Throwing Bricks Quotes

What's the point in wasting a perfectly good brick wall when you have someone to throw against it, that's what I always say.

I’ve wrestled with alligators, I’ve tussled with a whale. I done handcuffed lightning And throw thunder in jail. You know I’m bad. just last week, I murdered a rock, Injured a stone, Hospitalized a brick. I’m so mean, I make medicine sick.

If it had been easy for Romeo to get to Juliet, nobody would have cared. Same goes for Cyrano and Don Quixote and Gatsby and their respective paramours. What captures the imagination is watching men throw themselves at a brick wall over and over again, and wondering if this is the time that they won't be able to get back up.

When it occurs to a man that nature does not regard him as important, and that she feels she would not maim the universe by disposing of him, he at first wishes to throw bricks at the temple, and he hates deeply the fact that there are no bricks and no temples.

They want us to be afraid. They want us to be afraid of leaving our homes. They want us to barricade our doors and hide our children. Their aim is to make us fear life itself! They want us to hate. They want us to hate 'the other'. They want us to practice aggression and perfect antagonism. Their aim is to divide us all! They want us to be inhuman. They want us to throw out our kindness. They want us to bury our love and burn our hope. Their aim is to take all our light! They think their bricked walls will separate us. They think their damned bombs will defeat us. They are so ignorant they don’t understand that my soul and your soul are old friends. They are so ignorant they don’t understand that when they cut you I bleed. They are so ignorant they don’t understand that we will never be afraid, we will never hate and we will never be silent for life is ours!

But after spending ages walking around with everyone piling bricks in your arms, it can throw you off balance when someone removes a brick to carry for you.

A brick makes an excellent window cleaner, if you throw it hard enough. Before you know it, your window will look so clean you’d think it had been replaced with a new one.


Anyway, he's [Simon] obviously not here. Go back to what you were doing. What's the point in wasting a perfectly good brick wall when you have someone to throw against it, that's what I always say." And she [Isabelle] stalked off, back toward the bar. - City of Fallen Angels pg 188 hardcover

Entrepreneurship: you put one dumb foot in front of the other while the world throws bricks at your head.

A successful person is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him or her.

[Samantha Dunn] wrote that when God wants your attention, first He throws feathers. After that, He starts throwing bricks.

I don't want balance. What I want is the brick! I want to find the one thing in my life that, if I get that right, it doesn't matter what the world throws onto the other side of the scale.

If you throw ice at the sun, it will melt; if you throw spears, they will burn; and if you throw bricks, they will crumble. The sun is invincible; all that comes before it is consumed.

The owner of the Stone’s Throw was built like a brick wall—if a brick wall decided to grow a beard—tall

I detest that woman [Rachel Lynde] more than anybody I know. She can put a whole sermon, text, comment, and application, into six words, and throw it at you like a brick.

Lysandra,” Celaena echoed. She’d met Lysandra when they were both ten, and in the seven years that they’d known each other, Celaena couldn’t recall a time when she didn’t want to beat in the girl’s face with a brick. Or throw her out a window. Or do any of a number of things she’d learned from Arobynn. It

Give a low man one ounce of power and he’ll throw ten thousand pounds of bricks on your head.

Social media’s like a brick — you can use it to build an orphanage or throw it through somebody’s car window.

The larger the bricks your enemies throw at you the larger the palace you are going to build.

HENRY: Leave me out of it. They don’t count. Maybe Brodie got a raw deal, maybe he didn’t. I don’t know. It doesn’t count. He’s a lout with language. I can’t help somebody who thinks, or thinks he thinks, that editing a newspaper is censorship, or that throwing bricks is a demonstration while building tower blocks is social violence, or that unpalatable statement is provocation while disrupting the speaker is the exercise of free speech…Words don’t deserve that kind of malarkey. They’re innocent, neutral, precise, standing for this, describing that, meaning the other, so if you look after them you can build bridges across incomprehension and chaos. But when they get their corners knocked off, they’re no good any more, and Brodie knocks their corners off. I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little or make a poem which children will speak for you when you’re dead. Act II, Scene 5, HENRY and ANNIE

When it occurs to a man that nature does not regard him as important, and that she feels she would not maim the universe by disposing of him, he at first wishes to throw bricks at the temple, and he hates deeply the fact that there are no brick and no temples.

When I was a child," Theodora said lazily, "'--many years ago,' Doctor, as you put it so tactfully--I was whipped for throwing a brick through a greenhouse roof. I remember I thought about if for a long time, remembering the whipping but remembering also the lovely crash, and after thinking about it very seriously I went out and did it again.

People who live in brick houses shouldn't throw wrecking balls

What’s the point in wasting a perfectly good brick wall when you have someone to throw against it, that’s what I always say.

...This is the arena in which a spiritualized disobedience means most. It doesn't mean a second New Deal, another massive bureaucratic attack on our problems. It doesn't mean taking to the streets, throwing bricks through the window at the Bank of America, or driving a tractor through the local McDonald's. It means living differently. It means taking responsibility for the character of the human world. That's a real confrontation with the problem of value. In short, refusal of the present is a return to what Thoreau and Ruskin called "human fundamentals, valuable things," and it is a movement into the future. This movement into the future is also a powerful expression of that most human spiritual emotion, Hope. p.124

They may throw sticks, stones, or bricks, but nothing they do will hurt you. You are protected by God. He is forever got you covered and the enemy is defeated. Their hatred towards you is a reflection of the evilness on their inside which is slowly destroying them. A person like that must deal with the matters of their heart.

She stood at the edge of a glassy river lined with impossibly tall trees, fanning out their wide emerald leaves among the puffy white clouds. Across the river, a row of crystal castles glittered in the sunlight in a way that would make Walt Disney want to throw rocks at his “Magic Kingdom.” To her right, a golden path led into a sprawling city, where the elaborate domed buildings seemed to be built from brick-size jewels—each structure a different color. Snowcapped mountains surrounded the lush valley, and the crisp, cool air smelled like cinnamon and chocolate and sunshine.

If they throw sticks at you, build a house. If they throw stones at you, build a mansion. If they throw bricks at you, build a palace.

Don't go through life so fast that someone has to throw a brick at you to get you to pay attention.

Catastrophe! Of course! Last judgement! Horseshit! It's you that are the catastrophe, you're the bloody last judgement, your feet don't even touch the ground, you bunch of sleepwalkers. I wish you were dead, the lot of you. Let's make a bet,' and here he shook Nadaban by the shoulders, ‘that you don't even know what I'm talking about!! Because you don't talk, you "whisper" or "expostulate"; you don't walk down the street but "proceed feverishly"; you don't enter a place but "cross its threshold", you don't feel cold or hot, but "find yourselves shivering" or "feeling the sweat pour down you"! I haven't heard a straight word for hours, you can only mew and caterwaul; because if a hooligan throws a brick through your window you invoke the last judgement, because your brains are addled and filled up with steam, because if someone sticks your nose in shit all you do is sniff, stare and cry "sorcery!

Sign I wrote on the inside of a brick wall: This is not an exit. This is a wall. Though if you get a long running start, and really throw your shoulder into it, I’m sure you could get out this way.

When it occurs to a man that nature does not regard him as important, and that she feels she would not maim the universe by disposing of him, he at first wishes to throw bricks at the temple, and he hates deeply the fact that there are no brick and no temples. Any visible expression of nature would surely be pelleted with his jeers. Then, if there be no tangible thing to hoot he feels, perhaps, the desire to confront a personification and indulge in pleas, bowed to one knee, and with hands supplicant, saying: "Yes, but I love myself.

Shortly after this exchange my roommate suggested we start throwing water balloons at the construction workers. Not really at them because, I know, I know, it's not their fault. But believe me, it's hard to look down and see a man with a seven-speed power drill plowing through a brick wall and tell yourself he's not responsible for the noise.

The bigger the bricks critics throw at you the bigger the palace you are going to build.

Throw a puppy into the water. If it swims, well. If it sinks, well. But do not tie a rope around its throat and weight it with a brick and then assert its incapacity to keep afloat.

When someone sees you headed in a direction, and that person throws a brick into the road, that is the precise moment to forge onward, with greater velocity, toward your destination.

The sunshine of a day in early spring, honey pale and honey sweet, was showering over the red brick buildings of Queenslea College, and the grounds about them, throwing through the bare, budding maples and elms, delicate, evasive etchings of gold and brown on the paths, and coaxing into life the daffodils that were peering greenly and perkily up under the windows of the co-eds' dressing-room.

By the time I reached the coffee-shop door, however, my self-confidence had collapsed. Panic had taken its place. I believed that I was the ugliest, dirtiest little old bum in Manhattan. If I went into the coffee shop everybody would be nauseated. They would throw me out and tell me to go to the Bowery, where I belonged. But I somehow found the courage to go in anyway - and imagine my surprise! It was a though I had died and gone to heaven! A waitress said to me, "Honeybunch, you sit right own, and I'll bring you your coffee right away." I hadn't said anything to her. So I did sit down, and everywhere I looked I saw customers of every description being received with love. To the waitress everybody was "honeybunch" and "darling" and "dear". It was like an emergency ward after a great catastrophe. It did not matter what race or class the victims belonged to. They were all given the same miracle drug, which was coffee. The catastrophe in this case, of course, was that the sun had come up again. I had the feeling that if Frankenstein's monster crashed into the coffee shop through a brick wall, all anybody would say to him was, "You sit down here, Lambchop, and I'll bring your coffee right away.

When it occurs to a man that nature does not regard him as important, and that she feels she would not maim the universe by disposing of him, he at first wishes to throw bricks at the temple, and he hates deeply the fact that there are no bricks and no temples. Any visible expression of nature would surely be pelleted with his jeers. Then, if there be no tangible thing to hoot, he feels, perhaps, the desire to confront a personification and indulge in pleas, bowed to one knee, and with hands supplicant, saying, “Yes, but I love myself.” A high cold star on a winter’s night is the word he feels that she says to him. Thereafter he knows the pathos of his situation.

(...) Taking the journalist's vow of impartiality and objectivity was not unlike joining an order of monks and spending the rest of your life in a glass monastery - removed from the world of human affairs even as it continued to whirl around you on all sides. To be a journalist meant you could never be the person who tossed the brick through the window that started the revolution. You could only watch the man toss the brick, you could try to understand why he had tossed the brick, you could explain to others what significance the brick had in starting the revolution, but you yourself could never toss the brick or even stand in the mob that was urging the man to throw it.

Dressing, like painting, should have a residual stability, plus punctuation and surprise. Somewhere, like in Krazy Kat, you’ve got to throw the brick.

For loose teeth the tooth fairy recommends tying your tooth to a brick and throwing said brick down the stairs.

A brick could be used to test how fast you throw a baseball, if, you know, baseballs were cube-shaped and integral to the construction of houses.


It’s easy to make bricks, but making houses requires far more than throwing a pile of bricks in the air.

A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him. – Sidney Greenberg

Brick walls are there for a reason. And once you get over them—even if someone has practically had to throw you over—it can be helpful to others to tell them how you did it.

I'm not just building a foundation or a house with the bricks people throw at me. I'm building entire worlds. it's called writing.

I hate it when you have to be nice to someone you want to throw a brick at.

If I have to let Theo throw bricks at me in order to keep him in my life, I don't have to let them hit me, I can catch them.

This throws me. As in I am a brick, and have been hurled at the glass window.

To be a successful person you often have to create a strong foundation with the bricks others throw at you.

Throw the puppy into the water. If it swims, well. If it sinks, well. But do not tie a rope around its throat and weight it with a brick and then assert its incapacity to keep afloat.

Throw me a trial, throw me a brick, it may take me a while, but it'll do the trick, there's never a denial, I understood that quick, now it brings me a smile, but it'll make you sick.

Within a year or two, however, a couple of the first things I wrote – ‘Anarchy In The UK’ and ‘God Save The Queen’ – really hit their target. I’d like to thank the British public library system: that was my training ground, that’s where I learned to throw those verbal grenades. I wasn’t just throwing bricks through shop windows as a voice of rebellion, I was throwing words where they really mattered. Words count.

If you want something bad enough, never give up (and take a boost when offered). Brick walls are there for a reason. And once you get over them—even if someone has practically had to throw you over—it can be helpful to others to tell them how you did it.

Certainly, families like Harriet’s (and Hely’s) would not tolerate for one moment brick-throwing at children white or black (“or purple,” as Edie was fond of piping up in any discussion about skin color). And yet there Harriet was, at the all-white school.

A certain amount of brick-throwing might even be a good thing. There comes a moment in the career of most artists, if they are any good, when attacks on their work take a form almost more acceptable than praise. That happens at different moments in different careers.

Boston itself was a flea market of racism. It had all varieties, old and new. The city had corrupt, city hall-crony racists, brick-throwing, send-’em-back-to-Africa racists, and in the university areas phony radical-chic racists. . . . Other than that, I liked the city.

Bucket had started his criminal career in Braas, not far from when Allan and his new friends now found themselves. There he had gotten together with some like-minded peers and started the motorcycle club called The Violence. Bucket was the leader; he decided which newsstand was to be robbed of cigarettes next. He was the one who has chosen the name- The Violence, in English, not swedish. And he was the one who unfortunately asked his girlfriend Isabella to sew the name of the motorcycle club onto ten newly stolen leather jackets. Isabella had never really learned to spell properly at school, not in Swedish, and certainly not in English. The result was that Isabella sewed The Violins on the jackets instead. As the rest of the club members had had similar academic success, nobody in the group noticed the mistake. So everyone was very surprised when one day a letter arrived for The Violins in Braas from the people in charge of the concert hall in Vaxjo. The letter suggested that, since the club obviously concerned itself with classical music, they might like to put in am appearance at a concert with the city’s prestigious chamber orchestra, Musica Viate. Bucket felt provoked; somebody was clearly making fun of him. One night he skipped the newsstand, and instead went into Vaxjo to throw a brick through the glass door of the concert hall. This was intended to teach the people responsible lesson in respect. It all went well, except that Bucket’s leather glove happened to follow the stone into the lobby. Since the alarm went off immediately, Bucket felt it would be unwise to try to retrieve the personal item in question. Losing the glove was not good. Bucket had traveled to Vaxjo by motorbike and one hand was extremely cold all the way home to Braas that night. Even worse was the fact that Bucket’s luckless girlfriend had written Bucket’s name and adress inside the glove, in case he lost it." For more quotes from the novel visit my blog: frommybooks.wordpress.com

When I was a child,” Theodora said lazily, “—‘many years ago,’ Doctor, as you put it so tactfully—I was whipped for throwing a brick through a greenhouse roof. I remember I thought about it for a long time, remembering the whipping but remembering also the lovely crash, and after thinking about it very seriously I went out and did it again.

I was thinning the hellebore when I saw a woman in an oversize suit jacket and a fedora trying to throw a rope into a window two stories high to rescue her friend in the dark and rain. I've traveled all over the world and I've seen many things, but I've never seen anything like that. And then the alarm went off and she didn't run. She didn't give up. She refused to leave her friend and tried to scale a sheer brick wall with her bare hands. I didn't know love and loyalty like that existed. I only knew what it meant to be alone. I had to meet her." "We didn't meet," I said. "You grabbed me and dragged me into the bushes." "That's what you do when you find the love of your life," he said. "You love me?" His voice was soft as he turned away. "I think I loved you from the moment you threw that rope.

We’re going into the countryside and leaving everything behind. I would hate to have this book destroyed. The Germans will burn whatever they find.” She took an old volume from a pile of books that had been stacked against a brick wall. “Would you burn birds in a cage?” she asked Anne. “Of course not.” Anne thought of the magpie. She thought of the soldiers shooting at whatever they saw, just for fun. “And yet they burn books. They throw them into metal trash cans and light a fire and then all the words that had been written fly away.” “What happens to the words then?” Anne asked. “They’re remembered by everyone who ever read them.” Madame Clara’s bright eyes were trained on Anne. It was dark in the alley and Anne had the urge to run, but she stayed where she was. “I used to have everything,” the bookseller’s wife said. “Now I just have what I can remember.

When Pablo Picasso was an old man, he was sitting in a café in Spain, doodling on a used napkin. He was nonchalant about the whole thing, drawing whatever amused him in that moment—kind of the same way teenage boys draw penises on bathroom stalls—except this was Picasso, so his bathroom-stall penises were more like cubist/impressionist awesomeness laced on top of faint coffee stains. Anyway, some woman sitting near him was looking on in awe. After a few moments, Picasso finished his coffee and crumpled up the napkin to throw away as he left. The woman stopped him. “Wait,” she said. “Can I have that napkin you were just drawing on? I’ll pay you for it.” “Sure,” Picasso replied. “Twenty thousand dollars.” The woman’s head jolted back as if he had just flung a brick at her. “What? It took you like two minutes to draw that.” “No, ma’am,” Picasso said. “It took me over sixty years to draw this.” He stuffed the napkin in his pocket and walked out of the café. Improvement at anything is based on thousands of tiny failures, and the magnitude of your success is based on how many times you’ve failed at something.

A brick could be used to show you how to live a richer, fuller, more satisfying life. Don’t you want to have fulfillment and meaning saturating your existence? I can show you how you can achieve this and so much more with just a simple brick. For just $99.99—not even an even hundred bucks, I’ll send you my exclusive life philosophy that’s built around a brick. Man’s used bricks to build houses for centuries. Now let one man, me, show you how a brick can be used to build your life up bigger and stronger than you ever imagined. But act now, because supplies are limited. This amazing offer won’t last forever. You don’t want to wake up in ten years to find yourself divorced, homeless, and missing your testicles because you waited even two hours too long to obtain this information. Become a hero today—save your life. Procrastination is only for the painful things in life. We prolong the boring, but why put off for tomorrow the exciting life you could be living today? If you’re not satisfied with the information I’m providing, I’m willing to offer you a no money back guarantee. That’s right, you read that wrong. If you are not 100% dissatisfied with my product, I’ll give you your money back. For $99.99 I’m offering 99.99%, but you’ve got to be willing to penny up that percentage to 100. Why delay? The life you really want is mine, and I’m willing to give it to you—for a price. That price is a one-time fee of $99.99, which of course everyone can afford—even if they can’t afford it. Homeless people can’t afford it, but they’re the people who need my product the most. Buy my product, or face the fact that in all probability you are going to end up homeless and sexless and unloved and filthy and stinky and probably even disabled, if not physically than certainly mentally. I don’t care if your testicles taste like peanut butter—if you don’t buy my product, even a dog won’t lick your balls you miserable cur. I curse you! God damn it, what are you, slow? Pay me my money so I can show you the path to true wealth. Don’t you want to be rich? Everything takes money—your marriage, your mortgage, and even prostitutes. I can show you the path to prostitution—and it starts by ignoring my pleas to help you. I’m not the bad guy here. I just want to help. You have some serious trust issues, my friend. I have the chance to earn your trust, and all it’s going to cost you is a measly $99.99. Would it help you to trust me if I told you that I trust you? Well, I do. Sure, I trust you. I trust you to make the smart decision for your life and order my product today. Don’t sleep on this decision, because you’ll only wake up in eight hours to find yourself living in a miserable future. And the future indeed looks bleak, my friend. War, famine, children forced to pimp out their parents just to feed the dog. Is this the kind of tomorrow you’d like to live in today? I can show you how to provide enough dog food to feed your grandpa for decades. In the future I’m offering you, your wife isn’t a whore that you sell for a knife swipe of peanut butter because you’re so hungry you actually considered eating your children. Become a hero—and save your kids’ lives. Your wife doesn’t want to spread her legs for strangers. Or maybe she does, and that was a bad example. Still, the principle stands. But you won’t be standing—in the future. Remember, you’ll be confined to a wheelchair. Mushrooms are for pizzas, not clouds, but without me, your life will atom bomb into oblivion. Nobody’s dropping a bomb while I’m around. The only thing I’m dropping is the price. Boom! I just lowered the price for you, just to show you that you are a valued customer. As a VIP, your new price on my product is just $99.96. That’s a savings of over two pennies (three, to be precise). And I’ll even throw in a jar of peanut butter for free. That’s a value of over $.99. But wait, there’s more! If you call within the next ten minutes, I’ll even throw in a blanket free of charge. . .

How to Come Out as Gay Don’t. Don’t come out unless you want to. Don’t come out for anyone else’s sake. Don’t come out because you think society expects you to. Come out for yourself. Come out to yourself. Shout, sing it. Softly stutter. Correct those who say they knew before you did. That’s not how sexuality works, it’s yours to define. Being effeminate doesn’t make you gay. Being sensitive doesn’t make you gay. Being gay makes you gay. Be a bit gay, be very gay. Be the glitter that shows up in unexpected places. Be Typing . . . on WhatsApp but leave them waiting. Throw a party for yourself but don’t invite anyone else. Invite everyone to your party but show up late or not at all. If you’re unhappy in the closet but afraid of what’s outside, leave the door ajar and call out. If you’re happy in the closet for the time being, play dress-up until you find the right outfit. Don’t worry, it’s okay to say you’re gay and later exchange it for something else that suits you, fits, feels better. Watch movies that make it seem a little less scary: Beautiful Thing, Moonlight. Be southeast London, a daytime dance floor, his head resting on your shoulder. Be South Beach, Miami, night of water and fire, your head resting on his shoulder. Be the fabric of his shirt the muscles in his shoulder, your shoulder. Be the bricks, be the sand. Be the river, be the ocean. Remember your life is not a movie. Accept you will be coming out for your whole life. Accept advice from people and sources you trust. If your mother warns you about STDs within minutes of you coming out, try to understand that she loves you and is afraid. If you come out at fifteen, this is not a badge of honor, it doesn’t matter what age you come out. Be a beautiful thing. Be the moonlight, too. Remember you have the right to be proud. Remember you have the right to be you.

Do not throw that at me!” Kane’s voice suddenly shouted. Keela cackled. “It’s just a tub of butter, you big baby.” “It’s a frozen tub of butter, so you might as well throw a brick at my head!” “That can be arranged, big man.” “You’re an evil little person, I hope you know that.” “I do.” I laughed at their conversation and sunk back into my sofa, tugging my blanket farther up my body. “Leave him alone, Keela.” I heard something being set down on either the kitchen counter or table. It dropped with a thud. “You’re lucky she wants you alive and unharmed.” “And you’re lucky she wants you here often, otherwise I’d ban you from ever entering this building.” Keela seethed. “You’ve gone mad with power.” I smiled.

After that, we don't talk much until she brings out a ginger cake from the larder. "An old family recipe," she says. "I've been experimenting with the quantities of cloves and Jamaica ginger. Tell me what you think." And she pushes a slice toward me. I try not to gobble for it, for I am starving. "The most important thing with this cake is to beat in every ingredient, one by one, with the back of a wooden spoon," she says. "Simply throwing everything in together and then beating produces a most unsuccessful cake. I know because my first attempt was as heavy as a brick---quite indigestible!" She gives a rueful smile and asks if I think it needs more ginger. I feel the crumb, dense and dark, melt on my tongue. My mouth floods with warmth and spice and sweetness. As I swallow, something sharp and clean seems to lift through my nose and throat until my head swims. "I can see you like it." Miss Eliza watches me and smiles. And then I blurt something out. Something I know Reverend Thorpe and his wife would not like. But it's too late, the words jump from my throat of their own accord. "I can taste an African heaven, a forest full of dark earth and heat." The smile on Miss Eliza's face stretches a little wider and her eyes grow brighter. And this gives me the courage to ask a question that's nothing to do with my work. "What is the flavor that cuts through it so keenly, so that it sings a high note on my tongue?" She stares at me with her forget-me-not eyes. "It's the lightly grated rinds of two fresh lemons!

The book originated in the suggestion of a publisher; as many more good books have done than the arrogance of the man of letters is commonly inclined to admit. Very much is said in our time about Apollo and Admetus, and the impossibility of asking genius to work within prescribed limits or assist an alien design. But after all, as a matter of fact, some of the greatest geniuses have done it, from Shakespeare botching up bad comedies and dramatising bad novels down to Dickens writing a masterpiece as the mere framework for a Mr. Seymour’s sketches. Nor is the true explanation irrelevant to the spirit and power of Dickens. Very delicate, slender, and bizarre talents are indeed incapable of being used for an outside purpose, whether of public good or of private gain. But about very great and rich talent there goes a certain disdainful generosity which can turn its hand to anything. Minor poets cannot write to order; but very great poets can write to order. The larger the man’s mind, the wider his scope of vision, the more likely it will be that anything suggested to him will seem significant and promising; the more he has a grasp of everything the more ready he will be to write anything. It is very hard (if that is the question) to throw a brick at a man and ask him to write an epic; but the more he is a great man the more able he will be to write about the brick.

He ducked his head and started walking. “Go away.” “I don’t know why I was worried,” Hunter said from behind him. “Considering you only seem to know how to run and hide.” Gabriel swung around and hit him. Or he tried to. Hunter had some serious military training, and he deflected the blow easily. But Gabriel was no stranger to fighting dirty. He caught Hunter with a solid punch to the stomach. Hunter got him in the jaw. And then they were fighting in earnest. Christ, it felt fantastic to drive his fist into something. Especially when Hunter fought back with enough force to really make it worth it. Enough force that Gabriel started to wonder if this would turn into a test of endurance. Enough force that Gabriel started to wonder if he could win. His back slammed into the concrete wall of the mall. Breath rushed out of his lungs. He braced against the wall to throw Hunter off, getting enough leverage to shove the other boy to the ground. He followed him down to pin him there. “Whoa, hold up,” Hunter said, breathless. He made his hands into a T. “If I tear my clothes, my grandmother will shit a brick.” Gabriel stared down at him, unsure whether to let him go. Then he caught the glint of light on steel under Hunter’s jacket. “You are one crazy bastard. You really did come armed.” “Sure.” “You had a gun and you still fought me like that?” Hunter grinned. “Wait you were fighting for real? ” Yeah, he had been but suddenly it didn’t seem so important. Gabriel let him go. Hunter rolled to his feet and dusted bits of grass from his hair. “You want a ride home?

We could also see birches in the woods beyond the thirteen-foot-high fences. And we could see women prisoners in the adjacent field; if the girls saw their mothers among them, they could throw their bread to them, hoping that they would not loft it back, as our rations were greater than anyone else's in the camp. We could see the labs we were taken to on Tuesdays and Thursdays and Saturdays, the two-story buildings of brick, but the rest of our view was limited. If someone had cause to pluck us up and take us somewhere, then there was more we might learn of Auschwitz, but otherwise, we did not see the section of camp called Canada, which featured a series of warehouses so overwhelmed with pillaged splendor that the prisoners named it after a country that represented wealth and luxury to them. Inside Canada's structures, our former possessions loomed in stacks: our spectacles, our coats, our instruments, our suitcases, all of it, even down to our teeth, our hair, anything that could be considered necessary to the business of being human. We did not see the sauna where inmates were stripped, or the little white farmhouse whose rooms were passed off as showers. We did not see the luxuriant headquarters of the SS, where parties took place, parties where the women of the Puff were brought in to dance and sit upon Nazi laps. We did not see, and so we believed we already knew the worst. We couldn't image the greatness of suffering, how artful and calculating it could be, how it could pluck off the members of a family, one after the other, or show an entire village the face of death in one fell swoop.

The front door is locked—what’s up with that?” “Logan fixed the lock,” I tell her. Her bright red, heart-shaped mouth smiles. “Good job, Kevin Costner. You should staple the key to Ellie’s forehead, though, or she’ll lose it.” She has names for the other guys too and when her favorite guard, Tommy Sullivan, walks in a few minutes later, Marlow uses his. “Hello, Delicious.” She twirls her honey-colored, bouncy hair around her finger, cocking her hip and tilting her head like a vintage pinup girl. Tommy, the fun-loving super-flirt, winks. “Hello, pretty, underage lass.” Then he nods to Logan and smiles at me. “Lo . . . Good morning, Miss Ellie.” “Hey, Tommy.” Marlow struts forward. “Three months, Tommy. Three months until I’m a legal adult—then I’m going to use you, abuse you and throw you away.” The dark-haired devil grins. “That’s my idea of a good date.” Then he gestures toward the back door. “Now, are we ready for a fun day of learning?” One of the security guys has been walking me to school ever since the public and press lost their minds over Nicholas and Olivia’s still-technically-unconfirmed relationship. They make sure no one messes with me and they drive me in the tinted, bulletproof SUV when it rains—it’s a pretty sweet deal. I grab my ten-thousand-pound messenger bag from the corner. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of this before. Elle—you should have a huge banger here tonight!” says Marlow. Tommy and Logan couldn’t have synced up better if they’d practiced: “No fucking way.” Marlow holds up her hands, palms out. “Did I say banger?” “Huge banger,” Tommy corrects. “No—no fucking way. I meant, we should have a few friends over to . . . hang out. Very few. Very mature. Like . . . almost a study group.” I toy with my necklace and say, “That actually sounds like a good idea.” Throwing a party when your parents are away is a rite-of-high-school passage. And after this summer, Liv will most likely never be away again. It’s now or never. “It’s a terrible idea.” Logan scowls. He looks kinda scary when he scowls. But still hot. Possibly, hotter. Marlow steps forward, her brass balls hanging out and proud. “You can’t stop her—that’s not your job. It’s like when the Bush twins got busted in that bar with fake IDs or Malia was snapped smoking pot at Coachella. Secret Service couldn’t stop them; they just had to make sure they didn’t get killed.” Tommy slips his hands in his pockets, laid back even when he’s being a hardass. “We could call her sister. Even from an ocean away, I’d bet she’d stop her.” “No!” I jump a little. “No, don’t bother Liv. I don’t want her worrying.” “We could board up the fucking doors and windows,” Logan suggests. ’Cause that’s not overkill or anything. I move in front of the two security guards and plead my case. “I get why you’re concerned, okay? But I have this thing—it’s like my motto. I want to suck the lemon.” Tommy’s eyes bulge. “Suck what?” I laugh, shaking my head. Boys are stupid. “You know that saying, ‘When life gives you lemons, make lemonade’?—well, I want to suck the lemon dry.” Neither of them seems particularly impressed. “I want to live every bit of life, experience everything it has to offer, good and bad.” I lift my jeans to show my ankle—and the little lemon I’ve drawn there. “See? When I’m eighteen, I’m going to get this tattooed on for real. As a reminder to live as much and as hard and as awesome as I can—to not take anything for granted. And having my friends over tonight is part of that.” I look back and forth between them. Tommy’s weakening—I can feel it. Logan’s still a brick wall. “It’ll be small. And quiet—I swear. Totally controlled. And besides, you guys will be here with me. What could go wrong?” Everything. Everything goes fucking wrong.

Let’s take the threshold idea one step further. If intelligence matters only up to a point, then past that point, other things—things that have nothing to do with intelligence—must start to matter more. It’s like basketball again: once someone is tall enough, then we start to care about speed and court sense and agility and ball-handling skills and shooting touch. So, what might some of those other things be? Well, suppose that instead of measuring your IQ, I gave you a totally different kind of test. Write down as many different uses that you can think of for the following objects: a brick a blanket This is an example of what’s called a “divergence test” (as opposed to a test like the Raven’s, which asks you to sort through a list of possibilities and converge on the right answer). It requires you to use your imagination and take your mind in as many different directions as possible. With a divergence test, obviously there isn’t a single right answer. What the test giver is looking for are the number and the uniqueness of your responses. And what the test is measuring isn’t analytical intelligence but something profoundly different—something much closer to creativity. Divergence tests are every bit as challenging as convergence tests, and if you don’t believe that, I encourage you to pause and try the brick-and-blanket test right now. Here, for example, are answers to the “uses of objects” test collected by Liam Hudson from a student named Poole at a top British high school: (Brick). To use in smash-and-grab raids. To help hold a house together. To use in a game of Russian roulette if you want to keep fit at the same time (bricks at ten paces, turn and throw—no evasive action allowed). To hold the eiderdown on a bed tie a brick at each corner. As a breaker of empty Coca-Cola bottles. (Blanket). To use on a bed. As a cover for illicit sex in the woods. As a tent. To make smoke signals with. As a sail for a boat, cart or sled. As a substitute for a towel. As a target for shooting practice for short-sighted people. As a thing to catch people jumping out of burning skyscrapers.

In America a child can no longer visit the place where she was born a shopping mall stands there instead. In America a grownup can no longer see the school where she learned the art of growing sad a freeway goes through there now an overpass her memories of brick turn to glass the suburb goes from white to black and time speeds up so much she has to stay young forever and reset the clock every five minutes just to know where is there and there is everywhere because she lives in time and not in any space! In our country here the future is in ruins before it is built a fact recognized by postmodern architecture that grins at us shyly or demonically as it quoted ruins from other times and places! There are no buildings in America only passageways that connect migratory floods the most permanent architecture being precisely that which moves these floods from one future ruin to another that is to say freeways and skyways and the car is our only shelter the architecture of desire reduced to the womb a womb in transit from one nowhere to another!” Saddened by his own vision and sensing smugness in the audience, Wakefield is revolted by his desire to please the foreigners. He coughs. He is portraying his own country now for the sake of… what? Applause? There isn't any. He veers down another path. “The miracle of America is of motion not regret in New Mexico the has face of Jesus jumped on a tortilla in Plaquermine a Virgin appeared in a tree In Santuari de Chimayo the dirt turned healer a guy in Texas crasahed into a wall when God said Let me take the wheel! And others hear voice all the time telling them to sit under a tree or jump from a cliff or take large baskets of eggs into Blockbuster to throw at the videos the voices of God are everywhere heard loud and clear under the hum of the tickertape and all these miracle and speaking gods are the mysteries left homeless by the Architecture of speed and moving forward onward and ahead!” Wakefield throws his hands into the air as if to sprinkle fairy dust on the room; he is evoking the richness of a place always ready for miracles.

I’d much rather a monkey throws a blanket instead of a brick.

A brick could replace your window, if your window’s opaque, and you throw the brick hard enough.


George could dig and pour the concrete basement for a house. He could saw the lumber and nail the frame. He could wire the rooms and fit the plumbing. He could hang the drywall. He could lay the floors and shingle the roof. He could build the brick steps. He could point the windows and paint the sashes. But he could not throw a ball or walk a mile; he hated exercise, and once he took early retirement at sixty he never had his heart rate up again if he could help it, and even then only if it were to whack through some heavy brush to get to a good trout pool. Lack of exercise might have been the reason that, when he had his first radiation treatment for the cancer in his groin, his legs swelled up like two dead seals on a beach and then turned as hard as lumber. Before he was bedridden, he walked as if he were an amputee from a war that predated modern prosthetics; he tottered as if two hardwood legs hinged with iron pins were buckled to his waist. When his wife touched his legs at night in bed, through his pajamas, she thought of oak or maple and had to make herself think of something else in order not to imagine going down to his workshop in the basement and getting sandpaper and stain and sanding his legs and staining them with a brush, as if they belonged to a piece of furniture. Once, she snorted out loud, trying to stifle a laugh, when she thought, My husband, the table. She felt so bad afterward that she wept.

I know you can't see it now, but this is a good thing, man,” I say. “You have your freedom back. You're young, good looking, have a great job – just think about how much pussy you're going to get.” “I don't want pussy,” he moans. “I want Stephanie back.” I groan inwardly. Stephanie is a terrible human being. I haven't liked her since they first started dating back when we were all going to Stanford together. She was always too pretentious and condescending for my liking. Always looked down on people and seemed to think that she was better than everyone else. No, Stephanie and I never got on well at all. I know that it’s always bugged Trey, but some people just don't click. I never went out of my way to be an asshole to her – at least, not usually. But, I was never overly-friendly to her either. I have a hard time making nice with somebody I despise. Truthfully, I want to do fucking cartwheels and throw a party now that she's out of Trey's life. I genuinely think he'll be better off without her. And that he'll find a much better woman. I pour out another shot – a smaller amount this time – and Trey pounds it down, slamming his shot glass onto the bar again. “I really thought she was the one, man,” he says, sniffing loudly. “Yeah, well, I don't want to be an asshole,” I say, “but you usually aren't going to find the ‘one’ down on her knees sucking some other guy off in your house.” I feel bad for slapping Trey with such a hard dose of reality, but he needs it. Stephanie is about as close to the one for him as I am. I tried telling him that back in college. I've always suspected she had a side piece, but I couldn't ever prove it. And mentioning it to Trey was as useful as talking to a brick wall about it. All he ever saw in Stephanie was the good. Or at least, what he perceived to be good. But really, there is

Five cards, two dice, and an outside deck. A Domino’s pickup with a reality check. Testing: 1, 2, 3. Are you there? Static. Lay the mic brick work for another thought wreck. Perhaps a pantomime would work in this rhyme. So I’ll take an old penny, and wash off the grime. I’ll wash another 9, and then I’ll have a dime. The thought before the dime was the pantomime. Perhaps you can see it through the window I made. But the thoughts have been trashed like a 50’s grey shade. Yeah, I just said a whole lot. Don’t forget this is Wade. I just pull out the pen and I throw the grenade.

To suppose that the evolution of the wonderfully adapted biological mechanisms has depended only on a selection out of a haphazard set of variations, each produced by blind chance, is like suggesting that if we went on throwing bricks together into heaps, we should eventually be able to choose ourselves the most desirable house.

Steve could look at an open, weed-choked field and see gardens, walkways, new environments for animals. His mind buzzed with projects. It takes vision, and hard work. I would watch Steve planting trees, moving earth, and landscaping. He milled his own timber to build enclosures. He worked from dawn until well after dark, when he rigged spotlights to be able to keep working. I had never seen anything like it. He was a machine. He would go past human endurance. Often I’d catch him throwing up behind a tree out of sheer physical exhaustion. “Don’t worry about it. I just drank too much tea this morning,” he said after one such incident, when I expressed my concern. He continued with the job. Running a zoo meant being able to work with wildlife, yes. But I discovered there was so much more to it. Steve had an apprenticeship in diesel fitting, so he could operate and repair the backhoes, vehicles, and machines necessary to run the zoo. He laid brick and concrete, designed enclosures, and had an eye like an interior decorator for the end result of all his work. It didn’t just have to be sturdy and well-built. It had to look good, too. Over the course of several years in the early 1990s, I helped as Steve developed and expanded the zoo. Funds were limited. Steve did much of the work himself, making what little money we had stretch that much further. He wouldn’t even have one project finished and would already be dreaming up visions of another.

You okay?” she asks. “I think so. You?” “Yeah.” The courthouse looks like it’s burning under the morning sun. The flame-orange shimmer of hot brick forces me to look away. “Why are you still going through with this?” She’s silent, and I contemplate punching myself in the face. If she backs out now I’m going to…I don’t even know what. Slash Chase Dunkirk’s tires. Set fire to the school. Kick a hole in every wall in my house on my way out. “Don’t be an idiot,” she says, opens her door, and climbs out. “Seriously. Why?” “Because I can’t let bad things happen to you, Mo. Now quit being such a pantywaist and marry me.” She opens my door, and I look down in time to see her rolling her eyes. I’m so relieved. She isn’t cowering. She won’t break. “Pantywaist?” I ask. “What are you, seventy?” “Stop stalling.” “I feel like I might throw up,” I say as I get out. “Would this be a good time to tell you I’m not a virgin?” “Would this be a good time to tell you I’m in love with Maya?” “Finally!” she says, and grabs my arm, pulling me toward the building. “Only took you four years to admit it. So prewedding confessions are out of the way. Let’s do this.” “I really think I might be getting the stomach flu.” She ignores me. “This is weird, but right at this second, I feel . . .” She pauses, squinting at me through the blinding sun. “I feel like this is right. You know?” “No. Not at all. I’m about to piss my pants. I believe you remember the last time that happened, and they may or may not have black sweatpants in my size at the lost and found here

People in crowds often act in thoughtless ways—shouting profanities, destroying property, throwing bricks, threatening others. This can come about partly because of a process known to psychologists as deindividuation : people begin to lose their self-awareness and sense of individual agency as they identify more strongly with the group, which often leads to antisocial behaviors they would never consider if they were acting alone. They can form a mob, cease to think for themselves, lose their moral compass, and adopt a classic us-versus-them stance that brooks no shared understanding.

will wager that, rough as the diplomatic road may get with the Europeans, no American will throw a brick through the gaslit windows of bijou brasserie chains in the Midwest, or carve rude messages about German labor-market rigidity into the back of a Porsche 944. . . . For every Euro-hater in the conservative establishment there are at least half a dozen Americans ready to laud Europe. The cultural elite still likes to decry US TV and it longs for the virtues of British television, blissfully unaware that almost every piece of trash on American TV screens—from American Idol to I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here—has a British provenance

But like all revolutions, change isn't just about tearing down, it's about rebuilding. A real revolution isn't just throwing "bricks"; it's about telling the story after, and building the space to hear it.

Xavier and Catalina sat in the VIP box, waving down at us enthusiastically and I waved back before giving Darius my full attention. The entire right side of his face was covered in mud, not to mention the rest of him and his torn jersey fell open to reveal the firm cut of his abs and that perfect V which dipped beneath his waistband. “You’re killing it out there,” I told him truthfully, flashing a sweet smile which instantly had him narrowing his eyes in suspicion. We hadn’t exactly talked much since the whole three way thing and I was really curious about how he was feeling about that. But I was even more curious as to how he was going to react when he realised I’d been playing with the sack of treasure I stole from him oh so long ago. There were plenty of times when I’d thought about the little stash we’d hidden out in the woods and wondered why he hadn’t asked for it back and there was only one reason that made any sense – he assumed I didn’t have it anymore. I didn’t know if he thought I’d sold it or destroyed it, but I was about to remind him that I still had it and see how nice he was when his temper flared. I was pretty sure there was a guide book or two out there about not poking a Dragon, but I guessed I was just too stupid to care. “Thanks. Are you looking for me to make some cheesy statement like I’m thinking of you every time I tackle someone?” he teased and I laughed, tossing my hair. He frowned at me and I had to admit that might have been overkill, but whatever. “Nice to know I’m on your mind every time you have someone pinned beneath you in the mud,” I purred. From the corner of my eye, I noticed Mildred rising to her feet in the stands with a face like an angry Koala which had been hit by a car. I didn’t have long before she came over here to stake her claim on her Dragon, but I didn’t need much time. “I think I’ve made my desire to pin you beneath me pretty clear,” Darius replied in a low voice which had my toes curling, but I wasn’t here to flirt, I was here to poke a Dragon. “Good luck for the second half,” I said in a sweet voice, reaching out touch his bicep, making sure that the gold rings pressed against his skin. Darius looked down the moment he felt his magic stir in response to the gold and his eyes widened in surprise which was quickly followed by a flash of fury as he recognised the jewellery from his stash which I’d stolen. I whirled away from him with a dark laugh before he could do any more than suck in an angry breath and I jogged out to join my squad just as they started up a chant. V – E – G – A! She’ll wipe the floor with you today! Veeeeega! Veeeeega! I fell into the moves of the chant, clapping my hands as some of the others rustled pom-poms and Darcy offered me an appreciative smile from the side of the pitch. We had little chants like that for all of the team members, but we often forgot to call out for the Heirs. The music suddenly dropped and 7 Rings by Ariana Grande burst from speakers around the stadium as we moved into a full routine filled with dance moves and tricks. The song choice turned out to be perfect for taunting a gold obsessed Dragon as well as performing a badass routine to and I couldn’t help but smirk like a psychopath throughout. Darius stood glaring at me from the side of the pitch even when Seth tried to drag him into the locker rooms and my heart thundered at the pure fury in his eyes. Remind me again why I thought poking the Dragon was a good idea because he looks ready to shit a brick! I turned my eyes from him, grinning out at the crowd as I moved between my girls, running forward as I performed a set of hand springs which ended in me throwing a huge blast of multicoloured petals up into the air so that they fell over the crowd. (Tory)

to the major leagues. As Jim became more interested in sports, his parents tried to gently direct him to soccer, a sport famous for not needing the use of your hands. Yet everyone in the neighborhood was playing baseball, so that is what Jim Abbott wanted to play. As any good parent would, Mike would spend hours with Jim working on hand-eye coordination drills to help him accomplish the same motions other kids were doing with two hands. After hours of throwing rubber balls against brick walls and catching the rebounds, Jim eventually began practicing the glove technique that would make him famous. He would elegantly remove his left hand from his glove and then take the ball out of his glove to throw to the

I was having a field day down the Westend; my deep pockets were jingling and full of money nearly every day of the week. My brother’s bird, Irene, wanted a fur coat, so I got her one by throwing a brick through the shop window and grabbing the coat off the shop dummy. Once I got to the bed-sit, I put the jacket on and waltzed in to the flat looking like Liberace, the two of them burst out laughing. Irene was like a tramp eating chips. ‘Let’s try it on, Jimmy, please?’ As she swooned around like Joan Collins with the fur coat on, she had the air of a council estate beauty queen about her.

In this instance, she’d not heard him count. He’d not hit a wall, unless the brick-headed stubbornness of Dmitri’s face counted. Thwack! “Yay.” Yes, that was her cheering for her Pookie aloud. Since it seemed he hadn’t heard, she said it louder, yodeled it as a matter of fact. “You get him, Pookie. Show him who’s the biggest, baddest pussy around.” Leo turned his head at that, narrowing his blue gaze on her. Totally annoyed. Totally adrenalized. Totally hot. “Vex!” How sexy her nickname sounded when he growled it. She could tell he totally dug the encouragement. She waggled her fingers at him and meant to say, “You’re welcome,” but instead shouted, “Behind you!” During that moment of inattention— which really Leo should have known better than to indulge in— Dmitri threw a mighty hook. Had she mentioned just how sigh-worthy big her Pookie was? The perfectly aimed blow hit Leo in the jaw, and the force snapped his head to the side. But it certainly didn’t fell him. Not even close. On the contrary, the punch brought the predator in him alive. As he rotated his jaw, Leo’s gaze flicked her way, his eyes lit with a wildness, his lip quirked, almost in amusement, and then he acted. His fist retaliated then his elbow, snapping Dmitri in the nose. Any other man, even shifter, might have quickly succumbed, but the Russian Siberian tiger was more than a match for the hybrid lion/ tiger. Put them in a ring and they’d have brought in a fortune. They certainly put on a good show. Blood trailed from Dmitri’s lip from where Leo’s fist struck him. However, that didn’t stop the Russian from giving as good as he got. Size-wise, Leo held a slight edge, but what Dmitri lacked in girth, he made up for in skill. Even if Meena wasn’t interested in marrying him, it didn’t mean she couldn’t admire the grace of Dmitri’s movement and his uncanny intuition when it came to dodging blows. Leo wasn’t too shabby either. While he’d obviously not grown up on the mean streets of Russia, he knew how to throw a punch, wrestle a man, and look totally hot in defense of his woman. Sigh. A man coming to her rescue. Just like one of those romance novels Teena likes to read. Luna sidled up alongside her. “What did you do this time?” Why did everyone assume it was her fault? “I didn’t do anything.” Luna snorted. “Sure you didn’t. And it also wasn’t you who put Kool-Aid in Arik’s mom’s shampoo bottle and turned her hair pink at the family picnic a few years ago.” “I thought the short spikes she sported after she got it shaved looked awesome.” “Never said the outcome wasn’t worth it. Just like I’m totally intrigued about what’s happening here. That is Leo laying a smackdown on that Russian diplomat, right? Since I highly doubt they’re sparring over who makes the better vodka or who deserved the gold medal in hockey at the last winter Olympics, then that leaves only one other possibility.” Luna fixed her with a gaze. “This is your fault.” Meena’s shoulders hunched. “Okay, so maybe I’m a teensy tiny bit responsible. Like maybe I made sure my ex-fiancé and current fiancé got to meet.” “Duh. I already knew about that part. What I’m talking about is, how the hell did you get Leo to lose his shit? I mean when he gets his serious on, you couldn’t melt an ice cube in his mouth. Leo never loses control because to lose control is to lose one’s way, or some such bullshit. He’s always spouting these funny little sayings in the hopes of curbing our wild tendencies.” Pookie had the cutest personality. “What can I say?” Meena shrugged. “I guess he got jealous. Totally normal, given we’re soul mates.

Where people were once dazzled to be online, now their expectations had soared, and they did not bother to hide their contempt for those who sought to curtail their freedom on the Web. Nobody was more despised than a computer science professor in his fifties named Fang Binxing. Fang had played a central role in designing the architecture of censorship, and the state media wrote admiringly of him as the “father of the Great Firewall.” But when Fang opened his own social media account, a user exhorted others, “Quick, throw bricks at Fang Binxing!” Another chimed in, “Enemies of the people will eventually face trial.” Censors removed the insults as fast as possible, but they couldn’t keep up, and the lacerating comments poured in. People called Fang a “eunuch” and a “running dog.” Someone Photoshopped his head onto a voodoo doll with a pin in its forehead. In digital terms, Fang had stepped into the hands of a frenzied mob. Less than three hours after Web users spotted him, the Father of the Great Firewall shut down his account and recoiled from the digital world that he had helped create. A few months later, in May 2011, Fang was lecturing at Wuhan University when a student threw an egg at him, followed by a shoe, hitting the professor in the chest. Teachers tried to detain the shoe thrower, a science student from a nearby college, but other students shielded him and led him to safety. He was instantly famous online. People offered him cash and vacations in Hong Kong and Singapore. A female blogger offered to sleep with him.

A brick could be used to measure water levels through what scientists call hydrostatics. If you throw a brick into the ocean, you’ll have proof that sea levels are rising globally. 


Moving on sometimes is the best way to take all the bricks that life throws at you, and building a castle to chillax

You changed it?” I look over at him and he shrugs. “It needed changing.” I don’t understand. “Why?” It was her. She’s the butterfly. “She’s not broken,” he says. “So that didn’t fit her.” I scoff. “Okay.” “That’s why she’s pushing you away, you idiot,” he says. I don’t understand, so I throw up my hands and wait. “You see her as this broken little thing that needs you to take care of her. She doesn’t need that. She might have been broken at one time, but she’s not fucking broken now. She’s put it all back together. She’s made a life for herself, and you’re trying to change it. It’s kind of like she’s built this fortress around herself, brick by fucking brick, and you might think a fortress is too much, but it’s not. Do you know why?” I can only sit and stare at him. “Do you want to know why?” he asks. I nod. My heart is in my fucking throat. “Because she fucking lives there, Paul. It’s home for her. It’s safe and it’s secure and it’s hers. And she built it with her own two hands. So for you to swoop in and not only try to move her out of her fortress but also to tear it down, you’re fucking up everything she’s worked for. And that’s why she’s rejecting you. It’s not because she doesn’t love you, because I believe she does. It’s because you need her to change for you, and she’s too smart for that.” I cough into my fist because words won’t come to me. “Do you understand, now?” he asks. When he came in, he was all protective and confrontational, but now he’s softening, and he’s looking at me with those blue eyes that look so much like our mother’s. “I get it,” I say. He walks toward me and slaps me in the forehead. “You dumb fucker,” he says. But he laughs and pulls me against his chest and pats my back. He sets me back and looks into my eyes. “Now figure out what you need to do.

Will you let me move into your fortress with you?” I blurt out. Her brow furrows, and she looks so damn cute that I want to kiss her, but I know I can’t. “What?” she breathes out. I get up and walk to her. “That fortress where you reside? Will you let me live there with you?” “What the fuck are you talking about?” she asks. She puts her hands on her hips and glares at me. “I don’t want to blow all your walls to bits,” I say. She has a piece of hair stuck to her lips, so I pull it away and tuck it behind her ear. “I just want to live inside them with you. Fuck,” I say, throwing up my hands. “I fucking love your walls. Every single brick. But let me move in. Let me be there with you. Then you can find out if you love me, and you can invite me to stay if you find out that you do. Just let me inside.” I take a deep breath and watch her. “Did you hit your fucking head on the way to work?” she asks. I laugh and rub my forehead. “No, but Logan just slapped some sense into me.” “Then what the fuck is wrong with you?” “I’m in fucking love with you, Friday!” I cry. “I fucking love you, you irritating, obnoxious, sexy-ass woman that I can’t get out of my fucking head.” I hit myself in the head with my fists like I’m knocking. “I’m in love with you.” I drop down onto my knees in front of her, and she steps back, so I inch forward until I can pull her belly to touch my forehead. “I’m in love with you.” I look up at her. “I’m on my knees, and I’m not going to try to get you to marry me or make you do anything you don’t want to do. Just let me in, and I’ll be happy with it.” “So, you don’t want to talk me into marrying you?” I shake my head, staring up at her like a puppy. “You’re not going to hold it over my head and refuse intimacy until I cave to what you want?” “No.” “You’re not going to keep asking me again and again?” “No.” “You’re going to stop being stupid?” I grin. “I don’t know about that one.” “You have testicles,” she says, and she shrugs. “I can’t have it all, can I?” She sinks down onto her knees in front of me. She bites her lower lip and stares at me. “Say it,” I coax. She goes back to glaring at me. “Say what?” “Whatever you’re thinking.” “I’m thinking that my knees are uncomfortable on this fucking floor, and I’m wondering how long you’re going to fucking make me stay down here.” I laugh. God, she’s so contrary! She takes my face in her hands. “Tonight, can I make you dinner?” she asks. My heart does that pitter-patter thing again. “Like a date?” She rocks her head back and forth like she’s weighing her words. “I guess you could call it a date.” “Then yes, I’d love that.” Then I remember. “But I have Hayley tonight.” She brightens. “Good.” She kisses me quickly and grins. “Because that’s about as close to a threesome as you’ll ever get with me.” She points to the floor. “Can I get up now?” she asks. “Get the fuck up,” I growl. I get to my feet, too. She falls against me and wraps her arms around my waist. “So does this mean that you don’t want to marry me?” she asks, her voice muffled against my chest. Her words touch the tattoo I just got, and it stings a little. But I don’t pull back. I don’t want her to see it yet. “I didn’t say that.” “You didn’t say the opposite.” I set her back a little and look down into her upturned face. “Are you telling me you do want to marry me?” She shakes her head and jabs a finger at me. “But I want to leave the door open.” Oh, holy hell. She’s opening a fucking door and I didn’t even have to threaten her or withhold anything or torment her in any way. I might pass out. “Okay,” I say.

When they’d filled the peppers and they were laid out in nice, neat, bacon-wrapped lines, she slid them into the oven. Then they went into the sitting room. David sat down next to Leah on the settee. “Now, we can’t fall asleep, waiting for them to finish cooking,” he said. Famous. Last. Words. They chatted for a moment about how melted cheese was probably the best invention on the planet, but it descended into quiet as their lids dropped and she wondered why she couldn’t think of anything more insightful to say. It had felt like only seconds that she rested her eyes, but Leah and David jumped to a start, the fire alarm beeping in the kitchen. The both looked at each other, their eyes big with surprise. “Oh no!” he laughed. They ran into the kitchen, David throwing on one of Nan’s oven mitts and yanking the smoking, sizzling peppers out of the oven. Leah opened the windows and the back door, but it seemed to let more cold air in than smoke out. She fanned the air, while David took the peppers outside and set them on the brick walkway. As they both stood in the freezing kitchen, the smoke billowing around the ceiling, they broke into laughter. “Maybe we should’ve just had the marshmallows,” he said. Leah rolled under the duvet to view the time, the gray morning barely giving her enough light to focus. It was still early—six o’clock. She closed her eyes and lay back on the pillow, the feel of the linens so familiar and comfortable that, at first, she’d almost forgotten about her troubles. This was the bed she’d slept in when she needed the security of family, and a retreat to ease her mind.

She’d met Lysandra when they were both ten, and in the seven years that they’d known each other, Celaena couldn’t recall a time when she didn’t want to beat in the girl’s face with a brick. Or throw her out the window. Or do any of a number of things she’d learned from Arobynn.

If you consider words to be like bricks, throwing more bricks onto a pile won’t make a wall, not matter how many you put on. But selected words, placed carefully, make a wall and then a structure. Well-structured words have great power, and power should be handled carefully. Kind words have the ability to soothe the soul, like lying on warm brick in the sunlight. While on the other hand, harsh words feel like a sharp knife or a brick to the face.

Ohhhhhh, that lil’ nigga below done finally woke the fuck up. Bruh, do you cause it’s been a long muthafuckin’ time. I feel for the bitch that let you hit, ‘cause yo’ ass gone tear her damn insides the fuck up!” This nigga burst out laughing and walked out. He was right; this was the first time that my fuckin’ dick rose to any woman. My nigga is bricked up right now, and all I wanted to do was throw this fine ass girl on this bar and bless her fuckin’ life the Kashas way.

In a world that tells girls we shouldn't be angry, even as our lives are ripped from our grasps. When I throw the brick, I picture myself as a small child throwing pennies in a pond making wishes. So, tonight, I wish too, and the wish begins, "If only. . . If only this world loved living girls as much as it loved dead ones.

there can hardly be a town in the South of England where you can throw a brick without hitting the niece of a bishop.

Sooner or later every gardener must face the fact that certain things are going to die on him. It is a temptation to be anthropomorphic about plants, to suspect they do it to annoy. One knows, after all, that they lead lives of their own: plant the lily bulb in the center of the bed and watch it come up under a brick near the edge; pull up a sick little bush and throw it on the compost heap, and ten to one, it will obstinately revive. Usually, though, gardening failures, like airplane crashes, are the result of 'human error', of not reading the directions or paying attention.