Proper Way To Write Quotes

Dearest, I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times. And I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can't concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don't think two people could have been happier 'til this terrible disease came. I can't fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can't even write this properly. I can't read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that – everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can't go on spoiling your life any longer. I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been. V.

But my way of writing is rather to think aloud, and follow my own humours, than much to consider who is listening to me; and, if I stop to consider what is proper to be said to this or that person, I shall soon come to doubt whether any part at all is proper.

If I had a friend and loved him because of the benefits which this brought me and because of getting my own way, then it would not be my friend that I loved but myself. I should love my friend on account of his own goodness and virtues and account of all that he is in himself. Only if I love my friend in this way do I love him properly.

Personally, I think so-called "common language" is more interesting and apropos than "proper English"; it's passionate and powerful in ways that "wherefore art thou ass and thy elbow" just isn't.

I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times. And I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can't concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don't think two people could have been happier 'til this terrible disease came. I can't fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can't even write this properly. I can't read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that — everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can't go on spoiling your life any longer. I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been.

...you'd be surprised how many people violate this simple principle every day of their lives and try to fit square pegs into round holes, ignoring the clear reality that Things Are As They Are. We will let a selection from the writings of Chuang-tse illustrate: Hui-tse said to Chuang-tse, "I have a large tree which no carpenter can cut into lumber. Its branches and trunk are crooked and tough, covered with bumps and depressions. No builder would turn his head to look at it. Your teachings are the same - useless, without value. Therefore, no one pays attention to them." ... "You complain that your tree is not valuable as lumber. But you could make use of the shade it provides, rest under its sheltering branches, and stroll beneath it, admiring its character and appearance. Since it would not be endangered by an axe, what could threaten its existence? It is useless to you only because you want to make it into something else and do not use it in its proper way.

Father! My father knows the proper way The nation should be run; He tells us children every day Just what should now be done. He knows the way to fix the trusts, He has a simple plan; But if the furnace needs repairs, We have to hire a man. My father, in a day or two Could land big thieves in jail; There's nothing that he cannot do, He knows no word like "fail." "Our confidence" he would restore, Of that there is no doubt; But if there is a chair to mend, We have to send it out. All public questions that arise, He settles on the spot; He waits not till the tumult dies, But grabs it while it's hot. In matters of finance he can Tell Congress what to do; But, O, he finds it hard to meet His bills as they fall due. It almost makes him sick to read The things law-makers say; Why, father's just the man they need, He never goes astray. All wars he'd very quickly end, As fast as I can write it; But when a neighbor starts a fuss, 'Tis mother has to fight it. In conversation father can Do many wondrous things; He's built upon a wiser plan Than presidents or kings. He knows the ins and outs of each And every deep transaction; We look to him for theories, But look to ma for action

It is a well-known established fact throughout the many-dimensional worlds of the multiverse that most really great discoveries are owed to one brief moment of inspiration. There's a lot of spadework first, of course, but what clinches the whole thing is the sight of, say, a falling apple or a boiling kettle or the water slipping over the edge of the bath. Something goes click inside the observer's head and then everything falls into place. The shape of DNA, it is popularly said, owes its discovery to the chance sight of a spiral staircase when the scientist‘s mind was just at the right receptive temperature. Had he used the elevator, the whole science of genetics might have been a good deal different. This is thought of as somehow wonderful. It isn't. It is tragic. Little particles of inspiration sleet through the universe all the time traveling through the densest matter in the same way that a neutrino passes through a candyfloss haystack, and most of them miss. Even worse, most of the ones that hit the exact cerebral target, hit the wrong one. For example, the weird dream about a lead doughnut on a mile-high gantry, which in the right mind would have been the catalyst for the invention of repressed-gravitational electricity generation (a cheap and inexhaustible and totally non-polluting form of power which the world in question had been seeking for centuries, and for the lack of which it was plunged into a terrible and pointless war) was in fact had by a small and bewildered duck. By another stroke of bad luck, the sight of a herd of wild horses galloping through a field of wild hyacinths would have led a struggling composer to write the famous Flying God Suite, bringing succor and balm to the souls of millions, had he not been at home in bed with shingles. The inspiration thereby fell to a nearby frog, who was not in much of a position to make a startling contributing to the field of tone poetry. Many civilizations have recognized this shocking waste and tried various methods to prevent it, most of them involving enjoyable but illegal attempts to tune the mind into the right wavelength by the use of exotic herbage or yeast products. It never works properly.

If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it. Or, if proper usage gets in the way, it may have to go. I can’t allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative.

I love the way folktale and fantasy tap into the roots of story telling. The paradox, for me, is that by moving a story into the fantastic we can actually bring it closer to the reader, not move it further away. It is more than an escape. When we read of the only daughter of a fisherman (or the third son of a woodcutter) in a fairy tale, we are all that character. That's the underlying pulse beat of such tales. Using the fantastic as a prism for the past, if done properly, removes the tale from distancing specificity. It can't just be read as unique to a time and place; it is universalized in interesting, powerful ways. When I wrote Tigana, about the way tyranny tries to erase identity in conquered peoples, the fantasy setting seems to have done exactly that: I'm asked in places ranging from Korea to Poland to Croatia to Quebec, "Were you writing about us?" I was. All of them. That is the point. The fantastic is a tool in the writer's arsenal, as potentially powerful as any there is, and any tool we have works to the benefit of the reader.

People didn't know how to do that anymore, brew some proper coffee. In the same way as nowadays nobody could write with a pen. Because now it was all computers and espresso machines. And where was the world going if people couldn't even write or brew a pot of coffee?

If you want to properly tell a story, you have to be willing to write it a thousand ways. And then you must be brave enough to share it with others.

It is not easy to properly position and structure a book, not to mention to do the actual writing.

What, after all this time, is the purpose of mass schooling supposed to be? Reading, writing, and arithmetic can’t be the answer, because properly approached those things take less than a hundred hours to transmit — and we have abundant evidence that each is readily self-taught in the right setting and time. Why, then, are we locking kids up in an involuntary network with strangers for twelve years? Surely not so a few of them can get rich? Even if it worked that way, and I doubt that it does, why wouldn’t any sane community look on such an education as positively wrong? It divides and classifies people, demanding that they compulsively compete with each other, and publicly labels the losers by literally de-grading them, identifying them as “low-class” material. And the bottom line for the winners is that they can buy more stuff! I don’t believe that anyone who thinks about that feels comfortable with such a silly conclusion. I can’t help feeling that if we could only answer the question of what it is that we want from these kids we lock up, we would suddenly see where we took a wrong turn. I have enough faith in American imagination and resourcefulness to believe that at that point we’d come up with a better way — in fact, a whole supermarket of better ways.

If you have received a letter inviting you to speak at the dedication of a new cat hospital, and you hate cats, your reply, declining the invitation, does not necessarily have to cover the full range of your emotions. You must make it clear that you will not attend, but you do not have to let fly at the cats. The writer of the letter asked a civil question; attack cats, then, only if you can do so with good humor, good taste, and in such a way that your answer will be courteous as well as responsive. Since you are out of sympathy with cats, you may quite properly give this as a reason for not appearing at the dedicatory ceremonies of a cat hospital. But bear in mind that your opinion of cats was not sought, only your services as a speaker. Try to keep things straight.

(By the way, I spell “Black” with a capital B because I subscribe to all the Black intellectuals and academics and barbershop sages who say that Blackness is as much an uppercase identity as Chinese-ness or Christianity-ness or any other proper-noun identity is. And if Wikipedia is going to insist on capitalizing “Klansman,” then I am certainly going to insist on capitalizing “Black.” No matter what every editor of everything I write tells me—except for the editor of this book. Thanks, Jill.)

I have come to see this fear, this sense of my own imperilment by my creations, as not only an inevitable, necessary part of writing fiction but as virtual guarantor, insofar as such a thing is possible, of the power of my work: as a sign that I am on the right track, that I am following the recipe correctly, speaking the proper spells. Literature, like magic, has always been about the handling of secrets, about the pain, the destruction and the marvelous liberation that can result when they are revealed. Telling the truth, when the truth matters most, is almost always a frightening prospect. If a writer doesn’t give away secrets, his own or those of the people he loves; if she doesn’t court disapproval, reproach and general wrath, whether of friends, family, or party apparatchiks; if the writer submits his work to an internal censor long before anyone else can get their hands on it, the result is pallid, inanimate, a lump of earth. The adept handles the rich material, the rank river clay, and diligently intones his alphabetical spells, knowing full well the history of golems: how they break free of their creators, grow to unmanageable size and power, refuse to be controlled. In the same way, the writer shapes his story, flecked like river clay with the grit of experience and rank with the smell of human life, heedless of the danger to himself, eager to show his powers, to celebrate his mastery, to bring into being a little world that, like God’s, is at once terribly imperfect and filled with astonishing life. Originally published in The Washington Post Book World

Ruskin’s interest in beauty and in its possession led him to five central conclusions. First, beauty was the result of a number of complex factors that affected the mind both psychologically and visually. Second, humans had an innate tendency to respond to beauty and to desire to possess it. Third, there were many lower expressions of this desire for possession (including, as we have seen, buying souvenirs and carpets, carving one’s name on a pillar and taking photographs). Fourth, there was only one way to possess beauty properly, and that was by understanding it, by making oneself conscious of the factors (psychological and visual) responsible for it. And last, the most effective means of pursuing this conscious understanding was by attempting to describe beautiful places through art, by writing about or drawing them, irrespective of whether one happened to have any talent for doing so.

You start into it, inflamed by an idea, full of hope, full indeed of confidence. If you are properly modest, you will never write it at all, so there has to be one delicious moment when you have thought of something, know just how you are going to write it, rush for a pencil, and start buoyed up with exaltation. You then get into difficulties, don’t see your way out, and finally manage to accomplish more or less what you first meant to accomplish, though losing confidence all the time. Having finished it, you know it is absolutely rotten. A couple of months later, you wonder if it may not be all right after all.

In many ways, likability is a very elaborate lie, a performance, a code of conduct dictating the proper way to be. Characters who don't follow this code become unlikable. Critics who criticize a character's unlikability cannot necessarily be faulted. They are merely expressing a wider cultural malaise with all things unpleasant, all things that dare to breach the norm of social acceptability.

I could put down a scene from two days ago right beside one from twenty years earlier, and ask the reader to ponder the relationship between the two. Often the narrator himself would not need to know fully the deeper reasons for a particular juxtaposition. I could see a way of writing that could properly suggest the many layers of self-deception and denial that shrouded any person’s view of their own self and past.

What is it, Master Calligrapher, that little girls do in the way that spiders weave?" sleeve asked primly. The Calligrapher coughed, for his room was very dusty, and there was dust even on his eyelashes, and said: "It is right and proper," he said, "for a girl to read as many books as there are bricks in this city, and then, when she is finished, to begin to write new ones which are made out of the old ones, as this city is made of those stones.

Virginia Woolf's suicide note- Dearest, I feel certain I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times. And I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can't concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don't think two people could have been happier till this terrible disease came. I can't fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can't even write this properly. I can't read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that - everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can't go on spoiling your life any longer.I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been Virginia Woolf filled her pockets with stones and drowned herself.

These truths I hold to be self-evident: That man was made to be happy; that happiness is only attainable through useful effort; that the very best way to help ourselves is to help others, and often the best way to help others is to mind our own business; that useful effort means the proper exercise of all our faculties; that we grow only through exercise; that education should continue through life, and the joys of mental endeavor should be, especially, the solace of the old; that where men alternate work, play and study in right proportion, the organs of the mind are the last to fail, and death for such has no terrors. That

Each sentence should have proper meaning, details should not be needlessly repeated, and every sentence should add to the entertainment value in one way or another.

My thoughts on the descent of our moral prejudices – for that is what this polemic is about – were first set out in a sketchy and provisional way in the collection of aphorisms entitled Human, All Too Human. A Book for Free Spirits, which I began to write in Sorrento during a winter that enabled me to pause, like a wanderer pauses, to take in the vast and dangerous land through which my mind had hitherto travelled. This was in the winter of 1876–7; the thoughts themselves go back further. They were mainly the same thoughts which I shall be taking up again in the present essays – let us hope that the long interval has done them good, that they have become riper, brighter, stronger and more perfect! The fact that I still stick to them today, and that they themselves in the meantime have stuck together increasingly firmly, even growing into one another and growing into one, makes me all the more blithely confident that from the first, they did not arise in me individually, randomly or sporadically but as stemming from a single root, from a fundamental will to knowledge deep inside me which took control, speaking more and more clearly and making ever clearer demands. And this is the only thing proper for a philosopher. We have no right to stand out individually: we must not either make mistakes or hit on the truth individually. Instead, our thoughts, values, every ‘yes’, ‘no’, ‘if ’ and ‘but’ grow from us with the same inevitability as fruits borne on the tree – all related and referring to one another and a testimonial to one will, one health, one earth, one sun. – Do you like the taste of our fruit? – But of what concern is that to the trees? And of what concern is it to us philosophers? . . .

Anger is an energy. It really bloody is. It’s possibly the most powerful one-liner I’ve ever come up with. When I was writing the Public Image Ltd song ‘Rise’, I didn’t quite realize the emotional impact that it would have on me, or anyone who’s ever heard it since. I wrote it in an almost throwaway fashion, off the top of my head, pretty much when I was about to sing the whole song for the first time, at my then new home in Los Angeles. It’s a tough, spontaneous idea. ‘Rise’ was looking at the context of South Africa under apartheid. I’d be watching these horrendous news reports on CNN, and so lines like ‘They put a hotwire to my head, because of the things I did and said’, are a reference to the torture techniques that the apartheid government was using out there. Insufferable. You’d see these reports on TV and in the papers, and feel that this was a reality that simply couldn’t be changed. So, in the context of ‘Rise’, ‘Anger is an energy’ was an open statement, saying, ‘Don’t view anger negatively, don’t deny it – use it to be creative.’ I combined that with another refrain, ‘May the road rise with you’. When I was growing up, that was a phrase my mum and dad – and half the surrounding neighbourhood, who happened to be Irish also – used to say. ‘May the road rise, and your enemies always be behind you!’ So it’s saying, ‘There’s always hope’, and that you don’t always have to resort to violence to resolve an issue. Anger doesn’t necessarily equate directly to violence. Violence very rarely resolves anything. In South Africa, they eventually found a relatively peaceful way out. Using that supposedly negative energy called anger, it can take just one positive move to change things for the better. When I came to record the song properly, the producer and I were arguing all the time, as we always tend to do, but sometimes the arguing actually helps; it feeds in. When it was released in early 1986, ‘Rise’ then became a total anthem, in a period when the press were saying that I was finished, and there was nowhere left for me to go. Well, there was, and I went there. Anger is an energy. Unstoppable.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN we pray? Have you ever really thought about that? When you bow your knee and fold your hands or walk the floor with your eyes closed, opening your heart to heaven, what exactly happens? There are very few references in the Bible about the proper procedures for how to pray, and I believe that is because prayer is more about the heart’s attitude and focus than it is about whether we stand, sit, close our eyes, or any other practice we normally associate with prayer. The truth be told, if we are supposed to pray without ceasing, we should also be able to work on an engine, write an e-mail, give a presentation, change a diaper, write a report, have coffee with a friend, encourage a coworker, pay our bills, and any of the other myriad of things we do in a day while still keeping the communication lines open with heaven. I believe that every day we need focused times of prayer, but at all other times we should be in an attitude of prayer with our spiritual ears open to the thoughts of heaven. There should be seasons of intense, concentrated prayer and fasting with specified hours set aside for intercession, and there should be times when prayer is simply a regular part of our daily routine. A great interest has arisen in the last decade around 24-7 prayer rooms where different church members pray in hour-long blocks so that unbroken intercession is raised up for their city and our world. Other churches dedicate evenings solely to prayer and worship and gather believers to lift their voices in song and petition to the Lord. While all of these are wonderful things to do, at its essence prayer is simply conversation with God. Because we have changed passports from the kingdom of this world to the kingdom of heaven, we are members of God’s family and therefore have the right to talk with our Father anytime we want because He is not limited by time and space. Yet while it isn’t difficult to speak to Him, even as a babe in faith, it does take some maturity to discern His voice from the voice of our own thoughts, dreams, and desires. This is why, when I speak about prayer, I get more questions about hearing the voice of God than anything else.

Oh, as far as they go.” Helmholtz shrugged his shoulders. “But they go such a little way. They aren’t important enough, somehow. I feel I could do something much more important. Yes, and more intense, more violent. But what? What is there more important to say? And how can one be violent about the sort of things one’s expected to write about? Words can be like X-rays, if you use them properly ― they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced. That’s one of the things I try to teach my students ― how to write piercingly. But what on earth’s the good of being pierced by an article about a Community Sing, or the latest improvement in scent organs? Besides, can you make words really piercing ― you know, like the very hardest X-rays ― when you’re writing about that sort of thing? Can you say something about nothing? That’s what it finally boils down to. I try and I try.

It's important to note that neither British nor American English is the "correct" one, and in fact, there's no proper way to speak, or write, or spell. The thing about language is that it can't stay still. Restless and impatient, it races forward without waiting for our dictionaries to catch up. The changes made in this book are meant to make it easier for us to understand each other. That's the entire point of having language in the first place. In fact, I would say that if a person is rude about the way you speak, write, or spell, they are showing a distinct lack of understanding, and it's perfectly reasonable to make up a creative word to describe them.

People didn’t know how to do that anymore, brew some proper coffee. In the same way as nowadays nobody could write with a pen. Because now it was all computers and espresso machines. And where was the world going if people couldn’t even write or brew a pot of coffee?

However, if our judgments are crooked because we don’t use reason, then everything that follows will be crooked, and we will lose our ability to steady ourselves in the chaos and rush of life. If you want to be steady, if you want clarity, proper judgment is the best way.

by a moving reef? A gigantic horned narwhal? A mythical kraken? But I am letting myself be carried away by reveries which I must now put aside, writes Aronnax. Enough of these phantasies. All day Marie-Laure lies on her stomach and reads. Logic, reason, pure science: these, Aronnax insists, are the proper ways to pursue a mystery. Not fables and fairy tales. Her fingers walk the tightropes of sentences; in her imagination, she walks the decks of the speedy two-funneled frigate called the Abraham Lincoln. She watches New York City recede; the forts of New Jersey salute

You begin to experiment with fragmentation. Maybe “experiment” is a generous word; you’re really just unable to focus enough to string together a proper plot. Every narrative you write is smashed into pieces and shoved into a constraint, an Oulipian’s wet dream—lists and television episode synopses and one with the scenes shattered and strung backward. You feel like you can jump from one idea to the next, searching for a kind of aggregate meaning. You know that if you break them and reposition them and unravel them and remove their gears you will able to access their truths in a way you couldn’t before

Almost all genius up to now was one-sided—the result of a sickly constitution. One type had too much sense of the external, the other too much inner sense. Seldom could nature achieve a balance between the two—a complete constitution of genius. Often a perfect proportion arose by chance, but this could never endure because it was not comprehended and fixed by the spirit—they remained fortunate moments. The first genius that penetrated itself found here the exemplary germ of an immeasurable world. It made a discovery which must have been the most remarkable in the history of the world—for with it there begins a whole new epoch for humanity—and true history of all kinds becomes possible for the first time at this stage—for the way that had been traversed hitherto now makes up a proper whole that can be entirely elucidated. That point outside the world is given, and now Archimedes can fulfill his promise.

There's nothing harder than writing something you don't really feel, I mean doing it convincingly; it's not that you don't use the proper words but they're not arranged in the proper way or rather, they obviously are arranged and that's quite enough ... Talking is quite different. With practice, you can make your voice tremble with emotion and that can be enhanced by a few well-placed tears; eyes can express a blend of tenderness and desire; and finally, a few broken words help to reinforce the air of bewilderment and agitation which is the most eloquent proof of love. Above all, the presence of our lover prevents women from thinking and makes us want to surrender.

The foremost duty, therefore, of the rulers of the State should be to make sure that the laws and institutions, the general character and administration of the commonwealth, shall be such as of themselves to realize public well-being and private prosperity. This is the proper scope of wise statesmanship and is the work of the rulers. Now

The central theme of a story is often crystallized by a moral choice the hero must make, typically near the end of the story. Theme is your view of the proper way to act in the world. It is your moral vision, and it is one of the main reasons you are writing your story. Theme is best expressed through the structure of the story, through what I call the moral argument.

Now a business, in my way of thinking, is not a machine. It is a collection of people who are brought together to do work and not to write letters to one another. It is not necessary for any one department to know what any other department is doing. If a man is doing his work he will not have time to take up any other work. It is the business of those who plan the entire work to see that all of the departments are working properly toward the same end. It is not necessary to have meetings to establish good feeling between individuals or departments. It is not necessary for people to love each other in order to work together. Too much good fellowship may indeed be a very bad thing, for it may lead to one man trying to cover up the faults of another. That is bad for both men.

Concerning sin and our proper attitude when we find ourselves in sin. Truly, to have committed a sin is not sinful if we regret what we have done. Indeed, not for anything in time or eternity should we want to commit a sin, neither of a mortal, venial or any other kind. Whoever knows the ways of God should always be mindful of the fact that God, who is faithful and loving, has led us from a sinful life into a godly one, thus making friends of us who were previously enemies, which is a greater achievement even than making a new earth. This is one of the chief reasons why we should be wholly established in God, and it is astonishing how much this inflames us with so great and so strong a love that we strip ourselves entirely of ourselves. Indeed, if you are rightly placed in the will of God, then you should not wish that the sin into which you fell had not happened. Of course, this is not the case because sin was something against God but, precisely because it was something against God, you were bound by it to greater love, you were humbled and brought low. And you should trust God that he would not have allowed it to happen unless he intended it to be for your profit. But when we raise ourselves out of sin and turn away from it, then God in his faithfulness acts as if we had never fallen into sin at all and he does not punish us for our sins for a single moment, even if they are as great as the sum of all the sins that have ever been committed. God will not make us suffer on their account, but he can enjoy with us all the intimacy that he ever had with a creature. If he finds that we are now ready, then he does not consider what we were before. God is a God of the present. He takes you and receives you as he finds you now, not as you have been, but as you are now. God willingly endures all the harm and shame which all our sins have ever inflicted upon him, as he has already done for many years, in order that we should come to a deep knowledge of his love and in order that our love and our gratitude should increase and our zeal grow more intense, which often happens when we have repented of our sins. Therefore God willingly tolerates the hurtfulness of sin and has often done so in the past, most frequently allowing it to come upon those whom he has chosen to raise up to greatness. Now listen! Was there ever anyone dearer to or more intimate with our Lord than the apostles? And yet not one of them escaped mortal sin. They all committed mortal sin. He showed this time and again in the Old and New Testament in those individuals who were to become the closest to him by far; and even today we rarely find that people achieve great things without first going astray. And thus our Lord intends to teach us of his great mercy, urging us to great and true humility and devotion. For, when repentance is renewed, then love too is renewed and grows strong.

What is the proper relationship between dodgy self-absorption and a quest for perceptive understanding of our own journey? Why do we need to determine who we are? Why do I spend hours attempting to evaluate past performance, reconcile exhibited flaws in my personal character, and atone for reprehensible prior behavior? Why cannot a person be satisfied with just being? People tend to spend more time living inside their head than they do confronting reality. Is a person’s constant internal narrative dialogue a form of catharsis? Is a narrative the most apropos method to comprehend what living entails? Do we seek to tell our own stories in order to interpret and organize the reality of the world that surrounds us? Alternatively, is storytelling simply the easiest way for us to apprehend the tenuous notion of the self? Does storytelling enable us to recognize the translucent thread that connects us to the past?

The utmost accolade a writer can receive is that the reader is incognizant of his presence. The writer must put no obstacles in the reader’s way. Therefore I try avoid words that he must puzzle over, or that he cannot gloss from context; and when I make up names, I shun the use of diacritical marks that he must sound out, thus halting the flow; and in general, I try to keep the sentences metrically pleasing, so that they do not obtrude upon the reader’s mind.

There were two separate and notable things that happened that evening, but they happened at the same time, and I do not feel it would write down properly that way, going back and forth, so what I will do is, spell out one, then the other. I always assumed that, in the few books I have read, the author had made some sort of attempt to squeeze real life between the covers. Now I see that this is not so: life is made easier to handle - blinkered, tethered and hobbled - before it is whipped into words and bound between leather.

it was customary in long-past centuries on Earth for every man bold enough to aspire to the right to be considered by others and to consider himself a “conscious thinker” to be instructed, while still in the early years of his responsible existence, that man has two kinds of mentation one kind, mentation by thought, expressed by words always possessing a relative meaning, and another kind, proper to all animals as well as to man, which I would call “mentation by form.” The second kind of mentation, that is, “mentation by form”—through which, by the way, the exact meaning of all writing should be perceived and then assimilated after conscious confrontation with information previously acquired—is determined in people by the conditions of geographical locality, climate, time, and in general the whole environment in which they have arisen and in which their existence has flowed up to adulthood. Thus, in the brains of people of different races living in different geographical localities under different conditions, there arise in regard to one and the same thing or idea quite different independent forms, which during the flow of associations evoke in their being a definite sensation giving rise to a definite picturing, and this picturing is expressed by some word or other that serves only for its outer subjective expression. That is why each word for the same thing or idea almost always acquires for people of different geographical localities and races a quite specific and entirely different so to say “inner content.” In other words, if in the “presence” of a man who has arisen and grown up in a given locality a certain “form” has been fixed as a result of specific local influences and impressions, this “form” evokes in him by association the sensation of a definite “inner content,” and consequently a definite picturing or concept, for the expression of which he uses some word that has become habitual and, as I said, subjective to him, but the hearer of that word—in whose being, owing to the different conditions of his arising and growth, a form with a different “inner content” has been fixed for the given word—will always perceive and infallibly understand that word in quite another sense.

He was the best kind of ordinary man, and when I say that he was an ordinary man, I mean that as high praise, not deprecation. That’s the highest praise you can give a man, that he’s one of the people and becomes distinguished in the service that he gives other people. I don’t know of any higher compliment you can pay a man than that. He was one of the people, and he wanted to stay that way. And he was that way until the day he died. One of the reasons he was assassinated was because he didn’t feel important enough to have the proper guards around him at the Ford’s Theater.

All human beings are driven by "an inner compulsion to understand the world as a meaningful cosmos and to take a position toward it." And that goes for suffering, too...."Human beings apparently want to be edified by their miseries." Sociologist Peter Berger writes, every culture has provided an "explanation of human events that bestows meaning upon the experiences of suffering and evil." Notice Berger did not say people are taught that suffering itself is good or meaningful. What Berger means rather is that it is important for people to see how the experience of suffering does not have to be a waste, and could be a meaningful though painful way to live life well. Because of this deep human "inner compulsion," every culture either must help its people face suffering or risk a loss of credibility. When no explanation at all is given- when suffering is perceived as simply senseless, a complete waste, and inescapable- victims can develop a deep, undying anger and poisonous hate called ressentiment by Friedrich Nietzsche, Max Weber, and others. This ressentiment can lead to serious social instability. And so, to use sociological language, every society must provide a discourse through which its people can make sense of suffering. That discourse includes some understanding of the causes of pain as well as the proper responses to it. And with that discourse, a society equips its people for the battles of living in this world.

who shall in any way, publicly or privately, in print, writing, or by the spoken word, adversely criticize military training at or by Isaiah College, or in any other institution of learning in the United States, or by the state militias, federal forces, or other officially recognized military organizations in this country, shall be liable to immediate dismissal from this college, and any student who shall, with full and proper proof, bring to the attention of the President or any Trustee of the college such malign criticism by any person whatever connected in any way with the institution shall receive extra credits in his course in military training, such credits to apply to the number of credits necessary for graduation.

On the value of the renunciation that we should practise inwardly and outwardly. You should know that no one has ever renounced themselves so much in this life that there was nothing left of themselves to renounce. But there are few people who are properly aware of this and who remain constant in their efforts. It is a fair trade and an equal exchange: to the extent that you depart from things, thus far, no more and no less, God enters into you with all that is his, as far as you have stripped yourself of yourself in all things. It is here that you should begin, whatever the cost, for it is here that you will find true peace, and nowhere else. People should not worry so much about what they do but rather about what they are. If they and their ways are good, then their deeds are radiant. If you are righteous, then what you do will also be righteous. We should not think that holiness is based on what we do but rather on what we are, for it is not our works which sanctify us but we who sanctify our works. However holy our works may be, they do not in any way make us holy in so far as they are works, but it is we, in so far as we are holy and possess fulness of being, who sanctify all our works, whether these be eating, sleeping, waking, or anything at all. Little comes from the works of those whose being is slight. This teaches us then that we should make every effort to be good, and should worry not so much about what we do or the character of our actions, but we should be concerned rather about their ground.

The dominant literary mode of the twentieth century has been the fantastic. This may appear a surprising claim, which would not have seemed even remotely conceivable at the start of the century and which is bound to encounter fierce resistance even now. However, when the time comes to look back at the century, it seems very likely that future literary historians, detached from the squabbles of our present, will see as its most representative and distinctive works books like J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, and also George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm, William Golding’s Lord of the Flies and The Inheritors, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five and Cat’s Cradle, Ursula Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed, Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot-49 and Gravity’s Rainbow. The list could readily be extended, back to the late nineteenth century with H.G. Wells’s The Island of Dr Moreau and The War of the Worlds, and up to writers currently active like Stephen R. Donaldson and George R.R. Martin. It could take in authors as different, not to say opposed, as Kingsley and Martin Amis, Anthony Burgess, Stephen King, Terry Pratchett, Don DeLillo, and Julian Barnes. By the end of the century, even authors deeply committed to the realist novel have often found themselves unable to resist the gravitational pull of the fantastic as a literary mode. This is not the same, one should note, as fantasy as a literary genre – of the authors listed above, only four besides Tolkien would find their works regularly placed on the ‘fantasy’ shelves of bookshops, and ‘the fantastic’ includes many genres besides fantasy: allegory and parable, fairy-tale, horror and science fiction, modern ghost-story and medieval romance. Nevertheless, the point remains. Those authors of the twentieth century who have spoken most powerfully to and for their contemporaries have for some reason found it necessary to use the metaphoric mode of fantasy, to write about worlds and creatures which we know do not exist, whether Tolkien’s ‘Middle-earth’, Orwell’s ‘Ingsoc’, the remote islands of Golding and Wells, or the Martians and Tralfa-madorians who burst into peaceful English or American suburbia in Wells and Vonnegut. A ready explanation for this phenomenon is of course that it represents a kind of literary disease, whose sufferers – the millions of readers of fantasy – should be scorned, pitied, or rehabilitated back to correct and proper taste. Commonly the disease is said to be ‘escapism’: readers and writers of fantasy are fleeing from reality. The problem with this is that so many of the originators of the later twentieth-century fantastic mode, including all four of those first mentioned above (Tolkien, Orwell, Golding, Vonnegut) are combat veterans, present at or at least deeply involved in the most traumatically significant events of the century, such as the Battle of the Somme (Tolkien), the bombing of Dresden (Vonnegut), the rise and early victory of fascism (Orwell). Nor can anyone say that they turned their backs on these events. Rather, they had to find some way of communicating and commenting on them. It is strange that this had, for some reason, in so many cases to involve fantasy as well as realism, but that is what has happened.

No one ever warns you about the complicated and political decisions regarding lessons and classes and sports you’ll have to make when you become a parent. When I was in eighth grade everyone in Home Economics had to care for flour-sack babies for two weeks to teach us about parenting and no one ever mentioned enrolling your flour baby in sports. Basically, everyone got a sealed paper sack of flour that puffed out flour dust whenever you moved it. You were forced to carry it around everywhere because I guess it was supposed to teach you that babies are fragile and also that they leave stains on all of your shirts. At the end of the two weeks your baby was weighed and if it lost too much weight that meant you were too haphazard with it and were not ready to be a parent. It was a fairly unrealistic child-rearing lesson. Basically all we learned about babies in that class was that you could use superglue to seal your baby’s head after you dropped it. And that eighth-grade boys will play keep-away with your baby if they see it so it’s really safer in the trunk of your car. And that you should just wrap your baby up in plastic cling wrap so that its insides don’t explode when it’s rolling around in the trunk on your way home. And also that if you don’t properly store your baby in the freezer your baby will get weevils and then you have to throw your baby in the garbage instead of later making it into a cake that you’ll be graded on. (The next two weeks of class focused on cooking and I used my flour baby to make a pineapple upside-down cake. My baby was delicious. These are the things you never realize are weird until you start writing them down.)

We all know what good writing is: It’s the novel we can’t put down, the poem we never forget, the speech that changes the way we look at the world. It’s the article that tells us when, where, and how, the essay that clarifies what was hazy before. Good writing is the memo that gets action, the letter that says what a phone call can’t. It’s the movie that makes us cry, the TV show that makes us laugh, the lyrics to the song we can’t stop singing, the advertisement that makes us buy. Good writing can take form in prose or poetry, fiction or nonfiction. It can be formal or informal, literary or colloquial. The rules and tools for achieving each are different, but one difficult-to-define quality runs through them all: style. “Effectiveness of assertion” was George Bernard Shaw’s definition of style. “Proper words in proper places” was Jonathan Swift’s. You

And now there can be no fitter occasion than the present to pronounce a left-handed blessing upon the man who invented the American saddle. There is no seat to speak of about it - one might as well sit in a shovel - and the stirrups are nothing but an ornamental nuisance. If I were to write down here all the abuse I expended on those stirrups, it would make a large book, even without pictures. Sometimes I got one foot so far through, that the stirrup partook of the nature of an anklet; sometimes both feet were through, and I was handcuffed by the legs; and sometimes my feet got clear out and left the stirrups wildly dangling about my shins. Even when I was in proper position and carefully balanced upon the balls of my feet, there was no comfort in it, on account of my nervous dread that they were going to slip one way or the other in a moment. But the subject is too exasperating to write about.

What the young writer needs to develop, to achieve his goal of becoming a great artist, is not a set of aesthetic laws but artistic mastery. He cannot hope to develop mastery all at once; it involves too much. But if he pursues his goal in the proper way, he can approach it much more rapidly than he would if he went at it hit-or-miss, and the more successful he is at each stage along the way, the swifter his progress is likely to be. Invariably when the beginning writer hands in a short story to his writing teacher, the story has many things about it that mark it as amateur. But almost as invariably, when the beginning writer deals with some particular, small problem, such as description of a setting, description of a character, or brief dialogue that has some definite purpose, the quality of the work approaches the professional. Having written some small thing very well, he begins to learn confidence.

Romans employed crucifixion on a wide scale—though it was always considered poor taste to discuss it in proper society. Crucifixion was strictly a punishment for criminals and slaves, being designed as much for torture and terror as killing. A condemned man would first be flogged to humiliate and weaken him, then forced to pick up a heavy wooden beam called a patibulum. When he had reached the prison yard or an out-of-the-way spot on the edge of town, the prisoner was stripped naked and fastened to the beam with nails and cords. He was then hauled by ropes to the top of a sturdy pole driven deep in the ground. Sometimes there was a small seat for the tortured man to sit on, but even so the prisoner normally suffered in agony for days until finally succumbing to exhaustion and shock. Suetonius writes without irony when he says that Caesar mercifully cut the throats of the pirates before hanging each one on a cross.

Keeping a new church outwardly focused from the beginning is much easier than trying to refocus an inwardly concerned church. In order to plant a successful church, you have to know that you know that you are undeniably called by God. The call to start a new church plant is not the same as the call to serve in an existing church or work in a ministry-related organization. You may be the greatest preacher this side of Billy Graham but still not be called to start a church. If you think you may have allowed an improper reason, voice or emotion to lead you to the idea of starting a new church, back away now. Spend some more time with God. You don’t want to move forward on a hunch or because you feel “pretty sure” that you should be planting a church. You have to be completely certain. “You’re afraid? So what. Everybody’s afraid. Fear is the common ground of humanity. The question you must wrestle to the ground is, ‘Will I allow my fear to bind me to mediocrity?’” When you think of a people group that you might be called to reach, does your heart break for them? If so, you may want to consider whether God is specifically calling you to reach that group for His kingdom. Is your calling clear? Has your calling been confirmed by others? Are you humbled by the call? Have you acted on your call? Do you know for certain that God has called you to start a new church? Nail it down. When exactly were you called? What were the circumstances surrounding your call? How did it match up with the sources of proper calling? Do you recognize the four specific calls in your calling? How? How does your call measure up to biblical characteristics? What is the emerging vision that God is giving you with this call? As your dependence on God grows, so will your church. One of the most common mistakes that enthusiastic and well-meaning church starters make is to move to a new location and start trying to reach people without thinking through even a short-term strategy. Don’t begin until you count the cost. why would you even consider starting a church (the only institution Jesus left behind and the only one that will last forever) without first developing a God-infused, specific, winning strategy? There are two types of pain: the pain of front-end discipline and the pain of back-end regret. With the question of strategy development, you get to choose which pain you’d rather live with. Basically, a purpose, mission and vision statement provides guiding principles that describe what God has called you to do (mission), how you will do it (purpose) and what it will look like when you get it done (vision). Keep your statement simple. Be as precise as possible. Core values are the filter through which you fulfill your strategy. These are important, because your entire strategy will be created and implemented in such a way as to bring your core values to life. Your strategic aim will serve as the beacon that guides the rest of your strategy. It is the initial purpose for which you are writing your strategy. He will not send more people to you than you are ready to receive. So what can you do? The same thing Dr. Graham does. Prepare in a way that enables God to open the floodgates into your church. If you are truly ready, He will send people your way. If you do the work we’ve described in this chapter, you’ll be able to build your new church on a strong base of God-breathed preparation. You’ll know where you are, where you’re going and how you are going to get there. You’ll be standing in the rain with a huge bucket, ready to take in the deluge. However, if you don’t think through your strategy, write it down and then implement it, you’ll be like the man who stands in the rainstorm with a Dixie cup. You’ll be completely unprepared to capture what God is pouring out. The choice is yours!

Someone’s gotta determine whether you guys are destined for superstardom,” I said, my mind catching up somewhat. A light bulb popped over my head. “Hey, I could be your momager! Get you gigs, do your wardrobe. Ride your coattails all the way to the Grammys.” I was mentally calculating my cut. “Mom, we’re a high school band who haven’t even properly rehearsed yet. Don’t write the acceptance speech just yet,” she chided. “Mmhmm,” I said distractedly, thinking of the Porsche I’d buy with my income. Brad the front desk receptionist wandered past. “Brad!” I called, stopping him. “Lexie’s band is going to be world famous. Want her autograph now so you can sell it on eBay in five years and retire a rich man?” I asked him. He grinned. “You bet. I’ll also be doing a TMZ interview telling all about how I knew her before she was gobbled up by the fame monster,” he responded without missing a beat. I gave him a thumbs up and turned to Lexie, grinning. She had her head in her hands.

After Bailey came Samuel Johnson, His Cantankerousness. Son of a London bookseller, a university dropout, afflicted with depression and what modern doctors think was likely Tourette’s—“a man of bizarre appearance, uncouth habits, and minimal qualifications”—Johnson was bewilderingly chosen by a group of English booksellers and authors to write the authoritative dictionary of English. Because of the seriousness of the charge, and because Johnson was scholarly but not a proper scholar, he began work on his dictionary the way that all of us now do: he read. He focused on the great works of English literature—Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Locke, Pope—but also took in more mundane, less elevated works. Among the books that crossed his desk were research on fossils, medical texts, treatises on education, poetry, legal writing, sermons, periodicals, collections of personal letters, scientific explorations of color, books debunking common myths and superstitions of the day, abridged histories of the world, and other dictionaries.

On undetached people who are full of self-will.4 People say: ‘O Lord, I wish that I stood as well with God and that I had as much devotion and peace with God as other people, and that I could be like them or could be as poor as they are.’ Or they say: ‘It never works for me unless I am in this or that particular place and do this or that particular thing. I must go to somewhere remote or live in a hermitage or a monastery.’ Truly, it is you who are the cause of this yourself, and nothing else. It is your own self-will, even if you don’t know it or this doesn’t seem to you to be the case. The lack of peace that you feel can only come from your own self-will, whether you are aware of this or not. Whatever we think – that we should avoid certain things and seek out others, whether these be places or people, particular forms of devotion, this group of people or this kind of activity – these are not to blame for the fact that you are held back by devotional practices and by things; rather it is you as you exist in these things who hold yourself back, for you do not stand in the proper relation to them. Start with yourself therefore and take leave of yourself. Truly, if you do not depart from yourself, then wherever you take refuge, you will find obstacles and unrest, wherever it may be. Those who seek peace in external things, whether in places or devotional practices, people or works, in withdrawal from the world or poverty or self-abasement: however great these things may be or whatever their character, they are still nothing at all and cannot be the source of peace. Those who seek in this way, seek wrongly, and the farther they range, the less they find what they are looking for. They proceed like someone who has lost their way: the farther they go, the more lost they become. But what then should they do? First of all, they should renounce themselves, and then they will have renounced all things. Truly, if someone were to renounce a kingdom or the whole world while still holding on to themselves, then they would have renounced nothing at all. And indeed, if someone renounces themselves, then whatever they might keep, whether it be a kingdom or honour or whatever it may be, they will still have renounced all things. St Peter said, ‘See, Lord, we have left everything’ (Matt. 19:27), when he had left nothing more than a mere net and his little boat, and a saint5 comments that whoever willingly renounces what is small, renounces not only this but also everything which worldly people can possess or indeed even desire. Whoever renounces their own will and their own self, renounces all things as surely as if all things were in that person’s possession to do with as they pleased, for what you do not wish to desire, you have given over and given up to God. Therefore our Lord said, ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit’ (Matt. 5:3), which is to say those who are poor in will. Let no one be in any doubt about this: if there were a better way, then our Lord would have told us, who said, ‘If anyone would follow me, he must first deny himself’ (Matt 16:24). This is the point which counts. Examine yourself, and wherever you find yourself, then take leave of yourself. This is the best way of all.

Ten days later I was amazed to receive a letter from Diana written just days after she’d arrived home--in fact, before I’d written her a thank-you letter. I was mortified by my delay in writing to her. I had managed to fire off proper thank-you notes to Ambassador Wight and Ms. Gillett, but I had so much more to say to Diana. Her letter was the most heartwarming one I have ever received--even more so, now that I know what personal strain she was under then. After thanking us “a million times” for coming to see them in Washington, she wrote, “From the beginning to the end I had a lump in my throat looking at what a special little man Patrick had grown up to be--Goodness, you must be extremely proud of him and if either of my boys turn out like Patrick I will have no worries and I really mean every word.” I had a lump in my throat as I read this. I was very proud of Patrick and deeply touched by Diana’s praise. Diana added that, for her, the high point of the visit to Washington was seeing Patrick and me. She explained, “Being able to get in touch with a v. happy and memorable part of my past meant a tremendous amount to me and kept me going for days!” Seeing the world-famous Diana in such a warm and personal way after five years and realizing how much she still cherished our friendship kept me going for months, even years!

For the next twenty minutes Elizabeth asked for concessions, Ian conceded, Duncan wrote, and the dowager duchess and Lucinda listened with ill-concealed glee.. In the entire time Ian made but one stipulation, and only after he was finally driven to it out of sheer perversity over the way everyone was enjoying his discomfort: He stipulated that none of Elizabeth’s freedoms could give rise to any gossip that she was cuckolding him. The duchess and Miss Throckmorton-Jones scowled at such a word being mentioned in front of them, but Elizabeth acquiesced with a regal nod of her golden head and politely said to Duncan, “I agree. You may write that down.” Ian grinned at her, and Elizabeth shyly returned his smile. Cuckolding, to the best of Elizabeth’s knowledge, was some sort of disgraceful conduct that required a lady to be discovered in the bedroom with a man who was not her husband. She had obtained that incomplete piece of information from Lucinda Throckmorton-Jones, who, unfortunately, actually believed it. “Is there anything more?” Duncan finally asked, and when Elizabeth shook her head, the dowager spoke up. “Indeed, though you may not need to write it down.” Turning to Ian, she said severely, “If you’ve any thought of announcing this betrothal tomorrow, you may put it out of your head.” Ian was tempted to invite her to get out, in a slightly less wrathful tone than that in which he’d ordered Julius from the house, but he realized that what she was saying was lamentably true. “Last night you went to a deal of trouble to make it seem there had been little but flirtation between the two of you two years ago. Unless you go through the appropriate courtship rituals, which Elizabeth has every right to expect, no one will ever believe it.” “What do you have in mind?” Ian demanded shortly. “One month,” she said without hesitation. “One month of calling on her properly, escorting her to the normal functions, and so on.” “Two weeks,” he countered with strained patience. “Very well,” she conceded, giving Ian the irritating certainty that two weeks was all she’d hoped for anyway. “Then you may announce your betrothal and be wed in-two months!” “Two weeks,” Ian said implacably, reaching for the drink the butler had just put in front of him. “As you wish,” said the dowager. Then two things happened simultaneously: Lucinda Throckmorton-Jones let out a snort that Ian realized was a laugh, and Elizabeth swept Ian’s drink from beneath his fingertips. “There’s-a speck of lint in it,” she explained nervously, handing the drink to Bentner with a severe shake of her head. Ian reached for the sandwich on his plate. Elizabeth watched the satisfied look on Bentner’s face and snatched that away, too. “A-a small insect seems to have gotten on it,” she explained to Ian. “I don’t see anything,” Ian remarked, his puzzled glance on his betrothed. Having been deprived of tea and sustenance, he reached for the glass of wine the butler had set before him, then realized how much stress Elizabeth had been under and offered it to her instead. “Thank you,” she said with a sigh, looking a little harassed. Bentner’s arm swopped down, scooping the wineglass out of her hand. “Another insect,” he said. “Bentner!” Elizabeth cried in exasperation, but her voice was drowned out by a peal of laughter from Alexandra Townsende, who slumped down on the settee, her shoulders shaking with unexplainable mirth. Ian drew the only possible conclusion: They were all suffering from the strain of too much stress.

They taught him how to milk cows and now they expected him to tame lions. Perhaps they expected him to behave like all good lion tamers. Use a whip and a chair. But what happens to the best lion tamer when he puts down his whip and his chair. Goddamnit! It was wrong. He felt cheated, he felt almost violated. He felt cheated for himself, and he felt cheated for guys like Joshua Edwards who wanted to teach and who didn’t know how to teach because he’d been pumped full of manure and theoretical hogwash. Why hadn’t anyone told them, in plain, frank English, just what to do? Couldn’t someone, somewhere along the line, have told them? Not one single college instructor? Not someone from the board of Ed, someone to orientate them after they’d passed the emergency exam? Not anyone? Now one sonofabitch somewhere who gave a good goddamn? Not even Stanley? Not even Small? Did they have to figure it out for themselves, sink and swim, kill or be killed? Rick had never been told how to stop in his class. He’d never been told what to do with a second term student who doesn’t even know how to write down his own goddamn name on a sheet of paper. He didn’t know, he’d never been advised on the proper tactics for dealing with a boy whose I.Q. was 66, a big, fat, round, moronic 66. He hadn’t been taught about kids’ yelling out in class, not one kid, not the occasional “difficult child” the ed courses had loftily philosophized about, not him. But a whole goddamn, shouting, screaming class load of them all yelling their sonofbitching heads off. What do you do with a kid who can’t read even though he’s fifteen years old? Recommend him for special reading classes, sure. And what do you do when those special reading classes are loaded to the asshole, packed because there are kids who can’t read in abundance, and you have to take only those who can’t read the worst, dumping them onto a teacher who’s already overloaded and those who doesn’t want to teach a remedial class to begin with? And what do you with that poor ignorant jerk? Do you call him on class, knowing damn well he hasn’t read the assignment because he doesn’t know how to read? Or do you ignore him? Or do you ask him to stop by after school, knowing he would prefer playing stickball to learning how to read. And knowing he considers himself liberated the moment the bell sounds at the end of the eighth period. What do you do when you’ve explained something patiently and fully, explained it just the way you were taught to explain in your education courses, explained in minute detail, and you look out at your class and see that stretching, vacant wall of blank, blank faces and you know nothing has penetrated, not a goddamn thing has sunk in? What do you do then? Give them all board erasers to clean. What do you do when you call on a kid and ask “What did that last passage mean?”and the kid stands there without any idea of what the passage meant , and you know that he’s not alone, you know every other kid in the class hasn’t the faintest idea either? What the hell do you do then? Do you go home and browse through the philosophy of education books the G.I bill generously provided. Do you scratch your ugly head and seek enlightenment from the educational psychology texts? Do you consult Dewey? And who the hell do you condemn, just who? Do you condemn elementary schools for sending a kid on to high school without knowing how to read, without knowing how to write his own name on a piece of paper? Do you condemn the masterminds who plot the education systems of a nation, or a state or a city?

That such a surprisingly powerful philosophical method was taken seriously can be only partially explained by the backwardness of German natural science in those days. For the truth is, I think, that it was not at first taken really seriously by serious men (such as Schopenhauer, or J. F. Fries), not at any rate by those scientists who, like Democritus2, ‘would rather find a single causal law than be the king of Persia’. Hegel’s fame was made by those who prefer a quick initiation into the deeper secrets of this world to the laborious technicalities of a science which, after all, may only disappoint them by its lack of power to unveil all mysteries. For they soon found out that nothing could be applied with such ease to any problem whatsoever, and at the same time with such impressive (though only apparent) difficulty, and with such quick and sure but imposing success, nothing could be used as cheaply and with so little scientific training and knowledge, and nothing would give such a spectacular scientific air, as did Hegelian dialectics, the mystery method that replaced ‘barren formal logic’. Hegel’s success was the beginning of the ‘age of dishonesty’ (as Schopenhauer3 described the period of German Idealism) and of the ‘age of irresponsibility’ (as K. Heiden characterizes the age of modern totalitarianism); first of intellectual, and later, as one of its consequences, of moral irresponsibility; of a new age controlled by the magic of high-sounding words, and by the power of jargon. In order to discourage the reader beforehand from taking Hegel’s bombastic and mystifying cant too seriously, I shall quote some of the amazing details which he discovered about sound, and especially about the relations between sound and heat. I have tried hard to translate this gibberish from Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature4 as faithfully as possible; he writes: ‘§302. Sound is the change in the specific condition of segregation of the material parts, and in the negation of this condition;—merely an abstract or an ideal ideality, as it were, of that specification. But this change, accordingly, is itself immediately the negation of the material specific subsistence; which is, therefore, real ideality of specific gravity and cohesion, i.e.—heat. The heating up of sounding bodies, just as of beaten or rubbed ones, is the appearance of heat, originating conceptually together with sound.’ There are some who still believe in Hegel’s sincerity, or who still doubt whether his secret might not be profundity, fullness of thought, rather than emptiness. I should like them to read carefully the last sentence—the only intelligible one—of this quotation, because in this sentence, Hegel gives himself away. For clearly it means nothing but: ‘The heating up of sounding bodies … is heat … together with sound.’ The question arises whether Hegel deceived himself, hypnotized by his own inspiring jargon, or whether he boldly set out to deceive and bewitch others. I am satisfied that the latter was the case, especially in view of what Hegel wrote in one of his letters. In this letter, dated a few years before the publication of his Philosophy of Nature, Hegel referred to another Philosophy of Nature, written by his former friend Schelling: ‘I have had too much to do … with mathematics … differential calculus, chemistry’, Hegel boasts in this letter (but this is just bluff), ‘to let myself be taken in by the humbug of the Philosophy of Nature, by this philosophizing without knowledge of fact … and by the treatment of mere fancies, even imbecile fancies, as ideas.’ This is a very fair characterization of Schelling’s method, that is to say, of that audacious way of bluffing which Hegel himself copied, or rather aggravated, as soon as he realized that, if it reached its proper audience, it meant success.

You’ve written a surprising large number of screenplays – – Have I? … but they’ve all been adaptations. Yes. Why are there no original Stoppard screenplays? I’ve never felt like that about film. I wanted to start… I wanted to be a writer, I wanted to start writing for the stage at a time when the stage was particularly interesting in the British theatre… I’ve had as many ideas for a play as I’ve written, you know, I don’t have a bottom drawer of half-baked ideas and half-finished plays. I’ve just used everything. I just wanted to work in the theatre and that’s what I did. I’m trying to sort of… understand something in myself, it’s as though I don’t want to waste my idea on a movie. I think there’s an element of that. Because there’s no question about it, unless you are… I can’t, I can’t imagine a circumstance in which a writer is properly in control of his script in the world of movies. Well, I can imagine one way - you pay for the film and that’s that. But as long as there’s a paymaster… You never… You never, you never quite… You don’t quite have the final vote, the decisive vote on things. There are situations, there have been situations where… I mean Shakespeare In Love, for example was, you know… yeah, pretty much, I mean I wrote it on the back of an earlier script called Shakespeare In Love and in the final stages of that movie I was arguing, you know, with the producer about… well, just a phrase or two. And this happened with television too with BBC/ HBO, I did a thing called Parade’s End. I end up arguing trying to persuade them to keep something which, which is generally felt by other people to be difficult to understand. And I’m saying ‘No, it’s not difficult to understand, honestly.’ And they’re saying: ‘Well, it is for our audience –’ or whatever. That kind of thing wont happen, I don’t think that kind of thing would ever happen, at least in the theatre that I work in, the London theatre, the British theatre.

The traditional reluctance in this country to confront the real nature of racism is once again illustrated by the manner in which the majority of American whites interpreted what the Kerner Commission had to say about white racism. It seems that they have taken the Kerner Report as a call merely to examine their individual attitudes. The examination of individual attitudes is, of course, an indispensable requirement if the influence of racism is to be neutralized, but it is neither the only nor the basic requirement. The Kerner Report took great pains to make a distinction between racist attitudes and racist behavior. In doing so, it was trying to point out that the fundamental problem lies in the racist behavior of American institutions toward Negroes, and that the behavior of these institutions is influenced more by overt racist actions of people than by their private attitudes. If so, then the basic requirement is for white Americans, while not ignoring the necessity for a revision of their private beliefs, to concentrate on actions that can lead to the ultimate democratization of American institutions. By focusing upon private attitudes alone, white Americans may come to rely on token individual gestures as a way of absolving themselves personally of racism, while ignoring the work that needs to be done within public institutions to eradicate social and economic problems and redistribute wealth and opportunity. I mean by this that there are many whites sitting around in drawing rooms and board rooms discussing their consciences and even donating a few dollars to honor the memory of Dr. King. But they are not prepared to fight politically for the kind of liberal Congress the country needs to eradicate some of the evils of racism, or for the massive programs needed for the social and economic reconstruction of the black and white poor, or for a revision of the tax structure whereby the real burden will be lifted from the shoulders of those who don't have it and placed on the shoulders of those who can afford it. Our time offers enough evidence to show that racism and intolerance are not unique American phenomena. The relationship between the upper and lower classes in India is in some ways more brutal than the operation of racism in America. And in Nigeria black tribes have recently been killing other black tribes in behalf of social and political privilege. But it is the nature of the society which determines whether such conflicts will last, whether racism and intolerance will remain as proper issues to be socially and politically organized. If the society is a just society, if it is one which places a premium on social justice and human rights, then racism and intolerance cannot survive —will, at least, be reduced to a minimum. While working with the NAACP some years ago to integrate the University of Texas, I was assailed with a battery of arguments as to why Negroes should not be let in. They would be raping white girls as soon as they came in; they were dirty and did not wash; they were dumb and could not learn; they were uncouth and ate with their fingers. These attitudes were not destroyed because the NAACP psychoanalyzed white students or held seminars to teach them about black people. They were destroyed because Thurgood Marshall got the Supreme Court to rule against and destroy the institution of segregated education. At that point, the private views of white students became irrelevant. So while there can be no argument that progress depends both on the revision of private attitudes and a change in institutions, the onus must be placed on institutional change. If the institutions of this society are altered to work for black people, to respond to their needs and legitimate aspirations, then it will ultimately be a matter of supreme indifference to them whether white people like them, or what white people whisper about them in the privacy of their drawing rooms.

Universities are fueled in large measure by what's called overhead of the grant...so if you get a million dollar grant, half or more will go to your university, right? So that's what builds the buildings and fuels the place. So the university has an incentive to get as many people to file grant applications as they can, and they have an incentive to hire people whose grant applications will be large rather than small. So this, for example, is one of the reasons that science has taken up arms against theory –that is to say, proper scientific theoreticians like me – and it has instead hired people who run big expensive experiments: Because big expensive experiments have big grants, and those big grants bring in money. But if you were a university and what you wanted was to have people writing big expensive grants who were capable of getting them, then what you would want to do is...you would want to free those people from teaching, and you would want to get people who weren't so expensive to do the work of the university...and the way you do that is: you bring them on as graduate students; and you pay them an appalling wage; you claim that they are not actually workers, that they are students; and they do most of the teaching, and they do a lot of the work of the university, for incredibly low amounts of money; they live under poor conditions; and increasingly they have to come from abroad where they are in some sense getting a deal that still makes sense. But this means that we overproduce PhDs. We give people degrees instead of money to do the work of the university, in order that people who are capable of getting the grants spend almost full time doing that job. And it's a racket. The person who knows the most about this is actually Eric, my brother. So...what he unearthed was actually that there was an explicit conspiracy to game the visa system in order to keep this system running...that effectively a fake shortage of science students was created to allow the universities to basically flood the market, to drive the wages down.

Even more threatening to Christian assumptions than the Qur’an’s flat denial that Jesus had been crucified, however, was the imperious, not to say terrifying, tone of authority with which it did so. Very little in either the Old or the New Testament could compare. For all the reverence with which Christians regarded their scripture, and for all that they believed it illumined by the flame of the Holy Spirit, they perfectly accepted that most of it, including the Gospels themselves, had been authored by mortals. Only the covenant on the tablets of stone, given to Moses amid fire and smoke on the summit of Sinai, ‘and written with the finger of God’,13 owed nothing to human mediation. Perhaps it was no surprise, then, that Moses, of all the figures in the Old and New Testaments, should have featured most prominently in the Qur’an. He was mentioned 137 times in all. Many of the words attributed to him had served as a direct inspiration to Muhammad’s own followers. ‘My people! Enter the Holy Land which God has prescribed for you!’14 The Arab conquerors, in the first decades of their empire, had pointedly referred to themselves as muhajirun: ‘those who have undertaken an exodus’. A hundred years on from Muhammad’s death, when the first attempts were made by Muslim scholars to write his biography, the model that they instinctively reached for was that of Moses. The age at which the Prophet had received his first revelation from God; the flight of his followers from a land of idols; the way in which—directly contradicting the news brought to Carthage in 634—he was said to have died before entering the Holy Land: all these elements echoed the life of the Jews’ most God-favoured prophet.15 So brilliantly, indeed, did Muslim biographers paint from the palette of traditions told about Moses that the fading outlines of the historical Muhammad were quite lost beneath their brushstrokes. Last and most blessed of the prophets sent by God to set humanity on the straight path, there was only the one predecessor to whom he could properly be compared. ‘There has come to him the greatest Law that came to Moses; surely he is the prophet of this people.’16

In Romans 12:4-8, Paul writes about gifts: “For as we have many members in one body, but all the members do not have the same function, so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another. Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, let us prophesy in proportion to our faith; or ministry, let us use it in our ministering; he who teaches, in teaching; he who exhorts, in exhortation; he who gives, with liberality; he who leads, with diligence; he who shows mercy, with cheerfulness.” “Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, let us use them.” Recognize that the gifts inside you are not only for you; just as the gifts inside other people around you are not only for them. We are meant to help each other. God designed us this way on purpose! All being members of one body, our successes are shared — there is no need to be threatened by another person’s gift. Use your gifts, and encourage the people in your life to use their gifts as well. You will be blessed as a result! Unfortunately, one thing that keeps us from asking for help or taking advantage of the talents in people around us is pride. Never allow pride to keep you from asking for counsel when it is needed! 1 Corinthians 12:20 is another passage about gifts: “now indeed there are many members, yet one body. And the eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you’; nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’ ” We need each other, and joining our gifts together will result in a much stronger body. If you have time, read 1 Corinthians 12:4-20. Reflect on how there can be unity in the diversity of gifts if we use our different gifts properly. Determine that you will not be threatened by anyone else’s gifts! Esther was not afraid of the gifts in the people around her. Let’s see how she responds to the wisdom of others today. And every day Mordecai paced in front of the court of the women’s quarters, to learn of Esther’s welfare and what was happening to her. Esther 2:11 Every day, Mordecai goes to the palace gates to inquire after Esther and learn of what was happening to her. He goes to the palace gates with purpose. He paces in front of the women’s court until he has learns the day’s news about Esther. Even though she is no longer under his roof, he stills feels a strong responsibility toward her, and acts accordingly. He is a faithful man, and has set a great example before Esther. The news that he hears concerning Esther daily must be good: her inward beauty and submission to authority are two of the many wonderful traits that God placed in her so that she will be effective in Persia. Even though Esther is in an unfamiliar place and experiencing “firsts” every day in the palace, God is making sure she has what she needs. Esther did not need to feel nervous! She needed wise counsel; it has been provided for her in Mordecai and Hegai. She needs a pleasant and patient personality; that has been being developed in her by the Lord for many years. In your own life, you are constantly undergoing change and growth as you are submitting to the Lord. Whether or not you can see it, God is continually preparing you for what lies ahead so that you will have what you need when you need it. The God who loves you so much knows your future, and He is preparing you today for what you will experience tomorrow. Esther is receiving what she needs as well. She is in the palace undergoing her beauty preparations — a twelve month process! Even through this extended period of time, Mordecai is still at the palace gates every day (the Bible does not say that he stopped his concern for her at any point). It is an entire

But won’t political involvement distract us from the main task of preaching the Gospel? At this point someone may object that while political involvement may have some benefits and may do some good, it can so easily distract us, turn unbelievers away from the church, and cause us to neglect the main task of pointing people toward personal trust in Christ. John MacArthur writes, “When the church takes a stance that emphasizes political activism and social moralizing, it always diverts energy and resources away from evangelization.”83 Yet the proper question is not, “Does political influence take resources away from evangelism?” but, “Is political influence something God has called us to do?” If God has called some of us to some political influence, then those resources would not be blessed if we diverted them to evangelism—or to the choir, or to teaching Sunday School to children, or to any other use. In this matter, as in everything else the church does, it would be healthy for Christians to realize that God may call individual Christians to different emphases in their lives. This is because God has placed in the church “varieties of gifts” (1 Cor. 12:4) and the church is an entity that has “many members” but is still “one body” (v. 12). Therefore God might call someone to devote almost all of his or her time to the choir, someone else to youth work, someone else to evangelism, someone else to preparing refreshments to welcome visitors, and someone else to work with lighting and sound systems. “But if Jim places all his attention on the sound system, won’t that distract the church from the main task of preaching the Gospel?” No, not at all. That is not what God has called Jim to emphasize (though he will certainly share the Gospel with others as he has opportunity). Jim’s exclusive focus on the church’s sound system means he is just being a faithful steward in the responsibility God has given him. In the same way, I think it is entirely possible that God called Billy Graham to emphasize evangelism and say nothing about politics and also called James Dobson to emphasize a radio ministry to families and to influencing the political world for good. Aren’t there enough Christians in the world for us to focus on more than one task? And does God not call us to thousands of different emphases, all in obedience to him? But the whole ministry of the church will include both emphases. And the teaching ministry from the pulpit should do nothing less than proclaim “the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27). It should teach, over the course of time, on all areas of life and all areas of Bible knowledge. That certainly must include, to some extent, what the Bible says about the purposes of civil government and how that teaching should apply to our situations today. This means that in a healthy church we will find that some people emphasize influencing the government and politics, others emphasize influencing the business world, others emphasize influencing the educational system, others entertainment and the media, others marriage and the family, and so forth. When that happens, it seems to me that we should encourage, not discourage, one another. We should adopt the attitude toward each other that Paul encouraged in the church at Rome: Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God…. So then each of us will give an account of himself to God. Therefore let us not pass judgment on one another any longer, but rather decide never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother (Rom. 14:10–13). For several different reasons, then, I think the view that says the church should just “do evangelism, not politics” is incorrect.

The easiest way to write a book is to use the Table of Contents as an outline. People get stuck when they think in terms of writing a book. Do not let this delay you. There are a lot of book outline writing software’s available today, but I personally believe they have the potential to cause more distraction then assistance. The best possible outlines have come from pure "flow". I advise my clients to do a simple process of setting the timer for 2 minutes and just writing. I ask that they write everything that pops into their heads without thought or judgment on the subject. The questions I ask are: What is most important to you? What do you know a lot about? Tell me 12 things that fall under that subject that are valuable to know. Under each of the 12 things, give me 3 things that are a "must" in that category. Using index cards to write your answers on is a useful way to arrange chapters and sections of your book. Believe it or not, my students have come up with a Table of Contents/outline in less than 10 minutes using this method. Our greatest block is that we tend to over think things too much. We over analyze and what happens is that we get into analysis paralysis. Our creativity and ‘flow’ freezes up and all spontaneity and creativity just exits out of the thought process. When we stall the creative flow by trying to be correct, proper and appropriate, we end up talking ourselves out of what we intuitively know that we know and into a space of doubt, or what we think we do not know.

Jesus Christ, who is . . . the ruler of the kings of the earth” (Revelation 1:5). The word for “ruler” means he is the ultimate authority over all the kings of the earth. They are great, but he is greater. They are mighty, but he is mightier. Millions answer to them, but they answer to him. He is not merely one of the kings. He rules over them all. In the first century the mighty emperor Nero thought he was the ruler of the kings of the earth. He held in his hands the power of life and death. Thumbs up: one man lived. Thumbs down: one man died. It is said that he ordered the burning of Rome and then blamed it on the early Christians. He had Paul the apostle beheaded, thinking that the pernicious Christian movement would die with him. But now 2000 years have passed, and the tables have turned. We name our dogs Nero and our sons Paul. Who are the kings of the earth John is talking about? They are political leaders in their various spheres–mayors and council members, governors, congressmen and senators, presidents and prime ministers, and potentates of every variety. There are small-time kings who rule tiny realms and mighty kings who rule vast empires. Their names are Obama, Putin, Netanyahu, Ahmadinejad, Komorowski, Mukherjee, Harper, Kim, Abdullah, Sarkozy, Karzai, Xi, Mugabe, Remengesau, Calderon, Merkel, Cartes and Cameron. And a thousand others just like them. Jesus rules over them all. We all know that the world is in a mess. That’s why it’s hard to believe this is true. All the evidence seems to move in the opposite direction. The pornographers go free, the baby-killers are untouched, the politicians break the laws they write, the drug dealers make their millions, and the nations arm themselves for total destruction. Without trying very hard, you could make a good case that Satan is the ruler of the kings of the earth. But it only seems that way. Satan has no power except that granted to him by God. In due time and at the proper moment, Jesus will step back on the stage of world history. Think of it. The hands that were nailed to the cross will someday rule the world. Though we do not see it today, it is certain and sure of fulfillment. That’s what the book of Revelation is all about. Read it for yourself and see how the story ends.

Instead, he (and Epictetus and Seneca) focused on a series of questions not unlike the ones we continue to ask ourselves today: “What is the best way to live?” “What do I do about my anger?” “What are my obligations to my fellow human beings?” “I’m afraid to die; why is that?” “How can I deal with the difficult situations I face?” “How should I handle the success or power I hold?” These weren’t abstract questions. In their writings—often private letters or diaries—and in their lectures, the Stoics struggled to come up with real, actionable answers. They ultimately framed their work around a series of exercises in three critical disciplines: The Discipline of Perception (how we see and perceive the world around us) The Discipline of Action (the decisions and actions we take—and to what end) The Discipline of Will (how we deal with the things we cannot change, attain clear and convincing judgment, and come to a true understanding of our place in the world) By controlling our perceptions, the Stoics tell us, we can find mental clarity. In directing our actions properly and justly, we’ll be effective. In utilizing and aligning our will, we will find the wisdom and perspective to deal with anything the world puts before us. It was their belief that by strengthening themselves and their fellow citizens in these disciplines, they could cultivate resilience, purpose, and even joy. Born in the tumultuous ancient world,

But Trump apparently wanted to squeeze some extra juice from the word “lying” and make his branding stand out. So he insisted that Lyin’ Ted was the proper spelling, not Lying Ted. This was good branding. It was different from anything you have seen in politics and it gave you a reason to pause and wonder why it mattered if the spelling was “lyin’” or “lying.” It did matter, but only because you stopped and wondered about it. That is an engineered mental pause for persuasion. Trump wants you to stop and think about his choice of “lyin’” over “lying.” The fact that you spent time thinking about it helps you remember the name. It also uses a trick called “making you think past the sale.” In this case the sale is the idea that Ted Cruz lies. You end up accidentally accepting that idea because you spent time thinking about the best way to write “lyin’.” That’s strong persuasion engineering.

No doubt my name will soon be among the list of our Indian dead. At least I will have good company — for no finer, kinder, braver, wiser, worthier men and women have ever walked this earth than those who have already died for being Indian. Our dead keep coming at us, a long, long line of dead, ever growing and never ending. To list all their names would be impossible, for the great, great majority of us have died unknown, unacknowledged. Yes, even our dead have been stolen from us, uprooted from our memory just as the bones of our honored ancestors have been dishonored by being dug up from their graves and shipped to museums to be boxed and catalogued, denied that final request and right of every human being: a decent burial in Mother Earth and proper ceremonies of remembrance to light the way to the afterworld. Yes, the roll call of our Indian dead needs to be cried out, to be shouted from every hilltop in order to shatter the terrible silence that tries to erase the fact that we ever existed.

But these progressives rarely note that Roosevelt's New Deal, much like the democracy that produced it, rested on the foundation of Jim Crow. "The Jim Crow South," writes Ira Katznelson, a history and political science professor at Columbia, "was the one collaborator America's democracy could not do without." The marks of that collaboration are all over the new Deal. The omnibus programs passed under the Social Security Act in 1935 were crafted in such a way as to protect the southern way of life. Old-age insurance (Social Security proper) and unemployment insurance excluded farm workers and domestics-jobs heavily occupied by blacks. When President Roosevelt signed Social Security into law in 1935, 65 percent of African Americans nationally and between 70 and 80 percent in the South were ineligible. The NAACP protested, calling the new American safety net " a sieve with holes just big enough for the majority of Negroes to fall through.

Listed below are three basic rules that will help you become a successful candidate. Remember, however, that you need not be offered a job in every case to consider yourself successful. Rather, you are successful if you keep the job search process going in a professional manner. In working with countless people in the process of looking for a job, I have concluded that, for those who are currently unemployed, the full-time job should be just that: looking for a job. For those who currently have a job, but are openly seeking a better position with new challenges or a higher salary, take comfort in knowing you are working from a position of strength; use that knowledge to add to your self-esteem. In all cases, see yourself from the employer’s point of view. In their eyes, you are a more likely candidate if you behave professionally before and after the interview (with appropriate inquiry and follow-up—more on that later) and if you interact appropriately during the interview itself. As you continue to look for a job, remember the following tips for success: 1. When you call about a job prospect, get as much information as you can about the position and the company—including the name of the person doing the interviewing. Don’t be put off by feelings of anxiety—you have a right to “interview” them too. If possible, go to the library and research the company. By the time of your interview, you will feel more confident—and less anxious—because you will have resources from which to draw during your conversation. 2. If you have time to mail your resume before your scheduled interview, do so. But be sure to include a cover letter as well. While the resume gives background information about you, the cover letter explains why you are writing and briefly describes what makes you a good candidate for the job. Don’t allow low self-esteem to make you afraid to “sell yourself!” Only you can say why you would be an asset to the company. And one more thing—write the letter to a particular person, not “To Whom It May Concern” or “Dear Sir or Madam.” Most of the time, a prospective employer’s receptionist is willing to tell you exactly whom to contact. Use courtesy titles (“Dear Mrs. Smith”), unless the person is someone you already know on a first-name basis. 3. Do follow up. An appropriate measure of assertiveness goes a long way. Most employers appreciate someone who is diligent and communicates a genuine interest in the position. But don’t be aggressive. Limit your contact to a follow-up note, a phone call two weeks later, and perhaps a third one a few weeks after that. Be sure to let them know that if another, more appropriate, position comes along, you would be interested to learn about it. Again, by communicating properly and creating your own opportunities, you can achieve some control over your own destiny.

The theme of his life’s work was his effort to bridge this gap. The way to do it was simply to refuse to see anything in isolation. Everything, as he saw it, existed within a context, outside of which it was unintelligible. Moreover, every problem existed within a context, outside of which it was unsolvable. Agriculture, thus, cannot be understood or its problems solved without respect to context. The same applied even to an individual plant or crop. And this respect for context properly set the standard and determined the methodology of agricultural science: The basis of research was obviously to be investigation directed to the whole existence of a selected crop, namely, “the plant itself in relation to the soil in which it grows, to the conditions of village agriculture under which it is cultivated, and with reference to the economic uses of the product”; in other words research was to be integral, never fragmented. 11 If nothing exists in isolation, then all problems are circumstantial; no problem resides, or can be solved, in anybody’s department. A disease was, thus, a symptom of a larger disorder.

Writer's block, for me, is merely a way of saying "I'm too lazy to sit down and give it the proper time." I want to be a progressive writer, not a lazy one.

This operating power of our minds is called joriki. It is, in short, the operation of no-self. Master Sogaku writes about it as follows, “The right mind operates at each time and in each place to make you take the right attitude and act properly without deviating from the Way.

But the proper way to take notes is not to copy things word-for-word (except in the case of exact quotes). Instead, you re-write it in your own words, which is even more powerful. Second, you don't write down everything you read. You only write down the important things: Things that are interesting, relevant to your work, or that you otherwise want to retain.

November 30th What do you know? For once I favourably surprise myself. After I'd read Howard's exemplary "White Ship" on Friday night and spent yesterday idling about in Providence - woolgathering, I suppose - I've finally made up my mind to sit down and attempt to lick this novel into some kind of functional shape. The central character I'm thinking, is a young man in his early thirties. He's well educated, but if forced by economic circumstance to leave his home in somewhere like Milwaukee (on the principle of writing about somewhere that you know) to seek employment further east. I feel I should give him a name. I know that details of this sort could wait until much later in the process, but I don't feel able to flesh out his character sufficiently until I've at least worked out what he's called. There's been a twenty minute pause between the end of the foregoing sentence and the start of this one, but I think his first name should be Jonathan. Jonathan Randall is the name that comes to me, perhaps by way of Randall Carver. Yes, I think I like the sound of that. So, young Jonathan Randall realises that his yearnings for a literary life have to be put aside to spare his parents dwindling resources, and that he must make his own way in the world, through manual labour if needs be, in order to become the self-sufficient grownup he aspires to be. During an early scene, perhaps in a recounting of Jonathan's childhood, there should be some striking incident which foreshadows the supernatural or psychological weirdness that will dominate the later chapters. Thinking about this, it seems to me that this would be the ideal place to introduce the bridge motif I've toyed with earlier in these pages: since I'm quite fond of the opening paragraphs that I've already written, with that long description of America as a repository for all the world's religious or else occult visionaries, I think what I'll do is largely leave that as it is, to function as a kind of prologue and establish the requisite mood, and then open the novel proper with Jonathan and a school friend playing truant on a summer's afternoon at some remote and overgrown ravine or other, where there's a precarious and creaking bridge with fraying ropes and missing boards that joins the chasm's two sides. I could probably set up the story's major themes and ideas in the two companions' dialogue, albeit simply expressed in keeping with their age and limited experience. Perhaps they're talking in excited schoolboy tones about some local legend, ghost story or piece of folklore that's connected with the bridge or the ravine. This would provide a motive - the eternal boyish fascination with the ghoulish - for them having come to this ill-omened spot while playing hooky, and would also help establish Jonathan's obsession with folkloric subjects as explored in the remainder of the novel.

But in spite of our alleged freedoms today, we cynical, postmodern subjects – finding ourselves overwhelmed by the injunction to transgress and the burden of choosing every aspect of our very existence – compensate for the decline in symbolic efficacy by voluntarily subjecting ourselves to ever new forms of constraint: in short, we demand that the Other act on our behalf. Instead of recognizing that Capital itself is the ultimate power of deterritorialization, we blame the disintegration of symbolic order on some (religious, racial, ethnic) Other. This “postmodern racism” is inherent to the multiculturalist and (allegedly) tolerant reduction of the sphere of politics proper to the clash of cultures. When all conflicts are presupposed to arise from cultural or ethnic differences, we not only miss the true causes of the conflict. More seriously, the pre- supposition functions so as to depoliticize all problems: the result is a cynical subject. This is why the resigned, postmodern subject of late capitalism views anyone with political principles as a dangerous fanatic. Moreover, as Žižek has argued in more recent writings, “the opposition between rightist populism and liberal tolerance is a false one.” In other words, democratic openness is based on exclusion, and right-wing populism and liberal tolerance are two sides of the same coin. This explains why there are forms of racism that involve a rejection of Muslims, for example, with the false claim that all Muslims are racist. This implicit moment of racism in liberal “tolerance” is also manifested in the way that the worldwide triumph of liberal democracy has led to the development of a new ideological formation, the universalization of the fantasy image of the helpless victim: “So the much-advertised liberal-democratic “right to difference” and anti-Eurocentrism appear in their true light: the Third World other is recognized as a victim – that is to say, in so far as he is a victim. The true object of anxiety is the other no longer prepared to play the role of victim – such another is promptly denounced as a “terrorist,” a “fundamentalist,” and so on. The Somalis, for example, undergo a true Kleinian splitting into a “good” and a “bad” object – on the one hand the good object: passive victims, suffering starving children and women; on the other the bad object: fanatical warlords who care more for their power or their ideological goals than for the welfare of their own people. The good other dwells in the anonymous passive universality of a victim – the moment we encounter an actual/active other, there is always something with which to reproach him: being patriarchal, fanatical, intolerant … (Metastases, p. 215) All of this supports Žižek’s initial, provocative claim, which at first seemed so outrageous, that unconscious enjoyment was the cause of the West’s indecision during the Bosnian war. It is the enjoyment provided by ideological formations – such as the fantasy image of the victim – that explains the failure of Western intervention in the Bosnian conflict.

You may consider me sentimental or realistic since I perceive that the world's scientists of Intelligence Agencies can develop such as coronavirus, cancer, and other chemicals to harm humans, especially its political foes, whether those hold high status or low grade. In such fields, every option is possible. I suffered from two incidents in my life by the International Intelligence Agencies, first in 1980 and second in 2016, first causing esophagus damage and stomach hernia, and second metastatic prostate cancer. I tried for years and years to investigate the first incident, but Dutch police refused even to write a report about that. Such refusal created doubts in my mind that Dutch Secret Agencies played an evil role in damaging and destroying my life since why the authorities had been ignoring and refusing. Before diagnosing metastatic prostate cancer, when urologists were not paying attention, I went to a Brazilian Homeopath, Miriam Sommer, in The Hague; after a month's discussion, she told me that she was sure that I was poisoned in 1980, not to kill, but severe physical damage and it happened. She put a couple of tablets under my tongue to suck, and I did that. However, later I became suspicious of why she did do that. Dutch urologists, one year from the start of 2016 to 2017, refused to check what I requested per International Medical Guidelines, they overlooked it, and consequently, in February 2017, they diagnosed as last stage prostate cancer, which was not curable. The Dutch medical system is very awkward; it does not meet International Medical Guidelines; they let the patients suffering from the disease and treat them in a gravely poor way, paying no proper care and attention. In this regard, I am unaware of others' experiences. I want that both incidents, which caused me unexplained damage and the destruction of my career and life, the Dutch authorities should investigate on a high-level scale as guidelines before criminals disappear, can lead to a positive result; otherwise, I am right to realize that Institutions of the Dutch government had victimized me, violating International Law and human rights.

A theatrical tribute to John Knox is one way of measuring his failure. John Kox was a strong advocate of the death penalty for actors, and consistent supporters of his doctrine should properly have strung up Tom Fleming, his impersonator, along with the rest of the cast of Robert Kemp's Master John Knox presented at the Gateway Theatre during October. The play and the man cannot both be justified, and an unrealistic element enters into a theatrical interpretation that is devised to do fulsome homage to a historical character without conceding that he was one of the Theatre's most savage enemies. This element of calculated inaccuracy was sustained in a piece that Christopher Small, writing in the Glasgow Herald, rightly observed presented us with the Knox of tradition, or sentiment, rather than the Knox of history. But if we are prepared to swallow the legend, Mr. Kemp succeeded in giving it theatrical life.

In her book The Craft of Thought, medievalist Mary Carruthers corrects the modern misordering of the five canons of rhetoric and points out specifically how our misconceptions of the relationship between invention and memory has distracted us from the real priority. In school, I learned the canons in this order: invention, organization, style, memory, delivery, In other words, you invent words on a page, arrange them, craft them to sound pretty, memorize the product, and recite it. But Carruthers points out that memory precedes invention. She writes, “The arts of memory are among the arts of thinking…[what] we now revere as ‘imagination’ and ‘creativity.’ The word “invention” has its root in “inventory.” Carruthers returns memory to its proper position—first—among our ways of thinking for we must remember in order to invent. … The hurdle of originality was nonexistent to the medieval mind. How could you ever invent without that which came before in your inventory? The medieval thinkers emphasized remembering as a practice essential to reading. Education for them was intended “not to become a ‘living book’ (by rote reiteration, the power of an idiot),” Carruthers writes, “but to become a ‘living concordance,’ the power of prudence and wisdom.” From reading, meditating, memorizing, and then interpreting the books within oneself, one could live wisely in the world. (pp. 133-134)

Freelancing and Creativity In Freelancing, doing a job in different ways is called creativity. The importance of creativity is immense among all that is required for freelancing work because creativity is the main thing of freelancing. It is difficult to give an exact definition of creativity. Because there is no end to creativity. In the case of some, creativity or the development of creativity begins to manifest naturally, while for some it manifests through talent, practice, and practice. Creativity is basically a mental process that is the result of positive thinking, perseverance, and high analytical ability. Just as it takes practice, practice, and dedication to develop this creativity, there is a high chance that this creativity will be wasted if it is not properly used or applied. Below are the causes of creativity loss and ways to increase Creativity: ** Reasons for loss of Creativity - 1. Lack of focus on work – Creativity does not arise if there is no focus on work, to complete a task properly, there must be focus on it. 2. Irregular sleep – the brain does not work properly if you do not sleep properly, repeated sleep disturbances can also cause many mental problems that hinder creativity. 3. Suffering from indecisiveness – Having too many negative thoughts running through your head while doing a task can also hamper creativity. For example: if the work is going well, if the client likes it, if the client doesn't like it, if the client doesn't pay, etc. 4. Fear of not succeeding at work – Many people rush to work for quick cash income, but it does not work properly or on the contrary, more creativity is lost, which results in payment time problems. As a result, the fear of not succeeding enters the freelancer. ** Ways to Increase Creativity - 1. Dietary discipline – Of course, there is no substitute for healthy eating. Consuming regular meals maintains mental and physical well-being which in turn enhances creativity. 2. Gaining knowledge from nature – Nature is the main source of knowledge. All the sages and poets in the world were worshipers of nature. All of them could see something extraordinary in the ordinary things of this nature. Try to see it that way. 3. From everyday events – notice what is happening around you. You can get new ideas from it, for example, you can get an idea on any subject by reading a book, and new ideas can be invented while watching TV or watching newspaper advertisements. 4. Write down ideas – We all have something going on in our heads all the time, either mainly through thought or sensory processing. So whenever you get an idea, note it down so that you don't forget to read it. So, creativity is created by the combination of ideas and skills. Freelancing is unthinkable without this creativity because to do freelancing you must have a clear idea about something or acquire full skill in that subject.

Neurodivergent Checklist Time Blindness: Many neurodivergent people have trouble properly perceiving time as it passes. It either goes by too quickly or slowly. The perception of time depends on the level of stimulation the neurodivergent person is dealing with. It also can vary depending on what you’re focused on. If you’ve ever found yourself unable to account for time, you may be neurodivergent. Executive Dysfunction: This is what you experience when you want to accomplish a task, but despite how hard you try, you cannot see it through. Executive dysfunction happens for various reasons, depending on the type of neurodivergence in question. Still, the point is that this is a common occurrence in neurodivergent people. Task Multiplication: What is task multiplication? It happens when you set off to accomplish one thing but have to do a million other things, even though that wasn’t your original plan. For instance, you may want to sit down to finish some writing, only to notice water on the floor. You get up to grab a mop, and on the way, you notice the laundry you were supposed to drop off at the dry cleaners. Stooping to pick up the bag, you find yourself at eye level with your journal and remember you were supposed to make an entry the previous day, so you’re going to do that now. On and on it goes. Inconsistent Sleep Habits: This depends on what sort of neurodivergence you’re dealing with and if you’ve got comorbid disorders. Most importantly, neurodivergent people sleep more or less than “regular” people. You may also notice that your sleep habits fluctuate a lot. Sometimes you may sleep for eight hours at a stretch for a week, only to suddenly start running on just three hours of sleep. Emotional Dysregulation: With many neurodivergent people, it’s hard to keep emotions in check. Emotional dysregulation occurs in extreme emotions, sudden mood swings, or inappropriate emotional reactions (either not responding to the degree they should or overreacting). Hyperfixation: This also plays out differently depending on the brand of neurodivergence in question. Often, neurodivergent people get very involved in topics or hobbies to the point of what others may think of as obsession. Picking Up on Subtleties but Missing the Obvious: Neurodivergent people may struggle with picking up on things neurotypical people can see easily. At the same time, they are incredibly adept at noticing the subtle things everyone else misses. Sensory Sensitivities: If you’re neurodivergent, you may be unable to ignore your clothes tag scratching your back, have trouble hearing certain sounds, and can’t quite deal with certain textures of clothing, food, and so on. Rejection Sensitivity: Neurodivergent people are often more sensitive to rejection than others due to neurological differences and life experiences. For instance, children with ADHD get much more negative feedback than their peers without ADHD. Neurodivergent people are often rejected to the point where they notice rejection even when it’s not there.

What we need is a book of knowledge written so well as to constitute literature in its own right. Something for anyone interested in the state of the Earth and of us - a manual for living well and for survival. The quality of its writing must be such that it would serve for pleasure, for devotional reading, as a source of facts and even as a primary school text. It would range from simple things such as how to light a fire, to our place in the solar system and the universe. It would be a primer of philosophy and science - it would provide a top-down look at the Earth and us. It would explain the natural selection of all living things, and give the key facts of medicine, including the ciculation of the blood, the role of the organs. The discovery that bacteria and viruses caused infectious diseases is relatively recent; imagine the consequences if such knowledge was lost. In its time the Bible set the constraints for behaviour and for health. WE need a new book like the Bible that would serve in the same way but acknowledge science. It would explain properties like temperature, the meaning of their scales of measurement and how to measure them. It would list the periodic table of the elements. It would give an account of the air, the rocks, and the oceans. It would give schoolchildren of today a proper understanding of our civilization and of the planet it occupies. It would inform them at an age when their minds were most receptive and give them facts they would remember for a lifetime. It would also be the survival manual for our successors. A book that was readily available should disaster happen. It would help bring science back as part of our culture and be an inheritance. Whatever else may be wrong with science, it still provides the best explanation we have of the material world.

How To Get the Exact Position You Desire. Everyone enjoys doing the kind of work for which he is best suited. An artist loves to work with paints, a craftsman with his hands, a writer loves to write. Those with less definite talents have their preferences for certain fields of business and industry. If America does anything well, it offers a full range of occupations, tilling the soil, manufacturing, marketing, and the professions. First: decide exactly what kind of a job you want. If the job doesn’t already exist, perhaps you can create it. Second: choose the company or individual for whom you wish to work. Third: study your prospective employer, as to policies, personnel, and chances of advancement. Fourth: by analysis of yourself, your talents and capabilities, figure what you can offer, and plan ways and means of giving advantages, services, developments, ideas that you believe you can successfully deliver. Fifth: forget about “a job.” Forget whether or not there is an opening. Forget the usual routine of “have you got a job for me?” Concentrate on what you can give. Sixth: once you have your plan in mind, arrange with an experienced writer to put it on paper in neat form, and in full detail. Seventh: present it to the proper person with authority and he will do the rest. Every company is looking for men who can give something of value, whether it be ideas, services, or “connections.” Every company has room for the man who has a definite plan of action which is to the advantage of that company. This line of procedure may take a few days or weeks of extra time, but the difference in income, in advancement, and in gaining recognition will save years of hard work at small pay. It has many advantages, the main one being that it will often save from one to five years of time in reaching a chosen goal. Every person who starts, or “gets in” halfway up the ladder does so by deliberate and careful planning.

He treats me like his property. But it’s all fine. I have my ways to escape from the prison he designed for me. He likes his girls proper and innocent. Oh, hubby dearest. You haven’t a clue in the world. You’re going to regret underestimating me. While he’s deep in dreamland, I have other things on my mind. Blood. Revenge. Murder. At night is when I unleash all of my vulgar thoughts on paper. At night is when my fantasies come alive. At night is when I write.

Organic inspiration. The proper conception of inspiration holds that the Holy Spirit acted on the writers of the Bible in an organic way, in harmony with the laws of their own inner being, using them just as they were, with their character and temperament, their gifts and talents, their education and culture, their vocabulary and style. The Holy Spirit illumined their minds, aided their memory, prompted them to write, repressed the influence of sin on their writings, and guided them in the expression of their thoughts even to the choice of their words.

Writing surrogate letters wasn’t quite so easily justified; there was something slightly but definitely dishonest about it. To get one placed, you had to sound like the real thing, but not so much that you discredited your own position or insulted the intelligence of the supporter whose name you were hoping to attach to it. You had to start the letter off with some sassy stock phrase or rhetorical question: “Representative So-and-so just doesn’t get it” or “Which constitution is Senator So-and-so reading?” Then you’d make your case without sounding like you knew too much about the topic. That’s where surrogate letters sometimes went wrong. They would refer to specific revenue numbers or to the names of subcommittees or explain the difference between house and senate versions of bills. Average people didn’t know these things, and if a surrogate letter used them, it sounded like what it was, and editors wouldn’t run them. I spent a day writing these wretched things. It wasn’t worth it unless you produced ten or fifteen; newspapers likely wouldn’t print a letter taking a certain view if they got only one, but if they got a handful they’d feel bound to run one or two. It was a mind-numbing exercise: each one had to sound clumsy but not stupid; each had to approach the question from a different angle; and none could use the same vocabulary. We sent them out to the ostensible authors, and over the next two weeks or so I would see my little creations pop up in a variety of newspapers. Sometimes a few words had been changed by the surrogates, but by and large they slapped their names on the letters and forwarded them to their hometown newspapers. I felt the whole exercise was pointless, but perhaps the letters did contribute in a small way to the sense that Knotts’s allegations had been grossly unfair and that the governor had acted properly. Had he? I thought so at the time, but enough time has passed that I can admit I don’t know. One of the melancholy facts of political life is that your convictions tend to align with your paycheck.

the most important document of Leo’s pontificate, his bull Rerum novarum, issued on May 15, 1891. The subject of that bull was one with which few popes had dealt before: the proper relations between laborers and their employers. In the bull, Leo shows that he is aware of the inequities that have resulted from the contrast between “the enormous fortunes of a few individuals, and the extreme poverty of the masses.” Therefore, he writes, the time has come “to define the mutual rights and obligations of the rich and the poor, of capital and labor.” Such relations have become all the more tragic since labor organizations have disappeared in recent times, and “a small group of very rich people have been able to throw upon the masses of poor laborers a yoke that is little better than slavery itself.” Although it is an error to believe that between the rich and the poor there can only be class war, it is true that the defense of the poor merits special attention, for the rich have many ways to protect themselves, while the poor have no other recourse than the protection of the state. Therefore, laws should be such that the rights of the poor are guaranteed. In particular, this refers to the right of every laborer to a salary sufficient to sustain him and his family, without being forced to work beyond a fair limit. All this is to be done because “God seems to lean in favor of those who suffer misfortune.

Stronger, more effective interviewee. Value-based résumés lead to interviews, and interviews lead to job offers. When you write your résumé thinking about the interview, you begin developing the key messages you’ll eventually want to communicate in an interview to win the job. In other words, when you take the time to properly prepare your résumé thinking about the key messages that will win job offers, you’ll then showcase those messages on your résumé to win interviews!

Rules for the Use and Arrangement of Words The following rules for the use and arrangement of words will be found helpful in securing clearness and force. 1. Use words in their proper sense. 2. Avoid useless circumlocution and "fine writing." 3. Avoid exaggerations. 4. Be careful in the use of not ... and, any, but, only, not ... or, that. 5. Be careful in the use of ambiguous words, e. g., certain. 6. Be careful in the use of he, it, they, these, etc. 7. Report a speech in the first person where necessary to avoid ambiguity. 8. Use the third person where the exact words of the speaker are not intended to be given. 9. When you use a participle implying when, while, though, or that, show clearly by the context what is implied. 10. When using the relative pronoun, use who or which, if the meaning is and he or and it, for he or for it. 11. Do not use and which for which. 12. Repeat the antecedent before the relative where the non-repetition causes any ambiguity. 13. Use particular for general terms. Avoid abstract nouns. 14. Avoid verbal nouns where verbs can be used. 15. Use particular persons instead of a class. 16. Do not confuse metaphor. 17. Do not mix metaphor with literal statement. 18. Do not use poetic metaphor to illustrate a prosaic subject. 19. Emphatic words must stand in emphatic positions; i. e., for the most part, at the beginning or the end of the sentence. 20. Unemphatic words must, as a rule, be kept from the end. 21. The Subject, if unusually emphatic, should often be transferred from the beginning of the sentence. 22. The object is sometimes placed before the verb for emphasis. 23. Where several words are emphatic make it clear which is the most emphatic. Emphasis can sometimes be given by adding an epithet, or an intensifying word. 24. Words should be as near as possible to the words with which they are grammatically connected. 25. Adverbs should be placed next to the words they are intended to qualify. 26. Only; the strict rule is that only should be placed before the word it affects. 27. When not only precedes but also see that each is followed by the same part of speech. 28. At least, always, and other adverbial adjuncts sometimes produce ambiguity. 29. Nouns should be placed near the nouns that they define. 30. Pronouns should follow the nouns to which they refer without the intervention of any other noun. 31. Clauses that are grammatically connected should be kept as close together as possible. Avoid parentheses. 32. In conditional sentences the antecedent or "if-clauses" must be kept distinct from the consequent clauses. 33. Dependent clauses preceded by that should be kept distinct from those that are independent. 34. Where there are several infinitives those that are dependent on the same word must be kept distinct from those that are not. 35. In a sentence with if, when, though, etc. put the "if-clause" first. 36. Repeat the subject where its omission would cause obscurity or ambiguity. 37. Repeat a preposition after an intervening conjunction especially if a verb and an object also intervene. 38. Repeat conjunctions, auxiliary verbs, and pronominal adjectives. 39. Repeat verbs after the conjunctions than, as, etc. 40. Repeat the subject, or some other emphatic word, or a summary of what has been said, if the sentence is so long that it is difficult to keep the thread of meaning unbroken. 41. Clearness is increased when the beginning of the sentence prepares the way for the middle and the middle for the end, the whole forming a kind of ascent. This ascent is called "climax." 42. When the thought is expected to ascend but descends, feebleness, and sometimes confusion, is the result. The descent is called "bathos." 43. A new construction should not be introduced unexpectedly.

Refining the relationship between exaggeration and realism in humor can be related to stretching a rubber band. Imagine the unstretched band is the realism, and exaggeration stretches the band. When the rubber band is stretched to capacity, several things happen at once. Stretching alters the shape of the band; exaggeration changes the perception of reality. The rubber band can be stretched a little (understatement) or a lot (overstatement). Just as tension increases in a rubber band that it is stretched, exaggeration increases tension in the audience—up to the breaking point. When you pluck a rubber band, it makes a sound. The pitch of this sound gets higher as you stretch the rubber band further. This sound can be compared to emotion in an audience. The more you stretch the rubber band, the greater the emotion in the audience. Finding the proper balance between realism and exaggeration is the ultimate test of a comedy writer’s skill. Humor only comes when the exaggeration is logical. Simply being ludicrous or audacious is not a skill. It’s amateur. Many novice stand-up comedians struggle with exaggeration. They’ll start with some realistic premise—the way women dress, picking up men in a singles bar, outsmarting the police, or advertising slogans—but then they’ll shift into fifth gear in a wild display of ludicrous fantasy that’s not well connected to the initial premise. Their material has limited success because they make the same mistake repeatedly: They disrupt the equal balance of realism and exaggeration. Outrageous doesn’t mean creative.

Christopher…” Her voice was trembling. “I wish…” “Yes?” It was terribly selfish, and yet she couldn’t help from blurting out, “I wish there had been no other women before me.” He looked down at her in a way that made her feel as if she were dissolving in honey. His mouth descended, caressing hers with tender, urgent warmth. “My heart belongs only to you,” he whispered. “It was never lovemaking before. This is a first for me, too.” She puzzled over that, staring into his bright, lambent eyes. “Then it’s different, when one is in love?” “Beatrix, dearest love, it’s beyond anything I’ve ever known. Beyond dreams.” His hand glided over her hip, fingers gently tugging the black gossamer aside to reach her skin. Her stomach tightened at the temptation and knowledge in his touch. “You’re the reason I live. If it weren’t for you, I never would have come back.” “Don’t say that.” It was unbearable, the thought of anything happening to him. “‘It’s all come down to the hope of being with you,’…Do you remember when I wrote that?” Beatrix nodded and bit her lip as his hand slid farther beneath the transparent silk panels. “I meant every word,” he murmured. “I would have written much more, but I didn’t want to frighten you.” “I wanted to write more, too,” she said shakily. “I wanted to share every thought with you, every--” She broke off with a gasp as he found the vulnerable place between her thighs. “You’re so warm here,” he whispered, stroking her intimately. “So soft. Oh, Beatrix…I fell in love with you by words alone…but I have to admit…I prefer this way of communicating.” She could barely speak, her mind dazzled by sensation. “It’s still a love letter,” she said, sliding her hand over the golden slope of his shoulder. “Only in bed.” He smiled. “Then I’ll try to use proper punctuation.” “And no dangling participles,” she added, making him laugh.

The Gospel of John was written at least twenty years after the last of Paul’s writings. Since John’s ministry was a mending ministry, his Gospel is a mending Gospel. Problems had been caused by certain ones who called themselves Christians but did not believe in the deity of Christ. In his Gospel John mended the damage caused by this lack of faith in Christ’s deity. His Gospel reveals clearly that Christ is God. Furthermore, we have pointed out that in the very Gospel which emphasizes the deity of Christ the eating and drinking of the Lord are also emphasized. We have also seen that in the book of Revelation we find reference to both eating and drinking. This indicates definitely that John’s ministry, like that of Paul, stresses the importance of eating and drinking the Lord. Without eating and drinking, there is no way for us to be proper Christians. It is of vital importance that we learn how to drink the living water. There is the need to give our attention to all that the Bible reveals concerning how to drink the Lord.

What we see in Penny’s writings then is what Paul de Man calls the rhetoric of Romanticism. An attempt to neutralise all that is properly radical in the Romantic epoch we continue to live in: revolution, new disruptive ways of relating to the world, disparate experiences in a master narrative that neutralises these while claiming to be the voice they ought to speak in.

a dark and empty place without our feelings. Put on a pair of sunglasses and rock on, Mom! If you answered FALSE to #3, let’s brainstorm right now about some healthy ways you can vent negative emotions, anger, and stress. We talked about a few at the end of the chapter (resting properly, exercising regularly, and eating well), but there are hundreds of other ways you can get the emotional release you need. Laughter is a big one. Do you maintain a sense of humor about your life and about your emotional challenges in particular? Connecting with friends is another important one. And what about those times when you find yourself needing what I like to call a “sanity moment”? Write

fact, all the other war news was almost disregarded and the population had no way of getting any other news reports, since radios were unavailable. My Russian boss, for whom I prepared all the lists and bread ration cards, was a blond, slim Northerner from Leningrad. When sober, he was distant and quite proper; but when he was drunk, one had a hard time fighting him off. He was very demanding and we were forever writing. In the entire section there was not a single typewriter. Everything was written longhand. The bookkeepers were using the abacus, the only available calculator.