“
The Earth, time, concepts, love, life, faith justice, evil - they're all fluid and in transition. They don't stay in one form or in one place forever. The whole universe is like some big FedEx box.
”
”
Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)
“
Listen, every object's in flux. The Earth, time, concepts, love, life, faith, justice, evil--they're all fluid and in transition. They don't stay in one form or in one place forever. The whole universe is like some big FedEx box.
”
”
Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)
“
I had cleaned off all the blood and fluid with the hygiene unit but was too angry to take a shower. (Showers are nice and I wanted to stay angry.)
”
”
Martha Wells (Network Effect (The Murderbot Diaries, #5))
“
In the parallel universe the laws of physics are suspended.
What goes up does not necessarily come down, a body at rest does not tend to stay at
rest and not every action can be counted on to provoke an equal and opposite reaction.
Time, 'too, is different. It may run in circles, flow backward, skip about from now to
then. The very arrangement of molecules is fluid: Tables can be clocks, faces,
flowers.
”
”
Susanna Kaysen (Girl, Interrupted)
“
Annie," Tilly said. "If I wanted to suck vile fluids out of a flaccid and indifferent tube, I'd have stayed on Earth with my husband.
”
”
James S.A. Corey (Abaddon's Gate (Expanse, #3))
“
Feminism, like the ocean, is fluid, powerful, deep, and encompasses the infinite complexity of life; it moves in waves, currents, tides, and sometimes in storms. Like the ocean, feminism never stays quiet.
”
”
Isabel Allende (The Soul of a Woman)
“
Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way round or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.
Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water my friend.
”
”
Bruce Lee
“
How do you know your injuries aren’t life threatening? You’re covered in the fluid from its guts. How do you know it’s not poisonous?”
“If it’s poisonous, we’ll deal with it when I feel sick.”
“Fine. I’ll stay here with this thing, and you will drive yourself to the hospital.”
“No.”
He hit me with an alpha stare.
I opened my eyes as wide as I could. “Why, of course, Your Majesty. What was I thinking? I will go and do this right away, just please don’t look at me.
”
”
Ilona Andrews (Magic Shifts (Kate Daniels, #8))
“
Love Letter"
Not easy to state the change you made.
If I'm alive now, then I was dead,
Though, like a stone, unbothered by it,
Staying put according to habit.
You didn't just tow me an inch, no-
Nor leave me to set my small bald eye
Skyward again, without hope, of course,
Of apprehending blueness, or stars.
That wasn't it. I slept, say: a snake
Masked among black rocks as a black rock
In the white hiatus of winter-
Like my neighbors, taking no pleasure
In the million perfectly-chisled
Cheeks alighting each moment to melt
My cheeks of basalt. They turned to tears,
Angels weeping over dull natures,
But didn't convince me. Those tears froze.
Each dead head had a visor of ice.
And I slept on like a bent finger.
The first thing I was was sheer air
And the locked drops rising in dew
Limpid as spirits. Many stones lay
Dense and expressionless round about.
I didn't know what to make of it.
I shone, mice-scaled, and unfolded
To pour myself out like a fluid
Among bird feet and the stems of plants.
I wasn't fooled. I knew you at once.
Tree and stone glittered, without shadows.
My finger-length grew lucent as glass.
I started to bud like a March twig:
An arm and a leg, and arm, a leg.
From stone to cloud, so I ascended.
Now I resemble a sort of god
Floating through the air in my soul-shift
Pure as a pane of ice. It's a gift.
”
”
Sylvia Plath (Crossing the Water)
“
Old houses make funny noises. One time I stayed in a decaying place that made sounds like John Waite's 1984 radio hit "Missing You." Personally, I liked it, but the 13 ducks I was sharing a bathtub with didn't agree, so they made me take them to the luxury hotel known as Motel 6.
”
”
Jarod Kintz (Music is fluid, and my saxophone overflows when my ducks slosh in the sounds I make in elevators.)
“
The skills needed to stay employable are changing daily, which is why I'm now offering a class called: "How To Sew Pants While Riding A Unicycle And Playing The Saxophone Like A Quacking Duck." What are the jobs of The Future? Nobody knows, but my class will train you to Get Hired!
”
”
Jarod Kintz (Music is fluid, and my saxophone overflows when my ducks slosh in the sounds I make in elevators.)
“
If two people managed not to get stuck in hatred during their honest struggles with each other, that is, in the edges of their passion that became ragged and sharp when it cooled and set, if they could stay fluid, active, flexible, and changeable in all of their interactions and relations, and, in a word, if a mutually human and friendly consideration remained available to them, then their decision to separate cannot easily conjure disaster and terror.
”
”
Rainer Maria Rilke (The Poet's Guide to Life: The Wisdom of Rilke)
“
There’s no context, just the illusion that you’re showing a snapshot of a life, but life isn’t snapshots, it’s fluid. So photos are like fictions. I loved that about them. Everyone thinks photography is truth, but it’s just a very convincing lie.” “Why did you stop?” Because time doesn’t work like photos. Click, and it stays still. Blink, and it leaps forward.
”
”
Victoria E. Schwab (The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue)
“
And so, in spite of his virtues, he was a frivolous, superficial man, an animal organism who dripped sweat and fluids and left behind, like the residue of a careless pleasure, living material conceived, nourished, shaped within female bellies.
”
”
Elena Ferrante (Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay (Neapolitan Novels, #3))
“
How many minutes of my life have I wasted staring at the microwave waiting for my plate to get hot while my food stays refrigerated? To save time, and add potentially years to my life, I've decided that I do like cold pizza. I learned that from my ducks, as they LOVE cold pizza.
”
”
Jarod Kintz (Music is fluid, and my saxophone overflows when my ducks slosh in the sounds I make in elevators.)
“
People ask, How did you get in there? What they really want to know is if they are likely to end up in there as well. I can’t answer the real question. All I can tell them is, It’s easy.
And it is easy to slip into a parallel universe. There are so many of them: worlds of the insane, the criminal, the crippled, the dying, perhaps of the dead as well. These worlds exist alongside this world and resemble it, but are not in it.…
…In the parallel universe the laws of physics are suspended. What goes up does not necessarily come down, a body at rest does not tend to stay at rest; and not every action can be counted on to provoke an equal and opposite reaction. Time, too, is different. It may run in circles, flow backward, skip about from now to then. The very arrangement of molecules is fluid: Tables can be clocks; faces, flowers.
These are facts you find out later, though.
Another odd feature of the parallel universe is that although it is invisible from this side, once you are in it you can easily see the world you came from. Sometimes the world you came from looks huge and menacing, quivering like a vast pile of jelly; at other times it is miniaturized and alluring, a-spin and shining in its orbit. Either way, it can’t be discounted.
Every window on Alcatraz has a view of San Francisco.
”
”
Susanna Kaysen (Girl, Interrupted)
“
But if something that was good morphs into something that's not good - and is not changing back - one has to stay conscious of that too. Settling for more is not an endgame - it's an active process. It means staying aware of one's surroundings, because "more" is a fluid concept. Life changes, and requires that we change too.
”
”
Megyn Kelly (Settle for More)
“
The highest goodness is like water.
Water is beneficial to all things but not contend. It stays in places which others despise. Therefore it is near Tao. The weakest things in the world can overmatch the strongest things in the world. Nothing in the world can be compared to water for its weak and yielding nature; yet in attacking the hard and strong nothing proves better than water. For there is no alternative to it. The weak can overcome and the yielding can overcame the hard. This all the world knows but does not practice. This again is the practice of ‘wu-wel’ and nonviolence. Water may be weak, pliable, fluid, but its action is not one of running away from an obstacle. On the contrary, it gives at the point of resistance, envelopes the object and passes beyond it. Ultimately it will wear down the hardest rock. Water is a more telling symbol than land… crossing the river to get to the other side is, again, attaining the state of enlightenment.
”
”
J.C. Cooper
“
The tension drained from her face and she softened in his hold until she was again the fluid, responsive woman who had kissed him within an inch of his life. This time he knew better than to restrain her when she slipped from the bed. He bit back an appeal for her to stay with him. If his life depended on it, he couldn’t say whether he wanted her to stay an hour, a day, or forever.
”
”
Anna Campbell (Seven Nights in a Rogue's Bed (Sons of Sin, #1))
“
As soon as two people have resolved to give up their togetherness, the resulting pain with its heaviness or particularity is already so completely part of the life of each individual that the other has to sternly deny himself to become sentimental and feel pity. The beginning of the agreed-upon separation is marked precisely by this pain, and its first challenge will be that this pain already belongs separately to each of the two individuals. This pain is an essential condition of what the now solitary and most lonely individual will have to create in the future out of his reclaimed life. If two people managed not to get stuck in hatred during their honest struggles with each other, that is, in the edges of their passion that became ragged and sharp when it cooled and set, if they could stay fluid, active, flexible, and changeable in all of their interactions and relations, and, in a word, if a mutually human and friendly consideration remained available to them, then their decision to separate cannot easily conjure disaster and terror. When it is a matter of a separation, pain should already belong in its entirety to that other life from which you wish to separate. Otherwise the two individuals will continually become soft toward each other, causing helpless and unproductive suffering. In the process of a firmly agreed-upon separation, however, the pain itself constitutes an important investment in the renewal and fresh start that is to be achieved on both sides. People in your situation might have to communicate as friends. But then these two separated lives should remain without any knowledge of the other for a period and exist as far apart and as detached from the other as possible. This is necessary for each life to base itself firmly on its new requirements and circumstances. Any subsequent contact (which may then be truly new and perhaps very happy) has to remain a matter of unpredictable design and direction. If you find that you scare yourself.
”
”
Rainer Maria Rilke (Letters on Life)
“
Never criticize someone's quality of work on a job you wouldn't want to get asked to improve upon. If you don't know what I mean, just watch me shovel duck poop out of their pen and see how quickly you stay quiet.
”
”
Jarod Kintz (Music is fluid, and my saxophone overflows when my ducks slosh in the sounds I make in elevators.)
“
Listen, every object’s in flux. The Earth, time, concepts, love, life, faith, justice, evil—they’re all fluid and in transition. They don’t stay in one form or in one place forever. The whole universe is like some big FedEx box.
”
”
Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)
“
A cop who breaks the law is unfit to serve. But laws have become criminal, so a cop who follows the law is also unfit to serve. If you want to stay safe, raise some ducks, give eggs to your neighbors when the grocery shelves go empty, and read your Bible.
”
”
Jarod Kintz (Music is fluid, and my saxophone overflows when my ducks slosh in the sounds I make in elevators.)
“
While traditional saunas heat the air around you, infrared light in an infrared sauna directly penetrates and heats your body tissue. You can stay in these saunas longer without feeling like you’re going to pass out. Also, infrared light is beneficial to your mitochondria (see chapter 8 for more on this). Keep in mind that sweating pulls electrolytes and trace minerals from your body, so it’s important to drink a lot of fluids and get plenty of salt (preferably Himalayan pink salt or another mineral-rich natural salt) if you use a sauna to detox.
”
”
Dave Asprey (Head Strong: The Bulletproof Plan to Activate Untapped Brain Energy to Work Smarter and Think Faster-in Just Two Weeks)
“
After a stranger asked where I'm from, I told him I'm from Florida, and he said he has been there once and he'd stayed a week. I replied, "Yes, I remember. We all waited for you to come back, and we wondered where you had gone. We cried out for you, but you never answered." Then I offered him a swig of duck soup, because I had a thermos full and we were now practically brothers.
”
”
Jarod Kintz (Music is fluid, and my saxophone overflows when my ducks slosh in the sounds I make in elevators.)
“
second assumption of Daoist “cosmology” (now using this term “cosmology” under advisement) that follows from this acknowledgment of the reality of both change and the uniqueness that follows from it is that particular “things” are in fact processual events, and are thus intrinsically related to the other “things” that provide them context. Said another way, these processual events are porous, flowing into each other in the ongoing transformations we call experience. Formation and function—the shape of things and what they do to whom—are interdependent and mutually determining characteristics of these events. It is for this reason that things resist “definition” in the literal sense of finis—a practice that delineates some ostensibly discrete boundary around them, and thus reduces all relations to external, extrinsic transactions. With fluid and shifting boundaries among things, integrity for any particular thing does not mean being or staying whole, or even actualizing its own internal potential. Rather, integrity is something becoming whole in its co-creative relationships with other things. Integrity is consummatory relatedness.
”
”
Lao Tzu (Dao De Jing: A Philosophical Translation)
“
The only disability you have is between your ears.
We all have our disabilities; we all have our little insecurities--some are just more visible than others. How do you handle yours? Do you let them hold you back? I’ve learned that our brains play many tricks on us. Fear and doubt are only in your mind and have as much power as you give them. When Amy was lying in a hospital bed, being pumped full of fluids and fighting to stay alive, a doctor asked her what she believed in. “I believe in love,” she told him. “And I’ve got a lot more love to give.” It’s incredible to know someone who’s been on the brink of death and come out on the other side. Amy doesn’t want sympathy or pity or special treatment. Her legs are her legs--she doesn’t see them as a disability. It’s not about what you have or don’t have--it’s what you give and you share with others. The more you put into something, the more fulfillment you get back in return.
”
”
Derek Hough (Taking the Lead: Lessons from a Life in Motion)
“
He kept his distance from the villa. It was too easy to slip in Kestrel’s presence.
One day, Lirah came to the forge. Arin was sure that he was being called to serve as Kestrel’s escort somewhere. He felt an eager dread.
“Enai would like to see you,” Lirah said.
Arin set the hammer on the anvil. “Why?” His interactions with Enai had been limited, and he liked to keep them that way. The woman’s eyes were too keen.
“She’s very sick.”
Arin considered this, then nodded, following Lirah from the forge.
When they entered the cottage, they could hear the sounds of sleep from beyond the open bedroom door. Enai coughed, and Arin heard fluid in her lungs.
The coughing subsided, then gave way to ragged breath.
“Someone should fetch a doctor,” Arin told Lirah.
“Lady Kestrel has gone for one. She was very upset. She’ll return soon, I hope.” Haltingly, Lirah said, “I’d like to stay with you, but I have to get back to the house.” Arin barely noticed her touch his arm before leaving him.
Reluctant to wake Enai, Arin studied the cottage. It was snug and well maintained. The floor didn’t creak. There were signs, everywhere, of comfort. Slippers. A stack of dry wood. Arin ran a hand along the smooth mantel of the fireplace until he touched a porcelain box. He opened it. Inside was a small braid of dark blond hair with a reddish tinge, looped in a circle and tied with golden wire.
Although he knew he shouldn’t, Arin traced the braid with one fingertip.
“That’s not yours,” a voice said.
He snatched his hand away. He turned, his face hot. Through the open bedroom door, Arin saw Enai staring at him from where she lay. “I’m sorry.” He set the lid on the box.
“I doubt it,” she muttered, and told him to come near.
Arid did, slowly. He had the feeling he was not going to like this conversation.
“You spend a lot of time with Kestrel,” Enai said.
He shrugged. “I do what she asks.”
Enai held his gaze. Despite himself, he looked away first.
“Don’t hurt her,” the woman said.
It was a sin to break a deathbed promise.
Arin left without making one.
”
”
Marie Rutkoski (The Winner's Curse (The Winner's Trilogy, #1))
“
One of the earliest and most pleasing demonstrations of complex behaviors emerging from agents following local rules was Craig Reynolds’s simulation of the motions of flocks of birds as they fly around in the evening sky feeding on insects. The fluid and flowing motions of these flocks wheeling around the sky, sometimes separating and then coming back together, avoiding collisions with each other, looks to be a supreme act of purposeful cooperation on the wing. But Reynolds achieved a surprisingly realistic simulation by assigning the individual birds just three simple rules: one is to stay near to and steer in the same direction as your nearest neighbor; the second is to follow the main heading of the group; and the third is to avoid crowding. Add to these rules a small amount of randomness to individuals’ behaviors, and flocks of “boids,” as Reynolds called them, elegantly and sublimely fly around computer screens. No one bird is directing the flock and the birds are not actively cooperating to produce it. It emerges from the simple rules.
”
”
Mark Pagel (Wired for Culture: Origins of the Human Social Mind)
“
They’re all okay, then?” I grin like an idiot. What is wrong with me?
She rises from her chair, fluid and vaguely shimmering. Her grace is legendary. I’m agile and strong, but I’d rather move like sunbeams on water, like Selena.
“In good health and arguing incessantly with Desma and Aetos. Those two are under the impression the Sintans abducted you.”
She’s asking a question. I owe her an answer. “They did. Sort of.”
Her sculpted lips purse. “Help me understand a ‘sort of’ abduction,” Selena says, pouring me a cup of water.
Well, it sounds stupid when you say it like that.
My throat is parched, so I drink before answering. “He’s Beta Sinta. He said he’d have you all arrested if I didn’t come.”
“And you believed him?”
It’s a loaded question coming from Selena. I nod. After nearly a month with him, I also know he would have done it because he felt he had to, not because he wanted to.
“He needs a powerful Magoi to help him and his precious Alpha sister, Egeria.” Egeria is no Alpha. She sounds more like a buttercup. Beta Sinta on the other hand, he’s Alpha material. Fierce on the battlefield, bloody, focused, ruthless…fair?
“Plus, he had a magic rope.”
Selena laughs, and the sound is like wind chimes on a spring breeze. “You? Caught by a magic rope?”
I flush. “Don’t remind me.”
She clears her throat, taming more laughter, and asks, “Will you help him?”
Selena may not know who I am, but I’m certain she knows what I am—the Kingmaker—even if we’ve never discussed it. “My abilities can be valuable in diplomatic situations,” I say carefully.
“He came here to save you. He looked like he cared.”
I shrug, glancing down. “I’m a weapon he doesn’t want to lose.”
“I think there’s more.”
My eyes snap back up. “Don’t infer something that isn’t there. We’re both monsters.”
Her dark-blue gaze flicks over me, unnerving. “Monsters still mate.”
I choke on my own spit and then cough.
A faint smile curves her lips. “Why didn’t you just escape?”
“The rope.” That stupid, infuriating enchanted rope that led me to make a binding vow to stay with Beta Sinta until his—or my, if it comes first—dying day.
She looks incredulous. “You couldn’t find a way out?”
“It was a bloody good rope!
”
”
Amanda Bouchet (A Promise of Fire (Kingmaker Chronicles, #1))
“
For years, Britain operated a research facility called the Common Cold Unit, but it closed in 1989 without ever finding a cure. It did, however, conduct some interesting experiments. In one, a volunteer was fitted with a device that leaked a thin fluid at his nostrils at the same rate that a runny nose would. The volunteer then socialized with other volunteers, as if at a cocktail party. Unknown to any of them, the fluid contained a dye visible only under ultraviolet light. When that was switched on after they had been mingling for a while, the participants were astounded to discover that the dye was everywhere—on the hands, head, and upper body of every participant and on glasses, doorknobs, sofa cushions, bowls of nuts, you name it. The average adult touches his face sixteen times an hour, and each of those touches transferred the pretend pathogen from nose to snack bowl to innocent third party to doorknob to innocent fourth party and so on until pretty much everyone and everything bore a festive glow of imaginary snot. In a similar study at the University of Arizona, researchers infected the metal door handle to an office building and found it took only about four hours for the “virus” to spread through the entire building, infecting over half of employees and turning up on virtually every shared device like photocopiers and coffee machines. In the real world, such infestations can stay active for up to three days. Surprisingly, the least effective way to spread germs (according to yet another study) is kissing. It proved almost wholly ineffective among volunteers at the University of Wisconsin who had been successfully infected with cold virus. Sneezes and coughs weren’t much better. The only really reliable way to transfer cold germs is physically by touch. A survey of subway trains in Boston found that metal poles are a fairly hostile environment for microbes. Where microbes thrive is in the fabrics on seats and on plastic handgrips. The most efficient method of transfer for germs, it seems, is a combination of folding money and nasal mucus. A study in Switzerland in 2008 found that flu virus can survive on paper money for two and a half weeks if it is accompanied by a microdot of snot. Without snot, most cold viruses could survive on folding money for no more than a few hours.
”
”
Bill Bryson (The Body: A Guide for Occupants)
“
It did, however, conduct some interesting experiments. In one, a volunteer was fitted with a device that leaked a thin fluid at his nostrils at the same rate that a runny nose would. The volunteer then socialized with other volunteers, as if at a cocktail party. Unknown to any of them, the fluid contained a dye visible only under ultraviolet light. When that was switched on after they had been mingling for a while, the participants were astounded to discover that the dye was everywhere—on the hands, head, and upper body of every participant and on glasses, doorknobs, sofa cushions, bowls of nuts, you name it. The average adult touches his face sixteen times an hour, and each of those touches transferred the pretend pathogen from nose to snack bowl to innocent third party to doorknob to innocent fourth party and so on until pretty much everyone and everything bore a festive glow of imaginary snot. In a similar study at the University of Arizona, researchers infected the metal door handle to an office building and found it took only about four hours for the “virus” to spread through the entire building, infecting over half of employees and turning up on virtually every shared device like photocopiers and coffee machines. In the real world, such infestations can stay active for up to three days. Surprisingly,
”
”
Bill Bryson (The Body: A Guide for Occupants)
“
While he’s examining them he glances over at Sergeant Disney who is lying on the deck with his feet propped-up on a bench. Then, Rob struggles to his feet and immediately lies back down—over and over again. What is happening is that he feels better with his feet propped up on the bench, higher than his heart. Gravity helps force the life-giving fluids into his body’s core and brain. The IV fluids along with his elevated feet counteract the shock brought on by his blood loss. As soon as he starts to feel better his instinct to help others kicks in and he tries to get up and assist his wounded friends. But as soon as he gets up, blood drains away from his brain, the shock returns, the world begins to spin and he nearly passes out. Sergeant Disney’s instinct for self-preservation reasserts itself and he quickly lies down and puts his feet back up on the bench. Soon he begins to feel better, and once again rises, only to be forced back down by dizziness. Funches yells at Disney to stay down, but Rob’s up and down antics continue until Ross returns to his side. As the helicopter speeds through the air, Disney briefly passes out. When Sergeant Funches glances over to check on him, his eyes are closed and he appears to be dead. Sergeant Funches goes ballistic and immediately screams at Disney. Sergeant Disney is abruptly startled awake.
”
”
William F. Sine (Guardian Angel: Life and Death Adventures with Pararescue, the World's Most Powerful Commando Rescue Force)
“
For years, Britain operated a research facility called the Common Cold Unit, but it closed in 1989 without ever finding a cure. It did, however, conduct some interesting experiments. In one, a volunteer was fitted with a device that leaked a thin fluid at his nostrils at the same rate that a runny nose would. The volunteer then socialized with other volunteers, as if at a cocktail party. Unknown to any of them, the fluid contained a dye visible only under ultraviolet light. When that was switched on after they had been mingling for a while, the participants were astounded to discover that the dye was everywhere—on the hands, head, and upper body of every participant and on glasses, doorknobs, sofa cushions, bowls of nuts, you name it. The average adult touches his face sixteen times an hour, and each of those touches transferred the pretend pathogen from nose to snack bowl to innocent third party to doorknob to innocent fourth party and so on until pretty much everyone and everything bore a festive glow of imaginary snot. In a similar study at the University of Arizona, researchers infected the metal door handle to an office building and found it took only about four hours for the “virus” to spread through the entire building, infecting over half of employees and turning up on virtually every shared device like photocopiers and coffee machines. In the real world, such infestations can stay active for up to three days.
”
”
Bill Bryson (The Body: A Guide for Occupants)
“
This is ridiculous. You’re bleeding. Don’t lie to me, I can smell it. You’re hurt. You need a medmage.”
“I’m not hurt that badly.”
His lips wrinkled, showing his teeth. “How badly do you have to be hurt?”
“There is a right-to-life exemption, which permits us to leave the scene if our injuries are life threatening. We’d have to provide paperwork from a hospital, or a qualified medmage, showing that we had to get treatment or we would’ve died. My injuries are not life threatening.”
“Paperwork is not a problem.”
“Yes, but I won’t lie.”
“How do you know your injuries aren’t life threatening? You’re covered in the fluid from its guts. How do you know it’s not poisonous?”
“If it’s poisonous, we’ll deal with it when I feel sick.”
“Fine. I’ll stay here with this thing, and you will drive yourself to the hospital.”
“No.”
He hit me with an alpha stare.
I opened my eyes as wide as I could. “Why, of course, Your Majesty. What was I thinking? I will go and do this right away, just please don’t look at me.”
“Kate, get in the car.”
“Maybe you should growl dramatically. I don’t think I’m intimidated enough.”
“I will put you in the car.”
“No, you won’t. First, it took both of us to kill that thing, and if it reinvents itself again, it will take both of us again. I’m not leaving you alone with it. Second, if you try to physically carry me to the car, I will resist and bleed more. Third, you can possibly stuff me in the car against my will, but you can’t make me drive.”
He snarled. “Argh! Why don’t you ever do anything I ask you to?”
“Because you don’t ask. You tell me.”
We glared at each other.
“I’m not going to the hospital because of a shallow cut.” And possibly a strained shoulder, a few gashes to my legs, and a bruised right side. “It could be worse. I could’ve hit a brick wall instead of a nice, fragile old fence . . .”
He held up his hand. “I’m going to get a medkit out of the car.
”
”
Ilona Andrews (Magic Shifts (Kate Daniels, #8))
“
To his surprise, Sorasa moved with him. She looked straight ahead, refusing to meet his eye. Instead, she fussed with the chain mail beneath her jacket, trying to adjust the metal rings. Clearly she despised it, her usually fluid motions slower and more stilted.
He opened his mouth to taunt her, to say anything, to grasp one more second at her side.
“Thank you for wearing armor,” he growled. It was the only thing left to say.
He expected a quick, poisonous retort. Instead, Sorasa looked up at him. Her copper eyes wavered, filled with all the emotion she no longer cared to hide.
“Iron and steel won’t save us from dragon fire,” she said, all regret, her mouth barely moving.
Again, Dom wanted to stay, lingering one last moment, his eyes locked on her own.
“I know you don't believe in ghosts,” Sorasa murmured, holding her ground. She did not move closer, or move at all, letting the crowd of Elders break around her.
A Vedera who falls in this realm falls forever, Dom thought, the old belief a sudden curse.
Sorasa’s eyes shimmered, swimming with tears she would never allow herself to shed. She looked like she did on the beach after the shipwreck, torn apart by grief.
“But I do,” she said.
His chest filled with an unfamiliar feeling, an ache he could not name.
“Sorasa,” he began, but the crowd surged around them, his Vederan soldiers too many to ignore. Every part of him wanted to stay rooted, though he knew he could not.
She would not reach chin, her hands pressed to her sides, her chin raised and jaw set. Whatever tears she carried faded, pushed down into the unfeeling well of an Amhara heart.
“Haunt me, Domacridhan.”
The tide of the army swelled before he could muster an answer. While Sorasa stood against it, Dom let himself be carried. While his body marched, his heart stayed behind, broken as it was, already burning.
Her last words followed him all the way down to the city gates.
”
”
Victoria Aveyard (Fate Breaker (Realm Breaker, #3))
“
Gregori approached the tiny being cautiously. The extent of the trauma was enormous. The baby was fading as blood gushed from its mother’s body. He could feel its willingness to slide away from the pain and outrage of the assault. He could only hope Shea would stop the bleeding quickly, as he had to concentrate on the child. She was so tiny, almost nonexistent, yet he could feel her pain and her puzzlement. She knew fear before she was born, knew pain, and now held forever the knowledge that life was not safe, even here in her mother’s womb.
Gregori murmured softly, reassuringly, to her. He had bathed her in his light once before, and she recognized him now, moved toward him, seeking comfort. Very carefully he attended to the wound in the artery that supplied her with nourishment. Very soon he would give her his own blood, sealing her fate, binding her ever closer to him. There were several tears in the placenta, which he meticulously sealed. She was afraid as his light floated closer, so he provided waves of reassurance and warmth.
There was a laceration in her right thigh. It hurt, and blood was seeping into the fluid surrounding her. With the lightest of touches he closed the wound, his touch lingering to calm her. His chant, the low pitch of his voice, echoed in her heart, in her mind, invading her soul. Gregori talked to her as he worked, the purity of his tone beguiling her, soothing her, so that she stayed with Raven rather than simply letting go, fading away with the steady trickle of blood.
Gregori could feel the strength in her, the determination. Without a doubt, she was Mikhail and Raven’s daughter. If she chose to go, she would do so, but if she chose to stay, she would fight with every breath left in her body. Gregori made certain she wanted to fight. He whispered to her in his most beguiling voice, promised a fascinating future, lured her with the secrets and beauty of the universe awaiting her. He promised her she would never be left alone; he would be there to guide her, to protect her, to see to her happiness.
”
”
Christine Feehan (Dark Desire (Dark, #2))
“
You can talk to me, Clay,” I said with a little hope. I really began to wonder if he could speak. When he didn’t respond, I spoke again. “Okay, do you want to go out or stay in?” He moved to the couch and sat in the middle, his choice clear. Stay in tonight. I hesitated. The chair, set at an odd angle to the TV, gave you a sore neck if you tried to watch a movie from there. That meant I’d need to sit next to him to watch a movie. But I felt so exposed in a skirt and sleeveless shirt. I wasn’t sure if I could sit next to him for a full movie. While I debated my options, he watched me closely. “I’m going to go change,” I stammered. “I’ll be right back.” I turned and made it one step before the back of my shirt snagged on something. Surprised, I looked over my shoulder and found Clay standing right behind me. He held a fold of my shirt between his thumb and forefinger. I could see the glint of his brown eyes behind the still damp strands of his hair. He tilted his head back toward the couch and gave a slight tug on my shirt. My stomach dropped, and I couldn’t tell if it was in a good way or a bad one. When I hesitated, he gave another tug. I surrendered, turned back, and sat on the couch. He padded over to the movies, made a selection I couldn’t see, and crouched to start it. It amazed me that he knew how to do that. Then again, he watched everything Rachel and I did. I wondered if anything escaped his notice. He pressed play, stood, and walked toward me with fluid strides. I felt graceless in comparison. He settled next to me and watched the previews. I tried to focus on them, too, but couldn’t. Instead, I noticed our bare feet, the scratch on the wall next to the TV, his leg lightly pressed against mine, the sound of the water as it slowly dripped from the showerhead in the bathroom, his hands loosely resting on his lap. The long list of unimportant details would not let my mind settle. It was midway through the movie when my mind calmed enough to notice we watched an action-comedy I’d wanted to see. I’d just mentioned it to Rachel this past week. She must have gotten it after that. Slowly, I began to relax and enjoy the movie. I even laughed aloud at one point. Clay’s echoing chuckle startled me, but in a good way. So, he could do more than growl as a dog. His deep laugh sounded pleasant. When
”
”
Melissa Haag (Hope(less) (Judgement of the Six #1))
“
According to Egyptian texts, to eat of this fruit was to eat of the flesh and the fluid of the Goddess, the patroness of sexual pleasure and reproduction. According to the Bible story, the forbidden fruit caused the couple's conscious comprehension of sexuality. Upon eating the fruit, Adam and Eve became aware of the sexual nature of their own bodies, "And they knew that they were naked." So it was that when the male deity found them, they had modestly covered their genitals with aprons of fig leaves. But it was vitally important to the construction of the Levite myth that they did not both decide to eat the forbidden fruit together, which would have been a more logical turn for the tale to take since the fruit symbolised sexual consciousness. No, the priestly scribes make it exceedingly clear that the woman Eve ate of the fruit first - upon the advice and counsel of the serpent. It can hardly have been chance or coincidence that it was a serpent who offerred Eve the advice. For people at that time knew that the serpent was the symbol, perhaps even the instrument, of divine counsel in the religion of the Goddess. It was surely intended in the Paradise myth, as in the Indo-European serpent and dragon myths, that the serpent, as the familiar counsellor of women, be seen as a source of evil and be placed in such a menacing and villainous role that to listen to the prophetesses of the female deity would be to violate the religion of the male deity in the most dangerous manner. {...} We are told that, by eating the fruit first, women possessed sexual consciousness before man and in turn tempted man to partake the forbidden fruit, that is, to join her sinfully in sexual pleasures. This image of Eve as a sexually tempting but god-defying seductress was surely intended as a warning to all Hebrew men to stay away from the sacred women of the temples, for if they succumb to the temptations of these women, they simultaneously accepted the female deity - Her fruit - Her sexuality and, perhaps most important, the resulting matrilineal identity for any children who might be conceived in this manner. It must also, perhaps even more pointedly, have been directed at Hebrew women, cautioning them not to take part in the ancient religion and its sexual customs, as they appear to have continued to do so, despite the warnings and punishments meted out by the Levite priests.
”
”
Merlin Stone (When God Was a Woman)
“
I lost my first patient on a Tuesday. She was an eighty-two-year-old woman, small and trim, the healthiest person on the general surgery service, where I spent a month as an intern. (At her autopsy, the pathologist would be shocked to learn her age: “She has the organs of a fifty-year-old!”) She had been admitted for constipation from a mild bowel obstruction. After six days of hoping her bowels would untangle themselves, we did a minor operation to help sort things out. Around eight P.M. Monday night, I stopped by to check on her, and she was alert, doing fine. As we talked, I pulled from my pocket my list of the day’s work and crossed off the last item (post-op check, Mrs. Harvey). It was time to go home and get some rest. Sometime after midnight, the phone rang. The patient was crashing. With the complacency of bureaucratic work suddenly torn away, I sat up in bed and spat out orders: “One liter bolus of LR, EKG, chest X-ray, stat—I’m on my way in.” I called my chief, and she told me to add labs and to call her back when I had a better sense of things. I sped to the hospital and found Mrs. Harvey struggling for air, her heart racing, her blood pressure collapsing. She wasn’t getting better no matter what I did; and as I was the only general surgery intern on call, my pager was buzzing relentlessly, with calls I could dispense with (patients needing sleep medication) and ones I couldn’t (a rupturing aortic aneurysm in the ER). I was drowning, out of my depth, pulled in a thousand directions, and Mrs. Harvey was still not improving. I arranged a transfer to the ICU, where we blasted her with drugs and fluids to keep her from dying, and I spent the next few hours running between my patient threatening to die in the ER and my patient actively dying in the ICU. By 5:45 A.M., the patient in the ER was on his way to the OR, and Mrs. Harvey was relatively stable. She’d needed twelve liters of fluid, two units of blood, a ventilator, and three different pressors to stay alive. When I finally left the hospital, at five P.M. on Tuesday evening, Mrs. Harvey wasn’t getting better—or worse. At seven P.M., the phone rang: Mrs. Harvey had coded, and the ICU team was attempting CPR. I raced back to the hospital, and once again, she pulled through. Barely. This time, instead of going home, I grabbed dinner near the hospital, just in case. At eight P.M., my phone rang: Mrs. Harvey had died. I went home to sleep.
”
”
Paul Kalanithi (When Breath Becomes Air)
“
Every Day Take Your Daily Doses Black Cumin (Nigella sativa) (¼ tsp) As noted in the Appetite Suppression section, a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized, controlled weight-loss trials found that about a quarter teaspoon of black cumin powder every day appears to reduce body mass index within a span of a couple of months. Note that black cumin is different from regular cumin, for which the dosing is different. (See below.) Garlic Powder (¼ tsp) Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled studies have found that as little as a daily quarter teaspoon of garlic powder can reduce body fat at a cost of perhaps two cents a day. Ground Ginger (1 tsp) or Cayenne Pepper (½ tsp) Randomized controlled trials have found that ¼ teaspoon to 1½ teaspoons a day of ground ginger significantly decreased body weight for just pennies a day. It can be as easy as stirring the ground spice into a cup of hot water. Note: Ginger may work better in the morning than evening. Chai tea is a tasty way to combine the green tea and ginger tweaks into a single beverage. Alternately, for BAT activation, you can add one raw jalapeño pepper or a half teaspoon of red pepper powder (or, presumably, crushed red pepper flakes) into your daily diet. To help beat the heat, you can very thinly slice or finely chop the jalapeño to reduce its bite to little prickles, or mix the red pepper into soup or the whole-food vegetable smoothie I featured in one of my cooking videos on NutritionFacts.org.4985 Nutritional Yeast (2 tsp) Two teaspoons of baker’s, brewer’s, or nutritional yeast contains roughly the amount of beta 1,3/1,6 glucans found in randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trials to facilitate weight loss. Cumin (Cuminum cyminum) (½ tsp with lunch and dinner) Overweight women randomized to add a half teaspoon of cumin to their lunches and dinners beat out the control group by four more pounds and an extra inch off their waists. There is also evidence to support the use of the spice saffron, but a pinch a day would cost a dollar, whereas a teaspoon of cumin costs less than ten cents. Green Tea (3 cups) Drink three cups a day between meals (waiting at least an hour after a meal so as to not interfere with iron absorption). During meals, drink water, black coffee, or hibiscus tea mixed 6:1 with lemon verbena, but never exceed three cups of fluid an hour (important given my water preloading advice). Take advantage of the reinforcing effect of caffeine by drinking your green tea along with something healthy you wish you liked more, but don’t consume large amounts of caffeine within six hours of bedtime. Taking your tea without sweetener is best, but if you typically sweeten your tea with honey or sugar, try yacon syrup instead. Stay
”
”
Michael Greger (How Not to Diet)
“
Stick to a sleep schedule. Go to bed and wake up at the same time each day. As creatures of habit, people have a hard time adjusting to changes in sleep patterns. Sleeping later on weekends won’t fully make up for a lack of sleep during the week and will make it harder to wake up early on Monday morning. Set an alarm for bedtime. Often we set an alarm for when it’s time to wake up but fail to do so for when it’s time to go to sleep. If there is only one piece of advice you remember and take from these twelve tips, this should be it. Exercise is great, but not too late in the day. Try to exercise at least thirty minutes on most days but not later than two to three hours before your bedtime. Avoid caffeine and nicotine. Coffee, colas, certain teas, and chocolate contain the stimulant caffeine, and its effects can take as long as eight hours to wear off fully. Therefore, a cup of coffee in the late afternoon can make it hard for you to fall asleep at night. Nicotine is also a stimulant, often causing smokers to sleep only very lightly. In addition, smokers often wake up too early in the morning because of nicotine withdrawal. Avoid alcoholic drinks before bed. Having a nightcap or alcoholic beverage before sleep may help you relax, but heavy use robs you of REM sleep, keeping you in the lighter stages of sleep. Heavy alcohol ingestion also may contribute to impairment in breathing at night. You also tend to wake up in the middle of the night when the effects of the alcohol have worn off. Avoid large meals and beverages late at night. A light snack is okay, but a large meal can cause indigestion, which interferes with sleep. Drinking too many fluids at night can cause frequent awakenings to urinate. If possible, avoid medicines that delay or disrupt your sleep. Some commonly prescribed heart, blood pressure, or asthma medications, as well as some over-the-counter and herbal remedies for coughs, colds, or allergies, can disrupt sleep patterns. If you have trouble sleeping, talk to your health care provider or pharmacist to see whether any drugs you’re taking might be contributing to your insomnia and ask whether they can be taken at other times during the day or early in the evening. Don’t take naps after 3 p.m. Naps can help make up for lost sleep, but late afternoon naps can make it harder to fall asleep at night. Relax before bed. Don’t overschedule your day so that no time is left for unwinding. A relaxing activity, such as reading or listening to music, should be part of your bedtime ritual. Take a hot bath before bed. The drop in body temperature after getting out of the bath may help you feel sleepy, and the bath can help you relax and slow down so you’re more ready to sleep. Dark bedroom, cool bedroom, gadget-free bedroom. Get rid of anything in your bedroom that might distract you from sleep, such as noises, bright lights, an uncomfortable bed, or warm temperatures. You sleep better if the temperature in the room is kept on the cool side. A TV, cell phone, or computer in the bedroom can be a distraction and deprive you of needed sleep. Having a comfortable mattress and pillow can help promote a good night’s sleep. Individuals who have insomnia often watch the clock. Turn the clock’s face out of view so you don’t worry about the time while trying to fall asleep. Have the right sunlight exposure. Daylight is key to regulating daily sleep patterns. Try to get outside in natural sunlight for at least thirty minutes each day. If possible, wake up with the sun or use very bright lights in the morning. Sleep experts recommend that, if you have problems falling asleep, you should get an hour of exposure to morning sunlight and turn down the lights before bedtime. Don’t lie in bed awake. If you find yourself still awake after staying in bed for more than twenty minutes or if you are starting to feel anxious or worried, get up and do some relaxing activity until you feel sleepy.
”
”
Matthew Walker (Why We Sleep The New Science of Sleep and Dreams / Why We Can't Sleep Women's New Midlife Crisis)
“
You’ve got the what?” Adam asked, voice rising in alarm.
“We’ve got the mumps,” Harriet croaked down the phone.
“Shit! Thought I felt rough.”
“Exactly. So, fluids, fluids, fluids. And stay in bed,” Harriet advised.
“Hmmm, sounds like what caused the problem in the first place,” Adam laughed quietly, voice low and suggestive. Harriet groaned fondly. “So, how are we playing this then?” Adam continued. “We were both opposite sides of the country, at home with our folks, and independently return for term with the mumps?”
“There’s probably a national epidemic or something,” Harriet said, straight-faced.
“No doubt,” Adam agreed, sarcastically.
”
”
Erin Lawless (Little White Lies)
“
What does it mean to be an 'open source' society? What does one mean when one says one has an 'open mind'? Open source means that its a society everybody can work on improving. It has a synergy that allows the best minds to float on top, since there is no entropical hierarchy of mediocrity - once everything stays fluid there is the odd chance for genius elements to actually lead. Such is the case now in Turkey. The protesters are a fluid synergy that have no entropical leadership, and thus the most brilliant PR moves are made by the resistance, who are opposed by the worst sort of mediocrity that is totally at odds with reality. An 'open mind' follows a similar process, but in this case the entropy hides in the hierarchy of ideas that is implanted in the brain: once a person follows mediocre ideas - such as the 'idea' that 'marriage is the meaning of life' or 'having a job is the purpose of existence' etc - then the phenomenon of the 'open mind' becomes already impossible, for there is an internal hierarchy of entropy present that will prevent any sort of original impulse to have the meaning it truly has. Hence, the only way to escape the mediocrity of ones own mind is to allow anything to build and revise it.
”
”
Martijn Benders
“
Tyler took in a gasp of air, shuddered, then exploded. Hot fluid shot from his cock, painting his stomach and drenching Tim’s fist. His eyes stayed locked on Tim’s as his mouth opened wide, like a silent scream. “That’s it,” Tim huffed. “Holy shit, look at you.” Tyler’s neck flushed as he peaked, and Tim watched his face through all of it, until it triggered his own orgasm and he couldn’t hold back. Not giving Tyler a chance to think about what was ‘too intimate’ or any of that nonsense, Tim captured his mouth with his as he rode the bliss, kissing him with all the passion he felt inside.
”
”
Darien Cox (Caught in Your Wake (The Village #4))
“
One day, however, they had an experience that revealed just how fragile their life had become. Bella developed a cold, causing fluid to accumulate in her ears. An eardrum ruptured. And with that she became totally deaf. That was all it took to sever the thread between them. With her blindness and memory problems, the hearing loss made it impossible for Felix to achieve any kind of communication with her. He tried drawing out letters on the palm of her hand but she couldn’t make them out. Even the simplest matters—getting her dressed, for instance—became a nightmare of confusion for her. Without sensory grounding, she lost track of time of day. She grew severely confused, at times delusional and agitated. He couldn’t take care of her. He became exhausted from stress and lack of sleep. He didn’t know what to do, but there was a system for such situations. The people at the residence proposed transferring her to a skilled nursing unit—a nursing home floor. He couldn’t bear the thought of it. No, he said. She needed to stay at home with him. Before the issue was forced, they got a reprieve. Two and a half weeks into the ordeal, Bella’s right eardrum mended and, although the hearing in her left ear was lost permanently, the hearing in her right ear came back. “Our communication is more difficult,” Felix said. “But at least it is possible.
”
”
Atul Gawande (Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End)
“
But the reflections came clear to me then, come still in quiet moments when past meets present so smoothly the seams disappear and time itself turns fluid. Sometimes I wish time stayed solid, in separable chunks as distinct as the sound of the ticking clock on my mantel. In truth, though, we break all boundaries, hurtling forward through hope and backward on the trail made by memory.
”
”
Lauren Slater (Welcome to My Country: A Therapist's Memoir of Madness)
“
You can plan for a short rebounding session in the morning and evening; start with just a few minutes, then gradually increase to tolerance. Most of the lymph travels through the chest in the thoracic duct (which has one-way valves). When you jump on the rebounder, you help the fluid move up and stay there when you come down. Since the lymphatic channels are next to your arteries, increasing
”
”
Gerald M. Lemole (Lymph & Longevity: The Untapped Secret to Health)
“
To begin the discussion of the Tipping Point, I’ll start with a prominent strategy, “Invite-Only,” that is often used to suck in a large network through viral growth. Another method to tip over a market is with a “Come for the Tool, Stay for the Network” strategy. Take Dropbox, for instance, which is initially adopted by many people for file backup and keeping files synced up between work and home computers—this is the tool. But eventually, a more advanced and stickier use case emerges to share folders with colleagues—this is the network. And if that doesn’t work, some products can always just spend money to build out their network, with a strategy of just “Paying Up for Launch.” For many networked products that touch transactions like marketplaces, teams can just subsidize demand and spend millions to stimulate activity, whether that’s in paying content creators for your social network, or subsidizing driver earnings in rideshare. If the hard side of the network isn’t yet activated, a team can just fill in their gaps themselves, using the technique of “Flintstoning”—as Reddit did, submitting links and content until eventually adding automation and community features for scale. In the end, all of these strategies require enormous creativity. And to close out the Tipping Point section of the book, I introduce Uber’s core ethos of “Always Be Hustlin’”—describing the creativity and decentralized set of teams, all with its own strategies that were localized to each region. Sometimes adding the fifth or one hundredth network requires creativity, product engagements, and tactical changes. In the goal of reaching the Tipping Point, teams must be fluid to build out a broad network of networks.
”
”
Andrew Chen (The Cold Start Problem: How to Start and Scale Network Effects)
“
When the kidneys are weak there is less stamina and staying power and the person is weakened by any loss of fluids. Therefore, exertion (producing sweat), diarrhea, and sex (fluid secretion) are weakening. There may be excessive menstrual bleeding with weakness after the period.
”
”
Matthew Wood (The Earthwise Herbal, Volume II: A Complete Guide to New World Medicinal Plants)
“
He had arrived of course with certain preconceptions. We recall from his book list that Fritz had begun reading Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West in May 1920. That book had a scathing description of the in- habitants of “world-cities” like New York: “a new sort of nomad, cohering unstably in fluid masses, the parasitical city-dweller, traditionless, utterly matter-of-fact, religionless, clever, unfruitful, deeply contemptuous of the countryman and especially of that highest form of countryman, the country gentleman” (Spengler 1926, 32). Fritz anticipated finding his stay in New York “instructive and unpleasant,” and his first month there con- firmed his expectations. In his letters he offered up what he recognized were the standard European stereotypes about America: that “as is known from decades of stories” Americans are obsessed with making money; that American “culture,” to the extent that the phrase is not an oxymoron, is lowbrow; that the superlative (e.g., having “the world’s biggest building, fortune, beauty”—he wrote this in English) is both the preferred mode of expression and the only thing that makes Americans happy (Fritz to Aba, Apr 26, 1923). He informed his readers that one would have suspected that such images must be caricatures, until, that is, one had actually experienced them, as he had. He was glad, he went on, that he had made the decision to come, to have had the experience of seeing things firsthand. But in his opinion, living in the United Stated long term would be impossible for any European even to consider. It might be noted that this harsh initial opinion did not appear to dissipate much during his time there. In a summer letter to Mises, he remarked on “the vast intellectual superiority of the Europeans. This becomes evident in every-day life, its lack of intellectuality, its tastelessness and banality, which have a fatal effect and make it impossible to enjoy the comfort that is available here in contrast to Europe. [Most of the Europeans living here] agree that America is a country to earn one’s money but not one to live” (Hayek to Mises, Aug 17, 1923).
”
”
Bruce Caldwell (Hayek: A Life, 1899–1950)
“
Where we are strongest
it is the easiest
to stay open, fluid--
curtains of lace and linen instead of
walls of steel--
open borders
(at least for those with passports and visas
or the will to earn citizenship
in our personal territory),
never losing clarity,
because that is where we are strong.
Where our resolve is weakest
is where we have to draw the hardest lines
for ourselves,
for others,
for the world.
We can't afford to give a little,
because, well, our resolve is too likely to give way
when so tested.
It sounds so simple.
But it can be so hard
to do.
Where we are weak,
the hard lines must be drawn strong.
”
”
Shellen Lubin
“
To be ‘well,’” according to authors Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski in their book Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle, “is not to live in a state of perpetual safety and calm, but to move fluidly from a state of adversity, risk, adventure, or excitement, back to safety and calm, and out again. Stress is not bad for you; being stuck is bad for you.
”
”
Emily P. Freeman (How to Walk into a Room: The Art of Knowing When to Stay and When to Walk Away)
“
Each sugar molecule attracted dozens of water molecules to stay circulating in his system. In many ways, abundant sugar acted like tiny sponges trapping water inside David’s blood. Glucose absorbed toxic amounts of fluid and kept it from leaving his circulation. This excess fluid, called inflammation, injured the tissues as the fluid stretched each cell to its limits. Failure to reduce David’s sugar not only expanded the volume of liquid pumping through his veins, it inflamed every cell that used sugar.
”
”
Annette Bosworth (ketoCONTINUUM: Consistently Keto Diet For Life)
“
Annie,” Tilly said. “If I wanted to suck vile fluids out of a flaccid and indifferent tube, I’d have stayed on Earth with my husband.
”
”
James S.A. Corey (Abaddon's Gate (Expanse, #3))
“
To overcome the exertion, mountaineers use several tricks to stay strong at altitude. One method is to inhale deeply, pursing one’s lips and exhaling forcefully, as if blowing up a balloon. This is known as pressure breathing; physicians call it positive end expiratory pressure, or PEEP. Patients with emphysema or other breathing difficulties use this technique reflexively, and research shows that it improves gas exchange and prevents fluid buildup in the lungs. The pursed lips and forceful exhalation increase air pressure, which resuscitates the lungs’ air sacs, or alveoli, so they can expand, absorb more oxygen, and expel more carbon dioxide.
”
”
Peter Zuckerman (Buried in the Sky: The Extraordinary Story of the Sherpa Climbers on K2's Deadliest Day)
“
I have been writing my whole life: stories and plays and sketches and scripts and poems and jokes. Most feel alive. And fluid. Breathing organisms made better by the people who come into contact with them. But this book has nearly killed me. Because, you see, a book? A book has a cover. They call it a jacket and that jacket keeps the inside warm so that the words stay permanent and everyone can read your genius thoughts over and over again for years to come. Once a book is published it can’t be changed, which is a stressful proposition for this improviser who relies on her charm. I’ve been told that I am “better in the room” and “prettier in person.” Both these things are not helpful when writing a book. I am looking forward to a lively book-on-tape session with the hope that Kathleen Turner agrees to play me when I talk about some of my darker periods. One can dream.
”
”
Amy Poehler (Yes Please)
“
She’s watching me in the dawn’s first light with an intensity that melts me. Her face a vivid world, I no longer know if I exist inside a photograph or if I once existed in the whiteness of the morning in front of this slow-gesturing woman who, never taking her eyes off me, is lying there in front of me, naked more naked than the night, more physical than a whole life spent caressing the beauty of the world. Sustaining her gaze is painful. I imagine, I breathe and imagine her once more. A few centimetres below the manubrium glints a little diamond that seems to stay on her chest by magic. The diamond, no doubt held there by a little ring inserted into the flesh, sparkles like a provocation, an object of light that lies in wait for desire, engulfs the other. I am that other. I am pure emotion lying in wait for the fate crouched inside this woman. The woman offers her desire, sows sentences in me whose syntax is unfamiliar and which I’m unable to follow and pronounce. Words there I cannot clearly distinguish – breasts, gusts, ships, stext – and, in between them, the woman’s lips move like some life-giving water that cleanses away all clichés, promises that every imprint of the gaze will be sexual, will be repeated and fluid as vivid as the morning light absorbing one’s most intimate thoughts. Her arms are open. She opens herself to the embraces that, in mother tongue, suspend reality. The woman has turned her head slightly and her throat astonishes. Her gaze contains traces of that water which, it is said, gushes when memory becomes verb and rekindles desire at the edge of the labia. The woman’s gaze sweeps into the future. Simone sometimes finds herself comparing herself to the woman of action, of business and of spirit, wise to intrigue, that was Marie de l’Incarnation.
”
”
Nicole Brossard (Yesterday, at the Hotel Clarendon)
“
Cade separated their bodies enough to pull his dick free of Rafe long enough to rub it the white fluid on Rafe’s abdomen. He made sure Rafe could see their come mixing together and then he buried himself deep inside of Rafe’s body once more and just stayed there as they kissed. As
”
”
Sloane Kennedy (A Family Chosen: Volume 3 (The Protectors and Barrettis #3))
“
Gandhi wrote: ‘I seem to have detected a flaw in me which is unworthy of a votary of truth and ahimsa. I am going through a process of self-introspection, the results of which I cannot foresee. I find myself for the first time during the past 50 years in a Slough of Despond.’
One wonders what readers of the press statement made of this decidedly odd interpolation. To them, the cause, manifestation and the precise nature of this flaw was left unelaborated. Gandhi’s close disciples knew the details; and the labours of the editors of his Collected Works have since made them public for us to examine it.
Here is what happened. On 14 April 1938, Gandhi awoke with an erection; and despite efforts to contain his excitement, had a masturbatory experience. He was sleeping alone, and it was decades since he had been aroused in such a way.
The details of the incident were kept from his ‘political’ followers such as Jawaharlal Nehru, but discussed with the spiritual followers who had stayed with him in Sabarmati and Segaon. To one Gujarati ashramite he wrote that ‘I was in such a wretched and pitiable condition that in spite of my utmost efforts I could not stop the discharge though I was fully awake.... After the event, restlessness has become acute beyond words. Where am I, where is my place, and how can a person subject to passion represent non-violence and truth?’
To Mira, Gandhi wrote in a language even more vivid in its self-abasement: ‘That dirty, degrading, torturing experience of 14th April shook me to bits and made me feel as if I was hurled by God from an imaginary paradise where I had no right to be in my uncleanliness.’
To his other close woman disciple, Amrit Kaur, Gandhi spoke of ‘an unaccountable dissatisfaction with myself’. But he had not lost faith, and was resolved to overcome the memory of his failure. ‘The sexual sense is the hardest to overcome in my case,’ he remarked. ‘It has been an incessant struggle. It is for me a miracle how I have survived it. The one I am engaged in may be, ought to be, the final struggle.’
Gandhi had taken a vow of brahmacharya, as far back as 1906. He thought sex was necessary only for procreation, and rejected the idea that sex might be pleasurable in and of itself. In his writings and speeches, he had often spoken of the importance of the preservation and husbanding of sperm, which he termed ‘the vital fluid’.
After this (to him) shocking experience, how could Gandhi best control his passions, best preserve and husband that vital fluid? Several ashramites (Amrit Kaur among them) thought he should avoid close physical contact with women, especially younger women. He should abandon ashram girls as supports while walking (he rested his hands on their shoulders to propel his frail frame along), and discontinue the practice of having his nails cut or his body massaged by women disciples. Gandhi was not convinced of the sagacity of this advice. He had, he reminded one disciple, not ‘advocated total avoidance of innocent contact between the two sexes and I have had a certain measure of success in this’. To Amrit Kaur, he insisted that ‘it is not the woman who is to blame. I am the culprit. I must attain the required purity.’
Gandhi had wanted to write about the experience of 14 April in Harijan, baring to the world his failure and lack of self-control. He discussed this with Rajagopalachari, who was then in Segaon. Rajaji dissuaded him from making his experience public. Afterwards, Rajaji wrote to his son-in-law Devadas, who was also Gandhi’s son. The Mahatma, he said, was deeply worried ‘that he was still unable to overcome the reflex action of his flesh. He discovered, it seems, one day and he was so shocked and felt so unworthy that he was deceiving people and he wrote an article about it for publication in Harijan, which, thank God, I have stopped, after a very quarrelsome hour'.
”
”
Ramachandra Guha (Gandhi 1915-1948: The Years That Changed the World)
“
We’ve all experienced a scenario like this one: You’re in a meeting voicing an idea when a coworker abruptly jumps in, cuts you off, and shamelessly chimes in with his or her own agenda. Not only is this upsetting for attendees, but it’s also extremely unproductive. To help cut down on cross-talk during meetings, it can be helpful for the meeting organizer to address ground rules for desired behaviors and outcomes before the session begins. If rules have not been established, consider adding one or two for a more fluid and constructive environment (such as, “Only one person speaks at a time” and “Due to time restraints, it is very important that we stay on topic”). Of course, there will be times when you as the facilitator will need to take control of the conversation and address repeat cross-talk offenders. Say something along the lines of “Matthew, I appreciate your input, but right now I would like to go back and hear what Amy was saying. When she is finished, we can come back and discuss your point.” By heading off cross-talkers, you give everyone the opportunity to speak, and you reinforce the rules for engagement.
”
”
Holly Reisem Hanna (Time Management in 20 Minutes a Day: Simple Strategies to Increase Productivity, Enhance Creativity, and Make Your Time Your Own)
“
Too little air, and the tire collapses, unable to support the weight of the vehicle. Too much air, and the tire could bulge or even burst from excess pressure. Just like with tire pressure, your joints need a healthy balance of synovial fluid to stay strong and mobile. This is called hydrodynamic pressure—the pressure of a liquid within a confined space. If you’ve ever hydroplaned while driving a vehicle, you’ve experienced this phenomenon. When you drive a car on a wet road, hydrodynamic pressure forces water into the gap between the tires and the road. As driving speed increases, so does pressure in the water underneath each tire. This causes a momentary loss of control as your car balances on the thin sheet of pressurized water instead of the road.
”
”
Scott H Hogan (Built from Broken: A Science-Based Guide to Healing Painful Joints, Preventing Injuries, and Rebuilding Your Body)
“
Well, with every pirouette, we entrust the weight of our bodies on the tips of our toes, with the promise of them delivering us in cyclones. Our arms, always elegant it may appear, struggle beneath the heaviness our muscles battle to stay fluid. It looks effortless--- every allongé, every piqué as simple as the natural flow of water. But every dance, every move our bodies make, is a war against itself. It's magnificently dangerous. Like... blooming into an ocean. That's what it feels like. An ocean. Deep and rich all-encompassing, drowning out everyone in our presence. They sink into the moment, succumb to every movement, and simply just admire.
”
”
Kiana Krystle (Dance of the Starlit Sea)
“
Having strong yet fluid relational boundaries is like wearing the zipper of our hearts on the inside rather than on the outside of us. Our true self is able to decide when to open our hearts and let someone in, or when we’re open to stepping out and mingling. If we’re tired or need a little time alone, we can close ourselves up a little bit or zip up entirely to get the rest we need.
”
”
Cyndi Dale (Energetic Boundaries: How to Stay Protected and Connected in Work, Love, and Life)
“
You could go [along the river] where you wanted and homestead—the forest gives you all kinds of fruit and animals, the river gives you fish and plants. That was very important to societies like Marajó. They had to be much less coercive, much more hang-loose, much more socially fluid, or people wouldn’t stay there.” Compared with much of the rest of the world at that time, people in the Amazon “were freer, they were healthier, they were living in a really wonderful civilization.
”
”
Charles C. Mann (1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus)
“
Even in Pleasant Grove, the stories floated around. . . . that stuff stays in your system forever . . . . . . in the spinal cord . . . in the fluid . . . . . . little crystals of acid, they lodge there . . . . . . seven years . . . . . . and cause flashbacks . . . Some of the whispers were specific, with the heavy ring of authority: If you’ve taken LSD more than seven times (or maybe nine?), you’re legally insane. No, it’s the number of hits in a month. Take it more than four times in one month, and you’re legally crazy. After that, they won’t even let you testify in court. It was all hogwash, but nobody rushed to correct the rumors. If the kids had a little fear, that was fine. Whatever kept them straight.
”
”
Rick Emerson (Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries)
“
to get out of the cold wind, lining their dens with grass and twigs to prevent sleeping on the cold ground. Animals taught him how to survive in the bad weather, and they taught him how to stay hidden, even in winter. After the long, cold winter passed, the sun returned and warmed the land, then rains came, and life sprang forth. In summer, violent storms passed through the area, and at times the wind would be so strong that it would knock down even the largest trees. The creek would flood and wipe out all traces of anyone ever having been there. ☐❖☐ Six years passed. Michael became a full-grown man. His hair was the color of sand. He had wide-set blue-green eyes, and he was more than six feet tall, with a strong, muscular body, wide shoulders, narrow hip and waist. He moved with the fluid movements of a cat.
”
”
William Wayne Dicksion (Sagebrush)
“
Couldn’t live in a town; when the countryside’s in your bones you can’t stay in those places, sucks the life out of you.” He was a farm worker, had been all his life. He’d lived in an employer-owned cottage on the land where he worked, but when the farm was sold, the houses were split off from the land and bought as second homes; he became homeless. He found other work, but the jobs never came with a house and his wages couldn’t cover an expensive rural rent. That’s when he first camped in the wood. Soon, others joined him, until their camp grew into a fluid village of people who came and went as the need arose.
”
”
Raynor Winn (The Salt Path: A Memoir)
“
I don't need you to be here, Jude would tell me in time, but I want you to be. And that's how it should be. It's better that way. Love, he would tell me, is all about choice. Free will. Need is about dependency.
Jude thought we should be like a gift to each other, but I longed to be essential. That was love, I decided, as our intimacy changed and deepened over the course of the year. Not being able to do without. Waiting -- that was just desire, fluid and changeable as the tide. Need was real love, the truest kind I'd known, born as it is out of what we lack, and that was how I felt about Jude back then -- that he completed me, we completed each other, as in the old myth about the origin of love. And if I was essential, the other half of whatever he was, then he could never abandon me.
Across from me at the table that afternoon, he shrugged.
So stay, he said, as if it were an easy thing.
I don't have any of my things.
I have things. A whole house full of things.
I shouldn't.
He was offering me what I'd wanted, but I was plagued by the feeling that the invitation wasn't genuine, that it was only because I'd prompted him that he suggested I'd stay. This cheapened it in my mind, and I felt graceless and worse than if he hadn't asked at all.
So don't. Forget it.
”
”
Madelaine Lucas (Thirst for Salt)
“
The Sixteen Conclusions of Reverend Kirk
In the last half of the seventeenth century, a Scottish scholar gathered all the accounts he could find about the Sleagh Maith and, in 1691, wrote an amazing manuscript entitled The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies. It was the first systematic attempt to describe the methods and organization of the strange creatures that plagued the farmers of Scotland. The author, Reverend Kirk, of Aberfoyle, studied theology at St. Andrews and took his degree of professor at Edinburgh. Later he served as minister for the parishes of Balquedder and Aberfoyle and died in 1692.
Kirk invented the name "the Secret Commonwealth" to describe the organization of the elves. It is impossible to quote the entire text of his treatise, but we can summarize his findings about elves and other aerial creatures in the following way:
1. They have a nature that is intermediate between man and the angels.
2. Physically, they have very light and fluid bodies, which are comparable to a condensed cloud. They are particularly visible at dusk. They can appear and vanish at will.
3. Intellectually, they are intelligent and curious.
4. They have the power to carry away anything they like.
5. They live inside the earth in caves, which they can reach through any crevice or opening where air passes.
6. When men did not inhabit most of the world, the creatures used to live there and had their own agriculture. Their civilization has left traces on the high mountains; it was flourishing at a time when the whole countryside was nothing but woods and forests.
7. At the beginning of each three-month period, they change quarters because they are unable to stay in one place. Besides, they like to travel. It is then that men have terrible encounters with them, even on the great highways.
8. Their chameleon-like bodies allow them to swim through the air with all their household.
9. They are divided into tribes. Like us, they have children, nurses, marriages, burials, etc., unless they just do this to mock our own customsor to predict terrestrial events.
10. Their houses are said to be wonderfully large and beautiful, but under most circumstances they are invisible to human eyes. Kirk compares them to enchanted islands. The houses are equipped with lamps that burn forever and fires that need no fuel.
11. They speak very little. When they do talk among themselves, their language is a kind of whistling sound.
12. Their habits and their language when they talk to humans are similar to those of local people.
13. Their philosophical system is based on the following ideas: nothing dies; all things evolve cyclically in such a way that at every cycle they are renewed and improved. Motion is the universal law.
14. They are said to have a hierarchy of leaders, but they have no visible devotion to God, no religion.
15. They have many pleasant and light books, but also serious and complex books dealing with abstract matters.
16. They can be made to appear at will before us through magic.
The similarities between these observations and the story related by Facius Cardan, which antedates Kirk's manuscript by exactly two hundred years, are clear. Both Cardan and Paracelsus write, like Kirk, that a pact can be made with these creatures and that they can be made to appear and answer questions at will. Paracelsus did not care to reveal what that pact was "because of the ills that might befall those who would try it." Kirk is equally discreet on this point. And, of course, to go deeper into this matter would open the whole field of witchcraft and ceremonial magic, which is beyond my purpose in the present book.
”
”
Jacques F. Vallée (Dimensions: A Casebook of Alien Contact)
“
As I get older I see more and more how fluid a thing time is. there are so many ways to slip in and out of it. The wonder is that we ever stay in the now.
”
”
Catriona Ward (Looking Glass Sound)
“
i want to make simba watch as i make a cum tribute to his dead father’s photo and, once finished, sticking the now-soiled and moist photo to simba’s dumb face with a stapler. once stapled on, i will force him to lick the excess semen and fluids off of his father’s rotting face and when he cries, i will catch every tear until i have an entire bucket worth of it, and i will then proceed to give simba a painful and scolding hot enema made of his own tears and saliva, and i will then proceed to do this every day until he begs me to kill him. i will make him think he is finally free from this torment, but he will be shocked to find that it is a water gun filled with his father’s drained blood. he will be staying with me for a while. there is no end.
”
”
Sarah Sadgirl
“
There are differences between 'the strong at heart' and 'the stubborn at heart'. The former is fluid yet calculated, the later is forceful and disorganized. One focuses on TECHNIQUES and the other, PRINCIPLES. Hazy and confused, the stubborn at heart is shabby, knows a lot of things and able to use them when he needs to but the downside of this is that the many things he knows are merged into a web that eventually makes his mind muddled up and his action low-grade. Attention to detail and techniques marked out for EACH situation makes the strong at heart effective. Most times he knows just enough to get the job done. His secret? He trains himself to do the right thing the first time so he never has to worry about it ever again. He sees through the web in his mind, pretends like he doesn't know so much until he can find just enough to solve a specific problem, then he records each solution and holds on to them. No long stories, no hypes, no fear. Hey, life gets better with practice. Do stay on Course
”
”
Asuni LadyZeal
“
While there's nothing wrong with the quantitative, strategic, and analytical skills traditional taught in B-schools, those alone do not guarantee success in business, where things tend to be messier and more fluid, and where success often rests on the ability to form winning coalitions that will back a good idea. Here, the soft skills--such as a willingness to listen, forge trusting relationships, take and support responsible risks, adapt to change, and stay positive in the face of adversity--are seen as those essential to allowing people and businesses to respond with agility and nimbleness to the fast-moving information, opportunities, and challenges of today's workplace.
”
”
Kelly Leonard (Yes, And: How Improvisation Reverses "No, But" Thinking and Improves Creativity and Collaboration--Lessons from The Second City)
“
Stay Hydrated Check this box if your urine never appeared darker than a pale yellow all day. Note that if you’re eating riboflavin-fortified foods (such as nutritional yeast), then base this instead on getting nine cups of unsweetened beverages a day for women (which would be taken care of by the green tea and water preloading recommendations) or thirteen cups a day for men. If you have heart or kidney issues, don’t increase fluid intake at all without first talking with your physician. Remember, diet soda may be calorie-free, but it’s not consequence-free, as we learned in the Low in Added Sugar section. Deflour Your Diet Check this box every day your whole grain servings are in the form of intact grains. The powdering of even 100 percent whole grains robs our microbiomes of the starch that would otherwise be ferried down to our colons encapsulated in unbroken cell walls. Front-Load Your Calories There are metabolic benefits to distributing more calories to earlier in the day, so make breakfast (ideally) or lunch your largest meal of the day in true king/prince/pauper style. Time
”
”
Michael Greger (How Not to Diet)
“
Stay Hydrated Check this box if your urine never appeared darker than a pale yellow all day. Note that if you’re eating riboflavin-fortified foods (such as nutritional yeast), then base this instead on getting nine cups of unsweetened beverages a day for women (which would be taken care of by the green tea and water preloading recommendations) or thirteen cups a day for men. If you have heart or kidney issues, don’t increase fluid intake at all without first talking with your physician. Remember, diet soda may be calorie-free, but it’s not consequence-free, as we learned in the Low in Added Sugar section. Deflour Your Diet Check this box every day your whole grain servings are in the form of intact grains. The powdering of even 100 percent whole grains robs our microbiomes of the starch that would otherwise be ferried down to our colons encapsulated in unbroken cell walls. Front-Load Your Calories There are metabolic benefits to distributing more calories to earlier in the day, so make breakfast (ideally) or lunch your largest meal of the day in true king/prince/pauper style. Time-Restrict Your Eating Confine eating to a daily window of time of your choosing under twelve hours in length that you can stick to consistently, seven days a week. Given the circadian benefits of reducing evening food intake, the window should end before 7:00 p.m. Optimize Exercise Timing The Daily Dozen’s recommendation for optimum exercise duration for longevity is ninety minutes of moderately intense activity a day, which is also the optimum exercise duration for weight loss. Anytime is good, and the more the better, but there may be an advantage to exercising in a fasted state, at least six hours after your last meal. Typically, this would mean before breakfast, but if you timed it right, you could exercise midday before a late lunch or, if lunch is eaten early enough, before dinner. This is the timing for nondiabetics. Diabetics and prediabetics should instead start exercising thirty minutes after the start of a meal and ideally go for at least an hour to completely straddle the blood sugar peak. If you had to choose a single meal to exercise after, it would be dinner, due to the circadian rhythm of blood sugar control that wanes throughout the day. Ideally, though, breakfast would be the largest meal of the day, and you’d exercise after that—or, even better, after every meal. Weigh Yourself Twice a Day Regular self-weighing is considered crucial for long-term weight control, but there is insufficient evidence to support a specific frequency of weighing. My recommendation is based on the one study that found that twice daily—upon waking and right before bed—appeared superior to once a day (about six versus two pounds of weight loss over twelve weeks).
”
”
Michael Greger (How Not to Diet)
“
and i thought that if i tried harder stayed longer you would stop hurting me failing to realize that’s all you knew.
”
”
Renaada Williams (fluid.)
“
I was thinking of something upsetting, and you took it away, didn’t you?” There was a hint of a smile in her voice.
He allowed her freedom, watched her sink beneath the foaming water, surface a few feet away. Her large eyes were moving over him with definite laughter. “You know, Mikhail, I’m beginning to think my very first assessment of your character was correct. You’re arrogant and bossy.”
He swam toward her with lazy, easy strokes. “But I am sexy.”
She backpedaled, sent a spray of water at him with the flat of her hand. “Stay away from me. Every time you get near me, something crazy happens.”
“Now might be a good time to take you to task for placing your life in danger. You should never have followed the assassins from the inn. You knew I was unable to hear if you called for help.” He kept swimming toward her, as relentless as a shark.
Raven took the coward’s way out and waded out of the pool, flinging herself into the next large one. The water was cold on her heated skin. She pointed a finger at him, her soft mouth curving. “I told you I was going to try to help you. In any case, if you dare to lecture me, I’ll have no choice but to go into just how unethical it was to bind me to you without my consent. Tell me--if I hadn’t followed the assassins and Jacob hadn’t stabbed me, I would have remained human, wouldn’t I?”
Mikhail rose out of the pool, water streaming off his body. Raven’s breath caught in her throat. He looked magnificent, so masculine and powerful. In one fluid leap, he launched himself into the air, jackknifed, and cut cleanly into the deep pool. She found her heart beating frantically, her blood singing for him. He came up behind her, his hands spanning her waist, dragging her close, his powerful legs keeping them afloat.
“You would still be human,” he agreed, his voice a black magic spell that could send heat coiling through her, despite the cold water.
“If I had stayed human, how could you have remained with me as a lifemate?” She pushed her rounded bottom against the cradle of his hips, enjoying the sudden excitement as his body swelled and hardened in response to the pressure. She laid her head back on his shoulder.
“I would have chosen to grow old with you and die when you died.
”
”
Christine Feehan (Dark Prince (Dark, #1))
“
If I wanted to suck vile fluids out of a flaccid and indifferent tube, I’d have stayed on Earth with my husband.
”
”
James S.A. Corey (Abaddon's Gate (Expanse, #3))
“
when Heaton turns their head, I nearly fumble the plate. The right side of their face is one giant contusion, and their right arm is splinted from the elbow down. “What happened?” Garrick and Bodhi exchange a glance that makes my stomach sink, even knowing that Xaden is alive—and not in our bedroom on this floor, but four stories above me. “They took Pavis,” Heaton tells me quietly, looking to see that we’re not overheard. I blink. That can’t be right. “That town is only an hour’s flight east of Draithus.” Heaton nods slowly. “Took seven of them and a hoard of wyvern. Town was overrun before we even got there. Your sister—she’s all right, just taking Emery to the healers for a shattered leg. She ordered us out after—” Their voice breaks, and they look away. “After Nyra Voldaren fell during our mission today,” Garrick finishes. “Nyra?” She was the quadrant’s senior wingleader last year and was damn near invincible. “Yeah. She went in to defend a group of civilians that had taken shelter near the armory, and…” His jaw works. “And there was nothing left of her or Malla. It was just like Soleil and Fuil, completely drained. I’m sure they’ll update everyone in Battle Brief tomorrow, but they recalled all first and second lieutenants to Aretia to regroup.” “I think they’re going to change the wing structure,” Heaton adds. “They have to,” Garrick agrees. “Leaving the less experienced riders back from the front doesn’t do a damn thing when the front is this fucking fluid.” “Did they take Cordyn?” Garrick shakes his head. “Skipped right over it and hundreds of other miles. They targeted Pavis and stayed there.” “It’s a good staging point”—Bodhi drops his voice when a trio of fliers out of First Wing walk by—“for Draithus. Has to be.” They’re coming for us.
”
”
Rebecca Yarros (Iron Flame (The Empyrean, #2))
“
[...] It is about thinking of yourself, and your fellow human beings, in more fluid terms than solid categories.
”
”
Elif Shafak (How to Stay Sane in an Age of Division)