Anger At Losing A Mother Quotes

I didn't get to grow up and pull away from her and bitch about her with my friends and confront her about the things I'd wished she'd done differently and then get older and understand that she had done the best she could and realize that what she had done was pretty damn good and take her fully back into my arms again. Her death had obliterated that. It had obliterated me. It had cut me short at the very heigh of my youthful arrogance. It had forced me to instantly grow up and forgive her every motherly fault at the same time that it kept me forever a child, my life both ended and begun in that premature place where we'd left off. She was my mother, but I was motherless. I was trapped by her, but utterly alone. She would always be the empty bowl that no one could full. I'd have to fill it myself again and again and again. ~ Cheryl Strayed

Moral sense is almost completely ignored by modern society. We have, in fact, suppressed its manifestations. All are imbued with irresponsibility. Those who discern good and evil, who are industrious and provident, remain poor and are looked upon as morons. The woman who has several children, who devotes herself to their education, instead of to her own career, is considered weak-minded. If a man saves a little money for his wife and the education of his children, this money is stolen from him by enterprising financiers. Or taken by the government and distributed to those who have been reduced to want by their own improvidence and the shortsightedness of manufacturers, bankers, and economists. Artists and men of science supply the community with beauty, health, and wealth. They live and die in poverty. Robbers enjoy prosperity in peace. Gangsters are protected by politicians and respected by judges. They are the heroes whom children admire at the cinema and imitate in their games. A rich man has every right. He may discard his aging wife, abandon his old mother to penury, rob those who have entrusted their money to him, without losing the consideration of his friends. ...Ministers have rationalized religion. They have destroyed its mystical basis. But they do not succeed in attracting modern men. In their half-empty churches they vainly preach a weak morality. They are content with the part of policemen, helping in the interest of the wealthy to preserve the framework of pres ~ Alexis Carrel

We have fought hard and long for integration, as I believe we should have, and I know that we will win. But I've come to believe we're integrating into a burning house.
I'm afraid that America may be losing what moral vision she may have had ... . And I'm afraid that even as we integrate, we are walking into a place that does not understand that this nation needs to be deeply concerned with the plight of the poor and disenfranchised. Until we commit ourselves to ensuring that the underclass is given justice and opportunity, we will continue to perpetuate the anger and violence that tears at the soul of this nation. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

From Beckett's "The Unnamable":

"They love each other, marry, in order to love each other better, more conveniently, he goes off to the wars, he dies at the wars, she weeps, with emotion, at having loved him, at having lost him, yep, marries again, in order to love again..., more conveniently again, they love each other, you love as many times as necessary, as necessary in order to be happy, he comes back, the other comes back, from the wars, he didn't die at the wars after all, she goes to the station, to meet him, he dies in the train, of emotion, at the thought of seeing her again, having her again, she weeps, weeps again, with emotion again, at having lost him again, yep, goes back to the house, he's dead, the other is dead, the mother-in-law takes him down, he hanged himself, with emotion, at the thought of losing her, she weeps, weeps louder, at having loved him, at having lost him, there's a story for you, that was to teach me the nature of emotion, that's called emotion, what emotion can do, given favourable conditions, what love can do, well well, so that's emotion, that's love, and trains, and the nature of trains, and the meaning of... ~ Samuel Beckett

Dad himself used to tell a story about one time when Mother went off to fill a lecture engagement and left him in charge at home. When Mother returned, she asked him if everything had run smoothly.
Didn't have any trouble except with that one over there,' he replied. 'But a spanking brought him into line.'
Mother could handle any crisis without losing her composure.
That's not one of ours, dear,' she said. 'He belongs next door. ~ Frank B. Gilbreth Jr.

Losing one's mother to a car crash at age four isn't a readily accessible idea of good luck, but I've come to accept it as the condition that was required for my luck to fall into place. ~ Allegra Huston

I need to ask, are you afraid of spiders?"
Nicholas blinked, suddenly caught off guard, "Yes, I'm afraid of spiders."
"Were you always?"
"What are you, a psychiatrist?"
Pritam took a breath. He could feel Laine's eyes on him, appraising his line of questioning.
"Is it possible that the trauma of losing your best friend as a child and the trauma of losing your wife as an adult and the trauma of seeing Laine's husband take his life in front of you just recently..." Pritam shrugged and raised his palms, "You see where I'm going?"
Nicholas looked at Laine. She watched back. Her gray eyes missed nothing.
"Sure," agreed Nicholas, standing. "And my sister's nuts, too, and we both like imagining that little white dogs are big nasty spiders because our daddy died and we never got enough cuddles."
"Your father died?" asked Laine. "When?"
"Who cares?"
Pritam sighed. "You must see this from our point of - "
"I'd love to!" snapped Nicholas. "I'd love to see it from your point of view, because mine is not that much fun! It's insane! It's insane that I see dead people, Pritam! It's insane that this," he flicked out the sardonyx necklace,"stopped me from kidnapping a little girl!"
"That's what you believe," Pritam said carefully.
"That's what I fucking believe!" Nicholas stabbed his finger through the air at the dead bird talisman lying slack on the coffee table. ~ Stephen M. Irwin

Fear of the Dark I've always been prone to worry and anxiety, but after I became a mother, negotiating joy, gratitude, and scarcity felt like a full-time job. For years, my fear of something terrible happening to my children actually prevented me from fully embracing joy and gratitude. Every time I came too close to softening into sheer joyfulness about my children and how much I love them, I'd picture something terrible happening; I'd picture losing everything in a flash. At first I thought I was crazy. Was I the only person in the world who did this? As my therapist and I started working on it, I realized that "my too good to be true" was totally related to fear, scarcity, and vulnerability. Knowing that those are pretty universal emotions, I gathered up the courage to talk about my experiences with a group of five hundred parents who had come to one of my parenting lectures. I gave an example of standing over my daughter watching her sleep, feeling totally engulfed in gratitude, then being ripped out of that joy and gratitude by images of something bad happening to her. You could have heard a pin drop. I thought, Oh, God. I'm crazy and now they're all sitting there like, "She's a nut. How do we get out of here?" Then all of the sudden I heard the sound of a woman toward the back starting to cry. Not sniffle cry, but sob cry. That sound was followed by someone from the front shouting out, "Oh my God! Why do we do that? What does it mean?" The auditorium erupted in some kind ~ Brene Brown

Every mother can easily imagine losing a child. Motherhood is always half loss anyway. The three-year-old is lost at five, the five-year-old at nine. We consort with ghosts, even as we sit and eat with, scold and kiss, their current corporeal forms. We speak to people who have vanished and, when they answer us, they do the same. Naturally, the information in these speeches is garbled in the translation. ~ Karen Joy Fowler

Very often in everyday life one sees that by losing one's temper with someone who has already lost his, one does not gain anything but only sets out upon the path of stupidity. He who has enough self-control to stand firm at the moment when the other person is in a temper, wins in the end. It is not he who has spoken a hundred words aloud who has won; it is he who has perhaps spoken only one word. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan

I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV's while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad. You've got to say, 'I'm a HUMAN BEING, God damn it! My life has VALUE!' So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up ~ Paddy Chayefsky

Mountains have long been a geography for pilgrimage, place where people have been humbled and strengthened, they are symbols of the sacred center. Many have traveled to them in order to find the concentrated energy of Earth and to realize the strength of unimpeded space. Viewing a mountain at a distance or walking around its body we can see its shape, know its profile, survey its surrounds. The closer you come to the mountain the more it disappears, the mountain begins to lose its shape as you near it, its body begins to spread out over the landscape losing itself to itself. On climbing the mountain the mountain continues to vanish. It vanishes in the detail of each step, its crown is buried in space, its body is buried in the breath. On reaching the mountain summit we can ask, "What has been attained?" - The top of the mountain? Big view? But the mountain has already disappeared. Going down the mountain we can ask, "What has been attained?" Going down the mountain the closer we are to the mountain the more the mountain disappears, the closer we are to the mountain the more the mountain is realized. Mountain's realization comes through the details of the breath, mountain appears in each step. Mountain then lives inside our bones, inside our heart-drum. It stands like a huge mother in the atmosphere of our minds. Mountain draws ancestors together in the form of clouds. Heaven, Earth and human meet in the raining of the past. Heaven, Earth and human meet in the winds of the fut ~ Joan Halifax

And Harry remembered his first nightmarish trip into the forest, the first time he had ever encountered the thing that was then Voldemort, and how he had faced him, and how he and Dumbledore had discussed fighting a losing battle not long thereafter. It was important, Dumbledore said, to fight, and fight again, and keep fighting, for only then could evil be kept at bay, though never quite eradicated. . . .

And Harry saw very clearly as he sat there under the hot sun how people who cared about him had stood in front of him one by one, his mother, his father, his godfather, and finally Dumbledore, all determined to protect him; but now that was over. He could not let anybody else stand between him and Voldemort; he must abandon forever the illusion he ought to have lost at the age of one, that the
shelter of a parent's arms meant that nothing could hurt him. There was no waking from his nightmare, no comforting whisper in the dark that he was safe really, that it was all in his imagination; the last and greatest of his protectors had died, and he was more alone than he had ever been before. ~ J.K. Rowling

Suddenly I'd had Enough and this was no turn of phrase but a warm body, nervous, with a constitution I could count on like a younger brother. That's when I told my mother: on the other side it's really underdeveloped. We're going back. Really, I said: I want to go back, not possible unless Mummy who is part of me comes too. We wait in the empty street at the stop for Lethe, the only bus that runs both ways. My mother is losing patience. The bus doesn't come. It's not easy to wait for a bus you've heard is the only one that runs both ways. I check the guidebook. Neither Canto XIV of the Iliad nor Canto XI of the Odyssey mentions the place. Just what you'd expect for Lethe I tell myself. Naturally forgetfulness attracts attention to itself by means of absence and omission. But for my mother the bus not turning up is the theme of her nightmares. I explain that in this country one comes along every quarter of an hour...To signal to the vehicle that one wishes to board Oblivion Return one must fan open the grille by pressing a button and lighting up the small lantern on the top of the archway, which I did. It's the one gleam of hope in this world. ~ Helene Cixous

What makes people good communicators is, in essence, an ability not to be fazed by the more problematic or offbeat aspects of their own characters. They can contemplate their anger, their sexuality, and their unpopular, awkward, or unfashionable opinions without losing confidence or collapsing into self-disgust. They can speak clearly because they have managed to develop a priceless sense of their own acceptability. They like themselves well enough to believe that they are worthy of, and can win, the goodwill of others if only they have the wherewithal to present themselves with the right degree of patience and imagination. As children, these good communicators must have been blessed with caregivers who knew how to love their charges without demanding that every last thing about them be agreeable and perfect. Such parents would have been able to live with the idea that their offspring might sometimes - for a while, at least - be odd, violent, angry, mean, peculiar, ~ Alain De Botton

Woman's fear of the female Self, of the experience of the numinous archetypal Feminine, becomes comprehensible when we get a glimpse - or even only a hint – of the profound otherness of female selfhood as contrasted to male selfhood. Precisely that element which, in his fear of the Feminine, the male experiences as the hole, abyss, void, and nothingness turns into something positive for the woman without, however, losing these same characteristics. Here the archetypal Feminine is experienced not as illusion and as maya but rather as unfathomable reality and as life in which above and below, spiritual and physical, are not pitted against each other; reality as eternity is creative and, at the same time, is grounded in primeval nothingness. Hence as daughter the woman experiences herself as belonging to the female spiritual figure Sophia, the highest wisdom, while at the same time she is actualizing her connection with the musty, sultry, bloody depths of swamp-mother Earth. However, in this sort of Self-discovery woman necessarily comes to see herself as different from what presents itself to men -as, for example, spirit and father, but often also as the patriarchal godhead and his ethics. The basic phenomenon - that the human being is born of woman and reared by her during the crucial developmental phases - is expressed in woman as a sense of connectedness with all living things, a sense not yet sufficiently realized, and one that men, and especially the patriarchal male, abso ~ Erich Neumann

Good day to you, Harry Potter's relatives!" said Dedalus happily, striding into the living room. The Dursleys did not look at all happy to be addressed thus; Harry half expected another change of mind. Dudley shrank nearer to his mother at the sight of the witch and wizard.
"I see you are packed and ready. Excellent! The plan, as Harry has told you, is a simple one," said Dedalus, pulling an immense pocket watch out of his waistcoat and examining it. "We shall be leaving before Harry does. Due to the danger of using magic in your house--Harry being still underage, it could provide the Ministry with an excuse to arrest him--we shall be driving, say, ten miles or so, before Disapparating to the safe location we have picked out for you. You know how to drive, I take it?" he asked Uncle Vernon politely.
"Know how to--? Of course I ruddy well know how to drive!" spluttered Uncle Vernon.
"Very clever of you, sir, very clever, I personally would be utterly bamboozled by all those buttons and knobs," said Dedalus. He was clearly under the impression that he was flattering Vernon Dursley, who was visibly losing confidence in the plan with every word Dedalus spoke.
"Can't even drive," he muttered under his breath, his mustache rippling indignantly, but fortunately neither Dedalus nor Hestia seemed to hear him. ~ J.K. Rowling

Shrugging, I glanced at Judd who was watching someone in the corner. When I looked back at Cooper, he was studying the hair in my eyes.
"You look tired," he said, reaching out to brush away the hair.
Cooper's hand never reached my face before Judd grabbed his wrist and yanked it away.
In that instant, everything shifted. The men stepped closer, eyeballing each other as the heat of their anger became palatable.
I thought to step between them and calm things before violence broke out. Then, I remembered when I tried to break up a fight between my uncle's dogs. If Farah hadn't pulled me out of the way, I'd have been mauled. That day, I learned if predators wanted to fight, you let them while staying as far back as possible.
"I'll let this go because it's your woman," Cooper muttered, dark eyes still angry. "If you pull this shit again and it's not your woman, you and I will have a problem."
Once Cooper walked away, Judd finally relaxed.
I just stared at him as he led me to a booth because a group of old timers were at his table. Sitting next to him, I caressed his face, soothing him. He finally gave me a little grin.
Suddenly, Vaughn appeared and took the spot across from us. "Why do you look so pissed off?"
"He almost went feral on Cooper for trying to touch me."
Vaughn gave us a lazy grin. "So losing his balls makes a man stupid, eh? Good to know. Just another reason to keep mine attached."
Judd exhaled hard. "Y ~ Bijou Hunter

Had I been too selfish? I had never known my mother, but I knew my life as it had been without her: the ship, the sea, the myths, the maps . . . and, yes, Kashmir. The pain I felt at the thought of losing him - the same pain that kept me at arm's length - gave me a hint of my father's own struggle. ~ Heidi Heilig

I did not think of myself as a violent man. But the more times we were attacked, the more lives we lost, the harder it was to keep those demons at bay. It was another moment I found myself thankful to have Jerry. He was the rational, intelligent one. He kept me from letting the anger completely consume me and from doing anything really stupid. He prevented me from running wild through the streets of Yusafiah.
But it was clear I was losing my grip on reality. One evening I was on the roof of a building at an intersection in some little town. I wasn't wearing my helmet or my vest. I was just in a T-shirt. The roofs were flat and there was about a two-foot-high wall at the ledge. I stood there with my right foot propped up on the wall and looked out at the little town. I felt fueled with power. Like I was having the ultimate manly man moment. I could see then why people say power is addictive. I felt high on it in that moment. All my life I had strived to be "manly." Everything I did was about being "the man." And in that moment that is how I felt: completely dominant. As I stood on that roof unprotected and not giving a shit, I looked out over the town and said to myself, but as if I were talking to all of them, "Work with me or against me. I can either destroy you or I can help you." I believed every word of that. Nothing could touch me. No one could hurt me. I was completely invincible. ~ Noah Galloway

She gave Mother Beal a look I couldn't, at that age, interpret but I have since come to think of as profound maternal compassion, a strength emanating from a deep well of endurance that, across my life, I've come to understand was not particular to Sarah Schofield. I've witnessed it in other women who have suffered much without losing their hope or their gift for embracing with forgiveness those who are broken. ~ William Kent Krueger

It is easy to be calm when there is nothing to worry about, Eragon. The true test of your self-control, however, is whether you can remain calm in a trying situation. You cannot allow anger or frustration to cloud your thoughts, not at the moment. Right now, you need your mind to be clear.
Have you always been able to remain calm at times like this?
The old dragon seemed to chuckle. No. I used to growl and bite and knock down trees and tear up the ground. Once, I broke the top off of a mountain in the Spine; the other dragons were rather upset with me for that. But I have had many years to learn that losing my temper rarely helps. You have not, I know, but allow my experience to guide you in this. Let go of your worries and focus on the task at hand. The future will be what is will, and fretting about it will only make your fears more likely to come true.
I know, Eragon sighed, but it's not easy.
Of course not. Few things of worth are. Then Glaedr withdrew and left him to the silence of his own mind. ~ Christopher Paolini

This is the work of a lifetime, here on earth: To invent the astral body, to create it. giving it our consciousness. Thus one will survive death. One could also die when one chooses… And on dying, not lose the awareness 'from here.'

What has happened to you is a detachment of your astral body while your physical body sleeps. This occurs to vîras; it's an automatic unconscious process. Sometimes, by simple chance, a glimmer of consciousness reaches this fine body and then, on suddenly awakening or the next day, one gets the impression of experiencing something much more real than physical reality. The deja-vu of psychologists has its explanation in this phenomena of detachment.

Have you seen those children who elevate a kite and send messages with little rolls of paper that go slowly up to the kite? So it is, more or less, with that other. The astral body breaks away, still attached to the physical body by a string which has been called a 'silver cord' that is only cut at death. Thanks to this cord we can go immeasurable distances without losing the connection with our physical bodies. It always returns. So it reaches consciousness, like those messages of children with their kite. Yes, we must become like children to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven… with our astral bodies. Pay attention to this other analogy: As a child finds itself joined to its mother by the umbilical cord, so the astral body is joined to its father, the physical body, by a silver cord ~ Miguel Serrano

People are afraid that if they let go of their anger and righteousness and wrath, and look at their own feelings-and even see the good in a bad person-they're going to lose the energy they need to do something about the problem. But actually you get more strength and energy by operating from a place of love and concern. You can be just as tough, but more effectively tough. ~ Robert Thurman

He's been given the boot!' Lofton insisted, directing his anger now at Mister Walton. 'And I think it wise not to interfere!'
'I don't like to benefit from another's misfortune,' said Mister Walton with a straight face, and never losing his peaceful demeanor. ' But the hotel's loss, in this case, is my gain, I fear.'
'Mr. Hubbard will be gravely offended!' said Lofton darkly.
'I can't imagine it,' quipped the bespectacled fellow. 'Only small people are easily offended.'
Lofton, who until now had done his best to appear offended, found himself at a loss for a response. ~ Van Reid

My mother sings One day at a time sweet Jesus, and even Daddy likes to say that, one day at a time, as if it's some strategy for living. And yet the quickest way to not live at all is to take life one day at a time. It's the way I've discovered to not do a damn thing. If you can break a day down into quarters, then hours, then half hours, then minutes, you can chew down any stretch of time to bite size. It's like dealing with losing a man. If you can bear it for one minute, then you can swallow two, then five, then another five and on and on. If I don't want to think about my life, I don't have to think about life at all, just hold for one minute, then two, then five, then another five, before you know it, a month can pass and you don't even notice because you've only been counting minutes. ~ Marlon James

If you are losing at a game, change the game. ~ Gregory Benford

I was a real daydreamer at school, gazing out of the window and losing myself in imaginary worlds. ~ Talulah Riley

But you are losing money every day you are here. It's always that thing: if I hang in here just a little bit longer, things may happen.
( ... )
No matter what you want to do in London, there's a million others who are in the queue ahead of you. Everything is always a hassle, because there is just so many people wanting to do the same shit at the same time. No matter what it is. And no matter what cool idea you've had, there's somebody else who's already done it. And they're usually younger, richer and more well-connected than you.
( ... )
London is like any other kind of addiction, really. You get 5 per cent entertainment out of it, and that makes you suffer through the other 95 per cent of it. ~ Craig Taylor

You're so beautiful," he said on a slow exhale. "It hurts to look at you." She sighed helplessly, swaying into him as her eyes drifted closed and wishing - desperately wishing - she could ask him to come home and make love to her. She was positive he knew far more about making love than she did (she'd only had two lovers since losing her virginity at twenty, and she thought of them as Bad and Worse) and would be an exceptional teacher. A distant corner of her mind warned she'd gone ~ Ann Christopher

To base your self worth relative to others is to play a losing game. If you are at the bottom, you will be filled with self-loathing. If you are at the top, you will be filled with self-aggrandizement and ego. This will most certainly be one of your greatest obstacles to achieving whatever degree of mastery you are capable. ~ Chris Matakas

I learned that my boom box was awesome at recording, but I didn't know my soul was also good at it and that my heart would remember all the things that would ever break it. Most recordings have a way of fading over time and losing their quality, but the moments that become the record our souls keep manage to stay so vivid. ~ Amena Brown

Losing my mom at such a young age had a profound effect on my life. ~ Molly Shannon

Sometimes our need clouds our ability to develop perspective. Being needy is kind of like losing your keys. You become desperate and search everywhere. You search in places you know damn well what you are looking for could never be. The more frantic you become in trying to find them the less rational you are in your search. The less rational you become the more likely you'll be searching in a way that actually makes finding what you want more difficult. You go back again and again to where you want them to be, knowing that there is no way in hell that they are there. There is a lot of wasted effort. You lose perspective of your real goal, let's say it's go to the grocery store, and instead of getting what you need -nourishment, you frantically chase your tail growing more and more confused and angry and desperate. You are mad at your keys, you are mad at your coat pockets for not doing their job. You are irrational. You could just grab the spare set, run to the grocery store and get what you need, have a sandwich, calm down and search at your leisure. But you don't.

Where ARE your keys?! Your desperation is skewing your judgement. But you need to face it, YOUR keys are not in HIS pocket. You know your keys are not there. You have checked several times. They are not there. He is not responsible for your keys. You are. He doesn't want to be responsible for your keys. Here's the secret: YOU don't want to be responsible for your keys. If you did you would be searching ~ Tim Janes

There's a difference between winning and losing and not trying at all. ~ Tim Huelskamp

Sometimes, when I'm feeling sorry for myself, it seems that I'm made to carry an impossibly heavy weight, the crushing weight of losing her. I have moments of bitterness and doubt. You know? But the weight is a blessing, really, and I shouldn't be bitter about it. The weight is on my heart because I knew her and loved her. The weight is the accumulation of all we had together, all the hopes and worries, all the laughs, the picnics at St. Bart's bell tower, the adventures we shared because of my gift ... If they had taken her away on their yacht, if I had never met her, there would be no weight to carry - and no memories to sustain me. ~ Dean Koontz

It took a moment to recognize Timothy ... her first love. There had been a time when the mere sight of his handsome face had made her catch her breath. It had taken her years to recover from losing Timothy. Now the pain of his loss was muted and somehow apart from her, as if a broken engagement had happened to some other young, naive girl. She looked at him, and all she could think was, Thank Goodness. Thank goodness she's escaped marrying him. ~ Elizabeth Hoyt

She had suddenly realized something about people like this -- whether they were businessmen, policemen, civil servants, hotel proprietors, landlords, or what: it was that they didn't mean what they said. They never told the truth. What they seemed to be doing -- catching criminals, buying and selling, banking, administering, making things -- wasn't the real business of their lives at all. It was a cover. They were only playing at it, and they didn't even do it well, because they didn't believe in it. The real, secret business of their lives lay in keeping power for people like themselves. That was all they really cared about, and they were desperately serious about it, because the thought of losing the little power they had was terrifying to them: and they didn't mind what damage they did to truth or honesty or justice in the struggle to hang on to it. ~ Philip Pullman

He's not dead," I spoke up. "The last we heard, he still lived."

"He did?" Simus asked, then let his eyes slide over to Keir. "Losing your touch?"

A cry of outrage filled the tent. I grabbed at the blanket, as Keir stood, sword in hand. Simus had two daggers that appeared from nowhere. I looked at the privy entrance, to see Marcus standing there, waving my underthings in his fist and shaking them in the air. "Where did the likes of these come from?"

I jumped up and grabbed for them, but that scarred little man dodged me. "Those are mine!" I made another attempt, darting around the bed. Simus roared out his laughter and Keir got out of the way.

Marcus danced away again. "The Warprize accepts nothing, except at the hand of the Warlord!" His face was bright red, the scarring a dull white against it.

"Give me those!" I went after him again and this time managed to wrestle the cloth from his hand. Flushed and breathless, I shoved them behind my back and faced down Marcus, toe to toe. "You have no business - "

"Nothing, except at the hand of the Warlord!" Marcus roared out, spittle flying from his mouth.

"You bragnect! I bought them with his coin!"

Marcus blinked. Apparently it was an effective curse in their language, since it seemed to leave him speechless. His recovery was quick. "Could have asked Hisself or I."

I rolled my eyes, just imagining that conversation. ~ Elizabeth Vaughan

When you view marketing from the vantage point of the guerrilla, you realize that it's your opportunity to help your prospects and customers succeed. They want to succeed at earning more money, building their company, losing weight, attracting a mate, becoming more fit, or quitting smoking. You can help them. You can show them how to achieve their goal. Marketing is not about you. It's about them. I hope you never forget that. ~ Jay Conrad Levinson

If you ask the religious person "What do you believe in?" he will tell you about one thing. But if you ask him "What do you not believe in?" he will tell you about many, many things! And if you ask an atheist "What do you believe in?" he will say "Nothing." The only difference between an atheist and a religious person, is one thing. If one thing isn't there, there would be no difference at all! When I say I am losing my religion, I am not saying that I'm losing my belief; but I am saying that I'm losing my disbeliefs. ~ C. JoyBell C.

Light skin gives me such privileges that my complaints are not worthy. I'm not "positive" enough. Not "black" enough. I'm not a "real" black person. Worst of all are the terrible choices - the possibility of losing connections to those I love, betraying them, those who have done terrible things but at the same time have had to survive within the context of racism. Whose side am I on? ~ Toi Derricotte

Longbottom, the boy who kept losing his toad, was called, he fell over on his way to the stool. The hat took a long time to decide with Neville. When it finally shouted, "GRYFFINDOR," Neville ran off still wearing it, and had to jog back amid gales of laughter to give it to "MacDougal, Morag." Malfoy swaggered forward when his name was called and got his wish at once: the hat had ~ J.K. Rowling

I think our nation is at a pivotal point. Too many people fear that we are losing the sense of limitless possibility that has always defined this nation. ~ Carly Fiorina

At its best, citizenship finds an equilibrium between two essential ingredients -- that of rights and that of duties. When the idea of citizenship is losing its grip, one or the other of these elements becomes eroded. Either freedom is on the losing end, or the sense of duty, of obligation, goes down the drain. We are living in a time when the idea of citizenship has been seriously weakened. We have a strong sense of the rights of a citizen. But we've lost much of the sense of the corresponding duties and obligations of citizenship. ~ Jim Stockdale

Anyway, those things would not have lasted long.
The experience of the years shows it to me.
But Destiny arrived in some haste and stopped them.
The beautiful life was brief.
But how potent were the perfumes,
On how splendid a bed we lay,
To what sensual delight we gave our bodies.
An echo of the days of pleasure,
An echo of the days drew near me,
A little of the fire of the youth of both of us,
Again I took in my hands a letter,
And I read and reread till the light was gone.
And melancholy, I came out on the balcony
Came out to change my thoughts at least by looking at
A little of the city that I loved,
A little movement on the street and in the shops.
Translated by Rae Dalven ~ Constantine P. Cavafy

The god abandons Antony

When at the hour of midnight
an invisible choir is suddenly heard passing
with exquisite music, with voices ―
Do not lament your fortune that at last subsides,
your life's work that has failed, your schemes that have proved illusions.
But like a man prepared, like a brave man,
bid farewell to her, to Alexandria who is departing.
Above all, do not delude yourself, do not say that it is a dream,
that your ear was mistaken.
Do not condescend to such empty hopes.
Like a man for long prepared, like a brave man,
like the man who was worthy of such a city,
go to the window firmly,
and listen with emotion
but not with the prayers and complaints of the coward
(Ah! supreme rapture!)
listen to the notes, to the exquisite instruments of the mystic choir,
and bid farewell to her, to Alexandria whom you are losing. ~ Constantinos P. Cavafy

If you haven't been in a war and are wondering how long it takes to get used to losing everything you think you need or love, I can tell you the answer is no time at all. ~ Meg Rosoff