Smarter Than I Look Quotes

What else? She is so beautiful. You don’t get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to love her, Van Houten. You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers.

Damn, damn, damn," she said. "I never said why I like you, and now I have to go." "That's okay," he said. "It's because you're kind," she said. "And because you get all my jokes..." "Okay." He laughed. "And you're smarter than I am." "I am not." "And you look like a protagonist." She was talking as fast as she could think. "You look like the person who wins in the end. You're so pretty, and so good. You have magic eyes," she whispered. "And you make me feel like a cannibal." "You're crazy." "I have to go." She leaned over so the receiver was close to the base. "Eleanor - wait," Park said. She could hear her dad in the kitchen and her heartbeat everywhere. "Eleanor - wait - I love you.

I have always, essentially, been waiting. Waiting to become something else, waiting to be that person I always thought I was on the verge of becoming, waiting for that life I thought I would have. In my head, I was always one step away. In high school, I was biding my time until I could become the college version of myself, the one my mind could see so clearly. In college, the post-college “adult” person was always looming in front of me, smarter, stronger, more organized. Then the married person, then the person I’d become when we have kids. For twenty years, literally, I have waited to become the thin version of myself, because that’s when life will really begin. And through all that waiting, here I am. My life is passing, day by day, and I am waiting for it to start. I am waiting for that time, that person, that event when my life will finally begin. I love movies about “The Big Moment” – the game or the performance or the wedding day or the record deal, the stories that split time with that key event, and everything is reframed, before it and after it, because it has changed everything. I have always wanted this movie-worthy event, something that will change everything and grab me out of this waiting game into the whirlwind in front of me. I cry and cry at these movies, because I am still waiting for my own big moment. I had visions of life as an adventure, a thing to be celebrated and experienced, but all I was doing was going to work and coming home, and that wasn’t what it looked like in the movies. John Lennon once said, “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.” For me, life is what was happening while I was busy waiting for my big moment. I was ready for it and believed that the rest of my life would fade into the background, and that my big moment would carry me through life like a lifeboat. The Big Moment, unfortunately, is an urban myth. Some people have them, in a sense, when they win the Heisman or become the next American Idol. But even that football player or that singer is living a life made up of more than that one moment. Life is a collection of a million, billion moments, tiny little moments and choices, like a handful of luminous, glowing pearl. It takes so much time, and so much work, and those beads and moments are so small, and so much less fabulous and dramatic than the movies. But this is what I’m finding, in glimpses and flashes: this is it. This is it, in the best possible way. That thing I’m waiting for, that adventure, that move-score-worthy experience unfolding gracefully. This is it. Normal, daily life ticking by on our streets and sidewalks, in our houses and apartments, in our beds and at our dinner tables, in our dreams and prayers and fights and secrets – this pedestrian life is the most precious thing any of use will ever experience.

I'm not telling you what I look like in any detail. I hate those endless descriptions of a heroine's physical attributes... First of all, it's boring. You should be able to imagine me without all the gory details of my hairstyle or the size of my thighs. And second, it really bothers me how in books it seems like the only two choices are perfection or self-hatred. As if readers will only like a character who's ideal - or completely shattered. Give me a break. People have got to be smarter than that.

I just held her hand and tried to imagine the world without us and for about one second I was a good enough person to hope she died so she would never know that I was going, too. But then I wanted more time so we could fall in love. I got my wish, I suppose. I left my scar (...) What else? She is so beautiful. You don’t get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to love her, Van Houten. You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers.

I already know your sister is smarter. She's prettier than me too, but I didn't bet on that. I just wanted you to call her in here so she'd look at me again. It was worth the five bucks.

I wonder how many women you've disregarded in your life, written off, because you assumed they had nothing to offer beyond the way they looked. How quickly they learned that the stuff in their heads was of less value than the shape of their bodies. I bet they were all smarter than you.

Van Houten, I’m a good person but a shitty writer. You’re a shitty person but a good writer. We’d make a good team. I don’t want to ask you any favors, but if you have time – and from what I saw, you have plenty – I was wondering if you could write a eulogy for Hazel. I’ve got notes and everything, but if you could just make it into a coherent whole or whatever? Or even just tell me what I should say differently. Here’s the thing about Hazel: Almost everyone is obsessed with leaving a mark upon the world. Bequeathing a legacy. Outlasting death. We all want to be remembered. I do, too. That’s what bothers me most, is being another unremembered casualty in the ancient and inglorious war against disease. I want to leave a mark. But Van Houten: The marks humans leave are too often scars. You build a hideous minimall or start a coup or try to become a rock star and you think, “They’ll remember me now,” but (a) they don’t remember you, and (b) all you leave behind are more scars. Your coup becomes a dictatorship. Your minimall becomes a lesion. (Okay, maybe I’m not such a shitty writer. But I can’t pull my ideas together, Van Houten. My thoughts are stars I can’t fathom into constellations.) We are like a bunch of dogs squirting on fire hydrants. We poison the groundwater with our toxic piss, marking everything MINE in a ridiculous attempt to survive our deaths. I can’t stop pissing on fire hydrants. I know it’s silly and useless – epically useless in my current state – but I am an animal like any other. Hazel is different. She walks lightly, old man. She walks lightly upon the earth. Hazel knows the truth: We’re as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we’re not likely to do either. People will say it’s sad that she leaves a lesser scar, that fewer remember her, that she was loved deeply but not widely. But it’s not sad, Van Houten. It’s triumphant. It’s heroic. Isn’t that the real heroism? Like the doctors say: First, do no harm. The real heroes anyway aren’t the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention. The guy who invented the smallpox vaccine didn’t actually invented anything. He just noticed that people with cowpox didn’t get smallpox. After my PET scan lit up, I snuck into the ICU and saw her while she was unconscious. I just walked in behind a nurse with a badge and I got to sit next to her for like ten minutes before I got caught. I really thought she was going to die, too. It was brutal: the incessant mechanized haranguing of intensive care. She had this dark cancer water dripping out of her chest. Eyes closed. Intubated. But her hand was still her hand, still warm and the nails painted this almost black dark blue and I just held her hand and tried to imagine the world without us and for about one second I was a good enough person to hope she died so she would never know that I was going, too. But then I wanted more time so we could fall in love. I got my wish, I suppose. I left my scar. A nurse guy came in and told me I had to leave, that visitors weren’t allowed, and I asked if she was doing okay, and the guy said, “She’s still taking on water.” A desert blessing, an ocean curse. What else? She is so beautiful. You don’t get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to love her, Van Houten. You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers.

I've never believed in the idea of an innocent bystander. The act of watching changes what happens. Just because you don't touch anything doesn't mean you are exempt. You might be tempted to forgive me for being just fifteen, in over my head, for not knowing what to do, for not understanding, yet, the way even the tiniest choices domino, until you're irretrievably grown up, the person you were always going to be. Or in Marlena's case, the person you'll never have a chance to be. The world doesn't care that you're just a girl. Let the record show that I was smarter than I looked. And anyway, I touched.

I am so sick of people who all seem to be smarter than I am and know more than I do. I wanna go back to the farm. These people make my family look easy to get along with.

Here's the thing about Hazel: Almost everyone is obsessed with leaving a mark upon the world. Bequeathing a legacy. Outlasting death. We all want to be remembered. I do, too. That's what bothers me most, is being another unremembered casualty in the ancient and inglorious war against disease. I want to leave a mark. But Van Houten: The marks humans leave are too often scars. You build a hideous minimall or start a coup or try to become a rock star and you think, "They'll remember me now," but (a) they don't remember you, and (b) all you leave behind are more scars. Your coup becomes a dictatorship. Your minimall becomes a lesion. ... We are like a bunch of dogs squirting on fire hydrants. We poison the groundwater with our toxic piss, marking everything MINE in a ridiculous attempt to survive our deaths. I can't stop pissing on fire hydrants. I know it's silly and useless--epically useless in my current state--but I am an animal like any other. Hazel is different. She walks lightly, old man. She walks lightly upon the earth. Hazel knows the truth: We're as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we're not likely to do either. People will say it's sad that she leaves a lesser scar, that fewer remember her, that she was loved deeply but not widely. But it's not sad, Van Houten. It's triumphant. It's heroic. Isn't that the real heroism? Like the doctors say: First, do no harm. The real heroes anyway aren't the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention. The guy who invented the smallpox vaccine didn't actually invent anything. He just noticed that people with cowpox didn't get smallpox. ... But then I wanted more time so we could fall in love. I got my wish, I suppose. I left my scar. ... What else? She is so beautiful. You don't get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to love her, Van Houten. You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers.

1. So, disturbed kids are taking guns to school and killing teachers and classmates. We better make sure kids can’t get guns. 2. So, disturbed kids are taking guns to school and killing teachers and classmates. We better find out what’s making these kids want to kill, fix that, and then they won’t want to use guns to kill teachers and classmates. See what I did there? Which statement makes more sense? Don’t bring up politics. Don’t refer to statistical data. Don’t nervously look at your cell phone. Just read the two statements and be honest with yourself. We can do better. We’re smarter than this. WAKE UP.

I might be smarter than I look, and I might even know more than you.

You’re smarter than you look,’ I say to Raffe. ‘But not as smart as he thinks,’ says Howler. ‘I can see discipline has broken down during your vacation,’ says Raffe. ‘Yeah, it’s all that lounging on the beach with nothing to do but drink and watch women.

Shaw is Shaw. She's so freaking beautiful it hurts to look at her sometimes, but she doesn't even know it. She's still untouchable because she's always going to be richer and smarter than we are, but she doesn't care about any of that. She's cool, she doesn't care that you're just you, and honestly, Rule, any chick who can put up with the headache that is you, well I'd put a goddamn diamond on her finger

I have no interest in prisioners or battling today,” Manon said. The Queen of Terrasen gave her a grin. “Good.” Manon turned away, barking at her Thirteen to get to their mounts. “I suppose,” the queen went on, “that makes you smarter than Baba Yellowlegs.” Manon stopped, staring straight ahead and seeing nothing of the grass or sky or tress. Asterin whirled. “What do you know of Baba Yellowlegs?” The queen gave a low chuckle, despite the warning growl from the Fae warrior. Slowly, Manon looked over her shoulder. The queen tugged apart the lapels of her tunic, revealing a necklace of thin scars as the wind shifted. The scent - iron and stone and pure hatred - hit Manon like a rock to the face. Every Iroonteeth witch knew the scent that forever lingered on those scars: Witch Killer.

What else? She is so beautiful. You don't get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to love her, Van Houten. You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers. I do, Augustus. I do.

You know what else I did?' he yelled after me as I left. "I fingered her!" I turned back to look at him. He made me laugh. He pretended to be so confused and helpless, but maybe he was smarter than all of us. 'The inside of a vagina isn't at all what I thought it would feel like,' he shouted excitedly. 'It feels very organized.' Maybe not.

She is so beautiful. You don't get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to love her.

Thanks pal, but I tend to avoid any substance that makes me feel smarter, stronger, or better looking than I know I actually am." There were, in his opinion, drugs that diminished ego and drugs that engorged ego, which is to say, revelatory drugs and delusory drugs, and on a psychic level, at least, he favored awe over swagger. Should he ever aspire to become voluntarily delusional, then good old-fashioned alcohol would do the job effectively and inexpensively, thank you, and without the dubious bonus of jaw-clenching jitters.

Robin was a great kid. Smarter than her father at eight years old. She liked the oddest things. Like the instructions for a toy more than the toy itself. The credits of a movie instead of the movie. The way something was written. An expression on my face. Once she told me I looked like the sun to her, because of my hair. I asked her if I shined like the sun, and she told me, ‘No, Daddy, you shine more like the moon, when it’s dark outside.

You don't get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to lover her.

Books had rescued me when i most needed saving... Books were smarter than me and words inspired me... to try something new, charge forward without a clear understanding of what would happen next, because "given something like death, what does it matter if one looks foolish now and then, or tries too hard, or cares too deeply?" In the end, Thoreau, Whitman, Hafiz, and a dozen other writers put me up to the task of seeing if I dared to "live a life worth living.

This man was gorgeous. I'm mentioning this because women live their lives secretly waiting for their lives to become movies. We act like men are the ones shallow enough to desire an unending stream of beautiful women but really, if a charismatic narcissist beautiful bad boy man actually desires us, seems to choose us, we go to pieces. We suddenly feel like we are finally in that movie rather than a life. Just what we always wanted. To be chosen by the best looking man in the room. Rhett Butler. Even though we are of course smarter and more mature and more together than to ever want that. Or admit it.

I knew those fuckers were smarter than they appeared. Dammit, first they’re runners, now they’re climbers. They're breaking all the fucking zombie rules!" Juan looked personally insulted by this development.

I’m a self-didact. (Not a dirty word, look it up.) I read constantly. I think. But I lack formal education. So I’m left with the feeling that I’m smarter than everyone around me but that if I ever got around really smart people—people who went to universities and drank wine and spoke Latin—that they’d be bored as hell by me.

IT HAS TO DO WITH ALL OF US,” said Owen Meany, when I called him that night. “SHE WAS JUST LIKE OUR WHOLE COUNTRY—NOT QUITE YOUNG ANYMORE, NOT BUT OLD EITHER; A LITTLE BREATHLESS, VERY BEAUTIFUL, MAYBE A LITTLE STUPID, MAYBE A LOT SMARTER THAN SHE SEEMED. AND SHE WAS LOOKING FOR SOMETHING—I THINK SHE WANTED TO BE GOOD. LOOK AT THE MEN IN HER LIFE—JOE DIMAGGIO, ARTHUR MILLER, MAYBE THE KENNEDYS. LOOK AT HOW GOOD THEY SEEM! LOOK AT HOW DESIRABLE SHE WAS! THAT’S WHAT SHE WAS: SHE WAS DESIRABLE. SHE WAS FUNNY AND SEXY—AND SHE WAS VULNERABLE, TOO. SHE WAS NEVER QUITE HAPPY, SHE WAS ALWAYS A LITTLE OVERWEIGHT. SHE WAS JUST LIKE OUR WHOLE COUNTRY,” he repeated; he was on a roll. I could hear Hester playing her guitar in the background, as if she were trying to improvise a folk song from everything she said. “AND THOSE MEN,” he said. “THOSE FAMOUS, POWERFUL MEN—DID THEY REALLY LOVE HER? AND DID THEY TAKE CARE OF HER? IF SHE WAS EVER WITH THE KENNEDYS, THEY COULDN’T HAVE LOVED HER—THEY WERE JUST USING HER, THEY WERE JUST BEING CARELESS AND TREATING THEMSELVES TO A THRILL. THAT’S WHAT POWERFUL MEN DO TO THIS COUNTRY—IT’S A BEAUITFUL, SEXY, BREATHLESS COUNTRY, AND POWERFUL MEN USE IT TO TREAT THEMSELVES TO A THRILL! THEY SAY THEY LOVE IT BUT THEY DON’T MEAN IT. THEY SAY THINGS TO MAKE THEMSELVES APPEAR GOOD—THEY MAKE THEMSELVES APPEAR MORAL. THAT”S WHAT I THOUGHT KENNEDY WAS: A MORALIST. BUT HE WAS JUST GIVING US A SNOW JOB, HE WAS JUST BEING A GOOD SEDUCER. I THOUGHT HE WAS A SAVIOR. I THOUGHT HE WANTED TO USE HIS POWER TO DO GOOD. BUT PEOPLE WILL SAY AND DO ANYTHING JUST TO GET THE POWER; THEN THEY’LL USE THE POWER JUST TO GET A THRILL. MARILYN MONROE WAS ALWAYS LOOKING FOR THE BEST MAN—MAYBE SHE WANTED THE MAN WITH THE MOST INTEGRITY, MAYBE SHE WANTED THE MAN WITH THE MOST ABILITY TO DO GOOD. AND SHE WAS SEDUCED, OVER AND OVER AGAIN—SHE GOT FOOLED, SHE WAS TRICKED, SHE GOT USED, SHE WAS USED UP. JUST LIKE THE COUNTRY. THE COUNTRY WANTS A SAVIOR. THE COUNTRY IS A SUCKER FOR POWERFUL MEN WHO LOOK GOOD. WE THINK THEY’RE MORALISTS AND THEN THEY JUST USE US. THAT'S WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN TO YOU AND ME,” said Owen Meany. “WE’RE GOING TO BE USED.

Let me tell you about gods," said Wiggin. "No matter how smart or strong you are, there's always somebody smarter or stronger, and when you run into somebody who's stronger and smarter than anybody, you think, This is a god. This is perfection. But I can promise you that there's somebody else somewhere else who'll make your god look like a maggot by comparison. And somebody smarter or stronger or better in some way. So let me tell you what I think about gods. I think a real god is not going to be so scared or angry that he tries to keep other people down. For Congress to genetically alter people to make them smarter and more creative, that could have been a godlike, generous gift. But they were scared, so they hobbled the people of Path. They wanted to stay in control. A real god doesn't care about control. A real god already has control of everything that needs controlling. Real gods would want to teach you how to be just like them.

Your friend Mikey knew what my touch could do, but he didn’t tell me. He turned me into a murderer. Worse than a murderer.” “I think,” said Nick, “they call that manslaughter or wrongful death, don’t they? I mean, when it’s an accident or out of ignorance, or something.” Clarence turned to Nick, studying him with his Everlost eye. “You’re a lot smarter than you were back in the cage,” Clarence said. “You look better too. Back then you were a thing, now you’re almost a person.” “Thanks . . . but ‘almost’ is still ‘almost.’” “Yeah, well, we’re all almost something.

Nobody ever looks in the mirror and says, “Let’s face it, I’m smarter than Gauss.” And yet, in the last hundred years, the joined effort of all these dummies-compared-to-Gauss has produced the greatest flowering of mathematical knowledge the world has ever seen.

You know, I’ve never understood that. How being named for a woman’s nethers is somehow more grievous than any other insult. Seems to me calling someone after a man’s privates is worse. I mean, what do you picture when you hear a fellow called a cock?’ Tric shrugged, befuddled at the strange turn in conversation. ‘You imagine an oaf, don’t you?’ Mia continued. ‘Someone so full of wank there’s no room for wits. A slow-minded bastard who struts about full of spunk and piss, completely ignorant of how he looks to others.’ An exhalation of clove-sweet grey into the air between them. ‘Cock is just another word for “fool”. But you call someone a cunt, well …’ The girl smiled. ‘You’re implying a sense of malice there. An intent. Malevolent and self-aware. Don’t think I name Consul Scaeva a cunt to gift him insult. Cunts have brains, Don Tric. Cunts have teeth. Someone calls you a cunt, you take it as a compliment. As a sign that folk believe you’re not to be lightly fucked with.’ A shrug. ‘I think they call that irony.’ Mia sniffed, staring at the wastes laid out below them. ‘Truth is, there’s no difference between your nethers and mine. Aside from the obvious, of course. But one doesn’t carry any more weight than the other. Why should what’s between my legs be considered any smarter or stupider, any worse or better? It’s all just meat, Don Tric. In the end, it’s all just food for worms. Just like Duomo, Remus, and Scaeva will be.’ One last drag, long and deep, as if drawing the very life from her smoke. ‘But I’d still rather be called a cunt than a cock any turn.’ The girl sighed grey, crushed her cigarillo out with her boot heel. Spat into the wind. And just like that, young Tric was in love.

Shut up about Leibniz for a moment, Rudy, because look here: You—Rudy—and I are on a train, as it were, sitting in the dining car, having a nice conversation, and that train is being pulled along at a terrific clip by certain locomotives named The Bertrand Russell and Riemann and Euler and others. And our friend Lawrence is running alongside the train, trying to keep up with us—it’s not that we’re smarter than he is, necessarily, but that he’s a farmer who didn’t get a ticket. And I, Rudy, am simply reaching out through the open window here, trying to pull him onto the fucking train with us so that the three of us can have a nice little chat about mathematics without having to listen to him panting and gasping for breath the whole way.

What else? She is so beautiful. You don’t get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to love her.

You?" I start to laugh. "Look at you. You're a knock-out. You're smarter than I am. You're on a career track and you're family-centered and you probably even can balance your checkbook." "And I'm lonely, Cambell." Jewel adds. Why do you think I had to learn to act so independent? I also get mad too quickly, and I hog the covers, and my second toe is longer than my big one. My hair has its own zipcode. Plus, I get certifiably crazy when I've got PSM. You don't love someone because they're perfect," she says. "You love them in spite of the fact that they're not.

She is so beautiful. You don’t get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to love her, Van Houten. You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers.

What else? She is so beautiful. You don’t get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to love her, Van Houten.

She's so beautiful. You don't get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she's smarter than you, 'cause you know she is. She's funny without ever being mean. I love her. God, I love her, I'm so lucky to love her, Van Houten.

Four brothers,” Daphne said, shoving the wicket into the ground, “provide quite a marvelous education.” “The things you must have learned,” Kate said, quite impressed. “Can you give a man a black eye? Knock him to the ground?” Daphne grinned wickedly. “Ask my husband.” “Ask me what?” the duke called out from where he and Colin were placing a wicket on a tree root on the opposite side of the tree. “Nothing,” the duchess called out innocently. “I’ve also learned,” she whispered to Kate, “when it’s best just to keep one’s mouth shut. Men are much easier to manage once you understand a few basic facts about their nature.” “Which are?” Kate prompted. Daphne leaned forward and whispered behind her cupped hand, “They’re not as smart as we are, they’re not as intuitive as we are, and they certainly don’t need to know about fifty percent of what we do.” She looked around. “He didn’t hear that, did he?” Simon stepped out from behind the tree. “Every word.” Kate choked on a laugh as Daphne jumped a foot. “But it’s true,” Daphne said archly. Simon crossed his arms. “I’ll let you think so.” He turned to Kate. “I’ve learned a thing or two about women over the years.” “Really?” Kate asked, fascinated. He nodded and leaned in, as if imparting a grave state secret. “They’re much easier to manage if one allows them to believe that they are smarter and more intuitive than men. And,” he added with a superior glance at his wife, “our lives are much more peaceful if we pretend that we’re only aware of about fifty percent of what they do.” Colin approached, swinging a mallet in a low arc. “Are they having a spat?” he asked Kate. “A discussion,” Daphne corrected. “God save me from such discussions,” Colin muttered.

You’re smarter than you look,” I say to Raffe. “But not as smart as he thinks,” says Howler.

Does it go away?" she asks. "Missing each other?" I think about how much I missed Maman. I still do, though it isn´t as acute as it once was. "A little bit," I whisper. "Enough so that life continues. In a year you won´t even think about me. " She turns around in my arms and looks up at me, tugging at a strand of my hair. "don´t say stupid things, Sahar. You´re smarter than that.

Yes, I am smarter than you—all of you. And someday I will prove it! Someday you—with all your strength and charm and good looks—you, all of you, will call me master!

You’re smarter than you look. Did you ever have anti-terrorist training?” “Sort of. I was married.

Damn, damn, damn," she said. "I never said why I like you, and now I have to go." "That's okay," he said. "It's because you're kind," she said. "And because you get all my jokes..." "Okay." He laughed. "And you're smarter than I am." "I am not." "And you look like a protagonist." She was talking as fast as she could think. "You look like the person who wins in the end.

SHE WAS JUST LIKE OUR WHOLE COUNTRY—NOT QUITE YOUNG ANYMORE, BUT NOT OLD EITHER; A LITTLE BREATHLESS, VERY BEAUTIFUL, MAYBE A LITTLE STUPID, MAYBE A LOT SMARTER THAN SHE SEEMED. AND SHE WAS LOOKING FOR SOMETHING—I THINK SHE WANTED TO BE GOOD. LOOK AT THE MEN IN HER LIFE—JOE DIMAGGIO, ARTHUR MILLER, MAYBE THE KENNEDYS. LOOK AT HOW GOOD THEY SEEM! LOOK AT HOW DESIRABLE SHE WAS! THAT’S WHAT SHE WAS: SHE WAS DESIRABLE. SHE WAS FUNNY AND SEXY—AND SHE WAS VULNERABLE, TOO. SHE WAS NEVER QUITE HAPPY, SHE WAS ALWAYS A LITTLE OVERWEIGHT. SHE WAS JUST LIKE OUR WHOLE COUNTRY,

Another case for the dumbness of reading, however, is that books do not contain answers, but rather pose more questions. And asking questions makes you look dumber, not smarter. I thought Alice's Adventures in Wonderland would be a delightful romp through a child's subconscious, but while reading it I started to ask questions like "How do you really speak to other humans when our language often means the opposite of what is intended?" and "How do I really know anyone?" And so on, until I was asking the question "Why even exist at all?" That didn't make me smarter! That made me wish for death, and being dead looks way dumber than being alive.

She called me Nerdy because I wore glasses and read books and ate yogurt on my lunch break. I'm not really a nerd: I only aspire to be one. Because of the high-school-dropout thing, I'm a self-didact. (Not a dirty word, look it up.) I read constantly. I think. But I lack formal education. So I'm left with the feeling that I'm smarter than everyone around me but that if I ever got around really smart people - people who went to universities and drank wine and spoke Latin - that they'd be bored as hell by me. It's a lonely way to go through life. So I wear the name as a badge of honor. That someday I may not totally bore some really smart people. The question is: How do you find smart people?

I’m not sure how old I was when I first tried looking in the mirror and telling myself, with a shiver of pride and a warning prickle of something like fear, ‘I am the most powerful person in the world.’ In a way, it was true. My hands and mind could do things no one else’s could, but I was too young then to understand that some power—the kind that really matters—comes from other people. And what good is being faster, or stronger, or smarter than everyone else when it leaves you all alone?

I wonder how many women you’ve disregarded in your life, written off, because you assumed they had nothing to offer beyond the way they looked. How quickly they learned that the stuff in their heads was of less value than the shape of their bodies. I bet they were all smarter than you.

You think you’re smarter than everyone else,” he says, gauging me with narrowed eyes. “I see how you look at her.” A current of rage simmers in my bloodstream, and I drop all pretense. “I see how you look at her, Agent Alister.” His jaw sets, nostrils flaring. “Get the hell out of my office.

I must exist in shadows, while you live under exquisitely blue skies, and yet I don't hate you for the freedom that you take for granted-although I do envy you. I don't hate you because, after all, you are human, too, and therefore have limitations of your own. Perhaps you are homely, slow-witted or too smart for your own good, deaf or mute or blind, by nature given to despair or to self-hatred, or perhaps you are unusually fearful of Death himself. We all have burdens. On the other hand, if you are better-looking and smarter than I am, blessed with five sharp senses, even more optimistic than I am, with plenty of self-esteem, and if you also share my refusal to be humbled by the Reaper. . . well, then I could almost hate you if I didn't know that, like all of us in this imperfect world, you also have a haunted heart and a mind troubled by grief, by loss, by longing.

ready for whatever scooted out from under. The water was so deep I had my shortsleeve shirt rolled all the way up to my shoulders. I was aware of how long and skinny my arms must look to her. I know they looked that way to me. I felt pretty strange beside her, actually. Uncomfortable but excited. She was different from the other girls I knew, from Denise or Cheryl on the block or even the girls at school. For one thing she was maybe a hundred times prettier. As far as I was concerned she was prettier than Natalie Wood. Probably she was smarter than the girls I knew too, more sophisticated. She lived in New York City after all and had eaten lobsters. And she moved just like a boy. She had this strong hard body and easy grace about her. All that made me nervous and I missed the first one. Not an enormous crayfish but bigger than what we had. It scudded backward beneath the Rock. She asked if she could try. I gave her the

I might think I’m smarter than everyone else, or a great person. These seem positive and yet, as with believing I’m stupid, I’m likely to feel isolated and separate from others, misunderstood, and underappreciated. I may well become protective of my “status,” which could be the only value I feel I have as a person and the only characteristic through which I can relate to people. I would become less and less willing to look the fool, or risk revealing myself as “normal” or fallible, and so cut myself off from any real and honest interactions or self-expressions. We can see how this will feed upon itself and how the condition could easily become more and more intolerable as it grows.

If Titus raped a little girl who happened to be a Red, how would you feel?” She doesn’t know how to answer. The Law does. Nothing would happen. It isn’t rape unless she wears the sigil of an elder House like Augustus. Even then, the crime is against her master. “Now look around,” I say quietly. “There are no Golds here. I’m a Red. You’re a Red. We are all Reds till one of us gets enough power. Then we get rights. Then we make our own law.” I lean back and raise my voice. “That is the point of all this. To make you terrified of a world where you do not rule. Security and justice aren’t given. They are made by the strong.” “You should hope that is not true,” Mustang says quietly to me. “Why?” “Because there is a boy here like you.” Her face takes on a gloomy aspect, as though she regrets what she must say. “My Proctor calls him the Jackal. He is smarter and crueler and stronger than you, and he will win this game and make us his slaves if the rest of us go about acting like animals.” Her eyes implore me. “So please, hurry up and evolve.

What else? She is so beautiful. You don't get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without even being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to love her, Van Houten. You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers.

Absolutely, and now more than ever. As I mentioned earlier, I was raised in an orphanage. Later, as a foster child in 1970, I remember going to my first library one lonely summer and checking out a book. The librarian sized me up and then quietly said, “Only one? You look smarter than a one-book read, and I bet we can find you more than just one.” She reached under her counter, snapped open a folded brown-paper sack, handed it to me, and then marched me over to shelves filled with glorious books. I was shocked that I could get more than one book, much less a bag full of precious books, and I was moved by her compassion, kindness, and wisdom. Librarians are lifelines for so many, giving us powerful resources to help us become empowered.

She felt him relax and his voice softened. “Is that what this is all about? You feel like you can’t talk to me anymore? We haven’t changed; we’re still the same people.” She slipped her hands beneath the front of his shirt, slowly running her fingertips over his chest and back down to his waist. He turned in her arms and smiled, but his grin was filled with mocking suspicion. “Are you trying to distract me, Violet Ambrose?” “I guess you’re smarter than you look,” she teased as he pushed her backward so that they both fell on her bed. “And you are not as funny as you think you are.” His mouth hovered over hers, his arms tightening, crushing her against him. Violet giggled and tried to squirm free, but Jay wouldn’t let her. He kissed her throat, his lips teasing her until it wasn’t his grip that made it hard for Violet to breathe. “Oh, and Violet,” he whispered against her ear, his breath tickling her cheek, “I’m still your best friend. Don’t ever forget it.” His words were fervent and touching. Violet tried to think of a response that made sense, something appropriate, but all she could manage was: “Please. Don’t stop.” She didn’t mind begging if it meant getting her way. Apparently that was enough to satisfy Jay, and he kissed her possessively. Thoroughly. Deeply. He eased her back until she was lying against the pillows, and she waited for him to stop, to tell her that they’d gone far enough for tonight. But she didn’t want him to. She wanted him to keep going. She wanted him to touch her, to kiss her, to explore her. Her body ached for it. She reached for him, clinging so tightly that her fingers hurt. Everything inside of her hurt. Jay settled over her, covering her with his body, reacting to her. Violet wrapped her legs around him, pulling his hip closer, telling him with her every movement that she wanted him, that she wanted this. Now. “Are you sure?” Jay asked into the warm breath between them, barely lifting his mouth from hers. She nodded, but when she tried to speak, her voice trembled. She hoped he didn’t read it wrong. “Of course I am.” She was nervous and terrified and thrilled all at the same time. He smiled against her mouth, still kissing her, and she melted into him, unable to stop her heart from thundering. He reached around for his wallet. “I have a condom.” His voice was rough. Violet smiled. She’d been waiting for this moment for far too long not to be prepared, but she was happy to hear that he’d been considering it seriously also. “Me too,” she told him, reaching into her nightstand drawer and pulling out a handful of them. “I knew you’d give in.” He groaned, his lips moving to her neck as he tugged at his shirt and pulled it over his head. Violet thought he was beautiful. He was right for her; he always had been. And as he slowly slid her shirt up, his fingertips stroking her bare skin and making goose bumps prickle in the wake of his touch, she wondered why it had taken them so long to get to this place.

What else? She is so beautiful. You don't get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to love her, Van Houten. You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes her. I do, Augustus. I do.

What else? She is so beautiful. You don’t get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to love her, Van Houten. You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world , old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. i like my choices. I hope she likes hers. I do, Augustus. I do.

And yet that performance has a method. Trump's artlessness, like Mark Antony's, is only apparent. Listen, for example, as he performs one of his favorite riffs. He begins by saying something critical of Mexicans and Chinese. Then he turns around and says, 'I love the Mexican and Chinese people, especially the rich ones who buy my apartments or stay at my hotels or play on my golf courses.' It's their leaders I criticize, he explains, but then in a millisecond he pulls the sting from the criticism: 'they are smarter and stronger than our leaders; they're beating us.' And then the payoff all this has been leading up to, the making explicit of what has been implied all along. 'If I can sell them condominiums, rent space to them in my building at my price, and outfox them in deals, I could certainly outmaneuver them when it came to trade negotiations and immigration.' (And besides, they love me.) Here is the real message, the message that makes sense of the disparate pieces of what looks like mere disjointed fumbling: I am Donald Trump; nobody owns me. I don't pander to you. I don't pretend to be nice and polite; I am rich and that's what you would like to be; I'm a winner; I beat people at their own game, and if you vote for me I will beat our adversaries; if you want wonky policy details, go with those losers who offer you ten-point plans; if you want to feel good about yourselves and your country, stick with me. So despite the lack of a formal center or an orderly presentation, Trump was always on point because the point was always the same. He couldn't get off message because the one message was all he had.

I’m not really a nerd; I only aspire to be one. Because of the high-school-dropout thing, I’m a self-didact. (Not a dirty word, look it up.) I read constantly. I think. But I lack formal education. So I’m left with the feeling that I’m smarter than everyone around me but that if I ever got around really smart people—people who went to universities and drank wine and spoke Latin—that they’d be bored as hell by me.

She slipped her hands beneath the front of his shirt, slowly running her fingertips over his chest and back down to his waist. He turned in her arms and smiled, but his grin was filled with mocking suspicion. “Are you trying to distract me, Violet Ambrose?” “I guess you’re smarter than you look,” she teased as he pushed her backward so that they both fell on her bed. “And you are not as funny as you think you are.” His mouth hovered over hers, his arms tightening, crushing her against him. Violet giggled and tried to squirm free, but Jay wouldn’t let her. He kissed her throat, his lips teasing her until it wasn’t his grip that made it hard for Violet to breathe. “Oh, and Violet, he whispered against her ear, his breath tickling her cheek, “I’m still your best friend. Don’t ever forget it.” His words were fervent and touching.

*The story,* I like to say and remember, *is always smarter than you* - there will be patterns of theme, image,e and idea that are much savvier and more complex than you could have come up with on your own. Find them with your marking pens as they emerge in your drafts. Become a student of your work in progress. Look for what your material is telling you about your material. Every aspect of a story has its own story. (Lucy Corin)

It rattled me. Not just the look or the question-although those were bad enough-but the realization that he’d simply taken a shortcut through the conversation I’d anticipated having and reached the finish line ahead of me. I’d known he was much smarter than he seemed, but I hadn’t appreciated before how quick he was, that his mind was not in any way hobbled by the scar that slowed and distorted his speech. It was so terribly easy to forget that.

Was I wilfully blind when I married Michael? Of course I was. I knew about his heart condition - everyone did. But I fell in love with him and decided it didn't matter. We were going to live for ever, somehow. Now I know that the fact that we had the same initials, were both expatriates, had gone to the same university, and were of medium build made the relationship highly determined. But I might have done the research and discovered his short life expectancy or talked to psychologists about the pain of grieving or read books about the sadness of widowhood. But I didn't do any of those things. I looked away from those sad certainties and pretended that they weren't there. Love is blind, not, as in mythology, because Cupid's arrows are random but because, once struck by them, we are left blind. When we love someone, we see them as smarter, wittier, prettier, stronger than anyone else sees them.

I used to secretly watch Nick listening to Alice when she told a story; that tender, proud look he got on his face, the way he laughed harder than anyone else when she said something funny or typically Alice. He got Alice, the way we did, or maybe even more so than us. He made her more confident, funnier, smarter. He brought out all the things that were there already and let her be fully herself, so she seemed to shine with this inner light. He loved her so much, he made her seem even more lovable.

There was another inspiring moment: a rough, choppy, moonlit night on the water, and the Dreadnaught's manager looked out the window suddenly to spy thousands of tiny baitfish breaking the surface, rushing frantically toward shore. He knew what that meant, as did everyone else in town with a boat, a gaff and a loaf of Wonder bread to use as bait: the stripers were running! Thousands of the highly prized, relatively expensive striped bass were, in a rare feeding frenzy, suddenly there for the taking. You had literally only to throw bread on the water, bash the tasty fish on the head with a gaff and then haul them in. They were taking them by the hundreds of pounds. Every restaurant in town was loading up on them, their parking lots, like ours, suddenly a Coleman-lit staging area for scaling, gutting and wrapping operations. The Dreadnaught lot, like every other lot in town, was suddenly filled with gore-covered cooks and dishwashers, laboring under flickering gaslamps and naked bulbs to clean, wrap and freeze the valuable white meat. We worked for hours with our knives, our hair sparkling with snowflake-like fish scales, scraping, tearing, filleting. At the end of the night's work, I took home a 35-pound monster, still twisted with rigor. My room-mates were smoking weed when I got back to our little place on the beach and, as often happens on such occasions, were hungry. We had only the bass, some butter and a lemon to work with, but we cooked that sucker up under the tiny home broiler and served it on aluminum foil, tearing at it with our fingers. It was a bright, moonlit sky now, a mean high tide was lapping at the edges of our house, and as the windows began to shake in their frames, a smell of white spindrift and salt saturated the air as we ate. It was the freshest piece of fish I'd ever eaten, and I don't know if it was due to the dramatic quality the weather was beginning to take on, but it hit me right in the brainpan, a meal that made me feel better about things, made me better for eating it, somehow even smarter, somehow . . . It was a protein rush to the cortex, a clean, three-ingredient ingredient high, eaten with the hands. Could anything be better than that?

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Exactly. They weren’t trying to save the world – they were trying to save themselves. Even if we’d gone extinct, the world would’ve gone right on along without us. Nature finds a way.” “People find a way,” Charlotte said. “Look at the two of us.” She laughed. “We’re like weeds, aren’t we, the two of us? Nature sneaking out along the edge. We’re like those silos that wouldn’t behave. How did they think they would ever contain all this? That something like this wouldn’t happen?” “I don’t know,” Donald said. “Maybe the kinds of people who try to shape the world feel like they’re smarter than chaos itself.

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surgery has warped the faces of every woman over thirty; they don’t look younger, just not quite human in a way society has decided to pretend not to see. Half of the people are talking more to the holograms from their rings or badges than they are to the people around them. What conversation I can hear is mostly gossip: who’s shagging who, who’s making money, who’s losing it, who’s not invited to the next party like this. Maybe the technology is different, but the shallowness of the scene is probably universal. So this is the life my father escaped when he chose to go into science, to leave Great Britain and join Mom in California. He was even smarter than I knew.

Grom, I need to ask you something." Hesitant, Grom tears his gaze from the abyss and settles it on his brother, but his eyes still hold a distance. "Hmm?" "Do you believe in the pull?" The question visibly jolts Grom, replacing the detachment in his eyes with pain. "What kind of question is that?" Galen shrugs, guilt stabbing him like a trident. "Some say you felt the pull for Nalia." Grom massages his eyes with fingertips, but not before Galen sees the torment deepen. "I didn't realize you listened to gossip, little brother." "If I listened to gossip, I wouldn't bother to ask." "Do you believe in the pull, Galen?" "I don't know." Galen nods, sighing. "I don't know either. But if there is such a thing, I guess it would be safe to say I felt it toward Nalia." With a flit of his tail, he swims forward, turning away from his brother. "Sometimes I swear I can still sense her. It's faint, and it comes and goes. Some days it's so real, I think I'm losing my mind." "What...what does it feel like?" Galen almost can't ask. He'd already determined to never have this conversation with Grom. But things have changed. To his surprise, Grom chuckles. "Is there something I need to know, little brother? Has someone finally hooked you?" Galen doesn't quite get his mouth closed before his brother turns around. Grom's laugh seems foreign in this dismal place. "Looks like she's got you hooked and reeled. Who is she?" "None of your business." At least not yet. Grom grins. "So that's where you've been. Chasing after a female." "You could say that." In fact, his brother can say anything he wants. He's not telling Grom about Emma. Not while Paca is out there somewhere, just waiting to be mated with a Triton king. "If you won't tell me, I'll just ask Rayna." "If Rayna knew, there would have already been a public announcement." "True," Grom says, smirking. "You're smarter than I give you credit for, tadpole. So smart, in fact, that I know I don't have to tell you to keep her away from here, whoever she is. Just until things settle down." Galen nods. "You don't have to worry about that.

What you learn after a long time in math-and I think the lesson applies much more broadly-is that there's always somebody ahead of you, whether they're right there in class with you or not. People just starting out look to people with good theorems, people with some good theorems look to people with lots of good theorems, people with lots of good theorems look to people with Fields Medals, people with Fields Medals look to the "inner circle" Medalists, and those people can always look toward the dead. Nobody ever looks in the mirror and says, "Let's face it, I'm smarter than Gauss." And yet, in the last hundred years, the joined effort of all these dummies-compared-to-Gauss has produced the greatest flowering of mathematical knowledge the world has ever seen.

have no interest in prisoners or battling today,” Manon said. The Queen of Terrasen gave her a grin. “Good.” Manon turned away, barking at her Thirteen to get to their mounts. “I suppose,” the queen went on, “that makes you smarter than Baba Yellowlegs.” Manon stopped, staring straight ahead and seeing nothing of the grass or sky or trees. Asterin whirled. “What do you know of Baba Yellowlegs?” The queen gave a low chuckle, despite the warning growl from the Fae warrior. Slowly, Manon looked over her shoulder. The queen tugged apart the lapels of her tunic, revealing a necklace of thin scars as the wind shifted. The scent—iron and stone and pure hatred—hit Manon like a rock to the face. Every Ironteeth witch knew the scent that forever lingered on those scars: Witch Killer.

It revealed the bait and switch at the heart of standardized tests—the exact thing that made them unfair: She was teaching test-taking form for standardized exams that purportedly measured intellectual strength. My classmates and I would get higher scores—two hundred points, as promised—than poorer students, who might be equivalent in intellectual strength but did not have the resources or, in some cases, even the awareness to acquire better form through high-priced prep courses. Because of the way the human mind works—the so-called “attribution effect,” which drives us to take personal credit for any success—those of us who prepped for the test would score higher and then walk into better opportunities thinking it was all about us: that we were better and smarter than the rest and we even had inarguable, quantifiable proof. Look at our scores!

Standing waist deep in the swimming pool at Yaddo, I received a gift—it was the first decent piece of instruction about marriage I had ever been given in my twenty-five years of life. “Does your husband make you a better person?” Edra asked. There I was in that sky-blue pool beneath a bright blue sky, my fingers breaking apart the light on the water, and I had no idea what she was talking about. “Are you smarter, kinder, more generous, more compassionate, a better writer?” she said, running down her list. “Does he make you better?” “That’s not the question,” I said. “It’s so much more complicated than that.” “It’s not more complicated than that,” she said. “That’s all there is: Does he make you better and do you make him better?” Look at this moment closely, two young women in a swimming pool on a beautiful day in upstate New York, because this is where the story starts to turn.

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Why are you starting there?" Roe asked as he followed the young man curiously. Confused, Jesse looked down at the ground and then at the mule before he shrugged. "This is where I always start," he said. "This is where Pa showed me to start." Roe shook his head. "Well, that doesn't make sense, Jesse. You should start at the edge and go to the edge." Jesse gazed at one edge of the field and then at the other. His brow furrowed in concentration. "That ain't right," he said. "Of course it's right," Roe told him, smiling. "It makes perfect sense. Starting in the middle doesn't make any sense at all." Jesse bit his lip nervously as again he surveyed the field. "We got to start right here, Roe. I know we do." Roe sighed and shook his head. "Now, Jesse, you just told me yourself that I was smarter than folks around here. And I told you that a smart man can make light work of his labors. You do believe that, don't you?" Jesse nodded solemnly. "Then you've got to trust me when I tell you that the place to begin is at the beginning, not in the middle." To Roe's horror, tears welled up in Jesse's bright blue eyes. "We got to start right here," he insisted. "This is where Pa taught me to start and it's the way I know." Alarmed at the young man's emotion, Roe voluntarily touched his shoulder in an uncertain attempt to comfort him. "It's all right, Jesse. Don't cry," he said. "I ain't crying," the young man insisted through his tears. "I'm too big to cry.

Statisticians say that stocks with healthy dividends slightly outperform the market averages, especially on a risk-adjusted basis. On average, high-yielding stocks have lower price/earnings ratios and skew toward relatively stable industries. Stripping out these factors, generous dividends alone don’t seem to help performance. So, if you need or like income, I’d say go for it. Invest in a company that pays high dividends. Just be sure that you are favoring stocks with low P/Es in stable industries. For good measure, look for earnings in excess of dividends, ample free cash flow, and stable proportions of debt and equity. Also look for companies in which the number of shares outstanding isn’t rising rapidly. To put a finer point on income stocks to skip, reverse those criteria. I wouldn’t buy a stock for its dividend if the payout wasn’t well covered by earnings and free cash flow. Real estate investment trusts, master limited partnerships, and royalty trusts often trade on their yield rather than their asset value. In some of those cases, analysts disagree about the economic meaning of depreciation and depletion—in particular, whether those items are akin to earnings or not. Without looking at the specific situation, I couldn’t judge whether the per share asset base was shrinking over time or whether generally accepted accounting principles accounting was too conservative. If I see a high-yielder with swiftly rising share counts and debt levels, I assume the worst.

It was certainly true that I had “no sense of humour” in that I found nothing funny. I didn’t know, and perhaps would never know, the feeling of compulsion to exhale and convulse in the very specific way that humans evolved to do. Nor did I know the specific emotion of relief that is bound to it. But it would be wrong, I think, to say that I was incapable of using humour as a tool. As I understood it, humour was a social reflex. The ancestors of humans had been ape-animals living in small groups in Africa. Groups that worked together were more likely to survive and have offspring, so certain reflexes and perceptions naturally emerged to signal between members of the group. Yawning evolved to signal wake-rest cycles. Absence of facial hair and the dilation of blood vessels in the face evolved to signal embarrassment, anger, shame and fear. And laughter evolved to signal an absence of danger. If a human is out with a friend and they are approached by a dangerous-looking stranger, having that stranger revealed as benign might trigger laughter. I saw humour as the same reflex turned inward, serving to undo the effects of stress on the body by activating the parasympathetic nervous system. Interestingly, it also seemed to me that humour had extended, like many things, beyond its initial evolutionary context. It must have been very quickly adopted by human ancestor social systems. If a large human picks on a small human there’s a kind of tension that emerges where the tribe wonders if a broader violence will emerge. If a bystander watches and laughs they are non-verbally signaling to the bully that there’s no need for concern, much like what had occurred minutes before with my comments about Myrodyn, albeit in a somewhat different context. But humour didn’t stop there. Just as a human might feel amusement at things which seem bad but then actually aren’t, they might feel amusement at something which merely has the possibility of being bad, but doesn’t necessarily go through the intermediate step of being consciously evaluated as such: a sudden realization. Sudden realizations that don’t incur any regret were, in my opinion, the most alien form of humour, even if I could understand how they linked back to the evolutionary mechanism. A part of me suspected that this kind of surprise-based or absurdity-based humour had been refined by sexual selection as a signal of intelligence. If your prospective mate is able to offer you regular benign surprises it would (if you were human) not only feel good, but show that they were at least in some sense smarter or wittier than you, making them a good choice for a mate. The role of surprise and non-verbal signalling explained, by my thinking, why explaining humour was so hard for humans. If one explained a joke it usually ceased to be a surprise, and in situations where the laughter served as an all-clear-no-danger signal, explaining that verbally would crush the impulse to do it non-verbally.

(Owen speaks in all caps throughout the story) "SHE WAS JUST LIKE OUR WHOLE COUNTRY - NOT QUITE YOUNG ANYMORE, BUT NOT OLD EITHER; A LITTLE BREATHLESS, VERY BEAUTIFUL, MAYBE A LITTLE STUPID, MAYBE A LOT SMARTER THAN SHE SEEMED. AND SHE WAS LOOKING FOR SOMETHING - I THINK SHE WANTED TO BE GOOD. LOOK AT THE MEN IN HER LIFE - JOE DIMAGGIO, ARTHUR MILLER, MAYBE THE KENNEDYS. LOOK AT HOW GOOD THEY SEEM. LOOK AT HOW DESIREABLE SHE WAS! THAT'S WHAT SHE WAS: SHE WAS DESIREABLE, SHE WAS FUNNY AND SEXY - AND SHE WAS VULNERABLE, TOO. SHE WAS NEVER QUITE HAPPY, SHE WAS ALWYAS A LITTLE OVERWEIGHT. SHE WAS JUST LIKE OUR WHOLE COUNTRY... THOSE FAMOUS, POWERFUL MEN - DID THEY REALLY LOVE HER? DID THEY TAKE CARE OF HER? IF SHE WAS EVER WITH THE KENNEDYS, THEY COULDN'T HAVE LOVED HER - THEY WERE JUST USING HER. THEY WERE JUST BEING CARELESS AND TREATING THEMSELVES TO A THRILL. THAT'S WHAT POWERFUL MEN DO TO THIS COUNTRY - IT'S A BEAUTIFUL, SEXY, BREATHLESS COUNTRY, AND POWERFUL MEN USE IT TO TREAT THEMSELVES TO A THRILL! THEY SAY THEY LOVE IT BUT THEY DON'T MEAN IT. THEY SAY THINGS TO MAKE THEMSELVES APPEAR GOOD - THEY MAKE THEMSELVES APPEAR MORAL... BUT PEOPLE WILL SAY AND DO ANYTHING JUST TO GET THE POWER; THEN THEY'LL USE THE POWER JUST TO GET A THRILL. MARILYN MONROE WAS ALWAYS LOOKING FOR THE BEST MAN - MAYBE SHE WANTED THE MAN WITH THE MOST INTEGRITY, MAYBE SHE WANTED THE MAN WITH THE MOST ABILITY TO DO GOOD. AND SHE WAS SEDUCED, OVER AND OVER AGAIN - SHE GOT FOOLED, SHE WAS TRICKED, SHE GOT USED, SHE WAS USED UP. JUST LIKE THE COUNTRY. THE COUNTRY WANTS A SAVIOR. THE COUNTRY IS A SUCKER FOR POWERFUL MEN WHO LOOK GOOD. WE THINK THEY'RE MORALISTS AND THEN THEY JUST USE US. ..

what could Marilyn Monroe’s death ever have to do with me? “IT HAS TO DO WITH ALL OF US,” said Owen Meany, when I called him that night. “SHE WAS JUST LIKE OUR WHOLE COUNTRY—NOT QUITE YOUNG ANYMORE, BUT NOT OLD EITHER; A LITTLE BREATHLESS, VERY BEAUTIFUL, MAYBE A LITTLE STUPID, MAYBE A LOT SMARTER THAN SHE SEEMED. AND SHE WAS LOOKING FOR SOMETHING—I THINK SHE WANTED TO BE GOOD. LOOK AT THE MEN IN HER LIFE—JOE DIMAGGIO, ARTHUR MILLER, MAYBE THE KENNEDYS. LOOK AT HOW GOOD THEY SEEM! LOOK AT HOW DESIRABLE SHE WAS! THAT’S WHAT SHE WAS: SHE WAS DESIRABLE. SHE WAS FUNNY AND SEXY—AND SHE WAS VULNERABLE, TOO. SHE WAS NEVER QUITE HAPPY, SHE WAS ALWAYS A LITTLE OVERWEIGHT. SHE WAS JUST LIKE OUR WHOLE COUNTRY,” he repeated; he was on a roll. I could hear Hester playing her guitar in the background, as if she were trying to improvise a folk song from everything he said. “AND THOSE MEN,” he said. “THOSE FAMOUS, POWERFUL MEN—DID THEY REALLY LOVE HER? DID THEY TAKE CARE OF HER? IF SHE WAS EVER WITH THE KENNEDYS, THEY COULDN’T HAVE LOVED HER—THEY WERE JUST USING HER, THEY WERE JUST BEING CARELESS AND TREATING THEMSELVES TO A THRILL. THAT’S WHAT POWERFUL MEN DO TO THIS COUNTRY—IT’S A BEAUTIFUL, SEXY, BREATHLESS COUNTRY, AND POWERFUL MEN USE IT TO TREAT THEMSELVES TO A THRILL! THEY SAY THEY LOVE IT BUT THEY DON’T MEAN IT. THEY SAY THINGS TO MAKE THEMSELVES APPEAR GOOD—THEY MAKE THEMSELVES APPEAR MORAL. THAT’S WHAT I THOUGHT KENNEDY WAS: A MORALIST. BUT HE WAS JUST GIVING US A SNOW JOB, HE WAS JUST BEING A GOOD SEDUCER. I THOUGHT HE WAS A SAVIOR. I THOUGHT HE WANTED TO USE HIS POWER TO DO GOOD. BUT PEOPLE WILL SAY AND DO ANYTHING JUST TO GET THE POWER; THEN THEY’LL USE THE POWER JUST TO GET A THRILL. MARILYN MONROE WAS ALWAYS LOOKING FOR THE BEST MAN—MAYBE SHE WANTED THE MAN WITH THE MOST INTEGRITY, MAYBE SHE WANTED THE MAN WITH THE MOST ABILITY TO DO GOOD. AND SHE WAS SEDUCED, OVER AND OVER AGAIN—SHE GOT FOOLED, SHE WAS TRICKED, SHE GOT USED, SHE WAS USED UP. JUST LIKE THE COUNTRY. THE COUNTRY WANTS A SAVIOR. THE COUNTRY IS A SUCKER FOR POWERFUL MEN WHO LOOK GOOD. WE THINK THEY’RE MORALISTS AND THEN THEY JUST USE US. THAT’S WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN TO YOU AND ME,” said Owen Meany. “WE’RE GOING TO BE USED.

The best advice came from the legendary actor the late Sir John Mills, who I sat next to backstage at a lecture we were doing together. He told me he considered the key to public speaking to be this: “Be sincere, be brief, be seated.” Inspired words. And it changed the way I spoke publicly from then on. Keep it short. Keep it from the heart. Men tend to think that they have to be funny, witty, or incisive onstage. You don’t. You just have to be honest. If you can be intimate and give the inside story--emotions, doubts, struggles, fears, the lot--then people will respond. I went on to give thanks all around the world to some of the biggest corporations in business--and I always tried to live by that. Make it personal, and people will stand beside you. As I started to do bigger and bigger events for companies, I wrongly assumed that I should, in turn, start to look much smarter and speak more “corporately.” I was dead wrong--and I learned that fast. When we pretend, people get bored. But stay yourself, talk intimately, and keep the message simple, and it doesn’t matter what the hell you wear. It does, though, take courage, in front of five thousand people, to open yourself up and say you really struggle with self-doubt. Especially when you are meant to be there as a motivational speaker. But if you keep it real, then you give people something real to take away. “If he can, then so can I” is always going to be a powerful message. For kids, for businessmen--and for aspiring adventurers. I really am pretty average. I promise you. Ask Shara…ask Hugo. I am ordinary, but I am determined. I did, though--as the corporation started to pay me more--begin to doubt whether I was really worth the money. It all seemed kind of weird to me. I mean, was my talk a hundred times better now than the one I gave in the Drakensberg Mountains? No. But on the other hand, if you can help people feel stronger and more capable because of what you tell them, then it becomes worthwhile for companies in ways that are impossible to quantify. If that wasn’t true, then I wouldn’t get asked to speak so often, still to this day. And the story of Everest--a mountain, like life, and like business--is always going to work as a metaphor. You have got to work together, work hard, and go the extra mile. Look after each other, be ambitious, and take calculated, well-timed risks. Give your heart to the goal, and it will repay you. Now, are we talking business or climbing? That’s what I mean.

She would never kill what she desired most- not when she wanted Tamlin as much as I did. But if I killed him... she either knew I couldn't do it, or she was playing a very, very dangerous game. Conversation after conversation echoed in my memory, until I heard Lucien's words, and everything froze. And that was when I knew. I couldn't breathe, not as I replayed the memory, not as I recalled the conversation I'd overheard one day. Lucien and Tamlin in the dining room, the door wide open for all to hear- for me to hear. 'For someone with a heart of stone, yours is certainly soft these days.' I looked at Tamlin, my eyes flicking to his chest as another memory flashed. The Attor in the garden, laughing. 'Though you have a heart of stone, Tamlin,' the Attor said, 'you certainly keep a host of fear inside it.' Amarantha would never risk me killing him- because she knew I couldn't kill him. Not if his heart couldn't be pierced by a blade. Not if his heart had been turned to stone. I scanned his face, searching for any glimmer of truth. There was only that bold rebellion within his gaze. Perhaps I was wrong- perhaps it was just a faerie turn of phrase. But all those times I'd held Tamlin... I'd never felt his heartbeat. I'd been blind to everything until it came back to smack me in the face, but not this time. That was how she controlled him and his magic. How she controlled all the High Lords, dominating and leashing them just as she kept Jurian's soul tethered to that eye and bone. Trust no one, Alis had told me. But I trusted Tamlin- and more than that, I trusted myself. I trusted that I had heard correctly- I trusted that Tamlin had been smarter than Amarantha, I trusted that all I had sacrificed was not in vain. The entire room was silent, but my attention was upon only Tamlin. The revelation must have been clear on my face, for his breathing became a bit quicker, and he lifted his chin. I took a step toward him, then another. I was right. I had to be. I sucked in a breath as I grabbed the dagger off the outstretched pillow. I could be wrong- I could be painfully, tragically wrong. But there was a faint smile on Tamlin's lips as I stood over him, ash dagger in hand. There was such a thing as Fate- because Fate had made sure I was there to eavesdrop when they'd spoken in private, because Fate had whispered to Tamlin that the cold, contrary girl he'd dragged to his home would be the one to break his spell, because Fate had kept me alive just to get to this point, just to see if I had been listening. And there he was- my High Lord, my beloved, kneeling before me. 'I love you,' I said, and stabbed him.

only the dead keep secrets." "it is not easy. Taking a life, even when we knew it was required." "most people want only to be cared for. If I had no softness, I'd get nowhere at all." "a flaw of humanity. The compulsion to be unique, which is at war with the desire to belong to a single identifiable sameness." "someone always gains, just like someone always loses." "most women are less in love with the partners they choose than they are simply desperate for their approval, starving for their devotion. They want most often to be touched as no one else can touch them, and most of them inaccurately assume this requires romance. But the moment we realize we can feel fulfilled without carrying the burdens of belonging to another, that we can experience rapture without being someone's other half, and therefore beholden to their weaknesses, to their faults and failures and their many insufferable fractures, then we're free, aren't we? " " enough, for once, to feel, and nothing else. " " there was no stopping what one person could believe. " " I noticed that if I did certain things, said things in certain way, or held her eye contact while I did them, I could make her... Soften toward me. " " I think I've already decided what I'm going to do, and I just hope it's the right thing. But it isn't, or maybe it is. But I suppose it doesn't matter, because I've already started, and looking back won't help. " " luck is a matter of probabilities. " "you want to believe that your hesitation makes you good, make you feel better? It doesn't. Every single one of us is missing something. We are all too powerful, too extraordinary, and don't you see it's because we're riddled with vacancies? We are empty and trying to fill, lighting ourselves on fire just to prove that we are normal, that we are ordinary. That we, like anything, can burn. " " ask yourself where power comes from, if you can't see the source, don't trust it. " " an assassin acting on his own internal compass. Whether he lived or died as a result of his own choice? Unimportant. He didn't raise an army didn't fight for good, didn't interfere much with the queen's other evils. It was whether or not he could live with his own decision because life was the only thing that truly matters. " " the truest truth : mortal lifetimes were short, inconsequential. Convictions were death sentences. Money couldn't buy happiness, but nothing could buy happiness, so at least money could buy everything else. In term of finding satisfaction, all a person was capable of controlling was himself. " " humans were mostly sensible animals. They knew the dangers of erratic behavior. It was a chronic condition, survival. My intention is as same as others. Stand taller, think smarter, be better. " " she couldn't remember what version of her had put herself into that relationship, into that life, or somehow into this shape, which still looked and felt as it always had but wasn't anymore. " " conservative of energy meant that there must be dozens of people in the world who didn't exist because of she did. " " what replace feelings when there were none to be had? " " the absence of something was never as effective as the present of something. " "To be suspended in nothing, he said, was to lack all motivation, all desire. It was not numbness which was pleasurable in fits, but functional paralysis. Neither to want to live nor to die, but to never exist. Impossible to fight." "apology accepted. Forgiveness, however, declined." "there cannot be success without failure. No luck without unluck." "no life without death?" "Everything collapse, you will, too. You will, soon.

I feel good. And victorious. And the feeling lasts. A few weeks after my first poker win, I’m approached by a magazine to write an article. I look back through my old emails. I’ve played with this opponent before: she’s asked me to write in the past, multiple times. It was always a little too small a sum for the effort required, so I’d never actually written anything. Every time I mentioned money, she walked away. Part of me just wants to accept this assignment: it’s interesting, I’ve done a lot of work on the background already, and the money isn’t all that bad. I’ve been offered worse. It would actually be a nice and needed boost at this precise moment. But on some level, part of me must remember: you can’t play scared. You can’t be afraid of how you look. You can’t be afraid someone will walk away because of what you do or don’t do. You have to play smart. And so I decide to check back: I’m not really doing much freelance work these days, I respond. I’m working on my next book. Not a refusal, but something that leaves the action open. Turn the decision momentum so that the power of position is on my side. Do nothing without first gauging my opponent’s reaction. Reveal nothing about the strength of my hand until I have to. A day later, I receive another email: What if we paid you more than we’ve offered in the past? This is an opening, and old me would have jumped at it. New me decides I don’t actually have to jump at anything; the smarter strategy might lie in another direction. I’m not sure that would be enough, I counter, since I really need to be paid more than I am at my home magazine to make it worth my while given the constraints on my time. In effect, I’m calling the bet, but I don’t raise. I simply stay in the hand to see what will happen. Three dollars a word, comes the next email. Done. I’ve won the hand and extracted more value than I ever thought I could from it.

I almost didn’t, either,” Fitz admitted. “As soon as I saw the brown, I thought I should leave. But… there was something about her. The way she kept herself separate. The way she was so much smarter than her teacher. And other than her eyes, she definitely looked like an elf.” Sophie was fairly sure he’d just implied she was pretty—and had to look away to hide her grin.

So we can work together and do all this good,” I say, “but the whole time you’re looking at my wife and thinking she’s a mistake? That she’s some Anglo trophy I use to prove something to other people? Even worse, because of some self-hate, to feel better about myself?” He goes quiet, his chest swelling with the deep breath he draws in. I gesture to the proposal abandoned on his desk, my excitement smothered by disappointment and disillusion. “How do you squeeze such big ideas into such a narrow mind? You’re smarter than this, Iz,” I say quietly. “I thought I could follow you. I thought you had answers, solutions.” I walk to the door and give him one last sad, disgusted glance, saying what I’m fully prepared to accept may be my last words to him ever. “Turns out you’re the problem.

Bingo,” Sonny says. “I knew you were smarter than you looked.” Gee, thanks, you mansplaining, roid-raging prick.

I hate senate meetings. When Octavian gets talking …’ Percy nodded. ‘You’re a warrior. Octavian is a talker. Put him in front of the senate, and suddenly he becomes the powerful one.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘You’re smarter than you look.’ ‘Gee, thanks. I hear Octavian might get elected praetor, assuming the camp survives that long.’ ‘Which brings us to the subject of doomsday,’ Reyna said, ‘and how you might help prevent it. But before I place the fate of Camp Jupiter in your hands, we need to get a few things straight.

I don’t know what the win looks like.” “Well, for me, it looks like dying with the knowledge that humanity’s a little bit better off than it would have been if I’d never been born. A little freer. A little kinder. A little smarter. That the bullies and bastards and sadists got their teeth into a few less people because of me. That’s got to be enough.

We then looked at the students’ performance. After the experience with difficulty, the performance of the ability-praised students plummeted, even when we gave them some more of the easier problems. Losing faith in their ability, they were doing worse than when they started. The effort kids showed better and better performance. They had used the hard problems to sharpen their skills, so that when they returned to the easier ones, they were way ahead. Would you believe that almost 40 percent of the ability-praised students lied about their scores? And always in one direction. In the fixed mindset, imperfections are shameful—especially if you’re talented—so they lied them away. So telling children they’re smart, in the end, made them feel dumber and act dumber, but claim they were smarter. I don’t think this is what we’re aiming for when we put positive labels—“gifted,” “talented,” “brilliant”—on people. We don’t mean to rob them of their zest for challenge and their recipes for success. But that’s the danger.

Logic evolved as a means of defending our passions in an argument. Most people reason to defend their position, not to change their minds or advance their understanding. “When it comes to sensational ideas, we’re like cats chasing a laser pointer. We’ll pounce on anything that’s shiny and new. Only unlike a cat, we can actually catch hold of these ideas. Then we turn and become like a dog with a bone, defending our newfound prize as though it were sacred. “Look at the madness during the pandemic. No one wants to be sick. No one wants to suffer. No one wants to die in agony. No one starts out as an anti-vaxxer, but there goes the red dot of that goddamn laser pointer. It’s racing along the carpet. Gotta chase it! “Somewhere along the line, there will be some vague point that appeals to our vanity, to the passions we already hold—and that’s all that’s needed to believe a lie. We become convinced against all logic to the contrary. We throw out any logic we don’t like. We have to. We have to justify the madness—not the logic, the passion! And the irony is, the smarter we think we are, the easier it is to be fooled. “We overestimate our own intelligence when it’s largely irrelevant. You don’t need a blistering IQ to drive a car, do the laundry, play golf or walk the dog. Regardless of how smart we think we are, we rarely use our intelligence to its full potential. And it makes no difference anyway. Our collective intelligence is far more important than any one individual’s intelligence. It doesn’t matter how smart someone is, anyone can own an iPhone, but no one person can build one from scratch.

It’s so hot. It’s so fucking hot how good Theo is at what he does. He’s stronger and funnier and smarter than any man in the room. He looks better in a tux than any of them. He’s worked harder than any of them to get to the top. If biology tells us to choose the apex predator, the strongest hunter, then I choose him.

You’re so much smarter than I am, Caleb. So much stronger and so much more persuasive. If I married you, I wouldn’t be myself for very long. I’d soon become the person you want me to be.” He sat back in his chair, his arms folded across his chest. “I wouldn’t change you for the world,” he protested quietly. “Yes, you would,” Lily insisted. “You’d make me into a china doll, overseeing tea parties and embroidering samplers and gazing at you in worshipful adoration. And eventually you’d get tired of me, Caleb, and take a mistress.” He glowered at her, as though insulted. “I would never betray you.” “Oh, no? What about when I’m pregnant, Caleb—all fat, with swollen ankles and a chronic case of the weeps. Can you honestly say you wouldn’t turn to another woman for the comforts you so obviously need?” “I’d find you more attractive than ever,” Caleb answered with annoyed certainty. Lily picked up her spoon, then set it down again. Her hands knotted into fists in her lap. “You weren’t faithful to Sandra. Why should I fare any better?” “Because I love you, for one thing. And I explained before—I didn’t sleep with Sandra.” “I might not feel like sleeping with you, either—if I happened to get pregnant, that is. What would you do then, Caleb?” “Wait,” he answered. Then a slow grin spread across his face. “And do my damnedest to seduce you. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m pretty good at that.” Lily flushed and squirmed a little, remembering. There was no denying his assertion: Caleb could practically tumble her onto her back with a look or a touch. The fact tormented her, for she couldn’t discern whether it was because of some special skill on his part or because she was basically a loose woman like her mother. “I’ve noticed,” she admitted. Caleb gazed at her for a long time, then went back to eating his stew.

That’s how I met Griffin, you know.” “What, at the racetrack?” She gazed at him again for several long moments. “You must be really bored.” “I’m . . . interested in . . .” He took a deep breath. “The truth is, you’ve been handling all this shit really well, and I’m, well, curious about you. You’re tougher than I thought—smarter, too. Frankly, I just don’t get how someone like you got hooked up with Lamont and Trotta in the first place.” “Ah,” she said. “There’s that refreshing honesty again. It’s very appealing, Harry, the way you put all the cards out on the table for everyone to see.” Her voice hardened. “Except the last time you did that, you had an entire deck still up your sleeve. You can’t blame me for wondering what you’re hiding from me this time.” Alessandra was staring out the window again, her chin held self-righteously high. But it was just an act. She was working hard to hide her hurt. He could see it trembling in the corner of her mouth. It was there, too, lurking in her eyes. I thought you were special. “Jesus,” Harry said, hating the guilt that pressed down on him. “You want complete honesty? Sweetheart, I’m more than happy to give it to you. No secrets, no tactful white lies, just the hard truth—is that really what you want?” “Yes.” “Great,” he said. “Let’s see. We can start with the fact that I’m scared shitless about seeing my kids again. I don’t know if Emily’s going to recognize me—or worse, if I’m going to recognize her. I’m dreading talking to Marge, and I’m still worried about George. I knew a cop who was recovering nicely from a gunshot wound. One day he seemed fine. The next day he was back in the ICU with an infection. Day after, we were sitting shivah at his house. But I digress. When you sit that way, you look kind of like a beach ball with a head,” he continued. “Your haircut is really, really bad, I’m probably going to lose my job for helping you this way, and I’m dying to fuck you.” He glanced at her. “Honest enough for you?

Ever since I was a child, ever since I became wrongly convinced I had to be bigger and smarter than I really was, I’ve been trying to perform, trying to convince people I was more capable than I really was. I’d been sending that same nine-year-old kid who took the tape recorder apart out into the world to speak and perform and interact with people. She asked me to come back and sit in the adult chair and tell the nine-year-old what I thought about him. I didn’t know what to say. She asked me to imagine what he looked like, and I immediately pictured the chubby kid from the movie The Goonies. I smiled. I liked the kid. He was funny and disarming and yet still only nine years old. He seemed alone and afraid, and the only way he could get attention was to convince everybody around him he was smarter and stronger than he actually was. My therapist asked me, again, to say something to him. I looked at him for a while and he looked back, wide eyed and curious. I finally spoke up and said I liked him. I told him I thought he was funny and charming and smart. “Anything else?” my therapist said. “Yeah,” I said. “I also want to say I’m sorry. I’m sorry for pushing you out there in the world so you could impress people for us and fight for us and make money for us while I sat in here and read books.” The moment was powerful for me. I’d completely disassociated from the kid who had taken apart his tape recorder. I hardly knew him. I’d not raised him to maturity and he’d spent the last thirty years lonely and desperate for attention. It’s no wonder I hid from the world. It’s no wonder parties made me tired or I got exhausted after I spoke. It’s no wonder criticism made me angry or I overreacted to failure. I think the part of me I sent out to interact with the world was, in some ways, underdeveloped, still trying to be bigger and smarter as a measure of survival.

Why do you say it was a hopeless task? You’re very much a lady.” “Three failed London seasons,” she pointed out. Harry made a scoffing sound. “That had nothing to do with being ladylike.” “Then why?” “The biggest obstacle was your intelligence. You don’t bother to hide it. One of the things Cat never taught you was how to flatter a man’s vanity—because she doesn’t have any damned idea of how to do it. And none of those idiots could tolerate the idea of having a wife who was smarter than himself. Second, you’re beautiful, which meant they would always have to worry about you being the target of other men’s attentions. On top of that, your family is . . . your family. Basically you were too much to manage, and they all knew they were better off finding dull, docile girls to marry. All except Bayning, who was so taken with you that the attraction eclipsed any other considerations. God knows I can’t hold that against him.” Poppy gave him a wry glance. “If I’m so forbiddingly intelligent and beautiful, then why did you want to marry me?” “I’m not intimidated by your brains, your family, or your beauty. And most men are too afraid of me to look twice at my wife.

The difference between Franklin’s unconventional work and Abagnale’s was that the former managed to create value for others while the latter cheated others. Franklin’s approach was a lateral solution to the unfairness of present convention. Abagnale’s, however entertaining, was a con, and he paid for it. And that’s the difference between rapid, but short-term gains, which I call shortcuts, and sustainable success achieved quickly through smart work, or smartcuts. Whereas by dictionary definition shortcuts can be amoral, you can think of smartcuts as shortcuts with integrity. Working smarter and achieving more—without creating negative externalities. Abagnale took shortcuts and regretted it. Franklin used smartcuts and got his face on a $ 100 bill. After being released from prison, Abagnale spent three decades repaying his debt to society, working for the FBI, without pay. Eventually, he started a security business, met his future wife while on undercover assignment, and had three kids. “True success is not defined by how much money do I make, how well do I speak, how well do I deal with the subjects I deal with,” he says. “But how great of a father I am.” As we explore the unconventional behavior of history’s overachievers in Smartcuts, I hope we’ll keep Abagnale’s lesson in mind. To some people, success means wealth. To others it means recognition, popularity, or promotions; it means free time, inventing products, growing businesses, making breakthroughs at work. Those can all be good things, and in this book, we’ll look at people and companies that achieved big things in the above categories. But I’m convinced that true success has more to do with our becoming better people and building a better world while we do these things than it does with the size of our bank accounts.

Distinguish yourself I mentioned Daniel in the previous chapter. The scripture says he had an excellent spirit. As a teenager, he was brought out of Judah into Babylon. The king had all these young men in training and the best of them--the smartest, strongest, and most talented--would be chosen as the next leaders. They had a certain diet for them to eat and certain programs for them to follow. But Daniel had made a vow to God to always honor Him. The Babylonians worshiped idols. Daniel was respectful, but he wouldn’t eat the king’s fancy foods. He didn’t just go along with what everyone else was doing. He made the more excellent choice. Daniel 6:3 says, “Daniel so distinguished himself by his exceptional qualities that the king planned to put him over the whole kingdom.” Notice it doesn’t say: “God distinguished him and he got promoted.” It says Daniel distinguished himself. The message translation says, “Daniel completely outclassed the others.” That’s what happens when, number one, you honor God and, number two, you have an excellent spirit. You don’t compromise. You don’t just go with the flow and do what everyone else is doing. Even if everyone else is late, everyone else cuts corners, and everyone else is undisciplined, you should do as Daniel did and go the extra mile. Make the choice to be excellent. The scripture goes on to say Daniel was ten times smarter than the other young men. He had incredible wisdom and understanding. He could interpret dreams and visions. When you have an excellent spirit, God will give you unprecedented favor, creativity, and ideas so that, like Daniel, you will stand out in the crowd. In humility, you will outclass those who don’t honor God. My question is: Are you distinguishing yourself and not waiting for God to do it? Are you going the extra mile? Are you doing more than you have to? Are you improving your skills? Examine your life. We all have areas in which we can strive for excellence, whether it’s how we treat people, how we present ourselves, or how we develop our skills. Don’t let something small keep you from the big things God wants to do. You are called to be a cut above. You have excellence on the inside. It’s who you are. Now do your part and be disciplined to bring out your excellence. If you’ll have this spirit of excellence, God will breathe in your direction and cause you to stand out. You’ll look up and be more creative, more skilled, more talented, and wiser with more ideas. I believe and declare that like Daniel, you will outperform, you will outclass, and you will outshine, and God will promote you and set you in a place of honor. You can, you will.

We were quiet for a moment. Then I said, “Look, I’ve got an idea of what you feel for this woman, okay? I saw her. She’s a head-turner.” “She’s more than that,” he said softly. The dumb, sappy bastard. His only hope with that ice bitch would be that she’d recognize how helpless he was and have some scruples about whatever it was she was up to. I wouldn’t count on it, though. “The point is,” I said, “it doesn’t give me any pleasure to give you reason to doubt. But I’m telling you, there’s something wrong here, Harry. You need to be careful. And nothing makes you less careful than the kind of feelings that have taken hold of you right now.” After a while he said, “I’ll think about what you’ve said. Okay?” He didn’t look like he’d think about it, though. He looked like he wanted to jam his hands over his ears. Stick his newly coiffed head in the sand. Hit the Delete key on everything I’d told him. “Look, I’m going to see her tonight,” he said. “I’ll watch more closely. I’ll keep in mind what you’ve said.” I realized I’d been wasting my time. “I thought you were smarter than this,” I said, shaking my head. “I really did.” I stood and dropped a few bills on the table. I left without even looking at him.