100 Quotes About Psychological

It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then. Lewis Carroll

To really change the world, we have to help people change the way they see things. Global betterment is a mental process, not one that requires huge sums of money or a high level of authority. Change has to be psychological. So if you want to see real change, stay persistent in educating humanity on how similar we all are than different. Don't only strive to be the change you want to see in the world, but also help all those around you see the world through commonalities of the heart so that they would want to change with you. This is how humanity will evolve to become better. This is how you can change the world. The language of the heart is mankind's main common language. Suzy Kassem

Don’t hide what you have just because people tell you it’s not normal. I have known normal people…and guess what? They are as boring as hell... Sidney Knight

A fundamental approach to life transformation is using social media for therapy; it forces you to have an opinion, provides intellectual stimulation, increases awareness, boosts self-confidence, and offers the possibility of hope. Germany Kent

How did you merit so much devotion so quickly?' I asked, making no attempt to keep the sarcasm from my voice.' I show them Heaven', said she, without a trace of irony. 'People are so desperate for light'. Rachel Hartman

.. . even the surprise of harmless others in the house disturbed me. I didn't want my inner rot on display, even accidentally. Living alone was frightening in that way. No one to police the spill of yourself, the ways you betrayed your primitive desires. Like a cocoon built around you, made of your own naked proclivities and never tidied into the patterns of actual human life. Emma Cline

[Patricia Highsmith] was a figure of contradictions: a lesbian who didn't particularly like women; a writer of the most insightful psychological novels who, at times, appeared bored by people; a misanthrope with a gentle, sweet nature. Andrew Wilson

Life is messy. No matter how hard we try to create order, something happens to cause the structure we created to falter. Maybe that's the only way for us to learn. If everything stayed neat and orderly, then we would never be forced to grow and change. We need something unexpected to help us make sense of where we are and to guide us to where we need to go. Jacqueline Simon Gunn

Our psychological and spiritual vigilance is very important during a time of persecution Sunday Adelaja

She was born under the sign of Gemini. And that stands for the good and evil twin. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde both hiding and residing inside her heart. Her good twin was not bad at all. But her evil twin was even better, and showed up to be way too fatal! Ana Claudia Antunes

I now know that deep within the human concept is something dark, selfish, and completely willing to do whatever is necessary to support the idea of humanity. Because that’s what it is, an idea. True humanity would never behave as we have behaved. Melissa West

With perseverance and endurance you can survive any storm. Lailah Gifty Akita

Jobs had begun to drop acid by then, and he turned Brennan on to it as well, in a wheat field just outside Sunnyvale. "It was great, " he recalled. "I had been listening to a lot of Bach. All of a sudden the whole field was playing Bach. It was the most wonderful feeling of my life up to that point. I felt like the conductor of this symphony with Bach coming through the wheat. Walter Isaacson

Psychic change, as Todorov has recognized, subverted the genre in another way, by revoking the cultural taboos, the social censorship, that had prohibited the overt treatment of psychosexual themes, which then found covert expression in the supernatural tale. 'There is no need today to resort to the devil [or to posthumous reverie] in order to speak of excessive sexual desire, and none to resort to vampires in order to designate the attraction exerted by corpses: psychoanalysis, and the literature which is directly or indirectly inspired by it, deal with these matters in undisguised terms. The themes of fantastic literature have become, literally, the very themes of the psychological investigations of the last fifty years. Howard Kerr

The distinction between diseases of "brain" and "mind, " between "neurological" problems and "psychological" or "psychiatric" ones, is an unfortunate cultural inheritance that permeates society and medicine. It reflects a basic ignorance of the relation between brain and mind. Diseases of the brain are seen as tragedies visited on people who cannot be blamed for their condition, while diseases of the mind, especially those that affect conduct and emotion, are seen as social inconveniences for which sufferers have much to answer. Individuals are to be blamed for their character flaws, defective emotional modulation, and so on; lack of willpower is supposed to be the primary problem. . Unknown

You never know what lurks just beneath the surface of my fragile sanity. Ashly Lorenzana

Human psychology is the most mysterious thing in the world. Munia Khan

Premature satisfaction with half-success is a dream-killer of ambition , nobody should indulge in it. Osunsakin Adewale

When I was cooking I enjoyed a sense of being ‘out’ of myself. The action of dicing vegetables and warming oil made my hands tingle and my thoughts switch to a different hemisphere, right brain rather than left, or left rather than right. In my mind there were many rooms and, just as I still got lost in the labyrinth of corridors at college, I often found myself lost, with a sense of déjà vu, in some obscure part of my cerebral cortex, the part of the brain that plays a key role in perceptual awareness, attention and memory. Everything I had lived through or imagined or dreamed appeared to have been backed up on a video clip and then scattered among those alien rooms. I could stumble into any number of scenes, from the horrifically sexual, horror-movie sequences that were crude and painful, to visualizing Grandpa polishing his shoes. Alice Jamieson

Forgiveness takes intelligence, discipline, imagination, and persistence, as well as a special psychological strength, something athletes call mental toughness and warriors call courage. Edward M. Hallowell

When the expected occurred, never panic, by keep calming, you gain control over the situation. Lailah Gifty Akita

She averted his eyes, but not before he recognized the pain in them, a tormented and languished gaze, a stare preserved for people who were able to love deeply enough that they could be destroyed by it. For a moment, he knew that gaze intimately, remembering it from a time long gone. The ache of a shattered belief once known. He knew that feeling. Jacqueline Simon Gunn

She averted his eyes, but not before he recognized the pain in them, a tormented and languished gaze, a stare preserved for people who were able to love deeply enough that they could be destroyed by it. Jacqueline Simon Gunn

[Man] literally drives himself into a blind obliviousness with social games, psychological tricks, personal preoccupations so far removed from the reality of his situation that they are forms of madness, but madness all the same. Ernest Becker

Sometimes a night of over-eating leaves you hungry for something you can't name. An emptiness haunted me. An emptiness I didn't have a name for until I met Jeb. Now, I' m starving. Kim Briggs

I don't know how the Wolfman knows all this, but he's not wrong. My warm cheeks turn scalding hot. "Your shame is a good sign. You may break sooner than I thought. The breaking is good. It purifies. Carolyn Lee Adams

The city was a machine of its own, continuously producing. We were constantly pumped out through its assembly line, in different forms or models. We came hardwired with different stories, dark secrets, vices, and defects. Over time, we fail and come to find our end, but the city continues onwards. Unknown

Dawn cackles as she guides me through the all-glass porch. Thinner, paler Reina shuffles about behind Dawn, watching as I slip my boots off. Although she tries to hide her hands, her fingers flicker nervously. I place my boots neatly on the floor of the porch beside the other pairs in the shadows under the coats. Music drifts through to us from a distant room — it’s the Beach Boys’ California Dreamin’. Dawn looks at me and I smile — they’ve put the record on for me. Dawn nods along happily. ‘Hear you’re a surfer boy! ’ she says and she mimics riding a wave. Carla H. Krueger

Corporate terrorism is psychological warfare. Corporate terrorists try to manipulate us and change our behavior by creating fear, uncertainty, and division in society. Steven Magee

After forty years of working on prevention of a wide range of common and costly psychological and behavioral problems, I am convinced we have the knowledge to achieve a healthier, happier, and more prosperous society than has ever been seen in human history. Anthony Biglan

Writing is a series of verbal suggestions designed to provoke a psychological reaction and an aesthetic experience. Stewart Stafford

Introspection does not need to be a still life. It can be an active alchemy. Unknown

The only way to go back in time is by moving into the future Waqas Bin Ehsan

A fresh approach is needed – an analysis of our human situation from a basis that recognises and confronts the psychological dimension to our behaviour Jeremy Griffith

Obsessions don't subside. They evolve. Alex Crimson

Happiness is a choice and a state of mind. Asa Don Brown

Trauma may be endured through a physiological or psychological threat to life or overall wellbeing. Asa Don Brown

Worldview is often confused with perception; rather, it is our perception that influences our worldview. Asa Don Brown

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. Michael Salter

Pierre Janet, a French professor of psychology who became prominent in the early twentieth century, attempted to fully chronicle late- Victorian hysteria in his landmark work The Major Symptoms of Hysteria. His catalogue of symptoms was staggering, and included somnambulism (not sleepwalking as we think of it today, but a sort of amnesiac condition in which the patient functioned in a trance state, or "second state, " and later remembered nothing); trances or fits of sleep that could last for days, and in which the patient sometimes appeared to be dead; contractures or other disturbances in the motor functions of the limbs; paralysis of various parts of the body; unexplained loss of the use of a sense such as sight or hearing; loss of speech; and disruptions in eating that could entail eventual refusal of food altogether. Janet's profile was sufficiently descriptive of Mollie Fancher that he mentioned her by name as someone who "seems to have had all possible hysterical accidents and attacks." In the face of such strange and often intractable "attacks, " many doctors who treated cases of hysteria in the 1800s developed an ill-concealed exasperation. Michelle Stacey

The physical shape of Mollies paralyses and contortions fit the pattern of late-nineteenth-century hysteria as well – in particular the phases of "grand hysteria" described by Jean-Martin Charcot, a French physician who became world-famous in the 1870s and 1880s for his studies of hysterics.."" The hooplike spasm Mollie experienced sounds uncannily like what Charcot considered the ultimate grand movement, the arc de de cercle (also called arc-en-ciel), in which the patient arched her back, balancing on her heels and the top of her head.."" One of his star patients, known to her audiences only as Louise, was a specialist in the arc de cercle – and had a background and hysterical manifestations quite similar to Mollie's. A small-town girl who made her way to Paris in her teens, Louise had had a disrupted childhood, replete with abandonment and sexual abuse. She entered Salpetriere in 1875, where while under Charcot's care she experienced partial paralysis and complete loss of sensation over the right side of her body, as well as a decrease in hearing, smell, taste, and vision. She had frequent violent, dramatic hysterical fits, alternating with hallucinations and trancelike phases during which she would "see" her mother and other people she knew standing before her (this symptom would manifest itself in Mollie). Although critics, at the time and since, have decried the sometime circus atmosphere of Charcot's lectures, and claimed that he, inadvertently or not, trained his patients how to be hysterical, he remains a key figure in understanding nineteenth-century hysteria. Michelle Stacey

SELFHOOD AND DISSOCIATIONThe patient with DID or dissociative disorder not otherwise specified (DDNOS) has used their capacity to psychologically remove themselves from repetitive and inescapable traumas in order to survive that which could easily lead to suicide or psychosis, and in order to eke some growth in what is an unsafe, frequently contradictory and emotionally barren environment. For a child dependent on a caregiver who also abuses her, the only way to maintain the attachment is to block information about the abuse from the mental mechanisms that control attachment and attachment behaviour.10 Thus, childhood abuse is more likely to be forgotten or otherwise made inaccessible if the abuse is perpetuated by a parent or other trusted caregiver. In the dissociative individual, ‘there is no uniting self which can remember to forget’. Rather than use repression to avoid traumatizing memories, he/she resorts to alterations in the self ‘as a central and coherent organization of experience. . DID involves not just an alteration in content but, crucially, a change in the very structure of consciousness and the self’ (p. 187).29 There may be multiple representations of the self and of others. Middleton, Warwick. "Owning the past, claiming the present: perspectives on the treatment of dissociative patients." Australasian Psychiatry 13.1 (2005): 40-49. Warwick Middleton

I like having options, alternate lives unlived but always possible. Abigail Padgett

I thought you might appreciate this...“ Excerpt from my lecture Sunday February 22, 2015 at Soul-Esteem Center10 Commandments - God knew when he gave us choice some would make the wrong choices, but God wanted his creation, man, to have free will and felt later it necessary to write the 10 Commandants as a reminder of how God wanted his creations to perform. The 10 Commandants contain 5 positives and five negatives”― I. Alan Appt, The Strength in Knowingtags: motivational, philosophy, psychology, self-help Peace to all, Alan Appt . I. Alan Appt

By freeze-framing the image of our lifestyle, by stopping our mental clock at times and letting time flow, 'psychological' time can replace 'chronological' time and our human condition can be called into question. This opens the door to a new challenge and a new future. ( "Svp "Arrêt sur image" ) Erik Pevernagie

There’s nothing. Nothing to hold on to while the current takes me. Whatever I might have had until today, I’ve lost. I feel my love for her, swelling; bloating into something that’s about to explode, like an abscess that’s been allowed to rot for too long, but the pain drowns it so completely I know I’m never coming back out. This feeling, that you’re choking and that your body is underwater, immersed in the ocean, a dense flood that overpowers your breathing abilities, and your will to survive gets drowned right along with it. And as I’m drowning I see her face and hear her voice–and it doesn’t give me hope, it terrifies me. I’m terrified because I know she’s going to be the death of me. I’m terrified because I know I won’t be able to cope. I’m terrified because the darkness is the only true friend I’ve ever had and if it wants to embrace me I don’t have the power to make it stop. Kady Hunt

Being in home is like magic moments, in a magic world, among magicians. Durgesh Satpathy

To be free, you have to examine authority, the whole skeleton of authority, tearing to pieces the whole dirty thing. And that requires energy, actual physical energy, and also it demands psychological energy. By the energy is destroyed, is wasted when one is in conflict. So when there is the understanding of the whole process of conflict, there is the ending of conflict, there is abundance of energy. Then you can proceed tearing the house that you have built throughout the centuries and that has no meaning at all. You know, to destroy is to create. We must destroy, not the buildings, not the social or economic system, - this comes about daily — but the psychological, the unconscious and the rationally, individually, deeply and superficially. We must tear through all that to be utterly defenseless, because you must be defenseless to love and have affection. Then you see and understand ambition, authority, and you begin to see when authority is necessary and at what level. Then there is no authority of learning, no authority of knowledge, no authority of capacity; no authority that function assumes and which becomes status. To understand all authority — of the gurus, of the Masters, and others — requires a very sharp mind, a clear brain, not a muddy brain, not a dull brain. Jiddu Krishnamurti

Sorry doesn’t make anything better. It’s just a word to fill the space of a loss of words. Shari J. Ryan

...shiny trinkets and frivolous spending make people forget what world they're living in. Beth Lewis

Sometimes I get so sad that it jest sounds good. Abbi Glines

The Subconscious mind can not tell the difference between what's real and what's imagined. Bob Proctor

How is it that some celebrities, whom the average person would believe to have all the popularity a human being could want, still admit to feeling lonely? It is quite naive to assume that popularity is the remedy for loneliness. Loneliness does not necessarily equal physical solitude, it is the inability to be oneself and rightfully represented as oneself. Criss Jami

The memory of having sat at someone’s feet will later make you want to trample him underfoot. I’m trying to fend off your admiration for me, you see, in order to save myself from your future contempt. I prefer to put up with my present state of loneliness rather than suffer more loneliness later. We who are born into this age of freedom and independence and the self must undergo this loneliness. It’s the price we pay for these times of ours. Unknown

She never wished for the thing what she is experiencing. It is her inner voice that became her enemy. Durgesh Satpathy

Without Psychological Evolution there cannot be any form of revolution. The self is constantly changing. Be involved, be evolved, be revolutionized as lucent and fresh as the new wave hitting at the shore. Become the Sea of Changes. It starts from within. Grigoris Deoudis

You can never be free of their criticism until you no longer seek their praise. Dennis Ruane

Do you want to run away by dying? Or to live and accept the challenge? - Ciel Phantomhive Yana Toboso

Some people talk about illogical things like love.. But then they can rationally sacrifice their relatives. - Sebastian Michaelis Yana Toboso

Apparently, we're all in the frame, " I heard Harry murmur somewhere behind me. And I whirled back to him. Innate, irrational anger surged. Then stopped, dead - as I suddenly took in Handsome, Robert and Doc. They were all staring at me. They were concentrating, all resolute, all a tad furrow-browed… upon my face. Self-consciousness burgeoned. I gingerly fingered my and lips and my chin, " Am I drooling?"" Your arse is hanging out, " said Harry, not looking up from the forensics he was scanning. And so it was. Handsome, Robert and Doc averted their eyes as I, wishing I'd merely been dribbling, grabbed the back flaps of my breezy hospital gown, fully placed my back against the wall. Then, thinking better of it, dived hurriedly, carefully, back into bed. If Chinese Lady'd been here, she could've, would've, told me. I missed her already. . Morana Blue

SWAT? For me?" Still trembling, one hand clung to the ambulance gurney, the other held a massive sterilised cotton wool wad under my nose." Tactical Support was busy. You got Dennis and Arlo, " said Harry, speed-reading the papers he'd snatched from inside my jacket. Closest his hands had been to my chest in a long time." Which one broke my nose?"" That'd be Dennis. Morana Blue

The click of the seat belt securing into the buckle is the only sound to break the awkward silence. I feel his warm breath on my neck as he reaches and I take a deep nervous inhale. His scent fills my nose, it is clean and warm, just like in the coffee shop. The smell of his skin is delicious. I try to stop these thoughts, but they are invading my brain in a way that has never happened to me before. Not even with.. Rick. I try push him back out of my mind at this moment because I feel a sense of guilt. Rick and I are frozen. That’s the only way I can describe us. He is faithful, he is steady, he is nice, but he is not like this man in front of me: new, mysterious, and unpredictable. Rick and I are in a state of comfort, but like much of my life, I am becoming more and more discontent with comfort. Nina G. Jones

If you enjoy sticking a straw in a dog's ear, don't sit next to the pooch with a milkshake. Alan Rogers

Why do I take a blade and slash my arms? Why do I drink myself into a stupor? Why do I swallow bottles of pills and end up in A&E having my stomach pumped? Am I seeking attention? Showing off? The pain of the cuts releases the mental pain of the memories, but the pain of healing lasts weeks. After every self-harming or overdosing incident I run the risk of being sectioned and returned to a psychiatric institution, a harrowing prospect I would not recommend to anyone. So, why do I do it? I don't. If I had power over the alters, I'd stop them. I don't have that power. When they are out, they're out. I experience blank spells and lose time, consciousness, dignity. If I, Alice Jamieson, wanted attention, I would have completed my PhD and started to climb the academic career ladder. Flaunting the label 'doctor' is more attention-grabbing that lying drained of hope in hospital with steri-strips up your arms and the vile taste of liquid charcoal absorbing the chemicals in your stomach. In most things we do, we anticipate some reward or payment. We study for status and to get better jobs; we work for money; our children are little mirrors of our social standing; the charity donation and trip to Oxfam make us feel good. Every kindness carries the potential gift of a responding kindness: you reap what you sow. There is no advantage in my harming myself; no reason for me to invent delusional memories of incest and ritual abuse. There is nothing to be gained in an A&E department. Alice Jamieson

To do what is right can be a dirty messy business" S. R. Tabone. Made it up for my Godfifa novel. S.R.Tabone

It is humiliating to have to confess that this conceit of Peter was one of his most fascinating qualities. To put it with brutal frankness, there never was a cockier boy. J.m. Barrie

It was a soulless gaze, burning with a wild hatred that shouldn’t be there in anyone who could call themselves a parent. Jess C. Scott

Every time he studied this instrument, with its slender, gleaming steel rod that tapered down to such needle-like sharpness, he wondered why it was necessary to have things like this in the world. If it were truly only for chopping ice, you'd think a completely different design might do. The people who produce and sell things like this don't understand, he thought. They don't realize that some of us break out in a cold sweat at just a glimpse of that shiny, pointed tip. . Unknown

When sleep came, I would dream bad dreams. Not the baby and the big man with a cigarette-lighter dream. Another dream. The castle dream. A little girl of about six who looks -like me, but isn’t me, is happy as she steps out of the car with her daddy. They enter the castle and go down the steps to the dungeon where people move like shadows in the glow of burning candles. There are carpets and funny pictures on the walls. Some of the people wear hoods and robes. Sometimes they chant in droning voices that make the little girl afraid. There are other children, some of them without any clothes on. There is an altar like the altar in nearby St Mildred’s Church. The children take turns lying on that altar so the people, mostly men, but a few women, can kiss and lick their private parts. The daddy holds the hand of the little girl tightly. She looks up at him and he smiles. The little girl likes going out with her daddy. I did want to tell Dr Purvis these dreams but I didn’t want her to think I was crazy, and so kept them to myself. The psychiatrist was wiser than I appreciated at the time; sixteen-year-olds imagine they are cleverer than they really are. Dr Purvis knew I had suffered psychological damage as a child, that’s why she kept making a fresh appointment week after week. But I was unable to give her the tools and clues to find out exactly what had happened. . Alice Jamieson

With making changes, the difficult part of trying to implement a new way, idea or thought, is getting people to believe the effect of your notion, and have them believe in themselves of adapting to something new. Anthony Liccione

Show the world the man you think you are, and I will show the world the man you really are... Timothy Norr

If one is sick, one is usually the last person to know. Ahmed Mostafa

We're Killers On The Keyboard Cyndi Williams Barnier

It wasn't the wild animals that scared her, but the civilised ones. Heena Rathore P.

The question why I don't shake hand with someone, A reason is Behind;Scumbags call it Attitude but they really don't know its actually the antimatter Waqas is composed of. Waqas Bin Ehsan

In the depths of his soul Ivan Ilyich knew that he was dying.. he simply did not, he could not possibly understand it. The example of a syllogism he had studied in Kiesewetter's logic - Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal-- had seemed to him all his life to be correct only in relation to Caius, but by no means himself. For the man Caius, man in general, it was perfectly correct; but he was not Caius and not man in general, he had always been quite, quite separate from all other human beings.. And Caius is indeed mortal, and it's right that he die, but for me, Vanya, Ivan Ilyich, with all my feelings and thoughts-- for me it's another matter. And it cannot be that I should die. It would be too terrible. So it felt to him. Leo Tolstoy

Jeopardy, Mom! You have got to get on Jeopardy! Seriously! You could marry Alex Trebek! You could be Alex and Alex Trebek! You could be Alex SQUARED! Diane L. Randle

What quantities evil - the amount of blood spilled the body count, the intentional destruction of innocent masses? Regardless of how evil is defined, there will always be those in power to discriminately judge it and their corrupt policing forces that enforce it. Mahima Martel

If I am darkness, then I have learned it backwards. Darkness must be in the right, and you my dear, along with nearly all others, have been blindly wandering within the light of the wrong. GRIS

Without pride, man becomes a parasite — and there are already too many parasites. Carla H. Krueger

Shame comes in different doses. Carla H. Krueger

It’s late and most of the clerks are at home in their beds, dreaming of swimming in pools filled with real money. Carla H. Krueger

Don’t mock my suggestions, Ridley — one day in the near future, they might just save your life.” Maxwell D. Kalist. Carla H. Krueger

Men circle like bees around honey, buzzing to communicate their sexual despair. Carla H. Krueger

Only men with intelligence, confidence and absolutely no empathy at all can progress upstairs. Carla H. Krueger

Every time I so much as blink you get an erection. Carla H. Krueger

To Kalist, Baumauer’s just a timber bridge in need of a good hot fire. Carla H. Krueger

He’s in a side room alone with her and it’s far too fucking hot. Carla H. Krueger

You are a more powerful person than you might have ever imagined.” Maxwell D. Kalist. Carla H. Krueger

Are there not times, Ridley, when you yourself wish only to hear the best in people — and not to be dragged downwards into the underworld we all regularly inhabit? Carla H. Krueger

I’m warning you because you’re young and vulnerable. He’s a dirty, lying, conniving piece of shit and he’s dangerous.” Gottfried Baumauer. Carla H. Krueger

Maxwell D. Kalist is a receiving teller at a city bank, Orwell and Finch, where he runs an efficient department of twenty two clerks and twelve junior clerks. He carries a leather-bound vade mecum everywhere with him — a handbook of the most widely contravened banking rules. He works humourlessly (on the surface of it) in a private, perfectly square office on the third floor of a restored grain exchange midway along the Eastern flank of KvÄ›tniv’s busy, modern central plaza. Behind his oblong slate desk and black leather swivel chair is an intimidating, three-storey wall made almost entirely of bevelled, glare-reducing grey glass in art-deco style; one hundred and thirty six rectangles of gleam stacked together in a dangerously heavy collage. Carla H. Krueger

Each day of the week, Kalist indulges himself in a different, secret ritual. On Mondays, he wears cologne. On Tuesdays, he eats meat for lunch. On Wednesdays, he places a bet after work. On Thursdays, he smokes one cigarette (but claims he’s not a smoker). On Fridays, he treats himself to his favourite pastime: horse practice — he grew up with horses and likes to try and emulate their distinctive whinnies, snorts, neighs, snuffles, sighs, grunts, fluttering nostrils, the occasional aggressive outburst and the especially beautiful nicker of a mare to her foal. And, on Saturdays, lest we forget, Maxwell D. Kalist drinks wine from a chalice. Carla H. Krueger