Being There Quotes

Hidden in the physical work space, in the user's words, and in the tools they use are the beautiful gems of knowledge that can create revolutionary, breakthrough products or simply fix existing, broken products. People do strange things - unexpected things - and being there to witness and record these minute and quick moments of humanity is simply invaluable ~ Jon Kolko

Time seemed to drag with dreamlike slowness, like a knife through cold honey, and the room took on a surreal golden sheen as if I was looking through that same jar of honey. Maybe at that moment, the sun shone just right though the grimy windows, but the woman, the shelves, the jars, everything in the room appeared in tones of gold and sepia, except for the painting behind the counter. From behind the shopkeeper's head, a fluorescent Mary and Jesus glared at me, their cartoon-like faces reproaching me for being there. ~ Sara Stark

What a joy to know where one is, and where one will stay, without being there. Nothing to do but stretch out comfortably on the rack, in the blissful knowledge you are nobody for all
eternity. A pity I should have to give tongue at the same time, it prevents it from bleeding in peace, licking the lips. ~ Samuel Beckett

I have always thought that if you can give viewers the sense of being there a story can be very compelling. ~ Chris Hegedus

If a guy works, and he has children, it's good, and he doesn't feel the same guilt about not being there for the children as a woman would. With a woman, there's that pull: 'Oh, I should be home,' when she's at work, and 'Oh, I should be at work,' when she's at home. ~ Melanie Mayron

It's very hard to balance being there for somebody else and taking care of yourself. ~ Jennifer Grey

Even the good can become careless without the Lord's being there to chasten. ~ Neal A. Maxwell

Why separate your spiritual life and your practical life? To an integral being, there is no such distinction. ~ Laozi

Inside of every being there is a constant war being raged. The part that tell us to do what is right and what is decent and the part of us that is self-serving. The part that wants what it wants regardless of who is hurt getting it. ~ Kinley MacGregor

There is no perfect Human being, there is no perfect Life ~ Anupama Garg

This point is often missed by evangelical feminists. They conclude that a difference in function necessarily involves a difference in essence; i.e., if men are in authority over women, then women must be inferior. The relationship between Christ and the Father shows us that this reasoning is flawed. One can possess a different function and still be equal in essence and worth. Women are equal to men in essence and in being; there is no ontological distinction, and yet they have a different function or role in church and home. Such differences do not logically imply inequality or inferiority, just as Christ's subjection to the Father does not imply His inferiority. ~ John Piper

Each of us is several, is man, is a profusion of selves. So that the self who disdains his surroundings is not the same as the self who suffers or takes joy in them. In the colony of our being there are many species of people who think and feel in different ways. ~ Pascal Mercier

His love for my mother wasn't about looking back and loving something that would never change. It was about loving my mother for everything
for her brokenness and her fleeing, for her being there right then in that moment before the sun rose and the hospital staff came in. It was about touching that hair with the side of his fingertip, and knowing yet plumbing fearlessly the depths of her ocean eyes. ~ Alice Sebold

The essential is never to arrive anywhere, never to be anywhere. The essential is to go on squirming forever at the edge of the line, as long as there are waters and banks and ravening in heaven a sporting God to plague his creature, per pro his chosen shits. I've swallowed three hooks and am still hungry. Hence the howls. What a joy to know where one is, and where one will stay, without being there. Nothing to do but strech out comfortably on the rack, in the blissful knowledge you are nobody for eternity. ~ Samuel Beckett

Sometimes we do not realize how many people give a damn until something horrible happens. And sometimes we realize that those who should give a damn, whom we counted on giving a damn, sometimes really don't ~ Monika Basile

The effect of this cannot be understood without being there. The beauty of it cannot be understood, either, and when you see beauty in desolation it changes something inside you. Desolation tries to colonize you. ~ Jeff VanderMeer

For if God is a title of the highest power, He must be incorruptible, perfect, incapable of suffering, and subject to no other being; therefore they are not gods whom necessity compels to obey the one greatest God. ~ Lactantius

The discrepancy is that the ethical self should be found immanently in the despair, that the individual won himself by persisting in the despair. True, he has used something within the category of freedom, choosing himself, which seem to remove the difficulty, one that presumably has not struck many, since philosophically doubting everything and then finding the true beginning goes one, two, three. But that does not help. In despairing, I use myself to despair, and therefore I can indeed despair of everything by myself. But if I do this, I cannot come back by myself. It is in this moment of decision that the individual needs divine assistance, whereas it is quite correct that in order to be at this point one must first have understood the existence-relation between the aesthetic and the ethical; that is to say, by being there in passion and inwardness, one surely becomes aware of the religious - and of the leap. ~ Soren Kierkegaard

Those who wish to change things may face disappointment, loss, or even ridicule. If you are ahead of your time, people laugh as often as they applaud, and being there first is usually lonely. But our protection cannot come between us and our purpose. Right protection is something within us rather than something between us and the world, more about finding a place of refuge and strength than finding a hiding place. ~ Rachel Naomi Remen

When Perry and I walked into the hospital waiting room and I saw her sitting there, I began to cry, because that's what friendship looks like: knowing your friend better than she knows herself and being there to hold her hand while her heart breaks. ~ Melanie Shankle

Now where I come from We don't let society Tell us how it's supposed to be Our clothes, our hair We don't care It's all about being there Everybody's going Uptown That's where I wanna be Uptown Set your mind free. ~ Prince

In every artist there is poetry. In every human being there is the poetic element. We know, we feel, we believe. ~ Ernst Haas

Horrible to think that inside a human being there could be a human being. A separate brain thinking its separate thoughts. ~ Lauren Groff

[T]he question of the existence of God can be neither asked nor answered. If asked, it is a question about that which by its very nature is above existence, and therefore the answer - whether negative or affirmative - implicitly denies the nature of God. It is as atheistic to affirm the existence of God as it is to deny it. God is being-itself, not a being. On this basis a first step can be taken toward the solution of the problem which usually is discussed as the immanence and the transcendence of God. As the power of being, God transcends every being and also the totality of beings - the world. Being-itself is beyond finitude and infinity; otherwise it would be conditioned by something other than itself, and the real power of being would lie beyond both it and that which conditioned it. Being-itself infinitely transcends every finite being. There is no proportion or gradation between the finite and the infinite. There is an absolute break, an infinite "jump." On the other hand, everything finite participates in being-itself and in its infinity. Otherwise it would not have the power of being. It would be swallowed by nonbeing, or it never would have emerged out of nonbeing. This double relation of all beings to being-itself gives being-itself a double characteristic. In calling it creative, we point to the fact that everything participates in the infinite power of being. In calling it abysmal, we point to the fact that everything participates in the power of being in a finit ~ Paul Tillich

Within 25 years, virtual reality meetings will be essentially transparent to being there in person. Once we can do this, the idea of climbing into an aircraft, and burning up huge quantities of fossil fuels to propel our bodies and briefcases full of papers, will seem absolutely backward. ~ Burt Rutan

He was a sincere husband who failed to understand the tremendous power of presence. His being there for his wife was more important than anything else in her mind. Physical presence in the time of crisis is the most powerful gift you can give if your spouse's primary love language is receiving gifts. Your body becomes the symbol of your love. Remove the symbol, and the sense of love evaporates. ~ Gary Chapman

I feel good with my husband: I like his warmth and his bigness and his being-there and his making and his jokes and stories and what he reads and how he likes fishing and walks and pigs and foxes and little animals and is honest and not vain or fame-crazy and how he shows his gladness for what I cook him and joy for when I make him something, a poem or a cake, and how he is troubled when I am unhappy and wants to do anything so I can fight out my soul-battles and grow up with courage and a philosophical ease. I love his good smell and his body that fits with mine as if they were made in the same body-shop to do just that. What is only pieces, doled out here and there to this boy and that boy, that made me like pieces of them, is all jammed together in my husband. So I don't want to look around any more: I don't need to look around for anything. ~ Sylvia Plath

We are unsettled to the very roots of our being. There isn't a human relation, whether of parent and child, husband and wife, worker and employer, that doesn't move in a strange direction. We don't know how to behave when personal contact and eternal authority have disappeared. There are no precedents to guide us, no wisdom that wasn't made for a simpler age. We have changed our environment faster than we can change ourselves. ~ Walter Lippmann

How could I suddenly go from a person who had struggled to dissect an already dead mouse, to someone who was willing to murder a human being? There was no logic to it! ~ Adele Rose

If someone is not spiritually present during a time when you need their help, then how will their physical presence make a difference? ~ Shannon L. Alder

In the center of your being there is a fountain of music and that is your love. ~ Debasish Mridha

I like being what the girls call MOD-"my other Dad." What I've learned in the past year is that every kid is different. But as long as you love them and never forget that love, then you have the key. I think it's all about just being there and loving them because kids feel that every single day. ~ Ashton Kutcher

I never expected the White House to be warm, and the artwork on the walls was extraordinary. I am a fan of the Louvre, but being there it was almost just as good. ~ Jill Scott

Despite fear narrowing hostages' perceptions of options available to them, their perceptions are probably more accurate than outsiders'. Being there, hostages both have more information than do outsiders and are forced to live with terrifying contingencies that outsiders probably cannot even imagine. Outsiders' perceptions are often distorted by a need to believe that, if they were taken hostage, they would be able to escape. ~ Dee L.R. Graham

If you always put limits on what you can do, physical or anything else, it'll spread over into the rest of your life. It'll spread into your work, into your morality, into your entire being. There are no limits. There are plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. If it kills you, it kills you. A man must constantly exceed his level. ~ Bruce Lee

He knew exactly how to make himself the center of attention, and he liked being there. He would have been magnetic at ten paces – right up close he was positively mesmeric ~ Robert Carter

I'm used to keeping things to myself, it's habit.And then...And then I kept things from you because the harder I fell in love with you,the more terrified I was. Look,damn it, I didn't want to depend on anyone for-" He broke off to drag a hand through his hair.
"For what?"
"For being there when I needed them," he said on a long breath. ~ Nora Roberts

Writing is like going underwater - thank you for being there when I come back up. ~ Ali Shaw

I've missed so much. Like the day you opened your flower shop or how you came up with the name Whimsicality. I missed the day you brought Noah into this world and saw him for the first time. I missed your late-night cravings and his midnight feedings. I'll never forgive myself for not being there, Josie. ~ Heidi McLaughlin

I know how you've always dreamed of an ordinary life, Caro, but why settle for ordinary when what we've got could be extraordinary? And I don't mean where and how we live. I mean being together, being friends, loving each other and trusting each other and being there for each other. We're so lucky to have found someone we can that that with. That's what's extraordinary. ~ Jessica Hart

I'm sure in the past I've said marriage is stupid. Marriage makes someone sign a contract promising something they really can't deliver. I'm sure I will again say marriage is dumb. But I can also imagine why it could be lovely. There's something beautiful about truly being there for another person. ~ Amy Schumer

We have to get to the Self beyond its physical and mental instrumentalities to realize we are not fragile mortal beings; there is an unbroken link between ourselves and the Beloved Mother of the Universe, the Divine Consciousness flowing through and permeating Infinity. ~ Daya Mata

You know you're my best friend, right?' he said.
I shrugged. I guessed it was true. Now that I wasn't going to be at the parade, they would all hate me. Everything had been carefully choreographed, and me not being there would throw them all off. I realized that kids like Theo and me weren't supposed to have real friends. We were supposed to be all alone and confused. By being each other's friend, we were defying our laws of gravity. ~ Heather O'Neill

NEED SHAME BINDS When these needs are neglected, children are given the message that their needs are not important, and they lose a sense of their own personal value. They are not worth someone being there for them. They get the feeling they do not matter. As their needs are chronically rejected, children stop believing they have the right to depend on anyone. These dependency needs rely on the interpersonal bridge and the bond of mutuality for their fulfillment. The interpersonal bridge is broken when one is abandoned through neglect. Since we have no one to depend on, we come to believe that we have no right to depend on anyone. We feel shame when we feel needy. Since these needs are basic needs, i.e., needs we cannot be fully human without, we have to get them met in abortive ways. ~ John Bradshaw

God will prepare everything for our perfect happiness in heaven, and if it takes my dog being there, I believe he'll be there. ~ Billy Graham

I found myself in a place that was thorny, but because I was so used to being there, it bore out certain twisted sensations of comfort. It's a place called «alone». ~ Carol Plum-Ucci

A process for discernment: God is my ultimate source of truth and wisdom, and dwells forever at the center of my being. Therefore, any thought, emotion, or action that takes me further from my center can be neither truthful, nor wise. ~ Bill Crawford

It is possible, as I have learned again and again, to be in one's place, in such company, wild or domestic, and with such pleasure, that one cannot think of another place that one would prefer to be - or of another place at all. One does not miss or regret the past, or fear or long for the future. Being there is simply all, and is enough. Such times give one the chief standard and the chief reason for one's work. ~ Wendell Berry

Never stop supporting music because it will never stop being there for you when you need it. ~ Hayley Williams

Molly wasn't hope then, of course, and i can't help hating her for not being there. ~ Ian Cross

When it comes to controlling human beings there is no better instrument than lies. Because, you see, humans live by beliefs. And beliefs can be manipulated. The power to manipulate beliefs is the only thing that counts. ~ Michael Ende

It's the person that calls you up because they're eating at 'our favorite spot,' and it made them think of you and miss being there with you. That's a friend, to me. ~ Crystal Woods

The problem that we have is the President himself- a President who prides himself on his own weakness and incompetence and whose love of false prophets and strange women knows no bounds and has no end. A President who is as confused and as clueless as the comic character called Chancey Gardner in the celebrated 1970's Peter Seller's Hollywood blockbuster titled Being There ~ Femi Fani-Kayode

The times when she was away were hard for Jimmy. He worried about her, he longed for her, he resented her for not being there. ~ Margaret Atwood

Long distance is the next best thing to being there. But a dove in love would rather reach out and touch someone. Spring is in the air and all lines are busy with local calls as the wooing and cooing commences. ~ Charley Harper

There are innumerable worlds of different sizes. In some there is neither sun not moon, in others they are larger than in ours and others have more than one. These worlds are at irregular distances, more in one direction and less in another, and some are flourishing, others declining. Here they come into being, there they die, and they are distroyed by collision with one another. Some of the worlds have no animal or vegetable life nor any water. ~ Democritus

I notice when you're gone. With you not being there I notice your unbeing, with you still being a being in time but not my space. ~ Jarod Kintz

Do you recall where the lamps were?" Camille whispered. In the dark, in someone else's home, whispering seemed more appropriate. A clunk off to her right and the screech of table legs skittering across the floor made her cringe.
"I don't remember that being there," Oscar said.
"I'm glad we don't break into houses for a living. We're appalling at it," Camille said, laughing as the room brightened. ~ Angie Frazier

You're more responsible ethically for being there with your interconnection to the world, but the you now is an always changing one, and you're responsible for how you change it. It's very important to understand that whole thing about the ego. ~ Robert Thurman

The verbal text of a play, especially one by a genius, is the manifestation of the clarity, the subtlety, the concrete power to express invisible thoughts and feelings of the author himself. Inside each and every word there is an emotion, a thought, that produced the word and justifies its being there. ~ Konstantin Stanislavski

The general election's taking place today in Iraq, so I guess that means we're one step closer to being there for another 10 years. ~ David Letterman

I can't describe how it felt, being there right then, so close together, on the edge between who we were and who we wanted to be. ~ Ava Dellaira

He's my family, and you don't just push family aside for some itch you want to scratch. That's not how real love works. Real love is support, even when you're fighting. Real love in honesty, even when the truth hurts like hell. Real love is being there through every miserable minute and every indefinite minute. ~ Aimee Carter

When you start from the bottom, there will be a host of people so used to you being there, they won't want you to grow. Some naive people still call them "friends." But "friends" don't strangle your dreams. ~ Troy Gathers

What scares me is not living up to be a good enough father to my son and letting down my family - not being there enough and not being able to give enough of yourself. ~ Morten Tyldum

God takes great delight in surprising His people with His goodness. He delights in being there for us, in coming through for us. He loves to give us the good gifts of His provision and grace that reveal to us His nature and His character. ~ John Paul Jackson

After all, the appeal to stop being yourself, even for a little while, is very great. To escape the cognitive mode of experience, to transcend the accident of one's moment of being. There are other advantages, more difficult to speak of, things which ancient sources only hint at and which I myself only understood after the fact. ~ Donna Tartt

I missed Britain. I'm from here and I never aspired to go to L.A. - it sort of happened by default. I loved being there. I found it a little bit difficult at first, but I found my way. ~ Ashley Jensen

The planet Earth in its present mode of florescence is being devastated. This devastation is being fostered and protected by legal, political and economic establishments that exalt the human community while offering no protection to the non-human modes of being. There is an urgent need for a Jurisprudence (system of governance) that recognizes that the well-being of the integral world community is primary, and that human well-being is derivative - an Earth Jurisprudence. ~ Thomas Berry

Part 2
Etienne: I cheated on her every day. In my mind, I thought of you in ways I shouldn't have, again and again. She was nothing compared to you. I've never felt this way about anybody before…

Anna: But…

Etienne: The first day of school. We weren't physics partners by accident. I saw Professeur Wakefield assigning lab parnters based on where people were sitting, so I leaned forward to borrow a pencil form you at just the right moment so he'dt think we were next to each other. Anna, I wanted to be your partner the first day.

Anna: But …

Etienne: I bought you love poetry! „I love you as certain dark things are loved, secretly, between the shadow and the soul." Neruda. I starred the pasasge. God. Why didn't you open it?

Anna: Because you said it was for school

Etienne: I said you were beautiful. I slept in your bed!

Anna: You never made a move! You had a girlfriend!

Etienne: No matter what a terrible boyfriend I was, I wouldn't actually cheat on her.
But I thought you'd know. With me being there, I thought you'd know.

Anna: How could I know if you never said anything?

Etienne: How could I know if you never said anything?

Anna: You had Ellie!

Etienne: You had Toph! And Dave! Anna. I'm sorry for what happened in Luxembourg Gardens. Not because of the kiss – I've never had a kiss like that in my life – but because I didn't tell you why I ~ Stephanie Perkins

No one who worked in "Corrections" appeared to give any thought to the purpose of our being there, any more than a warehouse clerk would consider the meaning of a can of tomatoes, or try to help those tomatoes understand what the hell they were doing on the shelf. ~ Piper Kerman

It is easy to be a good parent to a good child, but what makes a good parent, is dealing and being there for a difficult child, that is a real good parent! ~ Beta Metani'Marashi

Reid turned to Jax and with nothing more than a look, they said more things in three seconds than most women could say in three hours.
Thanks for always being there for me.
No problem, you've done the same for me.
I love your sister, man, I'll do whatever it takes to make her happy.
I know you do, and I know you will. Plus, if you don't, I'll break your fucking legs.
Fair enough.
Then let's do this.
Hell yeah. ~ Gina L. Maxwell

I am your husband, I will keep you safe and I will do it by keeping my feet on this earth, breathing the air and being there to make you feel safe. Do you understand this? ~ Kristen Ashley

When I was coming home from school as a youngster, and I saw my dad's car in the driveway, I would go to a friend's house. I connected my dad being there with fear. ~ Joe Torre

I still can't think about her being there. It doesn't make sense. Why would you stick someone you love down in a lonely old hole in the dirt? Where it's cold, and dirty, and full of bugs? That can't be how it ends, after everything, after everything she was. ~ Kami Garcia

A great man represents a great ganglion in the nerves of society, or to vary the figure, a strategic point in the campaign of history, and part of his greatness consists in his being there. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

If you ask me why I came to Iowa, I would say that Iowa is beautiful in the way that any place is beautiful: if you treat it as the answer to a question you're asking yourself every day, just by being there. ~ Nam Le

My job as a double was always to put [actors] at ease. My job was to make my character, or the actress that I was doubling, look as badass as possible by being there. ~ Zoe Bell

You go nowhere by accident. Wherever you go, God is sending you. Wherever you are, God has put you there; He has a purpose in your being there. Christ who indwells you has something He wants to do through you where you are. Believe this and go in His grace and love and power. ~ Mark Batterson

Thinking about you is my hobby, missing you is my concern, caring for you is my job, loving you is my duty and being there for is forever a pleasure. ~ Ritu Ghatourey

We cannot overlook the importance of wild country as source of inspiration, to which we give expression in writing, in poetry, drawing and painting, in mountaineering, or in just being there. ~ Olaus Murie

On the other hand, I have devoted so much energy to reach the top that I accept the stress of being there. ~ Placido Domingo

For each human being there is an optimum ratio between change and stasis. Too little change, he grows bored. Too little stability, he panics and loses his ability to adapt. One who marries six times in ten years won't change jobs. One who moves often to serve his company will maintain a stable marriage. A woman chained to one home and family may redecorate frantically or take a lover or go to many costume parties. ~ Larry Niven

Try to relax, and you will find out that you feel more tense than ever. Try harder and you will feel more tense and more tense. Relaxation is not a consequence, is not a result of some activity; it is the glow of understanding. This is the first thing I would like to relate to you: life is purposeless. It is very hard to accept it. And why is it so hard to accept that life is purposeless? It is hard because without purpose the ego cannot exist. It is hard to conceive that life has no goal because without any goal being there, there is no point in having a mind, in having an ego. ~ Rajneesh

Every day I look for ways to be inspired, to learn and to grow. And trying to be the best for my kids, my husband and my family. One thing I really wanna do is being there for my kids, be part of my siblings and my parents. ~ Mia Hamm

All Pro Dad is an organization that started down in Tampa in 1997. And it was just a group of us who felt like we weren't doing as good a job as our fathers did in connecting with kids and being there and being involved in their lives, working and coaching and spending all the time we had to. We just felt badly. ~ Tony Dungy

Whenever my country has something bad happening I feel guilty for not being there. It's weird. ~ Iggy Azalea

when you are there, be truly present, be into that moment, 100%, and that place, or person, or experience will forever become part of you ~ Bodhi Smith

So he could talk to Jane and find out what had happened between her and Blakeborough after he left. He could finally get an answer to his marriage proposal.
Proposal? Jane would probably call it a marriage command.
He groaned. Perhaps it wouldn't be a bad idea to talk to her while he waited. He could always pack her off in another hackney before it was time for Meredith to return home. Yes, that would be best.
Climbing inside the hackney, he doffed his hat and shrugged out of his box coat. But all of his perfectly logical reasons for being there went right out of his head the moment he saw her looking so luscious and lovely in her sunny gown.
Because he desired only one thing. Jane. In his arms. Now.
She must have seen the feral need flare in his face, for her eyes went wide. That was the only reaction she had time for, however, before he dragged her into his embrace so he could take her mouth in a hard, urgent kiss.
God, he wanted her. He would never stop wanting her. Fisting his hands in her puffy sleeves to hold her still, he plundered her mouth the way he ached to plunder her body.
Suddenly she shoved him back. "What are you doing? That's not why--"
He clasped her head in his hands, dislodging her bonnet, which tumbled to the floor. Then he kissed her again, demanding her to kiss him back, to need him back. It took her a moment, but then she moaned low in her throat and melted against him.
And he exulted. She was soft, so wonde ~ Sabrina Jeffries

There are spaces between breaths, when one year becomes another or one second another. Between the clock's tick and the second's hand. There are all these spaces, these times. Like when a person dies. There has to be time between being there and not being there. ~ Anne C. George

Perhaps there is no other knowing than the mere competence of the act. If at the heart of one's being, there is no self to which one ought to be true, then sincerity is simply nerve; it lies in the unabashed vigor of the pretense. But pretense is only pretense when it is assumed that the act is not true to the agent. Find the agent. ~ Alan Watts

Loyalty is…loyalty is being there for someone. It's selfless. It's about standing by someone's side even when you don't want to. ~ Julie Murphy

I did go to Vietnam in 2000 as a kind of pilgrimage and to feel my generation was very much a part of this. I felt responsible but also connected and empathetic. It was a very complicated relationship we had, whichever side you were on. The shock of being there was very few people my own age - I was primarily in the North in the streets of Hanoi. A whole generation was essentially decimated. ~ Anne Waldman

If you know your being, there is no question of becoming. All that you could have ever imagined to become you already are. You are gods who have forgotten who they are. You are emperors who have fallen asleep and are dreaming that they have become beggars. Now beggars are trying to become emperors, in dreams they are making great efforts to become emperors, and all that is needed is to wake up! Osho ~ Osho

There are things I want, too. Things I want to change. I'm tired of only being there for a good time, Brenna. I'm tired of being a corrupter of the people I love. I no one wants to be the perpetual fuck up. ~ Liz Reinhardt

I've got to be able to get my time off whether it's just enjoying my house or the peace and quiet of my family and being there and cooking for them. I love doing that. I also love doing leisure things. I ride horses. I love to shop. I love to drive! ~ LisaRaye McCoy-Misick

With the Musgroves there was the happy chat of perfect ease;[ ... ] and with Captain Wentworth, some moments of communication continually occurring, and always the hope of more, and always the knowledge of his being there. ~ Jane Austen

Thanks, Mom for always being there For showing me such love and care. Thanks for all you've done and do How I turned out is down to you I love you Have a lovely birthday ~ John Walter Bratton

Speaking to a foreigner was the dream of every student, and my opportunity came at last. When I got back from my trip down the Yangtze, I learned that my year was being sent in October to a port in the south called Zhanjiang to practice our English with foreign sailors. I was thrilled.

Zhanjiang was about 75 miles from Chengdu, a journey of two days and two nights by rail. It was the southernmost large port in China, and quite near the Vietnamese border.

It felt like a foreign country, with turn-of-the-century colonial-style buildings, pastiche Romanesque arches, rose windows, and large verandas with colorful parasols. The local people spoke Cantonese, which was almost a foreign language. The air smelled of the unfamiliar sea, exotic tropical vegetation, and an altogether bigger world.

But my excitement at being there was constantly doused by frustration. We were accompanied by a political supervisor and three lecturers, who decided that, although we were staying only a mile from the sea, we were not to be allowed anywhere near it. The harbor itself was closed to outsiders, for fear of 'sabotage' or defection. We were told that a student from Guangzhou had managed to stow away once in a cargo steamer, not realizing that the hold would be sealed for weeks, by which time he had perished. We had to restrict our movements to a clearly defined area of a few blocks around our residence.

Regulations like these were part of our daily li ~ Jung Chang