So Long A Letter Mariama Ba Quotes

He watches me eat for a moment. "Let me see it again."

"No."

"Okay." He pulls a can of carbonated water out of his backpack and pops the lid.

Sometimes I want to punch him. I find the letter and slide it across the table.

He reads it again. It makes me feel all jittery inside.

His eyes flick up. "She likes you."

I shrug and steal his drink. It tastes like someone drowned an orange in a bottle of Perrier, and I cough.

Rev smiles. "You like her."

"How can you drink this crap?"

His smile widens. "Is it making you crazy that she won't reveal herself?"

"Seriously, Rev, do you have any regular water?"

He's no fool. "What do you want to do?"

I take a long breath and blow it out. I run a hand through my hair. "I don't know."

"You know."

"I want to stake out the grave. This waiting between letters is killing me."

"Suggest email."

"She doesn't want to tell me anything more than her age. She's not going to give me her email address."

"Maybe not her real email. But you could set up a private account and give her the address. See if she writes you."

It's so simple it's brilliant. I hate that I didn't think of it. "Rev, I could kiss you."

"Brush your teeth first." He reclaims his bizarre can of water. ~ Brigid Kemmerer

He is blinded and nothing will open his eyes,nothing can,after having had truths so long before him in vain.--He will marry her and poor and miserable.God grant that her influence do not make him cease to be respectable!"---She looked over the letter again."So very fond of me!tis"nonsense all.She loves nobody but herself and her brother.Her friends leading her astray for years!She is quite as likely to have led them astray. They have all,perhaps, been corrupting one another;but if they are so much fonder of her than she is of them,she is the less likely to have been hurt except by their flattery.The only woman in the world,whom he could ever think of as a wife.....I firmly believe it.It is an attachment to govern his whole life. Accepted or refused,his heart is wedded to her for ever.The loss of Mary,I must consider as comprehending the loss of Crawford and Fanny.Edmund you do not know me.The families would never be connected,if you did not connected them.
Oh!write,write.Finish it at once.Let there be an end of this suspense.Fix, commit,condemn yourself."-Fanny Price ~ Jane Austen

Dear Forrest,
I am sorry there was no time for us to speech other before I left. The doctors made their decision quickly, and before I knew it, I was being taken away, but I asked if I could stop long enough to write you this note, because you have been so kind to me whileI was here.
I sense, Forrest, that you are on the verge of something very significant in your life, some change, or event that will move you in a different direction, and you must seize the moment, and not let it pass. When I think back on it now, there is something in your eyes, some tiny flash of fire that comes now and then, mostly when you smile, and , on those infrequent occasions, I believe what I saw was almost a Genesis of our ability as humans to think, to create, to be.
This war is to for you, old pal - nor me - and I am well out of it as I'm sure you will be in time. The crucial question is, what will you do? I don't think you're an idiot at all. Perhaps by the measure of tests or the judgement of fools, you might fall into some category or other, but deep down, Forrest, I have seen that glowing sparkle of curiosity burning deep in your mind. Take the tide, my friend, and as you are carried along, make it work for you, fight the shallows and the snags and never give up. You are a good fellow, forrest, and you have a big heart.
Your pal,
Dan ~ Winston Groom

One way to solve an encrypted message, if we know its language, is to find a different plaintext of the same language long enough to fill one sheet or so, and then we count the occurrences of each letter. We call the most frequently occurring letter the 'first', the next most occurring letter the 'second', the following most occurring letter the 'third', and so on, until we account for all the different letters in the plaintext sample.

Then we look at the ciphertext we want to solve and we also classify its symbols. We find the most occurring symbol and change it to the form of the 'first' letter of the plaintext sample, the next most common symbol is changed to the form of the 'second' letter, and the following most common symbol is changed to the form of the 'third' letter, and so on, until we account for all symbols of the cryptogram we want to solve. ~ Abu Yusuf Al-Kindi

Never before have I written so long a letter. I'm afraid it is much too long to take your precious time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, but what else can one do when he is alone in a narrow jail cell, other than write long letters, think long thoughts, and pray long prayers? ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

No realm was too petty: The Ministry of Posts ruled that henceforth when trying to spell a word over the telephone a caller could no longer say "D as in David," because "David" was a Jewish name. The caller had to use "Dora." "Samuel" became "Siegfried." And so forth. "There has been nothing in social history more implacable, more heartless and more devastating than the present policy in Germany against the Jews," Consul General Messersmith told Undersecretary Phillips in a long letter dated September 29, 1933. He wrote, "It is definitely the aim of the Government, no matter what it may say to the outside or in Germany, to eliminate the Jews from German life. ~ Erik Larson

Dear Anyone: This is a letter from one anyone to another anyone, no names required, because nobody really knows anyway. Names don't make a hell of a lot of difference. The world is made up entirely of strangers. Millions and millions of them. Everyone is a stranger to everyone else. Sometimes we think we know other people, especially those we supposedly are close to, but if we really knew them, why are we so often surprised by the shit they do? Like, parents are always surprised by what their kids will do. They raise them from the time they are babies, spend each and every day with them, think they're these goddamn fucking angels, and then one day the cops come to the door and say hey, guess what parents? Your kid just bashed some other kid's head in with a baseball bat. Or you're the kid, and you think things are pretty fucking OK, and then one day this guy who's supposed to be your dad says so long, have a nice life. And you think, what the fuck is this? So years later, your mom ends up living with another guy, and he seems OK, but you think, when's it coming? That's what life is. Life is always asking yourself, when's it coming? Because if it hasn't come for a long time, you know you're fucking due. All the best, Anyone. ~ Linwood Barclay

My lady,
When in difficulty, remember the words of our mutual friend Stephen Armstrong: "You can always swim out of quicksand as long as you don't panic."
Or send for me, and I'll come throw you a rope.
-W. R.

Every time Phoebe had read those words- at least a dozen times since they'd left Eversby Priory- a giddy sensation rushed through her. It had hardly escaped her notice that West had marked sections of the book with x's, just as she had marked Henry's book so long ago. A sly bit of flirtation, those x's- she was welcome to interpret them as kisses, while he could still maintain deniability.
Infuriating, complicated man. ~ Lisa Kleypas

That night I didn't sleep a wink, said Norton in her letter, and it occurred to me to call Morini. It was late, it was rude to bother him at that hour, it was rash of me, it was a terrible imposition, but I called him. I remember I dialed his number and immediately I turned out the light in the room, as if so long as I was in the dark Morini couldn't see my face. To my surprise, he picked up the phone instantly. ~ Roberto Bolano

Marius made a movement.
'Oh, don't go!' she said. 'It won't be long.'
She was sitting almost upright, but her voice was very low and broken by hiccoughs. At moments she struggled for breath. Raising her face as near as she could to Marius', she said, with a strange expression:
'Look, I can't cheat you. I have a letter for you in my pocket. I've had it since yesterday. I was asked to post it, but I didn't. I didn't want you to get it. But you might be angry with me when we meet again. Because we shall all meet again, shan't we? Take your letter.'
With a convulsive movement she seized Marius' hand with her own injured one, but without seeming to feel the pain, and guided it to her pocket.
'Take it,' she said.
Marius took out the letter, and she made a little gesture of satisfaction and acceptance.
'Now you must promise me something for my trouble...' She paused.
'What?' asked Marius.
'Do you promise?'
'Yes, I promise.'
'You must kiss me on the forehead after I'm dead...I shall know.'
She let her head fall back on his knees; her lids fluttered, and then she was motionless. He thought that the sad soul had left her. But then, when he thought it was all over, she slowly opened her eyes that were now deep with the shadow of death, and said in a voice so sweet that it seemed already to come from another world:
'You know, Monsieur Marius, I think I was a little bit in love with you.'
She tried to smile, and died. ~ Victor Hugo

I must admit that I am in a state of utter wretchedness and have been for a long time. I didn't know that such extreme unhappiness could continue for so long. ~ Iris Murdoch

Then one day our phone rang, and the voice on the other end said, "I need to talk to Mr. Robertson."
"Yeah, that's me," I answered.
"Are you the one who's getting duck calls into Walmart stores?" the man asked me.
"Yes, that's me," I told him.
"Son, let me ask you a question," he said. "How did you get duck calls into the Walmart chain without going through me?"
"Well, just who are you?" I asked.
"I'm the buyer for Walmart!" he screamed.
There was a pause.
"One store at a time," I told him.
There was a long pause.
"Let me get this right," he said. "You mean to tell me you've been driving around in your pickup truck and convincing our sporting goods departments to buy duck calls without even conferring with me, who's supposed to be doing the buying for the whole Walmart chain?"
"Sir, I didn't mean to slight you or anything," I said. "Look, I didn't even know who you were. Bentonville's a long way. I'm just trying to survive down here!"
He thought about that for a minute, then said, "I'll tell you what I'm going to do. Anybody who can pull a stunt like that, I'm going to write you a letter authorizing you to do what you've been doing."
"Man, I appreciate that," I told him.
"I'm going to authorize you to go into our stores," he said. "You'll have that letter from me, and that makes it all aboveboard."
"Hey, I'd appreciate any help you can give me," I said.
So the buyer in Bentonville wrote me a lette ~ Phil Robertson

And I *know* I wrote in the above that I hate biographies and reviews that focus on the psychological, surface detail, especially when they pertain to women writers, because I think it's really about the cult of the personality, which is essentially problematic, and I think simplistically psychologizing which biographies are so wont to do is really problematic, and dangerous, especially when dealing with complicated women who just by being writers at a certain time and age were labelled as nonconformist, or worse, hysterical or ill or crazy, and I think branding these women as femme fatales is all so often done. And I know in a way I'm contributing to this by posting their bad-ass photos, except hopefully I am humanizing them and thinking of them as complicated selves and intellects AND CELEBRATING THEM AS WRITERS as opposed to straight-up objectifying. One particular review long ago in Poetry that really got my goat was when Brian Phillips used Gertrude Stein's line about Djuna Barnes having nice ankles as an opener in a review of her poetry, and to my mind it was meant to be entirely dismissive, as of course, Stein was being as well. Stein was many important revolutionary things to literature, but a champion of her fellow women writers she was not. They published my letter, but then let the guy write a reply and scurry to the library and actually read Nightwood, one of my all-time, all-times, and Francis Bacon's too, there's another anecdote. And it's burned in my brain his ~ Kate Zambreno

Simon opened the door and was not surprised to find Jace standing outside of it.
"Here," Simon said, handing him the letter.
"Took you long enough," Jace said.
"Now we're even," said Simon. "Go party in the Herondale house with your weird family."
"I plan to," said Jace, and smiled a sudden, strangely endearing smile. He had a chipped tooth. The smile made him seem like he was Simon's age, and maybe they were friends after all. "Good night, Wiggles."
"Wiggles?"
"Yes, Wiggles. Your nickname? It's what you always made us call you. I almost forgot your name was Simon, I'm so used to calling you Wiggles."
"Wiggles? What does that . . . even mean?"
"You would never explain," Jace said with a shrug. "It was the big mystery about you. As I said, good night, Wiggles. I'll take care of this."
He held up the letter and used it to make a salute.
Simon shut the door. He knew most people on the hall had probably done everything they could to make sure they heard that exchange. He knew that in the morning he would be called Wiggles and there was nothing he would ever be able to do about it.
But it was a small price to pay to get a letter to Isabelle. ~ Cassandra Clare

Around 1980, I'd been writing short stories, all to no success; so I wrote a fan letter to Stephen King and asked "How long should it take an aspiring writer to either get published or know when to give up?" Lo and behold, King wrote back to me in long hand with blue flair pen on 14-inch paper, purveying a very nice, helpful note; in it he said my letter proved a "command of the language," that I should never give up, and that it would take years to succeed, not months. "That's cold comfort but it's the truth." This was the ultimate encouragement for a young writer to be who didn't know shit about the market. I took Mr. King's advice and actually sold my first novel little more than a year later. I'll always be copiously grateful for this advice, and it's the same advice I give aspiring writers now (along with the story of King's reply!). ~ Edward Lee

The democracy of to-day hold the liberty of one man to be absolutely nothing when in conflict with another man's right of property...
This is a world of compensations; and he would -be- no slave must consent to -have- no slave. Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it.
All honor to Jefferson - to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so embalm it there, that to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression. Your obedient Servant,
[Abraham Lincoln]
April 6, 1859, in a letter to MA State Rep Henry L. Pierce
Springfield, Ill. ~ Abraham Lincoln

They were already out of her lands, and in another day Yorkshire would be behind them altogether. By the end of the week she'd be in London, resuming her life as if this trip had never happened. Three or four months from now, Harry, acting as her land steward, might write to ask if she wanted him to present his report on her lands in person. And she, having just returned from another soiree, might turn the letter over in her hand and muse, Harry Pye. Why, I once lay in his arms. I looked up into his illuminated face as he joined his flesh with mine, and I was alive. She might toss the letter on her desk and think, But that was so long ago now and in a different place. Perhaps it was only a dream.
She might think that.
George closed her eyes. Somehow she knew that there would never come a day when Harry Pye was not her first memory when she woke and her last thought as she drifted into sleep. She would remember him all the days of her life.
Remember and regret. ~ Elizabeth Hoyt

Those who live in retirement, whose lives have fallen amid the seclusion of schools or of other walled-in and guarded dwellings, are liable to be suddenly and for a long while dropped out of the memory of their friends, the denizens of a freer world. Unaccountably, perhaps, and close upon some space of unusually frequent intercourse - some congeries of rather exciting little circumstances, whose natural sequel would rather seem to be the quickening than the suspension of communication - there falls a stilly pause, a wordless silence, a long blank of oblivion. Unbroken always is this blank; alike entire and unexplained. The letter, the message once frequent, are cut off; the visit, formerly periodical, ceases to occur; the book, paper, or other token that indicated remembrance, comes no more.

Always there are excellent reasons for these lapses, if the hermit but knew them. Though he is stagnant in his cell, his connections without are whirling in the very vortex of life. That void interval which passes for him so slowly that the very clocks seem at a stand, and the wingless hours plod by in the likeness of tired tramps prone to rest at milestones - that same interval, perhaps, teems with events, and pants with hurry for his friends.

The hermit - if he be a sensible hermit - will swallow his own thoughts, and lock up his own emotions during these weeks of inward winter. He will know that Destiny designed him to imitate, on occasion, the dormouse, and he wi ~ Charlotte Bronte

Here is Abraham Lincoln's touching condolence letter to 22-year-old Fanny McCullough, the daughter of a long-time friend:

"Dear Fanny

It is with deep grief that I learn of the death of your kind and brave Father; and, especially, that it is affecting your young heart beyond what is common in such cases. In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all; and, to the young, it comes with bitterest agony, because it takes them unawares. The older have learned to ever expect it. I am anxious to afford some alleviation of your present distress. Perfect relief is not possible, except with time. You can not now realize that you will ever feel better. Is not this so? And yet it is a mistake. You are sure to be happy again. To know this, which is certainly true, will make you some less miserable now. I have had experience enough to know what I say; and you need only to believe it, to feel better at once. The memory of your dear Father, instead of an agony, will yet be a sad sweet feeling in your heart, of a purer and holier sort than you have known before.
Please present my kind regards to your afflicted mother.
Your sincere friend,
A. Lincoln ~ Abraham Lincoln

My sweet little whorish Nora I did as you told me, you dirty little girl, and pulled myself off twice when I read your letter. I am delighted to see that you do like being fucked arseways. Yes, now I can remember that night when I fucked you for so long backwards. It was the dirtiest fucking I ever gave you, darling. My prick was stuck in you for hours, fucking in and out under your upturned rump. I felt your fat sweaty buttocks under my belly and saw your flushed face and mad eyes. At every fuck I gave you your shameless tongue came bursting out through your lips and if a gave you a bigger stronger fuck than usual, fat dirty farts came spluttering out of your backside. You had an arse full of farts that night, darling, and I fucked them out of you, big fat fellows, long windy ones, quick little merry cracks and a lot of tiny little naughty farties ending in a long gush from your hole. It is wonderful to fuck a farting woman when every fuck drives one out of her. I think I would know Nora's fart anywhere. I think I could pick hers out in a roomful of farting women. It is a rather girlish noise not like the wet windy fart which I imagine fat wives have. It is sudden and dry and dirty like what a bold girl would let off in fun in a school dormitory at night. I hope Nora will let off no end of her farts in my face so that I may know their smell also.

You say when I go back you will suck me off and you want me to lick your cunt, you little depraved blackguard. I hope y ~ James Joyce

EB: 'Ll showed me a long verse-letter, very obscene, he'd received from Dylan T[Thomas] before D's last trip here [New York] - very clever, but it really can't be published for a long, long time, he's decided. About people D. met in the U.S. etc. - one small sample: A Streetcar Named Desire is referred to as 'A truck called F - - - .'

RL: 'Psycho-therapy is rather amazing - something like stirring up the bottom of an aquarium - chunks of the past coming up at unfamiliar angles, distinct and then indistinct.'

RL: 'I have just finished the Yeats Letters - 900 & something pages - although some I'd read before. He is so Olympian always, so calm, so really unrevealing, and yet I was fascinated.'

RL: 'Probably you forget, and anyway all that is mercifully changed and all has come right since you found Lota. But at the time everything, I guess (I don't want to overdramatize) our relations seemed to have reached a new place. I assumed that would be just a matter of time before I proposed and I half believed that you would accept. Yet I wanted it all to have the right build-up. Well, I didn't say anything then.'

EB: 'so I suppose I am just a born worrier, and that when the personal worries of adolescence and the years after it have more or less disappeared I promptly have to start worrying about the decline of nations . . . But I really can't bear much of American life these days - surely no country has ever been so filthy rich and so ~ Robert Lowell

My sweetheart, my love, my love, my love - do you know what - all the happiness of the world, the riches, power and adventures, all the promises of religions, all the enchantment of nature and even human fame are not worth your two letters. It was a night of horror, terrible anguish, when I imagined that your undelivered letter, stuck at some unknown post office, was being destroyed like a sick little stray dog . . . But today it arrived - and now it seems to me that in the mailbox where it was lying, in the sack where it was shaking, all the other letters absorbed, just by touching it, your unique charm and that that day all Germans received strange wonderful letters - letters that had gone mad because they had touched your handwriting. The thought that you exist is so divinely blissful in itself that it is ridiculous to talk about the everyday sadness of separation - a week's, ten days' - what does it matter? since my whole life belongs to you. I wake at night and know that you are together with me, - I sense your sweet long legs, your neck through your hair, your trembling eyelashes - and then such happiness, such simmering bliss follows me in my dreams that I simply suffocate . . . ~ Vladimir Nabokov

You're not very good at this," Emma said, laughing at the frustration on Sean's face.
He pulled his hand out from under the back of her T-shirt. "You're distracting me."
"How am I distracting you?" She shook the bag at Sean, reminding him to pull two letter tiles to replace the C and the T he'd used to make CAT.
"You look totally hot. And you did it on purpose so I wouldn't be able to concentrate and you'd win."
Emma laughed. Sure, she'd thrown on baggy flannel boxers and an old Red Sox T-shirt after her shower just to seduce him out of triple-word scores. "You not having a shirt on is distracting. And you keep pretending you want to rub my back so you can peek at my tile rack."
"Nothing wrong with checking out your rack." He craned his neck to see better and she shoved him away. It wasn't easy playing Scrabble sitting side by side on the couch, but after a long workday, neither was willing to take the floor. ~ Shannon Stacey

Ian Fleming

The CBC Interview, 1953

He doesn't use Anglo-Saxon four-letter words, "I don't like seeing them on the page."

When asked why his novels are so popular in light of the dirtiness of the trade (of espionage), Fleming said, "The books have pace and plenty of action. And espionage is not regarded by the majority of the public as a dirty trade. They regard it as a rather sort of ah, ah very romantic affair… Spying has always been regarded as (a) very romantic one-man job, so-to-speak. A one man against a whole police force or an army."

Regarding heroes of his time, Fleming said, "I think that although they may have feet of clay, ah, we probably all have, and all human beings have, there's no point in dwelling entirely on the feet. There are many other parts of the animal to be examined. And I think people like to read about heroes."

BBC Interview on Desert Island Discs

Question: Had the character of James Bond been growing in your mind for a long time?
Ian Fleming's response: "No, I can't say I had, really. He sort of, ah, developed when I was just on the edge of getting married, after having been a bachelor for so long, and I really wanted to take my mind off the agony. And so I decided to sit down and write a book."

Question: How much long do you think you can keep Bond going?
Ian Fleming's response: "Well, I don't know. It depends on how much I, how much more I can go on following ~ Ian Fleming

Salvation, then, is not "going to heaven" but "being raised to life in God's new heaven and new earth." But as soon as we put it like this we realize that the New Testament is full of hints, indications, and downright assertions that this salvation isn't just something we have to wait for in the long-distance future. We can enjoy it here and now (always partially, of course, since we all still have to die), genuinely anticipating in the present what is to come in the future. "We were saved," says Paul in Romans 8:24, "in hope." The verb "we were saved" indicates a past action, something that has already taken place, referring obviously to the complex of faith and baptism of which Paul has been speaking in the letter so far. But this remains "in hope" because we still look forward to the ultimate future salvation of which he speaks in (for instance) Romans 5:9, 10. ~ N. T. Wright

This history has for so long lived like a spider in my breast. The spider spins and spins, catching memories in its web, threatening to devour every final happiness. With this letter I hope to sweep away the terror and the sadness and to have my heart made pure again by God's grace. ~ Kathleen Kent

I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead. ~ Mark Twain

Amal: It isn't sad. When they shut me in here first I felt the day was so long. Since the King's Post Office I like it more and more being indoors, and as I think I shall get a letter one day, I feel quite happy and then I don't mind being quiet and alone. I wonder if I shall make out what'll be in the King's letter?
Gaffer: Even if you didn't wouldn't it be enough if it just bore your name? ~ Rabindranath Tagore

I sit by his bed and pull the covers over him. In doing so, I accidently brush against his thigh.
And that's when I feel it.
That same electrical sensation I got the first time I touched the spot - in my room, when I begged him to stay the night. The feeling radiates up my spine and gnaws at my nerves. It's like something's there, marked on his leg.
I run my fingers over the spot - through the blanket - almost tempted to have a look. I close my eyes, trying to sense things the way he does - to get a mental picture from merely touching the area. But I can't. And I don't.
Still, I have to know if I'm right.
I peer over my shoulder toward the door, checking to see that no one's looking in. And then I roll the covers down.
Ben's wearing a hospital gown. With trembling fingers, I pull the hem and see it right away: the image of a chameleon, tattooed on his upper thigh. It's about four inches long, with green and yellow stripes.
And its tail curls into the letter C.
I feel my face furrow, wondering when he got the tattoo, and why he never told me. It wasn't so long ago that I told him the story of my name - how my mother named me after a chameleon, because chameleons have keen survival instincts. ~ Laurie Faria Stolarz

So now Nathan had a new partner, who, by all accounts, was a dour old drudge with nary a daughter to his name. She'd seen Nathan in town once since then. He had not looked happy.
But she was insanely happy, especially after what the doctor had hold her yesterday. With only a few days left at home, she and Freddy had dragged Jane and Oliver on a romantic picnic. So far, it wasn't going all that well. Poor Jane darted up at every sound. Freddy's mischievous brothers had convinced her that wild Indians might descend upon them any minute, and no amount of Freddy's posturing with the sword could relieve her fears.
Oliver was no help, either. He kept pretending to see feather headdresses behind every bush, though Maria had told him repeatedly that the only tribes in their area had left long ago. He was every bit as devilish as her cousins, who'd embraced him instantly as a man after their own heats. Aunt Rose had pronounced Oliver a smooth-tongued rogue the first time he told her how fetching she looked in her peacock bonnet.
Little did she know.
"Are you sure there's a fish pond back there, Freddy?" Jane asked skeptically as Freddy led her around a deserted cabin.
"Quite sure." He puffed out his chest. "I've caught many a fine trout in that pond."
"More like trout bait," Maria told Oliver, who was stretched out on the blanket beside her, reading a letter from Jarret. "I've never seen a fish longer than my thumb in that pond. ~ Sabrina Jeffries

Since we live in an age in which silence is not only criminal but suicidal, I have been making as much noise as I can, here in Europe, on radio and television - in fact, have just returned from a land, Germany, which was made notorious by a silent majority not so very long ago. ~ James Baldwin

A cursory look at history reveals that propaganda and disinformation are nothing new, and even the habit of denying entire nations and creating fake countries has a long pedigree. In 1931 the Japanese army staged mock attacks on itself to justify its invasion of China, and then created the fake country of Manchukuo to legitimise its conquests. China itself has long denied that Tibet ever existed as an independent country. British settlement in Australia was justified by the legal doctrine of terra nullius ('nobody's land'), which effectively erased 50,000 years of Aboriginal history.
In the early twentieth century a favourite Zionist slogan spoke of the return of 'a people without a land [the Jews] to a land without a people [Palestine]'. The existence of the local Arab population was conveniently ignored. In 1969 Israeli prime minister Golda Meir famously said that there is no Palestinian people and never was. Such views are very common in Israel even today, despite decades of armed conflicts against something that doesn't exist. For example, in February 2016 MP Anat Berko gave a speech in the Israeli Parliament in which she doubted the reality and history of the Palestinian people. Her proof? The letter 'p' does not even exist in Arabic, so how can there be a Palestinian people? (In Arabic, 'f' stands for 'p', and the Arabic name for Palestine is Falastin.) ~ Yuval Noah Harari

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

Never so long as you live, write a letter to a man - no matter who he is - that you would be ashamed to see in a newspaper above your signature. ~ Emily Post

I have lots of things to teach you now, in case we ever meet, concerning the message that was transmitted to me under a pine tree in North Carolina on a cold winter moonlit night. It said that Nothing Ever Happened, so don't worry. It's all like a dream. Everything is ecstasy, inside. We just don't know it because of our thinking-minds. But in our true blissful essence of mind is known that everything is alright forever and forever and forever. Close your eyes, let your hands and nerve-ends drop, stop breathing for 3 seconds, listen to the silence inside the illusion of the world, and you will remember the lesson you forgot, which was taught in immense milky way soft cloud innumerable worlds long ago and not even at all. It is all one vast awakened thing. I call it the golden eternity. It is perfect. We were never really born, we will never really die. It has nothing to do with the imaginary idea of a personal self, other selves, many selves everywhere: Self is only an idea, a mortal idea. That which passes into everything is one thing. It's a dream already ended. There's nothing to be afraid of and nothing to be glad about. I know this from staring at mountains months on end. They never show any expression, they are like empty space. Do you think the emptiness of space will ever crumble away? Mountains will crumble, but the emptiness of space, which is the one universal essence of mind, the vast awakenerhood, empty and awake, will never crumble away because it was never born ~ Jack Kerouac

Pudge/Colonel:
"I am sorry that I have not talked to you before. I am not staying for graduation. I leave for Japan tomorrow morning. For a long time, I was mad at you. The way you cut me out of everything hurt me, and so I kept what I knew to myself.

But then even after I wasn't mad anymore, I still didn't say anything, and I don't even really know why. Pudge had that kiss,

I guess. And I had this secret.
You've mostly figured this out, but the truth is that I saw her that night, I'd stayed up late with Lara and some people, and then I was falling asleep and I heard her crying outside my back window. It was like 3:15 that morning, maybe, amd I walked out there and saw her walking through the soccer field. I tried to talk to her, but she was in a hurry. She told me that her mother was dead eight years that day, and that she always put flowers on her mother's grave on the anniversary but she forgot that year. She was out there looking for flowers, but it was too early-too wintry. That's how

I knew about January 10. I still have no idea whether it was suicide.

She was so sad, and I didn't know what to say or do. I think she counted on me to be the one person who would always say and do the right things to help her, but I couldn"t. I just thought she was looking for flowers. I didn't know she was going to go. She was drunk just trashed drunk, and I really didn't think she would drive or anything. I thought she would ~ John Green

The way a love letter longs to be read
I long for you.
The way the poor Kane longs for his sled
I long for you.

The way the moon longs for the dark of night
I long for you.
The way a nestling bird longs for flight
I long for you.

I am blessed
and I am cursed.
I have waited for so long.
I need you to come to me.
And remind me
of who I was once. ~ Kamand Kojouri

As it is my practice here to conceal nothing, I shall relate on this page the episode of the wall. Virigilia and Lobo Neves were soon to sail. Entering Dona Placida's house, I saw on the table a folded piece of paper. It was a note from Virgilia. It said that she would be waiting for me in the garden at sundown, without fail. It concluded, "The wall is low on the side toward the little path."
I made a gesture of displeasure. The letter seemed to me extraordinary audacious, ill-considered, and even ridiculous. It not only invited scandal, it invited it together with laughter and sneers. I pictured myself leaping over the wall and caught in the act by an officer of the law, who led me off to jail. "The wall is low…" And what if it was low? Obviously Virgilia did not know what she was doing; perhaps by now she wished she had not sent the note. I looked at it, a small piece of paper, wrinkled by inflexible. I felt an urge to tear it in thirty thousand pieces and to throw it to the wind as the last vestige of my adventure; but I did not do so. Self-love, shame at the thought of fleeing from danger…There was no way out; I would have to go.
"Tell her I'll go."
"Where?" asked Dona Placida.
"Where she said she would wait for me."
"She said nothing to me."
"In this note."
Dona Placida stared. "But this paper, I found it this morning in your drawer, and I thought that…"
I felt a queer sensation. I reread the paper and looked at it a long t ~ Machado De Assis