#hal

The bar staff and croupiers all wore black with the same green triangle logo emblazoned on their shirts, and contact lenses which made their eyes shine an eerie, vibrant green. The bar optics glowed with the same green light, the intensity of which was linked to the music. As the bartender walked away to fetch the drinks, a breakdown in the techno track commenced and the bottles began to palpitate. The bartender's eyes glowed with a hallucinatory felinity that made Mangle feel nervous. ↗

— R.D. Ronald

#eerie-attraction #hallucinatory #music

Contrary to what we usually believe, moments like these, the best moments in our lives, are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times—although such experiences can also be enjoyable, if we have worked hard to attain them. The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile. Optimal experience is thus something that we make happen. For a child, it could be placing with trembling fingers the last blockon a tower she has built, higher than any she has built so far; for a swimmer, it could be trying to beat his own record; for a violinist, mastering an intricate musical passage. For each person there are thousands of opportunities, challenges to expand ourselves. ↗

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#flow #happiness #experience

There is a tendency at every important but difficult crossroad to pretend that it's not really there. ↗

— Bill McKibben

#environment #judgement #nature

When a person boldly declares, 'You can't,' he might as well add on, 'can you?', knowing that this spoken roadblock only serves to fuel a challenge in naturally stubborn souls. ↗

— Richelle E. Goodrich

#dare #impossibility #richelle #richelle-goodrich #roadblock

Sir, no insult intended, but you said to me once that you don’t like kiss-asses and that you’d rather work with people challenging your perceptions. ↗

— Mario Stinger

#insults #nature

I felt the heat of the animosity they bear towards me, the vindictive nature that drives a man to destroy his neighbour in a fire as if he were a banned book...for what is the difference? Every book is imbued with the human spirit. ↗

— Sjón

#sjon #nature

A new generation of satellites carries highly sensitive radars that can measure the size of waves on the water surface. Making use of the relationship between wind speed and the amplitude of small surface waves, a wind-speed map...was created. ↗

— Cliff Mass

#relationship

What after all, is a halo? It's only one more thing to keep clean. ↗

— Christopher Fry

#clean #halo #keep #more #only

If you cannot see that divinity includes male and female characteristics and at the same time transcends them, you have bad consequences. Rome and Cardinal O'Connor base the exclusion of women priests on the idea that God is the Father and Jesus is His Son, there were only male disciples, etc. They are defending a patriarchal Church with a patriarchal God. We must fight the patriarchal misunderstanding of God. ↗

— Hans Küng

#christianity #church #clergy #patriarchal #women-and-religion

What the devil is Chocho?' Will whispered. Horace's grin broadened. 'You are. It's what the men call you,' he said. Then he added, 'It's a term of great respect.' Behind them, Halt nodded confirmation. 'Great respect,' he agreed. ↗

— John Flanagan

#halt #horace #ranger-s-apprentice #will #men