Something Borrowed Book Quotes

[D]on't ever apologise to an author for buying something in paperback, or taking it out from a library (that's what they're there for. Use your library). Don't apologise to this author for buying books second hand, or getting them from bookcrossing or borrowing a friend's copy. What's important to me is that people read the books and enjoy them, and that, at some point in there, the book was bought by someone. And that people who like things, tell other people. The most important thing is that people read...

Sections in the bookstore - Books You Haven't Read - Books You Needn't Read - Books Made for Purposes Other Than Reading - Books Read Even Before You Open Them Since They Belong to the Category of Books Read Before Being Written - Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered - Books You Mean to Read But There Are Others You Must Read First - Books Too Expensive Now and You'll Wait 'Til They're Remaindered - Books ditto When They Come Out in Paperback - Books You Can Borrow from Somebody - Books That Everybody's Read So It's As If You Had Read Them, Too - Books You've Been Planning to Read for Ages - Books You've Been Hunting for Years Without Success - Books Dealing with Something You're Working on at the Moment - Books You Want to Own So They'll Be Handy Just in Case - Books You Could Put Aside Maybe to Read This Summer - Books You Need to Go with Other Books on Your Shelves - Books That Fill You with Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified - Books Read Long Ago Which It's Now Time to Re-read - Books You've Always Pretended to Have Read and Now It's Time to Sit Down and Really Read Them

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door — Only this, and nothing more." Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December, And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. Eagerly I wished the morrow; — vainly I had sought to borrow From my books surcease of sorrow — sorrow for the lost Lenore — For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore — Nameless here for evermore. And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain Thrilled me — filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before; So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating, Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door — Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; — This it is, and nothing more." Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer, Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore; But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping, And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door, That I scarce was sure I heard you"— here I opened wide the door; — Darkness there, and nothing more. Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before; But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token, And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore?" This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore!" — Merely this, and nothing more. Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning, Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before. Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window lattice: Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore — Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; — 'Tis the wind and nothing more." Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter, In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore; Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he; But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door — Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door — Perched, and sat, and nothing more. Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore. Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven, Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly shore — Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!" Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." Much I marveled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly, Though its answer little meaning— little relevancy bore; For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being Ever yet was blest with seeing bird above his chamber door — Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door, With such name as "Nevermore.

In the shop window you have promptly identified the cover with the title you were looking for. Following this visual trail, you have forced your way through the shop past the thick barricade of Books You Haven't Read, which were frowning at you from the tables and shelves, trying to cow you. But you know you must never allow yourself to be awed, that among them there extend for acres and acres the Books You Needn't Read, the Books Made For Purposes Other Than Reading, Books Read Even Before You Open Them Since They Belong To The Category Of Books Read Before Being Written. And thus you pass the outer girdle of ramparts, but then you are attacked by the infantry of the Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered. With a rapid maneuver you bypass them and move into the phalanxes of the Books You Mean To Read But There Are Others You Must Read First, the Books Too Expensive Now And You'll Wait Till They're Remaindered, the Books ditto When They Come Out In Paperback, Books You Can Borrow From Somebody, Books That Everybody's Read So It's As If You Had Read Them, Too. Eluding these assaults, you come up beneath the towers of the fortress, where other troops are holding out: the Books You've Been Planning To Read For Ages, the Books You've Been Hunting For Years Without Success, the Books Dealing With Something You're Working On At The Moment, the Books You Want To Own So They'll Be Handy Just In Case, the Books You Could Put Aside Maybe To Read This Summer, the Books You Need To Go With Other Books On Your Shelves, the Books That Fill You With Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified, Now you have been able to reduce the countless embattled troops to an array that is, to be sure, very large but still calculable in a finite number; but this relative relief is then undermined by the ambush of the Books Read Long Ago Which It's Now Time To Reread and the Books You've Always Pretended To Have Read And Now It's Time To Sit Down And Really Read Them.

My sister thought about it for a few moments. "Well, that's boring," she said finally. "Why can't you read porn of something fun that I could borrow?" I laughed. "Maybe later.

I can imagine myself saying at the time that life itself was like a book borrowed from the library—something that did not belong to me and was due to expire. How silly.

Write it. Just write it. Write it on receipts in the car while you wait for your kid to finish their piano lessons, scribble on napkins at lunch with friends. Type on crappy typewriters or borrow computers if you have to. Fill notebooks with ink. Write inside your head while you’re in traffic and when you’re sitting in the doctor’s office. Write the truth, write lies. Write the perfect spouse. Write your dreams. Write your nightmares. Write while you cry about what you’re writing, write while you laugh out loud at your own words. Write until your fingers hurt, then keep writing more. Don’t ever stop writing. Don’t ever give up on your story, no matter what “they” say. Don’t ever let anybody take away your voice. You have something to say, your soul has a story to tell. Write it. There is never any reason to be afraid. Just write it and then put it out there for the world. Shove it up a flag pole and see who salutes it. Somebody will say it’s crap. So what? Somebody else will love it. And that’s what writing’s about. Love. Love of the art, love of the story, and love for and from the people who really understand your work. Nobody else matters. Love yourself. Love your work. Be brave. Just write.

Knowledge can be borrowed, but you can’t borrow understanding. Once you reach a conclusion derived from your thinking, it is called a realisation. And once you realise something, your perception changes about it once and for all. And that perception remains locked down until another realisation impacts it—that’s the process of learning and growing.

I have always been interested in this man. My father had a set of Tom Paine's books on the shelf at home. I must have opened the covers about the time I was 13. And I can still remember the flash of enlightenment which shone from his pages. It was a revelation, indeed, to encounter his views on political and religious matters, so different from the views of many people around us. Of course I did not understand him very well, but his sincerity and ardor made an impression upon me that nothing has ever served to lessen. I have heard it said that Paine borrowed from Montesquieu and Rousseau. Maybe he had read them both and learned something from each. I do not know. But I doubt that Paine ever borrowed a line from any man... Many a person who could not comprehend Rousseau, and would be puzzled by Montesquieu, could understand Paine as an open book. He wrote with a clarity, a sharpness of outline and exactness of speech that even a schoolboy should be able to grasp. There is nothing false, little that is subtle, and an impressive lack of the negative in Paine. He literally cried to his reader for a comprehending hour, and then filled that hour with such sagacious reasoning as we find surpassed nowhere else in American letters - seldom in any school of writing. Paine would have been the last to look upon himself as a man of letters. Liberty was the dear companion of his heart; truth in all things his object. ...we, perhaps, remember him best for his declaration: 'The world is my country; to do good my religion.' Again we see the spontaneous genius at work in 'The Rights of Man', and that genius busy at his favorite task - liberty. Written hurriedly and in the heat of controversy, 'The Rights of Man' yet compares favorably with classical models, and in some places rises to vaulting heights. Its appearance outmatched events attending Burke's effort in his 'Reflections'. Instantly the English public caught hold of this new contribution. It was more than a defense of liberty; it was a world declaration of what Paine had declared before in the Colonies. His reasoning was so cogent, his command of the subject so broad, that his legion of enemies found it hard to answer him. 'Tom Paine is quite right,' said Pitt, the Prime Minister, 'but if I were to encourage his views we should have a bloody revolution.' Here we see the progressive quality of Paine's genius at its best. 'The Rights of Man' amplified and reasserted what already had been said in 'Common Sense', with now a greater force and the power of a maturing mind. Just when Paine was at the height of his renown, an indictment for treason confronted him. About the same time he was elected a member of the Revolutionary Assembly and escaped to France. So little did he know of the French tongue that addresses to his constituents had to be translated by an interpreter. But he sat in the assembly. Shrinking from the guillotine, he encountered Robespierre's enmity, and presently found himself in prison, facing that dread instrument. But his imprisonment was fertile. Already he had written the first part of 'The Age of Reason' and now turned his time to the latter part. Presently his second escape cheated Robespierre of vengeance, and in the course of events 'The Age of Reason' appeared. Instantly it became a source of contention which still endures. Paine returned to the United States a little broken, and went to live at his home in New Rochelle - a public gift. Many of his old companions in the struggle for liberty avoided him, and he was publicly condemned by the unthinking. {The Philosophy of Paine, June 7, 1925}

Sometimes a tragedy must happen to keep a soul on schedule. This is the reason for things that seem to have no reason. This is the reason that we cannot fathom when we are going through it. Perhaps I will get very sick. People wonder why cancer exists when it is just a clever method to teach people lessons about love and loss. It borrows time or steals it depending on the needs of Heaven. It is a vehicle to get us where we need to be. It calls us home because something needs us there.

Books are essential to me. I cannot live without them, because I cannot live without reading. But, Arry has just said to me, you can always borrow them so why buy them? I don't buy books just to collect them. I'm not a collector. I'm not interested in them as objects that might be valuable one day, regardless of what they are about, nor do I want to own every book ever written by one particular author or on one particular subject. I buy them because I want to read them, and I keep them because I've read them. I can't afford to buy all the ones I'd like to, so I have to borrow quite a few, and this has taught me something about myself, which I haven't heard anyone else admit. When I've read a book which I really like, a book which MATTERS, I feel it belongs to me. I mean, the book itself, the copy I've read. It's as if I pour myself onto the pages as I read them, all my thoughts and emotions, so that by the time I've finished that copy holds inside it the essence of my reading. A borrowed book has to be returned, so I lose this essence of myself when I give it back. Besides which, a borrowed book has inside it something of everyone else who's read it. They've fingered it and pawed over it, breathed on it, done heaven knows what else as well as read it. And knowing this spoils my reading. The other readers get in my way. I can feel their presence on the cover and on the pages. They even make it smell differently from my own books. In fact, to my mind they've polluted the book and everything in it. That is also why I never buy second-hand books.

Even today, I would go halfway round the world to find a book if I thought it essential to my needs, and I have a feeling of absolute veneration for those few authors who have given me something special. For this reason, I can never understand the tepid youth of today who wait for books to be given to them and who neither search nor admire. I would go without eating in order to get a book, and I have never liked borrowing books, because I have always wanted them to be absolutely mine so that I could live with them for hours on end. As with men, it has always seemed to me that books have their own peculiar destinies. They go towards the people who are waiting for them and reach them at the right moment. They are made of living material and continue to cast light through the darkness long after the death of their authors.

Life itself was like a book borrowed from a library, something that didn't belong to me and was due to expire.

I was in the fifth grade the first time I thought about turning thirty. My best friend Darcy and I came across a perpetual calendar in the back of the phone book, where you could look up any date in the future, and by using this little grid, determine what the day of the week would be. So we located our birthdays in the following year, mine in May and hers in September. I got Wednesday, a school night. She got a Friday. A small victory, but typical. Darcy was always the lucky one. Her skin tanned more quickly, her hair feathered more easily, and she didn't need braces. Her moonwalk was superior, as were her cart-wheels and her front handsprings (I couldn't handspring at all). She had a better sticker collection. More Michael Jackson pins. Forenze sweaters in turquoise, red, and peach (my mother allowed me none- said they were too trendy and expensive). And a pair of fifty-dollar Guess jeans with zippers at the ankles (ditto). Darcy had double-pierced ears and a sibling- even if it was just a brother, it was better than being an only child as I was. But at least I was a few months older and she would never quite catch up. That's when I decided to check out my thirtieth birthday- in a year so far away that it sounded like science fiction. It fell on a Sunday, which meant that my dashing husband and I would secure a responsible baby-sitter for our two (possibly three) children on that Saturday evening, dine at a fancy French restaurant with cloth napkins, and stay out past midnight, so technically we would be celebrating on my actual birthday. I would have just won a big case- somehow proven that an innocent man didn't do it. And my husband would toast me: "To Rachel, my beautiful wife, the mother of my chidren and the finest lawyer in Indy." I shared my fantasy with Darcy as we discovered that her thirtieth birthday fell on a Monday. Bummer for her. I watched her purse her lips as she processed this information. "You know, Rachel, who cares what day of the week we turn thirty?" she said, shrugging a smooth, olive shoulder. "We'll be old by then. Birthdays don't matter when you get that old." I thought of my parents, who were in their thirties, and their lackluster approach to their own birthdays. My dad had just given my mom a toaster for her birthday because ours broke the week before. The new one toasted four slices at a time instead of just two. It wasn't much of a gift. But my mom had seemed pleased enough with her new appliance; nowhere did I detect the disappointment that I felt when my Christmas stash didn't quite meet expectations. So Darcy was probably right. Fun stuff like birthdays wouldn't matter as much by the time we reached thirty. The next time I really thought about being thirty was our senior year in high school, when Darcy and I started watching ths show Thirty Something together. It wasn't our favorite- we preferred cheerful sit-coms like Who's the Boss? and Growing Pains- but we watched it anyway. My big problem with Thirty Something was the whiny characters and their depressing issues that they seemed to bring upon themselves. I remember thinking that they should grow up, suck it up. Stop pondering the meaning of life and start making grocery lists. That was back when I thought my teenage years were dragging and my twenties would surealy last forever. Then I reached my twenties. And the early twenties did seem to last forever. When I heard acquaintances a few years older lament the end of their youth, I felt smug, not yet in the danger zone myself. I had plenty of time..

I wanted something to tell me my future was bright. I can imagine myself saying at the time that life itself was like a book borrowed from the library―something that did not belong to me and was due to expire. How silly.

It is because of this sea between us. The earth has never, up to now, separated us. But, ever since yesterday, there has been something in this nonetheless real, perfectly Atlantic, salty, slightly rough sea that has cast a spell on me. And every time I think about Promethea, I see her crossing this great expanse by boat and soon, alas, a storm comes up, my memory clouds over, in a flash there are shipwrecks, I cannot even cry out, my mouth is full of saltwater sobs. I am flooded with vague, deceptive recollections, I am drowning in my imagination in tears borrowed from the most familiar tragedies, I wish I had never read certain books whose poison is working in me. Has this Friday, perhaps, thrown a spell on me? But spells only work if you catch them. I have caught the Tragic illness. If only Promethea would make me some tea I know I would find some relief. But that is exactly what is impossible. And so, today, I am sinning. I am sinking beneath reality. I am weighted down with literature. That is my fate. Yet I had the presence of mind to start this parenthesis, the only healthy moment in these damp, feverish hours. All this to try to come back to the surface of our book... Phone me quickly, Promethea, get me out of this parenthesis fast!)

Some of you, we all know, are poor, find it hard to live, are sometimes, as it were, gasping for breath. I have no doubt that some of you who read this book are unable to pay for all the dinners which you have actually eaten, or for the coats and shoes which are fast wearing or are already worn out, and have come to this page to spend borrowed or stolen time, robbing your creditors of an hour. It is very evident what mean and sneaking lives many of you live, for my sight has been whetted by experience; always on the limits, trying to get into business and trying to get out of debt, a very ancient slough, called by the Latins aes alienum, another's brass, for some of their coins were made of brass; still living, and dying, and buried by this other's brass; always promising to pay, promising to pay, tomorrow, and dying today, insolvent; seeking to curry favor, to get custom, by how many modes, only not state-prison offences; lying, flattering, voting, contracting yourselves into a nutshell of civility or dilating into an atmosphere of thin and vaporous generosity, that you may persuade your neighbor to let you make his shoes, or his hat, or his coat, or his carriage, or import his groceries for him; making yourselves sick, that you may lay up something against a sick day, something to be tucked away in an old chest, or in a stocking behind the plastering, or, more safely, in the brick bank; no matter where, no matter how much or how little.

He had read many books over the years, but he owned few. He tended to dislike filling his home with a lot of possessions. When he finished a book, unless it was something quite special, he would take it to a used-book store. He bought only books he knew he was going to read right away, and he would read the ones he cared about very closely, until they were ingrained in his mind. When he needed other books he would borrow them from the neighborhood library.

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

A smile, someone once said, costs nothing but gives much. It enriches those who receive without making poorer those who give. It takes but a moment, but the memory of it sometimes lasts forever. None is so rich or mighty that he cannot get along without it and none is so poor that he cannot be made rich by it. Yet a smile cannot be bought, begged, borrowed, or stolen, for it is something that is of no value to anyone until it is given away. Some people are too tired to give you a smile. Give them one of yours, as none needs a smile so much as he who has no more to give. Smile. It increases your face value.

And I'd like you to speak to the herdsman about borrowing another yak. I don't like the looks of the one your father offered. The way it stares at me, it's as if it's plotting something. I don't travel with plotters. Thieves, liars, cheats, that's all right, but I can't stand plotters.” …. “Finally, see if you can find me a good ice ax. I lost mine.” ... “You lost your--” “A yak trampled it on my last expedition. Snapped it in two. Did you hear what I said about choosing your yak carefully?

I never knew there was a place where you could go look at books, much less borrow them, then return them when you are through looking. Imagine! Something that precious!

But maybe I’d need something to read on my ride to my future, I thought. I could borrow a few of the finer books from the X-ville library, disappear and never return them.

listening to Barack, I began to understand that his version of hope reached far beyond mine: It was one thing to get yourself out of a stuck place, I realized. It was another thing entirely to try and get the place itself unstuck. I was gripped all over again by a sense of how special he was. Slowly, all around me, too, the church ladies began nodding their approval, punctuating his sentences with calls of “Mmmm-hmm” and “That’s right!” His voice climbed in intensity as he got to the end of his pitch. He wasn’t a preacher, but he was definitely preaching something—a vision. He was making a bid for our investment. The choice, as he saw it, was this: You give up or you work for change. “What’s better for us?” Barack called to the people gathered in the room. “Do we settle for the world as it is, or do we work for the world as it should be?” It was a phrase borrowed from a book he’d read when he first started out as an organizer, and it would stay with me for years.

My curiosity for the stars is obvious: I wanted something to tell me my future was bright. I can imagine myself saying at the time that life itself was like a book borrowed from the library—something that did not belong to me and was due to expire. How silly.

Beyond that -- don't ever apologise to an author for buying something in paperback, or taking it out from a library (that's what they're there for. Use your library). Don't apologise to this author for buying books second hand, or getting them from bookcrossing or borrowing a friend's copy. What's important to me is that people read the books and enjoy them, and that, at some point in there, the book was bought by someone. And that people who like things, tell other people. The most important thing is that people read...

Books were irreplaceable to me as a teenage trans person trying to figure out my identity. I bought or borrowed every one I could find, and the feeling of being reflected–as well as being challenged by learning how differently others live their lives–was integral to finding myself as a trans man. I believe many trans people still look to books to help them see themselves or expand their world. There’s something more lasting, more visceral about interacting with a book full of narratives, rather than reading blog posts or advice columns online. There will always be a place for trans books.

Dr. Mary Atwater's story was so inspiring. Growing up, Dr. Atwater had a dream to one day be a teacher. But as a black person in the American South during the 1950s, she didn't have many great educational opportunities. It didn't help that she was also a girl, and a girl who loved science, since many believed that science was a subject only for men. Well, like me, she didn't listen to what others said. And also like me, Dr. Atwater had a father, Mr. John C. Monroe, who believed in her dreams and saved money to send her and her siblings to college. She eventually got a PhD in science education with a concentration in chemistry. She was an associate director at New Mexico State University and then taught physical science and chemistry at Fayetteville State University. She later joined the University of Georgia, where she still works as a science education researcher. Along the way, she began writing science books, never knowing that, many years down the road, one of those books would end up in Wimbe, Malawi, and change my life forever. I'd informed Dr. Atwater that the copy of Using Energy I'd borrowed so many times had been stolen (probably by another student hoping to get the same magic), so that day in Washington, she presented me with my own copy, along with the teacher's edition and a special notebook to record my experiments. "Your story confirms my belief in human beings and their abilities to make the world a better place by using science," she told me. "I'm happy that I lived long enough to see that something I wrote could change someone's life. I'm glad I found you." And for sure, I'm also happy to have found Dr. Atwater.

The tired intellectual sums up the deformities and the vices of a world adrift. He does not act, he suffers; if he favors the notion of tolerance, he does not find in it the stimulant he needs. Tyranny furnishes that, as do the doctrines of which it is the outcome. If he is the first of its victims, he will not complain: only the strength that grinds him into the dust seduces him. To want to be free is to want to be oneself; but he is tired of being himself, of blazing a trail into uncertainty, of stumbling through truths. “Bind me with the chains of Illusion,” he sighs, even as he says farewell to the peregrinations of Knowledge. Thus he will fling himself, eyes closed, into any mythology which will assure him the protection and the peace of the yoke. Declining the honor of assuming his own anxieties, he will engage in enterprises from which he anticipates sensations he could not derive from himself, so that the excesses of his lassitude will confirm the tyrannies. Churches, ideologies, police—seek out their origin in the horror he feels for his own lucidity, rather than in the stupidity of the masses. This weakling transforms himself, in the name of a know-nothing utopia, into a gravedigger of the intellect; convinced of doing something useful, he prostitutes Pascal’s old “abêtissezvous,” the Solitary’s tragic device. A routed iconoclast, disillusioned with paradox and provocation, in search of impersonality and routine, half prostrated, ripe for the stereotype, the tired intellectual abdicates his singularity and rejoins the rabble. Nothing more to overturn, if not himself: the last idol to smash … His own debris lures him on. While he contemplates it, he shapes the idol of new gods or restores the old ones by baptizing them with new names. Unable to sustain the dignity of being fastidious, less and less inclined to winnow truths, he is content with those he is offered. By-product of his ego, he proceeds—a wrecker gone to seed—to crawl before the altars, or before what takes their place. In the temple or on the tribunal, his place is where there is singing, or shouting—no longer a chance to hear one’s own voice. A parody of belief? It matters little to him, since all he aspires to is to desist from himself. All his philosophy has concluded in a refrain, all his pride foundered on a Hosanna! Let us be fair: as things stand now, what else could he do? Europe’s charm, her originality resided in the acuity of her critical spirit, in her militant, aggressive skepticism; this skepticism has had its day. Hence the intellectual, frustrated in his doubts, seeks out the compensations of dogma. Having reached the confines of analysis, struck down by the void he discovers there, he turns on his heel and attempts to seize the first certainty to come along; but he lacks the naiveté to hold onto it; henceforth, a fanatic without convictions, he is no more than an ideologist, a hybrid thinker, such as we find in all transitional periods. Participating in two different styles, he is, by the form of his intelligence, a tributary of the one of the one which is vanishing, and by the ideas he defends, of the one which is appearing. To understand him better, let us imagine an Augustine half-converted, drifting and tacking, and borrowing from Christianity only its hatred of the ancient world. Are we not in a period symmetrical with the one which saw the birth of The City of God? It is difficult to conceive of a book more timely. Today as then, men’s minds need a simple truth, an answer which delivers them from their questions, a gospel, a tomb.

There is one thing that ought to be taught in all the colleges, Which is that people ought to be taught not to go around always making apologies. I don't mean the kind of apologies people make when they run over you or borrow five dollars or step on your feet, Because I think that is sort of sweet; No, I object to one kind of apology alone, Which is when people spend their time and yours apologizing for everything they own. You go to their house for a meal, And they apologize because the anchovies aren't caviar or the partridge is veal; They apologize privately for the crudeness of the other guests, And they apologize publicly for their wife's housekeeping or their husband's jests; If they give you a book by Dickens they apologize because it isn't by Scott, And if they take you to the theater, they apologize for the acting and the dialogue and the plot; They contain more milk of human kindness than the most capacious diary can, But if you are from out of town they apologize for everything local and if you are a foreigner they apologize for everything American. I dread these apologizers even as I am depicting them, I shudder as I think of the hours that must be spend in contradicting them, Because you are very rude if you let them emerge from an argument victorious, And when they say something of theirs is awful, it is your duty to convince them politely that it is magnificent and glorious, And what particularly bores me with them, Is that half the time you have to politely contradict them when you rudely agree with them, So I think there is one rule every host and hostess ought to keep with the comb and nail file and bicarbonate and aromatic spirits on a handy shelf, Which is don't spoil the denouement by telling the guests everything is terrible, but let them have the thrill of finding it out for themselves.

Thousands of Jews in the ghetto came to their library to borrow books. Reading gave both hope and consolation to the inhabitants, as a fifteen-year-old boy, Yitzhak Rudashevski, wrote in his diary on the same day that the library celebrated its hundred thousandth book loan: 'Hundreds of people read in the ghetto. Reading has become the ghetto's greatest pleasure. Books give one a feeling of freedom; books connect us to the world. The loan of the hundred thousandth copy is something the ghetto can be proud of.

I always thought of men as being hard—maybe because I was hard. But there was a softness in Tom that betrayed his large masculine hands and his deep baritone voice. He knew something about love that I didn’t. I don’t know where he’d learned it, but it wasn’t something you got from a book, not something you could learn in an online class, not something you could borrow. Maybe it was something you were born with. Some people knew how to love and some people didn’t. Tom was the former. I was the latter. I didn’t know which one of us had it worse

It is often said that what most immediately sets English apart from other languages is the richness of its vocabulary. Webster’s Third New International Dictionary lists 450,000 words, and the revised Oxford English Dictionary has 615,000, but that is only part of the total. Technical and scientific terms would add millions more. Altogether, about 200,000 English words are in common use, more than in German (184,000) and far more than in French (a mere 100,000). The richness of the English vocabulary, and the wealth of available synonyms, means that English speakers can often draw shades of distinction unavailable to non-English speakers. The French, for instance, cannot distinguish between house and home, between mind and brain, between man and gentleman, between “I wrote” and “I have written.” The Spanish cannot differentiate a chairman from a president, and the Italians have no equivalent of wishful thinking. In Russia there are no native words for efficiency, challenge, engagement ring, have fun, or take care [all cited in The New York Times, June 18, 1989]. English, as Charlton Laird has noted, is the only language that has, or needs, books of synonyms like Roget’s Thesaurus. “Most speakers of other languages are not aware that such books exist” [The Miracle of Language, page 54]. On the other hand, other languages have facilities we lack. Both French and German can distinguish between knowledge that results from recognition (respectively connaître and kennen) and knowledge that results from understanding (savoir and wissen). Portuguese has words that differentiate between an interior angle and an exterior one. All the Romance languages can distinguish between something that leaks into and something that leaks out of. The Italians even have a word for the mark left on a table by a moist glass (culacino) while the Gaelic speakers of Scotland, not to be outdone, have a word for the itchiness that overcomes the upper lip just before taking a sip of whiskey. (Wouldn’t they just?) It’s sgriob. And we have nothing in English to match the Danish hygge (meaning “instantly satisfying and cozy”), the French sang-froid, the Russian glasnost, or the Spanish macho, so we must borrow the term from them or do without the sentiment. At the same time, some languages have words that we may be pleased to do without. The existence in German of a word like schadenfreude (taking delight in the misfortune of others) perhaps tells us as much about Teutonic sensitivity as it does about their neologistic versatility. Much the same could be said about the curious and monumentally unpronounceable Highland Scottish word sgiomlaireachd, which means “the habit of dropping in at mealtimes.” That surely conveys a world of information about the hazards of Highland life—not to mention the hazards of Highland orthography. Of

Walter came from a strong line of self-motivated, determined folk: not grand, not high-society, but no-nonsense, family-minded, go-getters. His grandfather had been Samuel Smiles, who, in 1859, authored the original motivational book, titled Self-Help. It was a landmark work, and an instant bestseller, even outselling Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species when it was first launched. Samuel’s book Self-Help also made plain the mantra that hard work and perseverance were the keys to personal progress. At a time in Victorian society where, as an Englishman, the world was your oyster if you had the get-up-and-go to make things happen, his book Self-Help struck a chord. It became the ultimate Victorian how-to guide, empowering the everyday person to reach for the sky. And at its heart it said that nobility is not a birthright but is defined by our actions. It laid bare the simple but unspoken secrets for living a meaningful, fulfilling life, and it defined a gentleman in terms of character not blood type. Riches and rank have no necessary connection with genuine gentlemanly qualities. The poor man with a rich spirit is in all ways superior to the rich man with a poor spirit. To borrow St. Paul’s words, the former is as “having nothing, yet possessing all things,” while the other, though possessing all things, has nothing. Only the poor in spirit are really poor. He who has lost all, but retains his courage, cheerfulness, hope, virtue, and self-respect, is still rich. These were revolutionary words to Victorian, aristocratic, class-ridden England. To drive the point home (and no doubt prick a few hereditary aristocratic egos along the way), Samuel made the point again that being a gentleman is something that has to be earned: “There is no free pass to greatness.

Do you have a piece of paper I could write on?” I jump up too fast. “Sure. Just one? Do you—of course you need something to write with. Sorry. Here.” I grab him a paper from my deskdrawer and one of my myriad pencils, and he uses the first Children of Hypnos book as a flat surface to write on. When I’m sure he’s writing something for me to read right now, I say, “I thought you only needed to do that when other people were around?” He etches one careful line after the next. He frowns, shakes his head. “Sometimes it’s . . . tough to say things. Certain things.” His voice is hardly a whisper. I sit down beside him again, but his big hand blocks my view of the words. He stops writing, leaves the paper there, and stares. Then he hands it to me and looks the other direction. Can I kiss you? “Um,” is a delightfully complex word. “Um” means “I want to say something but don’t know what it is,” and also “You have caught me off guard,” and also “Am I dreaming right now? Someone please slap me.” I say “um,” then. Wallace’s entire head-neck region is already flushed with color, but the “um” darkens it a few shades, and goddammit, he was nervous about asking me and I made it worse. What good is “um” when I should say “YES PLEASE NOW”? Except there’s no way I’m going to say “YES PLEASE NOW” because I feel like my body is one big wired time bomb of organs and if Wallace so much as brushes my hand, I’m going to jump out of my own skin and run screaming from the house. I’ll like it too much. Out of control. No good. I say, “Can I borrow that pencil?” He hands me the pencil, again without looking. Yes, but not right now. I know it sounds weird. Sorry. I don’t think it’ll go well if I know it’s coming. I will definitely freak out and punch you in the face or scream bloody murder or something like that. Surprising me with it would probably work better. I am giving you permission to surprise me with a kiss. This is a formal invitation for surprise kisses. I don’t like writing the word “kiss.” It makes my skin crawl. Sorry. It’s weird. I’m weird. Sorry. I hope that doesn’t make you regret asking. I hand the paper and pencil back. He reads it over, then writes: No regret. I can do surprises. That’s it. That’s it? Shit. Now he’s going to try to surprise me with a kiss. At some point. Later today? Tomorrow? A week from now? What if he never does it and I spend the rest of the time we hang out wondering if he will? What have I done? This was a terrible idea. I’m going to vomit. “Be right back,” I say, and run to the bathroom to curl up on the floor. Just for like five minutes. Then I go back to my room and sit down beside Wallace. As I’m moving myself into position, his hand falls over mine, and I don’t actually jump out of my skin. My control shakes for a moment, but I turn in to it, and everything smooths out. I flip my hand over. He flexes his fingers so I can fit mine in the spaces between. And we sit there, shoulder to shoulder, with our hands resting on the bed between us. It’s not so bad

Bezos had seemingly made up his mind that he was no longer going to indulge in financial maneuvering as a way to escape the rather large hole Amazon had dug for itself, and it wasn’t just through borrowing Sinegal’s business plan. At a two-day management and board offsite later that year, Amazon invited business thinker Jim Collins to present the findings from his soon-to-be-published book Good to Great. Collins had studied the company and led a series of intense discussions at the offsite. “You’ve got to decide what you’re great at,” he told the Amazon executives. Drawing on Collins’s concept of a flywheel, or self-reinforcing loop, Bezos and his lieutenants sketched their own virtuous cycle, which they believed powered their business. It went something like this: Lower prices led to more customer visits. More customers increased the volume of sales and attracted more commission-paying third-party sellers to the site. That allowed Amazon to get more out of fixed costs like the fulfillment centers and the servers needed to run the website. This greater efficiency then enabled it to lower prices further. Feed any part of this flywheel, they reasoned, and it should accelerate the loop. Amazon executives were elated; according to several members of the S Team at the time, they felt that, after five years, they finally understood their own business. But when Warren Jenson asked Bezos if he should put the flywheel in his presentations to analysts, Bezos asked him not to. For now, he considered it the secret sauce.

I lived in New York City back in the 1980s, which is when the Bordertown series was created. New York was a different place then -- dirtier, edgier, more dangerous, but also in some ways more exciting. The downtown music scene was exploding -- punk and folk music were everywhere -- and it wasn't as expensive to live there then, so a lot of young artists, musicians, writers, etc. etc. were all living and doing crazy things in scruffy neighborhoods like the East Village. I was a Fantasy Editor for a publishing company back then -- but in those days, "fantasy" to most people meant "imaginary world" books, like Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. A number of the younger writers in the field, however, wanted to create a branch of fantasy that was rooted in contemporary, urban North America, rather than medieval or pastoral Europe. I'd already been working with some of these folks (Charles de Lint, Emma Bull, etc.), who were writing novels that would become the foundations for the current Urban Fantasy field. At the time, these kinds of stories were considered so strange and different, it was actually hard to get them into print. When I was asked by a publishing company to create a shared-world anthology for Young Adult readers, I wanted to create an Urban Fantasy setting that was something like a magical version of New York...but I didn't want it to actually be New York. I want it to be any city and every city -- a place that anyone from anywhere could go to or relate to. The idea of placing it on the border of Elfland came from the fact that I'd just re-read a fantasy classic called The King of Elfland's Daughter by the Irish writer Lord Dunsany. I love stories that take place on the borderlands between two different worlds...and so I borrowed this concept, but adapted it to a modern, punky, urban setting. I drew upon elements of the various cities I knew best -- New York, Boston, London, Dublin, maybe even a little of Mexico City, where I'd been for a little while as a teen -- and scrambled them up and turned them into Bordertown. There actually IS a Mad River in southern Ohio (where I went to college) and I always thought that was a great name, so I imported it to Bordertown. As for the water being red, that came from the river of blood in the Scottish folk ballad "Thomas the Rhymer," which Thomas must cross to get into Elfland. [speaking about the Borderland series she "founded" and how she came up with the setting. Link to source; Q&A with Holly, Ellen & Terri!]

With a rapid maneuver you bypass them and move into the phalanxes of the Books You Mean To Read But There Are Others You Must Read First, the Books Too Expensive Now And You’ll Wait Till They’re Remaindered, the Books ditto When They Come Out In Paperback, Books You Can Borrow From Somebody, Books That Everybody’s Read So It’s As If You Had Read Them, Too. Eluding these assaults, you come up beneath the towers of the fortress, where other troops are holding out: the Books You’ve Been Planning To Read For Ages, the Books You’ve Been Hunting For Years Without Success, the Books Dealing With Something You’re Working On At The Moment, the Books You Want To Own So They’ll Be Handy Just In Case, the Books You Could Put Aside Maybe To Read This Summer, the Books You Need To Go With Other Books On Your Shelves, the Books That Fill You With Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified. Now you have been able to reduce the countless embattled troops to an array that is, to be sure, very large but still calculable in a finite number; but this relative relief is then undermined by the ambush of the Books Read Long Ago Which It’s Now Time To Reread and the Books You’ve Always Pretended To Have Read And Now It’s Time To Sit Down And Really Read Them.

My identity as Jewish cannot be reduced to a religious affiliation. Professor Said quoted Gramsci, an author that I’m familiar with, that, and I quote, ‘to know thyself is to understand that we are a product of the historical process to date which has deposited an infinity of traces, without leaving an inventory’. Let’s apply this pithy observation to Jewish identity. While it is tempting to equate Judaism with Jewishness, I submit to you that my identity as someone who is Jewish is far more complex than my religious affiliation. The collective inventory of the Jewish people rests on my shoulders. This inventory shapes and defines my understanding of what it means to be Jewish. The narrative of my people is a story of extraordinary achievement as well as unimaginable horror. For millennia, the Jewish people have left their fate in the hands of others. Our history is filled with extraordinary achievements as well as unimaginable violence. Our centuries-long Diaspora defined our existential identity in ways that cannot be reduced to simple labels. It was the portability of our religion that bound us together as a people, but it was our struggle to fit in; to be accepted that identified us as unique. Despite the fact that we excelled academically, professionally, industrially, we were never looked upon as anything other than Jewish. Professor Said in his book, Orientalism, examined how Europe looked upon the Orient as a dehumanized sea of amorphous otherness. If we accept this point of view, then my question is: How do you explain Western attitudes towards the Jews? We have always been a convenient object of hatred and violent retribution whenever it became convenient. If Europe reduced the Orient to an essentialist other, to borrow Professor Said’s eloquent language, then how do we explain the dehumanizing treatment of Jews who lived in the heart of Europe? We did not live in a distant, exotic land where the West had discursive power over us. We thought of ourselves as assimilated. We studied Western philosophy, literature, music, and internalized the same culture as our dominant Christian brethren. Despite our contribution to every conceivable field of human endeavor, we were never fully accepted as equals. On the contrary, we were always the first to be blamed for the ills of Western Europe. Two hundred thousand Jews were forcibly removed from Spain in 1492 and thousands more were forcibly converted to Christianity in Portugal four years later. By the time we get to the Holocaust, our worst fears were realized. Jewish history and consciousness will be dominated by the traumatic memories of this unspeakable event. No people in history have undergone an experience of such violence and depth. Israel’s obsession with physical security; the sharp Jewish reaction to movements of discrimination and prejudice; an intoxicated awareness of life, not as something to be taken for granted but as a treasure to be fostered and nourished with eager vitality, a residual distrust of what lies beyond the Jewish wall, a mystical belief in the undying forces of Jewish history, which ensure survival when all appears lost; all these, together with the intimacy of more personal pains and agonies, are the legacy which the Holocaust transmits to the generation of Jews who have grown up under its shadow. -Fictional debate between Edward Said and Abba Eban.

Sometimes, though, friendship is like love. You can’t plan for it. It finds you in unlikely places. Or in the most obvious place imaginable. One evening, I get back from a run and am doubled over, recovering and panting in front of my building. The entrance opens and a woman pops out, taking out her rubbish. ‘I’m not loitering,’ I tell her when she gives me a funny look. ‘Oh, I didn’t think you were loitering,’ she says. ‘I thought you lived here.’ ‘Oh. I do. I do live here. On the third floor.’ We introduce ourselves. Her name is Hannah and she’s from the Netherlands. As she turns to go back inside, I say, ‘Hey! Do you want to swap numbers? Just in case … there’s a fire or something?’ I can tell my year is already changing me. Talking to strangers has made me less shy and even though I still had to make it a bit weird with the whole fire thing. A few weeks later, Hannah and her husband have Sam and me over for dinner in their flat because we stored a package for them when they were on holiday. Hannah has hundreds of books and I leave her flat with an armful to borrow. A few months later Hannah texts out of the blue, saying, ‘Want to grab a coffee with me right now?’ And I do. The elusive perfect friend-date: spontaneous, with good coffee, great conversation and no commute. We’d also had the spark, both having read several of the same books, both of us the same age, both of us struggling with similar things. She’d been living downstairs the entire time. But if I hadn’t gone through so many friend-dates and false starts, I know I would have asked for her number when we met. In fact, given how I normally treated my neighbours in London and how insular I was before all this began, I probably would have just pretended to be loitering.

Palo Mayombe is perhaps best known for its display of human skulls in iron cauldrons and accompanied by necromantic practices that contribute to its eerie reputation of being a cult of antinomian and hateful sorcerers. This murky reputation is from time to time reinforced by uninformed journalists and moviemakers who present Palo Mayombe in similar ways as Vodou has been presented through the glamour and horror of Hollywood. It is the age old fear of the unknown and of powers that threaten the established order that are spawned from the umbra of Palo Mayombe. The cult is marked by ambivalence replicating an intense spectre of tension between all possible contrasts, both spiritual and social. This is evident both in the history of Kongo inspired sorcery and practices as well as the tension between present day practitioners and the spiritual conclaves of the cult. Palo Mayombe can be seen either as a religion in its own right or a Kongo inspired cult. This distinction perhaps depends on the nature of ones munanso (temple) and rama (lineage). Personally, I see Palo Mayombe as a religious cult of Creole Sorcery developed in Cuba. The Kongolese heritage derives from several different and distinct regions in West Africa that over time saw a metamorphosis of land, cultures and religions giving Palo Mayombe a unique expression in its variety, but without losing its distinct nucleus. In the history of Palo Mayombe we find elite families of Kongolese aristocracy that contributed to shaping African history and myth, conflicts between the Kongolese and explorers, with the Trans-Atlantic slave trade being the blood red thread in its development. The name Palo Mayombe is a reference to the forest and nature of the Mayombe district in the upper parts of the deltas of the Kongo River, what used to be the Kingdom of Loango. For the European merchants, whether sent by the Church to convert the people or by a king greedy for land and natural resources, everything south of present day Nigeria to the beginning of the Kalahari was simply Kongo. This un-nuanced perception was caused by the linguistic similarities and of course the prejudice towards these ‘savages’ and their ‘primitive’ cultures. To write a book about Palo Mayombe is a delicate endeavor as such a presentation must be sensitive both to the social as well as the emotional memory inherited by the religion. I also consider it important to be true to the fundamental metaphysical principles of the faith if a truthful presentation of the nature of Palo Mayombe is to be given. The few attempts at presenting Palo Mayombe outside ethnographic and anthropological dissertations have not been very successful. They have been rather fragmented attempts demonstrating a lack of sensitivity not only towards the cult itself, but also its roots. Consequently a poor understanding of Palo Mayombe has been offered, often borrowing ideas and concepts from Santeria and Lucumi to explain what is a quite different spirituality. I am of the opinion that Palo Mayombe should not be explained on the basis of the theological principles of Santeria. Santeria is Yoruba inspired and not Kongo inspired and thus one will often risk imposing concepts on Palo Mayombe that distort a truthful understanding of the cult. To get down to the marrow; Santeria is a Christianized form of a Yoruba inspired faith – something that should make the great differences between Santeria and Palo Mayombe plain. Instead, Santeria is read into Palo Mayombe and the cult ends up being presented at best in a distorted form. I will accordingly refrain from this form of syncretism and rather present Palo Mayombe as a Kongo inspired cult of Creole Sorcery that is quite capable

IN T H E last twenty-five years I have had a lot of people staying with me and sometimes I am tempted to write an essay on guests. There are the guests who never shut a door after them and never turn out the light when they leave their room. There are the guests who throw themselves on their bed in muddy boots to have a nap after lunch, so that the counterpane has to be cleaned on their departure. There are the guests who smoke in bed and burn holes in your sheets. There are the guests who are on a regime and have to have special food cooked for them and there are the guests who wait till their glass is filled with a vintage claret and then say: "I won't have any, thank you." There are the guests who never put back a book in the place from which they took it and there are the guests who take away a volume from a set and never return it. There are the guests who borrow money from you when they are leaving and do not pay it back. There are the guests who can never be alone for a minute and there are the guests who are seized with a desire to talk the moment they see you glancing at a paper. There are the guests who, wherever they are, want to be somewhere else and there are the guests who want to be doing something from the time they get up in the morning till the time they go to bed at night. There are the guests who treat you as though they were SOME NOVELISTS I HAVE KNOWN 459 gauleiters in a conquered province. There are the guests who bring three weeks* laundry with them to have washed at your expense and there are the guests who send their clothes to the cleaners and leave you to pay the bill. There are the guests who telephone to London, Paris, Rome, Madrid and New York, and never think of inquiring how much it costs. There are the guests who take all they can get and offer nothing in return. There are also the guests who are happy just to be with you, who seek to please, who have resources of their own, who amuse you, whose conversation is delightful, whose interests are varied, who exhilarate and excite you, who in short give you far more than you can ever hope to give them and whose visits are only too brief.

The man at the desk in the library had seen Martin there so often that he had become quite cordial, always greeting him with a smile and a nod when he entered. It was because of this that Martin did a daring thing. Drawing out some books at the desk, and while the man was stamping the cards, Martin blurted out: "Say, there's something I'd like to ask you." The man smiled and paid attention. "When you meet a young lady an' she asks you to call, how soon can you call?" Martin felt his shirt press and cling to his shoulders, what of the sweat of the effort. "Why I'd say any time," the man answered. "Yes, but this is different," Martin objected. "She - I - well, you see, it's this way: maybe she won't be there. She goes to the university." "Then call again." "What I said ain't what I meant," Martin confessed falteringly, while he made up his mind to throw himself wholly upon the other's mercy. "I'm just a rough sort of a fellow, an' I ain't never seen anything of society. This girl is all that I ain't, an' I ain't anything that she is. You don't think I'm playin' the fool, do you?" he demanded abruptly. "No, no; not at all, I assure you," the other protested. "Your request is not exactly in the scope of the reference department, but I shall be only too pleased to assist you." Martin looked at him admiringly. "If I could tear it off that way, I'd be all right," he said. "I beg pardon?" "I mean if I could talk easy that way, an' polite, an' all the rest." "Oh," said the other, with comprehension. "What is the best time to call? The afternoon? - not too close to meal-time? Or the evening? Or Sunday?" "I'll tell you," the librarian said with a brightening face. "You call her up on the telephone and find out." "I'll do it," he said, picking up his books and starting away. He turned back and asked: "When you're speakin' to a young lady - say, for instance, Miss Lizzie Smith - do you say 'Miss Lizzie'? or 'Miss Smith'?" "Say 'Miss Smith,'" the librarian stated authoritatively. "Say 'Miss Smith' always until you come to know her better." So it was that Martin Eden solved the problem. "Come down any time; I'll be at home all afternoon," was Ruth's reply over the telephone to his stammered request as to when he could return the borrowed books.

University, where she is an adjunct professor of education and serves on the Veterans Committee, among about a thousand other things. That’s heroism. I have taken the kernel of her story and do what I do, which is dramatize, romanticize, exaggerate, and open fire. Hence, Game of Snipers. Now, on to apologies, excuses, and evasions. Let me offer the first to Tel Aviv; Dearborn, Michigan; Greenville, Ohio; Wichita, Kansas; Rock Springs, Wyoming; and Anacostia, D.C. I generally go to places I write about to check the lay of streets, the fall of shadows, the color of police cars, and the taste of local beer. At seventy-three, such ordeals-by-airport are no longer fun, not even the beer part; I only go where there’s beaches. For this book, I worked from maps and Google, and any geographical mistakes emerge out of that practice. Is the cathedral three hundred yards from the courthouse in Wichita? Hmm, seems about right, and that’s good enough for me on this. On the other hand, I finally got Bob’s wife’s name correct. It’s Julie, right? I’ve called her Jen more than once, but I’m pretty sure Jen was Bud Pewtie’s wife in Dirty White Boys. For some reason, this mistake seemed to trigger certain Amazon reviewers into psychotic episodes. Folks, calm down, have a drink, hug someone soft. It’ll be all right. As for the shooting, my account of the difficulties of hitting at over a mile is more or less accurate (snipers have done it at least eight times). I have simplified, because it is so arcane it would put all but the most dedicated in a coma. I have also been quite accurate about the ballistics app FirstShot, because I made it up and can make it do anything I want. The other shot, the three hundred, benefits from the wisdom of Craig Boddington, the great hunter and writer, who looked it over and sent me a detailed email, from which I have borrowed much. Naturally, any errors are mine, not Craig’s. I met Craig when shooting something (on film!) for another boon companion, Michael Bane, and his Outdoor Channel Gun Stories crew. For some reason, he finds it amusing when I start jabbering away and likes to turn the camera on. Don’t ask me why. On the same trip, I also met the great firearms historian and all-around movie guy (he knows more than I do) Garry James, who has become

The man at the desk in the library had seen Martin there so often that he had be- come quite cordial, always greeting him with a smile and a nod when he entered. It was because of this that Martin did a daring thing. Drawing out some books at the desk, and while the man was stamping the cards, Martin blurted out:- "Say, there's something I'd like to ask you." The man smiled and paid attention. "When you meet a young lady an' she asks you to call, how soon can you call?" Martin felt his shirt press and cling to his shoulders, what of the sweat of the ef- fort. "Why I'd say any time," the man answered. "Yes, but this is different," Martin objected. "She - I - well, you see, it's this way: maybe she won't be there. She goes to the university." "Then call again." "What I said ain't what I meant," Martin confessed falteringly, while he made up his mind to throw himself wholly upon the other's mercy. "I'm just a rough sort of a fellow, an' I ain't never seen anything of society. This girl is all that I ain't, an' I ain't anything that she is. You don't think I'm playin' the fool, do you?" he de- manded abruptly. "No, no; not at all, I assure you," the other protested. "Your request is not ex- actly in the scope of the reference department, but I shall be only too pleased to as- sist you." Martin looked at him admiringly. "If I could tear it off that way, I'd be all right," he said. "I beg pardon?" "I mean if I could talk easy that way, an' polite, an' all the rest." "Oh," said the other, with comprehension. "What is the best time to call? The afternoon? - not too close to meal-time? Or the evening? Or Sunday?" "I'll tell you," the librarian said with a brightening face. "You call her up on the telephone and find out." "I'll do it," he said, picking up his books and starting away. He turned back and asked:- "When you're speakin' to a young lady - say, for instance, Miss Lizzie Smith - do you say 'Miss Lizzie'? or 'Miss Smith'?" "Say 'Miss Smith,'" the librarian stated authoritatively. "Say 'Miss Smith' always - until you come to know her better." So it was that Martin Eden solved the problem. "Come down any time; I'll be at home all afternoon," was Ruth's reply over the telephone to his stammered request as to when he could return the borrowed books.

In the shop window you have promptly identified the cover with the title you were looking for. Following this visual trail, you have forced your way through the shop past the thick barricade of Books You Haven't Read, which were frowning at you from the tables and shelves, trying to cow you. But you know you must never allow yourself to be awed, that among them there extend for acres and acres the Books You Needn't Read, the Books Made For Purposes Other Than Reading, Books Read Even Before You Open Them Since They Belong To The Category Of Books Read Before Being Written. And thus you pass the outer girdle of ramparts, but then you are attacked by the infantry of the Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered. With a rapid maneuver you bypass them and move into the phalanxes of the Books You Mean To Read But There Are Others You Must Read First, the Books Too Expensive Now And You'll Wait Till They're Remaindered, the Books ditto When They Come Out In Paperback, Books You Can Borrow From Somebody, Books That Everybody's Read So It's As If You Had Read Them, Too. Eluding these assaults, you come up beneath the towers of the fortress, where other troops are holding out: the Books Dealing With Something You're Working On At The Moment, the Books You Want To Own So They'll Be Handy Just In Case, the Books You Could Put Aside Maybe To Read This Summer, the Books You Need To Go With Other Books On Your Shelves, the Books That Fill You With Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified. Now you have been able to reduce the countless embattled troops to an array that is, to be sure, very large but still calculable in a finite number; but this relative relief is then undermined by the ambush of the Books Read Long Ago Which It's Now Time To Reread and the Books You've Always Pretended To Have Read And Now It's Time To Sit Down And Really Read Them. With a zigzag and a dash you shake them off and leap straight into the citadel of the New Books Whose Author or Subject Appeals To You. Even inside this stronghold you can make some breaches in the ranks of the defenders, dividing them into New (for you in general) and New Books By Authors Or On Subjects Completely Unknown (at least to you), and defining the attraction they have for you on the basis of your desires and needs for the new and the not new (for the new you seek in the not new and for the not new you seek in the new). All this means that, having rapidly glanced over the titles of the volumes displayed in the bookshop, you turn toward a stack of If on a winter’s night a traveler fresh off the press, you have grasped a copy, and you have carried it to the cashier so that your right to own it can be established. You cast another bewildered look at the books around you (or, rather: it was the books that looked at you, with the bewildered gaze of dogs who, from their cages in the city pound, see a former companion go off on the leash of his master, come to rescue him), and out you went. You derive a special pleasure from a just-published book, and it isn’t only a book you are taking with you but the novelty as well, which could also merely be that of an object fresh from the factory, the youthful bloom of new books, which lasts until the dust jacket begins to yellow, until a veil of smog settles on the top edge, until the bindings become dog-eared, in the rapid autumn of libraries. No, you hope always to encounter true newness, which having been new once, will continue to be so. Having read the freshly published book, you will take possession of this newness at the first moment, without having to pursue, to chase it. Will it happen this time? You can never tell. Let’s see how it begins.

Why do you want my copy of Pride and Prejudice?” she answered as soon as I called her back. “I want to borrow it.” She snorted. “Why?” “I’m curious about it.” I pictured Hannah’s eyes lighting up, talking about it. There must have been something good in that book.

The common thinking is that you can’t possibly sell something before you own it, and even if you could, some interest likely would be charged for borrowing the asset that you intend to sell. Although that might be true in stock trading, that logic doesn’t apply to the futures markets.

Can I borrow your phone?” There’s no hesitation. “No.” I sigh through my nose. “Look. I totally butchered the last call. I don’t want Jonah not knowing how much I love him if I go and die tonight or something.” Karl leans back against the wood paneled wall. “Then don’t die.” Lyons, Heather (2013-11-03). A Matter of Truth (Fate Series Book 3) (p. 144). Cerulean Books. Kindle Edition.

I’d like to leave all my interest in, please,” explained Paddington. “In case it rains.” “Well,” said the man in a superior tone of voice as he made some calculations on a piece of paper. “I’m afraid you won’t keep very dry on this. It only comes to ten pence.” “What!” exclaimed Paddington, hardly able to believe his ears. “Ten pence! I don’t think that’s very interesting.” “Interest isn’t the same thing as interesting,” said the man. “Not the same thing at all.” He tried hard to think of some way of explaining matters for he wasn’t used to dealing with bears and he had a feeling that Paddington was going to be one of his more difficult customers. “It’s… it’s something we give you for letting us borrow your money,” he said. “The longer you leave it in the more you get.” “Well, my money’s been in since just after Christmas,” exclaimed Paddington. “That’s nearly six months.” “Ten pence,” said the man firmly.

IN T H E last twenty-five years I have had a lot of people staying with me and sometimes I am tempted to write an essay on guests. There are the guests who never shut a door after them and never turn out the light when they leave their room. There are the guests who throw themselves on their bed in muddy boots to have a nap after lunch, so that the counterpane has to be cleaned on their departure. There are the guests who smoke in bed and burn holes in your sheets. There are the guests who are on a regime and have to have special food cooked for them and there are the guests who wait till their glass is filled with a vintage claret and then say: "I won't have any, thank you." There are the guests who never put back a book in the place from which they took it and there are the guests who take away a volume from a set and never return it. There are the guests who borrow money from you when they are leaving and do not pay it back. There are the guests who can never be alone for a minute and there are the guests who are seized with a desire to talk the moment they see you glancing at a paper. There are the guests who, wherever they are, want to be somewhere else and there are the guests who want to be doing something from the time they get up in the morning till the time they go to bed at night. There are the guests who treat you as though they were SOME NOVELISTS I HAVE KNOWN 459 gauleiters in a conquered province. There are the guests who bring three weeks* laundry with them to have washed at your expense and there are the guests who send their clothes to the cleaners and leave you to pay the bill. There are the guests who telephone to London, Paris, Rome, Madrid and New York, and never think of inquiring how much it costs. There are the guests who take all they can get and offer nothing in return. There are also the guests who are happy just to be with you, who seek to please, who have resources of their own, who amuse you, whose conversation is delightful, whose interests are varied, who exhilarate and excite you, who in short give you far more than you

Here’s something to think about: the only thing you really own is what you create. And the only thing you can create without needing someone else to give you the raw materials first… is intellectual property. You can write a book, or draw a picture, or compose some music. Everything else is borrowed. It belonged to someone else before you and it will belong to someone else after you.

Girl, why the fuck are you coming out like Michael Myers and shit? Do you have a machete hiding behind your back or something? Damn, what the fuck is all over your face? Shit, your ass probably should have borrowed his mask because your ass is standing here looking like the hood version of Miss Doubtfire.

All words are borrowed. The beauty of writing is how they flow through us and arrange themselves as something new but familiar. We can be unique and belong at the same time. In moments of confusion, anger, and sadness, words lend comfort, letting us know that someone else has navigated the same tempestuous tides and survived.

A smile, someone once said, costs nothing but gives much. It enriches those who receive without making poorer those who give. It takes but a moment, but the memory of it sometimes lasts forever. None is so rich or mighty that he cannot get along without it and none is so poor that he cannot be made rich by it. Yet a smile cannot be bought, begged, borrowed, or stolen, for it is something that is of no value to anyone until it is given away. Some people are too tired to give you a smile. Give them one of yours, as none needs a smile so much as he who has no more to give.15 Smile. It increases your face value.

I had two great passions at the time: one magical and ethereal, which was reading, and the other mundane and predictable, which was pursuing silly love affairs. Concerning my literary ambitions, my successes went from slender to nonexistent. During those years I started a hundred woefully bad novels that died along the way, hundreds of short stories, plays, radio serials, and even poems that I wouldn't let anyone read, for their own good. I only needed to read them myself to see how much I still had to learn and what little progress I was making, despite the desire and enthusiasm I put into it. I was forever rereading Carax's novels and those of countless authors I borrowed from my parent's bookshop. I tried to pull them apart as if they were transistor radios, or the engine of a Rolls-Royce, hoping I would be able to figure out how they were built and how and why they worked. I'd read something in a newspaper about some Japanese engineers who practiced something called reverse engineering. Apparently these industrious gentlemen disassembled an engine to its last piece, analyzing the function of each bit, the dynamics of the whole, and the interior design of the device to work out the mathematics that supported its operation. My mother had a brother who worked as an engineer in Germany, so I told myself that there must be something in my genes that would allow me to do the same thing with a book or with a story. Every day I became more convinced that good literature has little or nothing to do with trivial fancies such as 'inspiration' or 'having something to tell' and more with the engineering of language, with the architecture of the narrative, with the painting of textures, with the timbres and colors of the staging, with the cinematography of words, and the music that can be produced by an orchestra of ideas. My second great occupation, or I should say my first, was far more suited to comedy, and at times touched on farce. There was a time in which I fell in love on a weekly basis, something that, in hindsight, I don't recommend. I fell in love with a look, a voice, and above all with what was tightly concealed under those fine-wool dresses worn by the young girls of my time. 'That isn't love, it's a fever,' Fermín would specify. 'At your age it is chemically impossible to tell the difference. Mother Nature brings on these tricks to repopulate the planet by injecting hormones and a raft of idiocies into young people's veins so there's enough cannon fodder available for them to reproduce like rabbits and at the same time sacrifice themselves in the name of whatever is parroted by bankers, clerics, and revolutionary visionaries in dire need of idealists, imbeciles, and other plagues that will prevent the world from evolving and make sure it always stays the same.

alright,

heirloom dress,

Sections in the bookstore - Books You Haven't Read - Books You Needn't Read - Books Made for Purposes Other Than Reading - Books Read Even Before You Open Them Since They Belong to the Category of Books Read Before Being Written - Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered - Books You Mean to Read But There Are Others You Must Read First - Books Too Expensive Now and You'll Wait 'Til They're Remaindered - Books ditto When They Come Out in Paperback - Books You Can Borrow from Somebody - Books That Everybody's Read So It's As If You Had Read Them, Too - Books You've Been Planning to Read for Ages - Books You've Been Hunting for Years Without Success - Books Dealing with Something You're Working on at the Moment - Books You Want to Own So They'll Be Handy Just in Case - Books You Could Put Aside Maybe to Read This Summer - Books You Need to Go with Other Books on Your Shelves - Books That Fill You with Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified - Books Read Long Ago Which It's Now Time to Re-read - Books You've Always Pretended to Have Read and Now It's Time to Sit Down and Really Read Them

All sooners know life is something you just borrow for a while. Each person must choose how to spend it.

You may not have much time left in the corridor of life. Remember that it is not something that you can buy or borrow from others. Therefore, you must maximize your time.

Her most difficult choice had been which book to bring. She couldn't decide between something she'd never read before and one of her favorites. So, of course, she'd packed two: a pirate adventure story she'd borrowed from the bookseller just the day before and the beloved book of short stories her mother used to read to her when she was a child. A warm smile stretched across Belle's lips at the thought of her mother and the love of reading she'd instilled in her only daughter. She'd also nurtured Belle's sense of adventure. "I'm finally going on one of my own, Mama," Belle whispered. "A true adventure.

Yes. Together, they are strong. But apart, they should be more than vulnerable to our attacks,” Alex explained. “I see… but how do we separate them?” “That part, I don’t know.” The four knights stood ready with their giant swords in front of them. Then an idea came to me. “I got it!” I yelled. “What did you come up with?” asked Alex. “Does anyone have a shovel I can borrow?” “A shovel? Are you going to dig them to death?” asked Arthur. “Something like that. Do you have one?” Arthur shook his head.

Today the cloud is the central metaphor of the internet: a global system of great power and energy that nevertheless retains the aura of something noumenal and numnious, something almost impossible to grasp. We connect to the cloud; we work in it; we store and retrieve stuff from it; we think through it. We pay for it and only notice it when it breaks. It is something we experience all the time without really understanding what it is or how it works. It is something we are training ourselves to rely upon with only the haziest of notions about what is being entrusted, and what it is being entrusted to. Downtime aside, the first criticism of this cloud is that it is a very bad metaphor. The cloud is not weightless; it is not amorphous, or even invisible, if you know where to look for it. The cloud is not some magical faraway place, made of water vapor and radio waves, where everything just works. It is a physical infrastructure consisting of phone lines, fibre optics, satellites, cables on the ocean floor, and vast warehouses filled with computers, which consume huge amounts of water and energy and reside within national and legal jurisdictions. The cloud is a new kind of industry, and a hungry one. The cloud doesn't just have a shadow; it has a footprint. Absorbed into the cloud are many of the previously weighty edifices of the civic sphere: the places where we shop, bank, socialize, borrow books, and vote. Thus obscured, they are rendered less visible and less amenable to critique, investigation, preservation and regulation. Another criticism is that this lack of understanding is deliberate. There are good reasons, from national security to corporate secrecy to many kinds of malfeasance, for obscuring what's inside the cloud. What evaporates is agency and ownership: most of your emails, photos, status updates, business documents, library and voting data, health records, credit ratings, likes, memories, experiences, personal preferences, and unspoken desires are in the cloud, on somebody else's infrastructure. There's a reason Google and Facebook like to build data centers in Ireland (low taxes) and Scandinavia (cheap energy and cooling). There's a reason global, supposedly post-colonial empires hold onto bits of disputed territory like Diego Garcia and Cyprus, and it's because the cloud touches down in these places, and their ambiguous status can be exploited. The cloud shapes itself to geographies of power and influence, and it serves to reinforce them. The cloud is a power relationship, and most people are not on top of it. These are valid criticisms, and one way of interrogating the cloud is to look where is shadow falls: to investigate the sites of data centers and undersea cables and see what they tell us about the real disposition of power at work today. We can seed the cloud, condense it, and force it to give up some of its stories. As it fades away, certain secrets may be revealed. By understanding the way the figure of the cloud is used to obscure the real operation of technology, we can start to understand the many ways in which technology itself hides its own agency - through opaque machines and inscrutable code, as well as physical distance and legal constructs. And in turn, we may learn something about the operation of power itself, which was doing this sort of thing long before it had clouds and black boxes in which to hide itself.

Trick #1 for Farming Humans is the ability to invisibly commit crime. Chapter 1, Page 9, Ring of Gyges Trick #2 for Farming Humans is to allow professionals to create rigged systems or self serving social constructs. Chapter 4, page 28 (Lawyers who serve corporate interests are often incentivized to assist in harming the society to increase their own security. SEC, Bernie Madoff, Corporations as invisible friends, Money laundering assistance) Trick #3 in Farming Humans is making it legal for insider manipulation of public markets for private gain. (Boeing CEO) page 32 Trick #4 for Farming Humans is Justice prefers to look only down…rarely up towards power. Chapter 5, page 33. Trick #5 for Farming Humans is “let us create the nation’s money”. What could go wrong? Found in Chapter 7 on page 38. Trick # 6 in the game of Farming Humans, to create something which gives a few men an elevated status above the rest. Southern Pacific Railroad taxes, to Pacific Gas and Electric deadly California fires, to Boeing aircraft casualties. Paper “persons” cannot be arrested or jailed. Trick #7 for Farming Humans is a private game of money creation which secretly “borrowed” on the credit backing of the public. Chapter 9, page 51. Federal Reserve. Trick #8 for Farming Humans is seen in the removal of the gold backing of US dollars for global trading partners, a second default of the promises behind the dollar. (1971) Chapter 15, page 81 Trick #9 for Farming Humans is being able to sell out the public trust, over and over again. Supreme Court rules that money equals speech. Chapter 16, page 91. Trick #10 for Farming Humans is Clinton repeals Glass Steagall, letting banks gamble America into yet another financial collapse. Chapter 17, page 93. Trick #11 for Farming Humans is when money is allowed to buy politics. Citizens United, super PAC’s can spend unlimited money during campaigns. Chapter 18, page 97. Trick #12 for Farming Humans is the Derivative Revolution. Making it up with lawyers and papers in a continual game of “lets pretend”. Chapter 19, page 105. Trick #13 for Farming Humans is allowing dis-information to infect society. Chapter 20, page 109. Trick #14 for Farming Humans is substitution of an “advisor”, for what investors think is an “adviser”. Confused yet? The clever “vowel movement” adds billions in profits, while farming investors. Trick #15 for Farming Humans is when privately-hired rental-cops are allowed to lawfully regulate an industry, the public gets abused. Investments, SEC, FDA, FAA etc. Chapter 15, page 122 Trick #16 for Farming Humans is the layer of industry “self regulators”, your second army of people paid to “gaslight” the public into thinking they are protected.

Unfortunately, the Bull that gilded Renaissance New York did little for most Americans. Eighties Wall Street was about institutional money released by deregulation, mergers and acquisitions, and, most of all, the debt that made it all possible. As John Kenneth Galbraith points out, financial euphoria always starts with new ways to borrow money; this time it was triggered by the Savings & Loan crisis. Volcker’s rocketing interest rates had forced S&Ls to offer double digits to new depositors while only getting back single digits on the old thirty-year mortgages on their books. S&Ls were going under, and getting a mortgage was nearly impossible, so in March 1980, with the banking system and the housing market on the brink, Carter had signed a law to allow them to issue credit cards, invest in commercial real estate, and offer checking accounts in order to stay in business. Reagan then took it a step further with a change that encouraged S&Ls to sell their mortgages in search of higher returns, freeing up a $1 trillion that needed to be invested in something. Which takes us back to Salomon Brothers, where in 1978 one Lew Ranieri had repackaged an old investment product the government had clamped down on during the Depression: A group of home mortgages all backed by government insurance would be bundled together, then sliced into bonds, thus converting the debt some people owed on their homes into an asset for others. Ranieri had been a bit ahead of the curve then—the same high interest rates that killed the S&Ls also made his bonds unattractive—but now deregulation let Salomon buy up the S&Ls’ mortgages at a deep discount, bundle them into bonds, and sell them back to the S&Ls who believed they’d diversified into the bond market when in fact they’d just bought ground meat made out of their own steaks. In June 1983, Salomon Brothers and Freddie Mac together issued the first collateralized mortgage obligation bonds (CMOs), which bundled up debt and cut it into tranches based on the amount of risk: you could choose between ground chuck and ground sirloin. It would be years before technology would allow doing this on a huge scale, but the immediate impact was that all kinds of debt, not just mortgages, were bundled, cut into bonds, and sold: credit card debt, car loans, you name it. Between 1983 and 1988, some $60 billion of CMOs were sold; GM’s financing arm became more profitable than its cars. America began to make debt instead of things. The

She’d been trying to put distance between them, afraid that the strange attraction she felt for him would somehow be noticed and he’d think her incapable of doing her job. And all this time, he was in love with her! This would never do. Polly took a deep breath as she entered the kitchen. What if Mitch was there? What was she supposed to say? Mitch, I got your note, and, against my better judgment, I am finding myself very attracted to you, but I cannot imagine how a romance between us would work? Preposterous. That’s what it was. How could she even consider falling in love with a man who would keep her tied down to a family that… “Good morning, Polly!” Five cheerful voices greeted her as she entered the kitchen. They were all seated at the kitchen table, working on their…lessons? Isabella held up a slate. “I wite name!” Someone had clearly written Isabella on her slate, and underneath, Isabella had scribbled. “I’ve already done my spelling,” Louisa said. “And the other children are still working on theirs, but we should be ready for the rest of our lessons soon.” Then she held up a book. “Pastor, er, Uncle Frank said it was all right to borrow something from his study. I thought this looked interesting.” Robinson Crusoe. Not something Polly would have picked for the girl, but if she wanted to read it… “That sounds just fine.” Polly looked around the spotless kitchen. “Where’s Maddie?” Maddie came in the back door, drying her hands on her apron. “Just out finishing up a few things. I don’t know what you did to these children, but they’ve been well behaved all morning. Said they wanted you to get your rest and helped me with the washing up, then got right to their lessons.” Polly stared at them. “Really?” “Oh, yes,” Clara said, her smile filling her face. “We like you best of all of our nannies, and since the other ones left

IMPORTANT NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR Are you aware that if you borrow a book from Kindle Unlimited and read in Page Flip mode the author doesn’t get paid? Amazon has recently confirmed this to authors, and there is no indication as to whether they intend to fix this or not. I hate mentioning this, but as my page reads continue to decline (despite the fact I have way more books enrolled in Kindle Unlimited), I may need to revisit my participation in the program going forward. I would never ask any reader to stop reading in Page Flip mode, as reading is highly personal, but I do want to ensure every reader is fully aware of all the facts, so they can make their own informed decision. Thanks for your attention. P.S. I did include this note at the front of the book, but Amazon continually keeps setting my books to start on Chapter One despite the fact I usually have a note at the front of each book to explain something important, and set the book to open on the title page. So, I’m copying this note here, not to be an annoying so and so but to ensure my readers have read this important notification. Thank you

Still another barrier for many people which closes the door to success is the mania or passion for reading too many books, because of their inability to make a definite choice. Getting one on a theme which interests them, they invariably soon seek something “new,” and as soon as that has been read, they again start their interminable searching. Their lives pass without being properly and reasonably used. Such men forget that books are much more numerous than the weeks and months they have yet to live through. So what is the good of having read even half of them and dying before making any use of the things which men know only mentally? After all, books are usually for us only crystallized stores of borrowed thoughts created by other men, and not always of use to us, since in all fields of literature they so frequently offer only fiction or near-fiction, which can hardly help an earnest seeker. Although the mind is only a secondary power in man, compared with the higher wisdom consciousness known in Samadhi, which is devoid of thoughts, faults in the structure of that mind are almost an absolute barrier impossible to over come in any study, and especially in the present one. Inadequate comprehension is the same as insufficient knowledge of a foreign alphabet for someone who wants to read in that particular language. It may happen that it is not merely an unquenchable thirst for reading which drives a man from one author to another, but the fact that he is not satisfied with any so far encountered. In such a case there is nothing more to say then: “Seek and ye shall find.

He said Willow wanted slimeballs to make magma cream for her potion of Fire Resistance, so she could walk through fire as part of their talent show act. “Even one of the spider jockeys wanted to borrow slime!” Sam said, as if that meant he and the jocks were best buds now or something. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Sam was helping everyone else with the talent show, even JOCKS. But not me—his best friend! And the way things were going lately, I could really

I’ve held off telling it because I believe that when you speak, you are always also listening—or you should be. You are trying, in a sense, to “overhear” yourself, and so to be changed by what you have heard yourself reveal no less than if someone other than yourself were the one revealing it to you. Revelation was what I was afraid of: self-knowledge and change. Molly said Harold Bloom said that this capacity for self-overhearing is what Shakespeare’s characters do in their soliloquies—they listen to themselves, are changed, and then act based on that change—and that this is the foundation of modern human consciousness. Or something. I’m not saying I followed it all, but I did take the trouble later to peruse the relevant Wikis, where I learned that Bloom borrowed this idea from Hegel. Or maybe what I really did was hire Molly to ghostwrite this whole book for me, and here she is throwing in Easter eggs that reveal her unacknowledged legislation of my story.

You’ll have to believe me that I haven’t been withholding this to be coy, or because I was scared to face this story, though it’s possible that both those things are true. I’ve held off telling it because I believe that when you speak, you are always also listening—or you should be. You are trying, in a sense, to “overhear” yourself, and so to be changed by what you have heard yourself reveal no less than if someone other than yourself were the one revealing it to you. Revelation was what I was afraid of: self-knowledge and change. Molly said Harold Bloom said that this capacity for self-overhearing is what Shakespeare’s characters do in their soliloquies—they listen to themselves, are changed, and then act based on that change—and that this is the foundation of modern human consciousness. Or something. I’m not saying I followed it all, but I did take the trouble later to peruse the relevant Wikis, where I learned that Bloom borrowed this idea from Hegel. Or maybe what I really did was hire Molly to ghostwrite this whole book for me, and here she is throwing in Easter eggs that reveal her unacknowledged legislation of my story.