Ruining Someone's Life Quotes

Here's to the kids. The kids who would rather spend their night with a bottle of coke & Patrick or Sonny playing on their headphones than go to some vomit-stained high school party. Here's to the kids whose 11:11 wish was wasted on one person who will never be there for them. Here's to the kids whose idea of a good night is sitting on the hood of a car, watching the stars. Here's to the kids who never were too good at life, but still were wicked cool. Here's to the kids who listened to Fall Out boy and Hawthorne Heights before they were on MTV...and blame MTV for ruining their life. Here's to the kids who care more about the music than the haircuts. Here's to the kids who have crushes on a stupid lush. Here's to the kids who hum "A Little Less 16 Candles, A Little More Touch Me" when they're stuck home, dateless, on a Saturday night. Here's to the kids who have ever had a broken heart from someone who didn't even know they existed. Here's to the kids who have read The Perks of Being a Wallflower & didn't feel so alone after doing so. Here's to the kids who spend their days in photobooths with their best friend(s). Here's to the kids who are straight up smartasses & just don't care. Here's to the kids who speak their mind. Here's to the kids who consider screamo their lullaby for going to sleep. Here's to the kids who second guess themselves on everything they do. Here's to the kids who will never have 100 percent confidence in anything they do, and to the kids who are okay with that. Here's to the kids. This one's not for the kids, who always get what they want, But for the ones who never had it at all. It's not for the ones who never got caught, But for the ones who always try and fall. This one's for the kids who didnt make it, We were the kids who never made it. The Overcast girls and the Underdog Boys. Not for the kids who had all their joys. This one's for the kids who never faked it. We're the kids who didn't make it. They say "Breaking hearts is what we do best," And, "We'll make your heart be ripped of your chest" The only heart that I broke was mine, When I got My Hopes up too too high. We were the kids who didnt make it. We are the kids who never made it.

Why me?" she asked, holding on to him. "Because you cared," he whispered. "You cared so much for your people, it broke your heart to see the pack in ruins. You cared so much for your mother, you risked your life for hers. You cared enough to save someone who wanted you dead. And because you walk like a queen.

One of the greatest realizations that I clumsily stumbled upon during this process, was that these people didn’t need someone like me to tell them what to do; they needed someone like me to show them what can be done, together.

People do it all the time--assume that they "know" what's going on in someone else's head. That's impossible. And to think it's possible is a mistake. A really big mistake. A life-ruining one if you're not careful.

When I first learned the truth, I thought Sebastian's life would be ruined. But seeing you, I realized everything would be fine. Because someone still loved him.

when you truly love someone and they love you in return, you ruin your lives together. That is not a curse, it’s what life is, my girl. We all come to ruin, we turn to dust, but whom we love is the thing that lasts.

It just goes to show, if you try to ruin someone's life, it only gets better. You just don't get to be a part of it.

You ruin your life by desensitizing yourself. We are all afraid to say too much, to feel too deeply, to let people know what they mean to us. Caring is not synonymous with crazy. Expressing to someone how special they are to you will make you vulnerable. There is no denying that. However, that is nothing to be ashamed of. There is something breathtakingly beautiful in the moments of smaller magic that occur when you strip down and are honest with those who are important to you. Let that girl know that she inspires you. Tell your mother you love her in front of your friends. Express, express, express. Open yourself up, do not harden yourself to the world, and be bold in who, and how you love. There is courage in that.

Sometimes I think there’s someone up there just sitting around thinking of ways to make me look like a complete moron. Seriously, I bet there’s an angel—or, more likely, a demon—assigned just to me. And every day it gets up and asks itself what it can do to ruin my life. Well, today it got an A plus.

Maybe this was trust ... Giving someone the power to ruin you, betting your life on the belief that they wouldn't.

Let me inform you of something," he says in a low voice. "The moment my lips touch yours, it will be your first kiss. Because if you've never felt anything when someone's kissed you, then no one's ever really kissed you. Not the way I plan on kissing you." He drops his hands and keeps his eyes locked on mine while he backs up to the stove. He turns around to tend to the pasta like he didn't just ruin me for any other guy for the rest of my life. I can't feel my legs, so I do the only thing I can. I slide down the refrigerator until my butt meets the floor and I inhale.

In the heat of an argument, my mother once told me, "Someday you can go to a therapist and tell him all about how your terrible mother ruined your life. But it will be your ruined life you're talking about. So make a life for yourself in which you can feel happy, and in which you can love and be loved, because that's what's actually important." You can love someone but not accept him; you can accept someone but not love him. I wrongly felt the flaws in my parents' acceptance as deficits in their love. Now, I think their primary experience was of having a child who spoke a language they'd never thought of studying.

Amanda: This weekend was wonderful, but it isn't real life. It was more like a honeymoon, and after a while the excitement will wear off. We can tell ourselves it won't happen, we can make all the promises we want, but it's inevitable, and after that you'll never look at me the way you do now. I won't be the woman you dream about, or the girl you used to love. And you won't be my long-lost love, my one true thing anymore, either. You'll be someone my kids despise because you ruined the family, and you'll see me for who I really am. In a few years, I'll simply be a woman pushing fifty with three kids who might or might not hate her, and who might end up hating herself because of all this. And in the end, you'll end up hating her, too. Dawson: That's not true. Amanda: But it is. Honeymoons always come to an end. Dawson: Being together isn't about a honeymoon. It's about the real you and me. I want to wake up with you beside me in the mornings, I want to spend my evenings looking at you across the dinner table. I want to share every mundane detail of my day with you and hear every detail of yours. I want to laugh with you and fall asleep with you in my arms. Because you aren't just someone I loved back then. You were my best friend, my best self, and I can't imagine giving that up again. You might not understand, but I gave you the best of me, and after you left, nothing was ever the same. I know you're afraid, and I'm afraid, too. But if we let this go, if we pretend none of this ever happened, then I'm not sure we'll ever get another chance. We're still young. We still have time to make this right. Amanda: We're not that young anymore- Dawson: But we are. We still have the rest of our lives. Amanda: I know. That's why I need you to do something for me. Dawson: Anything. Amanda: Please...don't ask me to go with you, because if you do, I'll go. Please don't ask me to tell Frank about us, because I'll do that, too. Please don't ask me to give up my responsibilities or break up my family. I love you, and if you love me, too, then you just can't ask me to do these things. Because I don't trust myself enough to say no.

And what is a man? He is someone who rises when life has knocked him down. He is someone who raises his fist to heaven when a storm has ruined his crop--and then plants again. And again. A man remains unbroken by the savage twists of fate. That man may never win. But when he sees himself reflected, he can be proud of what he sees. For low he may be in the present scheme of things: peasant, serf, or dispossessed. But he is unconquerable

You ever look at someone and know that if you let them, they could turn your life upside down... completely ruin you?

You punk asshole. What was this? A game for you? This is my life’s work you just annihilated and for what? Shits and giggles? Or was this nothing more than a fraternity prank? Please tell me that you didn’t just ruin my integrity to get some kind of drinking points. This is something I’ve been working for since before you were born. How dare you make a mockery of me. I hope to God that one day someone degrades you like this so that you’ll know, just once in your spoiled pompous life, what humiliation feels like! (Tory)

If all it takes is an angry stranger to ruin your day, what are you going to do if something really serious happens? Why give someone else control of your life like that?

The life of grace is not an effort on our part to achieve a goal we set ourselves. It is a continually renewed attempt simply to believe that someone else has done all the achieving that is needed and to live in relationship with that person, whether we achieve or not. If that doesn't seem like much to you, you're right: it isn't. And, as a matter of fact, the life of grace is even less than that. It's not even our life at all, but the life of that Someone Else rising like a tide in the ruins of our death.

Come on," Alec said, already stomping down the ramp. "Let's find us a squirrel." He swept the weapon back and forth as he walked, looking for any interlopers. "Or better yet, one of the crazies who might've strayed over here. Too bad these things have to be charged or we could get rid of this virus problem in a jiffy. Sweep these old neighborhoods nice and clean." Mark joined him on the ground below the Berg, wary that someone might be watching from the ruined homes surrounding them or from the burnt woods beyond those. "Your value of human life brings tears to my eyes," he muttered.

It just goes to show, if you try to ruin someone's life, it only gets better.

What GOD has joined together, let no man put asunder. Your consummation is an eternal binding. It is a glorious mystery not realized by many, and abused by most." ~SCRIBER~

Sometimes the way to make someone feel better is by not trying to make them feel better. Let people be sad. It's not your job to fix them.

Maria Owens did what she did for a reason. She was young and she thought damning anyone who loved us would protect us. But what she had with that terrible man wasn't love. She didn't understand that when you truly love someone and they love you in return, you ruin your lives together. That is not a curse, it's what life is, my girl. We all come to ruin, we turn to dust, but whom we love is the thing that lasts.

I took in a deep breath, and smoke twisted around my head as I let it slip through my teeth. “Do you know what my favorite show was when I was a little kid?” The look again. “I would have no idea.” “Doctor Who. British sci-fi show.” “I am familiar with it. Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant, and Matt—“ “No,” I said. “The new show’s great, but I grew up on the old one. The low-budget, rubber monster show with Tom Baker and Peter Davison. I watched it on PBS all the time as a kid.” I looked out at the dark ruins of Hollywood, at the stumbling shadows dotting the streets as far as you could see. The only other living person within half a mile was standing behind me, her eyes boring into my head. “The Doctor didn’t have super-powers or weapons or anything like that. He was just a really smart guy who always tried to do the right thing. To help people, no matter what. That struck me when I was a kid. The idea that no matter how cold and callous and heartless the world seemed, there was somebody out there who just wanted to make life better. Not better for worlds or countries in some vague way. Just better for people trying to live their lives, even if they didn’t know about him.” I turned back to her and tapped my chest. “That’s what this suit’s always been about. Not scaring people like you or Gorgon do. Not some sort of pseudo-sexual roleplay or repressed emotions. I wear this thing, all these bright colors, because I want people to know someone’s trying to make their lives better. I want to give them hope.

If I could take away his pain… If there was a way to transfer it from his soul onto mine. I would take it. Without hesitation I would take it all. Maybe that’s how you know you love someone. When you actually feel each tear they cry as if they were your own. When you feel each cut, each bruise, each hit as if you’re the one suffering. I bled for him.& in turn, he bled for her.Funny, how life comes full circle

There are two ways to ruin any chances of leading a happy life. The first is to chase a goal twenty-four hours a day, day after day, and gladly give up all the little laughs and joys that life has to offer in exchange for that ever-elusive moment of jubilation. The second way is far worse, in that it NEVER fails. You know what it is, Sam? Falling in love with someone who chases a goal twenty four hours a day.

i swear to God, that was the question. Sometimes, I think there's someone up there just sitting around thinking of ways to make me look like a complete moron. Seriously, I bet there's an angel or more likely a demon assigned just to me. And every day it gets up and asks itself what it can do to ruin my life. well, today it got an A plus

Stop, stop!" he blurts, then his tone mellows into a dark, low murmur. "I think...you've been lied to about what male needs are like. We aren't animals. Yes, our desires get pretty strong, but they're not overpowering. There's no such thing as going mad because of them." A bitter laugh grinds out of me like glass shards. "Tell that to all the girls getting raped as we speak." "That's not a matter of losing control. Every guy who does something like that knows exactly what he's doing. There is always a moment where he consciously decides that he will ruin someone's life to feel better about his own. Always.

Anger doesn't really cover what I feel, though. You get angry because someone almost runs you over in the bike lane. Angry because someone cuts in line at Walmart. What's the word for when someone drinks so much, they are ruining your best friend's life? Or the word for a man so vengeful about his own past that he wants to destroy your future? What's the word for a woman who was sick for months, but refused to go to the doctor until it was too late? The word for a girl at school whose personal mission is to mess with your head? Anger 's not the right word. Rage. That's what this feeling is, eating me up.

I could blame my lack of a happy ending on Edward all day long but the truth was that my own dissatisfaction with my life wasn't anybody's fault but mine. I'd been looking for a man to sweep me off my feet when I should have been looking for one who willing to pick up the pieces. Not some fictional hero, but a real flesh-and-blood man. Someone who would love me for the long haul.

Your coldness has ruined my life. All right, you didn't mean it, all right I was a schoolgirl, but you could have been kinder to someone who said they loved you, you could have been gentle and grateful.

Long ago, when I looked up at the stars and wished, it was for someone like you to be in my life. I truly believe those stars listened, because getting to share this wild adventure with you has been a dream answered. I love you more than words can convey.

Sometimes by holding onto what you love the most — you end up choking the very life from the thing you want to keep on living. It’s possible to try too hard, to love something so deeply that you lose yourself. The danger is never in loving someone — but losing your identity in the process. Because what happens when tragedy strikes? You’re left an empty shell. You’re left with nothing.

Sometimes, People just aren’t going to get it It’s an ever-elusive concept, to be understood All you can hope for Is that you find someone that tries. Find someone that tries.

Be with someone who is going to ruin your lipstick, not your mascara. So, suck it up, dry your tears, and say yes to the rest of your life.

The best method for ruining someone's life is to give them exactly what they want and then politely get out of their way.

Mud Slinging is so much fun,when you do it to others. But remember the day someone else does the same to you,youll realise how bad the mud in your mouth tastes. Think twice before you go around ruining the reputation of others. Because what goes around comes around for sure.

I never worried about money. I grew up in a middle-class family, so I never thought I would starve. And I learned at Atari that I could be an okay engineer, so I always knew I could get by. I was voluntarily poor when I was in college and India, and I lived a pretty simple life even when I was working. So I went from fairly poor, which was wonderful, because I didn’t have to worry about money, to being incredibly rich, when I also didn’t “have to worry about money. I watched people at Apple who made a lot of money and felt they had to live differently. Some of them bought a Rolls-Royce and various houses, each with a house manager and then someone to manage the house managers. Their wives got plastic surgery and turned into these bizarre people. This was not how I wanted to live. It’s crazy. I made a promise to myself that I’m not going to let this money ruin my life.

Amelia the bright-sider believes it is better to be alone than to be with someone who doesn’t share your sensibilities and interests. (It is, right?) Her mother likes to say that novels have ruined Amelia for real men.

You will go through your life thinking there was a day in second grade that you must have missed, when the grown-ups came in and explained, everything important to other kids. they said, 'Look, you're human, you're going to feel isolated and afraid a lot of the time, nad have bad self-esteem, and feel uniquely ruined, but here is the magic phrase that will take this feeling away. It will be like a feather that will lift you out of that fear and self-consciousness every single time, all through your life.' And then they told the cildren who were there that day the magic phrase that everyone else in the world knows about and uses when feeling blue, which only you don't know, because you were home sick the day the grown-ups told the children the way the whole world works. But there was not such a day in school. No one got the instructions. That is the secret of life. Everyone is flailing around, winging it most of the time, trying to find the way out, or through, or up, without a map. This lack of instruction manual is how most people develop compassion, and how they figure out to show up, care, help and serve, as the only way of filling up and being free. Otherwise you gorw up to be someone who needs to dominate and shame others so no one will know that you weren't there the day the instructions were passed out.

Oh,Mercer," he murmured against my temple once we'd come up for air, "we are so screwed." I pressed my face against his neck, breathing him in. "I know." "So what do we do?" Reluctantly, I tried to move away. It was hard to think when he was so close to me. "If we were good people, we'd never see each other again." His arms locked around my waist, pulling me back. "Okay,well, that's not happening. Plan B?" I smiled up at him, feeling ridiculously giddy for someone on the verge of ruining her life. "I don't have one.You?" He shook his head. "Nothing.But...look. I've spent basically my whole life pretending to be someone I'm not, faking some feelings, hiding others." Reaching down, he clasped my hand and lifted it so that our joined hands were trapped between our chests. "This thing with us is the only real thing I've had in a long time.You're the only real thing." He raised our hands and kissed my knuckles. "And I'm done pretending I don't want you." I had read a lot about swooning in the romance novels Mom had tried to hide from me,but I'd never felt in danger of doing it until now. Which was why a snarky comment was definitely called for. "Wow,Cross.I think you missed your calling.Screw demon hunting: you should clearly be writing Hallmark cards." His face broke into that crooked grin that was maybe my favorite sight in the whole world. "Shut up," he muttered before lowering his head and kissing me again. "Why is it," I said against his lips several moments later, "that we're always kissing in gross, dirty places like cellars and abandoned mills?" He laughed, pressing kisses to my jaw, then my neck. "Next time it'll be a castle, I promise.This is England, after all. Can't be too hard to find one.

I hope your life is ruined before you ruin someone’s life. Just like you ruined mine.

My life hasn’t been all that stable over the last few years. However, I’m a firm believer that, when you find someone who fits, you claim them. Immediately.

One can simply never take back the words he spoke. And when you know you unintentionally did hurt someone, instead of letting it go or keeping a distance from that person, you can actually do something to mend the broken. That's the least we can do, when circumstances never are on our side; we can stick to our words and promises even if people change and fate ruins..

You’ve been downgraded from a thrill-kill to a simple bill-kill. (Nykyrian) Bill-kill? (Kiara) Kill you any way possible and send the bill in for payment. (Nykyrian) I can’t believe that someone’s life can be bartered and sold so easily. That it’s so common that there are even names for the different ways to take a person’s life. For torturing them? My God, what is wrong with you people? (Kiara) We’re not the ones who are sick, mu Tara. With us –the predators– you know what we’ll do and why we do it. What we’re capable of. We make no bones about it and we wear the uniform so that you can see us coming. The ones who are sickening are the cowards who masquerade as sheep. The ones who lull you into trusting them and smile at your face while they plot your downfall behind your back for any number of psychotic reasons. The friends who turn on you out of jealousy or greed. Who try to ruin you for no reason at all. They are the ones who should be put down. And they’re the ones who are truly sickening. (Nykyrian)

At the end of his life, which had included financial ruin in the Great Depression, his wife's barbiturate addiction and death by overdose, and then his own lung cancer, Doc said, "It was enough to have been a unicorn." What he meant was that he got to do art. It was magic to him that his hands and mind got to make wonderful things, that he didn't have to be just another goat or horse.

The only person that should wear your ring is the one person that would never… 1. Ask you to remain silent and look the other way while they hurt another. 2. Jeopardize your future by taking risks that could potentially ruin your finances or reputation. 3. Teach your children that hurting others is okay because God loves them more. God didn’t ask you to keep your family together at the expense of doing evil to others. 4. Uses religious guilt to control you, while they are doing unreligious things. 5. Doesn't believe their actions have long lasting repercussions that could affect other people negatively. 6. Reminds you of your faults, but justifies their own. 7. Uses the kids to manipulate you into believing you are nothing. As if to suggest, you couldn’t leave the relationship and establish a better Christian marriage with someone that doesn’t do these things. Thus, making you believe God hates all the divorced people and will abandon you by not bringing someone better to your life, after you decide to leave. As if! 8. They humiliate you online and in their inner circle. They let their friends, family and world know your transgressions. 9. They tell you no marriage is perfect and you are not trying, yet they are the one that has stirred up more drama through their insecurities. 10. They say they are sorry, but they don’t show proof through restoring what they have done. 11. They don’t make you a better person because you are miserable. They have only made you a victim or a bitter survivor because of their need for control over you. 12. Their version of success comes at the cost of stepping on others. 13. They make your marriage a public event, in order for you to prove your love online for them. 14. They lie, but their lies are often justified. 15. You constantly have to start over and over and over with them, as if a connection could be grown and love restored through a honeymoon phase, or constant parental supervision of one another’s down falls. 16. They tell you that they don’t care about anyone other than who they love. However, their actions don’t show they love you, rather their love has become bitter insecurity disguised in statements such as, “Look what I did for us. This is how much I care.” 17. They tell you who you can interact with and who you can’t. 18. They believe the outside world is to blame for their unhappiness. 19. They brought you to a point of improvement, but no longer have your respect. 20. They don't make you feel anything, but regret. You know in your heart you settled.

I just wish life was more like my books,” Fern complained [...] “Main characters never die in books. If they did, the story would be ruined, or over.” “Everybody is a main character to someone,” Bailey theorized, winding his way through the busy hall and out the nearest exit into the November afternoon. “There are no minor characters.

Don’t ruin your life over somebody else’s foolishness. If they want to leave, let them leave! Manipulating, begging, or coercing someone to stay with you is an insult to SELF. Have confidence in yourself! Know your worth! Take a stand for YOU. You deserve to be loved, respected, and appreciated by someone who’s genuinely in love with you. It may hurt to let go, but trying to force someone to stay with you is more damaging than you realize. It’s VERY unhealthy. Set Yourself Free! Be a Priority to Yourself!

His eyes were wild, that muscle in his jaw jumping so fast it had a life of his own. I’d never seen him like that. Pissed, yes. Annoyed, definitely. But not like that. Like he wanted to burn the world down at seeing me hurt. My naïve heart sang, cutting a swath of hope through my lingering panic. Because no one looks at someone like that unless they care, and I realized that I wanted Alex Volkov to care. Very much. I wanted him to care because of me, not because of a promise he’d made to my brother. Talk about a terrible time to come to such a realization. I was a freaking mess, and he’d just beat the living daylights out of my ex-boyfriend. I sucked in a shaky breath and wiped the tears from my face with the backs of my hands. “I will destroy him.” Alex’s words sliced through the air like lethal blades of ice. Goosebumps blossomed on my skin and I shivered, my teeth chattering from the cold. “Everything he has ever touched, everyone he has ever loved. I will ruin them until they’re nothing more than a pile of ashes at your feet.

Guns discommode me. Their facility alarms me. Point and kill. Ruin someone's life. Remove at a finger pull deeply loved people, as important in their spheres as the sun in the sky. The very weight of a gun disturbs me-an insolent object, insisting on its own importance.

Never underestimate how easy it is to ruin someone's life.

Check things out before you commit your resources or put yourself at risk to help someone else.

(This is why I strongly advise everyone who is in a new romantic relationship to wait at least a year before marrying someone, moving in with them, or having a child with them.)

When you care for someone, you don't ruin their life!

It was really rather wretched that you couldn’t will yourself to fall in love, for the very effort can keep falling at bay. Nor could you will yourself to stay that way. Least of all could you will yourself NOT to fall in love, for thus far whatever meager resistance she had put up had only made the compulsion more intense. So you were perpetually tyrannized by a feeling that came and went as it pleased, like a cat with its own pet door. How much more agreeable, if love were something that you stirred up from a reliable recipe, or elected, however perversely, to pour down the drain. Still, there was nothing for it. The popular expression notwithstanding, love was not something you made. Nor could you dispose of the stuff once manifested because it was inconvenient, or even because it was wicked, and ruining your life, and, by the by, someone else’s.

...Love isn't a heart condition. It's not even an emotional one. It's just a four-letter word we want to use when we want to control someone else and ruin their life if we ever decide to walk out on them.

We may think of egoists as people who have grown sick from too much love, but in fact the opposite is the case: an egoist is someone who has not yet had their fill. Self-centredness has to have a clear run in the early years if it isn’t to haunt and ruin the later ones. The so-called narcissist is simply a benighted soul who has not had a chance to be inordinately and unreasonably admired and cared for at the start.

I wonder where the dreams go that I don't remember. I do not know what to do with my hands when they have nothing to do. Even though it's not for me, I turn around when someone whistles in the street. Dangerous animals do not scare me. I have seen lightening. I wish they had slides for grown-ups. I have read more volumes one than volumes two. The date on my birth certificate is wrong. I am not sure I have any influence. I talk to my things when they're sad. I don't know why I write. I prefer a ruin to a monument. I am calm during reunions. I have nothing against New Year's Eve. Fifteen years old is the middle of my life, regardless of when I die. I believe there is an afterlife, but not an afterdeath. I do not ask "do you love me". Only once can I say "I'm dying" without telling a lie. The best day of my life may already be behind me.

You're not even happy. You're throwing away your own life because you love someone who's not here anymore, and you hate it, and it's killing you. Love is the worst thing that ever happened to you, but you still love her.

That's the only thing I want. That's the only thing I can think about wanting. But guess what? I'm going to rise above that. I'm not going to ruin your life. For once, I'm going to put someone else first." He grabbed another fistful of hair. "I can't believe your life. You've spent ten years taking care of your dad—and you gave up everything to do it. All this time, you've kept a lid on that Spindletop of talent you've got. It's so wrong that it happened.

She didn't understand that when you truly love someone and they love you in return, you ruin your lives together. That is not a curse, it's what life is, my girl. We all come to ruin, we turn to dust, but whom we love it the thing that lasts.

This moment, this very experience of it, seemed only the thinnest gauze. She sat in the audience thinking - someone here has cancer, someone has a broken heart, someone's soul is lost, someone feels naked and foreign, thinks they once knew the way but can't remember the way, feels stripped of armor and alone, there are people in this audience with broken bones, others whose bones will break sooner or later, people who've ruined their health, worshipped their own lies, spat on their dreams, turned their backs on their true beliefs, yes, yes, and all will be saved. All will be saved. All will be saved.

I knew this guy he'd been in a motorcycle accident and it really ruined him and he was a linesman working on the power and he was working with someone who had Parkinsons so they both had complimentary inadeqacies and so two of them could do the job of one person so they're out there fixing powerlines in the freezing cold despite the fact that one was three quarters wrecked and the other one had Parkinsons That's how our civilization works, there's all these ruined people out there they've got problems like you can't believe, off they go to work to do things they don't even like and look! The Lights Are On

That power is yours. I want you to find a way to hold on to the strength that's inside of you, to accept what I'm giving you. Don't you think every abused child, every spouse whose lost their loved one at the hands of someone else wishes they could kill the person that ruined their whole life? You had no one, and you fucking survived on your own. You're not alone anymore.

Our Society, which seems so sturdily built out of concrete and custom, is just a temporary resting place, a hotel our civilization checked into a couple hundred years ago and must one day check out of. It's an inevitability tourists can't help but realize when visiting Mayan ruins, Egyptian ruins, Roman ruins. How long will it be before someone is visiting American ruins?

You don't want to smile, because if you do, it means everything they did to you didn't matter. And it has to matter or else they're off the hook, right? And you can't have that." I shake my head, but I still can't meet his eyes. "They need to know what they did to you," Jake says, acting like he knows me. "Showing them how they hurt you will hurt them, right? They need to see how they ruined your life. You can't just let it go like it was nothing, because you're angry. You need them to know. You need someone to know.

I’m so close to crying, I don’t think I can stop myself. They’re alive. They’re alive and nothing else matters. Tears are already starting to burn my eyes, clouding my vision. Kiaran looks at me with an expression I’ve never seen on him. It takes me a moment to realize it’s dawning horror. “Kam. Kam, don’t do that. Don’t cry. Don’t—” Then I’m crying and he puts his arms around me in quite possibly the most awkward, stiff embrace I’ve ever had in my life. And I adore every second of it. Aithinne speaks from behind us. “I admit to being somewhat unclear on the function of human tears,” she says. “So we’re sad about this? Should I menace someone?” In lieu of a response, the only thing I can manage is something of a half-laugh, half-sob, because they’re alive and I haven’t felt like this in so long. “For god’s sake, Aithinne,” Kiaran says, his voice rumbling through his chest, “put the blade away. You’re not going to stab Kam’s idiot friends.” Then, after a moment: “On second thought, the Seer really serves no purpose . . .” “Oh, shush.” I look up at him, whisking the tears off my cheeks. “Don’t ruin this. It helps if you don’t speak.” Then I press my face back into his chest. “And if you stop responding to my hug like I’m torturing you.” Kiaran makes some attempt to relax, but he could use lessons in hugging. He ends up with one hand shoved up in my hair and the other giving my back a there there pat, but it’s the thought that counts

It’s not real. Love is a product of habit and routine. If you break that habit and change those routines, the person you’ve loved and lost and can’t live without suddenly becomes an easy memory to file in the back of your mind . In other words, love isn’t a heart condition. It’s not even an emotional one. It’s just a four-letter word we use when we want to control someone else and ruin their life if we ever decide to walk out on them

Learn to love being single and being alone. It can be tough, but it can also be brilliant. It's down to you to make it work. If you don't love yourself, you're going to spend the rest of your life auditioning people to do it for you. We all know how crazy it is to leave your emotions in someone else's hands.

Know must look the same. He'd never thought he'd be someone with tired eyes. Never thought, he'd stare across a fire at a girl who had them, a girl who'd lied to him and insulted him and, really, when it came down to it, ruined his life. He never thought he'd want to keep staring at her. (The Frog Prince Story.

Watch out for being “overly helpful.” Don’t allow yourself to get tricked into doing tasks, lending money, giving up personal information, and doing other things for someone you do not know very well. In fact, get comfortable with setting reasonable boundaries, even with people you have known a long time—you may not know their full story.

Sooner or later, all talk among foreigners in Pyongyang turns to one imponderable subject. Do the locals really believe what they are told, and do they truly revere Fat Man and Little Boy? I have been a visiting writer in several authoritarian and totalitarian states, and usually the question answers itself. Someone in a café makes an offhand remark. A piece of ironic graffiti is scrawled in the men's room. Some group at the university issues some improvised leaflet. The glacier begins to melt; a joke makes the rounds and the apparently immovable regime suddenly looks vulnerable and absurd. But it's almost impossible to convey the extent to which North Korea just isn't like that. South Koreans who met with long-lost family members after the June rapprochement were thunderstruck at the way their shabby and thin northern relatives extolled Fat Man and Little Boy. Of course, they had been handpicked, but they stuck to their line. There's a possible reason for the existence of this level of denial, which is backed up by an indescribable degree of surveillance and indoctrination. A North Korean citizen who decided that it was all a lie and a waste would have to face the fact that his life had been a lie and a waste also. The scenes of hysterical grief when Fat Man died were not all feigned; there might be a collective nervous breakdown if it was suddenly announced that the Great Leader had been a verbose and arrogant fraud. Picture, if you will, the abrupt deprogramming of more than 20 million Moonies or Jonestowners, who are suddenly informed that it was all a cruel joke and there's no longer anybody to tell them what to do. There wouldn't be enough Kool-Aid to go round. I often wondered how my guides kept straight faces. The streetlights are turned out all over Pyongyang—which is the most favored city in the country—every night. And the most prominent building on the skyline, in a town committed to hysterical architectural excess, is the Ryugyong Hotel. It's 105 floors high, and from a distance looks like a grotesquely enlarged version of the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco (or like a vast and cumbersome missile on a launchpad). The crane at its summit hasn't moved in years; it's a grandiose and incomplete ruin in the making. 'Under construction,' say the guides without a trace of irony. I suppose they just keep two sets of mental books and live with the contradiction for now.

Life is tough enough just being yourself. I can’t imagine how hard it would be trying to be someone else.

Boyfriend/Girlfriend-Centered This may be the easiest trap of all to fall into. I mean, who hasn’t been centered on a boyfriend or girlfriend at one point? Let’s pretend Brady centers his life on his girlfriend, Tasha. Now, watch the instability it creates in Brady. TASHA’S ACTIONS BRADY’S REACTIONS Makes a rude comment: “My day is ruined.” Flirts with Brady’s best friend: “I’ve been betrayed.   I hate my friend.” “I think we should date other people”: “My life is over. You don’t love me anymore.” The ironic thing is that the more you center your life on someone, the more unattractive you become to that person. How’s that? Well, first of all, if you’re centered on someone, you’re no longer hard to get. Second, it’s irritating when someone builds their entire emotional life around you. Since their security comes from you and not from within themselves, they always need to have those sickening “where do we stand” talks. if who I am is what I have and what I have is lost, then who am I? ANONYMOUS When I began dating my wife, one of the things that attracted me most was that she didn’t center her life on me. I’ll never forget the time she turned me down (with a smile and no apology) for a very important date. I loved it! She was her own person and had her own inner strength. Her moods were independent of mine. You can usually tell when a couple becomes centered on each other because they are forever breaking up and getting back together. Although their relationship has deteriorated, their emotional lives and identities are so intertwined that they can never fully let go of each other. Believe me, you’ll be a better boyfriend or girlfriend if you’re not centered on your partner. Independence is more attractive than dependence. Besides, centering your life on another doesn’t show that you love them, only that you’re dependent on them. Have as many girlfriends or boyfriends as you’d like, just don’t get obsessed with or centered on them, because, although there are exceptions, these relationships are usually about as stable as a yo-yo.

When you choose, you divide. Then you say, ”This is good, that is wrong.” And life is a unity. Existence remains undivided, existence remains in a deep unison. It is oneness. If you say, ”This is beautiful and that is ugly,” mind has entered, because life is both together. And the beautiful becomes ugly, and the ugly goes on becoming beautiful. There is no boundary; no watertight compartments are there. Life goes on flowing from this to that. Mind has fixed compartments. Fixedness is the nature of mind and fluidity is the nature of life. That’s why mind is obsession; it is always fixed, it has a solidness about it. And life is not solid; it is fluid, flexible, goes on moving to the opposite. Something is alive this moment, next moment is dead. Someone was young this moment, next moment he has become old. The eyes were so beautiful, now they are no more there – just ruins. The face was so rose-like, now nothing is there – not even a ghost of the past. Beautiful becomes ugly, life becomes death, and death goes on taking new birth. What to do with life? You cannot choose. If you want to be WITH life, with the whole, you have to be choiceless.

He cannot do anything deliberate now. The strain of his whole weight on his outstretched arms hurts too much. The pain fills him up, displaces thought, as much for him as it has for everyone else who has ever been stuck to one of these horrible contrivances, or for anyone else who dies in pain from any of the world’s grim arsenal of possibilities. And yet he goes on taking in. It is not what he does, it is what he is. He is all open door: to sorrow, suffering, guilt, despair, horror, everything that cannot be escaped, and he does not even try to escape it, he turns to meet it, and claims it all as his own. This is mine now, he is saying; and he embraces it with all that is left in him, each dark act, each dripping memory, as if it were something precious, as if it were itself the loved child tottering homeward on the road. But there is so much of it. So many injured children; so many locked rooms; so much lonely anger; so many bombs in public places; so much vicious zeal; so many bored teenagers at roadblocks; so many drunk girls at parties someone thought they could have a little fun with; so many jokes that go too far; so much ruining greed; so much sick ingenuity; so much burned skin. The world he claims, claims him. It burns and stings, it splinters and gouges, it locks him round and drags him down… All day long, the next day, the city is quiet. The air above the city lacks the usual thousand little trails of smoke from cookfires. Hymns rise from the temple. Families are indoors. The soldiers are back in barracks. The Chief Priest grows hoarse with singing. The governor plays chess with his secretary and dictates letters. The free bread the temple distributed to the poor has gone stale by midday, but tastes all right dipped in water or broth. Death has interrupted life only as much as it ever does. We die one at a time and disappear, but the life of the living continues. The earth turns. The sun makes its way towards the western horizon no slower or faster than it usually does. Early Sunday morning, one of the friends comes back with rags and a jug of water and a box of the grave spices that are supposed to cut down on the smell. She’s braced for the task. But when she comes to the grave she finds that the linen’s been thrown into the corner and the body is gone. Evidently anonymous burial isn’t quite anonymous enough, after all. She sits outside in the sun. The insects have woken up, here at the edge of the desert, and a bee is nosing about in a lily like silk thinly tucked over itself, but much more perishable. It won’t last long. She takes no notice of the feet that appear at the edge of her vision. That’s enough now, she thinks. That’s more than enough. Don’t be afraid, says Yeshua. Far more can be mended than you know. She is weeping. The executee helps her to stand up.

Thirty years after Apple went public, he reflected on what it was like to come into money suddenly: I never worried about money. I grew up in a middle-class family, so I never thought I would starve. And I learned at Atari that I could be an okay engineer, so I always knew I could get by. I was voluntarily poor when I was in college and India, and I lived a pretty simple life even when I was working. So I went from fairly poor, which was wonderful, because I didn’t have to worry about money, to being incredibly rich, when I also didn’t have to worry about money. I watched people at Apple who made a lot of money and felt they had to live differently. Some of them bought a Rolls-Royce and various houses, each with a house manager and then someone to manage the house managers. Their wives got plastic surgery and turned into these bizarre people. This was not how I wanted to live. It’s crazy. I made a promise to myself that I’m not going to let this money ruin my life.

Each of these people has an extreme version of what we call a high-conflict personality. Unlike most of us, who normally try to resolve or defuse conflicts, people with high-conflict personalities (HCPs) respond to conflicts by compulsively increasing them. They usually do this by focusing on Targets of Blame, whom they mercilessly attack—verbally, emotionally, financially, reputationally, litigiously, and sometimes violently—often for months or years, even if the initial conflict was minor. Their Targets of Blame are usually someone close (a coworker, neighbor, friend, partner, or family member) or someone in a position of authority (boss, department head, police, government agent). Sometimes, though, the Target of Blame can be completely random.

Every woman has the instinct to harm. We spend our whole lives denying it, but it's there. And denying it only damages us. It doesn't actually help anyone - least of all people we think we're protecting from ourselves. Because the instinct to harm? It leaks out in other ways. Darker, stranger ways - more insidious ways - until suddenly we've actually ruined someone's life instead of just punching them in the face. Don't you think they would have preferred a fist in the face, given the choice to choose?

Like most girls, I want a lot. Fame and fortune. Equal rights. Shoes no one else has. But I'd trade all that in for the perfect guy. (Don't tell me there's something wrong with that. I don't know of a single person who doesn't spend most of her time thinking about love.) Anyway, ever since I could think, I have been imagining and reimagining the exact sort of boy I want to love and who would love me back. Basically, I imagine someone who has all the good attributes of the male species and whose bad ones wouldn't ruin my life.

Forgiving someone doesn’t mean you condone or approve of what they did. Forgiveness is not for the other person at all. It has nothing to do with whether they deserve it or not. Forgiveness is an act of self-love. The best revenge really is a life well lived. While fantasizing about all kinds of revenge was fun for a while, I realized it would only perpetuate what I wanted to be free of, and it would keep me from healing. My advice to anyone struggling with betrayal is don’t let yourself be abused twice. First by the act committed against you, and second by believing it has ruined your ability to experience happiness, trust, or love. Forgive someone who has hurt you so they may receive that gift, and more important because you know it is the scissor that cuts the cord that binds you together. Remember that betrayal doesn’t happen to you so much as it happens by someone else. Forgiveness allows you to release anger. Carrying anger with you is like lighting your own house on fire to get rid of rats. The rats run to safety while you burn yourself down. Forgive. Let go. Heal.

If you genuinely care about someone, you won’t let them ruin themselves. It’s as simple as that. Don’t use your ‘supportive friend’ excuse to justify your ignorance. If someone in your life is living a self-destructive lifestyle, don’t encourage them. Don’t stand on the sidelines and watch. Do something. Tell them they’re worth more than that. That they’re bigger than what they’re facing. Tell them there are better ways to heal. Better ways to grow. Tell them they can be friends with better people.Tell them there’s no escape from reality but it only gets better if you face it. Tell them they’re killing themselves slowly by intaking drugs. Tell them you love them and don’t want them to get hurt. Tell them that you care. Do. Everything. You. Can. Because even if they may not listen, at least you’ll know you tried.

Aiden was the whole world stretched out beneath him. Aiden’s hair spread out on the sheets, Aiden moaning in his ear. The magnitude of his certainty tipped Harvard over the edge into terrifying and unwelcome knowledge. Terrible realization dawned, remorseless illumination shed on a whole landscape. Harvard found himself looking at his entire life in a new light. Aiden on their first day of school, on their first day of fencing class, on their last day in the hospital, on their first day at Kings Row. Inextricably part of every important moment in Harvard’s life. The bright and shining center of Harvard’s life, ever since he’d turned around and seen Aiden and thought, That boy looks sad, and wanted nothing but to give Aiden everything. Finding Aiden and being too young to understand what he’d found. Only knowing Aiden was necessary to him and wanting Aiden there always. Of course he loved his best friend, of course he did. That was always such an absolute truth that Harvard could never question it. Harvard gasped against Aiden’s mouth. He should have questioned it before now. He should have asked himself what he was feeling. Only he’d been afraid. Dating someone else hadn’t been Harvard’s idea, and with this new clarity he realized he didn’t actually want to do it. He hadn’t wanted to be alone, hadn’t wanted to be left behind, but it was impossible and distinctly horrible to think of being like this with anyone but Aiden. Only very recently, as Aiden dated more and more people and the potential for distance between them started to feel far more real, had Harvard started to feel lonely. If it hadn’t been for Coach suggesting dating, it might never have occurred to him. Why would he go out and look for a partner when he had one at home? Why would he go searching for a lightning strike when there was all the brightness and all the pain he could wish for, always with him? He’d never cared about dating, never really felt the need to find someone, because he’d been otherwise emotionally committed all along. Apparently, Harvard’s subconscious was insane, bent on his own ruin. Somewhere in the back of his mind he’d just decided he was Aiden’s boyfriend, without consulting Aiden. Without even consulting himself. He’d been in love with Aiden the whole time.

Though I am satisfied at first by my actions, I'm suddenly jolted with a mournful dispair at how useless, how extraordinarily painless, it is to take a child's life. This thing before me, small and twisted and bloody, has no real history, no worthwhile past, nothing is really lost. It's so much worse (and more pleasurable) taking the life of someone who has hit his or her prime, who has the beginnings of a full history, a spouse, a network of friends, a career, whose death will upset far more people whose capacity for grief is limitless than a child's would, perhaps ruin many more lives than just the meaningless, puny death of this boy.

People keep saying someone should fix the system, the system is corrupt. What they don’t get is; they are the system. It’s just like how people hate McDonald’s and Coca Cola. People say they are evil corporations, terrorists and ruining the health of the future but then, how are these brands live and running all over the world, making billions of dollars of profit every day? People still buy it, that’s how. The majority of the world is people who know something is bad for them but keep consuming it. If it’s so bad for you, why buy it? If the system is so bad, why do they vote for it? It’s the people who need to change not the leaders.

No,' Andy says. 'If you ruin this, Jude-if you keep lying to someone who loves you, who really loves you, who has only ever wanted to see you exactly as you are-then you will only have yourself to blame. It will be your fault. And it'll be your fault not because of who you are or what's been done to you or the diseases you have or what you think you look like, but because of how you behave, because you won't trust Willem enough to talk to him honestly, to extend to him the same sort of generosity and faith that he has always, always extended to you. I know you think you're sparing him, but you're not. You're selfish and you're stubborn and you're proud and you're going to ruin the best thing that has happened to you. Don't you understand that?

Wallingford vaulted up from his chair. “You’ve come here so that I can mollify you and share in your belittling of Anais? Well, you’ve knocked on the wrong bloody door, Raeburn, because I will not join you in disparaging Anais. I will not! Not when I know what sort of woman she is—she is better than either of us deserves. Damn you, I know what she means to you. I know how you’ve suffered. You want her and you’re going to let a mistake ruin what you told me only months ago you would die for. Ask yourself if it is worth it. Is your pride worth all the pain you will make your heart suffer through? Christ,” Wallingford growled, “if I had a woman who was willing to overlook everything I’d done in my life, every wrong deed I had done to her or others, I would be choking back my pride so damn fast I wouldn’t even taste it.” Lindsay glared at Wallingford, galled by the fact his friend— the one person on earth he believed would understand his feelings—kept chastising him for his anger, which, he believed, was natural and just. “If I had someone like Anais in my life,” Wallingford continued, blithely ignoring Lindsay’s glares, “I would ride back to Bewdley with my tail between my legs and I would do whatever I had to do in order to get her back.” “You’re a goddamned liar! You’ve never been anything but a selfish prick!” Lindsay thundered. “What woman would you deign to lower yourself in front of? What woman could you imagine doing anything more to than fucking?” Wallingford’s right eye twitched and Lindsay wondered if his friend would plant his large fist into his face. He was mad enough for it, Lindsay realized, but so, too, was he. He was mad, angry—all but consumed with rage, but the bluster went out of him when Wallingford spoke. “I’ve never bothered to get to know the women I’ve been with. Perhaps if I had, I would have found one I could have loved—one I could have allowed myself to be open with. But out of the scores of women I’ve pleasured, I’ve only ever been the notorious, unfeeling and callous libertine—that is my shame.Your shame is finding that woman who would love you no matter what and letting her slip through your fingers because she is not the woman your mind made her out to be. You have found something most men only dream of. Things that I have dreamed of and coveted for myself. The angel is dead. It is time to embrace the sinner, for if you do not, I shall expect to see you in hell with me. And let me inform you, it’s a burning, lonely place that once it has its hold on you, will never let you go. Think twice before you allow pride to rule your heart.” “What do you know about love and souls?” Lindsay growled as he stalked to the study door. “I know that a soul is something I don’t have, and love,” Wallingford said softly before he downed the contents of his brandy, “love is like ghosts, something that everyone talks of but few have seen. You are one of the few who have seen it and sometimes I hate you for it. If I were you, I’d think twice about throwing something like that away, but of course, I’m a selfish prick and do as I damn well please.” “You do indeed.” Wallingford’s only response was to raise his crystal glass in a mock salute.“To hell,” he muttered,“make certain you bring your pride. It is the only thing that makes the monotony bearable.

How could it be, she wondered. How could it be that the simple act of having a child did this to you? Had every birth in the world ruined every woman in the world? Was this a secret they’d been keeping, or had she just not been listening? Underneath all the vacuous, cruel wisdom the women who saw her in her late stages of pregnancy imparted to her, most of which had to do with banking sleep or measuring every precious moment because it all goes so fast, were they really telling her to mark her personhood? The other women in her prenatal yoga class had kept up an email chain, and in their messages, she tried to discern that they, too, were terrified and violated and sad and broken, but they weren’t. Trust her, they just weren’t. They made jokes about how they were tired and it was a tragedy that one of them had had an epidural and it was a tragedy that one of them couldn’t produce enough milk for her baby and had to supplement with formula. She wanted to write back to tell them she couldn’t look in the mirror at herself. She wanted someone to understand how small she was now. She wanted to ask one of them if this was the real her—if the real her had been revealed to her suddenly that day in the hospital, or if she would somehow bounce back. Bouncing back was a language they understood: their vaginas needed to bounce back, their breasts needed to bounce back, would their abdomens ever bounce back. With a few small adjustments, these women would acclimate to life. They would recognize themselves. But would Rachel? Would Rachel bounce back? The entire phrase “bouncing back” seemed to her like it existed to make fun of her. There was no bouncing. There was no back.

This is the worst idea ever,” Lend shouted from behind the closed door as Arianna finished pinning my hair under a brunette wig. “I’ve been having a lot of those lately, but one of us wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for my most recent one.” “Well, you look the part, at least,” Arianna said, standing back to admire her handiwork. I was in a fitted, sleek black pantsuit with a blouse underneath. The blouse was white. I hated it already. That, combined with the too-dark hair and colored eyebrows making my tragically pale skin even white, and I was not loving life. Still, sacrifices had to be made. Jack was lying on the bed with his head hanging over the side, his face slowly turning more and more red as the blood rushed to it. He looked phenomenally bored for someone about to break into a secret international high security facility. I slipped into my favorite stilettos, took one step, and fell over. “Ouch.” Shaking off the shoes, I rubbed at my still-tender feet. The stilettos were so not happening. That did it. If I didn’t already want to destroy the Dark Queen, the fact that she had ruined my ability to wear high heels put her at the very top of my hit list. She was so going down.

Viola could start again—there are no second chances, life’s not a rehearsal, blah, blah, blah—yes, but if she could, if she could retake the journey that wasn’t really a journey, what would she do? She would learn how to love. Learning to Love, a painful but ultimately redemptive journey, displaying warmth and compassion as the author learns how to overcome loneliness and despair. The steps she takes to mend her relationship with her children are particularly rewarding. (Half the members of the jury had nodded off by now.) She had tried, she really had. She had worked on herself. Years of therapy and fresh starts, although nothing that really required an effort on her part. She wanted someone else to effect change in her. It seemed a shame you couldn’t just get an injection that would suddenly make everything all right. (“Try heroin,” Bertie said.) She hadn’t turned to the Church yet, but now that she had voted Tory (tactical!), Anglicanism would probably be next. But it didn’t seem to matter how many new beginnings she had, Viola always somehow found herself in the same place, and no matter how hard she tried, the earliest template of herself always seemed to trump later versions.

How did he know my dad helped get me this job? Did someone in the office tell him? I mean, it’s not like I’m some spoiled, incompetent rich kid with zero work experience and mega connections. My dad’s just aCPA! But I’m not going to bother explaining that or anything else. Because right now, I’m halfway convinced a hole in my skull has blown right off and my brains are flowing out like molten lava. I think I might well and truly hate Porter Roth. “You know nothing about me or my family. And you’re a goddamn dickbag, you know that?” I say, so enraged that I don’t even care that a family of four is walking up to my window. I should have. And I should have noticed that I left the green switch turned on from the last pair of tickets I sold. But the family’s wide-eyed faces clue me in now. They’ve heard every nasty word. For one terrible moment, the booth spins around me. I apologize profusely, but the parents aren’t happy. At all. Why should they be? Oh God, is the wife wearing a crucifix pendant? What if these people are fundamentalists? Are these kids homeschooled? Did I just ruin them for life? Jesus fu—I mean, fiddlesticks. Are they going to ask to speak to Mr. Cavadini? Am I going to be fired? On my first day? What is my dad going to say?

The windblast sent people to the ground. A thunderhead of smoke and ash came moving toward them. The light drained dead away, bright day gone. They ran and fell and tried to get up, men with toweled heads, a woman blinded by debris, a woman calling someone’s name. The only light was vestigial now, the light of what comes after, carried in the residue of smashed matter, in the ash ruins of what was various and human, hovering in the air above. He took one step and then the next, smoke blowing over him. He felt rubble underfoot and there was motion everywhere, people running, things flying past. He walked by the Easy Park sign, the Breakfast Special and Three Suits Cheap, and they went running past, losing shoes and money. He saw a woman with her hand in the air, like running to catch a bus. He went past a line of fire trucks and they stood empty now, headlights flashing. He could not find himself in the things he saw and heard. Two men ran by with a stretcher, someone facedown, smoke seeping out of his hair and clothes. He watched them move into the stunned distance. That’s where everything was, all around him, falling away, street signs, people, things he could not name. Then he saw a shirt come down out of the sky. He walked and saw it fall, arms waving like nothing in this life.

To come back to the question, the wise man, self-sufficient as he is, still desires to have a friend if only for the purpose of practising friendship and ensuring that those talents are not idle. Not, as Epicurus put it in the same letter, ‘for the purpose of having someone to come and sit beside his bed when he is ill or come to his rescue when he is hard up or thrown into chains’, but so that on the contrary he may have someone by whose sickbed he himself may sit or whom he may himself release when that person is held prisoner by hostile hands. Anyone thinking of his own interests and seeking out friendship with this in view is making a great mistake. Things will end as they began; he has secured a friend who is going to come to his aid if captivity threatens: at the first clank of a chain that friend will disappear. These are what are commonly called fair-weather friendships. A person adopted as a friend for the sake of his usefulness will be cultivated only for so long as he is useful. This explains the crowd of friends that clusters about successful men and the lonely atmosphere about the ruined – their friends running away when it comes to the testing point; it explains the countless scandalous instances of people deserting or betraying others out of fear for themselves. The ending inevitably matches the beginning: a person who starts being friends with you because it pays him will similarly cease to be friends because it pays him to do so. If there is anything in a particular friendship that attracts a man other than the friendship itself, the attraction of some reward or other will counterbalance that of the friendship. What is my object in making a friend? To have someone to be able to die for, someone I may follow into exile, someone for whose life I may put myself up as security and pay the price as well. The thing you describe is not friendship but a business deal, looking to the likely consequences, with advantage as its goal. There can be no doubt that the desire lovers have for each other is not so very different from friendship – you might say it was friendship gone mad. Well, then, does anyone ever fall in love with a view to a profit, or advancement, or celebrity? Actual love in itself, heedless of all other considerations, inflames people’s hearts with a passion for the beautiful object, not without the hope, too, that the affection will be mutual. How then can the nobler stimulus of friendship be associated with any ignoble desire?

As a civilization progresses, it goes through wars, pandemics, catastrophes. those that survive grow more astute, more perceptive, more advanced. Diseases are conquered, infirmity eliminated. Life spans increase. Suffering becomes largely a memory. "Meanwhile, their explorers and historians find evidence of past cultures, and cultures before that. At first it is exciting. But all they keep finding are ruins. And slowly, either through science or history, every advanced civilizations becomes aware of a disturbing possibility -- that their futures may end in ruin too. "The civilization then rushes to probe other stars, even other galaxies; it increases its research, attempting to manipulate space, time, in the hope that somewhere, someone might have found an escape, a loophole. "But eventually, the find, and solve, the mathematical equation that explains the entire universe." "I think our scientists are working on something like that too," Shizuka said. Lan shook her head. "They'll need to find the Grand Unified Theory a few more times before they can even begin to understand what 'everything' is -- sorry, I didn't mean to offend your civilization." Shizuka shrugged. "No offense taken." "Still, should your civilization survive, it will eventually find the same equation. And that will be your death sentence. For in that equation, there will be no forever, no eternity. Nothing. "And this collapse, and all its attendant despair, is the Endplague." Shizuka was puzzled. Space aliens, she could understand. Purple skin? Cute. Two elbows? Weird, but fine. Galactic warfare? Frankly, expected. Being a refugee? Of course. But how could the mere concept of mortality be enough to topple advanced civilizations? People live, people die, and so what?

Move when it’s time We were touring the ruins at Hovenweep National Monument in the southwestern United States. A sign along the interpretive trail told about the Anasazi who had lived along the small, narrow canyon so long ago. The archaeologists have done their best to determine what these ancient Indians did and how they lived their lives. The signs told about the strategic positioning of the buildings perched precariously on the edge of a cliff, and questioned what had caused this ancient group to suddenly disappear long ago. “Maybe they just got tired of living there and moved,” my friend said. We laughed as we pictured a group of wise ancients sitting around the campfire one night. “You know,” says one of them, “I’m tired of this desert. Let’s move to the beach.” And in our story they did. No mystery. No aliens taking them away. They just moved on, much like we do today. It’s easy to romanticize what we don’t know. It’s easy to assume that someone else must have a greater vision, a nobler purpose than just going to work, having a family, and living a life. People are people, and have been throughout time. Our problems aren’t new or unique. The secret to happiness is the same as it has always been. If you are unhappy with where you are, don’t be there. Yes, you may be here now, you may be learning hard lessons today, but there is no reason to stay there. If it hurts to touch the stove, don’t touch it. If you want to be someplace else, move. If you want to chase a dream, then do it. Learn your lessons where you are, but don’t close off your ability to move and to learn new lessons someplace else. Are you happy with the path that you’re on? If not, maybe it’s time to choose a new one. There need not be a great mysterious reason. Sometimes it’s just hot and dry, and the beach is calling your name. Be where you want to be. God, give me the courage to find a path with heart. Help me move on when it’s time.

well it's going to be very long and boring i guess so , i am sorry in advance. Now i won't waste anymore time ...so here i go ..... ummm so you saw him/her for the first time and felt something different was that feeling is called love ? was that love at first sight? If you think so you are absolutely whom it was just some sort of attraction the first step towards love /? naah ...it was first step towards infatuation . confused? Let me explain it is the same feeling as love people get so mad that they start saying that they can't live without the person they love , they just give remote of their life to them so that they can do whatever they want to do with you , and if you like that person just because of their looks then its not love. when they talk to someone else or ignore you you get hurt and then depressed and start ruining your life. but you need to know forever is a wrong concept , people change and you need to understand depression won't help you . You need to forget that person and move on , but you say its impossible but do you why you feel like this because you dont ant to forget that person you still hope that they will come back , you need to end that hope for your own good it was their fault not yours, you just think you will never fall in love again with someone else again but this is wrong you can fall in love as many time you want to . don't fall in infatuation fall in love this world is a selfish place no one is going to die for you so why should you ? love only happens to some lucky people and they can't explain how it feels like it can be only felt by heart and in love there is nothing like like jelousy nothing like selfishness there is only love and those who love's you will never show that they have hurted you you just give them love without asking for something in return so don't think that infatuation is love ... so first ask yourself is this really love or just a tempory feeling ..! And never take someone for granted .

He told me to stay away from you.” Strong hands roamed her back in the most comforting fashion. “You should have listened.” Rose raised her face to look at him. “But then I would not have known what it was to be truly happy.” Grey’s eyes widened, and for a moment he looked young and vulnerable. “Don’t say that. I’ve made you miserable.” She smiled sadly. “True, but those nights with you at Saint’s Row? That was happiness for me. The most I’ve ever known.” His mouth opened and she pressed her fingers again his lips to close them. “You don’t have to say anything. I already know it’s not what I want to hear.” Grey frowned, and reached up to move her hand from his face. He held her fingers within his. He gave off more heat than the fire she’d fried herself in front of earlier. Heat that went straight to her bones, right to the very center of her being, radiating out into her limbs. There was nothing seductive about their embrace and yet she ached inside, that wet and willing part of herself desperate to take him inside once more. She wanted to claim him, mark him. Ruin him for anyone else. “I was happy too,” he said softly. So softly she wouldn’t have known it was him who spoke were she not watching his beautiful lips as they formed the words. “God help me, you make me forget every vow and promise I’ve ever made.” Heart pounding, Rose didn’t resist as he dropped her hand to thread his fingers in her hair, pressing against her scalp. “You make me feel like someone else,” he told her gruffly. “A good man. A worthy man, and not a selfish bastard too corrupted to ever be loved.” Her eyes burned, but Rose managed to hold the tears at bay. She bit her lip, staring at him, she knew, with her heart in her eyes. She didn’t care. “You are a good man,” she whispered. “The best I know.” Who else would cut himself off from almost all contact with people simply to keep himself from returning to a way of life he wanted to leave behind? “You shouldn’t say things like that.” “Why not? I believe them.” “Because when you say them, I want to believe them.” And then he lowered his head and captured her mouth with his own.

A lady told me about one of her husband’s relatives who was very opinionated. He was always making these cutting, demeaning remarks about her. This couple hadn’t been married that long. Every time they went to family get-togethers, this relative would say something to offend her. She would get all upset and it would ruin the day. She reached the point where she refused to even go to family events. Finally, she told her husband, “You’ve got to do something about that man. He’s your relative.” She was expecting her husband to say, “You’re right, honey. He shouldn’t talk to you like that. I will set him straight.” But the husband did just the opposite. He said, “Honey, I love you but I cannot control him. He has every right to have his opinion. He can say what he wants to, but you have every right to not get offended.” At first she couldn’t understand why her husband wouldn’t really stick up for her. Time and time again she would become upset. If this relative was in one room she would go to another. If he went outside she would make sure she stayed inside. She was always focused on avoiding this man. One day she realized she was giving away her power. It was like a light turned on in her mind. She was allowing one person with issues to keep her from becoming who she was meant to be. When you allow what someone says or does to upset you, you’re allowing them to control you. When you say, “You make me so mad,” what you’re really doing is admitting that you’re giving away your power. As long as that person knows they can push this button and you’ll respond this way, you are giving them exactly what they want. When you allow what someone says or does to upset you, you’re allowing them to control you. People have a right to say what they want, to do what they want, as long as it’s legal. But we have a right to not get offended. We have a right to overlook it. But when we get upset and go around angry, we change. What’s happening is we’re putting too much importance on what they think about us. What they say about you does not define who you are. Their opinion of you does not determine your self-worth. Let that bounce off of you like water off of a duck’s back. They have every right to have their opinion, and you have every right to ignore it.

Sean was watching me, though. And Sean wiped the bryozoa residue from his hand across my stomach. This was the third time a boy had ever touched my bare tummy, and I’d had enough. Through gritted teeth, like any extra movement might spread the bryozoa further across my skin, I told him, “I like you less than I did.” I bailed over the side of the boat-the side opposite where the bryozoa returned to its native habitat. Deep in the warm water, I scrubbed at my tummy with both hands. A combination of bryozoa waste and Sean germs: it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Leaning toward worst, because now I had slime on my hands. Or maybe this was psychosomatic. Holding my hands open in front of me in the water, I didn’t see any slime. I rubbed my hands together anyway. Something dove into the water beside me in a rush of bubbles. I came up for air. Sean surfaced, too, tossing sparkling drops of water from his hair. “You still like me a lot, though, right?” “No prob. Green is the new black.” Giving up on getting clean, I swam a few strokes back toward the platform to get out again. What I needed was a shower with chlorinated water and disinfectant soap. I might need to bubble out my belly button with hydrogen peroxide. “What if I made it up to you?” He splashed close behind me. “What if I helped you get clean? We don’t want you dirty.” He moved both hands around me under the water, up and down across my tummy. It was the fourth time a boy had touched my tummy! And it was very awkward. He bobbed so close behind me that I had a hard time treading water without kicking him. I needed to choose between flirting and breathing. Cameron and my brother leaned over the side of the boat and gaped at us, which didn’t help matters. I’d been afraid of this. Flirting with Sean was no fun if the other boys acted like we were lepers. Well, okay, it was fun, but not as fun as it was supposed to be. Obviously I would need to give McGullicuddy the little dolphin talk. I wasn’t sure I could do this with Cameron-Cameron and I didn’t have heart-to-heart convos-but I might need to make an exception, if he continued to watch us like we were a dirty movie on Pay-Per-View (which I’d also seen a lot of. Life with boys). BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE- Sean and I started and turned toward the boat. Still behind the steering wheel, Adam had his chin in his hand and his elbow on the horn. -EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE Damn it! I turned around to face Sean and gave him a wry smile, but he’d already taken his hands away from my tummy. The horn really ruined the mood. -EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE Sean hauled himself up onto the platform. I followed close behind him, and (glee!) he put out a hand to help me. Cameron and my brother yelled at Adam. -EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP. “Oh!” Adam said as if he’d had no idea he’d been laying on the horn. He looked at his elbow like it belonged to someone else. I was in the boat with Sean now, and he was still holding my hand. Or, maybe I was still clinging to his hand, but this is a question of semantics. In any case, I pulled him by the hand past the other boys to the bow. We didn’t have privacy. There was no privacy on a wakeboarding boat. At least we had the boat’s windshield between us and the others. As I turned to sit down on the bench, I stuck out my tongue at Adam behind the windshield. He crossed his eyes at me.