Through Thick And Thin Quotes

But it does not seem that I can trust anyone,' said Frodo. Sam looked at him unhappily. 'It all depends on what you want,' put in Merry. 'You can trust us to stick with you through thick and thin--to the bitter end. And you can trust us to keep any secret of yours--closer than you keep it yourself. But you cannot trust us to let you face trouble alone, and go off without a word. We are your friends, Frodo.

Dying is overrated. Human sentimentality has twisted it into the ultimate act of love. Biggest load of bullshit in the world. Dying for someone isn't the hard thing. The man that dies escapes. Plain and simple. Game over. End of pain...Try living for someone. Through it all-good, bad, thick, thin, joy, suffering. That's the hard thing.

You can trust us to stick to you through thick and thin – to the bitter end. And you can trust us to keep any secret of yours – closer than you yourself keep it. But you cannot trust us to let you face trouble alone, and go off without a word. We are your friends, Frodo. Anyway: there it is. We know most of what Gandalf has told you. We know a good deal about the ring. We are horribly afraid–but we are coming with you; or following you like hounds.

Through thick and thin, we're brothers to the bitter end. And if you're going to hell, buddy, I'm driving the bus.

When you really love someone, you cannot walk away. No matter what they do. No matter the lies from their mouth, or the actions from their bodies, you tie yourself tightly to their sail and vow to be there through thick and thin. Let the wind blow you where it may. Even if that place is a crash. Even if that place tears you apart and kills anything good.

I might like to have someone courting me. But it would have to be someone who is a square shooter and who has a train load of courage. And it would have to be someone who doesn't have to talk down to folks to feel good, or to tell a person they are worthless ifthey just made a mistake. And he'd have to be not too thin. Why, I remember hugging [my brother] Ernest was like warpping your arms around a fence post,and I love Ernest, but I want a man who can hold me down in a wind. Maybe he'd have to be pretty stubborn. I don't have any use for a man that isn't stubborn. Likely a stubborn fellow will stay with you through thick and thin, and a spineless one will take off, or let his heart wander.

people who succeed tend to find one goal in the distant future and then chase it through thick and thin. People who flit from one interest to another are much, much less likely to excel at any of them. School asks students to be good at a range of subjects, but life asks people to find one passion that they will follow forever.

You'd help if you could, wouldn't you, boy?" I said. "It's no wonder they call you man's best friend. Faithful and loyal and true, you share in our sorrows and rejoice with us in our triumphs, the truest friend we ever have known, a better friend than we deserve. You have thrown in your lot with us, through thick and thin, on battlefield and hearthrug, refusing to leave your master even when death and destruction lie all around. Ah, noble dog, you are the furry mirror in which we see our better selves reflected, man as he could be, unstained by war or ambition, unspoilt by-

It seems to me that you won't have had a proper series of adventures, unless you've gone through thick and thin.

When I said I loved you, I didn't mean for a week, or maybe a year, I meant always, in the good times and the bad, through thick and thin. I'm playing for keeps here, Mags.

Yet amid the hurricane of emotions raging within Your lover is at peace loving you through thick and thin

Friends come and go. But through the thick and thin, the good and bad, you can only ever count on your family. That's the heart of it. Family.

It depends on what you want," put in Merry. "You can trust us to stick to you through thick and thin- to the bitter end. And you can trust us to keep any secret of yours- closer than you keep it yourself. But you cannot trust us to let you face trouble alone and go off without a word. We are your friends, Frodo. Anyway: there it is. We know most of what Gandalf has told you. We know a good deal about the Ring. We are horribly afraid- but we are coming with you; or following you like hounds.

Did I have to be dead to get you to see me? Wake the fuck up, Ms. Lane. Dying is overrated. Human sentimentality has twisted it into the ultimate act of love. Biggest load of bullshit in the world. Dying for someone isn't the hard thing. The man that dies escapes. Plan and simple. Game over. End of pain. Alina was the lucky one. Try living for someone. Through it all - good, bad, thick, thin, joy, suffering. That's the hard thing.

Before you begin a thing, remind yourself that difficulties and delays quite impossible to foresee are ahead. If you could see them clearly, naturally you could do a great deal to get rid of them but you can't. You can only see one thing clearly and that is your goal. Form a mental vision of that and cling to it through thick and thin.

No. I don't want the love at first sight That sears my heart Like a bolt of lightning And disappears in the blink of an eye Leaving me burned and scarred for life I want a steady mutual liking Which brings respect and equality, compassion and compatibility acknowledgement and appreciation A strong friendship Which makes us both want to put in efforts To stick to each other Through thick and thin Not because we have to but because we want to

She's never really wanted to be the only person, she's never been such a fan of being alone.

I’ve done this job for centuries On every student’s head I’ve sat Of thoughts I take inventories For I’m the famous Sorting Hat I’ve sorted high, I’ve sorted low, I’ve done the job through thick and thin So put me on and you will know Which House you should be in 

No matter what the deeper reasons are, the loss of friends you thought would stand by you through thick and thin is an added heartbreak. The injustice of these second losses makes grief itself that much more difficult.

When you really love somebody, you stick with them through thick and thin and you’ll do anything not to let that person go.

Family is people who won’t ever give up on you, yet they push you and support you through thick and thin.

It’s kind of a dorky statement, but it is true that grief rearranges your address book. It’s amazing how many people drop out of your life in the wake of catastrophic loss. People who have been with you through thick and thin suddenly disappear, or turn dismissive, shaming, strange. Random strangers become your biggest, deepest source of comfort, if even only for a few moments.

Dying for someone isn't the hard thing. The man that dies escapes. Plain and simple. Game over. End of pain. Alina was the lucky one. Try living for someone. Through it all-good, bad, thick, thin, joy, suffering.

Some stupid people started the idea that because women obviously back up their own people through everything, therefore women are blind and do not see anything. They can hardly have known any women. The same women who are ready to defend their men through thick and thin are (in their personal intercourse with the man) almost morbidly lucid about the thinness of his excuses or the thickness of his head. A man's friend likes him but leaves him as he is: his wife loves him and is always trying to turn him into somebody else. Women who are utter mystics in their creed are utter cynics in their criticism. Thackeray expressed this well when he made Pendennis' mother, who worshipped her son as a god, yet assume that he would go wrong as a man. She underrated his virtue, though she overrated his value. The devotee is entirely free to criticise; the fanatic can safely be a sceptic. Love is not blind; that is the last thing that it is. Love is bound; and the more it is bound the less it is blind.

Love wasn’t about a beautiful dress, a note, or even poignant words. It was about being with someone through thick and thin, about seeing them through not only the best moments of life but also the worst. It was about being there for someone like I would have been there for Reed if he’d let me. I thought of my birth mother. True love was also about forgiveness.

both you and paintings are layered… first, ephemera and notations on the back of the canvas. Labels indicate gallery shows, museum shows, footprints in the snow, so to speak. Then pencil scribbles on the stretcher, usually by the artist, usually a title or date. Next the stretcher itself. Pine or something. Wooden triangles in the corners so the picture can be tapped tighter when the canvas becomes loose. Nails in the wood securing the picture to the stretcher. Next, a canvas: linen, muslin, sometimes a panel; then the gesso - a primary coat, always white. A layer of underpaint, usually a pastel color, then, the miracle, where the secrets are: the paint itself, swished around, roughly, gently, layer on layer, thick or thin, not more than a quarter of an inch ever -- God can happen in that quarter of an inch -- the occasional brush hair left embedded, colors mixed over each other, tones showing through, sometimes the weave of the linen revealing itself. The signature on top of the entire goulash. Then varnish is swabbed over the whole. Finally, the frame, translucent gilt or carved wood. The whole thing is done.

I want to be your husband, Lucy. I want to be the guy who carries your bag, and holds your hand and sits next to you on planes. I want to be the one who supports you in your career and in your life. The man who loves you through thick and thin. And I’m hoping you’ll say yes to being my wife.

IF YOU WANT A STORYBOOK ENDING, stop—now—and remember them in that tender moment. Be content to know that they embarked on a series of adventures throughout the West and that they stayed together through thick and thin for forty-five years. But know this as well: If their story ended here, no one would remember them at all. Where a tale begins and where it ends matters. Who tells the story, and why . . . That makes all the difference.

One must make allowances for a parental instinct that has been starving for twenty-five or thirty years. It is famished, it is crazed with hunger by that time, and will be entirely satisfied with anything that comes handy; its taste is atrophied, it can't tell mud cat from shad. A devil born to a young couple is measurably recognizable by them as a devil before long, but a devil adopted by an old couple is an angel to them, and remains so, through thick and thin.

A friend is someone who accepts you for who you are not what you are. They are with you through the good and the bad, the thick and the thin and doesn't try to change you but will tell you when you are in error. If you believe in your friend you will accept their opinion as an optimistic way to improve yourself. No one can tell you who to choose as a friend as you must choose who you are willing to accept failure from because even a friend can let you down but it is up to you to choose who you will allow to let you down

Love, true love, lasts through thick and thin, pain and happiness, trials and tribulations. I

You are never alone, not when you have friends. Learn from my stories and, through thick and thin, remember, if you have friends you are never alone.   Rock

One of the most memorably unexpected events I experienced in the course of doing this book came in a dissection room at the University of Nottingham in England when a professor and surgeon named Ben Ollivere (about whom much more in due course) gently incised and peeled back a sliver of skin about a millimeter thick from the arm of a cadaver. It was so thin as to be translucent. “That,” he said, “is where all your skin color is. That’s all that race is—a sliver of epidermis.” I mentioned this to Nina Jablonski when we met in her office in State College, Pennsylvania, soon afterward. She gave a nod of vigorous assent. “It is extraordinary how such a small facet of our composition is given so much importance,” she said. “People act as if skin color is a determinant of character when all it is is a reaction to sunlight. Biologically, there is actually no such thing as race—nothing in terms of skin color, facial features, hair type, bone structure, or anything else that is a defining quality among peoples. And yet look how many people have been enslaved or hated or lynched or deprived of fundamental rights through history because of the color of their skin.

It’s so easy to be around people when everything is... well... easy. But the people who’ve been with you through thick and thin, who’ve seen you at your absolute worst, and who still want to hang out with you at the end of the day? If that isn’t family, I don’t know what is.

I used to think in my Russian-novel days, that I would cherish a lover who managed through thick and thin, snow and sleet, to have a bunch of Parma violets on my breakfast tray each morning--also rain or shine, Christmas or August, and onward into complete Neverland. Later, I shifted my dream plan--a split of cold champagne one half hour before the tray! Violets, sparkling wine, and trays themselves were as nonexistent as the lover(s), of course, but once again, Why not?

You’re lucky to have such great friends,” Joey said quietly. “Luck has nothing to do with it, dearie. We decided to become friends and to stay friends, through thick and thin, warts and all.

I got a lot out of my bad times, not just because they gave me mistakes to learn from but also because they helped me find out who my real friends were—the friends who would be with me through thick and thin.

Nonetheless, when it finally ended and the hairdressers left and Tess insisted upon pulling her to the mirror, Fire saw, and understood, that everyone had done the job well. The dress, deep shimmering purple and utterly simple in design, was so beautifully-cut and so clingy and well-fitting that Fire felt slightly naked. And her hair. She couldn’t follow what they’d done with her hair, braids thin as threads in some places, looped and wound through the thick sections that fell over her shoulders and down her back, but she saw that the end result was a controlled wildness that was magnificent against her face, her body, and the dress. She turned to measure the effect on her guard - all twenty of them, for all had roles to play in tonight’s proceedings, and all were awaiting her orders. Twenty jaws hung slack with astonishment - even Musa’s, Mila’s, and Neel’s. Fire touched their minds, and was pleased, and then angry, to find them open as the glass roofs in July. ‘Take hold of yourselves,’ she snapped. ‘It’s a disguise, remember? This isn’t going to work if the people meant to help me can’t keep their heads.’ ‘It will work, Lady Granddaughter.’ Tess handed Fire two knives in ankle holsters. ‘You’ll get what you want from whomever you want. Tonight King Nash would give you the Winged River as a present, if you asked for it. Dells, child - Prince Brigan would give you his best warhorse.

Our “in tune with my feelings” era believes that to be true to myself, to be authentic, means I need to act on my feelings. But the opposite is true. In fact, true authenticity means I maintain a trust through thick and thin.

Think of them. Heads up, eyes on the target. Running. Full speed. Gravity be damned. Toward that thick layer of glass that is the ceiling. Running, full speed, and crashing. Crashing into that ceiling and falling back. Crashing into it and falling back. Into it and falling back. Woman after woman. Each one running and each one crashing. And everyone falling. How many women had to hit that glass before the first crack appeared? How many cuts did they get, how many bruises? How hard did they have to hit the ceiling? How many women had to hit that glass to ripple it, to send out a thousand hairline fractures? How many women had to hit that glass before the pressure of their effort caused it to evolve from a thick pane of glass into just a thin sheet of splintered ice? So that when it was my turn to run, it didn’t even look like a ceiling anymore. I mean, the wind was already whistling through—I could always feel it on my face. And there were all these holes giving me a perfect view to the other side. I didn’t even notice the gravity, I think it had already worn itself away. So I didn’t have to fight as hard. I had time to study the cracks. I had time to decide where the air felt the rarest, where the wind was the coolest, where the view was the most soaring. I picked my spot in the glass and I called it my target. And I ran. And when I finally hit that ceiling, it just exploded into dust. Like that.

People can burn and beat love out of you. They really can kill it, and it’s not your fault you don’t feel it anymore, and how liberating it is to finally realize that. Love isn’t for better or for worse, through thick or thin. It damn well shouldn’t be.

Excuse me while I throw this down, I’m old and cranky and tired of hearing the idiocy repeated by people who ought to know better. Real women do not have curves. Real women do not look like just one thing. Real women have curves, and not. They are tall, and not. They are brown-skinned, and olive-skinned, and not. They have small breasts, and big ones, and no breasts whatsoever. Real women start their lives as baby girls. And as baby boys. And as babies of indeterminate biological sex whose bodies terrify their doctors and families into making all kinds of very sudden decisions. Real women have big hands and small hands and long elegant fingers and short stubby fingers and manicures and broken nails with dirt under them. Real women have armpit hair and leg hair and pubic hair and facial hair and chest hair and sexy moustaches and full, luxuriant beards. Real women have none of these things, spontaneously or as the result of intentional change. Real women are bald as eggs, by chance and by choice and by chemo. Real women have hair so long they can sit on it. Real women wear wigs and weaves and extensions and kufi and do-rags and hairnets and hijab and headscarves and hats and yarmulkes and textured rubber swim caps with the plastic flowers on the sides. Real women wear high heels and skirts. Or not. Real women are feminine and smell good and they are masculine and smell good and they are androgynous and smell good, except when they don’t smell so good, but that can be changed if desired because real women change stuff when they want to. Real women have ovaries. Unless they don’t, and sometimes they don’t because they were born that way and sometimes they don’t because they had to have their ovaries removed. Real women have uteruses, unless they don’t, see above. Real women have vaginas and clitorises and XX sex chromosomes and high estrogen levels, they ovulate and menstruate and can get pregnant and have babies. Except sometimes not, for a rather spectacular array of reasons both spontaneous and induced. Real women are fat. And thin. And both, and neither, and otherwise. Doesn’t make them any less real. There is a phrase I wish I could engrave upon the hearts of every single person, everywhere in the world, and it is this sentence which comes from the genius lips of the grand and eloquent Mr. Glenn Marla: There is no wrong way to have a body. I’m going to say it again because it’s important: There is no wrong way to have a body. And if your moral compass points in any way, shape, or form to equality, you need to get this through your thick skull and stop with the “real women are like such-and-so” crap. You are not the authority on what “real” human beings are, and who qualifies as “real” and on what basis. All human beings are real. Yes, I know you’re tired of feeling disenfranchised. It is a tiresome and loathsome thing to be and to feel. But the tit-for-tat disenfranchisement of others is not going to solve that problem. Solidarity has to start somewhere and it might as well be with you and me

Of course,’ Horton answered. ‘Of course I will stick. I’ll stick by you small folks through thin and through thick!

Through the thick and thin of it all, it is with every harmless personal dare that I have found my greatest happiness.

Try living for someone. Through it all—good, bad, thick, thin, joy, suffering. That’s the hard thing.

I think a true friend is one who stands by you through thick and thin. I think someone who loves you will stand by you through the thickest and the thinnest.

Brant When you really love someone, you cannot walk away. No matter what they do. No matter the lies from their mouth, or the actions from their bodies, you tie yourself tightly to their sail and vow to be there through thick and thin. Let the wind blow you where it may. Even if that place is a crash. Even if that place tears you apart and kills anything good.

They say marry the person with whom you are the closest to, the guy with whom you can share your 3 am thoughts with, sitting on a rooftop and discussing random things like why cavemen were hirsute or why the earth isn’t a square. The genie who knows what you want before you open your mouth. The angel who reads your mind before you can articulate your thoughts. The friend you can laugh and cry with. The brother whose arms are safer than any amount of security and protection the outside world can provide you. The parent that will support you through thick and thin, no matter what. The soul whose love for them in the river of your heart will never dilute, even when the currents get rough, and the waters, dark. The fellow who would tell you that he loves you every night and spend the day proving it through little gestures that speak much louder than any words of love. The person with whom you can hold hands when you turn eighty and announce to the world- ‘we made it!

On this material plane, each living being is like a street lantern lamp with a dirty lampshade. The inside flame burns evenly and is of the same quality as all the rest—hence all of us are equal in the absolute sense, the essence, in the quality of our energy. However, some of the lamps are “turned down” and having less light in them, burn fainter, (the beings have a less defined individuality, are less in tune with the universal All which is the same as the Will)—hence all of us are unequal in a relative sense, some of us being more aware (human beings), and others being less aware (animal beings), with small wills and small flames. The lampshades of all are stained with the clutter of the material reality or the physical world. As a result, it is difficult for the light of each lamp to shine through to the outside and it is also difficult to see what is on the other side of the lampshade that represents the external world (a great thick muddy ocean of fog), and hence to “feel” a connection with the other lantern lamps (other beings). The lampshade is the physical body immersed in the ocean of the material world, and the limiting host of senses that it comes with. The dirt of the lampshade results from the cluttering bulk of life experience accumulated without a specific goal or purpose. The dirtier the lampshade, the less connection each soul has to the rest of the universe—and this includes its sense of connection to other beings, its sense of dual presence in the material world and the metaphysical world, and the thin connection line to the wick of fuel or the flow of electricity that resides beyond the material plane and is the universal energy. To remain “lit” each lantern lamp must tap into the universal Source of energy. If the link is weak, depression and-or illness sets in. If the link is strong, life persists. This metaphor to me best illustrates the universe.

This is where I go, when I go: It's a room with no windows and no doors, and walls that are thin enough for me to see and hear everything but too thick to break through. I'm there, but I'm not there. I am pounding to be let out, but nobody can hear me. This is where I go, when I go: To a country where everyone's face looks different from mine, and the language is the act of not speaking, and noise is everywhere in the air we breathe. I am doing what the Romans do in Rome; I am trying to communicate, but no one has bothered to tell me that these people cannot hear. This is where I go, when I go: Somewhere completely, unutterably orange. This is where I go, when I go: To the place where my body becomes a piano full of black keys only—the sharps and the flats, when everyone know that to play a song other people want to hear, you need some white keys. This is why I come back: To find those white keys.

Cultures tend to invite the dominance of one over the other, as a means by which an individual succeeds and advances or, conversely, fails and falls. A culture dominated by attackers—and one in which the qualities of attacking are admired, often overtly encouraged—tends to breed people with a thick skin, which nonetheless still serves to protect a most brittle self. Thus the wounds bleed but stay well hidden beneath the surface. Cultures favouring the defender promote thin skin and quickness to take offence—its own kind of aggression, I am sure you see. The culture of attackers seeks submission and demands evidence of that submission as proof of superiority over the subdued. The culture of defenders seeks compliance through conformity, punishing dissenters and so gaining the smug superiority of enforcing silence, and from silence, complicity.

Ten things you should always do when you form a group 1. Work with your friends 2. Find like-minded people 3. Have ultimate self-belief 4. Write great songs 5. Get a great manager 6. Live in Manchester 7. Support each other through thick and thin 8. Realise no one person is bigger than the group (thanks to Gene Simmons for that one) 9. Watch where the money goes 10. Always get separate legal advice for everything before you sign; failing that, ask your mam and dad

Be glad your nose is on your face" Be glad your nose is on your face, not pasted on some other place, for if it were where it is not, you might dislike your nose a lot. Imagine if your precious nose were sandwiched in between your toes, that clearly would not be a treat, for you'd be forced to smell your feet. Your nose would be a source of dread were it attached atop your head, it soon would drive you to despair, forever tickled by your hair. Within your ear, your nose would be an absolute catastrophe, for when you were obliged to sneeze, your brain would rattle from the breeze. Your nose, instead, through thick and thin, remains between your eyes and chin, not pasted on some other place-- be glad your nose is on your face!

Yeah, it stings. But at least I feel something. Something besides hungry. Something besides afraid. Weird. I always thought cutters were sick. Sicker than me, even. But with a single swipe I understand why they do it. Why they like it, even though they hate it. I let the water run over the cut, ratchet it hotter, watch the blood slow, stutter, almost halt. I like the way the exposed flesh looks, all pinkish white. It looks new, although I know that isn't right. It's the same age as my skin, as my bones. Me. It's been there with me since the beginning. Been with me through thick. Thin. Daddy. Suddenly, I don't like how it looks at all.

Brain scans prove that patients who’ve sustained significant childhood trauma have brains that look different from people who haven’t. Traumatized brains tend to have an enlarged amygdala—a part of the brain that is generally associated with producing feelings of fear. Which makes sense. But it goes further than that: For survivors of emotional abuse, the part of their brain that is associated with self-awareness and self-evaluation is shrunken and thin. Women who’ve suffered childhood sexual abuse have smaller somatosensory cortices—the part of the brain that registers sensation in our bodies. Victims who were screamed at might have an altered response to sound. Traumatized brains can result in reductions in the parts of the brain that process semantics, emotion and memory retrieval, perceiving emotions in others, and attention and speech. Not getting enough sleep at night potentially affects developing brains’ plasticity and attention and increases the risk of emotional problems later in life. And the scariest factoid, for me anyway: Child abuse is often associated with reduced thickness in the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain associated with moderation, decision-making, complex thought, and logical reasoning. Brains do have workarounds. There are people without amygdalae who don’t feel fear. There are people who have reduced prefrontal cortices who are very logical. And other parts of the brain can compensate, make up the lost parts in other ways. But overall, when I looked at the breadth of evidence, the results felt crushing. The fact that the brain’s cortical thickness is directly related to IQ was particularly threatening to me. Even if I wasn’t cool, or kind, or personable, I enjoyed the narrative that I was at least effective. Intelligent. What these papers seemed to tell me is that however smart I am, I’m not as smart as I could have been had this not happened to me. The questions arose again: Is this why my pitches didn’t go through? Is this why my boss never respected me? Is this why I was pushed to do grunt work in the back room?

At any stage of the game — regardless of your educational level, upbringing or age — you can decide to leapfrog the pettiness of people to achieve your goals. When you make a commitment and have the courage to stick with it through thick and thin, you'll double your income — and more.

The books in Mo and Meggie’s house were stacked under tables, on chairs, in the corners of the rooms. There were books in the kitchen and books in the lavatory. Books on the TV set and in the closet, small piles of books, tall piles of books, books thick and thin, books old and new. They welcomed Meggie down to breakfast with invitingly opened pages; they kept boredom at bay when the weather was bad. And sometimes you fell over them. “He’s just standing there!” whispered Meggie, leading Mo into her room. “Has he got a hairy face? If so he could be a werewolf.” “Oh, stop it!” Meggie looked at him sternly, although his jokes made her feel less scared. Already, she hardly believed anymore in the figure standing in the rain—until she knelt down again at the window. “There! Do you see him?” she whispered. Mo looked out through the raindrops running down the

And in an odd way, realizing all this has given me an unexpected satisfaction and a little more self-respect. I have changed, and it’s for the better. You really can’t love unconditionally. People can burn and beat love out of you. They really can kill it, and it’s not your fault you don’t feel it anymore, and how liberating it is to finally realize that. Love isn’t for better or for worse, through thick or thin. It damn well shouldn’t be.

They said love is fleeting, so we hung on to it through thick and thin. They said marriage is about compromise, so we made it about equality. They said jobs exist just to pay bills, so we made up one we enjoyed. They said you need to settle for a mediocre life, so we made it about chasing the extraordinary.

Beauty lies in the mind, inner soul.... Beauty lies in the innocence, appreciation, understanding, warmth, expressions, caring nature, behavior towards others, the depth of understanding the situations, the kind of sufferings, struggles, losses, difficulties, sorrows, happiness- the thick n thins through which person sails throughout hi/her life. Which ultimately reflects on your face- the ultimate reflection of your mind and thus evolves a beautiful personality.

7. Character is built in the course of your inner confrontation. Character is a set of dispositions, desires, and habits that are slowly engraved during the struggle against your own weakness. You become more disciplined, considerate, and loving through a thousand small acts of self-control, sharing, service, friendship, and refined enjoyment. If you make disciplined, caring choices, you are slowly engraving certain tendencies into your mind. You are making it more likely that you will desire the right things and execute the right actions. If you make selfish, cruel, or disorganized choices, then you are slowly turning this core thing inside yourself into something that is degraded, inconstant, or fragmented. You can do harm to this core thing with nothing more than ignoble thoughts, even if you are not harming anyone else. You can elevate this core thing with an act of restraint nobody sees. If you don’t develop a coherent character in this way, life will fall to pieces sooner or later. You will become a slave to your passions. But if you do behave with habitual self-discipline, you will become constant and dependable. 8. The things that lead us astray are short term—lust, fear, vanity, gluttony. The things we call character endure over the long term—courage, honesty, humility. People with character are capable of a long obedience in the same direction, of staying attached to people and causes and callings consistently through thick and thin. People with character also have scope. They are not infinitely flexible, free-floating, and solitary. They are anchored by permanent attachments to important things. In the realm of the intellect, they have a set of permanent convictions about fundamental truths. In the realm of emotion, they are enmeshed in a web of unconditional loves. In the realm of action, they have a permanent commitment to tasks that cannot be completed in a single lifetime.

I saw them all, suddenly, for just a moment, through non-Radchaai eyes, an eddying crowd of unnervingly ambiguously gendered people. I saw all the features that would mark gender for non-Radchaai—never, to my annoyance and inconvenience, the same way in each place. Short hair or long, worn unbound (trailing down a back, or in a thick, curled nimbus) or bound (braided, pinned, tied). Thick-bodied or thin-, faces delicate-featured or coarse-, with cosmetics or none. A profusion of colors that would have been gender-marked in other places. All of this matched randomly with bodies curving at breast and hip or not, bodies that one moment moved in ways various non-Radchaai would call feminine, the next moment masculine. Twenty years of habit overtook me, and for an instant I despaired of choosing the right pronouns, the right terms of address. But I didn't need to do that here. I could drop that worry, a small but annoying weight I had carried all this time. I was home.

Few arborists would suggest planting trees on a three-foot center, but if we planted our trees in groups of three or more on ten-foot centers, the resulting root matrix would keep them locked in place through thick and thin. None of the trees would develop into a single majestic specimen tree, but together they would form a single grove of trees that the eye will take in just as if they were one large tree. Planting tree groves will also protect against the domino effect. Every time we take down a tree, we make the remaining trees more vulnerable to straight-line winds. There is one catch to this approach, however: the trees must be planted young, so their roots can interlock as they grow.

Even through the darkest phase Be it thick or thin Always someone marches brave Here beneath my skin

The reader tries to uncover the skeleton that the book conceals. The author starts with the skeleton and tries to cover it up. His aim is to conceal the skeleton artistically or, in other words, to put flesh on the bare bones. If he is a good writer, he does not bury a puny skeleton under a mass of fat; on the other hand, neither should the flesh be too thin, so that the bones show through. If the flesh is thick enough, and if the flabbiness is avoided, the joints will be detectable and the motion of the parts will reveal the articulation.

I'm a proud American girl! There's something about America that has a free spirit. We're rebels, fighters, dreamers, wanderers, and go-getters. I'm proud to have been raised in a Military family. I know what true leadership is. The true essence of the American spirit is that we're not quitters. We've gone through thick and thin to make America ours, to make it home. Happy 4th!

Savannah's fear was being pushed aside by the heated tenderness of Gregori's mouth, by the gentleness in his caressing hands. He carelessly shoved the sheet down, exposing her bare breasts to his hungry gaze. Hot. He was so hot. Savannah could not stand the feel of the thin sheet of her heated hips, twisting around her legs. Her hands were tangled in Gregori's thick hair, crushing it in her fingers like so much silk.His shirt was open to his tapered waist, his hard muscles pressing against her soft breasts. The rough,dark hair on his chest rasped erotically over nipples. A wave of heat heralded a storm of fire, through him, through her. Savannah's hands, of their own accord, pushed his shirt from his wide shoulders. She watched with enormous eyes as he slowly shrugged out of it, his silver gaze holding her blue one captive. She was drowning in those pale, mesmerizing eyes. Eyes filled with such intensity, with so much hunger for one woman. Her. Only her.

Diggory's Dyke was a deep cut between two chalk downs-high, green hills, where a thin layer of green grass and reddish earth covered the chalk, and there was scarcely soil enough for trees. The Dyke looked, from a distance, like a white chalk gash on a green velvet board. Local legend had it that the cut was dug, in a day and a night, by one Diggory, using a spade that had once been a sword blade before Wayland Smith had melted it down and beaten it out, on his journey into Faerie from the Wall. There was those who said the sword had once been Flamberge, and others, that it was one the sword Balmung; but there was none who claimed to know just who Diggory had been, and it might all have been stuff and nonsense. Anyway, the path to Wall went through Diggory's Dyke, and any foot-traveler or any person going by any manner of wheeled vehicle went through the Dyke, where the chalk rose on either side of you like thick white walls, and the Downs rose up above them like green pillows of a giant's bed.

Everyone's unique. No two people are alike. Be proud of that. If someone says something against you, screw them. They don't know what it's like to be you. If they did, they would never trash talk you. And, do the same with others. You don't know what a person's going through. If someone's having a rough day, and lashes out, forgive them. Give them a shoulder to cry on, a person to put their faith in. And always, always, stay loyal to your friends. Get yourself some, and never lose them. These are the people that are going to be with you through thick and thin, no matter what. Sure, you'll fight, you'll bitch, all friend groups do. But, the important thing to do is: forgive, and move on. And most importantly, love God. He is our Creator, and if you don't believe in him, that's ok. I'm saddened by the fact that you don't, but it's ok. I can just pray for you, and hope that He shows himself to you later on. You may ask, "How can there be a God that lets all this bad stuff happen? How can he just sit and watch and do nothing?" Well, I don't have all of the answers. But, I do know that He is greatly saddened by all of the evil in the world, yet He still loves each and every one of us. And, when you feel like nobody loves you, or maybe you just don't love yourself, know: He is there for you. He loves you, and he will never stop loving you.

The wind was bitterly cold, but while he pulled the first rope toward the pulley Shinji stared out over the dark-indigo sea and felt boiling up within him energy for the toil that would soon have him sweating. The pulley began to turn and heavy, wet rope came rising from the sea. Through his thin gloves Shinji could feel the thick, icy rope he grasped in his hands. As it passed over the pulley the taut rope threw off a sleet-like spray of salt water.

He wasn’t actually physically perfect, but he came close. He had a scar cutting through the center of his right eyebrow; I made a mental note to ask him about the story behind that. One ear was slightly larger than the other, and his nose was bent, just a whisper, to the left. His hairline wasn’t even, and his hair was too thick; it needed to be cut and thinned. His bottom teeth were slightly crooked, but I didn’t notice or see them unless he smiled his full-on one-thousand-watt smile. I loved that when I looked at him, I didn’t see the blinding McHotpants façade of perfection any more. I saw a frustratingly bossy, hilariously funny, irritatingly teasing, captivatingly intelligent, seriously sexy good guy.

When people dream something as a child, it doesn’t always come true. But my childhood dream of what kind of man I would marry and spend the rest of my life with did come true. I always knew my husband would be tall, dark, and handsome, but he also had to have a rugged look, as if he’d just walked out of the wilderness. He had to love the outdoors and be able to survive there if needed. I also wanted him to be able to take command of any situation when needed. I wanted him to be a leader but with a sense of humor, too. I wanted him to work and make a living. I wanted him to be a man’s man, but with gentleness and love for me and his children, and be ready to defend us at all times. More than anything else, I wanted to feel loved and protected. What I didn’t know when I found the man who filled my dreams was that I had found a diamond in the rough. It would take a lifetime to perfect that diamond on the long journey of life. Phil and I have had many good years, some hard years, a few sad years, and a lot of struggling years to get where we are now. God put us in each other’s paths. It has always been a wonderful ride for me. I have a husband who is my best buddy and friend, my lover, my Christian brother, my champion, and the person who will always be there through thick and thin. There is no greater love than your love for God, but right under that is your love for your husband, your partner in life. One of the greatest tragedies I see is people not putting every effort into the foundation of their marriage. My grandmother told me that it’s one man and one woman for life and that your marriage is worth fighting for. We had a few hard and bumpy years, but prayer, patience, and some suffering and hope-plus remembering an old lady’s words-were what got me through the difficult times. We have given it our all for our marriage and family, and my dreams did come true. Phil is and will always be my hero!

I still stared at Daemon, completely aware that everyone else except him was watching me. Closely. But why wouldn’t he look at me? A razor-sharp panic clawed at my insides. No. This couldn’t be happening. No way.
 My body was moving before I even knew what I was doing. From the corner of my eye, I saw Dee shake her head and one of the Luxen males step forward, but I was propelled by an inherent need to prove that my worst fears were not coming true. After all, he’d healed me, but then I thought of what Dee had said, of how Dee had behaved with me. What if Daemon was like her? Turned into something so foreign and cold? He would’ve healed me just to make sure he was okay. I still didn’t stop.
 Please, I thought over and over again. Please. Please. Please. On shaky legs, I crossed the long room, and even though Daemon hadn’t seemed to even acknowledge my existence, I walked right up to him, my hands trembling as I placed them on his chest. “Daemon?” I whispered, voice thick. His head whipped around, and he was suddenly staring down at me. Our gazes collided once more, and for a second I saw something so raw, so painful in those beautiful eyes. And then his large hands wrapped around my upper arms. The contact seared through the shirt I wore, branding my skin, and I thought—I expected—that he would pull me against him, that he would embrace me, and even though nothing would be all right, it would be better. Daemon’s hands spasmed around my arms, and I sucked in an unsteady breath. His eyes flashed an intense green as he physically lifted me away from him, setting me back down a good foot back. I stared at him, something deep in my chest cracking. “Daemon?” He said nothing as he let go, one finger at a time, it seemed, and his hands slid off my arms. He stepped back, returning his attention to the man behind the desk. “So . . . awkward,” murmured the redhead, smirking. I was rooted to the spot in which I stood, the sting of rejection burning through my skin, shredding my insides like I was nothing more than papier-mâché. “I think someone was expecting more of a reunion,” the Luxen male behind the desk said, his voice ringing with amusement. “What do you think, Daemon?” One shoulder rose in a negligent shrug. “I don’t think anything.” My mouth opened, but there were no words. His voice, his tone, wasn’t like his sister’s, but like it had been when we first met. He used to speak to me with barely leashed annoyance, where a thin veil of tolerance dripped from every word. The rift in my chest deepened.
For the hundredth time since the Luxen arrived, Sergeant Dasher’s warning came back to me. What side would Daemon and his family stand on? A shudder worked its way down my spine. I wrapped my arms around myself, unable to truly process what had just happened. “And you?" the man asked. When no one answered, he tried again. “Katy?” I was forced to look at him, and I wanted to shrink back from his stare. “What?” I was beyond caring that my voice broke on that one word. The man smiled as he walked around the desk. My gaze flickered over to Daemon as he shifted, drawing the attention of the beautiful redhead. “Were you expecting a more personal greeting?” he asked. “Perhaps something more intimate?” I had no idea how to answer. I felt like I’d fallen into the rabbit hole, and warnings were firing off left and right. Something primal inside me recognized that I was surrounded by predators. Completely.

Most women seek some kind of emotional connection or emotional involvement with a man before consenting to sex. From an evolutionary perspective, this is emotional wisdom women have inherited from their successful maternal ancestors. A man’s emotional involvement, particularly his genuine love, provides a powerful signal that he will stick with her through thick and thin, through health and sickness. Love provides the best chance that he will devote his commitment, provisions, and protection to one woman and her children. Men not in love feel freer to flit from woman to woman.

There’s no one but you, Bran,” Ryder began, his chest puffed out. “I never thought I’d be the type to settle down and get married until you, quite literally, fell into my life. I never thought I’d want a wife, a family, and someone to love me as much as you do until you smiled in my direction and took my breath away. I never thought, after everything I’ve been through in my life, that someone as beautiful, smart and selfless as you would stick by my side through thick and thin, but you have. I’m not perfect, and I have my flaws, but you love me in spite of that. You have changed me, and my entire life for the better. You love my brothers, like they are your own, and you made us part of your family. You’ve given me purpose. Will you do me the greatest of honour of being my wife?” It took the might of God and willpower I never knew I had not to burst into tears there and then. I squeezed his hand to the point of pain and said, “Yes!” Ryder’s shoulders sagged with relief, and I heard practically everyone release a shaky breath. I looked to my family and friends and raised a brow, “You all thought after six years I was lettin’ him out of this church without puttin’ a ring on me finger, really?

People with character are capable of long obedience in the same direction, of staying attached to people and causes and callings through thick and thin. People with character also have scope. They are not infinitely flexible, free-floating, and solitary. They are anchored by permanent attachments to important things. In the realm of the intellect, they have a set of permanent convictions about fundamental truths. In the realm of emotion, they are enmeshed in a web of unconditional loves. In the realm of action, they have a permanent commitment to tasks that cannot be completed in a single lifetime.

He says to the king, in the north they have contempt for the king’s peace, they want to administer their own murders. If Norfolk cannot subdue them they will fall into their old savagery, where each eye or limb or life itself is costed out, and all flesh has a price. In our forefathers’ time a nobleman’s life was worth six times that of a man who followed the plough. The rich man can slaughter as he pleases, if his pocket can bear the fines, but the poor man cannot afford one murder across his lifetime. We repudiate this, he tells the king: we say a man of violence cannot go free because his cousin is the judge, no more than a wealthy sinner can make up for his sins by founding a monastery. Before God and the law, all men are equal. It takes a generation, he says, to reconcile heads and hearts. Englishmen of every shire are wedded to what their nurses told them. They do not like to think too hard, or disturb the plan of the world that exists inside their heads, and they will not accept change unless it puts them in better ease. But new times are coming. Gregory’s children—and, he adds quickly, your Majesty’s children yet to be born—will never have known their country in thrall to an old fraud in Rome. They will not put their faith in the teeth and bones of the dead, or in holy water, ashes and wax. When they can read the Bible for themselves, they will be closer to God than to their own skin. They will speak His language, and He theirs. They will see that a prince exists not to sit a horse in a plumed helmet, but—as your Majesty always says—to care for his subjects, body and soul. The scriptures enjoin obedience to earthly powers, and so we stick by our prince through thick and thin. We do not reject part of his polity. We take him as a whole, consider him God’s anointed, and suppose God is keeping an eye on him.

The model stripped down naked and stood with her arms out to her sides while genderless cohorts sprayed her body with large silver canisters of foundation. They wore masks over there faces and sprayed her from head to toe like they were putting out a fire. They airbrushed her into a mono-toned six-foot-two column of a human being with no visible veins, nipples, nails, lips, or eyelashes. When every single thing that was real about the model was gone, the make up artist fug through a suite case of brushes and plowed through hundreds of tubes of flesh colored colors and began to draw human features onto her face. At the same time, the hair stylist meticulously sewed with a needle and thread strand after strand of long blond hairs onto her thin light brown locks, creating a thick full mane of shimmering gold. The model had brought her own chef, who cooked her spinach soup from scratch. The soup was fed to her by one of her lackeys, who existed solely for this purpose. The blond boy stood in front of her, blowing on the soup and then feeding it to her from a small silver child's spoon, just big enough to fit between her lips. the model's mouth was barely open, maybe a quarter of an inch wide, so that she would not crack the flesh colored paint.

continued. “The solution to almost every problem imaginable can be found in the outcome of a fairy tale. Fairy tales are life lessons disguised with colorful characters and situations. “‘The Boy Who Cried Wolf ’ teaches us the value of a good reputation and the power of honesty. ‘Cinderella’ shows us the rewards of having a good heart. ‘The Ugly Duckling’ teaches us the meaning of inner beauty.” Alex’s eyes were wide, and she nodded in agreement. She was a pretty girl with bright blue eyes and short strawberry-blonde hair that was always kept neatly out of her face with a headband. The way the other students stared at their teacher, as if the lesson being taught were in another language, was something Mrs. Peters had never grown accustomed to. So, Mrs. Peters would often direct entire lessons to the front row, where Alex sat. Mrs. Peters was a tall, thin woman who always wore dresses that resembled old, patterned sofas. Her hair was dark and curly and sat perfectly on the top of her head like a hat (and her students often thought it was). Through a pair of thick glasses, her eyes were permanently squinted from all the judgmental looks she had given her classes over the years. “Sadly, these timeless tales are no longer relevant in our society,” Mrs. Peters said. “We have traded their brilliant teachings for small-minded entertainment like television and video games. Parents now let obnoxious cartoons and violent movies influence their children. “The only exposure to the tales some children acquire are versions bastardized by film companies. Fairy

Rohit: I long to be with you, in the fullest most beautiful, complete expression of all that you are. I long to see you, hear you and love you in every way possible. When and how will that be possible? God: You will, in time. I will certainly reveal myself to you and all those who desire to have a relationship with me. For now, find me everywhere and in everyone. Love me in nature, in the land, the trees, the plants and the animals. Love me as all of the people you meet. Grab your boyfriend or girlfriend, husband or wife, child or friend. See me in them. Love them as you would love me and I will love you through them as well. I will show you the way. Rohit: What can I do to get closer to you? God: You need not do anything. I am always with you, always by your side, always ready to connect with you, always longing to be in love with you. Through this book and many like it, I have been reminding you of our long forgotten love. I am the soul mate, the one true love, the knight in shining armor, the King or Queen of your heart, the ideal lover that you have been searching for all your life. All your adventures in this world have added richness to the tapestry of your being and deepened your capacity to love and be loved. Our love is the greatest ecstasy, the sweetest bliss, the most intoxicating nectar that your soul has been longing for. It hurts me to see you resist, struggle and suffer. You are not alone. Make me a partner on your journey and let us walk together. Share your joys and sorrows, your struggle and your successes with me. Know that I have your back, that I am with you through thick and thin. I never let go of you.

–I'll just play the notes inside my skull alone in the dark where they roam around loose. 'Cause playing like a slave, I'd just step myself straight into a hangman's noose." On Sissieretta Jones, Jess writes: "See, Sissie would know how to let folks into one mask and out through another. She'd even raise a toast to the mask, jokin about whether folk–black and white–really believed that the opera was wearing her as a mask, or if it just tickled them to see her puttin on that white mask of Vivaldi. Was it her voice or someone else's? they'd seem to ask. Well, it was all her. Every note, in whiteface or blackface or in just plain old American, went straight down to her bones. That's what I heard when I truly listened, anyway. She'd pour those opera songs all over her body and then dress herself in the church frock of hymns. She told me one time, that in order to hear her true voice, she'd had to ask herself about her own masks. What kind of mask might I have on? she said. Because let me tell you, most don't even know they're wearing a mask. You've got to know which masks, how many masks you're wearing before you can put it down and see your true self. Those that do, they know just how to slide in and out of it, how to make the world spin inside it and out of it. How to spread their song all over that mask and make it one with the world, no matter how thick or thin the truth in that song might be.

In two days they began to come upon bones and cast-off apparel. They saw halfburied skeletons of mules with the bones so white and polished they seemed incandescent even in that blazing heat and they saw panniers and packsaddles and the bones of men and they saw a mule entire, the dried and blackened carcass hard as iron. They rode on. The white noon saw them through the waste like a ghost army, so pale they were with dust, like shades of figures erased upon a board. The wolves loped paler yet and grouped and skittered and lifted their lean snouts on the air. At night the horses were fed by hand from sacks of meal and watered from buckets. There was no more sickness. The survivors lay quietly in that cratered void and watched the whitehot stars go rifling down the dark. Or slept with their alien hearts beating in the sand like pilgrims exhausted upon the face of the planet Anareta, clutched to a namelessness wheeling in the night. They moved on and the iron of the wagontires grew polished bright as chrome in the pumice. To the south the blue cordilleras stood footed in their paler image on the sand like reflections in a lake and there were no wolves now. They took to riding by night, silent jornadas save for the trundling of the wagons and the wheeze of the animals. Under the moonlight a strange party of elders with the white dust thick on their moustaches and their eyebrows. They moved on and the stars jostled and arced across the firmament and died beyond the inkblack mountains. They came to know the nightskies well. Western eyes that read more geometric constructions than those names given by the ancients. Tethered to the polestar they rode the Dipper round while Orion rose in the southwest like a great electric kite. The sand lay blue in the moonlight and the iron tires of the wagons rolled among the shapes of the riders in gleaming hoops that veered and wheeled woundedly and vaguely navigational like slender astrolabes and the polished shoes of the horses kept hasping up like a myriad of eyes winking across the desert floor. They watched storms out there so distant they could not be heard, the silent lightning flaring sheetwise and the thin black spine of the mountain chain fluttering and sucked away again in the dark. They saw wild horses racing on the plain, pounding their shadows down the night and leaving in the moonlight a vaporous dust like the palest stain of their passing.

The air is crisp on my skin, and though my hands are wrapped under thick gloves, I shove my fists into my pockets anyway. The wind penetrates here through every layer, including skin. I’m dressed in fur so thick that walking feels like an exertion. It slows me down more than I would like, and even though I know there’s no imminent threat of attack, I still don’t like being unprepared in case one comes. It shakes me more than the cold ever could. When I turn to Lira, the ends of her hair are white with frost. “Try not to breathe,” I tell her. “It might get stuck halfway out.” Lira flicks up her hood. “You should try not to talk then,” she retorts. “Nobody wants your words being preserved for eternity.” “They’re pearls of wisdom, actually.” I can barely see Lira’s eyes under the mass of dark fur from her coat, but the mirthless curl of her smile is ever-present. It lingers in calculated amusement as she considers what to say next. Readies to ricochet the next blow. Lira pulls a line of ice from her hair, artfully indifferent. “If that is what pearls are worth these days, I’ll make sure to invest in diamonds.” “Or gold,” I tell her smugly. “I hear it’s worth its weight.” Kye shakes the snow from his sword and scoffs. “Anytime you two want to stop making me feel nauseated, go right ahead.” “Are you jealous because I’m not flirting with you?” Madrid asks him, warming her finger on the trigger mechanism of her gun. “I don’t need you to flirt with me,” he says. “I already know you find me irresistible.” Madrid reholsters her gun. “It’s actually quite easy to resist you when you’re dressed like that.” Kye looks down at the sleek red coat fitted snugly to his lithe frame. The fur collar cuddles against his jaw and obscures the bottoms of his ears, making it seem as though he has no neck at all. He throws Madrid a smile. “Is it because you think I look sexier wearing nothing?” Torik lets out a withering sigh and pinches the bridge of his nose. I’m not sure whether it’s from the hours we’ve gone without food or his inability to wear cutoffs in the biting cold, but his patience seems to be wearing thin. “I could swear that I’m on a life-and-death mission with a bunch of lusty kids,” he says. “Next thing I know, the lot of you will be writing love notes in rum bottles.” “Okay,” Madrid says. “Now I feel nauseated.

Even more confused than before, I started backing up. I’d go around and get in through the kitchen; David and Raquel had to know what was going on. Unfortunately for all of us, that was when Lend came out the front door, immediately collapsed with a thunk that made me cringe, and—perfect—went completely transparent. The police officers stopped fighting, every eye glued on my boyfriend, now essentially invisible other than this T-shirt and flannel pajama pants. “Okay,” I said, putting my hands on my hips. “No. This is unacceptable. I don’t care what the bleep is going on, we’re going to get it settled immediately or I swear I will give you all to the Dark Queen and let her feed on your dreams for the rest of eternity.” Every head turned my direction, their faces a portrait of shock and disbelief. “What, you’ve never seen a boy made of water before? Yawn. Go down to the pond—it’ll really blow your mind.” One close to the front—barrel-chested, middle-aged man with salt-and-pepper hair and a thick mustache—shook his head as though trying to clear it. “Are you Evelyn Green?” “Sort of. Mostly. I mean, legally. Again, sort of.” He tried to look at me, but his eyes kept drifting back to Lend. “You’re under—We’re here to—Could you please come with us?” I rolled my eyes. “No, I couldn’t. You’re last place in a very long line of people who want me right now. Besides, I haven’t done anything.” “Actually,” said a painfully tall and thin officer with a voice that struggled between tenor and bass but really sounded like a dog with something caught in its throat, “you’re wanted for terrorism.” He shrugged apologetically. “We’re supposed to take you into NSA headquarters.” “I think you have the wrong acronym there,” I said. This had Anne-Whatever Whatever written all over it.

Smart girl,” Andel muttered, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw their shapes disappear. Instead of relaxing, the tension along my spine tightened further. Vale stood, and I caught the briefest impression of a tall, broad form packed tightly with the kind of muscle hard-won through fighting. There were thin, fading scars peppered over his thighs and stomach. I tried to look away but ended up staring straight at the length of him, half-raised and thick between his legs. “Don’t read into it.” He stepped out of the bath, reaching for a towel to dry himself. “It has nothing to do with you.” “Manipulating people actually makes you hard?

Leaving Forever My son can look me level in the eyes now, and does, hard, when I tell him he cannot watch chainsaw murders at the midnight movie, that he must bend his mind to Biology, under this roof, in the clear light of a Tensor lamp. Outside, his friends throb with horsepower under the moon. He stands close, milk sour on his breath, gauging the heat of my conviction, eye-whites pink from his new contacts. He can see me better than before. And I can see myself in those insolent eyes, mostly head in the pupil's curve, closed in by the contours of his unwrinkled flesh. At the window he waves a thin arm and his buddies squall away in a glare of tail lights. I reach out my arm to his shoulder, but he shrugs free and shows me my father's narrow eyes, the trembling hand at my throat, the hard wall at the back of my skull, the raised fist framed in the bedroom window I had climbed through at three A.M. "If you hit me I'll leave forever," I said. But everything was fine in a few days, fine. "I would have come back," I said, "false teeth and all." Now, twice a year after the long drive, in the yellow light of the front porch, I breathe in my father's whiskey, ask for a shot, and see myself distorted in his thick glasses, the two of us grinning, as he holds me with both hands at arm's length.

And then she set to work, washing fresh blueberries that sat on the counter, before grabbing a big colander. Sam headed into the backyard, whose lawn backed acres of woods. Blackberries and raspberries grew wild and thick in the brambles that sat at the edge of the woods. Sam carefully navigated her way through the thorny vines, her thin running shirt catching and snagging on a thorn. "Darn it," she mumbled. Blackberries are red when they're green, she could hear her grandfather telling her when they used to pick the fruit. But today, a brilliant summer day, the blackberries were deep purple, almost black, and each one resembled a mini beehive. Sam plucked and popped a fresh blackberry, already warm from the sun, into her mouth, savoring the natural sweetness, and picked until her colander was half full before easing her way through the woods to find a raspberry bush thick with fruit. She navigated her way out of the brambles and headed back to the kitchen, where she preheated the oven and began to wash the blackberries and raspberries. Sam pulled cold, unsalted butter from the fridge and began to cube it, some flour and sugar from the cupboard, a large bowl, and then she located her grandmother's old pastry blender. Sam made the crust and then rolled it into a ball, lightly flouring it and wrapping it in plastic before placing it in the refrigerator. Then she started in on the filling, mixing the berries, sugar, flour, and fresh orange juice.

Then he watches the minute flicker of the pulse in her neck and imagines the vein, deep below the skin, dilating then shrinking, dilating then shrinking with the hot, thick blood sent shooting from the heart. The elastic, muscular stretch of it, every three-quarters of a second. He looks at the delta of veins at her wrist, the thin violet patterns on her eyelids, the trace of blue that runs through her cheek, the web of vessels at the curve of her instep. He wonders for the first time if they used just one person’s blood to revive her or whether it was the blood of lots of different people. And whether she is still her, if the very blood that pumps around her body doesn’t belong to her. At what point do you become someone else?

Students at the instituted for Environmental Research at RWTH Aachen discovered something amazing about photosynthesis in undisturbed beech forests. Apparently, the trees synchronize their performance so that they are all equally successful. And that is not what one would expect. Each beech tree grows in a unique location, and conditions can vary greatly in just a few yards. The soil can be stony or loose. It can retain a great deal of water or almost no water. It can be full of nutrients or extremely barren. Accordingly, each tree experiences different growing conditions; therefore, each tree grows more quickly or more slowly and produces more or less sugar or wood, and thus you would expect every tree to be photosynthesizing at a different rate. And that's what makes the research results so astounding. The rate of photosynthesis is the same for all the trees. The trees, it seems, are equalizing differences between the strong and the weak. Whether they are thick or thin, all members of the same species are using light to produce the same amount of sugar per leaf. This equalization is taking place underground through the roots. There's obviously a lively exchange going on down there. Whoever has an abundance of sugar hands some over; whoever is running short gets help. Once again, fungi are involved. Their enormous networks act as gigantic redistribution mechanisms. It's a bit like the way social security systems operate to ensure individual members of society don't fall too far behind.

Floating" Our canoe idles in the idling current Of the tree and vine and rush enclosed Backwater of a torpid midwestern stream; Revolves slowly, and lodges in the glutted Waterlilies. We are tired of paddling. All afternoon we have climbed the weak current, Up dim meanders, through woods and pastures, Past muddy fords where the strong smell of cattle Lay thick across the water; singing the songs Of perfect, habitual motion; ski songs, Nightherding songs, songs of the capstan walk, The levee, and the roll of the voyageurs. Tired of motion, of the rhythms of motion, Tired of the sweet play of our interwoven strength, We lie in each other's arms and let the palps Of waterlily leaf and petal hold back All motion in the heat thickened, drowsing air. Sing to me softly, Westron Wynde, Ah the Syghes, Mon coeur se recommend à vous, Phoebi Claro; Sing the wandering erotic melodies Of men and women gone seven hundred years, Softly, your mouth close to my cheek. Let our thighs lie entangled on the cushions, Let your breasts in their thin cover Hang pendant against my naked arms and throat; Let your odorous hair fall across our eyes; Kiss me with those subtle, melodic lips. As I undress you, your pupils are black, wet, Immense, and your skin ivory and humid. Move softly, move hardly at all, part your thighs, Take me slowly while our gnawing lips Fumble against the humming blood in our throats. Move softly, do not move at all, but hold me, Deep, still, deep within you, while time slides away, As the river slides beyond this lily bed, And the thieving moments fuse and disappear In our mortal, timeless flesh.

I spent most of the afternoon tempering the new batch of couverture and working on the window display. A thick covering of green tissue paper for the grass. Paper flowers- daffodils and daisies, Anouk's contribution- pinned to the window frame. Green-covered tins that had once contained cocoa powder, stacked up against each other to make a craggy mountainside. Crinkly cellophane paper wraps it like a covering of ice. Running past and winding into the valley, a river of blue silk ribbon, upon which a cluster of houseboats sits quiet and unreflecting. And below, a procession of chocolate figures, cats, dogs, rabbits, some with raisin eyes, pink marzipan ears, tails made of licorice-whips, with sugar flowers between their teeth... And mice. On every available surface, mice. Running up the sides of the hill, nestling in corners, even on the riverboats. Pink and white sugar coconut mice, chocolate mice of all colors, variegated mice marbled through with truffle and maraschino cream, delicately tinted mice, sugar-dappled frosted mice. And standing above them, the Pied Piper resplendent in his red and yellow, a barley-sugar flute in one hand, his hat in the other. I have hundreds of molds in my kitchen, thin plastic ones for the eggs and the figures, ceramic ones for the cameos and liqueur chocolates. With them I can re-create any facial expression and superimpose it upon a hollow shell, adding hair and detail with a narrow-gauge pipe, building up torso and limbs in separate pieces and fixing them in place with wires and melted chocolate.... A little camouflage- a red cloak, rolled from marzipan. A tunic, a hat of the same material, a long feather brushing the ground at his booted feet. My Pied Piper looks a little like Roux, with his red hair and motley garb.

There are Californians who waiver in their allegiance to the climate of California. Sometimes the climate of San Francisco has made me cross. Sometimes I have thought that the winds in summer were too cold, that the fogs in summer were too thick. But whenever I have crossed the continent—when I have emerged from New York at ninety-five degrees, and entered Chicago at one hundred degrees—when I have been breathing the dust of alkali deserts and the fiery air of sagebrush plains—these are the times when I have always been buoyed up by the anticipation of inhaling the salt air of San Francisco Bay. If ever a summer wanderer is glad to get back to his native land, it is I, returning to my native fog. Like the prodigal youth who returned to his home and filled himself with husks, so I always yearn in summer to return to mine, and fill myself up with fog. Not a thin, insignificant mist, but a fog—a thick fog—one of those rich pea-soup August fogs that blow in from the Pacific Ocean over San Francisco. When I leave the heated capitals of other lands and get back to California uncooked, I always offer up a thank-offering to Santa Niebla, Our Lady of the Fogs. Out near the Presidio, where Don Joaquin de Arillaga, the old comandante, revisits the glimpses of the moon, clad in rusty armor, with his Spanish spindle-shanks thrust into tall leathern boots—there some day I shall erect a chapel to Santa Niebla. And I have vowed to her as an ex-voto a silver fog-horn, which horn will be wound by the winds of the broad Pacific, and will ceaselessly sound through the centuries the litany of Our Lady of the Fogs. Every Californian has good reason to be loyal to his native land. If even the Swiss villagers, born in the high Alps, long to return to their birthplace, how much more does the exiled Californian yearn to return to the land which bore him. There are other, richer, and more populous lands, but to the Californian born, California is the only place in which to live. And to the returning Californian, particularly if he be native-born, the love of his birthplace is only intensified by visits to other lands. Why do men so love their native soil? It is perhaps a phase of human love for the mother. For we are compact of the soil. Out of the crumbling granite eroded from the ribs of California’s Sierras by California’s mountain streams—out of earth washed into California’s great valleys by her mighty rivers—out of this the sons of California are made, brain, and muscle, and bone. Why then should they not love their mother, even as the mountaineers of Montenegro, of Switzerland, of Savoy, lover their mountain birth-place? Why should not exiled Californians yearn to return? And we sons of California always do return; we are always brought back by the potent charm of our native land—back to the soil which gave us birth—and at the last back to Earth, the great mother, from whom we sprung, and on whose bosom we repose our tired bodies when our work is done.

Fresh Pasta Dough Recipe INGREDIENTS: 1 ½ cups flour ½ cup semolina flour (pasta flour) 2 whole eggs, at room temperature 3 egg yolks, at room temperature DIRECTIONS: In a large bowl, whisk together the flour and the semolina. Create a well in the center and add the eggs and egg yolks. Using a fork, break up the eggs then gradually start to draw flour from the edges of the well into the mixture. If the dough gets too firm to mix with the fork switch to mixing with your hands. Continue to work in flour until the dough no longer sticks to your hands; you may not need to incorporate all of the flour. (I used a bit more than what the recipe called for.) Transfer the dough to a lightly floured surface and knead the dough for 8 to 10 minutes or until it is smooth and pliable. Wrap the dough tightly in plastic wrap and allow to rest for at least 30 minutes. If using a pasta roller: Divide the dough into 4 pieces. Starting with the machine set to the widest setting, pass the dough through the rollers. Fold the dough into thirds and pass it through again 2 more times. Continue passing the pasta through the machine, reducing the setting a few notches each time. You may need to dust a bit with flour if the dough sticks to the rollers at all. Once you reach your desired thickness, use the cutting attachment to cut the pasta sheet into fettuccine. Dust the cut pasta with more flour to prevent sticking and repeat with the remaining dough. If using a rolling pin: Divide the dough in half. Dust your surface with flour and sprinkle generously on your rolling pin. *Roll out the dough as thin and as evenly possible, adding flour as needed to prevent sticking. Use a paring knife (a pizza cutter works great!) to cut your dough into even ribbons, then set aside, dusting the cut pasta with more flour. Repeat with the remaining dough. (At this point, the pasta can be transferred to a sealable plastic bag and frozen for up to 3 months; do not defrost before cooking.) Cook the pasta in a large pot of generously salted boiling water, checking for doneness after just 1 minute; fresh pasta cooks very quickly. As soon as it is al dente, no more than 3 or 4 minutes, drain, reserving some of the cooking water if desired for saucing the pasta. Toss with your sauce, loosen with some of the reserved cooking water as needed and serve immediately. *Note:  You must get the dough as thin as possible and cut them into small strips, otherwise, it will be too thick and end up having the texture of dumplings.

[Concerning] phosphorescent bodies, and in particular to uranium salts whose phosphorescence has a very brief duration. With the double sulfate of uranium and potassium ... I was able to perform the following experiment: One wraps a Lumière photographic plate with a bromide emulsion in two sheets of very thick black paper, such that the plate does not become clouded upon being exposed to the sun for a day. One places on the sheet of paper, on the outside, a slab of the phosphorescent substance, and one exposes the whole to the sun for several hours. When one then develops the photographic plate, one recognizes that the silhouette of the phosphorescent substance appears in black on the negative. If one places between the phosphorescent substance and the paper a piece of money or a metal screen pierced with a cut-out design, one sees the image of these objects appear on the negative. One can repeat the same experiments placing a thin pane of glass between the phosphorescent substance and the paper, which excludes the possibility of chemical action due to vapors which might emanate from the substance when heated by the sun's rays. One must conclude from these experiments that the phosphorescent substance in question emits rays which pass through the opaque paper and reduces silver salts. [Although the sun is irrelevant, and he misinterprets the role of phosphorescence, he has discovered the effect of radioactivity.]

Now there is this song on the saxophone. And I am ashamed. A glorious little suffering has just been born, an exemplary suffering. Four notes on the saxophone. They come and go, they seem to say: You must be like us, suffer in rhythm. All right! Naturally, I’d like to suffer that way, in rhythm, without complacence, without self-pity, with an arid purity. But is it my fault if the beer at the bottom of my glass is warm, if there are brown stains on the mirror, if I am not wanted, if the sincerest of my sufferings drags and weighs, with too much flesh and the skin too wide at the same time, like a sea-elephant, with bulging eyes, damp and touching and yet so ugly? No, they certainly can’t tell me it’s compassionate—this little jewelled pain which spins around above the record and dazzles me. Not even ironic: it spins gaily, completely self-absorbed; like a scythe it has cut through the drab intimacy of the world and now it spins and all of us, Madeleine, the thick-set man, the patronne, myself, the tables, benches, the stained mirror, the glasses, all of us abandon ourselves to existence, because we were among ourselves, only among ourselves, it has taken us unawares, in the disorder, the day to day drift: I am ashamed for myself and for what exists in front of it. It does not exist. It is even an annoyance; if I were to get up and rip this record from the table which holds it, if I were to break it in two, I wouldn’t reach it. It is beyond—always beyond something, a voice, a violin note. Through layers and layers of existence, it veils itself, thin and firm, and when you want to seize it, you find only existants, you butt against existants devoid of sense. It is behind them: I don’t even hear it, I hear sounds, vibrations in the air which unveil it. It does not exist because it has nothing superfluous: it is all the rest which in relation to it is superfluous. It is. And I, too, wanted to be. That is all I wanted; this is the last word. At the bottom of all these attempts which seemed without bonds, I find the same desire again: to drive existence out of me, to rid the passing moments of their fat, to twist them, dry them, purify myself, harden myself, to give back at last the sharp, precise sound of a saxophone note. That could even make an apologue: there was a poor man who got in the wrong world. He existed, like other people, in a world of public parks, bistros, commercial cities and he wanted to persuade himself that he was living somewhere else, behind the canvas of paintings, with the doges of Tintoretto, with Gozzoli’s Florentines, behind the pages of books, with Fabrizio del Dongo and Julien Sorel, behind the phonograph records, with the long dry laments of jazz. And then, after making a complete fool of himself, he understood, he opened his eyes, he saw that it was a misdeal: he was in a bistro, just in front of a glass of warm beer. He stayed overwhelmed on the bench; he thought: I am a fool. And at that very moment, on the other side of existence, in this other world which you can see in the distance, but without ever approaching it, a little melody began to sing and dance: “You must be like me; you must suffer in rhythm.

You?” Crowfeather decided he was still in some weird dream. “Like ‘Hey, you’?” “No, flea-brain,” the tabby tom responded, with an exasperated twitch of his whiskers. “Yew, like the tree.” “Oh, sorry,” Crowfeather mewed, then added after a moment, “I’m Crowfeather. Thanks for helping me.” “You’re welcome. I’ve learned a bit about patching up injured cats in my time, and I like to help out when I can.” Yew finished his massage and stood back, rubbing his paw in the snow to clean off the juices. “Try sitting up.” Crowfeather obeyed; his head swam, and every one of his muscles shrieked in protest, but he managed to stay upright. He found himself in the lee of a large, jutting outcrop of rocks, with only a thin powdering of snow covering the tough moorland grass. Beyond the shelter, all the hills were hidden in a thick layer of snow, the white expanse stretching in all directions as far as Crowfeather could see. More flakes were slowly drifting down. Though clouds hid the sun, he guessed that sunhigh would be long past. “How did you find me, in all this?” he asked. Yew looked thoughtful. “That was strange,” he replied. “I was hunting, down there on the edge of the forest. Then I saw a gray she-cat—the prettiest cat I ever laid eyes on. She beckoned me to follow her, and she brought me up here. But when we got here, I couldn’t find her . . . only you, half buried in the snow and looking just about dead.” For a moment his bold amber gaze softened. “Her fur glittered like stars. . . .” Feathertail! Warmth spread through Crowfeather from ears to tail-tip, as if he were basking in the sun of greenleaf. She saved me! Injured and unconscious in the snow, he would have frozen to death if no cat had found him.

I’ll tell you what’s true,’ said Weston presently. ‘What?’ ‘A little child that creeps upstairs when nobody’s looking and very slowly turns the handle to take one peep into the room where its grandmother’s dead body is laid out–and then runs away and has bad dreams. An enormous grandmother, you understand.’ ‘What do you mean by saying that’s truer?’ ‘I mean that child knows something about the universe which all science and all religion is trying to hide.’ Ransom said nothing. ‘Lots of things,’ said Weston presently. ‘Children are afraid to go through a churchyard at night, and the grown-ups tell them not to be silly: but the children know better than the grown-ups. People in Central Africa doing beastly things with masks on in the middle of the night–and missionaries and civil servants say it’s all superstition. Well, the blacks know more about the universe than the white people. Dirty priests in back streets in Dublin frightening half-witted children to death with stories about it. You’d say they are unenlightened. They’re not: except that they think there is a way of escape. There isn’t. That is the real universe, always has been, always will be. That’s what it all means.’ ‘I’m not quite clear–’ began Ransom, when Weston interrupted him. ‘That’s why it’s so important to live as long as you can. All the good things are now–a thin little rind of what we call life, put on for show, and then–the real universe for ever and ever. To thicken the rind by one centimetre–to live one week, one day, one half hour longer–that’s the only thing that matters. Of course you don’t know it: but every man who is waiting to be hanged knows it. You say “What difference does a short reprieve make?” What difference!!’ ‘But nobody need go there,’ said Ransom. ‘I know that’s what you believe,’ said Weston. ‘But you’re wrong. It’s only a small parcel of civilised people who think that. Humanity as a whole knows better. It knows–Homer knew–that all the dead have sunk down into the inner darkness: under the rind. All witless, all twittering, gibbering, decaying. Bogeymen. Every savage knows that all ghosts hate the living who are still enjoying the rind: just as old women hate girls who still have their good looks. It’s quite right to be afraid of the ghosts. You’re going to be one all the same.’ ‘You don’t believe in God,’ said Ransom. ‘Well, now, that’s another point,’ said Weston. ‘I’ve been to church as well as you when I was a boy. There’s more sense in parts of the Bible than you religious people know. Doesn’t it say He’s the God of the living, not of the dead? That’s just it. Perhaps your God does exist–but it makes no difference whether He does or not. No, of course you wouldn’t see it; but one day you will. I don’t think you’ve got the idea of the rind–the thin outer skin which we call life–really clear. Picture the universe as an infinite glove with this very thin crust on the outside. But remember its thickness is a thickness of time. It’s about seventy years thick in the best places. We are born on the surface of it and all our lives we are sinking through it. When we’ve got all the way through then we are what’s called Dead: we’ve got into the dark part inside, the real globe. If your God exists, He’s not in the globe–He’s outside, like a moon. As we pass into the interior we pass out of His ken. He doesn’t follow us in. You would express it by saying He’s not in time–which you think comforting! In other words He stays put: out in the light and air, outside. But we are in time. We “move with the times”. That is, from His point of view, we move away, into what He regards as nonentity, where He never follows. That is all there is to us, all there ever was. He may be there in what you call “Life”, or He may not. What difference does it make? We’re not going to be there for long!

All the women, white or black or brown, who woke up like this, who came before me in this town. Think of them. Heads up, eyes on the target. Running. Full speed. Gravity be damned. Toward that thick layer of glass that is the ceiling. Running, full speed, and crashing. Crashing into that ceiling and falling back. Crashing into it and falling back. Into it and falling back. Woman after woman. Each one running and each one crashing. And everyone falling. How many women had to hit that glass before the first crack appeared? How many cuts did they get, how many bruises? How hard did they have to hit the ceiling? How many women had to hit that glass to ripple it, to send out a thousand hairline fractures? How many women had to hit that glass before the pressure of their effort caused it to evolve from a thick pane of glass into just a thin sheet of splintered ice? So that when it was my turn to run, it didn’t even look like a ceiling anymore. I mean, the wind was already whistling through—I could always feel it on my face. And there were all these holes giving me a perfect view to the other side. I didn’t even notice the gravity, I think it had already worn itself away. So I didn’t have to fight as hard. I had time to study the cracks. I had time to decide where the air felt the rarest, where the wind was the coolest, where the view was the most soaring. I picked my spot in the glass and I called it my target. And I ran. And when I finally hit that ceiling, it just exploded into dust. Like that. My sisters who went before me had already handled it. No cuts. No bruises. No bleeding. Making it through the glass ceiling to the other side was simply a matter of running on a path created by every other woman’s footprints. I just hit at exactly the right time in exactly the right spot. So I’m breaking my family’s rule today. This is a trophy for participation. And I am beyond honored and proud to receive it. Because this? Was a group effort. Thank you to all the women in this room. Thank you to all the women who never made it into this room. And thank you to all the women who will hopefully fill a room one hundred times this size when we are all gone. You are all an inspiration.

Suddenly he felt his foot catch on something and he stumbled over one of the trailing cables that lay across the laboratory floor. The cable went tight and pulled one of the instruments monitoring the beam over, sending it falling sideways and knocking the edge of the frame that held the refractive shielding plate in position. For what seemed like a very long time the stand wobbled back and forth before it tipped slowly backwards with a crash. ‘Take cover!’ Professor Pike screamed, diving behind one of the nearby workbenches as the other Alpha students scattered, trying to shield themselves behind the most solid objects they could find. The beam punched straight through the laboratory wall in a cloud of vapour and alarm klaxons started wailing all over the school. Professor Pike scrambled across the floor towards the bundle of thick power cables that led to the super-laser, pulling them from the back of the machine and extinguishing the bright green beam. ‘Oops,’ Franz said as the emergency lighting kicked in and the rest of the Alphas slowly emerged from their hiding places. At the back of the room there was a perfectly circular, twenty-centimetre hole in the wall surrounded by scorch marks. ‘I am thinking that this is not being good.’ Otto walked cautiously up to the smouldering hole, glancing nervously over his shoulder at the beam emitter that was making a gentle clicking sound as it cooled down. ‘Woah,’ he said as he peered into the hole. Clearly visible were a series of further holes beyond that got smaller and smaller with perspective. Dimly visible at the far end was what could only be a small circle of bright daylight. ‘Erm, I don’t know how to tell you this, Franz,’ Otto said, turning towards his friend with a broad grin on his face, ‘but it looks like you just made a hole in the school.’ ‘Oh dear,’ Professor Pike said, coming up beside Otto and also peering into the hole. ‘I do hope that we haven’t damaged anything important.’ ‘Or anyone important,’ Shelby added as she and the rest of the Alphas gathered round. ‘It is not being my fault,’ Franz moaned. ‘I am tripping over the cable.’ A couple of minutes later, the door at the far end of the lab hissed open and Chief Dekker came running into the room, flanked by two guards in their familiar orange jumpsuits. Otto and the others winced as they saw her. It was well known already that she had no particular love for H.I.V.E.’s Alpha stream and she seemed to have a special dislike for their year in particular. ‘What happened?’ she demanded as she strode across the room towards the Professor. Her thin, tight lips and sharp cheekbones gave the impression that she was someone who’d heard of this thing called smiling but had decided that it was not for her. ‘There was a slight . . . erm . . . malfunction,’ the Professor replied with a fleeting glance in Franz’s direction. ‘Has anyone been injured?’ ‘It doesn’t look like it,’ Dekker replied tersely, ‘but I think it’s safe to say that Colonel Francisco won’t be using that particular toilet cubicle again.’ Franz visibly paled at the thought of the Colonel finding out that he had been in any way responsible for whatever indignity he had just suffered. He had a sudden horribly clear vision of many laps of the school gym somewhere in his not too distant future.

There is an art to the business of making sandwiches which it is given to few ever to find the time to explore in depth. It is a simple task, but the opportunities for satisfaction are many and profound: choosing the right bread for instance. The Sandwich Maker had spent many months in daily consultation and experiment with Grarp the baker and eventually they had between them created a loaf of exactly the consistency that was dense enough to slice thinly and neatly, while still being light, moist and having that fine nutty flavour which best enhanced the savour of roast Perfectly Normal Beast flesh. There was also the geometry of the slice to be refined: the precise relationships between the width and height of the slice and also its thickness which would give the proper sense of bulk and weight to the finished sandwich: here again, lightness was a virtue, but so too were firmness, generosity and that promise of succulence and savour that is the hallmark of a truly intense sandwich experience. The proper tools, of course, were crucial, and many were the days that the Sandwich Maker, when not engaged with the Baker at his oven, would spend with Strinder the Tool Maker, weighing and balancing knives, taking them to the forge and back again. Suppleness, strength, keenness of edge, length and balance were all enthusiastically debated, theories put forward, tested, refined, and many was the evening when the Sandwich Maker and the Tool Maker could be seen silhouetted against the light of the setting sun and the Tool Maker’s forge making slow sweeping movements through the air trying one knife after another, comparing the weight of this one with the balance of another, the suppleness of a third and the handle binding of a fourth. Three knives altogether were required. First there was the knife for the slicing of the bread: a firm, authoritative blade which imposed a clear and defining will on a loaf. Then there was the butter-spreading knife, which was a whippy little number but still with a firm backbone to it. Early versions had been a little too whippy, but now the combination of flexibility with a core of strength was exactly right to achieve the maximum smoothness and grace of spread. The chief amongst the knives, of course, was the carving knife. This was the knife that would not merely impose its will on the medium through which it moved, as did the bread knife; it must work with it, be guided by the grain of the meat, to achieve slices of the most exquisite consistency and translucency, that would slide away in filmy folds from the main hunk of meat. The Sandwich Maker would then flip each sheet with a smooth flick of the wrist on to the beautifully proportioned lower bread slice, trim it with four deft strokes and then at last perform the magic that the children of the village so longed to gather round and watch with rapt attention and wonder. With just four more dexterous flips of the knife he would assemble the trimmings into a perfectly fitting jigsaw of pieces on top of the primary slice. For every sandwich the size and shape of the trimmings were different, but the Sandwich Maker would always effortlessly and without hesitation assemble them into a pattern which fitted perfectly. A second layer of meat and a second layer of trimmings, and the main act of creation would be accomplished.