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“A man might desire something for a moment, while a larger part of him rejects it. You'll need to learn to judge people by their actions, not their thoughts.”
― Helene Wecker, The Golem and the Jinni

“One must not permit oneself excesses, except with persons whom one wishes soon to leave.”
― Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, Les Liaisons dangereuses

“You have to make mistakes to find out who you aren't. You take the action, and the insight follows: You don't think your way into becoming yourself.”
― Anne Lamott

“You never know who it's going to be, or what they'll bring, but whatever it is, it's always exactly what is needed.”
― Ruth Ozeki, My Year of Meats

“A loner by nature and an introvert... i am a twinkling star, burning bright amidst a cloudless night. As such, i tend to fade in and out of people's lives. This aspect of me is often misunderstood as rejection or a lack of love and caring. In reality, the only way i can survive as an introvert, is to drop from the sky, from time-to-time, recharging within the energizing landscape of my inner-universe. To love me, is to let me me have the space i need to illuminate the sky. I can't be taken hostage or held captive. Inner-light is what gives my star its twinkle.”
― Jaeda DeWalt

“Fugit irreparabile tempus.”
― Virgil, The Georgics

“Along with the concept of American Dream runs the notion that every man and woman is entitled to an opinion and to one vote, no matter how ridiculous that opinion might be or how uninformed the vote. It could be that the Borderer Presbyterian tradition of "stand up and say your rightful piece" contributed to the American notion that our gut-level but uninformed opinions are some sort of unvarnished foundational political truths. I have been told that this is because we redneck working-class Scots Irish suffer from what psychiatrists call "no insight".Consequently, we will never agree with anyone outside our zone of ignorance because our belligerent Borderer pride insists on the right to be dangerously wrong about everything while telling those who are more educated to "bite my ass!”
― Joe Bageant, Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War

“The difference between a good golf shot and a bad one is the same as the difference between a beautiful and a plain woman --a matter of millimetres.”
― Ian Fleming, Goldfinger

“It is romantic, yes,�� agreed Hercule Poirot. ‘It is peaceful. The sun shines. The sea is blue. But you forget, Miss Brewster, there is evil everywhere under the sun��.”
― Agatha Christie

“What you are to me is the guy that I’ve been madly in love with since sixth grade. You’re the guy I think about every night when I’m in bed by myself. You’re the one who doesn’t want me but insists on keeping me tied so close that I can’t have anyone else, who keeps one hand on my collar and the other hand up his girlfriend’s skirt. And I can’t do it anymore!�� ~ Jordy”
― Eli Easton, Superhero

“You want what you can’t have. Again, is it worth it? Does it hurt your heart or does it hurt your balls?”~ grandpa Ray

Excerpt From: Boheme, Kade. “Trouble & the Wallflower" Kade Boehme, 2014-03-03T20:38:08+00:00. iBooks.
This material may be protected by copyright.”
― Kade Boehme, Trouble & the Wallflower

“It’s true that if your religion failed to deliver a miracle, that a human sacrifice would certainly follow."
"Ah...quite. You are a man of acute insight."
"That’s not insight. That’s a personal guarantee.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Borders of Infinity

“There's a fine line between career criminals and career professionals because most of us fall somewhere in between.”
― Samantha Leahy

“God lures us into marriage through love and sex and loneliness, or simply the fact that someone finally paid attention - all those reasons that you got married in the first place. It doesn't really matter, he'll do whatever it takes. He lures us into marriage and then he uses it to transform us.”
― John Eldredge, Love and War: Finding the Marriage You've Dreamed Of

“People of civilized countenance made much of exposing the soft underbellies of their psyche - effete and sensitive were the brands of finer breeding. It was easy for them, safe, and that was the whole point, after all: a statement of coddled opulence that burned the throats of the poor more than any ostentatious show of wealth.”
― Steven Erikson, Deadhouse Gates

“As he drove away, I began to think that what kept us together was perhaps not even our romance with an imaginary France. That was just a veneer, an illusion. Rather, it was our desperate inability to lead ordinary lives with ordinary people anywhere--ordinary loves, ordinary homes, ordinary careers, watching ordinary television, eating ordinary meals, with ordinary friends--even ordinary friends we didn't have, or couldn't keep.”
― André Aciman, Harvard Square

“Magic," her mother said, "is a kind of hope. And wishes are like dreams. When we have them, we can make things change. Without, we stay the same.”
― Avi, Bright Shadow

“*And to keep her immune system strong she followed Dr. Goodhue's advice to abstain from alcohol, get plenty of fresh air and exercise, and consume a nourishing diet, low in salt. Page 144

"Fear is good. In the right degree it prevents us from making fools of ourselves. But in the wrong measure it prevents us from fully living. Fear is our boon companion but never our master.". Page 204

"I've come to believe that how we choose to live with pain, or injustice, or death ... Is the true measure of the Divine within us." . . . "I used to wonder, why did God give children leprosy? Now I believe: God doesn't give anyone leprosy. He gives us, if we choose to use it, the spirit to live with leprosy, and with the imminence of death. Because it is in our own mortality that we are most Divine.". Page 307

**"With wonder and a growing absence of fear she realized, I am more than I was an hour ago.". Page 372
**my favorite!”
― Alan Brennert, Moloka'i

“And so, when she heard if Hare Krishnas, she didn't hear right. She heard "Hairless Christians", and that is what they were to her for many years. When I corrected her, I told her in fact she was not so wrong; that Hindus, in their capacity for love, are indeed hairless Christians, just as Muslims, in the way they see God in everything, are bearded Hindus, and Christians in their devotion to God, are hat-wearing Muslims.”
― Yann Martel

“I hand over a lot of things when I'm home. Mom tells me she doesn't like my shirt I want to buy, and I hand it over. Not the shirt itself, but my wish for that shirt. I want to watch one television show and she wants to watch another one -I hand that over too. It's easier that way. I even hand over my toenails when she asks. But I think sometimes you need to put a thing in a box -even if the box is inside your head -and store it away for yourself.”
― Gin Phillips, The Hidden Summer

“Together they listed the people they had known who had died on the mountains. A bleak conversation to have, thought Margrét, but there was some comfort in talking about death aloud, as though in naming things, you could prevent them from happening.”
― Hannah Kent, Burial Rites

“The phone rang. It was a familiar voice.

It was Alan Greenspan. Paul O'Neill had tried to stay in touch with people who had served under Gerald Ford, and he'd been reasonably conscientious about it. Alan Greenspan was the exception. In his case, the effort was constant and purposeful. When Greenspan was the chairman of Ford's Council of Economic Advisers, and O'Neill was number two at OMB, they had become a kind of team. Never social so much. They never talked about families or outside interests. It was all about ideas: Medicare financing or block grants - a concept that O'Neill basically invented to balance federal power and local autonomy - or what was really happening in the economy. It became clear that they thought well together. President Ford used to have them talk about various issues while he listened. After a while, each knew how the other's mind worked, the way married couples do.

In the past fifteen years, they'd made a point of meeting every few months. It could be in New York, or Washington, or Pittsburgh. They talked about everything, just as always. Greenspan, O'Neill told a friend, "doesn't have many people who don't want something from him, who will talk straight to him. So that's what we do together - straight talk."

O'Neill felt some straight talk coming in.

"Paul, I'll be blunt. We really need you down here," Greenspan said. "There is a real chance to make lasting changes. We could be a team at the key moment, to do the things we've always talked about."

The jocular tone was gone. This was a serious discussion. They digressed into some things they'd "always talked about," especially reforming Medicare and Social Security. For Paul and Alan, the possibility of such bold reinventions bordered on fantasy, but fantasy made real.

"We have an extraordinary opportunity," Alan said. Paul noticed that he seemed oddly anxious. "Paul, your presence will be an enormous asset in the creation of sensible policy."

Sensible policy. This was akin to prayer from Greenspan. O'Neill, not expecting such conviction from his old friend, said little. After a while, he just thanked Alan. He said he always respected his counsel. He said he was thinking hard about it, and he'd call as soon as he decided what to do.

The receiver returned to its cradle. He thought about Greenspan. They were young men together in the capital. Alan stayed, became the most noteworthy Federal Reserve Bank chairman in modern history and, arguably the most powerful public official of the past two decades. O'Neill left, led a corporate army, made a fortune, and learned lessons - about how to think and act, about the importance of outcomes - that you can't ever learn in a government.

But, he supposed, he'd missed some things. There were always trade-offs. Talking to Alan reminded him of that. Alan and his wife, Andrea Mitchell, White House correspondent for NBC news, lived a fine life. They weren't wealthy like Paul and Nancy. But Alan led a life of highest purpose, a life guided by inquiry.

Paul O'Neill picked up the telephone receiver, punched the keypad.

"It's me," he said, always his opening.

He started going into the details of his trip to New York from Washington, but he's not much of a phone talker - Nancy knew that - and the small talk trailed off.

"I think I'm going to have to do this."

She was quiet. "You know what I think," she said.

She knew him too well, maybe. How bullheaded he can be, once he decides what's right. How he had loved these last few years as a sovereign, his own man. How badly he was suited to politics, as it was being played. And then there was that other problem: she'd almost always been right about what was best for him.

"Whatever, Paul. I'm behind you. If you don't do this, I guess you'll always regret it."

But it was clearly about what he wanted, what he needed.

Paul thanked her. Though somehow a thank-you didn't seem appropriate.

And then he realized she was crying.”
― Ron Suskind, The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill

“My dear Copperfield,�� he replied. “To a man possessed of the higher imaginative powers, the objection to legal studies is the amount of detail which they involve. Even in our professional correspondence,�� said Mr. Micawber, glancing at some letters he was writing, “the mind is not at liberty to soar to any exalted form of expression. Still, it is a great pursuit! A great pursuit!”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

“You Can Trust. Yes, but Try to remember even Demons had their wings.”
― kent Ian N. Cny

“I was drowning that times, but when I saw those eyes of yours, my body learned how to swim.”
― kent Ian N. Cny

“I knew everything! Yet, I'm still not perfect.”
― kent Ian N. Cny

“I'm not here only just for a visit; but I'm here cuz' i knew I'm HOME.”
― kent Ian N. Cny

“Life is not about how long you live or how much you experience. Life is about how you choose to live it and what you experience.”
― Marlene Hansen

“Different denotes neither bad nor good, but it certainly means not the same.”
― The Mad Hatter

“Greed, however it manifests itself, is always ugly.”
― Mort Herman