Safer Writing Quotes

There are books full of great writing that don't have very good stories. Read sometimes for the story... don't be like the book-snobs who won't do that. Read sometimes for the words--the language. Don't be like the play-it-safers who won't do that. But when you find a book that has both a good story and good words, treasure that book.

Writing feels safer somehow. I can catch myself before I say the wrong thing.

It's 4am again and I'm just getting started. People are boring and I want to burn with excitement or anger and bleed, bleed through my words. I want to get all fucked up and write real and raw and ugly and beautifully. I bet you're sleeping safe and calm, and you can stay there, it's safer there, and you wouldn't stand one night on this journey my mind wanders off to every night you close your eyes. I'll stay here one day and I will never come down. I promise I can fly before I hit the ground. It doesn't even hurt anymore. I swear, it doesn't hurt.

If you really want me to be safe, maybe it's time." "I'd just feel safer if you'd start sleeping in a coffin." Just then my door creaked open. Billy's expression turned to surprise. "Get out!" I said, hopping off the bed. "Uh...we are making up lyrics to a song." But that didn't keep Billy out. Instead he was totally interested. "You're writing a song? That's so cool. I want to hear it." "It goes, 'Safer in a coffin, and if your brother doesn't leave, he'll be in one too.

There are also books full of great writing that don't have very good stories. Read sometimes for the story, Bobby. Don't be like the book-snobs who won't do that. Read sometimes for the words - the language. Don't be like the play-it-safers that won't do that. But when you find a book that has both a good story and good words, treasure that book.

Trauma leaves your shipwrecked. You are left to rebuild your inner world. Part of the rebuilding, the healing process, is revisiting the shattered hull of your old worldview; you sift through the wreckage looking for what remains, seeking your broken pieces…as you revisit the ship-wreck, piece by piece, you find a fragment and move it to your new, safer place in the now-altered landscape. You build a new worldview. That takes time. And many visits to the wreckage. And this process involves both unconscious and conscious repetitive “reenactment” behaviors, or writing, drawing, sculpting, or playing. Again and again, you revisit the site of the earthquake, look through the wreckage, take something, and move it to a safe haven. That’s part of the healing process.

Upon this a question arises: whether it be better to be loved than feared or feared than loved? It may be answered that one should wish to be both, but, because it is difficult to unite them in one person, is much safer to be feared than loved, when, of the two, either must be dispensed with.

Some write for fun others write because if they didn’t the words would grow and fester and burst from the seams of their souls. Some words are safer down on paper.

If you were writing poetry it was somewhat safer to be a woman than a man.

There are also books full of great writing that don’t have very good stories. Read sometimes for the story, Bobby. Don’t be like the book-snobs who won’t do that. Read sometimes for the words—the language. Don’t be like the play-it-safers that won’t do that. But when you find a book that has both a good story and good words, treasure that book.

The skeleton key unlocks the mind and swings open the door of imagination. A far better place than here A much safer place than there The quintessential somewhere The mystical nowhere The enigmatic anywhere My gift to you - the key to everywhere. The mortal will find itself lost while the soul always knows the way it is grateful for the darkness and celebrates the day I can give you peace my peace I give you... but I cannot be your savior or your god - I cannot be the light along your path - I can only give you the lamp and point the way. The blind will see... the deaf will hear... but those who choose reason will never understand. Woe to the ones who think they know the answers they will cease to ask the questions that may be their own salvation. We possess the knowledge of the Universe from conception. Once born we are taught to forget. If we cannot look out at our world and see our children's vision then we are truly blind we are unable to lead them to paradise. "Even people who are in the dark search for their shadows. Shadows exist only if there is light. We will never find total darkness - not even in death... ...and we always cast a shadow no matter how overcast our skies become. You are never alone." Do not listen to the voice that shouts to you from behind desks behind podiums behind altars. Do not pay attention to the orators and the opportunists. Do not be distracted by the promises made behind masks. Listen to the quiet. Listen to the whispers as they gently guide you through the assaults of man's absurdities. Listen to the gentle breathing of your mother and lay your head to rest in her peace and in her warm embrace and understand that truth and power lie within you. Breathe silence. The free bird will always return to the cage sooner or later to seek food and water and the loving hand of it's caretaker.

An editor doesn't just read, he reads well, and reading well is a creative, powerful act. The ancients knew this and it frightened them. Mesopotamian society, for instance, did not want great reading from its scribes, only great writing. Scribes had to submit to a curious ruse: they had to downplay their reading skills lest they antagonize their employer. The Attic poet Menander wrote: "those who can read see twice as well." Ancient autocrats did not want their subjects to see that well. Order relied on obedience, not knowledge and reflection. So even though he was paid to read as much as write messages, the scribe's title cautiously referred to writing alone (scribere = "to write"); and the symbol for Nisaba, the Mesopotamian goddess of scribes, was not a tablet but a stylus. In his excellent book A History of Reading, Alberto Manguel writes, "It was safer for a scribe to be seen not as one who interpreted information, but who merely recorded it for the public good." In their fear of readers, ancients understood something we have forgotten about the magnitude of readership. Reading breeds the power of an independent mind. When we read well, we are thinking hard for ourselves—this is the essence of freedom. It is also the essence of editing. Editors are scribes liberated to not simply record and disseminate information, but think hard about it, interpret, and ultimately, influence it.

I paint as the mood takes me- it is an emotional release. But in this society moods and images can incriminate you. Writing is much safer for me. I can hide myself behind a maze of words and the details of people's lives.

I never made my homes out of places. Not physical places, anyway. I made my homes out of paper places. Nothing ever felt safer or more real than the worlds inside my head. I grew up on books. Hungry and never satiated. I grew up ravenous for words, which of course is why I started writing them down. Tried making homes out of people for a while but it didn’t work out. Now I make poems out of them instead and still don’t have anyplace I feel like I belong.

I have found that my best travel experiences happen when I rely on strangers instead of guidebooks, and when I immerse myself in a place instead of trying to remember a list of rules that will supposedly make me safer or more fulfilled.

couple of serious watch-outs when it comes to disconnection. The first comes from researcher Trisha Raque-Bogdan. She writes, “To avoid the pain and vulnerability that may result when their efforts to achieve connection are unsuccessful, individuals may enact their own disconnection strategies, such as hiding parts of themselves or discounting their need for others. They may learn that it is safer to keep their feelings and thoughts to themselves, rather than sharing them in their relationships.

She is better, she is safer, if she rests in Richmond; if she does not speak too much, write too much, feel too much; if she does not travel impetuously to London and walk through its streets; and yet she is dying this way, she is gently dying on a bed of roses.

There are also books full of great writing that don’t have very good stories. Read sometimes for the story, Bobby. Don’t be like the book-snobs who won’t do that. Read sometimes for the words – the language. Don’t be like the play-it-safers that won’t do that. But when you find a book that has both a good story and good words, treasure that book.

Still tripping after the flight, I decided I was going to hitchhike from Luxembourg, and I took one of my big photographs and wrote on the back in big black letters: Paris. I had no idea how far away it was, or even that it was in another country. I stood on this big highway—it was a beautiful day. I felt I looked pretty hot in my cape and hat, certainly worth someone stopping for to find out what the story was, but all these sports cars whizzed past me without stopping, totally ignoring me. None of them stopped. I thought, Everyone in Europe is so rude! Eventually, a sports car skidded to a halt. It backed up to me, and the driver said, in English, by the way, “You’re on the wrong side of the road. Paris is the other way! I think it’s safer for you to catch a train,” and he took me to the train station. He helped me get a ticket and onto the train, heading for Paris. I’m not sure if he was being kind or just wanted to get rid of me. I didn’t speak a word of French, not one word.

When I was a young man, I loved to write poems And I called a spade a spade And the only only thing that made me sing Was to lift the masks at the masquerade. I took them off my own face, I took them off others too And the only only wrong in all my song Was the view that I knew what was true. Now I am older and tireder too And the tasks with the masks are quite trying. I’d gladly gladly stop if I only only knew A better way to keep from lying, And not get nervous and blue When I said something quite untrue: I looked all around and all over To find something else to do: I tried to be less romantic I tried to be less starry-eyed too: But I only got mixed up and frantic Forgetting what was false and what was true. But tonight I am going to the masked ball, Because it has occurred to me That the masks are more true than the faces: —Perhaps this too is poetry? I no longer yearn to be naïve and stern And masked balls fascinate me: Now that I know that most falsehoods are true Perhaps I can join the charade? This is, at any rate, my new and true view: Let live and believe, I say. The only only thing is to believe in everything: It’s more fun and safer that way!

I've dreamed about you my whole life, but I never imagined you were real. I should have known what you were, but it honestly never occurred to me. I don't know if I should be happy or sad that you're one of us. It doesn't make any sense for us to meet again, but I saw you and I can't unsee you now. All I can think about is that you're here, somewhere in the city. It makes me want to burn down every building between us until all that's left is you and me. I think the less I know about you, the safer you'll be, but I can't shake this feeling that there's a reason I've been drawing you since I was old enough to hold a crayon. I need to hear from you. Tell me you hate me. Tell me to go to hell. Anything. Just write me back. Ajax

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

Thus Epicurus also, when he designs to destroy the natural fellowship of mankind, at the same time makes use of that which he destroys. For what does he say? ‘Be not deceived, men, nor be led astray, nor be mistaken: there is no natural fellowship among rational animals; believe me. But those who say otherwise, deceive you and seduce you by false reasons.’—What is this to you? Permit us to be deceived. Will you fare worse, if all the rest of us are persuaded that there is a natural fellowship among us, and that it ought by all means to be preserved? Nay, it will be much better and safer for you. Man, why do you trouble yourself about us? Why do you keep awake for us? Why do you light your lamp? Why do you rise early? Why do you write so many books, that no one of us may be deceived about the gods and believe that they take care of men; or that no one may suppose the nature of good to be other than pleasure? For if this is so, lie down and sleep, and lead the life of a worm, of which you judged yourself worthy: eat and drink, and enjoy women, and ease yourself, and snore. And what is it to you, how the rest shall think about these things, whether right or wrong? For what have we to do with you? You take care of sheep because they supply us with wool and milk, and last of all with their flesh. Would it not be a desirable thing if men could be lulled and enchanted by the Stoics, and sleep and present themselves to you and to those like you to be shorn and milked? For this you ought to say to your brother Epicureans: but ought you not to conceal it from others, and particularly before every thing to persuade them, that we are by nature adapted for fellowship, that temperance is a good thing; in order that all things may be secured for you? Or ought we to maintain this fellowship with some and not with others? With whom then ought we to maintain it? With such as on their part also maintain it, or with such as violate this fellowship? And who violate it more than you who establish such doctrines? What then was it that waked Epicurus from his sleepiness, and compelled him to write what he did write?

A letter from John Pearl asking for news of Chicago. As if I had any to give him. I know no more about it than he does. He wanted to go to New York but now sounds nostalgic and writes with deep distaste about his "peeling environment." "Peeling furniture, peeling walls, posters, bridges, everything is peeling and scaling in South Brooklyn. We moved here to save money, but I'm afraid we'd better start saving ourselves and move out again. It's the treelessness, as much as anything, that hurts me. The unnatural, too human deadness." I'm sorry for him. I know what he feels, the kind of terror, and the danger he sees of the lack of the human in the too-human. We find it, as others before us have found it in the last two hundred years, and we bolt for "Nature." It happens in all cities. And cities are "natural," too. He thinks he would be safer in Chicago, where he grew up. Sentimentality! He doesn't mean Chicago. It is no less inhuman. He means his father's house and the few blocks adjacent. Away from these and a few other islands, he would be just as unsafe. But even such a letter buoys me up. It gives me a sense of someone else's recognition of the difficult, the sorrowful, what to others is merely neutral, the environment.

What’d you think?” Dan asked as we buckled into the Acclaim after another Sunday under the big top. “I wonder if they realize their worship songs include both amillennial and premillennial theology,” I said with a sigh. “Also, what’s this business from the preacher about Moses writing Numbers? I mean, everyone knows Moses didn’t actually write the book of Numbers. It originated from a combination of written and oral tradition and was assembled and edited by Jewish priests sometime during the postexilic period as an exercise in national self-definition. You can look that up on Wikipedia. And, while we’re at it, a bit more Christology applied to the Old Testament text would be nice.” “Um, Rach, the sermon today was about humility.” Lord, have mercy. See, I’ve got this coping mechanism thing where, when I’m feeling frightened or vulnerable or over my head, I intellectualize the situation to try and regain a sense of control. . . . In some religious traditions, this particular coping mechanism is known as pride. I confess I preened it. I scoffed at the idea of being taught or led. Deconstructing was so much safer than trusting, so much easier than letting people in. I knew exactly what type of Christian I didn’t want to be, but I was too frightened, or too rebellious, or too wounded, to imagine what might be next. Like a garish conch shell, my cynicism protected me from disappointment, or so I believed, so I expected the worst and smirked when I found it. So many of our sins begin with fear . . .

among the young, a portent of the world’s future. Hate crimes, violence against women, and the victimization of children are all in long-term decline, as is the exploitation of children for their labor. As people are getting healthier, richer, safer, and freer, they are also becoming more literate, knowledgeable, and smarter. Early in the 19th century, 12 percent of the world could read and write; today 83 percent can. Literacy and the education it enables will soon be universal, for girls as well as boys. The schooling, together with health and wealth, are literally making us smarter—by thirty IQ points, or two standard deviations above our ancestors. People are putting their longer, healthier, safer, freer, richer, and wiser lives to good use. Americans work 22 fewer hours a week than they used to, have three weeks of paid vacation, lose 43 fewer hours to housework, and spend just a third of their paycheck on necessities rather than five-eighths. They are using their leisure and disposable income to travel, spend time with their children, connect with loved ones, and sample the world’s cuisine, knowledge, and culture. As a result of these gifts, people worldwide have become happier. Even Americans, who take their good fortune for granted, are “pretty happy” or happier, and the younger generations are becoming less unhappy, lonely, depressed, drug-addicted, and suicidal. As societies have become healthier, wealthier, freer, happier, and better educated, they have set their sights on the most pressing global challenges. They have emitted fewer pollutants, cleared fewer forests, spilled less oil,

cotton wool, decided that it was not good to eat, ran all round the table, sat up and put his fur in order, scratched himself, and jumped on the small boy’s shoulder. “Don’t be frightened, Teddy,” said his father. “That’s his way of making friends.” “Ouch! He’s tickling under my chin,” said Teddy. Rikki-tikki looked down between the boy’s collar and neck, snuffed at his ear, and climbed down to the floor, where he sat rubbing his nose. “Good gracious,” said Teddy’s mother, “and that’s a wild creature! I suppose he’s so tame because we’ve been kind to him.” “All mongooses are like that,” said her husband. “If Teddy doesn’t pick him up by the tail, or try to put him in a cage, he’ll run in and out of the house all day long. Let’s give him something to eat.” They gave him a little piece of raw meat. Rikki-tikki liked it immensely, and when it was finished he went out into the veranda and sat in the sunshine and fluffed up his fur to make it dry to the roots. Then he felt better. “There are more things to find out about in this house,” he said to himself, “than all my family could find out in all their lives. I shall certainly stay and find out.” He spent all that day roaming over the house. He nearly drowned himself in the bathtubs, put his nose into the ink on a writing table, and burned it on the end of the big man’s cigar, for he climbed up in the big man’s lap to see how writing was done. At nightfall he ran into Teddy’s nursery to watch how kerosene lamps were lighted, and when Teddy went to bed Rikki-tikki climbed up too. But he was a restless companion, because he had to get up and attend to every noise all through the night, and find out what made it. Teddy’s mother and father came in, the last thing, to look at their boy, and Rikki-tikki was awake on the pillow. “I don’t like that,” said Teddy’s mother. “He may bite the child.” “He’ll do no such thing,” said the father. “Teddy’s safer with that little beast than if he had a bloodhound to watch him. If a snake came into the nursery now–” But Teddy’s mother wouldn’t think of anything so awful. · · · Early in the morning Rikki-tikki came to early breakfast in the veranda riding on Teddy’s shoulder, and they gave him banana and some boiled egg. He sat on all their laps one after the other, because every well-brought-up mongoose always hopes to be a house mongoose some day and have rooms to run about in; and Rikki-tikki’s mother (she used to live in the general’s house at Segowlee) had carefully told Rikki what to do if ever he came across white men.

If, as children, we had to deny our true thoughts or feelings to be safe, as adults we are likely to continue to deny what’s true for us. Telling the truth feels very unsafe, a threat to survival. What a dilemma. Denying ourselves feels safer, but it obscures our sense of who we are. The safe route, however, violates an emotional boundary. What’s the way out of the dilemma? If boundary development was severely harmed when you were a child, therapy may be the most efficient route. When we don’t work ourselves free of the issues that got started when we were children, we are destined to relive them again and again. “Children who suffer trauma to core self and identity …,” writes Jane Middleton-Moz, “work toward resolution of that trauma and completion of development in adult life through repetition of the struggle with authority figures, in intimate relationships, through their own children or in therapy.”3

Safety” is a broad, nebulous concept, even as it’s anxiously central to child-rearing. And kids could always be safer. “The ultimate question then becomes,” Mose writes, “how do parents choose ‘safe’ people with whom to hold a playdate? ‘Safe’ in this context really means people/ parents who are selected based on potential social and cultural capital.” 19 The true risk of nonorganic food isn’t that it’s going to poison anyone, it’s that the kids whose parents are buying it might not make for the best professional connections down the line, which means if your child plays with them, your child is less likely to get a crucial future promotion than they would be if they had played with peers who ate fancier corn puffs. This may or may not be an accurate analysis, but it must be confusing for young kids at first. That is, until they absorb the attention to class hierarchy. Childhood risk is less and less about death, illness, or grievous bodily harm, and more and more about future prospects for success.

Living through the Blitz, edited by MO’s Tom Harrisson, makes clear just how much the ‘1945’ we now consume is a construct, a convenient fairy tale built up piece by piece several generations later. Most interesting for our purposes is its plentiful evidence that the imperative (in rhetoric, if not in the specific form of the unprinted poster) to ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ actually had much the opposite effect. The patronising message infuriated most of the scores of mostly working-class diarists and interviewees whose materials make up the book. And rather than an alliance between the ‘decent’ people and their ‘decent’, benevolent public servants, Living through the Blitz finds a total divorce between the interests of each, with the civil service and local government desperately scared of the workers they were supposed to be sheltering from bombs. For example, while the Labour left and radical architects were advocating communal shelters, central government had a firm preference for the privatisation of bomb protection. ‘Whitehall’, Harrisson writes, ‘had long declared that there must be no “shelter mentality”. If big, safe, deep shelters were established, people would simply lie in them and do no work. Worse, such concentrations of proletarians could be breeding grounds for mass hysteria, even subversion. The answer was the Anderson shelter.’2 That is, private shelters in back gardens, not necessarily safer, but less likely to encourage sedition.

Despairing narrowness consists in the lack of primitiveness, or of the fact one has deprived oneself of one’s primitiveness; it consists in having emasculated oneself, in a spiritual sense. For every man is primitively planned to be a self, appointed to become oneself; and while it is true that every self as such is angular, the logical consequence of this merely is that it has to be polished, not that it has to be ground smooth, not that for fear of men it has to give up entirely being itself, nor even that for fear of men it dare not be itself in its essential accidentality (which precisely is what should not be ground away), by which in fine it is itself. But while one sort of despair plunges wildly into the infinite and loses itself, a second sort permits itself as it were to be defrauded by “the others.” By seeing the multitude of men about it, by getting engaged in all sorts of worldly affairs, by becoming wise about how things go in this world, such a man forgets himself, forgets what his name is (in the divine understanding of it), does not dare to believe in himself, finds it too venturesome a thing to be himself, far easier and safer to be like the others, to become an imitation, a number, a cipher in the crowd.

You should be able to write your story on your body through tattoos and piercings I wouldn’t suggest letting the coroner right the story for you. Write your biography through tattoos and piercings while you still can live the good life and live the good life without money do things not for money safer because you enjoy them.

...for it was only through letter writing that we began to really know each other, our old-fashioned correspondence offering a safer, more honest alternative to the cat-and-mouse games of dating.

The final magic ingredient has been a willingness to risk it all. All in. No questions asked. The program started, and grew, from a determination to push the boundaries. Do the impossible. Climb the impassable--eat the inedible. Of course, there was often a safer, easier way down the waterfall or cliff face. But I rarely took it. That wasn’t my aim. I wanted to show you how to survive when you have no safe options. And I loved it. I had learned a while back that whenever I had succeeded, it had always come about because of total commitment. Heart and soul. No holds barred. I realized, early on, that this would also be the key to this show. It’s not rocket science. It’s a lesson as old as the hills: Hold back from the tackle and that’s when you get nailed. This commitment built the show. But I nearly paid for it with my life. Many times. There have been a multitude of near-death moments. None of which I am proud of. The list, though, is long. For old times’ sake, I used to write them down. Then I gave up when I passed the fiftieth. Anyway, I don’t like to think about those--they are in the past. Part of the learning process. Part of what made me stronger. Nowadays, the show is still crazy, but I manage the risk way better. I use ropes much more, off-camera. I think twice, not once, before I leap. I never did that before. It is called being aware. Aware of being a husband. Aware of being a dad. I am proud that I am learning; you only ever get it wrong once.

Experimentation also proved serendipitous for Greg Koch and Steve Wagner, when they were putting together the Stone Brewing Co. in Escondido, California, north of San Diego. It was destined to become one of the most successful brewing startups of the 1990s. In The Craft of Stone Brewing Co. Koch and Wagner confess that the home-brewed ale that became Arrogant Bastard Ale and propelled Stone to fame in the craft brewing world, started with a mistake. Greg Koch recalls that Wagner exclaimed “Aw, hell!” as he brewed an ale on his brand spanking new home-brewing system. “I miscalculated and added the ingredients in the wrong percentages,” he told Koch. “And not just a little. There’s a lot of extra malt and hops in there.” Koch recalls suggesting they dump it, but Wagner decided to let it ferment and see what it tasted like. Greg Koch and Steve Wagner, founders of Stone Brewery. Photograph © Stone Brewing Co. They both loved the resulting hops bomb, but they didn’t know what to do with it. Koch was sure that nobody was “going to be able to handle it. I mean, we both loved it, but it was unlike anything else that was out there. We weren’t sure what we were going to do with it, but we knew we had to do something with it somewhere down the road.”20 Koch said the beer literally introduced itself as Arrogant Bastard Ale. It seemed ironic to me that a beer from southern California, the world of laid back surfers, should produce an ale with a name that many would identify with New York City. But such are the ironies of the craft brewing revolution. Arrogant Bastard was relegated to the closet for the first year of Stone Brewing Co.’s existence. The founders figured their more commercial brew would be Stone Pale Ale, but its first-year sales figures were not strong, and the company’s board of directors decided to release Arrogant Bastard. “They thought it would help us have more of a billboard effect; with more Stone bottles next to each other on a retail shelf, they become that much more visible, and it sends a message that we’re a respected, established brewery with a diverse range of beers,” Wagner writes. Once they decided to release the Arrogant Bastard, they decided to go all out. The copy on the back label of Arrogant Bastard has become famous in the beer world: Arrogant Bastard Ale Ar-ro-gance (ar’ogans) n. The act or quality of being arrogant; haughty; Undue assumption; overbearing conceit. This is an aggressive ale. You probably won’t like it. It is quite doubtful that you have the taste or sophistication to be able to appreciate an ale of this quality and depth. We would suggest that you stick to safer and more familiar territory—maybe something with a multi-million dollar ad campaign aimed at convincing you it’s made in a little brewery, or one that implies that their tasteless fizzy yellow beverage will give you more sex appeal. The label continues along these lines for a couple of hundred words. Some call it a brilliant piece of reverse psychology. But Koch insists he was just listening to the beer that had emerged from a mistake in Wagner’s kitchen. In addition to innovative beers and marketing, Koch and Wagner have also made their San Diego brewery a tourist destination, with the Stone Brewing Bistro & Gardens, with plans to add a hotel to the Stone empire.

There are also books full of great writing that don’t have very good stories. Read sometimes for the story, Bobby. Don’t be like the book-snobs who won’t do that. Read sometimes for the words—the language. Don’t be like the play-it-safers that won’t do that. But when you find a book that has both a good story and good words, treasure that book.

It is possible to access secrets of mind reprogramming with effortless methods. However, they are very dangerous to apply, and often, the consequences and implications, unpredictable as well. They are known only to members of secret societies. But even they often pay the price for applying high levels of magic. This universe has its own rules, and they should never be broken. There is a very big price to pay when that happens, and many times, if not with loneliness and severe levels of depression, with death itself. That is why, the vast majority of those who know this, focus on conscious methods. They are safer, imply more responsibility, and are easier to explain and understand. The secret path is secret for a very good reason - it is not meant for the common mortal. The common human needs to go through rituals of preparation before he is ready to accept such secrets, and it can take years. It often takes a whole lifetime for the common person. The conscious method is a safe path to the unconscious. Knowledge is a good and well-rooted path. But it's also true that some books are made to access the subconscious mind more than others. Meditation, on the other hand, can reveal to you how ready you are to acquire what you want and what you need to do next if that is not the case. But most forms of meditation are wrong or incomplete and can lead to madness and apathy. Zen meditation is the most efficient, but before you practice, you must know what that is within your heart, not with your mind. After that point, you will understand alchemy. That is how you bridge your mind with your heart. Nothing can enter your heart before your mind is ready. Finally, it is in the heart that you find all the answers you seek, including the ones that nullify the relevance of any of your questions. Know that, when I speak or write, I always speak and write to the heart. Those that focus on my words or the emotions I cause on them, are not listening and never will. To them, all secrets remain hidden because they are in the darkness.

The bottom line is this: "Married women are notably safer than their unmarried peers, and girls raised in a home with their married father are markedly less likely to be abused or assaulted than children living without their own father," they write. Of course, while playing the game of manipulating statistics, they pointedly ignore the fact that domestic violence rates have been falling at the same marriage rates are falling.

The shallow waters were a much safer place than the depths at which my ocean went. I hoped he'd dive in and tread there with me awhile because from where I was wading, it was quite beautiful, and that acknowledgment, I realized, was not only growth but self-love.

New York State, for instance, has not as of this writing executed a single criminal since reinstituting its death penalty in 1995. Even among prisoners on death row, the annual execution rate is only 2 percent—compared with the 7 percent annual chance of dying faced by a member of the Black Gangster Disciple Nation crack gang. If life on death row is safer than life on the streets, it’s hard to believe that the fear of execution is a driving force in a criminal’s calculus

They still are snoops,” Tacitus put in. “The worst sort. They’ve even infected me, I’m afraid.” “Maybe you should try writing history,” Torquatus said. “Lots of unsolved mysteries in the past. For instance, did Claudius really just get some bad mushrooms by accident? Did Nero poison Britannicus or kill his mother?” He lowered his voice. “Did Domitian kill Titus?” “And there are lots of people who don’t want those mysteries solved.” Tacitus raised his wine cup. I was relieved that he changed the subject. “I’ll stick to writing speeches, thank you. They’re much safer.

But lately I’ve been wondering how much I had to do with that, too. If I’ve held at a distance people I perceive as being at odds with me not so much because I disagreed with their views, but because I was protecting myself from their rejection for those differences, because it felt safer to write someone off rather than risk being written off first.

Another way to infuse your presence is to tell your child you’ll write them a note or create a drawing with their name on it after they fall asleep and put it next to their bed; this way, kids who wake up in the middle of the night will see proof of your presence and your child’s body will feel safer knowing there’s a time you’ll “be there” next to them.

Remember,” Wolfe said, “the suggestions you make, outcomes you record, and reports you write are setting baselines for other Knights to possibly use, or sometimes avoid, in the future. Not every tactic you suggest will work and sometimes it may be something we’ve already tried and know is ineffective. But don’t let those get you down. Each tornado is a chance to come up with better and safer strategies.

Stuck on "on": how to manage a Sympathetic response 1. Say to yourself, "I am having trauma response. This is a physiological process. I'm not crazy." 2. Make a list of people, places, and things that you love. Notice how your body feels as you think about hugging your best friend, sitting on a beach, or curling up with your favorite book. 3. Use your senses. Weighted blankets. Essential oils. Soft music. Warm tea. These can all help your nervous system come back down. 4. Count backward from the number 31. 5. Notice 5 things you can see, 4 things you can hear, 3 things you can touch, and 1 thing you can taste. 6. Push as hard as you can against a door or a wall. Notice your muscles firing. Step back, take a break. Repeat three times. 7. Do simple math problems in your head. Simple thinking tasks will help your brain reorientate itself. 8. Name the sensations inside your body. Say to yourself out loud, "I feel tension in my neck. I feel tightness in my stomach. I feel he at in my face." Then look for one place in your body where you feel neutral or calm. Most people can access neutral by noticing random areas like their left knee cap or right ring finger. Focus your attention first on the neutral area, then on the tense area, then on the neutral area. Do this for four minutes. 9. Don't ask why you feel panic. Do ask who or what will help you feel safe. 10. If you have a dog or a cat, gently put your hand on their heart and count their heartbeat for three minutes. Stuck on "off": how to manage a high tone dorsal vagal state. 1. Remind yourself that you are not lazy or unmotivated. Tell yourself, "I am having a trauma response. This is a thing. I am not crazy." 2. Get cold. Splash ice-cold water on your face. Hold ice cubes in your hand. Put an ice pack on your neck. Or jump into the coldest possible shower you can stand. 3. Hum or sing. There's a reason people have changed "Ommm" since the 6th century. 4. Social connection is powerful medicine. Connect with a human over the phone: good. Over video chat: better: In person: best. 5. Don't ask why you're feeling frozen. Do ask who or what might help you feel safer. 6. Don't use hyperbolic exaggerated language like "I feel buried" or "I'm drowning." This language reinforces the stress response. Instead, get really specific." I need to call my son's teacher, pick up my prescription and finish a proposal for work." Write down the specific tasks. This will help your brain click back into solution mode. 7. Suck on a lemon. This sounds weird, but it can help suck your brain out of shutdown mode. 8. Open and close your mouth. Then move your head. Then stretch your arms and legs. 9. Grab both ends of a blanket and wring it out as you would if it was soaking wet. Notice your muscles firing as you do this. Take a break. Repeat three times. 10. If you have a safe and willing friend or partner, make eye contact with them for 2-3 minutes. It's super awkward, but you will get a bonus dose of energy if you both end up laughing.

Although my aunts and uncles will think otherwise, I’m not writing this book to cash in or out of a desire for revenge. If either of those had been my intention, I would have written a book about our family years ago, when there was no way to anticipate that Donald would trade on his reputation as a serially bankrupt businessman and irrelevant reality show host to ascend to the White House; when it would have been safer because my uncle wasn’t in a position to threaten and endanger whistleblowers and critics. The events of the last three years, however, have forced my hand, and I can no longer remain silent. By the time this book is published, hundreds of thousands of American lives will have been sacrificed on the altar of Donald’s hubris and willful ignorance. If he is afforded a second term, it would be the end of American democracy.

Although my aunts and uncles will think otherwise, I’m not writing this book to cash in or out of a desire for revenge. If either of those had been my intention, I would have written a book about our family years ago, when there was no way to anticipate that Donald would trade on his reputation as a serially bankrupt businessman and irrelevant reality show host to ascend to the White House; when it would have been safer because my uncle wasn’t in a position to threaten and endanger whistleblowers and critics. The events of the last three years, however, have forced my hand, and I can no longer remain silent. By the time

He’d protected another Catresou tonight. He should be proud, or at least satisfied. But his debt would never be paid. Juliet was still enslaved to the Mahyanai. Makari was stillpretending to serve the Master Necromancer. And Paris— A hand clapped him on the shoulder. Romeo whirled, his sword coming up. “You know,” said Vai, “staring sadly into the darkness is a lot safer in a locked room...” Romeo sighed and lowered his sword. “I could have hurt you,” he said. “I mean, theoretically you couldhave,” said Vai. “You were pretty formidable that one time we dueled. But honestly, were you actually going to do anything except glare at me and think of how to complain about this in a poem?” “I don’t write poems anymore,” Romeo muttered. That was something he’d done back when Juliet was free, and he’d thought there was a chance he could be with her. “Probably why you’re so sad,” said Vai.

Oil had appeared at a deeper horizon on Bahrain, 2,832 feet. Looking for a parallel field, they decided to drill Dammam No. 2 deeper. By 11 May 1936, Stegner writes, down to 2,175 feet, it “was giving most encouraging indications.” In a five-day test on 20 June it flowed 335 barrels a day. They decided to acidize it: to pump down hydrochloric acid at low pressure to dissolve open the pores of the limestone. That was safer than it sounded, since the limestone that the acid dissolved neutralized it. Acidizing No. 2 worked. Production went up to 3,840 barrels a day. Then they faced the same dilemma that Edwin Drake had faced seventy-seven years earlier when his first well came in: they ran out of storage. So they shut down the well. It had already confirmed what they and the Saudis had hoped: there was oil in Arabia.

Ocasio-Cortez calls herself a democratic socialist. What she seems to mean by the name is that we have in common the things we choose to share together, and these common things—good schools, good transport, public parks, good housing, and medical care for everyone—make a shared world. We should make them everyone’s. The name is also a way of claiming a long tradition of politics that asks not whether the world is good enough or getting better, but instead what is the gap between the world we have now and the better world that is within our power to make. It is a tradition that recognizes that economies do not just produce wealth: they produce human lives and relationships, which can be dignified or humiliating, mutual or exploitative, solidaristic or fragmenting, more frightening or safer. And economies, in turn, do not arise naturally, whether from the self-interest of “rational man” or from the disruptive imagination of entrepreneurs and the benignity of philanthropists. Political decisions give economies their shape, from labor laws and tax rates and public investments to questions of almost metaphysical significance. The journalist Kate Aronoff has observed that climate politics addresses the question of who will survive the twenty-first century. Environmental politics, like the politics of work and health care, answers in very concrete terms the ultimate question: What is the value of life? And whose life, which lives, will be valued? As I write, a hopeful, even heroic response to these questions is gathering under the heading of the Green New Deal. Maybe it will find another banner soon, or maybe it will succeed in transforming the meaning of the New Deal from the industrial, racially exclusionary, male-centered program of solidarity that it was to a truly universal reworking of its potential into a commonwealth of shared dignity and mutual care.

Blockchain can be described as “a “write only” digital platform that records and verifies transactions”. Simply put, blockchain is the next step within database development. It can also be called Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT). As a distributed ledger, it is designed and built with the goal of securely storing millions of data within its platform, leveraging a series of architecture tweaks for it. A blockchain is then, nothing else than a database made up of rows, columns, and tables. What differentiates it from other databases, is its sophisticated encryption, that makes it safer, transparent, and more trustworthy. Blockchain technology uses cryptography and digital signatures to prove identity, authenticity, and enforce read/write access rights. All transactions within a block which is part of the blockchain are visible; so there is full transparency for every transaction. What is more, once an entry goes into a blockchain ledger, it cannot be (easily) altered or erased. There is no “central power” overseeing the ledger of transactions. Instead, blockchain technology enables a decentralised and distributed ledger where transactions are shared among a network of computers—in almost real time—rather than being stored on a central server with a central authority (like a bank) overseeing transactions. A blockchain platform is formed out of infinite blocks. The system was inspired by the way bitcoin was first designed when invented in 2008. Similarly to bitcoin, every time a block is made, it will attach itself to the blockchain carrying along a “hash”, or fingerprint from the previous block. These have an important function as they use cryptography to authenticate the source of the transaction.

A neomaterialist explanation has been offered by Robert Evans of the University of British Columbia and George Kaplan of the University of Michigan. If you want to improve health and quality of life for the average person in a society, you spend money on public goods—better public transit, safer streets, cleaner water, better public schools, universal health care. But the more income inequality, the greater the financial distance between the wealthy and the average and thus the less direct benefit the wealthy feel from improving public goods. Instead they benefit more from dodging taxes and spending on their private good—a chauffeur, a gated community, bottled water, private schools, private health insurance. As Evans writes, “The more unequal are incomes in a society, the more pronounced will be the disadvantages to its better-off members from public expenditure, and the more resources will those members have [available to them] to mount effective political opposition” (e.g., lobbying). Evans notes how this “secession of the wealthy” promotes “private affluence and public squalor.” Meaning worse health for the have-nots.