Bitter Taste Quotes

I tasted the salt on my own lips, and the bitter taste of blood on his. It was a desperate kiss, the sort of kiss that marks a lovers' parting, a kiss of sorrow and regret and a kind of blind and wordless promise. I would have risen up when it was finished, but he held me close, his hand stroking my hair. "I'll hurt your chest," I protested, but he shook his head. "I am past pain," he lied, "and I've always had a fancy to die in my lover's arms. 'Tis most romantic. ~ Susanna Kearsley

From the heart of this fountain of delights wells up some bitter taste to choke them even amid the flowers. ~ Lucretius

Losing leaves a bitter taste that lingers long after the sweetness of victory has been forgotten. ~ Michael J. Sullivan

If I thought about it, I could be bitter, but I don't feel like being bitter. Being bitter makes you immobile, and there's too much that I still want to do. ~ Richard Pryor

Because being a fan is not all about the good times when victory makes life better. Dealing with defeat helps mold you as a fan. If you didn't experience the bitter taste of losing, then you wouldn't have any humility. You wouldn't have a heart. You'd be a New York Yankees fan. ~ Mark Tye Turner

Sweet like liquor. Sweet like heroin. She's an addict's kind of bitter taste--my own personal hit of dope ~ Lana Sky

But O, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man's eyes. ~ William Shakespeare

Rudeness affected Margaret like a bitter taste in the mouth. It poisoned life. At times it is necessary, but woe to those who employ it without due need. ~ E.M. Forster

What are you two doing?" Her uncle's teasing voice came into the room before he did. But his voice was the second warning that they were no longer alone, since Violet had tasted his presence long before he'd actually stepped into her house. Ever since saving her and Jay at Homecoming, her uncle carried an imprint of his own. The bitter taste of dandelions still smoldered on Violet's tongue whenever he was near. A taste that Violet had grown to accept. And even, to some degree, to appreciate. "Nothing your parents wouldn't approve of, I hope," he added.
Violet flashed Jay a wicked grin. "We were just making out, so if you could make this quick, we'd really appreciate it."
Jay jumped up from beside her. "She's kidding," he blurted out. "We weren't doing anything."
Her uncle Stephen stopped where he was and eyed them both carefully. Violet could've sworn she felt Jay squirming, even though every single muscle in his body was frozen in place. Violet smiled at her uncle, trying her best to look guilty-as-charged.
Finally he raised his eyebrows, every bit the suspicious police officer. "Your parents asked me to stop by and check on you on my way home. They won't be back until late. Can I trust the two of you here . . . alone?"
"Of course you can - " Jay started to say.
"Probably not - " Violet answers at the same time. And then she caught a glimpse of the horror-stricken expression on Jay's face, and she laughed. "Relax, Uncle Stephen, we're fine. We ~ Kimberly Derting

Coffee is a lot like people. In many ways, it's deceiving. The sweetness that you smell as it brews is more often than not a fallacy. The scent of a dark roasted coffee bean promises you rich flavors with hints of chocolate and hazelnut, but if you're not used to coffee's deceptiveness, you're left with a bitter aftertaste dangling at the back of your throat. To those of us who are used to it- we've grown a fondness for that bitter taste. It's complex. It's teasing. It reminds us that most things in life are not consistently sweet with every sip. One morning, your coffee might brew mild with just a flirtation of nutty undertones, And the next morning, it might be pelting you in the face with those same nuts, leaving little stinging marks with each sip. It's moody. It's not easy to perfect. But when you get the perfect brew, it's rewarding. And that same perfection is not guaranteed tomorrow just because you managed it today. ~ Katana Collins

You go first," Four says. Eric shrug. "Edward." Four leans against the door frame and nods. The moonlight makes his eyes bright. He scans the group of transfer initiates briefly, without calculation and says, "I want the Stiff." ...
Heat rushes into my cheeks and I don't know whether to be angry at the people laughing at me or flattered by the fact that he chose me first. "Got something to prove?" asks Eric, with his trademark smirk. "Or you just picking the weak ones, so that if you lose, you'll have someone to blame it on?" Four shrugs. "Something like that." Angry. I should be angry. I scowl at my hands. Whatever Four's strategy is, it's based on the idea that I am weaker than the other initiates. And it gives me a bitter taste in my mouth. i have to prove him wrong
I have to. ~ Veronica Roth

The effects of Fate come together like stew simmering with provisions from the universe. Which ingredients we've used make the end result easy to swallow or bitterly distasteful. So choose wisely for, when our lot in life is done, only those young enough or strong enough can toss their destiny aside and start over. ~ Elizabeth Good

I would have given a fortune to know what the people sitting there were thinking. What the world looked like to them. Imagine if it was radically different from what I saw. If it was full of pleasure at the dark leather of the sofa, the black surface of the coffee and its bitter taste, not to mention the yellow eye of custard in the center of the puff pastry's winding and cracked terrain. What if the whole of this world sang inside them? What if they were full to bursting with the many delights the day had bestowed on them? ~ Karl Ove Knausgaard

Meanwhile, blacks observed how German prisoners housed at Camp Gordon were getting paid to work the grounds of the Augusta National Golf Club, and to pick peanuts, corn, and potatoes across the Savannah River. "They sing and whistle, seem to enjoy work," enthused the Augusta Chronicle. "Farmers are delighted." Such news stories left a bitter taste in the mouths of black Augustans, who felt the government was doing more for the enemy than it was willing to do for them. ~ RJ Smith

It seems love is the root of all pain and most of its fruit only leaves a bitter taste behind. ~ L.F. Falconer

Before I was twenty, I mean, I used to think that life was a thing that kept gaining impetus. It would get richer and deeper each year. You kept learning more, getting wiser, having more insight, going further into the truth - " She hesitated. Port laughed abruptly. "And now you know it's not like that. Right? It's more like smoking a cigarette. The first few puffs it tastes wonderful, and you don't even think of its ever being used up. Then you begin taking it for granted. Suddenly you realize it's nearly burned down to the end. And then's when you're conscious of the bitter taste." "But I'm always conscious of the unpleasant taste and of the end approaching," she said. ~ Paul Bowles

A man cannot un-see the truth. He cannot willingly return to darkness or go blind once he has the gift of sight, anymore than he can be unborn.

We are the only species capable of self-reflection. The only species with the toxin of self-doubt written into our genetic code. Unequal to our gifts we build, we buy, we consume. We wrap ourselves in the illusion of material success. We cheat and deceive as we claw our way to the pinnacle of what we define as achievement; superiority to other men.

But there is a sickness inside us. Rising like the bile that leaves that bitter taste at the back of our throats. We do our best to deny its existence, dealing in lies and distraction. Until one day the body rebels against the mind and screams out… I am not a well man. Only when we know what ails us can we hope to find the cure. ~ Justin Haythe

I'm loyal to my Clan, Lionpaw told himself. I shouldn't have to prove it. But still, the bitter taste of his lie stung in his throat. ~ Erin Hunter

You see, at young age I had known how bitter taste like and it all started with a cup of brewed coffee. ~ Ymatruz

was like a crystal bowl filled with warm kettle corn. But when you lifted it up and checked the bottom, you could see a layer of burnt, unpopped kernels. The kind that makes you flinch from the unexpected bitter taste. The kind that may cause you to chip a tooth. ~ Jennifer Coburn

today we read of Don Quixote with a bitter taste in the mouth, it is
almost an ordeal, which would make us seem very strange and incomprehensible
to the author and his contemporaries, – they read it with a clear
conscience as the funniest of books, it made them nearly laugh themselves
to death).To see suffering does you good, to make suffer, better still – that
On the Genealogy of Morality
42
48 See below, Supplementary material, pp. 153–4.
49 See below, Supplementary material, pp. 137–9, pp. 140–1, pp. 143–4.
50 Don Quixote, Book II, chs 31–7.
is a hard proposition, but an ancient, powerful, human-all-too-human
proposition to which, by the way, even the apes might subscribe: as people
say, in thinking up bizarre cruelties they anticipate and, as it were, act out
a 'demonstration' of what man will do. No cruelty, no feast: that is what
the oldest and longest period in human history teaches us – and punishment,
too, has such very strong festive aspects! – ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

I took a walk on the cool sand dunes, brittle grass overgrown, and above me, in the night sky, above me, I saw. Bitter taste of unripe peaches and a smell I could not place, nor could I escape. I remembered other times that I could not escape. I remembered other smells. The moon slunk like a wounded animal. The world spun like it had lost control. Concentrate only on breathing and let go of ideas you had about nutrition and alarm clocks. I took a walk on the cool sand dunes, brittle grass overgrown, and above me, in the night sky, above me, I saw.
This message brought to you by Coca-Cola. ~ Joseph Fink

Your exuberance, passion,
mesmerizing voice,
animated actions,
and eyes full of dreams
captured my attention
so completely,
that I didn't feel
the bitter taste of coffee ~ Vijaya Gowrisankar

I am like a little child naked in a strong wind. I have a fever, I shiver, I'm too hot or too cold. My lips retain the unusual fruity taste of your mouth, & the bitter taste of your saliva lingers on my tongue, making me find everything I eat bland, sickening since nothing is as good as your love. ~ Rachilde

Bitterness is what happens when we view the things we want which we don't have. Those harbouring bitterness in their hearts have the tendency to alienate themselves from those things that cause the bitter taste. Which is why bitterness never works. Because in order to acheive that which we want but don't have, we need to be putting ourselves in that river, in those rivers, and flowing in them. Bitterness is an anchor that denies you the right to flow in, and towards, the things that you really wish you had. Grace of the Soul is what empowers you with the ability to be joyful for the ones who have what you don't yet have. Grace of Soul is the canoe helping you to flow with and in those rivers. ~ C. JoyBell C.

The salmon is perfectly cooked. The trace amounts of sugar contained in the wheat flour have combined with the butter in a chemical reaction that's creating a wonderful fragrance. It was all fried together for precisely the right amount of time to create a superb Meunière."
"The squid liver was quickly sautéed in a dollop of butter as well, taking a bite of that with the Meunière is sublime! The butter's flavor gently wraps around the salty and pleasantly bitter taste of the liver, giving it a beautifully mellow body."
"He added pomegranate seeds and tonburi to the soy sauce marinated roe! Those three completely disparate flavors meld into a seamless whole thanks to butter! Not only does it have an amusing texture, the roe doesn't have its typical greasiness either!"
*Tonburi, also called land caviar, is the seeds of the summer cypress plant. It's texture is similar to caviar.*
He's used mounds of butter in so many different facets of the dish, but it somehow hasn't made the flavor heavy at all. The secret to that lies in the bed of special sushi rice hidden underneath the seafood!
"This sushi rice was made not with vinegar but with orange juice and lemon juice!"
"So that's why he was squeezing that mountain of oranges!" ~ Yuto Tsukuda

But for fear of disheartening them, we also spoke to them of disappointments and the bitter taste that rest has after a useless action. And seeing the eldest of them lost in a reverie that pained us, we added that perhaps the only truth is the peace to be found in books ... ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery

And now I am engulfed in this new flavor, so different from the light but humorless flavor of the Anapa and the thick bitter taste of the Mumbanyo, this rich deep resonant complex flavor that I am only getting my first sips of and yet how do I explain these differences to an average American who will take one look at the photographs and see black men & women with bones through their noses and lump them in a pile marked Savages? ~ Lily King

The pull of lingering dreams,
the strong, bitter taste
of morning coffee,
the ticking clock,
and horn of awaiting bus
form a powerful combination
to kick-start the day ~ Vijaya Gowrisankar

such a bitter taste in his mouth? He had become so accustomed to her feisty spirit and to the martial spark that flared in her eyes when she was ready to do battle, that this quiet surrender left him feeling more like a bullying lout than an officer deserving ~ Andrea Pickens

They say that love hath a bitter taste.... But what matter? What matter? I have kissed thy mouth. ~ Oscar Wilde

The laugh left a bitter taste in our mouths, but we laughed out all the same. ~ Haruki Murakami

If revenge is sweet, why does it leave such a bitter taste? In disarming Peter, Christ disarmed ever knight. Turn the other cheek. ~ Angela Elwell Hunt

Mikas had always envisioned them together, traveling together, taking on the world together, even when the world pushed them down, they'd be there to help each other up. His relationship with Blue had once seemed eternal, Blue a soothing constant in his life. Seeing Blue here, holding the Mechi's hand, left a bitter taste in his mouth ~ A.M. Daily

Though plucking artichoke leaves doesn't mend all cracked spirits as firmly as pea shelling, it has its own curative power. There is a Dutch saying: "Bitter in the mouth cures the heart." If you happen to have a friend shaken by heartache, hand over a bag of raw artichokes. Once she has relieved them of their leaves, encourage one brave bite. Between the meditative peeling and the bitter taste, she should be completely healed. If there are no artichokes around, raw dandelion greens are a good substitute. ~ Tamar Adler

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, But trust him for his grace; Behind a frowning providence He hides a smiling face. ~ John Piper

All this blackness was within him, but that was where it really mattered. It was night without moon or stars, it was a doorless pit in the earth's bowels, it was forever. He felt black ice growing, blooming in his veins. One last sharp feeling was left to him
the bitter taste of failure. Then that went too. All was nothing.
Cold and everlasting night, and an everlasting laughter that was older and colder than the stars he would never see again. His heart squirmed wildly in his chest, seeking an escape that was denied it. Laughter like a glacier came again, rolling and crushing all else before it.
A bird sang. ~ Susan Dexter

We find beauty in poison, and we love the bitter taste. ~ Cole McCade

He slowed to a walk. As he approached her he was surprised at just how pretty she was. She looked a little like Maureen O'Hara in those old pirate movies. His writer's mind kicked in and he thought, This woman could break my heart. I could crash and burn on this woman. I could lose this woman, drink heavily, write profound poems, and die in the gutter of turberculosis over this woman.
This was not an unusual reaction for Tommy. He had it often, mostly with girls who worked the drive-through windows at fast-food places. He would drive off with the smell of fries in his car and the bitter taste of unrequited love on his tongue. It was usually good for at least one short story. ~ Christopher Moore

Gratitude is the best food to start and sustain you. Hankering creates hunger, unhappiness, bellyache, headache and heartache - and often leaves a bitter taste ~ Rasheed Ogunlaru

Yeah, I understand better than you can ever imagine. I know exactly what it's like to want something so bad, you can taste it and to have to watch as it voluntarily goes to someone else and then wish them both the best and try to mean it. I know the bitter taste of gall as they dir down at your table and you have to smile while inside you die every time they touch or exchange love-saturated glances. Don't talk to me about torment, Jess. I wrote the fucking book on it." – Ren ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

One cannot develop taste from what is of average quality but only from the very best. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

The world was so beautiful, and there was so much of it: he could gaze forever at the wonder of leaves and not see them all: could inhale the wind and not smell all its scents, hear the sounds of men and horses and not hear all the sounds of the woods, and taste the thousand flavors in stale water and still find it wonderful ... because it was not the darkness. ~ C.J. Cherryh

You cannot taste a song
but you can feel the tune relishing your heart
where strings of music belong. ~ Munia Khan

One must renounce the bad taste of wishing to agree with many people. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

I don't have a Madonna-sized fan base, so I can actually e-mail and talk to everyone that e-mails me because I am totally appreciative, and I like my fans! They seem to have the same interests as me. They are kind of nerdy and cool - and have good taste, obviously. ~ Jill Sobule

I did another commercial. Don't lose your loved ones, I wrote, because of excessive radioactivity. Don't be a wallflower at the dance because of strontium 90 in your bones. Don't be a victim of fallout. When the tart on Thirty-sixth Street gives you the big eye does your body stride off in one direction and your imagination in another? Does your mind follow her up the stairs and taste her wares in revolting detail while your flesh goes off to Brooks Brothers or the foreign exchange desk of the Chase Manhattan Bank? Haven't you noticed the size of the ferns, the lushness of the grass, the bitterness of the string beans, and the brilliant makings on the new breeds of butterflies? You have been inhaling lethal atomic waste for the last twenty-five years and only Elixircol can save you. ~ John Cheever

To be allowed, no, invited into the private lives of strangers, and to share their joys and fears, was a chance to exchange the Southern bitter wormwood for a cup of mead with Beowulf or a hot cup of tea and milk with Oliver Twist. ~ Maya Angelou

Risotto with Seafood 2 bay leaves 1 carrot, chopped 2 small onions: 1 chopped, 1 minced 3 (1-pound) lobsters 1/3 cup olive oil 3 tablespoons tomato paste 2 cups Arborio rice 1½ cups white wine (dry) 2 tablespoons butter 2 pounds medium shrimp, peeled 1 pound scallops Fill pot with water sufficient to cover 3 lobsters. Add bay leaves, carrot, chopped onion. Bring to a boil, add lobsters, and cook 10 minutes. Reserve water the lobsters were cooked in. Cool lobsters and remove meat. Cook minced onion in olive oil until translucent; add tomato paste until blended. Then add rice. Slowly add white wine and an equal amount of lobster water. Continue stirring and adding liquid as rice cooks, 20 minutes or so. Melt butter in a separate pan. Add shrimp; cook until pink. Remove shrimp and add scallops; sear until golden. Add shrimp and lobster to the risotto pan. Fold in. Season to taste. ~ Christina Baker Kline

Living life as only half humans until one day we meet a woman who completes us, who gives meaning to our pathetic existence and makes it worthwhile, enriching it with her laugh, with her smell, and the taste of her body. Days ~ Mia Asher

Speak of the appetite for drink; or of a bon-vivant's relish for dinner! What are these mere animal throes and ragings compared with those fantasies of taste, of those yearning of the imagination, of those insatiable appetites of intellect, which bewilder a student in a great bookseller's temptation-hall. ~ Henry Ward Beecher

Appleblossom can't believe the taste of the dark square. Is tehre a way to describe this morsel of goodness? It is so sweet adn smooth. It makes a green snail seem like an old pinecone seed, and every possum knows that a green snail is fantastic eating. ~ Holly Goldberg Sloan

I could have told him there was no sense in rushing toward being dead. It would find you soon
enough, and before it did there were pleasures to make your heart hurt less. If I lay very still in bed at night, I remembered how Grandma's house smelled. The taste of mint ice cream on Kellen's tongue. Donal jumping on the bed to wake me up. ~ Bryn Greenwood

Perhaps the strongest indictment against us as the Church is that we have settled for an Americanized version of the Church that mirrors whatever culture says, and there is no collective sense of loss, no sense of remorse. We have sinned deeply. The problem is that we haven't got a taste of the sinfulness of racism... We don't see the wickedness of profiling God's people that He has created to be one and that He has created in His image (p. 75). ~ John M. Perkins

there are others who are bitter and angry. ~ Joelle Charbonneau

It seems, then, we are forced to believe in a real Right and Wrong. People may be sometimes mistaken about them, just as people sometimes get their sums wrong, but they are not a matter of mere taste and opinion any more than the multiplication table. ~ C.S. Lewis

Bad taste is a species of bad morals. ~ Christian Nestell Bovee

I don't hafta taste it to know it taste funny. It already looks like it taste funny. ~ Dennis The Menace

If anyone bothered to search through the laurel bordering the asphalt he'd surely find handfuls of teeth that were said to give the laurel its odd milky color, ivory with a pale pink edge, each blossom forming the shape of a bitter man's mouth. ~ Alice Hoffman

I meet a lot of readers who first encountered my work in school. And I can only assume there is another group who would run away very fast if they saw me coming, for exactly the same reason. Reading is individual, and not all tastes are alike. ~ Margaret Atwood

... what splendid dreams young people build upon a word, and how bitter is the pain when the bright bubbles burst. ~ Louisa May Alcott

Give the child a taste of meditation by creating a climate and atmosphere of love, acceptance and silence. ~ Swami Dhyan Giten

Revolution is a bitter thing, mixed with filth and blood, not as lovely or perfect as the poets think. It is eminently down to earth, involving many humble, tiresome tasks, not so romantic as the poets think ... So it is easy for all who have romantic dreams about revolution to become disillusioned on closer acquaintance, when a revolution is actually carried out. ~ Lu Xun

Her world fragmented into dozens of sharp, cutting shards, shedding the salty blood and saltier tears that ringed the bitter cocktail of her despair. She was caterpillar and butterfly, both, caught in a cocoon of raw nerves and open sores; she was insanity, wrapped up in the thin, transient wrappings of a temporary lucidity; and she was afraid, because an innate desire lay in the bottom reaches of her psyche for the very poison that was killing her. ~ Nenia Campbell

There are certain songs that if people come up to me and tell me how much that song meant to them, I think, You should have better taste, then, because I don't really like that song. ~ Moby

If someone had asked him about his dreams on the morning of the barbecue, he would have said that he didn't want for much, but he wouldn't mind a lower mortgage, a tidier house, another baby - ideally a son, but he'd take another girl no problem at all - a big motherfucking boat if it were up for grabs, and more sex. He would have laughed about the sex. Or smiled at least. A rueful smile. Maybe the smile would have been exactly halfway between rueful and bitter. ~ Liane Moriarty

Love a person who is quite unloved, rather than a person who is very much loved. People who feel unloved treat it as a luxury, a hidden treasure, a gem. People who felt loved all their lives treat it as a birthright, an entitlement, a necessary materiality. Give water to the thirsty, they know what water should taste like. ~ C. JoyBell C.

I have a certain taste, and I might be like, 'I like this,' when other people are like, 'I can't wear that.' And in basketball, I might be able to do things other guys might not. ~ Russell Westbrook

Cooking is an art and patience a virtue... Careful shopping, fresh
ingredients and an unhurried approach are nearly all you need. There is one more thing - love. Love for food and love for those you invite to your table. With a combination of these things you can be an artist - not perhaps in the representational style of a Dutch master, but rather more like Gauguin, the naïve, or Van Gogh,
the impressionist. Plates or pictures of sunshine taste of happiness and love. ~ Keith Floyd

Champagne has the taste of an apple peeled with a steel knife ~ Aldous Huxley

That bitter hour cannot be described: in truth, the waters came into my soul; I sank in deep mire: I felt no standing; I came into deep waters; the floods overflowed me. ~ Charlotte Bronte

You have no idea how difficult it was trying to listen to a single word you said today when all I could think about was how soft they are. How incredible they taste. How perfect they fit between mine. ~ Colleen Hoover

Come over here and taste me, he says, his voice little but a seductive whisper. ~ Felicity Brandon

I give eulogy to those who are meant to see. You see those who are meant to be by the seeds they sow, growing near the living water, sprouting into a tree. The fruits they reap are sweet like dripping honey, warm to the touch and sweet to the buds of taste. ~ Jose R. Coronado

I now understand why people sometimes describe the air as 'bitter cold'. The cold is not bitter. They are bitter about the cold. ~ Taylor Jenkins Reid

When young lips have drunk deep of the bitter waters of hate, suspicion and despair, all the love in the world will not wholly take away that knowledge. Though it may turn darkened eyes for a while to the light, and teach faith where no faith was. ~ Rudyard Kipling

Did you ever feel happy in church?" "Naw. I didn't want to. Nobody but poor folks get happy in church." "But you are poor, Bigger."
Again Bigger's eyes lit with a bitter and feverish pride. "I ain't that poor. ~ Richard Wright

Love is a driver, bitter and fierce if you fight and resist him,
Easy-going enough once you acknowledge his power. ~ Ovid

It is not strange to me that persons of the fair sex should like, in all things about them, the handsomeness for which they find themselves most liked. ~ Robert Boyle

Because I was dying.
　　And Warner could've let me die. He was angry and hurt and had every reason to be bitter. I'd just ripped his heart out; I'd let him believe something would come of our relationship. I let him confess the depth of his feelings to me; I let him touch me in ways even Adam hadn't. I didn't ask him to stop.
　　Every inch of me was saying yes.
　　And then I took it all back. Because I was scared, and confused, and conflicted. Because of Adam.
　　Warner told me he loved me, and in return I insulted him and lied to him and yelled at him and pushed him away. And when he had the chance to stand back and watch me die, he didn't.
　　He found a way to save my life.
　　With no demands. No expectations. Believing full well that I was in love with someone else, and that saving my life meant making me whole again only to give me back to another guy.
　　And right now, I can't say I know what Adam would do if I were dying in front of him. I'm not sure if he would save my life. And that uncertainty alone makes me certain that something wasn't right between us. ~ Tahereh Mafi

But just as it sometimes happens that the most temperate people, who have never acquired the habit of drinking alcohol, or even a taste for it, are tormented by the fear that somehow or other they will one day find themselves drunk, so Isabelle perpetually feared that she might be betrayed into an impulsive act that was destructive to such order as reason had imposed on life. Therefore she was forever running her faculty of analysis over in her mind with the preposterous zeal of an adolescent running a razor over his beardless chin. ~ Rebecca West

A life passed amid gangsters, thieves, smugglers, and gamblers had granted Amelia an unerring nose for greed, vanity, and other assorted venal characteristics, and in Miss Sparrow, she smelled rancid pride combined with the bitter char of unrequited love. She smelled the lemon tang of loneliness mingling with despair. Just under Priscilla Sparrow's skin, Amelia could tell, a rosemary blast of judiciousness rippled, followed by the must decay of jealousy and a lingering note of envy - in short (and in spite of all of Miss Sparrow's better attempts with Dick Crane), the odors of a lifelong spinster. ~ Tiffany Baker

Life's a jumble of farce and melodrama, the chaotic scribbling of a third-rate penny-a-liner. We mock it to keep from going mad--or at least to display our good taste. ~ Gary Inbinder

As I wade into the still-freezing stream, the wind raises goose bumps on my body. A cloud of swallows skates across the sky; the water carries a slight taste of grit; my mother hums downstream. This is not any kind of happiness that I imagined. It is not what I chose.

But it's enough. It is more than enough. ~ Lauren Oliver

We mustn't romanticize suffering. It can turn people bitter and hard, although it does seem to have been almost indispensable in making people into the kind of leaders that we admire. ~ Desmond Tutu

The poor tell us who we are, the prophets tell us who we could be, so we hide the poor, and kill the prophets. ~ Philip Berrigan