And More White Sheets Quotes

Heavy as such things are
After the wordslide, the writing begins."
From "Word Quake ~ Eileen Granfors

To split the very sea into ours and theirs. Border at the Beach
And More White Sheets ~ Eileen Granfors

Old age is far more than white hair, wrinkles, the feeling that it is too late and the game is finished, that the stage belongs to the rising generations. The true evil is not the weakening of the body, but the indifference of the soul. ~ Andre Maurois

I want to get you out of here."
"Don't you mean you want me to get you out of here?"
He took my hand - yeah, my hand again. I was liking this. A lot. "No, I mean I want to get you out. This shouldn't be your life. You deserve a lot more. Like a locker."
"And a driver's license?"
"Let's not get carried away. ~ Kiersten White

I love you more than words can say. I love you more than what you can imagine. I love you more than what your senses can perceive. I love you more than all the mortals' feelings, emotions, love, and passion combined. You became part of my blood cells' contents. You became my white blood cells that protect me from getting sick. You became my blood plasma that I will die without. You became my red blood cells that I can't breathe without. You became my heart, that through it, I can survive. You became my lungs, that without them, I would die. You became my brain that is the only hope for life if my heart stops functioning. You became my eyes that see you and were created only to see you. You became my limbs that I can't do anything without. You became my nose that smells your musk, even if you are amid millions of mortals. You became my lips that touch your flesh and paint their signature on every inch of your body. I am your love who cannot live without you. ~ Amany Al-Hallaq

A river is more than an amenity, it is a treasure. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority. ~ E.B. White

Given the existence as uttered forth in the public works of Puncher and Wattmann of a personal God quaquaquaquaquaquaqua with white beard quaquaquaquaquaqua outside time without extension who from the heights of divine apathia divine athambia divine aphasia loves us dearly with some exceptions for reasons unknown but time will tell and suffers like the divine Miranda with those who for reasons unknown but time will tell are plunged into torment plunged into fire whose fire flames if that continues and who can doubt it will fire the firmament that is to say blast hell to heaven so blue still and calm so calm with a calm which even though intermittent is better than nothing but not so fast and considering what is more that as a result of the labors left unfinished ~ Samuel Beckett

Would the potential attraction to Mormonism by simply having a Mormon in the White House threaten traditional Christianity by leading more Americans to a church that some Christians believe misleadingly calls itself Christian, is an active missionary church, and a dangerous cult? ~ Rick Santorum

The ideal of quiet and of genteel retirement, in 1835, was found in Washington Square, where the Doctor built himself a handsome, modern, wide-fronted house, with a big balcony before the drawing-room windows, and a flight of marble steps ascending to a portal which was also faced with white marble. This structure, and many of its neighbours, which it exactly resembled, were supposed, forty years ago, to embody the last results of architectural science, and they remain to this day very solid and honourable dwellings. In front of them was the Square, containing a considerable quantity of inexpensive vegetation, enclosed by a wooden paling, which increased its rural and accessible appearance; and round the corner was the more august precinct of the Fifth Avenue, taking its origin at this point with a spacious and confident air which already marked it for high destinies. I know not whether it is owing to the tenderness of early associations, but this portion of New York appears to many persons the most delectable. It has a kind of established repose which is not of frequent occurrence in other quarters of the long, shrill city; it has a riper, richer, more honourable look than any of the upper ramifications of the great longitudinal thoroughfare - the look of having had something of a social history. ~ Henry James

I think I know more about you at age seven than you do," Henri teased.
"Do you, now?" she asked, happy he couldn't see her blushing since she sat in front of him on their steed.
"Yes," he said confidently. "I know you always preferred the colors blue and yellow to any other. You were excellent at hide-and-seek. You hated cold porridge, and my personal favorite- you named every horse in the royal stables and liked to put bows on them when allowed."
She colored some more and burst out laughing. This she did not remember! "I did not! Did I?"
Henri laughed, too. "Apparently you did, driving the royal seamstress crazy with your requests for ribbons and bows for the royal steeds. ~ Jen Calonita

I'm sorry, but I don't want to be an emperor. That's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible; Jew, Gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone, and the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical; our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost. The airplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men; cries out for universal brotherhood; for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women, and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me, I say, do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the ~ Charlie Chaplin

Every time I've had a bad performance at an event, I've come back more determined and focused. ~ Shaun White

Small reason was there to doubt, then, that ever since that almost fatal encounter, Ahab had cherished a wild vindictiveness against the whale, all the more fell for that in his frantic morbidness he at last came to identify with him, not only all his bodily woes, but all his intellectual and spiritual exasperations. The White Whale swam before him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating in them, till they are left living on with half a heart and half a lung. ~ Herman Melville

Which mirror now, Ms. Lane?" He glanced around the white room, scanning the ten mirrors.
"Fourth from the left. Jericho." I was sick of him calling me Ms. Lane. I picked myself up off the white floor. Once again the Silver had spit me out with entirely too much enthusiasm, and I didn't even have the stones on me. I didn't have anything but the spear in my holster, a protein bar, two flashlights, and a bottle of Unseelie in my pockets.
"You don't have the right to call me Jericho."
"Why? Because we haven't been intimate enough? I've had sex with you in every possible position, killed you, fed you my blood in the hopes that it would bring you back to life, crammed Unseelie into your stomach, and tried to rearrange your guts. I'd say that's pretty personal. How much more intimate do we have to get for you to feel comfortable with me calling you Jericho? Jericho."
I expected him to pounce on the sex-in-every-possible-position comment, but he only said. "You fed me your - "
I pushed into the mirror, cutting him off. Like the first one, it resisted me, then grabbed me and squirted me out on the other side.
His voice preceded his arrival. "You bloody fool, do you never stop to consider the consequences of your actions?" He barreled out of the mirror behind me.
"Of course I do," I said coolly. "There's always plenty of time to consider the consequences. After I've screwed up."
"Funny girl, aren't you, Ms. Lane?"
"Sure am. Jericho. It's Mac ~ Karen Marie Moning

His hand lightly pressed to the small of my back, and I turned. His arm slid around me and I was brought up against him. 'You're shaking,' he said, a frown lacing his tone. 'I know.' 'We don't have to,' he said. 'I'm a patient man.' 'Are you really?' I asked, my tone slightly rueful. His white teeth flashed. 'For you I would be.' The sincerity in his voice was my undoing. 'No more talking,' I whipered.
- Romeo & Rimmel ~ Cambria Hebert

Beneath these fruit-tree boughs that shed
Their snow-white blossoms on my head,
With brightest sunshine round me spread
Of spring's unclouded weather,
In this sequestered nook how sweet
To sit upon my orchard-seat!
And birds and flowers once more to greet,
My last year's friends together. ~ William Wordsworth

ELECTION DAY, NOVEMBER, 1884.

If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest
scene and show,
'Twould not be you, Niagara - nor you, ye limitless prairies - nor
your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado,
Nor you, Yosemite - nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic geyser-
loops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing,
Nor Oregon's white cones - nor Huron's belt of mighty lakes -
nor Mississippi's stream:
- This seething hemisphere's humanity, as now, I'd name - the
still small voice vibrating - America's choosing day,
(The heart of it not in the chosen - the act itself the main, the
quadriennial choosing,)
The stretch of North and South arous'd - sea-board and inland
- Texas to Maine - the Prairie States - Vermont, Virginia,
California,
The final ballot-shower from East to West - the paradox and con-
flict,
The countless snow-flakes falling - (a swordless conflict,
Yet more than all Rome's wars of old, or modern Napoleon's:)
the peaceful choice of all,
Or good or ill humanity - welcoming the darker odds, the dross:
- Foams and ferments the wine? it serves to purify - while the
heart pants, life glows:
These stormy gusts and winds waft precious ships,
Swell'd Washington's, Jefferson's, Lincoln's sails. ~ Walt Whitman

KAPELA: Just look above you. Do you see? That is called the immense board of lights. And there is the Great Black and, strewn across it, small and surrounded and vulnerable and brave, there is the Great White.
COMMUTER: Oh. Oh, yeah. Of course. Hah. You know, that's perfect. That's really perfect. And the Great White ... I mean, there's so much more black. A-are we losing?
KAPELA: No. Once there was only black. We are winning. ~ Alan Moore

She sometimes takes her little brother for a walk round this way," explained Bingo. "I thought we would meet her and bow, and you could see her, you know, and then we would walk on."
"Of course," I said, "that's enough excitement for anyone, and undoubtedly a corking reward for tramping three miles out of one's way over ploughed fields with tight boots, but don't we do anything else? Don't we tack on to the girl and buzz along with her?"
"Good Lord!" said Bingo, honestly amazed. "You don't suppose I've got nerve enough for that, do you? I just look at her from afar off and all that sort of thing. Quick! Here she comes! No, I'm wrong!"
It was like that song of Harry Lauder's where he's waiting for the girl and says, "This is her-r-r. No, it's a rabbut." Young Bingo made me stand there in the teeth of a nor'-east half-gale for ten minutes, keeping me on my toes with a series of false alarms, and I was just thinking of suggesting that we should lay off and give the rest of the proceedings a miss, when round the corner there came a fox-terrier, and Bingo quivered like an aspen. Then there hove in sight a small boy, and he shook like a jelly. Finally, like a star whose entrance has been worked up by the personnel of the ensemble, a girl appeared, and his emotion was painful to witness. His face got so red that, what with his white collar and the fact that the wind had turned his nose blue, he looked more like a French flag than anything else. He sagged from the wais ~ P.G. Wodehouse

The Genesis Of Butterflies

The dawn is smiling on the dew that covers
The tearful roses; lo, the little lovers
That kiss the buds, and all the flutterings
In jasmine bloom, and privet, of white wings,
That go and come, and fly, and peep and hide,
With muffled music, murmured far and wide.
Ah, the Spring time, when we think of all the lays
That dreamy lovers send to dreamy mays,
Of the fond hearts within a billet bound,
Of all the soft silk paper that pens wound,
The messages of love that mortals write
Filled with intoxication of delight,
Written in April and before the May time
Shredded and flown, playthings for the wind's playtime,
We dream that all white butterflies above,
Who seek through clouds or waters souls to love,
And leave their lady mistress in despair,
To flit to flowers, as kinder and more fair,
Are but torn love-letters, that through the skies
Flutter, and float, and change to butterflies ~ Victor Hugo

He grabbed a handful of God's silky curls and pulled, making him tilt his head back and show his throat. Day's senses snapped, turning feral. Day growled with the animalistic urge to leave a large bite mark on his man. Day bowed forward as his cock's first eruption of a thick, white rope of come hit God's Adam's apple, followed by much more painting his lover's neck and cheek. Day pulled slow, firm strokes up to his head before dragging back down until he was completely emptied. "Mmmhmm. I'm yours, sweetheart," God said, giving him a sexy grin. "Fucking right you are," Day said while he kissed and licked God's face clean. ~ A.E. Via

The dragon is withered
His bones are now crumbled;
His armour is shivered,
His splendour is humbled!
Though sword shall be rusted
And throne and crown perish
With strength that men trusted
And wealth that they cherish,
Here grass is still growing,
And leaves are yet swinging,
The white water flowing,
And elves are yet singing
Come! Tra-la-la-lally!
Come back to the Valley!

The stars are far brighter
Than gems without measure,
The moon is far whiter
Than silver in treasure:
The fire is more shining
On hearth in the gloaming
Than gold won by mining,
So why go a-roaming?
O! Tra-la-la-lally
Come back to the Valley!

O! Where are you going,
So late in returning?
The river is flowing,
The stars are all burning!
O! Wither so laden,
So sad and so dreary?
Here elf and elf-maiden
Now welcome the weary
With Tra-la-la-lally
Come back to the Valley,
Tra-la-la-lally
Fa-la-la-lally
Fa-la! ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

Everything is going according to plan in this strategically fathomed notion of "country" where the population wholeheartedly believes in that fabled myth known as democracy. The corporations that profit from our endless war campaigns, who have a multifarious number of politicians at the top of their covert letterheads and on payroll always get what they pay for - a route to even more of our tax dollars. The status quo doesn't change with the election of any given politician, whether it be in the Senate, the Congress, or even the White House. This nation (i.e. notion) is, in and of itself, nothing but an ingeniously designed corporation that uses you and I to further perpetuate the myth of country, the myth of united, the myth of democracy, and the myth of patriotism. We have long passed the point where we the people sat on the tongue of this monstrosity. We now reside in the belly of the beast. ~ A.K. Kuykendall

It is very difficult to look at anger dispassionately because it is a part of me, but that is what I am trying to do. Here I am, a violent human being, whether I am black, brown, white or purple. I am not concerned with whether I have inherited this violence or whether society has produced it in me; all I am concerned with is whether it is at all possible to be free from it. To be free from violence means everything to me. It is more important to me than sex, food, position, for this thing is corrupting me. It is destroying me and destroying the world, and I want to understand it, I want to be beyond it. I feel responsible for all this anger and violence in the world. I feel responsible - it isn't just a lot of words - and I say to myself, `I can do something only if I am beyond anger myself, beyond violence, beyond nationality'. And this feeling I have that I must understand the violence in myself brings tremendous vitality and passion to find out. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

When Franz returned to himself, he seemed still to be in a dream. He thought himself in a sepulchre, into which a ray of sunlight in pity scarcely penetrated. He stretched forth his hand, and touched stone; he rose to his seat, and found himself lying on his bournous in a bed of dry heather, very soft and odoriferous. The vision had fled; and as if the statues had been but shadows from the tomb, they had vanished at his waking. He advanced several paces towards the point whence the light came, and to all the excitement of his dream succeeded the calmness of reality. He found that he was in a grotto, went towards the opening, and through a kind of fanlight saw a blue sea and an azure sky. The air and water were shining in the beams of the morning sun; on the shore the sailors were sitting, chatting and laughing; and at ten yards from them the boat was at anchor, undulating gracefully on the water. There for some time he enjoyed the fresh breeze which played on his brow, and listened to the dash of the waves on the beach, that left against the rocks a lace of foam as white as silver. He was for some time without reflection or thought for the divine charm which is in the things of nature, specially after a fantastic dream; then gradually this view of the outer world, so calm, so pure, so grand, reminded him of the illusiveness of his vision, and once more awakened memory. He recalled his arrival on the island, his presentation to a smuggler chief, a subterranean palace full of s ~ Alexandre Dumas

And the voice spoke even more deliberately: ' ... but remember what is under the ocean of clouds: eternity.'
And suddenly that tranquil world, the world of such simple harmony that you discover as you rise above the clouds, took on an unfamiliar quality in my eyes. All that gentleness became a trap. In my mind's eye I saw that vast white trap laid out, right under my feet. Beneath it reigned neither the restlessness of men nor the living tumult and motion of cities, as one might have thought, but a silence that was even more absolute, a more final peace. That viscous whiteness was turning before my eyes into the boundary between the real and the unreal, between the known and the unknowable. And I was already beginning to sense that a spectacle has no meaning except when seen through a culture, a civilization, a professional craft. ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery

The lie we are told is that white rage and white fear are honest emotions that preserve the integrity of American democracy...White rage and white fear are reactions to perceptions among white people that their power might be slipping away. Black rage and Black fear are fundamentally more honest, because they are reactions to the violence of white supremacy. ~ Brittney Cooper

I'm going out with him again tomorrow night," Emilie said after they'd finished eating. "He lives up in Baltimore, so we're going to meet after I'm done at the clinic."
"What are your wearing?" Kelly asked, wiping her mouth with her napkin.
"Just ... " She shrugged and looked down at the white cardigan she wore over a pair of basic black slacks. "Work clothes".
Kelly's eyes went wide. "Oh, no. No, no. Hottie McHotterson deserves more than work clothes. Hottie deserves a little black dress or a pair of fuck-hot jeans and a slinky little top. And heel - sexy, tall heels." She arched an eyebrow. ~ Laura Kaye

Back in L.A., I'd remained friends with my freshman-year boyfriend, Collin, and we'd become even closer after he confided in me one dark and emotional night that he'd finally come to terms with his homosexuality. Around that time, his mother was visiting from Dallas, and Collin invited me to meet them at Hotel Bel Air for brunch. I wore the quintessential early-1990s brunch outfit: a copper-brown silk tank with white, dime-size polka dots and a below-the-knee, swinging skirt to match. A flawless Pretty Woman--Julia Roberts polo match replica. I loved that outfit.
It was silk, though, and clingy, and the second I sat down at the table I knew I was in trouble. My armpits began to feel cool and wet, and slowly I noticed the fabric around my arms getting damper and damper. By the time our mimosas arrived, the ring of sweat had spread to the level of my third rib; by mealtime, it had reached the waistline of my skirt, and the more I tried to will it away, the worse it got. I wound up eating my Eggs Florentine with my elbows stuck to my hip bones so Collin and his mother wouldn't see. But copper-brown silk, when wet, is the most unforgiving fabric on the planet. Collin had recently come out to his parents, so I'd later determined I'd experienced some kind of sympathetic nervousness on Collin's behalf. I never wore that outfit again. Never got the stains out.
Nor would I ever wear this suit again. ~ Ree Drummond

I was marching. I kept saying it as I scanned the crowd for Jill, pumping myself up, because some people had told me racism was a thing of the past, they's told me not to get involved. But that was nuts. They were nuts. And more to the point - they'd all been white people. Well, guess what? I'm white too - and that's exactly why I was marching. I had to. Because racism was alive and real as shit. It was everywhere and all mixed up in everything, and the only people who said it wasn't, and the only people who said "Don't talk about it" were white. Well, stop lying. That's what I wanted to tell those people. Stop lying. Stop denying. That's why I was marching. Nothing was going to change unless we did something about it. We! White people! We had to stand up and say something about it too, because otherwise it was just like what one of those posters in the crowd outside school said:
OUR SILENCE IS ANOTHER KIND OF VIOLENCE ~ Jason Reynolds

Passing is one of the few words in the transgender lexicon that's not a medical-legacy word. We did ever so much better with this one: it's a racist-legacy word, a legacy of the time when Africans were kidnapped from their homeland to be enslaved in the Americas. If you're not familiar with this, a hierarchy of race developed in which the lighter your skin was, the more attractive and intelligent you were considered, and someone quite light-skinned could sometimes pass for white and live in white society. ~ S. Bear Bergman

The glee of it. The ecstasy of It. I can't speak about this It because I know no word. It is just there, It is always there, like death in life. In this instant I know that something terrible is rising that must be seized and turned back upon itself before it twists outward into violence. But that knowing always comes too late, a wild unraveling is under way and I am caught up in it like a coyote seen late one afternoon in an Arkansas tornado-a toy dog spinning skyward, struck white by a ray of sun against black clouds, then black, then white, then gone and lost forever. The wind dies. A dead stillness. Mirror water. That ecstasy that shivered every nerve replaced by the precise knowing that what this self perpetrated is as much a part of the universal will as erupting lava that subsides once more into the inner earth. ~ Peter Matthiessen

I wiped my eyes on my sleeve and jumped when I turned and found Ren's brother standing behind me as a man.
Ren got up, alert, and watched him carefully, suspicious of Kishan's every move. Ren's tail twitched back and forth, and a deep grumble issued from his chest.
Kishan look down at Ren, who had crept even closer to keep an eye on him, and then looked back at me. He reached out his hand, and when I placed mine in it, he lifted it to his lips and kissed it, then bowed deeply with great aplomb. "May I ask your name?"
"My name is Kelsey. Kelsey hayes."
"Kelsey. Well, I, for one, appreciate all the efforts you have made on our behalf. I apologize if I frightened you earlier. I am," he smiled, "out of practice in conversing with young ladies. These gifts you will be offering to Durga. Would you kindly tell me more about them?"
Ren growled unhappily.
I nodded. "Is Kishan your given name?"
"My full name is actually Sohan Kishan Rajaram, but you can call me Kishan if you like." He smiled a dazzling white smile, which was even more brilliant due to the contrast with his dark skin. He offered an arm. "Would you please sit and talk with me, Kelsey?"
There was something very charming about Kishan. I surprised myself by finding I immediately trusted and liked him. He had a quality similar to his brother. Like Ren, he had the ability to set a person completely at ease. Maybe it was their diplomatic training. Maybe it was how their mother raised the ~ Colleen Houck

Now the long-feared Asiatic colossus takes its turn as world leader, and we
the white race
have become the yellow man's burden.Let us hope that he will treat us more kindly than we treated him. ~ Gore Vidal

Gary Nixon and I have had a loving, committed, faithful relationship for twenty-five years (now over 30) yet we are denied more than a thousand rights and protections that go automatically with marriage. ~ Mel White

As he sat up, he heard soft dripping sounds from the bathroom, little plips like water slipping over the edges of the tub and into the floor. The hairs on the back of his neck rose as he realized where he‟d last heard that sound. His muscles tight with strain from his earlier exertions, he stood and walked warily toward the half open bathroom door and the tub beyond it. Slipping quietly past the door, he saw that the curtain was drawn, and again the shadowed figure lay behind it. One long, slim, leg dangled from the end of the tub, beads of water gliding down its length and off the polished toes. At the other end he saw a mass of auburn curls, matted deep red near the porcelain of the tub. It was the dream and the vision again, more real now, too strong to deny. Shaking, he moved toward the curtain, gagging on the sickly smell of rust and roses, feeling the thin nylon glide between thumb and palm as he pulled it back to reveal his darkest nightmare and deepest regret. He could see the crimson water now, blood bubbles gliding over its surface and clinging to the legs dangling over the tub‟s edge. When he‟d pulled the curtain completely away from the tub and around to its opposite side, he saw her face. Her eyes were closed and he saw that her lids were bruised and purple against the translucent paleness of her face, drained completely dead white under the makeup she‟d brushed on before she‟d died. Staggering by the sight of her, he knelt by the tub and extended one shaking han ~ Amanda M. Lyons

His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful!
Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips. ~ Mary Shelley

More than a third of all the men, women, and children on this march perished from cold, starvation, and disease. Thanks to President Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal Act, Cherokee land was left to white farmers who used it to grow cotton with slave labor and to mine gold. ~ Gloria Steinem

It's a dirty little secret that I'm pretty self-conscious about coloring my own work. I just see so many people who love color more than me that I get freaked out every time I hit Photoshop. Black and white? I know exactly what to do, but color offers a million solutions to problems I don't even know exist. ~ Doug TenNapel

For if single women are looking for government to create a "hubby state" for them, what is certainly true is that their male counterparts have a long enjoy the fruits of a related "wifey state," in which the nation and its government supported male independence in a variety of ways. Men, and especially married wealthy white men, have a long relied on government assistance. It's a government that has historically supported white men's home and business ownership through grants, loans, incentives, and tax breaks. It has allowed them to accrue wealth and offer them shortcuts and bonuses for passing it down to their children. Government established white men's right to vote and thus exert control over the government at the nation's founding and has protected their enfranchisement. It has also bolstered the economic and professional prospects of men by depressing the economic prospects of women: by failing to offer women equivalent economic and civic protections, thus helping to create conditions whereby women were forced to be dependent on those men, creating a gendered class of laborers who took low paying or unpaid jobs doing the domestic and childcare work that further enabled men to dominate public spheres.

But the growth of a massive population of women who are living outside those dependent circumstances puts new pressures on the government: to remake conditions in a way that will be more hospitable to female independence, to a citizenry now made up of plenty of ~ Rebecca Traister

As Reagan's first budget director, Stockman, a former two-term congressman from Michigan, was the point man for the supply-side economics the new administration was pushing - the theory that taxes should be lowered to stimulate economic activity, which would in turn produce more tax revenue to compensate for the lower rates.

With his wonky whiz-kid persona, computer-like mental powers, and combative style, he browbeat Democratic congressmen and senators who challenged his views. But he soon incurred the wrath of political conservatives when he confessed to Atlantic reporter William Greider that supply-side economics was really window dressing for reducing the rates on high incomes. Among other acts of apostasy, he called doctrinaire supply-siders "naive." The 1981 article created a sensation and prompted Reagan to ask him over lunch, "You have hurt me. Why?" Stockman famously described the meeting as a "trip to the woodshed." Though the president himself forgave him, Stockman's loose lips undercut his power at the White House, and in 1985 he left government to become an investment banker at Salomon Brothers. ~ David Carey

Dear Mama,
I hope this letter finds you well. It contains all my love and affection. (It also contains all my questions about how you could ever have loved a man like Professor Miller.)
You asked about where I live. I cannot believe I haven't mentioned it, but I suppose I'm so used to it now I don't think of it. The dorms are small and plain, but as a student I don't need much more. (I cannot afford the dorms. I do not live in them.) The food is dreadful, all heavy meat and sauce. I miss fruit! (I am always hungry; a supper with a strange man was the fullest my stomach has been since I got here.)
As I have mentioned in every letter, my professors are all interesting and I take copious notes during lectures. (If you do not bring up my father, I am certainly not going to offer you information on that louse of a man.) The course work is challenging but I am excelling. (I have to be perfect so they can find no excuse to dock my grades.)
I have delivered Aunt Nani's package to Jacabo. He was so happy to receive it, and I take tea with him once a week. It is a great comfort to speak Melenese with someone. (I live in the hotel where Jacabo works. He saved me when I realized I could not afford room and board at the school. I work long, hard hours in the evenings to earn a tiny hole of a servant's room and whatever scraps of food are left over.)
Please give everyone my love and tell them how much I am learning to bring back to the island as a teacher. (I will ~ Kiersten White

His life coiled back into the brown murk of the past like a twined filament of electric wire; he gave life, a pattern, and movement to these million sensations that Chance, the loss or gain of a moment, the turn of the head, the enormous and aimless impulsion of accident, had thrust into the blazing heat of him. His mind picked out in white living brightness these pinpoints of experience and the ghostliness of all things else became more awful because of them. So many of the sensations that returned to open haunting vistas of fantasy and imagining had been caught from a whirling landscape through the windows of the train.

And it was this that awed him - the weird combination of fixity and change, the terrible moment of immobility stamped with eternity in which, passing life at great speed, both the observer and the observed seem frozen in time. There was one moment of timeless suspension when the land did not move, the train did not move, the slattern in the doorway did not move, he did not move. It was as if God had lifted his baton sharply above the endless orchestration of the seas, and the eternal movement had stopped, suspended in the timeless architecture of the absolute. Or like those motion-pictures that describe the movements of a swimmer making a dive, or a horse taking a hedge - movement is petrified suddenly in mid-air, the inexorable completion of an act is arrested. Then, completing its parabola, the suspended body plops down into the pool. Only, ~ Thomas Wolfe

Perhaps people felt there was nothing more they could do, you know? After all, how can someone be helped who doesn't see the need? A Christian counselor I saw for a while described such situations as, "a White Elephant everyone can see but no one wants to deal with; everyone hopes the problem will just go away on its own."

Just like with my mom.

Back then it seemed women were almost expected to go a little loopy sometimes. After all we're the ones with raging hormones that get out of whack – by our periods, PMS or pregnancy and childbirth – and cause craziness and bizarre behavior. And because of those uncontrollable hormones, women are also more emotional and predisposed to depression. These are things my mom was actually told by her parents, her family, her husbands and friends... even her doctor. Eventually, she made herself believe that her erratic behavior stemmed from PMS, not mania or alcohol. ~ Chynna T. Laird

Something More Fragile Than This"

Quick
before our bodies turn themselves in,
with a reverence reserved for the dead touch me
because I want to remember how beautiful I am.
While Spring snows around us, cracking her eggs
on our windows, in her meager dress of yellowing-white,
because I want to rise into today.

So why the urge to render something
more fragile than this?
Why, always, the soul blowing glass?
The soul, once again, filling the lungs
with smoke because a memory of regret sweats
in the plastic sleeve of a family
album. Because there's a snapshot caught
between the pages of some thick book:
my heavy 20 year old frame setting off
the 60lb weight of a dying mother. Because
somewhere, there's a negative slide
of my heart. Because and because and because
I'm sure there's a photo
in some drawer that shows me dressed in black.

But I want to devote myself to the mystery
of this afternoon. I want to honor this falling night, worship the
hour vanishing
between six and seven. This moment
where I'm standing against myself and against you with a taste in my mouth
that's yolk.

With Bob Marley taking that one long drag
on the refrigerator door. ~ Olena Kalytiak Davis

The term POTUS used to be viewed around the world with a degree of respect. Unfortunately the current US president has junked any last remnant of that image. Instead he seems only too happy to trash the environment; to scrap age old alliances promoting peace and prosperity; to discard internationally binding treaties; to toss aside like garbage hard won civil liberties. Maybe DETRITUS is a more fitting acronym for the current occupant of the White House - 'Deranged egotistical tyrant ruining & isolating the U.S. ~ Alex Morritt

The world is more than black and white. Seeing everything in color helps me raise my spirit and find my happy. Life is meant to be lived in color! ~ Jodi Livon

The table was prettily decorated with camellias from the orangery, and upon the snow-white tablecloth, amongst the clear crystal glasses, the old green wineglasses threw delicate little shadows, like the spirit of a pine forest in summer. The Prioress had on a grey taffeta frock with a very rare lace, a white lace cap with streamers, and her old diamond eardrops and brooches. The heroic strength of soul of old women, Boris thought, who with great taste and trouble make themselves beautiful - more beautiful, perhaps, than they have ever been as young women - and who still can hold no hope of awakening any desire in the hearts of men, is like a righteous man working at his good deeds even after he has abandoned his faith in a heavenly reward. ~ Karen Blixen