Blatantly Quotes

The death penalty is used in such a blatantly racist way in the United States. There is no way that can be defended under any kind of definition of justice by anybody. ~ Assata Shakur

This country was founded on a core set of family values. These values should not be discouraged and blatantly undermined by the airing of offensive material on broadcast television and radio. ~ Kenny Marchant

The Marquis believed himself to be hardened against flattery. He thought that he had experienced every variety, but he discovered that he was mistaken: the blatantly worshipful look in the eyes of a twelve-year-old, anxiously raised to his, was new to him, and it pierced his defences. ~ Georgette Heyer

Why doesn't anyone address the substantive question of why other states blatantly interfere in Israel's internal affairs? Israel does not meddle in the affairs of other states in a similar way, so why do other countries feel entitled to do this to Israel? These actions violate Israeli sovereignty and I expect European Union member states to act differently. ~ Ayelet Shaked

I love that Katie would never, ever, in a million years, treat anyone as blatantly shitty as you've treated her tonight. It's a shame you're so thoroughly self-absorbed that it renders you incapable of getting to know her, because believe me, if you could, you'd be a better person for it. ~ Kim Holden

Today, corruption has won and justice has lost. I brought corruption cases in good faith involving powerful people, and the political and legal establishment blatantly covered up and retaliated by targeting my law license. ~ Andrew Thomas

She, on the other hand, had blatantly exhibited the Sagittarius traits of excessive enthusiasm and bluntness. Mr. ~ Nina Lane

Fear says that what God has called me to is blatantly impossible. Selfishness says that the cost is unacceptably prohibitive. My humanity harbors other lesser agendas that seduce me to my own death. And I would be wise to believe none of it. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Tossing it to a corner, he turns back to take my hand. And I'm facing the chest that I've not been able to dislodge from my brain for weeks. The one that instantly makes my breath hitch. The one that I've never had a chance to stare at so blatantly while sober. And I do stare now. Like a deer caught in headlights, I can't seem to turn away as I take in all the ridges and curves.
"What does that mean?" I ask, jutting my chin toward the inked symbol over his heart. Ashton doesn't answer. He avoids the question completely by sliding his thumb across my bottom lip.
"You have a bit of drool there, ~ K.A. Tucker

Stigma takes many forms, comes from all directions, is sometimes blatantly overt, but can also be remarkably subtle. It is the cruel comment, the unkind smirk, the extrusion from the group, the lost job opportunity, the rejected marriage proposal, the ineligibility for life insurance, the inability to adopt a child or pilot a plane.

But it is also the reduced expectation, the helping hand when none is needed or wanted, the solicitous sympathy that one cannot really be expected to measure up.

And the secondary psychological and practical harms of having a mental disorder come only partly from how others see you. A great deal of the trouble comes from the change in how you see yourself: the sense of being damaged goods, feeling not normal or worthy, not a full fledged member of the group.

It is bad enough that stigma is so often associated with having a mental disorder, but the stigma that comes from being mislabeled with a fake diagnosis is a dead loss with absolutely no redeeming features. ~ Allen Frances

Senator. If you call my friend a liar one more time, I will take it badly."
"Excuse me?" Arnos said, his eyebrows rising up.
"I suggest you find an alternate shortsighted, egomaniacally ridiculous reason to blatantly, recklessly ignore an obvious threat to the Realm simply because you don't wish it to exist. If you cannot restrain yourself from base slander, I will be pleased to meet you in juris macto and personally rip your forked tongue from your head. ~ Jim Butcher

I'm just shocked at how blatantly shallow people are sometimes. ~ Michael Keaton

Police internal affairs are in the business of protecting corrupt and incompetent police officers from prosecution due to the extensive range of laws that they have blatantly broken. ~ Steven Magee

Decades of social science studies have confirmed what the Heidi/Howard case study so blatantly demonstrates: we evaluate people based on stereotypes (gender, race, nationality, and age, among others). Our stereotype of men holds that they are providers, decisive, and driven. Our stereotype of women holds that they are caregivers, sensitive, and communal. Because we characterize men and women in opposition to each other, professional achievement and all the traits associated with it get placed in the male column. ~ Sheryl Sandberg

While police officers who blatantly shaft the common people believe that they are God, they are the Devil to those that they wrong. ~ Steven Magee

Here the voice told him truthfully what sort of wife he had wedded, and what she was doing in his absence. ~ Rudyard Kipling

Arin wanted to insist that if a secret concerned Kestrel, it concerned the emperor, and that concerned Herran. This was why he asked for Deliah's help. It was for his country. Only for that.
It was not out of worry for Kestrel.
Not out of love.
Not because the description of that dress made Arin try to imagine every possible thing that had been done to Kestrel while she wore it, or everything she might have tried to do.
In the end, none of this was easy for him to say. He was silent as he made to leave Deliah's workshop.
"She cares for you," Deliah said suddenly. "I know that she does."
It was so blatantly untrue that it almost seemed like a cruel joke.
Arin laughed. ~ Marie Rutkoski

Amy is blatantly fond of red light bulbs instead of, you know, normal ones, and I can't see shit. Silly me, running out without my infrared night vision goggles and all. ~ S.E. Hall

One can only return to the fact that even the most ordinary, good-hearted, intelligent people are literally prone to believing the most blatantly nonsensical untruths. And this comes from the realization that there are some opinions and some beliefs so incredibly inane, we may actually on occasion feel insane for not believing them; and that is probably because in giving the benefit of the doubt we self-doubt, we convince ourselves into lame passivity and blind acceptance, we tell ourselves, 'Maybe I'm just missing something here. ~ Criss Jami

Words are not cubicles for truth telling. Words do not allow us to touch the face of God or define the contours of the soul. Words are imprecise and cannot capture all aspects of reality or replicate all facets of a person's emotional mélange. Language allows for limited explorations of reality and minimal probing of the human mind. I accept that the only possible relation between language and the world is the image displayed in each person's head by the picture invoking ability of language. Select word pictures might accurately portray what I perceive and still be vague, blatantly inaccurate, completely meaningless, misleading, distorted, or incomprehensible in other persons' minds. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

So…you're not going to tell me what they mean? C'mon. What's the Hob? Why Forks?"

When I stand, I switch to my blatantly rude, you're-an-idiot tone. This is the one that always pisses off my mom. To be sure he's not missing my insult this time, I also cross my arms and speak very slowly like I'm speaking to a toddler. "The Hob is from The Hunger Games books. It's the underground market where the characters trade food and information. Forks would be the town in Twilight. The setting. In boy-speak, Forks equals the planet Tatooine for Star Wars. You know - Anakin Skywalker's childhood home? Or are you not familiar with any global blockbusters? I suppose I could use Sesame Street or Pokémon for a reference - if it would help you understand better?"

Bam. That should seal it. I couldn't have sounded more like a total bitch.

He nods. "No, I've got it. My bedroom was Tatooine for all of third and fourth grade. Boy-speak…that's funny." He laughs again, and it sounds warm and - and - not at all offended! ~ Anne Eliot

We live in blatantly corrupt times. ~ Steven Magee

Contentedly sat the old woman. Soon now, the sea would hold no terrors, and the blinds wouldn't have to be down, nor the windows shut; she would even be able to walk along the shore at midnight as of old; and they, whom she had deserted so long ago, would once more shrink from the irresistable energy aura of her new, young body.
The sound of the sea came to her, where she sat so quietly; calm sound at first, almost gentle in the soft sibilation of each wave thrust. Farther out, the voices of the water were louder, more raucous, blatantly confident, but the meaning of what they said was blurred by the distance, a dim, clamorous confusion that rustled discordantly out of the gathering night.
Night!
She shouldn't be aware of night falling, when the blinds were drawn.
("The Witch") ~ A.E. Van Vogt

She trained the girls in her Girl Scout troop to believe that they could be anything, and she went to lengths to prevent negative stereotypes of their race from shaping their internal views of themselves and other Negroes. It was difficult enough to rise above the silent reminders of Colored signs on the bathroom doors and cafeteria tables. But to be confronted with the prejudice so blatantly, there in that temple to intellectual excellence and rational thought, by something so mundane, so ridiculous, so universal as having to go to the bathroom...In the moment when the white women laughed at her, Mary had been demoted from professional mathematician to a second-class human being, reminded that she was a black girl whose piss wasn't good enough for the white pot. ~ Margot Lee Shetterly

irony is that, while secular leadership has become blatantly spiritual, Christian leadership has become blatantly (and blandly) secular. ~ Erwin Raphael McManus

He leaned back in his seat throwing his hands behind his head; sort of an open offer for the entire bar to get a good look at what he was working with and it was quite impressive. God why did he have to have tattoos? Or the killer smile he was so blatantly using as foreplay. And since when did smiling at a girl count as foreplay? I wasn't sure but I guess Carter was the one living man capable of this. ~ Maven West

You might be an intelligent person, but once you let someone else filter the world for you, you have no way to critically analyze what you're hearing. At best, absolute best case scenario, if they blatantly contradict themselves, you can spot that. But if they take basic care to maintain an internal logical consistency, which they all do, you've got nothing. You've delegated the ability to make up your mind. ~ Max Barry

he guessed they all knew what he'd done and counted him foolish for blatantly going against their boss. Well, he reasoned as he dropped his jacket over the high back of his chair, there was a Bible verse about the world's wisdom being foolish in the sight of God. ~ Kim Vogel Sawyer

In the youth of middle age
square-shouldered, stocky, decisive, blatantly virile
... ~ A.J. Liebling

As the leader of the international Human Genome Project, which had labored mightily over more than a decade to reveal this DNA sequence, I stood beside President Bill Clinton in the East Room of the White House...

Clinton's speech began by comparing this human sequence map to the map that Meriwether Lewis had unfolded in front of President Thomas Jefferson in that very room nearly two hundred years earlier.

Clinton said, "Without a doubt, this is the most important, most wondrous map ever produced by humankind." But the part of his speech that most attracted public attention jumped from the scientific perspective to the spiritual. "Today," he said, "we are learning the language in which God created life. We are gaining ever more awe for the complexity, the beauty, and the wonder of God's most divine and sacred gift."

Was I, a rigorously trained scientist, taken aback at such a blatantly religious reference by the leader of the free world at a moment such as this? Was I tempted to scowl or look at the floor in embarrassment? No, not at all. In fact I had worked closely with the president's speechwriter in the frantic days just prior to this announcement, and had strongly endorsed the inclusion of this paragraph.

When it came time for me to add a few words of my own, I echoed this sentiment: "It's a happy day for the world. It is humbling for me, and awe-inspiring, to realize that we have caught the first glimpse of our own instruct ~ Francis S. Collins

The planets and moons of our solar system are blatantly visible because they reflect sunlight. Without the nearby Sun, these planets would be cryptic and dark on the sky. ~ Seth Shostak

Asking for favors puts me in a foul temper."
"Everything puts you in a foul temper."
"That is blatantly untrue. Pretty girls put me in a lovely frame of mind. ~ Roseanna M. White

The corporate government is a blatantly corrupt group of people who make their living by willfully damaging the health and well being of your family. ~ Steven Magee

What a treacherous thing a body was, how it so blatantly acted out the mind's secrets. ~ Nathan Hill

Take off your boots, please."
He set his feet apart and brought his hands to his hips. He let his gaze slide over her with deliberate slowness, not assessing this time, but going for a blatantly male vibe. He clearly couldn't believe he hadn't shut her up yet, and he was now switching to a different tactic.
"What else do you want me to take off? ~ Dana Marton

The pop culture has become more frenetic. There are more forces at work that are far more invasive. However, I think it would be perfectly doable to defend ones loved ones from some of the harsher aspects of public life. You're not going to be a 100% successful. But you can see when it's on purpose. It's so blatantly easy to avoid at times and you can tell when it was unavoidable. ~ Mel Gibson

We live in a blatantly corrupt world and smart people engage in the wise practice of risk management. ~ Steven Magee

Thankfully, Gabriel was five minutes late, and by the time he knocked on the door I'd just finished putting on lipstick and slipping my feet into sandals. I opened the door.
"I hope I didn't keep you wait . . ." His voice drifted off as he quite blatantly checked me out.
"What?" I asked, hand on my hip.
He flashed me a devilish grin. "The little pink dress. You look cute."
What I found frumpy, he found cute. Wonder what his response would have been to the tight number. My eyes gave him a discreet once-over. He wore jeans and a Yankees T-shirt. It wasn't exactly going to win over the locals, but I had to admit, he filled the shirt out ridiculously well. His short black hair was damp, like he'd just taken a shower. I felt my face behind to flush, so I turned away. "Come on in."
He stopped and surveyed the foyer. "I was only here for a minute when we came to get Joni. I didn't get a chance to check the place out." He paused. "It's not what I was expecting."
"What were you expecting? Voodoo dolls hung from the ceiling?"
He smirked. "Maybe just a little one of me."
"That's hidden under my bed. ~ Kim Harrington

I pick up a copy of Newsweek on the plane and immediately notice how biased, slanted, and opinionated all the U.S. newsmagazine articles are. Not that the Euro and British press aren't biased as well
they certainly are
but living in the United States we are led to believe, and are constantly reminded, that our press is fair and free of bias. After such a short time away, I am shocked at how obviously and blatantly this lie is revealed
there is the 'reporting' that is essentially parroting what the White House press secretary announces; the myriad built-in assumptions that one ceases to register after being somewhere else for a while. The myth of neutrality is an effective blanket for a host of biases. ~ David Byrne

Mungo was a gnome. Disguised as a dwarf. The blatantly false beard was a giveaway. It appeared that Mungo had crafted it himself out of hair collected from a wide assortment of cars and then glued it to his face. ~ Jeffery Russell

There he is, a woman's living, breathing fantasy, doing his slow, cocky turn, spiky black hair, darkly tanned chest, dimpled smile-killer smile-all in the package of Remington Tate. He's perfection itself, and a new surge of hormones sweeps through me as I do what the rest of the crowd does and take in his visual, so blatantly on display in those low riding boxing shorts and so strikingly sexy, he becomes the center of my attention. The center. Of my. World. ~ Katy Evans

The Southern strategy of the Nixon administration is based upon the same principle as the Compromise of 1876: namely, that Northern Republicans and Southern conservatives share common interests and together can rule this nation. I do not think it is possible to condemn too harshly what the President has done in the South in order to form this alliance. Indeed, I can think of no recent President who has more blatantly sacrificed the ideals of equality and racial justice for his own political ends. Nor is Nixon simply riding the wave of reaction. He is encouraging that reaction, for he knows that he became President because of divisions in the society, and that it is in his interest that these divisions grow wider. ~ Bayard Rustin

The Reality of the Creator God of Christianity blatantly reveals itself in His majestic handy-work."

~R. Alan Woods [2013] ~ R. Alan Woods

Sex, like race, is a visible, immutable characteristic bearing no necessary relationship to ability." The analogy had special meaning in the constitutional context: In a series of cases triggered by Brown v. Board of Education, the court had said that laws that classified on the basis of race were almost always unconstitutional, or deserving "strict scrutiny." The court had said in Reed that it wasn't applying strict scrutiny, but then it seemed to do so anyway. Were laws that classified what men and women could do blatantly unconstitutional the way laws classifying by race were? RBG boldly urged the court to say they were. ~ Irin Carmon

Depending on how you looked at it, Darren was our Mick Jagger (designated swaggering extrovert) to Simon's Keith Richards (quietly virtuosic, blatantly self-destructive). Or else Darren had been Paul McCartney (chirpily commercial) and Simon had been John Lennon (moody, introspective, possessed of quasi-mystical insights). ~ Austin Grossman

Car radios blared in the night, generally pitting a gang in favor of Neil Young's "Southern Man," which chastised the South for its flagrant racism, against those who preferred Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama," which chastised Neil Young for chastising the South and which praised the blatantly racist Alabama governor George Wallace. ~ Brent Hendricks

Huh! It is only a pahari," said Kim over his shoulder. "Since when have the hill-asses owned all Hindustan?"
The retort was a swift and brilliant sketch of Kim's pedigree for three generations. ~ Rudyard Kipling

The temerity of [Christian Grey] is astounding. E.L. James has managed to create one of the most blatantly antagonistic sociopaths I've ever seen, yet women everywhere are gobbling it up like he's the best thing since the vibrator. ~ Katrina Passick Lumsden

In one motion, Connor shrugged off his jacket, flung it aside, and went to her. "Where's the bedroom?" he asked in a heated voice.

She tipped her head toward the rear of the apartment. "Back there."

"Too far. I'm not sure I can last." He kissed her, a blatantly carnal kiss that reawakened all their earlier urgency, brought it screaming back to life.

"There's a couch in the living room," Julia managed, pointing to their left and shivering as Connor began unbuttoning her blouse. "That's a lot closer."

His lips burned a path from her collarbone to her throat. "Which is bigger, the couch or the bed?"

"The bed."

"Then I'll last." Connor was pulling her down the hall. "Barely. ~ Andrea Kane

Halt glared at his friend as the whistling continued.
'I had hoped that your new sense of responsibly would put an end to that painful shrieking noise you make between your lips' he said.
Crowley smiled. It was a beautiful day and he was feeling at peace with the world. And that meant he was more than ready to tease Halt 'It's a jaunty song'
'What's jaunty about it?' Halt asked, grim faced. Crowley made an uncertain gesture as he sought for an answer to that question.
'I suppose it's the subject matter' he said eventually. 'It's a very cheerful song. Would you like me to sing it for you?'
'N-' Halt began but he was too late, as Crowley began to sing. He had a pleasant tenor voice, in fact, and his rendering of the song was quite good. But to Halt it was as attractive as a rusty barn door squeaking.
'A blacksmith from Palladio, he met a lovely lady-o'
'Whoa! Whoa!' Halt said 'He met a lovely lady-o?' Halt repeated sarcastically 'What in the name of all that's holy is a lady-o?'
'It's a lady' Crowley told him patiently.
'Then why not sing 'he met a lovely lady'?' Halt wanted to know.
Crowley frowned as if the answer was blatantly obvious.
"Because he's from Palladio, as the song says. It's a city on the continent, in the southern part of Toscana.'
'And people there have lady-o's, instead of ladies?' Asked Halt
'No. They have ladies, like everyone else. But 'lady' doesn't rhyme with Palladio, does it? I could hardl ~ John Flanagan

I was just so blatantly shy throughout my life. ~ Danny Aiello

I'm against suppression of pornography. If you suppress guns - yes; if you want to suppress poverty - yes. These are the obscenities, the real brutalization of people. I am almost more outraged by ads for blue jeans or cars that sort of blatantly depict women not only as sex objects, but women that look younger than the age of consent, looking like they've just been raped or asking to be raped-utterly passive sex objects. ~ Betty Friedan

She eyed his gorgeous body, and raised a brow. "Doing a little flaunting of your own this morning, huh?"
"In deference to your delicate sensibilities, I pulled on jeans. Isn't that enough?"
Enough for what, her peace of mind? Ha. Being around Trace, especially with him like this, half-naked, sent her heart racing like a marathon runner's. "Maybe it would be," Priss admitted, "if you don't look so good."
The compliment sent his right eyebrow arching high.
"Oh, come on, Trace. You know what you look like." She visually devoured him again, more blatantly this time, and noticed a rise behind the fly of his jeans. For her?
Well-well-well. Flattering. ~ Lori Foster

The summit of Mauna Kea was definitely a place where it was better to be a hard to replace skilled engineer than an easy to replace technician. It was my experience that once you had developed Mauna Kea Sickness that the management team would blatantly harass you out of your job using nasty inhumane human resources techniques. ~ Steven Magee

Victims are often, automatically, accused of lying. But when a perpetrator is exposed of lying, the stigma doesn't stick. Why is it that we're wary of victims making false accusations, but rarely consider how many men have blatantly lied about, downplayed, or manipulated others to cover their own actons? ~ Chanel Miller

Science fiction lends itself readily to imaginative subversion of any status quo. Bureaucrats and politicians, who can't afford to cultivate their imaginations, tend to assume it's all ray-guns and nonsense, good for children. A writer may have to be as blatantly critical of utopia as Zamyatin in We to bring the censor down upon him. The Strugatsky brothers were not blatant, and never (to my limited knowledge) directly critical of their government's policies. What they did, which I found most admirable then and still do now, was to write as if they were indifferent to ideology - something many of us writers in the Western democracies had a hard time doing. They wrote as free men write. ~ Arkady Strugatsky

The political situation was becoming increasingly volatile. The Treaty of Versailles was such a sore point. It popped up in almost any conversation. Perhaps the separation from the "Reich" (what was left of the old Germany) was more intensely felt in everyday life in our province of East Prussia than in the rest of Germany. The Treaty forced Germany to accept blame for causing the First World War. It demanded that Germany disarm, give up substantial portions of land, and pay heavy reparations to countries of the victors. No other country bore the blame or brunt of the burden as heavily as Germany. Germans viewed the terms imposed by the treaty as blatantly unfair. From our perspective, Germany was drawn into the conflict through a political alliance we had with the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. We did not initiate hostilities. The fact that Europe was a political powder keg was certainly not the exclusive fault of the German Empire. I ~ Ulrich Karl Thomas

When the police willfully break the law on video and then deny the event in writing, you know that you are dealing with a blatantly corrupt group of people. ~ Steven Magee

Does that sort of blatantly lascivious glance generally sway women to jump into your bed?" she asked tartly.
"Often enough to make it worth the attempt.' He grinned. "Besides, it need only work occasionally. "a man must sleep sometime. ~ Sabrina Jeffries

Go fuck yourself! - Dan said genuinely pissed off.
Izzy
I've found that I'm a little shy for such blatantly public display of self-affection. Besides, I like to be wined and dined before I have my way with myself. I'm an old-fashioned kind of guy. ~ Suzanne Brockmann

I love talking about the Kennedy assassination. The reason I do is because I'm fascinated by it. I'm fascinated that our government could lie to us so blatantly, so obviously for so long, and we do absolutely nothing about it. ~ Bill Hicks

A secret blueprint for US global domination reveals that President Bush and his cabinet were planning a premeditated attack on Iraq to secure regime change even before he took power in January 2001 ... It has been called a secret blueprint for US global domination ... A small group of people with a plan to remove Saddam Hussein long before George W. Bush was elected president ... And 9/11 provided the opportunity to set it in motion. Not since Mein Kampf has a geopolitical punch been so blatantly telegraphed years ahead of the blow. ~ Ted Koppel

If the Resurrection had not occurred, why would the apostle Paul give such a list of supposed eyewitnesses? He would immediately lose all credibility with his Corinthian readers by lying so blatantly. ~ Norman Geisler

Every conversation does not have to be blatantly spiritual for God to make it positively effectual. Sometimes God gives us favor with people who are touched or impressed with how we express ourselves because God empowered our words even when the listener couldn't distinguish the difference. ~ Beth Moore

I loved the idea of doing something that has this misconception about what stewardesses were. And, I also love the idea that these girls were navigating a blatantly misogynistic society, with the girdle checks and make-up checks. ~ Christina Ricci

In 1934, strongman Fulgencio Batista forced President Grau's resignation. Then in 1940, Grau lost his bid for the Presidency to his adversary Batista. Four years later in 1944, he did win the election and took office for a four-year term starting on October 10th. After Grau won the election and was the President elect, Batista still in office, blatantly attacked the National Treasury, leaving the cupboards bare by the time Grau was actually sworn in as President.
Since Grau and Batista were staunch adversaries, it is highly unlikely that any deal could have been made in 1946 to allow "Lucky" Luciano into Cuba, especially with Luciano having been exiled to Sicily by the United States government that preceding February. Still, Lansky had enough political pull within the Cuban government to prepare for a strong Mafia presence in Havana.
In October of 1946, in an attempt to keep his whereabouts a secret, "Lucky" Luciano covertly boarded a freighter taking him from Naples, Italy, to Caracas, Venezuela. Then Luciano flew south to Rio de Janeiro and returned north to Mexico City. On October 29, 1946, he arranged for a private flight from Mexico City to Camagüey, Cuba, where Meyer Lansky met him. Having the right connections, Luciano passed through Cuban customs unimpeded and was whisked by car to the splendid Grand Hotel.
Luciano, having just arrived in Cuba, was looking forward to setting up operations. Cuba would actually be a better place than the United States fo ~ Hank Bracker

If they lose their legal basis for owning a .cn domain, google.cn would cease to exist, or if it continued to exist, it would be illegal, and doing anything blatantly illegal in China puts their employees at serious risk. ~ Rebecca MacKinnon

My name's Asher," he rumbled in that deep voice and she realized she'd been blatantly staring.
"I'm Ella." And she wasn't going anywhere, she realized. Not until she got a taste of this sexy male. Something told her one taste wouldn't be nearly enough. ~ Savannah Stuart

My time in camp with Kaden had become awkward several times, or perhaps I was just more self-conscious now.

I had known he cared about me. It was hardly a secret. It was the reason I was still alive, but I hadn't quite grasped how much he cared. And in spite of myself, I knew in my own way, I cared about him too. Not Kaden the assassin, but the Kaden I had known back in Terravin, the one who had caught my attention the minute he walked through the tavern door. The one who was calm and had mysterious, but kind, eyes.

I remembered dancing with him at the festival, his arms pulling me closer, and the way he struggled with his thoughts, holding them back. He didn't hold back the night he was drunk. The fireshine had loosened his lips and he laid it all out quite blatantly. Slurred and sloshy but clear. He loved me. This from a barbarian who was sent to kill me.

I lay back, staring into the cloudless sky, a shade bluer and brighter than yesterday.

Did he even know what love was? For that matter, did I? Even my parents didn't seem to know. I crossed my arms behind my head as a pillow. Maybe there was no one way to define it. Maybe there were as many shades of love as the blues of the sky.

I wondered if his interest had begun when I tended his shoulder. I remembered his odd look of surprise when I touched him, as if no one had ever shown him a kindness before. If Griz, Finch, and Malich were any indication of his past, maybe no ~ Mary E. Pearson

What they'd got was a fat, balding academic who bandied about the phrase "family annihilation", especially when there were cameras pointed at him, and mentioned the titles of books and articles he'd written to anyone who would listen; who blatantly thought he was the mutt's nuts, as Sellers had so aptly put it. ~ Sophie Hannah

When the CERN teams reported a 'five-sigma' result for the Higgs boson, corresponding to a P-value of around 1 in 3.5 million, the BBC reported the conclusion correctly, saying this meant 'about a one-on-3.5 million chance that the signal they see would appear if there were no Higgs particle.' But nearly every other outlet got the meaning of this P-value wrong. For example, Forbes Magazine reported, 'The chances are less than 1 in a million that it is not the Higgs boson,' a clear example of the prosecutor's fallacy. The Independent was typical in claiming that 'there is less than a one in a million chance that their results are a statistical fluke.' This may not be blatantly mistaken as Forbes, but it is still assigning the small probability to 'their results are a statistical fluke', which is logically the same as saying this is the probability of the null hypothesis being tested. ~ David Spiegelhalter

He saw her right after the seventh-period bell rang. She seemed dressed for the sole purpose of blending in with the lockers, but she stood out, anyway. It didn't matter that her wide blue eyes were narrowed or that her pretty mouth was twisted into a near snarl - she was blatantly beautiful. It was kind of sick the way Ed was preoccupied with beautiful girls these days.
He felt a little sorry for her. (He was also preoccupied with finding ways of feeling sorry for people.) She was new and trying hard not to look it. She was confused and trying to look tough. It was endearing is what it was. ~ Francine Pascal

Anna was grateful for Ursula - really she was. But Ursula, who was usually never blatantly unkind to Anna, still treated her as a foreign object, a means to the end of her son's happiness (if indeed "happy" was the word for what Bruno was, and Anna was almost sure it wasn't) and the vessel by which her grandchildren - whom she deeply loved - were carried into the world. The help that Ursula offered was for the children's sake, not Anna's. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

A man who goes into a restaurant and blatantly disrespects the servers shows a strong discontent with his own being. Deep down he knows that restaurant service is the closest thing he will ever experience to being served like a king. ~ Criss Jami

However in recent times, the US and the whole world has been hit by a
financial Tsunami, because of beliefs which are now, to everyone in
hindsight, blatantly and obviously absurd. ~ Peter B. Lockhart

I've always loved Halloween: the one day of the year when you can blatantly dress as your number-one obsession and people will smile instead of snicker. ~ J.C. Lillis

He stared back at me so blatantly I wanted to smack him. "I know. Like I said, that… was never my intention. It was an accident." My mouth dropped open. "Did you slip and fall on my bed? Because I don't understand how you've accidentally ended up there." Red stained the tips of his cheeks. "I check the outside, and then I check the inside just to be sure. Hybrids can get into your house, Katy, as you already know. So could Daedalus if they wanted." What would he have done if Daemon had been there? Then it struck me and I felt sick all over again. "How long do you watch at night?" He shrugged. "A couple of hours." So he'd have known if Daemon had come over most of the time, and the rest was just sheer dumb luck. Part of me wished he'd tried it just once when Daemon was there. He wouldn't be walking right for months. There was a good chance he may leave this stairwell with a limp. Blake seemed to sense where my mind went. "After I checked inside your house, I… I don't know what happened. You have bad dreams." I wondered why. I had perverts sleeping in the bed with me. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

Obama made his no-new-taxes pledge over and over again four years ago as he campaigned. Not only has he repeatedly and blatantly violated it, but his policies have relentlessly assaulted poor and middle-income family budgets. ~ Bob Beauprez

Prisoners!" Finan shouted, and I suspected he was shouting at me because I had so blatantly ignored my own insistence that we take men captive. ~ Bernard Cornwell

I could need you in many ways yet I don't; I love you in many ways. It is peculiar. I need you only in the sense that you need yourself. I don't expect anything to be mutually intense among us. I somehow like the thought of being the one who is feeling already more than one should. But I need you to believe that you are distinctively refreshing. And uncommon. And intriguing. It is an extreme oddity of mine but I need you to believe that. Call it a form of paranoia; I know that I am feeding your ego right now. Call it self-defense; I am putting in words your uniqueness in an attempt to explain to my own self why is it that I adore you. The truth is: You shine out like the sun shines out and you melt away all my intentions of a fatal, whatsoever, description regarding what is it exactly that you do. There is no exactness. See, it takes suns and miraculous imagery to slightly sketch you in words whereas you probably are as complex as an impressionist painting of impeccable quality. You continually provoke my blatantly awful poetical instincts; that is for sure. ~ Katherine Mansfield

How can I explain purposely setting foot on a path so blatantly treacherous? Was the fun in the fall? ~ Ellen Hopkins

I wasn't sure if I wanted to put that out there so blatantly, so that before you listen to me you know that I'm Asian. But I thought it was sort of cool to embrace the Korean half of me, which I love. ~ Priscilla Ahn

Did you bring money with you, or shall we play for markers?" She flipped the stack of cards to the table with a professional twist of her wrist. "I don't play for less than a guinea a hand."
His lips twitched. "The question is not if I have money. The question is, do you?"
"I don't need funds, as I don't plan on losing," she said, her gaze mocking.
For a moment, he thought he'd heard her incorrectly. Slowly, he said, "I beg your pardon, but are you saying you could beat me at a game of chance?"
A dismissive smile rested on her lips. "Please, Dougal, let's speak frankly," she drawled softly. "Naturally, I expect to win; I was taught by a master."
Dougal was entranced. He'd been challenged to many things before, but no one had so blatantly dismissed his chances of winning. "A giunea a hand?"
"At least."
"I didn't realize I'd need a note from my banker, or I'd have brought one with me."
Her eyes sparkled with pure mischief, which inflamed him more. "If you've no money with you, then perhaps there are other things we can play for."
The words hung in the room, as thick as the smoke that seeped from the fireplace. Like a blinding bolt of light from a storm-black sky, everything fell into place. This was why she and her minions had worked so hard to convince him that the house was worthless. If he thought it of low value, he'd be eager to wager the deed.
Of all the devious plots!
Yet Dougal found himself fighting a grin. He'd be ~ Karen Hawkins

Some people's theologies come across as blatantly wrong when weighed against what is revealed in Scripture. However God has mercy on those who may be wrong but genuinely seek understanding before seeking themselves. ~ Criss Jami

The idea that "femininity is artificial" is also blatantly misogynistic. Just as woman is man's "other", so too is femininity masculinity's "other". Under such circumstances, negative connotations like "artificial", "contrived", and "frivolous" become built into our understanding of femininity - indeed, this is precisely what allows masculinity to always come off as "natural", "practical" and "uncomplicated". ~ Julia Serano

It is, I think, a far lesser offense to blatantly ignore God's directions for our lives rather than arrogantly think ourselves shrewd enough to be able to bend them to our liking without breaking them and therefore breaking ourselves. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

It's a most peculiar psychology - this business of 'Science is based on faith too, so there!' Typically this is said by people who claim that faith is a good thing. Then why do they say 'Science is based on faith too!' in that angry-triumphal tone, rather than as a compliment? And a rather dangerous compliment to give, one would think, from their perspective. If science is based on 'faith', then science is of the same kind as religion - directly comparable. If science is a religion, it is the religion that heals the sick and reveals the secrets of the stars. It would make sense to say, 'The priests of science can blatantly, publicly, verifiably walk on the Moon as a faith-based miracle, and your priests' faith can't do the same.' Are you sure you wish to go there, oh faithist? Perhaps, on further reflection, you would prefer to retract this whole business of 'Science is a religion too! ~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

The American share of the crisis began with grossly improper mortgages provided to wholly unqualified borrowers, all directly caused and encouraged by government distortion of and interference in the market. The government's market deformation and market intervention was in turn the result of two factors: political favouritism and Leftist ideology, on the one hand; and upon the other, corruption: the blatant cooption of such Friends of Angelo as Mr Dodd and of such bien-pensant Lefties as Mr Frank. The stability and efficiency of any market is directly proportional to the amount and trustworthiness of market information. The Yank Congress, for blatantly partisan and ideological reasons, gave out false information to the market, pushing lenders into making bad loans and giving out, with the appropriate winks and nudges, that Fannie (will Americans ever realise how that sounds) and Freddie, imperfectly quangoised, were 'really just as good as the Treasury' and were in any case 'too big to [be let] fail': which, as it happens, was untrue. Similarly, this moronic mantra of 'too big to fail' was chanted desperately and loudly to drown out the warning sounds of various financial institutions on the brink and of the automobile industry. Incomprehensible sums of public money were thrown at these corporations so that they could avoid bankruptcy, and have succeeded only in privatising profit whilst socialising risk. ~ G.M.W. Wemyss

I think myself so terribly 'clever' that the need for God is blatantly irrelevant. And all the while, in the rapidly growing mess that I'm 'cleverly' creating, I rather quickly begin to realize that the only thing that is relevant is His relevance. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

I like being able to have things that identify you in a brand without blatantly showing a logo. ~ Shaun White

Protect yourself against the venomous attacks of jealous and envious people by eliminating them from your life. Whether it's family, friends, or social media. Trim the fat of the naysayers that currently weigh you down. It may not be that their attack is blatantly against you; but if they don't energize and inspire you or leave you drained and exhausted after leaving their presence, that's a positive indicator of the presence of negativity. ~ Dwaun S. Cox

She ... applied makeup, enough to have made an effort, not enough to be blatantly a woman ... ~ Kate Atkinson

Sometimes men present a swagger that suggests a prowess, whether it's sexual or financial. L.A. seems to be a place where trying too hard is almost a given. Some people are unapologetic about how blatantly they represent who they are through what they wear or drive. Subtlety is in short supply. ~ Michael C. Hall

Sex is, directly or indirectly, the most powerful weapon in the armoury of the Magician; and precisely because there is no moral guide, it is indescribably dangerous. I have given a great many hints, especially in Magick , and The Book of Thoth - some of the cards are almost blatantly revealing; so I have been rapped rather severely over the knuckles for giving children matches for playthings. My excuse has been that they have already got the matches, that my explanations have been directed to add conscious precautions to the existing automatic safeguards. ~ Aleister Crowley

You think far too much."
"Excuse me? You don't know me."
"I can see the wheels turning, babe. You're analyzing everything I say, filtering yourself. I can tell by your answers to my questions. You're so guarded."
"I--"
"Sorry, not guarded. I meant: uptight. You're uptight. You need to get laid."
"How dare you? How do you even know that I haven't--?"
"Oh, trust me, I know. It's blatantly obvious. You're wound so tight. ~ Franca Storm

Many of us find comfort and interest in old, familiar things, while others seek inspiration or stimulation in the blatantly new or unconventional." Charity Davis-Woodard ~ Kevin A. Hluch

I get angry when I think that people are blatantly incorrect on matters of fact. ~ Tom Colicchio

Second, the resolution contains the blatantly false assertion that negotiating a timeline for bringing U.S. troops home with the Iraqi government undermines U.S. national security. Such a statement shows a misunderstanding of the enemy we face in Iraq. ~ Peter DeFazio

Good riddance to the blatantly corrupt Democratic Party! ~ Steven Magee

Majesty,
A frozen swamp. Icicles on branches and uprooted trees. That was our crystal palace, once upon a time. I was your king and you were my queen. I promised you I'd always try to give you your desires. I meant that. And since you wanted Derek, I tried to get him for you. I tried to get Derek to see how beautiful, sweet and amazing you are, in spite of myself, in spite of my rending heart. He never saw you the way I did, and you never saw me at all. I thought maybe if I found love with someone else, I'd be rid of my feelings for you, but that empty relationship only made me long for you more. I've offered you the most support and devotion a person can give an unwanting heart, but all I get in return are your mocking advances, which blatantly scream and reiterate the fact that you'll never love me. It's been so excruciating to be around you lately. You're always teasing me, and it kills me. That's why I've been so irritable and angry. It's inconceivable to me how you could think I'd EVER hurt you, when all I've been living for is to try and make you happy. Well, I'm done. Your doubt has caused me more pain than anything I've ever known. I always thought we'd be life-long friends, but this fairytale has no happy ending. The crystal has shattered. I can't be your king anymore. Then again, I never really was. I've always been the lowly jester. And everyone knows a fool can never be with a queen.

Goodbye, Alec ~ Courtney Vail