May 18-19

Jonathan, really, you are the one that got in the ladies room. You gotta respect the rooomies privacy, while you are still here.

I miss Jonathan Harker and who knows when he'll come back from the war so I've compiled a list of his funniest, most iconic lines

May 3rd- "I had for dinner, or rather supper, a chicken done up some way with red pepper, which was very good but thirsty. (Mem., get recipe for Mina.) I asked the waiter, and he said it was called "paprika hendl,""

"I did not sleep well, though my bed was comfortable enough, for I had all sorts of queer dreams. There was a dog howling all night under my window, which may have had something to do with it; or it may have been the paprika, for I had to drink up all the water in my carafe, and was still thirsty."

May 5th- "so I quietly got my polyglot dictionary from my bag and looked them out. I must say they were not cheering to me, for amongst them were "Ordog"—Satan, "pokol"—hell, "stregoica"—witch, "vrolok" and "vlkoslak"—both of which mean the same thing, one being Slovak and the other Servian for something that is either were-wolf or vampire. (Mem., I must ask the Count about these superstitions)" Okay look I think the overlooked thing in this passage is that he had a polyglot dictionary to begin with and was just quietly flipping through it in the background.

Was this a customary incident in the life of a solicitor's clerk sent out to explain the purchase of a London estate to a foreigner? Solicitor's clerk! Mina would not like that. Solicitor—for just before leaving London I got word that my examination was successful; and I am now a full-blown solicitor! This is in my opinion the best and funniest thing Jonathan has ever said not only the first sentence which is in itself perfection but the fact that when recounting this freaky fucking wolf infested carriage ride to Dracula's haunted castle he does a full stop to ponder his new promotion and Mina's opinions on it.

May 8th- It is very annoying, for I do not see how I am to shave, unless in my watch-case or the bottom of the shaving-pot, which is fortunately of metal.

It was by this time close on morning, and we went to bed. (Mem., this diary seems horribly like the beginning of the "Arabian Nights," for everything has to break off at cockcrow—or like the ghost of Hamlet's father. So true bestie, you really do forget how poetical and rambling he used to be before the trauma set in

May 12th- I saw the fingers and toes grasp the corners of the stones, worn clear of the mortar by the stress of years, and by thus using every projection and inequality move downwards with considerable speed, just as a lizard moves along a wall. What manner of man is this, or what manner of creature is it in the semblance of man? I feel the dread of this horrible place overpowering me; I am in fear—in awful fear —and there is no escape for me; I am encompassed about with terrors that I dare not think of... ->May 15th- Once more have I seen the Count go out in his lizard fashion. -> June 29th- As he went down the wall, lizard fashion, I wished I had a gun or some lethal weapon, that I might destroy him

May 15th- Here I am, sitting at a little oak table where in old times possibly some fair lady sat to pen, with much thought and many blushes, her ill-spelt love-letter, and writing in my diary in shorthand all that has happened since I closed it last. It is nineteenth century up-to-date with a vengeance. And yet, unless my senses deceive me, the old centuries had, and have, powers of their own which mere "modernity" cannot kill. Bestie you are literally a prisoner in Dracula's castle and you think you're gonna die here

May 16th- "Up to now I never quite knew what Shakespeare meant when he made Hamlet say:—"My tablets! quick, my tablets 'Tis meet that I put it down," etc.," This is why he's my boy I too would immediately quote Hamlet in a major crisis

May 19- "I am surely in the toils."

June 24th- What shall I do? what can I do? How can I escape from this dreadful thing of night and gloom and fear? We would all like to know

June 25th- No man knows till he has suffered from the night how sweet and how dear to his heart and eye the morning can be." Not funny but I feel strongly about highlighting the resilience of Jonathan Harker at all times

I am so excited for your new Priory-related project! I loved the world you created in TPOTOT, especially given how meticulous you are with your research and world building. Everything is so vivid and immersive, creating an immaculate setting for your characters to toil within.

Anyways, I saw your post on Instagram indicating that, as of now, it is over 1,000 pages long!! As a huge fan, I am really excited, but wondering whether you think it will end up being split in two by your publishers?

I’m really not sure. I’m interested to know what Bloomsbury will make of it. They have previously published a book that was over 300K words (Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell), and I know from Brandon Sanderson’s massive word counts that it is possible to publish much larger books than mine as a single volume – Oathbringer is over 450K. 

I suppose there are pros and cons to both options. My main worry is that I haven’t designed this to be two books. It builds like a standalone. If we split it, we’re likely to end up with one very slow book and then a faster one, rather than two books with two clear, organic arcs, which isn’t ideal. So I would sooner keep it as one, if at all possible. 

(Also, bear in mind it may not be so long after edits. It will still be chunky, but I think I managed to carve about 40K off Priory.) 

Where do you stand on blogging anonymity?

Blogging is a very public thing. Posts are written on some very raw and personal subjects and put out there for all to read. There is something very therapeutic about writing down your thoughts, feelings or issues you may be struggling with and getting them out of your head and online. With that therapy comes a vulnerability which we all struggle with. Whether you decide to hide behind anonymity or not, whether you post out to fellow bloggers who are strangers you have a common purpose with or you post to your friends, colleagues or family there is always a real feel of vulnerability about bearing all your feelings and thoughts.

Having recently listened to and taken part in a podcast with fellow blogger Jonathan Beckett, there is one common theme that runs through his interactions with bloggers and that is we all struggle with who we share our posts to. Many like me do not share them with family, friends, etc.

I have often juggled with going anonymous, going under a pseudonym or being me. There are a number of reasons behind this decision and one I toil with regularly. This has come up again hence this blog post.

After receiving some positive feedback from a work mate about my personal blog posts it got me thinking about following all the people I know on Twitter so they can find these posts. I currently have a new and small Twitter account where I post my blogs to but I follow no one I know personally. There is something very comforting about keeping it away from friends and family as I follow them on my personal Facebook account so it is not like I am missing out.

Now I don’t have an ulterior motive for keeping it from my nearest and dearest it is something difficult to explain. Maybe as we share so much of our lives to those people on various social media platforms for once it is nice to do the opposite with the blog.

I am tempted to change all that and post my inner most thoughts to those near to me as it seems a shame they will miss out but I know when I make that decision there is never any going back.

I will give it some thought over the forthcoming days but I would love to hear the thoughts of fellow bloggers on this subject. Where do you stand on this subject and what are your reasons for it? Please let me know.

Ian

Ghosts of the Past - Chapter 7

Chapter 1 + warnings

AO3

Previous chapter

Chapter 7

Terry awkwardly looked around. They didn’t imagine this. Torture chamber? Sure. Dark cellar with horrible lighting? Filthy factory where chemicals eat the skin off your hands. That all when the scary lady told them to go to this address.

“Mum! Look at that elephant! It’s huuuuge!”

Terry definitely didn’t imagine a toyshop.

“Kids are sometimes loud, can you deal with that?”

“Uh… I… If I can rest for a bit after, yeah?”

They knew. The little ding gave it away, but instead of the scary lady there was the owner who could get lost in the crowd. She smiled at them when they entered. Are they in wonderland? Have they died already?

“I am looking for an assistant. The work is not hard. You sell toys, you listen to little devils babble a bit, and when someone scary comes in, you call me.”

Terry was speechless. They came here to die. Instead, Banshee was offering them a job?

“I…”

“Confused, are you?”

“Yeah.”

“Listen, I don’t appreciate what you did, but I’ve done worse when pissed off. I’m giving you a chance. And the pay check is not half bad.” She handed them a paper. Terry gasped over the amount. That was not payment for a shop assistant!

“What’s the catch?”

“You keep your mouth shut if you see something weird.”

“Like Banshee?”

“Exactly. It’s Miranda, by the way. Nice to meet you.”

So, Terry got a job. When they felt overwhelmed, they just hid in backroom for a minute watching the shop on cameras. They sold toys, joked with customers and all the time they thought about one thing only.

This will probably bite them in the ass later.

***

Miranda had a plan this time. When she got to Jonathan’s place, she started without proper hello: “I need help.”

“That’s new,” answered Jonathan. She squeezed past him into the living room, put the bag down and turned to him.

“I want to do a little experiment on myself and I need your help.”

“That’s usually what I say,” he commented with raised eyebrows.

“Yeah. That’s why you’ll help me, right?” she grinned.

“What do you need?”

“The drugs you gave me the first time around. And your backup.”

Jonathan grimaced thinking. “What are you up to?”

“It’s complicated. I want to take down the charm and I need you to put it back if I collapse.”

“Really?” Jonathan sounded surprised. She couldn’t blame him, she just expected he will be more excited.

“You can make notes, you wanted to rip that thing off since day one. I am sure you want to see this.” Miranda played the science string. She was sure he will jump at the plan immediately, but he kept stalling.

“Why the drugs? What do you want to find out?”

Miranda sighed. “I don’t wanna talk about it. I am not sure if it will work. Please?”

“Why me?”

“I don’t know anyone else. And I think you don’t want me dead.”

Jonathan smiled. “Very well, I will help you with this. But after we are done, I want to know why.”

“I promise nothing.”

“Trust, huh?”

“No. This is for me only.”

She really didn’t want to explain herself. It was complicated, she committed several logical fallacies, and everyone would tell her she is crazy and needs to get hospitalized instead of doing this. But she needed to learn about the shadows. She couldn’t do it herself. Miranda took the charm off before, but the ghosts were faster every time and she didn’t believe she can put it back on in time.

“Fine,” said Jonathan not happy. “Let me get the toxin.”

“I’ll owe you one.”

“We’ve been over this.”

“No, I mean it,” she looked him straight in the eyes. “You do this for me, I’ll do for you anything you ask.”

“Have you thought this through?”

“Of course,” Miranda smiled. She knew offering something was the best strategy to shut him up. And it was win-win situation because she really wanted to know for what he will ask.

Miranda, focus. Ghosts. You can look at the professor later, you horny bitch!

“Yes, ghosts,” she answered to her thoughts.

“Excuse me?”

“Did I say that out loud? Yeah, um. I’m ghost hunting. That’s all. Can we start before I freak out?”

Jonathan left with thinking expression. She messed up. You need to stop talking to yourself, Miranda. You sound craaazy. Your shrink will definitely notice.

She got ready. Jonathan found her looking around the room when he came back with his mask and toxin. He didn’t ask what she is doing. She counted ghosts. Her plan was simple. She wanted to know which ones are real.

“Okay,” she said doing a little jump. “Hit me up.”

Jonathan released the toxin. She made sure not to lose sight of the shadows. She breathed in letting the drug take over. In seconds her head started to spin. The room showed signs of decay, as if it was living organism, the smell got strong. Jonathan stood there, his mask full of worms eating the flesh.

Instead of two ghosts there were four.

“Yes. Good. Just show up, you fuckers,” she mumbled. Four shapes that gave her no emotions whatsoever. Even the room made her more disgusted than this. “I’m gonna do it.”

She heard growling instead of an answer but that was fine. Little nervous she reached behind her neck and opened the necklace. As long as she held it everything was fine.

“Take it,” Miranda said her chest tight. She felt a touch.

It hit her like a truck. For the first time ever, she heard them. She screamed and collapsed in on herself. The screeching was tearing her brain apart. She held her ears, muscles tight, eyes closed. It pulsed throughout the room and her whole body. Painful. Like punching over and over. Eyes started tearing.

“No, no, shut up!” she grinded her teeth. “Stop it!”

Get a grip, woman! Look at them!

Trembling like a child, head light, room pulsing like her heart faster and faster. The shadows surrounded her, all of them. They reached for her, trying to catch her in their deadly grips. Dripping cold and wet.

Some of them just hoovered calmly with no evil aura. Two of them.

Miranda laughed hysterically.

And fainted.

***

Miranda woke up with horrible headache and distaste in her mouth. She needed shower, to brush her teeth, have a drink and vomit. Maybe not in this order. She sat up, the world turned with her.

Don’t puke on his carpet, Miranda!

She didn’t.

Looking around it took her a while to realize where she was. Living room. Couch. Horrible feeling. Hands trembling. Snakes in her stomach.

She held her charm. That calmed her. Breathe in, breathe out. They can’t harm you now. You are in control of yourself. Lock the emotions away. That’s the way. Good job, Miranda.

“You are up. Good.”

She turned, Jonathan stood in the kitchen door, looking at her. Arms folded. He didn’t look happy at all. She probably did puke on his carpet! Damn it, Miranda. Way to make him angry!

“Thanks,” she said. She closed her eyes for a second, the world spun with her. She wasn’t walking out for a minute. “Last time it wasn’t this bad,” she joked.

“It shouldn’t have been. I had to give you something to calm down. The charm didn’t fix your panic attack.”

“It didn’t?” The tremble didn’t stop. She swallowed saliva. It didn’t help?

“Are you planning to tell me what the hell happened?”

“I don’t know. I… need to… Excuse me.”

She ran in the bathroom on time. Her stomach clenched rock hard and threw up. She collapsed next to the toiled and breathed.

Better. Much better.

It didn’t help. Jonathan had to calm her.

Fuck! Fuck it!

She pulled herself together. Washed her mouth and face. She felt the tremble getting smaller. Calm down, Miranda. It’s gonna be okay. You’ve dealt with them for over a decade. You can do this.

Jonathan waited for her. She thanked him again feeling a bit awkward. “I didn’t know this will happen.”

“How do you feel?” he ignored her self-bashing. To her surprise he sounded calm and really interested.

“Like shit.”

“Did you find what you wanted?”

“I think so. I need time to figure it out.”

He calmed a bit. “Don’t do this again without supervision.”

She smiled ready to fire back at him but stopped herself. “I don’t plan to.”

“Go home. I’ll call you later.”

“Thanks, Jonathan.”

Whatever care he had in his voice disappeared and he smirked at her. “Don’t thank me, Miranda. Remember – you owe me.”

Oh, she did. But shower and sleep first.

***

They were real.

She will die.

***

Miranda stayed home for two day. This was another reason she hired Terry – she can vail in self-pity for days and the business is still running. She used that time to read about the ritual again but found nothing to help her.

She came around. Accepted her faith.

She is dying.

The ghosts were cancer growing stronger and closer and one day they will devour her body and take her to the afterlife.

Miranda wasn’t ready to die. She didn’t want to. But she ran out of options. Jonathan Crane might help her with emotions but not with ghosts. They were her to deal with and she failed.

Just accept you lost, Miranda. It’s easier than to fight this. It will cause you less pain this way.

Giving up wasn’t on her schedule. But she made a mental note to do it later.

***

Jonathan visited her week after. She had her marbles back – as much as she could. She was happy to see him. It brought her back to reality. There are not only ghosts, there is real world out there. Miranda needed to be reminded of that knowledge. To get back on the ground. Be grounded.

“I didn’t have time to praise your place last time,” he said.

“Thanks. I like making my place comfy. Small things, you know. It makes it feel like home despite me still moving around.”

“I was surprised by your book collection.”

“Oh god.”

“My thoughts exactly. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many low-quality chick li and porn at one place.”

“Listen, quality literature is great and all, but I want to turn off my brain sometimes. Don’t judge.”

Jonathan smirked happily. “I will have to lend you better things, so you catch up with my intellect.”

“Wow, that was low blow,” Miranda scoffed. “Leave my flat, you philistine.”

“I was just joking. Also, you are using that word incorrectly. You are the philistine.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” she grinned. “But I also don’t think you’ve come to insult my bookshelf.”

“No, I’ve come to collect the debt.” Jonathan said that with calm straight face. Miranda loved that, it made her hairs stand up. She scratched her head a bit.

“What do you have in mind?”

“I will leave that as a surprise.”

“Oh, okay. I have a suggestion.” She felt like a schoolgirl saying this. She never had problem going right to the point, but in this scenario, she felt it’s inappropriate. Jonathan was the one calling the shots. “If you want to hear it that is.”

He did it again. Left her in silence waiting for his answer as if she wasn’t worth the talk. It got under her skin. She was ready to say things anyways, but he finally said: “I’ll allow you to say it.”

Allow? What the hell? No, he didn’t come to insult her bookshelf but her! Damn him and his fucked-up way she liked so much.

She took out a night mask from her drawer and set it on the table. “I thought that if I can’t see you, you will feel better. And you can lead my hands, so I don’t touch something you don’t want.” Also, she won’t see who is in the room with them, but she kept that for herself.

“Do you trust me enough for that? You won’t see what I’ll do.”

“Yes.” Miranda wanted to say more but couldn’t get it off her tongue. It would feel too much like commitment.

“I will think about it,” he said calmly eyeing her. “Interesting suggestion, Miranda. Does that mean you think about me often?”

“No, I…”

“You wouldn’t lie to me, would you?” he stopped her.

She shuffled on her chair. To the point, so harsh. “Yes, I think about you sometimes.”

“Why?”

Why? What kind of question is that? Why not? She never thought about reasons, just him. Oh, Miranda, don’t be dull. You know exactly what he wants to hear. Indulge him.

“Because you are handsome. And clever. You see right through me. And I like when you order me around. I don’t have to think.” She smiled a bit over the tingle in her stomach. “And you fuck really good.”

He didn’t seem to be phased by any of that. “Do you touch yourself when you think about me?”

“Sometimes.”

“Show me.”

She hesitated a bit – for his pleasure – and then took down her sweater and pants. Sitting across to him in her underwear, she let her hands run on her body just to keep him on his toes. It affected him and she knew. His face might not say so, but the way he moved to sit more comfortably did.

“But in my imagination, you always tell me what to do,” she winked at him.

“Are you that uninventive?” Jonathan replied with pleased expression.

She pulled her bra letting her nipples out. She played with them for a bit, rolling her thumbs on them. She sighed here and there. “Maybe I am.”

“No, you need to try harder, Miranda.”

Oh, come on. She really wanted him to tell her. Instead he was stalling again. She was horny and he was making it worse. She would take anything from him. Just one word. No? Fine!

She slowly reached inside her underwear. Her pussy was so wet her fingers slipped inside easily. Jonathan will have to use his imagination. Everything was properly hidden behind her panties. He will have to work for it. She took out her fingers and rubbed her wetness on her clitoris. She smiled looking in his eyes.

Slowly she touched herself. Sometimes slipped in, still played with her nipple. Moaned for him, but she wasn’t planning to finish it. She was teasing him. And herself. Her body was warm, wet and ready and she wanted Jonathan to fuck her. This she could do any other time, alone.

Finally, Jonathan stood up and came to her. “You do not stop,” he warned. He grabbed her chin and made her look at him. Then he kissed her, deep, his tongue found hers. She replied the same. Her fingers still playing with her clit. She moaned to his mouth, he wouldn’t let her go and breathe. He forced that kiss so long and the sensation was mind numbing. When she tried to get away, he just gripped stronger and pulled her in.

He let go after a while. She breathed in, the excitement trembled her body. She couldn’t speak, she was still feeling his tongue inside her and she wished he would hold just a little bit longer.

“I like that idea of yours,” he said, “it will fit nicely with mine.”

She would say something, but he still held her chin so strongly, she couldn’t open her mouth. Did he know how easy it would be to snap her neck now? Was she the only one who realized those things? So much power and he might not even know.

“You keep doing that,” he said. She kept masturbating, slowly, the happy tingle sometimes woke her up from thoughts. She was excited for what he came up with. Maybe she will regret it. She will absolutely regret it.

She just wanted to touch him so bad!

“Last chance,” he whispered to her ear. She shivered.

“You afraid?” she asked.

He scoffed and his expression tightened. “Of you?” he said insulted. “No, you are obedient little girl, you are not scary.” He put the blindfold on her. The world disappeared leaving her only sensation of her body and sounds.

The lack of one sense was deceiving. She thought she knew what was going on for a second and then as she touched herself and few tingles clouded her mind, she got lost. Shaking of her body, wetness and pleasure, those were only things left for her. And occasional sound that could have mean anything.

How long was this going on? She didn’t know. For too long. Where was he? So silent. She bit her lip. Do not call his name. That’s what he wants. That’s why he keeps you waiting, to make you desperate.

Damn him.

“Professor?”

Nothing.

Oh god damn him, she won’t be able to keep this up. She felt the need to fasten the pace of masturbation. To finish it. Woman can only take so much.

And then…

She gasped as she felt fingers run on her neck. Comfortably, slowly. And they were gone.

She tightened in anticipation of next touch. Where? Come on?

Nothing.

She moaned frustrated.

On her leg, he reached for her inner thigh and stopped again.

“Professor, please, I can’t take this,” she begged.

She nearly screamed when he touched her breasts. And stopped. Her stomach. He scars. Cheeks. One after the other, so slowly, and she never knew what will be next. He stopped and she stretched out to him as if she could get more. Always too slow.

The anticipation was worse than any pain in the world. She loved it and hated it. She wanted him to continue and stop and just take her.

“Look at you, so hungry for a touch,” he said silently. “You should be ashamed.”

She wasn’t at all. She could lower herself like this forever.

He finally grabbed her wrists. He was standing over her, he tucked her to sit straight. He kissed tips of her fingers, one by one, and licked her wetness of it. It gave her ideas, reminded her of time she had him deep in her mouth. She wanted that again. To feel him.

He delivered. He led her palm from his mouth to his neck. And then to his chest. Miranda gasped silently. She felt how careful he was. Very stiff. He wasn’t relaxed at all. His grip was strong, as if he was worried she could break free, and do what she wants. Not good.

“Thank you for letting me do this,” she said in hope of calming him down.

“Who allowed you to talk, Miranda?” he hissed.

“I’m sorry.”

“That’s second time. Third time I will have to punish you.”

She thought about it. He seemed to loosen the grip a bit, she still had her hand on his chest. She moved her fingers a bit, feeling his skin. So normal. She loved that. But he was still unsure. “I’m sorry,” she said again.

She felt him relax, as if he gave up on her and realized she can’t harm him. And then she felt painful pinch on her breast. She shouted, but he caught her hand before she could cover the place.

“I warned you,” he whispered so close to her she felt her insides tightened. They wished to have him.

She stayed silent.

“Good girl.”

She enjoyed she could touch him. She wished to see his expression. Did he let his guard down? Is he pleased? She wanted to know. She wished he said something. Or gasped. Anything.

Always when it looked like he will want her to touch his penis he avoided it. She let him enjoy the touches. She was patient. It took him long time again, but this time she felt like it was for him, not to boil her in lust.

When he finally let her go, she was silent. She wanted to reach for him, hug him, hold him close and kiss him, but she knew the boundaries.

“You’ve done good, Miranda.” She heard his voice somewhere behind her. “If only you weren’t that obnoxiously loud and touchy.”

Rude. She didn’t say anything.

“I can see you try, but I don’t think you are capable of shutting up. I will help you with that.”

From behind he placed something on her chest and moved it around, so she understood.  He circled a plastic around her nipple. Oh man, was this his thing?

“I’ll be good,” she pleaded.

“Here you go again, talking. Good thing I brought this. Open your mouth.” She hesitated. “Do I have to make you?” he warned her. Miranda surrendered and did what he asked. Jonathan put the gag in and tightened it behind her head. Miranda had trouble to swallow. She will drool like a dog. Breathing was fine.

“That’s better. And now we must do something about those hand of yours. Always touching yourself like some sort of harlot. You aren’t a harlot, are you, Miranda?” he said massaging her boobs.

She moaned and shook her head.

“Good, let me see.”

Something clicked and her hands were restrained behind her back. She was at complete mercy of this man. He could do anything. She let him do that. He could simply turn on her now. The danger was real. It was exciting.

“Miranda, you follow orders so nicely,” he kept playing with her boobs. “I think you deserve a reward.”

He walked in front of her and took down her panties. He didn’t even need to use force to open her legs. She gasped as she felt his fingers on her clit. He rubbed it a bit and she bended her back under the sensation.

“Are you sure you aren’t a harlot?” he said amusement in his voice.

He licked her. She would scream if the gag let her. He focused on her clit and teased it with his tongue. Sucked it, played with it. She moaned silently. He held her thighs open, gripping her strong, she wanted to force him down more. His mouth on her cunt felt so good.

He slipped two fingers inside her. Licked her and moved them. Ate her out and she felt like she will lose her mind any second. The sensation was so strong, so great. Sensitive parts were screaming from pleasure. He wasn’t stopping.

This is it. He wasn’t letting her go. With ever lick she was closer. She wanted to grab him and force him down, but her restrains didn’t let her. Her screams were muffled. Her body was fighting and then with final wave of pleasure it was over.

She trembled, gasped for the air. He caressed her crotch for a while adding to her twitching. She nearly collapsed, all her muscles giving up. God, she loved him. It was so great. She would tell him, but she couldn’t. She would kiss him right there and let him fuck her so he can be just as pleased as he was.

“Look at you,” he said still wetting his hand on her. “Your face is so beautiful like this.”

His voice came to her from far away. She was lost in orgasm land. She didn’t understand what he was saying.

He stopped touching her and stood up.

“Do you know what would make it prettier?” Jonathan asked.

Tired, she shook her head.

“Me.”

Him?

What?

Oh… did he mean… oooh.

She sat straight, waves of pleasure still pulsed in her, but she tried for him not to move much. She bended her head backwards to show her face some more for him.

“Mmm, that’s good. Good girl, Miranda.” She heard him gasp few times. Then he moaned silently. She felt wet and warm sensation on her face. She moaned back to him.

She heard him sit down. Semen was slowly dripping of her face to her breast. She sat still.

“You hold right there. I need to remember this beautiful look.”

She did. This time he didn’t take forever. Soon he came to her and took her gag out. She tasted the semen but before she could say something, he silenced her with deep kiss. Less forceful and more passionate this time. She really felt every emotion he had. She kissed him back.

“Thank you, Miranda,” he whispered almost silently.

She smiled. “My pleasure.”

She wasn’t lying.

Next chapter

THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS

When my concerned parents faced the early and unpleasant realization that they were raising a ravenous little horror hound, it meant that they had to somehow split the difference between their strict curbing of my potentially mid-warping viewing habits, and their principled encouragement of unfettered reading. That must be how I came into possession of a copy of Thomas Harris' harrowing police procedural The Silence of the Lambs at the tender age of 10, even as the film adaptation was being touted by many viewers as The Scariest Movie of All Time. I carried that book around like the Bible well into my teenage years, reading and re-reading it with even greater fervor after my parents finally decided that the film was sophisticated enough for me to watch without it turning me into some kind of animal-torturing arsonist. (Said screening was chaperoned and accompanied by an academic post-viewing family discussion, of course) The decision seemed to make sense; after all, THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS had swept the Oscars the year it was released, scooping up wins for Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Picture. This is not to say that my intellectual and art-appreciating family regarded the Academy as the ultimate arbiters of taste and achievement. I mention these accolades more to point out that, as my parents had surely noticed, the film holds a certain power over viewers on both sides of the high-low cultural divide, a spell that has hardly weakened in its twenty-seven years of life.

As a child, I certainly responded to the same things that piqued the general public: Anthony Hopkins' iconic performance as Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter, his ambiguous romance with purehearted FBI trainee Clarice Starling, and the controversial perversity of serial killer Buffalo Bill. Though the story shares the influence of real-life ghoul Ed Gein with classic shockers like PSYCHO and THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE, the impact of SILENCE is more akin to that of DRACULA. Much of the enduring discussion about the film revolves around the tantalizing chemistry between the preternaturally elegant Dr. Lecter and the virginal Starling; the rest is somewhat unfortunately focused on Ted Levine's eccentric performance as the (pseudo-) transsexual murderer at large, which has come under some understandable scrutiny. However, it would be unjust to reduce Jonathan Demme's movie to a gothic romance, or a gory shocker, or a campy cult item with ironic eroticism and a great soundtrack. There simply have to be better reasons for a movie to stick around this long, lingering in the minds of stuffy critics and the hoi polloi alike.

In preparing my statements about what makes THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS stand out, I learned something very shocking: It began its life as the directorial project of Gene Hackman. Hackman eventually dropped out when the script produced by (Oscar-winner) Ted Tally turned out to be too violent. Prospective Starlings like Michelle Pfeiffer and Meg Ryan were similarly disgusted, so Demme got stuck with a less likely candidate in (Oscar-winner) Jodie Foster. Personally, I find (Oscar-winner) Demme himself to be an unlikely candidate. The director cut his teeth on exploitation movies under Roger Corman, and by the time of SILENCE, had distinguished himself as a hipster extraordinaire, directing classic performance videos for the Talking Heads and Spaulding Gray, as well as chic comedies speckled with cameos from the likes of John Waters, and underground music firebrands from New York's new wave scene. Time would prove that Demme and his frequent collaborator, cinematographer Tak Fujimoto, were perfect choices for this grim project, which only supports the idea that there is something more happening with SILENCE OF THE LAMBS than its gruesome violence and epic sexual tension.

In light of these more famous elements, one might expect an adaptation of Thomas Harris' grim and seductive novel to be grandiose, expressionistic, swathed in a dense physical and emotional mist, rumbling with its own pomp and circumstance. An orphan from the hills of West Virginia, Clarice Starling is a tragic hero from the start, guarding her broken heart against a world of condescending and hostile men. Her mentor Jack Crawford seems to distinguish himself from the herd by assigning her the ambitious task of interviewing notorious serial killer Hannibal Lecter for the FBI's files--but in fact, Crawford is counting on Starling's feminine charms and naivety, secretly using her to manipulate Lecter into profiling a killer at large, Buffalo Bill. In spite of this nasty revelation, Starling sticks with it, suffering Lecter's high-minded insults and penetrative analysis of her character, and eventually earning his admiration. She proves herself not only brave and determined, but a detective of unparalleled wit and instinct, single-handedly taking down the polymorphously perverse Buffalo Bill in his moth-filled subterranean lair, rescuing a high-profile victim where the entire rest of the Federal Bureau of Investigation have failed.

This all seems to portend a bigger, louder movie than what has been committed to film. However, the book has a certain organic grit to it, something honest, downbeat and tragically real, which Demme and Fujimoto grasp instinctively. The film provides a dry, frank view of the life of Clarice Starling: the toil of academia, the drudgery of physical conditioning, the undermining attitudes of her mostly-male peers. Shot in West Virginia and Pennsylvania, Starling's world is bleak and desolate, but earnestly so, without the pageantry of the film noir and Universal horror movies with which it is so easily compared. Demme's education under B-movie king Corman shows here, and makes for a much more compelling iteration of the story than we might have from someone less accustomed to economy. While SILENCE has developed a reputation for its brutality, the film is not remotely so gore-drenched as many traumatized viewers would have you believe. That said, it may be the film's generally stark and desicated look, its workaday-ness, and its endless (wonderful) dialogic exchanges that throw into relief its comparatively minimal violence, which usually appears not in scenes of assault, but in crime scene photos or autopsy scenes.

The blanched, dreary look of the film also offsets the emotional plight of Clarice Starling. She is afforded no real romance, external or internal. The petite and clear-eyed orphan is visibly used to, and exhausted by, the constant need to look out for herself, and SILENCE will see her shuffled from one humiliating personal trial to the next. She is led into a perilous situation by a mentor who pretends to respect her abilities, but who really counts on her to fall short of discovering his scam; She is trapped in roomfuls of macho cops who scarcely acknowledge her; She has to negotiate the sexual attention of evidence technicians and bureaucrats; She even has semen flung at her by a particularly rambunctious neighbor of Lecter's. (And how often do you see that in any movie? As gross as it is, it has a way of reinforcing the extreme adult-ness of Demme's often dry, methodical movie) And then of course, there is Lecter himself, who turns Starling's personal vulnerability into a form of currency with which she can buy the scant clues that lead her to her quarry. Instead of eroticizing the anomalous femininity that Starling brings to the traditionally masculine world of law enforcement, Demme constantly reminds you of her fear, her embarrassment, her alienation. One can also imagine the temptation to Ripley-fy the character, presenting her as a fully-formed badass not to be fucked with. Instead, by eschewing both these femme and fatale modes, Demme describes Clarice Starling as three-dimensional human being whose heroism is extremely hard-won. While the character is undeniably one of the great Strong Female Protagonists, Jodie Foster's performance somehow defies the cinematic semiotics of gender altogether, giving us a person whose most important qualities are purely psychological. Tak Fujimoto drives the point home by frequently filling the screen with closeups of her face, focusing us on what she thinks and says, taking the proverbial heat off her body. Even as Lecter probes her for painful biographical information, Starling's sexuality remains entirely private--still a rare thing in any movie with a lady lead.

I don't mean to suggest that THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS is principally successful because of its plucky girl detective--that contributes to its greatness, but not in the feminist fashion that I seem to be angling for. I am reviewing this movie presently because I recently found myself looking back on my own history with it, comparing my feelings with those of popular audiences, and thinking, "What is The Silence of the Lambs really about?" It can't be so beloved *only* due to the sexy slow burn between Anthony Hopkins' Count Dracula and Jodie Foster's Mina Harker. It can't be *just* a matter of the exotic insanity of the gender-bending madman sewing together the flesh of his victims and dancing provocatively to "Goodbye Horses" by Q Lazzarus (a sadly mysterious musician who Demme certainly knew from his involvement in the New York underground). All of these characters, and their respective dynamics, contribute to the important thrill of this movie, but not in the way that most people seem to think.

Rather like the director's earlier work with iconoclastic punk icons and indie auteurs, THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS is about authenticity. Hannibal Lecter, the unparalleled genius whose culinary expertise is part of his murderous MO, is a serial killer because he has such refined taste and decorum that he cannot live peaceably among other people. He favors victims whom he perceives as tacky, pretentious and impertinent--Starling knows that he would never harm her because, as she famously remarks, "He would consider it rude." Lecter is fascinated, not by her youthful beauty as Crawford had hoped, but by her sincerity. Starling is brilliantly intelligent in her own right, as she proves through her police work, but she doesn't have an ironic bone in her body. She is the most unpretentious individual alive, and nothing could be more interesting to Lecter, who preys upon people who are untrue to others and to themselves. Meanwhile, we have Buffalo Bill, who is attempting to change his sex by crafting a full-body "woman suit"--but, as Lecter insists, the killer is not a "true transsexual" whose legitimate identity is that of the opposite sex. Buffalo Bill is someone who was reared by his abusive parents to hate himself so much, that he is compelled to escape his natural identity; becoming a woman is less important as a matter of self-actualization, than as a means of becoming an entirely different person, *any* different person. He has been so radically alienated from his own essence by this self-loathing, that he is incapable of authenticity of any kind.

That, I really think, is the secret power of THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS: the at-once satanic and profoundly innocent declaration, "to thine own self be true". I would really love to get into a deeper dive on this movie at some point, to discuss what I think must have been the very best and very last time that Anthony Hopkins gave us a fearless and unpredictable (and in this case, somewhat hilarious) performance; to insist that Ted Levine as Buffalo Bill and Brooke Smith as his would-be victim actually give the best performances in the whole movie; to talk about the problem of the Ubiquitous Daddy Figure (of whom there are no fewer than THREE in this movie) in so many narratives about powerful women; to simply analyze the movie's sly psychological techniques, like fully humanizing Brooke Smith *just* by showing her singing a few bars of a beloved pop song in closeup, immediately before her fate takes a disastrous turn. (I would probably not take such an opportunity to investigate accusations of homophobia and transphobia, which requires a smarter and more directly experienced voice than my own) There is really a lot to say about why SILENCE is so powerful, without even threatening to address its most famous features. Unfortunately, I don't have the gumption or the madness to commit all that to Letterboxd at the moment, so I'll have to be satisfied with my primary conclusion: That the film's simplicity and gritty naturalism mirror its commitment to spiritual purity, honesty, and self-knowledge at all costs. Even at the high cost of wearing a muzzle, any time they let you out of your cage.

Katherine Helmond, the seven-time Emmy-nominated Texas actress who played the feisty, man-crazy mother Mona Robinson on the long-running ABC sitcom Who’s the Boss?, has died. She was 89.

Helmond, who earlier starred as the wide-eyed socialite sister Jessica Tate on another popular ABC comedy, Susan Harris’ daytime-serial spoof Soap, died Saturday of complications from Alzheimer’s disease at her home in Los Angeles, her talent agency, APA, announced.

The shapely, blue-eyed Helmond also portrayed Doris Sherman, the widowed owner of the fictional NFL team the Orlando Breakers, on ABC’s Coach, and she was Lois Whelan, the upper-class mother of Patricia Heaton’s character, on CBS’ Everybody Loves Raymond.

On the big screen, Helmond appeared in three Terry Gilliam movies — as the seafaring cannibal Mrs. Ogre in Time Bandits (1981), as Jonathan Pryce’s rich, cosmetic surgery-addicted mother in Brazil (1985) and as a hotel clerk in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998). And she provided the voice of Lizzie, a 1923 Ford Model T, in the three Cars movies.

More recently, she appeared on True Blood.

Helmond received Emmy noms for lead actress in a comedy for playing Jessica in every season of Soap, which aired from 1977-81. She was nominated again for Who’s the Boss? in 1988 and 1989 and for Everybody Loves Raymond in 2002. And she won two Golden Globes, one for each show.

The 5-foot-2-inch Helmond also showed off her glorious cheekbones when she earned a Tony nom in 1973 for best featured actress in a play for her work in Eugene O’Neill’s The Great God Brown. She often said that the theater was her first love.

After Helmond toiled for years in small, dramatic parts on television, her agent thought it was time that the actress did some comedy.

"I was married to drunks, I got knocked around and battered and beaten and taken advantage of,” she said of her first TV roles in a 2008 interview with the Archive of American Television. “That’s one of the reasons I got switched to comedic roles. My agent said, ‘I just can’t bear to see you knocked around on television any more. … We’re going to try for a sitcom.’”

When she auditioned for Soap, Helmond said that Harris sat very seriously, never laughing, but by the time the actress had arrived home from their first meeting, she learned that she had gotten the part.

Soap, as described in the opening, was “the story of two sisters — Jessica Tate and Mary Campbell.” The wealthy Jessica had a philandering husband (Robert Mandan) and a sarcastic servant named Benson (Robert Guillaume); Mary’s (Cathryn Damon) family, meanwhile, was blue-collar.

Helmond said that Jessica “floated through life; it was like music playing all the time. [Harris] said that I had captured that, that I was very loving and wide-eyed about life, more child-like than stupid.”

On Who’s the Boss?, which aired for eight seasons from 1984-92, Helmond’s sexually active Mona dated all manner of men. She played the mother of a divorced advertising executive Angela (Judith Light), who employs a retired St. Louis Cardinals second baseman (Tony Danza) as a live-in housekeeper in Fairfield, Connecticut. His daughter (Alyssa Milano) and Angela's son (Danny Pintauro) also live there.

Mona was a widow who moved on from her husband's death by "throwing caution to the wind, doing whatever comes up, thinking my own thoughts, being a little more risque," Helmond said. She heard from viewers who benefited from that characterization, she noted.

"If life dealt you some unfortunate blow, you would still be able to go out into the world, find new friends, find new jobs, find a new way of living if you knew who you were," she said. "I felt like I was giving a free lesson to a lot of people who are in that position … I got wonderful letters from people."

Helmond noted that ABC filmed a pilot for a Mona spinoff, but it was not picked up.

Milano paid tribute to Helmond on Friday, captioning a series photos of her co-star with the words, "My beautiful, kind, funny, gracious, compassionate, rock. You were an instrumental part of my life. You taught me to hold my head above the marsh! You taught me to do anything for a laugh! What an example you were! Rest In Peace, Katherine."

Light called Helmond "a remarkable human being and an extraordinary artist; generous, gracious, charming and profoundly funny. She taught me so much about life and inspired me indelibly by watching her work. Katherine was a gift to our business and to the world."

An only child, Katherine Marie Helmond was born on Galveston Island in Texas on July 5, 1929. Her father was a fireman and her mother a housewife, and she was the oldest of three daughters.

After attending Ball High School, she pursued acting in Houston and Dallas, then moved to New York with a handful of friends. When they had trouble finding work, they bought a theater in upstate New York and put on plays there. She said she did 10 years of summer stock.

She spent seven years with the Hartford Stage Company in Connecticut and the Trinity Repertory Theater in Providence, Rhode Island. After winning the Drama Critics Award for her off-Broadway performance in John Guare's Pulitzer Prize-winning play The House of Blue Leaves, Helmond followed the production to Los Angeles and quickly landed a guest-starring spot on Gunsmoke in 1972.

Helmond had a role in Arthur Hiller’s The Hospital (1971), and in Alfred Hitchcock’s Family Plot (1976), her character kicks over a headstone in a graveyard.

Gilliam originally cast Ruth Gordon for Time Bandits, but she broke her leg on a Clint Eastwood movie, so Helmond got the part. For Brazil, the filmmaker phoned her and said, "I have a part for you, but you're not going to look very good in it," she recalled.

Helmond said that she had a rubber mask glued to her face at 5 a.m. each day during production and wore it for 10 hours at a time. She developed blisters that needed medical attention, yet even during that time, she found "great joy in acting."

"I felt I blossomed as a person when I got a chance to act," she said. "Through all the many years now, I’ve never fallen out of love. It’s been like an incredible marriage that really worked. I enjoyed every minute of it.”

Survivors include her half-sister, Alice, and her husband of 57 years, David Christian. She met him at The Hampton Playhouse Summer Stock Theater, where he was the set designer and she the leading lady.

"She was the love of my life," Christian said. "We spent 57 beautiful, wonderful, loving years together, which I will treasure forever. I've been with Katherine since I was 19 years old. The night she died, I saw that the moon was exactly half-full, just as I am now … half of what I’ve been my entire adult life."

A memorial for family and friends is being planned.

Mel Feller, MPA, MHR. Shares Quotes to Charge the Entrepreneurial Spirit

Mel Feller, MPA, MHR. Shares Quotes to Charge the Entrepreneurial Spirit

 Mel is the President/Founder of Mel Feller Seminars with Coaching for Success 360, Inc. and Mel Feller Coaching.  Mel Feller maintains offices in Texas and in Utah.

  Quotes.  Entrepreneurs are fascinated with them.  They spark our creativity, motivate us to action, and inspire us to greatness. They offer us insights into the spirit behind innovation and genius. In addition, they act as fuel to the fire that burns deep within every true entrepreneur.

  The quotes below are, in Mel Feller’s opinion, some of the best of the best.  They come from authors, poets, inventors, scholars, and entrepreneurs – all legends in their own rights.  So jot them down on Post-it notes and decorate your workspace. Grab red lipstick and write them in sweeping letters across your mirrors.  Pick your favorite and brand it on your…palm.  The right words at the right time can be paramount to your success, so do whatever it takes to keep inspiration nearby.

  “If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.” Jim Rohn, Entrepreneur, Author, Motivational Speaker

  “In life and business, there are two cardinal sins: The first is to act without thought, and the second is to not act at all.” – Carl Icahn, Investor and Entrepreneur

  “Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, Poet

  “A business has to be involving, it has to be fun, and it has to exercise your creative instincts.” – Richard Branson, Entrepreneur

  “Can anything be sadder than work left unfinished? Yes; work never begun.” – Christina Rossetti, Author

  “Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.” Williams Jenning Bryan, Politician and three-time Presidential candidate

  “Watch, listen, and learn. You can’t know it all yourself. Anyone who thinks they do is destined for mediocrity.” – Donald Trump, Business Mogul

  “High expectations are the key to everything.” – Sam Walton, Entrepreneur

  “The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary.” – Vidal Sassoon, Entrepreneur

  “Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.” William Butler Yeats, Poet

  “I know the price of success: dedication, hard work, and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen.” - Frank Lloyd Wright, Architect and Entrepreneur

  “Opportunity is missed by most because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” – Thomas Alva Edison, Inventor and Entrepreneur

  “If you work just for money, you’ll never make it, but if you love what you’re doing and you always put the customer first, success will be yours.” – Ray Kroc, Entrepreneur

  “The secret of success is constancy to purpose.” – Benjamin Disraeli, Author, Politician and Scholar

  “How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something but to be someone.” – Coco Chanel, Entrepreneur

  “A successful person is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him.” - David Brinkley, Newscaster

  “I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.” – G. K. Chesterton, Author

  “Those who try to do something and fail are infinitely better than those who try nothing and succeed.” Lloyd Jones

  “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed.”­ – Michael Jordan, Basketball Legend and Entrepreneur

  “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” - Thomas Alva Edison, Inventor and Entrepreneur

  “Not doing more than the average is what keeps the average down.” - William M. Winans, Clergyman

  “Six essential qualities that are the key to success: Sincerity, personal integrity, humility, courtesy, wisdom, charity.” William Menninger, Entrepreneur

  “My will shall shape the future.  Whether I fail or succeed shall be no one’s doing but my own. I am the force. I can clear any obstacle before me or I can be lost in the maze. My choice. My responsibility. Win or lose; only I hold the key to my destiny.” - Elaine Maxwell, Author

  “It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd American President

  “You can’t build a reputation on what you’re going to do.” - Henry Ford, Entrepreneur

  “The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible — and achieve it, generation after generation.” - Pearl S. Buck, Author

  “It is on our failures that we base a new and different and better success.” – Havelock Ellis, Physician and Author

  “Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.” - Goethe

  “With courage you will dare to take risks, have the strength to be compassionate, and the wisdom to be humble. Courage is the foundation of integrity.” - Keshavan Nair, Author – Gandhi Biographer

  “To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.” - Anatole France, Poet

  “Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” - T. S. Eliot, Author

  “Some people have thousands of reasons why they cannot do what they want to, when all they need is one reason why they can.” Willis R. Whitney, American Chemist

  “For every failure, there’s an alternative course of action. You just have to find it. When you come to a roadblock, take a detour.” - Mary Kay Ash, Entrepreneur

  “Whether you think you can or you can’t, you are usually right.” -Henry Ford

 “If we did all the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves” -Thomas Edison

  “There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

  “We must all suffer one of two things: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret or disappointment.” Jim Rohn

  “I demolish my bridges behind me… then there is no choice but to move forward.” — Fridtjof Nansen

  “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” — Alan Kay

  “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” — Michelangelo

  “Not everyone who chased the zebra caught it, but he who caught it chased it.” — South African proverb

 “The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” — Walt Disney

  “In my mind, I’ve always been an A-list Hollywood superstar. Y’all just didn’t know yet.” — Will Smith

  “Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If it’s original, you’ll have to ram it down their throats.” — Howard Aiken

  “I couldn’t wait for success, so I went ahead without it.” — Jonathan Winters

  “It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.” — Albert Einstein

  “There is no elevator to success. You have to take the stairs.” — Unknown

  “It’s not what you are that holds you back. It’s what you think you’re not.”

- Denis Waitley

  “The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.”

- John F. Kennedy

  “Coming home from very lonely places, all of us go a little mad: whether from great personal success, or just an all-night drive, we are the sole survivors of a world no one else has ever seen.” - John le Carre

  This one came from a fortune cookie, but it sure is poignant: “Affirm it, visualize it, believe it, and it will actualize itself”  (And if you’re curious, the “Learn Chinese” word on the back is Mian, meaning Inside.)

   “Think it, write it, act on it, stick to the process; count your wins or losses and repeat the process.” This is the whole duty of an entrepreneur. – Ajaero Tony Martins

  “All our dreams can come true – if we have the courage to pursue them.” – Walt Disney

  “There comes a time in every man’s life, and I’ve had plenty of them.” Casey Stengel

  “Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve!” –Napoleon Hill

  “A successful person is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him.” – David Brinkley

  “I demolish my bridges behind me… then there is no choice but to move forward.” — Fridtjof Nansen

  “I celebrate failure – it can temper your character and pave the way for great achievement” -    Kamran Elahian, Serial Entrepreneur

 “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.” - Warren Buffett

  “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” — Alan Kay

  “Be like a postage stamp. Stick to it until you get there.” – Bob Proctor

  “A successful person is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him.” – David Brinkley

 “People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing.”  - Dale Carnegie

 “Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.” -Henry Ford

  “Try not to become a man of success but a man of value.” -Albert Einstein

 “Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not.” - George Bernard Shaw

  “Watch, listen, and learn. You cannot know it all yourself. Anyone who thinks they do is destined for mediocrity.” – Donald Trump

  “I do not fear failure. I only fear the “slowing up” of the engine inside of me which is pounding, saying, “Keep going, someone must be on top, why not you?”” -General Patton

  “The brave may not live forever, but the cautious do not live at all!” – Richard Branson

  “I believe you can train yourself to become a positive thinker, but you must cultivate a desire to develop the skill of setting personal worthy and realistic goals. I am so thoroughly convinced that if we don’t set goals in our life and learn how to master the technique of living to reach our goals, we can reach a ripe old age and look back on our life only to see that we reached but a small part of our full potential. When you learn to master the principle of setting a goal, you will then be able to make a great difference in the results you attain in this life.” -M. Russell Ballard

  “Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it’s yours.”-  Ayn Rand

  “Quality is the best business plan.” -John Lasseter (Pixar Animation Studios Inc.)

  “The critical ingredient is getting off your butt and doing something. It’s as simple as that. A lot of people have ideas, but there are few who decide to do something about them now. Not tomorrow. Not next week. But today. The true entrepreneur is a doer, not a dreamer.”

- Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari and Chuck E. Cheese’s

  “Innovation is the specific tool of entrepreneurs, the means by which they exploit change as an opportunity for a different business or a different service. It is capable of being presented as a discipline, capable of being learned, capable of being practiced. Entrepreneurs need to search purposefully for the sources of innovation, the changes and their symptoms that indicate opportunities for successful innovation. And they need to know and to apply the principles of successful innovation.”

- Peter F. Drucker, “The Father of Modern Management”

  “BE the change you want to see in the world” - Mahatma Gandhi

  “When you’re born the world rejoice, while you cry. Live life in such a way that when you die the world cry, while you rejoice” – Robin Sharma

  “Your life is your story, what kind of character are you going to be?” - David Archuleta

  “Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself”  - William Faulkner

  “If you believe you can, you probably can. If you believe you won’t, you most assuredly won’t. Belief is the ignition switch that gets you off the launching pad.”  - Denis Waitley

  “Never doubt that a small group of committed people can CHANGE THE WORLD. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has” – Margaret Mead

  “They who laugh at others with dreams have to look at themselves and realize they laugh because they’re too scared to try” -Louie Ortega

  “The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotion, spends himself in a worthy cause; who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who have never tasted victory or defeat.” - Theodore Roosevelt

Mel Feller, MPA, MHR, is a well-known real estate, business consultant, personal development consultant and speaker, specializing in performance, productivity, and profits. Mel is the President/Founder of Mel Feller Seminars with Coaching For Success 360, Inc. and Mel Feller Coaching, a real estate and business specific coaching company. His three books for real estate professionals are systems on how to become an exceptional sales performer. His four books in Business and Government Grants are ways to leverage and increase your business Success in both time and money! His book on Personal Development “Lies that Will Sabotage Your Success”. Mel Feller is in Texas and In Utah.  Currently an MBA Candidate.

bubble bubble toil and trouble / i heard rumors that [ lily evans ] is part of [ the order ] ! [ she ] is/are [ a cis woman ] and [ twenty ] ! they are often mistaken for [ ludovica martino ] and known to be [ assertive and overemotional ] ! i wonder if they’ll survive the war.

LINKS: pinboard, stats page CHARACTER PARALLELS:  lois lane ( dc ), jane sloan ( the bold type ), katarina stratford ( 10 things i hate about you ), leslie knope ( parks and rec ), donna pinciotti ( that 70s show ), sam ( the perks of being a wallflower ), trish walker ( jessica jones ).

HISTORY

lily is born late january, 1960, as the second child to jonathan and miranda evans, a pair of muggles who have found the perfect balance between standing out and being ordinary. she grows up running after ( and sometimes in front of ) her sister, petunia, her best friend for most of her youth. her father works as a bank teller and – like many – hates his job. her mother is a stay at home mum, who mostly spends her free time tending to the family’s garden — their pride and joy.

lily has many memories of that garden. plucking flowers for her teachers, playing hide and seek, digging through the dirt with her tiny fingers, having barbecue’s and picknicks, laughing at her father’s deep hum of a voice as he complains about customers, crying in her mother’s arms when she scuffed her knees.

so life was ordinary and happy and simple. sure, lily was able to make flowers grow with a touch of her fingers if she concentrated deeply and caused small explosions when she raged ( which was often — lily was an energetic child, but an explosive one, too ). they explained it away with laughter, and kept on living. and then there was severus, whom she met when she was nine, who explained it all.

lily was a witch, and she loved it. she didn’t quite understand it, but she loved it. her parents seemed enthusiastic enough, too, even if they didn’t start believing it until a witch showed up on their doorstep. severus was a new friend, someone who’d help her brave this new world. and petunia … petunia was withering away from her life, slowly taking steps back and back until things seemed beyond repair.

going to hogwarts was confusing, at first. when she stepped on that train, something between her and petunia was changed forever, and lily shed a few tears before she met up with severus. once arrived, she was sorted in gryffindor in a matter of seconds. honestly, i don’t know what to say about hogwarts what wasn’t stated in canon — lily was a great student?? loved learning, had natural skills, was charming, etc. she wasn’t perfect, of course — she was prone to starting debates in class, to going on tangents, cursed quickly and easily and very … creatively

what i’m trying to say is she definitely wasn’t a goody two shoes?? yes, she cared about her education, but no, she was no stickler to the rules. lily was and is a firecracker, someone with fire, and there were plenty of times when she chose to disregard rules, or to go against what was asked for her. not out of spite or just because, always for a good reason, but still. also got into plenty of fights, mostly verbal, mostly with purists, but also with plenty of other people.

lily excelled in charms and potions, specifically. was a big fan of herbology as well, and transfiguration merely bc of mcgonagall.

and then, things seemed to shift. severus called her a mudblood. he was the only person who’d been part of her life before and during hogwarts, and now she couldn’t look at him any more without feeling nauseous. tensions were rising all around her, too. lily started wearing her blood status as a badge of pride even more than before. she became unforgiving and angry and determined to see change. she worked hard in her classes and worked hard on her friendships and tried not to combust with her rage.

and she somehow fell for james potter too, what a fucking tool. both of them. ugh. such a sappy story!!! but yes. they became a thing, and i stan.

lily graduated and had no clue where to go, until it dawned on her — her voice, her anger, her need to find truth: she could use that all. screw having a particularly magical job; lily applied at up and coming news site and magazine lumos and started interning there the summer after graduation. lily as a journalist is very important to me. her whole need for truth is in all honesty the most important thing about her so excuse me as i am about to go on a RANT.

i mean, lily herself is honest. brutally so. she can’t lie, either, and barely ever sees cause to. it’s partly just nature, but also a bit of nurture, i think. her sister, for example, so caught up in her lies and her wish for perfection seems altogether untrue because of it. severus, who hid true thoughts from her. her father, who never told his customers how annoyed he truly was. so many blood purists in the world, keeping their views carefully quiet. this war is based on lies. the world wizards live in is based on lies, and lily hates it. she seeks truth, always has, always will. it’s part curiosity, part anger.

her job as a journalist allows her to seek truth. it also allows her to cover the war, to talk about it, to hold interviews and seek out sources, to think of good questions, to be critical and empathetic and clever. all things lily likes and loves and wants to do.

lily also joined the order. i mean, what other option was there to fight? her family, her friends, she herself — everyone was in danger because of this damn war. there was no bone in her body that thought about sitting still, and when she was approached about the order, she didn’t think twice before saying yes. there is no way that lily ever accept the reality these death eaters want. no way. she’ll die before she sees that happen.

where her and james are at is still something i’m discussing with liz, but they’re def happily in love! lily is about to get pregnant too and she’s going to freak

CURRENTLY & PERSONALITY

okay so i know i’ve mentioned lily’s anger a lot, and i think that’s an important thing to talk about? lily is a very feeling person. she’s compassionate and kind and empathetic. she cares about others, and does so easily. she does so deeply. and she feels deeply too, always has. she cries easily, laughs easily, rages easily. combine those two things and the fact that there’s a war going on that’s fueled by such sickening bigotry … well, of course she’s fucking angry. her anger comes from her kindness, it comes from her compassion and her warmth. her motivation isn’t her anger, per se — it’s her wish to see the world different, to see it be good, but her anger is a huge drive.

lily loves muggle shit so much. she came into the lumos office and dropped a whole lot of muggle office supplies on her desk and said: “if i cant work on paper then im walking” and they were like … dude its ok lol wtf. she’s kind of very extra abt it but in this current economy she’s so set on being PROUD of being a muggleborn and she just loves muggle stuff too — i mean, wizarding fashion is Nothing compared to mom jeans and plaid shirts??? she loves muggle music too, especially indiepop and classic rock and just everything by Cool Ladies.

was raised catholic and still practices it but in a v liberal and modern way because she has seen a lot that with the more traditional views. so yeah, her thoughts on religion and especially the way it’s practised have shifted a lot. she still prays, goes to church every now and then ( but definitely not ever sunday ) and sticks with it, even if it’s hard to cling to faith when the world looks the way it does.

cannot cook to save her life, help her

a big  fan of white wine and rose, lolol. will also drink loads of beer if the occasion calls for it. a fun drunk, but also a mama bird when drunk, holding back your hair and drying your tears.

honestly lily is slightly dramatic, full of rage and a downright good person. such a good friend, holy shit. so blunt. so extra. so loving. dances and fights through life. laughs wildly and loudly. gives great hugs. supports blanket forts, always. loves loves loves.

The Monday Interview: Mark Gatiss - Top of the League

The Monday Interview: Mark Gatiss - Top of the League 

Published: 19:14 Updated: 19:27 Sunday 16 November 2008

ALTHOUGH it's bad form to ogle someone else's husband, I can't help admiring Mark Gatiss's rather sexy legs. They seem to stretch to his neck, meeting a scruffy beard that adds a raffish edge to his air of sexual devilry. 

This tastiness is a far cry from the grotesques he's so often portrayed, from his days as a member of The League of Gentlemen, to frizzy-haired, gap-toothed Glen Bulb of Nighty Night, and Doctor Who's maniacal Dr Lazarus.

This dishiness is very on-message, since we're here talking about his third mainstream novel, Black Butterfly, starring charismatic spy extraordinaire Lucifer Box, whose adventures in bisexuality are every bit as breathtaking as his undercover work for monarch and country. Each Box novel visits a different era, allowing Gatiss to pay homage to some of his favourite authors. The Vesuvius Club, set in the early 1900s, evoked Conan Doyle. The Devil in Amber found Box battling Nazis and Stalinists, and was Gatiss's homage to Dennis Wheatley and John Buchan. Preparing for Black Butterfly, set in 1953, heimmersedhimself in Ian Fleming and contemplated the machinations of John le Carr's spies. But for all these acknowledged influences, Lucifer Box is a spy like no other. Gatiss explains: "I am a gay man who loves James Bond films and snooker – all kinds of working-class pursuits. I didn't set out to deliberately respond to themasculinity. I'mfascinatedthat somanyspieswere or are gay,but I also like the idea, which le Carr showed, that the real job is much more prosaic." Surely a great spy would be ruthless enough to shag anything? "Yes, and also back in the day, the natural people to approach were people who were already lying about themselves.When homosexuality was illegal these people already had a different identity. What's interesting is that simultaneously to recruiting known homosexuals, they were also perceived as a security risk, precisely because of the blackmail thing.The recruiters must have known and actually relied on it, but it was always a worry." "Black Butterfly" is the French nickname for depression, but here it's also the name of a nefarious drug that imbues people with a euphoric sense of infallibility – before propelling them to grisly ends.When Box is poisoned he believes that he's young again – and behaves accordingly – until the antidote is administered by the object of his affections, a dishy CIA operative called Kingdom Kum. With a respectful nod to JaneMarple, I suggest there must be special challenges in writing about a geriatric spy. "I've never been specific, but he's obviously in his late seventies. I thought the thing to do was mention every now and then how much it hurts (to leap about], but if you keep going on about it then readers stop wanting to go on the journey. You have to believe he's still in good shape even though he's very old. "I was thinking about whether therewouldbeany sex scenes and how to handle it; itmademethink that maybe I couldgetawaywith this idea of thedrugmaking him young again. "The bit when he's on the drug was my favourite part to write. I carried a notebook around and wrote in a stream of consciousness way. I found it really liberating. I'd open my eyes on a beach – what did I see? What colour are my eyelids when closed with the sun on them? I was filming in Morocco and noticed a beetle that was like a sculpture rolling down the dunes. I was trying to create very vivid snapshots." Proving that the lines between life and art blur,whilewritingBlack Butterflyhewas sent theDoctorWhoscriptthat foundhimplaying a man in search of eternal youth. "I thought, 'Oh, there's a message here,'" he jokes. At 42, he must be increasingly aware of his ownageing? "I'vebeenhavingthose thoughts since Iwas 20! Evenwhen Iwas a childI always wanted to be older. I realised just in time that it's a mistake and to enjoy my youth while I hadit. If Imeetsomeonearound20,who's a bit like I was, I want to say, 'Get out! Have fun.' Becauseyourknees start togo,myeyes aregoing. Ithappens overnight. In the car, trying to read the A-Z, I'msuddenly like my dad!" He also says he had a youthful morbid streak: "Mymumused to say I had an old soul. As long as I can remember Iwas looking backwards. I remember my mumorganised a singalong for pensioners in about 1970, and I used to love singing the old Blitz songs." He smiles. "They are called Emos now, and before that they were Goths. They didn't have a name for it when I was one, but I was that black-wearing teenager and yes, I wore a little eyeliner. I was really into horror. On the less negative side, I was fascinated by the idea that peoplehadbeenhere beforeme. Ihave a print Julia Davis (the writer and star of Nighty Night] gave me of (my neighbourhood] around the time my house was built, in the 1760s, and it has cows on it, yet it's recognisably the same street. I love that idea of the changes." This historical bent dovetails nicely with his delight in wordplay. The Box novels are peppered with silly names, which often occur to him in the bath, a site he finds conducive to deep thinking. Thus Lucifer's sister is Pandora Box, and his Black Butterfly nemesis, Melissa ffawthawte, is affiliated with nefarious baddies A.C.R.O.N.I.M. My own favourite is the "cadre of psychoanalysts-cum-mercenaries known as the Jung Turks".

Both times we've met, Gatiss has patiently explainedthat itonly looks as thoughheworks night and day, but I'msure you'll agree his output is impressive. In addition to the novel, he recentlywrote (andappearedin) an episode of Poirot, filmed the upcoming TV programme Purves & Pekkala, written and directed by Annie Griffinandfilmedhere in Scotland,and the sitcom Clone, which stars Jonathan Pryce. He's busy writing episodes of the next full season of Doctor Who, for an as yet un-cast (or so he says) Doctor.Knowinghowmuch he coveted the role, andthat he's close friendswith all involved, I try teasing an indiscretion out of him, but Gatiss remains frustratingly closedmouthed. "I haven't a clue. I found David's announcement incredibly moving. I knew he was going, but I love the fact he did it in the interval, dressed as Hamlet, and he was accepting the award, but he had to find the moment to tell everyone. He's going at the top of his game which is always the best and themost difficult thing to do, because I know he loves it." Is there a Hamlet, a Lear, or another classic role he longs to play? Without hesitation, he says, "Oh yes, Richard II. It's a very underrated play, a fabulous part – beautiful. He was a very weak king but there's this fantastic poetry about his desire to stay on the throne despite being incredibly compromised. It has that wonderful line, 'I have wasted time and now doth time waste me.' I'd like to do that." Amidall this activity, Gatiss foundtime, last spring, to get married. He and Ian have been together for nearly a decade, so I wonder if marriage changed their relationship at all. "I feel subtly different," he says. "I don't know what it is, but it's nicer. It was a lovely, very moving day. I was most moved by the notion of our families coming together. My brother said it's the best wedding he's ever beento. Itwasamazing to think that our families were so completely at ease with the whole idea of a gay wedding. And then there was the incredible irony that it took place in Middle Temple underneath a portrait of Sir Edward Carson, the man who prosecuted Oscar Wilde. So when I did my little speech the first thing I did was flick him two fingers. 'This one's for Oscar.'"

Black Butterfly is out now from Simon &Schuster (15).Mark willbein conversation about his work on 18 November at 6:30pm at Waterstone's (Sauchiehall Street) in Glasgow, 0141 332 9105; 19 November at 7pm at Waterstone's (Union Bridge) in Aberdeen, 01224592440; 20 November at 6pm at Waterstone's (West End) in Edinburgh, 0131 226 2666. For more details, contact the stores or log on to: www.simonsays.co.uk

BACKGROUND A FEW things that might surprise you about Mark Gatiss: • The League of Gentlemen won the 1997 Perrier Award for comedy, the first sketch group to win since the awards were inaugurated in 1981. • A massive fan of the show, Gatiss started writing Doctor Who novels (four to date) when he was a penniless actor. • Growing up in County Durham, he lived opposite a psychiatric hospital, where both his parents worked and where he toiled as a gardener during his first year at college. He and Ian are the devoted 'parents' of Bunsen, a Labrador retriever. • He's starred opposite Julia Davis twice –as Glen Bulb in Nighty Night, and again as Johnnie Cradock in Fear of Fanny. • In 2003 he was the script editor for eight episodes of Little Britain. • As French poet Louis Aragon, he played opposite Ewan Bremner's Salvador Dali in Surrealissimo: The Trial of Salvador Dali. The cast list included Stephen Fry (Andre Breton), Vic Reeves (Paul Eluard) and both members of The Mighty Boosh! Read more at: https://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/the-monday-interview-mark-gatiss-top-of-the-league-1-1147037

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Australia v india: boxing day take a look at, day 3 - as it took place

stumps on day three - india fifty four-5 (lead by way of 346) jonathan howcroft

all sport is abnormal on some degree, however cricket is greater odd than maximum, a truth borne out all through an amazing day’s play in melbourne. Following  days of ponderous action on a dull surface the boxing day take a look at exploded into existence with 15 wickets falling in three madcap classes. Jasprit bumrah become the superstar of the primary , obliterating australia’s first innings with figures of 6/33. Inside that there had been multiple sizzling deliveries (if you haven’t seen his slower ball to shaun marsh yet you must rectify that immediately) but within the main he profited from some other show of terrible nice australian batting. No person in a green helmet passed 22 regardless of little considerable difference within the pitch. A lead of 289 runs turned into no longer sufficient to persuade virat kohli to implement the follow on early in the very last session, and at 28-0 in india’s 2nd innings his side have been gambolling away with out a care within the world. However then out of nowhere five wickets fell in a flash, 4 to pat cummins, three of them catches behind square on the leg-facet, two of them - che pujara and kohli - in near equal style within the identical over. It became chaotic and compelling. Even as this useless cat jump lifted spirits in bay 13 it's far not going to have any impact on the overall result. India will be bowled out or declare sooner or later day after today, leaving them at least a day to take ten australian wickets, or locate themselves at the receiving quit of a file run-chase, which seems not likely given the proof of nowadays. Discover what occurs right here with adam, geoff and that i. Till then, thank you on your organization. Jasprit bumrah and virat kohli have fun india’s strong position inside the boxing day check. Photo: asanka brendon ratnayake/ap

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“hello jonathan,” hello gopal sankaranarayanan. “i find it splendid for kohli to pick to bat once more whilst even ponting said it'd be hard to get 20 aussie wickets and win the match after india’s slow batting rate. , it would had been ideal to take the new ball and get a few wickets via near of play. Plus, an innings defeat would have a demoralising effect at the hosts. If australia pull off an not likely win after this, kohli will have to hand in his captaincy. I gravely doubt dhoni might have executed this.”

1. 58am est01:58

twenty seventh over: india fifty four-five (agarwal 28, pant 6) josh hazlewood bowls the very last over of the day and it begins with bouncer after bouncer at pant. The left-hander nearly gloves the primary, evades the second one, then shovels the 0. 33 to the quality-leg boundary. The period is fuller thereafter with pant nurdling a single into the on-side and agarwal on the crease for a leg-bye. A preposterous day of test cricket comes to a close. 1. 54am est01:54

26th over: india 48-five (agarwal 28, pant 1) lots of chat from tim paine to rishabh pant at some stage in this lyon over. Count on to peer plenty of stories about it on social media in a be counted of seconds. Something about encouraging the huge-hitter to enroll in the hobart hurricanes, babysitting, and other examples of banter. “liquid gold,” in step with james brayshaw. It nearly has the desired impact too. Pant blocks five lyon deliveries but launching at the final, squirting a mistimed power into the offside. 1. 49am est01:49

twenty fifth over: india forty seven-five (agarwal 28, pant 0) hazlewood has eased into his paintings after a disappointing start, and a degree of his self belief is more than one well-directed brief balls that agarwal does well to live to tell the tale. He evades the primary then wears the second on his gloves, prompting a visit from the physio.

1. 45am est01:forty five

twenty fourth over: india 47-five (agarwal 28, pant zero) lyon remains wicketless however he has been the accomplice bowler for both cummins and hazlewood, building pressure, maintaining india on their toes with a spell of very clever off-spin. 1. 42am est01:42

twenty third over: india forty four-5 (agarwal 25, pant zero) this match maintains to profession into absurd territory. Meanwhile here are two reviews without judgement:

“as i pay attention to shane warne doing his statement, i’m getting a actual feel of why the person became one of the all-time greats to play the sport,” emails sankaran krishna. “his optimism is relentless, his intuition is to assault - assault and attack, and it’s frankly fantastic to listen the man simply consider that the aussies can nevertheless win this one. What’s extra, his damn optimism truly instills fear within the opponent. Actually pretty tremendous,”

cummins is changed via hazlewood and the change works nearly without delay. Just brief of a great duration outside off stump - standard hazlewood areas - and rohit can’t face up to an ambitious cut shot regardless of the ball cramping him up. The final results is a wholesome area that shaun marsh clutches to his chest at first slip. What a day. Updated at 1. 44am est

1. 34am est01:34

twenty second over: india 44-four (agarwal 25, rohit 5) lyon has now perhaps overtaken cummins as australia’s finest risk. He’s flighting the ball menacingly into the footmarks outdoor rohit’s off stump and scary a series of uncomfortable inner edges and lbw appeals. Bannerman-watch replace from ian forth: “agarwal is behind at the bannerman duckworth-lewis. When india get to 50, his par bd-l is 34.”

1. 31am est01:31

twenty first over: india 43-four (agarwal 25, rohit 4) a rare boundary for india, agarwal using tender arms to manual cummins to third-guy off a thick outside edge. Seven overs or half an hour closing in this ridiculous day. 1. 27am est01:27

twentieth over: india 37-4 (agarwal 19, rohit 4) lyon has performed the wingman function for cummins and yet again he continues india on their toes with a teasing over. 1. 24am est01:24

19th over: india 35-four (agarwal 18, rohit three) cummins maintains to charge in, mixing up his lengths, the quick balls maintaining india’s batsmen at the crease, the fuller ones concentrated on the pads. Agarwal survives a loud lbw call, which is ideal news for fanatics of bannerman-watch. 1. 18am est01:18

18th over: india 34-four (agarwal 18, rohit 2) panic is spreading like a fever around the indian team. You wouldn’t think that they had a 326 run lead. The latest display of mayhem is a close to run out, agarwal making his ground following rohit’s annoying call however he would have perished with an immediate hit. 1. 15am est01:15

seventeenth over: india 33-four (agarwal 18, rohit 1) fantastic amusement. After the attrition of days one and  day 3 has brought in spades. 1. 13am est01:thirteen

sixteen. 2 over: india 33-four (agarwal 18, rohit 1) no hat-trick for cummins, however he wasn’t a ways off! Once more it’s an ordinary delivery on an indian batsman’s hip however this time rohit middles it past the dive of harris at leg gully. Some thing bizarre has gripped the mcg in the last few minutes. Updated at 1. 20am est

1. 11am est01:eleven wicket! Rahane c paine b cummins 1 (india 32-4)

whaaaaaaaattttttt!!!??? Cummins is on a hat-trick! Dross ball, leaking down the leg-facet, but rahane plays an ungainly sort-of-pull that consequences in a glove in the back of the wicket that paine gobbles up without problems. The mcg is bouncing. It’s not game on although, is it? 1. 08am est01:08

sixteenth over: india 32-3 (agarwal 18, rahane 1) this flurry of wickets may not depend a wonderful deal inside the context of the healthy, but they're simply praise for pat cummins who has bowled beautifully all series, especially in the first innings here where he toiled largely in vain. 1. 05am est01:05 wicket! Kohli c harris b cummins 0 (india 28-3)

what is going on!!? Cummins has kohli for a duck, in precisely the equal fashion as he disregarded pujara. That is bizarre. India’s  most fulfilling batsmen perishing inside the same over, each flicking harmless deliveries directly to the unconventionally located fielder at the back of square on the leg side. Barmy. Up to date at 1. 07am est

12. 58am est00:fifty eight wicket! Pujara c harris b cummins 0 (india 28-2)

the comeback keeps! Cummins once more, this time sending down a unprecedented fuller transport that pujara shovels to the ready harris at shortish backward square leg. Up to date at 12. 59am est

12. 55am est00:fifty five

14th over: india 28-1 (agarwal 15, pujara 0) lyon is bowling properly however with out a praise, coming close to inducing a bat-pad danger from agarwal and additionally pinning him at the lower back foot lbw. Brilliant maiden over. Olly’s returned with some chirp. “i don’t suggest to dominate lawsuits but i will’t sleep so am following the motion. I desired to ask whether or not the aussie government are able to deter the local seagulls due to the proliferation of ducks?”. Photographs fired. 12. 53am est00:fifty three

13th over: india 28-1 (agarwal 15, pujara zero) “it stays an abiding mystery that australia can be inside the maximum parlous state either aspect of an ashes down below and england in superb form, however, for the six weeks of the ashes aussie bowlers who've been undeserving or unselectable for five or ten years hit unparalleled veins of form (harris, cummins, johnson) even as international elegance poms (pietersen, trott, trescothick, vaughan, flintoff, thorpe, jones, gough, stokes, swann, prior etc and many others) find novel and/or ridiculous strategies to render themselves

12. 52am est00:fifty two wicket! Vihari c khawaja b cummins 13 (india 28-1)

cummins adopts a brief-ball approach to vihari and in the end it can pay dividends, the indian opener failing to address a much from unplayable transport with the ball kissing the shoulder of the bat and looping to khawaja inside the gully. Updated at 12. 56am est

12. 47am est00:forty seven

12th over: india 28-zero (vihari thirteen, agarwal 15) ooh, agarwal receives away with one, scooping an unsightly slog just over short midwicket regardless of aiming to ship the ball wristily through the covers. Lyon australia’s maximum dangerous bowler so far. 12. 44am est00:44

eleventh over: india 26-0 (vihari 12, agarwal 14) the mcg has completed a excellent process of ridding the area of seagulls (specially compared to aami park over the road which is infested with the aid of the blighters on a nightly basis) but one interrupts complaints at some stage in pat cummins’ first over of the innings. Yeah, we’ve reached that factor inside the match in which avian hobby is more exciting than the cricket. India lead by using 318 with ten second wickets in hand. 12. 39am est00:39

10th over: india 24-zero (vihari eleven, agarwal 13) every other unremarkable hazlewood over sees the rating develop by way of one run. 17 overs left today, eighty mins final wherein to bowl them. Olly, an england fan, is licking his lips at australia’s travails on the mcg. “at the same time as numerous us are off work for some days can we release some sort of collective attempt to invent a time device in order that we are able to pass back (or is it ahead) and play the ashes now rather than remaining 12 months. India are top, top magnificence however playing this bunch of regular aussies i suppose we'd keep away from a whitewash.” i do enjoy how splendidly english the optimism is - heading off a whitewash being the summit of ambition. 12. 35am est00:35

ninth over: india 23-zero (vihari 10, agarwal thirteen) lyon’s promising opening over did not go disregarded through agarwal who welcomes the australian spinner’s 2d effort by means of lofting a force over mid-on for 4. The sector is at once shuffled to a greater protecting formation and agarwal lifeless bats the remainder of the over. 12. 31am est00:31

8th over: india 19-zero (vihari 10, agarwal 9) hazlewood has tightened his line from outdoor off to stump-to-stump. It’s a miles more productive method, mainly with the abnormal one keeping low and forcing anxious protecting jabs. 12. 27am est00:27

seventh over: india 19-0 (vihari 10, agarwal nine) lyon is invited to discover how stiff his bowling action is following his workload of previous days, and he responds superbly, finding prodigious leap and no little flip, befuddling each openers in a promising over. 12. 24am est00:24

sixth over: india 18-0 (vihari nine, agarwal 9) simply the single from a recurring hazlewood over.

“jonathan,” sure, paul blundell? “a) could we simply drop alyssa healy and meg lanning within the top order and notice how we cross? B) why is all and sundry abruptly obsessed with the aid of maxwell? Will we simply want every other shaun marsh to hate?”. On factor a, i wouldn’t endorse that approach, but i might suggest as a state all and sundry focussing more attention at the girls’s sport so that the mood of depression is rebalanced. The wbbl that’s on right now, for example, has been tremendous to look at. The latest women’s global t20 became fantastic. As for b, talking handiest for myself, i think maxwell has a expertise ceiling better than most of his friends and while he’s been given the possibility to recognition on red ball cricket within the past he has delivered. Given guide and a clean role i think he could be a successful take a look at cricketer. Unluckily his cost in white ball cricket has continually disrupted his first-class recreation, an impediment genuinely now not helped by being messed around with the aid of a sequence of selectors and coaches. 12. 19am est00:19

fifth over: india 17-zero (vihari eight, agarwal nine) starc does hit his straps at the least once this over, testing agarwal with a tidy bouncer. Round that the information isn’t so good. Vihari nudging three off his hip, agarwal four off his pads. 12. 15am est00:15

4th over: india 10-zero (vihari 5, agarwal 5) no alarms but for india with each openers searching confident at the crease and australia struggling to put the ball in the right areas constantly. That is a dispiriting little session for the aussie quicks. 12. 11am est00:eleven

third over: india 8-0 (vihari four, agarwal four) starc shifts across the wicket and is straight away extra threatening angling the ball into vihari’s frame. Maiden over. 12. 07am est00:07

second over: india 8-0 (vihari 4, agarwal 4) hazlewood’s radar is likewise skewiff in his beginning over and he also is going for 4, this one much a greater appealing attempt with agarwal striding to fulfill the pitch of the ball and lightly stroking an elegant boundary through greater cover. I without a doubt hope now not.

SIMON DONNELLY has revealed Celtic had to stop Rangers from winning 10 in a row – to honour the Lisbon Lions!

The former Hoops striker played his part in Wim Jansen’s side making certain their Ibrox rivals did not go double figures in a sequence that would have overshadowed the achievements of Jock Stein’s great team from 1966 to 1974.

Donnelly lined up alongside Henrik Larsson when they faced St Johnstone exactly 22 years ago at Parkhead. The Bhoys went into the fraught encounter in the knowledge a triumph would make certain of the Scottish crown while derailing Walter Smith’s side at the same time.

As the Celts lined up against the Perth visitors, the Govan club were preparing to take on Dundee United at Tannadice.

Donnelly, who was only 24 at the time, recalled the momentous occasion as he told the Daily Record: “It’s up there with the most important dates and achievements in the club’s history. To preserve the Lions’ nine in a row was massive.

“If Rangers had got 10, they could have kicked on and won far more. It was a really important season.”

The week before the match against St Johnstone, Jansen, in his only season in the Parkhead dug-out, saw his players blow the opportunity of sealing the flag against during a nerve-riddled display at East End Park.

DONNELLY DYNAMITE…Celtic striker Simon Donnelly fires the Hoops into the lead against the Fifers.

Donnelly fired the Hoops into a first-half lead, but, with the clock ticking down, Craig Faulconbridge looped a header over the helpless Jonathan Gould for the leveller. The visitors toiled their way through the remaining seven minutes to set up a last-day showdown.

The ex-Scotland international hitman continued: “I remember the expectation of the Dunfermline game. It was the first time we had the league in our control, after Kilmarnock had won at Ibrox on the Saturday.

“We played the next day and every Celtic fan expected us to go there and win the league. That didn’t pan out and I remember the disappointment and nerves kicking in on the bus on the way back.

“We knew we’d have to wait until the following Saturday to achieve it. We went out for a Chinese and a few beers on the Tuesday, as we did every week when we had the Wednesday off. We just decided to treat it like any other week.

“If that had happened now with people having camera phones and stuff, we’d probably have got dog’s abuse.

“We came through that unscathed, had the next day off then worked hard on the Thursday and Friday.”

SO CLOSE…Dunfermline keeper Ian Westwater takes the ball off the toes of Henrik Larsson with Marc Reiper and Simon Donnelly watching.

On the day of the flag decider, Donnelly added: “Henrik scored early on. Having got in front early the normal pattern of play would be that we’d go on and batter St Johnstone 3-0 or 4-0 because an early goal usually killed teams off. That’s not how it panned out.

“They were dogged and we couldn’t get that second goal to kill them off. They also had a real chance when the ball was bouncing about our penalty box, but they couldn’t stick it away.

“You could sense the tension going into the second-half. I watched it back last week and I could see the nerves coming into my play.

“I lost a couple of passes and I ended up getting hooked for Harald Brattbakk which in hindsight was the best thing!

“Everybody knew Rangers were getting the result they needed at Tannadice and, at 1-0, we were one mistake or a St Johnstone screamer away from losing.

“We’d been over that course the week before, being 10 or 15 minutes from winning it when Craig Faulconbridge scored for Dunfermline. That was playing on everybody’s mind and the play was scrappy. It wasn’t a good spectacle.

“But then we got the second goal and the main emotion was relief. I was on the bench by then and you just become a fan because you can’t influence anything on the pitch.

THREE CHEERS…Darren Jackson and Simon Donnelly celebrate the title triumph with David Hannah about to join in.

“We worked it down the right, Jackie McNamara put the ball in and Harald slotted it home. Watching it the other day, it brought back the goosebumps.

“As soon as that goal went in that was it for me. We weren’t going to concede two goals in the time that was left.

“It was very much a squad effort and some guys didn’t play a lot of games but still played their part. I remember eight or nine of them in the tunnel area, bouncing about and singing, just before the final whistle. Guys like Darren Jackson, Tosh McKinlay and David Hannah were there.

“At the end of the game we were taken back inside and were celebrating in the dressing room.

“John Higgins, who had been parading the world snooker trophy at half-time, was pushed into the dressing room. All the Scottish boys welcomed him with open arms and the foreign lads were thinking: ‘Who’s this guy?’

“We went into the players lounge to see our families for a couple of minutes before going back out to lift the trophy.”

ALL GOOD THINGS COME TO THOSE WHO WAIT…

CQN would like to thank our readers for their patience in the interruption to the launch of Alex Gordon’s latest Celtic book, ‘Fifty Flags’, which was due to be published in March.

Unfortunately, production of the tome, which thoroughly examines the glorious half-century of seasons in which the Parkhead men were crowned Scotland champions, came to an unfortunate halt due to the coronavirus pandemic lockdown.

The support for ‘Fifty Flags’ has been overwhelming and author Alex said: “The response to the book has been utterly astonishing and I can only say how totally grateful I am to CQN readers for their backing. I can only hope it will be worth the wait.

“We are depending on the printers letting us know when the run will commence and we are in their hands at the moment. It will be published this year and CQN will keep the readers up to date. Thanks for your patience, folks. It’s much appreciated. 

“Main thing, though, in these testing times is to take care and stay safe. See you all when we get the green light.”

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Investing Quotes

Official Website: Investing Quotes

  • A cell is a complex structure, with its investing membrane, nucleus, and nucleolus. – Charles Darwin • A constant in my approach to investing: You should think politically but unconventionally. – Kenneth Fisher • A sound banker, alas, is not one who foresees danger and avoids it, but one who, when he is ruined, is ruined in a conventional way along with his fellows, so that no one can really blame him. – John Maynard Keynes • A true luxury is a reward for investing in and developing a real asset. – Robert Kiyosaki • After all, the chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing and prospering in the world. – Calvin Coolidge • All intelligent investing is value investing – acquiring more that you are paying for. You must value the business in order to value the stock. – Charlie Munger • All sensible investing is value investing – Charlie Munger • An outstanding addition to the volumes written on value investing. Not only do the authors offer their own valuable insights but they have provided in one publication invaluable insights from some of the most accomplished professionals in the investment business. I would call this publication a must-read for any serious investor. – Leon G. Cooperman • And what I’m interested in is investing in people. – Arthur Rock • Anyone who is not investing now is missing a tremendous opportunity. – Carlos Slim • As long as you enjoy investing, you’ll be willing to do the homework and stay in the game. That’s why I try to make the show so entertaining, because if you aren’t interested, you’ll either miss the opportunity to make money in the market or not pay enough attention and end up losing your shirt. – Jim Cramer • At heart, “uncertainty” and “investing” are synonyms. – Benjamin Graham • At Microsoft, we’re investing heavily in security because we want customers to be able to trust their computing experiences, so they can realize the full benefits of the interconnected world we live in. – Steve Ballmer

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• Bankruptcies of governments have, on the whole, done less harm to mankind than their ability to raise loans. – R. H. Tawney • Being superficially different is the goal of so many of the products we see… rather than trying to innovate and genuinely taking the time, investing the resources and caring enough to try and make something better. – Jonathan Ive • Buffett’s uncommon urge to chronicle made him a unique character in American life, not only a great capitalist but the Great Explainer of American capitalism. He taught a generation how to think about business, and he showed that securities were not just tokens like the Monopoly flatiron, and that investing need not be a game of chance. It was also a logical, commonsensical enterprise, like the tangible businesses beneath. He stripped Wall Street of its mystery and rejoined it to Main Street — a mythical or disappearing place, perhaps, but one that is comprehensible to the ordinary American. – Roger Lowenstein • But when that information travels only to a privileged few, when it is used to profit at the expense of the investing public, when that information comes by way of favored access rather than by acumen, insight or diligence, we must ask, ‘Whose interest is really being served?’. – Arthur Levitt Jr • By investing at a discount, Benjamin Graham knew that he was unlikely to experience losses. – Seth Klarman • Chairman Priebus set out on an early and historic political outreach plan which called for investing resources early to build the RNC network well before Election Day. And although the elections are still eight months away, all indications are that the money has been well spent. Our message is getting out to the Hispanic, Asian and African American communities. If we can continue to implement this plan, we will be able to save the country from further policy damages at the hand of President Obama and the Democrats. – Matt Schlapp • China is doing lots of things right. It’s investing in education and R&D, it’s opening up, it’s more cosmopolitan than it’s ever been. I think it’s very likely that China will continue to explode economically and certainly become a superpower. – Amy Chua • Democrats believe we should renew our commitment to creating tax credits for hybrid vehicles, increasing fuel efficiency standards for cars, and investing in ethanol, biofuel, hydrogen fuel cell technology. – Rosa DeLauro • Do you know what investing for the long run but listening to market news everyday is like? It’s like a man walking up a big hill with a yo-yo and keeping his eyes fixed on the yo-yo instead of the hill. – Alan Abelson • Don’t limit investing to the financial world. Invest something of yourself, and you will be richly rewarded. – Charles R. Schwab • Ethanol reduces our dependence on foreign sources of oil and is an important weapon in the War on Terror. By investing in South Dakota’s ethanol producers, we will strengthen our energy security and create new jobs. – John Thune • For me it’s all about keeping things simple and feeling comfortable in what I am wearing. I prefer investing in classic well-tailored pieces. – Miranda Kerr • For me, being in front of a camera is a matter of practicing and refining your art. I think, if you’re telling a story worth telling, it’s worth investing the time into developing. – Danny Pino • For more than twenty years he [Blanchard] toiled on through the most fatiguing paths of literary composition, mostly in periodicals, often anonymously; pleasing and lightly instructing thousands, but gaining none of the prizes, whether of weighty reputation or popular renown, which more fortunate chances, or more pretending modes of investing talent, have given in our day to men of half his merits. – Samuel Laman Blanchard • Generally speaking, investing in yourself is the best thing you can do. Anything that improves your own talents; nobody can tax it or take it away from you. They can run up huge deficits and the dollar can become worth far less. You can have all kinds of things happen. But if you’ve got talent yourself, and you’ve maximized your talent, you’ve got a tremendous asset that can return ten-fold. – Warren Buffett • Growth and value investing are joined at the hip. – Warren Buffett • How many millionaires do you know who have become wealthy by investing in savings accounts? I rest my case. – Robert G. Allen • I am convinced that there is a need for high quality software, and the time will come when it will be recognized that it is worth investing effort in its development and in using a careful, structured approach based on safe, structured languages. – Niklaus Wirth • I am investing like a crazy person, mostly in internet start-ups. And I want to invest in Brazil as well, because I am Brazilian and that’s in my heart. – Eduardo Saverin • I am not criticizing investing in the stock market; I am an investor. – Grace Napolitano • I do a lot of media work, I’ve been investing and I’m involved with real estate. It’s totally different from what I had been doing but I find it challenging and fun. To be honest, I really don’t miss the track. I pretty well accomplished what I set out to do and it was time to move on. – Donovan Bailey • I find it more enjoyable investing time doing what pleases me, rather than wasting precious time attempting to please everyone else. – Greg Reid • I have learned things from the game. Much of my knowledge of locations in Britain and Europe comes not from school, but from away games or the sports pages, and hooliganism has given me both a taste for sociology and a degree of fieldwork experience. I have learned the value of investing time and emotion in things I cannot control, and of belonging to a community whose aspirations I share completely and uncritically. – Nick Hornby • I just want someone to explain to the American public why investing in transportation in Iraq is so much more important than investing in passenger rail right here in the United States of America. – Corrine Brown • I knew a lot about what I did when I was 20. I had read a lot, and I aspired to learn everything I could about the subject. – Warren Buffett • I know no better way to show true patriotism and love for one’s country, than investing to create wealth and employment. – Strive Masiyiwa • I learned that a real friendship is not about what you can get, but what you can give. Real friendship is about making sacrifices and investing in people to help them improve their lives. – Eric Thomas • I never buy anything unless I can fill out on a piece of paper my reasons. I may be wrong, but I would know the answer to that …I’m paying $32 billion today for the Coca Cola Company because… If you can’t answer that question, you shouldn’t buy it. If you can answer that question, and you do it a few times, you’ll make a lot of money. – Warren Buffett • I take more jobs when I need more money, if I’m investing in films. I take fewer when I don’t. Or if something really good comes along, I usually find a way to do a good job on it in the time that I’ve got. – John Sayles • I think if you have mandatory carbon caps combined with a trading system, much like we did with sulfur, and if you have a tax-incentive program for investing in the solutions, that there’s a package there that’s very, very good. – Newt Gingrich • I think we do not need to send more jobs to low wage countries. I think corporate America has to start investing in this country and create decent paying jobs here. – Hillary Clinton • I was educated to think maybe Brazil works, maybe it doesn’t. But I decided I am going to make this country work for my children. I am investing all my effort now in making Brazil a great country. – Eike Batista • I’ve always said that a wise businessperson will support the ANC… because supporting the ANC means you’re investing very well in your business – Jacob Zuma • If at first you do succeed, quit trying on investing. – Warren Buffett • If I were investing in oil and gas stocks, there is one question I would ask CEO’s: What portion of your capital is going to have to go in to stay even – Gwyn Morgan • If investing is entertaining, if you’re having fun, you’re probably not making any money. Good investing is boring. – George Soros • If we assume that there are normal or standard income results to be obtained from investing money in securities, then the role of the adviser can be more readily established. He will use his superior training and experience to protect his clients against mistakes and to make sure that they obtain the results to which their money is entitled. – Benjamin Graham • If we could muster the same determination and sense of responsibility that saves a country like Japan – or a company like Xerox – then investing to save women and children who are dying in the developing world would be very good business. – Anne M. Mulcahy • If you defer investing your time and energy until you see that you need to, chances are it will already be too late. – Clayton Christensen • If you have never missed when investing, you haven’t been in there trying. – Venita VanCaspel • If you invested in a very low cost index fund – where you don’t put the money in at one time, but average in over 10 years -you’ll do better than 90% of people who start investing at the same time. – Warren Buffett • I’m able to lead my life as well as make a film. My wife and my friends and people around me know that I do tend to distance myself a little bit during the making of a film, but I have to, it’s a natural part of the process for me because you are indulging in the headspace of somebody else, you are investing in the psychology of somebody else and you are becoming somebody else, and so there isn’t enough room for you and that somebody else. – Guy Pearce • I’m standing here saying that those who miss the boat now, will miss it forever. So if you want to be in Africa, think about investing. – Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala • In a time of tight budgets, difficult choices have to be made. We must make sure our very limited resources are spent on priorities. I believe we should have no higher priority than investing in our children’s classrooms and in their future. – Bob Riley • In investing, just as in baseball, to put runs on the scoreboard, one must watch the playing field, not the scoreboard. – Warren Buffett • In my home state of Delaware, we’ve done our homework and worked hard and, as a result, we’ve made great strides in cleaning up our own air pollution. Unfortunately, a number of the upwind states to the west of us have not made the same commitment to reducing harmful pollution by investing in cleaner air. – Thomas Carper • In ourselves, rather than in material nature, lie the true source and life of the beautiful. The human soul is the sun which diffuses light on every side, investing creation with its lovely hues, and calling forth the poetic element that lies hidden in every existing thing. – Giuseppe Mazzini • Investing and connecting are the key factors in turning any intention into reality. – Rhonda Britten • Investing in Chicago property is just Wandas first move into the U.S. real estate market. – Wang Jianlin • Investing in the market without knowing what stage it is in is like selling life insurance to 20 year olds and 80 year olds at the same premium. – Victor Sperandeo • Investing in tomorrow’s technology today is more critical than ever. – Bill Gates • Investing in women’s lives is an investment in sustainable development, in human rights, in future generations – and consequently in our own long-term national interests. – Liya Kebede • Investing is an activity of forecasting the yield over the life of the asset; speculation is the activity of forecasting the psychology of the market. – John Maynard Keynes • Investing is far more cumulative [than chess]. So long as you’re sharp, you can do it for as long as you want. – Patrick Wolff • Investing is fun and exciting, but dangerous if you don’t do any work. – Peter Lynch • Investing is important, but get debt-free first. That’s what frees up your income so you can win. – Dave Ramsey • Investing is laying out money now to get more money back in the future. – Warren Buffett • Investing is most intelligent when it is most businesslike. – Benjamin Graham • Investing is not as tough as being a top-notch bridge player. All it takes is the ability to see things as they really are. – Warren Buffett • Investing is simple, but not easy. – Warren Buffett • Investing is the greatest business in the world because you never have to swing. You stand at the plate; the pitcher throws you General Motors at 47! U.S. Steel at 39! And nobody calls a strike on you. There’s no penalty except opportunity. All day you wait for the pitch you like; then, when the fielders are asleep, you step up and hit it. – Warren Buffett • Investing is the intersection of economics and psychology. – Seth Klarman • Investing should be more like watching paint dry or watching grass grow. If you want excitement, take $800 and go to Las Vegas. – Paul Samuelson • Investors, most of them, have a herd mentality. They want to invest only if other people are investing – Jessica Livingston • It is very much easier for a rich man to invest and grow richer than for the poor man to begin investing at all. And this is also true of nations. – Barbara Ward, Baroness Jackson of Lodsworth • It just seems logical that sticking to investing in only a small number of companies that you understand well, rather than moving down the list to your thirtieth or fiftieth favorite pick, would create a much greater potential to earn above-average investment returns. – Joel Greenblatt • I’ve felt for some time that economics needs to be taught differently by economists who actually have had experience making a payroll or investing on Wall Street. When economics is taught by pure academics, watch out. – Mark Skousen • Just as a cautious businessman avoids investing all his capital in one concern, so wisdom would probably admonish us also not to anticipate all our happiness from one quarter alone. – Sigmund Freud • Let’s hope brands recognize that the true power of this technology is not its reach but its ability to communicate substance that adds meaning to our lives. Otherwise, brands will be investing in technology that consumers simply won’t buy. – Simon Mainwaring • Long ago, Sir Isaac Newton gave us three laws of motion, which were the work of genius. But Sir Isaac’s talents didn’t extend to investing: He lost a bundle in the South Sea Bubble, explaining later, ‘I can calculate the movement of the stars, but not the madness of men.’ If he had not been traumatized by this loss, Sir Isaac might well have gone on to discover the Fourth Law of Motion: For investors as a whole, returns decrease as motion increases. – Warren Buffett • Money is ultimately not enough compensation for investing your time and energy: there has to be a sense of purpose, meaning and fulfillment. – Dan Miller • Never stop investing. Never stop improving. Never stop doing something new. – Bob Parsons • No wonder nobody around the world is nervous about America anymore. No wonder we’re not intimidating our adversaries and they’re running around wild in the world, because they know we’re not investing in our defense anymore. We need to make or military strong, not to wage war, but to avoid war and to bring peace and stability in the world. – Chris Christie • Not only does investing in your infrastructure provide very good construction jobs, at the end of the project, you have something. – Shelley Berkley • Of course we have to make a profit, but we have to make a profit over the long haul, not just the short term, and that means we must keep investing in research and development – it has run consistently about 6 percent of sales at Sony – and in service. – Akio Morita • one of the greatest deterrents to successful investing is the three-letter word ego. – Venita VanCaspel • One thing about the business and investing world that I connect to very intimately is that there is little room to deny the harsh realities of your mistakes. A bad call can lose you many millions. – Joshua Waitzkin • One thing I’d like to do is angel investing in small companies. That’s what’s exciting, and if you are lucky to have a bit of money, you can take those risks. – Nick D’Aloisio • Our economy is the result of millions of decisions we all make every day about producing, earning, saving, investing, and spending. – Dwight D. Eisenhower • Our government is committed to investing in world-class research networks such as GlycoNet, which will develop new drugs and vaccines to fight diseases that affect millions of Canadians. These investments will improve our quality of life and contribute to the creation of a stronger, more innovative economy and a more prosperous Canada. – Rona Ambrose • People need to have the incentive that if they invest and succeed, they can make a fair profit. Otherwise they’ll stop investing. – Steve Jobs • People who lie to themselves about investing are the same as overweight people who blame their genes for their obesity. – Robert Kiyosaki • Picking the right stocks is one of the hardest parts of investing, and every night on Mad Money, I try to take some of that burden off your shoulders. – Jim Cramer • Please understand, I am not saying that technology is unimportant. I understand that technology is important. But if we are just focusing on technology and investing in an IT manufacturing plant to come up with higher performance processing [chips], we will not succeed. – Satoru Iwata • President Marcos was investing in precious metals long before he entered politics. – Imelda Marcos • Quinn’s First Law of Investing is never to buy anything whose price you can’t follow in the newspapers. An investment without a public marketplace attracts the fabulists the way picnics attract ants. Stock brokers and financial planners can tell you anything they want, because no one really knows what’s true. The First Corollary to Quinn’s First Law states that, even when the price is in the newspapers, you shouldn’t buy anything too complex to explain to the average 12-year-old. – Jane Bryant Quinn • Re-investing in one’s own little moments of insight is very important – Anish Kapoor • So if I keep making mistakes on Broadway or tape or film, producing, directing or acting, I can go along and do it – so long as I’m not investing too much capital in these things. – Jackie Cooper • So if we are really concerned about generating more taxes, we ought to be investing in our people, not taking away the kinds of resources that contribute to their ability to become greater taxpayers in this country. – Patrick J. Kennedy • Sound investing can make you very wealthy if you’re not in too big a hurry – Warren Buffett • Success in investing doesn’t correlate with I.Q. Once you are above the level of 25; once you have ordinary intelligence, what you need is the temperament to control the urges that get other people into trouble in investing. – Warren Buffett • Successful investing is about managing risk, not avoiding it. – Benjamin Graham • Successful investing is anticipating the anticipations of others. – John Maynard Keynes • Successful investing professionals are disciplined and consistent and they think a great deal about what they do and how they do it. – Benjamin Graham • Successful Investing takes time, discipline and patience. No matter how great the talent or effort, some things just take time: You can’t produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant. – Warren Buffett • The ancients had a taste, let us say rather a passion, for the marvellous, which caused grouping together the lofty deeds of a great number of heroes, whose names they have not even deigned to preserve, and investing the single personage of Hercules with them. In our own time the public delight in blending fable with history. In every career of life, in the pursuit of science especially, they enjoy a pleasure in creating Herculeses. – Francois Arago • The art of investing is not about figuring out what has already happened. It’s about anticipating the futureand creating the future that others will read about in The Wall Street Journal. – Joshua Rogers • The big success stories – Facebook, Zynga and Twitter – are leading to investing in ideas on a napkin, because no one wants to miss out on the next big thing. – Eric Lefkofsky • The difference between the price we pay for a stock and its liquidation value gives us a margin of safety. This kind of investing is one of the most effective ways of achieving good long term results. – Peter Cundill • The evidence shows that investing in women and girls delivers major benefits for society. An educated woman has healthier children. She is more likely to send them to school. She earns more and invests what she earns in her family. – Jimmy Carter • The game of investing is one of making better predictions about the future than other people. How are you going to do that? One way is to limit your tries to areas of competence. If you try to predict the future of everything, you attempt too much. – Charlie Munger • The key is in not spending time, but in investing it. – Stephen Covey • The key to investing is not assessing how much an industry is going to affect society, or how much it will grow, but rather determining the competitive advantage of any given company and, above all, the durability of that advantage. – Warren Buffett • The only preparation for prospering in the global economy is investing in ourselves. – William J. Clinton • The purpose of finance is to enable business to acquire the ownership of capital instruments before it has saved the funds to buy and pay for them. The logic used by business in investing is things that will pay for themselves is not today available to the 95% born without capital. Most of us owe instead of own. And the less the economy needs our labor, the less able we are to “save” our way to capital ownership. – Louis O. Kelso • The pursuit of things robs me of investing more in the work of Christ. – Jack Hyles • The real secret to investing is that there is no secret to investing. – Seth Klarman • The secret to investing is to figure out the value of something – and then pay a lot less. – Joel Greenblatt • The stock market is a giant distraction to the business of investing. – John C. Bogle • The Stone Age didn’t end because we ran out of stones, and the age of oil won’t end because we run out of oil. – Ahmed Zaki Yamani • The three most important words in investing…Margin of Safety. – Warren Buffett • The transaction reflects our disciplined strategy of investing capital in core businesses where we can leverage scale and expertise for competitive advantage. In addition to being a great strategic fit, the deal is compelling financially. – Jamie Dimon • There are jobs to be created on both sides of the climate argument. Whether we are investing in oil or sun, coal or wind, gas or algae, the economy will be stimulated by the investment. The economy, unlike each of us, is not swayed by ideology. – Evangeline Lilly • There are substantial rewards for adopting a regular routine of investing and following it no matter what, and additional rewards for buying more shares when most investors are scared into selling. – Peter Lynch • There is a secret to investing that cuts a path directly to the profits that you’re looking for. The secret is simplicity. The more elementary your investment style, the more confident you can be of making money in the long run. – Jane Bryant Quinn • There is empirical evidence that leading brands that keep investing during recessions gain share. – Ken Kaess • There is something in people; you might even call it a little bit of a gambling instinct… I tell people investing should be dull. It shouldn’t be exciting. Investing should be more like watching paint dry or watching grass grow. If you want excitement, take $800 and go to Las Vegas. – Paul Samuelson • There isn’t a person at the Koch brothers events who would not get a good return on their investment by investing in [Santorum] as president, because of what they believe about the free enterprise system. – Foster Friess • Time is a most precious asset. Would you consider investing more of your time in the things of eternity in order to merit the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost and to benefit more fully from His influence? – Keith K. Hilbig • To build a twenty-first-century economy, America must revive a nineteenth-century habit–investing in the common, national economic resources that enable every person and every firm to create wealth and value. – William J. Clinton • Value investing is at its core the marriage of a contrarian streak and a calculator. – Seth Klarman • Value investing is predicated on the efficient market hypothesis being wrong. – Seth Klarman • Value investing is risk aversion. – Seth Klarman • Value investing is the discipline of buying shares at a significant discount from their current underlying values and holding them until more of their value is realised. The element of a bargain is the key to the process. – Seth Klarman • Value investing requires a great deal of hard work, unusually strict discipline, and a long-term investment horizon. Few are willing and able to devote sufficient time and effort to become value investors, and only a fraction of those have the proper mind-set to succeed. – Seth Klarman • Value investors look at cash flows. If a company can maintain present cash flows for 5 or 6 years, it’s a good investment. Investors then just hope that those cash flows – and thus the company’s value – don’t decrease faster than they anticipate. – Peter Thiel • We are quite convinced that if he were alive today, as an astute businessman looking out to the future, he would be moving out of fossil fuels and investing in clean, renewable energy. – Stephen Heintz • We need to continue investing in the programs that put Americans back to work in communities like Clark County. – Maria Cantwell • Well, higher-income people don’t have to pay taxes if they don’t want to because they can move their money somewhere else, they can move their investments. They can stop investing. They can stop working. They don’t need to work. They’re higher-income people. – Rick Santorum • We’ve got a tax code that is encouraging flight of jobs and outsourcing. And that’s why we’ve specifically recommended in this campaign that Congress change our tax code so that we stop giving tax breaks to companies that are moving to Mexico and China and other places, and start putting those tax breaks into companies that are investing here in the United States. – Barack Obama • What’s both fascinating and challenging about investing is that the changing nature of business and finance means you can never have it all figured out. – Whitney Tilson • What’s nice about investing is you don’t have to swing at every pitch. – Warren Buffett • When asked how he became so successful in investing, Buffett answered: ‘we read hundreds and hundreds of annual reports every year. – Warren Buffett • When we look at investing, we always think about ‘how defensible is this, how likely is it that somebody is going to copy this.’ E-commerce tends to be something easy to copy because it’s execution. – Niklas Zennstrom • When you – when you – and this is still going on today – are making your money by pushing paper around, when you should be making your money by investing venture capital in various job-creating things, that makes it much harder to recover. – Howard Dean • Whether fuel cell system development in central Oregon, wind power generation along the Columbia Gorge, or geothermal energy in southern Oregon, investing in new energy sources makes America more energy independent while creating good paying, environmentally friendly jobs. – Greg Walden • While Financier George Soros was investing money in Kosovo’s reconstruction, the George Soros Foundation for an Open Society had opened a branch office in Pristina establishing the Kosovo Foundation for an Open Society (KFOS) as part of the Soros’ network of “non-profit foundations” in the Balkans. – Michel Chossudovsky • While many applauded Oprah for opening her heart to young girls in South Africa, some criticized her for not investing in the youth of America. – Kitty Kelley • While some might mistakenly consider value investing a mechanical tool for identifying bargains, it is actually a comprehensive investment philosophy that emphasizes the need to perform in-depth fundamental analysis, pursue long-term investment results, limit risk, and resist crowd psychology. – Seth Klarman • Why didn’t I just throw my money out of the window – and light it on fire? – Peter Cohan • Without investing in the rule of law for the poor, none of the other investments we make will be sustainable. – Samantha Power • You are spending millions and millions of dollars of other peoples money when you make a movie. You have to at least approach it in a way where you can see how you can make that money back for the people who are investing. – Duncan Jones • You can learn investing by reading books. – Bill Ackman • You don’t get what you want from investing, you get what you deserve. – Bill Bonner • You don’t need to be a rocket scientist. Investing is not a game where the guy with the 160 IQ beats the guy with 130 IQ. – Warren Buffett • You have to be constantly reinventing yourself and investing in the future. – Reid Hoffman • You must never delude yourself into thinking that you’re investing when you’re speculating. – Benjamin Graham • Your investor’s edge is not something you get from Wall Street experts. It’s something you already have. You can outperform the experts if you use your edge by investing in companies or industries you already understand. – Peter Lynch