Poison Apple Quotes

This evening I spied her in the back orchard. I decided to sacrifice one of my better old shirts and carried it out to her. The weather’s been warm of late. Buds on the apple trees are ready to burst. Usually by this time of the year, at that time of day, the back orchard is full of screaming children. Damut’s boys were the only two. They were on the terrace below her, running through the slanted sunlight, chasing each other around tree trunks. She stood above them, like a merlin watching rabbits play.

Grow the lawn and mow the lawn always keep the TV on, brush your teeth and kill the germs, poison apples, poison worms.

I really feel that we're not giving children enough credit for distinguishing what's right and what's wrong. I, for one, devoured fairy tales as a little girl. I certainly didn't believe that kissing frogs would lead me to a prince, or that eating a mysterious apple would poison me, or that with the magical "Bibbity-Bobbity-Boo" I would get a beautiful dress and a pumpkin carriage. I also don't believe that looking in a mirror and saying "Candyman, Candyman, Candyman" will make some awful serial killer come after me. I believe that many children recognize Harry Potter for what it is, fantasy literature. I'm sure there will always be some that take it too far, but that's the case with everything. I believe it's much better to engage in dialog with children to explain the difference between fantasy and reality. Then they are better equipped to deal with people who might have taken it too far.

I was angry with my friend: I told my wrath, my wrath did end. I was angry with my foe; I told it not, my wrath did grow. And I water'd it in fears, Night & morning with my tears; And I sunnéd it with smiles And with soft deceitful wiles. And it grew both day and night, Till it bore an apple bright; And my foe beheld it shine, And he knew that it was mine, And into my garden stole, When the night had veil'd the pole: In the morning glad I see My foe outstretch'd beneath the tree.

When you're five and you hurt, you make a big noise in the world. At ten you whimper. But by the time you make fifteen you begin to eat the poisoned apples that grow on your own inner tree of pain.

The greatest enemy of hunger for God is not poison but apple pie. It is not the banquet of the wicked that dulls our appetite for heaven, but endless nibbling at the table of the world. It is not the X-rated video, but the prime-time dribble of triviality we drink in every night.

Villains were wonderful. They got to be cruel and selfish, to preen in front of mirrors and poison apples, and trap girls on mountains of glass. They indulged all their worst impulses, revenged themselves for the least offense, and took every last thing they wanted. And sure, they wound up in barrels studded with nails, or dancing in iron shoes heated by fire, not just dead, but disgraced and screaming. But before they got what was coming to them, they got to be the fairest in all the land.

Everyone thinks of them in terms of poisoned apples and glass coffins, and forgets that they represent girls who walked into dark forests and remade them into their own reflections.

I believe that the world isn't always what we can see...I believe there are secrets in the woods. And I believe that goodness wins out...So, if someone's changed overnight - by witch curse or poison apple or were-turtle - you have to show them what's good. You show them love. That works a surprising amount of the time.

And Tiffany knew that if a witch started thinking of anyone as "just" anything, that would be the first step on a well-worn path that could lead to, oh, to poisoned apples, spinning wheels, and a too-small stove... and to pain, and terror, and horror and the darkness.

Every plant is an individual. Wrong again. We are not individuals at all, we are all connected. We are individuals the way each blossom on an apple tree is an individual.

You’ve always been the hunger at the heart of me, Red—my teeth, my claws, my poisoned apple.

But here's a great thing about stories: they can be retold.

How stupid that all I have to do is grow two squishy lumps and suddenly I'm man's best friend

You can lose your way anywhere.

Nature Lesson The dress code says we must cover ourselves in ample pants, skirts that reach well below our lascivious knees, polos buttoned over the rim of the canyon, a glimpse of which can send a boy plunging to such depths he may never climb back up to algebra. We say that if a hiker strays off the path, trips, and winds up crippled, is it really the canyon's fault?

Maybe there aren’t any happily ever afters, or white knights who ride in on valiant steeds to save the day. Maybe, in real life, Prince Charming isn’t always perfect – he’s just as flawed as everyone else in the tale. And that princess, alone in her tower? She’s not perfect either. Birds don’t braid her hair every morning, she can’t serenade wild forest creatures into servitude, and she doesn’t even own a ball gown. But she’s also smart enough to know not to accept poisoned apples from strangers, or prick her finger on deadly spindles. She doesn’t wait around for a prince to charge in and slay the dragon. Maybe she saves herself and in the end, rides off into her own goddamned sunset.

If you find the dividing line between fairy tales and reality, let me know. In my mind, the two run together, even though the intersections aren't always obvious. The girl sitting quietly in class or waiting for the bus or roaming the mall doesn't want anyone to know, or doesn't know how to tell anyone, that she is locked in a tower. Maybe she's a prisoner of a story she's heard all her life- that fairest means best, or that bruises prove she is worthy of love.

No need for a bunch of trees. You can lose your way anywhere.

Not foliage green, but of a fusk colour, Not branches smooth, but gnarled and intertangled not apple-tress were there, but thorns with poison.

I believe that the world isn’t always what we can see,” he said. “I believe there are secrets in the woods. And I believe that goodness wins out.” He gave Hazel a serious look. “So, if someone’s changed overnight—by witch curse or poison apple or were-turtle—you have to show them what’s good. You show them love. That works a surprising amount of the time. And if that doesn’t save them, they’re not worth saving.

Rubenesque: the word for masterpiece curves. Screw you, unsalted rice cakes.

I should warn you, Edie. I’m not the prince in this fairy tale. I’m the villain. The poisonous apple, the flame-breathing monster.

For my own part, my constant prayer is that I may know the worst of my case, whatever the knowledge may cost me. I know that an accurate estimate of my own heart can never be otherwise than lowering to my self-esteem; but God forbid that I should be spared the humiliation which springs from the truth! The sweet red apples of self-esteem are deadly poison; who would wish to be destroyed thereby? The bitter fruits of self-knowledge are always healthful, especially if washed down with the waters of repentance, and sweetened with a draught from the wells of salvation; he who loves his own soul will not despise them.

Love is a soft thing. It smells like woodsmoke and sounds like rain. It tastes like sugared apples. It costs nothing to give yet is more precious than a sea of diamonds.

What the miller's daughter should have said from the start or at any point down the line is, no.

And those women were sneaky. They understood that including fantastical elements in their tales- golden eggs, signing harps, talking frogs- worked to mask a deeper purpose....it made the stories look on the surface like 'a mere bubble of nonsense' within which it was possible to 'utter harsh truths, to say what you dare' about the state of women's lives. Because they were just stories, right? Harmless little fantasies?

think of the prequels like snap shots of a magical land you're about to visit soon. I like to think of them as poisoned apples…once you taste them, you’ll never see fairy tales in the same light again.

The glass bottle does not know its own contents. It has no idea whether it is a vessel for the most delicious apple cider, a lovingly crafted wine, or a bitter poison.

The only thing fairytales have taught us is the slipper doesn't always fit, the kiss won't always wake you, and the prince won't always fight for you. However, one thing that rings true, the apple will ALWAYS be poisoned.

Gingerbread I knew I had to get out of there before the icing cracked and they discovered that I'm burnt around the edges, doughy in the center, that what they thought was sugar is salt. If I was a good girl, if I could satisfy their cravings, if every dream in my misshapen head didn't bite, I might have stayed at the table. Wouldn't you run, too, from such voracious love?

Save the sugar for some other girl. This one’s had it up to here with people in general.

I’ll finish your fairy tale. You forgot to mention the snake. In the story the apple poisons the snake, and Eve packs her books and moves out of paradise. The End.

If the devil decided to run for President, do you think he/she would put on their horns and wicked grin, or a suit with an angelic smile? If the wicked witch stayed green and ugly, would she have been able to give Snow White a poisoned apple? And if the Big Bad Wolf had not disguised himself as an old granny, would he have been able to lure Little Red Riding Hood into the house to eat her? And if a drug dealer wanted to seduce some school kids to get on his drugs, would he act like a greedy businessman — or a caring friend? Salt and sugar look exactly the same but taste very different. We live in a world of illusions, one filled with Luciferians acting like righteous men, and righteous men condemned as criminals.

There are two apples, one is green and the other is red. Which apple would the wise man choose? The answer is: I’ll take the one you didn’t choose. You see, you are the fool here, because I poisoned the first apple!

maybe the apple was actually a cock and maybe eve wanted it because adam was too busy, self-absorbed, and distracted to fuck her? maybe the original sin was a man taking a woman for granted • i’ve always liked serpents

Imagine this: Instead of waiting in her tower, Rapunzel slices off her long, golden hair with a carving knife, and then uses it to climb down to freedom. Just as she’s about to take the poison apple, Snow White sees the familiar wicked glow in the old lady’s eyes, and slashes the evil queen’s throat with a pair of sewing scissors. Cinderella refuses everything but the glass slippers from her fairy godmother, crushes her stepmother’s windpipe under her heel, and the Prince falls madly in love with the mysterious girl who dons rags and blood-stained slippers. Imagine this: Persephone goes adventuring with weapons hidden under her dress. Persephone climbs into the gaping chasm. Or, Persephone uses her hands to carve a hole down to hell. In none of these versions is Persephone’s body violated unless she asks Hades to hold her down with his horse-whips. Not once does she hold out on eating the pomegranate, instead biting into it eagerly and relishing the juice running down her chin, staining it red. In some of the stories, Hades never appears and Persephone rules the underworld with a crown of her own making. In all of them, it is widely known that the name Persephone means Bringer of Destruction. Imagine this: Red Riding Hood marches from her grandmother’s house with a bloody wolf pelt. Medusa rights the wrongs that have been done to her. Eurydice breaks every muscle in her arms climbing out of the land of the dead. Imagine this: Girls are allowed to think dark thoughts, and be dark things. Imagine this: Instead of the dragon, it’s the princess with claws and fiery breath who smashes her way from the confines of her castle and swallows men whole.

When God gives you a present, a power, a talent, the Devil also hands you a poisoned apple, so as not to be outdone.

Once there was a girl who longed to be brave enough to stick her finger down her throat, to measure herself by the teaspoon, to shrink to the size of a serving. Once

Gripping his hand, she shook. “The name’s Neve, not damsel in distress.

You’ve always been the hunger at the heart of me, Red–my teeth, my claws, my poisoned apple. Under the spreading chestnut tree, I made you and you made me.

hating people is like a poisoned apple. The more you hated them , the faster the poisons spread.

She’s a poker player’s wet dream. Sorry, sweetheart, you can’t bluff for anything.

Now when I was fifteen, oh I knew it was over The road to enchantment was not mine to take Cause lower calf, upper arm should be half what they are I was breaking the laws that the signmakers made. And all I could eat was the poisonous apple And that's not a story I was meant to survive I was all out of choices, but the woman of voices She turned round the corner with music around her, She gave me the language that keeps me alive

Every night before bed, her mother had told her a story that should have been frightening: Scary Evil Queen. Huntsman ordered to cut out her heart. Lost in dark woods with grabby trees. Dwarves, dwarves, more dwarves. Old peddler lady giving her a strangling ribbon. Old peddler lady giving her a poisoned comb. Old peddler lady giving her a poisoned apple. Crunch. Gasp. Faint (beautifully). Dead sleep. Cold glass coffin. Empty dreams. Then… kiss. Wake. Prince! Cheering dwarves. Huge choreographed dance number. Happily Ever After.

But what's left on earth that I haven't tried?" Prince Lír demanded. "I have swum four rivers, each in full flood and none less than a mile wide. I have climbed seven mountains never before climbed, slept three nights in the Marsh of the Hanged Men, and walked alive out of that forest where the flowers burn your eyes and the nightingales sing poison. I have ended my betrothal to the princess I had agreed to marry — and if you don't think that was a heroic deed, you don't know her mother. I have vanquished exactly fifteen black knights waiting by fifteen fords in their black pavilions, challenging all who come to cross. And I've long since lost count of the witches in the thorny woods, the giants, the demons disguised as damsels; the glass hills, fatal riddles, and terrible tasks; the magic apples, rings, lamps, potions, swords, cloaks, boots, neckties, and nightcaps. Not to mention the winged horses, the basilisks and sea serpents, and all the rest of the livestock." He raised his head, and the dark blue eyes were confused and sad. "And all for nothing," he said. "I cannot touch her, whatever I do. For her sake, I have become a hero — I, sleepy Lír, my father's sport and shame — but I might as well have remained the dull fool I was. My great deeds mean nothing to her.

You expect me to believe you're a witch? A broom riding, cauldron stirring, poison apple witch? Witches are Fae, Angelina," Dasan mocked. "No, you creeper, witches are not Fae. Maybe some are, but there are mortals who practice witchcraft, and I'm one of them!" Angelina almost spit the words at him. "And we don't ride brooms, get real! How Hans Christian Anderson are you, anyway? As for poison apples, you'll be lucky to not get served one in your lifetime! I mean, you and your buddy here turn into giant... what are you... dogs... but you can't believe in a little earth magic? Grow up!" "See, this is the kind of conversation that would crop up on like a third or fourth date," I chimed in, unable to help myself. -told by Finley in The Sacred Oath

She glanced outside at the sky, filled with clouds and smog. All the pollution, all that hell—even the stars didn’t stand a chance.

lettuce

If she had known who was a perfect match for Karen/Kelly, she wouldn’t put cake on her plate, but instead add poison to her coffee.

who all are former villains. How do you like them poison apples?

I've drank her wine - intoxication. Her taste lingers on my tongue And yours And his And hers. She gifts her fruit to all. And like the poisonous apple, Those who indulge Never leave.

What would you think of a man who not only kept an arsenal in his home, but was collecting at enormous financial sacrifice a second arsenal to protect the first one? What would you say if this man so frightened his neighbors that they in turn were collecting weapons to protect themselves from him? What if this man spent ten times as much money on his expensive weapons as he did on the education of his children? What if one of his children criticized his hobby and he called that child a traitor and a bum and disowned it? And he took another child who had obeyed him faithfully and armed that child and sent it out into the world to attack neighbors? What would you say about a man who introduces poisons into the water he drinks and the air he breathes? What if this man not only is feuding with the people on his block but involves himself in the quarrels of others in distant parts of the city and even in the suburbs? Such a man would clearly be a paranoid schizophrenic, Mr. Flanagan, with homicidal tendencies.

The Anorexic Eats a Salad Mountains rise, fall, rise again. Stars complete their slow trek into oblivion. A snail tours the length of China’s Great Wall twice. All those pesky cancers—cured. Somewhere in Lower Manhattan, a barista finally smiles. Roundworms evolve into ovals. Flatworms get chesty. Molasses, a tortoise, and sedimentation run the fifty-yard dash. Results pending. Temps plunge in hell. The devil waxes his skis. She has almost made it through her first bite.

All Souls’ Eve, when the spirits of the dead will come back to the living, dressed as ballerinas and Coke bottles and spacemen and Mickey Mice, and the living will give them candy to keep them from turning vicious. I can still taste that festival: the tart air, caramel in the mouth, the hope at the door, the belief in something for nothing all children take for granted. They won’t get homemade popcorn balls any more, though, or apples: rumors of razor blades abound, and the possibility of poison. Even by the time of my own children, we worried about the apples. There’s too much loose malice blowing around. In Mexico they do this festival the right way, with no disguises. Bright candy skulls, family picnics on the graves, a plate set for each individual guest, a candle for the soul. Everyone goes away happy, including the dead. We’ve rejected that easy flow between dimensions: we want the dead unmentionable, we refuse to name them, we refuse to feed them. Our dead as a result are thinner, grayer, harder to hear, and hungrier.

Inferno: Canto XIII Not yet had Nessus reached the other side, When we had put ourselves within a wood, That was not marked by any path whatever. Not foliage green, but of a dusky colour, Not branches smooth, but gnarled and intertangled, Not apple-trees were there, but thorns with poison. Such tangled thickets have not, nor so dense, Those savage wild beasts, that in hatred hold 'Twixt Cecina and Corneto the tilled places. There do the hideous Harpies make their nests, Who chased the Trojans from the Strophades, With sad announcement of impending doom; Broad wings have they, and necks and faces human, And feet with claws, and their great bellies fledged; They make laments upon the wondrous trees.

And I remember thinking that all these stories started off sounding like the old fairy tales Mom and Dad used to tell me, and instead of witches putting kids in ovens and evil queens conjuring poisoned apples, the fathers and husbands were the monsters doing the unspeakable things to their families, and these stories all ended without anyone saving anybody.

You can't blame her for liking yoga. It's just a weakness that all white chicks have.

beSt frenDS.

You took so long I got bored.” She widened her smile, teeth showing. “Next time freshen up quicker, princess.

Daughters aren’t trash you can toss away, Dad. I had to deal with the mess you left.

This is a poisoned apple, but I can’t stop humping the tree.

She slept deeply the night before—fairy tale–princess sleep, poisoned-apple sleep

As she’d walked along this street, a million stars stretched across an indigo canvas, holding all the freedom she’d yearned for every night.

A mirror that witnessed death was as dear to me as a poisoned apple that steals breath.

I am pinewood / chest pains / poisoned apples / dog-eared pages / and I am the switchblade / in the back pocket of your baby blue jeans / sharp and made for hunting.

I was scared—with that crystalline, childish fear of being caught and punished. That fear thrashed behind my rib cage like a bird in cupped hands, perhaps the last truly childlike instance of that emotion I’d ever feel. That fear is a kind of magic. As you get older, the texture of your fear changes. You’re no longer afraid of the things you had absolute faith in as a child: that you’d die in convulsions from inhaling the gas from a shattered lightbulb, that chewing apple pips brought on death by cyanide poisoning, or that a circus dwarf had actually bounced off a trampoline into the mouth of a hungry hippo. You stop believing in the things my uncle believed in. Even if your mind wants to go there, it has lost the nimbleness needed to make the leap. That magic gets kicked out of you, churched out, shamed out—or worse, you steal it from yourself. It gets embarrassed out of you by the kids who run the same stretch of streets and grown-ups who say it’s time to put away childish things. By degrees, you kill your own magic. Before long your fears become adult ones: crushing debts and responsibilities, sick parents and sick kids, the possibility of dying unremembered or unloved. Fears of not being the person you were so certain you’d grow up to be.

With Nicasia by his side, Cardan drew others to him until he formed a malicious little foursome who prowled the isles of Elfhame looking for trouble. They unravelled precious tapestries and set fire to part of the Crooked Forest. They made their instructors at the palace school weep and made courtiers terrified to cross them. Valerian, who loved cruelty the way some Folk loved poetry. Locke, who had a whole empty house for them to run amok in, along with an endless appetite for merriment. Nicasia, whose contempt for the land made her eager to have all of Elfhame kiss her slipper. And Cardan, who modelled himself on his eldest brother and learned how to use his status to make Folk scrape and grovel and bow and beg, who delighted in being a villain. Villains were wonderful. They got to be cruel and selfish, to preen in front of mirrors and poison apples, and trap girls on mountains of glass. They indulged all their worst impulses, revenged themselves for the least offense, and took every last thing they wanted. And sure, they wound up in barrels studded with nails, or dancing in iron shoes heated by fire, not just dead, but disgraced and screaming. But before they got what was coming to them, they got to be the fairest in the land.

An obsession, a mania, Lib supposed it could be called. A sickness of the mind. Hysteria, as that awful doctor had named it? Anna reminded Lib of a princess under a spell in a fairy tale. What could restore the girl to ordinary life? Not a prince. A magical herb from the world's end? Some shock to jolt a poisoned bite of apple out of her throat? No, something simple as a breath of air: reason. What if Lib shook the girl awake this very minute and said, Come to your senses! But that was part of the definition of madness, Lib supposed, the refusal to accept that one was mad. Standish's wards were full of such people. Besides, could children ever be considered quite of sound mind? Seven was counted the age of reason, but Lib's sense of seven-year-olds was that they still brimmed over with imagination. Children lived to play. Of course they could be put to work, but in spare moments they took their games as seriously as lunatics did their delusions. Like small gods, children formed their miniature worlds out of clay, or even just words. To them, the truth was never simple. But Anna was eleven, which was a far cry from seven, Lib argued with herself. Other eleven-year-olds knew when they'd eaten and when they hadn't; they were old enough to tell make-believe from fact. There was something very different about - very wrong with - Anna O'Donnell.

Not a single family finds itself exempt from that one haunted casualty who suffered irreparable damage in the crucible they entered at birth. Where some children can emerge from conditions of soul-killing abuse and manage to make their lives into something of worth and value, others can’t limp away from the hurts and gleanings time decanted for them in flawed beakers of memory. They carry the family cross up the hill toward Calvary and don’t mind letting every other member of their aggrieved tribe in on the source of their suffering. There is one crazy that belongs to each of us: the brother who kills the spirit of any room he enters; the sister who’s a drug addict in her teens and marries a series of psychopaths, always making sure she bears their children, who carry their genes of madness to the grave. There’s the neurotic mother who’s so demanding that the sound of her voice over the phone can cause instant nausea in her daughters. The variations are endless and fascinating. I’ve never attended a family reunion where I was not warned of a Venus flytrap holding court among the older women, or a pitcher plant glistening with drops of sweet poison trying to sell his version of the family maelstrom to his young male cousins. When the stories begin rolling out, as they always do, one learns of feuds that seem unbrokerable, or sexual abuse that darkens each tale with its intimation of ruin. That uncle hates that aunt and that cousin hates your mother and your sister won’t talk to your brother because of something he said to a date she later married and then divorced. In every room I enter I can sniff out unhappiness and rancor like a snake smelling the nest of a wren with its tongue. Without even realizing it, I pick up associations of distemper and aggravation. As far as I can tell, every family produces its solitary misfit, its psychotic mirror image of all the ghosts summoned out of the small or large hells of childhood, the spiller of the apple cart, the jack of spades, the black-hearted knight, the shit stirrer, the sibling with the uncontrollable tongue, the father brutal by habit, the uncle who tried to feel up his nieces, the aunt too neurotic ever to leave home. Talk to me all you want about happy families, but let me loose at a wedding or a funeral and I’ll bring you back the family crazy. They’re that easy to find.

However, this bottle was not marked 'poison,' so Alice ventured to taste it, and finding it very nice, (it had, in fact, a sort of mixed flavour of cherry-tart, custard, pine-apple, roast turkey, toffee, and hot buttered toast,) she very

Villains were wonderful. They got to be cruel and selfish, to preen in front of mirrors and poison apples, and trap girls on mountains of glass. They indulged all their worst impulses, revenged themselves for the least offense, and took every last thing they wanted. And sure, they wound up in barrels studded with nails, or dancing in iron shoes heated by fire, not just dead, but disgraced and screaming. But before they got what was coming to them, they got to be the fairest in all the land.

Just in time, Evie,” Selena said. “I’ve got everything ready.” I surveyed the outdoor table, immaculately set with nice silver and crisp napkins. Covered dishes steamed with mouthwatering aromas. “We’re having quail, asparagus, and mushroom risotto. Hot apple cobbler for dessert.” I smiled thinly. Martha Stewart called, wants her shtick back. “Can I help?” Jackson snorted. And Selena play-slapped his chest, like he was her mischievous boyfriend. At that, the initial mrowr pfft pfft I’d felt transformed into I will cut a bitch.

Joy always overcooked chicken. She had a terror of salmonella […] She put her fingertips to her hairline. She was sweating. Food poisoning? Savannah’s roast chicken had been so wonderfully tender! Was this the price you had to pay for tender chicken? It was too high a price!

Apple and went on to be a partner in the venture firm Sequoia Capital with Don Valentine) repudiated it by complaining that his reporting had been “siphoned, filtered, and poisoned with gossipy benzene by an editor in New York whose regular task was to chronicle the wayward world of rock-and-roll music.

Prunus persica: peach. While the fruit of this plant is juicy and sweet, the seed-like the seeds of cherries, apples, plums and apricots-is full of poison. Yes, that pit you throw out is a little woody ball packed with cyanide. The Seed Moral of this story? Be careful of what's at the center-yours or anyone else's.

Imagine what it's like to be (untouchable) Better not take a chance on me (untouchable) I'm the bad boy your mama told you about I'm dangerous, without a doubt Even coming off a ten-year drought Untouchable I'm the rose with hidden thorns (untouchable) Don't tell me that you haven't been warned (untouchable) I'm pretty poison under the skin, The bite of the apple that's a mortal sin In a game of love you'll never win Untouchable My reputation's fairly earned (untouchable) If you play with fire, you will get burned (untouchable) Stay out of the kitchen if you can't take the heat, My kisses are deadly as they are sweet, I'm a runaway bus on a dead-end street Untouchable Fools rush in, that's what they say(untouchable) But angels fall, too, most every day (untouchable) I'm the snake in the garden, the siren on the reef I have the face of a saint and the heart of a thief I'll promise you love! And bring you nothing but grief Untouchable Hearing Jonah sing like this was like watching him slice himself open and show off his insides. Why would he do that? Why would be write such a song? And then Emma answered her own question. Because good music always tells the truth, no matter how much it hurts. Emma couldn't be the only one who felt the bite of the blade, but everyone else seemed to take it in stride. Did they know? Did they all know about Jonah? Of course they did. They were there when it happened. They'd allow Jonah to keep the secrets that were most important to him. She knew she shouldn't resent that, but she still did. They must have known she was falling for him. They must have.

When you’re five and you hurt, you make a big noise unto the world. At ten you whimper. But by the time you make fifteen you begin to eat the poisoned apples that grow on your own inner tree of pain. It’s the Western Way of Enlightenment. You begin to cram your fists into your mouth to stifle the screams. You bleed on the inside.

Many had been raped and most of these rape victims had fallen prey to male members of their own family, usually their own fathers. Unmarried women who became pregnant as a result of these rapes were murdered as soon as their condition was discovered to wash away the disgrace and keep the scandal hidden. In some cases the murderer was the rapist himself. Some victims were deliberately poisoned with the pesticides that were used to spray the apple trees in that region famous for its apple production. The death certificate would read: “Death from natural causes.” No doctor was required to obtain a death certificate for these women. Witnesses were sufficient.

Which story are you going to tell us tonight, Mother?" Tootless asked. "One that is very close to my heart," Red said. "It's called 'Beautiful and Brilliant Little Blue Riding Hood'." Just hearing the title made the Lost Boys excitedly clap. "Is it a good story, Mum? Slightly asked. "It's the best story you'll ever hear," Red said. "Does Little Blue die in the end like Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and Rapunzel?" Curly asked. "I just want to know before I get attached." "Those were such sad stories," Nibs said, and shook his head. "I can't believe poor Cinderella slipped while running down the stairs at midnight, or that Snow White choked on the poisoned apple, or when Sleeping Beauty awoke, she discovered the spindle had given her a staph infection." "Poor, poor princesses," the Lost twins sniffled. "Well, these stories are supposed to teach us valuable lessons," Red said. "Never run down stairs, always chew your food, and see a doctor if your skin is punctured by rusty metal." "Is there a lesson in the story of 'Beautiful and Brilliant Little Blue Riding Hood'?" Slightly asked. "You'll have to wait to find out," she teased.

The child affixes one of her little pictures to my refrigerator. She asks, Can you detect the radiation? There is a house, one tree, and grass in dark slashes. A sun shining. Beneath, in her child letters, she has written Chernobyl. At kindergarten they must be having nuclear energy week. One could look at the picture and say everything is in order. No, I say, I cannot see the radiation. The radiation poison, she says, sits inside the apple and the apple looks pretty. Then singsongs, Bury the apple and bury the shovel that buried the apple and put the apple-burier person in a closet forever. We are both thinking Then bury the burier. Both thinking of her picture with no people. The poison sits inside the people and the people still look pretty, she says.

No one has been able to aggregate more intention data on what consumers like than Google. Google not only sees you coming, but sees where you’re going. When homicide investigators arrive at a crime scene and there is a suspect—almost always the spouse—they check the suspect’s search history for suspicious Google queries (like “how to poison your husband”). I suspect we’re going to find that U.S. agencies have been mining Google to understand the intentions of more than some shopper thinking about detergent, but cells looking for fertilizer to build bombs. Google controls a massive amount of behavioral data. However, the individual identities of users have to be anonymized and, to the best of our knowledge, grouped. People are not comfortable with their name and picture next to a list of all the things they have typed into the Google query box. And for good reasons. Take a moment to imagine your picture and your name above everything you have typed into that Google search box. You’ve no doubt typed in some crazy shit that you would rather other people not know. So, Google has to aggregate this data, and can only say that people of this age or people of this cohort, on average, type in these sorts of things into their Google search box. Google still has a massive amount of data it can connect, if not to specific identities, to specific groups.

I was worried about you, Ivy-Divy. You slept like you were a Disney princess who ate a rotten apple.” I arched a brow as I scratched the kitten above its tail. “I think you mean a poisoned apple.” “Whatever. Same difference. Prince Charming over there couldn’t wake you with a kiss,” he said. “That’s all I know.” “You’re going to need more than a Prince Charming to wake you when I knock your ass unconscious,” Ren said with little heat behind the threat, watching Dixon as he curled into a little ball and promptly went to sleep.

I should warn you, Edie. I’m not the prince in this fairy tale. I’m the villain. The poisonous apple, the flame-breathing monster.” “Good. I always enjoyed the broken in the fairy tales better. The apple always looked shinier because I knew it could destroy me. The villain was just damaged and misunderstood, and the monster…” I leaned on my tiptoes, biting the tip of his ear, just barely reaching his impossible height. “I always kept the door to my closet a little ajar as a kid to make sure it could come out in case it wanted to play.

These minor, natural flaws did not explain why hers was but the deceptive beauty of the poisoned apple. It was not merely that she was shallow, a creature of simple malice: within her tiny skull a storm raged, hectic, vicious and vengeful. The depths of her character were murky and she herself, had she made the attempt, would struggle to rationalise her behaviour. In morals she was well-versed, for they had been imparted to her through fables as a young child, yet she could find no trace of villainy in her own actions. In her skewed world-view she was set apart.

Gran had made him suffer through many terrible things in the name of ridding his body of the poison. The first day, in addition to the rotten apple brew she made him guzzle by the jugful, she'd forced him to stand for twenty minutes under the spray of an icy waterfall, then bathe in a tub of boiled milk. On the second day she'd wrapped a chicken gizzard around his neck, stuck a lump of charcoal under his tongue, and made him say the alphabet backward. "What was the alphabet part for?" he'd asked after he finally reached a. "Nothing," Gran had chortled. "I just wanted to hear you say it." Gran delighted in torturing him.

Once we went to a family picnic back when my mother was still speaking to her family. We ate hot dogs and hamburgers that my mom’s dad cooked on the grill, and my mom’s stepmom, a woman she insisted was evil but seemed nice enough to me. She made apple pie for dessert. We ate big, warm slices with rivers of vanilla ice cream melting into the crust. The pie made me feel good inside: warm and full and happy. Then my mom said her stepmom probably made those pies from poisoned apples, and I spent the rest of the night thinking of Snow White eating the poisoned apple and sleeping for years. I was afraid to go to sleep that night.

Stories of the Street" The stories of the street are mine, the Spanish voices laugh. The Cadillacs go creeping now through the night and the poison gas, And I lean from my window sill in this old hotel I chose, Yes one hand on my suicide, one hand on the rose. I know you've heard it's over now and war must surely come, The cities they are broke in half and the middle men are gone. But let me ask you one more time, O children of the dusk, All these hunters who are shrieking now oh do they speak for us? And where do all these highways go, now that we are free? Why are the armies marching still that were coming home to me? O lady with your legs so fine O stranger at your wheel, You are locked into your suffering and your pleasures are the seal. The age of lust is giving birth, and both the parents ask The nurse to tell them fairy tales on both sides of the glass. And now the infant with his cord is hauled in like a kite, And one eye filled with blueprints, one eye filled with night. O come with me my little one, we will find that farm And grow us grass and apples there and keep all the animals warm. And if by chance I wake at night and I ask you who I am, O take me to the slaughterhouse, I will wait there with the lamb. With one hand on the hexagram and one hand on the girl I balance on a wishing well that all men call the world. We are so small between the stars, so large against the sky, And lost among the subway crowds I try to catch your eye.

At the trial in March 1952, Turing pled guilty, though he made clear he felt no remorse. Max Newman appeared as a character witness. Convicted and stripped of his security clearance,VI Turing was offered a choice: imprisonment or probation contingent on receiving hormone treatments via injections of a synthetic estrogen designed to curb his sexual desires, as if he were a chemically controlled machine. He chose the latter, which he endured for a year. Turing at first seemed to take it all in stride, but on June 7, 1954, he committed suicide by biting into an apple he had laced with cyanide. His friends noted that he had always been fascinated by the scene in Snow White in which the Wicked Queen dips an apple into a poisonous brew. He was found in his bed with froth around his mouth, cyanide in his system, and a half-eaten apple by his side. Was that something a machine would have done?

During Snow White's story, her mother had somehow survived sharing a castle with the Greatest Evil the World Has Ever Known and come out of it not only okay but Happily Ever After. What advice would her mother give? Apple knew because Snow White had cross-stitched the words on a pillow and propped it up in the informal receiving room: When Life Is All Dark Woods And Poisoned Apples, Remember You Have Friends. Snow White had stitched messages on other pillows, too, such as: Squirrels Will Never Let You Down, Unless They're Hibernating; There Are Always Birds; Nature Loves A Broom; Love Is Knowing A rabbit Needs You; Hugs Are How It's Done; Double Hugs Are For The Grumpy; Trees And Dogs Are Happy, So Start Barking; and others. Honestly, it was hard to find a sofa in the enormous White Castle that didn't sport a cross-stitched pillow. But the "Remember You Have Friends" one offered the most insight to Apple at the moment.

But believe me, Henry. You’re not the first Snow White I’ve seen, and you probably won’t be the last. You’ll do what you can with the resources you have, and you’ll serve your story by trying to save me.” Sloane dropped her head again. “I should be trying to save you. That would subvert the narrative. But instead here we are, you saving me, or dying in the process. Dying is a lot more likely.” “Only if you take things at face value,” I said. “I’m not going to eat anything you hand me, drink anything you’ve touched, borrow your comb, or put on any of your rings. You know what I will do?” “What?” asked Sloane, not sounding as if she believed that the answer could matter in the slightest. “I’ll shoot you in your goddamn head if I really and truly feel that you’ve become a danger to yourself and others. And then I’ll take your body down to the folks in Agricultural and ask them to use you to fertilize an apple tree. And when you’ve grown to a lovely size and started bearing fruit, I will sit underneath you and not eat a single one of your inevitably poisoned apples.” Sloane glanced at me through her hair, and for a moment I actually saw a wisp of a smile on her face. “You’d do that for me?” she asked.

Most of the garden was devoted to the usual things- lettuces, onions, cabbage, and eggplant- ordinary ingredients for good, honest meals. But then there were the chef's other plants, the ones that made the cooks cross themselves and kiss their thumbnails whenever they were forced to handle them. Take love apples, to start with. Their poisonous reputation was as well known as that of hemlock, and the cooks protested loudly the day the chef put in his seedlings. What if their roots contaminated the onions? What if their fumes caused swoons or fits? What if the odd, tangy smell of their leaves attracted disgruntled ghosts from the nearby dungeons? It took repeated assurances, the installation of a wire enclosure, and the fact that nothing catastrophic followed their planting to keep the staff from uprooting the love apples behind the chef's back. Even so, one cook quit, and another developed a twitchy eye and started nipping at the cooking sherry. After the love apples, the chef put in beans- another rarity from the New World- and then potatoes. Once, he tried something he called maize, but the plants failed, so instead he bought sacks of dried maize from an unknown source. In a giant stone mortar, he ground the dried maize down to a coarse yellow meal from which he made one of his exotic specialties- polenta.

Thank you for coming with me.” She knew it was no small thing. Dom was Monarch of Iona now, the leader of an enclave shattered by war and betrayal. He should have been at home with his people, helping them restore what was nearly lost forever. Instead, he looked grimly down a sand dune, his clothes poorly suited to the climate, his appearance sticking sticking out of the desert like the sorest of thumbs. While so many things had changed, Dom’s ability to look out of place never did. He even wore his usual cloak, a twin to the one he lost months ago. The gray green had become a comfort like nothing else, just like the silhouette of his familiar form. He loomed always, never far from her side. It was enough to make Sorasa’s eyes sting, and turn her face to hide in her hood for a long moment. Dom paid it no notice, letting her recover. Instead, he fished an apple from his saddlebags and took a noisy bite. “I saved the realm,” he said, shrugging. The least I can do is try to see some of it.” Sorasa was used to Elder manners by now. Their distant ways, their inability to understand subtle hints. The side of her mouth raised against her hood, and she turned back to face him, smirking. “Thank you for coming with me,” she said again. “Oh,” he answered, shifting to look at her. The green of his eyes danced, bright against the desert. “Where else would I go?” Then he passed the rest of the apple over to her. She finished the rest without a thought. His hand lingered, though, scarred knuckles on a tattooed arm. She did not push him away. Instead, Sorasa leaned, so that her shoulder brushed his own, putting some of her weight on him. “Am I still a waste of arsenic?” he said, his eyes never moving from her face. Sorasa stopped short, blinking in confusion. “What?” “When we first met.” His own smirk unfurled. “You called me a waste of arsenic.” In a tavern in Byllskos, after I dumped poison in his cup, and watched him drink it all. Sorasa laughed at the memory, her voice echoing over the empty dunes. In that moment, she thought Domacridhan was her death, another assassin sent to kill her. Now she knew he was the opposite entirely. Slowly, she raised her arm and he did not flinch. It felt strange still, terrifying and thrilling in equal measure. His cheek was cool under under her hand, his scars familiar against her palm. Elders were less affected by the desert heat, a fact that Sorasa used to her full advantage. “No,” she answered, pulling his face down to her own. “I would waste all the arsenic in the world on you.” “Is that a compliment, Amhara?” Dom muttered against her lips. No, she tried to reply. On the golden sand, their shadows met, grain by grain, until there was no space left at all.

I am not a Goddess. I am the face of them All, the embodiment of many. I will burn your village to the ground wearing pants. Nourish your soil and scatter new seeds in a skirt that lifts in the breeze. Strike like lightening and change everything you thought you knew. Scorch you and replenish your reservoir. Sing until you weep with joy. I will leave you poetry on your pillow beside a bottle of hemlock. Feed you til' your belly is full. Devour your ego and spit out your falsities in front of you. Steal your favourite things. I will lead you into temptation. Be the ugliest hag you ever did see. Awaken you from your slumber. Hand you a poisoned apple. Light a candle in your darkness. Weave you a dream. Bow at your feet and kiss the ground you walk upon. I will love you like you've never felt love before. Take your breath away with my beauty. Call your demons into the Light and watch them bury you. Make you tremble in ecstasy. I'll answer your prayers. Shake you til' you scream. Retrieve you from the deep. Carry your manifestations inside of me and birth them into Being. Be the wind in your sails. The blood on your sheets. The wish granted from the wild dandelion wheel. The snake in the grass. Tufts of idle time. I will disappear suddenly, wait until you ache for me, and reemerge as if I had never gone. I am not a Goddess. I am the face of them All, the embodiment of many.

Turing was offered a choice: imprisonment or probation contingent on receiving hormone treatments via injections of a synthetic estrogen designed to curb his sexual desires, as if he were a chemically controlled machine. He chose the latter, which he endured for a year. Turing at first seemed to take it all in stride, but on June 7, 1954, he committed suicide by biting into an apple he had laced with cyanide. His friends noted that he had always been fascinated by the scene in Snow White in which the Wicked Queen dips an apple into a poisonous brew. He was found in his bed with froth around his mouth, cyanide in his system, and a half-eaten apple by his side. Was that something a machine would have done? I. Stirling’s formula, which approximates the value of the factorial of a number. II. The display and explanations of the Mark I at Harvard’s science center made no mention of Grace Hopper nor pictured any women until 2014, when the display was revised to highlight her role and that of the programmers. III. Von Neumann was successful in this. The plutonium implosion design would result in the first detonation of an atomic device, the Trinity test, in July 1945 near Alamogordo, New Mexico, and it would be used for the bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, three days after the uranium bomb was used on Hiroshima. With his hatred of both the Nazis and the Russian-backed communists, von Neumann became a vocal proponent of atomic weaponry.

This Compost" Something startles me where I thought I was safest, I withdraw from the still woods I loved, I will not go now on the pastures to walk, I will not strip the clothes from my body to meet my lover the sea, I will not touch my flesh to the earth as to other flesh to renew me. O how can it be that the ground itself does not sicken? How can you be alive you growths of spring? How can you furnish health you blood of herbs, roots, orchards, grain? Are they not continually putting distemper'd corpses within you? Is not every continent work'd over and over with sour dead? Where have you disposed of their carcasses? Those drunkards and gluttons of so many generations? Where have you drawn off all the foul liquid and meat? I do not see any of it upon you to-day, or perhaps I am deceiv'd, I will run a furrow with my plough, I will press my spade through the sod and turn it up underneath, I am sure I shall expose some of the foul meat. 2 Behold this compost! behold it well! Perhaps every mite has once form'd part of a sick person—yet behold! The grass of spring covers the prairies, The bean bursts noiselessly through the mould in the garden, The delicate spear of the onion pierces upward, The apple-buds cluster together on the apple-branches, The resurrection of the wheat appears with pale visage out of its graves, The tinge awakes over the willow-tree and the mulberry-tree, The he-birds carol mornings and evenings while the she-birds sit on their nests, The young of poultry break through the hatch'd eggs, The new-born of animals appear, the calf is dropt from the cow, the colt from the mare, Out of its little hill faithfully rise the potato's dark green leaves, Out of its hill rises the yellow maize-stalk, the lilacs bloom in the dooryards, The summer growth is innocent and disdainful above all those strata of sour dead. What chemistry! That the winds are really not infectious, That this is no cheat, this transparent green-wash of the sea which is so amorous after me, That it is safe to allow it to lick my naked body all over with its tongues, That it will not endanger me with the fevers that have deposited themselves in it, That all is clean forever and forever, That the cool drink from the well tastes so good, That blackberries are so flavorous and juicy, That the fruits of the apple-orchard and the orange-orchard, that melons, grapes, peaches, plums, will none of them poison me, That when I recline on the grass I do not catch any disease, Though probably every spear of grass rises out of what was once a catching disease. Now I am terrified at the Earth, it is that calm and patient, It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions, It turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with such endless successions of diseas'd corpses, It distills such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor, It renews with such unwitting looks its prodigal, annual, sumptuous crops, It gives such divine materials to men, and accepts such leavings from them at last.

...Me, I do not want to go to no suburbans not even Brooklyn. But Joyce wants to integrate. She says America has got two cultures, which should not he divided as they now is, so let's leave Harlem." "Don't you agree that Joyce is right?" "White is right," said Simple, "so I have always heard. But I never did believe it. White folks do so much wrong! Not only do they mistreat me, but they mistreats themselves. Right now, all they got their minds on is shooting off rockets and sending up atom bombs and poisoning the air and fighting wars and Jim Crowing the universe." "Why do you say 'Jim Crowing the universe'?" "Because I have not heard tell of no Negro astronaughts nowhere in space yet. This is serious, because if one of them white Southerners gets to the moon first, COLORED NOT ADMITTED signs will go up all over heaven as sure as God made little green apples, and Dixiecrats will be asking the man in the moon, 'Do you want your daughter to marry a Nigra?' Meanwhile, the N.A.A.C.P. will have to go to the Supreme Court, as usual, to get an edict for Negroes to even set foot on the moon. By that time, Roy Wilkins will be too old to make the trip, and me, too." "But perhaps the Freedom Riders will go into orbit on their own," I said. "Or Harlem might vote Adam Powell into the Moon Congress.'' "One thing I know," said Simple, "is that Martin Luther King will pray himself up there. The moon must be a halfway stop on the way to Glory, and King will probably be arrested. I wonder if them Southerners will take police dogs to the moon?

Toward an Organic Philosophy SPRING, COAST RANGE The glow of my campfire is dark red and flameless, The circle of white ash widens around it. I get up and walk off in the moonlight and each time I look back the red is deeper and the light smaller. Scorpio rises late with Mars caught in his claw; The moon has come before them, the light Like a choir of children in the young laurel trees. It is April; the shad, the hot headed fish, Climbs the rivers; there is trillium in the damp canyons; The foetid adder’s tongue lolls by the waterfall. There was a farm at this campsite once, it is almost gone now. There were sheep here after the farm, and fire Long ago burned the redwoods out of the gulch, The Douglas fir off the ridge; today the soil Is stony and incoherent, the small stones lie flat And plate the surface like scales. Twenty years ago the spreading gully Toppled the big oak over onto the house. Now there is nothing left but the foundations Hidden in poison oak, and above on the ridge, Six lonely, ominous fenceposts; The redwood beams of the barn make a footbridge Over the deep waterless creek bed; The hills are covered with wild oats Dry and white by midsummer. I walk in the random survivals of the orchard. In a patch of moonlight a mole Shakes his tunnel like an angry vein; Orion walks waist deep in the fog coming in from the ocean; Leo crouches under the zenith. There are tiny hard fruits already on the plum trees. The purity of the apple blossoms is incredible. As the wind dies down their fragrance Clusters around them like thick smoke. All the day they roared with bees, in the moonlight They are silent and immaculate. SPRING, SIERRA NEVADA Once more golden Scorpio glows over the col Above Deadman Canyon, orderly and brilliant, Like an inspiration in the brain of Archimedes. I have seen its light over the warm sea, Over the coconut beaches, phosphorescent and pulsing; And the living light in the water Shivering away from the swimming hand, Creeping against the lips, filling the floating hair. Here where the glaciers have been and the snow stays late, The stone is clean as light, the light steady as stone. The relationship of stone, ice and stars is systematic and enduring: Novelty emerges after centuries, a rock spalls from the cliffs, The glacier contracts and turns grayer, The stream cuts new sinuosities in the meadow, The sun moves through space and the earth with it, The stars change places. The snow has lasted longer this year, Than anyone can remember. The lowest meadow is a lake, The next two are snowfields, the pass is covered with snow, Only the steepest rocks are bare. Between the pass And the last meadow the snowfield gapes for a hundred feet, In a narrow blue chasm through which a waterfall drops, Spangled with sunset at the top, black and muscular Where it disappears again in the snow. The world is filled with hidden running water That pounds in the ears like ether; The granite needles rise from the snow, pale as steel; Above the copper mine the cliff is blood red, The white snow breaks at the edge of it; The sky comes close to my eyes like the blue eyes Of someone kissed in sleep. I descend to camp, To the young, sticky, wrinkled aspen leaves, To the first violets and wild cyclamen, And cook supper in the blue twilight. All night deer pass over the snow on sharp hooves, In the darkness their cold muzzles find the new grass At the edge of the snow.

In Muggle fairy tales, magic tends to lie at the root of the hero or heroine’s troubles – the wicked witch has poisoned the apple, or put the princess into a hundred years’ sleep, or turned the prince into a hideous beast.

I gave you passion. you left me with poetry