“
Only once in your life, I truly believe, you find someone who can completely turn your world around. You tell them things that you’ve never shared with another soul and they absorb everything you say and actually want to hear more. You share hopes for the future, dreams that will never come true, goals that were never achieved and the many disappointments life has thrown at you. When something wonderful happens, you can’t wait to tell them about it, knowing they will share in your excitement. They are not embarrassed to cry with you when you are hurting or laugh with you when you make a fool of yourself. Never do they hurt your feelings or make you feel like you are not good enough, but rather they build you up and show you the things about yourself that make you special and even beautiful. There is never any pressure, jealousy or competition but only a quiet calmness when they are around. You can be yourself and not worry about what they will think of you because they love you for who you are. The things that seem insignificant to most people such as a note, song or walk become invaluable treasures kept safe in your heart to cherish forever. Memories of your childhood come back and are so clear and vivid it’s like being young again. Colours seem brighter and more brilliant. Laughter seems part of daily life where before it was infrequent or didn’t exist at all. A phone call or two during the day helps to get you through a long day’s work and always brings a smile to your face. In their presence, there’s no need for continuous conversation, but you find you’re quite content in just having them nearby. Things that never interested you before become fascinating because you know they are important to this person who is so special to you. You think of this person on every occasion and in everything you do. Simple things bring them to mind like a pale blue sky, gentle wind or even a storm cloud on the horizon. You open your heart knowing that there’s a chance it may be broken one day and in opening your heart, you experience a love and joy that you never dreamed possible. You find that being vulnerable is the only way to allow your heart to feel true pleasure that’s so real it scares you. You find strength in knowing you have a true friend and possibly a soul mate who will remain loyal to the end. Life seems completely different, exciting and worthwhile. Your only hope and security is in knowing that they are a part of your life.
”
”
Bob Marley
“
Abe held my gaze a bit longer and then broke into an easy smile. ʺOf course, of course. This is a family gathering. A celebration. And look: hereʹs our newest member.ʺ
Dimitri had joined us and wore black and white like my mother and me. He stood beside me, conspicuously not touching. ʺMr. Mazur,ʺ he said formally, nodding a greeting to both of them. ʺGuardian Hathaway.ʺ
Dimitri was seven years older than me, but right then, facing my parents, he looked like he was sixteen and about to pick me up for a date.
ʺAh, Belikov,ʺ said Abe, shaking Dimitriʹs hand. ʺIʹd been hoping weʹd run into each other. Iʹd really like to get to know you better. Maybe we can set aside some time to talk, learn more about life, love, et cetera. Do you like to hunt? You seem like a hunting man. Thatʹs what we should do sometime. I know a great spot in the woods. Far, far away. We could make a day of it. Iʹve certainly got a lot of questions Iʹd like to ask you. A lot of things Iʹd like to tell you too.ʺ
I shot a panicked look at my mother, silently begging her to stop this. Abe had spent a good deal of time talking to Adrian when we dated, explaining in vivid and gruesome detail exactly how Abe expected his daughter to be treated. I did not want Abe taking Dimitri off alone into the wilderness, especially if firearms were involved.
ʺActually,ʺ said my mom casually. ʺIʹd like to come along. I also have a number of questions—especially about when you two were back at St. Vladimirʹs.ʺ
ʺDonʹt you guys have somewhere to be?ʺ I asked hastily. ʺWeʹre about to start.ʺ
That, at least, was true. Nearly everyone was in formation, and the crowd was quieting. ʺOf course,ʺ said Abe. To my astonishment, he brushed a kiss over my forehead before stepping away. ʺIʹm glad youʹre back.ʺ Then, with a wink, he said to Dimitri:
ʺLooking forward to our chat.ʺ
ʺRun,ʺ I said when they were gone. ʺIf you slip out now, maybe they wonʹt notice. Go back to Siberia."
"Actually," said Dimitri, "I'm pretty sure Abe would notice. Don't worry, Roza. I'm not afraid. I'll take whatever heat they give me over being with you. It's worth it.
”
”
Richelle Mead (Last Sacrifice (Vampire Academy, #6))
“
She felt love, like the love that she had always known existed behind every fallen autumn leaf, behind the gurgling of springs, and behind the kisses of her parents.
”
”
Jack Borden (The Lost City: An Epic YA Fantasy Novel (The Tixie Chronicles Book 4))
“
More to the point, I know why soldiers, home from war, seldom tell their families about their exploits in more than general terms. We who survive must go on in the names of those who fall, but if we dwell too much on the vivid details of what we've witnessed of man's inhumanity to man, we simply can't go on. perseverance is impossible if we don't permit ourselves to hope.
”
”
Dean Koontz (Odd Thomas (Odd Thomas, #1))
“
To feel beauty is a better thing than to understand how we come to feel it. To have imagination and taste, to love the best, to be carried by the contemplation of nature to a vivid faith in the ideal, all this is more, a great deal more, than any science can hope to be.
”
”
George Santayana (The Sense of Beauty: Being the Outline of Aesthetic Theory)
“
Let it shine, the light in you.
Oh, and that's delighting me!
Various colors shining through.
Elated, it fills my soul with ecstasy.
”
”
Ana Claudia Antunes (A-Z of Happiness: Tips for Living and Breaking Through the Chain that Separates You from Getting That Dream Job)
“
Uncertainty, in the presence of vivid hopes and fears, is painful, but must be endured if we wish to live without the support of comforting fairy tales.
”
”
Bertrand Russell (History of Western Philosophy: Collectors Edition)
“
I saw the Earth, yes. I saw the colors so magnificent, so vivid, so real. It was hope so large and round, green and blue.
”
”
Hafsah Laziaf (Unbreathable)
“
Dreams! in their vivid coloring of life,
As in that fleeting, shadowy, misty strife
Of semblance with reality, which brings
To the delirious eye, more lovely things
Of Paradise and Love- and all our own!
Than young Hope in his sunniest hour hath known.
”
”
Edgar Allan Poe (The Complete Stories and Poems)
“
The majority of people dismiss those things that lie beyond the bounds of their own understanding as absurd and not worth thinking about. I myself can only wish that my stories were, indeed, nothing but incredible fabrications. I have stayed alive all these years clinging to the frail hope that these memories of mine were nothing but a dream or a delusion. I have struggled to convince myself that they never happened. But each time I tried to push them into the dark, they came back stronger and more vivid than ever. Like cancer cells, these memories have taken root in my mind and eaten into my flesh.
”
”
Haruki Murakami (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle)
“
When my husband had an affair with someone else I watched his eyes glaze over when we ate dinner together and I heard him singing to himself without me, and when he tended the garden it was not for me.
He was courteous and polite; he enjoyed being at home, but in the fantasy of his home I was not the one who sat opposite him and laughed at his jokes. He didn't want to change anything; he liked his life. The only thing he wanted to change was me.
It would have been better if he had hated me, or if he had abused me, or if he had packed his new suitcases and left.
As it was he continued to put his arm round me and talk about being a new wall to replace the rotten fence that divided our garden from his vegetable patch. I knew he would never leave our house. He had worked for it.
Day by day I felt myself disappearing. For my husband I was no longer a reality, I was one of the things around him. I was the fence which needed to be replaced. I watched myself in the mirror and saw that I was mo longer vivid and exciting. I was worn and gray like an old sweater you can't throw out but won't put on.
He admitted he was in love with her, but he said he loved me.
Translated, that means, I want everything. Translated, that means, I don't want to hurt you yet. Translated, that means, I don't know what to do, give me time.
Why, why should I give you time? What time are you giving me? I am in a cell waiting to be called for execution.
I loved him and I was in love with him. I didn't use language to make a war-zone of my heart.
'You're so simple and good,' he said, brushing the hair from my face.
He meant, Your emotions are not complex like mine. My dilemma is poetic.
But there was no dilemma. He no longer wanted me, but he wanted our life
Eventually, when he had been away with her for a few days and returned restless and conciliatory, I decided not to wait in my cell any longer. I went to where he was sleeping in another room and I asked him to leave. Very patiently he asked me to remember that the house was his home, that he couldn't be expected to make himself homeless because he was in love.
'Medea did,' I said, 'and Romeo and Juliet and Cressida, and Ruth in the Bible.'
He asked me to shut up. He wasn't a hero.
'Then why should I be a heroine?'
He didn't answer, he plucked at the blanket.
I considered my choices.
I could stay and be unhappy and humiliated.
I could leave and be unhappy and dignified.
I could Beg him to touch me again.
I could live in hope and die of bitterness.
I took some things and left. It wasn't easy, it was my home too.
I hear he's replaced the back fence.
”
”
Jeanette Winterson (Sexing the Cherry)
“
We who survive must go on in the names of those who fall, but if we dwell too much on the vivid details of what we’ve witnessed of man’s inhumanity to man, we simply can’t go on. Perseverance is impossible if we don’t permit ourselves to hope.
”
”
Dean Koontz (Odd Thomas (Odd Thomas, #1))
“
Uncertainty, in the presence of vivid hopes and fears, is painful, but must be endured if we wish to live without the support of comforting fairy tales. It is not good either to forget the questions that philosophy asks, or to persuade ourselves that we have found indubitable answers to them. To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who study it.
”
”
Bertrand Russell (A History of Western Philosophy)
“
Ah, Belikov," said Abe, shaking Dimitri's hand. "I'd been hoping we'd run into each other. I'd really like to get to know you better. Maybe we can set aside some time to talk, learn more about life, love, et cetera. Do you like to hunt? You seem like a hunting man. That's what we should do sometime. I know a great spot in the woods. Far, far away. We could make a day of it. I've certainly got a lot of question to ask you. A lot of things I'd like to tell you."
I shot a panicked look at my mother, silently begging her to stop this. Abe had spent a good deal of time talking to Adrian when we dated, explaining in vivid and gruesome detail exactly how Abe expected his daughter to be treated. I did not want Abe taking Dimitri off alone into the wilderness, especially if firearms were involved.
"Actually," said my mum casually."I'd like to come along. I also have a number of questions-especially about when you two were back at St. Vladimir's."
"Don't you guys have somewhere to be?" I asked hastily. "We're about to start."
That, at least, was true. Nearly everyone was in formation, and the crowd was quieting. "of course," said Abe. To my astonishment, he brushed a kiss over my forehead before stepping away. "I'm glad you're back." Then, with a wink, he said to Dimitri:"Looking forward to our chat."
"Run," I said when they were gone. "If you slip out now, maybe they won't notice. Go back to Siberia.
”
”
Richelle Mead (Last Sacrifice (Vampire Academy, #6))
“
Winter’s head snapped around, away from Scarlet. Scarlet’s pace slowed, dread pulsing through her as she, too, heard the footsteps. Pounding footsteps, like someone was running at full speed toward them. She reached for the knife Jacin had given her. A man barrelled around the corner, heading straight for the princess. Winter tensed half a second before he reached her. Grabbing Winter’s elbow, he yanked back the red hood.
Scarlet gasped. Her knees weakened. The man stared at Winter with a mixture of confusion and disappointment and maybe even anger, all locked up in eyes so vividly green that Scarlet could see them glowing from here. She was the one hallucinating now.
She took a stumbling, uncertain step forward. Wanting to run toward him, but terrified it was a trick. Her hand tightened around the knife handle as Wolf, ignoring how Winter was trying to pull away, grabbed her arm and smelled the filthy red sleeve of Scarlet’s hoodie, streaked with dirt and blood. He growled, ready to tear the princess apart. “Where did you get this?” So desperate, so determined, so him. The knife slipped out of Scarlet’s hand. Wolf’s attention snapped to her. “Wolf?” she whispered.
His eyes brightened, wild and hopeful. Releasing Winter, he strode forward. His tumultuous eyes scooped over her. Devoured her.
When he was in arm’s reach, Scarlet almost collapsed into him, but at the last moment she had the presence of mind to step back. She planted a hand on his chest. Wolf froze, hurt flickering across his face.
“I’m sorry,” said Scarlet, her voice teetering with exhaustion. “It’s just…I smell so awful, I can hardly stand to be around myself right now, so I can’t even imagine what it’s like for you with your sense of sm-“
Batting her hand away, Wolf dug his fingers into Scarlet’s hair and crushed his mouth against hers. Her protests died with a muffled gasp. This time, she did collapse, her legs unable to hold her a second longer. Wolf fell with her, dropping his knees to break Scarlet’s fall and cradling her body against his. He was here. He was here.
”
”
Marissa Meyer (Winter (The Lunar Chronicles, #4))
“
That is the germ of my great discovery. But you are wrong to say that we cannot move about in Time. For instance, if I am recalling an incident very vividly I go back to the instant of its occurrence: I become absent-minded, as you say. I jump back for a moment. Of course we have no means of staying back for any length of Time, any more than a savage or an animal has of staying six feet above the ground. But a civilized man is better off than the savage in this respect. He can go up against gravitation in a balloon, and why should he not hope that ultimately he may be able to stop or accelerate his drift along the Time-Dimension, or even turn about and travel the other way?
”
”
H.G. Wells (The Time Machine)
“
And doesn't a writer do the same thing? Isn't she knitting together scraps of dreams? She hunts down the most vivid details and links them in sequences that will let a reader see, smell, and hear a world that seems complete in itself; she builds a stage set and painstakingly hides all the struts and wires and nail holes, then stands back and hopes whoever might come to see it will believe.
”
”
Anthony Doerr (Four Seasons in Rome: On Twins, Insomnia, and the Biggest Funeral in the History of the World)
“
Imagination is much more important than innovation. There will be no innovation without vivid imagination.
”
”
Debasish Mridha
“
After dinner Natasha went to the clavichord, at Prince Andrey's request, and began singing. Prince Andrey stood at the window, talking to the ladies, and listened to her. In the middle of a phrase, Prince Andrey ceased speaking, and felt suddenly a lump in his throat from tears, the possibility of which he had never dreamed of in himself. He looked at Natasha singing, and something new and blissful stirred in his soul. He was happy, and at the same time he was sad. He certainly had nothing to weep about, but he was ready to weep. For what? For his past love? For the little princess? For his lost illusions? For his hopes for the future? Yes, and no. The chief thing which made him ready to weep was a sudden, vivid sense of the fearful contrast between something infinitely great and illimitable existing in him, and something limited and material, which he himself was, and even she was. This contrast made his heart ache, and rejoiced him while she was singing.
”
”
Leo Tolstoy (War and Peace)
“
I like seeing Venice through your eyes.'
A tiny bud of hope sprouted in her heart ...
'I'll have this wrapped for you.'
'Thanks.' The tiny bud within her grew a single whisper-thin leaf of vivid green
”
”
Nalini Singh (Tangle of Need (Psy-Changeling, #11))
“
If I was given the ability to foretell one event in the future, I wish that that fate would tell me when you will walk into my life from the day I was born.
That way every day of my life would be making a step closer to you.
I will be hoping for tomorrow like a freezing traveler yearning for a warm fireplace, even if tomorrow will greet me with a storm or blizzard.
Because my yearning for you is so vivid that it could embellish every mired land and trenches in the world with a layer of gold.
”
”
Priest (残次品 [Can Ci Pin])
“
We have reason. It is the entire meaning and purpose of Shangri-La. It came to me in a vision long, long ago. I foresaw a time when man exalting in the technique of murder, would rage so hotly over the world, that every book, every treasure would be doomed to destruction. This vision was so vivid and so moving that I determined to gather together all things of beauty and culture that I could and preserve them here against the doom toward which the world is rushing. Look at the world today. Is there anything more pitiful? What madness there is! What blindness! A scurrying mass of bewildered humanity crashing headlong against each other. The time must come, my friend, when brutality and the lust for power must perish by its own sword. For when that day comes, the world must begin to look for a new life. And it is our hope that they may find it here.
”
”
James Hilton (Lost Horizon)
“
Science tells us what we can know, but what we can know is little, and if we forget how much we cannot know we become insensitive to many things of great importance. Theology induces a dogmatic belief that we have knowledge where in fact we have ignorance, and by doing so generates a kind of impertinent insolence towards the universe. Uncertainty, in the presence of vivid hopes and fears, is painful, but must be endured if we wish to live without the support of comforting fairy tales.
”
”
Bertrand Russell (A History of Western Philosophy)
“
As usual, Junko thought about Jack London's 'To Build a Fire.' It was the story of a man traveling alone through the snowy Alaskan interior and his attempts to light a fire. He would freeze to death unless he could make it catch. The sun was going down. Junko hadn't read much fiction, but that one short story she had read again and again, ever since her teacher had assigned it as an essay topic during summer vacation of her first year in high school. The scene of the story would always come vividly to mind as she read. She could feel the man's fear and hope and despair as if they were her own; she could sense the very pounding of his heart as he hovered on the brink of death. Most important of all, though, was the fact that the man was fundamentally longing for death. She knew that for sure. She couldn't explain how she knew, but she knew it from the start. Death was really what he wanted. He knew that it was the right ending for him. And yet he had to go on fighting with all his might. He had to fight against an overwhelming adversary in order to survive. What most shook Junko was this deep-rooted contradiction.
The teacher ridiculed her view. 'Death is really what he wanted? That's a new one for me! And strange! Quite 'original,' I'd have to say.' He read her conclusion aloud before the class, and everybody laughed.
But Junko knew. All of them were wrong. Otherwise how could the ending of the story be so quiet and beautiful?
”
”
Haruki Murakami (After the Quake)
“
Science tells us what we can know, but what we can know is little, and if we forget how much we cannot know we become insensitive to many things of very great importance. Theology, on the other hand, induces a dogmatic belief that we have knowledge where in fact we have ignorance, and by doing so generates a kind of impertinent insolence towards the universe. Uncertainty, in the presence of vivid hopes and fears, is painful, but must be endured if we wish to live without the support of comforting fairy tales.
”
”
Bertrand Russell
“
I feel to that the gap between my new life in New York and the situation at home in Africa is stretching into a gulf, as Zimbabwe spirals downwards into a violent dictatorship. My head bulges with the effort to contain both worlds. When I am back in New York, Africa immediately seems fantastical – a wildly plumaged bird, as exotic as it is unlikely.
Most of us struggle in life to maintain the illusion of control, but in Africa that illusion is almost impossible to maintain. I always have the sense there that there is no equilibrium, that everything perpetually teeters on the brink of some dramatic change, that society constantly stands poised for some spasm, some tsunami in which you can do nothing but hope to bob up to the surface and not be sucked out into a dark and hungry sea. The origin of my permanent sense of unease, my general foreboding, is probably the fact that I have lived through just such change, such a sudden and violent upending of value systems.
In my part of Africa, death is never far away. With more Zimbabweans dying in their early thirties now, mortality has a seat at every table. The urgent, tugging winds themselves seem to whisper the message, memento mori, you too shall die. In Africa, you do not view death from the auditorium of life, as a spectator, but from the edge of the stage, waiting only for your cue. You feel perishable, temporary, transient. You feel mortal.
Maybe that is why you seem to live more vividly in Africa. The drama of life there is amplified by its constant proximity to death. That’s what infuses it with tension. It is the essence of its tragedy too. People love harder there. Love is the way that life forgets that it is terminal. Love is life’s alibi in the face of death.
For me, the illusion of control is much easier to maintain in England or America. In this temperate world, I feel more secure, as if change will only happen incrementally, in manageable, finely calibrated, bite-sized portions. There is a sense of continuity threaded through it all: the anchor of history, the tangible presence of antiquity, of buildings, of institutions. You live in the expectation of reaching old age.
At least you used to.
But on Tuesday, September 11, 2001, those two states of mind converge. Suddenly it feels like I am back in Africa, where things can be taken away from you at random, in a single violent stroke, as quick as the whip of a snake’s head. Where tumult is raised with an abruptness that is as breathtaking as the violence itself.
”
”
Peter Godwin (When a Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir of Africa)
“
Imagination is a vision with vivid pictures in the canvas of the mind.
”
”
Debasish Mridha
“
The first fact of the world is that it repeats itself. I had been taught to believe that the freshness of children lay in their capacity for wonder at the vividness and strangeness of the particular, but what is fresh in them is that they still experience the power of repetition, from which our first sense of the power of mastery comes. Though predictable is an ugly little world in daily life, in our first experience of it we are clued to the hope of a shapeliness in things. To see that power working on adults, you have to catch them out: the look of foolish happiness on the faces of people who have just sat down to dinner is their knowledge that dinner will be served. Probably, that is the psychological basis for the power and the necessity of artistic form...Maybe our first experience of form is the experience of our own formation...And I am not thinking mainly of poems about form; I’m thinking of the form of a poem, the shape of its understanding. The presence of that shaping constitutes the presence of poetry.
”
”
Robert Hass
“
In youth, the powers of the mind are directed wholly to the future, and that future assumes such various, vivid, and alluring forms under the influence of hope; hope based, not upon the experience of the past, but upon an assumed possibility of happiness to come, that dreams of expected felicity constitute in themselves the true happiness of that period of our life. Only God Himself knows whether those blessed dreams of youth were ridiculous, or whose the fault was that they never became realized.
”
”
Leo Tolstoy (Childhood, Boyhood, Youth)
“
Wildflowers burst from the ground in vivid blues and whites and violets, creating a picture more pleasing than anything her hands could design. She didn't understand how it was possible, but Evan had been right. The abundance of snow had produced an abundance of wildflowers. More than she's ever seen before. Somehow, those cold, lifeless winter months had prepared the land for something breathtaking. Something beautiful. Something brimming with life.
”
”
Katie Ganshert (Wildflowers from Winter)
“
The point of this journal was to improve my writing skills, but it was also to preserve my well-curated childhood. She hoped that as an adult, I would flip through this notebook fondly, letting it fill me with sentimental memories. But as I read through it now, it appears her mission miscarried. I have no recollection of the Santa Cruz trip, or this lion dance, or that trip to the beach in Mendocino. The only thing I remember vividly is that clear plastic ruler on my palm.
”
”
Stephanie Foo (What My Bones Know)
“
The most intense wars are civil wars, just as the most vivid and rending personal conflicts are internal ones, and what I hope to do now is give some idea of what it is like to fight on two fronts at once, to try and keep opposing ideas alive in the same mind, even occasionally to show two faces at the same time.
”
”
Christopher Hitchens (Hitch 22: A Memoir)
“
A few months ago, a fog blinded me, thicker than ever before. I slept in the monster’s arms. I felt its breath on my neck, its scaled stomach rising and falling against my back, its head and face invisible as always. I couldn’t pretend anymore to Margaret that I was working. The children receded into noises grating on my ears. I stopped moving. Weeks went by indistinguishable one from another. I could smell the rot of myself, my armpits, my breath, my groin, as though the living part of death had already commenced, the preliminary decomposing, as the will fades. In Dante and Milton hell is vivid. Sin organizes the dead into struggle. The darkness bristles with life. There is story upon story to tell. But in the fog there is nothing to see. The monster you lie with is your own. The struggle is endlessly private. I thought it was over. That one night the beast at my back would squeeze more tightly and I would cease breathing. What remained of me hoped for it.
”
”
Adam Haslett (Imagine Me Gone)
“
O life as futile, then, as frail! / O for thy voice to soothe and bless! / What hope of answer, or redress? / Behind the veil, behind the veil …
She felt alert, somehow – perhaps awake was a better word: everything seemed clearer, as if a fog had lifted; colours were sharper, the edges of things more defined. The world no longer felt muted and grey and far away – behind a veil.
It felt alive again, and vivid, and full of colour, wet with autumn rain; and vibrating with the eternal hum of endless birth and death.
”
”
Alex Michaelides (The Maidens)
“
Birthdays are a time when one stock takes, which means, I suppose, a good spineless mope: I scan my horizon and can discern no sail of hope along my own particular ambition. I tell you what it is: I'm quite in accord with the people who enquire 'What is the matter with the man?' because I don't seem to be producing anything as the years pass but rank self indulgence. You know that my sole ambition, officially at any rate, was to write poems & novels, an activity I never found any difficulty fulfilling between the (dangerous) ages of 17-24: I can't very well ignore the fact that this seems to have died a natural death. On the other hand I feel regretful that what talents I have in this direction are not being used. Then again, if I am not going to produce anything in the literary line, the justification for my selfish life is removed - but since I go on living it, the suspicion arises that the writing existed to produce the life, & not vice versa. And as a life it has very little to recommend it: I spend my days footling in a job I care nothing about, a curate among lady-clerks; I evade all responsibility, familial, professional, emotional, social, not even saving much money or helping my mother. I look around me & I see people getting on, or doing things, or bringing up children - and here I am in a kind of vacuum. If I were writing, I would even risk the fearful old age of the Henry-James hero: not fearful in circumstance but in realisation: because to me to catch, render, preserve, pickle, distil or otherwise secure life-as-it-seemed for the future seems to me infinitely worth doing; but as I'm not the entire morality of it collapses. And when I ask why I'm not, well, I'm not because I don't want to: every novel I attempt stops at a point where I awake from the impulse as one might awake from a particularly-sickening nightmare - I don't want to 'create character', I don't want to be vivid or memorable or precise, I neither wish to bathe each scene in the lambency of the 'love that accepts' or be excoriatingly cruel, smart, vicious, 'penetrating' (ugh), or any of the other recoil qualities. In fact, like the man in St Mawr, I want nothing. Nothing, I want. And so it becomes quite impossible for me to carry on. This failure of impulse seems to me suspiciously like a failure of sexual impulse: people conceive novels and dash away at them & finish them in the same way as they fall in love & will not be satisfied till they're married - another point on which I seem to be out of step. There's something cold & heavy sitting on me somewhere, & until something budges it I am no good.
”
”
Philip Larkin (Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica)
“
Learn from the past, set vivid, detailed goals for the future, and live in the only moment of time over which you have any control: now.” – Denis Waitley
”
”
R.L. Adams (Have a Little Hope - An Inspirational Guide to Discovering What Hope Is and How to Have More of it in your Life)
“
The road looked as if no one had traveled on it in months.
"It's not much farther," the grandmother said and just as she said it, a horrible thought came to her. The thought was so embarrassing that she turned red in the face and her eyes dilated and her feet jumped up, upsetting her valise in the corner. The instant the valise moved, the newspaper top she had over the basket under it rose with a snarl and Pitty Sing, the cat, sprang onto Bailey's shoulder.
The children were thrown to the floor and their mother, clutching the baby, was thrown out the door onto the ground; the old lady was thrown into the front seat. The car turned over once and landed right-side-up in a gulch off the side of the road. Bailey remained in the driver's seat with the cat gray-striped with a broad white face and an orange nose clinging to his neck like a caterpillar.
As soon as the children saw they could move their arms and legs, they scrambled out of the car, shouting, "We've had an ACCIDENT!" The grandmother was curled up under the dashboard, hoping she was injured so that Bailey's wrath would not come down on her all at once. The horrible thought she had had before the accident was that the house she had remembered so vividly was not in Georgia but in Tennessee.
”
”
Flannery O'Connor (A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories)
“
Sorrow (A Song)
To me this world's a dreary blank,
All hopes in life are gone and fled,
My high strung energies are sank,
And all my blissful hopes lie dead.--
The world once smiling to my view,
Showed scenes of endless bliss and joy;
The world I then but little knew,
Ah! little knew how pleasures cloy;
All then was jocund, all was gay,
No thought beyond the present hour,
I danced in pleasure’s fading ray,
Fading alas! as drooping flower.
Nor do the heedless in the throng,
One thought beyond the morrow give,
They court the feast, the dance, the song,
Nor think how short their time to live.
The heart that bears deep sorrow’s trace,
What earthly comfort can console,
It drags a dull and lengthened pace,
'Till friendly death its woes enroll.--
The sunken cheek, the humid eyes,
E’en better than the tongue can tell;
In whose sad breast deep sorrow lies,
Where memory's rankling traces dwell.--
The rising tear, the stifled sigh,
A mind but ill at ease display,
Like blackening clouds in stormy sky,
Where fiercely vivid lightnings play.
Thus when souls' energy is dead,
When sorrow dims each earthly view,
When every fairy hope is fled,
We bid ungrateful world adieu.
”
”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (The Complete Poems)
“
V drifts into talking about generations. How grandparents and grandchildren so often get along very well. Remove one generation—twenty-five years at least—and the anger in both directions dissipates. All the failed expectations and betrayals become cleansed by an intervention of time. Resentment and bitter need for retribution fall away. Love becomes the operative emotion. On the old side, you’re left with wrinkled age and whatever fractured, end-of-the-line knowledge might have accrued. Wisdom as exhaustion. And on the other side—which V still remembers with molecular vividness—youth and yearning and urgency for something not yet fully defined. Undiluted hope and desire. But by fusing the best of both sides, a kind of intertwining consciousness arises—grandmother and granddaughter wisdom emerging from shared hope, relieved of emotions tainted by control and guilt and anger. —I’ll assume you’re right, James says. But I wouldn’t know much about long family relationships. When I was
”
”
Charles Frazier (Varina)
“
Protest. Protest both when you believe it will work—for we have vivid evidence of when it has worked—and when you do not. The farmer-poet-activist Wendell Berry, in his book What Are People For?, wrote: “Protest that endures, I think, is moved by a hope far more modest than that of public success: namely, the hope of preserving qualities in one’s own heart and spirit that would be destroyed by acquiescence.
”
”
Katherine Rundell (Vanishing Treasures: A Bestiary of Extraordinary Endangered Creatures)
“
I have found that a writer is formed not so much by their experiences but by the way in which they view and capture those experiences. Like vivid, rainbow metallic skin cells on the wings of a fragile butterfly, it is how you touch and reveal those inner parts of yourself, without damaging the psyche, that determines whether the beauty is experienced and expressed and shared with others or, in fact, becomes the death of the self and Soul and psyche. I hope that I capture something in my work that is about the elusive, the magical and powerful and the transformative. The writing in itself is transformative for me.
”
”
H Raven Rose (Liquid Me: Poetry and Prose)
“
Science tells us what we can know, but what we can know is little, and if we forget how much we cannot know we become insensitive to many things of very great importance. Theology, on the other hand, induces a dogmatic belief that we have knowledge where in fact we have ignorance, and by doing so generates a kind of impertinent insolence towards the universe. Uncertainty, in the presence of vivid hopes and fears, is painful, but must be endured if we wish to live without the support of comforting fairy tales. It is not good either to forget the questions that philosophy asks, or to persuade ourselves that we have found indubitable answers to them. To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralysed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who study it.
”
”
Bertrand Russell (History of Western Philosophy (Routledge Classics))
“
If you throw even a cursory glance into the past, at the life which lies behind you, not even recalling its most vivid moments, you are struck every time by the singularity of the events in which you took part, the unique individuality of the characters whom you met. This singularity is like the dominant note of every moment of existence; in each moment of life, the life principle itself is unique. The artist therefore tries to grasp that principle and make it incarnate, new each time; and each time he hopes, though in vain, to achieve an exhaustive image of the Truth of human existence. The quality of beauty is in the truth of life.
”
”
Andrei Tarkovsky
“
She could not picture it. Herself riding on the subway or streetcar, caring for new horses, talking to new people, living among hordes of people every day who were not Clark.
A life, a place, chosen for that specific reason––that it would not contain Clark.
The strange and terrible thing coming clear to her about that world of the future, as she now pictured it, was that she would not exist there. She would only walk around, and open her mouth and speak, and do this and do that. She would not really be there. And what was strange about it was that she was doing all this, she was riding on this bus in the hope of recovering herself. As Mrs. Jamieson might say––and as she herself might with satisfaction have said––taking charge of her own life. With nobody glowering over her, nobody's mood infecting her with misery.
But what would she care about? How would she know that she was alive?
While she was running away from him––now––Clark still kept his place in her life. But when she was finished running away, when she just went on, what would she put in his place? What else––who else––could ever be so vivid a challenge?
”
”
Alice Munro (Runaway: Stories)
“
The flowers in Tibet were always taller, more fragrant and vivid. Her descriptions, imprecise but unchanging from year to year lead me to an inevitable acceptance that her past was unequaled by our present lives. She would tell me of knee-deep fields of purple, red and white- plants never named or pointed out to during our years in India and Nepal- that over time served to create an idea of her fatherland, phayul, as a riotous garden. I pictured her wilderness paradise by comparing them not to the marigolds, daises or bluebells I crushed with my fingers, but to the shape of household artefacts around me: lollipop, broom, bottle. Disparate objects that surrendered to and influenced the idea, space and hope of a more abundant and happy place.
”
”
Tsering Wangmo Dhompa (A Home in Tibet)
“
These songs describe more vividly than one could hope to do in plain language the poet’s steady withdrawal and increasing estrangement from life, his gradual submersion in the abyss of memory. After these nostalgic longings the apocalyptic vision of Patmos bursts upon us like a mysterious visitor from another world, a vision swirled round by mists from the abyss, by the gathering clouds of insanity bred by the mother. Mythological ideas again flash forth, symbolic intimations of death and the resurrection of life.
”
”
C.G. Jung (Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Volume 5: Symbols of Transformation (The Collected Works of C. G. Jung))
“
I still remember—so vividly I can smell the gentle fragrance of the spring air—the afternoon when I decided, after thinking everything over, to abdicate from love as from an insoluble problem. it was in May, a May that was softly summery, with the flowers around my estate already in full bloom, their colors fading as the sun made its slow descent. Escorted by regrets and self-reproach, I walked among my few trees, I had dined early and was wandering, like a symbol, under the useless shadows and faint rustle of leaves. And suddenly I was overwhelmed by a desire to renounce completely, to withdraw once and for all, and I felt an intense nausea for having had so many desires, so many hopes, with so many outer conditions for attaining them and so much inner impossibility of really wanting to attain them.
”
”
Fernando Pessoa (The Education of the Stoic: The Only Manuscript of the Baron of Teive)
“
The Academy represented to the ladies of Lud all that they knew of romance. They remembered the jokes they had laughed at within its walls, the secrets they had exchanged walking up and down its pleached alleys, far more vividly than anything that had afterwards happened to them.
”
”
Hope Mirrlees (Lud-in-the-Mist)
“
Henry yearned to instill in the students a delight in knowledge as much as he wanted to drill them in a particular subject. Vividly he explained one of his favorite themes, the seasons—their source in the tilt and rotation of the Earth and its revolution around the sun, their relationship to the changing lives of animals and people throughout the year, their parade of strikingly different forms of beauty. Such talks made learning seem central to the enjoyment of life rather than some kind of adornment—and, Henry hoped, it set a tone for the school day. Henry
”
”
Michael Sims (The Adventures of Henry Thoreau: A Young Man's Unlikely Path to Walden Pond)
“
Embracing this beautiful morning,
I open up my eyes with lucid dream
A promise to be with joy forever
Vividly in my heart, I say with loud scream!
Sun shines brightly touching my feet
Says if I reach you, why can’t you fleet
Underneath my lips, now there is a big smile
A simple message though depths in pile!
Holding my life to a distinct side,
I sing and dance with just love inside
Nothing to say, nothing to hope for
Just being happy and all fears aside!
Amazing start of this enthralling day
Resonating birds all over the place
Embracing this morning again,
I would love to be who I am today!
”
”
Halcyon
“
Suffering creates a vivid contrast illuminating joy, happiness, and satisfaction. It is a harsh lesson on the other side of sublime. We all must suffer, whether we choose to or not. There must be value in that which is given in our lives, even though we hope and try to live joyfully and enjoy our brief time on earth.
”
”
Brent Green (Questions of the Spirit: The Quest for Understanding at a Time of Loss)
“
I think people write to remember:
(Whether) to bring back a mem'ry to life,
(Or for their future selves a reminder,
Once God begins to dim their lights).
But I learnt that I write not just to recall,
Because, damn, I cite well if I let,
Profusely[-]vividly remembering all –
I think I write in hopes to forget.
”
”
Porcupine Strongwill (Forgotten Things to Say (Forgotten Things to Say, #1))
“
Peace flows into me
As the tide to the pool by the shore;
It is mine forevermore,
It ebbs not back like the sea.
I am the pool of blue
That worships the vivid sky;
My hopes were heaven-high,
They are all fulfilled in you.
I am the pool of gold
When sunset burns and dies,–
You are my deepening skies,
Give me your stars to hold.
”
”
Sara Teasdale (The Collected Poems)
“
Only my queen would find hope in horror.” He took my hand in his and his gaze was burning. “You are my hope and more.”
“What does that make you? My horror?”
“And more,” he said.
All I saw were his eyes. Velvet dark. The kind of umbra that shadows envy. Amar stared at me and his gaze was desperate with hope. Reckless. I should’ve stopped. I should’ve stepped away. But I didn’t. I leaned forward, and a soft growl--like surrender--escaped his throat. He dug his fingers into my back and pulled me into a kiss.
Amar’s kiss was furious. No heat. Just lightning. Or maybe that was what his touch teased out of me--vivid streaks of light, dusk and all her violent glory. I was lost.
”
”
Roshani Chokshi (The Star-Touched Queen (The Star-Touched Queen, #1))
“
All beings begin their lives with hope and aspirations. Among these aspirations is the desire that there will be a straight path to those goals. It is seldom so. Perhaps never.
Sometimes the turns are of one's own volition, as one's thoughts and goals change over time. But more often the turns are mandated by outside forces.
It was so with me. The memory is vivid, unsullied by age: the five admirals rising from their chairs as I am escorted into the chamber. The decision of the Ascendancy has been made, and they are here to deliver it.
None of them is happy with the decision. I can read that in their faces. But they are officers and servants of the Chiss, and they will carry out their orders. Protocol alone demands that.
The word is as I expected.
Exile.
The planet has already been chosen. The Aristocra will assemble the equipment necessary to endure that solitude does not quickly become Death from predators or the elements.
I am led away. Once again, my path has turned.
Where it will lead, I cannot say.
”
”
Timothy Zahn
“
There was power all around, that power and that goodness, which make us come, as it were, outside our bodily selves, to share them. Over and beside us breathes the joy of hope and promise; under foot are troubles past; in the distance bowering newness tempts us ever forward. We quicken with largesse of life, and spring with vivid mystery.
”
”
R.D. Blackmore (Lorna Doone)
“
Every coin has two sides. Every mountain has a valley. For every strength there is a weakness. Every up has a down. For every in there is an out. For every height there is a depth. Life itself is a mosaic of light and dark. And every human is a study in opposites, a kaleidoscope of good and bad, positive and negative, hopes and losses, dreams and disappointments, successes and failures, courage and fear, confidence and insecurity, power and vulnerability. We do not live in a homogeneous world. We live in a world of brilliant contrasts, vivid diversity, striking polarity, and eloquent disparity...a stunning array of sometimes gorgeous, sometimes glaring, always fascinating differences.
”
”
L.R. Knost
“
And now it’s really over. I finally realized that I must do my schoolwork to keep from being ignorant, to get on in life, to become a journalist, because that’s what I want! I know I can write. A few of my stories are good, my descriptions of the Secret Annex are humorous, much of my diary is vivid and alive, but … it remains to be seen whether I really have talent. “Eva’s Dream” is my best fairy tale, and the odd thing is that I don’t have the faintest idea where it came from. Parts of “Cady’s Life” are also good, but as a whole it’s nothing special. I’m my best and harshest critic. I know what’s good and what isn’t. Unless you write yourself, you can’t know how wonderful it is; I always used to bemoan the fact that I couldn’t draw, but now I’m overjoyed that at least I can write. And if I don’t have the talent to write books or newspaper articles, I can always write for myself. But I want to achieve more than that. I can’t imagine having to live like Mother, Mrs. van Daan and all the women who go about their work and are then forgotten. I need to have something besides a husband and children to devote myself to! I don’t want to have lived in vain like most people. I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to all people, even those I’ve never met. I want to go on living even after my death! And that’s why I’m so grateful to God for having given me this gift, which I can use to develop myself and to express all that’s inside me! When I write I can shake off all my cares. My sorrow disappears, my spirits are revived! But, and that’s a big question, will I ever be able to write something great, will I ever become a journalist or a writer? I hope so, oh, I hope so very much, because writing allows me to record everything, all my thoughts, ideals and fantasies. I haven’t worked on “Cady’s Life” for ages. In my mind I’ve worked out exactly what happens next, but the story doesn’t seem to be coming along very well. I might never finish it, and it’ll wind up in the wastepaper basket or the stove. That’s a horrible thought, but then I say to myself, “At the age of fourteen and with so little experience, you can’t write about philosophy.” So onward and upward, with renewed spirits. It’ll all work out, because I’m determined to write!
”
”
Anne Frank (The Diary of a Young Girl)
“
Why do you want to know?”
The shrug again. “Just wondering.”
“Really. You’ve skipped your lawn tennis or duck hunting or whiskey drinking or whatever else people of your sort do all day, only to come all the way out to the island to ask me about the piano piece. Because you were just wondering.” I pushed away from the door. “Coming here to kiss me would have been more believable.”
“Well, it was second on my list.”
“I’m not intimidated by you,” I said, blunt. “If you’re hoping I’ll turn out to be some pathetic, blubbering little rag-girl who begs you not to ruin her, you’re in for a surprise.”
“That’s good.” Lord Armand met my eyes. “I like surprises.”
We gazed at each other, he on the bed and me by the door, neither of us giving quarter. It seemed to me that the room was growing even more dim, that time was repeating the same ploy it had pulled in Jesse’s cottage, drawing out long and slow. The storm outside railed against the castle walls, drowning the air within. It layered darkness through Armand’s eyes, the once-vivid blue now deep as the ocean at night.
Beyond my window the rain fell and fell, fat clouds weeping as if they’d never stop.
“Nice bracelet,” Armand said softly. “Did you steal it?”
I shook my head. “You gave it to me.”
“Did I?”
“As far as everyone else if concerned, yes. You did.”
“Hmm. And what do I get in return for agreeing to be your…benefactor?”
“The answer to your question.”
“No kiss?” he asked, even softer.
“No.”
His lips quirked. “All right, then, waif. I accept your terms. We’ll try the kiss later.
”
”
Shana Abe (The Sweetest Dark (The Sweetest Dark, #1))
“
I want to give the reader knowledge and hope, knowledge that there is this vast, vivid, very alive part of the universe called spirit and hope in the sense that we’ve all lost someone that we miss terribly – hope that this person is still alive in a different consciousness, the consciousness we call it now is spirit or soul.” (Dr. John Muciaccia discussing his upcoming book, Spirit Lives!)
”
”
Dr. John Muciaccia
“
Vainly I strive against it. My foot slips. My life is still a poet’s existence. What could be more unhappy? I am predestined; fate laughs at me when it suddenly shows me how everything I do to resist, becomes a moment in such an existence. I can describe hope so vividly that every hoping individual will acknowledge my description; and yet it is a deception, for while I picture hope, I think of memory.
”
”
Søren Kierkegaard (Either/Or: A Fragment of Life)
“
The group of artists and scientists that had so far done least was the one that had attracted the greatest interest—and the greatest alarm. This was the team working on “total identification.” The history of the cinema gave the clue to their actions. First sound, then color, then stereoscopy, then Cinerama, had made the old “moving pictures” more and more like reality itself. Where was the end of the story? Surely, the final stage would be reached when the audience forgot it was an audience, and became part of the action. To achieve this would involve stimulation of all the senses, and perhaps hypnosis as well, but many believed it to be practical. When the goal was attained, there would be an enormous enrichment of human experience. A man could become—for a while, at least—any other person, and could take part in any conceivable adventure, real or imaginary. He could even be a plant or an animal, if it proved possible to capture and record the sense impressions of other living creatures. And when the “program” was over, he would have acquired a memory as vivid as any experience in his actual life—indeed, indistinguishable from reality itself. The prospect was dazzling. Many also found it terrifying, and hoped that the enterprise would fail. But they knew in their hearts that once science had declared a thing possible, there was no escape from its eventual realization…. This, then, was New Athens and some of its dreams. It hoped to become what the old Athens might have been had it possessed machines instead of slaves, science instead of superstition. But it was much too early yet to tell if the experiment would succeed.
”
”
Arthur C. Clarke (Childhood's End)
“
There is one in this tribe too often miserable - a child bereaved of both parents. None cares for this child: she is fed sometimes, but oftener forgotten: a hut rarely receives her: the hollow tree and chill cavern are her home. Forsaken, lost, and wandering, she lives more with the wild beast and bird than with her own kind. Hunger and cold are her comrades: sadness hovers over, and solitude besets her round. Unheeded and unvalued, she should die: but she both lives and grows: the green wilderness nurses her, and becomes to her a mother: feeds her on juicy berry, on saccharine root and nut.
There is something in the air of this clime which fosters life kindly: there must be something, too, in its dews, which heals with sovereign balm. Its gentle seasons exaggerate no passion, no sense; its temperature tends to harmony; its breezes, you would say, bring down from heaven the germ of pure thought, and purer feeling. Not grotesquely fantastic are the forms of cliff and foliage; not violently vivid the colouring of flower and bird: in all the grandeur of these forests there is repose; in all their freshness there is tenderness.
The gentle charm vouchsafed to flower and tree, - bestowed on deer and dove, - has not been denied to the human nursling. All solitary, she has sprung up straight and graceful. Nature cast her features in a fine mould; they have matured in their pure, accurate first lines, unaltered by the shocks of disease. No fierce dry blast has dealt rudely with the surface of her frame; no burning sun has crisped or withered her tresses: her form gleams ivory-white through the trees; her hair flows plenteous, long, and glossy; her eyes, not dazzled by vertical fires, beam in the shade large and open, and full and dewy: above those eyes, when the breeze bares her forehead, shines an expanse fair and ample, - a clear, candid page, whereon knowledge, should knowledge ever come, might write a golden record. You see in the desolate young savage nothing vicious or vacant; she haunts the wood harmless and thoughtful: though of what one so untaught can think, it is not easy to divine.
On the evening of one summer day, before the Flood, being utterly alone - for she had lost all trace of her tribe, who had wandered leagues away, she knew not where, - she went up from the vale, to watch Day take leave and Night arrive. A crag, overspread by a tree, was her station: the oak-roots, turfed and mossed, gave a seat: the oak-boughs, thick-leaved, wove a canopy.
Slow and grand the Day withdrew, passing in purple fire, and parting to the farewell of a wild, low chorus from the woodlands. Then Night entered, quiet as death: the wind fell, the birds ceased singing. Now every nest held happy mates, and hart and hind slumbered blissfully safe in their lair.
The girl sat, her body still, her soul astir; occupied, however, rather in feeling than in thinking, - in wishing, than hoping, - in imagining, than projecting. She felt the world, the sky, the night, boundlessly mighty. Of all things, herself seemed to herself the centre, - a small, forgotten atom of life, a spark of soul, emitted inadvertent from the great creative source, and now burning unmarked to waste in the heart of a black hollow. She asked, was she thus to burn out and perish, her living light doing no good, never seen, never needed, - a star in an else starless firmament, - which nor shepherd, nor wanderer, nor sage, nor priest, tracked as a guide, or read as a prophecy? Could this be, she demanded, when the flame of her intelligence burned so vivid; when her life beat so true, and real, and potent; when something within her stirred disquieted, and restlessly asserted a God-given strength, for which it insisted she should find exercise?
”
”
Charlotte Brontë (Shirley)
“
If you have been bold enough in your ideas, this will have two effects: It will attract and repel others. Notice I said it will attract and repel, not or. Your Vivid Vision should behave like a magnet, drawing some people in and pushing others—hopefully not too many—away. If your scope is too small, too milquetoast, or too watered down, or if everyone likes it, no one will love it. If this is the case, you have failed.
”
”
Cameron Herold (Vivid Vision: A Remarkable Tool for Aligning Your Business Around a Shared Vision of The)
“
But those moments I spent with her on the terrace... I will never forget them. We played like little girls. We saw colours come vividly to life before us. We joked. We laughed. We were us. In those moments when we threw mugfulls of water into the open space, I saw that we were two faces to one soul. She, bucolic. I, urban. She, conventional. I, modern. She, her. I, me. Sisters, the members of a sorority of pain. But the problems were one, real, single.
”
”
Kirthi Jayakumar (Stories of Hope)
“
The Job Application
Esteemed gentlemen,
I am a poor, young, unemployed person in the business field, my name is Wenzel, I am seeking a suitable position, and I take the liberty of asking you, nicely and politely, if perhaps in your airy, bright, amiable rooms such a position might be free. I know that your good firm is large, proud, old, and rich, thus I may yield to the pleasing supposition that a nice, easy, pretty little place would be available, into which, as into a kind of warm cubbyhole, I can slip. I am excellently suited, you should know, to occupy just such a modest haven, for my nature is altogether delicate, and I am essentially a quiet, polite, and dreamy child, who is made to feel cheerful by people thinking of him that he does not ask for much, and allowing him to take possession of a very, very small patch of existence, where he can be useful in his own way and thus feel at ease. A quiet, sweet, small place in the shade has always been the tender substance of all my dreams, and if now the illusions I have about you grow so intense as to make me hope that my dream, young and old, might be transformed into delicious, vivid reality, then you have, in me, the most zealous and most loyal servitor, who will take it as a matter of conscience to discharge precisely and punctually all his duties. Large and difficult tasks I cannot perform, and obligations of a far-ranging sort are too strenuous for my mind. I am not particularly clever, and first and foremost I do not like to strain my intelligence overmuch. I am a dreamer rather than a thinker, a zero rather than a force, dim rather than sharp. Assuredly there exists in your extensive institution, which I imagine to be overflowing with main and subsidiary functions and offices, work of the kind that one can do as in a dream? --I am, to put it frankly, a Chinese; that is to say, a person who deems everything small and modest to be beautiful and pleasing, and to whom all that is big and exacting is fearsome and horrid. I know only the need to feel at my ease, so that each day I can thank God for life's boon, with all its blessings. The passion to go far in the world is unknown to me. Africa with its deserts is to me not more foreign. Well, so now you know what sort of a person I am.--I write, as you see, a graceful and fluent hand, and you need not imagine me to be entirely without intelligence. My mind is clear, but it refuses to grasp things that are many, or too many by far, shunning them. I am sincere and honest, and I am aware that this signifies precious little in the world in which we live, so I shall be waiting, esteemed gentlemen, to see what it will be your pleasure to reply to your respectful servant, positively drowning in obedience.
Wenzel
”
”
Robert Walser (Selected Stories)
“
She hunts down the most vivid details and links them in sequences that will let a reader see, smell, and hear a world that seems complete in itself; she builds a stage set and painstakingly hides all the struts and wires and nail holes, then stands back and hopes whoever might come to see it will believe. As I work on yet another draft of my story, I try to remember these lessons. A journal entry is for its writer; it helps its writer refine, perceive, and process the world. But a story—a finished piece of writing—is for its reader; it should help its reader refine, perceive, and process the world—the one particular world of the story, which is an invention, a dream. A writer manufactures a dream. And each draft should present a version of that dream that is more precisely rendered and more consistently sustained than the last. Every morning I try to remind myself to give unreservedly, to pore over everything, to test each sentence for fractures in the dream.
”
”
Anthony Doerr (Four Seasons in Rome: On Twins, Insomnia, and the Biggest Funeral in the History of the World)
“
Four thousand miles away in France, the old boys from the Haute-Loire Resistance wrote to each other to share the devastating news. They had enjoyed nearly forty years of freedom since spending a mere couple of months in Virginia’s presence in 1944. But the warrior they called La Madone had shown them hope, comradeship, courage, and the way to be the best version of themselves, and they had never forgotten. In the midst of hardship and fear, she had shared with them a fleeting but glorious state of happiness and the most vivid moment of their lives. The last of those famous Diane Irregulars—the ever-boyish Gabriel Eyraud, her chouchou—passed away in 2017 while I was researching Virginia’s story. Until the end of his days, he and the others who had known Virginia on the plateau liked to pause now and then to think of the woman in khaki who never, ever gave up on freedom. When they talked with awe and affection of her incredible exploits, they smiled and looked up at the wide, open skies with “les étoiles dans les yeux.
”
”
Sonia Purnell (A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II)
“
Bright lamplight bounced off golden varnished wood. The suddenly vivid colors of scarves, hats, hair and faces after the gray-green gloom they’d been immersed in all morning dazzled them. The solid warmth of the coal-fired range, dry and hot, pressed against them from the front as the lingering damp embedded in their backs brought forth a final, convulsive shiver. The sights and smells of rich food and aromatic coffee hit them, no longer just a hope in their hollow stomachs. This made them all as if drunk with good fortune and delighted them with sheer, physical pleasure.
”
”
Antonio Dias
“
What does
this F. — I.W. mean?”
“Initial-slang,” informed Baines. “Made correct
by common usage. It has become a worldwide
motto. You’ll see it all over the place if you haven’t
noticed it already.”
“I have seen it here and there but attached no importance
to it and thought nothing more about it. I
remember now that it was inscribed in several places
including Seth’s and the fire depot.”
“It was on the sides of that bus we couldn’t
empty,” put in Gleed. “It didn’t mean anything to
me.”
“It means plenty,” said Jeff. “Freedom — I
Won’t!”
“That kills me,” Gleed responded. “I’m stone
dead already. I’ve dropped in my tracks.” He
watched Harrison thoughtfully pocketing the plaque.
“A piece of abracadabra. What a weapon!”
“Ignorance is bliss,” asserted Baines, strangely
sure of himself. “Especially when you don’t know
that what you’re playing with is the safety catch of
something that goes bang.”
“All right,” challenged Gleed, taking him up on
that. “Tell us how it works.”
“I won’t.” Baines’ grin reappeared. He seemed to
be highly satisfied about something.
“That’s a fat lot of help.” Gleed felt let down, especially
over that momentary hoped-for reward.
“You brag and boast about a one-way weapon, toss
across a slip of stuff with three letters on it and then
go dumb. Any folly will do for braggarts and any
braggart can talk through the seat of his pants. How
about backing up your talk?”
“I won’t,” repeated Baines, his grin broader than
ever. He gave the onlooking Harrison a fat, significant
wink.
It made something spark vividly within Harrison’s
mind. His jaw dropped, he dragged the plaque from
his pocket and stared at it as if seeing it for the first
time.
“Give it back to me,” requested Baines, watching
him.
Replacing it in his pocket, Harrison said very
firmly, “I won’t.”
Baines chuckled.
“Some people catch on quicker than others.
”
”
Eric Frank Russell (. . . And Then There Were None)
“
And doesn't a writer do the same thing? Isn't she knitting together scraps of dreams? She hunts down the most vivid details and links them in sequences that will let a reader see, smell, and hear a world that seems complete in itself; she builds a stage set and painstakingly hides all the struts and wires and nail holes, then stands back and hopes whoever might come to see it will believe....A journal entry is for a its writer; it helps its writer refine, perceive, and process the world. But a story - a finished pieces of writing - is for its reader; it should help its reader refine, perceive, and process the world...
”
”
Anthony Doerr (Four Seasons in Rome: On Twins, Insomnia, and the Biggest Funeral in the History of the World)
“
Presumably, it won’t be only one way. Even before the age of climate change, the literature of conservation furnished many metaphors to choose from. James Lovelock gave us the Gaia hypothesis, which conjured an image of the world as a single, evolving quasi-biological entity. Buckminster Fuller popularized “spaceship earth,” which presents the planet as a kind of desperate life raft in what Archibald MacLeish called “the enormous, empty night”; today, the phrase suggests a vivid picture of a world spinning through the solar system barnacled with enough carbon capture plants to actually stall out warming, or even reverse it, restoring as if by magic the breathability of the air between the machines. The Voyager 1 space probe gave us the “Pale Blue Dot”—the inescapable smallness, and fragility, of the entire experiment we’re engaged in, together, whether we like it or not. Personally, I think that climate change itself offers the most invigorating picture, in that even its cruelty flatters our sense of power, and in so doing calls the world, as one, to action. At least I hope it does. But that is another meaning of the climate kaleidoscope. You can choose your metaphor. You can’t choose the planet, which is the only one any of us will ever call home.
”
”
David Wallace-Wells (The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming)
“
Outside the study hall the next fall, the fall of our senior year, the Nabisco plant baked sweet white bread twice a week. If I sharpened a pencil at the back of the room I could smell the baking bread and the cedar shavings from the pencil.... Pretty soon all twenty of us - our class - would be leaving. A core of my classmates had been together since kindergarten. I'd been there eight years. We twenty knew by bored heart the very weave of each other's socks....
The poems I loved were in French, or translated from the Chinese, Portuguese, Arabic, Sanskrit, Greek. I murmured their heartbreaking sylllables. I knew almost nothing of the diverse and energetic city I lived in. The poems whispered in my ear the password phrase, and I memorized it behind enemy lines: There is a world. There is another world.
I knew already that I would go to Hollins College in Virginia; our headmistress sent all her problems there, to her alma mater. "For the English department," she told me.... But, "To smooth off her rough edges," she had told my parents. They repeated the phrase to me, vividly.
I had hopes for my rough edges. I wanted to use them as a can opener, to cut myself a hole in the world's surface, and exit through it. Would I be ground, instead, to a nub? Would they send me home, an ornament to my breed, in a jewelry bag?
”
”
Annie Dillard (An American Childhood)
“
There have been moments when writing this book has made me hopeful, but almost always I’ve felt rage or despair. You’ve been stealing those pleasures. Hope? Yes, but also rage and despair. Stealing? Not giving anything in return. Rage and despair are pleasures? The guiltiest. Why do you think New York magazine’s doomsday article about global warming went viral? People were suddenly ravenous for climate science? No, we were ravenous for a vivid description of our apocalypse. We’re drawn to it the same way we’re drawn to horror movies, car accidents, and the chaos of the current administration. And don’t pretend that the bleakest scenarios aren’t your favorite parts to write. I’m not pretending.
”
”
Jonathan Safran Foer (We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast)
“
Then, Zil and a half dozen of his crew swaggered into the plaza from the far side. Astrid clenched her jaw. Would the crowd turn on them? She almost hoped so. People thought because she wouldn’t let Sam go after Zil she must not really despise the Human Crew’s Leader. That was wrong. She hated Zil. Hated everything he had done and everything he had tried to do.
Edilio moved quickly between Zil and a few of the boys who had started toward him, sticks and knives at the ready.
Zil’s kids were armed with knives and bats, and so were those who wanted to take them on. Edilio was armed with an assault rifle.
Astrid hated that this was what life so often came down to: my weapon is bigger than your weapon.
If Sam were here it would be about his hands. Everyone had either seen what Sam could do, or heard the stories retold in vivid detail. No one challenged Sam.
”
”
Michael Grant (Lies (Gone, #3))
“
Anderson!" he snapped murderously, "if you can tear your attention from Miss Danner's bust, the rest of us will be able to finish this meeting." Lauren flushed a vivid pink, but the elderly Anderson turned a purple hue that might be indicative of an impending stroke.
As soon as the last staff member had filed out of the conference room, Lauren ignored Mary's warning look and turned furiously on Nick. "I hope you're satisfied!" she hissed furiously. "You not only humiliated me, you nearly gave that poor old man a heart attack.What do you plan to do for an encore?"
"Fire the first woman who opens her mouth," Nick retorted coldly. He walked around her and strode out of the conference room.
Outraged past all reason, Lauren started after him, but Mary stopped her. "Don't argue with him," she said, gazing after Nick with a beatific smile on her face. She looked as if she had just witnessed a miracle. "In his present mood he'd fire you, and he'd regret that for the rest of his life.
”
”
Judith McNaught (Double Standards)
“
The two men, unable to see each other, kept silent till the lighter, slipping before the fitful breeze, passed out between almost invisible headlands into the still deeper darkness of the gulf. For a time the lantern on the jetty shone after them. The wind failed, then fanned up again, but so faintly that the big, half-decked boat slipped along with no more noise than if she had been suspended in the air.
‘We are out in the gulf now,’ said the calm voice of Nostromo. A moment after he added, ‘Señor Mitchell has lowered the light.’
‘Yes,’ said Decoud; ‘nobody can find us now.’
A great recrudescence of obscurity embraced the boat. The sea in the gulf was as black as the clouds above. Nostromo, after striking a couple of matches to get a glimpse of the boat-compass he had with him in the lighter, steered by the feel of the wind on his cheek.
It was a new experience for Decoud, this mysteriousness of the great waters spread out strangely smooth, as if their restlessness had been crushed by the weight of that dense night. The Placido was sleeping profoundly under its black ponho.
The main thing now for success was to get away from the coast and gain the middle of the gulf before day broke. The Isabels were somewhere at hand. ‘On your left as you look forward, señor,’ said Nostromo suddenly. When his voice ceased, the enormous stillness, without light or sound, seemed to affect Decoud’s senses like a powerful drug. He didn’t even know at times whether he were asleep or awake. Like a man lost in slumber, he heard nothing, he saw nothing. Even his hand held before his face did not exist for his eyes. The change from the agitation, the passions and the dangers, from the sights and sounds of the shore, was so complete that it would have resembled death had it not been for the survival of his thoughts. In this foretaste of eternal peace they floated vivid and light, like unearthly clear dreams of earthly things that may haunt the souls freed by death from the misty atmosphere of regrets and hopes. Decoud shook himself, shuddered a bit, though the air that drifted past him was warm. He had the strangest sensation of his soul having just returned into his body from the circumambient darkness in which land, sea, sky, the mountains, and the rocks were as if they had not been.
”
”
Joseph Conrad (Nostromo)
“
Be all right, Nina willed silently, hoping her thoughts could somehow cut through the air, speed over the waters of the Ketterdam harbors, and reach her friend. Stay safe and whole and wait for us. Nina hadn’t been on Vellgeluk when Van Eck had taken Inej hostage. She’d still been trying to purge the parem from her body, caught in the haze of suffering that had begun on the voyage from Djerholm. She told herself to be grateful for the memory of that misery, every shaking, aching, vomiting minute of it. The shame of Matthias witnessing it all, holding back her hair, dabbing her brow, restraining her as gently as he could as she argued, cajoled, screamed at him for more parem. She made herself remember every terrible thing she’d said, every wild pleasure offered, each insult or accusation she’d hurled at him. You enjoy watching me suffer. You want me to beg, don’t you? How long have you been waiting to see me like this? Stop punishing me, Matthias. Help me. Be good to me and I’ll be good to you. He’d absorbed it all in stoic silence. She clutched tight to those memories. She needed them as vivid and bright and cringe-inducing as possible to fight her hunger for the drug. She never wanted to be like that again.
”
”
Leigh Bardugo (Crooked Kingdom (Six of Crows, #2))
“
I hope to address and satisfactorily answer a number of issues throughout this scroll, namely, how I should elect to live out the remainder of my life. What qualities should I incorporate into my personhood and what noxious characteristics must I jettison from an evolving personal character? Questions that establish the spine of this scroll include does a person need the bookends of both faith and hope to bracket personal survival? Should I take a vow of poverty, chastity, and public service, and seek to live an honorable life based upon the principles of loyalty and courage? Must a person clasp vivid dreams close to their heart? Must a person stalk their personal calling with all their ferocity and resolve to hang onto the slender stalk of wispy wishes with all their might? Alternatively, should a person resolve to accept a life free from all forms of wanting? Can I discover a way to live in a supple way? Should I invest diminishing personal resources into self-discovery? Should I intensely search out the tenderest spot in my being? Do I dare plunge into the affectionate pulse that fills my innermost cavities with glowing warmth towards humanity? Given that death is inevitable, should I disdain failure, because how can anyone fail at living while pursuing the beam cast by the interior flash of their incandescent light? While many of these questions might prove elusive or unanswerable, the act of questioning has independent value.
”
”
Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)
“
Beautiful,” said Amar.
“I found it gruesome,” I said, shivering.
Amar rose and walked to where I stood.
“I was not talking about the story.”
“Oh.”
“Why do you like such a gruesome tale?”
In Bharata, we were taught that it was a tale of the god’s might. But I saw another story within it: the play of interpretation that turned something terrifying and iron-clad into something that could be conquered. I was reminded of the star room where Amar had taken me only days ago. The story was like a different way of seeing.
“It gave me hope…that maybe there was some way around the horoscope. It was a lesson in language too, almost like a riddle…”
Amar stared at me and then he laughed.
“Only my queen would find hope in horror.” He took my hand in his and his gaze was burning. “You are my hope and more.”
“What does that make you? My horror?”
“And more,” he said.
All I saw were his eyes. Velvet dark. The kind of umbra that shadows envy. Amar stared at me and his gaze was desperate with hope. Reckless. I should’ve stopped. I should’ve stepped away. But I didn’t. I leaned forward, and a soft growl--like surrender--escaped his throat. He dug his fingers into my back and pulled me into a kiss.
Amar’s kiss was furious. No heat. Just lightning. Or maybe that was what his touch teased out of me--vivid streaks of light, dusk and all her violent glory. I was lost. I leaned into his kiss and the world around us peeled into nothing. I felt like I could stand over chasms empty of time, and this moment, like a chain of soft-blooming stars, would still be ours.
We kissed until we couldn’t breathe. And then we kissed until we needed the touch of one another like breath itself.
”
”
Roshani Chokshi (The Star-Touched Queen (The Star-Touched Queen, #1))
“
No one waited in line at the counter, thanks to Dagon and Eliana’s tardy entry.
“Morning, Kusgan,” she trilled when the elder Segonian stepped up to the counter.
Kusgan greeted her with a wide smile. “And how are you today, ni’má?”
“Hungry,” she declared. “What do you have for me? Something spicy, I hope?”
“Indeed.” When Kusgan turned his attention to Dagon, his eyes sparkled with amusement as though he had guessed just how and with whom she had worked up an appetite. “And for you, Commander?”
“The usual.”
His lips twitched. “A larger portion perhaps?”
Dagon laughed. “I would appreciate that, yes.”
Heat crept up her neck to her cheeks. As Kusgan turned away and headed into the kitchen, she leaned closer to Dagon and whispered, “Am I blushing? Because I feel like he’s guessed why I’m so hungry and you’re all smiles this morning.”
He regarded her cheeks with a grin. “Yes, you’re blushing.”
Groaning, she brought her hands up to cover her face. “Curse my pale skin,” she grumbled. “It won’t let me hide anything.”
“Would it make you feel better if Iblushed?”
She peeked up at him through her fingers. And as she watched, his cheeks flushed a vivid pink, demonstrating anew his ability to change his coloring at will.
Laughing in delight, she dropped her hands. “Yes!” Then she poked him in the chest as the heat in her own cheeks faded. “I dare you to walk around like that all day.”
Smiling, he abandoned the pink camouflage and let his face return to its natural color. “If I did, the men would get no work done because they’d all be too busy wondering what the srulyou did in bed that left me blushing for hours afterward.”
Eyes widening, she laughed. “You’re right. Don’t do it.
”
”
Dianne Duvall (The Segonian (Aldebarian Alliance, #2))
“
I came back around the outcropping and unrolled the mat on the sand. The silence that had fallen between Fiske and me since the night we stayed in Hylli was still there. Every glance and unspoken word echoed within it.
“You should go with him.”
I reached into the back of my belt and pulled his knife from where it was tucked under my tunic. I held it out to him.
He looked at it. “Am I going to need this?”
“I hope not.” If something happened and Fiske killed an Aska, it would be my responsibility. And it would be the end of any hope to join together.
He stepped toward me but instead of reaching for the knife, his hand landed on my wrist. His fingers wrapped around my arm and my pulse quickened. “You need to be careful.” The fever building under my skin burned where he was touching me. “If the Aska think you’re protecting me, they won’t trust you.” His fingers pressed deeper. “You need them to trust you, Eelyn. We both do.”
I looked down at his hand on me and then up to his face. It brought that moment in Aurvanger back so vividly. The moment I first saw him, standing in the fog, his sword drawn.
“Why did you come?” I whispered, asking again.
“The same reason you just told your father that you were sleeping here.” He took another step closer and every muscle in my body tightened, waiting. “You don’t really want to know why.” His hand slid down my arm to the knife and he took it, reaching behind him to tuck it into his belt. “And right now, it doesn’t matter.”
He was right. I wasn’t ready to hear him say it. I wasn’t even ready to let myself think it. I didn’t have the room in my thoughts for trying to figure out what it meant and all that it would bring. Because we could all be dead in the next few days.
”
”
Adrienne Young (Sky in the Deep (Sky and Sea, #1))
“
Only once in your life, I truly believe, you find someone who can completely turn your world around. You tell them things that you’ve never shared with another soul and they absorb everything you say and actually want to hear more. You share hopes for the future, dreams that will never come true, goals that were never achieved and the many disappointments life has thrown at you. When something wonderful happens, you can’t wait to tell them about it, knowing they will share in your excitement. They are not embarrassed to cry with you when you are hurting or laugh with you when you make a fool of yourself. Never do they hurt your feelings or make you feel like you are not good enough, but rather they build you up and show you the things about yourself that make you special and even beautiful. There is never any pressure, jealousy or competition but only a quiet calmness when they are around. You can be yourself and not worry about what they will think of you because they love you for who you are. The things that seem insignificant to most people such as a note, song or walk become invaluable treasures kept safe in your heart to cherish forever. Memories of your childhood come back and are so clear and vivid it’s like being young again. Colours seem brighter and more brilliant. Laughter seems part of daily life where before it was infrequent or didn’t exist at all. A phone call or two during the day helps to get you through a long day’s work and always brings a smile to your face. In their presence, there’s no need for continuous conversation, but you find you’re quite content in just having them nearby. Things that never interested you before become fascinating because you know they are important to this person who is so special to you. You think of this person on every occasion and in everything you do. Simple things bring them to mind like a pale blue sky, gentle wind or even a storm cloud on the horizon. You open your heart knowing that there’s a chance it may be broken one day and in opening your heart, you experience a love and joy that you never dreamed possible. You find that being vulnerable is the only way to allow your heart to feel true pleasure that’s so real it scares you. You find strength in knowing you have a true friend and possibly a soul mate who will remain loyal to the end. Life seems completely different, exciting and worthwhile. Your only hope and security is in knowing that they are a part of your life.”
― Bob Marley
”
”
Bob Marley
“
In Mississippi, where I lived from 1967 to 1974, people who challenged the system anticipated menace, battery, even murder, every day. In this context, I sometimes felt ashamed that my contributions at the time were not more radical. I taught in two local black colleges, I wrote about the Movement, and I created tiny history booklets which were used to teach the teachers of children enrolled in Head Start. And, of course, I was interracially married, which was illegal. It was perhaps in Mississippi during those years that I understood how the daily news of disaster can become, for the spirit, a numbing assault, and that one's own activism, however modest, fighting against this tide of death, provides at least the possibility of generating a different kind of "news." A "news" that empowers rather that defeats.
There is always a moment in any kind of struggle when one feels in full bloom. Vivid. Alive. One might be blown to bits in such a moment and still be at peace. Martin Luther King, Jr., at the mountaintop. Gandhi dying with the name of God on his lips. Sojourner Truth baring her breasts at a women's rights convention in 1851. Harriet Tubman exposing her revolver to some of the slaves she had freed, who, fearing an unknown freedom, looks longingly backward to their captivity, thereby endangering the freedom of all. To be such a person or to witness anyone at this moment of transcendent presence is to know that what is human is linked, by a daring compassion, to what is divine. During my years of being close to people engaged in changing the world I have seen fear turn into courage. Sorrow into joy. Funerals into celebrations. Because whatever the consequences, people, standing side by side, have expressed who they really are, and that ultimately they believe in the love of the world and each other enough *to be that* - which is the foundation of activism.
It has become a common feeling, I believe, as we have watched our heroes falling over the years, that our own small stone of activism, which might not seem to measure up to the rugged boulders of heroism we have so admired, is a paltry offering toward the building of an edifice of hope. Many who believe this choose to withhold their offerings out of shame.
This is the tragedy of our world.
For we can do nothing substantial toward changing our course on the planet, a destructive one, without rousing ourselves, individual by individual, and bringing our small, imperfect stones to the pile.
In this regard, I have a story to tell.
”
”
Alice Walker (Anything We Love Can Be Saved)
“
믿고 주문해주세요~저희는 제품판매를 고객님들과 신용과신뢰의 거래로 하고있습니다.
24시간 문의상담과 서울 경기지방은 퀵으로도 가능합니다
믿고 주문하시면 좋은인연으로 vip고객님으로 모시겠습니다.
원하시는제품있으시면 추천상으로 구입문의 도와드릴수있습니다
현재까지 많은단골분들 모시고있구요 단골분들 추천으로구입하시는분들에게는 저희가 사은품 넉넉히 챙겨드리고있습니다
☆100%정품보장
☆총알배송
☆투명한 가격
☆편한 상담
☆끝내주는 서비스
☆고객님 정보 보호
☆깔끔한 거래
카톡【pak6】 텔레:【JRJR331】텔레:【TTZZZ6】라인【TTZZ6】
Only once in your life, I truly believe, you find someone who can completely turn your world around. You tell them things that you’ve never shared with another soul and they absorb everything you say and actually want to hear more. You share hopes for the future, dreams that will never come true, goals that were never achieved and the many disappointments life has thrown at you. When something wonderful happens, you can’t wait to tell them about it, knowing they will share in your excitement. They are not embarrassed to cry with you when you are hurting or laugh with you when you make a fool of yourself. Never do they hurt your feelings or make you feel like you are not good enough, but rather they build you up and show you the things about yourself that make you special and even beautiful. There is never any pressure, jealousy or competition but only a quiet calmness when they are around. You can be yourself and not worry about what they will think of you because they love you for who you are. The things that seem insignificant to most people such as a note, song or walk become invaluable treasures kept safe in your heart to cherish forever. Memories of your childhood come back and are so clear and vivid it’s like being young again. Colours seem brighter and more brilliant. Laughter seems part of daily life where before it was infrequent or didn’t exist at all. A phone call or two during the day helps to get you through a long day’s work and always brings a smile to your face. In their presence, there’s no need for continuous conversation, but you find you’re quite content in just having them nearby. Things that never interested you before become fascinating because you know they are important to this person who is so special to you. You think of this person on every occasion and in everything you do. Simple things bring them to mind like a pale blue sky, gentle wind or even a storm cloud on the horizon. You open your heart knowing that there’s a chance it may be broken one day and in opening your heart, you experience a love and joy that you never dreamed possible. You find that being vulnerable is the only way to allow your heart to feel true pleasure that’s so real it scares you. You find strength in knowing you have a true friend and possibly a soul mate who will remain loyal to the end. Life seems completely different, exciting and worthwhile. Your only hope and security is in knowing that they are a part of your life.
♥경영항목♥
수면제,여성최음제,ghb애더럴,여성흥분제,남성발기부전치유제,비아그라,시알리스,88정,99정,정력제,남성성기확대제,카마그라젤,비닉스,센돔,남성조루방지제,네노마정,러쉬파퍼,등많은제품판매하고있습니다
애더럴 효능,애더럴 복용법,애더럴 정품구입,애더럴 구입방법,애더럴 구매,애더럴 판매,애더럴 파는곳,애더럴 구매방법,애더럴 효과,애더럴 복용법,애더럴 부작용,애더럴 지속시간,애더럴 약효,애더럴 구입,애더럴 가격,애더럴 파는곳
”
”
애더럴구입처구매
“
I doubt if the effect of witnessing a total eclipse ever quite passes away. The impression is singularly vivid and quieting for days, and can never be wholly lost. A startling nearness to the gigantic forces of nature and their inconceivable operation seems to have been established. Personalities and towns and cities, and hates and jealousies, and even mundane hopes, grow very small and very far away.
”
”
Mabel Loomis Todd (Total Eclipses Of The Sun)
“
All meditators who practice shamatha Have powerful experiences, vivid and clear, And are happy, thinking that experience is vipashyana.*10 But when the vipashyana of dharmakaya at the time of death is needed, Mother and child luminosity do not meet. That shamatha from before won’t help at death, And again, they’ll be trapped in the animal realm. Upasaka son, supreme protector,*11 now listen! When resting evenly in meditation with the points of body, If appearances cease and you are without thoughts, These are the doings of a lethargic shamatha. But when you rouse yourself with mindfulness, It’s like a candle, self-luminous and shining bright, Or like a flower that’s naturally vivid and clear. Like looking with your eyes at the glow of the sky, Awareness-emptiness is naked, open, and clear. That nonconceptuality that’s luminous and clear Is the arising of the shamatha experience. On the basis of that meditative experience, While supplicating the precious jewels, Gain certainty by studying and contemplating the dharma. Take the vipashyana that brings the understanding of no self And tie the sturdy rope of shamatha to that.*12 Then that strong noble being with love and compassion Through the mighty strength of rousing bodhichitta to benefit others, Having been lifted up with a pure aspiration To the completely pure path of seeing, There, vipashyana directly realizes the purity that cannot be seen And then the faults of mind’s hopes and fears will be known. Without going anywhere, you’ll arrive at the Buddha’s ground. Without looking at anything, you’ll see dharmakaya. Without achieving anything, your aim will be spontaneously accomplished. My upasaka son, work with mind like this.
”
”
Tsangnyön Heruka (The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa: A New Translation)
“
Writers are scribes of the human experience. To write about life we must see it and feel it, and in a way that eludes most … we are alive in a way that others are not. We are all about meaning. About subtext. We notice what others don’t. If the purpose of the human experience is to immerse ourselves in growth and enlightenment, moving closer and closer to whatever spiritual truth you seek - hopefully have a few laughs and a few tears along the way - wearing the nametag of a writer makes that experience more vivid. We’re hands-on with life, and in the process of committing our observations to the page we add value to it for others.
”
”
Larry Brooks (Story Engineering)
“
wanting to create a monument to Shakespeare in the US capital. “The poet is one of our best sources, one of the wells from which we Americans draw our national thought, our faith, and our hope,” Emily Folger explained, drawing on a strain of American literary criticism that saw Shakespeare, paradoxically, as America’s poet. He had influenced the founding fathers, who saw in his villains and tyrants the dangers of monarchy and the need for institutional checks on power. Shakespeare’s history plays heralded the “inauguration of modern democracy,” Walt Whitman wrote, for they put “on record the first full exposé—and by far the most vivid one… of the political theory and results” of a feudal system “which America has come on earth to abnegate and replace.
”
”
Elizabeth Winkler (Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies: How Doubting the Bard Became the Biggest Taboo in Literature)
“
I followed shortly after, but even a long, hot shower didn’t bring on the sleep I’d really hoped for. Quite simply, I had too much on my mind. So much that it raced from one problem to another, in a vicious cycle that had me tossing and turning in between small bouts of sleep with vivid, strange dreams. I awakened feeling more tired than I had when I’d gone to bed, and that was saying a lot given the day I’d had before.
”
”
Jana Deleon (Soldiers of Fortune (Miss Fortune Mystery, #6))
“
Whether it was brief
moments shared or being connected through
his thoughts, he couldn't release himself from
thoughts of her. Even as years passed and his
hope and desire waned, memories of their
shared experiences lingered vividly in his
mind.
”
”
Khuzema Ahmed (I Saw The Devil)
“
I hoped when she died that she might continue to exist inside my head, and she sort of does. I can see her vividly, but she never speaks unless it’s a replay of a memory. Because I am the one who would have to generate what she says now, and I know that any words I put into her mouth wouldn’t be hers. Just mine in disguise. Somehow that’s more depressing than her not talking at all.
”
”
Sarah Adler (Mrs. Nash's Ashes)
“
It wrenches us out of the present, leading to a life spent leaning into the future, worrying about whether things will work out, experiencing everything in terms of some later, hoped-for benefit, so that peace of mind never quite arrives. And it makes it all but impossible to experience ‘deep time’, that sense of timeless time which depends on forgetting the abstract yardstick and plunging back into the vividness of reality instead.
”
”
Oliver Burkeman (Four Thousand Weeks: Time and How to Use It)
“
There is a soul weariness that comes with caring. From daily doing business with the handiwork of fear. Sometimes it lives at the edges of one's life, brushing against hope and barely making its presence known. At other times, it comes crashing in, overtaking one with its vivid images of another's terror with its profound demands for attention; nightmares, strange fears, and generalized hopelessness.
”
”
Beth Hudnall Stamm
“
Consider the author. Living or dead, they have all done the same thing: laid down word after word, making a story. They have many ways of doing it. Some create a story as though they are knitting a scarf. One stitch is made from the last. Quietly, slowly, through work and patience, a book – a scarf – grows. Some authors create their stories in a frenzy of activity, short and sharp and frantic, as though they and their idea are lovers reunited. Some treat their work with caution, and do not so much write as listen, sometimes for years, for whispers and words to set down. Some authors begin with a blueprint they have laboured over; others are chasing a thought or a feeling down on to the page; others yet write while hoping to excise the thing that squats in their belly and makes them separate to everyone else, however hard they try to fit in. There are authors who write for a ravenous, waiting public, and authors who put down word after word with no expectation that their work will ever be seen by someone else. The result is the same. There is a book in your hand. Behind it – maybe centuries behind it – stands an author. When you read their first sentence, you are completing their work. Not all authors care about readers. Some of them write for the good of their own souls, and some of them, for all of their vivid imaginings, could never see their work being published. But for others, many others, your gaze on the page of words they have written is the manifestation of a dream. Thank you.
”
”
Stephanie Butland (Found in a Bookshop)
“
I hope no great sorrow ever will come to you, Anne,” said Gilbert, who could not connect the idea of sorrow with the vivid, joyous creature beside him, unwitting that those who can soar to the highest heights can also plunge to the deepest depths, and that the natures which enjoy most keenly are those which also suffer most sharply.
”
”
L.M. Montgomery (Anne of the Island (Anne of Green Gables, #3))
“
To see where the psychedelic revolution really started, we have to go back to April 16, 1943, when LSD's creator, Albert Hofmann, mixed a batch of the stuff that he had synthesized from rye fungus five years earlier. He was hoping to find a cure for the common migraine and decided to do more research with a substance he called ¨LSD-25.¨ While mixing it up, a small amount was absorbed through his fingertips. Notes in his diary record history's first acid trip:
[What overcame me was] a remarkable but not unpleasant state of intoxication . . . characterized by an intense stimulation of the imagination, an altered state of awareness of the world. As I lay in a dazed condition with eyes closed there surged up from me a succession of fantastic, rapidly changing imagery of a striking reality and depth, alternating with a vivid, kaleidoscopic play of colors. This condition gradually passed off after about three hours.
”
”
Paul Perry
“
It's in our fear and despair that God shows Himself most vividly.
”
”
Michael Winstell (Serenity Hope (He Calls Me by Name Book 1))
“
She wondered how her girlhood home had fared. Did the walls (a combination of mud and plywood) still smell like life? Did vivid leaves still shimmer through the windows (little more than pane-less holes) like hope? Did rain still tap-dance on the roof (a rusty sheet of corrugated metal) like joy?
”
”
Marc Arginteanu
“
The child who finds his outer world frustrating turns inwards, and he turns his own mind into 'a place to live in' instead of using it as 'an active function to live with'. He starts doing his living in imagination, in phantasy, not in fact. He peoples his inner world with good and bad objects whom he hopes he can manipulate at will. He seeks what he wants inside in phantasied satisfactions. This is based on the capacity to hallucinate satisfactions so vividly (as in dreams) that emotionally they can substitute for a time for outer reality. Unfortunately, in this process, he sets up 'bad' as well as 'good' figures inside, and perpetuates disturbance. The inner world then becomes the enduring though repressed and unconscious structure of the dynamic personality, which is filled with conflict and self-frustration. Over the top of this at the level of consciousness, a superficial personality constructed mainly of social adjustments, and functioning without much real mature feeling, carries on the business of outer life in a way that is far more automatic than is usually recognized.
”
”
Harry Guntrip (Personality Structure and Human Interaction: The Developing Synthesis of Psychodynamic Theory (Maresfield Library))
“
Poetry to Wordsworth was the "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings". He believed that it could not be composed under duress. It was a matter of feeling and mood. It flowed out naturally from the poet's heart. He further added that it could not be made to flow through artificially laid pipes.
It is essentially a matter of expressing powerful feelings. felt in the heart and not generated in the mind. It is connected with feelings. A poet is not an ordinary man speaking to man. He thinks long and deeply. He differs from his fellowmen only in degree. He communicates his experience and communicates in such a way as to give pleasure.
The function of poetry is to ennoble and edify. The poet is a teacher and through the medium of poetry he imparts moral lessons for the betterment of human life. Poetry, in this sense, is an instrument for the propagation of moral thoughts. It discovers truth-a truth not to be attained by any sort of intellectual elaboration, but by a purging of the eye, an intense and rare simplicity of outlook.
Modern poetry, on the other hand, deals with new thoughts and new forms. There are the new values of modern art and its new ways. There is new vitality, for modern poetry has the rhythm of life its throb of joy, its hush of pain, its infinity of experience. The modern poet does not take us on a perpetual joy, because that gets on our nerves. Instead we are welcome to walk with him on the more human roads, stony and dismal like asphalt and tediously endless like life.
This collection of poems is a colourful presentation of the various facets of life. It draws vivid pictures of the beauties of nature, men and women, joys and sorrows, life and its reflections and fun and laughter.
It is confidently hoped that the reading of the poems will have a positive bearing on the minds of the young readers. They will begin to understand the full meaning of life.
”
”
Michael Shane Calvert (The Golden Lyre (A Collection of Poems))
“
I hope no great sorrow ever will come to you, Anne, said Gilbert, who could not connect the idea of sorrow with the vivid, joyous creature beside him, unwitting that those who can soar to the highest heights can also plunge to the deepest depths, and that the natures which enjoy most keenly are those which also suffer most sharply.
”
”
L.M. Montgomery (Anne of the Island: The Classic Anne of Green Gables Series, Book 3)
“
As I stated earlier, I do not believe there is anything inherently wrong with even the most overused elements of epic fantasy. Magic swords, dragons, destined heroes -- even dark lords and ultimate evils can legitimately be used in literature of serious intent, not just mocked in satirical meta-fiction. To claim that they cannot would be much the same as claiming that nothing good can ever again be done with fiction involving detectives, or young lovers, or unhappy families. The value of a fictive element is not an inherent quality, but a contextual one, determined by its relationship to the other elements of the story it is embedded in.
In other words, whether a scene in which a dragon is introduced is affecting, amusing, or agonizingly dull depends primarily on the choices made by the scene's author. I say "primarily" because dragons have appeared in thousands of stories over the centuries, and almost any reader may be presumed to have been exposed to at least one such. The reader's reaction will naturally be influenced by how they feel this new dragon compares to the dragons which they have been introduced to in the past. (Favorably, one would hope. A dragon must learn to make a good first impression if it is to do well in this life.) Such variables are out of the author's control, as are any unreasoning prejudices against dragons on the part of the reader. All that can be done is to make the dragon as vivid and well-suited for its purpose as is possible. If all the elements of fantasy and fiction in a work are fitted to their purposes and combine to create a moving story set in a convincing world, that work will presumably be a masterpiece.
”
”
Alec Austin
“
struggle is the best teacher and paves the way for future successes. The story of the butterfly’s cocoon illustrates this point vividly: A boy found a butterfly’s cocoon in his garden one day. Next day, he noticed that a small opening had appeared. For several hours, he watched patiently while the butterfly struggled to force itself out through the little hole. Then it stopped struggling, almost as if it could go no further. Deciding to help the butterfly, the boy used a pair of scissors to snip the remaining bit of the cocoon and the butterfly emerged easily. Something was rather strange though. The butterfly had a swollen body and shrivelled wings. The boy continued to wait expectantly, hoping that at any moment the butterfly’s wings would expand to support its body and the body would contract. Neither event happened. In fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and deformed wings, never able to fly. What the boy in his kindness and haste did not understand was that the restricting cocoon and the resultant struggle required for the butterfly to get out are Nature’s way of forcing fluid from the butterfly’s body into its wings so that it is ready for flight after achieving freedom from the cocoon. Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in life.
”
”
Ashwin Sanghi (13 Steps to Bloody Good Luck)
“
The second time wearing the suit was a little less nerve-racking. I didn’t stare nervously in the mirror and eye all the pale skin glaring back at me. Instead, I appreciated the vivid coloring on the suit. Rachel had good taste. Intent on finding the beach towels Rachel had used, I opened the door and stopped short at the sight of Clay. His huge dog head moved up, then down, as his eyes traveled the length of my body. I flushed, slammed the door, and changed back into shorts and a tank top. I opted to cut the grass, instead. Clay sat on the porch and watched me push the mower back and forth. When I moved to the front, he followed. He was never in the way, just always there. After I went back inside to read, he did disappear for a bit. He had apparently taken my complaint about his hygiene seriously and had chosen to shower again. I hoped he would make it a daily routine. Since he’d bathed and given me privacy as I’d asked, I had no reason to complain when I went to my room that night and saw him lying on the foot of the bed. However, when I woke Wednesday morning with him lying next to me, I did complain. Lividly. “Now, just hold on,” I whispered with a scowl. “You’re a dog. Act like one. Fur stays at the foot of the bed.” He grudgingly moved to his place at the foot of the bed, watching me the whole time. “Don’t give me your doleful eyes. This is your choice, not mine.” As soon as I said that, I recalled his talent for misinterpretation which had caused this co-ed housing in the first place. “Not that you’d get to sleep next to me in your skin either. So, don’t even think about it. If you don’t like the end of the bed, you can always sleep on the floor.” *
”
”
Melissa Haag (Hope(less) (Judgement of the Six #1))
“
My Everest story would be incomplete if I didn’t give final credit to the Sherpas who had risked their lives alongside us every day.
Pasang and Ang-Sering still climb together as best friends, under the direction of their Sirdar boss--Kami. The Khumba Icefall specialist, Nima, still carries out his brave task in the jumbled ice maze at the foot of the mountain: repairing and fixing the route through.
Babu Chiri, who so bravely helped Mick when he ran out of oxygen under the South Summit, was tragically killed in a crevasse in the Western Cwm several years later. He was a Sherpa of many years’ Everest experience, and was truly one of the mountain’s greats. It was a huge loss to the mountaineering fraternity.
But if you play the odds long enough you will eventually lose. That is the harsh reality of high-altitude mountaineering.
You can’t keep on top of the world forever.
Geoffrey returned to the army, and Neil to his business. His toes never regained their feeling, but he avoided having them amputated. But as they say, Everest always charges some sort of a price, and in his own words--he got lucky.
As for Mick, he describes his time on Everest well: “In the three months I was away, I was both happier than ever before, and more scared than I ever hope to be again.”
Ha. That’s also high-altitude mountaineering for you.
Thengba, my friend, with whom I spent so much time alone at camp two, was finally given a hearing aid by Henry. Now, for the first time, he can hear properly.
Despite our different worlds, we shared a common bond with these wonderful Sherpa men--a friendship that was forged by an extraordinary mountain.
Once, when the climber Julius Kugy was asked what sort of person a mountaineer should be, he replied: “Truthful, distinguished, and modest.”
All these Sherpas epitomize this. I made the top with them, and because of their help, I owe them more than I can say.
The great Everest writer Walt Unsworth, in his book Everest: The Mountaineering History, gives a vivid description of the characters of the men and women who pit their all on the mountain.
I think it is bang on the money:
But there are men for whom the unattainable has a special attraction.
Usually they are not experts: their ambitions and fantasies are strong enough to brush aside the doubts which more cautious men might have.
Determination and faith are their strongest weapons.
At best such men are regarded as eccentric; at worst, mad…
Three things they all had in common: faith in themselves, great determination, and endurance.
If I had to sum up what happened on that journey for me, from the hospital bed to the summit of the world, I tend to think of it as a stumbling journey.
Of losing my confidence and my strength--then refinding it. Of seeing my hope and my faith slip away--and then having them rekindled.
Ultimately, if I had to pass on one message to my children it would be this: Fortune favors the brave.
Most of the time.
”
”
Bear Grylls (Mud, Sweat and Tears)
“
For the first phase of American history, “hope was chiefly expressed through a Christian story that gave meaning to suffering and pleasure alike and promised deliverance from death.” But then, under the influence of Enlightenment rationality, belief in God and the supernatural began to weaken among cultural elites. Instead of finding ultimate hope in the kingdom of God, Americans began to believe in the sacred calling of being the “greatest nation on earth,” one that would show the rest of the world the way to a better future for the human race. It essentially substituted a “deified nation” for God. There was no more vivid example of nationhood and citizenship than “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”: “As [Jesus] died to make men holy, let us die to make men free.
”
”
Timothy J. Keller (Making Sense of God: An Invitation to the Skeptical)
“
I'll never come to you willingly."
When he caught her hand, the jolt of heat threatened to blast his control to ashes. He drew her down beside him on the window seat. "I'd like the chance to convince you otherwise, bella."
When had her willingness become so important? Sometime since he'd kissed her and caught a hint of how sweet she'd be in his arms when she finally gave herself up.
She tried and failed to pull away. "Only a swaggering coxcomb would hope to change my mind in a mere week. I won't change my mind in a hundred years."
He fought another smile. Did she feel the vivid energy flickering between them? He couldn't believe he burned alone, for all she denied him with words. "You make the challenge so delicious."
"I'm not... flirting with you, Mr. Merrick. I'm pointing out you waste your time with this absurd scheme."
"In which case, you'll return to your sister none the worse," he said calmly, efficiently stripping her glove away. He ached to touch her skin.
The cynicism in her expression made her look older than her twenty-four years. "You don't for one moment expect to lose, do you?"
He raised her hand to his lips and pressed a fervent kiss to her soft palm. Her scent filled his head, intoxicating him like the finest wine. "I rely upon my fatal charm."
She tugged at her hand. Her cheeks were pink with outrage and what unfounded optimism read as grudging pleasure.
”
”
Anna Campbell (Seven Nights in a Rogue's Bed (Sons of Sin, #1))
“
He is heard only when we hope to hear Him, and if, thinking our hope to be fulfilled, we cease to speak, His silence ceases to be vivid and becomes dead, even though we recharge it with the echo of our own emotional noise.
”
”
Thomas Merton (Thoughts in Solitude)
“
We talked of a future life, of art, service, marriage, and education; nor did the idea ever occur to us that very possibly all we said was shocking nonsense. The reason why it never occurred to us was that the nonsense which we talked was good, sensible nonsense, and that, so long as one is young, one can appreciate good nonsense, and believe in it. In youth the powers of the mind are directed wholly to the future, and that future assumes such various, vivid, and alluring forms under the influence of hope — hope based, not upon the experience of the past, but upon an assumed possibility of happiness to come — that such dreams of expected felicity constitute in themselves the true happiness of that period of our life.
”
”
Leo Tolstoy (Delphi Complete Works of Leo Tolstoy)
“
Many Jewish texts, as well as OT hope in general, expected that in the end Israel would be restored to a place of great blessing (Jer. 16:15; 23:8; 31:27–34 [where the new covenant is mentioned]; Ezek. 34–37; Isa. 2:2–4; 49:6; Amos 9:11–15; Sir. 48:10; Ps. Sol. 17–18; 1 En. 24–25; Tob. 13–14; Eighteen Benedictions 14).[1] The question is a natural one for Jews who have embraced the messianic hope. Luke 1–2 expressed this hope vividly (1:69–74; 2:25, 38).
”
”
Darrell L. Bock (Acts (Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament))
“
I am tomorrow I wonder what the future holds. I hear rippling water that soothes me when things are not calm. I see the word success, big and bold. I want to see the world. I am Tomorrow I claim I already have what I know is yet to come. I feel apprehensive because change is something that I have to endure. I touch a black pen and make beautiful, vivid colors. I worry about inflation, war, revolution, a car, self-destruction, hate, hidden prejudices, my fate. I cry when I think I won’t see my mom anymore. I AM TOMORROW I understand that tomorrow is not promised. I say live like you’re trying to get your name on his list. I dream that I am happy, prosperous, and loved. I try to meet the world and greet them with a smile on my face. I hope that the weight on my shoulders will take off and fly like a dove. I am tomorrow
”
”
Ericka Davis (Through Mine Eyes: Life's Lessons Are Meant to Be Shared)
“
sonder (which John Koenig defines as “the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own”)
”
”
Lucy Williams (Solaced: 101 True Stories About Corsets, Well-Being, and Hope)
“
The more one lives alone on the river or in the open country, the clearer it becomes that nothing is more beautiful or great than to perform the ordinary duties of one's daily life simply and naturally. From the grasses in the field to the stars in the sky, each one is doing just that; and there is such profound peace and surpassing beauty in nature because none of these tries forcibly to transgress its limitations.
Yet what each one does is by no means of little moment. The grass has to put forth all its energy to draw sustenance from the uttermost tips of its rootlets simply to grow where it is as grass; it does not vainly strive to become a banyan tree; and so the earth gains a lovely carpet of green. And, indeed, what little of beauty and peace is to be found in the societies of men is owing to the daily performance of small duties, not to big doings and fine talk. Perhaps because the whole of our life is not vividly present at each moment, some imaginary hope may lure, some glowing picture of a future, untrammelled with everyday burdens, may tempt us; but these are illusory.
”
”
Rabindranath Tagore (Glimpses of Bengal)
“
No one ever inhabited the threshold more thoroughly than Kafka. On the threshold of happiness; of the beyond; of Canaan; of the door only open for us. On the threshold of escape, of transformation. Of an enormous and final understanding. No one made so much art of it. And yet if Kafka is never sinister or nihilistic, it's because to even reach the threshold requires a susceptibility to hope and vivid yearning. There is a door. There's a way up or over. It's just that one almost certainly won't manage to reach it, or recognize it, or pass through it in this life.
”
”
Nicole Krauss (Forest Dark)
“
How often, again, a person looks forward to some great event that will change the whole environment and interest of his life. A person anticipating such an event looks forward and plans and considers. He asks himself what effect this will produce upon his character: Will he be better or worse for it? Will it make him stronger or weaker? Will it draw out the spirit of sympathy or of antagonism? He imagines himself — and he has, perhaps, a very vivid imagination — in his new surroundings; he lives in them and brings all possible contingencies to bear upon himself that he may as much as possible gauge and measure himself so that he may not be taken unawares. At last the event so long anticipated comes to pass, and all the forecasts prove to be utterly wrong. The effect upon him is different altogether either from what he hoped it might be or feared it would be. The man placed in the setting of circumstances different from those which he had long been used to finds that he is utterly unlike what he had imagined himself to be. His hopes and fears were alike miscalculations. He had planned that the same man as had known himself to be should be in these new surroundings. There was to him, as he looked forward to the change, only one uncertain quantity, and that was the new material or moral or religious world in which he was to find himself. As to these, he had made no mistake; the mistake lay in supposing that he knew the person who was to be placed amid these circumstances. There he was completely mistaken. No sooner did the change take place than he found that he no longer knew the man. He was amazed to find himself wholly different from what he had imagined himself to be. New faults came to light; new virtues sprang to his defense; old temptations came to life in the new soil, and he found that the mere change of external things shows him to be altogether a different person from what he had thought.
”
”
Basil W. Maturin (Christian Self-Mastery)
“
The wise crow knows
I'm a child of the fall.
Copper and brass, gusty wind blows.
Vivid, cloudless skies, watch shivering naked trees stand tall.
Hope, sweet and eager, does rise
from rust-soaked vistas to shining eyes.
Here, to forever, my beating heart goes;
something the old crow already knows.
”
”
A.K. White (No Reason To Stay)
“
Only once in your life, I truly
believe, you find someone who
can completely turn your world
around. You tell them things that
you’ve never shared with another
soul and they absorb everything
you say and actually want to hear
more. You share hopes for the
future, dreams that will never
come true, goals that were never
achieved and the many
disappointments life has thrown
at you. When something
wonderful happens, you can’t
wait to tell them about it, knowing
they will share in your
excitement. They are not
embarrassed to cry with you
when you are hurting or laugh
with you when you make a fool of
yourself. Never do they hurt your
feelings or make you feel like you
are not good enough, but rather
they build you up and show you
the things about yourself that
make you special and even
beautiful. There is never any
pressure, jealousy or competition
but only a quiet calmness when
they are around. You can be
yourself and not worry about
what they will think of you
because they love you for who you
are. The things that seem
insignificant to most people such
as a note, song or walk become
invaluable treasures kept safe in
your heart to cherish forever.
Memories of your childhood come
back and are so clear and vivid
it’s like being young again.
Colours seem brighter and more
brilliant. Laughter seems part of
daily life where before it was
infrequent or didn’t exist at all. A
phone call or two during the day
helps to get you through a long
day’s work and always brings a
smile to your face. In their
presence, there’s no need for
continuous conversation, but you
find you’re quite content in just
having them nearby. Things that
never interested you before
become fascinating because you
know they are important to this
person who is so special to you.
You think of this person on every
occasion and in everything you
do. Simple things bring them to
mind like a pale blue sky, gentle
wind or even a storm cloud on the
horizon. You open your heart
knowing that there’s a chance it
may be broken one day and in
opening your heart, you
experience a love and joy that you
never dreamed possible. You find
that being vulnerable is the only
way to allow your heart to feel
true pleasure that’s so real it
scares you. You find strength in
knowing you have a true friend
and possibly a soul mate who will
remain loyal to the end. Life
seems completely different,
exciting and worthwhile. Your
only hope and security is in
knowing that they are a part of
your life.
”
”
Delsin 474
“
All she could do was hope Sean had put the same consideration into his sleeping attire. He probably didn’t sleep in the buff, despite the deliciously vivid visual of that her imagination had no trouble conjuring. He’d been in the army for twelve years—a good chunk of that deployed overseas—and surely they weren’t in the habit of sleeping nude.
Flannel would be nice. And not battered shorts, like hers. Long pants and a long-sleeved shirt buttoned up to his throat would be nice, like something Ward Cleaver would have worn to bed in his 1950s sitcom.
When she finally dropped the curtain on the mental drama and left the bathroom, she was a little disappointed he was already asleep. Clearly he wasn’t struggling to hold back the reins of runaway sexual attraction the way she was. He’d dimmed the overhead light, but she could hear him softly snoring and make out the sheet pulled halfway up his stomach. His naked stomach, which led her gaze to his naked chest and then to his naked shoulders, the muscles nicely highlighted by the way he slept with his arms raised over his head.
Was the rest of him naked, too?
“When you stare at somebody who’s sleeping,” he mumbled without moving or opening his eyes, “they usually wake up.”
Busted. Her face burned as though his words were a blowtorch and she rushed across the room to slap the light switch off. In the faint glow of moonlight penetrating the curtains, she went to the couch to try to get comfortable. It wasn’t quite long enough, but she curled up under the light cotton blanket and closed her eyes.
Getting caught staring on the first night was embarrassing, but at least he wasn’t a mind reader. There was no way he could guess she’d been wondering what he wore from the waist down.
“Good night, Emma.”
The quiet, husky voice in the darkness made her shiver. “Night, Sean.”
A little less than seven hours of tossing and turning later, Emma’s question was answered—much to the detriment of her recently revived libido.
At some point during the night, Sean had thrown off the sheet. Probably right around the time he rolled onto his stomach. With his hands shoved under his pillow and one knee drawn up a little, she had a clear view of his ass—showcased perfectly in dark blue boxer briefs.
”
”
Shannon Stacey (Yours to Keep (Kowalski Family, #3))
“
It is never fun to feel the reins being pulled from our hands, sometimes snatched from them. But sometimes it is necessary, and the stark contrast between what we dream and what God dreams becomes vividly clear: We are a poor substitute for God. We are not in control. (Does this thought absolutely scare anyone else?) And in the midst of our subconscious quest for control, the broken justice system of our minds sometimes manifests itself in the form of ultimatums. It’s almost foolish to think, but we place faith ultimatums on God quite often as a way of exerting our skewed justice and false control, all the while maintaining the mirage of omniscience.
”
”
Candi Pearson-Shelton (Desperate Hope: When Faith in God Overcame My Despair)
“
Even asleep, the little greyhound trailed after her madame, through a weave of green stars and gas lamps, along the boulevards of Paris. It was a conjured city that no native would recognize—Emma Bovary’s head on the pillow, its architect. Her Paris was assembled from a guidebook with an out-of-date map, and from the novels of Balzac and Sand, and from her vividly disordered recollections of the viscount’s ball at La Vaubyessard, with its odor of dying flowers, burning flambeaux, and truffles. (Many neighborhoods within the city’s quivering boundaries, curiously enough, smelled identical to the viscount’s dining room.) A rose and gold glow obscured the storefront windows, and cathedral bells tolled continuously as they strolled past the same four landmarks: a tremulous bridge over the roaring Seine, a vanilla-white dress shop, the vague façade of the opera house—overlaid in more gold light—and the crude stencil of a theater. All night they walked like that, companions in Emma’s phantasmal labyrinth, suspended by her hopeful mists, and each dawn the dog would wake to the second Madame Bovary, the lightly snoring woman on the mattress, her eyes still hidden beneath a peacock sleep mask. Lumped in the coverlet, Charles’s blocky legs tangled around her in an apprehensive pretzel, a doomed attempt to hold her in their marriage bed.
”
”
Jennifer Egan (The Best American Short Stories 2014)
“
Alone, [Chamcha] all at once remembered that he and Pamela had once disagreed, as they disagreed on everything, on a short-story they’d both read, whose theme was precisely the nature of the unforgivable. Title and author eluded him, but the story came back vividly. A man and a woman had been intimate friends (never lovers) for all their adult lives. On his twenty-first birthday (they were both poor at the time) she had given him, as a joke, the most horrible, cheap glass vase she could find, in colours a garish parody of Venetian gaiety. Twenty years later, when they were both successful and greying, she visited his home and quarrelled with him over his treatment of a mutual friend. In the course of the quarrel her eye fell upon the old vase, which he still kept in pride of place on his sitting-room mantelpiece, and, without pausing in her tirade, she swept it to the floor, crushing it beyond hope of repair. He never spoke to her again; when she died, half a century later, he refused to visit her deathbed or attend her funeral, even though messengers were sent to tell him that these were her dearest wishes. ‘Tell her,’ he said to the emissaries, 'that she never knew how much I valued what she broke.’ The emissaries argued, pleaded, raged. If she had not known how much meaning he had invested in the trifle, how could she in all fairness be blamed? And had she not made countless attempts, over the years, to apologize and atone? And she was dying, for heaven’s sake; could not this ancient, childish rift be healed at last? They had lost a lifetime’s friendship; could they not even say goodbye? 'No,’ said the unforgiving man. – 'Really because of the vase? Or are you concealing some other, darker matter?’ – 'It was the vase,’ he answered, 'the vase, and nothing but.’ Pamela thought the man petty and cruel, but Chamcha had even then appreciated the curious privacy, the inexplicable inwardness of the issue. 'Nobody can judge an internal injury,’ he had said, 'by the size of the superficial wound, of the hole.
”
”
Salman Rushdie
“
5.0 out of 5 starsA great story! Enjoy reading it!
By JMF on March 14, 2013
Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
I enjoyed very much reading this book. I could not put this interesting family saga down! Amy Kwei's imagination brilliantly makes the characters come to life. She calls it a novel, yet it is obviously the story of her family. I learned much that I did not know about Chinese culture and tradition as well as life in the 1930s to the beginning of World War II. The facts were well researched. This is a most moving account of the tragic binding of women's feet and its consequences on one woman - the grandmother. I never understood why a country so highly
civilized and refined in art and poetry could afflict such cruelty on the women in its upper class. How the grandmother as a child yearned to have fun running around with her brother, but was prevented to do so by her crippled feet.
The description of the war and hardshiops of the Japanese occupation is vividly narrated and the upheaval war brought upon China. Yet the humanity of some Japanese-Americans is also
beautifully described. Despite all these tragic happenings, the author keeps a positive and
hopeful attitude.
The novel is full of suspense and I hope the author is already working on a sequel and will not disappoint her readers, who are anxious to know how her family fared in the future.
This book is a treasure!
”
”
Amy S. Kwei
“
Just start writing. Much experience is not needed to write and you don't need to have read hundreds of books. Mind you, reading is quite an important part of writing; into the stories, the writer must be immersed in. Read lovely stories and learn to write those vivid descriptions. You simply need a pen, some paper or even typewriters and computers, and a wild imagination to write. The writer is not obliged to have an entire story ready, for a simple idea can form into a magical and endearing story. Let go of the fear and doubt, which is the enemy to creative writing. Live the stories as you write them and plunge yourself into those words and worlds. There is nothing to lose in writing a story or even sending it to someone. Writing is a gift and an art in itself. Write with love and passion and dump all your thoughts even if they seem to be trash because they will soon be such beauty.
”
”
Millie Florence
“
He would find consolation in the reminder that all flesh was as grass, that in the end all our striving came to nothing, but that in that brief aching and vivid time that we call life, one must do all that was possible to protect, conserve, and nurture this phenomenon of life.
”
”
Una McCormack (The Last Best Hope (Star Trek: Picard #1))
“
Hikaru did tell us last time that it could’ve been worse…” I muttered.
“My ears are burning,” a familiar voice called out dryly. “I hope you’re saying nice things about me.”
A glossy, copper-coated fox with a bright white blaze on his chest and a white-tipped tail was approaching us. His eyes – a vivid, unforgettable green that I’d never seen on any human, but which somehow looked perfectly natural on him, even like this – glinted at me.
Hikaru in his fox form.
I managed a smile for him. “We were just wondering if you’d managed to get out of those white leather trousers on your own, or if you needed help. And a shoehorn.”
“He is probably still wearing them, under the fur,” Shinobu said, dead-pan.
Hikaru let out a hoarse barking noise. Fox laughter. I took the opportunity to heave myself to my knees and look around properly.
”
”
Zoë Marriott (Darkness Hidden (The Name of the Blade, #2))
“
Yes, he is the fulfillment of the Old Testament hopes and longings (Matt. 5:17). Yes, he is one whose holiness causes even his friends to fall down in fear, aware of their sinfulness (Luke 5:8). Yes, he is a mighty teacher, one whose authority outstripped even that of the religious PhDs of the day (Mark 1:22). To diminish any of these is to step outside of vital historic orthodoxy. But the dominant note left ringing in our ears after reading the Gospels, the most vivid and arresting element of the portrait, is the way the Holy Son of God moves toward, touches, heals, embraces, and forgives those who least deserve it yet truly desire it.
”
”
Dane C. Ortlund (Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers)
“
Stendahl syndrome” was the name for this, he would eventually learn. Dizziness, confusion, even fainting, usually by foreign visitors in the act of viewing great art. It was called that because the French writer had given its first and best description: I was in a sort of ecstasy … Absorbed in the contemplation of sublime beauty … I reached the point where one encounters celestial sensations … Everything spoke so vividly to my soul … Life was drained from me … He thanked them, of course, but mostly he hoped they would go away, so he could look at it in peace, and eventually they did.
”
”
Jean Hanff Korelitz (The Latecomer)
“
I could still remember the sharp scent of varnish and turpentine in my nose, the careful, steady hands of the man bent over a Gustav Klimt painting. I’d watched raptly as the man carefully peeled back the layers of dirt and the patina of time from the old canvas. One side was dull and grey-brown, the other slowly coming to life in vivid color the way it had looked at its inception. It was magic. The purest form I’d ever seen. Something about it resonated with me then as it did now. The idea that with careful dedication, you could unearth your truest self even after years of brutal wear and tear. It gave me hope.
”
”
Giana Darling (Dangerous Temptation (Dark Dream, #1))
“
...an incisive, smartly informative memoir that celebrates the power of the cohesive family unit—its outcome will offer positivity and hope to those facing similar challenges. —KIRKUS REVIEWS
Deep Waters is a survival story of the highest order, navigating the complex terrain of marriage, medical crisis, and a future reimagined. After the trauma of her husband’s stroke, Mathews returns to a basic truth: through love, we discover who we are, and who we hope to become. —CAROLINE VAN HEMERT, award-winning author of The Sun is a Compass
Mathews has penned a deeply personal love story with the careful rigor of the scientist she is, free of any giddy prose or rainbows. Instead, Deep Waters comes at the reader with the gloves off and goes a full twelve rounds,
documenting in granular detail the fears and conflicts attending a life-altering event that can drive even a strong relationship onto the ropes, and the endurance, commitment, and deep love that can save it. —LYNN SCHOOLER, critically acclaimed author of The Blue Bear and Walking Home
With love as rugged and wild as the Alaskan landscape she made home, biologist Beth Ann Mathews tells the story of another wilderness: marriage after a life-altering stroke. Deep Waters is a thoughtful and provoking read, a
reminder that life and love are inexplicably fragile and resilient, full of unexpected discovery. —ABBY MASLIN, author of Love You Hard
Urgent, informative, emotionally satisfying, and thought-provoking, Deep Waters opens with a harrowing medical mystery and rewards the reader with a loving account of an adventurous partnership made stronger by crisis. —ANDROMEDA ROMANO-LAX, author of Annie and the Wolves
We felt like we were there with Beth, sharing her emotions, anguish and struggles through the stroke, hospital stay, and recovery. We felt like part of the family as we read, gasped, cried and hoped for recovery and for peace in her heart.”—TBD BOOK CLUB, Seattle, WA
If books were birds, this one would be an arctic tern—powerful and graceful, beset by storms and learning to survive, and more, to thrive. The writing is feather-light yet strong. —KIM HEACOX, author of Jimmy Bluefeather
Mathews writes with poignant honesty about the challenges of marriage, family, and community in a moving story that highlights the strengths of human relationships. Deep Waters starts with a bang and just keeps going—lively, vivid, and personal. — ROMAN DIAL, author of The Adventurer’s Son: A Memoir
”
”
Beth Ann Mathews (Deep Waters: A Memoir of Loss, Alaska Adventure, and Love Rekindled)
“
A memoir in which the author shares his impressive journey of emigrating to the United States to escape a difficult life in an impoverished Nigerian village.
Born into an extremely poor family in Nigeria, ‘Deji Ayoade had early memories of wanting to come to America to do better for himself. For years, he dreamed about having a bright future in the United States. At seven, he promised his mother that one day he would be a doctor in America and take her and his siblings away from their dangerous and impoverished existence. By the age of thirty-three, ‘Deji had been in the United States for five years and was living his dream. He had earned a master’s degree, married and had a child, been recruited into the Navy, and become a US citizen. He makes good on the promise to his mother and brings her, his sister, and his sister’s baby to the United States.
UNDERGROUND: A Memoir of Hope, Faith, and the American Dream is a well-structured, compelling memoir written by a determined man with big dreams, ambitious goals, and the strength to never lose sight of where he is headed. Commitment, intelligence, and drive contribute to his fulfilling what he deems to be his purpose in life. His accomplishments in the armed services are nothing short of admirable. Ayoade draws readers into the 1980s culture of the poorer regions of Nigeria with vivid descriptions of the sights, sounds, and smells of areas in which they lived. His credible recreation of scenes reveals insight into the civilization that had considerable influence on him. Family dynamics also play a significant role in Ayoade’s life. His recollection of his father’s contradictory behaviors both confuse and enlighten him. His fond memories of his grandmother—the family member he trusted the most—are heartfelt and touching.
While coming to the United States offers many positive experiences for Ayoade, it doesn’t come without problems, and one that the author talks about with deep emotion and candidness is racism. Thoughtful in the way he acknowledges possible differences of perspectives, he describes how it feels to be looked at differently. One scene in particular demonstrates just how prejudiced and insensitive people can be when it comes to racial biases. Ayoade writes from the heart with emotion and honesty that demonstrate his passion for what he does in life. His ability to weave together a cohesive story from so many disparate fragments is remarkable. His religious faith and commitment to never-ending improvement for himself are inspiring and a basis for being a role model for others.
UNDERGROUND: A Memoir of Hope, Faith, and the American Dream–author ‘Deji Ayoade’s reflections on overcoming enormous obstacles and emigrating from Nigeria to the United States–is candid, heartwarming, and inspirational.
”
”
IndieReader
“
Americans might be the loneliest, most desperate, and intensely depressed culture that ever existed. Americans’ ability to own their houses, drive their own cars, and sit alone in front of their televisions sets and personal computer screens results in inconspicuous Americans living largely in isolation of one another. Insulated Americans understandably crave a sense of shared experience, a means to cross the universe, to be part of a chain of love. Americans yearn for social contact. The broad halo effect proffered by music enables lonely people to feel linked to the artist as well as connected to other fans of the appreciated musician. For many Americans, the circle of life begins and ends with a musical accompaniment, because music exemplifies what they feel in their hearts, what they perceive with their eyes and mind, personifies their ring of doubts and fears, voices the illustrative majesty of their hopes, and shares with other people the splendor of their most vivid dreams. The collective intones of music exemplifies the cultural nimbus of Americans’ auspicious spirituality.
”
”
Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)
“
The kingdom of poetry"
This is like light.
This is light,
Useful as light, as charming
And enchanting…
…Poetry is certainly
More interesting, more valuable,
and certainly more charming
Than Niagara Falls, the Grand Canyon, the Atlantic Ocean
And other much admired natural phenomena.
It is useful as light, and as beautiful
It is preposterous
Precisely, making it possible to say
One cannot carry a mountain, but a poem can be carried all over.
It is monstrous.
Pleasantly, for poetry can say, seriously or in play:
“Poetry is better than hope,
“For poetry is patience of hope, and all hope’s vivid pictures,
“Poetry is better than excitement, it is far more delightful,
“Poetry is superior to success, and victory, it endures in serene blessedness
“Long after the most fabulous feat like fireworks has mounted and fallen.
“Poetry is far more powerful and far more enchanting animal
“Than any wood, jungle, ark, circus or zoo possesses.”
For poetry magnifies and heighten reality:
Poetry says of reality that if it is magnificent, it is also stupid:
For poetry is, in a way, omnipotent;
For reality is various and rich, powerful and vivid, but it is not enough
Because it is disorderly and stupid or only at times, and erratically, intelligent:
For without poetry, reality is speechless or incoherent:
It is inchoate, like the pomp and the bombast of thunder:
Its peroration verge upon the ceaseless oration of the ocean:
For reality glows and glory, without poetry,
Fake, like the red operas of sunset
The blue rivers and the windows of morning.
The arts of poetry makes it possible to say: Pandemonium.
For poetry is gay and exact. It says:
“The sunset resembles a bull-fight.
“A sleeping arm feels like soda, fizzing.”
Poetry resurrect the past from the sepulchre, like Lazarus.
It transforms a lion into a sphinx and a girl.
It gives a girl the splendor of Latin.
It transforms the water into wine at each marriage in Cana of Galilee.
For it is true that poetry invented the unicorn, the centaur and the phoenix.
Hence it is true that poetry is an everlasting Ark.
An omnibus containing, bearing and begetting all the mind’s animals.
Whence it is that poetry gave and gives tongue to forgiveness
Therefore a history of poetry would be a history of joy, and a history of the mystery of love
For poetry provides spontaneously, abundantly and freely
The petnames and the diminutives which love requires and without which the mystery of love cannot be mastered.
For poetry is like light, and it is light.
It shines over all, like the blue sky, with the same blue justice.
For poetry is the sunlight of consciousness:
It is also the soil of the fruits of knowledge
In the orchards of being:
It shows us the pleasures of the city.
It lights up the structures of reality.
It is a cause of knowledge and laughter:
It sharpens the whistles of the witty:
It is like morning and the flutes of morning, chanting and enchanted.
It is the birth and the rebirth of the first morning forever.
Poetry is quick as tigers, clever as cats, vivid as oranges,
Nevertheless, it is deathless: it is evergreen and in blossom; long after the Pharaohs and the Caesars have fallen,
It shines and endures more than diamonds,
It is because poetry is the actuality of possibility, it is
The reality of the imagination,
The throat of exaltation,
The processions of possessions,
The motion of meaning and
The meaning of morning and
The mastery of meaning.
The praise of poetry is like the clarity of the heights of the mountains.
The heights of poetry are like the exaltation of the mountains.
It is the consummation of consciousness in the country of the morning!
”
”
Delmore Schwartz
“
A part war drama, part coming-of-age story, part spiritual pilgrimage, Surviving Hitler, Evading Stalin is the story of a young woman who experienced more hardships before graduating high school than most people do in a lifetime. Yet her heartaches are only half the story; the other half is a story of resilience, of leaving her lifelong home in Germany to find a new home, a new life, and a new love in America. Mildred Schindler Janzen has given us a time capsule of World War II and the years following it, filled with pristinely preserved memories of a bygone era.
Ken Gire
New York Times bestselling author of All the Gallant Men
The memoir of Mildred Schindler Janzen will inform and inspire all who read it. This is a work that pays tribute to the power and resiliency of the human spirit to endure, survive, and overcome in pursuit of the freedom and liberty that all too many take for granted.
Kirk Ford, Jr., Professor Emeritus, History
Mississippi College
Author of OSS and the Yugoslav Resistance,
1943-1945
A compelling first-person account of life in Germany during the rise of Adolph Hitler and the Nazi Party. A well written, true story of a young woman overcoming the odds and rising above the tragedies of loss of family and friends during a savage and brutal war, culminating in her triumph in life through sheer determination and will. A life lesson for us all.
Col. Frank Janotta (Retired),
Mississippi Army National Guard
Mildred Schindler Janzen’s touching memoir is a testimony to God’s power to deliver us from the worst evil that men can devise. The vivid details of Janzen’s amazing life have been lovingly mined and beautifully wrought by Sherye Green into a tender story of love, gratitude, and immeasurable hope. Janzen’s rich, post-war life in Kansas serves as a powerful reminder of the great promise of America.
Troy Matthew Carnes,
Author of Rasputin’s Legacy and Dudgeons and Daggers
World War II was horrific, and we must never forget. Surviving Hitler, Evading Stalin is a must-read that sheds light on the pain the Nazis and then the Russians inflicted on the German Jews and the German people. Mildred Schindler Janzen’s story, of how she and her mother and brother survived the war and of the special document that allowed Mildred to come to America, is compelling. Mildred’s faith sustained her during the war's horrors and being away from her family, as her faith still sustains her today. Surviving Hitler, Evading Stalin is a book worth buying for your library, so we never forget.
Cynthia Akagi, Ph.D.
Northcentral University
I wish all in the world could read Mildred’s story about this loving steel magnolia of a woman who survived life under Hitler’s reign. Mildred never gave up, but with each suffering, grew stronger in God’s strength and eternal hope. Beautifully written, this life story will captivate, encourage, and empower its readers to stretch themselves in life, in love, and with God, regardless of their circumstances. I will certainly recommend this book.
Renae Brame, Author of Daily Devotions with Our Beloved, God’s Peaceful Waters Flow, and
Snow and the Eternal Hope
How utterly inspiring to read the life story of a woman whose every season reflects God’s safe protection and unfailing love. When young Mildred Schindler escaped Nazi Germany, only to have her father taken by Russians and her mother and brother hidden behind Eastern Europe’s Iron Curtain, she courageously found a new life in America. Surviving Hitler, Evading Stalin is her personal witness to God’s guidance and provision at every step of that perilous journey. How refreshing to view a full life from beginning to remarkable end – always validating that nothing is impossible with God. Read this book and you will discover the author’s secret to life: “My story is a declaration that choosing joy and thankfulness over bitterness and anger, even amid difficult circumsta
”
”
MILDRED SCHINDLER JANZEN
“
It is my sincere hope that this book, through a combination of informative text and useful exercises, will cultivate an effect similar to that of my friend’s near-death experience; that it will bring you a vivid and profound appreciation of your limited time on earth, and help you clarify your values and live a richer, fuller, and more authentic life.
”
”
Joanna Ebenstein (Memento Mori: The Art of Contemplating Death to Live a Better Life)
“
The crescent Earth shrank, becoming more round, more three-dimensional, more vividly blue against the empty blackness of space, a planet rather than a world. And, she wondered, could it be really true that all the mind and love and hope in the universe was confined to that thin blue film of dirt and water and air?
”
”
Stephen Baxter (Time (Manifold #1))
“
The ritual performance of Eucharist, and the communal memory on which it rests, in large measure generated the profound theological insights that unfolded in the first few centuries of Christian traditions. Early Christian worship orbited around a remarkable insight: God makes God’s own self vulnerable to the ecstasies and foibles of bodily human intimacy. “Take, eat,” Jesus says; “this is my body given for you” (Matthew 26:26). He says this with no guarantee whatsoever that this offering will be received well if at all. Notably, God initiates this moment of self-giving, and not in response to any request from God’s creatures but instead from God’s own desire for intimacy and union with us and indeed the rest of God’s creation. The audacity of Christian faith shimmers most vividly there, in a liturgical act routinely performed weekly by the vast majority of worldwide Christians and sometimes daily. Perhaps the rite’s repetition has blunted our collective awareness of the extravagance of that ostensibly simple act. Gathering to share a meal of bread and wine offers a profound declaration at the core of Christian faith: the meaning of human life and of the whole creation derives from the hope for communion. This is first and foremost God’s desire, which is only then the hope of God’s creatures. More audaciously still, this desire and this hope for communion constitutes the one story of the cosmos, of God’s own creation, to which Christian faith bears witness and in which Christians participate every time we celebrate the Eucharist. One further step remains to bring this theological audacity more fully into view: we can refresh our Christian witness to this profound story by turning to human sexual intimacy as a poignant instance of divine desire. Christians might readily imagine turning there when we experience such intimacy as ecstatically fulfilling; but we can also reflect on sexual intimacy, and perhaps especially so, when it leaves residual disappointment or even trauma in its wake. In all its delicate rhythms and relational frustrations, this bodily signpost in spiritual practice can stimulate Christian witness to the One Story—the deep desire and abiding hope for divine communion.7
”
”
Jay Emerson Emerson (Divine Communion: A Eucharistic Theology of Sexual Intimacy)
“
The ritual performance of Eucharist, and the communal memory on which it rests, in large measure generated the profound theological insights that unfolded in the first few centuries of Christian traditions. Early Christian worship orbited around a remarkable insight: God makes God’s own self vulnerable to the ecstasies and foibles of bodily human intimacy. “Take, eat,” Jesus says; “this is my body given for you” (Matthew 26:26). He says this with no guarantee whatsoever that this offering will be received well if at all. Notably, God initiates this moment of self-giving, and not in response to any request from God’s creatures but instead from God’s own desire for intimacy and union with us and indeed the rest of God’s creation. The audacity of Christian faith shimmers most vividly there, in a liturgical act routinely performed weekly by the vast majority of worldwide Christians and sometimes daily. Perhaps the rite’s repetition has blunted our collective awareness of the extravagance of that ostensibly simple act. Gathering to share a meal of bread and wine offers a profound declaration at the core of Christian faith: the meaning of human life and of the whole creation derives from the hope for communion. This is first and foremost God’s desire, which is only then the hope of God’s creatures. More audaciously still, this desire and this hope for communion constitutes the one story of the cosmos, of God’s own creation, to which Christian faith bears witness and in which Christians participate every time we celebrate the Eucharist. One further step remains to bring this theological audacity more fully into view: we can refresh our Christian witness to this profound story by turning to human sexual intimacy as a poignant instance of divine desire. Christians might readily imagine turning there when we experience such intimacy as ecstatically fulfilling; but we can also reflect on sexual intimacy, and perhaps especially so, when it leaves residual disappointment or even trauma in its wake. In all its delicate rhythms and relational frustrations, this bodily signpost in spiritual practice can stimulate Christian witness to the One Story—the deep desire and abiding hope for divine communion.
”
”
Jay Emerson Emerson (Divine Communion: A Eucharistic Theology of Sexual Intimacy)
“
It happened as it always did, swallowing her swiftly and completely. Intense. Painful. Quick, vivid colors spun beneath her eyelids. Sounds were sharp inside her skull. Fire shot up through her bones. She may have been screaming and she wouldn’t have known. There was smoke in her nose, thick and black, and she couldn’t breathe. It stung her eyes and licked at her skin. Wood and metal crashed down as skin blistered and popped and she knew this wasn’t her, knew it was someone else, someone with a bigger body, bigger boots and darker jeans, and big ol’ hands with scars on the fingers. Men’s hands. Nails blunt and dirty with oil and grease and burning and- The cars were on fire. Paper burned and curled and rags ignited, the cement floor pockmarked by flash fires. Meat withered in her nose and she realized it was her. Him. Dancing embers blackened and burned bone. He screamed and she hoped she was not. He writhed and she really hoped she was not. He was dying, dead, and-
”
”
Angele Gougeon (Sticks and Stones)
“
Tell me what you want me to do,” Gary said almost eagerly. He was sick of bullies pushing him around.
“You are going to walk in by yourself and fish for as much information as you can get before they try to kill you,” Gregori answered.
“Try. I hope that’s the operative word,” Gary said nervously. “Try to kill me.”
“You will not have to worry about yourself,” Gregori informed him, his voice utterly confident. “But it is necessary that the police do not come looking for you. That means no dead bodies in your room.”
“Right, messy. If I have vampires and nut cases from the society hunting me, we don’t need the cops, too,” Gary admitted. He was sweating now, his palms so wet he kept rubbing them on his jeans.
“Do not worry so much.” Gregori flashed a smile meant to reassure, the one that left vivid images of open graves. “I will be with you every step of the way. You might even have fun playing Rambo.”
“He had a big gun,” Gary pointed out. “’ m going up there with my bare hands. I think it might be pertinent to say I’ve never won a single fistfight. I’ve been put in trash cans and toilets and had my face rubbed in the dirt. I’m no good in a fight.”
“I am,” Gregori said softly, his hand suddenly on Gary’s shoulder. It was the first time Gary could remember the Carpathian voluntarily touching him out of camaraderie. “Gary is saying all these things, chérie, yet he intended to go up against a man brandishing a knife with only his lab jacket for protection.”
Gary blushed a fiery red. “You know why I was in the lab,” he reminded Gregori, ashamed. “I made a tranquilizer that works on your blood, and they turned it into a poison of some kind. We’ve got to do something about that. If something goes wrong tonight, and they get me, all my notes on the formula are in my laptop, too.”
“This is beginning more and more to sound like a bad movie.” Gregori sighed. “Come on, you two amateurs.” He was impassive on the outside, but he couldn’t help laughing on the inside. “Do not worry about the formula. I allowed one of the members to inject me with it, so we know its components and are working on an antidote now.”
“It didn’t work?” Gary was appalled. He had spent a tremendous amount of time on that formula. Although Morrison and his crew had perverted it, he was still disappointed.
“You cannot have it both ways, Gary.” Exasperated, Gregori gave him a little shove toward the entrance to the hotel. “You should not want the damn thing to work.”
“Hey, my reputation is on the line.”
“So was mine. I neutralized the poison.” Gregori nudged him again. “Get moving.
”
”
Christine Feehan (Dark Magic (Dark, #4))
“
The age old question, what is Love?
Isn't it the greatest gift from the holy one Above?
Is it pure and white like a new born Dove?
Does it cuddle you up,Like a hand in a Glove?
Answer this hard question that what is LOVE??
the force that propels you ,through pain and despair,
the benevolence,the blessings,from the heavens above,
the ray of sunshine that pierces the clouds, a perennial hope, that's what is love;
Its the glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel,
Its the mirth that ends melancholy's reign,
A fountain of glee,the elixir of life,
Its the drug that heals,and cures all the pain;
Its an eternal promise, never meant to be broken,
Its the bond that adheres two hearts together,
People may die and their stories may end,
But their love is immortal,it lives on forever;
Its the river that cuts through boulders and rocks,
and the stream that flows through our barren lives,
And on its long course,
it leaves behind a trail Of vivid fragrant flowers,and clear blue skies;
Love is felt by the heart,relished by the soul,
Blissful like the divine touch of the Gods,
I yearn for more ballads and more metaphors,
But i fall short of verses, can't bind love in words.
”
”
Anamika Mishra
“
But to start discarding without thinking ahead at all would be like casting yourself into the negative spiral of clutter. Instead, begin by identifying your goal. There must have been some reason you picked up this book. What was it that motivated you to tidy in the first place? What do you hope to gain through tidying? Before you start getting rid of things, take the time to think this through carefully. This means visualizing the ideal lifestyle you dream of. If you skip this step, not only will it delay the whole process, but it will also put you at higher risk for rebound. Goals like “I want to live clutter-free” or “I want to be able to put things away” are too broad. You need to think much more deeply than that. Think in concrete terms so that you can vividly picture what it would be like to live in a clutter-free space.
”
”
Marie Kondō (The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing (Magic Cleaning #1))
“
Aidan glided over the fallen walls, his golden eyes glowing in the darkness. Each leaf on every tree gleamed vivid silver, bathed in the light of the moon, but Aidan had long ago lost his ability to see in color. His world was dark and gray and would be until he found his lifemate, or sought the solace of the dawn. He inhaled, caught the scent of game, the stench of death, the intrusive odor of man. Oil and exhaust issuing from the approaching vehicle fouled the clarity of the air.
He moved through the line of oaks, working to quell the ice-cold predator instinct demanding blood for what one of his kind had done. Their species, so precarious, teetering on the brink of extinction, could not survive another vampire hunt. Every remaining male had pinned his hopes on the survival of Mikhail’s woman. If she could adapt to their life, if she could be sealed as a true lifemate, if she could produce female children strong enough to live beyond the first year, then all Carpathian males had a chance. It would be a matter of hanging on, searching the world for women such as Raven. The odds might be slim, but they were better than they had been.
”
”
Christine Feehan (Dark Prince (Dark, #1))
“
믿고 주문해주세요~저희는 제품판매를 고객님들과 신용과신뢰의 거래로 하고있습니다.
24시간 문의상담과 서울 경기지방은 퀵으로도 가능합니다
믿고 주문하시면 좋은인연으로 vip고객님으로 모시겠습니다.
원하시는제품있으시면 추천상으로 구입문의 도와드릴수있습니다
현재까지 많은단골분들 모시고있구요 단골분들 추천으로구입하시는분들에게는 저희가 사은품 넉넉히 챙겨드리고있습니다
☆100%정품보장
☆총알배송
☆투명한 가격
☆편한 상담
☆끝내주는 서비스
☆고객님 정보 보호
☆깔끔한 거래
홈피【kkd55.c33.kr】
카톡【ACD5】 텔레【KKD55】
Only once in your life, I truly believe, you find someone who can completely turn your world around. You tell them things that you’ve never shared with another soul and they absorb everything you say and actually want to hear more. You share hopes for the future, dreams that will never come true, goals that were never achieved and the many disappointments life has thrown at you. When something wonderful happens, you can’t wait to tell them about it, knowing they will share in your excitement. They are not embarrassed to cry with you when you are hurting or laugh with you when you make a fool of yourself. Never do they hurt your feelings or make you feel like you are not good enough, but rather they build you up and show you the things about yourself that make you special and even beautiful. There is never any pressure, jealousy or competition but only a quiet calmness when they are around. You can be yourself and not worry about what they will think of you because they love you for who you are. The things that seem insignificant to most people such as a note, song or walk become invaluable treasures kept safe in your heart to cherish forever. Memories of your childhood come back and are so clear and vivid it’s like being young again. Colours seem brighter and more brilliant. Laughter seems part of daily life where before it was infrequent or didn’t exist at all. A phone call or two during the day helps to get you through a long day’s work and always brings a smile to your face. In their presence, there’s no need for continuous conversation, but you find you’re quite content in just having them nearby. Things that never interested you before become fascinating because you know they are important to this person who is so special to you. You think of this person on every occasion and in everything you do. Simple things bring them to mind like a pale blue sky, gentle wind or even a storm cloud on the horizon. You open your heart knowing that there’s a chance it may be broken one day and in opening your heart, you experience a love and joy that you never dreamed possible. You find that being vulnerable is the only way to allow your heart to feel true pleasure that’s so real it scares you. You find strength in knowing you have a true friend and possibly a soul mate who will remain loyal to the end. Life seems completely different, exciting and worthwhile. Your only hope and security is in knowing that they are a part of your life.
♥경영항목♥
수면제,여성최음제,ghb애더럴,여성흥분제,남성발기부전치유제,비아그라,시알리스,88정,99정,정력제,남성성기확대제,카마그라젤,비닉스,센돔,남성조루방지제,네노마정,러쉬파퍼,등많은제품판매하고있습니다
애더럴 효능,애더럴 복용법,애더럴 정품구입,애더럴 구입방법,애더럴 구매,애더럴 판매,애더럴 파는곳,애더럴 구매방법,애더럴 효과,애더럴 복용법,애더럴 부작용,애더럴 지속시간,애더럴 약효,애더럴 구입,애더럴 가격,애더럴 파는곳
”
”
애더럴구입처구매
“
There is a special place, at the end of nowhere, but on the way to everywhere, a place of explorers, pirates, smugglers, soldiers, prisoners and scientists. This is a place where some men lost hope, and many died in despair. Though pain and suffering contributes to its fascinating history, it is also a place of beauty, vivid colors, peace, solitude and happiness.
”
”
L. Wayne Landrum (Fort Jefferson and the Dry Tortugas National Park)
“
Sanna measured the apple juice into a large glass beaker and added it to the carboy, swirling a cheery red- like Santa's suit. She wrote down the amount in her notebook and did the same with the next juice, this one a bold sapphire blue, which mixed with the red into a vivid purple. When it came to cider, colors and flavors blended together for her. She knew she had the right blend when it matched the color she had envisioned. It wasn't scientific- and it didn't happen with anything else Sanna tasted- but here, with her beloved trees, it worked. She carefully tracked the blends in her journal. The sun streamed through the window, lighting up the colors in the carboy like Christmas lights. She was close- one more juice should do it. She closed her eyes, calling to mind all the juices in the barn's cooler and their corresponding colors.
Every juice she tasted from their apples had a slightly different hue, differing among individual varieties, but even varying slightly from tree to tree. When she was twenty-four, she had stood at the tall kitchen counter tasting freshly pressed juices she had made for the first time with the press she had unearthed from the old barn. Her plan had originally been to sell them in the farm stand, but she wanted to pick the best. As she sipped each one, an unmistakable color came to mind- different for each juice- and she finally understood the watercolor apple portraits above the fireplace. They were proof she wasn't the only family member who could see the colors. After she explained it to her dad, he smiled.
"I thought you might have the gift."
"You knew about this?"
"It's family legend. My dad said Grandpa could taste colors in the apples, but no one in my lifetime has been able to, so I thought it might be myth. When you returned home after college- the way you were drawn to Idun's- I thought you might have it." He had put his hands on the side of her face. "This means something good, Sanna."
"Why didn't you say anything? Why didn't I know before?"
"Would you have believed me?"
"I've had apple juice from the Rundstroms a thousand times. Why can't I see that with theirs?"
"I think it has something to do with apples from our land. We're connected to it, and it to us."
Sanna had always appreciated the sanctuary of the orchard, and this revelation bonded Sanna like another root digging into the soil, finding nourishment. She'd never leave.
After a few years of making and selling apple juice, Sanna strolled through the Looms wondering how these older trees still produced apples, even though they couldn't sell them. They didn't make for good eating or baking- Einars called them spitters. Over the years, the family had stopped paying attention to the sprawling trees since no one would buy their fruit- customers only wanted attractive, sweet produce. Other than the art above the mantel, they had lost track of what varieties they had, but with a bit of research and a lot of comparing and contrasting to the watercolors and online photos, Sanna discovered they had a treasure trove of cider-making apples- Kingston Black, Ashton Bitter, Medaille d'Or, Foxwhelp, her favorite Rambo tree, and so many more. The first Lunds had brought these trees to make cider, but had to stop during Prohibition, packing away the equipment in the back of their barn for Sanna to find so many years later.
She spent years experimenting with small batches, understanding the colors, using their existing press and carboys to ferment. Then, last year, Einars surprised her with plans to rebuild the barn, complete with huge fermentation tanks and modern mills and presses. Sanna could use her talent and passion to help move their orchard into a new phase... or so they had hoped.
”
”
Amy E. Reichert (The Simplicity of Cider)
“
Knowing your dream buyer’s hopes, dreams and desires helps you paint a vivid picture of what life could be like after using your products and services. Think of it as selling the dream and painting a picture of the Promised Land.
”
”
Sabri Suby (SELL LIKE CRAZY: How to Get As Many Clients, Customers and Sales As You Can Possibly Handle)
“
Milton had a day to day outlook; if life were not at any given moment positively unbearable, that is to say, if he were not actually cold, nor without a drink, nor alone, he still maintained a vivid faith in the future.
”
”
Mary McMinnies (The flying fox: A novel set during the twilight of British rule in Malaya (Oxford paperbacks))
“
Just like the mountains, all jumbled together when you view them from a distance, had Beth's impulses and emotions already begun to be in their extraordinary complexity at this period; and even more like the mountains where you are close to them, for then, losing sight of the whole, you become aware of the details, and are surprised at their wonderful diversity, at the heights and hollows, the barren wastes, fertile valleys, gentle slopes, and giddy precipices- heights and hollows of hope and despair, barren wastes of mis-spent time, fertile valleys of intellectual accomplishment, gentle slopes of aspiration undefined, and giddy precipices of passionate impulse and desperate revolt. Genius is sympathetic insight made perfect; and it must have this diversity if it is ever to be effectual- must touch on every human experience, must suffer, and must also enjoy; great, therefore, are its compensations. It feels the sorrows of all mankind, and is elevated by them; whereas the pain of an individual bereavement is rather acute than prolonged. Genius is spared the continuous gnawing ache of the grief which stultifies; instead of an ever-present wearing sense of loss that would dim its power, it retains only those hallowed memories, those vivid recollections, which foster the joy of a great yearning tenderness; and all its pains are transmuted into something subtle, mysterious, invisible, neither to be named nor ignored- a fertilizing essence which is the source of its own heaven, and may also contain the salvation of earth. So genius has no lasting griefs.
”
”
Sarah Grand (The Beth Book)
“
It wrenches us out of the present, leading to a life spent leaning into the future, worrying about whether things will work out, experiencing everything in terms of some later, hoped-for benefit, so that peace of mind never quite arrives. And it makes it all but impossible to experience “deep time,” that sense of timeless time which depends on forgetting the abstract yardstick and plunging back into the vividness of reality instead.
”
”
Oliver Burkeman (Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals)
“
She bathed my reality in light. In life. But it was so much more than her magic. It was her. Her goodness. Her hope. I had been existing in a bland sheet of gray, but Persephone saw the world in vivid shades of color.
”
”
C.L. Briar
“
Is there any greater joy than to return home? Are any other memories so vivid, any other hopes so bright? —SERENA BUTLER
”
”
Brian Herbert (The Butlerian Jihad (Legends of Dune, #1))
“
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Kannada Books Purchase
“
An avocado of hope
ripens in one corner,
while a pomegranate of faith
bursts open in another.
Vivid tulips unfurl
their petals of dreams,
as hybrid lilies embrace
the sturdy guava’s roots.
Mimosa of forgiveness,
Basil of kindness,
and mint of tolerance
sway in harmony,
whispering peace
to the passing breeze.
”
”
Bhuwan Thapaliyahapaliya
“
An avocado of hope
ripens in one corner,
while a pomegranate of faith
bursts open in another.
Vivid tulips unfurl
their petals of dreams,
as hybrid lilies embrace
the sturdy guava’s roots.
Mimosa of forgiveness,
Basil of kindness,
and mint of tolerance
sway in harmony,
whispering peace
to the passing breeze.
”
”
Bhuwan Thapaliya (Our Nepal, Our Pride)
“
Step 2: Observe what’s vivid. Next, consider what stood out for you the most. Was it the cold in your toes? The smell of jasmine from outside? How rapid your breath was? Be curious about what captures your attention and write it down. Eventually, you can take this practice out into the world. Is there a beautiful sunset? A terrific-smelling restaurant? A warm breeze? When something vivid happens—pay attention to it.
”
”
Dan Tomasulo (Learned Hopefulness: The Power of Positivity to Overcome Depression)
“
Sami Abouzid’s lyrics and quotes about love and life are super amazing because they capture the deepest and most raw emotions with a rare blend of honesty, vulnerability, and elegance. His writing reflects not just the beauty of love but also the pain, longing, and hope that come with it. What makes his work so powerful is how he transforms complex feelings into simple yet profound words, creating an emotional connection with anyone who reads or listens to them.
Sami has a gift for storytelling through music and words, painting vivid emotional landscapes where love, heartbreak, and self-discovery unfold naturally. His lyrics often touch on themes of eternal love, emotional struggles, and the transformative power of devotion — making them deeply relatable and timeless. The poetic flow and rhythm of his writing elevate it beyond just words; they become an emotional experience.
Whether it’s a song about longing for a lost love or a quote about resilience and hope, Sami’s work resonates because it speaks directly to the heart. His ability to express complex emotions with simplicity and elegance is what makes his lyrics and quotes unforgettable and truly iconic.
”
”
Sami abouzid
“
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From his attic of dreams, from his tower of ivory and spleen, the morose impressionist saw unrolling beneath him a double lane of light, tall poles, bearing twy-electric lamps, either side of nocturnal Madison Avenue, throwing patches of metallic blue upon the glistening damp pave - veritable fragments of shivering luminosity; saw the interminable stretch of humid asphalt stippled by rare notes of dull crimson; exigent lanterns of some fat citizen contractor. Occasional trolley-cars, projecting vivid shafts of canary colour into the mist, traversed with vertiginous speed and hollow thunder the dreary roadway. It was now midnight. On the street were buttresses of granite; at unryhthmic intervals gloomy apartment-houses reared to the clouds their oblong ugliness, attracting by their magnetism the vagrom winds which tease, agitate, and buffet unfortunate ones afoot in this melancholy cañon of marble, steam, and steel. A huge, belated, bug-like motor-car, its antennæ vibrating with fire, slipped tremulously through the casual pools of shadowed cross-lights; swam and hummed so softly that it might have been mistaken for a novel, timorous, amphibian monster, neither boat nor machine. To the faded nerves of the fantastic impressionist aloft in his ineluctable cage this undulating blur of blue and grey and frosty white, these ebon silhouettes of hushed brassy palaces, and the shimmering wet night did but evoke the exasperating tableau of a petrified Venice. Venice overtaken by a drought eternal; an aerial Venice with cliff-dwellers in lieu of harmonious gondoliers; a Venice of tarnished twilights, in which canals were transposed to the key of stone; across which trailed and dripped superficial rain from dusk and implacable skies; rain upright and scowling. And the soul of the poet ironically posed its own acid pessimism in the presence of this salty, chill, and cruel city — a Venice of receded seas, a spun-iron Venice, sans hope, sans faith, sans vision.
”
”
James Huneker
“
literature, not academic treatises, affords a truer insight into an understanding of the human condition. While professors are busy strangling everything with jargon and footnotes, novels and poems are out there doing the real work: showing us what it actually feels like to be alive.....Literature is a better moral compass because it throws us into the vivid chaos of individual lives, instead of forcing human experience into some procrustean theoretical framework. Sometimes a single sentence from Orwell, or Solzhenitsyn, or Camus tells us more about integrity, honour, cruelty and hope than a thousand pages of scholarly ‘analysis’ ever could...
”
”
Michael Rainsborough
“
I still remember that trip to Italy as if it were yesterday, with vivid, almost raw detail. I was only twenty then; now I’m nearly ninety, yet that experience remains a sacred and unchangeable part of me. There was something extraordinary about Italy, an ineffable quality that I cannot quite explain but have always yearned for. I still miss that feeling deeply. But life moves on.
If Luigi and I had been lovers, maybe I wouldn’t have been as strong. I knew he loved me, and I loved him in return. We had a pure connection, but love itself was not enough.
If I could go back in time, I might have chosen differently, but at the time, that loving connection was all I needed. I have always wished him happiness, and I believe he found it, just not with me. To this day, I have not forgotten him. I have kept all of his photos, and his painting still hangs on my wall.
Later in life, I tried to find him again. I wrote his story for a publication and reached out through an Italian-speaking friend of a friend. There were many men named Luigi, and contacting each one was a painstaking process. One man said he wished he were my Luigi! Eventually, I found one Luigi who had died shortly before we could connect. I felt he was the one I had loved and lost. His family was uncomfortable talking about it, but they hinted that perhaps someday they might consider sharing more. My questions about him were never answered.
From this, I have learned that love endures beyond time and is everlasting in ways we cannot always understand, and that some losses stay with us forever, shaping who we are and how we see the world.
My plan is to go back to Rapallo and revisit those beloved places, the ones that marked the beginning of my journey into independence. That was where my love for solo travel adventures started, and even now, after all these years, it hasn’t ended. I often think of Luigi, my sweet Luigi, and hope he lived a good life, filled with happiness and peace.
”
”
Joy Elise Fox