A Quiet Kind Of Thunder Quotes

And then it happens. The panic. It's slow at first, creeping through the cracks in my thoughts until everything starts to feel heavy. It builds; it becomes something physical that clutches at my insides and squeezes out the air and the blood. ~ Sara Barnard

Here are three separate but similar things: shyness, introversion and social anxiety. You can have one, two or all three of these things simultaneously. A lot of the time people thing they're all the same thing, but that's just not true. Extroverts can be shy, introverts can be bold, and a condition like anxiety can strike whatever kind of social animal you are.

Lots of people are shy. Shy is normal. A bit of anxiety is normal. Throw the two together, add some brain-signal error - a NO ENTRY sign on the neural highway from my brain to my mouth perhaps, though no one really knows - and you have me. ~ Sara Barnard

I decide this is just A Bad Day. We all get them, because grief doesn't care how many years it's been. ~ Sara Barnard

Panic attacks are a lot like being drunk in some ways, you lose self-control. You cry for seemingly no reason. You deal with the hangover long into the next day. ~ Sara Barnard

Chronic anxiety is a form of illness. It's not something you bring on yourself by how you feel on any given day. It isn't about happiness and sadness. Anxiety doesn't care if you're happy or not, just like cancer doesn't care if you're happy. ~ Sara (Barnard) Harris

With lightning, you're never really sure if that's what it was; it's just a flash. Thunder, you know. You feel it.'
'You can keep your quiet thunder. I'll keep the exciting lightning. ~ Sara Barnard

A loud whine cut through the day's quiet and Josie looked out the window to find a man wearing some kind of jetpack attached to a vacuum cleaner. Oh no. A leaf blower. The easiest way to witness the stupidity and misplaced hopes of all humanity is to watch, for twenty minutes, a human using a leaf blower. With this machine, the man was saying, I will murder all quiet. I will destroy the aural plane. And I will do so with a machine that performs a task far less efficiently than I could with a rake. ~ Dave Eggers

And then there were the wallflowers who had recognized for years that the thing was hopeless, who had found in that information a kind of calm. They no longer tried, with a bright and desperate effort, to sustain a conversation with somebody's brother, somebody's usher, somebody's roommate, somebody's roommate's usher's brother ... The category of wallflower who had given up on all this was very quiet, not indifferent, only quiet. And she always brought a book. ~ Renata Adler

I saw her when I came back... Her eyes were closed and everything. I had to stop.

I just watched her. It was very relaxing. I had to keep proper still. I had to be extra quiet or I'd ruin it. I didn't want it to stop.

I could see her lips move but I couldn't hear the words. Sometimes she bent forward until her head was nearly on the ground. She made everything to proper slow. It made me sleepy from just watching it. I wanted to ask her what she was praying for but I swallowed the words back down again.

...you knew it had to be something good.

I just watched from behind the wall. There was nobody else around. It was the best kind of quiet... When the head-tie girl finished praying she opened her eyes and stood up. I turned aroun sharp-sharp and went back down the corridor. I tried not to make a sound. I didn't want her to see me. I didn't want her to know I was there for if it ruined it. I waited until she was gone, then I came back to life. I held my breath when I went past the bit she was praying in. I walked around the outside so I didn't tread on it. ~ Stephen Kelman

Amy Finnerty: At the end of it [MTV Unplugged taping], we went back to the hotel, and Kurt said to me, "I didn't do very good." I said, "What are you talking about? That was a historical moment, that was a really incredible performance. Why do you feel like you didn't do very good?"

He said, "Because everybody was so quiet, nobody really clapped that loud and they just kind of sat there." I said something to the effect of, "People felt like they were seeing Jesus Christ for the first time. It was intense for people. They were trying to be respectful by being quiet and just letting you do your thing." And then he kind of got a little smirk on his face and said, "Thank you. ~ Mark Yarm

[Fall, 1951]

To me Acapulco is the detoxicating cure for all the evils of the city: ambition, vanity, quest for success in money, the continuous contagious presence of power-driven, obsessed individuals who want to become known, to be in the limelight, noticed, as if life among millions gave you a desperate illness, a need of rising above the crowd, being noticed, existing individually, singled out from a mass of ants and sheep. It has something to do with the presence of millions of anonymous faces, anonymous people, and the desperate ways of achieving distinction. Here, all this is nonsense. You exist by your smile and your presence. You exist for your joys and your relaxations. You exist in nature. You are part of the glittering sea, and part of the luscious, well-nourished plants, you are wedded to the sun, you are immersed in timelessness, only the present counts, and from the present you extract all the essences which can nourish the senses, and so the nerves are still, the mind is quiet, the nights are lullabies, the days are like gentle ovens in which infinitely wise sculptor's hands re-form the lost contours, the lost sensations of the body. The body comes to life. Quests, pursuits of concrete securities of one kind or another lose all their importance. As you swim, you are washed of all the excrescences of so-called civilization, which includes the incapacity to be happy under any circumstances. ~ Anais Nin

This never happens again," I said quietly. "You try to get to me through other mortals again and I'll kill you."

Mavra's rotted lips turned up at one corner. "No, you won't," she said in her dusty voice. "You don't have that kind of power."

"I can get it," I said.

"But you won't," she responded, mockery in her tone. "It wouldn't be right."

I stared at her for a full ten seconds before I said, in a very quiet voice, "I've got a fallen angel tripping all over herself to give me more power. Queen Mab has asked me to take the mantle of Winter Knight twice now. I've read Kemmler's book. I know how the Darkhallow works. And I know how to turn necromancy against the Black Court."

Mavra's filmed eyes flashed with anger.

I continued to speak quietly, never raising my voice. "So once again, let me be perfectly clear. If anything happens to Murphy and I even think you had a hand in it, fuck right and wrong. If you touch her, I'm declaring war on you. Personally. I'm picking up every weapon I can get. And I'm using them to kill you. Horribly. ~ Jim Butcher

Maybe it was that I was broken. Maybe it was just that I was out of my mind. But it occurred to me that I was going to kiss him. The thought just arrived, certain knowledge, delivered from some greater, more knowledgeable place. I was going to kiss him. Stephen would not want to kiss me. He would back up in horror. And yet, I was still going to do it. I reached over, and I put my hand against his chest, then I moved closer. I could feel just the very tips of the gentle stubble on his cheek brushing against my skin.

"Rory," he said. But it was a quiet protest, and it went nowhere.

For the first few seconds, he didn't move - he accepted the kiss like you might accept a spoonful of medicine. Then I heard it, a sigh, like he had finally set down a heavy weight.

"I was pretty sure we were both kind of terrified, but I was completely sure that we were both doing this. We kissed slowly, very deliberately, coming together and then pulling apart and looking at each other. Then each kiss got longer, and then it didn't stop. Stephen put his hand just under the edge of my shirt, holding it on the spot where the scar was. Sometimes the skin around the scar got cold - now it was warm. Now it was alive. ~ Maureen Johnson

My grandfather was crying. The kind of quiet that is quiet and a secret. The kind of crying that only I noticed. I thought about him going into my mom's room when she was little and hitting my mom and holding up her report card and saying that her bad grades would never happen again. And I think now that maybe he meant my older brother. Or my sister. Or me. That he would make sure that he was the one to work in a mill. I don't know if that's good or bad. I don't know if it's better to have your kids be happy and not go to college. I don't know if it's better to be close with your daughter or make sure she has a better life than you do. I just don't know. ~ Stephen Chbosky

In historical terms women, black people in general, were very attracted to very bright-colored clothing. Most people are frightened by color anyway...They just are. In this culture quiet colors are considered elegant. Civilized Western people wouldn't buy bloodred sheets or dishes. There may be something more to it than what I am suggesting. But the slave population had no access even to what color there was, because they wore slave clothes, hand-me-downs, work clothes made out of burlap and sacking. For them a colored dress would be luxurious; it wouldn't matter whether it was rich or poor cloth . . . just to have a red or a yellow dress. I stripped Beloved of color so that there are only the small moments when Sethe runs amok buying ribbons and bows, enjoying herself the way children enjoy that kind of color. The whole business of color was why slavery was able to last such a long time. It wasn't as though you had a class of convicts who could dress themselves up and pass themselves off. No, these were people marked because of their skin color, as well as other features. So color is a signifying mark. Baby Suggs dreams of color and says, "Bring me a little lavender." It is a kind of luxury. We are so inundated with color and visuals. I just wanted to pull it back so that one could feel that hunger and that delight. ~ Toni Morrison

She has a quiet paroxysm.
Now remember that these are the days
before digital pornography.
There is no cliché of how women are supposed to orgasm,
no idea in their heads of how they are supposed to sound when they climax.
Mrs. Daldry's first orgasms could be very quiet,
organic, awkward, primal. Or very clinical. Or embarrassingly natural.
But whatever it is, it should not be a cliché, a camp version
of how we expect all women sound when they orgasm.
It is simply clear that she has had some kind of release. ~ Sarah Ruhl

I pu my finger to her lips. "You have to hush a minute so that I can tell you something."
"What?" she says, bites my finger.
I look at her. "I love you."
She gets quiet, the kind of quiet that sinks into her, softens her. "Well that works out," she finally says, her voice deeper and breathless, her eyes moist, "because I love you too." She turns, leans against my arm, and settles into me. ~ Brad Barkley

Then we were quiet. Quiet isn't easy. Especially with virtual strangers. They say that nature hates a vacuum, and so it's kind of natural to want to fill up a human silence with words - any kind of lame words. But there was such a feeling of space around us that my first self-conscious word died long before I ever felt it on my tongue. ~ Kristen D. Randle

But my heart… my heart believed in a quiet, simple kind of love. A kind of love that was created before time existed, a kind of love that was bigger than any limitations the world placed upon us. It was a type of love that had no age limits, no boundaries , and was seen only within the souls of two people. My heart didn't give me much of a choice. ~ Brittainy C. Cherry

The true creativity comes out of sitting silently. When you are so totally quiet that there is no thought, no wave in the ocean of your being, out of this silence comes a different kind of creativity. ~ Rajneesh

Ryzek will be in a huge crowd of people, many of whom are his most ardent supporters and fiercest soldiers. What kind of 'move' do you suggest we make?"
Cyra replied, "You said it yourself, didn't you? Kill him."
"Oh, right!" Teka smacked the table, obviously annoyed. "Why didn't I think of killing him? How simple!"
Cyra rolled her eyes. "This time you won't have to sneak into his house while he's asleep. This time, I'll challenge him to the arena."
Everybody got quiet again. For different reasons, Akos was sure. Cyra was a good fighter, everybody knew that, but no one knew how good Ryzek was--they hadn't seen him in action. And then there was the matter of getting to a place where Cyra could actually challenge him. And getting him to do it instead of just arresting her.
"Cyra," Akos said.
"He declared nemhalzak--he erased your status, your citizenship," Teka said, talking over him. "He has no reason to honor your challenge."
"Of course he does." Isae was frowning. "He could have gotten rid of her quietly when he learned she was a renegade, but he didn't. He wanted her disgrace, and her death, to be public. That means he's afraid of her, afraid she has power over Shotet. If she challenges hi in front of everyone, he won't be able to back down. He'll look like a coward."
"Cyra," Akos said again, quiet this time.
"Akos," Cyra answered, with just a touch of the gentleness he had seen in the stairwell. "He is no match for me."
The ~ Veronica Roth

We thought we should list all legendary animals," Nigel explained – apparently without
realizing it – why they had visa problems. "Can't hurt to ask. Dragons are real, right?"
"Elves say they are." Jane desperately wanted a scotch but if she had one, Hal couldn't resist
needing one, and she didn't want go back down that road. "This list is suicidal if you're not
willing to defend yourself. This isn't Earth, where you can sit in your Jeep and take picture of
lions, or go sit in the middle of a bunch of apes. Most of these things will peel open an SUV like
it's a can of sardines and make a snack of everything inside."
"It would be amusing to watch but it would end badly for you," Hal murmured. It was hard to
tell if he was making a play on his previous statement or if he didn't realize he was repeating
himself.
"The list is a starting point." Nigel leaned forward, face lighting up with inner fire. "To get us
in the door. What we want is all of Elfhome. To revel in all that it has to offer. The virgin iron
wood forest. The beautiful immortal elves. The strange and magical beasts. And the humans that
live peacefully side by side with all this."
Jane shook her head, trying to resist the power of a TV host beaming at her one-on-one.
"Don't snow job me."
"I've seen this kind of shit before," Taggart said with quiet intensity. "When a country goes
dark, its means someone has something it's trying to ~ Wen Spencer

And now at last authentic word I bring,
Witnessed by every dead and living thing;
Good tidings of great joy for you, for all:
There is no God; no Fiend with names divine
Made us and tortures us; if we must pine,
It is to satiate no Being's gall.

It was the dark delusion of a dream,
That living Person conscious and supreme,
Whom we must curse for cursing us with life;
Whom we must curse because the life he gave
Could not be buried in the quiet grave,
Could not be killed by poison or the knife.

This little life is all we must endure,
The grave's most holy peace is ever sure,
We fall asleep and never wake again;
Nothing is of us but the mouldering flesh,
Whose elements dissolve and merge afresh
In earth, air, water, plants, and other men.

We finish thus; and all our wretched race
Shall finish with its cycle, and give place
To other beings with their own time-doom:
Infinite aeons ere our kind began;
Infinite aeons after the last man
Has joined the mammoth in earth's tomb and womb. ~ James Thomson

Harry's extremities seemed to have gone numb. He stood quite still, holding the miraculous paper in his nerveless fingers while inside him a kind of quiet eruption sent joy and grief thundering in equal measure through his veins. Lurching to the bed, he sat down.

He read the letter again, but could not take in any more meaning than he had done the first time, and was reduced to staring at the handwriting itself. She had made her "g's" the same way he did: he searched the letter for every one of them, and each felt like a friendly little wave glimpsed from behind a veil. The letter was an incredible treasure, proof that Lily Potter had lived, really lived, that her warm hand had once moved across this parchment, tracing into these letters, words about him, Harry, her son. ~ J.K. Rowling

Civilization is a kind of prayer: that by right action we might bring to pass the peace and quiet that is the ardent desire of every decent heart. ~ Christopher Ruocchio

I am a Christian guy. And I am kind of quiet about it because I want people to take me seriously before I throw something that serious in their face. ~ Samuel Larsen

Rora played along, saying the right words, smiling the right smile, and nodding, but her mind wasn't in it. Not really. She was outside herself. Her heart grew calm and steady and quiet-- the kind of quiet that came before the Rage season. As if the whole land was bracing itself for the battle to come. All the nerves and the confusing emotions melted away, and she was nothing more than a series of actions cobbled together by instinct alone. That was what happened to an animal when it was cornered. When the danger was high and adrenaline took over. Reason disappeared then, and the only thing left was an instinct older than blood and bones. And her instinct? It told her two things. To lie. And to run. ~ Cora Carmack

So, you care about me now,' I said, meaning to make a joke of it, but it came out soft and low and full of something guttural that made me embarrassed. 'Why?'
"Because I don't know anybody like you. You're like … a rare artefact. And it would be a shame if you got broken.' Amusement spluttered from me in the most unattractive way. 'Are you really comparing me to an antique right now? Oh my God, you nerd."
He started laughing, and the carefree melody of it swept me up until I was laughing too, and it was absurd because our families were being threatened and murdered and there we were squished together in a hundred-degree heat outside a maximum security prison, and we used to hate each other and now we were laughing so hard I had tears in my eyes.
He composed himself first, but it took a while and I was left choking my laughter into silence. 'What I meant was,' his face twisted into a quiet smile that felt secret and deadly, 'you're a bright spark, Sophie. And I don't want anyone to snuff you out.'
'Oh.' Well I couldn't make fun of that. Was I supposed to say something back? Wasn't that how compliments worked? The silence was growing and suddenly his words felt heavy and important and he was so close to me and I was perspiring and panicking, and … and I said, 'And you're kind of like a snowflake.'
Oh, Jesus Christ.
He masked his fleeting surprise with a quirked eyebrow. 'Excuse me?'
'Nothing,' I said quickly. 'I didn't say anything.'
'No ~ Catherine Doyle

Clean, hard-working, dependable, quiet type.' Good God! What kind of monster is this that they want. I am afraid that I could never work for a concern with a worldview like that. ~ John Kennedy Toole

When she sat at her sewing, talking in her quiet, tranquil voice, or looking up with her clear, kind eyes, his whole being was drawn to her with the irresistible strength of a deep, calm longing for home. He wanted to humble himself before her, to bend the knee and call her holy. He always felt a strange yearning to come close to her, not only to her present self, but to her childhood and all the days he had not known her. When they were alone, he would lead her to talk of the past, of her little troubles and mistakes and the vagaries that every childhood is full of. He lived in these memories and clung to them with a restless jealousy and a languishing desire to possess and be one with these pale foreshadowings of a life which was even now glowing in richer, riper colors. ~ Jens Peter Jacobsen

The majority of us lead quiet, unheralded lives as we pass through this world. There will most likely be no ticker-tape parades for us, no monuments created in our honor. But that does not lessen our possible impact, for there are scores of people waiting for someone just like us to come along; people who will appreciate our compassion, our unique talents. Someone who will live a happier life merely because we took the time to share what we had to give. Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have a potential to turn a life around. It's overwhelming to consider the continuous opportunities there are to make our love felt. ~ Leo Buscaglia

The Job Application

Esteemed gentlemen,
I am a poor, young, unemployed person in the business field, my name is Wenzel, I am seeking a suitable position, and I take the liberty of asking you, nicely and politely, if perhaps in your airy, bright, amiable rooms such a position might be free. I know that your good firm is large, proud, old, and rich, thus I may yield to the pleasing supposition that a nice, easy, pretty little place would be available, into which, as into a kind of warm cubbyhole, I can slip. I am excellently suited, you should know, to occupy just such a modest haven, for my nature is altogether delicate, and I am essentially a quiet, polite, and dreamy child, who is made to feel cheerful by people thinking of him that he does not ask for much, and allowing him to take possession of a very, very small patch of existence, where he can be useful in his own way and thus feel at ease. A quiet, sweet, small place in the shade has always been the tender substance of all my dreams, and if now the illusions I have about you grow so intense as to make me hope that my dream, young and old, might be transformed into delicious, vivid reality, then you have, in me, the most zealous and most loyal servitor, who will take it as a matter of conscience to discharge precisely and punctually all his duties. Large and difficult tasks I cannot perform, and obligations of a far-ranging sort are too strenuous for my mind. I am not particularly clever, and first and fo ~ Robert Walser

There is enough said. Trouble no quiet, kind heart; leave sunny imaginations hope. Let it be theirs to conceive the delight of joy born again fresh out of great terror, the rapture of rescue from peril, the wondrous reprieve from dread, the fruition of return. Let them picture union and a happy succeeding life. ~ Charlotte Bronte

Just yesterday I was twenty and meeting some of these people⏤people that I'd spend my life with, that'd become my home.
Just yesterday I was twenty⏤still deeply and desperately in love with my best friend.
I grew older.
We all grow older.
In a blink of an eye, our children will grow old too.
And I'll think: just yesterday they were twenty. Headed for college. Falling in love. Memories will flood behind us, the lake house no longer filled to the brim. As quiet as the moment we first walked in⏤and we'll sit on this hill. Feeling the stillness that exists.
And then we end⏤we end where we started.
Just us.
All six of us. ~ Krista Ritchie

It was 1976.
It was one of the darkest days of my life when that nurse, Mrs. Shimmer, pulled out a maxi pad that measured the width and depth of a mattress and showed us how to use it. It had a belt with it that looked like a slingshot that possessed the jaw-dropping potential to pop a man's head like a gourd. As she stretched the belt between the fingers of her two hands, Mrs. Shimmer told us becoming a woman was a magical and beautiful experience.

I remember thinking to myself, You're damn right it had better be magic, because that's what it's going to take to get me to wear something like that, Tinkerbell! It looked like a saddle. Weighed as much as one, too. Some girls even cried.
I didn't.
I raised my hand.
"Mrs. Shimmer," I asked the cautiously, "so what kind of security napkins do boys wear when their flower pollinates? Does it have a belt, too?"
The room got quiet except for a bubbling round of giggles.
"You haven't been paying attention, have you?" Mrs. Shimmer accused sharply. "Boys have stamens, and stamens do not require sanitary napkins. They require self control, but you'll learn that soon enough."
I was certainly hoping my naughty bits (what Mrs. Shimmer explained to us was like the pistil of a flower) didn't get out of control, because I had no idea what to do if they did. ~ Laurie Notaro

The only problem is the heart is quiet. It takes a very special kind of person to hear what the heart says. Most can't hear it at all and they have to guess. There are a lot of people walking around just guessing. ~ Suzanne Palmieri

But it was women like Rudabeh who planted in my mind the idea of a different kind of woman whose courage is private and personal. Without making any grand claims, without aiming to save humanity or defeat the forces of Satan, these women were engaged in a quiet rebellion, courageous not because it would get them accolades, but because they could not be otherwise. If they were limited and vulnerable, it was an audacious vulnerability, transcending the misogyny of their creator and his times. ~ Azar Nafisi

Time, like a skilful tailor, had seamlessly stitched together the two fabrics that sheathed Peri's life: what people thought of her and what she thought of herself. The impression she left on others and her self-perception had been sewn into a whole so consummate that she could no longer tell how much of each day was defined by what was wished upon her and how much of it was what she really wanted. She often felt the urge to grab a bucketful of soapy water and scrub the streets, the public squares, the government, the parliament, the bureaucracy, and, while she was at it, wash out a few mouths too. There was so much filth to clean up; so many broken pieces to fix; so many errors to correct. Every morning when she left her house she let out a quiet sigh, as if in one breath she could will away the detritus of the previous day. While Peri questioned the world without fail, and was not one to keep silent in the face of injustice, she had resolved some years ago to be content with what she had. It would therefore come as a surprise when, on a middling kind of day, at the age of thirty-five, established and respected, she found herself staring at the void in her soul. ~ Elif Shafak

Elegy for Smoking"

It's not the drug I miss
but all those minutes
we used to steal
outside the library,
under restaurant awnings,
out on porches, by the quiet fields.

And how kind it used to make us
when we'd laugh
and throw our heads back
and watch the dragon's breath
float from our mouths,
all ravenous and doomed.

Which is why I quit, of course,
like almost everyone,
and stay inside these days
staring at my phone,
chewing toothpicks
and figuring the bill,

while out the window,
the smokers gather
in their same old constellations,
like memories of ourselves.

Or like the remnants
of some decimated tribe,
come down out of the hills
to tell their stories
in the lightly-falling rain -

to be, for a moment, simply there
and nowhere else,
their faces glowing
each time someone lifts,
like a gift, the little flame. ~ Patrick Phillips

And I thought how many satisfied, happy people really do exist in this world! And what a powerful force they are! Just take a look at this life of ours and you will see the arrogance and idleness of the strong, the ignorance and bestiality of the weak. Everywhere there's unspeakable poverty, overcrowding, degeneracy, drunkenness, hypocrisy and stupid lies... And yet peace and quiet reign in every house and street. Out of fifty thousand people you won't find one who is prepared to shout out loud and make a strong protest. We see people buying food in the market, eating during the day, sleeping at night-time, talking nonsense, marrying, growing old and then contentedly carting their dead off to the cemetery. But we don't hear or see those who suffer: the real tragedies of life are enacted somewhere behind the scenes. Everything is calm and peaceful and the only protest comes from statistics - and they can't talk. Figures show that so many went mad, so many bottles of vodka were emptied, so many children died from malnutrition. And clearly this kind of system is what people need. It,s obvious that the happy man feels contented only because the unhappy ones bear their burden without saying a word: if it weren't for their silence, happiness would be quite impossible. It's a kind of mass hypnosis. Someone ought to stand with a hammer at the door of every contented man, continually banging on it to remind him that there are unhappy people around and that however happy he may be at t ~ Anton Chekhov

After Tom leaves for work, I take Evie to the park, we play on the swings and the little wooden rocking horses, and when I put her back into her buggy she falls asleep almost immediately, which is my cue to go shopping. We cut through the back streets towards the big Sainsbury's. It's a bit of a roundabout way of getting there, but it's quiet, with very little traffic, and in any case we get to pass number thirty-four Cranham Road. It gives me a little frisson even now, walking past that house - butterflies suddenly swarm in my stomach, and a smile comes to my lips and colour to my cheeks. I remember hurrying up the front steps, hoping none of the neighbours would see me letting myself in, getting myself ready in the bathroom, putting on perfume, the kind of underwear you put on just to be taken off. Then I'd get a text message and he'd be at the door, and we'd have an hour or two in the bedroom upstairs. ~ Paula Hawkins

If you were to look back at me as a school kid you'd see a very quiet little church mouse kind of character. ~ John Lydon

Don't make that mistake again," he said in a voice so quiet it was barely audible. He looked as if all his latent hostilities were waiting for an excuse to turn on her. "If you throw that cup at me, so help me, I'll carry you over and put you down in the punch bowl!"
"You and the CIA, maybe!" Cecily hissed. "Go ahead and try…!"
Tate actually took a step toward her just as Colby managed to get between them. "Now, now," he cautioned.
Cecily wasn't backing down an inch. Neither was Tate. He'd gone from lazy affection and indulgent amusement to bristling antagonism in the space of weeks. Lately he flew into a rage if Cecily's name was mentioned, but Colby hadn't told her that.
"You have no right to make that kind of insinuation about me," she said through her teeth. "I don't get jobs lying on my back, and you know it!"
Tate's black eyes narrowed. He looked formidable, but Cecily wasn't intimidated by him. She never had been. He glanced at her hands, which were clenched on her cup, and then back to her rigid features. It had infuriated him to be the object of televised ridicule at the political dinner, and Audrey's comments had only made things worse. He was carrying a grudge. But as he looked at Cecily, he felt an emptiness in his very soul. This woman had been a thorn in his side for years, ever since an impulsive act of compassion had made her his responsibility. In those days, she'd been demure and sweet and dependent on him, and her shy hero worship ~ Diana Palmer

It was the great evil of plays that every character had some kind of purpose. Absorb too much of them, and you could go about believing there was something wrong with you if you drifted unremarked towards your thirties, and coasted into a quiet beach of no interest to anyone. ~ Natasha Pulley

My hope, for all future generations, is that they will have (in addition to sunshine, fresh air, clean water, and fertile soil) a somewhat slower pace of life, with plenty of time to pause, in quiet places . . . haunted places - everyday, accessible places, open to the public - places that are not too radically transformed over time - places susceptible of cultivation, where people can express their caring, and nature can respond - places with tough, gnarled roots and tangled stalks, with digging mammals and noisy birds - places of common remembrance and hopeful guidance - places of unexpected encounters - places that breed solidarity across difference - places where children can walk in the footsteps of those who have gone before - places that are perpetually up for adoption - places that have been humanized but not conquered or commodified - places that foster a kind of connectedness both mournful and celebratory. ~ Aaron Sachs

Grieving is intense and it is non-stop intense. Even if things are quiet, and you're sitting there in your chair, kind of staring off into space, inside, the intensity is raging. - Lori Ennis ~ Nathalie Himmelrich