Sybil Quotes

Aaah ... said Ron, imitating Professor Trelawney’s mystical whisper, when two Neptunes appear in the sky it is a sure sign that a midget in glasses is being born, Harry...

Let me get this straight. First you decide I'm a demon because of a power I didn't ask for and don't even understand. Then when that falls through you label me a fallen sybil and a ho. Am I missing something or do you just not like me

You're never ready for what you have to do. You just do it. That makes you ready.

By the time she had interpreted Harry's dreams at the top of her voice (all of which, even the ones that involved eating porridge, apparently foretold a gruesome and early death), he was feeling much less sympathetic toward her.

Isolated, she managed somehow to feel free—albeit with a freedom that made her want to smash a hole in the very center of the universe.

But I don’t think I’ve ever known such a natural at Potions!” said Slughorn. “Instinctive, you know — like his mother! I’ve only ever taught a few with this kind of ability, I can tell you that, Sybill — why even Severus —” And to Harry’s horror, Slughorn threw out an arm and seemed to scoop Snape out of thin air toward them.

Sybil tells me your little festival is an annual occurrence," she said, the cadence of her voice swooning like a lullaby. "Yes," Kai said, lifting a shrimp wonton between his chopsticks. "It falls on the ninth full moon if each year." "Ah, how lovely for you to base your holidays on the cycles of my planet." Kai wanted to scoff at the word planet but sucked it back down his throat.

Right, you've got a crooked sort of cross..." He consulted Unfogging the Future. "That means you're going to have 'trials and suffering' — sorry about that — but there's a thing that could be the sun... hang on... that means 'great happiness'... so you're going to suffer but be very happy..." "You need your Inner Eye tested, if you ask me," said Ron, and they both had to stifle their laughs as Professor Trelawney gazed in their direction.

I have to force myself even to move my eyeballs. It's so easy just to stare.

The neurologist had dismissed her case after a single visit, handing out an easy nostrum by telling her father that if she continued to write poetry, she would be all right.

There is no past. Past is present when you carry it with you.

Sybil’s female forebears had valiantly backed up their husbands as distant embassies were besieged, had given birth on a camel or in the shade of a stricken elephant, had handed around the little gold chocolates while trolls were trying to break into the compound, or had merely stayed at home and nursed such bits of husbands and sons as made it back from endless little wars.  The result was a species of woman who, when duty called, turned into solid steel.

Was it—was she making a real prediction?' Dumbledore looked mildly impressed. 'Do you know, Harry, I think she might have been,' he said thoughtfully. 'Who'd have thought it? That brings her total of real predictions up to two. I should offer her a pay raise...

Theirs was the eternal youth of an alternating self, a youth with the constant although unfulfilled promise of growing up

I’m not fit to occupy space. Excuse me for living.

The anger. The terror. The feeling of entrapment. the profound distrust of people.The wistful, plaintive conviction that a window, a thing, was more important than she. These feelings and attitudes, expressed in the course of this hour, were symptoms of some profound disturbance.

I want somebody to love, and I want somebody to love me. And nobody ever will. And that's why it hurts. Because it makes a difference. And when nobody cares, it makes you all mad inside and it makes you want to say things, tear up things, break things, get through the glass.

She'd abandoned the animal she loved as she herself had been abandoned repeatedly in the past by people who had claimed to love her.

That brings her total of real predictions up to two. I should offer her a pay rise…

I realized how trapped I was by all the talk of the end of the world.

God fearing and man hating. Sugar sugar. There was so much sugar in the way they pretended to treat each other that I suffered from diabetes of the soul.

It is so much more threatening to have something out of hand than to believe that at any moment I can stop (I started to say "This foolishness") any time I need to.

I let you sleep, Sam," said Lady Sybil. "You didn't get in this morning until after three." "Everyone's double-shifting, dear," said Sam, daring Carrot and Sally to even think about telling anyone they'd seen the boss wearing a blue shawl covered in ducks. "I've got to set a good example." "I'm sure you intend to, Sam, but you look like a horrible warning," said Sybil.

He had a notebook. He took notes in it. It was always useful. And them Sybil, gods bless her, had brought him this fifteen-function imp which did so many other things, although as far as he could see at least ten of its functions consisted of apologizing for its inefficiency in the other five.

Two nations; between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other's habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets; who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by a different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same laws . . . . THE RICH AND THE POOR.

I myself have seen with my own eyes the sybil hanging in a bottle at Cumae. And when the little boys asked her "Sybil, what do you want?" she said, "I want to die.

Will there never be an end that also has a beginning? Will there never be continuity bridging the awful void between now and some other time, a time in the future, a time in the past?

Half an hour later, each of them had been given a complicated circular chart, and was attempting to fill in the position of the planets at their moment of birth. It was dull work, requiring much consultation of timetables and calculation of angles. “I’ve got two Neptunes here,” said Harry after a while, frowning down at his piece of parchment, “that can’t be right, can it?” “Aaaaah,” said Ron, imitating Professor Trelawney’s mystical whisper, “when two Neptunes appear in the sky, it is a sure sign that a midget in glasses is being born, Harry . . .

You knock yourself down. You don't think much of yourself. That's an uncomfortable feeling. So you project it on others and say, 'They don't like me.

It's not an exaggeration to say that they saved my life. Ray Quinn, then Cam and Ethan and Phil. They turned their world around for me, and because of it, turned mine around with it. Anna and Grace and Sybill, Aubrey too. They made a home for me, and nothing that happened before matters nearly as much as everything that came after.

He always says that,' muttered Vimes as the two men hurried down the stairs. 'He knows I don't like being married to a duchess.' 'I thought you and Lady Sybil-' 'Oh, being married to Sybil is fine, fine,' said Vimes hurriedly. 'It's just the duchess bit I don't like.

Willard married his father in female form.

Past is present if you carry it with you.

What would you rather?" yelled Sybil from the distant sandpit. "Know everything or know nothing?" "Know nothing," I yelled back. "Then you have the fun of finding everything out.

Silk stockings. With garters. Well, they were out. There were a lot of things he'd do for Sybil, but if garters figured anywhere in the relationship they weren't going to be on him.

It all made sense — terrible sense. The panic she had experienced in the warehouse district because of not knowing what had happened had been superseded at the newsstand by the even greater panic of partial knowledge. And now the torment of partly knowing had yielded to the infinitely greater terror of knowing precisely

..when someone says "please pray for me," they are not just saying "let's have lunch sometime." They are issuing an invitation into the depths of their lives and their humanity- and often with some urgency. And worry is not a substitute for prayer. Worry is a starting place, but not a staying place. Worry invites me into prayer. As a staying place, worry can be self-indulgent, paralyzing, draining, and controlling. When I take worry into prayer, it doesn't disappear, but it becomes smaller.

Where do you think they've gone?' he said. 'Where what?' said Lady Ramkin, temporarily halted. 'The dragons. You know. Errol and his wi - female.' 'Oh, somewhere isolated and rocky, I should imagine,' said Lady Ramkin. 'Favourite country for dragons.' 'But it - she's a magical animal,' said Vimes. 'What'll happen when the magic goes away?' Lady Ramkin gave him a shy smile. 'Most people seem to manage,' she said. She reached across the table and touched his hand.

Vicky became more serious and her tone more reflective as she remarked, "Life has so much pain that one needs a catharsis. I don't mean escape. You don't escape in books. On the contrary, they help you to realize yourself more fully. Mon Dieu, I'm glad I have them. When I find myself in a situation in which I'd rather not be - because of the perculiar circumstances of my life - I have this outlet. You may think me tres superieure but I'm not really, I am just what I am and live the way I like.

Well, it would have been easier if it were put on. But the only ruse of which I'm guilty is to have pretended for so long before coming to you that nothing was wrong. Pretending that the personalities did not exist has now caused me to lose about two days.

Sybil never shouted when she told him off. She just spoke sadly, which was a lot worse.

We live in an age when to be young and to be indifferent can be no longer synonymous.

The Sam Vimes "Boots" Theory of Economic Injustice runs thus: At the time of Men at Arms, Samuel Vimes earned thirty-eight dollars a month as a Captain of the Watch, plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots, the sort that would last years and years, cost fifty dollars. This was beyond his pocket and the most he could hope for was an affordable pair of boots costing ten dollars, which might with luck last a year or so before he would need to resort to makeshift cardboard insoles so as to prolong the moment of shelling out another ten dollars. Therefore over a period of ten years, he might have paid out a hundred dollars on boots, twice as much as the man who could afford fifty dollars up front ten years before. And he would still have wet feet. Without any special rancour, Vimes stretched this theory to explain why Sybil Ramkin lived twice as comfortably as he did by spending about half as much every month.

To my surprise, I had not just doodled, I had prayed (I drew new shapes and names of each friend and focused on the person whose name stared at me from the paper). I had though OF each person as I drew but not ABOUT each person. I could just sit with them in a variation on stillness. I could hold them in prayer.

Seated in a car full of women, squashed between his six-foot landlady and Sybil Underwood, having to listen to them talk nonstop all the way to Atlanta and back, was too much for him to bear.

- Идва вълна! - извика Сибил, поуплашена. - Няма да ѝ обърнем внимание. Ще я отминем с презрение – каза младият мъж. – Ние сме двама високомерни. "Here comes a wave," Sybil said nervously. "We'll ignore it. We'll snub it," said the young man. "Two snobs.

Nevertheless, it bothered Vimes, even though he'd got really good at the noises and would go up against any man in his rendition of the HRUUUGH! But is this a book for a city kid? When would he ever hear these noises? In the city, the only sound those animals would make was "sizzle." But the nursery was full of the conspiracy with bah-lambs and teddy bears and fluffy ducklings everywhere he looked. One evening, after a trying day, he'd tried the Vimes street version: Where's my daddy? Is that my daddy? He goes "Bugrit! Millennium hand and shrimp!" He is Foul Ol' Ron! No, that's not my daddy! It had been going really well when Vimes heard a meaningful little cough from the doorway, wherein stood Sybil. Next day, Young Sam, with a child's unerring instinct for this sort of thing, said "Buglit!" to Purity. And that, although Sybil never raised the subject even when they were alone, was that. From then on Sam stuck rigidly to the authorized version.

I've got two Neptunes here," said Harry after a while, frowning down at his piece of parchment, "that can't be right, can it?" "Aaaaah," said Ron, imitating Professor Trelawney's mystical whisper, "when two Neptunes appear in the sky, it is a sure sign that a midget in glasses is being born, Harry..." Seamus and Dean, who were working nearby, sniggered loudly, though not loud enough to mask the excited squeals from Lavender Brown— "Oh Professor, look! I think I might've gotten an unaspected planet! Oooh, which one's that, Professor?" "It is Uranus, my dear," said Professor Trelawney, peering down at the chart. "Can I get a look at Uranus too, Lavender?" said Ron.

After writing the letter Sybil lost almost two days. "Coming to," she stumbled across what she had written just before she had dissociated and wrote to Dr. Wilbur as follows: It's just so hard to have to feel, believe, and admit that I do not have conscious control over my selves. It is so much more threatening to have something out of hand than to believe that at any moment I can stop (I started to say "This foolishness") any time I need to. When I wrote the previous letter, I had made up my mind I would show you how I could be very composed and cool and not need to ask you to listen to me nor to explain anything to me nor need any help. By telling you that all this about the multiple personalities was not really true I could show, or so I thought, that I did not need you. Well, it would be easier if it were put on. But the only ruse of which I'm guilty is to have pretended for so long before coming to you that nothing was wrong. Pretending that the personalities did not exist has now caused me to lose about two days.

corridor. Cress screamed and collapsed onto the ground. “Jacin, we are about to have company,” said Sybil, ignoring Cress’s sobs. “Separate yourself from this satellite, but stay close enough to have good visual without drawing suspicion. When an Earthen ship draws close, they will likely release one podship—wait until the pilot has boarded this satellite and then rejoin us using the opposite

When I wrote the previous letter, I had made up my mind I would show you how I could be very composed and cool and not need to ask you to listen to me nor to explain anything to me nor need any help. By telling you that all this about the multiple personalities was not really true but just put on, I could show, or so I thought, that I did not need you. Well, it would have been easier if it were put on.

We live in an age where to be young and to be indifferent can no longer by synonymous. We must prepare for the coming hour. The claims of the future are represented by suffering millions; and the youth of a nation are the trustees of posterity

It is so much more threatening to have something out of hand than to believe that at any moment I can stop (I started to say "This foolishness") any time I need to. When I wrote the previous letter, I had made up my mind I would show you how I could be very composed and cool and not need to ask you to listen to me nor to explain anything to me nor need any help. By telling you that all this about the multiple personalities was not really true but just put on, I could show, or so I thought, that I did not need you. Well, it would have been easier if it were put on. But the only ruse of which I'm guilty is to have pretended for so long before coming to you that nothing was wrong. Pretending that the personalities did not exist has now caused me to lose about two days. Three weeks later Sybil reaffirmed her belief in the existence of her other selves in a letter to Miss Updyke, the school nurse of undergraduate days.

And, incidentally, tomato ketchup is not a vegetable." Sybil added. "Not even the dried stuff around the top of the bottle.

That's hard to say, Sybil. She may be in any one of a thousand places.

She was followed by another thaumaturge, one rank beneath Sybil, who had dark skin and piercing eyes and no purpose, it seemed to Kai, other than to stand behind his queen and look smug.

For years afterward, I had dreams in which my mother appeared in strange forms, her features sewn onto other beings in combinations that seemed both grotesque and profound: as a slippery white fish at the end of my hook, with a trout’s gaping, sorrowful mouth and her dark, shuttered eyes; as the elm tree at the edge of our property, its ragged clumps of tarnished gold leaves replaced by knotted skeins of her black hair; as the lame gray dog that lived on the Mueller’s property, whose mouth, her mouth, opened and closed in yearning and who never made a sound. As I grew older, I came to realize that death had been easy for my mother; to fear death, you must first have something to tether you to life. But she had not. It was as if she had been preparing for her death the entire time I knew her. One day she was alive; the next, not. And as Sybil said, she was lucky. For what more could we presume to ask from death — but kindness?

Sybil entered, with a plate. "You're not eating enough, Sam," she announced. "And the canteen here is a disgrace. It's all grease and garbage!" "That's what the men like, I'm afraid," said Vimes guiltily. "I've cleaned out the tar in the tea urn, at least," Sybil went on, with satisfaction. "You cleaned out the tar urn?" said Vimes in a hollow voice. It was like being told that someone had wiped the patina off a fine old work of art. "Yes, it was like tar in there. There really wasn't much proper food in the store, but I managed to make you a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich." "Thank you, dear." Vimes cautiously lifted a corner of the bread with his broken pencil. There seemed to be too much lettuce, which is to say, there was some lettuce.

Speaking of novels,’ I said, ‘you remember we decided once, you, your husband and I, that Proust’s rough masterpiece was a huge, ghoulish fairy tale, an asparagus dream, totally unconnected with any possible people in any historical France, a sexual travestissement and a colossal farce, the vocabulary of genius and its poetry, but no more, impossibly rude hostesses, please let me speak, and even ruder guests, mechanical Dostoevskian rows and Tolstoian nuances of snobbishness repeated and expanded to an unsufferable length, adorable seascapes, melting avenues, no, do not interrupt me, light and shade effects rivaling those of the greatest English poets, a flora of metaphors, described—by Cocteau, I think—as “a mirage of suspended gardens,” and, I have not yet finished, an absurd, rubber-and-wire romance between a blond young blackguard (the fictitious Marcel), and an improbable jeune fille who has a pasted-on bosom, Vronski’s (and Lyovin’s) thick neck, and a cupid’s buttocks for cheeks; but—and now let me finish sweetly—we were wrong, Sybil, we were wrong in denying our little beau ténébreux the capacity of evoking “human interest”: it is there, it is there—maybe a rather eighteenth-centuryish, or even seventeenth-centuryish, brand, but it is there. Please, dip or redip, spider, into this book [offering it], you will find a pretty marker in it bought in France, I want John to keep it. Au revoir, Sybil, I must go now. I think my telephone is ringing.

Sam Vimes had learned a lot from watching Lady Sybil. She didn’t mean to act like that, but she’d been born to it, into a class which had always behaved this way: You went through the world as if there was no possibility that anyone would stop you or question you, and most of the time that’s exactly what didn’t happen.

Ask me something else, Sybil," he said. "That's a fine bathing suit you have on. If there's one thing I like, it's a blue bathing suit." Sybil stared at him, then looked down at her protruding stomach. "This is a yellow," she said. "This is a yellow." "It is? Come a little closer." Sybil took a step forward. "You're absolutely right. What a fool I am.

I think we all have the germ of every other person inside of us.

To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge.

There is no wisdom like frankness.

Power has only one duty--to secure the social welfare of the people.

The poor are very well off, at least the agricultural poor, very well off indeed. Their incomes are certain, that is a great point, and they have no cares, no anxieties; they always have a resource, they always have the House. People without cares do not require as much food as those whose life entails anxieties. See how long they live!

As a prayer popper, I stay in touch with God. I send lots of spiritual postcards. Little bits and bytes of adoration, supplication, and information attached prayer darts speed in God's direction all day long.

Yea, she hath passed hereby, and blessed the sheaves, And the great garths, and stacks, and quiet farms, And all the tawny, and the crimson leaves. Yea, she hath passed with poppies in her arms, Under the star of dusk, through stealing mist, And blessed the earth, and gone, while no man wist. With slow, reluctant feet, and weary eyes, And eye-lids heavy with the coming sleep, With small breasts lifted up in stress of sighs, She passed, as shadows pass, among the sheep; While the earth dreamed, and only I was ware Of that faint fragrance blown from her soft hair. The land lay steeped in peace of silent dreams; There was no sound amid the sacred boughs. Nor any mournful music in her streams: Only I saw the shadow on her brows, Only I knew her for the yearly slain, And wept, and weep until she come again.

Susannah Buxton, costume designer: These three dresses demonstrate well the different ways in which we brought the costumes together for the show. Mary's dress was made for her, Edith's was hired - it was previously used in the Merchant-Ivory production of A Room With A View - and Sybil's is an original Edwardian summer dress.

As death approaches me, I regret this most, Pilgrim--aside from my loss of you. I regret that I blamed, so often, others--for faults and problems of my own making. And, if not of my own making, certainly of my own tolerance. That men could not love men--or women, women--that poverty was the fault and responsibility of the poverty-stricken (how can I have thought so!)--and that 'good' was something that could be decreed by governments, as if by creating laws we could establish the boundaries of someone else's needs and joys and confidence. How dare we decree what is 'good' for others when for us it has been a gift!' Sybil Quartermaine Hôtel Baur au Lac Zürich 14th May 1912

Incidentally, that thing you are dreading—it will happen on Friday the sixteenth of October.

I was brought up in a clergyman's household so I am a first-class liar.

For all the men and women in our Armed Forces, thank you so much for your service.

What would you rather?" yelled Sybil from the distant sandpit. "Know everything or know nothing?" "Know nothing," I yelled back. "Then you have the fun of finding everything out.

Never forget that when thirteen dine together, the first to rise will be the first to die!” “We’ll risk it, Sybill,

By journey's end the brides were much better acquainted with their grooms and more or less pleased with the matches. Sybil Bingham wrote in her diary, thanking God for answering her prayer for filling "the void" with a husband like Hiram, a "treasure rich and undeserved." Having read his insufferable memoir, "A Residence of Twenty-one Years in the Sandwich Islands", all I can say is: I'm happy for her?

Sam Vimes, I’ve dreamed of visiting Koom Valley all my life, so don’t you think for one moment you’re gallivanting off to see it and leave me at home!” “I don’t gallivant! I’ve never gallivanted. I don’t know how to vant! I don’t even have a galli! But there’s going to be a war there soon!” “Then I shall tell them we’re not involved!” said Sybil calmly. “That won’t work!” “Then it won’t work in Ankh-Morpork, either,” said Sybil,

Since words elude me when I need them most, I learned long ago that I cannot count on QUALITY time with God when I want to pray. I need QUANTITY and regularity. Quality is not something I can predict. My husband, Andy, and I might schedule an elaborate evening out with candles and a gourmet meal, but there is no guarantee that we'll have a wonderful time together -- chopping onions peppers die by side in the kitchen, reading together on the couch, sitting on the front step watching our sons ride bikes, and making plans for our life together.

The ability to lie persuasively is one of the greatest gifts a woman can possess in this life. Some critics, principally men, will argue that deception in women is inherently evil; but having spent the last fifteen years of my life in the theater, I can attest that lying not only is sometimes expedient but can save one's career.

I felt that way not because I never once discovered any palpable hard young throat to crush among the masculine mutes that flickered somewhere in the background; but because it was to me "overwhelmingly obvious" (a favorite expression with my aunt Sybil) that all varieties of high school boys - from the perspiring nincompoop whom "holding hands" thrills, to the self-sufficient rapist with pustules and a souped-up car - equally bored my sophisticated young mistress.

My emotions locked, as I saw her lipstick lying on the table and grabbed it, saying, "Yes, yes," as I bent to write furiously across her belly in drunken inspiration: SYBIL, YOU WERE RAPED BY SANTA CLAUS SURPRISE and paused there; trembling above her, my knees on the bed as she waited with unsteady expectancy. It was purplish metallic shade of lipstick, and as she panted with anticipation the letters stretched and quivered, up hill and down dale, and she was lit up like a luminescent sign.

Debbie Nathan’s thesis is that Shirley Mason was a vulnerable hysteric and was manipulated by her therapist into iatrogenic DID and false memories of child abuse. Nathan says that this is generally true of DID, except for perhaps a small number of genuine cases. One problem with this thesis is that it is based on a stereotypically male chauvinist view of women as impressionable hysterics who do not know, and are not in control of, their own minds or histories; this demeaning view of women is presented as a feminist thesis.

The word is dissociate. There is no 'a' before the 'ss'. People invariably say dis-a-ssociate, which, if you're suffering Disso-ciative Identity Disorder/Multiple Personality Disorder, can be irritating. People then want to know how many personalities I have and the answer is: I don't know. The first book about Multiple Personality Disorder to make an impact was Flora Rheta Schreiber's Sybil, published in 1973, which carries the subtitle: The True and Extraordinary Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Separate Personalities. Corbett H. Thigpen and Hervey M. Cleckley published the controversial The Three Faces of Eve much earlier in 1957, and Pete Townshend from The Who wrote the song 'Four Faces'. People seem to feel safe with numbers. The truth is more complicated. The kids emerged over time. Billy, the boisterous five-year-old, was at first the most dominant. But he slowly stood aside for JJ, the self-confident ten-year-old who appears when Alice is under stress and handles complicated situations like travelling on the Underground and meeting new people. The first entity to visit was the external voice of the Professor. But he had a choir of accomplices without names. So, how many actual alter personalities are there? I would say more than fifteen and less than thirty, a combination of protectors, persecutors and friends - my own family tree.

Basic misunderstandings about DID encountered in the therapeuric community include the following; • The expectation that all clients with DID will present in a Sybil-like manner, with obvious switching and extreme changes in personality. • That therapists create DID in their clients. • That DID clients have very little control over their internal systems and can be expected to stay in the mental health systein indefinitely. • That alter personalities, especially child alters, are simply regressive states associated with anxiety or that switching represents a psychotic episode.

In great cities men are brought together by the desire of gain. They are not in a state of cooperation, but of isolation, as to the making of fortunes;; and for all the rest they are careless of neighbors. Christianity teaches us to love our neighbour as ourself; modern society acknowledges no neighbour.

It was getting harder, however. American magazines still looked shiny and lively, but by the early 1960s, writers like Flora were sensing trouble. With television's exploding popularity, more and more people were staring at screens instead of turning pages. Big corporations like car manufacturers were pulling their advertising dollars out of print and spending them on the airwaves. Magazines were bleeding ad pages and readers, and editors scrambled to balance budgets by retooling audiences.

If it's worth doing, it's worth doing poorly. (friend who is a priest said regarding prayer)

Prayer is the glue that holds all of the pieces of life together in a spiritual whole. It reminds us of who we are and whose we are.

Discipline means choices. Every time you say yes to a goal or objective, you say no to many more.

Predominant opinions are generally the opinions of the generation that is vanishing.

For the rest of her life, Jackie wouldn't forget that comment. She and her daddy weren't as close as they had been, and she felt a pang in her chest whenever she saw him with Sybil, but most of that jealousy was mitigated by T.C. When she had the baby, she realized how much a parent loved a child, and she assumed her father's feelings for her were at least as sturdy. Because of that perspective, all this time she had also assumed that when he asked her how she was doing, when he drove her car to the lot for oil changes, moved her furniture, stopped by unannounced, and paid her light bill, that there was nothing else in the world he'd rather be doing. In reality though he'd been building up anger with every check he signed, every mile he drove, and the last thing she wanted was a favor laced in resentment. She waited for her mam to cut in with a word that might coat the ferocity of what had just been said, but there was only silence, a heavy resolve as though Jackie were the one who needed to explain, as if she would do anything differently if the circumstances tumbled into her lap again.

But soon the poltergeist ran out of ideas in connection with Aunt Maud and became, as it were, more eclectic. All the banal motions that objects are limited to in such cases, were gone through in this one. Saucepans crashed in the kitchen; a snowball was found (perhaps, prematurely) in the icebox; once or twice Sybil saw a plate sail by like a discus and land safely on the sofa; lamps kept lighting up in various parts of the house; chairs waddled away to assemble in the impassable pantry; mysterious bits of string were found on the floor; invisible revelers staggered down the staircase in the middle of the night; and one winter morning Shade, upon rising and taking a look at the weather, saw that the little table from his study upon which he kept Bible-like Webster open at M was standing in a state of shock outdoors, on the snow (subliminally this may have participated in the making of lines 5-12). I imagine, that during the period the Shades, or at least John Shade, experienced a sensation of odd instability as if parts of the everyday, smoothly running world had got unscrewed, and you became aware that one of your tires was rolling beside you, or that your steering wheel had come off.

Most of you have been where I am tonight. The crash site of unrequited love. You ask yourself, How did I get here? What was it about? Was it her smile? Was it the way she crossed her legs, the turn of her ankle, the poignant vulnerability of her slender wrists? What are these elusive and ephemeral things that ignite passion in the human heart? That's an age-old question. It's perfect food for thought on a bright midsummer's night.

It’s like that, isn’t it? Just as Raymond Chandler says, ‘The first kiss is dynamite, the second is routine and then you take her clothes off,’ It had been like that for Alan in his previous affairs, even the extended one he had had with Sybil while Naomi was pregnant. Sure, Alan went on enjoying sex with Sybil, but at a fundamental level his lust for her had died the very first time he felt the shock of her pubic bone against his, and knew that they were now truly welded into one another. Alan was a one-thrust man. Not that he’d ever been exactly promiscuous. Perhaps it would have been better for all concerned if he had been. Rather, his sentiment self-absorption had managed to gild each of these terminal thrusts with enough self-regarding burnish for him to sustain the ‘relationships’ that legitimised them for months; and in at least two instances, for years.

So what do you think?’ He asked, holding up the book. ‘I think Salinger is a closet paedophile,’ I replied placidly and was surprised and comforted by this minuscule, acidic, bitter Sylvia Plath like mocking, sniping tone that had crept into my voice. ‘The main character Seymour is a fully grown man and a pervert who befriends young girls with his storytelling and swimming, just to get close enough to groom them in preparation for the inevitable sexual assault he lusts after. You might have noticed for example in A Perfect Day For Bananafish he grabs the young girls-’ ‘Sybil.’ ‘He grabs Sybil’s ankles while lying on the beach and again when he pushes her in the water,’ I continued. ‘He goes too far when he kisses the bottom of her foot which makes even a four-year-old yell out in fear, knowing a line had been crossed. Frustrated Seymour walks away and goes back to his hotel where he kills himself in shame.

The split second before it touches your tongue, there's anticipation. The second it hits your taste buds, there's promise. When you swallow, its satisfaction. Anticipation, promise, satisfaction - it's the perfect trifecta. But it only lasts for the first bite.

Provided that a writer of almanacs has already gained enough authority for people to bother to read his books, examining his words for implications and shades of meaning, he can be made to say anything whatever – like Sybils. There are so many ways of taking anything, that it is hard for a clever mind not to find in almost any subject something or other which appears to serve his point, directly or indirectly. [C] That explains why an opaque, ambiguous style has been so long in vogue. All an author needs to do is to attract the concern and attention of posterity. (He may achieve that not so much by merit as by some chance interest in his subject-matter.) Then, whether out of subtlety or stupidity, he can contradict himself or express himself obscurely: no matter! Numerous minds will get out their sieves, sifting and forcing any number of ideas through them, some of them relevant, some off the point, some flat contradictory to his intentions, but all of them doing him honour. He will grow rich out of his students’ resources – like dons being paid their midsummer fees at the Lendit fair.

The prophecy stated that Hades' most beloved oracle, Sybil, was to bed two males of significance on the same night. Each male had been chosen from the finest of all Hades' demons to consecrate this union. They were to fill her not only their seed but with their blood, giving the boys their life and their abilities. On the day of their birth, Sybil announced that her boys were to rule the five rivers and would do so in peace for many years, but that eventually, one of her sons would become the underworld's demise, while the other would become its destiny.

Ако някога съм възнамерявала образът на Пипи да послужи за нещо друго, освен за забавление на моите малки читатели, то щеше да бъде да им покажа, че човек може да има власт, без да злоупотребява с нея... Навсякъде се злоупотребява с властта. Всеки се изживява като господар, къде както свари. Това започва в детството и стига до онези, които управляват държавите. Пипи обаче притежава дарбата да борави правилно с властта. Тя е по-силна от всяко друго дете на света и би била в състояние да упражнява ужасяващо господство както над децата, така и над възрастните около себе си - но прави ли го? О, не! Тя просто е приятелски настроена, готова да помогне, и великодушна, тя взема мерки само когато това е неизбежно ...

So often have I studied the views of Florence, that I was familiar with the city before I ever set foot within its walls; I found that I could thread my way through the streets without a guide. Turning to the left I passed before a bookseller's shop, where I bought a couple of descriptive surveys of the city (guide). Twice only was I forced to inquire my way of passers by, who answered me with politeness which was wholly French and with a most singular accent; and at last I found myself before the facade of Santa Croce. Within, upon the right of the doorway, rises the tomb of Michelangelo; lo! There stands Canova's effigy of Alfieri; I needed no cicerone to recognise the features of the great Italian writer. Further still, I discovered the tomb of Machiavelli; while facing Michelangelo lies Galileo. What a race of men! And to these already named, Tuscany might further add Dante, Boccaccio and Petrarch. What a fantastic gathering! The tide of emotion which overwhelmed me flowed so deep that it scarce was to be distinguished from religious awe. The mystic dimness which filled the church, its plain, timbered roof, its unfinished facade – all these things spoke volumes to my soul. Ah! Could I but forget...! A Friar moved silently towards me; and I, in the place of that sense of revulsion all but bordering on physical horror which usually possesses me in such circumstances, discovered in my heart a feeling which was almost friendship. Was not he likewise a Friar, Fra Bartolomeo di San Marco, that great painter who invented the art of chiaroscuro, and showed it to Raphael, and was the forefather of Correggio? I spoke to my tonsured acquaintance, and found in him an exquisite degree of politeness. Indeed, he was delighted to meet a Frenchman. I begged him to unlock for me the chapel in the north-east corner of the church, where are preserved the frescoes of Volterrano. He introduced me to the place, then left me to my own devices. There, seated upon the step of a folds tool, with my head thrown back to rest upon the desk, so that I might let my gaze dwell on the ceiling, I underwent, through the medium of Volterrano's Sybills, the profoundest experience of ecstasy that, as far as I am aware, I ever encountered through the painter's art. My soul, affected by the very notion of being in Florence, and by proximity of those great men whose tombs I had just beheld, was already in a state of trance. Absorbed in the contemplation of sublime beauty, I could perceive its very essence close at hand; I could, as it were, feel the stuff of it beneath my fingertips. I had attained to that supreme degree of sensibility where the divine intimations of art merge with the impassioned sensuality of emotion. As I emerged from the porch of Santa Croce, I was seized with a fierce palpitations of the heart (that same symptom which, in Berlin, is referred to as an attack of nerves); the well-spring of life was dried up within me, and I walked in constant fear of falling to the ground. I sat down on one of the benches which line the piazza di Santa Croce; in my wallet, I discovered the following lines by Ugo Foscolo, which I re-read now with a great surge of pleasure; I could find no fault with such poetry; I desperately needed to hear the voice of a friend who shared my own emotion (…)