Brunt Quotes

All my parents' music came from greatest hits albums. It was like the thought of getting even one bum track was too much for them to handle. ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

Rebukes are easy from our betters,
From men of quality and letters;
But when low dunces will affront,
What man alive can stand the brunt? ~ Jonathan Swift

That's the difference between you and Greta. She has better things to do. She gets involved in clubs, activities. She has friends. But you? You slump around in that room of yours
~ Carol Rifka Brunt

None of those things should have mattered, but I guess they did. I guess they were like water. Soft and harmless until enough time went by. Then all of a sudden you found yourself with the Grand Canyon on your hands. ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

The trees down the boulevard stand naked in thought,
Their abundant summery wordage silenced, caught
In the grim undertow; naked the trees confront
Implacable winter's long, cross-questioning brunt. ~ D.H. Lawrence

A leader is someone you are not disappointed in placing trust in. When that person makes suggestions, you are inclined to trust [them]. Often it is people who have been there [in a similar situation to the people he or she is leading]. They would generally be people who are ready to take the risks themselves. Most leaders would be people who don't ever give commands and remain at home and let the foot soldiers be the ones who bear the brunt. ~ Desmond Tutu

There was at least some small beauty in what we'd done. ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

A person frequently writes in order to escape madness and crushing despondency by culling moral lesson and healing growth serum from personal experiences. Akin to riders on a storm, and a dog without a bone, we only come to understand our limits by enduring suffering. Only by deliberately confronting the essential facts of life does a person come to understand humanity. Without suffering the full brunt of love, sorrow, pain, illness, death, and accepting the relentless march of time a person never comes to know anything at all regarding the wonderful mystery of life. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Who could resist the two of us all squashed into one beautiful person, right? He smiled. ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

And that's actually the brunt of what we do is, people going straight from their workplace, straight from home, straight into the classroom and working directly with the students. So then we're able to work with thousands and thousands more students. ~ Dave Eggers

You learn to forgive (the South) for its narrow mind and growing pains because it has a huge heart. You forgive the stifling summers because the spring is lush and pastel sprinkled, because winter is merciful and brief, because corn bread and sweet tea and fried chicken are every bit as vital to a Sunday as getting dressed up for church, and because any southerner worth their salt says please and thank you. It's soft air and summer vines, pine woods and fat homegrown tomatoes. It's pulling the fruit right off a peach tree and letting the juice run down your chin. It's a closeted and profound appreciation for our neighbors in Alabama who bear the brunt of the Bubba jokes. The South gets in your blood and nose and skin bone-deep. I am less a part of the South than it is part of me. It's a romantic notion, being overcome by geography. But we are all a little starry-eyed down here. We're Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara and Rosa Parks all at once. ~ Amanda Kyle Williams

Sometimes it feels good to take the long way home. ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

Well, there are conjoined twins in real life and we can tell a story about them so long as they're not the brunt of the jokes. In this, they're the heroes of this story; we love these guys. ~ Bobby Farrelly

Is it safe?" John asked, hovering by the doorway. "Safe?" Richard asked. "What mean you by that?" John entered the chamber slowly. Richard blinked at the enormous discoloration on John's face. "Saints, man, have you and Jessica been brawling?" "Jessica? Richard, you fool, 'twas you who struck me! And twice, no less!" "Me? Have you gone daft? Why would I do such a thing?" John shrugged. "You were out of your head with fever. Jessica was the fortunate one. You only nicked her. I took the full brunt of your blows. ~ Lynn Kurland

Exactly who bears responsibility for the spate of extrajudicial killings is unclear. Senior police officials privately accuse the military's intelligence services of committing the worst abuses, and complain that their men bear the brunt of Taliban reprisals. One retired officer, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, offered a still-murkier explanation: that in some cases, intelligence operatives tortured suspected militants, then handed them to allied police officers for execution. Whatever the truth, ~ Anonymous

I thought of trying to catch her eye, so she'd know I understood what she'd done, but I decided not to. Everyone needs to think they have secrets. ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

Black holes aren't an Earth Science topic, but Mr. Zerbiak is like that. One minute Adam Bell was asking a question about a meteoroid he found in his backyard, and the next Mr. Zerbiak was saying that he was "going a little off topic here, but ... " and of course everyone was suddnely all interested. If teachers pretended that everything they said was "off topic", we'd have a whole school full of straight-A students. ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

I mean, why did sex have to be so important? Why couldn't people live together, spend their whole lives together, just because they liked each other's company? Just because they liked each other more than they liked anyone else in the whole world?
If you found a person like that you wouldn't have to have sex. You could just hold them, couldn't you? ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers,
The heroes of old,
Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears
Of pain, darkness and cold. ~ Robert Browning

If things went my way, I would be working at a renaissance fair as a falconer. I wouldn't have to worry about climbing career ladders or getting promotions, because falconry's not like that. Either you're a falconer or you're not. Either the birds come back to you or they fly away. My father waited ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

Now it is the least developed world who are not responsible for this climate change phenomenon that bore the brunt of climate change consequences so it is morally and politically correct that the developed world who made this climate change be responsible by providing financial support and technological support to these people. ~ Ban Ki-moon

when it's only you and your sister, you can do any embarrassing thing you want. ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

I felt the wall between the world of secrets and the real world start to collapse. I felt the girls from the portrait becoming us and us becoming them ... ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

Now, she realized that the hardest test for a child of Athena wasn't leading a quest or facing death in combat. It was making the strategic decision to step back, to let someone else take the brunt of danger - especially if that person was your friend. She had to face the fact that she could not protect everyone she loved. ~ Rick Riordan

Maybe it's just that people didn't know everything then. There were things people had never seen before. Places nobody had ever been. You could make up a story and people would believe it. You could believe in dragons and saints. You could look around at plants and think that maybe they could save your life. ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

Single women that place high value on Higher Education are often the brunt of snide remarks and smearing put downs by less educated black man ... page 126 ~ Deborrah Cooper

Things you'd never even seen with Finn could remind you of him, because he was the one person you'd want to show. "Look at that," you'd want to say, because you knew he would find a way to think it was wonderful. To make you feel like the most observant person in the world for spotting it. ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

Greta knows that for me there are no good parties. I'm okay with one or two people, but more than that and I turn into a naked mole rat. That's what being shy feels like. Like my skin is too thin, the light too bright. Like the best place I could possibly be is in a tunnel far under the cool, dark earth. Someone asks me a question and I stare at them, empty-faced, my brain jammed up with how hard I'm trying to find something interesting to say. And in the end, all I can do is nod or shrug, because the light of their eyes looking at me, waiting for me, is just too much to take. And then it's over and there's one more person in the world who thinks I'm a complete and total waste of space. ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

Don't you see? It's like we've known each other all these years. Without even seeing each other. It's like there's been this ... this ghost relationship between us. You laying out my plectrums on the floor, me buying black-and-white cookies every time I knew you would be coming over. You didn't know that was me, but it was. ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

If you're going to die at age thirty-five, professional sports is the best life ever. If you're going to die at eighty-five, it's the worst. The best life ever lived by anyone in any walk of life was Lou Gehrig. ~ Douglas Brunt

Toby was right. Finn was my first love. But Toby, he was my second. And the sadness in that stretched like a thin cold river down the length of my whole life. ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

As the elevator door started to close, she stood and put up one hand to wave goodbye. That's one of those frozen memories for me, because there was something in Greta's solemn wave that made me understand it was about something bigger. That as the elevator door eclipsed the look between us, we were really saying goodbye to the girls we used to be. Girls who knew how to play invisible mermaids, who could run through dark aisles, pretending to save the world. ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

My mother gave me a disappointed look. Then I gave her one back. Mine was for everything, not just the sandwich. ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

When people mentioned it to me, they thought they were talking about some casual relative of mine. For most people that's what an uncle was. They had no idea how I felt about Finn. No idea that hearing them talk about AIDS, like that was the important part of the story
more important than who Finn was, or how much I loved him, or how much he was still breaking my heart every single hour of every single day
made me want to scream. ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

SHAME-BASED FAMILY RULES Each family system has several categories of rules. There are rules about celebrating and socializing, rules about touching and sexuality, rules about sickness and proper health care, rules about vacations and vocations, rules about household maintenance and the spending of money. Perhaps the most important rules are about feelings, interpersonal communication and parenting. Toxic shame is consciously transferred by means of shaming rules. In shame-based families, the rules consciously shame all the members. Generally, however, the children receive the major brunt of the shame. Power is a cover-up for shame. Power is frequently hierarchical. ~ John Bradshaw

Leia Organa is not a child." Her voice carried through the room, commanding the kind of attention that would halt a more crowded gathering than this one. She slowly stood. "Leia has had her Day of Demand. She's growing into an adult -- a representative of the next generation. And make no mistake, they're the generation who will bear the brunt of what's to come. They're the ones who'll do most of the fighting and most of the dying. They're the ones who will do most of the rebuilding afterward, if we are so fortunate as to see an 'after.' We need the young with us. Without them, this war is lost before it's begun. ~ Claudia Gray

Consistently, from the Hezbollah heartland, my message was that Hezbollah must stop this cowardly blending ... among women and children," . "I heard they were proud because they lost very few fighters and that it was the civilians bearing the brunt of this. I don't think anyone should be proud of having many more children and women dead than armed men. ~ Jan Egeland

Shirtless, they'd stretch out in the long grass and take the healing brunt of a noontime sun that gave no clue of the thunderheads it already, in secret, had begun to breed. ~ Paul Russell

No matter how you measure it, women and girls bear the brunt of poverty. But it's also clear that women are also our greatest hope for ending it. We at CARE have long believed that if you change the life of a girl or woman, you don't just change that individual, you change her family and then her community. ~ Helene D. Gayle

Sometimes I wondered if I might go through my whole life looking for someone who came even a little bit close ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

I know all about love that's too big to stay in a tiny bucket. Splashing out all over the place in the most embarrassing way possible. ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

Hm-hm-hm, his laugh went. Like he'd swallowed the sun. ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

I'm the competitor, I'm the one who has to wear the brunt of that being a good or bad score. And I'm not too worried about it. I don't know why so many are to be honest with you. ~ Kelly Slater

I ... Why do you want me to?"
There was a flicker of something in Greta's look. I couldn't tell whether it was a flicker of love or regret or meanness, and then she said, "Why wouldn't I want you to?"
Because you hate me, I thought, but I didn't say it. ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

I don't mind being the brunt of a joke, so long as it's a good one. ~ Joey McIntyre

The sun kept on with its slipping away, and I thought how many small good things in the world might be resting on the shoulders of something terrible. ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

I like the word clandestine. It feels medieval. Sometimes I think of words as being alive. If clandestine were alive, it would be a pale little girl with hair the color of fall leaves and a dress as white as the moon. ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

That's one of those snapshot moments. I don't know why some memories are like that, where everything is perfectly preserved. Frozen. ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

To experience conflicts knowingly, though it may be distressing, can be an invaluable asset. The more we face our own conflicts and seek out our own solutions, the more inner freedom and strength we will gain. Only when we are willing to bear the brunt can we approximate the ideal of being the captain of our ship. Spurious tranquillity rooted in inner dullness is anything but enviable. It is bound to make us weak and an easy prey to any kind of influence. ~ Karen Horney

But if he had indeed blushed-and his cheeks did feel a touch warm-neither of his brothers saw it, because they didn't say anything, and if there was anything in life as certain as, say, the sun rising in the east,it was that a Bridgerton never passed up the opportunity to tease and torment another Bridgerton.
"She's been talking about Penelope Featherington nonstop," Colin said with a scowl. "I tell you, I've known the girl since we were both in short pants. Er, since I was in short pants, at least. She was in..." He scowled some more, because both his brothers were laughing at him. "She was in whatever it is that young girls wear."
"Frocks?" Anthony supplied helpfully.
"Petticoats?" was Benedict's suggestion.
"The point is," Colin said forcefully, "that I have known her forever, and I can assure you I am not likely to fall in love with her."
Anthony turned to Benedict and said, "They'll be married within a year.Mark my words."
Colin crossed his arms. "Anthony!"
"Maybe two," Benedict said. "He's young yet."
"Unlike you," Colin retorted. "Why am I besiged by Mother, I wonder? Good God, you're thirty-one-"
"Thirty," Benedict snapped.
"Regardless, one would think you'd be getting the brunt of it. ~ Julia Quinn

The real question for me is why Lieutenant Cable and Nellie didn't just get together. Because they would have been a perfect match. I guess the idea is that opposites attract, but I don't think that's what it's like in real life. I think in real life you'd want someone who was as close to you as possible. Someone who could understand exactly the way you thought. ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

For the other end of the spectrum, the 50 to 85 percent of the world's population who are not the recipients of privilege, the world they know is almost certainly worse than any their earlier counterparts knew. It is likely they are worse off materially, despite the technological changes. In substantive as opposed to formal terms, they are more, not less, subject to arbitrary constraints, since the central mechanisms are more pervasive and more efficient. And they bear the brunt of the various kinds of psychic malaise, as well as of the destructiveness of civil wars. ~ Immanuel Wallerstein

Watching people is a good hobby, but you have to be careful about it. You can't let people catch you staring at them. If people catch you, they treat you like a first-class criminal. And maybe they're right to do that. Maybe it should be a crime to try to see things about people they don't want you to see. ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

I wasn't interested in drinking beer or vodka or smoking cigarettes or doing all the other things Greta thinks I can't even imagine. I don't want to imagine those things. Anyone can imagine things like that. I want to imagine wrinkled time, and forests thick with wolves, and bleak midnight moors. I dream about people who don't need to have sex to know they love each other. I dream about people who would only ever kiss you on the cheek. ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

Greta always wanted to know everything. Every little detail. But I understood. You can ruin anything if you know too much. ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

I want to imagine wrinkled time, and forests thick with wolves, and bleak midnight moors ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

Until the last light faded. Until the space between the tree branches and the branches themselves became the same dark thing. ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

After a tragedy, I think God gives us a period of numbing as a kind of grace. Perhaps he knows our small minds, given so easily to false hope, couldn't handle the full brunt of reality. ~ Donald Miller

I'm okay with one or two people, but more than that and I turn into a naked mole rat. ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

Everybody tries to protect this vulnerable two three four five six seven eight year old inside, and to acquire skills and aptitudes for dealing with the situations that threaten to overwhelm it... Usually, that child is a wretchedly isolated undeveloped little being. It's been protected by the efficient armour, it's never participated in life, it's never been exposed to living and to managing the person's affairs, it's never been given responsibility for taking the brunt. And it's never properly lived. That's how it is in almost everybody. And that little creature is sitting there, behind the armour, peering through the slits. And in its own self, it is still unprotected, incapable, inexperienced...

And in fact, that child is the only real thing in them. It's their humanity, their real individuality, the one that can't understand why it was born and that knows it will have to die, in no matter how crowded a place, quite on its own. That's the carrier of all the living qualities. It's the centre of all the possible magic and revelation. What doesn't come out of that creature isn't worth having, or it's worth having only as a tool - for that creature to use and turn to account and make meaningful...

And so, wherever life takes it by surprise, and suddenly the artificial self of adaptations proves inadequate, and fails to ward off the invasion of raw experience, that inner self is thrown into the front line - unprepared, with all its childhood terrors round ~ Ted Hughes

What's the one superpower of June Elbus?"
I thought about myself from head to toe. It was like being forced to read the most boring part of the Sears catalog. Like leafing through the bathroom accessories pages. Boring brain. Boring face. No sex appeal. Clumsy hands.
"Heart. Hard heart," I said, not sure where it came from. "The hardest heart in the world."
"Hmmm," Toby said, tapping a finger in the air. "That's a useful one, you know. Very handy. The question is ... " Toby paused like he was considering this all very seriously.
"What's the question?"
"The question is, stone or ice? Crack or melt? ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

She was wired into my heart. Twisted and kinked and threaded right through. ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

In truth, there will never be enough power in the presidency for an incumbent to make good on a purely constructive leadership project, and it is unlikely that there will ever be another president stretched so thinly by a determination to use great power to do just that. Lyndon Johnson was a full-service president who had at his disposal an alignment of political resources, economic resources, international resources, and military resources unmatched in the annals of presidential history. The problem is that in a full-service presidency, where no interest of political significance is denied a modicum of legitimacy, resources turn fickle; the exercise of power consumes authority. Committed to a wholly affirmative result, Johnson could not rest content to let anyone carry the brunt of change. ~ Stephen Skowronek

To me, it is one world, and the non-human animals bear the brunt of oppression and suffering. ~ Ingrid Newkirk

I thought how that was wrong and terrible and beautiful all at the same time. ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

I told my mother he looked like a deflated balloon. Greta said he looked like a small gray moth wrapped in a spider's web. That's because everything about Greta is more beautiful, even the way she says things. ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

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

Hazel sometimes had a fantasy daydream at school where the teacher walked into the classroom and yelled,

ISN'T EVERYTHING HORRIBLE? DOESN'T THE PAIN OF THE WORLD OUTWEIGH THE JOY BY TRILLIONS? WOULD YOU LIKE TO PUSH ALL OF THE DESKS INTO THE CENTER OF THE ROOM AND BURN THEM IN A GIANT BONFIRE? THEN WE CAN RUN AROUND SCREAMING AND WEEPING AMIDST THE SMOKE IN A TRUTHFUL PARADE OF OUR HUMAN CONDITION. SINCE YOU ARE SMALL STATURED, CHILDREN, IT MIGHT HELP OTHERS TO FEEL THE FULL BRUNT OF YOUR AGITATION IF YOU WAVE STICKS AND SHRUBBERY OVER YOUR HEADS ALL THE WHILE. WE DON'T WANT TO KILL ANYTHING WE DON'T HAVE TO KILL; EVERYTHING LIVING THAT WE'VE EVER SEEN OR KNOWN WILL DIE WITHOUT OUR INTERVENTION, OURSELVES INCLUDED; THIS IS A PSYCHOLOGICAL LEAD BLANKET THAT EVEN OUR MOST PERVASIVE MOMENTS OF COMFORT CANNOT CRAWL OUT FROM UNDER AND ONE UNEXTINGUISHABLE SOURCE OF DESPAIR, SO WE WON'T BE PERFORMING ANY RITUALISTIC SACRIFICES; THAT'S NOT THE DIRECTION WE WILL GO IN JUST YET; HOWEVER, ASSISTANT PRINCIPAL LAWRENCE IS ON THE PROWL FOR A ROAD CARCASS WE MIGHT BE ABLE TO USE AS A REPRESENTATIVE PROP BECAUSE NOWHERE IN OUR AUTUMN-THEMED POSTER BOARD DéCOR IS MORBIDITY OR DECAY SYMBOLIZED. OUR SCHOOL BOARD MEMBERS CANNOT AGREE ON HOW BEST TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE BOUNDLESSNESS OF HUMAN CRUELTY. IN OUR SOCIETY SOME OF YOU ARE FAR SAFER AND MORE ADVANTAGED THAN OTHERS; AT HOME SOME OF YOU ARE FAR MORE LOVED; SOME OF YOU WILL FIND THAT CONCEPTS LIKE FAIRNESS AND JUSTICE WILL BE THIN, F ~ Alissa Nutting

Maybe you had to be dying to finally get to do what you wanted.
I fidgeted around with the puzzle pieces for a while longer, but I wasn't lucky. Nothing seemed to fit without a whole lot of work.
Then I had this thought: What if it was enough to realize that you would die someday, that none of this would go on forever? Would that be enough? ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

I don't like to overhear things, because, in my experience, things your parents are keeping quiet about are things you don't want to know. ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

You could just hold them, couldn't you? You could sit close to them, nestle into them so you could hear the machine of them churning away. You could press your ear against that person's back, listening to the rhythm of them, knowing that you were both made of the same exact stuff. You could do things like that. ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

My mother said it was like a cassette tape you could never rewind. But it was hard to remember you couldn't rewind it while you were listening to it. And so you'd forget and fall into the music and listen and then, without you even knowing it, the tape would suddenly end. ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

The sooner being gay is completely normalized, the sooner homophobic prohibitions against touch will be taken off straight men. As much as gay men have faced the brunt of homophobic violence, straight men have been banished to a desert of physical isolation by these same homophobic fanatics who police lesbians and gays in our society. The result has been a generation of American men who do not hug each other, do not hold hands and cannot sit close together without the homophobic litmus test kicking in. ~ Mark Greene

The kinds of things I want don't cost money. ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

Maybe all I wanted was for Toby to hear the wolves that lived in the dark forest of my heart. ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

Since the end of the postwar economic boom, certain strategies have been intensified to stimulate consumption, especially strategies aimed at American youth that project sexual activity as instant fulfillment and violence as the locus of machismo identity. This market activity has contributed greatly to the disorientation and confusion of American youth, and those with less education and fewer opportunities bear the brunt of this cultural chaos. ~ Cornel West

This crisis of long-term unemployment is having a profoundly damaging impact on the lives of those bearing the brunt of it. We know this thanks to a series of careful studies of the problem conducted in the depths of the 1930s Great Depression. ~ Barry Eichengreen

But women bear the brunt of this bias. According to patient surveys,
women are more likely than men to have been advised to lose weight by a
health care provider. ~ Maya Dusenbery

I felt as if I was the brunt of some massive joke at my expense: Can you believe this loser can be connected to Marlon Brando and Katharine Hepburn? But through the years I have learned to tolerate and sometimes embrace the idea. People have asked me if I consider it an honour. Well, all it indicates is that I've been in a lot of movies with a lot of people. And besides that there are plenty of other actors that would work. ~ Kevin Bacon

The bed was warm and ordinary and perfect, and it had been such a long, long day. Probably the longest day of my life. I felt like I had proof that not all days are the same length, not all time has the same weight. Proof that there are worlds and worlds and worlds on top of worlds, ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

The Cigarette had a mackintosh which put him more or less above these contrarieties. But I had to bear the brunt uncovered. I began to remember that nature was a woman. My companion, in a rosier temper, listened with great satisfaction to my Jeremiads, and ironically concurred. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Either you're a falconer or you're not. Either the birds come back to you or they fly away. ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

When you're an older woman [in a movie], you are the brunt of the joke. ~ Jane Fonda

As you head into adulthood, June, you may occasionally encounter oversize exotic beverages of an alcoholic nature. I felt it was my duty to acquaint you with these potentially hazardous drinks. ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

If you think a story can be like a kind of cement, the sloppy kind that you put between bricks, the kind that looks like cake frosting before it dries hard, then maybe I thought it would be possible to use what Toby had to hold Finn together, to keep him here with me a little bit longer. ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

What if you ended up in the wrong kind of love? What if you accidentally ended up in the falling kind with someone it would be so gross to fall in love with that you could never tell anyone in the world about it? The kind you'd have to crush down so deep inside yourself that it almost turned your heart into a black hole? The kind you squashed deeper and deeper down, but no matter how much you hoped it would suffocate, it never did? Instead, it seemed to inflate, to grow gigantic as time went by, filling every little spare space you had until it was you. You were it. Until everything you ever saw or thought led you back to one person. The person you weren't supposed to love that way. ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

Please promise to take the very best care of my only girl. With so much love my heart might split in two ... ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

And I suddenly understood that getting drunk was just one more way to leave this place, this time. ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

... there's just something beautiful about walking on snow that nobody else has walked on. It makes you believe you're special, even though you know you're not. ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

Of course, having a culprit, someone to take the brunt of your anger, is an open door, a chance to temporarily escape your suffering. And the more odious the crime, the more ideal the culprit, the more legitimate your hatred. You think about him in order not to think about yourself. You hate him in order not to hate what's left of your life. You rejoice at his death in order not to have to smile at those who remain. ~ Antoine Leiris

That's what being shy feels like. Like my skin is too thin, the light too bright. Like the best place I could possibly be is in a tunnel far under the cool, dark earth. Someone asks me a question and I stare at them, empty-faced, my brain jammed up with how hard I'm trying to find something interesting to say. And in the end, all I can do is nod or shrug, because the light of their eyes looking at me, waiting for me, is just too much to take. And then it's over and there's one more person in the world who thinks I'm a complete and total waste of space.
The worst thing is the stupid hopefulness. Every new party, every new bunch of people, and I start thinking that maybe this is my chance. That I'm going to be normal this time. A new leaf. A fresh start. But then I find myself at the party, thinking, Oh, yeah. This again.
So I stand on the edge of things, crossing my fingers, praying nobody will try to look me in the eye. And the good thing is, they usually don't. ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

Women not only bear the brunt of the equation of beauty with youth, we perpetuate it - every time we dye our hair to cover the gray or lie about our age, not to mention have plastic surgery to cover the signs of aging. ~ Ashton Applewhite

I thought how there was a kind of power in being needed. In having a purpose. I could feel it hardening up my bones and thickening my blood. ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

The walls of the tunnels were covered with so much dirt, it was almost like fur. I thought those tunnels were the kind of places wolves might live. I thought they were like the vessels of the human heart. ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

By remaining behind the scenes, they (the Rothschilds) were able to avoid the brunt of public anger which was directed, instead, at the political figures which they largely controlled. This is a technique which has been practiced by financial manipulators ever since, and it is fully utilized by those who operate the Federal Reserve System today. ~ G. Edward Griffin

There was a flicker of something in Greta's look. I couldn't tell whether it was a flicker of love or regret or meanness. ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

Unfortunately, parents who put a priority on saving kids from frustration and teachers who put a priority on challenging their students often butt heads, and consequently, the parent-teacher partnership has reached a breaking point. Teaching has become a push and pull between opposing forces in which parents want teachers to educate their children with increasing rigor, but reject those rigorous lessons as "too hard" or "too frustrating" for their children to endure. Parents rightly feel protective of their children's self-esteem, but teachers too often bear the brunt of parental ire. ~ Jessica Lahey

But if they loved each other so much, couldn't they talk it out?"
Toby gave an exasperated laugh. "You get into habits. Ways of being with certain people. ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

Among all the emotions, the rich have the least talent for love. It is possible to love one's dog, dress or duck-shooting hat, but a human being presents a more difficult problem. The rich might wish to experience feelings of affection, but it is almost impossible to chip away the enamel of their narcissism. They take up all the space in all the mirrors in the house. Their children, who represent the most present and therefore the most annoying claim on their attention, usually receive the brunt of their irritation. ~ Lewis H. Lapham

I only need one good friend to see me through. Most people aren't like that. Most people are always looking out for more people to know. ~ Carol Rifka Brunt