Twilight Zone Quotes

When eagerness and passion vanish, desire is deserting a weary mind. The power of craving is reaching, then, a twilight zone: The twilight of desire " ( “Crépuscule du désir “ )

Maybe it's information the whitecoats never wanted anyone to figure out.' Fang said in the hollow Twilight Zone-y voice he used sometimes when things got unusually weird- as opposed to regular weird.

There is a twilight zone in our hearts that we ourselves cannot see. Even when we know quite a lot about ourselves-our gifts and weaknesses, our ambitions and aspirations, our motives and our drives-large parts of ourselves remain in the shadow of consciousness. This is a very good thing. We will always remain partially hidden to ourselves. Other people, especially those who love us, can often see our twilight zones better than we ourselves can. The way we are seen and understood by others is different from the way we see and understand ourselves. We will never fully know the significance of our presence in the lives of our friends. That's a grace, a grace that calls us not only to humility, but to a deep trust in those who love us. It is the twilight zones of our hearts where true friendships are born.

We're developing a new citizenry. One that will be very selective about cereals and automobiles, but won't be able to think.

All she could think of as she turned the key was, they were real. Jabberwockys and Bandersnatches and all the fucking Snarks. Boojums for sure. Maybe she had entered the Twilight Zone, but this shit was as real as real gets.

Some people look as if they have lost their eagerness and passion. Their aspiration seems to be exhausted and fresh inspiration has abandoned their weary mind. Life has boundlessly given them material welfare, which has fully spoiled them in the end. No energy for longing has been left, as they have reached a twilight zone. The twilight of desire. ( "Twilight of desire" )

This highway leads to the shadowy tip of reality: you're on a through route to the land of the different, the bizarre, the unexplainable...Go as far as you like on this road. Its limits are only those of mind itself. Ladies and Gentlemen, you're entering the wondrous dimension of imagination. . . Next stop The Twilight Zone.

You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension: a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You’re moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You’ve just crossed over into… the Twilight Zone.

for civilization to survive, the human race has to remain civilized

Nick‘s eyes widened as a total state of befuddled huh possessed him. Was he in the Twilight Zone?

According to the Bible, God created the heavens and the Earth. It is man’s prerogative - and woman’s - to create their own particular and private hell.

It feels like I'm babysitting in the Twilight Zone. I keep waiting for the parents to show up because we are out of chips and diet cokes.

The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices - to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own - for the children and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is that these things cannot be confined to The Twilight Zone. [closing narration: "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street", Twilight Zone episode aired March 4, 1960

A sickness known as hate; not a virus, not a microbe, not a germ - but a sickness nonetheless, highly contagious, deadly in its effects. Don't look for it in the Twilight Zone - look for it in a mirror. Look for it before the light goes out altogether.

For the record, suspicion can kill, and prejudice can destroy. And a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own, for the children and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is that these things cannot be confined to the Twilight Zone.

Every man is put on earth condemned to die. Time and method of execution unknown.

If in any quest for magic, in any search for sorcery, witchery, legerdemain, first check the human spirit.

The ultimate obscenity is not caring, not doing something about what you feel, not feeling! Just drawing back and drawing in, becoming narcissistic.

Jonah spoke what everyone was thinking. "Wouldn't it be Twilight Zone if the door was open, too?" Hamilton tried the knob. It didn't budge. Ian stepped forward and examined the lock. "Natalie's diary has better security than this." He produced a credit card and slipped it between the latch and the jamb. There was a click, and the door swung wide.

I've lost my mind," Alex muttered, grabbing her knives again and stomping back across the kitchen. "I woke up this morning a boring little chef on planet earth, and somehow ended up in the Twilight Zone as a third-rate stand-in for Buffy the Vampire Slayer".

What lies between where you are and where you want to be sometimes requires traveling through the Twilight Zone.

The Chelsea was like a doll’s house in the Twilight Zone, with a hundred rooms, each a small universe.

What, did I just step into the twilight zone?

People without children thought that having a newborn was the hardest part of parenthood, that upside down, the day is night twilight zone feedings and toothless wails. But parents knew better. Parents knew that the hardest part of parenthood was figuring out how to do the right thing in 24 hours a day, forever, and surviving all the times you failed.

First you shoot me,” he muttered. “Now you’re handin’ me your damn club and spoutin’ love poems.” “She was sixteen, motherfucker, you woulda shot you.” “No, asshole, I woulda killed me.” At that, Preacher just kept grinning. Jesus, was he in the twilight zone?

You told me there wouldn’t be any Rod Serling voice-overs, yet here I am in the middle of a Twilight Zone episode. Oh, and let me guess the title of it, Night of the Terminally Stupid! (Channon)

You know, I keep having this really weird feeling that you’re going to take me someplace later and tie me up so that your friends can come laugh at me. (Channon) Does that happen to you often? (Sebastian) No, never, but this night has the makings for a Twilight Zone episode. (Channon)

I think I snapped a wheel at some point tonight. Or at the very least stepped over into the realm of Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone. (Cassandra) How do you mean? (Wulf) Well, let’s see…It’s only eleven o’clock and tonight I have gone to a club that seems to be owned by shape-shifting panthers, where a group of vampire hit men and one possible god attacked me. Went home only to be attacked again by said hit men, god, and then a dragon. Had a Dark-Hunter save me. My bodyguard my or may not be in the service of a goddess and now I just met a sleep spirit. Hell of a day, huh? (Cassandra)

It may be said with a degree of assurance that not everything that meets the eye is as it appears.

Music is my one necessary tool. I put on music that fits the mood of what I'm writing, to help me stay in the zone and get the emotional tone right.

Trying to be the best at anything carries its own special risks, in or out of the Twilight Zone.

A place . . . a time . . . where a man can live his life full measure.

That's not fair. That's not fair at all. There was time now. There was, was all the time I needed... - Harry Bemis

Welcome to The Twilight Zone!” The “Holy-crap-that’s-a-lot-of-pink” Zone would have been a more accurate description.

Gaslighting causes us to doubt our own memories, perceptions, and judgments. It throws us psychologically off balance. It’s like being in the Twilight Zone. If you feel as though your self-esteem, confidence, and dignity has withered under the flame of gaslighting, you are not alone.

I am that I am a Goddess, a God entitled to the deepest and most beautiful sensations offered by Heaven and Earth In Love I trust In Wisdom I am revealed

Every child must have chores to do. It gives them dignity in work and the joy of labor.

The crowd slowly dispersed in soft, whispering groups, voices muted by the fascination of death that all men carry with them in small pockets deep inside them.

Beasley was a little man whose face looked like an X ray of an ulcer.

Martin Sloan, age thirty-six, vice-president in charge of media. Successful in most things but not in the one effort that all men try at some time in their lives - trying to go home again. And also like all men perhaps there'll be an occasion, maybe a summer night sometime, when he'll look up from what he's doing and listen to the distant music of a calliope, and hear the voices and the laughter of the people and the places of his past. And perhaps across his mind there'll flit a little errant wish, that a man might not have to become old, never outgrow the parks and the merry-go-rounds of his youth. And he'll smile then too because he'll know it is just an errant wish, some wisp of memory not too important really, some laughing ghosts that cross a man's mind, that are a part of the Twilight Zone.

On a deeper level, the film [Seven Days in May] displays several themes that are important to my father throughout his career. Prime among these is not succumbing to fear born of ignorance. In the nuclear age, he seems to be telling us, we can't throw up our hands in helplessness over the enormity of the problem. With the stakes as dire as they are, we must all work positively to change things for the better. I think that is why he believes so firmly in the idea of the United Nations. As in 'Twilight Zone's' "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street", my dad is warning us that the greatest threat we face is if a potential enemy uses our fears to get us to start destroying ourselves.

A small footnote found in the court records of some parallel world. The name of Mitchell Chaplin, who served his sentence of invisibility and learned his lesson well. Too well. This time, however, he will wear his invisibility like a shield of glory. A shield forged in the very heart...of the Twilight Zone.

Highly creative people have a gift for connecting supposedly unrelated elements and ideas. They cross borders without regard for customs posts or No Trespassing signs. They throw suspension bridges across great distances. These elegant and unexpected combinations flow together beautifully in the twilight zone, where metaphor and resemblance rules in place of logic and classification.

You gotta BELIEVE, Bolie!

The idea of living forever makes me uncomfortable, and at this point I've lived long enough and seen enough Twilight Zone episodes to know that there's always a catch.

The Chelsea was like a doll’s house in the Twilight Zone, with a hundred rooms, each a small universe. I wandered the halls seeking its spirits, dead or alive.

dealing with drunks and hypes and homeless people who’ve got one foot in reality and the other in the Twilight Zone, you get used to seeing big changes in people, and usually not changes for the better. You teach yourself to see who’s under the new bruises and the fresh coats of dirt.

And something inside the young man cracked. The small compartment in the back of his mind, where man closets his fears, ties them up, controls and commands them, broke open and they surged across brain and nerves and muscles—a nightmare flood in open rebellion.

Bye Bye , Father,' I said as the confessional door clicked shut behind me, 'Ah's' eyes following me, wondering, I suppose, what He'd been drinking the day he went and made a twilight zone of a disaster like me.

Sentinels of trees breathe life into bodies of earthly flesh As their mighty arms reach to the stars we join in their quest for Helios’s mighty power Like sentinels, we seek our place in the forest of nature’s gentle breath

I only wanted to tell you that this was the wonderful time for you. Don’t let any of it go by without enjoying it. There won’t be any more merry-go-rounds. No more cotton candy. No more band concerts. I only wanted to tell you, Martin, that this is the wonderful time. Now! Here! That’s all. That’s all I wanted to tell you.

Almost every girl goes through this weird living nightmare, where you show up at school and realize people have grown to hate you overnight. It’s a Twilight Zone moment when you can’t figure out what is real. It is a group mind-fuck of the highest kind, and it makes or breaks you. I got through it by keeping my head down, and a few weeks passed and all the girls liked me again. We all pretended it never happened. There should be manuals passed out to teach girls how to handle that inevitable one-week stretch when up is down and the best friend who just slept over at your house suddenly pulls your hair in front of everyone and laughs.

The postmodernist belief in the relativism of truth, coupled with the clicker culture of mass media, in which attention spans are measured in New York minutes, leaves us with a bewildering array of truth claims packaged in infotainment units. It must be true—I saw it on television, the movies, the Internet. The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, That’s Incredible!, The Sixth Sense, Poltergeist, Loose Change, Zeitgeist: The Movie. Mysteries, magic, myths, and monsters. The occult and the supernatural. Conspiracies and cabals. The face on Mars and aliens on Earth. Bigfoot and Loch Ness. ESP and psi. UFOs and ETIs. OBEs and NDEs. JFK, RFK, and MLK Jr.—alphabet conspiracies. Altered states and hypnotic regression. Remote viewing and astroprojection. Ouija boards and tarot cards. Astrology and palm reading. Acupuncture and chiropractic. Repressed memories and false memories. Talking to the dead and listening to your inner child. It’s all an obfuscating amalgam of theory and conjecture, reality and fantasy, nonfiction and science fiction. Cue dramatic music. Darken the backdrop. Cast a shaft of light across the host’s face. Trust no one. The truth is out there. I want to believe.

In other news, Aang dominates on “Are You Smarter Than the Fire Nation”. Bella Swan becomes engaged to her boyfriend of one year, Edward Cullen, and unceremoniously sends Jacob Black to the “friend zone”. Pop star Candy Cane trades her controversial career for being a housewife (which was a move that is very unpopular with many of her young fans), and Jacquel Rassenworth is still the Internet’s biggest fame-nut (cue APPLAUSE).

Deuce continued to stare at him, feeling flabbergasted and more than a little uneasy. “First you shoot me,” he muttered. “Now you’re handin’ me your damn club and spoutin’ love poems.” “She was sixteen, motherfucker, you woulda shot you.” “No, asshole, I woulda killed me.” At that, Preacher just kept grinning. Jesus, was he in the twilight zone?

Can't I just say it's magic? - Charlie Blue

It’s like the Twilight Zone,” murmured Alex, her eyes big. “Watching them work together on anything, even when it’s just eggs and bacon.

Like The Twilight Zone Serling?” She

Nature—cue the theme from The Twilight Zone—somehow knows calculus.

It’s like I’ve walked into the fucking Twilight Zone,” she murmured…

You have now crossed over into... The Twilight Zone.

The psychedelic realm is eccentrically unique; a Twilight Zone of sorts. A surreal experience, although different factors may influence the experience.

You always think you’d like it if the Twilight Zone came true. You can forget that shit.

I've already got the storm figured out. Some idiot blew up the sun. Some dumb Russian general pushed the wrong button and launched one of their million missiles, or maybe NASA misaimed one of our test rockets. Either way, the sun is gone and we're now engaged in a nuclear shootout. It's the end of everything. Batman and Superman aren't coming and James Bond doesn't have a trick up his sleeve to save us this time. In a week or a month, we'll all freeze to death, just like in that Twilight Zone episode where the pretty lady is burning up with fever, dreaming the sun is baking the world dry, when really the Earth has dropped out of orbit, is hurtling further and further away from the sun, rapidly turning into a big ball of ice.

And what I further don't understand is how little you appreciate the nature of your departure. Think of all the poor souls who go in violent accidents. These are the nonprecognition victim. We are not permitted to forewarn them. You, Mr. Bookman, fall into the category of natural causes.

Today at lunch the waiter told me that the soup of the day was "Beef and Human." And I was like, "What the shit?" He said he'd had some and it was "good but really heavy on the human." Victor was like, "That sounds great. I'll have a bowl of that," and I felt like I'd fallen into a Twilight Zone movie. But it turns out the waiter was saying "Beef and Cumin," which honestly sounds almost as gross.

I believe that evil is directly proportional to idiocy. I believe that the territory you roamed in anguish before you disappeared is ruled by idiots. It isn’t true that criminals are masterminds. It takes a vast amount of stupidity to assemble the parts of such grotesque, absurd, and cruel machinery. Pure brutality disguised as a masterplan. Small people, with small minds, who don’t understand the abyss of the other. They lack the language or tools for it. Empathy and compassion require a clear mind. Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes, changing your skin, adopting a new face: these are all acts of genuine intelligence.

As he looked at his reflection in the dresser mirror, he felt that recurring surprise that the tall, attractive man staring back was he, and beyond that was the wonder that the image bore no real relationship to the man himself.

Easter blessings All life’s sacrifices like autumn leaves awaken our senses and power to love and be whole Our Mother Earth, Our Father Sky embraces our happiness and laughter Praise be to freedom and life’s seasons Praise be to Christ’s freedom song

The coronavirus outbreak feels like an episode of The Twilight Zone. I went to see a doctor the other day, and they told me to wear a face mask. Then they said how much it would cost to see the doctor and I told them THEY were the ones who should be wearing masks!

The security offered inside a bank safe even became fodder for a 1959 episode of The Twilight Zone, in which mild-mannered, bookish bank clerk Henry Bemis, who locked himself inside the bank’s safe each day to read during his lunch break, emerged from the vault one day to find the world devastated by nuclear bombs. IV

The city had grown, implacably, spreading its concrete and alloy fingers wider every day over the dark and feral country. Nothing could stop it. Mountains were stamped flat. Rivers were dammed off or drained or put elsewhere. The marshes were filled. The animals shot from the trees and then the trees cut down. And the big gray machines moved forward, gobbling up the jungle with their iron teeth, chewing it clean of its life and all its living things. Until it was no more. Leveled, smoothed as a highway is smoothed, its centuries choked beneath millions and millions of tons of hardened stone. The birth of a city... It had become the death of a world.

People without children thought that having a newborn was the hardest part of parenthood, that upside-down, day-is-night twilight zone of feedings and toothless wails. But parents knew better. Parents knew that the hardest part of parenthood was figuring out how to do the right thing twenty-four hours a day, forever, and surviving all the times you failed.

Some have argued that because of its atypicality, Twilight Struggle is not a “real” wargame, but we will leave such jesuitical distinctions to the message boards.

How do you lose a case where there are two dead children?

There’s a Twilight Zone episode, “Time Enough at Last,” about a book-lover desperate for more time so he can do nothing but read. He gets his wish; he’s the lone survivor of a global nuclear holocaust and ends up at a library with a lifetime’s worth of intact books. He’s excitedly sorting through them when his glasses fall off and shatter, leaving him unable to read.

I put on the most serious face I could muster. “We’re about to embark on a journey.” I used the Twilight Zone voice. “Full of involuntary sleepless nights, throw-up, and out-of-control behavior. Our freedom will no longer exist; our identities will vanish before our very eyes. We. Will. Be. PARENTS!” I mimicked loud, thundering music. “Glad you’re excited,” Mia said.

Every second, every minute, every hour our bodies breathe in the manna of Heaven. Our bodies resonate with the love and power of creative cosmic rhythms dancing through every cell in our beautiful beingness. Heaven is the heart of our atomic structure. Only with realisation of God manna within can the external cosmic energy fuse and ignite eternal bliss. Manna from Heaven.

Once she believes his version of the relationship—that he is "good" and she is "bad," that he is "right" and she is "wrong," that her deficiencies are the cause of his blow-ups, and that he is acting this way only because he is trying to help her become a better person—she has stepped into a dangerous twilight zone of distorted perceptions. Accepting his version of reality means she must give up hers. It's Alice in Wonderland time. She may still know that she is being mistreated, but she invents "good reasons" to explain it away. What makes this transition so destructive to her is that she actually has begun to help him to abuse her. She suspends her own good judgement, joins him in his persecution of her, and finds explanations to justify his behavior.

Susannah: This place...it may or may not be Topeka, but what it really looks like to me is one of those creepy little towns on The Twilight Zone. You boys probably don't remember that one, but-- Eddie and Jake: (in perfect unison) Yes, I do. (laughter) Jake: They still show the reruns. Eddie: Yeah, all the time. Usually sponsored by bankruptcy lawyers who look like shorthair terriers.

I would sink into the relief I felt from having friends like these girls. Smart. Patient. Good daughters and sisters. That’s who I ran with. That being said, I still went through the young-girl rites of passage, including being kicked out of the group. Almost every girl goes through this weird living nightmare, where you show up at school and realize people have grown to hate you overnight. It’s a Twilight Zone moment when you can’t figure out what is real. It is a group mind-fuck of the highest kind, and it makes or breaks you. I got through it by keeping my head down, and a few weeks passed and all the girls liked me again. We all pretended it never happened. There should be manuals passed out to teach girls how to handle that inevitable one-week stretch when up is down and the best friend who just slept over at your house suddenly pulls your hair in front of everyone and laughs.

Now the evening's at its noon, its meridian. The outgoing tide has simmered down, and there's a lull-like the calm in the eye of a hurricane - before the reverse tide starts to set in. The last acts of the three-act plays are now on, and the after-theater eating places are beginning to fill up with early comers; Danny's and Lindy's - yes, and Horn & Hardart too. Everybody has got where they wanted to go - and that was out somewhere. Now everybody will want to get back where they came from - and that's home somewhere. Or as the coffee-grinder radio, always on the beam, put it at about this point: 'New York, New York, it's a helluva town, The Bronx is up, the Battery's down, And the people ride around in a hole in the ground. Now the incoming tide rolls in; the hours abruptly switch back to single digits again, and it's a little like the time you put your watch back on entering a different time zone. Now the buses knock off and the subway expresses turn into locals and the locals space themselves far apart; and as Johnny Carson's face hits millions of screens all at one and the same time, the incoming tide reaches its crest and pounds against the shore. There's a sudden splurge, a slew of taxis arriving at the hotel entrance one by one as regularly as though they were on a conveyor belt, emptying out and then going away again. Then this too dies down, and a deep still sets in. It's an around-the-clock town, but this is the stretch; from now until the garbage-grinding trucks come along and tear the dawn to shreds, it gets as quiet as it's ever going to get. This is the deep of the night, the dregs, the sediment at the bottom of the coffee cup. The blue hours; when guys' nerves get tauter and women's fears get greater. Now guys and girls make love, or kill each other or sometimes both. And as the windows on the 'Late Show' title silhouette light up one by one, the real ones all around go dark. And from now on the silence is broken only by the occasional forlorn hoot of a bogged-down drunk or the gutted-cat squeal of a too sharply swerved axle coming around a turn. Or as Billy Daniels sang it in Golden Boy: While the city sleeps, And the streets are clear, There's a life that's happening here. ("New York Blues")

Following his wonderful introduction to the joys of womanhood, Waldo found a perverse pleasure in leaving his after-sex cigarette butt glowing on the lawn of the executive mansion. Despite Jeanne's repeated assurances that it wouldn't actually be visible to any nineteenth century passers-by, Waldo preferred to picture his discarded cigarette butt being the center of much scrutiny, with puzzled Civil War-era Washingtonians reacting to it in the same way Brazilian farmers would react to U.F.O.'s a century later.

You whom my body longs for, where are you? In the stars, in the river, over the rainbow? Perhaps you hide in the shadows of the mountains, whistling in the wind through mighty peaks Just maybe you are in every corner of my being awaiting invocation Ô Manna Breath fill my life with your infinite power

Life at the Chelsea was an open market, everyone with something of himself to sell. (..) the lobby hung with bad art. Big invasive stuff unloaded on Stanley Bard in exchange for rent. The hotel is an energetic, desperate haven for scores of gifted hustling children from every rung of the ladder. Guitar bums and stoned-out beauties in Victorian dresses. Junkie poets, playwrights, broke down filmmakers, and French actors. Everybody passing through here is somebody, if nobody in the outside world (…) The Chelsea was like a doll’s house in the Twilight Zone, with a hundred rooms, each a small universe.

Life at the Chelsea was an open market, everyone with something of himself to sell.” (p.107) (..)the lobby hung with bad art. Big invasive stuff unloaded on Stanley Bard [gerente do hotel] in exchange for rent. The hotel is an energetic, desperate haven for scores of gifted hustling children from every rung of the ladder. Guitar bums and stoned-out beauties in Victorian dresses. Junkie poets, playwrights, broke down filmmakers, and French actors. Everybody passing through here is somebody, if nobody in the outside world.” (p.91). (…) The Chelsea was like a doll’s house in the Twilight Zone, with a hundred rooms, each a small universe.

We cannot call ourselves anti-theist, like New Atheism, while creating even rainbow pantheons of gods to follow, chasing ideological spectres to the end of illogical rainbow arguments constructed and maintained artificially by ignorant leaders. When we do this we not only create strawmen, spectres, and artificial rainbows but pocket dimensions of subjective thought that can be likened to the Twilight Zone. In this place things will not be more real but be like a Marvel comics version of both biblical and Norse heroes that are created solely for the readers recreation and for corporate sales. We will end up selling our souls for ideological satisfaction.

zone of twilight” in which “the president acts in absence of either a congressional grant or denial of authority.” He then “can only rely upon his own independent powers,” and whether that reliance is legitimate “is likely to depend on the imperatives of events and contemporary imponderables rather than on abstract theories of law.

In spite of myself I got deeper and deeper in. Suddenly I wasn't the person I used to be. I could blame my bosses. I could say that they were the ones who changed me. But you always have a hand in what happens to you. I know this because I've seen people who don't betray themselves. People who might be up to their necks in shit and they don't break.

the lower South, its meaning was settled by the overtly discriminatory Black Codes. These codes, described by Kenneth Stampp as “a twilight zone between slavery and freedom,”12 restricted Blacks by, for instance, requiring them to sign labor contracts and prohibiting them from taking any job other than farmer or servant without receiving a license and paying a tax.13 Extensive regulation of the “employment” relationship made it resemble slavery, with “masters” allowed to whip “servants.” Breaching or not entering into a contract could trigger the application of vagrancy laws, which took advantage of the Thirteenth Amendment back door: Blacks convicted of vagrancy could be sentenced to work or leased out while prisoners.

Groupies and hangers-on somehow fancy themselves entitled to the narcissist’s favour and largesse, his time, attention, and other resources. They convince themselves that they are exempt from the narcissist’s rage and wrath and immune to his vagaries andabuse . This self-imputed and self-conferred status irritates the narcissist no end as it challenges and encroaches on his standing as the only source of preferential treatment and the sole decision-maker when it comes to the allocation of his precious and cosmically significant wherewithal. The narcissist is the guru at the centre of a cult. Like other gurus, he demands complete obedience from his flock: his spouse, his offspring, other family  members, friends, and colleagues. He feels entitled to adulation and special treatment by his followers. He punishes the wayward and the straying lambs. He enforces discipline, adherence to his teachings, and common goals. The less accomplished he is in reality – the more stringent his mastery and the more pervasive the brainwashing. Cult leaders are narcissists who failed in their mission to "be someone", to become famous, and to impress the world with their uniqueness, talents, traits, and skills. Such disgruntled narcissists withdraw into a "zone of comfort" (known as the "Pathological Narcissistic Space") that assumes the hallmarks of a cult. The – often involuntary – members of the narcissist's mini-cult inhabit a twilight zone of his own construction. He imposes on them an exclusionary or inclusionary shared psychosis, replete with persecutory delusions, "enemies", mythical-grandiose narratives, and apocalyptic scenarios if he is flouted. Exclusionary shared psychosis involves the physical and emotional isolation of the narcissist and his “flock” (spouse, children, fans, friends) from the outside world in order to better shield them from imminent threats and hostile intentions. Inclusionary shared psychosis revolves around attempts to spread the narcissist’s message in a missionary fashion among friends, colleagues, co-workers, fans, churchgoers, and anyone else who comes across the mini-cult. The narcissist's control is based on ambiguity, unpredictability, fuzziness, and ambientabuse . His ever-shifting whims exclusively define right versus wrong, desirable and unwanted, what is to be pursued and what to be avoided. He alone determines the rights and obligations of his disciples and alters them at will.

Kaizong understood very well that the figure who stood before him was far more than an old man at the twilight of life. The sparkling lights that emitted from his eyes were clearly the result of the latest model of augmented-reality contact lenses, though Kaizong wasn’t sure of the access level. In this restricted-bitrate zone, an old man so equipped was a terrifying figure, as though he could tear off his disguise and, in a flash, turn into a cold-blooded warrior.

For a zoned-out, stupefied populace, “democracy” will be nothing more than the right to shop, or to choose between Wendy’s and Burger King, or to stare at CNN and think that this managed infotainment is actually the news. Corporate hegemony, the triumph of global democracy/consumerism based on an American model, is the collapse of American civilization. So a large-scale transformation is indeed going on, but it is one that makes triumph indistinguishable from disintegration.

Modern art always projects itself into a twilight zone where no values are fixed. It is always born in anxiety, at least since Cézanne. And Picasso once said that what matters most to us in Cézanne, more than his pictures, is his anxiety. It seems to me a function of modern art to transmit this anxiety to the spectator, so that his encounter with the work is--at least while the work is new-- a genuine existential predicament. Like Kierkegaard's God, the work molests us with its aggressive absurdity [...]. It demands a decision in which you discover something of your own quality; and this decision is always a "leap of faith," to use Kierkegaard's famous term. And like Kierkegaard's God, who demands a sacrifice from Abraham in violation of every moral standard: like Kierkegaard's God, the picture seems arbitrary, cruel, irrational, demanding your faith, while it makes no promise of future rewards. In other words, it is in the nature of original contemporary art to present itself as a bad risk. And we the public, artists included, should be proud of being in this predicament, because nothing else would seem to us quite true to life; and art, after all, is supposed to be a mirror of life.

Lilith listened to her father having a fucking tantrum and then she saw a retreating Ian. Ian figured he would take this chance to get away from what was like the twilight zone. Lilith turned around making her father growl from her lack of respect. “If you so much as move you will regret it Ian and I swear by all the fires in hell I will make you feel every fucking sting from my paddle. My patience is thin and I am tired of your fear so fucking stay put.” She turned back to her father “Fine I will go save your sorry ass but if you ever threaten mine again...” Pointing to Ian and then turning back to a enraged Lucifer “We will have a fucking problem. Do I make myself clear father?” before he could reply she turned to a pissed off Ian and at this point she could care less because she was beyond pissed right now. She grabbed his shirt and pulled him down to her lips and kissed him with everything she hoped and wanted from him. Ian was beyond sense when Lilith threw him into an abyss of fire. She pulled back watching a dazed Ian “So help me if you ever let any woman touch you again I will kill her.” Ian didn’t know what to say to that he was still drunk on her taste. This time she pulled his hair and looked into his eyes; he saw passion and seduction “Mine” and she kissed him again and then pulled away. Lilith faced her father and nodded. Ian watched as she walked away.

There is a section of the museum (of memory and human rights) that I like the best...Guides describe it as the heart of the museum. From an observation platform surrounded by candles, which aren't actually candles but little bulbs, more than a thousand photographs of many of the regime's victims are visible, hung high op on one wall. The photographs were donated by the victims' families, so we see them at home, at celebrations, at the beach, smiling at teh camera the way we all do when we want to leave a record of ourselves at our best. There are beautiful women who look like movie stars, who must have fixed themselves up flirtatiously, thinking they'll give the photo to a boyfriend, a lover.

Little Blaine: Stop! Stop it, you're killing him! Eddie: (in his mind) What do you think he's trying to do to us, squirt? He considered shooting Blaine one Jake had told while they'd been sitting around the campfire that night and then didn't. He wanted to stick further inside the bounds of logic than that one allowed...and he could do it. He didn't think he would have to get much more surreal than the level of, say, a third-grader with a fair-to-good collection of Garbage Pail Kids cards in order to fuck Blaine up royally...and permanently. Because no matter how many emotions his fancy dipolar circuits had allowed him to mimic, HE was still an IT--a computer. Even allowing Eddie this far into riddledom's Twilight Zone had caused Blaine's sanity to totter. Eddie: Why do people go to bed, Blaine? Blaine: BECAUSE...BECAUSE...GODS DAMN YOU, BECAUSE...BECAUSE THE BED WON'T COME TO THEM, GODS DAMN YOU! Eddie: Give up, Blaine. Stop before I have to blow your mind completely. If you don't quit, it's going to happen. We both know it. Blaine: NO! Eddie: I got a million of these puppies. Been hearing them my whole life. They stick to my mind the way flies stick to flypaper. Hey, with some people it's recipes. So what do you say? Want to give? Blaine: NO! Eddie: Okay, Blaine. You asked for it. Here comes the cruncher. Why did the dead baby cross the road? (later) It crossed the road because it was stapled to the chicken, you dopey fuck!

When I was a girl, I was told that if I misbehaved the man with the sack would come for me. All disobedient children disappeared into that wicked old man's bottomless dark sack. But rather than frighten me, the story piqued my curiosity. I secretly wanted to meet the man, open his sack, climb into it, see the disappeared children, and get to the heart of the terrible mystery. I imagined it many times. I gave him a face, a suit, a pair of shoes. When I did, he became more disturbing, because normally the face I gave him belonged to someone I knew: my father, my uncle, the corner grocer, the mechanic next door, my science teacher. Any of them could be the old man with the sack. Even I could probably play the part, if I looked in the mirror and drew on a mustache.

The red haired waitress arrived with their drinks, dancing about the table as she placed their orders in front of them. "Hiya, keeds. Peachy place, ain't it?" Before anyone could respond, she kicked her heels in the air and flitted off again. Waldo lit up a cigarette and tasted his drink. "Listen, I don't think we ought to stay here very long...." "No shit, Sherlock!" Brisbane chortled. "But first I want to have a little fun. I think I'm gonna talk to some of these guys." The fredneck left the table and walked over to a group of five men, all of them clad in the old baseball uniforms that were apparently quite popular at The One Year Wonder And All-Around Oddity Bar. They were huddled together on one side of the bar, and Brisbane broke into their conversation with a burst of fredneck chutzpah.

It was often like this with her: never stepping out of her quiet comfort zone except for someone else’s perceived need; changing the subject whenever her circle of human friends grew too cruel to one another; thanking a teacher for their lesson if that teacher seemed down; giving up her locker for a more inconvenient location so two best friends could be neighbors; smiling a certain smile that never surfaced for her contented friends, only revealing itself to someone who was hurting. Little things that none of her acquaintances or admirers ever seemed to see. Through all these little things, I was able to add the most important quality to my list, the most revealing of them all, as simple as it was rare. Bella was good. All the other things added up to that whole: Kind and self-effacing and unselfish and brave—she was good through and through.