Texting Quotes

The Bhagavad Gita--that ancient Indian Yogic text--says that it is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life with perfection.

If you're texting Magnus to say 'I think u r kewl,' I'm going to kill you." "Who's Magnus?" Max inquired. "He's a warlock," said Alec. "A sexy, sexy warlock," Isabelle told Max, ignoring Alec's look of total fury. "But warlocks are bad," protested Max, looking baffled. "Exactly," said Isabelle.

THE FIRST TEN LIES THEY TELL YOU IN HIGH SCHOOL 1. We are here to help you. 2. You will have time to get to your class before the bell rings. 3. The dress code will be enforced. 4. No smoking is allowed on school grounds. 5. Our football team will win the championship this year. 6. We expect more of you here. 7. Guidance counselors are always available to listen. 8. Your schedule was created with you in mind. 9. Your locker combination is private. 10. These will be the years you look back on fondly. TEN MORE LIES THEY TELL YOU IN HIGH SCHOOL 1. You will use algebra in your adult lives. 2. Driving to school is a privilege that can be taken away. 3. Students must stay on campus during lunch. 4. The new text books will arrive any day now. 5. Colleges care more about you than your SAT scores. 6. We are enforcing the dress code. 7. We will figure out how to turn off the heat soon. 8. Our bus drivers are highly trained professionals. 9. There is nothing wrong with summer school. 10. We want to hear what you have to say.

The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words.

I am interested in language because it wounds or seduces me.

People have to forgive. We don't have to like them, we don't have to be friends with them, we don't have to send them hearts in text messages, but we have to forgive them, to overlook, to forget. Because if we don't we are tying rocks to our feet, too much for our wings to carry!

V'lane: Are you busy tomorrow MacKayla ? Barrons: She's working on old texts with me. V'lane: Ah. Old texts. A banner day at the bookstore. Barrons: We're translating Kama Sutra...with interactive aids.

One of the most spiritual things you can do is embrace your humanity. Connect with those around you today. Say, "I love you", "I'm sorry", "I appreciate you", "I'm proud of you"...whatever you're feeling. Send random texts, write a cute note, embrace your truth and share it...cause a smile today for someone else...and give plenty of hugs.

Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.

I wanted to tell you that I just--I miss you. And maybe that sounds ridiculous--like we barely know each other, but between the emails and texts and... everything else, I felt like we did. Like we do. and I miss--I don't know how else to say it--I miss both of you.

You can’t take back texts. If you come off all moody and melancholy in a text, it just sits there in your phone, reminding you of what a drag you are.

If you're texting Magnus to say 'I think u r kewl' I'm going to kill you

... the companions of our childhood always possess a certain power over our minds which hardly any later friend can obtain.

One generation to change the text. One generation chooses to teach that text. The next grows, and the lie becomes history.

When he texts you, he’s thinking about you. When he calls you, he misses you. When he shows up, he wants you. When he suddenly stops doing all of the above for you, he’s doing it for someone else.

The text has disappeared under the interpretation.

Please try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they do and cause you to endure does not testify to your inferiority but to their inhumanity

that's it - hundreds of texts and conversations, thousands upon thousands of words spoken and sent, all boiled down into a single line. is that what relationships become?

(text message) CMDR ROOT. TRBLE BELOW. HAVN OVRRN BY GOBLINS. PLCE PLAZA SRROUNDED. CUDGEON + OPL KBOI BHND PLOT. NO WPONS OR CMMUNICATIONS. DNA CNONS CNTRLLED BY KBOI. I M TRPPED IN OP BTH. CNCL THNKS IM 2 BLM. IF ALIVE PLSE HLP. IF NOT, WRNG NMBR.

The one thing I know for sure is that feelings are rarely mutual, so when they are, drop everything, forget belongings and expectations, forget the games, the two days between texts, the hard to gets because this is it, this is what the entire world is after and you’ve stumbled upon it by chance, by accident––so take a deep breath, take a step forward, now run, collide like planets in the system of a dying sun, embrace each other with both arms and let all the rules, the opinions and common sense crash down around you. Because this is love kid, and it’s all yours. Believe me, you're in for one hell of a ride, after all––this is the one thing I know for sure.

I sent a quick text to Adrian: I have a hickey! You can’t ever kiss me again. I honestly hadn’t expected him to be awake this early, so I was surprised to get a response: Okay. I won’t kiss you on your neck again. So typical of him. No! You can’t ever kiss me ANYWHERE. You said you were going to keep your distance. I’m trying, he wrote back. But you won’t keep your distance from me. I didn’t dignify that with a response.

The story itself, the true story, is the one that the audience members create in their minds, guided and shaped by my text, but then transformed, elucidated, expanded, edited, and clarified by their own experience, their own desires, their own hopes and fears.

I’m never gonna wait that extra twenty minutes to text you back, and I’m never gonna play hard to get when I know your life has been hard enough already. When we all know everyone’s life has been hard enough already it’s hard to watch the game we make of love, like everyone’s playing checkers with their scars, saying checkmate whenever they get out without a broken heart. Just to be clear I don’t want to get out without a broken heart. I intend to leave this life so shattered there’s gonna have to be a thousand separate heavens for all of my flying parts.

My phone pinged. It was a text from Cookie. I'm not good at cocking guns. Really? Did she not know me at all? I texted her back. You can do this. Learn the cock, Cookie. Know the cock. Be the cock.

The Bhagavad Gita—that ancient Indian Yogic text—says that it is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else’s life with perfection. So now I have started living my own life. Imperfect and clumsy as it may look, it is resembling me now, thoroughly.

I think that the reader should enrich what he is reading. He should misunderstand the text; he should change it into something else.

Good. If you checked your e-mail every five minutes, or keep texting and Tweeting in the middle of our conversation, I might snap your neck out of sheer principle.

If you're texting Magnus to say 'I think ur kewl,' I'm going to kill you.

Life is the farce we are all forced to endure.

So what I'm trying to say is you should text me back. Because there's a precedent. Because there's an urgency. Because there's a bedtime. Because when the world ends I might not have my phone charged and If you don't respond soon, I won't know if you'd wanna leave your shadow next to mine.

1. I’m lonely so I do lonely things 2. Loving you was like going to war; I never came back the same. 3. You hate women, just like your father and his father, so it runs in your blood. 4. I was wandering the derelict car park of your heart looking for a ride home. 5. You’re a ghost town I’m too patriotic to leave. 6. I stay because you’re the beginning of the dream I want to remember. 7. I didn’t call him back because he likes his girls voiceless. 8. It’s not that he wants to be a liar; it’s just that he doesn’t know the truth. 9. I couldn’t love you, you were a small war. 10. We covered the smell of loss with jokes. 11. I didn’t want to fail at love like our parents. 12. You made the nomad in me build a house and stay. 13. I’m not a dog. 14. We were trying to prove our blood wrong. 15. I was still lonely so I did even lonelier things. 16. Yes, I’m insecure, but so was my mother and her mother. 17. No, he loves me he just makes me cry a lot. 18. He knows all of my secrets and still wants to kiss me. 19. You were too cruel to love for a long time. 20. It just didn’t work out. 21. My dad walked out one afternoon and never came back. 22. I can’t sleep because I can still taste him in my mouth. 23. I cut him out at the root, he was my favorite tree, rotting, threatening the foundations of my home. 24. The women in my family die waiting. 25. Because I didn’t want to die waiting for you. 26. I had to leave, I felt lonely when he held me. 27. You’re the song I rewind until I know all the words and I feel sick. 28. He sent me a text that said “I love you so bad.” 29. His heart wasn’t as beautiful as his smile 30. We emotionally manipulated one another until we thought it was love. 31. Forgive me, I was lonely so I chose you. 32. I’m a lover without a lover. 33. I’m lovely and lonely. 34. I belong deeply to myself .

What you want to do tonight? I read Daniel's text and respond. Sorry. Plans. WTF, puss flap!? No! Me. You. Plans. Can't. Pretty sure I have a date. Sky? Yep. Can I come? Nope. Can I be your date next Saturday, then? Sure, babe. Can't wait, sugar.

*Appendix usually means "small outgrowth from large intestine," but in this case it means "additional information accompanying main text." Or are those really the same things? Think carefully before you insult this book.

A small man can be just as exhausted as a great man.

...when your child dies, you feel everything you'd expect to feel, feelings so well-documented by so many others that I won't even bother to list them here, except to say that everything that's written about mourning is all the same, and it's all the same for a reason - because there is no read deviation from the text. Sometimes you feel more of one thing and less of another, and sometimes you feel them out of order, and sometimes you feel them for a longer time or a shorter time. But the sensations are always the same. But here's what no one says - when it's your child, a part of you, a very tiny but nonetheless unignorable part of you, also feels relief. Because finally, the moment you have been expecting, been dreading, been preparing yourself for since the day you became a parent, has come. Ah, you tell yourself, it's arrived. Here it is. And after that, you have nothing to fear again.

An unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences.

What’s not so great is that all this technology is destroying our social skills. Not only have we given up on writing letters to each other, we barely even talk to each other. People have become so accustomed to texting that they’re actually startled when the phone rings. It’s like we suddenly all have Batphones. If it rings, there must be danger. Now we answer, “What happened? Is someone tied up in the old sawmill?” “No, it’s Becky. I just called to say hi.” “Well you scared me half to death. You can’t just pick up the phone and try to talk to me like that. Don’t the tips of your fingers work?

Can't you see that I'm only advising you to beg yourself not to be so dumb?

Music is the melody whose text is the world.

Too many scholars think of research as purely a cerebral pursuit. If we do nothing with the knowledge we gain, then we have wasted our study. Books can store information better than we can--what we we do that books cannot is interpret. So if one is not going to draw conclusions, then one might as well just leave the information in the texts.

Internet: What do you want for your birthday? Virtual Cole: to stay young forever Cole texted me: Actually I want you

You can't eat the orange and throw the peel away - a man is not a piece of fruit.

This is a 911? You know you only text that when someone is dead or dying. You scared the crap out of me.

Text me when you want to see me again, he signed. I'm giving you your space, but know this: I will wait forever for you.

My books piled up before me for my use waiting in space where I placed them, they haven't disappeared, time's left its remnants and qualities for me to use -- my words piled up, my texts, my manuscripts, my loves.

Lucas: I wanted to talk to you after class, but you disappeared. Me: I have another class right after. One of those profs who stops talking, stares at you and waits until you get to your seat if you're late. Lucas: I would probably just walk to my seat even slower. ;)

Don't be amazed if you see my eyes always wandering. In fact, this is my way of reading, and it is only in this way that reading proves fruitful to me. If a book truly interests me, I cannot follow it for more than a few lines before my mind, having seized on a thought that the text suggests to it, or a feeling, or a question, or an image, goes off on a tangent and springs from thought to thought, from image to image, in an itinerary of reasonings and fantasies that I feel the need to pursue to the end, moving away from the book until I have lost sight of it. The stimulus of reading is indispensable to me, and of meaty reading, even if, of every book, I manage to read no more than a few pages. But those few pages already enclose for me whole universes, which I can never exhaust.

There's a lovely Hasidic story of a rabbi who always told his people that if they studied the Torah, it would put Scripture on their hearts. One of them asked, "Why on our hearts, and not in them?" The rabbi answered, "Only God can put Scripture inside. But reading sacred text can put it on your heart, and then when your hearts break, the holy words will fall inside.

Got your text,” he said when I climbed out. “How much did it hurt?” “Not at all,” I said. “Apparently, I can’t get a tattoo because I’m a witch.” “I could have told them-” He stopped. “Oh, you said witch.” “Ha-ha.

I texted back: Did you make it home? A few minutes passed while I stared at my phone. Yeah. Fam showering me with affection. U cld learn frm them. I think you get enough attention. I'm needy. Boy, don't I know that.

I texted Kaidan, who was listed in my contacts under “James,” for James Bond. He’d chosen it. He had me listed as “Hot Chick From Gig.” Video chat in 30. His immediate response made me shake my head. Clothing optional? It was nice to know he could keep a sense of humor in the face of calamity. Or maybe he wasn’t joking... “Are you two flirting?” Patti asked, her eyes darting to me from the road. I blushed and deleted his message.

I created you from one soul, and from the soul I created its mate so that you may live in harmony and love.

There's not much to do underground besides train." "I can think of a few more interesting ways to spend one's time." "Is that supposed to be innuendo?" "What a filthy mind you have. I was referring to puzzles and the perusal of edifying texts.

Do you know what the worst thing about being a parent is? That you're always judged by your worst moments. You can do a million things right, but if you do one single thing wrong you're forever that parent who was checking his phone in the park when your child was hit in the head by a swing. We don't take our eyes off them for days at a time, but then you read just one text message and it's as if all your best moments never happened. No one goes to see a psychologist to talk about all the times they weren't hit in the head by a swing as a child. Parents are defined by their mistakes.

The impossible is the least that one can demand.

Catch-22 did not exist, he was positive of that, but it made no difference. What did matter was that everyone thought it existed, and that was much worse, for there was no object or text to ridicule or refute, to accuse, criticize, attack, amend, hate, revile, spit at, rip to shreds, trample upon or burn up.

I realised that the search for the Knowledge has encouraged us to think of the House as if it were a sort of riddle to be unravelled, a text to be interpreted, and that if ever we discover the Knowledge, then it will be as if the Value has been wrested from the House and all that remains will be mere scenery.

What progress, you ask, have I made? I have begun to be a friend to myself.

I've never felt so bereft and panicky. What do I do without my phone? How do I function? My hand keeps automatically reaching for my phone in its usual place in my pocket. Every instinct in me wants to text someone, 'OMG, I've lost my phone!' but how can do that without a bloody phone?

The Internet also makes it extraordinarily difficult for me to focus. One small break to look up exactly how almond milk is made, and four hours later I'm reading about the Donner Party and texting all my friends: DID YOU GUYS KNOW ABOUT THE DONNER PARTY AND HOW MESSED UP THAT WAS? TEXT ME BACK SO WE CAN TALK ABOUT IT!

Daemon was suddenly in front of me. I took an involuntary step back. "Do you think I didn't enjoy kissing you? That I haven't thought about it every second since then? And I know you have. Just admit it." In the pit of my stomach, tight coils thrummed. "What is the point of this?" "Have you?" "Oh, for crap's sake, yes, I have. I do! Do you want me to write it down for you? Send you an e-mail or a text? Will that make you feel better?" Daemon arched a brow. "You don't need to be sarcastic.

Re-vision – the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical direction – is for woman more than a chapter in cultural history: it is an act of survival. Until we understand the assumptions in which we are drenched we cannot know ourselves. And this drive to self-knowledge, for women, is more than a search for identity: it is part of our refusal of the self-destructiveness of male-dominated society.

And I think missing you hurts the most when something funny happens. Because in that one moment I find myself laughing, and within the next second I want to tell or text you what happened. And then it hits me again, every single time, that you aren’t there anymore. That I lost that one thing that mattered to me.

Every single cell in the human body replaces itself over a period of seven years. That means there's not even the smallest part of you now that was part of you seven years ago.

I am all too aware of my own desperate need to find a message in the madness, and as it takes shape I am suspicious, afraid to hope. But the implications of the text and its small part in our story are impossible to ignore, too critical for a scholar as meticulous as James to overlook.

Did you know we were leaving for Idris?" "Catarina told me she'd been summoned to make a portal. I guessed," Magnus said wryly. "I was a little surprised you hadn't called or texted to tell me you were going away." "You never answer my calls or texts," said Alec. "That hasn't stopped you before." "Everyone gives up eventually," Alec said. "Besides, Jace broke my phone." Magnus huffed a laughter. "Oh, Alexander." "What?" alec asked, honestly puzzled. "you're just--You're so--I really want to kiss you," Magnus said abruptly, and then shook his head. "See this is why I haven't been willing to see you.

I found I could extinguish all human hope from my soul.

In the ordinary jumble of my literary drawer, I sometimes find texts I wrote ten, fifteen, or even more years ago. And many of them seem to me written by a stranger: I simply do not recognize myself in them. There was a person who wrote them, and it was I. I experienced them, but it was in another life, from which I just woke up, as if from someone else's dream.

The boy in the closet is your boyfriend. He loves you and will tell you all about last night.

There is no greater love than the love the wolf feels for the lamb-it-doesn’t-eat.

But the problem with readers, the idea we're given of reading is that the model of a reader is the person watching a film, or watching television. So the greatest principle is, "I should sit here and I should be entertained." And the more classical model, which has been completely taken away, is the idea of a reader as an amateur musician. An amateur musician who sits at the piano, has a piece of music, which is the work, made by somebody they don't know, who they probably couldn't comprehend entirely, and they have to use their skills to play this piece of music. The greater the skill, the greater the gift that you give the artist and that the artist gives you. That's the incredibly unfashionable idea of reading. And yet when you practice reading, and you work at a text, it can only give you what you put into it. It's an old moral, but it's completely true.

Elle est retrouvée! Quoi? -l'Éternité. C'est la mer allée Avec le soleil.

He tried to read an elementary economics text; it bored him past endurance, it was like listening to somebody interminably recounting a long and stupid dream. He could not force himself to understand how banks functioned and so forth, because all the operations of capitalism were as meaningless to him as the rites of a primitive religion, as barbaric, as elaborate, and as unnecessary. In a human sacrifice to deity there might be at least a mistaken and terrible beauty; in the rites of the moneychangers, where greed, laziness, and envy were assumed to move all men's acts, even the terrible became banal.

I took a breath and blurted everything out before I was too chickenshit to say any of it. “I wanted to tell you that I just—I miss you. And maybe that sounds ridiculous—like we barely know each other, but between the emails and texts and… everything else, I felt like we did. Like we do. And I miss—I don’t know how else to say it—I miss both of you.” He swallowed, closing his eyes and inhaling slowly. I knew he would be all rational and do-the-right-thing and he would push me away again, and I was determined not to give him that chance. But then his eyes flashed open and he said, “Fuck it,” pushing me against the door, slamming his forearms on either side of my head and kissing me more forcefully than I’d ever been kissed

people seem to be getting dumber and dumber. You know, I mean we have all this amazing technology and yet computers have turned into basically four figure wank machines. The internet was supposed to set us free, democratize us, but all it's really given us is Howard Dean's aborted candidacy and 24 hour a day access to kiddie porn. People... they don't write anymore, they blog. Instead of talking, they text, no punctuation, no grammar: LOL this and LMFAO that. You know, it just seems to me it's just a bunch of stupid people pseudo-communicating with a bunch of other stupid people at a proto-language that resembles more what cavemen used to speak than the King's English.

But depression wasn't the word. This was a plunge encompassing sorrow and revulsion far beyond the personal: a sick, drenching nausea at all humanity and human endeavor from the dawn of time. The writhing loathsomeness of the biological order. Old age, sickness, death. No escape for anyone. Even the beautiful ones were like soft fruit about to spoil. And yet somehow people still kept fucking and breeding and popping out new fodder for the grave, producing more and more new beings to suffer like this was some kind of redemptive, or good, or even somehow morally admirable thing: dragging more innocent creatures into the lose-lose game. Squirming babies and plodding, complacent, hormone-drugged moms. Oh, isn't he cute? Awww. Kids shouting and skidding in the playground with no idea what future Hells await them: boring jobs and ruinous mortgages and bad marriages and hair loss and hip replacements and lonely cups of coffee in an empty house and a colostomy bag at the hospital. Most people seemed satisfied with the thin decorative glaze and the artful stage lighting that sometimes, made the bedrock atrocity of the human predicament look somewhat more mysterious or less abhorrent. People gambled and golfed and planted gardens and traded stocks and had sex and bought new cars and practiced yoga and worked and prayed and redecorated their homes and got worked up over the news and fussed over their children and gossiped about their neighbors and pored over restaurant reviews and founded charitable organizations and supported political candidates and attended the U.S. Open and dined and travelled and distracted themselves with all kinds of gadgets and devices, flooding themselves incessantly with information and texts and communication and entertainment from every direction to try to make themselves forget it: where we were, what we were. But in a strong light there was no good spin you could put on it. It was rotten from top to bottom.

I adore the way fan fiction writers engage with and critique source texts, by manipulating them and breaking their rules. Some of it is straight-up homage, but a lot of [fan fiction] is really aggressive towards the source text. One tends to think of it as written by total fanboys and fangirls as a kind of worshipful act, but a lot of times you’ll read these stories and it’ll be like ‘What if Star Trek had an openly gay character on the bridge?’ And of course the point is that they don’t, and they wouldn’t, because they don’t have the balls, or they are beholden to their advertisers, or whatever. There’s a powerful critique, almost punk-like anger, being expressed there—which I find fascinating and interesting and cool.

Claire was just coming down the stairs, humming and thinking about how nice it was to have things getting back to normal, and how she'd tell Shane about the January thing tonight, when Myrnin sent a message through the portal. Well, more of a rock with a note tied to it, which rolled across the floor and scared Eve into a scream before the portal snapped shut. Eve kicked the rock resentfully with her thick black boots and glared at it, then at the wall. Claire gave her a "What the hell?" kind of look. "Your boss," Eve said, and reached down to grab the rock, "needs to figure out texting. Seriously. Who does this? Is he actually from the Stone Age?

Your salary is not love and your word is not love. Your clothes are not love and holding hands is not love. Sex is not love and a kiss is not love. Long letters are not love and a text is not love. Flowers are not love and a box of chocolates is not love. Sunsets are not love and photographs are not love. The stars are not love and a beach under the moonlight is not love. The smell of someone else on your pillow is not love and the feeling of their skin touching your skin is not love. Heart-shaped candy is not love and an overseas holiday is not love. The truth is not love and winning an argument is not love. Warm coffee isn't love and cheap cards bought from stores are not love. Tears are not love and laughter is not love. A head on a shoulder is not love and messages written at the front of books given as gifts are not love. Apathy is not love and numbness is not love. A pain in your chest is not love and clenching your fist is not love. Rain is not love. Only you. Only you, are love.

I want it all, Emily. I want to spend my nights holding hands with you,” he breathed the words into her ear. “I want the all-day texting.” He kissed her temple and caressed her cheek. “I want the laughing and the forehead kisses.” He softly ran his lips over her forehead. “I want the date nights, the movie watching, and the breakfast making.” He dragged his hands through her hair, his teeth tugging gently at her bottom lip. “I want the late-night drives, the sunset watching, the screaming, the yelling, and the crying.” Still kissing her, he smiled against her mouth. “I know I’ll definitely want the make up sex that comes after the screaming and the crying. In want the good, the bad and e in between. All of it is what's going to make us amazing together,

Practice giving things away, not just things you don't care about, but things you do like. Remember, it is not the size of a gift, it is its quality and the amount of mental attachment you overcome that count. So don't bankrupt yourself on a momentary positive impulse, only to regret it later. Give thought to giving. Give small things, carefully, and observe the mental processes going along with the act of releasing the little thing you liked. (53) (Quote is actually Robert A F Thurman but Huston Smith, who only wrote the introduction to my edition, seems to be given full credit for this text.)

There is no time to reallocate the turkeys.” Without missing a beat, he blurts out, “Bring them to the house.” “Where? Are you hiding a turkey habitat up your ass, son? Where, in our historically protected house, am I going to put a couple of turkeys until I pardon them tomorrow?” “Put them in my room. I don’t care.” She outright laughs. “No.” “How is it different from a hotel room? Put the turkeys in my room, Mom.” “I’m not putting the turkeys in your room.” “Put the turkeys in my room.” “No.” “Put them in my room, put them in my room, put them in my room—” That night, as Alex stares into the cold, pitiless eyes of a prehistoric beast of prey, he has a few regrets. THEY KNOW, he texts Henry. THEY KNOW I HAVE ROBBED THEM OF FIVE-STAR ACCOMMODATIONS TO SIT IN A CAGE IN MY ROOM, AND THE MINUTE I TURN MY BACK THEY ARE GOING TO FEAST ON MY FLESH.

Imagine for a moment that we are nothing but the product of billions of years of molecules coming together and ratcheting up through natural selection, that we are composed only of highways of fluids and chemicals sliding along roadways within billions of dancing cells, that trillions of synaptic conversations hum in parallel, that this vast egglike fabric of micron-thin circuitry runs algorithms undreamt of in modern science, and that these neural programs give rise to our decision making, loves, desires, fears, and aspirations. To me, that understanding would be a numinous experience, better than anything ever proposed in anyone's holy text.

At lunch I turned my phone on to check my messages. Georgia always sent me a few inane texts during the day, and sure enough there were two messages from her: one complaining about her physics teacher and a second, also obviously sent from her phone: I love you, baby. V. I wrote her back: I thought I told you to buzz off last night, you creep-o French stalker guy. Her response came back immediately: As if! Your beet-red cheeks this morning suggest otherwise ... liar! You're so into him. I groaned and was about to turn my phone off when I saw that there was a third text from UNKNOWN. Clicking on it, I read: Can I pick you up from school? Same place, same time? I texted back: How'd you get my number? Called myself from your phone while you were in the restaurant's bathroom last night. Warned you we were stalkers!

If you are looking for verses with which to support slavery, you will find them. If you are looking for verses with which to abolish slavery, you will find them. If you are looking for verses with which to oppress women, you will find them. If you are looking for for verses with which to liberate or honor women, you will find them. If you are looking for reasons to wage war, you will find them. If you are looking for reasons to promote peace, you will find them. If you are looking for an out-dated, irrelevant ancient text, you will find it. If you are looking for truth, believe me, you will find it. This is why there are times when the most instructive question to bring to the text is not "what does it say?", but "what am I looking for?" I suspect Jesus knew this when he said, "ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened." If you want to do violence in this world, you will always find the weapons. If you want to heal, you will always find the balm.

To the most inconsiderate asshole of a friend, I’m writing you this letter because I know that if I say what I have to say to your face I will probably punch you. I don’t know you anymore. I don’t see you anymore. All I get is a quick text or a rushed e-mail from you every few days. I know you are busy and I know you have Bethany, but hello? I’m supposed to be your best friend. You have no idea what this summer has been like. Ever since we were kids we pushed away every single person that could possibly have been our friend. We blocked people until there was only me and you. You probably haven’t noticed, because you have never been in the position I am in now. You have always had someone. You always had me. I always had you. Now you have Bethany and I have no one. Now I feel like those other people that used to try to become our friend, that tried to push their way into our circle but were met by turned backs. I know you’re probably not doing it deliberately just as we never did it deliberately. It’s not that we didn’t want anyone else, it’s just that we didn’t need them. Sadly now it looks like you don’t need me anymore. Anyway I’m not moaning on about how much I hate her, I’m just trying to tell you that I miss you. And that well . . . I’m lonely. Whenever you cancel nights out I end up staying home with Mum and Dad watching TV. It’s so depressing. This was supposed to be our summer of fun. What happened? Can’t you be friends with two people at once? I know you have found someone who is extra special, and I know you both have a special “bond,” or whatever, that you and I will never have. But we have another bond, we’re best friends. Or does the best friend bond disappear as soon as you meet somebody else? Maybe it does, maybe I just don’t understand that because I haven’t met that “somebody special.” I’m not in any hurry to, either. I liked things the way they were. So maybe Bethany is now your best friend and I have been relegated to just being your “friend.” At least be that to me, Alex. In a few years time if my name ever comes up you will probably say, “Rosie, now there’s a name I haven’t heard in years. We used to be best friends. I wonder what she’s doingnow; I haven’t seen or thought of her in years!” You will sound like my mum and dad when they have dinner parties with friends and talk about old times. They always mention people I’ve never even heard of when they’re talking about some of the most important days of their lives. Yet where are those people now? How could someone who was your bridesmaid 20 years ago not even be someone who you are on talking terms with now? Or in Dad’s case, how could he not know where his own best friend from college lives? He studied with the man for five years! Anyway, my point is (I know, I know, there is one), I don’t want to be one of those easily forgotten people, so important at the time, so special, so influential, and so treasured, yet years later just a vague face and a distant memory. I want us to be best friends forever, Alex. I’m happy you’re happy, really I am, but I feel like I’ve been left behind. Maybe our time has come and gone. Maybe your time is now meant to be spent with Bethany. And if that’s the case I won’t bother sending you this letter. And if I’m not sending this letter then what am I doing still writing it? OK I’m going now and I’m ripping these muddled thoughts up. Your friend, Rosie

The books I liked became a Bible from which I drew advice and support; I copied out long passages from them; I memorized new canticles and new litanies, psalms, proverbs, and prophecies, and I sanctified every incident in my life by the recital of these sacred texts. My emotions, my tears, and my hopes were no less sincere on account of that; the words and the cadences, the lines and the verses were not aids to make believe: but they rescued from silent oblivion all those intimate adventures of the spirit that I couldn’t speak to anyone about; they created a kind of communion between myself and those twin souls which existed somewhere out of reach; instead of living out my small private existence, I was participating in a great spiritual epic.

I’ve stopped being sorry for all my soft. I won’t apologise because I miss you, or because I said it, or because I text you first, or again. I think everyone spends too much time trying to close themselves off. I don’t want to be cool or indifferent, I want to be honest. If I love you at 5AM, I’d damn well rather that you know I felt it. If I love you two hours later, I’ll tell you then too. Listen, I won’t wait double the time it takes for you to text me back because I don’t want to. I don’t care enough to be patient with you. I’m happy, you made me feel that way, don’t you want to know? So that’s how it’s going to be. I’m going to leave myself as open as a church door. And I’m going to wake you up before the crack of dawn to tell you that I’m fucking joyful, no pretending, not from me, not ever. Would you like some coffee, would you please kiss me? Here, these are my hands, this is my mouth, it is all yours.

Time moves so fucking fast. Blink, and you’re halfway through school, paralyzed by the idea that whatever you choose to do, it means choosing not to do a hundred other things, so you change your major half a dozen times before finally ending up in theology, and for a while it seems like the right path, but that’s really just a reflex to the pride on your parents’ faces, because they assume they’ve got a budding rabbi, but the truth is, you have no desire to practice, you see the holy texts as stories, sweeping epics, and the more you study, the less you believe in any of it. Blink, and you’re twenty-four, and you travel through Europe, thinking—hoping—that the change will spark something in you, that a glimpse of the greater, grander world will bring your own into focus. And for a little while, it does. But there’s no job, no future, only an interlude, and when it’s over, your bank account is dry, and you’re not any closer to anything. Blink, and you’re twenty-six, and you’re called into the dean’s office because he can tell that your heart’s not in it anymore, and he advises you to find another path, and he assures you that you’ll find your calling, but that’s the whole problem, you’ve never felt called to any one thing. There is no violent push in one direction, but a softer nudge a hundred different ways, and now all of them feel out of reach. Blink and you’re twenty-eight, and everyone else is now a mile down the road, and you’re still trying to find it, and the irony is hardly lost on you that in wanting to live, to learn, to find yourself, you’ve gotten lost.

Rooney dropped to her knees. ‘Georgia, I am never going to stop being your friend. And I don’t mean that in the boring average meaning of ‘friend’ where we stop talking regularly when we’re twenty-five because we’ve both met nice young men and gone off to have babies, and only get to meet up twice a year. I mean I’m going to pester you to buy a house next door to me when we’re forty-five and have finally saved up enough for our deposits. I mean I’m going to be crashing round yours every night for dinner because you know I can’t fucking cook to save my life, and if I’ve got kids and a spouse, they’ll probably come round with me, because otherwise they’ll be living on chicken nuggets and chips. I mean I’m going to be the one bringing you soup when you text me that you’re sick and can’t get out of bed and ferrying you to the doctor’s even when you don’t want to go because you feel guilty about using the NHS when you just have a stomach bug. I mean we’re gonna knock down the fence between our gardens so we have one big garden, and we can both get a dog and take turns looking after it. I mean I’m going to be here, annoying you, until we’re old ladies, sitting in the same care home, talking about putting on a Shakespeare because we’re all old and bored as shit.

...Whilst on board the Beagle I was quite orthodox, and I remember being heartily laughed at by several of the officers... for quoting the Bible as an unanswerable authority on some point of morality... But I had gradually come by this time, i.e., 1836 to 1839, to see that the Old Testament from its manifestly false history of the world, with the Tower of Babel, the rainbow at sign, &c., &c., and from its attributing to God the feelings of a revengeful tyrant, was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos, or the beliefs of any barbarian. ...By further reflecting that the clearest evidence would be requisite to make any sane man believe in the miracles by which Christianity is supported, (and that the more we know of the fixed laws of nature the more incredible do miracles become), that the men at that time were ignorant and credulous to a degree almost uncomprehensible by us, that the Gospels cannot be proved to have been written simultaneously with the events, that they differ in many important details, far too important, as it seemed to me, to be admitted as the usual inaccuracies of eyewitnesses; by such reflections as these, which I give not as having the least novelty or value, but as they influenced me, I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as a divine revelation. The fact that many false religions have spread over large portions of the earth like wild-fire had some weight with me. Beautiful as is the morality of the New Testament, it can be hardly denied that its perfection depends in part on the interpretation which we now put on metaphors and allegories. But I was very unwilling to give up my belief... Thus disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress, and have never since doubted even for a single second that my conclusion was correct. I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother and almost all of my friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine.

Real love feels less like a throbbing, pulsing animal begging for its freedom and beating against the inside of my chest and more like, 'Hey, that place you like had fish tacos today and i got you some while i was out', as it sets a bag spotted with grease on the dining room table. It's not a game you don't understand the rules of, or a test you never got the materials to study for. It never leaves you wondering who could possibly be texting at 3 am. Or what you could possibly do to make it come home and stay there. It's fucking boring, dude. I don't walk around mired in uneasiness, waiting for the other shoe to drop. No parsing through spun tales about why it took her so long to come back from the store. No checking her emails or calling her job to make sure she's actually there. No sitting in my car outside her house at dawn, to make sure she's alone when she leaves. This feels safe, and steadfast, and predictable. And secure. It's boring as shit. And it's easily the best thing I've ever felt.

I started getting Mal's texts just before lunch. Mal: Awake Anne: Morning Mal: Going for a run with Jim Anne: Have fun! Mal: Back from run having lunch ... Mal:Your taste in music sucks Anne: Thanks Mal: Seriously, we need to talk it's that bad. Everything apart from Stage Dive needs to go. Anne: Wait. What are you doing? Mal:Fixing it. Anne: Mal, WTH are you doing? Mal: Making you new playlist wih decent shit. Relay Anne: K Thanks Mal: Bored again Mal: Ben's coming over to play Halo Anne: Great! But you don't have to tell me everything you do, Mal Mal: Davie says communication's important Mal: When are you on the rag? Davie said to find out if you want cupcakes or ice cream Anne: I want to not talk about this ever Mal: Bored. Ben's late Mal: Let's get a dog Anne: Apartment has no pets rule Mal: Nice green lace bra Anne: Get out of my drawers, Mal. Mal: Matching panties? Anne: GET OUT NOW. Mal: :) Mal: sext me Mal: Some on it'll be funny Mal: Plz? Mal: High level of unhealthy codependency traits exhibited by both parties relationship possibly bordeing on toxic Anne: WTF? Mal: Did magazine quiz. We need help- Especially you Anne:... Mal: Booking us couples counseling. Tues 4:15 alright? Anne: We are not going to counseling. Mal: What's wrong? Don't you love me anymore? Anne: Turning phone off now.

I reached out my hand, England's rivers turned and flowed the other way... I reached out my hand, my enemies's blood stopt in their veins... I reached out my hand; thought and memory flew out of my enemies' heads like a flock of starlings; My enemies crumpled like empty sacks. I came to them out of mists and rain; I came to them in dreams at midnight; I came to them in a flock of ravens that filled a northern sky at dawn; When they thought themselves safe I came to them in a cry that broke the silence of a winter wood... The rain made a door for me and I went through it; The stones made a throne for me and I sat upon it; Three kingdoms were given to me to be mine forever; England was given to me to be mine forever. The nameless slave wore a silver crown; The nameless slave was a king in a strange country... The weapons that my enemies raised against me are venerated in Hell as holy relics; Plans that my enemies made against me are preserved as holy texts; Blood that I shed upon ancient battlefields is scraped from the stained earth by Hell's sacristans and placed in a vessel of silver and ivory. I gave magic to England, a valuable inheritance But Englishmen have despised my gift Magic shall be written upon the sky by the rain but they shall not be able to read it; Magic shall be written on the faces of the stony hills but their minds shall not be able to contain it; In winter the barren trees shall be a black writing but they shall not understand it... Two magicians shall appear in England... The first shall fear me; the second shall long to behold me; The first shall be governed by thieves and murderers; the second shall conspire at his own destruction; The first shall bury his heart in a dark wood beneath the snow, yet still feel its ache; The second shall see his dearest posession in his enemy's hand... The first shall pass his life alone, he shall be his own gaoler; The second shall tread lonely roads, the storm above his head, seeking a dark tower upon a high hillside... I sit upon a black throne in the shadows but they shall not see me. The rain shall make a door for me and I shall pass through it; The stones shall make a throne for me and I shall sit upon it... The nameless slave shall wear a silver crown The nameless slave shall be a king in a strange country...

Walking around, even on a bad day, I would see things – I mean just the things that were in front of me. People’s faces, the weather, traffic. The smell of petrol from the garage, the feeling of being rained on, completely ordinary things. And in that way even the bad days were good, because I felt them and remembered feeling them. There was something delicate about living like that – like I was an instrument and the world touched me and reverberated inside me. After a couple of months, I started to miss days. Sometimes I would fall asleep without remembering to write anything, but then other nights I’d open the book and not know what to write – I wouldn’t be able to think of anything at all. When I did make entries, they were increasingly verbal and abstract: song titles, or quotes from novels, or text messages from friends. By spring I couldn’t keep it up anymore. I started to put the diary away for weeks at a time – it was just a cheap black notebook I got at work – and then eventually I’d take it back out to look at the entries from the previous year. At that point, I found it impossible to imagine ever feeling again as I had apparently once felt about rain or flowers. It wasn’t just that I failed to be delighted by sensory experiences – it was that I didn’t actually seem to have them anymore. I would walk to work or go out for groceries or whatever and by the time I came home again I wouldn’t be able to remember seeing or hearing anything distinctive at all. I suppose I was seeing but not looking – the visual world just came to me flat, like a catalogue of information. I never looked at things anymore, in the way I had before.

A man inherited a field in which was an accumulation of old stone, part of an older hall. Of the old stone some had already been used in building the house in which he actually lived, not far from the old house of his fathers. Of the rest he took some and built a tower. But his friends coming perceived at once (without troubling to climb the steps) that these stones had formerly belonged to a more ancient building. So they pushed the tower over, with no little labour, and in order to look for hidden carvings and inscriptions, or to discover whence the man's distant forefathers had obtained their building material. Some suspecting a deposit of coal under the soil began to dig for it, and forgot even the stones. They all said: 'This tower is most interesting.' But they also said (after pushing it over): 'What a muddle it is in!' And even the man's own descendants, who might have been expected to consider what he had been about, were heard to murmur: 'He is such an odd fellow! Imagine using these old stones just to build a nonsensical tower! Why did not he restore the old house? he had no sense of proportion.' But from the top of that tower the man had been able to look out upon the sea.

This is my last letter There will be no others. This is the last grey cloud That will rain on you, After this, you will never again Know the rain. This is the last drop of wine in my cup There will be no more drunkenness. This is the last letter of madness, The last letter of childhood. After me you will no longer know The purity of youth The beauty of madness. I have loved you Like a child running from school Hiding birds and poems In his pockets. With you I was a child of Hallucinations, Distractions, Contradictions, I was a child of poetry and nervous writing. As for you, You were a woman of Eastern ways Waiting for her fate to appear In the lines of the coffee cups. How miserable you are, my lady, After today You won't be in the blue notebooks, In the pages of the letters, In the cry of the candles, In the mailman's bag. You won't be Inside the children's sweets In the colored kites. You won't be in the pain of the letters In the pain of the poems. You have exiled yourself From the gardens of my childhood You are no longer poetry.

When you get older, you notice your sheets are dirty. Sometimes, you do something about it. And sometimes, you read the front page of the newspaper and sometimes you floss and sometimes you stop biting your nails and sometimes you meet a friend for lunch. You still crave lemonade, but the taste doesn’t satisfy you as much as it used to. You still crave summer, but sometimes you mean summer, five years ago. You remember your umbrella, you check up on people to see if they got home, you leave places early to go home and make toast. You stand by the toaster in your underwear and a big t-shirt, wondering if you should just turn in or watch one more hour of television. You laugh at different things. You stop laughing at other things. You think about old loves almost like they are in a museum. The socks, you notice, aren’t organized into pairs and you mentally make a note of it. You cover your mouth when you sneeze, reaching for the box of tissues you bought, contains aloe. When you get older, you try different shampoos. You find one you like. You try sleeping early and spin class and jogging again. You try a book you almost read but couldn’t finish. You wrap yourself in the blankets of: familiar t-shirts, caffe au lait, dim tv light, texts with old friends or new people you really want to like and love you. You lose contact with friends from college, and only sometimes you think about it. When you do, it feels bad and almost bitter. You lose people, and when other people bring them up, you almost pretend like you know what they are doing. You try to stop touching your face and become invested in things like expensive salads and trying parsnips and saving up for a vacation you really want. You keep a spare pen in a drawer. You look at old pictures of yourself and they feel foreign and misleading. You forget things like: purchasing stamps, buying more butter, putting lotion on your elbows, calling your mother back. You learn things like balance: checkbooks, social life, work life, time to work out and time to enjoy yourself. When you get older, you find yourself more in control. You find your convictions appealing, you find you like your body more, you learn to take things in stride. You begin to crave respect and comfort and adventure, all at the same time. You lay in your bed, fearing death, just like you did. You pull lint off your shirt. You smile less and feel content more. You think about changing and then often, you do.

How To Tell If Somebody Loves You: Somebody loves you if they pick an eyelash off of your face or wet a napkin and apply it to your dirty skin. You didn’t ask for these things, but this person went ahead and did it anyway. They don’t want to see you looking like a fool with eyelashes and crumbs on your face. They notice these things. They really look at you and are the first to notice if something is amiss with your beautiful visage! Somebody loves you if they assume the role of caretaker when you’re sick. Unsure if someone really gives a shit about you? Fake a case of food poisoning and text them being like, “Oh, my God, so sick. Need water.” Depending on their response, you’ll know whether or not they REALLY love you. “That’s terrible. Feel better!” earns you a stay in friendship jail; “Do you need anything? I can come over and bring you get well remedies!” gets you a cozy friendship suite. It’s easy to care about someone when they don’t need you. It’s easy to love them when they’re healthy and don’t ask you for anything beyond change for the parking meter. Being sick is different. Being sick means asking someone to hold your hair back when you vomit. Either love me with vomit in my hair or don’t love me at all. Somebody loves you if they call you out on your bullshit. They’re not passive, they don’t just let you get away with murder. They know you well enough and care about you enough to ask you to chill out, to bust your balls, to tell you to stop. They aren’t passive observers in your life, they are in the trenches. They have an opinion about your decisions and the things you say and do. They want to be a part of it; they want to be a part of you. Somebody loves you if they don’t mind the quiet. They don’t mind running errands with you or cleaning your apartment while blasting some annoying music. There’s no pressure, no need to fill the silences. You know how with some of your friends there needs to be some sort of activity for you to hang out? You don’t feel comfortable just shooting the shit and watching bad reality TV with them. You need something that will keep the both of you busy to ensure there won’t be a void. That’s not love. That’s “Hey, babe! I like you okay. Do you wanna grab lunch? I think we have enough to talk about to fill two hours!" It’s a damn dream when you find someone you can do nothing with. Whether you’re skydiving together or sitting at home and doing different things, it’s always comfortable. That is fucking love. Somebody loves you if they want you to be happy, even if that involves something that doesn’t benefit them. They realize the things you need to do in order to be content and come to terms with the fact that it might not include them. Never underestimate the gift of understanding. When there are so many people who are selfish and equate relationships as something that only must make them happy, having someone around who can take their needs out of any given situation if they need to. Somebody loves you if they can order you food without having to be told what you want. Somebody loves you if they rub your back at any given moment. Somebody loves you if they give you oral sex without expecting anything back. Somebody loves you if they don’t care about your job or how much money you make. It’s a relationship where no one is selling something to the other. No one is the prostitute. Somebody loves you if they’ll watch a movie starring Kate Hudson because you really really want to see it. Somebody loves you if they’re able to create their own separate world with you, away from the internet and your job and family and friends. Just you and them. Somebody will always love you. If you don’t think this is true, then you’re not paying close enough attention.

For us, eating and being eaten belong to the terrible secret of love. We love only the person we can eat. The person we hate we ‘can’t swallow.’ That one makes us vomit. Even our friends are inedible. If we were asked to dig into our friend’s flesh we would be disgusted. The person we love we dream only of eating. That is, we slide down that razor’s edge of ambivalence. The story of torment itself is a very beautiful one. Because loving is wanting and being able to eat up and yet to stop at the boundary. And there, at the tiniest beat between springing and stopping, in rushes fear. The spring is already in mid-air. The heart stops. The heart takes off again. Everything in love is oriented towards this absorption. At the same time real love is a don’t-touch, yet still an almost-touching. Tact itself: a phantom touching. Eat me up, my love, or else I’m going to eat you up. Fear of eating, fear of the edible, fear on the part of the one of them who feels loved, desired, who wants to be loved, desired, who desires to be desired, who knows there is no greater proof of love than the other’s appetite, who is dying to be eaten up, who says or doesn’t say, but who signifies: I beg you, eat me up. Want me down to the marrow. And yet manage it so as to keep me alive. But I often turn about or compromise, because I know that you won’t eat me up, in the end, and I urge you: bite me. Sign my death with your teeth