If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery--isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you'll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is.

An inn, of course, was a place you came to at night (not at three o'clock in the afternoon), preferably a rainy night—wind, too, if it could be managed; and it should be situated on a moor (“bleak,” Kate knew, was the adjective here). And there should be scullions; mine host should be gravy-stained and broad in the beam with a tousled apron pulled across his stomach; and there should be a tall, dark stranger—the one who speaks to nobody—warming thin hands before the fire. And the fire should be a fire—crackling and blazing, laid with an impossible size log and roaring its great heart out up the chimney. And there should be some sort of cauldron, Kate felt, somewhere about—and, perhaps, a couple of mastiffs thrown in for good measure.

Science has never killed or persecuted a single person for doubting or denying its teaching, and most of these teaching have been true; but religion has murdered millions for doubting or denying her dogmas and most of these dogmas have been false.All stories about gods and devils, of heavens and hells, as they do not conform to nature, and are not apparent to sense, should be rejected without consideration. Beyond the universe there is nothing and within the universe the supernatural does not and cannot exist.Of all deceivers who have plagued mankind, none are so deeply ruinous to human happiness as those imposters who pretend to lead by a light above nature.The lips of the dead are closed forever. There comes no voice from the tomb. Christianity is responsible for having cast the fable of eternal fire over almost every grave.

It was a lone tree burning on the desert. A heraldic tree that the passing storm had left afire. The solitary pilgrim drawn up before it had traveled far to be here and he knelt in the hot sand and held his numbed hands out while all about in that circle attended companies of lesser auxiliaries routed forth into the inordinate day, small owls that crouched silently and stood from foot to foot and tarantulas and solpugas and vinegarroons and the vicious mygale spiders and beaded lizards with mouths black as a chowdog's, deadly to man, and the little desert basilisks that jet blood from their eyes and the small sandvipers like seemly gods, silent and the same, in Jeda, in Babylon. A constellation of ignited eyes that edged the ring of light all bound in a precarious truce before this torch whose brightness had set back the stars in their sockets.

In my biology class, we'd talked about the definition of life: to be classified as a living creature, a thing needs to eat, breathe, reproduce, and grow. Dogs do, rocks don't, trees do, plastic doesn't. Fire, by that definition, is vibrantly alive. It eats everything from wood to flesh, excreting the waste as ash, and it breathes air just like a human, taking in oxygen and emitting carbon. Fire grows, and as it spreads, it creates new fires that spread out and make new fires of their own. Fire drinks gasoline and excretes cinders, it fights for territory, it loves and hates. Sometimes when I watch people trudging through their daily routines, I think that fire is more alive than we are–brighter, hotter, more sure of itself and where it wants to go. Fire doesn't settle; fire doesn't tolerate; fire doesn't 'get by.'Fire does.Fire is.

The thing about fires most people don’t realise is the noise. It’s deafening so even if you shout, you can’t be heard three feet away. You can never quite get used to the fury of it, it’s like a mighty roar of anger that just keeps going. I suppose flame is beautiful, the way it leaps into the air like it’s free to do what it wants. Other elements are also free and I guess the sea can be pretty awesome, wind too, and lightning, but fire has a mind and a determination. You don’t see it as a blind raging thing, which I suppose it is, but something that attacks and thinks and changes tactics. It has a malevolence that uses surprise, dirty tricks, cunning. You get to think of it as someone, not something, and it’s someone you have to beat, but right from the start you don’t like your chances because it’s so big and unpredictable and can do so much harm.

For the Hebrews, names provided a direct link with the Creator. They understood words as being the creative fire of God, the ‘black fire on white fire’ of His Law. Every utterance and every act of creation through which He revealed Himself was not only word made flesh but fire made flesh. The word for ‘being’, yesh, ‘to exist’ or ‘to have substance’ was flame–breathed. The word for ‘fire’, esh, was embedded in the word for ‘being’ and in the very notion of ‘being human’.The rabbis were said to have asked: Why is the word for ‘woman’, ishah? Because she is fire, esh. Why is the word for ‘man’, ish? Because he too is fire, esh. They noted that when the Hebrew letters for ‘man’ and ‘woman’ came together they produced a new word as part of the union: yah, a reference to Yahweh, the Name of God.

It was a pleasure to burn.It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history. With his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his stolid head, and his eyes all orange flame with the thought of what came next, he flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black. He strode in a swarm of fireflies. He wanted above all, like the old joke, to shove a marshmallow on a stick in the furnace, while the flapping pigeon-winged books died on the porch and lawn of the house. While the books went up in sparkling whirls and blew away on a wind turned dark with burning.

I want to tell the rebels that I am alive. That I'm right here in District Eight, where the Capitol has just bombed a hospital full of unarmed men, women and children. There will be no survivors." The shock I've been feeling begins to give way to fury. "I want to tell people that if you think for one second the Capitol will treat us fairly if there's a cease-fire, you're deluding yourself. Because you know who they are and what they do." My hands go out automatically, as if to indicate the whole horror around me. "This is what they do and we must fight back!""President Snow says he's sending a message. Well I have one for him. You can torture us and bomb and burn our districts to the ground, but do you see that?" One of the cameras follows where I point to the planes burning on the roof of a warehouse across from us. "Fire is catching!" I am shouting now, determined he will not miss a word of it, "And if we burn, you burn with us!

H--‐how did we get in the water?”“You were burning. I needed to do something to cool you. As soon as I carried you in, though, you started flailing around. Scared me,” he added on a whisper.That explained the dream. But it didn’t change what she knew was coming. She pressed her face against his neck and drew in the sweet scent of his skin. Loved the rasp of his stubbly cheek against her flesh.“Why do I get the feeling you’re holding something back?” he asked softly.Because he was smart. And because even in the short amount of time they’d been together, he’d learned more about her than anyone else in her entire life. “I believe in signs. I never did before but…I dreamed about you.”“You did?”She nodded. “I think I have for a while, I just…I didn’t know it was you. But now…”She swallowed hard. “I should have waited for you. It’s the biggest regret I have. I’m sorry I didn’t wait.

LET’S GO BACK HOMEI can't think about you,Without smiling.What I wouldn’t give,To go back there,Take you in my arms,Kiss you, And tell you,"I still love you."It's been three decades now,And still your smile's with me,Your wave goodbye, The love in your eyes, And everything else you gave me,Before that highway fog swept in,And stole your spirit away.Oh- to return by your side again, Fish beside the Pleasant Hill Dam,Hike through the Mayer's woods, Hang out on your big hill,Sleep naked in your twin bed,Fill your room with laughter- And marijuana smoke.You returned home-And I traveled on down the road,Found new loves,Safely took them under my wing,And deeply into my heart.But you know, as I do-This wasn’t always possible.I didn’t always have the fire- The courage to stand tall,The joy to expand, Nor the love to give deeply.These were all your gifts--To me.Someday-When I close my eyes for good,And cry out- "Lord- forgive me for I have sinned-"I'll joyously return by your side,Take you into my arms, Kiss you, And tell you,"I still love you.

Have you ever known DEATH? Its creatures crawl amidst the lost soul you live wondering if ever they will survive off the bloodthirsty desires of your midnight screams. Shuuush. Can you hear the voices in your head? I listen as I hear them calling you. I sneak a peak up the stairs with just a mere candle gently lit @ the far off end to the hallway … are you there? I hear foot prints … perhaps the logs making witches cackling is all it is? There is no comfort to the lost. No settling to the fire ignited through their veins. Have you not rejoiced in the victory from your burning haunts? Sadness prevails and I loathe sadness. It eats at your bones like a sick little parasite. Stop the madness I plead. Cut its very existence out like the heart of a filthy swine. DEATH be to this demon madness. DEATH I say. Sleep sweetly for the addiction to aliveness comforts your weakened brokenness. [the torturous journey one plays in the outside lines of addiction … as if experienced in the type of rock thrown down for it’s victory. HOP SCOTCH. have we erased the sidewalk chalk?]

One day we took the children to see a goldsmith refine gold after the ancient manner of the East. He was sitting beside his little charcoal fire. ("He shall sit as a refiner"; the gold- or silversmith never leaves his crucible once it is on the fire.) In the red glow lay a common curved roof tile; another tile covered it like a lid. This was the crucible. In it was the medicine made of salt, tamarind fruit and burnt brick dust, and imbedded in it was the gold. The medicine does its appointed work on the gold, "then the fire eats it," and the goldsmith lifts the gold out with a pair of tongs, lets it cool, rubs it between his fingers, and if not satisfied puts it back again in fresh medicine. This time he blows the fire hotter than it was before, and each time he puts the gold into the crucible, the heat of the fire is increased; "it could not bear it so hot at first, but it can bear it now; what would have destroyed it then helps it now." "How do you know when the gold is purified?" we asked him, and he answered, "When I can see my face in it [the liquid gold in the crucible] then it is pure.

I was only going to say that heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung my out into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy. That will do to explain my secret, as well as the other. I've no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in heaven; and if the wicked man in there had not brought Heathcliff so low, I shouldn't have thought of it. It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him: and that, not because he's handsome, but because he's more myself than I am. What ever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same; and Linton's is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire.'Ere this speech ended, I became sensible of Heathcliff's presence. Having noticed a slight movement, I turned my head, and saw him rise from the bench, and steal out noiselessly. He had listened till he heard Catherine say it would degrade her to marry him, and then he stayed to hear no further.

I am Cinna's bird, ignited, flying frantically to escape something inescapable. The feathers of flame that grow from my body. Beating my wings only fans the blaze. I consume myself, but to no end.Finally, my wings begin to falter, I lose height, and gravity pulls me into a foamy sea the color of Finnick's eyes. I float on my back, which continues to burn beneath the water, but the agony quiets to pain. When I am adrift and unable to navigate, that's when they come. The dead.The ones I loved fly as birds in the open sky above me. Soaring, weaving, calling to me to join them. I want so badly to follow them, but the seawater saturates my wings, making it impossible to lift them. The ones I hated have taken to the water, horrible scaled things that tear my salty flesh with needle teeth. Biting again and again. Dragging me beneath the surface.The small white bird tinged in pink dives down, buries her claws in my chest, and tries to keep me afloat."No, Katniss! No! You can't go!"But the ones I hated are winning, and if she clings to me, she'll be lost as well. "Prim, let go!" And finally she does.