Ask yourself something. Have you ever thought about why guys want you gone the next day? It’s not because they’ve got things to do, though I’m sure there are a few assholes who think like that, either because they repeated the folly so often they learned to bury the guilt or because they didn’t have a conscience to begin with but, truthfully, it’s because they can’t stand to look at the reason they feel a hole in their chest. They don’t like reminders of who helped put that sick feeling in the pits of their stomachs. As long as they had a decent mama, the guilt is always substantial. Always. If they say differently, they’re liars." - Spencer Blackwell, GREED
Your printers have made but one blunder,Correct it instanter, and then for the thunder!We'll see in a jiffy if this Mr S[pencer]Has the ghost of a claim to be thought a good fencer.To my vision his merits have still seemed to dwindle,Since I have found him allied with the great Dr T[yndall]While I have, for my part, grown cockier and cockier,Since I found an ally in yourself, Mr L[ockyer]And am always, in consequence, thoroughly willin',To perform in the pages of Nature's M[acmillan].
Adam is fading out. It is on account of Darwin and that crowd. I can see that he is not going to last much longer. There's a plenty of signs. He is getting belittled to a germ—a little bit of a speck that you can't see without a microscope powerful enough to raise a gnat to the size of a church.('The Refuge of the Derelicts' collected in Mark Twain and John Sutton Tuckey, The Devil's Race-Track: Mark Twain's Great Dark Writings (1980), 340-41. - 1980)
I fully agree with all that you say on the advantages of H. Spencer's excellent expression of 'the survival of the fittest.' This, however, had not occurred to me till reading your letter. It is, however, a great objection to this term that it cannot be used as a substantive governing a verb; and that this is a real objection I infer from H. Spencer continually using the words, natural selection.(Letter to A. R. Wallace July 1866)
I thought back to all the times I’d slept with a girl and not thought twice about it and my gut ached. If a girl doesn’t safeguard herself, who will? I’d always had the mentality that men will change when women change but I never thought about how safeguarding the girls around me was just as much my responsibility as it was theirs.
I followed suit, a little bit nervous, and very unaware of what I was supposed to do. I had that same sensation you get when you were new to a school and had no idea who anyone was in your lunch period. You’d take your lunch tray and sort of stand around for a moment looking for a good spot to take a seat but the entire time you’re searching, all you can feel is everyone’s eyes on you. That’s a shitty feeling.
I started toward the barn and was grateful that the wind was still. About halfway up the drive, my heart began to beat an irregular rhythm as I caught sight of Cricket coming toward me. My breath caught in my throat. This girl. This tiny little girl had such incredible power over me with her big, blue, round, sad eyes. Her unusual face, her unusually striking face. Her pert nose. The faint laugh lines around her eyes and mouth. And I didn’t know her, didn’t really even know if she and I were anything alike but that didn’t stop me from wishing we shared a future...even if she did belong to someone else.
I ran up the stairs, shedding pieces of my suit as I went, determined for a shower, resolute in washing away what I’d just done, who I really was but I was certain there was nothing that could cleanse me, to launder my poisoned blood. This was who I was. Hopeless personified.
August said you row?” she asked. Her voice spilled over me like warm syrup. I closed my eyes and enjoyed the drugging sensation then realized she’d asked me a question.“Yeah,” I answered belatedly. Good. A short answer but it’s better than mouth diarrhea. “I row...a-uh-boat...with-uh-my teammates.” Superb! Just-uh-superb.
A cemetery?" I chuckle, but the pitch is a bit higher than I expected. "At night? With a full moon? Um ... did you see any, uh, zombies, you, while you were there?"Shiko blinks at me a few times. "No"I slump in relief. "Thank God. I mean, I don't want to be the first to die. The funny guy always dies first, for shock value, you know. Rourke would get killed next, because it's be a heroic sacrifice or something." I motion to Shiko. "You'd live, though, unless you had sex."... Shiko has the look of an addled kitten, complete with head tilt. Rourke sighs and leans toward her, embarrassed. 'You'll have to excuse him. According to his mother he has an irrational fear of something called the zombie apocalypse.""It's not irrational!