Real Hamilton Quotes

Sometimes it's not the optimist you need, but another pessimist to walk beside you and know, absolutely know, that the sound in the dark is a monster, and it really is as bad as you think. Did that sound hopeless? It didn't feel hopeless. It felt reassuring. It felt - real.

Wesley Rush was the most disgusting womanizing playboy to ever darken the doorstep of Hamilton High… but he was kind of hot. Maybe if you could put him on mute… and cut off his hands… maybe—just maybe—he’d be tolerable then. Otherwise, he was a real piece of shit. Horn dog shit.

Hard words are very rarely useful. Real firmness is good for every thing. Strut is good for nothing.

Then stop trying to throw logic at nightmares. Sometimes the monsters are real, Anita. Sometimes they're real and the only way to defeat them is to be the bigger monster. ~Bibiana to Anita

Sometimes the monsters are real, Anita. Sometimes they’re real and the only way to defeat them is to be the bigger monster.' - Chang Bibi to Anita

True love means you love the real person, not an ideal that you have in your head and superimpose over them. That's illusion and lies to me.

Sex was never as neat as the movies made it. Real sex was messy. Good sex was messier.

A little boy who's discovered the monster under the bed is actually real, and it's screwing Mommy.

Stop what? Cheering you up? Or is life supposed to stop because you did something horrible? I'll tell you the real horrible truth, Anita. No matter what you do or how bad you feel about it, life just goes on. Life doesn't give a fuck that you're sorry or upset or deranged or tormented. Life just goes on, and you gotta go on with it, or sit in the middle of the road and feel sorry for yourself. And I don't see you doing that.

In real life I do violence, but for psychic stuff I do other things better.

I'd killed him in the end, but revenge only makes things all better in the movies. In real life, once the villain is dead the trauma lives on inside the victims.

The author describes how impressed she was with the detailed storyboards that outlined her movie – "not just sketches, but real art". She then describes a Hawaiian sunset as, "God painting His storyboard on the sky".

I smiled at him, as Doyle squeezed my hand and I squeezed back. "Some people are addicted to falling in love, Doctor. Some people love that rush of new emotions, and when that first rush of new love is spent, they move on to the next, thinking the love wasn't real. What I felt in her, and potentially in you, is the love of years. Love that knows that that first rush of freshness isn't the real thing. It's the tip of the iceberg.

He looked less handsome without the smile and glow in his eyes, but he also seemed more real. Being real will get me into trouble faster than any amount of charm.

Real ghosts are so much easier to deal with than the kind we carry around in our heads. Most people haunt themselves more effectively than any spirit.

Some days you go bear hunting and you get eaten. Some days you come home with a nice rug to roll around on, and bear steaks. What they don't tell you as a kid is that sometimes you get the rug and steaks, but you also get some nice scars to go with them. As a child you don't understand that you can win, but that's it's not always worth the price. Once you understand and accept that possibility you become a real grown up, and the world becomes a much more serious place. Not less fun, but once you realize what can go wrong, it's a lot scarier to go hunting "bears".

To be content, horse people need only a horse, or, lacking that, someone else who loves horses with whom they can talk. It was always that way with my grandfather. He took me places just so we could see horses, be near them. We went to the circus and the rodeo at Madison Square Garden. We watched parades down Fifth Avenue. Finding a horse, real or imagined, was like finding a dab of magic potion that enlivened us both. Sometimes I'd tell my grandfather about all the horses in my eleborate dreams. He'd lean over, smile, and assure me that, one day, I'd have one for real. And if my grandfather, my Opa, told me something was going to come true, it always did.

I watched her fade, but I loved her always. Because it was her love that made me real, Merry. Not faerie, not wild magic, but the magic of love. I thought I was giving up what life I had to save Rose, but the consort had asked if I would give up everything I was, and I did. I became what she needed me to be. When I realized that I would not age with her I wept, because I could not imagine being without her." He came to his knees and put his hands on my arms, and stared down into my face. "I will love you always. When this red hair is white, I will still love you. When the smooth softness of youth is replaced by the delicate softness of age, I will still want to touch your skin. When your face is full of the lines of every smile you have ever smiled, of every surprise I have seen flash through your eyes, when every tear you have ever cried has left its mark upon your face, I will treasure you all the more, because I was there to see it all. I will share your life with you, Meredith, and I will love you until the last breath leaves your body or mine

To gain your heart's desire you have to lose some part of your old life, your old self. To do that you have to have courage; without it, you can't make the leap. And if you don't make the leap you have only three choices: You can hate yourself for not taking the chance, you can hate the person from whom you've sacrificed your happiness, or you can hate the one who offered you happiness, and blame them for your lack of courage, convince yourself it wasn't real.

She looked up at me, eyes puffy, nose running. Real crying is like real sex. If you really do it, it isn't pretty.

it was more like two scared kids huddling in the dark when they knew the monster under the bed wasn't just real, but was holding a grudge.

It is too early for politicians to presume on our forgetting that the public good, the real welfare of the great body of the people, is the supreme object to be pursued;

I'd once asked Jin if the sand sea was like the real sea. He'd given me that knowing smile he used to use when he knew something I didn't. Before I stripped all his secrets away and that smile became mine.

My characters surprise me constantly. My characters are like my friends - I can give them advice, but they don't have to take it. If your characters are real, then they surprise you, just like real people.

The airy phantoms that flit before the distempered imaginations of some of its adversaries would quickly give place to the more substantial forms of dangers, real, certain, and formidable.

Once, the belief that his love would heal all the wounds, and finally make me feel safe, had been true. True, and a lie. Love is real, and false, even true love. Because love alone cannot keep you safe, if there is still a trembling fear inside you. Still a knowledge of what it was like to love and believe and have it all taken away.

Serving [Hamilton's] legacy didn't just mean commemorating him, though: It also meant continuing his work. [Eliza] crusaded against slavery, as Hamilton had. And this widow of an orphan helped to found the first private orphanage in New York. That's the real power of a legacy: We tell stories of people who are gone because like any powerful stories, they have the potential to inspire, and to change the world.

There's nothing more frightening to me than a character who thinks he knows what a real American is – mainly because it generally turns out he’s convinced it's somebody like him. It seems an odd notion to me. I certainly don't want to live in a country populated with people just like me, God forbid! Anyway, I figure there’s room for a little variety in a nation as big as ours.

Respect is more valuable then the amount of times guys flirt with you. It's better to have one trustworthy real man then any amount of boys interested in you. The "cool" guys may not notice or date you but the right one will marry you.

People talk of sorrow as if it is soft, a thing of water and tears. But true sorrow is not soft. True sorrow is a thing of fire, and rock. It burns your heart, crushes your soul under the weight of mountains. It destroys, and even if you keep breathing, keep going, you die. The person you were moments ago dies... Gone. Everything solid, everything real, is gone. It doesn't come back. The world is forever fractured, so that you walk on the crust of an earth where you can always feel the heat under you, the press of lava, that is so hot it can burn flesh, melt bone, and the very air is poisonous. To survive, you swallow the heat. To keep from falling through and dying for real, you swallow all that hate. You push it down inside you, into that fresh grave that is all that is left of what you thought the world would be.

Check it out." Jonah removed the bubble wrap and held up the picture for his three cousins. Dan took a step backward. The shock was almost as powerful as it had been the day before at the Uffizi. "It's perfect! It's every bit as disgusting as the real one!" Amy nodded. "And so fast. We only called you yesterday." Jonah shrugged. "Even the Janus take a short cut every now and then. You can do a lot with digitization these days. You break the picture down to squares and reproduce them one at a time. The other two are just as fly." "You mean, hog ugly," Hamilton amended. "The serpents don't help," Dan put in critically. "Live fat spaghetti. Lady, if you're thinking of a modeling career, forget it!" The rapper clucked sympathetically. "You guys just don't appreciate the power of the visual image. The Wiz used to be like that–until Gangsta Kronikles. When you're in film industry, you understand the whole picture's-worth-a-thousand-words deal." Hamilton rolled his eyes. "Here we go again.

Shit got real when they both did numbers from Hamilton.

Real firmness is good for every thing—Strut is good for nothing.

At the very least they teach us that God does not always answer our prayers, even when we offer those prayers in faith at times of real and pressing need. They also teach us that while God may not answer our prayers as we pray them, God does not abandon us. More than that, these accounts tell us that God works through the situations from which we have not been delivered as we asked.

Visions of such things would get you talking of demons, which Quinlan had done briefly. The police ignored him, and I didn't back up his story. Quinlan had never met a real demon, or he wouldn't have made the mistake. Once you've been in the presence of demons, you never forget it. I'd rather fight a dozen vampires than one demonic presence. They don't give a shit about silver bullets.

Of course I know what she means. To make art in fandom is to follow your passion at the risk of never being taken seriously. I've written dozens of fics-put them together and you'd have several novels-but who knows what a college admissions officer will think of that as a pastime. Where does 12,000 Tumbler followers rate in relation to a spot in the National Honor Society in their minds? Every week I get anonymous messages in my inbox telling me I should write a real book. Well, haven't I already? What makes what I do different from "real writing"? Is it that I don't use original characters? I guess that makes every Hardy Boys edition, every Star Wars book, every spinoff, sequel, fairy-tale re-telling, historical romance, comic book reboot, and the music Hamilton "not real writing". Or is it that a real book is something printed, that you can hold in your hand, not something you write on the internet? Or is "real writing" something you sell in a store, not give away for free? No, I know it's none of these things. It's merely this: "real writing" is done by serious people, whereas fanfiction is written by weirdos, teenagers, degenerates, and women.

I often ask, "What do you want to work at? If you have the chance. When you get out of school, college, the service, etc." Some answer right off and tell their definite plans and projects, highly approved by Papa. I'm pleased for them* but it's a bit boring, because they are such squares. Quite a few will, with prompting, come out with astounding stereotyped, conceited fantasies, such as becoming a movie actor when they are "discovered" "like Marlon Brando, but in my own way." Very rarely somebody will, maybe defiantly and defensively, maybe diffidently but proudly, make you know that he knows very well what he is going to do; it is something great; and he is indeed already doing it, which is the real test. The usual answer, perhaps the normal answer, is "I don't know," meaning, "I'm looking; I haven't found the right thing; it's discouraging but not hopeless." But the terrible answer is, "Nothing." The young man doesn't want to do anything. I remember talking to half a dozen young fellows at Van Wagner's Beach outside of Hamilton, Ontario; and all of them had this one thing to say: "Nothing." They didn't believe that what to work at was the kind of thing one wanted. They rather expected that two or three of them would work for the electric company in town, but they couldn't care less, I turned away from the conversation abruptly because of the uncontrollable burning tears in my eyes and constriction in my chest. Not feeling sorry for them, but tears of frank dismay for the waste of our humanity (they were nice kids). And it is out of that incident that many years later I am writing this book.

Sometimes love isn’t about being smart. Sometimes it’s about being stupid together. I hated those moments, but I’d grown to understand that love, real love, is full of choices that make no sense, that should go horribly wrong, but you make the choice anyway. Why? Because love is about hope; you hope that this time it will be different.

Then stop trying to throw logic at nightmares. Sometimes the monsters are real, Anita. Sometimes they’re real and the only way to defeat them is to be the bigger monster.

True love means you love the real person, not an ideal that you have in your head and superimpose over them.

I looked at him, into his warm gray eyes, and suddenly understood what he was trying to tell me. The message hidden beneath the words. You’re not alone. Because he understood. He understood how it felt to be abandoned. He understood the insults. Understood me. I pushed myself onto my tiptoes and kissed him-really kissed him. It was more than just a precursor to sex. There was no war between our mouths. My hips rested lightly beneath his, not pressed tightly. Our lips moved in soft, perfect harmony with each other. This time it meant something. What that something was, I didn’t know at the time, but I knew that there was a real connection between us. His hands stroked gently through my hair, his thumb grazing my cheek-still damp from crying earlier. And it didn’t feel sick or twisted or unnatural. Actually, it felt like the most natural thing in the world. I slid off his shirt, and he pulled mine over my head. Then he laid me down on the bed. No rush. This time things were slow and earnest. This time I wasn’t looking for an escape. This time it was about him. About me. About honesty and compassion and everything I’d never expected to find in Wesley Rush. This time, when our bodies connected, it didn’t feel dirty or wrong. It felt horrifyingly right.

There are few chapters in the biography of the childhood of men of genius more significant than those which describe imaginary worlds which were, for a time, as real as the actual world in which the boy lived.

At the same time, the mounting fear of Hamilton among Jefferson, Madison, and their supporters cohered into an organized opposition that began to call itself Republican. Alluding to the ancient Roman republic, this was also a clever label, insinuating that Federalists were not real republicans and hence must be monarchists. Often Baptists and Methodists, Republicans drew their strength from rich southern planters and small farmers.

First nights in strange places can determine how one sees them forever after. And now this same tropic opiate fills my lungs and heart and awakens memories of things which have never happened and foretelling things which will never be. Experiences of great intensity - a special dream, a period of concentrated work, maybe a love affair - have in common that they are unusually real while they last. Yet it is precisely this quality which so easily vanishes. Afterwards, how unreal it all suddenly seems!

Would it be wonderful if, under the pressure of all these difficulties, the convention should have been forced into some deviations from that artificial structure and regular symmetry which an abstract view of the subject might lead an ingenious theorist to bestow on a Constitution planned in his closet or in his imagination? The real wonder is that so many difficulties should have been surmounted, and surmounted with a unanimity almost as unprecedented as it must have been unexpected. It is impossible for any man of candor to reflect on this circumstance without partaking of the astonishment. It is impossible for the man of pious reflection not to perceive in it a finger of that Almighty hand which has been so frequently and signally extended to our relief in the critical stages of the revolution.

Hamilton had championed a humane, enlightened policy toward the Indians. When real-estate speculators had wanted to banish them from western New York, he warned Governor Clinton that the Indians’ friendship “alone can keep our frontiers in peace. . . . The attempt at the total expulsion of so desultory a people is as chimerical as it would be pernicious.

According to the most modern idea, a real myth has nothing to do with religion. It is an explanation of something in nature; how, for instance, any and everything in the universe came into existence: men, animals, this or that tree or flower, the sun, the moon, the stars, storms, eruptions, earthquakes, all that is and all that happens. Thunder and lightning are caused when Zeus hurls his thunderbolt.

Grant later boasted, with some justice, that Hamilton Fish was the best secretary of state in fifty years. While historians have tended to mock Grant’s cabinet as a bunch of mediocrities—and Borie certainly qualified as such—it was actually weighted with former congressmen, senators, governors, and judges. It had figures of real distinction (Fish), Radical Republicans (Boutwell, Creswell), men of exceptional intellect (Hoar),

The ancient priests had said, “Thus far and no farther. We set the limits to thought.” The Greeks said, “All things are to be examined and called into question. There are no limits set to thought.” It is an extraordinary fact that by the time we have actual, documentary knowledge of the Greeks there is not a trace to be found of that domination over the mind by the priests which played such a decisive part in the ancient world. The priest plays no real part in either the history or the literature of Greece.

«C’è una reale buona ragione per te, di andare a vivere una vita che non sembra sedurti più di me? Più di quello che abbiamo vissuto?» mi chiede. Travis sta facendo un altro tentativo di sapere cosa nascondo. Come quando eravamo lontani da qui, lontani da questo addio. Nel bel mezzo dell'Alaska, in quella camera d'albergo. Solo che da allora le cose non sono cambiate. «Fra un po’ di tempo comprenderai che posso restare per sempre nel tuo cuore, ma non nella tua vita. Non possiamo vivere insieme, Travis, le nostre vite sono troppo diverse, e questo finirebbe per distruggerci. Quello che abbiamo adesso, in questo istante, non potrà mai sopravvivere al ritorno alla realtà. Ma l'amore che proviamo sarà probabilmente il più bel ricordo della nostra vita.» Taccio un istante prima di sussurrare dolcemente: «Sei la mia cometa, Travis Hamilton. Sapevo che la nostra relazione avrebbe avuto una data di scadenza, ma questo non mi ha impedito di vivere quello che c’era da vivere con te, approfittando di ogni istante, senza mai dispiacermene, perché era perfetto. Corto, ma perfetto»

Look, I’ve already fucked you twice. You don’t have to flatter me. Besides, I love my friends way too much to trade them in for the sake of looking hotter.” “Seriously?” “Yeah. I mean, Casey has been my best friend since, like, forever, and she’s the most loyal person I’ve ever met. And Jessica… well, she has no idea about me and her brother. We weren’t friends back then. In fact, I didn’t want to know her after Jake and I split, but Casey said it would be good for me, and she was right… as usual. Jessica can be a little ditsy, but she’s the sweetest, most innocent person I know. I could never give either of them up just to look good. That’d make me a real dumbass.” “Then they’re lucky to have you.” “I just said not to flatter-” “I’m being honest.” Wesley frowned at the mirror. “I have only one friend-one real friend. Harrison is the only guy who will be seen with me, and that’s because we aren’t trying to attract the same audience, if you know what I mean.” A small smile spread across his lips when he turned to face me. “Most people will do anything to avoid being the Duff.” “Well, I guess I’m not most people.

Because of the economies of scale in data, the cloud giants are increasingly powerful. And because they’re so susceptible to regulation, these companies have a vested interest in keeping government entities happy. When the Justice Department requested billions of search records from AOL, Yahoo, and MSN in 2006, the three companies quickly complied. (Google, to its credit, opted to fight the request.) Stephen Arnold, an IT expert who worked at consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, says that Google at one point housed three officers of “an unnamed intelligence agency” at its headquarters in Mountain View. And Google and the CIA have invested together in a firm called Recorded Future, which focuses on using data connections to predict future real-world events.

In Richard’s arms, breathing in the warmth of his body, is the closest I’ve ever found to my mother’s arms. It isn’t the same, because I know that though Richard would give his life for me, even that might not be enough. When I was a child, I believed it would be. There is no real safety. Innocence lost can never be regained. But sometimes with Richard I want to believe in it again. There is nothing comforting about Jean-Claude’s arms. He doesn’t make me feel safe in the least. He’s like some forbidden pleasure that you know eventually you’ll regret. I’ve decided not to wait; I’m regretting it now, but I’m still seeing him. Somehow Jean-Claude has crossed that line that a handful of other vampires have crossed. I don’t think of him as a monster anymore. God have mercy on my soul. •

He licked his lips, still looking earnest. “Sara. We had such a special connection. It was real and it was fantastic. Maybe that’s why I’ve spent so many years yearning for it too. We both knew what it was like, and we lost it. Even though you may not remember yet, it’s somewhere in here.” He reached over and touched my head. “And in there.” He pointed a finger toward my heart. I was speechless. I stared at Jack, knowing in my heart that he was being honest and truthful. And I was overwhelmed that he understood me so well. Turning to face me, his eyes burned with intensity. He took my hands in his and said, “I love you Sara Jordan Hamilton, and I’m willing to give you all the desires of your heart, if only you’ll let me. Nothing can take away my love for you. Not time, not distance, not even another husband.

I will give you my word that she will not be harmed if you help us." "No offense, but that's not enough." "You doubt my word." His voice growled low and warm, angry. "No, but you don't hold Aubrey's leash. Unless he answers to you you can't guarantee his behavior." Aubrey's laughter had softened to a few faint giggles. I had never heard a vampire giggle before. It wasn't a pleasant sound. The laughter died completely, and he straightened. "No one holds my leash, girl. I am my own master." "Oh, get real. If you were over five hundred years old, and a master vampire, you'd have cleaned up the stage with me. As it was" - I flattened my hands palms up - "you didn't, which means you're very old but not your own master." He growled low in his throat, face darkening with anger. "How dare you?" "Think, Aubrey, she judged your age within fifty years. You are not a master vampire, and she knew that. We need her.

The Greeks were the first people in the world to play, and they played on a great scale. All over Greece there were games, all sorts of games; athletic contests of every description: races—horse-, boat-, foot-, torch-races; contests in music, where one side out-sung the other; in dancing—on greased skins sometimes to display a nice skill of foot and balance of body; games where men leaped in and out of flying chariots; games so many one grows weary with the list of them. They are embodied in the statues familiar to all, the disc thrower, the charioteer, the wrestling boys, the dancing flute players. The great games—there were four that came at stated seasons—were so important, when one was held, a truce of God was proclaimed so that all Greece might come in safety without fear. There “glorious-limbed youth”—the phrase is Pindar’s, the athlete’s poet—strove for an honor so coveted as hardly anything else in Greece. An Olympic victor—triumphing generals would give place to him. His crown of wild olives was set beside the prize of the tragedian. Splendor attended him, processions, sacrifices, banquets, songs the greatest poets were glad to write. Thucydides, the brief, the severe, the historian of that bitter time, the fall of Athens, pauses, when one of his personages has conquered in the games, to give the fact full place of honor. If we had no other knowledge of what the Greeks were like, if nothing were left of Greek art and literature, the fact that they were in love with play and played magnificently would be proof enough of how they lived and how they looked at life. Wretched people, toiling people, do not play. Nothing like the Greek games is conceivable in Egypt or Mesopotamia. The life of the Egyptian lies spread out in the mural paintings down to the minutest detail. If fun and sport had played any real part they would be there in some form for us to see. But the Egyptian did not play. “Solon, Solon, you Greeks are all children,” said the Egyptian priest to the great Athenian.

Yet the Constitution did not hold factions in check, and as early as 1791, Madison had begun to revise his thinking. In an essay called “Public Opinion,” he considered a source of instability particular to a large republic: the people might be deceived. “The larger a country, the less easy for its real opinion to be ascertained,” he explained. That is, factions might not, in the end, consist of wise, knowledgeable, and reasonable men. They might consist of passionate, ignorant, and irrational men, who had been led to hold “counterfeit” opinions by persuasive men. (Madison was thinking of Hamilton and his ability to gain public support for his financial plan.) The way out of this political maze was the newspaper. “A circulation of newspapers through the entire body of the people,” he explained, “is equivalent to a contraction of territorial limits.” Newspapers would make the country, effectively, smaller.90 It was an ingenious idea. It would be revisited by each passing generation of exasperated advocates of republicanism. The newspaper would hold the Republic together; the telegraph would hold

The legislative department derives a superiority in our governments from other circumstances. Its constitutional powers being at once more extensive, and less susceptible of precise limits, it can, with the greater facility, mask, under complicated and indirect measures, the encroachments which it makes on the co-ordinate departments. It is not unfrequently a question of real nicety in legislative bodies, whether the operation of a particular measure will, or will not, extend beyond the legislative sphere. On the other side, the executive power being restrained within a narrower compass, and being more simple in its nature, and the judiciary being described by landmarks still less uncertain, projects of usurpation by either of these departments would immediately betray and defeat themselves. Nor is this all: as the legislative department alone has access to the pockets of the people, and has in some constitutions full discretion, and in all a prevailing influence, over the pecuniary rewards of those who fill the other departments, a dependence is thus created in the latter, which gives still greater facility to encroachments of the former. I

If we had no other knowledge of what the Greeks were like, if nothing were left of Greek art and literature, the fact that they were in love with play and played magnificently would be proof enough of how they lived and how they looked at life. Wretched people, toiling people, do not play. Nothing like the Greek games is conceivable in Egypt or Mesopotamia. The life of the Egyptian lies spread out in the mural paintings down to the minutest detail. If fun and sport had played any real part they would be there in some form for us to see. But the Egyptian did not play. “Solon, Solon, you Greeks are all children,” said the Egyptian priest to the great Athenian. At any rate, children or not, they enjoyed themselves. They had physical vigor and high spirits and time, too, for fun. The witness of the games is conclusive. And when Greece died and her reading of the great enigma was buried with her statues, play, too, died out of the world. The brutal, bloody Roman games had nothing to do with the spirit of play. They were fathered by the Orient, not by Greece. Play died when Greece died and many and many a century passed before it was resurrected. To rejoice in life, to find the world beautiful

You're afraid that you'll live like those things in the hospital. You're afraid of ending up like them." "Aren't you?" His voice was almost too soft to hear, but somehow it carried over the rush of wheels and the expensive purr of the engine. "I'm trying not to think about it," I said. "How can you not think about it?" he asked. "Because if you start thinking about the bad things, worrying about them, then it makes you slow, makes you afraid. Neither of us can afford that." "Two years ago, I'd have been giving you the pep talk," he said, and there was something in his voice, not anger, but close. "You were a good teacher," I said. His hands gripped the wheel. "I haven't taught you all I know, Anita. You are not a better monster than I am." I watched the side of his face, trying to read that expressionless face. There was a tightness at the jaw, a thread of anger down the neck and into his shoulders. "Are you trying to convince me or yourself... Ted?" I made the name light and mocking. I didn't usually play with Edward just to get a rise out of him, but today, he was unsure, and I wasn't. Part of me was enjoying the hell out of that. He slammed on the brakes and screeched to a stop on the side of the road. I had the Browning pointed at the side of his head, close enough that pulling the trigger would paint his brains all over the windows. He had a gun in his hand. I don't know where in the car it had come from, but the gun wasn't pointed at me. "Ease down, Edward." He stayed motionless but didn't drop the gun. I had one of those moments when you see into another person's soul like looking into an open window. "Your fear makes you slow, Edward, because you'd rather die here, like this, than survive like those poor bastards. You're looking for a better way to die." My gun was very steady, finger on the trigger. But this wasn't for real, not yet. "If you were really serious, you'd have had the gun in your hand before you pulled over. You didn't invite me here to hunt monsters. You invited me here to kill you if it works out wrong." He laid the gun very, very slowly on the floorboard hump between the seats. He looked at me, hands spread on the steering wheel. I took the offered gun without taking either my eyes or my gun off of him. "Like I believe that's the only gun you've got hidden in this car. But I do appreciate the gesture." He laughed then, and it was the most bitter sound I'd ever heard from Edward.

What the “geniuses [who] went to Philadelphia” wanted remains the subject of endless debate—a debate fueled by the real differences among them and the very real ambiguities of the compromises they forged. But James Madison did not go to Philadelphia seeking gridlock. Quite the opposite: The Virginian who played such a critical role in the nation’s founding led the charge for a powerful national government. He pushed for a new constitution specifically because its predecessor, the Articles of Confederation, adopted in 1777, had been a catastrophe—a decentralized arrangement too weak to hold the country together or confront pressing problems that needed collective solutions. Madison arrived at the convention with one firm conviction: Government needed the authority to govern.29 In the deliberations that followed, Madison stayed true to that cause. He argued tirelessly for the power of the federal government to be understood broadly and for it to be decisively superior to the states. He even supported an absolute federal veto over all state laws, likening it to “gravity” in the Newtonian framework of the new federal government.30 Most of the concessions to state governments in the final document were ones that Madison had opposed. He was a practical politician, and he ultimately defended these compromises in the public arena—the famed Federalist Papers Madison penned with his colleagues Alexander Hamilton and John Jay are an advertisement, not a blueprint—but he did so because he saw them as necessary, not because he saw them as ideal.31 Throughout, Madison kept his eyes on the prize: enactment of the more vital and resilient government he regarded as a national imperative.

newer marshals,” Newman added. “I was glad when they invited them to teach you new guys. That much field experience shouldn’t go to waste.” “A lot of them are stake-and-hammer guys though,” Newman said. “Old-fashioned doesn’t begin to cover their methods.” “The hunter that taught me the ropes was like that.” “I thought Forrester was your mentor. He’s known for his gun knowledge,” Livingston said. “You get that off his Wikipedia page?” I asked. “No, he worked a case that a buddy of mine was on. My friend is a gun nut, and he loved Forrester’s arsenal. He said that Forrester even used a flamethrower.” “Yep, that’s Ted,” I said, shaking my head. “So, he wasn’t your first mentor?” “No, Manny Rodriguez was. He taught me how to raise zombies and how to kill vampires.” “What happened to him?” Newman asked. “His wife thought he was getting too old and forced him to retire from the hunting side of things.” “It is not a job for old men,” Olaf said. “I guess it isn’t, but I wasn’t ready to fly solo when Manny retired. I was lucky I didn’t get killed doing jobs on my own at first.” “When did Forrester start training you?” Livingston asked. “Soon enough to help me stay alive.” “Ted spoke highly of you from the beginning,” Olaf said. “He does not give unearned praise. Are you being humble?” “No, I don’t . . . I really did have some close calls when Manny first retired, or maybe I just missed having backup.” Hazel brought our coffee and my Coke. “I’ll be back to fill those waters up, and with the juice,” she said before she left again. I so wanted to start questioning her, but this was Newman’s warrant and everyone else besides Olaf was local. They knew Hazel. I didn’t. I’d let them play it for now. The coffee was fresh and hot and surprisingly good for a mass-produced cup. I did add sugar and cream, so it wasn’t great coffee, but I didn’t add much, so it wasn’t bad either. Olaf put in way more sugar than I did, so his cup would have been too sweet for me. He didn’t take cream. I guessed we could be snobby about each other’s coffee habits later. “But it was Forrester who taught you how to fight empty hand?” Livingston asked. “I had some martial arts when we met, but he started me on more real-world training that worked outside of a judo mat or a martial arts tournament.” “I thought he was out of New Mexico,” Livingston said. “He is.” “And you’re in St. Louis, Missouri.” “I am.” “Hard to train long-distance.” “I have people I train with at home.” “How often do you train?” Kaitlin asked. “At least three times a week in hand-to-hand and blade.” “Really that often?” Newman asked. “Yeah. How often do you train?” “I go to the range two, three times a month.” “Any martial arts?” I asked. “I go to the gym three times a week.

And then it sends a signal to turn off the system.” “So the universe with the wallet in the chamber waiting to be sent still exists,” added Allen. “But the universe from which it is actually sent never does.”  “That is just so messed up,” said Blake in exasperation, and Jenna, Walsh, and Soyer nodded their agreement. “Here is my advice to all of you,” said Cargill. “The best thing to do is ignore time travel, and don’t think about the paradoxes too hard. If you do, your head really will explode,” he added with a wry smile. “Just think of it as duplication and teleportation. But always keep in mind that the universe seems to go out of its way to ensure that infinite alternate timelines aren’t allowed. So no matter what, we only ever get this one universe.” He sighed. “So we’d better make sure we don’t screw it up.”     48   Brian Hamilton hated Cheyenne Mountain. Sure, it was one of the most interesting places in the world to visit, but living there only worked if you were a bat. The Palomar facility had also been underground, but nothing like this. It had a much larger security perimeter, so trips to the surface were easier to make happen. Not that it really mattered. Soon enough he would be traveling on another assignment anyway, living in a hotel room somewhere. But what he really wanted was to work side by side with Edgar Knight, toward their common goal. He was tired of being Knight’s designated spy, having to watch Lee Cargill squander Q5’s vast resources and capabilities. Watching him crawl like a wounded baby when he could be soaring. Cargill was an idiot. He could transform the world, but he was too weak to do it. He could wipe out the asshole terrorists who wanted nothing more than to butcher the helpless. If you have the ultimate cure for cancer, you use it to wipe out the disease once and for all. You don’t wield your cure only as a last resort, when the cancer has all but choked the life out of you. Edgar Knight, on the other hand, was a man with vision. He was able to make the tough decisions. If you were captain of a life raft with a maximum capacity of ten people, choosing to take five passengers of a sinking ship on board was an easy decision, not a heroic one. But what about when there were fifty passengers? Was it heroic to take them all, dooming everyone to death? Or was the heroic move using force, if necessary, to limit this number, to ensure some would survive? Sure, from the outside this looked coldhearted, while the converse seemed compassionate. But watching the world circle the drain because you were too much of a pussy to make the hard decisions was the real crime. Survival of the fittest was harsh reality. In the animal kingdom it was eat or be eaten. If you saw a group of fuck-nuts just itching to nuke the world back into the Dark Ages—who believed the Messiah equivalent, the twelfth Imam, would only come out to play when Israel was destroyed, and worldwide Armageddon unleashed—you wiped them out. To a man. Or else they’d do the same to you. It had been three days since Cargill had reported that he was on the verge of acquiring Jenna Morrison and Aaron Blake.

and pressed my hands into fists, trying to prepare myself. There is no real way to prepare

fucking ungrateful, misogynistic, prejudiced, racist, undeserving bastard.” Travers’s face sort of froze, and then it was like he looked lost—that was the only word I had for it. That one expression was enough; something about the fight in the mountains, being wounded, being saved by Truth, had affected him deeply, and not in a good way. He just turned without another word and walked out. “What the hell was that about?” Jonas asked, to no one in particular. Since the question hadn’t been directed at anyone in particular, no one answered it. In fact, the silence was a little thick. It was Deputy Al from the back of the room. “Sorry I’m late, but damn, Anita, you cuss real pretty.

Hamilton was born on January 11, 1755 outside of the United States on an island called Nevis, which is a British island in the West Indies. His story, which begins on this island, is one of the great immigrant stories in American history.

in real life, monsters weren’t always vanquished, and heroes didn’t always win.

I often meet people who have lists of reasons why they will never be successful. They list their failures, their critics, and their setbacks. They talk to me about how they’ve wasted time. They tell me it’s too late. And I tell them the same thing: the path to victory is the path you’re on. It becomes a path to victory the moment you decide it does. You think that doing what it takes to win will be miserable, but the real misery comes when you lose because you weren’t willing to do the simple things it takes to become a champion.

If I’d really been sane I couldn’t have been calm, but I’d hit that switch in my head that let me think when awful things were happening. The same switch that let me kill without much remorse. Being able to divorce myself from my emotions kept me from shooting pieces off Zeke’s body until he told me where Micah and Cherry were. Besides, there was always the very real possibility that we could do it later. Talk reasonably first, torture only if you had to, conservation of energy.

The desk lamp was the only light in the room. The vampire had requested the overheads be turned out. His name was Sabin, and he stood against the far wall, huddling in the dark. He was covered head to foot in a black, hooded cape. He looked like something out of an old Vincent Price movie. I’d never seen a real vampire dress like that. The

He looked up at me then, and there was fierceness in his face. “I watched her fade, but I loved her always. Because it was her love that made me real, Merry. Not faerie, not wild magic, but the magic of love. I thought I was giving up what life I had to save Rose, but the consort had asked if I would give up everything I was, and I did. I became what she needed me to be. When I realized that I would not age with her I wept, because I could not imagine being without her.” He came to his knees and put his hands on my arms, and stared down into my face. “I will love you always. When this red hair is white, I will still love you. When the smooth softness of youth is replaced by the delicate softness of age, I will still want to touch your skin. When your face is full of the lines of every smile you have ever smiled, of every surprise I have seen flash through your eyes, when every tear you have ever cried has left its mark upon your face, I will treasure you all the more, because I was there to see it all. I will share your life with you, Meredith, and I will love you until the last breath leaves your body or mine.” He leaned down and kissed me, and this time I kissed him back. This time I melted into his arms, his body, because I could do nothing else.

We know it is similar to the Persian sorcerer I met in the Sandbox,” Olaf said. “I know it would be weird, and too coincidental for real life, but could it be the same sorcerer with a slightly different spell, or whatever?” I asked. “Not possible,” Olaf said. “Why not?” I asked. “The sorcerer was not bulletproof.” “So he’s dead,” I said. Olaf nodded.

conference room or something of that sort, the big table in the middle, uhh, and I went in there and actually sat in a couple of chairs because I figured that was my only chance I’d ever have to. NOTE: Everybody wanted to sit in the chairs ... me: Mmm hmmm. Instant Replay: And uh, there was talk of yeah, they were talking about the different things that there’s ... there’s this ornate stuff that there’s like plates and things. And it was a real quick thing of “do not touch anything. Do not break anything. That’s not what we’re here for. That’s what we’re about.” So uh, I don’t think anybody took anything and I don’t think ... I know nothing was broken.

Here's the thing, Jaimi Hamilton. I've been looking for a woman for a long time, and I think you might be her.

Here’s a TOAST to expanding your success and capacity for growth! You did it! You recognize that consistent personal growth coupled with ongoing successful results require leveling up in these powerful, yet key, inner-character traits: TRUST. Having faith in yourself by behaving beyond your level of trauma. Reducing and/ or removing fear and wounds as an excuse not to trust. OPEN-MINDEDNESS. Being open to learn. Learning new perspectives opens up pathways to infinite opportunities, more successes, and peace. ALIGNMENT. Connecting to our real selves versus our egoic selves so that we may authentically follow our heart, truths, and higher energy versus living story after story, through excuse after excuse. SELF-WORTH. You’'re enough. Always have been, always will be. Lead with an awareness of and connection toof your value, intelligence, creativity, and ability to learn, in a worthy and deserving way. TRUTH. Embracing and facing your authenticity where things have happened in your life FOR you, not TO you. Be generous in sharing those lessons.

tiles in the hearth at number 6, real pot tiles

It’s too late to save Micah’s dad, but we were able to save you, you fucking ungrateful, misogynistic, prejudiced, racist, undeserving bastard.’ Travers’s face sort of froze, and then it was like he looked lost. He just turned without another word and walked out. ‘What the hell was that about?’ Jonas asked, to no one in particular. Since the question hadn’t been directed at anyone in particular, no one answered it. In fact, the silence was a little thick. It was Deputy Al from the back of the room. ‘Sorry I’m late, but damn, Anita, you cuss real pretty.’ It made people laugh, at least a little.

Who you going to call when it looks like you’re really going to have to survive the zombie apocalypse? I knew exactly who to call. ‘Ted, you know how you complained that I had a zombie apocalypse and didn’t invite you?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Consider yourself invited.’ He gave a small chuckle, the way some men will do when you say something sexy. ‘You’re excited. After what we saw in the hospital and the basement you’re excited about this,’ I said. ‘Yeah, I am.’ ‘There’s something wrong with you, you do know that, right?’ I said, and laughed. ‘Yeah, I do know.’ ‘And, Ted?’ ‘Yes, Anita.’ ‘Bring your flamethrower.’ He gave that excited sex chuckle again. ‘For real, you’re not just teasing this time?’ ‘Zombie reports from all over the area and it’s still daylight. It’s just going to get worse after dark.’ He gave that low, deep laugh again. ‘You say the best things.’ ‘Conversations like this is one of the reasons people think we’re doing each other.’ ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘Someone on your end of the phone said something you didn’t like about us, or me, and you’re rubbing their face in it.’ ‘Would I do that?’ The words were innocent; the tone was not. Someone must have done something that truly pissed him off for him to play into it like this, because he knew it hurt my reputation worse than his. ‘Get here as soon as you can, and let me know which of the guys with you pissed you off and I’ll help you play with him, between killing zombies.’ ‘You sweet-talking thing, you,’ he said. That made me laugh. We hung up with both of us laughing. There were so many reasons that Edward and I were friends.

On May 19, Representative Elias Boudinot of New Jersey, Hamilton’s old patron from Elizabethtown, proposed that Congress establish a department of finance. From the clamor that arose over what would become the Treasury Department, it was clear this would be the real flash point of controversy in the new government, the place where critics feared that European-style despotism could take root. Legislators recalled that British tax abuses had spawned the Revolution and that chancellors of the exchequer had directed huge armies of customs collectors to levy onerous duties. To guard against such concentrated power, Elbridge Gerry wanted to invest the Treasury leadership in a board, not an individual. It was Madison who insisted that a single secretary, equipped with all necessary powers, should superintend the department.

England of 1840 expected its young, affluent women to be literate and culturally astute, but it provided no real occupation for women with energy and vision. Fields of endeavor that were open to energetic, ambitious men—the military, finance, law, medicine, manufacture—were effectively closed to women.

sleep paralysis” when the conscious mind wakes up before this restraining function does. The result is a feeling of immobility and

The law of thermodynamics, you know, the idea that nothing is lost, that a loss in one area equals a gain in the other, was actually not invented by scientists but by the people who write redemptive fiction. [...] Actually, in real life, we lose things all the time and they're gone. Lost, period.

I glanced up to find several of the women looking appreciative, but the energy in the room had changed to something softer. I realized that the energy had been almost predatory, the way it can get at Guilty Pleasures sometimes. Women are more sexually aggressive at strip clubs than men, and their energy can be much angrier. I suddenly realized that one or more of the wives must have recognized Nathaniel from the club. It’s hard for most people to treat you like a real human being once they’ve seen you take your clothes off on stage. The wife, or wives, hadn’t been able to resist telling some of the other women and they’d wanted to see for themselves.

The 9/11 Commission warned that Al Qaeda "could... scheme to wield weapons of unprecedented destructive power in the largest cities of the United States." Future attacks could impose enormous costs on the entire economy. Having used up the surplus that the country enjoyed as part of the Cold War peace dividend, the U.S. government is in a weakened financial position to respond to another major terrorist attack, and its position will be damaged further by the large budget gaps and growing dependence on foreign capital projected for the future. As the historian Paul Kennedy wrote in his book The Rise and Fall of Great Powers, too many decisions made in Washington today "bring merely short-term advantage but long-term disadvantage." The absence of a sound, long-term financial strategy could bring about a deterioration that, in his words, "leads to the downward spiral of slower growth, heavier taxes, deepening domestic splits over spending priorities and a weakening capacity to bear the burdens of defense." Decades of success in mobilizing enormous sums of money to fight large wars and meet other government needs have led Americans to believe that ample funds will be readily available in the event of a future war, terrorist attack, or other emergency. But that can no longer be assumed. Budget constraints could limit the availability or raise the cost of resources to deal with new emergencies. If government debt continues to pile up, deficits rise to stratospheric levels, and heave dependence on foreign capital grows, borrowing the money needed will be very costly. [Alexander] Hamilton understood the risks of such a precarious situation. After suffering through financial shortages, lack of adequate food and weapons, desertions, and collapsing morale during the Revolution, he considered the risk that the government would have difficulty in assembling funds to defend itself all too real. If America remains on its dangerous financial course, Hamilton's gift to the nation - the blessing of sound finances - will be squandered. The U.S. government had no higher obligation that to protect the security of its citizens. Doing so becomes increasingly difficult if its finances are unsound. While the nature of this new brand of warfare, the war on terrorism, remains uncharted, there is much to be gained if our leaders look to the experiences of the past for guidance in responding to the challenges of the future. The willingness of the American people and their leaders to ensure that the nation's finances remain sound in the face of these new challenges - sacrificing parochial interests for the common good - is the price we must pay to preserve the nation's security and thus the liberties that Hamilton and his generation bequeathed us.

Israel has a genuine choice between life and death, blessing and curse (Deut. 30:11–18), and heaven and earth are witness to the covenant between Yahweh and his people (30:19). Israel is urged to choose life, to love Yahweh, to cleave fast to him (30:19–20). They have a real choice, but their “chooser” will always select sin because Yahweh has not given them the heart they need (29:3, ET 4). But they will make their choice, and they will be judged for the rightness or wrongness of the choice they make. The fact that Yahweh promises to change their chooser by circumcising their hearts does not remove their responsibility for the choice they will make. Nor does it make Yahweh unjust if he chooses not to change their chooser, or if he chooses only to change the choosers of those he chooses. People are responsible. And Yahweh is sovereign.

as alexander hamilton who shared my name with one phillp skylar my mother, and my father eliza who i told to steal my identy in the war, iam nothign more then proud of the work on my deathbed writing again. i always surive true imoratlity and amenia disorder wtih life like reborn disorders cant be cured. but as alexian smith the former princess diana and smauel sabery you just seem unread. unscripted. and missed the point of the burnings of heart and bon fires in reetribution to racism in state and notion. You miss the point of what occured or whatever relaxed to it. I dont hate having multiple personaltiis. or living forever in stupid wayward ideas. that donald bloke has a diosrder called idiocy where hes accidently racist and you liked him for that. no i still dont hate you as avery pines. and no matter what occured when i was tortured in stupid situations, worst then a single one and counting somehow creepily for all of them, because my dad was and i was not. you must understand the history of why it was a town you now never knew of the name of. and why it was occurance and why it was the stories of it. And why nobody knew the musical hamilton was about my father alexander of americas presdient and me the secretary of state. my real name is adam snowflake. and if you loved a dam thing i ever wrteo from death note to creepy stalkings or the kingdom diaries or lspds, and what i built at disney naimating snow white and aruara and filming hawkuseris abotu my lack of faith as scince lik ebuilding jeeus you would know i never often resented it after highschool. and its better to remember a dead name as dead. i am not the evil events that defined me. but i am all the pain of them. and that is my wolrd. And you are ar acit for demanding i be things liek civil war or holocuast. and you are a racist slutty loser like i and bad king actors were steryped to be. and no matter what ever occured or how casuality is evil when in office. i want you to know no matter what i study or why i dress. its th history of me being an emo teenage fagot, and my mother was abusive as reya. and just interputed me to scream her ass off as reya fine an adbucter when orphaned. its easy to blame a color when the person is faceless. did you know im half that story. and did you know in the way i looked like the one you liked? When you have a boogie man, its so easy to hate the things you try to stop. Fuck you ukraine im jewish. and i know what you took. and while i didnt go. Oh god can i never go by frank again as someone in a clsoet room who surived that. and i want you to know as adam i will never be what you did to me. but oh god did you amke it look liket he people from russia fuck you royal.

Bank of North America was the first chartered bank in the United States. Constructed through the underpinnings and the vision of two early American forefathers - Alexander Hamilton and Henry Morris - and initially thought of by Hamilton and Morris as a de-facto American “central bank.

Real bargaining and accommodation simply cannot happen in public, as negotiators fear being seen to make concessions before they can point to what they gain in return. The Constitution actually owes its origins to its framers’ understanding of that fact, as the Philadelphia Convention was held behind closed doors for just this reason. “Had the deliberations been open,” Alexander Hamilton argued in 1792, “the clamours of faction would have prevented any satisfactory result.” The point was not to keep out the public’s interests and views but to provide a protected arena to work out deals.

there were “instigators” of some kind when the Capitol was being stormed. People breaking windows even when others told them to stop, people with megaphones shouting “MEN! Line up behind me!” ... I witnessed that stuff myself, that stuff was real, and I’d like to get to the bottom of it. But when the MAGA people heard one rumor they liked, they became so desperate for it to be true that they swallowed it, hook, line and sinker. “There’s the scapegoat!” They shouted. “I knew it was someone else’s fault, I just knew it! And now I have proof.” Their insistence on seeing fake BLM instigators everywhere makes it a lot harder for me to find out who the real instigators were, BLM or otherwise. Their compulsion to instantly believe the things that comfort them makes it very, very difficult to sort through their beliefs and figure out what’s real and what isn’t ... which I guess puts them about even with all the other Americans I meet these days. Such times I live in, eh?

found a pocket of forlorn, former conquerors, huddling under un-heated heaters in the bus station. They bitterly informed me they’d tried being “peaceful” today, and that hadn’t worked, so now it was probably time to use bombs, guns, and nooses to exterminate people with different ideas than them, including elected officials and civilians such as myself. They weren’t terrorists of course, they were “patriots,” it’d be ridiculous to suggest people who “blowed up” houses and hung corpses from trees for political reasons were terrorists, right? In the spirit of fairness, I will concede that I’m just one man, and I can’t claim to have been everywhere at once on this day, so if defenders of MAGA want to claim “not everyone was like that” yeah, that could be true. Maybe I got a skewed sample. But being on the ground and witnessing the whole day, I did see a theme about a terrorist guerrilla campaign develop that was a real thing, however widespread.

I spent a lot of time with the MAGA movement for the Chasing History Project. I mingled with them for months. I interviewed church-going moms who babbled incoherently about life changing videos of politicians performing Satanic rituals, which they freely admitted they’d never actually seen. I felt their pain as they talked about real problems: jobs disappearing, poverty running rampant, swarms of drug-addicted homeless people sleeping in every park, and schools that taught kids almost no useful skills.

For those of you in future generations who’ve never seen “Trump, Live in Concert,” the experience is ... uncanny. His voice is oddly nasal, and just slightly higher pitched than most other men; not pleasing, yet impossible to ignore. He sounds somehow self-confident and whiny at the same time. He often speaks without a teleprompter, which is unheard of in my time, he just makes up 90-minute rants on the spot. And although the results can be unconventional and even bizarre, it also feels more like a real conversation than any politician I’ve ever seen.

Nobody here seems to remember about security cameras, but I do. Even as this confusing experience is unfolding in real time, I suspect that the people who set foot inside the building will be in a drastically different legal category. I don’t want to expose myself to that risk. I’ve pushed this pretty far already; this is where I draw the line. This isn’t just a crime, it’s a crime they’ll almost certainly get caught for.

We can also see here that he believes that the entire pandemic is a “farce” staged for political purposes. He also thinks The Media has been censoring and misleading since at least the beginning of the Trump presidency. These aren’t just his beliefs; they’re the reasons why he stormed the Capitol. People argue a lot about what peoples’ real motives were when they stormed the Capitol. He just told you.

goes on about how frightened he is because it looks like all the elections going forward might be rigged and he has no way of knowing if the results will ever be real ... As I said, I believe this guy gives us useful insight into the minds of the people who stormed the Capitol. Try to imagine how it felt to be this guy; not knowing if the election outcomes were real or rigged. He’s frustrated at probably justified accusations of unfair media coverage. On the other hand, he genuinely believes that the police were “the aggressors” after he twice broke into a building under their protection, so I can’t say I have much respect for his judgment. Mentally, this guy’s a mess. It’s like he can intuitively sense something unfair is happening, but he lacks the logical tools to differentiate between statements that have evidence and statements that don’t ... which puts him about even with most people these days.

To a large extent, the brain doesn’t distinguish real from imaginary, and this underpins some aspects of the placebo effect. When you imagine that something is happening, it really is happening as far as your brain is concerned, and it releases the chemical substances necessary to confirm that what you’re imagining is indeed real.

People talk of sorrow as if it is soft, a thing of water and tears. But true sorrow is not soft. True sorrow is a thing of fire, and rock. It burns your heart, crushes your soul under the weight of mountains. It destroys, and even if you keep breathing, keep going, you die. The person you were moments ago dies, dies in the sound of screaming metal and the impact of one bad driver. Gone. Everything solid, everything real, is gone. It doesn’t come back. The world is forever fractured, so that you walk on the crust of an earth where you can always feel the heat under you, the press of lava, that is so hot it can burn flesh, melt bone, and the very air is poisonous. To survive, you swallow the heat. To keep from falling through and dying for real, you swallow all that hate. You push it down inside you, into that fresh grave that is all that is left of what you thought the world would be.

Jason put a hand on each shoulder and shook me gently. "Damn it, Anita, get a grip. It isn't like you to wallow in the horror. You're a good soldier. You kill and keep going like you're supposed to." I pushed him away from me. "I tortured a man, Jason. I reduced him to something that writhed on the floor, mewling with terror and pain. And I wanted to do it. I wanted him to hurt because of what they'd done to Charlotte and Daniel. I wanted to do it." I shook my head. "I'll do my bit tonight, but forgive me if it's a little harder to keep going than normal. Forgive me if I'm not superwoman, after all." "Not superwoman?" he exclaimed, putting a hand on his chest in mock surprise. "You've lied to me all these years!" It made me smile, and I didn't want to smile. "Stop it." "Stop what? Cheering you up? Or is life supposed to stop because you did something horrible? I'll tell you the real horrible truth, Anita. No matter what you do or how bad you feel about it, life just goes on. Life doesn't give a fuck that you're sorry or upset or deranged or tormented. Life just goes on, and you gotta go on with it, or sit in the middle of the road and feel sorry for yourself. And I don't see you doing that." "I am not feeling sorry for myself." "You aren't all broken up about Thompson. You're broken up because of what you did to Thompson and how it makes you feel. You don't give a rat's ass about him. You're just weeping and gnashing your teeth about how much of a monster you are. Well, I get enough of that from Richard. I don't need it from you. So get your act together. We've got people we care about to save.

Scientists measure the depth of someone’s depression using something named the Hamilton scale, which was invented by a scientist named Max Hamilton in 1959. The Hamilton scale ranges from 0 (where you’re skipping along merrily) to 51 (where you’re jumping in front of trains). To give you a yardstick: you can get a six-point leap in your Hamilton score if you improve your sleeping patterns

Some people are grateful when you offer them what they want most, but some people are terrified of it. Because to gain your heart’s desire you have to lose some part of your old life, your old self. To do that you have to have courage; without it, you can’t make the leap. And if you don’t make the leap, you have only three choices: You can hate yourself for not taking the chance, you can hate the person for whom you’ve sacrificed your happiness, or you can hate the one who offered you happiness, and blame them for your lack of courage, convince yourself it wasn’t real. That way, you don’t have to hate yourself. It’s always easier to blame someone else.