Words Are Like Bullets Quotes

Some words are more than letters on a page, don't you think? They have shape and texture. They are like bullets, full of energy, and when you give one breath you can feel its sharp edge against your lip.

The words fire from my mouth like bullets, ricocheting off the walls before I can even register what I'm saying.

I’m a modern man, a man for the millennium. Digital and smoke free. A diversified multi-cultural, post-modern deconstruction that is anatomically and ecologically incorrect. I’ve been up linked and downloaded, I’ve been inputted and outsourced, I know the upside of downsizing, I know the downside of upgrading. I’m a high-tech low-life. A cutting edge, state-of-the-art bi-coastal multi-tasker and I can give you a gigabyte in a nanosecond! I’m new wave, but I’m old school and my inner child is outward bound. I’m a hot-wired, heat seeking, warm-hearted cool customer, voice activated and bio-degradable. I interface with my database, my database is in cyberspace, so I’m interactive, I’m hyperactive and from time to time I’m radioactive. Behind the eight ball, ahead of the curve, ridin the wave, dodgin the bullet and pushin the envelope. I’m on-point, on-task, on-message and off drugs. I’ve got no need for coke and speed. I've got no urge to binge and purge. I’m in-the-moment, on-the-edge, over-the-top and under-the-radar. A high-concept, low-profile, medium-range ballistic missionary. A street-wise smart bomb. A top-gun bottom feeder. I wear power ties, I tell power lies, I take power naps and run victory laps. I’m a totally ongoing big-foot, slam-dunk, rainmaker with a pro-active outreach. A raging workaholic. A working rageaholic. Out of rehab and in denial! I’ve got a personal trainer, a personal shopper, a personal assistant and a personal agenda. You can’t shut me up. You can’t dumb me down because I’m tireless and I’m wireless, I’m an alpha male on beta-blockers. I’m a non-believer and an over-achiever, laid-back but fashion-forward. Up-front, down-home, low-rent, high-maintenance. Super-sized, long-lasting, high-definition, fast-acting, oven-ready and built-to-last! I’m a hands-on, foot-loose, knee-jerk head case pretty maturely post-traumatic and I’ve got a love-child that sends me hate mail. But, I’m feeling, I’m caring, I’m healing, I’m sharing-- a supportive, bonding, nurturing primary care-giver. My output is down, but my income is up. I took a short position on the long bond and my revenue stream has its own cash-flow. I read junk mail, I eat junk food, I buy junk bonds and I watch trash sports! I’m gender specific, capital intensive, user-friendly and lactose intolerant. I like rough sex. I like tough love. I use the “F” word in my emails and the software on my hard-drive is hardcore--no soft porn. I bought a microwave at a mini-mall; I bought a mini-van at a mega-store. I eat fast-food in the slow lane. I’m toll-free, bite-sized, ready-to-wear and I come in all sizes. A fully-equipped, factory-authorized, hospital-tested, clinically-proven, scientifically- formulated medical miracle. I’ve been pre-wash, pre-cooked, pre-heated, pre-screened, pre-approved, pre-packaged, post-dated, freeze-dried, double-wrapped, vacuum-packed and, I have an unlimited broadband capacity. I’m a rude dude, but I’m the real deal. Lean and mean! Cocked, locked and ready-to-rock. Rough, tough and hard to bluff. I take it slow, I go with the flow, I ride with the tide. I’ve got glide in my stride. Drivin and movin, sailin and spinin, jiving and groovin, wailin and winnin. I don’t snooze, so I don’t lose. I keep the pedal to the metal and the rubber on the road. I party hearty and lunch time is crunch time. I’m hangin in, there ain’t no doubt and I’m hangin tough, over and out!

He places the last pillow on the pile and looks at me. He jerks his head to the pile of pillows. “I watched you die. I need to fuck you Mac.” The words slam into me like bullets taking my knees out. I lean back against a piece of furniture-an armoire I think. I really don’t care. It holds me up. It wasn’t a request. It was an acknowledgement of a requirement to make it from this moment to the next like I need a transfusion my body has been poisoned. “Do you want me to ” There is no purr or coyness or seduction in his voice. There is a question that needs an answer. Bare bones. That’s what he’s after. That’s what he offers. “Yes.

I turned back to the television. After a while what I was staring at registered. “Hey, this is The Long Goodbye." Jake opened his eyes. “What?" "This movie. It's Robert Altman's take on Chandler's The Long Goodbye. ‘Nothing says good-bye like a bullet.’” "I don't know,” said Jake. “Sometimes the words are enough.

Time passes by you like a bullet," he says. "and fear gives you the excuses you're craving to not do the things you know you should. Don't doubt yourself, don't second guess, don't let fear hold you back, don't be lazy, and don't base your decisions on how happy it will make others. Just go for it, okay?

It’s just… I wish it was easier, for me, you know?” I make a special point not to look at her. “I wish it was someone else who was chosen for this. Someone competent. If only I didn’t stop that robbery. I wish I didn’t have to go through with it all.” It comes gushing out, with words like spilled milk. “And I wish it was me with you and not that other guy. I wish it was my own skin touching with yours…” And there you have it. Stupidity in its purest form. “Oh, Ed.” Audrey looks away. “Oh, Ed.” Our feet dangle. I watch them, and I watch the jeans on Audrey’s legs. We only sit there now. Audrey and me. And discomfort. Squeezed in, between us. She soon says, “You’re my best friend, Ed.” “I know.” You can kill a man with those words. No gun. No bullets. Just words and a girl.

don’t be afraid to be this luminous to be so bright so empty the bullets pass right through you thinking they have found the sky as you reach down press a hand to this blood -warm body like a word being nailed to its meaning & lives

I’ve become obsessed. I carry her notebook with me everywhere I go, spending all my free moments trying to decipher the words she’s scribbled in the margins, developing stories to go along with the numbers she’s written down. I’ve also noticed that the last page is missing. Ripped out. I can’t help but wonder why. I’ve searched through the book a hundred times, looking for other sections where pages might be gone, but I’ve found none. And somehow I feel cheated, knowing there’s a piece I might’ve missed. It’s not even my journal; it’s none of my business at all, but I’ve read her words so many times now that they feel like my own. I can practically recite them from memory. It’s strange being in her head without being able to see her. I feel like she’s here, right in front of me. I feel like I now know her so intimately, so privately. I’m safe in the company of her thoughts; I feel welcome, somehow. Understood. So much so that some days I manage to forget that she’s the one who put this bullet hole in my arm. I almost forget that she still hates me, despite how hard I’ve fallen for her. And I’ve fallen. So hard. I’ve hit the ground. Gone right through it.

No more boys taking you on trips, you hear?” His voice was gravelly. “You can take your own self from now on. Last thing you need is some boy distracting you and making this whole situation even more complicated. Promise me you'll stay away from that son of Pharzuph.” I opened my mouth but the words stuck in my dry throat. How sweat beaded up on my forehead. “I tried that once, John,” Patti warned him. “It didn't work out so well for me.” “Have you seen the way he looks at her?” He focused on Patti, but pointed at me. “Yes, and I've seen the way she looks at him. Truthfully, I think they need each other.” “Those two need each other like a bullet needs a target. Trust me. I've seen Nephilim kids killed for falling in love and letting it get in the way of their work.” “Well, you don't have to worry, because we're not in love,” I chimed in. “He doesn't like me like that.” Dad puffed out a breath of air. “Well, he must feel something, 'cause he sure doesn't want that other kid near you.” “Is there someone else you're interested in?” Patti asked. I rolled my colors back up, tucked them inside, and yanked the barrier back into place. Then I entertained the image of Kopano's sweet dimple for a brief second before pushing it away. “I'm not ready to think about that,” I answered. My father tilted his head up to the ceiling and pressed his giant hands to his face, muffling his speech. “I'm way too old for this.

Ok. Listen. I not know where all you morons come from but holy water no hurt Bigfoot. Garlic and Crucifix also no. Fire, Pitchfork, Silver Bullet OK. Cryptonite do nothing. It not even real. Please stop sending letters asking "What you vulnerability? What Bigfoot?" Like I tell. What next me bank account number? Why not you invest time in moving out of parent basement? Maybe have sex or something. Yes I be talking to you Steve. Youuu! Stalking is a crime Steve.

Girls like her, my grandfather once warned me, girls like her turn into women with eyes like bullet holes and mouths made of knives. They are always restless. They are always hungry. They are bad news. They will drink you down like a shot of whisky. Falling in love with them is like falling down a flight of stairs. What no one told me, with all those warnings, is that even after you’ve fallen, even after you know how painful it is, you’d still get in line to do it again. A girl like that, Grandad said, perfumes herself with ozone and metal filings. She wears trouble like a crown. If she ever falls in love, she’ll fall like a comet, burning the sky as she goes. She was the epic crush of my childhood. She was the tragedy that made me look inside myself and see my corrupt heart. She was my sin and my salvation, come back from the grave to change me forever. Again. Back then, when she sat on my bed and told me she loved me, I wanted her as much as I have ever wanted anything. There are no words for how much I will miss her, but I try to kiss her so that she’ll know. I try to kiss her to tell her the whole story of my love, the way I dreamed of her when she was dead, the way that every other girl seemed like a mirror that showed me her face. The way my skin ached for her. The way that kissing her made me feel like I was drowning and like I was being saved all at the same time. I hope she can taste all that, bittersweet, on my tongue.

The last word went like a bullet to my heart. My arm lost all sensation of the hand that grasped it. I never moved and never spoke. The sharp autumn breeze that scattered the dead leaves at our feet, came as cold to me, on a sudden, as if my own mad hopes were dead leaves, too, whirled away by the wind like the rest. Hopes! Betrothed, or not betrothed, she was equally far from me. Would other men have remembered that in my place? Not if they loved her as I did.

Some words are more than letters on a page, don’t you think?” she said, tying the sash around my belly as best she could. “They have shape and texture. They are like bullets, full of energy, and when you give one breath you can feel its sharp edge against your lip. It can be quite cathartic in the right context.

When You Return Fallen leaves will climb back into trees. Shards of the shattered vase will rise and reassemble on the table. Plastic raincoats will refold into their flat envelopes. The egg, bald yolk and its transparent halo, slide back in the thin, calcium shell. Curses will pour back into mouths, letters un-write themselves, words siphoned up into the pen. My gray hair will darken and become the feathers of a black swan. Bullets will snap back into their chambers, the powder tamped tight in brass casings. Borders will disappear from maps. Rust revert to oxygen and time. The fire return to the log, the log to the tree, the white root curled up in the un-split seed. Birdsong will fly into the lark’s lungs, answers become questions again. When you return, sweaters will unravel and wool grow on the sheep. Rock will go home to mountain, gold to vein. Wine crushed into the grape, oil pressed into the olive. Silk reeled in to the spider’s belly. Night moths tucked close into cocoons, ink drained from the indigo tattoo. Diamonds will be returned to coal, coal to rotting ferns, rain to clouds, light to stars sucked back and back into one timeless point, the way it was before the world was born, that fresh, that whole, nothing broken, nothing torn apart.

A WOMAN WITHOUT A BRAIN IS LIKE A GUN WITHOUT A BULLET... JUST A TOY.

When Olivia unleashes an insult you feel like you’re being assaulted by word bullets.

A bullet is like a word, when it flies out, you cannot catch it

But words are like bullets. Once they exit the barrel, it’s impossible to bring them back.

One day they would decide to shoot him. You could not tell when it would happen, but a few seconds beforehand it should be possible to guess. It was always from behind, walking down a corridor. Ten seconds would be enough. In that time the world inside him could turn over. And then suddenly, without a word uttered, without a check in his step, without the changing of a line in his face—suddenly the camouflage would be down and bang! would go the batteries of his hatred. Hatred would fill him like an enormous roaring flame. And almost in the same instant bang! would go the bullet, too late, or too early. They would have blown his brain to pieces before they could reclaim it. The heretical thought would be unpunished, unrepented, out of their reach for ever. They would have blown a hole in their own perfection. To die hating them, that was freedom.

What is a Gallagher Girl?” Liz asked. She looked nervously down at the papers in her hand even though I knew for a fact she had memorized every word. “When I was eleven I thought I knew the answer to that question. That was when the recruiters came to see me. They showed me brochures and told me they were impressed by my test scores and asked if I was ready to be challenged. And I said yes. Because that was what a Gallagher Girl was to me then, a student at the toughest school in the world.” She took a deep breath and talked on. “What is a Gallagher Girl?” Liz asked again. “When I was thirteen I thought I knew the answer to that question. That was when Dr. Fibs allowed me to start doing my own experiments in the lab. I could go anywhere—make anything. Do anything my mind could dream up. Because I was a Gallagher Girl. And, to me, that meant I was the future.” Liz took another deep breath. “What is a Gallagher Girl?” This time, when Liz asked it, her voice cracked. “When I was seventeen I stood on a dark street in Washington, D.C., and watched one Gallagher Girl literally jump in front of a bullet to save the life of another. I saw a group of women gather around a girl whom they had never met, telling the world that if any harm was to come to their sister, it had to go through them first.” Liz straightened. She no longer had to look down at her paper as she said, “What is a Gallagher Girl? I’m eighteen now, and if I’ve learned anything, it’s that I don’t really know the answer to that question. Maybe she is destined to be our first international graduate and take her rightful place among Her Majesty’s Secret Service with MI6.” I glanced to my right and, call me crazy, but I could have sworn Rebecca Baxter was crying. “Maybe she is someone who chooses to give back, to serve her life protecting others just as someone once protected her.” Macey smirked but didn’t cry. I got the feeling that Macey McHenry might never cry again. “Who knows?” Liz asked. “Maybe she’s an undercover journalist.” I glanced at Tina Walters. “An FBI agent.” Eva Alvarez beamed. “A code breaker.” Kim Lee smiled. “A queen.” I thought of little Amirah and knew somehow that she’d be okay. “Maybe she’s even a college student.” Liz looked right at me. “Or maybe she’s so much more.” Then Liz went quiet for a moment. She too looked up at the place where the mansion used to stand. “You know, there was a time when I thought that the Gallagher Academy was made of stone and wood, Grand Halls and high-tech labs. When I thought it was bulletproof, hack-proof, and…yes…fireproof. And I stand before you today happy for the reminder that none of those things are true. Yes, I really am. Because I know now that a Gallagher Girl is not someone who draws her power from that building. I know now with scientific certainty that it is the other way around.” A hushed awe descended over the already quiet crowd as she said this. Maybe it was the gravity of her words and what they meant, but for me personally, I like to think it was Gilly looking down, smiling at us all. “What is a Gallagher Girl?” Liz asked one final time. “She’s a genius, a scientist, a heroine, a spy. And now we are at the end of our time at school, and the one thing I know for certain is this: A Gallagher Girl is whatever she wants to be.” Thunderous, raucous applause filled the student section. Liz smiled and wiped her eyes. She leaned close to the microphone. “And, most of all, she is my sister.

As Reverend Deal moved into his sermon, the hands of the women unfolded like pairs of raven's wings and flew high above their hats in the air. They did not hear all of what he said;they heard the one word, or phrase, or inflection that was for them the connection between the event and themselves. For some it was the term "Sweet Jesus". And they saw the Lamb's eye and the truly innocent victim: themselves. They acknowledged the innocent child hiding in the corner of their hearts, holding a sugar-and-butter sandwich. That one. The one who lodged deep in their fat, thin, old, young skin, and was the one the world had hurt. Or they thought of their son newly killed and remembered his legs in short pants and wondered where the bullet went in. Or they remembered how dirty the room looked when their father left home and wondered if that is the way the slim, young Jew, he who for them was both son and lover and in whose downy face they could see the sugar-and-butter sandwiches and feel the oldest and most devastating pain there is : not the pain of childhood, but the remembrance of it.

Suicide by train is also popular in many developed countries. Without ready access to firearms, suicidal people often turn to trains. —Der Spiegel, July 27, 2011 Once it happens you can’t remember how you started out: innocent, barreling into the tunnel, shooting out at each station like a dolphin out of a dim green pool. Pneumatic doors inhale open, puff shut, lock with a solid thump. Up and down the line, fifty times a day, it’s a long slow song. You feel the rumble as much as hear it. In your dim green trance the words retain wonder: Vorsicht, Türe werden geschloßen. Caution, the doors are closing. Then the first time: someone decides darkness will answer, hides out in the tunnel, steps out in front of the train like he knows where he’s going, steps out at you, dying at you, knowing you can’t stop in time. Now each time the doors close, they seal you in. You are a human bullet shot into the tunnels, hoping no one will block the light far ahead, each station one minute’s reprieve.

You make out with a boy because he’s cute, but he has no substance, no words to offer you. His mouth tastes like stale beer and false promises. When he touches your chin, you offer your mouth up like a flower to to be plucked, all covered in red lipstick to attract his eye. When he reaches his hand down your shirt, he stops, hand on boob, and squeezes, like you’re a fruit he’s trying to juice. He doesn’t touch anything but skin, does not feel what’s within. In the morning, he texts you only to say, “I think I left the rest of my beer at your place, but it’s cool, you can drink it. Last night was fun.” You kiss a girl because she’s new. Because she’s different and you’re twenty two, trying something else out because it’s all failed before. After spending six weekends together, you call her, only to be answered by a harsh beep informing you that her number has been disconnected. You learn that success doesn’t come through experimenting with your sexuality, and you’re left with a mouth full of ruin and more evidence that you are out of tune. You fall for a boy who is so nice, you don’t think he can do any harm. When he mentions marriage and murder in the same sentence, you say, “Okay, okay, okay.” When you make a joke he does not laugh, but tilts his head and asks you how many drinks you’ve had in such a loving tone that you sober up immediately. He leaves bullet in your blood and disappears, saying, “Who wants a girl that’s filled with holes?” You find out that a med student does. He spots you reading in a bar and compliments you on the dust spilling from your mouth. When you see his black doctor’s bag posed loyally at his side, you ask him if he’s got the tools to fix a mangled nervous system. He smiles at you, all teeth, and tells you to come with him. In the back of his car, he covers you in teethmarks and says, “There, now don’t you feel whole again.” But all the incisions do is let more cold air into your bones. You wonder how many times you will collapse into ruins before you give up on rebuilding. You wonder if maybe you’d have more luck living amongst your rubble instead of looking for someone to repair it. The next time someone promises to flood you with light to erase your dark, you insist them you’re fine the way you are. They tell you there’s hope, that they had holes in their chest too, that they know how to patch them up. When they offer you a bottle in exchange for your mouth, you tell them you’re not looking for a way out. No, thank you, you tell them. Even though you are filled with ruins and rubble, you are as much your light as you are your dark.

Russkie, promise me a simple thing?" Out of the blue when they had finished, after a mouthful from the mug. Dan seemed relaxed, leaning on his side. Resting back, savoring the taste, Vadim turned his head to look at Dan. Oh, that body. The effect it had on him, all the time, even when Dan wasn't there. Twelve months. "Promise what?" Sometimes, that kind of thing was about letters. Tell my girl I love her. Tell my mother I didn't suffer. Almost painful. Letters. Words that would hurt worse than the killing bullet. "Simple." Dan nodded, "if I'm unlucky, and if you find my body, will you bury it? Some rocks would do, I can't stand the thought of carrion's. As if that mattered, eh? I'd be fucking dead." Dan shrugged, tossed a grin towards the other, made light of an entirely far too heavy situation. He took the bottle once more, washing down the taste of death and decay, chasing away unbidden images. Vadim felt a shudder race over his skin. The thought of death chilled him to the bone, like a premonition. For a moment he saw himself stagger through enemy territory, looking for something that had been Dan. Minefields, snipers, fucking Hind hellfire. He might be able to track him. He might be able to guess where he had gone, where he had fallen. He had found the occasional pilot. But he had had help. Finding a dead man in a country full of dead people was more of a challenge. "I'll send you home," he murmured. Stay alive, he thought. Stay alive like you are now. I don't want to carry your rotting body to fucking Kabul and hand myself in to whatever bastard is your superior or handler there, but it must be Kabul. I can't hand myself over. But I will. Fuck you. He felt his face twitch, and turned away, breathing. "No, I have no home anymore." Dan's hand stopped Vadim from turning over fully. Fingers digging into the muscular thigh. "Not my brother's family. Nowhere to send the body to. Forget it." Grip tightening while he moved closer. Ignored the heat, the damned fan and its monotonous creaking, pressed his body behind the other. "You're as close to a fucking home as I get.

Pall-- Oh, yes, she could feel it/even though the bullet/had never stabbed her skin./ The bright white heat/ burned at her core/ where two lives/ beat, and if he'd aimed/ there and pulled the trigger,/red would have crested/ like a broken dam/ over her hands/ as her last word rushed/ up to her throat-- Paul-- / a sound that took no time and also lifetimes.

Pepper woke up thinking of butts. And nothing else. Ladies' butts. Skinny butts, big butts, saddlebag butts, flabby and firm butts, the kind that sit so high they seem like part of the woman's back, the kind that ride low and form a UU just above the thighs like in the old television commercials for Hanes Underalls, butts that wiggle and butts that jiggle, sagging butts and robust butts, butts that hardly make an impression under a pair of jeans; sidewinder butts and trumpet butts -- the ones so meaty they actually spread out until they appear to be a woman's thighs (ass so fat you can see it from the front), butts as knotty as acorns, butts as smooth as a slice of Gouda, butts with pimples and butts with cellulite, the kind that have pockmarks or red splotches, butts with tattoos and butts with bullet scars. Butts you can cup in your warm hands. Butts and butts and butts. In other words, Pepper woke up horny.

Martin Luther King, Jr., is the most quoted black man on the planet. His words are like scripture to you and, yes, to us too. His name is evoked, his speech referenced, during every racial crisis we confront. He has become the language of race itself. He is, too, the history of black America in a dark suit. But he is more than that. He is the struggle and suffering of our people distilled to a bullet in Memphis. King’s martyrdom made him less a man, more a symbol, arguably a civic deity. But there are perils to hero-worship. His words get plucked from their original contexts, his ideas twisted beyond recognition. America has washed the grit from his rhetoric. Beloved,

His words clip out like bullets from a gun — sharp, staccato, shiver-inducing.

Let this be my first lesson to you: words matter. Use them carefully, like bullets.)

Personally, I’d like to see the word genre taken out back and shot, a bullet in the back of its head, if it’s going to be so overloaded with meanings it’s just gibberish skewed to self-serving doublethink.

The missing remained missing and the portraits couldn't change that. But when Akhmed slid the finished portrait across the desk and the family saw the shape of that beloved nose, the air would flee the room, replaced by the miracle of recognition as mother, father, sister, brother, aunt, and cousin found in that nose the son, brother, nephew, and cousin that had been, would have been, could have been, and they might race after the possibility like cartoon characters dashing off a cliff, held by the certainty of the road until they looked down -- and plummeted is the word used by the youngest brother who, at the age of sixteen, is tired of being the youngest and hopes his older brother will return for many reasons, not least so he will marry and have a child and the youngest brother will no longer be youngest; that youngest brother, the one who has nothing to say about the nose because he remembers his older brother's nose and doesn't need the nose to mean what his parents need it to mean, is the one who six months later would be disappeared in the back of a truck, as his older brother was, who would know the Landfill through his blindfold and gag by the rich scent of clay, as his older brother had known, whose fingers would be wound with the electrical wires that had welded to his older brother's bones, who would stand above a mass grave his brother had dug and would fall in it as his older brother had, though taking six more minutes and four more bullets to die, would be buried an arm's length of dirt above his brother and whose bones would find over time those of his older brother, and so, at that indeterminate point in the future, answer his mother's prayer that her boys find each other, wherever they go; that younger brother would have a smile on his face and the silliest thought in his skull a minute before the first bullet would break it, thinking of how that day six months earlier, when they all went to have his older brother's portrait made, he should have had his made, too, because now his parents would have to make another trip, and he hoped they would, hoped they would because even if he knew his older brother's nose, he hadn't been prepared to see it, and seeing that nose, there, on the page, the density of loss it engendered, the unbelievable ache of loving and not having surrounded him, strong enough to toss him, as his brother had, into the summer lake, but there was nothing but air, and he'd believed that plummet was as close as they would ever come again, and with the first gunshot one brother fell within arms' reach of the other, and with the fifth shot the blindfold dissolved and the light it blocked became forever, and on the kitchen wall of his parents' house his portrait hangs within arm's reach of his older brother's, and his mother spends whole afternoons staring at them, praying that they find each other, wherever they go.

Verbal Ballistics Write a poem riddled with hollowpoint words, so when the poem enters the readers mind it explodes on impact like frangible bullets, fragmenting into associations and symbols that trigger memories and deep emotions.

his next words. “Ralph, I’ve had this coming a long time. Sins catch up with you in the end.” He sighed, and looked up at a spiderweb in the corner of his cell, where a few flies hung like forlorn Christmas decorations. “I should have been dead years ago. God knows I should have copped a bullet or a bayonet a hundred times over. I’ve been on borrowed time a long while.” He swallowed hard. “It’s tough enough on Izz being without Lucy. She’d never survive time in— Ralph, this is one

Disillusioned words like bullets bark As human gods aim for their marks Made everything from toy guns that sparks To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark It's easy to see without looking too far That not much Is really sacred. While preachers preach of evil fates Teachers teach that knowledge waits Can lead to hundred-dollar plates Goodness hides behind its gates But even the President of the United States Sometimes must have To stand naked. An' though the rules of the road have been lodged It's only people's games that you got to dodge And it's alright, Ma, I can make it. Advertising signs that con you Into thinking you're the one That can do what's never been done That can win what's never been won Meantime life outside goes on All around you. Although the masters make the rules For the wise men and the fools I got nothing, Ma, to live up to. For them that must obey authority That they do not respect in any degree Who despite their jobs, their destinies Speak jealously of them that are free Cultivate their flowers to be Nothing more than something They invest in. While some on principles baptized To strict party platforms ties Social clubs in drag disguise Outsiders they can freely criticize Tell nothing except who to idolize And then say God Bless him. While one who sings with his tongue on fire Gargles in the rat race choir Bent out of shape from society's pliers Cares not to come up any higher But rather get you down in the hole That he's in. Old lady judges, watch people in pairs Limited in sex, they dare To push fake morals, insult and stare While money doesn't talk, it swears Obscenity, who really cares Propaganda, all is phony. While them that defend what they cannot see With a killer's pride, security It blows the minds most bitterly For them that think death's honesty Won't fall upon them naturally Life sometimes Must get lonely. And if my thought-dreams could been seen They'd probably put my head in a guillotine But it's alright, Ma, it's life, and life only.

Some people engage in retail therapy, buying new things to make themselves feel more secure, and others engage in knowledge therapy, amassing new ideas to make themselves feel like they know something. We consume for comfort. We rely on certainty to shield us from the pain of confusion. The truth is staggering, colossal, unfathomable, so we cling to our bite-sized lies. We organize knowledge into bulleted lists and line graphs while the wisdom of the present moment sits patiently at the doors of our perception.

Getting shot should be an experience from which you can draw some small pride. I don't mean the macho stuff. All I mean is that you should be able to talk about it: the stiff thump of the bullet, like a fist, the way it knocks the air out of you and makes you cough, how the sound of the gunshot arrives about ten years later, and the dizzy feeling, the smell of yourself, the things you think about and say and do right afterward, the way your eyes focus on a tiny white pebble or a blade of grass and how you start thinking, Oh man, that's the last thing I'll ever see, that pebble, that blade of grass, which makes you want to cry. Pride isn't the right word. I don't know the right word. All I know is, you shouldn't feel embarrassed. Humiliation shouldn't be part of it.

Jealousy? I don't think jealousy is the right word, says Pauline. They were both strong women and in those days people liked to make strong women compete with each other, like you couldn't have two strong women in the same room at the same time. The world would explode.

EVERY WEDNESDAY, I teach an introductory fiction workshop at Harvard University, and on the first day of class I pass out a bullet-pointed list of things the students should try hard to avoid. Don’t start a story with an alarm clock going off. Don’t end a story with the whole shebang having been a suicide note. Don’t use flashy dialogue tags like intoned or queried or, God forbid, ejaculated. Twelve unbearably gifted students are sitting around the table, and they appreciate having such perimeters established. With each variable the list isolates, their imaginations soar higher. They smile and nod. The mood in the room is congenial, almost festive with learning. I feel like a very effective teacher; I can practically hear my course-evaluation scores hitting the roof. Then, when the students reach the last point on the list, the mood shifts. Some of them squint at the words as if their vision has gone blurry; others ask their neighbors for clarification. The neighbor will shake her head, looking pale and dejected, as if the last point confirms that she should have opted for that aseptic-surgery class where you operate on a fetal pig. The last point is: Don’t Write What You Know. The idea panics them for two reasons. First, like all writers, the students have been encouraged, explicitly or implicitly, for as long as they can remember, to write what they know, so the prospect of abandoning that approach now is disorienting. Second, they know an awful lot. In recent workshops, my students have included Iraq War veterans, professional athletes, a minister, a circus clown, a woman with a pet miniature elephant, and gobs of certified geniuses. They are endlessly interesting people, their lives brimming with uniquely compelling experiences, and too often they believe those experiences are what equip them to be writers. Encouraging them not to write what they know sounds as wrongheaded as a football coach telling a quarterback with a bazooka of a right arm to ride the bench. For them, the advice is confusing and heartbreaking, maybe even insulting. For me, it’s the difference between fiction that matters only to those who know the author and fiction that, well, matters.

However he said before I came: To him who brought you up relate How you have broken honor's ties, And say,- his prompt response I wait!' 'Distressed am I to bear your words; And humbled low I am by fate. For honor's sake I must revenge The wrong done Batu and his mate.' Then slowly on one upraised knee He placed with care his loaded gun; Ten aimed at Sapar-beg whom he Had reared, and loved more than a son 'O Sapar-beg,' he gravely said, 'Unworthy even for death are you. 'Tis I who am unfit to live For bringing up a man like you' A sudden flash… a bursting shot… A bullet pierce through temples gray… And on the ground in wreaths of smoke Haji-Iusub lifeless lay.

There’s only one thing you can say when you come up against magic like this, and Mitch waited a long moment in silence to find the right words, to make them good and true and real. “Not tomorrow,” he said. “Because it’s Sunday and it’s Christmas Day. And not Monday, because it’s a federal holiday, but Tuesday. Will you marry me on Tuesday?” She looked up and her lashes were wet as though she’d been crying too, dawning belief in her eyes. “Yes.

Load poems like guns— war's geography calls you to arms. The enemy has no signs, counter-signs, colors signals symbols! Load poems like guns— each moment is loaded with bombs bullets blasts death-sounds— death and war don't follow rules you can make your pages into white flags a thousand times but swallow your words, say no more. Load your poems— your body— your thoughts— like guns. The schoolhouses of war rise up within you. Maybe you are next.

Among the Allied casualties was Ernie Pyle. “If I ever was brave, I ain’t any more,” he wrote a friend. “I’m so indifferent to everything I don’t even give a damn that I’m in Paris.” The war had become “a flat, black depression without highlights, a revulsion of the mind and an exhaustion of the spirit.” In a final column from Europe, he told his readers, “I have had all I can take for a while. I’ve been twenty-nine months overseas since this war started; have written around seven hundred thousand words about it.… The hurt has finally become too great.” Arriving at Bradley’s headquarters on September 2—“worn out, thin, and badly in need of a shave,” one officer reported—he said goodbye, then sailed home on the Queen Elizabeth, her decks crowded with other wounded. “I feel like I’m running out,” he confessed to another writer. Eight months later, while covering the Pacific war, he would be killed by a Japanese bullet in the head.

THE ANTHEM OF HOPE Tiny footprints in mud, metal scraps among thistles Child who ambles barefooted through humanity’s war An Elderflower in mud, landmines hidden in bristles Blood clings to your feet, your wee hands stiff and sore You who walk among trenches, midst our filth and our gore Box of crayons in hand, your tears tumble like crystals Gentle, scared little boy, at the heel of Hope Valley, The grassy heel of Hope Valley. And the bombs fall-fall-fall Down the slopes of Hope Valley Bayonets cut-cut-cut Through the ranks of Hope Valley Napalm clouds burn-burn-burn All who fight in Hope Valley, All who fall in Hope Valley. Bullets fly past your shoulder, fireflies light the sky Child who digs through the trenches for his long sleeping father You plant a kiss on his forehead, and you whisper goodbye Vain corpses, brave soldiers, offered as cannon fodder Nothing is left but a wall; near its pallor you gather Crayon ready, you draw: the memory of a lie Kind, sad little boy, sketching your dream of Hope Valley Your little dream of Hope Valley. Missiles fly-fly-fly Over the fields of Hope Valley Carabines shoot-shoot-shoot The brave souls of Hope Valley And the tanks shell-shell-shell Those who toiled for Hope Valley, Those who died for Hope Valley. In the light of gunfire, the little child draws the valley Every trench is a creek; every bloodstain a flower No battlefield, but a garden with large fields ripe with barley Ideations of peace in his dark, final hour And so the child drew his future, on the wall of that tower Memories of times past; your tiny village lush alley Great, brave little boy, the future hope of Hope Valley The only hope of Hope Valley. And the grass grows-grows-grows On the knolls of Hope Valley Daffodils bloom-bloom-bloom Across the hills of Hope Valley The midday sun shines-shines-shines On the folk of Hope Valley On the dead of Hope Valley From his Aerodyne fleet The soldier faces the carnage Uttering words to the fallen He commends their great courage Across a wrecked, tower wall A child’s hand limns the valley And this drawing speaks volumes Words of hope, not of bally He wipes his tears and marvels The miracle of Hope Valley The only miracle of Hope Valley And the grass grows-grows-grows Midst all the dead of Hope Valley Daffodils bloom-bloom-bloom For all the dead of Hope Valley The evening sun sets-sets-sets On the miracle of Hope Valley The only miracle of Hope Valley (lyrics to "the Anthem of Hope", a fictional song featured in Louise Blackwick's Neon Science-Fiction novel "5 Stars".

The Bible isn’t an answer book. It isn’t a self-help manual. It isn’t a flat, perspicuous list of rules and regulations that we can interpret objectively and apply unilaterally to our lives. The Bible is a sacred collection of letters and laws, poetry and proverbs, philosophy and prophecies, written and assembled over thousands of years in cultures and contexts very different from our own, that tells the complex, ever-unfolding story of God’s interaction with humanity. When we turn the Bible into an adjective and stick it in front of another loaded word (like manhood, womanhood, politics, economics, marriage, and even equality), we tend to ignore or downplay the parts of the Bible that don’t fit our tastes. In an attempt to simplify, we try to force the Bible’s cacophony of voices into a single tone, to turn a complicated and at times troubling holy text into a list of bullet points we can put in a manifesto or creed. More often than not, we end up more committed to what we want the Bible to say than what it actually says. So

The more I know you, the more I wonder who you are.” He counted off her qualities on his fingers. “You have the accent of a lady. You dress like a peasant. You shoot like a marksman. You view the world cynically, yet you venerate Miss Victorine. Your face and body would be the envy of a young goddess, yet you sport an air of innocence. And that innocence hides a criminal mind and the cheek to pull off the most outrageous of felonies.” “So I’m Athena, the goddess of war.” “Definitely not Diana, the goddess of virginity.” As the last shot hit home, he saw Amy’s mask slip. Blood rushed to her face. She bit her lip and looked toward the stairs as if only now realizing she could have—should have—left this whole discussion behind. He laughed softly, triumphantly. “Or perhaps I’m mistaken. Perhaps you have more in common with Diana than I thought.” “Pray remember, sir, that Diana was also the goddess of the hunt.” Amy leaned across the table, intent on making her point—but the blush still played across her cheeks. “She carried a bow and arrow, and she always bagged her quarry. Have a look at the bullet hole in the rock behind you and remember my skill and my cynicism. For we do know things about each other. I know that if you escape, you’ll make sure I’m hung from a gibbet. You know that if I catch you escaping, I’ll shoot you through the heart. Remember that as you cast longing glances toward the window.” With a flourish, she picked up the breakfast tray and walked up the stairs. Jermyn had learned something else about Amy. She liked to have the last word.

Let me tell you what happened, the way it looked from inside my head. The world slowed down, like it does in the movies when someone is getting shot and the filmmaker wants you to feel every bullet enter your body. The words echoed in my ears over and over and over. Attached to that simple pronoun was the word failure, quickly followed by the word freak. All the joy sucked out of my life in that instant, and every moment I'd ever fucked up crashed down on my head. Here was someone who'd never known me as a man, referring to me as a man.

How does one kill fear, I wonder? How do you shoot a spectre through the heart, slash off its spectral head, take it by its spectral throat? It is an enterprise you rush into while you dream, and are glad to make your escape with wet hair and every limb shaking. The bullet is not run, the blade not forged, the man not born; even the winged words of truth drop at your feet like lumps of lead. You require for such a desperate encounter an enchanted and poisoned shaft dipped in a lie too subtle to be found on earth. An enterprise for a dream, my masters!

The story of Kelly is easily told. He was a murderous thug who deserved to be hanged and was. He came from a family of rough Irish settlers, who made their living by stealing livestock and waylaying innocent passers-by. Like most bushrangers he was at pains to present himself as a champion of the oppressed, though in fact there wasn’t a shred of nobility in his character or his deeds. He killed several people, often in cold blood, sometimes for no very good reason. In 1880, after years on the run, Kelly was reported to be holed up with his modest gang (a brother and two friends) in Glenrowan, a hamlet in the foothills of the Warby Range in north-eastern Victoria. Learning of this, the police assembled a large posse and set off to get him. As surprise attacks go, it wasn’t terribly impressive. When the police arrived (on an afternoon train) they found that word of their coming had preceded them and that a thousand people were lined up along the streets and sitting on every rooftop eagerly awaiting the spectacle of gunfire. The police took up positions and at once began peppering the Kelly hideout with bullets. The Kellys returned the fire and so it went throughout the night. The next dawn during a lull Kelly stepped from the dwelling, dressed unexpectedly, not to say bizarrely, in a suit of home-made armour – a heavy cylindrical helmet that brought to mind an inverted bucket, and a breastplate that covered his torso and crotch. He wore no armour on his lower body, so one of the policemen shot him in the leg. Aggrieved, Kelly staggered off into some nearby woods, fell over and was captured. He was taken to Melbourne, tried and swiftly executed. His last words were: ‘Such is life.

That was the first time in my life that anyone had rejected me so completely.' Tsukuru said. 'And the ones who did it were the people I trusted the most, my four best friends in the world. I was so close to them that they had been like an extension of my own body. Searching for the reason, or correcting a misunderstanding, was beyond me. I was simply, and utterly, in shock. So much so that I thought I might never recover. It felt like something inside me snapped.' The bartender brought over the glass of wine and replenished the bowl of nuts. Once he'd left, Sara turned to Tsukuru. 'I've never experienced that myself, but I think I can imagine how stunned you must have been. I understand that you couldn't recover from it quickly. But still, after time had passed and the shock had worn off, wasn't there something you could have done? I mean, it was so unfair. Why didn't you challenge it? I don't see how you could stand it.' Tsukuru shook his head slightly. 'The next morning I made up some excuse to tell my family and took the bullet train back to Tokyo. I couldn't stand being in Nagoya for one more day. All I could think of was getting away from there.' 'If it had been me, I would have stayed there and not left until I got to the bottom of it,' Sara said. 'I wasn't strong enough for that.' Tsukuru said. 'You didn't want to find out the truth?' Tsukuru stared at his hands on the tabletop, careful choosing his words. 'I think I was afraid of pursuing it, of whatever facts might come of light. Of actually coming face-to-face with them. Whatever the truth was, I didn't think it would save me. I'm not sure why, but I was certain of it.' 'And you're certain of it now?' 'I don't know,' Tsukuru said. 'But I was then.' 'So you went back to Tokyo, stayed holed up in your apartment, closed your eyes, and covered up your ears.' 'You could say that, yes.

I don’t like to use this word,” he said, “because I’m a man of science and I don’t believe in it. But what happened to your mother today was a miracle. I never say that, because I hate it when people say it, but I don’t have any other way to explain this.” The bullet that hit my mother in the butt, he said, was a through-and-through. It went in, came out, and didn’t do any real damage. The other bullet went through the back of her head, entering below the skull at the top of her neck. It missed the spinal cord by a hair, missed the medulla oblongata, and traveled through her head just underneath the brain, missing every major vein, artery, and nerve. With the trajectory the bullet was on, it was headed straight for her left eye socket and would have blown out her eye, but at the last second it slowed down, hit her cheekbone instead, shattered her cheekbone, ricocheted off, and came out through her left nostril. On the gurney in the emergency room, the blood had made the wound look much worse than it was. The bullet took off only a tiny flap of skin on the side of her nostril, and it came out clean, with no bullet fragments left inside. She didn’t even need surgery. They stopped the bleeding, stitched her up in back, stitched her up in front, and let her heal. “There was nothing we can do, because there’s nothing we need to do,” the doctor

When she asked him why he'd shot her daddy, he just shrugged and said that he'd been planning on shooting six people when he rode into town. She looked up at him, eyes wide, batting her eyelashes, feigning awe, looking on him the way that Joshua must have looked on the walls of Jericho, and asked him why six; and he said back to her: because his pistol had six bullets in it. With another shrug, as though that answered everything. And then he turned to face her, with his livid scar and gap teeth and breath that stank like the devil and hell, and the words flashed sudden through her mind, clear as if they'd been laid out on parchment: this is what the face of a free man looks like.

Trick Candle Torches feeding on the dark between the stars a river of ice and fire converge in her chest a kiss like a hot spring, a tongue of embers breath of ash with sparking lips words that crash like the tide and a judge’s hammer a touch like a bed of poppies and spiderwebs hips like the curve of an hourglass and sex pure sex manifested in the flesh a body to take a bullet for I am drunk and drugged, dashed upon the shore of her soul a soul to set the angels and demons to war I am stranded in no man’s land in between her ribs like a madman guardian searching for her womb seeking death or rebirth those bittersweet twins one a flicker the other a trick candle I crawl towards the light

Whenever I thought about having a conversation with [the widow], my words felt like confederate currency to me, worthless, ineffectual, meaningless, and of no use to anyone in the present day. No matter how many portraits of Jefferson Davis I placed on the table before her, she would never feel like my debt was paid, my obligation met. [We] could never be even. No matter how fast I talked or how eloquently I crafted the English language, my words couldn't turn back the clock, reverse the bullets, and reunite her with her husband, the only actions that would truly right my mistake. I was a writer and I believed in the power of words, but my words were as useless now as the defunct currency of the Old South.

Yet Rhysand shook his head, as if still not quite believing it. “And you think …” He met Bryce’s stare, his eyes once again full of that predatory focus. Gods, he was terrifying. “You believe the Daglan—these Asteri—want to come back here for revenge. After at least fifteen thousand years.” Doubt dripped from every word. “That’s, like, five minutes for Rigelus,” Bryce countered. “He’s got infinite time—and resources.” “What kind of resources?” Cold, sharp words—a leader assessing the threat to his people. How to begin describing guns or brimstone missiles or mech-suits or Omega-boats or even the Asteri’s power? How to convey the ruthless, swift horror of a bullet? And maybe it was reckless, but … She extended her hand to Rhysand. “I’ll show you.

We are glad to visit your beautiful country. It is prosperous—you all live far from the struggle. Nobody destroys your towns, cities, fields. Nobody kills your citizens, your sisters and mothers, your fathers and brothers. I come from a place where bombs pound villages into ash, where Russian blood oils the treads of German tanks, where innocent civilians die every day.” She caught herself up, exhaled slowly as she marshaled her next words. No one moved, least of all the marksman. “An accurate bullet fired by a sniper like me, Mrs. Roosevelt, is no more than a response to an enemy. My husband lost his life at Sevastopol before my eyes. He died in my arms. As far as I am concerned, any Hitlerite I see through my telescopic sights is the one who killed him.” A frozen silence fell over the room. Only the marksman’s eyes moved as he looked around the table, cataloging responses. The Soviet delegation leader sat clutching his butter knife, looking like he wanted to saw off her head and bowl it through the window into the White House gardens. The smart Washington women in their frills and pearls looked appalled. The First Lady looked . . . Embarrassed? the marksman wondered. Did that horsey presidential bitch look embarrassed? “I’m sorry, Lyudmila dear,” she said quietly, laying down her napkin. “I had no wish to offend you. This conversation is important, and we will continue it in a more suitable setting. But now, unfortunately, it is time to disperse. My duties are calling, and I understand

I say, it sounds like some dangerous psychotic killer wrote this, and this buttoned-down schizophrenic could probably go over the edge at any moment in the working day and stalk from office to office with an Armalite AR-180 carbine gas-operated semiautomatic. My boss just looks at me. The guy, I say, is probably at home every night with a little rattail file, filing a cross into the tip of every one of his rounds. This way, when he shows up to work one morning and pumps a round into his nagging, ineffectual, petty, whining, butt-sucking, candy-ass boss, that one round will split along the filed grooves and spread open the way a dumdum bullet flowers inside you to blow a bushel load of your stinking guts out through your spine. Picture your gut chakra opening in a slow-motion explosion of sausage-casing small intestine. My boss takes the paper out from under my nose. Go ahead, I say, read some more. No really, I say, it sounds fascinating. The work of a totally diseased mind. And I smile. The little butthole-looking edges of the hole in my cheek are the same blue-black as a dog’s gums. The skin stretched tight across the swelling around my eyes feels varnished. My boss just looks at me. Let me help you, I say. I say, the fourth rule of fight club is one fight at a time. My boss looks at the rules and then looks at me. I say, the fifth rule is no shoes, no shirts in the fight. My boss looks at the rules and looks at me. Maybe, I say, this totally diseased fuck would use an Eagle Apache carbine because an Apache takes a thirty-shot mag and only weighs nine pounds. The Armalite only takes a five-round magazine. With thirty shots, our totally fucked hero could go the length of mahogany row and take out every vice-president with a cartridge left over for each director. Tyler’s words coming out of my mouth. I used to be such a nice person. I just look at my boss. My boss has blue, blue, pale cornflower blue eyes. The J and R 68 semiautomatic carbine also takes a thirty-shot mag, and it only weighs seven pounds. My boss just looks at me. It’s scary, I say. This is probably somebody he’s known for years. Probably this guy knows all about him, where he lives, and where his wife works and his kids go to school. This is exhausting, and all of a sudden very, very boring. And why does Tyler need ten copies of the fight club rules? What I don’t have to say is I know about the leather interiors that cause birth defects. I know about the counterfeit brake linings that looked good enough to pass the purchasing agent, but fail after two thousand miles. I know about the air-conditioning rheostat that gets so hot it sets fire to the maps in your glove compartment. I know how many people burn alive because of fuel-injector flashback. I’ve seen people’s legs cut off at the knee when turbochargers start exploding and send their vanes through the firewall and into the passenger compartment. I’ve been out in the field and seen the burned-up cars and seen the reports where CAUSE OF FAILURE is recorded as "unknown.” No, I say, the paper’s not mine. I take the paper between two fingers and jerk it out of his hand. The edge must slice his thumb because his hand flies to his mouth, and he’s sucking hard, eyes wide open. I crumble the paper into a ball and toss it into the trash can next to my desk. Maybe, I say, you shouldn’t be bringing me every little piece of trash you pick up.

Necessities 1 A map of the world. Not the one in the atlas, but the one in our heads, the one we keep coloring in. With the blue thread of the river by which we grew up. The green smear of the woods we first made love in. The yellow city we thought was our future. The red highways not traveled, the green ones with their missed exits, the black side roads which took us where we had not meant to go. The high peaks, recorded by relatives, though we prefer certain unmarked elevations, the private alps no one knows we have climbed. The careful boundaries we draw and erase. And always, around the edges, the opaque wash of blue, concealing the drop-off they have stepped into before us, singly, mapless, not looking back. 2 The illusion of progress. Imagine our lives without it: tape measures rolled back, yardsticks chopped off. Wheels turning but going nowhere. Paintings flat, with no vanishing point. The plots of all novels circular; page numbers reversing themselves past the middle. The mountaintop no longer a goal, merely the point between ascent and descent. All streets looping back on themselves; life as a beckoning road an absurd idea. Our children refusing to grow out of their childhoods; the years refusing to drag themselves toward the new century. And hope, the puppy that bounds ahead, no longer a household animal. 3 Answers to questions, an endless supply. New ones that startle, old ones that reassure us. All of them wrong perhaps, but for the moment solutions, like kisses or surgery. Rising inflections countered by level voices, words beginning with w hushed by declarative sentences. The small, bold sphere of the period chasing after the hook, the doubter that walks on water and treads air and refuses to go away. 4 Evidence that we matter. The crash of the plane which, at the last moment, we did not take. The involuntary turn of the head, which caused the bullet to miss us. The obscene caller who wakes us at midnight to the smell of gas. The moon's full blessing when we fell in love, its black mood when it was all over. Confirm us, we say to the world, with your weather, your gifts, your warnings, your ringing telephones, your long, bleak silences. 5 Even now, the old things first things, which taught us language. Things of day and of night. Irrational lightning, fickle clouds, the incorruptible moon. Fire as revolution, grass as the heir to all revolutions. Snow as the alphabet of the dead, subtle, undeciphered. The river as what we wish it to be. Trees in their humanness, animals in their otherness. Summits. Chasms. Clearings. And stars, which gave us the word distance, so we could name our deepest sadness.

But she was not prepared to understand me. And so we parted. Thinking about all the things that made her so much nicer than the other girls at home, I sat on the bullet train to Tokyo feeling terrible about what I'd done, but there was no way to undo it. I would try to forget her. There was only one thing for me to do when I started my new life in the dorm: stop taking everything so seriously; establish a proper distance between myself and everything else. Forget about green baize pool tables and red N-360s and white flowers on school desks; about smoke rising from tall crematorium chimneys, and chunky paperweights in police interrogation rooms. It seemed to work at first. I tried hard to forget, but there remained inside me a vague knot of air. And as time went by, the knot began to take on a clear and simple form, a form that I am able to put into words, like this: Death exists, not as the opposite but as a part of life

I select the right practice gun, the one about the size of a pistol, but bulkier, and offer it to Caleb. Tris’s fingers slide between mine. Everything comes easily this morning, every smile and every laugh, every word and every motion. If we succeed in what we attempt tonight, tomorrow Chicago will be safe, the Bureau will be forever changed, and Tris and I will be able to build a new life for ourselves somewhere. Maybe it will even be a place where I trade my guns and knives for more productive tools, screwdrivers and nails and shovels. This morning I feel like I could be so fortunate. I could. “It doesn’t shoot real bullets,” I say, “but it seems like they designed it so it would be as close as possible to one of the guns you’ll be using. It feels real, anyway.” Caleb holds the gun with just his fingertips, like he’s afraid it will shatter in his hands. I laugh. “First lesson: Don’t be afraid of it. Grab it. You’ve held one before, remember? You got us out of the Amity compound with that shot.” “That was just lucky,” Caleb says, turning the gun over and over to see it from every angle. His tongue pushes into his cheek like he’s solving a problem. “Not the result of skill.” “Lucky is better than unlucky,” I say. “We can work on skill now.” I glance at Tris. She grins at me, then leans in to whisper something to Christina. “Are you here to help or what, Stiff?” I say. I hear myself speaking in the voice I cultivated as an initiation instructor, but this time I use it in jest. “You could use some practice with that right arm, if I recall correctly. You too, Christina.” Tris makes a face at me, then she and Christina cross the room to get their own weapons. “Okay, now face the target and turn the safety off,” I say. There is a target across the room, more sophisticated, than the wooden-board target in the Dauntless training rooms. It has three rings in three different colors, green, yellow, and red, so it’s easier to tell where the bullets it. “Let me see how you would naturally shoot.” He lifts up the gun with one hand, squares off his feet and shoulders to the target like he’s about to lift something heavy, and fires. The gun jerks back and up, firing the bullet near the ceiling. I cover my mouth with my hand to disguise my smile. “There’s no need to giggle,” Caleb says irritably. “Book learning doesn’t teach you everything, does it?” Christina says. “You have to hold it with both hands. It doesn’t look as cool, but neither does attacking the ceiling.” “I wasn’t trying to look cool!” Christina stands, her legs slightly uneven, and lifts both arms. She stares the target for a moment, then fires. The training bullet hits the outer circle of the target and bounces off, rolling on the floor. It leaves a circle of light on the target, marking the impact site. I wish I’d had this technology during initiation training. “Oh, good,” I say. “You hit the air around your target’s body. How useful.” “I’m a little rusty,” Christina admits, grinning.

A Poetry Reading at West Point I read to the entire plebe class, in two batches. Twice the hall filled with bodies dressed alike, each toting a copy of my book. What would my shrink say, if I had one, about such a dream, if it were a dream? Question and answer time. “Sir,” a cadet yelled from the balcony, and gave his name and rank, and then, closing his parentheses, yelled “Sir” again. “Why do your poems give me a headache when I try to understand them?” he asked. “Do you want that?” I have a gift for gentle jokes to defuse tension, but this was not the time to use it. “I try to write as well as I can what it feels like to be human,” I started, picking my way care- fully, for he and I were, after all, pained by the same dumb longings. “I try to say what I don’t know how to say, but of course I can’t get much of it down at all.” By now I was sweating bullets. “I don’t want my poems to be hard, unless the truth is, if there is a truth.” Silence hung in the hall like a heavy fabric. My own head ached. “Sir,” he yelled. “Thank you. Sir.

We were almost back to the jail with our second load, and I was just beginning to think we might pull this off, when Uncle Wiggens wandered into the street. 'Who there?' he called out, his words slurred. Emma ducked behind a tree, but I didn't move fast enough. 'Is that you, Dit?' I nodded. Something was strange about him. 'What you doing out so late at night?' he asked. 'Nothing.' I figured out what was strange. 'Where's your leg?' I asked. His leg ended at the knee and he was hopping along on one leg and his cane. 'Left it at home,' said Uncle Wiggens. 'Always do when I'm sleepwalking. My daughter warned me about drinking a whole bottle of whiskey in one sitting. But I was never one to let a woman tell me what to do.' 'Yeah. Me neither.' 'Well,' said Uncle Wiggens, 'I'd best get on home before I wake up.' 'Yeah.' 'Being without my leg and all.' 'That would be embarrassing.' 'Sure would. Sure would.' Uncle Wiggens mumbled to himself as he wandered off. 'General Lee always said, if you ain't got all your supplies, don't ride into battle. Course he meant bullets, but he wouldn't have liked us going off without our legs neither. Course most of us have our legs buttoned on, but...

If you leave without me, I’ll just follow you. You can’t stop me, Cassie. How are you going to stop me?” I shrug helplessly, fighting back tears. “Shoot you, I guess.” “Like you shot the Crucifix Soldier?” The words hit me like a bullet between the shoulder blades. I whirl around and fling open the door. He flinches, but stands his ground. “How do you know about him?” Of course, there’s only one way he could know. “You read my diary.” “I didn’t think you were going to live.” “Sorry to disappoint you.” “I guess I wanted to know what happened—” “You’re lucky I left the gun downstairs or I would shoot you right now. Do you know how creepy that makes me feel, knowing you read that? How much did you read?” He lowers his eyes. A warm red blush spreads across his cheeks. “You read all of it, didn’t you?” I’m totally embarrassed. I feel violated and ashamed. It’s ten times worse than when I first woke up in Val’s bed and realized he had seen me naked. That was just my body. This was my soul. I punch him in the stomach. There’s no give at all; it’s like I hit a slab of concrete. “I can’t believe you,” I shout. “You sat there—just sat there—while I lied about Ben Parish. You knew the truth and you just sat there and let me lie!

The rifle started to move lazily in a low arc. The man's left hand was at the trigger, his right just in front of the triggerguard, pivoting the gun. They stood still. The man sat lazily looking down at the breech, his chair still tilted against the small door with the yellow Yale lock. The gun slowly traversed Leiter's stomach, then Bond's. The two men stood like statues, not risking a move of the hand. The gun stopped pivoting. It was pointing down the wharf. The Robber looked briefly up, narrowed his eyes and pulled the trigger. The pelican gave a faint squawk and they heard its heavy body crash into the water. The echo of the shot boomed across the harbor. "What the hell d'you do that for?" asked Bond furiously. "Practice," said the man, pumping another bullet into the breech. "Guess there's a branch of the ASPCA in this town," said Leiter. "Let's get along there and report this guy." "Want to be prosecuted for trespass?" asked The Robber, getting slowly up and shifting the gun under his arm. "This is private property. Now," he spat the words out, "git the hell out of here." He turned and yanked the chair away from the door, opened the door with a key and turned with one foot on the threshold. "You both got guns," he said. "I kin smell 'em. You come aroun' here again and you follow the boid 'n I plead self-defense. I've had a bellyfull of you lousy dicks aroun' here lately breathin' down my neck. Sybil my ass!" He turned contemptuously through the door and slammed it so that the frame rattled.

Obviously, the violence suppression of social movements is hardly new. One need only think of the Red Scare, the reaction to radical labor movements like the IWW, let alone the campaigns of outright assassination directed against the American Indian Movement or black radicals in the 1960s and early 1970s. But in almost every case, the victims were either working-class or nonwhite. On the few occasions where even much milder systematic repression is directed at any significant number of middle-class white people--as during the McCarthy era, or against student protesters during the Vietnam War--it quickly becomes a national scandal. And, while it would be wrong to call Occupy Wall Street a middle-class white people’s movement--it was much more divers than that--there is no doubt that very large numbers of middle-class white people were involved in it. Yet the government did not hesitate to attack it, often using highly militarized tactics, often deploying what can only be called terroristic violence--that is, if "terrorism" is defined as attacks on civilians consciously calculated to create terror for political ends. (I know this statement might seem controversial. But when Los Angeles police, for example, open fire with rubber bullets on a group of chalk-wielding protesters engaged in a perfectly legal, permitted "art walk," in an obvious attempt to teach citizens that participating in any Occupy-related activity could lead to physical injury, it’s hard to see how that word should not apply.) (p. 141-142)

The artillery and mortars had been silent for at least the past few hours. After awhile the rabbi stopped initiating new songs. He took a few more sips of wine and sat for a time, almost shining in obvious pleasure, and yet reflective and silent. All watched him, and after a few minutes he spoke again in his odd Moroccan/Brooklyn accent. "The weapons of a Jew are prayer and mitzvot. Tonight we are arming ourselves with mitzvot like the finest suit of armor ever made. Better than a ceramica," he said, referring to the bullet-proof flak vests worn by many Israeli soldiers by their street name. "By the mere act of sitting and eating and drinking, because we are doing so in a sukkah at the time that our Creator told us to do so, we acquire for ourselves a heavenly shield more powerful than any missile or tank." He let those words settle in as he beamed at all present at the table and standing in the sukkah. "A mitzvah—carrying out HaShem's commandment or doing a good deed, such as an act of kindness towards your fellow human being—creates a heavenly smell, a wonderful odor that is both spiritual and physical. When the Creator of the whole universe commanded the Jewish people to bring sacrifices upon His holy altar, and they did so exactly as he had instructed them, the Torah says that it created a Re-ach Tov, a good and wonderful scent, that pleased the Ribbono Shel-Olam. And in those moments when the Jewish people acted on the instructions of their Creator, there was a kesher and a devekus, a tie and a drawing closer, between the Jewish people and their Creator.

Define Your Options When people are spinning their rumination wheels about a particular problem, they often don’t concretely define what their options are for moving forward. To shift out of rumination and into problem-solving mode, concretely and realistically define what your best three to six options are. For example, imagine you’ve recently hired a new employee but that person is not working out. Instead of mentally slapping yourself around about why you made the hire, it would be more useful to define what your options are at this point: --Giving the employee more time --Shifting the employee’s responsibilities to simpler jobs --Giving the employee checklists of the steps needed to complete each task --Having another employee work with the individual --Firing the employee Defining your options relieves some of the stress of rumination and helps you shift to effective problem solving. Keeping your list of options short will prevent you from running into choice-overload problems. Research shows that if you consider more than three to six choices, you’re less likely to end up making a choice. Experiment: Practice concretely defining your best three to six options for moving forward with a problem you’re currently ruminating or worrying about. Write brief bullet points, like in the example just given. You can use this method for all sorts of problems. For example, a friend just used it to come up with ideas for how to have more social contact in her life. Note: If the word best is causing you to jump into perfectionism/frozen mode, write any three to six options.

Sam, I know you’re upset over what happened with you and Drake,” Astrid began. “Upset?” Sam echoed the word with an ironic smirk. “But that’s no excuse for you keeping secrets from us.” “Yeah,” Howard said, “Don’t you know only Astrid is allowed to keep secrets?” “Shut up, Howard,” Astrid snapped. “Yeah, we get to lie because we’re the smart ones,” Howard said. “Not like all those idiots out there.” Astrid turned her attention back to Sam. “This is not okay, Sam. The council has the responsibility. Not you alone.” Sam looked like he could not care less about what she was saying. He looked almost beyond reach, indifferent to what was going on around him. “Hey,” Astrid said. “We’re talking to you.” That did it. His jaw clenched. His head snapped up. His eyes blazed. “Don’t push me. That wasn’t you with your skin whipped off and covered in blood. That was me. That was me who went down into that mine shaft to try to fight the gaiaphage.” Astrid blinked. “No one is minimizing what you’ve done, Sam. You’re a hero. But at the same time—” Sam was on his feet. “At the same time? At the same time you were here in town. Edilio had a bullet in his chest. Dekka was torn to pieces. I was trying not to scream from the…You and Albert and Howard, you weren’t there, were you?” “I was busy standing up to Zil, trying to save Hunter’s life,” Astrid yelled. “But it wasn’t you and your big words, was it? It was Orc who stopped Zil. And he was there because I sent him to rescue you. Me!” He stabbed a finger at his own chest, actually making what looked like painful impact. “Me! Me and Brianna and Dekka and Edilio! And poor Duck.

It turns out that in that terrible year Andrei Yanuaryevich (one longs to blurt out, “Jaguaryevich”) Vyshinsky, availing himself of the most flexible dialectics (of a sort nowadays not permitted either Soviet citizens or electronic calculators, since to them yes is yes and no is no), pointed out in a report which became famous in certain circles that it is never possible for mortal men to establish absolute truth, but relative truth only. He then proceeded to a further step, which jurists of the last two thousand years had not been willing to take: that the truth established by interrogation and trial could not be absolute, but only, so to speak, relative. Therefore, when we sign a sentence ordering someone to be shot we can never be absolutely certain, but only approximately, in view of certain hypotheses, and in a certain sense, that we are punishing a guilty person. Thence arose the most practical conclusion: that it was useless to seek absolute evidence—for evidence is always relative—or unchallengeable witnesses—for they can say different things at different times. The proofs of guilt were relative, approximate, and the interrogator could find them, even when there was no evidence and no witness, without leaving his office, “basing his conclusions not only on his own intellect but also on his Party sensitivity, his moral forces” (in other words, the superiority of someone who has slept well, has been well fed, and has not been beaten up) “and on his character” (i.e., his willingness to apply cruelty!). In only one respect did Vyshinsky fail to be consistent and retreat from dialectical logic: for some reason, the executioner’s bullet which he allowed was not relative but absolute. . . . Thus it was that the conclusions of advanced Soviet jurisprudence, proceeding in a spiral, returned to barbaric or medieval standards. Like medieval torturers, our interrogators, prosecutors, and judges agreed to accept the confession of the accused as the chief proof of guilt.

Hunting in my experience—and by hunting I simply mean being out on the land—is a state of mind. All of one’s faculties are brought to bear in an effort to become fully incorporated into the landscape. It is more than listening for animals or watching for hoofprints or a shift in the weather. It is more than an analysis of what one senses. To hunt means to have the land around you like clothing. To engage in a wordless dialogue with it, one so absorbing that you cease to talk with your human companions. It means to release yourself from rational images of what something “means” and to be concerned only that it “is.” And then to recognize that things exist only insofar as they can be related to other things. These relationships—fresh drops of moisture on top of rocks at a river crossing and a raven’s distant voice—become patterns. The patterns are always in motion. Suddenly the pattern—which includes physical hunger, a memory of your family, and memories of the valley you are walking through, these particular plants and smells—takes in the caribou. There is a caribou standing in front of you. The release of the arrow or bullet is like a word spoken out loud. It occurs at the periphery of your concentration. The mind we know in dreaming, a nonrational, nonlinear comprehension of events in which slips in time and space are normal, is, I believe, the conscious working mind of an aboriginal hunter. It is a frame of mind that redefines patience, endurance, and expectation. The focus of a hunter in a hunting society was not killing animals but attending to the myriad relationships he understood bound him into the world he occupied with them. He tended to those duties carefully because he perceived in them everything he understood about survival. This does not mean, certainly, that every man did this, or that good men did not starve. Or that shamans whose duty it was to intercede with the forces that empowered these relationships weren’t occasionally thinking of personal gain or subterfuge. It only means that most men understood how to behave.

Sorrow walked in my clothes before I did. Flocks of shadows followed me. One night I looked at the stars I thought were gods until they disappeared. Some say I smashed my father’s idols and walked away. Or walked towards a desert of barren promises. Or promises that are hummingbirds hovering for a moment then drifting away. Even now, walking towards that mountain, sometimes I will watch my shadow sitting beneath a plane tree, casting dice, ignoring my steps. Some of you made me a founder but it was only that shadow. Some of you made me your father, but it was yourselves you were describing. You plant a tree, you dig a well, and it brings life, that’s all. Everything else is the heart’s mirage. Except what begins inside you. Except Sarah. When she stepped inside my dream the curtains shivered, whole mountains entered the room. It always seemed a question of which love to honor. The land I loved fills with fire. Who should we listen to? It’s true, He offered the world and I offered only myself. But I thought His words were coffins. I was frantic for any scrap of shade. Now everything is shade. Your old newspapers are taken up by the wind like pairs of broken wings. Each window, each door is a wound. One track erases another track. One bomb. One rock, one rubber bullet. What can I tell you? Where have you left your own morning of promises? You remember Isaac, maybe Ishmael, but not the love that led me there. Not Sarah. Just to hear the sound of her eyelids opening, or her plants pushing the air aside as they reach for the sun, twilight filling her fingers like fruit. This afternoon a flock of doves settled on my porch. Their silence took the shape of all I ever wanted to say. Today, the miracle you want aches inside the trees. Why believe anything except what is unbelievable? I never thought of it as a trial, not any of it. Now the leaves turn into messages that are simply impossible to read. The roots turn into roads as they break through the surface. How can I even know what I mean? Beneath the hem of night the rain falls asleep on the grass. We have to turn into each other. One heart inside the other’s heart. One love. One word. Inside us, our shadows will walk into water, the water will walk into the sky. Blind. Faithful. Inside us the music turns into a flock of birds. Theirs is a song whose promise we must believe the way the moon believes the earth, the fire believes the wood, that is, for no reason, for no reason at all.

Long story short, I got lured into a trap. A Mage using that concealment spell tried to knife me. Then someone else tried to blow my brains out with a bullet." "A Mage attacked you?" Alain asked, feeling a sick sensation inside. "She tried. I knew they'd been watching me. I didn't give them any reason to try to kill me." Mari looked at him. "Did I?" "It is my fault," Alain admitted. "Even though I have tried to keep them from finding out who you are, they still believe that you are dangerous." She gave him another look, then shook her head. "From the looks of things, I'm mainly dangerous to my friends and myself. Just how much trouble did you actually get in because of spending time with me in Dorcastle?" Alain looked into the fire. "My Guild did not believe that I had been with you in Dorcastle. The elders thought that the woman I had been seen with in that city was a common I had sought out because she researched the Mechanic I had met in Ringhmon." "Why would you want to find a common who looked like me?" Mari asked. "For physical satisfaction." The simple statement would have created no reaction in a Mage, but he saw the outraged look in Mari's face and hurriedly added more. "I would not have done that. But the elders assumed that I did. I told you that they believed I was attracted to you." "Alain, 'attracted to' doesn't bring to mind the idea of finding another woman who resembles me so that you can pretend that you're—" she choked off the words, glaring into the night. "The elders assumed that. I never wanted it. I would never do it. There is no other woman like you." Somehow he must have said the right thing, because she relaxed. "But because of that belief of theirs," Mari said, "your elders thought you might look for me again." "They actually thought that you would seek me," Alain explained. "They were very concerned that you would..." His "social skills" might need work, but Alain realized that he probably should not say the rest. Too late. Mari bent a sour look his way. "What did they think I would do?" "It is not important." "Alain..." He exhaled slowly, realizing that Mari would not give up on this question. "The elders thought that you would seek to ensnare me, using your physical charms, and through me work to strike at the Mage Guild." She stared back in disbelief. "Ensnare? They actually used the word ensnare?" "Yes. Many times." "Using my physical charms?" Mari seemed unable to decide whether to laugh or get angry. She looked down at herself. "I'm a little low on ammunition when it comes to physical charms, or hadn't these elders of yours noticed?" "You are beautiful beyond all other women," Alain objected. Mari rolled her eyes. "And you ate seriously deluded. I hadn't realized how badly until this moment.

him. "Fuck, fuck, fuck. I hate this. I don't want to sell my soul to win." Steve placed a hand on her shoulder. "You're not selling your soul. Maybe you're just . . . lending it out for a while." She closed her eyes and gritted her jaw. Could she do this? Could she truly make a deal with the devil? Even if they survived, how would she then live with herself? Steve hugged her from behind, and Addy held his hands, silent, eyes closed. They made love—silent but hard, eager yet so weary. When she climaxed, she shouted into his palm, and she fell asleep in his arms. She never wanted to leave his embrace. In the morning, she walked through the military base. She wore no uniform, just jeans and a hockey jersey. She carried her rifle across her back, a bandoleer of bullets hung around her waist, and a cigarette dangled from her lips. Her helmet hung askew, scrawled with the words Hell Patrol. Her people walked behind her, just as ragged. She looked like a haggard survivor, bruised, scratched, her eyes sunken. But the fire burned

picked this up at Skip’s place,” the kid said. He showed Bobby a bullet. It looked like a regular .45-caliber round but the bullet was blunter. “This is a multiple-impact round. When you fire the gun, the bullet breaks into three fragments held together with strings of Kevlar. The fragments come at you spinning like a South American bolo and they hit with a fourteen-inch spread. In other words, I could shoot at you, miss by thirteen inches, and still blow your brains out. Now I don’t know if that verifies Skip as a hit man but it verifies him as something.” Bobby looked like he’d opened his safe and found a head of cabbage. Hegan turned away to hide his smile. “Any questions?” the short guy said. The kid lifted his head. “Something’s burning.” Earlier

Don Fabrizio remembered a conversation with Father Pirrone some months before in the sunlit observatory. What the Jesuit had predicted had come to pass. But wasn’t it perhaps good tactics to insert himself into the new movement, make at least part use of it for a few members of his own class? The worry of his imminent interview with Don Calogero lessened. “But the rest of his family, Don Ciccio, what are they really like?” “Excellency, no one has laid eyes on Don Calogero’s wife for years, except me. She only leaves the house to go to early Mass, the five o’clock one, when it’s empty. There’s no organ-playing at that hour; but once I got up early just to see her. Donna Bastiana came in with her maid, and as I was hiding behind a confessional I could not see very much; but at the end of Mass the heat was too great for the poor woman and she took off her black veil. Word of honour, Excellency, she was lovely as the sun, one can’t blame Don Calogero, who’s a beetle of a man, for wanting to keep her away from others. But even in the best kept houses secrets come out; servants talk; and it seems Donna Bastiana is a kind of animal: she can’t read or write or tell the time by a clock, can scarcely talk; just a beautiful mare, voluptuous and uncouth; she’s incapable even of affection for her own daughter! Good for bed and that’s all.” Don Ciccio, who, as protégé of queens and follower of princes, considered his own simple manners to be perfect, smiled with pleasure. He had found a way of getting some of his own back on the suppressor of his personality. “Anyway,” he went on, “one couldn’t expect much else. You know whose daughter Donna Bastiana is, Excellency?” He turned, rose on tiptoe, pointed to a distant group of huts which looked as if they were slithering off the edge of the hill, nailed there just by a wretched-looking bell-tower: a crucified hamlet. “She’s the daughter of one of your peasants from Runci, Peppe Giunta he was called, so filthy and so crude that everyone called him Peppe “Mmerda” . . . excuse the word, Excellency.” Satisfied, he twisted one of Teresina’s ears round a finger. “Two years after Don Calogero had eloped with Bastiana they found him dead on the path to Rampinzeri, with twelve bullets in his back. Always lucky, is Don Calogero, for the old man was getting above himself and demanding, they say.” Much of this was known to Don Fabrizio and had already been balanced up in his mind; but the nickname of Angelica’s grandfather was new to him; it opened a profound historical perspective, and made him glimpse other abysses compared to which Don Calogero himself seemed a garden flowerbed. The Prince began to feel the ground giving way under his feet; how ever could Tancredi swallow this? And what about himself? He found himself trying to work out the relationship between the Prince of Salina, uncle of the bridegroom, and the grandfather of the bride; he found none, there wasn’t any. Angelica was just Angelica, a flower of a girl, a rose merely fertilised by her grandfather’s nickname. Non olet, he repeated, non olet; in fact optime foeminam ac contuberninum olet.

The .338 Lapua Magnum bullet shot from the Barrett’s muzzle at a speed of 2,750 feet per second, striking its target almost before the sound had reached his ears. Farouk’s head exploded like a ripe melon, blood and brains spraying over the surrounding worshipers as he went down. He never had a chance to react, no final words, no prayers for mercy. Quite literally, the 300-grain slug was the last thing to enter his mind.

Do You Know How Search Engine Optimization Can Help You? In order to market your website and/or business effectively, you need to have the proper information to guide you along the way. Without the right info, you'll be swinging blindly in the most competitive marketplace in the world. Read the article below and find out about some tips you can use for optimizing your website. You will need to make your website pop up in the google search results. Build a really solid website and use search engine optimization to get it found. If other local businesses in your area don't have this, you will stand out like a shining star from the crowd. When it comes to linking your keywords, whether on your own site or on someone else's, quality beats quantity any day of the week. Make sure that your keywords are linked naturally in quality content. One proper, quality link will earn you much higher placement than 10 garbage links. Since web business is a marathon, it is good to plan around quality so that you last the long haul. To know where you stand with your particular niche market, you should check on your page rank at least once a week. By checking your rank, you will find out varying information about how competitors are finding you and you will also realize what you need to do in order to shoot up in the rankings. Your goal should be a page rank of 1. To search engine optimize your website, don't include more than 150 internal linking hyperlinks on your home page. Too many internal links on one page can dilute a web page's search engine rank. Huge numbers of links also make it hard for visitors to find the information that they need quickly. A great way to get more people to your site is to list your site with Google so that when people search through Google your page will come up. Listing your site in this way, will give you a vast venue where thousands of people will be introduced to your site and to your links. The future development strategy for all companies with a web site should include a strategy for search engine optimization, getting more traffic to their site. One key point is to be aware of the use of appropriate key words. Appropriate key words should be placed strategically throughout your site, the title tag and page header are generally the most important spots for keywords, be careful with your choices. Linking to lists is very popular for website owners and bloggers and can help your search engine optimization. You can find a lot of articles on the internet that are written as a top 10 list or top 100 list of tips or small facts. If possible, present well- written articles with relevant content composed as lists with numbers, not bullets, such as "10 ways to buy a new car." It's all about what the websites want in SEO, and that's what you need to realize. It doesn't matter if you're a simple blog or a legitimate business; you still need the proper optimization if you hope to achieve a high ranking. What you've read here will help you achieve that, but you still need to put the information to good use.

Most things we learn are easier to apply in a material form, as when following a certain decision or task, when thinking rationally about ourselves and our life. Everything becomes messed up when are trying to understand what makes us who we are, and that's why love exists, to pushes us there. Emotions are very powerful, I believe up to five thousand times more than the mind - there are actual scientific studies on the topic. In other words, our brain is nothing compared to the heart. The heart has an intelligence of its own. But it is indeed connected to the rest of us, including our mind. So what this means is that our emotions are far more powerful than our reason. You know, like when a grasshopper gets his head chopped off by a female after sex - he knows he is going to die, but he sill can't help himself. A large majority of us is like that. We think we are superior to animals, but only in the amount of problems. Nonetheless, when you look at someone very smart doing something very stupid, you wonder what the hell is happening, and that's when we enter the fields of spirituality and psychology. Psychology can answer pretty much most of our behaviors - as we either move towards pleasure or pain, to avoid one and obtain more of the other. When both get mixed it all becomes complicated, but it does happen, in families, relationships, and so on. The extreme of this is altruism, when a person literally sacrifices his life to save another. You can start by Jesus, but you don't need to go so far. There are many examples everywhere, like the fireman that tries to save a guy that attempted to commit suicide by setting his house on fire. The fireman may know the other man did it on purpose, but he still risks his life to save him. The same with the exorcist, who faces the devil to save someone who actually accepted to be possessed or did some crazy ritual to get more knowledge, power, sex, and whatsoever; the exorcist knows he is risking his life and mental health to save an ignorant soul, and yet he still does it. The same with the father who runs after the son who is consuming drugs. He knows that his son or one of his companions may kill him out of anger but he still can't help himself. The same occurs with the police officer, when risking getting a bullet from the person to whom he is pointing a gun with no desire to shoot it. So what about love? It's a similar relation. Many times we are programmed to behave in a certain way and we can't help ourselves. Life, however, is more complex than that, which can be a good thing, like when we are cheated by someone who was already no good in our life. He or she did us a very good favor, even if we can't see it right then. The same when someone dies. Well, yeah, this one sounds bad, but people don't just die for no reason, even though it may seem so, not when they are texting while driving or drunk or high on weed. And what about when we lose our job and our partner starts fighting about money? That's also a blessing, as otherwise we would never know that that's all he or she cared about. There are countless ways to look at it. And yet, many times we have strong feelings for someone who is simply mentally sick. Is this love or insanity? I don't really know. I know as much as the grasshopper that gets his head chopped by a female for thousands of years and is not yet extinct by reason.

Most things we learn are easier to apply in a material form, as when following a certain decision or task, when thinking rationally about ourselves and our life. Everything becomes messed up when are trying to understand what makes us who we are, and that's why love exists, to pushes us there. Emotions are very powerful, I believe up to five thousand times more than the mind - there are actual scientific studies on the topic. In other words, our brain is nothing compared to the heart. The heart has an intelligence of its own. But it is indeed connected to the rest of us, including our mind. So what this means is that our emotions are far more powerful than our reason. You know, like when a praying mantis gets his head chopped off by a female after sex - he knows he is going to die, but he sill can't help himself. A large majority of us is like that. We think we are superior to animals, but only in the amount of problems. Nonetheless, when you look at someone very smart doing something very stupid, you wonder what the hell is happening, and that's when we enter the fields of spirituality and psychology. Psychology can answer pretty much most of our behaviors - as we either move towards pleasure or pain, to avoid one and obtain more of the other. When both get mixed it all becomes complicated, but it does happen, in families, relationships, and so on. The extreme of this is altruism, when a person literally sacrifices his life to save another. You can start by Jesus, but you don't need to go so far. There are many examples everywhere, like the fireman that tries to save a guy that attempted to commit suicide by setting his house on fire. The fireman may know the other man did it on purpose, but he still risks his life to save him. The same with the exorcist, who faces the devil to save someone who actually accepted to be possessed or did some crazy ritual to get more knowledge, power, sex, and whatsoever; the exorcist knows he is risking his life and mental health to save an ignorant soul, and yet he still does it. The same with the father who runs after the son who is consuming drugs. He knows that his son or one of his companions may kill him out of anger but he still can't help himself. The same occurs with the police officer, when risking getting a bullet from the person to whom he is pointing a gun with no desire to shoot it. So what about love? It's a similar relation. Many times we are programmed to behave in a certain way and we can't help ourselves. Life, however, is more complex than that, which can be a good thing, like when we are cheated by someone who was already no good in our life. He or she did us a very good favor, even if we can't see it right then. The same when someone dies. Well, yeah, this one sounds bad, but people don't just die for no reason, even though it may seem so, not when they are texting while driving or drunk or high on weed. And what about when we lose our job and our partner starts fighting about money? That's also a blessing, as otherwise we would never know that that's all he or she cared about. There are countless ways to look at it. And yet, many times we have strong feelings for someone who is simply mentally sick. Is this love or insanity? I don't really know. I know as much as the praying mantis that gets his head chopped by a female for thousands of years and is not yet extinct by reason.

Outdated words and words that penetrate like bullets The terms, the words, the subjects that propaganda utilizes must have in themselves the power to break the barrier of the individual's indifference. They must penetrate Like bullets; they must spontaneously evoke a set of images and have a certain grandeur of their own. To circulate outdated words or pick new ones that can penetrate only by force is unavailing, for timeliness furnishes the "operational words" with their exclusive and affective power. Part of the power of propaganda is due to its use of the mass media, but this power will be dissipated if propaganda relies on operational words that have lost their force.

Know this, equerry,’ said Perturabo. ‘I pity you. You see, and you know, and you fear for your Legion and wonder what the oaths you swore mean now. Yet you do not have the strength and the power to do the only thing that is left to do.’ Argonis looked as though he might reply, but the Lord of Iron had turned to Forrix. ‘Send a signal to all of our forces, full withdrawal. Bring our fleet into dock and begin to embark. We will move to the system edge and translate. This is immediate.’ Forrix did not move. The words he had just heard rang like bullets hitting iron. ‘Lord…’ ‘It is over,’ said Perturabo. ‘Horus has given this battle to sorcerers and beasts. The war of Legions is over. Mortarion comes here to take this place. He and what he has become is what this war is now. He comes at the will of Horus to be the agent of what will happen.’ ‘But he did not order our withdrawal.’ ‘I order it,’ growled Perturabo. ‘It is my will. There is no victory here, just creatures and parasites pulling down a dying beast. It is gone. The Legion war is dead. The chance is gone. The cause is gone…’ Perturabo paused, and then shook his head. ‘We will not bleed for this. We will not break the circle of our iron for this.

If you put half as much effort in trying to make us work as you are in trying to rip us apart right now, we could be fucking unstoppable,” he mutters softly. “We’d be everything.” His words hit me like a bullet to the chest. We already are, my love. You are everything. I only wish I could tell you that.

Somewhere, he thought, there was this boy’s mother, who had trembled with protective concern over his groping steps, while teaching him to walk, who had measured his baby formulas with a jeweler’s caution, who had obeyed with a zealot’s fervor the latest words of science on his diet and hygiene, protecting his unhardened body from germs—then had sent him to be turned into a tortured neurotic by the men who taught him that he had no mind and must never attempt to think. Had she fed him tainted refuse, he thought, had she mixed poison into his food, it would have been more kind and less fatal. He thought of all the living species that train their young in the art of survival, the cats who teach their kittens to hunt, the birds who spend such strident effort on teaching their fledglings to fly—yet man, whose tool of survival is the mind, does not merely fail to teach a child to think, but devotes the child’s education to the purpose of destroying his brain, of convincing him that thought is futile and evil, before he has started to think. From the first catch-phrases flung at a child to the last, it is like a series of shocks to freeze his motor, to undercut the power of his consciousness. “Don’t ask so many questions, children should be seen and not heard!”—“Who are you to think? It’s so, because I say so!”—“Don’t argue, obey!”—“Don’t try to understand, believe!”—“Don’t rebel, adjust!”—“Don’t stand out, belong!”—“Don’t struggle, compromise!”—“Your heart is more important than your mind!”—“Who are you to know? Your parents know best!”—“Who are you to know? Society knows best!” “Who are you to know? The bureaucrats know best!”—“Who are you to object? All values are relative!”—“Who are you to want to escape a thug’s bullet? That’s only a personal prejudice!

This is for the kids who die, Black and white, For kids will die certainly. The old and rich will live on awhile, As always, Eating blood and gold, Letting kids die. Kids will die in the swamps of Mississippi Organizing sharecroppers Kids will die in the streets of Chicago Organizing workers Kids will die in the orange groves of California Telling others to get together Whites and Filipinos, Negroes and Mexicans, All kinds of kids will die Who don't believe in lies, and bribes, and contentment And a lousy peace. Of course, the wise and the learned Who pen editorials in the papers, And the gentlemen with Dr. in front of their names White and black, Who make surveys and write books Will live on weaving words to smother the kids who die, And the sleazy courts, And the bribe-reaching police, And the blood-loving generals, And the money-loving preachers Will all raise their hands against the kids who die, Beating them with laws and clubs and bayonets and bullets To frighten the people— For the kids who die are like iron in the blood of the people— And the old and rich don't want the people To taste the iron of the kids who die, Don't want the people to get wise to their own power, To believe an Angelo Herndon, or even get together Listen, kids who die— Maybe, now, there will be no monument for you Except in our hearts Maybe your bodies'll be lost in a swamp Or a prison grave, or the potter's field, Or the rivers where you're drowned like Leibknecht But the day will come— You are sure yourselves that it is coming— When the marching feet of the masses Will raise for you a living monument of love, And joy, and laughter, And black hands and white hands clasped as one, And a song that reaches the sky— The song of the life triumphant Through the kids who die.

The world is full of murder and words are usually the first to go. A life runs its course then full-stops. There is nothing as pointed as bullets used for punctuation and no betrayal like a word used for ill gain. Those whose mouths are filled with darkness will spend their breaths repeating alibis and verdicts.

Dad was right, you know. You’re not good enough for me.” Like a bullet to my chest, I’m bleeding out. Hearing those words from her is too much to bear. “I know I’m not, Princess. I never have been. I never will be. I’m trash and you’re a fucking treasure.

Raising his fist, Hayder knocked on the condo door but didn’t wait for an answer. Being the pride’s beta gave him certain liberties, such as access to all the units in the building— a building owned and managed by, you guessed it, the pride. Slapping his hand on the control panel alongside the door, he waited for the telltale click before turning the handle to open it. In he walked, uninvited, only to stop dead. Almost literally, and with good reason, given a gun wavered in front of his face. Bullets fired point-blank never boded well. However, the weapon wasn’t the most shocking thing he faced. No, that was reserved for the possessive growl of his lion and the unwavering sureness that gobsmacked him when he caught the scent of the gun wielder. A woman. But not just any woman. Mine. Our mate. Uh-oh. Like most shapeshifters, Hayder had heard of the so-called certainty that hit certain couples when they first met. The zing of awareness. The moment of recognition. Or, in his case, the slam and resounding clang of a door on a cell labeled Monogamy. Argh. Not the dreaded M word. A cowardly lion might have run away, but Hayder wasn’t one to fear anything, especially not the short and trembling woman in front of him. Barely reaching his chin with deep brown hair held back in a ponytail, she didn’t possess a fearsome mien. On the contrary, everything about her appeared soft and delicate, from the silky smoothness of her skin and the long lashes framing the biggest brown eyes to her cupid’s-bow lips, pursed and pink. She was also, judging by her scent, a Lycan. Cats and dogs aren’t supposed to mix. But tell that to his lion, who urged him to give her cheek a lick to say hello. Uh, no. Somehow slobbering over a woman, armed with a gun, didn’t seem appropriate. Introductions, though, might help. “Are you Jeoff’s sister?” he asked when she didn’t seem inclined to speak. Nor did she lower her weapon, but he allowed it for the moment. The acrid stink of fear rolled off her and agitated his lion. She fears. Feared him and Hayder didn’t like it one bit. “Who are you? What do you want?” Her words might have proven more forceful if they’d emerged less breathy and high pitched. “I’m Hayder.” He might have said more, like I am the most awesome beta the pride could ever hope for. He could have boasted he was a lion with a mane only slightly less impressive than that of Arik, the alpha king. He might have probably said something witty and flirty too, if she hadn’t almost shot him!

I liked to watch anime in the original Japanese even though I couldn’t speak a single word of the language.

Your scars? Would you tell me if I asked?” “What I know. The bullet that nearly severed my spine.” He waited until she found it, until the pads of her fingers stroked over the spot like a caress. “Amsterdam. I know that but not why or who. The knife along my hip was Paris and one up by my shoulder blade, Egypt. I know where I was with each of them, but not why.” “I should have taken you to the hospital.” She was frowning again, he could tell by her voice. He wished he could see her face, but she was working on his buttocks and he lost his own voice as well as his ability to think straight. Little explosions were going off in his head— and his groin. His cock was hot and heavy and so full he was leaking. Her hands went to the backs of his thighs. Impersonal. He repeated the word silently over and over to himself. She would have done the same for anyone needing help. He’d have to kill any man she touched like this. His body should have been relaxed, not ready to take possession of hers. He was acutely aware of her every movement. Her breath. The swing of her hair. The beat of her heart. Her hands moving over his muscles, pressing deep, stroking and gliding. He knew she was wholly focused on what she was doing— not on him— and God help them both, he wanted her to notice him.

life inspires death, the world is only a playground built for you and me we are all given obsicals to encounter how much more is able for my body to be unstable this world is killing the very reason I seek to see drowning in my own soul as life slowly drifts away as I fade into darkness. I'm useless I don't have the strength I once had it used to be so simple I could help all even if it meant myself dying atleast they could stay but I would fade I'm now 16 years from life and so cold no one will pull me out of this hole. your words like bullets terring through the fabric of my heart I no longer hold the key to survive instead I find myself battleing a war that will not be one because after all how can you win when your greatest obstical is yourself.

Is there a problem, ma’am?” Mitch slanted a glance in her direction. She stood military straight, vehemently shaking her head. “Everything’s fine, Officer.” “Sheriff. You sure about that?” Charlie said, sounding like a complete hard-ass. “Looked to me like you were being accosted.” “N-no—” Mitch cut her off. “Would you get the hell out of here?” “Mitch,” Maddie said, with a low hiss. Evidently in a devious mood, Charlie stalked forward, placing a hand menacingly over his baton. “What did you say?” “Fuck. Off.” Mitch fired each word like a bullet. “Mitch, please,” Maddie said, tone pleading. “Do I have to take you in?” Charlie’s attention shifted in Maddie’s direction and his mouth twisted into a smile that Mitch had seen him use on hundreds of women during their fifteen-year friendship. “I’ll be happy to look after her for you, Mitch.” A stab of something suspiciously close to possessiveness jabbed at his rib cage. Mitch shot Charlie a droll glare. “Over my dead body.” One black brow rose over his sunglasses. “That can be arranged.” “Please, don’t take him to jail,” Maddie said, sounding alarmed. Both Charlie’s and Mitch’s attention snapped to her. “Now, why would you be thinking that?” Charlie asked, in an amused voice. Maddie’s gaze darted back and forth. “He threatened you.” Mitch laughed and Charlie scoffed. “Honey, he’s nothing but a pesky little fly I’d have to bat away.” Comprehension dawned and her worried expression cleared. “Oh, I see. You know, you should tell someone this is some macho-guy act before you get rolling.” “And what fun would that be?” Charlie rocked back on his heels. Even with his eyes hidden behind the mirrored frames, it was damn clear he was scoping Maddie out from head to toe. Under his scrutiny, she started to fidget. She pressed closer to Mitch, almost as if by instinct, pleasing him immensely. “Don’t mind him, Princess.” He slid his arm around her waist, pulling her tighter against him. “He likes to abuse his power over unsuspecting women.” “Um,” Maddie said, fitting under the crook his arm as though she were made for him, which was odd considering he towered over her by a foot. “I bet it’s quite effective.” Charlie laughed. “Maddie Donovan, you’re everything I’ve heard and then some.” Maddie stiffened, pulling out of Mitch’s embrace and cocking her head to the side. “How do you know my name?” “Honey,” Charlie drawled, the endearment scraping a dull blade over Mitch’s nerves. “This is a small town. People don’t have anything else to do but talk. Give me time and I’ll know your whole life story.” That strawberry-stained mouth pulled into a frown, and two little lines formed between auburn brows. She studied the cracked concrete at her feet. Suddenly, she looked up, her cheeks flushing when she realized they were watching her. She smiled brightly. “Oh well, I guess this is what I get for making an entrance.” Charlie

a while. To let John Puller Sr. see what his real priorities were in life. And then, depending on what he decided, they would go from there. Puller folded the letter and slid it back into the envelope. Words from the grave. Or if not the grave, Puller didn’t know where. Despite the obvious love and affection she held for her sons, as noted in the letter, Puller came away from reading it more depressed than he had been before. Part of him had hoped that his mother had left her husband. Because that meant she might still be alive. To Puller, this letter meant that his mother most likely was dead. He would take bullets and bombs and jihadist fanatics trying to rip his life from him over that. You fought for the flag and country you represented. But you really fought for the guy beside you. Here, Puller was alone. It was just him and a vanished mother to whom he had given all of his heart. As he stood there looking down at the envelope, depression

Micah, how are you feeling?” She tried to avoid looking at the small, round metal container beside him in which a bloody, misshapen bullet lay. “Better now, Miss Sarah,” he said in his soft, slurred drawl. “This Dr. Nolan, he’s one fine bullet remover. I barely felt it,” he said. The pain shining in his eyes, and the beads of sweat shimmering on his brow, however, belied his words. “Young Micah, you’re a very polite liar,” Nolan told him. “It’s all right to say it hurt like h—that is, it hurt very badly. You bore up well, though.” “Thank ya, Doctor.

First, you drink the beer, obviously, and you think about everything you’ve been through, including how much some of it sucked. If you’ve seen really bad things, think of them now. If you’ve got stuff you’re not proud of, deal with it now. It helps if you pound the beer. When the bottle’s empty, you stand up, say your name and where you came from, and throw it into the fire. Hard. It’s supposed to break. We all did something like this, and I can’t tell you why, but it…it helps. It’s good for you. It’s a ‘setting sail on your new life’ kind of thing.

with every vet Jed knew. He’d taken a bullet through the left eye, which was bad enough, but then the round’s diagonal trajectory had cored down and out the back of his head. In an instant, his left eye was jelly and his right occipital lobe went from functional to oatmeal. Technically, his right eye still worked, but the brain damage meant that, after ’Nam, he couldn’t read or recognize words. Color was gone, too. His waking world had existed in ashy shades of gray, although his dreams and the flashbacks were always in Technicolor. Worse, his brain had conjured eerie shimmers the Navy shrinks said were hallucinations, like visual phantom limbs. Like Grace, though … these days, he was different. Now he stood, looking up at that distant cabin. Oh, he was still blind in that left eye, the eyeball itself long gone and the socket filled with a plastic implant sheathed with flesh. He never had gotten around to getting fitted for an artificial eye, maybe because he didn’t mind making other people uncomfortable. Vietnam was wedged in his brain, good and tight, like a stringy piece of meat caught between his teeth that wouldn’t be dislodged for love or money. So why should everybody else forget if he couldn’t? But his good right eye still worked, nowadays better than ever, and that was what he aimed at the

She’s going to be fine,” he told Judd, clapping him on the shoulder. “It’s just a matter of time, now. You can stop holding your breath.” Judd thanked him and then went down the hall and leaned against the wall trying to compose himself. He’d been in hell for so long that the relief was devastating. She would live. She was going to live. He brushed away thquick moisture in his eyes. Cash came up beside him, a question in his eyes. Lawless 269 “She’s going to make it,” Judd said huskily. “Thank God,” Cash said with heartfelt relief. “What about Clark?” he asked suddenly, having only just remembered the man. “Patched up and in jail, probably for the rest of his life after the trial,” Cash assured him. He was watching the other man closely. “I think you should know what Tippy told me,” he added, hating to reveal it even now. It meant an end to all his own hopes. “Yes?” Judd prompted. “She saw Clark step out and aim the gun at you. She didn’t have time to react, and neither did Crissy. She saiCrissy realized you wouldn’t be able to save yourself, and she deliberately stepped out in front of the gun.” Judd’s intake of breath was audible. “Tippy was devastated when she saw it,” he continued. “She said she felt ten kinds of a fool for the trouble she’d caused between the two of you, when she knew how much Crissy cared.” He shook his head. “I wouldn’t have told you if Crissy had died. But you should know. I’ll go call Maude and give her the good news.” He turned and walked away. Judd stood there like a statue, absorbing the statement with a feeling of utter humility. Christabel had taken the bullet meant for him. She’d been willing to give her own life to save him. He’d never dreamed she cared so much. He was absolutelwithout words. Now he had to find a way to rebuild the bridges he’d burned. It wasn’t going to be easy.

She’s going to be fine,” he told Judd, clapping him on the shoulder. “It’s just a matter of time, now. You can stop holding your breath.” Judd thanked him and then went down the hall and leaned against the wall trying to compose himself. He’d been in hell for so long that the relief was devastating. She would live. She was going to live. He brushed away the quick moisture in his eyes. Cash came up beside him, a question in his eyes. “She’s going to make it,” Judd said huskily. “Thank God,” Cash said with heartfelt relief. “What about Clark?” he asked suddenly, having only just remembered the man. “Patched up and in jail, probably for the rest of his life after the trial,” Cash assured him. He was watching the other man closely. “I think you should know what Tippy told me,” he added, hating to reveal it even now. It meant an end to all his own hopes. “Yes?” Judd prompted. “She saw Clark step out and aim the gun at you. She didn’t have time to react, and neither did Crissy. She said Crissy realized you wouldn’t be able to save yourself, and she deliberately stepped out in front of the gun.” Judd’s intake of breath was audible. “Tippy was devastated when she saw it,” he continued. “She said she felt ten kinds of a fool for the trouble she’d caused between the two of you, when she knew how much Crissy cared.” He shook his head. “I wouldn’t have told you if Crissy had died. But you should know. I’ll go call Maude and give her the good news.” He turned and walked away. Judd stood there like a statue, absorbing the statement with a feeling of utter humility. Christabel had taken the bullet meant for him. She’d been willing to give her own life to save him. He’d never dreamed she cared so much. He was absolutely without words. Now he had to find a way to rebuild the bridges he’d burned. It wasn’t going to be easy.

He would have liked to continue talking about his mother. He did not suppose, from what he could remember of her, that she had been an unusual woman, still less an intelligent one; and yet she had possessed a kind of nobility, a kind of purity, simply because the standards that she obeyed were private ones. Her feelings were her own, and could not be altered from outside. It would not have occurred to her that an action which is ineffectual thereby becomes meaningless. If you loved someone, you loved him, and when you had nothing else to give, you still gave him love. When the last of the chocolate was gone, his mother had clasped the child in her arms. It was no use, it changed nothing, it did not produce more chocolate, it did not avert the child’s death or her own; but it seemed natural to her to do it. The refugee woman in the boat had also covered the little boy with her arm, which was no more use against the bullets than a sheet of paper. The terrible thing that the Party had done was to persuade you that mere impulses, mere feelings, were of no account, while at the same time robbing you of all power over the material world. When once you were in the grip of the Party, what you felt or did not feel, what you did or refrained from doing, made literally no difference. Whatever happened you vanished, and neither you nor your actions were ever heard of again. You were lifted clean out of the stream of history. And yet to the people of only two generations ago, this would not have seemed all-important, because they were not attempting to alter history. They were governed by private loyalties which they did not question. What mattered were individual relationships, and a completely helpless gesture, an embrace, a tear, a word spoken to a dying man, could have value in itself. The

I mostly saw Vince Foster in the hallways. He was Mrs. Clinton’s personal attaché, a lawyer from Arkansas. Word circulated that she berated him mercilessly. The first time I saw Foster I figured he wouldn’t last a year. He looked uncomfortable and unhappy in the White House. I knew what it was like to be yelled at by superiors, but Mrs. Clinton never hesitated to launch a tirade. Yet her staffers never dared say, “I don’t have to take this shit!” They reminded me of battered wives: too loyal, too unwilling to acknowledge they’d never assuage her. They had no one to blame but themselves, but they could never admit it. She criticized Foster for failing to get ahead of the constant scandals, for cabinet positions not confirmed, and for the slowness of staffing the White House. Foster eventually took his own life in Fort Marcy Park. In his briefcase was a note torn into twenty-seven pieces, blaming the FBI, the media, the Republicans—even the White House Ushers Office. A rumor circulated among law enforcement types that contended his suicide weapon had to be repaired in order for the forensics team to fire it since it wouldn’t function for them. Maybe his final shot misaligned the cylinders and later prevented contact with the bullet primers. But that, along with many other public details of the case (carpet fibers on his suit coat, etc.), made his case spooky. The last lines of his sparse suicide note read: “I was not meant for the job or the spotlight of public life in Washington. Here ruining people is considered sport.” A UD friend of mine, Hank O’Neil, was posted outside of Foster’s office as part of the FBI’s investigation of his suicide. Maggie Williams, Mrs. Clinton’s always well dressed chief of staff, physically pushed her way past Hank into Foster’s office, arguing that he had no right to block her entrance. She removed boxes that were never recovered; they were destroyed. Congressmen bashed Officer O’Neil’s integrity, but he held firm. He reported exactly what he saw and didn’t make any inferences about it, but they were sure he held some smoking gun and was protecting the Clintons.

The two wars that I have participated in were not horribly fascinating like the devil-protected, fiery gates at all. Rather, war is unspeakably disgusting. War is seeing poorly trained American boys committing atrocities—savagely cutting the ears off of injured enemy soldiers. It is stopping them and then wondering about being shot in the back. War is a young husband with his privates blown away and begging you for a grenade and you are tempted to give him one. War is the elderly, half-crazed peasant suffering from “interrogation wounds” lying in the mud beside his dead wife who had been sexually assaulted because he would not tell secrets that he probably did not possess. War is to see an American Marine cut in two by machine gun bullets; seeing him writhing in the dirt, trying to pull his own intestines out of the black, gritty sand and shove them back into the cavity that was his abdomen while pleading with his eyes for you to come out in front of the lines and help him; war is seeing that tortured silent plea just after seeing two of his buddies try, but be killed immediately by sinister, hissing sniper fire from nowhere. War is a young man, your own brother (say), with half his face shot away, while he is choking and drowning in his own vomit as it pulsates out of his throat. This is war. To veil it with the word, “hell,” is a manipulative lie, like calling it “heaven.” Face it; be able to discuss it for what it is—horrible death over and over—so that we are truly motivated to stop it.