Wang So Quotes

I’ve never needed a sword to protect you—to raise you the way your father wanted. Caring for my family meant putting away the fighter, so I did.

Montana was naked, and so was Billy, of course. He had a tremendous wang, incidentally. You never know who'll get one.

So many parents will try to kill everything brilliant about a girl in the name of giving her a good life, a safe life, a chance at happiness.

Does it help if we're so strong-willed, stubborn, ambitious, and selfish that we always overcome everything in our way no matter what?" asked Wang-mu. "I think those are the pertinent virtues, yes," said Peter. "Then let's do it. That's us in spades.

This... you are my story... and I was so selfish, so tied to that shadow that I missed it. And my son, I— I’m so sorry it took me this long to understand. I’m sorry—” the words caught in her throat, choking her, until pain shot through her chest, forcing her to let them out. “I never loved you the way I should have.

So he likes being mean to you," she said. "And you like that he likes being mean to you." "And I like being mean to him, too, don't forget." "Of course not. Pleasure from meaness. There's a name for it: sadomasochism." "Thanks a lot." I said. "That's just what I need. A mental picture of Todd Harding laced up in a black leather bodysuit with a whip in one hand and his wang in the other.

So you have a choice. You can leave quietly or I can call the police after I wang you with my stapler.

Lan WangJi looked at him quietly, "Do you behave in such a frivolous way towards everyone?" Wei WuXian thought for a second, "I think so?" Lan WangJi looked at the ground. He only replied a moment later, "How impudent!

Wei WuXian, "So, I'm actually really curious. Just how did you recognize me?" Lan WangJi replied in a calm voice, "I am also really curious as to why your memory is so bad.

Winkie? Flesh flute? Tallywhacker? Baby maker? Quiver bone? Joystick? Fun stick? Lap rocket? Love muscle? Wedding tackle? One-eyed wonder weasel? Helmet head? Wang? Trouser snake? Giggle stick? Schlong? Mushroom head? Love rod? Pecker? Thundersw—” “Enough!” Lucian barked, and when Bricker paused and glanced to him questioningly, he said, “I do not know what alarms me more, that you have so many names for cock or what it means in regard to how much time you spend thinking about cock.

So Wang Lung sat, and so his age came on him day by day and year by year, and he slept fitfully in the sun as his father had done, and he said to himself that his life was done and he was satisfied with it.

So there are pics of Tucker’s mighty wang on the internet?” “I haven’t been tagged on Instagram yet, so I’m hopeful they aren’t out there. But thanks for calling my dick mighty. We appreciate that.” Amusement colors his words. “We? As in you and your penis?” “Yup,” he says cheerfully. I snuggle deeper under the covers. “You have a name for your penis?” “Doesn’t everyone? Guys put a name on everything that’s important to them—cars, dicks. One of my teammates in junior hockey named his stick, which was dumb because sticks break all the time. He’d gone through twelve of them by the end of the season.” “What were the names?” “That’s the thing. He just kept adding a number to the end, like iPhone 6, iPhone 7, except in his case it was Henrietta 1, Henrietta 2, et cetera.” I snicker. “He should’ve used the hurricane naming convention.” “Darlin’, he wasn’t smart enough to come up with two names, let alone twelve.

Clear waters drift through the immensity of a tall forest. In front of me a huge river mouth receives the long wind. Deep ripples hold white sand and white fish swimming as in a void. I sprawl on a big rock, billows nourishing my humble body. I gargle with water and wash my feet. A fisherman pauses out on the surf. So many fish long for bait. I look only to the east with its lotus leaves.

Vera Wang is very famous person, even white people know her name. So your mother said we might as well name it after her.” “That’s called misrepresentation,

In the language of cancer, people describe a thing that “invades” them so that they can then “battle” the cancer. No one ever says that a person is cancer, or that they have become cancer, but they do say that a person is manic-depressive or schizophrenic, once those illnesses have taken hold.

It’s not a matter of Dad sitting down with his preadolescent son and incorporating 'Don’t be a criminal!' into the 'birds and the bees' talk. (I mean, that couldn’t hurt, probably. But it’s not the point.) It’s about teaching our boys to actively oppose sexual violence. It’s all well and good to say you’re against rape and would never rape anyone, end of story. But somewhere in that crowd of guys laughing about an unconscious girl getting 'a wang in the butthole, dude'—and the one listening to Daniel Tosh say, 'Wouldn’t it be funny if she got gang-raped right now?' and the one reading an op-ed in the Washington Post that puts 'sexual assault' in quotation marks, as though it exists only in the eye of the beholder—somewhere in all of those crowds is the guy who would rape someone. The guy who will rape someone. The guy who has raped someone. And could you blame any of those guys for thinking that rape is not a serious crime, or even something to be particularly ashamed of, when so many 'good' guys around them are laughing at the same jokes?

Americans he found to be so outwardly happy all the time and superficially positive. To be indiscriminately happy seemed to him as much of a curse as to be indiscriminately sad.

A Chinese proverb predicts that for every man with great skill, there is a woman with great beauty. In ancient China, there are four great beauties: The first so beautiful that when fish see her reflection they forget to swim and sink. The second so beautiful that birds forget how to fly and fall. The third so beautiful that the moon refuses to shine. The fourth so beautiful that flowers refuse to bloom. I find it interesting how often beauty is shown to make the objects around it feel worse.

A habit that forms from this is that I can ask Eric questions when he is asleep. Once I hear the first snore, I say, Why is your trajectory so straight? Why is your family so nice? It seems unfair how easy everything comes to you. In your last life you must have been a dung beetle. Or someone who gave up his life for someone else. Perhaps a pregnant woman crossing the street. Do you remember? Then I part his autumn hair and bring my voice down to a whisper. Please stop, just for a little while, and let me catch up. How do you expect me to marry you if you never let me catch up?

So, the thing is, my dad, the immigrant, is really, really disappointed that I have an allergy. A peanut allergy. Because immigrants do not believe in allergies. I swear to God, ask any brown person with an accent that you see and they’ll tell you that allergies are some New World shit.

Only there were plenty of parents who didn’t do that. Plenty of parents who tried to keep their children down, to control them, to make slaves of them. Where she had grown up, Wang-mu had seen plenty of that. So what Wiggin was describing wasn’t parents, really. He was describing good parents. He wasn’t telling her what the gods were, he was telling her what goodness was. To want other people to grow. To want other people to have all the good things that you have. And to spare them the bad things if you can. That was goodness.

Some bonds are so forged in fire, some experiences are so permeated with feeling, that it is impossible to not see them with love.

Shown her how life could reward the places where you least exerted effort, while denying what you desired and worked so ardently toward most.

Secrets. They have so much power, don’t they?

Montana was naked, and so was Billy, of course. He had a tremendous wang, incidentally. You never know who’ll get one.

Julia was tired. She was always tired. But it just seemed so pathetic to complain, to talk about how fatigued you were. Men never said they were tired, which made sense, because compared to women they did fuck-all.

Interrogated by Pearl about the smell of roasting men and whether the Chinese variety smelled different from white flesh, Wang Amah replied confidently that white meat was coarser, more tasteless and watery, "because you wash yourselves so much.

With such unpleasant associations tied to the schizophrenias, it is no wonder that I cling to the concept of being high-functioning. As in most marginalized groups, there are those who are considered more socially appropriate than others, and who therefore distance themselves from those so-called inappropriate people, in part because being perceived as incapable of success causes a desire to distance oneself from other, similarly marginalized people who are thought to be even less capable of success.

I am here because I am the one that must love Peter so much that he can feel worthy, worthy enough to bear to let the goodness of Young Valentine flow into him, making him whole, making him Ender. Not Ender the Xenocide and Andrew the Speaker for the Dead, guilt and compassion mingled in one shattered, broken, unmendable heart, but Ender Wiggin the four-year-old boy whose life was twisted and broken when he was too young to defend himself. Wang-mu was the one who could give Peter permission to become the man that child should have grown up to be, if the world had been good.

This scroll, five hundred years old and more, had been inspired by her favorite, the great Wang Wei, master of landscape art, who had painted the scenes from his own home, where he lived for thirty years before he died. Now behind the palace walls on this winter’s day, where she could see only sky and falling snow, Tzu His gazed upon the green landscapes of continuing spring. One landscape melted into another as slowly she unrolled the scroll, so that she might dwell upon every detail of tree and brook and distant hillside. So did she, in imagination, pass beyond the high walls which enclosed her, and she traveled through a delectable country, beside flowing brooks and spreading lakes, and following the ever-flowing river she crossed over wooden bridges and climbed the stony pathways upon a high mountainside and thence looked down a gorge to see a torrent fed by still higher springs, and breaking into waterfalls as it traveled toward the plains. Down from the mountain again she came, past small villages nestling in pine forests and into the warmer valleys among bamboo groves, and she paused in a poet’s pavilion, and so reached at last the shore where the river lost itself in a bay. There among the reeds a fisherman’s boat rose and fell upon the rising tide. Here the river ended, its horizon the open sea and the misted mountains of infinity. This scroll, Lady Miao had once told her, was the artist’s picture of the human soul, passing through the pleasantest scenes of earth to the last view of the unknown future, far beyond.

Mr. Wang had found my interest in fen, the Mandarin word for excrement, peculiar. Nonetheless, he tried to be helpful. He would point out when he spotted a truck full of fen looming behind, though its odor preceded it by far. He would alert me when he saw a tiny figure in a roadside field bearing a tank and hose, spraying--by the smell of it--the contents of his toilets on his cabbages. This practice would horrify any public health professional, given the disease-load of feces, but it's what happens to 90 percent of China's excrement, and has been done forever. There are reasons not to eat salads in China, and why the sizzling woks are so sizzling.

If you govern a country by listening to the arguments of a multitude of people, the country will be in danger in no time at all. How do we know this is so? Lao-tzu emphasized flexibility, Confucius emphasized humaneness, Mo-tzu emphasized universality, the Keeper of the Pass emphasized purity, Lieh-tzu emphasized emptiness, Ch’en Ping emphasized equality, Yang Chu emphasized self, Sun Pin emphasized power, Wang Liao emphasized initiative, Ni Liang emphasized conformism. Using bells and drums is a means of unifying ears; making law and order uniform is a way of unifying minds. When the smart ones can’t be clever and the stupid ones can’t be clumsy, this is a means of unifying a mass.

It remains one of the great inequalities of the world that some children are born light years ahead of others. They may come from more stable homes, from wealthy homes, from homes with cleaners and domestic staff, cooks and tutors. Everything is easier, more streamlined, more conducive to educational and career success. Others will come from one-bedroom huts with no running water and no electricity, little chance of a good education, and little time to do anything besides work. The child born into a rich family will, no doubt, progress at a faster rate and develop the sort of self-assurance that comes from stability. This is the case wherever you’re from; it is as true of communist societies as it is of capitalist ones. I have travelled the world and seen these inequalities. I have witnessed the problems such different starting blocks can bring. But if I’ve learned anything, it is that success is possible, whatever your situation and however your life begins. I hope that this story, my story, will prove inspirational and that it will encourage others to dream big, take a plunge, use whatever resources are available. If a small poor boy fishing for prawns on a lake in Ningbo can do it, then so can you.

China should significantly augment the foreign aid and public goods it provides, so it can use these as a bargaining chip in its efforts to get more say in global decision-making

As a child, I get new clothes so rarely that when I do, I put off wearing them. It then happens that when the big day comes, the clothes no longer fit.

If she has cried, she has not done so in front of me. She has done so in the shower where it is hard to tell.

I’m starting to understand how ridiculous it is to demand civility when the world is so disgustingly uncivil.

We go to three parks. We walk nonstop or else she cries. The baby likes moving, especially moving at high speeds, so we go on swings. She opens one eye and looks at me with profound suspicion. What is this contraption? she asks silently, a tiny cyclops in my hands. This is a simple harmonic oscillator, I say, a pendulum; this is periodic motion. Wheeeee is the sound I think her temporal lobe wants to make" (p125)

28.  Do not repeat the tactics which have gained you one victory, but let your methods be regulated by the infinite variety of circumstances. [As Wang Hsi sagely remarks: “There is but one root-principle underlying victory, but the tactics which lead up to it are infinite in number.” With this compare Col. Henderson: “The rules of strategy are few and simple. They may be learned in a week. They may be taught by familiar illustrations or a dozen diagrams. But such knowledge will no more teach a man to lead an army like Napoleon than a knowledge of grammar will teach him to write like Gibbon.”] 29.  Military tactics are like unto water; for water in its natural course runs away from high places and hastens downwards. 30.  So in war, the way is to avoid what is strong and to strike at what is weak. [Like water, taking the line of least resistance.] 31.  Water shapes its course according to the nature of the ground over which it flows; the soldier works out his victory in relation to the foe whom he is facing. 32.  Therefore, just as water retains no constant shape, so in warfare there are no constant conditions. 33.  He who can modify his tactics in relation to his opponent and thereby succeed in winning, may be called a heaven-born captain. 34.  The five elements (water, fire, wood, metal, earth) are not always equally predominant; [That is, as Wang Hsi says: “they predominate alternately.”] the four seasons make way for each other in turn. [Literally, “have no invariable seat.”] There are short days and long; the moon has its periods of waning and waxing. [Cf. V. ss. 6. The purport of the passage is simply to illustrate the want of fixity in war by the changes constantly taking place in Nature. The comparison is not very happy, however, because the regularity of the phenomena which Sun Tzu mentions is by no means paralleled in war.]

How good it made them feel, these well-meaning Upper West Side transplants, buying organic produce they didn't even have to wash from a handsome black man who would greet them with an exotic fist bump! An attractive, articulate chap, not unlike the young senator from Illinois they had just congratulated themselves for nominating, who would show the world that slavery was behind us and that we could appreciate Hip Hop. Yes! So many pretty boxes to check all at once!

Those skilled in war bring the enemy to the field of battle and are not brought there by him. One able to make the enemy come of his own accord does so by offering him some advantage. And one able to prevent him from coming does so by hurting him. If you are able to hold critical points on his strategic roads the enemy cannot come. Therefore Master Wang said: 'When a cat is at the rat hole, ten thousand rats dare not come out; when a tiger guards the ford, ten thousand deer cannot cross.

They see too much,” her father had said once, when she was doing a report for history class and asked him whether his own parents had ever talked about the war. “They see too much so they have to close their hearts tight. Can’t get them open again.

Young has a personal relationship with electricity. In Europe, where the electrical current is sixty cycles, not fifty, he can pinpoint the fluctuation --- by degrees. It dumbfounded Cragg. "He'll say, 'Larry, there's a hundred volts coming out of the wall, isn't there?' I'll go measure it, and yeah, sure --- he can hear the difference." Shakey's innovations are everywhere. Intent on controlling amp volume from his guitar instead of the amp, Young had a remote device designed called the Whizzer. Guitarists marvel at the stomp box that lies onstage at Young's feet: a byzantine gang of effects that can be utilized without any degradation to the original signal. Just constructing the box's angular red wooden housing to Young's extreme specifications had craftsmen pulling their hair out. Cradled in a stand in front of the amps is the fuse for the dynamite, Young's trademark ax--Old Black, a '53 Gold Top Les Paul some knot-head daubed with black paint eons ago. Old Black's features include a Bigsby wang bar, which pulls strings and bends notes, and Firebird picking so sensitive you can talk through it. It's a demonic instrument. "Old black doesn't sound like any other guitar," said Cragg, shaking his head. For Cragg, Old Black is a nightmare. Young won't permit the ancient frets to be changed, likes his strings old and used, and the Bigsby causes the guitar to go out of tune constantly. "At Sound check, everything will work great. Neil picks up the guitar, and for some reason that's when things go wrong.

I burned incense, swept the earth, and waited for a poem to come... Then I laughed, and climbed the mountain, leaning on my staff. How I'd love to be a master of the blue sky's art: see how many sprigs of snow-white clouds he’s brushed in so far today

I once saw a huge pack of dogs, scruffy, mangy, maybe so, but they slept where they pleased, and waking, ran romping. But throw them a bone? It was war in the street . . . Maybe it’s a good thing bones are rare: but until there’s enough, no creature will share.

Forgiveness, as it turns out, is not a linear prospect. Neither is healing; both flare up and die down. So do my symptoms of schizoaffective disorder. I have tried to control these "oscillations" as my psychiatrist calls them. But what, if anything, can truly be controlled?

The baby has become sentient. When we walk, she screams across the street at other babies, baby expletives, we think. Something along the lines of God-damn it other baby, don't try to out-cute me. To make matters worse, she is very cute, so we have a hard time correcting her.

As part of the ordinary life, one should try to constantly self-reflect and contemplate rather than constantly comparing oneself with others. By doing so, one would constantly remain in the state of light reflex. This would be one of the proactive applications of this technique.

I’m not one of these white lib-er-als like that cracker Fulldull or that Charlie McCarthy a while back gave all the college queers a hard-on, think Vietnam some sort of mistake, we can fix it up once we get the cave men out of office, it is no mistake, right, any President comes along falls in love with it, it is lib-er-al-ism’s very wang and ding-dong pussy. Those crackers been lickin’ their mother’s ass so long they forgotten what she looks like frontwards. What is lib-er-alism? Bringin’ joy to the world, right? Puttin’ enough sugar on dog-eat-dog so it tastes good all over, right?

Fear of Flying (Because every time you fly, you land somewhere new and you have to make new friends.) Leave something you love in every city you've lived in. A record player in Shanghai, a kitten in Seattle, your best dresses hanging in a closet in Paris. That way you'll always have a reason to retrace your steps back to old friends. So it means you won't have to stay away forever. Learn to enjoy being alone, appreciate the silence of dinners where an entire roast duck can be gnawed away, cartilage and all, without conversational interruption. You are free and oh-so-mysterious. Think: Friends, who needs friends?

Statt mich wegzudrücken oder zurückzutreten, griff er nach meinem Oberarm und zog mich noch näher zu sich heran. Wieder hüllte mich sein würziger Geruch ein und mein Blick glitt über sein Gesicht, seine Lippen, hinunter zu seinem Hals. Sein ganzer Körper war angespannt, die Muskeln traten hervor und sein Kiefer zuckte. Er schluckte – schwer. Noch nie war mir aufgefallen, wie sexy so ein Hals oder ein Kiefer sein konnte. Oder diese vollen Lippen, die sich gerade teilten, als er Luft ausstieß. Sein Atem streifte meine Wange und ging nun mindestens genauso schnell wie meiner. Verdammt – so war das nicht geplant gewesen.

However, to maintain a good credit rating during periods when revenue is lagging, municipalities must fuck over residents by implementing austerity measures such as firing public employees, cutting pension funds and health-care benefits, weakening the power of labor unions, cutting the education budget, and so forth.

But the more that I tried to remind myself of the various ways in which I did, in fact, seem to have a body that was moving, with a heart that pumped blood, the more agitated I became. Being dead butted up against the so-called evidence of being alive, and so I grew to avoid that evidence because proof was not a comfort; instead, it pointed to my insanity.

Weidenblätter fielen dann und wann auf sie herab, auf seine bleiche Stirn, auf ihre Wange und ihren Scheitel. In der Stille verursachte ihr Fallen ein Geräusch, feiner als alles, was Mina bisher gehört hatte. Tautropfen mochten solche Geräusche hervorbringen, wenn sie auf Spinnennetzen zitterten; Schmetterlingsfühler, wenn sie nach der Sonne tasteten. Es vermischte sich mit dem Bachgeplauder und mit ihrem Atem; seinen hörte sie nicht. Aber sie konnte sehen, dass seine Brust sich schwach hob und senkte. Zwischen den Wimpern sah sie ihm beim Atmen zu. So lange, bis die Träume, die mit den schmalen Blättern aus der Weide rieselten, sich auf ihren Augenlidern gesammelt hatten, sie sanft herunterdrückten und der Schlaf alle Geräusche fortwischte.

If I believe that I don’t exist, or that I am dead, does that not impact who I am? Who is this alleged “person” who is a “person living with psychosis,” once the psychosis has set in to the point that there is nothing on the table save acceptance? When the self has been swallowed by illness, isn’t it cruel to insist on a self that is not illness? Is this why so many people insist on believing in a soul?

I'm still trying to figure out what "okay" is, particularly whether there exists a normal version of myself beneath the disorder, in the way a person with cancer is a healthy person first and foremost. In the language of cancer, people describe a thing that "invades" them so that they can then "battle" the cancer. No one ever says that a person is cancer, or that they have become cancer, but they do say that a person is manic-depressive or schizophrenic, once those illnesses have taken hold. In my peer education courses I was taught to say that I am a person with schizoaffective disorder. "Person-first language" suggests that there is a person in there somewhere without the delusion and the rambling and the catatonia. But what if there isn't? What happens if I see my disordered mind as a fundamental part of who I am?

...wandered into a shoe store. A lone customer stood at the display rack, turning the shoes over, one after another, to look at their soles. Jessica recalled the proverb "Hell is a stylish shoe." A salesman greeted her at the door, a young man with a shaved head and a black turtleneck. Too intimate from the start, he held each selection so close to her face that she had to lean back to get a better look. She felt his breath as he pressed some studded sparkly sneakers on her. Jessica found it fascinating that he thought she would want these, or the next pair he held up--stiletto-heeled jobs that seemed lewd, as did his smirk. The salesman didn't conceal his disappointment when she bought a pair of marked-down Vera Wang flats. She bought them because they seemed so pedestrian. Men preferred women teetering so she chose to walk like a Neanderthal.

The whole world was dancing and so were we. We exchanged another smile and I marvelled how, in all the stories of the gold-paved Mei Guo and the dangerous Mei Guo, no one in China knew about the lights of America, about how they were so delightful that they could stop us in the middle of the street, in the middle of our lives and our worries, in the middle of strangers living stranger lives, all just to fill us with music and hope.

The psychiatric hierarchy decrees who can and cannot be high-functioning and “gifted.” A much-liked meme on Facebook once circulated on my feed, in which a chart listed so-called advantages to various mental illnesses. Depression bestows sensitivity and empathy; attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder allows people to hold large amounts of information at once; anxiety creates useful caution. I knew immediately that schizophrenia wouldn’t make an appearance.

Medicine is an inexact science, but psychiatry is particularly so. There is no blood test, no genetic marker to determine beyond a shadow of a doubt that someone is schizophrenic, and schizophrenia itself is nothing more or less than a constellation of symptoms that have frequently been observed as occurring in tandem. Observing patterns and giving them names is helpful mostly if those patterns can speak to a common cause or, better yet, a common treatment or cure.

The power they have over you, Eric says. I just don't get it. But you can't even tell me the worst thing your parents have said. And that's a bad thing? I often wonder what I would have been like if I had been raised like him-- notes, stickers, complimentary questions asked at the table, by the hearth. I would probably socialize better in large groups and not stare so intently at shoes. I would hold my neck up high like a giraffe, the most confident of mammals.

Er drückte sich an den Tisch, auf den die Magd zum Gruß ein Glas Branntwein stellte, und blieb dort verhangenen Blicks den ganzen Vormittag unbeweglich sitzen. Unablässig spähten vom Fenster die Dorfkinder herein, lachten und schrien ihm etwas zu - er hob den Kopf nicht. Eintretende betrachteten ihn neugierig, er blieb, den Blick auf den Tisch gebannt, mit krummen Rücken sitzen, schamhaft und scheu. Und als mittags zur Essenszeit ein Schwarm Leute den Raum mit Lachen füllte, Hunderte Worte um ihn schwirrten, die er nicht verstand, und er, seiner Fremdheit entsetzlich gewahr, taub und stumm inmitten einer allgemeinen Bewegtheit saß, zitterten ihm die Hände so sehr, daß er kaum den Löffel aus der Suppe heben konnte. Plötzlich lief eine dicke Träne die Wange herunter und tropfte schwer auf den Tisch. Scheu sah er sich um. Die andern hatten sie bemerkt und schwiegen mit einemmal. Und er schämte sich: immer tiefer beugte sich sein schwerer, struppiger Kopf gegen das schwarze Holz.

All I wanted," Saina thought, "was to make someone feel something." Money can't do that. Just looking at a dollar bill did nothing to your emotions — you have to make money or lose money for it to make you feel anything. You can earn it, win it, lose it, save it, spend it, find it, but you can't sell it because you never really own it. On the other hand, you didn't have to possess a song or a sculpture for it to make you feel something — you only had to experience it. So why did collectors want to collect? What feeling were they pursuing?

And what people want to own, of course, is real estate. So a dental hygienist with bad credit making forty thousand dollars a year felt that she deserved to park her ass in a million-dollar home. With a little creative financing, and as long as housing prices continued to rise, she believed that she could afford a million-dollar home. And as long as the dental hygienist continued to pay interest on the mortgage for the million-dollar home, as long as housing prices continued to rise, as long as more loan officers approved more loans for more dental hygienists with bad credit who could continue to pay the interest on their overblown mortgages, housing prices would indeed stay stratospheric, and banks could print money based on that certainty. And, like your nursery rhyme, that was the house that Jack built.” Kalchefsky

The Memory Business Steven Sasson is a tall man with a lantern jaw. In 1973, he was a freshly minted graduate of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. His degree in electrical engineering led to a job with Kodak’s Apparatus Division research lab, where, a few months into his employment, Sasson’s supervisor, Gareth Lloyd, approached him with a “small” request. Fairchild Semiconductor had just invented the first “charge-coupled device” (or CCD)—an easy way to move an electronic charge around a transistor—and Kodak needed to know if these devices could be used for imaging.4 Could they ever. By 1975, working with a small team of talented technicians, Sasson used CCDs to create the world’s first digital still camera and digital recording device. Looking, as Fast Company once explained, “like a ’70s Polaroid crossed with a Speak-and-Spell,”5 the camera was the size of a toaster, weighed in at 8.5 pounds, had a resolution of 0.01 megapixel, and took up to thirty black-and-white digital images—a number chosen because it fell between twenty-four and thirty-six and was thus in alignment with the exposures available in Kodak’s roll film. It also stored shots on the only permanent storage device available back then—a cassette tape. Still, it was an astounding achievement and an incredible learning experience. Portrait of Steven Sasson with first digital camera, 2009 Source: Harvey Wang, From Darkroom to Daylight “When you demonstrate such a system,” Sasson later said, “that is, taking pictures without film and showing them on an electronic screen without printing them on paper, inside a company like Kodak in 1976, you have to get ready for a lot of questions. I thought people would ask me questions about the technology: How’d you do this? How’d you make that work? I didn’t get any of that. They asked me when it was going to be ready for prime time? When is it going to be realistic to use this? Why would anybody want to look at their pictures on an electronic screen?”6 In 1996, twenty years after this meeting took place, Kodak had 140,000 employees and a $28 billion market cap. They were effectively a category monopoly. In the United States, they controlled 90 percent of the film market and 85 percent of the camera market.7 But they had forgotten their business model. Kodak had started out in the chemistry and paper goods business, for sure, but they came to dominance by being in the convenience business. Even that doesn’t go far enough. There is still the question of what exactly Kodak was making more convenient. Was it just photography? Not even close. Photography was simply the medium of expression—but what was being expressed? The “Kodak Moment,” of course—our desire to document our lives, to capture the fleeting, to record the ephemeral. Kodak was in the business of recording memories. And what made recording memories more convenient than a digital camera? But that wasn’t how the Kodak Corporation of the late twentieth century saw it. They thought that the digital camera would undercut their chemical business and photographic paper business, essentially forcing the company into competing against itself. So they buried the technology. Nor did the executives understand how a low-resolution 0.01 megapixel image camera could hop on an exponential growth curve and eventually provide high-resolution images. So they ignored it. Instead of using their weighty position to corner the market, they were instead cornered by the market.

Bald sind sie allein auf der Tanzfläche, und Pierre führt seine Partnerin schon viel sicherer. “Was haben sie mir denn da vorgemacht?” sagt Ève. “Sie tanzen doch sehr gut.” “Das ist das erste Mal, dass man mir das sagt.” “Sie brauchten eben mich als Tänzerin.” “Ich glaube es fast …” Sie sehen sich an und tanzen eine Weile schweigend. “Sagen Sie”, fragte Pierre plötzlich, “was geht hier eigentlich vor? Vorhin dachte ich nur an meine Sorgen, und jetzt bin ich hier … Ich tanze und sehe nur Ihr Lächeln … Wenn das der Tod … wäre …” “Das?” “Ja. Mit Ihnen tanzen, immer, nichts sehen als Sie, alles andere vergessen …” “Ja, und?” “Der Tod wäre besser als das Leben. Finden sie nicht auch?” “Halten Sie mich fester”, haucht sie. Ihre Gesichter sind einander ganz nahe. Sie tanzen noch einen Augenblick weiter, und sie wiederholt: “Halten sie mich fester…” Plötzlich wird Pierres Gesicht traurig. Er hört auf zu tanzen, rückt ein wenig von Ève ab und murmelt: “Es ist ja alles Theater. Ich habe Ihre Taille nicht einmal berührt …” Ève begreift nun ebenfalls: “Wahrhaftig”, sagt sie langsam, “wir tanzen jeder für sich …” Sie bleiben voreinander stehen. Dann streckt Pierre die Hände aus, als wolle er sie auf die Schultern der jungen Frau legen, dann zieht er sie unwillig wieder zurück: “Mein Gott”, sagt er, “wie süß wäre es, Ihre Schultern zu berühren. Ich möchte so gerne Ihren Atem spüren, wenn Sie mich anlächeln. Aber auch das habe ich verpasst. Ich bin ihnen zu spät begegnet …” Ève legt Pierre die Hand auf die Schulter. Sie sieht ihn liebevoll an: “Ich gäbe meine Seele dafür hin, einen Augenblick lang wieder zu leben und mit Ihnen zu tanzen.” “Ihre Seele?” “Das ist alles, was wir noch besitzen.” Pierre nähert sich seiner Begleiterin und umfasst sie von neuem. Sie beginnen wieder zu tanzen, sehr zart, Wange an Wange, mit geschlossenen Augen.

Washington University found that adding a single extra gene dramatically boosted a mouse’s memory and ability. These “smart mice” could navigate mazes faster, remember events better, and outperform other mice in a wide variety of tests. They were dubbed “Doogie mice,” after the precocious character on the TV show Doogie Howser, M.D. Dr. Tsien began by analyzing the gene NR2B, which acts like a switch controlling the brain’s ability to associate one event with another. (Scientists know this because when the gene is silenced or rendered inactive, mice lose this ability.) All learning depends on NR2B, because it controls the communication between memory cells of the hippocampus. First Dr. Tsien created a strain of mice that lacked NR2B, and they showed impaired memory and learning disabilities. Then he created a strain of mice that had more copies of NR2B than normal, and found that the new mice had superior mental capabilities. Placed in a shallow pan of water and forced to swim, normal mice would swim randomly about. They had forgotten from just a few days before that there was a hidden underwater platform. The smart mice, however, went straight to the hidden platform on the first try. Since then, researchers have been able to confirm these results in other labs and create even smarter strains of mice. In 2009, Dr. Tsien published a paper announcing yet another strain of smart mice, dubbed “Hobbie-J” (named after a character in Chinese cartoons). Hobbie-J was able to remember novel facts (such as the location of toys) three times longer than the genetically modified strain of mouse previously thought to be the smartest. “This adds to the notion that NR2B is a universal switch for memory formation,” remarked Dr. Tsien. “It’s like taking Michael Jordon and making him a super Michael Jordan,” said graduate student Deheng Wang. There are limits, however, even to this new mice strain. When these mice were given a choice to take a left or right turn to get a chocolate reward, Hobbie-J was able to remember the correct path for much longer than the normal mice, but after five minutes he, too, forgot. “We can never turn it into a mathematician. They are rats, after all,” says Dr. Tsien. It should also be pointed out that some of the strains of smart mice were exceptionally timid compared to normal mice. Some suspect that, if your memory becomes too great, you also remember all the failures and hurts as well, perhaps making you hesitant. So there is also a potential downside to remembering too much.

You want to kiss her, right?” “What?” I have lost track of our conversation. I was thinking about how if Kit called me her friend, then I would have multiplied my number of them by a factor of two. And then I considered the word flirting, how it sounds like fluttering, which is what butterflies do. Which of course looped me back to chaos theory and my realization that I’d like to have more information to provide Kit on the topic. “Do. You. Want. To. Kiss. Her?” Miney asks again. “Yes, of course I do. Who wouldn’t want to kiss Kit?” “I don’t want to kiss Kit,” Miney says, doing that thing where she imitates me and how I answer rhetorical questions. Though her intention is to mock rather than to educate, it’s actually been a rather informative technique to demonstrate my tendency toward taking people too literally. “Mom doesn’t want to kiss Kit. I don’t know about Dad, but I doubt it.” My father doesn’t look up. His face is buried in a book about the mating patterns of migratory birds. It’s too bad our scholarly interests have never overlapped. Breakfast would be so much more interesting if we could discuss our work. “So if you want to kiss Kit, that means you want her to see you like a real guy,” Miney says, and points at me with her cup of coffee. She’s drinking it black. Maybe there’s nothing wrong with Miney. Maybe she’s just tired. “I am a real guy.” How come even my own sister sees me as something not quite human? Something other. “I have a penis.” “And just when I think we’ve made progress you go and mention your penis.” “What? Fact: I have a penis. That makes me a guy. Though technically there are some trans people who have penises but self-identify as girls.” “Please stop saying that word.” “What word? Penis?” “Yes.” “Do you prefer member? Shlong? Wang? Johnson?” I ask. “Dongle, perhaps?” “I would prefer we not discuss your man parts at all.” “Wait, should I text Kit immediately and clarify that I do in fact have man parts?” I pick up my phone and start typing. “Dear Kit. Just to be clear. I have a penis.” “Oh my God. Do not text her. Seriously, stop.” Miney puts her coffee down hard. She’ll climb over the table and tackle me if she has to. “Ha! Totally got you!” I smile, as proud as I was the other day for my that’s what she said joke. “Who are you?” Miney asks, but she’s grinning too. I’ll admit it takes a second—something about the disconnect between her confused tone and her happy face—and I almost, almost say out loud: Duh, I’m Little D. Instead I let her rhetorical question hang, just like I’m supposed to

As Frank promised, there was no other public explosion. Still. The multiple times when she came home to find him idle again, just sitting on the sofa staring at the rug, were unnerving. She tried; she really tried. But every bit of housework—however minor—was hers: his clothes scattered on the floor, food-encrusted dishes in the sink, ketchup bottles left open, beard hair in the drain, waterlogged towels bunched on bathroom tiles. Lily could go on and on. And did. Complaints grew into one-sided arguments, since he wouldn’t engage. “Where were you?” “Just out.” “Out where?” “Down the street.” Bar? Barbershop? Pool hall. He certainly wasn’t sitting in the park. “Frank, could you rinse the milk bottles before you put them on the stoop?” “Sorry. I’ll do it now.” “Too late. I’ve done it already. You know, I can’t do everything.” “Nobody can.” “But you can do something, can’t you?” “Lily, please. I’ll do anything you want.” “What I want? This place is ours.” The fog of displeasure surrounding Lily thickened. Her resentment was justified by his clear indifference, along with his combination of need and irresponsibility. Their bed work, once so downright good to a young woman who had known no other, became a duty. On that snowy day when he asked to borrow all that money to take care of his sick sister in Georgia, Lily’s disgust fought with relief and lost. She picked up the dog tags he’d left on the bathroom sink and hid them away in a drawer next to her bankbook. Now the apartment was all hers to clean properly, put things where they belonged, and wake up knowing they’d not been moved or smashed to pieces. The loneliness she felt before Frank walked her home from Wang’s cleaners began to dissolve and in its place a shiver of freedom, of earned solitude, of choosing the wall she wanted to break through, minus the burden of shouldering a tilted man. Unobstructed and undistracted, she could get serious and develop a plan to match her ambition and succeed. That was what her parents had taught her and what she had promised them: To choose, they insisted, and not ever be moved. Let no insult or slight knock her off her ground. Or, as her father was fond of misquoting, “Gather up your loins, daughter. You named Lillian Florence Jones after my mother. A tougher lady never lived. Find your talent and drive it.” The afternoon Frank left, Lily moved to the front window, startled to see heavy snowflakes powdering the street. She decided to shop right away in case the weather became an impediment. Once outside, she spotted a leather change purse on the sidewalk. Opening it she saw it was full of coins—mostly quarters and fifty-cent pieces. Immediately she wondered if anybody was watching her. Did the curtains across the street shift a little? The passengers in the car rolling by—did they see? Lily closed the purse and placed it on the porch post. When she returned with a shopping bag full of emergency food and supplies the purse was still there, though covered in a fluff of snow. Lily didn’t look around. Casually she scooped it up and dropped it into the groceries. Later, spread out on the side of the bed where Frank had slept, the coins, cold and bright, seemed a perfectly fair trade. In Frank Money’s empty space real money glittered. Who could mistake a sign that clear? Not Lillian Florence Jones.

Wang-mu was surprised to hear Peter sound so oriental. The American way was to make excuses, to stay and argue.

He was a fast and proficient chemist and so was I. The shrink says she doesn't question that. But what every scientist knows—you can't just be proficient; you have to have insight.

The best parenting is done not in the direction of our children but through the hard work of deep healing within ourselves so that our children are met with a healthy and whole parent imparting patterns of lovingkindness instead of shame.

She knew now the truth that at first had been so frightening, that success in America was less about what you earned than your particular luck on the day you decided to take it for yourself.

It was at the age of forty-seven that Wang gained a great victory over the rebel army, and wrote to a friend saying: "It is so easy to gain a victory over the rebels fortifying themselves among the mountains, yet it is not so with those rebels living in our mind."[FN#266]

(O-yo-mei) won a splendid victory over the rebel army which threatened the throne of the Ming dynasty. During that warfare Wang was giving a course of lectures to a number of students at the headquarters of the army, of which he was the Commander-in-chief. At the very outset of the battle a messenger brought him the news of defeat of the foremost ranks. All the students were terror-stricken and grew pale at the unfortunate tidings, but the teacher was not a whit disturbed by it. Some time after another messenger brought in the news of complete rout of the enemy. All the students, enraptured, stood up and cheered, but he was as cool as before, and did not break off lecturing. Thus the practiser of Zen has so perfect control over his heart that he can keep presence of mind under an impending danger, even in the presence of death itself. [FN#240]

energy so abundantly that be could talk with a voice sounding as a large bell. Being asked by Wang the secret of longevity, the man replied: "There is no secret in it; I merely kept my mind calm and peaceful." Further, he explained the method of Meditation according to Taoism and Buddhism. Thereupon Wang sat face to face with the old man and began to practise Meditation, utterly forgetful of his bride and nuptial ceremony. The sun began to cast his slanting rays on the wall of the temple, and they sat motionless; twilight came over them, and night wrapped them with her sable shroud, and they sat as still as two marble statues; midnight, dawn, at last the morning sun rose to find them still in their reverie. The father of the bride, who had started a search during the night, found to his surprise the bridegroom absorbed in Meditation on the following day.[FN#265]

There were so many worlds he'd never even considered – which one would be his?

The problem with her, with her friends, was that there was nothing really serious to worry about. No war. No famine. The world might be filled with catastrophes, but none were poised to intrude in their lucky lives. The concerns of her father's generation were so much more vital. More global. Saina and her friends might travel the world, but no one lived or died on what they did - having an art gallery in Berlin was not the same was fighting an army of Communists. Worrying, Saina realized, was a luxury in itself. The luxury of purpose.

If she lives here, she is expected to speak the language, Eric says. Immediately, he apologizes. Immediately, I put the stapler down. But I can’t forgive him. That thing you said, I have heard from other people as well. So I don’t need to hear it from you.

Who cares about your humor? How do you think my mother feels right now, trying to get to know you? That is not my problem. If she lives here, she is expected to speak the language. The moment I hear him say that, I reach for the nearest heavy thing. A stapler. Perhaps I was planning to staple his lips together so that he could feel even more limited.

Probably that day was one of the times my mother reminded me that a woman needed power, and power came from money, so a woman needed money.

Little you can do about which era or group you're set into here, was another direct line that I could draw. An immigrant family controls nothing, and so raises two average children obsessed with gaining it back, albeit in different ways.

It can't be denied, she is indeed very good towards me, and not the so called committing to a fake act, but true and honestly good. I once also had her viewed as my actual consort mother for a time. But, tens of thousands of good still can't make up for one two points of bad. When I was ten, she did one thing, and when I was thirteen, she did another thing. These two things were more than enough to have everything erased.

Als ob er meine Gedanken gelesen oder die Sehnsucht in meinen Augen gesehen hätte, begann er sanft, mit den Lippen meine Wange entlang zu streichen. Er roch so gut und war mir so nahe, dass ich erwartungsvoll den Atem anhielt. Zentimeterweise näherte er sich meinem Mund, und die Spannung, das aufgeregte Knistern war unbeschreiblich süß. Schließlich trafen sich unsere Lippen ganz sachte, und es kam mir vor, als könnte ich nach einer Ewigkeit wieder frei atmen. Seine Lippen waren warm, so voll und erstaunlich zärtlich, als sie an meinen kosteten. Es kribbelte in meinem ganzen Körper, Wärme wirbelte in meinem Magen herum und verursachte mir Schwindel, sodass ich alles andere vergaß.

»Was ist anders?« Er lässt die Hand auf ihrer Wange ruhen und blickt ihr so forschend ins Gesicht, dass ihr bei ihren nächsten Worten innerlich heiß wird. »Alles irgendwie. Mein Leben hier. Meine Gefühle … Du.«

He pushed off the arms and legs of the dead he had used as his disguise so that he could stand and in doing so looked down at the bodies of his countrymen. He looked down and met Wang’s blank stare. “Thank you,” were the only words he could find.

Returning to the One' is for the heart to be in the One. It is cutting off and breaking away from attachment to external things, so that the self's seeking, loving, knowledge, and discernment are cut off and broken away from all that is sought after, all that is loved, all that is known, and all that is discerned (other than the One). (Then) there will only be an awareness of the Lord, and this awareness of the Lord is non-awareness.

(Think of keywords like words in a human language. The fewer words you know, the more limited your communication is. If a little kid only knows the word hot, he can only express himself in a limited manner, such as describing something as very hot, a little hot, or not so hot. However, if a kid knows a lot of different words, he can express himself much better. Rather than use two or more words to describe something as very hot, a little hot, or not so hot, a kid with a richer vocabulary could describe the same items as scalding, warm, or cool.)

Death was always at your back, an infinite darkness coming to swallow you. I felt miniscule. No matter what I did, I would still be just as miniscule. But so long as I could walk, I could outrun death.

In their book, Racial Melancholia, Racial Dissociation, professors David L. Eng and Shinhee Han explore the topic of racial melancholia, which they describe as a mourning without end for Asian Americans, a mourning for all of the parts of ourselves that cannot name the unknowable losses we experience as children of immigrants, as adoptees, as members of diasporas. The authors explore the cost of assimilation to and mimicry of white culture as a search for belonging, and the mourning that follows when we may realize that despite our best efforts, we are still never fully accepted. The heartbreaking part of this story is that in this mimicry of whiteness, we also sacrifice much of our own identity and histories in the process. What results is a dissociation and disconnection of the self in order to survive racism and xenophobia. In many immigrant households, parents chose not to speak in their native languages at home so as to ensure that their children learned fluent English

Ach nein?" Ich schüttle den Kopf. Seine Worte sind Dinge, die ich schon tausendmal hören wollte. Aber sie ändern nichts. "Nichts ändert, was ich bin." "Es geht auch darum, wer du bist." "Nein. Nicht in dieser Welt." Er legt seine Hand an meinen Hals, sein Daumen streicht über meine Wange. "Dann ändere ich diese Welt.

Sometimes she found it difficult to believe that the brothers could have shared a roof with her all these years and not picked up on her combat background. Then again, it was very possible that the sexism inherent to their upbringing had created a blind spot so opaque that they weren’t capable of recognizing those abilities in a woman.

About weapons, not boys!” Misaki said. “Oh my Gods! So, his parents disinherited him because he married a man?

As the spirits faded, so did the last of the ties that had bound Misaki to the horizon for so many years, dissolving like threads of blood in water.

Giving someone a diagnosis of schizophrenia will impact how they see themselves. It will change how they interact with friends and family. The diagnosis will affect how they are seen by the medical community, the legal system, the Transportation Security Administration, and so on.

But... aren't we all children of the Empire?" [...] "Don't we have to trust our government?" "I suppose so," Misaki said, and before she could stop herself --"if you really want to be a child forever. Do you son?

She had thought for so many years that what she had was strength -faking a smile through pain and anger- but this honest ability to smile from the heart was something beyond anytihng she had ever had.

Evangeline,” Lisa said. “I like you better like this.” “You would,” Daphne scoffed. “Where is Uncle Jack tonight?” “He's got a date,” Evangeline said. “He asked me to watch Ruby till y'all came home. I was about to start supper, but I’m going to have to rethink what we are going to eat. I've only got six pork chops.” “Don't worry, Evangeline. There's plenty to eat. We just need to adjust a little,” Jen said. She walked down a short hallway that led to the laundry room and disappeared into a closet that had been turned into a pantry. She emerged a moment later carrying an arm full of ingredients. She put two bags of noodles on the counter, along with four cans of tuna and two cans of cream of mushroom soup. Then went back to get a box of breadcrumbs. “Tuna noodle casserole?” Charlie asked. “Yep,” Jen said. “Quick, easy, and a crowd pleaser.” “Yeah, my thighs are going to be real pleased,” Lisa quipped. “Oh hush,” Jen said. “You can run it off tomorrow.” “I love tuna noodle casserole,” Daphne smiled. “Honestly though, I can't remember the last time I had it.” “That's because you eat too much take out, sweetie,” Evangeline said. “So, anything I can do to help?” “Could you check the fridge for sour cream and Parmesan cheese, please? And there should be a bag of frozen peas in the freezer,” Jen said, inclining her head in that direction. Charlie handed one of the three journals from Edwina’s box to Lisa and the other one to Daphne. “Come on, let's start looking through these while they’re making dinner.” Charlie sat at the end of the table with Lisa and Daphne flanking her, and they each began to flip through the pages of Edwina’s most private thoughts. Ruby walked into the kitchen and placed herself between Charlie and Lisa. Ruby glanced up at the clock. “Aunt Lisa, will you come upstairs and read me a story?” Jen ripped open the packages of noodles and poured them into a pot of hot water. “Ruby Ellen, you've already had a story. Why are you out of bed?” “I can't sleep, Mama,” Ruby said. Lisa

The Chinese memory of national humiliation is really the key to understanding China’s foreign policy,” says scholar Zheng Wang, who believes that the strident voice of the young nationalists, magnified by the Internet, has become a factor in foreign policy decisions. “This government is finding itself the victim of its own patriotic education campaign. It has very limited choices. Backing down becomes weakness or even a new humiliation. The government is the guardian of China’s national face, so being tough and strong is the only choice.

There was a spelling test during my first week back in Ms. Tang's class. By spelling out words that were on the signs hung around the room - A for apple, D for dog - writing gibberish, and copying not so covertly from a handwritten list of words I had in my pocket (Ms. Tang caught me twice, though she said nothing), I scored a proud 33 percent. So began my path to graduating from college with an English degree fifteen years later.