Strikes Twice Quotes

I thought lightning wasn't supposed to strike in the same place twice....sure it does...but only if you're too dumb to move.

The half-human was the hottest thing he'd ever gotten anywhere near. And he'd cozied up to a lightning strike once or twice before.

His Majesty needs a can-I girl anyway. And I'm not it." "A can-I girl?" Andrea frowned. I leaned back. "'Can I fetch your food, Your Majesty? Can I tell you how strong and mighty you are, Your Majesty? Can I pick your fleas, Your Majesty? Can I kiss your ass, Your Majesty? Can I..." It dawned on me that Raphael was sitting very still. Frozen, like a statue, his gaze fixed on the point above my head. "He's standing behind me, isn't he?" Andrea nodded slowly. "Technically it should be 'may I'," Curran said, his voice deeper than I remembered. "Since you're asking for permission." Why me? "To answer your question, yes, you may kiss my ass. Normally I prefer maintain my personal space, but you're a Friend of the Pack and your services have proven useful once or twice. I strive to accommodate the wishes of persons friendly to my people. My only question is, would kissing my ass be obeisance, grooming, or foreplay?

Evil doesn't die. It never dies. It just takes on a new face, a new name. Just because we've been touched by it once, it doesn't mean we're immune to ever being hurt again. Lightning can strike twice.

Ezekiel 25:17. "The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of the darkness. For he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know I am the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you." I been sayin' that shit for years. And if you ever heard it, it meant your ass. I never really questioned what it meant. I thought it was just a cold-blooded thing to say to a motherfucker before you popped a cap in his ass. But I saw some shit this mornin' made me think twice. Now I'm thinkin': it could mean you're the evil man. And I'm the righteous man. And Mr. .45 here, he's the shepherd protecting my righteous ass in the valley of darkness. Or it could be you're the righteous man and I'm the shepherd and it's the world that's evil and selfish. I'd like that. But that shit ain't the truth. The truth is you're the weak. And I'm the tyranny of evil men. But I'm tryin, Ringo. I'm tryin' real hard to be the shepherd. he became the shepherd instead of the vengeance. Jules Winnfield- Samuel L. Jackson

Lightning doesn't strike twice.

I believe there are only one or two people in the world with whom one can have a true connection. When you've been fortunate enough to marry one of those people, you are reluctant to settle for less. One can have lovers, those are easily found, but true love rarely strikes twice.

They say lightning never strikes in the same place twice. They lied.

They say that lightning never strikes in the same place twice, but the same is not true for courage. As it turns out, when courage strikes, it almost always begets more courage.

THEY SAY LIGHTNING NEVER strikes in the same place twice. “They” are wrong. From an evolutionary perspective, it’s a little surprising that this saying has survived; you’d think that people who believed it would have been gradually filtered out of the living population.

I lean against my sister's shoulder. "I thought lightning wasn't supposed to strike in the same place twice." "Sure it does," Izzy tells me. "But only if you're too dumb to move.

We feel sorry for you. Manon rubbed at her eyes and braced her elbows on her knees, peering into the drop below. She would have dismissed her, wouldn't have thought twice about it, if it hadn't been for that look in Keelie's eyes as she fell, fighting with every last scrap of strength to save her Petrah. Or for Abraxos's wing, sheltering Manon against icy rain. The wyverns were meant to kill and maim and strike terror into the hearts of their enemies. And yet . . . And yet. Manon looked toward the star-flecked horizon, leaning her face into a warm spring breeze, grateful for the steady, solid companion lounging behind her. A strange feeling, that gratitude for his existence.

She thumped him again. He looked startled, then caught her flying fist in his hand and gently pried her fingers open. Very carefully he pressed a kiss into the exact center of her palm. 'Savannah? Were you trying to hit me?' 'I didn't hit you--twice, you scum. You didn't even notice the first time.' She sounded very irritated with him. For some reason it made him want to smile. 'I apologize, mon amour. Next time, I promise I will notice when you strike me.' The hard edge to his mouth softened into a semblance of a smile. 'I will even go so far as to pretend that it hurts, if you wish it.

Lightning always strikes in the same place twice," said Mma Ramotswe. "Whatever people say to the contrary.

When one's married for so long, always walking on four feet and always breathing double breaths and thinking every thought twice through and the time between the main things is packed double full with minor details - then, sometimes, naturally, one yearns like an arrow for one whole space thin as air. And you start up in the night, terrified by your own breathing, which had just been going along as evenly without you. But you don't rise up free - or even really as far as your knees - not once. You strike a match. And there's one of you right there, wrapped in flesh. Only then is it love.

He who the sword of heaven will bear Should be as holy as severe; Pattern in himself to know, Grace to stand, and virtue go; More nor less to others paying Than by self-offences weighing. Shame to him whose cruel striking Kills for faults of his own liking! Twice treble shame on Angelo, To weed my vice and let his grow! O, what may man within him hide, Though angel on the outward side! How may likeness made in crimes, Making practise on the times, To draw with idle spiders' strings Most ponderous and substantial things! Craft against vice I must apply: With Angelo to-night shall lie His old betrothed but despised; So disguise shall, by the disguised, Pay with falsehood false exacting, And perform an old contracting.

She won't come back here like that," Lee said weakly. "Lightning never strikes the same place twice, right?" Filo stopped in the doorway, one hand on the frame. "No, Lee," he said, giving her a withering look. "A place is never the same after lightning strikes it. I guess that makes you the lightning.

He had no document but his memory; the training he had acquired with each added hexameter gave him a discipline unsuspected by those who set down and forget temporary, incomplete paragraphs. He was not working for posterity or even for God, whose literary tastes were unknown to him. Meticulously, motionlessly, secretly, he wrought in time his lofty, invisible labyrinth. He worked the third act over twice. He eliminated certain symbols as over-obvious, such as the repeated striking of the clock, the music. Nothing hurried him. He omitted, he condensed, he amplified. In certain instances he came back to the original version. He came to feel affection for the courtyard, the barracks; one of the faces before him modified his conception of Roemerstadt's character. He discovered that the wearying cacophonies that bothered Flaubert so much are mere visual superstitions, weakness and limitation of the written word, not the spoken...He concluded his drama. He had only the problem of a single phrase. He found it. The drop of water slid down his cheek. He opened his mouth in a maddened cry, moved his face, dropped under the quadruple blast.

I stifled a snort. Sixty isn’t old to me. At sixty, humans are just beginning to understand that the weather will never obey them; that true love strikes at most twice in a lifetime; and that by saying yes in your youth, you may bind yourself unwisely to another’s cause. But that was beside the point.

Lightning could strike twice, three times, or ten. When you're on the wrong side of the odds, the odds are meaningless. They don't protect you or give you comfort.

When I was born, the doctor looked over to my mom, and apologized. ‘I did everything I could, but he pulled through anyhow.’” –Rodney Dangerfield

And he’d cozied up to a lightning strike once or twice before.

The most striking finding is that between 1900 and 2006, nonviolent resistance campaigns were nearly twice as likely to achieve full or partial success as their violent counterparts.

Let us be just, my friends! What a splendid destiny for a nation to be the Empire of such an Emperor, when that nation is France and when it adds its own genius to the genius of that man! To appear and to reign, to march and to triumph, to have for halting-places all capitals, to take his grenadiers and to make kings of them, to decree the falls of dynasties, and to transfigure Europe at the pace of a charge; to make you feel that when you threaten you lay your hand on the hilt of the sword of God; to follow in a single man, Hannibal, Caesar, Charlemagne; to be the people of some one who mingles with your dawns the startling announcement of a battle won, to have the cannon of the Invalides to rouse you in the morning, to hurl into abysses of light prodigious words which flame forever, Marengo, Arcola, Austerlitz, Jena, Wagram! To cause constellations of victories to flash forth at each instant from the zenith of the centuries, to make the French Empire a pendant to the Roman Empire, to be the great nation and to give birth to the grand army, to make its legions fly forth over all the earth, as a mountain sends out its eagles on all sides to conquer, to dominate, to strike with lightning, to be in Europe a sort of nation gilded through glory, to sound athwart the centuries a trumpet-blast of Titans, to conquer the world twice, by conquest and by dazzling, that is sublime; and what greater thing is there?" "To be free," said Combeferre.

People say lots of things. Lightning never strikes twice in the same place, a broken mirror brings seven years’ bad luck, a whippoorwill calling at midnight means someone in the family’s going to die.

To answer your question, yes, you may kiss my ass. Normally I prefer to maintain my personal space, but you’re a Friend of the Pack and your services have proven useful once or twice. I strive to accommodate the wishes of persons friendly to my people. My only question is, would your kissing my ass be obeisance, grooming, or foreplay?

Have you heard of the Monte Carlo method? Ah, it’s a computer algorithm often used for calculating the area of irregular shapes. Specifically, the software puts the figure of interest in a figure of known area, such as a circle, and randomly strikes it with many tiny balls, never targeting the same spot twice. After a large number of balls, the proportion of balls that fall within the irregular shape compared to the total number of balls used to hit the circle will yield the area of the shape. Of course, the smaller the balls used, the more accurate the result.

We need contact. It’s only human. But if you’re not getting it from someone else, there’s nothing wrong with a little self-love, either. Just pointing that out. You strike me as uptight, and it’ll help. I self-love at least twice a day.

All the same, it strikes me as unfair that I still have to defend myself against her moral judgements. My continuing need for her approbation is pathetic. Twice now I have stopped myself on the street to remonstrate with her, a crazy old coot talking to himself.

Even after more than ten years as a suicide prevention activist, I still find those numbers—and the general public’s ignorance about them—staggering. I taught Dylan, as I had taught his brother before him, to protect himself from lightning strikes, snakebites, and hypothermia. I taught him to floss, to wear sunscreen, and the importance of checking his blind spot twice. As he became a teenager, I talked as openly as I could about the dangers of drinking and drug use, and I educated him about safe and ethical sexual behavior. It never crossed my mind that the gravest danger Dylan faced would not come from an external source at all, but from within himself. In

To answer your question, yes, you may kiss my ass. Normally I prefer to maintain my personal space, but you’re a Friend of the Pack and your services have proven useful once or twice. I strive to accommodate the wishes of persons friendly to my people. My only question is, would your kissing my ass be obeisance, grooming, or foreplay?” “You didn’t answer my question,” Curran said. “What will it be?” “No,” I said. Curran grinned and my heart made a little jump. I didn’t expect that. “That’s it? That’s your witty comeback?

…I notice that people always make gigantic arrangements for bathing when they are going anywhere near the water, but that they don’t bathe much when they are there. It is the same when you go to the sea-side. I always determine—when thinking over the matter in London—that I’ll get up early every morning, and go and have a dip before breakfast, and I religiously pack up a pair of drawers and a bath towel. I always get red bathing drawers. I rather fancy myself in red drawers. They suit my complexion so. But when I get to the sea I don’t feel somehow that I want that early morning bathe nearly so much as I did when I was in town. On the contrary, I feel more that I want to stop in bed till the last moment, and then come down and have my breakfast. Once or twice virtue has triumphed, and I have got out at six and half-dressed myself, and have taken my drawers and towel, and stumbled dismally off. But I haven’t enjoyed it. They seem to keep a specially cutting east wind, waiting for me, when I go to bathe in the early morning; and they pick out all the three-cornered stones, and put them on the top, and they sharpen up the rocks and cover the points over with a bit of sand so that I can’t see them, and they take the sea and put it two miles out, so that I have to huddle myself up in my arms and hop, shivering, through six inches of water. And when I do get to the sea, it is rough and quite insulting. One huge wave catches me up and chucks me in a sitting posture, as hard as ever it can, down on to a rock which has been put there for me. And, before I’ve said “Oh! Ugh!” and found out what has gone, the wave comes back and carries me out to mid-ocean. I begin to strike out frantically for the shore, and wonder if I shall ever see home and friends again, and wish I’d been kinder to my little sister when a boy (when I was a boy, I mean). Just when I have given up all hope, a wave retires and leaves me sprawling like a star-fish on the sand, and I get up and look back and find that I’ve been swimming for my life in two feet of water. I hop back and dress, and crawl home, where I have to pretend I liked it.

I said that we should be all right if we had some cigarettes. I only meant this as a joke; nevertheless half an hour later McNair appeared with two packets of Lucky Strike. He had braved the pitch-dark streets, roamed by Anarchist patrols who had twice stopped him at the pistol’s point and examined his papers. I shall not forget this small act of heroism. We were very glad of the cigarettes.

Nearly every plaintiff testified in almost exactly the same words, describing behavior that included the exact minimum requirements and even the precise legal phrases needed for a fault-based divorce. “The number of cruel spouses in Chicago, both male and female, who strike their marriage partners in the face exactly twice, without provocation, leaving visible marks, is remarkable,” noted the author of one 1950s divorce study.15

Look, do you believe in the institution of marriage?” “Of course.” “And you accept that such beautiful lightning cannot strike you twice?” “Well yes, I suppose—” “Then shouldn’t you get a ring on her as soon as possible?

I’ve met you twice, yes? And both times, you mesmerized me. We’re on our third try, aren’t we? What’s that saying?” “Three strikes and you’re out?” Ryan said flatly. Lars huffed indignantly. This stupid language. “Third time’s the charm.

Be fair, my friends! To be the empire of such an emperor, what a splendid destiny for a nation, when that nation is France, and when it adds its genius to the genius of such a man ! To appear and to reign, to march and to triumph, to have every capital for a staging area, to take his grenadiers and make kings of them, to decree the downfall of dynasties, to transfigure Europe at a double quickstep, so men feel, when you threaten, that you are laying your hand on the hilt of God’s sword, to follow in one man Hannibal , Caesar, and Charlemagne, to be the people of a man who mingles with your every dawn the glorious announcement of a battle won, to be wakened in the morning by the cannon of the Invalides, to hurl into the vault of day mighty words that blaze forever, Marengo, Arcola, Austerlitz, lena, Wagram ! To repeatedly call forth constellations of victories at the zenith of the centuries, to make the French Empire the successor of the Roman Empire, to be the grand nation and to bring forth the Grand Army, to send your legions flying across the whole earth as a mountain sends out its eagles, to vanquish, to rule, to strike thunder, to be for Europe a kind of golden people through glory, to sound through history a Titan’s fanfare, to conquer the world twice, by conquest and by resplendence, that is sublime. What could be greater?" "To be free," said Combeferre.

He could surprise her sometimes, she had found. It had emerged that it was dangerous to assume that he wouldn’t catch her nuances; he caught a lot more than he let on. Also, his accent was improving. Or was it just that she had stopped hearing it? And he had started beginning his sentences with a “well” or an “oh,” on occasion. He seemed to take great delight in discovering new idioms—“jumped the gun,” for instance, which had sprinkled his conversations for the past several days. (“I was thinking the evening news would be on, but I see that I…” and then a weighty pause before “jumped the gun!” he finished up triumphantly.) Now and then, an expression he used would strike her as eerily familiar. “Good grief,” he said, and “Geez,” and once or twice, “It was semi-okay.” At such moments, she felt like someone who had accidentally glimpsed her own reflection in a mirror.

Now that Dad was gone I was starting to see how mortality was bound up in things like that cold, arc-lit sky. How the world is full of signs and wonders that come, and go, and if you are lucky you might see them. Once, twice. Perhaps never again. The albums on my mother’s shelves are full of family photographs. But also other things. A starling with a crooked beak. A day of hoarfrost and smoke. A cherry tree thick with blossom. Thunderclouds, lightning strikes, comets and eclipses: celestial events terrifying in their blind distances but reassuring you, too, that the world is for ever, though you are only a blink in its course.

They all watched as Genya checked his pulse, his breathing. She shook her head. “Zoya,” said Sturmhond. His voice had the ring of command. Zoya sighed and pushed up her sleeves. “Unbutton his shirt.” “What are you doing?” Kaz asked as Genya undid Kuwei’s remaining buttons. His chest was narrow, his ribs visible, all of it spattered with the pig’s blood they’d encased in the wax bladder. “I’m either going to wake up his heart or cook him from the inside out,” said Zoya. “Stand back.” They did their best to obey in the cramped space. “What exactly does she mean by that?” Kaz asked Nina. “I’m not sure,” Nina admitted. Zoya had her hands out and her eyes closed. The air felt suddenly cool and moist. Inej inhaled deeply. “It smells like a storm.” Zoya opened her eyes and brought her hands together as if in prayer, rubbing her palms against each other briskly. Nina felt the pressure drop, tasted metal on her tongue. “I think … I think she’s summoning lightning.” “Is that safe?” asked Inej. “Not remotely,” said Sturmhond. “Has she at least done it before?” said Kaz. “For this purpose?” asked Sturmhond. “I’ve seen her do it twice. It worked splendidly. Once.” His voice was oddly familiar, and Nina had the sense they’d met before. “Ready?” Zoya asked. Genya shoved a thickly folded piece of fabric between Kuwei’s teeth and stepped back. With a shudder, Nina realized it was to keep him from biting his tongue. “I really hope she gets this right,” murmured Nina. “Not as much as Kuwei does,” said Kaz. “It’s tricky,” said Sturmhond. “Lightning doesn’t like a master. Zoya’s putting her own life at risk too.” “She didn’t strike me as the type,” Kaz said. “You’d be surprised,” Nina and Sturmhond replied in unison. Again, Nina had the eerie sensation that she knew him. She saw that Rotty had squeezed his eyes shut, unable to watch. Inej’s lips were moving in what Nina knew must be a prayer. A faint blue glow crackled between Zoya’s palms. She took a deep breath and slapped them down on Kuwei’s chest.

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

I called the Keep, introduced myself to the disembodied female voice on the phone, and asked for the Beast Lord. In less than fifteen seconds Curran came on the line. “I’m going into hiding with Jim.” The silence on the other side of the phone had a distinctly sinister undertone. Perhaps he thought that his kissing superpowers had derailed me. Fat chance. I would keep him from having to kill Derek. That was a burden he didn’t need. “I thought about this morning,” I said, doing my best to sound calm and reasonable. “I’ve instructed the super to change the locks. If I ever catch you in my apartment again, I will file a formal complaint. I’ve taken your food, under duress, but I did take it. You rescued me once or twice, and you’ve seen me near naked. I realize that you’re judging this situation by shapeshifter standards, and you expect me to fall on my back with my legs spread.” “Not necessarily.” His voice matched mine in calmness. “You can fall on your hands and knees if you prefer. Or against the wall. Or on the kitchen counter. I suppose I might let you be on top, if you make it worth my while.” I didn’t grind my teeth—he would’ve heard it. I had to be calm and reasonable. “My point is this: no.” “No?” “There will be no falling, no sex, no you and me.” “I wanted to kiss you when you were in your house. In Savannah.” Why the hell was my heart pounding? “And?” “You looked afraid. That wasn’t the reaction I was hoping for.” Be calm and reasonable. “You flatter yourself. You’re not that scary.” “After I kissed you this morning, you were afraid again. Right after you looked like you were about to melt.” Melt? “You’re scared there might be something there, between you and me.” Wow. I struggled to swallow that little tidbit. “Every time I think you’ve reached the limits of arrogance, you show me new heights. Truly, your egotism is like the Universe—ever expanding.” “You thought about dragging me into your bed this morning.” “I thought about stabbing you and running away screaming. You broke into my house without permission and slobbered all over me. You’re a damn lunatic! And don’t give me that line about smelling my desire; I know it’s bullshit.” “I didn’t need to smell you. I could tell by the dreamy look in your eyes and the way your tongue licked the inside of my mouth.” “Enjoy the memory,” I ground out. “That’s the last time it will ever happen.” “Go play your games with Jim. I’ll find you both when I need you.” Arrogant asshole. “I tell you what, if you find us before those three days run out, I’ll cook you a damn dinner and serve it to you naked.” “Is that a promise?” “Yes. Go fuck yourself.” I slammed the phone down. Well, then. That was perfectly reasonable. On the other side of the counter an older, heavyset man stared at me like I had sprouted horns. Glenda handed me the money I’d given her. “That was some conversation. It was worth ten bucks.

We have discarded the fixed costumes of our forefathers; every one must still dress like other people, but the fashion may change once or twice a year. We thus take care that when there is change it shall be for change's sake, and not from any idea of beauty of convenience; for the same idea of beauty or convenience would not strike all the world at the same moment, and be simultaneously thrown aside by all at another moment.

You may attempt to defy me, but I assure you, it is a waste of your energy." He spoke gently, that mocking male superiority setting her teeth on edge. "I am your lifemate, cherie, and I will give any order I deem necessary for your safety." She thumped his chest hard with her clenched fist. "You make me so mad, Gregori! I'm trying very hard to get along with you and your arrogant orders. You don't even change expression! We could be discussing the weather instead of having a fight." His eyebrows shot up. "This is no fight, ma petite. A fight is where we both are angry and have a contest of wills,a battle.There cannot be such a thing between us.I do not feel anger when I look at you,only the need to care for you and protect you. I am responsible for your health and safety, Savannah. I can do no other than to protect you,even from your own folly.You cannot hope to win.I know this absolutely, so there is no reason to become agitated over the issue." She thumped him again.He looked startled, then caught her flying fist in his hand and gently pried her fingers open.Very carefully he pressed a kiss into the exact center of her palm. "Savannah? Were you trying to hit me?" "I did hit you-twice,you scum.You didn't even notice the first time." She sounded very irritated with him. For some reason it made him want to smile. "I apologize,mon amour. Next time,I promise I will notice when you strike me." The hard edge to his mouth softened into a semblance of a smile. "I will even go so far as to pretend that it hurts,if you wish it." Her blue eyes flashed at him. "Ha,ha, ha, you're so funny,Gregori. Stop being so smug." "It is not being smug to know my own power, cherie. I am trying to care for you as best I know how.YOu do not make it easy for me. I find myself making poor decisions just to see that smile on your face," he admitted reluctantly. Savannah laid her head on his chest. "I'm sorry I'm so much trouble, Gregori." She wasn't certain if that was the strict truth.She rather liked stirring him up.

At four degrees, there would be eight million more cases of dengue fever each year in Latin America alone and close to annual global food crises. There could be 9 percent more heat-related deaths. Damages from river flooding would grow thirtyfold in Bangladesh, twentyfold in India, and as much as sixtyfold in the United Kingdom. In certain places, six climate-driven natural disasters could strike simultaneously, and, globally, damages could pass $600 trillion—more than twice the wealth as exists in the world today. Conflict and warfare could double.

BIN LADEN DETERMINED TO STRIKE IN U.S. was the headline on the President’s Daily Brief presented to Bush at his Crawford, Texas, ranch on August 6. The report addressed questions Bush had asked about domestic threats and included the possibility that bin Laden operatives would seek to hijack airplanes. The hijacking threat, mentioned twice, was one of several possibilities outlined. There was no specific information about when or where such an attack might occur. Tenet said the intelligence indicated that al Qaeda might have delayed a major attack.30

The sexton studied me; again he clicked his tongue twice. “The boy, yes,” he said in his soft voice. “I do not much care for childhood. It is a state of terrible vulnerability, and is therefore unnatural and incompatible with human life. Everyone will cut you, strike you, cheat you, everyone will offer you suffering when goodness should reign. And because children can do nothing for themselves, they need good advocates, good parents. But a good parent is as rare as snow in summer, I am afraid. Well.” He smiled sadly. “It is possible I have some prejudices in this respect.” “You are an orphan yourself, are you

One of the general patterns of good (i.e., striking and memorable) writing is the effect of repetition. If you use a certain element—a plot device, an image, a noticeable phrase—once, readers may or may not notice it consciously, but it doesn’t disturb the flow of their reading. If you use that element twice, they won’t notice it consciously—but they will notice it subconsciously, and it will add to the resonance of the writing or to their sense of depth and involvement (and if it’s a plot device, it will heighten the dramatic tension). But if you use that element three times, everybody will notice it the third time you do it.

If both you and your plane are on time, the airport is merely a diffuse, short, miserable prelude to the intense, long, miserable plane trip. But what if there's five hours between your arrival and your connecting flight, or your plane is late arriving and you've missed your connection, or the connecting flight is late, or the staff of another airline are striking for a wage-benefit package and the government has not yet ordered out the National Guard to control this threat to international capitalism so your airline staff is trying to handle twice as many people as usual, or there are tornadoes or thunderstorms or blizzards or little important bits of the plane missing or any of the thousand other reasons (never under any circumstances the fault of the airlines, and rarely explained at the time) why those who go places on airplanes sit and sit and sit and sit in airports, not going anywhere? In this, probably its true aspect, the airport is not a prelude to travel, not a place of transition: it is a stop. A blockage. A constipation. The airport is where you can't go anywhere else. A nonplace in which time does not pass and there is no hope of any meaningful existence. A terminus: the end. The airport offers nothing to any human being except access to the interval between planes.

Not everyone in the village was happy with the idea of having an Untouchable man's statue put up at the entrance. Particularly not an Untouchable who carried a weapon. They felt it would give out the wrong message, give people ideas. Three weeks after the statue went up, the rifle on its soldier went missing. Sepoy S. Murugesan's family tried to file a complaint, but the police refused to register a case, saying that the rifle must have fallen off or simply disintegrated due to the use of substandard cement- a fairly common malpractice- and that nobody could be blamed. A month later the statue's hands were cut off. Once again the police refused to register a case, although this time they sniggered knowingly and did not even bother to offer a reason. Two weeks after the amputation of its hands, the statue of Sepoy S. Murugesan was beheaded. There were a few days of tension. People from nearby villages who belonged to the same caste as S. Murugesan organized a protest. They began a relay hunger strike at the base of the statue. A local court said it would constitute a magisterial committee to look into the matter. In the meanwhile it ordered a status quo. The hunger strike was discontinued. The magisterial committee was never constituted. In some countries, some soldiers die twice.

I know what the problem is.” Curran pulled his shoulders back and flexed, warming up a little. I stole a glance. He had decided to fight in jeans and an old black T-shirt, from which he’d torn the sleeves. Probably his workout shirt. His biceps were carved, the muscle defined and built by countless exertions, neither too bulky nor too lean. Perfect. Kissing him might make me guilty of catastrophically bad judgment, but at least nobody could fault my taste. The trick was not to kiss him again. Once could be an accident; twice was trouble. “You said something?” I arched an eyebrow at him. Nonchalance—best camouflage for drooling. Both the werebison and the swordsman looked ready to charge: the muscles of their legs tense, leaning forward slightly on their toes. They seemed to be terribly sure that we would stay in one place and wait for them. Curran was looking at their legs, too. They must be expecting a distraction from the lamia. She sat cocooned in magic, holding on with both hands as it strained on its leash. “I said, I know why you’re afraid to fight with me.” “And why is that?” If he flexed again, I’d have to implement emergency measures. Maybe I could kick some sand at him or something. Hard to look hot brushing sand out of your eyes. “You want me.” Oh boy. “You can’t resist my subtle charm, so you’re afraid you’re going to make a spectacle out of yourself.” “You know what? Don’t talk to me.

The flowering of the consumerist ethic is manifested most clearly in the food market. Traditional agricultural societies lived in the awful shade of starvation. In the affluent world of today one of the leading health problems is obesity, which strikes the poor (who stuff themselves with hamburgers and pizzas) even more severely than the rich (who eat organic salads and fruit smoothies). Each year the US population spends more money on diets than the amount needed to feed all the hungry people in the rest of the world. Obesity is a double victory for consumerism. Instead of eating little, which will lead to economic contraction, people eat too much and then buy diet products – contributing to economic growth twice over.

He had a wild yellow beard and long, tangled hair that stood out from his head in a way that made it seem too large for his shoulders, though they were twice the width of mine. But these were not the things I noticed first. Nor, I think, the things that anyone would notice first. Before anything else, I saw his eyes: They were huge, and yellow as gold. And after that, I saw the way he moved. Cim Glowing is beautiful, and walks with liquid grace; but sometimes she looks clumsy beside him. I think I had guessed who he was before she called his name. “Ketin,” she said, and raised the endieva wand as though to strike, backing away until her shoulders were against the wall. “Yes, Ketin,” the bearded man said. His voice was like a storm five kilometers off.

Suppose the city of Sparta to be deserted, and nothing left but the temples and the ground-plan, distant ages would be very unwilling to believe that the power of the Lacedaemonians was at all equal to their fame. And yet they own two-fifths of the Peloponnesus, and are acknowledged leaders of the whole, as well as of numerous allies in the rest of Hellas.But their city is not built continuously, and has no splendid temples or other edifices; it rather resembles a group of villages like the ancient towns of Hellas, and would therefore make a poor show. Whereas, if the same fate befell the Athenians, the ruins of Athens would strike the eye, and we should infer their power to have been twice as great as it really is. We ought not then to be unduly sceptical. The greatness of cities should be estimated by their real power and not by appearances. (Book 1 Chapter 10.2-3)

For a moment, I thought I heard laughter, the click of one croquet ball striking another, a dog barking. I stared at the empty yard, trying hard to see what Great-grandfather saw, but nothing shifted, nothing changed. If the Tylers were playing croquet, they were visible to him and him alone. The only dog in sight was Binky. Running across the lawn to meet him, I took the stick he carried and threw it as hard as I could. It sailed across the sky, and Binky dashed after it. As the dog disappeared into the bushes, I looked up at the attic window and remembered the flash of white I’d seen the day I arrived--my first glimpse of Andrew. Funny to think I’d been scared. Nothing stirred in the attic now. No one watched, no one waited. Deep in my pocket, I touched the red bull’s-eye, warm as blood and twice as lucky. The marbles were mine for keeps. They were safe, and so was Andrew.

The real loser in the eastern forests has been the songbird. One of the most striking losses was the Carolina parakeet, a lovely, innocuous bird whose numbers in the wild were possibly exceeded only by the unbelievably numerous passenger pigeon. (When the first pilgrims came to America there were an estimated nine billion passenger pigeons—more than twice the number of all birds found in America today.) Both were hunted out of existence—the passenger pigeon for pig feed and the simple joy of blasting volumes of birds from the sky with blind ease, the Carolina parakeet because it ate farmers’ fruit and had a striking plumage that made a lovely ladies’ hat. In 1914, the last surviving members of each species died within weeks of each other in captivity. A similar unhappy fate awaited the delightful Bachman’s warbler. Always rare, it was said to have one of the loveliest songs of all birds. For years it escaped detection, but in 1939, two birders, operating independently in different places, coincidentally saw a Bachman’s warbler within two days of each other. Both shot the birds (nice work, boys!), and that, it appears, was that for the Bachman’s warbler. But there are almost certainly others that disappeared before anyone much noticed. John James Audubon painted three species of bird—the small-headed flycatcher, the carbonated warbler, and the Blue Mountain warbler—that have not been seen by anyone since. The same is true of Townsend’s bunting, of which there is one stuffed specimen in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. Between the 1940s and 1980s, the populations of migratory songbirds fell by 50 percent in the eastern United States (in large part because of loss of breeding sites and other vital wintering habitats in Latin America) and by some estimates are continuing to fall by 3 percent or so a year. Seventy percent of all eastern bird species have seen population declines since the 1960s. These days, the woods are a pretty quiet place.

The flowering of the consumerist ethic is manifested most clearly in the food market. Traditional agricultural societies lived in the awful shade of starvation. In the affluent world of today one of the leading health problems is obesity, which strikes the poor who stuff themselves with hamburgers and pizzas even more severely than the rich who eat organic salads and fruit smoothies. Each year the US population spends more money on diets than the amount needed to feed all the hungry people in the rest of the world. Obesity is a double victory for consumerism. Instead of eating little, which will lead to economic contraction, people eat too much and then buy diet products – contributing to economic growth twice over. In medieval Europe, aristocrats spent their money carelessly on extravagant luxuries, whereas peasants lived frugally, minding every penny. Today, the tables have turned. The rich take great care managing their assets and investments, while the less well heeled go into debt buying cars and televisions they don’t really need.

5And David went out  fand was successful wherever Saul sent him, so that Saul set him over the men of war. And this was good in the sight of all the people and also in the sight of Saul’s servants. Saul’s Jealousy of David 6As they were coming home, when David returned from striking down the Philistine,  gthe women came out of all the cities of Israel, singing and dancing, to meet King Saul, with tambourines, with songs of joy, and with musical instruments. [1] 7And the women  hsang to one another as they celebrated, i“Saul has struck down his thousands, and David his ten thousands.” 8And Saul was very angry, and this saying displeased him. He said, “They have ascribed to David ten thousands, and to me they have ascribed thousands, and what more can he have but  jthe kingdom?” 9And Saul eyed David from that day on. 10The next day  ka harmful spirit from God rushed upon Saul, and  lhe raved within his house while David was  mplaying the lyre, as he did day by day.  nSaul had his spear in his hand. 11And Saul  ohurled the spear, for he thought, “I will pin David to the wall.” But David evaded him twice. 12

Phoebe entered the room and stopped with a head-to-toe quiver, like an arrow striking a target, at the sight of a half-naked West Ravenel. He was facing away from her, standing barefoot at an old-fashioned washstand as he blotted his neck and chest with a length of toweling. The robe had been tossed to a chair, leaving him dressed only in a pair of trousers that rode dangerously low on his hips. Henry had always seemed so much smaller without his clothes, vulnerable without the protection of civilized layers. But this man, all rippling muscle and bronzed skin and coiled energy, appeared twice as large. The room scarcely seemed able to contain him. He was big-boned and lean, his back flexing as he lifted a goblet of water and drank thirstily. Phoebe's helpless gaze followed the long groove of his spine down to his hips. The loose edge of a pair of fawn-colored trousers, untethered by braces, dipped low enough to reveal a shocking absence of undergarments. How could a gentleman go without wearing drawers? It was the most indecent thing she'd ever seen. The inside of her head was scalded by her own thoughts.

The Praying Mantis Visits A Penthouse The praying Mantis with its length of straw Out of nowhere's forehead born full armed Engaged the century at my terrace door. Focused at inches the dinosaur insect sends Broadsides of epic stillness at my eye, Above the deafening projects of the age. My love, who fears the thunder of its poise, Has seen it and cries out. The clouds like curls Fall in my faith as I seize a stick to stop This Martian raid distilled to a straw with legs, To wisps of prowess. Bristling with motionlessness The Mantis prays to the Stick twice armed with Man. I strike, the stick whistles, shearing off two legs Which run off by themselves beneath some boards. The Mantis spreads out tints of batlike wing, The many colored pennants of its blood, And hugs my weapon; the frantic greens come out, the reds and yellows blurt out from the straw, All sinews doubtless screaming insect death. Against the railing's edge I knock the stick Sending that gay mad body into the gulf. Such noisy trappings in defeat wake doubts. I search my mind for possible wounds and feel The victim's body heavy on the victor's heart.

Growing up I was afraid of heights; if I looked down I got instantly queasy. So what did I decide to do a few years ago? Go skydiving with my sisters. I stood on the ground, waiting for my turn, watching them jump out of a small plane strapped to some dude’s back. All I could see were these tiny blond dots floating in the air. Then one of the instructors (thankfully he was on his own and not tied to a Hough!) lost control of his chute. It got twisted and he began to spiral toward the ground. Everyone watching below gasped; he was plunging to his death. At the very last second, he pulled his auxiliary chute and glided down to safety. After landing, he walked right over to me. “Phew, that was a close one. Okay, Derek, you’re up next. You’re comin’ with me.” I felt my stomach leap into my throat. Are you serious? You’re a dead man walking and you want me to go up with you? Then reason kicked in: What was the likelihood lightning would strike twice and his chute would fail again? And if it did, clearly the guy knew how to get out of trouble. “Um, okay…I guess.” I read the disclaimer and signed it. In a nutshell, it said, “If you die, we’re not responsible.” Thanks a lot.

Piketty and some colleagues would later publish a paper containing a startling fact about 2014, the year of Cohen’s graduation and debut as a self-supporting earner. The study showed that a college graduate like Cohen, on the safe assumption that she ended up in the top 10 percent of earners, would be making more than twice as much before taxes as a similarly situated person in 1980. If Cohen entered the top 1 percent of earners, her income would be more than triple what a 1 percenter earned in her parents’ day—an average of $1.3 million a year for that elite group versus $428,000 in 1980, adjusted for inflation. On the narrow chance that she entered the top 0.001 percent, her income would be more than seven times higher than in 1980, with a cohort average of $122 million. The study included the striking fact that the bottom half of Americans had over this same span seen their average pretax income rise from $16,000 to $16,200. One hundred seventeen million people had, in other words, been “completely shut off from economic growth since the 1970s,” Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman wrote. A generation’s worth of mind-bending innovation had delivered scant progress for half of Americans.

I’m here to horrify you,” he said. And then, because he couldn’t bear it any longer, he reached out and pulled her to him. She was warm and soft in his arms, and she smelled so deliciously right. He could have inhaled her scent for hours. “Hugo—” He didn’t want to talk. He didn’t want to answer any questions. He didn’t know who he was or what he wanted or what dreams would come to fill his heart. He only knew that if he couldn’t have her, nothing would ever be right again. And so he kissed her. He tasted her, sweet and steady against him, put his hand in the small of her back and drew her toward him. She kissed him back. “I love you,” he said. The truth took root inside him. For the first time in years, the dark words of his past receded. “But, Hugo…” He set his fingers over her lips. “Let me do this,” he said. “I thought I had to prove myself with money and accomplishments. But those will always ring hollow. They will never be enough. I want to be somebody. Let me be your husband. Let me be the father of your child—of all your children. I got more satisfaction from striking Clermont than I did from any success I found in business.” She pulled back from him. “You struck Clermont?” “Twice. And—that reminds me—I blackmailed him into promising to send your child to Eton.” Hugo tightened his grip around her. “I’ve never pretended to be a good man, you know. It’s just that…I’m yours.” He leaned his head against hers. Her breath was warm against his face. “Did you hit him hard?” “I’m afraid I did.” “That’s my Hugo.” There was a grim satisfaction in her voice. “I love you, you know. If you hadn’t come, as soon as winter set in and the ground became too hard to work, I’d planned to come for you.” “Well, I’m glad I came to my senses,” Hugo said. “You shouldn’t have traveled, not in your condition. Yet curiosity impels me to inquire. What did you plan to do, once you arrived?” “Allow me to demonstrate.” She lifted her face to his, traced the line of his jaw with her fingers. “This.” She pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth. “And this.” She kissed the other corner. “And…” She took his mouth full on, her lips soft against his, tasting of all the things he’d most wanted. “I’d do that,” she whispered, “until you were forced to admit you loved me.” “I love you.” “Well, that’s no fun.” She kissed him again. “Now what excuse do I have?” He drew in a shuddering breath and pulled her closer. “You could make me say it again,” he whispered. “Make me say it always. Make me say it so often that you never have cause to doubt. I love you.

The calf is capable of walking quite well now," Dazu said. "He never stumbles." "But I told you to carry him back here," the teacher said. "The first thing a soldier must learn is to obey orders." Every day, the calf grew a little heavier, and every day, Dazu had to struggle a little harder. He would collapse, exhausted, when he finally got to the ranch, and the calf would bound out of his arms, glad to be able to walk on his own and stretch out. When winter rolled around again, Médo handed him a wooden sword and asked him to strike as hard as he could at the practice dummy. Dazu looked with distaste at the crude weapon with no edge, but he swung obediently. The wooden dummy fell in half, cut clean through. He looked at the sword in his hand with wonder. "It's not the sword," his teacher said. "Have you looked at yourself lately?" He brought Dazu to stand in front of a brightly polished shield. The young man could hardly recognize the reflection. His shoulders filled the frame of the mirror. His arms and thighs were twice as thick as he remembered, and his chest bulged over his narrow waist. "A great warrior trusts not his weapons, but himself. When you possess true strength, you can deal a killing blow even if all you have is a blade of grass. "Now you're finally ready to learn from me. But first, go thank the calf for making you strong.

They seemed so right together-both of them sophisticated, dark-haired, and striking; no doubt they had much in common, she thought a little dismally as she picked up her knife and fork and went to work on her lobster. Beside her, Lord Howard leaned close and teased, “It’s dead, you know.” Elizabeth glanced blankly at him, and he nodded to the lobster she was still sawing needlessly upon. “It’s dead,” he repeated. “There’s no need to try to kill it twice.” Mortified, Elizabeth smiled and sighed and thereafter made an all-out effort to ingratiate herself with the rest of the party at their table. As Lord Howard had forewarned the gentlemen, who by now had all seen or heard about her escapade in the card room, were noticeably cooler, and so Elizabeth tried ever harder to be her most engaging self. It was only the second time in her life she’d actually used the feminine wiles she was born with-the first time being her first encounter with Ian Thornton in the garden-and she was a little amazed by her easy success. One by one the men at the table unbent enough to talk and laugh with her. During that long, trying hour Elizabeth repeatedly had the strange feeling that Ian was watching her, and toward the end, when she could endure it no longer, she did glance at the place where he was seated. His narrowed amber eyes were leveled on her face, and Elizabeth couldn’t tell whether he disapproved of this flirtatious side of her or whether he was puzzled by it. “Would you permit me to offer to stand in for my cousin tomorrow,” Lord Howard said as the endless meal came to an end and the guests began to arise, “and escort you to the village?” It was the moment of reckoning, the moment when Elizabeth had to decide whether she was going to meet Ian at the cottage or not. Actually, there was no real decision to make, and she knew it. With a bright, artificial smile Elizabeth said, “Thank you.” “We’re to leave at half past ten, and I understand there are to be the usual entertainments-sopping and a late luncheon at the local inn, followed by a ride to enjoy the various prospects of the local countryside.” It sounded horribly dull to Elizabeth at that moment. “It sounds lovely,” she exclaimed with such fervor that Lord Howard shot her a startled look. “Are you feeling well?” he asked, his worried gaze taking in her flushed cheeks and overbright eyes. “I’ve never felt better,” she said, her mind on getting away-upstairs to the sanity and quiet of her bedchamber. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have the headache and should like to retire,” she said, leaving behind her a baffled Lord Howard. She was partway up the stairs before it dawned on her what she’d actually said. She stopped in midstep, then gave her head a shake and slowly continued on. She didn’t particularly care what Lord Howard-her fiance’s own cousin-thought. And she was too miserable to stop and consider how very odd that was.

The slim chestnut-haired woman had been battering an assailant twice her size with precisely aimed strikes of her cane. Ethan had loved the way she'd done it, as if attending to some necessary task, like carrying a household bin out to the rubbish carter. Her face had been unexpectedly young, her complexion clean-scrubbed and as smooth as a tablet of white soap. All cheekbones and cool green eyes, with a sharp little rampart of a chin. But amidst the elegant angles and edges of her features, there was a valentine of a mouth, tender and vulnerable, the upper lip nearly as full as the lower. A mouth with such pretty curves that it did something to Ethan's knees every time he saw it. After that first encounter, Ethan had taken care to avoid Garrett Gibson, knowing she would be trouble for him, possibly even worse than he would be for her. But last month he'd gone to visit her at the medical clinic where she worked, for information concerning one of her patients, and his fascination had ignited all over again. Everything about Garrett Gibson was... delicious. The dissecting gaze, the voice as crisp as the icing on a lemon cake. The compassion that drove her to treat the undeserving poor as well as the deserving. The purposeful walk, the relentless energy, the self-satisfaction of a woman who neither concealed nor apologized for her own intelligence. She was sunlight and steel, spun into a substance he'd never encountered before. The mere thought of her left him like a stray coal on the hearth.

Jane and Mr. Nobley entered the great hall, the ceiling dazzling with thousands of real candles that put fire into the white dresses and cravats. Five musicians were seated on a dais--a cello and two violins (or maybe a viola?), a harpsichord, and some kind of wind instrument. From keys and strings, they coaxed a grand prelude to the minuet. Jane looked at everything, smiling at the amusement park novelty of it all. She looked at Mr. Nobley. He was beaming at her. At last. “You are stunning,” he said, and every inch of him seemed to swear that it was true. “Oh,” she said. He kissed her gloved fingers. He was still smiling. There was something different about him tonight, and she couldn’t place what it was. Some new plot twist, she presumed. She was eager to roll around in all the plot she could on her last night, though once or twice her eyes strayed to spot Martin. Mr. Nobley stood opposite her in a line of ten men. She watched Amelia and Captain East perform the figures. They held each other’s gazes, they smiled with the elation of new love. All very convincing. Poor Amelia, thought Jane. It was a bit cruel, now that she thought about it, all these actors who made women fall in love with them. Amelia seemed so tenderhearted, and Miss Charming and her heaving breasts so delighted with this world. Jane caught sight of a very striking Colonel Andrews who, now that she watched him dance, might just be gay. Jane felt a thrumming of foreboding. All the ladies were so happy and open-hearted and eager to love. What would happen to them in the dregs of tomorrow?

The newspapers, according to their political colour, urged punishment, eradication, colonisation or a crusade against the newts, a general strike, resignation of the government, the arrest of newt owners, the arrest of communist leaders and agitators and many other protective measures of this sort. People began frantically to stockpile food when rumours of the shores and ports being closed off began to spread, and the prices of goods of every sort soared; riots caused by rising prices broke out in the industrial cities; the stock exchange was closed for three days. It was simply the more worrying and dangerous than it had been at any time over the previous three or four months. But this was when the minister for agriculture, Monsieur Monti, stepped dexterously in. He gave orders that several hundred loads of apples for the newts should be discharged into the sea twice a week along the French coasts, at government cost, of course. This measure was remarkably successful in pacifying both the newts and the villagers in Normandy and elsewhere. But Monsieur Monti went even further: there had long been deep and serious disturbances in the wine-growing regions, resulting from a lack of turnover, so he ordered that the state should provide each newt with a half litre of white wine per day. At first the newts did not know what to do with this wine because it caused them serious diarrhoea and they poured it into the sea; but with a little time they clearly became used to it, and it was noticed that from then on the newts would show a lot more enthusiasm for sex, although with lower fertility rates than before. In this way, problems to do with the newts and with agriculture were solved in one stroke; fear and tension were assuaged, and, in short, the next time there was another government crisis, caused by the financial scandal around Madame Töppler, the clever and well proven Monsieur Monti became the minister for marine affairs in the new cabinet.

Here are two examples of just how strange and unique humans can be when they go about harming one another and caring for one another. The first example involves, well, my wife. So we’re in the minivan, our kids in the back, my wife driving. And this complete jerk cuts us off, almost causing an accident, and in a way that makes it clear that it wasn’t distractedness on his part, just sheer selfishness. My wife honks at him, and he flips us off. We’re livid, incensed. Asshole-where’s-the-cops-when-you-need-them, etc. And suddenly my wife announces that we’re going to follow him, make him a little nervous. I’m still furious, but this doesn’t strike me as the most prudent thing in the world. Nonetheless, my wife starts trailing him, right on his rear. After a few minutes the guy’s driving evasively, but my wife’s on him. Finally both cars stop at a red light, one that we know is a long one. Another car is stopped in front of the villain. He’s not going anywhere. Suddenly my wife grabs something from the front seat divider, opens her door, and says, “Now he’s going to be sorry.” I rouse myself feebly—“Uh, honey, do you really think this is such a goo—” But she’s out of the car, starts pounding on his window. I hurry over just in time to hear my wife say, “If you could do something that mean to another person, you probably need this,” in a venomous voice. She then flings something in the window. She returns to the car triumphant, just glorious. “What did you throw in there!?” She’s not talking yet. The light turns green, there’s no one behind us, and we just sit there. The thug’s car starts to blink a very sensible turn indicator, makes a slow turn, and heads down a side street into the dark at, like, five miles an hour. If it’s possible for a car to look ashamed, this car was doing it. “Honey, what did you throw in there, tell me?” She allows herself a small, malicious grin. “A grape lollipop.” I was awed by her savage passive-aggressiveness—“You’re such a mean, awful human that something must have gone really wrong in your childhood, and maybe this lollipop will help correct that just a little.” That guy was going to think twice before screwing with us again. I swelled with pride and love.

If we consider the possibility that all women–from the infant suckling her mother’s breast, to the grown woman experiencing orgasmic sensations while suckling her own child, perhaps recalling her mother’s milk-smell in her own; to two women, like Virginia Woolf’s Chloe and Olivia, who share a laboratory; to the woman dying at ninety, touched and handled by women–exist on a lesbian continuum, we can see ourselves as moving in and out of this continuum, whether we identify ourselves as lesbian or not. It allows us to connect aspects of woman-identification as diverse as the impudent, intimate girl-friendships of eight- or nine-year-olds and the banding together of those women of the twelfth and fifteenth centuries known as Beguines who “shared houses, rented to one another, bequeathed houses to their room-mates … in cheap subdivided houses in the artisans’ area of town,” who “practiced Christian virtue on their own, dressing and living simply and not associating with men,” who earned their livings as spinners, bakers, nurses, or ran schools for young girls, and who managed–until the Church forced them to disperse–to live independent both of marriage and of conventual restrictions. It allows us to connect these women with the more celebrated “Lesbians” of the women’s school around Sappho of the seventh century B.C.; with the secret sororities and economic networks reported among African women; and with the Chinese marriage resistance sisterhoods–communities of women who refused marriage, or who if married often refused to consummate their marriages and soon left their husbands–the only women in China who were not footbound and who, Agnes Smedley tells us, welcomed the births of daughters and organized successful women’s strikes in the silk mills. It allows us to connect and compare disparate individual instances of marriage resistance: for example, the type of autonomy claimed by Emily Dickinson, a nineteenth-century white woman genius, with the strategies available to Zora Neale Hurston, a twentieth-century black woman genius. Dickinson never married, had tenuous intellectual friendships with men, lived self-convented in her genteel father’s house, and wrote a lifetime of passionate letters to her sister-in-law Sue Gilbert and a smaller group of such letters to her friend Kate Scott Anthon. Hurston married twice but soon left each husband, scrambled her way from Florida to Harlem to Columbia University to Haiti and finally back to Florida, moved in and out of white patronage and poverty, professional success and failure; her survival relationships were all with women, beginning with her mother. Both of these women in their vastly different circumstances were marriage resisters, committed to their own work and selfhood, and were later characterized as “apolitical ”. Both were drawn to men of intellectual quality; for both of them women provided the ongoing fascination and sustenance of life.

As Wheen has pointed out, ‘In the twenty years between 1950 and 1970… a state of emergency had been declared only twice, for the national rail strike of 1955 and the seamen’s strike of 1966. During Ted Heath’s brief and calamitous premiership, between June 1970 and February 1974, he declared no fewer than five.’27 Thus, on either side of the momentous decision to join the European project, Britain was in crisis mode. These five national emergencies may have planted the seeds of one of the tropes that would surface in the coming decades and flower in Brexit: the idea that Britain was, in some way, still at war.

Aurora shrugged. “They do like jumping to conclusions, and they have arrested me twice. What’s to say the killer won’t strike again before the right arrest is made?

Now that Dad was gone I was starting to see how mortality was bound up in things like that cold, arc-lit sky. How the world is full of signs and wonders that come, and go, and if you are lucky you might see them. Once, twice. Perhaps never again. The albums on my mother's shelves are full of family photographs. But also other things. A starling with a crooked beak. A day of hoarfrost and smoke. Cherry tree thick with blossom. Thunderclouds, lightning strikes, comets and eclipses: celestial events terrifying in their blind distances but reassuring you, too, that the world is for ever though you are only a blink in its course

I taught Dylan, as I had taught his brother before him, to protect himself from lightning strikes, snakebites, and hypothermia. I taught him to floss, to wear sunscreen, and the importance of checking his blind spot twice. As he became a teenager, I talked as openly as I could about the dangers of drinking and drug use, and I educated him about safe and ethical sexual behavior. It never crossed my mind that the gravest danger Dylan faced would not come from an external source at all, but from within himself.

Next time you’re running, count the times your right foot strikes the ground in 20 seconds. Multiply by three and you’ll have your stride rate per minute. (One stride equals two steps, so your steps per minute will be twice your stride rate.) Now comes the good part: Speed up until you’re running at 85 to 90 strides per minute.

Man, no wonder Kat left you. You smell, your hair is knotted, and you haven't shaved in how many days? Forget fighting the gallu. One whiff of you would kill them." He looked at Kish as he stood up. "Don't strike a match. The alcohol fumes alone would send him up like a Roman candle." "Shut up," Sin snarled as he got up and grabbed the half-empty bottle of Jack Daniel's off the coffee table. He headed for his bedroom so that he wouldn't have to put up with their nagging anymore. At least that was the plan, but the walls were so thin, he couldn't help but overhear them. "When was the last time he changed those clothes?" Damien asked. "I think it was the last time he bathed ... the day Kat left." Sin heard the sound of glasses clinking together. Damien cursed. "How much shit is he drinking?" "Let me put it to you this way ... I restock the cabinet twice a day now." "Damn, how can he fight the demons and be that wasted?" "I think you were right earlier. He strikes a match and breathes at them. Like a human blowtorch.

He stated that he thought someone had quietly carried her downstairs to the basement and that person had then either stabbed JonBenét or struck a blow to her head with a hammer. A chill ran down the back of my neck as I watched Burke twice physically imitate the act of striking a blow with his right arm during his casual discussion of this matter. I stopped and replayed that section of the video several times. It seemed absolutely incredible, but Burke was replicating exactly the type of an over-the-arm blow that would have been responsible for the head injury sustained by JonBenét.

Lightning didn’t strike twice, except when it did.

Environmentalists probably know already about “the Great Pacific garbage patch”—that mass of plastic, twice the size of Texas, floating freely in the Pacific Ocean. It is not actually an island—in fact, it is not actually a stable mass, only rhetorically convenient for us to think of it that way. And it is mostly composed of larger-scale plastics, of the kind visible to the human eye. The microscopic bits—700,000 of them can be released into the surrounding environment by a single washing-machine cycle—are more insidious. And, believe it or not, more pervasive: a quarter of fish sold in Indonesia and California contain plastics, according to one recent study. European eaters of shellfish, one estimate has suggested, consume at least 11,000 bits each year. The direct effect on ocean life is even more striking. The total number of marine species said to be adversely affected by plastic pollution has risen from 260 in 1995, when the first assessment was carried out, to 690 in 2015 and 1,450 in 2018. A majority of fish tested in the Great Lakes contained microplastics, as did the guts of 73 percent of fish surveyed in the northwest Atlantic. One U.K. supermarket study found that every 100 grams of mussels were infested with 70 particles of plastic. Some fish have learned to eat plastic, and certain species of krill are now functioning as plastic processing plants, churning microplastics into smaller bits that scientists are now calling “nanoplastics.” But krill can’t grind it all down; in one square mile of water near Toronto, 3.4 million microplastic particles were recently trawled. Of course, seabirds are not immune: one researcher found 225 pieces of plastic in the stomach of a single three-month-old chick, weighing 10 percent of its body mass—the equivalent of an average human carrying about ten to twenty pounds of plastic in a distended belly. (“Imagine having to take your first flight out to sea with all that in your stomach,” the researcher told the Financial Times, adding: “Around the world, seabirds are declining faster than any other bird group.”) Microplastics have been found in beer, honey, and sixteen of seventeen tested brands of commercial sea salt, across eight different countries. The more we test, the more we find; and while nobody yet knows the health impact on humans, in the oceans a plastic microbead is said to be one million times more toxic than the water around it. Chances are, if we started slicing open human cadavers to look for microplastics—as we are beginning to do with tau proteins, the supposed markers of CTE and Alzheimer’s—we’d be finding plastic in our own flesh, too. We can breathe in microplastics, even when indoors, where they’ve been detected suspended in the air, and do already drink them: they are found in the tap water of 94 percent of all tested American cities. And global plastic production is expected to triple by 2050, when there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish.

Specifically, the software puts the figure of interest in a figure of known area, such as a circle, and randomly strikes it with many tiny balls, never targeting the same spot twice. After a large number of balls, the proportion of balls that fall within the irregular shape compared to the total number of balls used to hit the circle will yield the area of the shape. Of course, the smaller the balls used, the more accurate the result.

Imagine you and I were eternal— A Goddess and a God capable of miracles, Standing as one at the beginning of time. Every time you kiss me, a world is created. Every time I kiss you, a world vanishes. When we kiss, time stops again. Between two kisses, time continues to flow. You kiss me first, for your breath ruptures with creativity. One kiss, and a universe is brought to life— A perfect world full of beauty and pain. Wait, I whisper—another universe would be one too many. I kiss you back, and the world vanishes. Once again we are all alone, just you and me. It took one cosmic unit of time for you to kiss me And just half of that time, for me to kiss you back. And a half of that half for you to kiss me again. We take infinitely many turns: Who can tell if this game is one of lust or a brawl? Each kiss betides twice faster than the last. When the clock strikes the second cosmic unit of time Who’ll be the winner between the two of us? If you kiss me last, I promise we’ll be dancing through a multiverse If I kiss you last, then everything will fall into oblivion— even this eternal love.

Imagine you and I were eternal— A Goddess and a God capable of miracles, Standing as one at the beginning of time. Every time you kiss me, a world is created. Every time I kiss you, a world vanishes. When we kiss, time stops again. Between two kisses, time continues to flow. You kiss me first, for your breath ruptures with creativity. One kiss, and a universe is brought to life— A perfect world full of beauty and pain. Wait, I whisper—another universe would be one too many. I kiss you back, and the world vanishes. Once again we are all alone, just you and me. It took one cosmic unit of time for you to kiss me And just half of that time, for me to kiss you back. And a half of that half for you to kiss me again. We take infinitely many turns: Who can tell if this game is one of lust or a brawl? Each kiss betides twice faster than the last. When the clock strikes the second cosmic unit of time Who’ll be the winner between the two of us? If you kiss me last, I promise we’ll be dancing through a multiverse If I kiss you last, then everything will fall into oblivion— even this eternal love.

Within the SCCS societies there is a striking correlation between the prestige that warriors enjoyed and the presence of early democracy. We see in Figure 3.3 that when warriors were accorded great prestige, the likelihood of having council governance was about twice as high as when warriors were accorded no particular prestige.

Upon arriving we went straight into the school. Shepherd boys would come here twice a week, have a hot meal, go to a class. We sat in semi-darkness, beside a paraffin lamp, watching a lesson, and then we sat on the ground with a dozen boys, some as young as eight. We listened to them describe their daily trek to our school. It defied belief: after twelve hours of tending their cattle and sheep, they’d walk for two hours through mountain passes just to learn maths, reading, writing. Such was their hunger to learn. They braved sore feet, bitter cold – and far worse. They were so vulnerable on the road, so exposed to the elements, several had died from lightning strikes. Many had been attacked by stray dogs. They dropped their voices and told us that many had also been sexually abused by wanderers, rustlers, nomads and other boys. I felt ashamed to think of all my bitching about school. About anything.

So have this skill set — the ability to accurately assess markets by taking into account pain, money, targeting, and growth — in your back pocket so that when lightning strikes, you can make sure it strikes twice.

RB Leipzig vs. Man City score, highlights from Champions League as Gvardiol cancels out Mahrez strike Josko Gvardiol secured a 1-1 draw for RB Leipzig in the first leg of their Champions League last-16 tie with Manchester City. Riyad Mahrez gave City the lead before the half-hour, crowning a dominant opening from the Premier League champions. But Leipzig emerged with renewed purpose after the break and halftime substitute Benjamin Henrichs twice went close before Croatia defender Gvardiol converted Marcel Halstenberg's cross as City were caught napping from a short corner.

convergent evolution: a strikingly similar trait that arose independently in different branches of the tree of life. As milk scientist Katie Hinde has written on her blog, Mammels Suck: “The production of milk independently arose after the divergence of avian and mammalian lineages over 300 million years ago. However, these milks seemingly serve the same function: body-nourishing, bacteria-inoculating, immune-programming substances produced by parents specifically to support offspring development.” Milk, in other words, is so useful that evolution created it twice.

I slammed the top frame shut. The complex lock clicked closed and I slid the thick bars in place, locking it down. Curran ripped apart the blanket. His face was pure rage. He grasped the bars and recoiled. I sat on the edge of the floor and rubbed my leg. It had gone numb from kicking him. I’d have to thank Julie for this idea. She’d almost fallen into the cage twice.

The company claimed to have interviewed some 2,210 “experts,” of whom it said 1,184 were exclusive Luckies smokers. Of these, federal investigators tracked down 440 and discovered that more than 100 denied smoking Luckies exclusively, 50 did not smoke at all, and some smoked other brands exclusively, some did not recall having ever been interviewed on the subject by American Tobacco, and some had no connection with the tobacco industry. Such details aside, the campaign and the company’s new media-buying strategy were hugely successful, and by 1941 Lucky Strike would narrowly reclaim the market share lead from Camel and widen it dramatically in ensuing years. “He was a dictator, of course,” Pat Weaver recalled of the newly triumphant George Hill of this period, but now he invited the input of others. “His strength,” said Weaver, “was his tremendous conviction about the importance of the business he was in. His weakness was tunnel vision—he was really obsessed with Lucky Strike, I’m afraid.” But not to such a degree that he failed to recognize the danger of his company’s dependence on a single brand amid the vicissitudes of a fickle marketplace. “One day, I came into his office,” Weaver remembered, “and I said, ‘Mr. Hill, I have a good idea.’ He said, ‘Great, what is it?’—he loved ideas.” Weaver’s was a not entirely harebrained scheme to get around the federal excise tax of six cents per pack of twenty cigarettes by putting out a brand in which each smoke was twice the normal length and the package would include a razor blade for slicing each one in two, thereby saving the customer the equivalent of three cents a pack. Hill listened and nodded,

Train yourself really to see things. A good way to do this is to pick an object at random once or twice a day and describe it to yourself in a way that feels fresh. Watch people carefully: the smallest actions (the apparently confident man who tugs constantly at a T-shirt that rides up over his stomach) can reveal a huge amount about a person’s dreams and fears, his vanities and insecurities, and often contradict what he or she is saying. Actions do speak louder than words. That said, listen too. When something strikes you as interesting, write it down. Even if you don’t know why it interests you now, there’ll be a reason.

Occasionally the rain lifted briefly, enough to enable me to see ahead when I topped the gentle rises that undulated along the road. And after a time I realized that though no suspicious riders were approaching, for I had passed nothing but farmers and artisans going into the city, I was matching the pace of a single rider some distance before me. Twice, three times, I spotted the lone figure, cresting a hill just as I did. No bright colors of livery, only an anonymous dark cloak. A messenger from Flauvic? Who else could it be? For Azmus would have reached the Royal Wing to speak his story just as I set out. No one sent by the Renselaeuses could possibly be ahead of me. Of course the rider could be on some perfectly honest business affair that had nothing to do with the terrible threat of warfare looming like thunderclouds over the land. This thought comforted me for a hill or two, until a brief ray of light slanting down from between some clouds bathed the rider in light, striking a cold gleam off a steel helm. Merchants’ runners did not wear helms. A messenger, then.

Bashan is the place of the Serpent.” She knew more about this world around her than he realized. “Yes,” he said. “It is like a battle between two cosmic mountains. That is why the Psalm says, “O many-peaked mountain, mountain of Bashan! Why do you look with hatred, O many-peaked mountain, at the mount that Elohim desired for his abode, yes, where Yahweh will dwell forever? The chariots of Elohim are twice ten thousand, thousands upon thousands… Elohim will strike the heads of his enemies.” Mary stopped walking. They were almost to the forested area. She looked fearful. “Do you mean that we are walking into the midst of a battle of gods and angels?

There is also violence by omission: By not following the example of Georg Elser and attempting to remove Hitler, good Germans were culpable for the effects Hitler had on the world. By not removing dams I am culpable for their effects on my landbase. There is violence by silence. I will tell you something I did, or rather didn’t do, that causes me more shame than almost anything I have ever done or not done in my life. I was walking one night several years ago out of a grocery store. A man who was clearly homeless and just as clearly alcoholic (and inebriated) approached me and asked for money. I told him, honestly, that I had no change. He respectfully thanked me anyway, and wished me a good evening. I walked on. I heard the man say something to whomever was behind me. Then I heard another man’s voice say, “Get the fuck away from me!” followed by the thud of fist striking flesh. Turning back, I saw a youngish man with slick-backed black hair and wearing a business suit pummeling the homeless man’s face. I took a step toward them. And then? I did nothing. I watched the businessman strike twice more, wipe the back of his hand on his pants, then walk away, shoulders squared, to his car. I took another step toward the homeless man. He turned to face me. His eyes showed he felt nothing. I didn’t say a word. I went home.

mountain of God, O many-peaked mountain of Bashan. The mount that Elohim desired for his abode.’” He looked directly at Demas and Gestas. “The phrase, ‘twice ten thousand, thousands of thousands’ refers to the heavenly host of Elohim’s divine council. They are his holy ones, Sons of God who did not rebel.” The brothers knew that “host” was a military term for a king’s army of warriors. “Sinai was Yahweh’s holy mountain in the Exodus, until Mount Zion with its temple in Jerusalem became the holy mountain.” Simon’s eyes narrowed as he spoke. “This area is known for the Seirim, the sons of hairy Esau. It is an original dwelling place of satyrs, goat demons of Azazel. Pan is the last of the satyrs and the guardian of Gaia, the Mother Earth Goddess.” It was all coming together for Gestas. He tried to finish Simon’s thought. “So Hermon is the cosmic mountain in opposition to Yahweh? And Jesus is going to strike down the ‘hairy crown’ of Pan, storm the Gates of Hades, and occupy this cosmic mountain as his own?” Simon nodded in agreement, and added, “And he will ascend on high with his train of captives, as any military conqueror would in a Triumphal Procession.” “Grandiose claims for a man without a single soldier amongst his wild-eyed fanatics,” said Demas skeptically.

Jesus looked back at the cave, then up at the mountain and recited a Psalm of David. “O mountain of God, mountain of Bashan; O many-peaked mountain, mountain of Bashan! Why do you look with hatred, O many-peaked mountain, at the mount that Elohim desired for his abode, yes, where Yahweh will dwell forever? The chariots of God are twice ten thousand, thousands upon thousands; the Lord is among them; Sinai is now in the sanctuary. You ascended on high, leading a host of captives in your train and receiving gifts among men, even among the rebellious, that Yahweh Elohim may dwell there. But God will strike the heads of his enemies, the hairy Seirim crown of him who walks in his guilty ways. Yahweh said, “I will bring them back from Bashan, I will bring them back from the depths of the sea.

There is no chance that I will allow such a thing. You may attempt to defy me, but I assure you, it is a waste of your energy.” He spoke gently, that mocking male superiority setting her teeth on edge. “I am your lifemate, chérie, and I will give any order I deem necessary for your safety.” She thumped his chest hard with her clenched fist. “You make me so mad, Gregori! I’m trying very hard to get along with you and your arrogant orders. You don’t even change expression! We could be discussing the weather instead of having a fight.” His eyebrows shot up. “This is no fight, ma petite. A fight is where we both are angry and have a contest of wills, a battle. There cannot be such a thing between us. I do not feel anger when I look at you, only the need to care for you and protect you. I am responsible for your health and safety, Savannah. I can do no other than to protect you, even from your own folly. You cannot hope to win. I know this absolutely, so there is no reason to become agitated over the issue.” She thumped him again. He looked startled, then caught her flying fist in his hand and gently pried her fingers open. Very carefully he pressed a kiss into the exact center of her palm. “Savannah? Were you trying to hit me?” “I did hit you— twice, you scum. You didn’t even notice the first time.” She sounded very irritated with him. For some reason it made him want to smile. “I apologize, mon amour. Next time, I promise I will notice when you strike me.” The hard edge to his mouth softened into a semblance of a smile. “I will even go so far as to pretend that it hurts, if you wish it.” Her blue eyes flashed at him. “Ha, ha, ha, you’re so funny, Gregori. Stop being so smug.” “It is not being smug to know my own power, chérie. I am trying to care for you as best I know how. You do not make it easy for me. I find myself making poor decisions just to see that smile on your face,” he admitted reluctantly. Savannah laid her head on his chest. “I’m sorry I’m so much trouble, Gregori.” She wasn’t certain if that was the strict truth. She rather liked stirring him up.

Even more striking and revealing is how he interweaves “sons of God” twice in Romans 8:14, 19 with “children of God” twice in Romans 8:16, 21—and again in Romans 9:8. It is, for Paul, all about family values—but divine family values, and that is what makes him very, very radical.

That's twice you've married because you had to. I won't say I'm sorry. I'd do it again." "I know that, but I don't know why. If it's not the land, what is it?" Cade gave her a curious look. "You have to ask?" Suddenly aware that she was sitting here naked talking to a man who the day before had been only her foreman, Lily glanced around for her clothing while struggling with his question. She reached for her chemise. "I suppose I'm the only single woman over the age of fourteen for fifty miles around, except poor Anna Whitaker, perhaps." Cade's impassivity gave way to exasperation as he gathered up her clothes and dropped them in her lap. "There are women enough out here for men like me. You're the first lady who has ever looked at me." Pulling on her chemise, Lily peered over the top at him in surprise. "I doubt that there's a female over the age of fourteen who doesn't look at you. My word, Cade, we'd have to be blind not to see you." He grinned and handed her a piece of toasted bread. "It's good to know my size warrants notice, at least. But that's not what I meant, and you know it. You're a lady, but you didn't pull your skirts away in distaste when I spoke to you. You didn't talk to me as if I didn't have sense enough to eat. You listened, even when you were talking a blue norther." Pulling on the gingham, Lily left it unbuttoned. She bit into the toast and wrinkled her forehead at this striking new knowledge. "I can't pull away skirts I don't wear, but I suppose it's something to know you married me because I know how to talk and listen. I'm sure that's as good as marrying me because I know how to cook and clean." A low rumble rose from Cade's chest, and Lily was uncertain as to its cause, until he pushed her back down on the robes and kissed her. She thought perhaps he might be laughing at her. "Anyone can cook and clean. No one can do what you do." Cade didn't tell her precisely what she did that no one else could do, but Lily hoped that what followed was his way of showing what he meant. She had to get dressed a second time when he was done making himself clear.

What’s the matter, chile? The debil chasin’ after you?” Emma paused to take a deep breath and recover her dignity. “Yes,” she said. “Do you know where Chloe put Mr. Fair—Steven’s pistol?” “She done locked it up in her desk drawer with the derringer. Why? You gonna give it back to him?” Emma nodded, then proceeded toward the hallway. “I most certainly am.” “Why you wanna do that?” Daisy fussed, following her out of the kitchen and into Chloe’s study. Finding the key in its customary hiding place, Emma unlocked Chloe’s desk and lifted the formidable Colt .45 gingerly from its depths. “There’s always the hope that he’ll shoot himself,” she said cheerfully. Daisy shrank back against the doorway. “Miss Emma, you put that thing down right now, or I’s gonna take you over my knee and paddle you!” Emma raised the gun and sited in on a book shelf across the room. She wondered what it would be like to fire the weapon. In the next instant she found out, for the gun went off with no intentional help from Emma, and several of Chloe’s leatherbound books exploded into a single smoldering tangle of paper. Daisy screamed and so did Emma, who dropped the gun in horror only to have it fire again, this time splintering the leg of Big John’s favorite chair. “Don’t you dare touch that thing again!” Daisy shrieked, when Emma bent to retrieve it. Emma left the pistol lying on the rug and straightened up again, one hand pressed to her mouth in shock. The two women stood in their places for a long time, afraid to move. Emma, for her part, was busy imagining all the dreadful things that could have happened. She was amazed to see Steven stumble into the room, fully dressed except for his boots, drenched in sweat from the effort of making his way down the stairs in a hurry. The expression in his eyes was wild and alert, almost predatory. “What the hell’s going on in here?” he rasped. Emma pointed to the pistol as though it were a snake coiled to strike. “It went off—twice.” Steven was supporting himself by grasping the edge of Chloe’s desk. “Pick it up very carefully and hand it to me,” he said. Emma bit her lower lip, remembering what had happened when she’d handled the gun before. “You can do it,” Steven urged. “Just make sure you don’t touch the hammer or the trigger.” Emma crouched and picked it up cautiously. The barrel was hot against her palm. “Here,” Steven said, holding out his hand. Emma surrendered the gun, and leaning back against the desk, Steven spun the chamber expertly, dropping the four remaining bullets into his palm. He gave a ragged sigh, then just stood there, cradling the pistol in his hands like a kitten or a puppy. “I was going to bring it to you,” Emma confessed in a small voice. “She was hopin’ you’d blow your brains out with it,” Daisy muttered, before she turned and went back to the kitchen. Steven

Not everyone in the village was happy with the idea of having an Untouchable man's statue put up at the entrance. Particularly not an Untouchable who carried a weapon. They felt it would give out the wrong message, give people ideas. Three weeks after the statue went up, the rifle on its soldier went missing. Sepoy S. Murugesan's family tried to file a complaint, but the police refused to register a case, saying that the rifle must have fallen off or simply disintegrated due to the use of substandard cement- a fairly common malpractice- and that nobody could be blamed. A month later the statue's hands were cut off. Once again the police refused to register a case, although this time they sniggered knowingly and did not even bother to offer a reason. Two weeks after the amputation of its hands, the statue of Sepoy S. Murugesan was beheaded. There were a few days of tension. People from nearby villages who belonged to the same caste as S. Murugesan organized a protest. They began a relay hunger strike at the base of the statue. A local court said it would constitute a magisterial committee to look into the matter. In the meanwhile it ordered a status quo. The hunger strike was discontinued. The magisterial committee was never constituted. In some countries, some soldiers die twice. The headless statue remained at the entrance of the village. Though it no longer bore any likeness to the man it was supposed to commemorate, it turned out to be a more truthful emblem of the times than it would otherwise have been.