Wreck And Ruin Quotes

I’m not a romantic, I’m a half-wit. Only stupid people would think I’m smart. I’m not something anyone should know. I’m a lunatic wandering around for scraps, I’m like every single miserable moron I’ve scorned and pretended I didn’t recognize. I’m all of them, every last ugly thing in a bad last-minute costume. I’m not different, not at all, not different from any other speck of a thing. I’m a blemished blemish, a ruined ruin, a stained wreck so failed I can’t see what I used to be.

Congratulations, then. You wanted to be ruined? Well, you did yourself one better because you wrecked me, too, Sunshine. Now we’re both worth shit.

You have ruined me, Tatum O'Shea,” he told her. “Completely wrecked me.

He kisses her, thinks, Go on, ruin me. Wreck me, please. She kisses him back and she does.

Just because we aren't crying on the outside doesn't mean we aren't completely wrecked on the inside

A great Hope fell You heard no noise The Ruin was within Oh cunning wreck that told no tale And let no Witness in

Wreck me, shatter me, destroy me, be the ruin of me. I don't care, just make me feel again.

Her vice takes hold of her again, but she still refrains until some moment when, gnawed by some hideous caprice, she comes aground like a mournful wreck ruined by lust, in the midst of her own banal, perfidious pollution.

You have ruined me, Tatum O'Shea,” he told her. “Completely wrecked me.” Her breath caught in her throat. “It's only fair, you did it to me first,” she whispered.

Fuck your fairytale. I just want you. I’ll make my own God damn happily ever after. But you’re the one who is mistaken. You’ll be at the end of that story, beautiful. You either come willingly or you force me into the dark after you. It doesn’t matter to me, because either way, I’ll find you.

Good, because did you see his ass in those jeans tonight? Seriously, I would gladly go to jail just to hump his leg.

The night before her wedding, Daisy taught me that after the world ended, you still had to get up in the morning, and the things that you ruined would still be there, needing to be fixed. When I looked at famous Jay Gatsby, soul gone and some terrible engine he called love driving him now, I could see that for him, the world was always ending. For him, it was all a wreck and a ruin, and he had no idea why the rest of us weren't screaming.

You know you’re in love with someone when the idea of them being in love with someone else doesn’t just wreck you, it invades every part of your being. Yet, how could I be upset that Gabe loved her? When his love for her was one of the very reasons I loved him? —Saylor

Forgiveness is a very abstract term. It doesn’t erase the past. It’s not a magical switch you can flip or a stained rug you can just turn over. It’s merely a scar that covers the deep, dark gash that hate carved in your soul.

I'm her fucking man, so you better start apologizing before you become her dead brother.

When I looked at famous Jay Gatsby, soul gone and some terrible engine he called love driving him now, I could see that for him, the world was always ending. For him, it was all a wreck and a ruin, and he had no idea why the rest of us weren’t screaming.

This is your very own Kindle. No more borrowing mine. I swear, Sarah, I opened it the other day and there was a naked man on the cover of nearly every book in my library.

Bowman turned his back on her and began to search the place methodically and exhaustively. When one searches any place, be it a gypsy caravan or a baronial mansion, methodically and exhaustively, one has to wreck it completely in the process.So, in a orderly and systematic fashion, Bowman set about reducing Czerda's caravan to a total ruin.

The circus is a jealous wench. Indeed that is an understatement. She is a ravening hag who sucks your vitality as a vampire drinks blood – who kills the brightest stars in her crown and will allow no private life for those who serve her; wrecking their homes, ruining their bodies, and destroying the happiness of their loved ones by her insatiable demands. She is all of these things, and yet, I love her as I love nothing else on earth.

I want you. All of you. Not these little bits I hear echoing around the room. I just want you, Riley.

Don’t be so vain to think that you ruined me, that you wrecked me, destroyed me. I am the only one who has the power to do that. — Amanda Helm,

Oh God. What did you say?" "I don’t even remember exactly. But I’m pretty sure I called you my woman and pissed on someone’s leg.

You’re strange." He looks up from the book with a humor-filled expression. "If, by strange, you mean insanely sexy, then yes, I would have to agree with you." He smirks.

Is that the kind of woman you want to be with? Is that the person you fell in love with?" "… Yes, the woman who struggled and got better is absolutely the woman I fell in love with.

We do not admire, we hardly excuse, the fanatic who wrecks this world for love of the other. But what are we to say of the fanatic who wrecks this world out of hatred of the other? He sacrifices the very existence of humanity to the non-existence of God. He offers his victims not to the altar, but merely to assert the idleness of the altar and the emptiness of the throne. He is ready to ruin even that primary ethic by which all things live, for his strange and eternal vengeance upon some one who never lived at all.

Sometimes you have to fight down the demons before you can help the angels,

I wrecked one building, Cassian had said once of his last visit to the Summer Court. Where he was now banned. Apparently, even assisting them in battle hadn’t lifted it.

I love you. I love you despite it all, and now, I’m standing here, begging you to love me despite it all too.

See, if you said green bean, I'd be very upset. However, if you told her an eggplant, I'd probably never wear pants again. So what's it going to be, Jess?

You’re hurting me … Just you being here physically hurts." "I’m not trying to hurt you, Sarah. But you should know it’s excruciating for me to stay away." Her shoulders fall and she drops her chin to her chest as tears once again begin to flow from her eyes. "I hate you so much," she chokes out. "Well, I love you enough to supersede that

It is nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wreck and ruin without fail. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty.

She thinks of him lying there, the beautiful moment never arriving, never ruined, never disappointing, over. It must be sublime dwelling in that house of longing, forever poised on desire’s trembling tip, before everything is wrecked.

Please, Jess, I don’t want to stand here for another minute without kissing you. I’ve had a shit night and I’d love to forget it with you. When I’m with you, the world goes silent.

I love you. I have loved you for months … it isn’t just fucking. I have made love to you every single time I have touched your body since the first day we met.

I am absolutely not in love with you. Because that would imply that I could ever be out of love with you. But Emmy, I do love you. Plan and simple.

Love me more than you hate her. Please.

Food poisoning, huh? The second best gift you can give a date…besides an STD.

My life hasn’t been all that stable over the last few years. However, I’m a firm believer that, when you find someone who fits, you claim them. Immediately.

This bride will give up the selfish riches of this world to inherit the earth. She will be so ruined and wrecked by love that she will run full force into the darkness. This will cause His light through her to explode into the world—all for love’s sake.

We might be a mess, but you’re my mess, Sarah.” “I don’t think you really understand what you’re getting into.” “I don’t think you really understand that I’m not getting into anything. I’m already in so deep there isn’t a chance in hell that I could ever turn back.

Me: Can we order takeout tonight? You’ve been out of town for, like, three days. I won’t make it through dinner without mole-sting you. Leo: Ah yes. Mole-sting. My favorite. Me: Molesting* Fucking autocorrect. Leo: Don’t lie! If you want to get kinky , just say so. I’m not sure how I feel about moles, but I’m willing to discuss.

But thou shalt leave it all behind thee! It shall not cumber thy steps, as thou treadest along the forest-path; neither shalt thou freight the ship with it, if thou prefer to cross the sea. Leave this wreck and ruin here where it hath happened! Meddle no more with it! Begin all anew! Hast thou exhausted possibility in the failure of this one trial? Not so! The future is yet full of trial and success. There is happiness to be enjoyed! There is good to be done! Exchange this false life of thine for a true one. Be, if thy spirit summons thee to such a mission, the teacher and apostle of the red men. Or,—as is more thy nature,—be a scholar and a sage among the wisest and the most renowned of the cultivated world. Preach! Write! Act! Do any thing, save to lie down and die! Give up this name of Arthur Dimmesdale, and make thyself another, and a high one, such as thou canst wear without fear or shame. Why shouldst thou tarry so much as one other day in the torments that have so gnawed into thy life!—that have made thee feeble to will and to do!—that will leave thee powerless even to repent! Up, and away!

Had I known that any contact from this beautiful stranger would forever change me – would mark me for the rest of my life, wreck me from the inside out, completely break me down until I was nothing but a memory of who I used to be – I would still have made the same choice. Funny, how people always say they want second chances, yet had I been given one. I would have travelled down the same road. Every. Single. Time.

It was not without a certain wild pleasure I ran before the wind, delivering my trouble of mind to the measureless air-torrent thundering through space. Descending the laurel walk, I faced the wreck of a chestnut-tree; it stood up, black and riven: the trunk, split down the centere, gasped ghastly. The cloven halves were not broken for each other, for the firm base and strong roots kept them unsundered below; through communtiy of vitality was destroyed -- the sap could flow no more: their great boughs on each side were dead, and next winter's tempests would be sure to fell one or both to earth: as yet, however, they might be said to form one tree -- a ruin, but and entire ruin. 'You did right to hold fast to each other,' I said: as if the monster splinters were living things, and could hear me. 'I think, scathed as you look, and charred and scorched, there must be a little sense of life in you yet, rising out of that adhesion at the faithful, honest roots: you will never have green leaves more -- never more see birds making nests and singing idylls in your boughs; the time of pleasure and love is over with you; but you are not desolate: each of you has a comrade to sympathize with him in his decay.' As I looked up at them, the moon appeared momentarily in that part of the sky which filled their fissure; her disc was blood-red and half overcast; she seemed to throw on me one bewildered, dreary glance, and buried herself again instantly in the deep drift of cloud. The wind fell, for a second, round Thornfield; but far away over wood and water poured a wild, melancholy wail: it was sad to listen to, and I ran off again.

The art historians are the real wreckers of art, Reger said. The art historians twaddle so long about art until they have killed it with their twaddle. Art is killed by the twaddle of the art historians. My God, I often think, sitting here on the settee while the art historians are driving their helpless flocks past me, what a pity about all these people who have all art driven out of them, driven out of them for good, by these very art historians. The art historians’ trade is the vilest trade there is, and a twaddling art historian, but then there are only twaddling art historians, deserves to be chased out with a whip, chased out of the world of art, Reger said, all art historians deserve to be chased out of the world of art, because art historians are the real wreckers of art and we should not allow art to be wrecked by the art historians who are really art wreckers. Listening to an art historian we feel sick, he said, by listening to an art historian we see the art he is twaddling about being ruined, with the twaddle of the art historian art shrivels and is ruined. Thousands, indeed tens of thousands of art historians wreck art by their twaddle and ruin it, he said. The art historians are the real killers of art, if we listen to an art historian we participate in the wrecking of art, wherever an art historian appears art is wrecked, that is the truth.

Thankfully, ángel, nothing’s perfect, because oftentimes, the flaws are the most beautiful part.

What exactly do you say to a woman after you blow up and tell her you want to fuck her in the ass? I’m pretty sure that this is the moment you just cut your losses and move on.

I don’t know the what, when, where or why about my life, but as I stroke her hair on the way home, I suddenly know the who.

It’s not enough. It won’t be enough until I have all of you. And I’m not even sure if that will be enough, Manda. I love you. I want you to be mine, but more than that. I want to be yours.

Self-defense isn’t a one-stop shop that will make her invincible, but I’m hoping I can light a fire inside her to maybe explore this further. It doesn’t hurt that I’ll have to touch her while we do it. While I think that may make me an asshole, I can live with that fact. I would never hurt her, but I wouldn’t mind making her come a time or twelve. Yeah, that absolutely makes me an asshole, but I’m still okay with it.

I’ve given it a seriously less than mediocre effort, but I can't seem to stop touching her. It’s just something about the way every connection sends a spark of electricity through… Okay, fine. She makes me hard.

I wait in front of the stadium, scrolling through Facebook on my cell phone. I swear if one more of my high school friends posts pictures of their lunch, kids, or dogs, I'm going on a spree reporting everyone as spam.

I’m able to be your rock even though, sometimes, I feel like I can barely support my own weight. But more than that, I love knowing that, even on my weakest days, you understand enough about how I’m feeling to be my rock also.

Circumstances may appear to wreck our lives and God's plans, but God is not helpless among the ruins. God's love is still working. He comes in and takes the calamity and uses it victoriously, working out His wonderful plan of love.

The Last Song of Grimbeard the Ghastly I sailed so far to be a King but the time was never right I lost my way on a stormy past, got wrecked in starless night But let my heart be wrecked by hurricanes and my ship by storm weather I know I am a Hero, and a Hero is… forever In another time, another place, I could have been a King But in my castle’s ruined towers the lonely seabirds sing I burned up my Tomorrows, I cannot go back ever But I am still a Hero, and a Hero is… forever

Those two are the horniest people I have ever met in my life. I wouldn’t put it past Caleb to throw her down on the table in front of us all. Just knowing that his hand is within a twelve-inch radius of Emma’s pants makes me question his motives.

I knew this guy he'd been in a motorcycle accident and it really ruined him and he was a linesman working on the power and he was working with someone who had Parkinsons so they both had complimentary inadeqacies and so two of them could do the job of one person so they're out there fixing powerlines in the freezing cold despite the fact that one was three quarters wrecked and the other one had Parkinsons That's how our civilization works, there's all these ruined people out there they've got problems like you can't believe, off they go to work to do things they don't even like and look! The Lights Are On

Ruins and basilicas, palaces and colossi, set in the midst of a sordid present, where all that was living and warm-blooded seemed sunk in the deep degeneracy of a superstition divorced from reverence; the dimmer but yet eager titanic life gazing and struggling on walls and ceilings; the long vistas of white forms whose marble eyes seemed to hold the monotonous light of an alien world—all this vast wreck of ambitious ideals, sensuous and spiritual, mixed confusedly with the signs of breathing forgetfulness and degradation…the vastness of St. Peter’s the huge bronze canopy, the excited intention in the attitudes and garments of the prophets and evangelists in the mosaics above, and the red drapery which was being hung for Christmas spreading itself everywhere like a disease of the retina.

Jax steps away from me. “Learn to let go of whatever’s haunting you. You don’t want to become like me, ruining anything good in your life. Unfortunately, people like me don’t get a big happy ending. But you deserve it all. The dancing in the rain finale with some lovesick twat who can give you the best of him for the rest of your long lives.” He walks back to his room, leaving me in a mess of my own emotions. Jax Kingston stole a piece of my heart, and I’m not sure if I’ll ever get it back. And worse, I don’t know if I want it.

An idea popped into my head. “Excuse me a second,” I said to the guy who’d just tried to pay me fifty bucks to sleep with him. “My boyfriend just got here.

Oh God…” “I don’t see anyone named God here, baby. I want you screaming my name when I make you come, not God.” “Brett.” “There we go, much better.

I prefer my lovers with a dick.” We are both in luck, because I just so happen to have one of those growing in my pants as we speak.

I’m not falling in love with Emma. Oh, I’ve more than passed that. I am unquestionably in love with Emma Jane Erickson.

I want this with Emma so God damn badly. I have no idea what this is, but I know for certain that it’s real.

We are officially together. I don’t care about the rest of the bullshit we have going on. We’re going to figure this out one way or another. No one comes near this but me. Yeah?

I’m down, done for, lost and ensnared. There is no going back from Emmy.

It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wreck and ruin without fail. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty. To the contrary, I believe it would be possible to rob even a healthy beast of prey of its voraciousness, if it were possible, with the aid of a whip, to force the beast to devour continuously, even when not hungry, especially if the food, handed out under such coercion, were to be selected accordingly.

Okay. The truth. Fine. You’re as sexy as fuck, and I can’t stop thinking about drilling into that smartass mouth of yours … you can add your ass to that list too. “Wow. That was really honest.

I felt in my bones; first, that this world does not explain itself. It may be a miracle with a supernatural explanation; it may be a conjuring trick, with a natural explanation. But the explanation of the conjuring trick, if it is to satisfy me, will have to be better than the natural explanations I have heard. The thing is magic, true or false. Second, I came to feel as if magic must have a meaning, and meaning must have some one to mean it. There was something personal in the world, as in a work of art; whatever it meant it meant violently. Third, I thought this purpose beautiful in its old design, in spite of its defects, such as dragons. Fourth, that the proper form of thanks to it is some form of humility and restraint: we should thank God for beer and Burgundy by not drinking too much of them. We owed, also, an obedience to whatever made us. And last, and strangest, there had come into my mind a vague and vast impression that in some way all good was a remnant to be stored and held sacred out of some primordial ruin. Man had saved his good as Crusoe saved his goods: he had saved them from a wreck...And all this time I had not even thought of Christian theology.

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

The Devil put a thorn in Paul’s flesh and made a special effort to acquire Peter’s loyalty. He directed the whirlwind, kindled the fire, and ordered the disease that devastated Job and his property. He armed the thieving Chaldeans and Sabines against Job, and got control of his wife. He directed the various offices of his empire to ruin this one saint. He will wreck an empire at any time to secure a soul.

It’s different and bold. It stands out amongst a blank world of black, white, and gray. Orange is the early morning sun stretching across the sky and the color of a burning ember standing tall in the middle of a beach bonfire. It’s leaves in the fall, carrots in Nana’s vegetable soup on a cold winter day, tulips in the spring, and the ladybugs in the middle of the grassy park on a hot summer afternoon. Orange is life. It’s unexpected but beautiful.

The broken pink pillars, in the half-light, might have been waiting to fall down on him: the pool, covered with green scum, its steps torn away and hanging by one rotting clamp, to close over his head. The shattered evil-smelling chapel, overgrown with weeds, the crumbling walls, splashed with urine, on which scorpions lurked - wrecked entablature, sad archivolt, slippery stones covered with excreta - this place, where love had once brooded, seemed part of a nightmare.

Our relationship is not simple or straightforward. It’s not perfect the way young couples dream about. It’s rough and flawed, but it’s ours. And sometimes, if you get really lucky, something truly beautiful can come from the imperfections.

The customary blizzard of pigeons wheeled briefly across the walk and settled back around an old lady who fed them from a large, wrinkled, paper bag. “I heard a guy on television the other night,” Dillon said. “He was talking about pigeons. Called them flying rats. I thought that was pretty good. He had something in mind, going to feed them the Pill or something, make them extinct. Trouble is, he was serious, you know? There was a guy that got shit on and probably got shit on again and then he got mad. Ruined his suit or something, going to spend the rest of his life getting even with the pigeons because they wrecked a hundred-dollar suit. Now there isn’t any percentage in that. There must be ten million pigeons in Boston alone, laying eggs every day, which will generally produce more pigeons, and all of them dropping tons of shit, rain or shine. And this guy in New York is going to, well, there just aren’t going to be any of them in this world any more.

What the engineers had first seen in the October coup d'état was ruin. (And for three years there had been ruin and nothing else.) Beyond that, they had seen the loss of even the most elementary freedoms. (And these freedoms never returned.) How, then, could engineers not have wanted a democratic republic? How could engineers accept the dictatorship of the workers, the dictatorship of their subordinates in industry, so little skilled or trained and comprehending neither the physical nor the economic laws of production, but now occupying the top positions, from which they supervised the engineers? Why shouldn't the engineers have considered it more natural for the structure of society to be headed by those who could intelligently direct its activity?

We modern civilizations have learned to recognize that we are mortal like the others. We had heard tell of whole worlds vanished, of empires foundered with all their men and all their engines, sunk to the inexplorable depths of the centuries with their gods and laws, their academies and their pure and applied sciences, their grammars, dictionaries, classics, romantics, symbolists, their critics and the critics of their critics. We knew that all the apparent earth is made of ashes, and that ashes have a meaning. We perceived, through the misty bulk of history, the phantoms of huge vessels once laden with riches and learning. We could not count them. But these wrecks, after all, were no concern of ours. Elam, Nineveh, Babylon were vague and splendid names; the total ruin of these worlds, for us, meant as little as did their existence. But France, England, Russia, these names, too, are splendid. And now we see that the abyss of history is deep enough to bury all the world. We feel that a civilization is fragile as a life.

Once paper and ink were to hand, it was useless to appeal to his better nature, to tell him he was wrecking reputations and ruining people's lives. A kind of sweet venom flowed through his veins, smoother than the finest cognac, quicker to make the head spin. And, just as some people crave opium, he craves the opportunity to exercise his fine art of mockery, vituperation and a buss; laudanum might quieten the senses, but a good editorial puts a catching the throat and a skip in the heartbeat. Writing's like running downhill; can't stop if you want to.

I Cannot Remember I once was a poet too (you gave life to my words), but now I cannot remember Since I have forgotten you (my love!), my art too I cannot remember Yesterday consulting my heart, I learned that your hair, lips, mouth, I cannot remember In the city of the intellect insanity is silence But now your sweet, spontaneous voice, its fluidity, I cannot remember Once I was unfamiliar with wrecking balls and ruins But now the cultivation of gardens, I cannot remember Now everyone shops at the store selling arrows and quivers But neglects his own body, the client he cannot remember Since time has brought me to a desert of such arid forgetfulness Even your name may perish; I cannot remember In this narrow state of being, lacking a country, even the abandonment of my fellow countrymen, I cannot remember

Surely you would not insult me with such a lack of extravagance?” I am at a loss. Even if she could see into my dreams, she would find no garment of the sort she would have me imagine. “I don’t know what I want.” The words come out a whisper, too true by half. “Destruction and ruin,” she says with a clack of her tongue. “I can practically smell it on you.” I shake my head, but I can’t help thinking of the satisfaction I felt wrecking the glaistig’s spells. Sometimes it feels as though there’s a knot inside me, and were it to come apart, whatever emerged would be all teeth.

Just as Rem stood now by her side, never truly gone, so too would this wreck of a forest reclaim life. God had created it that way--to rebound from any ruin that man could wreak. To grow again. Thrive again. Cover over the scars with new life. That was what God's creation did, plant and animal and man.

Last year I admired wines. This year I am wandering inside the red world. Last year I gazed at the fire. This year I am burnt kabob. Thirst drove me down to the water, where I drank the moon's reflection. Now I am a lion staring up totally lost in love with the thing itself. Do not ask questions about longing. Look in my face. Soul-drunk, body-ruined, these two sit helpless in a wrecked wagon. Neither knows how to fix it. And my heart, I would say it is more like a donkey sunk in a mudhole, strugglings and miring deeper. But listen to me. For one moment quit being sad. Hear blessings dropping their blossoms around you. God.

I’m scared, Eri. If I do something wrong, or say something wrong, I’m scared it will wreck everything and our relationship will vanish forever.” Eri slowly shook her head. “It’s no different from building stations. If something is important enough, a little mistake isn’t going to ruin it all, or make it vanish. It might not be perfect, but the first step is actually building the station. Right? Otherwise trains won’t stop there. And you can’t meet the person who means so much to you. If you find some defect, you can adjust it later, as needed. First things first. Build the station. A special station just for her. The kind of station where trains want to stop, even if they have no reason to do so. Imagine that kind of station, and give it actual color and shape. Write your name on the foundation with a nail, and breathe life into it. I know you have the power to do that. Don’t forget—you’re the one who swam across the freezing sea at night.

The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists. Ernest Hemingway War, Political, Both Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime. Ernest Hemingway War, Justified, Matter Once we have a war there is only one thing to do. It must be won. For defeat brings worse things than any that can ever happen in war. Ernest Hemingway War, Once, Happen The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it. Ernest Hemingway Hate, Leave, Worth Personal columnists are jackals and no jackal has been known to live on grass once he had learned about meat - no matter who killed the meat for him. Ernest Hemingway Once, Matter, Learned The only thing that could spoil a day was people. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself. Ernest Hemingway Happiness, Good, Few But man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated. Ernest Hemingway Defeat, Defeated, Destroyed You're beautiful, like a May fly. Ernest Hemingway Beauty, Beautiful, Fly His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred. Ernest Hemingway Time, Natural, Talent The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other.

On all sides, as far as the eye could reach, rose the grass-covered heaps marking the site of ancient habitations. The great tide of civilisation had long since ebbed, leaving these scattered wrecks on the solitary shore. Are those waters to flow again, bearing back the seeds of knowledge and of wealth that they have wafted to the West? We wanderers were seeking what they had left behind, as children gather up the coloured shells on the deserted sands. At my feet there was a busy scene, making more lonely the unbroken solitude which reigned in the vast plain around, where the only thing having life or motion were the shadows of the lofty mounds as they lengthened before the declining sun.

The Last Hero The wind blew out from Bergen from the dawning to the day, There was a wreck of trees and fall of towers a score of miles away, And drifted like a livid leaf I go before its tide, Spewed out of house and stable, beggared of flag and bride. The heavens are bowed about my head, shouting like seraph wars, With rains that might put out the sun and clean the sky of stars, Rains like the fall of ruined seas from secret worlds above, The roaring of the rains of God none but the lonely love. Feast in my hall, O foemen, and eat and drink and drain, You never loved the sun in heaven as I have loved the rain. The chance of battle changes -- so may all battle be; I stole my lady bride from them, they stole her back from me. I rent her from her red-roofed hall, I rode and saw arise, More lovely than the living flowers the hatred in her eyes. She never loved me, never bent, never was less divine; The sunset never loved me, the wind was never mine. Was it all nothing that she stood imperial in duresse? Silence itself made softer with the sweeping of her dress. O you who drain the cup of life, O you who wear the crown, You never loved a woman's smile as I have loved her frown. The wind blew out from Bergen to the dawning of the day, They ride and run with fifty spears to break and bar my way, I shall not die alone, alone, but kin to all the powers, As merry as the ancient sun and fighting like the flowers. How white their steel, how bright their eyes! I love each laughing knave, Cry high and bid him welcome to the banquet of the brave. Yea, I will bless them as they bend and love them where they lie, When on their skulls the sword I swing falls shattering from the sky. The hour when death is like a light and blood is like a rose, -- You never loved your friends, my friends, as I shall love my foes. Know you what earth shall lose to-night, what rich uncounted loans, What heavy gold of tales untold you bury with my bones? My loves in deep dim meadows, my ships that rode at ease, Ruffling the purple plumage of strange and secret seas. To see this fair earth as it is to me alone was given, The blow that breaks my brow to-night shall break the dome of heaven. The skies I saw, the trees I saw after no eyes shall see, To-night I die the death of God; the stars shall die with me; One sound shall sunder all the spears and break the trumpet's breath: You never laughed in all your life as I shall laugh in death.

He had started out the way nearly all writers do, and I'd seen it a hundred times--amateurs transformed into gibbering wrecks by actually being published; what once they'd done for fun ruined forever by the burden of expectation, the hope of sales and good reviews and riches, hobbyists turned authors made bitter by the knowledge that they'd missed their main chance.

You don’t want a saviour, and I get that. But you fucking need some family right now. I’m sorry to say it, but I’m all that’s left. So while you are wrapped up in your head, trying to figure out your next move, you need to remember one thing. No matter how dark you get, I will trudge through the quicksand of your guilt and drag you out – every single time. Get fucking used to it. I may not have been there before, but I’m here now.

More than anything, I dream of love, crazy crazy mad love. Not the love of rings and white dresses and churches, but of lust and insanity, the love where you can’t stop touching, kissing, licking, sucking, and fucking. The love that breaks hearts, starts wars, ruins lives, the love that sears itself into your soul, that you can feel every time your heart beats, that scorches your memory and comes back to you whenever you’re alone and it’s quiet and the world falls away, the love that still hurts, that makes you sit and stare at the floor and wonder what the fuck happened and why. I dream of crazy crazy mad love the kind that starts with a look, with eyes that meet, a smile, a touch, a laugh, a kiss. The kind of love that hurts and makes you love the pain, makes you want the pain, makes you yearn for the fucking pain, keeps you awake until the sun rises, stirs you while you’re still asleep. The kind of love you can feel with every step you take, every word you speak, every breath, every movement, is part of every thought you have every minute of the day. Love that overwhelms. That justifies our existence. That provides proof we are here for a reason. That either confirms the existence of God and divinity, or renders it utterly meaningless. Love that makes life more than just whatever we know and see and feel. That elevates it. Love for which so many words have been spoken and written and read and cried and screamed and sung and sobbed, but is beyond any real description of it. I’ve known much in my short, silly, unstable, sometimes wonderful sometimes brutal always reckless wreck of a life, but I’ve never known love. Crazy crazy mad love. Fear and pain, insecurity, rage, occasional joy, fleeting peace, they are all friends of mine. Kindness and familial love have always come my way. Disdain, contempt, and rage are constant companions. But never love.

By now the moon was well down. Over the tree tops they had seen her cruise across the heavens to strike on a reef of jagged clouds, and now she foundered among them in the semblance of a ruined galleon, the sails lost overboard, the belly-shaped hull punctured; and just above her there swung a single red star, like a riding light set on an invisible spar to mark the wreck. But the moon had come up, not as a ship but as a tipsy tile-layer. First, across her contract, she flung a long stepladder of celestial gold; then so wrought that the waves all turned to silver scallops with a separate bright rime for each separate tessellation. But the job was done only to be undone. As the wind went down with her, the water was smoothing out; the checkers were vanishing, the paved surface, between the shores, changing and tarnishing to a duller metal. Catching tone from this, the woodland grew denser and darker. Open spaces which ten minutes before had been glades for the fairies to dance in were mysteries for witchcraft now.

Until you came along, I didn’t think much about having kids. Why have kids if you don’t have the love of a good woman to raise them alongside you? “I don’t know, darlin’. One day we’ll be old. One of us will go first. Whoever is left behind…well, I like the idea of having the comfort of family when that time comes. A family you and I made together. A part of me, a part of you, will always be left in the world, even when we’re gone. And if we have more than one kid, they’ll be there for each other when we’re both gone.

The wrecked town of Gaza lay silent and empty. It had once been among the finest cities of the Near East: a stopping point on the coastal road from Syria through Palestine to Egypt, made rich by a thriving market and renowned for its mosques, churches and massive airy houses built in marble.1 But in 1149 only its natural wells and reservoirs remained to indicate that this was once a place where people of many religions had thrived. War had swept through the elegant streets and emptied Gaza, seemingly for good. ‘It was now in ruins’, wrote William of Tyre, ‘and entirely uninhabited.

I went to a party, And remembered what you said. You told me not to drink, Mom So I had a sprite instead. I felt proud of myself, The way you said I would, That I didn't drink and drive, Though some friends said I should. I made a healthy choice, And your advice to me was right, The party finally ended, And the kids drove out of sight. I got into my car, Sure to get home in one piece, I never knew what was coming, Mom Something I expected least. Now I'm lying on the pavement, And I hear the policeman say, The kid that caused this wreck was drunk, Mom, his voice seems far away. My own blood's all around me, As I try hard not to cry. I can hear the paramedic say, This girl is going to die. I'm sure the guy had no idea, While he was flying high, Because he chose to drink and drive, Now I would have to die. So why do people do it, Mom Knowing that it ruins lives? And now the pain is cutting me, Like a hundred stabbing knives. Tell sister not to be afraid, Tell daddy to be brave, And when I go to heaven, Put Daddy's Girl on my grave. Someone should have taught him, That its wrong to drink and drive. Maybe if his parents had, I'd still be alive. My breath is getting shorter, Mom I'm getting really scared. These are my final moments, And I'm so unprepared. I wish that you could hold me Mom, As I lie here and die. I wish that I could say, "I love you, Mom!" So I love you and good-bye.

If our democracy worked as it should, we would elect wise women and men who made laws for the good of the people and enforced those laws. That, though, is not the way things work. Greedy, power–mad billionaires spend money so that politicians such as George W. Bush can buy elections. Corrupt corporations such as Enron defraud old ladies and commit crimes. And they get away with it. They get away with it because most of us are so afraid of losing the security of our nice, normal lives that we are not willing to risk anything about those lives. We are either afraid to fight or we don’t know how. Or we believe that bad things won’t happen to us. And so, in the end, too many people lose their lives anyway. In Nazi Germany, millions of men who acquiesced to Hitler’s murderous rise to power wound up marching into Russia’s icy wasteland—into the Soviet Army’s machine guns and cannon—to themselves be murdered. In America after 9–11, trusting teenagers who had joined the National Guard found themselves sent to Iraq on extended and additional tours. Our enemy killed many of them because we, citizens of the richest country in the world, did not provide them with body armor. Grieving mothers protested the wasting of their sons’ lives. Nadia McCaffrey defied Bush’s shameful ban on the filming of U.S. soldiers’ coffins returning home from Iraq. She knew, as we all did, that this tyrannical dictum of Bush dishonored our soldiers’ sacrifice. And so she invited the press to the Sacramento International Airport to photograph her son’s flag–draped coffin. Again, I am not comparing George W. Bush to Adolph Hitler, nor America to Germany’s Third Reich. What I do believe is that each of us has the duty to keep the Bushes of the world from becoming anything like Hitler—and to keep America from invading other countries with no just cause. We will never, though, be able to stop corrupt politicians and corporations from doing criminal things until we stop surrendering our power to them. The more we fear to oppose them—the more we want to retreat into the supposed safety of our nice gated communities or downtown lofts—the more powerful people will conspire to ruin our prosperity and wreck our lives.

Oh Time! the beautifier of the dead, Adorner of the ruin, comforter And only healer when the heart hath bled— Time! the corrector where our judgments err, The test of truth, love,—sole philosopher, For all beside are sophists, from thy thrift, Which never loses though it doth defer— Time, the avenger! unto thee I lift My hands, and eyes, and heart, and crave of thee a gift: Amidst this wreck, where thou hast made a shrine And temple more divinely desolate, Among thy mightier offerings here are mine, Ruins of years— though few, yet full of fate:— If thou hast ever seen me too elate, Hear me not; but if calmly I have borne Good, and reserved my pride against the hate Which shall not whelm me, let me not have worn This iron in my soul in vain— shall they not mourn?

I doubt it's a strictly factual account, but these attitudes are deeply imbedded. Which means that our only hope of changing them, of ending the wrecks, lies not in stopping or even changing the Internet -- even with the best blocking functions, report-abuse functions, real-name transparency protocols, and twenty-four-hour moderation in the world, hate (to quite Jurassic Park) finds a way -- but in changing ourselves, and our definitions of womanhood. We have to stop believing that when a woman does something we don't like, we are qualified and entitled to punish her, violate her, or ruin her life. We have to change our ideas of what a "good" woman, or a "likable" woman, or simply a "woman who can leave her house without fearing for her life because she is a woman," can be.

When Abbess Ebba received tidings of the near approach of the pagan hordes, who had already wrecked vengeance upon ecclesiastics, monks, and consecrated virgins, she summoned her nuns to Chapter, and in a moving discourse exhorted them to preserve at any cost the treasure of their chastity. Then seizing a razor, and calling upon her daughters to follow her heroic example, she mutilated her face in order to inspire the barbarian invaders with horror at the sight. The nuns without exception courageously followed the example of their abbess. When the Danes broke into the cloister and saw the nuns with faces thus disfigured, they fled in panic. Their leaders, burning with rage, sent back some of their number to set fire to the monastery, and thus the heroic martyrs perished in the common ruin of their house.

All about the hills the hosts of Mordor raged. The Captains of the West were foundering in a gathering sea. The sun gleamed red, and under the wings of the Nazgul the shadows of death fell dark upon the earth. Aragorn stood beneath his banner, silent and stern, as one lost in thought of things long past or far away; but his eyes gleamed like stars that shine the brighter as the night deepens. Upon the hill-top stood Gandalf, and he was white and cold and no shadow fell on him. The onslaught of Mordor broke like a wave on the beleaguered hills, voices roaring like a tide amid the wreck and crash of arms. As if to his eyes some sudden vision had been given, Gandalf stirred; and he turned, looking back north where the skies were pale and clear. Then he lifted up his hands and cried in a loud voice ringing above the din: The Eagles are coming! And many voices answered crying: The Eagles are coming! The Eagles are coming! The hosts of Mordor looked up and wondered what this sign might mean. There came Gwaihir the Windlord, and Landroval his brother, greatest of all the Eagles of the North, mightiest of the descendants of old Thorondor, who built his eyries in the inaccessible peaks of the Encircling Mountains when Middle-earth was young. Behind them in long swift lines came all their vassals from the northern mountains, speeding on a gathering wind. Straight down upon the Nazgul they bore, stooping suddenly out of the high airs, and the rush of their wide wings as they passed over was like a gale. But the Nazgul turned and fled, and vanished into Mordor's shadows, hearing a sudden terrible call out of the Dark Tower; and even at that moment all the hosts of Mordor trembled, doubt clutched their hearts, their laughter failed, their hands shook and their limbs were loosed. The Power that drove them on and filled them with hate and fury was wavering, its will was removed from them; and now looking in the eyes of their enemies they saw a deadly light and were afraid. Then all the Captains of the West cried aloud, for their hearts were filled with a new hope in the midst of darkness. Out from the beleaguered hills knights of Gondor, Riders of Rohan, Dunedain of the North, close-serried companies, drove against their wavering foes, piercing the press with the thrust of bitter spears. But Gandalf lifted up his arms and called once more in a clear voice: 'Stand, Men of the West! Stand and wait! This is the hour of doom.' And even as he spoke the earth rocked beneath their feet. Then rising swiftly up, far above the Towers of the Black Gate, high above the mountains, a vast soaring darkness sprang into the sky, flickering with fire. The earth groaned and quaked. The Towers of the Teeth swayed, tottered, and fell down; the mighty rampart crumbled; the Black Gate was hurled in ruin; and from far away, now dim, now growing, now mounting to the clouds, there came a drumming rumble, a roar, a long echoing roll of ruinous noise. 'The realm of Sauron is ended!' said Gandalf. 'The Ring-bearer has fulfilled his Quest.' And as the Captains gazed south to the Land of Mordor, it seemed to them that, black against the pall of cloud, there rose a huge shape of shadow, impenetrable, lightning-crowned, filling all the sky. Enormous it reared above the world, and stretched out towards them a vast threatening hand, terrible but impotent: for even as it leaned over them, a great wind took it, and it was all blown away, and passed; and then a hush fell. The Captains bowed their heads...

Mass-observation sent out its "December directive" asking its many diarists to express their feelings about the coming year. "How do I feel about 1941?" wrote diarist Olivia Cockett. "I stopped typing for two minutes to listen to an extra noisy enemy plane. It dropped a bomb which puffed my curtains in and made the house shiver (I am in bed under the roof) and now the guns are galoomphing at its back. There are craters at the bottom of my garden, and a small unexploded bomb. Four windows are broken. Can see the ruins of 18 houses within five minutes walk. Have two lots of friends staying with us whose homes have been wrecked. "About 1941, I feel that I shall be damned glad if I'm lucky enough to see it all—and that I'd rather like to see it." At root she felt "cheerful," she wrote. "But I THINK differently, think we'll be hungrier (haven't been hungry yet), think many of our young men will die abroad.

Jesus does not want to be the only perfect human being at the expense of humankind. He does not want, as the only guiltless one, to ignore a humanity that is being destroyed by its guilt; he does not want some kind of human ideal to triumph over the ruins of a wrecked humanity. Love for real people leads into the fellowship of human guilt. Jesus does not want to exonerate himself from the guilt in which the people he loves are living. A love that left people alone in their guilt would not have real people as its object. So, in vicarious responsibility for people and in his love for real human beings, Jesus becomes the one burdened by guilt—indeed, the one upon whom all human guilt ultimately falls and the one who does not turn it away but bears it humbly and in eternal love. As the one who acts responsibly in the historical existence of humankind, as the human being who has entered reality, Jesus becomes guilty. But because his historical existence, his incarnation, has its sole basis in God’s love for human beings, it is the love of God that makes Jesus become guilty. Out of selfless love for human beings, Jesus leaves his state as the one without sin and enters into the guilt of human beings. He takes it upon himself.