“
And this note was a jittery time bomb, ticking beneath my normal life, in my pocket all day firecely reread, in my purse all week until I was afraid it would get crushed or snooped, in my drawer between two dull books to escape my mother and then in the box and now thunked back to you. A note, who writes a note like that? Who were you to write one to me? It boomed inside me the whole time, an explosion over and over, the joy of what you wrote to me jumpy shrapnel in my bloodstream. I can't have it near me anymore, I'm grenading it back to you, as soon as I unfold it and read it and cry one more time. Because me too, and fuck you. Even now.
I can’t stop thinking about you.
”
”
Daniel Handler (Why We Broke Up)
“
In truth, we will only perform any action a certain number of times, and to know that can never be helpful. There is, in my opinion, no use in demanding to know the number, in demanding to know upon waking the number of boxes to be ticked off every single day. After all, why would it help to be shown the mathematics of things, when instead we could simply imagine that whatever time we have is limitless.
”
”
Julia Armfield (Our Wives Under the Sea)
“
Why do you want me?" I asked, suppressing the trembling of my voice. "I’m strange, definitely not perfect, and fucked up. Actually, a lot of the latter.”
“Perfect is boring and overrated.” He smiled that lopsided grin of his that made my lower abdomen twist and curl with delicious desire. “I’m looking for sexy, fun, kind, and honest. And you tick all the right boxes, Brooke.
”
”
J.C. Reed (Surrender Your Love (Surrender Your Love, #1))
“
[Australia] is the home of the largest living thing on earth, the Great Barrier Reef, and of the largest monolith, Ayers Rock (or Uluru to use its now-official, more respectful Aboriginal name). It has more things that will kill you than anywhere else. Of the world's ten most poisonous snakes, all are Australian. Five of its creatures - the funnel web spider, box jellyfish, blue-ringed octopus, paralysis tick, and stonefish - are the most lethal of their type in the world. This is a country where even the fluffiest of caterpillars can lay you out with a toxic nip, where seashells will not just sting you but actually sometimes go for you. ... If you are not stung or pronged to death in some unexpected manner, you may be fatally chomped by sharks or crocodiles, or carried helplessly out to sea by irresistible currents, or left to stagger to an unhappy death in the baking outback. It's a tough place.
”
”
Bill Bryson (In a Sunburned Country)
“
Yet I was wound up. I tick. I exist. I am poised eighteen inches over the black rivets you are reading, I am in your place, I am shut in a bone box and trying to fasten myself on the white paper. The rivets join us together and yet for all the passion we share nothing but our sense of division.
”
”
William Golding (Free Fall)
“
We all have one life and we can choose how we want to live it. It's important you realize that, no matter what anyone else says or how people may try to influence things, it's ultimately down to you... only YOU can live for you. You can't live in someone else's shadow or permanently try to please someone else, then what do you have to show for it? You won't have any of your own accomplishments, you won't reach your personal goals, and you'll only be ticking someone else's boxes for them. If there is something in life that you really want to do, then do it. You'll only ever live this day once in your lifetime, so start now.
”
”
Zoe Sugg (On Tour (Girl Online #2))
“
So he doesn’t tick any of my usual boxes, but there’s something in the way he looks at me. In his eyes, there’s this strange kind of appreciation that is part attraction, part something else that makes me feel rare and precious and . . . seen.
”
”
Cora Carmack (All Broke Down (Rusk University, #2))
“
Thanks for the apology, Caden, really. Anyway, isn’t it pretty normal for a straight girl to fall for a gay guy? All the sitcoms treat it like a rite of passage, something that all girls must go through. You’re pretty and kind and way too good to be true. At least I’ve ticked that box now.” “I …” I don’t exist to teach her a lesson, and it irks me that she thinks labeling me is okay now. Like, by liking guys, I automatically take on that role in her life. That I’m suddenly a supporting character in her story rather than the hero of my own.
”
”
Cale Dietrich (The Love Interest)
“
I couldn't tell anyone how I felt because I knew they wouldn't understand. Oh, poor little Christina, falling for the bad man who treats her like dirt because she didn't know any better. And isn't it a pity that they don't still teach sex-ed in schools? Or, oh, Christina, that filthy slut, if she puts out for a man like that, I imagine she puts out for anyone. You stay away from her. It wasn't like that at all. Maybe it would have been easier if it was, just like ticking a box. Are you the Madonna, or the whore? The victim, or the vixen? The Sabine, or the skank?
But nothing in life is ever that simple.
”
”
Nenia Campbell (Armed and Dangerous (The IMA, #2))
“
Xav sprinkled olive oil on his lettuce. 'Lola was very particular that it all had to fit properly.'
'Lola?' squeaked Diamond. I wanted to warn her not to rise to the bait Xav was dangling in front of her but it was too late.
Xav added some Parmesan and pepper. 'Suspicious, Diamond? You should be. This is a bachelor party I'm organizing, not a school outing, and it is going to tick all of Trace's boxes. Lola is either a very efficient water sports instructor or an exotic dancing girl; I'll leave it your imagination.'
I rolled my eyes at Diamond. 'Myabe she's both. I mean the guys will really go for that, I guess. Don't worry,Di, Luigi and his crew will not disappoint us girls.' Luigi was in fact Contessa Nicoletta's little bespectacled chef with whom I had been consulting about the menu for Friday, but the Benedicts weren't to know that. 'He has promised to provide something suitably spicy for our tastes.
”
”
Joss Stirling (Seeking Crystal (Benedicts, #3))
“
Because feeling like a fuck-up isn’t about being a failure, it’s about being made to feel like one. It’s the pressure and the panic to tick all the boxes and reach all the goals . . . and what happens when you don’t. When you find yourself on the outside. Because on some level, in some aspect of your life, it’s so easy to feel like you’re failing when everyone around you appears to be succeeding.
”
”
Alexandra Potter (Confessions of a Forty-Something F**k Up)
“
If ever a society could be said to meet all the mythological criteria of the next lost civilization – a society that ticks all the boxes – is it not obvious that it is our own? Our pollution and neglect of the majestic garden of the earth, our rape of its resources, our abuse of the oceans and the rainforests, our fear, hatred and suspicion of one another multiplied by a hundred bitter regional and sectarian conflicts, our consistent track record of standing by and doing nothing while millions suffer, our ignorant, narrow-minded racism, our exclusivist religions, our forgetfulness that we are all brothers and sisters, our bellicose chauvinism, the dreadful cruelties that we indulge in, in the name of nation, or faith, or simple greed, our obsessive, competitive, ego-driven production and consumption of material goods and the growing conviction of many, fuelled by the triumphs of materialist science, that matter is all there is – that there is no such thing as spirit, that we are just accidents of chemistry and biology – all these things, and many more, in mythological terms at least, do not look good for us.
”
”
Graham Hancock (Magicians of the Gods: Evidence for an Ancient Apocalypse)
“
Tom got out a bit of paper and carefully unrolled it. Huckleberry viewed it wistfully. The temptation was very strong. At last he said: "Is it genuwyne?" Tom lifted his lip and showed the vacancy. "Well, all right," said Huckleberry, "it's a trade." Tom enclosed the tick in the percussion-cap box that had lately been the pinchbug's prison, and the boys separated, each feeling wealthier than before.
”
”
Mark Twain (The Adventures of Tom Sawyer)
“
Too often we just accept the premise that a homemaker drives carpool, gets the casserole in the oven, and organizes the closets. Once those things are done, we feel like we have ticked all the boxes and now our time is our own. It’s all too easy for us to work in order that we may have leisure, rather than working because we’re convinced that we’re building something phenomenal—and that mindset makes absolutely all the difference in the world. It is the difference between the employee and the boss, the hired help and the entrepreneur, the servant and the free man.
”
”
Rebekah Merkle (Eve in Exile and the Restoration of Femininity)
“
This note was a jittery bomb ticking beneath my normal life, in my pocket all day fiercely reread, in my purse all week until I was afraid it would get crushed or snooped, in my drawer between two dull books to escape my mother and then in the box and now thunked back to you. A note, who writes a note like that? Who were you to write one to me? It boomed inside me the whole time, an explosion over and over, the joy of what you wrote to me jumpy shrapnel in my bloodstream. I can't have it near me anymore, I'm grenading it back to you, as soon as I unfold it and read it and cry one more time. Because me too, and f--- you. Even now.
”
”
Daniel Handler (Why We Broke Up)
“
It is easier, I guess, to believe that life is inexhaustible. Not so much that its opportunities are vast or that one’s personal dreams can be reached at any age or season, but rather to believe that every dull or daily thing you do will happen again any number of times over. To stamp a limit on even the most tedious of things—the number of
times you have left to buy a coffee, the number of times you will defrost the fridge—is to acknowledge reality in a way that amounts to torture. In truth, we will only perform any action a certain number of times, and to know that can never be helpful. There is, in my opinion, no use in demanding to know the number, in demanding to know upon waking the number of boxes to be ticked off every single day. After all, why would it help to be shown the mathematics of things, when instead we could simply imagine that whatever time we have is limitless.
”
”
Julia Armfield (Our Wives Under the Sea)
“
Going the extra mile is one of the most important things you can do to deliver great customer service. This is when you have ticked all the boxes, yet you still want to do more.
”
”
Oscar Auliq-Ice (Happy Customers)
“
She can’t concentrate because trying not to cry is taking all of her focus. She looked up the symptoms of depression and ticked off all the boxes.
”
”
Lori Gottlieb (Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed)
“
It’s the way my mind works, when it works at all. Things to do today: settle down, achieve serenity, live happily ever after. Tick the box and move on.
”
”
K.J. Parker (The Company)
“
Just tick a few boxes, agree to the terms and conditions and wait for the automated reply that says it’s all gone through and we’re now husband and wife. Why has that not been set up?
”
”
Karl Pilkington (The Moaning of Life: The Worldly Wisdom of Karl Pilkington)
“
Dating from a place of co-dependency, like a lot of us do, is immediately feeling as though the guy you went on a few dates with (who keeps ghosting you) is suddenly the one - just because he ticks a few of your boxes, texts you back sometimes and happens to be cute. But no, he's not being mysterious for intermittently disappearing on you. He's actually keeping you at a distance and playing on your need for validation, so that when he's done with his other options, he can return to you with minimal effort, knowing that you've been waiting for him all this time.
”
”
Chidera Eggerue (How To Get Over A Boy)
“
He was a prisoner to the calendar, he realised, as we all were. He thought in little boxes that were to be ticked off and filled with things to do. Almost every day he thought back to what he had been doing ten years ago, twenty years ago, further. He lived in the past, by his diary. He was a history man, his head full of dead leaves. It was a form of reassurance, he knew. There were too many roads into the future and he didn't like not having a map for it.
("Wait")
”
”
Conrad Williams (Best New Horror 23 (The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, #23))
“
Ordering online was all about ticking boxes. Species. Color. Size. Number. Grade of quality. Degree of openness. But there was something miraculous about seeing the flowers she'd imagined brought to life. Roses from Columbia. Chrysanthemums from Ecuador. Orchids from Thailand. Anemones and agapanthus from Spain. Stargazers and parrot tulips from the vast Dutch flower fields.
”
”
Ella Griffin (The Flower Arrangement)
“
Loftus grew up with a cold father who taught her nothing about love but everything about angles. A mathematician, he showed her the beauty of the triangle's strong tip, the circumference of the circle, the rigorous mission of calculus. Her mother was softer, more dramatic, prone to deep depressions. Loftus tells all this to me with little feeling "I have no feelings about this right now," she says, "but when I'm in the right space I could cry." I somehow don't believe her; she seems so far from real tears, from the original griefs, so immersed in the immersed in the operas of others. Loftus recalls her father asking her out to see a play, and in the car, coming home at night, the moon hanging above them like a stopwatch, tick tick, her father saying to her, "You know, there's something wrong with your mother. She'll never be well again. Her father was right. When Loftus was fourteen, her mother drowned in the family swimming pool. She was found floating face down in the deep end, in the summer. The sun was just coming up, the sky a mess of reds and bruise. Loftus recalls the shock, the siren, an oxygen mask clamped over her mouth as she screamed, "Mother mother mother," hysteria. That is a kind of drowning. "I loved her," Loftus says. "Was it suicide?" I ask. She says, "My father thinks so.
Every year when I go home for Christmas, my brothers and I think about it, but we'll never know," she says. Then she says, "It doesn't matter." "What doesn't matter?" I ask. "Whether it was or it wasn't," she says. "It doesn't matter because it's all going to be okay." Then I hear nothing on the line but some static. on the line but some static. "You there?" I say. "Oh I'm here," she says. "Tomorrow I'm going to Chicago, some guy on death row, I'm gonna save him. I gotta go testify. Thank God I have my work," she says. "You've always had your work," I say. "Without it," she says, "Where would I be?
”
”
Lauren Slater (Opening Skinner's Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century)
“
Build a barrier inside her mind, a fence to keep it out. It was just one of the boxes to tick, that’s what she told herself. Focus on that. Just a task to tick off in the plan, like all the plans she’d ever made, even the small ones, even the mundane. This was no different.Except it was, that dark voice reminded her, the one that hid at the back beside the shame, unpicking her barrier piece by piece
”
”
Holly Jackson (As Good As Dead (A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, #3))
“
pick Maddy and Josh up from Mum’s house no later than six each day, and we’re always home around ten minutes later. I thought that was enough to qualify me as a good mother, a parent who is there for her children. Yet I feel a niggle deep down that tells me he’s right. Once I get through the door each evening, I simply set my laptop up on the kitchen counter and carry on working. I often cook the children’s tea around updating the InsideOut4Kids website. The reality is, I’m there… but I’m not really there. Not all of me. For the first time, I consider the echoes of my own childhood, when Mum spent so much time in her bedroom. I can’t remember the last time we all sat down and ate together, or watched TV as a family. We often stay in different rooms until it’s time for bed. And the outings to the park or the cinema we used to plan and enjoy at weekends? I seriously can’t remember the last time we did that. I thought I was being Superwoman, and it turns out I’m struggling to tick all the boxes like any other mere mortal. The realisation renders me speechless, and it doesn’t take Tom long to
”
”
K.L. Slater (The Silent Ones)
“
National Curriculum! league tables! lesson plans! all of which left no room for responding to the fluctuating needs of a classroom of living, breathing, individualized children nor could she freely write school reports any more, which she’d actually enjoyed, commenting on her pupils’ progress, letting their parents know she was looking out for their child instead she had to tick boxes according to a list of generic statements she could no longer say, for example, that a child’s handwriting had improved, making their work more legible and therefore higher gradable because she had encouraged the child to sit straight, concentrate and write slower
”
”
Bernardine Evaristo (Girl, Woman, Other)
“
Death and life are not in opposition. So when someone tells you to live every day like it’s your last, kindly tell them to fuck off. They’re wrong. You should live every day like it’s your first. Live it like it’s your last and you’ll just run around like the house is on fire. I don’t want a bucket list. I don’t wanna live like I’m dying. I wanna live like I’m living. And I want there to be more possibilities left when I die, not NONE. Why rush to tick off all of those boxes? You don’t get a fucking gold star from God for that. I know now that I am going to spend the rest of my life incomplete. But life was designed to be incomplete. It’s not a worksheet you fill out. It’s an open platform. You do some things, but you also leave behind infinite possibilities for those in your wake. That’s the freedom.
”
”
Drew Magary (The Night the Lights Went Out: A Memoir of Life After Brain Damage)
“
face lit up with a glow of gratitude that was prayer, though he did not know it. Then furtively the percussion-cap box came out. He released the tick and put him on the long flat desk. The creature probably glowed with a gratitude that amounted to prayer, too, at this moment, but it was premature: for when he started thankfully to travel off, Tom turned him aside with a pin and made him take a new direction. Tom's bosom friend sat next him, suffering just as Tom had been, and now he was deeply and gratefully interested in this entertainment in an instant. This bosom friend was Joe Harper. The two boys were sworn friends all the week, and embattled enemies on Saturdays. Joe took a pin out of his lapel and began to assist in exercising the prisoner. The sport grew in interest momently. Soon Tom said that they were interfering with each other, and neither getting the fullest benefit of the tick. So he put Joe's slate on the desk and drew a line down the middle of it from top to bottom.
”
”
Mark Twain (Tom Sawyer Collection)
“
I'm not sure what form I expected the threat to take; a police car actually stopping outside, a powerfully built black man darting up the drive? I had several dreams of siege, in which the house became a frail slatted box, shadowy and exquisite within, the walls all cracked and bleached louvres which fell to powder as one brushed against them. In one dream Arthur and I were there, and others, old school friends, a gaggle of black kids from the Shaft, my grandfather tearful and hopeless. We knew we had no chance of surviving the violence that surrounded us, closing in fast, and I was gripped by a nauseating terror. I woke up in the certain knowledge that I was about to die: the bedsprings were ticking from the sprinting vehemence of my heartbeat. I didn't dare go back to sleep and after a while sat up and read, while Arthur slept deeply beside me. It took days to lose the mood of the dream, and its power to prickle my scalp. The neighbourhood seemed eerily impregnated with it, and its passing made possible a new confidence, as if a sentence had been lifted.
”
”
Alan Hollinghurst (The Swimming-Pool Library)
“
Vaishali felt flattered. “But my mother proved that no injustice was done to the girl.”
“You should not worry about that. Those in power will use all means to prove their point. They’ll make it look real, appealing, convincing. And that’s what your mother did.”
“Do you think so?” asked Vaishali eagerly.
Regina smiled as she ticked mentally the first box: Gullible.
Regina continued the conversation. “Going to the US?”
“Yes, my leave is over. I am going back to the university. In spite of whatever I did to them, my parents have agreed to pay for my overseas education.”
“What is so great about it? After all, you are their daughter and it is their responsibility to give you the right education. Indians are unnecessarily sentimental about it,” said Regina.
“Perhaps you are right…”
As Vaishali paused for a moment, Regina ticked a couple of more boxes: Ungrateful. Disdain for Indian values.
In the next few minutes, Regina ticked a few other boxes mentally: Insolent. Obstinate. Unreasonable. Unrepentant.
Regina concluded that she had identified the right candidate for the role of an activist.
”
”
Hariharan Iyer (Surpanakha)
“
I must at this point reiterate my strong objection to being asked to fill in forms in which I have to tick a box labelling my 'race' or 'ethnicity', and voice my strong support for Lewontin's statement that racial classification can be actively destructive of social and human relations - especially when people use racial classification as a way of treating people differently, whether through negative or positive discrimination. To tie a racial label to somebody is informative in the sense that it tells you more than one thing about them. It might reduce your uncertainty about the colour of their hair, the colour of their skin, the straightness of their hair, the shape of their eye, the shape of their nose and how tall they are. But there is no reason to suppose that it tells you anything about how well-qualified they are for a job. And even in the unlikely event that it did reduce your statistical uncertainty about their likely suitability for some particular job, it would still be wicked to use racial labels as a basis for discrimination when hiring somebody. Choose on the basis of ability, and if, having done so, you end up with an all-black sprinting team, so be it. You have not practised racial discrimination in arriving at this conclusion
”
”
Richard Dawkins (The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution)
“
Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings
and some are treasured for their markings--
they cause the eyes to melt
or the body to shriek without pain.
I have never seen one fly, but
sometimes they perch on the hand.
Mist is when the sky is tired of flight
and rests its soft machine on the ground:
then the world is dim and bookish
like engravings under tissue paper.
Rain is when the earth is television.
It has the properites of making colours darker.
Model T is a room with the lock inside --
a key is turned to free the world
for movement, so quick there is a film
to watch for anything missed.
But time is tied to the wrist
or kept in a box, ticking with impatience.
In homes, a haunted apparatus sleeps,
that snores when you pick it up.
If the ghost cries, they carry it
to their lips and soothe it to sleep
with sounds. And yet, they wake it up
deliberately, by tickling with a finger.
Only the young are allowed to suffer
openly. Adults go to a punishment room
with water but nothing to eat.
They lock the door and suffer the noises
alone. No one is exempt
and everyone's pain has a different smell.
At night, when all the colours die,
they hide in pairs
and read about themselves --
in colour, with their eyelids shut.
”
”
Craig Raine
“
I push my eye farther into the crack, smushing my cheek. The door rattles.
Her arm freezes. The needle stops. Instantly, her shadow fills the room, a mountain on the wall.
“Leidah?”
I hold my breath. No hiding in the wood-box this time. Before I even have time to pull my eye away, the door opens. My mother's face, like the moon in the dark hallway. She squints and takes a step toward me. “Lei-lee?”
I want to tell her I’ve had a nightmare about the Sisters, that I can’t sleep with all this whispering and worrying from her—and what are you sewing in the dark, Mamma? I try to move my lips, but I have no mouth. My tongue is gone; my nose is gone. I don’t have a face anymore.
It has happened again.
I am lying on my back, flatter than bread. My mother’s bare feet slap against my skin, across my belly, my chest. She digs her heel in, at my throat that isn’t there. I can see her head turning toward her bedroom. Snores crawl under the closed door. The door to my room is open, but she can’t see my bed from where she stands, can’t see that my bed is empty. She nods to herself: everything as it should be. Her foot grinds into my chin. The door to the sewing room closes behind her.
I struggle to sit up. I wiggle my hips and jiggle my legs. It is no use. I am stuck, pressed flat into the grain of wood under me.
But it’s not under me. It is me.
I have become the floor.
I know it’s true, even as I tell myself I am dreaming, that I am still in bed under the covers. My blood whirls inside the wood knots, spinning and rushing, sucking me down and down. The nicks of boot prints stomp and kick at my bones, like a bruise. I feel the clunk of one board to the next, like bumps of a wheel over stone. And then I am all of it, every knot, grain, and sliver, running down the hall, whooshing like a river, ever so fast, over the edge and down a waterfall, rushing from room to room. I pour myself under and over and through, feeling objects brush against me as I pass by. Bookshelves, bedposts, Pappa’s slippers, a fallen dressing gown, the stubby ends of an old chair. A mouse hiding inside a hole in the wall. Mor’s needle bobbing up and down.
How is this possible?
I am so wide, I can see both Mor and Far at the same time, even though they are in different rooms, one wide awake, the other fast asleep. I feel my father’s breath easily, sinking through the bed into me, while Mor’s breath fights against me, against the floor. In and out, each breath swimming away, away, at the speed of her needle, up up up in out in out outoutout—let me out, get me out, I want out.
That’s what Mamma is thinking, and I hear it, loud and clear. I strain my ears against the wood to get back into my own body. Nothing happens. I try again, but this time push hard with my arms that aren’t there. Nothing at all. I stop and sink, letting go, giving myself into the floor.
Seven, soon to be eight… it’s time, time’s up, time to go.
The needle is singing, as sure as stitches on a seam. I am inside the thread, inside her head. Mamma is ticking—onetwothreefourfivesix—
Seven. Seven what? And why is it time to go?
Don’t leave me, Mamma. I beg her feet, her knees, her hips, her chest, her heart, my begging spreading like a big squid into the very skin of her.
It’s then that I feel it.
Something is happening to Mamma. Something neither Pappa nor I have noticed.
She is becoming dust.
She is drier than the wood I have become.
- Becoming Leidah
Quoted by copying text from the epub version using BlueFire e-reader.
”
”
Michelle Grierson (Becoming Leidah)
“
This afternoon, I went to my doctor. She did a check-up, then asked me questions about my life, including what sort of contraception Miles and I were using. I grew embarrassed, admitting the truth: pulling out. It was what I had used with almost every man. What if you get pregnant? Would you be okay with that? I tried to answer in an easy way, but soon my sentences got twisted up.
After the appointment, I walked in the streets and called Teresa. I brought up my worries over paths not taken, and she said everyone had those, but often when you looked back on your life, you saw that the choices you made and the paths you went down were the right ones. She said it wasn’t a matter of choosing one life over another, but being sensitive to the life that wants to be lived through you. You need tension in order to create something—the sand in the pearl. She said my questioning and doubts were the sand. She said they were good and forced me to live with integrity, to interrogate what was important to me, and so to live the meaning of my life, rather than resort to convention.
Then to try and discover and live my values, even if it may not seem like I’m moving forward in my life, while my friends appear to be moving forward in theirs—ticking off all the boxes. Ask only whether you are living your values, not whether the boxes are ticked.
After our call, I realized the thing I always do: I try to imagine different futures for myself, what I would most like to occur. I don’t know why I do this, when any of the things I’ve hoped for—whenever I have actually got them—are nothing like what I imagined they’d be. Then why don’t I spend time acclimating myself to what actually occurred? Why not make peace with the way things are, given what I know about life from actually living? Instead I spin fantasies, when the only happiness I have ever known has occurred without my design.
”
”
Sheila Heti (Motherhood)
“
I must at this point reiterate my strong objection to being asked to fill in forms in which I have to tick a box labelling my 'race' or 'ethnicity', and voice my strong support for Lewontin's statement that racial classification can be actively destructive of social and human relations - especially when people use racial classification as a way of treating people differently, whether through negative or positive discrimination. To tie a racial label to somebody is informative in the sense that it tells you more than one thing about them. It might reduce your uncertainty about the colour of their hair, the colour of their skin, the straightness of their hair, the shape of their eye, the shape of their nose and how tall they are. But there is no reason to suppose that it tells you anything about how well-qualified they are for a job. And even in the unlikely event that it did reduce your statistical uncertainty about their likely suitability for some particular job, it would still be wicked to use racial labels as a basis for discrimination when hiring somebody. Choose on the basis of ability, and if, having done so, you end up with an all-black sprinting team, so be it. You have not practised racial discrimination in arriving at this conclusion... Discriminating against individuals purely on the basis of a group to which they belong is, I am inclined to think, always evil. There is near-universal agreement today that the apartheid laws of South Africa were evil. Positive discrimination in favour of 'minority' students on American campuses can fairly, in my opinion, be attacked on the same grounds as apartheid. Both treat people as representative of groups rather than as individuals in their own right. Positive discrimination is sometimes justified as redressing centuries of injustice. But how can it be just to pay back a single individual today for the wrongs done by long-dead members of a plural group to which he belongs?
”
”
Richard Dawkins (The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution)
“
Pokémon with a blue glow surrounding it in your menu simply indicates that you have caught this Pokémon in the last 24 hours. If you tap on a Pokémon, you can check its name, HP below the Pokémon, CP above the Pokémon, various traits, different attacks and the location and date you caught this particular Pokémon. You can rename your Pokémon by tapping the pencil next to its name. You may also want to give your Pokémon a power up to boost its maximum health and CP, and thus making your Pokémon more powerful. This will cost you Stardust and Pokémon candy. If you wish to get rid of a Pokémon, you will want to tap the “Transfer” button in order to transfer your Pokémon to the Professor. Note that once you transfer a Pokémon to the Professor, this Pokémon will be lost forever and cannot be retrieved. The last category features your items. In your items you will find all the items with their quantities you currently own. Pressing the trash allows you to toss an item if you wish to do so. Your maximum capacity is 350 items, but you can buy an upgrade in the Shop if you wish to expand your capacity. An additional feature of the main menu is the Settings panel, which you will find in the upper right of your screen. If you open up the Settings, you can toggle the Music, Sound Effects, Vibration and Battery Saver. You may also revisit Professor Willow if you missed any of his speeches using the Quick Start option. Another feature is being able to sign out. This could be useful in case you wish to log in via another account. You can check the version of the application in the Settings too. Toggling the Battery Save option will allow you to enter the Battery Save state. To enter this state simply tick the box and hold your device upside down. Your device will enter a battery saving state, indicated by a dark screen featuring the Pokémon Go logo, until held in its authentic state again. This feature is especially useful when your device is below 5% of its battery life. To utilize the remaining battery life to the fullest extent, simply hold your device upside down and put your device where it’s most comfortable for you. Mind that you may want to have your device in a position where you can still notice vibration, because whenever a Pokémon approaches you, your device will notify you through vibration, if you’ve enabled vibration in the Settings. Whenever your device vibrates, you can turn around your device with ease to continue playing without having to unlock your device. Note that you will not be notified when passing a gym or PokéStop. The
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”
Jeremy Tyson (Pokemon Go: The Ultimate Game Guide: Pokemon Go Game Guide + Extra Documentation (Android, iOS, Secrets, Tips, Tricks, Hints))
“
each other. No words were needed, they both felt the same. What a load of bollocks. They’d known each other two minutes. How could they be in love? Joan was just going over the top. The four glasses clinked together. “Tuck in guys. This is one of my better dishes. My mam helped with it too so I know it’s going to be top notch.” Trevor rubbed his hands together and grabbed his fork. There were no flies on him he was tucking in. Food was his comfort and now Joan was off the market he needed it more than ever. Mabel picked at the food on her plate, nibbling, watching everyone else around her. Patrick sat next to Joan and every chance he got he kissed her, held her hand. He knew he was on show here tonight and he was making sure he ticked all the boxes. * Cath and Katrina were chatting in the yard. The winds were blowing with force. They both looked freezing as they marched around the concrete yard. There were high steel fences with barbed wire on the top of it. There was no way out. Katrina needed a friendly ear, some advice, someone to ease her heavy heart. Once she’d filled Cath in on everything that had happened they both sat on a bench not far from the fence. The screws watched them with caution and never took their eyes from them. They were high-risk prisoners. Cath let out a laboured breath and bit down hard on her bottom lip. “For crying out loud didn’t I tell you to keep away from that prick. Look what’s happened now. You’ve fucking blown it. You were getting out of this shit-hole in a few more months and you’ve gone and fucked it all. Where is your head at woman, you should of steered well clear of any trouble?” Katrina snivelled, her eyes flooding with tears. “I know, I just wanted to hurt him like he’s hurt me. I loved that man with all my heart and he just fucked off and left me. I’ve lost it all Cath. My kids, my home, everything I ever loved. How can I tell my kids I’m not coming home? It will break their hearts. I’ve made promises to them. A better life, no more trouble. Their mother home for good.” “They’ve not charged you yet. Wait until it’s set in stone and then you know what you’re dealing with.” Cath held her in her arms and squeezed her tight. She knew as much as the other person that she wasn’t getting out of jail anytime soon. The crime she’d committed would be all over the news soon and the public would know who she was. She’d seen it so many times before. Once an offender was named, the nation would be all over it. No doubt Norman would be made out to be the hero too. There would be no story about the way he treated this woman, no mention of all the women he’d abused in the past. Maybe someone should have grassed him up. Katrina had warned him if he she got her collar felt there would be repercussions. Why hadn’t she put his name in the picture yet? Now was the time to put her cards on the table and look after number one. Maybe if she turned Queen’s evidence she could get a deal with the prosecution. A lesser sentence, a few years knocked off. Cath was aware of this but to be a Judas was another matter. Katrina would have to
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”
Karen Woods (Sins)
“
The hoard here is just as regimented, kept hidden from prying eyes by its obsessive use of containers. But I know from looking in that cupboard that inside those cardboard boxes is a wormhole to a world of chaos. That is what she was always like, I suppose, rigid control on the surface, and the howling void beneath. That's why so many people cling so desperately to their semblances of discipline, their habits, schedules, routines, diets, personal trainers, personal grooming, theories of morality. It's all about the fear of the chaos beneath. It's certainly true of India, nothing in her life is real unless it's been ticked off on a list. For us, the recognition of the void came so early that we were always going to go one of two ways, spend our lives fighting valiantly to hold back the tide the way she does, or, like me, accept the truth and let the chaos reign.
”
”
Alex Marwood (The Darkest Secret)
“
Once every few weeks, beginning in the summer of 2018, a trio of large Boeing freighter aircraft, most often converted and windowless 747s of the Dutch airline KLM, takes off from Schiphol airport outside Amsterdam, with a precious cargo bound eventually for the city of Chandler, a western desert exurb of Phoenix, Arizona. The cargo is always the same, consisting of nine white boxes in each aircraft, each box taller than a man. To get these profoundly heavy containers from the airport in Phoenix to their destination, twenty miles away, requires a convoy of rather more than a dozen eighteen-wheeler trucks. On arrival and family uncrated, the contents of all the boxes are bolted together to form one enormous 160-ton machine -- a machine tool, in fact, a direct descendant of the machine tools invented and used by men such as Joseph Bramah and Henry Maudslay and Henry Royce and Henry Ford a century and more before.
"Just like its cast-iron predecessors, this Dutch-made behemoth of a tool (fifteen of which compose the total order due to be sent to Chandler, each delivered as it is made) is a machine that makes machines. Yet, rather than making mechanical devices by the precise cutting of metal from metal, this gigantic device is designed for the manufacture of the tiniest of machines imaginable, all of which perform their work electronically, without any visible moving parts.
"For here we come to the culmination of precision's quartermillennium evolutionary journey. Up until this moment, almost all the devices and creations that required a degree of precision in their making had been made of metal, and performed their various functions through physical movements of one kind or another. Pistons rose and fell; locks opened and closed; rifles fired; sewing machines secured pieces of fabric and created hems and selvedges; bicycles wobbled along lanes; cars ran along highways; ball bearings spun and whirled; trains snorted out of tunnels; aircraft flew through the skies; telescopes deployed; clocks ticked or hummed, and their hands moved ever forward, never back, one precise second at a time."Then came the computer, then the personal computer, then the smartphone, then the previously unimaginable tools of today -- and with this helter-skelter technological evolution came a time of translation, a time when the leading edge of precision passed itself out into the beyond, moving as if through an invisible gateway, from the purely mechanical and physical world and into an immobile and silent universe, one where electrons and protons and neutrons have replaced iron and oil and bearings and lubricants and trunnions and the paradigm-altering idea of interchangeable parts, and where, though the components might well glow with fierce lights send out intense waves of heat, nothing moved one piece against another in mechanical fashion, no machine required that measured exactness be an essential attribute of every component piece.
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Simon Wincheter
“
I mean, where do you turn when you've already ticked off all the boxes? What else is there? I had built my ordinary, perfect little life, not realizing that ordinary often comes at the cost of extraordinary.
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Ash Ambirge (The Middle Finger Project: Trash Your Imposter Syndrome and Live the Unf*ckwithable Life You Deserve)
“
His insinuation that he’d fuck me dead or alive shouldn’t turn me on, but damn, it does. I love a psychopath, and Night ticks all the boxes for me.
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Crystal North (Prettiest Psycho (The Asylum, #1))
“
I don’t blame them. After seven weeks, Sarah’s disappearance was a footnote unless something significant happened to draw attention back to it. Nothing had.” “What about the reward?” “That also never came up at trial.” Dan squinted as if fighting a headache. “Given that Hagen’s testimony provided Calloway and Clark what they needed to convince Judge Sullivan to issue the search warrants, Finn should have jumped all over Hagen about every detail, especially because Hagen also laid the groundwork for Calloway’s testimony the next day.” Roy Calloway sat in the witness chair as if he was seated in his living room and everyone else in the courtroom was an invited guest. The rain ticked off the second-story wood-sash windows, sounding like birds pecking against the glass. Tracy looked out at the trees in the courthouse square, their soaked limbs sagging. Smoke curled from the chimneys of houses in the near distance, but the bucolic image only seemed to magnify the illusion that Edmund House had exposed. Small towns were not immune to violent crimes. Far from it. Clark stepped to the railing of the jury box. “When did you next return to Parker House’s property, Sheriff Calloway?
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Robert Dugoni (My Sister's Grave (Tracy Crosswhite, #1))
“
No one knew Greek mythology like my friend. He was no doubt running through the entire story in his head. How Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to man. And Zeus decided to punish Prometheus by making a clay figure of a smokin’ hot chick which he then brought to life. The gods gave that lady, Pandora, all sorts of gifts like beauty, charm, wit, and curiosity. Then Zeus gave her a box, told her she was never to open it, and told Prometheus he could have this drop-dead gorgeous girl as a wife. Prometheus wasn’t stupid; he knew it was a trick and said, “No way.” Zeus got ticked off and punished Prometheus by chaining him to a rock and then let a vulture chow down on him. Prometheus’s brother married Pandora, and the couple settled down for a happy life. But Pandora always wondered what was in the box Zeus gave her. Finally her curiosity won out. She opened the box, and out flew hate, anger, sickness, poverty, and every bad thing in the world. She slammed the lid down and managed to trap one final thing in the box: hope. So today, even when the going gets tough, every human still has hope. No
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Erin Fry (Secrets of the Book)
“
When you live in Jersey a beach isn’t enough. People have energy in Jersey. They need things to do. They need a beach with a boardwalk. And the boardwalk has to be filled with rides and games and crappy food. Add some miniature golf. Throw in a bunch of stores selling T-shirts with offensive pictures. Life doesn’t get much better than this. And the best part is the smell. I’ve been told there are places where the ocean smells wild and briny. In Jersey the ocean smells of coconut-scented suntan lotion and Italian sausage smothered in fried onions and peppers. It smells like deep-fried zeppoles and chili hot dogs. The scent is intoxicating and exotic as it expands in the heat rising from crowds of sun-baked bodies strolling the boardwalk. Surf surges onto the beach and the sound is mingled with the rhythmic tick, tick, tick of the spinning game wheels and the highpitched Eeeeeeee of thrill seekers being hurtled down the log flume. Rock stars, pickpockets, homies, pimps, pushers, pregnant women in bikinis, future astronauts, politicians, geeks, ghouls, and droves of families who buy American and eat Italian all come to the Jersey shore.
”
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Janet Evanovich (Plum Boxed Set 2 (Stephanie Plum, #4-6))
“
Facilitator of mass murder, smiling a Judas smile as she ticks the boxes.
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M.R. Carey (The Girl With All the Gifts)
“
A smaller screen near us pans to Sam. He’s pacing back and forth down the sideline, and he’s not even looking in our direction. But then one of his teammates smacks him on the shoulder and he looks toward me. He stops. He unstraps his helmet, pulls it from his head and stares up at me. Star motions for everyone in our section to be quiet, and they all lower their signs. Emily swipes a tear from her cheek and says, “Go for it.” Logan wraps an arm around her and Kit and holds them tight. Logan is grinning like a fool, though. The camera guy is right in front of me. “Forty-five seconds,” he reminds me. I see my image on the big screen and one of the guys on the field points to it, so Sam looks in that direction. I hold up my signs. I have them grouped in order, one after the other. I show the first one. I love you, 51! I flip to the next. I don’t want to be just a Zero anymore. Flip. I want to be a Zero-plus-one. Flip. Or a Zero-plus-two. Flip. Maybe even a Zero-plus-three. Flip. I want to make little cupcakes with you. Flip. Only you. Flip. Forever. Flip. Check yes or no. I take this last card and walk out of my section. I have hands of people I don’t even know reaching out to steady me, and they’re all saying encouraging things. The camera guy runs along behind me, cursing as he chases me down the stairs. I run with my last card all the way down to the bottom bleacher and I lean over the side, holding it down against the concrete block wall. I pull a marker from my pocket and hold it out, too. Then I wait. It’s the longest forty-five seconds of my life. Sam stands completely still. He scratches his head. His teammates say things to him and he still stands there. The clock is ticking. Maybe he doesn’t want what I want after all. Then he starts to run toward me. He jogs in my direction, and my heart is in my throat. I have tears running down my face, and I don’t care. When he gets to the wall, he stares up at me. There’s no way he can come up this high, so I drop the board with the check boxes and the pen on the ground in front of him. He grins up at me and lays the board on the grass. He takes the pen and starts to check a box. Then he stops and looks up. Then he moves like he’s finally going to do it. Then he stops and looks up. I’m going to kick his ass if he keeps messing with me. Then he checks the yes box and holds the board up for the whole stadium to see. The buzzer goes off and he has to run with his teammates back onto the field to play the last two minutes of the half. When that’s over, just before he goes into the tunnel, he turns back and flashes me the I love you sign, along with a big smile. My heart settles. I
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Tammy Falkner (Zip, Zero, Zilch (The Reed Brothers, #6))
“
Ironically both of them were on the pavement that night to escape their past and all that had circumscribed their lives so far. And yet, in order to arm themselves for battle, they retreated right back into what they sought to escape, into what they were used to, into what they really were. He, a revolutionary trapped in an accountant’s mind. She, a woman trapped in a man’s body. He, raging at a world in which the balance sheets did not tally. She, raging at her glands, her organs, her skin, the texture of her hair, the width of her shoulders, the timbre of her voice. He, fighting for a way to impose fiscal integrity on a decaying system. She, wanting to pluck the very stars from the sky and grind them into a potion that would give her proper breasts and hips and a long, thick plait of hair that would swing from side to side as she walked, and yes, the thing she longed for most of all, that most well stocked of Delhi’s vast stock of invectives, that insult of all insults, a Maa ki Choot, a mother’s cunt. He, who had spent his days tracking tax dodges, pay-offs and sweetheart deals. She, who had lived for years like a tree in an old graveyard, where, on lazy mornings and late at night, the spirits of the old poets whom she loved, Ghalib, Mir and Zauq, came to recite their verse, drink, argue and gamble. He, who filled in forms and ticked boxes. She, who never knew which box to tick, which queue to stand in, which public toilet to enter (Kings or Queens? Lords or Ladies? Sirs or Hers?). He, who believed he was always right. She, who knew she was all wrong, always wrong. He, reduced by his certainties. She, augmented by her ambiguity. He, who wanted a law. She, who wanted a baby. A circle formed around
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Arundhati Roy (Ministry of Utmost Happiness)
“
The man ticked all of her boxes. Compassionate, kind, thoughtful. But he was alpha as fuck on a rugby field.
And in the bedroom.
Or on a balcony. Or in front of a mirror. Or up against a wall.
She really should walk away. Now. Right now.
Hell, she should run.
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Amy Andrews (Playing With Forever (Sydney Smoke Rugby, #4))
“
Why does it have to be such a pain-in-the-ass process?” “Nothing worthwhile is easy. Finding a partner isn’t about ticking all the boxes. No one is perfect, not even you, Sloaney Baloney. Falling in love is about discovering someone who makes you better than you are alone and vice versa.” I plucked at the carpet. “What if they hurt you?” “People make mistakes. A lot of them. You get to decide which ones are forgivable
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Lucy Score (Things We Left Behind (Knockemout, #3))
“
Different departments want different things. Health departments want people to be more physically active. Environment departments to meet air quality and carbon reduction targets. Education wants kids arriving at school alert and happy, which active school journeys do. Business wants people healthy and productive, taking fewer sick days, which active commutes do. Local councils want thriving high streets. Cycling and walking policies tick all these boxes and more.
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Laura Laker (Potholes and Pavements: A Bumpy Ride on Britain’s National Cycle Network)
“
For all of us, it seems, life isn’t always easy, and the lesson I’ve learned is that you’re not fucking up if life hasn’t worked out how you expected. Because real life is messy and complicated. Shit happens. One size doesn’t fit all. Remove the filters and the hashtags and the motivational messages and we’re all just as scared and confused as the next person. We’re all just living our life, and it might not tick all the boxes or look Insta-perfect, but that’s OK.
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Alexandra Potter (Confessions of a Forty-Something F**k Up)
“
about being a failure, it’s about being made to feel like one. It’s the pressure and the panic to tick all the boxes and reach all the goals . . . and what happens when you don’t. When you find yourself on the outside. Because on some level, in some aspect of your life, it’s so easy to feel like you’re failing when everyone around you appears to be succeeding.
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Alexandra Potter (Confessions of a Forty-Something F**k Up)
“
To stamp a limit on even the most tedious of things- the number of times you have left to buy a coffee, the number of times you will defrost the fridge- is to acknowledge reality in a way that amounts to torture. In truth, we will only perform any action a certain number of times, and to know that can never be helpful. There is, in my opinion, no use in demanding to know upon waking the number of boxes to be ticked off every single day. After all, why would it help to be shown the mathematics of things, when instead we could simply imagine that whatever time we have is limitless.
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Julia Armfield (Our Wives Under the Sea)
“
Standing on the tube, Coe was studying his fellow passengers, gauging their identities, There was a checklist he'd memorized, a crib sheet on how to spot a terrorist; and there was another checklist, allowing for the possibility that terrorists might have got hold of the first checklist and adapted their behavior accordingly, and Coe had memorized this too. And he was mentally running through them, scoring his fellow travelers, when it struck him there was conceivably a checklist for spotting members of the security services, and he was doubtless ticking all the right boxes himself...The thought made him want to giggle, which itself was on one of the checklists.
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Mick Herron (The List (Slough House, #2.5))
“
Boomers have a lot of time and money, and they like things that reflect well on themselves. A great deal of their choices are shaped by how they’re perceived by others. Recycling is the perfect storm for all these urges. Doing it completely requires time. To purchase food items in the right packages requires money. And it is a virtuous activity that they can promote. It ticks all the boxes.
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I.M. Millennial (A Year in Boomertown: A Memoir)
“
As a chef, my future wife ticked all the boxes.
She tasted delicious, just the right balance between sweet and biting.
Most important of all…
She tasted like forever.
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L.J. Shen (Truly Madly Deeply (Forbidden Love, #1))
“
Karen is always the one who ticks all the boxes; the homeowner, the successful accountant, the mother of two, the dutiful daughter. I am always the one who demands pity: the single one, the poor one, the artsy one.
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Winnie M. Li (Complicit)
“
It would mean unpicking a lot of social conditioning, sure. But to be able to look at a piece of clothing, like it, appreciate it as a gorgeous object, and not feel that stomach-wrenching desire to possess it – that would be a triumph. And the flipside. If something ticks all three boxes: like, want, need, how much more will we love it and appreciate it once it’s ours?
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Lauren Bravo (How To Break Up With Fast Fashion: A guilt-free guide to changing the way you shop – for good)
“
Why, then, should a story as absurd as Pizzagate prove so ‘sticky’? Quite simply, it ticked all the conspiracy theory boxes, and in so doing ticked many of the boxes for a great story. It evoked strong emotion through a narrative of supposedly suffering children. It posited a world clearly divided between good and evil. And in triggering fear in an environment dominated by social and political uncertainty it played on people’s natural tendency to pay more attention to negative coverage in the media when faced with news that induces anxiety, whether a terrorist attack, a natural disaster, a financial crash – or an evil conspiracy.
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Alison Goldsworthy (Poles Apart: Why People Turn Against Each Other, and How to Bring Them Together)
“
Turkish Airlines Reservations Phone Number+1-855-653-5007
Turkish Airlines Reservations offers several methods to purchase tickets within no time. With the use of modern technology, it has become quite easy to make Turkish Airlines Booking. Now, you don’t even have to go anywhere, stand in the long queue, and wait for hours to get your booking done. You can do it from anywhere around the world; book now and save your time.
Open Turkish Airlines official site
Open the official site of the airline, and you will see the option of “book a flight” on its home page. Click on it. With this option, you will also find other options like “check-in/ manage booking” and “Flight Status.”
Select what type of trip you want, such as a round trip, one way, or multi-city.
Enter your departure city in the “to” field, and arrival city in the “from” field.
Click on “Dates” and enter your departure date. If you are booking a round-trip, enter the return date also.
Click on the “cabin and passenger selection” field to enter your travel class and number of passengers traveling. You have to clearly mention the number of adults, children, and infants that are traveling.
If you want to book an award ticket, tick the box, named “Award ticket – Buy a ticket with miles.” If you wish to use this option, you have to sign-in by using your membership number and password.
Click on the arrow to see all the available flights. Choose the flight that comes within your budget.
Making Turkish Airlines Book a Flight via this official website is the most convenient method and used by most of the passengers.
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Nojoh
“
point of making forecasts is not to tick all the boxes on the “how to make forecasts” checklist. It is to foresee what’s coming. To have accountability for process but not accuracy is like ensuring that physicians wash their hands, examine the patient, and consider all the symptoms, but never checking to see whether the treatment works.
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Philip E. Tetlock (Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction)
“
Nothing worthwhile is easy. Finding a partner isn’t about ticking all the boxes. No one is perfect, not even you, Sloaney Baloney. Falling in love is about discovering someone who makes you better than you are alone and vice versa.
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Lucy Score (Things We Left Behind (Knockemout, #3))
“
Recent decades have seen merciless competition for our appetites. We are led by our palates in a search for calorific delicacies – this desire is our genetic heritage from the distant past. We instinctively crave foods that are fatty, sweet and salty, compressed carbohydrates. This urge would have made sense 10,000 years ago, after all, when a calorie bomb was a rare thing to find, and if you stumbled across one you had to eat it immediately. Faced with supermarkets crammed to the rafters with calories, there is no reason to binge eat in this way, but we struggle to switch off our pre-programmed instincts. Instead, our food has been improved and optimised to make it fit as closely as possible to our unconscious longing for taste and calories. Products only survive in the market when they tick these boxes, and even then they’re only popular until something even tastier emerges. The impact on our diet is that everything we eat tastes more or less the same.
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Peter Wohlleben (Walks in the Wild: A Guide Through the Forest)
“
Lionhearts
One very cold night in Ann Arbor
I went to a party where “Kate Bush”
was the password. I put on my Uggs
& trudged through the slush.
I climbed the fire escape to an attic apartment
where five other writers & I
sat around a Crosley turntable
& a box of Bordeaux Blend
& a stale bâtard with expensive butter
& listened to Lionheart
& talked about line breaks
& grew increasingly drunk
& complimentary & eager
—for aesthetics’ sake—
to investigate each other up close.
Some of us kissed. Kate stalked us
from the cover—crimped mane
& lion-skin suit—as two people
with silk scarves tied someone
to the radiator & danced madly,
leaping on chairs, licking paws!
Leo rising, downward dog!
Candles sputtering their last magic
into the rafters as we sank straight
through the secondhand loveseat:
floral flickering, ticking undone.
This is one of my fondest memories.
The whole room a gold & rolling
ship of girl flame! But there—
in the dark, catholic corners
where I can’t quite see—a stowaway
sometimes darts. Imagine such a creature:
subsisting all this time
on the dusty crusts & vinegars
of someone else’s slight
& misplaced shame.
”
”
Karyna McGlynn
“
Mr. Armstrong as usual let the argument go rogue for a long while. But, he finally said. Didn’t we wonder why there’s nothing else doing around here, in the way of paying work? Our general thinking was that God had made Lee County the butthole of the job universe. “It wasn’t God,” he said. Just ticked off enough for his accent to give him away. I remember that day like a picture. Mr. Armstrong in his light-green shirt, breaking a sweat. We all were. It’s May, there’s no AC, and even the two cement bulldogs out front probably have their tongues hanging out. Every soul in the long brick box of Jonesville Middle wishing they could be someplace else. Except for Mr. Armstrong, determined to hold us there in our seats. “Wouldn’t you think,” he asked us, “the miners wanted a different life for their kids? After all the stories you’ve heard? Don’t you think the mine companies knew that?” What the companies did, he told us, was put the shuthole on any choice other than going into the mines. Not just here, also in Buchanan, Tazewell, all of eastern Kentucky, these counties got bought up whole: land, hospitals, courthouses, schools, company owned. Nobody needed to get all that educated for being a miner, so they let the schools go to rot. And they made sure no mills or factories got in the door. Coal only. To this day, you have to cross a lot of ground to find other work. Not an accident, Mr. Armstrong said, and for once we believed him, because down in the dark mess of our little skull closets some puzzle pieces were clicking together and our world made some terrible kind of sense. The dads at home drinking beer in their underwear, the moms at the grocery with their SNAP coupons. The army recruiters in shiny gold buttons come to harvest their jackpot of hopeless futures. Goddamn.
”
”
Barbara Kingsolver (Demon Copperhead)
“
Because there is a growing belief among the community of thinking beings that by 2050 men and women will be marrying human like robots. At that point, how Craig Raine will describe his experiences will be fascinating to know. And in my imagination I have already travelled with the Green Man into the future called 2075 and witnessed How humans will experience love in 2075. Because this science fiction novel navigates through the possibility of men and women falling in love with machines, without knowing they are robots imitating human emotions. Will you still dare to fall in love in 2075 or will you strive to tell the difference between a human lover and a robotic lover?
Now it is your turn to join the Green Man on this exciting journey into 2075, where he will reveal to you what the world would look like in 2075, and take you on an excitingly epic journey with the protagonist, Saabir, who criss crosses the highways and all by ways of emotional trajectory in the midst of synthetic emotions and feelings that engulf him. To know more, travel with the Green Man via the science fiction titled, They Loved in 2075.
With this anticipation I shall dream of you tonight and hope that you will be able to unlock the alien imagination within you, to realise the part of you that is from Heaven. If you have any doubts, here is the poem by Craig Raine to make you a dreamer who while asleep is always awake in his/her subconscious state too. Because he/she has learned the art of having a rendezvous with the light that radiates through the universe, to eventually settle in a dreamer's eyes who dares to dream beyond the ordinary and the 3 dimensional reality.
"A Martian Sends A Postcard Home”
Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings
and some are treasured for their markings--
they cause the eyes to melt
or the body to shriek without pain.
I have never seen one fly, but
sometimes they perch on the hand.
Mist is when the sky is tired of flight
and rests its soft machine on the ground:
then the world is dim and bookish
like engravings under tissue paper
Rain is when the earth is television.
It has the properites of making colours darker.
Model T is a room with the lock inside --
a key is turned to free the world
for movement, so quick there is a film
to watch for anything missed.
But time is tied to the wrist
or kept in a box, ticking with impatience.
In homes, a haunted apparatus sleeps,
that snores when you pick it up.
If the ghost cries, they carry it
to their lips and soothe it to sleep
with sounds. And yet, they wake it up
deliberately, by tickling with a finger.
Only the young are allowed to suffer
openly. Adults go to a punishment room
with water but nothing to eat.
They lock the door and suffer the noises
alone. No one is exempt
and everyone's pain has a different smell.
At night, when all the colours die,
they hide in pairs
and read about themselves --
in colour, with their eyelids shut.
Dedicated to you, the Green Man and Saabir who hails from 2075 and dares to love a real woman in 2075 because he loves her a lot!
”
”
Javid Ahmad Tak and Craig Raine
“
She alternately cursed Sam Prescott and longed for him. He’d told her his wife, enraged, had found out about them. Demanded he cut all ties. As a result, he was missing out on his own daughter; either exactly what the bastard deserved, or unendingly sad. Lily had resisted googling him as much as she could. But she knew Sam was still practicing law, and divorced, and then married again, to some Isabel DeSoto, la dee dah, who was rumored to be running for Congress or something in Colorado. Big money, big family, big power. Big boobs. No kids. Ticked all the necessary Sam boxes, apparently.
”
”
Hank Phillippi Ryan (Her Perfect Life)
“
We need to stop being so narcissistic (“look at me, aren’t I lovely?”) and materialistic (“he ticks all the right boxes, I’ll have him”) and take a long hard look at where this need for love is coming from, according to Fromm.
”
”
Sarah Tomley (What Would Freud Do?: How the greatest psychotherapists would solve your everyday problems)
“
Up until then, my regrets had been feathery things, the regrets of a privileged child. (I should have gone on semester abroad. I should have lost my virginity to someone nice.) But on that morning, I made the first of many real mistakes that would stack up on top of one another until they blocked out the sun. I did not get mauled by an animal. I had not been mugged or assaulted in dangerous Johannesburg. I had not even failed at the unlikely task I had invented for myself when I insisted I could find my way and my story on another continent about which I knew nothing. The world had left me unscathed. But the danger that we invite into our lives can come in the most unthreatening shape, the most pedestrian: the cellphone you press against your head, transmitting the voice of your mother, pouring radiation into your brain day after day; the little tick bite in the garden that leaves you aching and palsied for years. It can come in the form of an email from an old lover whom you have not spoken with for many years, which you receive when you are back at the lodge, sitting under a thatched roof drinking a cup of milky tea. It can come when, instead of writing to the person with whom you share a home and a history, the person you adore and have married, you write to your old lover. And you say, “Today I saw a family of lions licking each other in the yellow grass, and they looked like they were in love.” 3 My mother knew instinctively that danger could come in a friendly box from the grocery store, full of brightly colored cereal that gets inside your body and rots you quietly from the inside out. She had inherited from her own mother the immigrant’s mistrust for authority, and combined it with insurrectionary tendencies left over from her days as a student radical, and what it all added up to in the kitchen was a ban on Cheez Doodles.
”
”
Ariel Levy (The Rules Do Not Apply)
“
How Explainer Videos Work For Your Business
If you wonder how to take your business to the next level, then explainer videos could be your answer. A short, crisp, informative piece of explainer video is the ultimate key to reach your ideal business leads. Henceforth, you need not worry about keeping your profits high. All you have to do is to invest a part of your money in getting quality, professional explainer videos to boost up your rankings on search engines.
Google’s algorithm for search engine rankings includes a part that quantifies the amount of time spent by the visitors to your website. The longer time they spent, the higher will be your ranking. This is why your site needs an explainer video to keep the clock ticking for you. These videos are great ways to get the attention of your visitors; it really keeps them engaged for a long time, provided the videos are interesting. It has been found out that a human brain is more attentive to visuals rather than mere phrases. As readers spend only a few seconds to minutes on each site, quality content with a catchy title would grab their attention, but not always.
On the other hand, if they confront an interesting and funny video, they will be attracted and urged to watch the content. That is why explainer videos are smart marketing tools. According to top marketing firms, websites with explainer videos rank higher than others in Google universal searches. In a business, an explainer video offers you a smart platform to reach your ideal customers and introduce your services to them with the reasons for them to choose you over your competitors.
What could it be?
An explainer video could be anything. You can share your identity, ideas, concepts, issues, solutions, products, services and even arguments. You can bring them all up with videos in just a few seconds.
How long could it be?
The shorter, the better. Videos more than a 90 seconds could be boring to your visitors. Keeping them short and engaging is the trick to make the visitors stay on your page, which in turn fetches the ranking.
Here are a few reasons to justify the need for explainer videos for your business.
1. Creates a virtual connection:
The most important aspect of online marketing is to showcase your personality in a smart manner. Your customer is with little or no contact with you in online business. So it is crucial to build a trustworthy bond with your customer to maintain a strong relationship. Explainer videos do this job for you; they offer you an identity that is recognized by your customers which wins their trust.
2. Gains popularity:
A good and attractive explainer video is extremely contagious. It is not restricted to your website alone and can be shared with other video hosting sites like YouTube. This means your site gains popularity. People share videos on a higher scale rather than sharing web pages. Moreover, free video hosting sites like YouTube can be accessed even on a Smart phone which is an added advantage.
3. Holds all in one:
Website clutter is a serious mistake that directly affects the rankings of a website. With the intention to hike rankings and boost sales, many website owners clutter their site with loads of images, colorful fonts, flash pictures and pop boxes. This could only have adverse effects on the site. It increases the load time of the website and leaves the visitors confounded that they wonder what your site conveys. On the contrary, an explainer video is can be designed to comprise all such smart aspects squeezed into a single video.
4. Resurrects your identity:
PPT slides and pop up ads are obsolete and they don’t belong to this era of online business marketing. A colorful, funny and informative video with great visuals can do the magic; it grabs the attention of the audience. This is particularly suitable for multifaceted businesses with multiple products and services. You can create customized videos for each product and
”
”
mahalingam
“
Tick All the Right Boxes Between the twenty-four checkboxes in the Daily Dozen and the thirty-seven new checkboxes in the Tweaks, you may feel a bit overwhelmed, but it’s easy to knock off a bunch at a time. For example, starting a meal with a tomato salad sprinkled with some black cumin, garlic powder, and balsamic vinegar hits five boxes right there, including the “Preload with ‘Negative Calorie’ Foods” tweak and the Daily Dozen box for “Other Vegetables.” And if that was one of your implementation intentions, make that six! Ten percent of your boxes nailed with a single appetizer. Of course, you don’t have to hit all the booster boxes every day. You don’t even have to hit any. A healthy diet, as encapsulated by the Daily Dozen, should be all you need to lose as much weight as you want, but the more of these extra tweaks you can hit, the more successful you may be. I’m working on an entire How Not to Diet Cookbook to try to fit as many of these combinations together into delicious recipes and hearty meal plans—but in the meanwhile, please feel free to download the free, updated Dr. Greger’s Daily Dozen app on your Android or iPhone. Start experimenting with a few of the Twenty-One Tweaks and see which ones work for you. My goal is to provide you with the broadest palette of tools to choose from. Remember, it’s not what you eat today that matters, or tomorrow, or next week, but rather what you eat over the next months, years, and decades, so you have to find lifestyle changes that fit into your lifestyle.
”
”
Michael Greger (How Not to Diet)
“
She also remade the bed with her crispest, nicest sheets. It was probably time to sleep with him. O h, yes, it was a bit clinical, but that's how it was when you were dating in your thirties. It wasn't hearts and flowers anymore. They weren't sixteen. They weren't religious. They had met on the internet: a dating website. So it was all very clear and upfront. They were both looking for a long-term relationship. They had ticked corresponding boxes to indicate this.
”
”
Liane Moriarty (The Hypnotist's Love Story)