Vying Quotes

In really bad times, the hungriest would gather at his door at nightfall, vying for the chance to earn a few coins to feed their families by selling their bodies. Had I been older when my father died, I might have been among them. Instead I learned to hunt.

Of course, everyone's going to freak out when you show up at school." "Freak out? Why?" "Because you're so much hotter now than when you left." She shrugged. "It's true. Must be a vampire thing." Simon looked baffled. "I'm hotter now?" "Sure you are. I mean, look at those two. They're both totally into you." She pointed to a few feet in front of them, where Isabelle and Maia had moved to walk side by side, their head bent together. Simon looked up ahead at the girls. Clary could almost swear he was blushing. "Are they? Sometimes they get together and whisper and stare at me. I have no idea what it's about." "Sure you don't." Clary grinned. "Poor you, you have two cute girls vying for your love. Your life is hard.

Poor you, you have two cute girls vying for your love. Your life is hard.

Would you like to dance with me?” He laughed. “With you? No.” She looked at the marble floor, her chest tight. “You needn’t be so cruel.” “Cruel? Celaena, Perrington is just over there. I’m sure he’s not happy about you being here, so I wouldn’t risk drawing his attention any more than necessary.” “Coward.” Chaol’s eyes softened. “If he weren’t here, I would have said yes.” (...) “Anyway,” Chaol added, jerking his chin at Dorian, “I think you have far more attractive suitors vying for your attention. I’m boring company to keep.” “I don’t mind being here with you.” “I’m sure you don’t,” Chaol said dryly, though he met her stare. “I mean it. Why aren’t you dancing with anyone? Aren’t there ladies whom you like?” “I’m the Captain of the Guard—I’m not exactly a catch for any of them.” There was some sorrow in his eyes, though it was well concealed. “Are you mad? You’re better than everyone in here. And you’re—you’re very handsome,” she said, taking his hand in her free one. There was beauty in Chaol’s face—and strength, and honor, and loyalty. She stopped hearing the crowd, and her mouth became dry as he stared at her. How had she missed it for so long? “You think so?” he said after a moment, looking at their clasped hands. She tightened her grasp. “Why, if I wasn’t—

Do you think it is a vain hope that one day man will find joy in noble deeds of light and mercy, rather than in the coarse pleasures he indulges in today -- gluttony, fornication, ostentation, boasting, and envious vying with his neighbor? I am certain this is not a vain hope and that the day will come soon.

We’re afraid the others will think we’re agringadas because we don’t speak Chicano Spanish. We oppress each other trying to out-Chicano each other, vying to be “real” Chicanas, to speak like Chicanos. There is no one Chicano language just as there is no one Chicano experience.

Men like him would always look at her and see the things they were glad they weren't: weak, small, timid, powerless. Let them. She'd expended so much energy vying for a broken seat at an uneven table.

Undoubtedly, Baron Arald thought with a deep sense of pride and satisfaction, this would go down as the weddiong of the year. Perhaps of the decade. Already, it had the hallmarks of a roaring success . The Bores' Table was well attended with a group of eight people, currently vying to see who could be the most uninteresting, overbearing, and repetitive. Other guests glanced in their direction, giving silent thanks to the organizers who had seperated them from such dread-ful people. There had been inevitable tearful flouncing and shrill recriminations when a girlfriend of one of the younger warriors from Sir Rodney's Battleschool had caught her boyfriend kissing another girl in a darkened corridor. It wouldn't be a wedding reception without that, Arald thought.

Sometimes we forget to appreciate the things that truly matter because our vision is so clouded by all of the mundanes. The here and now become our obsession , and we forget the concept of our finite state because with all the little things vying for our attention it feels like we'll go on forever.

I understand very clearly," Anya replied, a pensive look on her face. Peter's mom continued, "Anya, I suspect you're going through similar feelings. There are so many nice young men vying for your attention, it can get bewildering. I was there, so I know what it's like for you." "Thank you for saying that, Mrs. Brown. I believe I know what they all want, but I'm just not ready to get serious yet.

He found himself playing the love-sick fool vying for a crumb of attention or approval from Genevieve. Anything to make her smile. Make her happy. He'd give her the damn moon if that was what it took.

Through fetishizing the inequality embedded in the romance story, women have somehow become convinced that being in, or even vying for, a relationship is something we should want -- regardless of whether that relationship might hold equal power or doesn't serve us.

Mặt trời vẫn mọc mỗi ngày và mọi người vẫn mặc những bộ quần áo cũ, nói những câu nói cũ, không có nghĩa là người ta không buồn hơn, không vui hơn, không tổn thương hay không trưởng thành hơn.

Bạn trưởng thành khi bạn đủ mạnh mẽ để trở thành một điểm tựa

If our primary caregivers are shame-based, they will act shameless and pass their toxic shame onto us. There is no way to teach self-value if one does not value oneself. Toxic shame is multigenerational. It is passed from one generation to the next. Shame-based people find other shame-based people and get married. As each member of a couple carries the shame from his or her own family system, their marriage will be grounded in their shame-core. The major outcome of this will be a lack of intimacy. It’s difficult to let someone get close to you if you feel defective and flawed as a human being. Shame-based couples maintain nonintimacy through poor communication, nonproductive circular fighting, games, manipulation, vying for control, withdrawal, blaming and confluence. Confluence is the agreement never to disagree. Confluence creates pseudointimacy.

Have you noticed, now, the way people talk so loudly in snackbars and cinemas, how the shelved back gardens shudder with prodigies of talentlessness, drummers, penny-whistlers, vying transistors, the way you see and hear the curses and sign-language of high sexual drama at the bus-stops under ghosts of clouds, how life has come out of doors? And in the soaked pubs the old-timers wince and weather the canned rock. We talk louder to make ourselves heard. We will all be screamers soon.

There were too many things to be terrified of, a hundred horror scenarios all vying for attention in my brain.

We all have an innate feeling of being separate from the world, peering out at life from behind our own little self, and vying against other isolated selves. But how can we truly be separate from the same world that created us? “Dust to dust” isn’t just something they say at funerals, it’s the truth. You can no more disconnect from the universe and its inhabitants than a wave can extricate itself from the ocean.

Thời gian để quên một con người có lẽ cũng lâu như khi nhớ tới. Và cuối cùng, những thứ mà bạn nhìn thấy được, vẫn chỉ là sự tĩnh lặng của mình. Như thể chưa từng yêu. Mọi giới hạn đều quá mơ hồ. Ở bên trái. Cũng có thể bên phải. Thứ mà chúng ta yêu, vẫn chỉ là bản thân tình yêu. Có hay không con người đó đã không còn quan trọng.

phần lớn thời gian chúng ta chỉ trải qua, mà không thực sự tận hưởng

Koľká rozkoš! Tušíme sa len. Vy žúžoľ plášťa zriete splývať v dlhý tieň, ja letnej šaty vašej úbeľ vidím zas, ja som len tôňa temná, vy ste svetla jas!

Jsou chvíle, kdy na vás přijde jakási jasnozřivost a vy najednou prohlédnete skrz zdi do jiného rozměru, na který jste zapomněli nebo se rozhodli ho nevnímat, abyste mohli dál žít s nejrůznějšími iluzemi, díky nimž je život, zejména život s druhými, vůbec možný.

Not a breath, not a sound—except at intervals the muffled crackling of stones that the cold was reducing to sand—disturbed the solitude and silence surrounding Janine. After a moment, however, it seemed to her that the sky above her was moving in a sort of slow gyration. In the vast reaches of the dry, cold night, thousands of stars were constantly appearing, and their sparkling icicles, loosened at once, began to slip gradually towards the horizon. Janine could not tear herself away from contemplating those drifting flares. She was turning with them, and the apparently stationary progress little by little identified her with the core of her being, where cold and desire were now vying with each other. Before her the stars were falling one by one and being snuffed out among the stones of the desert, and each time Janine opened a little more to the night. Breathing deeply, she forgot the cold, the dead weight of others, the craziness or stuffiness of life, the long anguish of living and dying. After so many years of mad, aimless fleeing from fear, she had come to a stop at last. At the same time, she seemed to recover her roots and the sap again rose in her body, which had ceased trembling. Her whole belly pressed against the parapet as she strained towards the moving sky; she was merely waiting for her fluttering heart to calm down and establish silence within her. The last stars of the constellations dropped their clusters a little lower on the desert horizon and became still. Then, with unbearable gentleness, the water of night began to fill Janine, drowned the cold, rose gradually from the hidden core of her being and overflowed in wave after wave, rising up even to her mouth full of moans. The next moment, the whole sky stretched out over her, fallen on her back on the cold earth.

... Ban ngày mọi thứ đều gớm ghiếc. Người ta lịch sự, mơn trớn, tô son đánh phấn, rắc nước hoa, đi xe đạp. Mẹ kiếp, xi-líp cũng cần mác xịn. Mình muốn đập tan tất cả các tôn giáo (phải ngu lắm mới thờ một thằng ngoẻo từ đời tám hoánh, một thằng chắc chắn không biết giấy toa-lét là gì). Nhưng đạo Phật không đến nỗi. Nếu nhà chùa cho tự do tình dục thì mình cũng trùm áo cà sa mấy năm. Tiện, chẳng cần mặc quái gì bên trong. Mà đầu cũng đã trọc sẵn...

We all have a million things vying for our attention. If you tell yourself that you don’t have enough time to clear out your junk, you might be delaying the well-being and relief you could experience by tackling it. If not now, when?

Belgian colonial law barred Congolese from reaching senior positions in the army, civil service, judiciary or other organs of state, and by the time the colonialists left, the country had barely a handful of graduates. Control of the Congo fell into the hands not of a cadre of trained, experienced, educated leaders, but of young turks who suddenly found themselves vying for positions of enormous influence.

While it's certainly true that raising children is a big job and certainly has emotional resonance, it's really hard to intellectually justify the belief that you're adding something important to the world by adding more people to pollute the planet and compete for opportunities that become more precious as the number of people vying for a chance grows.

DIDEROT: Vy šejdíři! THERBOUCHEOVÁ: Používejte pro mě prosím femininum. Říkejte mi "šejdířko". DIDEROT (temně): V ženském rodě se říká spíš děvka.

her thoughts were in tumult as she quietly sorted through the cornmeal, searching out the grubs that were vying with hungry Virginians for the meager stores of food.

Chúng ta thường đi qua cuộc đời mà không nhận biết sự khác nhau giữa tình bạn và sự quen biết. Người quen chỉ là người ta biết tên và thường hay gặp. Ta có thể chia sẻ nơi ở, bàn làm việc, những bữa ăn, kể cả thời gian. Nhưng họ không phải là người để ta chia sẻ những khoảnh khắc đặc biệt trong đời. Và ta cũng không biết được đâu là những khoảnh khắc quan trọng trong đời họ. Còn bè bạn là những người ta nhớ đến khi nhìn thấy điều gì đó mà ta biết là họ thích, có liên quan đến họ, hay gợi đến những giờ phút đã chia sẻ cùng nhau. Tình bạn bắt đầu từ đó.

But real adults — people who are masters of their own lives — are in fact nowhere to be found. And a youthful transformation of what exists is in no way characteristic of those who are now young; it is present solely in the economic system, in the dynamism of capitalism. It is things that rule and that are young, vying with each other and constantly replacing each other.

Vy ale nejste mrtvá, Lauro." "Ale ano, jdem." "Lauro!" vykříkl Tracy. "Pro boha živého, Lauro, já vás miluju." "Promiňte," omlouvala se Laura. "Promiňte, ale myslím, že budu radši mrtvá.

The powers of insanity never slept, always vying for a voice that justified their lies. Insanity. The insane self. The false self. The flesh self. The ego, the mistaken mind, the costume, the roommate…

Muốn ngồi xuống, nhìn ánh tà dương vàng ngoài cửa sổ. Nhưng nỗi cô đơn đột nhiên lại trào dâng, không để bạn dừng chân. Bạn hiểu rất rõ. Bạn rất hiếm khi nhớ tới cô đơn. Nhưng bạn có thể cảm thấy giờ đây đang rất cô đơn. Như một người phụ nữ đương lúc đẹp nhất, trầm lắng nhất, người mà cô yêu và người yêu cô đều không có bên cạnh.

phần lớn thời gian chún gta chỉ trải qua, mà không thực sự tận hưởng

If I took a month off, I was likely to be replaced by one of the other, say, two hundred freelancers vying to get my assignments. If I took six months off to have a baby, I believed I would be written off by my editors. I was in a man’s profession.

Dnes ráno jsem vyrazil na procházku. Na vyvýšený okraj kráteru jsem to měl zhruba kilometr. S takovou vzdáleností si lidé na Zemi vůbec nelámou hlavou, ale ve skafandru je to utrpení. Nemůžu se dočkat, až budu mít vnoučata. „Když jsem byl mladší, šel jsem na kraj kráteru. Do kopce! Ve skafandru! Na Marsu, vy smradi! Slyšíte? Na Marsu!

My own view is that, since we have it and since it gives such pleasure to so many, especially around the world, it would be folly to get rid of it. The backside of whom are we going to lick when we send a letter in the Republic of Britain? William Hague? Harriet Harman? An elected British President will not glamourize the heads of state of other countries when they come on a state visit. Compared to carriages, crowns, orbs and ermine, an entry-level Jaguar and Marks & Spencer suit offer no edge over other nations when vying for trade advantages. By definition half the country will despise a Labour President or a Conservative one, and you can bet your bottom dollar that politicians will ensure that, if we do become a republic, there will be little other choice than the major parties. Which, at the time of writing, might include UKIP. Lovely.

Rất nhiều người từng yêu chúng ta. Chúng ta rời bỏ họ. Đó là cái giá chúng ta phải trả. Nghĩ ra cũng là cam tâm tình nguyện. Không ai có thể cùng một lúc chiếm được cả tự do và an toàn trong cuộc sống. Đó là điều không thể. Tô này, cậu có biết nỗi cô độc của riêng một người như thế nào không? Có nghĩa là tất cả mọi người xung quanh đều không có liên quan gì tới cậu cả. Tất cả mọi người đều biến mất. Thế là mình chỉ có thể khóc.

With every other girl vying for his attention, why the heck would he notice a bookworm like me?” And

Ne, kdepak, milé dámy, vy buďte vždy sentimentální a soucitné, jako jste dnes – buďte konejšivým máslem našemu suchému, okoralému chlebu.

Traditional Networking: "Trying to get media attention." Guerrilla Networking: "Doing such cool things that the media are vying for your attention.

When you choose freedom over security, then you embrace a life where you choose exactly what you want, rather than vying for what you think you need.

My strčíme všechny naše politiky, hned poté co jsou zvoleni, do kriminálu. Vy ne?" "Proč?" "Ušetří to spoustu času.

Why me?” he asked the guard. The guard shoved him back into ranks. “Vy you? Vy anybody?” he said.

Vy idioti, si budou myslet, že tady vaříme guláš.

Voices in the Poet's Head I have a repertory company in my head ~ each voice a vain actor vying for his moment upon the stage, for his 15 minutes of faux-fame in the fading limelight.

Thoughts clutter his mind, too many to focus on one, as though they are all vying to be final. He thinks that if he is about to die he should have begun collecting his final thoughts earlier.

I have devoted my whole life to Physical Culture. I shall devote the rest too for the same. I have seen the degradation in which we are at present. I have travelled extensively and all that I have remarked here is from experience; and my suggestions are to meet the situation. I know they would, if adapted remedy the evil; for, I have studied carefully the position. If we in all seriousness wish to call ourselves the descendants of the mighty Yoddhas of past, if we wish not to cast a blot on the fair name of India, if we wish that India should have a future vying with its glorious past, if we wish that we should gain an honorable and equal place among the peoples of the world it should be our sacred resolve from now to wake up from the sleep as a lion; we should muster muscle and steel the body. For all greatness lies in Culture and 1 should only be too gratified if my scheme could put the youth of the country on the right track to achieve our most cherished Ideals.

She left our Gdańsk-Morena apartment with same haste as Tata, gone in a mad dash. She must have prepared for it , trained hard and practised. Everything that fast is slow in planning. An earthquake that takes seconds to wreck everything is a result of billions of years of slipping and shoving of tectonic plates. Those plates have no choice but to live side by side, often on top of one another. They hate this setup. They push each other around, siblings vying for the top bunk, to the point of eruption, ruin and exhaustion. After the quake: calm. A sad empty calm, with too much time to think...

In the window I smelled all the food of San Francisco. There were seafood places out there where the buns were hot, and the baskets were good enough to eat too; where the menus themselves were soft with foody esculence as though dipped in hot broths and roasted dry and good enough to eat too. Just show me the bluefish spangle on a seafood menu and I’d eat it; let me smell the drawn butter and lobster claws. There were places where they specialized in thick and red roast beef au jus, or roast chicken basted in wine. There were places where hamburgs sizzled on grills and the coffee was only a nickel. And oh, that pan-fried chow mein flavored air that blew into my room from Chinatown, vying with the spaghetti sauces of North Beach, the soft-shell crab of Fisherman’s Wharf — nay, the ribs of Fillmore turning on spits! Throw in the Market Street chili beans, redhot, and french-fried potatoes of the Embarcadero wino night, and steamed clams from Sausalito across the bay, and that’s my ah-dream of San Francisco…

And on the other side of the ledger, unions like the Teamsters often employed their own muscle, their own reigns of terror, including bombings, arsons, beatings, and murders. The warfare and violence were not just between labor and management. It was often between rival unions vying for the same membership. Sadly, it was often violence directed at rank-and-file union members who urged democratic reform of their unions. The

I step back, farther inside the salon. Watching Luca surrounded by girls, all vying for his attention, Elisa attached to him like a nasty growth that will need extensive surgery to remove, is not my idea of a fun time.

Sau khi chúng ta chia tay, em sẽ dần dần, dần dần, quên sạch gương mặt anh. Không thể nhớ nổi. Quên mất gương mặt ở bên cạnh mình. Một gương mặt đã từng ngắm lâu như thế trong bóng tối. Cứ ngỡ còn nhớ tới, không ngờ đã quên. Không ngừng tiêu mòn, rút lui, mãi cho đến khi hoá thành hư không. Anh phải quay về cuộc sống của anh. Em phải đối mặt với sự trĩu nặng chân thành và không tài nào tiêu hoá nổi của em. Ngại gì chúng chỉ là những kí ức.

I was dealing with governance in both instances, and individual responsibilities, and enmities and friendship. In a university, professors and others are always vying for power, and there’s really no power there. If you have any power at all, it’s a nothing. It’s really odd that these things should happen in a university but they do. Except in scale, the machinations for power are about the same in a university as in the Roman Empire or Washington.

But we would do well to meditate daily, rather as the religious do on their God, on the 9.5 trillion kilometres which comprise a single light year, or perhaps on the luminosity of the largest known star in our galaxy, Eta Carinae, 7,500 light years distant, 400 times the size of the sun and 4 million times as bright. We should punctuate our calendars with celebrations in honour of VY Canis Majoris, a red hypergiant in the constellation Canis Major, 5,000 light years from earth and 2,100 times bigger than our sun. Nightly – perhaps after the main news bulletin – we might observe a moment of silence in order to contemplate the 200 to 400 billion stars in our galaxy, the 100 billion galaxies and the 3 septillion stars in the universe. Whatever their value may be to science, the stars are in the end no less valuable to mankind as solutions to our megalomania, self-pity and anxiety. To answer our need to be repeatedly connected through our senses to ideas of transcendence, we should insist that a percentage of all prominently positioned television screens on public view be hooked up to live feeds from the transponders of our extraplanetary telescopes. We would then be able to ensure that our frustrations, our broken hearts, our hatred of those who haven’t called us and our regrets over opportunities that have passed us by would continuously be rubbed up against, and salved by, images of galaxies such as Messier 101, a spiral structure which sits towards the bottom left corner of the constellation Ursa Major, 23 million light years away, majestically unaware of everything we are and consolingly unaffected by all that tears us apart.

When Paris is asked to judge the three goddesses, says Jane Harrison in her wonderful book Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, it amounts to a male put-down of the Goddess. For here were the three major classical goddesses, the three aspects of the one Goddess who is manifested in these three modes, and here is Paris, a languid young man, judging them as though in an Atlantic City beauty contest! And they are vying for his vote by giving him bribes and promises.

jak se jednou dostanete do sledu velení, musíte být neustále připraveni přijmout vyšší velení. Jste-li v oddíle o jedné četě - dost pravděpodobné, v nynějším stadiu války - a jste pomocníkem velitele čety, když to váš velitel koupí... pak... vy ... jste... jím!

There are so many stimuli vying for your attention—sounds, places, people, smells, and your own thoughts rattling around in your head. You only have so much attentional energy and it will make you happier, more efficient, and healthier if you are able to focus it properly.

ECONOMIC RULES OF THE DYSFUNCTIONAL MEDICAL MARKET More treatment is always better. Default to the most expensive option. A lifetime of treatment is preferable to a cure. Amenities and marketing matter more than good care. As technologies age, prices can rise rather than fall. There is no free choice. Patients are stuck. And they’re stuck buying American. More competitors vying for business doesn’t mean better prices; it can drive prices up, not down. Economies of scale don’t translate to lower prices. With their market power, big providers can simply demand more. There is no such thing as a fixed price for a procedure or test. And the uninsured pay the highest prices of all. There are no standards for billing. There’s money to be made in billing for anything and everything. Prices will rise to whatever the market will bear.

Cage a bird that once felt the wind through its feathers and the world beneath its feet, and you’d find that insane glint of hope in its eyes that enticed it to escape every time the door swung open. Even if it could no longer fly, it’d never stop vying for its freedom, and neither would I.

It's painful and terrible that youth is over, and with it that whole game of looking and longing and vying for attention, hoping for something, for some absolute transformation of everything. But it’s also a reprieve to be let off that hook and know that you’re simply in your own hands at last

Once you become an Essentialist, you will find that you aren’t like everybody else. When other people are saying yes, you will find yourself saying no. When other people are doing, you will find yourself thinking. When other people are speaking, you will find yourself listening. When other people are in the spotlight, vying for attention, you will find yourself waiting on the sidelines until it is time to shine. While other people are padding their résumés and building out their LinkedIn profiles, you will be building a career of meaning. While other people are complaining (read: bragging) about how busy they are, you will just be smiling sympathetically, unable to relate. While other people are living a life of stress and chaos, you will be living a life of impact and fulfillment. In many ways, to live as an Essentialist in our too-many-things-all-the-time society is an act of quiet revolution.

- "Neviem si ani predstaviť, aké hrôzy videli vaše oči.“ - „Skoro by som si myslela, že ma ľutujete. Podľa mňa je ťažšie predstaviť si, aké hrôzy napáchali moje ruky. Neľutujte mňa, ľutujte tých chudákov, ktorí pod nimi padli.“ - „A čo vy? Ľutujete ich?“ - „Ja som ich zabila. Ak by som ich ľutovala, tak by sa to nestalo.

You’d better marry her before she reaches eighteen and the spell wears off,” I said. “Spell?” “Yes. The one that’s hiding her fangs and pincers from plain sight.” “I don’t find them especially hidden,” he said mildly. “Then perhaps you’re a pair.” His brows lifted. “Now, that’s the cruelest thing you’ve said so far.” Mrs. Fredericks cleared off, and Chloe took her place before the piano. A beam of sunlight was just beginning its slide into the chamber, capturing her in light. She was a glowing girl with a glowing face, and Joplin at her fingertips. “Give me time,” I muttered, dropping my gaze to my plate. “I’ll come up with something worse.” “No doubt.” Armand pulled a flask from his jacket and shook it in front of my nose. “Whiskey. Conveniently the same color as tea. Are you game, waif?” I glanced around, but no one was looking. I lifted my cup, drained it to the dregs, and set it before him. He was right. It did look like tea. But it tasted like vile burning fire, all the way down my throat. “Sip it,” he hissed, as I began to cough. His voice lifted over my sputtering. “Dear me, Miss Jones, I do beg your pardon. The tea’s rather hot; I should have mentioned it.” “Quite all right,” I gasped, as the whiskey swirled an evil amber in my teacup. Chloe’s song grew bouncier, with lyrics about a girl with strawberries in a wagon. Several of the men had begun to cluster near, drawn to her soprano or perchance her bosom. Two were vying to turn the pages of her music. She had to crane her head to keep Armand in view. He sent her another smile from his chair, lifting his cup in salute. “I’m going to kiss you, Eleanore,” he said quietly, still looking at her. “Not now. Later.” His eyes cut back to mine. “I thought it fair to tell you first.” I stilled. “If you think you can do so without me biting your lip, feel free to try.” His gaze shone wicked blue. “I don’t mind if you bite.” “Biting your lip off, I should have said.” “Ah. Let’s see how it goes, shall we?

For the TL;DR (too long; didn’t read), generation dating is just one more arena vying for our headspace. The days of introspection and developing relationships have been replaced with instant, curated imagery, all intended to get to the point of selling our sexual market brand in the best picture before the swipe. Image and perception are king.

Suddenly it becomes possible that there are just others, that we ourselves are an “other” among others.

Much in the contemporary church reflects the idolatry of consumerism. Many people join the church simply because of what it has to offer them. A “gospel of prosperity” replaces the radical and costly good news of God’s new creation in Jesus Christ. Churches become competitors vying for a greater share of the religious market. Evangelism is reduced to a marketing strategy

The stars are still there, but in the city—the lights of our offices that stay on late, bright advertisements vying for our attention, the yellow glow of so many lamps in so many apartment windows—it all works together to drown out the lights that remind us of how small we are. It all works together to convince me that the world from behind my tiny perspective is all there is.

Theistic claims that supernatural agency exists in the universe derive from ancient traditions of belief. The word 'atheist' is a theist's term for a person who does not share such beliefs. Theists think that atheists have a belief or set of beliefs, just as theists do but in the opposite sense, about theism-related questions. This is a mistake; atheists certainly have beliefs about many things, but they are not 'theistic-subject-matter-related beliefs' in any but a single negative sense. For atheism is the absence of 'theistic-subject-matter-related belief. Although it is true that 'absence of belief in supernatural agency' is functionally equivalent to 'belief in the absence of supernatural agency', theists concentrate on the latter formulation in order to make atheism a positive as opposed to privative thesis with regard to theistic-subject-matter-related matters. This is what makes theists think they are in a kind of belief football match, with opposing sets of beliefs vying for our allegiance. What is happening is that the theists are rushing about the park kicking the ball, but the atheists are not playing. They are not even on the field; they are in the stands, arguing that this particular game should not be taking place at all.

Cray would have been disliked, anyway, because of the uniform he wore, but it was his habit of luring starving young women into his bed for money that made him an object of loathing in the district. In really bad times, the hungriest would gather at his door at nightfall, vying for the chance to earn a few coins to feed their families by selling their bodies. Had I been older when my father died, I might have been among them.

Já vinen jsem, vy ne, a to je dobře. Měli byste mít nicméně možnost si říci, že toho, čeho jsem se dopustil já, byste se bývali dopustili taky. Možná s menší dávkou horlivosti, ale možná také s menší dávkou zoufalství, v každém případě nějakým způsobem ano. Snad mohu konstatovat, že, jak dokázaly moderní dějiny, za určitých daných okolností každý nebo téměř každý dělá to, co se mu řekne; a nezlobte se na mě, ale je jen malá pravděpodobnost, že zrovna vy byste byli výjimka, stejně jako jsem jí nebyl já. Jestli jste se narodili v zemi, kde nejen že vám nikdo nepřijde zabít ženu, ale kde ani nikdo nepřijde a neřekne vám, abyste šli zabíjet ženy a děti druhých, děkujte Bohu a jděte s pokojem. Ale pořád mějte na paměti tohle: možná jste měli víc štěstí než já, ale nejste lepší. Protože nebezpečí začíná právě ve chvíli, kdy najdete tolik troufalostí, abyste si to mysleli.

Are you--er--quite sure it’s Grindelwald’s--?” “I am not mistaken,” said Krum coldly. “I valked past that sign for several years, I know it vell.” “Well, there’s a chance,” said Harry, “that Xenophilius doesn’t actually know what the symbol means. The Lovegoods are quite…unusual. He could easily have picked it up somewhere and think it’s a cross section of the head of a Crumple-Horned Snorkack or something.” “The cross section of a vot?” “Well, I don’t know what they are, but apparently he and his daughter go on holiday looking for them…” Harry felt he was doing a bad job explaining Luna and her father. “That’s her,” he said, pointing at Luna, who was still dancing alone, waving her arms around her head like someone attempting to beat off midges. “Vy is she doing that?” asked Krum. “Probably trying to get rid of a Wrackspurt,” said Harry, who recognized the symptoms.

Do you remember our conversation? Do you remember the places we went and the things we saw? The bindery was our access, the point in space that contains all other points, and that night you were a boy unbound, a tiny astronaut, taking your first leap into an infinite and unknowable universe. For the first time you could see the voices of the things you'd been hearing for so long, all that clamorous matter vying for your attention. With your supernatural ears, you were able to perceive, with absolute clarity, the sinuous shapes and contours of the sounds that matter makes as it moves through space and time and mind. Some of these sounds were so beautiful they made you laugh out loud and clap your hands with delight, and others were so sad they made tears run down your face. And, oh, the visions we had! Container ships glittering on a moonlit night off the coast of Alaska. Pyramids of sulfur, rising yellow in the mist. The plundered moon and all its craters; globes and stars and asteroids; a jet black crow with a diamond tiara; a flock of rubber duckies, spinning through the Pacific gyres. At the sound of a footstep, a young girl freezes, and Andromeda sparkles in the firmament. Fires rage as the redwoods burn; and in the deep ocean, a pilot whale carries her dead baby on her nose, while sea turtles weep briny tears onto nets of plastic.

Memory is an artist, an impressionist. She adds colour, sound, smell and emotion to events at her whim. She adds, subtracts and embellishes until the event she started documenting is quite unrecognisable to the others who also experienced it, but at the same time, is more truthful to the owner of the memory. There is no reality. There are only impres- sions of past events, made by a million selves, all interacting with each other, vying for superiority. Reality doesn’t exist, perhaps in the end, that’s my only truth.

The sun and moon keep their appointed seasons; the animals get up when God tells them to get up and they lie down when God directs them to do so. What is the result? “The earth is satisfied” (verse 13); “they are filled with good” (verse 28). Did you catch that? To surrender to the Creator’s control is not onerous or burdensome; it is, in fact, the place of blessing, fullness, and peace. There is no evidence in this passage of any stress, struggle, or strain. Why? Because the creation is not vying with the Creator for control.

Now he could see with his own eyes and hear with his own ears that not only Hitler, not only Heydrich or the “sphinx” Müller, not just the S.S. or the Party, but the elite of the good old Civil Service were vying and fighting with each other for the honor of taking the lead in these “bloody” matters. “At that moment, I sensed a kind of Pontius Pilate feeling, for I felt free of all guilt.” Who was he to judge? Who was he “to have [his] own thoughts in this matter”? Well, he was neither the first nor the last to be ruined by modesty.

Prioritizing likability over status means choosing to help our peers rather than exclusively satisfying our own needs, showing more interest in others rather than vying for more attention and power, and cultivating relationships more than “likes.” It’s making the choice to help others feel included and welcome rather than making ourselves feel superior. Attaining the most gratifying form of popularity comes from making the effort to fit in more than trying to stand out, and from doing what we can to promote harmony rather than focusing on how to dominate others.

I usually can’t stop babbling, just to fill space, but with Julienne, I can see the appeal of just being. Julienne is quiet, obviously, but that’s because she can say what she means to in so few words. She has a commanding presence that’s hard to ignore. Julienne doesn’t seem to feel the same urgency other people do. Everyone else, myself included, is constantly vying for a space to occupy, just for the sake of it. But when Julienne does share, it’s incredible. She has an actual opinion on everything, not just something to say, and I want to hear about all of them.

In the window I smelled all the food of San Francisco. There were seafood places out there where the buns were hot, and the baskets were good enough to eat too; where the menus themselves were soft with foody esculence as though dipped in hot broths and roasted dry and good enough to eat too. Just show me the bluefish spangle on a seafood menu and I’d eat it; let me smell the drawn butter and lobster claws. There were places where they specialized in thick red roast beef au jus, or roast chicken basted in wine. There were places where hamburgs sizzled on grills and the coffee was only a nickel. And oh, that pan-fried chow mein flavored air that blew into my room from Chinatown, vying with the spaghetti sauces of North Beach, the soft-shell crab of Fisherman’s Wharf—nay, the ribs of Fillmore turning on spits! Throw in the Market Street chili beans, redhot, and french-fried potatoes of the Embarcadero wino night, and steamed clams from Sausalito across the bay, and that’s my ah-dream of San Francisco. Add fog, hunger-making raw fog, and the throb of neons in the soft night, the clack of high-heeled beauties, white doves in a Chinese grocery window . . .

And yet, my research shows that this isn't actually the case. The lightning bug researchers discovered that when the fireflies were able to time their pulses with one another with astonishing accuracy (to the millisecond!), it allowed them to space themselves apart perfectly, thus eliminating the need to compete. In the same way, when we help others become better, we can actually increase the available opportunities, instead of vying for them. Like the lightning bugs, once we learn to coordinate and collaborate with those around us, we all begin to shine brighter, both individually and as an ecosystem.

I feel the boy’s gaze on me, and I turn to him. He is still lying on the sand, propped on one arm, staring at me like a fisherman who has unexpectedly caught a shark in his nets. I return his gaze with equal candor, adding him up. His stubbled jaw is strong and just slightly crooked, his copper eyes large and expressive, his lips full. A small, cheap earring hangs from his left earlobe. A handsome boy growing into a man’s body, already powerfully built. Were he a prince or a renowned warrior, he would have entire harems vying for his attention. As it is, his rough beauty is hidden in his poorly cut clothing.

Zachraňovat... Dokdy vás bude třeba zachraňovat? Naučíte už se někdy konečně chránit sami? Proč věčně nasloucháte páterům, fašizujícím demagogům a doktorům Opirům? Proč nechcete zaměstnávat vlastní mozky? Proč tak strašně nechcete přemýšlet? Copak je to tak těžké pochopit, že svět je obrovský, složitý a úchvatný? Proč vám všechno připadá tak jednoduché a nudné? Čím se váš mozek liší od Rabelaisova, Swiftova, Leninova, Einsteinova, Makarenkova, Hemingwayova, Strogovova? Jednou mě to udolá, pomyslel jsem si. Jednou se mi začne nedostávat sil. Já jsem přece stejný jako vy! Jenže já vám chci pomoct, kdežto vy mně ne...

As soon as Trump announced in 2015, I immediately set out to report what the mainstream news media were not. I wrote an early piece that posed twenty-one questions I thought reporters should ask on the campaign trail. Not one of them did. Late in the primaries, Senator Marco Rubio brought up my question about Trump University and Senator Ted Cruz posed my question about Trump’s dealings with the Genovese and Gambino crime families, matters explored in this book. I will always wonder what might have happened had journalists and some of the sixteen candidates vying with Trump for the Republican nomination started asking my questions months earlier. This

Battle rappers having an insult contest. Men and boys compete in ritualized insult wars all around the world. Earlier we saw how the instinctive choreography of a standard human fight has been elaborated into the world’s various formal dueling systems. The same goes for the monkey dance of the banter fight, which always involves the same basic moves and rules. Two men take turns hurling boasts and insults. The contests draw spectators, who laugh and hoot as the men derogate each other’s masculinity, while also leveling hilariously vile attacks on relatives (especially mothers). All around the world, the verbal duel is a pure monkey dance for the mind, in which men compete in verbal artistry, wit, and the ability to take a rhetorical punch. Like other forms of the monkey dance, scholars have wondered why boys and men are drawn to verbal duels, and girls and women generally aren’t. This strikes me as a very male sort of question to ask. It’s sort of like a dung beetle wondering why humans don’t find feces delicious. Women avoid verbal duels not because they’ve been told it’s unladylike, but because trading the vilest attacks conceivable while vying in braggadocio just isn’t most women’s idea of a good time. Why don’t people eat feces? Because coprophagy isn’t in our nature. Why don’t women like to duel verbally? Because it’s not in theirs.

Chtěl jste bojovat proti válce; zatím však bojujete proti zákonu. Porušit zákon je mravně dovoleno jen ve jménu vyššího a ušlechtilejšího zákona. Který je vyšší zákon, o nějž se zasazujete? Ano: nezabíjet. Je však ještě vyšší zákon: položit život “za to, co větší je než já”. Vojáku Vladimíre, to větší je národ. Neodsuzuji vás proto, že nechcete zabíjet – kdo by mohl odsuzovat vůli tak ušlechtilou? –, ale proto, že nechcete položit život za něco, co je větší než vy. Jste vinen, že jste nepomyslil na tuto hodnotu. Celé pasívní hrdinství vaší oběti se nevyrovná aktivnímu hrdinství obyčejného vojáka, který přijímá riziko své povinnosti. Není doba pro zbytečné mučednictví; prosté věci, jako poslušnost, jsou dnes vážnější lidskou obětí.

Ale vy Poláci náma trochu pohrdáte, že jo?" řekl mi znenadání. "Já tedy ne, pane, český odboj přece dokázal něco úžasného…" (Věděl jsem, že mu jde o zásadní věci.) "Zabít Hitlerova oblíbence, to je tedy hrdinství!" dodal jsem, protože vím, jak se odehrál atentát na protektora Čech a Moravy Reinharda Heydricha, Černého anděla, který vymyslel holokaust do detailů. "Není se čím chlubit," oponoval taxikář. "Heydrich nejel v obrněným voze, ale v kabrioletu, a tak nebylo těžký ho trefit." "No, ale vám se ho povedlo zabít!" "Nepřehánějte. Neměl žádnou eskortu a trasu nepatrolovaly žádný hlídky." "No ale nepřežil!" „Jedině proto, že si to sám usnadnil. Když se do něj pokusil trefit ten první kluk, Heydrich nerozkázal šlápnout na plyn a uject, ale řekl stát. Sám se nám podal na podnose. Není se čím chlubit." "No ale přece jen jste ho zabili." "To vůbec není jistý, protože samopal toho prvního atentátníka se zasekl a dodnes se neví proč. Až teprv ten druhej hodil do auta bombu." "No a díky tomu jste zabili Hitlerovu pravou ruku." "Nesmí se to přehánět. Heydrich se ani nebránil. Když vyskočil z auta a chtěl střílet, ukázalo se, že v jeho pistoli není zásobník." "No ale podařilo se vám ho zabít." "Ale kdepak! Umřel ve špitále až za tejden. Když se vrhnul do auta pro ten zásobník, už jen dopadl na sedadlo, protože měl od tý bomby polámaný žebra a ty se mu zapíchly do sleziny. Takže vlastně potom umřel na otravu krve.“ Přiznávám, dámy a pánové, že v Čechách není snadné provést hrdinský čin.

Když řekne on: Co se děje? a vy řeknete: Jak to myslíš? Kde? A on řekne: Tak, všeobecně. Na to mu, Same, řeknete: Tak abys vědel, já toho nevím o nic víc, než víš ty. Přisámbůh, Same, já toho vím jěšte míň. Věr mi, jestli máš na mysli všelijaký ty trable, jestli máš na mysli lidi, co maj peníze a ty druhý, co je nemaj, a jiný, co maj kvalitní pití, a druhý, co ho nemaj, a jěšte jiný, co se můžou někde v pohodlí vyspat, a ty druhý, co takový pohodlíčko nemaj, věr mi, tomu já nerozumím. Jestli máš dokonce na mysli nějakýho mužskýho a nějakou ženskou, a jestli se milujou nebo nemilujou, pak se tedy omlouvám. Kdybych na tebe dělal dojem, že patřím k těm, co vědí, nebo k těm, co by měli vědet, tak to jsem nechtěl. Nevím. Nemá to pro mě hlavu ani patu. Vyznám se v dešti. Když jsem někde venku za deště, tak vím, že prší.

Legally Kidnapped: The Case Against Child Protective Services is a radical book at its core. It seeks to strike the root of the problem rather than feverishly vying for compromise. This book is a journey inside an agency that has carelessly and often unnecessarily disrupted families throughout the country. With over 400,000 children in the United States currently in the custody of this organization, it is imperative to explore the true intentions and motives behind its work (1). This is a book about Child Protective Services, assembled by a former CPS investigator who has worked to expose the agency; it is dedicated to the past, current and future victims of an agency which has hurt parents and children time and time again. Though it may seem extreme, the information divulged to you is backed by facts and experience.

Ach, vy, kteří jste neprožili dvaačtyřicátý rok na Pankráci, vy nevíte, vy nemůžete vědět, co je to guláš! Pravidelně, i v dobách nejhorších, kdy žaludek ryčel hladem, kdy se při koupání objevovali kostlivci, potažení lidskou koží, kdy kamarád kamarádu alespoň očima kradl sousta z jeho přídělu, kdy i odporná kaše sušené zeleniny, zředěná odstředěným výtažkem z rajčat, se zdála touženou pochoutkou, i v těch nejhorších dobách pravidelně dvakrát v týdnu – ve čtvrtek a v neděli – vyklepli ti hausarbajtři do misky sběračku brambor a polili lžicí gulášové omáčky s několika třásničkami masa. Bylo to zázračně chutné, ano, ale bylo to víc než chutné, byla to hmatatelná připomínka lidského života, bylo to něco civilního, něco normálního v kruté nenormalitě gestapáckého věznění, něco, o čem se hovořilo sladce a s rozkoší, – ach, kdož by mohl pochopit, jakých výsostných hodnot může dosáhnout lžíce dobré omáčky, kořeněné hrůzou stálého odumírání!

No happiness without order, no order without authority, no authority without unity.” The mildness of all government among them, civil or domestic, may be signalised by their idiomatic expressions for such terms as illegal or forbidden—viz., “It is requested not to do so and so.” Poverty among the Ana is as unknown as crime; not that property is held in common, or that all are equals in the extent of their possessions or the size and luxury of their habitations: but there being no difference of rank or position between the grades of wealth or the choice of occupations, each pursues his own inclinations without creating envy or vying; some like a modest, some a more splendid kind of life; each makes himself happy in his own way. Owing to this absence of competition, and the limit placed on the population, it is difficult for a family to fall into distress; there are no hazardous speculations, no emulators striving for superior wealth and rank.

I would not be able to explain the highly complex process of wealth concentration to you,” the alien said, “but in essence it was no different than the operations of capital markets in your world. In the time of my great-grandfather, sixty percent of the wealth of the First Earth was under the control of ten million; in the world of my grandfather, eighty percent of our world's wealth was in the hands of a mere ten thousand. And, when my father was young, ninety percent of the wealth was held by no more than forty-two individuals. “When I was born, capitalism on the First Earth had reached the peak of peaks, producing an almost unbelievable marvel of wealth: Ninety-nine percent of the wealth of our world was now in the hands of single person! That person was known as the 'Last Entrepreneur'. “Even though there was still a gap between rich and poor among the other two billion, they were vying for nothing more than the remaining one percent of the world's wealth. And so the First Earth became a world with one rich man and two billion poor.

People who prefer to give or match often feel pressured to lean in the taker direction when they perceive a workplace as zero-sum. Whether it’s a company with forced ranking systems, a group of firms vying to win the same clients, or a school with required grading curves and more demand than supply for desirable jobs, it’s only natural to assume that peers will lean more toward taking than giving. “When they anticipate self-interested behavior from others,” explains the Stanford psychologist Dale Miller, people fear that they’ll be exploited if they operate like givers, so they conclude that “pursuing a competitive orientation is the rational and appropriate thing to do.” There’s even evidence that just putting on a business suit and analyzing a Harvard Business School case is enough to significantly reduce the attention that people pay to relationships and the interests of others. The fear of exploitation by takers is so pervasive, writes the Cornell economist Robert Frank, that “by encouraging us to expect the worst in others it brings out the worst in us: dreading the role of the chump, we are often loath to heed our nobler instincts.

Prečítal som si Klausov list Mečiarovi, išiel som sa vyšabliť a potom som ho upravil pre svoju krátku správu bývalému premiérovi k sedemdesiatke: Vážený pán Vladimír Mečiar! Poznal som Vás ako politika, ktorý nevie dodržať slovo. A to nebolo a nie je v českej a slovenskej politike výnimočné. Poznal som Vás ako ako človeka, ktorý sa nebojí riskovať a pokojne so svojimi komplicmi okradne krajinu o miliardový majetok a organizuje štátom objednané kriminálne činy, násilné útoky či dokonca vraždy. Súčasne som Vás poznal ako štátnika, ktorý dokonale ovláda umenie klamať, manipulovať médiá a šíriť štátnu propagandu jedného názoru. Pre svoju zem a pre svoj národ ste nehľadali racionálne riešenia zásadných problémov. A to v dobe veľkých existenčných neistôt, ktoré väčšina občanov pociťuje dodnes, ale Vy a Vaša rodina a Vaši spojenci už dávno nie. Vôbec ma neprekvapuje, že svoju sedemdesiatku oslavujete v blahobyte, spokojne a šťastne na slobode, a nie vo väzení, kam podľa mňa patríte. A vlastne ma ani nezaráža, keď Vám blahoželajú premiér slovenskej republiky aj český prezident - vo svojej podstate sa podobáte ako vajce vajcu. Vaša verzia mafiánskeho kapitalizmu sa zakorenila mimoriadne hlboko. Pri príležitosti Vášho životného jubilea Vám úprimne želám, nech Vás nesúdi len história.

I,” he said, a faint note of derision in his voice, “am the least favored scion of our ruling house, House Mara Sant.” He was from Brontes, then. Which might explain the eyes…she thought again of certain differences, and suppressed a shudder. “I am a Prince of the Blood,” he continued, sounding both embittered and proud, “third in line for the Dragon Throne, and grand nephew to the Emperor. Owing to a…political dispute, I am now also an exile. Presented with a choice between resigning my commission in the na-vy and leaving to become governor of a mining planet and staying to face my uncle’s as-sassins….” He shrugged slightly, as if the choice were of no consequence. “A…political dispute?” “I gambled,” he said bluntly. “I lost.” “You seem…sanguine,” she remarked, surprise blunting the instinct to guard her tongue. “He shouldn’t have let me live.” That anyone could discuss their own murder with such cold calculation horrified her. He horrified her. She chewed her lip, digesting all that he’d told her: not merely a naval officer, but a prince—and a maverick one at that. She wondered what he could have done. “So you see,” he finished, “I’m no more free than you.” He laughed, then, but without humor. “We can be prisoners together. I am en route to a wretched planet called Tarsonis to assume governorship and as you have no other, more pressing engagement, you are coming with me.

Nevzpomínám si ale na jejich argumenty, tak nemohu odolat a neříci vám, co podle mne vedlo k nedostatku komunikace v NASA. Když se v NASA pokoušeli letět na Měsíc, vládlo velké nadšení. Byl to cíl, jehož chtěl dosáhnout každý. Nikdo nevěděl, jestli se to podaří, ale všichni spolupracovali. Mám o tom představu, protože jsem pracoval v Los Alamos a zažil to napětí a tlak, když jsme všichni společně pracovali na atomové bombě. Když měl někdo problém – třeba s detonátorem –, všichni věděli, že je to velký problém, a přemýšleli, jak se s ním vypořádat, a podávali zlepšovací návrhy. Když jsme se všichni dověděli o jeho vyřešení, byli jsme šťastní, protože to znamenalo, že je naše práce užitečná. Kdyby nefungoval detonátor, nefungovala by ani celá bomba. Uměl jsem si představit, že totéž probíhalo zpočátku v NASA. Kdyby nefungoval skafandr, nemohlo by se letět na Měsíc. A tak se každý zajímal o problémy těch druhých. Když pak projekt letů na Měsíc skončil, NASA zaměstnával spoustu lidí: měl velkou organizaci v Houstonu, velkou organizaci v Huntsville, nemluvě o Kennedyho středisku na Floridě. Když se skončí s velkým projektem a vy nechcete vyhodit lidi z práce a poslat je na ulici, co uděláte? Musíte přesvědčit Kongres, že existuje projekt, který může uskutečnit jen NASA. Aby se to podařilo, je třeba – alespoň to v tomto případě zřejmě třeba bylo – přehánět. Přehánět o tom, jak ekonomický raketoplán bude, jak často bude moci létat, jak bude bezpečný, jak velké vědecké objevy učiní. „Raketoplán může absolvovat tolik a tolik letů a bude stát tolik a tolik. Letěli jsme na Měsíc, tak tohle dokážeme taky!

[Vitellius's] sins were luxury and cruelty. He divided his feasts into three, sometimes into four a day, breakfast,​ luncheon, dinner, and a drinking bout; and he was readily able to do justice to all of them through his habit of inducing vomiting. ... When his mother died, he was suspected of having forbidden her being given food when she was ill, because a woman of the Chatti, in whom he believed as he would in an oracle, prophesied that he would rule securely and for a long time, but only if he should survive his parent. .... He declared from the steps of the Palace before his assembled soldiers, that he withdrew from the rule which had been given him against his will; but when all cried out against this, he postponed the matter, and after a night had passed, went at daybreak to the rostra in mourning garb and with many tears made the same declaration, but from a written document. When the people and soldiers again interrupted him and besought him not to lose heart, vying with one another in promising him all their efforts in his behalf, he by a sudden onslaught drove Sabinus and the rest of the Flavians, into the Capitol. Then he set fire to the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus and destroyed them, viewing the battle and the fire from the house of Tiberius, where he was feasting. ... At last on the Stairs of Wailing​ he was tortured for a long time and then despatched and dragged off with a hook to the Tiber. He met his death, along with his brother and his son, in the fifty-seventh year of his age, fulfilling the prediction of those who had declared from an omen which befell him at Vienna, as we have stated,​ that he was destined to fall into the power of some man of Gaul. For he was slain by Antonius Primus, a leader of the opposing faction, who was born at Tolouse and in his youth bore the surname Becco, which means a rooster's beak.

The final examination came and my mother came down to watch it. She hated watching me fight. (Unlike my school friends, who took a weird pleasure in the fights--and more and more so as I got better.) But Mum had a bad habit. Instead of standing on the balcony overlooking the gymnasium where the martial arts grading and fights took place, she would lie down on the ground--among everyone else vying to get a good view. Now don’t ask me why. She will say it is because she couldn’t bear to watch me get hurt. But I could never figure out why she just couldn’t stay outside if that was her reasoning. I have, though, learned that there is never much logic to my wonderful mother, but at heart there is great love and concern, and that has always shone through with Mum. Anyway, it was the big day. I had performed all the routines and katas and it was now time for the kumite, or fighting part of the black-belt grading. The European grandmaster Sensei Enoeda had come down to adjudicate. I was both excited and terrified--again. The fight started. My opponent (a rugby ace from a nearby college), and I traded punches, blocks, and kicks, but there was no real breakthrough. Suddenly I found myself being backed into a corner, and out of instinct (or desperation), I dropped low, spun around, and caught my opponent square round the head with a spinning back fist. Down he went. Now this was not good news for me. It was bad form and showed a lack of control. On top of that, you simply weren’t meant to deck your opponent. The idea was to win with the use of semicontact strikes, delivered with speed and technique that hit but didn’t injure your opponent. So I winced, apologized, and then helped the guy up. I then looked over to Sensei Enoeda, expecting a disapproving scowl, but instead was met with a look of delight. The sort of look that a kid gives when handed an unexpected present. I guess that the fighter in him loved it, and on that note I passed and was given my black belt. I had never felt so proud as I did finally wearing that belt after having crawled my way up the rungs of yellow, green, orange, purple, brown--you name it--colored belts. I had done this on my own and the hard way; you can’t buy your way to a black belt. I remember being told by our instructor that martial arts is not about the belts, it is about the spirit; and I agree…but I still couldn’t help sleeping with my black belt on that first night. Oh, and the bullying stopped.

We've been here three days already, and I've yet to cook a single meal. The night we arrived, my dad ordered Chinese takeout from the old Cantonese restaurant around the corner, where they still serve the best egg foo yung, light and fluffy and swimming in rich, brown gravy. Then there had been Mineo's pizza and corned beef sandwiches from the kosher deli on Murray, all my childhood favorites. But last night I'd fallen asleep reading Arthur Schwartz's Naples at Table and had dreamed of pizza rustica, so when I awoke early on Saturday morning with a powerful craving for Italian peasant food, I decided to go shopping. Besides, I don't ever really feel at home anywhere until I've cooked a meal. The Strip is down by the Allegheny River, a five- or six-block stretch filled with produce markets, old-fashioned butcher shops, fishmongers, cheese shops, flower stalls, and a shop that sells coffee that's been roasted on the premises. It used to be, and perhaps still is, where chefs pick up their produce and order cheeses, meats, and fish. The side streets and alleys are littered with moldering vegetables, fruits, and discarded lettuce leaves, and the smell in places is vaguely unpleasant. There are lots of beautiful, old warehouse buildings, brick with lovely arched windows, some of which are now, to my surprise, being converted into trendy loft apartments. If you're a restaurateur you get here early, four or five in the morning. Around seven or eight o'clock, home cooks, tourists, and various passers-through begin to clog the Strip, aggressively vying for the precious few available parking spaces, not to mention tables at Pamela's, a retro diner that serves the best hotcakes in Pittsburgh. On weekends, street vendors crowd the sidewalks, selling beaded necklaces, used CDs, bandanas in exotic colors, cheap, plastic running shoes, and Steelers paraphernalia by the ton. It's a loud, jostling, carnivalesque experience and one of the best things about Pittsburgh. There's even a bakery called Bruno's that sells only biscotti- at least fifteen different varieties daily. Bruno used to be an accountant until he retired from Mellon Bank at the age of sixty-five to bake biscotti full-time. There's a little hand-scrawled sign in the front of window that says, GET IN HERE! You can't pass it without smiling. It's a little after eight when Chloe and I finish up at the Pennsylvania Macaroni Company where, in addition to the prosciutto, soppressata, both hot and sweet sausages, fresh ricotta, mozzarella, and imported Parmigiano Reggiano, all essential ingredients for pizza rustica, I've also picked up a couple of cans of San Marzano tomatoes, which I happily note are thirty-nine cents cheaper here than in New York.

What lesson is this?” she choked out. His wild gaze met hers. “That even a low bastard can be tempted above his station when a lady is as lovely as you.” “A lady? Not a tomboy?” “I wish you were a tomboy, sweeting,” he said bitterly. “Then you wouldn’t have viscounts and earls and dukes vying for your favors.” Was he jealous? Oh, how wonderful if he was! “And Bow Street Runners?” she prodded. He shot her a dark glance that was apparently supposed to serve as her answer, for he then bent to close his mouth over one linen-draped breast. Good. Heavens. What deliciousness what this? She shouldn’t allow it. But the man she’d been fascinated with for months was treating her as if he truly found her desirable, and she didn’t want it to stop. Clutching his head to her, she exulted in the hungry way he sucked her breast through her chemise, turning her knees to water and her blood to stream. He pleasured her breast with teeth and tongue as his hand found her other breast and teased the nipple to arousal. Her pulse leapt so high she feared she might faint. “Jackson…ohhh, Jackson…I thought you…despised me.” “Does this feel like I despise you?” he murmured against her breast, then tongued it silkily for good measure. A sensual tremor swept through her. “No.” But then, she’d been a fool before with men. She wasn’t good at understanding them when it came to this. “If you desired me all along, why didn’t you…say anything before?” “Like what? ‘My lady, I keep imagining you naked in my bed?’” He slid one hand down to her hip. “I’m not fool enough to risk being shot for impertinence.” Should she be thrilled or disappointed to hear that he imagined her in his bed? It was more than she’d expected, yet not enough. She dug her fingers into his shoulder. “How do you know I won’t try shooting you now?” He nuzzled her breast. “You left your pistol on the breakfast table.” A strange excitement coursed through her. It made no sense, considering what had happened the last time a man had got her alone and helpless. “Perhaps I have another hidden in this room.” He lifted his head to gaze steadily into her eyes. “Then I’d best keep you too busy to use it.” Suddenly he was kissing her again, hard, hungry kisses…each more intoxicating than the last. He filled his hands with her breasts and fondled them shamelessly, distracting her from anything but the taste and feel of him. A moan escaped her, and he tore his mouth from hers. “You shouldn’t let me touch you this way.” “Yet I am,” she gasped against his cheek. “And you aren’t stopping, either.” “Say the word, and I will.” Yet he dragged her skirts up and pressed forward between her legs. “This is mad. We’re both mad.” “Are we?” she asked, hardly conscious anymore of what she was aying. Because it felt utterly right to be in his arms, as if she’d waited ages to be there. Her heart had never clamored so for anyone else. “I don’t generally take advantage of my clients’ sisters,” he rasped as his hands slid to grip her thighs. “It’s unwise.” “I’m your client, too. Do I look as if I’m complaining?” she whispered and drew his head down to hers.