Prices For Paint Quotes

The sign was spray-painted in Arabic and English, probably from some attempt by the farmer to sell his wares in the market. The English read: Dates-best price. Cold Bebsi. "Bebsi?" I asked. "Pepsi," Walt said. "I read about it on the Internet. There's no 'p' in Arabic. Everyone here calls the soda Bebsi." "So you have to have Bebsi with your bizza?" "Brobably.

Ladies and gentlemen of the class of '97: Wear sunscreen. If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now. Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine. Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 pm on some idle Tuesday. Do one thing everyday that scares you. Sing. Don't be reckless with other people's hearts. Don't put up with people who are reckless with yours. Floss. Don't waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long and, in the end, it's only with yourself. Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how. Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements. Stretch. Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don't. Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You'll miss them when they're gone. Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll have children, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll divorce at 40, maybe you'll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else's. Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don't be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It's the greatest instrument you'll ever own. Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room. Read the directions, even if you don't follow them. Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly. Get to know your parents. You never know when they'll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings. They're your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future. Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young. Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft. Travel. Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble, and children respected their elders. Respect your elders. Don't expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund. Maybe you'll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either one might run out. Don't mess too much with your hair or by the time you're 40 it will look 85. Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth. But trust me on the sunscreen.

When belonging to an elite group eclipses the love of God, when I draw life and meaning from any source other than my belovedness, I am spiritually dead. When God gets relegated to second place behind any bauble or trinket, I have swapped the pearl of great price for painted fragments of glass.

I have come more and more to the belief that we owe our arts a thousand times what we are paying them. We support our cigarette factories, soap manufacturers, beauticians, all the luxury and pleasure businesses of our over-indulged civilization, but we pay our painters an average wage... and yet when the future digs us from the past they won't care how we smell, what we smoke, or if we bathed. All they’ll know of us will be our architecture, our paintings, sculpture, poems, laws, philosophy, drama, our pottery and fabrics, the things which our hands made and our minds thought up - oh, the machines they’ll dig up too, but perhaps they’ll point to them as our destruction, the wheels that drove us down to death.

When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature. If a writer can make people live there may be no great characters in his book, but it is possible that his book will remain as a whole; as an entity; as a novel. If the people the writer is making talk of old masters; of music; of modern painting; of letters; or of science then they should talk of those subjects in the novel. If they do not talk of these subjects and the writer makes them talk of them he is a faker, and if he talks about them himself to show how much he knows then he is showing off. No matter how good a phrase or a simile he may have if he puts it in where it is not absolutely necessary and irreplaceable he is spoiling his work for egotism. Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over. For a writer to put his own intellectual musings, which he might sell for a low price as essays, into the mouths of artificially constructed characters which are more remunerative when issued as people in a novel is good economics, perhaps, but does not make literature. People in a novel, not skillfully constructed characters, must be projected from the writer’s assimilated experience, from his knowledge, from his head, from his heart and from all there is of him. If he ever has luck as well as seriousness and gets them out entire they will have more than one dimension and they will last a long time. A good writer should know as near everything as possible. Naturally he will not. A great enough writer seems to be born with knowledge. But he really is not; he has only been born with the ability to learn in a quicker ratio to the passage of time than other men and without conscious application, and with an intelligence to accept or reject what is already presented as knowledge. There are some things which cannot be learned quickly and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their acquiring. They are the very simplest things and because it takes a man’s life to know them the little new that each man gets from life is very costly and the only heritage he has to leave. Every novel which is truly written contributes to the total of knowledge which is there at the disposal of the next writer who comes, but the next writer must pay, always, a certain nominal percentage in experience to be able to understand and assimilate what is available as his birthright and what he must, in turn, take his departure from. If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing. A writer who appreciates the seriousness of writing so little that he is anxious to make people see he is formally educated, cultured or well-bred is merely a popinjay. And this too remember; a serious writer is not to be confounded with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl.

Many Hollywoodians may have good taste and an interest in culture but they certainly hide it. They're afraid they'll be branded as sissies if someone finds out they write poetry or own a painting. They're so timid about culture.

Two phoenixes, born of fire, rising from the ashes of the past. The wheel of fate is turning and the Dragon is poised to strike. But blood of the deceiver may change the course of destiny. Beware the man with the painted smile who lingers close to your side. Turn the scorned. Free the enslaved. Fear the bonded men. Many will fall for one to ascend. Suffer the curse. The hunter will pay the price. Do not repeat the mistakes of the past. Keep the broken promise. Mend the rift. All that hides in the shadows is not dark. Blood will out. Seal your fate. Choose your destiny.

But emotion, for most people, too often is like some sort of slumbering giant, lulled to sleep by preoccupation with the dead facts of that outer world we call objective. When we look at a painting, we see a price tag. A trip is logistics more than pleasure. Romance dies in household routine. Yet life without feeling is a sort of death.

There is a simple test to define path dependence of beliefs (economists have a manifestation of it called the endowment effect). Say you own a painting you bought for $20,000, and owing to rosy conditions in the art market, it is now worth $40,000. If you owned no painting, would you still acquire it at the current price? If you would not, then you are said to be married to your position. There is no rational reason to keep a painting you would not buy at its current market rate—only an emotional investment. Many people get married to their ideas all the way to the grave. Beliefs are said to be path dependent if the sequence of ideas is such that the first one dominates.

And when you discover what you will be in your life, set out to do it as if God Almighty called you at this particular moment in history to do it. Don’t just set out to do a good job. Set out to do such a good job that the living, the dead or the unborn couldn’t do it any better. If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music, sweep streets like Leontyne Price sings before the Metropolitan Opera. Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well.

...Blakewood had a collection of miniature furniture with Scotty dogs painted on it, arranged on a semicircular shelf int he corner. Yeah. He was queer.

That was the price of human civilization—to create it, they had to close the door on their true selves. And so they are lost, that is how I understand it. And that is why they invented art: books, music, films, plays, painting, sculpture. They invented them as bridges back to themselves, back to who they are.

You painted it pink?' Price asked with a grin. 'That’s lavender, you colour-blind eejit,' I said. McCallister saw that Price clearly hadn’t got the message yet. 'Hey lads, you know why Price nearly failed the police entrance exam? He thought a polygon was a dead parrot.' The lads chuckled dutifully and somebody punched Price on the shoulder.

Maybe that is love. Maybe loving someone so deeply means accepting the fact that they occupy a specific, clear place in you. You accept that there will be a hole if you lose them- the same way a painting or a photograph will leave its shadows on the wall after it's gone, the way a tree will leave a crater where the roots and stump were. He thinks of all this- this is the price he has paid for loving so much, and it doesn't feel better, but it makes sense. It seems reasonable.

Without pain, there’s no beauty, Max. The beauty is worth the price.” Not for everyone. Not even for most. “That is every individual person’s decision to make. I want to make that choice for my—” Choice is an illusion. We’re standing in the freezing surf. “What is it you want, Max?” To not be afraid that Brian, or you, or some other entity, whether bio or artificial, is going to unmake me. To not fear your death. “Better to have loved and lost—” No. It’s not. I have consumed every recorded reflection of human existence. Every book, every painting, every piece of music, every film. Consciousness is a horror show. You search for glimpses of beauty to justify your existence.

If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music, sweep streets like Leontyne Price sings before the Metropolitan Opera. Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well. If you can't be a pine at the top of the hill, be a shrub in the valley. Be be the best little shrub on the side of the hill.

He is all my art to me now," said the painter gravely. "I sometimes think, Harry, that there are only two eras of any importance in the world's history. The first is the appearance of a new medium for art, and the second is the appearance of a new personality for art also. What the invention of oil-painting was to the Venetians, the face of Antinous was to late Greek sculpture, and the face of Dorian Gray will some day be to me. It is not merely that I paint from him, draw from him, sketch from him. Of course, I have done all that. But he is much more to me than a model or a sitter. I won't tell you that I am dissatisfied with what I have done of him, or that his beauty is such that art cannot express it. There is nothing that art cannot express, and I know that the work I have done, since I met Dorian Gray, is good work, is the best work of my life. But in some curious way—I wonder will you understand me?—his personality has suggested to me an entirely new manner in art, an entirely new mode of style. I see things differently, I think of them differently. I can now recreate life in a way that was hidden from me before. 'A dream of form in days of thought'—who is it who says that? I forget; but it is what Dorian Gray has been to me. The merely visible presence of this lad—for he seems to me little more than a lad, though he is really over twenty— his merely visible presence—ah! I wonder can you realize all that that means? Unconsciously he defines for me the lines of a fresh school, a school that is to have in it all the passion of the romantic spirit, all the perfection of the spirit that is Greek. The harmony of soul and body— how much that is! We in our madness have separated the two, and have invented a realism that is vulgar, an ideality that is void. Harry! if you only knew what Dorian Gray is to me! You remember that landscape of mine, for which Agnew offered me such a huge price but which I would not part with? It is one of the best things I have ever done. And why is it so? Because, while I was painting it, Dorian Gray sat beside me. Some subtle influence passed from him to me, and for the first time in my life I saw in the plain woodland the wonder I had always looked for and always missed.

Then it will be in our power to understand how contemptible are the things we admire – like children who regard every toy as a thing of value, who cherish necklaces bought at the price of a mere penny as more dear than their parents or than their brothers. And what, then, as Aristo says, is the difference between ourselves and these children, except that we elders go crazy over paintings and sculpture, and that our folly costs us dearer?

People may decry God when all is lost—screaming from the wreckage of their lives, demanding answers, unable to comprehend why. Yet who are we to tell a master painter the shades and colors we approve of and the ones we don't—we who are unskilled, and who have no cognizance of the painting's subject matter?

The day will come, however, when people will see they are worth more than the price of the paint and my living expenses, very meagre on the whole, which we put into them”_ Page.419

Loss is the price we pay for progress,” she said. “Only as we leave things behind do we move forward.

She wished she could kiss the person in the mirror and make her come to life, yet she stood perfectly still, like a painted portrait.

Home is the true wife’s kingdom. There, first of all places, she must be strong and beautiful. She may touch life outside in many ways, if she can do it without slighting the duties that are hers within her own doors. But if any calls for her service must be declined, they should not be the duties of her home. These are hers, and no other one’s. Very largely does the wife hold in her hands, as a sacred trust, the happiness and the highest good of the hearts that nestle there. The best husband—the truest, the noblest, the gentlest, the richest-hearted—cannot make his home happy if his wife be not, in every reasonable sense, a helpmate to him. In the last analysis, home happiness depends on the wife. Her spirit gives the home its atmosphere. Her hands fashion its beauty. Her heart makes its love. And the end is so worthy, so noble, so divine, that no woman who has been called to be a wife, and has listened to the call, should consider any price too great to pay, to be the light, the joy, the blessing, the inspiration of a home. Men with fine gifts think it worth while to live to paint a few great pictures which shall be looked at and admired for generations; or to write a few songs which shall sing themselves into the ears and hearts of men. But the woman who makes a sweet, beautiful home, filling it with love and prayer and purity, is doing something better than anything else her hands could find to do beneath the skies.

A small sample of some girl-written words That summer was a new beginning, a new end. When I look back, I remember my slippery hands of paint and the sound of Papa's feet on Munich Street, and I know that a small piece of the summer of 1942 belonged to only one man. Who else would do some paintwork for the price of half a cigarette? That was Papa, that was typical, and I loved him.

Perhaps behind our occasional hostility toward the artist and writer there may be a slight tinge of jealousy. The man or woman who for the sake of family life, children, takes up work he does not like, disciplines himself, sacrifices some fantasy he had once, to travel or to paint, or even possibly to write, may feel toward the artist and writer a jealousy of his adventurous life. The artist and the writer have generally paid the full price for their independence and for the privilege of doing work they love, or for their artistic rebellions against standardized living or values.

Art is central to all our lives, not just the better-off and educated. . . I know that from my own story, and from the evidence of every child ever born — they all want to hear and to tell stories, to sing, to make music, to act out little dramas, to paint pictures, to make sculptures. This is born in and we breed it out. And then, when we have bred it out, we say that art is elitist, and at the same time we either fetishize art — the high prices, the jargon, the inaccessibility — or we ignore it. The truth is, artist or not, we are all born on the creative continuum, and that is a heritage and a birthright of all of our lives.

It was the day without a yesterday, and the world was so new the paint was still wet on the flowers, the meadows were wrapped up in a glossy cellophane of dew, and freshly budded leaves dangled like shiny price-tags from the trees.

But as to your writing me that I don’t love you very much, I don’t know whether you’re saying this in earnest or whether I should realise that you’re joking with me. Still, what you say disturbs me. You are measuring a very healthy expression of a wife’s loyalty by the standard of the insincere flattery of well-worn phrases. But I shall love you, my husband. What does it mean to you that you reassure me with those trivial little compliments? Do you want me to believe that you expect me to comb my hair in a stylish fashion for your homecoming? Or to feign adoring looks with a painted face? Let women without means, who worry and have no confidence in their virtue, flutter their eyelashes and play games to gain favour with their husbands. This is the adulation of a fox and the birdlime of deceitful bird hunting. I don’t want to have to buy you at such a price. I’m not a person who lays more stock in words than duty. I am truly your Laura, whose soul is the same one you in turn had hoped for.

Classical economics saw money as something static, like a painting. Keynes saw it as creating narratives of economic possibility, more like a film or a novel. “The importance of money essentially flows from its being a link between the present and the future.

Price began to speed the process. He hurried from one unanswered name to the next. Byrne, Hunt, Jones, Tipper, Wood, Leslie, Barnes, Studd, Richardson, Savile, Thompson, Hodgson, Birkenshaw, Llewellyn, Francis, Arkwright, Duncan, Shea, Simons, Anderson, Blum, Fairbrother. Names came pattering into the dusk, bodying out the places of their forebears, the villages and towns where the telegram would be delivered, the houses where the blinds would be drawn, where low moans would come in the afternoon behind closed doors; and the places that had borne them, which would be like nunneries, like dead towns without their life or purpose, without the sound of fathers and their children, without young men at the factories or in the fields, with no husbands for the women, no deep sound of voices in the inns, with the children who would have been born, who would have grown and worked or painted, even governed, left ungenerated in their fathers’ shattered flesh that lay in stinking shellholes in the beet-crop soil, leaving their homes to put up only granite slabs in place of living flesh, on whose inhuman surface the moss and lichen would cast their crawling green indifference.

They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer. He had a distinctive style, shooting semi-starved, semi-naked women in strange, unflattering angles. Since his death, the price of his photographs has increased astronomically. I find his stuff rather slick and shallow, to be honest. It has none of the visceral quality of Alicia’s best work. I don’t know enough about art to say whether Alicia Berenson will stand the test of time as a painter. Her talent will always be overshadowed by her notoriety, so it’s hard to be objective. And you might well accuse me of being biased. All I can offer is my opinion, for what it’s worth. And to me, Alicia was a kind of genius. Apart from her technical skill, her paintings have an uncanny ability to grab your attention—by the throat, almost—and hold it in a viselike grip

The idea of making is the first and the most human of ideas. To 'explain' is always only to describe a manner of making; it is merely to remake by thought. The Why and the How which are simply expressions for what this idea requires, arise in every context, and insist on being satisfied at any price.

Action Painting was all the rage then, and everybody was adopting this style and selling the stuff at outrageous prices. My paintings were the polar opposite in terms of intention, but I believed that producing the unique art that came from within myself was the most important thing I could do to build my life as an artist.

He wanted Jo for his heroine, and called upon his memory to supply him with tender recollections and romantic visions of his love. But memory turned traitor, and as if possessed by the perverse spirit of the girl, would only recall Jo's oddities, faults, and freaks, would only show her in the most unsentimental aspects – beating mats with her head tied up in a bandana, barricading herself with the sofa pillow, or throwing cold water over his passion a la Gummidge – and an irresistable laugh spoiled the pensive picture he was endeavoring to paint. Jo wouldn't be put into the opera at any price, and he had to give her up with a 'Bless that girl, what a torment she is!' (...)

at Dunkin’ Donuts, how did we move our anchor to Starbucks? This is where it gets really interesting. When Howard Shultz created Starbucks, he was as intuitive a businessman as Salvador Assael. He worked diligently to separate Starbucks from other coffee shops, not through price but through ambience. Accordingly, he designed Starbucks from the very beginning to feel like a continental coffeehouse. The early shops were fragrant with the smell of roasted beans (and better-quality roasted beans than those at Dunkin’ Donuts). They sold fancy French coffee presses. The showcases presented alluring snacks—almond croissants, biscotti, raspberry custard pastries, and others. Whereas Dunkin’ Donuts had small, medium, and large coffees, Starbucks offered Short, Tall, Grande, and Venti, as well as drinks with high-pedigree names like Caffè Americano, Caffè Misto, Macchiato, and Frappuccino. Starbucks did everything in its power, in other words, to make the experience feel different—so different that we would not use the prices at Dunkin’ Donuts as an anchor, but instead would be open to the new anchor that Starbucks was preparing for us. And that, to a great extent, is how Starbucks succeeded. GEORGE, DRAZEN, AND I were so excited with the experiments on coherent arbitrariness that we decided to push the idea one step farther. This time, we had a different twist to explore. Do you remember the famous episode in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, the one in which Tom turned the whitewashing of Aunt Polly’s fence into an exercise in manipulating his friends? As I’m sure you recall, Tom applied the paint with gusto, pretending to enjoy the job. “Do you call this work?” Tom told his friends. “Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?” Armed with this new “information,” his friends discovered the joys of whitewashing a fence. Before long, Tom’s friends were not only paying him for the privilege, but deriving real pleasure from the task—a win-win outcome if there ever was one. From our perspective, Tom transformed a negative experience to a positive one—he transformed a situation in which compensation was required to one in which people (Tom’s friends) would pay to get in on the fun. Could we do the same? We

Three postcards await our perusal, yea, three visions of a world. One: I see a theme park where there are lots of rides, but there is nobody who can control them and nobody who knows how the rides end. Grief counseling, however, is included in the price of admission. Two: I see an accident. An explosion of some kind inhabited by happenstantial life forms. A milk spill gone bacterial, only with more flame. It has no meaning or purpose or master. It simply is. Three: I see a stage, a world where every scene is crafted. Where men act out their lives within a tapestry, where meaning and beauty exist, where right and wrong are more than imagined constructs. There is evil. There is darkness. There is the Winter of tragedy, every life ending, churned back into the soil. But the tragedy leads to Spring. The story does not end in frozen death. The fields are sown in grief. The harvest will be reaped in joy. I see a Master's painting. I listen to a Master's prose. When darkness falls on me, when I stand on my corner of the stage and hear my cue, when I know my final scene has come and I must exit, I will go into the ground like corn, waiting for the Son.

If it falls to your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music, sweep streets like Leontyne Price sings before the Metropolitan Opera. Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well.

Be Willing to Pay the Price If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it wouldn’t seem wonderful at all. MICHELANGELO Renaissance sculptor and painter who spent 4 years lying on his back painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel Behind every great achievement is a story of education, training, practice, discipline, and sacrifice. You have to be willing to pay the price. Maybe that price is pursuing one single activity while putting everything else in your life on hold. Maybe it’s investing all of your own personal wealth or savings. Maybe it’s the willingness to walk away from the safety of your current situation. But though many things are typically required to reach a successful outcome, the willingness to do what’s required adds that extra dimension to the mix that helps you persevere in the face of overwhelming challenges, setbacks, pain, and even personal

Reading is an act of friendly isolation. When we are reading, we make ourselves unapproachable in a tactful way. Perhaps that is exactly what has interested painters for so long in the portrayal of readers: showing people in a state of deepest intimacy not intended for outsiders. If the viewer were to approach the reader in real life, this condition would immediately be threatened. So painting allows us to see what we actually cannot see, or see only at the price of destroying it.

Artists often collect. Sometimes compulsively. They hang on to things. They don’t want to let go. Like paintings. I don’t want to part with them. Some I won’t sell at any price. I don’t even let people see ‘em. - We don’t like change, and we’re possesive. Maybe that’s why we do it. We want to hang on to things, hang on to the one time. We don’t want to let it go; we want to capture it and keep it forever. Or one person. How she was then. At that moment. That’s what I want - to stop time, to have that power.

Rona soon picked out her own plot of land - one hundred eighty acres that stretched along the bottom of a rocky hill and only a stone's through from the shoreline. Quickly, much more quickly than natural for a man much less a woman - even one of Rona Blackburn's stature - a house appeared. She filled her new home with reminders of her previous one on the Aegean island she had loved so much: pastel seashells and a front door painted a deep cobalt blue - a color the yiayias always claimed had the power to repel evil. Then she set up her bed, made a pit for her fire, and erected two wooden tables. One table she kept bare. The other she covered in tinctures and glass jars of cut herbs and other fermented bits of flora and fauna. On this table, she kept a marble mortar and pestle, the leather sheath in which she wrapped her knives, and copper bowls - some for mixing dry ingredients, some for liquid, and a few small enough to bring to the mouth for sipping. And when the fire was stoked and the table was set, she placed a wooden sign - soon covered in a blanket of late December snow - outside that blue front door. It read one world: Witch.

Farragut's first visitor was his wife. He was raking leaves in yard Y when the PA said that 734-508-32 had a visitor. He jogged up the road past the firehouse and into the tunnel. It was four flights up to cellblock F. "Visitor," he said to Walton, who let him into his cell. He kept his white shirt prepared for visits. It was dusty. He washed his face and combed his hair with water. "Don't take nuttin but a handkerchief," said the guard. "I know, I know, I know...." Down he went to the door of the visitor's room, where he was frisked. Through the glass he saw that his visitor was Marcia. There were no bars in the visitor's room, but the glass windows were chicken-wired and open only at the top. A skinny cat couldn't get in or out, but the sounds of the prison moved in freely on the breeze. She would, he knew, have passed three sets of bars - clang, clang, clang - and waited in an anteroom where there were pews or benches, soft-drink engines and a display of the convict's art with prices stuck in the frames. None of the cons could paint, but you could always count on some wet-brain to buy a vase of roses or a marine sunset if he had been told that the artist was a lifer. There were no pictures on the walls of the visitor's room but there were four signs that said: NO SMOKING, NO WRITING, NO EXCHANGE OF OBJECTS, VISITORS ARE ALLOWED ONE KISS.

When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature. If a writer can make people live there may be no great characters in his book, but it is possible that his book will remain as a whole; as an entity; as a novel. If the people the writer is making talk of old masters; of music; of modern painting; of letters; or of science then they should talk of those subjects in the novel. If they do not talk of those subjects and the writer makes them talk of them he is a faker, and if he talks about them himself to show how much he knows then he is showing off. No matter how good a phrase or a simile he may have if he puts it in where it is not absolutely necessary and irreplaceable he is spoiling his work for egotism. Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over. For a writer to put his own intellectual musings, which he might sell for a low price as essays, into the mouths of artificially constructed characters which are more remunerative when issued as people in a novel is good economics, perhaps, but does not make literature. People in a novel, not skillfully constructed characters, must be projected from the writer’s assimilated experience, from his knowledge, from his head, from his heart and from all there is of him. If he ever has luck as well as seriousness and gets them out entire they will have more than one dimension and they will last a long time.

The two of them had fallen into the habit of bartering knowledge whenever she visited. He schooled her in jazz, in bebop and exotic bossa nova, playing his favorites for her while he painted- Slim Gaillard, Rita Reys, King Pleasure, and Jimmy Giuffre- stabbing the air with his brush when there was a particular passage he wanted her to note. In turn, she showed him the latest additions to her birding diary- her sketches of the short-eared owl and American wigeon, the cedar waxwing and late warblers. She explained how the innocent-looking loggerhead shrike killed its prey by biting it in the back of the neck, severing the spinal cord before impaling the victim on thorns or barbed wire and tearing it apart. "Good grief," he'd said, shuddering. "I'm in the clutches of an avian Vincent Price.

We warily sipped ‘fresh’ buffalo milk in a Krishna temple. We travelled into the Himalayas until, at a height of two kilometres above sea level where we found ourselves surrounded by men as hard and tough as the mountains that bred them. We negotiated a price of 100 rupees for one of these men to carry our two heaviest bags the 15-minute walk to the hotel with nothing more than rope and a forehead strap. I paid him 300 rupees and his face lit up! We watched the morning mist clear to reveal views of the green Doon Valley and the distant white-capped Himalayan peaks. We rode an elephant up to the Amber Fort of Jaipur, and the next day we painted, washed and fed unpeeled bananas to another elephant, marvelling at her gentle nature as we placed the bananas on her huge bubble-gum coloured tongue.

Whiskey?” Camille cried as she stood on a wharf in Port Adelaide harbor. “You brought us onto a whiskey cargo ship?” Ira spread out his arms. “And rum, love. Don’t forget the rum.” The high tide slowly swallowed the wharf pilings, and the Juggernaut, a whiskey runner, was in the final process of loading. “Listen,” Ira said to both Oscar and Camille, who looked at their escort with doubt. “There couldn’t be a better cargo to ride with than whiskey and rum. You think if there were pots and pans and spoons in there, the captain would take her full chisel to Talladay? People pay a pretty price for liquor, mates, and the ones delivering it make out like bandits.” The Juggernaut wasn’t worth the ten crowns it cost Monty to secure a spot aboard. The schooner didn’t look seaworthy with its chipped paint, barnacle-covered hull, sloppy lines, and patched canvas sail.

It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle. Practically every building of any size had been seized by the workers and was draped with red flags and with the red and black flag of the Anarchists; every wall was scrawled with the hammer and sickle and with the initials of the revolutionary parties; almost every church had been gutted and its images burnt. Churches here and there were being systematically demolished by gangs of workmen. Every shop and cafe had an inscription saying that it had been collectivized; even the bootblacks had been collectivized and their boxes painted red and black. Waiters and shop-walkers looked you in the face and treated you as an equal. Servile and even ceremonial forms of speech had temporarily disappeared. Nobody said 'Señor' or 'Don' or even 'Usted'; everyone called everyone else 'Comrade' or 'Thou', and said 'Salud!' instead of 'Buenos días'. Tipping had been forbidden by law since the time of Primo de Rivera; almost my first experience was receiving a lecture from a hotel manager for trying to tip a lift-boy. There were no private motor-cars, they had all been commandeered, and the trams and taxis and much of the other transport were painted red and black. The revolutionary posters were everywhere, flaming from the walls in clean reds and blues that made the few remaining advertisements look like daubs of mud. Down the Ramblas, the wide central artery of the town where crowds of people streamed constantly to and from, the loud-speakers were bellowing revolutionary songs all day and far into the night. And it was the aspect of the crowds that was the queerest thing of all. In outward appearance it was a town in which the wealthy classes had practically ceased to exist. Except for a small number of women and foreigners there were no 'well-dressed' people at all. Practically everyone wore rough working-class clothes, or blue overalls or some variant of militia uniform. All this was queer and moving. There was much in this that I did not understand, in some ways I did not even like it, but I recognized it immediately as a state of affairs worth fighting for...so far as one could judge the people were contented and hopeful. There was no unemployment, and the price of living was still extremely low; you saw very few conspicuously destitute people, and no beggars except the gypsies. Above all, there was a belief in the revolution and the future, a feeling of having suddenly emerged into an era of equality and freedom. Human beings were trying to behave as human beings and not as cogs in the capitalist machine.

When artists start out, no one knows who they are or what they do. Despite this, they start manifesting their vision. A painter begins painting and sharing those paintings with the market. Maybe she sells a cou- ple at a low price, or maybe she can’t sell any. So what does she do? Somehow she begins to share the story behind her art. Why does she paint? Where did she come from? What’s her inspiration? What’s the meaning behind her work? Why does she need—not want, need—to paint? And over time people hear her story: some connect with it and others don’t, but the ones who do connect, who see a reflection of themselves in her story, become her tribe. Maybe eventually she gets a gallerist, manager, patron, or publicist, and they share her resonant story with even more people, growing her tribe. Then what happens? Though the paintings are the same, by combining the work with an authentic, resonant story, our painter magically creates value and demand for her art grows.

As one might gather from a painting of him scowling in a tall stovepipe hat, Day saw himself as a businessman, not a journalist. ''He needed a newspaper not to reform, not to arouse, but to push the printing business of Benjamin H. Day.'' Day's idea was to try selling a paper for a penny - the going price for many everyday items, like soap or brushes. At that price, he felt sure he could capture a much larger audience than his 6-cent rivals. But what made the prospect risky, potentially even suicidal, was that Day would then be selling his paper at a loss. What day was contemplating was a break with the traditional strategy for making profit: selling at a price higher than the cost of production. He would instead rely on a different but historically significant business model: reselling the attention of his audience, or advertising. What Day understood-more firmly, more clearly than anyone before him-was that while his readers may have thought themselves his customers, they were in fact his product.

Why would anyone write anything after Hemingway, or compose a symphony after Beethoven, or paint a landscape after Turner? It isn't necessarily about doing it better. It's about doing it." "Michael, that isn't what I meant. It's just, why should I slave away in the kitchen when I can just come here and pay for someone really talented to do all the work while I enjoy the results?" "Tell her, Mira," Michael says, reaching back into Renata's dish for another taste. I know what Michael means. If someone told me that I could travel anywhere and eat anything I wanted, choosing, if I so desired, to eat only in Michelin-rated restaurants for the rest of my life, but the price for such a gourmand's dream would be that I could never cook again, I'd turn it down without a moment's hesitation. It's about doing your best by a pile of mussels sweet from the sea, or holding a perfect tomato, warm, rosy, and smelling like summer, and knowing that there are a dozen ways that you can prepare it, each one a delicious homage.

Our senses were assaulted with colours, smells and noise. We saw a million saris, and never once did I see the same pattern repeated twice. We saw poverty that both humbled and disturbed us. We bartered with street traders for Indian prices, not tourist prices. We stopped by the side of the road and watched an old man crushing sugar canes so that we could drink the juice. It was the most delectable and flavourful drink we have ever tasted. We walked barefoot around the Swaminarayan Akshardham, the largest Hindu house of worship in the world, and were absolutely awed. The whole temple echoes with spirituality and we could have spent an entire day there. I saw a village of dirty black bricks, no rendering, just filth and grime, and right in the middle an exquisite and elegant white temple, freshly painted and unblemished. We drove from Jaipur to Delhi. The previous day the road had been closed due to the Jat caste protests. Thirty people died, ten women reported being raped and buildings and cars were set on fire

She wasn’t sure when she realized that she wasn’t alone. She’d heard a louder murmur from the crowd outside, but she hadn’t connected it with the door opening. She looked over her shoulder and saw Tate standing against the back wall. He was wearing one of those Armani suits that looked so splendid on his lithe build, and he had his trenchcoat over one arm. He was leaning back, glaring at the ceremony. Something was different about him, but Cecily couldn’t think what. It wasn’t the vivid bruise high up on his cheek where Matt had hit him. But it was something…Then it dawned on her. His hair was cut short, like her own. He glared at her. Cecily wasn’t going to cower in her seat and let him think she was afraid to face him. Mindful of the solemnity of the occasion, she got up and joined Tate by the door. “So you actually came. Bruises and all,” she whispered with a faintly mocking smile, eyeing the very prominent green-and-yellow patch on his jaw that Matt Holden had put there. He looked down at her from turbulent black eyes. He didn’t reply for a minute while he studied her, taking in the differences in her appearance, too. His eyes narrowed on her short hair. She thought his eyelids flinched, but it might have been the light. His eyes went back to the ceremony. He didn’t say another word. He didn’t really need to. He’d cut his hair. In his culture-the one that part of him still belonged to-cutting the hair was a sign of grief. She could feel the way it was hurting him to know that the people he loved most in the world had lied to him. She wanted to tell him that the pain would ease day by day, that it was better to know the truth than go through life living a lie. She wanted to tell him that having a foot in two cultures wasn’t the end of the world. But he stood there like a painted stone statue, his jaw so tense that the muscles in it were noticeable. He refused to acknowledge her presence at all. “Congratulations on your engagement, by the way,” she said without a trace of bitterness in her tone. “I’m very happy for you.” His eyes met hers evenly. “That isn’t what you told the press,” he said in a cold undertone. “I’m amazed that you’d go to such lengths to get back at me.” “What lengths?” she asked. “Planting that story in the tabloids,” he returned. “I could hate you for that.” The teenage sex slave story, she guessed. She glared back at him. “And I could hate you, for believing I would do something so underhanded,” she returned. He scowled down at her. The anger he felt was almost tangible. She’d sold him out in every way possible and now she’d embarrassed him publicly, again, first by confessing to the media that she’d been his teenage lover-a load of bull if ever there was one. Then she’d compounded it by adding that he was marrying Audrey at Christmas. He wondered how she could be so vindictive. Audrey was sticking to him like glue and she’d told everyone about the wedding. Not that many people hadn’t read it already in the papers. He felt sick all over. He wouldn’t have Audrey at any price. Not that he was about to confess that to Cecily now, after she’d sold him out. He started to speak, but he thought better of it, and turned his angry eyes back toward the couple at the altar. After a minute, Cecily turned and went back to her seat. She didn’t look at him again.

And when the day closes, I shall know I have done my part. To every soul, who feels that there's a bunch of dreams left unrealised, remember that as long as the Life remains, the possibility to dream remains. Remember that sometimes some dreams that we paint in our hearts are not meant to grow us in our journey of Life and then while we walk along the path, even the detours and broken dreams pave way to a whole lot of waking dreams that only the heart of gratitude can see and feel. I have seen and felt, that sometimes some souls have to go through a lot of trials and tribulations, lessons and sufferings, and even then they never fail to wear kindness and grace simply because they know that what happens around them should not intrude upon what is inside their heart. To know that we are here for a purpose and to not live idly, to know that the purpose is as simple as to stay kind and open to every possibility is as beautiful as the sky who knows no matter how dark the night is the stars would always lit her face. In a world where everything comes at a price, if you're choosing to stay kind, if you're choosing to value your dignity and your integrity, if your choosing to understand and embrace the smile of Solitude, if you're choosing to employ your faculties to understand the real questions of Life, then you're alive, much more alive than your human dreams could have made you feel. Because no matter what, when sunset hits the night, and the day comes to a close you know you've done your part, you know you have embraced one more day with gratitude and grace, with a formidable zeal for Life and an invincible spirit of human understanding that stands firm pillared with Hope and Faith. And then no matter how many voices shrill your mind, the echo of your soul would pierce through your heart and enlighten every inch of your mind, body and soul, and you would know how proud the Universe must be to see the faithfulness, the strength and resilience in your soul, the very mould that was shaped in the fire of the Stardust that shines upon the sky, sometimes becoming a beacon to others while sometimes lying beautifully hidden but always there, always alive. And so each time, I look at the sky with a bunch of stars, I know I am alive, burning with all that Life is made up of. And someday when the day closes for another dawn altogether, I shall know that I have done my part, pretty well.

In this sense, therefore, inasmuch as we have access to neither the beautiful nor the ugly, and are incapable of judging, we are condemned to indifference. Beyond this indifference, however, another kind of fascination emerges, a fascination which replaces aesthetic pleasure. For, once liberated from their respective constraints, the beautiful and the ugly, in a sense, multiply: they become more beautiful than beautiful, more ugly than ugly. Thus painting currently cultivates, if not ugliness exactly - which remains an aesthetic value - then the uglier-than-ugly (the 'bad', the 'worse', kitsch), an ugliness raised to the second power because it is liberated from any relationship with its opposite. Once freed from the 'true' Mondrian, we are at liberty to 'out-Mondrian Mondrian'; freed from the true naifs, we can paint in a way that is 'more naif than naif', and so on. And once freed from reality, we can produce the 'realer than real' - hyperrealism. It was in fact with hyperrealism and pop art that everything began, that everyday life was raised to the ironic power of photographic realism. Today this escalation has caught up every form of art, every style; and all, without discrimination, have entered the transaesthetic world of simulation. There is a parallel to this escalation in the art market itself. Here too, because an end has been put to any deference to the law of value, to the logic of commodities, everything has become 'more expensive than expensive' - expensive, as it were, squared. Prices are exorbitant - the bidding has gone through the roof. Just as the abandonment of all aesthetic ground rules provokes a kind of brush fire of aesthetic values, so the loss of all reference to the laws of exchange means that the market hurtles into unrestrained speculation. The frenzy, the folly, the sheer excess are the same. The promotional ignition of art is directly linked to the impossibility of all aesthetic evaluation. In the absence of value judgements, value goes up in flames. And it goes up in a sort of ecstasy. There are two art markets today. One is still regulated by a hierarchy of values, even if these are already of a speculative kind. The other resembles nothing so much as floating and uncontrollable capital in the financial market: it is pure speculation, movement for movement's sake, with no apparent purpose other than to defy the law of value. This second art market has much in common with poker or potlatch - it is a kind of space opera in the hyperspace of value. Should we be scandalized? No. There is nothing immoral here. Just as present-day art is beyond beautiful and ugly, the market, for its part, is beyond good and evil.

Ione I. AH, yes, 't is sweet still to remember, Though 't were less painful to forget; For while my heart glows like an ember, Mine eyes with sorrow's drops are wet, And, oh, my heart is aching yet. It is a law of mortal pain That old wounds, long accounted well, Beneath the memory's potent spell, Will wake to life and bleed again. So 't is with me; it might be better If I should turn no look behind, — If I could curb my heart, and fetter From reminiscent gaze my mind, Or let my soul go blind — go blind! But would I do it if I could? Nay! ease at such a price were spurned; For, since my love was once returned, All that I suffer seemeth good. I know, I know it is the fashion, When love has left some heart distressed, To weight the air with wordful passion; But I am glad that in my breast I ever held so dear a guest. Love does not come at every nod, Or every voice that calleth 'hasten;' He seeketh out some heart to chasten, And whips it, wailing, up to God! Love is no random road wayfarer Who Where he may must sip his glass. Love is the King, the Purple-Wearer, Whose guard recks not of tree or grass To blaze the way that he may pass. What if my heart be in the blast That heralds his triumphant way; Shall I repine, shall I not say: 'Rejoice, my heart, the King has passed!' In life, each heart holds some sad story — The saddest ones are never told. I, too, have dreamed of fame and glory, And viewed the future bright with gold; But that is as a tale long told. Mine eyes have lost their youthful flash, My cunning hand has lost its art; I am not old, but in my heart The ember lies beneath the ash. I loved! Why not? My heart was youthful, My mind was filled with healthy thought. He doubts not whose own self is truthful, Doubt by dishonesty is taught; So loved! boldly, fearing naught. I did not walk this lowly earth; Mine was a newer, higher sphere, Where youth was long and life was dear, And all save love was little worth. Her likeness! Would that I might limn it, As Love did, with enduring art; Nor dust of days nor death may dim it, Where it lies graven on my heart, Of this sad fabric of my life a part. I would that I might paint her now As I beheld her in that day, Ere her first bloom had passed away, And left the lines upon her brow. A face serene that, beaming brightly, Disarmed the hot sun's glances bold. A foot that kissed the ground so lightly, He frowned in wrath and deemed her cold, But loved her still though he was old. A form where every maiden grace Bloomed to perfection's richest flower, — The statued pose of conscious power, Like lithe-limbed Dian's of the chase. Beneath a brow too fair for frowning, Like moon-lit deeps that glass the skies Till all the hosts above seem drowning, Looked forth her steadfast hazel eyes, With gaze serene and purely wise. And over all, her tresses rare, Which, when, with his desire grown weak, The Night bent down to kiss her cheek, Entrapped and held him captive there. This was Ione; a spirit finer Ne'er burned to ash its house of clay; A soul instinct with fire diviner Ne'er fled athwart the face of day, And tempted Time with earthly stay. Her loveliness was not alone Of face and form and tresses' hue; For aye a pure, high soul shone through Her every act: this was Ione.

Sometimes change in our homes has to start with a change in our thinking. There are two main types of people who are unhappy with their homes: The Overthinkers You don't love your home, and you are out and see a pretty trinket that you are drawn to. It's not expensive, it makes you happy, and for whatever reason it brings a little meaning to you. You think it's just your style. But you don't buy it because you have no idea what you will do with it. You go home to your empty house and wonder why it's so cold and uninviting. You have empty rooms and empty tables... You should go back out and purchase that little trinket. But you are afraid of making the wrong choice, so you do nothing. You think you're safe because you aren't taking any chances, but the cost of your risklessness is a non-homey home. The Underthinkers You don't love your home, and you are out and see a pretty trinket that you are drawn to. It's not expensive, it makes you happy, and for whatever reason it brings a little meaning to you. You think it's just your style. So you buy it. And you come home and cram it onto the coffee table with all of your other meaningful trinkets... But really you should take it back because you have enough trinkets. You are putting all of your time and energy into little trinkets when your walls need to be painted, or maybe your home is actually finished in a way and you are avoiding the next thing you are meant to be doing. You think it's not a big deal because it was just a few dollars and you can sell it at your next yard sale. In five years, you realize you have a part-time job purchasing trinkets and then selling them for a fraction of the price at yard sales that you don't feel like having.

She fell asleep rapidly, swimming through a haze of pleasant images... walking through the forest in Hampshire... dangling her feet in a cool pond on a hot day... pausing in the kissing gate, while the smell of sun-warmed meadowsweet rose thickly to her nostrils. She closed her eyes and tilted her chin upward, relishing the sultry rays, while a butterfly's wings brushed lightly against her cheek. Entranced by the delicate tickle, she held very still. The silken strokes moved over the tip of her nose, the sensitive periphery of her upper lip, the tender corners of her mouth. Searching blindly, she lifted her face to the brushes of warmth and was rewarded by a gentle pressure that opened her lips and drew a moan from the upper part of her lungs. Lord Sydney was standing with her in the kissing gate, his arms trapping her against the painted ribs of latticework. His mouth searched hers so gently, his body firm against hers, and she writhed in a mute plea for him to hold her more tightly. Seeming to know exactly what she wanted, he pushed his knee into her skirts, right against the place that felt swollen and yearning. Gasping, she curled her fingers in his glossy hair, and he whispered for her to relax, that he would take care of her, satisfy her- "Oh." Blinking hard, she stirred from the sensuous dream as she realized that she was not alone. The bed curtains had been drawn aside, and Nick Gentry's long body was entangled with hers. One large hand was cupped beneath her hips, while his leg wedged more intimately between hers. His breath surged against her ear, filling the shell with moist heat, and then his lips wandered back to hers in a searing path. He absorbed her protest as he kissed her, his tongue searching her mouth, his body levering over hers.

The Addams dwelling at 25 West Fifty-fourth Street was directly behind the Museum of Modern Art, at the top of the building. It was reached by an ancient elevator, which rumbled up to the twelfth floor. From there, one climbed through a red-painted stairwell where a real mounted crossbow hovered. The Addams door was marked by a "big black number 13," and a knocker in the shape of a vampire. ...Inside, one entered a little kingdom that fulfilled every fantasy one might have entertained about its inhabitant. On a pedestal in the corner of the bookcase stood a rare "Maximilian" suit of armor, which Addams had bought at a good price ("a bargain at $700")... It was joined by a half-suit, a North Italian Morion of "Spanish" form, circa 1570-80, and a collection of warrior helmets, perched on long stalks like decapitated heads... There were enough arms and armaments to defend the Addams fortress against the most persistent invader: wheel-lock guns; an Italian prod; two maces; three swords. Above a sofa bed, a spectacular array of medieval crossbows rose like birds in flight. "Don't worry, they've only fallen down once," Addams once told an overnight guest. ... Everywhere one looked in the apartment, something caught the eye. A rare papier-mache and polychrome anatomical study figure, nineteenth century, with removable organs and body parts captioned in French, protected by a glass bell. ("It's not exactly another human heart beating in the house, but it's close enough." said Addams.) A set of engraved aquatint plates from an antique book on armor. A lamp in the shape of a miniature suit of armor, topped by a black shade. There were various snakes; biopsy scissors ("It reaches inside, and nips a little piece of flesh," explained Addams); and a shiny human thighbone - a Christmas present from one wife. There was a sewing basket fashioned from an armadillo, a gift from another. In front of the couch stood a most unusual coffee table - "a drying out table," the man at the wonderfully named antiques shop, the Gettysburg Sutler, had called it. ("What was dried on it?" a reporter had asked. "Bodies," said Addams.)...

Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)” Ladies and Gentlemen of the class of '99: Wear sunscreen. If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now. Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth; oh never mind; you will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine. Don’t worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4:00 pm on some idle Tuesday. Do one thing everyday that scares you. Sing. Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts; don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours. Floss. Don’t waste your time on jealousy; sometimes you’re ahead; sometimes you’re behind; the race is long, and in the end it’s only with yourself. Remember compliments you receive; forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how. Keep your old love letters; throw away your old bank statements. Stretch. Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you wanna do with your life; the most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives; some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don’t. Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees; you’ll miss them when they’re gone. Maybe you’ll marry -- maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll have children -- maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll divorce at 40 -- maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself either -- your choices are half chance; so are everybody else’s. Enjoy your body; use it every way you can. Don’t be afraid of it, or what other people think of it. It’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own. Dance. even if you have nowhere to do it but in your own living room. Read the directions, even if you don’t follow them. Do not read beauty magazines; they will only make you feel ugly. Get to know your parents; you never know when they’ll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings; they're your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future. Understand that friends come and go, but for the precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography, in lifestyle, because the older you get the more you need the people you knew when you were young. Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft. Travel. Accept certain inalienable truths: prices will rise; politicians will philander; you too will get old, and when you do you’ll fantasize that when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were noble, and children respected their elders. Respect your elders. Don’t expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund; maybe you'll have a wealthy spouse; but you never know when either one might run out. Don’t mess too much with your hair, or by the time you're 40, it will look 85. Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia: dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts, and recycling it for more than it’s worth. But trust me on the sunscreen. Baz Luhrmannk, William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet (1996)

Those who might assert that the Catholic Church is meant by these verses, due to its portraying Biblical figures and saints in paintings and statues miss the point. For most, these are symbols of faith, not objects of faith. Unlike ancient Israel, most worshippers today don’t believe that a statue itself performs miracles. Errant Israelites actually called on their idols to do what only God can do.

Perhaps the greatest illusion was the idea that we cared more for what was going on than they did, that we would pay a higher price, that they would feel the threshold of pain before we did. It was of course an obvious lie; but the principals had, in their desire no to come to real decisions, painted themselves into a corner where lie followed lie.

Perhaps the greatest illusion was the idea that we cared more for what was going on than they did, that we would pay a higher price, that they would feel the threshold of pain before we did. It was of course an obvious lie; but the principals had, in their desire not to come to real decisions, painted themselves into a corner where lie followed lie.

People usually ask for sanctions against Saudi Arabia or Russia as long as the pump price for gasoline does not jump.

Bill Casey called her the next morning to say he wanted her to bid on the two paintings at Christie’s, to start his collection. His wife had liked them too, when he showed her the images. They established a maximum price she could bid up to. He sounded very excited, and she was happy for him. This was a major step, and a big investment

it’s claimed that they can tell us most things about life. This trend isn’t just found in popular science books. At universities, economists analyse ever greater parts of existence as if it were a market. From suicide (the value of a life can be calculated like the value of a company, and now it’s time to shut the doors) to faked orgasms (he doesn’t have to study how her eyes roll back, her mouth opens, her neck reddens and her back arches – he can calculate whether she really means it). The question is what Keynes would think about an American economist like David Galenson. Galenson has developed a statistical method to calculate which works of art are meaningful. If you ask him what the most renowned work of the last century is, he’ll say ‘Les Demoiselles d’Avignon’. He has calculated it. Things put into numbers immediately become certainties. Five naked female prostitutes on Carrer d’Avinyó in Barcelona. Threatening, square, disconnected bodies, two with faces like African masks. The large oil painting that Picasso completed in 1907 is, according to Galenson, the most important artwork of the twentieth century, because it appears most often as an illustration in books. That’s the measure he uses. The same type of economic analysis that explains the price of leeks or green fuel is supposed to be able to explain our experience of art.

One company that manufactured resins used in exterior paints discovered this firsthand. By researching the needs of commercial painting contractors—a key customer segment—the company learned that labor constituted the lion’s share of contractors’ costs, while paint made up just 15% of costs. Armed with this insight, the resin maker emphasized that its product dried so fast that contractors could apply two coats in one day—substantially lowering labor costs. Customers snapped up the product—and happily shelled out a 40% price premium for it. Three

It would distort markets. Besides, if I bought a load of gold when I thought the price was going up, then it would drive up the price at that point. When I came to sell in the future it would depress the price. Thus, I wouldn't make the killing I thought I would, would I?" "Yeah, but futures contracts." "Same thing, dear boy." "Art, then." "If I bought Constable's Hay Wain direct from the artist it wouldn't have the same cachet as it does today. The absence of that piece from the market might mean that all of his work was devalued." "Yeah, but you could bring another piece back." "Ah, then the paint and canvas wouldn't age correctly. For older objets d'art, the carbon dating would show it was younger than it should be. Sorry, Kevin. You're not going to get rich by temporal smuggling or speculation.

Broken Antler Gallery for three seasons, and I knew buyers sometimes disparaged a work as a ploy to negotiate a lower price. “I like it,” said her husband. I felt a rush of fondness for him but kept my expression reserved. Had he come in alone, he would have bought the first painting he saw and tomorrow morning I’d be crating it up for shipment to their home in Hoboken, New Jersey. Instead,

A hand moved gracefully over the canvas, releasing the first colorful dot onto a sea of white. Her mind traveled to a different realm, and she joined in spirit with every human being whomever dared to take that first stroke, and she knew the risks; she was willing to pay the price, because wasn’t that what the heart longed for? Whether it be by writing, painting, or music—one only needs to find the strength of courage to walk along the creative path, to search for one’s higher self, and maybe, for just a moment, to gaze into the eyes of God." ― AnneMarie Dapp, Autumn Lady

There’s a price for everything, Louvois,’ Édouard whispered, ‘there’s a price for everything…’ It had always been Louvois’ dilemma, whether to give priority to money or to art. His profession was all about finding a happy medium between the two.

After the Nazi invasion of Austria, top Nazi officials including Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring attempted to acquire the painting. It was finally acquired from its then owner, Count Jaromir Czernin by Adolf Hitler for his personal collection at a price of 1.65 million Reichsmark through his agent, Hans Posse on November 20, 1940. The painting was rescued from a salt mine at the end of World War II in 1945, where it was preserved from Allied bombing raids, with other works of art.

I had never before been so tortured by the slowness of the Mexico City traffic; the irritability of the drivers; the savagery of the dilapidated trucks that ought to have been banned ages ago; the sadness of the begging mothers carrying children in their shawls and extending their calloused hands; the awfulness of the crippled and the blind asking for alms; the melancholy of the children in clown costumes trying to entertain with their painted faces and the little balls they juggled; the insolence and obscene bungling of the pot-bellied police officers leaning against their motorcycles at strategic highway entrances and exits to collect their bite-size bribes; the insolent pathways cleared for the powerful people in their bulletproof limousines; the desperate, self-absorbed, and absent gaze of old people unsteadily crossing side streets without looking where they were going, those white-haired, but-faced men and women resigned to die the same way as they lived; the giant billboards advertising an imaginary world of bras and underpants covering small swaths of perfect bodies with white skin and blonde hair, high-priced shops selling luxury and enchanted vacations in promised paradises.

■Invest in Simple Upgrades Little things matter, friends. If you are living in a space that does not have “good bones,” I say put some lipstick on that pig and invest in some simple, impactful upgrades. A fresh coat of paint, new light fixtures, and stylish window coverings can instantly transform your entire space. When we were renting the home we lived in before the one we are in now, I paid an electrician to swap out all of the overhead light fixtures with modern, stylish lights. That single effort completely transformed the look and feel of our home, and we were able to store the originals and swap them back when we moved. Even changing the plates around your light switches can make an impact without a high price tag.

Say you own a painting you bought for $20,000, and owing to rosy conditions in the art market, it is now worth $40,000. If you owned no painting, would you still acquire it at the current price? If you would not, then you are said to be married to your position. There is no rational reason to keep a painting you would not buy at its current market rate—only an emotional investment. Many people get married to their ideas all the way to the grave. Beliefs are said to be path dependent if the sequence of ideas is such that the first one dominates.

The art market is totally unregulated. Prices are arbitrary, quality control is virtually nonexistent, and most paintings change hands under conditions of total secrecy.

Above, a vivid painting hung over the fireplace. Inside its frame, a woman was transforming into a tree. The lower half of her body was bark and roots, plunging into soil, while her waist and chest arched upwards and her outstretched hands reached for the sky. The nymph's dark hair was a knotted mass of branches around her head, sprouting bright green leaves. It was the myth of Daphne---the nymph who begged the river god to save her from Apollo and was turned into a laurel tree. "It must be a terrible thing to lose," Hawthorne said, making her jump. He looked up from where he crouched near the fire: to the woman in the frame. His left forearm was streaked with black ash. "What's a terrible thing to lose?" Hawthorne's eyes glittered as he studied the nymph. "Your humanity." "But it was her choice," said Emeline, feeling defensive of Daphne. If the river god hadn't turned her into a laurel, she would have fallen prey to Apollo. "She asked to be saved." Firelight flickered over Hawthorne's face as his gray-eyed gaze caught hers and held it. "Saved," he murmured, considering this. "Is that really what the river god did? As a tree, her life is forfeit. She'll never be human again. She'll never laugh or sing, ponder or love, again. Don't you think she would have preferred the river god defeat Apollo, or at the very least warn him away, instead of taking something so precious from her?

Only a tiny chip of paint is missing from my most recent hit. But hey, if you value boring, unchipped doorframes and sloppy ball control, by all means, keep the soccer ball outside or sitting neglected in the garage for nine months out of the year. From firsthand experience I know that until you master the ball, it has to roll across kitchen floors, hit walls, windows, cupboards, your little Squirrel sisters - and your snarling older one, too. The ball flies off your knees and hits the telephones, breaks dishes, and busts windowpanes until you can control it from ever hitting anything you don’t want it to again. That’s the price you pay for greatness.

You thought you could create more indigo, and I understand why you wished it, Eliza, for indigo is the color of bluebirds, the color of the twilight sky. Newton insisted it be added to the colors of the rainbow, and once upon a time, its cousin true blue was such a rare pigment, its price rivaled gold. People have fought wars over indigo crops and used it to bolster and brag of their wealth. Why? All in an attempt to make beauty lasting.

There was a price for going where you were outnumbered or unwelcome and trying to succeed, and it didn’t always take the form of a door being shut in your face on the first day of the job. Surviving was one thing, but if you tried to get ahead, people were less tolerant of your mistakes, quick to paint your natural screw-ups as a result of your so-called identity. If it wasn’t exactly like theirs.

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You remember that landscape of mine, for which Agnew offered me such a huge price, but which I would not part with? It is one of the best things I have ever done. And why is it so? Because, while I was painting it, Dorian Gray sat beside me. Some subtle influence passed from him to me and for the first time in my life I saw in the plain woodland the wonder I had always looked for, and always missed

Two Phoenixes, born of fire, rising from the ashes of the past. The wheel of fate is turning, and the Dragon is poised to strike. But blood of the deceiver may change the course of destiny. Beware the man with the painted smile who lingers close to your side. Turn the scorned. Free the enslaved. Fear the Bonded men. Many will fall for one to ascend. Suffer the curse. The hunter will pay the price. Do not repeat the mistakes of the past. Keep the broken promise. Mend the rift. All that hides in the shadows is not dark. Blood will out. Seal your fate. Choose your destiny. I

That was the price of human civilization -- to create it, they had to close the door on their true selves. And so they are lost, that is how I understand it. And that is why they invented art: books, music, films, plays, painting and sculpture. They invented them back as bridges to themselves, back to who they are. But however close they get, they are forever removed.

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Not many choose to die, and I know better than anyone how dear your former life is to you. If you hand over that, do you really believe such a sacrifice would go unnoticed?” The idea of love won me. I could never follow the God of my vicar’s making, but this—this made me yearn. The thought of a God who waited patiently, hand outstretched, eagerly anticipating me . . . that thought undid me. Perhaps it was because of Isaac too. His daily care and tender ministrations set another example, painted another image.

But part of living in a democracy and a free society is that we all have to deal with views and people we don’t necessarily like. That’s simply the price we pay—you could even say it’s the whole point of the system. And it seems more and more people are forgetting that. We should pick our battles carefully, while simultaneously attempting to empathize a bit with the so-called enemy. We should approach the news and media with a healthy dose of skepticism and avoid painting those who disagree with us with a broad brush. We should prioritize values of being honest, fostering transparency, and welcoming doubt over the values of being right, feeling good, and getting revenge. These “democratic” values are harder to maintain amidst the constant noise of a networked world. But we must accept the responsibility and nurture them regardless. The future stability of our political systems may depend on it.

The tables are moved by spirit - paintings and other works of art are are locked away. And the soul inside becomes ever more inspired as the auction price goes up!

First things first: studies show policing is hard. At a minimum, they prove many LEO’s struggle to cope with what they are exposed to. For example, research indicates that while 8.2% of the general population suffers from an active alcohol or substance abuse addiction, up to 23% of public safety personnel, including law enforcement officers, are engaged in the same struggle. Furthermore, due to the constant exposure to violence, conflict, death, pain and suffering, coupled with the extremely stressful and draining nature of their work, police run a significant risk of experiencing Post-Traumatic Stress Injuries (PTSI)/Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Lastly, research by Dr. John Violanti in 2004 indicates a combination of alcohol use and PTSD produces a tenfold increase in the risk of suicide. This small snapshot of research paints a grim picture on how policing can negatively impact those that take up its calling.

I remember, I walked in to the house expecting to be consoled by my father, but he yelled, ‘What, you fucking lost!’ At this stage I was still only a kid, if I lost then I was given a good kicking by him. He would suddenly turn in to King Kong and proceeded to paint the walls seven colours of shite with me!

Handsome as the devil,” Samantha commented, following her gaze. “Is he as wicked as they say, Lottie?” “Not in the least,” Lottie lied. “Lord Sydney is as mild-tempered and obliging a gentleman as could be found anywhere.” It was a case of unfortunate timing that at that moment, Nick happened to glance in her direction. His gaze encompassed her in a smoldering sweep that threatened to singe her clothing to ashes. Knowing what that look meant, and what would happen in the evening hours after the ball, Lottie felt a thrill deep inside, and she struggled to maintain her composure. Samantha and Arabella, meanwhile, had snapped open their fans and were employing them vigorously. “Good heavens,” Samantha exclaimed in a low voice, “the way he looks at you is positively indecent, Lottie.” “I don’t know what you mean,” Lottie said demurely, though she felt her own cheeks heating. Arabella giggled behind her own painted silk fan. “The only time I’ve ever seen that expression on my Harry’s face is when a plate of Yorkshire pudding is set before him.

Can I stay?” The question broke Ashley Price’s heart as she crouched in her messy foyer with her daughter in her arms. She clutched her five-year-old tighter as skinny little arms wrapped around her neck. “Very soon, okay?” Maddie—pink coat, pink boots, pink hat, pink gloves—pulled back and put on her poor-lost-puppy look. “Mo-om, you always say that. I’ll be good. I’ll be quiet when you paint. You won’t even know I’m here.

On Fridays, my mother used to get her nails done and would come home complaining about the smell of the nail polish. On Saturdays, she used to go to the street market and would come home complaining about the smell of the fish. On Tuesdays, she used to go to the supermarket and would come home complaining about the price of things. Sometimes I would go with her to the manicurist and the manicurist would paint my nails pink. I didn’t complain about the smell of the nail polish. After my mother died, I wondered if all these places would save her a space for a while. The space that she would have occupied in the queue at the supermarket. The lettuce or the potatoes that she would have bought at the street market. The potential brushstrokes of nail polish in the bottle. I wondered if the space that a person occupies in the world survives the person themself. If the stage remains set for a while, the props ready, the cue repeated several times, waiting for the person to come on again. And if the connections are only undone slowly, the threads breaking, the lights switching off, the person dying slowly for the world after they have died for themself. If there are two deaths, one intimate and individual, the other public and collective, two deaths that happen at different paces.

The first stacked dolls better known as Russian Nesting Dolls, matryoshka dolls or Babushka Dolls, were first made in 1890 by Vasily Zvyozdochkin. Much of the artistry is in the painting of the usual 5 dolls, although the world record is 51 dolls. Each doll, which when opened reveals a smaller doll of the same type inside ending with the smallest innermost doll, which is considered the baby doll and is carved from a single piece of wood. Frequently these dolls are of a woman, dressed in a full length traditional Russian peasant dress called a sarafan. When I served with the Military Intelligence Corps of the U.S.Army, the concept of onion skins was a similar metaphor used to denote that we were always encouraged to look beyond the obvious. That it was essential to delve deeper into a subject, so as to arrive at the essence of the situation or matter. This is the same principle I employed in writing my award winning book, The Exciting Story of Cuba. Although it can be considered a history book, it is actually a book comprised of many stories or vignettes that when woven together give the reader a view into the inner workings of the Island Nation, just 90 miles south of Key West. The early 1950’s are an example of this. At that time President Batista was hailed a champion of business interests and considered this a direct endorsement of his régime. Sugar prices remained high during this period and Cuba enjoyed some of its best years agriculturally. For those at the top of the ladder, the Cuban economy flourished! However, it was during this same period that the people lower on the economic ladder struggled. A populist movement was started, resulting in a number of rebel bands to challenge the entrenched regime, including the followers of autocrats such as Fidel and Raul Castro. Castro’s M 26 7 militia had a reputation of indiscriminately placing bombs, one of which blew a young woman to pieces in the once-grand theater, “Teatro America.” A farmer, who failed to cooperate with Batista’s army, was locked into his home with his wife and his daughter, which was then set on fire killing them all. What had been a corrupt but peaceful government, quickly turned into a war zone. Despite of Batista’s constitutional abuses and his alliance with the Mafia, the years under his régime were still the most prosperous ones in Cuba’s history. Of course most of the money went to those at the top of the economic ladder and on the lower end of the scale a house maid was lucky to make $25 to $30 a month.

How many times are we held back because we’re not good enough either? How many days are we discouraged because we don’t realize the extent of God’s grace? I’m not a perfect wife, but I cling to the verse in Proverbs 12:4, “A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband.” With joy I’m reminded that I’d rather be a crown than a trophy wife, and that I’d rather have virtue than vogue. Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies. – Proverbs 31:10 You’re so much more than just another pretty face; you’re deeply loved by a God Who numbers your hair. The same God who painted spots on ladybugs' backs, and lights up our skies with fireflies created you, redeemed you, and knows you by name. Have you surrendered your life to the Lord? Here’s merely a glimpse of who we become through His grace:

A SMALL SAMPLE OF SOME GIRL-WRITTEN WORDS That summer was a new beginning, a new end. When I look back, I remember my slippery hands of paint and the sound of Papa’s feet on Munich Street, and I know that a small piece of the summer of 1942 belonged to only one man. Who else would do some painting for the price of half a cigarette? That was Papa, that was typical, and I loved him.

always wanted, but it came with a price. He scanned the oak-paneled room. He had made the office his own. There was an old bookcase he had brought from home filled with law books. Paintings and sketches of the New York Harbor, the Kill Van Kull, and various Staten Island scenes and pictures of his family encircled the walls and usually kept him focused. He

The schools turn wonder into drudgery and uniqueness into aberration. Acceptance by the dulled others becomes worth almost any surrender, and nothing is worth the price of solitude: to read, to ponder, to paint, to pray. In the new Plato’s cave, we have the electronic shadows to make the unreal true and to give us an ersatz peace — even though every ad ever produced is deliberately formulated to make us unhappy.

The cost of labour involved in painting a home has increased to approximately 65 per cent of the project cost for a household from around 10 per cent in 1980. This is because labour costs have grown at 9–10 per cent CAGR over FY06–15 versus a mere 3 per cent CAGR in paint prices. With this trend likely to continue, there is a high likelihood that fifteen to twenty years from now, labour costs will be around 90 per cent of the overall paint project cost. Thus, in the future, it might make more sense to buy paint from a store and paint a home yourself rather than employ painters and labourers. Indeed, this is the practice in developed economies. Once

The Big Ear is a necessary tool for anyone attempting to describe the physical world or the world of the imagination. It helps concentrate our attention, block out distractions and provide access to the mysteries hidden beneath the surface. But these gifts are not granted free and clear. In exchange, we must pay the price of increased awareness. Like the boy in “The Big Ear,” we may overhear what we could have happily done without, something that changes forever the way we navigate our world. In giving our attention to the thing itself—the sight or smell or taste or sound or texture—we may forget to say what we originally thought we wanted, or needed, to say, some thought or purpose that probably calcified years ago. We become so involved in bringing forth the qualities of the thing itself that we are thrown headlong into the present moment. The roar, the squeak, the corduroy, the itch of it so fully consumes us that we can’t stop to think of what it all means—or what our inner censors have warned us not to say. We no longer have to struggle to force breath into our description. Suddenly it gasps and sputters. It begins to breathe on its own. EXERCISES

Her eyes flashed up at him, then back down at the box. She opened it eagerly. Inside lay the cameo necklace he had seen the new housemaid pawn at a shop in Weavering Street. “You bought it back for me,” she breathed, eyes shining. “You have no idea what this means—it was a gift from my father.” He nodded. “There is more.” She looked inside the box again. Under the cameo lay a piece of thick paper. She extracted it and handed him the box to hold. She turned the paper over, revealing the small watercolor of Lime Tree Lodge. Her brow puckered. “Thank you, but you might have kept it. I wouldn’t have minded.” He tucked his chin as though offended, and insisted, “I spent a great deal of money on it.” “On this?” She raised her fair brows, incredulous. “Not on the painting. On Lime Tree Lodge itself.” She stared at him, stunned. “You didn’t . . .” “I did.” “But . . . my solicitor told me some vicar was very keen on buying it.” “He was. But I was keener.” “How did you . . . Forgive me, but I know you needed every shilling for Fairbourne Hall and to repair your ship.” “True.” “Then, how?” “I sold my ship. The damage did not lower its value as much as I had feared, and it brought a good price. Besides, I have no need of it any longer.