Thousand Cranes Quotes

I won't let this be my good-bye. I've folded one thousand paper crane memories of me and Grace, and I've made my wish. I will find a cure. And then I will find Grace.

Does pain go away and leave no trace, then?’ ‘You sometimes even feel sentimental for it.

Now, even more than the evening before, he could think of no one with whom to compare her. She had become absolute, beyond comparison. She had become decision and fate.

This is the story of a boy who used to be a wolf, and a girl who became one. I won't let this be my goodbye. I've folded one thousand paper crane memories of me and Grace, and I've made my wish. I will find a cure. And then I will find Grace.

You've always been fond of understanding people too well." "They should arrange not to be understood quite so easily.

Ruby, what does the future look like?” Nico asked. “I can’t picture it. I try all the time, but I can’t imagine it. Jude said it looked like an open road just after a rainstorm.” I turned back toward the board, eyes tracing those eight letters, trying to take their power away; change them from a place, a name, to just another word. Certain memories trap you; you relive their thousand tiny details. The damp, cool spring air, swinging between snow flurries and light rain. The hum of the electric fence. The way Sam used to let out a small sigh each morning we left the cabin. I remembered the path to the Factory the way you never forgot the story behind a scar. The black mud would splatter over my shoes, momentarily hiding the numbers written there. 3285. Not a name. You learned to look up, craning your neck back to gaze over the razor wire curled around the top of the fence. Otherwise, it was too easy to forget that there was a world beyond the rusting metal pen they’d thrown all of us animals into. “I see it in colors,” I said. “A deep blue, fading into golds and reds—like fire on a horizon. Afterlight. It’s a sky that wants you to guess if the sun is about to rise or set.” Nico shook his head. “I think I like Jude’s better.” “Me too,” I said softly. “Me too.

All the idylls of youth: beauty manifest in lakes, mountains, people; richness in experience, conversation, friendships. Nights during a full moon, the light flooded the wilderness, so it was possible to hike without a headlamp. We would hit the trail at two A.M., summiting the nearest peak, Mount Tallac, just before sunrise, the clear, starry night reflected in the flat, still lakes spread below us. Snuggled together in sleeping bags at the peak, nearly ten thousand feet up, we weathered frigid blasts of wind with coffee someone had been thoughtful enough to bring. And then we would sit and watch as the first hint of sunlight, a light tinge of day blue, would leak out of the eastern horizon, slowly erasing the stars. The day sky would spread wide and high, until the first ray of the sun made an appearance. The morning commuters began to animate the distant South Lake Tahoe roads. But craning your head back, you could see the day’s blue darken halfway across the sky, and to the west, the night remained yet unconquered—pitch-black, stars in full glimmer, the full moon still pinned in the sky. To the east, the full light of day beamed toward you; to the west, night reigned with no hint of surrender. No philosopher can explain the sublime better than this, standing between day and night. It was as if this were the moment God said, “Let there be light!” You could not help but feel your specklike existence against the immensity of the mountain, the earth, the universe, and yet still feel your own two feet on the talus, reaffirming your presence amid the grandeur.

In a gourd that had been handed down for three centuries, a flower that would fade in a morning.

You would brave a life with me?" "I would brave this life," I murmured against him, "and a thousand more.

Your mother was such a gentle person. I always feel when I see someone like her that I'm watching the last flowers fall. This is no world for gentle people.

I'm crying for the little girl whose mother divorced her father, the girl who wanted to fall in love for the first time but wasn't ready for sex, the girl who dated a boy just because he wasn't the first one, the girl who fell hard for the guy with the easy smile and the green eyes, the girl who needed to prove she could hook up on a class trip, the girl who rand for student council just to impress a guy, the girl who lost her best friend, the girl whose father doesn't care anymore, the girl who doesn't have the money for college, the girl who just wants her grandma to fix everything, the girl who doesn't talk to anyone about anything, the girl who just can't fall in love again - even if a sweet guy folds a thousand paper cranes. Just for her.

Your mother is in the bedside chair. She is wearing a dress printed with strawberries and birds. Using a long needle, she is stringing brightly colored origami cranes into garlands. You know what she's doing: It's a Japanese custom called senbazuru. If you make one thousand paper cranes, you can restore someone to good health. Though you cannot see him, you become aware of the fact that your father is sitting on the floor. He is folding cranes so that your mother can string them. This is marriage.

Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind. Because your lover threw wild hands toward the sky And the affrighted steed ran on alone, Do not weep. War is kind. Hoarse, booming drums of the regiment, Little souls who thirst for fight, These men were born to drill and die. The unexplained glory flies above them, Great is the battle-god, great, and his kingdom -A field where a thousand corpses lie. Do not weep, babe, for war is kind.

I still watch her now, like I always did, and she watches me, her brown eyes looking out from a wolf's face. This is the story of a boy who used to be a wolf, and a girl who became one. I won't let this be my last good-bye. I've folded one thousand paper cranes of me and Grace, and I've made my wish. I will find a cure. And then I will find Grace.

IV Yes, I have a thousand tongues, And nine and nighty-nine lie. Though I strive to use the one, It will make no melody at my will, But is dead in my mouth.

Every war invariably results in terrible tragedies, immense waste and sinful destruction. All wars, no matter how big or small, how nearby or far away, diminish OUR humanity to a barbaric level.

He could not call up the faces of his own mother and father, who had died three or four years before. He would look at a picture, and there they would be. Perhaps people were progressively harder to paint in the mind as they near one, loved by one. Perhaps clear memories came easily in proportion as they were ugly.

In the darkness he saw visions of a thousand-tongued fear that would babble at his back and cause him to flee, while others were going coolly about their country’s business. He admitted that he would not be able to cope with this monster. He felt that every nerve in his body would be an ear to hear the voices, while other men would remain stolid and deaf.

I had great plans to surgically excise the quaking, complaining teenager within someday. If I could just get rid of her and her thousands upon thousands of issues - Do I look fat? Am I ugly? Will anyone ever love me? Will I always be alone? Is she fatter than me? How ugly am I? Are they making fun of me? - I was convinced I would immediately become the sort of casual and laid back adult person who was forever smiling and was genuinely unconcerned with the size and/or shape of her body. I wasn't holding my breath.

The human mind is only capable of absorbing a few things at a time. We see what is taking place in front of us in the here and now, and cannot envisage simultaneously a succession of processes, no matter how integrated and complementary. Our faculties of perception are consequently limited even as regards fairly simple phenomena. The fate of a single man can be rich with significance, that of a few hundred less so, but the history of thousands and millions of men does not mean anything at all, in any adequate sense of the word. The symmetriad is a million—a billion, rather—raised to the power of N: it is incomprehensible. We pass through vast halls, each with a capacity of ten Kronecker units, and creep like so many ants clinging to the folds of breathing vaults and craning to watch the flight of soaring girders, opalescent in the glare of searchlights, and elastic domes which criss-cross and balance each other unerringly, the perfection of a moment, since everything here passes and fades. The essence of this architecture is movement synchronized towards a precise objective. We observe a fraction of the process, like hearing the vibration of a single string in an orchestra of supergiants. We know, but cannot grasp, that above and below, beyond the limits of perception or imagination, thousands and millions of simultaneous transformations are at work, interlinked like a musical score by mathematical counterpoint. It has been described as a symphony in geometry, but we lack the ears to hear it.

I’ve heard it said that love is choosing to listen to how someone’s day went at least thirty thousand times. Love is saying, I am here, I am paying attention, and I care about that fight you had with your coworker. Beau, sometimes listening to you scream Fuck today, let’s go on a date was the only thing keeping me alive.

What is power? Hesina had thought it was wielding the knife, or getting someone to wield it for her. Now she realized it was neither. Power was yielding. It was taking the bloodstained knife out of a thousand frenzied hands and making it hers alone.

Father's life was only a very small part of the life of a tea bowl.

But love flowed into the apology, to coddle and mollify the guilt.

These men were born to drill and die.             Point for them the virtue of the slaughter,             Make plain to them the excellence of killing             And a field where a thousand corpses lie.

…Sam [Raimi] wanted the climactic sword fight to play out as elegantly as a Fred Astaire movie and he wanted it all in one crane shot. I must have rehearsed the routine for three weeks, but when it came time to shoot, the rigors of running up and down steps, fighting with both hands, and flipping skeletons over my head was too much to pull off without cuts. After ten takes, I knew Sam was pissed off, because he yanked the bullhorn from John Cameron. ‘Okay, obviously, this is NOT WORKING, and it’s NOT GOING TO WORK, so we’re going to break it up into A THOUSAND LITTLE PIECES.’ When Sam gets upset, he lets you know it, and he’ll torture you for days afterward because he’s one of those guys who never forgets. The first ‘little piece’ of the sequence was a shot of me ducking as a sword glances off the stone wall behind me. ‘So, you think you can do this, Bruce?’ he’d say, loud enough for the entire crew to hear. ‘Or should I break this ONE shot into THREE MORE SHOTS?’ Sam also threatened to put Ash in a chorus line with skeletons.

We’re three of a kind—you, me and her.” Her hand found its way to her chest. “But where are my manners? I’m your aunt, Charlene—but you can call me Charlie.” Her smile was ten thousand watts, bright and vibrant. “I’m here to help you.

I live in gratitude to my parents for initiating me--and as early as I begged for it, without keeping me waiting--into knowledge of the word, into reading and spelling, by way of the alphabet. They taught it to me at home in time for me to begin to read before starting school. My love for the alphabet, which endures, grew out of reciting it but, before that, out of seeing the letters on the page. In my own story books, before I could read them for myself I fell in love with various winding, enchanted-looking initials drawn by Walter Crane at the head of fairy tales. In "Once upon a time," an "o" had a rabbit running it as a treadmill, his feet upon flowers. When the day came years later for me to see the Book of Kells, all the wizardry of letter, initial, and word swept over me a thousand times, and the illumination, the gold, seemed a part of the world's beauty and holiness that had been there from the start.

Your mother is in the bedside chair. She is wearing a dress printed with strawberries and birds. Using a long needle, she is stringing brightly origami cranes into garlands. It's a Japanese custom called senbazaru. If you make one thousand paper cranes, you can restore someone to good health.

The cranes were moving south and he watched their thin echelons trail along those unseen corridors writ in their blood a hundred thousand years.

I just mark days in my teal blue planner. Black ink pouring onto the pages without deep attachment, I think they lied, time is not a medication.

Cocorii albi de pe baticul tinerei Inamura zburară în amurgul care-i mai zăbovea sub pleoape.

Anyway, it’s hardly a problem worth worrying about.

When you're held by the dead, you begin to feel that you aren't in this world yourself.

Japanese custom, a thousand paper cranes being made by one person before a wedding gives that person one wish to be carried to the heavens—usually the wish for a happy and prosperous marriage.

That's what we've been taught, this is the underpinning of all European culture-this firm belief that there are no secrets that won't sooner or later come to light. Who was it that said it? Jesus? No, Pascal, I think it was… so naïve. But this faith has been nurtured for centuries; it has sprouted its own mythology: the cranes of Ibycus, manuscripts don't burn. An ontological faith in the fundamental knowability of every human deed. The certainty that, as they now teach journalism majors, you can find everything on the Internet. As if the Library of Alexandria never existed. Or the Pogruzhalsky arson, when the whole historical section of the Academy of Sciences' Public Library, more than six-hundred thousand volumes, including the Central Council archives from 1918, went up in flames. That was in the summer of 1964; Mom was pregnant with me already, and almost for an entire month afterward, as she made her way to work at the Lavra, she would get off the trolleybus when it got close to the university and take the subway the rest of the way: above ground, the stench from the site of the fire made her nauseous. Artem said there were early printed volumes and even chronicles in that section-our entire Middle Ages went up in smoke, almost all of the pre-Muscovite era. The arsonist was convicted after a widely publicized trial, and then was sent to work in Moldova's State Archives: the war went on. And we comforted ourselves with "manuscripts don't burn." Oh, but they do burn. And cannot be restored.

Tell it, Fanny. About the crowds, streets, buildings, lights, about the whirligig of loneliness, about the humpty-dumpty clutter of longings. And then explain about the summer parks and the white snow and the moon window in the sky. Throw in a poignantly ironical dissertation on life, on its uncharted aimlessness, and speak like Sherwood Anderson about the desire that stir in the heart. Speak like Remy de Gourmont and Dostoevsky and Stevie Crane, like Schopenhauer and Dreiser and Isaiah; speak like all the great questioners whose tongues have wagged and whose hearts have burned with questions. He will listen bewilderedly and, perhaps, only perhaps, understand for a moment the dumb pathos of your eyes.

Because rape is about power; it is never about desire or love,” he answered quietly. “His Majesty is a power-hungry beast with a voracious hunger for more, and what better way to display that he reigns supreme than by taking what is precious to his own people? “But the more women he devours,” he continued, “the more starved he becomes. A thousand will not satiate him. And one day, should his dream come true, and he gains ten thousand … I fear he will only be hungrier than ever.

Sam is holding one of your hands, and Sadie is holding the other. And your parents are there, but they are standing behind your friends. And this makes sense, because Sadie and Sam have been your family, as much as your family has been your family. Behind them, a thousand paper cranes festoon the room. “It’s okay, Marx,” Sadie says. “You can let go.

We drove past the rail yards on Elliott Bay with the huge orange cranes that look like drinking ostriches standing sentry over thousands of stacked shipping containers. When I was little, I asked Mom what all those containers were. She said ostrich eggs filled with Barbie dolls. Even though I don’t play with Barbies anymore, it still gets me excited to think of that many Barbies. “I’m sorry I haven’t been around much.” It was Dad again. “You’re around.

Nights with David the Physicist are upsetting,” she said. “And unconnected.” She sighed, took a drag, exhaled. “There is talking, about a thousand things. Laughter. Even some kissing. And then nothing. Nothing inspires him, if you see what I mean.” “I’m not sure I do.” She shrugged. “Nothing impacts him, I don’t think. His head, maybe his heart, these things are involved in the moment. I believe they are. But then the moment is over and he never thinks of it again. Or chooses not to care.” I slumped back in my seat. “He cares,” I said. “I mean, I’ve seen him. When he looks at you, it’s like no one else exists.” “And when he looks away,” Cristina said quietly, “it is as if I don’t exist.” She toyed with her cigarette. “I don’t think he means to be cruel. I think he might think he is being kind instead.” She smiled. “After all, he cannot control what I feel. What the things he does make me feel. Or the things he does not do.” “I greatly dislike him,” I said. “I wish I did.” Cristina sighed. “But what would be the point? He is like a storm. You don’t like or dislike something of nature, you just try to survive it and hope for the best. Right?” “I don’t think he’s a force of nature,” I countered. “I think he’s just a coward. There’s no way he likes anyone more than he likes you.” “Maybe not,” Cristina agreed. “But that doesn’t mean that everything automatically leads to a happy ending. I don’t think there will be any happy ending with David the Physicist, Alex. I think there will maybe be one or two other nights I will have to survive, and then he will disappear because he’s a coward or because he just will, and I will cry some more and smoke some more and never know why.

Alexei has created a language of a hundred and twelve thousand words controlled by an elaborate syntax. It is a pity that no one can enjoy it along with Alexei, but he refuses to translate a single word. He has been accused of both narcissism and ostentation, but he is never offended. It is the typical artist, so he declares, who is mad for acclaim and whose self-esteem depends upon adulation. Alexei sees himself as a lonely man, indifferent to both praise and censure.” Wayness craned her neck. “He is now playing the concertina and dancing a jig, all at the same time. What do you make of that?” “It is just Alexei in one of his moods; it means nothing.

We pass through vast halls, each with a capacity of ten Kronecker units, and creep like so many ants clinging to the folds of breathing vaults and craning to watch the flight of soaring girders, opalescent in the glare of searchlights, and elastic domes which criss-cross and balance each other unerringly, the perfection of a moment, since everything here passes and fades. The essence of this architecture is movement synchronized towards a precise objective. We observe a fraction of the process, like hearing the vibration of a single string in an orchestra of supergiants. We know, but cannot grasp, that above and below, beyond the limits of perception or imagination, thousands and millions of simultaneous transformations are at work, interlinked like a musical score by mathematical counterpoint. It has been described as a symphony in geometry, but we lack the ears to hear it.

The Sandhill Cranes of Nebraska Too bad you weren’t here six months ago, was a lament I heard on my visit to Nebraska. You could have seen the astonishing spectacle of the sandhill cranes, thousands of them feeding and even dancing on the shores of the Platte River. There was no point in pointing out the impossibility of my being there then because I happened to be somewhere else, so I nodded and put on a look of mild disappointment if only to be part of the commiseration. It was the same look I remember wearing about six months ago in Georgia when I was told that I had just missed the spectacular annual outburst of azaleas, brilliant against the green backdrop of spring and the same in Vermont six months before that when I arrived shortly after the magnificent foliage had gloriously peaked, Mother Nature, as she is called, having touched the hills with her many-colored brush, a phenomenon that occurs, like the others, around the same time every year when I am apparently off in another state, stuck in a motel lobby with the local paper and a styrofoam cup of coffee, busily missing God knows what.

Eventually the term ended and I was on the windy mountain road to camp, still slightly worried that I’d made a wrong turn in life. My doubt, however, was short-lived. The camp delivered on its promise, concentrating all the idylls of youth: beauty manifest in lakes, mountains, people; richness in experience, conversation, friendships. Nights during a full moon, the light flooded the wilderness, so it was possible to hike without a headlamp. We would hit the trail at two A.M., summiting the nearest peak, Mount Tallac, just before sunrise, the clear, starry night reflected in the flat, still lakes spread below us. Snuggled together in sleeping bags at the peak, nearly ten thousand feet up, we weathered frigid blasts of wind with coffee someone had been thoughtful enough to bring. And then we would sit and watch as the first hint of sunlight, a light tinge of day blue, would leak out of the eastern horizon, slowly erasing the stars. The day sky would spread wide and high, until the first ray of the sun made an appearance. The morning commuters began to animate the distant South Lake Tahoe roads. But craning your head back, you could see the day’s blue darken halfway across the sky, and to the west, the night remained yet unconquered—pitch-black, stars in full glimmer, the full moon still pinned in the sky. To the east, the full light of day beamed toward you; to the west, night reigned with no hint of surrender. No philosopher can explain the sublime better than this, standing between day and night. It was as if this were the moment God said, “Let there be light!” You could not help but feel your specklike existence against the immensity of the mountain, the earth, the universe, and yet still feel your own two feet on the talus, reaffirming your presence amid the grandeur.

Pulling her head back, Lillian stared at him with wondering eyes, her lips damp and reddened. Her hands left his hair, her fingertips coming to the hard angles of his cheekbones, delicate strokes of coolness on the blazing heat of his skin. He bent his head, nuzzling his jaw against the pale silk of her palm. “Lillian,” he whispered, “I’ve tried to leave you alone. But I can’t do it anymore. In the past two weeks I’ve had to stop myself a thousand times from coming to you. No matter how often I tell myself that you are the most inappropriate…” He paused as she squirmed suddenly, twisting and craning her neck to look down at the floor. “No matter what I— Lillian, are you listening to me? What the devil are you looking for?” “My pear. I dropped it, and— oh, there it is.” She broke free of him and sank to her hands and knees, reaching beneath a chair. Pulling out the brandy bottle, she sat on the floor and held it in her lap. “Lillian, forget the damned pear.” “How did it get in there, d’you think?” She poked her finger experimentally into the neck of the bottle. “I don’ see how something so big could fit into a hole that small.” Marcus closed his eyes against a surge of aggravated passion, and his voice cracked as he replied. “They… they put it directly on the tree. The bud grows… inside…” He slitted his eyes open and squeezed them shut again as he saw her finger intruding deeper into the bottle. “Grows…” he forced himself to continue, “until the fruit is ripe.” Lillian seemed rather too impressed by the information. “They do? That is the cleverest, cleverest… a pear in its own little… oh no.” “What?” Marcus asked through clenched teeth. “My finger’s stuck.” Marcus’s eyes flew open. Dumbfounded, he looked down at the sight of Lillian tugging on her imprisoned finger. “I can’t get it out,” she said. “Just pull at it.” “It hurts. It’s throbbing.” “Pull harder.” “I can’t! It’s truly stuck. I need something to make it slippery. Do you have some sort of lubricant nearby?” “No.” “Not anything?” “Much as it may surprise you, we’ve never needed lubricant in the library before now.

Sadako’s death, ten years after the Hiroshima bombing, was caused by radiation exposure.

In November, Mrs. Sasaki became very ill. With each passing day, the radiation that had infected her body would make its gruesome symptoms more visible. Soon, it became apparent that Mr. Sasaki was also infected. Both parents took consolation in thinking that at least Sadako and Masahiro had been spared what was now commonly referred to as the Atomic Bomb Disease.

Those tests showed that Sadako’s white blood count was 33,000. A normal person’s white blood count is between 5,000 and 8,000. Her red blood count was 3,560,000. A normal person’s would be between 4,000,000 and 5,000,000.

The druin stopped where he was. He didn’t appear to notice the king had spoken. The wyvern craned its neck and lowered its head so the druin could stroke the glossy scales along its jaw. Clay assumed the beast was a matriarch, since it was twice the size of most wyverns he’d seen, and he’d seen quite a few. The creature emitted a sound like ten thousand cats purring at once, and the ribbed fins along her neck and below her chin vibrated in pleasure.

Al principio, es probable que fuera una pieza común para la mesa, pero ha pasado mucho tiempo desde que se convirtió en un tazón para té. Hubo personas que lo cuidaron y lo pasaron, algunas de ellas pueden haberlo llevado durante largas travesías con ellas. No puedo romperlo sólo porque me dices que lo haga.

Without boundaries you are lost in the void with no horizon.

This is the story of a boy who used to be a wolf, and a girl who became one. I won't let this be my good-bye. I've folded one thousand paper crane memories of me and Grace, and I've made my wish. I will find a cure. And then I will find Grace.

The first Superfortress reached Tokyo just after midnight, dropping flares to mark the target area. Then came the onslaught. Hundreds of planes—massive winged mechanical beasts roaring over Tokyo, flying so low that the entire city pulsed with the booming of their engines. The US military’s worries about the city’s air defenses proved groundless: the Japanese were completely unprepared for an attacking force coming in at five thousand feet. The full attack lasted almost three hours; 1,665 tons of napalm were dropped. LeMay’s planners had worked out in advance that this many firebombs, dropped in such tight proximity, would create a firestorm—a conflagration of such intensity that it would create and sustain its own wind system. They were correct. Everything burned for sixteen square miles. Buildings burst into flame before the fire ever reached them. Mothers ran from the fire with their babies strapped to their backs only to discover—when they stopped to rest—that their babies were on fire. People jumped into the canals off the Sumida River, only to drown when the tide came in or when hundreds of others jumped on top of them. People tried to hang on to steel bridges until the metal grew too hot to the touch, and then they fell to their deaths. After the war, the US Strategic Bombing Survey concluded: “Probably more persons lost their lives by fire at Tokyo in a six-hour period than at any time in the history of man.” As many as 100,000 people died that night. The aircrews who flew that mission came back shaken. [According to historian] Conrad Crane: “They’re about five thousand feet, they are pretty low... They are low enough that the smell of burning flesh permeates the aircraft...They actually have to fumigate the aircraft when they land back in the Marianas, because the smell of burning flesh remains within the aircraft. (...) The historian Conrad Crane told me: I actually gave a presentation in Tokyo about the incendiary bombing of Tokyo to a Japanese audience, and at the end of the presentation, one of the senior Japanese historians there stood up and said, “In the end, we must thank you, Americans, for the firebombing and the atomic bombs.” That kind of took me aback. And then he explained: “We would have surrendered eventually anyway, but the impact of the massive firebombing campaign and the atomic bombs was that we surrendered in August.” In other words, this Japanese historian believed: no firebombs and no atomic bombs, and the Japanese don’t surrender. And if they don’t surrender, the Soviets invade, and then the Americans invade, and Japan gets carved up, just as Germany and the Korean peninsula eventually were. Crane added, The other thing that would have happened is that there would have been millions of Japanese who would have starved to death in the winter. Because what happens is that by surrendering in August, that givesMacArthur time to come in with his occupation forces and actually feedJapan...I mean, that’s one of MacArthur’s great successes: bringing in a massive amount of food to avoid starvation in the winter of 1945.He is referring to General Douglas MacArthur, the supreme commander for the Allied powers in the Pacific. He was the one who accepted theJapanese emperor’s surrender.Curtis LeMay’s approach brought everyone—Americans and Japanese—back to peace and prosperity as quickly as possible. In 1964, the Japanese government awarded LeMay the highest award their country could give a foreigner, the First-Class Order of Merit of the Grand Cordon of the Rising Sun, in appreciation for his help in rebuilding the Japanese Air Force. “Bygones are bygones,” the premier of Japan said at the time.

On the wings of one thousand paper cranes, hope finally answered.

What need has the king for a thousand courtesans? I cannot possibly imgaine wanting a thousand husbands." "Because rape - "He flicked an uneasy glance my way, as though afraid to offend my womanly sensiblities. But I did not shy away from the word. How could I when it was the reality my sister lived with? " Because rape is about power; it is never about desire or love," he answered quietly. "His majesty is a powerhungry beast with a voracious hunger for more, and what better way to display that he reigns supreme than by taking what is precious to his own people?

Коли вона померла, я з жалем подумала: навіть якщо її не розуміли, то все одно смерть не можна виправдати. Смерть виключає будь-яку надію на порозуміння.

Гріх ніколи не змиєш, а горе минає.

- Яка краса... - промовив Кікудзі ніби сам до себе. - Батько возився з чашками, хоч таке заняття і не в його вдачі... Мабуть, хотів заглушити цим докори сумління... - Докори сумління?.. - Бо дивишся на чашку і забуваєш, що і її колишнього власника могли бути гріхи... А батько прожив лише часточку того, що випало на долю цієї чашки.

Нейната алена фукуса не изглеждаше крещяща за обреда и дори подсилваше чувството за пролетна свежест. Сякаш алено цвете цъфтеше в ръцете на момичето. Още малко и като че ли около нея ще закръжат хиляди малки бели жерави.

Умрял е човек. Останалите живи или осъждат мъртвите, или страдат и се разкайват. И в единия, и в другия случай има нещо изкуствено, нещо лицемерно. А на мъртвите им е все едно. Тях не ги интересува нашият морал.

Инамура-сан дори не подозираше, че Тикако иска да я покаже на Кикудзи. Съвсем спокойно тя му приготви чая и без всякакво смущение подаде чашката на Кикудзи. След като отпи от нея, той започна да й се любува. Това беше черна чашка. От едната й страна имаше ивица бяла глазура, върху която с черно бе нарисувано стръкче от папрат. — Би трябвало да я помните — каза Тикако. — Да, да — замислено отговори Кикудзи и отпусна ръката, в която държеше чашката. — Това стръкче папрат създава усещането за планинска местност. Чашката е подходяща за чайна церемония в началото на пролетта и баща ви обичаше да пие от нея през същия сезон. Въпреки че вече е малко късно за нея, предлагам ви я, защото си помислих, че ще ви бъде приятно да я подържите в ръце. — Баща ми твърде кратко време е притежавал тази чашка. Тя си има своя история и ако не се лъжа, тя е преминала дълъг път — от майстора Рикю, епоха Момояма, за да стигне до нас. В продължение на няколко столетия тя е била съхранявана от много ценители на чайната церемония и е била предавана следващите поколения. Така че тук баща ми стои по-настрана — каза Кикудзи, стараейки се да забрави съдбите, които се преплитаха около тази чашка. От господин Оота чашката е станала собственост на вдовицата му, след това е била подарена на бащата на Кикудзи, който от своя страна я подарил на Тикако. И сега от четиримата, двамата мъже са починали, а двете жени присъствуват тук на чайната церемония. Само по себе си това вече е достатъчно съдбата на тази чашка да бъде считана за необикновена. А тук на чайната церемония колко много други момински ръце и устни са се докосвали до тъмната й повърхност. — Аз също с удоволствие бих пила от тази чашка. По-рано пиех от друга — неочаквано за всички каза госпожа Оота.

А паметта продължаваше да живее. Той виждаше сега не госпожа Оота, а залеза, който видя от прозореца на вагона, вече на път за в къщи, след нощта в камакурския хотел. Зад стъклото изплува очарователното очертание на храма Хоммон-дзи в Икегами. Слънцето — червено и кръгло като топка, бавно се спускаше от клон на клон. Короните бяха съвсем черни и релефно се очертаваха на фона на заревото. Провиращите се между клоните лъчи на залязващото слънце заслепяваха очите на Кикудзи и той ги затвори. И тогава у него се появи усещането, че хилядата бели жерави, изпърхали от розовата фурашики на Юкико и прелетели през багровочервения залез, влетяха под неговите плътно затворени клепачи.

Rule # 1 – Mom and I are the only ones allowed in our house. Rule # 2 – I am never to leave the house. Rule # 3 – Never open the curtains or look outside. Sorry, Mom, I thought. We’re just breaking your rules all to hell today. I heard the gunfire again and I ran, dodging out the front door of the porch. I’d seen this space a thousand times as Mom was leaving, but never what lay beyond

– Понимаете, Кикудзисан, человек не может быть благоразумным и мудрым, если в нем слишком сильно мужское или женское начало. – Да? Значит, мудрость среднего пола? – Иронизируете? Ну, ну… Однако, когда превращаешься в существо среднего пола, начинаешь насквозь видеть и мужчин и женщин.

I moved with fluid grace, a thousand hours of practice in a basement, in a training room, in the field, all coming together with the thousands of years of experience of a heinous beast who lived in my head and had nothing but a thirst for blood.

It was a short walk from the bridge to the waterfall, and I heard it long before I actually saw it, a loud, roaring sound that reverberated like rolling thunder. We passed under an outcropping of rock, and then there it was on the other side. Quixotic Falls. It took my breath away. The waterfall was so tall, I had to crane my neck to see the top of it. Shimmers of a rainbow reflected in the mist and sunlight, and the air was cool and damp. It felt good in the humidity of the afternoon. I closed my eyes, and enjoyed the mist that clung to my skin, coagulating into droplets. We walked along the underside of it, and the sunlight hit the falling water like it was glimmers of glass. The tunnel between the rock face and the waterfall was smooth and rounded from thousands of years of erosion. Vines crawled across the rocks--- morning glories and four o'clocks and honeysuckles. The waterfall poured down into a small watering hole that then slowly wormed its way into a larger river down the mountain. I knew this place would feel whimsical. Surrounding the swimming hole, the bright pink heather and stark white yarrow mixed with coneflowers and black-eyed Susans.

He could not call up the faces of his own mother and father, who had died three or four years before. He would look at a picture, and there they would be. Perhaps people were progressively harder to paint in the mind as they were near one, loved by one. Perhaps clear memories came easily in proportion as they were ugly.

Does pain go away and leave no trace, then?

And by his side rode loathsome Gluttony, Deformed creature, on a filthie swyne, His belly was vp-blowne with luxury, And eke with fatnesse swollen were his eyne, And like a Crane his necke was long and fyne, With which he swallowd vp excessiue feast; For want whereof poore people oft did pyne; And all the way, most like a brutish beast, He spued vp his gorge, that all did him deteast. In greene vine leaues he was right fitly clad; For other clothes he could not weare for heat, And on his head an yuie girland had, From vnder which fast trickled downe the sweat: Still as he rode, he somewhat still did eat, And in his hand did beare a bouzing can, “Of which he supt so oft, that on his seat His dronken corse he scarse vpholden can, In shape and life more like a monster, then a man. Vnfit he was for any worldly thing, And eke vnhable once to stirre or go, Not meet to be of counsell to a king, Whose mind in meat and drinke was drowned so, That from his friend he seldome knew his fo: Full of diseases was his carcas blew, And a dry dropsie through his flesh did flow And next to him rode lustfull Lechery, Vpon a bearded Goat, whose rugged haire, And whally eyes (the signe of gelosy,) Was like the person selfe, whom he did beare: Who rough, and blacke, and filthy did appeare, Vnseemely man to please faire Ladies eye; Yet he of Ladies oft was loued deare, When fairer faces were bid standen by: O who does know the bent of womens fantasy? In a greene gowne he clothed was full faire, Which vnderneath did hide his filthinesse, And in his hand a burning hart he bare, Full of vaine follies, and new fanglenesse: For he was false, and fraught with ficklenesse, And learned had to loue with secret lookes, And well could daunce, and sing with ruefulnesse, And fortunes tell, and read in louing bookes, And thousand other wayes, to bait his fleshly hookes. And greedy Auarice by him did ride, Vpon a Camell loaden all with gold; Two iron coffers hong on either side, With precious mettall full, as they might hold, And in his lap an heape of coine he told; For of his wicked pelfe his God he made, And vnto hell him selfe for money sold; Accursed vsurie was all his trade, And right and wrong ylike in equall ballaunce waide. His life was nigh vnto deaths doore yplast, And tired-bare cote, and cobled shoes he ware, Ne scarse good morsell all his life did tast, But both from backe and belly still did spare, To fill his bags, and richesse to compare; Yet chylde ne kinsman liuing had he none To leaue them to; but thorough daily care To get, and nightly feare to lose his owne, He led a wretched life vnto himselfe vnknowne. And next to him malicious Enuie rode, Vpon a rauenous wolfe, and still did chaw Betweene his cankred teeth a venemous tode, That all the poison ran about his chaw; But inwardly he chawed his owne maw At neighbours wealth, that made him euer sad For death it was, when any good he saw, And wept, that cause of weeping none he had But when he heard of harme, he wexed wondrous glad. And him beside rides fierce reuenging Wrath, Vpon a Lion, loth for to be led; And in his hand a burning brond he hath, The which he brandisheth about his hed; His eyes did hurle forth sparkles fiery red, And stared sterne on all, that him beheld, As ashes pale of hew and seeming ded; And on his dagger still his hand he held, Trembling through hasty rage, when choler in him sweld.

Let our strands be ever knotted as we weather joy and sorrow, fortune and misfortune, and pass our years from youth to old age. We are of one heart, honor-bound, and one spirit, whether on earth or in heaven. From now until ten thousand years forth.

The list of things that keep me up at night includes, but is not limited to: appendicitis, typhoid, leprosy, unclean meat, foods I haven’t seen emerge from their packaging, foods my mother hasn’t tasted first so that if we die we die together, homeless people, headaches, rape, kidnapping, milk, the subway, sleep. An assistant teacher comes to school with bloodshot eyes, and I am convinced he’s infected with Ebola. I wait for blood to trickle from his ear or for him to just fall down dead. I stop touching my shoelaces (too filthy) or hugging adults outside of my family. In school, we are learning about Hiroshima, so I read Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes and I know instantly that I have leukemia. A symptom of leukemia is dizziness and I have that, when I sit up too fast or spin around in circles. So I quietly prepare to die in the next year or so, depending on how fast the disease progresses. My parents are getting worried. It’s hard enough to have a child, much less a child who demands to inspect our groceries and medicines for evidence that their protective seals have been tampered with. I have only the vaguest memory of a life before fear. Every morning when I wake up there is one blissful second before I look around the room and remember my daily terrors. I wonder if this is what it will always be like, forever, and I try to remember moments I felt safe: In bed next to my mother one Sunday morning. Playing with Isabel’s puppy. Getting picked up from a sleepover just before bedtime.

The dams on the Upper Missouri, called the Pick-Sloan Plan, were located so as not to disturb white settlements. Instead, they would flood the bottomlands of eight reservations, land guaranteed to tribes by treaty and home to thousands of families. Pick-Sloan, the Lakota historian Vine Deloria, Jr., wrote, was “the single most destructive act ever perpetrated on any tribe by the United States.

vice president, and secretary of the treasury beam down from the walls. Visitors pass a sequence of photographs and paintings detailing the history of paper money in the United States and culminating with a life-size re-creation of President Lincoln signing the legislation authorizing the federal government to print money. At the end of the long corridor, visitors watch a short video on the history of paper money, after which guides divide them into small groups before they enter the work area. These small groups wend their way through the carefully marked visitors’ corridors past glass-enclosed galleries from which they can watch the sheets of dollars being printed, examined, cut, and stacked as the guides dispense a constant flow of facts about America’s money: The dollar is printed on textile paper made by the Crane Company using a mixture of 75 percent cotton and 25 percent linen with a polyester security thread. The printing machines are made by Germans and Italians. Nearly half of the bills printed in a day are one-dollar notes, and 95 percent of the bills are used to replace worn-out bills. The average life span of a bill varies from eighteen months for the one-dollar note to an ancient nine years for a one-hundred-dollar note. A bill can be folded four thousand times before it tears.

Кад је певао о пупољцима, он није размишљао о пупољцима, кад је певао о месецу, он није мислио на месец. Кад је за то била прилика, кад би осетио инспирацију, тад је писао поезију. Црвена дуга преко неба била је попут неба које добија боју. Бела сунчева светлост била је попут неба које се осветљава. Ипак, празно небо, по својој природи, не може да се осветли. Оно не може ни да се обоји. Са духом попут празног неба, он је давао боју свим призорима, мада од тога њему ништа није остало.

Take a government car, weighing several thousand pounds, add a dab of velocity for several seconds, then a parked car, garnish with two assholes who were out to kill me. Voila! That’s my recipe for mercenary puree. Put it in your cookbooks, kids,

Let me take the responsibility a thousand times before you hand it off to someone else who will screw it up. I won’t stand by and take dumb orders. I did what I thought—what I knew was right.

The tribe was unprepared for the boom, he believed. After centuries of colonization—of federal entities weakening and displacing tribal institutions—it did not have the resources, let alone the expertise or regulatory power, to control the oil industry. It had no environmental agency to monitor leaks or spills; no transportation department to track trucks; and what was more troubling, it had no criminal jurisdiction over the thousands of non-Native men and women who had come to work, since the U.S. Supreme Court had stripped tribes nationwide of the right to criminally prosecute nonmembers. “It’s like the lottery winners you see on TV,” Fox said. “Their lives get worse, because they’re not ready for it. We’re the same way. My biggest fear is that we end up like other reservations I know—industry comes in, money’s thrown around, everyone celebrates for a while, and when industry leaves, the reservation is in worse shape than before.

I'll fold you a thousand cranes engraved with heartfelt affirmations if you'll believe me when I say: I'm proud of you and I'll wait for you on the forest floor

The train was moving too fast to see much beyond the pines stepping up rock walls, but she knew from memory the bird species that would be endemic. She could picture the colored plates in her textbooks- the greater roadrunner, with its shaggy pompadour crest; the yellow eyes of burrowing owls; the shiny, jet-black plumage of the phainopepla, which gobbled up hundreds of mistletoe berries a day. She'd missed the Festival of the Cranes by only a few weeks. How tempting, to find herself just hours from Bosque del Apache, and the Rio Grande. She imagined lying on her stomach, binoculars trained on the sandhill cranes and snow geese in their winter quarters, watching in wonder the mass morning liftoffs and evening fly-ins. It was an old desire, but even now, though she knew the impossibility of it, it persisted; the world as one giant aviary she ached to see, all of its feathered inhabitants in their natural environment, a thousand times better to hear their cries dampened by verdant jungle foliage or echoed across the wells of canyons than to listen to abbreviated bits of captured songs emanating from a machine.

There is really nothing else to do but turn to the window. We are on the highway now and it is unbelievable how much construction is going on even as we speed further and further away from Gangnam. Each building is topped with a gargantuan orange crane reeling large beams and planks through the air. The scale of these new apartment complexes takes my breath away – I cannot imagine them all filling with people and furniture and light. Hundreds, no, thousands of apartments, so far away from the heart of the capital, and yet I will never be able to afford a single one, no matter how much I save all my life. In a way, I will be glad when we are almost home and the scenery will turn into rice fields and farm plots, and I will be reminded of how far I have come, instead of what I cannot reach.

The end of the summer and the autumn of 1986 was the period of the Great Building. Concrete plants were built in Chernobyl and in the Station's neighborhood. Huge machines milled compositions of concrete, sand, and crushed stone constantly. Every two minutes, at night and in daylight, powerful petrol tanks with roaring motors ran by the roads to the Station. They were followed by watering machines, which misted the dust in the air so that it wouldn’t spread. Small Chernobyl houses, kept under the cover of fruit gardens and having lost their owners forever, trembled at the thunder of the passing vehicles. At the Station, concrete was flowing like a river. Cranes of the Demagy worked day and night. Workers, engineers, and soldiers labored in four shifts, by sunlight and by searchlight. At the same time, about ten thousand people were working at the ground.

Una de las muchachas era hermosa. Llevaba un bulto envuelto en un pañuelo con un diseño blanco de mil grullas sobre un fondo rosado de crespón

And he prayed that his family would be protected from the atom bomb disease called leukemia.

It’s a Japanese custom called senbazuru. If you make one thousand paper cranes, you can restore someone to good health. Though you cannot see him, you become aware of the fact that your father is sitting on the floor. He is folding cranes so your mother can string them. This is marriage.

Your mother is in the bedside chair. She is wearing a dress printed with strawberries and birds. Using a long needle, she is stringing brightly colored origami cranes into garlands. You know what she’s doing: It’s a Japanese custom called senbazuru. If you make one thousand paper cranes, you can restore someone to good health. Though you cannot see him, you become aware of the fact that your father is sitting on the floor. He is folding cranes so that your mother can string them. This is marriage.

Your mother is in the bedside chair. She is wearing a dress printed with strawberries and birds. Using a long needle, she is stringing brightly colored origami cranes into garlands. You know what she’s doing: It’s a Japanese custom called senbazuru. If you make one thousand paper cranes, you can restore someone to good health. Though you cannot see him, you become aware of the fact that your father is sitting on the floor. He is folding cranes so that your mother can string them. This is marriage.