“
Telling me I can do anything I want is like pulling the plug out of the bath and then telling the water it can go anywhere it wants. Try it, and see what happens.
”
”
Nick Hornby (A Long Way Down)
“
You’d better not be messing with me. I like you, but if you’re feeding me a load of shit just to get some action, I’m going to plug a big silver stake right through your heart.(Cat)
”
”
Jeaniene Frost (Halfway to the Grave (Night Huntress, #1))
“
There were two things about Mama. One is she always expected the best out of me. And the other is that then no matter what I did, whatever I came home with, she acted like it was the moon I had just hung up in the sky and plugged in all the stars. Like I was that good.
”
”
Barbara Kingsolver (The Bean Trees (Greer Family, #1))
“
The nutritionist said I should eat root vegetables.
Said if I could get down thirteen turnips a day
I would be grounded, rooted.
Said my head would not keep flying away
to where the darkness lives.
The psychic told me my heart carries too much weight.
Said for twenty dollars she’d tell me what to do.
I handed her the twenty. She said, “Stop worrying, darling.
You will find a good man soon.”
The first psycho therapist told me to spend
three hours each day sitting in a dark closet
with my eyes closed and ears plugged.
I tried it once but couldn’t stop thinking
about how gay it was to be sitting in the closet.
The yogi told me to stretch everything but the truth.
Said to focus on the out breath. Said everyone finds happiness
when they care more about what they give
than what they get.
The pharmacist said, “Lexapro, Lamicatl, Lithium, Xanax.”
The doctor said an anti-psychotic might help me
forget what the trauma said.
The trauma said, “Don’t write these poems.
Nobody wants to hear you cry
about the grief inside your bones.”
But my bones said, “Tyler Clementi jumped
from the George Washington Bridge
into the Hudson River convinced
he was entirely alone.”
My bones said, “Write the poems.
”
”
Andrea Gibson (The Madness Vase)
“
I brought music." I pull my iPhone and ear buds out of my bra and plug them in my ears.
"What else do you have in there?
”
”
Kristen Proby (Come Away with Me (With Me in Seattle, #1))
“
Give me the gun." Ranger said.
I extracted the gun from my pants and handed it over.
Ranger held the gun in the pulm of his hand and smiled. "It's warm," he said. He put the gun in the glove compartment and plugged the key into the ignition.
Am I fired?"
No. Any women who can heat up a gun like that is worth keeping around.
”
”
Janet Evanovich (Eleven on Top (Stephanie Plum, #11))
“
Drink it,” I told her. “It’s good for what ails you. Caffeine and sugar. I don’t drink it, so I ran over to your house and stole the expensive stuff in your freezer. It shouldn’t be that bad. Samuel told me to make it strong and pour sugar into it. It should taste sort of like bitter syrup.”
She gave me a smile smile, then a bigger one, and plugged her nose before she drank it down in one gulp. “Next time," she said in a hoarse voice, “I make the coffee.
”
”
Patricia Briggs (Moon Called (Mercy Thompson, #1))
“
This is an apology letter to the both of us
for how long it took me to let things go.
It was not my intention to make such a
production of the emptiness between us
playing tuba on the tombstone of a soprano
to try and keep some dead singer’s perspective alive.
It’s just that I coulda swore you had sung me a love song back there
and that you meant it
but I guess sometimes people just chew with their mouth open
so I ate ear plugs alive with my throat
hoping they’d get lodged deep enough inside the empty spots
that I wouldn’t have to hear you leaving
”
”
Buddy Wakefield
“
I am not a finished poem, and I am not the song you’ve turned me into. I am a detached human being, making my way in a world that is constantly trying to push me aside, and you who send me letters and emails and beautiful gifts wouldn’t even recognise me if you saw me walking down the street where I live tomorrow
for I am not a poem.
I am tired and worn out and the eyes you would see would not be painted or inspired
but empty and weary
from drinking too much
at all times
and I am not the life of your party who sings and has glorious words to speak
for I don’t speak much
at all
and my voice is raspy and unsteady from unhealthy living and not much sleep and I only use it when I sing and I always sing too much
or not at all
and never when people are around because they expect poems and symphonies and I am not
a poem
but an elegy
at my best
but unedited and uncut and not a lot of people want to work with me because there’s only so much you can do with an audio take, with the plug-ins and EQs and I was born distorted, disordered, and I’m pretty fine with that,
but others are not.
”
”
Charlotte Eriksson (Another Vagabond Lost To Love: Berlin Stories on Leaving & Arriving)
“
Nothing can fill you up,” she stated.
“Nope,” he agreed again.
“You won’t let it.”
“Barrel’s got a hole in the bottom, buddy, everything leaks out no matter how much you pour in.”
She was silent a moment then she whispered, “Right.”
She turned to the door and his hand gripped his bourbon so hard he had to focus everything on loosening his grip or the glass would shatter.
Before she opened it, she turned back. “You don’t know, Cal, you have no idea.
You’ve shut yourself up for so long in this fucking house with your tragic memories, you have no idea what’s about to walk out your door. Kate, Keira and me, we could have plugged that hole. We could have filled you so full, you’d be bursting. We would have loved that chance. We’d have given it everything we had, no matter the time that slid by, graduations, weddings, grandbabies, you’d have been a part of us and we’d have given everything we had to keep you
so full, you’d be bursting.”
Cal didn’t reply.
“Joe,” she whispered, “you let me walk out this door, you’ll lose your chance.”
Cal didn’t move.
Vi waited.
Cal stayed seated.
”
”
Kristen Ashley (At Peace (The 'Burg, #2))
“
I couldn't think of anything other than her and the components of her. For example, her red hair. But was I so primitive I let myself be bewitched by hair? I mean, really. Hair! It's just hair! Everyone has it! She puts it up, she lets it down. So what? And why did all the other parts of her have me wheezing with delight? I mean, who hasn't got a back, or a belly, or armpits? This whole finicky obsession serves to humiliate me even as I write it, sure, but I suppose it isn't that abnormal. That's what first love is all about. What happens is you meet a love object and immediately a hole inside you starts aching, the hole that is always there but you don't notice until someone comes along, plugs it up, and then runs away with the plug.
”
”
Steve Toltz (A Fraction of the Whole)
“
I love the imagery of struggle. I sometimes wish I were suffering in a good cause, or risking my life for the good of others, instead of just being a gravely endangered patient. Allow me to inform you, though, that when you sit in a room with a set of other finalists, and kindly people bring a huge transparent bag of poison and plug it into your arm, and you either read or don't read a book while the venom sack gradually empties itself into your system, the image of the ardent solider is the very last one that will occur to you. You feel swamped with passivity and impotence: dissolving in powerlessness like a sugar lump in water.
”
”
Christopher Hitchens (Mortality)
“
Mira, I'm about to be naked," Blue said as he whipped off his belt and tossed it on the floor. "So watch out. Well, in my underwear."
"I've seen you in your bathing suit," Mira said. "It's the same thing."
"It is not the same thing," Blue said. "When it's accompanied by seventies porn music, it's an X-rated strip show." Blue yanked off his shirt. "Freddie, you're kind of slow on the uptake. Eine kleine porn music, please."
Freddie scrunched his forehead in distaste. "I don't want to plug my guitar in just so I can play some bow-chicka-wow-wow accompaniment to your strip show.
Mira laughed. "Bow-chicka-what was that, Freddie?
”
”
Sarah Cross (Kill Me Softly (Beau Rivage, #1))
“
It seemed to me at an early age that all human communication — whether it’s TV, movies, or books — begins with somebody wanting to tell a story. That need to tell, to plug into a universal socket, is probably one of our grandest desires. And the need to hear stories, to live lives other than our own for even the briefest moment, is the key to the magic that was born in our bones. The
”
”
Robert McCammon (Boy's Life)
“
Is it true that you don’t love me anymore?”
“Yes.”
“Why? Because I lied to you? Because I left you? Because I humiliated you?”
“No. Just when I felt deceived, abandoned, humiliated, I loved you very much, I wanted you more than in any other moment of our life together.”
“And then?”
“I don’t love you anymore because, to justify yourself, you said that you had fallen into a void, an absence of sense, and it wasn’t true.”
“It was.”
“No. Now I know what an absence of sense is and what happens if you manage to get back to the surface from it. You, you don’t know. At most you glanced down, you got frightened, and you plugged up the hole with Carla’s body.
”
”
Elena Ferrante (The Days of Abandonment)
“
Look, why don’t you sit yourself down over there and let me plug you in?” He gestured Arthur toward a chair which looked as if it had been made out of the rib cage of a stegosaurus. “It was made out of the rib cage of a stegosaurus,” explained the old man
”
”
Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide, #1))
“
Once or twice a week I would set my alarm for six A.M. so I could get up and plug in Hot Stix...I would study the curls in the mirror, impressed with both the appliance and my newfound ability to use it.
Then, without fail, at the last second before leaving for school, I would ask myself, "Am I supposed to brush it out or leave it?" Why could I never remember" That feeling of "I'm pretty sure this next step is wrong, but I'm just gonna do it anyway" is part of the same set of instincts that makes me such a great cook.
”
”
Tina Fey (Bossypants)
“
My first psychotherapist told me to spend three hours each day sitting in a dark closet with my eyes closed and my ears plugged. I tried it once but couldn't stop thinking how gay it was to be sitting in the closet.
”
”
Andrea Gibson (Take Me With You)
“
I noticed how utterly indifferent the passengers were to what they were doing, namely, flying through the air. A glance out of the window would have revealed furrowed fields of cloud stained smoke-blue and violet as night and morning changed shifts –- but how were they passing time in First, Business and Coach? Crosswords. In-flight movies. Computer games. E-mail. Creation sprawls like a dewed and willing maiden outside your window awaiting only the lechery of your senses –- and what do you do? Complain about the dwarf cutlery. Plug your ears. Blind you eyes. Discuss Julia Roberts’s hair. Ah, me. Sometimes I think my work is done.
”
”
Glen Duncan (I, Lucifer)
“
It would be especially comforting to believe that I have the answer to the question, What happens when we die? Does the light just go out and that’s that—the million-year nap? Or will some part of my personality, my me-ness, persist? What will that feel like? What will I do all day? Is there a place to plug in my laptop?
”
”
Mary Roach (Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife)
“
These days, after drinking from the internet's fire hose for thirty years, I've begun to feel more of those negative effects. I don't know if it's my age, or the fact that the internet is no longer plugged into the wall and now travels with me everywhere I go, but I find myself thinking of that Wordsworth poem that begins, "The world is too much with us; late and soon.
”
”
John Green (The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet)
“
This week
in live current
events: your eyes.
All power can be
dangerous:
Direct
or alternating,
you, socket to me.
Plugged in and the grid
is humming,
this electricity,
molecule-deep desire:
particular friction, a charge
strong enough to stop
a heart
or start it
again; volt, re-volt--
I shudder, I stutter, I start
to life. I've got my ion
you, copper-top,
so watch how you
conduct yourself.
Here's today's
newsflash: a battery of rolling
blackouts in California, sudden,
like lightning kisses:
sudden, whitehot
darkness and you're
here, fumbling for
that small switch
with an urgent surge
strong enough to kill
lesser machines.
Static makes hair raise,
makes things cling,
makes things rise like
a gathering storm
charging outside
our darkened house
and here I am:
tempest, pouring out
mouthfulls
of tsunami on the ground,
I've got that rain-soaked kite,
that drenched key.
You know what it's for,
circuit-breaker, you know
how to kiss until it's hertz.
”
”
Daphne Gottlieb (Why Things Burn)
“
Villanelle - Roland Leighton
Violets from Plug Street Wood,
Sweet, I send you oversea.
(It is strange they should be blue,
Blue, when his soaked blood was red,
For they grew around his head;
It is strange they should be blue.)
Violets from Plug Street Wood-
Think what they have meant to me-
Life and Hope and Love and You
(And you did not see them grow
Where his mangled body lay
Hiding horror from the day;
Sweetest it was better so.)
Violets from oversea,
To your dear, far, forgetting land
These I send in memory,
Knowing you will understand.
”
”
Roland Leighton
“
There’s no one else for me in this world, nobody but you. If I was driving and saw you on the side of the road? You better believe I’d rip out a spark plug or two if it meant getting to spend even five minutes in your presence.
”
”
Elle Kennedy (The Goal (Off-Campus, #4))
“
With practice I will eventually realize my goal; in the meantime, come to Paris and you will find me, headphones plugged tight in my external audio meatus, walking the quays and whispering, 'Has anything else been inserted into your anus? Has anything else been inserted into your anus?
”
”
David Sedaris (Me Talk Pretty One Day)
“
You don't know, Cal, you have no idea. You've shut yourself up for so long in this fucking house with your tragic memories, you have no idea what's about to walk out your door. Kate, Keira and me, we could have plugged that hole. We could have filled you so full,you'd be bursting. We would have loved that chance. We'd have given it everything we had.
”
”
Kristen Ashley (At Peace (The 'Burg, #2))
“
In the outside world, he told me, there was no real silence. Not the fake silence you get when you plug your ears so you hear nothing but your heart, but real out-of-doors silence.
”
”
Chuck Palahniuk (Survivor)
“
She beeped rudely at him. "I have noted in your file that you are refusing medical assistance against my advice. If you die during the night, your surviving family will not be able to bring a lawsuit against me."
He laughed wildly. "You're my surviving family."
"Oh. Well. Engaging Empathy Protocol. That was very nice of you to say. You are wonderful. Disengaging Empathy Protocol. Idiot. I am going to sleep now. Do not bother me unless you are on fire. Even then, I will do little to help you." She plugged herself in next to Rambo and was silent.
”
”
T.J. Klune (In the Lives of Puppets)
“
He looked at me screaming and plugging my ears and at the tears dripping like the kitchen tap down my cheeks; my words finally hit him, and he listened. Fish twisted sharply from me to Will Junior as though suddenly adding two and two and getting twenty-seven, even though most people could only ever get four.
”
”
Ingrid Law (Savvy (Savvy, #1))
“
You know, Chase, one of these days you're going to need me. You might need help changing a tire, or you can't figure out a gas pump, or, damn," she smacked her forehead, "you bought the wrong brand of spark plugs and need me to get you different ones, and you'll be sorry you were such a prick to me and didn't become my friend.
”
”
Harper Bentley
“
I've got data incoming. Do you want me to transfer it to my portable unit?"
"No, you stay here, finish the runs. I shouldn't be more than a couple of hours. When you're done with this, I want you to go find a hammer."
Peabody had taken out her memo book, nearly plugged in the order, when she stopped, frowned up at Eve. "Sir? A hammer?"
"That's right. A really big, heavy hammer. Then you take it into my office and beat that fucking useless excuse for a data spitter on my desk to dust."
"Ah." Because she was a wise woman, Peabody cleared her throat rather than loosen the chuckle. "As an alternate to that action, Lieutenant, I could call maintenance.
”
”
J.D. Robb (Conspiracy in Death (In Death, #8))
“
In writing the short novel Fahrenheit 451 I thought I was describing a world that might evolve in four or five decades. But only a few weeks ago, in Beverly Hills one night, a husband and wife passed me, walking their dog. I stood staring after them, absolutely stunned. The woman held in one hand a small cigarette-package-sized radio, its antenna quivering. From this sprang tiny copper wires which ended in a dainty cone plugged into her right ear. There she was, oblivious to man and dog, listening to far winds and whispers and soap-opera cries, sleep-walking, helped up and down curbs by a husband who might just as well not have been there. This was not fiction.
”
”
Ray Bradbury
“
Readers who were born postmillennium might not understand the fuss, but trust me, this was a goddamned miracle. Nowadays, connectivity is just presumed. Smartphones, laptops, desktops, everything’s connected, always. Connected to what exactly? How? It doesn’t matter. You just tap the icon your older relatives call “the Internet button” and boom, you’ve got it: the news, pizza delivery, streaming music, and streaming video that we used to call TV and movies. Back then, however, we walked uphill both ways, to and from school, and plugged our modems directly into the wall, with manly twelve-year-old hands.
”
”
Edward Snowden (Permanent Record)
“
I enjoy having breakfast in bed. I like waking up to the smell of bacon, sue me. And since I don’t have a butler, I have to do it myself. So, most nights before I go to bed, I will lay six strips of bacon out on my George Foreman grill. Then I go to sleep. When I wake up, I plug in the grill. I go back to sleep again. Then I wake up to the smell of crackling bacon. It is delicious, it’s good for me, it’s the perfect way to start the day.
”
”
Steve Carell
“
now I felt more confident when I had the Kay in front of me, an electric shield plugged in and ready to drive.
”
”
Stephen King (Revival)
“
If you’re worried I have some devious secret
plan to seduce you, you can just pull my plug
out.
”
”
Jojo Moyes (Me Before You (Me Before You, #1))
“
In the United States, though, convenience was everything; it still is. We were plugging anything we could into the internet, at a rate of 127 devices a second. We had bought into Silicon Valley’s promise of a frictionless society. There wasn’t a single area of our lives that wasn’t touched by the web. We could now control our entire lives, economy, and grid via a remote web control. And we had never paused to think that, along the way, we were creating the world’s largest attack surface.
”
”
Nicole Perlroth (This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race)
“
He tried to talk to me in the car, but I just put my sunglasses on, plugged my earbuds in, and blasted Beyoncé all the way back to New York City. When life gives you lemons, put Lemonade on repeat play.
”
”
Lila Monroe (Bet Me (Lucky in Love, #2))
“
That ship hated me,'' he said dejectedly, indicating the policecraft.
"That ship?'' said Ford in sudden excitement. "What happened to it? Do you know?''
"It hated me because I talked to it.''
"You talked to it?'' exclaimed Ford. "What do you mean you talked to it?''
"Simple. I got very bored and depressed, so I went and plugged myself in to its external computer feed. I talked to the computer at great length and explained my view of the Universe to it,'' said Marvin.
"And what happened?'' pressed Ford.
"It committed suicide,'' said Marvin and stalked off back to the Heart of Gold.
”
”
Douglas Adams
“
I tried to talk about National Geographic one night, and Jason gave me a look like I was insulting him, so I moved on to a safer subject: which of the girls have implants.
”
”
Eoin Colfer (Plugged)
“
These days, after drinking from the internet's fire hose for thirty years, I've begun to feel more of those negative effects. I don't know if it's my age, or the fact that the internet is no longer plugged into the wall and now travels with me everywhere I go, but I find myself thinking of that Wordsworth poem that begins, "The world is too much with us; late and soon.”
What does it say that I can't imagine my life or my work without the internet? What does it mean to have my way of thinking, and my way of being, so profoundly shaped my machine logic? What does it mean that, having been part of the internet for so long, the internet is also part of me?
My friend Stan Muller tells me that when you're living in the middle of history, you never know what it means. I am living in the middle of the internet. I have no idea what it means.
”
”
John Green (The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet)
“
I promise to keep her secure. Then I took two large wads a candle wax, kneaded them into earplugs, and stuff them into my ears. Annabeth nodded sarcastically, letting me know the air plugs are a real fashion statement. I made a face at her...
”
”
Rick Riordan (The Sea of Monsters (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #2))
“
Sometimes I just wonder,like,how could anyone else possibly be this lost,too?!Sometimes the words are so beautiful and true and unsettling I just want to hug my book and make sure nobody else in the world ever reads those words,because they are mine,Goddamnit,and they apply to me, and damn it if anyone else is going to steal my words and plug them into their lives!
”
”
Seth King (The Summer Remains (The Summer Remains, #1))
“
You know, the first time I saw you in that bar it was as if someone plugged me into an electrical socket. Everything in my head lit up. I could have written ten songs, answered the age-long question about the meaning of love, and asked you to marry me on the spot.
”
”
Tarryn Fisher (Atheists Who Kneel and Pray)
“
The Doper's Dream
Last night I dreamed I was plugged right in
To a bubblin' hookah so high,
When all of a sudden some Arab jinni
Jump up just a-winkin' his eye.
'I'm here to obey all your wishes,' he told me.
As for words I was trying to grope.
'Good buddy,' I cried, 'you could surely oblige me
By turning me on to some dope!'
With a bigfat smile he took ahold of my hand,
And we flew down the sky in a flash,
And the first thing I saw in the land where he took me
Was a whole solid mountain of hash!
All the trees was a-bloomin' with pink 'n' purple pills,
Whur the Romilar River flowed by,
To the magic mushrooms as wild as a rainbow,
So pretty that I wanted to cry.
All the girls come to greet us, so sweet in slow motion,
Mourning glories woven into their hair,
Bringin' great big handfuls of snowy cocaine,
All their dope they were eager to share.
We we dallied for days, just a-ballin' and smokin',
In the flowering Panama Red,
Just piggin' on peyote and nutmeg tea,
And those brownies so kind to your head.
Now I could've passed that good time forever,
And I really was fixing to stay,
But you know that jinni turned out, t'be a narco man,
And he busted me right whur I lay.
And he took me back to a cold, cold world
'N' now m'prison's whurever I be...
And I dream of the days back in Doperland
And I wonder, will I ever go free?
”
”
Thomas Pynchon (Gravity’s Rainbow)
“
There were two things about Mama. One is she always expected the best out of me. And the other is that then no matter what I did, whatever I came home with, she acted like it was the moon I had just hung up in the sky and plugged in all the stars. Like I was that good.
”
”
Barbara Kingsolver (The Bean Trees)
“
The fact that Cincinnati thought I resembled him in any way sickened me. It made me want to run and hide. When I was a child in Detroit and terrors chased me, I would run to my hiding spot, a crawl space under the front porch of the boardinghouse we lived in. I’d wedge my small body into the cool brown earth and lie there, escaping the ugliness that was inevitably going on above me. I’d plug my ears with my fingers and hum to block out the remnants of Mother’s toxic tongue or sharp backhand. It became a habit, humming, and a decade later, I was still doing it. Life had turned cold again, the safety of the cocoon under the porch was gone, and lying in the dirt had become a metaphor for my life.
”
”
Ruta Sepetys (Out of the Easy)
“
Jacey, I can never give you what you want. You want someone who can open up and discuss feelings, someone who will be an active participant in your life. That’s not me and it never will be. We need to pull the plug on this thing now, because once again, you’re falling for the wrong guy.
”
”
Courtney Cole (Before We Fall (Beautifully Broken, #3))
“
The instant I saw Lori’s dad and Frances across the hot asphalt road, I spun around, hoping Lori was still hidden by the trees.
She stood right behind me, in full view. And if my expression matched hers, we couldn’t have looked more guilty.
I turned back around. Her dad’s face was even worse. Glaring at me, he worked his jaw like he was going to say something, but he wanted to make sure he’d thought of
the worst possible insult first. He turned redder and seemed to swell, like all his holes were plugged up and the pressure had nowhere to escape.
He opened his mouth.
“It was my fault,” I said quickly.
“I know!” he roared.
At the same time, Lori stepped in front of me and muttered, “Wrong thing to say, Adam.”
“Right.” I put my hand on Lori’s shoulder and pushed her an arm’s length away so it wouldn’t look like I was hiding behind her. “It’s nobody’s fault, because we didn’t
do anything wrong.
”
”
Jennifer Echols (Endless Summer (The Boys Next Door, #1-2))
“
Here’s something about Mom: she’s bad with annoyances, but great in a crisis. If a waiter doesn’t refill her water after she’s asked three times, or she forgets her dark glasses when the sun comes out, look out! But when it comes to something truly bad happening, Mom plugs into this supreme calm. I think she got it from all those years half living at Children’s because of me. I’m just saying, when things are bad, there’s nobody better to have in your corner than Mom.
”
”
Maria Semple (Where'd You Go, Bernadette)
“
Shoot it down," he's yelling. "Pull the plug. Give me a gun and I'll do it," he's yelling. "Just get that damn blimp out of the air."
"No can do," the events coordinator says. The minute the wedding party comes out of the stadium, the crew in the blimp will dump fifteen thousand pounds of rice over the parking lot.
”
”
Chuck Palahniuk (Survivor)
“
So tell me: were you born broken just like me, born hungry? Are we all of us born with some part of us missing? Are we each us born with a hole?....Born with a hole and no earthly way of finding just the exact right plug to fill it, not 'til you've tried 'em from A to Z and back once more: booze, fags, work, candy, men, girls, heroin, methedrine, methadone, God. Tried having a baby. Tried killing yourself. A hundred religions, from Calvin to the Dalai Lama and back again; tried every damn thing you could think of and some you had to stumble over....You stick a plug in your weakness like a finger in the proverbial dike and let pressure build up let it swell and swell 'til there's nothing left but tension, nothing left but what's left over--the absence, not the presence. The wound you shape your soul around.
”
”
Gemma Files (We Will All Go Down Together)
“
Brandon,” Marc said.
“Say something so she can hear you.”
“You’re in deep shit, Kayli,” Brandon said.
“Can he hear me?” I asked Marc.
“I can hear you,” Brandon said in my ear, a little fuzzy, like he was standing in another room with the door closed, but I could make out what he was saying.
“Just wait until I get a hold of you.”
“Raven,” I pretended to plea. “Brandon said he was going to hurt me.”
“I’ll kill him,” he said. He jammed his own ear plug into his noggin.
“Corey? Yeah. Hit your brother once for me. No, in the dick. No, he won’t hit you back. I promise.”
“Cut it out, you guys,” Marc said.
“How come I can’t hear Corey?” I asked.
“I get Corey,” Raven said. “You get Brandon.”
“I want to switch.”
“I said stop,” Marc barked at us.
Stone, C. L. (2014-02-24). Thief: The Scarab Beetle Series: #1 (The Academy Scarab Beetle Series) (Kindle Locations 5192-5200). Arcato Publishing. Kindle Edition.
”
”
C.L. Stone (Thief (The Scarab Beetle, #1))
“
modesty, she deserved at least two-thirds of the suitcase. In the end, we both lost. So it goes. Our flight didn’t leave until noon, but Mom woke me up at five thirty, turning on the light and shouting, “AMSTERDAM!” She ran around all morning making sure we had international plug adapters and quadruple-checking that we had the right number of oxygen tanks to get there and that
”
”
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
“
I look at my mother. I can feel her tugging at the invisible line between us. Yanking it from afar. The umbilical cord. I plug my belly button with my finger. I miss her and I need her, and she's me, or a part of me at least, and I haven't fully absorbed her yet. I haven't gleaned all the woman-ness from her. Which is what a daughter does. Whose daughter am I now? Where has she gone?
”
”
Ella Baxter (New Animal)
“
The city at night gave me the same melancholy twinge I’d felt as a kid watching Mom plug in the Christmas tree. Something beautiful and full of promise, but something you knew you could never touch.
”
”
Leah Raeder (Unteachable)
“
The next day, when I came home from the library, there was a small, used red record player in my room. I found my mother in the kitchen and spotted a bandage taped to her arm.
“Ma,” I asked. “Where did you get the money for the record player?”
“I had it saved,” she lied.
My father lived well, had a large house and an expensive imported car, wanted for little, and gave nothing. My mother lived on welfare in a slum and sold her blood to the Red Cross to get me a record player.
“Education is everything, Johnny,” she said, as she headed for the refrigerator to get me food. “You get smart like regular people and you don’t have to live like this no more.”
She and I were not hugging types, but I put my hand on her shoulder as she washed the dishes with her back to me and she said, in best Brooklynese, “So go and enjoy, already.” My father always said I was my mother’s son and I was proud of that. On her good days, she was a good and noble thing to be a part of.
That evening, I plugged in the red record player and placed it by the window. My mother and I took the kitchen chairs out to the porch and listened to Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony from beginning to end, as we watched the oil-stained waters of the Mad River roll by. It was a good night, another good night, one of many that have blessed my life.
”
”
John William Tuohy
“
Fine by me, Jack. I just have to plug in the machine. The City will have to change its name to Sunny Beach.”
“We don’t have a beach.”
“Well, you know what I mean …”
Conversation on Radio Fake 112.8 MHz
In The Shadow of Sadd
”
”
Steen Langstrup (In The Shadow of Sadd)
“
I'm sorry," she whispers.
"You're sorry? You've been dating Toph for the last month,and you're sorry?"
"It just happened.I meant to tell you, I wanted to tell you-"
"But you lost control over your mouth? Because it's easy,Bridge. Talking is easy. Look at me! I'm talking right-"
"You know it wasn't that easy! I didn't mean for it to happen,it just did-"
"Oh,you didn't mean to wreck my life? It just 'happened'?"
Bridge stands up from behind her drums. It's impossible,but she's taller than me now. "What do you mean,wreck your life?"
"Don't play dumb,you know exactly what I mean. How could you do this to me?"
"Do what? It's not like you were dating!"
I scream in frustration. "We certainly won't be now!"
She sneers. "It's kind of hard to date someone who's not interested in you."
"LIAR!"
"What,you ditch us for Paris and expect us to put our lives on hold for you?"
My jaw drops. "I didn't ditch you. They sent me away."
"Ooo,yeah.To Paris.Meanwhile,I'm stuck here in Shitlanta, Georgia, at the same shitty school,doing shitty babysitting jobs-"
"If babysitting my brother is so shitty, why do you do it?"
"I didn't meant-"
"Because you want to turn him against me, too? Well.Congratulations, Bridge. It worked. My brother loves you and hates me. So you're welcome to move in when I leave again,because that's what you want, right? My life?"
She shakes with fury. "Go to hell."
"Take my life.You can have it. Just watch out for the part where my BEST FRIEND SCREWS ME OVER!" I knock over a cymbal stand,and the brass hits the stage with an earsplitting crash that reverberates through the bowling alley. Matt calls my name.Has he been calling it this entire time? He grabs my arm and leads me around the electrical cords and plugs and onto the floor and away,away,away.
Everyone in the bowling alley is staring at me.
”
”
Stephanie Perkins (Anna and the French Kiss (Anna and the French Kiss, #1))
“
Feinberg’s study reminds me of a billboard advertisement I once saw from a large insurance firm, which read: “Why do most 16-year-olds drive like they’re missing part of their brain? Because they are.” It takes deep sleep, and developmental time, to accomplish the neural maturation that plugs this brain “gap” within the frontal lobe. When your children finally reach their mid-twenties and your car insurance premium drops, you can thank sleep for the savings.
”
”
Matthew Walker (Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams)
“
After a year I felt so plugged in to all the stories and the images and the fear that even the dead started telling me stories, you’d hear them out of a remote but accessible space where there were no ideas, no emotions, no facts, no proper language, only clean information. However many times it happened, whether I’d known them or not, no matter what I’d felt about them or the way they’d died, their story was always there and it was always the same: it went, “Put yourself in my place.
”
”
Michael Herr (Dispatches)
“
As a songwriter, I'm gathering clues and possibilities all the time, whether I see a piano that day or not. I've tried to explain to people how I collect these dispatches, because I think anybody can do what I'm talking about. Once I do plug in, I might get only one line and two bar phrases of the melody. I always have elements of songs around that may never ever get recorded. As far back as Little Earthquakes, I began to realize that I needed to have a library of notes, phrases, words, things that might prove useful at any given time. Within a few months' time I'll gather hundreds of those fragments. Half won't be used. And then the craft comes in, the part that is about painting a world. You want listeners to smell the lavender, to feel the point of those knitting needles in a handbag of the granny who happens to harbor a loyalty to Madame Defarge. You want the listener to know the wood's burning in the stove when they walk into the song with me. Music is about all of your senses, not just hearing.
”
”
Tori Amos
“
I rooted around the kitchen for a coffee pot, confused by the prehistoric model sitting in one of the cabinets. I brushed off the dust and plugged it in; it took me nearly thirty minutes to figure out how to turn the damn thing on, and once I had two cups of coffee, they had the consistency of burnt mud.
“Cheers,” I said, clinking my mug against Molly’s. “Don’t actually drink it though.”
She sniffed the top of the mug.
“Just inhale deeply and hope you get some caffeine through your nasal passages.
”
”
R.S. Grey (Out of Bounds (The Summer Games, #2))
“
He lifted his gaze to hers. "I have a lot of other things I should be doing, but I'm here." He stared into her eyes for several heartbeats before he returned his attention to the big box. "I've tried to stay away. After you threw me out of the house, I thought it was probably for the best. You're a distraction, and I don't need a distraction right now." He handed the screwdriver back to her and ripped the box open with his big hands. "I've got tapes I need to review, and plays I need to go over in my head before today's practice, yet here I am. Putting baby furniture together for you because I can't get you out of my head. I plug in a tape, and all I do is think about you." He peeled back the cardboard and reached for the instruction sheet that had fallen to the floor. "But the thing is, Adele, I'm not really sure whether you want me to be here or not." His polo shirt pulled out of the waistband of his Levi's and slid up the tan muscles of his back. He straightened and looked at her over the top of the instructions. "I don't know what you want.
”
”
Rachel Gibson (Not Another Bad Date (Writer Friends, #4))
“
I climb onto his body, leaning down to tongue his nipple, and he moans. “What kind of situation?” I ask between licks. He lets out a shaky breath. “I thought it would be fun to wear a plug out to breakfast today. That way you could fuck me when we got home…” My eyes snap up to his. “Seriously?” He nods, his expression miserable. “But then you said, ‘Let’s just look at a couple of rugs.’ And that was, like, hours ago. Every time I walk across another store, this thing massages my prostate. If you don’t fuck me in the next five minutes I’m going to explode.
”
”
Sarina Bowen (Him (Him, #1))
“
The second of the Ten Commandments is oddly worded: “Thou shalt not have [allegiance to] any other gods before Me.” The statement seems almost self-contradictory. Here the Torah insists on an absolute devotion to monotheism, faith in the one and only God—and then, in the selfsame statement, the text seems to take for granted the existence of other gods, saying only that we shouldn’t have allegiance to them. But what other gods are there? Isn’t the Torah’s whole point that there is only one? The problem falls away, though, if you go back to the original Hebrew and read it carefully. The second commandment states: “Thou shalt not have [allegiance to] any other elohim before Me.” Just plug in our working definition of elohim, and suddenly it all starts to make sense: the text adjures us not to have allegiance to other “powers” besides God. For, indeed, there are other great sources of power one might choose to worship. The sun is powerful, there’s no denying that. It provides light and heat, and without it, we die. Nevertheless, the second commandment tells us that the sun is off-limits for worship because we may not have allegiance to any power other than the Almighty. As
”
”
David Fohrman (The Exodus You Almost Passed Over)
“
E L James, Party Games
you’re looking kind of smug
inserting that god damn anal plug
giving me your kinky love
after writing Fifty Shades
you’re acting like some kind of renegade
giving me your kinky love
sit me on a dildo and spin me right around
chain me up and hang me upside down
giving me your kinky love
god damn you E L James
making me into some kind of party game
giving me your kinky love
put me in a dream
and wheel in the Fucking Machine
god damn you E L James
spank a hand on my bum
see how much I can cum
god damn you E L James
stand me up and sit me down
lay me out and roll me about
god damn you E L James
BDSM
electro impulses up my brainstem
god damn you E L James
cast me in a submissive role-play
with my genitals on display
god damn you E L James
suspend me high in the air
slap me around like I don’t care
god damn you E L James
take that whip off the shelf
make me forget myself
god damn you E L James
Why are you wearing oven mittens?
branding iron your name written
inner goddess don’t keep in hidden
god damn you E L James
holy crap
my mind has snapped
to forget one thing that I have heard
I’m never going to use the safe-word
god damn you E L James
By R.M.Romarney
”
”
R.M. Romarney
“
[Uh-oh, it's bath time for Calvin.]
MOM, who sits in the living room, has turned toward the door. Very likely she is screaming the following words at the top of her lungs:
CALVIN! Quiet down
and quit that splashing!
I don't want to have to
clean the whole bathroom!
CALVIN:
Ha! I pulled the plug!
Down the drain with you!
DIE, FIEND!
DIE, DIE!!
MOM [By now she's sitting in a normal position on her armchair, trying to read a book, when she has apparently just heard an unexpected noise]:
Don't tell me he's letting
the water out already.
CALVIN, now standing right in back of his mother. He's naked, scowling full force, and dripping:
Believe it, lady.
”
”
Bill Watterson (Calvin & Hobbes)
“
Lyric," it said. "Melodic. Suitable for singing. A lyric poem. Of the lyre." That didn't seem to make much sense in regards to a movie theater, until I continued following "lyre" in my dictionary. "Lyre" took me into the story-poems sung by traveling minstrels back when there were castles and kings. Which took me back to that wonderful word: story. It seemed to me at an early age that all human communication - whether it's TV, movies, or books - begins with somebody wanting to tell a story. That need to tell, to plug into a universal socket, is probably one of our grandest desires. And the need to hear stories, to live lives other than our own even for the briefest moment, is the key to the magic that was born in our bones.
”
”
Robert McCammon (Boy's Life)
“
You can’t just check out and think it will all be over. It won’t be over for anyone who loves you. You’ll only leave them to run after the pieces that scatter in the angry wind. You’ll leave them desperately trying to solve the problems you wouldn’t . . . all while plugging their own wounds. Even if you’re like me, single without children, you could impact generations.
”
”
Terri Blackstock (If I Run (If I Run #1))
“
So what are you supposed to do with it?"
He eyed her incredulously. "For real? It's called a butt plug. What do you think you're supposed to do with it?"
She scratched her nose and nodded, trying not to let the apprehension show. "Okay. I'll do it. But if it hurts, just let me know and I'll take it out, stat. Don't be a hero."
He gaped at her and shook his head. "Aw, no. Sweetie. That's not for me.
”
”
Christine Bell (Down the Aisle (Dare Me, #2.5))
“
We walked side by side to the station. The sweater kept me comfortable in the night air.
“Okay, I’ll keep plugging away,” she said.
“Wasn’t much help, was I?”
“No, actually, it took a load off me just to be able to talk.”
We caught trains going in opposite directions from the same platform.
“You’re really not lonely?” she asked one last time. And while I was searching for a good reply, her train came.
”
”
Haruki Murakami (Pinball, 1973 (The Rat, #2))
“
This seat taken?" My eyes grazing over the only other occupant, a guy with long glossy dark hair with his head bent over a book.
"It's all yours," he says. And when he lifts his head and smiles,my heart just about leaps from my chest.
It's the boy from my dreams.
The boy from the Rabbit Hole,the gas station,and the cave-sitting before me with those same amazing,icy-blue eues, those same alluring lips I've kissed multiple times-but only in slumber, never in waking life.
I scold my heart to settle,but it doesn't obey.
I admonish myself to sit,to act normal, casual-and I just barely succeed.
Stealing a series of surreptitious looks as I search through my backpack, taking in his square chin,wide generous lips,strong brow,defined cheekbones, and smooth brown skin-the exact same features as Cade.
"You're the new girl,right?" He abandons his book,tilting his head in a way that causes his hair to stream over his shoulder,so glossy and inviting it takes all of my will not to lean across the table and touch it.
I nod in reply,or at least I think I do.I can't be too sure.I'm too stricken by his gaze-the way it mirrors mine-trying to determine if he knows me, recognizes me,if he's surprised to find me here.Wishing Paloma had better prepared me-focused more on him and less on his brother.
I force my gaze from his.Bang my knee hard against the table as I swivel in my seat.Feeling so odd and unsettled,I wish I'd picked another place to sit, though it's pretty clear no other table would have me.
He buries his smile and returns to the book.Allowing a few minutes to pass,not nearly enough time for me to get a grip on myself,when he looks up and says, "Are you staring at me because you've seen my doppelganer roaming the halls,playing king of the cafeteria? Or because you need to borrow a pencil and you're too shy to ask?"
I clear the lump from my throat, push the words past my lips when I say, "No one's ever accused me of being shy." A statement that,while steeped in truth, stands at direct odds with the way I feel now,sitting so close to him. "So I guess it's your twin-or doppelganer,as you say." I keep my voice light, as though I'm not at all affected by his presence,but the trill note at the end gives me away.Every part of me now vibrating with the most intense surge of energy-like I've been plugged into the wall and switched on-and it's all I can do to keep from grabbing hold of his shirt, demanding to know if he dreamed the dreams too.
He nods,allowing an easy,cool smile to widen his lips. "We're identical," he says. "As I'm sure you've guessed. Though it's easy enough to tell us apart. For one thing,he keeps his hair short.For another-"
"The eyes-" I blurt,regretting the words the instant they're out.From the look on his face,he has no idea what I'm talking about. "Yours are...kinder." My cheeks burn so hot I force myself to look away,as words of reproach stampede my brain.
Why am I acting like such an inept loser? Why do I insist on embarrassing myself-in front of him-of all people?
I have to pull it together.I have to remember who I am-what I am-and what I was born to do.Which is basically to crush him and his kind-or,at the very least,to temper the damage they do.
”
”
Alyson Noel (Fated (Soul Seekers, #1))
“
Safe! All I wanted to do was keep them safe. How do you protect your brothers at eight-fucking-teen? How do you make enough money, get enough respect to do that? I wasn’t smart, Eve. I’m a big, dumb fucking bastard. I couldn’t even get a job as a bagger at the A&P. I wanted to make their lives worth living. That’s what they’d done for me—made my life worth living. They’re my family. I can’t…I just can’t.” Beckett pounded his chest.
“They would’ve been better off without me,” he continued. “Blake would still be homeless, but Cole made his own damn way. But I wanted in. I wanted to belong. I was too fucking selfish to walk away. I should have walked away. But I didn’t and now—” Beckett choked on a deep, angry sob. “Now, they’re paying for it. All my stupid decisions. They’ll die tonight. They’ll both die, and I can’t stop it. I can’t plug it with money. I can’t bring them back from the dead, even if I act tough or kill more people.
”
”
Debra Anastasia (Poughkeepsie (Poughkeepsie Brotherhood, #1))
“
Edmund stood up quickly and cupped my face in his hands. His thumb traced the track of my tear, wiping it away and sending shivers through me. “Are you crying?” I sighed. “Yes, I’m crying.” My voice didn’t sound right thanks to my plugged nose. “It’s been a really rough day and I’d just like to be left alone. So, can you go?” I feebly pushed against his chest. “Evie,” he whispered, my name a plea. “Please, tell me I’m not the reason you’re crying?” The way he looked at me made me want to bawl even more. From his face, I could tell the idea that he’d made me cry was torturous. I looked up at him, wanting him closer and hating myself for it. “Today was really crappy and yes, you’re part of that.” I pulled my face away from his hand. “But you’re far from the only reason.” He pulled me into his arms and kissed my forehead. “I’m so sorry. I never wanted to make you cry. I was a complete arse.” “Yes, you were.” He leaned me back and smiled softly. “Well, at least we can agree.
”
”
Emily Albright (The Heir and the Spare)
“
It hurt me with its inevitability. They all find out sooner or later how unchic it is to pop your buttons at the Sadie Hawkins dance, or to crawl into the trunk so you can get into the drive-in for free. They stop eating pizza and plugging dimes into the juke down at Fat Sammy’s. They stop kissing boys in the blueberry patch. And they always seem to end up looking like Barbie doll cutouts in Jack and Jill magazine. Fold in at Slot A, Slot B, and Slot C. Watch Her Grow Old Before Your Very Eyes.
”
”
Richard Bachman (Rage)
“
Holy One, there is something I wanted to tell you, but there have been errands to run, bills to pay, arrangements to make, meetings to attend, friends to entertain, washing to do . . . and I forget what it is I wanted to say to you, and mostly I forget what I’m about or why. O God, don’t forget me, please, for the sake of Jesus Christ. Eternal One, there is something I wanted to tell you, but my mind races with worrying and watching, with weighing and planning, with rutted slights and pothole grievances, with leaky dreams and leaky plumbing and leaky relationships I keep trying to plug up; and my attention is preoccupied with loneliness, with doubt, and with things I covet; and I forget what it is I want to say to you, and how to say it honestly or how to do much of anything. O God, don’t forget me, please, for the sake of Jesus Christ. Almighty One, there is something I wanted to ask you, but I stumble along the edge of a nameless rage, haunted by a hundred floating fears of terrorists of all kinds, of losing my job, of failing, of getting sick and old, having loved ones die, of dying . . . I forget what the real question is that I wanted to ask, and I forget to listen anyway because you seem unreal and far away, and I forget what it is I have forgotten. O God, don’t forget me, please, for the sake of Jesus Christ . . . O Father . . . in Heaven, perhaps you’ve already heard what I wanted to tell you. What I wanted to ask is forgive me, heal me, increase my courage, please. Renew in me a little of love and faith, and a sense of confidence, and a vision of what it might mean to live as though you were real, and I mattered, and everyone was sister and brother. What I wanted to ask in my blundering way is don’t give up on me, don’t become too sad about me, but laugh with me, and try again with me, and I will with you, too. What I wanted to ask is for peace enough to want and work for more, for joy enough to share, and for awareness that is keen enough to sense your presence here, now, there, then, always.27
”
”
Tyler Staton (Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools: An Invitation to the Wonder and Mystery of Prayer)
“
But it’s a class-divided society. It’s a rich cultural environment, full of galleries and incredible restaurants and museums and shows. But unless you’re wealthy, the city requires sacrifice to enjoy those things. Unless you are rich, you struggle every day. You grind. You ride the subway for two hours just to work at Starbucks. But there’s also nowhere else to be for professional networking. You can access the movers and shakers. You can be a mover and a shaker if you work hard enough. Just plug yourself into the scene, whatever your scene is. But what ends up happening— or what ended up happening to me— is an unplugging form family life, an unplugging from the things that make you feel whole and rooted. While living in New York, I eventually came to realize that for every good thing about the city, there was also a dark side. We go to New York to make our careers, but we end up stepping over homeless people on the sidewalk on our way to work. Successful New Yorkers can ignore those dark sides, but I could not.
”
”
Mira Ptacin (Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York)
“
It’s our bad luck to have teachers in this world, but since we’re stuck with them, the best we can do is hope to get a brand-new one instead of a mean old fart. New teachers don’t know the rules, so you can get away with things the old-timers would squash you for. That was my theory. So I was feeling pretty excited to start fifth grade, since I was getting a rookie teacher—a guy named Mr. Terupt. Right away, I put him to the test. If the bathroom pass is free, all you have to do is take it and go. This year, the bathrooms were right across the hall. It’s always been an easy way to get out of doing work. I can be really sneaky like that. I take the pass all the time and the teachers never notice. And like I said, Mr. Terupt was a rookie, so I knew he wasn’t going to catch me. Once you’re in the bathroom, it’s mess-around time. All the other teachers on our floor were women, so you didn’t have to worry about them barging in on you. Grab the bars to the stalls and swing. Try to touch your feet to the ceiling. Swing hard. If someone’s in the stall, it’s really funny to swing and kick his door in, especially if he’s a younger kid. If you scare him bad enough, he might pee on himself a little. That’s funny. Or if your buddy’s using the urinal, you can push him from behind and flush it at the same time. Then he might get a little wet. That’s pretty funny, too. Some kids like to plug the toilets with big wads of toilet paper, but I don’t suggest you try doing that. You can get in big trouble. My older brother told me his friend got caught and he had to scrub the toilets with a toothbrush. He said the principal made him brush his teeth with that toothbrush afterward, too. Mrs. Williams is pretty tough, but I don’t think she’d give out that kind of punishment. I don’t want to find out, either. When I came back into the classroom after my fourth or fifth trip, Mr. Terupt looked at me and said, “Boy, Peter, I’m gonna have to call you Mr. Peebody, or better yet, Peter the Pee-er. You do more peein’ than a dog walking by a mile of fire hydrants.
”
”
Rob Buyea (Because of Mr. Terupt (Mr. Terupt, #1))
“
plugged in my headphones. In the sermon, King uses the parable of the neighbor who knocks upon his friend’s door at midnight, seeking three loaves to feed a hungry traveler. The man’s need is great, King reminds us, because the loaves of bread he seeks are spiritual loaves. The bread of faith, the bread of hope, the bread of love. The man’s friend refuses him. “Do not bother me; the door is now shut,” his friend says, “and my children are with me in bed, I cannot get up and give you anything.” In his tremendous tenor, his voice rolling with the calm power and depth of the sea, King explains that the man continues to persistently knock; he will not be denied. He urges us to embrace the hope, faith, and love necessary to continue our struggle for justice in midnight’s darkest hour. With faith in his friend’s generosity, and out of a deep need to provide loaves to his visitor, the man knocks. “Midnight is a confusing hour when it is difficult to be faithful.” His voice sonorous, King intones, “The weary traveler by midnight who asks for bread is really seeking the dawn. Our eternal message of hope is that dawn will come.
”
”
Brittany K. Barnett (A Knock at Midnight: A Story of Hope, Justice, and Freedom)
“
All summers take me back to the sea. There in the long eelgrass, like birds' eggs waiting to be hatched, my brothers and sister and I sit, grasses higher than our heads, arms and legs like thicker versions of the grass waving in the wind, looking up at the blue sky. My mother is gathering food for dinner: clams and mussels and the sharply salty greens that grow by the shore. It is warm enough to lie here in the little silty puddles like bathwater left in the tub after the plug has been pulled. It is the beginning of July and we have two months to live out the long, nurturing days, watching the geese and the saltwater swans and the tides as they are today, slipping out, out, out as the moon pulls the other three seasons far away wherever it takes things. Out past the planets, far away from Uranus and the edge of our solar system, into the brilliantly lit dark where the things we don't know about yet reside. Out past my childhood, out past the ghosts, out past the breakwater of the stars. Like the silvery lace curtains of my bedroom being drawn from my window, letting in light, so the moon gently pulls back the layers of the year, leaving the best part open and free. So summer comes to me.
”
”
Polly Horvath (My One Hundred Adventures (My One Hundred Adventures, #1))
“
The nutritionist said I should eat root vegetables.
Said if I could get down thirteen turnips a day
I would be grounded, rooted.
Said my head would not keep flying away
to where the darkness lives.
The psychic told me my heart carries too much weight.
Said for twenty dollars she’d tell me what to do.
I handed her the twenty. She said, “Stop worrying, darling.
You will find a good man soon.”
The first psycho therapist told me to spend
three hours each day sitting in a dark closet
with my eyes closed and ears plugged.
I tried it once but couldn’t stop thinking
about how gay it was to be sitting in the closet.
The yogi told me to stretch everything but the truth.
Said to focus on the out breath. Said everyone finds happiness
when they care more about what they give
than what they get.
The pharmacist said, “Lexapro, Lamicatl, Lithium, Xanax.”
The doctor said an anti-psychotic might help me
forget what the trauma said.
The trauma said, “Don’t write these poems.
Nobody wants to hear you cry
about the grief inside your bones.”
But my bones said, “Tyler Clementi jumped
from the George Washington Bridge
into the Hudson River convinced
he was entirely alone.”
My bones said, “Write the poems.
”
”
Andrea Gibson (The Madness Vase)
“
Now: I am an affectionate man but I have much trouble showing it.
When I was younger I used to worry so much about being alone - of being unlovable or incapable of love. As the years went on, my worries changed. I worried that I had become incapable of having a relationship, of offering intimacy. I felt as though the world lived inside a warm house at night and I was outside, and I couldn't be seen - because I was out there in the night. But now I am inside that house and it feels just the same.
Being alone here now, all of my old fears are erupting - the fears I thought I had buried forever by getting married: fear of loneliness; fear that being in and out of love too many times itself makes you harder to love; fear that I would never experience real love; fear that someone would fall in love with me, get extremely close, learn everything about me and then pull the plug; fear that love is only important up until a certain point after which everything is negotiable.
For so many years I lived a life of solitude and I thought life was fine. But I knew that unless I explored intimacy and shared intimacy with someone else then life would never progress beyond a certain point. I remember thinking that unless I knew what was going on inside of someone else's head other than my own I was going to explode.
”
”
Douglas Coupland
“
Then let me tell you this. Basically .General Forester, there are two types of
codes. In the first, letters, or symbols that stand for letters, are shuffled and
juggled according to a pattern. In the second, letters, words, or groups of
words are replaced by other letters, symbols, or words. A code can be one
type or the other, or a combination. But both have this in common: once you
find the key, you just plug it in and out come logical sentences. A language,
however, has its own internal logic, its own grammar, its own way of putting
thoughts together with words that span various spectra of meaning. There is
no key you can plug in to unlock the exact meaning. At best you can get a
close approximation.
”
”
Samuel R. Delany (Babel-17)
“
I was raised on the struggle of elders - iron collars, severed feet, the rifle of dirty Harriet, and down through the years, the Muslims and regal Malcolm. But mostly what I saw around me was rank dishonor: cable and Atari plugged into every room, juvenile parenting, niggers sporting kicks with price tags that looked like mortgage bills. The Conscious among us knew the whole race was going down, that we'd freed ourselves from slavery and Jim Crow but not the great shackling of minds. The hoppers had no picture of the larger world. We thought all our battles were homegrown and personal, but, like an evil breeze at our back, we felt invisible hands at work, like someone else was still tugging at levers and pulling strings.
”
”
Ta-Nehisi Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons and an Unlikely Road to Manhood)
“
So tell me: were you born broken just like me, born hungry? Are we all of us born with some part of us missing? Are we each us born with a hole?....Born with a hold and no earthly way of finding just the exact right plug to fill it, not 'til you've tried 'em from A to Z and back once more: booze, fags, work, candy, men, girls, heroin, methedrine, methadone, God. Tried having a baby. Tried killing yourself. A hundred religions, from Calvin to the Dalai Lama and back again; tried every damn thing you could think of and some you had to stumble over....You stick a plug in your weakness like a finger in the proverbial dike and let pressure build up let it swell and swell 'til there's nothing left but tension, nothing left but what's left over--the absence, not the presence. The wound you shape your soul around.
”
”
Gemma Files (We Will All Go Down Together)
“
Akos was still in the bathroom. He had plugged the bathtub drain and turned on the faucets. Now he was undoing the straps of his armor with quick, nimble fingers.
“Don’t tell me you don’t need my help,” he said to me. “I won’t believe you.”
I stepped out of sight of the living room and tried to lift my shirt over my head. I only made it up to my stomach before I had to stop for breath. Akos set his armor down and took the hem of my shirt from me. I laughed, softly, as he guided it over my head and down my arms and said, “This is awkward.”
“Yes it is,” he said. He kept his eyes on my face. He was blushing.
I had not allowed myself to imagine a situation like this, his fingers brushing my arms, the memory of his mouth on mine so close I could still feel it.
“I think I can handle the pants on my own,” I said.
I didn’t mind showing skin. I was far from frail, with thick thighs and a small chest, and it didn’t concern me. This body had carried me through a hard life. It looked exactly the way it was supposed to. Still, when his eyes dropped--just for a moment--I stifled a nervous giggle.
”
”
Veronica Roth (Carve the Mark (Carve the Mark, #1))
“
Zaphod paused for a while. For a while there was silence. Then he frowned and said, “Last night I was worrying about this again. About the fact that part of my mind just didn’t seem to work properly. Then it occurred to me that the way it seemed was that someone else was using my mind to have good ideas with, without telling me about it. I put the two ideas together and decided that maybe that somebody had locked off part of my mind for that purpose, which was why I couldn’t use it. I wondered if there was a way I could check.
“I went to the ship’s medical bay and plugged myself into the encephalographic screen. I went through every major screening test on both my heads—all the tests I had to go through under Government medical officers before my nomination for presidency could be properly ratified. They showed up nothing. Nothing unexpected at least. They showed that I was clever, imaginative, irresponsible, untrustworthy, extrovert, nothing you couldn’t have guessed. And no other anomalies. So I started inventing further tests, completely at random. Nothing. Then I tried superimposing the results from one head on top of the results from the other head. Still nothing. Finally I got silly, because I’d given it all up as nothing more than an attack of paranoia. Last thing I did before I packed it in was take the superimposed picture and look at it through a green filter. You remember I was always superstitious about the color green when I was a kid? I always wanted to be a pilot on one of the trading scouts?”
Ford nodded.
“And there it was,” said Zaphod, “clear as day. A whole section in the middle of both brains that related only to each other and not to anything else around them. Some bastard had cauterized all the synapses and electronically traumatized those two lumps of cerebellum.”
Ford stared at him, aghast. Trillian had turned white.
“Somebody did that to you?” whispered Ford.
“Yeah.”
“But have you any idea who? Or why?”
“Why? I can only guess. But I do know who the bastard was.”
“You know? How do you know?”
“Because they left their initials burned into the cauterized synapses. They left them there for me to see.”
Ford stared at him in horror and felt his skin begin to crawl.
“Initials? Burned into your brain?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, what were they, for God’s sake?”
Zaphod looked at him in silence again for a moment. Then he looked away.
“Z.B.,” he said quietly.
At that moment a steel shutter slammed down behind them and gas started to pour into the chamber.
“I’ll tell you about it later,” choked Zaphod as all three passed out.
”
”
Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1))
“
But then I got into Joseph Campbell—The Power of Myth and The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Joseph Campbell was the first person to really open my eyes to [the] compassionate side of life, or of thought. . . . Campbell was the guy who really kind of put it all together for me, and not in a way I could put my finger on. . . . It made you just glad to be alive, [realizing] how vast this world is, and how similar and how different we are.” * Most-gifted or recommended books? “You’re going to think I’m plugging you, but I probably have recommended The Art of Learning [by Josh Waitzkin, page 577] and The 4-Hour Body, I’m not kidding, more than any other books.” What Would You Say in a College Commencement Speech? “Well, I would say that if you are searching for status, and if you are doing things because there’s an audience for it, you’re probably barking up the wrong tree. “I would say, ‘Listen to yourself.’ Follow your bliss, and Joseph Campbell, to bring it back around, said, ‘There is great security in insecurity.’ We are wired and programmed to do what’s safe and what’s sensible. I don’t think that’s the way to go. I think you do things because they are just things you have to do, or because it’s a calling, or because you’re idealistic enough to think that you can make a difference in the world. “I think you should try to slay dragons. I don’t care how big the opponent is. We read about and admire the people who did things that were basically considered to be impossible. That’s what makes the world a better place to live.
”
”
Timothy Ferriss (Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers)
“
In judging of that tempestuous wind called Euroclydon," says an old writer—of whose works I possess the only copy extant—"it maketh a marvellous difference, whether thou lookest out at it from a glass window where the frost is all on the outside, or whether thou observest it from that sashless window, where the frost is on both sides, and of which the wight Death is the only glazier." True enough, thought I, as this passage occurred to my mind—old black-letter, thou reasonest well. Yes, these eyes are windows, and this body of mine is the house. What a pity they didn't stop up the chinks and the crannies though, and thrust in a little lint here and there. But it's too late to make any improvements now. The universe is finished; the copestone is on, and the chips were carted off a million years ago. Poor Lazarus there, chattering his teeth against the curbstone for his pillow, and shaking off his tatters with his shiverings, he might plug up both ears with rags, and put a corn-cob into his mouth, and yet that would not keep out the tempestuous Euroclydon. Euroclydon! says old Dives, in his red silken wrapper (he had a redder one afterwards) pooh, pooh! What a fine frosty night; how Orion glitters; what northern lights! Let them talk of their oriental summer climes of everlasting conservatories; give me the privilege of making my own summer with my own coals. But what thinks Lazarus? Can he warm his blue hands by holding them up to the grand northern lights? Would not Lazarus rather be in Sumatra than here? Would he not far rather lay him down lengthwise along the line of the equator; yea, ye gods! go down to the fiery pit itself, in order to keep out this frost?
”
”
Herman Melville (Moby-Dick or, The Whale)
“
Open All Night"
(originally by Bruce Springsteen)
I had the carburetor cleaned and checked
With her line blown out, she's hummin' like a turbojet
Propped her up in the backyard on concrete blocks
For a new clutch plate and a new set of shocks
Took her down to the carwash, check the plugs and points
I'm goin' out tonight, I'm gonna rock that joint
Early north Jersey industrial skyline
I'm a all-set cobra jet creepin' through the nighttime
Gotta find a gas station, gotta find a payphone
This turnpike sure is spooky at night when you're all alone
Gotta hit the gas, baby, I'm runnin' late
This New Jersey in the mornin' like a lunar landscape
The boss don't dig me, so he put me on the nightshift
It takes me two hours to get back to where my baby lives
In the wee wee hours, your mind gets hazy
Radio relay towers, won't you lead me to my baby?
Underneath the overpass, trooper hits his party light switch
Goodnight, good luck, one two powershift
I met Wanda when she was employed
Behind the counter at the Route 60 Bob's Big Boy
Fried chicken on the front seat, she's sittin' in my lap
We're wipin' our fingers on a Texaco roadmap
I remember Wanda up on scrap metal hill
With them big brown eyes that make your heart stand still
5 A.M., oil pressure's sinkin' fast
I make a pit stop, wipe the windshield, check the gas
Gotta call my baby on the telephone
Let her know that her daddy's comin' on home
Sit tight, little mama, I'm comin' round
I got three more hours, but I'm coverin' ground
Your eyes get itchy in the wee wee hours
Sun's just a red ball risin' over them refinery towers
Radio's jammed up with gospel stations
Lost souls callin' long distance salvation
Hey Mr. DJ, won't you hear my last prayer?
Hey ho rock 'n' roll, deliver me from nowhere
Ryan Adams, Nebraska (2022)
”
”
Ryan Adams
“
I’m fine, Sierra. Really.”
“No, you’re not fine. Brit, I’m your best friend. I’ll be here before and after your boyfriends. So spill your guts. I’m all ears.”
“I loved him.”
“No shit, Sherlock. Tell me something I don’t know.”
“He used me. He had sex with me to win a bet. And I still love him. Sierra, I am pathetic.”
“You had sex and didn’t tell me? I mean, I thought it was a rumor. You know, of the untrue kind.”
I lean my head in my hands in frustration.
“I’m just kidding. I don’t even want to know. Okay, I do, but only if you want to tell me,” Sierra says. “Forget about that now. I saw the way Alex always looked at you, Brit. That’s why I laid off you for liking him. There was no way he was acting. I don’t know who told you about a supposed bet--”
I look up. “He did. And his friends confirmed it. Why can’t I let him go?”
Sierra shakes her head, as if erasing the words I’ve said. “First things first.” She grabs my chin and forces me to look at her. “Alex had feelings for you, whether he admitted it to you or not, whether there was a bet or not. You know that, Brit, or you wouldn’t be clutching those hand warmers like that. Second of all, Alex is out of your life and you owe it to yourself, to his goofy friend Paco, and to me to keep plugging along even if it’s not easy.”
“I can’t help but think he pushed me away on purpose. If I could only talk to him, I can get answers.”
“Maybe he doesn’t have the answers. That’s why he left. If he wants to give up on life, to ignore what’s right in front of him, so be it. But you show him that you’re stronger than that.”
Sierra is right. For the first time I feel I can make it through the rest of senior year. Alex took a piece of my heart that night we made love, and he’ll forever hold it. But that doesn’t mean my life has to be on hold indefinitely. I can’t run after ghosts.
I’m stronger now. At least, I hope I am.
”
”
Simone Elkeles (Perfect Chemistry (Perfect Chemistry, #1))
“
The chorus of criticism culminated in a May 27 White House press conference that had me fielding tough questions on the oil spill for about an hour. I methodically listed everything we'd done since the Deepwater had exploded, and I described the technical intricacies of the various strategies being employed to cap the well. I acknowledged problems with MMS, as well as my own excessive confidence in the ability of companies like BP to safeguard against risk. I announced the formation of a national commission to review the disaster and figure out how such accidents could be prevented in the future, and I reemphasized the need for a long-term response that would make America less reliant on dirty fossil fuels.
Reading the transcript now, a decade later, I'm struck by how calm and cogent I sound. Maybe I'm surprised because the transcript doesn't register what I remember feeling at the time or come close to capturing what I really wanted to say before the assembled White House press corps:
That MMS wasn't fully equipped to do its job, in large part because for the past thirty years a big chunk of American voters had bought into the Republican idea that government was the problem and that business always knew better, and had elected leaders who made it their mission to gut environmental regulations, starve agency budgets, denigrate civil servants, and allow industrial polluters do whatever the hell they wanted to do.
That the government didn't have better technology than BP did to quickly plug the hole because it would be expensive to have such technology on hand, and we Americans didn't like paying higher taxes - especially when it was to prepare for problems that hadn't happened yet.
That it was hard to take seriously any criticism from a character like Bobby Jindal, who'd done Big Oil's bidding throughout his career and would go on to support an oil industry lawsuit trying to get a federal court to lift our temporary drilling moratorium; and that if he and other Gulf-elected officials were truly concerned about the well-being of their constituents, they'd be urging their party to stop denying the effects of climate change, since it was precisely the people of the Gulf who were the most likely to lose homes or jobs as a result of rising global temperatures.
And that the only way to truly guarantee that we didn't have another catastrophic oil spill in the future was to stop drilling entirely; but that wasn't going to happen because at the end of the day we Americans loved our cheap gas and big cars more than we cared about the environment, except when a complete disaster was staring us in the face; and in the absence of such a disaster, the media rarely covered efforts to shift America off fossil fuels or pass climate legislation, since actually educating the public on long-term energy policy would be boring and bad for ratings; and the one thing I could be certain of was that for all the outrage being expressed at the moment about wetlands and sea turtles and pelicans, what the majority of us were really interested in was having the problem go away, for me to clean up yet one more mess decades in the making with some quick and easy fix, so that we could all go back to our carbon-spewing, energy-wasting ways without having to feel guilty about it.
I didn't say any of that. Instead I somberly took responsibility and said it was my job to "get this fixed." Afterward, I scolded my press team, suggesting that if they'd done better work telling the story of everything we were doing to clean up the spill, I wouldn't have had to tap-dance for an hour while getting the crap kicked out of me. My press folks looked wounded. Sitting alone in the Treaty Room later that night, I felt bad about what I had said, knowing I'd misdirected my anger and frustration.
It was those damned plumes of oil that I really wanted to curse out.
”
”
Barack Obama (A Promised Land)
“
It was awful. It was three in the morning. And I finally said, “Chip, I’m not sleeping in this house.”
We were broke. We couldn’t go to a hotel. There was no way we were gonna go knock on one of our parents’ doors at that time of night.
That’s when I got an idea. We happened to have Chip’s parents’ old RV parked in a vacant lot a few blocks down. We had some of our things in there and had been using it basically as a storage unit until we moved in. “Let’s get in the RV. We’ll go find somewhere to plug it in, and we’ll have AC,” I said.
As we stepped outside, the skies opened up. It started pouring rain. When we finally got into the RV, soaking wet, we pulled down the road a ways and Chip said, “I know where we can go.” It was raining so hard we could barely see through the windshield, and all of a sudden Chip turned the RV into a cemetery.
“Why are you pulling in to a cemetery?” I asked him.
“We’re not going to the cemetery,” Chip said. “It’s just next to a cemetery. There’s an RV park back here.”
“Are you kidding me? Could this get any worse?”
“Oh, quit it. You’re going to love it once I get this AC fired up.”
Chip decided to go flying through the median between the two rows of RV parking, not realizing it was set up like a culvert for drainage and rain runoff. That RV bounced so hard that, had it not been for our seat belts, we would’ve both been catapulted through the roof of that vehicle.
“What was that?!”
“I don’t know,” Chip said.
I tried to put it in reverse, and then forward, and then reverse again, and the thing just wouldn’t move. I hopped out to take a look and couldn’t believe it. There was a movie a few years ago where the main character gets his RV caught on this fulcrum and it’s sitting there teetering with both sets of wheels up in the air. Well, we sort of did the opposite. We went across this valley, and because the RV was so long, the butt end of it got stuck on the little hill behind us, and the front end got stuck on the little hill in front of us, and the wheels were just sort of hanging there in between. I crawled back into the RV soaking wet and gave Jo the bad news.
We had no place to go, no place to plug in so we could run the AC; it was pouring rain so we couldn’t really walk anywhere to get help. And at that point I was just done. We wound up toughing it out and spending the first night after our honeymoon in a hot, old RV packed full of our belongings, suspended between two bumps in the road.
”
”
Joanna Gaines (The Magnolia Story)
“
One day, on the verge of dying of boredom, Uncle Johnny had had enough. He turned to me and said sternly, “Noah, I’m not gonna sit in here like we’re in an oversized coffin. We’re either opening the door or we’re turning the TV on. Which one do you want?” I rolled my eyes and grumbled for a few minutes before answering, “All right. Turn on the TV.” Without hesitation Uncle Johnny shot up out of that chair and reached up to hit the power button on the TV mounted from the ceiling. No sooner had his butt hit the chair seat than he was right back up again. “Fuck that. I am opening the door, too, because I want it open.” He vigorously emphasized his intention so I didn’t protest. He marched over and swung that door open. I swear he might have even taken a deep breath as if it were fresh mountain air. Then he came back to his chair and sat down.
There was a movie on starring Matthew Broderick. I’d never heard of it before but Uncle Johnny was explaining to me that this was a remake and Gene Wilder had played Broderick’s character in the original film. In spite of myself, and my stubborn wish to sit and suffer in silence, I really liked the movie. And I remember thinking, I am really enjoying myself. I even turned to Uncle Johnny and said, “I’m glad we turned the TV on. This is great!” Uncle Johnny just smiled as if to say, “Of course! Finally!”
We were right in the middle of the movie when one of my machines started to malfunction. The machine’s beeps drowned out the movie. A nurse came in to fix the problem and it just happened to be the hot nurse I had a crush on. She had short hair, a few tattoos on her arm, and she always wore a bandana over her head. The machine she was trying to fix was plugged in on the other side of the bed, up against the wall.
“Oh, I see. Hold on. I have to move the bed out from the wall to fix this,” she said.
At this point I was just watching her. She fixed the machine and pushed the bed back up against the wall. She actually hit the wall with the bed and zap! The TV went out! “WHAT?! NO!” I screamed. She couldn’t get it to turn back on. She tried but nothing worked.
“Oh no, I’m sorry. We’ll have to get maintenance down here to fix it,” she said with an apologetic look that I met with a glare of disdain. She was no longer hot to me. She was just the nurse who broke the TV. Maintenance didn’t come to repair the TV until the next day. I didn’t get to watch the rest of the movie. In fact, I never saw the end of the movie and I didn’t even know the name of it until years later. Maybe one of these days I’ll get to see The Producers from start to finish.
”
”
Noah Galloway (Living with No Excuses: The Remarkable Rebirth of an American Soldier)
“
The morning was already setting up to be hectic, and Jon thanked his lucky stars that Jessie was so good at his job and a constant spark-plug of activity.
Oh god, you did not just think Jessie was a spark-plug? You really are getting old. Next thing you know you’ll being saying whipper-snappers and break a hip getting out of bed. He shook his head. I guess I had a good run.
Jessie quickly re-entered the office. “Alright. Elisabeth has her caffeine fix and said she’ll be down to say goodbye in a few. So let’s get this bad boy going for the week.
Travel plans are done for next month and meetings for the week are in you planner so I’m assuming they’ll be no more complaining about flying coach class this time?” Jessie gave a sly wink and kept organizing his desk.
“Yes. And for that I thank you for that my color-coding, hyper computer organized planner. We have to make sure the next presentation for Chicago is ready in three weeks; the storyboards for the new campaign ideas have to be finished by Tuesday the 16th so we can get them shipped before I head out there.”
“And let’s not forget our important morning ritual.”
Jon looked at Jessie with a question about to form before the realization hit him. His expression changed from confused to stern. “No cat videos Jessie. I swear. Enough of the cat videos.”
“C’mon. You know you love them and they brighten your dour moods. Look at this one.” Jessie turned his screen and Jon begrudgingly looked at the cute little puppy and kitten with captions over them. “How can you not love this?” Jessie smiled. “The cute little kitty tells the playful puppy not to do it and yet the puppy bonks the little kitty on the head with his little puppy paw. “Boop Boop.” And then the cat swipes at the puppy and it falls off the bed. You know this is internet gold.”
Jon smiled. “Can we get back to work?”
Jessie nodded and then walked up to Jon - without hesitating, he bonked him lightly on the head. “Boop.” He paused and added, “I think this puppy is onto something.” Jessie grinned ear to ear still. “I pledge, from now on if something makes me as happy as this bonking picture I’m just going to say Boop boop.”
Jon stood stone-faced but a second later, could not stop his smile. “I am not amused.” Jon shook the smile away. “Now, if you’re done boop booping me, there is something else I want to talk with you about.”
Jessie looked at Jon with a quizzical smile.
“Not to blow my own horn but I have a new and brilliant thought my young apprentice.”
Jessie opened his mouth to comment on the blowing horn, but Jon held up his hand and cut him off.
“Stop it.”
Jessie closed his mouth and swallowed the sexual innuendo-laced comment he had forming on the tip of his tongue.
”
”
Matthew Alan
“
MY PROCESS I got bullied quite a bit as a kid, so I learned how to take a punch and how to put up a good fight. God used that. I am not afraid of spiritual “violence” or of facing spiritual fights. My Dad was drafted during Vietnam and I grew up an Army brat, moving around frequently. God used that. I am very spiritually mobile, adaptable, and flexible. My parents used to hand me a Bible and make me go look up what I did wrong. God used that, as well. I knew the Word before I knew the Lord, so studying Scripture is not intimidating to me. I was admitted into a learning enrichment program in junior high. They taught me critical thinking skills, logic, and Greek Mythology. God used that, too. In seventh grade I was in school band and choir. God used that. At 14, before I even got saved, a youth pastor at my parents’ church taught me to play guitar. God used that. My best buddies in school were a druggie, a Jewish kid, and an Irish soccer player. God used that. I broke my back my senior year and had to take theatre instead of wrestling. God used that. I used to sleep on the couch outside of the Dean’s office between classes. God used that. My parents sent me to a Christian college for a semester in hopes of getting me saved. God used that. I majored in art, advertising, astronomy, pre-med, and finally English. God used all of that. I made a woman I loved get an abortion. God used (and redeemed) that. I got my teaching certification. I got plugged into a group of sincere Christian young adults. I took courses for ministry credentials. I worked as an autism therapist. I taught emotionally disabled kids. And God used each of those things. I married a pastor’s daughter. God really used that. Are you getting the picture? San Antonio led me to Houston, Houston led me to El Paso, El Paso led me to Fort Leonard Wood, Fort Leonard Wood led me back to San Antonio, which led me to Austin, then to Kentucky, then to Belton, then to Maryland, to Pennsylvania, to Dallas, to Alabama, which led me to Fort Worth. With thousands of smaller journeys in between. The reason that I am able to do the things that I do today is because of the process that God walked me through yesterday. Our lives are cumulative. No day stands alone. Each builds upon the foundation of the last—just like a stairway, each layer bringing us closer to Him. God uses each experience, each lesson, each relationship, even our traumas and tragedies as steps in the process of becoming the people He made us to be. They are steps in the process of achieving the destinies that He has encoded into the weave of each of our lives. We are journeymen, finding the way home. What is the value of the journey? If the journey makes us who we are, then the journey is priceless.
”
”
Zach Neese (How to Worship a King: Prepare Your Heart. Prepare Your World. Prepare the Way)
“
But was young Boasthard's fear vanquished by Calmer's words ? No, for he had in his bosom a spike named Bitterness which could not by words be done away. And was he then neither calm like the one nor godly like the other ? He was neither as much as he would have liked to be either. But could he not have endeavoured to have found again as in his youth the bottle Holiness that then he lived withal ? Indeed not for Grace was not there to find that bottle. Heard he then in that clap the voice of the god Bringforth or, what Calmer said, a hubbub of Phenomenon ? Heard ? Why, he could not but hear unless he had plugged up the tube Understanding (which he had not done). For through that tube he saw that he was like the rest too a passing show. And would he not accept to die like the rest and pass away ? By no means would he and make more shows according as men do with wives which Phenomenon has commanded them to do by the book Law. Then wotted he nought of that other land which is called Believe-on-Me, that is the land of promise which behoves to the king Delightful and shall be for ever where there is no death and no birth neither wiving nor mothering at which all shall come as many as believe on it ? Yes, Pious had told him of that land and Chaste had pointed him to the way but the reason was that in the way he fell in with a certain whore of an eyepleasing exterior whose name, she said, is Bird-in-the-Hand and she beguiled him wrongways from the true path by her flatteries that she said to him as, Ho, you pretty man, turn aside hither and I will show you a brave place, and she lay at him so flatteringly that she had him in her grot which is named Tow-in-the-Bush or, by some learned, Carnal Concupiscence.
This was it what all that company that sat there at commons in Manse of Mothers the most lusted for after and if they met with this whore Bird-in-the-Hand (which was within all foul plagues, monsters and a wicked devil) they would strain the last but they would make at her and know her. For regarding Believe-on-Me they said it was nought else but notion and they could conceive no thought of it for, first, Two-in-the-Bush whither she ticed them was the very goodliest grot and in it were four pillows on which were four tickets with these words printed on them, Pickaback and Topsyturvy and Shameface and Cheek by Jowl and, second, for that foul plague Allpox and the monsters they cared not for them for Preservative had give them a stout shield of oxengut and, third, that they might take no hurt neither from Offspring that was that wicked by devil by virtue of this same shield which was named Killchild. So were they all in ther blind fancy, Mr Cavil and Mr Sometimes Godly, Mr Ape Swillale, Mr False Franklin, Mr Dainty Dixon, Young Boasthard and Mr Cautious Calmer. Wherein, O wretched company were ye all deceived for that was the voice of the god that was in a very grievous rage that he would presently lift his arm and spill their souls for their abuse and their spillings done by them contrariwise to his word which forth to bring brenningly biddeth.
”
”
James Joyce (Ulysses)
“
A box sat on top of Jade’s pillows, wrapped in green paper with a white bow. He frowned slightly. Who would’ve left a gift on Jade’s bed?
“You have a present.”
“What?” Jade turned her head when he gestured toward the box. Confusion filled her eyes. She sat up and reached for the box. “I don’t understand.”
Zach sat by her again and wrapped his arm around her waist. “Maybe there’s a card.”
After searching beneath the large white bow, Jade pulled out a small envelope. Zach looked over her shoulder as she withdrew the card and read it aloud.
“‘To Mom and Zach. Have fun tonight. Bre.’”
Zach chuckled, both at Breanna’s card and at Jade’s blush. “Your daughter has quite a sense of humor.”
“My daughter deserves to be spanked.” She lifted the box onto her lap. “I’m afraid to open it.”
“Would you like me to? It’s addressed to both of us.”
“I’m even more afraid for you to open it.”
“Go ahead. It can’t be that bad.”
“You don’t know my daughter.”
Untying the bow, Jade raised the lid and pulled apart the bright green tissue paper. Several sex toys lay in the box. She gasped.
“Oh, my God. I can’t believe she did this!”
She started to push the tissue paper back over the contents, but Zach held her hand to stop her. “Wait. Let’s see what she bought.”
“I am going to kill her, after I beat her.”
Chuckling, Zach dug through the box, lifting the different items as he came to them. “Cock ring. Chocolate body paint. Stay-hard gel.” He looked into Jade’s eyes. “I don’t think I’ll need that tonight.”
Her cheeks turned a deep pink. He dropped a kiss on her lips before beginning to explore again. “Anal beads. Ben-Wa balls. Fur-lined handcuffs. Nipple clamps. Lemon-flavored nipple cream.” His gaze dipped to her breasts. “Interesting.”
She huffed out a breath. “Can we close the box now?”
“Not yet. I like it when you blush.”
Zach grinned when Jade scowled at him. “This is completely spoiling the mood.”
“I won’t have any problem getting hard again.”
“Zach!”
Ignoring her outraged tone, he continued to sift through the items. “Lifelike dildo.” He held it up to eye level. “Close, but not quite as big as I am.”
Jade covered her eyes with one hand. “I don’t believe this,” she muttered.
“Butt plug. Wait, I’m wrong. It’s a vibrating butt plug. Very interesting. I hope you have batteries. Never mind. Breanna included several packages.”
“Okay, that’s enough.”
Jade tried to jerk the box out of his reach, but Zach held on to the side. “There’re only a couple more items. We might as well see what they are.”
“I don’t care what they are.”
“You might care about one of them.” Zach held up a large box of condoms.
“Oh.”
He turned the box in his hand. “I’m flattered, but I don’t think I’ll be able to use one hundred of these tonight.”
“One hundred?”
“All different types, sizes, and colors.”
Jade laughed. “Oh, Bre.” She pushed her hair behind one ear. “What’s the last thing?”
“Cherry-flavored lubricant. It looks like she thought of everything.”
“You must think my daughter is crazy.”
“I think your daughter loves you very much and wants you to be happy.”
“That’s true. But we won’t use all this…stuff.”
“Who says we won’t?
”
”
Lynn LaFleur (Rent-A-Stud (Coopers' Companions, #1))
“
The door was still open, so I shut it and was returning to my desk when I braked. There was a backpack resting on the other side of my desk chair. It wasn’t mine. It wasn’t Missy’s. I was pretty sure it wasn’t Holly’s or the cousin’s.
“Shit,” I muttered under my breath.
“Huh?” she barked, her head swinging around to me.
A quick glance confirmed what I already knew. She was drunk.
“Nothing.”
She pulled out one of her shirts, but it wasn’t her normal pajama top. She was really drunk. I picked up Shay’s bag and checked the contents to make sure it was his. It was. I saw his planner with his name scrawled at the top, so I zipped that bag and put it in the back of my closet. No one needed to go through it. I didn’t think Missy would, but I just never knew.
Dropping into my chair, I picked up my phone to text Shay as Missy fell to the floor. I looked up to watch. I couldn’t not see this.
I was tempted to video it, but I was being nice. For once.
As Missy wrestled with her jeans and lifted them over her head to throw into her closet, I texted Shay.
Me: You left your bag here.
Missy let out a half-gurgled moan and a cry of frustration at the same time. She didn’t stand, instead crawling to the closet. She grabbed another pair of pants.
Those weren’t her pajamas, either.
As she pulled them on—or tried since her feet kept eluding the pants’ hole—my phone buzzed back.
Coleman: Can I pick it up in the morning?
I texted back.
Me: When?
Missy got one leg in. Success. I wanted to thrust my fist in the air for her.
My phone buzzed again.
Coleman: Early. My playbook is in there.
I groaned.
Me: When is early? I’m in college, Coleman. Sleeping in is mandatory.
Coleman: Nine too early for you? I can come back to get it now.
Nine was doable.
Me: Let’s do an exchange. You bring me coffee, and I’ll meet you at the parking lot curb with your bag.
Coleman: Done. Decaf okay?
I glared at my phone.
Me: Back to hating you.
Coleman: Never stop that. The world’s equilibrium will be fucked up. I have to know what’s right and wrong. Don’t screw with my moral compass, Cute Ass.
Oh, no! No way.
Me: Third rule of what we don’t talk about. No nicknames unless they reconfirm our mutual dislike for each other. No Cute Ass.
His response was immediate.
Coleman: Cunt Ass?
A second squeak from me.
Me: NO!
I could almost hear him laughing.
Coleman: Relax. I know. Clarke’s Ass. That’s how you are in my phone.
The tension left my shoulders.
Me: See you in the morning. 9 sharp.
Coleman: Night.
I put my phone down, but then it buzzed once again.
Coleman: Ass.
I was struggling to wipe this stupid grin off my face. All was right again. I plugged my phone in, pulled my laptop back toward me, and sent a response to Gage’s email. I’ll sit with you, but only if we’re in the opposing team’s section.
He’d be pissed, but that was the only way. I turned the computer off, and by then Missy was climbing up the ladder in a bright pink silk shirt. The buttons were left buttoned, and her pajama bottoms were a pair of corduroy khakis. I was pretty sure she didn’t brush her teeth, but before my head even hit the pillow, she was snoring
”
”
Tijan (Hate to Love You)