Sweep Books Quotes

Never did she find anything so difficult as to keep herself from losing her temper when she was suddenly disturbed while absorbed in a book. People who are fond of books know the feeling of irritation which sweeps over them at such a moment. The temptation to be unreasonable and snappish is one not easy to manage. "It makes me feel as if something had hit me," Sara had told Ermengarde once in confidence. "And as if I want to hit back. I have to remember things quickly to keep from saying something ill-tempered.

Anytime you feel love for anything, be it stone, tree, lover, or child, you are touched by the Goddess's magick...

I can see why you like it here," he said,making a sweeping gesture that encompassed Kyle's collection of movie posters and science fiction books. "There's a thin layer of nerd all over everything." said Jace. "Thanks. I appreciate that." Simon gave Jace a hard look.

I chase the wind and get lost in the clouds. I'm sweep into darkness in my search for the light.

Never did she find anything so difficult as to keep herself from losing her temper when she was suddenly disturbed while absorbed in a book. People who are fond of books know the feeling of irritation which sweeps over them at such a moment. The temptation to be unreasonable and snappish is one not easy to manage.

His hands root me through the floor, the room stilling. “Sorry. I just needed …” His eyes search mine, thumbs still sweeping in that gentle rhythm. “A nap?” he teases softly, tentatively. “A fantasy novel? A competitively fast oil change?” The block of ice in my chest cracks. “How do you do that?” His brow furrows. “Do what?” “Say the right thing.” The corner of his mouth quirks. “No one thinks that.” “I do.” His lashes splay across his cheeks as his gaze drops. “Maybe I just say the right thing for you.

I wished that the chains would break and the wind would sweep me up, up, up into the sky, beyond the clouds, beyond the sun and the moon, to some marvelous kingdom where no one ever changed and friends were friends for life.

At times I believed that the last page of my book and the last page of my life were one and the same, that when my book ended I'd end, a great wind would sweep through my rooms carrying the pages away, and when the air cleared of all those fluttering white sheets the room would be silent, the chair where I sat empty.

Men are natural warriors, but a woman in battle is truly bloodthirsty

whether they'll write the story of my life as a tragedy or an epic fantasy... I was wondering if it was going to be a kiss at the end, or sad music and a sweeping camera shot over the fields I once roamed freely. I'm hoping for the kiss, but expecting the sweeping camera shot.

Someone was coming through the velvet. He was pulling it wide, he was stepping onto Kestrel’s balcony—close, closer still as she turned and the curtain swayed, then stopped. He pinned the velvet against frame. He held the sweep of it high, at the level of his gray eyes, which were silver in the shadows. He was here. He had come. Arin.

There are few of us who have not sometimes wakened before dawn, either after one of those dreamless nights that make us almost enamoured of death, or one of those nights of horror and misshapen joy, when through the chambers of the brain sweep phantoms more terrible than reality itself, and instinct with that vivid life that lurks in all grotesques, and that lends to Gothic art its enduring vitality, this art being, one might fancy, especially the art of those whose minds have been troubled with the malady of reverie. Gradually white fingers creep through the curtains, and they appear to tremble. In black fantastic shapes, dumb shadows crawl into the corners of the room and crouch there. Outside, there is the stirring of birds among the leaves, or the sound of men going forth to their work, or the sigh and sob of the wind coming down from the hills and wandering round the silent house, as though it feared to wake the sleepers and yet must needs call forth sleep from her purple cave. Veil after veil of thin dusky gauze is lifted, and by degrees the forms and colours of things are restored to them, and we watch the dawn remaking the world in its antique pattern. The wan mirrors get back their mimic life. The flameless tapers stand where we had left them, and beside them lies the half-cut book that we had been studying, or the wired flower that we had worn at the ball, or the letter that we had been afraid to read, or that we had read too often. Nothing seems to us changed. Out of the unreal shadows of the night comes back the real life that we had known. We have to resume it where we had left off, and there steals over us a terrible sense of the necessity for the continuance of energy in the same wearisome round of stereotyped habits, or a wild longing, it may be, that our eyelids might open some morning upon a world that had been refashioned anew in the darkness for our pleasure, a world in which things would have fresh shapes and colours, and be changed, or have other secrets, a world in which the past would have little or no place, or survive, at any rate, in no conscious form of obligation or regret, the remembrance even of joy having its bitterness and the memories of pleasure their pain.

You have to admit he's good looking," Bree pressed, leaning against my kitchen counter. "Of course I admit it. I'm not blind," I said, busily opening cans.

Ancient Egyptians believed that the first and most necessary ingredient in the universe was chaos. It could sweep you away, but it was also the place from which all things start anew.

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

In fairy tales there's always one person who is made for one other, and they find each other and live happily ever after. Cal was my person. I couldn't imagine anyone more perfect. Yet what kind of sick fairy tale would it be if he was the one made exactly right for me and I wasn't right for him?

said, “but the school board—” He opened his arms in a helpless sweep. “If I can help . . .” The following Wednesday the bells of the chapel did not ring, and when the old women

Where resides the comforting knowledge of history's vast, cyclical sweep, the ebb and flow of wars and peace? Peace is the time of waiting for war. A time of preparation, or a time of willful ignorance, blind, blinkered and prattling behind secure walls.

It seems to me that after someone sweeps across your life like a red-hot flame, peeling back the shutters that sat over your heart and your mind and setting free your sweetest dreams or your worst nightmares, after things cool down you've got two choices. You can either slip back into your old self, your old life, tucking those things you were too scared to look at back into hiding, or you can keep those parts of yourself out until you get so used to them that they don't scare you anymore and they just become a part of who you are.

It took my breath away, that evening. If you've ever dreamed that you walked into your best-loved book or film or TV program, then maybe you've got some idea how it felt: things coming alive around you, strange and new and utterly familiar at the same time; the catch in your heartbeat as you move through the rooms that had such a vivid untouchable life in your mind, as your feet actually touch the carpet, as you breathe the air; the odd, secret glow of warmth as these people you've been watching for so long, from so far away, open their circle and sweep you into it.

Books were a healthy drug. They could sweep me away from storms, make me forget bruises, and soothe any emotional ache, if only for a moment.

Code is not like other how-computers-work books. It doesn't have big color illustrations of disk drives with arrows showing how the data sweeps into the computer. Code has no drawings of trains carrying a cargo of zeros and ones. Metaphors and similes are wonderful literary devices but they do nothing but obscure the beauty of technology.

I've been very lucky at what's happened in my career to date, but playing something as far from me as possible is an ambition of mine - anything from a mutated baddy in a comic book action thriller, to a detective. If anything, I'd like Gary Oldman's career: he's the perfect example of it. I've love to have a really broad sweep of characters - to be able to do something edgy, surprising and unfashionable.

The educated man pictures a horde of submen, wanting only a day's liberty to loot his house, burn his books, and set him to work minding a machine or sweeping out a lavatory. 'Anything,' he thinks, 'any injustice, sooner than let that mob loose.' He does not see that since there is no difference between the mass of rich and poor, there is no question of setting the mob loose. The mob is in fact loose now, and--in the shape of rich men--is using its power to set up enormous treadmills of boredom, such as 'smart' hotels.

He swam at my feet, Powerful arms in broad strokes Sweeping the sand. So I asked this man, What seas do you swim? And to this he answered, 'I have seen shells and the like On this desert floor, So I swim this land's memory Thus honouring its past,' Is the journey far, queried I. 'I cannot say,' he replied, 'For I shall drown long before I am done.' Sayings of the Fool Thenys Bule" Steven Erikson - Malazan Book of the Fallen 02 Deadhouse Gates

Ah, Meese has brought us her finest goblets! A moment, whilst Kruppe sweeps out cobwebs, insect husks and other assorted proofs of said goblets' treasured value.

Never did she find anything so difficult as to keep herself from losing her temper when she was suddenly disturbed while absorbed in a book. People who are fond of books know the feeling of irritation which sweeps over them at such a moment. The temptation to be unreasonable and snappish is one not easy to manage

Books, Sonia had decided, were what she would live with when she finally left this place. She would work in a library—any library, anywhere. She’d sweep the floors if she had to. But she’d work in a library, and she’d read the books every day for the rest of her life.

Women can go mad with insomnia. The sleep-deprived roam houses that have lost their familiarity. With tea mugs in hand, we wander rooms, looking on shelves for something we will recognize: a book title, a photograph, the teak-carved bird -- a souvenir from what place? A memory almost rises when our eyes rest on a painting's grey sweep of cloud, or the curve of a wooden leg in a corner. Fingertips faintly recall the raised pattern on a chair cushion, but we wonder how these things have come to be here, in this stranger's home. Lost women drift in places where time has collapsed. We look into our thoughts and hearts for what has been forgotten, for what has gone missing. What did we once care about? Whom did we love? We are emptied. We are remote. Like night lilies, we open in the dark, breathe in the shadowy world. Our soliloquies are heard by no one.

... books are a very recent means of expression in the broad sweep of history, capable of changing the world and toppling tyrants.

Where the slanting forest eaves, Shingled tight with greenest leaves, Sweep the scented meadow-sedge, Let us snoop along the edge; Let us pry in hidden nooks, Laden with our nature books, Scaring birds with happy cries, Chloroforming butterflies, Rooting up each woodland plant, Pinning beetle, fly, and ant, So we may identify What we've ruined, by-and-by.

Stories. Character. Dialouge. Entire worlds created on the page. Worlds that could sweep you away or frighten you, make you laugh or cry. Worlds that allowed you to escape to another country or time. Worlds built piece by piece of ink and punctuation.

That’s what’s amazing about books, isn’t it? The way they can sweep you away. Let you live another life when you need to not be in yours.

I never thought I'd find such peace in simple reading. The words were a kind of magic, taking me by the hand and sweeping me into lands unseen, times unremembered, thoughts unimagined. Through all my years in San Michon, all the blood and sweat and darkling roads I walked, I learned one of my greatest lessons sitting in that Library with those girls in the still of the night. A life without books is a life not lived.

This book is dedicated to all my readers who deserve to be treated like a princess, but don't want the prince to sweep them off their feet. Who want the villain to tell them to grab the headboard and take it all like a good girl. Villains fuck better. Grayson is ready for you now…

The mommy-porn genre currently sweeping the book industry and the Babylonian excess of most television shows probably fall within the historical norm in our culture's sleaze index and are not omens of the imminent collapse of civilization, though if I were not so busy, I might start building an ark.

One of the first requisites of a tea-master is the knowledge of how to sweep, clean, and wash, for there is an art in cleaning and dusting.

People who are fond of books know the feeling of irritation which sweeps over them at such a moment.

There is a lesson here. Just because a book makes you feel bad does not mean it is bad.

Books are a social substitute; you read people who, at one level, you'd like to hang out with. [David Foster Wallace]'s writing self--it's most pronounced in his essays--was the best friend you'd ever have, spotting everything, whispering jokes, sweeping you past what was irritating or boring or awful in humane style.

A book about books is like a poem about poetry: Books are knowledge, paid for, all. Readers - horses in a stall. Stallions should always run. Lest they stale become, in turn. Running waters are most clear. In some books, you disappear – lose yourself, and track of time. How I wish that one was mine... Mine, to have, to write, to read... Mine, just like a flying steed. Mine, forever, - to improve. Would I then, of me, approve? I would not, I can't... myself. I'm but dust, swept off a shelf. Fly, can I, just 'til I'm settled, down, beside my flower, petalled.

One often hears of writers that rise and swell with their subject, though it may seem but an ordinary one. How, then, with me, writing of this Leviathan? Unconsciously my chirography expands into placard capitals. Give me a condor's quill! Give me Vesuvius' crater for an inkstand! Friends, hold my arms! For in the mere act of penning my thoughts of this Leviathan, they weary me, and make me faint with their out-reaching comprehensiveness of sweep, as if to include the whole circle of the sciences, and all the generations of whales, and men, and mastodons, past, present, and to come, with all the revolving panoramas of empire on earth, and throughout the whole universe, not excluding its suburbs. Such, and so magnifying, is the virtue of a large and liberal theme! We expand to its bulk. To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be who have tried it.

You have broken my heart. Just as well. Now I am learning to rise above all that, learning the thin life, waking up simply to praise everything in this world that is strong and beautiful always—the trees, the rocks, the fields, the news from heaven, the laughter that comes back all the same. Just as well. Time to read books, rake the lawn in peace, sweep the floor, scour the faces of the pans, anything. And I have been so diligent it is almost over, I am growing myself as strong as rock, as a tree which, if I put my arms around it, does not lean away.

In the end Navidson is left with one page and one match. For a long time he waits in darkness and cold, postponing this final bit of illumination. At last though, he grips the match by the neck and after locating the friction strip sparks to life a final ball of light. First, he reads a few lines by match light and then as the heat bites his fingertips he applies the flame to the page. Here then is one end: a final act of reading, a final act of consumption. And as the fire rapidly devours the paper, Navidson's eyes frantically sweep down over the text, keeping just ahead of the necessary immolation, until as he reaches the last few words, flames lick around his hands, ash peels off into the surrounding emptiness, and then as the fire retreats, dimming, its light suddenly spent, the book is gone leaving nothing behind but invisible traces already dismantled in the dark.

you are ever again the wave     sweeping through all things     RAINER MARIA RILKE, BOOK OF HOURS

Love is our greatest achievement. Don’t ever forget that. Don’t squander it. Seek it. Experience it. Savor it every day that you can, because you never know when a rogue wave might sweep you away.

I tried to imagine myself as an old lady, grey and wrinkled, with my life behind me. And suddenly I knew what I wanted. Not in the details, but the broad sweep of things. I wanted my life to be like one of my favourite books: a big, fat novel, each page filled with smallwritten words as though the only way to cram so much life in was to make the writing really small. I wanted to be brave, take risks, make a difference, fall in love. The characters would be colourful, the landscapes exotic. I wanted my life to be a page-turner.

A book itself is a little machine; what is the relation (also measurable) of this literary machine to a war machine, love machine, revolutionary machine, etc.—and an abstract machine that sweeps them along? We have been criticized for overquoting literary authors. But when one writes, the only question is which other machine the literary machine can be plugged into, must be plugged into in order to work.

[Lee Oswald] saw himself as part of something vast and sweeping. He was the product of a sweeping history, he and his mother, locked into a process, a system of money and property that diminished their human worth every day, as if by scientific law. The books made him part of something. Something led up to his presence in this room, in this particular skin, and something would follow. Men in small rooms. Men reading and waiting, struggling with secret and feverish ideas.

Folds of scarlet drapery shut in my view to the right hand; to the left were the clear panes of glass, protecting, but not separating me from the drear November day. At intervals, while turning over the leaves of my book, I studied the aspect of that winter afternoon. Afar, it offered a pale blank of mist and cloud; near a scene of wet lawn and storm-beat shrub, with ceaseless rain sweeping away wildly before a long and lamentable blast.

The Buddha said that responding to email and Twitter is like sweeping the sands from the banks of the Ganges River.” “The Buddha said that?” “Well, maybe not. But the point remains the same. Some tasks are impossible, even if you are a Buddha. Even if you have eleven heads and a thousand arms.

Egyptians believed that the first and most necessary ingredient in the universe was chaos. It could sweep you away, but it was also the place from which all things start anew.

Men are natural warriors, but a woman in battle is truly bloodthirsty.” —Old Scottish saying> <

A bell sounded silencing motion where anything moved, hurling motionlessness into activity, books gathered at a sweep, papers to the floor, a glove through the air.

The essence of meditation practice in Dzogchen is encapsulated by these four points: ▪ When one past thought has ceased and a future thought has not yet risen, in that gap, in between, isn’t there a consciousness of the present moment; fresh, virgin, unaltered by even a hair’s breadth of a concept, a luminous, naked awareness? Well, that is what Rigpa is! ▪ Yet it doesn’t stay in that state forever, because another thought suddenly arises, doesn’t it? This is the self-radiance of that Rigpa. ▪ However, if you do not recognize this thought for what it really is, the very instant it arises, then it will turn into just another ordinary thought, as before. This is called the “chain of delusion,” and is the root of samsara. ▪ If you are able to recognize the true nature of the thought as soon as it arises, and leave it alone without any follow-up, then whatever thoughts arise all automatically dissolve back into the vast expanse of Rigpa and are liberated. Clearly this takes a lifetime of practice to understand and realize the full richness and majesty of these four profound yet simple points, and here I can only give you a taste of the vastness of what is meditation in Dzogchen. … Dzogchen meditation is subtly powerful in dealing with the arisings of the mind, and has a unique perspective on them. All the risings are seen in their true nature, not as separate from Rigpa, and not as antagonistic to it, but actually as none other–and this is very important–than its “self-radiance,” the manifestation of its very energy. Say you find yourself in a deep state of stillness; often it does not last very long and a thought or a movement always arises, like a wave in the ocean.  Don’t reject the movement or particulary embrace the stillness, but continue the flow of your pure presence. The pervasive, peaceful state of your meditation is the Rigpa itself, and all risings are none other than this Rigpa’s self-radiance. This is the heart and the basis of Dzogchen practice. One way to imagine this is as if you were riding on the sun’s rays back to the sun: …. Of couse there are rough as well as gentle waves in the ocean; strong emotions come, like anger, desire, jealousy. The real practitioner recognizes them not as a disturbance or obstacle, but as a great opportunity. The fact that you react to arisings such as these with habitual tendencies of attachment and aversion is a sign not only that you are distracted, but also that you do not have the recognition and have lost the ground of Rigpa. To react to emotions in this way empowers them and binds us even tighter in the chains of delusion. The great secret of Dzogchen is to see right through them as soon as they arise, to what they really are: the vivid and electric manifestation of the energy of Rigpa itself. As you gradually learn to do this, even the most turbulent emotions fail to seize hold of you and dissolve, as wild waves rise and rear and sink back into the calm of the ocean. The practitioner discovers–and this is a revolutionary insight, whose subtlety and power cannot be overestimated–that not only do violent emotions not necessarily sweep you away and drag you back into the whirlpools of your own neuroses, they can actually be used to deepen, embolden, invigorate, and strengthen the Rigpa. The tempestuous energy becomes raw food of the awakened energy of Rigpa. The stronger and more flaming the emotion, the more Rigpa is strengthened.

As he stood in the red light of the oil-lamp, strong, tall, and beautiful, his long black hair sweeping over his shoulders, the knife swinging at his neck, and his head crowned with a wreath of white jasmine, he might easily have been mistaken for some wild god of a jungle legend. -"Son," she said at last,—her eyes were full of pride,—"have any told thee that thou art beautiful beyond all men?" "Hah?" said Mowgli, for naturally he had never heard anything of the kind.

...the thought went through his mind that beauty is a spark which flares up when two ages meet across the distance of time, that beauty is a clean sweep of chronology, a rebellion against time.

Regret nothing. Not the cruel novels you read to the end just to find out who killed the cook. Not the insipid movies that made you cry in the dark, in spite of your intelligence, your sophistication. Not the lover you left quivering in a hotel parking lot, the one you beat to the punchline, the door, or the one who left you in your red dress and shoes, the ones that crimped your toes, don’t regret those. Not the nights you called god names and cursed your mother, sunk like a dog in the livingroom couch,b chewing your nails and crushed by loneliness. You were meant to inhale those smoky nights over a bottle of flat beer, to sweep stuck onion rings across the dirty restaurant floor, to wear the frayed coat with its loose buttons, its pockets full of struck matches. You’ve walked those streets a thousand times and still you end up here. Regret none of it, not one of the wasted days you wanted to know nothing, when the lights from the carnival rides were the only stars you believed in, loving them for their uselessness, not wanting to be saved. You’ve traveled this far on the back of every mistake, ridden in dark-eyed and morose but calm as a house after the TV set has been pitched out the upstairs window. Harmless as a broken ax. Emptied of expectation. Relax. Don’t bother remembering any of it. Let’s stop here, under the lit sign on the corner, and watch all the people walk by.

I learned a simple lesson about being awesome: always play to the size of your heart, not to the size of your audience. Awesome doesn’t let the crowd determine the size of the performance. Awesome gets up for two people or 200. Awesome writes great books even if no one is going to read them. Awesome sweeps the parts of store floors that no foot will ever touch. Awesome can’t help itself. Awesome has a huge heart. And that’s what it always plays to. The size of the crowd doesn’t matter. The applause of the audience doesn’t matter.

From time to time I feel as though my books and figurines were with me still. But how could they be? Are they somehow floating around me or over my head? Have the figurines and books that I lost over the years dissolved into the air of Mexico City? Have they become the ash that blows through the city from north to south and from east to west? Perhaps. The dark night of the soul advances through the streets of Mexico City sweeping all before it. And now it is rare to hear singing, where once everything was a song. The dust cloud reduces everything to dust. First the poets, then love, then, when it seems to be sated and about to disperse, the cloud returns to hang high over your city or your mind, with a mysterious air that means it has no intention of moving.

Books were a healthy drug. They could sweep me away from storms, make me forget bruises, and soothe any emotional ache, if only for a moment. History was full of fascinating tales of guts and glory, each one a vacation I could afford.

This body is a guesthouse each morning someone new arrives. Welcome them all for they may be messengers from the invisible. Do not feel burdened by them or they may go back to non-existence. Each time a thought enters your heart treat it as an honored guest, your worth is shown by the thoughts you entertain. Embrace sorrowful thoughts for they sweep the house of your heart clean, scatter the withered leaves, and pull out the twisted roots, preparing the ground for the new shoots of joy.

A pretty woman is a Christmas tree,' my mother told me in the airport. This fella is hanging things on my branches as his gaze sweeps from my face all the way down my body to my hips and then back to my face. Ideas fly from his widened eyes and land on me like teeny, decorative burdens. He is giving me shyness, maybe, some book smarts, and a certain yielding sweetness in bed. The oil-slick eyes get me, and I find myself hanging a few ornaments myself, giving him deft hands and a sense of humor.

Sticking your nose in a book might seem like the very opposite of grabbing life by the balls, but reading had always been one of my great loves, and it was one of the things I was most terrified to lose. Sure, there were always audiobooks, but the holy communion of bringing your eyes to paper and sweeping them across the page, left to right, left to right, left to right, the rhythm of that dance, the quiet of it, the sound of the page turning, the look of crinkled covers stained with the coffee you were drinking when you read that chapter that changed your life--you didn't get any of that when listening to an audiobook, and I wanted as much of that as I could get, while I still could.

Finally I find it, the book, but as I’m pulling it out of the stack I hear a noise coming from my toy room. It sounds like scratching or scraping maybe and my mind instantly goes to the possibility that maybe it’s a monster or a dragon or something else with claws. My hand shakes a little as I stand up and turn back toward the room. When I step into it, I feel the wind hit my cheeks. I shine the light around and notice one of the windows is open. I don’t understand why. I didn’t open it and I don’t think it was open when I came down here. What if it was a monster? I sweep the flashlight around the room at all my toys as I start back toward the corner. Then the light lands on something tall… I hear voices. Ones that don’t sound like they belong to a monster, but just people. But that’s what they end up being. Terrible, horrible monsters.

As soon as Bohm began to reflect on the hologram he saw that it too provided a new way of understanding order. Like the ink drop in its dispersed state, the interference patterns recorded on a piece of holographic film also appear disordered to the naked eye. Both possess orders that are hidden or enfolded in much the same way that the order in a plasma is enfolded in the seemingly random behavior of each of its electrons. But this was not the only insight the hologram provided. The more Bohm thought about it the more convinced he became that the universe actually employed holographic principles in its operations, was itself a kind of giant, flouring hologram, and this realization allowed him to crystallize all of his various insights into a sweeping and cohesive whole. He published his first papers on his holographic view of the universe in the early 1970s, and in 1980 he presented a mature distillation of his thoughts in a book entitled Wholeness and the Implicate Order. In it he did more than just link his myriad ideas together. He transfigured them into a new way of looking at reality that was as breathtaking as it was radical.

The moon was climbing the sky, and the vast sweep of the milky way stretched above, every one of those minute specks a sun in its own system, lighting and warming planets, maybe, and life, maybe, and some kind of wondering being, maybe, looking out at the little star that was her sun, and at this world, and at Lyra.

You don’t know me.” “I know everything about you. I know your deepest, darkest secrets. And I know you need a hero. A dark one.” I stop at that, press the heels of my hands into my eyes. When I pull them away, I find him watching me. This is so fucked up. I’m so fucked up. “What do you want from me?” He leans in close, his gaze sweeps over my face, pausing at my mouth for a long minute before returning to my eyes. “I already told you. I want everything. Every fucking thing.

We stopped you from going, didn't we? Me and Shiva. Our birth?" Don't be silly. Can you imagine me giving up this?" he said sweeping his hand to indicate family, Missing, the home he'd made out of a bungalow. "I've been blessed. My genius was to know long ago that money alone wouldn't make me happy. Or maybe that's my excuse for not leaving you a huge fortune! I certainly could have made more money if that had been my goal. But one thing I won't have is regrets. My VIP patients often regret so many things on their deathbeds. They regret the bitterness they'll leave in people's hearts. They realize the no money, no church service, no eulogy, no funeral procession no matter how elaborate, can remove the legacy of a mean spirit. Of course, you and I have seen countless deaths among the poor. Their only regret surely is being born poor, suffering from birth to death. You know, in the book of Job, Job says to God, 'You should've taken me straight from the womb to the tomb! Why the in-between part, why life, if it was just to suffer?' Something like that. For the poor, death is at least the end of suffering.

I don't believe in answers. I don't believe in big sweeping philosophies. All the great men of history tried to make these absolute laws, answer all the big questions, and they were always wrong. There's no big answers out there, not that we can understand. I think the thing is just to somehow accept that life doesn't always make sense. Terrible things can happen. It's ridiculous to try to spin it. I mean, maybe in the grand sense, you know, when we all come out to take our bows at the end, it'll all seem logical and wonderful. But in the meantime, life can fucking hurt. We need to be there for each other. That's the real magical act--making someone a sandwich, cleaning the flat.

Dorothy looked at everything as though it might vanish. The bright daily pottery, the spice-jars, the sweep of the staircase, the pigeons in the stable yard. What had been real was now like a thick film, a coloured oilcloth, spread over a cauldron of vapours which shaped and reshaped themselves into shadowy forms, embracing, threatening, glaring.

Don’t read books! Don’t chant poems! When you read books your eyeballs wither away leaving the bare sockets. When you chant poems your heart leaks out slowly with each word. People say reading books is enjoyable. People say chanting poems is fun. But if your lips constantly make a sound like an insect chirping in autumn, you will only turn into a haggard old man. And even if you don’t turn into a haggard old man, it’s annoying for others to have to hear you. It’s so much better to close your eyes, sit in your study, lower the curtains, sweep the floor, burn incense. It’s beautiful to listen to the wind, listen to the rain, take a walk when you feel energetic, and when you’re tired go to sleep.

The car wash sign said, “Free Vacuums.” So I told them I wanted a high-powered Dyson. I figured it’d be a good gift for my girl, so she could stop sweeping the living room carpet.

I had a whole evening planned. I was hoping to sweep you off your feet. Like those guys in your stupid books.

¿Qué enfermo cuento de hadas era, si él estaba hecho exactamente para mí y yo no estaba bien para él?

Bree smiled at me. "Don't worry about me. I think I can handle him. In fact, I want to handle him," she joked. "All over.

Have you ever seen a god laugh? It makes you catch your breath and feel hopeful and shivery and excited all at the same time. That's how it was watching Cal.

One of the great advantages about being a villain is that you can easily recognise other villains and on rare occasions, recognise a truly good man.

People who are fond of books know the feeling of irritation which sweeps over them at such a moment. The temptation to be unreasonable and snappish is one not easy to manage.

Shu's face is the last thing I remember as the darkness sweeps me away.

The initial small step is simple: Rather than making a sweeping determination to tackle the Great Books (all of them), decide to begin on one of the reading lists in Part II. As you read each book, you’ll follow the pattern of the trivium. First you’ll try to understand the book’s basic structure and argument; next, you’ll evaluate the book’s assertions; finally, you’ll form an opinion about the book’s ideas. You’ll have to exercise these three skills of reading—understanding, analysis, and evaluation—differently for each kind of book.

What the deuce does he mean by all this? I thought I had found a clever man who would give me good advice, and I find a chimney-sweep, who, instead of speaking to me, plays at mora.

Prosperity rolled river-like and stopped, Making their mill go; but when wheel wore out, The wave would find a space and sweep on free And, half-a-mile off, grind some neighbour's corn

Ancient Egyptians believed that the first and most necessary ingredient in the universe was chaos. It could sweep you away, but it was also the place from which all things start anew. —

These things matter to me, Daniel, says the man with six days to live. They are sitting on the porch in the last light. These things matter to me, son. The way the hawks huddle their shoulders angrily against hissing snow. Wrens whirring in the bare bones of bushes in winter. The way swallows and swifts veer and whirl and swim and slice and carve and curve and swerve. The way that frozen dew outlines every blade of grass. Salmonberries thimbleberries cloudberries snowberries elderberries salalberries gooseberries. My children learning to read. My wife's voice velvet in my ear at night in the dark under the covers. Her hair in my nose as we slept curled like spoons. The sinuous pace of rivers and minks and cats. Fresh bread with too much butter. My children's hands when they cup my face in their hands. Toys. Exuberance. Mowing the lawn. Tiny wrenches and screwdrivers. Tears of sorrow, which are the salt sea of the heart. Sleep in every form from doze to bone-weary. Pay stubs. Trains. The shivering ache of a saxophone and the yearning of a soprano. Folding laundry hot from the dryer. A spotless kitchen floor. The sound of bagpipes. The way horses smell in spring. Red wines. Furnaces. Stone walls. Sweat. Postcards on which the sender has written so much that he or she can barely squeeze in the signature. Opera on the radio. Bathrobes, back rubs. Potatoes. Mink oil on boots. The bands at wedding receptions. Box-elder bugs. The postman's grin. Linen table napkins. Tent flaps. The green sifting powdery snow of cedar pollen on my porch every year. Raccoons. The way a heron labors through the sky with such a vast elderly dignity. The cheerful ears of dogs. Smoked fish and the smokehouses where fish are smoked. The way barbers sweep up circles of hair after a haircut. Handkerchiefs. Poems read aloud by poets. Cigar-scissors. Book marginalia written with the lightest possible pencil as if the reader is whispering to the writer. People who keep dead languages alive. Fresh-mown lawns. First-basemen's mitts. Dish-racks. My wife's breasts. Lumber. Newspapers folded under arms. Hats. The way my children smelled after their baths when they were little. Sneakers. The way my father's face shone right after he shaved. Pants that fit. Soap half gone. Weeds forcing their way through sidewalks. Worms. The sound of ice shaken in drinks. Nutcrackers. Boxing matches. Diapers. Rain in every form from mist to sluice. The sound of my daughters typing their papers for school. My wife's eyes, as blue and green and gray as the sea. The sea, as blue and green and gray as her eyes. Her eyes. Her.

On the front flap, the reader was informed that the Testamento geometrico was really three books, 'each independent, but functionally correlated by the sweep of the whole,' and then it said 'this work representing the final distillation of Dieste's reflections and research on Space, the notion of which is involved in any methodical discussion of the fundamentals of Geometry.

But a risk-free life wasn't much of a life, really, and if she was going to change, she might as well start now.” this book also had a lesson of taking risks for Lexi she was a middle aged women who was waiting for that one guy to sweep her off her feet. well one had come along (aka Jeremy Marsh) and she was about to let him go. but she got out of her comfort zone and loved him.

I looked deeply into the fire, and the timeless, eternal dance of colors I saw there was so beautiful, I wanted to cry. Cal's deep voice floated toward me as clearly as a whisper in a tunnel, as if his words were meant for me alone, and the found me unerringly even as the group dissolved into talking. He said the words under his breath, his gaze fixed on my face. "I banish loneliness.

Love is our greatest achievement. Don't ever forget that. Don't squander it. Seek it. Experience it. Savor it every day that you can, because you never know when a rogue wave might sweep you away.

Man today lives in a coffin of flesh. Hearing and seeing nothing. The Land and Law are perverted. The Good Book says I will gather you to Jerusalem to the furnace of my wrath. It says thou art the land that is not cleansed. I concur. We need a great fire that will sweep from ocean to ocean and I offer my oath that I will soak myself in kerosene if promised the fire would be allowed to burn.

What people had been calling a “gut reaction” turned out to be a mere hint of the complex intelligence at work in a hundred thousand billion cells. In a sweeping medical revolution, scientists have

Genuine conversion is needed, not once in years, but daily. This conversion brings man into a new relation with God. Old things, his natural passions and hereditary and cultivated tendencies to wrong, pass away, and he is renewed and sanctified. But this work must be continual; for as long as Satan exists, he will make an effort to carry on his work. He who strives to serve God will encounter a strong undercurrent of wrong. His heart needs to be barricaded by constant watchfulness and prayer, or else the embankment will give way; and like a mill-stream, the undercurrent of wrong will sweep away the safeguard. No renewed heart can be kept in a condition of sweetness without the daily application of the salt of the word. Divine grace must be received daily, or no man will stay converted.

Only once was there a question which YISUN hesitated to answer. Strangely enough, it was asked by Aesma, the least wise of their companions. They trode a stony road together, and Aesma’s feet grew hot and sore. She swore and spat, and clutched her feet, and asked YISUN a stupid question. “Lord!” said she, in roiling frustration, “Before you said there is no such thing as Universal Truth!” “It was so,” said YISUN. “Then what is all this! This foolery!” said Aesma, with an exaggerated sweep of her ashen arms, “Isn’t creation itself, the entirety of your own grand work, a self-evident truth? The only self evident truth, in fact!” “It is not so,” said YISUN, stopping their pace. “Then what is it?” wailed Aesma, starting to tantrum. This was the question that caused YISUN to hesitate. They meditated on it for a short time only, but Aesma was aghast with wonderment at the power of the question. “My opinion,” said YISUN, finally. “Is it a correct opinion?” said Aesma, awestruck. “Aesma is observant,” said YISUN.

In his room, scanning through the poetry book for one to read in class, Tate found a poem by Thomas Moore: ... she's gone to the Lake of the Dismal Swamp, Where, all night long, by a fire-fly lamp, She paddles her white canoe. And her fire-fly lamp I soon shall see, And her paddle I soon shall hear; Long and loving our life shall be, And I'll hide the maid in a cypress tree, When the footstep of death is near. The words made him think of Kya, Jodie's little sister. She'd seemed so small and alone in the marsh's big sweep. He imagined his own sister lost out there. His dad was right- poems made you feel something.

This idea of collective liberty also was expressed in many bizarre obligations which New England towns collectively imposed upon their members. Eastham’s town meeting, for example, ordered that no single man could marry until he had killed six blackbirds or three crows. Every town book contained many such rules.4 The General Court also passed sweeping statutes which allowed the magistrates to suppress almost any act, by any means. One such law, for example, threatened that “if any man shall exceed the bounds of moderation, we shall punish him severely.” The definition of “exceeding the bounds of moderation” was left to the magistrate.

Maybe I’m desensitized to real men. Maybe my expectations live between the pages of books involving heroes with ten-inch schlongs and magical tongues, performing grandeur gestures to sweep their heroines off their feet.

Karsa shrugged. ‘The Malazan soldiers in Genabaris said the Seven Cities was going to rebel against their occupiers. This is why the Teblor do not make conquests. Better that the enemy keeps its land, so that we may raid again and again.’ ‘Not the imperial way,’ the Daru responded, shaking his head. ‘Possession and control, the two are like insatiable hungers for some people. Oh, no doubt the Malazans have thought up countless justifications for their wars of expansion. It’s well known that Seven Cities was a rat’s warren of feuds and civil wars, leaving most of the population suffering and miserable and starving under the heels of fat warlords and corrupt priest-kings. And that, with the Malazan conquest, the thugs ended up spiked to the city walls or on the run. And the wilder tribes no longer sweep down out of the hills to deliver mayhem on their more civilized kin. And the tyranny of the priesthoods was shattered, putting an end to human sacrifice and extortion. And of course the merchants have never been richer, or safer on these roads. So, all in all, this land is rife for rebellion.

Of students’ papers: ‘I am generally very benevolent [said Shade]. But there are certain trifles I do not forgive.’ Kinbote: ‘For instance?’ ‘Not having read the required book. Having read it like an idiot. Looking in it for symbols; example: “The author uses the striking image green leaves because green is the symbol of happiness and frustration.” I am also in the habit of lowering a student’s mark catastrophically if he uses “simple” and “sincere” in a commendatory sense; examples: “Shelley’s style is always very simple and good”; or “Yeats is always sincere.” This is widespread, and when I hear a critic speaking of an author’s sincerity I know that either the critic or the author is a fool.’ Kinbote: ‘But I am told this manner of thinking is taught in high school?’ ‘That’s where the broom should begin to sweep. A child should have thirty specialists to teach him thirty subjects, and not one harassed schoolmarm to show him a picture of a rice field and tell him this is China because she knows nothing about China, or anything else, and cannot tell the difference between longitude and latitude.’ Kinbote: ‘Yes. I agree.

Most often, a haloed moon means nothing more than that reflective volcanic ash has made its way into the stratosphere, and a two-headed goat is only a genetic curiosity. The mommy-porn genre currently sweeping the book industry and the Babylonian excess of most television shows probably fall within the historical norm in our culture’s sleaze index and are not omens of the imminent collapse of civilization, though if I were not so busy, I might start building an ark.

Smiling wistfully at the thought of her beloved sister, Daisy felt a wave of loneliness sweep over her. She and Lillian had always been together, arguing, laughing, getting each other into scrapes, and rescuing each other whenever possible. Naturally she was happy that Lillian had met her perfect match in the strong-willed Westcliff... but that didn't stop Daisy from missing her terribly. And now that the other wallflowers, including Evie, had found husbands, they were part of the mysterious married world that Daisy was still excluded from. She was going to have to find a husband soon. Some nice, sincere gentleman who would share her love of books. A man who wore spectacles, and liked dogs and children.

Never did she find anything so difficult as to keep herself from losing her temper when she was suddenly disturbed while absorbed in a book. People who are fond of books know the feeling of irritation which sweeps over them at such a moment.

I couldn't think of anything I wanted to do or any place I wanted to be more than home. Where I can walk around the yard, sweeping leaves off the slate paths to my heart's content. Where I can spend all day in my pajamas puttering around the house, or curled up in my favorite chair in the family room next to the big stone fireplace. The walls are papered deep red, hung with Madison's paintings and lined with our favorite books. The furniture is comfortable and inviting. Our house is made to be lived in; we use every inch of it and don't mind the signs of wear and tear. There's a deep dent in the floor next to the hearth ... It's part of the story of this house, where a family has left its mark, and where it continues to grow and evolve.

men worked fifty, sixty, even seventy or more hours a week; the women worked all the time, with little assistance from labor-saving devices, washing laundry, ironing shirts, mending socks, turning collars, sewing on buttons, mothproofing woolens, polishing furniture, sweeping and washing floors, washing windows, cleaning sinks, tubs, toilets, and stoves, vacuuming rugs, nursing the sick, shopping for food, cooking meals, feeding relatives, tidying closets and drawers, overseeing paint jobs and household repairs, arranging for religious observances, paying bills and keeping the family’s books while simultaneously attending to their children’s health, clothing, cleanliness, schooling, nutrition, conduct, birthdays, discipline, and morale.

There was dusting and sweeping to do, books to be put away. Lovely books. It didn't matter to Dick if they were serious leather-bound tomes or paperbacks with garish covers. He loved them all, for they were filled with words, and words were magic to this hob. Wise and clever humans had used some marvelous spell to imbue each book with every kind of story and character you could imagine, and many you couldn't. If you knew the key to unlock the words, you could experience them all - Pixel Pixies

If you’ve ever dreamed that you walked into your best-loved book or film or TV program, then maybe you’ve got some idea how it felt: things coming alive around you, strange and new and utterly familiar at the same time; the catch in your heartbeat as you move through the rooms that had such a vivid untouchable life in your mind, as your feet actually touch the carpet, as you breathe the air; the odd, secret glow of warmth as these people you’ve been watching for so long, from so far away, open their circle and sweep you into it.

A breakfast-room adjoined the drawing-room, I slipped in there.  It contained a bookcase: I soon possessed myself of a volume, taking care that it should be one stored with pictures.  I mounted into the window-seat: gathering up my feet, I sat cross-legged, like a Turk; and, having drawn the red moreen curtain nearly close, I was shrined in double retirement. Folds of scarlet drapery shut in my view to the right hand; to the left were the clear panes of glass, protecting, but not separating me from the drear November day.  At intervals, while turning over the leaves of my book, I studied the aspect of that winter afternoon.  Afar, it offered a pale blank of mist and cloud; near a scene of wet lawn and storm-beat shrub, with ceaseless rain sweeping away wildly before a long and lamentable blast. I

I wish I could sweep her into my arms and kiss her. I want to know her in the way I know my favorite books, read her front to back and savor every sentence, learn every secret between the lines of her life. I wish I could discover all the ways to love someone with her.

Did you ever notice that most of us relate to our lives like we have no control or say over them? Especially in areas where we’re not proud. We speak about ourselves like we’re reporting on the weather, making sweeping generalizations...And boy do we ever believe our own ‘forecasts.

And those who will carefully study the so-called 'Mosaic code' contained in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, will see that, though Jahveh's prohibitions of certain forms of immorality are strict and sweeping, his wrath is quite as strongly kindled against infractions of ritual ordinances. Accidental homicide may go unpunished, and reparation may be made for wilful theft. On the other hand, Nadab and Abihu, who 'offered strange fire before Jahveh, which he had not commanded them,' were swiftly devoured by Jahveh's fire; he who sacrificed anywhere except at the allotted place was to be 'cut off from his people'; so was he who ate blood; and the details of the upholstery of the Tabernacle, of the millinery of the priests' vestments, and of the cabinet work of the ark, can plead direct authority from Jahveh, no less than moral commands.

So while we cannot be certain that some new Ebola outbreak or an unknown flu strain won’t sweep across the globe and kill millions, we will not regard it as an inevitable natural calamity. Rather, we will see it as an inexcusable human failure and demand the heads of those responsible.

She’d entered a city made entirely of leather and paper. Celaena put a hand against her heart. Escape routes be damned. “I’ve never seen—how many volumes are there?” Chaol shrugged. “The last time anyone bothered to count, it was a million. But that was two hundred years ago. I’d say maybe more than that, especially given the legends that a second library lies deep beneath, in catacombs and tunnels.” “Over a million? A million books?” Her heart leapt and danced, and she cracked a smile. “I’d die before I even got through half of that!” “You like to read?” She raised an eyebrow. “Don’t you?” Not waiting for an answer, she moved farther into the library, the train of her gown sweeping across the floor. She neared a shelf and looked at the titles. She recognized none of them. Grinning, she whirled and moved through the main floor, running a hand across the dusty books.

This was the sort of girl who should be attending college, not ones like that dreadful Minkoff girl, that brutal and slovenly girl who had almost been raped by one of the janitors just outside of his office. Dr. Talc shuddered at the very thought of Miss Minkoff. In class she had Insulted and challenged and vilified him at every turn, egging the Reilly monster to join in the attack. He would never forget those two; no one on the faculty ever would. They were like two Huns sweeping down on Rome. Dr. Talc idly wondered if they had married each other. Each certainly deserved the other.

One sweeping charge may be brought against the whole of Christendom, and that charge is neglect and abuse of the Bible. To prove this charge we have no need to look abroad: the proof lies at our own doors. I have no doubt that there are more Bibles in Great Britain at this moment than there ever were since the world began. There is more Bible buying and Bible selling,—more Bible printing and Bible distributing,—than ever was since England was a nation. We see Bibles in every bookseller's shop,—Bibles of every size, price, and style,—Bibles great, and Bibles small,—Bibles for the rich, and Bibles for the poor. There are Bibles in almost every house in the land. But all this time I fear we are in danger of forgetting, that to have the Bible is one thing, and to read it quite another. This neglected Book is the subject about which I address the readers of this paper to-day. Surely it is no light matter what you are doing with the Bible.

Never did she find anything so difficult as to keep herself from losing her temper when she was suddenly disturbed while absorbed in a book. People who are fond of books know the feeling of irritation which sweeps over them at such a moment. The temptation to be unreasonable and snappish is one not easy to manage. “It makes me feel as if some one had hit me,” Sara had told Ermengarde once in confidence. “And as if I want to hit back. I have to remember things quickly to keep from saying something ill-tempered.” She had to remember things quickly when she laid her book on the window-seat and jumped down from her comfortable corner.

I reminded him that I was there by appointment to offer him my book for publication. He began to swell and went on swelling and swelling and swelling until he had reached the size of a god of about the second or third degree. Then the fountains of his great deep were broken up and for two or three minutes I couldn’t see him for the rain. It was words, only words, but they fell so thickly that they darkened the atmosphere. Finally he made an important sweep with his right hand which took in the whole room, and said: “ Books—look around you! Every place are books that are waiting for publication. Do I want any more? Excuse me, I don’t. Good morning.

Our life is like a journey…’ – and so the journey seems to me less an adventure and a foray into unusual realms than a concentrated likeness of our existence: residents of a city, citizens of country, beholden to a class or a social circle, member of a family and clan and entangled by professional duties, by the habits of an ‘everyday life’ woven from all these circumstances, we often feel too secure, believing our house built for all the future, easily induced to believe in a constancy that makes ageing a problem for one person and each change in external circumstances a catastrophe for another. We forget that this is a process, that the earth is in constant motion and that we too are affected by ebbs and tides, earthquakes and events far beyond our visible and tangible spheres: beggars, kings, figures in the same great game. We forget it for our would-be peace of mind, which then is built on shifting sand. We forget it so as not to fear. And fear makes us stubborn: we call reality only what we can grasp with our hands and what affects us directly, denying the force of the fire that’s sweeping our neighbour’s house, but not yet ours. War in other countries? Just twelve hours, twelve weeks from our borders? God forbid – the horror that sometimes seizes us, you feel it too when reading history books, time or space, it doesn’t matter what lies between us and it. But the journey ever so slightly lifts the veil over the mystery of space – and a city with a magical, unreal name, Samarkand the Golden, Astrakhan or Isfahan, City of Rose Attar, becomes real the instant we set foot there and touch it with our living breath.

He reached down to the exposed line of her throat, drawing the backs of his fingers over her skin with a sensitive lightness that caused her breath to quicken. His fingertips rested on the rapid tattoo of her pulse, and caressed softly. Watching a delicate tide of pink rise in her face, he said in a low voice, “Put the book aside.” Poppy’s toes curled beneath the bed linens. “But I’ve reached a very interesting part,” she said demurely, teasing him. “Not half so interesting as what’s about to happen to you.” Drawing the covers back with a deliberate sweep that left her gasping, Harry lowered his body over hers … and the book dropped to the floor, forgotten.

So it needs to be said that nearly all of the anti-Shakespeare sentiment—actually all of it, every bit—involves manipulative scholarship or sweeping misstatements of fact. Shakespeare “never owned a book,” a writer for the New York Times gravely informed readers in one doubting article in 2002. The statement cannot actually be refuted, for we know nothing about his incidental possessions. But the writer might just as well have suggested that Shakespeare never owned a pair of shoes or pants. For all the evidence tells us, he spent his life naked from the waist down, as well as bookless, but it is probable that what is lacking is the evidence, not the apparel or the books.

There's a reason that dust and life go together naturally. Sometimes it comes together in the most perfect way to make the very building blocks of life. Sometimes it sweeps in and makes everything seem hazy and dark. Sometimes it gets in my amaretto and then I have to pour a new glass, but mainly that's cat's fur, which is not really the same thing.

Boredom isn’t even a real function within nature. It is a human glitch. Nature is beyond judgment; only humans cast broad sweeping judgments across their world about what’s good, what’s bad, what is or isn’t worth their time, etc. As soon as you cast judgement, you limit your world. Whenever you’re bored, it’s your own fault. Boredom is caused by judgement.

University and its immediate aftermath were little more than a sensory haze. A blur of gold and green, the scent of old books, the slide of a stranger’s body against mine. Rushes of chemical rapture. The heat of a nightclub, a sweep of lights, like a peacock’s tail, bodies and heartbeats and music. I was king of a glittering world, a splintering, falling, shattering world.

People like these have done more to relieve human misery than any prophet with a manifesto ever will. They number in the millions, these mortals, but they don’t make it into the history books much. They don’t do anything sweeping or controversial. They live their lives, contribute their bits of good work, and die quietly in their beds without recognition or reward. Usually.

When books sweep the world with characters and plots that seem unutterably grim...you have to ask whether we willingly incorperate such material into our lives because we need more shadows, clouds, drama, or perhaps because vicarious exposure to such material equips us, psychologically, for potential exposure to the real thing. [p35, Chapter 1 Taking the rough with the smooth]

My goal is to sweep the reader away from his world and bring him along for the adventure. Learning something new shouldn’t feel like work, nor should today’s younger reader be underestimated. If done correctly, there is no need to “dumb down” the plot or simplify words. When someone tells me he thought The Serpent’s Ring was easy to read, I know I succeeded in my storytelling.

More than anything, I wanted this book to highlight a neurodiverse heroine who happens to be on medication and in therapy falling in love and thriving. I wanted to show the messy, heavy parts of her life alongside the moments that sweep her off her feet. And I wanted a hero who'd love her through her dark days, not despite them, because to me, that is the most romantic thing of all.

It’s WA today, Minna,” called Orson from across the room, Orson’s name for Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Orson played second violin with a sloppy serenity, rolling his eyes and sticking out his tongue, his bowing long and sweeping and beautiful even when out of tune. “If you must make a mistake,” he had quoted, “make it a big one.” Was it Heifetz who had said it? Perlman? Zukerman maybe?

She didn’t run. Gideon never ran unless she had to. In the absolute darkness before dawn she brushed her teeth without concern and splashed her face with water, and even went so far as to sweep the dust off the floor of her cell. She shook out her big black church robe and hung it from the hook. Having done this every day for over a decade, she no longer needed light to do it by. This

I wish I could answer your question. All I can say is that all of us, humans, witches, bears, are engaged in a war already, although not all of us know it. Whether you find danger on Svalbard or whether you fly off unharmed, you are a recruit, under arms, a soldier." "Well, that seems kinda precipitate. Seems to me a man should have a choice whether to take up arms or not." "We have no more choice in that than in whether or not to be born." "Oh, I like choice, though," he said. "I like choosing the jobs I take and the places I go and the food I eat and the companions I sit and yarn with. Don't you wish for a choice once in a while ?" She considered, and then said, "Perhaps we don't mean the same thing by choice, Mr. Scoresby. Witches own nothing, so we're not interested in preserving value or making profits, and as for the choice between one thing and another, when you live for many hundreds of years, you know that every opportunity will come again. We have different needs. You have to repair your balloon and keep it in good condition, and that takes time and trouble, I see that; but for us to fly, all we have to do is tear off a branch of cloud-pine; any will do, and there are plenty more. We don't feel cold, so we need no warm clothes. We have no means of exchange apart from mutual aid. If a witch needs something, another witch will give it to her. If there is a war to be fought, we don't consider cost one of the factors in deciding whether or not it is right to fight. Nor do we have any notion of honor, as bears do, for instance. An insult to a bear is a deadly thing. To us... inconceivable. How could you insult a witch? What would it matter if you did?" "Well, I'm kinda with you on that. Sticks and stones, I'll break yer bones, but names ain't worth a quarrel. But ma'am, you see my dilemma, I hope. I'm a simple aeronaut, and I'd like to end my days in comfort. Buy a little farm, a few head of cattle, some horses...Nothing grand, you notice. No palace or slaves or heaps of gold. Just the evening wind over the sage, and a ceegar, and a glass of bourbon whiskey. Now the trouble is, that costs money. So I do my flying in exchange for cash, and after every job I send some gold back to the Wells Fargo Bank, and when I've got enough, ma'am, I'm gonna sell this balloon and book me a passage on a steamer to Port Galveston, and I'll never leave the ground again." "There's another difference between us, Mr. Scoresby. A witch would no sooner give up flying than give up breathing. To fly is to be perfectly ourselves." "I see that, ma'am, and I envy you; but I ain't got your sources of satisfaction. Flying is just a job to me, and I'm just a technician. I might as well be adjusting valves in a gas engine or wiring up anbaric circuits. But I chose it, you see. It was my own free choice. Which is why I find this notion of a war I ain't been told nothing about kinda troubling." "lorek Byrnison's quarrel with his king is part of it too," said the witch. "This child is destined to play a part in that." "You speak of destiny," he said, "as if it was fixed. And I ain't sure I like that any more than a war I'm enlisted in without knowing about it. Where's my free will, if you please? And this child seems to me to have more free will than anyone I ever met. Are you telling me that she's just some kind of clockwork toy wound up and set going on a course she can't change?" "We are all subject to the fates. But we must all act as if we are not, or die of despair. There is a curious prophecy about this child: she is destined to bring about the end of destiny. But she must do so without knowing what she is doing, as if it were her nature and not her destiny to do it. If she's told what she must do, it will all fail; death will sweep through all the worlds; it will be the triumph of despair, forever. The universes will all become nothing more than interlocking machines, blind and empty of thought, feeling, life...

How did we get here? How, like Tootle the Train, did we get so off track? Perhaps it’s time to revisit these beloved stories and start all over again. Trying to figure out where you belong, like Scuffy the Tugboat? Maybe, as time marches on, you’re beginning to feel that you resemble the Saggy Baggy Elephant. Or perhaps your problems are more sweeping. Like the Poky Little Puppy, do you seem to be getting into trouble rather often and missing out on the strawberry shortcake of life? Maybe this book can help you! After all, Little Golden Books were first published during the dark days of World War II, and they’ve been comforting people during trying times ever since—while gently teaching us a thing or two. And they remind us that we’ve had the potential to be wise and content all along.

I can't say I remember this bit in the book,' she commented when he was finished and she was sweeping an applicator along his collarbone and pressing it lightly into the hollow beneath. 'They call it “artistic licence”. ' 'Not just the producers trying to shoe-horn in a scene involving you in a wet shirt?' 'Why would they want that?' There was a soft gleam of white teeth as his lips parted in a smile.

The movie style eventually known as ‘Film Noir’ served up hard-bitten crime stories featuring morally bankrupt men and mysterious femme fatales, blending violence and sexual desire into bleak tales of modern life, without clear messages of morality. The comic book industry offered younger readers its own version of the Film Noir mood with a wave of crime comics that began sweeping the newsstands around 1947.

Tell me what I'll be doing. Washing windows? Sweeping floors?" She cocked her head. "No, you'll be working with the kids as my aide." His whole face closed down. His hands fisted briefly. He reminded her of a picture in a Sunday school book she'd seen when she was little of a sinner condemned to hell. "No, I won't, Ms. McPherson. I will not, ever, be working with kids." "But that's all we have here for you to do.

Across the broad sweep of human history, societies either were governed autocratically by someone who disposed of a state bureaucracy or had something resembling early democracy where the state was absent, power was decentralized, and their overall size was likely to be small. The idea that one could sustain a democracy in a polity as large as the thirteen American colonies, combined with a central state, was unprecedented

Marjorie wondered if she was in love. How could she know? How did anyone know? In middle school she had been into Victorian literature, the sweeping romance of it. Every character in those books was hopelessly in love. All the men were wooing, all the women being wooed. It was easier to see what love looked like then, the embarrassingly grand, unabashed emotion of it. Now, did it look like sitting in a Camry, sipping whiskey?

At times I can certainly see a subject clearly and distinctly, think my way through it, great sweeping thoughts that I can scarcely grasp but which all at once give me an intense feeling of importance. Yet when I try to write them down they shrivel into nothing, and that's why I lack the courage to commit them to paper - in case I become too disillusioned with the fatuous little as they that emerges. But let me impress just one thing upon you, sister. Wash your hands of all attempts to embody those great, sweeping thoughts. The smallest, most fatuous little essay is worth more than the flood of grandiose ideas in which you like to wallow. Of course you must hold on to your forebodings and your intuitions. They are the sources upon which you draw, but be careful not to drown in them. Just organise things a little, exercise some mental hygiene. Your imagination and your emotions are like a vast ocean from which you wrest small pieces of land that may well be flooded again. The ocean is wide and elemental, but what matter are the small pieces of land you reclaim from it. The subject right before you is more important than those prodigious thoughts of Tolstoy and Napoleon that occurred to you in the middle of last night, and the lesson you gave that keen young girl and Friday night is more important than all your vague philosophizing. Never forget that. Don't overestimate your own intensity; it may give you the impression that you were cut out for greater things than the so-called men in the street, who's inner life is a closed book to you. In fact, you're no more than a weakling and a non-entity adrift and tossed by the waves. Keep your eyes fixed on the mainland and don't flounder helplessly in the ocean.

her small white dog Bouton hurrying at her heels to keep up. A far cry from the fluffy lapdogs so popular with the ladies of the Court, he looked vaguely like a cross between a poodle and a dachshund, with a rough, kinky coat whose fringes fluttered along the edges of a wide belly and stumpy, bowed legs. His feet, splay-toed and black-nailed, clicked frantically over the stones of the floor as he trotted after Mother Hildegarde, pointed muzzle almost touching the sweeping black folds of her habit. “Is that a dog?” I had asked one of the orderlies in amazement, when I first beheld Bouton, passing through the Hôpital at the heels of his mistress. He paused in his floor-sweeping to look after the curly, plumed tail, disappearing into the next ward. “Well,” he said doubtfully, “Mother Hildegarde says he’s a dog. I wouldn’t like to be the one to say he isn’t.

Chaotic waters, I translate, surprised that I can still decipher this. It could be referring to rain, or it could be referring to inundation. It can be positive, like when the Nile floods and waters the crops. Or it can be devastating, and demolish a city. Ancient Egyptians believed that the first and most necessary ingredient in the universe was chaos. It could sweep you away, but it was also the place from which all things start anew. —

In the winter of 1968, Kya sat at her kitchen table one morning, sweeping orange and pink watercolors across paper, creating the plump form of a mushroom. She had finished her book on seabirds and now worked on a guide to mushrooms. Already had plans for another on butterflies and moths. Black-eyed peas, red onions, and salt ham boiled in the old dented pot on the woodstove, which she still preferred to the new range. Especially in winter.

American Indians share a magnificent history — rich in its astounding diversity, its integrity, its spirituality, its ongoing unique culture and dynamic tradition. It's also rich, I'm saddened to say, in tragedy, deceit, and genocide. Our sovereignty, our nationhood, our very identity — along with our sacred lands — have been stolen from us in one of the great thefts of human history. And I am referring not just to the thefts of previous centuries but to the great thefts that are still being perpetrated upon us today, at this very moment. Our human rights as indigenous peoples are being violated every day of our lives — and by the very same people who loudly and sanctimoniously proclaim to other nations the moral necessity of such rights. Over the centuries our sacred lands have been repeatedly and routinely stolen from us by the governments and peoples of the United States and Canada. They callously pushed us onto remote reservations on what they thought was worthless wasteland, trying to sweep us under the rug of history. But today, that so-called wasteland has surprisingly become enormously valuable as the relentless technology of white society continues its determined assault on Mother Earth. White society would now like to terminate us as peoples and push us off our reservations so they can steal our remaining mineral and oil resources. It's nothing new for them to steal from nonwhite peoples. When the oppressors succeed with their illegal thefts and depredations, it's called colonialism. When their efforts to colonize indigenous peoples are met with resistance or anything but abject surrender, it's called war. When the colonized peoples attempt to resist their oppression and defend themselves, we're called criminals. I write this book to bring about a greater understanding of what being an Indian means, of who we are as human beings. We're not quaint curiosities or stereotypical figures in a movie, but ordinary — and, yes, at times, extraordinary — human beings. Just like you. We feel. We bleed. We are born. We die. We aren't stuffed dummies in front of a souvenir shop; we aren't sports mascots for teams like the Redskins or the Indians or the Braves or a thousand others who steal and distort and ridicule our likeness. Imagine if they called their teams the Washington Whiteskins or the Washington Blackskins! Then you'd see a protest! With all else that's been taken from us, we ask that you leave us our name, our self-respect, our sense of belonging to the great human family of which we are all part. Our voice, our collective voice, our eagle's cry, is just beginning to be heard. We call out to all of humanity. Hear us!

Feeling the Wind in Your Hair The peak of the cliff sits tantalizingly close. Your hands rest on your knees as you gasp, willing more oxygen into your lungs. You look back with pride down the way you've come. Just a little farther and you'll be there. Your energy now partially restored, you step on and on. The light wind lifts the closer you get to the peak. A plateau soon falls away abruptly down to the sea, and the sweeping air collects and whips into your face. The view is sublime but the payoff comes as you stand--arms stretched wide in triumph--with your eyes closed as the raging wind buffets your face. This wind, collected and grown above oceans, flitting and crashing its way across the waves, finally reaches the shore and clasps itself around you in a fleeting embrace. The crack of its passing meets your ears and slowly it absorbs you--a streaming current of air caressing your rejoicing face.

The current wave of book banning sweeping the country has created a chilling effect on our education system and the purchasing of books in our libraries, the effects of which will be seen for decades even if we somehow get it under control in the next year. This is a huge movement that has been in the works for a while. It is well funded and well coordinated. It is about marginalizing and erasing cultures and groups of people, it is about defunding public institutions, it is about dumbing down society for a more easily led population, and it is about using libraries for political gain. At the end of the day, the pro-censorship movement is about privatizing education and privatizing libraries for a group of people who are seeking to line their pockets. And to achieve those goals, otherwise well-meaning people have been enlisted in a social movement that goes against everything America stands for. That's the really sad and tragic thing.

Almost everyone can remember losing his or her virginity, and most writers can remember the first book he/she walked away from thinking, "I can do better that this. Hell, I am doing better than this!" What could be more encouraging to the struggling writer than to realize that his/her work is unquestionably better than that of someone who actually got paid for his/her stuff? Good writing on the other hand, teaches the learning writer about style, graceful narration, plot development, the creation of believable characters, and truth-telling. A novel like The Grapes of Wrath may fill a new writer with feelings of despair and good old-fashioned jealousy--"I'll never be able to write anything that good, not if I live to be a thousand"--but such feelings can also serve as a spur, goading the writer to work harder and aim higher. Being swept away by a combination of great story and great writing--of being flattened, in fact--is part of every writer's necessary formation. You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you. So we read to experience the mediocre and the outright rotten; such experience helps us to recognize those things when they begin to creep into our own work, and to steer clear of them. We also read in order to measure ourselves against the good and the great, to get a sense of all that can be done. And we read in order to experience different styles.

She sees the mountain upside down. With her long hair sweeping the fallen leaves she swings like a pendulum. From the lagoon at sunset a hundred sparrows fly away. Wishing them back she whistles softly. And downward she falls into the sky. -- Chungmi Kim. 'A Girl on a Swing," Copyright © 1995. Originally published in Grand Passion: The Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond, Suzanne Loomis and Charles H. Webb, eds. (Red Wind Books, 1995). Reprinted with the permission of the author.

For example, suppose you intend to clean your home. You normally need five hours to make it appear spotless. This allows for vacuuming and mopping the floors, cleaning the countertops, washing the dishes, dusting and polishing the furniture, cleaning the appliances, washing the windows, sweeping the patio, and more. Now, impose a challenging time limit upon yourself. For instance, rather than allowing yourself five hours, give yourself two hours. Then, get as much cleaning done as possible in those two hours.

Yeshua Said: When you love some, but do not love some others it isn’t love: it is a collection of lower emotions, feelings and desires combined, disguised and misinterpreted as love. True love cannot help itself, it runs throughout, it cannot have exclusions; and even that it does not like, does not support: that which opposes it and tries to cause it pain, it loves nevertheless. Love is not a faucet to be turned on or off and directed in a chosen way; it is a tidal wave that sweeps indiscriminately throughout everything.

Then she dove into the morning cleaning. There weren't many rooms in the tower, which made it easy, but she liked to be thorough. Sweep, mop, polish. The garderobe and her mirror got sparkly from scrubbing with a bit of vinegar (a trick she learned from Book #14: Useful Recipes for Master Servants). She transferred a day dress that was soaking in a soapy bucket to a clean water bucket, scrubbing out the bit of lingonberry juice stain from breakfast on Monday. 7:00: Personal ablutions. She washed her face and nails and applied cream to her cuticles and everywhere on her face but the T-zone, which was, despite her fairy-tale beauty, just a tad prone to breaking out. 8:00: Reading. She (re)read Book #26, Sidereus Nuncius by Galileo. More a pamphlet than a book, but it counted. 8:30: Art! Lacking a proper canvas (or piece of wall space) she chose to spend her painting time decorating the mop handle. It might not be dry enough to actually use the next day, but that was all right. Birthday weeks meant the occasional break from routine-- that was part of the fun!

Later, when the time for the baby grew nearer, he would bustle round in his slovenly fashion, poking out the ashes, rubbing the fire-place, sweeping the house before he went to work. Then, feeling very self-righteous, he went upstairs. "Now I'n cleaned up for thee: that's no 'casions ter stir a peg all day, but sit and read thy books." Which made her laugh, in spite of her indignation. "And the dinner cooks itself?" she answered. "Eh, I know nowt about th' dinner." "You'd know if there weren't any." "Ay, 'appen so," he answered, departing.

Street-car lines had been extended far out into the open country in anticipation of rapid growth. The city had laid miles and miles of streets and sewers through regions where, perhaps, one solitary house stood out alone — a pioneer of the populous ways to be. There were regions open to the sweeping winds and rain, which were yet lighted throughout the night with long, blinking lines of gas-lamps, fluttering in the wind. Narrow board walks extended out, passing here a house, and there a store, at far intervals, eventually ending on the open prairie.

There is pleasure in watching the sophistries of mankind, his decisions made and unmade like the swirl of a mill-race, causation sweeping him forward from act to act while his reason dances on the surface of action like a pattern of foam. Yes, and the accumulations of human reason, she thought, the proofs we all assent to, the truths established beyond shadow of doubt, these are like the stale crusts of foam that lie along the river-bank and look solid enough, till a cloudburst further up the valley sends down a force of water that breaks them up and sweeps them away.

He felt like a character in a book. He thought of Mary Lennox as she discovered her secret garden. The blackberry bushes had become too thick to ride through and Percy dismounted, leaving Prince beneath the shade of a thick-trunked oak tree. He chose a strong whip of wood and started carving his way through the knotted vines. He was no longer a boy whose legs didn't always do as he wished; he was Sir Gawain on the lookout for the Green Knight, Lord Byron on his way to fight a duel, Beowulf leading an army upon Grendel. So keen was his focus on his swordplay that he didn't realize at first that he'd emerged from the forested area and was standing now on what must have been the top of a gravel driveway. Looming above him was not so much a house as a castle. Two enormous floors, with mammoth rectangular windows along each face and an elaborate stone balustrade of Corinthian columns running around all four sides of its flat roof. He thought at once of Pemberley, and half expected to see Mr. Darcy come striding through the big double doors, riding crop tucked beneath his arm as he jogged down the stone steps that widened in an elegant sweep as they reached the turning circle where he stood.

Gather close, and let us speak of nasty little shits. Oh, come now, we are no strangers to the vicious demons in placid disguises, innocent eyes so wide, hidden minds so dark. Does evil exist? Is it a force, some deadly possession that slips into the unwary? Is it a thing separate and thus subject to accusation and blame, distinct from the one it has used? Does it flit from soul to soul, weaving its diabolical scheme in all the unseen places, snarling into knots tremulous fears and appalling opportunity, stark terrors and brutal self-interest? Or is the dread word nothing more than a quaint and oh so convenient encapsulation of all those traits distinctly lacking moral context, a sweeping generalization embracing all things depraved and breath takingly cruel, a word to define that peculiar glint in the eye—the voyeur to one’s own delivery of horror, of pain and anguish and impossible grief? Give the demon crimson scales, slashing talons. Tentacles and dripping poison. Three eyes and six slithering tongues. As it crouches there in the soul, its latest abode in an eternal succession of abodes, may every god kneel in prayer. But really. Evil is nothing but a word, an objectification where no objectification is necessary. Cast aside this notion of some external agency as the source of inconceivable inhumanity—the sad truth is our possession of an innate proclivity towards indifference, towards deliberate denial of mercy, towards disengaging all that is moral within us. But if that is too dire, let’s call it evil. And paint it with fire and venom. There are extremities of behaviour that seem, at the time, perfectly natural, indeed reasonable. They are arrived at suddenly, or so it might seem, but if one looks the progression reveals itself, step by step, and that is a most sad truth.

If you are not lost, what do you want with a Savior? Should the shepherd go after those who never went astray? Why should the woman sweep her house for the bits of money that were never out of her purse? No, the medicine is for the diseased; the quickening is for the dead; the pardon is for the guilty; liberation is for those who are bound: the opening of eyes is for those who are blind. How can the Savior, and His death upon the cross, and the gospel of pardon, be accounted for, unless it be upon the supposition that men are guilty and worthy of condemnation? The sinner is the gospel's reason for existence.

I learned a lesson many years ago from a report of two men who flew to Atlanta to confer with a civil rights leader at the airport. Before they could begin to talk, the porter sweeping the floor drew the local leader aside to talk about a matter that troubled him. After fifteen minutes had passed, one of the visitors said bitterly to his companion, “I am just too busy for this kind of nonsense. I haven’t come a thousand miles to sit and wait while he talks to a porter.” The other replied, “When the day comes that he stops having time to talk to a porter, on that day I will not have the time to come one mile to see him.

Nobody had ever seen him so animated. In one night he had thrown off his boyish clumsiness; he was changed from a sulky stripling, who could not enter a ladies’ room without sweeping half the ornaments from the table, to a nobleman, full of grace and manly courtesy. To see him hand the Muscovite (as she was called) to her sledge, or offer her his hand for the dance, or catch the spotted kerchief which she had let drop, or discharge any other of those manifold duties which the supreme lady exacts and the lover hastens to anticipate was a sight to kindle the dull eyes of age, and to make the quick pulse of youth beat faster.

The citizens of the City of Rome, therefore, could not believe it when toward the end of the first decade of the fifth century, they woke to find Alaric, king of the Visigoths, and all his forces parked at their gates. He might as well have been the king of the Fuzzy-Wuzzies, or any other of the inconsequential outlanders that civilized people have looked down their noses at throughout history. It was preposterous. They dispatched a pair of envoys to conduct the tiresome negotiation and send him away. The envoys began with empty threats: any attack on Rome was doomed, for it would be met by invincible strength and innumerable ranks of warriors. Alaric was a sharp man, and in his rough fashion a just one. He also had a sense of humor. “The thicker the grass, the more easily scythed,” he replied evenly. The envoys quickly recognized that their man was no fool. All right, then, what was the price of his departure? Alaric told them: his men would sweep through the city, taking all gold, all silver, and everything of value that could be moved. They would also round up and cart off every barbarian slave. But, protested the hysterical envoys, what will that leave us? Alaric paused. “Your lives.” In that pause, Roman security died and a new world was conceived.

What are these conventions? Although there are many, and much of this book is devoted to refuting them, there is one central doctrine on which they all depend: Whites are responsible for the problems blacks face. Black crime, black poverty, black illegitimacy, black difficulties of all kinds can be traced to a heritage of slavery and to inveterate white racism. In other words, it is the malevolence of whites that causes blacks to fail. Although the doctrine is not often stated as sweepingly or as bluntly as this, it underlies virtually every public pronouncement on race relations and virtually every public program designed to improve them.

I reminded him that I was there by appointment to offer him my book for publication. He began to swell and went on swelling and swelling and swelling until he had reached the size of a god of about the second or third degree. Then the fountains of his great deep were broken up and for two or three minutes I couldn’t see him for the rain. It was words, only words, but they fell so thickly that they darkened the atmosphere. Finally he made an imposing sweep with his right hand which took in the whole room, and said: “Books—look around you! Every place are books that are waiting for publication. Do I want any more? Excuse me, I don’t. Good morning.

I reminded him that I was there by appointment to offer him my book for publication. He began to swell and went on swelling and swelling and swelling until he had reached the size of a god of about the second or third degree. Then the fountains of his great deep were broken up and for two or three minutes I couldn’t see him for the rain. It was words, only words, but they fell so thickly that they darkened the atmosphere. Finally he made an imposing sweep with his right hand which took in the whole room, and said: “Books—look around you! Every place are books that are waiting for publication. Do I want any more? Excuse me, I don’t. Good morning.

I reminded him that I was there by appointment to offer him my book for publication. He began to swell and went on swelling and swelling and swelling until he had reached the size of a god of about the second or third degree. Then the fountains of his great deep were broken up and for two or three minutes I couldn’t see him for the rain. It was words, only words, but they fell so thickly that they darkened the atmosphere. Finally he made an imposing sweep with his right hand which took in the whole room, and said: “ Books—look around you! Every place are books that are waiting for publication. Do I want any more? Excuse me, I don’t. Good morning.

I reminded him that I was there by appointment to offer him my book for publication. He began to swell and went on swelling and swelling and swelling until he had reached the size of a god of about the second or third degree. Then the fountains of his great deep were broken up and for two or three minutes I couldn’t see him for the rain. It was words, only words, but they fell so thickly that they darkened the atmosphere. Finally he made an imposing sweep with his right hand which took in the whole room, and said: “ Books—look around you! Every place are books that are waiting for publication. Do I want any more? Excuse me, I don’t. Good morning.

A slave, Marcus Cato said, should be working when he is not sleeping. It does not matter whether his work in itself is good in itself—for slaves, at least. This sentiment still survives, and it has piled up mountains of useless drudgery. I believe that this instinct to perpetuate useless work is, at bottom, simply fear of the mob. The mob (the thought runs) are such low animals that they would be dangerous if they had leisure; it is safer to keep them too busy to think. A rich man who happens to be intellectually honest, if he is questioned about the improvement of working conditions, usually says something like this: "We know that poverty is unpleasant; in fact, since it is so remote, we rather enjoy harrowing ourselves with the thought of its unpleasantness. But don’t expect us to do anything about it. We are sorry fort you lower classes, just as we are sorry for a cat with the mange, of your condition. We feel that you are much safer as you are. The present state of affairs suits us, and we are not going to take the risk of setting you free, even by an extra hour a day. So, dear brothers, since evidently you must sweat to pay for our trips to Italy, sweat and be damned to you.” This is particularly the attitude of intelligent, cultivated people; one can read the substance if it in a hundred essays. Very few cultivated people have less than (say) four hundred pounds a year, and naturally they side with the rich, because they imagine that any liberty conceded to the poor is a threat to their own liberty. foreseeing some dismal Marxian Utopia as the alternative, the educated man prefers to keep things as they are. Possibly he does not like his fellow-rich very much, but he supposes that even the vulgarest of them are less inimical to his pleasures, more his kind of people, than the poor, and that he had better stand by them. It is this fear of a supposedly dangerous mob that makes nearly all intelligent people conservative in their opinions. Fear of the mob is a superstitious fear. It is based on the idea that there is some mysterious, fundamental difference between rich and poor, as though they were two different races, like negroes and white men. But in reality there is no such difference. The mass of the rich and the poor are differentiated by their incomes and nothings else, and the average millionaire is only the average dishwasher dressed in a new suit. Change places, and handy dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief? Everyone who has mixed on equal terms with the poor knows this quite well. But the trouble is that intelligent, cultivated people, the very people who might be expected to have liberal opinions, never do mix with the poor. For what do the majority of educated people know about poverty? In my copy of Villon’s poems the editor has actually thought it necessary to explain the line “Ne pain ne voyent qu'aux fenestres” by a footnote; so remote is even hunger from the educated man’s experience. From this ignorance a superstitious fear of the mob results quite naturally. The educated man pictures a horde of submen, wanting only a day’s liberty to loot his house, burn his books, and set him to work minding a machine or sweeping out a lavatory. “Anything,” he thinks, “any injustice, sooner than let that mob loose.

But compared with much of the rest of the world, Europe is a beacon of enlightenment. Among the many amazing and depressing facts in his book, Roberts gives a list of all the aquatic life incidentally killed—the bycatch, as it is known—by a fishing boat in the Pacific Ocean in the process of legally catching 211 mahi-mahi. Among the aquatic animals hauled aboard and tossed back dead after a single sweep were: 488 turtles 455 stingrays and devil rays 460 sharks 68 sailfish 34 marlin 32 tuna 11 wahoo 8 swordfish 4 giant sunfish This was legal under international protocols. The hooks on the longlines were certified as “turtle friendly.” All this was to give 211 people a dinner of mahi-mahi. —

A lone figure lies motionless in his bed as the street below him is still and silent, until a sudden sound shatters the relative calm. The noise comes from out of nowhere, is high-pitched and repetitive and is starting to get louder and louder; what could it be? A light breeze stirs the cold air as it makes its way down the long passages of the street, sweeps down and picks up the yet unknown noise and lifts it high in the air, spreading the sound all around before taking it up into a darkened room above: Paul’s room. The room is a simple one with a double bed and bedside table, a built-in wardrobe, a chest of drawers and a few shelves scattered with books being the only other furniture: it is a single man’s room.

In tortures of dire coldness now a Lake of waters deep Sweeps over thee freezing to solid still thou sitst closd up In that transparent rock as if in joy of thy bright prison Till overburdend with its own weight drawn out thro immensity With a crash breaking across the horrible mass comes down Thundring & hail & frozen iron haild from the Element Rends thy white hair yet thou dost fixd obdurate brooding sit Writing thy books. Anon a cloud filld with a waste of snows Covers thee still obdurate still resolvd & writing still Tho rocks roll oer thee tho floods pour tho winds black as the Sea Cut thee in gashes tho the blood pours down around thy ankles Freezing thy feet to the hard rock still thy pen obdurate Traces the wonders of Futurity in horrible fear of the future

This body is a guesthouse each morning someone new arrives. Welcome them all for they may be messengers from the invisible. Do not feel burdened by them or they may go back to non-existence. Each time a thought enters your heart treat it as an honored guest, your worth is shown by the thoughts you entertain. Embrace sorrowful thoughts for they sweep the house of your heart clean, scatter the withered leaves, and pull out the twisted roots, preparing the ground for the new shoots of joy. What sorrow takes away from the heart it replaces with something better. Without the fury of thunder and lightning the plants will be scorched by the sun. Be grateful for all you receive, good and bad alike, for it may be a gift from the treasury of Spirit that will bring the fulfillment of your most secret desire.

THE BOOK OF A MONK’S LIFE I live my life in circles that grow wide And endlessly unroll, I may not reach the last, but on I glide Strong pinioned toward my goal. About the old tower, dark against the sky, The beat of my wings hums, I circle about God, sweep far and high On through milleniums. Am I a bird that skims the clouds along, Or am I a wild storm, or a great song? Many have painted her. But there was one Who drew his radiant colours from the sun. My God is dark- like woven texture flowing, A hundred drinking roots, all intertwined; I only know that from His warmth I'm growing. More I know not: my roots lie hidden deep My branches only are swayed by the wind. Dost thou not see, before thee stands my soul In silence wrapt my Springtime's prayer to pray? But when thy glance rests on me then my whole Being quickens and blooms like trees in May. When thou art dreaming then I am thy Dream, But when thou art awake I am thy Will Potent with splendour, radiant and sublime, Expanding like far space star-lit and still Into the distant mystic realm of Time. I love my life's dark hours In which my senses quicken and grow deep, While, as from faint incense of faded flowers Or letters old, I magically steep Myself in days gone by: again I give Myself unto the past:- again I live. Out of my dark hours wisdom dawns apace, Infinite Life unrolls its boundless space ... Then I am shaken as a sweeping storm Shakes a ripe tree that grows above a grave ' Round whose cold clay the roots twine fast and warm- And Youth's fair visions that glowed bright and brave, Dreams that were closely cherished and for long, Are lost once more in sadness and in song.

Saeed’s father encountered each day objects that had belonged to his wife and so would sweep his consciousness out of the current others referred to as the present, a photograph or an earring or a particular shawl worn on a particular occasion, and Nadia encountered each day objects that took her into Saeed’s past, a book or a music collection or a sticker on the inside of a drawer, and evoked emotions from her own childhood, and jagged musings on the fate of her parents and her sister, and Saeed, for his part, was inhabiting a chamber that had been his only briefly, years ago, when relatives from afar or abroad used to come to visit, and being billeted here again conjured up for him echoes of a better era, and so in these several ways these three people sharing this one apartment splashed and intersected with each other across varied and multiple streams of time.

I closed the book*, angry with myself that I should still be admiring earthly things who might long ago have learned from even the pagan philosophers that nothing is wonderful but the soul, which, when great itself, finds nothing great outside itself. Then, in truth, I was satisfied that I had seen enough of the mountain; I turned my inward eye upon myself, and from that time not a syllable fell from my lips until we reached the bottom again... [W]e look about us for what is to be found only within... How many times, think you, did I turn back that day, to glance at the summit of the mountain which seemed scarcely a cubit high compared with the range of human contemplation. * Augustine's Confessions: And men go about to wonder at the heights of the mountains, and the mighty waves of the sea, and the wide sweep of rivers, and the circuit of the ocean, and the revolution of the stars, but themselves they consider not.

authors of more recent books have also praised the bureau for destroying the Nazi networks in South America. But the FBI didn’t intercept the messages. It didn’t monitor the Nazi circuits. It didn’t break the codes. It didn’t solve any Enigma machines. The coast guard did this stuff—the little codebreaking team that Elizebeth created from nothing. During the Second World War, an American woman figured out how to sweep the globe of undercover Nazis. The proof was on paper: four thousand typed decryptions of clandestine Nazi messages that her team shared with the global intelligence community. She had conquered at least forty-eight different clandestine radio circuits and three Enigma machines to get these plaintexts. The pages found their way to the navy and to the army. To FBI headquarters in Washington and bureaus around the world. To Britain. There was no mistaking their origin. Each sheet said “CG Decryption” at the bottom, in black ink.

The rain eased. A single drop, here then there, shook a leaf like the flick of a cat’s ear. Kya hopped up, cleaned out the Frigidaire-cupboard, mopped the stained plywood kitchen floor, and scraped off months of caked-on grits from the woodstove burners. Early the next morning, she scrubbed Pa’s sheets, reeking of sweat and whiskey, and draped them over the palmettos. She went through her brothers’ room, not much bigger than a closet, dusting and sweeping. Dirty socks were piled in the back of the closet and yellowed comic books strewn next to the two soiled mattresses on the floor. She tried to see the boys’ faces, the feet that went with the socks, but the details blurred. Even Jodie’s face was fading; she’d see his eyes for an instant, then they’d slip away, closing. The next morning, carrying a gallon can, she walked the sandy tracks to the Piggly and bought matches, backbone, and salt. Saved out two dimes. “Can’t get milk, gotta get gas.

The usual short story cannot have a complex plot, but it often has a simple one resembling a chain with two or three links. The short short, however, doesn't as a rule have even that much - you don't speak of a chain when there's only one link. ... Sometimes ... the short short appears to rest on nothing more than a fragile anecdote which the writer has managed to drape with a quantity of suggestion. A single incident, a mere anecdote - these form the spine of the short short. Everything depends on intensity, one sweeping blow of perception. In the short short the writer gets no second chance. Either he strikes through at once or he's lost. And because it depends so heavily on this one sweeping blow, the short short often approaches the condition of a fable. When you read the two pieces by Tolstoy in this book, or I.L. Peretz's 'If Not Higher,' or Franz Kafka's 'The Hunter Gracchus,' you feel these writers are intent upon 'making a point' - but obliquely, not through mere statement. What they project is not the sort of impression of life we expect in most fiction, but something else: an impression of an idea of life. Or: a flicker in darkness, a slight cut of being. The shorter the piece of writing, the more abstract it may seem to us. In reading Paz's brilliant short short we feel we have brushed dangerously against the sheer arbitrariness of existence; in reading Peretz's, that we have been brought up against a moral reflection on the nature of goodness, though a reflection hard merely to state. Could we say that the short short is to other kinds of fiction somewhat as the lyric is to other kinds of poetry? The lyric does not seek meaning through extension, it accepts the enigmas of confinement. It strives for a rapid unity of impression, an experience rendered in its wink of immediacy. And so too with the short short. ... Writers who do short shorts need to be especially bold. They stake everything on a stroke of inventiveness. Sometimes they have to be prepared to speak out directly, not so much in order to state a theme as to provide a jarring or complicating commentary. The voice of the writer brushes, so to say, against his flash of invention. And then, almost before it begins, the fiction is brought to a stark conclusion - abrupt, bleeding, exhausting. This conclusion need not complete the action; it has only to break it off decisively. Here are a few examples of the writer speaking out directly. Paz: 'The universe is a vast system of signs.' Kafka in 'First Sorrow': The trapeze artist's 'social life was somewhat limited.' Paula Fox: 'We are starving here in our village. At last, we are at the center.' Babel's cossack cries out, 'You guys in specs have about as much pity for chaps like us as a cat for a mouse.' Such sentences serve as devices of economy, oblique cues. Cryptic and enigmatic, they sometimes replace action, dialogue and commentary, for none of which, as it happens, the short short has much room. There's often a brilliant overfocussing. ("Introduction")

melanin is memory. is the blue weight of the ocean. sewn into the red dusk of sky. living in the soil of your body. it is alive. leaping and sweeping you. against. into the sun. your skin was the first astronaut. the first in space. you touch. talk. are intimate with the sun. everyday. and do not perish. melanin. is the world. before this world. before the word. slave. during the word. slave. after the word. slave. it is the books. written into yourself. wild math in the pads of your feet. soft science in your hair. language down your back. invention in your mouth. melanin is why you are still alive. after. the torching. it is a second lung. the next heart. and the next heart. and the next. a never ending. regenerative. breathing thing. a ceremony of life. while you are asleep. a cosmos. in conversation. immortal. melanin is a wisdom that knew. hate would be the anti light come to devour. defile. destroy. a wisdom that did not flinch. a wisdom that is not bothered by such things. melanin is memory. future memory. past memory. your memory. the memory of life. all. in your skin. — melanin

There are few of us who have not sometimes wakened before dawn, either after one of those dreamless nights that make us almost enamored of death, or one of those nights of horror and misshapen joy, when through the chambers of the brain sweep phantoms more terrible than reality itself, and instinct with that vivid life that lurks in all grotesques, and that lends to Gothic art its enduring vitality, this art being, one might fancy, especially the art of those who minds have been troubled with the malady of reverie. Gradually white fingers creep through the curtains, and they appear to tremble. In black, fantastic shapes, dumb shadows crawl into the corners of the room, and crouch there. Outside, there is the stirring of the birds among the leaves, or the sound of men going forth to their work, or the sigh and sob of the wind coming down from the hills and wandering round the silent house, as though it feared to wake the sleeper, and yet must needs call forth Sleep from her purple cave. Veil after veil of thin, dusky gauze is lifted, and by degrees the forms and colors of things are restored to them, and we watch the dawn remaking the world in its antique pattern. The wan mirrors get back their mimic life. The flameless tapers stand where we had left them, and beside them lies the half-cut book that we had been studying, or the wired flower that we had worn at the ball, or the letter we had been afraid to read, or that we had read too often. Nothing seems to us changed. Out of the unreal shadows of the night comes back the real life that we had known. We have to resume it where we had left off, and there steals over us a terrible sense of the necessity for the continuance of energy in the same wearisome round of stereotyped habits, or a wild longing, it may be, that our eyelids might open some morning upon a world that had been refashioned anew in the darkness for our pleasure, a world in which things would have fresh shapes and colors, and be changed, or have other secrets, a world in which the past would have little or no place, or survive, at any rate, in no conscious form of obligation or regret, the remembrance even of joy having its bitterness, and the memories of pleasure their pain.

One of the special delights of my childhood was to go and see the cases of illuminated manuscripts in the British Museum, and to walk, as every child can, right into their pages--losing myself in an enchanted world of gold, landscapes and skies whose colours were indwelt with light as if their sun shone not above but in them. Most marvelous of all were the many manuscripts mysteriously entitled "Book of Hours", since I did not know how one kept hours in a book. Their title-pages and richly ornamented initials showed scenes of times and seasons--ploughing in springtime, formal gardens bright in summer with heraldic roses, autumn harvesting, and logging in winter snow under clear, cold skies seen through a filigree screen of black trees. I could only assume that these books were some ancient device for marking the passage of time and they associated themselves in my mind with sundials in old country yards upon hot afternoons, with the whirring and booming of clocks in towers, with astrolabes engraved with the mysterious signs of the Zodiac, and-above all-with the slow, cyclic sweep of the sun, moon and stars over my head.

I still have no choice but to bring out Minerva instead.” “But Minerva doesn’t care about men,” young Charlotte said helpfully. “She prefers dirt and rocks.” “It’s called geology,” Minerva said. “It’s a science.” “It’s certain spinsterhood, is what it is! Unnatural girl. Do sit straight in your chair, at least.” Mrs. Highwood sighed and fanned harder. To Susanna, she said, “I despair of her, truly. This is why Diana must get well, you see. Can you imagine Minerva in Society?” Susanna bit back a smile, all too easily imagining the scene. It would probably resemble her own debut. Like Minerva, she had been absorbed in unladylike pursuits, and the object of her female relations’ oft-voiced despair. At balls, she’d been that freckled Amazon in the corner, who would have been all too happy to blend into the wallpaper, if only her hair color would have allowed it. As for the gentlemen she’d met…not a one of them had managed to sweep her off her feet. To be fair, none of them had tried very hard. She shrugged off the awkward memories. That time was behind her now. Mrs. Highwood’s gaze fell on a book at the corner of the table. “I am gratified to see you keep Mrs. Worthington close at hand.” “Oh yes,” Susanna replied, reaching for the blue, leatherbound tome. “You’ll find copies of Mrs. Worthington’s Wisdom scattered everywhere throughout the village. We find it a very useful book.” “Hear that, Minerva? You would do well to learn it by heart.” When Minerva rolled her eyes, Mrs. Highwood said, “Charlotte, open it now. Read aloud the beginning of Chapter Twelve.” Charlotte reached for the book and opened it, then cleared her throat and read aloud in a dramatic voice. “’Chapter Twelve. The perils of excessive education. A young lady’s intellect should be in all ways like her undergarments. Present, pristine, and imperceptible to the casual observer.’” Mrs. Highwood harrumphed. “Yes. Just so. Hear and believe it, Minerva. Hear and believe every word. As Miss Finch says, you will find that book very useful.” Susanna took a leisurely sip of tea, swallowing with it a bitter lump of indignation. She wasn’t an angry or resentful person, as a matter of course. But once provoked, her passions required formidable effort to conceal. That book provoked her, no end. Mrs. Worthington’s Wisdom for Young Ladies was the bane of sensible girls the world over, crammed with insipid, damaging advice on every page. Susanna could have gleefully crushed its pages to powder with a mortar and pestle, labeled the vial with a skull and crossbones, and placed it on the highest shelf in her stillroom, right beside the dried foxglove leaves and deadly nightshade berries. Instead, she’d made it her mission to remove as many copies as possible from circulation. A sort of quarantine. Former residents of the Queen’s Ruby sent the books from all corners of England. One couldn’t enter a room in Spindle Cove without finding a copy or three of Mrs. Worthington’s Wisdom. And just as Susanna had told Mrs. Highwood, they found the book very useful indeed. It was the perfect size for propping a window open. It also made an excellent doorstop or paperweight. Susanna used her personal copies for pressing herbs. Or occasionally, for target practice. She motioned to Charlotte. “May I?” Taking the volume from the girl’s grip, she raised the book high. Then, with a brisk thwack, she used it to crush a bothersome gnat. With a calm smile, she placed the book on a side table. “Very useful indeed.

Yorick's Used and Rare Books had a small storefront on Channing but a deep interior shaded by tall bookcases crammed with history, poetry, theology, antiquated anthologies. There was no open wall space to hang the framed prints for sale, so Hogarth's scenes of lust, pride, and debauchery leaned rakishly against piles of novels, folk tales, and literary theory. In the back room these piles were so tall and dusty that they took on a geological air, rising like stalagmites. Jess often felt her workplace was a secret mine or quarry where she could pry crystals from crevices and sweep precious jewels straight off the floor. As she tended crowded shelves, she opened one volume and then another, turning pages on the history of gardens, perusing Edna St. Vincent Millay: "We were very tired, were very merry, / We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry..." dipping into Gibbon: "The decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay..." and old translations of Grimm's Fairy Tales: "They walked the whole day over meadows, fields, and stony places. And when it rained, the little sister said, 'Heaven and our hearts are weeping together...

The sun had not yet stood out from the orient, but his precedent light shone through the translucent blue. Yet it was not blue, nor is there any word, nor is a word possible to convey the feeling unless one could be built up of signs and symbols like those in the book of the magician, which glowed and burned to and fro the page. For the blue of the precious sapphire is thick to it, the turquoise dull, these hard surfaces are no more to be compared to it than sand and gravel. They are but stones, hard, cold, pitiful, that which gives them their lustre is the light. Through delicate porcelain sometimes the light comes, and it is not the porcelain, it is the light that is lovely. But porcelain is clay, and the light is shorn, checked, and shrunken. Down through the beauteous azure came the Light itself, pure, unreflected Light, untouched, untarnished even by the dew-sweetened petal of a flower, descending, flowing like a wind, a wind of glory sweeping through the blue. A luminous purple glowing as Love glows in the cheek, so glowed the passion of the heavens. Two things only reach the soul. By touch there is indeed emotion. But the light in the eye, the sound of the voice! the soul trembles and like a flame leaps to meet them. So to the luminous purple azure his heart ascended.

Many other things were delivered to me out of storage, the most important being Matthew Rose Sorensen’s missing journals. They cover the period from June 2000 (when he was an undergraduate) until December 2011. As for the rest of his possessions, I am getting rid of most of them. Piranesi cannot bear to have so many possessions. I do not need this! is his constant refrain. Piranesi is always with me, but of Rose Sorensen I have only hints and shadows. I piece him together out of the objects he has left behind, from what is said about him by other people and, of course, from his journals. Without the journals I would be all at sea. I remember how this world works – more or less. I remember what Manchester is and what the police are and how to use a smartphone. I can pay for things with money – though I still find the process strange and artificial. Piranesi has a strong dislike of money. Piranesi wants to say: But I need the thing you have, so why don’t you just give it to me? And then when I have something you need, I will just give it to you. This would be a simpler system and much better! But I, who am not Piranesi – or at least not only him – realise that this probably wouldn’t go down too well. I have decided to write a book about Laurence Arne-Sayles. It is something that Matthew Rose Sorensen wanted to do and something that I want to do. After all, who knows Arne-Sayles’s work better than me? Raphael has shown me what Laurence Arne-Sayles taught her: how to find the path to the labyrinth and how to find the path out again. I can come and go as I please. Last week I took a train to Manchester. I took a bus to Miles Platting. I walked through a bleak autumn landscape to a flat in a tower block. The door was answered by a thin, ravaged-looking man who smelt strongly of cigarettes. ‘Are you James Ritter?’ I asked. He agreed that he was. ‘I’ve come to take you back,’ I said. I led him through the shadowy corridor and when the noble minotaurs of the first vestibule rose up around us, he started to cry, not for fear, but for happiness. He went immediately and sat under the great marble sweep of the staircase; the place where he used to sleep. He closed his eyes and listened to the sounds of the tides. When it was time to leave, he begged me to let him stay, but I refused. ‘You don’t know how to feed yourself,’ I told him. ‘You never learnt. You would die here unless I fed you – and I can’t take on that responsibility. But I’ll bring you back here whenever you want. And if ever I decide to come back for good, I promise I will bring you with me.’ The

Scupper walked to the sitting room, calling back, “I used to know most of it by heart, but not anymore. But here it is, I’ll read it to ya.” He sat back down at the table and began reading. When he got to this segment: “And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm, in the heart of the furnace roar; And he wore a smile you could see a mile, and he said, ‘Please close that door. It’s fine in here, but I greatly fear you’ll let in the cold and storm— Since I left Plumtree down in Tennessee, it’s the first time I’ve been warm.’” Scupper and Tate chuckled. “Your mom always laughed at that.” They smiled, remembering. Just sat there a minute. Then Scupper said he’d wash up while Tate did his homework. In his room, scanning through the poetry book for one to read in class, Tate found a poem by Thomas Moore: . . . she’s gone to the Lake of the Dismal Swamp, Where, all night long, by a fire-fly lamp, She paddles her white canoe. And her fire-fly lamp I soon shall see, And her paddle I soon shall hear; Long and loving our life shall be, And I’ll hide the maid in a cypress tree, When the footstep of death is near. The words made him think of Kya, Jodie’s little sister. She’d seemed so small and alone in the marsh’s big sweep. He imagined his own sister lost out there. His dad was right—poems made you feel something.

I'm loath to bring up the E word here, and I'm even more embarrassed to talk about "millennials" in this way because it is a terrible cliché you've heard a hundred million times, and it is not a cliché I actually believe to be true. However, in writing a book for people in their twenties in 2017, I'd be remiss to not discuss this biggest criticism against them. If you are a twenty-something working in the world of Gen Xers and baby boomers, many older people think you are entitled. This is probably not news to you. Your bosses meet over glasses of wine and get parent drunk about how lazy you are and how you don't respect authority and don't take initiative and also what a pain in the ass and entitled they feel you are. Boo-hoo. It doesn't matter that the assessment is a wild, sweeping stereotype, nor that it's not actually true or fair--after managing millennials successfully for years, I know it's not. There's not an entire generation of lazy jerks walking around, waiting to steal jobs and assignments they don't deserve. Also, people of all ages can and do act entitled, and this is just a tidy, cantankerous way to label a whole census block of folks and make them seem less threatening because some people (cough cough: olds) feel afraid that they might be aging out of their careers and not feel as relevant as before.

Liturgy gathers the holy community as it reads the Holy Scriptures into the sweeping tidal rhythms of the church year in which the story of Jesus and the Christian makes its rounds century after century, the large and easy interior rhythms of a year that moves from birth, life, death, resurrection, on to spirit, obedience, faith, and blessing. Without liturgy we lose the rhythms and end up tangled in the jerky, ill-timed, and insensitive interruptions of public-relations campaigns, school openings and closings, sales days, tax deadlines, inventory and elections. Advent is buried under 'shopping days before Christmas.' The joyful disciplines of Lent are exchanged for the anxious penitentials of filling out income tax forms. Liturgy keeps us in touch with the story as it defines and shapes our beginnings and ends our living and dying, our rebirths and blessing in this Holy Spirit, text-formed community visible and invisible. When Holy Scripture is embraced liturgically, we become aware that a lot is going on all at once, a lot of different people are doing a lot of different things. The community is on its feet, at work for God, listening and responding to the Holy Scriptures. The holy community, in the process of being formed by the Holy Scriptures, is watching, listening to God's revelation taking shape before an din them as they follow Jesus, each person playing his or her part in the Spirit.

Derrick flies through the portal first. “Look at you,” he says, stopping to study me. “Alive. Unscathed. Good. If you hadn’t been, I would have lopped his fingers off.” Kiaran moves to stand beside me. “I would have pulled off your wings.” “Ignore him, pixie.” Aithinne strides into the room, her long coat billowing behind her. “I should have figured he’d be sullen and moody.” Kiaran’s emotionless gaze flickers to her. “Phiuthair.” “Bhràthair.” She stops and studies him. “You look like hell. I suppose you haven’t fed in a few days, if the lack of gifts is any indication.” “Don’t.” Kiaran’s voice dips in warning. “I’m wonderful, by the way,” she continues, as if he hadn’t spoken. “Do you like my coat? Don’t I look lovely? Aren’t I the best sister for standing here, still willing to talk to you after you’ve ignored me for months, you stubborn bastard?” “Well, this is fun,” Derrick says. “I’m really feeling the love in this room. It’s beautiful. Aileana, isn’t it beautiful?” “You’re here because Kam wanted your help. Not because I did.” “Damn it, MacKay—” “You might not have wanted me,” Aithinne says, ignoring my attempts to stand between them, “but look how quickly I came. Because I still care about you. Though god only knows why, since you’re such an obstinate pain in my arse.” “I love it when Aithinne curses at people.” Derrick says to me. “I say we let them fight it out. A round of fisticuffs. No killing. I’ll go and find refreshments.” “Oh, for god’s sake,” Sorcha says from behind us. “If you’re all going to squabble, I’d prefer to be back in my prison. That wasn’t torture. This is torture.” Derrick peeks through my hair. “What’s that murderous arsehole doing here?” Sorcha blinks at him. “What did you just call me?” “You heard me, pointy-toothed hag.” “Sorcha can find the Book,” I interrupt. “And we need her blood to get there. It was her or Lonnrach.” “So given a choice between murderous arseholes you chose the one who killed you.” Derrick’s laugh is dry. “That’s interesting.” “I chose the one who was conveniently chained up, rather than the one in hiding.” Derrick doesn’t look convinced. “And we’re just supposed to believe she’s helping out of the goodness of that black hunk of rock in her chest that she calls a heart?” “I’m standing right here,” Sorcha says sharply. “Wish you weren’t,” Derrick sings. Then, to me: “Let me give you some advice, friend. If you’re going to take her along, make her go first. That way you don’t have to worry about her shoving a blade into your back.” “Sweet little pixie,” Sorcha says. “If there’s one thing you should have learned, it’s that I’m perfectly willing to stab her in the front.” She turns on her heel and heads toward the great hall, the fabric of her brocade dress sweeping across the ground like a cloak. “If you’re coming, the door is this way

Subject of Thought Number of Times Thought Occurred per Year (in descending order) L. 580.0 Family 400.0 Brushing tongue 150.0 Earplugs 100.0 Bill-paying 52.0 Panasonic three-wheeled vacuum cleaner, greatness of 45.0 Sunlight makes you cheerful 40.0 Traffic frustration 38.0 Penguin books, all 35.0 Job, should I quit? 34.0 Friends, don't have any 33.0 Marriage, a possibility? 32.0 Vending machines 31.0 Straws don't unsheath well 28.0 Shine on moving objects 25.0 McCartney more talented than Lennon? 23.0 Friends smarter, more capable than I am 19.0 Paper-towel dispensers 19.0 "What oft was thought, but ne'er" etc. 18.0 People are very dissimilar 16.0 Trees, beauty of 15.0 Sidewalks 15.0 Friends are unworthy of me 15.0 Indentical twins separated at birth, studies of traits 14.0 Intelligence, going fast 14.0 Wheelchair ramps, their insane danger 14.0 Urge to kill 13.0 Escalator invention 12.0 People are very similar 12.0 "Not in my backyard" 11.0 Straws float now 10.0 DJ, would I be happy as one? 9.0 "If you can't get out of it, get into it" 9.0 Pen, felt-tip 9.0 Gasoline, nice smell of 8.0 Pen, ballpoint 8.0 Stereo systems 8.0 Fear of getting mugged again 7.0 Staplers 7.0 "Roaches check in, but they don't check out" 6.0 Dinner roll, image of 6.0 Shoes 6.0 Bags 5.0 Butz, Earl 4.0 Sweeping, brooms 4.0 Whistling, yodel trick 4.0 "You can taste it with your eyes" 4.0 Dry-cleaning fluid, smell of 3.0 Zip-lock tops 2.0 Popcorn 1.0 Birds regurgitate food and feed young with it 0.5 Kant, Immanuel 0.5

Great are the works of the Lord; they are pondered by all who delight in them. —Psalm 111:2 (NIV) The church I attend recently celebrated its 150th anniversary. It’s been a festive year, replete with special dinners, panel discussions, and a book on the church’s history. But what amazed me even more were all the little stories that formed the big story—those quiet, individual witnesses of faith who, taken together, made up this grand sweep of 150 years. One woman has been a member for nearly half the church’s life. Fifty-two Sundays times seven decades is how many church services? “You’ve heard thousands of sermons!” I said. “What do you remember about the best ones?” She smiled. “The best sermons are the ones I think about all week. Because then I know God is working in me.” That simple lesson of faith was the start of a new practice for me. When I hear a phrase or sentence in a sermon that especially strikes me, I’ll write it down on the bulletin or on whatever I have handy. (Once it was the palm of my hand!) Then I pin that phrase to the bulletin board behind my computer. This week’s was: May God give me the grace to understand that the world is too small for anything but Love. I see it every day, reminding me to ponder how I might live that message. Like my friend at church, I’ve been able to see in a new way how God is working in my life—all week long. Guide my life, God, by Your Words; that in hearing them, I may live according to Your wishes. —Jeff Japinga Digging Deeper: Pss 105, 111, 119:18; 1 Pt 2:2

He could not look at her, be near her, think of her, and keep the Kestrel afloat at the same time. No red-blooded man could. “Go back to your cabin.” “No.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “I’ll go mad if I spend another day in that cabin, with no one to talk to and nothing to do.” “Well, I’m sorry we’re not entertaining you sufficiently, but this isn’t a pleasure cruise. Find some other way to amuse yourself. Can’t you find something to occupy your mind?” he made an open-handed sweep through the steam. “Read a book.” “I’ve only got one book. I’ve already read it.” “Don’t tell me it’s the Bible.” The corner of her mouth twitched. “It isn’t.” He averted his gaze to the ceiling, blowing out an impatient breath. “Only one book,” he muttered. “What sort of lady makes an ocean crossing with only one book?” “Not a governess.” Her voice held a challenge. Gray refused the bait, electing for silence. Silence was all he could manage, with this anger slicing through him. It hurt. He kept his eyes trained on a cracked board above her head, working to keep his expression blank. What a fool he’d been, to believe her. To believe that something essential in him had changed, that he could find more than fleeting pleasure with a woman. That this perfect, delicate blossom of a lady, who knew all his deeds and misdeeds, would offer herself to him without hesitation. Deep inside, in some uncharted territory of his soul, he’d built a world on that moment when she came to him willingly, trustingly. Giving not just her body, but her heart. Ha. She hadn’t even given him her name.

Eena worried to Ian in her thoughts. (You’re not going to let him walk away thinking what I think he’s thinking, are you?) (You won't change his mind. The evidence is a little suggestive. You should have just stayed behind me.) (Oh, this is all my fault?) (Well, you were the one swimming in your underwear.) (And you’re the one who took your shirt off!) (You think the alternative would have been better?) She shuttered at the thought of the Braetic stumbling across her in her underclothes. “Cale,” Eena said in another attempt to convince the stranger. Somehow she managed to sidestep Ian’s effort to halt her, and she approached the man. “I am not messing around with my protector. I am, and always have been, true and faithful to Derian. It’s just……a lot of weird things have happened lately.” The Braetic looked willing to consider a good excuse. “Such as?” “Well,” she started, casting a furtive glance at Ian. He was shaking his head, conveying strong disapproval. She ignored him. “Okay, well…..I’ve been fighting these immortals who are bent on using me to break free from an imprisoning gem where they were sentenced to stayed locked up for eternity. They nearly annihilated a world of Viiduns—that’s how awful they are! But one of these immortals has control over my necklace, and her brother keeps transporting me and my protector all over Moccobatra in search of pieces to a star-shaped platform they intend to use to free their bodies which have been trapped for over three-thousand years now. We were sent here at an inopportune—and highly embarrassing—moment to find the final piece to the platform. It’s been a nightmare just trying to stay alive!” “Wow,” Cale breathed, not looking half as concerned as Eena thought he ought to. “So these immortals are using you and trying to kill you at the same time?” She shook her head. “No, no, only the dragons are trying to kill me…or they were trying to kill me until Naga put a stop to them.” Eena heard Ian’s hand smack against his forehead. She saw humor sweep over the Braetic’s face. It made her angry. “Dragons too, huh?” Cale snickered. “It’s the truth!” she insisted. (Eena, just forget it. You’re only making it worse.) She ignored her protector’s advice again. “Cale, I’m telling you the honest-to-goodness truth. Do you know the story of Wanyaka Cave? The red-gemmed prison and the two spirit sisters?” Completely out of patience, Ian broke into the conversation, rudely speaking over his queen. “We’ll be on our way now, sir. We apologize for trespassing.” With a big grin on his face, the Braetic offered a friendly alternative. “Why don’t the pair of you accompany me home. I’m sure my wife can round up some suitable clothing for you. Those immortals must have a ripe sense of humor, leaving you alone in the woods without any decent attire.” He caught a chuckle in his throat. “That is unless it was the dragons who took the shirt off your back.” “Dragons are immortals!” Eena snapped, as if any fool ought to know it. Ian flashed her a harsh look. “We would greatly appreciate the help, sir.” “Oh, it’ll cost you something,” Cale informed them, “but we can discuss that on our way.

One finds oneself surprisingly supplied with information. Outside the undifferentiated forces roar; inside we are very private, very explicit, have a sense indeed, that it is here, in this little room, that we make whatever day of the week it may be. Friday or Saturday. A shell forms upon the soft soul, nacreous, shiny, upon which sensations tap their beaks in vain. On me it formed earlier than on most. Soon I could carve my pear when other people had done dessert. I could bring my sentence to a close in a hush of complete silence. It is at that season too that perfection has a lure. One can learn Spanish, one thinks, by tying a string to the right toe and waking early. One fills up the little compartments of one’s engagement book with dinner at eight; luncheon at one-thirty. One has shirts, socks, ties laid out on one’s bed. But it is a mistake, this extreme precision, this orderly and military progress; a convenience, a lie. There is always deep below it, even when we arrive punctually at the appointed time with our white waistcoats and polite formalities, a rushing stream of broken dreams, nursery rhymes, street cries, half-finished sentences and sights—elm trees, willow trees, gardeners sweeping, women writing—that rise and sink even as we hand a lady down to dinner. While one straightens the fork so precisely on the table-cloth, a thousand faces mop and mow. There is nothing one can fish up in a spoon; nothing one can call an event. Yet it is alive too and deep, this stream. Immersed in it I would stop between one mouthful and the next, and look intently at a vase, perhaps with one red flower, while a reason struck me, a sudden revelation.

Do you have vows?” Freeman asked. Zane nodded, but he didn’t move to take out a piece of paper or any notes. He licked his lips instead and took a deep breath. “Ty,” he said, and the sound was almost lost in the night. “Some roads to love aren’t easy, and I’ve never been more thankful for being forced to fight for something. I started this journey with a partner I hated, and a man in the mirror I hated even more. The road took me from the streets of New York to the mountaintops of West Virginia, from the place I born to the place I found a home. It forced me to let go of my past and face my future. And I had to be made blind before I could see.” Zane swallowed hard and looked down, obviously fighting to finish without choking on the words or tearing up. Ty realized his own eyes were burning, and it wasn’t because of the cold wind. Zane squeezed Ty’s fingers with one hand, and he met Ty’s eyes as he reached into his lapel with his other. “I promise to love you until I die,” he said, his voice strong again. He held up a Sharpie he’d had in his suit, and pulled Ty’s hand closer to draw on his ring finger. With several sweeping motions, he created an infinity sign that looped all the way around the finger. When he was satisfied with the ring he’d drawn, he kissed Ty’s knuckles and let him go, handing him the Sharpie. Ty grasped the pen, but he couldn’t take his eyes off Zane. He ran his thumb over Zane’s palm. He had a set of vows he’d jotted down on a note card, folded up in his pocket, but he left them where they were and gazed into Zane’s eyes, their past flashing in front of him, their future opening up in his mind. He took a deep breath. “I promise to never leave you alone in the dark,” he whispered. He pulled Zane’s hand closer and pressed the tip of the Sharpie against Zane’s skin, curving the symbol for forever around it. When he was satisfied, he kissed the tip of Zane’s finger and slid the pen back into his lapel pocket. Freeman coughed and turned a page in his book. “Do you, Zane Zachary Garrett, take this man to be your lawful wedded husband?” Zane’s lips curved into a warm smile. “I do.” Freeman turned toward Ty. “Do you, Beaumont Tyler Grady, take this man to be your lawful wedded husband?” “I do,” Ty said, almost before the question was finished. “Then by the power vested in me by the state of Maryland, I pronounce you legally wed.” Freeman slapped his little book closed. “You may now share the first kiss of the rest of your lives.” Ty had fully expected to have the urge to grab Zane and plant one on him out of sheer impatience and joy, but as he stood staring at his brand-new husband, it was as if they were moving underwater. He touched the tips of his fingers to Zane’s cheek, then stepped closer and used both hands to cup his face with the utmost care. Zane was still smiling when they kissed, and it was slow and gentle, Zane’s hands at Ty’s ribs pulling them flush. “Okay, now,” Livi whispered somewhere to their side, and a moment later they were both pelted with handfuls of heart-shaped confetti. Zane laughed and finally wrapped his arms around Ty, squeezing him tight. The others continued to toss the confetti at them, even handing out bits to people passing by so they’d be sure to get covered from all sides. They laughed into the kiss, not caring. They were still locked in their happy embrace when Deuce turned the box over above them and rained little, bitty hearts down on their heads.

*SNEAK PEAK* An Excerpt from Grace Prevailing, to be released TOMORROW!!! :) “Agabus.” Mary smiled warmly as she reached him, her luminous gray eyes twinkling with welcome and a hint of mirth. “How brave of you to join us this evening.” Agabus’ dark eyes met hers, flickering in annoyance. So much for his clever disguise! “I must ask you to lower your voice, please,” the young Pharisee hissed under his breath, wondering how many of her guests had overheard the use of his name. “You needn’t fear, Agabus,” Mary assured him, lowering her dulcet tone to placate him. “None of us wish to give you away.” “One careless slip of the tongue could very well prove ruinous,” Agabus told her, his glittering eyes sweeping cautiously about the room. “Possibly even deadly.” “Not nearly so deadly as rejecting the Way Christ has clearly revealed to you.” “He hasn’t revealed anything to me,” Agabus argued, though his tone was far from convincing. “At least, not personally.” “No?” Mary prompted, her slender brow lifting in question. “Then why are you here? And why do you persist in your questions?” “This is not about me,” Agabus insisted, his voice rising in frustration. When several believers glanced his way, he shifted uncomfortably, pulling his hooded shawl to further obscure his bearded face. “I must speak with you,” he finally concluded, his gaze shifting anxiously about the crowded room. “Alone.” “If you wish to speak, then we may speak here.” “For heaven’s sake, Mary,” Agabus breathed, his frustration mounting. “Go on,” Mary prodded, appearing perfectly composed. Maddeningly aware of the chatter and movement surrounding them, Agabus took a step closer, so close Mary could smell his spice-scented breath. “I come bearing ill tidings.” “Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Mary responded, smiling faintly. “What kind of ill tidings?” “It’s about Saul of Tarsus.” “I see,” Mary nodded, her expression sobering beneath her pale blue head covering. “What has he done now?” “It’s what he is about to do,” Agabus warned her, his obsidian eyes growing serious. “At this moment, he is attempting to obtain permission to target churches beyond Jerusalem.” “Preposterous,” Mary declared, her eyes flashing. “He hasn’t the jurisdiction to do so.” “The high priest is seriously considering granting his request,” Agabus told her grimly. “Your sect endangers the very office he holds.” “On what grounds will Saul make his arrests?” “By order of the high priest,” Agabus sighed. “I imagine Jewish men and women will be dragged from other provinces by order of the Great Sanhedrin.” “Women, too?” Mary asked, surprised. “I’m afraid no one is safe,” Agabus replied grimly. “Once within the grasp of the high priest and the Sanhedrin here in Jerusalem, I imagine far more serious political charges will be fabricated against the prisoners, resulting in life in prison—possibly even the death penalty.” Releasing a steadying sigh, Mary brushed cool fingertips across her smooth forehead, deep in thought. “This isn’t good, Mary,” Agabus warned her, daring yet another step closer. “Up to this point, your friends have been safe beyond our borders. But now… if Saul has his way, they cannot run. They cannot hide. In time, they will be hunted down and exterminated one by one. And their cause shall perish with them.” “Never,” Mary said firmly, her eyes flashing. “The gospel will reach the ends of the earth, Agabus. Mark my words.” “There’s just no way,” Agabus countered, shaking his covered head. “God has already made a Way,” Mary told him, her eyes alight with conviction. “And His name is Jesus. Jesus is the Way.

Among the forces which sweep and play throughout the universe, untutored man is but a wisp in the wind. Our civilisation is still in a middle stage, scarcely beast, in that it is no longer wholly guided by instinct; scarcely human, in that it is not yet wholly guided by reason. On the tiger no responsibility rests. We see him aligned by nature with the forces of life — he is born into their keeping and without thought he is protected. We see man far removed from the lairs of the jungles, his innate instincts dulled by too near an approach to free-will, his free-will not sufficiently developed to replace his instincts and afford him perfect guidance. He is becoming too wise to hearken always to instincts and desires; he is still too weak to always prevail against them. As a beast, the forces of life aligned him with them; as a man, he has not yet wholly learned to align himself with the forces. In this intermediate stage he wavers — neither drawn in harmony with nature by his instincts nor yet wisely putting himself into harmony by his own free-will. He is even as a wisp in the wind, moved by every breath of passion, acting now by his will and now by his instincts, erring with one, only to retrieve by the other, falling by one, only to rise by the other — a creature of incalculable variability. We have the consolation of knowing that evolution is ever in action, that the ideal is a light that cannot fail. He will not forever balance thus between good and evil. When this jangle of free-will and instinct shall have been adjusted, when perfect understanding has given the former the power to replace the latter entirely, man will no longer vary. The needle of understanding will yet point steadfast and unwavering to the distant pole of truth. In Carrie — as in how many of our worldlings do they not? — instinct and reason, desire and understanding, were at war for the mastery. She followed whither her craving led. She was as yet more drawn than she drew.

Of course he wept at the funeral and knew how colossal this thing was that, without warning, had been taken away. When the minister read, along with the biblical stuff, a selection from Julius Caesar out of his father's cherished volume of Shakespeare's plays —the oversized book with the floppy leather binding that, when Coleman was a small boy, always reminded him of a cocker spaniel —the son felt his father's majesty as never before: the grandeur of both his rise and his fall, the grandeur that, as a college freshman away for barely a month from the tiny enclosure of his East Orange home, Coleman had begun faintly to discern for what it was. "Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once. Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, It seems to me most strange that men should fear; Seeing that death, a necessary end, Will come when it will come." The word "valiant," as the preacher intoned it, stripped away Coleman's manly effort at sober, stoical self-control and laid bare a child's longing for that man closest to him that he'd never see again, the mammoth, secretly suffering father who talked so easily, so sweepingly, who with just his powers of speech had inadvertently taught Coleman to want to be stupendous. Coleman wept with the most fundamental and copious of all emotions, reduced helplessly to everything he could not bear. As an adolescent complaining about his father to his friends, he would characterize him with far more scorn than he felt or had the capacity to feel—pretending to an impersonal way of judging his own father was one more method he'd devised to invent and claim impregnability. But to be no longer circumscribed and defined by his father was like finding that all the clocks wherever he looked had stopped, and all the watches, and that there was no way of knowing what time it was. Down to the day he arrived in Washington and entered Howard, it was, like it or not, his father who had been making up Coleman's story for him; now he would have to make it up himself, and the prospect was terrifying.

the end chaos would burst forth to overwhelm the order that the gods had made and preserved. In Midgard the end would begin with three winters of war and general lawlessness; men would fight without mercy, murder one another and betray their own kin through adultery and with violence. After this would come three years of winter, with the sun’s warmth weakened and terrible winds sweeping the earth so that its people died of hunger. Then the wolves that ran behind the moon and sun would overtake them, and darkness would fall on the land. ​In Asgard Loki would break from his bonds and so would his son, the wolf Fenrir.  In the depths of the sea Loki’s other monster-son, the Midgard Serpent, would rise in anger. The giants out of Jotunheim and the fire-demons out of Muspelheim would come to Loki’s call and attack the gods. The battle would be desperate. Thor would kill and be killed by the Midgard Serpent, and Heimdall the sentry of Asgard would kill and be killed by Loki. Odin would fight against the wolf Fenrir and die, but his son Vidar would destroy the wolf. At the end, when the best part of both armies lay dead, Surt the fire-bearer would come from the burning world of Muspelheim and set Asgard, Midgard and the World Tree itself ablaze. The sea would rise, churned up by the death-throes of the Midgard Serpent, and the ruined land would be drowned. ​But this destruction, while great and terrible, was not quite final. Out of the empty seas land would rise again and green plants would grow there; indeed, fine crops of grain would grow without any man tending them. Balder would return from the dead, Honir would return with the gift of prophecy added to his other strengths, and Thor’s sons would arise carrying their father’s great hammer. Soli would not return from death to drive the chariot of the sun but her daughter, even stronger and lovelier than she, would rise and give light to the worlds again. And a man and a woman, long concealed in a safe place hidden from the ruin, would emerge to drink of the dew and eat of the plants of the field and start the human race again. Some said also that the dead humans in Helheim would be raised to life again, but some said otherwise.

We let our ship blow and drift as it will. But it sweeps up and up, with the swiftness of light. In less time than it takes a flower to open, we are carried to the parapets of ancient Heaven. We find our great-leaved, heavy-fruited Amaranth Vine, climbing up over the closed gates and high wall-towers of Heaven and winding a long way into the old forest that has overgrown the streets. We find the new all conquering Springfield vine, spreading branches through the forest like a banyan tree. As this Amaranth from our little earthly village grows thicker, we see by its light a bit pf what the ancient Heaven has been. And it is still a solid place of soil and rock and metal. Where the Springfield Amaranth blooms thickest, shedding luminous glory from the petals in the starlight, this Heaven is shown to be an autumn forest, yet with the cedars of Lebanon, and sandalwood thickets, and the million tropic trees whose seeds have blown here from strange zones of the'planets, and whose patterns are not the patterns of those of our world. Among these, vineclad pillars and walls are still standing, roofed palaces, so gigantic that, when our boat glides down the great streets between them, they overhang our masts. And from branches above us these strange manners of fruits tumble upon our decks for our feasting and delight. And there are beneath our ship, as it sails on as it will, little fields long cleared in the forest, where grows weedy ungathered grain. Through hours and hours of the night our boat goes on, whether we will or no, through starlight and through storm-clouds and through flower-light. And the red star at the masthead and the sight of the proud face of Avanel keeps laughter in my bosom, and the heavenly breeze that blows on the flowers still sings to our hearts: “Springfield Awake, Springfield Aflame.” Out of the storm now, three great rocks . appear, giving forth white light there on the far horizon, and this light burns on and on. At last our ship approaches. We see the great rocks are three empty thrones. These are the thrones of the Trinity, empty for these many years, just as the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy of Holies were bereft of the Presence, when Israel sinned.

There are few of us who have not sometimes wakened before dawn, either after one of those dreamless nights that make us almost enamoured of death, or one of those nights of horror and misshapen joy, when through the chambers of the brain sweep phantoms more terrible than reality itself, and instinct with that vivid life that lurks in all grotesques, and that lends to Gothic art its enduring vitality, this art being, one might fancy, especially the art of those whose minds have been troubled with the malady of reverie. Gradually white fingers creep through the curtains, and they appear to tremble. In black fantastic shapes, dumb shadows crawl into the corners of the room, and crouch there. Outside, there is the stirring of birds among the leaves, or the sound of men going forth to their work, or the sigh and sob of the wind coming down from the hills, and wandering round the silent house, as though it feared to wake the sleepers, and yet must needs call forth sleep from her purple cave. Veil after veil of thin dusky gauze is lifted, and by degrees the forms and colours of things are restored to them, and we watch the dawn remaking the world in its antique pattern. The wan mirrors get back their mimic life. The flameless tapers stand where we had left them, and beside them lies the half-cut book that we had been studying, or the wired flower that we had worn at the ball, or the letter that we had been afraid to read, or that we had read too often. Nothing seems to us changed. Out of the unreal shadows of the night comes back the real life that we had known. We have to resume it where we had left off, and there steals over us a terrible sense of the necessity for the continuance of energy in the same wearisome round of stereotyped habits, or a wild longing, it may be, that our eyelids might open some morning upon a world that had been refashioned anew in the darkness for our pleasure, a world in which things would have fresh shapes and colours, and be changed, or have other secrets, a world in which the past would have little or no place, or survive, at any rate, in no conscious form of obligation or regret, the remembrance even of joy having its bitterness, and the memories of pleasure their pain.

This is a good moment to remember one of Mansfield’s Manly Maxims: “Manly men tend their fields.” It means that we take care of the lives and property entrusted to us. It means that we take responsibility for everything in the “field assigned to us.” We cannot do this without knowledge. We cannot do it if we are ignorant of our times, blind to the trends shaping our lives, and oblivious to the basic knowledge that allows us to do what we are called to do as men. We must know enough about law, health, science, economics, politics, and technology to fulfill our roles. We should also know enough about our faith to stand our ground in a secular age, resist heresies, and teach our families. We also shouldn’t be without the benefits of literature and poetry, of good novels and stirring stories, all of which make us more relevant and more effective. We need all of this, and no one is going to force it upon us. Nor will we acquire what we need from a degree program or a study group alone, as valuable as these can be. The truth is that men who aspire to be genuine men and serve well have no choice: they must devote themselves to an aggressive program of self-education. They have to read books, stay current with websites and periodicals, consult experts, and put themselves in a position to know. It isn’t as hard as it sounds, particularly in our Internet age. Much of what a man needs to know can land in his iPad while he is sleeping, but he has to know enough to value this power in the first place. To ignore this duty can mean disaster. How many men have lost jobs because they did not see massive trends on the horizon? How many men have failed to stay intellectually sharp and so gave up ground in their professions to others with more active minds? How many have lost money through uninformed investments or have not taken opportunities in expanding fields or have missed promotions because they had not bothered to learn about new technologies or what changes social media, for example, would bring to their jobs? I do not want to be negative. Learning is a joy. Reading is one of the great pleasures of life. A man ought to invest in knowledge because it is part of living in this world fully engaged and glorifying God. Yet our times also make it essential. The amount of knowledge in the world is increasing. Technology is transforming our lives. New trends can rise like floodwaters and sweep devastation into our homes. Men committed to tending their fields learn, study, research, dig out facts, and test theories. They know how to safeguard their families. They serve well because they serve as informed men.

another showed him back in Berlin, reviewing a throng of grateful Germans from the balcony of the German chancery. He had led Germany to military glory against all odds. The Third Reich built by his Nazis seemed invincible. Yet the restless erstwhile artist and miracle-working warlord was not finished. In fact, the most ambitious act of Nazi world building was yet to come. In Mein Kampf Hitler had made it abundantly clear that the long-term plan of National Socialism was the elimination of the Jews and the enslavement of the Slavs. Both goals were contingent on the conquest of the Soviet Union. Since a large percentage of European Jewry lived within her borders and those of Poland, a war in the east was necessary. Poland had now fallen, and German military forces were already sweeping through the country rounding up its Jewish citizenry. But the Soviet Union—the heart of “Jewish-Bolshevism”—remained untouched. To overcome the Aryans’ greatest racial enemy and subdue the Slavs, a full-scale invasion was necessary. As 1941 opened, then, Hitler prepared for what came to be known as Operation Barbarossa. Bringing Nazi ideology to fulfillment, it proved to be the greatest invasion in history. Hitler before the Eiffel Tower Hitler’s plans for the invasion of Russia were laid out in a series of meetings and reports during the spring. They were defined by a combination of utopian vision and nihilistic contempt. Gathering his generals before him on March 30, the leader declared that the coming struggle was not merely one of army against army but of culture against culture. It would be a “clash of two ideologies,” he explained. The Communists and Nazis had erected their states on the ruins of Christendom. Both Christianity, with its principle of charity, and humanism, with its celebration of autonomous individual dignity, were bankrupt. Wars in the past, he observed, had accommodated such values. But mercy and chivalry were now dead. Between opposing armies, he declared “we must forget the notion” of sympathy.150 The coming conflict will be “a war of annihilation.”151 Hitler’s generals got the message. One, Erich Hoepner (d. 1944), subsequently declared to his men with a combination of Darwinian objectivity and Nietzschean ruthlessness: The war against Russia is an essential phase in the German nation’s struggle for existence. It is the ancient struggle of the Germanic peoples against Slavdom, the defense of European culture against the Muscovite-Asiatic tide, the repulse of Jewish Bolshevism. That struggle must have as its aim the shattering of present-day Russia and therefore be waged with unprecedented hardness.

They came in to look. I watched them. Most people go through museums like they do Macy's: eyes sweeping the display, stopping only if something really grabs their attention. These two looked at everything. They both clearly liked the bicycle picture. Yup, Dutch, I decided. He was a few steps ahead when he got to my favorite painting there. Diana and the Moon. It was-surprise surprise-of Diana, framed by a big open window, the moon dominating the sky outside. She was perched on the windowsill, dressed in a gauzy wrap that could have been nightclothes or a nod to her goddess namesake. She looked beautiful, of course, and happy, but if you looked for more than a second, you could see that her smile had a teasing curve to it and one of her hands was actually wrapped around the outside frame. I thought she looked like she might swing her legs over the sill and jump, turning into a moth or owl or breath of wind even before she was completely out of the room. I thought she looked, too, like she was daring the viewer to come along. Or at least to try. The Dutch guy didn't say anything. He just reached out a hand. His girlfriend stepped in, folding herself into the circle of his outsretched arm. They stood like that, in front of the painting, for a full minute. Then he sneezed. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a tissue.He took in and, without letting go of her, did a surprisingly graceful one-handed blow. Then he crumpled the tissue and looked around for a trash can. There wasn't one in sight. She held out her free hand; he passed over the tissue, and she stuck it right back into her pocket. I wanted to be grossed out. Instead, I had the surprising thought that I really really wanted someone who would do that: put my used Kleenex in his pocket. It seemed like a declaration of something pretty big. Finally,they finished their examination of Diana and moved on.There wasn't much else, just the arrogant Willings and the overblown sunrise. They came over to examine the bronzes. She saw my book. "Excuse me. You know this artist?" Intimately just didn't seem as true anymore. "Pretty well," I answered. "He is famous here?" "Not very." "I like him." she said thoughtfully. "He has...oh, the word...personism?" "Personality?" I offered. "Yes!" she said, delighted. "Personality." She reached behind her without looking. Her boyfriend immediately twined his fingers with hers. They left, unfolding the map again as they went, she chattering cheerfully. I think she was telling him he had personality. They might as well have had exhibit information plaques on their backs: "COUPLE." CONTEMPORARY DUTCH. COURTESY OF THE ESTATE OF LOVE, FOR THE VIEWING PLEASURE (OR NOT) OF ANYONE AND EVERYONE.

He watched her pace toward him. She stopped just short of his chair and looked down at him. Her loose hair slipped over her shoulder. “I remember something. I’m not sure if it happened or not. Will you tell me?” “Yes,” he whispered. “I remember lying with you on the lawn of the imperial palace’s spring garden.” He shifted. Lamplight pulsed over his face. He shook his head. “I remember finding you in your suite.” This memory was coming to her now. It had a similar flavor as the last one. “I promised to tell you my secrets. You held a book. Or kindling? You were making a fire.” “That didn’t happen.” “I kissed you.” She touched the hollow at the base of his neck. His pulse was wild. “Not then,” he said finally. “But I have before.” There was a rush of images. It was as if the melody she’d imagined while lying in the dark had been dunked in the green liquor. All the cold stops gained heat and ran together. It was easy to remember Arin, especially now. Her hand slid to his chest. The cotton of his shirt was hot. “Your kitchens. A table. Honey and flour.” His heart slammed against her palm. “Yes.” “A carriage.” “Yes.” “A balcony.” Breath escaped him like a laugh. “Almost.” “I remember falling asleep in your bed when you weren’t here.” He pulled back slightly, searched her face. “That didn’t happen.” “Yes it did.” His mouth parted, but he didn’t speak. The blacks of his eyes were bright. She wondered what it would be like to give her body what it wanted. It knew something she didn’t. Her heart sped, her blood was lush in her veins. “The first day,” she said. “Last summer. Your hair was a mess. I wanted to sweep it back and make you meet my eyes. I wanted to see you.” His chest rose and fell beneath her hand. “I don’t know. I can’t--I don’t know what you wanted.” “I never said?” “No.” She lowered her mouth to his. She tasted him: the raw burn of liquor on his tongue. She felt him swallow, heard the low, dry sound of it. He pulled her down to him, tangled his hands in her hair, sucked the breath from her lips. She became uncertain whose breath was whose. He kissed her back, fingertips fanning across her face, then gone, nowhere. Then: a light touch along the curve of her hip, just barely. A stone skipping the surface of the water. “Strange,” he murmured into her mouth. She wasn’t listening. She was rippling, the sensation spreading wide. Stone on water, dimpled pockets of pressure. The wait for the stone to finally drop down. Suddenly she knew--or thought she knew--what he found strange as he traced where a dagger should have been. To see a part of her missing. She felt her missing pieces, the stark gaps. She was arrested by the thought (it pierced her, sharp and surreal) that she had become transparent, that if he touched her again his hand would go right through her, into air, into the empty spaces of who she was now.

THE NIGHTGOWN was only the first of the garments in the box. There were seven nightgowns, in fact—one for each day of the week—of delicate silk, lovely georgette, and beautiful tiffany. As Alexandra pulled them out, she draped them on the bed. She’d never seen a nightgown that wasn’t white, but these were almond and pale blush pink, powder blue and soft peach, with delicate edgings of lace and intricate, exquisite embroidery. “They’re stunning,” she said. “Madame Rodale has nothing like them in her book of fashion plates.” Tris just grinned. He seemed different tonight. More relaxed, less worried. She didn’t know what had prompted his sudden good humor, but she didn’t want to question it. She’d rather enjoy it instead. After the afternoon she’d had—starting with Elizabeth’s letter and ending with three fruitless interviews—she wasn’t about to risk the one thing that seemed to be going right. “Are you going to try one on for me?” he asked. Her face heated. He chose a nightgown off the bed, palest lavender with black lace and violet embroidery. “This one,” he said, handing it to her. “Do you require assistance with your dress?” “Just the buttons,” she said, and turned to let him unfasten them. She shifted the nightgown in her hands. It felt so light. “There,” he said when the back of her green dress gaped open. He kissed her softly on the nape of her neck, then settled on one of the striped chairs, sipping from the glass of port he’d brought upstairs with him. “Use the dressing room. I’ll be waiting.” In the dressing room, she shakily stripped out of her frock, chemise, shoes, and stockings, then dropped the nightgown over her head and smoothed it down over her hips. The fabric whispered against her legs. She turned to see herself in the looking glass. Sweet heaven. She’d never imagined nightgowns like this existed. Her nightgowns all had high collars that tied at the throat. This one had a wide, low neckline. Her nightgowns all had long, full sleeves. This one had tiny puffed sleeves that began halfway off her shoulders. Her nightgowns were made of yards and yards of thick, billowing fabric. This one was a slender column that left no curve to the imagination. It was wicked. “Are you ready yet?” Tris called. Alexandra swallowed hard, reminding herself that he’d seen her in less clothing. And he was her husband. Still, wearing the nightgown for him somehow felt more intimate than wearing nothing at all. She was as ready as she’d ever be. Drawing a deep breath, she exited the dressing room, walked quickly through the sitting room, and paused in the bedroom’s doorway. She dropped her gaze, then raised her lashes, giving him the look—the one Juliana had said would make men fall at her feet. Judging from the expression on Tris’s face, it was a good thing he was sitting. The way he looked at her made her heartbeat accelerate. He rose and moved toward her. She met him halfway, licking suddenly dry lips. “Will you kiss me?” she asked softly, reaching up to sweep that always unruly lock off his forehead. It worked this time. He kissed her but good.

Nevertheless, it would be prudent to remain concerned. For, like death, IT would come: Armageddon. There would be-without exaggeration-a series of catastrophes. As a consequence of the evil in man...-no mere virus, however virulent, was even a burnt match for our madness, our unconcern, our cruelty-...there would arise a race of champions, predators of humans: namely earthquakes, eruptions, tidal waves, tornados, typhoons, hurricanes, droughts-the magnificent seven. Floods, winds, fires, slides. The classical elements, only angry. Oceans would warm, the sky boil and burn, the ice cap melt, the seas rise. Rogue nations, like kids killing kids at their grammar school, would fire atomic-hydrogen-neutron bombs at one another. Smallpox would revive, or out of the African jungle would slide a virus no one understood. Though reptilian only in spirit, the disease would make us shed our skins like snakes and, naked to the nerves, we'd expire in a froth of red spit. Markets worldwide would crash as reckless cars on a speedway do, striking the wall and rebounding into one another, hurling pieces of themselves at the spectators in the stands. With money worthless-that last faith lost-the multitude would riot, race against race at first, God against God, the gots against the gimmes. Insects hardened by generations of chemicals would consume our food, weeds smother our fields, fire ants, killer bees sting us while we're fleeing into refuge water, where, thrashing we would drown, our pride a sodden wafer. Pestilence. War. Famine. A cataclysm of one kind or another-coming-making millions of migrants. Wearing out the roads. Foraging in the fields. Looting the villages. Raping boys and women. There'd be no tent cities, no Red Cross lunches, hay drops. Deserts would appear as suddenly as patches of crusty skin. Only the sun would feel their itch. Floods would sweep suddenly over all those newly arid lands as if invited by the beach. Forest fires would burn, like those in coal mines, for years, uttering smoke, making soot for speech, blackening every tree leaf ahead of their actual charring. Volcanoes would erupt in series, and mountains melt as though made of rock candy till the cities beneath them were caught inside the lava flow where they would appear to later eyes, if there were any eyes after, like peanuts in brittle. May earthquakes jelly the earth, Professor Skizzen hotly whispered. Let glaciers advance like motorboats, he bellowed, threatening a book with his fist. These convulsions would be a sign the parasites had killed their host, evils having eaten all they could; we'd hear a groan that was the going of the Holy Ghost; we'd see the last of life pissed away like beer from a carouse; we'd feel a shudder move deeply through this universe of dirt, rock, water, ice, and air, because after its long illness the earth would have finally died, its engine out of oil, its sky of light, winds unable to catch a breath, oceans only acid; we'd be witnessing a world that's come to pieces bleeding searing steam from its many wounds; we'd hear it rattling its atoms around like dice in a cup before spilling randomly out through a split in the stratosphere, night and silence its place-well-not of rest-of disappearance. My wish be willed, he thought. Then this will be done, he whispered so no God could hear him. That justice may be served, he said to the four winds that raged in the corners of his attic.