Super Sad Quotes

Remember this... develop a sense of nostalgia for something, or you'll never figure out what's important.

There's nothing wrong with her except she's completely fucked up.

If you stop thinking, if you stop wondering, you die.

By reading this message you are denying its existence and implying consent.

I feel safe with him because he is so not my ideal and I feel like I can be myself because I'm not in love with him.

Glitter is a form of anti-depressant, because it is impossible to be sad when you twinkle.

The love I felt for her on that train ride had a capital and provinces, parishes and a Vatican, an orange planet and many sullen moons -- it was systemic and it was complete.

Do not throw away your heart. Keep your heart. Your heart is all that matters ... Throw away your ancestors! ... Throw away your shyness and the anger that lies just a few inches beneath ... Accept the truth! And if there is more than one truth, then learn to do the difficult work -- learn to choose. You are good enough, you are HUMAN ENOUGH, to choose!

You could drown a kitten in her blue eyes.

Let's see if I can write about something other than my heart.

If we can't take care of each other now, when the world is going to shit, how are we ever going to make it?

The fading light is us, and we are, for a moment so brief (...) beautiful.

I have my own dying empire to contend with, and I do not wish for any other.

So what'd you write about?' 'I wrote about how last weekend my parents and I waited in line at the movies for an hour, and when we finally got up to the ticket booth lady, they were sold out! Isn't that sad?' 'That is super sad,' I said, wishing, hoping, one day that would be my super sad.

His appearance gives no clue to what his profession might be, and yet he doesn't look like a man without a profession either. Consider what he's like: He always knows what to do. He knows how to gaze into a woman's eyes. He can put his mind to any question at any time. He can box. He is gifted, strong-willed, open-minded, fearless, tenacious, dashing, circumspect—why quibble, suppose we grant him all those qualities—yet he has none of them! They have made him what he is, they have set his course for him, and yet they don't belong to him. When he is angry, something in him laughs. When he is sad, he is up to something. When something moves him, he turns against it. He'll always see a good side to every bad action. What he thinks of anything will always depend on some possible context—nothing is, to him, what it is: everything is subject to change, in flux, part of a whole, of an infinite number of wholes presumably adding up to a super-whole that, however, he knows nothing about. So every answer he gives is only a partial answer, every feeling an opinion, and he never cares what something is, only 'how' it is—some extraneous seasoning that somehow goes along with it, that's what interests him.

Every returning New Yorker asks the question: Is this still my city? I have a ready answer, cloaked in obstinate despair: It is. And if it's not, I will love it all the more. I will love it to the point where it becomes mine again.

My hair would continue to gray, and then one day, it would fall out entirely, and then, on a day meaninglessly close to the present one, meaninglessly like the present one, I would disappear from the earth. And all these emotions, all these yearnings, all these data, if that helps to clinch the enormity of what I'm talking about, would be gone. And that's what immortality means. It means selfishness. My generations belief that each one of us matters more than you or anyone else would think.

Reading is difficult. People just aren't meant to read anymore. We're in a post-literate age. You know, a visual age. How many years after the fall of Rome did it take for a Dante to appear? Many, many years.

I felt the weakness of these books, their immateriality, how they had failed to change the world, and I didn't want to sully myself with their weakness anymore.

We know summer is the height of of being alive. We don't believe in God or the prospect of an afterlife mostly, so we know that we're only given eighty summers or so per lifetime, and each one has to be better then the last, has to encompass a trip to that arts center up at Bard, a seemingly mellow game of badminton over at some yahoo's Vermont cottage, and a cool, wet, slightly dangerous kayak trip down an unforgiving river. Otherwise, how would you know that you have lived your summertime best? What if you missed out on some morsel of shaded nirvana?

That's what tyrants do, I guess. They make you covet their attention; they make you confuse attention for mercy.

In books there were people who were always agreeable or tender, and delighted to do things that made one happy, and who did not show their kindness by finding fault. The world outside the books was not a happy one, Maggie felt: it seemed to be a world where people behaved the best to those they did not pretend to love and that did not belong to them. And if life had no love in it, what else was there for Maggie? Nothing but poverty and the companionship of her mother’s narrow griefs—perhaps of her father’s heart-cutting childish dependence. There is no hopelessness so sad as that of early youth, when the soul is made up of wants, and has no long memories, no super-added life in the life of others; though we who look on think lightly of such premature despair, as if our vision of the future lightened the blind sufferer’s present.

Tutt'intorno a noi scorreva la città di Roma, splendida nella sua indifferenza, eternamente sicura di sé, felice di prendersi i nostri soldi e posare per una foto, ma senza avere alla fin fine bisogno di niente e di nessuno.

Forget the fountain of youth, pal of mine. You can live to be a thousand, and it won't matter. Mediocrities like you deserve immortality.

I wanted this complex language, this surge of intellect, to be processed into love. Isn’t how they used to do it a century ago, people reading poetry to one another?

I gave him a photocopy of who I was, without telling him that I was unhappy and humiliated and often, just like him, all alone.

Here was the tiredness of failure imposed on a country that believed only in its opposite. Here was the end product of our deep moral exhaustion.

Then I celebrated my Wall of Books. I counted the volumes on my twenty-foot-long modernist bookshelf to make sure none had been misplaced or used as kindling by my subtenant. “You’re my sacred ones,” I told the books. “No one but me still cares about you. But I’m going to keep you with me forever. And one day I’ll make you important again.” I thought about that terrible calumny of the new generation: that books smell.

And the looks on the faces of my countrymenpassive heads bent arms at their trousers everyone guilty of not being their best of not earning their daily bread the kind of docility I had never expected from Americans even after so many years of our decline. Here was the tiredness of failure imposed on a country that believed only in its opposite. Here was the end product of our deep moral exhaustion.

He didn't love her. They were together for the obvious and timeless reason: It was slightly less painful than being alone.

In contravention of my belief that any life ending in death is essentially pointless, I needed my friends to open up that plastic bag and take one last look at me. Someone had to remember me, if only for a few more minutes in the vast silent waiting room of time.

I know this kind of girl,” Grace was saying. “It’s the worst kind of combination of abuse and privilege, and growing up in this, like, greenhorn southern-Californian Asian upper-middle-class ghetto, where everyone is so shallow and money-craven.

... I'm the fortieth-ugliest man in this bar. But so what! So what! What if someday she lets me kiss each one of her freckles again? She has like a million. But every one of them means something to me. Isn't this how people used to fall in love? I know we're living in Rubenstein's America, like you keep saying. But doesn't that just make us even more responsible for each other's fates? I mean, what if Eunice and I just said no to all this. To this bar. To this FACing. The two of us. What if we just went home and read books to each other?

How can we read when people need our help? It's a luxury. A stupid luxury.

The three things I had going for me: an inbred Russian willingness to get drunk and chummy, an inbred Jewish willingness to laugh strategically at myself, and, most impressively, my new äppärät.

I wanted to confront her, to make her see the folly of her religion, to change her diet, to help her spend less on makeup and other nonessentials, to make her worship every biological moment she was offered instead of some badly punctured deity. I also wanted to kiss her for some reason, feel the life pulsing in those big Catholic lips, remind myself of the primacy of the living animal, of my time amongst the Romans.

I remember reading the Times in the subway, folding it awkwardly while leaning against the door, caught up in the words, worried about crashing to the floor or tripping over some lightly clad beauty (there was always at least one), but even more afraid to lose the thread of the article in front of me, my spine banging against the train door, the clatter and drone of the massive machine around me, and me, with my words, brilliantly alone.

Frank grabbed a tourist brochure stuck under the napkin dispenser. He began to read it. Piper patted Leo’s arm, like she couldn’t believe he was really here. Nico stood at the edge of the group, eyeing the passing pedestrians as if they might be enemies. Coach Hedge munched on the salt and pepper shakers. Despite the happy reunion, everybody seemed more subdued than usual—like they were picking up on Leo’s mood. Jason had never really considered how important Leo’s sense of humor was to the group. Even when things were super serious, they could always depend on Leo to lighten things up. Now, it felt like the whole team had dropped anchor. “So then Jason harnessed the venti,” Hazel finished. “And here we are.” Leo whistled. “Hot-air horses? Dang, Jason. So basically, you held a bunch of gas together all the way to Malta, and then you let it loose.” Jason frowned. “You know, it doesn’t sound so heroic when you put it that way.” “Yeah, well. I’m an expert on hot air. I’m still wondering, why Malta? I just kind of ended up here on the raft, but was that a random thing, or—” “Maybe because of this.” Frank tapped his brochure. “Says here Malta was where Calypso lived.” A pint of blood drained from Leo’s face. “W-what now?” Frank shrugged. “According to this, her original home was an island called Gozo just north of here. Calypso’s a Greek myth thingie, right?” “Ah, a Greek myth thingie!” Coach Hedge rubbed his hands together. “Maybe we get to fight her! Do we get to fight her? ’Cause I’m ready.” “No,” Leo murmured. “No, we don’t have to fight her, Coach.” Piper frowned. “Leo, what’s wrong? You look—” “Nothing’s wrong!” Leo shot to his feet. “Hey, we should get going. We’ve got work to do!” “But…where did you go?” Hazel asked. “Where did you get those clothes? How—” “Jeez, ladies!” Leo said. “I appreciate the concern, but I don’t need two extra moms!” Piper smiled uncertainly. “Okay, but—” “Ships to fix!” Leo said. “Festus to check! Earth goddesses to punch in the face! What are we waiting for? Leo’s back!” He spread his arms and grinned. He was making a brave attempt, but Jason could see the sadness lingering in his eyes. Something had happened to him…something to do with Calypso.

I wish I were stronger and more secure in myself so that I could really spend my life with a guy like Lenny. Because he has a different kind of strength than Joshie. He has the strength of his sweet tuna arms. He has the strength of putting his nose in my hair and calling it home. He has the strength to cry when I go down on him. Who IS Lenny? Who DOES that? Who will ever open up to me like that again? No one. Because it's too dangerous. Lenny is a dangerous man. Joshie is more powerful, but Lenny is much more dangerous.

I started to see it Eunice's way. We now had obligations to each other. Our families had failed us, and now we had to form an equally strong and enduring connection to each other. Any gap between us was a failure. Success would come when neither of us knew where one ended and the other began.

IT IS FORBIDDEN TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE EXISTENCE OF THIS VEHICLE ("THE OBJECT") UNTIL YOU ARE .5 MILES FROM THE SECURITY PERIMETER OF JOHN F. KENNEDY INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT. BY READING THIS SIGN YOU HAVE DENIED EXISTENCE OF THE OBJECT AND IMPLIED CONSENT.

It's just a passing thing,' Vishnu had told me about his girlfriend's beliefs. 'It's like their way of assimilating into the West. It's like a social club. One more generation, it'll be over.

The novel was set in an unspecified near future, because setting a novel in the present in a time of unprecedented technological and social dislocation seemed to me shortsighted.... To write a book set in the present, circa 2013, is to write about the distant past.

Also, I've spent an entire week without reading any books or talking about them too loudly. I'm learning to work my apparat's screen, the colourful pulsating mosaic of it, the fact that it knows every last stinking detail about the world, whereas my books only know the minds of their authors.

I have always been sensitive to vibrations and energies. Sometimes, I meet people and the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and I know that person is just wrong somehow. That their wiring is different, their moral compass screwed.

We may not be a great power anymore, we may be into you for sixty-five trillion yuan-pegged, but we're not afraid to use our troops if our spades act up, so watch out, or we'll go fucking nuclear on your yellow asses if you try to cash in your chips.

When he mentioned family, I could only think of my father, my real father, the Long Island janitor with the impenetrable accent and true-to-life smells. My mind returned away from what Joshie was saying and I pondered my father's humiliation. The humiliation of growing up a Jew in the Soviet Union, of cleaning piss-stained bathrooms in the States, of worshipping a country that would collapse as simply and inelegantly as the one he had abandoned.

That's what I admire about youngish Italians, the slow dimunition of ambition, the recognition that the best is far behind them.

Soon you will be home and in my arms and the world will reconfigure itself around you and there will be enough compassion for you to feel scared by how much I care for you.

Another piece of Zygo-Gogozizzle 24 ended up landing in a grape vineyard on planet Pinot. The Zygo-Gogozizzle 24 was quickly absorbed into the soil and was subsequently soaked up into the grapes. These grapes, which had until recently been harvested almost to extinction, suddenly became self-aware and super intelligent. They banded together in bunches and rose up to defeat their oppressors. The battle lasted one whole night, but sadly, it ended the next morning when the sun came up. The rebellion shriveled when the poor grapes ran out of juice. Apparently there’s a raisin for everything.

And then there was the sad sign that a young woman working at a Tim Hortons in Lethbridge, Alberta, taped to the drive-through window in 2007. It read, “No Drunk Natives.” Accusations of racism erupted, Tim Hortons assured everyone that their coffee shops were not centres for bigotry, but what was most interesting was the public response. For as many people who called in to radio shows or wrote letters to the Lethbridge Herald to voice their outrage over the sign, there were almost as many who expressed their support for the sentiment. The young woman who posted the sign said it had just been a joke. Now, I’ll be the first to say that drunks are a problem. But I lived in Lethbridge for ten years, and I can tell you with as much neutrality as I can muster that there were many more White drunks stumbling out of the bars on Friday and Saturday nights than there were Native drunks. It’s just that in North America, White drunks tend to be invisible, whereas people of colour who drink to excess are not. Actually, White drunks are not just invisible, they can also be amusing. Remember how much fun it was to watch Dean Martin, Red Skelton, W. C. Fields, John Wayne, John Barrymore, Ernie Kovacs, James Stewart, and Marilyn Monroe play drunks on the screen and sometimes in real life? Or Jodie Marsh, Paris Hilton, Cheryl Tweedy, Britney Spears, and the late Anna Nicole Smith, just to mention a few from my daughter’s generation. And let’s not forget some of our politicians and persons of power who control the fates of nations: Winston Churchill, John A. Macdonald, Boris Yeltsin, George Bush, Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Hard drinkers, every one. The somewhat uncomfortable point I’m making is that we don’t seem to mind our White drunks. They’re no big deal so long as they’re not driving. But if they are driving drunk, as have Canada’s coffee king Tim Horton, the ex-premier of Alberta Ralph Klein, actors Kiefer Sutherland and Mel Gibson, Super Bowl star Lawyer Milloy, or the Toronto Maple Leafs’ Mark Bell, we just hope that they don’t hurt themselves. Or others. More to the point, they get to make their mistakes as individuals and not as representatives of an entire race.

I reveled in the smallness, the coziness of an upstairs bedroom in a traditional American Cape Cod house the half-floor that forces you to duck, to feel small and naive again, ready for anything, dying for love, your body a chimney filled with odd, black smoke. These square, squat, awkward rooms are like a fifty-square-foot paean to teenage-hood, to ripeness, to the first and last taste of youth.

In the first few pages, Kundera discusses several abstract historical figures: Robespierre, Nietzsche, Hitler. For Eunice's sake, I wanted him to get to the plot, to introduce actual "living" characters - I recalled this was a love story - and to leave the world of ideas behind. Here we were, two people lying in bed, Eunice's worried head propped on my collarbone, and I wanted us to feel something in common. I wanted this complex language, this surge of intellect, to be processed into love. Isn't that how they used to do it a century ago, people reading poetry to one another?

But I knew it wasn't just the cute girl on the screen that had made Eunice cry. It was her father laughing, being kind, the family momentarily loving and intact - a cruel side trip into the impossible, an alternate history. The dinner was over. The waiters were clearing the table with resignation and without a word. I knew that, according to tradition, I had to allow Dr. Park to pay for the meal, but I went into my apparat and transferred him three hundred yuan, the total of the bill, out of an unnamed account. I did not want his money. Even if my dreams were realised and I would marry Eunice someday, Dr. Park would always remain to me a stranger. After thirty-nine years of being alive, I had forgiven my own parents for not knowing how to care for a child, but that was the depth of my forgiveness.

For the first time in my life, I felt sorry for Jesus. Sorry that the miracles ascribed to him hadn’t actually made a difference. Sorry that we were all alone in a universe where even our fathers would get us nailed to a tree if they were so inclined, or cut our throats if so commanded—see under Isaac, another unfortunate Jewish shmuck.

HERE IS A LIST of foods we discovered in America: Peanut butter. Marshmallows. Barbecue sauce. (You can say, “Can I have BBQ?” to a kid’s mom at potlucks and they’ll know what you mean.) Puppy chow. (Chex cereal covered in melted chocolate and peanut butter and tossed in powdered sugar. They only give it if you win a Valentine friend.) Corn-chip pie (not a pie). (Chili on top of corn chips with cheese and sour cream (not sour).) Some mores. (They say it super fast like s’mores.) Banana puddin. (They don’t say the g. Sometimes they don’t even say the b.) Here is a list of the foods from Iran that they have never heard of here: All of it. All the food. Jared Rhodes didn’t even know what a date was.

But what will happen, and I got this from reliable sources, is that the International Monetary Fund will skedaddle from D.C., possibly to Singapore or Beijing, and then they're going to make an IMF recovery plan for America, divide the country into concessions, and hand them over to the sovereign wealth funds. Norway, China, Saudi Arabia, all that jazz.

They were very bitter tears: everybody in the world seemed so hard and unkind to Maggie: there was no indulgence, no fondness, such as she imagined when she fashioned the world afresh in her own thoughts. In books there were people who were always agreeable or tender, and delighted to do things that made one happy, and who did not show their kindness by finding fault. The world outside the books was not a happy one, Maggie felt: it seemed to be a world where people behaved the best to those they did not pretend to love and that did not belong to them. And if life had no love in it, what else was there for Maggie? Nothing but poverty and the companionship of her mother's narrow griefs - perhaps of her father's heart-cutting childish dependence. There is no hopelessness so sad as that of early youth, when the soul is made up of wants, and has no long memories, no super-added life in the life of others; though we who look on think lightly of such premature despair, as if our vision of the future lightened the blind sufferer’s present. Maggie in her brown frock with her eyes reddened and her heavy hair pushed back, looking from the bed where her father lay, to the dull walls of this sad chamber which was the centre of her world, was a creature full of eager, passionate longings for all that was beautiful and glad: thirsty for all knowledge: with an ear straining after dreamy music that died away and would not come near to her: with a blind, unconscious yearning for something that would link together the wonderful impressions of this mysterious life and give her soul a sense of home in it.

I wondered how she would survive in the world without an ass. Everyone needs a cushion. Maybe I could be that for her.

the true subject of science fiction is death, not life. It will all end. The totality of it.

I was proud of New York, now more than ever, for it had survived something another city would have not: its own rage.

This country is so stupid. Only spoiled white people could let something so good get so bad. I

What if we just went home and read books to each other?

I told her my father was a retired janitor who liked to go fishing. She told me her father was a podiatrist who liked to punch his wife and two daughters in the face.

How desperately I wanted to forsake these facts, to open a smelly old book or to go down on a pretty young girl instead. Why couldn't I have been born to a better world?

Do not believe the Judeo-Christian lie!

After thirty-nine years of being alive, I had forgiven my own parents for not knowing how to care for a child, but that was the depth of my forgiveness.

That’s what tyrants can do, I guess. They make you covet their attention; they make you confuse attention for mercy.

The love I felt for her on that train ride had a capital and provinces, parishes and a Vatican, an orange planet and many sullen moons—it was systemic and it was complete.

I thought of Eunice’s lips on my nose, the love mixed in with the pain, the foretaste of almonds and salt. I thought of how it was all just too beautiful to ever let go.

Joshie had always told Post-Human Services staff to keep a diary, to remember who we were, because every moment our brains and synapses are being rebuilt and rewired with maddening disregard for our personalities, so that each year, each month, each day we transform into a different person, an utterly unfaithful iteration of our original selves, of the drooling kid in the sandbox.

Dead is dead, we know where to file another person’s extinction, but the artist purposely zoomed in on the living, or, to be more accurate, the forced-to-be-living and the soon-to-be-dead. Grainy

And I was at that party in Venice,” Juliette continued. “When the mansion collapsed.” “I was there too!” said Lily. “Raphael was super sad to be at a party; it was hilarious. I made out with so many people, it was a personal record. I think one of them was a hot blonde! Was it you?” Juliette blinked. “Er, no. I don’t really . . . make out with girls.” Lily shrugged. “Sorry you’re wasting your life.

The humiliation of growing up a Jew in the Soviet Union, of cleaning piss-stained bathrooms in the States, of worshiping a country that would collapse as simply and inelegantly as the one he had abandoned.

She never backed down. A fighter to the very last. This is how a human being is forged after an unhappy early life. This is the independence of growing up, of standing up for yourself, even if against a phantom enemy.

My poor Eunice looked so tired when she huffed off the bus with her many bags that I nearly tackled her in a rejuvenating embrace, but I was careful not to make a scene, waving my roses and champagne at the armed men to prove that I had enough Credit to afford Retail, and then kissed her passionately on one cheek (she smelled of flight and moisturizer), then on the straight, thin, oddly non-Asian nose, then the other cheek, then back to the nose, then once more the first cheek, following the curve of freckles backward and forward, marking her nose like a bridge to be crossed twice. The champagne bottle fell out of my hands, but, whatever futuristic garbage it was made of, it didn't break.

IT IS FORBIDDEN TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE EXISTENCE OF THIS VEHICLE (“THE OBJECT”) UNTIL YOU ARE .5 MILES FROM THE SECURITY PERIMETER OF JOHN F. KENNEDY INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT. BY READING THIS SIGN YOU HAVE DENIED EXISTENCE OF THE OBJECT AND IMPLIED CONSENT.

For what it's worth, I know how you feel," Conner told him. "I used to doubt myself a lot. When people told me I wasn't good enough, I believed them. It's hard not to when you're young." "Tell me about it," Bold said. "Does it get better when you're older?" "It did for me," Conner said. "How?" Bolt asked. "Someone else believed in me," Conner said. "All it took was one person's approval and suddenly I believed myself, too. It gave me a shield to block out all the doubt and negativity. It made me realize I was just as capable and deserving as the people I compared myself to. But you know what? I was wrong." "You were?" Bolt asked. "Totally," Conner said. "I didn't need someone else. I had confidence in myself, deep down inside, the whole time. Approval is just a shortcut to self-worth, but sometimes we have to find things out on your own. Sometimes if we want something bad enough, we have to inspire ourselves to get it. Sometimes we have to be our own superhero." Out of everything Conner said, he could tell this resonated with the boy the most. If he wanted to help people, maybe he had to start with himself. "But what if I fail?" Bolt asked. "What if the Snake Lord wins and I don't save anyone? Then I'll never be a superhero." "A very wise man once told me that 'courage is what makes a superhero super,'" Conner said. "He never sad anything about succeeding.

giving up on Indefinite Life Extension and eking out a small hairy lifetime in the Bay Area, seemed to me tantamount to plunging off the Empire State Building with such mass and velocity that the myriad of safety nets would snap beneath you until your skull knew the pavement.

And as we take up our positions on the stage, we call upon the nine Muses for assistance, Calliope, who helps with the epic ballads, Euterpe, who helps with the sad songs, Erato, who helps with the confessional songs, Clio, who helps with the oldies, Melpomene, who helps with the super-tragic stuff, Polyhymnia, who helps with the religious songs, Terpsichore, who helps with the dance numbers, Thalia, who helps with the funny songs, And Urania, who helps when it gets spacey and psychedelic.

The science fiction writer cuts out her heart. It is a thousand hearts. It is all the hearts she will ever have. It is her only child’s dead heart. It is the heart of herself when she is old and nothing she ever wrote can be revised again. It is a heart that says with its wet beating mouth: Time is the same thing as light. Both arrive long after they began, bearing sad messages. How lovely you are. I love you.   The science fiction writer steals her heart from herself to bring it into the light. She escapes her old heart through a smoke hole and becomes a self-referencing system of imperfect, but elegant, memory. She sews up her heart into her own leg and gives birth to it twenty years later on the long highway to Ohio. The heat of herself dividing echoes forward and back, and she accretes, bursts, and begins again the long process of her own super-compression until her heart is an egg containing everything. She eats of her heart and knows she is naked. She throws her heart into the abyss and it falls a long way, winking like a red star.

A co-op woman, old, tired, Jewish, fake drops of jade spread across the little sacks of her bosom, looked up at the pending wind and said one word: "Blustery." Just one word, a word meaning no more than "a period of time characterized by strong winds," but it caught me unaware, it reminded me of how language was once used, its precision and simplicity, its capacity for recall. Not cold, not chilly, blustery. ... "It is blustery, ma'am," I said to the old co-op woman. "I can feel it in my bones." And she smiled at me with whatever facial muscles she still had in reserve. We were communicating with words.

I hate the Fourth of July. The early middle age of summer. Everything is alive and kicking for now, but the eventual decline into fall has already set itself in motion. Some of the lesser shrubs and bushes, seared by the heat, are starting to resemble a bad peroxide job. The heat reaches a blazing peak, but summer is lying to itself, burning out like some alcoholic genius. And you start to wonder - what have I done with June? The poorest of the lot - the Vladeck House project dwellers who live beneath my co-op - seem to take summer in stride; they groan and sweat, drink the wrong kind of lager, make love, the squat children completing mad circles around them by foot or mountain bike. But for the more competitive of New Yorkers, even for me, the summer is there to be slurped up. We know summer is the height of being alive. We don’t believe in God or the prospect of an afterlife mostly, so we know that we’re only given eighty summers or so per lifetime, and each one has to be better than the last, has to encompass a trip to that arts center up at Bard, a seemingly mellow game of badminton over at some yahoo’s Vermont cottage, and a cool, wet, slightly dangerous kayak trip down an unforgiving river. Otherwise, how would you know that you have lived summertime best? What if you missed out on some morsel of shaded nirvana?

What is a spaceship compared to an eternally young cyborg who does not breed and has no sexuality, who can share thoughts directly with other beings, whose abilities to focus and remember are a thousand times greater than our own, and who is never angry or sad, but has emotions and desires that we cannot begin to imagine? Science fiction rarely describes such a future, because an accurate description is by definition incomprehensible. Producing a film about the life of some super-cyborg is akin to producing Hamlet for an audience of Neanderthals. Indeed, the future masters of the world will probably be more different from us than we are from Neanderthals. Whereas we and the Neanderthals are at least human, our inheritors will be godlike.

Whether it’s watching a sunset, or really feeling the stream of water hit your face in the shower, everyone needs to take time to find a way to quiet themselves. Allowing these moments of awareness and recognizing that it is a magnificent thing to be alive, regardless of what might be pressing on me, has brought a level of calm that words can’t adequately explain. Many of the spiritual teachers who have talked with me on Super Soul Sunday describe the highest state of mindfulness as a “constant state of prayer.” This means acknowledging only what you are experiencing in that moment. The true power of staying in the now means that you resist projecting what might happen in the future or lamenting past mistakes. There will always be times of stress or sadness, but when you feel the earth moving, that’s the time to bring yourself back to center. Whatever shakeup or disturbance that might come, you’ll handle that when it actually happens. But in this moment, you’re still breathing. In this moment, you’ve survived. In this moment, you’re finding a way to step onto higher ground. Today and every day, I continue to do the consciousness work, focusing on prayer and just being still. I awaken, and my first thought is, Thank you, and my next thought is, I’m still here in this body. I feel the All that is God so deeply that it lifts and carries me. Sometimes I actually feel weightless in the love that I call God, because I sense it in all things. The entry point for living consciously is mindfulness.

Humanity many times has had sad experience of super-powerful police forces … As soon as (the police) slip from under the firm thumb of a suspicious local tribune, they become arbitrary, merciless, a law unto themselves. They think no more of justice, but only of establishing themselves as a privileged and envied elite. They mistake the attitude of natural caution and uncertainty of the civilian population as admiration and respect, and presently they start to swagger back and forth jingling weapons, in megalomaniac euphoria. People thereupon become not masters, but servants … Such a police force becomes merely an aggregate of uniformed criminals, the more baneful in that their position is unchallenged and sanctioned by law. The police mentality cannot regard a human being in terms other than as an item or object to be processed as expeditiously as possible. Public convenience or dignity means nothing; police prerogatives assume the status of divine law. Submissiveness is demanded. If a police officer kills a civilian, it is a regrettable circumstance: the officer was possibly over-zealous. If a civilian kills a police officer all hell breaks loose. The police foam at the mouth. All other business comes to a standstill until the perpetrator of this most dastardly act is found out. Inevitably, when apprehended, he is beaten or otherwise tortured for his intolerable presumption … The police complain that they cannot function efficiently, that criminals escape them. Better a hundred unchecked criminals than the despotism of one unbridled police force.

Humanity many times has had sad experience of super-powerful police forces … As soon as (the police) slip from under the firm thumb of a suspicious local tribune, they become arbitrary, merciless, a law unto themselves.

That’s the spot…” he drawled as he quickly whipped around for another round of pets. “For a talking cat, you’re easy to please,” I joked as I scratched under his chin. “I’m sorry, I can’t hear you over this amazing pat-down,” he purred louder. I laughed as I shook my head. “I wish I could give you more, but I have to get ready.” Buttons yawned and gave me a lazy stink eye before flopping down in the middle of my bed and rolling around. “Fine, fine. I guess I can wait until you come back to get more.” “Oh, don’t be so dramatic,” I snorted as I climbed out of bed and padded into the bathroom. “It’s not like I’m never coming back.” “Hey, don’t forget that we both nearly died after you got up and left me to have breakfast,” he pointed out with a sad tone in his deep voice.

Sadly, most of us turn ourselves off. We have a quite narrow range of “strokes” that we're willing to get off on in our day. Someone is super nice to us? Turn-on. We get a big unexpected gift of money? Turn-on. The sun is shining? Turn-on. Someone is rude to us? Turn-off. Grey, cold, drizzly day? Turn-off. Low bank account? Turn-off. The game and the invitation of Existential Kink are to practice letting ourselves be madly, irrationally turned on and playfully excited by “strokes” in life that we would usually use to turn ourselves off.

they were sculptures. Then he tried to step between two Greek spearmen, and they moved with surprising speed, their joints cracking and spraying ice crystals as they crossed their javelins to block Jason’s path. From the far end of the hall, a man’s voice rang out in a language that sounded like French. The room was so long and misty, Jason couldn’t see the other end; but whatever the man said, the ice guards uncrossed their javelins. “It’s fine,” Khione said. “My father has ordered them not to kill you just yet.” “Super,” Jason said. Zethes prodded him in the back with his sword. “Keep moving, Jason Junior.” “Please don’t call me that.” “My father is not a patient man,” Zethes warned, “and the beautiful Piper, sadly, is losing her magic hairdo very fast.

Looking at sample five — "The car . . . was a blue Ford" we might again encounter Bertrand Russell's two-head paradox. It seems a blue Ford exists "in" the head of the witness, but whether the blue Ford also existed "outside" that head remains unsure. Even outside tricky psychology labs, ordinary perception has become problematical due to the whole sad history of eye-witness testimony frequently breaking down in court. Or does the "external universe" (including the blue Ford) exist in some super-Head somewhere? It seems that the translation into E-Prime — "I recall the car . . . as a blue Ford" better accords with the experiential level of our existence in space-time than the two heads and other paradoxes we might encounter in Standard English.

Sadly, pythons are also often hunted and killed because of their beautiful skin pattern. Python skin is used to make bags, clothes, boots, and shoes.

A great spidery web of defeat spread across her face - as if there lived below her neck a parasitic creature that gradually but purposefully removed all the elements that in human beings combine to form satisfaction and contentment.

What do they know about Jelal?” Galip said. “Someone must have said, do an interview with such and such a famous columnist, he’d be super for your program on Turkey. And they would have written his name on a piece of paper. They’d probably not have asked his age or his description.” Just then, they heard laughter in the corner where the historical film was being shot. They turned around where they sat on the divan and looked. “What are they laughing at?” Galip said. “I didn’t catch it,” İskender said, but he was smiling as if he had. “None of us is himself,” said Galip, whispering as if he were imparting a secret. “None of us can be. Don’t you suspect that others might see you as someone else? Are you quite so certain that you are you? If you are, then are you certain that the person you are certain you are is you? What do these people want anyway? Isn’t the person they are looking for some foreigner whose stories will affect British viewers watching TV after supper, whose troubles will trouble them, whose sorrow will make them feel sad? I have just the story to fit the bill! No one need see my face even. They could keep my face in the dark during the shooting. A mysterious and well-known Turkish journalist—and don’t forget my being a Moslem which is most interesting—fearing the repressive government, politically motivated assassinations, and juntaists, grants the BBC an interview, provided that his identity is kept secret. Isn’t that even better?

The true power of staying in the now means that you resist projecting what might happen in the future or lamenting past mistakes. There will always be times of stress or sadness, but when you feel the earth moving, that’s the time to bring yourself back to center. Whatever shake-up or disturbance that might come, you’ll handle that when it actually happens. But in this moment, you’re still breathing. In this moment, you’ve survived. In this moment, you’re finding a way to step onto higher ground.

Sadness would inevitably happen down the road. It wasn't being pessimistic, just realistic.

Papa, there’s an armored jeep guarding the 99¢ store on Old Country Road and you’re talking about gomiki?

If they can make a fabulous gay man work like that, I thought, what can they do to the rest of us?

Slowly, carefully, she threaded her arms around his neck and hugged him. Under her touch, his muscles were rigid, bunched, braced. But then it was like he melted, and his arms came around her in return. For a long moment, he held on tight, like she was his anchor. And then he pulled back enough to rest his forehead on her shoulder, the pain that had rolled off of him moments before replaced by a heavy weariness. She stroked the back of his head and neck, soft caresses meant to comfort. She loved holding this big man in her arms, loved knowing that maybe she wasn’t the only one in need of some comfort and protection and reassurance. “Know what’ll make you feel better?” she said after a little while. “You?” Her heart literally panged in her chest at the sweetness of that single word. She kissed the side of his head, his super short hair tickling her lips. “Besides me.” Reaching out with her hand, she grabbed the milk-shake glass and her spoon. Easy sat up, an eyebrow arched as he looked between her and the ice cream. She scooped some onto the spoon and held it out to him. “Trust me.” Skepticism plain on his face, he ate what she offered. Jenna couldn’t keep from grinning at his lack of reaction. “You clearly need more. Here.” He swallowed the second spoonful, too, but still wasn’t looking particularly better. “This is a very serious case,” she said playfully. “Better make it a double this time.” The spoon nearly overflowed. A smile played around the corners of Easy’s lips, and it filled her chest with a warm pressure. He ate it just before it dripped, humor creeping into his dark eyes. “See? It’s working. I knew it.” This time he stole the spoon right out of her fingers. “Problem is, you aren’t administering this medicine the proper way,” he said as he filled the spoon himself. Jenna grinned again, happy to see lightness returning to his expression. “I’m not?” “Nope,” he said, shaking his head. “This is what will really help.” He held the spoon up to her lips. “How will me taking it—” “No questioning. Just obeying.” There was that cocked eyebrow again. “Oh, is that how it is?” she asked, smirking. When he just stared at her, she gave in and ate the ice cream. Next thing she knew, his lips were on hers. Avoiding the cut on her lip, Easy’s cool tongue slowly snaked over her lips and stroked at her tongue. He grasped the back of her head as he kissed and nibbled at her. The rich flavor of the chocolate combined with another taste that was all Easy and made her moan in appreciation. His grip tightened, his tongue stroked deeper, and a throaty groan spilled from his lips. One more soft press of his lips against hers, and he pulled away. Jenna was nearly panting, and very definitely wanting more. “You’re right,” she said, “that is much more effective.” He gave a rare, open smile, and it made her happy to see it after how sad he’d seemed a few minutes before. “Told ya,” he said with a wink. She nodded. “But, you know, that could’ve been a fluke. Just to be sure it really worked, maybe you should, um, give me another dose?” Easy looked at her a long moment, then leaned in and scooped another spoonful from her nearly empty glass. He held it out to her, making her heart flutter in anticipation. When she tilted her head toward the spoon, he yanked it away and ate the ice cream himself. “No fair,” Jenna sputtered, reaching for the spoon. “That is not what the doctor prescribed.” Holding the spoon above his head put it out of Jenna’s reach, even with them sitting on the bed. She pushed to her knees, grabbed hold of his shoulder, and lunged for it. Laughing, he banded an arm around her lower back and held her in place, easily avoiding her grabs. Jenna couldn’t stop laughing as they wrestled for the spoon. It was stupid and silly and childish . . . and exactly what she needed. And it seemed he did, too. It was perfect.

You’re such a nerd.” She laughed cruelly at me. “What?” I said. “I’m sorry.” I laughed too, just in case it was a joke, but right away I felt hurt. “LPT,” she said. “TIMATOV. ROFLAARP. PRGV. Totally PRGV.” The youth and their abbreviations. I pretended like I knew what she was talking about. “Right,” I said. “IMF. PLO. ESL.” She looked at me like I was insane. “JBF,” she said.