“
You should always be taking pictures, if not with a camera then with your mind. Memories you capture on purpose are always more vivid than the ones you pick up by accident.
”
”
Isaac Marion (Warm Bodies (Warm Bodies, #1))
“
The biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while doing this. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of the three on them sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4, and 1. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in a hurry to get on to the next things: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less.
”
”
Anna Quindlen (Loud and Clear)
“
That was the thing about pictures. No matter how beautiful, they couldn't capture the truly felt parts of a moment.
”
”
Sarah Ockler (The Book of Broken Hearts)
“
No, you don't shoot things. You capture them. Photography means painting with light. And that's what you do. You paint a picture only by adding light to the things you see.
”
”
Katja Michael
“
Don't become a random photograph in the eyes of friends, and even your enemies, for each glance at your face will cause a declination of value and reputation. Create value, through scarcity.
”
”
Michael Bassey Johnson
“
a picture wasn’t worth anything if it didn’t produce a reaction, that it takes talent to capture feeling with an image.
”
”
Brigid Kemmerer (Letters to the Lost (Letters to the Lost, #1))
“
It's not one of the posed shots- it's one he didn't even realize had been taken, one he definitely didn't think would be released. He should have given the photographer more credit. He managed to capture the moment right when Henry cracked a joke, a candid, genuine photo, completely caught up in each other, Henry's arm around him and his own hand reaching up to grasp for Henry's on his shoulder.
The way Henry's looking at him in the picture is so affectionate, so openly loving, that seeing it from a third person perspective almost makes Alex want to look away, like he's staring into the sun. He called Henry the North Star once. That wasn't bright enough.
”
”
Casey McQuiston (Red, White & Royal Blue)
“
I look at pictures of you because I am afraid that you would notice me staring in real life. I looked at your picture today for countless minutes. It is closer than I’ll ever get to you for real. I felt like I was looking at a captured animal at a safe distance. If you knew I was doing this, you would feel sickened and frightened. That’s why you’ll never know. Years will go by and you’ll never know. I will never say the things that I want to say to you. I know the damage it would do. I love you more than I hate my loneliness and pain.
”
”
Henry Rollins (Solipsist)
“
If we could capture feelings like we capture pictures, none of us would ever leave our rooms. It would be so tempting to inhabit the good moments over and over again. But I don't want to be the kind of person who lives backwardly, who memorializes moments before she's finished living in them. So I plant my feet here on this hillside beside a boy who is undoing me, and I kiss him back like I mean it. And, God help me, with the sky wrapped around us in every direction, I do mean it.
”
”
Emery Lord (Open Road Summer)
“
A picture is truly worth a thousand words and in that single frame, I realized the power that images have, not only catching a fraction of a second, but truly pausing time, pausing my thoughts, and the swirling chaos in my brain.
”
”
Jeff Johns (Jet Lag Junkie: Unfiltered Tales of a Compulsive Wanderer)
“
We drove 22 miles into the country around Farmington. There were meadows and apple orchards. White fences trailed through the rolling fields. Soon the sign started appearing. THE MOST PHOTOGRAPHED BARN IN AMERICA. We counted five signs before we reached the site. There were 40 cars and a tour bus in the makeshift lot. We walked along a cowpath to the slightly elevated spot set aside for viewing and photographing. All the people had cameras; some had tripods, telephoto lenses, filter kits. A man in a booth sold postcards and slides -- pictures of the barn taken from the elevated spot. We stood near a grove of trees and watched the photographers. Murray maintained a prolonged silence, occasionally scrawling some notes in a little book.
"No one sees the barn," he said finally.
A long silence followed.
"Once you've seen the signs about the barn, it becomes impossible to see the barn."
He fell silent once more. People with cameras left the elevated site, replaced by others.
We're not here to capture an image, we're here to maintain one. Every photograph reinforces the aura. Can you feel it, Jack? An accumulation of nameless energies."
There was an extended silence. The man in the booth sold postcards and slides.
"Being here is a kind of spiritual surrender. We see only what the others see. The thousands who were here in the past, those who will come in the future. We've agreed to be part of a collective perception. It literally colors our vision. A religious experience in a way, like all tourism."
Another silence ensued.
"They are taking pictures of taking pictures," he said.
”
”
Don DeLillo (White Noise)
“
... but it is always dreadful when the pictures in front of one's eyes become meaningless and the real word is there instead and seems meaningless, too.
”
”
Dodie Smith (I Capture the Castle)
“
When you got captured, I didn't know..." He trailed off, had to chug whiskey before he could continue. "If it'd be like..."
"What?"
"Like it was with Clotile."
"Oh, Jackson, no. I was okay. I'm unharmed."
"Didn't know if I'd get there too late," he said with a shudder. Then he crossed over to me, until we stood toe-to-toe. "Evie, if you ever get taken from me again, you better know that I'll be coming for you." He cupped my face with a bloodstained hand. "So you stay the hell alive! You don't do like Clotile, you doan take that way out. You and me can get through anything, just give me a chance."--his voice broke lower "just give me a chance to get to you." He buried his face in my hair, inhaling deeply. "There is nothing that can happen to you that we can't get past."
...
"When you say we...?"
He pulled back, gazing down at me, his eyes blazing. "I'm goan to lay it all out there for you. Laugh in my face--I don't care. But I'm goan to get this off my chest."
"I won't laugh. I'm listening."
"Evie, I've wanted you from the first time I saw you. Even when I hated you, I wanted you." He raked his fingers through his hair. "I got it bad, me."
My heart felt like it'd stopped--so that I could hear him better.
"For as long as you've been looking down your nose at me, I've been craving you, an envie like I've never known."
"I don't look down at you! I'm too busy looking up to you."
...
"The corners of his lips curled for an instant before he grew serious again. "You asked me if I had that phone with your pictures, if I'd looked at it. Damn right, I did! I saw you playing with a dog at the beach, and doing a crazy-ass flip off a high dive, and making faces for the camera. I learned about you"- his voice grew hoarse -"and I wanted more of you. To see you every day." With a humourless laugh, he admitted, "After the Flash, I was constantly sourcing ways to charge a goddamned phone--that would never make a call."
I murmured, "I didn't know...I couldn't be sure."
"It's you for me, peekon.
”
”
Kresley Cole (Poison Princess (The Arcana Chronicles, #1))
“
When two people talk, they don’t just fall into physical and aural harmony. They also engage in what is called motor mimicry. If you show people pictures of a smiling face or a frowning face, they’ll smile or frown back, although perhaps only in muscular changes so fleeting that they can only be captured with electronic sensors. If I hit my thumb with a hammer, most people watching will grimace: they’ll mimic my emotional state. This is what is meant, in the technical sense, by empathy. We imitate each other’s emotions as a way of expressing support and caring and, even more basically, as a way of communicating with each other.
”
”
Malcolm Gladwell (The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference)
“
He, Teddy and Eliza entered the room just as someone was snapping a picture: they would be forever captured in a photo they didn't belong in, blinking against the flash.
”
”
Eleanor Henderson (Ten Thousand Saints)
“
Sometimes a picture of a moment captures more than the moment itself.
”
”
Leanna Renee Hieber (Darker Still (Magic Most Foul, #1))
“
To preserve the values of the civilized world, it is necessary to set fire to a library. To blow up a mosque. To incinerate olive trees. To dress up in the lingerie of women who fled and then take pictures. To level universities. To loot jewelry, art, banks, food. To arrest children for picking vegetables. To shoot children for throwing stones. To parade the captured in their underwear. To break a man’s teeth and shove a toilet brush in his mouth. To let combat dogs loose on a man with Down syndrome and then leave him to die. Otherwise, the uncivilized world might win.
”
”
Omar El Akkad (One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This)
“
There is more to every photograph than what we see-more to the story than the one the camera captures on the plate. You have to look behind the picture to discover the truth.
”
”
Hazel Gaynor (The Cottingley Secret)
“
Sometimes I think you take photographs instead of seeing, you forget to look in your eagerness to grasp what is seen, to capture it in time's flight. You are absent from your own pictures, not only because you took them yourself, but also because you betray the moments you want to save from oblivion.
”
”
Jens Christian Grøndahl (Silence In October: A Haunting Literary Psychological Novel of Marriage, Memory, and the Mystery of Connection)
“
No picture I saw online truly captured the effect of that tanned, well-structured face in person. Absolutely none. His face is walk-straight-into-a-wall stunning, and I won’t even dwell on his body, but now I understand why his bed is the most coveted spot in town.
”
”
Katy Evans (Manwhore (Manwhore, #1))
“
If you don’t capture the moments, it will be gone forever.
”
”
Lailah Gifty Akita (Think Great: Be Great! (Beautiful Quotes, #1))
“
Sometimes you have to sacrifice your queen to capture the king.
”
”
Aimee Carter (Queen (The Blackcoat Rebellion, #3))
“
I've always had a good memory a good head for facts although when something is behind you it changes when you try to capture it in words. The past is slippery that way. I know all about that. And even the present is hard to pin down. You think you know everything that's happening around you. But you can't always see clearly when you're standing right there in the picture.
”
”
Amanda Howells (The Summer of Skinny Dipping (Summer, #1))
“
The biggest mistake I made [as a parent] is the one that most of us make. … I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of [my three children] sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages six, four, and one. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less.
”
”
Anna Quindlen (Loud and Clear)
“
Perhaps the cause of our contemporary pessimism is our tendency to view history as a turbulent stream of conflicts – between individuals in economic life, between groups in politics, between creeds in religion, between states in war. This is the more dramatic side of history; it captures the eye of the historian and the interest of the reader. But if we turn from that Mississippi of strife, hot with hate and dark with blood, to look upon the banks of the stream, we find quieter but more inspiring scenes: women rearing children, men building homes, peasants drawing food from the soil, artisans making the conveniences of life, statesmen sometimes organizing peace instead of war, teachers forming savages into citizens, musicians taming our hearts with harmony and rhythm, scientists patiently accumulating knowledge, philosophers groping for truth, saints suggesting the wisdom of love. History has been too often a picture of the bloody stream. The history of civilization is a record of what happened on the banks.
”
”
Will Durant
“
Don't try to be good at everything, don't spread yourself so thin that you accomplish nothing; rather, pick a few things and do them well. Excel in those areas and you'll excel in life.
”
”
Rachel Van Dyken (Capture (Seaside Pictures, #1))
“
Why no pictures?” While I knew from the beginning that I did not want to include them, it took lengthy discussion with readers to articulate exactly why. It comes down to the fact that photos capture one instant in a person’s life. I hoped to bring these people alive as complex individuals: hopeful, gloomy, anxious, playful, devious, etc. Photos, within these covers, undermine that, in my opinion. So we left them out. Photos
”
”
Dave Cullen (Columbine)
“
the DeMille films were foolishness. I was born to do this, and I can do it precisely because I thought the whole religion through when I broke away. It takes someone who knows—not believes—to capture and picture the storytelling truth about Moishe Rabenu in a film.
”
”
Herman Wouk (The Lawgiver)
“
She capture the hidden mystery that gives a special flavor to the photograph ...
”
”
Imran Shaikh
“
Capture every moments of your life.
”
”
Lailah Gifty Akita (Think Great: Be Great! (Beautiful Quotes, #1))
“
Our eyes captures thousands of beautiful pictures everyday.
”
”
Pradeepa Pandiyan
“
I gasped. I’d seen photographs people had taken from this point above the river. But no picture captures a vista better than one’s own eyes.
”
”
Patrick Dobson (Canoeing the Great Plains: A Missouri River Summer)
“
Last night meant as much to me as it did to her and she painted it, capturing it in a way unique to Echo. […] Up close all those colors would look like chaos, but when viewed as a whole it creates this beautiful picture. In the end, that’s the best way to describe me and Echo, our relationship. Our love.
”
”
Katie McGarry (Breaking the Rules (Pushing the Limits, #1.5))
“
The best part of photography is capturing a moment of humanity and freezing it forever.
”
”
Mary Frame (Picture Imperfect (Imperfect, #4))
“
Sometimes I think I’ve got something, only in the next minute to be thrown into confusion once again. I don’t like being confused; I have no tolerance for it. That’s why I wish either I didn’t have this ability to capture details, or I had a greater ability to assemble them into a picture that made some sense.
”
”
Jo Nesbø (The Bat (Harry Hole, #1))
“
Stories are not just entertainment, not to me. A story records and transmits the experience of being human. It teaches us what it’s like to be who we are. Nothing but art can do this. There is no science that can capture the inner life. No words can describe it directly. We can only speak of it in metaphors. We can only say: it’s like this—this story, this picture, this song.
”
”
Andrew Klavan (The Great Good Thing: A Secular Jew Comes to Faith in Christ)
“
I’m not surprised he decided he wants to take pictures for a living. When we were kids, Jamie was always playing with his dad’s camera. I think one of the reasons we always got along so well was because we both saw the world as a series of moments that needed to be captured—we just captured them in different ways.
”
”
Akemi Dawn Bowman (Starfish)
“
All she captures is a moment and what she calls it is a memory,
Sometimes, it is assumptions that we use; all we need is a theory,
Because you don’t know what is there in the future,
And all you need is a vision to make a perfect picture.
I feel that I have known you for a century,
And whatever she calls is a memory.
”
”
Nishikant (The Papery Onions)
“
The very act of recall is like trying to photograph the sky. The infinite and ever-shifting colors of memory, its rippling light, cannot really be captured. Show someone who has never seen the sky a picture of the sky and you show them a picture of nothing.
Still I have to try.
”
”
Rachel Lyon (Self-Portrait with Boy)
“
The Fae book was definitely filled with the same stories as hers, but this one was filled with picture after picture of Jared. She couldn’t help but flip backward a few pages and see magical images come to life: of Jared defending her in an alley. Sitting in art class with Mina, spinning on the pottery wheel. There was another one of Jared by the lake, teaching her to fight. Jared and her in the storage room, laughing, before their tickling fight. She flipped forward and saw the last page filled with a motion-captured image of Jared and her sharing a kiss.
”
”
Chanda Hahn (Fable (An Unfortunate Fairy Tale, #3))
“
She wrote somewhere that photographs create their own memories, and supplant the past. In her pictures there isn’t nostalgia for the fleeting moment, captured by chance with a camera. Rather, there’s a confession: this moment captured is not a moment stumbled upon and preserved but a moment stolen, plucked from the continuum of experience in order to be preserved.
”
”
Valeria Luiselli (Lost Children Archive)
“
I’m gathering Kylie thinks that all it takes to capture an image is to point and shoot. That’s what everyone thinks. But there’s a lot more to it. It’s taken me years to frame things correctly. People assume you can’t take good pictures on an iPhone, but they’re wrong. Some of my best shots are on the phone.
They’re raw and simple, and most of the time no one knows you’re taking a picture. It’s much better than the thousand-dollar Nikon my dad got me for Christmas. I don’t think I’ve used it in months.
”
”
Valerie Thomas (From What I Remember...)
“
What is a writer?
A writer is a magician who can create a masterpiece
With a wave of a pencil
A writer has the key to a new world
Capturing readers and taking them on a roller coaster ride away from reality
But a writer can be a commanding tyrant
Or a hypnotist stealing minds
What is a writer?
A writer is a powerful being, an intelligent thinker
And an artist creating mind pictures through words.
A writer is a keeper of secrets
Or like a roomful of words waiting for a book
But a writer is also a puppet master taking control
With no strings attached
What is a writer?
A writer is a true friend
Using words to spread smiles to the world
A writer is…..
The voice of the hear
”
”
Carol Archer
“
And I give you this picture because it fairly captures our nearly fifty-year happy marriage, during which I have offered up an astonishing number of foolish pronouncements with absolute assurance, and Ruth, with only limited rancor, has ignored almost every one. A
”
”
Ruth Bader Ginsburg (My Own Words)
“
About half an hour after the show tree, I made Roger pull over so that I could take a picture, and I realized that there was no way to ever capture the entire landscape. So I turned in a circle, taking a picture in every direction, knowing that was the only way I could come close to capturing what it looked like. I lowered my camera and stood still for a moment, just taking in the silence. Even though it probably should have been scary, standing by the side of a deserted desert highway, it wasn't. It felt strangely peaceful.
”
”
Morgan Matson (Amy & Roger's Epic Detour)
“
I went to a music concert last night. I took a bunch of pictures, because nothing captures sound like a photograph.
”
”
Jarod Kintz (A Memoir of Memories and Memes)
“
Let that sink in. You see, the thing about pictures is they’re only a moment captured in time. No one knows what transpires before or after they’re taken.
”
”
Alaska Angelini (Chase (Captive to the Dark #5))
“
A dirty text a day keeps the doc away." "You sure you're a virgin?" "I'm a virgin, not a priest." He rolled his eyes then went to the pantry to grab a few more marshmallows.
”
”
Rachel Van Dyken (Capture (Seaside Pictures, #1))
“
Hell, my parents forgot my birthday, yet threw a freaking party for the family Chihuahua.
”
”
Rachel Van Dyken (Capture (Seaside Pictures, #1))
“
Demetri and advice…" Jaymeson sighed. "… two words that should never go together in a sentence. Almost like ketchup and bunny rabbits.
”
”
Rachel Van Dyken (Capture (Seaside Pictures, #1))
“
Had to pee his pants for a role, and when they tried to attach the pouch to him so that it would look real,, he shouted, 'No, I do all my own stunts. I got this.
”
”
Rachel Van Dyken (Capture (Seaside Pictures, #1))
“
Fine. I'm tame. And boring. I like reading. And the last time I went to a party, I left early because Outlander was on.
”
”
Rachel Van Dyken (Capture (Seaside Pictures, #1))
“
A picture never fully captures the reasons behind why I want to freeze the moment in the first place.
”
”
Alicia Cook (Stuff I've Been Feeling Lately)
“
And instead of useless worrying, I began instead to catalog her. To stockpile every happy memory for later. Like if I had enough pictures of her, of our whole family, then I'd be able to reconstruct her if I had to. Or maybe I'd capture enough of her soul to keep her here.
”
”
Emily Henry (Great Big Beautiful Life)
“
We can all take pictures but not everyone can capture the beauty that's usually hidden in plain view...
We can all open our mouth to sing but not everyone can melodically touch your soul...
We can all pick up a pen to write but not everyone can write words in such a way that they leap off of the page for you...
We can all part our lips to speak but not everyone can speak life into you...
We can all move our bodies to a beat but not everyone can become one with music, stir emotions and shift energy with dance...
Point is: WE CAN all do something but Know your gifts, cultivate them and ALWAYS, ALWAYS BE YOURSELF! Then working together becomes effortless. Copies aren't accepted everywhere...ORIGINALS are eventually required!
”
”
Sanjo Jendayi
“
So, maybe we’re the
generation of the selfie,
but we’re also the generation
that grew up in a tainted,
Photoshopped world
with every impossible beauty standard
shoved down our throat
through a tube
because eating has become
a guilty pleasure
and condemning beauty ideals
won’t go straight to our thighs.
And if, by chance,
we are able to destroy the
demons that you’ve planted
inside of us with your
constant advertisements and rules
that play behind our eyelids and
take root in our brains,
then let us take our fucking pictures
and capture that moment when
we felt beautiful because all this world
has taught us is that
our beauty is the greatest
measure of our worth.
Scoff at our phones all you like,
these delicate extensions of
our fingers, but know that
through this technology
that you couldn’t even
begin to understand,
we have smudged the entire
world with our fingerprints.
We are the generation of knowledge,
and we are learning more than
any that came before us.
So, frown at my typing fingers;
I am using them to grasp power
by the throat.
Try to invalidate us,
but we’ve heard our
parents talking about
the world’s crashing and burning
since we had sprung from the womb.
We know you’ve fucked up,
and we’re angry about it-
the kind of anger that
fuels knowledge,
that I feel in my veins every time
I read the news from my phone
before school,
that sticks in my throat like honey
in a debate;
the kind of anger that simmers,
that sharpens teeth into daggers,
that makes this generation more dangerous
than you could have ever imagined.
We are the generation of change,
and goddammit, we’re coming.
”
”
E.P. .
“
choose to look at the mountains rather than trying to concentrate on the valleys. It's easier to glance behind you and see the peaks, but it takes actual effort to look down into the darkness of where you've been.
”
”
Rachel Van Dyken (Capture (Seaside Pictures, #1))
“
Hey, I got an idea, let’s go to the movies. I wanna go to the movies, I want to take you all to the movies. Let’s go and experience the art of the cinema. Let’s begin with the Scream Of Fear, and we are going to haunt us for the rest of our lives. And then let’s go see The Great Escape, and spend our summer jumping our bikes, just like Steve McQueen over barb wire. And then let’s catch The Seven Samurai for some reason on PBS, and we’ll feel like we speak Japanese because we can read the subtitles and hear the language at the same time. And then let’s lose sleep the night before we see 2001: A Space Odyssey because we have this idea that it’s going to change forever the way we look at films. And then let’s go see it four times in one year. And let’s see Woodstock three times in one year and let’s see Taxi Driver twice in one week. And let’s see Close Encounters of the Third Kind just so we can freeze there in mid-popcorn. And when the kids are old enough, let’s sit them together on the sofa and screen City Lights and Stage Coach and The Best Years of Our Lives and On The Waterfront and Midnight Cowboy and Five Easy Pieces and The Last Picture Show and Raging Bull and Schindler’s List… so that they can understand how the human condition can be captured by this amalgam of light and sound and literature we call the cinema.
”
”
Tom Hanks
“
But even while Rome is burning, there’s somehow time for shopping at IKEA. Social imperatives are a merciless bitch. Everyone is attempting to buy what no one can sell. See, when I moved out of the house earlier this week, trawling my many personal belongings in large bins and boxes and fifty-gallon garbage bags, my first inclination was, of course, to purchase the things I still “needed” for my new place. You know, the basics: food, hygiene products, a shower curtain, towels, a bed, and umm … oh, I need a couch and a matching leather chair and a love seat and a lamp and a desk and desk chair and another lamp for over there, and oh yeah don’t forget the sideboard that matches the desk and a dresser for the bedroom and oh I need a coffeetable and a couple end tables and a TV-stand for the TV I still need to buy, and don’t these look nice, whadda you call ’em, throat pillows? Oh, throw pillows. Well that makes more sense. And now that I think about it I’m going to want my apartment to be “my style,” you know: my own motif, so I need certain decoratives to spruce up the decor, but wait, what is my style exactly, and do these stainless-steel picture frames embody that particular style? Does this replica Matisse sketch accurately capture my edgy-but-professional vibe? Exactly how “edgy” am I? What espresso maker defines me as a man? Does the fact that I’m even asking these questions mean I lack the dangling brass pendulum that’d make me a “man’s man”? How many plates/cups/bowls/spoons should a man own? I guess I need a diningroom table too, right? And a rug for the entryway and bathroom rugs (bath mats?) and what about that one thing, that thing that’s like a rug but longer? Yeah, a runner; I need one of those, and I’m also going to need…
”
”
Joshua Fields Millburn (Everything That Remains: A Memoir by The Minimalists)
“
I should get rid of those boxes, full of all that junk. Burn them all – make a bonfire in the garden and burn the bloody lot of it. All the captured bits of me, the scraps and pictures and notes and letters, burn it all, burn the lot of it – every last trace of me. Every last bit of me – up in flames and gone for good. Forgotten and gone. Rid me of these memories... Yes, that’s something to do this afternoon. Get out into the garden, and burn the past... To ashes with.
”
”
Jonny Glynn (The Seven Days of Peter Crumb)
“
My mom’s smile is genuine,
A lilac beaming
In the presence of her Sun.
Indentions in the sand prove
Time’s linear progression,
Her hair yet unblighted,
Carrying midnight’s consistency.
Clear tracks fading as the
Movement slips further
In the past.
Cheekbones
High, soft,
In summer’s hue,
Hopeful.
Each step’s unknown impact,
A future looking back.
My father’s strength:
One whose
Life is in his arms.
Squinting past the camera,
He rests upon a rock
Like caramel corn half eaten,
Just to the left
Of man-made concrete convention
Daylight’s eraser
Removing color to his right.
Dustin sits
In my father’s lap,
Open mouth of a drooling
Big mouth bass;
Muscle tone
Of a well exercised
Jelly fish,
He looks at me
Half aware;
His wheelchair
Perched at the edge
Of parking lot gravel grafted
Like a scar on nature’s beach,
Opening to the ironic splendor
Of a bitter tasting lake.
I took the picture.
Age 11.
Capturing the pinnacle arc
Of a son
To my lilac
Who
Outlived him and weeps,
Still.
Their sky has staple holes –
Maybe that’s how the
Light
Leaked out.
”
”
Darcy Leech (From My Mother)
“
When this house was built, people used daggers and their fingers,” he said. “And it’ll probably last until the days when men dine off capsules.”
“Fancy asking friends to come over for capsules,” I said.
“Oh, the capsules will be taken in private,” said Father. “By that time, eating will have become unmentionable. Pictures of food will be considered rare and curious, and only collected by rude old gentlemen.
”
”
Dodie Smith (I Capture the Castle)
“
You can work through the physics of interstellar radio attenuation,1 but the problem is captured pretty well by considering the economics of the situation: If your TV signals are getting to another star, you’re wasting money. Powering a transmitter is expensive, and creatures on other stars aren’t buying the products in the TV commercials that pay your power bill. The full picture is more complicated, but the bottom
”
”
Randall Munroe (What If? 10th Anniversary Edition: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions)
“
That's about when people realized that this wasn't some kind of show, an optical illusion or something to stand around and point at. They might not have understood what they were seeing, but whatever instinct humans possessed that triggered that flight response kicked in.
It became all about survival- about getting away from the big, bad unknown- while trying to snap pictures of the spectacle at the same time.
Got to love the near-innate human response to capture everything on film.
”
”
Jennifer L. Armentrout
“
I could have been killed, and their response is to film me?...In that moment, the myth that every time your picture is taken, a part of your soul is stolen strikes me as a certain truth, because I feel my spirit being sucked out of me, into hundreds of all-seeing lenses that simply want to capture my fear, my anger, my performance.
”
”
Jeanne Ryan (Nerve)
“
You should always be taking pictures, if not with a camera then with your mind. Memories you capture on purpose are always more vivid than the ones you pick up by accident.
”
”
Isaac Marion (Warm Bodies (Warm Bodies, #1))
“
If we could capture feelings like we capture pictures, none of us would ever leave our rooms. It would be so tempting to inhabit the good moments over and over again.
”
”
Emery Lord (Open Road Summer)
“
An unexamined life is a fog of distraction that obscures our whole identity; only the brutally honest are willing to see a newer, better, bigger picture. My
”
”
Bob Goff (Undistracted: Capture Your Purpose. Rediscover Your Joy.)
“
Mom used to say that a picture wasn’t worth anything if it didn’t produce a reaction, that it takes talent to capture feeling with an image.
”
”
Jennifer Niven (All the Bright Places)
“
I don't just capture pictures. I capture stories and memories.
”
”
Ashish Ranjan
“
Your voice is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard.
”
”
Rachel Van Dyken (Capture (Seaside Pictures, #1))
“
I want this. I want you. Don’t tell me I can’t have you.
”
”
Rachel Van Dyken (Capture (Seaside Pictures, #1))
“
There is a thin line between capturing memories & capturing pictures. That thin line is not uploading them on every social networking sites.
”
”
Nitya Prakash
“
We chase life like we chase butterflies to snap a picture. We blink, and the butterfly is gone. Capture the moment today.
”
”
Julie Barbera
“
It doesn't matter whether you are an expert or a novice in photography. As long as the lense of your camera fucoses the "nature" as a subject, you will always capture the best picture.
”
”
Krizha Mae G. Abia
“
When I miss you, sometimes I listen to music or look at pictures of you, not to remind me of you but to make me feel as if I’m with you. It makes me forget the distance and capture you.
”
”
Aratrika
“
I’m not sure, though, what “for later” means anymore. Something changed in the world. Not too long ago, it changed, and we know it. We don’t know how to explain it yet, but I think we all can feel it, somewhere deep in our gut or in our brain circuits. We feel time differently. No one has quite been able to capture what is happening or say why. Perhaps it’s just that we sense an absence of future, because the present has become too overwhelming, so the future has become unimaginable. And without future, time feels like only an accumulation. An accumulation of months, days, natural disasters, television series, terrorist attacks, divorces, mass migrations, birthdays, photographs, sunrises. We haven’t understood the exact way we are now experiencing time. And maybe the boy’s frustration at not knowing what to take a picture of, or how to frame and focus the things he sees as we all sit inside the car, driving across this strange, beautiful, dark country, is simply a sign of how our ways of documenting the world have fallen short. Perhaps if we found a new way to document it, we might begin to understand this new way we experience space and time. Novels and movies don’t quite capture it; journalism doesn’t; photography, dance, painting, and theater don’t; molecular biology and quantum physics certainly don’t either. We haven’t understood how space and time exist now, how we really experience them. And until we find a way to document them, we will not understand them.
”
”
Valeria Luiselli (Lost Children Archive)
“
Quantitative historians who use statistical tools to study big-picture historical trends, created a vast database of research on more than 36,000 slave ship voyages that took place over four hundred years.
They found that there was a revolt on at least one in ten of these voyages. That was a much higher number than anyone expected.
Revolts were never easy, but revolts on slave ships in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean were basically suicide missions. Nonetheless, many captives chose death over this exceptionally horrid new kind of slavery.
This type of resistance was so expensive and time-consuming for the slavers, these historians estimate that it prevented at least a million more people from being captured and entering the slave trade. So why would a revolt happen on one ship and not another? The quantitative historians couldn't find a clear pattern, other than that captives tried to revolt whenever they would. But one thing did stand out: The more women onboard a slave ship, the more likely a revolt.
Let me emphasize this point: the more women onboard a slave ship, the more likely a revolt would occur.
”
”
Rebecca Hall (Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts)
“
Life is going on, but there is no drama, no expectation of an outcome, no sense of getting anywhere. Rather than this being a condition of boredom or frustration, though, it feels exactly right. It is tranquil but not tired. It is immensely peaceful but not inert. In a strange way, the picture is filled with a sense of delight in existence expressed quietly. It is not the light in itself that is so attractive; rather, it is the condition of the soul it evinces. The picture captures a part of who one is – a part that isn’t particularly verbal. You could point to this image and say, ‘That’s what I’m like, sometimes; and I wish I were like that more often.’ It could be the beginning of an important friendship if somebody else understood this too.
”
”
Alain de Botton (Art as Therapy)
“
If she captured Tamlin’s power once, who’s to say she can’t do it again?” It was the question I hadn’t yet dared voice.
“He won’t be tricked again so easily,” he said, staring up at the ceiling. “Her biggest weapon is that she keeps our powers contained. But she can’t access them, not wholly—though she can control us through them. It’s why I’ve never been able to shatter her mind—why she’s not dead already. The moment you break Amarantha’s curse, Tamlin’s wrath will be so great that no force in the world will keep him from splattering her on the walls.”
A chill went through me.
“Why do you think I’m doing this?” He waved a hand to me.
“Because you’re a monster.”
He laughed. “True, but I’m also a pragmatist. Working Tamlin into a senseless fury is the best weapon we have against her. Seeing you enter into a fool’s bargain with Amarantha was one thing, but when Tamlin saw my tattoo on your arm … Oh, you should have been born with my abilities, if only to have felt the rage that seeped from him.”
I didn’t want to think much about his abilities. “Who’s to say he won’t splatter you as well?”
“Perhaps he’ll try—but I have a feeling he’ll kill Amarantha first. That’s what it all boils down to, anyway: even your servitude to me can be blamed on her. So he’ll kill her tomorrow, and I’ll be free before he can start a fight with me that will reduce our once-sacred mountain to rubble.” He picked at his nails. “And I have a few other cards to play.”
I lifted my brows in silent question.
“Feyre, for Cauldron’s sake. I drug you, but you don’t wonder why I never touch you beyond your waist or arms?”
Until tonight—until that damned kiss. I gritted my teeth, but even as my anger rose, a picture cleared.
“It’s the only claim I have to innocence,” he said, “the only thing that will make Tamlin think twice before entering into a battle with me that would cause a catastrophic loss of innocent life. It’s the only way I can convince him I was on your side. Believe me, I would have liked nothing more than to enjoy you—but there are bigger things at stake than taking a human woman to my bed.”
I knew, but I still asked, “Like what?”
“Like my territory,” he said, and his eyes held a far-off look that I hadn’t yet seen. “Like my remaining people, enslaved to a tyrant queen who can end their lives with a single word. Surely Tamlin expressed similar sentiments to you.” He hadn’t—not entirely. He hadn’t been able to, thanks to the curse.
“Why did Amarantha target you?” I dared ask. “Why make you her whore?”
“Beyond the obvious?” He gestured to his perfect face. When I didn’t smile, he loosed a breath. “My father killed Tamlin’s father—and his brothers.”
I started. Tamlin had never said—never told me the Night Court was responsible for that.
“It’s a long story, and I don’t feel like getting into it, but let’s just say that when she stole our lands out from under us, Amarantha decided that she especially wanted to punish the son of her friend’s murderer—decided that she hated me enough for my father’s deeds that I was to suffer.”
I might have reached a hand toward him, might have offered my apologies—but every thought had dried up in my head. What Amarantha had done to him …
“So,” he said wearily, “here we are, with the fate of our immortal world in the hands of an illiterate human.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Thorns and Roses (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #1))
“
Life is scary as hell, but I’d rather believe you were spared for a reason, maybe so that on your eighteenth birthday you could make a stupid, spoiled, Hollywood actor give up his heart and fall in love.
”
”
Rachel Van Dyken (Capture (Seaside Pictures, #1))
“
I am being as honest with myself as possible, which is harder than it sounds. Who wouldn’t rather write down pretty things and pretend they are the truth?’
“My photos are a way of telling stories but without the pressure of all those words. I used to think of them as a way to capture everything that’s good. Everything my life wasn’t. but now I take pictures of all of it: the sad, the disturbing, the ugly.
”
”
Jennifer Niven (Breathless)
“
We're so distracted, we're missing out own lives. The parent who records his kid's dance recital or first steps or graduation is so busy trying to capture the moment--to create a thing that proves that they were there--they miss out on actually living and enjoying the moment.
I've done this before with my camera. I have jockeyed for position, bumping elbows with other parents so I could get into the best spot to look through the viewfinder of my SLR to capture the moment of my daughter's dance recital. Five-year-old Phoebe was so cute in her little sailor outfit, tapping away. And I got some great pictures. It's just that while I remember getting the pictures, I do not recall the moment. So much of the time we don't trust ourselves to experience our world without stuff. Things so often don't enhance our lives, but are barriers to fully living our lives.
”
”
Dave Bruno (The 100 Thing Challenge: How I Got Rid of Almost Everything, Remade My Life, and Regained My Soul – An Inspiring Guide to Simple and Meaningful Living)
“
A business model really is a system where one element influences the other; it only makes sense as a whole. Capturing that big picture without visualizing it is difficult. In fact, by visually depicting a business model, one turns its tacit assumptions into explicit information. This makes the model tangible and allows for clearer discussions and changes. Visual techniques give “life” to a business model and facilitate co-creation.
”
”
Alexander Osterwalder (Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers (The Strategyzer Series 1))
“
I saw exactly one picture of Marx and one of Lenin in my whole stay, but it's been a long time since ideology had anything to do with it. Not without cunning, Fat Man and Little Boy gradually mutated the whole state belief system into a debased form of Confucianism, in which traditional ancestor worship and respect for order become blended with extreme nationalism and xenophobia. Near the southernmost city of Kaesong, captured by the North in 1951, I was taken to see the beautifully preserved tombs of King and Queen Kongmin. Their significance in F.M.-L.B. cosmology is that they reigned over a then unified Korea in the 14th century, and that they were Confucian and dynastic and left many lavish memorials to themselves. The tombs are built on one hillside, and legend has it that the king sent one of his courtiers to pick the site. Second-guessing his underling, he then climbed the opposite hill. He gave instructions that if the chosen site did not please him he would wave his white handkerchief. On this signal, the courtier was to be slain. The king actually found that the site was ideal. But it was a warm day and he forgetfully mopped his brow with the white handkerchief. On coming downhill he was confronted with the courtier's fresh cadaver and exclaimed, 'Oh dear.' And ever since, my escorts told me, the opposite peak has been known as 'Oh Dear Hill.'
I thought this was a perfect illustration of the caprice and cruelty of absolute leadership, and began to phrase a little pun about Kim Jong Il being the 'Oh Dear Leader,' but it died on my lips.
”
”
Christopher Hitchens (Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays)
“
A picture is worth a thousand words, but is 400% less valuable, because a picture only captures one of the senses—sight. However, words can describe the other four senses, making writing four times more potent than photography.
”
”
Jarod Kintz (This Book is Not for Sale)
“
Scarcity of money narrows the mind’s focus, like a camera zoomed in too closely, unable to capture the full picture of possibilities. Yet within those limits lies the seed of creativity, waiting for a spark of courage to expand the view.
”
”
Linsey Mills (Currency of Conversations: The Talk You've Been Waiting For About Money)
“
In the last week of April 2004, a handful of the Abu Ghraib photographs were broadcast on 60 minutes and published in The New Yorker, and within a couple of days they had been rebroadcast and republished pretty much everywhere on earth. Overnight, the human pyramid, the hooded man on the box, the young woman soldier with a prisoner on a leash, and the corpse packed in ice had become the defining images of the Iraq war...Never before had such primal dungeon scenes been so baldly captured on camera...But above all, it was the posing soldiers, mugging for their buddies' cameras while dominating the prisoners in trophy stances, that gave the photographs the sense of unruly and unmediated reality. The staging was part of the reality they documented. And the grins, the thumbs-up, the arms crossed over puffed-out chests—all this unseemly swagger and self-regard was the height of amateurism. These soldier-photographers stood, at once, inside and outside the events they recorded, watching themselves take part in the spectacle, and their decision not to conceal but to reveal what they were doing indicated that they were not just amateur photographers, but amateur torturers.
So the amateurism was not merely a formal dimension of the Abu Ghraib pictures. It was part of their content, part of what we saw in them, and it corresponded to an aspect of the Iraq War that troubled and baffled nearly everyone: the reckless and slapdash ineptitude with which it had been prosecuted. It was an amateur-run war, a murky and incoherent war. It was not clear why it was waged; too many reasons were given, none had held up, and the stories we invented to explain it to ourselves hardly seemed to matter, since once it was started the war had become its own engine—not a means to an end but an end in itself. What had been billed as a war of ideas and ideals had been exposed as a war of poses and posturing.
”
”
Philip Gourevitch (Standard Operating Procedure)
“
I don't know why these things have to be transmitted by word of mouth, he thought. It wasn't exactly that they were secrets; God revealed his secrets easily to all his creatures.
He had only one explanation for this fact: things have to be transmitted this way because they were made up from the pure life, and this kind of life cannot be captured in pictures or words.
Because people become fascinated with pictures and words, and wind up forgetting the Language of the World.
”
”
Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist)
“
The endless procession of people and things that forms the world is for me an interminable gallery of pictures whose content bores me. It doesn't interest me because the soul is a monotonous thing and is always the same in everyone; it differs only in its personal manifestations and the best part of it is that which overflows into dreams, into mannerisms and gestures, and thus becomes part of the image that so captures my interest [...] This is how I experience the animate exteriors of things and beings, in pure vision, indifferent as a god from another world to their content, to their spirit. I only go deep into the surface of other people, if I want profundity I look for it in myself and in my concept of things.
”
”
Fernando Pessoa
“
The TV screen switched back to a picture of the crime scene, just in time to capture footage of my bod being police escorted out of the building, my shirt unbuttoned sufficiently for the entire State of Israel to know that I wear pick lace, push-up bras.
”
”
Kate McVaugh (Jaz, Tall Men, & Mayhem (A Jazmine Davidson Adventure #2))
“
For us, time is as difficult to grasp as picturing a country we've never been to. You can't capture the passing of time on a piece of paper. The hands of a clock may show that some time has passed, but the fact that we can't actually feel it makes us nervous.
”
”
Naoki Higashida (The Reason I Jump: the Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism)
“
My prolonged study of these photographs led me to appreciate the importance of preserving certain moments for prosperity, and as time moved forwards I also came to see what a powerful influence these framed scenes exerted over us as we went about our daily lives.
To watch my uncle pose my brother a maths problem, and at the same time to see him in a picture taken thirty-two years earlier; to watch my father scanning the newspaper and trying, with a half-smile, to catch the tail of a joke rippling across the crowded room, and at that very same moment to see a picture of him to me that my grandmother had framed and frozen these memories so that we could weave them into the present.When, in the tones ordinarily preserved for discussing the founding of a nation, my grandmother spoke of my grandfather who had died so young, and pointed at the frames on the tables and the walls, it seemed that she, like me, was pulled in two direction , wanting to get on with life but also longing to capture the moment of perfection, savouring the ordinary life but still honouring the ideal. But even as I pondered these dilemmas-if you plucked a special moment from life and framed it, were you defying death, decay and the passage of time, or were you submitting to them? - I grew very bored with them.
”
”
Orhan Pamuk (Istanbul: Memories and the City)
“
Everything in all the books I once pored over is finished for me now. Penelope Leach. T. Berry Brazelton. Dr. Spock. The ones on sibling rivalry and sleeping through the night and early-childhood education, all grown obsolete. Along with ‘Goodnight Moon’ and ‘Where the Wild Things Are,’ they are battered, spotted, well used. But I suspect that if you flipped the pages dust would rise like memories. . . . The biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make. . . .I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of the three of [my children] sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4, and 1. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less.
”
”
Anna Quindlen (Loud and Clear)
“
That was the thing about pictures. No matter how beautiful, they couldn't capture the truly felt parts of a moment. Life was different looking through the lens, the colors less vibrant, the beauty less grand. By the time you took the shot, the moment had already passed.
”
”
Sarah Ockler (The Book of Broken Hearts)
“
Lincoln Greene didn’t look at me like a puzzle that needed to be solved in order for us to be friends. He didn’t try to fix the pieces. He simply accepted them for what they were. Screwed up. It was as if he saw the fear, hurt, anger – the ugly – and accepted me anyway.
”
”
Rachel Van Dyken (Capture (Seaside Pictures, #1))
“
I used to think printing things made them permanent, but that seems so silly now. Everything will be destroyed no matter how hard we work to create it. The idea terrifies me. I want tiny permanents. I want gigantic permanents! I want what I think and who I am captured in an anthology of indulgence I can comfortingly tuck into a shelf in some labyrinthine library. Everyone thinks they’re special—my grandma for her Marlboro commercials, my parents for discos and the moon. You can be anything, they tell us. No one else is quite like you. But I searched my name on Facebook and got eight tiny pictures staring back. The Marina Keegans with their little hometowns and relationship statuses. When we die, our gravestones will match. HERE LIES MARINA KEEGAN, they will say. Numbers one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.
”
”
Marina Keegan (The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories)
“
Here's a good phrase for you to jot down: wherever you are, be there! Be there to absorb it. Take a picture if you can. Take pictures in your mind; let your soul and heart take pictures. Get it, capture it, absorb it. And don't be casual in getting it. Casualness leads to casualties.
”
”
Jim Rohn (Leading an Inspired Life)
“
Lollipops and raindrops
Sunflowers and sun-kissed daisies
Rolling surf and raging sea
Sailing ships and submarines
Old Glory and “purple mountain’s majesty”
Screaming guitar and lilting rhyme
Flight of fancy and high-steppin’ dances
Set free my mind to wander…
Imagine the ant’s marching journeys.
Fly, in my mind’s eye, on butterfly wings.
Roam the distant depths of space.
Unfurl tall sails and cross the ocean.
Pictures made just to enthrall
Creating images from my truth
Painting hopes and dreams on my canvas
Capturing, through my lens, the ephemeral
Let me ruminate ‘pon sensual darkness…
Tremble o’er Hollywood’s fluttering Gothics…
Ride the edge of my seat with the hero…
Weep with the heroine’s desperation.
Yet… more than all these things…
Give me words spun out masterfully…
Terms set out in meter and rhyme…
Phrases bent to rattle the soul…
Prose that always miraculously inspires me!
The trill runs up my spine, as I recall…
A touch… a caress…a whispered kiss…
Ebony eyes embracing my soul…
Two souls united in beat of hearts.
A butterfly flutter in my womb
My lover’s wonder o’er my swelling
The testament of our love given life
Newly laid in my lover’s arms
Luminous, sweet ebony eyes
Just so much like his father’s
A gaze of wonder and contentment
From my babe at mother’s breast
Words of the Divine set down for me
Faith, Hope, Love, and Charity
Grace, Mercy, and undeserved Salvation
“My Shepherd will supply my need”
These are the things that inspire me.
”
”
D. Denise Dianaty (My Life In Poetry)
“
She gasped as he captured the picture from her hands, “Pining over what could have been? Funny, if you hadn’t spread your legs for anyone with a pulse, you might be standing here married to the other Karasphalous brother right now,” Nikos growled as he placed the photo back in its original spot and turned just as Adriana's hand made contact with the side of his smug face.
“Go to hell!” she spat as she grasp the long folds of her dress and stormed toward the master bedroom like the hounds of hell were on her heels.
Just before slamming the door behind her she heard him bark, “I’m already there!
”
”
Julie Garver (The Greek Tycoon's Revenge)
“
For the person who wants to capture everything that passes before his eyes, [...] the only coherent way to act is to snap at least one picture a minute, from the instant he opens his eyes in the morning to when he goes to sleep. This is the only way that he rolls of exposed film will represent a faithful diary of our days, with nothing left out. If I were to start taking pictures, I'd see this thing through, even if it meant losing my mind. But the rest of you still insist on making a choice. What sort of choice? A choice in the idyllic sense, apologetic, consolatory, at peace with nature, the fatherland, the family. Your choice isn't only photographic; it is a choice of life, which leads you to exclude dramatic conflicts, the knots of contradiction, the great tensions of will, passion, aversion. So you think you are saving yourselves from madness, but you are falling into mediocrity, into hebetude."
- from "The Adventure of a Photographer
”
”
Italo Calvino (Difficult Loves)
“
SLEEP DIDN’T CURE MY GUILT. It didn’t lessen it either. The mind is nothing but a free Polaroid that never stops taking pictures. And you can’t just throw them away. They won’t rip or cut. Those moments are captured forever. I go through my morning routine like a robot. Shower. Dress. Hair. Make-up. Coffee. Two cups, actually.
”
”
Lisa De Jong (Break Even)
“
Humiecki and Graef asked Laudamiel to create a perfume that captures the state of ‘how men cry’—eruptive and sensual. Pictures from Slavic culture, as well as how they deal with melancholia and happiness served as inspiration [sic]. The result is a perfume that combines raw eruption, sensual strength, melancholic warmth and deep mysticism.
”
”
Luca Turin (Perfumes: The Guide)
“
took it with me everywhere, snapping thousands of pictures. I didn’t know why, but capturing moments fascinated me. Maybe it was because sometimes all we get are moments. There are no do-overs; whatever happens in a moment defines life—perhaps it is life. But capturing a moment on film keeps that moment alive, forever. To me, photography was magic.
”
”
Tillie Cole (A Thousand Boy Kisses)
“
I took it with me everywhere, snapping thousands of pictures. I didn’t know why, but capturing moments fascinated me. Maybe it was because sometimes all we get are moments. There are no do-overs; whatever happens in a moment defines life—perhaps it is life. But capturing a moment on film keeps that moment alive, forever. To me, photography was magic.
”
”
Tillie Cole (A Thousand Boy Kisses)
“
He released my body, and I slumped down the wall, my butt colliding with the hardwood floor as I looked up at him with blurry vision. "What just happened?"
Zane Smirked then leaned down, offering me his massive hand. "Demonstration. You want him to kiss you like that. You're welcome. Also, next time a guy tries to kiss you who isn't Lincoln, you slap him.
”
”
Rachel Van Dyken (Capture (Seaside Pictures, #1))
“
In another life, I'm an art historian. A professor of art history or maybe a conservator of artworks, but this is where I'd be. Surrounded by beautiful things, things that inspire you and move the world forward and speak to what it means to be human, and there would be nothing bad . . . and love would be straightforward because there are so many different kinds of love in the world and art captures a moment in each of them. And it's just a moment, not a whole picture–I know that–but there's something lovely about that. isn't there . . . ? About a snapshot moment for all the world to look upon, frozen the way the person who painted it saw it and felt it, like that forever for us to try and see it and feel it the same way.
”
”
Jessa Hastings (Daisy Haites (Magnolia Parks Universe, #2))
“
9. Your Photo Album Many people have a photo album. In it they keep memories of the happiest of times. There may be a photo of them playing by the beach when they were very young. There may be the picture with their proud parents at their graduation ceremony. There will be many shots of their wedding that captures their love at one of its highest points. And there will be holiday snapshots too. But you will never find in your album any photographs of miserable moments of your life. Absent is the photo of you outside the principal’s office at school. Missing is any photo of you studying hard late into the night for your exams. No one that I know has a picture of their divorce in their album, nor one of them in a hospital bed terribly sick, nor stuck in busy traffic on the way to work on a Monday morning! Such depressing shots never find their way into anyone’s photo album. Yet there is another photo album that we keep in our heads called our memory. In that album, we include so many negative photographs. There you find so many snapshots of insulting arguments, many pictures of the times when you were so badly let down, and several montages of the occasions where you were treated cruelly. There are surprisingly few photos in that album of happy moments. This is crazy! So let’s do a purge of the photo album in our head. Delete the uninspiring memories. Trash them. They do not belong in this album. In their place, put the same sort of memories that you have in a real photo album. Paste in the happiness of when you made up with your partner, when there was that unexpected moment of real kindness, or whenever the clouds parted and the sun shone with extraordinary beauty. Keep those photos in your memory. Then when you have a few spare moments, you will find yourself turning its pages with a smile, or even with laughter.
”
”
Ajahn Brahm (Don't Worry, Be Grumpy: Inspiring Stories for Making the Most of Each Moment)
“
Why is it that I can hardly bear to be in a moment as it's happening, but I take a picture instead, so I can experience it that way? I'm so bad at being present. I puncture the moment right as it reaches its zenith-- capture it, like a butterfly in a killing jar. Then, the photograph becomes a stand-in, pinned on velvet, for the feelings I didn't allow myself to fully feel.
”
”
Larissa Pham (Pop Song: Adventures in Art & Intimacy)
“
I perch atop a long, thick piece of bone-white driftwood, enjoying the stillness and the quiet, trying and failing to take a few phone pictures that might come close to capturing the feeling of energy and possibility that emanates from all around: the beach, the water, the sky. On my phone, it’s a blur of blue-black pixels. The most beautiful things never hold up on a screen.
”
”
Emily Henry (Great Big Beautiful Life)
“
Practically all human literature deals with the present and the past; when literature tries to describe the future, it at once ceases to be human and ceases to be literature; and all the pictures which the Bolsheviks have so far given us of a future world constructed on the design of Lenin are so depressing that nobody would like to read about such a world, much less to live in it.
”
”
Francis McCullagh (A prisoner of the Reds, the story of a British officer captured Siberia)
“
I love making films, playing video games, designing pictures on Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator. But what I felt so impressed about my life. Is that I finally got my chance to write stories just for the hell of it. To me, it helps with my life. It calms me down. The narrative stories is what captures me. More characters, but big connections. And that's what it took for me to become a writer.
”
”
Robert Augustine Capone
“
Are we not, all of us, in some way, damaged mirrors? Are we not constantly engaged in focusing the light of thought—memories out of the depths of human experience—onto the photographic plate of each moment? The image captured in this instant is a snapshot of all eternity, subtly altered by our own brokenness. And who’s to say that the image formed by a damaged mirror is not a truer picture of the universe?
”
”
Yael Shahar
“
The group of artists and scientists that had so far done least was the one that had attracted the greatest interest—and the greatest alarm. This was the team working on “total identification.” The history of the cinema gave the clue to their actions. First sound, then color, then stereoscopy, then Cinerama, had made the old “moving pictures” more and more like reality itself. Where was the end of the story? Surely, the final stage would be reached when the audience forgot it was an audience, and became part of the action. To achieve this would involve stimulation of all the senses, and perhaps hypnosis as well, but many believed it to be practical. When the goal was attained, there would be an enormous enrichment of human experience. A man could become—for a while, at least—any other person, and could take part in any conceivable adventure, real or imaginary. He could even be a plant or an animal, if it proved possible to capture and record the sense impressions of other living creatures. And when the “program” was over, he would have acquired a memory as vivid as any experience in his actual life—indeed, indistinguishable from reality itself. The prospect was dazzling. Many also found it terrifying, and hoped that the enterprise would fail. But they knew in their hearts that once science had declared a thing possible, there was no escape from its eventual realization…. This, then, was New Athens and some of its dreams. It hoped to become what the old Athens might have been had it possessed machines instead of slaves, science instead of superstition. But it was much too early yet to tell if the experiment would succeed.
”
”
Arthur C. Clarke (Childhood's End)
“
He hands me a book-
paperback cover
with a picture
of the bay.
I flip through,
find picture
after picture
from my month
in Felicity Bay,
all those
*beep*
*click*
*beep*
times that Daniel
captured,
put in a book -
a baby crab,
mermaid hair,
Froot Loops,
sandy toes,
tree house,
and even
stained glass windows,
and a chalice -
moments of significance,
ordinary things
that turned out to be
extraordinary."
-Bailey
”
”
Shari Green (Root Beer Candy and Other Miracles)
“
I suppose a part of me wished when I put my key in the door, it would magically open into a different apartment, a different life, a place so bright with joy and excitement that I'd be temporarily blinded when I first saw it. I pictured what a documentary film crew would capture in my face as I glimpsed this whole new world before me, like in those home improvement shows Reva liked to watch when she came over. First, I'd cringe with surprise. But then, once my eyes adjusted to the light, they'd grow wide and glisten with awe. I'd drop the keys and the coffee and wander in, spinning around with my jaw hanging open, shocked at the transformation of my dim, gray apartment into a paradise of realized dreams. But what would it look like exactly? I had no idea. When I tried to imagine this new place, all I could come up with was a cheesy mural of a rainbow, a man in a white bunny costume, a set of dentures in a glass, a huge slice of watermelon on a yellow plate—an odd prediction, maybe, of when I'm ninety-five and losing my mind in an assisted-living facility where they treat the elderly residents like retarded children. I should be so lucky, I thought. I opened the door to my apartment, and, of course, nothing had changed.
”
”
Ottessa Moshfegh (My Year of Rest and Relaxation)
“
The little island is dominated by a grand white house which might be showing its age but which is still striking. She used to want to live in the houses she saw pictured on chocolate box lids, cottages that were inseparable from that sweet smell, like gingerbread houses. This house looks nothing like those long-ago fairy-tale cottages, but it has the same kind of appeal. She would like to try to capture it on the page
”
”
Alison Moore (The Retreat)
“
As beautiful as you are my lady,
You sick answers to why love is never by your side
Your heart wonders around trying to find your ideal love
But yet nothing is completing your need.
You’re a women of strength and resemble power within,
Filled with joy on your angelic face, yet no good man appreciates it
A laughter that one can capture for a lifetime, too bad that all the men you seem to meet erase it all
You display Emotions that one can wish to dwell in and feel the energy you hold within.
Take a stand my lady, no rose ever dies without growing back again,
You need no tears to fall for a man who sees less in you
You need no sad feeling to crush that happy self, he’ll never be worth the joy in you
Show him no sad emotions, you’re too strong to give in now.
As a flower you bloomed gracefully and a beautiful lady rose up from that seed the Lord God planted
As a pillar you balanced yourself against all negative forces of life and that was your strength
As an ocean you cried your tears out but that never hindered the ocean from being full again
As a beautiful picture frame you lit up the room and no soul will ever take that away from you.
Let yourself love you, is the greatest love one can ever behold,
I’m done seeing you cry!!!
”
”
Molemo Sylence
“
At this point trillions of pictures have been taken of Kate Moss in an effort to capture her beauty, style and essence. Yet our appetite for more, more, more rages on unabated. She's paid very well to sell us things that we might previously have had no interest in buying. That's because anything she puts near her body is instantly transformed into the coolest thing ever, because She is the coolest thing ever and nobody can explain why. It's just a fact.
”
”
Alexa Chung (It)
“
In sum, the fruition of 50 years of research, and several hundred million dollars in government funds, has given us the following picture of sub-atomic matter. All matter consists of quarks and leptons, which interact by exchanging different types of quanta, described by the Maxwell and Yang-Mills fields. In one sentence, we have captured the essence of the past century of frustrating investigation into the subatomic realm, From this simple picture one can derive, from pure mathematics alone, all the myriad and baffling properties of matter. (Although it all seems so easy now, Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg, one of the creators of the Standard Model, once reflected on how tortuous the 50-year journey to discover the model had been. He wrote, "There's a long tradition of theoretical physics, which by no means affected everyone but certainly affected me, that said the strong interactions [were] too complicated for the human mind.")
”
”
Michio Kaku (Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the Tenth Dimension)
“
In the picture, as Poppy stared up at me, she looked beautiful. But it was the expression on her face that floored me. The look in her green eyes. In this moment, this single captured moment, there was that expression. The one she gave to me as readily as she gave to her music. The one that told me I had her just as much as she had me. The one that ensured we had stayed together all these years. The one that said even though we were young, we knew we’d found our soulmate in the other.
”
”
Tillie Cole (A Thousand Boy Kisses)
“
This picture of matter curving space and curvaceous space dictating how matter and light will move has several striking features. It brings the non-Euclidean geometries that we talked about in the last chapter out from the library of pure mathematics into the arena of science. The vast collection of geometries describing spaces that are not simply the flat space of Euclid are the ones that Einstein used to capture the possible structures of space distorted by the presence of mass and energy.
”
”
John D. Barrow (The Book of Nothing: Vacuums, Voids, and the Latest Ideas about the Origins of the Universe)
“
....though he hated to admit it, they were all Anglophiles. They were a family of Anglophiles. Pointed in the wrong direction, trapped outside their own history and unable to retrace their steps because their footprints had been swept away. He explained to them that history was like an old house at night. With all the lamps lit. And ancestors whispering inside.
"To understand history," Chacko said, "we have to go inside and listen to what they're saying. And look at the books and the pictures on the wall. And smell the smells."...
..."But we can't go in," Chacko explained, "because we've been locked out. And when we look in through the windows, all we see are shadows. And when we try and listen, all we hear is a whispering. And we cannot understand the whispering, because our minds have been invaded by war. A war that we have won and lost. The very worst sort of war. A war that captures dreams and re-dreams them. A war that has made us adore our conquerors and despise ourselves.
”
”
Arundhati Roy
“
For the first couple of years, I was aware, really aware, of what she was dealing with—and of the very real possibility that we could lose her—I remember spending all my time worrying. And then one year, for Christmas, my parents gave me a camera.
And instead of useless worrying, I began instead to catalog her. To stockpile every happy memory for later. Like if I had enough pictures of her, of our whole family, then I'd be able to reconstruct her if I had to. Or maybe I'd capture enough of her soul to keep her here.
”
”
Emily Henry (Great Big Beautiful Life)
“
I also like the constant tension in those pictures, a tension between document and fabrication, between capturing a unique fleeting instant and staging an instant. She wrote somewhere that photographs create their own memories, and supplant the past. In her pictures there isn’t nostalgia for the fleeting moment, captured by chance with a camera. Rather, there’s a confession: this moment captured is not a moment stumbled upon and preserved but a moment stolen, plucked from the continuum of experience in order to be preserved.
”
”
Valeria Luiselli (Lost Children Archive)
“
With these new techniques, a new breed of evolutionist is emerging, able to capture the workings of evolution in real time. The picture so painted is breathtaking in its wealth of detail and its compass, ranging from the subatomic to the planetary scale. And that is why I said that, for the first time in history, we know. Much of our growing body of knowledge is provisional, to be sure, but it is vibrant and meaningful. It is a joy to be alive at this time, when we know so much, and yet can still look forward to so much more.
”
”
Nick Lane (Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution)
“
Being a parent was so much more than baby books and birthing classes. It was late night groans over who would get up to change diapers. It was fits of laughter over each face she made, and fits of anger over each toy stepped on in the dark. It was pictures that didn’t do real life justice, memories captured with eyes and cameras both. It was worry over if we were feeding her the right things and loving her the right way. It was tears of agony when she was sick, when all we wanted to do was take the pain for her, and it was tears of joy over her first word spoken.
”
”
Kandi Steiner (What He Always Knew (What He Doesn't Know, #2))
“
Good Morning. This is Mr. Gold of Paramount Pictures Corporation. We are carrying out an authorized survey of the territory for a forthcoming "A" picture of the famous Confederate raid of 1861 which resulted in the capture of General Sherman at Muldraugh Hill. Yes, that's right. Cary Grant and Elizabeth Taylor in the lead. What's that? Clearance? Sure we've got clearance. Let me see now...yes, here it is. Signed by Chief of Special Services at the Pentagon. Sure, the Commanding officer at the Armored Center will have a copy. Okay and thanks. Hope you'll enjoy the picture. 'Bye.
”
”
Ian Fleming (Goldfinger (James Bond, #7))
“
I wondered as I watched people leaning out to snap digital photographs if the ability to capture the technical reality of a place took away from the feeling of it, and muted the memory forever. A picture in the mind was a picture in the heart, but a picture on paper or on a computer was only relevant when it was taken out or clicked on to view. Another way in which society was distancing itself from living, perhaps. Life could no longer be enjoyed unless we could send it on a phone so friends we rarely thought of and who rarely thought of us could see how much fun we were having.
”
”
Bobby Underwood (The Turquoise Shroud (Seth Halliday #1))
“
Recently, researchers captured an unbelievable picture of a small group of photons as waves and another group behaving as particles at the same time.14 Although the idea of complementarity is now established in physics, it is not widely seen as a possible foundational idea for thinking about the mind/brain explanatory gap. I think it should be, and first want to look at how physics came to accept its seemingly puzzling reality. Following its acceptance in physics, the idea of complementarity may prove itself to be key to thinking about biology, and about the mind/brain gap in particular.
”
”
Michael S. Gazzaniga (The Consciousness Instinct: Unraveling the Mystery of How the Brain Makes the Mind)
“
The really strange thing about this is that it was one of the Fog Facts.
That is, it was not a secret. It was known. But it was not known. That is, if you asked a knowledgeable journalist, or political analyst, or a historian, they knew about it. If you yourself went and checked the record, you could find it out. But if you asked the man in the street if President Scott, who loved to have his picture taken among the troops and driving armored vehicles and aboard naval vessels, if you asked if Scott had found a way to evade service in Vietnam, they wouldn't have a clue, and, unless they were anti-Scott already, they wouldn't believe it.
In the information age there is so much information that sorting and focus and giving the appropriate weight to anything have become incredibly difficult. Then some fact, or event, or factoid mysteriously captures the world's attention and there's a media frenzy. Like Clinton and Lewinsky. Like O. J. Simpson. And everybody in the world knows everything about it. On the flip side are the Fog Facts, important things that nobody seems able to focus on any more than the can focus on a single droplet in the mist. They are known, but not known.
”
”
Larry Beinhart (The Librarian)
“
I despise people who are forever taking pictures and go around with cameras hanging from their necks, always on the lookout for a subject, snapping anything and everything, however silly. All the time they have nothing in their heads but portraying themselves, in the most distasteful manner, though they are quite oblivious of this. What they capture in their photos is a perversely distorted world that has nothing to do with the real world except this perverse distortion, for which they themselves are responsible. Photography is a vulgar addiction that is gradually taking hold of the whole of humanity, which is not only enamored of such distortion and perversion but completely sold on them, and will in due course, given the proliferation of photography, take the distorted and perverted world of the photograph to be the only real one. Practitioners of of photography are guilty of one of the worst crimes it is possible to commit--of turning nature into a grotesque. The people in their photographs are nothing but pathetic dolls, disfigured beyond recognition, staring in alarm into the pitiless lens, brainless and repellent. Photography is a base passion that has taken hold of every continent and every section of the population, a sickness that afflicts the whole of humanity and is no longer curable. The inventor of the photographic art was the inventor of the most inhumane of all arts. To him we owe the ultimate distortion of nature and the human beings who form part of it, the reduction of human beings to perverse caricatures--his and theirs. I have yet to see a photograph that shows a normal person, a true and genuine person, just as I have yet to see one that gives a true and genuine representation of nature. Photography is the greatest disaster of the twentieth century.
”
”
Thomas Bernhard (Extinction)
“
Political correspondent Jim Rutenberg’s New York Times account of the data scientists’ seminal role in the 2012 Obama victory offers a vivid picture of the capture and analysis of behavioral surplus as a political methodology. The campaign knew “every single wavering voter in the country that it needed to persuade to vote for Obama, by name, address, race, sex, and income,” and it had figured out how to target its television ads to these individuals. One breakthrough was the “persuasion score” that identified how easily each undecided voter could be persuaded to vote for the Democratic candidate.103
”
”
Shoshana Zuboff (The Age of Surveillance Capitalism)
“
But any picture could deal with the problem of light. The problem with this picture is greater than that of reflective surfaces - it's one of death. You invite a profound theme into your work when you choose cut flowers. You are talking about mortality and time moving forward. You are saying that everything, everything we see and experience and love happens uniquely and happens only once. When you take a picture of a flower in a glass you are, paradoxically, capturing evanescence. You are also showing the indifference of Nature. There is no mourning in a flower photograph, only a shrugging of the shoulders.
”
”
Whitney Otto (Eight Girls Taking Pictures (Thorndike Press Large Print Basic Series))
“
Presumably, it won’t be only one way. Even before the age of climate change, the literature of conservation furnished many metaphors to choose from. James Lovelock gave us the Gaia hypothesis, which conjured an image of the world as a single, evolving quasi-biological entity. Buckminster Fuller popularized “spaceship earth,” which presents the planet as a kind of desperate life raft in what Archibald MacLeish called “the enormous, empty night”; today, the phrase suggests a vivid picture of a world spinning through the solar system barnacled with enough carbon capture plants to actually stall out warming, or even reverse it, restoring as if by magic the breathability of the air between the machines. The Voyager 1 space probe gave us the “Pale Blue Dot”—the inescapable smallness, and fragility, of the entire experiment we’re engaged in, together, whether we like it or not. Personally, I think that climate change itself offers the most invigorating picture, in that even its cruelty flatters our sense of power, and in so doing calls the world, as one, to action. At least I hope it does. But that is another meaning of the climate kaleidoscope. You can choose your metaphor. You can’t choose the planet, which is the only one any of us will ever call home.
”
”
David Wallace-Wells (The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming)
“
Christopher . . . are these from you?” she asked at lunch, careful to make her tone light as she placed the two picture-poems on the table. Christopher’s eyes fell to them, and he smiled.
“Yes.”
He didn’t ask if she liked them, and he didn’t seem embarrassed.
Sarah was flustered, and somewhat surprised by Christopher’s easy confidence. Even so, her natural suspicion surfaced. “Why?”
“Because,” he answered seriously, “you make a good subject. Your hair, for one, is like a shimmering waterfall. It’s so fair that it catches the light. It makes you seem like you have a halo about you. And your eyes—they’re such a pure color, not washed out at all, deep as the ocean. And your expression . . . intense and yet somehow detached, as if you see more of the world than the rest of us.”
Flustered, she could think of no way to respond. Did he just say this stuff from the top of his head? Only her strict Vida control kept her from blushing.
Meanwhile Nissa entered the cafeteria. She started to sit, then glanced from the pictures, to Christopher, to Sarah. “Should I go somewhere else?”
Christopher nodded to a chair, answering easily, “Sit down. We aren’t exchanging dark secrets—yet.”
Nissa flashed a teasing look to her brother as she took a seat. “As his sister, I feel the need to inform you, Sarah, that Christopher has been talking about you incessantly.”
Christopher smiled, unembarrassed. “I suppose I might have been.’
“Especially your eyes—he never shuts up about your eyes,” Nissa confided, and this time Christopher shrugged.
“They’re beautiful,” he said casually. “Beauty should be looked at, not ignored. I try to capture it on paper, but that’s really impossible with eyes, because they have a life no still portrait can capture.”
Sarah’s voice was tied up so tightly she thought she might be able to speak again sometime next year. No one had ever talked about her—or to her—with such admiration.
”
”
Amelia Atwater-Rhodes (Shattered Mirror (Den of Shadows, #3))
“
Words are not cubicles for truth telling. Words do not allow us to touch the face of God or define the contours of the soul. Words are imprecise and cannot capture all aspects of reality or replicate all facets of a person’s emotional mélange. Language allows for limited explorations of reality and minimal probing of the human mind. I accept that the only possible relation between language and the world is the image displayed in each person’s head by the picture invoking ability of language. Select word pictures might accurately portray what I perceive and still be vague, blatantly inaccurate, completely meaningless, misleading, distorted, or incomprehensible in other persons’ minds.
”
”
Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)
“
Translating cold numbers into a graphic picture of the hard economic realities in the lives of ordinary people is a challenge. In the 1990s, economist Edward Hyman of the ISI Group devised the Misery Index to capture the stress on average families by costly, unavoidable items that take a big bite out of family budgets and crimp what families have left to live on. The Misery Index tracked four items— income taxes, Social Security taxes, medical costs, and interest payments. In 1960, these four items took 24 percent of family budgets; but by the 1990s, they were taking more than 42 percent. Income taxes were lower, but Social Security payroll taxes had risen along with medical costs and interest payments on mortgages and debt. In sum, necessities, not lavish spending habits, were eating up family income.
”
”
Hedrick Smith (Who Stole the American Dream?)
“
The camera was a hand-held auxiliary of wanting-to-know. It had more than information and accuracy to teach me. I learned in the doing how ready I had to be. Life doesn't hold still. A good snapshot stopped a moment from running away. Photography taught me that to be able to capture transience, by being ready to click the shutter at the crucial moment, was the greatest need I had. Making pictures of people in all sorts of situations, I learned that every feeling waits upon its gesture, and I had to be prepared to recognize this moment when I saw it. These were things a writer needed to know. And I felt the need to hold transient life in words - there's so much more of life that only words can convey - strongly enough to last me as long as I lived. The direction my mind took was a writer's direction from the start, not a photographer's or a recorder's.
”
”
Eudora Welty (On Writing (Modern Library))
“
One of the most remarkable aspects of awe is its ability to help us feel more connected to others.
Find a place where you can be alone and then use the A.W.E. Method while thinking of a person who has been most dear to you in your life. They may be living or passed away.
Take time to create a clear picture of that person, maybe a particular memory or scene that captures their essence.
Hold the image in your mind, give it your full attention.
Wait the length of a full inhalation or maybe more than one, while you take time to appreciate this person. Imagine looking into their eyes.
Consider what they mean to you, what you learned from them or how you grew as a result of knowing them.
We can be in the moment while remembering. While you remember and feel, just remember and feel.
Then, when you're ready, exhale fully and allow yourself a moment of awe.
”
”
Jake G. Eagle (The Power of Awe: Overcome Burnout & Anxiety, Ease Chronic Pain, Find Clarity & Purpose―In Less Than 1 Minute Per Day)
“
Each and every day, as we navigate the real world, we leave a billion little fingerprints in our wake. The door handles we touch, the screens we press, and the people we interact with all capture a trace of our being there. The same is true on the Internet. We share pictures and videos on social networks, leave comments on news articles. We e-mail, text, and chat with hundreds of people throughout the day. If there is anyone who left more of those digital fingerprints lying around the Internet than most people, it was Ross Ulbricht. He spent years living on his computer and interacting with people, good and bad, through that machine. Over the course of my research for this book, I was able to gain access to more than two million words of chat logs and messages between the Dread Pirate Roberts and dozens of his employees. These logs were excruciatingly in-depth conversations about every moment and every decision that went into creating and managing the Silk Road.
”
”
Nick Bilton (American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road)
“
....though he hated to admit it, they were all Anglophiles. They were a family of Anglophiles. Pointed in the wrong direction, trapped outside their own history and unable to retrace their steps because their footprints had been swept away. He explained to them that history was like an old house at night. With all the lamps lit. And ancestors whispering inside.
'To understand history,' Chacko said, 'we have to go inside and listen to what they're saying. And look at the books and the pictures on the wall. And smell the smells.'...
...'But we can't go in,' Chacko explained, 'because we've been locked out. And when we look in through the windows, all we see are shadows. And when we try and listen, all we hear is a whispering. And we cannot understand the whispering, because our minds have been invaded by war. A war that we have won and lost. The very worst sort of war. A war that captures dreams and re-dreams them. A war that has made us adore our conquerors and despise ourselves.
”
”
Arundhati Roy (The God of Small Things)
“
He got up out of bed, walked across the room, and put his glowing hand to her face with hesitation. On a sigh she leaned into the imprint of his palm and the warmth of his flesh. “Is this you?” he said hoarsely.
She nodded and reached out to his cheeks, which were a little red. “You’ve been crying.”
He captured her hand. “I feel you.”
“Me, too.”
He touched her neck, her shoulder, her sternum. Brought her arm forward and looked at it…well, through it.
“Um…so I can sit on things,” she said for no particular reason. “I mean…while I was waiting out there, I sat on the couch. I also moved a picture on the wall, put a penny back in your change dish, picked up a magazine. It’s a little weird, but all I have to do is concentrate.” Shit. She had no idea what she was saying. “The, ah…the Scribe Virgin said I could eat but I didn’t have to. She said…I could drink, too. I’m not sure how it all works, but she seems to know. Yeah. So. Anyway, I think it’s going to take some time to figure out the drill, but…”
He put his hand into her hair and it felt the same as it had before. Her nonexistent body registered the sensations exactly as it had before. He frowned, then looked downright angry. “She said it required a sacrifice. To bring someone back. What did you give her? What did you bargain with?”
“How do you mean?”
“She doesn’t give things away without demanding something in return. What did she take from you?”
“Nothing. She never asked me for anything.”
He shook his head and seemed like he was going to speak. But then he wrapped his heavy arms around her and held her against his trembling, glowing body. Unlike the other times when she had to concentrate to find solidity, with V it just happened. Against him, she was corporeal with no effort on her part. She could tell he was crying by the way he breathed and the fact that he leaned on her, but she knew that if she made any mention of it, or tried to soothe him with words, he would stop on a dime. So she just held him and let him go. Then again, she was kind of busy holding herself together.
“I thought I would never get to do this again,” he said in a voice that cracked.
-Vishous & Jane
”
”
J.R. Ward (Lover Unbound (Black Dagger Brotherhood, #5))
“
How do you build peaks? You create a positive moment with elements of elevation, insight, pride, and/ or connection. We’ll explore those final three elements later, but for now, let’s focus on elevation. To elevate a moment, do three things: First, boost sensory appeal. Second, raise the stakes. Third, break the script. (Breaking the script means to violate expectations about an experience—the next chapter is devoted to the concept.) Moments of elevation need not have all three elements but most have at least two. Boosting sensory appeal is about “turning up the volume” on reality. Things look better or taste better or sound better or feel better than they usually do. Weddings have flowers and food and music and dancing. (And they need not be superexpensive—see the footnote for more.IV) The Popsicle Hotline offers sweet treats delivered on silver trays by white-gloved waiters. The Trial of Human Nature is conducted in a real courtroom. It’s amazing how many times people actually wear different clothes to peak events: graduation robes and wedding dresses and home-team colors. At Hillsdale High, the lawyers wore suits and the witnesses came in costume. A peak means something special is happening; it should look different. To raise the stakes is to add an element of productive pressure: a competition, a game, a performance, a deadline, a public commitment. Consider the pregame jitters at a basketball game, or the sweaty-hands thrill of taking the stage at Signing Day, or the pressure of the oral defense at Hillsdale High’s Senior Exhibition. Remember how the teacher Susan Bedford said that, in designing the Trial, she and Greg Jouriles were deliberately trying to “up the ante” for their students. They made their students conduct the Trial in front of a jury that included the principal and varsity quarterback. That’s pressure. One simple diagnostic to gauge whether you’ve transcended the ordinary is if people feel the need to pull out their cameras. If they take pictures, it must be a special occasion. (Not counting the selfie addict, who thinks his face is a special occasion.) Our instinct to capture a moment says: I want to remember this. That’s a moment of elevation.
”
”
Chip Heath (The Power of Moments: Why Certain Moments Have Extraordinary Impact)
“
Spill-what’s the deal with Hottie McDreamMan?”
“Sage?” I laughed.
“No, I mean Minister Sanders.” She threw a pillow at me. “Of course I mean Sage! He’s the one, right? The guy from your dreams. Oh my God-he’s real and he’s hot! Does he kiss as well in real life as he did in your dreams?”
“I wouldn’t know,” I admitted. “We haven’t kissed.”
“What are you waiting for?”
“So the whole randomly-popping-up-in-pictures thing doesn’t bother you?”
“Nope.”
“The whole strange-cultists-chasing-after-him? That doesn’t bother you either?”
“Nobody’s perfect, Clea.”
“How about if I told you he might be a serial killer? Would that bother you?”
“Debatable. Elaborate.”
I told her about the nightmares and about what I’d seen in his house. As I unrolled the story, her expression went from flip and giddy to openmouthed and riveted.
“Oh my God, Clea.”
“Crazy, right? And I still have no idea how he got into all those pictures.”
“That part’s easy.”
“Really?”
“Of course,” she said. “You’re soulmates.
“Rayna…”
“Fine, I know, you don’t like that word. But you can’t possibly deny that you have a deep, powerful soul connection. By definition you have that. You said yourself, he found you in four different countries and four different times. Out of all the people in the world at any given time, he found you. The only possible way he could have done that is if your souls were connected. He’s a soul-seeking missile.”
“But he told me he wasn’t there for any of the pictures.”
“Yes, he was! Don’t you get it, Clea? Your souls are connected-he’s always with you, whether he’s there physically or not. And you’re the one who told me about cameras capturing people’s souls, right? So that’s what it’s doing-capturing the soul that’s always with you, because you’re always connected. It’s very romantic.”
I thought about what she said, ignoring the last sentence because I knew by now that everything was very romantic to Rayna.
“Okay,” I ceded, “I’ll give you the connection. But what about the serial killer thing? What fi we’re connected because he tracks these women down, acts like he loves them, and then kills them?”
“Kills you. You’re them.”
“Yeah, thanks, that’s a much nicer way to put it,” I said, rolling my eyes.
”
”
Hilary Duff (Elixir (Elixir, #1))
“
Cassatt's quiet pictures of mothers and children, or of women alone in the privacy of their rooms, are deeply moving. They have that strange elusive quality of a Schubert song or a Vermeer painting, of capturing precisely the bittersweet fleeting moment that makes life, for all its disappointments, travails, and hardships, so worth living. Such moments are melancholy as well as joyful precisely because they are fleeting: transcendently beautiful but so brief as to be immeasurable. When we look at the milkmaid pouring milk in Vermeer’s painting in the Rijksmuseum, we see—as for the first time—how beautiful is a humble stream of milk that pours from a jug, how supremely elegant is its trajectory, how subtle is the play of light upon it; but we understand simultaneously that the moment cannot last, indeed that part of its beauty is its very transience. Though not for long, perfection is indeed of this world. And this perception reconciles us to our existence, full of ugliness as it might otherwise be. If there are Vermeerian moments in our life—as there will be, if only we pay close enough attention—we shall reach serenity, at least intermittently. And that is enough.
”
”
Theodore Dalrymple (Our Culture, What's Left of It: The Mandarins and the Masses)
“
Well, I’ll tell you. You know this new photographic process they’ve invented? It’s called Pathé. It makes everything seem lifelike. The hues and coloration are magnificent. Well, then, what I would do, if I were custodian of your park, is I’d hire a dozen of the best photographers in the world. I’d build them cabins in Yosemite Valley and pay them something and give them all the film they wanted. I’d say, ‘This park is yours. It’s yours for one year. I want you to take photographs in every season. I want you to capture all the colors, all the waterfalls, all the snow, and all the majesty. I especially want you to photograph the rivers. In the early summer, when the Merced River roars, I want to see that.’ And then I’d leave them be. And in a year I’d come back, and take their film, and send it out and have it developed and treated by Pathé. And then I would print the pictures in thousands of books and send them to every library. I would urge every magazine in the country to print them and tell every gallery and museum to hang them. I would make certain that every American saw them. And then,” Mulholland said slowly, with what Albright remembered as a vulpine grin, “and then do you know what I would do? I’d go in there and build a dam from one side of that valley to the other and stop the goddamned waste!
”
”
Marc Reisner (Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water)
“
Hey, I got an idea, let’s go to the movies. I wanna go to the movies, I want to take you all to the movies. Let’s go and experience the art of the cinema. Let’s begin with the Scream Of Fear, and we're gonna have it haunt us for the rest of our lives. And then let’s go see The Great Escape, and spend our summer jumping our bikes, just like Steve McQueen over barb wire. And then let’s catch The Seven Samurai for some reason on PBS, and we’ll feel like we speak Japanese because we can read the subtitles and hear the language at the same time. And then let’s lose sleep the night before we see 2001: A Space Odyssey because we have this idea that it’s going to change forever the way we look at films. And then let’s go see it four times in one year. And let’s see Woodstock three times in one year and let’s see Taxi Driver twice in one week. And let’s see Close Encounters of the Third Kind just so we can freeze there in mid-popcorn. And when the kids are old enough, let’s sit them together on the sofa and screen City Lights and Stage Coach and The Best Years of Our Lives and On The Waterfront and Midnight Cowboy and Five Easy Pieces and The Last Picture Show and Raging Bull and Schindler’s List… so that they can understand how the human condition can be captured by this amalgam of light and sound and literature we call the cinema.
”
”
Tom Hanks
“
O Come, O Come, Emmanuel “T hey shall call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us)” (Matthew 1:23 ESV). This is perhaps our oldest Christmas carol. Historians say its roots go back to the 8th century. In its earliest form, it was a “plain song” or a chant and the monks sang it a cappella. It was sung or chanted in Latin during the seven days leading up to Christmas. Translated into English by John Mason Neale in 1851, we sing it to the tune “Veni, Emmanuel,” a 15th-century melody. Many churches sing it early in the Advent season because of its plaintive tone of expectant waiting. Traditionally Advent centers on the Old Testament preparation for the coming of the Messiah who will establish his kingdom on the earth. When the words form a prayer that Christ will come and “ransom captive Israel,” we ought to remember the long years of Babylonian captivity. Each verse of this carol features a different Old Testament name or title of the coming Messiah: “O come, O come, Emmanuel.” “O come, Thou Wisdom from on high.” “O come, Thou Rod of Jesse.” “O come, Thou Day-spring.” “O come, Thou Key of David.” “O come, Thou Lord of Might.” “O come, Desire of Nations.” This carol assumes a high level of biblical literacy. That fact might argue against singing it today because so many churchgoers don’t have any idea what “Day-spring” means or they think Jesse refers to a wrestler or maybe to a reality TV star. But that argument works both ways. We ought to sing this carol and we ought to use it as a teaching tool. Sing it—and explain it! We can see the Jewish roots of this carol in the refrain: Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel Shall come to thee, O Israel. But Israel’s Messiah is also our Savior and Lord. What Israel was waiting for turns out to be the long-expected Jesus. So this carol rightly belongs to us as well. The first verse suggests the longing of the Jewish people waiting for Messiah to come: O come, O come, Emmanuel And ransom captive Israel That mourns in lonely exile here Until the Son of God appears The second verse pictures Christ redeeming us from hell and death: O come, Thou Rod of Jesse, free Thine own from Satan’s tyranny From depths of Hell Thy people save And give them victory o’er the grave This verse reminds us only Christ can take us home to heaven: O come, Thou Key of David, come, And open wide our heavenly home; Make safe the way that leads on high, And close the path to misery. Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel Shall come to thee, O Israel. Let’s listen as Selah captures the Jewish flavor of this carol. Lord, we pray today for all those lost in the darkness of sin. We pray for those who feel there is no hope. May the light of Jesus shine in their hearts today. Amen.
”
”
Ray Pritchard (Joy to the World! An Advent Devotional Journey through the Songs of Christmas)
“
Eventually he would came to learn that there was a technique in music that felt a lot like this, called ‘tempo rubato’. It involved speeding or slowing the traditional tempo of a song to invoke new feeling, as beautiful representation of freedom that relied completely on the discretion of the musician. If done incorrectly the technique could effectively butcher a thing of beauty—but if done right, it could award complete and utter freedom over the most expressive art known to man. That rubato was the thing one heard when an orchestra conductor briefly slowed a key moment in a classical piece. It was that breath at the end of a love ballad where your very heart felt as though it was shattering. It was responsible for every moment of emotion felt by conscious beings capable of hearing a music note played aloud.
Tempo rubato meant ‘robbed time’. That was the name humans gave to the concept. Like a word, time could not be captured, so people did the only thing they could, they attempted to defy it. They used surgeries to fix the physical flaws that came with age, and took photographs to help them remember a moment otherwise lost. People defied time by naming it. They called the past ‘memories’ and the future ‘what’s yet to pass’. They called hopelessness ‘rubato’, and in doing so, they granted themselves the illusion of controlling time.
At least, that's how he'd described it whenever someone cared enough to ask.
But still, it remained a comforting thought. If someone could speed up or slow down something as uncapturable as music—as pure emotion—then maybe time really was within their control. But everyone knew it wasn't possible. Not really. Whether as a conscious realisation or an inherent knowing, the answer was clear; time passed with or without people. With or without photographs or tempo. It always did, and it was easy to look back and desperately want to cling to it. Natural even, because what was behind was clear—it'd already been lived. It was the unknown ahead that scared people.
At sixteen Remus couldn’t have told anyone what a ‘tempo rubato’ was, but he’d been unknowingly experiencing it all his life. Being at school felt like the traditional, fast-moving tempo of the piece, and those few precious moments in the flat were his rubato. There he couldn’t play or make music, he could only listen and live. Conversations were without any real goal, the days blurred into one another, and the nights felt endless but not hopeless. There was very little action or adventure and that was how he liked it. The flat was rubato, one he’d never find anywhere else. There would be others, yes, but none the same. If he’d known then maybe he would’ve taken more pictures and less drugs so he could better commit them to memory.
But that’s the thing about memories—in the moment they’re not memories at all. They’re not even time.
They’re just life.
”
”
Motswolo (The Cadence of Part-time Poets)
“
Filming was done outside San Antonio, Texas. The scale of the production was vast and complex. Whole battlefields were scrupulously re-created on the plains of Texas. Wellman deployed as many as five thousand extras and sixty airplanes in some scenes—an enormous logistical exercise. The army sent its best aviators from Selfridge Field in Michigan—the very men with whom Lindbergh had just flown to Ottawa—and stunt fliers were used for the more dangerous scenes. Wellman asked a lot of his airmen. One pilot was killed, another broke his neck, and several more sustained other serious injuries. Wellman did some of the more dangerous stunt flying himself. All this gave the movie’s aerial scenes a realism and immediacy that many found almost literally breathtaking. Wellman captured features of flight that had never been caught on film before—the shadows of planes moving across the earth, the sensation of flying through drifting smoke, the stately fall of bombs, and the destructive puffs of impact that follow. Even the land-bound scenes were filmed with a thoughtfulness and originality that set Wings apart. To bring the viewer into a Parisian nightclub, Wellman used a boom shot in which the camera traveled through the room just above table height, skimming over drinks and between revelers, before arriving at the table of Arlen and Rogers. It is an entrancing shot even now, but it was rivetingly novel in 1927. “Wings,” wrote Penelope Gilliatt simply in The New Yorker in 1971, “is truly beautiful.” Wings was selected as best picture at the very first Academy Awards ceremony in 1929. Wellman, however, wasn’t even invited to the ceremony.
”
”
Bill Bryson (One Summer: America, 1927)
“
The Memory Business Steven Sasson is a tall man with a lantern jaw. In 1973, he was a freshly minted graduate of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. His degree in electrical engineering led to a job with Kodak’s Apparatus Division research lab, where, a few months into his employment, Sasson’s supervisor, Gareth Lloyd, approached him with a “small” request. Fairchild Semiconductor had just invented the first “charge-coupled device” (or CCD)—an easy way to move an electronic charge around a transistor—and Kodak needed to know if these devices could be used for imaging.4 Could they ever. By 1975, working with a small team of talented technicians, Sasson used CCDs to create the world’s first digital still camera and digital recording device. Looking, as Fast Company once explained, “like a ’70s Polaroid crossed with a Speak-and-Spell,”5 the camera was the size of a toaster, weighed in at 8.5 pounds, had a resolution of 0.01 megapixel, and took up to thirty black-and-white digital images—a number chosen because it fell between twenty-four and thirty-six and was thus in alignment with the exposures available in Kodak’s roll film. It also stored shots on the only permanent storage device available back then—a cassette tape. Still, it was an astounding achievement and an incredible learning experience. Portrait of Steven Sasson with first digital camera, 2009 Source: Harvey Wang, From Darkroom to Daylight “When you demonstrate such a system,” Sasson later said, “that is, taking pictures without film and showing them on an electronic screen without printing them on paper, inside a company like Kodak in 1976, you have to get ready for a lot of questions. I thought people would ask me questions about the technology: How’d you do this? How’d you make that work? I didn’t get any of that. They asked me when it was going to be ready for prime time? When is it going to be realistic to use this? Why would anybody want to look at their pictures on an electronic screen?”6 In 1996, twenty years after this meeting took place, Kodak had 140,000 employees and a $28 billion market cap. They were effectively a category monopoly. In the United States, they controlled 90 percent of the film market and 85 percent of the camera market.7 But they had forgotten their business model. Kodak had started out in the chemistry and paper goods business, for sure, but they came to dominance by being in the convenience business. Even that doesn’t go far enough. There is still the question of what exactly Kodak was making more convenient. Was it just photography? Not even close. Photography was simply the medium of expression—but what was being expressed? The “Kodak Moment,” of course—our desire to document our lives, to capture the fleeting, to record the ephemeral. Kodak was in the business of recording memories. And what made recording memories more convenient than a digital camera? But that wasn’t how the Kodak Corporation of the late twentieth century saw it. They thought that the digital camera would undercut their chemical business and photographic paper business, essentially forcing the company into competing against itself. So they buried the technology. Nor did the executives understand how a low-resolution 0.01 megapixel image camera could hop on an exponential growth curve and eventually provide high-resolution images. So they ignored it. Instead of using their weighty position to corner the market, they were instead cornered by the market.
”
”
Peter H. Diamandis (Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World (Exponential Technology Series))
“
Four Years Since
Today I remember the day but to be honest it is everyday
That day then, the moment then, when you left us all here
More than just a father I call, a gem I treasure, that day I lost
We four girls, my mom’s other half, my brothers best bud, our first love, we lost
Holding the key to the future called You, I stand still facing the gate of the past
Why I keep on asking the same question?
Why you? Why out of all those people? Why too soon? Why?
It has been years, 4 years exact, it seems like yesterday yes
You were taken too soon, words aren’t enough to express
It’s not fair, but who I am to blame, who Am I to question?
My eyes express longing you cannot fathom
From my open mouth my broken heart pours
Words that try to capture that image so faint
He is the picture I could not ever paint
Yet our memories is in the solid bowl being kept
Spare me even just 5 or 10 minutes of your presence
To build up this longing I feel, I am asking
I want to hear your nag; I want to hear your laugh
In my dreams please see me there
I won’t get afraid nor get frightened
Like a waterfalls my tears keeps on flowing
Like a bubble your voice keeps on vanishing
He, his shadow, he himself starts from fading
I don’t want to forget you please stop time from ticking
I don’t want to open my eyes don’t wake me from dreaming
You are the art of my painting, the muse of my poem
My strength, my inspiration why I’m still holding on
My king, my superman, name them all, you are my only one
I miss the old golden days when you used to carry us one by one
Look papa, how I am now, hoping always, you’ll be proud
It pains me to know this inevitable truth, yes
That I can’t see you for now yes it’s the truth, but
My father’s love undeniable not easily obtained
Something that few, many people rather don’t have
But I’m blessed and proud I have mine claimed.
”
”
Venancio Mary Ann
“
Knowing Chris was getting married, his fellow Team members decided that they had to send him off with a proper SEAL bachelor party. That meant getting him drunk, of course. It also meant writing all over him with permanent markers-an indelible celebration, to be sure.
Fortunately, they liked him, so his face wasn’t marked up-not by them, at least; he’d torn his eyebrow and scratched his lip during training. Under his clothes, he looked quite the sight. And the words wouldn’t come off no matter how he, or I scrubbed.
I pretended to be horrified, but honestly, that didn’t bother me much. I was just happy to have him with me, and very excited to be spending the rest of my life with the man I loved.
It’s funny, the things you get obsessed about. Days before the wedding, I spent forty-five minutes picking out exactly the right shape of lipstick, splurging on expensive cosmetics-then forgot to take it with me the morning of the wedding. My poor sister and mom had to run to Walgreens for a substitute; they came back with five different shades, not one of which matched the one I’d picked out.
Did it matter? Not at all, although I still remember the vivid marks the lipstick made when I kissed him on the cheek-marking my man.
Lipstick, location, time of day-none of that mattered in the end. What did matter were our families and friends, who came in for the ceremony. Chris liked my parents, and vice versa. I truly loved his mom and dad.
I have a photo from that day taped near my work area. My aunt took it. It’s become my favorite picture, an accidental shot that captured us perfectly. We stand together, beaming, with an American flag in the background. Chris is handsome and beaming; I’m beaming at him, practically glowing in my white gown.
We look so young, happy, and unworried about what was to come. It’s that courage about facing the unknown, the unshakable confidence that we’d do it together, that makes the picture so precious to me.
It’s a quality many wedding photos possess. Most couples struggle to make those visions realities. We would have our struggles as well.
”
”
Taya Kyle (American Wife: Love, War, Faith, and Renewal)
“
I’ve been discussing elite attitudes toward democracy. I sketched a line from the first democratic revolution, with its fear and contempt for the rascal multitude who were asking for ridiculous things like universal education, health care, and democratization of law, wanting to be ruled by countrymen like themselves who know the people’s sores, not by knights and gentlemen who just oppress them. From there to the second major democratic revolution establishing the US Constitution, which was, as discussed last time, a Framers’ Coup, the title of the main scholarly work, a coup by elites that the author describes as a conservative counterrevolution against excessive democracy. On to the twentieth century and such leading progressive theorists of democracy as Walter Lippmann, Edward Bernays, Harold Lasswell, and Reinhold Niebuhr, and their conception that the public has to be put in its place. They’re spectators, not participants. The responsible men, the elite, have to be protected from the trampling and the roar of the bewildered herd, who have to be kept in line with necessary illusions, emotionally potent oversimplifications, and, in general, engineering of consent, which has become a gigantic industry devoted to some aspects of the task, while responsible intellectuals take care of others. The men of best quality through the ages have to be self-indoctrinated, as Orwell discussed. They must internalize the understanding that there are certain things it just wouldn’t do to say. It must be so fully internalized that it becomes as routine as taking a breath. What else could anyone possibly believe? As long as all of this is in place, the system functions properly, with no crises. This picture, I think, captures crucial features of thought control in the more free societies, but it is misleading in essential ways. Most importantly, it largely omitted the constant popular struggles to extend the range of democracy, with many successes. Even in the last generation, there have been quite substantial successes. Such successes typically lead to a reaction. Those with power and privilege don’t relinquish it easily. The neoliberal period that we’re now enduring, long in planning, is such a reaction.
”
”
Noam Chomsky (Consequences of Capitalism: Manufacturing Discontent and Resistance)
“
When I finally calmed down, I saw how disappointed he was and how bad he felt. I decided to take a deep breath and try to think this thing through.
“Maybe it’s not that bad,” I said. (I think I was trying to cheer myself up as much as I was trying to console Chip.) “If we fix up the interior and just get it to the point where we can get it onto the water, at least maybe then we can turn around, sell it, and get our money back.”
Over the course of the next hour or so, I really started to come around. I took another walk through the boat and started to picture how we could make it livable--maybe even kind of cool. After all, we’d conquered worse. We tore a few things apart right then and there, and I grabbed some paper and sketched out a new layout for the tiny kitchen. I talked to him about potentially finishing an accent wall with shiplap--a kind of rough-textured pine paneling that fans of our show now know all too well.
“Shiplap?” Chip laughed. “That seems a little ironic to use on a ship, doesn’t it?”
“Ha-ha,” I replied. I was still not in the mood for his jokes, but this is how Chip backs me off the ledge--with his humor.
Then I asked him to help me lift something on the deck, and he said, “Aye, aye, matey!” in his best pirate voice, and slowly but surely I came around.
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but by the end of that afternoon I was actually a little bit excited about taking on such a big challenge. Chip was still deflated that he’d allowed himself to get duped, but he put his arm around me as we started walking back to the truck. I put my head on his shoulder. And the camera captured the whole thing--just an average, roller-coaster afternoon in the lives of Chip and Joanna Gaines.
The head cameraman came jogging over to us before we drove away. Chip rolled down his window and said sarcastically, “How’s that for reality TV?” We were both feeling embarrassed that this is how we had spent our last day of trying to get this stinkin’ television show.
“Well,” the guy said, breaking into a great big smile, “if I do my job, you two just landed yourself a reality TV show.”
What? We were floored. We couldn’t believe it. How was that a show? But lo and behold, he was right. That rotten houseboat turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
”
”
Joanna Gaines (The Magnolia Story)
“
When I launched my AI career in 1983, I did so by waxing philosophic in my application to the Ph.D. program at Carnegie Mellon. I described AI as “the quantification of the human thinking process, the explication of human behavior,” and our “final step” to understanding ourselves. It was a succinct distillation of the romantic notions in the field at that time and one that inspired me as I pushed the bounds of AI capabilities and human knowledge.
Today, thirty-five years older and hopefully a bit wiser, I see things differently. The AI programs that we’ve created have proven capable of mimicking and surpassing human brains at many tasks. As a researcher and scientist, I’m proud of these accomplishments. But if the original goal was to truly understand myself and other human beings, then these decades of “progress” got me nowhere. In effect, I got my sense of anatomy mixed up. Instead of seeking to outperform the human brain, I should have sought to understand the human heart.
It’s a lesson that it took me far too long to learn. I have spent much of my adult life obsessively working to optimize my impact, to turn my brain into a finely tuned algorithm for maximizing my own influence. I bounced between countries and worked across time zones for that purpose, never realizing that something far more meaningful and far more human lay in the hearts of the family members, friends, and loved ones who surrounded me. It took a cancer diagnosis and the unselfish love of my family for me to finally connect all these dots into a clearer picture of what separates us from the machines we build.
That process changed my life, and in a roundabout way has led me back to my original goal of using AI to reveal our nature as human beings. If AI ever allows us to truly understand ourselves, it will not be because these algorithms captured the mechanical essence of the human mind. It will be because they liberated us to forget about optimizations and to instead focus on what truly makes us human: loving and being loved.
Reaching that point will require hard work and conscious choices by all of us.
Luckily, as human beings, we possess the free will to choose our own goals that AI still lacks. We can choose to come together, working across class boundaries and national borders to write our own ending to the AI story.
Let us choose to let machines be machines, and let humans be humans. Let us choose to simply use our machines, and more importantly, to love one another.
”
”
Kai-Fu Lee (AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order)
“
A wealthy man and his son loved to collect works of art. They had in their collection works ranging from Picasso to Raphael and Rembrandt. When the Vietnam War broke out, the son was drafted and sent to fight in ’Nam. He was very courageous and died in battle. The father was notified and grieved deeply for his only son. About a month later, a young lad appeared at the door to his house and said, “Sir, you don’t know me, but I am the soldier for whom your son gave his life that fateful day. He was carrying me to safety when a bullet struck him in the heart. He died instantly. He used to often talk about you and your love for art. Here’s something for you,” he added, holding out a package. “It is something that I drew. I know I am not much of an artist, but I wanted you to have this from me as a small measure of memory and thanks.” It was a portrait of his son, painted by the young man. It captured the personality of his son. The father’s eyes welled up with tears as he thanked the young man for the painting. He offered to pay for the picture, but the man replied, “Oh! No, sir. I could never repay what your son did for me. It is my gift to you.” The father hung the portrait over his mantel and showed it proudly to all his visitors along with all of the great works of art he possessed. Some time later, the old man died. As decreed in his will, his paintings were all to be auctioned. Many influential and rich people gathered together, excited over the prospect of owning one of the masterpieces. On a platform nearby also sat the painting of his son. The auctioneer pounded his gavel. “Let’s start the bidding with the picture of his son. Who will bid for this picture?” There was silence. A voice shouted from the back, “Let’s skip this one. We want the famous masters.” But the auctioneer persisted. “Ten dollars, twenty dollars, what do I hear?” Another voice came back angrily, “We didn’t come here for this. Let’s have the Picassos, the Matisses, the van Goghs.” Still the auctioneer persisted. “The son. Anyone for the son? Who’ll take the son?” Finally a quavering voice came from the back. It was the longtime gardener of the house. “I’ll take the son for ten dollars. I am sorry, but that’s all I have.” “Ten dollars once, ten dollars twice, anybody for twenty dollars? Sold for ten dollars.” “Now let’s get on with the auction,” said a wealthy art aficionado sitting in the front row. The auctioneer laid down his gavel and spoke. “I am sorry, but the auction is over.” “But what about the other paintings? The masters?” “The auction is over,” said the auctioneer. “I was asked to conduct the auction with a stipulation, a secret stipulation that said that only the painting of the son would be auctioned. Whoever bought that painting would inherit the entire estate, paintings and all. The one who took the son gets everything.
”
”
Ramesh Richard (Preparing Evangelistic Sermons: A Seven-Step Method for Preaching Salvation)
“
YOU FIRST When entering into relationships, we have a tendency to bend. We bend closer to one another, because regardless of what type of relationship it might be — romantic, business, friendship — there’s a reason you’re bringing that other person into your life, and that means the load is easier to carry if you carry it together, both bending toward the center. I picture people in relationships as two trees, leaning toward one another. Over time, as the relationship solidifies, you both become more comfortable bending, and as such bend farther, eventually resting trunk to trunk. You support each other and are stronger because of the shared strength of your root system and entwined branches. Double-tree power! But there’s a flaw in this mode of operation. Once you’ve spent some time leaning on someone else, if they disappear — because of a breakup, a business upset, a death, a move, an argument — you’re all that’s left, and far weaker than when you started. You’re a tree leaning sideways; the second foundation that once supported you is…gone. This is a big part of why the ending of particularly strong relationships can be so disruptive. When your support system presupposes two trunks — two people bearing the load, and divvying up the responsibilities; coping with the strong winds and hailstorms of life — it can be shocking and uncomfortable and incredibly difficult to function as an individual again; to be just a solitary tree, alone in the world, dealing with it all on your own. A lone tree needn’t be lonely, though. It’s most ideal, in fact, to grow tall and strong, straight up, with many branches. The strength of your trunk — your character, your professional life, your health, your sense of self — will help you cope with anything the world can throw at you, while your branches — your myriad interests, relationships, and experiences — will allow you to reach out to other trees who are likewise growing up toward the sky, rather than leaning and becoming co-dependent. Relationships of this sort, between two equally strong, independent people, tend to outlast even the most intertwined co-dependencies. Why? Because neither person worries that their world will collapse if the other disappears. It’s a relationship based on the connections between two people, not co-dependence. Being a strong individual first alleviates a great deal of jealousy, suspicion, and our innate desire to capture or cage someone else for our own benefit. Rather than worrying that our lives will end if that other person disappears, we know that they’re in our lives because they want to be; their lives won’t end if we’re not there, either. Two trees growing tall and strong, their branches intertwined, is a far sturdier image than two trees bent and twisted, tying themselves into uncomfortable knots to wrap around one another, desperately trying to prevent the other from leaving. You can choose which type of tree to be, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with either model; we all have different wants, needs, and priorities. But if you’re aiming for sturdier, more resilient relationships, it’s a safe bet that you’ll have better options and less drama if you focus on yourself and your own growth, first. Then reach out and connect with others who are doing the same.
”
”
Colin Wright (Considerations)
“
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Introduction: The Importance of Free TikTok Followers & Fans
In today's digital landscape, having a significant number of free TikTok followers & fans is crucial for creators who want to build influence, reach wider audiences, and increase engagement. Free TikTok followers & fans are not just numbers; they represent real people who engage with your content and help amplify your voice organically. For many TikTokers, the search for free TikTok followers & fans is about growing an authentic community without investing money in paid ads or follower services. Understanding how to attract free TikTok followers & fans is the first step toward sustained success on this powerful platform.
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Why Creators Seek Free TikTok Followers & Fans
Creators, influencers, and brands all want free TikTok followers & fans because these followers serve as social proof and help increase visibility. When you have a large base of free TikTok followers & fans, your videos are more likely to appear on the coveted For You Page, exposing your content to millions more users. Moreover, free TikTok followers & fans can translate into better engagement rates, higher chances of collaboration offers, and even monetization opportunities. However, many new TikTok users are unsure how to attract free TikTok followers & fans organically and fear falling into unethical or ineffective methods.
Understanding TikTok's Algorithm to Gain Free TikTok Followers & Fans
The key to getting free TikTok followers & fans lies in understanding how TikTok's recommendation algorithm works. The algorithm prioritizes content based on factors such as watch time, likes, shares, comments, and replays. Videos that retain viewers longer and encourage interaction are favored and pushed to wider audiences, resulting in more free TikTok followers & fans. Therefore, optimizing your videos with long-tail keywords like "how to gain free TikTok followers & fans organically" and creating compelling hooks in the first few seconds are essential to capture viewer attention and boost your follower count naturally.
Proven Strategies to Get Free TikTok Followers & Fans Organically
Optimize Your TikTok Profile to Attract Free TikTok Followers & Fans
Your TikTok profile is the gateway for users to decide whether to follow you. To attract free TikTok followers & fans, create a username and bio that clearly represent your niche and include long-tail keyword phrases such as “tips for free TikTok followers & fans.” A clear, attractive profile picture and links to other social channels increase credibility. Adding a call-to action in your bio like “Follow me for daily tips on gaining free TikTok followers & fans” encourages visitors to hit that follow button immediately.
Consistent, High-Quality Content Creation to Increase Free TikTok Followers & Fans
Posting consistently is one of the most effective ways to build free TikTok followers & fans. Develop a content calendar to post daily or several times a week, focusing on quality over quantity. Use trending and niche-specific hashtags with long-tail phrases such as #FreeTikTokFollowersAndFans #OrganicTikTokGrowthTips. Videos that provide valuable information, entertain, or tell a story tend to generate more engagement, which leads to organic growth in free TikTok followers & fans.
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(10K-LIKES) Free TikTok Followers Ultimate Guide [Boost Views & Fans)
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THE VISION EXERCISE Create your future from your future, not your past. WERNER ERHARD Erhard Founder of EST training and the Landmark Forum The following exercise is designed to help you clarify your vision. Start by putting on some relaxing music and sitting quietly in a comfortable environment where you won’t be disturbed. Then, close your eyes and ask your subconscious mind to give you images of what your ideal life would look like if you could have it exactly the way you want it, in each of the following categories: 1. First, focus on the financial area of your life. What is your ideal annual income and monthly cash flow? How much money do you have in savings and investments? What is your total net worth? Next . . . what does your home look like? Where is it located? Does it have a view? What kind of yard and landscaping does it have? Is there a pool or a stable for horses? What does the furniture look like? Are there paintings hanging in the rooms? Walk through your perfect house, filling in all of the details. At this point, don’t worry about how you’ll get that house. Don’t sabotage yourself by saying, “I can’t live in Malibu because I don’t make enough money.” Once you give your mind’s eye the picture, your mind will solve the “not enough money” challenge. Next, visualize what kind of car you are driving and any other important possessions your finances have provided. 2. Next, visualize your ideal job or career. Where are you working? What are you doing? With whom are you working? What kind of clients or customers do you have? What is your compensation like? Is it your own business? 3. Then, focus on your free time, your recreation time. What are you doing with your family and friends in the free time you’ve created for yourself? What hobbies are you pursuing? What kinds of vacations do you take? What do you do for fun? 4. Next, what is your ideal vision of your body and your physical health? Are you free of all disease? Are you pain free? How long do you live? Are you open, relaxed, in an ecstatic state of bliss all day long? Are you full of vitality? Are you flexible as well as strong? Do you exercise, eat good food, and drink lots of water? How much do you weigh? 5. Then, move on to your ideal vision of your relationships with your family and friends. What is your relationship with your spouse and family like? Who are your friends? What do those friendships feel like? Are those relationships loving, supportive, empowering? What kinds of things do you do together? 6. What about the personal arena of your life? Do you see yourself going back to school, getting training, attending personal growth workshops, seeking therapy for a past hurt, or growing spiritually? Do you meditate or go on spiritual retreats with your church? Do you want to learn to play an instrument or write your autobiography? Do you want to run a marathon or take an art class? Do you want to travel to other countries? 7. Finally, focus on the community you’ve chosen to live in. What does it look like when it is operating perfectly? What kinds of community activities take place there? What charitable, philanthropic, or volunteer work? What do you do to help others and make a difference? How often do you participate in these activities? Who are you helping? You can write down your answers as you go, or you can do the whole exercise first and then open your eyes and write them down. In either case, make sure you capture everything in writing as soon as you complete the exercise. Every day, review the vision you have written down. This will keep your conscious and subconscious minds focused on your vision, and as you apply the other principles in this book, you will begin to manifest all the different aspects of your vision.
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Jack Canfield (The Success Principles: How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be)
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Kuznets himself, however, would not have chosen this as the picture of economic progress because he was well aware of the limits of his ingenious calculations from the outset. Emphasising that national income captured only the market value of goods and services produced in an economy, he pointed out that it therefore excluded the enormous value of goods and services produced by and for households, and by society in the course of daily life. In addition, he recognised that it gave no indication of how income and consumption were actually distributed between households. And since national income is a flow measure (recording only the amount of income generated each year), Kuznets saw that it needed to be complemented by a stock measure, accounting for the wealth from which it was generated, and its distribution. Indeed, as GNP reached the height of its popularity in the early 1960s, Kuznets became one of its most outspoken critics, having warned from the start that ‘the welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from a measure of national income’.
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Kate Raworth (Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist)
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The most beautiful of all photographs are those taken of savages in their natural surroundings. The savage is always confronting death, and he confronts the lens in exactly the same manner. He does not ham it up, nor is he indifferent. He always poses; he faces up to the camera. His achievement is to transform this technical operation into a face-to-face confrontation with death.
This is what makes these pictures such powerful and intense photographic objects. As soon as the lens fails to capture this pose, this provocative obscenity of the object facing death, as soon as the subject begins to collude with the lens, and the photographer too becomes subjective, the 'great game' of photography is over. Exoticism is dead. Today it is very hard indeed to find a subject - or even an object - that does not collude with the camera lens.
The only trick here, generally speaking, is to be ignorant of how one's subjects live. This gives them a certain aura of mystery, a savagery, which the successful picture captures. It also captures a gleam of ingenuity, of fatality, in their faces, betraying the fact that they do not know who they are or how they live. A glow of impotence and awe that is completely lacking in our tribes of worldly, devious, fashion-conscious and self-regarding people, always well-versed in the subject of themselves - and hence devoid of all mystery. For such people the camera is merciless.
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Jean Baudrillard (The Transparency of Evil: Essays in Extreme Phenomena)
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Back behind the wheel, it didn’t take long for her thoughts to turn to Callie, but every time she tried to picture her youngest sister, she came up blank. Glory’s prohibition against photographs had done its work. Her mother’s reasons changed depending on her mood. Sometimes it was, They’re just dust magnets. Other times it was, I prefer to start every day fresh. But now, with Julia gone, Ginger finally understood it. Her mother had banned photographs because the captured memories were painful to see
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Nancy Star (Sisters One, Two, Three)
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I printed a poem about an Italian boy in the school publication. Months go by before he finds it and he approaches me to ask if the poem is about him. He tells me no one has ever captured him so precisely before. He has the look of someone who believes he knows me because he has read my work. But I am unknowable, we all are, shifting course to suit each tide. I try to think of what he pictures when he thinks of me. Someone quiet? Alert? The way I glide through campus, my soul ready to depart. Could he bear the full weight of what I am? I reckon at the very least he could try, as might a student of literature reading the cumulated works of Nicole Brossard. He could understand with a certain degree of objectivity, possibly even discern a notable comparison. But could he live with her? The writer? Or stomach the reality that informs her? I presume he's still looking for a dream. He is a young man, he is allowed to. So I will try to be the girl who runs with him, the one who falls and laughs, but not the one who tells sad stories.
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Lethokuhle Msimang (The Frightened)
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As I gazed at the blank screen, I remembered a photograph I once saw. It was a picture of the inside of a movie theater. The photo was taken from the projection room and showed the seats and the screen. The photograph had captured one entire film and was taken by opening the shutter at the beginning of the film and then not closing it again until the film ended. In other words, the photograph recorded an entire two-hour-long film. The end result of absorbing the light from every scene in the movie was that the screen in the photo showed nothing but a white rectangle.
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Genki Kawamura (If Cats Disappeared from the World)
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In a world filled with endless photographic opportunities, capturing the innocence and charm of your newborn is a heartwarming adventure. Baby photography is a cherished art form that allows parents to immortalize the early moments of their little ones' lives. If you're looking to capture the magic of your baby's first days, you may be wondering, "Where can I find baby photography near me? here is our BABYPHOTOGRAPHYHYDERABAD is best choice.
Welcoming a new member into your family is a momentous occasion filled with joy and excitement. Those tiny hands, delicate features, and adorable expressions are fleeting, making it imperative to capture these moments in photographs that you can cherish forever.
While it's easy to snap pictures with your smartphone, professional baby photography offers a level of artistry and expertise that's hard to replicate. Skilled photographers have an eye for detail and understand how to capture the essence of your baby's personality, creating timeless and breathtaking images.
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avantiakstudios
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She angled the camera lower, her lens capturing the broken ankle, the delicate, dusty, patent-leather sandal straps that encased matching red-painted toenails, the slender toes crusted with dirt. That single shot signified the brutal end of this woman’s life. A tragic picture that needed no words.
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Jennifer Greer (A Desperate Place (McKenna and Riggs #1))
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A wedding is a celebration of love, a union of souls, and a promise of a lifetime together. In the heart of Hyderabad, a city known for its rich cultural heritage, vibrant traditions, and opulent celebrations, wedding photography has emerged as an art form that beautifully encapsulates these moments of love and union.
Hyderabad, often referred to as the "City of Pearls," has seen a burgeoning community of talented wedding photographers who skillfully document the essence of love, the grandeur of ceremonies, and the rich cultural tapestry that defines weddings in this city.
Wedding photography hyderabad is more than just taking pictures; it's about storytelling. It's the art of capturing emotions, traditions, and the love that binds two individuals. In Hyderabad, where tradition and modernity coexist harmoniously, wedding photographers have honed their craft to capture the essence of cultural rituals and ceremonies. They do not merely take photographs; they create narratives that tell the story of a couple's special day.
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chickstefen
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1:1. wilderness Wilderness emerges through the narrative not only as a setting but also as a theme of considerable significance. The Hebrew title of the book, bêmidbar, "In the Wilderness," which derives from the opening verse ("And YHWH spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai [bêmidbar sînay] ... "), is a better indicator of the book's contents than the Greek title, arithmoi (from which comes the English "Numbers"). It also better captures the pervasive feeling of the book. The wilderness depiction conveys two quite different qualities. On the one hand, the wilderness years constitute a kind of ideal. The peoples life is orderly, protected, close to God. It is a period of incubation, of nurturing. All is provided: food, water, direction. The miraculous is the norm. At the same time, though, the wilderness is depicted as terrible. Conditions are bad. The environment is hostile. There is rebellion from within and fighting with peoples whom they encounter on the way. There are power struggles and fear. And this is pictured as having been almost entirely avoidable, a fate that has come upon the people for having rejected the opportunity to enter the land. Numbers thus expresses pervasively a notion that is only begun in Leviticus, namely that closeness to the divine is both glorious and dangerous.
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Richard Elliott Friedman (Commentary on the Torah)
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None of those climbs, including my own, match what Mallory and Irvine did in June 1924. Mallory who gave the mountain a spirit that cannot be captured with radio or telephone equipment, nor seen with telephoto lenses or satellite pictures. Daring to attempt the impossible, risking everything for a dream, and refusing to capitulate in the face of adversity, Mallory, to me, personifies heroism.
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Reinhold Messner (The Second Death of George Mallory: The Enigma and Spirit of Mount Everest)
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He had only one explanation for this fact: things have to be transmitted this way because they were made up from the pure life, and this kind of life cannot be captured in pictures or words. Because people become fascinated with pictures and words, and wind up forgetting the Language of the World.
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Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist)
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Some people's minds are like a wide park... Some are like suburban villas on the street. I don't think my sense of privacy is very general - but it is very strong about one or two things - and I have a carefully locked and guarded strong room. Anyone might think they could get a good picture of my life from these pages, but it is not so. From Arthur Benson's diary
... Neither the grand park nor the suburban villa will capture Arthur's internal life. He has a 'carefully locked and guarded strong room,' an inner sanctum that goes beyond even his representation of the...recluse. This 'strong room' means he is - if not profoundly at least with a flourish of self-pronouncement - unknowable.
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Goldhill, Simon
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Anytime you access the internet, by phone or computer, there are companies using special programs to capture your information. They monitor the websites you visit, the information you have posted, advertisements you have viewed, and store the information on massive mainframes, collecting data on your browsing history. This information collection includes buying habits, places you’ve purchased coffee, and restaurants you have visited. Years ago, one large Social Media site hired four hundred people to sit at computers and look at the pictures people were posting.
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Perry Stone (America's Apocalyptic Reset: Unmasking the Radical's Blueprints to Silence Christians, Patriots, and Conservatives)
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He suspected that she saw the present scene solely as a tableau that she could later capture on a tableau, a pretty picture of an event in which she was a major figure.
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Noel B. Gerson (The Conqueror's Wife)
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a limited view of the past is worse than a failure to take the past into account. Any type of history that fails to capture a whole picture spells a plethora of problems.
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Jeffrey Ma (The House Advantage: Playing the Odds to Win Big In Business)
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A future that is PICTURED in God’s word can be CAPTURED in man’s world and RAPTURES into reality.
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Wisdom Ogbe
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Chapter 2: The Blinders of the Senses: Awakening from the Sensory Dream Close your eyes and imagine standing in a garden. The air is fragrant with the scent of flowers, and the sun's warmth kisses your skin. You hear the rustle of leaves, the chirping of birds, and the distant hum of life. This sensory symphony envelops you, defining your experience of the world around you. But what if I told you that this symphony is both a blessing and a limitation? Welcome to the chapter where we pull back the curtain on the
senses—the windows through which we perceive reality. These senses are our gateways to the world, allowing us to touch, taste, hear, see, and smell. They are our connection to the external, the bridge that links us to the physical universe.
However, in their splendor lies a trap—a trap that keeps us tethered to the surface of existence. Picture this: you're in a theater, engrossed in a captivating movie. The screen and the story before you are so compelling that you forget you're sitting in a theater, watching a mere projection. In the same way, our senses project a vivid reality that captivates us, making us forget that they're just a means of perception, not the ultimate truth. Our senses act as both guides and misguides. They offer us a glimpse into the world, but they also distort reality. They're like a paintbrush in the hands of an artist, creating a beautiful but partial picture. We become so focused on this picture that we overlook the canvas on which it's painted—the canvas of consciousness. Consider the blind spots in your eyes. These are spots where you literally cannot see, yet your brain fills in the gaps seamlessly, creating a complete image. Similarly, our senses have "blind spots" when it comes to the inner world of thoughts, emotions, and consciousness. They excel at perceiving the external, but they struggle to illuminate the internal. Herein lies the paradox: while our senses are our windows to the world, they can also be our blinders, keeping us from seeing the whole picture. Just as a map provides information about the terrain but not the essence of a place, our senses provide data about the world but not the essence of our being. So, how do we escape this
sensory dream and peer beyond the blinders? The answer lies in a shift of focus. We must turn our attention inwards, away from the dazzling spectacle of the external world. It's here, in the quietude of introspection, that we can begin to untangle the threads of our
consciousness from the threads of sensation.
In the coming pages, we'll delve into the paradox of perception and introspection. We'll journey through the ways our senses illuminate the external and yet leave us in the dark about the internal. And most importantly, we'll explore the profound power of looking beyond the surface, awakening to a reality that transcends the sensory
landscape. So, get ready to peel back the layers of perception, to unveil the subtle dance between our senses and our consciousness. As we journey through this chapter, remember: just as a photograph captures a moment in time, our senses capture a moment in reality. But to grasp the essence of existence, we must go beyond the snapshot and embrace the living, breathing symphony of
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Ajmal Shabbir (How To Experience Nothingness: A Profound Exploration of Consciousness and Reality)
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Ames, I’ve known you both for a long time. Right now, you don’t believe him, but I hope you can believe me when I say that the two of you were merely surviving alone, going through the motions in your own lives. Together, you were thriving, becoming better versions of yourselves—this picture captured that perfectly. That love wasn’t all for Charlie.
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Siena Trap (Playing Pretend with the Prince (The Remington Royals, #2))
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I saw myself as I’d just been captured for posterity. Little old lady with possum-gray hair falling across her face. Baja T-shirt scrunched up to expose little-old-lady midriff. Toothy shark slipper raised in elderly menace. How soon would the photo show up on the internet? Like a California-road version of those strange “Walmart People” pictures that are always popping up on Facebook. Would I be displayed between a droopy-jeans man bent over to expose a crack the size of the San Andreas fault and an oversized woman bulging out of a thong as she licked a carton of strawberry ice cream?
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Lorena McCourtney (That's the Way The Cookie Crumbles (The Mac 'n' Ivy Mysteries #4))
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In order to exemplify the way in which a soul seeks to actualize itself in the picture of its outer world — to show, that is, in how far culture in the "become" state can express or portray an idea of human existence — I have chosen number, the primary element on which all mathematics rests. I have done so because mathematics, accessible in its full depth only to the very few, holds a quite peculiar position amongst the creations of the mind. [...] Every philosophy has hitherto grown up in conjunction with a mathematic belonging to it. Number is the symbol of causal necessity. Like the conception of God, it contains the ultimate meaning of the world-as-nature. [...] But the actual number with which the mathematician works, the figure, formula, sign, diagram, in short the number-sign which he thinks, speaks or writes exactly, is (like the exactly-used word) from the first a symbol of these depths, something imaginable, communicable, comprehensible to the inner and the outer eye, which can be accepted as representing the demarcation. The origin of numbers resembles that of the myth. Primitive man elevates indefinable nature-impressions (the "alien," in our terminology) into deities, numina, at the same time capturing and impounding them by a name which limits them. [...] Nature is the numerable, while History, on the other hand, is the aggregate of that which has no relation to mathematics hence the mathematical certainty of the laws of Nature, the astounding Tightness of Galileo's saying that Nature is "written in mathematical language," and the fact, emphasized by Kant, that exact natural science reaches just as far as the possibilities of applied mathematics allow it to reach.
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Oswald Spengler (The Decline of the West)
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Pictures capture a single frame, but great photographers reveal the stories waiting to be discovered within.
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Biju Karakkonam, Nature and Wildlife Photographer
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Because a picture can't capture this present moment. It's can't capture the smell or the sounds or the colors. You have to save those in your mind.
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Rachel Hanna (The Beach House (South Carolina Sunsets, #1))
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Let’s imagine that one of the two-dimensional creatures was able to switch planes and see the other one and see that there was some truth in both of them. Then they could flip-flop between perspectives at different times or they could say we just need to hold paradox. It’s both and neither, which mostly means giving up on making sense of reality. Or they say it’s a middle path that’s somewhere between the two. And a middle path in two dimensions is like a rounded rectangle where you kind of do something that’s a little bit circle-ish and a little bit rectangle-ish which isn’t even any true part of what a cylinder is. And the thing is that they’re just at too low of a dimensional perspective to properly understand the nature of the cylinder which is actually a very simple thing. It doesn’t require holding paradox. It doesn’t require a middle path in that way. And it’s because when we think of a middle path oftentimes we’re thinking of extremes on left or right in a gradient. But sometimes the two different perspectives aren’t on a gradient on a single axis. They’re orthogonal to each other. And the reason why this is kind of actually an interesting example is because perception itself, a perspective on something defined by perception is inherently a reduction of the information of the thing. My perspective of it is going to be a lot less total information than the actual thing is. So I can look at the object from the east side, or the west, or the top, or the north side, or the inside, microscopically, telescopically. They’ll all give me different information. None will give me the entirety of the information about the situation. And so there is no all-encompassing perspective that gives me all of the information about really almost any situation. And so what this means is that reality itself is trans-perspectival. It can’t be captured in any perspective. So multiple perspectives have to be taken, all of which will have some part of the reality, some signal. There may also be distortion. I may be looking at the thing through a fisheye lens or through a colored lens that creates some distortion.
But then let’s say, I’m looking at a building and the picture, the 2D picture from the east and from the west side and from inside a particular room and the aerial view are all, obviously, very different pictures and it’s because the 3D complex building actually can’t be seen in a 2D process. So I could take a lot of pictures and I could seam them together into a kind of video that moves through the building. Now by having a video, I added the dimension of time and I go back to kind of the right dimensionally to be able to understand the thing. But that’s not a perspective. That’s a lot of perspectives that we’re able to put together. So why does this matter?
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Daniel Schmachtenberger
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Then, do you. Keep taking pictures, Cee. You’ve got a great eye. Live thrilling moments and capture others.
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Brandy Hynes (Carving Graves (KORT, #2))
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A decade ago, Australian philosopher and professor of sustainability Glenn Albrecht set out to coin a term to capture the particular form of psychological distress that sets in when the homelands that we love and from which we take comfort are radically altered by extraction and industrialization, rendering them alienating and unfamiliar. He settled on “solastalgia,” with its evocations of solace, destruction, and pain, and defined the new word to mean, “the homesickness you have when you are still at home.” He explained that although this particular form of unease was once principally familiar to people who lived in sacrifice zones—lands decimated by open-pit mining, for instance, or clear-cut logging—it was fast becoming a universal human experience, with climate change creating a “new abnormal” wherever we happen to live. “As bad as local and regional negative transformation is, it is the big picture, the Whole Earth, which is now a home under assault. A feeling of global dread asserts itself as the planet heats and our climate gets more hostile and unpredictable,” he writes.
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Naomi Klein (This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate)
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Time is relatively straightforward to measure inside a company once management begins to focus on it. Time is captured explicitly in measures of elapsed time—lead time, cycle time, and so on—and implicitly in metrics normally used in engineering and finance—machine uptime, product yield, inventory turnover, and the like. When all these time-related measures are brought together with maps showing the organization’s main flows and interaction patterns, a powerful picture of the company’s problems and opportunities comes into view.
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George Stalk Jr. (Competing Against Time: How Time-Based Competition is Reshaping Global Mar)
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BEST WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHY IN HYDERABAD
Couples are seeking not just ordinary photography, but the best wedding photography that can transform their special day into timeless memories. This essay explores the world of wedding photography in Hyderabad, delving into the factors that make it stand out and the talented photographers who excel in capturing these moments.
Wedding photography is not merely about taking pictures; it is about freezing moments in time, preserving emotions, and telling a story. In Hyderabad, where weddings are grand affairs with elaborate rituals and vibrant colors, the role of a wedding photographer becomes even more significant. The photographer is entrusted with the task of capturing the essence of the event, from the excitement of the pre-wedding ceremonies to the solemnity of the vows and the exuberance of the post-wedding celebrations. A skilled wedding photographer can turn these moments into works of art that will be cherished for generations.
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avantikastudios
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When he came back from the bathroom, I could only stare. He was exquisite naked. A Greek sculptor would have fallen over himself to capture his torso in marble. In modern terms, if there were thirst accounts for Kieran's forearms, his naked pictures would break the internet.
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Sarah Chamberlain (The Slowest Burn)
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It’s hunger, thirst, and longing—longing for the life I lost when my parents’ car slid on black ice, for the brother I only saw in pictures, and for the man I’d known just one day.
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Anna Zaires (Capture Me (Capture Me, #1))
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I am out there as a child and no one remembers the killing, the plowing, the swing of the ax toppling the trees. It is a picture by Grant Wood of perfect fields and fine farmhouses with lush kitchen gardens near at hand. It is a thing called the heartland without a wild heart. Wood’s work is an artful deception and his canvases —“American Gothic,” “Stone City, Iowa”—capture wounds on the land. When I was a boy his prints hung in farmhouses all over the state and no one ever mentioned that though there is black earth and fine corn in his paintings the people portrayed never seem happy, as if the last train to paradise has already left.
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Charles Bowden (Dakotah: The Return of the Future)
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It was from him, and from this picture in particular, that Henri Cartier-Bresson had developed the ideal of the decisive moment. Photography seemed to me, as I stood there in the white gallery with its rows of pictures and its press of murmuring spectators, an uncanny art like no other. One moment, in all of history, was captured, but the moments before and after it disappeared into the onrush of time; only that selected moment itself was privileged, saved, for no other reason than its having been picked out by the camera’s eye.
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Teju Cole (Open City)
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What are pictures, but frozen moments in time? With that simple technology, we've managed to take a split second and, using the photons of light, capture it forever. That second will never happen again; it is unique in the universe. Yet we're able to hold on to it.
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C. David Milles (Paradox)
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In the Sultan Suite Andy was eagerly awaiting my reappearance. He had nailed as many engaging pictures as he could, and he had done superbly – but I didn’t know that yet. When I regained position, Lihaar had straddled Aziz’s firmness, and Jabril’s thickness was gyrating within her derriere. The men rocked into her in rhythmic synchronicity while moans of zealous fervencies rose in crescendo from the singer’s throat. Coraline seized the opportunity and plunged her tilting pelvis onto the actress’s face. As if executing a perfect dance the Indian twirled her lecherous tongue into the big sister’s blossoming crevice. Afraid the dark-haired female would evade her pleasure vault, Coraline’s tenacious hands gripped her tightly. Aziz drove his slithering tongue into Narnia’s wetness, teasing her nether region to groans of rapturous ecstasy. His probing fingers buried deep in her rousing bottom, driving her to bouts of climactic liberations. She shuttered unquenchably to each heaving motion of intimate deliverance. Waves of euphoric ecstasies filled her girlishness. She delivered her youthful exuberance again and again until her heaving breasts laid heavy against the Arab’s muscular chest. After all, I had been taught by great masters of the day – and I was the sorcerer’s apprentice. Therefore, no encouragements were required for me to capture affectionate kisses and private embraces from every bewitching angle. But my task was by no means over. Exotic shots of erotic discharges arrived in the shapely form of Ms. Lihaar riding both phalluses with abandon. Like her little sister Narnia, Coraline had delivered curls of billowing euphoria onto the actress’s face, coating the flawless beauty with dribbling wetness before lapping at her deliverance with sensual jubilations. The men could no longer withhold their deposits. Sprays of masculinity filled the actress as she milked their pounding manliness to blissful nirvana. Together, my chaperone and I had garnered superlative shots for our patron when we left the Sultan cavern quietly, returning to the Maharajah in pursuit of a saturnalia of unbridled revelry.
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Young (Turpitude (A Harem Boy's Saga Book 4))
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I don’t believe he was deliberately taking indecent pictures, they’re too artistic; he’s managed to capture that magical moment when a child’s mind spins into a make-believe world. But actually, what Jack did is steal something – a child’s innocence – whilst creating something darker that will resonate with the adults looking at these photos: themes of sexuality and death, the leitmotifs that run through fairy tales, the stories that we tell ourselves about our children.
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Sanjida Kay (The Stolen Child)
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Abruptly, the sea of people parted . . . and then there they were. Bella, with Nalla in her arms, Z standing beside his girls.
Beth broke down all over again as the female came forward.
God, it was impossible not to remember how Nalla had started this, putting into motion the need that had become undeniable.
Bella was tearing up, too, as she stopped. “We just want to say yay!”
At that moment, Nalla reached out to Beth, a gummy smile on her face, pure joy radiating out.
No turning that down, nope, not at all.
Beth took the little girl out of her mother’s arms and positioned her on her chest, capturing one of the pinwheeling hands and giving kisses, kisses, kisses. “You ready to be a big . . .” Beth glanced at Z and then her husband. “. . . a big sister?”
Yes, Beth thought. Because that’s what the Brotherhood and their families were. Close as siblings, tighter than blood because they were chosen.
“Yes, she is,” Bella said as she wiped under her eyes and looked back at Z. “She is so ready.”
“My brother.” Z shoved out his palm, his scarred face in a half smile, his yellow eyes warm. “Congratulations.”
Instead of shaking anything, Wrath shoved that ultrasound picture into his Brother’s face. “Do you see him? See my son? He’s big, right, Beth?”
She kissed Nalla’s supersoft hair. “Yes.”
“Big and healthy, right?”
Beth laughed some more. “Big and healthy. Absolutely perfect.”
“Perfect!” Wrath bellowed. “And this is a doctor saying it—I mean, she went to medical school.”
Even Z started laughing at that point.
Beth gave Nalla back to her parents. “And Dr. Sam told me she’s delivered over fifteen thousand babies over the course of her career—”
“See!” Wrath yelled. “She knows these things. My son is perfect! Where’s the champagne? Fritz! Get the fucking champagne!
”
”
J.R. Ward (The King (Black Dagger Brotherhood, #12))
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A photograph, which used to be a pattern of pigment on a sheet of chemically coated paper, is not a string of numbers, each one representing the brightness and color of a pixel. An image captured on a 4-megapixel camera is a list of 4 million numbers-no small commitment of memory for the device shooting the picture. But these numbers are highly correlated with each other. If one pixel is bright green, the next one over likely to be as well. The actual information contained in the image is much less than 4 million numbers' worth-and it's precisely this fact that makes it possible to have compression, the critical mathematical technology that allows images, videos, music, and text to be stored in much smaller spaces than you'd think. The presence of correlation makes compression possible; actually doing it involves much more modern ideas, like the theory of wavelets developed in the 1970s and 80s by Jean Morlet, Stephane Mallat, Yves Meyer, Ingrid Daubechies, and others; and the rapidly developing area of compressed sensing, which started with a 2005 paper by Emmanuel Candes, Justin Romberg, and Terry Tao, and has quickly become its own active subfield of applied math.
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Jordan Ellenberg (How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking)
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Need to shoot some pictures is not only found in the special family occasions, but also necessary for architecture, landscape and even industries. These are pictures which are kept by business related people, so that these can be used in some way or the other in their business ventures. To shoot such pictures of landscape or industries, the industrial photographer is important. Such a professional will be able to know the right places to place the camera, proper areas to be shot and the type of video or photographs to be captured. The same goes true for the architectural photographer, who can shoot pictures from the proper angles and keep the images required during the editing process. Such features can be understood by photographers after lots of experience and suitable cameras.
• To become architectural photographer, skills need to be rightly developed
Holding a camera and shooting with the right ingredients is a part of the professional work of a photographer. It is possible to get the right images by the industrial photographer, if the camera angle and distance is adjusted. Also, the exposure is of good quality, with camera being found in the proper regions. In their efforts to come up with proper photographs, these professionals get high end cameras, with plenty of different variations possible. In the event of getting the best deals, people should also depend on these professionals.
By the virtue of being an architectural photographer, the experience is of much importance. These people will know the right camera angle and the best possible designs that can be shot. Many precautions are also to be taken, because the concept of photography is good technique, which can be developed by proper observation of the scenario. Visit us:- raygun.com.au
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Frank Nelson
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I don't know why these things have to be transmitted by word of mouth, he though. IT wasn't exactly that they were secretes; God revealed his secretes easily to all his creatures. He had only one explanation for this fact: things have to be transmitted this way because they were made up from the pure life, and this kind of life cannot be captured in pictures or words. Because people become fascinated with pictures and words, and wind up forgetting the Language of the World.
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Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist)
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We take pictures of everyday life and act like we are capturing history. “Unbelievable! The cat is asleep.
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Jim Gaffigan (Dad Is Fat)