Black Rose Suzanne Steele Quotes

Let's just say if karma's a bitch...
I'm her bastard of a brother. ~ Suzanne Steele

Felix!" Lucien called out.
The valet popped his head into Lucien's bedchamber. "My lord?"
"Change of plans. Set out my finest black breeches, black hessians and a black silk shirt. Also, do I still have a black domino mask?"
Felix's eyebrows rose. "Are we dressing you for a specific occasion, my lord? I was under the impression that abductions were not among your interests." The valet's eyes were cool, but Lucien caught the glimmer of amusement there.
Lucien sometimes forgot that what were considered secrets upstairs were sometimes common knowledge downstairs. No doubt he referred to Miss Emily Parr's adventure some months before.
"Abductions, when done properly, can turn out quite satisfactory. But fear not, Felix, tonight I'm off to the Garden."

-Lucien & Felix. His Wicked Seduction ~ Lauren Smith

Black rose, black rose
Who's gonna be your only one?
Who's gonna keep you safe and warm?
Run, run my baby black rose
I'm gonna find you home. ~ P.M. Highlanders

Promise me, she had cried, in a room that smelled of blood and roses. Promise me, Ned. The fever had taken her strength and her voice had been faint as a whisper, but when he gave her his word, the fear had gone out of his sister's eyes. Ned remembered the way she had smiled then, how tightly her fingers had clutched his as she gave up her hold on life, the rose petals spilling from her palm, dead and black. After that he remembered nothing. ~ George R R Martin

In winter darkness, the Baghdad Arabian keen blue deepness of the piercing lovely January winter's dusk
it used to tear my heart out, one stabbing soft star was in the middle of the magicalest blue, throbbing like love
I saw Maggie's black hair in this night
In the shelves of Orion her eye shades, borrowed, gleamed a dark and proud vellum somber power brooding rich bracelets of the moon rose from our snow, and surrounded the mystery. ~ Jack Kerouac

Shebna scraped the tablet clean and began drawing circles in the soft clay. "Suppose you had six figs and you ate two. How many would
"
"Four." Hezekiah answered before Shebna finished, and the tutor's thick black eyebrows rose in surprise.
"And suppose I had five figs. How many would we
"
"Nine."
"Have you done this before?"
Hezekiah thought the question was ridiculous. "I've eaten figs lots of times. ~ Lynn Austin

But that was before I saw her coming down those stairs reincarnated as a goddess. A goddess in mourning. Those emblems of bereavement kept alive the pity, the religious adoration, the sense that my beloved was a spirit who must be worshiped in spirit. But out of the black bodice rose the luminous column of the neck; between the coils of honey-colored hair the face was transfigured by a kind of unearthly radiance. ~ Aldous Huxley

As I Grew Older"

It was a long time ago.
I have almost forgotten my dream.
But it was there then,
In front of me,
Bright like a sun -
My dream.
And then the wall rose,
Rose slowly,
Slowly,
Between me and my dream.
Rose until it touched the sky -
The wall.
Shadow.
I am black.
I lie down in the shadow.
No longer the light of my dream before me,
Above me.
Only the thick wall.
Only the shadow.
My hands!
My dark hands!
Break through the wall!
Find my dream!
Help me to shatter this darkness,
To smash this night,
To break this shadow
Into a thousand lights of sun,
Into a thousand whirling dreams
Of sun! ~ Langston Hughes

A book is the one place you're permitted to feel emotion; anywhere else you're expected to be professional.
And you ask me why I like to read... ~ Suzanne Steele

There were no ravens to be seen. Abruptly a fox burst out of the trees, running hard. Ravens poured from the branches after it. The beat of their wings almost drowned out a desperate whining from the fox. A black whirlwind dove and swirled around it. The fox's jaws snapped at them, but they darted in, and darted away untouched, black beaks glistening wetly. The fox turned back toward the trees, seeking the safety of its den. It ran awkwardly now, head low, fur dark and bloody, and the ravens flapped around it, more and more of them at once, the fluttering mass thickening until it hid the fox completely. As suddenly as they had descended the ravens rose, wheeled, and vanished over the next rise to the south. A misshapen lump of torn fur marked what had been the fox. ~ Robert Jordan

He cupped her face lightly in his hands, and gravity seemed to draw them together, like light towards a black hole. ~ Frankie Rose

Standing there small among the boxes of Kandy Kakes that rose like brownish cartoon cliffs around him, he resembled the videos I'd seen of sea lions floating angelically among the kelp, black bodies filmed from below, their shapes cut out in bright sunlight, bodies mistakable for those of a human being. I felt the memory of a shadowy arm around me, a watcher again, sitting there on the couch with my boyfriend, watching the animals become prey. Somewhere there were giant whales feeding on creatures too small to see, pressing them against fronds of baleen with a tongue the size of a sedan. There were polar bears killing seals, tearing ovoid chunks from out of their smooth, round bellies. In the surrounding vastness of the warehouse, I heard something scratching against the concrete floor and knew there were rats here, scraping a thin film of nutrient from the dry packaged matter that surrounded them. Life was everywhere, inescapable, imperative. ~ Alexandra Kleeman

It became his habit to creep out of bed even before his mother was awake, to slip into his clothes and to go quietly down to the barn to see Gabilan. In the grey quiet mornings when the land and the brush and the houses and the trees were silver-grey and black like a photograph negative, he stole toward the barn, past the sleeping stones and the sleeping cypress tree. The turkeys, roosting in the tree out of coyotes' reach, clicked drowsily. The fields glowed with a grey frost-like light and in the dew the tracks of rabbits and of field mice stood out sharply. The good dogs came stiffly out of their little houses, hackles up and deep growls in their throats. Then they caught Jody's scent, and their stiff tails rose up and waved a greeting Doubletree Mutt with the big thick tail, and Smasher, the incipient shepherd-then went lazily back to their warm beds. It was a strange time and a mysterious journey, to Jody -an extension of a dream. When he first had the pony he liked to torture himself during the trip by thinking Gabilan would not be in his stall, and worse, would never have been there. And he had other delicious little self-induced pains. ~ John Steinbeck

As we strolled into the hospital, I couldn't help thinking about Maroon 5's "Harder to Breathe" because I was having a difficult time staying calm. I had been kidnapped and beaten senseless by an agent of Lucifer, and yet the white coats the doctors wore scared me just as badly. The men who had taken me from my mother wore those same damned lab coats. Every time I saw one, it awakened a dormant fear inside me - fear that I'd be dragged away from someone I loved again, fear that I'd be placed into the waiting hands of another horrible person. It would never truly go away.
Michael's shoulder bumped mine, which shook me out of my thoughts. I glanced at him. "What?"
"You're frowning."
"Am I supposed to be smiling right now?"
He faced forward, looking at our reflection in the elevator doors. "No, but you look like you're about to bolt at any second."
I watched the digital numbers change one by one as we rose up to the right floor, fiddling with the rosary in the pocket of my leather jacket. Somehow, the beads had a calming effect on me. "I'm fine."
"Hard ass."
A tiny smirk touched my lips. "Stop thinking about my butt. You're an archangel."
He grinned, but didn't reply. ~ Kyoko M.

Then the whole range, much nearer now, paled into fresh splendor; a full moon rose, touching each peak in succession like some celestial lamplighter, until the long horizon glittered against a blue-black sky. ~ James Hilton

In the same way, I saw our General once approach the table in a stolid, important manner. A lacquey darted to offer him a chair, but the General did not even notice him. Slowly he took out his money bags, and slowly extracted 300 francs in gold, which he staked on the black, and won. Yet he did not take up his winnings - he left them there on the table. Again the black turned up, and again he did not gather in what he had won; and when, in the third round, the RED turned up he lost, at a stroke, 1200 francs. Yet even then he rose with a smile, and thus preserved his reputation; yet I knew that his money bags must be chafing his heart, as well as that, had the stake been twice or thrice as much again, he would still have restrained himself from venting his disappointment. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

At that time, I well remember whatever could excite - certain accidents of the weather, for instance, were almost dreaded by me, because they woke the being I was always lulling, and stirred up a craving cry I could not satisfy. One night a thunder-storm broke; a sort of hurricane shook us in our beds: the Catholics rose in panic and prayed to their saints. As for me, the tempest took hold of me with tyranny: I was roughly roused and obliged to live. I got up and dressed myself, and creeping outside the basement close by my bed, sat on its ledge, with my feet on the roof of a lower adjoining building. It was wet, it was wild, it was pitch dark. Within the dormitory they gathered round the night-lamp in consternation, praying loud. I could not go in: too resistless was the delight of staying with the wild hour, black and full of thunder, pealing out such an ode as language never delivered to man - too terribly glorious, the spectacle of clouds, split and pierced by white and blinding bolts. ~ Charlotte Bronte

What are these songs, and what do they mean? I know little of music and can say nothing in technical phrase, but I know something of men, and knowing them, I know that these songs are the articulate message of the slave to the world. They tell us in these eager days that life was joyous to the black slave, careless and happy. I can easily believe this of some, of many. But not all the past South, though it rose from the dead, can gainsay the heart-touching witness of these songs. They are the music of an unhappy people, of the children of disappointment; they tell of death and suffering and unvoiced longing toward a truer world, of misty wanderings and hidden ways. ~ W.E.B. Du Bois

His fingertip gently wiped away a tear that had escaped down my cheek. "That's part of it," he said. "But also... well, you and I will both be Lissa's guardians someday. I need to protect her at all cost. If a pack of Strigoi come, I need to throw my body between them and her."
"I know that. Of course that's what you have to do." The black sparkles were dancing in front of my eyes again. I was fading out.
"No. If I let myself love you, I won't throw myself in front of her. I'll throw myself in front of you. ~ Richelle Mead

Love, time doth change."

The rose was red,
The color of love,
Its petals vibrant,
A sign of your love.
Its stem did twine,
Around my heart,
But it couldn't keep it pumping,
One day it failed to start.
As clouds parted,
Oceans apart,
We only had our memories,
To remember,
Our love would last.
But time went on,
Your love did change,
And so the rose,
Began to change.
Thorns grew wild,
Petals did fade,
My rose was wilting,
Showing its age.
Red was no more,
Black was the hue,
Without your love,
What was I to do?
I tended my garden,
The thoughts in my mind,
For you were still my love,
For me in my mind. ~ Anthony T. Hincks

Tell me something," he said in a low voice.
"Anything," I answered.
"What's it like to have every breath count?"
I sat up and braced myself on my hand. "I'm not following what you mean," I answered.
Jess pulled himself up and propped his hands behind him. He looked out at the water as if he were seeing something from his past. "To live life as if it's your last breath. To know that any minute could be the final one and that you have to make the most of what's given to you. To know not everything is forever."
I could see the defined muscles in his arm, but what caught my attention the most was the bottom half of the symbol just under the sleeve of his shirt. Like before, I reached my finger and traced the snake resting on the stem. Sliding his sleeve higher, I followed upward toward the pedals of the black rose.
"It bothers you, doesn't it? The fact that you're constantly reminded of..." I couldn't finish what I wanted to say. I didn't want to hurt him.
He looked over his shoulder, and I stopped what I was doing to look up at him. "Yeah, it bothers me. But you know what bothers me even more? You're not like me. You can take a final breath. ~ Laura Burks

After ripping through The Hobbit, I read The Lord of the Rings, and the darkness of that story enveloped me in a way that is impossible to explain. I was THERE, in a very real sense. The fear was palpable in the presence of the black-cloaked Ringwraiths, and I could taste the sulfurous fumes of Mt. Doom. I could smell the sweat of horses and hot leather and hear the clash of battle as I rode with the Rohan on the fields of the Pelennor. I bled and died with the sun-king, Theoden. I rose again with Eowyn's defiance of the Witch King. I soared with the Eagles as they swept the broken and bloody body of Frodo and his companion Samwise the Brave from the smoking crags of the fiery mountain. There has never been such a story, and I don't think there ever shall be again. ~ Steve Bivans

I thought of how proud he was when he took the marks- cutting the skin of his throat in a long slash and then packing it with ashes until keloid scars rose up.
He called it his second smile. ~ Holly Black

Everything was so beautiful in this magical moment before sunrise. The wild blue irises around the pond, the violet shadows in the curves of the dunes, the white, filmy mist hanging over the buttercup valley across the pond, the cloth of gold and silver thtat was called a field of daisies, thye cool, delicious gulf breeze, the blue of far lands beyond the harbour, plumes of purple and mauve smoke going up on the still, golden air from the chimneys of Stovepipe Town where the fishermen rose early. And Teddy lying at her feet, his slim brown hands clasped behind his head. Again she felt thye magnetic attraction of his personality. Felt it so strongly that she dared not meet his eyes. Yet she was admitting to herself with a secret cadour which would have horrified Aunt Elizabeth that she wanted to run her fingers through his sleek black hair- feel his arms about her- press her face against his dark tender ne- feel his lips on her lips-
Teddy took one of his hands from under his head and put it over hers. ~ L.M. Montgomery

He wasn't a man who was threatened by a woman's success. He was a man who not only respected it, but was thoroughly turned on by it. Nothing aroused him more than a professional woman with an alpha personality. A woman who was an alpha in business and a sub in bed was beyond sexy. ~ Suzanne Steele

Out of the black cave of time, terrible and swathed in scarlet, rose the image of his sin. ~ Oscar Wilde

I was sicker than I'd ever been in a short but healthy life, so sick I couldn't sleep but lay watching imaginary bugs crawl up the walls. And of course it had to be while I was like this--just about the lowest I'd sunk yet--that the Marquis of Shevraeth chose to reappear in my life.
It was not long after the single bell toll that means midnight and first-white-candle. Very suddenly the door opened, and a tall, glittering figure walked in, handing something to the silent guard at the door, who then went out. I heard footsteps receding as I stared, without at first comprehending, at the torch-bearing aristocrat before me.
I blinked at the resplendent black and crimson velvet embroidered over with gold and set with rubies, and at the rubies glittering on fingers and in pale braided hair. My gaze rose to the rakish hat set low over the familiar gray eyes.
He must have been waiting for me to recognize him.
"The King will summon you at first-green tomorrow," the Marquis said quickly, all trace of the drawl gone. "It appears that your brother has been making a fool of Debegri, leading him all over your mountains and stealing our horses and supplies. The King has changed his mind: Either you surrender, speaking for your brother and your people, or he's going to make an example of you in a public execution tomorrow. Not a noble's death, but a criminal's."
"Criminal's?" I repeated stupidly, my voice nearly gone.
"It will last all day," he said with a grima ~ Sherwood Smith

What did he do?" he murmured.
"He said something about if his words didn't put me in my place, he would find something that would. And then he slapped me."
Bram abruptly regretted not making use of the knife he'd carried in his boot to the Hampton soiree. He could understand Cosgrove desiring her and wanting to control her. But to strike her... Bram was accustomed to being angry; he'd spent most of the past ten years in varying states of it. What he felt as he listened to Rosamund, though, to the shake of her words and the despair in her voice, was deeper and hotter than anything he'd ever experienced. Plainly and simply, it was fury. White-hot, blood-boiling fury.
"Hope that he enjoyed hitting you, Rosamund," he said in a low voice, "because he will never touch you again. ~ Suzanne Enoch

His phone dinged again. "This crazy-ass voicemail. It's all jacked - Wait, when did you call me?"

"Please don't listen to that," I blurted.

He grinned. "Okay, now I have to hear it. Was this last night? Were you drunk? Did you drunk-dial me?" he teased. But it was too late, he'd already lifted the phone.

Bile rose in my throat and the room became a thousand degrees hotter. "Please. Don't."

"Why? What's wrong?" He grew quiet and listened. "I don't hear anything. Wait. You didn't mean to call, did you? Is that another guy?"

I put my face in my hands. Cade was quiet as he listened. And I prayed for a giant black hole to open and swallow me.

His phone made a soft thump as he tossed it onto the coffee table. The couch moved with him as he settled back.

"You can uncover your face now." His tone didn't sound angry but I still couldn't face him. His hands slid around my wrists and gently tugged, forcing me to lower them.

I swallowed the lump in my throat, annoyed that I didn't even have my own car to leave.

"Was that your roommate?" he asked.

I nodded, my face still tucked down.

"And…her boyfriend?"

"No, her best friend."

"So you told your roommate about me?"

I could hear the smile in his voice and looked up.

"I mean, I assume you don't know a bunch of 'therapy dog' guys named Cade, but I could be wrong."

"You ~ Renita Pizzitola

Who needs roses and champagne when you can have knives and Glocks? ~ Suzanne Steele

The facade of the robatayaki looked like a leftover from the past…smoky-black tiles topped its wooden overhang…red, waxy paper lanterns lit it up…a noren curtain hung from a thin bamboo pole above the doorframe. Its sliding doors had rows of rectangular panes of glass. The robatayaki's simplicity gave the impression of a one-story building, but eight floors of apartments rose up from it. ~ B. Jeanne Shibahara

She ran and didn't slow until she came to a hallway that terminated in a multipaned window of thick, old-fashioned glass. Her breath rasped in her throat, but the dizziness and nausea eased enough that she stood steadier on her feet. She heard again the gentle ringing of metal sliding against metal. Musty air rose up with the same smell of leather and dust, an acrid undertone beneath. She whipped her head toward the end of the hall. At first she didn't see anything. The light shifted and swirled, and the swordsman materialized from the shadows. Gold and red emblazoned his tunic in a chevron against a cobalt background. The sword was back in its scabbard, strapped across his back. He was tall, with broad shoulders and dark hair, and he looked like Sebastian. Timed to the wind stirring the ivy outside, he vanished through the wall. ~ Carolyn Jewel

Suddenly the black torturer laid down the pipes and rose, towering over the writhing white figure. ~ Robert E. Howard

Where are you taking me?" Andrew demanded, whirling on the Ferryman. His muscles tensed, hands curling in and out of fists.
"To my master." The voice was ghostly, whispers of black ash and death, words cold and detached.
He had an idea who that was but asked anyway: "And who is your master?"
No answer came.
Andrew's insatiable rage rose up and swallowed his grief like a yawning ocean mouth, the darkest depths surging to the surface to form a mighty tidal wave. He closed the distance and seized the Ferryman's gaunt wrist. There was no substance, no life beneath the cloak. The Ferryman slowly turned his hooded head, and Andrew found himself looking into the black hole of a self-contained night. The olfactory of decay was a punch in the face. Andrew released the Ferryman's wrist and hastily stepped back, rocking the boat as he put distance between him and the unnatural wind spilling from the gaping orifice. Andrew shivered, the tiny hairs on his neck saluting. The cloaked head faced forward again, and the wind died away. ~ Laura Kreitzer

Fire power and bravado does not a gangster make.
Glazov--Deadly ~ Suzanne Steele

Harriet turned round, and we both saw a girl walking towards us. She was dark-skinned and thin, not veiled but dressed in a sitara, a brightly coloured robe of greens and pinks, and she wore a headscarf of a deep rose colour. In that barren place the vividness of her dress was all the more striking. On her head she balanced a pitcher and in her hand she carried something. As we watched her approach, I saw that she had come from a small house, not much more than a cave, which had been built into the side of the mountain wall that formed the far boundary of the gravel plateau we were standing on. I now saw that the side of the mountain had been terraced in places and that there were a few rows of crops growing on the terraces. Small black and brown goats stepped up and down amongst the rocks with acrobatic grace, chewing the tops of the thorn bushes.
As the girl approached she gave a shy smile and said, 'Salaam alaikum, ' and we replied, 'Wa alaikum as salaam, ' as the sheikh had taught us. She took the pitcher from where it was balanced on her head, kneeled on the ground, and gestured to us to sit. She poured water from the pitcher into two small tin cups, and handed them to us. Then she reached into her robe and drew out a flat package of greaseproof paper from which she withdrew a thin, round piece of bread, almost like a large flat biscuit. She broke off two pieces, and handed one to each of us, and gestured to us to eat and drink. The water and the bread were both del ~ Paul Torday

The Sun burned down in a warm contrasting world of white and black, of white Sun against black sky and white rolling ground mottled with black shadow. The bright sweet smell of the Sun on every exposed square centimeter of metal contrasting with the creeping death-of-aroma on the other side.

He lifted his hand and stared at it, counting the fingers. Hot-hot-hot-turning, putting each finger, one by one, into the shadow of the others and the hot slowly dying in a change in tactility that made him feel the clean, comfortable vacuum.

Yet not entirely vacuum. He straightened and lifted both arms over his head, stretching them out, and the sensitive spots on either wrist felt the vapors- the thin, faint touch of tin and lead rolling through the cloy of mercury.

The thicker taste rose from his feet; the silicates of each variety, marked by the clear separate-and-together touch and tang of each metal ion. He moved one foot slowly through the crunchy, caked dust, and felt the changes like a soft, not quite random symphony.

And over all the Sun. He looked up at it, large and fat and bright and hot, and heard its joy. He watched the slow rise of prominences around its rim and listened to the crackling sound of each; and to the other happy noises over the broad face. When he dimmed the background light, the red of the rising wisps of hydrogen showed in bursts of mellow contralto, and the deep bass of the spots amid the muted whistling of the wi ~ Isaac Asimov

Then the Unlight of Ungoliant rose up even to the roots of the trees, and Melkor sprang upon the mound; and with his black spear he smote each Tree to its core, wounded them deep, and their sap poured forth as it were their blood, and was spilled upon the ground. But Ungoliant sucked it up, and going then from Tree to Tree she set her black beak to their wounds, till they were drained; and the poison of Death that was in her went into their tissues and withered them, root, branch, and leaf; and they died. And still she thirsted, and going to the Wells of Varda she drank them dry; but Ungoliant belched forth black vapours as she drank, and swelled to a shape so vast and hideous that Melkor was afraid. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

All of them had been give a makeover. Leo was wearing pinstriped pants, black leather shoes, a white collarless shirt with suspenders, and his tool
belt, Ray-Ban sunglasses, and a porkpie hat.
"God, Leo." Piper tried not to laugh. "I think my dad wore that to his last premiere, minus the tool belt."
"Hey, shut up!"
"I think he looks good," said Coach Hedge. "'Course, I look better."
The satyr was a pastel nightmare. Aphrodite had given him a baggy canary yellow zoot suit with two-tone shoes that fit over his hooves. He had a
matching yellow broad-brimmed hat, a rose-colored shirt, a baby blue tie, and a blue carnation in his lapel, which Hedge sniffed and then ate.
"Well," Jason said, "at least your mom overlooked me."
Piper knew that wasn't exactly true. Looking at him, her heart did a little tap dance. Jason was dressed simply in jeans and a clean purple T-shirt, like
he'd worn at the Grand Canyon. He had new track shoes on, and his hair was newly trimmed. His eyes were the same color as the sky. Aphrodite's
message was clear: This one needs no improvement.
And Piper agreed. ~ Rick Riordan

He fell to the seat, she by his side. There no more words. The stars were beginning to shine. How was it that their lips met? How is it that the birds sing, the the snow melts, that the rose opens, that May blooms, that the dawn whitens behind the black trees on the shivering summit of the hills? ~ Victor Hugo

Curse him for being all tight muscle, with ivory skin and a mouth as soft as rose petals. Curse him for having hair as fair as the sun, and eyes as black as night. Curse him for having the grace of a cat and deft, cool hands.
And now I am having the same argument on paper that I have in my own head on too many nights. I know my choice is sensible, but it isn't my common sense I think with, those times Rosto's stolen a kiss from me. ~ Tamora Pierce

The night came every day, stealing the sun's power and turning the world black. But every morning, the sun rose again, bringing light once more, no matter how dark the night had seemed. ~ Sara B. Larson

Does love have limits?
Because if it does…
I don't want to hear about them.
I choose to believe
In a reckless abandon,
no regrets,
can't be tamed,
kind of love.
I choose to believe
no matter how dark,
depraved, or dysfunctional,
it becomes,
in its process of
being discovered;
it is the substance
of the one absolute
I can't live devoid of…
It is real. ~ Suzanne Steele

All the radiance of April in Italy lay gathered together at her feet. The sun poured in on her. The sea lay asleep in it, hardly stirring. Across the bay the lovely mountains, exquisitely different in color, were asleep too in the light; and underneath her window, at the bottom of the flower-starred grass slope from which the wall of castle rose up, was a great cypress, cutting through the delicate blues and violets and rose-colors of the mountains and the sea like a great black sword.

She stared. Such beauty; and she there to see it. Such beauty; and she alive to feel it. Her face was bathed in light. ~ Elizabeth Von Arnim

Don't say 'Horse shite,' Amelia-Rose whispered, drawing even with him.
What should I call it, then, digested equine grass lumps? ~ Suzanne Enoch