Planning And Plotting Quotes

Plots behind plots, plans behind plans. There was always another secret.

Plans are of little importance, but planning is essential.

No matter how much you know, no matter how much you think, no matter how much you plot and you connive and you plan, you're not superior to sex. It's a very risky game. A man wouldn't have two-thirds of the problems he has if he didn't venture off to get fucked. It's sex that disorders our normally ordered lives.

He was on the lookout, and if the chance presented itself, he was going to be off on a little detour of his own during his cruise back to Earth.

If you’ve ever studied mortal age cartoons, you’ll remember this one. A coyote was always plotting the demise of a smirking long-necked bird. The coyote never succeeded; instead, his plans always backfired. He would blow up, or get shot, or splat from a ridiculous height. And it was funny. Because no matter how deadly his failure, he was always back in the next scene, as if there were a revival center just beyond the edge of the animation cell. I’ve seen human foibles that have resulted in temporary maiming or momentary loss of life. People stumble into manholes, are hit by falling objects, trip into the paths of speeding vehicles. And when it happens, people laugh, because no matter how gruesome the event, that person, just like the coyote, will be back in a day or two, as good as new, and no worse—or wiser—for the wear. Immortality has turned us all into cartoons.

Simon: You're in a dangerous line of work, Jayne. Odds are you'll be under my knife again, often. So I want you to understand one thing very clearly: No matter what you do or say or plot, no matter how you come down on us, I will never, ever harm you. You're on this table, you're safe... 'cause I'm your medic. And however little we may like or trust each other, we're on the same crew. Got the same troubles, same enemies, and more than enough of both. Now, we could circle each other and growl, sleep with one eye open, but that thought wearies me. I don't care what you've done, I don't know what you're planning on doing, but I'm trusting you. I think you should do the same. 'Cause I don't see this working any other way. River: Also, I can kill you with my brain.

And then what are your plans?” Annwyl frowned. “My plans?” “Yes. Your plans. You take your brother’s head, your troops are waiting. What is the next thing that you do?” Annwyl just stared at him. He realized in that instant that the girl had no plans. None. No grand schemes of controlling the world. No plots to destroy any other empires. Not even the plan to have a celebratory dinner. “Annwyl, you’ll be queen. You’ll have to do something.” “But I don’t want to be queen.” Her body shook with panic, and he could hear it in her voice. “You take his head, you’ll have little choice.” “What the hell am I supposed to do as queen?” “Well . .you could try ruling.” “That sounds awfully complicated.

Jazz spent a chunk of the day fantasizing about ways to kill his grandmother, plotting them and planning them in the most excruciating, gruesome detail his imagination would allow. It turned out his imagination allowed quite a bit. He spent the rest of the day convincing himself--over and over--not to do it.

Does Batman ever NOT have a plan...?

If we were left to ourselves with the task of taking the gospel to the world, we would immediately begin planning innovative strategies and plotting elaborate schemes. We would organize conventions, develop programs, and create foundations… But Jesus is so different from us. With the task of taking the gospel to the world, he wandered through the streets and byways…All He wanted was a few men who would think as He did, love as He did, see as He did, teach as He did and serve as He did. All He needed was to revolutionize the hearts of a few, and they would impact the world.

Some people majored in English to prepare for law school. Others became journalists. The smartest guy in the honors program, Adam Vogel, a child of academics, was planning on getting a Ph.D. and becoming an academic himself. That left a large contingent of people majoring in English by default. Because they weren't left-brained enough for science, because history was too try, philosophy too difficult, geology too petroleum-oriented, and math too mathematical - because they weren't musical, artistic, financially motivated, or really all that smart, these people were pursuing university degrees doing something no different from what they'd done in first grade: reading stories. English was what people who didn't know what to major in majored in.

A deus ex machina will never appear in real life so you best make other arrangements.

The brain is an incredible multitasker. At the same time that it’s piercing itself with superheated needles of anguish, it’s ruthlessly making plans, contingencies, plotting out a future, giving zero fucks whether it’ll ever see it. On the day I die, it’ll be calculating what to have for dinner as it bombards itself with pain signals from my amputated legs or my clocked-out heart.

...we need to stop plotting the course and instead just land the plane on our plans to make a difference by getting to the "do" part of faith.

Every movement of his body is an unconscious protest. Every desire, every dream, no matter how intimate or personal, is a plot or a conspiracy. Every hope is a plan for insurrection. Every glance of the eye is a threat. His very existence is a crime against the state!

They say the passage of time will heal all wounds, but the greater the loss, the deeper the cut and the more difficult the process to become whole again. The pain may fade, but scars serve as a reminder of our suffering and make the bearer all the more resolved never to be wounded again. So as time moves along we get lost in distractions, act out in frustration, react with aggression, give in to anger, and all the while we plot and plan as we wait to grow stronger, and before we know it, the time passes. We are healed. Ready to begin anew.

Having a sense of purpose is having a sense of self. A course to plot is a destination to hope for.

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary, O’er a plan to venge myself upon that cursed Thursday Next- This Eyre affair, so surprising, gives my soul such loath despising, Here I plot my temper rising, rising from my jail of text. “Get me out!” I said, advising, “Pluck me from this jail of text- or I swear I’ll wring your neck!

But I should caution that if you seek to plot out all your moves before you make them—if you put your faith in slow, deliberative planning in the hopes it will spare you failure down the line—well, you’re deluding yourself. For one thing, it’s easier to plan derivative work—things that copy or repeat something already out there. So if your primary goal is to have a fully worked out, set-in-stone plan, you are only upping your chances of being unoriginal.

For the past few years, I've been on a quest for a good old-fashioned date, the kind where the guy calls, makes the plans, picks you up in a car that's not his dad's or his other girlfriend's, and takes you somewhere that shows he put thought into what you might like, not what he might get off on like the latest how-many-naked-boobs-can-we-cram-into-this-movie-to-disguise-the-complete-lack-of-plot movie. I'm looking for the kind of date that starts with good conversation , has a sweet and satisfying middle, and ends with long, slow kisses and the dreamy feeling that you're walking on clouds.

The enemy plotted against you and awaited your downfall. Look at you surviving. And your enemies can not figure out how. What you have inside is greater than any negative force.

The only comfort I found was in planning to disappear.

He closed by telling us the real battle is won in the mind. It’s won by guys who understand their areas of weakness, who sit and think about it, plotting and planning to improve. Attending to the detail. Work on their weaknesses and overcome them. Because they can.

The brain is an incredible multitasker. At the same time that it's piercing itself with superheated needles of anguish, it's ruthlessly making plans, contingencies, plotting out a future, giving zero fucks whether it'll ever see it.

I have a plan, one I've been plotting for years now. It is my only way out.

Change of plan–," she called to Jonah. "Can you drop us off in Rome?" "Yo, am I a movie star or a taxi service?" Jonah grumbled from the depths of the script pile. "Technically, your neither," Hamilton puffed, lifting weights again. "I mean, you're a star and you've made movies...

I went to bed last night utterly dejected; I thought I was never going to amount to anything, and that you had thrown away your money for nothing. But what do you think? I woke up this morning with a beautiful new plot in my head, and I've been going about all day planning my characters, just as happy as I could be. No one can ever accuse me of being a pessimist! If I had a husband and twelve children swallowed by an earthquake one day, I'd bob up smilingly the next morning and commence to look for another set. ~Jershua Abbott

As I get older, the tyranny that football exerts over my life, and therefore over the lives of people around me, is less reasonable and less attractive. Family and friends know, after long years of wearying experience, that the fixture list always has the last word in any arrangement; they understand, or at least accept, that christenings or weddings or any gatherings, which in other families would take unquestioned precedence, can only be plotted after consultation. So football is regarded as a given disability that has to be worked around. If I were wheelchair-bound, nobody close to me would organise anything in a top-floor flat, so why would they plan anything for a winter Saturday afternoon.

The Children's Hour Between the dark and the daylight, When the night is beginning to lower, Comes a pause in the day's occupations, That is known as the Children's Hour. I hear in the chamber above me The patter of little feet, The sound of a door that is opened, And voices soft and sweet. From my study I see in the lamplight, Descending the broad hall stair, Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra, And Edith with golden hair. A whisper, and then a silence: Yet I know by their merry eyes They are plotting and planning together To take me by surprise. A sudden rush from the stairway, A sudden raid from the hall! By three doors left unguarded They enter my castle wall! They climb up into my turret O'er the arms and back of my chair; If I try to escape, they surround me; They seem to be everywhere. They almost devour me with kisses, Their arms about me entwine, Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen In his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine! Do you think, o blue-eyed banditti, Because you have scaled the wall, Such an old mustache as I am Is not a match for you all! I have you fast in my fortress, And will not let you depart, But put you down into the dungeon In the round-tower of my heart. And there will I keep you forever, Yes, forever and a day, Till the walls shall crumble to ruin, And moulder in dust away!

Listen my hatchling, for now you shall hear Of the only seven slayers a dragon must fear. First beware Pride, lest belief in one’s might Has you discount the foeman who is braving your sight. Never Envy other dragons their wealth, power, or home For dark plots and plans will bring death to your own. Your Wrath shouldn’t win, when spears strike your scale Anger kills cunning, which you will need to prevail. A dragon must rest, but Sloth you should dread Else long years of napping let assassins to your bed. ‘Greed is good,’ or so foolish dragons will say Until piles of treasure bring killing thieves where they lay. Hungry is your body, and at times you must feed But Gluttony makes fat dragons, who can’t fly at their need. A hot Lust for glory, gems, gold, or mates Leads reckless young drakes to the blackest of fates. So take heed of this wisdom, precious hatchling of mine, And the long years of dragonhood are sure to be thine.

I'm never going to complain about receiving free early copies of books, because clearly there's nothing to complain about, but it does introduce a rogue element into one's otherwise carefully plotted reading schedule. ... Being a reader is sort of like being president, except reading involves fewer state dinners, usually. You have this agenda you want to get through, but you get distracted by life events, e.g., books arriving in the mail/World War III, and you are temporarly deflected from your chosen path.

Is this useful?” It’s a simple, elegant corrective to my “price of security” motto. It’s okay to worry, plot, and plan, he’s saying—but only until it’s not useful anymore.

She was a quiet girl, a thoughtful girl. But you never knew what was going in that pretty little head of hers. Whether she was planning a tea party; or a plot to take over the world.

Dan moved forward and replaced Jonah at the helm. "I've got a plan!" "That's my man!" The famous grin disappeared as Jonah took in the grim determination in Dan's features. His expression was as flat and expressionless as a naked skull. Dan steered the hurtling boat directly toward the rocky shore. "Amy, hang onto that painting!" "That's not a plan!" Jonah shouted. "That's suicide!

They’re plotting against you. (Jaden) Who? (Jericho) Your best friends, fool, who do you think? The Easter Bunny or the assholes who brought you here? FYI, they’re planning to feed you to the gallu so that they can control your powers without your fighting them. If I were you, I’d be gone five minutes ago. (Jaden)

I'm Writing my stoy. But i'm also plotting my escape from this prison cell. This is my plan. I will do it with words. I will write them by day. I will write them by night. I will write them on the walls, the stalls, the halls. I will write them in big bold ink on posters i hang on the concrete blocks. I will write them on little pieces of paper I stuff on the mattress and the pillow. I will write them with fingers bent and cramped from use. I will write them in blood if i have to, but only my own. And i will keep writing them, again, and again, and again, until i fill this prison cell so full of words, that the bars bend and buckle and burst because they cannot contain them And then I will be free.

People were so consumed by their fears and ambitions, their desires.  They were so busy planning and plotting their lives that they failed to live them. 

To plot is to live. […] We start out lives in chaos, in babble. As we surge up into the world, we try to devise a shape, a plan. There is dignity in this. Your whole life is a plot, a scheme, a diagram. It is a failed scheme but that's not the point. To plot is to affirm life, to seek shape and control. Even after death, most particularly after death, the search continues. Burial rites are an attempt to complete the scheme, in ritual. Picture a state funeral, Jack. It is all precision, detail, order, design. The nation holds its breath. - (WN 292)

Bobby didn't like the world much after a really good movie in any case; for a little while it felt like an unfair joke, full of people with dull eyes, small plans, and facial blemishes. He sometimes thought if the world had a plot it would be so much better.

Now, I can tell you about some women writers who truly are fantastic. One is Anna Kavan. She writes stories like I approach "Land of a Thousand Dances": she's caught in a haze and then a light, a little teeny light, come through. It could be a leopard, that light, or it could be a spot of blood. It could be anything. But she hooks onto that and spirals out. And she does it within the accessible rhythms of plot, and that's really exciting. She's not hung up with being a woman, she just keeps extending herself, keeps telescoping language and plot. Another great woman writer is Iris Sarazan, who wrote The Runaway. She considered herself a mare, a wild runaway. She was a really intelligent girl stuck in all these convents with a hungry mind. I identify with her 'cause of her hunger to go beyond herself. She wound up in prison, but she escaped and wrote some great books before kicking off. Her books aren't page after page of her beating her breast about how shitty she's been treated, they're books about her exciting telescoping plans of escape. Rhythm, great wild rhythm.... The French poet, Rimbaud, predicted that the next great crop of writers would be women. He was the first guy who ever made a big women's liberation statement, saying that when women release themselves from the long servitude of men they're really gonna gush. New rhythms, new poetries, new horrors, new beauties. And I believe in that completely. (1976 Penthouse interview)

Settling is not a destination, rather a vacation rental staring at an endless sea that dares you to cross its waves.

It’s fair to say I don’t know what I’m doing. I like to plot my life and proceed carefully, but life doesn’t always follow a plan.

I distrust plot for two reasons: first, because our lives are largely plotless, even when you add in all our reasonable precautions and careful planning; and second, because I believe plotting and the spontaneity of real creation aren’t compatible. It’s best that I be as clear about this as I can—I want you to understand that my basic belief about the making of stories is that they pretty much make themselves. The job of the writer is to give them a place to grow (and to transcribe them, of course). If you can see things this way (or at least try to), we can work together comfortably. If, on the other hand, you decide I’m crazy, that’s fine. You won’t be the first.

Because after the haze of not being kissed cleared I was forced to face the facts that: 1. Jack was a very bad guy. 2. Jack had threatened Fred. 3. Just thinking that he was going to kiss me made me tingly everywhere 4. In a way no other guy had 5. And that was without our mouths even touching 6. Which meant that 7. If they did 8. Wooohoo baby! 9. Except that it did not matter 10. At all 11. Because he was plotting against fred 12. And I was complicit in whatever he planned if I didn't tell Mr. Curtis 13. And I was trapped in a boat with a woman singing showtunes.

Revealing her plans, explaining herself... It would take some getting used to. But she'd promised she'd try to be more... open about her plotting.

Plot twist: everything goes exactly as planned.

Until there was Piper McCloud. The probability of a flier is so rare, so completely out of the ordinary, and it was the very thing that Conrad needed to make an escape plan work. The minute he saw that Piper could fly, he knew hope. He carefully plotted and prepared for every eventuality except one---Piper's refusal to leave without the other's. How can she be so colosally stupid??!! Didn't she understand?

Me and a group of friends meeting in private to bond and have fun may appear to outsiders as a shadowy secret society plotting to take over the world. But that’s utter nonsense. That group meets on Sundays, and takes place in the sunshine, where nobody will suspect the sinister nature of our plans.

What did Volenski know of how he stood in the eyes of the Russian police? Living mostly abroad and consorting in a great measure with his own exiled countrymen, some small degree of suspicion was bound to remain attached to his name. He was a Pole, and, being a Pole, he conspired, not because he believed in all the Utopian theories set forth by his brother conspirators, but because it was in his blood to plot and plan against the existing government.

As I sit on my island, it becomes clears that we need to stop plotting the course and instead just land the plane on our plans to make a difference by getting to the "do" part of faith. That's because love is never stationary. In the end, love doesn't just keep thinking about it or keep planning for it. Simply put: love does.

Planning is worrying, only in a productive, proactive form. Worry has to be a large element of planning, or else how could you project different possible scenarios, situations, outcomes, and probabilities, and then plot a course of action? A worry-free man is not a plotter.

We're plotting to steal time itself from you.... We're going to spike it to the floor as it slips by. And just as you come over to see why it's so still, we'll pull it out from under you--and send you spinning off around the galaxy's edge. We're planning to pluck all the best stars out of the sky and stuff them in our pockets... so that when we meet you once again and thrust our hands deep inside to hide our embarrassment, our fingertips will smart on them, as if they were desert grains, caught down in the seams, and we'll smile at you on your way to a glory that, for all our stellar thefts, we shall never be able to duplicate.

Decadence   Phase one of our plan consisted of giving you so much of exactly what you want that you’d choke on it.

Men may plot and plan and scheme, but they had best pray as well, for no plan ever made by man has ever withstood the whims of the gods above.

She didn’t believe Scott had exactly planned all this; he didn’t even plan his books, as complex as some of them were. Plotting them, he said, would take out all the fun.

Ah, Ham, Kelsier thought. I wish I could explain everything to you. Plots behind plots, plans beyond plans. There was always another secret.

My Father, the Age I Am Now Time, which diminishes all things, increases understanding for the aging. —PLUTARCH My mother was the star: Smart and funny and warm, A patient listener and an easy laugher. My father was . . . an accountant: Not one to look up to, Ask advice from, Confide in. A man of few words. We faulted him—my mother, my sister, and I, For being this dutiful, uninspiring guy Who never missed a day of work, Or wondered what our dreams were. Just . . . an accountant. Decades later, My mother dead, my sister dead, My father, the age I am now, Planning ahead in his so-accountant way, Sent me, for my records, Copies of his will, his insurance policies, And assorted other documents, including The paid receipt for his cemetery plot, The paid receipt for his tombstone, And the words that he had chosen for his stone. And for the first time, shame on me, I saw my father: Our family’s prime provider, only provider. A barely-out-of-boyhood married man Working without a safety net through the Depression years That marked him forever, Terrified that maybe he wouldn’t make it, Terrified he would fall and drag us down with him, His only goal, his life-consuming goal, To put bread on our table, a roof over our head. With no time for anyone’s secrets, With no time for anyone’s dreams, He quietly earned the words that made me weep, The words that were carved, the following year, On his tombstone: HE TOOK CARE OF HIS FAMILY.

Don’t you like surprises?’ No, Frances didn’t like surprises. She hated the thought of people plotting and planning on her behalf. She loathed the burden of being delighted once the surprise was disclosed.

You’d all really rather sleep in your own rooms because you’re mad at me, and suffer through those nightmares, than to have to share a bed with me? I thought you were simply being petty, but you must truly hate me to knowingly put yourselves through that,” I say on a strained whisper. “All because I wandered off to try and learn more about myself while the four of you plotted your own plan behind my back? Do you not see the hypocrisy, or do you just find my thoughts and needs to be completely irrelevant? Am I still really that insignificant?

Almost as an article of faith, some individuals believe that conspiracies are either kooky fantasies or unimportant aberrations. To be sure, wacko conspiracy theories do exist. There are people who believe that the United States has been invaded by a secret United Nations army equipped with black helicopters, or that the country is secretly controlled by Jews or gays or feminists or black nationalists or communists or extraterrestrial aliens. But it does not logically follow that all conspiracies are imaginary. Conspiracy is a legitimate concept in law: the collusion of two or more people pursuing illegal means to effect some illegal or immoral end. People go to jail for committing conspiratorial acts. Conspiracies are a matter of public record, and some are of real political significance. The Watergate break-in was a conspiracy, as was the Watergate cover-up, which led to Nixon’s downfall. Iran-contra was a conspiracy of immense scope, much of it still uncovered. The savings and loan scandal was described by the Justice Department as “a thousand conspiracies of fraud, theft, and bribery,” the greatest financial crime in history. Often the term “conspiracy” is applied dismissively whenever one suggests that people who occupy positions of political and economic power are consciously dedicated to advancing their elite interests. Even when they openly profess their designs, there are those who deny that intent is involved. In 1994, the officers of the Federal Reserve announced they would pursue monetary policies designed to maintain a high level of unemployment in order to safeguard against “overheating” the economy. Like any creditor class, they preferred a deflationary course. When an acquaintance of mine mentioned this to friends, he was greeted skeptically, “Do you think the Fed bankers are deliberately trying to keep people unemployed?” In fact, not only did he think it, it was announced on the financial pages of the press. Still, his friends assumed he was imagining a conspiracy because he ascribed self-interested collusion to powerful people. At a World Affairs Council meeting in San Francisco, I remarked to a participant that U.S. leaders were pushing hard for the reinstatement of capitalism in the former communist countries. He said, “Do you really think they carry it to that level of conscious intent?” I pointed out it was not a conjecture on my part. They have repeatedly announced their commitment to seeing that “free-market reforms” are introduced in Eastern Europe. Their economic aid is channeled almost exclusively into the private sector. The same policy holds for the monies intended for other countries. Thus, as of the end of 1995, “more than $4.5 million U.S. aid to Haiti has been put on hold because the Aristide government has failed to make progress on a program to privatize state-owned companies” (New York Times 11/25/95). Those who suffer from conspiracy phobia are fond of saying: “Do you actually think there’s a group of people sitting around in a room plotting things?” For some reason that image is assumed to be so patently absurd as to invite only disclaimers. But where else would people of power get together – on park benches or carousels? Indeed, they meet in rooms: corporate boardrooms, Pentagon command rooms, at the Bohemian Grove, in the choice dining rooms at the best restaurants, resorts, hotels, and estates, in the many conference rooms at the White House, the NSA, the CIA, or wherever. And, yes, they consciously plot – though they call it “planning” and “strategizing” – and they do so in great secrecy, often resisting all efforts at public disclosure. No one confabulates and plans more than political and corporate elites and their hired specialists. To make the world safe for those who own it, politically active elements of the owning class have created a national security state that expends billions of dollars and enlists the efforts of vast numbers of people.

Andre had been telling her an ancient legend of the fall of man into evil. It came about, he said, by the hand of a woman, Eve, who gave man forbidden fruit. "And how was this woman to know that the fruit was forbidden?" Madame Wu had inquired. "An evil spirit, in the shape of a serpent, whispered it to her," Andre had said. "Why to her instead of to the man?" she had inquired. "Because he knew that her mind and her heart were fixed not upon the man, but upon the pursuance of life," he had replied. "The man's mind and heart were fixed upon himself. He was happy enough, dreaming that he possessed the woman and the garden. Why should he be tempted further? He had all. But the woman could always be tempted by the thought of a better garden, a larger space, more to possess, because she knew that out of her body would come many more beings, and for them she plotted and planned. The woman thought not of herself, but of the many whom she would create. For their sake she was tempted. For their sake she will always be tempted.

Lucky you that you can plan and think and plot without pretense. That you can want openly, that you don't have to stuff it all inside yourself to molder. Lucky you that you can lift your eyes to the sky without singeing your wings. Lucky you that you can consider the future without terror.

...The entire plan was there in shimmering hot pink ink. "It looks like a My Little Pony murder plot," Mary Alice said. "Jesus, is that glitter?" "I like it," Natalie said loyally. "I find it hard to take us seriously as agents of vengeance when our plot looks like a kindergarten craft project.

Now I was standing in a forest grove with a witch, a half-demon, a vampire, and a shaman, planning to put an end to a nefarious plot to usurp our powers and alter the path of humankind. Talk about your conspiracy theories.

I matched my grey eyes against his brown ones for guile, my young golf-and-tennis heart-beats against his, which must be slowing a little after years of over-work. And I planned and I contrived and I plotted - any woman can tell you - but it never came to anything, as you will see. I still like to think that if he'd been a poor boy and nearer my age I could manage it, but of course the real truth was that I had nothing to offer that he didn't have.

If we could picture the thoughts of those who stand about a deathbed, what fearful sights should we not see? Money is always the motive-spring of the schemes elaborated, of all the plans that are made and the plots that are woven about it!

What you’re saying is this spider, with a brain the size of strawberry seed, hid in your car with its face covered to avoid being gassed by insect spray.” He stood in front of me, laughing, peering down into my eyes. “And then, when the fumes dispersed, he set about plotting revenge. Once he’d come up with his plan, he exited your car and, even though he didn’t see which direction you went in, he found the front door because he knew you were inside this house.” Biting down on his bottom lip, Ric smirked. “Don’t you think, if he was as smart as all that, he’d have worn a mask before he ran out from under visor so you couldn’t recognise him on your doormat?

He had no big plan for this. He had not prepared for the day when he would be fighting his own work. He had not plotted against his own plots.

It’s okay to worry, plot, and plan, he’s saying—but only until it’s not useful anymore.

Take Marcus Aurelius! That's right! What did that old bugger do? In very similar situations! Harassed! Maligned! Transduced! On the brink of succumbing under the welter if abject plots... of murderous perfidies!... He withdrew, Ferdinand!... He abandoned the steps of the Forum to the jackals! Yes! In solitude! In exile! That's where he sought his balm! That's where he found new courage!... That's right!... He took counsel on himself! And no one else!... He didn't ask the mad dogs for their opinion!... No! Faugh!... Ah, despicable recantation!...

She was a quiet girl, a thoughtful girl. But you never could tell what was going on in that pretty little head of hers. Whether she was planning her next tea party; or a plot to take over the world.

I plotted his death. I planned it for weeks. I mapped out exactly how to kill a man. A bastard. A cunt. I wanted to watch the blood drain from him. I wanted to hear his final breath leave his body. I wanted to watch him writhe in agony underneath me. And I wanted his screams to be the very thing that allowed me peace at night.

All my life I've plotted and planned, been obsessed with those things. And now you've achieved them. You are not satisfied. He nodded. Life is a series of stairs of which we climb, Claudia... your horizons have moved.

Damen spent two fruitless hours with Nikandros trying to plot a course that could sneak two wagons across the border without alerting patrols, and another fruitless hour alone staring at the map, until Laurent wandered in and outlined a plan so outrageous that Damen had said yes with the feeling that his mind was splitting apart. They

When evil men plot, good men must plan. When evil men burn and bomb, good men must build and bind. When evil men shout ugly words of hatred, good men must commit themselves to the glories of love. —Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Two years ago, when leaders in neighboring Mathews County broached the subject of sea-level rise, Tea Partiers packed meetings, warning of an environmentalist plot to “put nature above man.” They linked a proposal to build dikes to a United Nations sustainability plan known as Agenda 21, which has inspired a number of conspiracy theories among far-right activists.

A survivor, in another sense, was left alive. The king’s nephew, Stephen, count of Blois, was suffering from a severe bout of diarrhoea and declined to join the revelry aboard the White Ship. Since he would be crowned as king of England fifteen years later, it can plausibly be maintained that an attack of diarrhoea determined the fate of the nation. Statesmen may plot and plan. Learned men may calculate and conclude. Diplomats may debate and prevaricate. But chance rules the immediate affairs of humankind.

And we swore that when it was our time turn to chase our happy endings, we'd do it together. But that was before all the heartbreak, all the broken promises, because life never panned out like a romance novel, no matter how well plotted and meticulously planned.

Her sweet smell drove my body higher as I nibbled on the edge of her earlobe. “I’m not stopping you. You plan. I’ll kiss.” Echo turned her head to look at me over her shoulder. My siren became a temptress with that seductive smile on her lips. A mistake on her part. I caressed her cheek and kissed those soft lips. I expected her to shy away. We’d been playing this game for over an hour: she plotted while I teased.Leaving for the summer was important to her and she was important to me. But instead of the quick peck I’d anticipated, she moved her lips against mine. A burning heat warmed my blood. It was a slow kiss at first—all I meant it to be, but then Echo touched me. Her hands on my face, in my hair. And then she angled her body to mine. Warmth, enticing pressure on all the right parts, and Echo’s lips on mine—fireworks. She became my world. Filling my senses so that all I felt and saw and tasted was her. Kisses and touches and whispered words of love and when my hand skimmed down the curve of her waist and paused on the hem of her jeans my body screamed to continue, but my mind knew it was time to stop. With a sigh, I moved my lips once more against hers before shifting and pulling her body to my side. “I’m in love with you.” Echo settled her head in the crook of my arm as her fingertips lazily touched my face. “I know. I love you, too.” “I’m sorry I didn’t say it sooner.” If I had, then maybe we never would have been apart. “It’s okay,” she murmured. “We’re together now and that’s all that matters.” I kissed her forehead and she snuggled closer to me. The world felt strange. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t fighting someone or something. My brothers were safe. Echo knew the truth. Soon, I’d be free from high school and foster care. Hopefully, I’d be admitted on late acceptance to college. Contentment and happiness were unfamiliar emotions, but ones I could learn to live with. “Do you mind?” she asked in a small voice that indicated nerves. “That we’re taking it slow?” “No.” And it was the truth. Everything in her life was in flux and she needed strong, steady and stable. Oddly, she found those three things in me. Who would ever have guessed I’d be the reliable sort? “Besides, taking it slow creates buildup. I like anticipation.” Her body rocked with silent giggles and my lips turned up. I loved making her happy.

Facing the sagging middle when writing a novel, while inevitable, may be overcome by pre-planning. I divide my collection of proposed scenes into three acts, each scene inciting tension that builds toward the final crisis in Act Three. If by Act Two the emotional river isn't spilling over the banks, I reassess the plot so that once the writing is flowing I don't slide into a dry creek. The central character should be struggling to navigate life well into the end of Act One, even if her fiercest antagonist is only from within.

The act I want to talk about is growing some—even just a little—of your own food. Rip out your lawn, if you have one, and if you don’t—if you live in a high-rise, or have a yard shrouded in shade—look into getting a plot in a community garden. Measured against the Problem We Face, planting a garden sounds pretty benign, I know, but in fact it’s one of the most powerful things an individual can do—to reduce your carbon footprint, sure, but more important, to reduce your sense of dependence and dividedness: to change the cheap-energy mind.

She still said nothing and I purposely did not look at her because I did not wish either to press her or to embarrass her. I was in love with her, and my heart went out to her as she tried to fathom her own feelings. I felt like saying: Don't bother to explain, darling. I know it all. Instead, the calculating side of my mind was at work: the side that plotted carefully, planned to get what it wanted and nearly always succeeded.

When you make a mistake with metal, you can melt things down and start afresh. It is irritating, and it costs in time and soot and sweat, but it can be done. There is a comfort in iron, knowing that a fresh start is always possible. But a city is not a sword. It is a living thing, and living things defy simple fixing. Roots cannot be reforged. They scar, and broken branches must be cut and sealed with tar, and this makes me angry, as it always has, and my anger has no place to go. It was easier when I was young. I could use my anger like a hammer against the world. I was so sure of myself and my friends and my rightness. I would hammer at the world, and breaking felt like making to me, and I was good at it. And while I was not wrong, neither was I entirely right. Nothing is simple. I do not work in wood. I am not brave enough for that. There is a comfort in iron, a promise of safety, a second chance if mistakes are made. But a city is more a forest than a sword. No, it needs more tending than that. Perhaps a city is like a garden, then. So these days, it seems I have become a gardener. I dig foundations in the earth. I sow rows of houses. I plan and plant. I watch the skies for rain and ruin. I cannot help but think that you would be better at this, but circumstance has put both of us in our own odd place. You are forced to be a hammer in the world, and my ungentle hands are learning how to tend a plot of land. We must do what we can do. Did you know that there are some seeds that cannot sprout unless they are first burned? A friend once told me that. She was– she was a bookish sort. I think of gardening constantly these days. I wear your gift, and I think of you, and I think it is interesting that there are some living things that need to pass through fire before they flourish. I ramble. You have the heart of a gardener, and because of this, you think of consequence, and your current path pains you. I am not wise, and I do not give advice, but I have come to know a few things: sometimes breaking is making, even iron can start again, and there are many things that move through fire and find themselves much better for it afterward.

Very well," it said. "I am a mighty fortress, sheathed in stone." King Vikram thought for a moment. "I am a catapult," he said. "Stone-breaking, fortress-sundering." "I am a saboteur," countered the vetala. "Oath-breaker, weapon disabler." "I am ill luck," said King Vikram. "Upending plots, dismaying plans." The vetala was favorably impressed. "I am fortune," it said. "I crown luck with destiny." "I am free will," said King Vikram. "I challenge destiny with choice." "I am divine will," said the vetala, "to which choice and destiny are one and the same." "I am myself," said King Vikram. "The only thing that is mine to give, by choice or by destiny.

We have entered a world of shorthand, precis, digest, summary, news flash, comic strip. We are bombarded with visual images, cutting from one to another, stabbing at the mind and put out with the rubbish sacks at the end of the week. The novel that took a man or woman years to create - in research, in planning of the plot and counter-plot, in construction - each word chosen, each phrase weighed against another, themes recurring, climaxes achieved - is now reduced to a four part serial, produced with pride in the accuracy of its sets and costumes, brilliantly acted, the music of the background authentic to the period. The words, but not the minds. The science, but not the significance. THE BOOK HAS BEEN MADE A THING TO WATCH, NOT TO LIVE. WE must FIGHT to save the WRITTEN WORD as we fight to save the whale. We must keep in our minds, a place apart, a sanctuary, where a lamp lights only the table at which we sit, where the curtains are drawn against the present time. Let us begin.

And yet sometimes she worried about what those musty old books were doing to her. Some people majored in English to prepare for law school. Others became journalists. The smartest guy in the honors program, Adam Vogel, a child of academics, was planning on getting a Ph.D. and becoming an academic himself. That left a large contingent of people majoring in English by default. Because they weren't left-brained enough for science, because history was too dry, philosophy too difficult, geology too petroleum-oriented, and math too mathematical--because they weren't musical, artistic, financially motivated, or really all that smart, these people were pursuing university degrees doing something no different from what they'd done in first grade: reading stories. English was what people who didn't know what to major in majored in.

Looking back down the vale of the ages at the endless recurrence of their reincarnations, before they were forced to drink their vials of forgetting and all became obscure to them again, they could see no pattern at all to their efforts; if the gods had a plan, or even a set of procedures, if the long train of transmigrations was supposed to add up to anything, if it was not just mindless repetition, time itself nothing but a succession of chaoses, no one could discern it; and the story of their transmigrations, rather than being a narrative without death, as the first experiences of reincarnation perhaps seemed to suggest, had become instead a veritable charnel house. Why read on? Why pick up their book from the far wall where it has been thrown away in disgust and pain, and read on? Why submit to such cruelty, such bad karma, such bad plotting? The reason is simple: these things happened. They happened countless times, just like this. The oceans are salt with our tears. No one can deny that these things happened. And so there is no choice in the matter. They cannot escape the wheel of birth and death, not in the experience of it, or in the contemplation of it afterwards; and their anthologist, Old Red Ink himself, must tell their stories honestly, must deal in reality, or else the stories mean nothing. And it is crucial that the stories mean something.

Statesmen may plot and plan. Learned men may calculate and conclude. Diplomats may debate and prevaricate. But chance rules the immediate affairs of humankind.

At a given moment, God unmasks the plots and defeats the plans of those who do not act solely for His glory.

when you were barely conscious that you had tapped out a hill of salt onto the dinner table and in it were drawing your plots and patterns and plans,

Nance’s Law: Coincidence takes a lot of planning.

Take my hand, my love. On sinews of air we tread Aught but distance our guide With no tempo to our gait No endpoint drawn Neither plot nor plan

Men may plot and plan and scheme, but they had best pray as well, for no plan made by man has ever withstood the whims of the gods above.

I have a clever and devious plan.

The divine self is the author of our life story, but without sufficient spiritual awareness the human self tends to rearrange the plot.

Nance’s Law of Intelligence Kismet: “Coincidence takes a lot of planning.

Plots behind plots, plans beyond plans. There was always another secret.

An elderly couple sat hand in hand, talking quietly. I imagined they were discussing dinner plans, but part of me hoped they were plotting to rob a bank.

What exactly was the role of the U.S. government in the coup that overthrew Ngo Dinh Diem?” Trumbull stared for a moment at Foley’s rigid back. Then he said to Patchen, “Tell him.” “I think you already know, Paul,” Patchen said. “In simple terms, we countenanced it. We knew it was being planned. We offered advice. We provided support. We encouraged the plot. We welcomed the results.

the CIA planned to kidnap the commander in chief of the armed forces, General René Schneider; although the plot would be carried out by a neo-Fascist group, it would appear to be the work of a leftist commando unit.

great plot twists of life will arrange themselves as they see fit, regardless of how much fretting and planning one does in advance. This is not cause for alarm. Quite the opposite; it is a comforting reminder that worrying serves little purpose. Worse, it takes up valuable time that could be better spent reading novels, taking walks in a shaded park, having friends over for tea and biscuits, and any number of equally pleasant pursuits.

There was a period-- or at least you hoped there was-- with every painting or project when the life of that painting became more real to you than your everyday life, when you sat wherever you were and thought only of returning to the studio, when you were barely conscious that you had tapped out a hill of salt onto the dinner table and in it were drawing your plots and patterns and plans, the white grains moving under your fingertip like silt.

Two months in Shanghai, and what does she have to show for herself? She had been full of plans on the plane ride over, had studied her phrase book as if cramming for an exam, had been determined to refine her computational model with a new set of data, expecting insights and breakthroughs, plotting notes for a new article. Only the time has trickled away so quickly. She has meandered through the days chatting with James instead of gathering data. At night, she has gone out to dinners and bars. [James'] Chinese has not improved; her computational model has barely been touched. She does not know what she has been doing with herself, and now an airplane six days away is waiting for her.

In his daydreams he was busy planning how to ask Kate to marry him someday. He thought, as a fourth-generation undertaker, it might be proper to say simply, “Kate, how would you like to be buried in the Wright family plot beside me?

Throughout his illness she had put his needs first, subsumed her own. Her sole objective had been to make his life as good as possible. She had changed shapre aound him. Reinvented herself to become the carer that his illness demanded, rather than the lover and partner she had once been. She had been selfless. And yet, all that time, he'd been planning and plotting behind her back, drafting this elaborate ending to their story. Damn him. Damn him. Damn him!

But there is only so much preparation you can make for death. You can plan the funeral, buy the plot, and read the grief books, but in the end, it doesn’t matter. Death still has a way of sweeping the rug out from under you every time.

When I start writing a new story, I often begin with setting. Before plot, before dialogue, before anything else, I begin to see where a story will take place, and then I hear the narrative voice, which means that character is not far behind. Lately I've been thinking a lot about landscape painting and literature, and perhaps as an extension of this I have started to think through this idea of character and landscape as similar things, or at least as intimates, co-dependent.

You can't stop people from things that hurt and are hard, Stella. You can't reroute to avoid pain at all costs. You can't plan your way around everything. Sometimes, you just have to go through with it. Sometimes, there's no other way, okay?

Plans and plots whirled through his head, each scheme fizzling out uselessly as he imagined it. He had rather thought he would have known what to do when he got to this point, and he was discovering, to his disgust, that he had absolutely no idea.

And our sailors of space have a legend of the furthest star of all, where the gods lay their plans against us, or plot the catastrophes of the end of time: the pachacuti. We call this undiscovered star Karu, which means ‘far’.’ ‘As we speak of Ultima,’ Quintus mused.

Of the Phoenix kids, the one Derek got along best with was Daniel. In him, Daniel had found a good sparring partner. And a plotting partner, too. Derek wasn’t just the biggest and strongest in our group. He was also the smartest. Scary, off-the-charts smart. That intimidated Daniel a little at first—he’s bright, but he needs to work for his grades. But Derek wasn’t a show-off or a know-it-all, so they got past that and we would hang out together, the two guys, Chloe, and I planning and plotting our future, bouncing ideas off one another.

When Marina and I got married,” I begin, “I gifted her a piece of land. She asked for this one specifically.” “Fuck,” Yulian breathes. “The plot she had all the plans for. She talked about it constantly.” “It was a symbol for her future,” I say. “And I just blew it the fuck up.

The four libertarians who came to New Hampshire had thinner wallets than…other would-be utopians, but they had a new angle they believed would help them move the Free Town Project out of the realm of marijuana-hazed reveries and into reality. Instead of building from scratch, they would harness the power and infrastructure of an existing town—just as a rabies parasite can co-opt the brain of a much larger organism and force it work against its own interests, the libertarians planned to apply just a bit of pressure in such a way that an entire town could be steered toward liberty.

Life is like a book that you are writing and reading at the same time. You might have a plan for how it turns out. But for it to be a great book, it needs to be savoured and chewed and digested along the way, like a book you read that changes your life. And you have to prepare for a plot twist and maybe two or three.

When evil men plot, good men must plan. When evil men burn and bomb, good men must build and bind. When evil men shout ugly words of hatred, good men must commit themselves to the glories of love. Where evil men would seek to perpetuate an unjust status quo, good men must seek to bring into being a real order of justice.2

But Zelda was never about plot. Indeed, one's head could explode if all the games were considered one story, since Link is always meeting Zelda and villainous Gannon for the first time. Imagine trying to explain why James Bond has stayed forty years old for forty years, while changing faces and hair color. Better to accept the story as a constant retelling, and don't dwell on continuity matters. Mario has made a cottage industry of jokes about how Bowser had only one playbook—kidnap the princess—and this time it'll work! He's utterly incapable of coming up with any other plan. Aside from that one time he obtained a degree in hotel management.

We think we know what we want, don’t we? We always believe we know better than God. We have our entire journey plotted out. We may have even packed our bags and purchased a ticket, but God always has His own plans. And His plans are infinite in wisdom.” Sophie smiled on the last words and took a sip of tea. “He was here, you know.

For the guard with the scar over her heart: I’ve been watching you. You’re not like the other guards — the bowing, scraping, mindlessly loyal lizards who live for your queen. You have your own thoughts, don’t you? You’re smarter than the average SandWing. And I think I know your secret. Let’s talk about it. Third cell down, the one with two NightWings in it. I’m the one who doesn’t snore. I HAVE NO INTEREST IN DISCUSSING ANYTHING WITH A NIGHTWING PRISONER. WHOSE IDEA WAS IT TO LET YOU HAVE PAPER AND INK? You should be interested. You’re going to need allies for what you’re planning … and when I get out of here, I’m going to be a very useful ally indeed. AMUSING ASSUMPTIONS. MY QUEEN BELIEVES YOU’RE GOING TO BE IN HERE FOR A LONG, LONG TIME. True … but she also believes she’s going to be queen for a long, long time … doesn’t she. An interesting silence after my last note. Perhaps it would reassure you to know I set your notes on fire as soon as I’ve read them. You can tell me anything, my new, venomous-tailed friend. Believe me, Night-Wings are exceptionally skilled at keeping secrets. WE ARE NOT FRIENDS. I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT YOU, OTHER THAN WHAT IT SAYS IN YOUR PRISONER FILE. FIERCETEETH: TRAITOR. KIDNAPPER. RINGLEADER OF ASSASSINATION PLOT. TO BE HELD INDEFINITELY WITH FELLOW TRAITOR STRONGWINGS, ON BEHALF OF THE NIGHTWING QUEEN. OH, YES, CERTAINLY SOUNDS LIKE A DRAGON ANYONE CAN TRUST. She’s not my queen. You can’t be a traitor to someone who shouldn’t be ruling over you in the first place. Which might be a thought you’ve had lately yourself, isn’t it? I know some things about you, even without a file. Saguaro: Prison guard. Schemer. Connected to great secret plans. We’re not so different, you and I. Particularly when it comes to trustworthiness. Just think, if my alleged “assassination plot” had worked, the NightWings would have a different queen right now. Perhaps it would even be me. Well, if at first you don’t succeed … I could tell you my story, if you get me more paper to write on. Or you could stop by one midnight and listen to it instead. But I’ve noticed you don’t like spending too much time in the dungeon. Is it the tip-tap of little scorpion claws scrabbling everywhere? The stench rising from the holes in the floor? The gibbering mad SandWing a few cages down who never shuts up, all night long? (What is her story? Has she really been here since the rule of Queen Oasis?) Or is it that you can too easily picture yourself behind these bars … and you know how close you are to joining us? ALL RIGHT, NIGHTWING, HERE’S A BLANK SCROLL. GO AHEAD AND TRY TO CONVINCE ME THAT YOU’RE A DRAGON WHO EVEN DESERVES TO LIVE, LET ALONE ONE I SHOULD WASTE MY TIME ON. I DO ENJOY BEING AMUSED.

When the enemy's envoys speak in humble terms, but he continues his preparations, he will advance. When their language is deceptive but the enemy pretentiously advances, he will retreat. When the envoys speak in apologetic terms, he wishes a respite. When without a previous understanding the enemy asks for a truce, he is plotting. If without reason one begs for a truce it is assuredly because affairs in his country are in a dangerous state and he is worried and wishes to make a plan to gain a respite. Or otherwise he knows that our situation is susceptible to his plots and he wants to forestall our suspicions by asking for a truce. Then he will take advantage of our unpreparedness.

Whilst the men and women involved in the July Plot of 1944 are generally regarded as heroes, it should be remembered that few, if any, intended to replace the Nazi regime with anything approaching a modern representative democracy. Stauffenberg and others were in favour of retaining much of the territory that Germany had seized from Poland in 1939 and wished to negotiate an end to the conflict only with the Western Allies – they fully intended to continue the war in the east against the Soviet Union. They planned to insist that Germany would not be occupied by any foreign power at the end of the war, and that prosecution of any war criminals would be a matter purely for German courts.

Letting go is your hope and your power. So refuse to hold on to anything—any memory, any worry, or any fear—that is associated with sin. That means if you are holding a grudge, you’ve got to let go of it. Holding on to it is a sin. It’s not taking a position of power; it’s sin, and so it’s weakness. So right now, this minute, get over it! If you think getting even with someone is your job, then you’ve lost your way. Who do you think you are—God? “ ‘Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,’ says the Lord” (Heb 10:30 NKJV). Don’t get even. Don’t sit around plotting and planning. Get over it. If there is something you can’t get over, then you’ve got a big weakness that is going to tear you down eventually.

Why should anyone here believe anything the Germans said? First, because many never saw the final horrors until it was too late for them to communicate the truth to their neighbors. Second, because no human being could comprehend the ultimate goals of which they were capable, which they plotted daily, and which was part of their master plan for world conquest.

Genesis methodically tilled the soil for the balance of the Bible and humankind, sowing the seeds for the many doctrines and plots cultivated throughout Scripture. Once the plots and doctrines are fully developed, one finds oneself inexplicably returning to Genesis to fully comprehend the insights, revisiting the little known and misunderstood agrarians of Genesis.

Now, years later and with Carnegie’s blessing, Frick had launched his plan to further consolidate his rule over their industrial kingdom by destroying the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers. The labor union, formed in 1876, was one of many that emerged in the industrial age to combat the cruel and oppressive treatment of workers. In the steel mills, workers typically put in 12-hour days, six days a week, for less than a dime an hour. There were no government agencies to inspect the work sites, no forms of compensation in case of injury, and more than 35,000 workers died each year in industrial accidents. Only the unions offered some hope by fighting for higher wages, eight-hour workdays, and improved working conditions.

To the old such plots and plans, such matured schemes for obtaining the goods of this world without the trouble of earning them, such long-headed attempts to convert 'tuum' into 'meum,' are the ways of life to which they are accustomed. 'Tis thus that many live, and it therefore behoves all those who are well to do in the world to be on their guard agains those who are not.

Once we have found this secret place in God, nothing we encounter in life can truly defeat us; God Himself preserves us in all things. In every distress or devilish plot aligned against us, we emerge as “more than conquerors” (Rom. 8:37, KJV). In God’s shelter, the redemptive power of Christ reverses the plans of Satan, annulling both the assault of the enemy and its aftereffects.

Think rather of Ruin as intelligent decay. Not simply chaos, but a force that sought in a rational—and dangerous—way to break everything down to its most basic forms. Ruin could plan and carefully plot, knowing if he built one thing up, he could use it to knock down two others. The nature of the world is that when we create something, we often destroy something else in the process.

The moment your belief matches with any state, you fuse with it, and this union results in the activation and projection of its plots, plans, conditions and circumstances. This new state of conscious awareness becomes your home from which you view the world. It is your workshop, and, if you are observant, you will see outer reality shaping itself upon the model of your imagination.

Although these actors and their views were part of the strategic landscape, our strategic planning still seldom factored them into the equation. Third, at an operational, even tactical level, the battlefield was now global. An enemy group could plot and plan on one side of the planet and execute on the other side in days, if not hours. In cyberspace, impact could be measured in seconds. If these emerging and converging factors were changing the nature of warfare, then what was the role of intelligence? How would we identify and discern these micro-actors with macro-impact bouncing around a global battlefield, burrowing into the human terrain and employing deception and denial tactics? Intelligence seemed to be getting harder even as it was becoming more important.

There is an alternative approach to being wrong as fast as you can. It is the notion that if you carefully think everything through, if you are meticulous and plan well and consider all possible outcomes, you are more likely to create a lasting product. But I should caution that if you seek to plot out all your moves before you make them—if you put your faith in slow, deliberative planning in the hopes it will spare you failure down the line—well, you’re deluding yourself. For one thing, it’s easier to plan derivative work—things that copy or repeat something already out there. So if your primary goal is to have a fully worked out, set-in-stone plan, you are only upping your chances of being unoriginal. Moreover, you cannot plan your way out of problems. While planning is very important, and we do a lot of it, there is only so much you can control in a creative environment. In general, I have found that people who pour their energy into thinking about an approach and insisting that it is too early to act are wrong just as often as people who dive in and work quickly. The overplanners just take longer to be wrong (and, when things inevitably go awry, are more crushed by the feeling that they have failed). There’s a corollary to this, as well: The more time you spend mapping out an approach, the more likely you are to get attached to it. The nonworking idea gets worn into your brain, like a rut in the mud. It can be difficult to get free of it and head in a different direction. Which, more often than not, is exactly what you must do.

Research to date suggests silvopasture far outpaces any grassland technique. That is because silvopastoral systems sequester carbon in both the biomass aboveground and the soil below. Pastures that are strewn or crisscrossed with trees sequester five to ten times as much carbon as those of the same size that are treeless. Moreover, because the livestock yield on a silvopasture plot is higher

Imagination—that’s the key word here. With your affairs, the arousal starts on your flight over there. You don’t need the blue pill because what turns you on is the plot, the planning, the carefully chosen clothes. All the anticipation is what fuels the desire. When you come home and the first thing you do is take off your nice clothes and put on old sweatpants, nobody’s going to get turned on.

So I help you defeat your brother,” he cut in churlishly. “And then what are your plans?” Annwyl frowned. “My plans?” “Yes. Your plans. You take your brother’s head, your troops are waiting. What is the next thing that you do?” Annwyl just stared at him. He realized in that instant that the girl had no plans. None. No grand schemes of controlling the world. No plots to destroy any other empires. Not even the plan to have a celebratory dinner. “Annwyl, you’ll be queen. You’ll have to do something.” “But I don’t want to be queen.” Her body shook with panic, and he could hear it in her voice. “You take his head, you’ll have little choice.” “What the hell am I supposed to do as queen?” “Well . . . you could try ruling.” “That sounds awfully complicated.” “I don’t understand you.” “What do you mean?” “You command the largest rebellion known to this land. From what I understand, your troops are blindingly loyal to you. And other kingdoms send you reinforcements and gold.” “Your point?” “You’re already queen, Annwyl. You just need to take the crown.” She shook her head. “My father didn’t believe in crowns. There’s a throne, though.” “Then take your throne. Take it and become queen.

I distrust plot for two reasons: first, because our lives are largely plotless, even when you add in all our reasonable precautions and careful planning; and second, because I believe plotting and the spontaneity of real creation aren’t compatible. It’s best that I be as clear about this as I can—I want you to understand that my basic belief about the making of stories is that they pretty much make themselves

We start our lives in chaos, in babble. As we surge up into the world, we try to devise a shape, a plan. There is dignity in this. Your whole life is a plot, a scheme, a diagram. It is a failed scheme but that’s not the point. To plot is to affirm life, to seek shape and control. Even after death, most particularly after death, the search continues. Burial rites are an attempt to complete the scheme, in ritual.

Ziggy is in front of the tube, as if nothing much has been happening in his day, watching Scooby Goes Latin! (1990). Maxine after a quick visit to the bathroom to reformat, knowing better than to start in with the Q&A, comes in and sits down next to him about the time it breaks for a commercial. “Hi, Mom.” She wants to enfold him forever. Instead lets him recap the plot for her. Shaggy, somehow allowed to drive the van, has become confused and made some navigational errors, landing the adventurous quintet eventually in Medellín, Colombia, home at the time to a notorious cocaine cartel, where they stumble onto a scheme by a rogue DEA agent to gain control of the cartel by pretending to be the ghost—what else—of an assassinated drug kingpin. With the help of a pack of local street urchins, however, Scooby and his pals foil the plan.

He smiled, a bright, open expression that Kash wasn’t used to seeing on Taggart’s face. “Complete and total dependence. I’m joking. Though that is what I feel when she leaves me alone with the kids. Sometimes I think that’s her way of letting me know what hell on earth is like. I’m ready to drop to my knees and beg her to never leave me and all she did was go buy groceries. Yeah, that’s a clever plan of hers. That’s my girl. She’s always plotting.

Here are some key attributes of the voice in my head. I suspect they will sound familiar. • It’s often fixated on the past and future, at the expense of whatever is happening right now. The voice loves to plan, plot, and scheme. It’s always making lists or rehearsing arguments or drafting tweets. One moment it has you fantasizing about some halcyon past or Elysian future. Another moment you’re ruing old mistakes or catastrophizing about some not-yet-arrived events. As Mark Twain is reputed to have said, “Some of the worst things in my life never even happened.” • The voice is insatiable. The default mental condition for too many human beings is dissatisfaction. Under the sway of the ego, nothing is good enough. We’re always on the hunt for the next dopamine hit. We hurl ourselves headlong from one cookie, one promotion, one party to the next, and yet a great many of us are never fully sated. How many meals, movies, and vacations have you enjoyed? And are you done yet? Of course not. • The voice is unrelievedly self-involved. We are all the stars of our own movies, whether we cast ourselves as hero, victim, black hat, or all three. True, we can get temporarily sucked into other people’s stories, but often as a means of comparing ourselves to them. Everything ultimately gets subordinated to the one plotline that matters: the Story of Me.

It's a sad fact that most people can't even spot a story when they see one. Most people don't know that stories aren't confined by the covers of books or by half-hour slots on TV. The world is made of stories. The world is driven by stories. When a sunburned-friend tells you about their holiday, it's not a straight list of everything that happened to them - it's a story, an anecdote with a plot, a beginning, a middle and an end. Each one of their holiday snaps is a story too. When you're making a decision, and you imagine the possible outcomes - what are you doing if not telling yourself a story? History is a story. Society is a story. Countries are stories. Your plans are stories. Your desires are stories. Your own memories are stories - narratives selected, trimmed and packaged by the hidden machinery in your mind. Human beings are story engines. We have to be - to understand stories is to understand the world.

Unknown to the Cabinet and Parliament, a tiny cabal had made a decision fateful for Britain, the empire, and the world. Under the guidance of Edward Grey, the foreign secretary from 1905 to 1916, British and French officers plotted Britain’s entry into a Franco-German war from the first shot. And these secret war plans were being formulated by Liberals voted into power in public revulsion against the Boer War on a platform of “Peace, Retrenchment, and Reform.

There were plots afoot—plans of deceit, treason, and betrayal—and the only hope the Americans had to survive them was to be prepared. Washington knew that New York City was of the utmost strategic importance from a military perspective, but even he could not anticipate how crucial the intelligence collected there would be in saving the cause for liberty. And neither side, American nor British, could yet imagine just how deep the treachery reached within its own ranks.

Loki, who plotted and planned as easily as other folk breathed in and out, smiled at Thor's anger and innocence. “Your hammer has been stolen by Thrym, lord of all the ogres," he said. "I have persuaded him to return it to you, but he demands a price.” "Fair enough," said Thor. "What's the price?" "Freya's hand in marriage.” "He just wants her hand?" asked Thor hopefully. She had two hands, after all, and might be persuaded to give up one of them without too much of an argument.

It is then no acoustic hallucination from which I suffer; everywhere there are plots, I say to myself. But one day, as I go by chance into a shoemaker's shop, the noise instantaneously breaks out. It is no plot, then! It is the Devil himself! Hunted from hotel to hotel, pursued everywhere by electric wires even to my bed, attacked everywhere by electric currents which lift me from my chair, or out of bed, I deliberately set about planning my suicide. The weather is terrible, and in my depression I seek distraction in drinking bouts with friends.

but the plan had the opposite of the desired effect: a wave of horror washed across the country and the Congress unanimously awarded Salvador Allende the presidential sash. From that moment on, the right and the CIA plotted together to oust the government of the Unidad Popular, even at the cost of destroying the economy and Chile’s long democratic tradition. Then the CIA activated an alternate plan: a so-called destabilization, which consisted of cutting off international credit and initiating a campaign of sabotage to incite economic ruin and social violence.

Here are some key attributes of the voice in my head. I suspect they will sound familiar. • It’s often fixated on the past and future, at the expense of whatever is happening right now. The voice loves to plan, plot, and scheme. It’s always making lists or rehearsing arguments or drafting tweets. One moment it has you fantasizing about some halcyon past or Elysian future. Another moment you’re ruing old mistakes or catastrophizing about some not-yet-arrived events. As Mark Twain is reputed to have said, “Some of the worst things in my life never even happened.

Waves of probabilities blinked in red through the neural chip in her brain. Warnings. Three weeks earlier the software in her chip intuitively began calculating information on the feasibility of a coup d’état on this exact date, 7/13 at exactly 4 P.M. "It’s Friday the 13th," Haisley realized, and looked to the clock in her neural chip, which read 12:12 P.M. Less than four hours away. Her chip based the warnings on a conspiracy so cynical, so deceitful that no one could have imagined it. Even in a time known for deceitful conspiracies and great cynicism, this conspiracy was literally, unbelievable. The conspiracy was found on the platform of a banned far-right group who followed “SUA,” which stood for “Save Us All.” SUA, supposedly at least, is a man from the future who argues that Socialists, like current President Sabina Xú Manzana, will take over and ruin America unless the future is altered by the American patriots who support General Schenk. The conspiracy was then cross-referenced to a PSYOP and a plot called the Constitutional Liberty Plan that only existed in a Pentagon-encrypted message board. ~Haisley II

Former acting Director and former Deputy Director of the CIA, Michael Morell has served six presidents—three from each party—and has voted for both Democrats and Republicans. He has kept his politics to himself throughout his thirty-three year intelligence career, until now. He takes a dim view of the entire Russian constellation of “coincidences” that surrounds Donald Trump. We may recall the U.S. intelligence community’s observation that “coincidences take a lot of planning.” The Trump coincidences seemed to bear the hallmarks of the sword and the shield of the FSB.

In 2003, a Dutch clinical psychologist named Christof van Nimwegen began a fascinating study of computer-aided learning that a BBC writer would later call “one of the most interesting examinations of current computer use and the potential downsides of our increasing reliance on screen-based interaction with information systems.”26 Van Nimwegen had two groups of volunteers work through a tricky logic puzzle on a computer. The puzzle involved transferring colored balls between two boxes in accordance with a set of rules governing which balls could be moved at which time. One of the groups used software that had been designed to be as helpful as possible. It offered on-screen assistance during the course of solving the puzzle, providing visual cues, for instance, to highlight permitted moves. The other group used a bare-bones program, which provided no hints or other guidance. In the early stages of solving the puzzle, the group using the helpful software made correct moves more quickly than the other group, as would be expected. But as the test proceeded, the proficiency of the members of the group using the bare-bones software increased more rapidly. In the end, those using the unhelpful program were able to solve the puzzle more quickly and with fewer wrong moves. They also reached fewer impasses—states in which no further moves were possible—than did the people using the helpful software. The findings indicated, as van Nimwegen reported, that those using the unhelpful software were better able to plan ahead and plot strategy, while those using the helpful software tended to rely on simple trial and error. Often, in fact, those with the helpful software were found “to aimlessly click around” as they tried to crack the puzzle.

She’s certain that I intend to lure Lilly into the debauched harem that I maintain in the opium dens of Paris.” He turned her toward the lane. “Be so good as to thwart me from this evil scheme. You can begin by distracting me with a walk to the post office.” She smiled, though it was slightly watery. “I see that it’s my Christian duty, when you put it so. I only hope I may not succumb to your wicked plot myself.” “Oh, I have far more sinister plans for you. I mean to entice you to a dish of tea in the public parlor at the Antlers. I will certainly set a chair for you, and possibly I may even speak French.

I suddenly remember being about seven, riding beside him in the car, and asking him how grown-ups found their way to places. After all, I had never seen him pull out a map. "I guess we just get used to taking the same turns," he said, but I wasn't satisfied. "Then what about the first time you go somewhere?" "Well," he said, "we get directions." But what I want to know is who got them the very first time? What if no one's ever been where you're going? "Dad?" I ask, "is it true that you can use stars like a map?" "Yeah, if you understand celestial navigation." "Is it hard?" I'm thinking maybe I should learn. A backup plan, for all those times I feel like I'm just wandering in circles. "It's pretty jazzy math—you have to measure the altitude of a star, figure out its position using a nautical almanac, figure out what you think the altitude should be and what direction the star should be in based on where you think you are, and compare the altitude you measured with the one you calculated. Then you plot this on a chart, as a line of position. You get several lines of position to cross, and that's where you go." My father takes one look at my face and smiles. "Exactly," he laughs. "Never leave home without your GPS.

New Rule: If you're going to have a rally where hundreds of thousands of people show up, you may as well go ahead and make it about something. With all due respect to my friends Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, it seems that if you truly wanted to come down on the side of restoring sanity and reason, you'd side with the sane and the reasonable--and not try to pretend the insanity is equally distributed in both parties. Keith Olbermann is right when he says he's not the equivalent of Glenn Beck. One reports facts; the other one is very close to playing with his poop. And the big mistake of modern media has been this notion of balance for balance's sake, that the left is just as violent and cruel as the right, that unions are just as powerful as corporations, that reverse racism is just as damaging as racism. There's a difference between a mad man and a madman. Now, getting more than two hundred thousand people to come to a liberal rally is a great achievement that gave me hope, and what I really loved about it was that it was twice the size of the Glenn Beck crowd on the Mall in August--although it weight the same. But the message of the rally as I heard it was that if the media would just top giving voice to the crazies on both sides, then maybe we could restore sanity. It was all nonpartisan, and urged cooperation with the moderates on the other side. Forgetting that Obama tried that, and found our there are no moderates on the other side. When Jon announced his rally, he said that the national conversation is "dominated" by people on the right who believe Obama's a socialist, and by people on the left who believe 9/11 was an inside job. But I can't name any Democratic leaders who think 9/11 was an inside job. But Republican leaders who think Obama's socialist? All of them. McCain, Boehner, Cantor, Palin...all of them. It's now official Republican dogma, like "Tax cuts pay for themselves" and "Gay men just haven't met the right woman." As another example of both sides using overheated rhetoric, Jon cited the right equating Obama with Hitler, and the left calling Bush a war criminal. Except thinking Obama is like Hitler is utterly unfounded--but thinking Bush is a war criminal? That's the opinion of Major General Anthony Taguba, who headed the Army's investigation into Abu Ghraib. Republicans keep staking out a position that is farther and farther right, and then demand Democrats meet them in the middle. Which now is not the middle anymore. That's the reason health-care reform is so watered down--it's Bob Dole's old plan from 1994. Same thing with cap and trade--it was the first President Bush's plan to deal with carbon emissions. Now the Republican plan for climate change is to claim it's a hoax. But it's not--I know because I've lived in L.A. since '83, and there's been a change in the city: I can see it now. All of us who live out here have had that experience: "Oh, look, there's a mountain there." Governments, led my liberal Democrats, passed laws that changed the air I breathe. For the better. I'm for them, and not the party that is plotting to abolish the EPA. I don't need to pretend both sides have a point here, and I don't care what left or right commentators say about it, I can only what climate scientists say about it. Two opposing sides don't necessarily have two compelling arguments. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke on that mall in the capital, and he didn't say, "Remember, folks, those southern sheriffs with the fire hoses and the German shepherds, they have a point, too." No, he said, "I have a dream. They have a nightmare. This isn't Team Edward and Team Jacob." Liberals, like the ones on that field, must stand up and be counted, and not pretend we're as mean or greedy or shortsighted or just plain batshit at them. And if that's too polarizing for you, and you still want to reach across the aisle and hold hands and sing with someone on the right, try church.

When Pence refused to participate in the plan—likely knowing that if the coup failed, he’d be the one left holding the bag—Trump fell back on the old tactic of spreading a false narrative through an investigation. He plotted to name Jeffrey Clark, a lawyer for the environmental division of the Justice Department, as attorney general. Clark planned to announce to the battleground state legislatures that the Department of Justice was “investigating various irregularities” in the election—this was a lie—and that they should choose a new set of electors. Only the threat that the entire leadership of the Department of Justice would resign made Trump back down.

While most American unions supported the Marshall Plan as an economic boon for their members and a necessary defense measure for the West, Al Bernstein’s union did not. Along with all the other Communist-controlled unions in America, Al Bernstein’s United Public Workers attacked the Marshall Plan as a Cold War plot and launched an all-out campaign against it. On the political front, Al Bernstein and his comrades bolted the Democratic Party and organized the Progressive Party candidacy of Henry Wallace in the hope of unseating Truman and ending his anti-Communist program. Their actions were in fact a Soviet-orchestrated plot to sabotage the defense of Europe against Soviet aggression.

JFK asked his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, to break up organized crime. Nobody high-up in government has tangled the Mafia. J. E. Hoover, the hired hands of FBI and CIA, ran the assassination teams. They have been used since World War II. JFK was attempting to end the oil-tax depletion rip-offs, to get tax money from oil companies. JFK instituted the nuclear test ban treaty, often called “the kiss of death,” to oppose the Pentagon. JFK called off the Invasion of Cuba. He allowed Castro to live, antagonized narcotics and gambling, oil and sugar interests, formerly in Cuba. JFK asked his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, to break up the CIA, the “hidden government behind my back.” Allen Dulles was fired. Dulles, the attorney for international multinationals, was angry. JFK planned to withdraw troops from Vietnam after the 1964 elections. Nov. 24, 1963, two days after JFK’s burial, the Pentagon escalated the Vietnam war … with no known provocations, after JFK was gone. There was no chance Kennedy could survive antagonizing the CIA, oil companies, Pentagon, organized crime. He was not their man. The assassination of JFK employed people from the Texas-Southwest. It was not a Southern plot. Upstarts could not have controlled the northern CIA, FBI, Kennedy family connections. This was a more detailed, sophisticated conspiracy that was to set the pattern for future murders to take place. The murder was funded by Permindex, with headquarters in Montreal and Switzerland. Their stated purpose was to encourage trade between nations in the Western world. Their actual purpose was fourfold: 1) To fund and direct assassinations of European, Mid-East and world leaders considered threats to the western world, and to Petroleum Interests of their backers. 2) Provide couriers, agents for transporting and depositing funds through Swiss Banks for Vegas, Miami and the international gambling syndicate. 3) Coordinate the espionage activities of White Russian Solidarists and Division V of the FBI, headed by William Sullivan. 4) Build, acquire and operate hotels and gambling casinos. See: Nomenclature of an Assassination Cabal, by William Torbitt.

Okay,” I finally said. “Can we all agree that this is maybe the most screwed-up situation we’ve ever found ourselves in?” “Agreed,” they said in unison. “Awesome.” I gave a little nod. “And do either of you have any idea what we should do about it?” “Well, we can’t use magic,” Archer said. “And if we try to leave, we get eaten by Monster Fog,” Jenna added. “Right. So no plans at all, then?” Jenna frowned. “Other than rocking in the fetal position for a while?” “Yeah, I was thinking about taking one of those showers where you huddle in the corner fully clothed and cry,” Archer offered. I couldn’t help but snort with laughter. “Great. So we’ll all go have our mental breakdowns, and then we’ll somehow get ourselves out of this mess.” “I think our best bet is to lie low for a while,” Archer said. “Let Mrs. Casnoff think we’re all too shocked and awed to do anything. Maybe this assembly tonight will give us some answers.” “Answers,” I practically sighed. “About freaking time.” Jenna gave me a funny look. “Soph, are you…grinning?” I could feel my cheeks aching, so I knew that I was. “Look, you two have to admit: if we want to figure out just what the Casnoffs are plotting, this is pretty much the perfect place.” “My girl has a point,” Archer said, smiling at me. Now my cheeks didn’t just ache, they burned. Clearing her throat, Jenna said, “Okay, so we all go up to our rooms, then after the assembly tonight we can regroup and decide what to do next.” “Deal,” I said as Archer nodded. “Are we all going to high-five now?” Jenna asked after a pause. “No, but I can make up some kind of secret handshake if you want,” Archer said, and for a second, they smiled at each other. But just as quickly, the smile disappeared from Jenna’s face, and she said to me, “Let’s go. I want to see if our room is as freakified as the rest of this place.” “Good idea,” I said. Archer reached out and brushed his fingers over mine. “See you later, then?” he asked. His voice was casual, but my skin was hot where he touched me. “Definitely,” I answered, figuring that even a girl who has to stop evil witches from taking over the world could make time for kissage in there somewhere. He turned and walked away. As I watched him go, I could feel Jenna starting at me. “Fine,” she acknowledged with a dramatic roll of her eyes. “He’s a little dreamy.” I elbowed her gently in the side. “Thanks.” Jenna started to walk to the stairs. “You coming?” “Yeah,” I said. “I’ll be right up. I just want to take a quick look around down here.” “Why, so you can be even more depressed?” Actually, I wanted to stay downstairs just a little longer to see if anyone else showed up. So far, I’d seen nearly everyone I remembered from last year at Hex Hall. Had Cal been dragged here, too? Technically he hadn’t been a student, but Mrs. Casnoff had used his powers a lot last year. Would she still want him here? To Jenna, I just said, “Yeah, you know me. I like poking bruises.” “Okay. Get your Nancy Drew on.

food has played a central role not only in my professional but also in my emotional life, in all of my dealings with loved ones and most of all in my relationship to myself and my body. I am what feeds me. And how I feed myself at any given moment says a lot about what I’m going through or what I need. I don’t believe I am alone. Yes, we eat for our stomachs, but we hunger with our hearts. Like most people and many women, I think about what to eat all the time. I am constantly plotting my next meal, planning how and what I will shop for, and ever hatching new plans to avoid the foods I know will undermine my well-being. Foods are like men: some are good, some are bad, and some are okay only in small doses. But most should be tried at least once.

After World War II, the United States, triumphant abroad and undamaged at home, saw a door wide open for world supremacy. Only the thing called ‘communism’ stood in the way, politically, militarily, economically, and ideologically. Thus it was that the entire US foreign policy establishment was mobilized to confront this ‘enemy’, and the Marshall Plan was an integral part of this campaign. How could it be otherwise? Anti-communism had been the principal pillar of US foreign policy from the Russian Revolution up to World War II, pausing for the war until the closing months of the Pacific campaign when Washington put challenging communism ahead of fighting the Japanese. Even the dropping of the atom bomb on Japan – when the Japanese had already been defeated – can be seen as more a warning to the Soviets than a military action against the Japanese.19 After the war, anti-communism continued as the leitmotif of American foreign policy as naturally as if World War II and the alliance with the Soviet Union had not happened. Along with the CIA, the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, the Council on Foreign Relations, certain corporations, and a few other private institutions, the Marshall Plan was one more arrow in the quiver of those striving to remake Europe to suit Washington’s desires: 1.    Spreading the capitalist gospel – to counter strong postwar tendencies toward socialism. 2.    Opening markets to provide new customers for US corporations – a major reason for helping to rebuild the European economies; e.g. a billion dollars (at twenty-first-century prices) of tobacco, spurred by US tobacco interests. 3.    Pushing for the creation of the Common Market (the future European Union) and NATO as integral parts of the West European bulwark against the alleged Soviet threat. 4.    Suppressing the left all over Western Europe, most notably sabotaging the Communist parties in France and Italy in their bids for legal, non-violent, electoral victory. Marshall Plan funds were secretly siphoned off to finance this endeavor, and the promise of aid to a country, or the threat of its cutoff, was used as a bullying club; indeed, France and Italy would certainly have been exempted from receiving aid if they had not gone along with the plots to exclude the Communists from any kind of influential role.

Many forces sought control of the Atreides twins and, when the death of Leto was announced, this movement of plot and counterplot was amplified. Note the relative motivations: the Sisterhood feared Alia, an adult Abomination, but still wanted those genetic characteristics carried by the Atreides. The Church hierarchy of Auquaf and Hajj saw only the power implicit in control of Muad'Dib's heir. CHOAM wanted a doorway to the wealth of Dune. Farad'n and his Sardaukar sought a return to glory for House Corrino. The Spacing Guild feared the equation Arrakis=melange; without the spice they could not navigate. Jessica wished to repair what her disobedience to the Bene Gesserit had created. Few thought to ask the twins what their plans might be, until it was too late. -The Book of Kreos

ominous murmur ran through the legion of onlookers, who had heretofore maintained an uncharacteristic silence. Their resentment was palpable. Five days later Coligny was assassinated, and the streets of Paris ran with blood as the entire Huguenot wedding party was hunted down and slaughtered in one of the most infamous episodes in French history, known today as the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. But this horrific mass murder, which claimed more than five thousand martyrs over the course of a week, was no spontaneous bloodletting. Rather, it was the denouement of a carefully constructed plot that utilized the unsuspecting Margot as both victim and bait to lure Coligny and his faction to their doom, an intrigue planned, instigated, and executed by the one individual in France powerful enough

...you made art because it was the only thing you’d ever been good at, the only thing, really, you thought about between shorter bursts of thinking about the things everyone thought about: sex and food and sleep and friends and money and fame. But somewhere inside you, whether you were making out with someone in a bar or having dinner with your friends, was always your canvas, its shapes and possibilities floating embryonically behind your pupils. There was a period—or at least you hoped there was—with every painting or project when the life of that painting became more real to you than your everyday life, when you sat wherever you were and thought only of returning to the studio, when you were barely conscious that you had tapped out a hill of salt onto the dinner table and in it were drawing your plots and patterns and plans, the white grains moving under your fingertip like silt.

Benedict Arnold was appointed to the rank of general in the Continental Army by George Washington during the American War of Independence. It was up to him to protect the fortifications at West Point, New York, which in 1802 became the U.S. Military Academy. Arnold however planned to surrender his command to the British forces. When his treasonous act was discovered Arnold fled down the Hudson River to the British sloop-of-war Vulture, avoiding capture by the forces of George Washington, who had previously been alerted to the plot. Arnold was hailed a hero by the British, who gave him a commission in the British Army as brigadier general. In the winter of 1782, after the war, he moved to London with his wife where he was received as a hero by King George III. In the United States his name "Benedict Arnold" became synonyms for the words “TRAITOR & TREASON.” Cohorting with a foreign power to overthrow the government or purposely aiding the enemy is an act of Treason!

Did you bring money with you, or shall we play for markers?" She flipped the stack of cards to the table with a professional twist of her wrist. "I don't play for less than a guinea a hand." His lips twitched. "The question is not if I have money. The question is, do you?" "I don't need funds, as I don't plan on losing," she said, her gaze mocking. For a moment, he thought he'd heard her incorrectly. Slowly, he said, "I beg your pardon, but are you saying you could beat me at a game of chance?" A dismissive smile rested on her lips. "Please, Dougal, let's speak frankly," she drawled softly. "Naturally, I expect to win; I was taught by a master." Dougal was entranced. He'd been challenged to many things before, but no one had so blatantly dismissed his chances of winning. "A giunea a hand?" "At least." "I didn't realize I'd need a note from my banker, or I'd have brought one with me." Her eyes sparkled with pure mischief, which inflamed him more. "If you've no money with you, then perhaps there are other things we can play for." The words hung in the room, as thick as the smoke that seeped from the fireplace. Like a blinding bolt of light from a storm-black sky, everything fell into place. This was why she and her minions had worked so hard to convince him that the house was worthless. If he thought it of low value, he'd be eager to wager the deed. Of all the devious plots! Yet Dougal found himself fighting a grin. He'd been feted and petted, fawned upon and sought out, but until now, no one had gone to such lengths to fleece him. Dugal couldn't look away from Sophia. He knew his own worth; women had paid attention to him for so long that he took it for granted. He'd dallied and toyed, taken and enjoyed. But never, in all of his years, had he so desired any woman as he did this one. The irony of it was that she desired him,too-but only for the contents of his pocket. Dougal didn't know whether to laugh or fume. He should be insulted, but instead he found himself watching her with new appreciation.

Our memories are unreliable. We often trick ourselves into believing things about our experiences that are biased and inaccurate. Studies suggest that our recollection of how we felt can greatly differ from the way an experience actually made us feel. We can remember wonderful events in a negative way, and negative events in a positive way. Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert likens our memories to painted portraits instead of photographs, where our mind artistically interprets memory. 20 It’s important to keep an accurate record of how things actually happened, because we often make decisions based on our past experiences. If we operate entirely on memory, we’re apt to repeat our mistakes by fooling ourselves into believing that something had an effect it actually did not. Good or bad, big or small, jot it down. Over the days, months, and years, they will form a pretty accurate roadmap of your life. Understanding how we got to where we are today will allow us to make more informed decisions as we plot our course forward.

Thor was waiting for him in the court of the gods, and before Loki had even landed he found himself seized by Thor's huge hands. "Well? You know something. I can see it in your face. Tell me whatever you know, and tell it now. I don't trust you, Loki, and I want to know what you know right this moment, before you've had a chance to plot and to plan. Loki, who plotted and planned as easily as other folk breathed in and out, smiled at Thor's anger and innocence. "Your hammer has been stolen by Thrym, lord of all the ogres," he said. "I have persuaded him to return it to you, but he demands a price." "Fair enough," said Thor. "What's the price?" "Freya's hand in marriage." "He just wants her hand?" asked Thor hopefully. She had two hands, after all, and might be persuaded to give up one of them without too much of an argument. Tyr had, after all. "All of her," said Loki. "He wants to marry her." "Oh," said Thor. "She won't like that. Well, you can tell her the news. You're better at persuading people to do things than I am when I'm not holding my hammer.

a 1960 self-published broadside, A Business Man Looks at Communism, Koch claimed that “the Communists have infiltrated both the Democrat [sic] and Republican Parties.” Protestant churches, public schools, universities, labor unions, the armed services, the State Department, the World Bank, the United Nations, and modern art, in his view, were all Communist tools. He wrote admiringly of Benito Mussolini’s suppression of Communists in Italy and disparagingly of the American civil rights movement. The Birchers agitated to impeach Chief Justice Earl Warren after the Supreme Court voted to desegregate the public schools in the case Brown v. Board of Education, which had originated in Topeka, in the Kochs’ home state of Kansas. “The colored man looms large in the Communist plan to take over America,” Fred Koch claimed in his pamphlet. Welfare in his view was a secret plot to attract rural blacks to cities, where he predicted that they would foment “a vicious race war.” In a 1963 speech, Koch claimed that Communists would “infiltrate the highest offices of government in the U.S. until the President is a Communist, unknown to the rest of us.

I silently assessed our predicament before deciding to implement the only real plan I could come up with. It was a risky plan—a plan that could easily backfire. But it was my only option. I was going to have to scare my mother out of the forest. Normally, I wouldn’t have been able to think of anything frightening enough to breach her grown-up resistance to scary kid stories. But a few nights earlier, she had watched The Texas Chainsaw Massacre while she thought I was asleep. Unfortunately, I wasn’t asleep. I was hiding behind the couch. And I had imprinted everything I’d seen that night. I imagine it would be pretty terrifying to be wandering through the forest at night when, out of nowhere, your eight-year-old child begins describing the plot from the horror film you watched the other night, which, as far as you know, she hadn’t seen. But my mother maintained her composure very well—until a twig snapped, at which point she whirled around shrieking, “WE HAVE A DOG!” As if Murphy’s presence were enough to deter a homicidal psychopath with a chainsaw. It was too much. All the helplessness and frustration that she had been trying so hard to hide from us came rushing to the surface.

...literature does its best to maintain that its concern is with the mind ; that the body is a sheet of plain glass through which the soul looks straight and clear, and, save for one or two passions such as desire and greed, is null , negligible and nonexistent. On the contrary, the very opposite is true. All day, all night the body intervenes; blunts or sharpens, colours or discolours, turns to wax in the warmth of June, hardens to tallow in the murk of February. The creature within can only gaze through the pane—smudged or rosy; it cannot separate off from the body like the sheath of a knife or the pod of a pea for a single instant; it must go through the whole unending procession of changes, heat and cold, comfort and discomfort, hunger and satisfaction, health and illness, until there comes the inevitable catastrophe; the body smashes itself to smithereens, and the soul (it is said) escapes. But of all this daily drama of the body there is no record. People write always about the doings of the mind; the thoughts that come to it; its noble plans; how it has civilised the universe. They show it ignoring the body in the philosopher's turret; or kicking the body, like an old leather football, across leagues of snow and desert in the pursuit of conquest or discovery. Those great wars which it wages by itself, with the mind a slave to it, in the solitude of the bedroom against the assault of fever or the oncome of melancholia, are neglected. Nor is the reason far to seek. To look these things squarely in the face would need the courage of a lion tamer; a robust philosophy; a reason rooted in the bowels of the earth. Short of these, this monster, the body, this miracle, its pain, will soon make us taper into mysticism, or rise, with rapid beats of the wings, into the raptures of transcendentalism. More practically speaking, the public would say that a novel devoted to influenza lacked plot; they would complain that there was no love in it—wrongly however, for illness often takes on the disguise of love, and plays the same odd tricks, investing certain faces with divinity, setting us to wait, hour after hour, with pricked ears for the creaking of a stair, and wreathing the faces of the absent (plain enough in health, Heaven knows) with a new significance, while the mind concocts a thousand legends and romances about them for which it has neither time nor liberty in health.

Schopenhauer, in his splendid essay called "On an Apparent Intention in the Fate of the Individual," points out that when you reach an advanced age and look back over your lifetime, it can seem to have had a consistent orderand plan, as though composed by some novelist. Events that when they occurred had seemed accidental and of little moment turn out to have been indispensable factors in the composition of a consistent plot. So who composed that plot? Schopenhauer suggests that just as your dreams are composed by an aspect of yourself of which your consciousness is unaware, so, too, your whole life is composed by the will within you. And just as people whom you will have met apparently by mere chance became leading agents in the structuring of your life, so, too, will you have served unknowingly as an agent, giving meaning to the lives of others. The whole thing gears together like one big symphony, with everything unconsciously structuring everything else. And Schopenhauer concludes that it is as though our lives were the features of the one great dream of a single dreamer in which all the dream characters dream, too; so that everything links to everything else, moved by the one will to life which is the universal will in nature.

but because to work in Ezra’s was to be constantly surrounded and interrupted by dilettantes. There, art was something that was just an accessory to a lifestyle. You painted or sculpted or made crappy installation pieces because it justified a wardrobe of washed-soft T-shirts and dirty jeans and a diet of ironic cheap American beers and ironic expensive hand-rolled American cigarettes. Here, however, you made art because it was the only thing you’d ever been good at, the only thing, really, you thought about between shorter bursts of thinking about the things everyone thought about: sex and food and sleep and friends and money and fame. But somewhere inside you, whether you were making out with someone in a bar or having dinner with your friends, was always your canvas, its shapes and possibilities floating embryonically behind your pupils. There was a period—or at least you hoped there was—with every painting or project when the life of that painting became more real to you than your everyday life, when you sat wherever you were and thought only of returning to the studio, when you were barely conscious that you had tapped out a hill of salt onto the dinner table and in it were drawing your plots and patterns and plans, the white grains moving under your fingertip like silt.

What use is knowing anything if no one is around to watch you know it? Plants reinvent sugar daily and hardly anyone applauds. Once as a boy I sat in a corner covering my ears, singing Quranic verse after Quranic verse. Each syllable was perfect, but only the lonely rumble in my head gave praise. This is why we put mirrors in birdcages, why we turn on lamps to double our shadows. I love my body more than other bodies. When I sleep next to a man, he becomes an extension of my own brilliance. Or rather, he becomes an echo of my own anticlimax. I was delivered from dying like a gift card sent in lieu of a pound of flesh. My escape was mundane, voidable. Now I feed faith to faith, suffer human noise, complain about this or that heartache. The spirit lives in between the parts of a name. It is vulnerable only to silence and forgetting. I am vulnerable to hammers, fire, and any number of poisons. The dream, then: to erupt into a sturdier form, like a wild lotus bursting into its tantrum of blades. There has always been a swarm of hungry ghosts orbiting my body—even now, I can feel them plotting in their luminous diamonds of fog, each eying a rib or a thighbone. They are arranging their plans like worms preparing to rise through the soil. They are ready to die with their kind, dry and stiff above the wet earth.

For the first time after the Great Purge, Stalin had a great number of high and highest officials executed, and we know for certain that this was planned as the beginning of another nationwide purge. This would have been touched off by the “Doctors’ plot” had Stalin’s death not intervened. A group of mostly Jewish physicians were accused of having plotted “to wipe out the leading cadres of the USSR.”30 Everything that went on in Russia between 1948 and January 1953, when the “Doctors’ plot” was being “discovered,” bore a striking and ominous similarity to the preparations of the Great Purge during the thirties: the death of Zhdanov and the Leningrad purge corresponded to Kirov’s no less mysterious death in 1934 which was immediately followed by a kind of preparatory purge “of all former oppositionists who remained in the Party.”31 Moreover, the very content of the absurd accusation against the physicians, that they would kill off people in leading positions all over the country, must have filled with fearful forebodings all those who were acquainted with Stalin’s method of accusing a fictitious enemy of the crime he himself was about to commit. (The best known example is of course his accusation that Tukhachevski conspired with Germany at the very moment when Stalin was contemplating an alliance with the Nazis.)

Did you see how the ball bounced right off her head? That was great, and one of the best things I’ve . . .” “It was not great that I bounced a ball off of Miss Dixon’s head,” Millie interrupted, her words causing the grin to slide right off Elizabeth’s face. “Sure it was,” Elizabeth countered. “She deserved it because she only wanted to play tennis with you in order to embarrass you, but . . . that didn’t turn out how she wanted, did it?” “I don’t know about that. I was pretty embarrassed when all those people started wagging their fingers at me, and especially when Gertrude began yelling at me that I was unnatural and shouldn’t be allowed in public.” Millie shuddered. “But my embarrassment aside, you, Elizabeth, have some explaining to do regarding that nasty business with the croquet ball. You could have seriously injured Miss Dixon.” Elizabeth looked less than contrite. “I was hoping if I conked her in the head, she’d lose her memory and forget all about the boarding school plan.” She suddenly looked a little hopeful. “Do you think your conking her on the head might have rattled her memory a little?” “Miss Dixon seemed perfectly coherent, and that means logical, when she took to screaming at me, so no, I think her memory is still intact. I believe it might be easier all around though, if you’d just talk to Uncle Everett about your feelings regarding boarding school instead of thinking up dangerous plots that will certainly see you sent off to one.” “If

Bernard acted thus when he complained of himself to our Lord, saying: ' Create in me a clean heart, oh Lord’, for not only is it filled with vain thoughts and defiled with impurity, but even distracted with bitterness, for often when annoyed by some injury done to me, my heart is full of a continuous tumult of feelings. Tossed to and fro I am beset and swayed on every side by the thought of what reprisals I can take for the injury done to me and how to avenge myself. I make endless plans, and my heart is bent solely on paying off my grudges in imagination as I cannot do so in act. I do not see the people around me but contradict the absent. In fancy, I insult and am insulted and reply with even harsher abuse as there is no one to answer me, I devise a quarrel. I think over the plots of the envious and what they might do and what I could do in return, and as it is all factitious, I labor like a litigant without a case. So I pass the day in idleness and the night in cogitation. I am slow in doing useful work because I am wearied with unlawful thoughts, and fight my battles in my memory because I meet with no resistance outside me. At other times the outward actions I have performed revert importunately to my mind, and often their memory torments me more than the act itself, frequently things that I never did or ever wished to do so haunt my thoughts that I almost wish that I had done them. Cleanse me, oh Lord, from my secret sins, for my outward actions cause me to sin gravely in my thoughts, because what I have seen and done is imprinted in my heart, so that a tumult of worldly cares revolves within it even when at rest.

We both know Dad was my parental trash can, the fatherly receptacle on whom I dumped my emotions. Does she think because she offered me a blanket and chocolate-covered whatever that I'll just hand over the keys to my inner diary? Uh, no. "I know you're eighteen now," she huffs. "I get it, okay? But you don't know everything. And you know what? I don't like secrets." My head spins. The first day of the Rest of My Normal Life is not turning out as planned. I shake my head. "I guess I still don't understand what you're asking me." She stomps her foot. "How long have you been dating him, Emma? How long have you and Galen been an item?" Ohmysweetgoodness. "I'm not dating Galen," I whisper. "Why would you even think that?" "Why would I think that? Maybe you should ask Mrs. Strickland. She's the one who told me how intimate you looked standing there in the hall. And she said Galen was beside himself when you wouldn't wake up. That he kept squeezing your hand." Intimate? I let my backpack slide off my shoulder and onto the floor before I plot to the table and sit down. The room feels like a giant merry-go-round. I am...embarrassed? No. Embarrassed is when you spill ketchup on your crotch and it leaves a red stain in a suspicious area. Mortified? No. Mortified is when you experiment with tanning lotion and forget to put some on your feet, so it looks like you're wearing socks with your flip-flops and sundress. Bewildered? Yep. That's it. Bewildered that after I screamed at him-oh yes, now I remember I screamed at him-he picked up my limp body, carried me all the way to the office, and stayed with me until help arrived. Oh, and he held my hand and sat beside me, too. I cradle my face in my hands, imagining how close I came to going to school without knowing this. How close I came to walking up to Galen, telling him to take his tingles and shove them where every girl's thoughts have been since he got there. I groan into my laced fingers. "I can never face him again," I say to no one in particular. Unfortunately, Mom thinks I'm talking to her. "Why? Did he break up with you?" She sits down next to me and pulls my hands from my face. "Is it because you wouldn't sleep with him?" "Mom!" I screech. "No!" She snatches her hand away. "You mean you did sleep with him?" Her lips quiver. This can't be happening. "Mom, I told you, we're not dating!" Shouting is a dumb idea. My heartbeat ripples through my temples. "You're not even dating him and you slept with him?" She's wringing her hands. Tears puddle in her eyes. One Mississippi...two Mississippi...Is she freaking serious?...Three Mississippi...four Mississippi...Because I swear I'm about to move out... Five Mississippi...six Mississippi...I might as well sleep with him if I'm going to be accused of it anyway... Seven Mississippi...eight Mississippi...Ohmysweetgoodness, did I really just think that?...Nine Mississippi...ten Mississippi...Talk to your mother-now. I keep my voice polite when I say, "Mom, I haven't slept with Galen, unless you count laying on the nurse's bed unconscious beside him. And we are not dating. We have never dated. Which is why he wouldn't need to break up with me. Have I missed anything?" "What were you arguing about in the hall, then?" "I actually don't remember. All I remember is being mad at him. Trust me, I'll find out. But right now, I'm late for school." I ease out of the chair and over to my backpack on the floor. Bending over is even stupider than shouting. I wish my head would just go ahead and fall off already.

literature does itsnbest to maintain that its concern is with the mind ; that the body is a sheet of plain glass through which the soul looks straight and clear, and, save for one or two passions such as desire and greed, is null , negligible and nonexistent. On the contrary, the very opposite is true. All day, all night the body intervenes; blunts or sharpens, colours or discolours, turns to wax in the warmth of June, hardens to tallow in the murk of February. The creature within can only gaze through the pane—smudged or rosy; it cannot separate off from the body like the sheath of a knife or the pod of a pea for a single instant; it must go through the whole unending procession of changes, heat and cold, comfort and discomfort, hunger and satisfaction, health and illness, until there comes the inevitable catastrophe; the body smashes itself to smithereens, and the soul (it is said) escapes. But of all this daily drama of the body there is no record. People write always about the doings of the mind; the thoughts that come to it; its noble plans; how it has civilised the universe. They show it ignoring the body in the philosopher's turret; or kicking the body, like an old leather football, across leagues of snow and desert in the pursuit of conquest or discovery. Those great wars which it wages by itself, with the mind a slave to it, in the solitude of the bedroom against the assault of fever or the oncome of melancholia, are neglected. Nor is the reason far to seek. To look these things squarely in the face would need the courage of a lion tamer; a robust philosophy; a reason rooted in the bowels of the earth. Short of these, this monster, the body, this miracle, its pain, will soon make us taper into mysticism, or rise, with rapid beats of the wings, into the raptures of transcendentalism. More practically speaking, the public would say that a novel devoted to influenza lacked plot; they would complain that there was no love in it—wrongly however, for illness often takes on the disguise of love, and plays the same odd tricks, investing certain faces with divinity, setting us to wait, hour after hour, with pricked ears for the creaking of a stair, and wreathing the faces of the absent (plain enough in health, Heaven knows) with a new significance, while the mind concocts a thousand legends and romances about them for which it has neither time nor liberty in health.

Clean Love Can you imagine love without jealousy, without possessiveness—love washed clean of all its clinginess and desperation? Let’s try. We can take some thoughts from Buddhism: What would it be like to love without attachment, to open our hearts to someone with no expectations, loving just for the joy of it, regardless of what we might get back? Imagine seeing the beauty and virtues of a beloved and letting go of how their strengths might meet our needs or how their beauty might make us look better. Imagine seeing someone in a clean light of love—without enumerating the ways in which that person does and does not match up to the fantasy we carry around of our perfect mate or dream lover. Imagine meeting another person in the freedom and innocence of childhood and playing together without plotting how to make this person give us the kind of love we wish we could have gotten in our actual childhood. But…but…but. What if you open your heart to someone, and you don’t like what happens next? Suppose that person gets drunk or treats your open affection with scorn? What if this person doesn’t fulfill your dreams? What if this one turns out just like the last one? Suppose all those things do happen. What have you lost? A little time, a brief fantasy. Let it go, learn from it, and walk away a little wiser. Love doesn’t much take to being stuffed into forms, which is what everybody’s fantasies and imaginings are: custom-built plans for a constructed individual they’ve created to solve all their problems. Your authors have dream lovers, too—but people are not made of clay or stone, and it won’t work well to approach them with a chisel. How many times have you rejected the possibility of love because it didn’t look the way you expected it to? Perhaps some characteristic was missing you were sure you must have, some other trait was present that you never dreamed of accepting. What happens when you throw away your expectations and open your eyes to the fabulous love that is shining right in front of you, holding out its hand? Clean love is love without expectations. Washing your love clean doesn’t require advanced spirituality or weekly psychoanalysis. You’ll probably never let go of every single attachment—at least we’ve never managed it. But maybe you can let go just for an instant: your history, worries, frets, and yearnings will still be there to come back to when you need them. Just for now, take a look at the wonderful person who is standing right in front of you.

Almost overnight the Glorious Loyalty Oath Crusade was in full flower, and Captain Black was enraptured to discover himself spearheading it. He had really hit on something. All the enlisted men and officers on combat duty had to sign a loyalty oath to get their map cases from the intelligence tent, a second loyalty oath to receive their flak suits and parachutes from the parachute tent, a third loyalty oath for Lieutenant Balkington, the motor vehicle officer, to be allowed to ride from the squadron to the airfield in one of the trucks. Every time they turned around there was another loyalty oath to be signed. They signed a loyalty oath to get their pay from the finance officer, to obtain their PX supplies, to have their hair cut by the Italian barbers. To Captain Black, every officer who supported his Glorious Loyalty Oath Crusade was a competitor, and he planned and plotted twenty-four hours a day to keep one step ahead. He would stand second to none in his devotion to country. When other officers had followed his urging and introduced loyalty oaths of their own, he went them one better by making every son of a bitch who came to his intelligence tent sign two loyalty oaths, then three, then four; then he introduced the pledge of allegiance, and after that 'The Star-Spangled Banner,' one chorus, two choruses, three choruses, four choruses. Each time Captain Black forged ahead of his competitors, he swung upon them scornfully for their failure to follow his example. Each time they followed his example, he retreated with concern and racked his brain for some new stratagem that would enable him to turn upon them scornfully again. Without realizing how it had come about, the combat men in the squadron discovered themselves dominated by the administrators appointed to serve them. They were bullied, insulted, harassed and shoved about all day long by one after the other. When they voiced objection, Captain Black replied that people who were loyal would not mind signing all the loyalty oaths they had to. To anyone who questioned the effectiveness of the loyalty oaths, he replied that people who really did owe allegiance to their country would be proud to pledge it as often as he forced them to. And to anyone who questioned the morality, he replied that 'The Star-Spangled Banner' was the greatest piece of music ever composed. The more loyalty oaths a person signed, the more loyal he was; to Captain Black it was as simple as that, and he had Corporal Kolodny sign hundreds with his name each day so that he could always prove he was more loyal than anyone else.

She thinks no one would ever marry ‘a reckless society miss’ and a ‘troublemaker.’” He winced to hear his own words thrown back at him. Celia was all that…and so much more. Not that he dared tell her. Bad enough that he’d revealed too much of how he felt yesterday. For now, she could chalk it up to mere desire. If he started paying her compliments, she might guess how far his feelings went, and that wouldn’t do. So he tempered his remarks. “Your grandmother is merely worried that you will waste yourself on some man who doesn’t deserve you.” Like a bastard Bow Street Runner. “I suspect that if you tell her you’re going to marry the duke, she won’t be a bit surprised. And she certainly won’t agree to rescind the ultimatum, now that she’s finally achieved what she wanted.” “Yes, I’ve come to that conclusion myself. And besides…well…it wouldn’t be fair to involve him in such a plot behind his back when he’s a genuinely nice man offering marriage. If word got out that he had offered and I’d accepted, only to turn him down, people would assume I’d done it because of the madness in his family. That would just be cruel.” Now that Jackson knew she wasn’t actually going to marry the duke, he could be open-minded. “It certainly wouldn’t be kind,” he agreed. “But I’d be more worried that if word got out, you’d be painted as the worst sort of jilt.” She shrugged that off. “I wouldn’t care, as long as it freed me from Gran’s ultimatum.” It took him a moment to digest that. “So you lied when you said at our first discussion of your suitors that you had an interest in marriage?” “Of course I didn’t lie.” Her cheeks pinkened again. “But I want to marry for love, and not because Gran has decided I’m taking too long at it. I want my husband to genuinely care for me.” Her voice shook a little. “And not just my fortune.” She cut him a sidelong glance. “Or my connections.” He stiffened in the saddle. “I understand.” Oh yes, he understood all right. Any overtures he made would be construed as mercenary. Her grandmother had made sure of that by telling her of his aspirations. Not that it mattered. If he married her, he risked watching her lose everything. A Chief Magistrate made quite a lofty sum for someone of Jackson’s station, but for someone of hers? It was nothing. Less than nothing. “So what do you plan to do?” he asked. “About your grandmother’s ultimatum, I mean.” She shook her head. “If presenting her with an offer and begging her forbearance didn’t work, my original plan was just to marry whichever of the three gentlemen had offered.” “And now?” “I can’t bring myself to do it.” He stopped clenching the reins. “Well, that’s something then.” “So I find myself back where I started. I suppose I shall have to drum up some more suitors.” She slanted a glance at him. “Any ideas?

NBC News reporter David Gregory was on a tear. Lecturing the NRA president—and the rest of the world—on the need for gun restrictions, the D.C. media darling and host of NBC’s boring Sunday morning gabfest, Meet the Press, Gregory displayed a thirty-round magazine during an interview. This was a violation of District of Columbia law, which specifically makes it illegal to own, transfer, or sell “high-capacity ammunition.” Conservatives demanded the Mr. Gregory, a proponent of strict gun control laws, be arrested and charged for his clear violation of the laws he supports. Instead the District of Columbia’s attorney general, Irv Nathan, gave Gregory a pass: Having carefully reviewed all of the facts and circumstances of this matter, as it does in every case involving firearms-related offenses or any other potential violation of D.C. law within our criminal jurisdiction, OAG has determined to exercise its prosecutorial discretion to decline to bring criminal charges against Mr. Gregory, who has no criminal record, or any other NBC employee based on the events associated with the December 23, 2012 broadcast. What irked people even more was the attorney general admitted that NBC had willfully violated D.C. law. As he noted: No specific intent is required for this violation, and ignorance of the law or even confusion about it is no defense. We therefore did not rely in making our judgment on the feeble and unsatisfactory efforts that NBC made to determine whether or not it was lawful to possess, display and broadcast this large capacity magazine as a means of fostering the public policy debate. Although there appears to have been some misinformation provided initially, NBC was clearly and timely advised by an MPD employee that its plans to exhibit on the broadcast a high capacity-magazine would violate D.C. law. David Gregory gets a pass, but not Mark Witaschek. Witaschek was the subject of not one but two raids on his home by D.C. police. The second time that police raided Witaschek’s home, they did so with a SWAT team and even pulled his terrified teenage son out of the shower. They found inoperable muzzleloader bullets (replicas, not live ammunition, no primer) and an inoperable shotgun shell, a tchotchke from a hunting trip. Witaschek, in compliance with D.C. laws, kept his guns out of D.C. and at a family member’s home in Virginia. It wasn’t good enough for the courts, who tangled him up in a two-year court battle that he fought on principle but eventually lost. As punishment, the court forced him to register as a gun offender, even though he never had a firearm in the city. Witaschek is listed as a “gun offender”—not to be confused with “sex offender,” though that’s exactly the intent: to draw some sort of correlation, to make possession of a common firearm seem as perverse as sexual offenses. If only Mark Witaschek got the break that David Gregory received.

Americans gear all their living to a constantly challenging world and are prepared to accept the challenge. Japanese reassurances are based rather on a way of life that is planned and charted beforehand and where the greatest threat comes from the unforeseen. The Japanese, more than any other sovereign nation, have been conditioned to a world where the smallest details of conduct are mapped and status is assigned. During two centuries where law and order were maintained in such a world with an iron hand, the Japanese learned to identify this meticulously plotted hierarchy with safety and security. So long as they stayed within known boundaries and so long as they fulfilled known obligations, they could trust their world. The Japanese point of view is that obeying the law is repayment upon their highest indebtedness. In spite of the fact that Japan is one of the great Buddhist nations in the world, her ethics at this point contrast sharply with the teachings of Gautama Buddha and of the holy books of Buddhism. The Japanese do not condemn self-gratification. They are not Puritans. They consider physical pleasures good and worthy of cultivation. Buddhist teachers and modern nationalistic leaders have written and spoken on this theme: human nature in Japan is naturally good and to be trusted. It does not need to flight and evil half of itself. It needs to cleanse the windows of its soul and act with appropriateness on every different occasion. The Japanese define the supreme task of life as fulfilling one's obligations. They fully accept the fact that repaying "on" means sacrificing one's personal desires and pleasures. The idea that the pursuit of happiness is a serious goal of life is to them an amazing and immoral doctrine. Happiness is a relaxation in which one indulges when one can. Zen seeks only the light man can find in himself. if you do this, if you do that, the adults say to the children, the word will laugh at you. The rules are particularistic and situational and a great many of them concern what we should call etiquette. They require subordinating one's own will to the ever-increasing duties to neighbors, to family and country. The child must restrain himself, he must recognize his indebtedness. Training is explicit for every art and skill. It is the habit that is taught, not just the rules. Adults do not consider that children will "pick up" the proper habits when the time to employ them comes around. Great things can only be achieved through self-restraint. Japanese people often keep their thoughts busy with trivial minutiae in order to stave off awareness of their real feelings. They are mechanical in the performance of a disciplined routine which is fundamentally meaningless to them. Japan's real strength which she can use in remaking herself into a peaceful nation lies in her ability to say to a course of action: "that failed" and then to throw her energies into other channels. The Japanese have an ethic of alternatives.

THE ORIGIN OF INTELLIGENCE Many theories have been proposed as to why humans developed greater intelligence, going all the way back to Charles Darwin. According to one theory, the evolution of the human brain probably took place in stages, with the earliest phase initiated by climate change in Africa. As the weather cooled, the forests began to recede, forcing our ancestors onto the open plains and savannahs, where they were exposed to predators and the elements. To survive in this new, hostile environment, they were forced to hunt and walk upright, which freed up their hands and opposable thumbs to use tools. This in turn put a premium on a larger brain to coordinate tool making. According to this theory, ancient man did not simply make tools—“tools made man.” Our ancestors did not suddenly pick up tools and become intelligent. It was the other way around. Those humans who picked up tools could survive in the grasslands, while those who did not gradually died off. The humans who then survived and thrived in the grasslands were those who, through mutations, became increasingly adept at tool making, which required an increasingly larger brain. Another theory places a premium on our social, collective nature. Humans can easily coordinate the behavior of over a hundred other individuals involved in hunting, farming, warring, and building, groups that are much larger than those found in other primates, which gave humans an advantage over other animals. It takes a larger brain, according to this theory, to be able to assess and control the behavior of so many individuals. (The flip side of this theory is that it took a larger brain to scheme, plot, deceive, and manipulate other intelligent beings in your tribe. Individuals who could understand the motives of others and then exploit them would have an advantage over those who could not. This is the Machiavellian theory of intelligence.) Another theory maintains that the development of language, which came later, helped accelerate the rise of intelligence. With language comes abstract thought and the ability to plan, organize society, create maps, etc. Humans have an extensive vocabulary unmatched by any other animal, with words numbering in the tens of thousands for an average person. With language, humans could coordinate and focus the activities of scores of individuals, as well as manipulate abstract concepts and ideas. Language meant you could manage teams of people on a hunt, which is a great advantage when pursuing the woolly mammoth. It meant you could tell others where game was plentiful or where danger lurked. Yet another theory is “sexual selection,” the idea that females prefer to mate with intelligent males. In the animal kingdom, such as in a wolf pack, the alpha male holds the pack together by brute force. Any challenger to the alpha male has to be soundly beaten back by tooth and claw. But millions of years ago, as humans became gradually more intelligent, strength alone could not keep the tribe together.

Antonia Valleau cast the first shovelful of dirt onto her husband’s fur-shrouded body, lying in the grave she’d dug in their garden plot, the only place where the soil wasn’t still rock hard. I won’t be breakin’ down. For the sake of my children, I must be strong. Pain squeezed her chest like a steel trap. She had to force herself to take a deep breath, inhaling the scent of loam and pine. I must be doing this. She drove the shovel into the soil heaped next to the grave, hefted the laden blade, and dumped the earth over Jean-Claude, trying to block out the thumping sound the soil made as it covered him. Even as Antonia scooped and tossed, her muscles aching from the effort, her heart stayed numb, and her mind kept playing out the last sight of her husband. The memory haunting her, she paused to catch her breath and wipe the sweat off her brow, her face hot from exertion in spite of the cool spring air. Antonia touched the tips of her dirty fingers to her lips. She could still feel the pressure of Jean-Claude’s mouth on hers as he’d kissed her before striding out the door for a day of hunting. She’d held up baby Jacques, and Jean-Claude had tapped his son’s nose. Jacques had let out a belly laugh that made his father respond in kind. Her heart had filled with so much love and pride in her family that she’d chuckled, too. Stepping outside, she’d watched Jean-Claude ruffle the dark hair of their six-year-old, Henri. Then he strode off, whistling, with his rifle carried over his shoulder. She’d thought it would be a good day—a normal day. She assumed her husband would return to their mountain home in the afternoon before dusk as he always did, unless he had a longer hunt planned. As Antonia filled the grave, she denied she was burying her husband. Jean-Claude be gone a checkin’ the trap line, she told herself, flipping the dirt onto his shroud. She moved through the nightmare with leaden limbs, a knotted stomach, burning dry eyes, and a throat that felt as though a log had lodged there. While Antonia shoveled, she kept glancing at her little house, where, inside, Henri watched over the sleeping baby. From the garden, she couldn’t see the doorway. She worried about her son—what the glimpse of his father’s bloody body had done to the boy. Mon Dieu, she couldn’t stop to comfort him. Not yet. Henri had promised to stay inside with the baby, but she didn’t know how long she had before Jacques woke up. Once she finished burying Jean-Claude, Antonia would have to put her sons on a mule and trek to where she’d found her husband’s body clutched in the great arms of the dead grizzly. She wasn’t about to let his last kill lie there for the animals and the elements to claim. Her family needed that meat and the fur. She heard a sleepy wail that meant Jacques had awakened. Just a few more shovelfuls. Antonia forced herself to hurry, despite how her arms, shoulders, and back screamed in pain. When she finished the last shovelful of earth, exhausted, Antonia sank to her knees, facing the cabin, her back to the grave, placing herself between her sons and where their father lay. She should go to them, but she was too depleted to move.

The translucent, golden punch tastes velvety, voluptuous and not off-puttingly milky. Under its influence, I stage a party for my heroines in my imagination, and in my flat. It's less like the glowering encounter I imagined between Cathy Earnshaw and Flora Poste, and more like the riotous bash in Breakfast at Tiffany's. Not everyone is going to like milk punch. So there are also dirty martinis, and bagels and baklava, and my mother's masafan, Iraqi marzipan. The Little Mermaid is in the bath, with her tail still on, singing because she never did give up her soaring voice. Anne Shirley and Jo March are having a furious argument about plot versus character, gesticulating with ink-stained hands. Scarlett is in the living room, her skirts taking up half the space, trying to show Lizzy how to bat her eyelashes. Lizzy is laughing her head off ut Scarlett has acquired a sense of humour, and doesn't mind a bit. Melanie is talking book with Esther Greenwood, who has brought her baby and also the proofs of her first poetry collection. Franny and Zooey have rolled back the rug and are doing a soft shoe shuffle in rhinestone hats. Lucy Honeychurch is hammering out some Beethoven (in this scenario I have a piano. A ground piano. Well, why not?) Marjorie Morningstar is gossiping about directors with Pauline and Posy Fossil. They've come straight from the shows they're in, till in stage make-up and full of stories. Petrova, in a leather aviator jacket, goggles pushed back, a chic scarf knotted around her neck, is telling the thrilling story of her latest flight and how she fixed an engine fault in mid-air. Mira, in her paint-stained jeans and poncho, is listening, fascinated, asking a thousand questions. Mildred has been persuaded to drink a tiny glass of sherry, then another tiny glass, then another and now she and Lolly are doing a wild, strange dance in the hallway, stamping their feet, their hair flying wild and electric. Lolly's cakes, in the shape of patriarchs she hates, are going down a treat. The Dolls from the Valley are telling Flora some truly scandalous and unrepeatable stories, and she is firmly advising them to get rid of their men and find worthier paramours. Celie is modelling trousers of her own design and taking orders from the Lace women; Judy is giving her a ten-point plan on how to expand her business to an international market. She is quite drunk but nevertheless the plan seems quite coherent, even if it is punctuated by her bellowing 'More leopard print, more leopard print!' Cathy looks tumultuous and on the edge of violent weeping and just as I think she's going to storm out or trash my flat, Jane arrives, late, with an unexpected guest. Cathy turns in anticipation: is it Heathcliff? Once I would have joined her but now I'm glad it isn't him. It's a better surprise. It's Emily's hawk. Hero or Nero. Jane's found him at last, and has him on her arm, perched on her glove; small for a bird of prey, he is dashing and patrician looking, brown and white, observing the room with dark, flinty eyes. When Cathy sees him, she looks at Jane and smiles. And in the kitchen is a heroine I probably should have had when I was four and sitting on my parents' carpet, wishing it would fly. In the kitchen is Scheherazade.

a serious contender for my book of year. I can't believe I only discovered Chris Carter a year ago and I now consider him to be one of my favourite crime authors of all time. For that reason this is a difficult review to write because I really want to show just how fantastic this book is. It's a huge departure from what we are used to from Chris, this book is very different from the books that came before. That said it could not have been more successful in my opinion. After five books of Hunter trying to capture a serial killer it makes sense to shake things up a bit and Chris has done that in best possible way. By allowing us to get inside the head of one of the most evil characters I've ever read about. It is also the first book based on real facts and events from Chris's criminal psychology days and that makes it all the more shocking and fascinating. Chris Carter's imagination knows no bounds and I love it. The scenes, the characters, whatever he comes up with is both original and mind blowing and that has never been more so than with this book. I feel like I can't even mention the plot even just a little bit. This is a book that should be read in the same way that I read it: with my heart in my mouth, my eyes unblinking and in a state of complete obliviousness to the world around me while I was well and truly hooked on this book. This is addictive reading at its absolute best and I was devastated when I turned the very last page. Robert Hunter, after the events of the last few books is looking forward to a much needed break in Hawaii. Before he can escape however his Captain calls him to her office. Arriving, Hunter recognises someone - one of the most senior members of the FBI who needs his help. They have in custody one of the strangest individuals they have ever come across, a man who is more machine than human and who for days has uttered not a single word. Until one morning he utters seven: 'I will only speak to Robert Hunter'. The man is Hunter's roommate and best friend from college, Lucien Folter, and found in the boot of his car are two severed and mutilated heads. Lucien cries innocence and Hunter, a man incredibly difficult to read or surprise is played just as much as the reader is by Lucien. There are a million and one things I want to say but I just can't. You really have to discover how this story unfolds for yourself. In this book we learn so much more about Hunter and get inside his head even further than we have before. There's a chapter that almost brought me to tears such is the talent of Chris to connect the reader with Hunter. This is a character like no other and he is now one of my favourite detectives of all time. We go back in time and learn more about Hunter when he was younger, and also when he was in college with Lucien. Lucien is evil. The scenes depicted in this book are some of the most graphic I've ever read and you know what, I loved it. After five books of some of the scariest and goriest scenes I've ever read I wondered whether Chris could come up with something even worse (in a good way), but trust me, he does. This book is horrifying, terrifying and near impossible to put down until you reach its conclusion. I spent my days like a zombie and my nights practically giving myself paper cuts turning the pages. If when reading this book you think you have an idea of where it will go, prepare to be wrong. I've learnt never to underestimate Chris, keeping readers on their toes he takes them on an absolute rollercoaster of a ride with the twistiest of turns and the biggest of drops you will finish this book reeling. I am on a serious book hangover, what book can I read next that can even compare to this? I have no idea but if you are planning on reading An Evil Mind I cannot reccommend it enough. Not only is this probably my book of the year it is probably the best crime fiction book I have ever read. An exaggeration you might say but my opinion is my own and this real

CJ just flashed her the smirk again. Then, for the tenth time since they’d magically arrived in Auradon, CJ reached into the pocket of her coat and ran her fingertips over the very special object she’d been keeping with her since she was a little girl. Fortunately, it had survived the trip. Her whole secret plan depended on it. Freddie sighed in surrender and stood up. “Well, maybe they’ll have a music class I can take or something. Singing will be a good distraction from whatever horrors Headmistress Fairy Godmother has in store for me.” She turned back to CJ and pouted. “Whatever it is you’re planning, can you at least try not to get caught? The last time you plotted secretly, you got us both in huge trouble.” CJ shook her head. “Two minutes in Auradon and you’ve already gone soft on me? Since when do you care about getting in trouble?” Freddie seemed to think about that for a second.

It fits in with what he told the general, that we would have a Secretary of General Affairs, and if Roosevelt played ball, swell; and if he did not, they would push him out. He expressed the belief that at least half of the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars would follow the general if he would announce such a plan.

He had seen it in Europe. It was a plan that Hitler had used in putting all of the unemployed in labor camps or barracks—enforced labor. That would solve it overnight, and he said that when they got into power, that is what they would do; that that was the ideal plan.

Young men who have no jobs, no wives, no hopes . . . they go out and they get themselves blown away while the real bastards continue to plot and plan.

We are socialized to place trust in our institutions—our government, our police, our schools, our regulators. It’s as if we assume there’s some guy with a secret team of experts sitting in an office with a plan, and if that plan doesn’t work, don’t worry, he’s got a plan B and a plan C—someone in charge will take care of it. But in truth, that guy doesn’t exist. If we choose to wait, nobody will come.

Watching Momma plot and plan is kinda like watching a natural disaster progress. You can see it coming but just can’t look away.

The plot thickened. He felt like a character in a Shakespearean play - a comedy, mayhap a tragedy. Just when he was ready to move forward with his own romantic plan, there came an unwelcome twist.

Fear runs deep throughout the Agency and inhabits every fiber of its soul. I started to see and sense that the first time I passed through the door. I saw it in the type of people they recruited, and the ideas that were drilled in our heads. It created a culture of risk aversion, which proved to be a huge impediment in the field. It doesn’t help that the Agency has become a media kick toy. One day you’ll see some so-called expert calling us inhumane torturers on CNN, and the next some congressman who can’t find Afghanistan on a map ranting about how we are incompetent. Conversely, conspiracy theorists worldwide talk about us as though we have omnipotent power. We’re blamed for constantly screwing up, and for planning and carrying out the most complex and nefarious plots imaginable. It makes everyone inside defensive.

The man who is described as someone who wouldn’t hurt a fly plotted the murders of his family and was relentless about following through with his plan. He’s even said in his letters to Cadle that he felt no remorse for his family. All he felt was that he was free to finally be with Nikki. All he cares about is himself.

Bloodline by Stewart Stafford Stuart Richards, 5,001st in line to the British throne, A distant cousin of the king but hitherto unknown, He dreamt of the crown and his fair queen's hand, But there was no baiting the hook unless he had a plan. He chose to eliminate the competition, stood before him, Through a dark celebration, they'd never know what hit them, He sent out invitations to the 5, 000 heirs, Promising vast feasting, with music and fanfare He built a fake house front with a door and a sign, That said: "Welcome to the party. Now, kindly form a line." Behind the door, there awaited a cliff face and a fall, A master of deception, his warm smile greeted them all. He stood at the front door with a charming bow, And, welcoming each guest, he said: "In you go now!" He watched them disappear as they stepped through the door, Counting steps to ascension, lemmings queued up for more. Backslapping himself, inner cackling at his scheme, Imagining himself as king - glory rained down, it seemed, But his Machiavellian plotting had a monstrous flaw, One thing he'd forgotten that greedy eyes never saw. The king was still alive, and he was not amused, He got wind of this plot and responded unconfused, He sent his guards to arrest him for sedition in a fury, They swept him off his feet, planting him before a jury. Put on trial for treason - the verdict was most guilty, Execution set, he had the neck to beg for mercy, But the king was not budging and barked: "Off with his head!" An Axeman's reverse coronation, he joined the fallen dead. Halting 2,986th in line to the British throne, A distant cousin of the king, headless spirit flown, In jealous craving, dispossessed as ruler of the land, Crowned pride came before a fallen plan. © Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.

It's not merely that life is fragile- but the plans we make, the paths we plot, all of it so easily thrown off course.

Potentially the weakest link in the long chain that led to Pearl Harbor was actually one of the strongest. This was the busy eyes of Ensign Yoshikawa, the ostensibly petty bureaucrat in the Honolulu consulate of Consul General Nagao Kita. Presenting himself as a Filipino, he washed dishes at the Pearl Harbor Officers Club listening for scuttlebutt. He played tourist on a glass bottom boat in Kaneohe Bay near the air station where most of the Navy’s PBYs were moored. He flew over the islands as a traveler. As a straight-out spy, he swam along the shore of the harbor itself ducking out of sight from time to time breathing through a reed. He was Yamamoto’s ears and eyes. The Achilles heel to the whole operation was J-19, the consular code he used to send his information back to Tokyo. And Tokyo used to give him his instructions. Rochefort, the code breaker in Hypo at Pearl Harbor, besides being fluent in Japanese could decipher eighty percent of J-19 messages in about twelve hours. The most tell-tale of all was message 83 sent to Honolulu September 24, 1941. It instructed Yoshikawa to divide Pearl Harbor into a grid so vessels moored in each square could be pinpointed. This so-called “bomb plot” message was relayed to Washington by Clipper in undeciphered form. The Pan American plane had been delayed by bad weather so 83 wasn’t decoded and translated until October 9 or 10. Washington had five times as many intercepts piling up for decoding from Manila than Honolulu because Manila was intercepting higher priority Purple. When he saw the decrypt of 83, Colonel Rufus Bratton, head of the Far Eastern Section of Army G-2 or intelligence, was brought up short. Never before had the Japanese asked for the location of ships in harbor. Bratton sent the message on to Brigadier General Leonard T. Gerow, chief of the Army’s War Plans Division with General Marshall and Secretary Stimson marked in.

In 1982 Abbas matriculated in the doctoral program at the Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow. The title of his dissertation was The Connection Between the Nazis and the Leaders of the Zionist Movement, 1933–1945. In 1984 he published his thesis as a book in Arabic under the title The Other Side: The Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism. In both works, Abbas wrote that the Holocaust was a joint initiative of the Nazis and the Zionist movement. He alleged that the European Jews who were killed were actually the victims of the Jews from pre-state Israel who were in cahoots with the Germans.5 In his words, “A partnership was established between Hitler’s Nazis and the leadership of the Zionist movement.… [The Zionists gave] permission to every racist in the world, led by Hitler and the Nazis, to treat Jews as they wish, so long as it guarantees immigration to Palestine.” Abbas wrote that the Zionists wanted as many Jews as possible to be killed. “Having more victims,” he wrote, “meant greater rights and stronger privilege to join the negotiation table for dividing the spoils of war once it was over. However, since Zionism was not a fighting partner—suffering victims in a battle—it had no escape but to offer up human beings, under any name, to raise the number of victims, which they could then boast of at the moment of accounting.” Abbas denied that six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust. This too was a Zionist plot. “The truth is that no one can either confirm or deny

Late in his prison term, Stephenson was visited by Will Remy. His old adversary asked him if he’d been serious about running for the White House. Steve said the plan was real. “You wouldn’t have called it President,” he said. “The form of government might have changed. You might have had a dictator.

Katy Cannon, a UK-based novelist, reports that she has developed this more persistent and abundant perspective on time over the years. At the start of 2013, she had a four-year-old daughter and had just sold her first book. Her contract called for her to turn in another book six months later, which seemed like the sort of work/life disaster one might need to write a very British novel about. But she did it, and in 2016 she wrote and edited five books, a novella, and three short stories (also using the pen name Sophie Pembroke). This is how she makes such prolificacy work. She takes about two weeks to plan her books, outlining scenes and working with her editors on characters and plots. Then, execution happens in small bursts. She sets a timer, and in a twenty- to thirty-minute block of total focus, she can write an 800- to 1,000-word scene. She does two or three of these blocks a day, generally putting down 2,000 to 3,000 words. This is not a huge number; I suspect the average office worker cranks out close to 2,000 words in emails daily. But 2,000 is enough, because Cannon just keeps going. Over a four-day workweek of these two or three bursts per day, she produces about 10,000 words. That means she can write a 70,000- to 80,000-word novel draft in seven to eight weeks. Add in the planning time and two weeks for editing, and that’s a full book in eleven to twelve weeks. Are the books perfect? No, but no book is ever perfect, even ones that take eleven to twelve years to write. As for some idealized book that never made it out of the author’s head, where it would be sullied by reality? We don’t even need to have this conversation. Cannon’s books have the virtue of being completed and out in the world, giving readers pleasure. Done is better than perfect, because there is no perfect without being done.

This is what I do. Scheme. Plot. Thieve. To me, stealing a king is no different than stealing a purse of gold, understand? You plan the battle; we’ll plan the score.