Stand here, he thought, and count the lighted windows of a city. You cannot do it. But behind each yellow rectangle that climbs, one over another, to the sky - under each bulb - down to there, see that spark over the river which is not a star? - there are people whom you will never see and who are your masters. At the supper tables, in the drawing rooms, in their beds and in their cellars, in their studies and in their bathrooms. Speeding in the subways under your feet. Crawling up in elevators through vertical cracks around you. Jolting past you in every bus. Your masters, Gail Wynand. There is a net - longer than the cables that coil through the walls of this city, larger than the mesh of pipes that carry water, gas and refuse - there is another hidden net around you; it is strapped to you, and the wires lead to every hand in the city. They jerked the wires and you moved. You were a ruler of men. You held a leash. A leash is only a rope with a noose at both ends.

I have leveled with the girls - from Anchorage to Amarillo.I tell them that all marriages are happyIt's the living together afterward that's tough.I tell them that a good marriage is not a gift,It's an achievement.that marriage is not for kids It takes guts and maturity.It separates the men from the boys and the women from the girls.I tell them that marriage is tested dily by the ability to compromise.Its survival can depend on being smart enough to know what's worth fighting about.Or making an issue of or even mentioning.Marriage is giving - and more important, it's forgiving.And it is almost always the wife who must do these things.Then, as if that were not enough, she must be willing to forget what she forgave.Often that is the hardest part.Oh, I have leveled all right.If they don't get my message, Buster,It's because they don't want to get it.Rose-colored glasses are never made in bifocalsBecause nobody wants to red the small print in dreams.

Margaux looks around the table; this is not working. All of a sudden she's thinking about a safe room, something she's only heard of but suddenly wants: water, oxygen, bulletproof door, dead bolts, a thousand books. Utterly quiet. Completely silent. No girls she barely knows in saggy leather pants, no girls in mesh strippers' gloves and jeans sanded thin as a bee's wing, and no girls who can't stay home one night a year because they are always and forever out. On their way to. Coming from.And then her heart open. Just a little, but it does. Because she remembers all that. How she felt then: the self-reproach, the utter confusion... That's why her heart opens. For those girls at the table who always feel baffled and sad, tender and malign, repulsive and desirable, innocent and contemptuous of innocence.So she cries. For them, mostly. For herself a little... everything hesitates. So that for a second there's no sound in the enormous room but that of Margaux sobbing.

L'homme ne peut jamais savoir ce qu'il faut vouloir car il n'a qu'une vie et il ne peut ni la comparer à des vies antérieures ni la rectifier dans des vies ultérieures. (...) Il n'existe aucun moyen de vérifier quelle décision est la bonne car il n'existe aucune comparaison. Tout est vécu tout de suite pour la première fois et sans préparation. Comme si un acteur entrait en scène sans avoir jamais répété. Mais que peut valoir la vie, si la première répétition de la vie est déjà la vie même ? C'est ce qui fait que la vie ressemble toujours à une esquisse. Mais même "esquisse" n'est pas le mot juste, car une esquisse est toujours l'ébauche de quelque chose, la préparation d'un tableau, tandis que l'esquisse qu'est notre vie est une esquisse de rien, une ébauche sans tableau. (partie I, ch. 3)

One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am - a reluctant enthusiast....a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards.

The universe, maybe a blank canvas, you and I are born to create a painting. Some people die from cancer, some people die at birth, and that's their painting. We'll share the same painting, we're born to die just like the universe began and it will end with your last breath.Our life might be a broken watch, or an untuned piano. Maybe all our lives, are but a drop, a drop in an ocean beyond control because chaos controls the rhythm of sound.Maybe the universe is a poem, and we're all the stanza break. Maybe the only way to live is to be poetic in some sense in what we do by the choices we make. Maybe the only way to see life is through the lenses of melody. Maybe we're all a poem or grand novel being written by an author. Maybe the only way to get through the night and day is to listen to your own heartbeat.To know that purposelessness and meaningless is a part of the human condition this will give you the strength to carry on through. And in the end your eyes could be a pen to write a story that would give yourself meaning.

But Viv, if I've learned anything at all in the last eight years of my life? It's that people just like to tell themselves stories about where they came from. They can't help themselves. They don't trust the world around them--it's too good for them, or not good enough--so they tell themselves stories about it. They tell themselves an old magician who lives up in the sky made them out of clay and put them here until whenever he makes up his mind to take them out again. Your parents didn't like their creation myth, that's all--it had pain in it, and chaos, and their own parents were ashamed. So they told themselves a story that was at least partially true: about two good people who deserved happy lives. And probably at some point they started to believe that story. But the thing is, really, that it doesn't matter. For your parents or anyone else. It doesn't actually matter where we came from, or where we're going, or when. The only thing that matters is what we have to do while we're here and how well we do it.

1. Who is a Death Warrior?Anyone can be a Death Warrior, not just someone who is terminally ill. We are all terminally ill. A Death Warrior accepts death and makes a commitment to live a certain way, whether it be for one year or thirty years.2. When does one become a Death Warrior?There is a specific moment during which you can decide to become a Death Warrior. That moment is when death shows you that you will die.3. How do you become a Death Warrior?Once you accept that life will end, you can become a Death Warrior by choosing to love life at all times and in all circumstances. You choose to love life by loving.4. What are the qualities of a Death Warrior?A Death Warrior is grateful for every second of time given and is aware of how precious each second is. Every second not spent loving is wasted. The Death Warrior's enemy is time that is wasted by not loving.5. Why should you become a Death Warrior?So you can live and die with truth and courage, and because life is too painful when you're wasteful with the time given to you.--The Death Warrior Manifesto, by DQ

I am not a finished poem, and I am not the song you’ve turned me into. I am a detached human being, making my way in a world that is constantly trying to push me aside, and you who send me letters and emails and beautiful gifts wouldn’t even recognise me if you saw me walking down the street where I live tomorrowfor I am not a poem. I am tired and worn out and the eyes you would see would not be painted or inspiredbut empty and weary from drinking too much at all timesand I am not the life of your party who sings and has glorious words to speakfor I don’t speak muchat alland my voice is raspy and unsteady from unhealthy living and not much sleep and I only use it when I sing and I always sing too muchor not at alland never when people are around because they expect poems and symphonies and I am nota poembut an elegyat my bestbut unedited and uncut and not a lot of people want to work with me because there’s only so much you can do with an audio take, with the plug-ins and EQs and I was born distorted, disordered, and I’m pretty fine with that,but others are not.

I don't know it is that I always feel that other people can create things but that I can't. I imagine it's simpler living in remote tribes or communities where one is obliged to have a go or else you have to do without. I suppose it is fear of failure in an age where political correctness is trying to erase the word 'failure' from the language. It's OK to fail isn't it, but only if you've tried? What is so bizarre is that when one does try, one rarely falls short. Obviously some people do things better than others but if it gives you pleasure, then so what? As my grandmother used to say, 'patience and perseverance made a bishop of his reverence!' So don't say you can't make candles or soap or that you can't spin or weave until you've tried it. As for mending, well, if you're not throwing everything away, then you have no option but to make do and mend. After all, the only way to get rid of shopping malls and supermarkets with their food miles is for people not to shop in those places and the way to cure this mercenary mercantile world is to make your own things.

When Death ComesWhen death comes like the hungry bear in autumn; when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me, and snaps the purse shut; when death comes like the measle-pox when death comes like an iceberg between the shoulder blades, I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering: what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness? And therefore I look upon everything as a brotherhood and a sisterhood, and I look upon time as no more than an idea, and I consider eternity as another possibility, and I think of each life as a flower, as common as a field daisy, and as singular, and each name a comfortable music in the mouth, tending, as all music does, toward silence, and each body a lion of courage, and something precious to the earth. When it's over, I want to say all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. When it's over, I don't want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real. I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument. I don't want to end up simply having visited this world

Picnic, LightningIt is possible to be struck by a meteoror a single-engine planewhile reading in a chair at home.Safes drop from rooftopsand flatten the odd pedestrianmostly within the panels of the comics,but still, we know it is possible,as well as the flash of summer lightning,the thermos toppling over,spilling out on the grass.And we know the messagecan be delivered from within.The heart, no valentine,decides to quit after lunch,the power shut off like a switch,or a tiny dark ship is unmooredinto the flow of the body’s rivers,the brain a monastery,defenseless on the shore.This is what I think aboutwhen I shovel compostinto a wheelbarrow,and when I fill the long flower boxes,then press into rowsthe limp roots of red impatiens—the instant hand of Deathalways ready to burst forthfrom the sleeve of his voluminous cloak.Then the soil is full of marvels,bits of leaf like flakes off a fresco,red-brown pine needles, a beetle quickto burrow back under the loam.Then the wheelbarrow is a wilder blue,the clouds a brighter white,and all I hear is the rasp of the steel edgeagainst a round stone,the small plants singingwith lifted faces, and the clickof the sundialas one hour sweeps into the next.

THE BARROW In this high field strewn with stones I walk by a green mound, Its edges sheared by the plough. Crumbs of animal bone Lie smashed and scattered round Under the clover leaves And slivers of flint seem to grow Like white leaves among green. In the wind, the chestnut heaves Where a man's grave has been. Whatever the barrow held Once, has been taken away: A hollow of nettles and dock Lies at the centre, filled With rain from a sky so grey It reflects nothing at all. I poke in the crumbled rock For something they left behind But after that funeral There is nothing at all to find. On the map in front of me The gothic letters pick out Dozens of tombs like this, Breached, plundered, left empty, No fragments littered about Of a dead and buried race In the margins of histories. No fragments: these splintered bones Construct no human face, These stones are simply stones. In museums their urns lie Behind glass, and their shaped flints Are labelled like butterflies. All that they did was die, And all that has happened since Means nothing to this place.Above long clouds, the skiesTurn to a brilliant redAnd show in the water's faceOne living, and not these dead." — Anthony Thwaite, from The Owl In The Tree

When I look back on history, and think about the ‘great depression’- when men, women and children starved- I’ve often wondered why people fell back to Government and money. That was the issue (after-all). Perhaps people believed that they were powerless... People had skills, to continue doing things like farming, building.. helping each other- coming together. But I think that they didn’t see that they had power, because they had been told that they didn’t.When you think about the power that people have (especially today), you can see that if something (like the collapse of banks) were to happen, we would all be perfectly okay. We still have inventors, builders, farmers, gardeners, entertainers, doctors, barristas, sports people, writers, etc. They don’t disappear. We could simply just go on, do what we love, and not worry about income from those pursuits. And everyone would be okay. Probably better, in-fact. No worry about paying bills, or affording things we want (or need). Too bad that people (during the depression) never thought to do that. But then again. What’s that saying?‘Hindsight is 20/20’...."From the third book in the "I Am... Subject to change without notice" series, by Cheri Baue

At present, a good many men engaged in scientific pursuits, and who have signally failed in gaining recognition among their fellows, are endeavoring to make reputations among the churches by delivering weak and vapid lectures upon the 'harmony of Genesis and Geology.' Like all hypocrites, these men overstate the case to such a degree, and so turn and pervert facts and words that they succeed only in gaining the applause of other hypocrites like themselves. Among the great scientists they are regarded as generals regard sutlers who trade with both armies.Surely the time must come when the wealth of the world will not be wasted in the propagation of ignorant creeds and miraculous mistakes. The time must come when churches and cathedrals will be dedicated to the use of man; when minister and priest will deem the discoveries of the living of more importance than the errors of the dead; when the truths of Nature will outrank the 'sacred' falsehoods of the past, and when a single fact will outweigh all the miracles of Holy Writ.Who can over estimate the progress of the world if all the money wasted in superstition could be used to enlighten, elevate and civilize mankind?When every church becomes a school, every cathedral a university, every clergyman a teacher, and all their hearers brave and honest thinkers, then, and not until then, will the dream of poet, patriot, philanthropist and philosopher, become a real and blessed truth.