Four Seasons Quotes

What the four seasons of the year mean to the European, the one season of monsoon means to the Indian. ~ Khushwant Singh

Does Heaven ever speak? The four seasons come and go, and all creatures thrive and grow. Does Heaven ever speak! ~ Confucius

The L.A. weather is a lot like Taiwan's, where you don't observe four seasons, so the years can pass and you don't feel a thing. ~ Ang Lee

I watch mediocre shows that have been on for three or four seasons, and feel angry at them. ~ Andy Richter

New York has an amazing history of farming and fishing that goes right back to the Pilgrim Fathers. At its core are the four seasons, which are distinct, well-established and similar to those in Lyon, where my family lives: when it's snowing in New York, a week later it will be snowing there. ~ Daniel Boulud

I was 12 years old, so auditioning for a TV show was something I didn't even think really happened. The next thing you know, I ended up booking the gig and I did four seasons on 'Emily of New Moon.' I got to learn on the job and kept going from there. ~ Shawn Roberts

I like roses best. But they bloom in all four seasons. I wonder if people who like roses best have to die four times over again. ~ Osamu Dazai

I consider the positions of kings and rulers as that of dust motes. I observe treasure of gold and gems as so many bricks
and pebbles. I look upon the finest silken robes as tattered rags. I see myriad worlds of the universe as small seeds of
fruit, and the greatest lake in India as a drop of oil on my foot. I perceive the teachings of the world to be the illusion of,
magicians. I discern the highest conception of emancipation as golden brocade in a dream, and view the holy path of the
illuminated one as flowers appearing in one's eyes. I see meditation as a pillar of a mountain, Nirvana as a nightmare of
daytime. I look upon the judgment of right and wrong as the serpentine dance of a dragon, and the rise and fall of beliefs
as but traces left by the four seasons. ~ Gautama Buddha

I was thinking of the Four Seasons, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, and when I was thinking "Uptown Girl!" I was trying to sing like Frankie Valli. They had a song called "Ragdoll," which was about a poor girl and a rich guy. So I just flipped it around and made it about a rich girl and a poor guy. ~ Billy Joel

Gravity's Rainbow"

Come on with me through ruined liplock
Across Tangian deserts we'll flock
Madcap Medusa flank my foghorn
We'll change four seasons with our first born.

All ships of sense on hyper ocean
All kinds of chaos still in motion
My culture vulture such a dab hand
I'll steal you from the year 4000

Come with me, come with me
We'll travel to infinity
Come with me, come with me
We'll travel to infinity
I'll always be there
Uh-oh my future love
I'll always be there
For you, my future love

Your tears leave trails of Tick fall blur room
Autonoma the room is bloom groom
Those crippled lines that I can't get to
You'd slip through time but I won't let you

Come with me, come with me
We'll travel to infinity
Come with me, come with me
We'll travel to infinity
I'll always be there
Uh-oh my future love
I'll always be there
For you, my future love

Come with me, come with me
We'll travel to infinity
Come with me, come with me
We'll travel to infinity
I'll always be there
Uh-oh my future love
I'll always be there
For you, my future love

Come with me, come with me
We'll travel to infinity
Come with me, come with me
We'll travel to infinity
I'll always be there
Uh-oh my future love
I'll always be there
For you, my future love< ~ The Klaxons

Learn to struggle in all four seasons, for opportunity has no date or an exact time to find, you will only get what you need by trying everthing you know, without fear or shame. ~ Auliq Ice

Then, just at the peak of complacency, when it was assumed that the climate of the world had changed forever, when the conductor of the philharmonic played Vivaldi's Four Seasons and left out an entire movement, and when to children of a young age stories of winter were told as if they were fairy tales, New York was hit by a cataclysmic freeze, and, once again, people huddled together to talk fearfully of the millennium. ~ Mark Helprin

This is Northern Scotland after all, where whole four seasons can be experienced in the same broad daylight, or even ONE BLOODY HOUR. ~ Andre Mokalu

Do you know what love is like, Rose? It's like having a sky, a whole sky racing inside you. Four seasons' worth of sky. One minute you are soaring and then you are all thunderclouds and then you are deep with stars and then you are empty. ~ Karen Foxlee

Bob Cavallo remembers early on in the process, 'We were at odds with each other. Our contract was up; five years had gone by since Purple Rain. We met at the Four Seasons with his lawyer and his accountant, me and Steve Fargnoli to discuss some kind of rapprochement because he had fired us. Basically he said, "I'll work with you again but you've got to help me make this movie." I read the treatment and said, "This could be an interesting thing," and I said, "I'll try to put you together with some young hip writers and maybe we can come up with a script quickly, 'cause this is pretty detailed." And he went, "What are you talking about? That is the script." It was thirty pages. And he said, "I'm going to shoot it, I know exactly how to do it." So I said, "Maybe we could get this on Broadway for you. Would you be interested in that?" And he said, "No." Now he was pissed that I didn't think this was a good enough script, so we shook hands and that was the end of it. Then, about a year later, we were suing each other. But even when we sued each other, it was kinda funny. I said, "How could you not pay me?" He said, "How could you sue me?" He said, "You can't have my children, those songs. You're gonna give your involvement in those songs to your grandchildren?" And I said, "Yeah, I put ten years of my life into you, and you sucked all the air out of the room. I couldn't really manage anybody else except for your friends. ~ Matt Thorne

After four seasons of co-hosting 'Wipeout,' I have been given the opportunity to pursue new directions in my acting career, which I am very passionate about. I am extremely grateful to all those at 'Wipeout,' Endemol and ABC, who have been so supportive of me through these years. ~ Jill Wagner

Friendship lasts for four seasons and more. ~ Kristian Goldmund Aumann

They'd ever enjoyed. Almost everyone mentioned some nice experience at a Four Seasons or Ritz-Carlton hotel. ~ Walter Isaacson

Life is but a carousel of four seasons. Unpredictable for the most part. Happy. Unhappy. Content. Searching. Mess up the order, and they still rebound at one point or another. ~ Tarryn Fisher

Future's the only flower worth tending in this earth, where I sow my words daily: and you know, these good trees bear fruit round the year, discreetly, moving along the waterways and four seasons of the faithful sun. ~ Alamgir Hashmi

To eat nothing at all is more human than to take a little of what cries out for the appetite of a giant. One servingspoonful of spaetzle is like the opening measures of Vivaldi's Four Seasons: Any man who walks out on either proves he doesn't understand the genre-and he misses the repose of the end. To eat without eating greatly is only to eat by halves. While God gives me meat in due season and the sensibilities with which to relish the gift, I refuse to sit down to eat and rise up only to have picked and fussed my way through the goodness of the earth. My vow, therefore, was beautifully simple: If I ate, I would eat without stint; and of I stinted, I would not eat at all. ~ Robert Farrar Capon

When there is mist on the mountains, it is beautiful, and when there is no mist, it is also beautiful. All four seasons are beautiful. [...] There is nothing to stop you from being in touch with life in the present moment. The question is, Do you have eyes that can see the sunset, feet that can touch the earth? [...]
Don't think that happiness will be possible only when conditions around you become perfect. Happiness lies in your own heart. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

They had a year of joy, twelve months of the strange heaven which the salmon know on beds of river shingle, under the gin-clear water. For twenty-four years they were guilty, but this first year was the only one which seemed like happiness. Looking back on it, when they were old, they did not remember that in this year it had ever rained or frozen. The four seasons were coloured like the edge of a rose petal for them. ~ T.H. White

ANTHONY DOERR is the author of the story collections Memory Wall and The Shell Collector, the novel About Grace, and the memoir Four Seasons in Rome. He has won numerous prizes both in the United States and overseas, including four O. Henry Prizes, three Pushcart Prizes, the Rome Prize, the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award, the National Magazine Award for fiction, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Story Prize. Raised in Cleveland, Doerr lives in Boise, Idaho, with his wife and two sons. ~ Anthony Doerr

I know I am but summer to your heart, and not the full four seasons of the year. ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

she's just passing through. And she's staying at the motherfucking Four Seasons Hotel. That's just fan-fucking-tastic." "Quin, ~ J.A. Huss

'Friday Night Lights' was kind of like my college years because I did four seasons of that. It was my first series. It was the most time I had with one character, and kind of growing and evolving with the character over that long of a span of time, it just allows you to sort of learn in a completely different way that I had never experienced. ~ Jesse Plemons

Don't pack out!

To some people, you make life bright
When you decide to dim your light
Their lives will be full of darkness
Do shine your light in kindness

To some people, you bring out a joy
With their emotions, never ever toy
With your smiles, grease them with oil
And make them glad when their lives boil

To other people, you are the warmth
That kills coldness and brings strength
Don't do it; don't pack out
Else, they will have blackout

You're on earth to do two things here
Wake up and do them now; this year
First, dare to grow and become better
Second, help others to also become greater

Never in any of the four seasons
Should you neglect your gifts for any reasons
The world needs you to make it a better place
Don't pack out; run your race. ~ Israelmore Ayivor

was speaking to hospitality associates at the Four Seasons Hotel in Miami, Florida, when one very young, very skinny, and very brave associate stood up. He said, "I didn't have a father, so I don't know how to properly button my jacket. Do I leave the last button open? When I need help with things like this, I don't know where to look for answers." After that tug at my heart, I wrote this career reference book specifically directed at hospitality associates globally. Hospitality Management: People Skills and Manners On and Off the Job covers just about every area of the hospitality associate's professional and personal life. ~ Lyn Pont

Some of the greatest businesses operating from a deeper purpose have a real commitment to service, like Four Seasons, Joie de Vivre hotels, Southwest Airlines, and JetBlue. ~ John Mackey

I may have a potty mouth, but I do not get caught in illicit sexual encounters in Marriotts, for fuck's sake. I guess I could be open to a Ritz-Carlton or a Four Seasons, but a Marriott, no fucking way! Yet here I am. And there's nowhere else I'd rather be. What spell has this boy cast on me? I ~ Rachel Cohn

The world is going to turn upside down in a way that the honest man will live uncomfortably -- while the dishonest man will live very comfortably. Pay attention to the windows of the Four Seasons next time you stroll by their dining room. You will find thugs and hustlers of every creed living like true kings and queens. ~ Suzy Kassem

We are not really privy to all that crazy stuff that goes on in the show. I go to work, eat, and talk about food. The wild things happen when we aren't around. I expected Top Chef to last three or four seasons and we are now shooting season ten. ~ Tom Colicchio

The Four Seasons was making me popular in Britain, but EMI America had no interest in making that happen in the States, so I just had a classical career there. ~ Nigel Kennedy

There are four seasons in a year: Winter, Spring, Summer and Colour! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

True men ... are strong willed, have dignity in their demeanor, serenity in their expression. They are cool like autumn, warm like spring. Their passions arise like the four seasons, in harmony with the ten thousand creatures, and no one knows their limits. ~ Zhuangzi

There's four seasons in the UK, spring, autumn, winter and winter. ~ Steve Fowler

Opportunistic relationships can hardly be kept constant. The acquaintance of honorable people, even at a distance, does not add flowers in times of warmth and does not change its leaves in times of cold: it continues unfading through the four seasons, becomes increasingly stable as it passes through ease and danger. ~ Sun Tzu

Reservations and cloth napkins are really minor pinnacles in the high sierra of the New York lunch. The zenith, the Mount Whitney of lunches, the noon meal at which all local lines of force converge [is] the Bar Room of the Four Seasons. ~ Raymond Sokolov

I have a lunch meeting with Cliff Huxtable at The Four Seasons in twenty minutes anyway," I lie, standing up. "I have to go too. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

The great minds, which from time to time have existed in this world, were like doors thrown wide to understanding. I don't mean just their brilliance or philosophy or even psychology. I mean that the spoken words that have endured are those uttered by men who understood with their hearts.

No one on earth understands everything; that all-comprehensive function belongs to God alone. But we all try to understand a little. Most of us realize that too late. We look back and think: If only I'd tried to understand. Many failures in human relationships derive from this common failure.

Watching the birds flock to discuss their travels among the brilliant leaves, listening to the slow turning of the earth upon her axis, meditating on Nature herself, never uncertain no matter how uncertain her manifestations may be, I think of the instinct that sends the birds from one locality to another, of the lengthening shadows as we face toward autumn, and of the marvelous system that encourages the leaf to fall and nurture the soil. In the single flame of October it begins the lullaby that will put the roots of grass and flowers to sleep. This system, in the four seasons of my little world, will cover the ground with silent snow, and at a later date will shout that spring is coming and awaken sleepers to new life.

The sun in his glory, the moon in her phases, the stars in their courses, all these are part of the system; and Nature, turning the wheel of the seasons ~ Faith Baldwin

It's easy to leave people wanting more after the first episode, but it's hard to leave people wanting more after the 24th episode. And it's my job, more than anybody else's, to keep that in mind. One season, in TV terms, is nothing. You need to hit it for three or four seasons, and then you're doing well, in TV terms. Then, you've done your job. ~ Bruno Heller

One sort of optional thing you might do is to realize there are six seasons instead of four. The poetry of four seasons is all wrong for this part of the planet, and this may explain why we are so depressed so much of the time. I mean, Spring doesn't feel like Spring a lot of the time, and November is all wrong for Fall and so on. Here is the truth about the seasons: Spring is May and June! What could be springier than May and June? Summer is July and August. Really hot, right? Autumn is September and October. See the pumpkins? Smell those burning leaves. Next comes the season called "Locking." That is when Nature shuts everything down. November and December aren't Winter. They're Locking. Next comes Winter, January and February. Boy! Are they ever cold! What comes next? Not Spring. Unlocking comes next. What else could April be? ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Holiday Inn comes in at the bottom of the market, but they can't go upmarket except if they emulate the Four Seasons. So they can go up, but they have to emulate the people they're trying to compete against. They can't disrupt them, because there isn't anything about their model that is extendable upmarket. ~ Clayton M Christensen

Like summer I can be hot.
Like winter I can be cold.
Like spring I can be warm
Like autumn I can be cool.
Like the four seasons I can change. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

When we were trying to get 'Jersey Boys' off the ground, I'd get, 'The Four Seasons? Who's going to care? There's the Beatles, there's the Rolling Stones.' But people know those stories. Here was a story no one knew. ~ Frankie Valli

Look at the four-spaced year
That imitates four seasons of our lives;
First Spring, that delicate season, bright with flowers,
Quickening, yet shy, and like a milk-fed child,
Its way unsteady while the countryman
Delights in promise of another year.
Green meadows wake to bloom, frail shoots and grasses,
And then Spring turns to Summer's hardiness,
The boy to manhood. There's no time of year
Of greater richness, warmth, and love of living,
New strength untried. And after Summer, Autumn,
First flushes gone, the temperate season here
Midway between quick youth and growing age,
And grey hair glinting when the head turns toward us,
Then senile Winter, bald or with white hair,
Terror in palsy as he walks alone. ~ Ovid

I have unemployed my girlfriend. She had a job working for a cardiologist and now she can hang out, put her feet up, buy all the things she wants, have a nice breakfast with you and me in the Four Seasons. Any fights in families like mine come from everyone worrying about money. I'm taking all those worries away. That makes me feel happy, makes me really proud of what I do. ~ Conor McGregor

Zhuangzi's wife died. When Huizu went to convey his condolences, he found Zhuangzi sitting with his legs sprawled out, pounding on a tub and singing. "You lived with her, she brought up your children and grew old," said Huizu. "It should be enough simply not to weep at her death. But pounding on a tub and singing - this is going too far, isn't it?"

Zhuangzi said, "You're wrong. When she first died, do you think I didn't grieve like anyone else? But I looked back to her beginning and the time before she was born. Not only the time before she was born, but the time before she had a body. Not only the time before she had a body, but the time before she had a spirit. In the midst of the jumble of wonder and mystery a change took place and she had a spirit. Another change and she had a body. Another change and she was born. Now there's been another change and she's dead. It's just like the progression of the four seasons, spring, summer, fall, winter.

"Now she's going to lie down peacefully in a vast room. If I were to follow after her bawling and sobbing, it would show that I don't understand anything about fate. So I stopped. ~ Zhuangzi

Thus unto winter's chill embrace I turn
Who once the summer's sun did blithely bide
'Neath solemn visage cold and fair and stern
In her cool breast my hot heart to confide.
Denied the warmth and wit of summer's sun
Or springtime's strength, and bright, melodious song
I dreamed not to complete what I'd begun
Nor dared to haste the laggard hours along.
But now with spring and summer sun at rest
Laid bare before bright winter's pale charms
I would for love of her lay down my quest
And take my ease in Winter-Lady's arms.
Before her beauty fair 'neath snow-swept sky
All other seasons blanch and fade, and die.
- The Lost Knight's Lament, "Winter's Lady" (Forthcoming) ~ D. Alexander Neill

You're suggesting the mysterious X. Where do we look for him?'

Poirot said:

'Obviously in a close circle. There were five people, were there not, whocould have been concerned?'

'Five? Let me see. There was the old duffer who messed about with his herb brewing. A dangerous hobby-but an amiable creature. Vague sort of person. Don't see him as X. There was the girl-she might have polished off Caroline, but certainly not Amyas. Then there was the stockbroker-Crale's best friend. That's popular in detective stories, but I don't believe in it in real life. There's no one else-oh yes, the kid sister, but one doesn't seriously consider her. That's four.'

Hercule Poirot said:

'You forget the governess.'

'Yes, that's true. Wretched people, governesses, one never does remember them. I do recall her dimly though. Middle-aged, plain, competent. I suppose a psychologist would say that she had a guilty passion for Crale and therefore killed him. The repressed spinster! It's no good-I just don't believe it. As far as my dim remembrance goes she wasn't the neurotic type.'

'It is a long time ago.'

'Fifteen or sixteen years, I suppose. Yes, quite that. You can't expect my memories of the case to be very acute. ~ Agatha Christie

Men's private self-worlds are rather like our geographical world's seasons, storm, and sun, deserts, oases, mountains and abysses, the endless-seeming plateaus, darkness and light, and always the sowing and the reaping. ~ Faith Baldwin

As I train myself to cast off words, as I learn to erase word-thoughts, I begin to feel a new world rising up around me, The old world of houses, rooms, trees and streets shimmers, wavers and tears away, revealing another universe as startling as fire. We are shut off from the fullness of things. Words hide the world. They blur together elements that exist apart, or they break elements into pieces bind up the world, contract it into hard little pellets of perception. But the unbound world, the world behind the world – how fluid it is, how lovely and dangerous. At rare moments of clarity, I succeed in breaking through. Then I see. I see a place where nothing is known, because nothing is shaped in advance by words. There, nothing is hidden from me. There, every object presents itself entirely, with all its being. It's as if, looking at a house, you were able to see all four sides and both roof slopes. But then, there's no "house," no "object," no form that stops at a boundary, only a stream of manifold, precise, and nameless sensations, shifting into one another, pullulating, a fullness, a flow. Stripped of words, untamed, the universe pours in on me from every direction. I become what I see. I am earth, I am air. I am all. My eyes are suns. My hair streams among the galaxies. ~ Steven Millhauser

He had given work to a nightwalker named Dorothy Evans and gradually became beguiled by her. She was a plump, pretty, cattleman's daughter, pale as a cameo, with the sort of overripe body that always seems four months pregnant. Her long brown hair was braided into figure eights and pinned up over her ears in the English country-girl style. Grim experience was in her eyes, many years of pouting shaped her lips, but everything else about her expression seemed to evince an appealing cupidity, as if she could accept anything as long as it was pleasing. ~ Ron Hansen

I love to simplify and edit the contents of just about anything, but women's closets hold particular appeal to me. I edit mine about four times a year and hold a yearly 'clothing swap' to encourage my girlfriends to do the same. ~ Autumn Reeser

Desire can be eradicated from the roots by firmly imbibing the four attributes of: Jnan, Atmanishtha, Vairagya, Dharma and the full fledged devotion to God. ~ Swami Vivekananda

We're the only major company in the U.S. that is solely in the professional beauty industry. We promised hairdressers when we started that we would stay with them. If I went retail tomorrow then we would be four times our size overnight, but I'm going to be the one guy who kept his word. ~ John Paul DeJoria

Or maybe spring is the season of love and fall the season of mad lust. Spring for flirting but fall for the untamed delicious wild thing. ~ Elizabeth Cohen

Females between sixteen and twenty-four years old face a higher risk of being sexually assaulted than any other age group. Most victims of campus rape are preyed upon when they are in their first or second year of college, usually by someone they know. And it's during the initial days and weeks of a student's freshman year, when she is in the midst of negotiating the fraught transition from girlhood to womanhood, that she is probably in the greatest danger. ~ Jon Krakauer

We should understand well that all things are the work of the Great Spirit. We should know the Great Spirit is within all things: the trees, the grasses, the rivers, the mountains, and the four-legged and winged peoples; and even more important, we should understand that the Great Spirit is also above all these things and peoples. When we do understand all this deeply in our hearts, then we will fear, and love, and know the Great Spirit, and then we will be and act and live as the Spirit intends. ~ Black Elk

Sam, I'm not good with words. I've rehearsed this a thousand times in my head in the last twenty-four hours, and nothing I could say comes close to what I'm feeling. What I've felt for what seems like forever. ~ Janine Infante Bosco

Music is ... a form of remembering, a return to the seasons of the heart long gone. ~ Gian Carlo Menotti

The Plowshares activists easily cut through Kitsap's perimeter fence, hiked around the huge base for four hours, ignored all the warning signs, cut through two more fences, and got to within about forty feet of the bunkers where the nuclear warheads are stored. Father Bix was eighty-one at the time. Sister Anne was eighty-three. Having survived two open-heart surgeries, Father Bix brought along his nitroglycerine tablets and paused to take some during the long hike. ~ Anonymous

We need to talk." she says.
"The four most dreaded words in the history of marriage. ~ Andrew Pyper

Nor are introverts necessarily shy. Shyness is the fear of social disapproval or humiliation, while introversion is a preference for environments that are not overstimulating. Shyness is inherently painful; introversion is not. One reason that people confuse the two concepts is that they sometimes overlap (though psychologists debate to what degree). Some psychologists map the two tendencies on vertical and horizontal axes, with the introvert-extrovert spectrum on the horizontal axis, and the anxious-stable spectrum on the vertical. With this model, you end up with four quadrants of personality types: calm extroverts, anxious (or impulsive) extroverts, calm introverts, and anxious introverts. In other words, you can be a shy extrovert, like Barbra Streisand, who has a larger-than-life personality and paralyzing stage fright; or a non-shy introvert, like Bill Gates, who by all accounts keeps to himself but is unfazed by the opinions of others. ~ Susan Cain

What else would they be?"
"No idea." Arik shrugged ... "Aliens, mabye?"
"Aliens." Thanatos's voice was flat, disbelieving.
"Your scepticism is funny, coming from one of the Four fucking Horsemen of the Apocalypse. ~ Larissa Ione

The football season is like pain. You forget how terrible it is until it seizes you again. ~ Sally Quinn

I don't like the way recording to digital sounds. Most of the time, when I'm recording to two-inch tape, I still have a romantic vision of how songs sounded coming out of the radio when I was younger, and how they sounded coming out of my little four-track cassette player. ~ M. Ward

Unfortunately, I know that some of you Hushlanders have trouble counting to three. (The Librarian- controlled schools don't want you to be able to manage complex mathematics.) So I've prepared this helpful guide.

Definition of "book one": The best place to start a series. You can identify "book one" by the fact that it has a little "1" on the spine. Smedrys do a happy dance when you read book one first. Entropy shakes its angry fist at you for being clever enough to organize the world.

Definition of "book two": The book you read after book one. If you start with book two, I will make fun of you. (Okay, so I'll make fun of you either way. But honestly, do you want to give me more ammunition?)

Definition of "book three": The worst place, currently, to start a series. If you start here, I will throw things at you.

Definition of "book four": And . . . how'd you manage to start with that one? I haven't even written it yet. (You sneaky time travelers.) ~ Brandon Sanderson

There are things that make us choose, on certain days, on certain nights, the opposite of love, in all its variations. But I want to acknowledge that with love and hate it's not simply one or the other. It's at least two, three, four, five different emotions existing at once, side by side, a broad spectrum of things alive. ~ Jamaica Kincaid

We started filming in 1993 which was only four years after the fall of communism. The difference in Budapest over the last five years has been remarkable. ~ Derek Jacobi

In 1969 my parents, my sister, my brother Jin-ming, and I were expelled from Chengdu one after another, and sent to distant parts of the Sichuan wilderness. We were among millions of urban dwellers to be exiled to the countryside.

In this way, young people would not be roaming the cities with nothing to do, creating trouble out of sheer boredom, and adults like my parents would have a 'future." They were part of the old administration which had been replaced by Mao's Revolutionary Committees, and packing them off to the sticks to do hard labor was a convenient solution.

According to Mao's rhetoric, we were sent to the countryside 'to be reformed." Mao advocated 'thought reform through labor' for everyone, but never explained the relationship between the two. Of course, no one asked for clarification. Merely to contemplate such a question was tantamount to treason. In reality, everyone in China knew that hard labor, particularly in the countryside, was always punishment. It was noticeable that none of Mao's henchmen, the members of the newly established Revolutionary Committees, army officers and very few of their children had to do it.

The first of us to be expelled was my father. Just after New Year 1969 he was sent to Miyi County in the region of Xichang, on the eastern edge of the Himalayas, an area so remote that it is China's satellite launch base today. It lies about 300 miles from Chengdu, four days' journey by truck, as there was no ~ Jung Chang

Kiss me, I'm horny."
"Best four words ever spoken. ~ Tiffany Reisz

A - ris - ta?" Degan asked, sounding horse. "What is it?"
"A rat bit me," she said, once again shocked by her own rasping voice.
"Jasper does that if - " Gaunt coughed and hacked. After a moment, he
spoke again. "If he thinks you're dead or too weak to fight."
"Jasper?"
"I call him that, but I've also named the stones in my cell."
"I only counted mine," Arista said.
"Two hundred and thirty-four," Degan replied instantly.
"I have two hundred and twenty-eight."
"Did you count the cracked ones as two?"
"No. ~ Michael J. Sullivan

Fear comes in many forms, and we usually don't call it by its four-letter name. Fear itself is quite fear-inducing. Most intelligent people in the world dress it up as something else: optimistic denial. Most who avoid quitting their jobs entertain the thought that their course will improve with time or increases in income. This seems valid and is a tempting hallucination when a job is boring or uninspiring instead of pure hell. Pure hell forces action, but anything less can be endured with enough clever rationalization. ~ Anonymous

In the beginning, it was odd to have so much attention brought to my body type. I thought, 'Uh-oh, brace yourself.' But everyone has been so positive. During the first season, a woman came up to me at dinner and said, 'I just want to thank you u2014 watching you has made me proud of my body.' I thought, What an amazing thing for someone to say! To make anyone feel good about themselves makes me feel good. ~ Christina Hendricks

Yet I have learned.
In chronicles of sorrow, too, there are joys,
In lesions of silence, immeasurable noise.
And certainly in the very pit of the heart
Beneath the trouble in the valves
There is kindness.
Certainly in the ruby heart of this plum's seasons,
A silent reason for hope. ~ Amal Khan

What I told you is the truth." "Really? You want to keep heading down that path? Because I went to the pub." Pope drummed his fingers on the tabletop. "They don't even have a female bartender on staff, and nobody saw you there four nights ago." "Somebody's lying." "So what I'm wondering is ... why'd you really come to ~ Blake Crouch

Shall I tell you a joke about languages? Abulfaz asked.
A joke. Yes, okay.
What do you call a Russian who speaks four languages?
I don't know.
A Zionist. What about a Russian who speaks three languages?
I don't know.
A spy. And two? ... No? A nationalist. And only one? ... An inter-nationalist. ~ Jon Fasman

Life is a green madness just now, trying to squeeze the last bit of warmth from the season. ~ Vernor Vinge

My father was an Episcopal minister, and for 14 years my family lived in China, in a city called Wuchang. We four children spoke Chinese before we spoke English. We left when the communists came, in the early 1930s. I was about 5 years old. ~ Audrey Meadows

Many of us have moments of weakness when we feel as if our cravings have taken us captive or left us out of control. Sometimes they leave our faith flavorless because we are craving what used to be or what we wish could be. The Bible tells us there is a season for everything, and if we don't learn to taste each season as it is served, we will end up missing special moments and those life lessons we need to draw closer to God. I love the seasons of love and laughter, but I have discovered that the seasons of loneliness and painful places are when I learn what my faith is for. The best way to season our faith again is to become salt in others' lives when our own feel lifeless. ~ Sheri Rose Shepherd

Kali. That's the name I used with clients. Kali is the four-armed Hindu goddess of death. She has been appropriated by hipster flakes as a symbol of feminine power. Maybe that's fair too. But make no mistake. Kali is a destructress. In one of her hands she holds a severed head.
I know, I know, so fucking dramatic. I'll admit to a little cultural appropriation for choosing a name like that. ~ Alex Dolan

Why are you so mad at me?" Norris shouted back. The neighbors could definitely hear them now. His throat dry, but he didn't care. "I'm sorry if I interrupted one of your dates, or whatever, but I DID NOT DO ANYTHING! Ground me for leaving prom, ground me for drinking, but I didn't drive, I didn't have unprotected sex, I didn't even get high! You know that! You're supposed to be on my side here, Mom!"
"NO!" she hurled back. "Not on this, Norris" I can't be!"
"Why the hell not?!"
"You know damn well! Trayvon Martin," she began. "Tamir Rice, Cameron Tillman, so many others that I can't remember all their names anymore!"
Norris knew too well. It was almost a ritual, even back in Canada. They would sit as a family and watch quietly. "Be smart out there," Felix used to say.
"You're not a handsome blue-eyed little Ken doll who's going to get a slap on the wrist every time he messes up. That, tonight?" she said, pointing to the door. "Do you know what that was? Do you?!"
"I-"
"That was a fucking coin flip, Norris. That was the coin landing heads." Her finger dug into his chest, punctuating every other word she was saying, spittle flying at his face. "Heads. A good one. Officer Miller, who has four sons, and luckily, mercifully, thank Jesus saw someone else's kid back-talking him tonight."
She exhaled, her breath Thai-food hot against his face.
"Tails." Her voice broke. "Tails, and I would be at the morgue right now identifying you! With so ~ Ben Philippe