classes ::: object,
children :::
branches ::: my desk

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object:my desk
class:object
would benefit from some on desk shelving or cabinets or bookshelf.
some way to increase desk space

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now begins generated list of local instances, definitions, quotes, instances in chapters, wordnet info if available and instances among weblinks


OBJECT INSTANCES [0] - TOPICS - AUTHORS - BOOKS - CHAPTERS - CLASSES - SEE ALSO - SIMILAR TITLES

TOPICS
SEE ALSO


AUTH

BOOKS
Savitri

IN CHAPTERS TITLE

IN CHAPTERS CLASSNAME

IN CHAPTERS TEXT
0_1961-08-05
1.01_-_Economy
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Loved_Dead
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Trap

PRIMARY CLASS

object
SIMILAR TITLES
my desk

DEFINITIONS



QUOTES [0 / 0 - 454 / 454]


KEYS (10k)


NEW FULL DB (2.4M)

   15 Haruki Murakami
   11 Jeff Lindsay
   7 Erica Jong
   6 Cayla Kluver
   5 Stephen King
   5 Ilona Andrews
   4 Elizabeth Gilbert
   4 Clive Barker
   4 Anonymous
   3 Ursula K Le Guin
   3 Sue Monk Kidd
   3 Paul Auster
   3 John Green
   3 Joanna Gaines
   3 J D Robb
   3 Herman Melville
   3 Henry David Thoreau
   3 Dennis Lehane
   3 Barack Obama
   3 Andr Aciman

*** WISDOM TROVE ***

1:I have three boxes on my desk: In, Out, and Too Hard. ~ warren-buffet, @wisdomtrove
2:My ideas usually come not at my desk writing but in the midst of living. ~ anais-nin, @wisdomtrove
3:I stand upon my desk to remind myself that we must constantly look at things in a different way. ~ robin-williams, @wisdomtrove
4:A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station. ~ william-faulkner, @wisdomtrove
5:A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station…. ~ william-faulkner, @wisdomtrove
6:If a tax hike makes it to my desk, I'll veto it in less time than it takes Vanna White to turn the letters V-E-T-O! ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove
7:Why does everyone think that I am a cruel and insensitive man? I mean, come on, I have kids... on my desk in little jars! ~ stephen-king, @wisdomtrove
8:Writing is a deeper sleep than death. Just as one wouldn't pull a corpse from its grave, I can't be dragged from my desk at night. ~ franz-kafka, @wisdomtrove
9:When I was poor living in a garage in Kansas I began to draw the mice that scampered over my desk. That is how Mickey Mouse was born. ~ walt-disney, @wisdomtrove
10:People think that I must be a very strange person. This is not correct. I have the heart of a small boy. It is in a glass jar on my desk. ~ stephen-king, @wisdomtrove
11:People want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them I have the heart of a small boy... and I keep it in a jar on my desk. ~ stephen-king, @wisdomtrove
12:I get up early in the morning, 4 o'clock, and I sit at my desk and what I do is just dream. After three or four hours, that's enough. In the afternoon, I run. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove
13:If I sought to answer all of the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would be engaged in little else in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove
14:I generally concentrate on work for three or four hours every morning. I sit at my desk and focus totally on what I’m writing. I don’t see anything else, I don’t think about anything else. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove
15:Problem is, once I sit at my desk and put all these down on paper. I realize something vital is missing. It doesn't crystallize - no crystals, just pebbles. And I'm not transported anywhere. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove
16:I am simply impressed by the unexpected insights which shower down on me when my job is to imagine, as contrasted with the woodenly familiar ideas which clutter my desk when my job is to tell the truth. ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove
17:First, I do not sit down at my desk to put into verse something that is already clear in my mind. If it were clear in my mind, I should have no incentive or need to write about it. We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
18:Every day I go to my study and sit at my desk and put the computer on. At that moment, I have to open the door. It's a big, heavy door. You have to go into the Other Room. Metaphorically, of course. And you have to come back to this side of the room. And you have to shut the door. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove
19:I wrote a huge number of letters that spring: one a week to Naoko, several to Reiko, and several more to Midori. I wrote letters in the classroom, I wrote letters at my desk at home with Seagull in my lap, I wrote letters at empty tables during my breaks at the Italian restaurant. It was as if I were writing letters to hold together the pieces of my crumbling life. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove
20:An old Russian woman goes into Kremlin, gets an audience with Mikhail Gorbachev and says, In America anyone can go to the White House, walk up to Reagan's desk and say, &
21:make it a practice to avoid hating anyone. If someone's been guilty of despicable actions, especially toward me, I try to forget him. I used to follow a practice - somewhat contrived, I admit - to write the man's name on a piece of scrap paper, drop it into the lowest drawer of my desk, and say to myself: "That finishes the incident, and so far as I'm concerned, that fellow." The drawer became over the years a sort of private wastebasket for crumbled-up spite and discarded personalities. ~ dwight-eisenhower, @wisdomtrove
22:I’m the kind of person who likes to be by himself. To put a finer point on it, I’m the type of person who doesn’t find it painful to be alone. I find spending an hour or two every day running alone, not speaking to anyone, as well as four or five hours alone at my desk, to be neither difficult nor boring. I’ve had this tendency ever since I was young, when, given a choice, I much preferred reading books on my own or concentrating on listening to music over being with someone else. I could always think of things to do by myself. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove
23:I make it a practice to avoid hating anyone. If someone's been guilty of despicable actions, especially toward me, I try to forget him. I used to follow a practice-somewhat contrived, I admit-to write the man's name on a piece of scrap paper, drop it into the lowest drawer of my desk, and say to myself: "That finishes the incident, and so far as I'm concerned, that fellow. The drawer became over the years a sort of private wastebasket for crumpled-up spite and discarded personalities. Besides, it seemed to be effective, and helped me avoid harboring useless black feelings." ~ dwight-eisenhower, @wisdomtrove

*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***

1:I plan to die at my desk. ~ Don Hewitt,
2:loosens my mind. From my desk, ~ Amy Harmon,
3:THEN MY DESK phone rang and I awakened. ~ Charles Bukowski,
4:I eat and drink at my desk, but I'm a tidy eater. ~ Jamie Zawinski,
5:I have three boxes on my desk: In, Out, and Too Hard. ~ Warren Buffett,
6:My desk drawer is filled with all kinds of prayers. ~ Geraldine Ferraro,
7:like a good librarian, I just sat at my desk and waited. ~ Rebecca Makkai,
8:Most working days I can be at my desk for nine hours a day. ~ Roddy Doyle,
9:sit at my desk and they tell me the things that are wrong ~ Lynda Mullaly Hunt,
10:I sit at my desk, and I do not know where the words are hidden! ~ Caitlin Moran,
11:I'm terrible in the mornings, but I'm always at my desk by 10 A.M. ~ James Herbert,
12:No special writing rituals. And my desk is usually cluttered. ~ Stephen Greenblatt,
13:I don't like to leave anything unfinished on my desk before I travel. ~ Vijay Mallya,
14:My ideas usually come not at my desk writing but in the midst of living. ~ Anais Nin,
15:My ideas usually come not at my desk writing but in the midst of living. ~ Ana s Nin,
16:I get up and I have coffee and I speak to no man and I go to my desk. ~ Hortense Calisher,
17:I place solitude in a frame on my desk and call it, the one I love. ~ Kelli Russell Agodon,
18:I have my favorite cat, who is my paperweight, on my desk while I am writing. ~ Ray Bradbury,
19:Holy shit. This girl was a fucking tiger. Beneath my desk, my cock was applauding. ~ Nelle L Amour,
20:I notice inspiration when it comes by. I don't sit down at my desk and try to write. ~ Gary Panter,
21:Still, something about writing made me spend large hours of my free time at my desk. ~ John Grisham,
22:I am a terrible mixture of being organized, controlling, but chaotic. My desk is monstrous. ~ Elizabeth Hurley,
23:I'm very lucky. I actually like screenwriting. I rarely feel a sense of doom going to my desk. ~ Simon Beaufoy,
24:There's one great script that hit my desk that I didn't change at all, and that was True Romance. ~ Tony Scott,
25:Here, beside this great black surface that is my desk, I feel as though I am on a desert island. ~ Etty Hillesum,
26:I stand upon my desk to remind myself that we must constantly look at things in a different way. ~ Robin Williams,
27:Despite my ghoulish reputation, I really have the heart of a small boy. I keep it in a jar on my desk. ~ Robert Bloch,
28:Insights don't usually arrive at my desk, but go into notebooks when I'm on the move. Or half-asleep. ~ Hilary Mantel,
29:For years, I kept an Onion story tacked above my desk: “Women Now Empowered by Everything a Woman Does. ~ Sarah Hepola,
30:I've got so many things coming across my desk right now that are nonfootball related, I can't stand it. ~ Chuck Pagano,
31:The evening breeze floated through the open window over my desk, waltzing the curtain from side to side. ~ Ruta Sepetys,
32:Some people say I am a terrible person. I'm not, I have the heart of a young boy... in a jar, on my desk. ~ Stephen King,
33:If I were to splay you out on my desk and thrust my fingers into you right now, I think I’d find different. ~ Nalini Singh,
34:The vase was placed upon my desk, and there were orange-blossoms in it—orange-blossoms, in an English winter! ~ Sarah Waters,
35:I live in Florida, and I live on a small lagoon. I sit and look out at the water all day - that's what my desk is. ~ Ted Bell,
36:Like a good American, I wanted to sue somebody. But like a good librarian, I just sat at my desk and waited. ~ Rebecca Makkai,
37:When I begin a story at my desk, the window to my back, the path is not there. As I start to walk, I make the path. ~ Paula Fox,
38:He was like a huge smug albatross waddling around my desk, squawking vacuously and crapping all over my paperwork. ~ Tana French,
39:I like to tell people I have the heart of a small girl, then I tell them it's in a jar on my desk.” ¯ Robert Bloch ~ Faraaz Kazi,
40:I want you, Rose. I want you in my company making me proud, and I want you bent over my desk cumming on my dick. ~ Lauren Landish,
41:My desk, most loyal friend thank you. You've been with me on every road I've taken. My scar and my protection. ~ Marina Tsvetaeva,
42:A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station…. ~ William Faulkner,
43:If a tax hike makes it to my desk, I'll veto it in less time than it takes Vanna White to turn the letters V-E-T-O! ~ Ronald Reagan,
44:For many years I had a sign next to my desk that said "Don't question authority. They don't have the answers either. ~ James Montier,
45:I don't really like coffee, she said, but I don't really like it when my head hits my desk when I fall asleep either. ~ Brian Andreas,
46:A hookup to the basement computer formed the greater part of my desk. Learning how to use it had taken me several months. ~ Larry Niven,
47:Being infuriated was actually a boost to my productivity I discovered. I bulldozed through the stack of work on my desk… ~ Andrea Smith,
48:For years, I kept a Post-it note above my desk. WORK NOT LOVE! was what it said. It seemed a sturdier kind of happiness. ~ Jenny Offill,
49:I've always prided myself on my discipline as a writer. I do it like a job. I get up in the morning and go to my desk. ~ Salman Rushdie,
50:Wait a minute, words in the prompter, script on my desk, vending machine upstairs out of Funyuns... the writers are back! ~ Jon Stewart,
51:The Oscar sits on some shelf above my desk. If there was an earthquake, I could actually be killed by my own Academy Award. ~ Helen Hunt,
52:Why does everyone think that I am a cruel and insensitive man? I mean, come on, I have kids... on my desk in little jars! ~ Stephen King,
53:Over my desk, I’ve got this enormous bulletin board, and on it I’ve tacked black-and-white photographs of writers at work. ~ Jennifer Niven,
54:People think I must be a strange person. This is not correct. I have the heart of a small boy. It is in a small jar on my desk. ~ Stephen King,
55:When the decision is up before you-and on my desk I have a motto which says "The buck stops here"-the decision has to be made. ~ Harry S Truman,
56:Writing is a deeper sleep than death. Just as one wouldn't pull a corpse from its grave, I can't be dragged from my desk at night. ~ Franz Kafka,
57:I sit in my room at my desk, looking out the window to the yard and waiting for a plot to come to me, to rise slowly in my mind. ~ Siegfried Lenz,
58:When I was poor living in a garage in Kansas I began to draw the mice that scampered over my desk. That is how Mickey Mouse was born. ~ Walt Disney,
59:I have a toy giraffe on my bed. I've got photographs over my desk as well as a mask of a giraffe in my kitchen. I am totally hooked. ~ Joanna Lumley,
60:Here's what I love: I love sitting at my desk, staring at the blank screen, and beginning that conversation with my imaginary friends. ~ Brad Meltzer,
61:I'm a morning person: if I don't get up, put the coffee on and get to my desk by 8, the day has already lost a lot of its promise. ~ Jennifer Gilmore,
62:My favorite part of writing a book is thinking up the ideas, and that can start a long time before I actually sit down at my desk. ~ Anthony Horowitz,
63:When I see a dictionary on my desk I feel like I'm looking at some strange dog leaving a twisty piece of poop on our lawn out back. ~ Haruki Murakami,
64:I don't know where my ideas come from, but I know where they come to. They come to my desk, and if I'm not there, they go away again. ~ Philip Pullman,
65:People think that I must be a very strange person. This is not correct. I have the heart of a small boy. It is in a glass jar on my desk. ~ Stephen King,
66:The entire United States is within range of our nuclear weapons, and a nuclear button is always on my desk. This is reality, not a threat. ~ Kim Jong un,
67:I sit at my desk, I do as I must,
my heart is ridden with pain.
I follow instructions without looking up,
quietly going insane. ~ Tabitha Suzuma,
68:BRANDON LOOKS AT THE PICS! Right then all I wanted to do was dig a really deep hole right next to my desk, CRAWL into it, and DIE!! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell,
69:I've never had a really creative idea sitting at my desk. All the big ideas that made a difference happened when I was playing outside. ~ Barbara Corcoran,
70:The first pork-barrel bill that crosses my desk, I'm going to veto it and make the authors of those pork-barrel items famous all over America. ~ John McCain,
71:I have sat here at my desk, day after day, night after night, a blank sheet of paper before me, unable to lift my pen, trembling and weeping too. ~ Susan Hill,
72:Every piece of legislation which came to my desk in the coming years as the governor, I came down on the side of preserving the sanctity of life. ~ Mitt Romney,
73:I sat down at my desk and ate a pickle spear and a large bite of sandwich, a Heimlich bite. I then sipped hot and strong and very good coffee. I ~ Jeffery Deaver,
74:I have a sudden urge to drag her out of her seat, bend her over my knee, spank her, and then fuck her over my desk with her hands tied behind her back. ~ E L James,
75:When the door to my writing chamber gasps shut and the almost imperceptible sigh of a rose petal falls on my desk, I know that my muse is present. ~ Brandi L Bates,
76:So I shook my head and flipped the picture back onto my desk. “Very nice picture,” I said. “Tell me, Detective, do you think a man can be too handsome? ~ Jeff Lindsay,
77:There are problems that just end up being really hard and by definition the only problems that come to my desk are the ones that nobody else can solve. ~ Barack Obama,
78:Whoa!” Brody yelled, looking back down to my desk. “Where’d you get these ones that say ‘don’t be a dick’ and ‘fuck this’? I gotta get some of those. ~ Kristen Ashley,
79:So I was always practically falling out of my desk chair. (Stimulants make the nerves a bit . . . jangly, you know. Especially at three in the morning.) I ~ Cat Marnell,
80:If I get a ticket in an Aston Martin, I plan to frame it and put it on my desk.” And with that Zach gunned the engine and spun out of the parking garage. ~ Tiffany Reisz,
81:People want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them I have the heart of a small boy... and I keep it in a jar on my desk. ~ Stephen King,
82:I shut the door behind me, headed over to my desk and slipped into my new leather chair. The leather made rude noises that we both thought best to ignore. “Wait, ~ J R Rain,
83:But perhaps Kira Dallaire wasn't exactly what she seemed to be. I sat down at my desk and turned on my computer to google her. One good turn deserved another. ~ Mia Sheridan,
84:On gym days, I don't get to my desk until 4 in the afternoon, and everything except bedtime and the appointment with the liquid narcotic is pushed back a bit. ~ Peter Straub,
85:People hear that I am a horror writer and they think that I must be a monster, but actually I have the heart of a small child - I keep it in a jar on my desk. ~ Robert Bloch,
86:I'm not a nervous person. I'm not afraid to be on TV. I'm only afraid when I write. When I'm at my desk I feel like most people would feel if they went on TV. ~ Fran Lebowitz,
87:I get up early in the morning, 4 o'clock, and I sit at my desk and what I do is just dream. After three or four hours, that's enough. In the afternoon, I run. ~ Haruki Murakami,
88:Like the beach glass you guys always brought me. Sometimes I dump it out on my desk and press my ear to the pieces, trying to hear the ocean. Trying to hear you. ~ Sarah Ockler,
89:Most of my writing life consist of nothing more than unglamorous, disciplined labor. I sit at my desk and I work like a farmer, and that's how it gets done. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert,
90:I'd much rather be eating a bar of chocolate or even something healthy like a lettuce leaf alone at my desk than sitting through this silent, painful meal. ~ Sarah Darer Littman,
91:I keep my stand-up comedy notes in a pile on my desk. I don't organize my act. I keep myself in a state of confusion. It stresses me out, but I prefer creative chaos. ~ Joy Behar,
92:While I fielded holiday news requests and worked on my end of year expense reports, the Angel of Death sat opposite my desk and played Angry Birds on his cell phone. ~ Elicia Hyder,
93:I find spending an hour or two every day running alone, not speaking to anyone, as well as four or five hours alone at my desk, to be neither difficult nor boring. ~ Haruki Murakami,
94:He laughs. "I'm sitting at my desk, looking through my window, and talking to you."
"Talking to your boyfriend."
"Yeah," he says. I can hear him smiling. "Him". ~ Becky Albertalli,
95:Over my desk hangs a poster from The Railway Children that my husband had framed for me. It is so lovely to see the children smiling as they run down the railway track. ~ Dinah Sheridan,
96:That I should die next week, I would still be able to sit at my desk all week and study with perfect equanimity, for I know now that life and death make a meaningful whole. ~ Etty Hillesum,
97:The nearest I have to a rule is a Post-It on the wall in front of my desk saying “Faire et se taire” (Flaubert), which I translate for myself as “Shut up and get on with it. ~ Helen Simpson,
98:I find writing extremely difficult. I usually have to drag myself to my desk, mainly because I doubt myself. And it's getting harder because I want to improve with every book. ~ Markus Zusak,
99:Still, truth is how I remember it now. In a way, I am changing the past from my desk here in the future as I write. It always happens like this. This is how we all tell our story. ~ J D Radke,
100:The coffee shop smell was strong enough to build a garage on. I went back to my desk, dropped the bottle of whiskey back into the drawer, shut the drawer and sat down again. ~ Raymond Chandler,
101:This is my company. My office. My desk. I make the rules, and you tried to subvert them. Now I’ll show you how I run things here when a woman like you tears me away from work. ~ Lauren Blakely,
102:It took me years to learn to sit at my desk for more than two minutes at a time, to put up with the solitude and the terror of failure, and the godawful silence and the white paper. ~ Erica Jong,
103:I wrote to find beauty and purpose, to know that love is possible and lasting and real.... Once I got to my desk, once I started writing, I still believed anything was possible. ~ Alice Hoffman,
104:My book would come out in one language, then it would come out in another language, then it would come out in One City, One Read, and I was always being called away from my desk. ~ Sandra Cisneros,
105:I can't just sit at my desk and let this web of weirdness spin around me. (That describes a lot of jobs, I realize, but this is potentially a special kind of magick-with-a-k weirdness. ~ Robin Sloan,
106:Fuck you!”
She stalks back around my desk toward the door.
“Here? Now?” I look up at the ceiling, like I’m debating the prospect. “Well…okay. But be gentle. My couch is a virgin. ~ Emma Chase,
107:Edward Snowden made an audacious claim: “I, sitting at my desk, could wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president, if I had a personal email. ~ Glenn Greenwald,
108:Creativty is a god who comes around only when he pleases, and it isn't very often. But when he does come around, he sits at my desk and folds his wings and I offer him whatever he wants. ~ Gary D Schmidt,
109:I can guarantee you this, that more pension and benefit reforms which I will consider arbitration reform to be one of them, are things that when they come to my desk, they will be signed. ~ Chris Christie,
110:At 4:32 I arrive at my desk, read what I have written the day before, rip it up, eat it, then sit, absolutely motionless for a period of six hours and eighteen minutes, waiting to be inspired ~ Paul Auster,
111:I generally concentrate on work for three or four hours every morning. I sit at my desk and focus totally on what I’m writing. I don’t see anything else, I don’t think about anything else. ~ Haruki Murakami,
112:Sometimes I want to clean up my desk and go out and say, “Respect me; I’m a respectable grown-up!" and other times I just want to jump into a paper bag and shake and bake myself to death. ~ Wendy Wasserstein,
113:But I barely had time to put my coffee cup down on my desk when I received a visitation from the Ghost of Christmas Gone Terribly Wrong, in the person of Israel Salguero, from Internal Affairs. ~ Jeff Lindsay,
114:If I sought to answer all of the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would be engaged in little else in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. ~ Martin Luther King Jr,
115:Problem is, once I sit at my desk and put all these down on paper. I realize something vital is missing. It doesn't crystallize - no crystals, just pebbles. And I'm not transported anywhere. ~ Haruki Murakami,
116:There was a day where I was sitting at my desk, working 90-hour work weeks, in a suit, looking at a computer, with all these pitch books on my desk, and I just thought, "This can't be my life..." ~ Laz Alonso,
117:felt like a newly laid egg, all swishy and gloopy inside, and so fragile that the slightest pressure could break me. There was already an email waiting for me by the time I sat down at my desk. ~ Gail Honeyman,
118:Snoop is a tour de force! It’s one of the smartest and most original books I’ve come across in a long time. I devoured it and then rushed over to clean up my desk and change my iPod playlist. ~ Richard Florida,
119:When did you first fall in love?"

"I think, I first fell in love
when I was in fifth grade
with this boy who kept his glass ruler in the sunlight
and made rainbows on my desk with it. ~ Saiber,
120:. . . With the wonder and bitterness of someone pardoned for a crime she did not commit I come back to marriage and friends, to pink fringed hollyhocks; come back to my desk, books, and chair. ~ Andrew Solomon,
121:I got you a present."

"Did you?"

"It's a book of poetry--romancy stuff. I thought, 'How schmaltzy is that,' so it seemed like the thing. Then I screwed up and left it in my desk at work ~ J D Robb,
122:I felt like a newly laid egg, all swishy and gloopy inside, and so fragile that the slightest pressure could break me. There was already an e-mail waiting for me by the time I sat down at my desk. ~ Gail Honeyman,
123:Morality and grammar are related. Human beings live by the word. Socrates said, “The misuse of language induces evil in the soul.” I’ve had that sentence pinned up over my desk for a long time. ~ Ursula K Le Guin,
124:I shuffle his papers on my desk, feeling ill. Ill that I have to send his accounts away and sick because I can't sleep with him. Not after this show of stupidity. Even my libido has IQ standards. ~ Rachel Robinson,
125:I do know how to operate a computer. (Joe) Yeah, right. What was it you said just ten minutes ago? Get this damned thing off my desk before I shoot it? Now make the call, Mr. Hunt-and-Peck. (Tee) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon,
126:I do know how to operate a computer. (Joe)
Yeah, right. What was it you said just ten minutes ago? Get this damned thing off my desk before I shoot it? Now make the call, Mr. Hunt-and-Peck. (Tee) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon,
127:I am simply impressed by the unexpected insights which shower down on me when my job is to imagine, as contrasted with the woodenly familiar ideas which clutter my desk when my job is to tell the truth. ~ Kurt Vonnegut,
128:I can only be in charge of producing the work itself. That’s a hard enough job. I refuse to take on additional jobs, such as trying to police what anybody thinks about my work once it leaves my desk. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert,
129:I actually use a computer a lot. I have three computers that I use on a regular basis - one is on my desk top in my Washington office, another is at home, and I have my laptop that I use when Im travelling. ~ Rick Boucher,
130:My leaving and the costs of my leaving had to pass through here with no more effect than the wind blowing through the balcony, ruffling the sheets on the line and the pages of one of the notebooks on my desk. ~ Jay Antani,
131:If only he would keep his mouth shut, he'd be perfect. A piece of duct tape would do the trick. I had some in my desk that I'd occasionally pull out and fondle, hoping someday I could put it to good use. ~ Christina Lauren,
132:When I used to work for the local government organisation we HAD TO change our Passwords every three months. To ensure I could remember it, I used to write it on a Post-It note and stick it above my desk. ~ Donald A Norman,
133:I do 30 to 40 books a year, so it's a fair amount of reading. Back and forth between nonfiction and fiction. I usually have three or four things that are open on my desk, on my bed, on audiobook in the car. ~ James Patterson,
134:Any analyst at any time can target anyone. Any selector, anywhere I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge, to even the President ~ Edward Snowden,
135:I thought if I created some distance, maybe I wouldn't want you to touch me so badly. Maybe I could come to work today and not sit at my desk all day dreaming about every wicked thing I want your hands to do to me ~ Mari Carr,
136:got up to fetch a glass of water and, assuming I’d missed the train to sleep, I went up to the study, opened the drawer in my desk and pulled out the book I had rescued from the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zaf n,
137:I just didn't want any order in anything. I have to leave an ordered life for them - the kids - and my job. I have to be at my desk at a certain time, and I have to answer e-mails within a certain time period. ~ Victoria Chang,
138:It's a funny thing: people often ask how I discipline myself to write. I can't begin to understand the question. For me, the discipline is turning off the computer and leaving my desk to do something else. ~ Barbara Kingsolver,
139:I lose things. I write things and they disappear from my desk, my life. I move a lot. I wanted to gather them and put them under one roof, under one cover, so I could document my life in a series of snapshots. ~ Sandra Cisneros,
140:I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, when the furniture of my mind was all undusted still, and threw them out the window in disgust. ~ Henry David Thoreau,
141:I've found myself at one in the morning just sitting at my desk spending an hour returning emails from the day until like two in the morning. It's ridiculous, I should be sleeping, or dreaming, or reading a novel. ~ Brit Marling,
142:I am a highly disciplined person. I get up at seven every morning and, still in my pajamas, sit down at my desk where my checkered ring binders and my fountain pen are ready for use. I try to write two pages every day. ~ Orhan Pamuk,
143:I know they're not actually talking but the books on my desk seem to whisper "Drop what you're doing! Set aside your poetry! Open us, read us! Read slowly while you're at it. Always read us - every day - before you play. ~ Ed Sanders,
144:I was having the surreal experience of having myself show myself around my office and bullpen.”
“Oh! My desk. I could’ve sat at my desk. I could’ve sat at your desk.”
“No.”
“It’s a vid set.”
“Even then, no. ~ J D Robb,
145:Professor Julius Lester, which I kept propped on my desk: “History is not just facts and events. History is also a pain in the heart and we repeat history until we are able to make another’s pain in the heart our own. ~ Sue Monk Kidd,
146:In my poetry a rhyme
Would seem to me almost insolent.

Inside me contend
Delight at the apple tree in blossom
And horror at the house-painter’s speeches.
But only the second
Drives me to my desk. ~ Bertolt Brecht,
147:I'm looking for anything interesting in the guitar playing, songwriting, artwork, and production. If you look at the stack of CDs on my desk and in my car, you'll find a very wide range of music under the umbrella of metal. ~ David Pajo,
148:I want everything with you, America. I want the holidays and the birthdays, the busy season and lazy weekends. I want peanut butter fingertips on my desk. I want inside jokes and fights and everything. I want a life with you. ~ Kiera Cass,
149:On my desk I have three screens, synchronized to form a single desktop. I can drag items from one screen to the next. Once you have that large display area, you'll never go back, because it has a direct impact on productivity. ~ Bill Gates,
150:I've got a big closet of scripts, and a big stack of scripts on the side of my desk, because you get a whole bunch. Nothing's going to be perfect, and I realize that; but I am a perfectionist, so you go through a lot of stuff. ~ Chris Tucker,
151:I cherish two sentences and keep them close to my desk. The first is by Flaubert. I came upon it among Van Gough's letters. It says, simply, 'Talent is long patience, and originality an effort of will and of intense observation. ~ Mary Oliver,
152:I go back to my desk, flip open my cell, and stare at the keypad. I want to hear his voice so badly, to be connected to him, to ask him why and how and what I can do to make it better. But you can‘t force someone to love you. ~ Daria Snadowsky,
153:Imagination is conjunctive and unifying; the sour, habitual wars of the self are disjunctive and separating.

When I begin a story at my desk, the window to my back, the path is not there. As I start to walk, I make the path. ~ Paula Fox,
154:I put the copy of 'A Christmas Carol' that my grandfather had first read to me 60 years ago on my desk, and I began to write. The result, for better or for worse, is the 'Christmas Spirits.' I plan to read it to my grandson. ~ Whitley Strieber,
155:I am really chained to my computer these days so I work in my bedroom, which is a room I have worked in for years and years. It is just as much an office as a bedroom, and during the day, my bed is rather like an extension of my desk. ~ Margaret Mahy,
156:I have my faithful rhyming dictionary that sits up there on my desk, but I have to tell you, there are very few new rhymes that I didn't think of. I often just go right through the alphabet in my head when I'm looking for a rhyme. ~ Mary Ann Hoberman,
157:Let's say I'm on the policy wonk end of the spectrum. As much as I can dive into a briefing book and really work to master various subjects that come before my desk, I'm still not an expert on a huge amount of the stuff that we work on. ~ Barack Obama,
158:What's funny is the act of cleaning out my desk takes an hour, yet I've been dreading it for so many damn years. How much time have I wasted in fretting about organizing this instead of actually organizing? I kind of don't want to know. ~ Jen Lancaster,
159:I haven't pursued it as a senator because I know it's like spitting in the wind. But I still believe it's the right thing. And if I were governor and a bill came to my desk that provided for background checks at gun shows, I would sign that. ~ Wendy Davis,
160:I wrote a play once called 'Lobby Hero,' which I thought turned out very well, but there's no final version of it. I published the one we produced, but there are seven other versions with different variations sitting in my desk at home. ~ Kenneth Lonergan,
161:I'm not big on to-do lists. Instead, I use e-mail and desktop folders and my online calendar. So when I walk up to my desk, I can focus on the e-mails I've flagged and check the folders that are monitoring particular projects and particular blogs. ~ Bill Gates,
162:Prior to Saving Private Ryan I never worked with men. I was always working with some babe, and it was always about falling in love, and it just got turned around. I'm not looking for any particular kind of story. I wait until it comes across my desk. ~ Tom Hanks,
163:My morning begins with trying not to get up before the sun rises. But when I do, it's because my head is too full of words, and I just need to get to my desk and start dumping them into a file. I always wake with sentences pouring into my head. ~ Barbara Kingsolver,
164:After my meeting, I go back to my office to find a flower delivery on my desk. I open the card and find that it reads, “Are you in love with me yet?” Not yet. But I’m close. Really close, despite the fact that these feelings scare the shit out of me. ~ Tammy Falkner,
165:First, I do not sit down at my desk to put into verse something that is already clear in my mind. If it were clear in my mind, I should have no incentive or need to write about it. We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand. ~ C S Lewis,
166:For the love of Thor, I was missing him even when we were in the same room together. The force of the feelings, and the virtually all-consuming nature of them, made me want to hide under my desk until my brain and my heart and my vagina came to a consensu ~ Penny Reid,
167:My desk clock told me it was five past ten, early for a drink, although I wanted one. After a little hesitation, I decided the bottle wouldn't know it was too early, hoisted it out of the desk drawer and gave myself a small, rather shamefaced nip. ~ James Hadley Chase,
168:My life revolved around my desk at work and my two dogs, who had become so adapted to my world that I no longer thought about their care as any sort of effort. Feeding and walking the dogs were as routine as brushing my teeth and starting up the car. ~ Jenna Woginrich,
169:Next one of you mouthy assholes makes me pound my desk again, I’m throwing you the fuck out.” On that note, he reached down, picked up the cowering ninety-pound retriever, and settled George in his lap. “You’re freaking out my dog and it’s pissing me off.” As ~ J R Ward,
170:Even when I'm just sitting at my desk, I have to get up every twenty minutes or so and walk around, walk around, walk around, and then I can go back to the page. I can't just sit there for hours at a time. Language comes out of the body as much as the mind. ~ Paul Auster,
171:I wrote letters in the classroom, I wrote letters at my desk at home with Seagull in my lap, I wrote letters at empty tables during my breaks at the Italian restaurant. It was as if I were writing letters to hold together the pieces of my crumbling life. ~ Haruki Murakami,
172:For years I kept a sign on my desk that helped me maintain the right perspective concerning yesterday. It simply said, 'yesterday ended last night.' It reminded me that no matter how badly I might have failed in the past, it's done, and today is a new day. ~ John C Maxwell,
173:I don't say anything and he casually leans against my desk, picking up the novel that's sitting there.

"It's bullshit," he tells me, flicking through it. "There's no such thing as Atticus Finch."

I shrug. "It'd be nice if there was, though. ~ Melina Marchetta,
174:The results of my work don't have much to do with me. I can only be in charge of producing the work itself. That's a hard enough job. I refuse to take on additional jobs, such as trying to police what anybody thinks about my work once it leaves my desk. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert,
175:My desk was covered with little white telephone messages. Office confetti. You think the universe comes to a halt when you are locked into your own little world, but it doesn’t. It goes on whether you’re in trial or at war or under the surgeon’s knife. Or dead. ~ Paul Levine,
176:My principal failing as a writer is the lack of spontaneity; the nuisance of parallel thoughts, second thoughts, third thoughts; inability to express myself properly in any language unless I compose every damned sentence in my bath, in my mind, at my desk. ~ Vladimir Nabokov,
177:One stay-at-home mom keeps this sign over her kitchen sink: “Divine tasks performed here, daily.” An executive hung this plaque in her office: “My desk is my altar.” Both are correct. With God, our work matters as much as our worship. Indeed, work can be worship. ~ Max Lucado,
178:The deadlines are much, much longer with books. When I was a reporter, a lot of times I'd come in at 8:30 a.m., get an assignment right away, interview somebody, turn the story in by 9:30, and have the finished story in the paper that landed on my desk by noon. ~ Margaret Haddix,
179:Holy fuck,” Mace muttered, rounding the end of my desk with Lee, eyes aimed down, and stopping there. When Lee came to a halt with Mace, his brows hiked high. “What’s all this shit?” Thank God I no longer carried a switchblade. “I’m organizing!” I nearly shouted. ~ Kristen Ashley,
180:Seeing yourself as part of a creative lineage will help you feel less alone as you start making your own stuff. I hang pictures of my favourite artists in my studio. They're like friendly ghosts. I can almost feel them pushing me forward as I'm hunched over my desk. ~ Austin Kleon,
181:I, for one, find writing excruciating. Some mornings, as I'm on my way to my desk, my hands actually tremble with fear. The fear, of course, is that I'll sit down at the desk and discover that what I've written is claptrap. Fear inevitably leads to procrastination. ~ Rosemary Mahoney,
182:Seriously, what guy turns down Die Hard? The only thing that could sweeten this deal is if you offered me some booze.”

“I don’t have any.” She stops to think. “But I’ve got a whole bag of gummy bears hidden in my desk drawer.”

“Marry me,” I say instantly. ~ Elle Kennedy,
183:I work seven days a week and I work about 12 hours a day, from the beginning of September to about the end of May; the school year. I take two days off, Christmas and New Year's, Thanksgiving sometimes - two and a half. And the result is that I bonded myself to my desk. ~ James Lipton,
184:I let his rose wither in a vase on my desk, a vase painfully empty of flowers since the long-ago time when, on my birthday, Mario would give me a cattleya, in imitation of Swann. In the evening the flower was already black and bent on its stem. I threw it in the trash. ~ Elena Ferrante,
185:The fly was on my desk, his hose in the candy dust. I cupped my hand and covered him, then brushed him past the edge to see where he’d go. He returned to the dust, as if I hadn’t just demonstrated that I could kill him, as if I hadn’t just shown him right there in the dust. ~ Adam Levin,
186:What sort of child asks for a prospective stepfather’s sperm count?” my boss read. He sucked in a breath. “Mackenzie! That email’s from…” I pushed my chair from my desk and oozed to the floor, where I pounded my fist into the carpeting. “His Royal Majesty of Montana. ~ Susan Copperfield,
187:I’m trying out Theodore Finche, ‘80s kid, and seeing how he fits.
I fish through my desk for a cigarette, stick it in my mouth, and remember as I’m reaching for my lighter that Theodore Finch, ‘80s kid, doesn’t smoke. God, I hate him, the clean-cut, eager little prick. ~ Jennifer Niven,
188:Why would I? Seriously, what guy turns down Die Hard? The only thing that could sweeten this deal is if you offered me some booze.”
“I don’t have any.” She stops to think. “But I’ve got a whole bag of gummy bears hidden in my desk drawer.”
“Marry me,” I say instantly. ~ Elle Kennedy,
189:If I'm not at my desk by 4 AM, I feel like I'm missing my most productive hours. In addition to starting early, I keep an antique hour glass on my desk and every hour break briefly to do pushups, sit-ups, and some quick stretches. I find this helps keep the blood (and ideas) flowing. ~ Dan Brown,
190:Many aspects of the writing life have changed since I published my first book, in the 1960s. It is more corporate, more driven by profits and marketing, and generally less congenial - but my day is the same: get out of bed, procrastinate, sit down at my desk, try to write something. ~ Paul Theroux,
191:Every day I go to my study and sit at my desk and put the computer on. At that moment, I have to open the door. It's a big, heavy door. You have to go into the Other Room. Metaphorically, of course. And you have to come back to this side of the room. And you have to shut the door. ~ Haruki Murakami,
192:In writing The Invention of Wings, I was inspired by the words of Professor Julius Lester, which I kept propped on my desk: “History is not just facts and events. History is also a pain in the heart and we repeat history until we are able to make another’s pain in the heart our own. ~ Sue Monk Kidd,
193:It wasn't that I couldn't write. I wrote every day. I actually worked really hard at writing. At my desk by 7 A.M., would work a full eight and more. Scribbled at the dinner table, in bed, on the toilet, on the No. 6 train, at Shea Stadium. I did everything I could. But none of it worked. ~ Junot Diaz,
194:The difference between most mothers and me is that I didn't sit around drinking coffee at baby group for 12 months after the birth of my baby. No, in three weeks I was back in my suit, back at my desk earning profit for my business and I don't see why other women shouldn't do the same. ~ Katie Hopkins,
195:I don't forgive people.Just ask Shauna Bradley. We were best friends in kindergarten until I discovered she was the one stealing the fruit snacks from my desk. She lost my trust that day, and
even now when I see her, I have to refrain myself from shouting, "Why? Why did you do it?! ~ Nicole Christie,
196:The vampire stared at me, his mouth slack as Ghastek assessed his options. I took a couple of forms from my desk, put them into the vamp's mouth, and pulled them up by their edges.
"What are you doing?" Ghastek asked.
"My hole puncher broke."
"You have no respect for the undead. ~ Ilona Andrews,
197:A new thing I've been doing is just making sure I clear off my desk and try to only touch a piece of paper once, so I get the mail, open it up, deal with it then. My son's homework, or what I get from his teachers, the same way. That way, it's not nagging me, things to add to my to-do list. ~ Adina Porter,
198:I wear mostly black Main Line or T… But the other day, the sun was shining so I wore blue jeans. It caused so much excitement in the office! People were literally coming up from the floor below and peering behind my desk saying; we hear you’re wearing blue jeans and we have to have a look ~ Alexander Wang,
199:I closed the door and sank into my desk chair. My heart was pounding even harder. I felt like someone who had just staggered out of her car after an accident on a freeway. This was different from the cockroach and the books and the Barbie. I’d been injured. Someone had tried to physically harm me. ~ Kate White,
200:Walker Banks,” Jade said. “Marlow. Jesus fuck, what took you?” “I just got the job seven hours ago.” “What took them?” “The FBI, Warden. Moving at the speed of bureaucracy.” “No shit. I got a stack of papers on my desk could sink the Titanic.” “The Titanic is sunk.” “My point, Marlow. My point. ~ Gregg Hurwitz,
201:when I was in seminary I kept a card on my desk that said, "You are responsible to believe and to teach what the Bible teaches, not what you would like for it to teach." I realize that when there's something in the Word of God that I don't like, the problem is not with the Word of God, it's with me. ~ R C Sproul,
202:Did I tell you I finally found the perfect page-cutter? It's a pearl-handled fruit knife. My mother left me a dozen of them, I keep one in the pencil cup on my desk. Maybe I go with the wrong kind of people but i'm just not likely to have twelve guests all sitting around simultaneously eating fruit. ~ Helene Hanff,
203:Another deliberate-practice routine was the introduction of my hour tally—a sheet of paper I mounted behind my desk at MIT, and plan on remounting at Georgetown. The sheet has a row for each month on which I keep a tally of the total number of hours I’ve spent that month in a state of deliberate practice. ~ Anonymous,
204:He loved the sticky taste. What had I done? I told him and pointed to the bruised evidence sitting on my desk. “Let me see.” He stood up and asked if I’d left it for him. Perhaps I had. Or had I simply put off thinking how to dispose of it? “Is this what I think it is?” I nodded naughtily in mock shame. ~ Andr Aciman,
205:He shrugs and moves away. Suddenly he’s a sly punk running his hand along my desk, touching things that don’t belong to him. “Yeah, but we hit it off. There was this instant connection. You get it. You probably feel the same way when you get a new medical device, this sort of excitement down in your loins. ~ R S Grey,
206:If you were a man, your ladyship, I would cordially horsewhip you for that remark. As you are not, I will simply bid you farewell and leave you to your fresh and obviously debilitating grief.' He said this last with a contemptuous glance at the Italian books piled on my desk and strode from the room. ~ Deanna Raybourn,
207:I’m twenty-five years old, trying to run a growing business, raise twins on my own, and in the middle of…” My hands flailed, motioning to everything on my desk “…cancer. I don’t’ have time to go chasing romance. I don’t care how good-looking he is.” Or how massive his arms were. None of that mattered. ~ Rebecca Yarros,
208:I was waiting for my body receipt when Morelli walked in. He nodded to Ranger and grinned at me in my whiteness. “I was at my desk, and Mickey told me I had to come out to take a look,” Morelli said. “It’s floor,” I told him. “I can see that. If we add some milk and eggs, we can turn you into a cake. ~ Janet Evanovich,
209:Most of my writing life, to be perfectly honest, is not freaky, old-timey, voodoo-style Big Magic. Most of my writing life consists of nothing more than unglamorous, disciplined labor. I sit at my desk and I work like a farmer, and that's how it gets done. Most of it is not like fairy dust in the least. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert,
210:He had big wrists. They were as thick as most men’s ankles. Summer stood next to the map, staring at the pushpins, like she was leading his gaze toward them and saying: We know. I sat at my desk. “What’s your name?” I said. “For the record.” “Trifonov,” he said. His accent was heavy and abrupt, all in his throat. ~ Lee Child,
211:It may be true that my desk here is really 'nothing but' a transient eddy of electrons in the flux of universal process. Nevertheless, I find that it continues to support my feet, my revolver, and my cigars all day long. What happens when my back is turned I don't know. Or much care. That's no concern of mine. ~ Edward Abbey,
212:In luggage claim at the Minneapolis airport, the guy came up to me and said, "Maybe you're wrong, maybe stories do matter." I wrote that on a scrap of paper and put it above my desk. That was the thing that pushed me through to the end of telling Despereaux, that comment, "Maybe they do...maybe stories matter." ~ Kate DiCamillo,
213:I folded my hands back on my desk, and as I did, I saw Paul's slanted handwriting standing out against my blocky, square printing on my skin. He'd managed to find room to squeeze in the words females hurt my brain on my left hand. I raised an eyebrow at him and he gave me a look like, well it's true, isn't it? ~ Maggie Stiefvater,
214:I was waiting for my body receipt when Morelli walked in. He nodded to Ranger and grinned at me in my whiteness.
“I was at my desk, and Mickey told me I had to come out to take a look,” Morelli said.
“It’s floor,” I told him.
“I can see that. If we add some milk and eggs, we can turn you into a cake. ~ Janet Evanovich,
215:Well, you won't unless you come to lunch with me," Cal said. "I'm holding it for ransom. There's a gun
to its heel right now."
"I have lunch at my desk," Min began, and thought,Oh, for crying out loud, could I beany more
pathetic ?
"Emilio is experimenting with a lunch menu. He needs you. I need you. ~ Jennifer Crusie,
216:I hate going out for lunch during a workday because it slows down my pace and ruins my rhythm. I prefer to eat at my desk. Actually, I wander around the design studio with a plate in my hand as I dine on, for example, salmon sashimi and a salad of tomatoes and mozzarella. I often have a bit of dark chocolate after lunch. ~ Tom Ford,
217:A smell of burned hair and cotton wafted into the air as I spun toward my desk. There was a low whine from the desk and then smoke billowed out of my closed laptop.
I gaped.
My precious, perfectly brand new laptop I cherished like one would a small child.
Son of a mother…
Friend or not, it was so on ~ Jennifer L Armentrout,
218:About five years ago, I fainted from exhaustion. I hit my head on my desk. I broke my cheekbone and got four stitches on my right eye. It started me on this journey of rediscovering sleep and balance and integrating my life. I think everyone should stop and reassess their lives before you hit your head on your desk. ~ Arianna Huffington,
219:Most people dream a dream when they are asleep. But to be a writer, you have to dream while you are awake, intentionally. So I get up early in the morning, 4 o’clock, and I sit at my desk and what I do is just dream. After three or four hours, that’s enough. In the afternoon, I run. The next day, the dream will continue. ~ Haruki Murakami,
220:I'm really glad that I'm not Anna because I don't want to be there again. I've been there. But when something does happen to me, whether it's that movie or whether it's actually happened to me, I feel that it's my duty to actually share that with all of you guys. I want to immediately go to my desk and start writing about it. ~ Stevie Nicks,
221:In writing The Invention of Wings, I was inspired by the words of Professor Julius Lester, which I kept propped on my desk: “History is not just facts and events. History is also a pain in the heart and we repeat history until we are able to make another’s pain in the heart our own.” ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My deepest thanks to . . . ~ Sue Monk Kidd,
222:Of all the forms of exercise that I have done, Power Plate® training is the most concise. If I start my session at 9.30am, I know I can be at my desk by 10.15am and I can even fit in a workout before rehearsals. Power Plate® exercise is not at all intimidating, and I know that in a short session I have had a complete workout. ~ Maureen Lipman,
223:Getting up with my head full of plans, I would be working, I was sure of it, all morning long. No sooner had I sat down at my desk than the odious, vile, and persuasive refrain: “What do you expect of this world?” stopped me short. And I returned, as usual, to my bed with the hope of finding some answer, of going back to sleep. ~ Emil M Cioran,
224:Never let it be said that Harry Dresden is afraid of a dried, dead bug. Creepy or not, I wasn't going to let it ruin my concentration. So I scooped it up with the corner of the phone book and popped it into the middle drawer of my desk. Out of sight, out of mind. So I have a problem with creepy, dead, poisonous things. So sue me. ~ Jim Butcher,
225:When order in study was finally reestablished, Wrath looked downright nasty. "Next one of you mouthy assholes makes me pound my desk again, I'm throwing you the fuck out." On that note, he reached down, picked up the cowering ninety-pounds retriever, and settled George in his lap. "You're freaking out my dog and it's pissing me off. ~ J R Ward,
226:How many minutes is shortly?” I asked. “Is it one minute or eight minutes or eleven minutes? On account of if it's one minute, I can wait, probably. But eleven minutes would be out of the question.” Mr. Scary walked back to my desk. And he sat me in my chair. I glanced up at him. “All I'm looking for is a rough estimate,” I said. ~ Barbara Park,
227:I really hope so. Partly because, yes, we're duty bound to produce heirs. But also... I want everything with you, America. I want the holidays and the birthdays, the busy seasons and lazy weekends. I want peanut butter finger-prints on my desk. I want inside jokes and fights and everything. I want a life with you." - Maxon Schreave ~ Kiera Cass,
228:Imagine, if you will, you're sitting at my desk in Hawaii. You have access to the entire world, as far as you can see it. Last several days, content of internet communications. Every email that's sent. Every website that's visited by every individual. Every text message that somebody sends on their phone. Every phone call they make. ~ Edward Snowden,
229:Never let it be said that Harry Dresden is afraid of a dried, dead bug. Creepy or not, I wasn't going to let it ruin my concentration.
So I scooped it up with the corner of the phone book and popped it into the middle drawer of my desk. Out of sight, out of mind.
So I have a problem with creepy, dead, poisonous things. So sue me. ~ Jim Butcher,
230:That’s easy.” I made a rude noise. “I want to go back to ten days ago. I want to be back in my office, fucking on my desk with you wrapped around me! I want your body underneath mine looking up at me with some expression other than the one I saw when you left me at the lifts!” I rested my forehead on the steering wheel and took in air. ~ Raine Miller,
231:For me, between "Reference" and "Sketching & Conceptualizing" is the "Get the Hell Out of the Studio" step. I most often NEED to shut off the computer, push myself back from my desk and escape the studio space to let possible ideas percolate in my gray matter before committing anything to paper or digital imagery as a sketch or a concept. ~ Jeff Fisher,
232:I took a couple of forms from my desk, put them into the vamp’s mouth, and pulled them up by their edges.
“What are you doing?” Ghastek asked.
“My hole puncher broke.”
“You have no respect for the undead.”
I sighed, examining the ragged tears in the forms. “It’s a personal failing. Have you thought of anything, or can I be on my way? ~ Ilona Andrews,
233:I don't know if I've ever really touched him. Maybe once or twice when passing papers back. You know, even shorter, his hair looks so soft. Maybe it's time I rub it a little. So I can give more concrete details.

I stretch my hand across my desk, but stop when I realize the horror of what I was about to do. Pet Sean. Have I lost my mind? ~ Lindsey Leavitt,
234:And these years later, when I think of that essay, what I remember most is not the moment I saw my work in New Yorker font, not when I saw the illustration of my father, not the congratulatory phone calls and notes that followed, but that predawn morning in my bedroom, at my desk, the lights of cars below on Broadway, my computer screen glowing in the dark. ~ Dani Shapiro,
235:Maybe we’re just sad, she said, as though she is deeply sad. Always women. Drowned women make a paper river on my desk. No mention of a single son. Lovers, bereaved husbands, aggrieved fathers abound, but a son? A brother? No, only me. I am an anomaly. While she continually shuffles cards and defaces my already damaged book. How did it become so ruined? The ~ Erika Swyler,
236:The future, in fiction, is a metaphor.

A metaphor for what?

If I could have said it non-metaphorically, I would not have written all these words, this novel; and Genly Ai would never have sat down at my desk and used up my ink and typewriter ribbon in informing me, and you, rather solemnly,
that the truth is a matter of the imagination. ~ Ursula K Le Guin,
237:I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, when the furniture of my mind was all undusted still, and threw them out the window in disgust. How, then, could I have a furnished house? I would rather sit in the open air, for no dust gathers on the grass, unless where man has broken ground. ~ Henry David Thoreau,
238:I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, when the furniture of my mind was all undusted still, and I threw them out the window in disgust. How, then, could I have a furnished house? I would rather sit in the open air, for no dust gathers on the grass, unless where man has broken ground. ~ Henry David Thoreau,
239:When I'm writing, I try to have the mask of my character on as I'm walking through the world. When I'm not at my desk, the rest of the time, I try to stay in that character and see the world the way that character would It's almost like method acting in a way — keeping the character close the way the actor keeps a script close and always tries to be in character. ~ Stewart O Nan,
240:Writing keeps me at my desk, constantly trying to write a perfect sentence. It is a great privilege to make one's living from writing sentences. The sentence is the greatest invention of civilization. To sit all day long assembling these extraordinary strings of words is a marvelous thing. I couldn't ask for anything better. It's as near to godliness as I can get. ~ John Banville,
241:I wrote a huge number of letters that spring: one a week to Naoko, several to Reiko, and several more to Midori. I wrote letters in the classroom, I wrote letters at my desk at home with Seagull in my lap, I wrote letters at empty tables during my breaks at the Italian restaurant. It was as if I were writing letters to hold together the pieces of my crumbling life. ~ Haruki Murakami,
242:Why won’t you leave me alone?” I whispered one night as he hovered behind me while I tried to work at my desk.

Long minutes passed. I didn’t think he would answer. I even had time to hope he might have gone, until I felt his hand on my shoulder.

“Then I’d be alone, too," he said, and he stayed the whole night through, till the lamps burned down to nothing. ~ Leigh Bardugo,
243:This is very rare for anyone in life to pursue something and that thing being the thing you actually most want to do. It's all about the inner, rather than the outer. Whether people like or don't like my work, read it or don't read it, it's just been a gift from the gods that I've been able to sit at my desk for the last almost 50 years and do the things I've wanted to do. ~ Paul Auster,
244:a frightening number of whom had IQ scores in the low 70s? I stopped reading and just stuck the records out of sight in a bottom drawer of my desk, and never thought of them again until the end of the year when I was throwing away the accumulation of papers in my desk. I was furious with those scores. My kids were not dumb! I’ve never trusted standardized tests since. ~ Katherine Paterson,
245:please feel free to work an extra half hour from time to time if you feel you need to do those “once-in-a-while” things like polishing the cup holders and the like. I, of course, will pay you for the extra time. “The next day, when I walked into my office,” Dr. Fitzhugh reported, “my desk had been polished to a mirror-like finish, as had my chair, which I nearly slid out of. ~ Dale Carnegie,
246:All right. We can handle this,” Ian said. “We’ll do it randomly. Coin toss.”
“That works,” Matt said. “You got a coin?”
“No. Get one out of your desk.”
“You think I keep coins in my desk?” Matt asked incredulously. “Do I also go to the saloon and get weirdly possessive of my horse?” “Whatever. Kennedy?”
“I literally can’t remember the last time I touched a coin. ~ Lauren Layne,
247:When we got to class, Andy reached in to my tote and set the rose on my desk. I didn’t understand why she had pulled it out. I had been very careful in making sure it wouldn’t get crushed. It wasn’t until I saw Jean tighten her brows when Andy said in a really loud voice, “David, that rose you gave Isis is beautiful,” that I understood Andy’s reason for putting the flower on display. ~ Nely Cab,
248:But, sir!” Andy protested. “I don’t know what happened to it. I didn’t do anything with my desk. Did you see me move it?” “My vision is not in question, young man. You expect me to believe your desk simply vanished?” “I don’t know what happened to it. I just know I didn’t do anything with it.” Then, not quietly enough under his breath, Andy added, “You need to get your eyes examined. ~ L R W Lee,
249:Dreamed of maman again. She was telling me—O cruelty!—that I didn’t really love her. But I took it calmly, because I was so sure it wasn’t true.

The idea that death would be a kind of sleep. But it would be horrible if we had to dream eternally.

(And this morning, her birthday. I always gave her a rose. Bought two at the little market of Mers Sultan and put them on my desk) ~ Roland Barthes,
250:I fell asleep at my desk many times. This was when working on events—virtually every one I’ve done in the last 5 years. I was not confronting the writing of speeches. In fact, I was not wanting to confront what I was doing at the time—being irresponsible... I am now known for falling asleep. This has happened 50 times in the last 5 years and probably 20 times at my desk in the last 2 years. ~ Mike Rinder,
251:An old Russian woman goes into Kremlin, gets an audience with Mikhail Gorbachev and says, In America anyone can go to the White House, walk up to Reagan's desk and say, 'I don't like the way you are running the country.' Gorbachev replied, You can do the same thing in the Soviet Union. You can go into the Kremlin, walk up to my desk and say 'I don't like the way Reagan is running his country.' ~ Ronald Reagan,
252:I reached for the switch on my desk lamp and flashed HELLO.
The lights switched off in Cassidy's bedroom, and her flashlight flicked on.
SORRY.
"She's sorry," I told Cooper, because he didn't understand Morse code.
He lifted his head as if to say But you already knew that, old sport.
Her flashlight flickered again.
FORGIVE ME.
This time, I didn't hesitate.
ALWAYS, I replied. ~ Robyn Schneider,
253:They don't make poles long enough for me want to touch Microsoft products, and I don't want any mass-marketed game-playing device or Windows appliance near my desk or on my network. This is my workbench, dammit, it's not a pretty box to impress people with graphics and sounds. When I work at this system up to 12 hours a day, I'm profoundly uninterested in what user interface a novice user would prefer. ~ Erik Naggum,
254:He’d let his anger take him to a place that his ass might have trouble getting out of, or maybe I just didn’t understand the normal branch of the service whose badge I carried. She put her elbows on the arms of her chair, her hands like a double fist in front of her lips. “Second, get the fuck off my desk.” Oh, I did understand the normal branch of the service. It worked just like all the others. ~ Laurell K Hamilton,
255:Your perception is riveting, Amal," he says in a bored and sarcastic tone, dropping the note down on my desk. "It's comforting to know that there are people in my class who have the maturity and intelligence to make derogatory comments about other people's external appearances."

Now what am I supposed to say to that?

"What do you have to say for yourself?"

Friggin' mind reader. ~ Randa Abdel Fattah,
256:Jonathan Green sat in one of the leather director’s chairs across from my desk and the two lesser attorneys went to the couch. Truly stayed on his feet. The videographer noticed the Pinocchio clock on the wall, then hustled around to the opposite side of my desk so that he could get both me and the clock in the frame. The Pinocchio clock has eyes that move side to side as it tocks. Photogenic. Like Green. ~ Robert Crais,
257:She’s there every day,' the writer says. 'Every time I’m about to sit down at my desk I feel the need to look at her. Who knows what she’s reading? I know it isn’t a book of mine, and instinctively I suffer at the thought, I feel the jealousy of my books, which would like to be read the way she reads. I never tire of watching her: she seems to live in a sphere suspended in another time and another space. ~ Italo Calvino,
258:tapped my pen against my desk. I needed to figure this out. Either fire her or forget about her. But I needed to do something. I found myself spending more and more time in my office with the door closed in an attempt to create some distance between Harper and me. Ordinarily, I’d spend time out on the floor with people, checking in on how things were going. But the open-plan area felt like contaminated land. ~ Louise Bay,
259:I’m not your gilded prince with the gilded chairs, Letty,” Geoff said simply. “I couldn’t be if I tried.”

“I wouldn’t want you to be.” Letty’s voice felt rusty.

“I’m not particularly bold or dashing or heroic. I’m happier at my desk than in a black cloak. And I’ve never entirely mastered all the steps of the quadrille.” He looked soberly down at her. “But what I am is yours, if you’ll still have me. ~ Lauren Willig,
260:An Augury
Upon my desk a single spray,
With starry blossoms fraught.
I write in many an idle way,
Thinking one serious thought.
'O flowers, a fine Greek name ye bear,
And with a fine Greek grace.'
Be still, O heart, that turns to share
The sunshine of a face.
'Have ye no messages-no brief,
Still sign: 'Despair', or 'Hope'?'
A sudden stir of stem and leafA breath of heliotrope!
~ Ambrose Bierce,
261:I'm trolling through the recesses of my mind for the things I did with my kids when they used to like to do things with me. They don't want to be around me now. I look back on these times - all those little funny pottery dishes that you'd pay for, and they'd paint, and they were ugly, and you glazed them, and you'd go back, pick them up, and it's like, "Oh, now I've got to put this on my desk." There's all that kind of stuff. ~ Michelle Obama,
262:Empress of the Universe would be way too much work. I'd have to wear fancy clothes, probably including lady shoes with pointed toes, and could no longer slouch into the study in PJs and slippers. Someone would (avert!) straighten my desk. Someone would reorganize my yarn stash...in fact, they'd assign someone else to knit my socks, thus depriving me of an excuse to rest my brain while pretending to accomplish something useful. ~ Elizabeth Moon,
263:He’s there for good, Steven. Stone is there for good.” He stays silent yet close, as we walk into my foyer and into my office. Ignoring him to the best of my ability, mostly out of shame, I turn on my computer and kick off my red-bottomed heels. “I’m not asking for him not to be,” he rasps. I let my gaze flick up to meet his as he looms over my desk, his large hands splayed on the dark, polished wood. “I’m demanding what’s left. ~ Rachel Robinson,
264:O, may you look, full moon that shines, On my pain for this last time: So many midnights from my desk, I have seen you, keeping watch: When over my books and paper,    [390] Saddest friend, you appear! Ah! If on the mountain height I might stand in your sweet light, Float with spirits in mountain caves, Swim the meadows in twilight’ waves,    [395] Free from the smoke of knowledge too, Bathe in your health-giving dew! ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,
265:I have made no attempt at chronology. My writing hasn’t changed much over the years. That’s because I haven’t changed. I am still the impractical dreamer that I was sixty years ago, when I decided that writing would be my vocation and my profession. I do not suffer from writer’s block. I have only to sit down at my desk for the words to come tumbling on to my writing pad. And if an ant moves across my desk, I shall record its transit. ~ Ruskin Bond,
266:Time and again, I was told, “Don’t do it.” But sometimes the best advice is that which you don’t take. Instead of listening to people who told me to quit, I heeded the quote that sits on a small placard on my desk: “What can be conceived can be created.” I discovered only recently that it was from a 1980s-era car advertisement. That’s OK, though, because it reminds me that dreams should be lofty. T oby Cosgrove, MD, CEO of Cleveland Clinic ~ Anonymous,
267:We had to get out of Chicago so quick. Election night happens, suddenly I'm talking to Ben Bernanke and Hank Paulson and trying to figure out whether the world's going to fly apart, and Michelle is trying to figure out where the girls are going to go to school. And we pack up and leave and basically our house in Chicago just became like a time capsule. My desk in my home office still had stacks of articles and bills and stuff from 2008. ~ Barack Obama,
268:When you can dump a load of bricks on a corner lot, and let me watch them arrange themselves into a house - when you can empty a handful of springs and wheels and screws on my desk, and let me see them gather themselves together into a watch - it will be easier for me to believe that all these thousands of worlds could have been created, balanced, and set to moving in their separate orbits, all without any directing intelligence at all. ~ Bruce Barton,
269:I wrote to find beauty and purpose, to know that love is possible and lasting and real, to see day lilies and swimming pools, loyalty and devotion, even though my eyes were closed, and all that surrounded me was a darkened room. I wrote because that was who I was at the core, and if I was too damaged to walk around the block, I was lucky all the same. Once I got to my desk, once I started writing, I still believed anything was possible. ~ Alice Hoffman,
270:It might be a little silly for someone getting to be my age to put this into words, but I just want to make sure I get the facts down clearly : I'm the kind of person who likes to be by himself. To put a finer point on it, I'm the type of person who doesn't find it painful to be alone. I find spending an hour or two everyday running alone, not speaking to anyone as well as four of five hours at my desk, to be neither difficult or boring. ~ Haruki Murakami,
271:Raining. Oh, brother, a scratch on the fender. Damn rabbi on his unicycle.
Wait a minute, where are my car keys? Could have sworn I left them in this pocket. No, just some loose change and ticket stubs from the all-black version of Elaine Stritch’ s one-woman show.
Did I check my desk? Better go back inside. What’s in the top drawer here? Hmm. Envelopes, my paper clips, a loaded revolver in case the tenant in 2A begins yodelling again. ~ Woody Allen,
272:SKANK is scribbled in ballpoint pen on my desk. I don’t exactly know why my heart starts to thump. It’s not like there aren’t messages and other handiwork all over this school. Take auditorium seat J-8. I found out during last week’s Expectations of Excellence assembly that it’s got a faded image of a penis carved on the armrest. No one likes to sit in the Pecker Chair for an assembly. People make fun of you the whole day after that. Ask Rob. ~ Meg Medina,
273:There was no deadly serpent hidden in my desk drawer, no assegais hurtling at my neck from a passing car, nothing. Even Deborah and her blistering arm punches were taking a holiday. I saw her and even spoke to her, of course. Her arm was still in a cast, and I would have expected her to call on me quite often for help, but she did not. Duarte was apparently picking up the slack, and Debs seemed content to live on a much lower dose of Dexter. So ~ Jeff Lindsay,
274:The book—” Cinderella started. “Is waiting for you on my desk. I’ll be along in a minute, although I shall miss you every second we are apart,” he said, clasping her hands. “I would have thought you wouldn’t act so silly in front of your men.” Cinderella plucked her hands from his grasp. “Where would be the fun in that, Pet?” She waggled her hand at him. “Be gone. I want my book.” “As you wish, Dearest,” he said before he headed up the hallway. Ensign ~ K M Shea,
275:The phone rang. I picked it up.
“Are you sitting down?” Curran's voice asked.
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Click.
I listened to the disconnect signal. If he wanted me to sit, then I'd stand. I got up. The chair got up with me and I ended up bent over my desk, with the chair stuck to my butt. I grabbed the edge of the chair and tried to pull it off.
It remained stuck.
I would murder him. Slowly. And I'd enjoy every second of it. ~ Ilona Andrews,
276:I took a deep breath and recited my vulnerability prayer as I waited for my turn: Give me the courage to show up and let myself be seen. Then, seconds before I was introduced, I thought about a paperweight on my desk that reads, “What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?” I pushed that question out of my head to make room for a new question. As I walked up to the stage, I literally whispered aloud, “What’s worth doing even if I fail? ~ Bren Brown,
277:I love a vision board. I have one hanging over my desk right now. Because what you see, you become, and it reminds you when you start getting busy in the day, about your vision. I like words more than pictures. I have a card sitting on my desk right now that says, "I only give out that which I wish to receive in return." It's one of Louise Hay's cards. Words remind me more and it gives me something to hold onto when I'm frantic about something else. ~ Iyanla Vanzant,
278:I wonder whether the academics at this institution are as rigid as they ought to be." Finn looks pointedly at the slate I left on my desk. Someone has drawn a crude rendition of a woman's body - mine, probably - along with mathematical equations for the size of her rather impressive bosom.
Go back to your island, rat is scrawled at the bottom.
"Yes," I say, dryly. "Their calculations are entirely wrong. It reflects poorly on the school. ~ Kiersten White,
279:I sink down onto my desk chair and take it in. He’s sent a fish tank for Steve. And… a friend, I note, seeing a second fish in the tank. This one’s got some white on its fins, which will be helpful in telling them apart. I tap on the side of the glass and Steve waves his little fish fin at me while blowing bubble kisses. No, not really. He’s a fish, and they do absolutely nothing. I unscrew the lid to the goldfish and drop a few flakes in. That gets their attention ~ Jana Aston,
280:Jane to Cosmo--
So you're thinking, you know, 'WTF, I thought we were going to do the horizontal mambo, and she has /questions/?' But really, I'm just keeping the conversation going until we can get into the bedroom, because I know that as soon as I touch you, I'm going to go up in flames, and I really don't want our first time to be on my office floor. Or on my desk. I mean, how would I ever get anything done again with that kind of vibe coming off of it? ~ Suzanne Brockmann,
281:I know, you've been here a year, you think these people are normal. Well, they're not. WE'RE not. I look in the library, I call up books on my desk. Old ones, because they won't let us have anything new, but I've got a pretty good idea what children are, and we're not children. Children can lose sometimes, and nobody cares. Children aren't in armies, they aren't COMMANDERS, they don't rule over forty other kids, it's more than anybody can take and not get crazy. ~ Orson Scott Card,
282:A rather insistent cross-examiner asks a pathologist whether he can be absolutely sure that a certain patient was dead before he began the autopsy. The pathologist says he’s absolutely certain. Oh, but how can you be so sure? Because, the pathologist says, his brain was in a jar sitting on my desk. But, says the cross-examiner, could the patient still have been alive nevertheless? Well, comes the answer, it’s possible he could have been alive and practicing law somewhere. ~ Ian McEwan,
283:The years passed unnoticed and unremembered, and one autumn morning I found myself suddenly forty-five years old. It was a time for weighing youthful hopes against mature accomplishment, for it was quite certain that I had by then done all I was ever going to do. Sitting alone at my desk that evening of my forty-fifth birthday I asked that least original of introspective questions: Where had it all gone? And the somewhat less banal question: What, after all, had it been? My ~ Trevanian,
284:From that, a person wouldn’t know it was twenty-seven miles long and up to three miles wide in the middle. They wouldn’t know it held buildings and people. Sitting at my desk in the back row, I’d raised my hand and after a while the schoolteacher, Miss Marquart, called on me. ‘What’s keeping us from floating away?’ I said. ‘God’s will.’ ‘That’s all?’ I got a whipping for asking a disrespectful question about God, and I figured I deserved it since what I’d said came out wrong. ~ Ann Weisgarber,
285:,My head is like a ridiculous barn packed full of stuff I want to write about,’ she said. 'Images, scenes, snatches of words…in my mind they’re all growing, all alive. Write! they shout at me. A great new story is about to be born - I can feel it. It’ll transport me to some brand-new place. Problem is, once I sit at my desk and put them all down on paper, I realize something vital is missing. It doesn’t crystallize - no crystals, just pebbles. And I’m not transported anywhere. ~ Haruki Murakami,
286:When I was finished, she licked and kissed up my abs, then tugged at my nipple rings and then sat back. Still spread out on my desk. I was pretty fucking sure she was going to tell me she was the gatekeeper, at this point, and I would absolutely, without a doubt, give up Jase Steel, CEO and everything I had worked for to become Vinz Clortho, Keymaster of Gozer. I sat down in my chair, rolled up to her and rubbed my finger on her outer lips as I looked up at her, my sexy tiger, in awe. ~ M J Fields,
287:Kate?”
I have a superior reaction time. That was why although I shot out of my chair, jumped onto my desk, and attempted to stab the intruder into my office in the throat, I stopped the blade two inches before it touched Andrea’s neck. Because she was my best friend, and sticking knives into your best friend’s windpipe was generally considered to be a social faux pas.
Andrea stared at the black blade of the throwing dagger. “That was great,” she said. “What will you do for a dollar? ~ Ilona Andrews,
288:I'm listening
to the new Killers CD
when Goodnight, Travel Well
comes on.
Dark.
Eerie.
Sad.
The room gets cold.
The light on my desk flickers.
He's here.
He loved The Killers.
I sit there, knowing he's listening too.
I close my eyes,
remembering,
wanting it to be different,
hating the world cause it's not.
When the last note fades,
the room warms up,
and the light brightens.
He's gone.
Goodnight, Lucca.
Travel Well. ~ Lisa Schroeder,
289:I took a deep breath and recited my vulnerability prayer as I waited for my turn: Give me the courage to show up and let myself be seen. Then, seconds before I was introduced, I thought about a paperweight on my desk that reads, “What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?” I pushed that question out of my head to make room for a new question. As I walked up to the stage, I literally whispered aloud, “What’s worth doing even if I fail?” I honestly don’t remember much of what I ~ Bren Brown,
290:Come in,” I barked at the loud rap on the door. Harper entered the room. I groaned. Being in the same room as her was the very last thing I needed. “What?” I asked as she strode toward me. “The revised Bangladesh report.” She held up some papers. “You could have left it with Donna.” She placed the report down on my desk with a bang. “I’m sure if I’d left it with Donna, you’d have told me I should have handed it to you directly.” Oh. Sass. I hadn’t been expecting that. I had to bite down a grin. ~ Louise Bay,
291:make it a practice to avoid hating anyone. If someone's been guilty of despicable actions, especially toward me, I try to forget him. I used to follow a practice - somewhat contrived, I admit - to write the man's name on a piece of scrap paper, drop it into the lowest drawer of my desk, and say to myself: "That finishes the incident, and so far as I'm concerned, that fellow." The drawer became over the years a sort of private wastebasket for crumbled-up spite and discarded personalities. ~ Dwight D Eisenhower,
292:As a young officer, it is very frustrating," recalls David Silverman. "My tour in Iraq in 2005, 2006-early on, we got a target list by the higher powers that said, 'This person is a bad person, you should take out the bad guy.' We planned, executed and were able to capture this person and turn him into the judicial system for prosecution. And then, literally five months later, the same target package ends up on my desk again. I said, 'Wait a minute, I just risked life and limb to go find this guy.' ~ Anonymous,
293:Echo continued to tap her finger to her chin and created more dots on her face while she stared at the canvas. The intensity of her stare shocked me.
The art teacher stacked the bowls and walked toward the door. “She’s in the zone. Good luck getting her attention. Do me a favor. If she ends up painting her whole face, grab my camera from my desk and take a picture. I’ll add it to my collection.” She gazed at Echo and smiled. “I’ll title that one Smurf. Nice tats, by the way.” ~ Katie McGarry,
294:I was still wrapped in my pink cloud of satisfaction a little before ten o’clock, when the phone on my desk rang. I stepped over and picked it up with a cheerful, “Hello, Morgan!” and was rewarded with the surly voice of my sister, Deborah. “Where are you?” she said, rather unnecessarily, I thought. If I was talking to her from a phone attached to my desk by a long wire, where would I be? Maybe cell phones really do destroy brain tissue. “I’m right here, on the other end of the telephone,” I said. ~ Jeff Lindsay,
295:My head is like some ridiculous barn packed full of stuff I
want to write about,” she said. “Images, scenes, snatches of
words … in my mind they’re all glowing, all alive. Write! they
shout at me. A great new story is about to be born I can feel it.
It’ll transport me to some brand-new place. Problem is, once I
sit at my desk and put them all down on paper, I realize
something vital is missing. It doesn’t crystallize—no crystals,
just pebbles. And I’m not transported anywhere. ~ Haruki Murakami,
296:But, in the end, the books that surround me are the books that made me, through my reading (and misreading) of them; they fall in piles on my desk, they stack behind me on my shelves, they surprise me every time I look for one and find ten more I had forgotten about. I love their covers, their weight and their substance. And like the child I was, with the key to the world that reading gave me, it is still exciting for me to find a new book, open it at the first page and plunge in, head first, heart deep. ~ Ramona Koval,
297:When it's the two of us and that pussy of yours is soft, swollen, and wet, I'll be the one in control. I'll have you wherever and whenever I want - in my bed, on my desk, on the floor right now if I want to. I'm going to own that sexy body of yours so thoroughly that you're going to beg for my cock, because it's going to be the only thing in the world that you want. And once I'm buried balls deep in you and you are filled with me, I'm going to make you come apart in the best way possible. Do you understand? ~ Avery Flynn,
298:This was the sum of everything I’d been in my life—and more: who I am when I sing and stir-fry vegetables for my family and friends on Sunday afternoons; who I am when I wake up on freezing nights and want nothing more than to throw on a sweater, rush to my desk, and write about the person I know no one knows I am; who I am when I crave to be naked with another naked body, or when I crave to be alone in the world; who I am when every part of me seems miles and centuries apart and each swears it bears my name. ~ Andr Aciman,
299:I think it takes an amazing amount of energy to convince oneself that the Forever Person isn't just around the corner. In the end I believe we never do convince ourselves. I know that I found it increasingly hard to maintain the pose of emotional self-sufficiency lying on my bed and sitting at my desk, watching the gulls cartwheeling in the clouds over the bridges, cradling myself in my own arms, breathing warm chocolate-and-vodka breath on a rose I had found on a street corner, trying to force it to bloom. ~ Douglas Coupland,
300:If I keep observing the uranium, which means a little more than keeping my eyes on the pot on my desk and involves something akin to surrounding it with a whole system of Geiger counters, I can freeze it in such a way that it stops emitting radiation.
Although Turing first suggested the idea as a theoretical construct, it turns out that it is not just mathematical fiction. Experiments in the last decade have demonstrated the real possibility of using observation to inhibit the progress of a quantum system. ~ Marcus du Sautoy,
301:my desk, and there, with my own hand, I kill it. It’s not that I want to kill it, but it’s the only way I can get something that is so three-dimensional onto the flat page. Just to make sure the job is done I stick it into place with a pin. Imagine running over a butterfly with an SUV. Everything that was beautiful about this living thing—all the color, the light and movement—is gone. What I’m left with is the dry husk of my friend, the broken body chipped, dismantled, and poorly reassembled. Dead. That’s my book. ~ Ann Patchett,
302:It was great not having a roommate. I didn’t have to turn the lights off and go to bed, like, ever. I took my new medicine and stayed up doing homework late in the night, hyperfocused and erasing and reprinting my math homework. Branches would bang on the glass and scare the shit out of me; there was also a stupid owl out there that was ridiculously loud and hooty. So I was always practically falling out of my desk chair. (Stimulants make the nerves a bit . . . jangly, you know. Especially at three in the morning.) I ~ Cat Marnell,
303:Just as the verbal illustrations are not the place to try to hone your skills as a novelist, they are also not the place to work out your feelings about your latest breakup or other assorted existential crises. If I am copyediting your batch and see a string of verbal illustrations like < I wonder why I do this job >, < thinking dark thoughts >, and < all hope is lost >, I will stop to wonder if you are okay, and then I will have to leave my desk and speak to you in person, which will terrify us both. ~ Kory Stamper,
304:Just your thing. It’s from a Massachusetts trial. A rather insistent cross-examiner asks a pathologist whether he can be absolutely sure that a certain patient was dead before he began the autopsy. The pathologist says he’s absolutely certain. Oh, but how can you be so sure? Because, the pathologist says, his brain was in a jar sitting on my desk. But, says the cross-examiner, could the patient still have been alive nevertheless? Well, comes the answer, it’s possible he could have been alive and practicing law somewhere. ~ Ian McEwan,
305:But of course that was absurd. I was just being my normal, nasty, and suspicious self, seeing wickedness lurking in every shadow—even when there wasn’t actually a shadow. I pushed the thought away and stepped over to my desk to see whether any real damage had been done. The coffee had spilled right in the center of the blotter, which was lucky. One small tendril had splatted onto a file folder on the right-hand side, but only enough to leave a small stain on the outside, and not enough to soak through to the papers inside. ~ Jeff Lindsay,
306:I’m the kind of person who likes to be by himself. To put a finer point on it, I’m the type of person who doesn’t find it painful to be alone. I find spending an hour or two every day running alone, not speaking to anyone, as well as four or five hours alone at my desk, to be neither difficult nor boring. I’ve had this tendency ever since I was young, when, given a choice, I much preferred reading books on my own or concentrating on listening to music over being with someone else. I could always think of things to do by myself. ~ Haruki Murakami,
307:And sometimes, when the day loomed grey, I'd sit at my desk and remember the heat of that summer. I’d remember the smells of tuberose that were carried by the wind, and the smell of octopus cooking on stinking griddles. I’d remember the sound of our laughter and the sound of a doughnut seller, and I’d remember the red canvas shoes I lost in the sea, and the taste of pastis and the taste of his skin, and a sky so blue it would defy anything else to be blue again. And I’d remember my love for a man that almost made everything possible. ~ Sarah Winman,
308:I don't sleep for two night. Instead I am wide awake and tossing. Each day I feel less like the person I was the day before, my body hurtling so fast in one direction that my mind cannot keep pace. I can scarcely remember who I was before my body became like this. I dream in bright, swirling colors. The dreams are so vivid that they linger with me long after I've woken up, I feel the same feelings that grip me at night while I'm at my desk, or on the subway. I will freeze, lost in them-scared, worried, or comforted in the same way-for hours. ~ Zinzi Clemmons,
309:And, as for me, if, by any possibility, there be any as yet undiscovered prime thing in me; if I shall ever deserve any real repute in that small but high hushed world which I might not be unreasonably ambitious of; if hereafter I shall do anything that, upon the whole, a man might rather have done than to have left undone; if, at my death, my executors, or more properly my creditors, find any precious MSS. in my desk, then here I prospectively ascribe all the honor and the glory to whaling; for a whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard. ~ Herman Melville,
310:And, as for me, if, by any possibility, there be any as yet undiscovered prime thing in me; if I shall ever deserve any real repute in that small but high hushed world which I might not be unreasonably ambitious of; if hereafter I shall do anything that, upon the whole, a man might rather have done than to have left undone; if, at my death, my executors, or more properly my creditors, find any precious MSS. in my desk, then here I prospectively ascribe all the honour and the glory to whaling; for a whaleship was my Yale College and my Harvard. ~ Herman Melville,
311:And, as for me, if, by any possibility, there be any as yet undiscovered prime thing in me; if I shall ever deserve any real repute in that small but high hushed world which I might not be unreasonably ambitious of ; if hereafter I shall do anything that, upon the whole, a man might rather have done than to have left undone ; if, at my death, my executors, or more properly my creditors, find any precious MSS. in my desk, then here I prospectively ascribe all the honour and the glory to whaling; for a whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard. ~ Herman Melville,
312:The best way to get quiet, other than the combination of extensive therapy, Prozac, and a lobotomy, is first to notice that the station is on. KFKD [K-Fucked] is on every single morning when I sit down at my desk. So I sit for a moment and then say a small prayer--please help me get out of the way so I can write what wants to be written. Sometimes ritual quiets the racket. Try it. Any number of things may work for you--an altar, for instance, or votive candles, sage smudges, small-animal sacrifices, especially now that the Supreme Court has legalized them. ~ Anne Lamott,
313:Since I was still feeling stupidly bright and chipper, I did not stop for a cup of the lethal coffee that might, after all, kill the buzz—or even me. Instead I went directly to my desk, where I found Deborah waiting for me, slumped into my chair and looking like the poster girl for the National Brooding Outrage Foundation. Her left arm was still in a sling, but her cast had lost its clean and bright patina, and she had leaned it against my desk blotter and knocked over my pencil holder. But nobody is perfect, and it was such a happy morning, so I let it go. ~ Jeff Lindsay,
314:...Alan, the first winter we knew him, stood at my desk in the Cathedral library and remarked, "I think you and Hugh live more existentially than most people."

I felt we'd made it: we, like Sartre and Camus and Kierkegaard, were existential; we were really with it. It doesn't matter that I'm still not quite sure what living existentially means, though I have a suspicion that it's not far from living ontologically, because it's one of those words that's outside the realm of provable fact and touches on mystery. Nothing important is completely explicable. ~ Madeleine L Engle,
315:Every dictionary contains a world. I open a book of thieves’ slang from Queen Anne’s reign and they have a hundred words for swords, for wenches, and for being hanged. They did no die, they danced on nothing. Then I peek into any one of my rural Victorian dictionaries, compiled by a lonely clergyman, with words for coppices, thickets, lanes, diseases of horses and innumerable terms for kinds of eel. They gave names to the things of their lives, and their lives are collected in these dictionaries – every detail and joke and belief. I have their worlds piled up on my desk. ~ Mark Forsyth,
316:Sunday Afternoons
I sit at home
at my desk alone
as I used to do
on many sunday afternoons
when you came back to me,
your arms ached for me,
and your arms would close me in
though they smelled of other women.
I think of you
on Sunday afternoons.
Your sweet head would bow,
like a child somehow,
down to me and your hair and your eyes were wild.
We would embrace on the floorYou see my back´s still sore.
You knew how easily I bruised,
It´s a soreness I would never lose.
I think of you
on Sunday afternoons.
~ Erica Jong,
317:It might be a little silly for someone getting to be my age to put this into words, but I just want to make sure I get the cats down clearly: I'm the kind of person who doesn't find it painful to be alone. I find spending an hour or two every day running alone, not speaking to anyone, as well as four or five hours alone at my desk, to be neither difficult nor boring. I've had this tendency ever since I was young, when given a choice, I much prefer reading books on my own or concentrating on listening to music over being with someone else. I could always think of things by myself. ~ Haruki Murakami,
318:Father-Speak "Our baby napped exclusively in her swing for months. I work at home, and I kept the swing next to my desk. It was the only way I could get Anna to sleep for more than twenty minutes. Eventually she grew too big for the swing and started sleeping in her crib in my office. If she woke mid-nap, I would jostle the crib, and she would return to sleep. Now the crib is in her room (with a radio set to a talk station), and she takes a two-hour nap. Honestly though, the swing was worth its weight in gold for me when she was an infant." —Hector, father of eleven-month-old Anna ~ Elizabeth Pantley,
319:ON THE morning of April 6, 2007, I was lying on the floor of my home office in a pool of blood. On my way down, my head had hit the corner of my desk, cutting my eye and breaking my cheekbone. I had collapsed from exhaustion and lack of sleep. In the wake of my collapse, I found myself going from doctor to doctor, from brain MRI to CAT scan to echocardiogram, to find out if there was any underlying medical problem beyond exhaustion. There wasn’t, but doctors’ waiting rooms, it turns out, were good places for me to ask myself a lot of questions about the kind of life I was living. ~ Arianna Huffington,
320:Okay,” I mumble, completely bemused, bewildered, and shell-shocked. He leans over my desk. What now? I am caught in his hypnotic gaze. “Love doing business with you, Mrs. Grey.” He leans in closer as I sit paralyzed, and he plants a soft tender kiss on my lips. “Laters baby,” he murmurs. He stands abruptly, winks at me, and leaves. I lay my head on my desk, feeling like I’ve been run over by a freight train – the freight train that is my beloved husband. He has to be the most frustrating, annoying, contrary man on the planet. I sit up and frantically rub my eyes. What have I just agreed to? ~ E L James,
321:SOMEHOW I PULLED MYSELF OUT OF BED AND WENT IN TO work the next day, in spite of the gnawing sense of dull despair that bloomed in me like a brittle garden of thorns. I felt wrapped in a fog of dull pain that hurt only enough to remind me that it, too, was without purpose, and there seemed no point to going through the empty motions of breakfast, the long slow drive to work, no reason at all beyond the slavery of habit. But I did it, allowing muscle memory to push me all the way into the chair at my desk, where I sat, turned on the computer, and let the day drag me off into gray drudgery. ~ Jeff Lindsay,
322:I bought books on grieving, on loss and bereavement. They spilled over my desk in tottering piles. Like a good academic, I thought books were for answers. Was it reassuring to be told that everyone sees ghosts? That everyone stops eating? Or can’t stop eating? Or that grief comes in stages that can be numbered and pinned like beetles in boxes? I read that after denial comes grief. Or anger. Or guilt. I remember worrying about which stage I was at. I wanted to taxonomise the process, order it, make it sensible. But there was no sense, and I didn’t recognise any of these emotions at all. Weeks ~ Helen Macdonald,
323:People often ask me what advice I have for writers, and I reply that the most important responsibility I believe a writer has is to his or her personal truth. Don't be misled by the best seller lists. Just do what feels true to you. Speak your heart, however strange or revelatory it is. Don't be ashamed of how your imagination works. What a reader wants to discover in a book is what you hold uniquely in your head."I think making stories which touch people deeply is always hard. I've been writing plays and books for 20 years and I still go to my desk every morning with a mixture of excitement and dread. ~ Clive Barker,
324:Treat writing as a job. Be disciplined. Lots of writers get a bit OCD-ish about this. Graham Greene famously wrote 500 words a day. Jean Plaidy managed 5,000 before lunch, then spent the afternoon answering fan mail. My minimum is 1,000 words a day – which is sometimes easy to achieve, and is sometimes, frankly, like shitting a brick, but I will make myself stay at my desk until I've got there, because I know that by doing that I am inching the book forward. Those 1,000 words might well be rubbish–they often are. But then, it is always easier to return to rubbish words at a later date and make them better. ~ Sarah Waters,
325:Unlike my father, who blindly churned out one canvas after another, I had real ideas about the artistic life. Seated at my desk, my beret as tight as an acorn’s cap, I projected myself into the world represented in the art books I’d borrowed from the public library. Leafing past the paintings, I would admire the photographs of the artists seated in their garrets, dressed in tattered smocks and frowning in the direction of their beefy nude models. To spend your days in the company of naked men – that was the life for me. ‘Turn a bit to the left, Jean-Claude. I long to capture the playful quality of your buttocks. ~ David Sedaris,
326:Like every experience that marks us for a lifetime, I found myself turned inside out, drawn and quartered. this was the sum of everything I'd been in my life--and more: who I am when I sing and stir-fry vegetables for my family and friends on Sunday afternoons; who I am when I wake up on freezing nights and want nothing more than to throw on a sweater, rush to my desk, and write about the person I know no one knows I am; who I am when I crave to be naked with another naked body, or when I crave to be alone in the world; who I am when every part of me seems miles and centuries apart and each swears it bears my name. ~ Andr Aciman,
327:Most anyone who has endeavored to maintain the habit of prayer, or making art, or regular exercise...knows the syndrome well. When I sit down to pray or write, a host of thoughts arise. I should call to find out how so-and-so is doing. I should dust and organize my desk, because I will get more work done in a neater space. While I'm at it, I might as well load and start the washing machine. I may truly desire to write, but as I am pulled to one task after another I lose the ability to concentrate on the work at hand. Any activity, even scrubbing the toilet, seems more compelling than sitting down to face the blank page. ~ Kathleen Norris,
328:16Most anyone who has endeavored to maintain the habit of prayer, or making art, or regular exercise...knows the syndrome well. When I sit down to pray or write, a host of thoughts arise. I should call to find out how so-and-so is doing. I should dust and organize my desk, because I will get more work done in a neater space. While I'm at it, I might as well load and start the washing machine. I may truly desire to write, but as I am pulled to one task after another I lose the ability to concentrate on the work at hand. Any activity, even scrubbing the toilet, seems more compelling than sitting down to face the blank page. ~ Kathleen Norris,
329:I looked at him sitting there at my desk, in my chair, drinking from my mug, and I discovered that I did not want to have a pleasant chat with someone who was working so hard to become me. But what I really wanted to do with him required a little more privacy than we had here in the heart of police headquarters, as well as a long stretch of uninterrupted time and a few rolls of duct tape. But of course, someone at the network might miss Robert sooner or later, and so the realities of civilized discourse left me no choice except to play the game properly. So I reached across the desk—my desk—and grabbed a pastelito from the box. ~ Jeff Lindsay,
330:The vampire gagged. The muscles of its neck constricted, widened, constricted again, and it disgorged a six-inch-long metal cylinder onto my desk. The bloodsucker grasped it, twisted the cylinder’s halves apart, and retrieved a roll of papers. “Photographs,” Ghastek said, handing me a couple of sheets from the roll.
“That’s disgusting.”
“He is thirty years old,” Ghastek said. “All his internal organs, with the exception of the heart, atrophied long ago. The throat makes for a very good storage cavity. People seem to prefer it to the anus.”
Translation: be happy I didn’t pull it out of my ass. Thank the gods for small favors. ~ Ilona Andrews,
331:Writing, to me, is the meaning of life. My life became something special because of writing. My desk is for me what the phone booth is for Clark Kent: Here I become Superman. I can do anything I want when I’m writing. I’m not afraid anymore. I can take anything from my imagination. I can save the world when I’m writing. But as soon as I leave the desk, I become Clark Kent again. Trust me, I am the most ordinary person in the world. I’m a good husband, I don’t yell at anyone, never lose it. But I don’t have a single idea for my literature in everyday life. When I run, cook or relax on the beach, there is absolutely nothing on my mind. ~ Haruki Murakami,
332:Writing keeps me at my desk, constantly trying to write a perfect sentence. It is a great privilege to make one’s living from writing sentences. The sentence is the greatest invention of civilization. To sit all day long assembling these extraordinary strings of words is a marvelous thing…

For me, a line has to sing before it does anything else. The great thrill is when a sentence that starts out being completely plain suddenly begins to sing, rising far above itself and above any expectation I might have had for it. That’s what keeps me going on those dark December days when I think about how I could be living instead of writing. ~ John Banville,
333:My favorite “trick” is to stop writing at a point where I know that I can pick up easily the next day. I’ll stop in mid-paragraph, often in midsentence. It makes getting out of bed so much easier, because I know that all I’ll have to do to be productive is complete the sentence. And by then I’ll be seated at my desk, coffee and Oreo cookie at hand, the morning’s inertia overcome. There’s an added advantage: The human brain hates incomplete sentences. All night my mind will have secretly worked on the passage and likely mapped out the remainder of the page, even the chapter, while simultaneously sending me on a dinner date with Cate Blanchett. ~ Erik Larson,
334:She stared at me a little longer, and then shook her head and slumped down in the chair beside my desk. “Samantha Aldovar,” she repeated. “She’s gone again.” Sometimes I think it is a very good thing that I have had so many years of practice at showing only what I want to show on my face, and this was absolutely one of those times, because my first impulse was to shout, Whoopee! Good girl! and burst into lighthearted song. And so it was quite possibly one of the greatest demonstrations of acting skill our age has yet seen when I managed instead to look shocked and concerned. “You’re kidding,” I said, thinking, I really hope you’re not kidding. ~ Jeff Lindsay,
335:My Desk Is Not So Wide That I Might Lean
My desk is not so wide that I might lean
Against the edge and reach out past the shell
Of board and glass, beyond the isthmus in
The endless miles of my scraped out farewell.
(It's night there now.) Beyond your sultry neck.
(They went to bed.) Behind your shoulders' realm.
(Switched off the light.) At dawn, I'd give them back.
The porch would touch them with a sleepy stem.
No, not with snowflakes! With your arms! Reach far!
Oh you, ten fingers of my pain, the light
Of crystal winter stars-and every star
A sign of northbound snowbound trains being late.
~ Boris Pasternak,
336:Walking had an added benefit: it helped me to think. Nietzsche wrote, “All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking,” and his observation is backed up by science; exercise-induced brain chemicals help people think clearly. In fact, just stepping outside clarifies thinking and boosts energy. Light deprivation is one reason that people feel tired, and even five minutes of daylight stimulates production of serotonin and dopamine, brain chemicals that improve mood. Many times, I’d guiltily leave my desk to take a break, and while I was walking around the block, I’d get some useful insight that had eluded me when I was being virtuously diligent. ~ Gretchen Rubin,
337:I’ve been so eager to make my time at Liberty tolerable that I’ve been sweeping all kinds of dirt under the rug. Homophobia? Nah, they’re just a little behind the times. Using religion to justify violence? Nope, not since the Crusades. But tonight, sitting there at my desk as my roommates reenacted The Laramie Project, I realized how naïve I was. My aunt Tina was right: this stuff does exist, and it does hurt people, and although there are lots of people at Liberty who condemn violence against gays—including Dr. Falwell himself—the number of students who want to give them the Goliath treatment isn’t zero. In fact, the number who live in my room isn’t zero. ~ Kevin Roose,
338:I wonder why Miss Kosugi's lectures are always so stiff. Is she a fool? It makes me sad. She went on and on, explaining to us about patriotism, but wasn't that pretty obvious? I mean, everyone loves the place where they were born. I felt bored. Resting my chin on my desk, I gazed idly out the window. The clouds were beautiful, maybe because it was so windy. There were four roses blooming in a corner of the yard. One was yellow, two were white, and one was pink. I sat there agape, looking at the flowers, and thought to myself, There are really good things about human beings. I mean, it's humans who discovered the beauty of flowers, and humans who admire them. At ~ Osamu Dazai,
339:A man sleeps through most of his life, even when awake. You get so little time, yet still you spend it utterly oblivious. Angry, frustrated, fixated on meaningless nothings. That drawer does not close flush with the front of my desk. What cards does my opponent hold, and how much money can I win from him? I wish I were taller. What will I have for dinner, for I am not fond of parsnips?’ Shenkt rolled a mangled corpse out of his way with the toe of one boot. ‘It takes a moment like this to jerk us to our senses, to draw our eyes from the mud to the heavens, to root our attention in the present. Now you realise how precious is each moment. That is my gift to you. ~ Joe Abercrombie,
340:I’ve noticed in myself that if something small and ultimately meaningless has gone wrong—I can’t find the file I left on top of my desk, my daughter failed to do what I asked her to do before going to a friend’s house—I can easily get rattled. But if someone calls to inform me of a serious difficulty—someone has been in an accident, or a child is in trouble—I notice a profound stillness come over me as I focus on the problem. In the former case, my temptation to become frantic does not attract solutions, but rather hinders them. There is nothing in my personal energy that invites help from others, nor do I have the clarity to think through what I need to do next. ~ Marianne Williamson,
341:I've got data incoming. Do you want me to transfer it to my portable unit?"

"No, you stay here, finish the runs. I shouldn't be more than a couple of hours. When you're done with this, I want you to go find a hammer."

Peabody had taken out her memo book, nearly plugged in the order, when she stopped, frowned up at Eve. "Sir? A hammer?"

"That's right. A really big, heavy hammer. Then you take it into my office and beat that fucking useless excuse for a data spitter on my desk to dust."

"Ah." Because she was a wise woman, Peabody cleared her throat rather than loosen the chuckle. "As an alternate to that action, Lieutenant, I could call maintenance. ~ J D Robb,
342:I was working from home at the time and sometimes indulged in a little wander around my yard, a hard reset before I got back to work. Today, however, I had ignored the nice weather and instead put my head on my desk, forehead pressed to the Formica and arms covering my skull.

I had joked with one of my yoga-loving co-workers that I was developing a series of poses that we could do at our desks. A head-in-hands slump over galleys called "Drudge's Hunch". The arms overhead seated stretch called "Fluorescent Salutation". The hand out position used to catch the fire door so it didn't slam and bother everyone. That was "Worrier's Pose".

My current pose was called "Nuclear Fallout". ~ Kory Stamper,
343:He reaches for his pen. He yawns and puts it down and picks it up again. I shall be found dead at my desk, he thinks, like the poet Petrarch. The poet wrote many unsent letters: he wrote to Cicero, who died twelve hundred years before he was born. He wrote to Homer, who possibly never even existed; but I, I have enough to do with Lord Lisle, and the fish traps, and the Emperor's galleons tossing on the Middle Sea. Between one dip of the pen, Petrarch writes, 'between one dip of the pen and the next, the time passes: and I hurry, I drive myself, and I speed towards death. We are always dying - I while I write, you while you read, and others while they listen or block their ears; they are all dying. ~ Hilary Mantel,
344:Then I took another sack and started going through all of the papers on my desk, and in the drawers of the desk. I was fairly ruthless and threw out things I'd been keeping for no good reason, stuff that if I died my unfortunate executor would have no hesitation in throwing out either, because what was he going to do with it... what was he going to do with old love letters, pay slips, gas and electric bills, yellowed typescripts of abandoned articles, instruction manuals for consumer durables I no longer possessed, holiday brochures the holidays of which I hadn't gone on... Jesus, it occurred to me -- as I stuffed all of this garbage into a bag -- the shit we leave behind us for other people to sort out. ~ Alan Glynn,
345:Greg leans forward from the seat in front of my desk, resting his elbows on his knees. “He’s right. We’ll handle shit here, and if anything new comes up, we’ll call. Just go make sure she’s okay. If you decide to come in tomorrow, then she comes with you.”
“You didn’t really think I was going to stay here today? Fuck you very much, Greg. All I had planned was filling you a**holes in before I went home to my woman.” I start packing up my laptop and anything else I think I’ll need should I decide to start working out of my house until this shit is over. There’s only ten more days in the month, so regardless of what we figure out, there’s only a short amount of time before the deadline we’re working against runs out ~ Harper Sloan,
346:My Ren & Stimpy reference wasn’t all that funny when written in the center of someone’s CONDOLENCE CARD.

“Fucking Leslie,” I spat. “She threw a bunch of cards on my desk and said they were birthday cards.”

Dean proceeded to lose his shit, his cackling laughs echoing inside my office.

I glared at him. “It’s not that funny.”

“Oh, hell yes it is. You referenced Ren & Stimpy on a sympathy card,” he wheezed.

Seriously, fuck you, Leslie. Fuck you, hard.

I was convinced I could blame her for everything wrong in my life.

Lost my keys? Goddammit, Leslie!

Missed the subway? Fuck you very much, Leslie.

Another awful dick pic sent to my phone? You’re such an asshole, Leslie. ~ Max Monroe,
347:So they spread the paintings on the lawn, and the boy explained each of them. "This is the school, and this is the playground, and these are my friends." He stared at the paintings for a long time and then shook his head in discouragement. "In my mind, they were a whole lot better."

Isn't that the truth? Every morning, I go to my desk and reread yesterday's pages, only to be discouraged that the prose isn't as good as it seemed during the excitement of composition. In my mind, it was a whole lot better.

Don't give in to doubt. Never be discouraged if your first draft isn't what you thought it would be. Given skill and a story that compels you, muster your determination and make what's on the page closer to what you have in your mind. ~ David Morrell,
348:I jumped up from the bed and paced the small space in front of Romeo. He was absolutely nuts.
"Why the hell would you do that?" I asked.
Then I stubbed my toe on the edge of my desk.
"Ow!" I hissed and doubled over while bouncing around on one foot.
"You're like a one-woman show," Romeo remarked from behind me. His voice was clearly amused.
"I need my glasses," I muttered, hopping around and reaching for them somewhere near my bed. I knocked something over and it fell to the floor.
"Whoa there, graceful," Romeo said and scooped me up in his arms.
I let out a little squeak in surprise. "Put me down."
"No," he said mildly. "You are a danger to yourself."
I made a hmph sound and he snickered.

- Rimmel & Romeo ~ Cambria Hebert,
349:Every day is a writing day. I get to my desk between 8 and 8:30 in the morning and then work through until 6pm, and then normally I'll take up whatever will be happening in the evening, usually painting or photography.

I do about four drafts total. I do handwritten drafts because I don't type and I have no wish to type. I mean, I know how to type, but I have no interest in putting the words down that way.
Maybe that's because I'm an artist and because I've always used a pen and so there's a sort of natural feel to it.

I don't know how familiar you are with Blake's illuminated texts, but you know very often he'll literally make words flower. It's really this glorious thing in bringing words and pictures into the same place, the same space. ~ Clive Barker,
350:After Collecting The Autumn Taxes
From my high castle I look at the town below
Where the natives of Pa cluster like a swarm of flies.
How can I govern these people and lead them aright?
I cannot even understand what they say.
But at least I am glad, now that the taxes are in,
To learn that in my province there is no discontent.
I fear its prosperity is not due to me
And was only caused by the year's abundant crops,
The papers that lie on my desk are simple and few;
My house by the moat is leisurely and still.
In the autumn rain the berries fall from the eaves;
At the evening bell the birds return to the wood.
A broken sunlight quavers over the southern porch
Where I lie on my couch abandoned of idleness.
~ Bai Juyi,
351:I like idling when I ought not to be idling; not when it is the only thing I have to do. Thatis my pig-headed nature. The time when I like best to stand with my back to the fire, calculating how much I owe, is when my desk is heaped highest with letters that must be answered by the next post. When I like to dawdle longest over my dinner is when I have a heavy evening's work before me. And if, for some urgent reason, I ought to be up particularly early in the morning, it is then, more than at any other time, that I love to lie an extra half-hour in bed.

Ah! how delicious it is to turn over and go to sleep again: "just for
five minutes." Is there any human being, I wonder, besides the hero of
a Sunday-school "tale for boys," who ever gets up willingly? ~ Jerome K Jerome,
352:That scene in the office stayed with me. Those cigars, the fine clothes. I thought of good steaks, long
rides up winding driveways that led to beautiful homes. Ease. Trips to Europe. Fine women. Were they
that much more clever than I? The only difference was money, and the desire to accumulate it.
I'd do it too! I'd save my pennies. I'd get an idea, I'd spring a loan. I'd hire and fire. I'd keep whiskey in
my desk drawer. I'd have a wife with size 40 breasts and an ass that would make the paperboy on the
corner come in his pants when he saw it wobble. I'd cheat on her and she'd know it and keep silent in
order to live in my house with my wealth. I'd fire men just to see the look of dismay on their faces. I'd
fire women who didn't deserve to be fired. ~ Charles Bukowski,
353:All fiction is metaphor. Science fiction is metaphor. What sets it apart
from older forms of fiction seems to be its use of new metaphors, drawn from
certain great dominants of our contemporary life -- science, all the sciences,
and technology, and the relativistic and the historical outlook, among them.
Space travel is one of these metaphors; so is an alternative society, an
alternative biology; the future is another. The future, in fiction, is a
metaphor.

A metaphor for what?

If I could have said it non-metaphorically, I would not have written all these
words, this novel; and Genly Ai would never have sat down at my desk and used
up my ink and typewriter ribbon in informing me, and you, rather solemnly,
that the truth is a matter of the imagination. ~ Ursula K Le Guin,
354:The thing is, work has simply swamped my whole existence. Slowly but surely it's robbed me of my mother, my wife, and everything that meant anything to me. It's like a germ planted in the skull that devours the brain, spreads to the trunk and the limbs, and destroys the entire body in time. No sooner am I out of bed in the morning than work clamps down on me and pins me to my desk before I've even had a breath of fresh air. It follows me to lunch and I find myself chewing over sentences as I'm chewing my food. It goes with me when I go out, eats out of my plate at dinner and shares my pillow in bed at night. It's so extremely merciless that once the process of creation is started, it's impossible for me to stop it, and it goes on growing and working even when I'm asleep. ... Outside that, nothing, nobody exists. ~ mile Zola,
355:The Rose
You gave me a rose
last time we met.
I told myself
if it bloomed
our love would bloom,
& if it diedO I did not
consider
the possibility.
It died.
Though I cut
the stem
on a slant
as my mother
taught me,
though I dropped
an aspirin
in the water,
it hung its head
like a spent cock
& died.
It stands
on my desk nowstraight green stalk,
blood-red clot
of bud
drooping
like a hanged man's
head.
Does this mean
we are doomed?
Does this mean
229
all lovers
are doomed?
O my loveI have not read roses
as amulets
in seven years. . . .
Which doom
is worse?
To love
& lose?
Or to lose
love
altogether
& not care
whether roses
live or die?
~ Erica Jong,
356:I can certainly throw out some observation about the process of creating which may be of use. Firstly, it's the best & the worst of worlds, because the only fuel you have to make the fire blaze on the page / screen is the stuff of your own being. An artist consumes his or herself in the act of making art. I can feel that consumption even now, sitting here at my desk at the end of a working day. In order to generate the ideas that I have set on the page for the last 10 or 11 hours I have burned the fuel of my own history. This is, obviously a double-edged sword. In order to give, the artist must take from himself. That's the deal. And it's very important to me that the work I do is the best I can make it, because I know what is being burned up to create. As the villain of Sacrament says: "living & dying, we feed the fire. ~ Clive Barker,
357:Kyler half-jumped half-threw himself toward my open window. I was wussy. Closing my eyes, I balled my hands up near my chest and let out a little shriek. There was a sound of flesh hitting wood and my eyes flew open. He came through the open window, landing on his feet like a damn cat. He stumbled though and banged into my desk, causing books and my computer to shake.
He held his hands out to his sides and looked around slowly before his gaze settled on me. “I am awesome.” I could barely breathe. “Yeah.” A knock sounded on my bedroom door a second before it opened. Dad popped his head in, eyes wide. “I’m just making sure he made it up here alive.” I nodded and Kyler flashed a grin. “I’m in one piece.” “That’s good to see.” Dad started to close the door, but stopped. “Next time, use the front door, Kyler.” “Yes, sir,” Kyler said. ~ Jennifer L Armentrout,
358:You, you buy into all this stuff about good guys and bad guys in the world. A loan shark breaks a guy's leg for not paying his debt, a banker throws a guy out of his home for the same reason, and you think there's a difference, like the banker's just doing his job but the loan shark's a criminal. I like the loan shark better because he doesn't pretend to be anything else, and I think the banker should be where I am sitting right now. I'm not going to live some life where I pay my fucking taxes and fetch the boss a lemonade at the company picnic and buy life insurance. Get older, get fatter, so I can join a men's club in Back Bay, smoke cigars with a bunch of assholes in a back room somewhere, talk about my squash game and my kid's grades. Die at my desk, and they'll already have scraped my name off the office door before the dirt's hit the coffin. ~ Dennis Lehane,
359:Good morning, sis,” I said cheerfully, which seemed to offend her more than it should have. She made a face and shook her head dismissively, as if the goodness or badness of the morning was irritating and irrelevant. “What happened last night?” she said, in a voice that was harsher than usual. “Was it the same as the others?” “You mean Camilla Figg?” I said, and now she very nearly snarled. “What the fuck else would I mean?” she said. “Goddamn it, Dex, I need to know—was it the same?” I sat down in the folding chair opposite my desk, which I thought was quite noble of me, considering that Debs was in my very own chair and this other one was not terribly comfortable. “I don’t think so,” I said, and Deborah hissed out a very long breath. “Fuck it; I knew it,” she said, and she straightened up and looked at me with an eager gleam in her eye. “What’s different?” I ~ Jeff Lindsay,
360:We have one processor. We can’t do it.” “I think that when I’m sitting at my desk feverishly doing seventeen things at once that I’m being clever and efficient, but you’re saying I’m actually wasting my time?” “Yes, because when you’re moving from this project to this project, your mind flits back to the original project, and it can’t pick it up where it left off. So it has taketo take a few steps back and then ramp up again, and that’s where the productivity loss is.” This problem was, of course, exacerbated in the age of what had been dubbed the “info-blitzkrieg,” where it took superhuman strength to ignore the siren call of the latest tweet, or the blinking red light on the BlackBerry. Scientists had even come up with a term for this condition: “continuous partial attention.” It was a syndrome with which I was intimately familiar, even after all my meditating. ~ Dan Harris,
361:I tried to go to sleep with my headphones still on, but then after a while my mom and dad came in, and my mom grabbed Bluie from the shelf and hugged him to her stomach, and my dad sat down in my desk chair, and without crying he said, 'You are not a grenade, not to us. Thinking about you dying makes us sad, Hazel, but you are not a grenade. You are amazing. You can't know, sweetie, because you've never had a baby become a brilliant young reader with a side interest in horrible television shows, but the joy you bring us is so much greater than the sadness we feel about your illness.'

'Okay,' I said.

'Really,' my dad said. 'I wouldn't bullshit you about this. If you were more trouble than you're worth, we'd just toss you out on the streets.'

'We're not sentimental people,' Mom added, deadpan. 'We'd leave you at an orphanage with a note pinned to your pajamas. ~ John Green,
362:The next day I came back from my lunch break to find a note on my desk: “Chip Gaines called. Call him back.” I thought, Oh, that must be the guy I met yesterday. So I called him. I honestly thought he was going to ask me about getting a better price on his brakes or something, but instead he said, “Hey, I really enjoyed our conversation yesterday. I was wondering…you want to go out sometime?”
And for some reason I said okay--just like that, without any hesitation. It wasn’t like me at all. When I hung up the phone, I went, “What in the world just happened!”

So you said okay immediately? I don’t even remember that. That’s fun! No reservations? Man, I must’ve been good-lookin’.

What Chip didn’t know was I didn’t even give myself time to have reservations. Something told me to just go for it.

Cute, Joey. This story makes me love you all over again. ~ Joanna Gaines,
363:As I sat alone at my desk in the dark, I thought about suicide. Sometimes I did that, thought about suicide, though not in an active way—it was more like pulling a lucky stone out of your back pocket. It was a comforting thing to have with you, so you could rub your fingers over it, reassure yourself that it was there if you needed it. I didn’t want to try to kill myself, didn’t want the blood and the hysterical parents and the guilt, any of it. But sometimes I liked the idea of simply not having to be here anymore, not having to deal with my life. As if death could be just an extended vacation.

But now what I thought about suicide was this: If I died tonight, everyone would believe this journal was true.

Like Amelia, Chava, and Sally, everyone would forever believe that I had written that diary. Everyone would believe they knew how I “really felt.” And how dare they? ~ Leila Sales,
364:Once this had been the life I'd wanted. Even chosen. Now, though, I couldn't believe that there had been a time when this kind of monotony and silence, this most narrow of existences, had been preferable. Then again, once, I'd never known anything else...
My mother had to know I was unhappy. But it didn't matter: all she cared about was that I was her Macy again, the one she'd come to depend on, always within earshot or reach. I came to work early, sat up straight at my desk and endured the monotony of answering phones and greeting potential homebuyers with a smile on my face. After dinner, I spent my hour and a half of free time alone, doing accepted activities. When I came home afterwards, my mother w ould be waiting for me, stickingher head out of her office to verify that, yes. I was just where I was supposed to be. And I was. I was also miserable. ~ Sarah DessenMacy, pg 306 ~ Sarah Dessen,
365:I came home to find three rocks on my desk and a card with a penguin on the front. Seeing it was from Greg, I did a little happy dance as I bounced into my room, reading his inscription.


Dearest Fiona,

I’m missing you dreadfully. It’s been an age, I don’t think you’ll recognize me when next we meet. I’ve put on ten stone and lost all my hair. And an eye. I hope you fancy a fat bald man with an eye patch.

Come out with me on Friday. Finals will finally be over and it’ll be time to celebrate. I’ll pick you up at four. We’ll do a first date do-over, eat at Manganiello’s again, plus a new, improved surprise.

Also, FYI: Gentoo penguins mate for life. Whereas Adélie penguins prostitute themselves for rocks.

I’d like to be your Gentoo penguin.

-Greg

P.S. Unless you’re open to a rock arrangement. If so, please find my first down payment enclosed. ~ Penny Reid,
366:What I remember most clearly is how it felt. I’d just finished painting a red fire engine-like the one I often walked past near my grandparents’ house. Suddenly the teachers, whose names I've long forgotten, closed in on my desk. They seemed unusually impressed, and my still dripping fire engine was immediately and ceremoniously pinned up. I don’t know what they might have said, but their unexpected attention and having something I’d made given a place of honor on the wall created an overwhelming and totally unfamiliar sense of pride inside me. I loved that feeling, and I wanted to feel it again and again. That desire, I suppose, was the beginning of my career.
I have no idea where my fire engine painting ended up, but I never forgot the basic layout. Several decades later, it served as the inspiration for this sketch for an illustration in a book called Why the chicken crossed the Road. ~ David Macaulay,
367:So what do you do when you are stuck?

The first thing I do when I am stuck is pray. But I’m not talking about a quick, Help me Lord, Sunday’s a comin’ prayer. When I get stuck I get up from my desk to head for my closet. Literally. If I‘m at the office I go over to a corner that I have deemed my closet away from home. I get on my knees and remind God that this was not my idea, it was His…

None of this is new information to God…

Then I ask God to show me if there is something He wants to say to prepare me for what He wants me to communicate to our congregation. I surrender my ideas, my outline and my topic. Then I just stay in that quiet place until God quiets my heart…

Many times I will have a breakthrough thought or idea that brings clarity to my message. . .

Like you, I am simply a mouthpiece. Getting stuck is one way God keeps me ever conscious of that fact. ~ Andy Stanley,
368:After The Interval
About three months ago, when first
Upon our open, unprotected
And freezing garden snowstorms burst
In sudden fury, I reflected
That I would shut myself away
And in seclusion write a section
Of winter poems, day by day,
To supplement my spring collection.
But nonsense piled up mountain-high,
Like snow-drifts hindering and stifling
And half the winter had gone by,
Against all hopes, in petty trifling.
I understood, alas, too late
Why winter-while the snow was falling,
Piercing the darkness with its flakesFrom outside at my house was calling;
And while with numb white-frozen lips
It whispered, urging me to hurry,
I sharpened pencils, played with clips,
Made feeble jokes and did not worry.
While at my desk I dawdled on
By lamp-light on an early morning,
The winter had appeared and goneA wasted and unheeded warning.
~ Boris Pasternak,
369:Their avatars all sat motionless, with their eyes closed. This was a signal that they were “engaged,” meaning they were currently on phone calls, browsing the Web, or logged into chat rooms. It was poor OASIS etiquette to try to talk to an engaged avatar. They usually just ignored you, and you’d get an automated message telling you to piss off. I took a seat at my desk and tapped the Engage icon at the edge of my display. My own avatar’s eyes slid shut, but I could still see my surroundings. I tapped another icon, and a large two-dimensional Web browser window appeared, suspended in space directly in front of me. Windows like this one were visible to only my avatar, so no one could read over my shoulder (unless I selected the option to allow it). My homepage was set to the Hatchery, one of the more popular gunter message forums. The Hatchery’s site interface was designed to look and operate like an old pre-Internet dial-up bulletin ~ Ernest Cline,
370:After all, what is it?- this indescribable something which men will persist in terming "genius"? I agree with Buffon- with Hogarth- it is but diligence after all.
Look at me!- how I labored- how I toiled- how I wrote! Ye Gods, did I not write? I knew not the word "ease." By day I adhered to my desk, and at night, a pale student, I consumed the midnight oil. You should have seen me- you should. I leaned to the right. I leaned to the left. I sat forward. I sat backward. I sat tete baissee (as they have it in the Kickapoo), bowing my head close to the alabaster page. And, through all, I- wrote. Through joy and through sorrow, I-wrote. Through hunger and through thirst, I-wrote. Through good report and through ill report- I wrote. Through sunshine and through moonshine, I-wrote. What I wrote it is unnecessary to say. The style!- that was the thing. I caught it from Fatquack- whizz!- fizz!- and I am giving you a specimen of it now. ~ Edgar Allan Poe,
371:And yet there are other days, when I’m downtrodden or morose, when I find myself at my desk late at night, unable to sleep, flipping through (of all things) Oscar’s dog-eared copy of Watchmen. One of the few things that he took with him on the Final Voyage that we recovered. The original trade. I flip through the book, one of his top three, without question, to the last horrifying chapter: “A Stronger Loving World.” To the only panel he’s circled. Oscar—who never defaced a book in his life—circled one panel three times in the same emphatic pen he used to write his last letters home. The panel where Adrian Veidt and Dr. Manhattan are having their last convo. After the mutant brain has destroyed New York City; after Dr. Manhattan has murdered Rorschach; after Veidt’s plan has succeded in “saving the world.” Veidt says: “I did the right thing, didn’t I? It all worked out in the end.” And Manhattan, before fading from our Universe, replies: “In ~ Junot D az,
372:I don't think that the despiritualised, dehumanised culture in which we live, the McDonalds and Disney culture, does our internal lives, our mythological lives, any favours at all. In other words, to be an Outsider in this culture now is to be looking inside at a plastic world, and I think it's easier to critique that world if I don't belong to it... In Hollywood where I live now, there's a lot of having lunches, a lot of going to parties... and I will have no part of that. I'm certainly not very good at it, I don't like it and I feel a little weird about it. I don't want to be part of the problem, I want to be a part of the solution, and the only way I can help solve the problem of the plasticity of our world is by writing, by painting and by making my work, so I stay where I can do that, which is at my desk, in my studio. I will venture out when I need to sell a book or exhibit my paintings, but the rest of the time my job is to be here and imagine. ~ Clive Barker,
373:I went down from the house in that hour, wearing the wet suit I use for tropical diving…since that day I have walked in the river in all seasons except late fall, winter, and early spring, when the water is too high…I’ve walked up and down it on moonlit nights, and on nights of the new moon when the only light falling in the woods has come from the bulb above my desk, that and photons from the stars above, the suns Ishmael imagined as islands in a “continentless,” continuous sea. Crabbing upcurrent some evenings, feeling the force of the water on my legs and a night breeze in my face, I often think of myself as passing the house offshore. Up there in that room, as I see it, is the reading and the thinking-through, a theory of rivers, of trees moving, of falling light. Here on the river, as I lurch against a freshening of the current, is the practice of rivers. In navigating by the glow of the Milky Way, the practice of light. In steadying with a staff, the practice of wood. ~ Barry Lopez,
374:And yet there are other days, when I’m downtrodden or morose, when I find myself at my desk late at night, unable to sleep, flipping through (of all things) Oscar’s dog-eared copy of Watchmen. One of the few things that he took with him on the Final Voyage that we recovered. The original trade. I flip through the book, one of his top three, without question, to the last horrifying chapter: “A Stronger Loving World.” To the only panel he’s circled. Oscar—who never defaced a book in his life—circled one panel three times in the same emphatic pen he used to write his last letters home. The panel where Adrian Veidt and Dr. Manhattan are having their last convo. After the mutant brain has destroyed New York City; after Dr. Manhattan has murdered Rorschach; after Veidt’s plan has succeded in “saving the world.” Veidt says: “I did the right thing, didn’t I? It all worked out in the end.” And Manhattan, before fading from our Universe, replies: “In the end? Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends. ~ Junot D az,
375:The thing about these balloons is that there are so goddamned many of them. The sky is choked full of them, rubbing up against one another as they float to here or from there, and every one of those damned balloons ends up on my desk one way or another, and after a while a man can get discouraged. Everywhere the balloons, and each of them with a mother or a father, or God forbid both, and after a while, you can’t even see ’em individually. You look up at all the balloons in the sky and you can see all of the balloons, but you cannot see any one balloon.” He paused then, and inhaled sharply, as if he was realising something. “But then every now and again you talk to some big-eyed kid with too much hair for his head and you want to lie to him because he seems like a good kid. And you feel bad for this kid, because the only thing worse than the skyful of balloons you see is what he sees: a clear blue day interrupted by just the one balloon. But once that string gets cut, kid, you can’t uncut it. ~ John Green,
376:Playing With The Boys
All the boring tedious young men
with dead eyes & dirty hair . . .
all the mad young men who hate their mothers,
all the squalling baby boys . . .
have grown up
& now write book reviews
or novels about the life
of the knife-fighter,
or movies in which grown men
torture each otherall the squalling boring baby boys!
I am not part of their game.
I have no penis.
I have a pen, two eyes
& I bleed monthly.
When the moon shines on the sea
I see the babies
riding on the moonwaves
asking to be born.
Does everything else in nature hate
its mother?
Does the chick fling
bits of eggshell at the hen?
Does the pear spit
its seeds against the pear tree?
Who made all these squalling baby boys?
I am a reasonable, hardworking woman.
I sit at my desk & write
from eight to three.
When I emerge I do not ask your blessing.
What have I done but bleed
to get your curse?
160
~ Erica Jong,
377:Miss Probert?” “Yes.” “I don’t really need a technology lesson.” “Wonderful, because I have neither the time nor inclination to give you one. My point is, such requests are fairly routine at Interpol. I put the photograph into the system before I left for the day, figuring the computer would work on it overnight and spew out an answer. Is that simplifying matters enough for you?” I nodded, realizing that I’d be wrong to interrupt. She was clearly agitated and I hadn’t helped. “So when I arrived at work this morning, I expected to have an identity to report back to you. But that wasn’t the case. Instead—how shall I put this politely?—all forms of intestinal waste hit the proverbial fan. Someone had gone through my desk. My computer had been accessed and searched. Don’t ask me how I know—I know.” She stopped and started searching through her bag. She found a cigarette and put it in her mouth. “You damn Americans and your antismoking crusade. If one of you says anything about no-smoking rules . . .” Neither ~ Harlan Coben,
378:In the Village

III

Who has removed the typewriter from my desk,
so that I am a musician without his piano
with emptiness ahead as clear and grotesque
as another spring? My veins bud, and I am so
full of poems, a wastebasket of black wire.
The notes outside are visible; sparrows will
line antennae like staves, the way springs were,
but the roofs are cold and the great grey river
where a liner glides, huge as a winter hill,
moves imperceptibly like the accumulating
years. I have no reason to forgive her
for what I brought on myself. I am past hating,
past the longing for Italy where blowing snow
absolves and whitens a kneeling mountain range
outside Milan. Through glass, I am waiting
for the sound of a bird to unhinge the beginning
of spring, but my hands, my work, feel strange
without the rusty music of my machine. No words
for the Arctic liner moving down the Hudson, for the mange
of old snow moulting from the roofs. No poems. No birds. ~ Derek Walcott,
379:It’s not me telling you,” she said. “It’s neuroscience that would say that our capacity to multitask is virtually nonexistent. Multitasking is a computer-derived term. We have one processor. We can’t do it.” “I think that when I’m sitting at my desk feverishly doing seventeen things at once that I’m being clever and efficient, but you’re saying I’m actually wasting my time?” “Yes, because when you’re moving from this project to this project, your mind flits back to the original project, and it can’t pick it up where it left off. So it has to take a few steps back and then ramp up again, and that’s where the productivity loss is.” This problem was, of course, exacerbated in the age of what had been dubbed the “info-blitzkrieg,” where it took superhuman strength to ignore the siren call of the latest tweet, or the blinking red light on the BlackBerry. Scientists had even come up with a term for this condition: “continuous partial attention.” It was a syndrome with which I was intimately familiar, even after all my meditating. ~ Dan Harris,
380:I had been nervous about not doing well in college. During my first class, I looked at the notes the boy next to me was taking. His supply and demand curves seemed more neatly drawn than mine. Nearly everyone appeared to have gone to preparatory schools and already knew such odd things as the fact that there was no inflation during the Middle Ages. Very few, however, were willing to work the way I did.

When I would come out of Firestone Library at two in the morning, walk past the strange statues scattered around campus, and then sit at my desk in my room till the trees in the yard appeared out of the darkness, I felt that I was achieving something, that every hour I worked was generating almost physical value, as if I could touch the knowledge I was gaining through my work. One weekend, I came home to my parents and worked all Saturday night. In the morning, my mother saw me at my desk and brought me a glass of milk. Later, in Birju’s room, she said to him, “Your brother can eat pain. He can sit all day at his desk and eat pain. ~ Akhil Sharma,
381:IT ALL STARTED SO PEACEFULLY, JUST A FEW SHORT WEEKS AGO, on a lovely day in early autumn. I had driven in to work as I always did, through the happy carnage that is rush hour in Miami. It had been a bright and pleasant day: sun shining, temperature in the seventies, the other drivers cheerfully honking their horns and screaming death threats, and I’d steered through it with a blissful feeling of belonging. I had pulled into a spot in the parking lot at police HQ, still completely unaware of the lurking terror that awaited me, and carefully carried a large box of doughnuts into the building and up to the second floor. I’d arrived at my desk punctually, at my usual time. And I made it all the way into a seated position in my chair, a cup of vile coffee in one hand and a jelly doughnut in the other, before I ever for a moment suspected that today would be anything other than one more day of peaceful routine among the newly dead of Our Fair City. And then the phone on my desk began to buzz, and because I was stupid enough to answer it, everything changed forever. ~ Jeff Lindsay,
382:I saw the folded note peeking up from behind the cover of the book in which I'd hidden it.
I brushed my fingertips across the lineny surface, my skin sparking with electricity, my fingers itching to pull it free.
I shoudn't, I told myself, even as I held my breath and watched myself withdrawing it from the book. I tried to tamp down the feeling of anticipation coursing through me at the same time I argued that it was a mistake to look at it again.
It didn't deserve anymore of my time. He didn't deserve the space he already occupied in my mind.
I glanced around to see if anyone had noticed me there, tucked beneath my desk, reading a note that I'd already memorized.
No one paid me any attention.
I held the letter, vividly picturing the six words written inside the folds. Six words that I already knew by heart. Six words that meant more to me than they should.
I unfolded the top third of the paper, then the bottom, purposely keeping my eyes unfocused for just a moment.
My heart stopped.
And then my eyesight cleared.

I pledge to keep you safe. ~ Kimberly Derting,
383:What are we doing for supper tonight?” Avery asked, turning around in my desk chair and separating me from my memories.
I grunted and tossed a package of ramen over my shoulder.
She groaned. “Not again. Please. You need real food, Summer.”
“Noodles are real food. They’re a relative to real pasta, which came from Italy and we know how kick-ass Italian food is. Boom. They’re gourmet badassness.”
She tossed them to the corner. “They’re not, and I’m pulling my friendship card.”
No way. She couldn’t.
I rotated around in my chair to stare at her. “Not the friendship card.”
“Totally the friendship card.”
I pretended to gasp and shudder. Okay, I really did shudder. I’d never admit it, but the ramen wasn’t doing it for me either...
"I was thinking we could go to a restaurant or something.”
“What is this you speak of? A dwelling where they serve many varieties of solids?”
Her lip twitched in a grin. “Yeah, that. You and me, we’re going to dress up, and we’re going to dine like queens.”
“Can I wear a tiara?”
“Without a doubt.” She winked at me as she got up and went to the door. “Thirty minutes, then we’re leaving. ~ Tijan,
384:As soon as I finished my last diary entry, I grabbed my books, stopped by André’s locker (hey, he’s part of my job duties!), and rushed straight to bio. But, unfortunately, I had arrived just seconds TOO LATE. . . . MACKENZIE SHOWS BRANDON THE PICS OF ANDRÉ AND ME! I just stood there FREAKING OUT as Brandon scrolled through the photos. He looked shocked, surprised, and hurt! All at the same time. . . . BRANDON LOOKS AT THE PICS! Right then all I wanted to do was dig a really deep hole right next to my desk, CRAWL into it, and DIE!! Once class started, I could practically feel Brandon staring at the back of my head. But whenever I turned around to make eye contact, he just gazed blankly at his bio book. Of course MacKenzie sat there with a big fat SMIRK on her face. She was SO proud of herself for pretty much DESTROYING my friendship with Brandon. I wanted to walk right up to her and say, “Congratulations, MacKenzie!” and give her a high five! In the FACE. With a CHAIR! Just kidding ! NOT ! Seriously! That girl is lucky I’m a very peaceful and nonviolent person. I just totally ignored her when she started EYEBALLING me all EVIL-LIKE. . . . MACKENZIE, ~ Rachel Ren e Russell,
385:So now, not only did my best friend leave, but the cheerleaders and their mindless followers assumed I was personally responsible for the petition (which, yeah, I was) and started being openly rude to me - shutting doors in my face, leaving nasty notes on my desk and in my locker, making fun of me when I could obviously hear them.
That's when I started keeping really quiet in class, and finding ways to show the other kids I wasn't afraid of them - like staring them straight in the eye when they looked at me, taking a step toward them when they talked to me, or walking right up to them and getting their personal space if I heard them say my name. Saying the meanest things I could think of whenever I had the chance - repeating rumors, embellishing them. I found out Kira Conroy had been arrested for shoplifting at the mall, and made sure everyone knew about it. The girl who burped in a boy's face during her first kiss, the girl who tripped and fell off the stage at the Miss Teen California pageant - I shared those stories the moment I heard them.
All's fair in war, right?
Suddenly I wasn't a nobody anymore.
I was a somebody.
Somebody everyone was afraid of. ~ Katie Alender,
386:Oh God, my chin. I have a cluster of five hairs on the left side of my chin. They’re coarse and wiry, like boar hair, and for the past couple of years, they’ve been my hideous secret and my sworn enemies. They sprout up every couple of days, and so I have to be vigilant. I keep my weapons—Revlon tweezers and a 10X magnifying mirror—at home, in my Sherpa bag, and in my desk drawer at work, so in theory, I can be anywhere, and if one of those evil little weeds pokes through the surface, I can yank it. I’ve been in meetings with CEOs, some of the most powerful men in the world, and could barely stay focused on what they were saying because I’d inadvertently touched my chin and become obsessed with the idea of destroying five microscopic hairs. I hate them, and I’m terrified of someone else noticing them before I do, but I have to admit, there is almost nothing more satisfying than pulling them out.I stroke my chin, expecting to feel my Little Pig beard, but touch only smooth skin. My leg feels like a farm animal, which suggests I haven’t shaved in at least a week, but my chin is bare, which would put me in this bed for less than two days. My body hair isn’t making any sense. ~ Lisa Genova,
387:The book I have not yet written one word of is a thing of indescribable beauty, unpredictable in its patterns, piercing in its color, so wild and loyal in its nature that my love for this book, and my faith in its as I track its lazy flight, is the single perfect joy in my life. It is the greatest novel in the history of literature, and I have thought it up, and all I have to do is put it down on paper and then everyone can see this beauty that I see.

And so I do. When I can’t think of another stall, when putting it off has actually become more painful than doing it, I reach up and pluck the butterfly from the air. I take it from the region of my head and I press it down against my desk, and there, with my own hand, I kill it. It’s not that I want to kill it, but it’s the only way I can get something that is so three-dimensional onto the flat page. Just to make sure the job is done I stick it into lace with a pin. Imagine running over a butterfly with an SUV. Everything that was beautiful about this living thing-all the color, the light and movement-is gone. What I’m left with is the dry husk of my friend, the broken body chipped, dismantled, and poorly reassembled. Dead. That’s my book. ~ Ann Patchett,
388:So, what are you doing after school?” he asked.
“You don’t give up, do you?”
“Nope, so you might as well surrender now.”
“And that’s exactly what will make you back off, isn’t it?”
He arched his brows, as if he had no idea what I was talking about.
“You like the chase,” I said. “But once you get a girl, you back off before you can collect the prize. Kind of missing the point, I think.”
“Huh. You’re right. Tell you what, go out with me and you can show me how it’s done.”
I’d walked right into that. I headed to the empty classroom, set my books on my desk, and opened the blinds for Mrs. Morris.
Rafe sat on the edge of a desk. “You’re right. I chase hard, but once I get to know a girl, I realize she’s not right for me.” He met my gaze, his eyes earnest and soulful. “I guess I haven’t found the one I’m looking for.”
I sputtered a laugh. “And you think I might be it. The girl you’ve been yearning for. Dreaming of. Your soul mate.” I laughed even harder and shook my head. “Please tell me that line doesn’t actually work on--”
“Rafael…” said a voice from the door. “I should have known. Cornering girls in classrooms so they can’t run away. Desperate. And kind of pathetic. ~ Kelley Armstrong,
389:Maeve, you wrote this to Tillie Olsen, who treasured it, and had it up on her studio wall. I copied it, and it’s now on the [bulletin] board over my desk.” The passage reads: I have been trying to think of the word to say to you that would never fail to lift you up when you are too tired or too sad [to] not be downcast. But I can think only of a reminder—you are all it has. You are all your work has. It has nobody else and never had anybody else. If you deny it hands and a voice, it will continue as it is, alive, but speechless and without hands. You know it has eyes and can see you, and you know how hopefully it watches you. But I am speaking of a soul that is timid but that longs to be known. When you are so sad that you “cannot work” there is always danger fear will enter in and begin withering around. A good way to remain on guard is to go to the window and watch the birds for an hour or two or three. It is very comforting to see their beaks opening and shutting. This is real friendship—the kind that takes another’s soul as seriously as one’s own. Aristotle considered it the highest order of love, philia, or “friendship love,” in which tending to somebody else’s welfare is central to our own flourishing. ~ Kate Bolick,
390:Song Of The Wheelman
Over my desk in a dark office bending.
Dim seems the sunlight and dull seems the day;
But when the afternoon draws toward an ending,
Here waits my steel steed-I mount, and away!
Like cobwebs of silver I see in the distance
The glint of bright wheels, I must follow and find.
What life in the air now! what zest in existence,
As faster and faster I race with the wind.
Down the smooth pavements, and out toward the heatherHo! fellows, ho! I am coming you see!
Breast to breast, now let us speed on togetherWho dares try mounting that hillside with me?
Over the bridge I go-past the green meadows,
Au revoir, boys, I will ride on alone!
For in yon cottage half hid in the shadows,
Waiting for me, is my sweetheart-my own.
She watches my wheel as it glitters and glistens
Down the steep crest of the daisy-starred hill.
Fair is her cheek as she waits there and listens
For the sure signal blown tenderly shrill.
Sweetheart, my sweetheart, I'm coming, I'm coming.
Here, sturdy steed, you may stand by the wall.
A bird to her mate has flown swift thro' the gloaming,
Love, youth and summer, thank God for them all.
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox,
391:I believe every day should begin and end with gratitude. I practice it every day in my morning meditation. Each morning, focusing on the reverse gap, I think of five things I’m grateful for in my personal life. Then I think of five things I’m grateful for in my work and career. A typical list might look like this: PERSONAL LIFE 1.​My daughter, Eve, and her beautiful smiles 2.​The happiness I felt last night relaxing with a glass of red wine and watching Sherlock on BBC 3.​My wife and life partner 4.​The time I spent with my son building his newest Lego Star Wars creation 5.​The wonderful cup of gourmet coffee my publicist, Tania, left on my desk WORK LIFE 1.​My leadership team and the amazing talent they bring to our company 2.​A particularly great letter we received for my online course Consciousness Engineering 3.​The incredibly fun Culture Day we had in the office yesterday 4.​The fact that plans are coming together to hold our upcoming A-Fest at another amazing location 5.​Having coworkers who are friends and who greet me with hugs when I come to the office This entire practice takes me no more than ninety seconds. But it’s perhaps one of the most important and powerful ninety seconds I can spend each day. ~ Vishen Lakhiani,
392:When I arrived home from Boston, I realized there were no pictures on my mantel. I set down my suitcase and walked into the living room and looked across to the fireplace, and it felt empty. Empty of real stories. I went to my bedroom where the bed was made, and on my desk there were no pictures in frames and on the end tables there were no pictures. There was a framed picture of Yankee Stadium above the toilet in the bathroom, and there was some art I’d picked up in my travels, but there was little evidence of an actual character living an actual life. My home felt like a stage on which props had been set for a face story rather than a place where a person lived an actual human narrative.

It’s an odd feeling to be awakened from a life of fantasy. You stand there looking at a bare mantel and the house gets an eerie feel, as though it were haunted by a kind of nothingness, an absence of something that could have been, an absence of people who could have been living here, interacting with me, forcing me out of my daydreams. I stood for a while and heard the voices of children who didn’t exist and felt the tender touch of a wife who wanted me to listen to her. I felt, at once, the absent glory of a life that could have been. ~ Donald Miller,
393:As winter went on, longer than long, we both freaked out. My mania grew to insane proportions. I sat in the study room at night, wildly typing out Dali-esque short stories. I sat at my desk in our room, drinking tea, flying on speed. She'd bang into the room in a fury. Or, she'd bang into the room, laughing like a maniac. Or, she'd bang into the room and sit under the desk eating Nutter-Butters. She was a sugar freak. She'd pour packets of sugar down her throat, or long Pixie-Stix. She was in constant motion. At first I wondered if she too had some food issues, subsisting mostly on sugar and peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches on Wonder Bread, but my concern (as she pointed out) was “total transference, seriously, Max. Maybe you're just hungry.” Some Saturdays, we'd go to town together, buy bags and bags of candies, Tootsie Rolls (we both liked vanilla best; she always smelled delicious and wore straight vanilla extract as perfume, which made me hungry), and gummy worms and face- twisting sour things and butterscotch. We'd lie on our backs on the beds, listening to The Who and Queen, bellowing, “I AM THE CHAMPION, YES I AM THE CHAMPION” through mouths full of sticky stuff, or we'd swing from the pipes over the bed and fall shrieking to the floor. ~ Marya Hornbacher,
394:Why did she do it? Nobody dared to ask. Because - what courage! Who had the courage to burn herself? Twenty aspirin, a little slit alongside the veins of the arm, maybe even a bad half hour standing on a roof: We've all had those. And somewhat more dangerous things, like putting a gun in your mouth. But you put it there, you taste it, it's cold and greasy, your finger is on the trigger, and you find that a whole world lies between this moment and the moment you've been planning, when you'll pull the trigger. That world defeats you. You put the gun back in the drawer. You'll have to find another way.

What was that moment like for her? The moment she lit the match. Had she already tried roofs and guns and aspirins? Or was it just an inspiration?

I had an inspiration once. I woke up one morning and I knew that today I had to swallow fifty aspirin. It was my task: my job for the day. I lined them up on my desk and took them one by one, counting. But it's not the same as what she did. I could have stopped, at ten, or at thirty. And I could have done what I did do, which was go onto the street and faint. Fifty aspirin is a lot of aspirin, but going onto the street and fainting is like putting the gun back in the drawer.

She lit the match. ~ Susanna Kaysen,
395:11.8 Christmas came and went. Parties; provincial exile; a return to London more relieved than joyous; more parties. On the 1st of January I found myself sitting, once more, beside my desk and blotter, looking through the window at the dawn. I always wake up early after drinking. It was a clear dawn, a good one to usher the new year in. The first phase of the Project would be going live this year. I looked at the pond, this site (since I’d rescued the girl there) of a minor resurrection, and thought of Vanuatans once again. On New Year’s Day, the men ride out on horses or just run about a stretch of pasture firing arrows up into the air: straight up, more or less vertically. The arrows, naturally, fall back down, with pretty much the same velocity as that with which they flew up in the first place. The men ride or run around until an arrow lands on one of them and kills him. Then they stop: the ritual demands that one man must be taken every year. Hungover, jaded, generally un-invigorated by the world, I found myself, in reverie, wishing—just as I had as a child when jumping from my sisters’ bed—that I could be one of these Vanuatan warriors, galloping about the fields, new-year’s wind biting at my cheeks, death whistling all around me, whistling me to life … ~ Tom McCarthy,
396:I had always liked darkness. When I was small I was afraid of it if I was alone, but when I was with others I loved it and the change to the world it brought. Running around in the forest or between houses was different in the darkness, the world was enchanted, and we, we were breathless adventurers with blinking eyes and pounding hearts.

When I was older there was little I liked better than to stay up at night, the silence and the darkness had an allure, they carried a promise of something immense. And autumn was my favorite season, wandering along the road by the river in the dark and the rain, not much could beat that.

But this darkness was different. This darkness rendered everything lifeless. It was static, it was the same whether you were awake or asleep, and it became harder and harder to motivate yourself to get up in the morning. I succeeded, and five minutes later I was standing in front of my desk again, but what happened there was also rendered lifeless. It felt as though I was getting nothing back from what I was doing. However much effort I put in, nothing came back. Everything vanished, everything dissolved into the great darkness in which we lived. I might as well say this as that, do this as that, nothing made any difference. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,
397:canvas and mirror
self-portrait with cats, with purple, with stacks
of half-read books adorning my desk, with coffee,
with mug, with yesterday's mug. self-portrait
with guilt, with fear, with thick-banded silver ring,
painted toes, and no make-up on my face. selfportrait with twins, with giggles, with sister at
last, with epistrophy, with crepescule with nellie,
with my favorite things. self-portrait with hard
head, with soft light, with raised eyebrow. selfportrait voo-doo, self-portrait hijinks, self-portrait
surprise. self-portrait with patience, with political
protest, with poetry, with papers to grade. selfportrait as thaumaturgic lass, self-portrait as luna
larva, self-portrait as your mama. self-portrait
with self at sixteen. self-portrait with shit-kickers,
with hip-huggers, with crimson silk, with wild
mushroom risotto and a glass of malbec. selfportrait with partial disclosure, self-portrait with
half-truths, self-portrait with demi-monde. selfportrait with a night at the beach, with a view
overlooking the lake, with cancelled flight. selfportrait with a real future, with a slight chance of
sours, with glasses, with cream, with fries, with
a way with words, with a propositional phrase.
~ Evie Shockley,
398:I felt like I was faking all of this, like I was playing the part of a student. I had the costume and the props, but I didn't really belong here. I'd pinned notes on the stupid corkboard backing of my desk, and I'd highlighted things...But it was all so meaningless.

For about an hour, I had an overwheling urge to grab my bag, stuff in a few things, and take the next train to Bristol. I could be back on my parents' couch that night if I got moving. I could admit that I wasn't ready for this, that the semester was a wash. My parents would be thrilled, I was sure. Not about the semester being a wash--but certainly about having me back where they could keep me safe and sound. It would be so easy to do it. The very idea made me warm inside. It was okay to give up. I'd been brave. Everyone would say so.

And yet...even as I opened a dresser drawer and figured out which things I would take with me in this hypothetical scenario, i remembered the problem.

There would still be ghosts

i would still have a future.

I would still go back to school eventually. You can't curl up on the sofa and deny life forever. Life is always going to be a series of ouch-making moments, and the question was, was i going to go all fetal position, or was I going to woman up? ~ Maureen Johnson,
399:Reservations Confirmed
The ticket settles on my desk: a paper tongue
pronouncing "Go away;" a flattened seed
from which a thousand-mile leap through the air can grow.
It's pure potential: a vacation-to-be
the way an apple is a pie-to-be,
a bullet is a death-to-be. Or is the future
pressed into it inalterably—woven between
the slick fibers like secret threads
from the U.S. Treasury? Is my flight number
already flashing as cameras grind and the newlybereaved moan? Or does it gleam under Arrivals,
digits turned innocuous as those that didn't
win the raffle for a new Ford truck?
If, somewhere, I'm en route now, am I
praying the winged ballpoint I'm strapped into
will write on Denver's runway, "Safe and Sound"?
Was my pocket picked in Burbank,
and I've just noticed at thirty thousand feet?
Am I smiling, watching the clouds' icefields
melt to smoky wisps, revealing lakes
like Chinese dragons embroidered in blue below?
Lifting my ticket, do I hold a bon voyage,
or boiling jet streams, roaring thunderstorms,
the plane bounced like a boat on cast iron seas,
then the lightning flash, the dizzy plunge,
perfectly aware (amid the shrieks and prayers)
that, live or die, I won't survive the fall?
~ Charles Harper Webb,
400:She looked suspiciously between Narian and me, and I went behind my desk, consciously mimicking what Cannan always did. I also wanted to put distance between myself and Nantilam, for her eyes seemed to pierce my flesh. Narian, on the other hand, went to stand directly in front of her.
“We weren’t expecting you,” he admonished boldly. Having grown up a member of a royal family, I winced, knowing if anyone had addressed my father, the King, in such a manner, great offense would have been taken, followed by great retribution.
“That much is apparent,” Nantilam responded, her words clipped. “I ask you once more, where is Rava?”
“In the dungeon.”
What?” Nantilam was shocked--of all the answers she might have postulated, this was the most outlandish. She dropped her riding gloves on the seat of an armchair before the fireplace, then crossed her arms, her icy expression suggesting that Narian and I might trade places with Rava if we did not have a good rationale.
“Narian, I grant you many privileges as the commander of my army, but imprisoning the shield maiden I have placed as your second is not among them.”
She was patronizing him, and he glared at her. “Unless I gravely misjudge you, Rava was never granted the privilege of arbitrarily torturing and murdering Hytanican citizens. ~ Cayla Kluver,
401:I Sit At My Desk Alone
I sit at my desk alone
as I did on many Sunday
afternoons when you came
back to me,
your arms aching for me,
though they smelled
of other women
and your sweet head bowed
for me to rub
and your heart bursting
with things to tell me,
and your hair
and your eyes
wild.
We would embrace
on the carpet
and leave
the imprint of our bodies
on the floor.
My back is still sore
where you pressed me
into the rug,
a sweet soreness I would never
lose.
I think of you always
on Sunday afternoons,
and I try to conjure you
with these words
as if you might
come back to me
at twilight
but you are never coming back
never.
The truth is
you no longer exist.
Oh you walk the world
105
sturdily enough:
one foot in front
of the other.
But the lover you were,
the tender shoot
springing within me,
trusting me with your dreams,
has hardened
into fear and cynicism.
Betrayal does that
betrays the betrayer.
I want to hate you
and I cannot.
But I cannot
love you either.
It is our old love
I love,
as one loves
certain images
from childhood
shards
shining in
the street
in the shit.
Shards of light
in the darkness.
~ Erica Jong,
402:What’s it about?” Danny seemed authentically curious.
“The night. It’s got its own set of rules.”
“Day’s got rules too.”
“Oh, I know,” Joe said, “but I don’t like them.” They stared through the mesh at each other for a long time.
“I don’t understand,” Danny said softly.
“I know you don’t,” Joe said. “You, you buy into all this stuff about good guys and bad guys in the world. A loan shark breaks a guy’s leg for not paying his debt, a banker throws a guy out of his home for the same reason, and you think there’s a difference, like the banker’s just doing his job but the loan shark’s a criminal. I like the loan shark because he doesn’t pretend to be anything else, and I think the banker should be sitting where I’m sitting right now. I’m not going to live some life where I pay my fucking taxes and fetch the boss a lemonade at the company picnic and buy life insurance. Get older, get fatter, so I can join a men’s club in Back Bay, smoke cigars with a bunch of assholes in a back room somewhere, talk about my squash game and my kid’s grades. Die at my desk, and they’ll already have scraped my name off the office door before the dirt’s hit the coffin.”
“But that’s life,” Danny said.
“That’s a life. You want to play by their rules? Go ahead. But I say their rules are bullshit. I say there are no rules but the ones a man makes for himself. ~ Dennis Lehane,
403:Listen, kid. This is what happens: Somebody-girl usually-got a free spirit, doesn't get on too good with her parents. These kids, they're like tied-down helium balloons. They strain against the string and strain against it, and then something happens, and that string gets cut, and they just fly away. And maybe you never see the balloon again. It lands in Canada or somethin', gets work at a restaurant, and before the balloon even notices, it's been pouring coffee in that same dinner to the same sad bastards for thirty years. Or maybe three or four years from now or three or four days from now, the prevailing winds take the balloon back home, because it needs money, or it sobered up, or it misses its kid brother. But listen, kid, that string gets cut all the time."
"Yeah, bu-"

"I'm not finished, kid. The thing about these balloons is that there are so goddamned many of them. The sky is choked full of them, rubbing up against one another as they float to here or from there, and every one of those damned balloons ends up on my desk, one way or another, and after awhile a man can get discouraged. Everywhere the balloons, and each of them with a mother and father, or God forbid both, and after a while, you can't even see'em individually. You look up at all the balloons in the sky and you can see all of the balloons, but you cannot see any one balloon. ~ John Green,
404:This tiny, white-washed Infants' room was a brief but cosy anarchy. In that short time allowed us we played and wept, broke things, fell asleep, cheeked the teacher, discovered things we could do to each other, and exhaled our last guiltless days.
My desk companions were those two blonde girls, already puppyishly pretty, whose names and bodies were to distract and haunt me for the next fifteen years of my life. Poppy and Jo were limper chums; they sat holding hands all day; and there was a female self-possession about their pink sticky faces that made me shout angrily at them.
Vera was another I studied and liked; she was lonely, fuzzy and short. I felt a curious compassion for stumpy Vera; and it was through her, and no beauty, that I got into trouble and received the first public shock of my life. How it happened was simple, and I was innocent, so it seemed. She came up to me in the playground one morning and held her face close to mine. I had a stick in my hand, so I hit her on the head with it. Her hair was springy, so I hit her again and watched her mouth open up with a yell.
To my surprise a commotion broke out around me, cries of scandal from the older girls, exclamations of horror and heavy censure mixed with Vera's sobbing wails. I was intrigued, not alarmed, that by wielding a beech stick I was able to cause such a stir. So I hit her again, without spite or passion, then walked off to try something else. ~ Laurie Lee,
405:The Telegraph Clerk
Sitting here by my desk all day,
Hearing the constant click
As the messages speed on their way,
And the call comes sharp and quick-Oh, what a varied tale they tell
Of joy and hope and fear!
The funeral knell and the marriage bell
In their steady tick I hear.
'Mother is dying; come at once.'
And the tears will almost start,
For tender daughters and loving sons-God pity each aching heart!
Ah! how the haunting memories press
Of the mother's unfailing tenderness,
That is now forever o'er.
'I am well; will come tonight.'
How bright some eyes will glow
All day long with a happy light
As they watch the moments go.
Have had no letters; is something wrong?'
Some heart is sad today,
Counting the hours that seem so long
For the sake of one away.
'Arthur Ross, by accident killed;
Tell his mother, am coming home.'
Alas for the home with such sorrow filled,
When the bitter tidings come!
374
'Alice is better; gaining fast.'
And hearts that have been bowed
Under their weight of fear, at last
Shall lose their weary load.
So over the wires the tidings speed,
Bitter and grave and gay;
Some hearts shall beat, and some shall bleed,
For the tale they have to say.
As I sit all day by my desk alone
I hear the steam go by,
And catch the wires' changeful tone
With a smile and then a sigh.
~ Anonymous Americas,
406:A Merciful Governor
Standing within the triple wall of Hell,
And flattening his nose against a grate
Behind whose brazen bars he'd had to dwell
A thousand million ages to that date,
Stoneman bewailed his melancholy fate,
And his big tear-drops, boiling as they fell,
Had worn between his feet, the record mentions,
A deep depression in the 'good intentions.'
Imperfectly by memory taught how
For prayer in Hell is a lost art-he prayed,
Uplifting his incinerated brow
And flaming hands in supplication's aid.
'O grant,' he cried, 'my torment may be stayed
In mercy, some short breathing spell allow!
If one good deed I did before my ghosting,
Spare me and give Delmas a double roasting.'
Breathing a holy harmony in Hell,
Down through the appalling clamors of the place,
Charming them all to willing concord, fell
A Voice ineffable and full of grace:
'Because of all the law-defying race
One single malefactor of the cell
Thou didst not free from his incarceration,
Take thou ten thousand years of condonation.'
Back from their fastenings began to shoot
The rusted bolts; with dreadful roar, the gate
Laboriously turned; and, black with soot,
The extinguished spirit passed that awful strait,
And as he legged it into space, elate,
Muttered: 'Yes, I remember that galoot
I'd signed his pardon, ready to allot it,
But stuck it in my desk and quite forgot it.'
~ Ambrose Bierce,
407:Dear Colette
Dear Colette,
I want to write to you
about being a woman
for that is what you write to me.
I want to tell you how your face
enduring after thirty, forty, fifty. . .
hangs above my desk
like my own muse.
I want to tell you how your hands
reach out from your books
& seize my heart.
I want to tell you how your hair
electrifies my thoughts
like my own halo.
I want to tell you how your eyes
penetrate my fear
& make it melt.
I want to tell you
simply that I love you-though you are "dead"
& I am still "alive."
Suicides & spinsters-all our kind!
Even decorous Jane Austen
never marrying,
& Sappho leaping,
& Sylvia in the oven,
& Anna Wickham, Tsvetaeva, Sara Teasdale,
& pale Virginia floating like Ophelia,
& Emily alone, alone, alone. . . .
But you endure & marry,
47
go on writing,
lose a husband, gain a husband,
go on writing,
sing & tap dance
& you go on writing,
have a child & still
you go on writing,
love a woman, love a man
& go on writing.
You endure your writing
& your life.
Dear Colette,
I only want to thank you:
for your eyes ringed
with bluest paint like bruises,
for your hair gathering sparks
like brush fire,
for your hands which never willingly
let go,
for your years, your child, your lovers,
all your books. . . .
Dear Colette,
you hold me
to this life.
~ Erica Jong,
408:I reach into the hat and pull out a little white slip of paper. I open it slowly while I bite my lower lip in anticipation. In bold letters I read HAND WARMERS.
“Hand warmers?” I question.
Alex leans over and reads the paper with a confused look on his face. “What the fuck are hand warmers?”
Mrs. Peterson shoots Alex a warning glare. “If you’d like to stay after school, I have another blue detention slip on my desk with your name already on it. Now, either ask the question again without using foul language or join me after school.”
“That’d be cool to hang with you, Mrs. P., but I’d rather spend the time studyin’ with my chem partner,” Alex responds, then has the nerve to wink at Colin, “so I’ll rephrase the question. What exactly are hand warmers?”
“Thermal chemistry, Mr. Fuentes. We use them to warm our hands.”
Alex has this big, cocky grin as he turns to me. “I’m sure we can find other things to warm.”
“I hate you,” I say loud enough for Colin and the rest of the class to hear. If I sit here and let him get the best of me, I’ll probably hear my mom tsk’ing in my head about reputation meaning everything.
I know the class is watching out interaction, even Isabel, who thinks Alex isn’t as bad as everyone thinks he is. Can’t she see him for what he is, or is she blinded by his chiseled face and popular status among their friends?
Alex whispers, “There’s a thin line between love and hate. Maybe you’re confusing your emotions.”
I scoot away from him. “I wouldn’t bet on it.”
“I would. ~ Simone Elkeles,
409:so often I get optimistic and explain the best method of learning to write to students. I don’t believe any of them has ever tried it, but I will explain it to you now. After all, you may be the exception. When I read about this method, it was attributed to Benjamin Franklin, who invented and discovered so much. Certainly I did not invent it. But I did it, and it worked. That is more than can be said for most creative writing classes. Find a very short story by a writer you admire. Read it over and over until you understand everything in it. Then read it over a lot more. Here’s the key part. You must do this. Put it away where you cannot get at it. You will have to find a way to do it that works for you. Mail the story to a friend and ask him to keep it for you, or whatever. I left the story I had studied in my desk on Friday. Having no weekend access to the building in which I worked, I could not get to it until Monday morning. When you cannot see it again, write it yourself. You know who the characters are. You know what happens. You write it. Make it as good as you can. Compare your story to the original, when you have access to the original again. Is your version longer? Shorter? Why? Read both versions out loud. There will be places where you had trouble. Now you can see how the author handled those problems. If you want to learn to write fiction, and are among those rare people willing to work at it, you might want to use the little story you have just finished as one of your models. It’s about the right length.     P ~ Gene Wolfe,
410:To Mrs. Professor In Defense Of My Cat's Honor And
Not Only
My valiant helper, a small-sized tiger
Sleeps sweetly on my desk, by the computer,
Unaware that you insult his tribe.
Cats play with a mouse or with a half-dead mole.
You are wrong, though: it's not out of cruelty.
They simply like a thing that moves.
For, after all, we know that only consciousness
Can for a moment move into the Other,
Empathize with the pain and panic of a mouse.
And such as cats are, all of Nature is.
Indifferent, alas, to the good and the evil.
Quite a problem for us, I am afraid.
Natural history has its museums,
But why should our children learn about monsters,
An earth of snakes and reptiles for millions of years?
Nature devouring, nature devoured,
Butchery day and night smoking with blood.
and who created it? Was it the good Lord?
Yes, undoubtedly, they are innocent,
Spiders, mantises, sharks, pythons.
We are the only ones who say: cruelty.
Our consciousness and our conscience
Alone in the pale anthill of galaxies
Put their hope in a humane God.
Who cannot but feel and think,
Who is kindred to us by his warmth and movement,
For we are, as he told us, similar to Him.
Yet if it is so, the He takes pity
88
On every mauled mouse, every wounded bird.
Then the universe ofr him is like a Crucifixion.
Such is the outcome of your attack on the cat:
A theological, Augustinian grimace,
Which makes difficult our walking on this eart.
~ Czeslaw Milosz,
411:Mother-daughter relationships can be complicated and fraught with the effects of moments from the past. My mom knew this and wanted me to know it too. On one visit home, I found an essay from the Washington Post by the linguistics professor Deborah Tannen that had been cut out and left on my desk. My mom, and her mom before her, loved clipping newspaper articles and cartoons from the paper to send to Barbara and me. This article was different. Above it, my mom had written a note: “Dear Benny”—I was “Benny” from the time I was a toddler; the family folklore was that when we were babies, a man approached my parents, commenting on their cute baby boys, and my parents played along, pretending our names were Benjamin and Beauregard, later shorted to Benny and Bo.
In her note, my mom confessed to doing many things that the writer of this piece had done: checking my hair, my appearance. As a teenager, I was continually annoyed by some of her requests: comb your hair; pull up your jeans (remember when low-rise jeans were a thing? It was not a good look, I can assure you!). “Your mother may assume it goes without saying that she is proud of you,” Deborah Tannen wrote. “Everyone knows that. And everyone probably also notices that your bangs are obscuring your vision—and their view of your eyes. Because others won’t say anything, your mother may feel it’s her obligation to tell you.” In leaving her note and the clipping, my mom was reminding me that she accepted and loved me—and that there is no perfect way to be a mother. While we might have questioned some of the things our mother said, we never questioned her love. ~ Jenna Bush Hager,
412:If I’d felt insensitive earlier, it wasn’t long before I was feeling downright callous. Everyone kept telling me they’d heard what had happened and how horrible it must have been. But inside, I was still buzzing, my pulse racing, as giddy as the time Serena and I sneaked champagne at her cousin’s wedding.
Rafe didn’t make it easy, either. During first period, he found an excuse to walk past my desk and drop off a note. It read, “Not dating classmates means you’ve missed out on an important part of fifth grade. Time to catch up.” Below that, he’d drawn a heart with our initials in it. I’d laughed, added “2 be + 2-gether = 4-ever” and passed it back.
And so it went, all morning, the page getting filled up with doodles as it went back and forth. It was completely fifth grade and completely silly and I loved it, because he wasn’t afraid to be silly. It was like kissing him first--I could do whatever I wanted, and not have to worry what he’d think of me.
Five minutes before lunch, he dropped off another note marked “Open at the bell,” then excused himself to use the washroom…and didn’t return. When the bell went, I unfolded it to find a rough sketch of the school, with a dotted line from our class to an X by the principal’s office.
I stuffed the note in my pocket and took off. At the office, I found an X in marker on the floor beside the trash can. I moved it and found another note. Another dotted line, this one leading outside to another X. That one ended just inside the forest, where I found a third note under a pebble…It was blank.
I looked up.
Rafe’s laugh floated down from the trees. “Can’t fool you, huh? ~ Kelley Armstrong,
413:I didn’t know what had ignited our passion, but with my hands in Narian’s hair and our mouths moving together, I was rapidly losing my ability to think. It was afternoon, and we were in my study, the door closed but not locked, and anyone, Cokyrian or Hytanican, could walk in at any moment.
Narian lifted me and set me on my desk, knocking a few papers to the floor, and I wrapped my legs around his waist. I laughed through our kiss until he was forced to come up for air.
“What?” he asked, cheeks flushed, his visage happy and dazed.
“What are we doing?”
“I don’t know, but I’m enjoying it,” he said, caressing my neck with his lips.
Despite how difficult he was making it for me to form words, I stuttered out a halfhearted objection. “Narian, you realize…we’re going to be caught.”
He was breathing heavily and took a moment to answer, too busy concentrating on the hollow of my throat. “Somehow…I can’t bring myself…to care.”
Still grasping his hair, I pulled his head back, kissing him once more fully on the lips. “That’s a new attitude you’ve adopted.”
He laughed. “The High Priestess and Rava appear to know we’re in love, so even if we’re discovered, it won’t be much of a shock to the powers that be.
Despite his words, he practically leaped away from me when the door opened. I crossed my legs, giving him a sideways glare for leaving me sitting rather inappropriately on the edge of my desk, and he rubbed the back of his neck in sheepish apology.
Of course it was Rava crossing the threshold, and she took in our postures before slamming the door, her expression particularly unpleasant.
“So this is how the two of you handle the affairs of the province,” she growled. ~ Cayla Kluver,
414:It took me years to learn to sit at my desk for more than two minutes at a time, to put up with the solitude and the terror of failure, and the godawful silence and the white paper. And now that I can take it . . . now that I can finally do it . . . I'm really raring to go.

I was in my study writing. I was learning how to go down into myself and salvage bits and pieces of the past. I was learning how to sneak up on the unconscious and how to catch my seemingly random thoughts and fantasies. By closing me out of his world, Bennett had opened all sorts of worlds inside my own head. Gradually I began to realize that none of the subjects I wrote poems about engaged my deepest feelings, that there was a great chasm between what I cared about and what I wrote about. Why? What was I afraid of? Myself, most of all, it seemed.

"Freedom is an illusion," Bennett would have said and, in a way, I too would have agreed. Sanity, moderation, hard work, stability . . . I believed in them too. But what was that other voice inside of me which kept urging me on toward zipless fucks, and speeding cars and endless wet kisses and guts full of danger? What was that other voice which kept calling me coward! and egging me on to burn my bridges, to swallow the poison in one gulp instead of drop by drop, to go down into the bottom of my fear and see if I could pull myself up? Was it a voice? Or was it a thump? Something even more primitive than speech. A kind of pounding in my gut which I had nicknamed my "hunger-thump." It was as if my stomach thought of itself as a heart. And no matter how I filled it—with men, with books, with food—it refused to be still. Unfillable—that's what I was. Nymphomania of the brain. Starvation of the heart. ~ Erica Jong,
415:Chip asked me about New York and what I wanted to do, and how long my dad had owned the shop, and what it was I loved about Waco. He asked about my sisters and my family in general, and what I’d done at Baylor, and if I’d known a few communications majors he’d run around with at school. (I told y’all he was chatty!) Somehow none of these questions seemed intrusive or strange to me at the time, which is funny, because thinking back I find them particularly telling.
At the time, it was just like talking with an old friend.
John finally stood up, and this baseball-cap-wearing customer that John had introduced as Chip followed. “Well, nice talking to you,” he said.
“Nice talking to you too,” I replied, and that was it. I went back inside. The guys in the shop wanted to know what I thought about Hot John, and I just laughed. “Sorry, guys, I don’t think it’s gonna work out.”
The next day I came back from my lunch break to find a note on my desk: “Chip Gaines called. Call him back.” I thought, Oh, that must be the guy I met yesterday. So I called him. I honestly thought he was going to ask me about getting a better price on his brakes or something, but instead he said, “Hey, I really enjoyed our conversation yesterday. I was wondering…you want to go out sometime?”
And for some reason I said okay--just like that, without any hesitation. It wasn’t like me at all. When I hung up the phone, I went, “What in the world just happened!”

So you said okay immediately? I don’t even remember that. That’s fun! No reservations? Man, I must’ve been good-lookin’.

What Chip didn’t know was I didn’t even give myself time to have reservations. Something told me to just go for it.

Cute, Joey. This story makes me love you all over again. ~ Joanna Gaines,
416:Dear Matt,
In less than a day, I’ ll be standing on the same sand you stood on so many times before. Well, not the same sand, with the tides and winds and erosion and all of that, but the same symbolic sand. I’m so excited and scared that I can’ t sleep – even though I have to wake up in five hours!
You know, I saved every one of your postcards. They’re here in a box under my bed – all the little stories you sent, like little pieces of California. Like the beach glass you guys always brought me. Sometimes I dump it out on my desk and press my ear to the pieces, trying to hear the ocean. Trying to hear you.
But you don’ t say anything.
Remember how you’ d come back from your vacation on the beach and tell me what it really felt like? What the ocean sounded like at dawn when the beach was deserted? What your hair and skin tasted like after swimming in saltwater all day? How the sand could burn your feet as you walked on it, but if you stuck your toes in, it was cold and wet underneath? How you spent three hours sitting on Ocean Beach just to watch the sun sink into the water a million miles away? If I closed my eyes as you were talking, it was like I was there, like your stories were my stories. In many ways, I feel as if I have memories of you there, too. Do you think that’s crazy?
Matt, please don’ t think badly about Frankie’s contest. It’s just a silly game. It’s so Frankie, you know?
No, I guess you wouldn’ t. You’ d kill her if you did!
She just misses you. We all do. I’ ll look out for her, though. I promise.
Please watch over us tomorrow, and for the next few weeks while we’re away. You’ ll be in my thoughts the whole time, like always.
I’m going to find some red sea glass for you.
I miss you more than you could ever know.
Love,
Anna ~ Sarah Ockler,
417:Steve Carver-the guy with the faux-surfer hair-and Amanda's best friend, Nicole,are chosen.Rashmi and I groan in a rare moment of camaraderie.Steve pumps a fist in the air.What a meathead.
The selecting begins,and Amanda is chosen first. Of course. And then Steve's best friend.Of course. Rashmi elbows me. "bet you five euros I'm picked last."
"I'll take that bet.Because it's totally me."
Amanda turns in her seat toward me and lowers her voice. "That's a safe bet, Skunk Girl. Who'd want you on their team?"
My jaw unhinges stupidly.
"St. Clair!" Steve's voice startles me. It figures that St. Clair would be picked early. Everyone looks at him, but he's staring down Amanda. "Me," he says, in answer to her question. "I want Anna on my team,and you'd be lucky to have her."
She flushes and quickly turns back around,but not before shooting me another dagger.What have I ever done to her?
More names are called. More names that are NOT mine. St. Clair goes to get my attention,but I pretend I don't notice. I can't bear to look at him.I'm too humiliated. Soon the selection is down to me, Rashmi,and a skinny dude who, for whatever reason,is called Cheeseburger. Cheeseburger is always wearing this expresion of surprise, like someone's just called his name, and he can't figure out where the voice is coming from.
"Rashmi," Nicole says without hestitation.
My heart sinks.Now it's between me and someone named Cheeseburger. I focus my attention down on my desk, at the picture of me that Josh drew earlier today in history. I'm dressed like a medieval peasant (we're studying the Black Plague), and I have a fierce scowl and a dead rat dangling from one hand.
Amanda whispers into Steve's ear. I feel her smirking at me,and my face burns.
Steve clears his throat. "Cheeseburger. ~ Stephanie Perkins,
418:Olo-keZ G-- a tc
There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven.
-ECCLESIASTES 3:1
What would we do without our day planners? I have a large one for my desk and a carry-all that goes with me. I don't know how a person functions without some type of organizer. I just love it; it truly has become my daily-calendar bible. I take it with me everywhere. My whole life is in that book. Each evening I peek in to see what tomorrow has to bring. I just love to see a busy calendar; it makes me feel so alive. I've got this to do and that to do.
Then I come upon a day that has all white space. Not one thing to do. What, oh what, will I do to fill the space and time? That's the way I used to think and plan. All my spaces had appointments written down, and many times they even overlapped.
I now plan for white spaces. I even plan ahead weeks or months and black out "saved for me or my family" days. I have begun to realize that there are
precious times for myself and my loved ones. Bob and I really try to protect these saved spaces just for us. We may not go anywhere or do anything out of the ordinary, but it's our special time. We can do anything we want: sleep in, stay out late, go to lunch, read a book, go to a movie, or take a nap. I really look forward with great anticipation to when these white spaces appear on my calendar.
I've been so impressed when I've read biographies of famous people. Many of them are controllers of their own time. They don't let outsiders dictate their schedules. Sure, there are times when things have to be done on special days, but generally that isn't the case. When we begin to control our calendars, we will find that our lives are more enjoyable and that the tensions of life are more manageable. Make those white spaces your friend, not your enemy. ~ Emilie Barnes,
419:Okay, so where were we?” I asked.
“I was telling you I’m busy and you were excusing me from this meeting.”
“No, that’s not where we were.”  I left the space behind my desk and came around to join her, taking the chair on her left.  She turned away from me, facing the wall of bookshelves that ran next to my desk.
“Ruby, if you’re worried that being honest with me will cause you to lose your job, I want you to know that it won’t happen.  I’d never let you go for being honest.  Besides … the senior partners love you.  You have total job protection here.”
She swiveled her head slowly in my direction.  “Can I get that in writing?”
“Shit, Ruby, you know the law as well as I do.  Your job is safe.  Come on, talk to me.”
She sighed.  “I don’t want to upset you.”  Her tone wasn’t quite as harsh.   It was the kindest thing she’d said to me in six months, and it gave me hope.
“Please, if it will help get us to the bottom of this mess, I don’t care.  Upset me.”
She stared at me long and hard before exhaling in a really long, really sad-sounding sigh.
Just that alone made me want to cry.  I almost didn’t want to hear what she had to say now, knowing she was preparing herself to deliver some very bad news.
“Okay, I’m just going to come right out and say it, because this is something you need to hear.  And since you don’t talk to your friends anymore, it’s on my shoulders to do it.”  She pressed her lips together and sat straighter.  Then she looked at the ceiling before muttering, “Lord Jesus, please forgive me for being so bold and honest, but you know I’m doing it for the right reasons and my heart is true.”
My own heart skipped a few beats.  I threw up a prayer of my own.  Dear Tiny Baby Jesus, please give me the strength to not bite Ruby’s head off, because I have a feeling I’m going to want to before she’s done. ~ Elle Casey,
420:Last night I had the dream again. Except it's not a dream I know because when it comes for me, I'm still awake.
There's my desk. The map on the wall. The Stuffed animals I don't play with anymore but don't want to hurt Dad's feelings by sticking in the closet I might be in bed. I might be just standing there, looking foe a missing sock. Then i'm gone.
it doesn't just show me somthing this time, it takes me from here to THERE> standing on the bank of a river of fire. A thousand wasps in my head. Fighting and dying inside my skull, their bodies piling up against the backs of me eyes. Stinging and stinging.
Dad's voice. Somewhere across the river. Calling my name. I've never heard him sound like that before. He's so frightened he can't hide it, even though he tries (he ALWAYS tries).
The dead boy floats by.
Facedown. So I wait for his head to pop up, show the holes where his eye used to be, say somthing with his blue lips. One of the terrible things it might make him do. But he just passes like a chunk of wood. I've never been here before, but I know it's real. The river is the line between this place and the Other Place. And I'm on the wrong side. There's a dark forest behind me but that's not what it is. I try to get to where Dad is. My toes touch the river and it sings with pain. Then there's arms pulling me back. Dragging me into the trees. They feel like a man's arms but it's not a man that sticks its fingers into my mouth. Nails that scratch the back of my throat. Skin that tastes like dirt. But just before that, before I'm back in my room with my missing sock in my hand, I realize I've been calling out to Dad just like he's been calling out to me. Telling him the same thing the whole time. Not words from my mouth through the air, but from my heart through the earth, so only the two of us could hear it.
FIND ME ~ Andrew Pyper,
421:There, I saw Adam messing around with a container of tic tacs. I had found the source of the cinnamon taste of his kisses. He looked up.

"Want one?" he offered.

"Sure, thanks," I replied. He proceeded to knock exactly one tic tac into his palm and hand it to me. "Are you sure you can spare this?" I asked solemnly.

"How many did you want?"

"Well, more than one. Who gives somebody one tic tac? Would it kill to be a little more generous? some psychologist somewhere probably has some theory about one tic tac givers and fear of commitment."

"Fear of commitment, my ass. You should be committed, you loon. If you were intended to have more than one tic tac, they would have just made tic tacs bigger. This is regulation sized tic tac, and it should be more than enough to satisfy your breath freshening needs," he said, sounding affronted.

"A tic tac is not merely a breath freshener, it is a candy," I pointed out, voice rising in anger. Who was he calling a loon? "And they make them small on purpose, so you'll think you're getting more, and so you'll run out faster when someone asks for one, and you will give them a few!"

"Why would someone ask for A tic tac when they really wanted several tic tacs? What does that say about their psychology?! Why not be honest from the get-go about what you want?!" he shouted back at me.

" I didn't ask for one! You offered me one, God damn it!"

"And as for your other points, it is primarily a breath freshener, and maybe you should alert the media about your great tic tac size conspiracy!"

"I can't believe we're fighting about motherfucking tic tacs!" I screamed and the two of us glowered each other across my desk for several seconds before smiles slowly appeared on both of our faces.

"Want to have make-up sex?" he asked.

"Yeah, let's go," I said, getting up and heading for the bedroom. ~ N M Silber,
422:And One For My Dame
A born salesman,
my father made all his dough
by selling wool to Fieldcrest, Woolrich and Faribo.
A born talker,
he could sell one hundred wet-down bales
of that white stuff. He could clock the miles and the sales
and make it pay.
At home each sentence he would utter
had first pleased the buyer who'd paid him off in butter.
Each word
had been tried over and over, at any rate,
on the man who was sold by the man who filled my plate.
My father hovered
over the Yorkshire pudding and the beef:
a peddler, a hawker, a merchant and an Indian chief.
Roosevelt! Willkie! and war!
How suddenly gauche I was
with my old-maid heart and my funny teenage applause.
Each night at home
my father was in love with maps
while the radio fought its battles with Nazis and Japs.
Except when he hid
in his bedroom on a three-day drunk,
he typed out complex itineraries, packed his trunk,
his matched luggage
and pocketed a confirmed reservation,
his heart already pushing over the red routes of the nation.
I sit at my desk
each night with no place to go,
opening thee wrinkled maps of Milwaukee and Buffalo,
18
the whole U.S.,
its cemeteries, its arbitrary time zones,
through routes like small veins, capitals like small stones.
He died on the road,
his heart pushed from neck to back,
his white hanky signaling from the window of the Cadillac.
My husband,
as blue-eyed as a picture book, sells wool:
boxes of card waste, laps and rovings he can pull
to the thread
and say Leicester, Rambouillet, Merino,
a half-blood, it's greasy and thick, yellow as old snow.
And when you drive off, my darling,
Yes, sir! Yes, sir! It's one for my dame,
your sample cases branded with my father's name,
your itinerary open,
its tolls ticking and greedy,
its highways built up like new loves, raw and speedy.
~ Anne Sexton,
423:Demon
A young man is afraid of his demon and puts his hand
over the demon's mouth sometimes...- D. H. Lawrence
I mentioned my demon to a friend
and the friend swam in oil and came forth to me
greasy and cryptic
and said,
'I'm thinking of taking him out of hock.
I pawned him years ago.'
Who would buy?
The pawned demon,
Yellowing with forgetfulness
and hand at his throat?
Take him out of hock, my friend,
but beware of the grief
that will fly into your mouth like a bird.
My demon,
too often undressed,
too often a crucifix I bring forth,
too often a dead daisy I give water to
too often the child I give birth to
and then abort, nameless, nameless...
earthless.
Oh demon within,
I am afraid and seldom put my hand up
to my mouth and stitch it up
covering you, smothering you
from the public voyeury eyes
of my typewriter keys.
If I should pawn you,
what bullion would they give for you,
what pennies, swimming in their copper kisses
what bird on its way to perishing?
No.
No.
59
I accept you,
you come with the dead who people my dreams,
who walk all over my desk
(as in Mother, cancer blossoming on her
Best & Co. titswaltzing with her tissue paper ghost)
the dead, who give sweets to the diabetic in me,
who give bolts to the seizure of roses
that sometimes fly in and out of me.
Yes.
Yes.
I accept you, demon.
I will not cover your mouth.
If it be man I love, apple laden and foul
or if it be woman I love, sick unto her blood
and its sugary gasses and tumbling branches.
Demon come forth,
even if it be God I call forth
standing like a carrion,
wanting to eat me,
starting at the lips and tongue.
And me wanting to glide into His spoils,
I take bread and wine,
and the demon farts and giggles,
at my letting God out of my mouth
anonymous woman
at the anonymous altar.
~ Anne Sexton,
424:Nicotine patches are somewhere in between gum and cigarettes. They contain more nicotine than the gum, but since you absorb it slowly through your skin throughout the day, you get sustained focus and energy. When I tried nicotine patches, I’d take the smallest-dose patch I could find and cut it in half (even though it says not to on the label). I’d leave it on for one to two hours, so I would get 1–4 mg of nicotine during that time. Nicotine inhalers are relatively hard to find, but Nicorette makes them, and they have no chemicals at all. It’s just a sponge with nicotine and a little plastic straw that you suck through to get nicotine-scented air. I like these because they’re free of nasty chemicals, but the downside is that the act of sucking on something appears to be addictive. I found myself wanting to take a puff from one when I was sitting at my desk, even when I didn’t need or want the energy from it—so I quit! Nicotine lozenges, like nicotine gum, are full of crappy chemicals and sweeteners such as aspartame, acesulfame potassium (ace-K), and sucralose. The safest one I’ve found is the Nicorette mini lozenge, which is very small and contains no aspartame. You do get a small dose of unsafe sweetener, but it’s so tiny that it’s unlikely to matter much. When I take half of the smallest, 2 mg lozenge, I feel a cognitive shift in about fifteen minutes. These lozenges are easy to find in the United States. And make sure to get the mini lozenges, as the large Nicorette lozenges are full of chemicals you don’t want to put in your body. Nicotine spray is a more recent invention. Each spray of 1 mg of nicotine contains vanishingly small amounts of sucralose. You spray it under your tongue and feel it quickly, making it an excellent option when you want a burst of sustained energy. I’ve done more than one interview while on this, and I find it’s great for jet lag or when you have a heavy day ahead of you and want to maintain focus. If you do decide to try nicotine, treat it carefully. A safe ~ Dave Asprey,
425:PROCRASTINATION

The day after tomorrow, yes, only the day after tomorrow ...
Tomorrow I’ll start thinking about the day after tomorrow,
Maybe I could do it then; but not today ...
No, nothing today; today I can’t.
The confused persistence of my objective subjectivity,
The sleep of my real life, intercalated,
Anticipated, infinite weariness—
I’m worlds too weary to catch a trolley—
That kind of soul ...
Only the day after tomorrow ...
Today I want to prepare,
I want to prepare myself for tomorrow, when I’ll think about the next day ...
That’d be decisive.
I’ve already got the plans sketched out, but no, today I’m not making any
plans ...
Tomorrow’s the day for plans.
Tomorrow I’ll sit down at my desk to conquer the world;
But I’ll only conquer the world the day after tomorrow ...
I feel like crying,
I suddenly feel like crying a lot, inside ...
That’s all you’re getting today, it’s a secret, I’m not talking.
Only the day after tomorrow ...
When I was a kid the Sunday circus diverted me every week.
Today all that diverts me is the Sunday circus from all the weeks of my
childhood ...
The day after tomorrow I’ll be someone else,
My life will triumph,
All my real qualities—intelligent, well-read, practical—
Will be gathered together in a public notice ...
But the public notice will go up tomorrow ...
Today I want to sleep, I’ll make a fair copy tomorrow ...
For today, what show will repeat my childhood to me?
Even if I buy tickets tomorrow,
The show would still really be the day after tomorrow ...
Not before ...
The day after tomorrow I’ll have the public pose I will have practiced
tomorrow.
The day after tomorrow I’ll finally be what I could never be today.
Only the day after tomorrow ...
I’m sleepy as a stray dog's chill.
I’m really sleepy.
Tomorrow I’ll tell you everything, or the day after tomorrow ...
Yes, maybe only the day after tomorrow ...
By and by ...
Yes, the old by and by ... ~ Fernando Pessoa,
426:I do not write every day. I write to the questions and issues before me. I write to deadlines. I write out of my passions. And I write to make peace with my own contradictory nature. For me, writing is a spiritual practice. A small bowl of water sits on my desk, a reminder that even if nothing is happening on the page, something is happening in the room--evaporation. And I always light a candle when I begin to write, a reminder that I have now entered another realm, call it the realm of the Spirit. I am mindful that when one writes, one leaves this world and enters another.

My books are collages made from journals, research, and personal experience. I love the images rendered in journal entries, the immediacy that is captured on the page, the handwritten notes. I love the depth of ideas and perspective that research brings to a story, be it biological or anthropological studies or the insights brought to the page by the scholarly work of art historians.

When I go into a library, I feel like I am a sleuth looking to solve a mystery. I am completely inspired by the pursuit of knowledge through various references. I read newpapers voraciously. I love what newspapers say about contemporary culture. And then you go back to your own perceptions, your own words, and weigh them against all you have brought together. I am interested in the kaleidoscope of ideas, how you bring many strands of thought into a book and weave them together as one piece of coherent fabric, while at the same time trying to create beautiful language in the service of the story. This is the blood work of the writer.

Writing is also about a life engaged. And so, for me, community work, working in the schools or with grassroots conservation organizations is another critical component of my life as a writer. I cannot separate the writing life from a spiritual life, from a life as a teacher or activist or my life intertwined with family and the responsibilities we carry within our own homes. Writing is daring to feel what nurtures and breaks our hearts. Bearing witness is its own form of advocacy. It is a dance with pain and beauty. ~ Terry Tempest Williams,
427:Call him,” Vicky urges one last time, placing my phone on my desk, tapping her nail on the screen before leaving me to it.

I stare at my phone and then with shaky fingers I pick it up and press redial on his number.

He answers on the first ring.

“Tru,” his voice comes deep and sexy down the line.

“Hi, Jake.”

Silence.

“So…” I say, not really knowing what to say.

“I’m taking it your boss beat me to it?” he states rather than asks.

“She did.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“Will you do it – the bio?”

“Do I have a choice?”

There’s a really long pause. I can practically feel his tension radiating down the line.

“There’s always a choice, Tru.” He sounds a little pissed off.

“Sorry,” I recover. “That sounded a little shitty, it’s just a lot of information to process this early in the morning. Especially when I haven’t even had a chance to have a coffee yet.”

“You haven’t?”

“No, and I don’t function without coffee,” I say in a Spanish accent. I’m actually fluent in Spanish, something my mum insisted on, and it does comes in handy at times – well, mainly holiday’s in Spanish speaking countries. And my crap Spanish accent always used to make Jake laugh when we were kids, so I’m aiming for just that again.

He chuckles, deep and throaty down the line. It does incredible things to me. “I see you’re still an idiot.”

“I am, and it still takes one to know one.”

“That it does … so you’ll do it?”

I get the distinct feeling he’s not asking me. And really in what world would I ever say no.

“I’ll do it,” I smile.

I can practically feel his grin down the phone.

“Okay, so as your new boss – well one of them – I order you to go get some coffee as I can’t have you talking in that cute Spanish accent of yours all day. You’ll drive me nuts.”

I’ll drive him nuts?! In a good or bad way…

“I’m seeing you today?”

“Of course. Go get that coffee and I’ll call you back soon.”

He hangs up, and I sit staring at the phone in my hand, feeling a little dumbfounded.

And somehow a little played. I just haven’t figured out as to how yet. ~ Samantha Towle,
428:Though I had fallen in love with Narian a long time ago, I was continually learning more about him. I’d always been familiar with his principles and his personality, but it was the little things that made a human being. Little things like how he was not accustomed to sharing his space--had I not been forced to hide in his bedroom during his exchange with the High Priestess, I would not yet have seen it. There were other things, as well. He was nearly fluent in three languages in addition to our own; he absolutely could not sleep on his back; and he didn’t know how to handle being irritated with me.
Had I lied for Shaselle? Yes. But he would have a difficult time confronting me about it. He never hesitated in handling issues with other people, but with me, he seemed to try his hardest to convince himself that there was nothing to handle.
It was late afternoon before he finally raised the matter. After holding audiences in the Hearing Hall, I had entered my office and was about ready to retire when there was a knock on the door. I knew it would be Narian, and that his countenance would be inscrutable. Indeed, when I granted him permission to enter, he was closed off, exactly as I hated him to be.
“I thought you would meet me in my quarters,” I said, attempting to keep things light.
“I will. But I need to talk to you first.” It was plain from the tone of his voice that he wasn’t about to mix business with pleasure.
“Of course.” I rose from my desk chair, straightening a few papers and avoiding eye contact with him, though I wasn’t sure of the reason.
“The knife I took from Shaselle didn’t belong to Baelic.”
“Oh?” I looked up to meet his disconcerting eyes. If he wouldn’t let me in, I wouldn’t let him in.
“Alera, it was Sarteradan. You lied for her. Why?”
“And what of Steldor’s dagger?” I asked, ignoring his inquiry.
“Hytanican. No doubt he managed to keep one of his own from my troops.”
“What were you and he arguing about?”
“That’s of no importance. But you needn’t worry--I’m not going to arrest him.” He scrutinized me, and I squirmed like a bug under a magnifying glass. “What is important, Alera, is the question you’re trying to avoid--why did you lie for Shaselle? ~ Cayla Kluver,
429:Nothing But Color
I didn't write Etsuko,
I sliced her open.
She was carmine inside
like a sea bass
and empty.
No viscera, nothing but color.
I love you like that, boy.
I pull the kimono down around your shoulders
and kiss you.
Then you let it fall open.
Each time, I cut you a little
and when you leave, I take the piece,
broil it, dip it in ginger sauce
and eat it. It burns my mouth so.
You laugh, holding me belly-down
with your body.
So much hurting to get to this moment,
when I'm beneath you,
wanting it to go on and to end.
At midnight, you say see you tonight
and I answer there won't be any tonight,
but you just smile, swing your sweater
over your head and tie the sleeves around your neck.
I hear you whistling long after you disappear
down the subway steps,
as I walk back home, my whole body tingling.
I undress
and put the bronze sword on my desk
beside the crumpled sheet of rice paper.
I smooth it open
and read its single sentence:
I meant to do it.
No. It should be common and feminine
like I can't go on sharing him,
or something to imply that.
Or the truth:
that I saw in myself
the five signs of the decay of the angel
15
and you were holding on, watching and free,
that I decided to go out
with the pungent odor
of this cold and consuming passion in my nose: death.
Now, I've said it. That vulgar word
that drags us down to the worms, sightless, predestined.
Goddamn you, boy.
Nothing I said mattered to you;
that bullshit about Etsuko or about killing myself.
I tear the note, then burn it.
The alarm clock goes off. 5:45 A.M.
I take the sword and walk into the garden.
I look up. The sun, the moon,
two round teeth rock together
and the light of one chews up the other.
I stab myself in the belly,
wait, then stab myself again. Again.
It's snowing. I'll turn to ice,
but I'll burn anyone who touches me.
I start pulling my guts out,
those red silk cords,
spiraling skyward,
and I'm climbing them
past the moon and the sun,
past darkness
into white.
I mean to live.
~ Ai Ogawa,
430:I also received a note from the Unknown, the first in two days. I pounced on it eagerly, for receiving his letters had come to be the most important part of my day.
Instead of the long letter I had come to anticipate, it was short.

I thank you for the fine ring. It was thoughtfully chosen and I appreciate the generous gesture, for I have to admit I would rather impute generosity than mere caprice behind the giving of a gift that cannot be worn.
Or is this a sign that you wish, after all, to alter the circumscriptions governing our correspondence?
I thought--to make myself clear--that you preferred your admirer to remain secret. I am not convinced you really wish to relinquish this game and risk the involvement inherent in a contact face-to-face.


I dropped the note on my desk, feeling as if I’d reached for a blossom and had been stung by an unseen nettle.
My first reaction was to sling back an angry retort that if gifts were to inspire such an ungallant response, then he could just return it. Except it was I who had inveighed, and at great length, against mere gallantry. In a sense he’d done me the honor of telling the truth--
And it was then that I had the shiversome insight that is probably obvious by now to any of my progeny reading this record: that our correspondence had metamorphosed into a kind of courtship.
A courtship.
As I thought back, I realized that it was our discussion of this very subject that had changed the tenor of the letters from my asking advice of an invisible mentor to a kind of long-distance friendship. The other signs were all there--the gifts, the flowers. Everything but physical proximity. And it wasn’t the unknown gentleman who could not court me in person--it was I who couldn’t be courted in person, and he knew it.
So in the end I sent back only two lines:

You have given me much to think about.
Will you wear the ring, then, if I ask you to?


I received no answer that day, or even that night. And so I sat through the beautiful concert of blended children’s voices and tried not to stare at Elenet’s profile next to the Marquis of Shevraeth, while feeling a profound sense of unhappiness, which I attributed to the silence from my Unknown.
The next morning brought no note, but a single white rose. ~ Sherwood Smith,
431:Dan has what amounts to my entire life in the palm of his hand. He’ll see our chats. He’ll see the texts I sent to Beth about him and my plan. And what did I think was going to happen? Did I really think I could pull off some only-works-in-movies shit?

“Do you think it could be possible that Dan didn’t mean to hit me with that basketball?” The question flies out of my mouth, and I don’t remember thinking about asking it.

She scowls, looking me up and down. “Are you okay? I mean, I can tell you’re not. Was he that big of a jerk last night?”

I shake my head and pick at my nail polish. It’s not chipping yet, but it’s inevitable, so why not just go ahead and get it over with? “No, I’m fine. He was fine. I just… I don’t know.”

She puts a worried hand on my shoulder. “What happened, Z? Tell me.”

I let my forehead hit the surface of my desk. It hurts. “He has my phone.”

A bit of time passes where she doesn’t say anything. I just wait for the moment of realization to explode from her.

“Holy shit! Don’t tell me your chat is on there!”

There it is.

I nod my head, which probably just looks like I’m rubbing it up and down on my desk.

“Please tell me it’s password protected or something.”

I shake my head, again seemingly nuzzling my desk.

“Zelda, do you have your homework?” Mr. Drew asks from above me.

I pull out my five hundred words on the importance of James Dean in cinema from my backpack without even looking and hand it to him. Mr. Drew has a big thing for James Dean.

“Are you…okay, Zelda?” he asks a bit uncomfortably.

Good old Mr. Drew. Concerned about his students but very much not well versed in actually dealing with them.

I raise a hand and wave him off. “I’m good. As you were, Drew.”

“Right. Okay then.” He moves on.

Beth rubs my back. “It’s going to be all good in the hood, babe. Don’t worry. Dan won’t be interested in your phone. How did he get it, by the way?”

I turn my head just enough to let her see my face fully. I’m not sure if she sees a woman at the end of her rope or a girl who has no idea what to do next, but she pulls her hand back like she just touched a disguised snake. I’m so not in the mood to describe the sequence of events that led up to the worst moment of my life, and she knows it. ~ Leah Rae Miller,
432:This is the way it is with all people, I’ve learned. A person’s strengths almost always have a flip side. Obama’s strengths are prodigious, but he’s not perfect or exempt from blame for some of the disappointments I hear expressed about him ever more frequently these days. The day after the Affordable Care Act passed, a slightly hungover but very happy president walked into my office to reflect on the momentous events of the night before. “Not used to martinis on work nights,” he said with a smile, as he flopped down on the couch across from my desk, still bearing the effects of the late-night celebration he hosted for the staff after the law was passed. “I honestly was more excited last night than I was the night I was elected. Elections are like winning the semifinals. They just give you the opportunity to make a difference. What we did last night? That’s what really matters.” That attitude and approach is what I admire most about Obama, the thing that makes him stand apart. For him, politics and elections are only vehicles, not destinations. They give you the chance to serve. To Obama’s way of thinking, far worse than losing an election is squandering the opportunity to make the biggest possible difference once you get the chance to govern. That’s what allowed him to say “damn the torpedoes” and dive fearlessly into health care reform, despite the obvious political risks. It is why he was able to make many other tough calls when the prevailing political wisdom would have had him punt and wait for another chance with the ball. Yet there is the flip side to that courage and commitment. Obama has limited patience or understanding for officeholders whose concerns are more parochial—which would include most of Congress and many world leaders. “What are they so afraid of?” he asked after addressing the Senate Democrats on health reform, though the answer seemed readily apparent: losing their jobs in the next election! He has aggravated more than one experienced politician by telling them why acting boldly not only was their duty but also served their political needs. Whether it’s John Boehner or Bibi Netanyahu, few practiced politicians appreciate being lectured on where their political self-interest lies. That hint of moral superiority and disdain for politicians who put elections first has hurt Obama as negotiator, and it’s why Biden, a politician’s politician, has often had better luck. ~ David Axelrod,
433:In chem, Peter sits a row in front of me.
I write him a note. Why would you tell Josh that we’re-- I hesitate and then finish with a thing?
I kick the back of his chair, and he turns around and I hand him the note. He slouches in his seat to read it; then I watch as he scribbles something. He tips back in his chair and drops the note on my desk without looking at me.
A thing? Haha.
I press down so hard my pencil tip chips off. Please answer the question.
We’ll talk later.

I let out a frustrated sigh and Matt, my lab partner, gives me a funny look.
After class Peter is swept away with all his friends; they leave in a big group. I’m packing up my backpack when he returns, alone. He hops up on the table. “So let’s talk,” he says, super casual.
I clear my throat and try to gather my bearings. “Why did you tell Josh we were--” I almost say “a thing” again, but then change it to “together?”
“I don’t get what you’re so upset about. I did you a favor. I could have just as easily blown up your spot.”
I pause. He’s right. He could have. “So why didn’t you?”
“You’ve sure got a funny way of saying thank you. You’re welcome, by the way.”
Automatically I say, “Thank you.” Wait. Why am I thanking him? “I appreciate you letting me kiss you, but--”
“You’re welcome,” he says again.
Ugh! He’s so insufferable. Just for that I’m going to toss a little dig his way. “That was…really generous of you. To let me do that. But I’ve already explained to Josh that it’s not going to work out with us because Genevieve has you whipped, so it’s all good. You can stop pretending now.”
Peter glares at me. “I’m not whipped.”
“But aren’t you, though? I mean, you guys have been together since the seventh grade. You’re basically her property.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Peter scoffs.
“There was a rumor last year that she made you get a tattoo of her initials on your butt for her birthday.” I pause. “So did you?” I reach around him and fake try to lift up the back of his shirt. He yelps and jumps away from me, and I collapse in a fit of giggles. “So you do have a tattoo!”
“I don’t have a tattoo!” he yells. “And we’re not even together anymore, so can you stop with this shit? We broke up. We’re over. I’m done with her.”
“Wait, didn’t she break up with you?” I ask.
Peter shoots me a dirty look. “It was mutual. ~ Jenny Han,
434:The knife I took from Shaselle didn’t belong to Baelic.”
“Oh?” I looked up to meet his disconcerting eyes. If he wouldn’t let me in, I wouldn’t let him in.
“Alera, it was Sarteradan. You lied for her. Why?”
“And what of Steldor’s dagger?” I asked, ignoring his inquiry.
“Hytanican. No doubt he managed to keep one of his own from my troops.”
“What were you and he arguing about?”
“That’s of no importance. But you needn’t worry--I’m not going to arrest him.” He scrutinized me, and I squirmed like a bug under a magnifying glass. “What is important, Alera, is the question you’re trying to avoid--why did you lie for Shaselle?”
I sighed, stepping around my desk. “She’s a hurt and confused young woman.”
“A hurt and confused young woman who got her hands on a weapon someone in her family planted. I needed to know where it was hidden.”
I frowned, drawing significance from his use of the word I in place of we.
“How do you know Baelic didn’t own a Sarteradan blade? How do you know this wasn’t innocent? Are you so determined to suspect these men whose comrades you killed?”
“What did you say?” His tone was chilled.
“That’s not what I meant,” I said, appalled at my word choice. “That just…came out wrong. I know you saved the lives you could.”
Narian’s gaze was sharp, and my heart thudded as I prayed he would believe me. I spoke the truth--he was not a murderer.
“Do you know where the dagger came from, Alera?” he finally asked, ice hanging off his words. He sounded so accusatory that I bristled.
“Of course not.”
“Do you know where London is?”
“No!” I exclaimed, in awe of the fact that he was interrogating me. “Narian, what is wrong with you? If I were aware of anything that might threaten our goals, I would tell you. If I knew London to be up to something, I wouldn’t keep it a secret. But I’m happy to believe he’s free and safe. Lord only know he’s suffered enough at Cokyrian hands. And I lied for Shaselle because, no matter how she came across that weapon, none of those men would have armed her, and you know it.”
He broke eye contact, stunned into silence, and his visage softened.
“You’re right, I shouldn’t have accused you. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t,” I murmured, walking over to him. I swept his hair away from his face, and he closed his eyes at my touch. “Just hold me.”
He obliged, wrapping me in his arms and his love, and I wished all disagreements could be so quickly forgotten. ~ Cayla Kluver,
435:To this day, I am still not sure what it was about Chip Gaines that made me give him a second chance--because, basically, our first date was over before it even started.
I was working at my father’s Firestone automotive shop the day we first met. I’d worked as my dad’s office manager through my years at Baylor University and was perfectly happy working there afterward while I tried to figure out what I really wanted to do with my life. The smell of tires, metal, and grease--that place was like a second home to me, and the guys in the shop were all like my big brothers.
On this particular afternoon, they all started teasing me. “You should go out to the lobby, Jo. There’s a hot guy out there. Go talk to him!” they said.
“No,” I said. “Stop it! I’m not doing that.”
I was all of twenty-three, and I wasn’t exactly outgoing.

She was a bit awkward--no doubt about that.

I hadn’t dated all that much, and I’d never had a serious relationship--nothing that lasted longer than a month or two. I’d always been an introvert and still am (believe it or not). I was also very picky, and I just wasn’t the type of girl who struck up conversations with guys I didn’t know. I was honestly comfortable being single; I didn’t think that much of it.
“Who is this guy, anyway?” I asked, since they all seemed to know him for some reason.
“Oh, they call him Hot John,” someone said, laughing.
Hot John? There was no way I was going out in that lobby to strike up a conversation with some guy called Hot John. But the guys wouldn’t let up, so I finally said, “Fine.”
I gathered up a few things from my desk (in case I needed a backup plan) and rounded the corner into the lobby. I quickly realized that Hot John was pretty good-looking. He’d obviously just finished a workout--he was dressed head-to-toe in cycling gear and was just standing there, innocently waiting on someone from the back. I tried to think about what I might say to strike up a conversation when I got close enough and quickly settled on the obvious topic: cycling. But just as that thought raced through my head, he looked up from his magazine and smiled right at me.
Crap, I thought. I completely lost my nerve. I kept on walking right past him and out the lobby’s front door.
When I reached the safety of my dad’s outdoor waiting area, I realized just how bad I’d needed the fresh air. I sat on a chair a few down from another customer and immediately started laughing at myself. Did I really just do that? ~ Joanna Gaines,
436:Killing Floor
1. RUSSIA, 1927
On the day the sienna-skinned man
held my shoulders between his spade-shaped hands,
easing me down into the azure water of Jordan,
I woke ninety-three million miles from myself,
Lev Davidovich Bronstein,
shoulder-deep in the Volga,
while the cheap dye of my black silk shirt darkened the water.
My head wet, water caught in my lashes.
Am I blind?
I rub my eyes, then wade back to shore,
undress and lie down,
until Stalin comes from his place beneath the birch tree.
He folds my clothes
and I button myself in my marmot coat,
and together we start the long walk back to Moscow.
He doesn't ask, what did you see in the river?,
but I hear the hosts of a man drowning in water and holiness,
the castrati voices I can't recognize,
skating on knives, from trees, from air
on the thin ice of my last night in Russia.
Leon Trotsky. Bread.
I want to scream, but silence holds my tongue
with small spade-shaped hands
and only this comes, so quietly
Stalin has to press his ear to my mouth:
I have only myself. Put me on the train.
I won't look back.
2. MEXICO, 1940
At noon today, I woke from a nightmare:
my friend Jacques ran toward me with an ax,
as I stepped from the train in Alma-Ata.
He was dressed in yellow satin pants and shirt.
A marigold in winter.
When I held out my arms to embrace him,
he raised the ax and struck me at the neck,
my head fell to one side, hanging only by skin.
A river of sighs poured from the cut.
3. MEXICO, August 20, 1940
The machine-gun bullets
hit my wife in the legs,
then zigzagged up her body.
I took the shears, cut open her gown
and lay on top of her for hours.
Blood soaked through my clothes
and when I tried to rise, I couldn't.
I wake then. Another nightmare.
I rise from my desk, walk to the bedroom
and sit down at my wife's mirrored vanity.
I rouge my cheeks and lips,
stare at my bone-white, speckled egg of a face:
lined and empty.
I lean forward and see Jacques's reflection.
I half-turn, smile, then turn back to the mirror.
He moves from the doorway,
lifts the pickax
and strikes the top of my head.
My brain splits.
The pickax keeps going
and when it hits the tile floor,
it flies from his hands,
a black dove on whose back I ride,
two men, one cursing,
the other blessing all things:
Lev Davidovich Bronstein,
I step from Jordan without you.
~ Ai Ogawa,
437:The four women came to see them at the house later in the afternoon. Alexander and Tatiana were playing soccer. Actually Tatiana had just gotten the ball away from him and, squealing, was trying to hold on to it, while he was behind her, trying to kick it from under her. He had lifted her off the ground and was pressing himself hard into her while she was shrieking. All he was wearing was his skivvies, and all she was wearing was his ribbed top and her underwear. Flummoxed, Tatiana stood in front of Alexander, trying to shield his near-naked body from four pairs of wide eyes. He stood behind her, his arms on her shoulders, and Tatiana heard him say, “Tell them—No, forget it, I will,” and before she could utter a sound, he came forward, walked up to them, twice their size, bare and unrelentingly himself, and said, “Ladies, in the future you might want to wait for us to come and see you.” “Shura,” Tatiana muttered, “go and get dressed.” “Soccer is probably the least of what you’ll see,” Alexander said into the women’s stunned faces before going inside the house. When he came back out, suitably covered, he told Tatiana he was going to the village to get a couple of things they needed, like ice and an ax. “What an odd combination,” she remarked. “Where are you going to get ice from?” “The fish plant. They have to refrigerate their fish, don’t they?” “Ax?” “From that nice man Igor,” Alexander yelled, walking up the clearing, blowing her a kiss. She gazed after him. “Hurry back,” she called. Naira Mikhailovna apologized hastily. Dusia was mouthing a prayer. Raisa shook. Axinya beamed at Tatiana, who invited them all for a bit of kvas. “Come inside. See how nicely Alexander cleaned the house. And look, he repaired the door. Remember, the top hinge was broken?” The four women looked around for a place to sit. “Tanechka,” said Naira nervously, “there is no furniture in here.” Axinya whooped. Dusia crossed herself. “I know, Naira Mikhailovna. We don’t need much.” She looked down on the floor. “We have some things, we have my trunk. Alexander said he will make us a bench. I’ll bring my desk with the sewing machine…we’ll be fine.” “But how—” “Oh, Naira,” said Axinya, “leave the girl alone, will you?” Dusia glared at the rumpled bedsheets on top of the stove. A flustered Tatiana smiled. Alexander was right. It was better to go and visit them. She asked when would be a good time to come for dinner. Naira said, “Come tonight, of course. We’ll celebrate. But you come every night. Look, you won’t be able to eat here at all. There’s nowhere even to sit or cook. You’ll starve. Come every night. That’s not too much to ask, is it? ~ Paullina Simons,
438:In my study, next to my desk, is a locked bookcase that contains a collection of volumes I value more than any of the hundreds of other books that fill a multitude of shelves in our home. Of these precious publications, the most prized and well-guarded is a slim first edition of 104 pages, simply titled Jungle Stories by Jim Corbett. The cover is of plain brown paper, with no illustrations or colouring. This thin little book was privately printed by Corbett, for family and friends, at the London Press in Nainital in 1935. Only a hundred copies were produced, of which very few remain. My copy came to me through my parents. They were given it by friends, who had once been Corbett’s neighbours in Nainital. By the time I received it, the book had been covered with a protective sleeve of clear plastic. The title page is signed by Jim Corbett, in a neat, fastidious hand. Several years after Jungle Stories was published, Lord Linlithgow, Viceroy of India from 1936-43, requested a copy. He had met Corbett, who assisted in organizing viceregal shoots in the terai and was already regarded as a legendary shikari and raconteur. After reading the book, Linlithgow recommended that it be published by the Oxford University Press in Bombay. Jungle Stories is, essentially, the first draft of Man-eaters of Kumaon. Several of the chapters are identical, including stories of ‘The Pipal Pani Tiger’ and ‘The Chowgarh Tigers’, as well as an angling interlude, ‘The Fish of My Dreams.’ Corbett expanded this book into its present form by adding six more tales, including an account of the first man-eater he killed in 1907, near Champawat. This tigress was responsible for the deaths of 436 victims and her destruction helped cement Corbett’s reputation as a hunter. In recognition of his success, Sir J. P. Hewett, Lieutenant Governor of the United Provinces, presented him with a .275 Rigby-Mauser rifle. An engraved citation on a silver plaque was fixed to the stock. Corbett later bequeathed this weapon to the Oxford University Press, who sent it to their head offices in England. Eventually, the gun was confiscated by the police in Oxford because the publishers didn’t have a licence. For a number of years, John Rigby & Co., gunsmiths, displayed the rifle at their showroom in London, along with a copy of Jungle Stories. In February 2016, Corbett’s rifle was purchased at auction by an American hunter for $250,000. Following this, the rifle was brought to India for a week and briefly displayed at Corbett Tiger Reserve, as part of a promotional event. The editor at OUP, who shepherded Man-eaters of Kumaon to publication, was R. E. ‘Hawk’ Hawkins, himself a legend, who contributed greatly to India’s canon of nature writing. In his introduction to a collection of Corbett’s stories, Hawkins describes how this book came into his hands: ~ Jim Corbett,
439:how to make notes ========== Life Is What You Make It A Story Of Love, Hope And How Determination Can Overcome Even Destiny (Preeti Shenoy) - Your Highlight at location 1584-1589 | Added on Monday, 15 June 2015 11:21:47 wanted to share my ‘colour coded’ way of remembering things with everybody, so they too could benefit. I felt like I had stumbled upon a great secret and my discovery would be hailed. I pictured it being used in schools, colleges and everywhere else as a new memory technique. I wondered why nobody else had thought of such a simple but brilliant technique earlier. As I was waiting for him to finish making the photocopies, my eyes chanced upon small glittering stickers of cartoon characters like Tw eety bird, Fairies and Garfield and some Disney characters, which children use to decorate their books and other objects. I thought the stickers would make a nice finishing touch and I bought twenty sheets. I also came across some very beautiful printed stationery and could not resist buying about eight packets of writing sheets. They looked very beautiful and ========== Life Is What You Make It A Story Of Love, Hope And How Determination Can Overcome Even Destiny (Preeti Shenoy) - Your Note at location 1596 | Added on Monday, 15 June 2015 11:24:46 cont. how to make notes ========== Life Is What You Make It A Story Of Love, Hope And How Determination Can Overcome Even Destiny (Preeti Shenoy) - Your Highlight at location 1590-1596 | Added on Monday, 15 June 2015 11:24:46 I also looked around the shop and discovered some water colours. I had last painted with water colours only in school. On an impulse, I bought a set of water colours and a set of brushes as well. It was like an urgent impulse inside my head that was driving me to buy all this stuff. They seemed absolutely essential. I reached home armed with my large bag of purchases and unpacked them carefully and arranged them all on my desk. Then I sat down and decorated the corners of each set of notes with tiny stickers of cartoon characters. I used highlighter pens and highlighted each set of the notes in my colour coded way with green, purple and orange. There were seventy sets to finish and I was like a woman possessed. I stayed up the whole night doing just this. I was a reservoir of energy. I just couldn' t stop. Strangely I did not feel even a little tired. ========== Life Is What You Make It A Story Of Love, Hope And How Determination Can Overcome Even Destiny (Preeti Shenoy) - Your Highlight at location 1617-1617 | Added on Monday, 15 June 2015 11:55:29 uncannily ========== Life Is What You Make It A Story Of Love, Hope And How Determination Can Overcome Even Destiny (Preeti Shenoy) - Your Highlight at location 1650-1650 | Added on Monday, 15 June 2015 14:48:08 besotted ========== Life Is What You Make It A Story Of Love, Hope And How Determination Can Overcome Even Destiny (Preeti Shenoy) - Your Highlight at location ~ Anonymous,
440:Grey
for Felicity Plunkett
In this World – which is not a world – black
and white withhold truths. In a world
we’d have multiplicities, the purity
of unqualified impurities. In ours we possess
, are possessed by, the comprehension
of qualified organs: terminal vs. respiratory
bronchioles of the lung, left vs. right
hemispheres of the brain. Not a scientist
(thank god) I best understand airports
life’s made me travel: arrivals vs. departures
of good and bad, tourists and terrorists,
and our so-called democracy: the Left
(cunning Capitalists) vs. the Right
(coldblooded Capitalists). Is my being
too a binary composite, bichromatic
backdropp of gloom with streaks of hope?
ii
Maybe I’d like to evoke an irrelevant
memory to name the absent thing: my desk
when my parents bought me one after
years of penury, after pouring their money
into a loan for a flashy house in Tehran’s
highest-status suburb, temporarily resigned
to their son being anti-social, introvert
33
ruining his spine by bending over notebooks
on the floor, asked me what colour
writing-table I wanted. Thrilled to get to choose
anything, I rejected their suggestions
(blue, blue, blue), insisted, resisted, fought
for two planks of vertical chipboard
legs joined by the horizontal third, desktop
covered in thick, grey contact. Ashen
’s so boring I remember someone sneering
(probably a nosy cousin): in Farsi ash-like
(khaakestar-ee) is the word for grey.
iii
Ashy vastness overshadowed the whiteness
of the page, incisions of my pen’s black ink
as I worked (regurgitated what I’d read)
to forge a raison d’être; and I stayed loyal
to the anti-colour post-migration. If I’d been
dark, wog and olive-complexioned
before, dislocation brought me the paleness
of a zombie’s skin, of what remains after
so much hurt, rejection, anger, self-hatred
not the certainty of black negation,
not the whiteness of success, undecidable
thing beyond the great and the ghastly
made me, overlooked immigrant boy,
loyal to the lyrics of 90s ‘alternative’ music
after I heard in a morose song: “Grey
would be the colour / if I had a heart.” The singer
34
a ‘Gothic’ artiste (albeit a millionaire
rock star) had just termed the emptiness
of my situation, the void of absolute colours.
iv
Cinder’s interstitial, sutures matter
to interment in ether, always
impermanent. At the point of erasure
by water or air; a caesura, exceeds
fire and smoke, cremation
is the idea of keeping alive the nothing
-ness of life against the parsimony
of urn and plaque – a person may only be
existent as a thing above and outside
body vs. epitaph, black vs. light, being vs. death
to belong to a world finally worthy
of the name, a world that can only be shaded
in ineffable, incomprehensible grey.
~ Ali Alizadeh,
441:Yes,” I call. “Sky,” the receptionist says quietly. I pick up the handset. “Yes,” I say again. “What’s up?” “There’s a really hunky guy standing in front of me, and he’s asking for you,” she whispers into the phone. What hunky guy would be asking about me? “What does he look like?” “He’s about six two,” she starts. “Six three,” I hear someone say. “Oh, six three,” she says. “He’s a big one.” She giggles. My heart jumps. “What color is his hair?” “Blond. And long.” It’s Matt. Oh shit. It’s Matt. “I’ll be right there,” I say. But my heart is thumping like crazy. What is Matt doing here? I hunt around under my desk for my shoes and slide them on. Then I straighten my skirt and run a hand down my hair to smooth it. A minute ago, I had it held up with a pencil. It’s just Matt, I tell myself. It’s Matt. “Do you want me to send him back?” the receptionist asks. She laughs again. “Or I can just keep him?” Definitely not. He’s mine. “I’ll be right there,” I repeat. I look down at my business suit. I hope I look all right. I guess it’s too late now to worry about it. I walk into the reception area and find Matt leaning against the glass doorway. He turns to face me and smiles. “Hi,” he says quietly. I walk toward him, my legs shaky. “What are you doing here?” I ask, but I’m grinning, too. I stop in front of him, one move short of leaning into him for a hug. The receptionist is watching really closely. “I came to see if you want to go to lunch.” He shrugs. He’s wearing black jeans and lace-up boots. A black T-shirt is stretched across his broad chest, and it’s tucked neatly into his jeans. I can see his tattoos. A piece of hair has fallen from his ponytail, and I want to reach up and tuck it behind his ear. “How did you find out where I work?” I ask. I motion for him to follow me. Thank you, I mouth at the receptionist, and she winks at me and gives me a thumbs-up. I shake my head, and Matt walks quietly behind me. “I texted Seth,” he says. “Traitor,” I say, but inside, I’m thrilled. “Did I come at a bad time?” he asks. He looks down at his wrist, even though there’s no watch on it. “I can come back later.” “No, no.” I don’t want him to leave. Ever. I lean against the edge of my desk. “I’m glad you’re here.” His voice is deep and soft when he responds. “I’ve been thinking about you all morning.” He shrugs, looking a little sheepish. “So I figured I’d drop by. I totally understand if you’re too busy, though.” He looks into my eyes. “I might cry if you send me away, but I’ll go.” I’m not going to send him away. Not a chance. “I don’t want you to go,” I say. He grins. “Good.” He looks around my office. “Do you have time for lunch?” “Oh!” I cry. “I thought you were just going to stand there and let me look at you. You actually want to go somewhere?” He laughs. “Yeah. I told you. I’m going to make you fall in love with me. Lunch is step one.” “What’s step two?” I ask impulsively. “If I told you, it wouldn’t work.” I nod. I want it to work. “Don’t tell me.” “Guy’s got to have some secrets. ~ Tammy Falkner,
442:ultimately, most of us would choose a rich and meaningful life over an empty, happy one, if such a thing is even possible. “Misery serves a purpose,” says psychologist David Myers. He’s right. Misery alerts us to dangers. It’s what spurs our imagination. As Iceland proves, misery has its own tasty appeal. A headline on the BBC’s website caught my eye the other day. It read: “Dirt Exposure Boosts Happiness.” Researchers at Bristol University in Britain treated lung-cancer patients with “friendly” bacteria found in soil, otherwise known as dirt. The patients reported feeling happier and had an improved quality of life. The research, while far from conclusive, points to an essential truth: We thrive on messiness. “The good life . . . cannot be mere indulgence. It must contain a measure of grit and truth,” observed geographer Yi-Fu Tuan. Tuan is the great unheralded geographer of our time and a man whose writing has accompanied me throughout my journeys. He called one chapter of his autobiography “Salvation by Geography.” The title is tongue-in-cheek, but only slightly, for geography can be our salvation. We are shaped by our environment and, if you take this Taoist belief one step further, you might say we are our environment. Out there. In here. No difference. Viewed that way, life seems a lot less lonely. The word “utopia” has two meanings. It means both “good place” and “nowhere.” That’s the way it should be. The happiest places, I think, are the ones that reside just this side of paradise. The perfect person would be insufferable to live with; likewise, we wouldn’t want to live in the perfect place, either. “A lifetime of happiness! No man could bear it: It would be hell on Earth,” wrote George Bernard Shaw, in his play Man and Superman. Ruut Veenhoven, keeper of the database, got it right when he said: “Happiness requires livable conditions, but not paradise.” We humans are imminently adaptable. We survived an Ice Age. We can survive anything. We find happiness in a variety of places and, as the residents of frumpy Slough demonstrated, places can change. Any atlas of bliss must be etched in pencil. My passport is tucked into my desk drawer again. I am relearning the pleasures of home. The simple joys of waking up in the same bed each morning. The pleasant realization that familiarity breeds contentment and not only contempt. Every now and then, though, my travels resurface and in unexpected ways. My iPod crashed the other day. I lost my entire music collection, nearly two thousand songs. In the past, I would have gone through the roof with rage. This time, though, my anger dissipated like a summer thunderstorm and, to my surprise, I found the Thai words mai pen lai on my lips. Never mind. Let it go. I am more aware of the corrosive nature of envy and try my best to squelch it before it grows. I don’t take my failures quite so hard anymore. I see beauty in a dark winter sky. I can recognize a genuine smile from twenty yards. I have a newfound appreciation for fresh fruits and vegetables. Of all the places I visited, of all the people I met, one keeps coming back to me again and again: Karma Ura, ~ Eric Weiner,
443:I know we agreed not to tell anyone--”
“Yes, we did,” he snapped, walking over to my desk, not meeting my eyes. This was so uncharacteristic of him that I knew I had to proceed very carefully.
“Please listen. We agreed not to tell anyone, but she’s my mother. She won’t breathe a word.”
“How can you be sure?”
I almost laughed, confused as to how he could question that. “Because she’s my mother! She raised me, Narian. I’ve always been able to trust her. Just believe me.”
I paused, expecting him to respond, but he did not. Instead he feigned interest in the papers lying atop my desk.
“Would you please look at me?” I gently prodded.
His eyes found mine, but they were steely, skeptical and almost defiant, as though I had challenged him.
“Narian,” I murmured, hoping something in my voice would drive away whatever instinct had awakened. Again and again, I was forced to acknowledge the extent of the Overlord’s reach; his shadow fell on Narian even now. It wasn’t Narian’s fault, though it was easy to become discouraged by it; eighteen years of someone’s tyranny was not easy to overcome, and was impossible to forget.
“I’m sorry if this bothers you,” I said, stepping closer to him. “But there’s really no danger in her knowing.”
“There is danger in her knowing.” He walked past me to the hearth, increasing the distance between us. “There always is when the information itself is dangerous. You didn’t have to tell her, Alera. I don’t understand why you did.”
I bridled, feeling like he was scolding me. “I’m not a fool. I would never knowingly put us or this kingdom at risk. Don’t speak to me like you’re the only one who understands the need for discretion. I made a decision that you obviously don’t agree with, but that doesn’t make it wrong.”
We stared at each other, our postures stiff, neither of us breaking the hush that had fallen over the room.
“I didn’t mean to imply,” he finally muttered, without change in his expression.
I hesitated, unable to determine if he were being sarcastic or sincere. When he glanced to the floor, I knew it was the latter. He approached me, stopping a few feet away--just out of reach.
“But I don’t understand it, Alera. I honestly don’t.”
I closed the remaining gap between us, not letting him maintain either physical or emotional distance, then laid a hand upon his chest, lightly scrunching the fabric of his shirt.
“Haven’t you ever wanted to confide in someone?”
He didn’t reply, disconcerted. He had, in fact, shared confidences with me, but it was always a struggle against his nature--against his training--to do so. After a few moments, he nodded, still not understanding, but unwilling to prolong the argument.
“Can I take that as agreement to accompany me to my mother’s tea?” I teased, bringing a slight smile to his face. “Now that she knows about us, your willingness to come would mean a great deal to her. When we are married, you will, in her eyes, become her son.”
He sighed, then nodded once more. By my guess, he was perplexed and intrigued enough by this last notion to risk an hour or two in the former Queen’s presence. ~ Cayla Kluver,
444:I consider myself a student of colours and shades and hues and tints. Crimson lake, burnt umber, ultramarine … I was too clumsy as a child to paint with my moistened brush the scenery that I would have liked to bring into being. I preferred to leave untouched in their white metallic surroundings my rows of powdery rectangles of water-colours, to read aloud one after another of the tiny printed names of the coloured rectangles, and to let each colour seem to soak into each word of its name or even into each syllable of each word of each name so that I could afterwards call to mind an exact shade or hue from an image of no more than black letters on a white ground.

Deep cadmium, geranium lake, imperial purple, parchment … after the last of our children had found employment and had moved out of our home, my wife and I were able to buy for ourselves things that had previously been beyond our means. I bought my first such luxury, as I called it, in a shop selling artists’ supplies. I bought there a complete set of coloured pencils made by a famous maker of pencils in England: a hundred and twenty pencils, each stamped with gold lettering along its side and having at its end a perfectly tapered wick. The collection of pencils is behind me as I write these words. It rests near the jars of glass marbles and the kaleidoscope mentioned earlier. None of the pencils has ever been used in the way that most pencils are used, but I have sometimes used the many-striped collection in order to confirm my suspicion as a child that each of what I called my long-lost moods might be recollected and, perhaps, preserved if only I could look again at the precise shade or hue that had become connected with the mood – that had absorbed, as it were, or had been permeated with, one or more of the indefinable qualities that constitute what is called a mood or a state of feeling. During the weeks since I first wrote in the earlier pages of this report about the windows in the church of white stone, I have spent every day an increasing amount of time in moving my pencils to and fro among the hollow spaces allotted to them in their container. I seem to recall that I tried sometimes, many years ago, to move my glass marbles from place to place on the carpet near my desk with the vague hope that some or another chance arrangement of them would restore to me some previously irretrievable mood. The marbles, however, were too variously coloured, and each differed too markedly from the other. Their colours seemed to vie, to compete. Or, a single marble might suggest more than I was in search of: a whole afternoon in my childhood or a row of trees in a backyard when I had wanted back only a certain few moments when my face was brushed by a certain few leaves. Among the pencils are many differing only subtly from their neighbours. Six at least I might have called simply red if I had not learned long ago their true names. With these six, and with still others from each side of them, I often arrange one after another of many possible sequences, hoping to see in the conjectured space between some or another unlikely pair a certain tint that I have wanted for long to see. ~ Gerald Murnane,
445:NINA
Your life is beautiful.

TRIGORIN
I see nothing especially lovely about it. [He looks at his watch] Excuse me, I must go at once, and begin writing again. I am in a hurry. [He laughs] You have stepped on my pet corn, as they say, and I am getting excited, and a little cross. Let us discuss this bright and beautiful life of mine, though. [After a few moments' thought] Violent obsessions sometimes lay hold of a man: he may, for instance, think day and night of nothing but the moon. I have such a moon. Day and night I am held in the grip of one besetting thought, to write, write, write! Hardly have I finished one book than something urges me to write another, and then a third, and then a fourth--I write ceaselessly. I am, as it were, on a treadmill. I hurry for ever from one story to another, and can't help myself. Do you see anything bright and beautiful in that? Oh, it is a wild life! Even now, thrilled as I am by talking to you, I do not forget for an instant that an unfinished story is awaiting me. My eye falls on that cloud there, which has the shape of a grand piano; I instantly make a mental note that I must remember to mention in my story a cloud floating by that looked like a grand piano. I smell heliotrope; I mutter to myself: a sickly smell, the colour worn by widows; I must remember that in writing my next description of a summer evening. I catch an idea in every sentence of yours or of my own, and hasten to lock all these treasures in my literary store-room, thinking that some day they may be useful to me. As soon as I stop working I rush off to the theatre or go fishing, in the hope that I may find oblivion there, but no! Some new subject for a story is sure to come rolling through my brain like an iron cannonball. I hear my desk calling, and have to go back to it and begin to write, write, write, once more. And so it goes for everlasting. I cannot escape myself, though I feel that I am consuming my life. To prepare the honey I feed to unknown crowds, I am doomed to brush the bloom from my dearest flowers, to tear them from their stems, and trample the roots that bore them under foot. Am I not a madman? Should I not be treated by those who know me as one mentally diseased? Yet it is always the same, same old story, till I begin to think that all this praise and admiration must be a deception, that I am being hoodwinked because they know I am crazy, and I sometimes tremble lest I should be grabbed from behind and whisked off to a lunatic asylum. The best years of my youth were made one continual agony for me by my writing. A young author, especially if at first he does not make a success, feels clumsy, ill-at-ease, and superfluous in the world. His nerves are all on edge and stretched to the point of breaking; he is irresistibly attracted to literary and artistic people, and hovers about them unknown and unnoticed, fearing to look them bravely in the eye, like a man with a passion for gambling, whose money is all gone. I did not know my readers, but for some reason I imagined they were distrustful and unfriendly; I was mortally afraid of the public, and when my first play appeared, it seemed to me as if all the dark eyes in the audience were looking at it with enmity, and all the blue ones with cold indifference. Oh, how terrible it was! What agony! ~ Anton Chekhov,
446:She's probably just tired of seeing you miserable.Like we all are," I add. "I'm sure...I'm sure she's as crazy about you as ever."
"Hmm." He watches me put away my own shoes and empty the contents of my pockets. "What about you?" he asks, after a minute.
"What about me?"
St. Clair examines his watch. "Sideburns. You'll be seeing him next month."
He's reestablishing...what? The boundary line? That he's taken, and I'm spoken for? Except I'm not. Not really.
But I can't bear to say this now that he's mentioned Ellie. "Yeah,I can't wait to see him again. He's a funny guy, you'd like him.I'm gonna see his band play at Christmas. Toph's a great guy, you'd really like him. Oh. I already said that,didn't I? But you would. He's really...funny."
Shut up,Anna. Shut.Up.
St. Clair unbuckles and rebuckles and unbuckles his watchband.
"I'm beat," I say. And it's the truth. As always, our conversation has exhausted me. I crawl into bed and wonder what he'll do.Lie on my floor? Go back to his room? But he places his watch on my desk and climbs onto my bed. He slides up next to me. He's on top of the covers, and I'm underneath. We're still fully dressed,minus our shoes, and the whole situation is beyond awkward.
He hops up.I'm sure he's about to leave,and I don't know whether to be relieved or disappointed,but...he flips off my light.My room is pitch-black. He shuffles back toward my bed and smacks into it.
"Oof," he says.
"Hey,there's a bed there."
"Thanks for the warning."
"No problem."
"It's freezing in here.Do you have a fan on or something?"
"It's the wind.My window won't shut all the way.I have a towel stuffed under it, but it doesn't really help."
He pats his way around the bed and slides back in. "Ow," he says.
"Yes?"
"My belt.Would it be weird..."
I'm thankful he can't see my blush. "Of course not." And I listen to the slap of leather as he pulls it out of his belt loops.He lays it gently on my hardwood floor.
"Um," he says. "Would it be weird-"
"Yes."
"Oh,piss off.I'm not talking trousers. I only want under the blankets. That breeze is horrible." He slides underneath,and now we're lying side by side. In my narrow bed. Funny,but I never imagined my first sleepover with a guy being,well,a sleepover.
"All we need now are Sixteen Candles and a game of Truth or Dare."
He coughs. "Wh-what?"
"The movie,pervert.I was just thinking it's been a while since I've had a sleepover."
A pause. "Oh."
"..."
"..."
"St. Clair?"
"Yeah?"
"Your elbow is murdering my back."
"Bollocks.Sorry." He shifts,and then shifts again,and then again,until we're comfortable.One of his legs rests against mine.Despite the two layers of pants between us,I feel naked and vulnerable. He shifts again and now my entire leg, from calf to thigh, rests against his. I smell his hair. Mmm.
NO!
I swallow,and it's so loud.He coughs again. I'm trying not to squirm. After what feels like hours but is surely only minutes,his breath slows and his body relaxes.I finally begin to relax, too. I want to memorize his scent and the touch of his skin-one of his arms, now against mine-and the solidness os his body.No matter what happens,I'll remember this for the rest of my life.
I study his profile.His lips,his nose, his eyelashes.He's so beautiful. ~ Stephanie Perkins,
447: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. ~ Chuck Palahniuk,
448:The door was still open, so I shut it and was returning to my desk when I braked. There was a backpack resting on the other side of my desk chair. It wasn’t mine. It wasn’t Missy’s. I was pretty sure it wasn’t Holly’s or the cousin’s.

“Shit,” I muttered under my breath.

“Huh?” she barked, her head swinging around to me.

A quick glance confirmed what I already knew. She was drunk.

“Nothing.”

She pulled out one of her shirts, but it wasn’t her normal pajama top. She was really drunk. I picked up Shay’s bag and checked the contents to make sure it was his. It was. I saw his planner with his name scrawled at the top, so I zipped that bag and put it in the back of my closet. No one needed to go through it. I didn’t think Missy would, but I just never knew.

Dropping into my chair, I picked up my phone to text Shay as Missy fell to the floor. I looked up to watch. I couldn’t not see this.

I was tempted to video it, but I was being nice. For once.

As Missy wrestled with her jeans and lifted them over her head to throw into her closet, I texted Shay.

Me: You left your bag here.

Missy let out a half-gurgled moan and a cry of frustration at the same time. She didn’t stand, instead crawling to the closet. She grabbed another pair of pants.

Those weren’t her pajamas, either.

As she pulled them on—or tried since her feet kept eluding the pants’ hole—my phone buzzed back.

Coleman: Can I pick it up in the morning?

I texted back.

Me: When?

Missy got one leg in. Success. I wanted to thrust my fist in the air for her.

My phone buzzed again.

Coleman: Early. My playbook is in there.

I groaned.

Me: When is early? I’m in college, Coleman. Sleeping in is mandatory.

Coleman: Nine too early for you? I can come back to get it now.

Nine was doable.

Me: Let’s do an exchange. You bring me coffee, and I’ll meet you at the parking lot curb with your bag.

Coleman: Done. Decaf okay?

I glared at my phone.

Me: Back to hating you.

Coleman: Never stop that. The world’s equilibrium will be fucked up. I have to know what’s right and wrong. Don’t screw with my moral compass, Cute Ass.

Oh, no! No way.

Me: Third rule of what we don’t talk about. No nicknames unless they reconfirm our mutual dislike for each other. No Cute Ass.

His response was immediate.

Coleman: Cunt Ass?

A second squeak from me.

Me: NO!

I could almost hear him laughing.

Coleman: Relax. I know. Clarke’s Ass. That’s how you are in my phone.

The tension left my shoulders.

Me: See you in the morning. 9 sharp.

Coleman: Night.

I put my phone down, but then it buzzed once again.

Coleman: Ass.

I was struggling to wipe this stupid grin off my face. All was right again. I plugged my phone in, pulled my laptop back toward me, and sent a response to Gage’s email. I’ll sit with you, but only if we’re in the opposing team’s section.

He’d be pissed, but that was the only way. I turned the computer off, and by then Missy was climbing up the ladder in a bright pink silk shirt. The buttons were left buttoned, and her pajama bottoms were a pair of corduroy khakis. I was pretty sure she didn’t brush her teeth, but before my head even hit the pillow, she was snoring ~ Tijan,
449:Thank you so much for coming,” I said to my mother. “It was right that you were there.”
“I enjoyed myself very much, and would like to extend an invitation of my own. Would you join me in my quarters for tea?”
“Yes, thank you. That would be lovely, and warm.” Her cheeks were rosy from the day’s activity, and mine were no doubt a match.
“Shall we say a half hour? And, Alera, please ask Narian to escort you.”
My eyebrows rose dramatically.
“I don’t know if that would be best,” I hedged, for I had no idea how Narian would react to her invitation.
She drew me away from the Cokyrian sentries stationed by the door and dropped her volume. “Alera, if you’re going to marry this man, he’s going to be my son. I want to know him better.”
“Yes, but…I don’t know if he’d be comfortable. He’s very reserved, and probably wouldn’t say much.”
“Then those are things I’ll learn about him. It can’t hurt to ask him, can it? If he prefers not to come, I’ll accept his decision.”
My mother was full of subtlety. She did not say that she would understand his decision, only that she would accept it. And her phrasing wasn’t really chosen with Narian in mind--it was to let me know that this was important, and that I should do all I could to ensure he would be there.
“I’ll do my best,” I agreed, thinking that this would be the quietest tea I had ever attended.
Leaving my mother behind, I walked through the antechamber and across the Hearing Hall to reach Narian’s headquarters, which was situated in the former strategy room between Cannan’s office and mine. As always, there was much activity in the partitioned room; I also could not simply knock on the door to his private office, for a Cokyrian sentry prevented access to him without an appointment. In the end, I directed one of Narian’s officers to inform him that I wished to speak with him about an “urgent provincial matter.”
“Shall we go to your study?” Narian asked when he emerged from his office, knowing full well I had no political matters to address.
“Yes, I think that would be best.” I couldn’t repress a smile, for his eyes sparkled with curiosity.
As soon as we had closed the door to my study, and before I could speak, Narian kissed me, catching me by surprise.
“I’ve wanted to do that all afternoon, Alera. I’m not particularly fond of the gowns Hytanican women wear, but I’m willing to make an exception for this one.”
I laughed, my head spinning, and he took hold of my hands.
“Now, what’s this about?”
“My mother has invited me to tea, and we would be pleased to have you join us.”
Despite how casual I was trying to sound, Narian stiffened, and I could feel him pulling away. This wasn’t going to be easy.
“You both would like me to join you?”
“Yes, she suggested it.” I took a deep breath and made my confession. “She knows that we’re betrothed, that we’re in love.”
I couldn’t gauge his reaction from his face, but the fact that he released my hands suggested he was disturbed, piqued--not an encouraging sign. I waited, giving him a chance to straighten out his thoughts, then tried again.
“I know we agreed not to tell anyone--”
“Yes, we did,” he snapped, walking over to my desk, not meeting my eyes. This was so uncharacteristic of him that I knew I had to proceed very carefully.
“Please listen. We agreed not to tell anyone, but she’s my mother. She won’t breathe a word.”
“How can you be sure?”
I almost laughed, confused as to how he could question that. “Because she’s my mother! She raised me, Narian. I’ve always been able to trust her. Just believe me. ~ Cayla Kluver,
450:In the Village
I came up out of the subway and there were
people standing on the steps as if they knew
something I didn't. This was in the Cold War,
and nuclear fallout. I looked and the whole avenue
was empty, I mean utterly, and I thought,
The birds have abandoned our cities and the plague
of silence multiplies through their arteries, they fought
the war and they lost and there's nothing subtle or vague
in this horrifying vacuum that is New York. I caught
the blare of a loudspeaker repeatedly warning
the last few people, maybe strolling lovers in their walk,
that the world was about to end that morning
on Sixth or Seventh Avenue with no people going to work
in that uncontradicted, horrifying perspective.
It was no way to die, but it's also no way to live.
Well, if we burnt, it was at least New York.
II
Everybody in New York is in a sitcom.
I'm in a Latin American novel, one
in which an egret-haired viejo shakes with some
invisible sorrow, some obscene affliction,
and chronicles it secretly, till it shows in his face,
the parenthetical wrinkles confirming his fiction
to his deep embarrassment. Look, it's
just the old story of a heart that won't call it quits
whatever the odds, quixotic. It's just one that'll
break nobody's heart, even if the grizzled colonel
pitches from his steed in a cavalry charge, in a battle
that won't make him a statue. It is the hell
of ordinary, unrequited love. Watch these egrets
trudging the lawn in a dishevelled troop, white banners
trailing forlornly; they are the bleached regrets
of an old man's memoirs, printed stanzas.
showing their hinged wings like wide open secrets.
38
III
Who has removed the typewriter from my desk,
so that I am a musician without his piano
with emptiness ahead as clear and grotesque
as another spring? My veins bud, and I am so
full of poems, a wastebasket of black wire.
The notes outside are visible; sparrows will
line antennae like staves, the way springs were,
but the roofs are cold and the great grey river
where a liner glides, huge as a winter hill,
moves imperceptibly like the accumulating
years. I have no reason to forgive her
for what I brought on myself. I am past hating,
past the longing for Italy where blowing snow
absolves and whitens a kneeling mountain range
outside Milan. Through glass, I am waiting
for the sound of a bird to unhinge the beginning
of spring, but my hands, my work, feel strange
without the rusty music of my machine. No words
for the Arctic liner moving down the Hudson, for the mange
of old snow moulting from the roofs. No poems. No birds.
IV
The Sweet Life Café
If I fall into a grizzled stillness
sometimes, over the red-chequered tablecloth
outdoors of the Sweet Life Café, when the noise
of Sunday traffic in the Village is soft as a moth
working in storage, it is because of age
which I rarely admit to, or, honestly, even think of.
I have kept the same furies, though my domestic rage
is illogical, diabetic, with no lessening of love
though my hand trembles wildly, but not over this page.
My lust is in great health, but, if it happens
that all my towers shrivel to dribbling sand,
joy will still bend the cane-reeds with my pen's
elation on the road to Vieuxfort with fever-grass
white in the sun, and, as for the sea breaking
in the gap at Praslin, they add up to the grace
39
I have known and which death will be taking
from my hand on this chequered tablecloth in this good place.
~ Derek Walcott,
451:Two observations take us across the finish line. The Second Law ensures that entropy increases throughout the entire process, and so the information hidden within the hard drives, Kindles, old-fashioned paper books, and everything else you packed into the region is less than that hidden in the black hole. From the results of Bekenstein and Hawking, we know that the black hole's hidden information content is given by the area of its event horizon. Moreover, because you were careful not to overspill the original region of space, the black hole's event horizon coincides with the region's boundary, so the black hole's entropy equals the area of this surrounding surface. We thus learn an important lesson. The amount of information contained within a region of space, stored in any objects of any design, is always less than the area of the surface that surrounds the region (measured in square Planck units).

This is the conclusion we've been chasing. Notice that although black holes are central to the reasoning, the analysis applies to any region of space, whether or not a black hole is actually present. If you max out a region's storage capacity, you'll create a black hole, but as long as you stay under the limit, no black hole will form.

I hasten to add that in any practical sense, the information storage limit is of no concern. Compared with today's rudimentary storage devices, the potential storage capacity on the surface of a spatial region is humongous. A stack of five off-the-shelf terabyte hard drives fits comfortable within a sphere of radius 50 centimeters, whose surface is covered by about 10^70 Planck cells. The surface's storage capacity is thus about 10^70 bits, which is about a billion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion terabytes, and so enormously exceeds anything you can buy. No one in Silicon Valley cares much about these theoretical constraints.

Yet as a guide to how the universe works, the storage limitations are telling. Think of any region of space, such as the room in which I'm writing or the one in which you're reading. Take a Wheelerian perspective and imagine that whatever happens in the region amounts to information processing-information regarding how things are right now is transformed by the laws of physics into information regarding how they will be in a second or a minute or an hour. Since the physical processes we witness, as well as those by which we're governed, seemingly take place within the region, it's natural to expect that the information those processes carry is also found within the region. But the results just derived suggest an alternative view. For black holes, we found that the link between information and surface area goes beyond mere numerical accounting; there's a concrete sense in which information is stored on their surfaces. Susskind and 'tHooft stressed that the lesson should be general: since the information required to describe physical phenomena within any given region of space can be fully encoded by data on a surface that surrounds the region, then there's reason to think that the surface is where the fundamental physical processes actually happen. Our familiar three-dimensional reality, these bold thinkers suggested, would then be likened to a holographic projection of those distant two-dimensional physical processes.

If this line of reasoning is correct, then there are physical processes taking place on some distant surface that, much like a puppeteer pulls strings, are fully linked to the processes taking place in my fingers, arms, and brain as I type these words at my desk. Our experiences here, and that distant reality there, would form the most interlocked of parallel worlds. Phenomena in the two-I'll call them Holographic Parallel Universes-would be so fully joined that their respective evolutions would be as connected as me and my shadow. ~ Brian Greene,
452:In every interview I’m asked what’s the most important quality a novelist has to have. It’s pretty obvious: talent. Now matter how much enthusiasm and effort you put into writing, if you totally lack literary talent you can forget about being a novelist. This is more of a prerequisite than a necessary quality. If you don’t have any fuel, even the best car won’t run.The problem with talent, though, is that in most cases the person involved can’t control its amount or quality. You might find the amount isn’t enough and you want to increase it, or you might try to be frugal and make it last longer, but in neither case do things work out that easily. Talent has a mind of its own and wells up when it wants to, and once it dries up, that’s it. Of course, certain poets and rock singers whose genius went out in a blaze of glory—people like Schubert and Mozart, whose dramatic early deaths turned them into legends—have a certain appeal, but for the vast majority of us this isn’t the model we follow.
If I’m asked what the next most important quality is for a novelist, that’s easy too: focus—the ability to concentrate all your limited talents on whatever’s critical at the moment. Without that you can’t accomplish anything of value, while, if you can focus effectively, you’ll be able to compensate for an erratic talent or even a shortage of it. I generally concentrate on work for three or four hours every morning. I sit at my desk and focus totally on what I’m writing. I don’t see anything else, I don’t think about anything else.

After focus, the next most important thing for a novelist is, hands down, endurance. If you concentrate on writing three or four hours a day and feel tired after a week of this, you’re not going to be able to write a long work. What’s needed of the writer of fiction—at least one who hopes to write a novel—is the energy to focus every day for half a year, or a year, or two years.

Fortunately, these two disciplines—focus and endurance—are different from talent, since they can be acquired and sharpened through training. You’ll naturally learn both concentration and endurance when you sit down every day at your desk and train yourself to focus on one point. This is a lot like the training of muscles I wrote of a moment ago. You have to continually transmit the object of your focus to your entire body, and make sure it thoroughly assimilates the information necessary for you to write every single day and concentrate on the work at hand. And gradually you’ll expand the limits of what you’re able to do. Almost imperceptibly you’ll make the bar rise. This involves the same process as jogging every day to strengthen your muscles and develop a runner’s physique. Add a stimulus and keep it up. And repeat. Patience is a must in this process, but I guarantee results will come.

In private correspondence the great mystery writer Raymond Chandler once confessed that even if he didn’t write anything, he made sure he sat down at his desk every single day and concentrated. I understand the purpose behind his doing this. This is the way Chandler gave himself the physical stamina a professional writer needs, quietly strengthening his willpower. This sort of daily training was indispensable to him.

Most of what I know about writing I’ve learned through running every day. These are practical, physical lessons. How much can I push myself? How much rest is appropriate—and how much is too much? How far can I take something and still keep it decent and consistent? When does it become narrow-minded and inflexible? How much should I be aware of the world outside, and how much should I focus on my inner world? To what extent should I be confident in my abilities, and when should I start doubting myself? I know that if I hadn’t become a long-distance runner when I became a novelist, my work would have been vastly different. How different? Hard to say. But something would definitely have been different. ~ Haruki Murakami,
453:The Division Of Parts
1.
Mother, my Mary Gray,
once resident of Gloucester
and Essex County,
a photostat of your will
arrived in the mail today.
This is the division of money.
I am one third
of your daughters counting my bounty
or I am a queen alone
in the parlor still,
eating the bread and honey.
It is Good Friday.
Black birds pick at my window sill.
Your coat in my closet,
your bright stones on my hand,
the gaudy fur animals
I do not know how to use,
settle on me like a debt.
A week ago, while the hard March gales
beat on your house,
we sorted your things: obstacles
of letters, family silver,
eyeglasses and shoes.
Like some unseasoned Christmas, its scales
rigged and reset,
I bundled out gifts I did not choose.
Now the houts of The Cross
rewind. In Boston, the devout
work their cold knees
toward that sweet martyrdom
that Christ planned. My timely loss
is too customary to note; and yet
I planned to suffer
and I cannot. It does not please
my yankee bones to watch
where the dying is done
in its usly hours. Black birds peck
at my window glass
235
and Easter will take its ragged son.
The clutter of worship
that you taught me, Mary Gray,
is old. I imitate
a memory of belief
that I do not own. I trip
on your death and jesus, my stranger
floats up over
my Christian home, wearing his straight
thorn tree. I have cast my lot
and am one third thief
of you. Time, that rearranger
of estates, equips
me with your garments, but not with grief.
2.
This winter when
cancer began its ugliness
I grieved with you each day
for three months
and found you in your private nook
of the medicinal palace
for New England Women
and never once
forgot how long it took.
I read to you
from The New Yorker, ate suppers
you wouldn't eat, fussed
with your flowers,
joked with your nurses, as if I
were the balm among lepers,
as if I could undo
a life in hours
if I never said goodbye.
But you turned old,
all your fifty-eight years sliding
like masks from your skull;
and at the end
I packed your nightgowns in suitcases,
paid the nurses, came riding
home as if I'd been told
I could pretend
236
people live in places.
3.
Since then I have pretended ease,
loved with the trickeries of need, but not enough
to shed my daughterhood
or sweeten him as a man.
I drink the five o' clock martinis
and poke at this dry page like a rough
goat. Fool! I fumble my lost childhood
for a mother and lounge in sad stuff
with love to catch and catch as catch can.
And Christ still waits. I have tried
to exorcise the memory of each event
and remain still, a mixed child,
heavy with cloths of you.
Sweet witch, you are my worried guide.
Such dangerous angels walk through Lent.
Their walls creak Anne! Convert! Convert!
My desk moves. Its cavr murmurs Boo
and I am taken and beguiled.
Or wrong. For all the way I've come
I'll have to go again. Instead, I must convert
to love as reasonable
as Latin, as sold as earthenware:
an equilibrium
I never knew. And Lent will keep its hurt
for someone else. Christ knows enough
staunch guys have hitched him in trouble.
thinking his sticks were badges to wear.
4.
Spring rusts on its skinny branch
and last summer's lawn
is soggy and brown.
Yesterday is just a number.
All of its winters avalanche
out of sight. What was, is gone.
Mother, last night I slept
in your Bonwit Teller nightgown.
Divided, you climbed into my head.
There in my jabbering dream
237
I heard my own angry cries
and I cursed you, Dame
keep out of my slumber.
My good Dame, you are dead.
And Mother, three stones
slipped from your glittering eyes.
Now it's Friday's noon
and I would still curse
you with my rhyming words
and bring you flapping back, old love,
old circus knitting, god-in-her-moon,
all fairest in my lang syne verse,
the gauzy bride among the children,
the fancy amid the absurd
and awkward, that horn for hounds
that skipper homeward, that museum
keeper of stiff starfish, that blaze
within the pilgrim woman,
a clown mender, a dove's
cheek among the stones,
my Lady of first words,
this is the division of ways.
And now, while Christ stays
fastened to his Crucifix
so that love may praise
his sacrifice
and not the grotesque metaphor,
you come, a brave ghost, to fix
in my mind without praise
or paradise
to make me your inheritor.
~ Anne Sexton,
454:Self-Portrait At 28
I know it's a bad title
but I'm giving it to myself as a gift
on a day nearly canceled by sunlight
when the entire hill is approaching
the ideal of Virginia
brochured with goldenrod and loblolly
and I think "at least I have not woken up
with a bloody knife in my hand"
by then having absently wandered
one hundred yards from the house
while still seated in this chair
with my eyes closed.
It is a certain hill
the one I imagine when I hear the word "hill"
and if the apocalypse turns out
to be a world-wide nervous breakdown
if our five billion minds collapse at once
well I'd call that a surprise ending
and this hill would still be beautiful
a place I wouldn't mind dying
alone or with you.
I am trying to get at something
and I want to talk very plainly to you
so that we are both comforted by the honesty.
You see there is a window by my desk
I stare out when I am stuck
though the outdoors has rarely inspired me to write
and I don't know why I keep staring at it.
My childhood hasn't made good material either
mostly being a mulch of white minutes
with a few stand out moments,
popping tar bubbles on the driveway in the summer
a certain amount of pride at school
everytime they called it "our sun"
and playing football when the only play
was "go out long" are what stand out now.
13
If squeezed for more information
I can remember old clock radios
with flipping metal numbers
and an entree called Surf and Turf.
As a way of getting in touch with my origins
every night I set the alarm clock
for the time I was born so that waking up
becomes a historical reenactment and the first thing I do
is take a reading of the day and try to flow with it like
when you're riding a mechanical bull and you strain to learn
the pattern quickly so you don't inadverantly resist it.
II two
I can't remember being born
and no one else can remember it either
even the doctor who I met years later
at a cocktail party.
It's one of the little disappointments
that makes you think about getting away
going to Holly Springs or Coral Gables
and taking a room on the square
with a landlady whose hands are scored
by disinfectant, telling the people you meet
that you are from Alaska, and listen
to what they have to say about Alaska
until you have learned much more about Alaska
than you ever will about Holly Springs or Coral Gables.
Sometimes I am buying a newspaper
in a strange city and think
"I am about to learn what it's like to live here."
Oftentimes there is a news item
about the complaints of homeowners
who live beside the airport
and I realize that I read an article
on this subject nearly once a year
and always receive the same image.
14
I am in bed late at night
in my house near the airport
listening to the jets fly overhead
a strange wife sleeping beside me.
In my mind, the bedroom is an amalgamation
of various cold medicine commercial sets
(there is always a box of tissue on the nightstand).
I know these recurring news articles are clues,
flaws in the design though I haven't figured out
how to string them together yet,
but I've begun to notice that the same people
are dying over and over again,
for instance Minnie Pearl
who died this year
for the fourth time in four years.
III three
Today is the first day of Lent
and once again I'm not really sure what it is.
How many more years will I let pass
before I take the trouble to ask someone?
It reminds of this morning
when you were getting ready for work.
I was sitting by the space heater
numbly watching you dress
and when you asked why I never wear a robe
I had so many good reasons
I didn't know where to begin.
If you were cool in high school
you didn't ask too many questions.
You could tell who'd been to last night's
big metal concert by the new t-shirts in the hallway.
You didn't have to ask
and that's what cool was:
the ability to deduct
to know without asking.
15
And the pressure to simulate coolness
means not asking when you don't know,
which is why kids grow ever more stupid.
A yearbook's endpages, filled with promises
to stay in touch, stand as proof of the uselessness
of a teenager's promise. Not like I'm dying
for a letter from the class stoner
ten years on but...
Do you remember the way the girls
would call out "love you!"
conveniently leaving out the "I"
as if they didn't want to commit
to their own declarations.
I agree that the "I" is a pretty heavy concept
and hope you won't get uncomfortable
if I should go into some deeper stuff here.
IV four
There are things I've given up on
like recording funny answering machine messages.
It's part of growing older
and the human race as a group
has matured along the same lines.
It seems our comedy dates the quickest.
If you laugh out loud at Shakespeare's jokes
I hope you won't be insulted
if I say you're trying too hard.
Even sketches from the original Saturday Night Live
seem slow-witted and obvious now.
It's just that our advances are irrepressible.
Nowadays little kids can't even set up lemonade stands.
It makes people too self-conscious about the past,
though try explaining that to a kid.
I'm not saying it should be this way.
16
All this new technology
will eventually give us new feelings
that will never completely displace the old ones
leaving everyone feeling quite nervous
and split in two.
We will travel to Mars
even as folks on Earth
are still ripping open potato chip
bags with their teeth.
Why? I don't have the time or intelligence
to make all the connections
like my friend Gordon
(this is a true story)
who grew up in Braintree Massachusetts
and had never pictured a brain snagged in a tree
until I brought it up.
He'd never broken the name down to its parts.
By then it was too late.
He had moved to Coral Gables.
V five
The hill out my window is still looking beautiful
suffused in a kind of gold national park light
and it seems to say,
I'm sorry the world could not possibly
use another poem about Orpheus
but I'm available if you're not working
on a self-portrait or anything.
I'm watching my dog have nightmares,
twitching and whining on the office floor
and I try to imagine what beast
has cornered him in the meadow
where his dreams are set.
I'm just letting the day be what it is:
a place for a large number of things
to gather and interact -not even a place but an occasion
17
a reality for real things.
Friends warned me not to get too psychedelic
or religious with this piece:
"They won't accept it if it's too psychedelic
or religious," but these are valid topics
and I'm the one with the dog twitching on the floor
possibly dreaming of me
that part of me that would beat a dog
for no good reason
no reason that a dog could see.
I am trying to get at something so simple
that I have to talk plainly
so the words don't disfigure it
and if it turns out that what I say is untrue
then at least let it be harmless
like a leaky boat in the reeds
that is bothering no one.
VI six
I can't trust the accuracy of my own memories,
many of them having blended with sentimental
telephone and margarine commercials
plainly ruined by Madison Avenue
though no one seems to call the advertising world
"Madison Avenue" anymore. Have they moved?
Let's get an update on this.
But first I have some business to take care of.
I walked out to the hill behind our house
which looks positively Alaskan today
and it would be easier to explain this
if I had a picture to show you
but I was with our young dog
and he was running through the tall grass
like running through the tall grass
is all of life together
until a bird calls or he finds a beer can
18
and that thing fills all the space in his head.
You see,
his mind can only hold one thought at a time
and when he finally hears me call his name
he looks up and cocks his head
and for a single moment
my voice is everything:
Self-portrait at 28.
Anonymous submission.
~ David Berman,

IN CHAPTERS [4/4]



   2 Fiction
   1 Integral Yoga


   2 H P Lovecraft


   2 Lovecraft - Poems


0 1961-08-05, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   It was during this period that I used to go out of my body every night and do the work Ive spoken of in Prayers and Meditations (I only mentioned it in passing).8 Every night at the same hour, when the whole house was very quiet, I would go out of my body and have all kinds of experiences. And then my body gradually became a sleepwalker (that is, the consciousness of the form became more and more conscious, while the link remained very solidly established). I got into the habit of getting up but not like an ordinary sleepwalker: I would get up, open my desk, take out a piece of paper and write poems. Yes, poems I, who had nothing of the poet in me! I would jot things down, then very consciously put everything back into the drawer, lock everything up again very carefully and go back to bed. One night, for some reason or other, I forgot and left it open. My mother came in (in France the windows are covered with heavy curtains and in the morning my mother would come in and violently throw open the curtains, waking me up, brrm!, without any warning; but I was used to it and would already be prepared to wake upotherwise it would have been most unpleasant!). Anyway, my mother came in, calling me with unquestionable authority, and then she found the open desk and the piece of paper: Whats that?! She grabbed it. What have you been up to? I dont know what I replied, but she went to the doctor: My daughter has become a sleepwalker! You have to give her a drug.
   It wasnt easy.

1.01 - Economy, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy
  Shall we always study to obtain more of these things, and not sometimes to be content with less? Shall the respectable citizen thus gravely teach, by precept and example, the necessity of the young mans providing a certain number of superfluous glow-shoes, and umbrellas, and empty guest chambers for empty guests, before he dies? Why should not our furniture be as simple as the Arabs or the Indians? When I think of the benefactors of the race, whom we have apotheosized as messengers from heaven, bearers of divine gifts to man, I do not see in my mind any retinue at their heels, any car-load of fashionable furniture. Or what if I were to allowwould it not be a singular allowance?that our furniture should be more complex than the Arabs, in proportion as we are morally and intellectually his superiors! At present our houses are cluttered and defiled with it, and a good housewife would sweep out the greater part into the dust hole, and not leave her mornings work undone. Morning work! By the blushes of Aurora and the music of Memnon, what should be mans _morning work_ in this world? I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, when the furniture of my mind was all undusted still, and I threw them out the window in disgust. How, then, could I have a furnished house? I would rather sit in the open air, for no dust gathers on the grass, unless where man has broken ground.
  It is the luxurious and dissipated who set the fashions which the herd so diligently follow. The traveller who stops at the best houses, so called, soon discovers this, for the publicans presume him to be a

1f.lovecraft - The Loved Dead, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Integral Yoga
   My seat is the foetid hollow of an aged grave; my desk is the back of a
   fallen tombstone worn smooth by devastating centuries; my only light is

1f.lovecraft - The Trap, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Integral Yoga
   Summoning him to my desk I suddenly asked him to pick up an
   ink-standand was scarcely surprised to note that, despite lifelong

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