The man who believes that the secrets of the world are forever hidden lives in mystery and fear. Superstition will drag him down. The rain will erode the deeds of his life. But that man who sets himself the task of singling out the thread of order from the tapestry will by the decision alone have taken charge of the world and it is only by such taking charge that he will effect a way to dictate the terms of his own fate.
Literature, like magic, has always been about the handling of secrets, about the pain, the destruction, and the marvelous liberation that can result when they are revealed. Telling the truth when the truth matters most is almost always a frightening prospect. If a writer doesn't give away secrets, his own or those of the people he loves; if she doesn't court disapproval, reproach, and general wrath, whether of friends, family, or party apparatchiks; if the writer submits his work to an internal censor long before anyone else can get their hands on it, the result is pallid, inanimate, a lump of earth.
Nothing in this world is hidden forever. The gold which has lain for centuries unsuspected in the ground, reveals itself one day on the surface. Sand turns traitor, and betrays the footstep that has passed over it; water gives back to the tell-tale surface the body that has been drowned. Fire itself leaves the confession, in ashes, of the substance consumed in it. Hate breaks its prison-secrecy in the thoughts, through the doorway of the eyes; and Love finds the Judas who betrays it by a kiss. Look where we will, the inevitable law of revelation is one of the laws of nature: the lasting preservation of a secret is a miracle which the world has never yet seen.
The knowledge of secrets is a very enticing ship, a very tempting voyage, and one thinks that the highest attainment in life is to find out hidden truths, to seek out what is truth, to know what are all lies; to uncover, to discover and to rediscover, to dig up, to expose, to reveal... But secrets can go on forever, for an eternity! For as vast as the universe is, so are the secrets therein! And one can lose, because of that thought that in the secrets, everything is to be gained! But I can see, that all the knowledge of hidden things, all the knowledge in the universe, is not nearly as valuable and as worthy as the innocence of one's soul. And we are not directed unto good things through our ability to scavenge or to hunt or to decipher or to sail! Or to fly! But we are directed unto good things, through sovereign providence! He is more worthy- the innocent soul who has a simple faith in what he believes in- than the one who has found out all the dark secrets about what the other man has put his faith in! And it is far more profitable for a man to be healthy, to have a long, long life, loved ones that are blessed with these blessings all the same, much love and happiness and safety! It is far more profitable for a man to be able to remain innocent and have love and be healthy and to be able to watch his loved ones in good health and in good love, than for a man to uncover all the secrets of the universe! A single love, a single faith, a single trust, and one hope- these are far, far better things to aspire to have! And this– this is the biggest secret!
There can be, if I forebode aright, no power, short of the Divine mercy, to disclose, whether by uttered words, or by type or emblem, the secrets that may be buried with a human heart. The heart, making itself guilty of such secrets, must perforce hold them, until the day when all hidden things shall be revealed. Nor have I so read or interpreted the Holy Writ, as to understand that the disclosure of human thoughts and deeds, then to be made, is intended as part of the retribution. That, surely, were a shallow view of it. No; these revelations, unless I greatly error, are meant merely to promote the intellectual satisfaction of all intelligent beings, who will stand waiting, on that day, to see the dark problem of this life made plain. A knowledge of men's hearts will be needful to the completest solution of that problem. And I conceive, moreover, that the hearts holding such secrets as you speak of will yield them up, at that last day, not with reluctance, but with a joy unutterable.
Ô, Wanderess, WanderessWhen did you feel your most euphoric kiss? Was I the source of your greatest bliss?
Then Cassie told her story. The feeling was like gathering up everything she's ever done or felt or known up to that moment and tying it into a ball and pitching it with all her might as far away as she could, and then watching to see what would happen next, what would roll back to her, what would have gotten left behind.
Our lips were for each other and our eyes were full of dreams. We knew nothing of travel and we knew nothing of loss. Ours was a world of eternal spring, until the summer came.
Ô, Muse of the Heart’s Passion,let me relive my Love’s memory,to remember her body, so brave and so free,and the sound of my Dreameress singing to me,and the scent of my Dreameress sleeping by me,Ô, sing, sweet Muse, my soliloquy!
So he was queer, E.M. Forster. It wasn't his middle name (that would be 'Morgan'), but it was his orientation, his romping pleasure, his half-secret, his romantic passion. In the long-suppressed novel Maurice the title character blurts out his truth, 'I'm an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort.' It must have felt that way when Forster came of sexual age in the last years of the 19th century: seriously risky and dangerously blurt-able. The public cry had caught Wilde, exposed and arrested him, broken him in prison. He was one face of anxiety to Forster; his mother was another. As long as she lived (and they lived together until she died, when he was 66), he couldn't let her know.
Every living soul in this universe should be given a chance at love – their personal shot at having the most powerful andmysterious thing that ever existed. You could love forever, or your love couldburn short and bright for just a few moments in the history oftime. But however you did it, I supposed the idea was to make it count; to create a story worthy of a new fairytale, a poem,or a new constellation that would wind itself into an infinite thread of light in your name. Maybe that was the whole point of love – to create an eternal story of your own.
Many millions of pregnancies—many if not most of which have each led to the birth of at least one child—were each used as nothing but a conspicuous means to a secret end called the evasion of abortion.
She said she never wanted to have secrets from me nor from herself, which is why she wanted to write down everything that otherwise would be hard to talk about. As I said, later I understood that someone who flees into honesty like that fears something, fears that her life will fill with something that can no longer be shared, a genuine secret, indescribable, unutterable.
There is no quarrel between science and spirituality. I often hear people of science trying to use it to prove the nonexistence of the spiritual, but I simply can't see a chasm in between the two. What is spiritual produces what is scientific and when science is used to disprove the spiritual, it's always done with the intent to do so; a personal contempt. As a result, scientists today only prove their inferiority to the great founding fathers of the sciences who were practitioners of alchemy. Today's science is washed-out and scrubbed-down and robbed of everything mystical and spiritual, a knowledge born of contempt and discontent. Or perhaps, there are a few who wish to keep those secrets to themselves and serve everyone else up with a tasteless version of science and the idiots of today blindly follow their equally blind leaders.
We have a predator that came from the depths of the cosmos and took over the rule of our lives. Human beings are its prisoners. The Predator is our lord and master. It has rendered us docile, helpless. If we want to protest, it suppresses our protest. If we want to act independently, it demands that we don't do so... I have been beating around the bush all this time, insinuating to you that something is holding us prisoner. Indeed we are held prisoner! "This was an energetic fact for the sorcerers of ancient Mexico ... They took us over because we are food for them, and they squeeze us mercilessly because we are their sustenance. just as we rear chickens in chicken coops, the predators rear us in human coops, humaneros. Therefore, their food is always available to them." "No, no, no, no," [Carlos replies] "This is absurd don Juan. What you're saying is something monstrous. It simply can't be true, for sorcerers or for average men, or for anyone." "Why not?" don Juan asked calmly. "Why not? Because it infuriates you? ... You haven't heard all the claims yet. I want to appeal to your analytical mind. Think for a moment, and tell me how you would explain the contradictions between the intelligence of man the engineer and the stupidity of his systems of beliefs, or the stupidity of his contradictory behaviour. Sorcerers believe that the predators have given us our systems of belief, our ideas of good and evil, our social mores. They are the ones who set up our hopes and expectations and dreams of success or failure. They have given us covetousness, greed, and cowardice. It is the predators who make us complacent, routinary, and egomaniacal." "'But how can they do this, don Juan? [Carlos] asked, somehow angered further by what [don Juan] was saying. "'Do they whisper all that in our ears while we are asleep?" "'No, they don't do it that way. That's idiotic!" don Juan said, smiling. "They are infinitely more efficient and organized than that. In order to keep us obedient and meek and weak, the predators engaged themselves in a stupendous manoeuvre stupendous, of course, from the point of view of a fighting strategist. A horrendous manoeuvre from the point of view of those who suffer it. They gave us their mind! Do you hear me? The predators give us their mind, which becomes our mind. The predators' mind is baroque, contradictory, morose, filled with the fear of being discovered any minute now." "I know that even though you have never suffered hunger... you have food anxiety, which is none other than the anxiety of the predator who fears that any moment now its manoeuvre is going to be uncovered and food is going to be denied. Through the mind, which, after all, is their mind, the predators inject into the lives of human beings whatever is convenient for them. And they ensure, in this manner, a degree of security to act as a buffer against their fear." "The sorcerers of ancient Mexico were quite ill at ease with the idea of when [the predator] made its appearance on Earth. They reasoned that man must have been a complete being at one point, with stupendous insights, feats of awareness that are mythological legends nowadays. And then, everything seems to disappear, and we have now a sedated man. What I'm saying is that what we have against us is not a simple predator. It is very smart, and organized. It follows a methodical system to render us useless. Man, the magical being that he is destined to be, is no longer magical. He's an average piece of meat." "There are no more dreams for man but the dreams of an animal who is being raised to become a piece of meat: trite, conventional, imbecilic.
There are so many movies like this, where you thought you were smarter than the screen but the director was smarter than you, of course he's the one, of course it was a dream, of course she's dead, of course, it's hidden right there, of course it's the truth and you in your seat have failed to notice in the dark.
Eli . . .” I rasped. I lost track of where his kisses landed, where his fingers touched, and grew too comfortable in his arms. “I can’t.”“You can,” he urged, pulling back and grinding my hips against his. Heat quickly rushed to my cheeks. “I have you. I found you, and I’m not letting you go.”“You don’t—” Eli’s mouth crashed down on mine, stealing a kiss, and I freakin’ lost it. His mouth was absolutely sinful and there was nothing gentle about him, either. Eli was out for something good and was determined to get it. Euphoria sliced through my drunken haze and I grinned as I kissed him back. When his hands slid up my dress and his tongue pushed past my teeth, I moaned loudly and wrapped my legs around his waist.Just this. I can do this.Eli’s fingers inched closer to my panties and I threw my head back against the building to catch my breath.Oh, my God.Lights flashed behind my eyes and the red and blue spots showered over me like rain. “I-I have a wedding tomorrow. My friend’s,” I muttered, almost pulling away. To my ears, it didn’t even sound like a coherent sentence.“Cielo, I don’t really care.” Eli glanced up at me from his place between my flushed breasts and leaned in to suck my bottom lip into his mouth.“I’m drunk.”“Good.” His hand beneath my dress tugged and I heard the audible rip of my panties. “So am I.
And when I realized you had secrets too, I was glad. I thought we could be honest with each other. That we could finally rid ourselves of all the clutter from our past. Not our possessions, but the stuff we carry around inside our heads. Because that's what I've realized, living in One Folgate Street. You can make your surroundings as polished and empty as you like. But it doesn't really matter if you're still messed up inside. And that's all anyone's looking for really, isn't it? Someone to take care of the mess inside our heads?
Theatres are curious places, magician's trick-boxes where the golden memories of dramtic triumphs linger like nostalgic ghosts, and where the unexplainable, the fantastic, the tragic, the comic and the absurd are routine occurences on and off the stage. Murders, mayhem, politcal intrigue, lucrative business, secret assignations, and of course, dinner.
Michelle, since the first day I met you I knew you were the one for me. I knew that I would make you my wife. I love waking up to your beautiful face every morning and seeing you before I close my eyes each night. I love you with everything in me, and I promise to be the man that you need for the rest of our lifetime together. Would you do me the honor of being my wife?
How easily such a thing can become a mania, how the most normal and sensible of women once this passion to be thin is upon them, can lose completely their sense of balance and proportion and spend years dealing with this madness.
I don't want to swim on the surface anymore and I never want to pretend again that I know you completely. Let me dive deep inside you, take me in and allow me to look into your secrets, make me feel every breath I take and crave for it more. Carry me to your darker side where you are afraid to allow anyone. Pull me deep inside and make me one of your secrets.
To know the truth of one's heart, trusting their words is not always the wisest thing because words can be used to deceive you. To truly know the truth which lies deep in one's heart, you only have to look into their eyes. For even though the mouth may speak lies to hide the truth, the eyes will always reveal what the mouth tries to hide.
Secrets are a part of life. Their mysteries make our world beautiful. Their depths inspire our hearts, intrigue our minds, and embrace our very souls.
Do not strive to be perfect. Strive to be perfectly imperfect.
Sharing secrets is the way in which women tie themselves together, for it reveals complicity and trust. Holding secrets shows trustworthiness and a sort of quite defiance. It is a natural thing for a female to hold secrets within her breast until the time is ripe to release them. Does it not follow the way in which her body is formed? A woman is made with that dark and mysterious recess that can grow a child safely until the child is ready to come out onto the birthing bed. And like birthing, secrets present themselves in many ways. some slip easily into the world, others must be torn out, if the body is unwilling.
Secrets make life more interesting. You can be in a crowded room with someone and touch them without touching, just with a look, because they know a part of you no one else knows. And whenever you're with them, the two of you are alone, because the you they see no one else can.
… it is that such of us as have loved deeply have learnt many secrets that are unknown to others; for thousands and thousands of things quiver in silence on the lips of true friendship and love, that are not to be found in the silence of other lips, to which friendship and love are unknown. …
If you are having private thoughts and ask an intimate friend to listen to them in privacy or on a date will that be considered too intimi-dating? And if the thoughts are proved to be untrue, but your friend still insists on believing in them anyway, would that be considered a cons-piracy?
I imagine the game wouldn’t be the same in the light,” Scarlett answered. “People think no one sees all the nasty things they do in the dark. The foul acts they commit, or the lies they tell as part of the game. Caraval takes place at night because you like to watch, and see what people do when they think there are no consequences.
I didn't tell him that I'd put his awful stories in boxes and stacked them on a shelf at the back of my mind. I could hear a quieter version of them still, from their dark place, through all the other business that occupied my brain, but I wouldn't unlid those boxes until I was ready to hear [his] stories again as they wanted to be heard.
I had a dream about you. It's been a while since I could remember any of my dreams, and still, this one has left me with such strong impression. Even now, when I am fully awake, your face flashes before my eyes. It's a face I can totally relate to, as if it wasn't any more yours than it is mine. Terrifying thing, you know? I can't say I've felt that sort of intimacy with anyone. For a moment you knew all my secrets, without me even having to tell them. For a moment I even knew them myself…While I was looking into your eyes, I suddenly started to realize things about myself that were unspoken for years, like fragments of my inner life that were deeply repressed. It’s hard to distinguish if they were buried inside because dealing with them was such a dirty work, or if leaving them unnamed meant that it was not possible to define them precisely enough, so they would keep their true meaning. Perhaps, all this life that I've known so far was in fact no more but a dream about living. The only thing that has kept me in touch with reality was you…I know it comes as a surprise, and you may be wondering why it took me so long to come clean. You also may be wondering how come you've never noticed before. I've tricked you on purpose, yes, and you must realize it really has nothing to do with you. It’s always been me. This is why, seeing you in my dream like that, came out as a shock. You also must forgive me. You must forgive me because I know how it looks like, that everything we ever shared was a lie, and it wasn't…I am more of an illusionist that a deceiver, but it all comes from being in fact, a very private person. Even if it was true that you knew me better than anyone, I’d never admit it. I’d rather dig my own heart out, with a rotten spoon, than admitting it. I may let people in my own little world occasionally, but I would never let them be aware of it. I don’t throw my intimacy in front of others, especially when I care. The more I care, the less I give away, and this is something for you to understand, and grant me your forgiveness. I didn't play my tricks on you in order to deceive you, but rather to save myself, and maybe even deceive myself as well. I’ve had hidden my feelings for you so deeply that I've learned to live with them, as if any other casualty. I have done wrong to myself as much as I did to you, and I don’t know if I can forgive myself. So now I wonder, could you forgive me without feeling sorry for me? I certainly don’t deserve your pity. Especially not now that I am awake.
Dreams are like the old stories where wolves are seekers always running, and women carry fire in their bare hands and light the dark paths before them.Old stories hold that the birds will fly all the miles of the world to tell your secrets to the rising moon, and men will walk over oceans of ice to find one truth.
If he slept, he dreamt of the woman with the icy white irises. She exploded planes, swallowed oceans and crumpled skiesin her palm in his dreams. Sometimes she and the green-eyed girl were one. At other times, the green-eyed girl was alone, a gaping hole where her heart should have been. At all times he could hear the woman’s cold, low laughter. It swept across his consciousness like a hailstorm.When he woke up, he thought he was going mad.
Every woman needs secrets,' her mother said with a smile then, her eyes meeting Sally's in the rearview mirror. 'Remember that when you're old like me, pumpkin, because the world has a way of making a woman's life everyone else's business--you have to dig out a little place that's only yours.
And as for the vague something --- was it a sinister or a sorrowful, a designing or a desponding expression? --- that opened upon a careful observer, now and then, in his eye, and closed again before one could fathom the strange depth partially disclosed; that something which used to make me fear and shrink, as if I had been wandering amongst volcanic-looking hills, and had suddenly felt the ground quiver, and seen it gape: that something, I, at intervals, beheld still; and with throbbing heart, but not with palsied nerves. Instead of wishing to shun, I longed only to dare --- to divine it; and I thought Miss Ingram happy, because one day she might look into the abyss at her leisure, explore its secrets and analyse their nature.
I am beginning to believe that we know everything, that all history, including the history of each family, is part of us, such that, when we hear any secret revealed, a secret about a grandfather, or an uncle, or a secret about the battle of Dresden in 1945, our lives are made suddenly clearer to us, as the unnatural heaviness of unspoken truth is dispersed. For perhaps we are like stones; our own history and the history of the world embedded in us, we hold a sorrow deep within and cannot weep until that history is sung.
17. One of the secrets of successful living is found in the word balance, referring to the avoidance of harmful extremes. We need food, but we should not overeat. We should work, but not make work our only activity. We should play, but not let play rule us. Throughout life, it will be important to find the safety of the middle ground rather than the imbalance of the extremes.
You are the stories and incidents that you never tell to anyone. You are the thoughts that you get while standing under theshower. You are those memories that won't lets you sleep at night peacefully. You are those words that you will never say while speaking with someone. You are those scars that you always hide from everyone. You are those little secrets that you will never let the world know. You are everything that you hide under the identity that you call the real you.
You are the stories and incidents that you never tell to anyone. You are the thoughts that you get while standing under the shower. You are those memories that won't lets you sleep at night peacefully. You are those words that you will never say while speaking with someone. You are those scars that you always hide from everyone. You are those little secrets that you will never let the world know. You are everything that you hide under the identity that you call the real you.
It had started to drizzle. The lamp poles cast a kaleidoscope of light dancing across the puddles in the road. The rain made Sam feel even more lost now, as if these shadowy events were invisible to the world. As if the night was cloaked in anonymity. This wasn’t a peaceful rain - it was a sad one. A drizzle, which wept for the inevitable. Sam knew even if she got Alison out of this alive, the cuts on their lives had already been made, pooling the blood of consequence beneath their feet as the night dragged on. Whichever way this went, they’d have scars from this night. Scars and scabs and things which could not be spoken. And that made her feel utterly hopeless.
The secret tugs at my sleeve.A child looking for attention.It is not a big secret.But it is not the only one either.“Strength in numbers” they say.For they are many.Many little things that – together –weigh tonnes.And take up space.And are quite noisy.The way only a lot of whispers can make noise.And they follow me.Little secretsof omission, desire,and denial.Of indulgence, hedonism,and exploration.Of peeves, passion,and deep-seated fear.Little secretsof despairanddisrepairandprohibited thoroughfare.
Then, as tonight, he had felt lonely, but soon had learnt the bounty of such loneliness. The music had breathed to him its message, to him alone amongst these ordinary folk, whispered its gentle secret. And now the star. Across the shoulders of these people a voice was speaking to him in a tongue that he alone could understand".
He started to estrange her... And they became strangers Who knew each other's heart, So broken as they drifted apart.
Book Excerpt:"What about your family, Abu Huwa? Are you an orphan?” the little girl very innocently asked the Sphinx.“My father and your father are one and the same. However, I do have a brother who has stood as my mirror throughout time on the opposite horizon. It is I who faces east, but it is he who faces west. I am the recorder of yesterday and he holds the records of tomorrow. I am the positive, and he is my negative. I carry the right eye of the sun and he carries the left eye of the moon. He keeps his eye on the underworld and I keep an eye on the world over. Together we have joined the sky and earth, and split fire and water.”Seham stood on all toes to peek over the Sphinx's shoulder for a sign of his brother. “Where is he?” she asked, her eyes still searching the open horizon.“He has yet to be uncovered, but as I stand above the sands of time, he still sleeps below. Before the descent of Adam, we have both stood as loyal Protectors of the Two Halls of Truth.”The girl asked in astonishment, “I've never heard of these halls, Abu Huwa. Where are they?”“At the end of each of our tails is a passage that will reveal to you the secrets of Time. One hall reflects a thousand truths, and the other hall reflects all that is untrue. One will speak to your heart, and the other will speak to your mind. This is why you need to use both your heart and mind to understand which one is real, and which is a distorted illusion created to misguide those that have neglected their conscience. Both passageways connect you to the Great Hall of Records.”“What is the Hall of Records?”“The Great Pyramid, my child. It is as multidimensional in its shape as it is in its purpose. Every layer and every brick marks the coming of a prophet, the ascension of evil, or another cycle of man. It contains the entire history and future of mankind. And, as is above, so is below. Above ground, it serves as the most powerful energy source to harmonize and power the world! The shape of the pyramid above ground is also the same image mirrored beneath it. Underground, it serves as a powerful well and drain. This is really why Egypt is called the Land of Two Lands. There exists a huge world of its own underneath the plateau, a world within worlds. Large amounts of gold, copper and mercury were once housed here, including the secrets of Time, the 100th name of He Who Is All, and a gift from Truth that still awaits to be discovered. It sleeps with Time in the Great Pyramid, hidden away in a lower shaft that leads to the stars.”Dialogue from 'The Little Girl and the Sphinx' by Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun (Dar-El Shams, 2010)
She remembered how her heart, so tight, like a scroll, had opened when Arin kissed her. It had unfurled. If her heart were truly a scroll, she could burn it. It would become a tunnel of flame, a handful of ash. The secrets she had written inside herself would be gone. No one would know
This is, in part, why there is less magic in the world today. Magic is secret and secrets are magic, after all, and years upon years of teaching and sharing magic and worse. Writing it down in fancy books that get all dusty with age has lessened it, removed its power bit by bit.
The mirror sighed and spoke in a tone tinged with melancholy. Its language was old and not of any of the worlds known or unknown.What you dream, what you darkly desire,Find it by trial or by fire.Seek it high and seek it low,Search the skies or the realms below.Look everywhere but beware,The deepest magic, the strongest spellWill not change what the stars foretell.
Azerowut, I must tend to an urgently urgent business and a business that is urgent most urgently. Watch over my tent with extreme care and care that is caring in the extreme, and do not, under any circumstantial circumstances, allow anyone and his brother to be within an uncomfortably uncomfortable distance of her door. --Master Kwadile
Someone could cut through the mess in our house and look at it like one might look at rings on a tree or layers of sediment. They'd find the black-and-white hairs of a dog we had when I was six, the acid-washed jeans my mother once wore, the seven blood-soaked pillowcases from the time I skinned my knee. All our family secrets rest in endless piles.
England is not the jewelled isle of Shakespeare's much-quoted message, nor is it the inferno depicted by Dr Goebbels. More than either it resembles a family, a rather stuffy Victorian family, with not many black sheep in it but with all its cupboards bursting with skeletons. It has rich relations who have to be kow-towed to and poor relations who are horribly sat upon, and there is a deep conspiracy of silence about the source of the family income. It is a family in which the young are generally thwarted and most of the power is in the hands of irresponsible uncles and bedridden aunts. Still, it is a family. It has its private language and its common memories, and at the approach of an enemy it closes its ranks. A family with the wrong members in control - that, perhaps is as near as one can come to describing England in a phrase.
All their lives Nath had understood, better than anyone, the lexicon of their family, the things they could never truly explain to outsiders: that a book or a dress meant more than something to read or something to wear; that attention came with expectations that—like snow—drifted and settled and crushed you with their weight.
Every so often a reader tells me, somewhat disappointedly, that their family doesn't have any secrets. To which I always reply that of course it does, they just don't know them yet. For where there are people living in close proximity, there will always be secrets.
Stop entertaining two faced people. You know the ones who have split personalities and untrustworthy habits. Nine times out of ten if they telling you stuff about another person, they're going to tell your business to other people. If they say, "You know I heard........." More than likely it's in their character to share false information. Beware of your box, circle, square! Whatever you want to call it.
When enforcing our boundaries, first and foremost, we are caring for ourselves, but we are also helping others to have a clear understanding of what we consider acceptable behavior. We are reflecting back to them what is not acceptable and, therefore, providing them an opportunity to consider that information and make necessary changes.
Honesty is overrated. As someone once said, 'Secrecy is the first essential in affairs of the heart.'""It was the Duc de Richelieu," said Lillian, who had read the same book of philosophy during their schoolroom lessons. "And the accurate quote is, 'Secrecy is the first essential in affairs of the State.'""He was French, though," Daisy argued. "I'm sure he meant the heart as well."Lillian laughed and glanced at her sister affectionately. "Perhaps he did. But I don't want to keep secrets from Lord Westcliff.""Oh, very well. But heed my words- it wouldn't be a true love affair if you didn't have a few little secrets.
Her gaze shifted away. "I don't remember my dreams anymore." It was like she was confessing a dirty secret. And maybe it was, because even though he hated the dreams, each time he had them, he was with his parents again. Hearing their laughter. Watching them live. But when he woke up they were really gone.
Because zombies can’t go out into the sun, most of them tend to be afraid of anything that can go into the sun and live to tell the tale.
You spill a lot of beans in historical fiction. Crime fiction is about spilling no beans at all. You spill the least beans you possibly can. So because I had already written historical fiction before I was really good at the spilling beans section, but the new skill I had to learn when I was writing Brighton Belle was difficult. I had to avoid the equivalent of shouting, "this character's a murderer! Look who did it!.
it's through the simple things in life, through its games, when our minds mature the most and we grow knowledgeable. It's also when the cloth masks of our outer, false personalities are torn asunder, and we are able to see every last blemish of a man's genuine character that they hide beneath... no matter how dark or obscene it may be.
What daily life is like for “a multiple” Imagine that you have periods of “lost time.” You may find writings or drawings which you must have done, but do not remember producing. Perhaps you find child-sized clothing or toys in your home but have no children. You might also hear voices or babies crying in your head. Imagine that you can never predict when you will be able to have certain knowledge or social skills, and your emotions and your energy level seem to change at the drop of a hat, and for no apparent reason. You cannot understand why you feel what you feel, and, if you are in therapy, you cannot explore those feelings when asked. Your life feels disjointed and often confusing. It is a frightening experience. It feels out of control, and you probably think you are going crazy. That is what it is like to be multiple, and all of it is experienced by the ANPs. A multiple may also experience very concrete problems, even life-threatening ones.
I recently consulted to a therapist who felt he had accomplished something by getting his dissociative client to remain in her ANP throughout her sessions with him. His view reflects the fundamental mistake that untrained therapists tend to make with DID and DDNOS. Although his client was properly diagnosed, he assumed that the ANP should be encouraged to take charge of the other parts at all times. He also expected her to speak for them—in other words, to do their therapy. This denied the other parts the opportunity to reveal their secrets, heal their pain, or correct their childhood-based beliefs about the world.If you were doing family therapy, would it be a good idea to only meet with the father, especially if he had not talked with his children or his spouse in years? Would the other family members feel as if their experiences and feelings mattered?Would they be able to improve their relationships? You must work with the parts who are inside of the system. Directly.
Research on organised abuse emphasises the diversity of organised abuse cases, and the ways in which serious forms of child maltreatment cluster in the lives of children subject to organised victimisation (eg Bibby 1996b, Itziti 1997, Kelly and Regan 2000). Most attempts to examine organised abuse have been undertaken by therapists and social workers who have focused primarily on the role of psychological processes in the organised victimisation of children and adults. Dissociation, amnesia and attachment, in particular, have been identified as important factors that compel victims to obey their abusers whilst inhibiting them from disclosing their abuse or seeking help (see Epstein et al. 2011, Sachs and Galton 2008). Therapists and social workers have surmised that these psychological effects are purposively induced by perpetrators of organised abuse through the use of sadistic and ritualistic abuse. In this literature, perpetrators are characterised either as dissociated automatons mindlessly perpetuating the abuse that they, too, were subjected to as children, or else as cruel and manipulative criminals with expert foreknowledge of the psychological consequences of their abuses. The therapist is positioned in this discourse at the very heart of the solution to organised abuse, wielding their expertise in a struggle against the coercive strategies of the perpetrators. Whilst it cannot be denied that abusive groups undertake calculated strategies designed to terrorise children into silence and obedience, the emphasis of this literature on psychological factors in explaining organised abuse has overlooked the social contexts of such abuse and the significance of abuse and violence as social practices.
Political prisoners describe:- extreme physical and emotional torture- distortion of language, truth, meaning and reality- sham killings- begin repeatedly taken to the point of death or threatened with death- being forced to witness abusive acts on others- being forced to make impossible "choices"- boundaries smashed i.e. by the use of forced nakedness, shame, embarrassment- hoaxes, 'set ups', testing and tricks- being forced to hurt othersRitual abuse survivors often describe much the same things.
Life's a book filled on pages Just awaiting to be written.Some don't open it for ages,Maybe afraid of being bitten.
What would you do if you saw something nobody else could see?”The tape gun fell out of Luke’s hand, and hit the tiled hearth. He knelt to pick it up, not looking at her. “You mean if I were the only witness to a crime, that sort of thing?”“No. I mean, if there were other people around, but you were the only one who could see something. As if it were invisible to everyone but you.”He hesitated, still kneeling, the dented tape gun gripped in his hand.“I know it sounds crazy,” Clary ventured nervously, “but…”He turned around. His eyes, very blue behind the glasses, rested on her with a look of firm affection. “Clary, you’re an artist, like your mother. That means you see the world in ways that other people don’t. It’s your gift, to see the beauty and the horror in ordinary things. It doesn’t make you crazy—just different. There’s nothing wrong with being different.
You have shared your secret. I think you will find it to be an unburdening in many other ways. You have very considerable natural advantages. You have nothing to fear from life. A day will come when these recent unhappy years may seem no more than that cloud-stain over there upon Chesil Bank. You shall stand in sunlight—and smile at your own past sorrows.
Some things should never be said. Not out loud in clear, simple words. You talk around them. You leave gaps and blanks. You use other words and talk in curves and arcs for the worst things because you need to keep them like mist. Words are dangerous. Like a spell, if you name the mist, call out all of the words that describe it sharp and clear, you turn it solid, into something that no one should ever hold in their hands. Better that it stays like water, slipping between your fingers.
You can lead and motivate people without a certificate or title, what you need to do is to tell people a compelling secret that was only known to you.
So that's it. That's the big secret. I tried to kill myself on New Year's eve. Just like Sadie did last night. Only she really did it. I don't know all the detatils, just the basics. She took a bunch of pills. I don't know what they were or where she got them. I'd like to think they were Wonder Drug. Then at least she could have gone thinking she was flying.
But what were you supposed to do with that weight? Once it was on you? Just be a man? Just suck it up? Maybe you were. Maybe that was the real test. Maybe that is exactly the thing that made you a man: the ability to function with the worst possible secrets in your brain. Which was why so many grown-up men seemed so ridiculous. They never felt that responsibility. They were untested, unproven; they were boys in grown-up clothes.
There's the imperative to keep secrets, and the imperative to have them known. How do you know that you're a person, distinct from other people? By keeping certain things to yourself. You guard them inside you, because, if you don't, there's no distinction between inside and outside. Secrets are the way you know you even have an inside. A radical exhibitionist is a person who has forfeited his identity. But identity in a vacuum is also meaningless. Sooner or later, the inside of you needs a witness. Otherwise you're just a cow, a cat, a stone, a thing in the world, trapped in your thingness. To have an identity, you have to believe that other identities equally exist. You need closeness with other people. And how is closeness built? By sharing secrets. . . . Your identity exists at the intersection of these lines of trust.
In the end, it's only a story of having had her words and secrets, her confidences, turned against her by someone she once believed entirely beyond any acts of betrayal. A story of pettiness and cruelty and of the lies friends will tell when a friendship has ceased to be profitable or convenient. It is a very simple and inexpressibly complex story of cowardice...
But don't you see, I say, I don't care. I don't care what you've done or how bad you are. Edward, we belong together. We both know it. Now I know your worst secrets and you know mine. Isn't that what you've always wanted? For us to be completely honest with each other?
If you are trading silence or compliance for love, you are being cheated. When acceptance or love is withheld if you reveal secrets, the value of the relationship is just an illusion. Love cannot be earned, bought or traded–only freely given. You are worthy of love that doesn’t require you to protect your abuser or sacrifice yourself.
It seems we need someone to know us as we are--with all we have done--and forgive us. We need to tell. We need to be whole in someone's sight: Know this about me, and yet love me. Please. ...for...others it seems there must be a person to redeem us to ourselves. It isn't enough, apparently, to know oneself. To forgive oneself in secret.
Sometimes since I've been in the garden I've looked up through the trees at the sky and I have had a strange feeling of being happy as if something was pushing and drawing in my chest and making me breathe fast. Magic is always pushing and drawing and making things out of nothing. Everything is made out of magic, leaves and trees, flowers and birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people. So it must be all around us. In this garden - in all the places.
The unknown grayish mystifying forest was benumbed into frost-covered cold, and the tremendous pines towering above the dark marshy soil resembled a gathering of severe mute brothers from a forbidden ancient order worshiping forgotten gods no one had ever heard of outside of the world of secret occult visions.
For many years there have been rumours of mind control experiments. in the United States. In the early 1970s, the first of the declassified information was obtained by author John Marks for his pioneering work, The Search For the Manchurian Candidate. Over time retired or disillusioned CIA agents and contract employees have broken the oath of secrecy to reveal small portions of their clandestine work. In addition, some research work subcontracted to university researchers has been found to have been underwritten and directed by the CIA. There were 'terminal experiments' in Canada's McGill University and less dramatic but equally wayward programmes at the University of California at Los Angeles, the University of Rochester, the University of Michigan and numerous other institutions. Many times the money went through foundations that were fronts or the CIA. In most instances, only the lead researcher was aware who his or her real benefactor was, though the individual was not always told the ultimate use for the information being gleaned. In 1991, when the United States finally signed the 1964 Helsinki Accords that forbids such practices, any of the programmes overseen by the intelligence community involving children were to come to an end. However, a source recently conveyed to us that such programmes continue today under the auspices of the CIA's Office of Research and Development. The children in the original experiments are now adults. Some have been able to go to college or technical schools, get jobs. get married, start families and become part of mainstream America. Some have never healed. The original men and women who devised the early experimental programmes are, at this point, usually retired or deceased. The laboratory assistants, often graduate and postdoctoral students, have gone on to other programmes, other research. Undoubtedly many of them never knew the breadth of the work of which they had been part. They also probably did not know of the controlled violence utilised in some tests and preparations. Many of the 'handlers' assigned to reinforce the separation of ego states have gone into other pursuits. But some have remained or have keen replaced. Some of the 'lab rats' whom they kept in in a climate of readiness, responding to the psychological triggers that would assure their continued involvement in whatever project the leaders desired, no longer have this constant reinforcement. Some of the minds have gradually stopped suppression of their past experiences. So it is with Cheryl, and now her sister Lynn.
That's how I do this life sometimes by making the ordinary just like magic and just like a card trick and just like a mirror and just like the disappearing. Every Indian learns how to be a magician and learns how to misdirect attention and the dark hand is always quicker than the white eye and no matter how close you get to my heart you will never find out my secrets and I'll never tell you and I'll never show you the same trick twice. I'm traveling heavy with illusions.
I believe in magic. Writing is my magic wand, and through my magic I create my own secret world, away from all these worries and responsibilities. Love, honesty and humanity is essential to enter this beautiful world of magic. I dwell among White magical peacocks, glowing unicorns, fire breathing turquoise dragons, talking trees, flying horses, talking wise jackals and wolves, crystal water falls, secret pathways hidden in urban gardens and books with doorways to secret worlds. You need to believe in magic to experience it.
As for her, I'd forgotten her for the moment. So I shall never understand why, suddenly, bewilderingly, I was certain that everything I had imagined to be truth was false. False. Only the magic and the dream are true—all the rest's a lie. Let it go. Here is the secret. Here.
When I was a teen, I liked to hang out around popular girls, I thought they had some magic, secrets that only they knew and I wanted to learn it... Though pretty soon I realized... popular girls were just like spam... they promised a lot, but only thing they had and could use were their well-built bodies and ability to apply make-up here and there. Mostly they were deceptive and had no senses... they had no idea about friendship, kindness and beauty as it is. Friendship for them was not something more than poor relations, sort of like in "God Father". Love for them was not something bigger than sex. Kindness for them was to have a kitty or a dog (which was already very rare case)... And beauty for them was... well, you can imagine. Concentrated selfishness
Someone is pounding on a door within you and hoping for an answer. They want to tell us the secret tale of ourselves. The stories we’ve never told. Some African tribes believe if you were to tell someone your entire story the audience would actually become you. From then on, the only life the teller would have would be in and through the listener. Some believe this is the relationship between Jesus and his disciples. How I wished for my story to be blemish free. How I wished to be a good-natured soul giving back to the world, regardless of how broken I was. In the end, it’s those things we are willing to die to change that sculpt our story. Some people open the floodgates of their minds and hearts so memories burst forth like water through a breached dam. Pieces of our lives can be found among the floating wreckage, and somewhere, the presence of God hovers over the surface of the deep. Inside, I am treading, biding my time, waiting for the magic I thought I owned as a child. Many seek this enchantment. I sought my wife, daughter and the power to conjure hope.
Then, idly scratching his nose, he walks to the bookcase in the living room and stoops before a set of drab brown Victorian volumes gathering dust on the second shelf from the bottom.How amusing, he thinks, as he withdraws one of them-amusing that a key to dark and ancient rites should survive in such innocuous-looking form.A young fool like Freirs would probably refuse to believe it. Like the rest of his doomed kind, he'd probably expect such lore to be found only in ancient leather-bound tomes with gothic lettering and portentously sinister titles. He'd search for it in mysterious old trunks and private vaults, in the "restricted" sections of libraries, in intricately carved wood chests with secret compartments.But there are no real secrets, the Old One knows. Secrets are ultimately too hard to conceal. The keys to the rites that will transform the world are neither hidden nor rare nor expensive. They are available to anyone. You can find them on the paperback racks or in any second-hand bookshop.
What’s the kindest thing you almost did? Is your fear of insomnia stronger than your fear of what awoke you? Are bonsai cruel? Do you love what you love, or just the feeling? Your earliest memories: do you look through your young eyes, or look at your young self? Which feels worse: to know that there are people who do more with less talent, or that there are people with more talent? Do you walk on moving walkways? Should it make any difference that you knew it was wrong �as you were doing it? Would you trade actual intelligence for the perception of being smarter? Why does it bother you when someone at the next table is having a conversation on a cell phone? How many years of your life would you trade for the greatest month of your life? What would you tell your father, if it were possible? Which is changing faster, your body, or your mind? Is it cruel to tell an old person his prognosis? Are you in any way angry at your phone? When you pass �a storefront, do you look at what’s inside, look at your reflection, or neither? Is there anything you would die for if no one could ever know you died for it? If you could be assured that money wouldn’t make �you any small bit happier, would you still want more money? What has �been irrevocably spoiled for you? If your deepest secret became public, �would you be forgiven? Is your best friend your kindest friend? Is it in any way cruel to give a dog a name? Is there anything you feel a need to confess? You know it’s a “murder of crows” and a “wake of buzzards” but it’s a what of ravens, again? What is it about death that you’re �afraid of? How does it make you feel to know that it’s an “unkindness �of ravens”?
The Ache That Would Not LeaveBehind the hum and routine of daily living, there lay a persistent and wild longing for something she could not easily put into words. It felt like impulsive adventures and watching the sun rise over unfamiliar mountains, or coffee in a street café, set to the background music of a foreign language. It was the smell of the ocean, with dizzying seagulls whirling in a cobalt sky; exotic foods and strange faces, in a city where no one knew her name. She wanted secrets whispered at midnight, and road trips without a map, but most of all, she ached for someone who desired to explore the mysteries that lay sleeping within her. The truly heartbreaking part was that she could feel the remaining days of her life falling away, like leaves from an autumn tree, but still this mysterious person who held the key to unlock her secrets did not arrive; they were missing, and she knew not where to find them.
It was the shadow of Some one who had gone by long before: of Some one who had gone on far away quite out of reach, never, never to come back. It was bright to look at; and when the tiny woman showed it to the Princess, she was proud of it with all her heart, as a great, great, treasure. When the Princess had considered it a little while, she said to the tiny woman, And you keep watch over this, every day? And she cast down her eyes, and whispered, Yes. Then the Princess said, Remind me why. To which the other replied, that no one so good and so kind had ever passed that way, and that was why in the beginning. She said, too, that nobody missed it, that nobody was the worse for it, that Some one had gone on to those who were expecting him-- 'Some one was a man then?' interposed Maggy. Little Dorrit timidly said yes, she believed so; and resumed:'-- Had gone on to those who were expecting him, and that this remembrance was stolen or kept back from nobody. The Princess made answer, Ah! But when the cottager died it would be discovered there. The tiny woman told her No; when that time came, it would sink quietly into her own grave, and would never be found.
Secrets. Funny how, when you're about to be given something precious, something you've wanted for a long time, you suddenly feel nervous over taking it.Everyone wants more than anything to be allowed into someone else's most secret self. Everyone wants to allow someone into their most secret self. Everyone feels so alone inside that their deepest wish is for someone to know their secret being, because then they are alone no longer. Don't we all long for this? Yet when it's offered it's frightening, because you might not live up to the desires of the one who bestows the gift. And frightening because you know that accepting such a gift means you'll want-perhaps be expected- to offer a similar gift in return. Which means giving your *self* away. And what's more frightening than that?
Secrets. Funny how, when you're about to be given something precious, something you've wanted for a long time, you suddenly feel nervous over taking it.Everyone wants more than anything to be allowed into someone else's most secret self. Everyone wants to allow someone into their most secret self. Everyone feels so alone inside that their deepest wish is for someone to know their secret being, because then they are alone no longer. Don't we all long for this? Yet when it's offered it's frightening, because you might not live up to the desires of the one who bestows the gift. And frightening because you know that accepting such a gift means you'll want-perhaps be expected- to offer a similar gift in return. Which means giving your *self* away. And what's more frightening than that?” ― Aidan Chambers, This is All: The Pillow Book of Cordelia Kenn
Secrets are revealed as you are ready to understand them. It seems capricious and mean-spirited of the Grimmerie to hold back, to yield and then to tease with a single page – but then the world is the same way, isn’t it. The world rarely shrieks its meaning at you. It whispers, in private language and obscure modalities, in arcane and quixotic imagery, through symbol systems in which every element has multiple meanings determined by juxtaposition.
I couldn’t help but feel as if everyone had lied about everything. We all had secrets. We all had a dark side to our innocent cover. I wondered what we would be like, if we had been completely honest with each other in the first place. Maybe more people would be alive, but then again, more people could be dead.
Please get off me, please, I don't wanna to have something with you" (Well said, by a woman (The Wolf of Wall Street) ), as far as I can see I really like how is made everything, unfortunately what happens is just incrediable from one point of a view. How business man, goes will go in jail for 20 years, his wife have fuck with some kind a Swedish man, who works for her husband,.. everyone should check out this film. That's how everything goes, that's what happens backstage!Anger and agressive stuff, that's the truth, don't run from it, what I saw isn't for first time, one stuff goes in silence then in shouting other go in shouting and in shouting. To have hot chick to have everything to get so devastated??It's fucking suicide, as for me!
My mother's mouth drops. 'Emmy...don't say those things Emmy. Remember, we don't talk about those things.''Yes Mom. I remember. That's why I'm here, looking like this.'An orderly knocks on the door and announces that visiting time is over.My mother and I look at each other awkwardly, and hug.'I love you,' she says.'I love you too, Mom.''You aren't telling them too much are you?' she asks, afraid.I sign. 'No Mommy, I'm not.'She's visibly relieved. She leaves the room.The orderley comes back and escorts me back into the main room.I just sit and laugh to myself." (after Emmy's suicide attempt) ~ The Finer Points of Becoming Machine
I was recently living more comfortably surrounded by secrets... Like dozens of luxurious satiny pillows, they were embracing me from all directions into safe lulling warmth, thus isolating me from the sharp dead-cold edges of the truth hiding behind their endearingly smooth textures and tender soothing colours.Secrets could be so irresistibly beautiful...
The tide, you see, is a fickle thing: stealing in, sliding away, always, always turning. She comes when you're not looking, a silent, liquid thief, only to rush away again, retreating from the shore like a coward. She gives sometimes too, though in fleeting, unexpected moments, yielding up her treasures and her dead--but never, ever her secrets.
There are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told. Men die nightly in their beds, wringing the hands of ghostly confessors, and looking them piteously in the eyes — die with despair of heart and convulsion of throat, on account of the hideousness of mysteries which will not suffer themselves to be revealed.
At the time I was being molested, I thought I was the only one. My father controlled everything in our house and he always said that what was happening to me was natural and that I should accommodate him. Even though I have to look back sometimes, I am moving forward. And even though it's painful for me to face my mother's complacency, doing so has helped me understand that it wasn't my fault. If I could have read something at the time about sex abuse, if people had talked openly about, I could have been saved so many years of guilt and shame and secrecy. Each time I talk about my incest, I get rid of some of that shame and guilt. Each person I share with, no matter what their response, takes another piece of the pain away.
In a nutshell, the process they [abusers in a ritual abuse group] use on survivors is designed to:break the will and personality of the person until they become as nothing... with no will of their own...no identity...then they... rebuild the person & shape their will in order to...try and make the person one of them...thus gaining powerIf abusers hold all the power, becoming one of them can, for some, be the only means of survival. However, this doesn't always work, instead survivors often find ways of regaining their own power and fighting back.
Some abusers organise themselves in groups to abuse children and other adults in a more formally ritualised way. Men and women in these groups can be abusers with both sexes involved in all aspects of the abuse. Children are often forced to abuse other children. Pornography and prostitution are sometimes part of the abuse as is the use of drugs, hypnotism and mind control. Some groups use complex rituals to terrify, silence and convince victims of the tremendous power of the abusers. the purpose is to gain and maintain power over the child in order to exploit. Some groups are so highly organised that they also have links internationally through trade in child-pornography, drugs and arms.Some abusers organise themselves around a religion or faith and the teaching and training of the children within this faith, often takes the form of severe and sustained torture and abuse. Whether or not the adults within this type of group believe that what they are doing is, in some way 'right' is immaterial to the child on the receiving end of the 'teachings' and abuse.
Those who support such survivors of abuse often find it difficult to hear the reality of those survivors' lives and experience and are often unsupported themselves. Rather than being supported, workers are often ridiculed, castigated or accused of being gullible or of giving the survivor false memories. Many workers work in isolation and a climate of hostility and are unable to talk about the work they do.Yes, despite all the odds, survivors of ritual abuse are beginning to speak out about their experiences, and some people, mainly in voluntary organisations, are beginning to listen to them and support them.[Published 2001]
Darkness watches me from every angle. My only friend. From its own place within the silence, it speaks to me in a strange way. It whispers secrets in my ear, telling me this is where I’m meant to be. It’s so certain, not a trace of doubt. And I think . . . I think it may be right.
Revelations help us accept the things we need the most, expose the secrets we so desperately try to hide and illuminate the dangers all around us. But more than anything, revelations are windows into our true selves... of the good and the evil and those wavering somewhere in between. But they have the ultimate power to destroy all that we cherish most.
The town was more than ready to accept the window dressing that hid the ugly truth of Joe's guilt. Some shared the secrets and kept the silence. Others would not have believed if they had been told. They would not have wanted to know. As those who saw and ignored the smoke from the crematoria of Hitler's Germany, they did not want to know that their world was not as it seemed.
For its survival, the satanic cult demanded secrecy and obedience while it made brutality, even killing, appropriate. Denial and disavowal were inevitable responses to required behaviors so bizarre as to seem unreal, even to those who enacted them. What they could not deny or disavow, they could distort. They could blame the victims, who deserved to die for fighting or crying or for failing to fight or cry. They found encouragement for such a stance in a general culture accustomed to blaming victims for their misfortunes, and in specific contact with child victims eager to blame themselves. By believing that victims had a choice when there was none, they could see victims as culpable. They could even see the deaths as right and purposeful in the nobility of sacrifice.
Want to know a secret?""Yeah!" His smile grew big and broad."I don't know how to saddle a horse either. And I've never even ridden on one before." His eyes grew wide as the moon. "Jase!" he bellowed, spinning toward his brother."She's never ridden a horse before!" Well, there went my secret.
There are those of us who nature is awakening to the secrets of the universe; apart from religious dogma or occult dabbling. It is Natural Law. It is awakening the minds and quickening the senses of those whom it's calling its descendants. Nature is fighting for its rightful place, which can never be fully usurped. Those who are most open to this knowledge are artists (poets, musicians, writers) who also happen to be free thinkers or "outsiders" to the system. We hear a voice that is calling us to waken to the secrets of the universe. Perhaps in some distant future, humanity will read of us; the ones who paved the way for this Pali or New Romanticism called the awakening unto Nature's Law. It won't be technology or software that paves the way, but nature. It won't allow itself to be destroyed, maybe uninhabitable for a time for humans, but never destroyed. There are those of us, the chosen few who are following the narrow path. We will be the future thinkers and writers who generations will read about that truly changed the world, and made a way where there seemingly was none.
In daily life we never understand each other, neither complete clairvoyance nor complete confessional exists. We know each other approximately, by external signs, and these serve well enough as a basis for society and even for intimacy. But people in a novel can be understood completely by the reader, if the novelist wishes; their inner as well as their outer life can be exposed. And this is why they often seem more definite than characters in history, or even our own friends; we have been told all about them that can be told; even if they are imperfect or unreal they do not contain any secrets, whereas our friends do and must, mutual secrecy being one of the conditions of life upon this globe.
What a skeletal wreck of man this is.Translucent flesh and feeble bones,the kind of temple where the whores and villains try to tempt the holistic domes.Running rampid with free thought to free form, and the free and clear.When the matters at hand are shelled out like lint at alaundry mat to sift and focus on the bigger, better, now.We all have a little sin that needs venting,virtues for the rending and laws and systems and stems are rippedfrom the branches of office, do you know where your post entails? Do you serve a purpose, or purposely serve?When in doubt inside your atavistic allure, the value of a summer spent, and a winter earned.For the rest of us, there is always Sunday.The day of the week the reeks of rest, but all we do is catch our breath,so we can wade naked in the bloody pool, and place our hand on the big, black book.To watch the knives zigzag between our aching fingers.A vacation is a countdown, T minus your life andcounting, time to drag your tongue across the sugar cube,and hope you get a taste.WHAT THE FUCK IS ALL THIS FOR?WHAT THE HELL’S GOING ON? SHUT UP!I can go on and on but lets move on, shall we?Say, your me, and I’m you, and they all watch the things we do,and like a smack of spite they threw me down the stairs,haven’t felt like this in years.The great magnet of malicious magnanimous refuse, let me go,and punch me into the dead spout again.That’s where you go when there’s no one else around,it’s just you, and there was never anyone to begin with, now was there?Sanctimonious pretentious dastardly bastards with their thumb on the pulse,and a finger on the trigger.CLASSIFIED MY ASS! THAT’S A FUCKING SECRET, AND YOU KNOW IT!Government is another way to say better…than…you.It’s like ice but no pick, a murder charge that won’t stick,it’s like a whole other world where you can smell the food,but you can’t touch the silverware.Huh, what luck. Fascism you can vote for.Humph, isn’t that sweet?And we’re all gonna die some day, because that’s the American way,and I’ve drunk too much, and said too little,when your gaffer taped in themiddle, say a prayer, say a face, get your self together and see what’s happening.SHUT UP! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU!I’m sorry, I could go on and on buttheir times to move on so, remember: you’re a wreck, an accident.Forget the freak, your just nature.Keep the gun oiled, and the temple cleaned shit snort,and blaspheme, let the heads cool, and the engine run.Because in the end, everything we do, is just everything we’ve done.
I forced my weary body up from the ground, my eyes burning with rage. I'd had enough of nearly dying. I'd had enough of secrets and mysteries. I was filled to the brim with pain and misery. It had taken its toll on me. It was hard to hold on to the very things that made you human, when there was nothing good left inside of you. In fact, I no longer felt human. I didn't feel anything except anger. It was time to find Kellan.
I hate looking at you sometimes. Looking into the eyes of a woman that holds so many secrets, so much pain, so many regrets. On the surface, you seem so normal - as if life has been kind to you. But your eyes. - your eyes reveal a different story. Your eyes reveal...
I hate looking at you sometimes. Looking into the eyes of a woman that holds so many secrets, so much pain, so many regrets. On the surface, you seem so normal - as if life has been kind to you. But your eyes - your eyes reveal a different story. Your eyes reveal...
Throughout our times with Christopher [therapist] we were encouraged to work together at communicating on the inside. He pointed out that it would be good for us all to listen-in when an alter was telling his/her story - that it's now safe, no harm will come to us from telling or from knowing. There was once a time when it was very important that we didn't know what had happened; that knowing meant danger or being so overwhelmed with pain and grief that we wouldn't survive. But now it was different. We're safe and strong, and our goal now are to uncover the grisly truth of what's happened to us, so that it's no longer a powerful secret. We can look at it and face the past for what it is - old memories of old events. Today is now,and we can choose to live a different way and believe different things. We were once powerless and vulnerable, but now we were in a position to make choices. We had control over our life.
I was increasingly both horrified and sceptical about these memories - I had no recall of these things at all, though I couldn't imagine why I'd want to make it all up either. It felt as though it had all happened to somebody else, I was not there - it wasn't me - when those people did nasty things.But then, of course, it didn't feel like me, that's the whole point of dissociation - to create distance between the victim and her experience of the abuse. The alters were created for just that purpose: so that I'd not be aware that it happened to me, but rather to "others". The trouble is, in reality it was my body that took the abuse. It was only my mind that was divided, and sooner or later the amnesic barriers were bound to come down.And that's exactly what had begun to happen as I heard their stories. They triggered a vague and growing sense in me that this really is my story.
Obi-Wan's young face clouded. "Some secrets are best left concealed, Master." He shook his head. "Besides, why must you always be the one to do the uncovering? You know how the Council feels about these... detours. Perhaps, just once, the uncovering should be left to someone else."Qui-Gon looked suddenly sad. "No, Obi-Wan. Secrets must be exposed when found. Detours must be taken when encountered. And if you are the one who stands at the crossroads or the place of concealment, you must never leave it to another to act in your place.
He had been driven hither by the impulse of that Remorse which dogged him everywhere, and whose own sister and closely linked companion was that Cowardice which invariably drew him back, with her tremulous gripe, just when the other impulse had hurried him to the verge of a disclosure.
[S]ecrets are like stars. They blaze inside the heart and ultimately could be explosive. But there are two types of secrets. Small secrets, like small stars, will eventually burn out. With time and space they lose their importance and simply vanish. No harm done. But big secrets, like massive stars, with time and constant fear grow stronger, creating a gravitational pull that eventually ... When they get so big, they become a black hole.
What someone’s lies reveal about them (aspirations to being an accomplished writer, fantasies of an exotic history and a cosmopolitan family) are always sadder than the fact of the lies themselves. These inventions illuminate the negative spaces of someone’s self-image, their vanity and insecurities and most childish wishes, as we can infer from warped starlight the presence of a far vaster mass of dark matter.
And what if we’d been utterly open? Made jokes about the first wife? What if we’d been that kind of family? Well, I would have been different, surely. But not because I knew the secret. For it wasn’t the secret—the secret that wasn’t a secret anyway—that led to the austerity in our lives. It was the austerity that led to the secret. And what I had been marked by, probably most of all, was the austerity. It had made secrets in my life too. Or silences, anyway, that became secrets. That became lies.
I used to pray you know, pray to God that He would somehow stop it. All the nights of listening to my mother scream and things breaking. Of holding my brother and sister and listening to them cry and begging me to stop it.'My voice is slow and steady like a freight train at night.'I was too young, and we were always told that they'd put us in foster homes where people would rape us if we ever said anything. So we explained away the bruises and my mom wore big sunglasses whenever she left the house. And we invented car accidents if the bruising was too bad to cover with make-up.
For it wasn't the secret--the secret that wasn't a secret anyway--that led to austerity in our lives. It was the austerity that led to the secret. And what I had been marked by, probably most of all, was the austerity. It had made secrets in my life too. Or silences, anyway, that became secrets. That became lies.
No secret can remain hidden for ever. Silently and patiently, it waits in the dark. It lets you build your life, carefully stacking the bricks one by one, and then it appears. It deals its blow and everything crumbles. That’s why it remains intact and incorruptible in time, waiting for its ultimate destiny to be revealed.
I choose to love you in silence, for in silence I find no rejection.I choose to love you in loneliness, for in loneliness no one owns you but me.I choose to adore you from a distance, for distance will shield me from pain.I chose to kiss you in the wind, for the wind is gentler than my lips.I choose to hold you in my dreams, for in my dreams you have no end.
Incest, rape and abuse is rampant everywhere, even in our churches, but society is silent. It is a silent epidemic. One in three women will experience a sexual assault in her lifetime and one in six males, yet we don't speak of it, even in our churches!
There is unmistakable proof that abusers do get together in order to share children, abuse more children, and even learn from each other. As more cases have come into the public eye in recent years, this has become increasingly obvious. More and more of this type of abuse is coming to light.I definitely think it is the word ritual which causes people to question, to feel uncomfortable, or even just disbelieve. It seems almost incredible that such things would happen, but too many of us know exactly how bad the lives of many children are. A great deal of child pornography shows children being abused in a ritualised setting, and many have now come forward to share their experiences, but there is a still tendency to say it just couldn't happen.Why not?Why, given what we now know about paedophiles and about what they do to children? Would they have limits? It was all done to me and I have enough experiences to write many more books than this one, but this will have to do for now. I've tried to make sense of it and I've tried to tell you my story in a way that will, hopefully, let you understand how it was done, and how they managed to get away with it, but I haven't told you a big part of it yet. I haven't told you what happened that finally ended it all for me.There was something else.When I was eight, someone else came into my life and made a huge difference to what was happening and how things would turn out. I didn't know it then, but I see the whole picture now.Something I have often wondered is whether Andrew was there while I was being abused. Lots of people hide their faces, and there were often masks worn, so he certainly could have been. I have no evidence one way or another though, so I will leave it to the reader to decide whether it would seem in a paedophile's character to watch abuse continue when it has been masterminded by him. But I do know that it wasn't just me who he abused - I know that because I saw it.Andrew was away a lot with the Army until I was at high school, then he left that position. He was instrumental both in my abuse and in setting the scene, but when I was eight, something happened which would distract him and which would, at times, take his attention from me. My mother very kindly provided him with a new victim - my little sister.
Ritual abuse is highly organised and, obviously, secretive. It is often linked with other major crimes such as child pornography, child prostitution, the drugs industry, trafficking, and many other illegal and heinous activities. Ritual abuse is organised sexual, physical and psychological abuse, which can be systematic and sustained over a long period of time. It involves the use of rituals - things which the abusers 'need' to do, or 'need' to have in place - but it doesn't have to have a belief system. There doesn't have to be God or the Devil, or any other deity for it to be considered 'ritual'. It involves using patterns of learning and development to keep the abuse going and to make sure the child stays quiet.There has been, and still is a great deal of debate about whether or not such abuse exists anywhere in the world. There are many people who constantly deny that there is even such a thing as ritual abuse. All I can say is that I know there is. Not only have I been a victim of it myself, but I have been dealing with survivors of this type of abuse for almost 30 years.If there are survivors, there must be something that they have survived.The things is, most sexual abuse of children is ritualised in some way. Abusers use repetition, routine and ritual to forced children into the patterns of behaviour they require. Some abusers want their victims to wear certain clothing, to say certain things. They might bathe them or cut them, they might burn them or abuse them only on certain days of the week. They might do a hundred other things which are ritualistic, but aren't always called that - partly, I think because we have a terror of the word and of accepting just how premeditated abuse actually is.Abusers instill fear in their victims and ensure silence; they do all they can to avoid being caught. Sexual abuse of a child is rarely a random act. It involves thorough planning and preparation beforehand. They threaten the children with death, with being taken into care, with no one believing them, which physical violence or their favourite teddy being taken away. They are told that their mum will die, or their dad will hate them, the abusers say everyone will think it's their fault, that everyone already knows they are bad. Nothing is too big or small for an abuser to use as leverage.There is unmistakable proof that abusers do get together in order to share children, abuse more children, and even learn from each other. As more cases have come into the public eye in recent years, this has become increasingly obvious. More and more of this type of abuse is coming to light.I definitely think it is the word ritual which causes people to question, to feel uncomfortable, or even just disbelieve. It seems almost incredible that such things would happen, but too many of us know exactly how bad the lives of many children are. A great deal of child pornography shows children being abused in a ritualised setting, and many have now come forward to share their experiences, but there is a still tendency to say it just couldn't happen.p204-205
I'm just asking you to accept that there are some people who will go to extraordinary lengths to cover up the facts that they are abusing children.What words are there to describe what happened to me, what was done to me? Some call it ritual abuse, others call it organised abuse. There are those that call it satanic. I've heard all the phrases, not just in relation to me, but also with regard to those I work with and try to help. Do you know what I think? It doesn't matter how you dress it up, it doesn't matter what label you put on it. It is abuse, pure and simple. It is adults abusing children. It is adults deciding - actually making a conscious decision, a conscious choices that what they want, what they convince themselves they need, is more important than anything else; certainly more important than the safety or feelings or sanity of a child.However, there can be differences which are layered on top of that abuse. I'm not saying that some abuse is worse than others, or that someone 'wins' the competition to have the worst abuse inflicted on them, but ritual and organised abuse is at the extreme end of the spectrum. If we try to think of a continuum where there are lots of different things imposed on children (or, for that matter, anyone who is forced into these things — and that force can take many forms, it can be threats and promises, as well as kicks and punches), then ritual and organised abuse is intense and complicated.It often involves multiple abusers of both sexes. There can be extreme violence, mind control, systematic torture and even, in some cases, a complex belief system which is sometimes described as religion. I say 'described as' religion because, to me, I think that when this aspect is involved, it is window dressing. I'm not religious. I cried many times for God to save me. I was always ignored — how could I believe? However, I think that ritual abusers who do use religious imagery or 'beliefs' are doing so to justify it all to themselves, or to confuse the victim, or to hide their activities. Ritual abuse is highly organised and, obviously, secretive. It is often linked with other major crimes such as child pornography, child prostitution, the drugs industry, trafficking, and many other illegal and heinous activities. Ritual abuse is organised sexual, physical and psychological abuse, which can be systematic and sustained over a long period of time. It involves the use of rituals - things which the abusers 'need' to do, or 'need' to have in place - but it doesn't have to have a belief system. There doesn't have to be God or the Devil, or any other deity for it to be considered 'ritual'. It involves using patterns of learning and development to keep the abuse going and to make sure the child stays quiet.
Then he led her to sit by him on a fallen gum trunk, smooth and white, and he leaned to whisper in her ear. Transferred the secret he and her mother had kept for seventeen years. Waited for the flicker of recognition, the minute shift in expression as she registered what he was telling her. Watched as the bottom fell out of her world and the person she had been vanished in an instant.
From the age of 13, I was attracted to physics and mathematics. My interest in these subjects derived mostly from popular science books that I read avidly. Early on I was fascinated by theoretical physics and determined to become a theoretical physicist. I had no real idea what that meant, but it seemed incredibly exciting to spend one's life attempting to find the secrets of the universe by using one's mind.
Cavenaugh rubbed his hands together and smiled his sunny smile.'I like that idea. It's reassuring. If we can have no secrets, it means we can't, after all, go so far afield as we might,' he hesitated, 'yes, as we might.'Eastman looked at him sourly. 'Cavenaugh, when you've practiced law in New York for twelve years, you find that people can't go far in any direction, except-' He thrust his forefinger sharply at the floor.'Even in that direction, few people can do anything out of the ordinary. Our range is limited. Skip a few baths, and we become personally objectionable. The slightest carelessness can rot a man's integrity or give him ptomaine poisoning. We keep up only be incessant cleansing operations, of mind and body. What we call character, is held together by all sorts of tacks and strings and glue. ("Consequences")
Accountability is the essence of democracy. If people do not know what their government is doing, they cannot be truly self-governing. The national security state assumes the government secrets are too important to be shared, that only those in the know can see classified information, that only the president has all the facts, that we must simply trust that our rulers of acting in our interest.
Life is made of moments. and choices. Not all of them matter, or have any lasting impact. Skipping class in favor of a taste of freedom, picking a prom dress because of the way it transforms you into a princess in the mirror. Even the nights you steal away from an open window, tiptoe silent to the end of the driveway, where darkened headlights and the pull of something unknown beckon. These are all small choices, really. Insignificant as soon as they’re made. Innocent.But then.Then there’s a different kind of moment. One when things are irrevocably changed by a choice we make. A moment we will play endlessly in our minds on lonely nights and empty days. One we’ll search repeatedly for some indication that what we chose was right, some small sign that tells us the truth isn’t nearly as awful as it feels. Or as awful as anyone would think if they knew.So we explain it to ourselves, justify it enough to sleep. And then we bury it deep, so deep we can almost pretend it never happened. But as much as we wish it were different, the truth is, our worlds are sometimes balanced on choices we make and the secrets we keep.
Secrets become harder to keep the older you get. The things you think you can suppress, those idiosyncrasies and fantasies you hope no one will ever discover, become harder and harder to hide as the years advance. Partly it is maturity-the fear of discovery grows smaller, less significant, for you learn that none of us is perfect, that human nature is flawed, that life twists and turns in all sorts of unexpected ways and it is okay to end up in a different place to where you expected.
Words do not come back to me easily,so I pull out my heart and wrap itin a thin sheet of paper, let the bloodseep across in stanzas of honestyand hand it to anyone who will take itso that the still-beating heart can tell themall my secrets, all my weaknesses,because if they are not hiddenthey cannot be taken and used against me.
You know I'm no squealer, Harry.''You're a rummy. But no matter how rum dumb you get, if you ever talk about that, I promise you.''I'm a good man,' he said. 'You oughtn't to talk to me like that.''They can't make it fast enough to keep you a good man,' I told him. But I didn't worry about him any more because who was going to believe him?
He was afraid that the secrets she'd kept would always be here, inside him, an ugly malignant thing lodged near enough to his heart to upset its rhythm, and though it could be removed, cut out, there would always be scars; bits and pieces of it would remain in his blood, making it wrong somehow, so that if he accidentally sliced his skin open, his blood would--for one heartbeat--flow as black as India ink before it remembered that it should be red.
Sam, I know you’re upset over what happened with you and Drake,” Astrid began.“Upset?” Sam echoed the word with an ironic smirk.“But that’s no excuse for you keeping secrets from us.”“Yeah,” Howard said, “Don’t you know only Astrid is allowed to keep secrets?”“Shut up, Howard,” Astrid snapped.“Yeah, we get to lie because we’re the smart ones,” Howard said. “Not like all those idiots out there.”Astrid turned her attention back to Sam. “This is not okay, Sam. The council has the responsibility. Not you alone.”Sam looked like he could not care less about what she was saying. He looked almost beyond reach, indifferent to what was going on around him.“Hey,” Astrid said. “We’re talking to you.”That did it. His jaw clenched. His head snapped up. His eyes blazed. “Don’t push me. That wasn’t you with your skin whipped off and covered in blood. That was me. That was me who went down into that mine shaft to try to fight the gaiaphage.”Astrid blinked. “No one is minimizing what you’ve done, Sam. You’re a hero. But at the same time—”Sam was on his feet. “At the same time? At the same time you were here in town. Edilio had a bullet in his chest. Dekka was torn to pieces. I was trying not to scream from the…You and Albert and Howard, you weren’t there, were you?”“I was busy standing up to Zil, trying to save Hunter’s life,” Astrid yelled.“But it wasn’t you and your big words, was it? It was Orc who stopped Zil. And he was there because I sent him to rescue you. Me!” He stabbed a finger at his own chest, actually making what looked like painful impact. “Me! Me and Brianna and Dekka and Edilio! And poor Duck.
The problem with secrets is that they don't want to stay that way. They say information wants to be free. And maybe that's the case. But what I do know is that every story wants to be told. You can bury them as deep as you want. You can hide them. You can toss them into the darkest places you can imagine, but sooner or later... They always come back.
There is nothing like discovering your own secrets in someone else’s story. Those thoughts and feelings you believed were too ugly or strange or idealistic or desperate or whimsical or hungry or sad they had to be just you because there could be no other place for them, anywhere. Books that make you realize you’re not alone, you never were. Those are the ones I like best.
You are asking us to lie, Colonel?""I am asking you to omit. Surely, amidst the...the infinite gradations of human venality, that particular sin ranks low." The old man kneaded the folds of his throat. "What happened out there belongs out there. The jungle has it; let the jungle keep it...
Ah man. I remember the days of lying to my mother about a boy. Once I had a boy hidden in the closet and of course Mom wouldn't leave, so I finally had to pretend to get sick to my stomach just to get her out of the room long enough for him to climb out the window and down the tree. He fell, broke his leg. Ah, to be young again.
What happened?" Bailey asks."That is somewhat difficult to explain," Tsukiko answers. "It is a long and complicated story.""And you're not going to tell me, are you?"She tilts her head a bit ... "No, I am not," she says."Great," Bailey mutters under his breath... "The bonfire exploded? How?""Remember when I said it was difficult to explain? That has not changed.
And so the game went on in this manner, a throng of children playing keep-away from a bowling ball tossed back and forth between two plump ogres. The air filled with shrieks and cheers and shouts of laughter as daring players thrilled at the sport. That is, all but the few poor souls knocked flat and captured. No laughter rose from behind bars because those in the birdcage knew what was in store. They would soon be lunch for a couple of hungry ogres. Now you might be thinking—didn’t Gavin call it fun when he was swallowed by a wolf earlier? And didn’t he tell that raven-haired girl it doesn’t hurt to be swallowed whole by a bear? All true, all true. But here’s a secret you might not
Son, I hope your opinion of your mother hasn’t lessened, knowing what you now know.” Gavin glanced up; incredulity skewed his eyebrows. His expression appeared both stunned and appalled. “Never, Father! I love her! It makes no difference to me where she came from.” The man nodded, a show of relief in his features. His large hand, soft in touch, went to brush a string of hair away from his wife’s peaceful profile. “Your mother loves you too, son, more than anything in the world. She worries about you, day and night.” That sentiment stirred something profoundly pleasant inside the boy. He grinned at the internal warmth it created.
Because, my dear Eric, I have tasted the secret knowledge. I know how much to say and when to pull back. I know what to see and not see. And now that I have become whole again, I can never go back. All these things he has given me. Better than my supposed mother and father ever could. For that, I owe him my life and allegiance.
Secret ceremonies in which malevolent men and women cloaked in hooded robes, hiding behind painted faces and chanting demonic incantations while inflicting sadistic wounds on innocent children lying on makeshift alters, or tied to inverted crosses, sounds like the stuff of which B-grade horror movies are made. Some think amoral religious cults only populate the world of Rosemary's Baby, but don't exist in real life. Or, do they? Ask Jenny Hill.
It is acknowledged that father-daughter incest occurs on a large scale in the United States. Sexual abuse has now been included in child abuse legislation. A conservative estimate is that more than 1 million women have been sexually victimized by their fathers or other male relatives, but the true figure probably is much higher. Many victims still fear reporting incest, and families continued to collude to keep the situation secret. Issues of family privacy and autonomy remain troublesome even when incest is reported and must be resolved for treatment to be effective. " Mary de Chesnay J. Psychosoc. Nurs. Med. Health Sep. 22:9-16 Sept 1984 reprinted in Talbott's 1986 edition
I adore the ocean and its vastness, as if it is trying to teach me something, as if it is trying to teach me to remain calm whatever the situation maybe. It holds such a huge amount of water but always remains content and at peace, while we people lose our calm even at smallest of tensions that we get in life. It teaches us to keep our secrets safe within. It has an entire habitat residing in its heart, but we haven’t been able to explore it fully, same way, we must keep our secrets tightly bound within us. If we will share them, the world will lose the curiosity, just like we will lose curiosity if we will come to know fully about the aquatic life. It teaches us to provide without seeking. It houses innumerable species inside and never asks them for anything, we must also help the needy and provide if we have in abundance. The ocean teaches us lessons that books or school can’t teach us.
It is a fundamental principle of American democracy that laws should not be public only when it is convenient for government officials to make them public. They should be public all the time, open to review by adversarial courts, and subject to change by an accountable legislature guided by an informed public. If Americans are not able to learn how their government is interpreting and executing the law then we have effectively eliminated the most important bulwark of our democracy. That’s why, even at the height of the Cold War, when the argument for absolute secrecy was at its zenith, Congress chose to make US surveillance laws public. Without public laws, and public court rulings interpreting those laws, it is impossible to have informed public debate. And when the American people are in the dark, they can’t make fully informed decisions about who should represent them, or protest policies that they disagree with. These are fundamentals. It’s Civics 101. And secret law violates those basic principles. It has no place in America.
Authorities this broad give the national security bureaucracy the power to scrutinize the personal lives of every law-abiding American. Allowing that to continue is a grave error that demonstrates a willful ignorance of human nature. Moreover, it demonstrates a complete disregard for the responsibilities entrusted to us by the Founding Fathers to maintain robust checks and balances on the power of any arm of the government. That obviously raises some very serious questions. What happens to our government, our civil liberties and our basic democracy if the surveillance state is allowed to grow unchecked? As we have seen in recent days, the intelligence leadership is determined to hold on to this authority. Merging the ability to conduct surveillance that reveals every aspect of a person’s life with the ability to conjure up the legal authority to execute that surveillance, and finally, removing any accountable judicial oversight, creates the opportunity for unprecedented influence over our system of government.
Everything that happens to us, everything that we say or hear, everything that we see with our own eyes or we articulate with our tongue, everything that enters through our ears, everything we are witness to (and for which we are therefore partially responsible) must find a recipient outside ourselves and we choose that recipient according to what happens, or what we are told or even according to what we ourselves say. Each thing must be told to someone—though not necessarily to the same person—and each thing will undergo a selection process, the way someone out shopping might scrutinize, set aside, and assess presents for the season to come. Everything must be told at least once, although...it must be told when the time is right, or, which comes to the same thing, at the right moment, and sometimes, if you fail to recognize that right moment or deliberately let it pass, there will never again be another.
I could tell from Anna's face that she had already told him about dancing in Saint Petersburg and that the memory weighed on her heavily. What monstrous things, our pasts, especially when they have been lovely. She had told a secret and now had the sadness of wondering how much deeper she might dig in order to keep the first secret fed.
Children who are victimized through sexual abuse often begin to develop deeply held tenets that shape their sense of self: 'My worth is my sexuality. I'm dirty and shameful. I have no right to my own physical boundaries.' That shapes their ideas about the world around them: 'No one will believe me. Telling the truth results in bad consequences. People can't be trusted.' It doesn't take long for children to being to act in accordance with these belief systems.For girls who have experienced incest, sexual abuse, or rape, the boundaries between love, sex, and pain become blurred. Secrets are normal, and shame is a constant.
As long as you keep secrets and suppress information, you are fundamentally at war with yourself…The critical issue is allowing yourself to know what you know. That takes an enormous amount of courage.
Although we are necessarily concerned, in a chronicle of events, with physical action by the light of day, history suggests that the human spirit wanders farthest in the silent hours between midnight and dawn. Those dark fruitful hours, seldom recorded, whose secret flowerings breed peace and war, loves and hates, the crowning or uncrowning of heads.
Fred and George, however, found all this very funny. They went out oftheir way to march ahead of Harry down the corridors, shouting, "Make way forthe Heir of Slytherin, seriously evil wizard coming through ......Percy was deeply disapproving of this behavior."It is not a laughing matter," he said coldly."Oh, get out of the way, Percy," said Fred. "Harry's in a hurry.""Yeah, he's off to the Chamber of Secrets for a cup of tea with his fangedservant," said George, chortling.Ginny didn't find it amusing either."Oh, don't," she wailed every time Fred asked Harry loudly who he wasplanning to attack next, or when George pretended to ward Harry off with a largeclove of garlic when they met.
All families have their secrets, most people would never know them, but they know there are spaces, gaps where the answers should be, where someone should have sat, where someone used to be. A name that is never uttered, or uttered just once and never again. We all have our secrets.
The conclusion I have reached is that, above all, dogs are witnesses. They are allowed access to our most private moments. They are there when we think we are alone. Think of what they could tell us. They sit on the laps of presidents. They see acts of love and violence, quarrels and feuds, and the secret play of children. If they could tell us everything they have seen, all of the gaps of our lives would stitch themselves together.
He had two lives: one, open, seen and known by all who cared to know, full of relative truth and of relative falsehood, exactly like the lives of his friends and acquaintances; and another life running its course in secret. And through some strange, perhaps accidental, conjunction of circumstances, everything that was essential, of interest and of value to him, everything in which he was sincere and did not deceive himself, everything that made the kernel of his life, was hidden from other people.
The hell with your secrets,” shouted Bonnie.“Language, language! How about this: One of you has kept a secret alltheir life, and is doing so even now. One of you is a murderer—and I amnot speaking of a vampire, or a mercy killing, or anything like that. Andthen there is the question of the true identity of Sage—good luck on yourresearch there!One of you has already had their memory erased—and I don’t meanDamon or Stefan. And what about the secret, stolen kiss? And then there isthe question of what happened the night of the motel, that it seems that nobodybut Elena can recall. You might ask her sometime about her theories aboutCamelot.
There are certain things in a man's past which he does not divulge to everybody but, perhaps, only to his friends. Again there are certain things he will not divulge even to his friends; he will divulge them perhaps only to himself, and that, too, as a secret. But, finally, there are things which he is afraid to divulge even to himself, and every decent man has quite an accumulation of such things in his mind. I can put it even this way: the more decent a man is, the larger will the number of such things be.
Lying in bed, half-covered by the blankets, I would drowsily ask why he had come to my door that night long ago. It had become a ritual for us, as it does for all lovers: where, when, why? remember...I understand even old people rehearse their private religion of how they first loved, most guarded of secrets. And he would answer, sleep blurring his words, "Because I had to." The question and the answer were always the same. Why? Because I had to.
I do not tell her about how much I look forward to going to the Wright barn. How those couple of hours in his studio feel like an escape, a refuge. Nor do I tell Rachel that I think Damian has the most beautiful hands I've ever seen, that he walks like a cat, that he has the clearest eyes, which seem able to see absolutely everything about me. That he seems to be the loneliest person I've ever met, and it breaks my heart. All of these things feel private. Precious. And I don't want to share them with Rachel. Not yet, anyway.
Have you ever done something that you were really ashamed of? I mean somehing so bad you felt sick just thinking about it?''Everyone has. Why, what'd you do?''I didn't say goodbye to Mum.''That's not so bad.''Did you say goodbye to your mum before she left?' I'd never asked Martin about this before. I didn't want to hear the answer.'She left before I had a chance.''Oh.''That's what I like about you, Faltrain.You always know just what to say.
The streetlight outside my house shines on tonight and I'm watching it like it could give me a vision. James ain't talked ever and he looks at that streetlight like it was a word and maybe like it was a verb. James wanted to streetlight me and make me bright and beautiful so all the moths and bats would circle me like I was the center of the world an held secrets.
He could hardly imagine anymore what his life would be without the weight of his hidden knowledge. He'd come to think of it as a kind of penance. It was self-destructive, he could see that, but that was the way things were. People smoked, they jumped out of airplanes, they drank too much and got into their cars and drove without seat belts.
What kind of woman tells all her secrets?” my mother continued, flabbergasted and disappointed in me. “Especially anything that has to do with your body making babies! I know a woman who had no ovaries when she got married. Her husband found out only years later that they couldn’t have children. The two of them are happy together still; they live in a big house, and have a cute dog.
Sarah wonders if whatever secrets Grace is protecting feel the same as her own, sometimes just fuzzy and ticklish, like a littler of kittens trying to climb and paw their way out, and sometimes with claws bared, kittens grown to tigers, camouflaged but always ready to spring.
People, in my long experience, want to talk. They may believe they wish to keep secrets, and they may believe that they are capable of doing so. But the truth is that secrets exist to be revealed; and it is usually very easy to find the combination of words that will cause them to emerge.
And then heard Detective Ryan’s pleased voice talking about Eli, about killers who’ve gone free: “They have to tell,” he’d saidWell, apparently so.But why? What is it that comes from the telling?Some of it must be relief, of course. A secret weighs on us, a terrible secret weighs with a terrible weight.It seems as we need someone to know us as we are—with all we have done—and forgive us. We need to tell. We need to be whole in someone’s sight: Know this about me, and yet love me. Please
I guess when someone tells you something they they usually guard, you feel privileged, not because you know something no-one else knows, but because you feel chosen. You feel like that person wants her life to intersect with yours. I think that's what felt best about it.
In a later chapter, less argued over and less well-known, Teccam explains that there are two types of secrets. There are secrets of the mouth and secrets of the heart. Most secrets are secrets of the mouth. Gossip shared and small scandals whispered. These secrets long to be let loose upon the world. A secret of the mouth is like a stone in your boot. At first you’re barely aware of it. Then it grows irritating, then intolerable. Secrets of the mouth grow larger the longer you keep them, swelling until they press against your lips. They fight to be let free. Secrets of the heart are different. They are private and painful, and we want nothing more than to hide them from the world. They do not swell and press against the mouth. They live in the heart, and the longer they are kept, the heavier they become.
We live in a culture of secrecy, where hiding and lying are accepted as natural, even though we don’t like it. We want honesty, transparency, and authenticity in our loved ones, our groups and organizations, and in our own self so we can reach the heights of our capacity. By clinging to the opaque reality we stall our evolution.
Lately I have come to believe that an as yet undiscovered human need and even a property of matter is the desire for revelation. The truth within us has a way of coming out despite all conscious efforts to conceal it. I have heard stories from those in the generation after the war, all speaking of the same struggle to ferret truth from the silence of their parents so that they themselves could begin to live.
They meet again at dinner--again, next day-- again, for many days in succession. Lady Dedlock is always the same exhausted deity, surrounded by worshippers, and terribly liable to be bored to death, even while presiding at her own shrine. Mr. Tulkinghorn is always the same speechless repository of noble confidences, so oddly but of place and yet so perfectly at home. They appear to take as little note of one another as any two people enclosed within the same walls could. But whether each evermore watches and suspects the other, evermore mistrustful of some great reservation; whether each is evermore prepared at all points for the other, and never to be taken unawares; what each would give to know how much the other knows--all this is hidden, for the time, in their own hearts.
Moving forward in time, it is important that we learn to distinguish between mysteries and secrets. Mysteries precede humankind, envelop us and draw us forward into exploration and wonder. Secrets are the work of humankind, a covert and often insidious way to gather, withhold or impose power. Do not confuse the pursuit of one with the manipulation of the other.
Maybe secrets were part of life; maybe everyone had something they were lying to themselves about, or something they were hiding.I looked up at the cross again and wondered if I was supposed to hear this particular sermon at this particular moment for a reason. I decided that the people who had said God didn’t love me, who said I didn’t have a place on Earth—they were wrong. God wanted me to live, and this was the only way I knew how to survive, so this was what God wanted. This was what I wanted. I had chosen to live, and it seemed like, finally, I was doing just that.
But Aladdin says nothing.Instead, he lowers his face and softly kisses the side of my neck, his mouth trailing up to the skin behind my ear. Goose bumps break across my skin, and I turn my face to meet his lips with mine. This kiss is gentler than our last, long and slow and restrained. It is a kiss of longing. A kiss of farewell. His hands tighten around my waist, pulling me against him. We drift in a slow circle, sending out ripples that make the floating flowers bob and dip.“You keep so many secrets,” he murmurs. “I could spend the rest of my life discovering you.” He tucks my hair behind my ear, his eyes devouring my face.
I used to think that sharing secrets always brought people closer. So I revealed secrets I did not want known in order to feel closer to someone. Oh, the loss I felt when I found out the secrets that I had held dear, that were so difficult to say out loud, that I had kept to myself, were being spread around the next day as if they were nothing! I think that was the moment I realized that pouring your heart out to someone might not bring you closer but in fact make you poorer instead. I even though maybe growing close to someone was better achieved by empathizing in silence.
Loving me is like entering a dungeon with a lot of doors. I cannot guarantee you that you will get the key of every door you come across, I cannot tell you which door leads you where and what is behind it, I cannot assure you that you will head back out again the way you came in. All I can say is if you manage to open every right door and the last one too, I will make you one of my secrets forever, you will see and feel things that you have never come across, which will never let you leave again from the paradise that you have reached.
Right after Matt died, I was afraid to do basically everything. I couldn’t even bite my nails or sniff my shirt to see if I needed deodorant without feeling like he was watching me. I willed and prayed and begged him to give me a sign that he was watching, that he was with me, so I would know. But he never did. Time moved on. And I stopped being afraid. Until right now, vulnerable and insecure and a little bit drunk. Lying in the sand and falling in crazy love with someone I just met. Matt is watching me. Observing. Possibly judging. And the worst part of it is, I don’t want to wake up under his landslide of sad rocks anymore. I don’t want to taste the marzipan frosting and the clove cigarettes. I don’t want to think about the blue glass necklace or the books he read to me on his bed or the piles of college stuff or some random boy in the grocery store wearing his donated clothes. I don’t want to be the dead boy’s best-friend-turned-something-else. Or the really supportive neighbor friend. Or the lifelong keeper of broken-hearted secrets.
it is funny how things are always perfect as long as you keep quiet. And then, what's the point in having an awesome lover when you do not let yourself admit it, even to your closest friends? And, if you do not kiss and tell, are your affairs real, or nothing more than bedroom distractions; check-in before midnight, check-out before 9 AM?
I blame what happened next on the door. The one right across the hall from me, a mere three feet away. I love doors. All of them, without exception. Doors lead to things and I’ve never met one I haven’t wanted to open. All the same, if that door hadn’t been so old and decorative, so decidedly closed, if a thread of light hadn’t positioned itself with such wretched temptation across its middle, highlighting the keyhole and its intriguing key, perhaps I might have stood a chance; remained twiddling my thumbs until Percy came to collect me. But it was and I didn’t; I maintain that I simply couldn’t. Sometimes, you can tell just by looking at a door there’s something interesting behind it.
But the secrets of such a book are not perpetual. Once they are known, they become relegated to a lesser sphere, which is that of the knower. Having lost the prestige they once enjoyed, these former secrets now function as tools in the excavation of still deeper ones which, in turn, will suffer the same corrosive fate. And this is the fate of all the secrets of the universe. Eventually the seeker of a recondite knowledge may conclude—either through insight or sheer exhaustion—that this ruthless process is never-ending, that the mortification of one mystery after another has no terminus beyond that of the seeker's own extinction. And how many still remain susceptible to the search? How many pursue it to the end of their days with undying hope of some ultimate revelation? Better not to think in precise terms just how few the faithful are.
The snow, the effect of concealment and secrecy it creates, makes him think of the brutality of the wartime legislation to forbid and violently extract secrets. It is as if the hushed white landscape is showing how sacrosanct are our secrets, how much of our vitality is bound up in them.
Samad! My mouth is like the grave! Whatever is told to me dies with me."Whatever was told to Zinat invariably lit up the telephone network, rebounded off aerials, radio waves, and satellites along the way, picked up finally by advanced alien civilizations as it bounced through the atmosphere of planets far removed from this one.
For Sabina, living in truth, lying neither to ourselves not others, was possible only away from the public: the moment someone keeps an eye on what we do, we involuntarily make allowances for that eye, and nothing we do is truthful. Having a public, keeping a public in mind, means living in lies. Sabina despised literature in which people give away all kinds of intimate secrets about themselves and their friends. A man who loses his privacy loses everything, Sabina thought. And a man who gives it up on his own free will is a monster. That is why Sabina did not suffer in the least from having to keep her love a secret. On the contrary, only by doing so could she live the truth.
Um, well, I’ve been working out with Alex. Today just happened to be right after our workout,” Craig admits finally.“Really,” I say dripping with sarcasm. “And you failed to mention this earlier? You ran off so abruptly for your tryst. I should’ve suspected something illicit was occurring.”Alex erupts in laughter looking at Craig. “You didn’t tell her.
The guy next to you, is probably saying some kind a truth behind everything or just a peace of it. Nobody knows!...Now your hands bloody, new mysteries new secrets found and some people don't want you to know them. So they kill the person to which you get in contact.... (Blindspot Series!)
Secrets are a sneaky little seed. You can hide them, you can bury them, you can disguise them, and cover them up. But then just when you think your secret has rotted away and decayed into nothing, it stirs back to life. It sprouts roots and stems, crawls its way through the mud and muck, growing and climbing, and bursting through the surface, blooming for everyone to see. That's the lesson here. The truth always comes out eventually.
Secrets carve us like water carves stone. On the surface nothing will shift, but things we cannot tell anyone chafe and consume us, and slowly our life settles around them, moulds itself into their shape.Secrets gnaw at the bonds between people. Sometimes we believe they can also build them: if we let another person into the silent space a secret has made within us, we are no longer alone there.
The things that kept them awake in the middle of the night, the things they did underneath the cover of darkness, both dreadful and beautiful, both attractive and repulsive, were revealed in stark clarity to their minds. A harsh reality that intensified sensations with each gust of wind. They shrank from it with frightened whimpers. The setting in each house would have fit perfectly into a post-apocalyptic tale of nuclear holocausts. Shell-shocked expressions gazed into the nothingness. Blankets over faces, silent prayers to the heavens. No curious eyes at the windows, or storm watchers dared to partake. The mere thought of looking out was too much to be borne.
Be careful who you share your personal life with. If someone you confide shares secrets with you, that they were asked not to divulge, chances are your secret's already out there too. Everything is not for everybody.
The secret of the whole matter is that a habit is not the mere tendency to repeat a certain act, nor is it established by the mere repetition of the act. Habit is a fixed tendency to react or respond in a certain way to a given stimulus; and the formation of habit always involves the two elements, the stimulus and the response or reaction. The indolent lad goes to school not in response to any stimulus in the school itself, but to the pressure of his father's will; when that stimulus is absent, the reaction as a matter of course does not occur.
The secret of wisdom is to be overly curious, like a cat--to take the time to look closely, to use all your senses to see and to touch and to taste and to smell and to hear, and to die because you were overly curious. To keep on wondering...about the afterlife. That is our only mission. Only one. If we don’t wonder, then we will never, ever be curious. Then, if like the cat, you wondered too far...you simply no longer will have to ever wonder again. Your mission will be fulfilled. All because of curiosity.--from The Wise-ass Man who butchered Eve Merriam’s wisdom...and Her Secret
I had loved Kitty -I would always love Kitty. But I had lived with her a kind of queer half-life, hiding from my own true self. Since then I had refused to love at all, had become - or so I thought - a creature beyond passion, driving others to their secret, humiliating confessions of lust; but never offering my own.
We all are secret-keepers in our intimate relationships. We keep secrets from our partners about daily encounters, former lovers, true feelings about sex, friends, in-laws, finances, personal hopes, and worries about work, health, love, and life. It may be, in fact, that keeping these secrets makes all relationships possible. If our partners knew every thought, every nuance of our selves, our relationships would run the risk of succumbing from either constant turmoil or—perhaps worse—a tedious matter-of-factness devoid of surprises. Whatever their contribution to the maintenance of our unions, secrets also contribute to their collapse.
Houses are like people, Agent Lemieux. They have secrets. I'll tell you something I've learned.'Armand Gamache dropped his voice so that Agent Lemieux had to strain to hear.'Do you know what makes us sick, Agent Lemieux?'Lemieux shook his head. Then out of the darkness and stillness he heard the answer.'It's our secrets that make us sick.
She was beginning to have that feeling that comes after midnight, of one's thoughts opening out, flowering, groping out loud for some new discovery, some new truth that is really as old as all the hundreds of years girls have been confiding to one another in the relaxing intimacy of the night.
I had to be right in never talking about what you could not change, and I had to make many people agree that I was right. None of them ever accused me of being responsible for what had happened to Phineas, either because they could not believe it or because they could not understand it. I would have talked about that, but they would not, and I would not talk about Phineas in any other way.
The world is swirling with so many mysteries and secrets that nobody will ever track down all of them. But with a book you can stay up very late, reading until all the secrets are clear to you. The questions of the world are hidden forever, but the answers in a book are hiding in plain sight.
If it could come about that each of us were to describe his innermost secrets –secrets which one would hesitate to tell not only to people at large, but even to one’s closest friends, nay, to fear to admit even to one’s own self - the world would be filled with such a stench that each one of us would choke to death. That’s why, speaking in parenthesis, all our social conventions and niceties are so beneficial.
…these books have their own integrity, their own identity. It is not about the words in there. You don’t need to read these books. Words are there to confuse you. They are just messing around with your mind. You have to look beyond words. There is a big secret somewhere in these books and I am going to find it. And you know that, but you are afraid to admit it. It is dangerous.
Never, my little one, hide anything from those that love you. Never let anything that makes itself a nest in your heart, grow into a secret, for then at once it will begin to eat a hole in it.
Turner's openness is starting to become more and more appealing to me. At least I know what I'm getting with him. And I still need to tell him about Dax's kiss. That, and his proposition. I haven't had even a single second to get him alone since, but the secret is burning a hole in my pocket. I need it gone. It's like I'm allergic to the fuckers now.
Rather, that rigidity had simply been given sporadic spots of wrath, coupled with the sprinkling of secrets, and placed in a cold corner to slowly stew and starve––leaving it no choice but to eventually break through with blooms of fury. And on the night of Cornelius’s arrival, it at long last broke through.
Yes, I just…” Should I be honest and sound like a complete loser? Oh why the hell not? “I have not had a kiss like that in a while.” I licked my lips.He looked me dead in the eye. “Good.” A wave of silence crashed over us. I didn’t know what to say to that. “Well, I better get going. See you soon?”I nodded dumbly. “Mmm-hmm.” He smiled and began to walk away. I couldn’t just let him go! “Declan!”He turned. “Yes, Cake?”Come on, brain! Think of something! “What should I wear? I mean, what kind of place is Shellshock?” Yes, yes, that was fine… damage averted.“California casual.”“Oh, ok.” I think I knew what that meant. Spend three hours getting ready to make it look like you just threw any-ol’-thing on. “Have a nice night.”He flicked his head my way. “You too.” Then he was gone.And then I was sad.It was ridiculous. Preposterous, even. I was going to have to come clean about the ring- eventually. I hoped he didn’t bring it up because I would probably tell the poor guy my life story to get to why the ring he bought meant so much to me.
Every day it got swept. All of the dirt each piece of dust and even the tiniest bread crumb of secret midnight snacks. It lay under that rug.Years went by nobody noticed it’s more defeated crumbled appearance with all the misshaped lumps and bumps. Eventually a boy drips and falls over it people are so surprised and nobody knows what why or how it could have happened. Not even the lady with the sweeping brush.
My body was a Pandora’s box of aches and pains. When Grandpa died all the ailments came jumping out. I was forever twitching and shaking. I had a persistent sore throat and had difficulty swallowing except when I was taking nips from my illicit cocktail. I was constantly constipated, holding everything in — a disorder that had started when I was two years old. It burned when I passed urine, and my migraines were so severe it felt on occasions as if I were going blind.
But nothing will help quite so much as just keeping quiet, talking with other people as little as possible, with yourself as much as possible. For conversation has a kind of charm about it, an insinuating and insidious something that elicits secrets from us just like love or liquor. Nobody will keep the things he hears to himself, and nobody will repeat just what he hears and no more. Neither will anyone who has failed to keep a story to himself keep the name of his informant to himself. Every person without exception has someone to whom he confides everything that is confided to himself. Even supposing he puts some guard in his garrulous tongue and is content with a single pair of ears, he will still be the creator of a host of later listeners – such is the way in which what was but a little while before a secret becomes common rumor.
Probably one or two moments in your whole life you will hear a dark whispering spirit, a voice coming from the center of things. It will have blades for lips and will not stop until it speaks the one secret thing at the heart of it all. Kneeling on the floor, unable to stop shuddering, I heard it plainly. It said, You are unlovable...
It turns out that when there is some conspicuous gap or contradiction at the center of someone's existence, there is probably a very specific, obvious reason for it, and the reason you're avoiding confronting it directly is that it's something you don't want to know.
Now writing is just working your way toward the border that the innermost secret draws around itself, and to cross that line would mean self-destruction. But writing is also an attempt to respect the borderline only for the truly innermost secret, and bit by bit to free the taboos around that core, difficult to admit as they are, from their prison of unspeakability. Not self-destruction but self-redemption. Not being afraid of unavoidable suffering.
Ritualised child sexual abuse is about abuse of power, control and secrecy. Ten years ago many people found it difficult to believe that fathers actually raped their children, yet survivors of such abuses spoke out and eventually began to be listened to and believed. Ritual abuse survivors, when they try to speak out about their experiences, face denial and disbelief from society and often fear for their lives from the abusers.
There are two good reasons to put your napkin in your lap. One is that food might spill in your lap, and it is better to stain the napkin than your clothing. The other is that it can serve as a perfect hiding place. Practically nobody is nosey enough to take the napkin off a lap to see what is hidden there.
If you tell anyone what I just told you, I’ll call the Mob. I know some of them, you know.” “Bullshit.” I shrugged. “Believe what you want.” Finch eyed me suspiciously, and then smiled. “You are officially the coolest person I know.” “That’s sad, Finch. You should get out more,” I said, stopping at the cafeteria entrance.
My name is Cammie!” I didn’t think about all the people I could have woken, all the alarms that might have gone off. I just snapped, “How did you know about Boston? Why are you working with Mr. Solomon now? Are you my friend or are you my enemy, Zach? Or, wait, let me guess, you can’t tell me.
I used to want to understand how the world worked. Little things, like heavy stuff goes at the bottom of the laundry bag, or big things, like the best way to get a boy to chase you is to ignore him, or medium things, like if you cut an onion under running water your eyes won't sting, and if you wash your fingers afterwards with lemon-juice they won't stink.I used to want to know all the secrets, and every time I learned one, I felt like I'd taken--a step. On a journey. To a place. A destination: to be the kind of person who knew all this stuff, the way everyone around me seemed to know all this stuff. I thought that once I knew enough secrets, I'd be like them.
Many more villagers, who have seen an elephant for the first time in their lives, give absurd exaggerations regarding his size, weight, and height. One of them describes him as ‘a fundament!’. Another, elaborating, alludes to the term ‘firmament,’ because of the elephant’s hugeness. He felt as though the sky was obliterated from his vision. The last to be interviewed by the local TV station swears that he sensed the world lean forward as the elephant came closer and tilt backwards as the beast walked away.This large mammal ambles purposefully. He pays no heed to the crowded silence following him in stealthy consciousness. One of the villagers, a woman often suspected of dabbling in witchcraft, talks of her inspired theory: that this was no elephant, more like a human on a holy mission of avenging justice. Two other witnesses, neither having had any contact with the woman, speak in substantiation of the woman’s claims, giving as evidence the observation that the elephant turned around when someone said something in Somali. Several villagers will not comment, afraid of a fitting retribution should they do so.
What are we going to do, Ayden?" she whispered, glaring up at me."I don't know," I confessed. "But how about we burn that bridge when we get there?""I thought it was 'cross' that bridge?"I lightly poked her in the eye and she laughed. "No. We're burning bridges. Crossing is so overrated." I smiled and touched the corner of her eyes, captivated by the iridescent blues."I think I like the sound of that," she whispered."Yeah?""Yeah.
Secrets are like plants. They can stay buried deep in the earth for a long time, but eventually they'll send up shoots and give themselves away. They have to. It's their nature. Just a tiny green stem at first. Which slowly, insidiously grows taller, stronger, unfolding itself, until there it is. A big fat secret, right in front of your face; a fully bloomed flower perfumed with the scent of deception.
Our enemies had a tendency to take one look at Charlotte, with her short, slim figure and her pretty, delicate Asian features, and assume she was weak. A low level threat.Ten seconds later, the look of surprise on his face as he lay on his back, winded, eyes rolled up and watching her support Kate towards the stairs, said he'd possibly learnt his lesson. Never judge a book by it's cover.
Did you see them? They're kids, Nathan. Children, who ended up being in the wrong place, at the wrong time." I blew out a frustrated breath, tracking one of the angry young teens in topic as he was dragged kicking and yelling from the room. "They won't even consider switching sides. Plumber has them so scared, all they can see if the numbers advantage he has over us.""Numbers don't mean shit when you're fighters have the same level of skill as a two year old." He sniffed, shaking his head at the kid who was finally pulled from the room. "And that's insulting to two year olds.
When her voice cracked and tears started spilling down her cheeks, I panicked. I wasn't good at consoling people at the best of times, but even a trained therapist would have struggled in my shoes. What could you possibly say to a girl who'd dug for hours trying to rescue her family after they'd been buried alive?
For all our guessing and speculating, there were a few things we all agree on. Things we knew to be fact. The drug was never meant to get out. Ordinary people were never supposed to develop extraordinary powers. Divines weren't supposed to take over the world.But they did.
Anyone who'd ever kept a secret could tell you, the bigger the secret, the more draining it was to carry around with you. Every second, of every minute, of every day, lying to the people around you. Waiting for the inevitable moment that the truth would come out and you would have to deal with the fallout.It was exhausting.
After a hasty gulp, I lowered the bottle and grinned. "How much are you betting it's that and the melons they put in the fridge yesterday on the menu for tonight?"Luke grinned but said nothing. I shook my head. "You're grinning because I said "melons", aren't you?"His smile widened. I rolled my eyes. Boys, they never grew up.
Studying him then, it was hard not to notice how handsome Luke was, a fact that that most of the girls hadn't missed either. To their delight, his almost OCD obsession with having his hair no more than several inches long meant he regularly asked them to trim his sandy brown hair with nail scissors. An honour they held rock, paper, scissor tournaments for. It was all very serious stuff.
I didn't even know this guy's name. I'd never heard him referred to as anything but "Plumber', a hideous nickname he'd dubbed himself for no other reason than that it had been his occupation Before. Oh, and he carried a wrench around as his signature weapon. The whole thing screamed sanity.Not.
What was best for Charlotte? The answer was obvious. And for once he needed to overcome his selfish desires. "Go home, Charlotte." "So thats it?" She straightened, her lovely pride stiffening her frame. "You are finished with me? Finally?" He discarded the glass and moved so quickly across the room, around the furniture, that he saw the surprise that she couldnt hide. "No." He touched her chin, made her meet his eyes. "I would never be finished with you, Charlotte" Something far more contorted than simple confusion graced her face. "Roman." And her voice was soft, questioning. "Do you think you might come to love me? If you werent ...giving...me back? Someday? Just a little?" He was frozen. Absolutely frozen. He couldnt speak a word. She lifted her chin a notch and pressed a soft kiss to his lips at his nonresponse. And still he remained frozen. He saw her walk to the door and grab Bills arm. Heard their footsteps filing down the hall. Leaving. Leaving. Never hearing his whisper that he already did.
Sunlight on orchids Lightning on water Twilight calls your name I have searched for you for centuries I am the woman who fell in love by accident- Virtual love- who would have thought, is it even possible? ( I believe so ) I raise my white flag and listen for your echo in my dreams I'm walking backwards to find you in my past I'm entangled in your fate~ ~Lady A~
It's naive to assume that another person can fulfill you, or save you, if the two things are, in fact, different, and I have never felt that way with Colin. I simply believe that he fulfills an important part of me, and that Robert fulfilled another equally important part of me. The part of me Robert fulfilled is a part which I imagine Colin, even now, doesn't know exists. It is the part of me that can destroy as easily as it loves. It is the part of me that feels safest and most at home behind closed doors, in a dark bedroom, that believes that the only truth lies in the secrets we keep from each other.
There comes a time in a man's life, if he is unlucky and leads a full life, when he has a secret so dirty that he knows he never will get rid of it. (Shakespeare knew this and tried to say it, but he said it just as badly as anyone ever said it. 'All the perfumes of Arabia' makes you think of all the perfumes of Arabia and nothing more. It is the trouble with all metaphors where human behavior is concerned. People are not ships, chess men, flowers, race horses, oil paintings, bottles of champagne, excrement, musical instruments or anything else but people. Metaphors are all right to give you an idea.)
If you didn't want to know things, you didn't have to know them. Things didn't become facts until someone actually spoke them. Until then, you could just go on acting just the way you had been acting and even if you suspected there was something that would change everything, you didn't have to acknowledge it; you didn't have to let it in.
His shirt is rumpled. His fingers, long and slender, are stained yellow at the tips from smoking. His mind is always on something else. My mind is busy, too, reading every cue and signal, keeping track of all the things that cannot be discussed, that must not be remembered, that have to be erased.
Will you promise to keep this to yourself, to not tell anyone of what we are?” By his words you’d think he was giving me a choice. Like I could say,no deal, honey bunch, I’m off to shout your secret from the rooftops, and he’d be like, oh no please don’t do that. Inreality, he’d have to kill me.
...how time packs new years over the old ones but how those old years are still in there, like the earliest, tightest rings centering a tree, the most hidden, enclosed in darkness and shielded from weather. But then a saw screams in and the tree topples and the circles are stricken by the sun and the sap glistens and the stump is laid open for the world to see.
The only place Aletta and I could be together unseen was just under the rafters in the church tower, a circumstance that propelled us into an earlier intimacy than what we would have known had we been permitted to walk together Sunday afternoons under the wide sky.