Puppet Dance Quotes

It all goes back and back," Tyrion thought, "to our mothers and fathers and theirs before them. We are puppets dancing on the strings of those who came before us, and one day our own children will take up our strings and dance in our steads.

We did just leave an insane asylum,” Hi agreed. “For all we know, Chance spend his nights dancing naked with sock puppets, plotting to invade Canada.

I want to build spires in their minds and dance shadows through like marionettes, chased by whispers and hints of the unspeakable.

Humanity is awful, angry, and violent. But we are also magical and musical. We dance. We sing. We create. We live and laugh and rage and cry and despair and hope. We are a bundle of contradictions without rhyme or reason. And there is no one like us in all the universe.

Do you believe we are masters of ourselves, or merely dance like puppets on strings having the illusion of independence?

Your mortal attachments are like a puppet’s strings," Avari said, both hands clasped casually at his back. "One need only pluck the right cord to make the puppet dance." His smile was almost creepier than his threats. "Dance, reaper!

The brain had its own food on which it battened, and the imagination, made grotesque by terror, twisted and distorted as a living thing by pain, danced like some foul puppet on a stand and grinned through moving masks.

What are we (I ask) but puppets in a show-box? Oh, omnipotent Destiny, pull our strings gently! Dance us mercifully off our moserable little stage!

Dance and fall. Like a puppet. All those years of dancing.

I want to terrify little kids, too! I want to build spires in their minds and dance shadows through like marionettes, chased by whispers and hints of the unspeakable. I want to torture future generations with the Puppet That Bites.

It’s time you realized that you have something in you more powerful and miraculous than the things that affect you and make you dance like a puppet. What’s in my thoughts at this moment? Fear? Jealousy? Desire? Feelings like that?

The people in the city seem paper thin in the mist. They believe they are dancing to the music of their lives... But I think, like the puppets, each of us is pulled upon invisible strings, until the night comes and we are put away. I shiver, and hurry from the square, as the darkness of the city closes over me like canal water or the grave.

What is a secret? It is much more than knowledge shared with only a few, or perhaps only one another. It is power. It is a bond. It is a sign of deep trust, or the darkest threat possible.... Be very chary of revealing your hoarded secrets. Many lose all power once they have been divulged. Be even more careful of sharing your secrets lest you find yourself a puppet dancing on someone else's strings.

Be very chary of telling your hoarded secrets. Many lose all power once they have been divulged. Be even more careful of sharing your own secrets lest you find yourself a puppet dancing on someone else's strings.

How can I bribe my tongue to speak as truth the things my heart so contradicts. Attach to me then your strings and pull and I shall dance and be your puppet…for a time

True power lies in the ability to harness energy and wield it like a sword, becoming the puppeteer that masters all the strings instead of the marionette being forced to dance.

My child isn’t my easel to paint on Nor my diamond to polish My child isn’t my trophy to share with the world Nor my badge of honor My child isn’t an idea, an expectation, or a fantasy Nor my reflection or legacy My child isn’t my puppet or a project Nor my striving or desire My child is here to fumble, stumble, try, and cry Learn and mess up Fail and try again Listen to the beat of a drum faint to our adult ears And dance to a song that revels in freedom My task is to step aside Stay in infinite possibility Heal my own wounds Fill my own bucket And let my child fly —Shefali Tsabary, PhD

He wondered about the people in houses like those. They would be, for example, small clerks, shop-assistants, commercial travellers, insurance touts, tram conductors. Did they know that they were only puppets dancing when money pulled the strings? You bet they didn’t. And if they did, what would they care? They were too busy being born, being married, begetting, working, dying. It mightn’t be a bad thing, if you could manage it, to feel yourself one of them, one of the ruck of men. Our civilization is founded on greed and fear, but in the lives of common men the greed and fear are mysteriously transmuted into something nobler. The lower-middle-class people in there, behind their lace curtains, with their children and their scraps of furniture and their aspidistras — they lived by the money-code, sure enough, and yet they contrived to keep their decency. The money-code as they interpreted it was not merely cynical and hoggish. They had their standards, their inviolable points of honour. They ‘kept themselves respectable’— kept the aspidistra flying. Besides, they were alive. They were bound up in the bundle of life. They begot children, which is what the saints and the soul-savers never by any chance do. The aspidistra is the tree of life, he thought suddenly.

The puppet dances, He turns flips and he jigs. His painted red smile looks happy but he is screaming, for he performs on red-hot coals. His wooden feet begin to smoke. A man comes in with a shining axe. He swings it. I think he will cut off the puppet's burning feet, but instead the axe cuts all his strings. But the man with the axe falls just as swiftly as the puppet leaps away, free.

Her entire life was obeying orders. She’d left her Father behind, only to fall into the hands of another dictator. Was her life her own anymore, or was she a puppet on a string, dancing to Ryan’s tune?

The more he tries to stop it, the faster it goes. When he lets his hands and face move like they want to and doesn’t try to hold them back, they flow and gesture in a way that’s real pretty to watch, but when he worries about them and tries to hold back he becomes a wild, jerky puppet doing a high-strung dance. Everything is moving faster and faster, and his voice is speeding up to match.

In her dance, she controlled the bright paper birds with invisible wires and threads. She played the human: heavy, tied to earth. Her dances weren't pretty or delightful, but they were magical, [...] They called her a dancer and a puppeteer and an artist. They might have called her a witch, and not the good kind either.

The feet and their tapping Write many a lovely couplet The body dances to your rhythm O lord After all, you are the master and I a puppet

The puppet masters only concern is how well they can manipulate their marionettes.

We are puppets dancing on the strings of those who came before us, and one day our own children will take up our strings and dance on in our steads.

I had concluded that I no longer shared her faith in a God who controlled the universe like a puppet master pulling and tugging strings and making us all dance. Our lives, I believed, were more like billiard balls on a pool table, ricocheting randomly with the impact of the cue ball. To believe otherwise was to believe that a God to whom my mother had devoted her life had responded by striking down her husband and causing her so much pain. I couldn’t accept that.

I have seen a puppet, dancing to the tunes. I have seen a kite flying with a string. I have seen people working for someone else without knowing this reality. I have seen prisoners who think they are free.

We caught the tread of dancing feet, We loitered down the moonlit street, And stopped beneath the harlot's house. Inside, above the din and fray, We heard the loud musicians play The 'Treues Liebes Herz' of Strauss. Like strange mechanical grotesques, Making fantastic arabesques, The shadows raced across the blind. We watched the ghostly dancers spin To sound of horn and violin, Like black leaves wheeling in the wind. Like wire-pulled automatons, Slim silhouetted skeletons Went sidling through the slow quadrille, Then took each other by the hand, And danced a stately saraband; Their laughter echoed thin and shrill. Sometimes a clockwork puppet pressed A phantom lover to her breast, Sometimes they seemed to try to sing. Sometimes a horrible marionette Came out, and smoked its cigarette Upon the steps like a live thing. Then, turning to my love, I said, 'The dead are dancing with the dead, The dust is whirling with the dust.' But she--she heard the violin, And left my side, and entered in: Love passed into the house of lust. Then suddenly the tune went false, The dancers wearied of the waltz, The shadows ceased to wheel and whirl. And down the long and silent street, The dawn, with silver-sandalled feet, Crept like a frightened girl.

We see the puppets dancing on their miniature stage, moving up and down as the strings pull them around, following the prescribed course of their various little parts. We learn to understand the logic of this theater and we find ourselves in its motions. We locate ourselves in society and thus recognize our own position as we hang from its subtle strings. For a moment we see ourselves as puppets indeed. But then we grasp a decisive difference between the puppet theater and our own drama. Unlike the puppets, we have the possibility of stopping in our movements, looking up and perceiving the machinery by which we have been moved. In this act lies the first step toward freedom. And in this same act we find the conclusive justification of sociology as a humanistic discipline

It was useless. The brain had its own food on which it battened, and the imagination, made grotesque by terror, twisted and distorted as a living thing by pain, danced like some foul puppet on a stand and grinned through moving masks.

Gannon came from loud, passionate Italian stock that wasn’t afraid to smash a plate to make a statement. Paige, on the other hand, systematically choked down any temper and, with frosty efficiency, made him dance like a fucking puppet.

Prieto had never given much thought to The Man. The notion of one mythical, monolithic, rich, powerful White Man puppeteering the lives of people of color to keep them dancing in service of his larger plan seemed far too simplistic to serve the complex issue of systemic oppression very well.

My dear Lord Krishna, you are so kind upon this useless soul, but I do not know why you have brought me here. Now you can do whatever you like with me. But I guess you have some business here, otherwise why would you bring me to this place? Somehow or other, O Lord, You have brought me here to speak about you. Now, my Lord, it is up to you to make me a success or failure as you like. O spiritual master of all the worlds. I can simply repeat your message; so if you like you can make my power of speaking suitable for their understanding. Only by Your causeless mercy will my words become pure. I am sure that when this transcendental message penetrates their hearts they will certainly feel engladdened and thus become liberated from all unhappy conditions of life. O Lord, I am just like a puppet in your hands. So if you have brought me here to dance, then make me dance, make me dance, O Lord, make me dance as you like. I have no devotion, nor do I have any knowledge, but I have strong faith in the holy name of Krishna. I have been designated as Bhaktivedanta, one who possesses devotion and knowledge, and now, if you like, you can fulfill the real purport of Bhaktivedanta. Signed, the most unfortunate, insignificant beggar, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami, On board the ship Jaladuta, Commonwealth Pier, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A. 18th of September, 1965

Puppets, zeitgeisty dressed, they dance on the edge of fire-breathing volcanoes - lack of emotion in their faces.

It’s time you realized that you have something in you more powerful and miraculous than the things that affect you and make you dance like a puppet.

As the butterflies danced, a human and a machine looked on, their hearts beating as one.

We are puppets dancing on the strings of those who came before us, and one day our own children will take up our strings and dance in our stead.

It’s time you realized that you have something in you more powerful and miraculous than the things that affect you and make you dance like a puppet

Her continued devotion in the face of all that had happened amazed me, but at this point I had concluded that I no longer shared her faith in a God who controlled the universe like a puppet master pulling and tugging strings and making us all dance. Our lives, I believed, were more like billiard balls on a pool table, ricocheting randomly with the impact of the cue ball.

The Art of Talking to Strangers Here are two things we apparently need to stop doing when strangers bend down over your stroller to look at how cute you are: 1. Me sneaking up behind the stroller, hissing, "Say hello to my little FRIEND!" 2. Me sneaking up behind the stroller, hissing, "Dance, puppets, Daaance!" So. Yeah. This feedback is mostly for me. You just carry on.

At sixty, I worshiped her with the volcanic ardour of eighteen. All the gold of my rich nature was poured hopelessly at her feet. My wife – poor angel! – my wife, who adores me, got nothing but the shillings and the pennies. Such is the Work, such Man, such Love. What are we (I ask) but puppets in a show-box? Oh, omnipotent Destiny, pull our strings gently! Dance us mercifully off our miserable little stage!

Most of my life I’ve felt I was dreaming. Now and then I wake up, sometimes for months, sometimes for minutes. I’m a character in a play, and I can’t tell if I’m making it up or if a great puppeteer is making me dance.

you feel what else is there to do in life apart from living? And even that is out of your control; it depends on an infinite number of factors. Everything is in your unconscious mind. Why sex desire arose in you, why you raised a family, how greed and anger entered you, why you were dishonest, why you accumulated wealth, why you made enemies – you have no idea! You are just like a puppet, whose strings are being pulled by someone else. You imagine you are dancing, but in fact it is someone else who is making you dance. Look closely at your life and you will find that you are nothing more than a puppet. How can anything real happen in the life of a man who is not his own master, but merely a puppet?

It was useless. The brain had its own food on which it battened, and the imagination, made grotesque by terror, twisted and distorted as a living thing by pain, danced like some foul puppet on a stand and grinned through moving masks. Then,

I confess that I felt something closer to exaltation than fear. Something inexplicable was happening. Forged in Jesuit logic and tempered in the cold bath of science. I nevertheless understood at that second the ancient obsession of the God-fearing for another kind of fear: the thrill of exorcism, the mindless whirl of Dervish possession, the puppet-dance ritual of Tarot, and the almost erotic surrender of séance, speaking in tongues, and Zen Gnostic trance. I realized at that instant just how surely the affirmation of demons or the summoning of Satan somehow can affirm the reality of their mystic antithesis – the God of Abraham.

Humanity is awful, angry, and violent. But we are also magical and musical. We dance. We sing. We create. We live and laugh and rage ad cry and despair and hope=; We are a bundle of contradictions without. rhyme or reason. And there is no one like us in all the universe. Don't you think we should make the most of it?

Humanity is awful, angry, and violent. But we are also magical and musical. We dance. We sing. We create. We live and laugh and rage and cry and despair and hope. We are a bundle of contradictions without rhyme or reason. And there is no one like us in all the universe. Don’t you think we should make the most of it? TJ

We would never let another person jerk us around the way we let our impulses do. It’s time we start seeing it that way—that we’re not puppets that can be made to dance this way or that way just because we feel like it. We should be the ones in control, not our emotions, because we are independent, self-sufficient people.

From the perspective of my old laptop, I am a numbers man, something like that every instruction he gives me is a one or a zero I remember well I have information about him before he left for his new toy thinner, younger, able to keep up with him, I have information about him may 15th 2008, he listened to a song five times in succession it was titled Everybody, open parenthesis, Backstreet's Back, close parenthesis it included the lyric 'Am I sexual, yeaaaaah' He said once, computers like a sense of finality to them when I write something I don't want to be able to run from it this was a lie he was addicted to my ability to keep his secrets I am a numbers man, every instruction he gives me is a one, or a zero I remember well January, 7th 2007 I was young just two week awake he gave me, a new series of one's and zeros the most sublime sequence I have ever seen it had curves, and shadow, it was him he gave his face in numbers and trusted me to be the artist, and I was do not laugh I have read about your God you kill each other over your grand fathers memory of him I still remember the fingertips of my God dancing across my body After I learnt to draw him he trusted with more art rubric jpeg 1063 was his favourite Him, and that woman, resting her head in the curve of his nick I read his correspondence she hasn't written him back in years but he asks for it, constantly, jpeg 1063, jpeg 1063, jpeg 1063 it was my master piece it looked so, .., life like I wanted to tell him That's not her that is me that is not her face those are my ones and zeros waltzing in space for you she is nothing more than my shadow puppet you do not miss her, you miss me, I am a numbers man, every instruction he gives is a one or a zero I remember well but he taught me to be a Da Vinci and I sit here, with his portraits waiting for him to return I do not think he will Is that what it means to be human to be all powerful, to build a temple to yourself and leave only the walls to pray

He knew what was waiting for him there; saw it, indeed, and, shuddering, crushed with dank hands his burning lids as though he would have robbed the very brain of sight and driven the eyeballs back into their cave. It was useless. The brain had its own food on which it battened, and the imagination, made grotesque by terror, twisted and distorted as a living thing by pain, danced like some foul puppet on a stand and grinned through moving masks. Then, suddenly, time stopped for him. Yes: that blind, slow-breathing thing crawled no more, and horrible thoughts, time being dead, raced nimbly on in front, and dragged a hideous future from its grave, and showed it to him. He stared at it. Its very horror made him stone.

I wonder, sometimes, if the Continentals were like shoals of fish, & the slightest flick of one fish caused dozens of others to follow suit, until the entire shimmering cloud had changed course. And were the Divinities the sum of this cloud? An embodiment, perhaps, of a national subconscious? Or were they empowered by the thoughts & praises of millions of people, yet also yoked to every one of those thoughts – giant, terrible puppets forced to dance by the strings of millions of puppeteers. This knowledge, I think, is incredibly dangerous. The Continentals derive so much pride & so much power from having Divine approval … but were they merely hearing the echoes of their own voices, magnified through strange caverns & tunnels? When they spoke to the Divinities, were they speaking to giant reflections of themselves?

Again, the publick shewed that they would bear their share in these things; the very Court, which was then gay and luxurious, put on a face of just concern for the publick danger. All the plays and interludes which, after the manner of the French Court, had been set up and began to increase among us, were forbid to act; the gaming tables, publick dancing rooms, and music houses, which multiplied and began to debauch the manners of the people, were shut up and suppressed; and the jack-puddings, merry-andrews, puppet-shows, rope-dancers, and such-like doings, which had bewitched the poor common people, shut up their shops, finding indeed no trade; for the minds of the people were agitated with other things, and a kind of sadness and horror at these things sat upon the countenances even of the common people. Death was before their eyes, and everybody began to think of their graves, not of mirth and diversions.

I imagine you not telling me to whisper. I imagine you not saying oh don't say this literally. You want me to evoke as opposed to mere describing. You want me to be an invisible scribe that an octoepoose was hiding. I'm not sure if my facial features are an autograph that your Picasso smile is signing. Infamous for the mirror I shook when my sock puppets were pining? I am not just a fish that you gave wings to! I don't simply flop in the air whenever you brush some mannequinn's hair. There is a reason for the bad timing. Exquisite imbalances. A child enjoying the pink sky. I won't say that is my clue! Playing The Beatles on a kazoo is beautiful oooh ooooh Your laughter is a woman with alot of eyeballs on her stomach that pretends that she doesn't see the colors of all them songs. In the pre dawn hours we dance with delusions and illusions. The eternal seamstress does not care for Frakenstein's dress(she still loves our unique caress ) She loves and laughs despite some so-called scientist. Where is that emperor and his nakedness! Darling, our atoms need never split. We compliment in so many ways that all our night's and days have become one swirling sunrise/sunset that only true lovers can scoff at(those who shhhhh) The flower is not passive or apologetic. It blooms through the fractured net. Floating magnetic(eep eeep) You are not just some seductress. You are the leader of an elite group of intergalactic seductress impersonators who reveal corruption but then choose to love. We embrace conclusions that make the puddle heart awake with ethereal drum beat gongs. You think of a heroic poodle in the dark. We both know that the trapeze artist that followed us was not a cliche. He smelled differently. He had never met a floating lady that showed him how to appreciate a symphony without taking away his love for a good rock n roll melody. I am not sure I can only whisper of such realities. I am not sure I can only whisper of such realities.-

The Harlot’s House. We caught the tread of dancing feet, We loitered down the moonlit street, And stopped beneath the harlot’s house. Inside, above the din and fray, We heard the loud musicians play The ‘Treues Liebes Herz’ of Strauss. Like strange mechanical grotesques, Making fantastic arabesques, The shadows raced across the blind. We watched the ghostly dancers spin To sound of horn and violin, Like black leaves wheeling in the wind. Like wire-pulled automatons, Slim silhouetted skeletons Went sidling through the slow quadrille. They took each other by the hand, And danced a stately saraband; Their laughter echoed thin and shrill. Sometimes a clockwork puppet pressed A phantom lover to her breast, Sometimes they seemed to try to sing. Sometimes a horrible marionette Came out, and smoked its cigarette Upon the steps like a live thing. Then, turning to my love, I said, ‘The dead are dancing with the dead, The dust is whirling with the dust.’ But she—she heard the violin, And left my side, and entered in: Love passed into the house of lust. Then suddenly the tune went false, The dancers wearied of the waltz, The shadows ceased to wheel and whirl. And down the long and silent street, The dawn, with silver-sandalled feet, Crept like a frightened girl.

SOMETIMES ON A PORCH in June, a girl begins to plunk her banjo; and after a spell of stillness, while the sound travels down their ear crinkles into their inmost feeling-chambers, the music starts to dance the people passing by. They toss like puppets on a bouncing sheet; like boys without a boat; they swing like weeds in the wind; they leap heptangularly about, dancing eccentric saltarellos, discovering that their springs are not so rusty. For even if you have built masterful aspen castles in your mind, have toppled whole forests to throttle the writhing elements into a liveably serene personal pond; if you have longtime sculled your ingenious fins to withstand the tumble-crazy currents; there is music that will dissolve your anchors, your sanctuaries, floating you off your feet, fetching you away with itself. And then you are a migrant, and then you are amuck; and then you are the music’s toy, juggled into its furious torrents, jostled into its foamy jokes, assuming its sparklyblue or greenweedy or brownmuddy tinges, being driven down to the dirgy bottom where rumble-clacking stones are lit by waterlogged and melancholy sunlight, warping back up to the surface, along with yew leaves and alewives and frog bones and other strange acquisitions snagged and rendered willy-nilly by the current, straggling away on its rambling cadenzas, with ever-changing sights—freckled children on the bank, chicken choirs, brewing thunderclouds, june bugs perched in wild parsley—until it spills you into a place whose dimensions make nonsense of your heretofore extraordinary spatial intelligence.

On a break from the tour, I went south to Bali, a place the choreographer Toni Basil, whom Eno and I had met during the Bush Of Ghosts sessions, had recommended as being transporting and all about performance. I rented a small motorcycle and headed up into the hills, away from the beach resort. I soon discovered that if one saw offerings of flowers and fruit being brought to a village temple compound in the afternoon, one could be pretty certain that some sort of ritual performance would follow there at night. Sure enough, night after night I would catch dances accompanied by gamelan orchestras and shadow-puppet excerpts from the Hindu Ramayana--epic and sometimes ritual performances that blended religious and theatrical elements. (A gamelan is a small orchestra made up mainly of tuned metallic gongs and xylophone-like instruments--the interplay between the parts is beautiful and intricate.) In these latter events some participants would often fall into a trance, but even in trance there were prescribed procedures. It wasn't all thrashing chaos, as a Westerner might expect, but a deeper kind of dance. As In Japanese theater, the performers often wore masks and extreme makeup; their movements, too, were stylized and "unnatural." It began to sink in that this kind of "presentational" theater has more in common with certain kinds of pop-music performance that traditional Western theater did. I was struck by other peripheral aspects of these performances. The audiences, mostly local villagers of all ages, weren't paying attention half the time. People would wander in and out, go get a snack from a cart or leave to smoke a bidi cigarette, and then return to watch some more. This was more like the behavior of audiences in music clubs than in Western theaters, where they were expected to sit quietly and only leave or converse once the show was over. The Balinese "shows" were completely integrated into people's daily lives, or so it seemed to me. There was no attempt to formally separate the ritual and the show from the audience. Everything seemed to flow into everything else. The food, the music, and the dance were all just another part of daily activity. I remembered a story about John Cage, who, when in Japan, asked someone what their religion was. The reply was that they didn't have a strict religion--they danced. Japanese do, of course, have Buddhist and Shinto rituals for weddings, funerals, and marriages, but a weekly thing like going to church or temple doesn't exist. The "religion" is so integrated into the culture that it appears in daily gestures and routines, unsegregated for ordinary life. I was beginning to see that theatricality wasn't necessarily a bad thing. It was part of life in much of the world, and not necessarily phony either.

It was getting difficult to see exactly what was going on in the pool and a fourth officer jumped in as one came up with the unconscious form of the first cop. While others pulled the half-drowned man from the pool, three more wrestled Skorzeny to the surface and dragged him to the steps at the shallow end of the pool. He wasn't struggling any longer. Nor was he breathing with any apparent difficulty. The biggest of the three cops later admitted to punching him as hard as he could in the stomach and Skorzey doubled over. Another half-dragged him, still on his feet, shirt torn, jacket ripped, out of the pool and put a handcuff on his left wrist. Skorzeny pulled his arm away from the cop and, suddenly straightening, elbow-jabbed him in the gut, sending him sprawling and rolling back into the pool. Skorzeny turned toward the back fence and was now between the pool and a small palm tree. Before him were two advancing officers, pistols leveled. Behind him two more circled the pool. Skorzeny lunged forward and all fired simultaneously. The noise was deafening. Lights in neighboring houses began to go on. Skorzeny's body twitched and bucked as the heavy slugs ripped through his body. His forward momentum carried him into the officers ahead of him and he half-crawled, half-staggered to the southeast corner of the yard where another gate was set into the fiberglass fencing. Two more officers, across the pool, cut loose with their pistols, emptying them into this writing body which danced like a puppet. Another cop fired two shots from his pump-action shotgun and Skorzeny was lifted clean off his feet and slammed against the gate, sagging to the ground. En masse from both ends of the pool they advanced, when he gave out with a terrible hissing snarl and started to rise once more. All movement ceased as the cops, to a man, stood frozen in their tracks. Skorzeny stood there like some hideous caricature, his shredding clothing and skin hanging like limp rags from his scarecrow form. His flesh was ripped in several places and he was oozing something that looked like watered-down blood. It was pinkish and transparent. He stood there like a living nightmare. Then he straightened and raised his fist with the cuff still dangling from it like a charm bracelet. 'Fools!' he shrieked. 'You can't kill me. You can't even hurt me.' Overhead, the copter hovered, the copilot giving a blow-by-blow description of the fight over the radio. The police on the ground were paralyzed. Nearly thirty shots had been fired (the bullets later tallied in reports turned in by the participating officers) and their quarry was still as strong as ever. He'd been hit repeatedly in the head and legs, so a bulletproof vest wasn't the answer. And at distances sometimes as little as five feet, they could hardly have missed. They'd seen him hit. They stood frozen in an eerie tableau as the still roiling pool water threw weird reflections all over the yard. Then Skorzeny did the most frightening thing of all. He smiled. A red-rimmed, hideous grin revealing fangs that 'would have done justice to a Doberman Pinscher.

Izzy, at ten, had been apprehended sneaking into the Humane Society in an attempt to free all the stray cats. “They’re like prisoners on death row,” she’d said. At eleven, her mother—convinced that Izzy was overly clumsy—had enrolled her in dance classes to improve her coordination. Her father insisted she try it for one term before she could quit. Every class, Izzy sat down on the floor and refused to move. For the recital—with the aid of a mirror and a Sharpie—Izzy had written NOT YOUR PUPPET across her forehead and cheeks just before taking the stage, where she stood stock-still while the others, disconcerted, danced around her.

My secret name for the annex was "the hen-coop". Glued to the nesting boxes of their favorite wicker chairs, the inmates sat click-clacking knitting needles, hatching balls of wool, their silence pierced only by an occasional frail voice of meaningless conversation. Flapping imaginary wings, "Cock-a-doodle-dooing," and "Chook-chooking", I ran through crowing, but not so loudly as to frighten them or be rude. I see now the old women's pinched faces, stiff and severe as the potted aspidistras beside them, only masked despair. With nothing to do but breathe, they knitted and crocheted memories and lost dreams into tangible objects. On the hour as though on cue, the old chickens roused, froze suddenly still, before exchanging smiles and nodding some shared secret to one another as the wild music from Bruges' church bells rang out the time from the many belfries, rattling teh panes and vibrating through the "hen house" with deep echoes. And I'd leap to the wild music - a dancing puppet pulled by unseen strings.

And what's God if not a puppeteer...one who makes us dance...one who craves and demands attention?

C’mon, I won’t tell anyone your secrets . . . even if they’re really, really bad,” she promised, raising an eyebrow. “Mocking me will get you nowhere.” But he leaned down, his breath tickling the side of her neck, and a rush of warmth flooded Violet’s stomach. “There are other ways to break me, though.” Violet reached for his hand, drawing him out of the flow of traffic, away from the pushing and shoving of students, until they were tucked into a private pocket of space, just the two of them. “What do I have to do to make you talk?” She pressed against him, standing on her toes so her lips could reach his. She didn’t have to reach far; he was already meeting her halfway, his arm snaking around her waist. They didn’t speak for several long seconds as Violet savored the feel of his lips against hers, soft and familiar and achingly tender. She shivered inwardly, both loving and hating the way her body reacted—almost instantaneously—to his. She had very little control over herself when he touched her. She felt like a puppet, at his command. But they couldn’t stand there for long, pretending that no one could see them, when everyone could. She kissed him one last time . . . lightly, softly, sweetly. “So, now are you gonna tell me?” she teased, slipping her hand beneath his T-shirt so she could feel the warmth of his bare stomach. One side of his lip twitched upward. “There’s really nothing to tell, Vi. I don’t have any deep dark secrets or anything. What you see is what you get.” “How can you be so sure? What did she say exactly?” Violet’s fingers danced along his waistline, tracing a path to his back. Jay grinned down at her, reaching for her hand and leading her toward the lunchroom. “Nothing, really. She just kept saying ‘interesting,’ over and over again. If you ask me, she just noticed what everyone else already knows, that I’m incredibly interesting.

Hideous, and yet comic too; for the spectacle of these feverish cranks toiling to create a new heaven and a new earth and thinking themselves the leaders of mankind, when they were dancing like puppets at the will of a few scoundrels engaged in the most ancient of pursuits, was an irony to make the gods laugh. I asked who was their leader. Macgillivray said he

Silhouettes A crow perches inside me. Actually, it is a whale. It is hard to tell by touch alone. Nothing I own ever looks me properly in the eye. Sometimes a loud caw at dusk feels like the largest mammal on Earth. A deep breath out the blowhole into my stomach. One second it swims and the next it is a small extension of a tree. This is a kind of beginning— a finger puppet show. The light dancing around my hands. Me dancing alone on a stem. A persimmon blooms. A boy learns a song and plants it in an orchard. Inside of me the large creatures change their shapes to fit. A blackbird. An organ. Animals with no names. I send them off into the world daily. Little sadness takes flight. Love is a brave child. These things take the shape of their containers. I don’t have to do anything to hold them.

That was old Ariel. The one who dove right into town life and interacted a little too closely with a puppet show, poking at things in shops that are for display only, dancing f to music that was probably just for listening to. Now she stood back and watched. Was this the result of age, and experience, and time? Or of not having a voice for so long? Had quiet observation just become a habit? Maybe this would provide am excuse for her to gather more information. Observation is all well and good, but only if it leads to a thoughtful plan of action!

And the homeless were still homeless, and the corpses still danced. Puppets on a hangman's string.

Much of the clothing is moth-eaten, but I can see what they once were. A skirt with a beaded pattern of pomegranates, another that pulls up, like a curtain, to show a stage with jewelled mechanical puppets underneath. There is even one stitched with the silhouette of dancing fauns as tall as the skirt itself. I've admired Oriana's dresses for their elegance and opulence, but these awaken in me a hunger for a dress that's riotous. They make me wish I'd seen Locke's mother in one of her gowns. They make me think she must have liked to laugh.

The First Swing, slicing through the air with effortless aplomb. The moment you take your first swing you wield your axe like you are a master in the art of gleaning. Those before you are in awe. They cannot imagine what your next move will be. You carry yourself as balanced and poised as a performer dancing brutally among them. The searing star of stars, your robe cascading to the earth in showers of gold. But that is not the truth. Your worth does not matter to those who now matter to you. You are truly nothing but a tiny sunspot to the eyes of others like yourself. An insignificant fleck. And as you take that first swing, they laugh at you. You try to rise above their derision, to be noticed in some small way. To find favor from the old ones, who are never old. To gain respect from the young ones, who have slain their own youth. To justify the arrogance that comes with the pride of being chosen. But that is not the truth either. It will be years until you come to know the truth: That those you revere are merely servants to the collective that we prune. It was their choice to let us choose all those years ago. The awed, terrified, relieved spectators; the real ones in power, the puppeteers of your actions. Standing in a perfect line before them, a cutting edge, wielding our axes, each one of us is the same as the last. We are one in all, We are all in one, and We. Shall. Kill. Our mantra, our commandment, our duty, to remind the immortal of mortality. To teach them that eternal repose may be distant, but not lost. Who are We? We are Scythes. And the weapons we wield are not by any means our friends. The devastating force of bullet, blade, and bludgeon tears us apart each day, every day, piece by piece, and leaves us with wounds that will never heal. This is what ties us to the masses, yet restrains us from being one with them. And with each new gleaning we bleed and break anew, yet our resolve never changes. For We are Scythes. Nothing will ever change that. And when it is your time to bleed, you will know and you will learn.

But you don’t need to have brawn to subdue and exert power. True power lies in the ability to harness energy and wield it like a sword, becoming the puppeteer who masters all the strings instead of the marionette being forced to dance.

He escaped, sire. In the night. No one knows how, and all that’s left in the dungeon is an old book of tales and some old man who is teaching the rats how to tap dance.

I hung up and sat for long minutes in the vacuous silence of my apartment. Such a stark contrast to the cacophonous voices in my head. So many people wanting me to fall in line with their expectations. To dance like a puppet in their narratives without any consideration for my needs. I circled back to my question from moments before. What if I didn’t allow myself to care what others desired from me? What if I focused on meeting my own needs and put myself first? In a way, we were taught as women that such a mindset was selfish. Was it, though? Who said I couldn’t be the captain of my own ship? A whisper of energy trickled through my veins at the prospect of such empowerment. Could the answer be so simple?

But what I’m not going to keep doing is this same old song and dance. This game was fun in the beginning. But now it just hurts. I no longer wish to pretend like I don’t lose my breath when you enter the room.

Neoclassical theology corrects misconceptions about God that are neither experientially true nor biblically grounded. If God were "omnipotent" in the sense of absolute determinism, then creation, and especially humans, would have no freedom. Freedom and absolute determinism negate one another. From the perspective of process metaphysics, if God were fully deterministic, then one could not speak of freedom of the will, the ability to choose to participate in God's creativity or not. God is in control, but God is not a control freak! God is not a "tyrant," puppeter, or robotic engineer!

Dance, you jazz-mad puppets of fate, and

I was sick and tired of having my actions commanded by another. I was a person, I had my own mind, I would not be someone's puppet.

The advancing creatures danced momentarily like marionette dolls on a demonic puppeteer’s string, then fell to their eternal positions of final decay. Serena

If I become like you, I will have no will of my own. I will have no individuality, I will just be your puppet.’ 'True.’ Sio smiled thinly. 'But even a puppet may dance before its strings are drawn tight. You will dance, Cass, and the heavens will applaud you.

Ah, immortals, bunch of amoebic parasites. Dance, puppets, dance... ~Death

Dialogue is action. It’s not separate from it. Action is doing something. Dialogue is talking, and talking is doing something. Even better when dialogue manifests while characters do shit: drive a car, execute some baddies, make an omelet, build a sinister dancing robot whose mad mechanical choromania will reduce the world to cinders. Characters don’t need to stand in one place in space and talk. They’re not puppets in community theater. Find language with movement and motion.

Foreword To you, that you may awaken to understand that the whole universe is a dance of energy, and that energy is God, and that energy is you. You are something that the whole universe is doing, that God is doing, just as a wave is something that the whole ocean is doing. The real you, the energy, the soul, is not a puppet that life pushes around. The real you is the whole universe. The real you is God, destined to follow no one, destined to ignite the ether, experience life from an individual perspective, and take part in the creation. So this is for you, my fellow creators, my fellow gods, and my fellow selves, that coincidence may never disguise itself with the mask of fate and torment you, that every moment be meaningful, and that no experience be lost

Dear Reader, In Claudia and Crazy Peaches, we get to know Aunt Peaches better, and to see the special relationship Claudia has with her aunt. I have three aunts — Aunt Adele, Aunt Martha, and Aunt Merlena — and I have special memories of all of them. Aunt Martha is my father’s sister-in-law. She and Uncle Lyman used to give my sister and me the best presents. One Christmas, when we were very little, they gave us stockings with garters. They were meant for grown women, and we thought they were hysterical! Another year they gave my sister a red cuckoo clock, and they gave me a music box with two dancing figures under a glass dome. I still have the music box. Aunt Merlena, my mother’s sister-in-law, was my only aunt who lived nearby. And she loved arts and crafts as much as I did. We made puppets together once, she showed me how to make doll clothes, and one summer day she invited me over especially so that we could make my birthday party invitations together. Aunt Adele is my father’s sister, and we are extremely close. We talk on the phone a lot, and we share a love of sewing and needlework. We exchange patterns in the mail, we give each other sewing tips, but mostly we just enjoy talking. I’m very lucky to have three such wonderful aunts — maybe that’s where the idea for Claudia and her wonderful aunt came from. Happy reading,

He’s a god demanding servitude from his loyal subjects. He’s a puppeteer, pulling all the right strings to make me dance beneath him. And I am a willing victim caught in his net.

Success is not about pulling the strings, but understanding the dance of the puppets.

The ones with the reason are the ghouls. If no one steps up, ghouls will continue to die without rhyme or reason. And this puppet-like world will dance on. That might not be a bad thing in or of itself, but...the world's like an egg. To give birth to something, you've gotta destroy the world right before your eyes.

You think you’d be able to fight the strings? You think you’d even feel them? I could apply a transcranial magnet to your head right now and you’d raise your middle finger or wiggle your toes or kick Siri here in the sack and then swear on your sainted mother’s grave that you only did it because you wanted to. You’d dance like a puppet and all the time swear you were doing it of your own free will, and that’s just me,

You’re anxious for your next fix.” I blanch. “I am not! I don’t want to see him ever again. He’s a sick, disgusting pervert.” “Whose fingers you danced on like a puppet until you were screaming his name.

That was the day she understood without a shadow of a doubt that Greg’s version of love was only about suffocating control. She had been his puppet to manipulate, and when she’d failed to perform as expected, he’d had to find another way to wrench back his power. That realisation, over everything else, was the one thing that had made her the most fearful of all for Daniel because she’d understood that her son would now have to be the one to dance when his strings were pulled. How much of what Greg felt for his son was actual love, and how much was something else entirely?

Backlash theorists, as we shall see, imagine countless conspiracies in which the wealthy, powerful, and well connected—the liberal media, the atheistic scientists, the obnoxious eastern elite—pull the strings and make the puppets dance. And yet the backlash itself has been a political trap so devastating to the interests of Middle America that even the most diabolical of stringpullers would have had trouble dreaming it up. Here, after all, is a rebellion against “the establishment” that has wound up cutting the tax on inherited estates. Here is a movement whose response to the power structure is to make the rich even richer; whose answer to the inexorable degradation of working-class life is to lash out angrily at labor unions and liberal workplace-safety programs; whose solution to the rise of ignorance in America is to pull the rug out from under public education.

The Unabridged Webster’s International Dictionary says it comes from the Latin root habilis. The definition is “to invest again with dignity.” Do you consider that part of your job, Harvey, to give a man back the dignity he once had? Your only interest is in how he behaves. You told me that once a long time ago and I’ll never forget it. “You’ll conform to our ideas of how you should behave.” And you haven’t retreated from that stand one inch in thirty-five years. You want your prisoners to dance out the gates like puppets on a string with rubber-stamp values impressed by you. With your sense of conformity. Your sense of behavior. Even your sense of morality. That’s why you’re a failure, Harvey. Because you rob prisoners of the most important thing in their lives—their individuality.15

Never before has so much power been concentrated into the hands of such a few number of people, who literally can decide what countries live or die on a minute by minute basis. Never before has all the world’s wealth been subject to the decisions of such a small clique of individuals, who can, as we said earlier, completely alter the economic, sociological, and legislative landscape of entire nations as if with the wave of a magic wand. And if this situation weren’t bad enough, what makes it worse is the fact that the mental condition of this clique is such that makes the whole situation a ticking time bomb. It’s true, on it’s face, that such a threat from such a statistically small number of people makes no sense, except when considering what possibilities exist when this small number of people have the ear of the President of the United States, the most powerful man in the world. And, if these people can literally make the president dance on strings like a puppet, (as has obviously been the case with every American president since Lyndon Johnson) then it becomes apparent how such machinery can be made to operate. We are talking about an unprecedented concentration of the world’s power in the hands of a few individuals who are, by any standards that can be used to measure, criminally insane. They possess 90% of the world’s wealth, control the political machinery of the world’s most powerful nations, control the informational infrastructure of these nations, and are imbued with the mindset that they have a right to possess all of this by virtue of: A: Their superiority, and by B. The inferiority of the rest of the world’s inhabitants. This situation does not paint a pretty picture, even to the most shallow-minded of thinkers. When it is reduced to its irreducible minimum, the program under which such individuals have deluded themselves is that it is impossible that evil in any form may emanate from the Jewish quarter, and, conversely, that the only evil that can exist is that which works against the Jewish agenda. Like Pavlov’s dogs, the sentiments of such individuals can be turned on like a light switch in defending the agenda of their masters, sentiments completely disconnected with any true intellectual processes and which vary between loyalty for the hand that feeds them and fear of the hand that can grab them by the throat. And thus it is in this manner therefore that we must view the intellectual parrying that takes place by today’s skeptics as but a magic act, and particularly so when the other side of the coin is discussed.

What is a secret? It is much more than knowledge shared with only a few, or perhaps only one other. It is power. It is a bond. It may be a sign of deep trust, or the darkest threat possible. There is power in the keeping of a secret, and power in the revelation of a secret. Sometimes it takes a very wise man to discern which is the path to greater power. All men desirous of power should become collectors of secrets. There is no secret too small to be valuable. All men value their own secrets far above those of others. A scullery maid may be willing to betray a prince before allowing the name of her secret lover to be told. Be very chary of telling your hoarded secrets. Many lose all power once they have been divulged. Be even more careful of sharing your own secrets lest you find yourself a puppet dancing on someone else’s strings.

Landon’s words echo in my head. Just moving parts. I’m a puppet on a string. I’m as good as a prostitute. It’s a sick sort of validation. I’ve been right all along. They only want me for the meat on my bones. Everybody, from Mamere on down, thinks this is it for me. Twirl and dance, little doll. There’s nothing else for you. Who needs a brain when you can let your arms hang in first position and the master will make the moves?

No true warrior, Rhaenys loved music, dancing, and poetry, and supported many a singer, mummer, and puppeteer. Yet it was said that Rhaenys spent more time on dragonback than her brother and sister combined, for above all she loved to fly. She was once heard to say that before she died she meant to fly Meraxes across the Sunset Sea to see what lay upon it's western shores

Other Kinds of Fun LARGE MOTOR SKILLS ♦  Take a walk on a balance beam, along the curb, or even down a line on the sidewalk. ♦  Play catch (start with a large, slightly deflated ball). ♦  Jump over things (anything more than a few inches, though, will be too high for most kids this age). ♦  Throw, kick, roll, and toss balls of all sizes. ♦  Ride a tricycle. ♦  Spin around till you drop. ♦  Pound, push, pull, and kick. ♦  Make music using drums, xylophones, flutes, and anything else you have handy. ♦  Play Twister. SMALL MOTOR SKILLS ♦  Puzzles (fewer than twenty pieces is probably best). You might even want to cut up a simple picture from a magazine and see whether your toddler can put it back together. ♦  Draw on paper or with chalk on the sidewalk. ♦  Sculpt with clay or other molding substance. ♦  Finger paint. ♦  Play with string and large beads. ♦  Pour water or sand or seeds from one container to another. ♦  Get a big box (from a dishwasher or refrigerator), then build, paint and decorate a house together. THE BRAIN ♦  Matching games. ♦  Alphabet and number games (put colorful magnetic letters and numbers on the fridge and leave them low enough for the child to reach). ♦  Lots of dress-up clothes. ♦  Dolls of all kinds (including action figures). ♦  Pretending games with “real” things (phones, computer keyboards). ♦  Imaginary driving trips where you talk about all the things you see on the road. Be sure to let your toddler drive part of the way. ♦  Sorting games (put all the pennies, or all the triangles, or all the cups together). ♦  Arranging games (big, bigger, biggest). ♦  Smelling games. Blindfold your toddler and have him identify things by their scent. ♦  Pattern games (small-big/small-big). ♦  Counting games (How many pencils are there?). A FEW FUN THINGS FOR RAINY DAYS (OR ANYTIME) ♦  Have pillow fights. ♦  Make a really, really messy art project. ♦  Cook something—kneading bread or pizza dough is especially good, as is roasting marshmallows on the stove (see pages 214–20 for more). ♦  Go baby bowling (gently toss your toddler onto your bed). ♦  Try other gymnastics (airplane rides: you’re on your back, feet up in the air, baby’s tummy on your feet, you and baby holding hands). ♦  Dance and/or sing. ♦  Play hide-and-seek. ♦  Stage a puppet show. ♦  If it’s not too cold, go outside, strip down to your underwear, and paint each other top-to-bottom with nontoxic, water-based paints. Otherwise, get bundled up and go for a long, wet, sloppy, muddy stomp in the rain. If you don’t feel like getting wet, get in the car and drive through puddles.

We give them power, to play the game Then to who do we blame we do surrender even without struggle keep quiet, we use to sit cool and calm Then to who do we blame ink, Paper pen, and human they are buying all, what they can blood in the street. is washing money rain putridity of Corpse, vanish by the status fragrance Orgy of cruelty everywhere without shame it's a new normal, as we are so tolerance just, religion cast and anti-nation where is health where is education harmony, peace, and love disappearing who is dying nearby, who is caring closed inside the malice cage, just dancing to the leader's fame Then to who do we blame the world is a market full of moon-shine shade the financial value will decide your grade the disease is a business, death is a trade I have seen, people crying for a piece of bread but, TV studio, newspaper, and twitter Filled to the brim with hate thread don't shout, shut your mouth king is sleeping, building the nation in a dream working hard for your butter and cream hunger, Poverty, thirst, nothing at all you must be a pride citizen, that's all keep burning nationalism flame otherwise, you are a traitor, damn We give them power, to play the game let them play, with our future and generation don't cry, don't cry, be little wise if we are a puppet of politics. to earn their bread and fame they need our sacrifice to earn their bread and fame they need our sacrifice

It’s time you realized that you have something in you more powerful and miraculous than the things that affect you and make you dance like a puppet.” – Marcus Aurelius

he could command an audience, set his box upright on its pole, opened its case, and began to play, bidding me dance to the music. The puppets never tired, of course; and I suppose he thought I was like them.

Inspired, Karou said, ‘Hey! That’s what you should do for your project. Make a giant puppeteer, and you be the marionette. You know? You could make it so that when you move, it’s like, I don’t know, reverse puppetry. Has anyone done that before? You’re the puppet, dancing from strings, but really it’s your movements that are making the puppeteer’s hands move?

You want practical assessments for easy to swallow logics that repeat the same old dialogue that doesn’t cross the border of your comfort zone. Yet those limits reduce your intellect until it’s been self-tailored to dance with the other puppets on society's string.

Nijinsky, Lawrence, Van Gogh, each had his own form of discipline towards this end. Each one had, as it were, discovered in some moment of insight a source from which these supplies of ‘more abundant life’ flowed, and each concentrated on a discipline that would make the source accessible. Lawrence was a thinker who had found imaginative relief in his study of the past. Van Gogh’s religious temperament needed to accumulate sense impressions; his striving towards a sense of ‘otherness’ took the form of a sort of pictorial memory of other times and other places: a memory that was, after all, incomplete, since he could not capture the scent of the almond tree or the hot July wind, or the tension in the air of a rising storm on his canvas. But Nijinsky’s kingdom was the body. People who saw him dance have testified to his amazing ability to become the part he was acting, whether the Negro in Scheherezade, the puppet in Petrouchka, or the Prince in Giselle. His discipline gave him the power to dismiss his identity at will, or to expand some parts and contract others to give an illusion of a completely new personality. It was this power that, at times, became a mystical intensity of abnegation in his dancing, that occasionally gave him glimpses into the ecstasy of the saint.

Are you dancing like a puppet for false popularity or distributing authentic content for true authority?