Puzzle Of My Heart Quotes

To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep; No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause: there's the respect That makes calamity of so long life; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, The insolence of office and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscover'd country from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pith and moment With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action.--Soft you now! The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons Be all my sins remember'd!

It’s the leftover humans. The survivors. They’re the ones I can’t stand to look at, although on many occasions I still fail. I deliberately seek out the colors to keep my mind off them, but now and then, I witness the ones who are left behind, crumbling among the jigsaw puzzle of realization, despair, and surprises. They have punctured hearts. They have beaten lungs. Which in turn brings me to the subject I am telling you about tonight, or today, or whatever the hour and color. It’s the story of one of those perpetual survivors –an expert at being left behind.

You are tired, (I think) Of the always puzzle of living and doing; And so am I. Come with me, then, And we’ll leave it far and far away— (Only you and I, understand!) You have played, (I think) And broke the toys you were fondest of, And are a little tired now; Tired of things that break, and— Just tired. So am I. But I come with a dream in my eyes tonight, And knock with a rose at the hopeless gate of your heart— Open to me! For I will show you the places Nobody knows, And, if you like, The perfect places of Sleep. Ah, come with me! I’ll blow you that wonderful bubble, the moon, That floats forever and a day; I’ll sing you the jacinth song Of the probable stars; I will attempt the unstartled steppes of dream, Until I find the Only Flower, Which shall keep (I think) your little heart While the moon comes out of the sea.

My heart raced. Part of me wanted to draw him into a hug and heal his wounds, and part of me wished to ferret out all his secrets and piece the puzzle of him together this instant.

Daylight...In my mind, the night faded. It was daytime and the neighborhood was busy. Miss Stephenie Crawford crossed the street to tell the latest to Miss Rachel. Miss Maudie bent over the azaleas. It was summertime, and two children scampered down the sidewalk toward a man approaching in the distance. The man waved, and the children raced each other to him. It was still summertime, and the children came closer. A boy trudged down the sidewalk dragging a fishingpole behind him. A man stood waiting with his hands on his hips. Summertime, and his children played in the front yeard with their friend, enacting a strange little drama of their own invention. It was fall and his children fought ont he sidewalk in front of Mrs. Dubose's. The boy helped his sister to her feet and they made their way home. Fall, and his children trotted to and fro around the corner, the day's woe's and triymph's on their face. They stopped at an oak tree, delighted, puzzled apprehensive. Winter, and his children shivered at the front gate, silhouetted against a blazing house. Winter and a man walked into the street, dropped his glasses, and show a dog. Summer, and he watched his children's heart break. Autumn again, and Boo's children needed him.

Last night is like a puzzle—only not put together: all the pieces are scattered everywhere and some are missing. I wish my heart wouldn’t beat so fast.

Guys can smell desperation. It triggers an instinct in them to run far and fast so they aren't around when a woman starts peeling apart her heart. They know she'll ask for help in putting it back together the right way - intact and beating correctly - and they dread the thought of puzzling over layers that they can't understand, let alone rebuild. They'd rather just not get blood on their hands. But sharks are different. They smell the blood of desperation and circle in. They whisper into a girl's ear, "I'll make it better. I'll make you forget all about your pain." Sharks do this by eating your heart, but they never mention this beforehand. That is the thing about sharks.

I am his puzzle and he is my lock, and it's an arms race to solve the other first. But somewhere in all the knots and twists and trapdoors, he turned to an arsonist, leaving his embers in my veins, smoke on my tongue, a fire burning softly in my heart. And it will not die easy.

Are you okay with what we ordered?” Angeline asked him. “You didn’t pipe up with any requests.” Neil shook his head, face stoic. He kept his dark hair in a painfully short and efficient haircut. It was the kind of no-nonsense thing the Alchemists would’ve loved. “I can’t waste time quibbling over trivial things like pepperoni and mushrooms. If you’d gone to my school in Devonshire, you’d understand. For one of my sophomore classes, they left us alone on the moors to fend for ourselves and learn survival skills. Spend three days eating twigs and heather, and you’ll learn not to argue about any food coming your way.” Angeline and Jill cooed as though that was the most rugged, manly thing they’d ever heard. Eddie wore an expression that reflected what I felt, puzzling over whether this guy was as serious as he seemed or just some genius with swoon-worthy lines.

I want so badly to take all her words and fit them like the pieces of a puzzle into the hole in my heart

Madness is loving the unsolvable puzzle of your soul and replacing the lost pieces with my own.

I love you," he writes again and again. "I can't bear to live without you. I'm counting the minutes until I see you." The words he uses are the idioms of popular songs and poems in the newspaper. And mine to him are no less cliched. I puzzle over the onionskin, trying to spill my heart onto the page. But I can only come up with the same words, in the same order, and hope the depth of feeling beneath them gives them weight and substance. I love you. I miss you. Be careful. Be safe.

My life had become a puzzle - its pieces scattered about like paper in the wind, with no one there to chase them but me.

They're the ones I can't stand to look at, although on occasion I still fail. I deliberately seek out the colors to keep my mind off them, but now and then, I witness the ones who are left behind, crumbling among the jigsaw puzzle of realization, despair, and surprise. They have punctured hearts. They have beaten lungs.

But in the end it doesn't matter what Roman wants to do. I'm beginning to learn that this is the exhilarating and puzzling and, frankly, the frustrating thing about love. Things that matter to the other person start to seem intriguing, even if they are actually quite trite when you really think about them.

The young gentlemen who came calling seemed especially puzzling. They sat in their velvet shirts and their leather boots, nibbling burnt cakes and praising Diamond's mind, and all the while their eyes said other things. Now, their eyes said. Now. Then: Patience, patience. 'You are flowers,' their mouths said, 'You are jewels, you are golden dreams.' Their eyes said: I eat flowers, I burn with dreams, I have a tower without a door in my heart, and I will keep you there...

I have always been interested in this man. My father had a set of Tom Paine's books on the shelf at home. I must have opened the covers about the time I was 13. And I can still remember the flash of enlightenment which shone from his pages. It was a revelation, indeed, to encounter his views on political and religious matters, so different from the views of many people around us. Of course I did not understand him very well, but his sincerity and ardor made an impression upon me that nothing has ever served to lessen. I have heard it said that Paine borrowed from Montesquieu and Rousseau. Maybe he had read them both and learned something from each. I do not know. But I doubt that Paine ever borrowed a line from any man... Many a person who could not comprehend Rousseau, and would be puzzled by Montesquieu, could understand Paine as an open book. He wrote with a clarity, a sharpness of outline and exactness of speech that even a schoolboy should be able to grasp. There is nothing false, little that is subtle, and an impressive lack of the negative in Paine. He literally cried to his reader for a comprehending hour, and then filled that hour with such sagacious reasoning as we find surpassed nowhere else in American letters - seldom in any school of writing. Paine would have been the last to look upon himself as a man of letters. Liberty was the dear companion of his heart; truth in all things his object. ...we, perhaps, remember him best for his declaration: 'The world is my country; to do good my religion.' Again we see the spontaneous genius at work in 'The Rights of Man', and that genius busy at his favorite task - liberty. Written hurriedly and in the heat of controversy, 'The Rights of Man' yet compares favorably with classical models, and in some places rises to vaulting heights. Its appearance outmatched events attending Burke's effort in his 'Reflections'. Instantly the English public caught hold of this new contribution. It was more than a defense of liberty; it was a world declaration of what Paine had declared before in the Colonies. His reasoning was so cogent, his command of the subject so broad, that his legion of enemies found it hard to answer him. 'Tom Paine is quite right,' said Pitt, the Prime Minister, 'but if I were to encourage his views we should have a bloody revolution.' Here we see the progressive quality of Paine's genius at its best. 'The Rights of Man' amplified and reasserted what already had been said in 'Common Sense', with now a greater force and the power of a maturing mind. Just when Paine was at the height of his renown, an indictment for treason confronted him. About the same time he was elected a member of the Revolutionary Assembly and escaped to France. So little did he know of the French tongue that addresses to his constituents had to be translated by an interpreter. But he sat in the assembly. Shrinking from the guillotine, he encountered Robespierre's enmity, and presently found himself in prison, facing that dread instrument. But his imprisonment was fertile. Already he had written the first part of 'The Age of Reason' and now turned his time to the latter part. Presently his second escape cheated Robespierre of vengeance, and in the course of events 'The Age of Reason' appeared. Instantly it became a source of contention which still endures. Paine returned to the United States a little broken, and went to live at his home in New Rochelle - a public gift. Many of his old companions in the struggle for liberty avoided him, and he was publicly condemned by the unthinking. {The Philosophy of Paine, June 7, 1925}

Morning Poem" I've got to tell you how I love you always I think of it on grey mornings with death in my mouth the tea is never hot enough then and the cigarette dry the maroon robe chills me I need you and look out the window at the noiseless snow At night on the dock the buses glow like clouds and I am lonely thinking of flutes I miss you always when I go to the beach the sand is wet with tears that seem mine although I never weep and hold you in my heart with a very real humor you'd be proud of the parking lot is crowded and I stand rattling my keys the car is empty as a bicycle what are you doing now where did you eat your lunch and were there lots of anchovies it is difficult to think of you without me in the sentence you depress me when you are alone Last night the stars were numerous and today snow is their calling card I'll not be cordial there is nothing that distracts me music is only a crossword puzzle do you know how it is when you are the only passenger if there is a place further from me I beg you do not go

Words have power, my son. Words can cut to the heart and soothe the deepest hurts. They can be puzzles that leave another pondering for days. I prefer to cast my spells of words in ways that make others think. It is a fault, I fear, that has come with age.

Ruith?" He looked at her with a smile. "Aye, my love?" "Are you sure?" He looked at her, puzzled, for a moment, then apparently he realized what she was asking. "How could you ask?" "Because when a gel wants something very badly, she tends to want to avoid breaking her heart over the false hope of having it." His breath caught. If she hadn't known better, she would have thought he was blinking rapidly from something besides the smoke the passageway.

Once, when I was puzzled to know why there were so many religions, he said: "There is one universal religion, Helen- the religion of love. Love your heavenly father with your whole heart and soul, love every child of God as much as you ever can, and remember that the possibilities of good are greater than the possibilities of evil; and you have the key to heaven." And his life was a happy illustration of this great truth. In this noble soul love and widest knowledge were blended with faith that had become insight. He saw God in all that liberates and lifts, in all that humbles, sweetens and consoles.

...You see I believe in that stuff to: yoga and mystical powers. I once knew a man who could kill himself on command. Can you believe that? . . . Why do you laugh? . . . Believe it! By will of his own mind, he could make his heart stop beating for good' My neighbor poised and looked seriously at me, searching in my eyes. '...You laugh!' he repeated once more… 'You laugh, but he was a master at it! He could commit suicide at his own will!' Indeed, hearty laughter streamed through my nose. 'Could he do it perpetually?' I asked. 'Perpetually...?' My neighbor rubbed his waxy chin. 'I mean, is he still able to do it?' 'I’m not sure I understand.' 'Well? Then is he dead…?!' My neighbor's puzzled face slowly began to transform into a look of realization. 'But sir,' he said, 'Of course he’s dead! I mean to say... this man could kill himself on command, you see. And you don’t come back from the dead!' The two of us found ourselves crossing to the door so I could let my visitor out. I slapped him with friendliness on the shoulder. 'No, you don’t come back from the dead,' I agreed.

I felt her heart pounding against her ribs and directly into me. Or maybe it was my heart. Curled against each other like two locked pieces of a puzzle, I could not tell where I ended and she began. There was just this. Us. One shared heart.

And my heart shatters for the second time today. It’s blown apart into so many pieces, the shrapnel spread so far and wide, I know what remains will never fit back together again. Puzzles don’t work when you only have half of the pieces. Same goes for hearts. I

Dreams are like puzzles. When all the pieces are missing, it is up to us to find them and decide where and how they fit in.

Everything fits, especially me with him, and him with me. He is the puzzle piece that slides into place in my heart, filling all the sad and empty spots inside me.

Then, recalling what he had said, she turned to him eagerly. “What’s my surprise?” Most Ancient turned and reached for something that was behind him. He picked it up and placed it in her arms, and it looked up at her with wide, curious eyes. It was what she had once been: tiny, a wisp of a thing, with a mischievous smile and a trusting, visible heart. “Oh!” she cried. She hugged it to her, against her badge. “What’s its name?” “Ask it,” Most Ancient suggested. “Who are you?” she asked the diminutive, transparent creature in her arms, keeping her voice calm so that it wouldn’t be scared. “New Littlest,” it told her. She was puzzled and almost frightened at first. The she thought, Of course! Most Ancient could not have always have been Most Ancient, and Thin Elderly must once have been something else. Even Fastidious – well, maybe not. Perhaps she had always been Fastidious. She cradled New Littlest, moving her hands as gently as possible around the fragile little thing, and turned back to ask Most Ancient what she needed to know. “Who am I now?” “Gossamer,” he told her.

Certainly not! I didn't build a machine to solve ridiculous crossword puzzles! That's hack work, not Great Art! Just give it a topic, any topic, as difficult as you like..." Klapaucius thought, and thought some more. Finally he nodded and said: "Very well. Let's have a love poem, lyrical, pastoral, and expressed in the language of pure mathematics. Tensor algebra mainly, with a little topology and higher calculus, if need be. But with feeling, you understand, and in the cybernetic spirit." "Love and tensor algebra?" Have you taken leave of your senses?" Trurl began, but stopped, for his electronic bard was already declaiming: Come, let us hasten to a higher plane, Where dyads tread the fairy fields of Venn, Their indices bedecked from one to n, Commingled in an endless Markov chain! Come, every frustum longs to be a cone, And every vector dreams of matrices. Hark to the gentle gradient of the breeze: It whispers of a more ergodic zone. In Reimann, Hilbert or in Banach space Let superscripts and subscripts go their ways. Our asymptotes no longer out of phase, We shall encounter, counting, face to face. I'll grant thee random access to my heart, Thou'lt tell me all the constants of thy love; And so we two shall all love's lemmas prove, And in bound partition never part. For what did Cauchy know, or Christoffel, Or Fourier, or any Boole or Euler, Wielding their compasses, their pens and rulers, Of thy supernal sinusoidal spell? Cancel me not--for what then shall remain? Abscissas, some mantissas, modules, modes, A root or two, a torus and a node: The inverse of my verse, a null domain. Ellipse of bliss, converge, O lips divine! The product of our scalars is defined! Cyberiad draws nigh, and the skew mind Cuts capers like a happy haversine. I see the eigenvalue in thine eye, I hear the tender tensor in thy sigh. Bernoulli would have been content to die, Had he but known such a^2 cos 2 phi!

The piece of you that loves a part of me tries its best to hold onto the rest, but my heart is a thousand-piece puzzle of a faraway galaxy, deep purple, colors blending together and impossible to place.

I just . . . I love the nuances of language and all their quirks. Like how certain words exist in foreign languages and have no direct English equivalent. Meraki in Greek means, basically, to do something with love, but there’s no English word for it. The closest is ‘labor of love,’ but that sounds like you’re being put-upon. Meraki means to do something with pleasure, to pour your whole heart into a task or craft. Like putting all your love into a meal or a gift.” She ducked her chin and shrugged. “So, yeah. Translation would be my dream job. Puzzling out how to keep the text true even when it’s not easy. There’s a cultural component you can’t ignore without”—her lips curved—“losing something in translation.

I was fucking terrified, Violet. There aren't adequate words.' 'I'm fine, Xaden,' she says softly, her hand rising to rest above my pounding heart. 'I thought I was going to lose you.' The confession comes out strangled, and maybe it's pushing my luck after all I've put her through, but I can't keep from leaning forward and brushing my lips over her forehead, then her temple. Gods, I'd kiss her forever if I thought it would keep the coming argument at bay, keep us in this one pristine moment where I can actually believe that everything might be all right between us, that I haven't irrevocably fucked up the best thing that's ever happened to me. 'You aren't going to lose me.' She gives me a puzzled look, smiling like I've said something peculiar. Then she leans in and kisses me. She still wants me. The revelation makes my heart fucking soar. I take the kiss deeper, swiping my tongue over her soft lower lip and gently sucking on the tender curve.

You can say whatever you like to me. I'm your oyster." Before she could restrain herself, an appalled giggle escaped her. "Please don't say that. You're no such thing." "You can choose another word, if you like." Mr. Severin extended his arm to escort her downstairs. "But the fact is, if you ever need anything- any favor, any service, large or small- I'm the one to send for. No questions asked. No obligations attached. Will you remember that?" Cassandra hesitated before taking his arm. "I'll remember." As they proceeded to the first floor, she asked in bewilderment, "But why would you make such a promise?" "Haven't you ever liked someone or something right away, without knowing exactly why, but feeling sure you would discover the reasons later?" She couldn't help smiling at that, thinking, Yes, as a matter of fact. Just now. But it would be too forward to say so, and besides, it would be wrong to encourage him. "I would be glad to call you a friend, Mr. Severin. But I'm afraid marriage will never be a possibility. We don't suit. I could please you only in the most superficial ways." "I would be happy with that," he said. "Superficial relationships are my favorite kind." A regretful smile lingered at her lips. "Mr. Severin, you couldn't give me the life I've always dreamed of." "I hope your dream comes true, my lady. But if it doesn't, I could offer you some very satisfying substitutes." "Not if you're heart is frozen," Cassandra said. Mr. Severin grinned at that, and made no reply. But as they neared the last step, she heard his reflective, almost puzzled murmur. "Actually... I think it just thawed a little.

...somewhere in that intersection of broken hearts and shattered souls... broken is not the end of things, but the beginning. Maybe broken is what happens before you become unbroken. What's more, maybe our broken pieces don't fit us... maybe my pieces are the very pieces needed to mend you and your pieces are the very pieces needed to mend me, but until we've been broken we don't have the pieces to mend each other. Maybe in the offering we discover the meaning, and value of being broken. Maybe...somewhere on the planet is another somebody standing around holding a bag of all the jagged, painful pieces of themselves and they can't get whole without you... Maybe love, the real kind, the kind only wished for in whispers and the kind our hearts are hardwired to want, is opening up the bag of you... And what's more, they don't cost you anything. They're free. I paid for them in the breaking... And because you're desperate, and you've tried most everything else, you empty my bag across the floor... and...find the one piece you've been missing... And when you insert that piece into the puzzle that had become you, it stops the hemorrhage, and for the first time in maybe your whole life, the wound starts to heal.

At my most alone, I trace English letters in the dirt floor. Next to them, I write the Chinese characters that match their sounds. The one that puzzles me most is the English letter I, companion sound in Chinese love. I, in English, to represent the self. Love, I, in Chinese, a heart to be given away. I, in English, an independence, an identity. Love in Chinese, a giving up of self for another. How funny, I think, that these two sound twins should represent such different things. It is another truth I am learning about English and the people who created it.

You're my missing puzzle piece," she whispers as we continue dancing. "Your puzzle piece?" I question. "I'm not broken...but before you; I was never whole, either," she clarifies. "You're the missing piece that made me whole. And now, you're the piece that keeps me from breaking.

But I want more' I whisper. 'More?' he looks down at me puzzled, his eyes darkening. I nod and swallow. Now he knows. 'More,' he says again softly. Testing the word- a small, simple word, but so full of promise. His thumb traces my lower lip. 'You want hearts and flowers' I nod again. He blinks down at me, and I watch his internal struggle played out in his eyes. 'Anastasia' His voice soft. 'It's not something I know.' 'Me neither.

I knew in my heart that she was right. He was the missing jigsaw puzzle.

Once, when I was puzzled to know why there were so many religions, he said: “There is one universal religion, Helen — the religion of love. Love your Heavenly Father with your whole heart and soul, love every child of God as much as ever you can, and remember that the possibilities of good are greater than the possibilities of evil; and you have the key to Heaven.

In The Sunset Sky The sunset sky dazzling with the golden hues, Taking bow in brilliant sparkle of experience Is it not a climax, of the story so far, that was today? Or is it building anticipation of the night yet to come. Watch the days go, some proud of their accomplishments Some leaving sighs of disappointments, Leaving all in awe of its Amaranthine twists and turns And the fortunate get to see the moon trying to steal the show from setting sun, Oh she is such a show off, isn't she, basking in reflected glory Its magical, the sunset sky,Puzzling, sometimes just like a riddle, Leaving the nature stunned and amazed For it has been filling the canvas whole day with colours And now the sunset threatens to hide them all And in dark all the colours will be same A cue for the wise. Sunset sky has so much to offer, is she not a fine exampleof how uncertain a life can be Often reminding no matter what you planned, there will besome unexpected returns For End has its own brain, its own script Charting its own course So why just the beginning,every moment of the life should be grand, meted with equal passion and fervor She has been so clever; the sunset sky Leaving Twinkling cryptic messages for the night sky For even the dark has sparkle and hope if you keep your head up, A constant reminder that exuberance is an attitude of deep,rich, warm hearts I want my sunset sky to be grand, magical, and full of stories of my life that has been And its memories to linger on in this world, in the tomorrow and a few more years to come

And he hadn’t complained when she put placemats and handi-wipes on the table. He’d just regarded her in that funny way he always did, with his brows raised and his lips tilted, like he was mulling over a frustrating puzzle.

I tried to turn my heart to the living, to the place I was, but putting seed in land not owned by me or my family seemed alien. The sandy, gray-white soil looked like dirty beach sand, not fit for growing anything. It smelled like dust. Yet weeds and trees and wildflowers grew along the roads. When we drove into town, we passed dense, impenetrable woods and fields of corn, peas, and peppers. Such new combinations of seemingly poor soil and happy flora puzzled me. Everywhere I went, I picked up the dirt, examining it for clues. Bringing anything out of such soil would require a whole new language on my part. I imagined there must be something richer and darker under the gray sand, or some trick the farmers all knew. Trick or no trick, what I had always been able to do well now seemed inaccessible. Still, I searched the yard around our house for the best spot to plant my fall garden.

I deliberately seek out the colors to keep my mind off them, but now and then, I witness the ones who are left behind, crumbling among the jigsaw puzzle of realization, despair, and surprise. They have punctured hearts. They have beaten lungs.

we were perfect just two souls clicking with each other fitting like puzzle pieces two broken hearts healing each other and holding onto each other there's no one that i trusted the way i trusted you with my secrets my dreams my fears my insecurities my passions

I want to run, to flee, to wake from this never-ending nightmare. But my body is frozen, my heart numb. Jagged pieces of the puzzle scatter across the corners of my mind, and fitting them together is futile. Threads of truth are still missing, exposing the gaps between what’s real and what’s fabricated.

I turned to go home. Street lights winked down the street all the way to town. I had never seen our neighborhood from this angle. There were Miss Maudie’s, Miss Stephanie’s—there was our house, I could see the porch swing—Miss Rachel’s house was beyond us, plainly visible. I could even see Mrs. Dubose’s. I looked behind me. To the left of the brown door was a long shuttered window. I walked to it, stood in front of it, and turned around. In daylight, I thought, you could see to the postoffice corner. Daylight… in my mind, the night faded. It was daytime and the neighborhood was busy. Miss Stephanie Crawford crossed the street to tell the latest to Miss Rachel. Miss Maudie bent over her azaleas. It was summertime, and two children scampered down the sidewalk toward a man approaching in the distance. The man waved, and the children raced each other to him. It was still summertime, and the children came closer. A boy trudged down the sidewalk dragging a fishingpole behind him. A man stood waiting with his hands on his hips. Summertime, and his children played in the front yard with their friend, enacting a strange little drama of their own invention. It was fall, and his children fought on the sidewalk in front of Mrs. Dubose’s. The boy helped his sister to her feet, and they made their way home. Fall, and his children trotted to and fro around the corner, the day’s woes and triumphs on their faces. They stopped at an oak tree, delighted, puzzled, apprehensive. Winter, and his children shivered at the front gate, silhouetted against a blazing house. Winter, and a man walked into the street, dropped his glasses, and shot a dog. Summer, and he watched his children’s heart break. Autumn again, and Boo’s children needed him. Atticus was right. One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them. Just standing on the Radley porch was enough.

His voice is lower than before when he says, "You're a vision." "She is, isn't she?" My heart skips a beat. The voice coming from over my shoulder is so cold I nearly shiver. Kai brushes my arm as he steps around me, facing the stunned boy still clutching me to him. "I'll be stealing her now," Kai says simply,... He feels too familiar. We fit together perfectly, pieces of a puzzle snapping into place. I shouldn't let myself relax into his touch. Shouldn't let the tension ease from my body when he holds me. But I can do nothing to stop it. Utterly and completely powerless. His palm is flat and firm against my exposed back, calluses brushing my flushed skin. "You looked like you needed saving," Kai says, and I catch a glimpse of his smirk before he spins me. "For once," I sigh, "I'm going to have to agree with you." "I'm sure I could think of other things we agree on." "Oh really? And what would those things be?" "That he was right," Kai says softly. "You are a vision. I'm sure we can both agree on that.

The survivors. They’re the ones I can’t stand to look at, although on many occasions, I still fail. I deliberately seek out the colours to keep my mind off them, but now and then, I witness the ones who are left behind, crumbling amongst the jigsaw puzzle of realisation, despair and surprise. They have punctured hearts. They have beaten lungs.

I knew exactly when the fever had struck. I had been reading Hamlet in an English class at school. Everyone else stumbled, puzzling over the strange words. Then it had been my turn, and the language had suddenly woken in me, so that my heart and lungs and tongue and throat were on fire. Later, I understood that this was why people spoke of Shakespeare as a god. At the time, I felt like weeping. Somebody had released me from dumbness, from utter isolation. I knew that I could live inside these words, that they would give me a a shape, a shell. I had no idea, then, that I would never play Hamlet…. I’m an actor, and in a good year I earn eleven thousand pounds for dressing up as a carrot.

As it is, I’m happy to wait all night for you, my love. When you’re ready, we continue.” My love. I turn away from him and close my eyes, breathing through the stretch. I am his love. This is love. This is the holy communion of two souls entwined by love, now joined in the flesh. I want to be worthy of him. I want to be the last piece of his puzzle, as he is surely mine. We’re complete now. Our hearts, our family. One unit, unbreakable.

One At A Time A friend of ours was walking down a deserted Mexican beach at sunset. As he walked along, he began to see another man in the distance. As he grew nearer, he noticed that the local native kept leaning down, picking something up and throwing it out into the water. Time and again he kept hurling things out into the ocean. As our friend approached even closer, he noticed that the man was picking up starfish that had been washed up on the beach and, one at a time, he was throwing them back into the water. Our friend was puzzled. He approached the man and said, “Good evening, friend. I was wondering what you are doing.” “I’m throwing these starfish back into the ocean. You see, it’s low tide right now and all of these starfish have been washed up onto the shore. If I don’t throw them back into the sea, they’ll die up here from lack of oxygen.” “I understand,” my friend replied, “but there must be thousands of starfish on this beach. You can’t possibly get to all of them. There are simply too many. And don’t you realize this is probably happening on hundreds of beaches all up and down this coast. Can’t you see that you can’t possibly make a difference?” The local native smiled, bent down and picked up yet another starfish, and as he threw it back into the sea, he replied, “Made a difference to that one!” Jack Canfield and Mark V. Hansen

He works fast," Alan commented as he lifted his wine. "David?" Shelby sent him a puzzled look. "Actually his fastest sped is crawl unless he's got a guitar in his hands." "Really?" Alan's eyes met hers as he sipped, but she didn't understand the amusement in them. "You only stood him up tonight, and already he's planning his wedding to someone else." "Stood him-" she began on a laugh, then remembered. "Oh." Torn between annoyance and her own sense of te ridiculous, Shelby toyed with the stem of her glass. "Men are fickle creatures," she decided. "Apparently." Reaching over, he lifted her chin with a fingertip. "You're holding up well." "I don't like to wear my heart on my sleeve" Exasperated, amused, she muffled a laugh. "Dammit, he would have to pick tonight to show up here." "Of all the gin joints in all the towns..." This time the laugh escaped fully. "Well done," Shelby told him. "I should've thought of that line myself; I heard the movie not long ago." "Heard it?" "Mmm-hmmm. Well..." She lifted her glass in a toast. "To broken hearts?" "Or foolish lies?" Alan countered. Shelby wrinkled her nose as she tapped her glass against his. "I usually tell very good ones. Besides, I did date David.Once.Tree years ago." She finished off her wine. "Maybe four.You can stop grinning in that smug, masculine way any time, Senator." "Was I?" Rising, he offered Shelby her damp jacket. "How rude of me." "It would've been more polite not to acknowledge that you'd caught me in a lie," she commented as they worked their way through the crowd and back into the rain. "Which you wouldn't have done if you hadn't made me so mad that I couldn't think of a handier name to give you in the first place." "If I work my way through the morass of that sentence it seems to be my fault." Alan slipped an arm around her shoulders in so casually friendly a manner she didn't protest. "Suppose I apologize for not giving you time to think of a lie that would hold up?" "It seems fair.

Going your own way shouldn't stop them from being happy with you." "My brother and my sisters, they're clerks and parents and settled sort of people. I'm a puzzle, and sooner or later when you can't solve a puzzle, you have to think there's somthing wrong with it. Else there's something wrong with you." "You ran away," she murmured. He wasn't sure he liked the phrase, but nodded. "In a sense, I suppose, and as fast as I could. What's the point in looking back?" But he was looking back, Keeley thought. Looking back over his shoulder, because he was still running away.

Our gift is to be a series of puzzles. In reading our clues and seeking our answers, we hope and pray you will find a future as well. A morrow filled with reasons to live, and a purpose grand enough to bestow upon you the gift of hope. For you deserve it all, my dear Brian. All the hope a tomorrow worth living can bring. “Here, then, is the first clue: From the hope tossed skyward on your beloved’s happiest day, in a grand palace made to make a child feel grander still, search for the heart, search for the heart, search for the heart of your beloved. Yours ever, Heather.

Each of us has a different life puzzle to assemble. The choices you make in the midst of your life journey do have eternal consequences. Yes, you can throw the pieces at God in anger and say, “I do not like the life You have given me, and I refuse to live within these limitations with a humble heart. You have made me a victim. You have ruined my life. I will choose to live in darkness.” If that is your choice, the puzzle of your life will remain fragmented and separated, with holes in the picture. However, if you choose to bow your knee and submit to the varied circumstances of your life, God will do miracles. If you choose to trust and develop your integrity and an inner standard of holiness that isn’t dependent on cultural standards, the puzzle pieces will begin to come together. No matter what your limitations are—health issues, financial problems, a difficult marriage or divorce, a loss of friendship, death of a dream—your life is meant to be filled to the brim with the potential of God’s blessings. But in order to thrive and heal, you must accept any limitations by faith, trust in His faithfulness each step of the way, and wait for His grace so you can live a faithful story right in the place you find yourself.

Christopher..." Her voice was trembling. "I wish..." "Yes?" It was so 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.

But is the timing of a thing supposed to be everything? I do, I do want all my ends and beginnings to be with you. But are you supposed to be one brick in the wall of my life and not the brick that completes it? Are you supposed to be one chapter in my book and the insignificant corner of my jigsaw puzzle? Did you and I collapse into each other for this one big pool of tears? Or is there more to it? I still think we could make the world a better place together and be strong for each other, and go till the ends of the world with each other. But at what cost? Please don't say at the cost of our peace. Because that's when you will give up and that's when you'll break my heart.

Amsterdam, I dreamed about my mother for the first time in years. I’d been shut up in my hotel for more than a week, afraid to telephone anybody or go out; and my heart scrambled and floundered at even the most innocent noises: elevator bell, rattle of the minibar cart, even church clocks tolling the hour, de Westertoren, Krijtberg, a dark edge to the clangor, an inwrought fairy-tale sense of doom. By day I sat on the foot of the bed straining to puzzle out the Dutch-language news on television (which was hopeless, since I knew not a word of Dutch) and when I gave up, I sat by the window staring out at the canal with my camel’s-hair coat thrown over my clothes—for I’d left New York in a hurry and the things I’d brought weren’t warm enough, even indoors. Outside, all was activity and cheer. It was Christmas, lights twinkling on the canal bridges at night; red-cheeked dames en heren, scarves flying in the icy wind, clattered down the cobblestones with Christmas trees lashed to the backs of their bicycles. In the afternoons, an amateur band played Christmas carols that hung tinny and fragile in the winter air. Chaotic room-service trays; too many cigarettes; lukewarm vodka from duty free. During those restless, shut-up days, I got to know every inch of the room as a prisoner comes to know his cell. It was my first time in Amsterdam; I’d seen almost nothing

and confused if someone does not appreciate their niceness. Others often sense this and avoid giving them feedback not only, effectively blocking the nice person’s emotional growth, but preventing risks from being taken. You never know with a nice person if the relationship would survive a conflict or angry confrontation. This greatly limits the depths of intimacy. And would you really trust a nice person to back you up if confrontation were needed? 3. With nice people you never know where you really stand. The nice person allows others to accidentally oppress him. The “nice” person might be resenting you just for talking to him, because really he is needing to pee. But instead of saying so he stands there nodding and smiling, with legs tightly crossed, pretending to listen. 4. Often people in relationship with nice people turn their irritation toward themselves, because they are puzzled as to how they could be so upset with someone so nice. In intimate relationships this leads to guilt, self-hate and depression. 5. Nice people frequently keep all their anger inside until they find a safe place to dump it. This might be by screaming at a child, blowing up a federal building, or hitting a helpless, dependent mate. (Timothy McVeigh, executed for the Oklahoma City bombing, was described by acquaintances as a very, very nice guy, one who would give you the shirt off his back.) Success in keeping the anger in will often manifest as psychosomatic illnesses, including arthritis, ulcers, back problems, and heart disease. Proper Peachy Parents In my work as a psychotherapist, I have found that those who had peachy keen “Nice Parents” or proper “Rigidly Religious Parents” (as opposed to spiritual parents), are often the most stuck in chronic, lowgrade depression. They have a difficult time accessing or expressing any negative feelings towards their parents. They sometimes say to me “After all my parents did for me, seldom saying a harsh word to me, I would feel terribly guilty complaining. Besides, it would break their hearts.” Psychologist Rollo May suggested that it is less crazy-making to a child to cope with overt withdrawal or harshness than to try to understand the facade of the always-nice parent. When everyone agrees that your parents are so nice and giving, and you still feel dissatisfied, then a child may conclude that there must be something wrong with his or her ability to receive love. -§ Emotionally starving children are easier to control, well fed children don’t need to be. -§ I remember a family of fundamentalists who came to my office to help little Matthew with his anger problem. The parents wanted me to teach little Matthew how to “express his anger nicely.” Now if that is not a formula making someone crazy I do not know what would be. Another woman told me that after her stinking drunk husband tore the house up after a Christmas party, breaking most of the dishes in the kitchen, she meekly told him, “Dear, I think you need a breath mint.” Many families I work with go through great anxiety around the holidays because they are going to be forced to be with each other and are scared of resuming their covert war. They are scared that they might not keep the nice garbage can lid on, and all the rotting resentments and hopeless hurts will be exposed. In the words to the following song, artist David Wilcox explains to his parents why he will not be coming home this Thanksgiving: Covert War by David Wilcox

You are correct. God has indeed changed me. I know it. I feel it. But there is one thing I have not let him do for me. Not until now. But he has just whispered to my heart the words that I needed to hear. Words of peace. Of forgiveness. He has forgiven me. Now I must forgive.” Helena seemed puzzled. “Who . . . ?” “Father.” “Your father? What has he – ” “Not a thing. Nothing but care for me.” “Then . . . ? I do not understand.” “What he has done to you, Mother. I have felt angry that he has treated you with such injustice. Leaving you with no legal status. No security as a wife would enjoy. I have been so angry. And you don’t even dare accept a faith because of his . . . his ownership. I . . .

It is not only unkind, it is simply wicked. For how shall we ever be anything but tools and drudges if we don’t co-operate, if we don’t stand shoulder to shoulder? Oh my heart goes out to all women! I never see one without feeling I must do all in my power to get to know her, to help her, to show her what she must do, so that when her youth is gone there will still be something left, a so much nobler happiness, a so much truer joy.’ ‘Than what?’ I asked, puzzled. Charlotte was looking into my eyes as though she were reading my soul. She wasn’t, whatever she might have thought she was doing. ‘Than what she had before, of course,’ she said with some asperity. ‘But perhaps what she had before was just what she liked best.

This arm devoid of a hand was for me a great mystery, almost as puzzling as Jesus. I wanted to know how the hand had come off (perhaps she had taken it off herself) and where it was now, and especially whether my own hand could ever come off like that; but I never asked, I must have been afraid of the answers. Going down the steps, I try to remember what the rest of her was like, her face, but I can see only the potent candies, inaccessible in their glass reliquary, and the arm, miraculous in an unspecified way like the toes of saints or the cut-off pieces of early martyrs, the eyes on the plate, the severed breasts, the heart with letters on it shining like a light bulb through the trim hole painted in the chest, art history.

IN SCHOOL. "I used to go to a bright school Where Youth and Frolic taught in turn; But idle scholar that I was, I liked to play, I would not learn; So the Great Teacher did ordain That I should try the School of Pain. "One of the infant class I am With little, easy lessons, set In a great book; the higher class Have harder ones than I, and yet I find mine hard, and can't restrain My tears while studying thus with Pain. "There are two Teachers in the school, One has a gentle voice and low, And smiles upon her scholars, as She softly passes to and fro. Her name is Love; 'tis very plain She shuns the sharper teacher, Pain. "Or so I sometimes think; and then, At other times, they meet and kiss, And look so strangely like, that I Am puzzled to tell how it is, Or whence the change which makes it vain To guess if it be--Love or Pain. "They tell me if I study well, And learn my lessons, I shall be Moved upward to that higher class Where dear Love teaches constantly; And I work hard, in hopes to gain Reward, and get away from Pain. "Yet Pain is sometimes kind, and helps Me on when I am very dull; I thank him often in my heart; But Love is far more beautiful; Under her tender, gentle reign I must learn faster than of Pain. "So I will do my very best, Nor chide the clock, nor call it slow; That when the Teacher calls me up To see if I am fit to go, I may to Love's high class attain, And bid a sweet good-by to Pain.

He finished his meeting a few minutes later and almost rudely ejected his business acquaintances from his library, then he went in search of Elizabeth. “She is out in the gardens, my lord,” his butler informed him. A short while later Ian strolled out the French doors and started down the balcony steps to join her. She was bending down and snapping a withered rosebud from its stem. “It only hurts for a moment,” she told the bush, “and it’s for your own good. You’ll see.” With an embarrassed little smile she looked up at him. “It’s a habit,” she explained. “It obviously works,” he said with a tender smile, looking at the way the flowers bloomed about her skirts. “How can you tell?” “Because,” he said quietly as she stood up, “until you walked into it, this was an ordinary garden.” Puzzled, Elizabeth tipped her head. “What is it now?” “Heaven.” Elizabeth’s breath caught in her chest at the husky timbre of his voice and the desire in his eyes. He held out his hand to her, and, without realizing what she was doing, she lifted her hand and gave it to him, then she walked straight into his arms. For one breathless moment his smoldering eyes studied her face feature by feature while the pressure of his arms slowly increased, and then he bent his head. His sensual mouth claimed hers in a kiss of violent tenderness and tormenting desire while his hands slid over the sides of her breasts, and Elizabeth felt all her resistance, all her will, begin to crumble and disintegrate, and she kissed him back with her whole heart.

Neither do I express well nor do I know how to write perfectly charming like writers do yet here I sit every night under the stars hoping one to break away so I could wish for the missing peace of my puzzle of life .. * Selfish isn't it wishing something to break so we can join ourselves  maybe thats the law of nature. One always has to give up for something to live. Tree dies  leaving the seed for a new bud behind.  Crazy! The sacrifice for one becomes the breath for the other one without even  him realizing what suffering something went through for its precious life * It gets cold fast once you decide to swim deep into your thoughts . Every thing from a star to even the buzzing of bees tell you a story about what your existence might be for but the city's lights and sound never let you realize how small yet how fascinating your existence is . We tend to forget the meaning of life even after preaching the same for others ourselves. . It feels good and at peace with nobody to bother you anymore . You can think and imagine stuff that might never be but this wonderful brain imagines  it . If not forever Atleast for sometime   you can feel the feeling you forever lust for.  Sure the usual disturbances try to lure my mind away from things but I'm used to it now . The gloominess  inside doesn't let them affect inside anymore. * The sky gets dark it really does . Maybe like the night sky's supposed to be so are my thoughts with a beating heart to support them and keep the flame of fight lit like the moon lights up the sky even if that means reflecting the harsh rays of sun. * The time flies and so do the body shivers for warmth but I feel like staying. Sure the exposed sky gives peace but it comes at a cost so I try to bargain with  it every night. She's a good at negotiating though only gives me some hours before she signal that time's over. * Hesitantly I move my numb body using the last remaining gas in  the dying  shell known as body. How much i try it won't let me stay so here I leave heartbroken once again like every other night.

But then Cole ran for her, sliding on his knees to close the final distance between his hands and her skin. Kyle wrapped his head in her arms, cradling him. “My sweet Cole. That’s better. That’s better.” Kyle braced her hands on his shoulders and slowly lowered herself to her knees. She put her hands on his cheeks and waited until he looked at her. “You forgot something last night.” Cole looked puzzled. “You made me promise you something. Now you owe me a promise.” Cole nodded somberly. “Be the real Cole. Promise me you will be you.” Kyle’s voice was strong and sure. Cole felt his heart soar with her embrace, settling the feelings inside him. “Kyle, I’ve done so much wrong. I think I’m done being the real Cole. How much hurt can I cause?” He could hardly speak through his fear. She smiled again. “I’ve done my own share of wrong, but look. Look around. We’re in the perfect place.” The church looked like paradise. A frame of broken rainbows arched above the lovers on their knees. Cole held her face to his, whispering, “Help me.” Kyle gave him the absolution he needed with her lips.

It is not my job to explain the story or understand the story or reduce it to a phrase or offer it as being a story about any specific person, place, or thing. My job is to have been true enough to the world of my story that I was able to present it as a forceful and convincing drama. Every story is a kind of puzzle. Many have obvious solutions, and some have no solution at all. We write to present questions, sometimes complicated questions, not to offer easy or not-so-easy answers. Do not be misled by the limited vocabulary the American marketplace uses to describe the possibilities for story and drama. If we’re really writing we are exploring the unnamed emotional facets of the human heart. Not all emotions, not all states of mind have been named. Nor are all the names we have been given always accurate. The literary story is a story that deals with the complicated human heart with an honest tolerance for the ambiguity in which we live. No good guys, no bad guys, just guys: that is, people bearing up the crucible of their days and certainly not always—if ever—capable of articulating their condition.

Daylight...In my mind, the night faded. It was daytime and the neighborhood was busy. Miss Stephenie Crawford crossed the street to tell the latest to Miss Rachel. Miss Maudie bent over the azaleas. It was summertime, and two children scampered down the sidewalk toward a man approaching in the distance. The man waved, and the children raced each other to him. It was still summertime, and the children came closer. A boy trudged down the sidewalk dragging a fishingpole behind him. A man stood waiting with his hands on his hips. Summertime, and his children played in the front yeard with their friend, enacting a strange little drama of their own invention. It was fall and his children fought ont he sidewalk in front of Mrs. Dubose's. The boy helped his sister to her feet and they made their way home. Fall, and his children trotted to and fro around the corner, the day's woe's and triymph's on their face. They stopped at an oak tree, delighted, puzzled apprehensive. Winter, and his children shivered at the front gate, silhouetted against a blazing house. Winter and a man walked into the street, dropped his glasses, and show a dog. Summer, and he watched his children's heart break. Autumn again, and Boo's children needed him.

I would not speak of a betrothal to you if I weren’t also compelled by what’s in my heart.” And what’s in your heart, I wanted to ask, but the question was brash and dangerous and I sensed that what lay there was a difficult puzzle—a jumble of God, destiny, duty, and love that couldn’t be solved, much less explained. If we married, I would always look over my shoulder for God. “I’m unsuited for you,” I said. “Certainly you know this.” I couldn’t think why I would try to discourage him, except to test his resolve. “I don’t just refer to my family’s wealth and ties to Herod Antipas, but to myself. You said you’re not like other men. Well, I’m not like other women—you’ve said so yourself. I have ambitions as men do. I’m racked with longings. I’m selfish and willful and sometimes deceitful. I rebel. I’m easy to anger. I doubt the ways of God. I’m an outsider everywhere I go. People look on me with derision.” “I know all of this,” he said. “And you would still have me?” “The question is whether you will have me.” I heard Sophia sigh into the wind—Here, Ana, here it is. And despite all that Jesus had just said, all his prevarication and provisos, the most curious feeling came over me, that I was always meant to arrive at this moment. I said, “I will have you.

Impossible?” she scoffed, lurching to face him. “You have servants who can pull the brains from a calf’s head, but they couldn’ get one little pear out of a bottle? I doubt that. Send for one of your under-butlers—just give a whistle, and—oh, I forgot. You can’t whistle.” She focused on him, her eyes narrowing as she stared at his mouth. “That’s the sillies’ thing I ever heard. Everyone can whistle. I’ll teach you. Right now. Pucker your lips. Like this. Pucker…see?” Marcus caught her in his arms as she swayed before him. Staring down at her adorably pursed lips, he felt an insistent warmth invading his heart, overflowing and spilling past its fretted barriers. God in heaven, he was tired of fighting his desire for her. It was exhausting to struggle against something so overwhelming. Like trying not to breathe. Lillian stared at him earnestly, seeming puzzled by his refusal to comply. “No, no, not like that. Like this.” The bottle dropped to the carpet. She reached up to his mouth and tried to shape his lips with her fingers. “Rest your tongue on the edge of your teeth and…it’s all about the tongue, really. If you’re agile with your tongue, you’ll be a very, very good”—she was temporarily interrupted as he covered her mouth with a brief, ravening kiss—“whistler. My lord, I can’t talk when you—” He fitted his mouth to hers again, devouring the sweet brandied taste of her.

It was the same as I remembered it,” she whispered, sounding defeated and puzzled and shattered. It was better than he remembered. Stronger, wilder…And the only reason she didn’t know it was because he hadn’t succumbed to temptation yet and kissed her once more. He had just rejected that idea as complete insanity when a male voice suddenly erupted behind them: “Good God! What’s going on here!” Elizabeth jerked free in mindless panic, her gaze flying to a middle-aged elderly man wearing a clerical collar who was dashing across the yard. Ian put a steadying hand on her waist, and she stood there rigid with shock. “I heart shooting-“ The gray-haired man gasped, sagging against a nearby tree, his hand over his heart, his chest heaving. “I heard it all the way up the valley, and I thought0” He broke off, his alert gaze moving from Elizabeth’s flushed face and tousled hair to Ian’s hand at her waist. “You thought what?” Ian asked in a voice that struck Elizabeth as being amazingly calm, considering they’d just been caught in a lustful embrace by nothing less daunting than a Scottish vicar. The thought had scarcely crossed her battered mind when the man’s expression hardened with understanding. “I thought,” he said ironically, straightening from the tree and coming forward, brushing pieces of bark from his black sleeve, “that you were trying to kill each other. Which,” he continued more mildly as he stopped in front of Elizabeth, “Miss Throckmorton-Jones seemed to think was a distinct possibility when she dispatched me here.” “Lucinda?” Elizabeth gasped, feeling as if the world was turning upside down. “Lucinda sent you here?” “Indeed,” said the vicar, bending a reproachful glance on Ian’s hand, which was resting on Elizabeth’s waist. Mortified to the very depths of her being by the realization she’d remained standing in this near-embrace, Elizabeth hastily shoved Ian’s hand away and stepped sideways. She braced herself for a richly deserved, thundering tirade on the sinfulness of their behavior, but the vicar continued to regard Ian with his bushy gray eyebrows lifted, waiting. Feeling as if she were going to break from the strain of the silence, Elizabeth cast a pleading look at Ian and found him regarding the vicar not with shame or apology, but with irritated amusement. “Well?” demanded the vicar at last, looking at Ian. “What do you have to say to me?” “Good afternoon?” Ian suggested drolly. And then he added, “I didn’t expect to see you until tomorrow, Uncle.” “Obviously,” retorted the vicar with unconcealed irony. “Uncle!” blurted Elizabeth, gaping incredulously at Ian Thornton, who’d been flagrantly defying rules of morality with his passionate kisses and seeking hands from the first night she met him. As if the vicar read her thoughts, he looked at her, his brown eyes amused. “Amazing, is it not, my dear? It quite convinces me that God has a sense of humor.

I was going to make a confession. Then I remembered I don't make them very well. We still need to see the monkeys." "You don't really think I'm going to let a provocative statement like that slip by,do you?" "Well...I thought the best way to discourage you was to agree to go out with you-to some place like this, which I thought would bore you to distraction-then be as obnoxious as possible." "Have you been obnoxious?" His tone was mild and entirely too serious. "I thought you've been behaving very naturally." "Ouch." Shelby rubbed at the figurative wound under her heart. "In any case, I get the distinct impression that I haven't discouraged you at all." "Really?" Reaching for more popcorn, he leaned close and spoke gently in her ear "How did you come by that?" "Oh-" She cleared her throat. "Just a hunch." He found that tiny show of nerves very rewarding. Yes, the puzzle was coming together, piece by careful piece. It was the way he'd always structured his life. "Odd.And not once since we've been here have I mentioned that I'd like to find a small, dim room and make love to you,over and over." Warily, Shelby slid her eyes to his. "I'd just as soon you didn't. "All right." Alan slipped an arm around her waist. "I won't mention it while we're here." A smile tugged at her mouth, but she shook her head. "It's not going to come to that, Alan.It can't." "We have a fundamental disagreement." He paused on a bridge. Beneath them, swans floated haughtily. "Because to my way of thinking it has to.

Aubade" Who lives where summer ends knows the hard cold of autumn is blissfully close, although it feels each season newly un- known. You are constantly newly unknown to me, my night-glowing open-hearted sting-of-salt weather. Rains and winds, sleights-of- hand. Who if not you could weigh me enough down. You’d paint my eyes blacker and warmer than they are and soon they would carry whole calendars of black night in them. You say you’re pulled back, but it is a rare thing inside those shocks of minutes that holds without our even needing to touch it. Maybe you think you trade one clean joy for another. But mine is darker, slanted, nitrous blue at the root, an acrostic of what is most free and far. To be another person than the one you were before means more than I understand. But my gradual hands move in streams over you whether you travel or not, as you drop into sleep or not, and in the book of this most-alone-place I am there only when you feel need, a coat so thin and so like skin you can touch the slopes, the smoother pools, dust-mooded winds over roads, the skeleton instrument of your voice as it richens the maps and paths, summer’s last shades of white on dark soil, as if the moon-moth and house-mouth were close against the lashes of your eyes, puzzles-in- flutter, or wandering off through the warm night air, unlikely ever again to find such light as this. from Boston Review: August 21, 2013

Um, I think I left my handkerchief on the table,” Jane said. “I’ll just run down and fetch it. There’s no need to wait for me--you go on to bed.” Lisette stopped to stare at her in bewilderment. “Your handkerchief will be perfectly fine where it is. A footman will find it and give it to you in the morning.” “No, I dare not leave it or I’ll forget about it in the confusion of our departure.” She was already turning to descend the stairs. “And it’s my favorite.” Jane didn’t stop to see if Lisette believed that nonsense. She just hastened down, trying to figure out how to get Dom alone. Fortunately, just as she approached the dining room, she heard the duke say from inside, “Sorry to be a wet blanket, old chap, but I shall turn in, too. Lisette and I don’t usually rise as early as we did this morning.” “So I’ve noticed.” Then Dom added hastily, “Not that it matters, mind you. Everyone has his own habits.” “Yes, that’s true.” The duke’s puzzled tone showed he was unaware of what his wife had said yesterday about his “habits.” “Don’t forget that we must leave as early tomorrow as possible.” “Of course.” “I’m hoping Tristan will have arrived by then, but if not, we’ll press on without him.” “Certainly,” Max said, rather stiffly now. He probably wasn’t used to being ordered about by anyone, even his brother-in-law. “Well, good night, then.” Hearing footsteps approaching, Jane darted quickly into an alcove and waited with heart pounding as the duke emerged from the dining room. He strode, with a surprisingly quick step for a man who claimed to be tired, in the direction his wife had gone. Only after he’d disappeared up the stairs did Jane relax. This was her chance.

Over the next few days we spent every waking moment together. We made up silly dances, did puzzles in the evening, and she stood smiling on the beach waiting for me as I took my customary New Year’s dip in the freezing cold North Atlantic. I just had a sense that we were meant to be. I even found out she lived in the next-door road along from where I was renting a room from a friend in London. What were the chances of that? As the week drew to a close we both got ready to head back south to London. She was flying. I was driving. “I’ll beat you to London,” I challenged her. She smiled knowingly. “No, you won’t.” (But I love your spirit.) She, of course, won. It took me ten hours to drive. But at 10:00 P.M. that same night I turned up at her door and knocked. She answered in her pajamas. “Damn, you were right,” I said, laughing. “Shall we go for some supper together?” “I’m in my pajamas, Bear.” “I know, and you look amazing. Put a coat on. Come on.” And so she did. Our first date, and Shara in her pajamas. Now here was a cool girl. From then on we were rarely apart. I delivered love letters to her office by day and persuaded her to take endless afternoons off. We roller-skated in the parks, and I took her down to the Isle of Wight for the weekends. Mum and Dad had since moved to my grandfather’s old house in Dorset, and had rented out our cottage on the island. But we still had an old caravan parked down the side of the house, hidden under a load of bushes, so any of the family could sneak into it when they wanted. The floors were rotten and the bath full of bugs, but neither Shara nor I cared. It was heaven just to be together. Within a week I knew she was the one for me and within a fortnight we had told each other that we loved each other, heart and soul. Deep down I knew that this was going to make having to go away to Everest for three and a half months very hard. But if I survived, I promised myself that I would marry this girl.

Poor Zélie! It was much her wont to declare about this time, that she was tired to death of a life of seclusion and labour; that she longed to have the means and leisure for relaxation; to have some one to work for her—a husband who would pay her debts (she was woefully encumbered with debt), supply her wardrobe, and leave her at liberty, as she said, to “goûter un peu les plaisirs.” It had long been rumoured, that her eye was upon M. Emanuel. Monsieur Emanuel’s eye was certainly often upon her. He would sit and watch her perseveringly for minutes together. I have seen him give her a quarter-of-an-hour’s gaze, while the class was silently composing, and he sat throned on his estrade, unoccupied. Conscious always of this basilisk attention, she would writhe under it, half-flattered, half-puzzled, and Monsieur would follow her sensations, sometimes looking appallingly acute; for in some cases, he had the terrible unerring penetration of instinct, and pierced in its hiding-place the last lurking thought of the heart, and discerned under florid veilings the bare; barren places of the spirit: yes, and its perverted tendencies, and its hidden false curves—all that men and women would not have known—the twisted spine, the malformed limb that was born with them, and far worse, the stain or disfigurement they have perhaps brought on themselves. No calamity so accursed but M. Emanuel could pity and forgive, if it were acknowledged candidly; but where his questioning eyes met dishonest denial—where his ruthless researches found deceitful concealment—oh, then, he could be cruel, and I thought wicked! he would exultantly snatch the screen from poor shrinking wretches, passionately hurry them to the summit of the mount of exposure, and there show them all naked, all false—poor living lies—the spawn of that horrid Truth which cannot be looked on unveiled. He thought he did justice; for my part I doubt whether man has a right to do such justice on man: more than once in these his visitations, I have felt compelled to give tears to his victims, and not spared ire and keen reproach to himself. He deserved it; but it was difficult to shake him in his firm conviction that the work was righteous and needed.

But nothing in my previous work had prepared me for the experience of reinvestigating Cleveland. It is worth — given the passage of time — recalling the basic architecture of the Crisis: 121 children from many different and largely unrelated families had been taken into the care of Cleveland County Council in the three short months of the summer of 1987. (p18) The key to resolving the puzzle of Cleveland was the children. What had actually happened to them? Had they been abused - or had the paediatricians and social workers (as public opinion held) been over-zealous and plain wrong? Curiously — particularly given its high profile, year-long sittings and £5 million cost — this was the one central issue never addressed by the Butler-Sloss judicial testimony and sifting of internal evidence, the inquiry's remit did not require it to answer the main question. Ten years after the crisis, my colleagues and I set about reconstructing the records of the 121 children at its heart to determine exactly what had happened to them... (p19) Eventually, though, we did assemble the data given to the Butler-Sloss Inquiry. This divided into two categories: the confidential material, presented in camera, and the transcripts of public sessions of the hearings. Putting the two together we assembled our own database on the children each identified only by the code-letters assigned to them by Butler-Sloss. When it was finished, this database told a startlingly different story from the public myth. In every case there was some prima fade evidence to suggest the possibility of abuse. Far from the media fiction of parents taking their children to Middlesbrough General Hospital for a tummy ache or a sore thumb and suddenly being presented with a diagnosis of child sexual abuse, the true story was of families known to social services for months or years, histories of physical and sexual abuse of siblings and of prior discussions with parents about these concerns. In several of the cases the children themselves had made detailed disclosures of abuse; many of the pre-verbal children displayed severe emotional or behavioural symptoms consistent with sexual abuse. There were even some families in which a convicted sex offender had moved in with mother and children. (p20)

The rain spattered against the window in a wind-driven sheet, and he dropped his forehead to her shoulder. “Sleep with me tonight,” he said, “or let me sleep with you.” “You know we cannot.” “Just sleep, Emmie. I will not bother you.” In the dark, she could not read his expression, but she did know he was ripe for another setback. He wasn’t sleeping in his bed, it was after midnight, and his memories were tormenting him. “I will scream the house down if you misbehave, and I will not let you seduce me.” It was a terrible idea—almost as terrible as the thought of not seeing him for weeks, not hearing him banter with Lord Amery, not watching as he slowly coaxed Winnie into a semblance of civilized behavior. It was a terrible idea, for she could not think of refusing him. “Tonight, Emmie love, I could not seduce my own right hand. I’ve already tried.” She shot him a puzzled look but kept her questions to herself. “Take me upstairs, Emmie.” He rose and drew her to her feet. “Please.” She made no reply, just took his hand, picked up her candle, and led him to her bedroom. While she finished braiding her hair, he locked the door then undressed, washed, and climbed under her covers. When her fingers hesitated at the ties of her nightgown, he met her gaze. “It’s up to you. Sleep however you are comfortable.” She blew out the candle before taking off her clothes and climbing in beside him. “You will sleep?” she asked, her voice hesitant in the darkness. “Eventually,” he replied, pushing her gently to her side, “and so will you.” He trailed his fingers over her shoulder blades then down her spine. “Relax, Emmie. I’ve given my word I will behave, and I would not lie to you.” She sighed and gave herself up to the pleasure of having her back rubbed and then, only moments later, to the pleasure of slumber. “Better,” he murmured, content just to touch her. The smooth, fragrant expanse of her flesh under his hands soothed him, distracted him from the rain and the rain scents coming in the windows. Her breathing evened out, and the tension in her body eased. Slowly, so as not to disturb her, he curved his naked body around hers and slipped a hand around her waist. She sighed again and snuggled back against his chest, then laced her fingers through his. He felt himself drifting into sleep, Emmie’s hand in his, her warmth against his heart, her fragrance blotting out the memories that had denied him sleep. Peace. Finally, finally, I have experienced that thing referred to as peace. ***

The perfect girl what can I say; to be so close yet, feel miles away. I want to run to her, but have to walk out the door going the other way. The only words spoken to her are- ‘Have a nice day.’ I think about her and the summer, and what it could have been with her. It reminds me of- sixteen, you are on my mind all the time. I think about you. It is like a vision of the stars shining, ribbon wearing, bracelet making, and holding hands forever. All the sunflowers in the hayfields and kissing in the rain, no more brick walls, no more falling teardrops of pain, and no more jigsaw puzzle pieces would remain. True love should not be such a game; does she feel the same. She is everything that I cannot have, and everything I lack. What if every day could be like this- Diamond rings, football games, and movies on the weekends? It is easy to see she belongs to me; she is everything that reminds me of ‘sixteen’ everything that is in my dreams. Everything she does is amazing, but then again, I am just speculating, and fantasizing about Nevaeh Natalie, who just turned the age of sixteen! Nevaeh- I recall my first boy kiss was not at all, what I thought it was going to be like. I was wearing a light pink dress, and flip-flops that were also pink with white daisy flowers printed on them. I loosened my ponytail and flipped out my hair until my hair dropped down my back, and around my shoulders. That gets A guy going every time, so I have read online. He was wearing ripped-up jeans and a Led Zeppelin t-shirt. He said that- ‘My eyes sparkled in blue amazement, which was breathtaking, that he never saw before.’ Tell me another line… I was thinking, while Phil Collins ‘Take Me Home’ was playing in the background. I smiled at him, he began to slowly lean into me, until our lips locked. So, enjoy, he kissed me, and my heart was all aflutter. When it happened, I felt like I was floating, and my stomach had butterflies. My eyes fastened shut with no intentions of me doing so during the whole thing. When my eyes unfastened my feelings of touch engaged, and I realized that his hands are on my hips. His hands slowly moved up my waist, and my body. I was trembling from the exhilaration. Plus, one thing led to another. It was sort of my first time, kissing and playing with him you know a boy, oh yet not really, I had gotten to do some things with Chiaz before like, in class as he sat next to me. I would rub my hand on it under the desks- yeah, he liked that, and he would be. Oh, how could I forget this… there was this one time in the front seat of his Ford pickup truck, we snuck off… and this was my first true time gulping down on him, for a lack of a better term. As I had my head in his lap and was about to move up for him to go in me down there, I was about to get on top and let him in me. When we both heard her this odd, yet remarkably loud scream of bloody murder! Ava was saying- ‘You too were going to fuck! What the fuck is going on here? Anyways, Ava spotted us before he got to ‘Take me!

Chapter One Vivek Ranadivé “IT WAS REALLY RANDOM. I MEAN, MY FATHER HAD NEVER PLAYED BASKETBALL BEFORE.” 1. When Vivek Ranadivé decided to coach his daughter Anjali’s basketball team, he settled on two principles. The first was that he would never raise his voice. This was National Junior Basketball—the Little League of basketball. The team was made up mostly of twelve-year-olds, and twelve-year-olds, he knew from experience, did not respond well to shouting. He would conduct business on the basketball court, he decided, the same way he conducted business at his software firm. He would speak calmly and softly, and he would persuade the girls of the wisdom of his approach with appeals to reason and common sense. The second principle was more important. Ranadivé was puzzled by the way Americans play basketball. He is from Mumbai. He grew up with cricket and soccer. He would never forget the first time he saw a basketball game. He thought it was mindless. Team A would score and then immediately retreat to its own end of the court. Team B would pass the ball in from the sidelines and dribble it into Team A’s end, where Team A was patiently waiting. Then the process would reverse itself. A regulation basketball court is ninety-four feet long. Most of the time, a team would defend only about twenty-four feet of that, conceding the other seventy feet. Occasionally teams played a full-court press—that is, they contested their opponent’s attempt to advance the ball up the court. But they did it for only a few minutes at a time. It was as if there were a kind of conspiracy in the basketball world about the way the game ought to be played, Ranadivé thought, and that conspiracy had the effect of widening the gap between good teams and weak teams. Good teams, after all, had players who were tall and could dribble and shoot well; they could crisply execute their carefully prepared plays in their opponent’s end. Why, then, did weak teams play in a way that made it easy for good teams to do the very things that they were so good at? Ranadivé looked at his girls. Morgan and Julia were serious basketball players. But Nicky, Angela, Dani, Holly, Annika, and his own daughter, Anjali, had never played the game before. They weren’t all that tall. They couldn’t shoot. They weren’t particularly adept at dribbling. They were not the sort who played pickup games at the playground every evening. Ranadivé lives in Menlo Park, in the heart of California’s Silicon Valley. His team was made up of, as Ranadivé put it, “little blond girls.” These were the daughters of nerds and computer programmers. They worked on science projects and read long and complicated books and dreamed about growing up to be marine biologists. Ranadivé knew that if they played the conventional way—if they let their opponents dribble the ball up the court without opposition—they would almost certainly lose to the girls for whom basketball was a passion. Ranadivé had come to America as a seventeen-year-old with fifty dollars in his pocket. He was not one to accept losing easily. His second principle, then, was that his team would play a real full-court press—every game, all the time. The team ended up at the national championships. “It was really random,” Anjali Ranadivé said. “I mean, my father had never played basketball before.” 2. Suppose you were to total up all the wars over the past two hundred years that occurred between very large and very small countries. Let’s say that one side has to be at least ten times larger in population and armed might

Jesus, the living embodiment of Israel’s God, could cry out, “My God, my God, why did you abandon me?” Here we have the Holy Spirit, who in Romans 8 is clearly the powerful presence of Israel’s God himself, groaning inarticulately from the heart of creation. And the Father—the Searcher of Hearts—is listening. This is the extraordinary “conversation” in which the suffering church is caught up. And because it was always the will of the Creator to work in his world through human beings, this human role of intercession—of patient, puzzled, agonized, labor-pain intercession—becomes one of the key focal points in the divine plan, not just to put into effect this or that smaller goal, but to rescue the whole creation from its slavery to corruption, to bring about the new creation at last. Paul has a great deal to say about suffering elsewhere in his writings, but I think this passage goes to the heart of it all.

He stopped and turned around, smiling at me for the first time. “All right, do tell me, please, which of the two is greater, do you think: the Prophet Muhammad or the Sufi Bistami?” “What kind of a question is that?” I said. “How can you compare our venerated Prophet, may peace be upon him, the last in the line of prophets, with an infamous mystic?” A curious crowd had gathered around us, but the dervish didn’t seem to mind the audience. Still studying my face carefully, he insisted, “Please think about it. Didn’t the Prophet say, ‘Forgive me, God, I couldn’t know Thee as I should have,’ while Bistami pronounced, ‘Glory be to me, I carry God inside my cloak’? If one man feels so small in relation to God while another man claims to carry God inside, which of the two is greater?” My heart pulsed in my throat. The question didn’t seem so absurd anymore. In fact, it felt as if a veil had been lifted and what awaited me underneath was an intriguing puzzle. A furtive smile, like a passing breeze, crossed the lips of the dervish. Now I knew he was not some crazy lunatic. He was a man with a question—a question I hadn’t thought about before. “I see what you are trying to say,” I began, not wanting him to hear so much as a quaver in my voice. “I’ll compare the two statements and tell you why, even though Bistami’s statement sounds higher, it is in fact the other way round.” “I am all ears,” the dervish said. “You see, God’s love is an endless ocean, and human beings strive to get as much water as they can out of it. But at the end of the day, how much water we each get depends on the size of our cups. Some people have barrels, some buckets, while some others have only got bowls.” As I spoke, I watched the dervish’s expression change from subtle scorn to open acknowledgment and from there into the soft smile of someone recognizing his own thoughts in the words of another. “Bistami’s container was relatively small, and his thirst was quenched after a mouthful. He was happy in the stage he was at. It was wonderful that he recognized the divine in himself, but even then there still remains a distinction between God and Self. Unity is not achieved. As for the Prophet, he was the Elect of God and had a much bigger cup to fill. This is why God asked him in the Qur’an, Have we not opened up your heart? His heart thus widened, his cup immense, it was thirst upon thirst for him. No wonder he said, ‘We do not know You as we should,’ although he certainly knew Him as no other did.

When you fall in every way- to me, it’s not about love… I have a hard time believing in something that I don’t find too real for me or can trust… like papa said- I should. Times have changed. To me, it’s trying to keep it, after the fact. That's the color of Jenny, her skin is never that natural looking. What was the look on her face all about? Maddie begins giggling hysterically until she doubles over and has to cover her mouth with both hands. I don’t know what she could find funny. Then I see Ray and Justen are love drinks doing it on the pole table, with my little sis just eyeing it all up. She knows- Ray is my guy, and Justen is her new bestie. ‘God save me if you can hear me!’ I am ready to rip someone’s head off and the skin that goes with it. ‘I can’t believe it,’ she- my sis says. ‘I can’t believe it.’ She looks back at me- like I know your heart has broken. Justen looked at her and said- ‘OH MY GOD’ get her out of here. She was her to dance not see this. I grab her by the back of her short dress and take her into the next room and said. ‘It’s okay, everything is going to be fine no damn it go home!’ She said- ‘Know it’s not… Kar-ley I did a No-no!’ (She still baby talks.) You’re never going to forgive me. I said- ‘I know you had sex, for the first time tonight.’ She said- ‘Yes, but…’ I said- ‘But… what… go on.’ She starts subbing. She said- ‘It was Ray that did it to me, up in the master bedroom. He said- ‘That you would think it would be okay because I knew him.’ ‘So, I believed him.’ She added- During sex I bleed a lot out of there (and the point) and it hurt so much Karly, I cried the whole time. But I felt close to him… How was it I ask? And then she dropped the shocker of a lifetime. She said- ‘I think I am in love with your boyfriend, yet Justen just ripped him away. She asks me the most complex question ever coming from the mind of a ten-year-old. ‘So, which of us girls do you think he loves the most? Is it me, you or her?’ I said- ‘I don’t know… she looks puzzled by that… just like I could not believe that I didn’t say- me.’ Kellie said- I feel a little sore but other than that I am a hundred percent perfectly fine emotion Madilyn and physically, up till this point at least.’ I whispered in her ear- ‘Aww sis, boys will say anything to get you to do what they want. She has her head on my chest. No, I am not mad at you. I’ll take care of this, ‘I am not mad’- I said once more. On the other hand, inside I was pissed, she had the night that I have been planning for a long time.

You carry me in your hearts, because I made them with my own. Hold me close forever as I hold you: in every beat. Mama

For me, now, a puzzle emerges. What, then, fuels insomnia – fear or anxiety? Anxiety, everyone says. Anxiety, my hypnotherapist says; you are safe in your bed yet your heart is racing as if a tiger is present. You must learn to see that there is no tiger. But there is a tiger: sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation isn’t a perceived threat but a real one, like thirst or starvation. It is the fear of not sleeping that raises the heart rate and tenses the muscles; fear, not anxiety. Here is where insomnia becomes intractable, because it deploys fear to act like anxiety. Where fear is a response to an external threat, insomnia is almost unique in giving rise to a fear that then causes the external threat. Being afraid of the saber-tooth tiger is what makes the tiger keep coming back – not seem to come back, but in fact come back. It is no use to say ‘don’t be afraid’. There is a tiger in your bedroom, you ought to be afraid.

The girl who had the ability to shatter my heart into a million pieces kissed me back, repairing everything that had gone wrong this week, putting me back together like a puzzle and she was the missing piece.

At first I felt something like an oppressed anxiety when I was near the little sick girl, which later changed into pious and reverential awe in face of this dumb and strangely moving suffering. Whenever I saw her, an obscure sensation would arise in me that she must surely die. And then I grew afraid to look her in the face. Whenever I roamed the forests during the day, feeling so joyful in this solitude and peace, when I stretched out wearily on the moss and gazed for hours together into the bright, shimmering sky, into whose very depths one could see, when a strange and profound sense of joy thrilled me, I would suddenly think of the sick Maria - then I would get up and roam aimlessly about, overwhelmed by inexplicable thoughts and feel a dull pressure in my head and my heart which brought me to the verge of tears. At times when I walked in the evening along the dusty main street which was filled with the scent of the blossoming lime and watched whispering couples as they stood in the shadows of the trees; when I saw two people pressed close together as though they were one being, sauntering slowly beside the fountain as it quietly played in the moolight, and a feverish thrill of presentiment coursed through me as I thought of poor sick Maria; then I was seized by a quiet yearning for something inexplicable and all at once I saw myself strolling arm in arm with her in the shade of the fragrant lime trees. And a strange radiance shone from Maria's great dark eyes, and the moon made her slender little face appear still paler and more transparent. Then I fled upstairs into my attic, leaned against the window, looked up into the deep dark heavens where the stars appeared to have gone out and for hours abandoned myself to formless and confusing dreams until overcome by sleep. And yet - and yet I did not exchange so much as ten words with poor sick Maria. She never spoke. I would only sit at her side for hours gazing into her sick, suffering face, feeling ever and again that she must die. In the garden I lay in the grass and breathed in the fragrance of a thousand flowers; my eye was intoxicated by the gleaming colours of blossoms flooded with sunlight, and I listened too for the silence in the air above, interrupted only by the mating call of a bird. I sensed the ferment of the fruitful, torrid earth, that mysterious sound of ever-creative life. I could then darkly feel the greatness and beauty of life. Then it semed to me as if life belonged to me. But then my eye lit upon the bay-window of the house. I could see the sick Maria sitting there - silent and motionless and with closed eyes. And all my thinking was again drawn to the suffering of this being and remained there - became a painful but shyly conceded yearning which struck me as puzzling and confusing. And I left the garden timidly, silently, as though I had no right to linger in this temple.

Gods, I'd kiss her forever if I thought it would keep the coming argument at bay, keep us in this one pristine moment where I can actually believe that everything might be all right between us, that I haven't irrevocably fucked up the best thing that's ever happened to me. "You aren't going to lose me." She gives me a puzzled look, smiling like I've said something peculiar. Then she leans in and kisses me. She still wants me. The revelation makes my heart fucking soar.

Each moment, each glance, stored forever, both in the depth of my camera and the chambers of our hearts.

Parker’s eyebrows dip, but his gaze slides back up to mine. “To love someone that much.” My heart seizes, my eyes stinging with fresh tears. I’m forced to look away as I pull my lips between my teeth, holding back another mournful cry. “Sorry. You should go dance now.” Swallowing, I glance back up at Parker, who has returned his attention to the lake. He teeters on the balls of his feet, his jaw clenching. I’m startled by his words as the chilly water laps at my toes—he’s never apologized for anything before, but he apologizes for this. For his brush with vulnerability, his tender curiosity. That’s nothing to be sorry for. “It felt like completion,” I tell him, explaining it the only way that makes sense. “It felt like a pinnacle. Like everything in your life has come full circle, and this person is the culmination of every dream, every plea, every dandelion wish. “And when your dreams dissolve, and the wishes scatter, it’s hard to find joy in anything else. How can you ever obtain completion again when you’re missing the biggest piece?” A ragged sigh escapes me, and I watch the emotions play across his face, a melancholy reflection pulling at his features. “I have to believe there’s still joy in the journey—this new journey —and that life isn’t all about the finished puzzle. There’s just as much fulfillment in putting it together.

Watch my shooting iron, will you.’ Jack turned and saw Reg rising to his feet, his hands holding onto the side of the vehicle as he began to swing his leg over the side. ‘No you bloody don’t,’ Jack shouted, before grabbing Reg’s foot and hauling him back into the vehicle. ‘Have a heart,’ Reg said, his face staring longingly at two women who were blowing kisses towards him. ‘No one leaves this vehicle,’ Jack shouted, as he stood swaying in the back of the half-track. ‘This butter’s bloody lovely,’ Ham mumbled, his lips smeared with grease. ‘You ain’t supposed to eat it,’ Jack said, as he shook his head in despair. ‘What are you meant to do with it, then?’ Ham asked, his face puzzled as he stared at the butter with suspicion. ‘You’re supposed to...’ Jack’s attention was distracted by Dan who was gulping greedily from a stone flagon, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he drank. ‘Give that here,’ Jack yelled, before snatching the bottle from the young soldier’s hands. ‘A drink won’t hurt him,’ Reg said, his tongue licking his lips as he stared at the bottle. ‘A gallon of it will,’ Jack replied, as he upended the bottle of raw cider over the side of the vehicle. ‘Here, what do yow think yow are doing?’ Jack looked down and saw Fred wiping cider from his chest, his face furious, before a Frenchman grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him in for an embrace, his lips smacking as they connected with his cheeks. ‘Get off yow foreign git,’ Fred shouted, before throwing the man into the crowd.

Love, love is enduring. Love is blind. Love is messy and so perfect, we search our entire lives for it, even when we think we aren’t. I guess I wasn’t either, but I found it anyway in the form of four criminals. Their hearts as dark as their souls. The thing is, I never tried to fight them, not really. I guess a part of me recognised them, and even though my mind was muddled with betrayal and anger, deep down, we clicked like pieces of a puzzle slotting together.

Let us examine first the psychological and legal position of the criminal. We see that in spite of the difficulty of finding other food, the accused, or, as we may say, my client, has often during his peculiar life exhibited signs of repentance, and of wishing to give up this clerical diet. Incontrovertible facts prove this assertion. He has eaten five or six children, a relatively insignificant number, no doubt, but remarkable enough from another point of view. It is manifest that, pricked by remorse—for my client is religious, in his way, and has a conscience, as I shall prove later—and desiring to extenuate his sin as far as possible, he has tried six times at least to substitute lay nourishment for clerical. That this was merely an experiment we can hardly doubt: for if it had been only a question of gastronomic variety, six would have been too few; why only six? Why not thirty? But if we regard it as an experiment, inspired by the fear of committing new sacrilege, then this number six becomes intelligible. Six attempts to calm his remorse, and the pricking of his conscience, would amply suffice, for these attempts could scarcely have been happy ones. In my humble opinion, a child is too small; I should say, not sufficient; which would result in four or five times more lay children than monks being required in a given time. The sin, lessened on the one hand, would therefore be increased on the other, in quantity, not in quality. Please understand, gentlemen, that in reasoning thus, I am taking the point of view which might have been taken by a criminal of the middle ages. As for myself, a man of the late nineteenth century, I, of course, should reason differently; I say so plainly, and therefore you need not jeer at me nor mock me, gentlemen. As for you, general, it is still more unbecoming on your part. In the second place, and giving my own personal opinion, a child’s flesh is not a satisfying diet; it is too insipid, too sweet; and the criminal, in making these experiments, could have satisfied neither his conscience nor his appetite. I am about to conclude, gentlemen; and my conclusion contains a reply to one of the most important questions of that day and of our own! This criminal ended at last by denouncing himself to the clergy, and giving himself up to justice. We cannot but ask, remembering the penal system of that day, and the tortures that awaited him—the wheel, the stake, the fire!—we cannot but ask, I repeat, what induced him to accuse himself of this crime? Why did he not simply stop short at the number sixty, and keep his secret until his last breath? Why could he not simply leave the monks alone, and go into the desert to repent? Or why not become a monk himself? That is where the puzzle comes in! There must have been something stronger than the stake or the fire, or even than the habits of twenty years! There must have been an idea more powerful than all the calamities and sorrows of this world, famine or torture, leprosy or plague—an idea which entered into the heart, directed and enlarged the springs of life, and made even that hell supportable to humanity! Show me a force, a power like that, in this our century of vices and railways!

My mother started singing Mick's lower line as I sang Carly's high lead vocal. without realizing it.. I was harmonizing! just as they do in the song! my heart lit up! my eyes wide and! and then something clicked… the sound over two voices, singing two different Melody lines, made me realize one of music's most basic principles: different notes, when sung together in harmony, create a chord. This moment is burned in my heart and mind as my first love. It is the Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel. My baptism. My musical “Big Bang” if you will. Hell, this was the chicken AND the egg! From that moment on, I heard life with an entirely new set of ears. I scored the radio for harmony. I searched every record in the house to find more. Did every song have this amazing new trick I just learned? Did everyone know about this? Had this been going on forever? Why hadn’t anyone bothered to tell me?! songs became more than songs; they became my toys. They became my puzzles. They became challenges and mysteries. Some became my best friends. Some picking my worst enemies. I was fascinated, and raptured, obsessed! I was hooked! (pg. xiii)

I’ll always be his, and he’ll always be mine. The knowledge that I belong to him clicks in my heart like a long lost piece of a puzzle finally sliding into place to make a complete picture. The perfect picture of happiness.

But if it was used before,” I asked, “then why do you need another Wielder?” Nura had begun pacing again. “Our last host is no longer a willing participant.” There was just something about the way she said it — Without it, that war would have gone on far longer and far bloodier than it did. Puzzle pieces scattered across my vision. My mind rearranged them. Slowly clicked them together. This man is nearly solely responsible for the end of the Great Ryvenai War. My eyes snapped to Nura. No matter what they offer you, no matter what they ask you to do, say no. “Max,” I murmured. “It was Max.” She lowered her chin, just barely. “Yes. The only one.

But what I knew in my head stayed up there, swirling about the other ten zillion things I had retained. That knowledge informed my actions, what I did and how I did it. What Emma knew filtered from her head down into her heart and informed who she was—what I have since come to call the Infinite Migration. If my wonderings about life were scientific, bent toward examination and physical discovery, Emma’s all leaned toward matters of the heart. While I could understand and explain the physics behind a rainbow, Emma saw the colors. When it came to life, I saw each piece and how they all fit together, and Emma saw the image on the face of the puzzle. And every now and then, she’d walk me through the door into her world and show it to me.

He touched her arm. “Frau Steadman, how old are you?” “I am twenty-nine.” She looked up at him, puzzled by the question. “Why?” He removed his hand and slid it into his trouser pocket. “You were a young bride, then.” She tipped her head. “Yes, I suppose I was. No one seemed to think I was too young, however. My sister-in-law was very eager to see me wed. She could be rid of me then, you see.” She offered a weak smile. “You are still a young woman. Do you—” his ears turned bright red—“do you ever wish to have another family?” Immediately she turned her attention to the pot of bubbling cornmeal mush. “I don’t know.” Why was he asking this?

You certainly are getting chummy with Elaine Golden.” Though my heart was racing, I turned around slowly. I didn’t need to face him to know who it was. “I might consider backing off if I were you,” I said. “Otherwise I’ll have to report you to Mr. Hanlon for stalking.” He snorted. “I’m a reporter,” he said. “It’s my job.” “What about the part where you’re incredibly obnoxious? Is that in the job description too, or just a personality disorder?” “You always come out swinging, don’t you, Calloway?” Mark London said. “It kind of makes a guy wonder what you’ve got to hide.” “I think they call that blaming the victim,” I came right back. “And for your information, it went out about twenty years ago.” I grabbed my bag and attempted to brush by him. He caught me by the arm. I stopped. We were shoulder to shoulder now. Eye to eye. “You really want to let go of me,” I said. Just for a second, I was sure I saw the last thing I expected flare in his dark eyes. “No, I don’t,” he said. But he did it anyhow, stepping back, his expression shuttered now. Run! my brain screamed. The rest of me stayed right where I was. “You really think I’m her, don’t you?” I heard myself say. “That’s what this is really all about. You’re not attracted to me, London. You just want to solve a puzzle. Prove you’re the smartest.” “Yes. No. I don’t know,” Mark said. He made a disgusted sound and dragged a hand through his hair. “There are just too many coincidences for me. Combined with too many things that don’t add up.” “Maybe I’m just a woman of mystery,” I said. He gave a sudden bark of laughter. “Maybe, but I doubt it. I’ll say this, though. You’re full of surprises.

If I ever feel the itch of worry, if I’m unable to ignore the anxiety building in my chest, I just take out my guns. Admire them. Then take them apart. It shows that something can become a total mess, rendered powerless, but all you have to do is clean them, make them more efficient, and put them back together again. It’s a puzzle with the same results every time.

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.