Sideways Best Quotes

Telling lies is a bit like tiling bathrooms - if you don't know how to do it properly, it's best not to try.

One of my rules is never to look sideways at what other people are doing but instead, do what I feel is right.

Shivers heaved out a sigh. “Just trying to make tomorrow that bit better than today is all. I’m one of those … you’ve got a word for it, don’t you?” “Idiots?” He looked sideways at her. “It was a different one I had in mind.” “Optimists.” “That’s the one. I’m an optimist.” “How’s it working out for you?” “Not great, but I keep hoping.” “That’s optimists. You bastards never learn.

Michael patted him on the shoulder. “I like this plan,” he said. “You and Eve, picking up cake and flowers, and you can’t even say a word. Should be tons of fun.” Shane almost choked, and gave Michael a sideways glare. Michael sent him a hundred-watt smile in return—no fangs, which was probably for the best.

Auri hopped down from the chimney and skipped over to where I stood, her hair streaming behind her. "Hello Kvothe." She took a half-step back. "You reek." I smiled my best smile of the day. "Hello Auri," I said. "You smell like a pretty young girl." "I do," she agreed happily. She stepped sideways a little, then forward again, moving lightly on the balls of her bare feet. "What did you bring me?" she asked. "What did you bring me?" I countered. She grinned. "I have an apple that thinks it is a pear," she said, holding it up. "And a bun that thinks it is a cat. And a lettuce that thinks it is a lettuce." "It's a clever lettuce then." "Hardly," she said with a delicate snort. "Why would anything clever think it was a lettuce?" "Even if it is a lettuce?" I asked. "Especially then," she said. "Bad enough to be a lettuce. How awful to think you are a lettuce too." She shook her head sadly, her hair following the motion as if she were underwater. I unwrapped my bundle. "I brought you some potatoes, half a squash, and a bottle of beer that thinks it is a loaf of bread." "What does the squash think it is?" she asked curiously, looking down at it. She held her hands clasped behind her back "It knows it's a squash," I said. "But it's pretending to be the setting sun." "And the potatoes?" she asked. "They're sleeping," I said. "And cold, I'm afraid." She looked up at me, her eyes gentle. "Don't be afraid," she said, and reached out and rested her fingers on my cheek for the space of a heartbeat, her touch lighter than the stroke of a feather. "I'm here. You're safe.

Whenever the horse stopped (which it did very often), he fell off in front; and, whenever it went on again (which it generally did rather suddenly), he fell off behind. Otherwise he kept on pretty well, except that he had a habit of now and then falling off sideways; and, as he generally did this on the side on which Alice was walking, she soon found that it was the best plan not to walk quite close to the horse.

The future is unwritten. there are best case scenarios. There are worst-case scenarios. both of them are great fun to write about if you' re a science fiction novelist, but neither of them ever happens in the real world. What happens in the real world is always a sideways-case scenario. World-changing marvels to us, are only wallpaper to our children.

I had as yet no notion that life every now and then becomes literature—not for long, of course, but long enough to be what we best remember, and often enough so that what we eventually come to mean by life are those moments when life, instead of going sideways, backwards, forward, or nowhere at all, lines out straight, tense and inevitable, with a complication, climax, and, given some luck, a purgation, as if life had been made and not happened.

The world tilted slightly sideways. 'I think I need to sit down.' The floor seemed like the best option. It was close and he'd already proved that he could hit it. His legs folded.

You're such a cheater. The best wood in your golf bag is your pencil!

Apologize," I ordered, striding in her direction once again. "What for?"Her gaze shifted, and she looked like she was about to throw a punch at me. "For not kissing me back when you clearly wanted to, you little liar. For fucking one of my best friends. For making that year the worst year of my life since I was nine. Apologize for not being mine when you should've been. Because Emilia, baby..." I tilted my head sideways. "It was always fucking us and you know it.

Ridoc bedhops like a fucking frog, but no, let’s give me crap.” We make it a few steps before none of us can smother our laughs. “A frog?” Ridoc grins from Sawyer’s left. “That’s the best you can do? A frog?” “Tara and I are old news.” Rhi shrugs. “Leadership is hard on both our schedules. We’re together when we have time, but it’s not like we’re seeing other people.” She shoots a sideways glance my way. “But he’s right, you and Riorson bicker like you’ve been married fifty years and neither of you wants to do the dishes.” “That is not true,” I protest as Sawyer nods. “Agreed,” Ridoc says. “And it’s always the same fight.” He lifts his hand to his chest. “I’ll trust you if you stop keeping secrets!” He drops the hand and scowls. “It’s my secretive nature that attracted you, and why can’t you just stay out of harm’s way for five fucking minutes?” Rhi laughs so hard she nearly chokes. I narrow my gaze on Ridoc. “Keep talking, and I’ll plant my dagger somewhere that prevents all frog-like activity.

Real loved one's aren't afraid, and will suggest to you, what's in your best interest... because they wouldn't want too see you suffer the consequences of your, sideways, emotional impulse(s). To see you crash and burn is the gratification of [the] 'yes folk' lurking in your corner. You may not agree, but always consider the voice(s) that have consistently kept it real.

My funny old brain, like those of many poets, has always done its best work sideways, seeking out tricky enjambments and surprising slant rhymes to craft lines capable of pulling their own weight.

Sometimes, staying put, going sideways, or moving backward is actually the best way to eliminate what blocks or impedes your path.

Jess and Ric watched as a shifted Blayne chased the squirrel, caught the squirrel, toyed with the squirrel, let the squirrel go, only to go chasing after it again. Until she was distracted by the crow that she tried to catch in her mouth. “So…when are you due?” Jess winced at Ric’s question as Blayne ran into a tree, backed up, and went after the bird again. “Mid-March.” “And you’re having a—” “Yes. Yes, I’m having a wolfdog.” “Huh.” Blayne was turning in circles now, trying to catch her tail. “Blayne,” Jess called out. “Blayne!” The wolfdog immediately stopped and started to walk over to Jess and Ric. Too bad the dizziness got the best of her, though, because she stumbled sideways into another tree and slid down, panting.

But that would mean it was originally a sideways number eight. That makes no sense at all. Unless..." She paused as understanding dawned. "You think it was the symbol for infinity?" "Yes, but not the usual one. A special variant. Do you see how one line doesn't fully connect in the middle? That's Euler's infinity symbol. Absolutus infinitus." "How is it different from the usual one?" "Back in the eighteenth century, there were certain mathematical calculations no one could perform because they involved series of infinite numbers. The problem with infinity, of course, is that you can't come up with a final answer when the numbers keep increasing forever. But a mathematician named Leonhard Euler found a way to treat infinity as if it were a finite number- and that allowed him to do things in mathematical analysis that had never been done before." Tom inclined his head toward the date stone. "My guess is whoever chiseled that symbol was a mathematician or scientist." "If it were my date stone," Cassandra said dryly, "I'd prefer the entwined hearts. At least I would understand what it means." "No, this is much better than hearts," Tom exclaimed, his expression more earnest than any she'd seen from him before. "Linking their names with Euler's infinity symbol means..." He paused, considering how best to explain it. "The two of them formed a complete unit... a togetherness... that contained infinity. Their marriage had a beginning and end, but every day of it was filled with forever. It's a beautiful concept." He paused before adding awkwardly, "Mathematically speaking.

If our bodies were different, though, our metaphors would be different, as Olaf Stapledon showed in Star Maker. Crabs walk sideways, for instance. If crabs could talk, they would undoubtedly describe progress in difficult negotiations as sidling toward agreement and express the hope for a better future by saying their best days are still beside them. Our bodies prime our metaphors, and our metaphors prime how we think and act.

Once again he was aware of eyes staring fixedly at him. He glanced sideways into the long, pointed face of Goodboy Bindle Featherstone, rearing up in a pose best described as The Last Puppy in the Shop. To his astonishment, he found himself reaching over and scratching it behind its ears, or at least behind the two spiky things at the sides of its head which were presumably its ears. It responded with a strange noise that sounded like a complicated blockage in a brewery. He took his hand away hurriedly. “It's all right,” said Lady Ramkin. “It's his stomachs rumbling. That means he likes you.” To his amazement, Vimes found that he was rather pleased about this. As far as he could recall, nothing in his life before had thought him worth a burp.

William Butler Yeats’s “Second Coming” seems perfectly to render our present predicament: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.” This is an excellent description of the current split between anaemic liberals and impassioned fundamentalists. “The best” are no longer able to fully engage, while “the worst” engage in racist, religious, sexist fanaticism. However, are the terrorist fundamentalists, be they Christian or Muslim, really fundamentalists in the authentic sense of the term? Do they really believe? What they lack is a feature that is easy to discern in all authentic fundamentalists, from Tibetan Buddhists to the Amish in the U.S.: the absence of resentment and envy, the deep indifference towards the non-believers’ way of life. If today’s so-called fundamentalists really believe they have their way to truth, why should they feel threatened by non-believers, why should they envy them? When a Buddhist encounters a Western hedonist, he hardly condemns him. He just benevolently notes that the hedonist’s search for happiness is self-defeating. In contrast to true fundamentalists, the terrorist pseudo-fundamentalists are deeply bothered, intrigued, fascinated by the sinful life of the non-believers. One can feel that, in fighting the sinful Other, they are fighting their own temptation. These so-called Christian or Muslim fundamentalists are a disgrace to true fundamentalists. It is here that Yeats’s diagnosis falls short of the present predicament: the passionate intensity of a mob bears witness to a lack of true conviction. Deep in themselves, terrorist fundamentalists also lack true conviction-their violent outbursts are proof of it. How fragile the belief of a Muslim must be, if he feels threatened by a stupid caricature in a low-circulation Danish newspaper. The fundamentalist Islamic terror is not grounded in the terrorists’ conviction of their superiority and in their desire to safeguard their cultural-religious identity from the onslaught of global consumerist civilization. The problem with fundamentalists is not that we consider them inferior to us, but rather that they themselves secretly consider themselves inferior. This is why our condescending, politically correct assurances that we feel no superiority towards them only make them more furious and feeds their resentment. The problem is not cultural difference (their effort to preserve their identity), but the opposite fact that the fundamentalists are already like us, that secretly they have already internalized our standards and measure themselves by them. (This clearly goes for the Dalai Lama, who justifies Tibetan Buddhism in Western terms of the pursuit of happiness and avoidance of pain.) Paradoxically, what the fundamentalists really lack is precisely a dose of that true “racist” conviction of one’s own superiority.

Gabriel nudged her with his shoulder. "Look." The newborn goat was standing on his own wobbly legs, taking drunken steps. When he toppled sideways, he bleated indignantly. Gabriel started to reach for him, but Penny held him back. "Wait." Marigold roused herself and ambled over to her kid, licking him about the head until George lurched and swayed himself to his hooves, and when he nosed at her swollen underside, she allowed him to nurse. "Oh. That's lovely." Penny snuggled under Gabriel's arm. "Thank God she finally took to him," he said. "How could she not? Look how adorable he is. Best little goat in the world.

Wish you were with him?' Volfier frowned sideways. 'I wish we'd won at Ospria, then the choice wouldn't have come up. But then I wish my wife hadn't fucked the baker while I was away in the Union on campaign three years ago. Wishing don't change nothing.' Shivers grinned, and tapped at his metal eye with a fingernail. 'That there is a fact.

Your grandparents are English?" "Grandfather is,but Grandmere is French. And my other grandparents are American,of course." "Wow.You really are a mutt." St. Clair smiles. "I'm told I take after my English grandfather the most, but it's only because of the accent." "I don't know.I think of you as more English than anything else.And you don't just sound like it,you look like it,too." "I do?" He surprised. I smile. "Yeah,it's that...pasty complexion. I mean it in the best possible way," I add,at his alarmed expression. "Honestly." "Huh." St. Clair looks at me sideways. "Anyway.Last summer I couldn't bear to face my father, so it was the first time I spent the whole holiday with me mum." "And how was it? I bet the girls don't tease you about your accent anymore." He laughs. "No,they don't.But I can't help my height.I'll always be short." "And I'll always be a freak,just like my dad. Everyone tells me I take after him.He's sort of...neat,like me." He seems genuinely surprised. "What's wrong with being neat? I wish I were more organized.And,Anna,I've never met your father,but I guarantee you that you're nothing like him." "How would you know?" "Well,for one thing,he looks like a Ken doll.And you're beautiful." I trip and fall down on the sidewalk. "Are you all right?" His eyes fill with worry. I look away as he takes my hand and helps me up. "I'm fine.Fine!" I say, brushing the grit from my palms. Oh my God, I AM a freak. "You've seen the way men look at you,right?" he continues. "If they're looking, it's because I keep making a fool of myself." I hold up my scraped hands. "That guy over there is checking you out right now." "Wha-?" I turn to find a young man with long dark hair staring. "Why is he looking at me?" "I expect he likes what he sees." I flush,and he keeps talking. "In Paris, it's common to acknowledge someone attractive.The French don't avert their gaze like other cultures do. Haven't you noticed?" St. Clair thinks I'm attractive. He called me beautiful. "Um,no," I say. "I hadn't noticed." "Well.Open your eyes." But I stare at the bare tree branches, at the children with balloons, at the Japanese tour group. Anywhere but at him. We've stopped in front of Notre-Dame again.I point at the familiar star and clear my throat. "Wanna make another wish?" "You go first." He's watching me, puzzled, like he's trying to figure something out. He bites his thumbnail. This time I can't help it.All day long, I've thought about it.Him.Our secret. I wish St. Clair would spend the night again.

SOPHOMORE YEAR Before he was mine and I was his... "You weren't in the lunchroom today," Jack said, coming up behind me at my locker. "Jules says you're never in the cafeteria on Wednesdays." I tried to calm the flush to my cheeks before I turned around to face him. My crush on Jack was getting ridiculous. Pretty soon I would be nonverbal.Just because he noticed,for the first time, that I wasn't at lunch,it didn't mean anything. I tried to keep my tone light. "Sounds like you guys had a very intriguing conversation." "Oh,we did." Jack fell into step beside me,and we walked down the hallway at a slower pace than everyone around us. "She said you avoid the cafeteria on Wednesdays.And she said you like me." I heard myself gasp,and I came to a stop. I'm gonna kill Jules, I thought. "So,is it true?" Jack said. I could barely hear him with the crashing waves in my ears.I started to turn away,embarrassed,but Jack stepped sideways so he was in front of me, and there was nowhere else I could look. "Is it true?" he asked again. "Yes.I hate hot-dog Wednesdays, so I don't go to the lunchroom.It's true." "That's not what I meant,Becks." "I know." "Tell me.Is it true? Do you like me?" I tried to roll my eyes,and promptly forgot how.So I just looked at the ceiling. "You know I like you. You're one of my best friends." "Friends," Jack repeated. "Of course." "Good friends?" I nodded. "More than friends?" I didn't say anything. I didn't move. Jack reached toward my hand and tugged gently on my fingers. The movement was so small,I wouldn't have seen it if I hadn't felt it. He leaned forward and said, "Tell me, friend.Is there more for us?" I looked into his eyes. "There's everything for us.

I don’t always want to see and be seen at the best parties, because I’ve done that for too many years. I want something real and true.” I pause and shoot him a sideways look. “I want a real partner, not a boyfriend who brings home a twenty two year old twink to make up a threesome for my birthday present.” “What the fuck?” I look at him and start laughing helplessly. “I just wanted the latest Jeremy Clarkson biography.

As a parent who raised his children in dysfunction, I know the parental wounds my children received were not intentional; often they were my best expression of love, sometimes coming out sideways, not as I intended.

We wrongly assume that moving forward is the only way to progress, the only way we can win. Sometimes, staying put, going sideways, or moving backward is actually the best way to eliminate what blocks or impedes your path.

The birth of spring is perhaps not the best time to cross a mountain range,’ observed Longfoot under his breath. Bayaz looked sharply sideways. ‘Some would say the best time to cross an obstacle is when one finds oneself on the wrong side of it! Or do you suggest we wait for summer?

Real loved one's aren't afraid, and will suggest to you, what's in your best interest because they wouldn't want too see you suffer the consequences of, sideways, emotional impulse(s). To see you crash and burn, time after time, is the gratification of 'yes folk' lurking in your corner. You may not agree, but always consider the voice(s) that have consistently kept it real.

My advice would be to find a good woman and steer well clear of the whole bloody business, and it’s a shame no one told me the same twenty years ago.” He looked sideways at Jezal. “But if, say, you’re stuck out on some great wide plain in the middle of nowhere and can’t avoid it, there’s three rules I’d take to a fight. First, always do your best to look the coward, the weakling, the fool. Silence is a warrior’s best armour, the saying goes. Hard looks and hard words have never won a battle yet, but they’ve lost a few.” “Look the fool, eh? I see.” Jezal had built his whole life around trying to appear the cleverest, the strongest, the most noble. It was an intriguing idea, that a man might choose to look like less than he was. “Second, never take an enemy lightly, however much the dullard he seems. Treat every man like he’s twice as clever, twice as strong, twice as fast as you are, and you’ll only be pleasantly surprised. Respect costs you nothing, and nothing gets a man killed quicker than confidence.” “Never underestimate the foe. A wise precaution.” Jezal was beginning to realise that he had underestimated this Northman. He wasn’t half the idiot he appeared to be. “Third, watch your opponent as close as you can, and listen to opinions if you’re given them, but once you’ve got your plan in mind, you fix on it and let nothing sway you. Time comes to act, you strike with no backwards glances. Delay is the parent of disaster, my father used to tell me, and believe me, I’ve seen some disasters.

Goodness gracious, Benny, why on earth would you hide this beautiful head of hair all the time?" He looks down sheepishly, sending a couple of dark curls tumbling over his forehead. The top of his head is covered in a thick layer of them, shiny and perfectly tousled in spite of his best efforts to crush them in a structured fabric dome day in and day out. The sides are cut short, which makes it harder to tell that he's hiding anything this gorgeous under those caps of his. "Maybe I thought it'd be too much for you to handle. I didn't even own a hat before this summer," he jokes with a sideways smirk. I bring my hands up and thread them both through his curls slowly before grabbing hold and pulling his head back to mine. Brushing his lips with mine, I say, "On second thought, you might've been onto something.

The rapt pupil will be forgive for assuming the Tsar of Death to be wicked and the Tsar of Life to be visrtuous. Let the truth be told: There is no virtue anywhere. Life is sly and unscrupulous, a blackguard, wolfish, severe. In service to itself, it wil commit any offense. So, too, is Death possessed of infinite strategies and a gaunt nature-but also mercy, also grace and tenderness. In his own country, Death can be kind. But of an end to their argument, we shall have none, not ever, until the end of all. So where is the country of the Tsar of Death? Where is the nation of the Tsar of Life? They are not so easy to find, yet each day you step upon both one hundred times or more. Every portion of Eath is infinitely divided between them, to the smallest unit of measure, and smaller yet. Even the specks of soil war with one another. Even the atoms strangle each other in their sleep. To reach the country of the Tsar of Life, which is both impossibly near and hopelessly far, you must not wish to arrive there, but approach is stealthily, sideways. It is best to be ill, in a fever, a delirium. In the riot of sickness, when the threatened flesh rouses itself, all redness and fluid and heat, it is easiest to topple over into the country you seek. Of course, it is just as easy, in this manner to reach the country of the Tsar of Death. Travel is never without risk.

David held my hand in an earnest way. It was confusing. I knew what I wanted but couldn’t find the words. I hoped that someday my feelings for a man would knock me sideways, that I’d get swept into the upending, tsunami-like rush that seemed to power all the best love stories. My parents had fallen in love as teenagers. My dad took my mother to her high school prom, even. I knew that teenage affairs were sometimes real and lasting. I wanted to believe that there was a guy who’d materialize and become everything to me, who’d be sexy and solid and whose effect would be so immediate and deep that I’d be willing to rearrange my priorities.

Forgetting herself entirely, Pandora let her head loll back against Gabriel's shoulder. "What kind of glue does Ivo use?" she asked languidly. "Glue?" he echoed after a moment, his mouth close to her temple, grazing softly. "For his kites." "Ah." He paused while a wave retreated. "Joiner's glue, I believe." "That's not strong enough," Pandora said, relaxed and pensive. "He should use chrome glue." "Where would he find that?" One of his hands caressed her side gently. "A druggist can make it. One part acid chromate of lime to five parts gelatin." Amusement filtered through his voice. "Does your mind ever slow down, sweetheart?" "Not even for sleeping," she said. Gabriel steadied her against another wave. "How do you know so much about glue?" The agreeable trance began to fade as Pandora considered how to answer him. After her long hesitation, Gabriel tilted his head and gave her a questioning sideways glance. "The subject of glue is complicated, I gather." I'm going to have to tell him at some point, Pandora thought. It might as well be now. After taking a deep breath, she blurted out, "I design and construct board games. I've researched every possible kind of glue required for manufacturing them. Not just for the construction of the boxes, but the best kind to adhere lithographs to the boards and lids. I've registered a patent for the first game, and soon I intend to apply for two more." Gabriel absorbed the information in remarkably short order. "Have you considered selling the patents to a publisher?" "No, I want to make the games at my own factory. I have a production schedule. The first one will be out by Christmas. My brother-in-law, Mr. Winterborne, helped me to write a business plan. The market in board games is quite new, and he thinks my company will be successful." "I'm sure it will be. But a young woman in your position has no need of a livelihood." "I do if I want to be self-supporting." "Surely the safety of marriage is preferable to the burdens of being a business proprietor." Pandora turned to face him fully. "Not if 'safety' means being owned. As things stand now, I have the freedom to work and keep my earnings. But if I marry you, everything I have, including my company, would immediately become yours. You would have complete authority over me. Every shilling I made would go directly to you- it wouldn't even pass through my hands. I'd never be able to sign a contract, or hire employees, or buy property. In the eyes of the law, a husband and wife are one person, and that person is the husband. I can't bear the thought of it. It's why I never want to marry.

Dr. John,” I began, “Love is blind;” but just then a blue subtle ray sped sideways from Dr. John’s eye: it reminded me of old days, it reminded me of his picture: it half led me to think that part, at least, of his professed persuasion of Miss Fanshawe’s naïveté was assumed; it led me dubiously to conjecture that perhaps, in spite of his passion for her beauty, his appreciation of her foibles might possibly be less mistaken, more clear-sighted, than from his general language was presumable. After all it might be only a chance look, or at best the token of a merely momentary impression. Chance or intentional real or imaginary, it closed the conversation.

What is the most beautiful place you’ve ever seen?” Dragging his gaze from the beauty of the gardens, Ian looked down at the beauty beside him. “Any place,” he said huskily, “were you are.” He saw the becoming flush of embarrassed pleasure that pinkened her cheeks, but when she spoke her voice was rueful. “You don’t have to say such things to me, you know-I’ll keep our bargain.” “I know you will,” he said, trying not to overwhelm her with avowals of love she wouldn’t yet believe. With a grin he added, “Besides, as it turned out after our bargaining session, I’m the one who’s governed by all the conditions, not you.” Her sideways glance was filled with laughter. “You were much too lenient at times, you know. Toward the end I was asking for concessions just to see how far you’d go.” Ian, who had been multiplying his fortune for the last four years by buying shipping and import-export companies, as well as sundry others, was regarded as an extremely tough negotiator. He heard her announcement with a smile of genuine surprise. “You gave me the impression that every single concession was of paramount importance to you, and that if I didn’t agree, you might call the whole thing off.” She nodded with satisfaction. “I rather thought that was how I ought to do it. Why are you laughing?” “Because,” he admitted, chuckling, “obviously I was not in my best form yesterday. In addition to completely misreading your feelings, I managed to buy a house on Promenade Street for which I will undoubtedly pay five times its worth.” “Oh, I don’t think so,” she said, and, as if she was embarrassed and needed a way to avoid meeting his gaze, she reached up and pulled a leaf off an overhanging branch. In a voice of careful nonchalance, she explained, “In matters of bargaining, I believe in being reasonable, but my uncle would assuredly have tried to cheat you. He’s perfectly dreadful about money.” Ian nodded, remembering the fortune Julius Cameron had gouged out of him in order to sign the betrothal agreement. “And so,” she admitted, uneasily studying the azure-blue sky with feigned absorption, “I sent him a note after you left itemizing all the repairs that were needed at the house. I told him it was in poor condition and absolutely in need of complete redecoration.” “And?” “And I told him you would consider paying a fair price for the house, but not one shilling more, because it needed all that.” “And?” Ian prodded. “He has agreed to sell it for that figure.” Ian’s mirth exploded in shouts of laughter. Snatching her into his arms, he waited until he could finally catch his breath, then he tipped her face up to his. “Elizabeth,” he said tenderly, “if you change your mind about marrying me, promise me you’ll never represent the opposition at the bargaining table. I swear to God, I’d be lost.” The temptation to kiss her was almost overwhelming, but the Townsende coach with its ducal crest was in the drive, and he had no idea where their chaperones might be. Elizabeth noticed the coach, too, and started toward the house. "About the gowns," she said, stopping suddenly and looking up at him with an intensely earnest expression on her beautiful face. "I meant to thank you for your generosity as soon as you arrived, but I was so happy to-that is-" She realized she'd been about to blurt out that she was happy to see him, and she was so flustered by having admitted aloud what she hadn't admitted to herself that she completely lost her thought. "Go on," Ian invited in a husky voice. "You were so happy to see me that you-" "I forgot," she admitted lamely.

— I seen him shoot two eggs off two bottles at fifty yards over his shoulder. The lefthand dead shot. Though he was slightly hampered by an occasional stammer and his gestures being also clumsy as it was still he did his best to explain. — Bottles out there, say. Fifty yards measured. Eggs on the bottles. Cocks his gun over his shoulder. Aims. He turned his body half round, shut up his right eye completely. Then he screwed his features up someway sideways and glared out into the night with an unprepossessing cast of countenance. — Pom! he then shouted once. The entire audience waited, anticipating an additional detonation, there being still a further egg. — Pom! he shouted twice. Egg two evidently demolished, he nodded and winked...

It’s a famous bull, and when they see him on the road, the passersby marvel at his size. They admire him from a distance: with the bow of his horns, he could toss any man high in the air, like an arrow—if, indeed, he hasn’t already done so. As gentle as a lamb when it suits him, he can fly into sudden rages when he feels so inclined, and people standing near him never know what’s going to happen next. The angler is peering at him sideways, out of the corner of his eye. “If I try to run away,” he’s thinking, “the bull will catch up to me before I have time to get out of the meadow. If I throw myself into the river, I’ll drown because I can’t swim. If I lie down and pretend to be dead, they say he’ll just come over to sniff me and leave me alone. But can I be quite sure? And what if he doesn’t go away? How dreadful! Best thing is to pretend I’m not worried, even if I am.

Our life together was filled with contrasts. One week we were croc hunting with Dateline in Cape York. Only a short time after that, Steve and I found ourselves out of our element entirely, at the CableACE Award banquet in Los Angeles. Steve was up for an award as host of the documentary Ten Deadliest Snakes in the World. He lost out to the legendary Walter Cronkite. Any time you lose to Walter Cronkite, you can’t complain too much. After the awards ceremony, we got roped into an after-party that was not our cup of tea. Everyone wore tuxedos. Steve wore khaki. Everyone drank, smoked, and made small talk, none of which Steve did at all. We got separated, and I saw him across the room looking quite claustrophobic. I sidled over. “Why don’t we just go back up to our room?” I whispered into his ear. This proved to be a terrific idea. It fit in nicely with our plans for starting a family, and it was quite possibly the best seven minutes of my life! After our stay in Los Angeles, Steve flew directly back to the zoo, while I went home by way of one my favorite places in the world, Fiji. We were very interested in working there with crested iguanas, a species under threat. I did some filming for the local TV station and checked out a population of the brilliantly patterned lizards on the Fijian island of Yadua Taba. When I got back to Queensland, I discovered that I was, in fact, expecting. Steve and I were over the moon. I couldn’t believe how thrilled he was. Then, mid-celebration, he suddenly pulled up short. He eyed me sideways. “Wait a minute,” he said. “You were just in Fiji for two weeks.” “Remember the CableACE Awards? Where you got bored in that room full of tuxedos?” He gave me a sly grin. “Ah, yes,” he said, satisfied with his paternity (as if there was ever any doubt!). We had ourselves an L.A. baby.

For Delta blueman Robert Johnson and his contemporaries, the train was the eternal metaphor for the travelling life, and it still holds true today. There is no travel like it. Train lines carve through all facets of a nation. While buses stick to major highways and planes reduce the unfolding of lives to a bird's eye view, trains putter through the domains of the rich and the poor, the desperate and the idle, rural and urban, isolated and cluttered. Through train windows you see realities rarely visible in the landscaped tourist areas. Those frames hold the untended jungle of a nation's truth. Despite my shredded emotions, there was still no feeling like dragging all your worldly possessions onto a carriage, alone and anonymous, to set off into the unknown; where any and all varieties of adventures await, where you might meet a new best friend, where the love of your life could be hiding in a dingy cafe. The clatter of the tracks is the sound of liberation.

If you live in New York City, for example, chances are you will not be going outside for a leisurely stroll down Fifth Avenue in shorts and a T-shirt and flip-flops in the month of February. Why is that? Because, if you’ve lived there for a while and experienced the local seasons, you’ve already identified that in February it will be pretty darn cold. To appropriately adapt, you will want to wear a heavy winter coat and maybe gloves and a scarf and earmuffs. It’s the same with the markets. You need to have “lived there for a while” and experienced a variety of market cycles so you know what “to wear,” or rather how to adapt, so that you are financially comfortable. Instead of knowing to wear a winter coat in February, you will know that in a choppy, sideways, bracketed market you need to adapt your system and rules so that you do not get whipsawed and stopped out a lot. Or you may need to recognize a bull market changing to a bear market so that you can exit your position in a timely fashion to lock in profits.

Any fair consideration of the depth and width of enslavement tempts insanity. First conjure the crime--the generational destruction of human bodies--and all of its related offenses--domestic terrorism, poll taxes, mass incarceration. But then try to imagine being an individual born among the remnants of that crime, among the wronged, among the plundered, and feeling the gravity of that crime all around and seeing it in the sideways glances of the perpetrators of that crime and overhearing it in their whispers and watching these people, at best, denying their power to address the crime and, at worst, denying that any crime had occurred at all, even as their entire lives revolve around the fact of a robbery so large that it is written in our very names. This is not a thought experiment. America is literally unimaginable without plundered labor shackled to a plundered land, without the organizing principle of whiteness as citizenship, without the culture crafted by the plundered, and without that culture itself being plundered.

The problem is that the Chinese have convinced themselves that they’re the most superior nation in the world,’ he said. ‘They insist on using the word yi to describe Europeans in their official memos, though we’ve asked them time and time again to use something more respectful, as yi is a designation for barbarians. And they take this attitude into all trade and legal negotiations. They recognize no laws except their own, and they don’t regard foreign trade as an opportunity, but as a pesky incursion to be dealt with.’ ‘You’d be in favour of violence, then?’ Letty asked. ‘It might be the best thing for them,’ said Professor Lovell with surprising vehemence. ‘It’d do well to teach them a lesson. China is a nation of semi-barbarous people in the grips of backward Manchu rulers, and it would do them good to be forcibly opened to commercial enterprise and progress. No, I wouldn’t oppose a bit of a shake-up. Sometimes a crying child must be spanked.’ Here Ramy glanced sideways at Robin, who looked away. What more was there to say?

Sam, Edilio’s a good guy,” Albert said, breaking in on Sam’s gloomy thoughts. “But like I said, he’ll tell the rest of them. Once the council knows, everyone knows. If everyone knows how desperate things are, what do you think will happen?” Sam smiled without humor. “About half the people will be great. The other half will freak.” “And people will end up getting killed,” Albert said. He cocked his head sideways, trying his best to look like the idea had just occurred to him. “And who is going to end up kicking butts? Who will end up playing Daddy and then be resented and blamed and finally told to go away?” “You’ve gained new skills,” Sam said bitterly. “You used to just be about working harder than anyone else and being ambitious. You’re learning how to manipulate people.” Albert’s mouth twitched and his eyes flashed angrily. “You’re not the only one walking around with a big load of responsibility on your shoulders, Sam. You play the big mean daddy who won’t let anyone have any fun, and I play the greedy businessman who is just looking out for himself. But don’t be stupid: maybe I am greedy, but without me no one eats. Or drinks.

Last Thoughts On Woody Guthrie When yer head gets twisted and yer mind grows numb When you think you're too old, too young, too smart or too dumb When yer laggin' behind an' losin' yer pace In a slow-motion crawl of life's busy race No matter what yer doing if you start givin' up If the wine don't come to the top of yer cup If the wind's got you sideways with with one hand holdin' on And the other starts slipping and the feeling is gone And yer train engine fire needs a new spark to catch it And the wood's easy findin' but yer lazy to fetch it And yer sidewalk starts curlin' and the street gets too long And you start walkin' backwards though you know its wrong And lonesome comes up as down goes the day And tomorrow's mornin' seems so far away And you feel the reins from yer pony are slippin' And yer rope is a-slidin' 'cause yer hands are a-drippin' And yer sun-decked desert and evergreen valleys Turn to broken down slums and trash-can alleys And yer sky cries water and yer drain pipe's a-pourin' And the lightnin's a-flashing and the thunder's a-crashin' And the windows are rattlin' and breakin' and the roof tops a-shakin' And yer whole world's a-slammin' and bangin' And yer minutes of sun turn to hours of storm And to yourself you sometimes say "I never knew it was gonna be this way Why didn't they tell me the day I was born" And you start gettin' chills and yer jumping from sweat And you're lookin' for somethin' you ain't quite found yet And yer knee-deep in the dark water with yer hands in the air And the whole world's a-watchin' with a window peek stare And yer good gal leaves and she's long gone a-flying And yer heart feels sick like fish when they're fryin' And yer jackhammer falls from yer hand to yer feet And you need it badly but it lays on the street And yer bell's bangin' loudly but you can't hear its beat And you think yer ears might a been hurt Or yer eyes've turned filthy from the sight-blindin' dirt And you figured you failed in yesterdays rush When you were faked out an' fooled white facing a four flush And all the time you were holdin' three queens And it's makin you mad, it's makin' you mean Like in the middle of Life magazine Bouncin' around a pinball machine And there's something on yer mind you wanna be saying That somebody someplace oughta be hearin' But it's trapped on yer tongue and sealed in yer head And it bothers you badly when your layin' in bed And no matter how you try you just can't say it And yer scared to yer soul you just might forget it And yer eyes get swimmy from the tears in yer head And yer pillows of feathers turn to blankets of lead And the lion's mouth opens and yer staring at his teeth And his jaws start closin with you underneath And yer flat on your belly with yer hands tied behind And you wish you'd never taken that last detour sign And you say to yourself just what am I doin' On this road I'm walkin', on this trail I'm turnin' On this curve I'm hanging On this pathway I'm strolling, in the space I'm taking In this air I'm inhaling Am I mixed up too much, am I mixed up too hard Why am I walking, where am I running What am I saying, what am I knowing On this guitar I'm playing, on this banjo I'm frailin' On this mandolin I'm strummin', in the song I'm singin' In the tune I'm hummin', in the words I'm writin' In the words that I'm thinkin' In this ocean of hours I'm all the time drinkin' Who am I helping, what am I breaking What am I giving, what am I taking But you try with your whole soul best Never to think these thoughts and never to let Them kind of thoughts gain ground Or make yer heart pound ...

Don't you dare,” Holly warned with an unsteady laugh, skittering away from him. “A gentleman should treat his beloved with respect, and here you are—” “The size of this cockstand is ample proof of my respect for you,” he interrupted, pulling her hand to his swollen crotch. Holly knew she should have rebuked him, but instead she found herself pressing close against his long, sturdy form. “You're impossibly vulgar,” she said against his ear. Zachary cupped her hand more tightly around himself. “That's one of the things you like best about me,” he whispered, and she couldn't help smiling. “Yes.” He nuzzled into the little space between her lace-edged neckline and the soft, warm skin of her throat. “Let me take you to the summerhouse. Just for a few minutes. No one will know.” Reluctantly she wriggled away from him. “I'll know.” Zachary shook his head with a groaning laugh, turning to brace his hands on the flower-covered wall. Dropping his head, he breathed deeply, striving to master his rampaging desire. As Holly approached him hesitantly, he glanced sideways with smoldering black eyes. “All right, then,” he said in a softly threatening tone underlaid with smoke. “I won't touch you again until our wedding night. But you may be sorry you made me wait.” “I already am,” she confessed, and their smiling gazes locked for a long moment.

Where to stash your organizational risk? Lately, I’m increasingly hearing folks reference the idea of organizational debt. This is the organizational sibling of technical debt, and it represents things like biased interview processes and inequitable compensation mechanisms. These are systemic problems that are preventing your organization from reaching its potential. Like technical debt, these risks linger because they are never the most pressing problem. Until that one fateful moment when they are. Within organizational debt, there is a volatile subset most likely to come abruptly due, and I call that subset organizational risk. Some good examples might be a toxic team culture, a toilsome fire drill, or a struggling leader. These problems bubble up from your peers, skip-level one-on-ones,16 and organizational health surveys. If you care and are listening, these are hard to miss. But they are slow to fix. And, oh, do they accumulate! The larger and older your organization is, the more you’ll find perched on your capable shoulders. How you respond to this is, in my opinion, the core challenge of leading a large organization. How do you continue to remain emotionally engaged with the challenges faced by individuals you’re responsible to help, when their problem is low in your problems queue? In that moment, do you shrug off the responsibility, either by changing roles or picking powerlessness? Hide in indifference? Become so hard on yourself that you collapse inward? I’ve tried all of these! They weren’t very satisfying. What I’ve found most successful is to identify a few areas to improve, ensure you’re making progress on those, and give yourself permission to do the rest poorly. Work with your manager to write this up as an explicit plan and agree on what reasonable progress looks like. These issues are still stored with your other bags of risk and responsibility, but you’ve agreed on expectations. Now you have a set of organizational risks that you’re pretty confident will get fixed, and then you have all the others: known problems, likely to go sideways, that you don’t believe you’re able to address quickly. What do you do about those? I like to keep them close. Typically, my organizational philosophy is to stabilize team-by-team and organization-by-organization. Ensuring any given area is well on the path to health before moving my focus. I try not to push risks onto teams that are functioning well. You do need to delegate some risks, but generally I think it’s best to only delegate solvable risk. If something simply isn’t likely to go well, I think it’s best to hold the bag yourself. You may be the best suited to manage the risk, but you’re almost certainly the best positioned to take responsibility. As an organizational leader, you’ll always have a portfolio of risk, and you’ll always be doing very badly at some things that are important to you. That’s not only okay, it’s unavoidable.

Finally, he looked sideways at Vaughn. “So. I guess this is probably a good time to mention that Isabelle is pregnant.” That got a small chuckle out of Vaughn. “I kind of figured that already. I’ve had my suspicions for a few weeks.” Simon nodded. “Isabelle wondered if you knew.” “You could’ve told me, Simon,” Vaughn said, not unkindly. “I get why you might not want Mom to know yet, but why not talk to me about it?” Simon leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “I guess I didn’t think you’d understand.” “I wouldn’t understand that you want to marry the woman who’s pregnant with your child? I think that’s a concept I can grasp.” “See, that’s just it.” Simon gestured emphatically. “I knew that’s how you would see it. That I’m marrying Isabelle because I got her pregnant. And I don’t want you, or Mom, or anyone else to think about Isabelle that way—that she’s the woman I had to marry, because it was the right thing to do. Because the truth is, I knew I wanted to marry Isabelle on our second date. She invited me up to her apartment that night, and I saw that she had the entire James Bond collection on Blu-ray. Naturally, being the Bond aficionado that I am, I threw out a little test question for her: ‘Who’s the best Bond?’” Vaughn scoffed. “Like there’s more than one possible answer to that.” “Exactly. Sean Connery’s a no-brainer, right? But get this—she says Daniel Craig.” Simon caught Vaughn’s horrified expression. “I know, right? So I’m thinking the date is over because clearly she’s either crazy or has seriously questionable taste, but then she starts going on and on about how Casino Royale is the first movie where Bond is touchable and human, and then we get into this big debate that lasts for nearly an hour. And as I’m sitting there on her couch, I keep thinking that I don’t know a single other person who would relentlessly argue, for an hour, that Daniel Craig is a better Bond than Sean Connery. She pulled out the DVDs and showed me movie clips and everything.” He smiled, as if remembering the moment. “And somewhere in there, it hit me. I thought to myself, I’m going to marry this woman.

Mystery is the sugar in the cup,' said the Doctor. She picked up the container of white crystals the delicatessen had included in the picnic basket and poured a large dollop into her cognac. 'I don’t think I’d do that, Gunilla,' said Darcourt. 'Nobody wants you to do it, Simon. I am doing it, and that’s enough. That is the curse of life—when people want everybody to do the same wise, stupid thing. Listen: Do you want to know what life is? I’ll tell you. Life is a drama.' 'Shakespeare was ahead of you, Gunilla,' said Darcourt. '"All the world’s a stage,"' he declaimed. 'Shakespeare had the mind of a grocer,' said Gunilla. 'A poet, yes, but the soul of a grocer. He wanted to please people.' 'That was his trade,' said Darcourt. 'And it’s yours, too. Don’t you want this opera to please people?' 'Yes, I do. But that is not philosophy. Hoffmann was no philosopher. Now be quiet, everybody, and listen, because this is very important. Life is a drama. I know. I am a student of the divine Goethe, not that grocer Shakespeare. Life is a drama. But it is a drama we have never understood and most of us are very poor actors. That is why our lives seem to lack meaning and we look for meaning in toys—money, love, fame. Our lives seem to lack meaning but'—the Doctor raised a finger to emphasize her great revelation—'they don’t, you know.' She seemed to be having some difficulty in sitting upright, and her natural pallor had become ashen. 'You’re off the track, Nilla,' said Darcourt. 'I think we all have a personal myth. Maybe not much of a myth, but anyhow a myth that has its shape and its pattern somewhere outside our daily world.' 'This is all too deep for me,' said Yerko. 'I am glad I am a Gypsy and do not have to have a philosophy and an explanation for everything. Madame, are you not well?' Too plainly the Doctor was not well. Yerko, an old hand at this kind of illness, lifted her to her feet and gently, but quickly, took her to the door—the door to the outside parking lot. There were terrible sounds of whooping, retching, gagging, and pitiful cries in a language which must have been Swedish. When at last he brought a greatly diminished Gunilla back to the feast, he thought it best to prop her, in a seated position, against the wall. At once she sank sideways to the floor. 'That sugar was really salt,' said Darcourt. 'I knew it, but she wouldn’t listen. Her part in the great drama now seems to call for a long silence.' 'When she comes back to life I shall give her a shot of my personal plum brandy,' said Yerko. 'Will you have one now, Priest Simon?

You’re still kind of pale though,” she worried, gazing at his face, running her finger along one of his cheekbones. “And your face is still pretty thin.” Gage glanced sideways, trying to avoid the attention. “I’m fine. My leg looks worse than it feels.” “No, it doesn’t,” Etienne teased him. “You’re just being brave.” “No, I’m not. It really doesn’t feel that bad.” “Well, at least you can feel something now,” Parker remarked offhandedly. “The night you got hurt, you couldn’t feel much of anything.” “I couldn’t?” “You mean, the girls didn’t tell you?” Feigning concern, Parker shook his head. “Well, they had to…you know…test a lot of places on you. Just to see if you could still feel.” The flush had already started up Gage’s cheeks. “That’s true,” Roo agreed. “Of course…some places were a lot more fun to test than others.” “A whole lot more fun to test than others,” Ashley insisted. Gage’s embarrassment reached full blush. Hiding a smile, Ashley pressed her palm to his forehead. “But you’re sure you feel fine now? Because you look a little hot.” “He is hot,” Roo answered. “Oh. Oh, you mean his temperature.” “Stop,” poor Gage mumbled. “I’m fine.” Etienne motioned to Ashley, his expression perfectly serious. “Come on. Y’all know how Gage is--he’s suffering in silence ’cause he doesn’t want to look weak in front of you women.” “Cut it out,” Gage said. “No, really. We all know you’re just being modest.” “Shut up.” Roo fixed Gage with an owlish stare. “You cried when you broke your leg.” “I did not.” “Yes, you did. You cried. You’re a crybaby.” The best Parker could offer was a sympathetic shrug. “Sorry, little soldier. You cried.” Gage looked longingly at the truck. Taking pity on him at last, the others stopped teasing and turned their attention back to their project.

I read a poem today that reminded me of you.” He gave her another sideways glance, as if confessing something naughty. “Would you like to hear it?” Her knees quivered beneath her skirts. Perhaps he did feel something for her. Perhaps he is now going to declare himself! “Yes, I would.” “Your chaperone is watching us from the parapets. It would be better for me to recite it more privately.” With gentle force, he guided her behind a tall hedge. Lydia’s belly fluttered as Deveril took both her hands. His hair gleamed like an angel’s wing. Would he tell her he couldn’t let her go, that they didn’t have to go to London? That instead they could remain here…together? “She walks in beauty, like the night,” he whispered. “Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that’s best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes; Thus mellowed to that tender light Which heaven to gaudy day denies.” Vincent’s eyes were like a turbulent sea in a moonlit storm. He gazed at her as though she was something precious. Lydia sighed as his long fingers removed a pin from her hair. “One shade the more, one ray the less, Had half impaired the nameless grace Which waves in every raven tress,” Her breath caught as he twirled a lock of her hair. “Or softly lightens o’er her face; Where thoughts serenely sweet express, How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.” His hand crept up to caress her cheek, his intent gaze never wavering. “And on that cheek, and o’er that brow, So soft, so calm, yet eloquent, The smiles that win, the tints that glow,” His lips curved in a sensual smile as he concluded. “But tell of days in goodness spent, A mind at peace with all below, A heart whose love is innocent!” For an eternity, they stared as if peering into each other’s souls. His fingers slid past her cheek and threaded once more through her hair, sending the remaining pins scattering into the grass. “Lydia,” he whispered. Then his lips were on hers, warm, silken, teasing.

So, you have a nice time with Luca?” says a sharp, high voice right behind me. I turn to see Elisa. “Luca likes to kiss the girls.” Elisa seems to be confiding, but also manages to smirk at the same time, which is sort of impressive. “Many girls. Molte ragazze. Every summer, the foreign girls. Very many.” Cold spreads across my rib cage as if she’s held an ice cube to my breastbone. But Elisa isn’t the first mean girl I’ve met in my life, and I’ve got plenty of experience dealing with them. “Don’t be jealous!” I say, tilting my head to one side and giving her my best faux-sympathetic smile. “He’s free now.” I glance sideways and spy at Luca, who’s standing by the bar table, finishing his Prosecco as coolly as if he’s entirely unaffected by what just happened between us. “You could go over and see if he’ll kiss you. Though I warn you, I’m a hard act to follow.

Why are you so into Pinot?” 2 Maya asks. In the next 60 seconds of the movie, the character of Miles Raymond tells a story which would set off a boom in sales of Pinot Noir. It’s a hard grape to grow. It’s thin-skinned, temperamental, ripens early. It’s not a survivor like Cabernet, which can just grow anywhere and thrive even when it’s neglected. No, Pinot needs constant care and attention. In fact it can only grow in these really specific, tucked away corners of the world. And only the most patient and nurturing of growers can do it, really. Only somebody who really takes the time to understand Pinot’s potential can coax it into its fullest expression. Its flavors are the most haunting and brilliant and thrilling and subtle and ancient on the planet. Miles is describing himself in the dialogue and using Pinot as a metaphor for his personality. In this one scene moviegoers projected themselves on the character, feeling his longing and his quest to be understood. Sideways was a hit and won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. It also launched a movement, turning the misunderstood Pinot Noir into the must-have wine of the year. In less than one year after the movie’s 2004 fall release date, sales of Pinot Noir had risen 18 percent. Winemakers began to grow more of the grape to meet demand. In California alone 70,000 tons of Pinot Noir grapes were harvested and crushed in 2004. Within two years the volume had topped 100,000 tons. Today California wine growers crush more than 250,000 tons of Pinot Noir each year. Interestingly, the Japanese version of the movie did not have the same “Sideways Effect” on wine sales. One reason is that the featured grape is Cabernet, a varietal already popular in Japan. But even more critical and relevant to the discussion on storytelling is that Japanese audiences didn’t see the “porch scene” because there wasn’t one. The scene was not included in the movie. No story, no emotional attachment to a particular varietal. You see, the movie Sideways didn’t launch a movement in Pinot Noir; the story that Miles told triggered the boom. In 60 seconds Maya fell in love with Miles and millions of Americans fell in love with an expensive wine they knew little about.

Those who write for children, or at least those who write best for children, are not child-like or immature, but they do remember with sometimes painful intensity both what it was to be small and confused and how wonderful was that fierce joy in the moment that can become so elusive in later life. Any book that is written down to children or with one nervous sideways eye on the author’s fellow adults or in the belief that this is the kind of thing that ‘they like’ cannot work and will not last. Children are not 'they.' They are us. And this is why writing that succeeds with children often succeeds just as well with adults—not because the latter are infantile or regressive, but because the true dilemmas of childhood are the dilemmas of the whole of life: those of belonging and betrayal, the power of the group and the courage it takes to be an individual, of love and loss, and learning what it is to be a human being, let alone a good, brave, or honest one.

I took care of the next guy in line while I checked out the girl who was boxing up a pecan pie and decorating it with some sort of fancy ribbon. Watching her wouldn’t be a hardship. She made the retro waitress uniform look good. If she looked as good from the front as she did from the back, maybe I would ask her out. She turned around and handed the box to the customer at the counter and my world turned sideways. It was Delia. My little sister’s annoying best friend. The girl who was practically a member of my family. When had she become hot? I blinked, hoping maybe I’d seen wrong. Nope. Same blonde hair with hot pink stripes, which I’d always thought was stupid. Now, wearing the Pie Princess tiara and some sort of glittery lip gloss she looked wild and kind of sexy. And that was just wrong.

It is relatively more difficult to pick up signals that an adult is lying than it is to determine if a child is lying. Adults are more able to try to cover up signs that they may be lying and are more analytical in learning the behaviors that a liar might present so that they can exhibit opposite behaviors. A person who wants to intentionally lie to manipulate others may know some of the signs that they might do while they are lying and try to fight those signals so that you don’t pick up on them while they are lying. The best tactic to use on an adult is to look at a collective of behaviors that the person is displaying while you are asking him or her a direct question. Body language is one of the easiest ways to tell whether an adult is lying. If they try to set something down in-between them and you, this is a defense measure that often indicates they are trying to distance themselves from you because you are making them uncomfortable with your questions. If they point their legs or feet at the door or lean sideways away from you, this is because they want to leave the room and get away from your interrogation.

thumb sideways, or three fingers, is the consensus threshold. Any option that has that level of support (or higher) from every person in the workshop is good to go. Everybody doesn’t have to like that option, but everyone will accept and support it. That’s what consensus means. This type of consensus voting usually reveals the best option quite clearly.

Life every now and then becomes literature [...] long enough to be what we best remember, and often enough so that what we eventually come to mean by life are those moments when life, instead of going sideways, backwards, forward, or nowhere at all, lines out straight, tense and inevitable, with a complication, climax, and, given some luck, a purgation, as if life had been made and not happened.

little miffed about it. But you only need two out of three votes. Just do the best you can.” The Council didn’t know about her? Then why did Fitz say they’d been looking for her for twelve years? Before she could ask, they arrived at another clearing, and all coherent thoughts vanished. Dozens of squat, earth-toned creatures with huge gray eyes and bright green thumbs and teeth tended a garden that belonged in a fairy tale. Lush plants grew up and down and sideways and slantways. One of the females shuffled by in a dress woven from grass, carrying a basket filled with twinkling purple fruit. “What?” It was the only word Sophie could come up with.

I buy a book, Yvon Chouinard’s Climbing Ice. The book is already dated but is the only guide to ice climbing techniques I can find. One thing Chouinard says resonates with me. Real adventure is defined best as a journey from which you may not come back alive, and certainly not as the same person.

Nobody noticed or cared that one day she turned sideways and slipped through a slit in the world and returned to Peristan, the other reality, the world of dreams whence the jinn periodically emerge to trouble and bless mankind. To the villagers of Lucena she seemed to have dissolved, perhaps into fireless smoke. After Dunia left our world the voyagers from the world of the jinn to ours became fewer in number, and then for a long time they stopped coming completely, and the slits in the world became overgrown by the unimaginative weeds of convention and the thornbushes of the dully material, until they finally closed up completely and our ancestors were left to do the best they could without the benefits or curses of magic.

I’m not doing it all. Who could? I can’t. You can’t. I decided what tricks belonged on my beam and dropped the rest or figured out a way to delegate. I love to write but hate web management. Off the beam. I could not juggle weekend travel, weeknight activities (times five kids . . . be near, Jesus), and a weekly small group, so as much as I love our church people, we aren’t in a group right now. (And I am the pastor’s wife, so let that speak freedom over your shoulds.) Off the beam. Cooking and sit-down dinners? Life-giving for me. On the beam. Coffee with everyone who wants to “pick my brain”? I simply can’t. Off the beam. After-hours with our best friends on the patio? Must. On the beam. Classroom Mom? I don’t have the skill set. Off the beam. You get to do this too. You have permission to examine all the tricks and decide what should stay. What parts do you love? What are you good at? What brings you life? What has to stay during this season? Don’t look sideways for these answers. Don’t transplant someone else’s keepers onto your beam.

Oh. Oh. Well, that is useful information. Thank you, dear. Yes, yes, you’re terribly thoughtful and I couldn’t have a better best friend. Yes, we’ll have to do a—” A con with a bloody spike in his grip charged at us, shrieking like a madman. Caitlin’s free hand clamped down over his face. She wrenched his head sideways, his neck breaking with a sharp snap, and let his corpse drop to the concrete. “—a girls’ night out when I get back,” she said. “But right now I really need to focus on the task at hand. I’ll call you.” “Problem?” I asked as she slipped the phone back into her coat.

Soft Structured Carries (SSC) OK when baby can sit unassisted. A soft structured carrier has buckles, straps, and snaps. The waist belt and shoulder straps are padded and connect with buckles. It can be put on quickly once the belts and buckles are figured out. Some manufacturers advertise wearing tiny infants in their SSC but, unless there is a separate crotch or bottom piece or the crotch or bottom piece is adjustable, it is not recommended to carry a newborn in a soft structured carrier. Most SSCs on the market are NOT adequate for a newborn and therefore we recommend against using a SSC with newborns. Anything you add to the carrier to make it work (rolled up receiving blankets, towels, cloth diapers, etc) for a newborn is also adding a potential hazard. A baby should not lay sideways in the cradle carry or cradle hold in a soft structured carrier. Most SSC are best used from about 6 months of age on.

What's so amusing?" he inquired, eyeing her curiously. "I don't believe this. I'm lying in bed with a near stranger, calmly chatting after making love. You are a wicked and potent temptation. You should be ashamed of yourself for demoralizing me. This is the most illogical and incredible thing I've ever done." He chuckled. "Count me in. I'm just as astonished and confused. I'm glad I met you first. You'd best be on your guard, woman; I'll probably shoot the first cowpoke who looks at you sideways." "How could I possibly notice him when my eyes are for you alone?" she quipped, caressing his smooth jawline. "Just make sure you remember that while I'm gone. I wouldn't want to challenge some new sweetheart the moment I return." "Aren't you mighty possessive for a man who has no claim on me?" she teased, snuggling up to him, savoring his words and new mood. Lynx shifted to remove a cross of pounded Spanish silver from his neck. He slipped it over her head and vowed, "That says you're mine." -Lynx & Calinda

Yo momma's so skinny she can use a bracelet as a hula hoop. Yo momma's so thin that if she stands in front of a wall she looks like a crack. Yo momma's so skinny she can't sideways when taking a selfie. Yo momma's so skinny she played the part of the staff in the story of Moses. Yo momma's so skinny she hid behind a stick during a game of hide and seek. Yo momma's so skinny, her pants have one belt loop. Yo momma's so skinny when she is taking a shower, she has to run around to get wet. Yo momma's legs so skinny, she looks like a blow pop. Yo momma's so skinny she can hang glide off a dorito. Yo momma's so skinny I put a dime on her head and people mistook her for a Nail. Yo momma's so skinny, she can grate cheese on her ribs. Yo momma's so skinny, when I slapped her I got a paper cut! Yo momma's so skinny, if she had a sesame seed on her head, she'd look like a push pin. Yo momma's so skinny the Olsen Twins called and said they want their eating disorder back. Yo momma's so skinny, if she turned sideways and stuck out her tongue, she would look like a zipper. Yo momma's so skinny, she can see out the peephole with both eyes. Yo momma's so skinny, she could dive through a fence.

I am cross with Christopher,” Beatrix told Amelia in the afternoon, as they strolled arm in arm along the graveled paths behind Ramsay House. “And before I tell you about it, I want to make it clear that there is only one reasonable side of the issue. Mine.” “Oh, bother,” Amelia said sympathetically. “Husbands do make one cross at times. Tell me your side, and I will agree completely.” Beatrix began by explaining about the calling card left by the Colonel Fenwick, and Christopher’s subsequent behavior. Amelia sent Beatrix a wry sideways smile. “I believe these are the problems that Christopher took pains to warn you about.” “That’s true,” Beatrix admitted. “But that doesn’t make it any easier to contend with. I love him madly. But I see how he struggles against certain thoughts that jump into his head, or reflexes that he tries to suppress. And he won’t discuss any of it with me. I’ve won his heart, but it’s like owning a house in which most of the doors are permanently locked. He wants to shield me from all unpleasantness. And it’s not really marriage--not like the marriage you have with Cam--until he’s willing to share the worst of himself as well as the best of himself.” “Men don’t like to put themselves at risk in that way,” Amelia said. “One has to be patient.” Her tone became gently arid, her smile rueful. “But I can assure you, dear…no one is ever able to share only the best of himself.” Beatrix gave her a brooding glance. “No doubt I’ll provoke him into some desperate act before long. I push and pry, and he resists, and I’m afraid that will be the pattern of our marriage for the rest of my life.” Amelia smiled at her fondly. “No marriage stays in the same pattern forever. It is both the best feature of marriage and the worst, that it inevitably changes. Wait for your chance, dear. I promise it will come.

I don’t take kindly to any of you shanty boys touching me,” she said. “So unless I give you permission, from now on, you’d best keep your hands off me.” With the last word, she lifted her boot and brought the heel down on Jimmy’s toes. She ground it hard. Like most of the other shanty boys, at the end of a day out in the snow, he’d taken off his wet boots and layers of damp wool socks to let them dry overnight before donning them again for the next day’s work. Jimmy cursed, but before he could move, she brought her boot down on his other foot with a smack that rivaled a gun crack. This time he howled. And with an angry curse, he shoved her hard, sending her sprawling forward. She flailed her arms in a futile effort to steady herself and instead found herself falling against Connell McCormick. His arms encircled her, but the momentum of her body caused him to lose his balance. He stumbled backward. “Whoa! Hold steady!” Her skirt and legs tangled with his, and they careened toward the rows of dirty damp socks hanging in front of the fireplace. The makeshift clotheslines caught them and for a moment slowed their tumble. But against their full weight, the ropes jerked loose from the nails holding them to the beams. In an instant, Lily found herself falling. She twisted and turned among the clotheslines but realized that her thrashing was only lassoing her against Connell. In the downward tumble, Connell slammed into a chair near the fireplace. Amidst the tangle of limbs and ropes, she was helpless to do anything but drop into his lap. With a thud, she landed against him. Several socks hung from his head and covered his face. Dirty socks covered her shoulders and head too. Their stale rotten stench swarmed around her. And for a moment she was conscious only of the fact that she was near to gagging from the odor. She tried to lift a hand to move the sock hanging over one of her eyes but found that her arms were pinned to her sides. She tilted her head and then blew sideways at the crusty, yellowed linen. But it wouldn’t budge. Again she shook her head—this time more emphatically. Still the offending article wouldn’t fall away. Through the wig of socks covering Connell’s head, she could see one of his eyes peeking at her, watching her antics. The corner of his lips twitched with the hint of a smile. She could only imagine what she looked like. If it was anything like him, she must look comical. As he cocked his head and blew at one of his socks, she couldn’t keep from smiling at the picture they both made, helplessly drenched in dirty socks, trying to remove them with nothing but their breath. “Welcome to Harrison.” His grin broke free. “You know how to make a girl feel right at home.” She wanted to laugh. But as he straightened himself in the chair, she became at once conscious of the fact that she was sitting directly in his lap and that the other men in the room were hooting and calling out over her intimate predicament. She scrambled to move off him. But the ropes had tangled them together, and her efforts only caused her to fall against him again. She was not normally a blushing woman, but the growing indecency of her situation was enough to chase away any humor she may have found in the situation and make a chaste woman like herself squirm with embarrassment. “I’d appreciate your help,” she said, struggling again to pull her arms free of the rope. “Or do all you oafs make a sport of manhandling women?” “All you oafs?” His grin widened. “Are you insinuating that I’m an oaf?” “What in the hairy hound is going on here?” She jumped at the boom of Oren’s voice and the slam of the door. The room turned quiet enough to hear the click-click of Oren pulling down the lever of his rifle. She glanced over her shoulder to the older man, to the fierceness of his drawn eyebrows and the deadly anger in his eyes as he took in her predicament.

I read a poem today that reminded me of you.” He gave her another sideways glance, as if confessing something naughty. “Would you like to hear it?” Her knees quivered beneath her skirts. Perhaps he did feel something for her. Perhaps he is now going to declare himself! “Yes, I would.” “Your chaperone is watching us from the parapets. It would be better for me to recite it more privately.” With gentle force, he guided her behind a tall hedge. Lydia’s belly fluttered as Deveril took both her hands. His hair gleamed like an angel’s wing. Would he tell her he couldn’t let her go, that they didn’t have to go to London? That instead they could remain here…together? “She walks in beauty, like the night,” he whispered. “Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that’s best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes; Thus mellowed to that tender light Which heaven to gaudy day denies.” Vincent’s eyes were like a turbulent sea in a moonlit storm. He gazed at her as though she was something precious. Lydia sighed as his long fingers removed a pin from her hair. “One shade the more, one ray the less, Had half impaired the nameless grace Which waves in every raven tress,” Her breath caught as he twirled a lock of her hair. “Or softly lightens o’er her face; Where thoughts serenely sweet express, How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.” His hand crept up to caress her cheek, his intent gaze never wavering. “And on that cheek, and o’er that brow, So soft, so calm, yet eloquent, The smiles that win, the tints that glow,” His lips curved in a sensual smile as he concluded. “But tell of days in goodness spent, A mind at peace with all below, A heart whose love is innocent!” For an eternity, they stared as if peering into each other’s souls. His fingers slid past her cheek and threaded once more through her hair, sending the remaining pins scattering into the grass. “Lydia,” he whispered. Then his lips were on hers, warm, silken, teasing. Her limbs melted. Intoxicating heat unfurled low in her body. Lydia reached up to pull him closer, to demand more. Vincent pulled back before she could grasp him. He took a deep, shuddering breath. “And that is your most important lesson in courtship, Lydia. Never allow a man to get you off alone, especially if he desires to recite poetry, and particularly Lord Byron’s verses.” A strangled gasp caught in her throat at his duplicity. It had all been part of the game! “You…you…” He held up a hand. “Now slap me with your fan in retaliation for taking such liberties.” Reeling in outrage, she fumbled in the pockets of her cloak for the ineffectual weapon. Vincent shrugged, undaunted at her ire. “That is why you should keep your fan at the ready.” Seizing the bundle of cloth-covered sticks, she smacked him soundly on the arm, much harder than Miss Hobson had instructed. “You are lucky I did not have my gun,” she hissed. How could he? To

Stanley reads The Mirror Thief. It’s a book of poems, but it tells a story: an alchemist and spy called Crivano steals an enchanted mirror, and is pursued by his enemies through the streets of a haunted city. Stanley long ago stopped paying the story any mind. He’s come to regard it as a fillip at best, at worst as a device meant to conceal the book’s true purpose, the powerful secret it contains. Nothing, he’s quite certain, could be so obscure by accident. As he reads, his eyes graze each poem’s lines like a needle over an LP’s grooves, atomizing them into letters, reassembling them into uniform arcades. What he’s looking for is a key: a gap in the book’s mask, a loose thread to unravel its veil. He tries tricks to find new openings—reading sideways, reading upsidedown, reading whitespace instead of text—but the words always close ranks like tiles in a mosaic, like crooks in a lineup, and mock him with their blithe expressions. The usual suspects.

Oh, this is the best.” Her eyes bright, she dipped her spoon in and then offered him a bite. Before he could stop himself, he opened his lips and let her feed him. Syn would shit sideways if he ever saw this. For that matter, the rest of his crew would fall over dead. But

Class, take 15 seconds to think of your answers. I will go around the room starting at Lindsay and everyone will have a chance to respond. When it is your time to answer, if you want to, you can say, "Pass." If you do so, that's OK. I will come back to you, and you can either give an idea you thought of or say an idea you heard from someone else that you agree with. Or a part of an idea you agree with. So in this way we will hear from everyone. Class, take 2 minutes to develop an answer to this question. You may write down some ideas in a list, in sentences, in images. I want you to go beyond the first ideas in your head. I will then call on you, one at a time. Class, this is a great question for everyone to consider. I think you need about 37 seconds on this one. I will tell you when that time is up, and then you should share your answer with the person sitting next to you. Then I am going to go around the room—this time, let's start with Andrew and go counterclockwise—and you have to tell us what your partner gave for an answer. So listen carefully. Class, here's the deal with answering this question. Everyone will have 20 seconds to consider. Then I am going to ask Eric and Liz their ideas. Then I will ask Jess and Matt to say if they agree or disagree with Eric and Liz. Then I will ask Jenny and Max to add any ideas or reactions. We will regularly do this: one group gives a first response, one group says if they agree, and the third group adds comments. Class, I am not asking you "Why did the Industrial Revolution begin?" but instead, "What are some of the reasons it began?" You can write a list or sentences. I will start this time with Danielle and have her say one reason. I'll write it on the board. Then Casey will give one reason. Then Eric. And we'll go around the room, collecting ideas, until we run out of them. That way, no one person gives all the answers for the group—everyone contributes. When we collect all the ideas, then I am going to have you work on your own to organize them into …. Class, JP just gave an answer to the question I asked before I could give you all time to think, so now I want you to consider his answer for 10 seconds. Then thumbs up if you agree with JP, thumbs down if you disagree, and thumbs sideways if you are not sure. Oh no, class, it happened again—this time Jeffrey answered the question before I gave you all time to think. So, it's "Fist to Five" time. Hold up a fist if you disagree, five fingers if you completely agree, and one to four fingers depending how much you agree. Let's see what we all really think, after 10 seconds. Class, this is a time I want to let the conversation flow more quickly than usual. There is only one thing you have to do before you give your ideas—you have to summarize as best you can what the person who spoke before you said. That way we know we are listening. Class, I have a question to ask that you will need a bunch of time to think about and organize your answers, and then we'll share them in some fashion. I put together this graphic organizer, which might help you get all the parts of the answer organized. You don't have to use it. You can sketch an answer, or write a list, or sentences. I am not playing "Guess what the teacher is thinking" here. The only right answer is what you are thinking, if it is organized enough for the rest of us to understand. Here goes….

Every time you hop down to a new curve, you have the opportunity to recalibrate the metrics by which you gauge yourself. Just as a business moves from the messiness of start-up life to codifying process in order to scale, as you start to identify the metrics that measure what matters to you deeply, you'll be able to lock and load, then barrel up the y-axis of success. I don't know how you'll define success. Mine is best described by paraphrasing Samuel Johnson: the ultimate result of all ambition is to be happy at home. As you look to tip the odds of success in your favor, beware the undertow of the status quo—current stakeholders in your life and career, including family members, may encourage you to just keep doing what you are doing. The metrics you've always used to measure yourself are comfortable, and so are your established habits; performing well on your current path is practically automatic. You can almost convince yourself that staying put is the right thing. But there really is no such thing as "standing still."14 The "use it or lose it" principle applies to our brain cells just as it does to the muscles in our bodies. Neuroplasticity has a reverse function. Connections recede through lack of activation, while continual stimulation of neural pathways keeps them healthy and active, including—and especially—when you step back, down, or sideways.

He’s a real asshole, huh.” “The worst.” I straighten up and tuck my hair behind my ears. “He’s rude and weird and his face is all”—I make a violent twisting gesture in midair—“and you know I like tattoos but there’s an upper limit. And he’s so full of shit, and so arrogant about it, like he knows what’s best for everybody else—what?” “Nothing,” Jasper says, but he gives me the sideways, shit-eating smile of a kid who’s about to break into the K-I-S-S-I-N-G song.

For me, a peaceful atmosphere devoid of noise and distractions is absolutely the worst place for poetry, likely to wind me up in a doomed attempt to stare down a blank page. My funny old brain, like those of many poets, has always done its best work sideways, seeking out tricky enjambments and surprising slant rhymes to craft lines capable of pulling their own weight.

Apologize,” I ordered, striding in her direction once again. “What for?” Her gaze shifted, and she looked like she was about to throw a punch at me. “For not kissing me back when you clearly wanted to, you little liar. For fucking one of my best friends. For making that year the worst year of my life since I was nine. Apologize for not being mine when you should’ve been. Because Emilia, baby…” I tilted my head sideways. “It was always fucking us and you know it.

Trenton’s disgusted look answered that question even as Wilhelm shook his head and said, “They’ll be almost as useless as the sword. With something that big, it probably won’t even notice unless we hit an eye.”   Which most likely still wouldn’t kill it.   The same with any attacks on the body. At most, they’d be a minor nuisance.   “That leaves one option,” Shea said in a resigned voice.   “You have a plan, then?” Witt asked, keeping an eye on their surroundings.   “Yup, but I don’t think any of you are going to like it.” Shea’s expression turned sour. If she was being honest, she didn’t like her plan either.   Trenton stared at her for several beats before he shook his head. “No, that’s crazy.”   “It’s the best option we’ve got ,” Fallon agreed, his mind already following where hers had gone.   Surprise and understanding dawned on Wilhelm and Witt’s faces as they realized what she was thinking.   “I feel like your plans get worse and worse the longer I know you—like gone ‘round the bend crazy worse,” Trenton said. To Fallon, he said, “At least tell me we’re not letting her do the honors.”   Fallon’s eyes were dark as he stared at Shea. It was obvious he wanted to order her to abandon their group and head to the Keep by herself, even at the expense of his own safety. It was just as obvious she would refuse.   “No, we’re not,” he agreed with Trenton. “One of us will do it.”   “I didn’t expect anything else.” Shea gave Fallon a half smile. “I could never make that throw. That’s why Wilhelm will do it.”   Wilhelm lifted an eyebrow. “I will?”   “Wait a minute. Why not me?” Trenton asked in outrage.   Shea ignored him to answer Wilhelm’s question. “I’m not skilled enough with a spear. Same for Witt, and the doubter over there is still recovering from cracked ribs and internal bleeding. And if we let Fallon do it, I’m pretty sure Caden would murder us all once he found out about it. That leaves you.”   “Hey!” Trenton protested.   Fallon looked like he wanted to argue, but he must have seen her point. Of the five of them, Wilhelm was the one with the best marksmanship. Beyond all of the other reasons, that was the one that counted the most and Fallon knew it.   Wilhelm stared off into the mist with a considering expression before looking sideways at Shea, his face serious and intent. “We’ll only get one chance at this.”   “Guess you’d better make the shot count, then,” she told him.   “Incoming,” Witt murmured.

Shivers heaved out a sigh. “Just trying to make tomorrow that bit better than today is all. I’m one of those… you’ve got a word for it, don’t you?” “Idiots?” He looked sideways at her. “It was a different one I had in mind.” “Optimists.” “That’s the one. I’m an optimist.” “How’s it working out for you?” “Not great, but I keep hoping.” “That’s optimists. You bastards never learn.

with others and having the best manners.” “If there were, you’d be a pauper, Grimble,” Commander Tagg said. “He’s the best captain here,” Commander Usher called, casting a sideways glance at King Whitson, “and no one can argue with that. He’d out-sail and out-fight any rabbit alive.” “Surely we’ll make our fortunes together—sail on together, fight together—serving our king,” Captain Walters said, looking into Captain Grimble’s haughty face. “Will we not?

Love, she and me! She stood there waiting, And being an admirer of hers I thought she was waiting for me, She brushed her hair sideways, And like others I thought she was doing it for me, She walked with grace and well measured steps, And I thought she was walking towards me, She smiled and her shimmering lips parted slowly, And I thought they parted and shimmered to kiss me, She knelt a bit and looked at the ground, And I felt she was looking at my shadow and then at me, She spoke of some wonderful experiences she had, And I thought they were all due to me, She raised her eyes to stare at the midday Sun, And I felt in its gleaming rays she was discovering me, She called someone haply, And I wished if it were me, just me, She traveled to some favourite destination, And I wished if it were me, She confessed her heart gives rise to endless desires, And I so deeply wished, all her desires led to me, just me, She looked at the starry night and closed her eyes to dream, How I wished all her dreams were about me, In the morning she woke up with fresh smile, And I hoped the smile always flashes only when she thinks of me, Then she ventured into the affairs of the day, And I wished her every step brought her closer to me, She often said her prayers and thought about God, And how I wished that her God thought of me, She was carrying a bouquet of roses yesterday, And I wondered for whom could it be? And wished it were for me, Then she walked away holding just one rose in her hand, And I hoped she dropped it in front of me, It is afternoon and she is walking towards me, Maybe it is just my imagination because I feel her true joy lies in being with me, But who cares whether it is my imagination or something I so deeply wish for me, That I want to love her, and spend the days thinking that she only loves me, She has walked by so many times, But she has never walked towards me, It is a dilemma alike the day and the night, where one would never know whether the day seeks night or the night seeks the day, So whenever she walks past me, I convince my heart she was walking towards me, A decade has passed and her mere glimpse still gladdens me, But today she walked up to me and said, “do you like me or you love me?” I stood there speechless, not that my feelings have turned numb, but my words were failing me, But somehow I managed to say, “I love you more than me!

Love, she and me! She stood there waiting, And being an admirer of hers I thought she was waiting for me, She brushed her hair sideways, And like others I thought she was doing it for me, She walked with grace and well measured steps, And I thought she was walking towards me, She smiled and her shimmering lips parted slowly, And I thought they parted and shimmered to kiss me, She knelt a bit and looked at the ground, And I felt she was looking at my shadow and then at me, She spoke of some wonderful experiences she had, And I thought they were all due to me, She raised her eyes to stare at the midday Sun, And I felt in its gleaming rays she was discovering me, She called someone haply, And I wished if it were me, just me, She traveled to some favourite destination, And I wished if it were me, She confessed her heart gives rise to endless desires, And I so deeply wished, all her desires led to me, just me, She looked at the starry night and and closed her eyes to dream, How I wished all her dreams were about me, In the morning she woke up with fresh smile, And I hoped the smile always flashes only when she thinks of me, Then she ventured into the affairs of the day, And I wished her every step brought her closer to me, She often said her prayers and thought about God, And how I wished that her God thought of me, She was carrying a bouquet of roses yesterday, And I wondered for whom could it be? And wished it were for me, Then she walked away holding just one rose in her hand, And I hoped she dropped it in front of me, It is afternoon and she is walking towards me, Maybe it is just my imagination because I feel her true joy lies in being with me, But who cares whether it is my imagination or something I so deeply wish for me, That I want to love her, and spend the days thinking that she only loves me, She has walked by so many times, But she has never walked towards me, It is a dilemma alike the day and the night, where one would never know whether the day seeks night or the night seeks the day, So whenever she walks past me, I convince my heart she was walking towards me, A decade has passed and her mere glimpse still gladdens me, But today she walked up to me and said, “do you like me or you love me?” I stood there speechless, not that my feelings have turned numb, but my words were failing me, But somehow I managed to say, “I love you more than me!

It’s a comfort, telling yourself there’s some big right thing out there. That you could seek some wise old bastard in the mountains who’s got the answer. Then there’d be no need for doubts and regrets.” He looked sideways, sunlight glinting off his metal eye. “But far as I can tell it ain’t that simple. Right things, wrong things, well… it’s all a matter of where you stand. Every choice is good for some, bad for others. And once you’re chief, you can’t just do what’s good for you, or those you love. You have to find what’s best for most. Worst for fewest. Like your father tried to, and with no magic eye to see the outcome.” He sat back, one leg stretched out, and looked towards the sea, breeze stirring the grey hair about his craggy face. “Doubts and regrets, they’re the cost of casting a shadow. The only folk without ’em are the dead. For what it’s worth, I’d say you did the best you could.

It’s like, dude, I get it that you think all I really want to hear is how beautiful I am, but the thing is I already know that I have pleasingly symmetrical features and the whole flush-of-youth thing going for me, so it only shows your own failure of imagination when you fall for the evolutionary fitness mask when I’m right here beneath it and I’m so much more and if you weren’t busy bragging about my looks, you would’ve realized I am the best resource you could ever think to have.” Evan’s next bite of skewered fowl hovered a few inches from his plate. “Poor Colby.” “Right. Side with him.” Ruby gave Evan a little backhanded thwap with her knuckles, her easy affection disarming. “And they’re all like that.” I even tried one of those wholesome-ish dating apps, but I kept matching with guys named Caden who want to chill and hang but don’t have any money to go out. Great. Thanks, dating apps. Something to make males of the species more lazy and indecisive.” Her thumb flick-flick-flicked. “Arty Caden. Try-Hard Caden. Jock Caden.” She held the phone sideways. “At least Jock Caden is kinda cute.

My grandson and me wanted to thank you for your service," the man said, his voice solemn. He held out his gnarled hand, and it trembled as Nick looked at it. Nick took it, shaking it dazedly. "Thank you," he managed. "And thank you for yours." The man nodded, then instructed his grandson to do the same as he shook Ty's hand as well. The boy, who was anywhere between eight and twelve maybe - Nick had no idea how to tell the age of children - gave Nick a sideways glance as he tentatively shook Nick's hand. Then he turned to his grandfather and hissed a question. He probably through he was being discreet, but Nick heard him loud and clear: "How'd they know you were a soldier, Pop?" The old man just smiled as he tossed a piece of popcorn into his mouth. "It's just something you know.

It’s hard growing up; it’s easier to grow sideways, to veer off from becoming a person and just be a girl instead. After all, it’s what your family want. They want you to be pretty and pleasing and no trouble at all. It’s not because they hate you and want to keep you down, but because they want what’s best for you, and objective observation of the world suggests that girls who are ugly and troublesome tend to have problems, or become problems, and nobody wants you to be a problem.

There’s this…gunk on the floor,” she muttered, pushing even harder with the mop. “It’s gross, so be sure you don’t step in it or bring in more…” I took a step sideways. Katie looked up at me with a horrified glance. “Look out!” I jumped. When I landed, I felt something rubbery and squishy beneath one foot. Swallowing heavily, I carefully looked down to see what I was standing in. “Gross!” I yelled, jumping away from the horrible puddle of muck on the floor. “I think someone threw up,” I stammered. “And they threw up a lot.” Katie’s laughter echoed around the cabin. After a moment, the others began to join in. Everyone in the cabin was laughing except me. I was still staring in horror at the stuff on the floor. Katie dropped the mop she was holding with a clatter and moved toward me. When she reached me, she bent over and picked up the gross puddle. “Look, rubber vomit. Isn’t it great?” she asked, giggling. “Don’t you love it?” I felt my mouth drop open. I bet I looked like one of the fish in my fish tank as I stared at Katie and her puddle of rubber vomit. But then I looked at Katie’s face and I couldn’t help it. I had to smile, too. She looked so happy that I’d fallen for her joke. Her green eyes twinkled happily. “This is the best joke I’ve played in ages!” Katie announced. Then she threw her free arm around my shoulders and gave me a big squeeze. “I’m so glad you’re in our cabin! I’ve been wanting to use this for a long time. Denni is no fun to play tricks on. She’s too grumpy! And Ariel doesn’t get my jokes half the time.” Katie giggled again and I noticed that she had a mouthful of braces. “I thought you guys would never come inside! It seemed like I’d been pushing on that mop for hours!

the gods answer our prayers sideways at best.

Hellooo.” The ferry captain shot a thumb at her Jeep. “Gonna get it off ?” “Oh.” She laughed. “Sorry.” Releasing Nicole, she ran back onto the ferry and slid behind the wheel. By the time she revved the engine, Nicole was in the passenger’s seat, sliding a hand over the timeworn dashboard. “I am paying you for this.” Charlotte shot her a startled look and inched forward. “For this car? You are not.” “You wouldn’t have bought it if it weren’t for my book, and you won’t take money for that.” “Because it’s your book. I’m just along for the ride.” She laughed at her own words. “Can you believe, this is the first car I’ve ever owned?” She eased it onto the dock. “Is it real or what?” “Totally real,” Nicole said, though momentarily wary. “Safe on the highway?” “It got me here.” Charlotte waved at the captain. “Thank you!” Still crawling along, she drove carefully off the pier. When she was on firm ground, she stopped, angled sideways in the seat, and addressed the first of the ghosts. “I’m sorry about your dad, Nicki. I wanted to be there. I just couldn’t.” Seeming suddenly older, Nicole smiled sadly. “You were probably better off. There were people all over the place. I didn’t have time to think.” “A heart attack?” “Massive.” “No history of heart problems?” “None.” “That’s scary. How’s Angie?” Nicole’s mother. Charlotte had phoned her, too, and though Angie had said all the right words—Yes, a tragedy, he loved you, too, you’re a darling to call—she had sounded distracted. “Bad,” Nicole confirmed. “They were so in love. And he loved Quinnipeague. His parents bought the house when he was little. He actually proposed to Mom here. They always said that if I’d been a boy, they’d have named me Quinn. She can’t bear to come now. That’s why she’s selling. She can’t even come to pack up. This place was so him.” “Woo-hoo,” came a holler that instantly lifted the mood. “Look who’s here!” A stocky woman, whose apron covered a T-shirt and shorts, was trotting down the stairs from the lower deck of the Chowder House. Dorey Jewett had taken over from her father midway through Charlotte’s summers here and had brought the place up to par with the best of city restaurants. She had the gleaming skin of one who worked over steam, but the creases by her eyes, as much from smiling as from squinting over the harbor, suggested she was nearing sixty. “Missy here

It’s getting-up time,” Alessandro declares. “Today is the day.” “What day?” “The release date.” “What are we talking about?” “Daa-add. The new XBOX game. Hunting Old Sammie.” Armand opens his eyes. He looks at his son looking at him. The boy’s eyes are only inches away. “You’re kidding.” “It’s the newest best game. You hunt down terrorists and kill them.” Lifting his voice, “‘Deploy teams of Black Berets into the ancient mountains of Tora Bora. Track implacable terrorists to their cavernous lairs. Rain withering fire down on the homicidal masterminds who planned the horror of September eleven, two-thousand-and-one.’” The kid’s memory is canny. Armand lifts Alex off his chest and sits up. “Who invented it?” “I’m telling you, dad. It’s an XBOX game.” “We can get it today?” “No,” Leah says. “Absolutely not. The last thing he needs is another violent video game.” “Mahhuum!” “How bad can it be?” says Armand. “How would you know? A minute ago you hadn’t heard of it.” “And you had?” “I saw a promo. Helicopter gunships with giant machine guns. Soldiers with flamethrowers, turning bearded men into candles.” “Sounds great.” “Armand, really. How old are you?” “I don’t see what my age has to do with it.” “Dad, it’s totally cool. ‘Uncover mountain strongholds with thermal imaging technology. Call in air-strikes by F-16s. Destroy terrorist cells with laser weaponry. Wage pitched battles against mujahideen. Capture bin Laden alive or kill him on the spot. March down Fifth Avenue with jihadists’ heads on pikes. Make the world safe for democracy.’” Safe for Dick Cheney’s profits, Armand thinks, knowing all about it from his former life, but says nothing. It’s pretty much impossible to explain the complexity of how things work within the greater systemic dysfunction. Instead, he asks the one question that matters. “How much does it cost?” Alessandro’s mouth minces sideways. He holds up fingers, then realizes he needs more than two hands. Armand can see the kid doesn’t want to say. “C’mon. ’Fess up.” Alex sighs. “A one with two zeros.” “One hundred dollars.” Alex’s eyes slide away. Rapid nods, face averted. “Yeah.” “For a video game, Alex.” “Yhep.” “No way.” “Daa-add! It’s the greatest game ever!” The boy is beginning to whine. “Don’t whine,” Armand tells him. “On TV it’s awesome. The army guys are flaming a cave and when the terror guys try to escape, they shoot them.” “Neat.” “Their turbans are on fire.” “Even better.” “Armand,” Leah says. “Dad,” says Alessandro. He will not admit it but Armand is hooked. It would be deeply satisfying in the second-most intimate way imaginable to kill al Qaida terrorists holed up along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border—something the actual U.S. military cannot or will not completely do. But a hundred bucks. It isn’t really the money, although living on interest income Armand has become more frugal. He can boost the C-note but what message would it send? Hunting virtual terrorists in cyberspace is all well and good. But plunking down $100 for a toy seems irresponsible and possibly wrong in a country where tens of thousands are homeless and millions have no health insurance and children continue, incredibly, to go hungry. Fifty million Americans live in poverty and he’s looking to play games.

Steve didn’t fear death. Maybe that was part of his secret for being so gifted with wildlife. He had such perfect love for every animal, and especially crocodiles, that there didn’t seem to be any room left over for fear. But this didn’t mean that Steve didn’t have his share of close calls. One day I was feeding Cookie, Wes was feeding Mary, and our crew member Jan was backing up Wes. Steve talked to the zoo visitors about our big male, Agro, partially submerged in the water near Steve. Steve was so intent on getting his message across about crocodiles that he might have been a bit distracted. It had poured rain that day, leaving the grass wet and slippery. Agro took full advantage when Steve’s back was to the water. He powered forward like a missile, out of the water and halfway up the bank. As he came out, Wes yelled. Agro had Steve backed against the fence. Steve couldn’t move. I looked across the enclosure and saw the look on Steve’s face--it wasn’t fear, it was resolve. A big male saltwater croc was about to grab him. But for some unknown reason, Agro hesitated for a split second. Maybe he just couldn’t believe his luck. Or he was distracted by Wes, running over to save his best friend. Steve darted sideways and ran down the fence line. He was safe. The audience erupted in excited chatter. “Nothing short of a miracle,” a crowd member said about Steve’s escape. Was it? Was it his sixth sense? Was it his mate, Wes? That night we lay in bed and I stroked his face, tracing the lines that were starting to form around the corners of his eyes, waiting for his breathing to become more regular as he fell asleep. “I thought for a minute there he had me,” Steve said softly in the dark. Steve was never one to panic, and that kind of levelheaded thinking allowed him to return the favor to Wes in a much closer call during cyclone season in March 2001.

You know,” John continued, “they say basketball’s a lot like life. It’s all about the rebounds and how you handle them.” Harrison shot him a sideways glance, the metaphor not lost on him. “Are we still talking about basketball?” John chuckled. “Maybe. Maybe not. Just remember, sometimes the best plays come from the most unexpected assists.

Evening,” Zane said. It was a pretty wordy opening for him. Phoebe debated inviting him in, then decided it would be too much like an offer to sleep with him. Instead of stepping back and pointing to the bed, which was really what she wanted to do, she moved down the hallway, shutting the door behind her, and did her best to look unimpressed. “Hi, Zane. How are the preparations coming?” He gave her one of his grunts, then shrugged. She took that to mean, “Great. And thanks so much for asking.” They weren’t standing all that close, but she was intensely aware of him. Despite the fact that he’d probably been up at dawn and that it was now close to ten, he still smelled good. He wasn’t wearing his cowboy hat, so she could see his dark hair. Stubble defined his jaw. She wanted to rub her hands over the roughness, then maybe hook her leg around his hip and slide against him like the sex-starved fool she was turning out to be. “Maya’ll be here tomorrow,” he said. “Elaine Mitchell is bringing her out to the ranch with all of the greenhorns in her tourist bus.” She had to clear her throat before speaking. “Maya called me about an hour ago to let me know she’d be getting here about three.” He folded his arms across his broad chest, then leaned sideways against the doorjamb beside her. So very close. Her attention fixed on the strong column of his neck, and a certain spot just behind his jaw that she had a sudden urge to kiss. Would it be warm? Would she feel his pulse against her lips? “She doesn’t need to know what happened,” Zane said. Phoebe couldn’t quite make sense of his words, and he must have read the confusion in her eyes. They were alone, it was night and the man seemed to be looming above her in the hallway. She’d never thought she would enjoy being loomed over, but it was actually very nice. She had the feeling that if she suddenly saw a mouse or something, she could shriek and jump, and he would catch her. Of course he would think she was an idiot, but that was beside the point. “Between us,” he explained. “Outside. She doesn’t need to know about the kiss.” A flood of warmth rushed to her face as she understood that he regretted kissing her. She instinctively stepped backward, only to bump her head against the closed bedroom door. Before she had time to be embarrassed about her lack of grace or sophistication, he groaned, reached for her hips and drew her toward him. “She doesn’t need to know about this one, either.” His lips took hers with a gentle but commanding confidence. Her hands settled on either side of the strong neck she’d been eyeing only seconds ago. His skin was as warm as she’d imagined it would be. The cords of his muscles moved against her fingers as he lifted his head to a better angle. His hands were still, except his thumbs, which brushed her hip bones, slow and steady. His fingers splayed over the narrowest part of her waist and nearly met at the small of her back. She wished she could feel his fingertips against her skin, but her thin cotton top got in the way. He kept her body at a frustrating distance from his. In fact, when she tried to move closer, he held her away even as he continued the kiss. Lips on lips. Hot and yielding. She waited for him to deepen the kiss, but he didn’t. And she couldn’t summon the courage to do it herself. Finally, he drew back and rested his forehead against hers for a long moment. “Do me a favor,” he said. “Try to be a little more resistible. I don’t think I can take a week of this.” Then he turned on his heel, walked to a door at the end of the long hallway, and went inside. She stood in place, her fingers pressed against her still-tingling lips. More than a minute passed before she realized she was smiling.

Mary’s Catholic Church with the Laudners amidst a sea of whispers and sideways glances. Truth can be a fuzzy concept in the best of circumstances. His story was less than perfect. When his mom returned with him to the Laudners’ home, he wondered how Uncle John and Aunt Carolyn would react. Dr. Silva, Malini, Lilly, and Jacob had talked