Sentenced To Be A Hero Quotes

Now I found it in writing sentences. You can write that sentence in a way that you would have written it last year. Or you can write it in the way of the exquisite nuance that is sriting in your mind now. But that takes a lot of ... waiting for the right word to come.

Leo cried, "Hold on! Let's have some manners here. Can I at least find out who has the honor of destroying me?" "I am Cal!" the ox grunted. He looked very proud of himself, like he'd taken a long time to memorize that sentence. "That's short for Calais," the love god said. "Sadly, my brother cannot say words with more than two syllables--" "Pizza! Hockey! Destroy!" Cal offered. "--which includes his own name," the love god finished. "I am Cal," Cal repeated. "And this is Zethes! My brother!" "Wow," Leo said. "That was almost three sentences, man! Way to go." Cal grunted, obviously pleased with himself. "Stupid buffoon," his brother grumbled. "They make fun of you. But no matter. I am Zethes, which is short for Zethes. And the lady there--" He winked at piper, but the wink was more like a facial seizure. "She can call me anything she likes. Perhaps she would like to have dinner with a famous demigod before we must destroy you?

I remembered the moment I read a novel for the first time. The texture of the soft paper touching my fingertips. The black letters blooming on a white field. The texture of the page I folded with my hands. 「 It isn’t important to read the letters. The important thing is where the letters lead you. 」 My mother, who loved books, used to say this. At least for me, it wasn’t just a saying. The gaps in the black print. My own little snow garden lay in between the letters. This space, which was too small for someone to go into, was a perfect place for a child who liked to hide. Every time a pleasant sound was heard, the letters stacked up like snow. In it, I became a hero. I had adventures, loved and dreamt. Thus, I read, read and read again. I remembered the first time I was about to finish a book. It was like being deprived of the world. The protagonist and supporting characters walked off with the sentence ‘They lived happily ever after’ and I was left alone at the end of the story. In my vanity and sense of betrayal, my young self struggled because I couldn’t stand the loneliness. 「This… is the end? 」 Perhaps it was similar to learning about death. For the first time, I realized that something was finite.

There was alliteration happening all over the place in that sentence.

Reg: Speaking of blunt, dinner is on my bill tonight, mes amis. Alex: What's the occasion? Augustus: Lady Caroline's agreed to venture out on a picnic with out intrepid hero. Kit: I don't know why you keep insisting she's smitten with me. I've barely spoken five sentences to her. Augustus: It's very simple. Reg has thrown his entire being into pleasing Caroline. She knows every nuance of his thought and character. You, however, are a mystery to be explored, solved, and resolved.

We could summarize the views of our Christian heroes across the centuries with a sentence from Jonathan Edwards: “Every Christian family ought to be as it were a little church.

At the mast, Coach Hedge mumbled,"HHHmmmmm-hmmm!" Leo figured that meant:" KILL THEM! " Easy translation, since most of the coach's sentences involved the word kill

I never thought I'd have a story worth telling, at least not one about me.

I’ll figure something out” probably wound up being the last sentence said by a lot of people in difficult scenarios.

Maybe I can do some writing then. The phrase made him sick. It had no meaning anymore. Like a word that is repeated until it becomes gibberish that sentence, for him, had been used to extinction. It sounded silly; like some bit of cliché from a soap opera. Hero saying in dramatic tones – Now, by God, maybe I can do some writing. Senseless. For a moment, though, he wondered if it was true. Now that she was leaving could he forget about her and really get some work done? Quit his job? Go somewhere and hold up in a cheap furnished room and write? You have $123.89 in the bank, his mind informed him. He pretended it was the only thing that kept him from it. But, far back in his mind, he wondered if he could write anything. Often the question threw itself at him when he was least expecting it. You have four hours every morning, the statement would rise like a menacing wraith. You have time to write many thousands of words. Why don't you? And the answer was always lost in a tangle of becauses and wells and endless reasons that he clung to like a drowning man at straws.(“Mad House”)

Three sentences were highlighted: I’ve been a so-called coward and a so-called hero and there’s not the thickness of a sheet of paper between them. Maybe cowards and heroes are just ordinary men who, for a split second, do something out of the ordinary. That’s all.

Our textbooks were ridiculous propaganda. The first English sentence we learned was "Long live Chairman Mao!" But no one dared to explain the sentence grammatically. In Chinese the term for the optative mood, expressing a wish or desire, means 'something unreal." In 1966 a lecturer at Sichuan University had been beaten up for 'having the audacity to suggest that "Long live Chairman Mao!" was unreal!" One chapter was about a model youth hero who had drowned after jumping into a flood to save an electricity pole because the pole would be used to carry the word of Mao. With great difficulty, I managed to borrow some English language textbooks published before the Cultural Revolution from lecturers in my department and from Jin-ming, who sent me books from his university by post. These contained extracts from writers like Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and Oscar Wilde, and stories from European and American history. They were a joy to read, but much of my energy went toward finding them and then trying to keep them. Whenever someone approached, I would quickly cover the books with a newspaper. This was only partly because of their 'bourgeois' content. It was also important not to appear to be studying too conscientiously, and not to arouse my fellow students' jealousy by reading something far beyond them. Although we were studying English, and were paid par fly for our propaganda value by the government to do this, we must not be seen to be too devoted to our subject: that was considered being 'white and expert." In the mad logic of the day, being good at one's profession ('expert') was automatically equated with being politically unreliable ('white').

Over the years, Skye sampled every drug she could find, and like many addicts, had a working knowledge of pharmacology. She snorted coke and swallowed pills. She took downers—orange and red Seconal, red and ivory Dalmane, Miltown, Librium, Luminal, Nembutal, and Quaaludes. Blue devils, red birds, purple hearts. Enough of them sank her in a kind of coma, where she watched her own limbs suspended in front of her in syrup. For a party, there was Benzedrine, rushing in her veins and making her talk for an hour in one long sentence. Day to day, she carried yellow tablets loose in her pockets, Dilaudid and Percodan, and chewed them in the back of classrooms. But her favorite was the greatest pain reliever of them all, named for the German word for hero.

We got lots of secrets, Will. You Apollo guys can't have all the fun. Our campers have been excavating the tunnel system under Cabin Nine for almost a century. We still haven't found the end. Anyway, Leo, if you don't mind sleeping in a dead man's bed, it's yours-Jake Suddenly Leo didn't feel like kicking back. He sat up, careful not to touch any of the buttons. The counselor who died-this was his bed-Leo Yeah. Charles Beckendorf-Jake Leo imagined saw blades coming through the mattress, or maybe a grenade sewn inside the pillows. He didn't, like, die IN this bed, did he-Leo No. In the Titan War, last summer-Jake The Titan War, which has NOTHING to do with this very fine bed-Leo "The Titans," Will said, like Leo was an idiot. The big powerful guys that ruled the world before the gods. They tried to make a comeback last summer. Their leader, Kronos, built a new palace on top of Mount Tam in California. Their armies came to New York and almost destoyed Mount Olympus. A lot of demigods died trying to stop them-Will I'm guessing this wasn't on the news-Leo It seemed like a fair question, but Will shook his head in disbelief. You didn't hear about Mount St. Helens erupting, or the freak storms across the country, or that building collapsing in St Louis-Will Leo shrugged. Last summer, he'd been on the run from another foster home. Then a truancy officer caught him in New Mexico, and the court sentenced him to the nearest correction facility-the Wilderness School. Guess I was busy-Leo Doesn't matter. You were lucky to miss it. The thing is, Beckendorf was one of the first casualties, and ever since then-Jake Your cabin's been cursed-Leo

This, to be sure, is not the entire truth. For there were individuals in Germany who from the very beginning of the regime and without ever wavering were opposed to Hitler; no one knows how many there were of them—perhaps a hundred thousand, perhaps many more, perhaps many fewer—for their voices were never heard. They could be found everywhere, in all strata of society, among the simple people as well as among the educated, in all parties, perhaps even in the ranks of the N.S.D.A.P. Very few of them were known publicly, as were the aforementioned Reck-Malleczewen or the philosopher Karl Jaspers. Some of them were truly and deeply pious, like an artisan of whom I know, who preferred having his independent existence destroyed and becoming a simple worker in a factory to taking upon himself the “little formality” of entering the Nazi Party. A few still took an oath seriously and preferred, for example, to renounce an academic career rather than swear by Hitler’s name. A more numerous group were the workers, especially in Berlin, and Socialist intellectuals who tried to aid the Jews they knew. There were finally, the two peasant boys whose story is related in Günther Weisenborn’s Der lautlose Aufstand (1953), who were drafted into the S.S. at the end of the war and refused to sign; they were sentenced to death, and on the day of their execution they wrote in their last letter to their families: “We two would rather die than burden our conscience with such terrible things. We know what the S.S. must carry out.” The position of these people, who, practically speaking, did nothing, was altogether different from that of the conspirators. Their ability to tell right from wrong had remained intact, and they never suffered a “crisis of conscience.” There may also have been such persons among the members of the resistance, but they were hardly more numerous in the ranks of the conspirators than among the people at large. They were neither heroes nor saints, and they remained completely silent. Only on one occasion, in a single desperate gesture, did this wholly isolated and mute element manifest itself publicly: this was when the Scholls, two students at Munich University, brother and sister, under the influence of their teacher Kurt Huber distributed the famous leaflets in which Hitler was finally called what he was—a “mass murderer.

As a matter of fact I don’t care two pins about accuracy. Who is accurate? Nobody nowadays. If a reporter writes that a beautiful girl of twenty-two dies by turning on the gas after looking out over the sea and kissing her favourite Labrador, Bob, goodbye, does anybody make a fuss because the girl was twenty-six, the room faced inland, and the dog was a Sealyham terrier called Bonnie? If a journalist can do that sort of thing I don’t see that it matters if I mix up police ranks and say a revolver when I mean an automatic and a dictograph when I mean a phonograph, and use a poison that just allows you to gasp one dying sentence and no more. What really matters is plenty of bodies! If the thing’s getting a little dull, some more blood cheers it up. Somebody is going to tell something – and then they’re killed first! That always goes down well. It comes in all my books – camouflaged different ways of course. And people like untraceable poisons, and idiotic police inspectors and girls tied up in cellars with sewer gas or water pouring in (such a troublesome way of killing anyone really) and a hero who can dispose of anything from three to seven villains singlehanded.

Higher purpose: I am here to serve. I am here to inspire. I am here to love. I am here to live my truth. Communion: I will appreciate someone who doesn’t know that I feel that way. I will overlook the tension and be friendly to someone who has ignored me. I will express at least one feeling that has made me feel guilty or embarrassed. Awareness: I will spend ten minutes observing instead of speaking. I will sit quietly by myself just to sense how my body feels. If someone irritates me, I will ask myself what I really feel beneath the anger—and I won’t stop paying attention until the anger is gone. Acceptance: I will spend five minutes thinking about the best qualities of someone I really dislike. I will read about a group that I consider totally intolerant and try to see the world as they do. I will look in the mirror and describe myself exactly as if I were the perfect mother or father I wish I had had (beginning with the sentence “How beautiful you are in my eyes”). Creativity: I will imagine five things I could do that my family would never expect—and then I will do at least one of them. I will outline a novel based on my life (every incident will be true, but no one would ever guess that I am the hero). I will invent something in my mind that the world desperately needs. Being: I will spend half an hour in a peaceful place doing nothing except feeling what it is like to exist. I will lie outstretched on the grass and feel the earth languidly revolving under me. I will take in three breaths and let them out as gently as possible. Efficiency: I will let at least two things out of my control and see what happens. I will gaze at a rose and reflect on whether I could make it open faster or more beautifully than it already does—then I will ask if my life has blossomed this efficiently. I will lie in a quiet place by the ocean, or with a tape of the sea, and breathe in its rhythms. Bonding: When I catch myself looking away from someone, I will remember to look into the person’s eyes. I will bestow a loving gaze on someone I have taken for granted. I will express sympathy to someone who needs it, preferably a stranger. Giving: I will buy lunch and give it to someone in need on the street (or I will go to a café and eat lunch with the person). I will compliment someone for a quality that I know the individual values in him- or herself. I will give my children as much of my undivided time today as they want. Immortality: I will read a scripture about the soul and the promise of life after death. I will write down five things I want my life to be remembered for. I will sit and silently experience the gap between breathing in and breathing out, feeling the eternal in the present moment.

Such dialogue attributions are sometimes known as “Swifties,” after Tom Swift, the brave inventor-hero in a series of boys’ adventure novels written by Victor Appleton II. Appleton was fond of such sentences as “Do your worst!” Tom cried bravely and “My father helped with the equations,” Tom said modestly.

We got lots of secrets, Will. You Apollo guys can't have all the fun. Our campers have been excavating the tunnel system under Cabin Nine for almost a century. We still haven't found the end. Anyway, Leo, if you don't mind sleeping in a dead man's bed, it's yours-Jake Suddenly Leo didn't feel like kicking back. He sat u, careful not to touch any of the buttons. The counselor who died-this was his bed-Leo Yeah. Charles Beckendorf-Jake Leo imagined saw blades coming through the mattress, or maybe a grenade sewn inside the pillows. He didn't, like, die IN this bed, did he-Leo No. In the Titan War, last summer-Jake The Titan War, which has NOTHING to do with this very fine bed-Leo "The Titans," Will said, like Leo was an idiot. The big powerful guys that ruled the world before the gods. They tried to make a comeback last summer. Their leader, Kronos, built a new palace on top of Mount Tam in California. Their armies came to New York and almost destoyed Mount Olympus. A lot of demigods died trying to stop them-Will I'm guessing this wasn't on the news-Leo It seemed like a fair question, but Will shook his head in disbelief. You didn't hear about Mount St. Helens erupting, or the freak storms across the country, or that building collapsing in St Louis-Will Leo shrugged. Last summer, he'd been on the run from another foster home. Then a truancy officer caught him in New Mexico, and the court sentenced him to the nearest correction facility-the Wilderness School. Guess I was busy-Leo Doesn't matter. You were lucky to miss it. The thing is, Beckendorf was one of the first casualties, and ever since then-Jake Your cabin's been cursed-Leo

HERE IS THE HERO’S JOURNEY IN ONE PITHY SENTENCE: Increasingly isolated protagonist stomps around prodding evil with pointy bits, eventually fatally prods baddie, gains glory and honor. HERE IS THE HEROINE’S JOURNEY IN ONE PITHY SENTENCE: Increasingly networked protagonist strides around with good friends, prodding them and others on to victory, together

After those four years, he returned to the Midwest. He'd turned twenty-five, the Age of Unfolding, and it was time to write a novel, the way his hero had. He moved to a cheap apartment in Chicago and set to work, but even as the pages accumulated, despair set in. It was easy enough to write a sentence, but if you were going to create a work of art, the way Melville had, each sentence needed to fit perfectly with the one that preceded it, and the unwritten one that would follow. And each of those sentences needed to square with the ones on either side, so that three became five and five became seven, seven became nine, and whichever sentence he was writing became the slender fulcrum on which the whole precarious edifice depended. That sentence could contain anything, anything, and so it promised the kind of absolute freedom that, to Affenlight's mind, belonged to the artist and the artist alone. And yet that sentence was also beholden to the book's very first one, and its last unwritten one, and ever sentence in between. Every phrase, every word, exhausted him.

Before this grief, mountains must bend down And rivers stop, But prison locks are strong, And behind them are the labor-camp bunks And the deadly tedium. For others the fresh breeze is blowing, For others the extravagant sun sets — For us everything is the same, we know nothing, We hear only the keys and their hateful grinding. Only the soldiers' stiff steps. We get up as for early Mass in the city, The savaged city, and coming We meet ourselves, the dead, the unbreathing. The sun is low, the Neva misty, It is only in the distance that hope is singing. The sentence . . . and at once tears, Now everything has been taken, The rest of life, torn from her heart, Knocked backwards by a hoodlum And yet she walks . . . stumbles . . . alone . . . Where are they now, unwilling friends Of years in Hell? What visions do they see in Siberian snow-storms? What hallucinations in the circle of the moon? I send them this goodbye and wish them well.

inspire. I am here to love. I am here to live my truth. Communion: I will appreciate someone who doesn’t know that I feel that way. I will overlook the tension and be friendly to someone who has ignored me. I will express at least one feeling that has made me feel guilty or embarrassed. Awareness: I will spend ten minutes observing instead of speaking. I will sit quietly by myself just to sense how my body feels. If someone irritates me, I will ask myself what I really feel beneath the anger—and I won’t stop paying attention until the anger is gone. Acceptance: I will spend five minutes thinking about the best qualities of someone I really dislike. I will read about a group that I consider totally intolerant and try to see the world as they do. I will look in the mirror and describe myself exactly as if I were the perfect mother or father I wish I had had (beginning with the sentence “How beautiful you are in my eyes”). Creativity: I will imagine five things I could do that my family would never expect—and then I will do at least one of them. I will outline a novel based on my life (every incident will be true, but no one would ever guess that I am the hero). I will invent something in my mind that the world desperately needs. Being: I will spend half an hour in a peaceful place doing nothing except feeling what it is like to exist. I will lie outstretched on the grass and feel the earth languidly revolving under me. I will take in three breaths and let them out as gently as possible. Efficiency: I will let at least two things out of my control and see what happens. I will gaze at a rose and reflect on whether I could make it open faster or more beautifully than it already does—then I will ask if my life has blossomed this efficiently. I will lie in a quiet place by the ocean, or with a tape of the sea, and breathe in its rhythms. Bonding: When I catch myself looking away from someone, I will remember to look into the person’s eyes. I will bestow a loving gaze on someone I have taken for granted. I will express sympathy to someone who needs it, preferably a stranger. Giving: I will buy lunch and give it to someone in need on the street (or I will go to a café and eat lunch with the person). I will compliment someone for a quality that I know the individual values in him- or herself. I will give my children as much of my undivided time today as they want. Immortality: I will read a scripture about the soul and the promise of life after death. I will write down five things I want my life to be remembered for. I will sit and silently experience the gap between breathing in and breathing out, feeling the eternal in the present moment.

they’ve worked their way through The Hundred Greatest Novels of All Time. He can’t remember why fiction used to make him so impatient. Nothing else has more power now to get him through the hours before lunch. He hangs on the most ridiculous plot crumb, as if the future of humanity hinges on it. The books diverge and radiate, as fluid as finches on isolated islands. But they share a core so obvious it passes for given. Every one imagines that fear and anger, violence and desire, rage laced with the surprise capacity to forgive—character—is all that matters in the end. It’s a child’s creed, of course, just one small step up from the belief that the Creator of the Universe would care to dole out sentences like a judge in federal court. To be human is to confuse a satisfying story with a meaningful one, and to mistake life for something huge with two legs. No: life is mobilized on a vastly larger scale, and the world is failing precisely because no novel can make the contest for the world seem as compelling as the struggles between a few lost people. But Ray needs fiction now as much as anyone. The heroes, villains, and walk-ons his wife gives him this morning are better than truth.

Congress decided to put him on a committee to write a declaration explaining why the colonies were seeking independence. It was back in the days when Congress knew how to appoint really good committees: Franklin and Jefferson and John Adams were on it. They knew that leadership required not merely asserting values, but finding a balance when values conflict. We can see that in the deft editing of the famous sentence that opens the second paragraph of the Declaration. “We hold these truths to be sacred . . . ,” Jefferson had written. On the copy of his draft at the Library of Congress we can see the dark printer’s ink and backslashes of Franklin’s pen as he changes it to “We hold these truths to be self-evident.” His point was that our rights would come from rationality and the consent of the governed, not the dictates and dogma of any religion. Jefferson’s draft sentence went on to say that all men have certain inalienable rights. We can see Adams’s hand making an addition: “They are endowed by their Creator” with these inalienable rights. So just in the editing of one half of one sentence we can see how Franklin and his colleagues struck a unifying balance between the grace of divine providence and the role of democratic consent in the founding values of our nation.

Amazing Grace” Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, That saved a wretch like me! I once was lost, but now am found; Was blind, but now I see. ’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, And grace my fears relieved; How precious did that grace appear, The hour I first believed. Through many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come; ’Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far, And grace will lead me home. The Lord has promised good to me, His Word my hope secures; He will my Shield and Portion be, As long as life endures. Yea, when this flesh and heart shall fail, And mortal life shall cease, I shall possess, within the veil, A life of joy and peace. The earth shall soon dissolve like snow, The sun forbear to shine; But God, who called me here below, Will be forever mine. When we’ve been there ten thousand years, Bright shining as the sun, We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise, Than when we’d first begun. Lyrics by John Newton, 1779 “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” (Chorus) Swing low, sweet chariot, Coming for to carry me home. Swing low, sweet chariot, Coming for to carry me home. I looked over Jordan, and what did I see? (Coming for to carry me home) A band of angels coming after me. (Coming for to carry me home) (Chorus) If you get there before I do, (Coming for to carry me home) Tell all of my friends, that I'm coming there too. (Coming for to carry me home) (Chorus) Traditional lyrics Wallis Willis, circa 1865 “Battle Hymn of the Republic” Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord; He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored; He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword: His truth is marching on. (Chorus) Glory, Glory, hallelujah! Glory, glory, hallelujah! Glory, glory, hallelujah! His truth is marching on. I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps, They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps; I can read His righteous sentence in the dim and flaring lamps: His day is marching on. (Chorus) I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel: "As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal"; Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel, Since God is marching on. (Chorus) He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat; He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat; Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! Be jubilant, my feet! Our God is marching on. (Chorus) In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me. As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free, While God is marching on. Lyrics by Julia Ward Howe, 1861

You know that you are not a hero and that you never wanted to be the one. You have never wanted to die for your nation, or for freedom, or for anything else, for that matter: the fates of Winkelried and Ordon [legendary heroes who died for their countries, which were overwhelmed by superior enemies] have never tempted you. You have always wanted to be alive, to live like a normal person, to have respect for yourself and for your friends. You have always enjoyed the moral comfort that allows you to take pleasure in your inner freedom, in beautiful women, and in wine. This war surprised you in the company of a pretty woman, not while you were plotting an assault on the Central Committee headquarters. Nevertheless, they did declare this war on you and over thirty million other people, and so you are forced to recognise that amid the street roundups, the ignoble court sentences, the despicable radio programs, and the distribution of leaflets by underground Solidarity you will not regain the normalcy that was based on respect for yourself. Now you must choose between moral and material stability, because you know that today's "normalcy" will have the bitter taste of self-defeat. And you will not, for the sake of life's enjoyments, give in to the tempting offers of freedom made by the policeman, who seeks to delude you with promises of happiness but really brings suffering and inner hell instead. No, this is not heroism. It is mere common sense.

Nothing happens while you live. The scenery changes, people come in and go out, that’s all. There are no beginnings. Days are tacked on to days without rhyme or reason, an interminable, monotonous addition. From time to time you make a semi-total: you say: I’ve been travelling for three years, I’ve been in Bouville for three years. Neither is there any end: you never leave a woman, a friend, a city in one go. And then everything looks alike: Shanghai, Moscow, Algiers, everything is the same after two weeks. There are moments—rarely—when you make a landmark, you realize that you’re going with a woman, in some messy business. The time of a flash. After that, the procession starts again, you begin to add up hours and days: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. April, May, June. 1924, 1925, 1926. That’s living. But everything changes when you tell about life; it’s a change no one notices: the proof is that people talk about true stories. As if there could possibly be true stories; things happen one way and we tell about them in the opposite sense. [...] “I was out walking, I had left the town without realizing it, I was thinking about my money troubles.” This sentence, taken simply for what it is, means that the man was absorbed, morose, a hundred leagues from an adventure, exactly in the mood to let things happen without noticing them. But the end is there, transforming everything. For us, the man is already the hero of the story. His moroseness, his money troubles are much more precious than ours, they are all gilded by the light of future passions. And the story goes on in the reverse: instants have stopped piling themselves in a lighthearted way one on top of the other, they are snapped up by the end of the story which draws them and each one of them in turn, draws out the preceding instant: “It was night, the street was deserted.” The phrase is cast out negligently, it seems superfluous; but we do not let ourselves be caught and we put it aside: this is a piece of information whose value we shall subsequently appreciate. And we feel that the hero has lived all the details of this night like annunciations, promises, or even that he lived only those that were promises, blind and deaf to all that did not herald adventure. We forget that the future was not yet there; the man was walking in a night without forethought, a night which offered him a choice of dull rich prizes, and he did not make his choice. I wanted the moments of my life to follow and order themselves like those of a life remembered. You might as well try and catch time by the tail.

As a child, Callum never sympathized much with storybook villains, who were always clinging to some sort of broad, unspecified drive. It wasn’t the depravity that unnerved him, but the desperation of it all; the need, the compulsion, which always destroyed them in the end. That was the distasteful thing about villains, really. Not the manner in which they went about their business, which was certainly gruesome and morally corrupt, but the fact that they desired things so intensely. The heroes were always reluctant, always pushed into their roles, martyring themselves. Callum didn’t like that, either, but at least it made sense. Villains were far too proactive. Must they participate in the drudgery of it all for some interminable cause? Taking over the world was a mostly nonsensical agenda. Have control of these puppets, with their empty heads and their pitchforked mobs? Why? Wanting anything—beauty, love, omnipotence, absolution—was the natural flaw in being human, but the choice to waste away for anything made the whole indigestible. A waste. Simple choices were what registered to Callum as most honestly, the truest truths: fairy-tale peasants need money for dying child, accepts whatever consequence follow. The rest of the story—about rewards of choosing good or the ill-fated outcomes of desperation and vice—we’re always too lofty, a pretty but undeniable lie. Cosmic justice wasn’t real. Betrayal was all too common. For better or worse, people did not get what they deserved. Callum had always tended toward the assassins in the stories, the dutiful soldiers, those driven by personal reaction rather than on some larger moral cause. Perhaps it was a small role to serve on the whole, but at least it was rational, comprehensible beyond fatalistic. Take the huntsman who failed to kill Snow White, for example. An assassin acting on his own internal compass. Whether humanity as a whole won or lost as a result of his choice? Unimportant. He didn’t raise an army, didn’t fight for good, didn’t interfere much with the queen’s other evils. It wasn’t the whole world at stake; it was never about destiny. Callum admired that, the ability to take a moral stance and hold it. It was only about whether the huntsman could live with his decision—because however miserable or dull or uninspired, life was the only thing that mattered in the end. The truest truths: Mortal lifetimes were short, inconsequential. Convictions were death sentences. Money couldn’t buy happiness, but nothing could buy happiness, so at least money could buy everything else. In terms of finding satisfaction, all a person was capable of controlling was himself.

Here before you lies the memorial to St. Cefnogwr, though he is not buried here, of course.” At her words, an uncanny knowing flushed through Katy and, crazy-of-crazy, transfixed her. “Why? Where is he?” Traci stepped forward, hand on her hip. A you’re-right-on-cue look crossed the guide’s face. She pointed to the ceiling. Traci scoffed. “I meant, where’s the body?” Her American southern accent lent a strange contrast to her skepticism. Again, the tour guide’s arthritic finger pointed upward, and a smile tugged at her lips, the smokers’ wrinkles on her upper lip smoothing out. “That’s the miracle that made him a saint, you see. Throughout the twelve hundreds, the Welsh struggled to maintain our independence from the English. During Madog’s Rebellion in 1294, St. Cefnogwr, a noble Norman-English knight, turned against his liege lord and sided with the Welsh—” “Norman-English?” Katy frowned, her voice raspy in her dry throat. “Why would a Norman have a Welsh name and side with the Welsh?” She might be an American, but her years living in England had taught her that was unusual. “The English nicknamed him. It means ‘sympathizer’ in Welsh. The knight was captured and, for his crime, sentenced to hang. As he swung, the rope creaking in the crowd’s silence, an angel of mercy swooped down and—” She clapped her hands in one decisive smack, and everyone jumped. “The rope dangled empty, free of its burden. Proof, we say, of his noble cause. He’s been venerated ever since as a Welsh hero.” Another chill danced over Katy’s skin. A chill that flashed warm as the story seeped into her. Familiar. Achingly familiar. Unease followed—this existential stuff was so not her. “His rescue by an angel was enough to make him a saint?” ever-practical Traci asked. “Unofficially. The Welsh named him one, and eventually it became a fait accompli. Now, please follow me.” The tour guide stepped toward a side door. Katy let the others pass and approached the knight covered in chainmail and other medieval-looking doodads. Only his face peeked out from a tight-fitting, chainmail hoodie-thing. One hand gripped a shield, the other, a sword. She touched his straight nose, the marble a cool kiss against her finger. So. This person had lived about seven hundred years ago. His angular features were starkly masculine. Probably had women admiring them in the flesh. Had he loved? An odd…void bloomed within, tugging at her, as if it were the absence of a feeling seeking wholeness. Evidence of past lives frozen in time always made her feel…disconnected. Disconnected and disturbed. Unable to grasp some larger meaning. Especially since Isabelle was in the past now too, instead of here as her maid of honor. She traced along the knight’s torso, the bumps from the carved chainmail teasing her fingers. “The tour group is getting on the bus. Hurry.” Traci’s voice came from the door. “Coming.” One last glance at her knight. Katy ran a finger down his strong nose again. “Bye,” she whispered.

ONE of the evil results of the political subjection of one people by another is that it tends to make the subject nation unnecessarily and excessively conscious of its past. Its achievements in the old great days of freedom are remembered, counted over and exaggerated by a generation of slaves, anxious to convince the world and themselves that they are as good as their masters. Slaves cannot talk of their present greatness, because it does not exist; and prophetic visions of the future are necessarily vague and unsatisfying. There remains the past. Out of the scattered and isolated facts of history it is possible to build up Utopias and Cloud Cuckoo Lands as variously fantastic as the New Jerusalems of prophecy. It is to the past — the gorgeous imaginary past of those whose present is inglorious, sordid, and humiliating — it is to the delightful founded-on-fact romances of history that subject peoples invariably turn. Thus, the savage and hairy chieftains of Ireland became in due course “the Great Kings of Leinster,” “the mighty Emperors of Meath.” Through centuries of slavery the Serbs remembered and idealised the heroes of Kossovo. And for the oppressed Poles, the mediaeval Polish empire was much more powerful, splendid, and polite than the Roman. The English have never been an oppressed nationality; they are in consequence most healthily unaware of their history. They live wholly in the much more interesting worlds of the present — in the worlds of politics and science, of business and industry. So fully, indeed, do they live in the present, that they have compelled the Indians, like the Irish at the other end of the world, to turn to the past. In the course of the last thirty or forty years a huge pseudo-historical literature has sprung up in India, the melancholy product of a subject people’s inferiority complex. Industrious and intelligent men have wasted their time and their abilities in trying to prove that the ancient Hindus were superior to every other people in every activity of life. Thus, each time the West has announced a new scientific discovery, misguided scholars have ransacked Sanskrit literature to find a phrase that might be interpreted as a Hindu anticipation of it. A sentence of a dozen words, obscure even to the most accomplished Sanskrit scholars, is triumphantly quoted to prove that the ancient Hindus were familiar with the chemical constitution of water. Another, no less brief, is held up as the proof that they anticipated Pasteur in the discovery of the microbic origin of disease. A passage from the mythological poem of the Mahabharata proves that they had invented the Zeppelin. Remarkable people, these old Hindus. They knew everything that we know or, indeed, are likely to discover, at any rate until India is a free country; but they were unfortunately too modest to state the fact baldly and in so many words. A little more clarity on their part, a little less reticence, and India would now be centuries ahead of her Western rivals. But they preferred to be oracular and telegraphically brief. It is only after the upstart West has repeated their discoveries that the modern Indian commentator upon their works can interpret their dark sayings as anticipations. On contemporary Indian scholars the pastime of discovering and creating these anticipations never seems to pall. Such are the melancholy and futile occupations of intelligent men who have the misfortune to belong to a subject race. Free men would never dream of wasting their time and wit upon such vanities. From those who have not shall be taken away even that which they have.

The theme line is your moral argument focused into one sentence. Now you must express the theme line dramatically. That requires that you split it into a set of oppositions. You then attach these thematic oppositions to the hero and his opponents as they fight.

Murray took Dictionary work with him to the hospital when Ada was giving birth. If you look at page 2, column 1 of the first volume of the printed Dictionary, twenty-third line from the bottom, you will see a sentence Murray wrote on the proof sheets while sitting beside Ada's bedside just after the birth of their daughter Elise. 'As fine a child as you will see' appears as an example of when a follows an adjective

Authors often leave their sentences unfinished like that—at least the kind who come to Wentworth’s do—and they are always men. Women authors seem to bother less about local color, or perhaps they bother more. Perhaps they actually pack a couple of suitcases and trek off to Borneo or Canada or wherever it may be, before they send their hero there to hob-nob with head-hunters or to track moose.

Nearly four thousand African Americans were lynched in the United States between 1877 and 1950. Most of the victims were not accused of any crime before they were sentenced to mob justice for offenses usually of a dubious nature, such as “seeking employment in a restaurant,” “using offensive language,” and “trying to act like a white man.

Yeah, thanks. I work fast when…” Jackie left off. “When?” asked Jack, wanting to know the rest of the sentence. “Nothing!

Hero opened her mouth, still unsure of whether to use English or Tagalog when talking to Paz. Paz had a habit of speaking to Roni in a mixture of English, Tagalog, and Pangasinan. It felt like Roni didn't really know the difference between Tagalog and Pangasinan, and moved between the two interchangeably as if they were one language. Nobody had told her otherwise, Hero supposed. But for Hero, listening to the mixture was like listening to a radio whose transmission would occasionally short out; she'd get half a sentence, then nothing -- eventually the intelligible parts would start back up, but she'd already lost her place in the conversation. But when Pol would come in, they'd switch to English, and like adjusting a dial to get a sharper signal, Hero would be able to tune in again.

Comrades,” he said quietly, “do you know who is responsible for this? Do you know the enemy who has come in the night and overthrown our windmill? SNOWBALL!” he suddenly roared in a voice of thunder. “Snowball has done this thing! In sheer malignity, thinking to set back our plans and avenge himself for his ignominious expulsion, this traitor has crept here under cover of night and destroyed our work of nearly a year. Comrades, here and now I pronounce the death sentence upon Snowball. ‘Animal Hero, Second Class,’ and half a bushel of apples to any animal who brings him to justice. A full bushel to anyone who captures him alive!

God, I can barely get you to say a full sentence, but get naked in front of you, and you have all kinds of dirty things to say.

All right, cupcakes!” Coach Hedge yelled. He frowned at the storm like it bothered him too. “We may have to cut this short, so get to work! Remember, complete sentences!

In the summer before the trial he had been diagnosed with heart disease and hospitalized for a month. On November 26, just before his prison term was to begin, he was admitted to the hospital once again. On December 29 he suffered a heart attack. On December 30, never having served a day of his sentence, he died. He died a hero. Over the course of the year that passed between his confession and his trial, public opinion in Holland had swung completely in Van Meegeren’s favor. Once damned as a traitor, he became, in the words of the American journalist Irving Wallace, “the man who swindled Goering.

He’s an excellent fencer,” the duke continued, “and responds to questions with single-sentence answers. Sometimes using only one word! Also, he’s a war hero. He lost ten thousand men in the Battle of Lakeprivy.

Hi,” I say, having no idea what else to say. He gives a dry huff, his eyes warming slightly. “Hi.” “Thank you for letting me stay.” “I didn’t know you wanted to.” “Why wouldn’t I want to?” He frowns, his eyes gently searching my face. “Because you broke up with me two years ago, and I thought that would mean you wouldn’t.” I take a weird shuddering breath as nerves and excitement both flutter in my chest. “I… I don’t know. Things feel different now. I’m not sure why. I know everything is kind of in flux and nothing is… is decided. But right now, I want to be with you. As long as you want it too.” “I’ve always wanted to be with you,” he murmurs. He’s still holding my head like it’s precious. “I guess I…” I swallow hard but make myself finish the sentence. “I guess I’ve never really understood why.” He’s doing that heavy breathing again—like there’s too much going on inside him, so much that it takes effort to contain it. “What do you mean?” “I don’t know. Just that you’re you. You can have anyone. Someone younger or prettier or stronger or sexier. Someone with a less complicated past. Someone who would never want to say no to you. For anything. For any reason. So why… why… did you never move on?” He shakes his head like he’s really thinking about the answer. “I tried. I did. And honestly I’m not sure how or exactly when it happened. When we first met, I thought you were sweet and smart and pretty and stronger than you ever realized. I liked helping you.” “I get that part. I was needy, and you have a hero complex.” When he starts to object, I go on. “Don’t try to argue. We both know it’s true.” “Okay, yeah. That was probably it at first. And when we started having sex on the way to get you to Maria that first time, I really thought it was just because we both needed some… some comfort.” “That’s what I thought too. That’s what it was. So when did it change?” “I don’t know. I really don’t. I just woke up one day and knew—I knew—that you were my resting place.” The soft words touch me so deeply I make a little whimper. “Mack.” He kind of shrugs. “And nothing I do can change it. I promise I tried.

In May of 1952, about a dozen individuals lead by Fidel Castro formed a group of anti-Batista rebels called “The Movement.” Fidel Castro had become a well-known activist and wrote articles intended to fire up the public in an underground newspaper El Acusador (The Accuser). In one year, his group grew to about 1,200 people. They began accumulating weapons with the idea that they would openly attack a Batista stronghold as a uniformed militant force. Being careful, Castro kept his intentions secret and only a few people knew that the target would be the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba. The attack on the second largest military barracks in Cuba, named after General Guillermón Moncada, a hero of the War of Independence, was worked out in the tiny two-room apartment of Abel Santamaría. Abel and his sister Haydée lived on the corner of 25th and O Streets in El Vedado, Havana. Only Abel, Haydée and seven other people were entrusted with the details of the attack. Tight security was maintained throughout and since the volunteers of the revolution were divided into cells, few of them knew each other…. One hundred and thirty two men and two women went up against 1,000 trained soldiers and although the battle ended badly for the Castro brothers, the attack on the barracks caused a public fury throughout Cuba. At his sentencing for leading the failed mission, Fidel delivered his famous “History will Absolve Me” speech. Read more in “The Exciting Story of Cuba.

The official position of the present Cuban government is that President Machado had Mella assassinated, but it recognizes that both Vittorio Vidali and the vivacious Tina Modotti were Stalinist operatives. Vidali was well known in Spain as Carlos or Comandante Contreras, the Commander of the Communist 5th Régiment of the Republican Militia. He was greatly feared, being a known assassin, and was allegedly responsible for the deaths of many anti-Stalinists within the Communist ranks. Later when he returned to Mexico, Vidali was acknowledged as having been involved in the May 24, 1940, failed attack on Trotsky’s life. On August 20, 1940, another Stalinist and Soviet NKVD agent, Ramón Mercader, an accomplice to Vidali, sank a mountaineering pickaxe deep into Trotsky’s skull. Taken to a Mexico City hospital, Trotsky lingered long enough to identify his attacker and died the following day. Mercader was convicted and sentenced to twenty years in a Mexican prison for the murder. During his time in prison, Joseph Stalin as leader of the Soviet Union awarded him the Order of Lenin, in absentia. After his release in 1961, Mercader officially became a Hero of the Soviet Union. On October 18, 1978, at the age of 65, Ramón Mercader died in Havana.

Dear Mr. Fraser, I write to inform you that I shall not visit Helwater this quarter; official affairs detain me. […] These affairs concern an inquiry into the explosion of a cannon in Germany, June last. I was summoned before an official Commission of Inquiry, which… He wrote steadily, pausing now and then to compose a sentence, and found that the exercise did seem to bring his seething thoughts to earth. He wrote of the commission, Marchmont, Twelvetrees, and Oswald, Edgar and his consortium, Jones, Gormley, the corpse of Tom Pilchard… […] It is a brutal occupation, he wrote, and God help me, if I am no hero, I am damned good at it. You understand, I think, for I know you are the same. […] God help me further, he wrote, more slowly. I am afraid. […] I am afraid of everything. Afraid of what I may have done, unknowing—of what I might do. I am afraid of death, of mutilation, incapacity—but any soldier fears these things, and fights regardless. I have done it, and— He wished to write firmly, and will do it again. Instead, the words formed beneath his quill as they formed in his mind; he could not help but write them. I am afraid that I might find myself unable. Not only unable to fight, but to command.

It’s just so typical. I’ve had writer’s block for days now− I literally couldn’t write a coherent sentence− then about a minute before Travis walks through the door it’s like the sea parted and Moses was on the other side looking relieved and waving at me. It’s pretty depressing when your mental metaphors are better than the crap you managed to put on paper that week. They say when you have writer’s block you should clear your mind and the ‘inspiration’ will just come. But my mind doesn’t go blank, and I’ve spent the last three hours staring at the wall and wondering if you want French toast in France, do you ask for French toast, or just toast? And now, because I’ve thought about it so much, I actually care what the answer is. Obviously not one of my better days.

each other. No words were needed, they both felt the same. What a load of bollocks. They’d known each other two minutes. How could they be in love? Joan was just going over the top. The four glasses clinked together. “Tuck in guys. This is one of my better dishes. My mam helped with it too so I know it’s going to be top notch.” Trevor rubbed his hands together and grabbed his fork. There were no flies on him he was tucking in. Food was his comfort and now Joan was off the market he needed it more than ever. Mabel picked at the food on her plate, nibbling, watching everyone else around her. Patrick sat next to Joan and every chance he got he kissed her, held her hand. He knew he was on show here tonight and he was making sure he ticked all the boxes. * Cath and Katrina were chatting in the yard. The winds were blowing with force. They both looked freezing as they marched around the concrete yard. There were high steel fences with barbed wire on the top of it. There was no way out. Katrina needed a friendly ear, some advice, someone to ease her heavy heart. Once she’d filled Cath in on everything that had happened they both sat on a bench not far from the fence.  The screws watched them with caution and never took their eyes from them. They were high-risk prisoners. Cath let out a laboured breath and bit down hard on her bottom lip. “For crying out loud didn’t I tell you to keep away from that prick. Look what’s happened now. You’ve fucking blown it. You were getting out of this shit-hole in a few more months and you’ve gone and fucked it all. Where is your head at woman, you should of steered well clear of any trouble?” Katrina snivelled, her eyes flooding with tears. “I know, I just wanted to hurt him like he’s hurt me. I loved that man with all my heart and he just fucked off and left me. I’ve lost it all Cath. My kids, my home, everything I ever loved. How can I tell my kids I’m not coming home? It will break their hearts. I’ve made promises to them. A better life, no more trouble. Their mother home for good.” “They’ve not charged you yet. Wait until it’s set in stone and then you know what you’re dealing with.” Cath held her in her arms and squeezed her tight. She knew as much as the other person that she wasn’t getting out of jail anytime soon. The crime she’d committed would be all over the news soon and the public would know who she was. She’d seen it so many times before. Once an offender was named, the nation would be all over it. No doubt Norman would be made out to be the hero too. There would be no story about the way he treated this woman, no mention of all the women he’d abused in the past. Maybe someone should have grassed him up. Katrina had warned him if he she got her collar felt there would be repercussions. Why hadn’t she put his name in the picture yet? Now was the time to put her cards on the table and look after number one. Maybe if she turned Queen’s evidence she could get a deal with the prosecution. A lesser sentence, a few years knocked off. Cath was aware of this but to be a Judas was another matter. Katrina would have to

In his story Sarrasine, Balzac, speaking of a castrato disguised as a woman, writes this sentence: “It was Woman, with her sudden fears, her irrational whims, her instinctive fears, her unprovoked bravado, her daring and her delicious delicacy of feeling” Who is speaking in this way? Is it the story’s hero, concerned to ignore the castrato con - cealed beneath the woman? Is it the man Balzac, endowed by his personal experience with a philosophy of Woman? Is it the author Balzac, professing certain “literary” ideas of femininity? Is it universal wisdom? or romantic psychology? It will always be impossible to know, for the good reason that all writing is itself this special voice, consisting of several indiscernible voices, and that literature is precisely the invention of this voice, to which we cannot assign a specific origin: literature is that neuter, that composite, that oblique into which every subject escapes, the trap where all identity is lost, beginning with the very identity of the body that writes.

In Colonel Montgomery’s hands these up-river raids reached the dignity of a fine art. His conceptions of foraging were rather more Western and liberal than mine, and on these excursions he fully indemnified himself for any undue abstinence demanded of him when in camp. I remember being on the wharf, with some naval officers, when he came down from his first trip. The steamer seemed an animated hen-coop. Live poultry hung from the foremast shrouds, dead ones from the mainmast, geese hissed from the binnacle, a pig paced the quarter-deck, and a duck’s wings were seen fluttering from a line which was wont to sustain duck-trousers. The naval heroes, mindful of their own short rations, and taking high views of one’s duties in a conquered country, looked at me reproachfully, as who should say, “Shall these things be?” In a moment or two the returning foragers had landed. “Captain——,” said Montgomery, courteously, “would you allow me to send a remarkably fine turkey for your use on board ship?” “Lieutenant——,” said Major Corwin, “may I ask your acceptance of a pair of ducks for your mess?” Never did I behold more cordial relations between army and navy than sprang into existence at those sentences. So true it is, as Charles Lamb7 says, that a single present of game may diffuse kindly sentiments through a whole community.

What is it that Australians celebrate on 26 January? Significantly, many of them are not quite sure what event they are commemorating. Their state of mind fascinated Egon Kisch, an inquisitive Czech who was in Sydney at the end of January 1935. Kisch has a place in our history as the victim, or hero, of a ludicrous chapter in the history of our immigration laws. He had been invited to Melbourne for a Congress against War and Fascism, and was forbidden to land by order of the attorney-general, R. G. Menzies. He had jumped overboard, broken his leg, gone to hospital, failed a dictation test in Gaelic and been sentenced to imprisonment and deportation. When the High Court declared Gaelic not a language, Kisch was free to hobble on our soil...

You know that you are no hero and that you never wanted to be the one. You have never wanted to die for your nation, or for freedom, or for anything else, for that matter: the fates of Winkelried and Ordon [legendary heroes who died for their countries, which were overwhelmed by superior enemies] have never tempted you. You have always wanted to be alive, to live like a normal person, to have respect for yourself and for your friends. You have always enjoyed the moral comfort that allows you to take pleasure in your inner freedom, in beautiful women, and in wine. This war surprised you in the company of a pretty woman, not while you were plotting an assault on the Central Committee headquarters. Nevertheless, they did declare this war on you and over thirty million other people, and so you are forced to recognise that amid the street roundups, the ignoble court sentences, the despicable radio programs, and the distribution of leaflets by underground Solidarity you will not regain the normalcy that was based on respect for yourself. Now you must choose between moral and material stability, because you know that today's "normalcy" will have the bitter taste of self-defeat. And you will not, for the sake of life's enjoyments, give in to the tempting offers of freedom made by the policeman, who seeks to delude you with promises of happiness but really brings suffering and inner hell instead. No, this is not heroism. It is mere common sense.

There comes a time in every story when the hero finally gets everything they ever wanted. And that's usually when the music swells and the credits roll or the last page turns or we just flip the channel. I believe there's a reason for that. We don't want to spend too much time with somebody once they've gotten everything they've ever wanted. They become insufferable. They become unsympathetic. They start using words like whom properly in a sentence. There's no more mountain left for them to climb, so we're out. We're underdog people. Get out of here with your all my dream already came true nonsense. Just take your football and go home, Rudy. Go live your happy life and let us be. We're already on to the next unlikely story. But what if success was where the real trouble began? What if we got everything we ever wanted, only to find out it doesn't change a thing about not liking this skin we have to do life in, this dirt still caked under our fingernails. That once we go home and tuck ourselves between the cool cotton sheets, where it's just us and the darkness settled in, it hasn't changed a thing about how easily we can lay our head down and fall asleep at night. ... The hero, it turns out, is flawed. Deeply, deeply, deeply flawed. And no amount of success is going to undo that. No relentless pursuit of more is going to erase what was missing. It's going to take digging in and doing the hard work of healing if there's any hope of changing all that. but how do e you gather up the nerve when it already feels so damaged? And is that the kind of story anybody will ever care about? ... We don't really make movies about what happened after someone got everything they ever wanted. About what happens when the hero at last has to come face-to-face with what no amount of success will ever fix. But that's the story we're living now.

We are merely escaped fugitives about to steal some horses to avoid a death sentence.

The oral tradition of runes may pre-date the written one during the time when the Germanic tribes were active. “The pronunciation of words was recognized to have a tremendous influence over the concerns of life. The impact of a sentence uttered aloud could not be questioned and could never be taken back – as if it had become somehow physical. … Words create reality, not the other way around.” (Raudvere, 2002)

He told me he intended to kill me.” Shock filled the raw, low sentence. Brus didn’t interrupt, sensing she needed him to listen and not respond. “I…I got away because I had a flash of memory—” Her words halted then, and her searching gaze delved into his. “Ye taught me how to defend myself.” It wasn’t a question, but he nodded. “Why?” “I could nae stand the thought of ye ever being helpless,” he said, answering honestly.

—which includes his own name,” the love god finished. “I am Cal,” Cal repeated. “And this is Zethes! My brother!” “Wow,” Leo said. “That was almost three sentences, man! Way to go.” Cal

Attempting to continue my sentence, I stammer, “But, uh, well…” What the fuck was I saying before he smirky-smoldered at me like fucking Flynn Rider?

Leo figured that meant: “KILL THEM!” Easy translation, since most of the coach’s sentences involved the word kill.

When corrupt lawyers become judges, do you think they will suddenly change? No, They will have more power and resources to commit further corruption. More cases will be thrown out, and criminals will never be held accountable. Only the poor and those unwilling to pay will be sentenced and prosecuted. They will favor criminals over law-abiding citizens because criminals are willing to pay. Victims will never get justice.

Tale of Two Cities flanked David Copperfield on either side. I retrieved the book and I placed Annabelle’s folded letter inside to mark page 1. Before I closed it, I read the first sentence. “Whether I shall turn out to be to hero of my own life, or whether that station will by held by anybody else, these pages must show,” it started. It sounded good.

Frog-faced Lord Slynt sat at the end of the council table wearing a black velvet doublet and a shiny cloth-of-gold cape, nodding with approval every time the king pronounced a sentence. Sansa stared hard at his ugly face, remembering how he had thrown down her father for Ser Ilyn to behead, wishing she could hurt him, wishing that some hero would throw him down and cut off his head. But

Both Mussolini and Hitler could perceive the space available, and were willing to trim their movements to fit. The space was partly symbolic. The Nazi Party early shaped its identity by staking a claim to the street and fought with communist gangs for control of working-class neighborhoods of Berlin. At issue was not merely a few meters of urban “turf.” The Nazis sought to portray themselves as the most vigorous and effective force against the communists—and, at the same time, to portray the liberal state as incapable of preserving public security. The communists, at the same time, were showing that the Social Democrats were unequipped to deal with an incipient revolutionary situation that needed a fighting vanguard. Polarization was in the interest of both. Fascist violence was neither random nor indiscriminate. It carried a well-calculated set of coded messages: that communist violence was rising, that the democratic state was responding to it ineptly, and that only the fascists were tough enough to save the nation from antinational terrorists. An essential step in the fascist march to acceptance and power was to persuade law-and-order conservatives and members of the middle class to tolerate fascist violence as a harsh necessity in the face of Left provocation. It helped, of course, that many ordinary citizens never feared fascist violence against themselves, because they were reassured that it was reserved for national enemies and “terrorists” who deserved it. Fascists encouraged a distinction between members of the nation who merited protection and outsiders who deserved rough handling. One of the most sensational cases of Nazi violence before power was the murder of a communist laborer of Polish descent in the town of Potempa, in Silesia, by five SA men in August 1932. It became sensational when the killers’ death sentences were commuted, under Nazi pressure, to life imprisonment. Party theorist Alfred Rosenberg took the occasion to underscore the difference between “bourgeois justice,” according to which “one Polish Communist has the same weighting as five Germans, frontsoldiers,” and National Socialist ideology, according to which “one soul does not equal another soul, one person not another.” Indeed, Rosenberg went on, for National Socialism, “there is no ‘law as such.’” The legitimation of violence against a demonized internal enemy brings us close to the heart of fascism. For some, fascist violence was more than useful: it was beautiful. Some war veterans and intellectuals (Marinetti and Ernst Jünger were both) indulged in the aesthetics of violence. Violence often appealed to men too young to have known it in 1914–18 and who felt cheated of their war. It appealed to some women, too. But it is a mistake to regard fascist success as solely the triumph of the D’Annunzian hero. It was the genius of fascism to wager that many an orderly bourgeois (or even bourgeoise) would take some vicarious satisfaction in a carefully selective violence, directed only against “terrorists” and “enemies of the people.” A climate of polarization helped the new fascist catch-all parties sweep up many who became disillusioned with the old deference (“honoratioren”) parties. This was risky, of course. Polarization could send the mass of angry protesters to the Left under certain conditions (as in Russia in 1917). Hitler and Mussolini understood that while Marxism now appealed mainly to blue-collar workers (and not to all of them), fascism was able to appeal more broadly across class lines. In postrevolutionary western Europe, a climate of polarization worked in fascism’s favor.

I put my arms around you,” she would tell Michael Stankewicz from the witness stand on the day he was sentenced. “To comfort you.

THE SAVE THE CAT! SHORT SYNOPSIS TEMPLATE PARAGRAPH 1: Setup, flawed hero, and Catalyst (2–4 sentences) PARAGRAPH 2: Break Into 2 and/or Fun and Games (2–4 sentences) PARAGRAPH 3: Theme Stated, Midpoint hint and/or All Is Lost hint, ending in a cliffhanger (1 to 3 sentences)

A masterfully written odyssey with a fast pace and stylish dialogue. The true story of a bad start in life that was turned into something great. This polished first offering from author Benjamin S. Brasford is a tour de force that details the highs and lows of an epic personal journey towards self growth and personal expansion. This is the modern day account of the Journey of the Hero. The Life of Benjamin S. Brasford, covering 20 pages, has an almost effortless flow that succeeds in delivering a mighty punch. This expertly written and richly blended true life story of drama, religious ritual, and psychological integration and reconciliation makes for a seriously smooth read. Content rich sentences; thought-provoking usage of names, and a kaliedoscope of images that move across the pages like cupfuls of mist weaving their way through the reader's subconscious give this book a deep rich feel that hovers just between 'dangerous' and 'delicious'. An addictive book - with numerous layers and levels, that makes serious readers want to read it again and again!

Hutchins’s role as the hero of the WannaCry story would be complicated just three months later, when he was arrested by the FBI after attending the DEF CON hacker conference. Hutchins was charged with computer fraud and abuse related to his alleged creation and sale of banking malware years earlier. In July 2019, however, a judge sentenced him to no jail time, in part due to his WannaCry work.

Nowadays everyone is involved in ideas—or, to be more accurate, in ideology. The impulse of novelists, which has been much decried, to make their heroes intellectuals of some sort was, however dull it became, perfectly sound: they wanted people of whom it was clear that ideas were an important condition of their lives. But this limitation to avowed intellectuals is no longer needed; in our society the simplest person is involved with ideas. Every person we meet in the course of our daily life, no matter how unlettered he may be, is groping with sentences toward a sense of his life and his position in it; and he has what almost always goes with an impulse to ideology, a good deal of animus and anger. What would so much have pleased the social philosophers of an earlier time has come to pass—ideological organization has cut across class organization, generating loyalties and animosities which are perhaps even more intense than those of class. The increase of conscious formulation, the increase of a certain kind of consciousness by formulation, makes a fact of modern life which is never sufficiently estimated. This is a condition which has been long in developing, for it began with the movements of religious separatism; now politics, and not only politics but the requirements of a whole culture, make verbal and articulate the motive of every human act: we eat by reason, copulate by statistics, rear children by rule, and the one impulse we do not regard with critical caution is that toward ideation, which increasingly becomes a basis of prestige. This presents the novel with both an opportunity and a duty. The opportunity is a subject matter. Social class and the conflicts it produces may not be any longer a compelling subject to the novelist, but the organization of society into ideological groups presents a subject scarcely less absorbing. Ideological society has, it seems to me, nearly as full a range of passion and nearly as complex a system of manners as a society based on social class. Its promise of comedy and tragedy is enormous; its assurance of relevance is perfect. Dostoevski adequately demonstrated this for us, but we never had in this country a sufficiently complex ideological situation to support it in our own practice of the novel. We have it now.

Prometheus was punished for stealing fire from the gods and giving it to people. Fire symbolizes the arts and sciences – the fruits of our cognitive faculties. Although he was sentenced by Zeus to eternal torture for sharing his knowledge, Prometheus is seen by most readers as a hero, and Zeus as a villain.

There is a traditional optimistic story that runs as follows. Our hero is a prisoner who has been sentenced to death by a tyrannical king, but gains a reprieve by promising to teach the king’s favourite horse to talk within a year. That night, a fellow prisoner asks what possessed him to make such a bargain. He replies, ‘A lot can happen in a year. The horse might die. The king might die. I might die. Or the horse might talk!

But how to push out? How to animate the static portrait? Ford Madox Ford, in his book Joseph Conrad: A Personal Remembrance, writes wonderfully about getting a character up and running—what he calls “getting a character in.” He says that Conrad himself “was never really satisfied that he had really and sufficiently got his characters in; he was never convinced that he had convinced the reader; this accounting for the great lengths of some of his books.” I like this idea, that some of Conrad’s novels are long because he couldn’t stop fiddling, page after page, with the verisimilitude of his characters—it raises the specter of an infinite novel. At least the apprentice writer, with his bundle of nerves, is in good company, then. Ford and Conrad loved a sentence from a Maupassant story, “La Reine Hortense”: “He was a gentleman with red whiskers who always went first through a doorway.” Ford comments: “That gentleman is so sufficiently got in that you need no more of him to understand how he will act. He has been ‘got in’ and can get to work at once.” Ford is right. Very few brushstrokes are needed to get a portrait walking, as it were; and—a corollary of this—that the reader can get as much from small, short-lived, even rather flat characters as from large, round, towering heroes and heroines. To my mind, Gurov, the adulterer in “The Lady with the Little Dog,” is as vivid, as rich, and as sustaining as Gatsby or Dreiser’s Hurstwood, or even Jane Eyre.

In Jordan, and this is only one example, there is a law on the books, as there is in most countries, that a murder must be punished by years in prison. But next to this law, are two small articles, ninety-seven and ninety-eight, specifying that judges will be lenient with those found guilty of honor crimes. The penalty is generally six months to two years in prison. The condemned, sometimes considered heroes, usually do not serve the whole sentence.

I remembered the moment I read a novel for the first time. The texture of the soft paper touching my fingertips. The black letters blooming on a white field. The texture of the page I folded with my hands. 「 It isn't important to read the letters. The important thing is where the letters lead you. 」 My mother, who loved books, used to say this. At least for me, it wasn't just a saying. The gaps in the black print. My own little snow garden lay in between the letters. This space, which was too small for someone to go into, was a perfect place for a child who liked to hide. Every time a pleasant sound was heard, the letters stacked up like snow. In it, I became a hero. I had adventures, loved and dreamt. Thus, I read, read and read again. I remembered the first time I was about to finish a book. It was like being deprived of the world. The protagonist and supporting characters walked off with the sentence 'They lived happily ever after' and I was left alone at the end of the story. In my vanity and sense of betrayal, my young self struggled because I couldn't stand the loneliness. 「 This… is the end? 」 Perhaps it was similar to learning about death. For the first time, I realized that something was finite. My mother said, 「This is the end. 」 「There isn't anything that comes next? 」 「There is no 'next'. 」 My mother was cold as she told me a brutal truth. 「 However, just because it is the end doesn't mean you've seen the whole story. 」 Then she gave me wise advice. 「 Yes? 」 「 Read it again. 」 Reread the finished story. As a child, I didn't know what this meant. 「 Why read a story I already know? 」 「 If you read it again, it will definitely be a different story. 」 「…I don't want to. 」 I was stubborn because I was afraid of feeling the deprivation again. Then my mother said, 「 Do you want to read it together? 」 Thus, I learnt to read again. At first, I only saw the main character's position. The second reading showed the position of the supporting character and the third reading showed the position of the enemy. The story changed every time I read it. The story was over but it wasn't over. The story wouldn't end unless the reader gave up on the story. I still thought about it often. What if my mother had said something else at that time? All fiction was fake and it would just be a loss of my life if I read it. Would I then have a lot of friends? What if I didn't study hard, wasn't bullied and didn't run away from the reality given to me? Sparks appeared in the air and the flowing memories were broken. 「 Kim Dokja. You look relaxed. 」

Franklin and Jefferson understood balance. They were part of an Enlightenment era that embraced the scientific method of testing and revising beliefs based on evidence. Both of them studied Isaac Newton, whose mechanics explained how contending forces could be brought into equilibrium. Their goal on contentious issues was not to triumph but to find the right balance, an art that has been lost today. Compromisers may not make great heroes, Franklin liked to say, but they do make great democracies.

Writing a novel is something beyond horror... Habil Yashar Writing a novel is something beyond horror... First of all, it can take months, even years, to think about what topic to write about. Just as you cannot determine when your time will come, you cannot even determine what topic to write about. It is born suddenly - from the impact that some event or some person has on you, or from something completely different. Its birth is so strange that... Perhaps stranger, more mysterious, more mysterious than the birth of a person... The birth of a person is based on certain laws, but there are no rules or any order in writing a novel. How can one write something whose birth is so strange... Imagine the difference between the feeling of waiting for the next lines with inexplicable excitement when you finish the first sentence, and the feeling of seeing the pages and sheets pile up and finally seeing the completion of a novel... Every line you write, every line you think is perhaps written at the cost of your blood, the ink is just a tool. For a writer, the nights spent writing can be so bright that they don't feel dark, because he is enlightened while writing, he lives while writing, but at the same time, the mornings can be as shocking as darkness, because he is always searching for something to write, always thinking. It shouldn't be so easy for you to write the fate of every character you create, to have a shadow and always follow it no matter where it is. You put so much life into unreal characters that you don't care about your own life as much as you give it your all. Because, you, yes, you are responsible for the fate of every character you create and you bear a great responsibility for every event that has happened to them or will happen. If non-writers are responsible for their families, and in a broader sense, humanity, then if writers are responsible for each of the characters they create (at the same time, they are also responsible to their families and humanity, like everyone else), imagine the weight of the burden they carry. Aside from responsibility, writers sacrifice even their health for them. But in return, they gain the name of a writer, eternity. Characters dominate your soul so much that... It's as if they are always around you, in dialogue with you. Regardless of where and when, they won't let go of you, they'll joke with you, they can even judge you and make you cry. Because, non-existent characters actually come to you as if they were real, and sometimes you think of yourself, not them, but rather as a non-existent being, flowing away like water. Perhaps they are your closest friends, confidants, heroes. Because in each of them there are sparks of your thoughts, of your energy. But along with all this, you have also given them freedom, leaving it up to them to choose in everything. Otherwise, in addition to being a dictatorial writer, you will be remembered as someone who does not respect their characters... Doesn't the existence of a writer depend on the perfection of their characters as well as on their works? Writing is something beyond horror, just as it is something beyond life. Habil Yashar