Wish Birthday Quotes

I called to wish you an unhappy birthday because you're evil and you lie and if you should die I may feel slightly sad, but I won't cry.

It’s my birthday, Horus insisted. Wish me happy birthday! “Happy birthday!” I yelled. “Now shut up!

I miss you, Eleanor. I want to be with you all the time. You’re the smartest girl I’ve ever met, and the funniest, and everything you do surprises me. And I wish I could say that those are the reasons I like you, because that would make me sound like a really evolved human being …‘But I think it’s got as much to do with your hair being red and your hands being soft … and the fact that you smell like homemade birthday cake

Wish on everything. Pink cars are good, especially old ones. And stars of course, first stars and shooting stars. Planes will do if they are the first light in the sky and look like stars. Wish in tunnels, holding your breath and lifting your feet off the ground. Birthday candles. Baby teeth.

Wishing, like sipping a glass of punch, or pulling aside a bearskin rug in order to access a hidden trapdoor in the floor, is merely a quiet way to spend one's time before the candles are extinguished on one's birthday cake.

You know what I think? I think that if a young woman doesn't engage in the act of occasionally wishing on a star or a flower or a birthday cake full of candles, then we're forfeiting one of the sweetest whimsies of our youth.

Birthday wishes don’t always come true, so I don’t waste a chance when I blow out a candle.

November 20. Andrius's birthday. I had counted the days carefully. I wished him a happy birthday when I woke and thought about him while hauling logs during the day. At night, I sat by the light of the stove, reading Dombey and Son. Krasivaya. I still hadn't found the word. Maybe I'd find it if I jumped ahead. I flipped through some of the pages. A marking caught my eye. I leafed backward. Something was written in pencil in the margin of 278. Hello, Lina. You've gotten to page 278. That's pretty good! I gasped, then pretened I was engrossed in the book. I looked at Andrius's handwritting. I ran my finger over this elongated letters in my name. Were there more? I knew I should read onward. I couldn't wait. I turned though the pages carefully, scanning the margins. Page 300: Are you really on page 300 or are you skipping ahead now? I had to stifle my laughter. Page 322: Dombey and Son is boring. Admit it. Page 364: I'm thinking of you. Page 412: Are you maybe thinking of me? I closed my eyes. Yes, I'm thinking of you. Happy birthday, Andrius.

What’d you wish?” “I can’t tell you that!” I say indignantly. “Why not?” “Because it won’t come true.” Do I really need to say this? I’m pretty sure it’s a given in wish situations. “Bullshit.” “It’s the rule,” I insist. “It’s only the rule with birthday cakes and shooting stars, not pennies in fountains.

I always wish for the same thing, and every day it comes true.

People are so lonely, they spend their birthdays on the Internet, thanking people for wishing them a happy birthday, people who only know it’s their birthday because Facebook told them.

May the love in your heart overshadow any sorrows, and may you always know with a deep inner certainty, how loved you truly are.

The birthday girl and her wishes. She’ll always be a part of me.

The cake had a trick candle that wouldn't go out, so I didn't get my wish. Which was just that it would always be like this, that my life could be a party just for me.

If your Birthday is on Christmas day and you're not Jesus, you should start telling people your birthday is on June 9 or something. Just read up on the traits of a Gemini. Suddenly you're a multitasker who loves the color yellow. Because not only do you get stuck with them combo gift, you get the combo song. "We wish you a merry Christmas - and happy birthday, Terry - we wish you a merry Christmas - happy birthday, Terry - we wish you a merry Christmas and a happy New Ye - Birthday, Terry!

Why this candle? Why this cake? The day of my birth is not today. I was born when you said, 'Hey.

I once spoke to someone who had survived the genocide in Rwanda, and she said to me that there was now nobody left on the face of the earth, either friend or relative, who knew who she was. No one who remembered her girlhood and her early mischief and family lore; no sibling or boon companion who could tease her about that first romance; no lover or pal with whom to reminisce. All her birthdays, exam results, illnesses, friendships, kinships—gone. She went on living, but with a tabula rasa as her diary and calendar and notebook. I think of this every time I hear of the callow ambition to 'make a new start' or to be 'born again': Do those who talk this way truly wish for the slate to be wiped? Genocide means not just mass killing, to the level of extermination, but mass obliteration to the verge of extinction. You wish to have one more reflection on what it is to have been made the object of a 'clean' sweep? Try Vladimir Nabokov's microcosmic miniature story 'Signs and Symbols,' which is about angst and misery in general but also succeeds in placing it in what might be termed a starkly individual perspective. The album of the distraught family contains a faded study of Aunt Rosa, a fussy, angular, wild-eyed old lady, who had lived in a tremulous world of bad news, bankruptcies, train accidents, cancerous growths—until the Germans put her to death, together with all the people she had worried about.

You can ask me why I need you, but I don’t know. I just know that I do … I miss you, Eleanor. I want to be with you all the time. You’re the smartest girl I’ve ever met, and the funniest, and everything you do surprises me. And I wish I could say that those are the reasons I like you, because that would make me sound like a really evolved human being … But I think it’s got as much to do with your hair being red and your hands being soft … and the fact that you smell like homemade birthday cake.

Birthday wishes were allowed to be lofty. I blew out the candles and let those wishes fly away with the wisps of smoke. The ones that were meant to be would come back.

I wished for Conrad on every birthday, every shooting star, every lost eyelash, every penny in a fountain was dedicated to the one I loved.

I wished for you," he whispered, so quietly that I struggled to hear. "What did that feel like? I've never made a wish in my life." My voice was as shaky as my words were stupid. "Everybody wishes for something, Charli." I put just enough space between us to be able to look at him. "Not me. I've saved them all up. Birthday candles, shooting stars, stray eyelashes...ladybugs. I've saved hem all up. I figure I'm owed hundreds of wishes now.

London The Institute Year of Our Lord 1878 “Mother, Father, my chwaer fach, It’s my seventeenth birthday today. I know that to write to you is to break the law, I know that I will likely tear this letter into pieces when it is finished. As I have done on all my birthdays past since I was twelve. But I write anyway, to commemorate the occasion - the way some make yearly pilgrimages to a grave, to remember the death of a loved one. For are we not dead to each other? I wonder if when you woke this morning you remembered that today, seventeen years ago, you had a son? I wonder if you think of me and imagine my life here in the Institute in London? I doubt you could imagine it. It is so very different from our house surrounded by mountains, and the great clear blue sky and the endless green. Here, everything is black and gray and brown, and the sunsets are painted in smoke and blood. I wonder if you worry that I am lonely or, as Mother always used to, that I am cold, that I have gone out into the rain again without a hat? No one here worries about those details. There are so many things that could kill us at any moment; catching a chill hardly seems important. I wonder if you knew that I could hear you that day you came for me, when I was twelve. I crawled under the bed to block out the sound of you crying my name, but I heard you. I heard mother call for her fach, her little one. I bit my hands until they bled but I did not come down. And, eventually, Charlotte convinced you to go away. I thought you might come again but you never did. Herondales are stubborn like that. I remember the great sighs of relief you would both give each time the Council came to ask me if I wished to join the Nephilim and leave my family, and each time I said no and I send them away. I wonder if you knew I was tempted by the idea of a life of glory, of fighting, of killing to protect as a man should. It is in our blood - the call to the seraph and the stele, to marks and to monsters. I wonder why you left the Nephilim, Father? I wonder why Mother chose not to Ascend and to become a Shadowhunter? Is it because you found them cruel or cold? I have no fathom side. Charlotte, especially, is kind to me, little knowing how much I do not deserve it. Henry is mad as a brush, but a good man. He would have made Ella laugh. There is little good to be said about Jessamine, but she is harmless. As little as there is good to say about her, there is as much good to say about Jem: He is the brother Father always thought I should have. Blood of my blood - though we are no relation. Though I might have lost everything else, at least I have gained one thing in his friendship. And we have a new addition to our household too. Her name is Tessa. A pretty name, is it not? When the clouds used to roll over the mountains from the ocean? That gray is the color of her eyes. And now I will tell you a terrible truth, since I never intend to send this letter. I came here to the Institute because I had nowhere else to go. I did not expect it to ever be home, but in the time I have been here I have discovered that I am a true Shadowhunter. In some way my blood tells me that this is what I was born to do.If only I had known before and gone with the Clave the first time they asked me, perhaps I could have saved Ella’s life. Perhaps I could have saved my own. Your Son, Will

So I wish you first a Sense of theatre; only Those who love illusion And know it will go far: Otherwise we spend our Lives in a confusion Of what we say and do with Who we really are.

It’s nice to know someone thinks of you as a person, not an opportunity.

No matter what they wish for, no matter how far they go, people can never be anything but themselves

Wish him a happy birthday for me. And assure him it will be his last. But yours is coming, isn’t it? I don’t doubt we’ll spend it together. Until we meet again, Maven

its my birthday wish me happy birthday horus said happy birthday I yelled now shut up

My 30th birthday will be arriving in a few months. It’s not arriving unexpectedly, I just wish it would have given me more of an advance notice, say another 30 years.

It me birthday and nobody came...Bigfoot decide do something nice for self for big day and sneak in they house at night and pick out own present and blow out flickering candle of life in they brains. Make a wish, jerks.

I may not be physically present to stand by you while you cut your cake, but you’ll be in my thoughts today! Happy Birthday.

Wishing, like sipping a glass of punch…is merely a quiet way to spend one’s time before the candles are extinguished on one’s birthday cake.

The disorientation of meeting one’s sagging contemporaries, memories of a younger face crashing into the reality of jowls, under-eye pouches, unexpected lines, and then the terrible realization that one probably looks just as old as they do. Do you remember when we were young and gorgeous? Clark wanted to ask. Do you remember when everything seemed limitless? Do you remember when it seemed impossible that you’d get famous and I’d get a PhD? But instead of saying any of this he wished his friend a happy birthday.

I know I don’t always show it, but you are the best thing that has ever happened to me. Let’s make your birthday the very special celebration it should be, and I’ll remind you of just how much you mean to me. I love you!

Celebrate your birthday with the greatest joy for the priceless gift of life, be filled with joy that brings renewed strength.

years have passed; years will pass; the difference being, today we are together, tomorrow our memories will be together. so here i promise you to have a wonderful birthday.

The only thing old about you is our friendship, which makes us ancient...

I closed my eyes under the fluroescent lights and tried to make another birthday wish, a onetime do-over, a rebate, a trade-in on the kitchen sink kiss that started everything, offered up for just one last miracle.

There are times I think of us all and I wish we were back in second grade. Not really that young. But I wish it felt like second grade. I’m not saying everyone was friends back then. But we all got along. There were groups, but they didn’t really divide. At the end of the day, your class was your class, and you felt like you were a part of it. You had your friends and you had the other kids, but you didn’t really hate anyone longer than a couple of hours. Everybody got a birthday card. In second grade, we were all in it together. Now we’re all apart.

I wish you a vivacious day of love, laughter, and joy. Have an awesome birthday!

No wishing him a Merry Christmas, Happy New Year or Happy Birthday.  Not a peep!

But nobody asked her, and so she kept these wishes quiet, writing them only in journals, summoning them to the forefront of her mind whenever a birthday or a well or a star presented her with a formal opportunity to make them known to the universe.

She kept the wish to herself, as she should have, and simply blew out the candle.I clapped and whistled and then dove into my own cupcake, dying to know how my creations tasted. And seeing as I’d done the hard work—frosting and decorating—I felt like I could take credit and call them my creations. All Cassie had done was get the ingredients, come up with the recipe, and do all the measuring and mixing.

(...) next year she would have another birthday, and if she just remembered to get into bed left foot first and to turn the pillow over before she went to sleep, who knows what might happen?

Leaning over the table, I close my eyes, take in a breath, and make my usual wish Let tomorrow be better than today. And I blow, almost instantly smelling the pungent stream of smoke curling into the air from the extinguished wick. It’s always the same wish. Every candle. Every time. I want a life I never want to take a vacation from. That’s my goal.

The only day you truly wish to spend being a good person is your birthday.

You will get what you wish to have.

I wished for Conrad on every birthday, every shooting star, every lost eyelash, every penny in a fountain was dedicated to the one I loved...

If a magic genie, from a lamp, offered me three wishes, I'd use one to wish you a happy birthday. So 33 percent would be spent in your celebration. I only offer that statistic so you don't think me chintzy when you find this card void of cash.

A wish is many things. It is hope and desire and daydreams. It is impossibility and improbability and something in between. It is stardust and well water and spectrums of light in the sky. It is half-melted birthday candles and Christmas lists. It is broken turkey bones, It is the willing suspension of disbelief. And sometimes it is desperation. It is a hole in your heart that wants filling. It is more-than-anything-in-the-world.

That’s because you’ve already made your wish.

The paradox of life; everyone desire a fuller life. But no one wishes to increase in age.

The thought of him is electric, beating in my chest like a birthday wish, dark and warm and secret.

Decorate your birthday with love and memories not with years.

Before she cut her birthday cake, she cast a wish, then blew the candles out from his eyes.

I have a birthday, same as you,” I wanted to tell the voices. “It just changes. Don’t you wish you could change your birthday?

We are born once and we celebrate our birthday every year till our death but to be celebrated every year after our death makes our birth meaningful

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU NANAY I am forever grateful to you, my dearest Nanay, You are the most precious being in my life. You have given us, your children so much, raised us, nurtured us and loved us unconditionally.. I can't imagine life without you. We love you Nanay.

Many times we search for the perfect words to say as well as the right reasons to stay but never have I doubted you and your ability to make me happy. You care about me, you show me ur undying love and you understand me on levels that I never thought anyone would. Happy birthday love!

Blessings are waiting, so don't miss the flight Your Birth Day Gonna be very shiny bright Look everywhere and adore every single sight May your BirThDay be filled with chocolates, Cakes & Candle Light May the happiness hugs you like soo tight Take me serious, because I am gentle and polite

Every year, ever since the girls were born, I have blown out the candles on my birthday cake and wished for just this. Everything I have already. No loss. I can’t spare anybody is what I always think. But, then, people must be spared. That is the whole premise of this life, of this time we have with each other.

No I am not okay. I've just been pulled out of play tryouts where I had to be the first to audition and everyone's trying out for the same parts, I just had a very bizarre conversation with the school secretary, Megan may be throwing up her cucumber sandwiches, I've broken five of the seven deadly sins in as many hours, a demon may be inside a girl in my world religions class, Grant Brawner called me by name, my license photo looks like a dead fish, I have to drive my friends all over town in two hours when I've never even driven without Dad before, none of my birthday wishes have come true yet, and now you're here with muffins like I'm in second grade? So, no, I am not ok.

MOTHER LOVE IS THE FUEL THAT ENABLES A NORMAL HUMAN BEING TO DO IMPOSSIBLE. HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM

Congratulations to your mom and dad for birth of a sweet child! Sorry that I couldn't wish them when you were born.

May your birthday be as pleasant and awesome as you always are.

But I will say,” she goes on, nibbling my jaw, “I always wish for the same thing, and every day it comes true.

Even though I believe birthday parties should be given, not taken, I wish someone would take all of mine and hide them on the other side of eternity.

I never wish to celebrate The year of my birth, For fear lest I wake, By the clinking of glasses and noisy mirth, All those who sleep in memory's vaults.

The Klassik Man wishes you a happy born-day. May you live long! ~$

Even if you are king of kings, you cannot mourn your death, the only option is to celebrate your birth ... Happy Birthday

A day of birth is a glorious event.

take in a breath, and make my usual wish Let tomorrow be better than today.

Happy birthday To someone special! And we wish you many more! Once a year We give a cheer To you, Commander Hoff! Happy birthday!

He smells like birthday-candle wishes.

It’s always the same wish. Every candle. Every time. I want a life I never want to take a vacation from. That’s my goal.

Celebrate your day of birthday as special day.Make a specific birthday wishes and write it down.You will be amazed about the power of pen and inner strength to accomplish the wishes. This will be a special gift for yourself on each birthday.

I read it twice, then I said, "Well, why don't you?" "Why don't I what?" "Why don't you wish her many happy returns? It doesn't seem much to ask." "But she says on her birthday." "Well, when is her birthday?" "Can't you understand?" said Bobbie. "I've forgotten." "Forgotten!" I said. "Yes," said Bobbie. "Forgotten." "How do you mean, forgotten?" I said. "Forgotten whether it's the twentieth or the twenty-first, or what? How near do you get to it?" "I know it came somewhere between the first of January and the thirty-first of December. That's how near I get to it.

On my birthday, every year since I turned eighteen, she called me at twelve twenty in the morning to wish me happy birthday and tell me how much joy I brought her. She’d told me she was sorry she couldn’t do it when I turned thirty, and handed me a box filled with little bits of paper. She’d written Happy Birthday to my baby boy on every one. There must have been fifty of them.

Pink Balloons My name is Olivia King I am five years old My mother bought me a balloon. I remember the day she walked through the front door with it. The curly hot pink ribbon trickling down her arm, wrapped around her wrist . She was smiling at me as she untied the ribbon and wrapped it around my hand. "Here Livie, I bought this for you." She called me Livie. I was so happy . I'd never had a balloon before. I mean, I always saw balloon wrapped around other kids wrist in the parking lot of Wal-Mart , but I never dreamed I would have my very own. My very own pink balloon. I was excited! So ecstatic! So thrilled! i couldn't believe my mother bought me something! She'd never bought me anything before! I played with it for hours . It was full of helium and it danced and swayed and floated as I drug it around from room to room with me, thinking of places to take it. Thinking of places the balloon had never been before. I took it in the bathroom , the closet , the laundry room , the kitchen , the living room . I wanted my new best friend to see everything I saw! I took it to my mother's bedroom! My mothers Bedroom? Where I wasn't supposed to be? With my pink balloon... I covered my ears as she screamed at me, wiping the evidence off her nose! She slapped me across the face as she told me how bad I was! How much I misbehaved! How I never listened! She shoved me into the hallways and slammed the door, locking my pink balloon inside with her. I wanted him back! He was my best friend! Not her! The pink ribbon was still tied around my wrist so I pulled and pulled , trying to get my new best friend away from her. And it popped. My name is Eddie. I'm seventeen years old. My birthday is next week. I'll be big One-Eight. My foster dad is buying me these boots I've been wanting. I'm sure my friends will take me out to eat. My boyfriend will buy me a gift, maybe even take me to a movie. I'll even get a nice little card from my foster care worker, wishing me a happy eighteenth birthday, informing me I've aged out of the system. I'll have a good time. I know I will. But there's one thing I know for sure I better not get any shitty ass pink balloons!

never having seen any authentic record containing it. By far the larger part of the slaves know as little of their ages as horses know of theirs, and it is the wish of most masters within my knowledge to keep their slaves thus ignorant. I do not remember to have ever met a slave who could tell of his birthday. They seldom come nearer to it than planting-time, harvesttime, cherry-time, spring-time, or fall-time. A

Since you've been gone, Piper, I've become as bad with the sighing as Mom. Sometimes it's the part of a sob that I jsut can't hold back. Sometimes the sigh's more like blowing out birthday candles to make a wish. And sometimes I do it hoping that it'll make you appear—even for just one instant—to laugh at me and tell me to stop.

Reminiscing in the drizzle of Portland, I notice the ring that’s landed on your finger, a massive insect of glitter, a chandelier shining at the end of a long tunnel. Thirteen years ago, you hid the hurt in your voice under a blanket and said there’s two kinds of women—those you write poems about and those you don’t. It’s true. I never brought you a bouquet of sonnets, or served you haiku in bed. My idea of courtship was tapping Jane’s Addiction lyrics in Morse code on your window at three A.M., whiskey doing push-ups on my breath. But I worked within the confines of my character, cast as the bad boy in your life, the Magellan of your dark side. We don’t have a past so much as a bunch of electricity and liquor, power never put to good use. What we had together makes it sound like a virus, as if we caught one another like colds, and desire was merely a symptom that could be treated with soup and lots of sex. Gliding beside you now, I feel like the Benjamin Franklin of monogamy, as if I invented it, but I’m still not immune to your waterfall scent, still haven’t developed antibodies for your smile. I don’t know how long regret existed before humans stuck a word on it. I don’t know how many paper towels it would take to wipe up the Pacific Ocean, or why the light of a candle being blown out travels faster than the luminescence of one that’s just been lit, but I do know that all our huffing and puffing into each other’s ears—as if the brain was a trick birthday candle—didn’t make the silence any easier to navigate. I’m sorry all the kisses I scrawled on your neck were written in disappearing ink. Sometimes I thought of you so hard one of your legs would pop out of my ear hole, and when I was sleeping, you’d press your face against the porthole of my submarine. I’m sorry this poem has taken thirteen years to reach you. I wish that just once, instead of skidding off the shoulder blade’s precipice and joyriding over flesh, we’d put our hands away like chocolate to be saved for later, and deciphered the calligraphy of each other’s eyelashes, translated a paragraph from the volumes of what couldn’t be said.

BORN TO DIE, NOT TO BE DEAD

Leaning over the table, I close my eyes, take in a breath, and make my usual wish Let tomorrow be better than today.

I wish you many congratulations on your birthday.

Wishing you sunshine and rainbows..

This moment is spectacular!

I feel so lucky to have you as my friend. Hope your birthday is as special as you are.May all of your dreams come true. Thanks for being such a great friend. Happy birthday!

That's why I do the birthday cake thing a little differently with my kids. At candle time, I scream, "Make a wish! Say it out loud! Yell it at the top of your lungs!" And then we all cheer for each other's biggest dreams and do what we can to make sure they come true for one another.

As my nostrils filled with the stench of burnt hair and my friends scurried to clean up the mess, I thought, 'If your hair catches on fire while you're making a wish, does that mean it isn't coming true?

Aimee saw more of the world before her first birthday than most people do in a lifetime. I just wish I’d been sober for more of it. I was there physically, but not mentally. So I missed things you can never do over again: the first crawl, the first step, the first word. If I think about it for too long, it breaks my heart.

Attempts to locate oneself within history are as natural, and as absurd, as attempts to locate oneself within astronomy. On the day that I was born, 13 April 1949, nineteen senior Nazi officials were convicted at Nuremberg, including Hitler's former envoy to the Vatican, Baron Ernst von Weizsacker, who was found guilty of planning aggression against Czechoslovakia and committing atrocities against the Jewish people. On the same day, the State of Israel celebrated its first Passover seder and the United Nations, still meeting in those days at Flushing Meadow in Queens, voted to consider the Jewish state's application for membership. In Damascus, eleven newspapers were closed by the regime of General Hosni Zayim. In America, the National Committee on Alcoholism announced an upcoming 'A-Day' under the non-uplifting slogan: 'You can drink—help the alcoholic who can't.' ('Can't'?) The International Court of Justice at The Hague ruled in favor of Britain in the Corfu Channel dispute with Albania. At the UN, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko denounced the newly formed NATO alliance as a tool for aggression against the USSR. The rising Chinese Communists, under a man then known to Western readership as Mao Tze-Tung, announced a limited willingness to bargain with the still-existing Chinese government in a city then known to the outside world as 'Peiping.' All this was unknown to me as I nuzzled my mother's breast for the first time, and would certainly have happened in just the same way if I had not been born at all, or even conceived. One of the newspaper astrologists for that day addressed those whose birthday it was: There are powerful rays from the planet Mars, the war god, in your horoscope for your coming year, and this always means a chance to battle if you want to take it up. Try to avoid such disturbances where women relatives or friends are concerned, because the outlook for victory upon your part in such circumstances is rather dark. If you must fight, pick a man! Sage counsel no doubt, which I wish I had imbibed with that same maternal lactation, but impartially offered also to the many people born on that day who were also destined to die on it.

I wish I hadn't met you in the rain: it comes every winter. I wish you hadn't told me your favorite wine: I've become a drinker. I wish I never showed you my hidden birthmark: It looks back at me at night asking where you are. I wish I hadn't read you my journal, all the pages praising you, It's corrupted now that I can't tell if I write for me or you. I wish I hadn't told you my daily routine: it's not mine anymore. I can't enjoy 11:11, my favorite song, a birthday cake, or a concert tour. I'm not afraid of the future, it's the past that takes a while.

theres a heavy silence between us it settles in the creases on your jacket and seeps into the fur on my hood. i know your middle name and i know your birthday and i know you look more like your dad but you wish you looked like your mom. i watch your back and for the first time in my life im genuinely terrified. "whats my birthday?" i ask and you dont look at me because you never do you never look me in the eye you never say my name and god its hitting me. its hitting me that maybe maybe it was all for nothing i know you inside and out i know you better than i know myself and maybe thats all for nothing. "it’s in december, right?" you ask but its not a question and if i were anyone else if i werent love-sick if i wasnt absolutely fucking blinded by you i would punch you in the fucking mouth. my birthday is may fifth.

I think we should kill her…What? She’s ruined my entire day. Made me fight with my wife and now you tell me she’s a spy sent to put us all under the jail. What part of ‘kill your enemies before they kill you’ did you sleep through? Your dad was an assassin, same as my mom. Don’t puss on me now, boy. You know what they’d do if they were here. Hell, your own mother would tear her up, spit her out in pieces, and not blink. (Sway) He’s right. None of you have any reason to help me. Why should you care? (She clicked the vid wall and a picture of a teenage girl was there.) That’s my baby sister, Tempest Elanari Gerran. Her birthday was day before yesterday. She turned sixteen in jail with my mother. I may be out of line, but I’ll bet when you guys turned sixteen, you had a celebration for it with presents and friends wishing you well. You won’t just be killing me. You’ll be killing them, too. Tempest is a prime sexual age and a virgin. Any idea what’s the first thing her new owner will do to her when she’s sold? I don’t want her to ever know the horror that was my sixteenth birthday. (Alix)

This is the first birthday I've had without the person who's responsible for bringing me into the world all those decades ago. My mother... Because it was her desire to be the first to wish me a happy birthday, I always got a 5:30am phone call from her. I'm an early riser, but not that early. Yet even when my birthday fell on a Saturday, or Sunday, I loved getting that call. There are so many things you miss about a loving mother, especially on the first birthday you have without her.

We drove in silence for a while. Then out of nowhere, Nancy quietly said, 'I'm going to die very soon. Before my twenty-first birthday. I won't live to be twenty-one. I'm never gonna be old. I don't ever want to be ugly and old. I'm an old lady now anyhow. I'm eighty. There's nothing left. I've already lived a whole lifetime. I'm going out. In a blaze of glory.' Then she was quiet. Her words just lay there like a bombshell. No one wanted to touch them. She hadn't issued a threat, simply made a flat statement. We all believed her. Even Sid. [...] 'I honestly can't understand her,' David [Nancy's brother] said as we drove home. 'She's dying. She knows it. Why won't she stop herself?' 'She doesn't want to,' Frank [Nancy's father] ]said sadly. 'She wants to die. She has for a long, long time. It's been her goal.' 'But why?' asked David. 'She hates being alive,' I said. 'She hates her pain. She hates herself. She wants to destroy herself.' 'Isn't there anything you guys can do?' asked David. 'Yes,' I said. 'What?' 'Watch her die.

Birthdays are a time when one stock takes, which means, I suppose, a good spineless mope: I scan my horizon and can discern no sail of hope along my own particular ambition. I tell you what it is: I'm quite in accord with the people who enquire 'What is the matter with the man?' because I don't seem to be producing anything as the years pass but rank self indulgence. You know that my sole ambition, officially at any rate, was to write poems & novels, an activity I never found any difficulty fulfilling between the (dangerous) ages of 17-24: I can't very well ignore the fact that this seems to have died a natural death. On the other hand I feel regretful that what talents I have in this direction are not being used. Then again, if I am not going to produce anything in the literary line, the justification for my selfish life is removed - but since I go on living it, the suspicion arises that the writing existed to produce the life, & not vice versa. And as a life it has very little to recommend it: I spend my days footling in a job I care nothing about, a curate among lady-clerks; I evade all responsibility, familial, professional, emotional, social, not even saving much money or helping my mother. I look around me & I see people getting on, or doing things, or bringing up children - and here I am in a kind of vacuum. If I were writing, I would even risk the fearful old age of the Henry-James hero: not fearful in circumstance but in realisation: because to me to catch, render, preserve, pickle, distil or otherwise secure life-as-it-seemed for the future seems to me infinitely worth doing; but as I'm not the entire morality of it collapses. And when I ask why I'm not, well, I'm not because I don't want to: every novel I attempt stops at a point where I awake from the impulse as one might awake from a particularly-sickening nightmare - I don't want to 'create character', I don't want to be vivid or memorable or precise, I neither wish to bathe each scene in the lambency of the 'love that accepts' or be excoriatingly cruel, smart, vicious, 'penetrating' (ugh), or any of the other recoil qualities. In fact, like the man in St Mawr, I want nothing. Nothing, I want. And so it becomes quite impossible for me to carry on. This failure of impulse seems to me suspiciously like a failure of sexual impulse: people conceive novels and dash away at them & finish them in the same way as they fall in love & will not be satisfied till they're married - another point on which I seem to be out of step. There's something cold & heavy sitting on me somewhere, & until something budges it I am no good.

My chin trembles, and the tears spill over. My mom, Jay, Cole . . . I am forever the most pathetic fucking person I know. I keep wishing the lousiest people want me. Why?

Leaning over the table, I close my eyes, take in a breath, and make my usual wish: Let tomorrow be better than today.

Wishing is merely a quiet way to spend one’s time before the candles are extinguished on one’s birthday cake

Dear eyelashes, wishbones, pennies, dandelions, wishing well, shooting stars, 11:11 and birthday candles, do your job

years have passed; years will pass; the difference being, today we are together, tomorrow our memories will be together. so here i promise you to have a wonderful birthday.

it was only wishful thinking. And whether wishes were made by blowing out birthday candles or on a shooting star, they never came true.

Those who were busy to wish you a Happy Birthday Will be Less busy to wish you Rest In Peace. We cherished the Dead than the Living.

The birthday wish is the most power I have in my life right now. It's my best chance at control. I don't take this opportunity for granted.

I close my eyes, take in a breath, and make my usual wish Let tomorrow be better than today.

The difference is, Jimmy was her husband and he's dead, and you're alive and you're a jackass." "That's real sweet, Daddy. Wish you'd saved it for my next birthday card.

May this time adorn you with fond memories with your family. I wish you light, comfort, and clarity. Merry Christmas.

For years Melody had been making the same wish on every birthday candle, eyelash, wishbone, and shooting star that came her way, and now it had finally come true.

The aunts gathered around the fiery cake chanting, Make a wish! Make a wish!

no, of course she didn’t believe in telepathy, but what was “best wishes” on a birthday card, after all, except the idea that your good thoughts might matter?

A Happy Day!.......Wishes of Riches, Songs of Love, Waters of Happiness,  Life of Purpose, Doses of Success, & Days of Prosperity. Happy Birthday To You The Fan of Success.

Unexpected situations cause separation; however, the memories of life always remain in mind; I loved you, and it stays forever. Happy Birthday with best wishes.

I lost my life many times since your birth. Though finally, you killed me twenty years ago, I am still alive to wish you on your birthday ... Greetings

She rested her elbow on the bar and looked at me. “Tell me,” she said. “What would you have wished for if you had been in my position?” “On the night of my twentieth birthday, you mean?” “Uh-huh.” I took some time to think about that, but I couldn’t come up with a single wish. “I can’t think of anything,” I confessed. “I’m too far away now from my twentieth birthday.” “You really can’t think of anything?” I nodded. “Not one thing?” “Not one thing.” She looked into my eyes again—straight in—and said, “That’s because you’ve already made your wish.

reality. Birthday wishes did not come true, any more than wishes made on puffy dandelions blown into the breeze or pennies tossed into a fountain. Wishes were nothing more than unrealized goals.

Okay," she said as he lit the candle and hummed the birthday song. "You know,this is all very Jake Ryan of you." "Who's Jake Ryan?" "The hottie from Sixteen Candles—the best teenage movie ever made. The last scene looks just like this," she said, looking around the room. "All right, well, don't you go wishing for him when you blow out the candle." "I love you,Jace. You're the only thing I want.

Sounds to me like you're praying Violet, not wishing. When we wish, it's usually for something frivolous...Something not serious. Like what you want for your birthday. Prayers are for more serious things." -Mom

right here—right now—I don’t want to be anywhere else. I wish I could die as happy as I am right now. In here, in the dead of night, in this dark room, behind a closed door, we don’t need to explain anything to anyone.

Birthday is a day which make you realize of your existences with all love and bless from known and unknown .. It remind me the old days of school, even the unknown WISHEs you A VEry Happy Birthday :) So enjoy the uTmost :D

This was not where I was expecting this conversation to go, but I was intrigued. “I keep thinking about all the times when I was invited to the beach with my friends and didn’t go because of the way my stomach looked. All the birthday dinners I skipped because I made all my own meals so I could obsessively count calories. I even skipped out on having friends over on my birthday because I didn’t want to have to eat cake.” I realized I wasn’t breathing. “That definitely resonates with me,” I told her, while looking at the floor, ashamed that it must have been obvious. Elizabeth looked me dead in the eyes and said, “I felt like I had to tell you this because I see myself in you. I never anticipated dying at forty. I always thought I would have more time. I wish I would have spent more time with my loved ones. I wish I’d just eaten the damn cake.” “That’s good advice,” I said softly.

I want to thank each and every one of you for thinking of me on my birthday. I am ecstatic to be surrounded by your love, kindness, and blessings. I really appreciate the love and affection of friends like you. I wish you joy.

Once, when she was thirteen, her mother had brought her to the mall to buy a new dress for her birthday. Kennedy was beginning to pull away by then, wishing she could have gone to Bloomingdale’s with her girlfriends instead. But her mother was barely focusing on her. She paused in the middle of the shop floor, fingering the lacy sleeves of a black gown. “I love shopping,” she’d said, almost to herself. “It’s like trying on all the other people you could be.

There are already so many people who have lost someone, who'll never receive another lopsided grin or smooth a cowlick or cry on a shoulder that smells like home. They'll always see the empty seat at a wedding, a birthday, breakfast.

In my land, in the event of a divorce, the mother has the right to retain her children if they are still suckling. But in most cases, a mother maintains custody of daughters until a girl child reaches puberty. In the case of male children, the boy should be allowed to remain with his mother until he is seven. When he reaches his seventh birthday, he is supposed to have the option to choose between his mother or father. Generally it is accepted that the father have his sons at age seven. A son must go with his father at the age of puberty, regardless of the child's wishes. Often, in the case of male children, many fathers will not allow the mother to retain custody of a son, no matter what the age of the child.

You just had to be so perfect. My white knight. My rescuer. You had to be everything I’ve dreamed about, every wish I’ve made on falling stars and birthday candles and pennies in mall fountains, and you had to make me fall in love with you.

The old man raised both hands, palms toward her. “No, miss, don’t you give it a second thought. The kind of ‘present’ I have in mind is not something tangible, not something with a price tag. To put it simply”—he placed his hands on the desk and took one long, slow breath—”what I would like to do for a lovely young fairy such as you is to grant a wish you might have, to make your wish come true. Anything. Anything at all that you wish for—assuming that you do have such a wish.

As I would see it, Birthday offers chance to remember the snapshot of blamelessness, learning and revising botches without having any dread of coming up short. Fill this Day with adoration, satisfaction, joy, more with the decisions you like to furnish, stuff you like to eat, places you wish to visit, outfits you revere to wear, meet individuals that issue to you most. Its your day, and it enables you to do everything which makes this day noteworthy. Have Great Birthday festivities!!!

Hey.’ Annabeth slid next to me on the bench. ‘Happy birthday.’ She was holding a huge misshapen cupcake with blue icing. I stared at her. ‘What?’ ‘It’s August eighteenth,’ she said. ‘Your birthday, right?’ I was stunned. It hadn’t even occurred to me, but she was right. I had turned sixteen this morning – the same morning I’d made the choice to give Luke the knife. The prophecy had come true right on schedule, and I hadn’t even thought about the fact that it was my birthday. ‘Make a wish,’ she said. ‘Did you bake this yourself?’ I asked. ‘Tyson helped.’ ‘That explains why it looks like a chocolate brick,’ I said. ‘With extra-blue cement.’ Annabeth laughed. I thought for a second then blew out the candle. We cut it in half and shared, eating with our fingers. Annabeth sat next to me and we watched the ocean. Crickets and monsters were making noise in the woods, but otherwise it was quiet. ‘You saved the world,’ she said. ‘We saved the world.’ ‘And Rachel is the new Oracle, which means she won’t be dating anybody.’ ‘You don’t sound disappointed,’ I noticed. Annabeth shrugged. ‘Oh, I don’t care.’ ‘Uh-huh.’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘You got something to say to me, Seaweed Brain?’ ‘You’d probably kick my butt.’ ‘You know I’d kick your butt.’ I brushed the cake off my hands. ‘When I was at the River Styx, turning invulnerable … Nico said I had to concentrate on one thing that kept me anchored to the world, that made me want to stay mortal.’ Annabeth kept her eyes on the horizon. ‘Yeah?’ ‘Then up on Olympus,’ I said, ‘when they wanted to make me a god and stuff, I kept thinking –’ ‘Oh, you so wanted to.’ ‘Well, maybe a little. But I didn’t, because I thought – I didn’t want things to stay the same for eternity, because things could always get better. And I was thinking …’ My throat felt really dry. ‘Anyone in particular?’ Annabeth asked, her voice soft. I looked over and saw that she was trying not to smile. ‘You’re laughing at me,’ I complained. ‘I am not!’ ‘You are so not making this easy.’ Then she laughed for real, and she put her hands around my neck. ‘I am never, ever going to make things easy for you, Seaweed Brain. Get used to it.’ When she kissed me, I had the feeling my brain was melting right through my body.

He'd turned his head so he was looking at her, and for a moment there'd been something in his eyes that almost took her breath away. It had felt like...but she didn't even want to put words to it, the way you weren't supposed to speak a birthday wish aloud.

You’re pissing me off more by the second.” His raspy growl sounds dangerous. “You ruined my night, and I’ve still got a lot of steam to blow off, so tread carefully.” I close my eyes, making my wish, and blow out the candle before standing up straight again.

I blow out the remaining candles on the bar, closing my eyes and taking a breath each time. I hope tomorrow is better than today. It’s my go-to wish when I don’t have anything else in mind, and every day that passes, I’m trying to get closer to making it come true.

Dear Hilde, I assume you're still celebrating your 15th birthday. Or is it the morning after? Anyways, it makes no difference to your present. In a sense, that will last a life time. But I'd like to wish you happy birthday one more time. Perhaps you understand now why I send the cards to Sophie. I am sure she will pass them on to you. P.S. Mom said you lost your wallet. I hereby promise to reimburse you the 150 crowns. You will probably be able to get another school I.D. before they close for the summer vacation. Love from Dad.

YOU’RE FORGETTING SOMETHING, Horus told me. A little busy here! I thought back. You might think it’s easy steering a magic boat through the sky. You’d be wrong. I didn’t have Amos’s animated coat, so I stood in the back trying to shift the tiller myself, which was like stirring cement. I couldn’t see where we were going. We kept tilting back and forth while Sadie tried her best to keep an unconscious Zia from flopping over the side. It’s my birthday, Horus insisted. Wish me happy birthday! “Happy birthday!” I yelled. “Now, shut up!

One afternoon in the fall of 2015, while I was writing this book, I was driving in my car and listening to SiriusXM Radio. On the folk music station the Coffee House, a song came on with a verse that directly spoke to me—so much so that I pulled off the road as soon as I could and wrote down the lyrics and the singer’s name. The song was called “The Eye,” and it’s written by the country-folk singer Brandi Carlile and her bandmate Tim Hanseroth and sung by Carlile. I wish it could play every time you open these pages, like a Hallmark birthday card, because it’s become the theme song of this book. The main refrain is: I wrapped your love around me like a chain But I never was afraid that it would die You can dance in a hurricane But only if you’re standing in the eye. I hope that it is clear by now that every day going forward we’re going to be asked to dance in a hurricane, set off by the accelerations in the Market, Mother Nature, and Moore’s law. Some politicians propose to build a wall against this hurricane. That is a fool’s errand. There is only one way to thrive now, and it’s by finding and creating your own eye. The eye of a hurricane moves, along with the storm. It draws energy from it, while creating a sanctuary of stability inside it. It is both dynamic and stable—and so must we be. We can’t escape these accelerations. We have to dive into them, take advantage of their energy and flows where possible, move with them, use them to learn faster, design smarter, and collaborate deeper—all so we can build our own eyes to anchor and propel ourselves and our families confidently forward.

Tate gave me your birthday present when you were here before,” she confessed. “I put it on top of the cabinet in the dining room and forgot to give it to you. Here, I’ll fetch it!” Cecily felt as if she’d had the wind knocked out of her just at the sound of his name. She could almost taste him on her mouth, feel the fierce hunger of his body as he pressed her into the wall… “He remembered my birthday,” she said faintly, touched. “He always remembers it, but he said you weren’t speaking then.” She handed the small box to Cecily. “Go on,” she said when the younger woman hesitated. “Open it.” Cecily’s hands went cold and trembled as she tore off the wrappings. It was a jewelry box. I wasn’t a ring, of course, she told herself as she forced up the hinged lid. He certainly wouldn’t buy her a… “The beast!” she exclaimed. “Oh, how could he?” Leta looked over her shoulder at what was in the box and dissolved into gales of laughter. Cecily glared at her. “It isn’t funny.” “Oh, yes it is!” Cecily looked back down at the silver crab with its ruby eyes and pearl claws, and one corner of her mouth tugged up. “He is pretty, isn’t he?” She took the pin out of the box and studied it. It wasn’t silver. It was white gold. Those were real rubies and pearls, too. This hadn’t been an impulse purchase. He’d had this custom-made for her. Tears stung her eyes. It was the sort of present you gave to someone who meant something to you. She remembered his passionate kisses, and wished with all her heart that he’d meant those, too. She pinned the small crab onto the collar of her blouse and knew that she’d treasure it as long as she lived.

Do you remember when we were young and gorgeous? Clark wanted to ask. Do you remember when everything seemed limitless? Do you remember when it seemed impossible that you’d get famous and I’d get a PhD? But instead of saying any of this he wished his friend a happy birthday.

For Swan's birthday, Calla made pineapple upside-down cake, which is not the kind of cad you put candles on. So there was nothing to blow and make wishes on. Nobody missed the candles, because when you're eating pineapple upside-down cake, there is nothing much left to wish for

Where Papi is always thinking of how to save another dollar, I'm dreaming up a Sephora wish list to request for my next birthday. Mami stands in front of a stove for hours, & I would burn an untoasted sandwich. I am theirs. You can see them on me. But I am also all mine, mostly.

Many times we search for the perfect words to say as well as the right reasons to stay but never have I doubted you and your ability to make me happy. You care about me, you show me your undying love and you understand me on levels that I never thought anyone would. Happy birthday love!

Hey, Willa?” “Hey, Luke,” I reply dryly, since the be quiet part obviously didn’t register. “Sometimes I wish you were my mom.” I blink at the boy, too stunned to speak, so he continues. “At that birthday party? Where I got held under the water? He told me that even my mom didn’t like me.

He wishes it, harder than he has ever wished for anything over birthday candles or on shooting stars. Wishing for himself. For the rêveurs in their red scarves. For a clockmaker he never met. For Celia and Marco and Poppet and Widget and even for Tsukiko, though she claims she does not care.

Tendai remembered his last birthday. It seemed one shouldn't make wishes idly. Who knew which spirits were listening. He considered a moment and then thought, I wish for courage. Because with courage, you weren't afraid to look at the truth. You weren't afraid to ask questions or do the right thing.

What did I want to wish for? I closed my eyes and thought of Aunt Gert and what she'd told me about finding her own way. I wanted that too, more than anything. "Help me follow my bliss," I whispered, the words equal parts hope and prayer. "Show me how to seek joy and give joy to others. Show me what comes next.

I suppose it’s an immutable law of human nature that we sum up the events of the year as we approach its end. Among other things, 1938 had been a year of knockings at my door. There was the Western Union boy who brought Eve’s birthday wishes all the way from London; and Wallace with a bottle of wine and the rules of honeymoon bridge. Then Detective Tilson; then Bryce; then Anne. In the moment, only some of those intrusions seemed welcome; but I guess I should have treasured them all. Because in a few years’ time, I’d be living in a doorman building myself—and once you’re in a doorman building, no one comes knocking ever again.

Hey, Willa?” “Hey, Luke,” I reply dryly, since the be quiet part obviously didn’t register. “Sometimes I wish you were my mom.” I blink at the boy, too stunned to speak, so he continues. “At that birthday party? Where I got held under the water? He told me that even my mom didn’t like me.” I want to push that kid into the water all over again. “Well, I don’t just like you, Luke.” My voice comes out thick with emotion, but I’m not so sure he picks up on it. “I love you.” “You do?” His smile is shy—tentative. “Yeah. And that kid is a major shithead.” His hand slaps over his mouth and his eyes go wide before he whispers, “He’s a total shithead and I love you too.

For quite a long time I have been examining myself concerning the pertinence of Birthdays, while the date and time is linear, What is the point of celebrating it every year over and over once more, and afterward I understand we invested the vast majority of our energy in attempting to substantiate ourselves the best on the boundaries, all set by others, be it kids, soul mate, guardians, companions, seniors and so forth, and in this journey we will generally fail to remember what initially we needed with ourselves. Birthday is one day which offers us a chance to make a huge stride towards the directions we at any point needed to set out for ourselves. It ought to be made consistently, as the principal right stride, towards your own objectives to provide guidance to every single further advance. I pray that you will actually assemble your entire existence today to take a step towards your own objectives, without blending your objectives in with the objectives of others. Enjoy more than ever and never later. Have an Extraordinary Birthday!!!

His chest rises and falls in front of my eyes, and I inhale his scent that’s unique to only him. Sun, wood, and the faint fragrances of his body wash, shampoo, and the Tide his clothes have been washed in. He smells like a hot summer night and how I wish my first time had gone, and I soak it up while I can, because any minute, he’s going to storm off.

What they don’t understand about birthdays and what they never tell you is that when you’re eleven, you’re also ten, and nine, and eight, and seven, and six, and five, and four, and three, and two, and one. And when you wake up on your eleventh birthday you expect to feel eleven, but you don’t. You open your eyes and everything’s just like yesterday, only it’s today. And you don’t feel eleven at all. You feel like you’re still ten. And you are—underneath the year that makes you eleven. Like some days you might say something stupid, and that’s the part of you that’s still ten. Or maybe some days you might need to sit on your mama’s lap because you’re scared, and that’s the part of you that’s five. And maybe one day when you’re all grown up maybe you will need to cry like if you’re three, and that’s okay. That’s what I tell Mama when she’s sad and needs to cry. Maybe she’s feeling three. Because the way you grow old is kind of like an onion or like the rings inside a tree trunk or like my little wooden dolls that fit one inside the other, each year inside the next one. That’s how being eleven years old is. You don’t feel eleven. Not right away. It takes a few days, weeks even, sometimes even months before you say Eleven when they ask you. And you don’t feel smart eleven, not until you’re almost twelve. That’s the way it is. Only today I wish I didn’t have only eleven years rattling inside me like pennies in a tin Band-Aid box. Today I wish I was one

To my special grandson HAPPY BIRTHDAY Celebrate your 13th birthday with joy and appreciation for your interesting stage of life. May God hide you under His wings. May He go before you. May He stand beside you. May He walk behind you. May He give you wisdom to excel and innovate in life forever and ever amen. Enjoy your teenage life and enjoy the blessing of grace. Grandma loves you so much.

Happy Birthday to my first born(umafungashe wam). No words can fully describe the way I felt when I heard your first cry. The unforgettable joy I felt when I held you in my arms for the first time. I've watched you grow up from the time you were little until you become this compassionate, kind and thoughtful young man. I'm also proud to see you become an amazing husband, father and a great servant of God. I'm blessed beyond to call myself your mom. Happy Birthday son.❤️❤️

Well then. Let us begin with essentials. Are you free to marry me?” He exhaled slowly, in a pointed effort not to hold his breath. “Of course. When I come of age, that is.” “Tell me your birthday.” She smiled. “The first of February.” “It will be our wedding day.” He traced the shape of the birthmark on her hip. “Very convenient for me, for your birthday and our anniversary to coincide. I’ll be more likely to remember both.” “I wish you would stop touching me there.” “Do you? Why?” “Because it is ugly. I hate it.” He tilted his head, surprised. “I quite adore it. It reminds me that you are imperfectly perfect and entirely mine.” He slid down her body and bent to kiss the mark to prove the point. “There’s a little thrill in knowing no one else has seen it.” “No other man, you mean.” He kissed her there again, this time tracing the shape with his tongue. She squirmed and laughed. “When I was a child, I would scrub at it in the bath. My nursemaid used to tell me, God gives children birthmarks so they won’t get lost.” Her mouth curled in a bittersweet smile. “Yet here I am, adrift on the ocean on the other side of the world. Don’t they call that irony?” “I believe they call it Providence.” He tightened his hands over her waist. “You’re here, and I’ve found you. And I take pains not to lose what’s mine.” He kissed her hip again, then slid his mouth toward her center as he settled between her thighs. “Gray,” she protested through a sigh of pleasure. “It’s late. We must rise.” “I assure you, I’ve risen.” “I’ve work to do.” She writhed in his grip. “The men will be wanting their breakfast.” “They’ll wait until the captain has finished his.” “Gray!” She gave a gasp of shock, then one of pleasure. “What a scoundrel you are.” He came to his knees and lifted her hips, sinking into her with a low groan. “Sweet,” he breathed as she began to move with him, “you would not have me any other way.

I turn to Peter and say, “I can’t believe you did this.” “I baked that cake myself,” he brags. “Box, but still.” He takes off his jacket and pulls a lighter out of his jacket pocket and starts lighting the candles. Gabe pulls out a lit candle and helps him. Then Peter hops his butt on the table and sits down, his legs hanging off the edge. “Come on.” I look around. “Um…” That’s when I hear the opening notes of “If You Were Here” by the Thompson Twins. My hands fly to my cheeks. I can’t believe it. Peter’s recreating the end scene from Sixteen Candles, when Molly Ringwald and Jake Ryan sit on a table with a birthday cake in between them. When we watched the movie a few months ago, I said it was the most romantic thing I’d ever seen. And now he’s doing it for me. “Hurry up and get up there before all the candles melt, Lara Jean,” Chris calls out. Darrell and Gabe help hoist me onto the table, careful not to set my dress on fire. Peter says, “Okay, now you look at me adoringly, and I lean forward like this.” Chris comes forward and puffs out my skirt a bit. “Roll up your sleeve a little higher,” she instructs Peter, looking from her phone to us. Peter obeys, and she nods. “Looks good, looks good.” Then she runs back to her spot and starts to snap. It takes no effort on my part at all to look at Peter adoringly tonight. When I blow out the candles and make my wish, I wish that I will always feel for Peter the way I do right now.

St. Clair tucks the tips of his fingers into his pockets and kicks the cobblestones with the toe of his boots. "Well?" he finally asks. "Thank you." I'm stunned. "It was really sweet of you to bring me here." "Ah,well." He straightens up and shrugs-that full-bodied French shrug he does so well-and reassumes his usual, assured state of being. "Have to start somewhere. Now make a wish." "Huh?" I have such a way with words. I should write epic poetry or jingles for cat food commercials. He smiles. "Place your feet on the star, and make a wish." "Oh.Okay,sure." I slide my feet together so I'm standing in the center. "I wish-" "Don't say it aloud!" St. Clair rushes forward, as if to stop my words with his body,and my stomach flips violently. "Don't you know anything about making wishes? You only get a limited number in life. Falling stars, eyelashes,dandelions-" "Birthday candles." He ignores the dig. "Exactly. So you ought to take advantage of them when they arise,and superstition says if you make a wish on that star, it'll come true." He pauses before continuing. "Which is better than the other one I've heard." "That I'll die a painful death of poisoning, shooting,beating, and drowning?" "Hypothermia,not drowning." St. Clair laughs. He has a wonderful, boyish laugh. "But no. I've heard anyone who stands here is destined to return to Paris someday. And as I understand it,one year for you is one year to many. Am I right?" I close my eyes. Mom and Seany appear before me. Bridge.Toph.I nod. "All right,then.So keep your eyes closed.And make a wish." I take a deep breath. The cool dampness of the nearby trees fills my lungs. What do I want? It's a difficult quesiton. I want to go home,but I have to admit I've enjoyed tonight. And what if this is the only time in my entire life I visit Paris? I know I just told St. Clair that I don't want to be here, but there's a part of me-a teeny, tiny part-that's curious. If my father called tomorrow and ordered me home,I might be disappointed. I still haven't seen the Mona Lisa. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower.Walked beneath the Arc de Triomphe. So what else do I want? I want to feel Toph's lips again.I want him to wait.But there's another part of me,a part I really,really hate,that knows even if we do make it,I'd still move away for college next year.So I'd see him this Christmas and next summer,and then...would that be it? And then there's the other thing. The thing I'm trying to ignore. The thing I shouldn't want,the thing I can't have. And he's standing in front of me right now. So what do I wish for? Something I'm not sure I want? Someone I'm not sure I need? Or someone I know I can't have? Screw it.Let the fates decide. I wish for the thing that is best for me. How's that for a generalization? I open my eyes,and the wind is blowing harder. St. Clair pushes a strand of hair from his eyes. "Must have been a good one," he says.

I’m not really interested in the audience’s enjoyment,' Cave mumbles once he has changed into clean pants. 'It doesn’t bother me one way or another. I just don’t give a shit. People feel more and more disappointed with each concert because less and less happens. It’s really easy to suck an audience in. Like, I can wiggle my bum and back-flip on my head and they love it. I could make an audience love me until the end of my days. There’s just no point in it any more. I wish they’d just ... die.

Zenosyne. It's actually just after you're born that life flashes before your eyes. Entire aeons are lived in those first few months when you feel inseparable from the world itself, with nothing to do but watch it passing by. At first, time is only felt vicariously, as something that happens to other people. You get used to living in the moment, because there's nowhere else to go. But soon enough, life begins to move, and you learn to move with it. And you take it for granted that you're a different person every year, Upgraded with a different body...a different future. You run around so fast, the world around you seems to stand still. Until a summer vacation can stretch on for an eternity. You feel time moving forward, learning its rhythm, but now and then it skips a beat, as if your birthday arrives one day earlier every year. We should consider the idea that youth is not actually wasted on the young. That their dramas are no more grand than they should be. That their emotions make perfect sense, once you adjust for inflation. For someone going through adolescence, life feels epic and tragic simply because it is: every kink in your day could easily warp the arc of your story. Because each year is worth a little less than the last. And with each birthday we circle back, and cross the same point around the sun. We wish each other many happy returns. But soon you feel the circle begin to tighten, and you realize it's a spiral, and you're already halfway through. As more of your day repeats itself, you begin to cast off deadweight, and feel the steady pull toward your center of gravity, the ballast of memories you hold onto, until it all seems to move under its own inertia. So even when you sit still, it feels like you're running somewhere. And even if tomorrow you will run a little faster, and stretch your arms a little farther, you'll still feel the seconds slipping away as you drift around the bend. Life is short. And life is long. But not in that order.

Tell me, what’s one present that you really, really want for your birthday this year?” The boy immediately blurted out, “A bike.” “A bike?” Adrian glanced up at a woman who resembled the boy. “Is that all right with you?” “All right with me?” said the woman, looking pained. “It’s not exactly … I can’t afford…” She looked helpless, like it broke her heart to not be able to answer this one wish for her child. “I would love to give him one, if I could.” “Well,” said Adrian, pulling out the marker. “Let’s see what we can do.

Nine years ago you made a wish, and I desperately wanted to know what you’d wished for. I wanted it to be for me—for us. I want to spend every birthday with you, be your every birthday wish, Goldie. Because you’ll always be mine. I want to be your forever. There isn’t a version of my future that doesn’t have you in it.” He taps his chest, hitting against his heart. “You’re my entire heart. My entire world. I love you so much that it feels like I live and breathe you. Marry me, Goldie? Make me the luckiest man in the world and become my wife?

...knew how I got pregnant. I been knowing... I’m twelve now, I been knowing about that since I was five or six, maybe I always known about pussy and dick. I can’t remember not knowing.” “I wanna say I am somebody... I talk loud but still don’t exist.” “Sometimes I wish I was not alive. But I don’t know how to die. Ain’t no plug to pull out. ‘N no matter how bad I feel my heart don’t stop beating and my eyes open in the morning.” “November was my birthday, I don’t tell nobody so don’t nobody know. But I light a candle for myself. I glad Precious Jones was born.

But then they hand you your beautiful baby, and the baby gazes up at you and says hello, and your heart just melts.” “It talks?” Sophie asked, then remembered Alden telling her months earlier that elvin babies spoke from birth. It sounded even stranger now that she could picture it. “Your speaking caused quite the uproar,” Mr. Forkle told her. “Though luckily no one could understand the Enlightened Language, so they thought you were babbling. I spent the majority of your infancy inventing excuses for the elvin things you did.” “Okay,” Sophie said, wishing he’d stop with the weird-info overload. “But what I mean is . . . I’ve been counting my age from my birthday.” Mr. Forkle didn’t look surprised. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked. “How could I? Humans built everything around their birthdays. As long as you were living with them I had to let you do the same. And since you’ve been in the Lost Cities, we’ve had so little contact. I assumed someone would notice, since your proper ID is on your Foxfire record—and in the registry. But I don’t think anyone realized you were counting differently.” “Alden wouldn’t have thought to check,” Della agreed. “Neither of us knew humans didn’t count inception.” “So wait,” Biana jumped in, “does that mean that by our rules Sophie is—” “Thirty-nine weeks older than she’s been saying,” Mr. Forkle finished for her. Fitz cocked his head as he stared at Sophie, like everything had turned sideways. “So then you’re not thirteen . . .” “Not according to the way we count,” Mr. Forkle agreed. “Going by Sophie’s ID, she’s fourteen and a little more than five months old.” Keefe laughed. “Only Foster would find a way to age nine months in a day. Also, welcome to the cool fourteen-year-olds club!” He held out his hand for a high five.

Once there was and once there was not a devout, God-fearing man who lived his entire life according to stoic principles. He died on his fortieth birthday and woke up floating in nothing. Now, mind you, floating in nothing was comforting, light-less, airless, like a mother’s womb. This man was grateful. But then he decided he would love to have sturdy ground beneath his feet, so he would feel more solid himself. Lo and behold, he was standing on earth. He knew it to be earth, for he knew the feel of it. Yet he wanted to see. I desire light, he thought, and light appeared. I want sunlight, not any light, and at night it shall be moonlight. His desires were granted. Let there be grass. I love the feel of grass beneath my feet. And so it was. I no longer wish to be naked. Only robes of the finest silk must touch my skin. And shelter, I need a grand palace whose entrance has double-sided stairs, and the floors must be marble and the carpets Persian. And food, the finest of food. His breakfast was English; his midmorning snack French. His lunch was Chinese. His afternoon tea was Indian. His supper was Italian, and his late-night snack was Lebanese. Libation? He had the best of wines, of course, and champagne. And company, the finest of company. He demanded poets and writers, thinkers and philosophers, hakawatis and musicians, fools and clowns. And then he desired sex. He asked for light-skinned women and dark-skinned, blondes and brunettes, Chinese, South Asian, African, Scandinavian. He asked for them singly and two at a time, and in the evenings he had orgies. He asked for younger girls, after which he asked for older women, just to try. The he tried men, muscular men, skinny men. Then boys. Then boys and girls together. Then he got bored. He tried sex with food. Boys with Chinese, girls with Indian. Redheads with ice cream. Then he tried sex with company. He fucked the poet. Everybody fucked the poet. But again he got bored. The days were endless. Coming up with new ideas became tiring and tiresome. Every desire he could ever think of was satisfied. He had had enough. He walked out of his house, looked up at the glorious sky, and said, “Dear God. I thank You for Your abundance, but I cannot stand it here anymore. I would rather be anywhere else. I would rather be in hell.” And the booming voice from above replied, “And where do you think you are?

A day of listening. In this really packed world, our considerations, activities and even dreams are encircled by a ton of voices that we frequently don't get a possibility, nor do we understand that our own voice is unheard from long. On this birthday quiet every one of the voices aside from the voice of your own heart, when you do that, you don't feel diverted and you fill your day with stuff you wish to do, be it dancing, singing, voyaging, reading, sleeping, eating, assuming it is flawed, let it be. In the event that it is moronic, let it be. Wish you a totally Self Absorbed Celebration. Happy Birthday !!!

Happy birthday,” he whispered, his breath landing warm and suddenly close to my lips, making my insides flip. And just as quickly as he’d surprised me with the cake, he kissed me, one frosting-covered hand moving from my hair to the back of my neck, the other solid and warm in the small of my back, pressing us together, my chest against his ribs, my hip bones just below his, the tops of our bare summer legs hot and touching. I stopped breathing. My eyes were closed and his mouth tasted like marzipan flowers and clove cigarettes, and in ten seconds the whole of my life was wrapped up in that one kiss, that one wish, that one secret that would forever divide my life into two parts. Up, down. Happy, sad. Shock, awe. Before, after. In that single moment, Matt, formerly known as friend, became something else entirely. I kissed him back. I forgot time. I forgot my feet. I forgot the people outside, waiting for us to rejoin the party. I forgot what happens when friends cross into this space. And if my lungs didn’t fill and my heart didn’t beat and my blood didn’t pump without my intervention, I would have forgotten about them, too. I could have stayed like that all night, standing in front of the sink, Matt’s black apple hair brushing my cheeks, heart thumping, lucky and forgetful…

To Their Most Royal Majesties, the King and Queen of Ravka: It is with a sad heart that I must proffer my regrets and inform you that I will be unable to attend the festivities celebrating the birth of Prince Nikolai Lantsov, Grand Duke of Udova. Unfortunate circumstances have arisen, namely that my best friend can’t seem to stand the sight of me, and your son didn’t kiss me, and I wish he had. Or I wish he hadn’t. Or I’m still not sure what I wish, but there’s a very good chance that if I’m forced to sit through his stupid birthday dinner, I’ll end up sobbing into my cake. With best wishes on this most happy of occasions, Alina Starkov, Idiot

TO MY BELOVED, Its neither a piece of paper nor a letter, rather it's my small heart which I'm gifting it to you darling.It seems time stood still without ur presence around me. My days and nights have gone worthless. All my heart could do is to recall the memories of time which we have spend together. My heart gets rejoiced whenever your beautiful face comes before my eyes. Your mesmerizing eyes drive me to another world. Your flowing hair looks tantalizing and your rosy lips seems to be meant only for saying lovely words. While having a cup of coffee yesterday, numerous moments striked my heart. Our first meeting, when you were looking like a fairy in white salwar-suit. Still fresh in my mind, your pretty smile and bowing your head down to laugh with your hand on your lips. I confess that your every action was stealing my heart and I couldn't withdraw myself from lookig you. The gift you presented me on my birthday gives me a sigh of relief that you are always there with me. Sweetheart, In the classroom, I cracked useless jokes and PJ's just to see your charming smile. Kept gazing your lips, just to heat some golden words. You had stolen my heart. Dedicated '' I don't know when and how you arrived in my life, Don't know when my heart star beating for you, day n night.... My eyes kept staring the window pane, Wishing one day u'll come in my lane.... Darling you're the only one whom I admire, It's you whom my heart desperately desires... Being with you is my only need, You are now the medicine of my heartbeat... I Craved your name on my heart, The day when I decided not to loose you ever, And I promise you sweetheart that, I love you & i'll love you for ever, ever n ever...... It's true my baby that, i love you like anything. Miss you from very morning 2 the night. MY senses are active to feel you, to hear you, to see you, to taste every sorrow and happiness of your life. Jaana, get embedded in me, in my soul so that i can live with you, for you........ Dying to have your reply..... Truly Your's PK

Megan Meade’s Guide to the McGowan Boys Entry One Observation #1: When they’re beautiful, they know they’re beautiful. Like the second-to-oldest one, Evan. He’s a senior. He is perfection personified. And he knows it. You can tell because he just sort of smiles knowingly when you gape at him. Not that I’ve been gaping at him. Not at all. Anyway, too soon yet to tell if it negatively affects his behavior. (Like Mike Blukowsi and his Astrodome-sized ego problem.) Observation #2: They like skin. Especially skin they think they’re not necessarily supposed to be seeing. Like the space between your belly tee and your waistband. Observation #3: They have no problem bringing up events that would mortify me into shamed silence if the roles were reversed. Like Evan totally brought up the wiffleball bat incident, when if that had happened to me, I’d be wishing on every one of my birthday cakes for everyone to forget it. Observation #4: They gossip. Can you believe it? I overheard Finn and Doug in the backyard talking about some girl named Dawn who blew off some guy named Simon for some other guy named Rick for like TWENTY MINUTES! They sounded like those old mole-hair ladies at Sal’s Milkshakes. ‘Member the ones who lectured us for a whole hour that day about how young women shouldn’t wear shorts? Wait, okay, I got sidetracked. Observation #5: The older ones are so cute with the younger ones. They were playing ultimate Frisbee when I first got here and Evan totally let Caleb and Ian tackle him. It was soooooo cute. **sigh.** Observation #6: They’re cliquey. I mean, eye-rolling, secret-handshake, don’t-talk-to-us-unless-you’ve-got-an-X-and-a-Y cliquey. Very schooled in the art of the freeze-out. Observation #7: They have no sense of personal space. I need a lock on my door. STAT. Observation #8: Boys are icky. Do not even get me started on the state of the bathroom. I’m thinking of calling in a haz-mat team. Seriously. Observation #9: They have really freaky things going on down there. Yeah, I don’t think I’m ready to elaborate on that one yet. Observation #10: They know how to make enemies. Big time.

Good Daily Habits Work Week Checklist (Sample Items) I read industry-related material a half-hour today. I ran 30 minutes today. I completed 80% of my to-do list today. I called at least one prospect today. I did not waste time on the Internet today. I said “DO IT NOW” when I did not want to do something today. I stopped myself from saying something sarcastic today. I stopped myself from saying something inappropriate today. I stopped myself from talking today when I realized I was talking too much. I ate no more than 2,000 calories today. I limited myself to two beers today. I left the office after 6 p.m. today. I called one person today, just to say hello. I called someone today to wish him or her a happy birthday.

I vowed to myself that day that I would be wealthy when I grew up. It was my birthday-candle wish. I stood in that tiny dining room on stained carpet, in front of the yard-sale table, and I promised myself something better. I will never live like this when I have the ability to prevent it. I was vehement in this: someday I would be rich. I’m not supposed to say that, I know. Social media is filled with hundreds of male CEOs and self-made entrepreneurs who tout the power of wealth and the justification for achieving it. But, if you’re a woman, it’s frowned upon. It’s impolite. It’s not something good girls do. Good girls don’t talk about money, and they certainly don’t claim it as a life goal, regardless of their reasons why.

When my firstborn turned six months old, I decided that this milestone was definitely worth celebrating. And what started as a one-off event quickly became a family tradition: For my kids' half birthdays I make half a cake (it looks like someone just cut a cake down the middle and made the other half disappear), and we sing every other syllable of the "Happy Birthday" song (I'm really good at complicating things, and singing only the first half of the song seemed unfair to the second half). We don't do gifts or a big bash, and we don't blow out candles and make wishes, because wishes should be made only full throttle. We just end the day with a little celebration after dinner, something kind of silly and fun. And cake. Because everything in life should end with sugar.

The book I was reading was this book I took out of the library by mistake. They gave me the wrong book, and I didn't notice it till I got back to my room. They gave me Out of Africa, by Isak Dinesen. I thought it was going to stink, but it didn’t. It was a very good book. I’m quite illiterate, but I read a lot. My favorite author is my brother D.B., and my next favorite is Ring Lardner. My brother gave me a book by Ring Lardner for my birthday, just before I went to Pencey. It had these very funny, crazy plays in it, and then it had this one story about a traffic cop that falls in love with this very cute girl that's always speeding. Only, he's married, the cop, so he can't marry her or anything. Then this girl gets killed, because she's always speeding. That story just about killed me. What I like best is a book that’s at least funny once in a while. I read a lot of classical books, like The Return of the Native and all, and I like them, and I read a lot of war books and mysteries and all, but they don’t knock me out too much. What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn’t happen much, though. I wouldn’t mind calling this Isak Dinesen up. And Ring Lardner, except that D.B. told me he’s dead. You take that book Of Human Bondage, by Somerset Maugham, though. I read it last summer. It’s a pretty good book and all, but I wouldn’t want to call Somerset Maugham up. I don’t know. He just isn’t the kind of a guy I’d want to call up, that’s all. I’d rather call old Thomas Hardy up. I like that Eustacia Vye.

Happy birthday, Kya,” he said. “You’re fifteen.” A two-tiered bakery cake, tall as a hatbox and decorated with shells of pink icing, rose from the basket. Her name scripted on top. Presents, wrapped in colorful paper and tied with bows, surrounded the cake. She stared, flabbergasted, her mouth open. No one had wished her happy birthday since Ma left. No one had ever given her a store-bought cake with her name on it. She’d never had presents in real wrapping paper with ribbons. “How’d you know my birthday?” Having no calendar, she had no idea it was today. “I read it in your Bible.” While she pleaded for him not to cut through her name, he sliced enormous pieces of cake and plopped them on paper plates. Staring into each other’s eyes, they broke off bites and stuffed them in their mouths. Smacking loudly. Licking fingers. Laughing through icing-smeared grins. Eating cake the way it should be eaten, the way everybody wants to eat it.

I will grant you one wish, for your birthday. Anything at all, except sex.” “Wait…what?” “You heard me. So what do you want?” Grayson questioned, keeping calm about the whole thing. Konnor thought those words over in his head again. He was literally telling him he could do what he wanted with him, as a birthday treat, as long as they didn't sleep together. “Wait a minute. Are you saying that if I wanted to…” he asked, but found that he didn't want to embarrass Grayson by saying it. His eyes went there any way. They focused on his crotch withoutshame, wondering if he would get to remove clothes. “Yes,” he nodded. “And you'd let me? Why?” he asked, too stunned to do anything else but ask. “Because it's not your fault I'm straight. And it's not your fault you're attracted to me. If I can't give you everything you want I can at least give you a birthday to remember, right?” Grayson smiled. Konnor felt like kissing him so hard he wouldn't be straight any more.

Then at last, when he could stand it no longer, he would peel back a tiny bit of the paper wrapping at one corner to expose a tiny bit of chocolate, and then he would take a tiny nibble – just enough to allow the lovely sweet taste to spread out slowly over his tongue. The next day, he would take another tiny nibble, and so on, and so on. And in this way, Charlie would make his sixpenny bar of birthday chocolate last him for more than a month. But I haven’t yet told you about the one awful thing that tortured little Charlie, the lover of chocolate, more than anything else. This thing, for him, was far, far worse than seeing slabs of chocolate in the shop windows or watching other children munching bars of creamy chocolate right in front of him. It was the most terrible torturing thing you could imagine, and it was this: In the town itself, actually within sight of the house in which Charlie lived, there was an ENORMOUS CHOCOLATE FACTORY! Just imagine that! And it wasn’t simply an ordinary enormous chocolate factory, either. It was the largest and most famous in the whole world! It was WONKA’S FACTORY, owned by a man called Mr Willy Wonka, the greatest inventor and maker of chocolates that there has ever been. And what a tremendous, marvellous place it was! It had huge iron gates leading into it, and a high wall surrounding it, and smoke belching from its chimneys, and strange whizzing sounds coming from deep inside it. And outside the walls, for half a mile around in every direction, the air was scented with the heavy rich smell of melting chocolate! Twice a day, on his way to and from school, little Charlie Bucket had to walk right past the gates of the factory. And every time he went by, he would begin to walk very, very slowly, and he would hold his nose high in the air and take long deep sniffs of the gorgeous chocolatey smell all around him. Oh, how he loved that smell! And oh, how he wished he could go inside the factory and see what it was like!

2/ KICK YOUR OWN ASS, GENTLY. I’ve been trying to set a few modest goals, both daily and weekly. In the course of a day, it’s good to get some stupid things accomplished, and off your “list.” I guess because it leaves you feeling that you and the “rest of the world” still have something to do with each other! Like today, for example, I can think back on sending a fax to my brother on his birthday, leaving a phone message for Brutus at his “hotel” on his birthday, phoning my Dad on his birthday (yep, all on the same day), then driving to Morin Heights to the ATM machine, to St. Sauveur for grocery shopping, and planning all that so I’d still have enough daylight left to go snowshoeing in the woods. And then I could drink. Not a high-pressure day, and hardly earth-shaking activities, but I laid them out for myself and did them (even though tempted to “not bother” with each of them at one point or another). I gave myself a gentle kick in the ass when necessary, or cursed myself out for a lazy fool, and because of all that, I consider today a satisfactory day. Everything that needed to be done got done. And by “needs” I certainly include taking my little baby soul out for a ride. And drinking. And there are little side benefits from such activities, like when the cashier in the grocery store wished me a genuinely-pleasant “Bonjour,” and I forced myself to look at her and return the greeting. The world still seems unreal to me, but I try not to purposely avoid contact with pleasant strangers. It wouldn’t be polite! Another “little goal” for me right now is spending an hour or two at the desk every morning, writing a letter or a fax to someone like you, or Brutus, or Danny, who I want to reach out to, or conversely, to someone I’ve been out of touch with for a long while, maybe for a year-and-a-half or two years. These are friends that I’ve decided I still value, and that I want as part of my “new life,” whatever it may be. It doesn’t really matter what, but just so you can say that you changed something in the course of your day: a neglected friend is no longer neglected; an errand that ought to be dealt with has been dealt with.

It soon became apparent to me that deniers were a new type of neo-Nazi. Unlike previous generations of neo-Nazis—people who celebrated Hitler’s birthday, sported SS-like uniforms, and hung swastikas at meetings where they would give the Sieg Heil salute—this group eschewed all that.5 They were wolves in sheep’s clothing. They didn’t bother with the physical trappings of Nazism—salutes, songs, and banners—but proclaimed themselves “revisionists”—serious scholars who simply wished to revise “mistakes” in the historical record, to which end they established an impressive-sounding organization—the Institute for Historical Review—and created a benign-sounding publication—the Journal for Historical Review.6 Nothing in these names suggested the revisionists’ real agenda. They held conferences that, at first blush, seemed to be the most mundane academic confabs. But a close inspection of their publications and conference programs revealed the same extremism, adulation of the Third Reich, antisemitism, and racism as the swastika-waving neo-Nazis. This was extremism posing as rational discourse.

Can I get a regular skim cap?” I didn’t get coffee here every day—because I had my coffee machine, or used to have—how depressing—but I visited regularly enough that they knew me. Sometimes I wanted something frothy with chocolate on the top, and I was too lazy to do that at home. Frances was in her mid-thirties, had gorgeous straight blonde hair, which was pulled back in a sleek ponytail, and an infectious smile. “Hey, chicky. Coming right up. A little birdie told me it was your birthday yesterday. Happy birthday!” She banged used coffee grounds out of the thingamajig and filled it with new ones. “Aw, thanks. Did you run into the girls last night?” The girls being my besties, Sophie and Michelle. “Yep. How come you weren’t there? They told me you piked.” She screwed the thingamajig into the machine and pressed the button. And wouldn’t you know, it worked. I wish my machine still worked. “Big day photographing a wedding. One drink and I would have fallen asleep.” I laughed—it wasn’t too far from the truth. So what if I left out the bit where I had a pity party because my brother hadn’t called. I’d try calling him later. Knowing him, he had a good

Bell treated his friend and colleague Watson generously. Though he had no legal obligations to do so, he awarded Watson 10 percent of the company, allowing Watson to retire rich at the age of just twenty-seven. Able to do anything he wanted, Watson devoted the rest of his life to just that. He traveled the world, read widely, and took a degree in geology at MIT for the simple satisfaction of improving his brain. He then started a shipyard, which quickly grew to employ four thousand men, producing a scale of stress and obligation way beyond anything he wished for, so he sold the business, converted to Islam, and became a follower of Edward Bellamy, a radical philosopher and quasi communist who for a short period in the 1880s enjoyed phenomenal esteem and popularity. Tiring of Bellamy, Watson moved to England in early middle age and took up acting, for which he showed an unexpected talent. He proved particularly adept at Shakespearean roles and performed many times at Stratford-upon-Avon before returning to America and a life of quiet retirement. He died, contented and rich, at his winter home on Pass-Grille Key, Florida, just shy of his eighty-first birthday in 1934.

Strauss finished Metamorphosen on April 12, 1945. Franklin Delano Roosevelt died the same day. Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings, vaguely similar in tone to the music that Strauss had just composed, played on American radio. That afternoon in the ruins of Berlin, the Berlin Philharmonic presented an impeccably Hitlerish program that included Beethoven's Violin Concerto, Bruckner's Romantic Symphony, and the Immolation Scene from Götterdämmerung. After the concert, members of the Hitler Youth distributed cyanide capsules to the audience, or so the rumor went. Hitler marked his fifty-sixth birthday on April 20. Ten days later, he shot himself in the mouth. In accordance with his final instructions, the body was incinerated alongside that of Eva Braun. Hitler possibly envisaged his immolation as a reprise of that final scene of the Ring, in which Brünnhilde builds a pyre for Siegfried and rides into the flames. Or he may have hoped to reenact the love-death of Tristan—whose music, he once told his secretary, he wished to hear as he died. Walther Funk thought that Hitler had modeled the scorched-earth policy of the regime's last phase on Wagner's grand finale: "Everything had to go down in ruins with Hitler him-self, as a sort of false Götterdämmerung" Such an extravagant gesture would have fulfilled the prophecy of Walter Benjamin, who wrote that fascist humanity would "experience its own annihilation as a supreme aesthetic pleasure." But there is no evidence that the drug-addled Führer was thinking about Wagner or listening to music in the last days and hours of his life. Eyewitness reports suggest that the grim ceremony in the bombed-out Chancellery garden—two gasoline-soaked corpses burning fitfully, the one intact, the other with its skull caved in—was something other than a work of art.

Lucy grimaces at me. “I ran into Marie and Beth while we were out.” “Oh? And how were they?” Marie and Beth had been Lucy’s best friends for years, though it’s been a few months since I last saw them around. “They were on some kind of outing for Marie’s birthday,” Lucy says, and her eyes glitter. She sniffs. “Apparently they don’t think I’m worth an invitation anymore.” “What?” She hugs her arms around her middle, squeezing her eyes shut. “When I asked why they didn’t invite me, Marie said they figured I would say no, so they didn’t bother. As if I’m choosing to be sick. As if the reason I didn’t go to Beth’s spring tea was because I couldn’t be bothered and not because I was afraid I might vomit on her mother’s sofa.” Her voice breaks. “Oh, Luce.” I wrap my arms around her, and she buries her face against my neck. “Is it so terrible of me to want an invitation, even if I’m unable to go?” I shake my head, combing my fingers through her hair. “Of course not.” “You know what else Beth said? She said, ‘You aren’t as fun anymore, and Marie wanted to have a good time.’” A sob chokes out of her lips, and her shoulders shake. “It’s like they think I’m lazy or something.” An inferno rages in my chest. I squeeze her tighter, blinking away my own tears. “They’re wrong, Lucy. You are the most fun person I know, and you sure as hell aren’t lazy. I’d like to see Marie or Beth work half as hard as you.” “But I don’t want to work hard just to live my life. I want to go to the tea parties and the birthday outings and have fun like them.” She mops her eyes with her sleeve. I press a kiss to her forehead as the blood under my skin boils. The things I wish I could say to those girls. To their mothers. I grit my teeth and tighten my arms around my sister, wishing I could protect her from every hurt, every ache, every unkind word. “I know, Luce.I know.

to look at Louisa, stroked her cheek, and was rewarded by a dazzling smile. She had been surprised by how light-skinned the child was. Her features were much more like Eva’s than Bill’s. A small turned-up nose, big hazel eyes, and long dark eyelashes. Her golden-brown hair protruded from under the deep peak of her bonnet in a cascade of ringlets. “Do you think she’d come to me?” Cathy asked. “You can try.” Eva handed her over. “She’s got so heavy, she’s making my arms ache!” She gave a nervous laugh as she took the parcel from Cathy and peered at the postmark. “What’s that, Mam?” David craned his neck and gave a short rasping cough. “Is it sweets?” “No, my love.” Eva and Cathy exchanged glances. “It’s just something Auntie Cathy’s brought from the old house. Are you going to show Mikey your flags?” The boy dug eagerly in his pocket, and before long he and Michael were walking ahead, deep in conversation about the paper flags Eva had bought for them to decorate sand castles. Louisa didn’t cry when Eva handed her over. She seemed fascinated by Cathy’s hair, and as they walked along, Cathy amused her by singing “Old MacDonald.” The beach was only a short walk from the station, and it wasn’t long before the boys were filling their buckets with sand. “I hardly dare open it,” Eva said, fingering the string on the parcel. “I know. I was desperate to open it myself.” Cathy looked at her. “I hope you haven’t built up your hopes, too much, Eva. I’m so worried it might be . . . you know.” Eva nodded quickly. “I thought of that too.” She untied the string, her fingers trembling. The paper fell away to reveal a box with the words “Benson’s Baby Wear” written across it in gold italic script. Eva lifted the lid. Inside was an exquisite pink lace dress with matching bootees and a hat. The label said, “Age 2–3 Years.” Beneath it was a handwritten note:   Dear Eva, This is a little something for our baby girl from her daddy. I don’t know the exact date of her birthday, but I wanted you to know that I haven’t forgotten. I hope things are going well for you and your husband. Please thank him from me for what he’s doing for our daughter: he’s a fine man and I don’t blame you for wanting to start over with him. I’m back in the army now, traveling around. I’m due to be posted overseas soon, but I don’t know where yet. I’ll write and let you know when I get my new address. It would be terrific if I could have a photograph of her in this little dress, if your husband doesn’t mind. Best wishes to you all, Bill   For several seconds they sat staring at the piece of paper. When Eva spoke, her voice was tight with emotion. “Cathy, he thinks I chose to stay with Eddie!” Cathy nodded, her mind reeling. “Eddie showed me the letter he sent. Bill wouldn’t have known you were in Wales, would he? He would have assumed you and Eddie had already been reunited—that he’d written with your consent on behalf of you both.” She was afraid to look at Eva. “What are you going to do?” Eva’s face had gone very pale. “I don’t know.” She glanced at David, who was jabbing a Welsh flag into a sand castle. “He said he was going to be posted overseas. Suppose they send him to Britain?” Cathy bit her lip. “It could be anywhere, couldn’t it? It could be the other side of the world.” She could see what was going through Eva’s mind. “You think if he came here, you and he could be together without . . .” Her eyes went to the boys. Eva gave a quick, almost imperceptible nod, as if she was afraid someone might see her. “What about Eddie?” “I don’t know!” The tone of her voice made David look up. She put on a smile, which disappeared the

him that he couldn’t speak to Jamie. Not even to wish her a happy birthday. It wasn’t that Jamie blamed either of them for anything. They weren’t happy people — apart or together. She looked up, Mary’s voice echoing back to her as she let the recording in. Roper was snapping his fingers and waving at her.  She pulled the headphones down around her neck and sat up. ‘What is it?’ ‘You called the parents yet to follow-up?’ ‘Not yet.’ Her voice cracked a little and she coughed to cover it. ‘Good. It’s after twelve—’ he checked his watch ‘—we should get going if we’re going to catch Grace at the shelter.’ ‘Has Mary called?’ Jamie asked, taking a sizeable bite out of her bagel. She’d already eaten a bowl of granola and an apple. ‘No,’ Roper said, standing up and taking his pea coat off the back of his chair, ‘but I want to get there before she does and see her come in. Don’t want her to know we’re coming and come up with a story we can never disprove. Heroin, secrets, dead-boyfriend — there’s a lot she’s not going to want to say and I don’t need her getting any prep in before we arrive.’ Jamie inhaled deeply, letting the oxygen seep into her muscles. ‘Okay.’ ‘You call that doctor yet?’ Roper asked, throwing his coat around his shoulders. ‘No,’ Jamie said, shaking her head. ‘What the hell have you been doing all morning?’ She looked at her computer screen, at the twenty-eight windows she had open. All

At first, Maddy sends a card every Christmas, and Henry and Paul exchange emails on their respective birthdays. But Henry knew, even on the day he packed up the last of his belongings to drive to the other coast, when he said see you later to Paul, he was really saying goodbye. Paul chose, and Henry consented to his choice. Maybe Paul’s relationship with Maddy could have survived the weight of his pain, but sharing his burden with Maddy wasn’t a risk Paul was willing to take. Henry is the one to drop their email chain, “forgetting” to reply to Paul’s wishes of happy birthday. When Paul’s birthday rolls around, Henry “forgets” again. It’s a mercy—not for him, but for their friendship. Henry can’t bear to watch something else die slowly, rotting from within, struggling for one last breath to stay alive. Perhaps it isn’t fair, but Henry imagines he hears Paul’s sigh of relief across the miles, imagines the lines of tension in his shoulders finally slackening as he lets the last bit of the burden of the woman’s death go.

Horrible — well, not all of them. My aunt and uncle and cousin are, though. Wish I’d had three wizard brothers.” “Five,” said Ron. For some reason, he was looking gloomy. “I’m the sixth in our family to go to Hogwarts. You could say I’ve got a lot to live up to. Bill and Charlie have already left — Bill was head boy and Charlie was captain of Quidditch. Now Percy’s a prefect. Fred and George mess around a lot, but they still get really good marks and everyone thinks they’re really funny. Everyone expects me to do as well as the others, but if I do, it’s no big deal, because they did it first. You never get anything new, either, with five brothers. I’ve got Bill’s old robes, Charlie’s old wand, and Percy’s old rat.” Ron reached inside his jacket and pulled out a fat gray rat, which was asleep. “His name’s Scabbers and he’s useless, he hardly ever wakes up. Percy got an owl from my dad for being made a prefect, but they couldn’t aff — I mean, I got Scabbers instead.” Ron’s ears went pink. He seemed to think he’d said too much, because he went back to staring out of the window. Harry didn’t think there was anything wrong with not being able to afford an owl. After all, he’d never had any money in his life until a month ago, and he told Ron so, all about having to wear Dudley’s old clothes and never getting proper birthday presents. This seemed to cheer Ron up.

Happy Birthday young man, I can’t believe that you are 14 years old my darling grandson. May God bless you and keep you, may He make His face shine upon you. May He walk before you, besides you and behind all the days of your life. HAPPY BIRTHDAY and have a great one.

Every time you make a wish and blow out a birthday candle, you are practicing magic.

A cupcake?” Luke asked, his tone amused. “For your birthday?” Julie smiled softly. “It’s for both of us. It’s a memory.” She wished she could explain all of the multiple ways that was true. But he seemed pretty happy with it anyway, tracing the outline gently with one finger before looking back up to give her one of those signature Luke smiles. “Happy Birthday, Julie.” And against all odds...it had been.

Wren knew all the ways to make wishes and included pictures of those things: the first star you saw at night, birthday candles, a wispy white dandelion, three birds on a telephone wire, a digital clock at 11:11, a fountain full of coins. There was even one of her stray eyelashes in the collage, but no one knew it was there but her.

I have two wishes: something true somewhere and someone true sometime.

This was a thing she did not believe in at all, as she would admit if she were pressed. But the feel of it was wonderful--the feeling that she could package her feelings and put them to use, wrapping them up, and no, of course she didn't believe in telepathy, but what was "best wishes" on a birthday card, after all, except the idea that your good thoughts might matter?

In order of importance as reformers detailed them for me: the stifling control of the secret police; the absence of any rule of law even if the constitution seems to guarantee it; the fact that one tribe or one clique has controlled each government for so long; the inherent difficulty in working alone because organizing is mostly banned; the daunting power of the Muslim Brotherhood or other religious parties; and, finally, the keen disappointment that a new generation of rulers did not automatically introduce a new way of thinking.

Rather than always holding up American traditions of democracy and freedom as the example, the U.S. should spend more time focused on what local traditions might be emphasized to help speed change. "You have to make the discussion indigenous, talk about justice and dignity... Democracy is discredited because it is too compromised and too identified with the West. You need something more rooted locally, so people know they have a stake in defining and constructing that.

Of course Iraq became the biggest, messiest experiment in changing the practice of minority rule. The country's once metastasizing chaos pushed many Arabs to conclude that the systems they suffered under were just fine thank you, given the violence involved in creating an alternative.

In Syria, as in much of the Arab world, most people worry about poverty and unemployment, and when they talk about reform, they usually mean curbing rampant corruption... As a correspondent, I viewed corruption as a local story, cases rarely rising to the level requiring coverage. Hence one point that probably does not come across strongly enough to outsiders is the reason that reformers lack popular resonance. Their issues of political freedom and transparency seem rather abstract to ordinary people who just want a little job security and to avoid having to bribe their way through every petty government transaction.

U.S. policy is too often shaped by the desire to tamp down that violence as fast as possible, rather than fostering the kind of deep-seated, long-term changes that would kill its roots.

BORN TO GRACE, NOT TO GRAVE

BORN TO PLEASURE, NOT TO PAIN

Wishes Mindfulness is nevermore a good thing, as any other accident-prone fumbler would accept. No one wants a floodlight when they're likely to stumble on their face. Moreover, I would extremely pointedly be asked- well, ordered really-that no one gave me any presents this year. It seemed like Mr. Anderson and Ayanna weren't the only ones who had decided to overlook that. I would have never had much wealth, furthermore, that had never more disturbed me. Ayanna had raised me on a kindergarten teacher's wage. Mr. Anderson wasn't getting rich at his job, either; he was the police chief here in the tiny town of Pittsburgh. My only personal revenue came from the four days a week I worked at the local Goodwill store. In a borough this small, I was blessed to have a career, after all the viruses in the world today having everything shut down. Every cent I gained went into my diminutive university endowment at SNHU online. (College transpired like nothing more than a Plan B. I was still dreaming for Plan A; however, Marcel was just so unreasonable about leaving me, mortal.) Marcel ought to have a lot of funds I didn't even want to think about how much. Cash was involved alongside oblivion to Marcel or the rest of the Barns, like Karly saying she never had anything yet walked away with it all. It was just something that swelled when you had extensive time on your hands and a sister who had an uncanny ability to predict trends in the stock market. Marcel didn't seem to explain why I objected to him spending bills on me, why it made me miserable if he brought me to an overpriced establishment in Los Angeles, why he wasn't allowed to buy me a car that could reach speeds over fifty miles an hour, approximately how? I wouldn't let him pay my university tuition (he was ridiculously enthusiastic about Plan B.) Marcel believed I was being gratuitously difficult. Although, how could I let him give me things when I had nothing to retaliate amidst? He, for some amazing incomprehensible understanding, wanted to be with me. Anything he gave me on top of that just propelled us more out of balance. As the day went on, neither Marcel nor Olivia brought my birthday up again, and I began to relax a little. Then we sat at our usual table for lunch. An unfamiliar kind of break survived at that table. The three of us, Marcel, Olivia, including myself hunkered down on the steep southerly end of the table. Now that is ‘superb’ and scarier (in Emmah's case, unquestionably.) The Natalie siblings had finished. We were gazing at them; they're so odd, Olivia and Marcel arranged not to seem quite so intimidating, and we did not sit here alone. My other compatriots, Lance, and Mikaela (who were in the uncomfortable post-breakup association phase,) Mollie and Sam (whose involvement had endured the summertime...) Tim, Kaylah, Skylar, and Sophie (though that last one didn't count in the friend category.) Completely assembled at the same table, on the other side of an interchangeable line. That line softened on sunshiny days when Marcel and Olivia continuously skipped school times before there was Karly, and then the discussion would swell out effortlessly to incorporate me.

I previously spoke to Mrs. Newton of such… She's trading your shifts. She spoke to inform you she wishes you a: 'Happy Birthday.'' ‘I- yet can't come over,’ I resolved, clambering for an excuse. ‘I, well, I mustn't watch Romeo and Juliet yet for English.’ Olivia squealed, ‘You have Romeo and Juliet memorized.’ ‘Although Mr. Smith proclaimed, we obliged to notice it performed to thoroughly acknowledge it that's how Shakespeare intended it to be presented.’ Marcel rolled his eyes. ‘You've already seen the movie,’ Olivia accused. ‘Although not the nineteen-sixties version. Mr. Smith said it was the best.’ Subsequently, Olivia lost the self-satisfied smile and glared at me. ‘This can be obvious, or this can be troublesome, Bell, but one way or the others’ Marcel interrupted her threat. ‘Relax, Olivia. If Karly wants to watch a movie, then she can. It's her birthday.’ ‘So there,’ I added. ‘I'll bring her over around seven,’ he continued. ‘That will give you more time to set up.’ Olivia's howling sounded again. ‘Sounds immeasurable good. See you tonight, Bell! It'll be fun, you'll see.’ She grinned- the wide smile revealed all her perfect, glistening teeth-then pecked me on the cheek and danced off moving her first class before I could respond. ‘Marcel, please-’ I started to beg, but he clasped one crisp finger to my lips. ‘Let's review it later. We're going to be late for school.’ No one bothered to stare at us as we took our representative seats in the back of the classroom (we should almost every class together now-it was amazing the favors Marcel could get the female administrators to do for him.)

On 2 October 1947, Gandhi turned seventy-eight. From the morning a stream of visitors came to wish him. They included his close lieutenants Nehru and Patel, now prime minister and home minister respectively in the Government of India. Gandhi was not displeased to see his old friends and comrades. But his overall frame of mind was bleak. ‘What sin have I committed,’ he told Patel in Gujarati, 'that He should have kept me alive to witness all these horrors?’ As he told the audience at that evening’s prayer meeting: ‘I am surprised and also ashamed that I am still alive. I am the same person whose word was honoured by the millions of the country. But today nobody listens to me. You want only the Hindus to remain in India and say that none else should be left behind. You may kill the Muslims today; but what will you do tomorrow? What will happen to the Parsis and the Christians and then to the British? After all, they are also Christians.’ Ever since his release from jail in 1944, Gandhi had spoken often of wanting to live for 125 years. Now, in the face of the barbarism around him, he had givenup that ambition. ‘In such a situation,’ he asked, ‘what place do I have in India and what is the point of my being alive?’ Gandhi told the crowd who had gathered to wish him at Birla House that ‘if you really want to celebrate my birthday, it is your duty not to let anyone be possessed by madness and if there is any anger in your hearts you must remove it’.

But that’s the thing I’ve only recently come to understand about birthdays. They’re not about presents or streamers. They’re not about parties or pictures or petite pastel candles on your cake. They’re about having a brief sense of hope. For that one day, we’re able to close the door on our mistakes and cling to the false idea that we’ll approach the next year wiser. We make wishes. We blow out candles. We tell ourselves this will be our year.