Be Wild Quotes

Be wild and crazy and drunk with Love,
if you are too careful, LOVE will not find you. ~ Rumi

I've always wanted to be a cat. Warm and domesticated when you want to be, wild when you don't. ~ Jenny Downham

I've never been wild."
"You want to be, don't you? That's why you're calling me.?"
"Yeah, I guess…maybe…"
"Yes or no. There's no one else here to hear you and I ain't judging."
"Yes. Yes, I'd like to be wild. ~ Molly O'Keefe

Don't climb on that, don't break anything, don't be so aggressive, don't be so noisy, don't be so messy, don't make such crazy risks. But God's design - which He placed in boys as the picture of Himself - is a resounding yes. Be fierce, be wild, be passionate. ~ John Eldredge

Go now, and live.
Experience. Dream. Risk. Close your eyes and jump. Enjoy the freefall. Choose exhilaration over comfort. Choose magic over predictability. Choose potential over safety. Wake up to the magic of everyday life. Make friends with your intuition. Trust your gut. Discover the beauty of uncertainty. Know yourself fully before you make promises to another. Make millions of mistakes so that you will know how to choose what you really need. Know when to hold on and when to let go. Love hard and often and without reservation. Seek knowledge. Open yourself to possibility. Keep your heart open, your head high and your spirit free. Embrace your darkness along with your light. Be wrong everyday once in a while, and don't be afraid to admit it. Awaken to the brilliance in ordinary moments. Tell the truth about yourself no matter what the cost. Own your reality without apology. See goodness in the world. Be Bold. Be Fierce. Be Grateful. Be Wild, Crazy and Gloriously Free. Be You.
Go now, and live. ~ Jeanette LeBlanc

I will not be another flower, picked for my beauty and left to die. I will be wild, difficult to find, and impossible to forget. ~ Erin Van Vuren

I know I am wild", she said. But not for the reasons that others say that about themselves. She was wild because there were flying things flapping around inside of her, trying to escape her eyes! ~ C. JoyBell C.

Just as blue is delicate and mysterious, yellow clear and unsubtle, and red sanguine and passionate, so he felt ulfire to be wild and painful, and jale dreamlike, feverish, and voluptuous. ~ David Lindsay

Your children will be wild and undisciplined. Your daughters will run off with stable hands and your sons will become attorneys. ~ Amanda Grange

Born to be wild; born to be free; nobody owns you; you are, a romantic tree. ~ Santosh Kalwar

Art is not tame, and Nature is not wild, in the ordinary sense. A perfect work of man's art would also be wild or natural in a good sense. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Be humble!! Be wise!! Be wild!! Be love!! Be cute!! Be sexy!! Be sweet!! Be bold!! Okaaaayyyy... Be whatever you wanna be!! It's your life!! **Someone's opinion of you doesn't have to be your reality! (Les brown)** ~ Abhishek Kumar

Be wild. Because life is lived in the moments you don't see coming. ~ Staci Hart

My heart is flailing, thumping in my chest like a bird caught in a cage, wanting to be wild again. ~ Sona Charaipotra

Wrong Question: How to love?
Right Question: Why am I afraid to love?
Wrong Question: Why do you love me?
Right Question: Do I love myself as much as you do?
Wrong Question: Why does love hurt?
Right Question: Why do I live in fantasies and expect so much without really giving anything back?
Wrong Question: What will you do for me?
Right Question: Am I capable of making your life more beautiful?
Wrong interpretation: Let's be practical.
Right interpretation: Let's be wild and unconditional in our love without pretending.
Wrong Confession: I want love in life.
Right Confession: I am lonely and I will start by being friendly with myself first.
Wrong Advice: Mind and Thoughts
Right Advice: Heart ~ Saurabh Sharma

I grow stronger with every moment. I will be wild. I will be brutal. I will encircle you and conquer you. I will be more powerful than your boats and your swords and your blood lust. I will be inevitable. ~ Rachel Swirsky

She slapped his shoulder. "You... you go down to breakfast, Gram. I'll be there as soon as I shower and dress."
"Have you been exercising? You sound out of breath."
Creighton buried his face in a pillow, his body shaking with laughter.
Gram knocked on the door. "Do you have a man in there with you?"
"No, Gram..."
He pushed himself off the pillow and sat, his large hands sweeping dark hair away from his face. "Aye, she bloody well does."
Clapping sounded from the other side of the door followed by Gram's bellowing "Born to be Wild. ~ Vonnie Davis

Live at the verge of insanity, be wild.
Life is too precious to be so tame and mild. ~ Debasish Mridha

I like to be wild in passion and calculated in expression! I'm both. I like to be wild in passion more. But I think the balance is what's essential. ~ Jane Fonda

Of the freedom to be wild and untrammeled. Of the ache she felt in her soul sometimes to be connected to nothing, answerable to nothing, bound by nothing. ~ Cassandra Clare

The logical side of our brain convinces us that these events are all merely coincidences. Pure happenstance. That, The Legend of John Titor, must be wild-eyed fiction. The mind cannot accept any other conclusion as rational. Keep ~ E.A. Blayre III

I had a very famous trainer tell me once, 'You can usually train a wild animal but never tame a wild animal, ever.' They are always going to be wild, no matter what anybody says. ~ Jack Hanna

I like girls to be wild but at the same time beautifully brought up and very funny. ~ Karl Lagerfeld

I don't believe in pets. I like animals to be wild and free. ~ John Lydon

To be fully human is to be wild. Wild is the strange pull and whispering wisdom. It's the gentle nudge and the forceful ache. It is your truth, passed down from the ancients, and the very stream of life in your blood. Wild is the soul where passion and creativity reside, and the quickening of your heart. Wild is what is real, and wild is your home. ~ Victoria Erickson

You can't dance cheerfully. Dancing is too important. It can be wild or solemn or gay or lewd or art for art's sake, but it can't be cheerful. ~ Rex Stout

The Mask "Put off that mask of burning gold With emerald eyes." "O no, my dear, you make so bold To find if hearts be wild and wise, And yet not cold." "I would but find what's there to find, Love or deceit." "It was the mask engaged your mind, And after set your heart to beat, Not what's behind." "But lest you are my enemy, I must enquire." "O no, my dear, let all that be, What matter, so there is but fire In you, in me?" ~ William Butler Yeats

I want to know without words. I want to fall so violently that I risk breaking into a million pieces. I want to love so desperately it's indecent. I want it to be wild and fated and forever. A no-choice connection. ~ Tia Williams

Rumors went round that I might be gay. In some ways, I was happy w/ this. Larry Rivers proved to me that a gay man could be wild, attractive, and courageous; in any case one's sexuality was becoming less of an issue every day. One of the great things about the British Mod movement was that being macho was no longer the only measure of manhood. ~ Pete Townshend

I'm such a huge fan of the horror genre and the supernatural elements ... There was something that happened to me. It was easy to be wild and crazy, and just let go and attack people. ~ Mena Suvari

This was it. This was us. This was what we'd be. Wild and free. ~ Kristen Ashley

The real work of this life is not what we do every day from 9-5 ... The real work is to be passionate, be holy, be wild, be irreverent, to laugh and cry until you awaken the sleeping spirits, until the ground of your being cleaves and the universe comes flooding in. ~ Geneen Roth

Be wild; that is how to clear the river. The river does not flow in polluted, we manage that. The river does not dry up, we block it. If we want to allow it its freedom, we have to allow our ideational lives to be let loose, to stream, letting anything come, initially censoring nothing. That is creative life. It is made up of divine paradox. To create one must be willing to be stone stupid, to sit upon a throne on top of a jackass and spill rubies from one's mouth. Then the river will flow, then we can stand in the stream of it raining down. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Dimitri: "She might be wild and disrespectful, but if she has potential - "
Rose: "Wild and disrespecful? Who the hell are you anyway? Oursourced help?"
Kirova: "Guardian Belikov is the Princess Lissa's guardian now, her sanctioned guardian."
Rose: "You got cheap foreign labor to protect Lissa? ~ Richelle Mead

Do you love this world? Do you cherish your humble and silky life? Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath? Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden, and softly, and exclaiming of their dearness, fill your arms with the white and pink flowers, with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling, their eagerness to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are nothing, forever? ~ Mary Oliver

Don't change a thing. God, Jess. Don't change a single thing. Be wild for me, be reckless. I love your kind of wild. ~ Penny Reid

Be orderly and disciplined in daily life, like a good bourgeois, so that I might be wild and violent in my art. ~ Gustave Flaubert

Born to be wild - live to outgrow it. ~ Douglas Horton

Always let life be wild. Forever have life be interesting. ~ A.D. Posey

The Girl She Was

She doesn't feel like herself. Not anymore. she was different once.

Now she is like a watered-down version, pale and thin. She slips through the cracks unnoticed. She fades into the background, afraid of saying the wrong thing. She grows sharp edges and wont let anyone get close to her.

She doesn't know how she came to be like this, how she ended up here. she only remembers the way she used to be - wild and reckless. Bold and unapologetic. ~ Lang Leav

To grow unique beauty, be wild and live in the wilderness of your mind. ~ Debasish Mridha

I was made to be wild, wicked and free, to carve out my own crazy destiny, to find a place in this world where I can be the most authentic version of me. ~ Christy Ann Martine

No one had ever called her wild before. She wanted to be wild now, for him. Wild seemed more enticing then a bowl of berries. ~ Shannon Hale

I think that people tend to associate the word "wild" with something that is used up and dirty; but I associate the word "wild" with wildflowers, wild roses, things in fields that haven't been hurt yet! So let's be things in fields that have healed and that have grown. Let's be wild. ~ C. JoyBell C.

I'm shy, but when the time comes to be wild, I'm fun-loving, adventurous, and mysterious. ~ Leonardo DiCaprio

Fashion is meant to be wild and expressive. I love colour but I also love basics - grungy minimalism mixed with this kind of broken-down cheerleader, is my thing. ~ Charli XCX

A lot of times people will have after-parties or try and host an event for comedians, and they misunderstand us. They think it should be wild and crazy, or loud music, and comedians are typically pretty mellow people that just want to talk to each other. I think it would be highly unusual to find comedians who want to be at a loud, crowded party. ~ Tig Notaro

Hoy shit!" Van yells. "Tom Carter! On tour with us! Man, it's gonna be wild! Chicks, parties ... chicks! It's gonna be so fucking wild! The man is a fucking legend!"
Sonny looks shell-shocked. Then, he springs to life. "Damn straight, he's a legend! He's a pussy legend! We are touring with the best there is! Just think of the stuff he can teach us." He gets this dreamy look in his eyes.
Honestly, he's starting to freak me out. ~ Samantha Towle

Be brave. Be wild , and stay forever hungry for love , art , knowledge and adventure ~ Erin Van Vuren

Be obscure clearly! Be wild of tongue in a way we can understand. ~ E.B. White

Will you go on a second date with me?"

"We're still in the middle of our first date, Zach. You can't just ask me that out of the blue."

"I already did, and I refuse to take it back."

"What if I don't like you by the end of this date?" I volley back.

"You honestly think that's possible?" His dimples poke through his smile, and I know right then I'm going to say yes. "Say yes, Delia. Be wild. Do something crazy and fun. ~ Teagan Hunter

I like to be wild, and I like to do wild, crazy things. I need excitement. At all times. Normal is not my type. ~ Neon Hitch

Young dreams may be wild ones, but they are never corrected by ridiculing them. They must be steered by a loving voice that has earned the right to be heard, not one enforced by means of power. This is a very difficult lesson for parents to learn. And as cultures lose their restraining power, there will be greater need for mutual love and respect between parents and children if a relationship of trust is to be built, rather than banking on authority because of position. ~ Ravi Zacharias

My love, you are closer to me than myself ...
You shine through my eyes,
Your light is brighter than the Moon ...
Step into the garden so all the flowers ...
Even the tall poplar can kneel before your beauty ...
Let your voice silence the lily famous for its hundred tongues,
When you want to be kind ...
You are softer than the soul ...
But when you withdraw ...
You can be so cold and harsh.
Dear one, you can be wild and rebellious ...
But when you meet him face to face ...
His charm will make you docile like the earth,
Throw away your shield and bare your chest ...
There is no stronger protection than him.
That's why when the Lover withdraws from the world ...
He covers all the cracks in the wall ...
So the outside light cannot come though,
He knows that only the inner light illuminates his world! ~ Rumi

And why did this Probert pretend to be so Welsh? I remembered that like me he'd been awarded nought for Welsh in School Certificate. Such a result, in that language, means an almost psychotic ignorance. It's standard practice, of course, with writers of Probert's allegiance to pretend to be wild valley babblers, woaded with pit-dirt and sheep-shit, thinking in Welsh the whole time and obsessed by terrible beauty, etc., but in fact they tend to come from comfortable middle-class homes, have a good urban education, never go near a lay preacher and couldn't even order a pint in Welsh, falling back, as Probert had done earlier in the evening, on things like the Welsh for big Jesus. (And don't tell me they can think in Welsh without knowing the language. Ever tried thinking in Bantu?) ~ Kingsley Amis

It doesn't take courage to drink too much and be wild or jump around. That doesn't take any kind of boldness, just riding a motorcycle or whatever the idea of being tough is. Tough is having four kids. Tough is committing to life and being disciplined. ~ Angelina Jolie

To be wild is not to be crazy or psychotic. True wildness is a love of nature, a delight in silence, a voice free to say spontaneous things, and an exuberant curiosity in the face of the unknown. ~ Robert Bly

We must be free, but to have real freedom, you must be wild and free yourself. ~ Bryant McGill

Sam loved me in a way that was as close as love could come to his mother's indifference. It was playful, bouncy, it accepted the situation between us without annotations, and without realizing it, he stuck me like a buffer between himself and his parents. He had a wife, and that warded them off. How could he be wild if he was settled? How could he be in trouble if he was married? He might have known these things, but coming from that emotionally monosyllabic household, how could he have had a vocabulary for them? ~ Laurie Colwin

I just want to hold you close." I gave Timby a squeeze. He relaxed in my embrace. "I'm wild about you, you know that, right?"
"I know." He smiled up at me.
"You don't have to be wild about me too. Just try to like me a little more than you do now. ~ Maria Semple

Art is a place where you can be wild. Kids-all of us-need that. ~ Helen Hunt

I go fishing in my mind. I put out bait, the bait of my own longing, my desire, and my hunger for connection, for a tug of something alive at the end of a line. Something that I may have to struggle with to pull in, but that will be wild and important to me, whether I keep it or let it go. ~ Pat Schneider

Then as I got older, I always gravitated towards the hard stuff, Born To Be Wild, then Black Sabbath. ~ Jello Biafra

Human girls always take love for granted. They want things to be wild and carefree all the time. And when it gets too comfortable or requires a little work, they just toss it off. I'd give anything to be loved by a guy like Jay. But I suppose the grass is always greener on the other side, right? ~ Wendy Higgins

A lot of stuff I was reading in mythology was about how women used to be taught to be wild. The wild woman was an essence that existed in the world. We're still coming back from many years of us being chiseled out to be identical and quiet. ~ Brie Larson

Be wild and boundless. Why are you crawling when you have wings of imagination? ~ Debasish Mridha

Stay firmly in your path and dare; be wild two hours a day! ~ Paul Gauguin

It would be wonderful if all the salmon we eat could be wild. But as one marine ecologist said to me recently, to continue to eat large wild fish at the rate we've been eating them we would need "four or five" oceans to support the crrent human population. ~ Paul Greenberg

We'll all be wild together, you and me and the other girls. Just like this. We won't fear anything anymore, will we? We'll burn our path through the trees, wolves and witches and goddesses, and we'll make the world ours. ~ Elizabeth May

Let it be wild, let it be messy. It's the first sunrise of many more to come. You can't screw it up. If you do, there's always tomorrow. ~ Karina Halle

O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow's wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
Tomorrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know.
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away. ~ Robert Frost

Kizzy was so busy wishing she was Sarah Ferris or Jenny Glass that she could scarcely see herself at all and she was certainly blind to her own weird beauty: her heavy spell-casting eyes too-wide mouth wild hair and hips that could be wild too if they learned how. No one else in town looked anything like her and if she lived to womanhood she was the one artists would want to draw not the Sarahs and Jennys. She was the one who would some day know a dozen ways to wear a silk scarf how to read the sky for rain and coax feral animals near how to purr throaty love songs in Portuguese and Basque how to lay a vampire to rest how to light a cigar how to light a man's imagination on fire. ~ Laini Taylor

Rainbows will forever be wild. ~ Anthony T. Hincks

There was no fear of sandpaper earth, no sense of danger from a bare-skinned spill, for the boy was a child - a six-foot, one-inch growing child who knew nothing of accident, injury, dismemberment, death - who would study those lessons tomorrow, thank you, but not today. Today, it would be sufficient to be wild and free. ~ Tony Taylor

Brightbill had been Roz's son from the moment she picked up his egg. She had saved him from certain death, and then he had saved her. He was the reason Roz had lived so well for so long. And if she wanted to continue living, if she wanted to be wild again, she needed to be with her family and her friends on her island. So, as Roz raced through the sky, she began computing a plan.
She would get the repairs she needed.
She would escape from her new life.
She would find her way back home. ~ Peter Brown

The elevator doors had barely shut before Olivia's fingers were at the buckle of the belt cinching the waist of her trench dress. Drunk on his nearness, she ignored the security camera in the ceiling. It didn't mean a damn thing. Hell, who was she kidding? She was the wild Sweet triplet, the one voted most likely to do anything, and all she wanted to do right now was Mateo. ~ Avery Flynn

All inquiry into antiquity, all curiosity respecting the Pyramids, the excavated cities, Stonehenge, the Ohio Circles, Mexico, Memphis,
is the desire to do away this wild, savage, and preposterous There and Then, and introduce in its place the Here and Now. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

That was a cozy night, a happy night; lamps lit, sparkle of glasses, rain falling heavy on the roof. Outside, the treetops tumbled and tossed, with a foamy whoosh like club soda bubbling up in the glass. The windows were open and a damp cool breeze swirled through the curtains, bewitchingly wild and sweet. ~ Donna Tartt

Urban Indians feel at home walking in the shadow of a downtown building. We came to know the downtown Oakland skyline better than we did any sacred mountain range, the redwoods in the Oakland hills better than any other deep wild forest. ~ Tommy Orange

I see time flies, when birds flew to their nests
The wind is blowing wild; but never mind
They keep flying towards home for a rest.

I wish to fly along with them,don t know where
My home is no more.. and nobody waiting...
When everything seems as gloomy and grey
All i recall is the smell of my beloved home. ~ Raigon Stanley

There is something about a search that was compelling and heady. The urgency, the meticulous use of the senses, and the desperate need to replace what was missing, to smooth out what had become so devastatingly out of sorts. ~ Les Becquets, Diane

And confronting these men, wild and terrible as we agree that they were, there were men of quite another kind, smiling and adorned with ribbons and stars, silk stockinged, yellow gloved and with polished boots; men who insisted on the preservation of the past, of the Middle Ages, of divine right, of bigotry, ignorance, enslavement, the death penalty and war, and who, talking in polished undertones, glorified the sword and the executioners' block. For our part, if we had to choose between the barbarians of civilization and those civilized upholders of barbarism we would choose the former. ~ Victor Hugo

There was a time when our minds were always on a roll. We used boxes and sticks to become astronauts and artists. We created fantasy characters and outrageous worlds. We drew whimsical pictures and cooked up wild ideas. We were complete originals. ~ Tom Asacker

It is unlikely that we will ever see a star being born. Stars are like animals in the wild. We may see the very young, but never their actual birth, which is a veiled and secret event. Stars are born inside thick clouds of dust and gas in the spiral arms of the galaxy, so thick that visible light cannot penetrate them. ~ Heinz Pagels

That New Year I was invited to stay with one of my old school buddies, Sam Sykes, at his house on the far northwestern coast of Sutherland, in Scotland.
It is as wild and rugged a place as anywhere on earth, and I love it there.
It also happens to boast one of my favorite mountains in the world, Ben Loyal, a pinnacle of rock and steep heather that overlooks a spectacular estuary. So I did not need much encouraging to go up to Sam's and climb.
This time up there, I was to meet the lady who would change my life forever; and I was woefully ill-prepared for the occasion.
I headed up north primarily to train and climb. Sam told me he had some other friends coming up for New Year. I would like them, he assured me.
Great. As long as they don't distract me from training, I thought to myself. I had never felt more distant from falling in love. I was a man on a mission. Everest was only two months away.
Falling in love was way off my radar.
One of Sam's friends was this young girl called Shara. As gentle as a lamb, beautiful and funny--and she seemed to look at me so warmly.
There was something about this girl. She just seemed to shine in all she did. And I was totally smitten, at once.
All I seemed to want to do was hang out with her, drink tea, chat, and go for nice walks.
I tried to fight the feeling by loading up my backpack with rocks and heavy books, then going off climbing on my own. But all I could think about was this beautiful ~ Bear Grylls

When it came down to it, she decided, she believed in a few important things.
In humanity before Dogma.
In religion of human kindness.
In Poetry. In Sex.
In being clear enough to ask for what she wanted,
and detaching from ego enough to hear the answer.
In the power of yoga.
In being embodied.
In owning her reality without apology.
In embracing it all, the fuck-ups and the bliss.
In the absolute necessity of dark chocolate to her continued existence.
In the power of a hard swallow of whiskey to make everything clear.
That most of the time we all do the very best we can.
But most of all, she believed that nothing is fixed and unchanging,
Not even the things she believed the most.
That belief, it turns out, is the one that felt the most like freedom. ~ Jeanette LeBlanc

For eight years I was an inmate in a state asylum for the insane. During those years I passed through such unbearable terror that I deteriorated into a wild, frightened creature intent only on survival. And I survived. I was raped by orderlies, gnawed on by rats and poisoned by tainted food. I was chained in padded cells, strapped into strait-jackets and half-drowned in ice baths. And I survived. The asylum itself was a steel trap, and I was not released from its jaws alive and victorious. I crawled out mutilated, whimpering and terribly alone. But I did survive. ~ Frances Farmer

She used to read us Where The Wild Things Are, which i loved, because Max was a bad little fucker and i always respected that. ~ James W. Fuerst

Love can sneak up on you in a heartbeat, even when you aren't looking for it. ~ Meredith Wild

I don't want to know
wreckage, dreck, and waste, but these are the materials
and so are the slow lift of the moon's belly.
over wreckage, dreck, and waste, wild treefrogs calling in
another season, light and music still pouring over
our fissured, cracked terrain.
If you had known me
once you'd still know me though in a different
light and life. This is no place you ever knew me.
But it would not surprise you
to find me here, walking in fog, the sweep of the great ocean
eluding me, even the curve of the bay, because as always
I fix on the land. I am stuck to earth ... these are not the roads
you knew me by. But the woman driving, walking, watching
for life and death, is the same. ~ Adrienne Rich

Outcast!" When he'd disappeared into the bushes, Juniper wiped her eyes. "I'm sorry, Percy. I didn't mean to get you involved. Leneus is still a lord of the Wild. You don't want to make an enemy of him." "No problem," I said. "I've got worse enemies than overweight satyrs." Nico walked back to us. "Good job, Percy. Judging from the trail of goat pellets, I'd say you shook him up pretty well. ~ Rick Riordan

In wakeful nights, as one may fancy, the wild soul of the man, tossing amid these vortices, would hail any light of a decision for them as a veritable light from Heaven; any making-up of his mind, so blessed, indispensable for him there, ~ Thomas Carlyle

What we lose in our great human exodus from the land is a rooted sense, as deep and intangible as religious faith, of why we need to hold on to the wild and beautiful places that once surrounded us. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

If you get caught at some crucial point and somebody tells you that your doctrine doesn't make sense - you're ready for him. You tell him there's something above sense. That here he must not try to think, he must feel. He must believe. Suspend reason and you can play it deuces wild. ~ Ayn Rand

I think we all have a Wallace and Gromit inside us. Wallace is the part that has wild plans. Gromit is the sensible side, reining you in. ~ Nick Park

Kiss me as if you remember me. Inspire this wild god as once you did. Incite poetry and fire with your passion and perhaps I'll find a way. ~ Karen Marie Moning

Everything changed ... even the things we didn't want to. ~ Ashley Jeffery

Then the fire was shining on the hearth, the cold and the dark and the wild beasts were all shut out, and Jack the brindle bulldog and Black Susan the cat lay blinking at the flames in the fireplace. Ma sat in her rocking chair, sewing by the light ~ Laura Ingalls Wilder

I want gifts and Christmas music. I don't care how many Draziri are out there. They won't take Christmas from me."

"Yes, but we don't have a suitable male," Orro said. "And only one dog."

I looked at him.

"What is this Christmas?" Wing asked.

Orro turned from the stove. "It's the rite of passage during which the young males of the human species learn to display aggression and use weapons."

Sean stopped what he was doing and looked at Orro.

"The young men go out in small packs," Orro continued. "They brave the cold and come into conflict with other packs and they have to prove their dominance through physical combat. Their fathers teach them lessons in the proper use of swear words, and the young men have to undergo tests of endurance, like holding soap in their mouths and licking cold metal objects."

Sean made a strangled noise.

"At the end of their trials, they go to see a wise elder in a red suit to prove their worth. If they are judged worthy, the family erects a ceremonial tree and presents them with gifts of weapons."

Sean was clearly struggling, because his head was shaking.

"Also," Orro added, "a sacrificial poultry is prepared and then given to the wild animals, probably to appease the nature spirits."

Sean roared with laughter. ~ Ilona Andrews

When the last moonshiner buys his radio,
And the last, lost, wild-rabbit of a girl
Is civilized with a mail-order dress,
Something will pass that was American
And all the movies will not bring it back. ~ Stephen Vincent Benet