When I asked him what, if anything, I could do about it, he surprised me by referring me to the director of the hall.

Was I sure, he asked, that I knew what I was applying for??

I asked Rawlins.

`` Why '', he went on, `` when Rob asked me if he could make his dive on this trip, I didn't think twice about it.

I have just asked these questions in the Pentagon, in the White House, in offices of key scientists across the country and aboard the submarines that prowl for months underwater, with neat rows of green launch tubes which contain Polaris missiles and which are affectionately known as `` Sherwood Forest ''.

I asked the same questions inside the launch-control rooms of an Atlas missile base in Wyoming, where officers who wear sidearms are manning the `` commit buttons '' that could start a war -- accidentally or by design -- and in the command centers where other pistol-packing men could give orders to push such buttons.

I asked Wisman what would happen if he broke out the go codes and tried to start transmitting one.

I asked.

How, I asked, could chaos be admitted to chaos??

I asked about the battle between life and death in his plays.

Given a theological lead, I asked what he thinks about those who find a religious significance to his plays.

At a party an English intellectual -- so-called -- asked me why I write always about distress.

I was having lunch not long ago ( apologies to N. V. Peale ) with three distinguished historians ( one specializing in the European Middle Ages, one in American history, and one in the Far East ), and I asked them if they could name instances where the general mores had been radically changed with `` deliberate speed, majestic instancy '' ( Francis Thompson's words for the Hound Of Heaven's Pursuit ) by judicial fiat.

Just as I was about to enlarge upon my discovery of the underside of the leaf of love, memory, displeased at being asked to yield its unsavory secrets, dashed ahead of me, calling back over its shoulder: `` Skip it.

The waspish man stopped me three paces from the bicycle barricade, and asked me in French if I had papers to leave France.

I asked him.

I asked.

One of the girl students, sitting by while I ate the thick soup, asked me if I had a sleeping bag.

I asked him.

Once or twice my father asked me if I wasn't overdoing a bit in my churchgoing.

I believed him.

Next to him was a young boy I was sure had sat near me at one of the trading sessions.

In my sights I watched him looming bigger and bigger.

Now under me I could see him for what he really was, a boy dressed up in streaks of paint.

`` I know him.

Once, pressing him, I learned that his job was only part-time, in the afternoons when nothing went on in the hall.

With distaste I saw him assume a pompous air.

At last, when I put it to him directly, the clerk was forced to admit that the delay in my case was unusual.

I was at once disappointed, although just what I had expected him to look like I could not have explained.

`` I never saw him.

`` I can't leave him there.

Donald Kruger would like nothing better than to hold him as hostage, and I wouldn't entrust a snake to his tender care.

But, by gosh, I want him and I'm going to have him!!

I meant him no harm.

I've got to take Danny away from Clayton before I lose him altogether.

I heard o' Texas cattlemen wrappin' a cow thief up in green hides and lettin' the sun shrink 'em and squeeze him to death.

`` I don't know nothin' about him ''.

`` So help me, Crouch, I'd like to kill you where you stand, but, before I do, I'm going to hear you admit killing him.

`` I ain't ragging him ''!!

I didn't get a good look at him at all, his back was to me, and I was so scared It was just somebody in a man's suit.

How long should I wait ''??

How far I knew will shortly become apparent.

How lightly her `` eventshah-leh '' passed into the crannies where I was storing dialect material for some vaguely dreamed opus, and how the word would echo.

`` How would I know??

His heart was pounding like a mighty dynamo and he was trying to think, his mind seeming to scream at him like a hurt or frightened child, `` How will I do it??

How he returned in such a ghastly condition, or why, I cannot say.

Once Peter asked, `` How oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him??

`` How many times have I told you '' -- he began, and was almost glad when she cut him off -- `` Too many times ''!!

I looked for Jessica to materialize out of the clogging, curdling crowd and, as the time passed and I waited, a fiend came to life beside me and whispered in my ear: How was I planning to greet Jessica??

How about them, I thought.

How did I get to be sixty-five so fast??

How am I going to live??

How would you feel about it if I were to ask you for a date when I get through at Hanover ''??

How can I find him??

How often have I looked to Jesus when entering the sick room, asking for His presence and help in my professional duties as I give my talents not only as the world giveth but as one who loves the Saviour and His creatures.

I said, `` How long do they keep that up ''??

She said to him, her father, `` How was I begotten, in pain or joy??

How can it be that I must part from you?

* In episode 2, season 4 of " How I Met Your Mother ", entitled " The Best Burger in New York ", Marshall's description of the taste of the best burger uses music that alludes to the 1984 film " Amadeus ", when Antonio Salieri describes the same music ( by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart ) with the same accuracy and passion with which Marshall speaks of the burger.

* Cómo me convertí en gran maestro y otros escritos " How I became grandmaster " and other writings, in Spanish.