After You Quotes

When you have pictured and defined your desired legacy, allow your present life activities and efforts to begin reflecting the future you desire. Begin to do what you want to see, become involved in the causes you want to be a part of. Show your legatees how you want and expect things to be done after you are gone. This will enable them to fit the vision into their own as they make their own individual unique mark. ~ Archibald Marwizi

After you get a job and before you have to do it. Nothing beats that. ~ Jerry Seinfeld

I mean most girls are so dumb and all. After you neck them for a while, you can really watch them losing their brains. You take a girl when she really gets passionate, she just hasn't any brains. -Holden Caulfield ~ J.D. Salinger

I'll keep it," she said. "Then, when you get back, after you and the dark one are done making out and planning a future filled with blond-haired, green-eyed, pigment-challeneged rug rats, I'll bring it over and you can add it to your scrapbook, right before you start cooking me dinner. I like vegetarian lasagna with cottage cheese instead of ricotta."
"Gwen?"
"And don't forget the mushrooms. Garlic bread, too, please. That is, as long as your vampire lover doesn't object."
"I want to say thank you," Isobel said. "For ... everything."
"No," Gwen said. "Thank you for the delicious dinner. I can almost taste the baklava you and Darth Vader will be making for dessert. Something tells me you're gonna have to look that one up, though. ~ Kelly Creagh

It was beautiful and rare, and you have every right to despise me."
She stood pressed to the wall, not moving.
"When you came in, I thought 'Send her away.' But I knew that if you went away, I'd run after you. I thought 'I won't say a word.' But I knew that you'd know it before you left. I love you. I know you'd think kindlier of me if I said that I hate you. ~ Ayn Rand

I never expected you to willingly leave me, Ainsley. You weren't supposed to do that. You were supposed to be there for me like you'd been for ten damn years. I couldn't fucking come after you because you'd crushed me. I couldn't come to you after that. I still can't. I'm still too damn hurt. ~ Amie Knight

To understand how natural it is to feel everything wholeheartedly, think back to a time in your life when you were an emotional "mess" and you allowed yourself to cry. Then, after you cried your last tear, you felt a wonderful sense of relief, release and freedom. You allowed yourself to be real and authentic; that felt so good. ~ Carol Reynolds

Nerves are always a big problem for me, which is why I loved doing American sitcoms. Because you know when you do the take in front of the audience that you're going to do it again afterwards. A minute after you finish, you just go and do it again. So, there's that sort of safety net. And then if you made a little mistake or two, they'll go pick it up, so there's nothing to worry about. ~ John Cleese

After you have been incarcerated for so long, whatever story is told in the aftermath is beautiful. ~ Rhys Ifans

I knew that cockroaches could go more than a month without food or water. And they could even survive on wood for food. And even after you step on them they come apart slowly and keep on walking all the while. Even when they freeze, after they thaw out they keep on going. For three hundred and fifty million years, they have reproduced with no change. When the world was practically naked, they walked slowly across it. ~ Clarice Lispector

After you died, I kept your wardrobe locked, with all your clothes inside, all your lovely ties. The scent of you. I sat inside this wardrobe when I missed you so much. ~ Trudi Kanter

Soup's here," Judd finally said after we watched each other for a few minutes.
As I sipped the broth, Judd pretended to ignore me. I knew he wasn't really watching television. His face was too perfectly stoic like he was working hard to make himself seem cold.
"Do you want the rest?" I asked.
Judd frowned at me. "If I wanted soup, I'd have ordered myself some. I'm not a dog begging for scraps."
Scowling at his ridiculous anger, I shrugged. "I don't want to waste the rest. Can we put it in the mini fridge and I'll eat it in the morning?"
Judd's frown eased. "Fuck it. I'll eat it."
"No, it's mine," I said, standing up. "I offered and you got grumpy. Now, you can't have it."
"I'll just eat it after you go to sleep."
"I respect your honesty," I said, setting the bowl into the little fridge next to the expensive treats. "It's a rare quality in a thief."
Judd grinned. ~ Bijou Hunter

No Hello.
No Hi, Pierce. Nice right hook you have there.
No It's lovely to see you. Sorry about your counselor being killed last night. Yes, I see your grandmother is a Fury even though I told you none was after you. I guess I was wrong about that.
Just Let's go. ~ Meg Cabot

I think that in order to get better as an athlete and to see whatever kind of results you're after, you have to make goals. Whether you write them down or tell someone about them, it's important to set goals for yourself in order to achieve any kind of success. ~ Abby Wambach

If you develop a detachment, through thoughtless awareness, God will take over, He will do your work. He will look after you. You should have faith in God that is the main thing which people don't understand what it means to have faith in God . That He is almighty, He does everything, He looks after everything, why should we worry? This is a very good way of life, is not to worry. ~ Nirmala Srivastava

Before I met you, I had no purpose. It didn't take long after you stormed into my life to realize the reason I'd been lost was because you hadn't found me yet. My purpose in life is to love you. ~ Vi Keeland

The images are designed, so that after you see the picture two or three times, its no longer my film, it starts to be your film, You recognize the people, you know them, and you don't even know who directed the picture. PlayTime is nobody. ~ Jacques Tati

What's great about 'Game of Thrones' is they change the perspective, the POV, all the time. So you will have one story told by one character and you'll go, 'Oh my God, horrible', and then maybe the season after you have the same story told but from the person you thought was just the most horrible, vile creature. ~ Nikolaj Coster-Waldau

We have laws in our country that tell us not to murder or steal and we have police that enforce them. The question is whether you personally need the police to watch you. If they disappeared would you begin killing and thieving because you know no one will come after you, or will you carry on not doing it because it is what you actually believe is right? ~ Lewis N. Roe

The world was here before you,
and will exist after you.
You are not the center of the universe,
nor are you its circumference. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

All good that you have done for the humanity, keep it like a secret; do your goodness in the shadow! Let one day others find this secret, preferably long after you have passed away! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

It is easy to get to the top after you get through the crowd at the bottom. ~ Zig Ziglar

Don't be frightened by your beauty, you haven't until now, known you had it, and so you're uncorrupted by it. You can never take any credit for it, or make it your aim. But it would be as much deceit to deny your beauty or tell yourself that what you see is not you. Beauty hovers around you wherever you go, which is why these two poor young men chase after you when you're covered in dirt and dressed in rags. Not beauty of the face or form. Something eternal. This beauty that comes from dresses and jewels is somewhat of an illusion. But even illusion has its place. And that's what parties and dancing are for. ~ Julie Berry

A chance is what you take before you think about it. A calculated risk is what you take after you have evaluated all possible factors and have determined that risk ~ Craig Elliott

I kept reading.
I miss you already, bro.
I love you, Augustus. God bless and keep you.
You'll live forever in our hearts, big man.
(That particularly galled me, because it implied the immortality of those left behind:
You will live forever in my memory, becauuse I will live forever! I AM YOUR GOD NOW, DEAD BOY! I OWN YOU! Thinking you won't die is yet another side effect of dying.)
You were always such a great friend I'm sorry I didn't see more of you after you left school, bro. I bet you're already playing ball in heaven. ~ John Green

All these polo-necked wankers from grammar schools were going out and buying songs like 'San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair)'. Flowers in your hair? Do me a f**king favour.
[...]
Who gave a dog's arse about what people were doing in San Francisco, anyway? The only flowers anyone saw in Aston were the ones they threw in the hole after you when you croaked it at the age of fifty-three 'cos you'd worked yourself to death.
I hated those hippy-dippy songs, man.
Really hated them. ~ Ozzy Osbourne

Well,' Shelby said with a crooked smile, 'look at it this way. If you're a member of the Disciples right now, you have Otto tracking you down and Raven coming after you when he does.'

'Actually,' Wing said, 'when you put it like that, I almost . . . almost . . . feel sorry for them. ~ Mark Walden

Everything that's happened since we met has led to this moment. There is only one woman I've loved before you, and there will never be another after you. ~ Jamie McGuire

To me, the magic of photography, per se, is that you can capture an instant of a second that couldn't exist before and couldn't exist after. It's almost like a cowboy that draws his gun. You draw a second before or after, you miss and you're dead - not them. To me, photography's always like that. ~ Mario Testino

'Can't Stop Dancing' is this other side of me that I was ready to introduce to my fans, which is like, after you hang out with me, you start to see that I can be chilled and relaxed, and I'm a little bit more mature for my age. ~ Becky G

We don't have enough Latinos on TV just getting cast in supporting roles; the idea of having your own show named after you seemed like such a long shot. ~ Cristela Alonzo

After you have done your work - challenging as it may have been to complete - and released it in the marketplace, be not concerned with sales, reviews, critical acclaim, or anything else of the like... After you've written and published a book, you're now an AUTHOR. And that great honor can NEVER be taken away from you, no matter what. ("My Book Place," 2018) ~ Cat Ellington

It was like a vault , this house, but still you got the impression it could, with a great deal of effort, and only if you made it very angry, lift itself off its manicured haunches and chase after you at a terrible pace. That it could overtake you and chase after you at a terrible pace. That it could overtake you and pin you down by the shirttail, and then it could carefully lower itself right back down, all the vast weight of its ancient rock-heaps and stones bearing down on top of you, crushing you - Outside boy pg.306 ~ Jeanine Cummins

People don't always make the right decisions, but the people that are still there even after you make the wrong decisions, are the ones you should never let go of. ~ Logan Zane Hessefort

So which theory did Lagos believe in? The
relativist or the universalist?"
"He did not seem to think there was much of a difference. In the end, they are
both somewhat mystical. Lagos believed that both schools of thought had
essentially arrived at the same place by different lines of reasoning."
"But it seems to me there is a key difference," Hiro says. "The universalists
think that we are determined by the prepatterned structure of our brains -- the
pathways in the cortex. The relativists don't believe that we have any limits."
"Lagos modified the strict Chomskyan theory by supposing that learning a
language is like blowing code into PROMs -- an analogy that I cannot interpret."
"The analogy is clear. PROMs are Programmable Read-Only Memory chips," Hiro
says. "When they come from the factory, they have no content. Once and only
once, you can place information into those chips and then freeze it -- the
information, the software, becomes frozen into the chip -- it transmutes into
hardware. After you have blown the code into the PROMs, you can read it out,
but you can't write to them anymore. So Lagos was trying to say that the
newborn human brain has no structure -- as the relativists would have it -- and
that as the child learns a language, the developing brain structures itself
accordingly, the language gets 'blown into the hardware and becomes a permanent
part of the brain's deep ~ Neal Stephenson

You had another tattoo done? What does it say?"
"Alex. It says, Alex. I guess I just needed something to remind me you were real, because after you left, there was nothing ... nothing to say you'd ever been here. ~ Samantha Towle

After you went, a low wind warbled through the house like a spacious bird, making it high but lonely. When you had gone the love came. I supposed it would. The supper of the heart is when the guest has gone. ~ Emily Dickinson

Let's live suddenly without thinking.
Let's live like the light that kills.
And let's as silence,
because Whirl's after all:
(after me) love, and after you.
I occasionally feel vague how
vague I don't know tenuous Now -
spears and The Then - arrows making do
our mouths, something red, something tall. ~ E. E. Cummings

In AA, you are brainwashed into believing that all the good stuff happens only after you stop drinking. Clearly they are lying; my life improved significantly as soon as I ordered a cocktail. ~ Augusten Burroughs

Tea. There is nothing saner than tea, he thought ... Tea was the great leveler. It brought calm, quiet, contentment, warmth. And it was something to do.
... Tea
so normal, so mundane, so hot ...
... The heat and scent of it permeated his head and cleared his mind. He understood completely the attraction of ceremonies grounded in the ritual of drinking tea.
It required both caution and abandonment of the senses. It demanded that you move into it slowly and savor the moment. And it rewarded you with warmth and delicacy of taste and refreshment.
And after you were done, it could parse out your future. ~ Thea Devine

Success is a very scary thing especially after you choose something and everything starts coming at you. It's absolutely frightening because the mind does things. It says, 'You've got to hold on to this or get away from this. ~ Nick Nolte

Holding this book in your hand, sinking back in your soft armchair, you will say to yourself: perhaps it will amuse me. And after you have read this story of great misfortunes, you will no doubt dine well, blaming the author for your own insensitivity, accusing him of wild exaggeration and flights of fancy. But rest assured: this tragedy is not a fiction. All is true. ~ Honore De Balzac

It's like when you put instant rice pudding mix in a bowl in the microwave and push the button, and you take the cover off when it rings, and there you've got ricing pudding. I mean, what happens in between the time when you push the switch and when the microwave rings? You can't tell what's going on under the cover. Maybe the instant rice pudding first turns into macaroni gratin in the darkness when nobody's looking and only then turns back into rice pudding. We think it's only natural to get rice pudding after we put rice pudding mix in the microwave and the bell rings, but to me, that is just a presumption. I would be kind of relieved if, every once in a while, after you put rice pudding mix in the microwave and it rang and you opened the top, you got macaroni gratin. I suppose I'd be shocked, of course, but I don't know, I think I'd be kind of relieved too. Or at least I think I wouldn't be so upset, because that would feel, in some ways, a whole lot more real. ~ Haruki Murakami

Ten minutes after you lose that last game, you start working on next season. ~ Don Meyer

You want to be burning calories after you work out. The problem becomes for most people - it's not pleasant, it's painful. You have to have the pain tolerance to be able to deal with that, which a lot of people do not. ~ Brett Hoebel

Jesus put it like this: You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world. Others have come before you. Others will come after you. But this is your day. If God's kingdom is to manifest itself right now, it will have to be through you. God himself will not come to take your place. You are on a mission from God. ~ John Ortberg Jr.

And it's not my place to chase around after you, fixing stuff. What I know's what I know, and it don't include putting the world back the way it out to be. It's too late for that. Way too late for heroes, champions, miracles. Don't matter what our heritage was maybe meant for - your side got hold of it first, and you won long ago. No undoing that, Esau, I ain't fool enough to think otherwise. I'm still sorry for you, but I know your side's won, this side of the grave. ~ Peter S. Beagle

If you tell them, I will pay a social visit to your mother." "That's playing dirty," Merrich said. "Perhaps, but you keep your patty-paws out of my love affairs." "Got it. I'll leave the Trieux Troll alone." "Her name is Cinderella." "Could you have said that and sounded anymore lovesick?" "Shut up. Let's go eat." "After you, lover-boy." "I hope she slaps you in the face when she meets you," Friedrich grumbled. "More ~ K.M. Shea

Good night's sleep?' she enquired, still smiling.

'For Wing, certainly,' Otto replied, 'though possibly not anyone within a hundred yards of him. If whales snore, that's what it sounds like.'

Wing smiled guiltily. 'I did warn you.'

'It's a sign of a good healthy set of lungs, at least that's what my dad always used to tell me,' Laura said, chuckling, 'though I think there were a few nights where my mum was not far from taking a kitchen knife and checking to see if his were as healthy as he claimed, if you know what I mean.'

Otto nodded in agreement. 'I wonder if you snore after you get hit with a sleeper?'

'Don't even think about it,' Wing replied. ~ Mark Walden

Callie scrambled from under the covers, dashed around the bed, and flung herself into Luce's arms. "They kept telling me you were going to be okay, but in that lying, we're-also-completely-terrified-we're-just-not-going-to-explain-a-word-to-you kind of way. Do you even realize how thoroughly spooky that was? It was like you physically dropped off the face of the Earth-"
Luce hugged her back tightly. As far as Callie knew, Luce had been gone only since the night before.
"Okay, you two," Molly growled, pulling Luce away from Callie, "you can OMG your faces off later. I didn't lie in your bed in that cheap polyester wig all night enacting Luce-with-stomach-flue so you guys could blow our cover now." She rolled her eyes. "Amateurs."
"Hold on. You did what?" Luce asked.
"After you...disappeared," Callie said breathlessly, "we knew we could never explain it to your parents. I mean, I could barely fathom it after seeing it with my own eyes. When Gabbe fixed up the backyard, I told your parents you felt sick and had gone to bed, and Molly pretended to be you and-"
"Lucky I found this in your closet." Molly twirled a short wavy black wig around one finger. "Halloween remnant?"
"Wonder Woman." Luce winced, regretting her middle school Halloween costume, and not for the first time.
"Well, it worked."
It was strange to see Molly-who'd once sided with Lucifer-helping her. But even Molly, like Cam and Roland, didn't want to fall again. So here they w ~ Lauren Kate

Every new routine I have ever written and performed probably occurred extemporaneously. Then after you have fleshed it out and tried it out in front of a number of audiences and it works, you put it down on paper. ~ Bob Newhart

Your habits always come hunting after you. The self you construct will haunt you. A ghost wandering around in search of your body, eager to possess you. We are addicted to the self we construct. ~ Frank Herbert

There is doubtless such a thing as a 'national character'. In art, it is the lowest common denominator. The more specific the character, the more commonplace it is. That is why creation always requires overcoming such a character.

An artist, if he is anything, is an individual. But to be an individual means embodying your own truths, suffering your own experiences, and inventing your own style. But these things can only occur by renouncing facility, and the most unfortunate facility comes from these so-called national characters, formed by the sedimentation of collective mediocrity, which lies there ready-made. National character is by definition that which remains in a culture after you have removed the personal effort involved in thinking, the personal experience of life and the triumph of individual creation. ~ Mihail Sebastian

You broke me up there in the mountains. You cracked something in my head, I don't know. I have never been obsessed with another person before or after. You just drilled your way in and since then, I've been yours. You got to a place that I didn't know existed ... and all that has changed me, taken the stuff away I thought was true about me. In some weird, weird way, started something that turned me into more than a goodlooking bastard. ~ Aleksandr Voinov

There is no greater heaven than the heart of a loving mother
She takes care of you when you are still in her womb.
She nurtures you after you are born.
She hurts when you fall,
She celebrates when you make your first steps.
She is the only person who genuinely cares about you.
She loves you as she loves herself.
Her heart is your true paradise.
I love you mama. ~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

Technology is anything invented after you were born. ~ Alan Kay

You get an image after you act in a film, but it is not necessary that you last long because of that image. ~ Ajay Devgan

We all three were struck with the kind of horror that makes you want to dig a hole, jump in, and pull the hole in after you. ~ Robert McCammon

We are already bound together in the way of my people. Will you speak vows in the way of yours?"
Her blue eyes widened with shock, eyes a man could drown in. Eyes a man could spend eternity staring into. A small, very male smile tugged at his mouth. He had succeeded in shocking her.
"Mikhail, are you asking me to marry you?"
"I am not really certain I know how it is done. Should I be on my knee?" He was grinning openly at her.
"You're proposing to me with a carload of assassins approaching?"
"Potential assassins." He gave her a small, heart-wrenching smile. "Say yes. You know you cannot possibly resist me. Say yes."
"After you made me drink that disgusting apple juice? You set your wolves on me, Mikhail. I know there's a long list of sins I should be reciting." Her eyes were sparkling with mischief.
He pulled her into his arms, against the heavy muscles of his chest, fitting her neatly into the cradle of his hips. "I can see this is going to take some heavy persuasion. ~ Christine Feehan

I'm going to keep it real gully with you; the first two months, I wanted to give him back. I expected someone to come and save me because after you have the baby, nobody cares about you anymore. Nobody cares if you sleep, nobody cares if you eat. It's just you and this all-consuming thingy! ~ Jill Scott

Your fellow soldiers had to know that you had their back. That was rule one, lesson one, and above all else. If the enemy goes after you, he goes after me too. ~ Harlan Coben

Lucky discovered that laughing was like crying in the sense that sometimes you cannot stop. And it's a catching disease, because when another person is spurting and gasping it makes you start again even after you have taken deep gulps of air and stopped looking at the other laughing person. ~ Susan Patron

After you win all these belts, you cannot fight all these mandatory guys. ~ Lennox Lewis

he said that when the baby was born, if it was a boy, I was to call it Edward."
"Edward?" Teddy repeated blankly.
"After you."
And for the first time in the whole of the war Teddy broke. ~ Kate Atkinson

When an artist is asked to speak about form, you expect something different than when a critic talks about it. Because you think that somewhere between sentences and words, the secret will slip out. I am trying to give you that secret; it isn't a secret at all, but it is building solidly, not using secrets. I had been trying to extend into metaphysical extension; that film is changing, metamorphic; that is, infinite; the idea that the movement of life is totally important rather than a single life. My films were built on an incline, an increase in intensity. I hoped to make a form which was infinite, the changingness of things. I thought I would want to find a total form which conveyed that sense, particularly in reference to an Oriental subject. My impression was: one is walking down a corridor of a hotel. One hears a sound, opens a door and a man is playing; one listens for three minutes and closes the door. The music went on before you opened the door and it continues after you close the door. There was neither beginning nor end. Western music increases in intensity to a climax and then resolves itself. Oriental music is infinite; it goes on and on. The Chinese theater goes on for hours and hours with time for lunch moving scenery, etc. ~ Maya Deren

Such women as you a hundred men always convet - your eyes will only bewitch scores on scores into the unvailing fancy for you - you can only marry one of that many. Out of these say twenty will will endeavour to drown the bitterness of despised love in drink; twenty more will mope away their lives without a wish or attempt to make a mark in the world, because they have no ambition apart from their attachment to you; twenty more - the suspectible person myself possibly among them - will be always draggling after you, getting where they may just see you, doing desperate things. Men are such constant fools! The rest may try to get over their passion with more or less success. But all of these men will be saddened. And not only those ninety-nine men, but the ninety-nine women they might have married are saddened with them. There's my tale. That's why I say that a woman so charming as yourself, Miss Everdene, is hardly a blessing to her race (Ch. 26) ~ Thomas Hardy

Thank Ra!" She exclaimed.
"Yeah, I'm alive."
"No, I almost jumped in after you. I hate the water! ~ Rick Riordan

When Elvis sang, it almost sounded like he was whispering. But after you heard the record, his voice was the strongest thing you ever heard. He was incredible. ~ Donald Dunn

It's not that words or human language stop having any meaning or relevance after you die, by the way. ~ David Foster Wallace

If God has saved you, He has saved you by faith--plus nothing. God is not accepting any kind of good works for salvation. But after you are saved, God talks to you about your works. ~ J. Vernon McGee

Once there was a little bunny who wanted to run away. So he said to his mother, "I am running away".
"If you run away", said his mother, "I will run after you. For you are my little bunny". ~ Margaret Wise Brown

I was accustomed to walking alone. I'd find other people who agreed with me, but they also said, "I wouldn't dare mention it." I was the only one who would say, "We've got to stand." And they said, "Well, yes. And after you make it safe, then I'll stand, too. But you have to make it safe." ~ Harry Hay

When was the last time you were kissed?" he went on easily. "And I'm not talking about the dry, noncommittal, meaningless kiss you forget about as soon as it's over."

I scrambled out of my stupor long enough to quip, "Like last night's kiss?"

He cocked an eyebrow. "That so? I wonder, then, why you moaned my name after you drifted to sleep."

"I did not!"

"If only I'd had a video recorder. When was the last time you were really kissed?" he repeated.

"You seriously think I'm going to tell you?"

"Your ex?" he guessed.

"And if he was?"

"Was it your ex who taught you to be ashamed and uncomfortable with intimacy? He took from you what he wanted, but never seemed to be around when you wanted something back, isn't that right? What do you want, Britt?" he asked me point-blank.
"Do you really want to pretend like last night never happened?"

"Whatever happened between me and Calvin isn't your business," I fired back.

"For your information, he was a really great boyfriend. I-I wish I was with him right now!" I exclaimed untruthfully. My careless comment made him flinch, but he recovered quickly.

"Does he love you?"

"What?" I said, flustered.

"If you know him so well, it shouldn't be a hard question. Is he in love with you? Was he ever in love with you?"

I tossed my head back haughtily. "I know what you're doing. You' ~ Becca Fitzpatrick

A thing is symmetrical if there is something you can do to it so that after you have finished doing it, it looks the same as before. ~ Dave Goldberg

I was nothing but a nomad to you.
Destined to leave,
inclined to stay.
I would have gladly rewritten
my entire journey for you,
but you already viewed me as a traveler.
"Wait for me," you murmured,
with no intention of ever returning.
I was your right now
after you became my infinity. ~ Noor Shirazie

On the last day of her visit I drove your grandmother to the airport. Your mother was her only child, as you are my only child, and having watched you grow I know that nothing could possibly be more precious to her. She said to me, "You take care of my daughter."
When she got out of the car my world had shifted. I felt that I had crossed some threshold out of the foyer of my life and into the living room. Everything that was the past seemed to be another life. There was before you and then there was after and in this after you were the god I'd never had. I submitted before your needs and I knew then that I must survive for something more than survival's sake. I must survive for you. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

After you back it up, then stop;
Then wha-wha-what, drop drop it like it's hot! ~ Juvenile

It's my turn next, and I realize then that I never turned in the name of my escort--because I hadn't planned on being here. I glance around wildly for Ryder, but he's nowhere to be seen, swallowed up by the sea of people in cocktail dresses and suits.
Crap. I thought he realized that escorting me on court was part of the deal, once I'd agreed to go. I guess he'd figured it'd be easier on me, what with the whole Patrick thing, if I was alone onstage. But I don't want to be alone. I want Ryder with me. By my side, supporting me.
Always.
I finally spot him in the crowd--it's not too hard, since he's a head taller than pretty much everyone else--and our eyes meet. My stomach drops to my feet--you know, that feeling you get on a roller coaster right after you crest that first hill and start plummeting toward the ground.
Oh my God, this can't be happening. I've fallen in love with Ryder Marsden, the boy I'm supposed to hate. And it has nothing to do with his confession, his declaration that he loves me. Sure, it might have forced me to examine my feelings faster than I would have on my own, but it was there all along, taking root, growing, blossoming.
Heck, it's a full-blown garden at this point.
"Our senior maid is Miss Jemma Cafferty!" comes the principal's voice. "Jemma is a varsity cheerleader, a member of the Wheelettes social sorority, the French Honor Club, the National Honor Society, and the Peer Mentors. She's escorted tonight by…ahem, sorry. ~ Kristi Cook

Fellas. Those are some nice guns. The Second Amendment is as American as yummy apple pie and after you are drenched in my semen you will taste just as delicious. ~ Mandy De Sandra

But as she rounded the last turn before the hall landing, she nearly collided with Sir Ian, carrying his mother's shawl.
"Oh!" Lina exclaimed, coming to an abrupt halt a step above his.
"Rather careless of you to leave this behind," he said.
He was too close.
"Aye, it was," she agreed, stepping back up a step to gain more space.
His eyes danced. "Mayhap I should demand a penance before returning it."
"You dare," she said, stiffening and wishing he were not so fiendishly beguiling with that boyish gleam of mischief in his eyes. He was definitely not just a mischievous boy anymore, though. And, for a lady to encourage such behavior . . .
He looked up, as if to heaven, and murmured, "Just one wee ki - "
"Shame on you, Sir Ian Colquhoun," she interjected, thinking she sounded just like her mother. "Galbraith cannot know that you are on this stairway."
"Once again, you are wrong, lass," he said, his eyes still alight. "He is still with Lizzie on the dais - giving her a well-deserved scolding, I trust. I saw that you had left the shawl and offered to find a maidservant to return it to you. But this is much better. I do think you should thank me prettily for taking so much trouble."
"I will thank you. After you have returned it to me."
Cocking his head, he held the shawl higher, so she'd have to reach for it.
When she did, he moved it back out of her reach.
Lina lowered her outstretched hand to her side and eyed him st ~ Amanda Scott

At every level, from the microcellular to the psychological, exercise not only wards off the ill effects of chronic stress; it can also reverse them. Studies show that if researchers exercise rats that have been chronically stressed, that activity makes the hippocampus grow back to its preshriveled state. The mechanisms by which exercise changes how we think and feel are so much more effective than donuts, medicines, and wine. When you say you feel less stressed out after you go for a swim, or even a fast walk, you are. ~ John Ratey

There have been no women before you and there will be no women after you, ~ Renee Carlino

Some movies get rushed out right after you make them and I'm not always happy with that. ~ Aaron Eckhart

Beginning before you know what you want to say and keeping on after you have said it lands a merchant in a lawsuit or the poorhouse, and the first is a shortcut to the second. ~ George Horace Lorimer

I just wanted you to know I'd be chasing after you right now, naked if need required it. But because I'm respecting your need for time and space, I'll force myself to lie here in bed and pretend I'm asleep. ~ Nicole Williams

It's funny, I think after you are a star like Sting and you no longer think you need any guidance or aid - it would be great to see those stars work with other songwriters. ~ Meshell Ndegeocello

Maybe after you die you get sent to a giant room with archives of newspapers that have been written by these angel journalists specifically about your life and then you read them and they look like this. That would be insanely depressing. Hopefully at least some of her headlines would be about the other people in your life and not just you. ~ Jesse Andrews

I didn't know love could disperse
without making a single seed grow,
that longing after you in solitude
would become dearer to me
than being in your arms. ~ Tatjana Ostojic

The little things we value as mundane or pithy usually turn into the big things in hindsight ... an "I love you" called out as the door closes, a walk around the same block with the same friend, Grandma's chocolate cake every time you visit ... the brush of skin on skin as two loves pause to breath in sync. Life isn't made up of miles, but memories. Cherish them while you're making them, not just after you can't make those memories anymore. ~ Toni Sorenson

To be rich, to be famous? do these profit a year hence, when other names sound louder than yours, when you lie hidden away under ground, along with the idle titles engraven on your coffin? But only true love lives after you, follows your memory with secret blessings or pervades you, and intercedes for you. Non omnis moriar, if, dying, I yet live in a tender heart or two; nor am lost and hopeless, living, if a sainted departed soul still loves and prays for me. ~ William Makepeace Thackeray

Gerald, through an act of silent will, imposed on his father the pressing obligation to perform his final acts of expiation for abandoning the family. You will not know, the child silently said, what these acts are until you have performed them all. And after you have performed them you will not understand that they were expiatory any more than you have understood all the other expiation that has kept you in such prolonged humiliation. Then, when these final acts are complete, you will stop trying to die because of me. ~ William Kennedy

Ah, no, deployment was delayed after you left. Technical difficulties."
"Oh?"
"Yes, it was technically difficult to leave a heartbroken Alpha. ~ Gail Carriger

The response of anybody interested in liberty is that we all have a say and the ability to have an argument is exactly what liberty is, even though it may never be resolved. In any authoritarian society the possessor of power dictates, and if you try and step outside he will come after you. ~ Salman Rushdie

Shortly after you left the room, Bushell came over and spoke to your father. I was not near enough to hear what he said, but Maria Lucas told me afterwards that he had been -' (she smiled) 'amazingly impertinent.'
'Peter actually spoke to Papa?'
'He did. According to Maria, he had the impudence to criticise Mr Bennet for his treatment of you. I must say it gives me the most favourable idea of his character. ~ Jennifer Paynter

After you were bitten, I knew what would happen. I waited for you to change, every night, so I could bring you back and keep you from getting hurt." A chilly gust of wind lifter his hair and sent a shower of golden leaves glimmering down around him. He spred out his arms, letting them fall into his hands. He looked like a dark angel in an eternal autumn wood. "Did you know you get one happy day for everyone you catch?"

I didn't know what he meant, even after he opened his fist to show me the quivering leaves crumpled in his palm.

One happy day for every falling leaf you catch." Sam's voice was low.

I watched the egdes of the leaves slowly unfold, fluttering in the breeze."How long did you wait?"

It would have been romantic if hr'd had the courage to look into my face to say it, but instead, he dropped his eyes to the ground and scuffed his boots in the leaves- countless possibilities for happy days- on the ground. "I haven't stopped."

And I should've said something romantic too, but i didn't have the courage, either. So instead, I watched the shy way he was chewing his lip and studying the leaves, and said, "That must've been very borring. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

Just two days in Manhattan and you find yourself looking for a place to wash your handkerchief after you wipe your forehead and it comes away black. Is there a dirtier or more fascinating city anywhere in the land? The answer to both parts of the question has to be positively negative. ~ Herb Caen

Gabrielle chuckled, her dark eyes twinkling. "So he's been after you, has he? Poor Etta, pursued by a sun priest offering to pleasure - "
"Every nook and cranny," Marietta interrupted dryly and Gabrielle tipped her head back with a throaty laugh. ~ Michelle O'Leary

There's a nonsensical dichotomy that exists within you after you break up with someone - especially if it's someone you loved deeply. A large part of you hopes they'll move on, be happy, follow their dreams to the fullest.
That's the side you show the world.
But a smaller part of you, whether you admit its existence or not, secretly and selfishly yearns for a reality in which that person would never move on. Never forget your love, or replace you with someone else; never be fully complete again, without you by their side.
That's the side we hide away, the innermost part of ourselves that we push down below the socially-acceptable responses to heartbreak. ~ Julie Johnson

You will have all kinds of trials to pass through. And it is quite as necessary for you to be tried as it was for Abraham and other men of God, and (said he) God will feel after you, and He will take hold of you and wrench your very heart strings, and if you cannot stand it you will not be fit for an inheritance in the Celestial Kingdom of God. ~ John Taylor

Have you ever noticed that humans have made it so difficult and complicated to "survive" in this world? It's a vicious cycle. You go to school, and try really hard, so that you can get into a good college, and then you try really hard at college to get a good job, and then you try really hard at your job, so you can make money. And then your kids do the same thing. And everyone just keeps on doing this and no one even stops to think WHY they're doing it any more. Everyone just does it because it's what you're supposed to do. And like, before, when the human race had just started, the goal was to just SURVIVE. People just lived. I mean, that's what really matters, right? Survival. Because after you die, it doesn't matter what college you went to. ~ Eliza Engellenner