Vent To Someone Quotes

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I wanted to talk to someone. But who? It’s moments like this, when you need someone the most, that your world seems smallest.
David Levithan (Dash & Lily's Book of Dares (Dash & Lily, #1))
Besides the obvious difference, there was not much distinction between losing a best friend and losing a lover: it was all about intimacy. One moment, you had someone to share your biggest triumphs and fatal flaws with; the next minute, you had to keep them bottled inside. One moment, you'd start to call her to tell her a snippet of news or to vent about your awful day before realizing you did not have that right anymore; the next, you could not remember the digits of her phone number.
Jodi Picoult
More often than not, people who vent or complain already know how to handle their current situation—they’re just looking for someone to see and appreciate their struggle.
Michael S. Sorensen (I Hear You: The Surprisingly Simple Skill Behind Extraordinary Relationships)
Like any crowd in a democracy they were looking for someone to vent their anger on,
William R. Forstchen
When I feel sad, I try to think of someone else in the world who is suffering worse than me. Like someone in Seattle, who is hurting so bad financially that instead of a vente coffee at Starbucks every morning, they have to downsize to grande.
Jarod Kintz (This Book is Not for Sale)
I've prowled the dirtiest back alleys of sadness, okay? And I know what it's like to fight for your life on those mean streets. So if you need someone to vent to or someone to be quiet with or someone to talk your ear off, I can be that person. I'm not scared of the dark places.
Emery Lord (When We Collided)
There are many things one can think of when one needs someone to vent one’s wrath on.
Åsne Seierstad (The Bookseller of Kabul)
I liked it all, but most of all I liked the fact that although the play was entirely focused on Quintana there were, five evenings and two afternoons a week, these ninety full minutes, the run time of the play, during which she did not need to be dead. During which the question remained open. During which the denouement had yet to play out. During which the last scene played did not necessarily need to be played in the ICU overlooking the East River. During which the bells would not necessarily sound and the doors would not necessarily be locked at six. During which the last dialogue heard did not necessarily need to concern the vent. Like when someone dies, don't dwell on it.
Joan Didion (Blue Nights)
The closest that most of us come to a direct experience of the centerlessness of capitalism is an encounter with the call center. As a consumer in late capitalism, you increasingly exist in two, distinct realities: the one in which the services are provided without hitch, and another reality entirely, the crazed Kafkaesque labyrinth of call centers, a world without memory, where cause and effect connect together in mysterious, unfathomable ways, where it is a miracle that anything ever happens, and you lose hope of ever passing back over to the other side, where things seem to function smoothly. What exemplifies the failure of the neoliberal world to live up to its own PR better than the call center? Even so, the universality of bad experiences with call centers does nothing to unsettle the operating assumption that capitalism is inherently efficient, as if the problems with call centers weren’t the systemic consequences of a logic of Capital which means organizations are so fixated on making profits that they can’t actually sell you anything. The call center experience distils the political phenomenology of late capitalism: the boredom and frustration punctuated by cheerily piped PR, the repeating of the same dreary details many times to different poorly trained and badly informed operatives, the building rage that must remain impotent because it can have no legitimate object, since – as is very quickly clear to the caller –there is no-one who knows, and no-one who could do anything even if they could. Anger can only be a matter of venting; it is aggression in a vacuum, directed at someone who is a fellow victim of the system but with whom there is no possibility of communality. Just as the anger has no proper object, it will have no effect. In this experience of a system that is unresponsive, impersonal, centerless, abstract and fragmentary, you are as close as you can be to confronting the artificial stupidity of Capital in itself. Call center angst is one more illustration of the way that Kafka is poorly understood as exclusively a writer on totalitarianism; a decentralized, market Stalinist bureaucracy is far more Kafkaesque than one in which there is a central authority. Read, for instance, the bleak farce of K’s encounter with the telephone system in the Castle, and it is hard not to see it as uncannily prophetic of the call center experience.
Mark Fisher (Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?)
It was completely unprofessional to speak about your boss like that to someone who wasn’t a trusted friend or family member you leaned on for the requisite boss-venting.
Mimi Jean Pamfiloff (Fugly (Fugly #1))
I want to talk. I actually want to tell someone what I feel.  I want to tell her, but I can't.  I don't do that.  I don't confide.  I don't vent.  I don't share.  I don't trust anyone, ever.
Sarah Ann Walker (I Am Her...)
He says nothing yet How do I understand everything Why does my soul vent out the anger At someone my heart adores Why do his words go straight To my heart and Deep into the soul Why does the time fail In telling the truth
Jyoti Patel (The Curved Rainbow)
And . . . it would be a real relief for me to have someone along I can talk to freely.” Her smile tilted a little at this. “Talk, or vent?” “I—hem!—suspect this one is going to entail quite a lot of venting, yes. D’you think you can stand it?
Lois McMaster Bujold (Diplomatic Immunity (Vorkosigan Saga, #13))
There is aerated ink caked in the air vents from the printing presses that shake the whole building when they run. Some reporters have ink in their veins. The Sun-Times staff have ink in their lungs. Once in a while someone will complain to OSHA.
Lauren Beukes (The Shining Girls)
He felt the heat blasting from the vents of the Jeep and he gave a lot of grateful thought to the fact that he was finally in a comfortable enough place to fall asleep, not driving a stolen car and not sleeping in said stolen car in a copse of trees in twelve-degree weather; not in an unfamiliar bed that smelled like someone else; not in the series of try-hard cots in the Interim Room at Lathrop House but instead in the soft bucket seat of a Jeep that smelled like someone he knew; homeward bound, God what a queer thing to say but he hardly had the wherewithal to correct himself, so heavy were his eyelids, his head full of newfound knowledge, his belly full of egg rolls, and he didn’t even notice falling asleep; he just drifted off, Wendy to his left, because he knew, somehow, that she’d get them home.
Claire Lombardo (The Most Fun We Ever Had)
Late in the evening, someone in the White House decided to vent to Ben Smith: 'A senior White House official just called me with a very pointed message for the administration's sometime allies in organized labor, who invested heavily in beating Blanche Lincoln, Obama's candidate, in Arkansas. "Organized labor just flushed $10 million of their members' money down the toilet on a pointless exercise," the official said. "If even half that total had been well-targeted and applied in key House races across this country, that could have made a real difference in November."' Boy, good thing for this source there's no member of Obama's staff who's known for blowing his stack and venting furiously at political defeats. I'll bet he was pounding the desk like a battering Rahm and that he threw out the E-manual on how to talk to the press when he did it.
Jim Geraghty
As my mom sees it, her dry, flaky skin is some immigrant’s vocational opportunity. Plus, hurting her offers immigrants a nifty cathartic therapy for venting their rage. Her chapped lips and split ends constitute someone’s rungs up the socioeconomic ladder to escape poverty. Sliding into middle age complete with cellulite and scaly elbows, my mother has become an economic engine, generating millions of dollars which will be wired to feed families and purchase cholera medicine in Ecuador. Should she ever decide to “let herself go,” no doubt tens of thousands would perish.
Chuck Palahniuk (Damned (Damned #1))
Over the years Amy’s family has become a cascade of domestic abuse: her father beat on her brother, who grew big and furious and beat on her mother, who had no one but Amy to vent her anger on. Based on this pattern, you’d think that if there were someone in the family after Amy, that someone would do well to take karate classes, or hit the weights.
Ron Currie Jr. (Everything Matters!)
Sorry," I said. There was little healing power in the word, but maybe the Inspectre wasn't looking to heal. Maybe he didn't want someone to fix it. It had been broken too long for me to think anything I said would actually help. It was like trying to put a Band-Aid on a shark bite. Sometimes people just needed to vent and get it out of their system.
Anton Strout (Dead Waters (Simon Canderous, #4))
On the TV screen in Harry's is The Patty Winters Show, which is now on in the afternoon and is up against Geraldo Rivera, Phil Donahue and Oprah Winfrey. Today's topic is Does Economic Success Equal Happiness? The answer, in Harry's this afternoon, is a roar of resounding "Definitely," followed by much hooting, the guys all cheering together in a friendly way. On the screen now are scenes from President Bush's inauguration early this year, then a speech from former President Reagan, while Patty delivers a hard-to-hear commentary. Soon a tiresome debate forms over whether he's lying or not, even though we don't, can't, hear the words. The first and really only one to complain is Price, who, though I think he's bothered by something else, uses this opportunity to vent his frustration, looks inappropriately stunned, asks, "How can he lie like that? How can he pull that shit?" "Oh Christ," I moan. "What shit? Now where do we have reservations at? I mean I'm not really hungry but I would like to have reservations somewhere. How about 220?" An afterthought: "McDermott, how did that rate in the new Zagat's?" "No way," Farrell complains before Craig can answer. "The coke I scored there last time was cut with so much laxative I actually had to take a shit in M.K." "Yeah, yeah, life sucks and then you die." "Low point of the night," Farrell mutters. "Weren't you with Kyria the last time you were there?" Goodrich asks. "Wasn't that the low point?" "She caught me on call waiting. What could I do?" Farrell shrugs. "I apologize." "Caught him on call waiting." McDermott nudges me, dubious. "Shut up, McDermott," Farrell says, snapping Craig's suspenders. "Date a beggar." "You forgot something, Farrell," Preston mentions. "McDermott is a beggar." "How's Courtney?" Farrell asks Craig, leering. "Just say no." Someone laughs. Price looks away from the television screen, then at Craig, and he tries to hide his displeasure by asking me, waving at the TV, "I don't believe it. He looks so... normal. He seems so... out of it. So... un dangerous." "Bimbo, bimbo," someone says. "Bypass, bypass." "He is totally harmless, you geek. Was totally harmless. Just like you are totally harmless. But he did do all that shit and you have failed to get us into 150, so, you know, what can I say?" McDermott shrugs. "I just don't get how someone, anyone, can appear that way yet be involved in such total shit," Price says, ignoring Craig, averting his eyes from Farrell. He takes out a cigar and studies it sadly. To me it still looks like there's a smudge on Price's forehead. "Because Nancy was right behind him?" Farrell guesses, looking up from the Quotrek. "Because Nancy did it?" "How can you be so fucking, I don't know, cool about it?" Price, to whom something really eerie has obviously happened, sounds genuinely perplexed. Rumor has it that he was in rehab.
Bret Easton Ellis (American Psycho)
think of a time when you were angry, when someone said or did something that you didn’t like, a time when you wanted to get even or you wanted to vent. Now, what if you had been able to stop, breathe deeply, and slow the process down? Right on the spot you could connect with natural openness. You could stop, give space, and empower the wolf of patience and courage instead of the wolf of aggression and violence.
Pema Chödrön (Taking the Leap: Freeing Ourselves from Old Habits and Fears)
Well, Harry, while we’ve still got you here, you won’t mind helping with the preparations for Bill and Fleur’s wedding, will you? There’s still so much to do.” “No--I--of course not,” said Harry, disconcerted by this sudden change of subject. “Sweet of you,” she replied, and she smiled as she left the scullery. From that moment on, Mrs. Weasley kept Harry, Ron, and Hermione so busy with preparations for the wedding that they hardly had any time to think. The kindest explanation of this behavior would have been that Mrs. Weasley wanted to distract them all from thoughts of Mad-Eye and the terrors of their recent journey. After two days of nonstop cutlery cleaning, of color-matching favors, ribbons, and flowers, of de-gnoming the garden and helping Mrs. Weasley cook vast batches of canapés, however, Harry started to suspect her of a different motive. All the jobs she handed out seemed to keep him, Ron, and Hermione away from one another; he had not had a chance to speak to the two of them alone since the first night, when he had told them about Voldemort torturing Ollivander. “I think Mum thinks that if she can stop the three of you getting together and planning, she’ll be able to delay you leaving,” Ginny told Harry in an undertone, as they laid the table for dinner on the third night of his stay. “And then what does she think’s going to happen?” Harry muttered. “Someone else might kill off Voldemort while she’s holding us here making vol-au-vents?
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter, #7))
I vented openly about how I couldn't believe that parents had abandoned these poor kids and how one of them had even smiled at me. The professor was a mentor, someone who thought deeply about how science and mortality intersected. I expected him to agree with me. "Yeah," he said. "Good. Good for you. But sometimes, you know, I think it's better if they die." Only later would I realize that our trip had added a new dimension to my understanding of the fact that brains give rise to our ability to form relationships and make life meaningful. Sometimes, they break.
Paul Kalanithi (When Breath Becomes Air)
He reached over and pulled her to him, and she didn't stiffen but relaxed in the hug as his arms encircled her small waist. The hug lingered, without either of them speaking. Maggie felt emotions she wasn't used to feeling, and they were so overwhelming. Her senses clamored and, as she struggled to make sense of her emotions, the breaking of dawn could not have been more obvious for Maggie. She realized with such certainty, that she felt safe. Without stopping herself, she laid her head where it met his chest, right next to his heart, her whole being venting, and so they stood frozen in time like a statue, till the moment was broken by someone clearing their throat.
Sonia Valencia Singh (The Mark of a Man)
Third, ask for a temporary agreement to engage in truthseeking. If someone is off-loading emotion to us, we can ask them if they are just looking to vent or if they are looking for advice. If they aren’t looking for advice, that’s fine. The rules of engagement have been made clear. Sometimes, people just want to vent. I certainly do. It’s in our nature. We want to be supportive of the people around us, and that includes comforting them when they just need some understanding and sympathy. But sometimes they’ll say they are looking for advice, and that is potentially an agreement to opt in to some truthseeking. (Even then, tread lightly because people may say they want advice when what they really want is to be affirmed.)
Annie Duke (Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts)
Three kids against five robotic school helpers. Well, four kids. Beck was still in the air vent under locker G42. His Tenderfoot Shell waited patiently, standing in place at the middle of the dead-end corridor in the girls’ locker room. One of the five SPUDs that had us cornered leapt through the air at Bloom. The world around me came to a standstill, like someone had paused a game. I saw Bloom. I saw the SPUD jumping toward her. I saw Lexi, huddled up and afraid. I don’t know what happened to me in that split-second, but I reacted before I even had time to think about it. Balling a tight fist, I threw my hand into the air in front of the SPUD that was going for Bloom. My right forearm scraped against the small robot’s face, and then my elbow shot forward, landing a blow right on the SPUD’s body, sending his arms and legs flying in all directions.
Marcus Emerson (Legacy (Middle School Ninja, #1))
What happens when a child reared in love, protection, and honesty is suddenly beaten by someone? The child will scream, give vent to his anger, then burst into tears, reveal his pain, and probably ask: Why are you doing this to me? None of this is possible when a child trained from the very outset to be obedient is beaten by his own parents, whom he loves. The child must stifle his pain and anger and repress the whole situation to survive. For to be able to show anger the child needs the confidence based on experience that he will not be killed as a result. A battered child cannot build up this confidence; children are indeed sometimes killed when they dare to rebel against injustice. Hence the child must suppress his rage to survive in a hostile environment, must even stifle his massive, overwhelming pain in order not to die of it. So now the silence of forgetting descends over everything, and the parents are idealized—they have never done any wrong. “And if they did beat me, I deserved it.” This is the familiar version of the torture that has been endured.
Alice Miller (Banished Knowledge: Facing Childhood Injuries)
In 1970, psychologists Bibb Latane and John Darley created an experiment in which they would drop pencils or coins. Sometimes they would be in a group, sometimes with one other person. They did this six thousand times. The results? They got help 20 percent of the time in a group, 40 percent of the time with one other person. They decided to up the stakes, and in their next experiment they had someone fill out a questionnaire. After a few minutes, smoke would start to fill the room, billowing in from a wall vent. They ran two versions of the experiment. In one, the person was alone; in the other, two other people were also filling out the questionnaire. When alone, people took about five seconds to get up and freak out. Within groups people took an average of 20 seconds to notice. When alone, the subject would go inspect the smoke and then leave the room to tell the experimenter he or she thought something was wrong. When in a group, people just sat there looking at one another until the smoke was so thick they couldn’t see the questionnaire. Only three people in eight runs of the group experiment left the room, and they took an average of six minutes to get up. The findings suggest the fear of embarrassment plays into group dynamics. You see the smoke, but you don’t want to look like a fool, so you glance over at the other person to see what they are doing. The other person is thinking the same thing. Neither of you react, so neither of you becomes alarmed. The third person sees two people acting like everything is OK, so that third person is even less likely to freak out. Everyone is influencing every other person’s perception of reality thanks to another behavior called the illusion of transparency. You tend to think other people can tell what you are thinking and feeling just by looking at you. You think the other people can tell you are really worried about the smoke, but they can’t. They think the same thing. No one freaks out. This leads to pluralistic ignorance—a situation where everyone is thinking the same thing but believes he or she is the only person who thinks it. After the smoke-filled room experiment, all the participants reported they were freaking out on the inside, but since no one else seemed alarmed, they assumed it must just be their own anxiety.
David McRaney (You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself)
for it was a hard thing to give satisfaction both to soldiers and people because the people loved peace, and for this reason they loved the unaspiring prince, while the soldiers loved the warlike prince who was bold, cruel, and rapacious, which qualities they were quite willing he should exercise upon the people so that they could get double pay and give vent to their own greed and cruelty. Hence it arose that those emperors were always overthrown who, either by birth or training, had no great authority, and most of them, especially those who came new to the principality, recognizing the difficulty of these two opposing humours, were inclined to give satisfaction to the soldiers, caring little about injuring the people. Which course was necessary because, as princes cannot help being hated by someone, they ought, in the first place, to avoid being hated by everyone, and when they cannot compass this, they ought to endeavour with the utmost diligence to avoid the hatred of the most powerful. Therefore, those emperors who through inexperience had need of special favour adhered more readily to the soldiers than to the people, a course which turned out advantageous to them or not, accordingly as the prince knew how to maintain authority over them.
Niccolò Machiavelli (The Prince)
Ocean Acidification is sometimes referred to as Global Warming's Equally Evil Twin. The irony is intentional and fair enough as far as it goes... No single mechanism explains all the mass extinctions in the record and yet changes in ocean chemistry seem to be a pretty good predictor. Ocean Acidification played a role in at least 2 of the Big Five Extinctions: the End-Permian and the End-Triassic. And quite possibly it was a major factor in a third, the End-Cretaceous. ...Why is ocean acidification so dangerous? The question is tough to answer only because the list of reasons is so long. Depending on how tightly organisms are able to regulate their internal chemistry, acidification may affect such basic processes as metabolism, enzyme activity, and protein function. Because it will change the makeup of microbial communities, it will alter the availability of key nutrients, like iron and nitrogen. For similar reasons, it will change the amount of light that passes through the water, and for somewhat different reasons, it will alter the way sound propagates. (In general, acidification is expected to make the seas noisier.) It seems likely to promote the growth of toxic algae. It will impact photosynthesis—many plant species are apt to benefit from elevated CO2 levels—and it will alter the compounds formed by dissolved metals, in some cases in ways that could be poisonous. Of the myriad possible impacts, probably the most significant involves the group of creatures known as calcifiers. (The term calcifier applies to any organism that builds a shell or external skeleton or, in the case of plants, a kind of internal scaffolding out of the mineral calcium carbonate.)... Ocean acidification increases the cost of calcification by reducing the number of carbonate ions available to organisms that build shells or exoskeletons. Imagine trying to build a house while someone keeps stealing your bricks. The more acidified the water, the greater the energy that’s required to complete the necessary steps. At a certain point, the water becomes positively corrosive, and solid calcium carbonate begins to dissolve. This is why the limpets that wander too close to the vents at Castello Aragonese end up with holes in their shells. According to geologists who work in the area, the vents have been spewing carbon dioxide for at least several hundred years, maybe longer. Any mussel or barnacle or keel worm that can adapt to lower pH in a time frame of centuries presumably already would have done so. “You give them generations on generations to survive in these conditions, and yet they’re not there,” Hall-Spencer observed.
Elizabeth Kolbert (The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History)
What are you doing abovedecks, anyhow?” “The cry went up for all hands.” “You’re not a hand. You’re a passenger.” “I may not be a hand, but I’ve got two perfectly good hands, and if I sit on them a second longer, I’ll go mad.” Joss stared at Gray’s open collar, where his cravat should have been knotted. “She’s really getting to you, isn’t she?” “You have no idea,” Gray muttered. “Oh, I think I do.” Gray ignored his brother’s smug tone. “Damn it, Joss, just put me to work. Send me up to furl a sail, put me down in the hold to pump the bilge…I don’t care, just give me something to do.” Joss raised his eyebrows. “If you insist.” He lifted the spyglass to his eye and began scanning the horizon again. “Batten the hatches, then.” Gray tossed a word of thanks over his shoulder as he descended to the quarterdeck and went to work, dragging the tarpaulins over the skylights and securing them with battens. As he labored, the ship’s motions grew more violent, hampering his efforts. He saved the vent above the ladies’ cabin for last, resisting the urge to peer down through the grate. Instead, he first secured one end, then blanketed the entire skylight with one strong snap on the canvas. “Ahoy! Ahoy!” Wiggins leaned forward over the prow, hailing the approaching ship, its puffed scudding sails a stark contrast against the darkening sky. Gray moved to cover the companion stairs, reaching inside the gaping black hole and groping for the handle to draw the hatch closed. Something-or someone-groped him back.
Tessa Dare (Surrender of a Siren (The Wanton Dairymaid Trilogy, #2))
Twas the night before Christmas and in SICU All the patients were stirring, the nurses were, too. Some Levophed hung from an IMED with care In hopes that a blood pressure soon would be there. One patient was resting all snug in his bed While visions—from Versed—danced in his head. I, in my scrubs, with flowsheet in hand, Had just settled down to chart the care plan. Then from room 17 there arose such a clatter We sprang from the station to see what was the matter. Away to the bedside we flew like a flash, Saved the man from falling, with restraints from the stash. “Do you know where you are?” one nurse asked while tying; “Of course! I’m in France in a jail, and I’m dying!” Then what to my wondering eyes should appear? But a heart rate of 50, the alarm in my ear. The patient’s face paled, his skin became slick And he said in a moment, “I’m going to be sick!” Someone found the Inapsine and injected a port, Then ran for a basin, as if it were sport. His heart rhythm quieted back to a sinus, We soothed him and calmed him with old-fashioned kindness. And then in a twinkling we hear from room 11 First a plea for assistance, then a swearing to heaven. As I drew in my breath and was turning around, Through the unit I hurried to respond to the sound. “This one’s having chest pain,” the nurse said and then She gave her some nitro, then morphine and when She showed not relief from IV analgesia Her breathing was failing: time to call anesthesia. “Page Dr. Wilson, or May, or Banoub! Get Dr. Epperson! She ought to be tubed!” While the unit clerk paged them, the monitor showed V-tach and low pressure with no pulse: “Call a code!” More rapid than eagles, the code team they came. The leader took charge and he called drugs by name: “Now epi! Now lido! Some bicarb and mag! You shock and you chart it! You push med! You bag!” And so to the crash cart, the nurses we flew With a handful of meds, and some dopamine, too! From the head of the bed, the doc gave his call: “Resume CPR!” So we worked one and all. Then Doc said no more, but went straight to his work, Intubated the patient, then turned with a jerk. While placing his fingers aside of her nose, And giving a nod, hooked the vent to the hose. The team placed an art-line and a right triple-lumen. And when they were through, she scarcely looked human: When the patient was stable, the doc gave a whistle. A progress note added as he wrote his epistle. But I heard him exclaim ere he strode out of sight, “Merry Christmas to all! But no more codes for tonight!” Jamie L. Beeley Submitted by Nell Britton
Jack Canfield (Chicken Soup for the Nurse's Soul: Stories to Celebrate, Honor and Inspire the Nursing Profession (Chicken Soup for the Soul))
Bannon thrived on the chaos he created and did everything he could to make it spread. When he finally made his way through the crowd to the back of the town house, he put on a headset to join the broadcast of the Breitbart radio show already in progress. It was his way of bringing tens of thousands of listeners into the inner sanctum of the “Breitbart Embassy,” as the town house was ironically known, and thereby conscripting them into a larger project. Bannon was inordinately proud of the movement he saw growing around him, boasting constantly of its egalitarian nature. What to an outsider could look like a cast of extras from the Island of Misfit Toys was, in Bannon’s eyes, a proudly populist and “unclubbable” plebiscite rising up in defiant protest against the “globalists” and “gatekeepers” who had taken control of both parties. Just how Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty figured into a plan to overthrow the global power structure wasn’t clear, even to many of Bannon’s friends. But, then, Bannon derived a visceral thrill anytime he could deliver a fuck-you to the establishment. The thousands of frustrated listeners calling in to his radio show, and the millions more who flocked to Breitbart News, had left him no doubt that an army of the angry and dispossessed was eager to join him in lobbing a bomb at the country’s leaders. As guests left the party, a doorman handed out a gift that Bannon had chosen for the occasion: a silver hip flask with “Breitbart” imprinted above an image of a honey badger, the Breitbart mascot. — Bannon’s cult-leader magnetism was a powerful draw for oddballs and freaks, and the attraction ran both ways. As he moved further from the cosmopolitan orbits of Goldman Sachs and Hollywood, there was no longer any need for him to suppress his right-wing impulses. Giving full vent to his views on subjects like immigration and Islam isolated him among a radical fringe that most of political Washington regarded as teeming with racist conspiracy theorists. But far from being bothered, Bannon welcomed their disdain, taking it as proof of his authentic conviction. It fed his grandiose sense of purpose to imagine that he was amassing an army of ragged, pitchfork-wielding outsiders to storm the barricades and, in Andrew Breitbart’s favorite formulation, “take back the country.” If Bannon was bothered by the incendiary views held by some of those lining up with him, he didn’t show it. His habit always was to welcome all comers. To all outward appearances, Bannon, wild-eyed and scruffy, a Falstaff in flip-flops, was someone whom the political world could safely ignore. But his appearance, and the company he kept, masked an analytic capability that was undiminished and as applicable to politics as it had been to the finances of corrupt Hollywood movie studios. Somehow, Bannon, who would happily fall into league with the most agitated conservative zealot, was able to see clearly that conservatives had failed to stop Bill Clinton in the 1990s because they had indulged this very zealotry to a point where their credibility with the media and mainstream voters was shot. Trapped in their own bubble, speaking only to one another, they had believed that they were winning, when in reality they had already lost.
Joshua Green (Devil's Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Nationalist Uprising)
THE INSTRUCTION OF PTAHHOTEP Instruction of the Mayor of the city, the Vizier Ptahhotep, under the Majesty of King Isesi, who lives for all eternity. The mayor of the city, the vizier Ptahhotep, said: O king, my lord! Age is here, old age arrived. Feebleness came, weakness grows, Childtike one sleeps all day. Eyes are dim, ears deaf. Strength is waning through weariness, The mouth, silenced, speaks not, The heart, void, recalls not the past, The bones ache throughout. Good has become evil, all taste is gone, What age does to people is evil in everything. The nose, clogged, breathes not, Painful are standing and sitting. May this servant be ordered to make a staff of old age, So as to teil him the words of those who heard, The ways of the ancestors, Who have listened to the gods. May such be done for you. So that strife may be banned from the people, And the Two Shores may serve you! Said the majesty of this god: Instruct him then in the sayings of the past, May he become a model for the children of the great, May obedience enter him, And the devotion of him who speaks to him, No one is born wise. Beginning of the formulations of excellent discourse spoken by the Prince, Count, God's Father, God's beloved, Eldest Son of the King, of his body, Mayor of the city and Vizier, Ptahhotep, in instructing the ignorant in knowledge and in the standard of excellent discourse, as profit for him who will hear, as woe to him who would neglect them. He spoke to his son: Don’t be proud of your knowledge. Consult the ignorant and the wise; The limits of art are not reached, No artist’s skills are perfect; Good speech is more hidden than greenstone, Yet may be found among maids at the grindstones. If you meet a disputant in action, A powerful man, superior to you. Fold your arms, bend your back, To flout him will not make him agree with you. Make little of the evil speech By not opposing him while he's in action; He will be called an ignoramus, Your self-control will match his pile (of words). If you meet a disputant in action Who is your equal, on your level, You will make your worth exceed his by silence, While he is speaking evilly, There will be much talk by the hearers. Your name will be good in the mind of the magistrates. If you meet a disputant in action, A poor man, not your equal. Do not attack him because he is weak, Let him alone, he will confute himself. Do not answer him to relieve your heart, Do not vent yourself against your opponent, Wretched is he who injures a poor man, One will wish to do what you desire. You will beat him through the magistrates’ reproof. If you are a man who leads, Who controls the affairs of the many, Seek out every beneficent deed, That your conduct may be blameless. Great is justice, lasting in effect, Unchallenged since the time of Osiris. One punishes the transgressor of laws, Though the greedy overlooks this; Baseness may seize riches, Yet crime never lands its wares; In the end it is justice that lasts, Man says: “It is my father's ground.” Do not scheme against people, God punishes accordingly: If a man says: “I shall live by it,” He will lack bread for his mouth. If a man says: “I shall be rich' He will have to say: “My cleverness has snared me.” If he says: “I will snare for myself,” He will be unable to say: “I snared for my profit.” If a man says: "I will rob someone,” He will end being given to a stranger. People’s schemes do not prevail, God’s command is what prevails; Live then in the midst of peace, What they give comes by itself.
Miriam Lichtheim (Ancient Egyptian Literature, Volume I: The Old and Middle Kingdoms)
Centre on deck three was just a large metal box; far less impressive than its name suggested. Lots of pipes, lots of exposed metal. Compared to the rest of the expensively-appointed ship, the control centre looked like a wound; like someone had peeled back the Oceanus’ perfect skin to reveal the steel skeleton underneath. All around the main room, metal veins snaked away, large and small. Vents that disappeared into the walls, delivering the purified, warm air to other parts of the ship.
K.R. Griffiths (Adrift (Adrift, #1))
When you need validation, ask for it specifically. It’s obviously best to talk with someone who already knows how to validate, but if the person you talk to doesn’t, you can still point them in the right direction. For example, you might say: “Hey I’m feeling stressed right now and need some validation. Can I vent for a minute? I don’t want feedback or any suggestions for fixing it. I’d just like you to hear me out and help me not feel crazy.” I
Michael S. Sorensen (I Hear You: The Surprisingly Simple Skill Behind Extraordinary Relationships)
I know I act like I don't have a care in the world… but, Jonah, I've prowled the dirtiest back alleys of sadness, okay? And I know what it's like to fight for your life on those mean streets. So if you need someone to vent to or someone to be quiet with or someone to talk your ear off, I can be that person. I'm not scared of the dark places.
Emery Lord (When We Collided)
You needed someone to vent to, and I had enough distance from it that it didn’t weigh me down. I could commiserate and walk away.
Greg Egan (Instantiation)
More often than not, people who vent or complain already know how to handle their current situation—they’re just looking for someone to see and appreciate their struggle. While it seems almost counterintuitive, validation is often the quickest and easiest way to help people work through their concerns and get back on track.
Michael S. Sorensen (I Hear You: The Surprisingly Simple Skill Behind Extraordinary Relationships)
It's okay to vent sometimes, just make sure you're venting someone that actually wants to hear it.
KD Jac
In prayer, we bring to Jesus those anxieties and insecurities that would otherwise fuel our outrage. The discipline of prayer prevents us from venting, flaming, or savaging others, either in person or online. I’ve never seen people go after someone they’re praying for.
Ed Stetzer (Christians in the Age of Outrage: How to Bring Our Best When the World Is at Its Worst)
Do you want advice, or do you want to vent?” “Would it help to talk more about what happened?” “What do you plan to do next?” “Do you need someone to go with you?
Jaya Saxena (Basic Witches: How to Summon Success, Banish Drama, and Raise Hell with Your Coven)
All of us experienced similar difficult moments when we were young. So what is different now? It is the absence of parents, who have nothing left to give. Some of us as kids came home to intact and caring families that were able to “talk us down” from the precipice, to assure us of their love, and to help put things in perspective. Someone was there who clearly cared and who told us that the harsh judgment of our peers was not the end of the world. In the absence of that kind of wise counsel in times of crisis, such as my dad provided for me when I came home battered from school, today’s kids have nowhere to go with their rage. Some resort to drugs or alcohol, some withdraw into isolation, and some, sadly, vent their anger in murderous assault. If only Mom and Dad had been there when the passions peaked. So many of the difficulties that confront our kids come down to that single characteristic of today’s families: There is nobody home.
James C. Dobson (Bringing Up Boys)
Don’t counterattack. You may strike back at the person with BPD to try to win the argument or vent your feelings. But when you do this, you’ll fall into the projection and projective identification trap that the person with BPD has unconsciously set for you.
Paul T. Mason (Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care About Has Borderline Personality Disorder)
Venting how you feel may make you look like a fool. And you may get in a cycle of pushing your loved ones away from you. No one wants to be around someone who bursts out with anger. If you’re quick to vent, you miss important information that your emotions have for you. You steamroll right into another gear. Instead, what you need to do is downshift and listen for the real meaning underneath the anger. You may have never heard of emotions as giving you key information. But they’re there, trying to get your attention.
Brent A. Bradley (Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy For Dummies)
spend a lot of the time depressed. Always have, always will. Give me medicine, I get less upset about being depressed, but the fact of it never leaves. Sometimes I am clinically, trouble-getting-out-of-bed depressed. Other times, I am just low-level, drag-myself-through-my-day depressed. Some people might call me pessimistic because I always expect disaster to occur. But looking at my life, I think that’s bull. When I expect doom? That’s what I call reality. Mostly, I ignore the depression. I developed a caustic sense of humor. I discovered mosh pits to vent. I listen to seriously angry music. When that doesn’t work, I soothe the emptiness with terrible food and old jazz. If that doesn’t work and I can afford it, I go in and see someone about getting some medicine for a few weeks. That means making appointments any place I think I might be able to get in, assuming that I’ll be turned down for service, and showing up to them all until I find someone who’s willing to do me a solid and give me a week or two of anti-anxiety medicine. If I can’t find anyone to do that, I just sort of check out for a while. Those
Linda Tirado (Hand to Mouth: Living in Bootstrap America)
It felt so good to have someone to vent to, and then I messed it up by letting my dick do the thinking.
Dani Wyatt (Hot for Teacher Anthology: 19 Stories Filled with Lust and Love)
When a person believes one thing but chooses or is forced to advocate its opposite, the result is cognitive dissonance. Eventually, in order to endure the internal conflict, one is forced, like Orwell’s Winston Smith, to change one’s mind. But the emotional fallout from such stress must somehow be vented; someone else must take the blame. Since I had been chosen to perform the role of scapegoat by the victorious trinka, I was the obvious choice for my defeated comrades too.
Yanis Varoufakis (Adults in the Room: My Battle with Europe's Deep Establishment)
In conclusion, the death of Christ was not about God the Father needing to vent His rage and fury upon a sacrificial victim in order to appease Himself. It was not about the Father needing to crush someone in the place of humanity so that, on the other side of the crushing He could be pleased with, and relational towards us. It was not about a sacrificial system which God originally instituted, but later decided was incapable of satisfying His needs. It was about the entire Trinity destroying and putting to death the alien entity of sin, the “devil’s work”(1 John 3: 18), in order to save us from its corrupting influence. It was done so that on the other side of the Cross, we would see and understand what man had lost sight of after partaking of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. It was to reveal to us that our God is not a cosmic Santa Claus who is making a list, checking it twice, and who will ultimately repay both the naughty and the nice. Our God is Love, and has only ever been seeking to reveal that love to us. He was never out to “get us”, but to rescue us from the consequences of our own decisions. Sin did not change God, and the Cross was not the means by which He reset Himself back to His factory settings. Sin changed us, and it therefore needed to be destroyed so that we could behold the unchangeable nature of our God of love. The Cross was the ultimate, climactic demonstration of the Godhead’s love for the human race, not the crude display of a deified version of human justice. It was Eternal Love Himself, stepping into our problem, absorbing it into Himself and dying in order to put it to death. It was heroic, self-giving, sacrificial justice.
Jeff Turner (Saints in the Arms of a Happy God)
As 1:00 a.m. approached, Second Officer Lightoller was feeling frustrated. None of the lifeboats on the port side had yet been launched, despite his best efforts. He had managed to get Lifeboat 4 swung out and lowered half an hour ago, even though Chief Officer Wilde had twice told him to wait. Both times Lightoller had jumped rank and gone directly to Captain Smith to get the go-ahead to proceed. The captain had also suggested that Lifeboat 4 be lowered to A deck since he thought it would be easier for the passengers to board from there. But a crewman had just shouted up that the A-deck windows were locked. (Smith may have forgotten that, unlike the Olympic, the Titanic had a glassed-in forward promenade.) Lightoller sent someone to unlock the windows and to recall the passengers who had been sent down there. Meanwhile, he moved aft to prepare Lifeboats 6 and 8, ordering that the masts and sails be lifted out of them. Just then the roaring steam was silenced and Lightoller was slightly startled by the sound of his own voice. Arthur Peuchen overheard the order and, ever handy around boats, jumped in to help cut the lashings and lift the masts out onto the deck. After that the call went out for women and children to come forward. The “women and children only” order would be more strictly enforced here than on the starboard side where men were being allowed into boats. When a crowd of grimy stokers and firemen suddenly appeared carrying their dunnage bags, Chief Officer Wilde was spurred into action. “Down below, you men! Every one of you, down below!” he bellowed in a stern, Liverpool-accented voice. Major Peuchen was very impressed with Wilde’s commanding manner as he drove the men right off the deck, and thought it “a splendid act.” Helen Candee, however, felt sympathy for the stokers whom she later described as a band of unknown heroes who had accepted their fate without protest. She was waiting by Lifeboat 6 with Hugh Woolner, who had been by her side ever since he had gone down to her cabin from the smoking room after the collision. “The Two” had then walked together on the boat deck, amid the roar of venting steam, and had noticed that the ship was listing to starboard. They went into the lounge to escape the cold and the noise, and there a young man came over to them with something in his hand. “Have some iceberg!” he said with a smile as he dropped a piece of ice into Helen’s palm. The ice soon chilled Helen’s fingers, so Woolner dashed it from her and rubbed her hand and then kept it clasped in his.
Hugh Brewster (Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The Titanic's First-Class Passengers and Their World)
She had been prepared for our anger, thought that we should begin to scold and reprove her, and perhaps she was unconsciously longing at that moment for some excuse to cry, to sob hysterically, to upset some more powders as she had just now and even to break something in her vexation, and with all this to relieve her capricious and aching little heart. Such capricious humours are to be found not only in the sick and not only in Nellie. How often I have walked up and down the room with the unconscious desire for someone to insult me or to utter some word that I could interpret as an insult in order to vent my anger upon someone. Women, venting their anger in that way, begin to cry, shedding the most genuine tears, and the more emotional of them even go into hysterics. It's a very simple and everyday experience, and happens most often when there is some other, often a secret, grief in the heart, to which one longs to give utterance but cannot.
Fyodor Dostoevsky (The Insulted and Humiliated)
If a player needs someone to whom he can vent his doubts, complaints, and fears, that’s what sports psychologists are for.
Bob Rotella (How Champions Think: In Sports and in Life)
Another way to tell if someone has used a vent is to look at the admin chart.
Bob Stevens (Among Us Strategies: The Pro’s Among Us Game Guide Book (Unofficial Among Us Novel Book))
In any chain of command, the leadership must always present a united front to the troops. A public display of discontent or disagreement with the chain of command undermines the authority of leaders at all levels. This is catastrophic to the performance of any organization. As a leader, if you don’t understand why decisions are being made, requests denied, or support allocated elsewhere, you must ask those questions up the chain. Then, once understood, you can pass that understanding down to your team. Leaders in any chain of command will not always agree. But at the end of the day, once the debate on a particular course of action is over and the boss has made a decision—even if that decision is one you argued against—you must execute the plan as if it were your own. When leading up the chain of command, use caution and respect. But remember, if your leader is not giving the support you need, don’t blame him or her. Instead, reexamine what you can do to better clarify, educate, influence, or convince that person to give you what you need in order to win. The major factors to be aware of when leading up and down the chain of command are these: • Take responsibility for leading everyone in your world, subordinates and superiors alike. • If someone isn’t doing what you want or need them to do, look in the mirror first and determine what you can do to better enable this. • Don’t ask your leader what you should do, tell them what you are going to do. APPLICATION TO BUSINESS “Corporate doesn’t understand what’s going on out here,” said the field manager. “Whatever experience those guys had in the field from years ago, they have long forgotten. They just don’t get what we are dealing with, and their questions and second-guessing prevents me and my team from getting the job done.” The infamous they. I was on a visit to a client company’s field leadership team, the frontline troops that executed the company’s mission. This was where the rubber met the road: all the corporate capital initiatives, strategic planning sessions, and allocated resources were geared to support this team here on the ground. How the frontline troops executed the mission would ultimately mean success or failure for the entire company. The field manager’s team was geographically separated from their corporate headquarters located hundreds of miles away. He was clearly frustrated. The field manager had a job to do, and he was angry at the questions and scrutiny from afar. For every task his team undertook he was required to submit substantial paperwork. In his mind, it made for a lot more work than necessary and detracted from his team’s focus and ability to execute. I listened and allowed him to vent for several minutes. “I’ve been in your shoes,” I said. “I used to get frustrated as hell at my chain of command when we were in Iraq. They
Jocko Willink (Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win)
When we are projecting it doesn’t FEEL as if we are doing anything complicated or special. On the contrary it feels just as if we are seeing things as they are. So, typically we dislike the suggestion that we are ‘projecting’. It feels as if it is an insult to our ability to perceive how things really are. Admitting the possibility that one might be projecting is humbling. But it could be worth it because projection brings a lot of trouble into our lives. We’re venting our anger on the wrong individual. And maybe in the process hurting someone very unfairly. We are afraid of the wrong person. Our fear of someone in the past gets in the way of making a friend or ally of someone today.
The School of Life
Stage 2 At this point, you’re dealing with someone who’s no longer striking out wildly but is still venting—better, but still a problem. So your next goal is to move the person from the emotional middle (mammal) brain up into the rational upper (human) brain.
Mark Goulston (Just Listen: Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone)
Often, when a person is ill-treated or relegated to a demeaning position in society, they will respond by venting their frustrations at someone whose societal position is even lower than their own. It is not rational; their violent action in no way serves as a retaliation towards their own oppressors. Taking this concept one step further, we can see that by a torturing or dominating a powerful animal, such as a bull, or a tiger in a big-game hunt, the oppressors feel, unconsciously, that they have destroyed those who held power over them. By destroying or tormenting the weak, such as a rabbit or child, the oppressors become the master who has in turn tortured them, their own victims’ helpless writings echoing what they have so often felt. Temporarily replaced in the role of victim, these new reactive torturers ascend, momentarily in their own minds, to the social- or physical-power position of their own masters.
Marjorie Spiegel (The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery: Revised and Expanded Edition)
If someone is venting or sharing a negative experience, do not jump in with advice unless they ask for it.
Michael S. Sorensen (I Hear You: The Surprisingly Simple Skill Behind Extraordinary Relationships)
The new research shows that dwelling on anger has the potential to enhance the anger, not diffuse it. I used to think that venting anger was like blowing the foam off a glass of beer; a few puffs and you're done with it. Instead, it's like blowing on a fire; the more you blow, the hotter the flame. On a physiological level, expressing anger on a regular basis enlarges the part of the brain devoted to negative emotions. What you do is what you get. With so much cerebral real estate devoted to anger, an angry response can become a conditioned response. Another fact about the brain is that the unconscious brain experiences all anger as dangerous to the self. It cannot determine whether the anger is directed at itself, or at someone else.
Harville Hendrix
And it was at this very moment that some obscure enemy crouching inside me—since when?—chose to twist around and shake my nerves, to force me to vent anger that I didn’t feel, that I didn’t want to feel, to make me yell and dance and then convulse like the two Agitated in the brown brick building! I had been completely honest, sincere and frank—and now it was no longer true! I hated Bid’homme and Roffieux! I wanted to bleed them, to do them in—and I shouted this out as clear as day! And I didn’t want to hate them and I didn’t want to shout out—and I clamored more loudly than ever!... I was sure that a terribly hostile being haunted me, a cruel being that had settled in me, a dreadful being that tortured me to force me to roar and writhe around like someone possessed… There was a moment of semi-calm and I begged (so absurd it was disturbing!): “Doctor! Doctor! Save me! I’m inhabited like a wormy fruit!
John-Antoine Nau (Enemy Force)
Not that he did not harbor some resentment. The constant testing of his patience, the frequent concessions to others, the many bitter pills swallowed in silence, had exasperated him so much that his health would surely have suffered had he not occasionally vented. But since in the end there were people in the world, close to him, that he knew could do him no harm, he could take out his long repressed annoyance on them, and indulge in the pleasure of losing his temper and unleashing some misdirected shouts. He was a harsh critic of men who did not behave like him, but only when he could voice his criticism without even the most remote danger. The defeated man had at the very least been imprudent. The murdered man had always been a troublemaker. And if a man’s head had been split open after standing up for himself against someone stronger, Don Abbondio could still find some fault in him. Which was easy enough, since right and wrong are never so neatly divided that each side is either one or the other. He was especially critical of his fellow priests who, at their own risk, took the side of a weak victim against a powerful bully.
Alessandro Manzoni (The Betrothed: A Novel)
Venting is empowered problem-solving. Complaining is asking someone to affirm our victimhood.
Jonathon Aslay (What The Heck Is Self-Love Anyway?)
The lack of answers, of any semblance of closure, is infuriating. The more questions I don’t get answers to, the more questions I have. The more questions I have, the more questions I don’t get answers to, and I’m driving myself crazy in the process of trying to find them. I need someone I can vent to, a sounding board, a voice of reason.
Jennette McCurdy (I'm Glad My Mom Died)
Ryuuji and Aisaka probably looked despicable right now, attacking the pole together. This was because Ryuuji had an enemy, and this enemy was like a rock getting in the way of his life, and Ryuuji could clearly feel the threat it emanated. Aisaka too had an enemy… sort of. The same enemy that stands between her and her life truly exists. When Aisaka liked someone, or wished to be with someone, this enemy would appear and reveal its weight. Perhaps this enemy can be called “low self-esteem”, or “fate”, or “genetics”, or “environment” or so on, it could even be called “self awareness during puberty” or “something one can’t do alone”. This enemy carries all sorts of names. No matter what, it was impossible to try and defeat this enemy, and they had no idea how many times they would have to do battle with this shapeless enemy in the future. If they did not savagely kick the electric pole now, they probably wouldn’t be able to vent their anger. They could have chosen to take it out on a wall or a bedsheet… but it seemed like this was the electric pole’s unlucky day. Ryuuji decided to help based on that reason alone. No matter how stupid they were, or how foolish they were, or how bored they were, they had now transformed into savage beasts attacking ferociously while howling away in the spring night.
Yuyuko Takemiya (Toradora! Manga, Vol. 1)
Dear Jon, A real Dear Jon let­ter, how per­fect is that?! Who knew you’d get dumped twice in the same amount of months. See, I’m one para­graph in and I’ve al­ready fucked this. I’m writ­ing this be­cause I can’t say any of this to you face-to-face. I’ve spent the last few months ques­tion­ing a lot of my friend­ships and won­der­ing what their pur­pose is, if not to work through big emo­tional things to­gether. But I now re­al­ize: I don’t want that. And I know you’ve all been there for me in other ways. Maybe not in the lit­eral sense, but I know you all would have done any­thing to fix me other than lis­ten­ing to me talk and al­low­ing me to be sad with­out so­lu­tions. And now I am writ­ing this let­ter rather than pick­ing up the phone and talk­ing to you be­cause, de­spite every thing I know, I just don’t want to, and I don’t think you want me to ei­ther. I lost my mind when Jen broke up with me. I’m pretty sure it’s been the sub­ject of a few of your What­sApp con­ver­sa­tions and more power to you, be­cause I would need to vent about me if I’d been friends with me for the last six months. I don’t want it to have been in vain, and I wanted to tell you what I’ve learnt. If you do a high-fat, high-pro­tein, low-carb diet and join a gym, it will be a good dis­trac­tion for a while and you will lose fat and gain mus­cle, but you will run out of steam and eat nor­mally again and put all the weight back on. So maybe don’t bother. Drunk­en­ness is an­other idea. I was in black­out for most of the first two months and I think that’s fine, it got me through the evenings (and the oc­ca­sional af­ter­noon). You’ll have to do a lot of it on your own, though, be­cause no one is free to meet up any more. I think that’s fine for a bit. It was for me un­til some­one walked past me drink­ing from a whisky minia­ture while I waited for a night bus, put five quid in my hand and told me to keep warm. You’re the only per­son I’ve ever told this story. None of your mates will be ex­cited that you’re sin­gle again. I’m prob­a­bly your only sin­gle mate and even I’m not that ex­cited. Gen­er­ally the ex­pe­ri­ence of be­ing sin­gle at thirty-five will feel dif­fer­ent to any other time you’ve been sin­gle and that’s no bad thing. When your ex moves on, you might be­come ob­sessed with the bloke in a way that is al­most sex­ual. Don’t worry, you don’t want to fuck him, even though it will feel a bit like you do some­times. If you open up to me or one of the other boys, it will feel good in the mo­ment and then you’ll get an emo­tional hang­over the next day. You’ll wish you could take it all back. You may even feel like we’ve en­joyed see­ing you so low. Or that we feel smug be­cause we’re win­ning at some­thing and you’re los­ing. Re­member that none of us feel that. You may be­come ob­sessed with work­ing out why ex­actly she broke up with you and you are likely to go fully, fully nuts in your bid to find a sat­is­fy­ing an­swer. I can save you a lot of time by let­ting you know that you may well never work it out. And even if you did work it out, what’s the pur­pose of it? Soon enough, some girl is go­ing to be crazy about you for some un­de­fin­able rea­son and you’re not go­ing to be in­ter­ested in her for some un­de­fin­able rea­son. It’s all so ran­dom and un­fair – the peo­ple we want to be with don’t want to be with us and the peo­ple who want to be with us are not the peo­ple we want to be with. Re­ally, the thing that’s go­ing to hurt a lot is the fact that some­one doesn’t want to be with you any more. Feel­ing the ab­sence of some­one’s com­pany and the ab­sence of their love are two dif­fer­ent things. I wish I’d known that ear­lier. I wish I’d known that it isn’t any­body’s job to stay in a re­la­tion­ship they don’t want to be in just so some­one else doesn’t feel bad about them­selves. Any­way. That’s all. You’re go­ing to be okay, mate. Andy
Dolly Alderton (Good Material)
It happened because angry, frustrated people were willing to vent their anger and frustration on innocent victims as soon as someone encouraged them to do so.
Harold S. Kushner (When Bad Things Happen to Good People)
A best friend is the person who can call you at any hour and say, ‘I have all this bullshit happening in my life and I need you to listen to me vent about it.’ And the other person is supposed to unconditionally respond, ‘That is bullshit and you’re right’ and then offer to fight someone.
Kate Goldbeck (You, Again)
When everything else in the world is an inexplicable disaster, someone behaving normally becomes suspect.
Thomm Quackenbush (The Road to Vent Haven)
A ventriloquist wants to be someone else. Ventriloquists wish to speak but want to blame someone else for the consequences of their words.
Thomm Quackenbush (The Road to Vent Haven)
When the Five Whys approach goes awry, I call it the Five Blames. Instead of asking why repeatedly in an attempt to understand what went wrong, frustrated teammates start pointing fingers at each other, trying to decide who is at fault. Instead of using the Five Whys to find and fix problems, managers and employees can fall into the trap of using the Five Blames as a means for venting their frustrations and calling out colleagues for systemic failures. Although it’s human nature to assume that when we see a mistake, it’s due to defects in someone else’s department, knowledge, or character, the goal of the Five Whys is to help us see the objective truth that chronic problems are caused by bad process, not bad people, and remedy them accordingly.
Eric Ries (The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses)
Reflect What You Heard Mirroring involves repeating the last few words of what someone said to show you’re listening and engaged. Particularly if someone is feeling emotional, it encourages them to keep talking and gives them the opportunity to vent. If someone says, “I’m so annoyed that our supplier is always a day or two late,” for example, one could respond, “They’re always a day or two late?
Jonah Berger (The Catalyst: How to Change Anyone's Mind)
Reflect What You Heard Mirroring involves repeating the last few words of what someone said to show you’re listening and engaged. Particularly if someone is feeling emotional, it encourages them to keep talking and gives them the opportunity to vent. If someone says, “I’m so annoyed that our supplier is always a day or two late,” for example, one could respond, “They’re always a day or two late?” Mirroring builds liking and affiliation while keeping the conversation flowing. Rather than repeating exactly what was said, paraphrasing involves restating someone’s meaning using your own words. This shows not only that you’re listening but that you truly understand what was being conveyed.
Jonah Berger (The Catalyst: How to Change Anyone's Mind)
British prime minister Winston Churchill said, “When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber.” Good leaders are like eagles: they soar; they inspire; they fly high. And they don’t talk just to hear themselves. They don’t vent about someone to others to make themselves feel better. If they have a problem with a person, they go to that individual and address the issue directly—never through a third party. They praise publicly and criticize privately. And they never say anything about others that they wouldn’t want them to hear—because they probably will.
John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
Do encourage movement: “Let’s swing our arms to the beat of this music. I always feel better when I stretch, don’t you?” Movement always improves sensory processing. Do encourage the child to try a new movement experience: “If you’re interested in that swing, I’ll help you get on.” Children with dyspraxia may enjoy new movement experiences but need help figuring out how to initiate them. Do offer your physical and emotional support: “I’m interested in that swing. Want to try it with me? You can sit on my lap, and we’ll swing together.” The child who is fearful of movement may agree to swing at the playground if he has the security of a loving lap. (Stop if he resists.) Do allow your child to experience unhappiness, frustration, or anger: “Wow, it really hurts when you don’t get picked for the team.” Acknowledging his feelings allows him to deal with them, whereas rushing in to make it better every time he’s hurt prevents him from learning to cope with negative emotions. Do provide appropriate outlets for negative emotions: Make it possible to vent pent-up feelings. Give her a ball or a bucketful of wet sponges to hurl against the fence. Designate a “screaming space” (her room, the basement, or garage) where she can go to pound her chest and shout. Do reinforce what is good about your child’s feelings and actions, even when something goes wrong: “You didn’t mean for the egg to miss the bowl. Cracking eggs takes practice. I’m glad you want to learn. Try again.” Help her assess her experience positively by talking over what she did right and what she may do better the next time. How wonderful to hear that an adult is sympathetic, rather than judgmental! Do praise: “I noticed that you fed and walked the dog. Thanks for being so responsible.” Reward the child for goodness, empathy, and being mindful of the needs of others. “You are a wonderful friend,” or “You make animals feel safe.” Do give the child a sense of control: “If you choose bed now, we’ll have time for a long story. If you choose to play longer, we won’t have time for a story. You decide.” Or, “I’m ready to go to the shoe store whenever you are. Tell me when you’re ready to leave.” Impress on the child that others don’t have to make every decision that affects him. Do set reasonable limits: To become civilized, every child needs limits. “It’s okay to be angry but not okay to hurt someone. We do not pinch.
Carol Stock Kranowitz (The Out-of-Sync Child: Recognizing and Coping with Sensory Processing Disorder)
She’s a gold digger. I know she is,” she says through sniffles. “Well . . .” I taper off. I don’t know what to say here. Is this even appropriate? My ex-boyfriend’s mother—an ex whom, until very (very) recently, I was pining over—is now venting to me about his new fiancée. Awkward is probably the most appropriate word to describe it. “You know she doesn’t love him. You saw her! Why would that pencil-thin witch be interested in my son? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I think Adam is handsome, of course. But not handsome enough for that slut-looking-supermodel. I pictured my Adam with someone more plain, you know? Like you.” She gestures over to me. Ouch. And here I was thinking my tailored, black shorts paired with a white button-down shirt, and the most amazing Kenneth Cole platform sandals, looked more than plain. Silly me.
Becky Monson (Speak Now: or Forever Hold Your Peace)
I couldn’t believe how physical and immediate my loneliness was. I needed help, some kind of comfort to get through until I could see him again, a place to vent. I needed someone warm who might not judge me.
Melissa Broder (The Pisces)
When I pulled my locker open, a small piece of paper fell to the ground. I bent down and picked it up, quickly realizing it was an envelope with a card inside. Someone must have slipped it through the vent in the door since I didn’t recognize it and my name was scrawled on the outside. Wary but curious, I opened it to find a plain, white note card. Inside was a gift card to my favorite coffee shop on Main Street, the one Grace and I liked to go to. I was excited for exactly half a second before I read the message written in serial killer print on the card. Bex, For the sake of Savage River’s overrun emergency room, use this to buy yourself something to eat. If you keep starving yourself, you’ll wind up with a cracked skull. I don’t know what you’ve heard, but scars aren’t a great look on girls. You know what is? A little meat on their bones. EAT! Asher
Julia Wolf (Through the Ashes (The Savage Crew, #2))
Thanks. You saved me down there…”, I said, venting. My voice came out shaky. I could hardly believe I was safe from those wizards. I kept shaking. “Shh… come here,” he said, wrapping me in a warm hug that strangely gave me some comfort. I sank into that warrior's body. I wasn't sure I could trust him but I didn't have the strength to fight anymore. “Dafne and Loran have special personalities. They hate sleves… seeing a human being admitted to the academy… goes against everything they stand for. ” "Wizards' sovereignty," I said, understanding. Harry nodded, lowering his head over mine. “There's only one way for someone without magic to get protection from wizards…”, he said. I remembered what I had heard. I widened my eyes, anticipating his words. I pulled back, looking at him indignantly, “Getting involved with one of them? You can believe I never… ” “Not with one of them… with me” I swallowed hard. “I come from good families, I have my place at the academy... Dafne and Loran respect me… it's your best chance” Why was Harry willing to help me? Risking his reputation. But then I saw excitement in his eyes. This was not a sacrifice for him… Harry spoke scornfully of the families of pure wizards… even though he was one of them. This was his chance to piss off his family. "Well, I think we can see each other again," I nodded.
M.P.