Starter Quotes

I want to keep a human mouth on my coffee table. It’ll be a great conversation starter.

What did I do?” “What did you do? Well, for starters, you used your face to stop a cafeteria door from swinging open.

What problems?" "Well for starters.. you're an evil duck killer.

Me: “I refuse to attend Support Group.” Mom: “One of the symptoms of depression is disinterest in activities.” Me: “Please just let me watch America’s Next Top Model. It’s an activity.” Mom: “Television is a passivity.” Me: “Ugh, Mom, please.” Mom: “Hazel, you’re a teenager. You’re not a little kid anymore. You need to make friends, get out of the house, and live your life.” Me: “If you want me to be a teenager, don’t send me to Support Group. Buy me a fake ID so I can go to clubs, drink vodka, and take pot.” Mom: “You don’t take pot, for starters.” Me: “See, that’s the kind of thing I’d know if you got me a fake ID.” Mom: “You’re going to Support Group.” Me: “UGGGGGGGGGGGGG.” Mom: “Hazel, you deserve a life.

We burned with love for ourselves, all of us, starters of the fire we suffered- our love was the affliction for which only our love was the cure.

You know, if you're going to stalk someone, you should be less obvious. For starters, try not to standing in the middle of a field, gawking at your prey.

Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suit on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourselves. Choose your future. Choose life… But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin’ else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you’ve got heroin?

Wait,” Kaidan called from behind me. I squeezed my eyes shut for a second, but kept walking. Then I felt his hand around my wrist, spinning me in a half circle and pulling me to his chest. His face was so close. He reached down and cupped my face with one woolly hand, and wiped the top corner of my lip hard with his thumb. I flinched back. “What are you doing?” “I...” He appeared to have no idea himself. “I wanted to see your freckle.” A vulnerable tenderness flashed across his face, more painful to see than the coldness. It took every ounce of strength I had not to beg for one last kiss. As fast as his expression had softened, it was back to stone again. “What do you want from me, Kai?” “For starters?” His voice lowered to sexy, dangerous depths. “I want to introduce myself to every freckle on your body.” A powerful shiver ripped through me.

No one ever complained about a fat brain. No one ever accused their brain of being too short or too tall, too wide or too narrow. Or ugly. It either worked or it didn't, and mine worked just fine.

When hawks cry, time to fly.

Me: "If you want me to be a teenager, don't send me to Support Group. Buy me a fake ID so I can go to clubs, drink vodka, and take pot." Mom: "You don't take pot, for starters." Me: "See, that's the kind of thing I'd know if you got me a fake ID.

Did Cinderella ever consider fessing up to the prince, that night she was enjoying herself in the fancy ball gown? Did she even think of telling him, oh, by the way, Prince, the coach isn’t mine, I’m really a filthy little barefoot servant on borrowed time? No. She took her moment. And then went quietly away after midnight.

In other news, It’s seven sols till the harvest, and I still haven’t prepared. For starters, I need to make a hoe. Also, I need to make an outdoor shed for the potatoes. I can’t just pile them up outside. The next major storm would cause The Great Martian Potato Migration.

Welcome every morning with a smile. Look on the new day as another special gift from your Creator, another golden opportunity to complete what you were unable to finish yesterday. Be a self-starter. Let your first hour set the theme of success and positive action that is certain to echo through your entire day. Today will never happen again. Don't waste it with a false start or no start at all. You were not born to fail.

Well for starters, my mother always taught me never to get into cars with strangers. But I’m also curious as to what name I’ll be screaming out later tonight.

It was the circle of perfect motion. Of the light-bringer and dark-giver, the world-starter and shadow-ender. Of initiation and completion. It was the symbol of the Cahr Awen. Cahr Awen.

I loathe people who say, 'I always read the ending of the book first.' That really irritates me, It's like someone coming to dinner, just opening the fridge and eating pudding, while you're standing there still working on the starter. It's not on.

As new dawns go, this one is depressingly like the old dawn.

On the other hand, winning awards is cool. Aside from the warm fuzzy, it creates publicity, and that helps spread the word about the book. Plus, this award was a plaque of some sort. I could have used that for all sorts of things. Obviously it would be useful for decorating the barren walls of my house and intimidating my enemies, but that's just for starters.

He said when the Lord made people He made them all the same for starters. But life marks people. If you know the way, you can read them like maps.

What must that be like? To be admired before you’ve even said a word, to be desired two or three hundred times a day by people who have absolutely no idea what you’re like?

Independence is the luxury of all those people who are too confident, and busy, and popular, and attractive to be just plain old lonely. And make no mistake, lonely is absolutely the worst thing to be. Tell someone that you've got a drink problem, or an eating disorder, or your dad died when you were a kid even, and you can almost see their eyes light up with the sheer fascinating drama and pathos of it all, because you've got an issue, something for them to get involved in, to talk about and analyse and discuss and maybe even cure. But tell someone you’re lonely and of course they’ll seem sympathetic, but look very carefully and you'll see one hand snaking behind their back, groping for the door handle, ready to make a run for it, as if loneliness itself were contagious. Because being lonely is just so banal, so shaming, so plain and dull and ugly.

When you're winning, everyone is a fan.

All young people worry about things, it's a natural and inevitable part of growing up, and at the age of sixteen my greatest anxiety in life was that I'd never again achieve anything as good, or pure, or noble, or true, as my O-level results.

developing tolerance for imperfection is the key factor in turning chronic starters into consistent finishers.

In what way could keeping me in ignorance be construed as protection?’ I straighten a piece of wire to add to the fire-starter. ‘God spare me from such protection, especially when it involves safeguarding my poor feminine sensibilities from life-saving information.

I'm not a quitter. I'm a never-starter. There's a difference.

Beauty isn’t about meeting some holo-star standard, it’s about being you. Because looks come and go. But nobody else can be you.

I'll show you an imaginative re-creation, my fist imaginatively re-creating your fucken face for starters.

I gave him my Order smile: sweet grin, hard eyes, reached over to my passenger seat, and pulled out my submachine gun. About twenty-seven inches long, the HK was my favorite toy for close-quarters combat. The rider’s eyes went wide. “This is an HK UMP submachine gun. Renowned for its stopping power and reliability. Cyclic rate of fire: eight hundred rounds per minute. That means I can empty this thirty-round clip into you in less than three seconds. At this range, I’ll cut you in half.” It wasn’t strictly true but it sounded good. “You see what it says on the barrel?” On the barrel, pretty white letters spelled out PARTY STARTER.

The sad fact is that I love Dickens and Donne and Keats and Eliot and Forster and Conrad and Fitzgerald and Kafka and Wilde and Orwell and Waugh and Marvell and Greene and Sterne and Shakespeare and Webster and Swift and Yeats and Joyce and Hardy, really, really love them. It’s just that they don’t love me back.

Her entire body quivered. "What is it about me that you're attracted to?" "For starters, the sexy underwear you put on beneath your clothes." "You've only seen my underwear once." "Twice," he said. "I looked down your top at the pier." "You did not." "Pink-and-white polka-dot bra." "Oh my God." "That's what I was thinking." -Mallory and Ty

As I got older, I got craftier and less obvious, but I’ve always put a lot of energy and effort into people liking me. That’s why I’ve never understood the compliment “effortless.” People love to say: “She just walked into the party, charming people with her effortless beauty.” I don’t understand that at all. What’s so wrong with effort, anyway? It means you care. What about the girl who “walked into the party, her determination to please apparent on her eager face”? Sure, she might seem a little crazy, and, yes, maybe everything she says sounds like conversation starters she found on a website, but at least she’s trying. Let’s give her a shot!

He put his arms around her. “Well, in my defense, then, whatever I did seemed to work, didn't it?” She sighed. “I suppose.” “You suppose?” “What do you want? A medal?” “For starters. A trophy would be nice, too.” She smiled. “What do you think you're holding right now?

I understand her immediately. She is an instigator, a fire starter, an accelerant of a human being, throwing herself into the middle of a crowd and lighting it up. She is fucking lighter fluid.

What else do you want to do to me?" Jace asked, and Clint smiled. "That's a wicked look you've got going on." "Just remember, you're the one who asked for it." "It was merely a conversation starter." "Consider it started. Now I'm going to finish it.

For starters, I need to make a hoe. Also, I need to make an outdoor shed for the potatoes. I can’t just pile them up outside. The next major storm would cause the Great Martian Potato Migration.

What are you doing?” “I...” He appeared to have no idea himself. “I wanted to see your freckle.” A vulnerable tenderness flashed across his face, more painful to see than the coldness. It took every ounce of strength I had not to beg for one last kiss. As fast as his expression had softened, it was back to stone again. “What do you want from me, Kai?” “For starters?” His voice lowered to sexy, dangerous depths. “I want to introduce myself to every freckle on your body.

Congratulate yourself as a good beginner. Feel proud of God for choosing you to begin the work at hand. Accept the work freely and get started. Be grateful.

In a culture that prizes the can-do, self-starter attitude, to be a pessimist is simply to be a complainer – if you’re not part of the solution, then you’re part of the problem. To live in such a culture is to constantly live in the shadow of an obligatory optimism, a novel type of coercion that is pathologized early on in child education in the assessment: “Does not like to play with others.

I applied for the University of Life. Didn't get the grades.

No matter how predictable, banal and listless the rest of my life might be, you can guarantee that there'll always be something interesting going on with my skin.

I needed a more interesting life. I could start by learning something. I could start with the starter.

Probably my favorite body part. No one ever complained about a fat brain. No one ever accused their brain of being too short or too tall, too wide or too narrow. Or ugly. It either worked or it didn't, and mine worked just fine.

For starters, would your soul mate even still be alive? A hundred billion or so humans have ever lived, but only seven billion are alive now (which gives the human condition a 93 percent mortality rate). If we were all paired up at random, 90 percent of our soul mates would be long dead.

Well, what if..." Scarlet listed her head. "You said the control when your animal instincts will overpower your own thoughts right? But fighting and hunting aren't the only instincts wolves have. Aren't wolves...monogamous, for starters?" Her cheeks started to burn and she had to look away, scratching her fork into a set of initial. "And isn't the alpha male the one who's responsible for protecting everyone? Not only the pack, but his mate too?" Dropping the fork, she threw her hands into the air. "I'm not saying I think you and I are--after just--I know we just met and that's...but it's not out of the questions, is it? That your instincts to protect me could be as strong as your instincts to kill?

I have to know.” “Know what?” Jaden demanded. “Well, for starters, I have to know why you left without even saying goodbye.” Without thinking, he caressed the soft curve of her cheek with his thumb, stroking it affectionately as he stared into her green eyes. “But more importantly, I need to know why a woman I barely know has left such a gaping hole in my chest, why when I open my eyes in the morning I’m disappointed that you aren’t there, and why every song on the radio sounds like Frank Sinatra. Why is it that one night with you felt more like a thousand?

The next generation is like the last runner in a very long relay race. The race to end extreme poverty has been a marathon, with the starter gun fired in 1800. This next generation has the unique opportunity to complete the job: to pick up the baton, cross the line, and raise its hands in triumph. The project must be completed. And we should have a big party when we are done.

Everybody sees the ants?" He looks at me and says, "Well, how many people do you think live perfect lives, son? Aren't we all victims of something at some time or another?" "I don't follow." "Left hand red!" he says. Two ants fall on this turn, and the ant laughter gets louder. "Well, think about it. How many bad things can be done to a person? You got murder and assault, rape and robbery for starters. Just with those you're looking at some big numbers of how many people see the ants." He calls, "Left foot blue!" I say, "Huh," because I'm not sure how many people he means. "There's battery, conspiracy, extortion, slander, defamation and harassment, child abuse, stalking-the list is long, isn't it? Don't forget that every crime has hundreds of victims-everyone who knew and loved the victim and the criminal. That shit can trickle down." "All those people see the ants?" "Yep. Right hand green!" "Wow." "Yeah," he says. "If there are people who don't see 'em, I'd say we outnumber them a million to one.

The truth was, neither the Central Intelligence Agency nor any of the other official and unofficial U.S. intelligence organizations have ever been some kind of all-seeing, all-knowing, global illuminati. For starters, we never hand that kind of funding.

I need you to go talk to a girl who may have some information about Emma." "Where is she?" "Someplace you're not going to want to go." (...) "I give up. Where?" "Institution 37." I felt a hitch in my breathing. I leaned back against the wall. "Could I pick hell instead?

What’s the point of you? Try this, for starters. And underneath there’s a long list. He’s written a long, long list, that fills the page. I’m so flustered, I can’t even read it properly, but as I scan down I catch beautiful smile and great taste in music (I sneaked a look at your iPod) and awesome Starbucks name. I give a sudden snort of laughter that almost turns to a sob and then turns to a smile, and then suddenly I’m wiping my eyes. I’m all over the place.

Like - that presentation board you'd made up? You definitely should have let me take care of that part." I frown. "What was wrong with my presentation board?" He gives me a look, like I shouldn't even have to ask. "For starters, you used the Papyrus font for the headers." "So? What's wrong with Papyrus?" He makes a gagging noise.

Graham Chapman, co-author of the "Parrot Sketch", is no more. He has ceased to be. Bereft of life, he rests in peace. He's kicked the bucket, hopped the twig, bit the dust, snuffed it, breathed his last, and gone to meet the great Head of Light Entertainment in the sky. And I guess that we're all thinking how sad it is that a man of such talent, of such capability for kindness, of such unusual intelligence, should now so suddenly be spirited away at the age of only forty-eight, before he'd achieved many of the things of which he was capable, and before he'd had enough fun. Well, I feel that I should say: nonsense. Good riddance to him, the freeloading bastard, I hope he fries. And the reason I feel I should say this is he would never forgive me if I didn't, if I threw away this glorious opportunity to shock you all on his behalf. Anything for him but mindless good taste. (He paused, then claimed that Chapman had whipered in his ear while he was writing the speech): All right, Cleese. You say you're very proud of being the very first person ever to say 'shit' on British television. If this service is really for me, just for starters, I want you to become the first person ever at a British memorial service to say 'fuck'.

Blue was in a terrible mood. Something had clearly happened while she was on shift, but Gansey’s attempts to prise it from her had established only that it was neither about the toga party nor him. Now, she was the one driving the Pig, which had a threefold benefit. For starters, Gansey couldn’t imagine anyone whose mood wouldn’t be marginally lifted by driving a Camaro. Second, Blue said she never got a chance to practise driving in Fox Way’s communal vehicle. And third, most importantly, Gansey was outrageously and eternally driven to distraction by the image of her behind the wheel of his car. Ronan and Adam weren’t with them, so there was no one to catch them in what felt like an incredibly indecent act.

If your goals aren’t synced with the substance of your heart, then achieving them won’t matter much.

Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol and dental insurance. Choose fixed- interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisure wear and matching luggage. Choose a three piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing sprit- crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing you last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked-up brats you have spawned to replace yourself. Choose your future. Choose life... But why would I want to do a thing like that?

Oh, come on,” Ronan said. For starters, it was Henrietta. And for finishers, it was Henrietta. No one got burgled, and if they did, they didn’t get beaten up. And if anyone was going to get beaten up, it wouldn’t be the Lynch brothers. There was very little worse than Ronan in Henrietta, and what worse there was was too busy racing around in a little white Mitsubishi to burgle the remaining Lynches.

Can we start with the cat?” I asked, sitting. CATS, Hera typed. PERSEPHONE IS MY INTERN. Persephone looked at me and mewed. “Paid internship, I hope,” I joked. OF COURSE, Hera typed back. WE’RE ANIMALS, NOT MONSTERS. I paused. “Do you actually get paid?” I asked my cat. YES. “How much?” MORE THAN YOU.

Well, for starters, you only wear black.” “Because it doesn’t get dirty.” “You don’t ever leave your house.” “People don’t look at me there.” “For the Create-a-Tale Competition, your story ended with Snow White eaten by vultures and Cinderella drowning herself in a tub.” “I thought it was a better ending.

If we go to the depths of anything, we will begin to knock upon something substantial, “real,” and with a timeless quality to it. We will move from the starter kit of “belief” to an actual inner knowing. This is most especially true if we have ever (1) loved deeply, (2) accompanied someone through the mystery of dying, (3) or stood in genuine life-changing awe before mystery, time, or beauty.

...maybe I've just read too many novels. In novels, alcoholics are always attractive and fuuny and charming and complex, like Sebastian Flyte or ABe North in Tender in the Night, and they're drinking because of a deep, unquenchable sadness of the soul, or the terrible legacy of the First World War, whereas I just get drunk because I'm thirsty, and I like the taste of lager...

Sometimes I wish that I hadn't learned how to crochet," I say, and Alice laughs. Obviously she thinks I'm joking, which is maybe for the best.

eventually we’ll be old and wrinkled. Like everybody. But we’ll look a lot better if we’re happy inside. If we used our brains and our talents instead of stressing over what someone else defines as ‘pretty.’ 

What defines me? Skin? I hope I'm more than that. Than this. That I am what I think, what I believe. What I feel.

Self-doubt is so insidious that it not only renders us stuck in our lives, but it also actually weakens our ability to dream about what living unleashed would look like.

Would - would you mind telling me -" he said to the guide, much deflated, "what was so stupid about that?" "We know how the Universe ends-" said the guide, "and Earth has nothing to do with it, except that it gets wiped out, too." "How - how does the Universe end?" said Billy. "We blow it up, experimenting with new fuels for our flying saucers. A Trafalmodarian test pilot presses a starter button, and the whole Universe disappears." So it goes.

Of course you should study whatever you want. The written appreciation and understanding of literature, or any kind of artistic endeavour, is absolutely central to a decent society. Why d'you think books are the first things that the fascists burn?

The religion of the flag promptly replaced the cult of heaven, an old cloud which had already been deflated by the Reformation and reduced to a network of episcopal money boxes. In olden times the fanatical fashion was: 'Long live Jesus! Burn the heretics!' . . . But heretics, after all, were few and voluntary . . . Whereas today vast hordes of men are fired with aim and purpose by cries of ‘Hang the limp turnips! The juiceless lemons! The innocent readers! By the millions, eyes right!’ If anybody doesn’t want to fight or murder, grab ‘em, tear ‘em to pieces! Kill them in thirteen juicy ways. For a starter, to teach them how to live, rip their guts out of their bodies, their eyes out of their sockets, and the years out of their filthy slobbering lives!

I want to be able to listen to recording of piano sonatas and know who's playing. I want to go to classical concerts and know when you're meant to clap. I want to be able to 'get' modern jazz without it all sounding like this terrible mistake, and I want to know who the Velvet Underground are exactly. I want to be fully engaged in the World of Ideas, I want to understand complex economics, and what people see in Bob Dylan. I want to possess radical but humane and well-informed political ideals, and I want to hold passionate but reasoned debates round wooden kitchen tables, saying things like 'define your terms!' and 'your premise is patently specious!' and then suddenly to discover that the sun's come up and we've been talking all night. I want to use words like 'eponymous' and 'solipsistic' and 'utilitarian' with confidence. I want to learn to appreciate fine wines, and exotic liquers, and fine single malts, and learn how to drink them without turning into a complete div, and to eat strange and exotic foods, plovers' eggs and lobster thermidor, things that sound barely edible, or that I can't pronounce...Most of all I want to read books; books thick as brick, leather-bound books with incredibly thin paper and those purple ribbons to mark where you left off; cheap, dusty, second-hand books of collected verse, incredibly expensive, imported books of incomprehensible essays from foregin universities. At some point I'd like to have an original idea...And all of these are the things that a university education's going to give me.

But the thing about Literature is, well, basically it encapsulates all the disciplines - it's history, philosophy, politics, sexual politics, sociology, psychology, linguistics, science. Literature is mankind's organised response to the world around him, or her.

How about a rain check?' She smiles, but I know it's not real because it doesn't crinkle her eyes. 'Sure. Some other time.' I nod and grab my car keys. Before I flip the light on in the grage, she's behind me, tugging on my backpack. 'You want to go to school? Fine. But you're not driving. Give me the key.' 'I'm okay, Mom, really. I'll see you tonight.' I plant a quick kiss on her cheek and turn to the door again. 'That's nice. Give it to me.' She holds out her hand. I clench the key in my fist. 'You practically shoved that car down my throat Monday, and now youre taking the key. What did I do?' 'What did you do? Well, for starters, you used your face to stop a cafeteria door from swinging open.

Falling apart wasn't an option.

It's just the beginning

it's rapidly becoming clear that the so-called best years of my life are never going to happen

It was Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the television series, 1997-2003, not the lackluster movie that preceded it) that blazed the trail for Twilight and the slew of other paranormal romance novels that followed, while also shaping the broader urban fantasy field from the late 1990s onward. Many of you reading this book will be too young to remember when Buffy debuted, so you'll have to trust us when we say that nothing quite like it had existed before. It was thrillingly new to see a young, gutsy, kick-ass female hero, for starters, and one who was no Amazonian Wonder Woman but recognizably ordinary, fussing about her nails, her shoes, and whether she'd make it to her high school prom. Buffy's story contained a heady mix of many genres (fantasy, horror, science-fiction, romance, detective fiction, high school drama), all of it leavened with tongue-in-cheek humor yet underpinned by the serious care with which the Buffy universe had been crafted. Back then, Whedon's dizzying genre hopping was a radical departure from the norm-whereas today, post-Buffy, no one blinks an eye as writers of urban fantasy leap across genre boundaries with abandon, penning tender romances featuring werewolves and demons, hard-boiled detective novels with fairies, and vampires-in-modern-life sagas that can crop up darn near anywhere: on the horror shelves, the SF shelves, the mystery shelves, the romance shelves.

All my life, I’ve thought that if I couldn’t say anything boys found interesting, I might as well shut up. But now I realize there was that whole other, invisible half of the world—girls—that I could speak to instead. A whole other half equally silent and frustrated, just waiting to be given the smallest starting signal—the tiniest starter culture—and they would explode into words, and song, and action, and relieved, euphoric cries of “Me too! I feel this too!

How come you write the way you do?” an apprentice writer in my Johns Hopkins workshop once disingenuously asked Donald Barthelme, who was visiting. Without missing a beat, Don replied, “Because Samuel Beckett was already writing the way he does.” Asked another, smiling but serious, “How can we become better writers than we are?” “Well," DB advised, “for starters, read through the whole history of philosophy, from the pre-Socratics up through last semester. That might help.” “But Coach Barth has already advised us to read all of literature, from Gilgamesh up through last semester...” “That, too,” Donald affirmed, and twinkled that shrewd Amish-farmer-from-West-11th-Street twinkle of his. “You’re probably wasting time on things like eating and sleeping. Cease that, and read all of philosophy and all of literature. Also art. Plus politics and a few other things. The history of everything.

I didn’t need another cat. At this point in my brilliant career as an itinerant educator I could barely afford to feed myself. But then, no one ever needs a cat these days. That’s not why we have cats. We have cats because they amuse us and because otherwise our clothes would lack the texture only cat hair can provide.

I jumped up and "casually" strolled a bit closer. I blinked my eyes in the sun. It couldn't be, could it? But it was. Gabe. ... "You know, if you're going to stalk someone, you should be less obvious." I wheeled around. It was Todd. He'd snuck up on me. He said, "For starters, try not to standing in the middle of a field, gawking at your prey." I kicked at a dusty clump of grass. "Gawking? I... I'm... not gawking. I was just watching your girlfired putting the moves on someone else. Jealous?" "Oh Gabe Webber?" Todd laughed. "Uh...no." I shielded my eyes from the sun. "Why? What's wrong with Gabe Webber?" "Nothing. As in, there's nothing there. He has the personality of dry toast." How dare he insult my Gabe? "Oh yes. I forgot. You prefer the company of assholes and jerks. As they say, 'Birds of a feather...'" "That must be why you hang around.

So what are you supposed to do? My friends, what I need you to do—just for starters—is not act. Not yet. Not first. First I need you to see. I need you to see the pains and possibilities of black life, its virtues and vices, its strengths and weaknesses, its yeses and nos. I need you to see how the cantankerous varieties of black identity have been distorted by seeing black folk collectively as the nigger. It is not a question of simply not saying nigger; you have to stop believing, no matter what, that black folk are niggers and all the term represents. Instead you must swim in the vast ocean of blackness and then realize you have been buoyed all along on its sustaining views of democracy.

When you know someone’s dream you look at that person differently—with more tenderness, respect, familiarity, sympathy, and generosity than before. Look at everyone you meet this week and actively think to yourself, “I wonder what their dreams are?

When you hang with your tribe, you feel invigorated, recognized, and understood—you can’t underestimate the powerful effects of being fortified in that way. When you have your tribe on speed dial, you’ve got all the resources you need to fuel up, fly straight, and head back out to face the world at large.

Whenever I hurt myself, my mother says it is the universe’s way of telling me to slow down. She also tells me to put some coconut oil on it. It doesn’t matter what it is. She often hides stones underneath my pillow when I come home for the weekend. The stones are a formula for sweet dreams and clarity. I dig them out from the streets, she tells me what each one is for. My throat hurts, so she grinds black pepper into a spoonful of honey, makes me eat the entire thing. My mother knows how to tie knots like a ship captain, but doesn’t know how I got that sailor mouth. She falls asleep in front of the TV only until I turn it off, shouts, I was watching that! The sourdough she bakes on Friday is older than I am. She sneaks it back and forth across the country when she flies by putting the starter in small containers next to a bag of carrots. They think it’s ranch dressing, she giggles. She makes tea by hand. Nettles, slippery elm, turmeric, cinnamon- my mother is a recipe for warm throats and belly laughs. Once she fell off of a ladder when I was three. She says all she was worried about was my face as I watched her fall.

I contemplate the idea that maybe I'm an alcoholic. I get this occassionally, the need to define myself as something-or-the-other, and at various times in my life have wondered if I'm a Goth, a homosexul, a Jew, a Catholic or a manic depressive, whether I am adopted, or have a hole in my heart, or possess the ability to move objects with the power of my mind, and have always, most regretfully, come to the conclusion that I'm none of the above. The fact is I'm actually not ANYTHING.

I especially loved the Old Testament. Even as a kid I had a sense of it being slightly illicit. As though someone had slipped an R-rated action movie into a pile of Disney DVDs. For starters Adam and Eve were naked on the first page. I was fascinated by Eve's ability to always stand in the Garden of Eden so that a tree branch or leaf was covering her private areas like some kind of organic bakini. But it was the Bible's murder and mayhem that really got my attention. When I started reading the real Bible I spent most of my time in Genesis Exodus 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Kings. Talk about violent. Cain killed Abel. The Egyptians fed babies to alligators. Moses killed an Egyptian. God killed thousands of Egyptians in the Red Sea. David killed Goliath and won a girl by bringing a bag of two hundred Philistine foreskins to his future father-in-law. I couldn't believe that Mom was so happy about my spending time each morning reading about gruesome battles prostitutes fratricide murder and adultery. What a way to have a "quiet time." While I grew up with a fairly solid grasp of Bible stories I didn't have a clear idea of how the Bible fit together or what it was all about. I certainly didn't understand how the exciting stories of the Old Testament connected to the rather less-exciting New Testament and the story of Jesus. This concept of the Bible as a bunch of disconnected stories sprinkled with wise advice and capped off with the inspirational life of Jesus seems fairly common among Christians. That is so unfortunate because to see the Bible as one book with one author and all about one main character is to see it in its breathtaking beauty.

I can't believe it's actually happening. This is independent adulthood, this is what it feels like. Shouldn't there be some sort of ritual? In certain remote African tribes there'd be some incredible four day rites of passage ceremony involving tattooing and potent hallucinogenic drugs extracted from tree-frogs, and village elders smearing my body with monkey blood, but here,rites of passage is all about three new pairs of pants and stuffing your duvet in a bin-liner.

I admit it. I'd made some mistakes. Okay, some big mistakes. Loads of them. But you can't hide in your room forever feeling sorry for yourself. It's not practical. At some point, you've got to get back out there, face up to things, and confront your demons. Ever since I can remember, I'd wanted to be clever. Some people are born clever, same way some people are born beautiful. I'm not one of those people. I'm going to have to work at it, put in the effort, and if I mess it up, I'll learn from it. Besides, sometimes it's not about knowing the right answer. Sometimes it's about asking the right questions" - Starter for 10

Today Means Amen Dear you, whoever you are, however you got here, this is exactly where you are supposed to be. This moment has waited its whole life for you. This moment is your lover and you are a soldier. Come home, baby, it's over. You don't need to suffer anymore. Dear you, this moment is your surprise party. You are both hiding in the dark and walking through the door. This moment is a hallelujah. This moment is your permission slip to finally open that love letter you've been hiding from yourself, the one you wrote when you were little when you still danced like a sparkler at dusk. Do you remember the moment you realized they were watching? When you became ashamed of how much light you were holding? When you first learned how to unlove yourself? Dear you, the word today means amen in every language. Today, we made it. Today, I'm going to love you. Today, I'm going to love myself. Today, the boxcutter will rust in the garbage. The noose will forget how to hold you, today, today-- Dear you, and I have always meant you, nothing would be the same if you did not exist. You, whose voice is someone's favorite voice, someone's favorite face to wake up to. Nothing would be the same if you did not exist. You, the teacher, the starter's gun, the lantern in the night who offers not a way home, but the courage to travel farther into the dark. You, the lover, who worships the taste of her body, who is the largest tree ring in his heart, who does not let fear ration your love. You, the friend, the sacred chorus of how can I help. You, who have felt more numb than holy, more cracked than mosaic. Who have known the tiles of a bathroom by heart, who have forgotten what makes you worth it. You, the forgiven, the forgiver, who belongs right here in this moment. You, this clump of cells, this happy explosion that happened to start breathing, and by the grace of whatever is up there, you got here. You made it this whole way: through the nights that swallowed you whole, the mornings that arrived in pieces. The scabs, the gravel, the doubt, the hurt, the hurt, the hurt is over. Today, you made it. You made it. You made it here.

The dream that we are our fathers. I walked to the Brod, 41 without knowing why, and looked into my reflection in the water. I couldn’t look away. What was the image that pulled me in after it? What was it that I loved? And then I recognized it. So simple. In the water I saw my father’s face, and that face saw the face of its father, and so on, and so on, reflecting backward to the beginning of time, to the face of God, in whose image we were created. We burned with love for ourselves, all of us, starters of the fire we suffered—our love was the affliction for which only our love was the cure . . .

Hey, dickhead!" one of the other drivers yelled. "Get off the road!" "This here is a Falcon Seven," the rider told him. "I can put a bolt through your windshield and pin you to your seat like a bug." A direct threat, huh? Okay. I pulled down my sunglasses a bit so the rider would see my eyes. "That's a nice crossbow." He glanced in my direction. He saw a friendly blond girl with a big smile and a light Texas accent and didn't get alarmed. "You've got what, a seventy-five-pound draw on it? Takes you about four seconds to reload?" "Three," he said. I gave him my Order smile: sweet grin, hard eyes, reached over to my passenger seat, and pulled out my submachine gun. About twenty-seven inches long, the HK was my favorite toy for close-quarters combat. The rider's eyes went wide. "This is an HK UMP submachine gun. Renowned for its stopping power and reliability. Cyclic rate of fire: eight hundred rounds per minute. That means I can empty this thirty-round clip into you in less than three seconds. At this range, I'll cut you in half." It wasn't strictly true but it sounded good. "You see what it says on the barrel?" On the barrel, pretty white letters spelled out PARTY STARTER. "You open your mouth again, and I'll get the party started." The rider clamped his jaws shut.

Many freeze types unconsciously believe that people and danger are synonymous, and that safety lies in solitude. Outside of fantasy, many give up entirely on the possibility of love. The freeze response, also known as the camouflage response, often triggers the individual into hiding, isolating and eschewing human contact as much as possible. This type can be so frozen in retreat mode that it seems as if their starter button is stuck in the ‘off’ position. It is usually the most profoundly abandoned child - ‘the lost child’ - who is forced to ‘choose’ and habituate to the freeze response… Unable to successfully employ fight, flight or fawn responses, the freeze type’s defenses develop around classical dissociation.

You're not going to turn into a wanker, are you?" says Tone, opening a can of larger. "What do you mean?" "He means you're not going to get all studenty on us," says Spencer. "Well, I am a student. I mean, I will be, so,..." "No, but I mean you're not gong to get all twatty and up-your-own-arse and come home at Christmas in a gown, talking Latin and saying "one does" and "one thinks" and all that..." "Yeah, Tone, that's EXACTLY what I'm going to do.

The thing about being barren is that you’re not allowed to get away from it. Not when you’re in your thirties. My friends were having children, friends of friends were having children, pregnancy and birth and first birthday parties were everywhere. I was asked about it all the time. My mother, our friends, colleagues at work. When was it going to be my turn? At some point our childlessness became an acceptable topic of Sunday-lunch conversation, not just between Tom and me, but more generally. What we were trying, what we should be doing, do you really think you should be having a second glass of wine? I was still young, there was still plenty of time, but failure cloaked me like a mantle, it overwhelmed me, dragged me under, and I gave up hope. At the time, I resented the fact that it was always seen as my fault, that I was the one letting the side down. But as the speed with which he managed to impregnate Anna demonstrates, there was never any problem with Tom’s virility. I was wrong to suggest that we should share the blame; it was all down to me. Lara, my best friend since university, had two children in two years: a boy first and then a girl. I didn’t like them. I didn’t want to hear anything about them. I didn’t want to be near them. Lara stopped speaking to me after a while. There was a girl at work who told me—casually, as though she were talking about an appendectomy or a wisdom-tooth extraction—that she’d recently had an abortion, a medical one, and it was so much less traumatic than the surgical one she’d had when she was at university. I couldn’t speak to her after that, I could barely look at her. Things became awkward in the office; people noticed. Tom didn’t feel the way I did. It wasn’t his failure, for starters, and in any case, he didn’t need a child like I did. He wanted to be a dad, he really did—I’m sure he daydreamed about kicking a football around in the garden with his son, or carrying his daughter on his shoulders in the park. But he thought our lives could be great without children, too. “We’re happy,” he used to say to me. “Why can’t we just go on being happy?” He became frustrated with me. He never understood that it’s possible to miss what you’ve never had, to mourn for it.

Wait,” Kaidan called from behind me. I squeezed my eyes shut for a second, but kept walking. Then I felt his hand around my wrist, spinning me in a half circle and pulling me to his chest. His face was so close. He reached down and cupped my face with one woolly hand, and wiped the top corner of my lip hard with his thumb. I flinched back. “What are you doing?” “I...” He appeared to have no idea himself. “I wanted to see your freckle.” A vulnerable tenderness flashed across his face, more painful to see than the coldness. It took every ounce of strength I had not to beg for one last kiss. As fast as his expression had softened, it was back to stone again. “What do you want from me, Kai?” “For starters?” His voice lowered to sexy, dangerous depths. “I want to introduce myself to every freckle on your body.” A powerful shiver ripped through me. “So, just something physical, then?” I clarified. “That's all you want?” “Tell me you hate me,” he demanded. I felt the air of his words against my face. “But I don't hate you. I couldn't.” “You could,” he assured me, pulling me tighter. “And you should.” “I'm letting you go.” My voice shook. “But only because I have to. I need to move on with my life, but I'll never hate you.” “The one who got away,” Kaidan murmured. “Nobody got away,” I corrected him. “And so help me, if you start comparing us to an unfinished game that went into overtime-” He released me and I stumbled back a step. I had to get away before I started clinging and begging him to admit his feelings, whatever they might have been. It was necessary to rip off this Band-Aid, and fast. So, as I'd done at the airport, I walked away from him, dragging my heart behind me. I didn't look back. Game over.

Too often we only identify the crucial points in our lives in retrospect. At the time we are too absorbed in the fetid detail of the moment to spot where it is leading us. But not this time. I was experiencing one of my dad’s deafening moments. If my life could be understood as a meal of many courses (and let’s be honest, much of it actually was), then I had finished the starters and I was limbering up for the main event. So far, of course, I had made a stinking mess of it. I had spilled the wine. I had dropped my cutlery on the floor and sprayed the fine white linen with sauce. I had even spat out some of my food because I didn’t like the taste of it. “But it doesn’t matter because, look, here come the waiters. They are scraping away the debris with their little horn and steel blades, pulled with studied grace from the hidden pockets of their white aprons. They are laying new tablecloths, arranging new cutlery, placing before me great domed wine glasses, newly polished to a sparkle. There are more dishes to come, more flavors to try, and this time I will not spill or spit or drop or splash. I will not push the plate away from me, the food only half eaten. I am ready for everything they are preparing to serve me. Be in no doubt; it will all be fine.” (pp.115-6)

Jack?" "Mmmm?" The band was playing a softer song, mellow and slow. "Why did you ask me out when you did?" I tried to sound casual. "What do you mean?" "I mean,did something specific happen to make you ask me out?" "Yes," he said. "What was it?" Had I thrown myself at Jack Caputo? Had I done something to get in Lacey's way? "You remember the first game of the season?" "Yeah," I said. It was Jack's first game as starting quarterback, the youngest starter in school history. I remembered sitting in the second row, directly behind the team bench. "After I threw for the first touchdown of the game?" "Yes." I still couldn't figure out where he was going with this.Had I flashed him or something,and blocked it out of my memory? I was pretty sure I wasn't holding up any large signs declaring my love or anything. "Our defense took the field, and I was on the bench.When I turned around to look at the fans..." He paused. Oh,no. "What did I do?" He smiled. "You looked at me.Not the game." He sighed,as if reliving the memory. I felt my face scrunch up in confusion. "That's it?" "That's it." He shrugged. "It was the first time I thought there might be a chance. I asked Jules about it." I bit my lip. "Apparently she doesn't understand that trusty sidekicks aren't supposed to spill secrets." In a flash,I was suspended in air, the back of my head inches from the ground, Jack's face a breath away from mine, his lips in a wicked grin. I gasped,more from surprise at the sudden dip than from fear. "There are no secrets between us,Becks." His smile remained,but his eyes were intense.

Here is a key insight for any startup: You may think yourself a puny midget among giants when you stride out into a marketplace, and suddenly confront such a giant via litigation or direct competition. But the reality is that larger companies often have much more to fear from you than you from them. For starters, their will to fight is less than yours. Their employees are mercenaries who don’t deeply care, and suffer from the diffuse responsibility and weak emotional investment of a larger organization. What’s an existential struggle to you is merely one more set of tasks to a tuned-out engineer bored of his own product, or another legal hassle to an already overworked legal counsel thinking more about her next stock-vesting date than your suit. Also, large companies have valuable public brands they must delicately preserve, and which can be assailed by even small companies such as yours, particularly in a tight-knit, appearances-conscious ecosystem like that of Silicon Valley. America still loves an underdog, and you’ll be surprised at how many allies come out of the woodwork when some obnoxious incumbent is challenged by a scrappy startup with a convincing story. So long as you maintain unit cohesion and a shared sense of purpose, and have the basic rudiments of living, you will outlast, outfight, and out-rage any company that sets out to destroy you. Men with nothing to lose will stop at nothing to win.

Brace yourselves, girls: Soda is liquid Satan. It is the devil. It is garbage. There is nothing in soda that should be put into your body. For starters, soda’s high levels of phosphorous can increase calcium loss from the body, as can its sodium and caffeine. [Cousens, Conscious Eating, 475] You know what this means—bone loss, which may lead to osteoporosis. And the last time we checked, sugar, found in soda by the boatload, does not make you skinny! Now don’t go patting yourself on the back if you drink diet soda. That stuff is even worse. Aspartame (an ingredient commonly found in diet sodas and other sugar-free foods) has been blamed for a slew of scary maladies, like arthritis, birth defects, fibromyalgia, Alzheimer’s, lupus, multiple sclerosis, and diabetes.2 When methyl alcohol, a component of aspartame, enters your body, it turns into formaldehyde. Formaldehyde is toxic and carcinogenic (cancer-causing). 3 Laboratory scientists use formaldehyde as a disinfectant or preservative. They don’t fucking drink it. Perhaps you have a lumpy ass because you are preserving your fat cells with diet soda. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has received more complaints about aspartame than any other ingredient to date.4 Want more bad news? When aspartame is paired with carbs, it causes your brain to slow down its production of serotonin.5 A healthy level of serotonin is needed to be happy and well balanced. So drinking soda can make you fat, sick, and unhappy.

an empathic and patient listener, coaxing each of us through the maze of our feelings, separating out our weapons from our wounds. He cautioned us when we got too lawyerly and posited careful questions intended to get us to think hard about why we felt the way we felt. Slowly, over hours of talking, the knot began to loosen. Each time Barack and I left his office, we felt a bit more connected. I began to see that there were ways I could be happier and that they didn’t necessarily need to come from Barack’s quitting politics in order to take some nine-to-six foundation job. (If anything, our counseling sessions had shown me that this was an unrealistic expectation.) I began to see how I’d been stoking the most negative parts of myself, caught up in the notion that everything was unfair and then assiduously, like a Harvard-trained lawyer, collecting evidence to feed that hypothesis. I now tried out a new hypothesis: It was possible that I was more in charge of my happiness than I was allowing myself to be. I was too busy resenting Barack for managing to fit workouts into his schedule, for example, to even begin figuring out how to exercise regularly myself. I spent so much energy stewing over whether or not he’d make it home for dinner that dinners, with or without him, were no longer fun. This was my pivot point, my moment of self-arrest. Like a climber about to slip off an icy peak, I drove my ax into the ground. That isn’t to say that Barack didn’t make his own adjustments—counseling helped him to see the gaps in how we communicated, and he worked to be better at it—but I made mine, and they helped me, which then helped us. For starters, I recommitted myself to being healthy. Barack and I belonged to the same gym, run by a jovial and motivating athletic trainer named Cornell McClellan. I’d worked out with Cornell for a couple of years, but having children had changed my regular routine. My fix for this came in the form of my ever-giving mother, who still worked full-time but volunteered to start coming over to our house at 4:45 in the morning several days a week so that I could run out to Cornell’s and join a girlfriend for a 5:00 a.m. workout and then be home by 6:30 to get the girls up and ready for their days. This new regimen changed everything: Calmness and strength, two things I feared I was losing, were now back. When it came to the home-for-dinner dilemma, I installed new boundaries, ones that worked better for me and the girls. We made our schedule and stuck to it. Dinner each night was at 6:30. Baths were at 7:00, followed by books, cuddling, and lights-out at 8:00 sharp. The routine was ironclad, which put the weight of responsibility on Barack to either make it on time or not. For me, this made so much more sense than holding off dinner or having the girls wait up sleepily for a hug. It went back to my wishes for them to grow up strong and centered and also unaccommodating to any form of old-school patriarchy: I didn’t want them ever to believe that life began when the man of the house arrived home. We didn’t wait for Dad. It was his job now to catch up with