Down Like A Quotes

He reached out and caressed her face. With a serious expression, he traced the edge of her jaw with his thumb. "You're beautiful, Ani. In all of eternity, there's never been another faery who could make me want to forget everything and everyone else."
"Because you like the way I look?" She rolled her eyes. "Apparently, my dream mind is shallow."
"No, not the exterior. You… the tempers and follies and passion… even the way you care for that infuriating steed."Devlin gazed at her like she was precious. "Even knowing you could be fatal, I would've said yes."
Her chest hurt like she had held her breath too long as she asked, "To?"
"Whatever you wanted." He didn't reach out and pull her into his embrace. Instead, he took one step forward, leaned down, and kissed her. ~ Melissa Marr

Computer business are like fruit market on a Saturday night. If you don't sell it at five o'clock, the price is down tomorrow because the fruit's no good the next day. You'd better sell it now. ~ Brian Bagnall

Slow down, and enjoy that stuff if it's possible. Kathy doesn't care what time I leave, only what time I clock out, and she knows sometimes I sleep here when I'm locked out, or have friends over. Everything's cool as long as I clock out on time."
She swallowed that big bite she'd rammed in, and said, "Okay. Jeez, I'm so hungry, this stuff is good."
Ketchup for your fries, miss? I can recommend it - it's my main source of vitamin C."
She smiled. "Sure. What does Kathy do if you clock out late?"
Well, a couple times I've fallen asleep and done it, and gotten off with a warning. Eventually, though, if I made a habit of it, I'd disappear in the middle of the night, and never be seen again, and the only clues the police would have would be a few orange hairs and some enormous shoe prints. But for a few weeks afterward, all over the country, the Quarter Pounders would taste just a little bit more like Lightsburg, Ohio. ~ John Barnes

Sweet Grace amazes me
The way that she can see
Beyond the man I am
To the man that I could be
She's bringing out my best
While she covers all the rest
Some say her love is blind
But I say her love forgets

She don't like it when I try so hard to impress her
'Cause when I do that, it's a lie that makes her love look the lesser
The truth is I know

I'll never be, I'll never be good enough
I'll never deserve her love
I'll never be, I'll never be good enough for Grace
But she takes me anyway

I am the cheatin' kind
But she's changing my mind
The way she takes me back
Though I fail her every time
She's got friends who tell her that she
Is much too good for me
Well, I've told her that myself
But she refuses to leave

I'd like to think my strength won her affection
But the truth is it was my weakness that caught her attention
I'm grateful to know

When my tears fall down like rain
She wipes them from my face
She tells me that I'm lovely
And if I am, it's all because of Grace
This love turns my inside out
And my world upside down
Grace is changing me ~ Jason Gray

The night sky is filled brimful as a night sky can be, lit brightly as it is with clusters of planets and pulsating stars and marriages of galaxies, all of it within a wobble of dust and gas and debris unseen. There are the Dippers Little and Big tonight, a lovely Pleiades, and a throbbing red star out like a tiny heart. This is the stuff of which we are made, I say to Son, all that is of us above us. We stand together looking upward, our mouths hung open as if to swallow what's above down and into us. Looking out at the past in its far distance, where from there, he we are not. ~ Susan Froderberg

It happened like that in fairytales, you see, oh yes, those heroic men would hack down a forest just to get to you. Where were all the heroes nowadays? She ~ Caroline Roberts

Books are like imprisoned souls till someone takes them down from a shelf and frees them. ~ Samuel Butler

But the examinations are the chief bugbears of my college life. Although I have faced them many times and cast them down and made them bite the dust, yet they rise again and menace me with pale looks, until like Bob Acres I feel my courage oozing out at my finger ends. The days before these ordeals take place are spent in cramming your mind with mystic formula and indigestible dates - unpalatable diets, until you wish that books and science and you were buried in the depths of the sea.

At last the dreaded hour arrives, and you are a favoured being indeed if you feel prepared, and are able at the right time to call to your standard thoughts that will aid you in that supreme effort. It happens too often that your trumpet call is unheeded. It is most perplexing and exasperating that just at the moment when you need your memory and a nice sense of discrimination, these faculties take to themselves wings and fly away. The facts you have garnered with such infinite trouble invariably fail you at a pinch. ~ Helen Keller

God what an outfield,' he says. 'What a left field.' He looks up at me, and I look down at him. 'This must be heaven,' he says.
No. It's Iowa,' I reply automatically. But then I feel the night rubbing softly against my face like cherry blossoms; look at the sleeping girl-child in my arms, her small hand curled around one of my fingers; think of the fierce warmth of the woman waiting for me in the house; inhale the fresh-cut grass small that seems locked in the air like permanent incense; and listen to the drone of the crowd, as below me Shoelss Joe Jackson tenses, watching the angle of the distant bat for a clue as to where the ball will be hit.
I think you're right, Joe,' I say, but softly enough not to disturb his concentration. ~ W.P. Kinsella

If the universe is running down like a clock, the clock must have been wound up at a date which we could name if we knew it. The world, if it is to have an end in time, must have had a beginning in time. ~ Dean Inge

Liz: What's it like in hell?
Ketut: Same like heaven. Universe is a circle, Liss. To up, to down
all same, at end.
Liz: Then how can you tell the difference between heaven and hell?
Ketut: Because of how you go. Heaven, you go up, through seven happy places. Hell you go down, through seven sad places. This is why it better for you to go up, Liss.
Liz: You mean, you might as well spend your life going upward, through the happy places, since heaven and hell
same destinations
are the same thing anyway?
Ketut: Same-same. Same in end, so better be happy on journey. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

I ate the roll, and forced down some more sparkling wine. When your eyes closed against the sun again, and I had nothing else to look at I glanced quickly at your chest, curious, really. I'd only seen chests like that in magazines. I wondered if that's how you'd got all your money ... modeling. I looked down at my stomach. I grabbed at it, seeing how much fat I could lift up in a roll.
"Don't worry," you said, one eye open again like a crocodile, watching me. "You're beautiful." You tipped your head back again "Beautiful," you murmured. "Perfect."
"You wouldn't know. You're built like some sort of supermodel." I bit my lip, wishing I hadn't complimented you like that. "Or a stripper," I added. "Prostitute."
"I wouldn't want you to think I'm repulsive," you said, half smiling.
"Too late."
You opened your other eye to squint at me. "Will you ever give me a break? ~ Lucy Christopher

Then teach me. I want the girl I marry to like me, to be happy with me.'
Lale's mother sat down, and he took a seat across from her. 'You must first learn to listen to her. Even if you are tired, never be too tired to listen to what she has to say. Learn what she likes, and more importantly what she doesn't like. When you can, give her little treats - flowers, chocolates - women like these things. ~ Heather Morris

skidded to the other side and disappeared into the pines. Pelt bristling, eyes wide, Snowfur streaked after them, over the oily Thunderpath. Bluefur froze. A monster was roaring straight at Snowfur. Without slowing down, it slammed into her body. Bluefur heard the dull thump, then the howl of the monster as it thundered away, leaving Snowfur's body lying like a wet leaf at the edge of the Thunderpath. "No! ~ Erin Hunter

He stopped at the gate on his way back to the temple, where Gracilis, the Twentieth's hard-case wolf hunter from the Campanian mountains, was supervising the strengthening of the defences.
'Take some men and tear down the huts along the west wall. And while you're at it, clear everything for a javelin throw in front of this gate. I want a killing ground from there to about there.'
Gracilis grinned and saluted. Like all legionaries, the only thing he liked better than fighting and drinking was destroying someone else's property. 'Should we burn them, sir?' he said hopefully. Valerius shook his head. No point in creating smoke to warn the enemy. 'Just break them up and add them to the barriers. ~ Douglas Jackson

Honey Locust"

Who can tell how lovely in June is the
honey locust tree, or why
a tree should be so sweet and live
in this world? Each white blossom
on a dangle of white flowers holds one green seed -
a new life. Also each blossom on a dangle of flower
holds a flask
of fragrance called Heaven, which is never sealed.
The bees circle the tree and dive into it. They are crazy
with gratitude. They are working like farmers. They are as
happy as saints. After awhile the flowers begin to
wilt and drop down into the grass. Welcome
shines in the grass.

Every year I gather
handfuls of blossoms and eat of their mealiness; the honey
melts in my mouth, the seeds make me strong,
both when they are crisps and ripe, and even at the end
when their petals have turned dully yellow.

So it is
if the heart has devoted itself to love, there is
not a single inch of emptiness. Gladness gleams
all the way to the grave. ~ Mary Oliver

He slid his hand onto Riley's bare abdomen. "I got to thinkin' that a few years down the line, when yer older, what if that was our baby and I could feel it right here under my hand. Feel the life we'd created."
Riley's eyes moistened. "Girl or boy?"
"Doesn't matter. If it's a girl, we can name her after my gran. Her name was Emily Rose."
"Hmm ... I like that. Maybe the boy could be Paul Arthur, like my dad."
"Yeah, that works. But that's all the way down the line, isn't it?" It might never come to pass. ~ Jana Oliver

The images are visual, auditory, olfactory, kinesthetic. They aren't laid down on the same tracks as thought. And sometimes, when they return to you, it is as if you feel them for the very first time. Memory lives on in the details, like the color of a room, a tone of a voice, the touch of a child, the smell of a man. ~ Martha Manning

I'm a real goof-ball deep down. It's always been my thing to make people like me. ~ Rita Ora

Man is in fact nailed down - like Christ on the Cross - to a grid of paradoxes ... he balances between the torment of not knowing his mission and the joy of carrying it out, between nothingness and meaningfulness. And like Christ, he is in fact victorious by virtue of his defeats. ~ Vaclav Havel

Ew.'
'Yeah,' Claire said. 'I need a shower.'
'I don't think a shower's going to cut it. Maybe fire hoses, and those brushes they use on elephants.' Eve stepped back and offered Shane a hand up as he finally got untangled.
'Speaking of elephants, you sounded like a herd of something coming down the stairs,' he said. 'What the hell are your shoes made of? Hooves? ~ Rachel Caine

I wonder how many people in the Washington metropolitan area know just how terrific Senator MacGregor looks in his underwear."
"A select few."
"You must have thought about image projection, Senator." She ran a fingertip down the top of his foot. "You should consider doing some of those ads,you know,like the ball players...I never meet with foreign dignitaries without my B.V.D.'s."
"One can only be grateful you're not the Media Adviser."
"Stuffy,that's the whole problem." She dropped, full-length, on top of him. "Just think of the possibilities."
Alan slipped a hand under her robe. "I am."
"Discreetly placed ads in national magazines, thirty-minute spots in prime time." Shelby propped her elbows on his shoulders. "I'd definitely get my set fixed."
"Think of the trent it might start. Federal officials everywhere stripped down to their respective shorts."
Shelby's brows drew together as she pictured it. "Good God, it could precipitate a national calamity."
"Worldwide," Alan corrected. "Once the ball got rolling, there'd be no stopping it."
"All right, you've convinced me." She gave him a smacking kiss. "It's your patriotic duty to keep your clothes on. Except in here," she added with a gleam in her eye as she toyed with his waistband. ~ Nora Roberts

On the other hand, it has a number of other advantages for power. For one thing, it diverts people, it atomizes people. When you're sitting in front of your tube, you're alone. I mean, there's something about human beings that just makes face-to-face contact very different from banging around on a computer terminal and getting some noise coming back―that's very impersonal, and it breaks down human relations. Well, that's obviously a good result from the point of view of people with power―because it's extremely important to drive human sentiments out of people if you just want them to be passive and obedient and under control. So if you can eliminate things like face-to-face contact and direct interaction, and just turn people into what's caricatured as kind of an M.I.T. nerd―you know, somebody who's got antennae coming out of his head, and is wired into his computer all the time―that's a real advantage, because then you've made them more inhuman, and therefore more controllable. ~ Noam Chomsky

You'd see more floods like you've seen in Mozambique in 2000, you'd see more droughts like you saw in Kenya in the late 1990s, there would be a serious threat to the water flow down the Nile on which 10 countries depend. ~ Nicholas Stern

Teach the student what needs to be taught.
'Cause black and white kids both take shorts
When one doesn't know about the other one's culture,
Ignorance swoops down like a vulture. ~ KRS-One

When she rolled over, nestling her back into Daniel's chest so that he was cradling her with his right wing, her eyelids fluttered shut. Then they flew open.
She was face to face with Cam.
He was inches away, on his side, head propped on his hand, green eyes holding hers as if they were both in a trance. He opened his mouth as if to say something-
BOOM.
The room trembled like a leaf. For an instant, the air seemed to take on a strange transparency. Cam's body shimmered, both there and somehow not there, his very existence seeming to flicker.
"Timequake," Daniel said.
"A big mother," Cam agreed.
Luce sprang upright, gaping at her own body in the sleeping bag, at Daniel's hand on her knee, at Arriane, whose muffled voice called out," "I'wuzznt me," until Annabelle's wing slapped her awake. All of them were flickering before each other's eyes. Solidly present one moment, as insubstantial as ghosts the next.
The timequake had jarred loose a dimension in which they weren't even there.
The cave around them shuddered. Sand sifted down from the walls. But unlike those of Luce and her friends, the physical properties of the red rock remained fixed, as if to prove that only people-souls-were at risk of being erased. ~ Lauren Kate

Of what use was it to be loved and lose one's beauty and become Real if it all ended like this? And a tear, a real tear, trickled down his little shabby velvet nose and fell to the ground. ~ Margery Williams

He shouldn't be captivated by the sight of a tear caught on her lashes, or her perfect nose, slightly pink. Those lips were even more intriguing, so he made himself look away, staring out at the forest beyond the gazebo.
He glanced down to find Ellice still looking up at him, her eyes liquid pools of chocolate.
Their gaze caught and held, the seconds ticking by in solemn regularity. He felt drawn to her like a magnet. Pulling away would be a difficult task.
He must for his own safety. This woman with her guileless eyes, soft heart, and lurid imagination was a danger. ~ Karen Ranney

I rail a lot against passion, because I feel like passion can be very exclusionary, and very elitist, and it can leave a lot of people feeling like they don't belong... I'm much more interested in allowing people to follow curiosity, which is a much more gentle impulse that doesn't require that you sacrifice your entire life for something. It's more of kind of a scavenger hunt, where you're allowed to pick up these tiny beautiful little clues along the pathway. It's more of a tap on the shoulder that asks you to turn your attention one inch to the left. Oh that's a little bit mildly interesting - what is that? Okay now I'm going to take that clue... I'm going to take it another inch, and I'm going to take it another inch. Rather than this idea that the symphony is born whole, because you sit down and you're struck by lightening and then you start to create. Curiosity I think, is a far more friendly way to do creativity than passion."

...this is why I say the path of curiosity is the scavenger hunt, because it took my probably three years between "gee it would be nice to put some plants in my backyard" to here I am in the South Pacific exploring the history of moss and inventing this giant novel. You know I think everybody thinks that creativity comes in lightening strikes, but I think it comes with whispers. And then the whispers can grow thunderous over time if you are patient enough to explore it, almost in the way that a scientist would.

Be open to - ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

I would run to rejoin the children. Especially when it was time for the kite-flying contests- where the boys would skilfully try to cut down their competitors' kite strings. It plunges. It was beautiful, and also a bit melancholy for me to see the pretty kittens sputter to the ground.
Maybe it was because I could see a future that would be cut down just like those kites- simply because I was a girl. ~ Malala Yousafzai

It's rude to discuss religion', the Buraq sniffed. 'But I don't hold with Teatimers. I'm of the Midnight Snack school. You have tea because it's three o'clock and that's what's done and yes, yes, it's pleasant to have a nice cup and a sandwich with no crusts on, but pleasant is not enough for me! When you tuck into a Midnight Snack, it's because you're hungry in the dark. You want that bit of roast you couldn't finish at supper and you want it now. Midnight Snackery is primal, like a wolf in the wood, hunkering down over her kill. ~ Catherynne M Valente

I just kinda do what I feel. I never knew what lane I would fill, [or that] I would fill a lane at all. I didn't even really contemplate that far down the road. I just started having fun, and a lot of that came from me seeing Wayne dare to be different, and I started feeling like I can be a multifaceted rapper. I don't have to be a one-dimensional female rapper. Once I put that in perspective, it was like everything just got easier for me, because I no longer wanted to fit in anybody's box ... I just wanted to be Nicki. ~ Nicki Minaj

I would like to mention some preparations that were required of me. The first preparation is to take a right attitude toward life. This means, stop being an escapist! Stop being a surface liver who stays right in the froth of the surface. There are millions of these people, and they never find anything really worthwhile. Be willing to face life squarely and get down beneath the surface of life where the verities and realities are to be found. That's what we are doing here now. ~ Peace Pilgrim

Under the redwood tree my grave was laid, and I beguiled my true love to lie down. The stream of our kiss put a waterway around the world, where love like a refugee sailed in the last ship. My hair made a shroud, and kept the coyotes at bay while we wrote our cyphers with anatomy. The winds boomed triumph, our spines seemed overburdened, and our bones groaned like old trees, but a smile like a cobweb was fastened across the mouth of the cave of fate.

Fear will be a terrible fox at my vitals under my tunic of behaviour.
Oh, canary, sing out in the thunderstorm, prove your yellow pride. Give me a reason for courage or a way to be brave. But nothing tangible comes to rescue my besieged sanity, and I cannot decipher the code of the eucalyptus thumping on my roof.
I am unnerved by the opponents of God, and God is out of earshot. I must spin good ghosts out of my hope to oppose the hordes at my window. If those who look in see me condescend to barricade the door, they will know too much and crowd in to overcome me.
The parchment philosopher has no traffic with the night, and no conception of the price of love. With smoky circles of thought he tries to combat the fog, and with anagrams to defeat anatomy. I posture in vain with his weapons, even though I am balmed with his nicotine herbs.
Moon, moon, rise in the sky to be a reminder of comfort and the hour when I was brave. ~ Elizabeth Smart

Pray when you're alone. Pray when you're with a lot of people. Pray when you're in small groups. Pray on your way in; pray on your way out. Pray in your closet, in your car, at your desk. Pray morning prayers, pray mealtime prayers, pray in between mealtimes. Pray fervently, expectantly, and unself-consciously. Pray when you're burdened, worried, sick, or brokenhearted. Pray when you're soaring, setting records, or dancing on a mountaintop. Pray when you're up, and pray when you're down. Pray when you're healthy, when you're sick, when you feel like it, and when you don't. (Especially when you don't.) ~ Bill Hybels

Like I could stop? Don't you know I dream about this when I'm away?" he asked, nudging me with his nose, exactly where I needed his mouth to be.
"You ... dream about ... this?" I asked, arching my back. I was so close, so very close.
"Fuck, yes, are you kidding?" He flattened his tongue and dragged it across my entire sex, dipping inside and continuing up, closing his mouth now and encircling me with his lips. Releasing me with a groan of his own, he brought one hand down, using his fingers to press into me. "I think about this, and the sounds you make when you come, the way you taste. Mmm ... sweet Caroline, you drive me crazy. ~ Alice Clayton

Out into the staff quarters. Over to the entrance to the movie theater. Tohr stopped dead. "If this is another Beaches marathon, I'm going to Bette your ass until you can't sit down."
"Aw, look at you! Trying to be finny."
"Seriously, if you have any compassion in you at all, you'll let me go to bed - "
"I have peanut M&M's up there."
"Not my style."
"Raisinets."
"Feh."
"Sam Adams."
Tohr narrowed his eyes. "Cold?"
"Downright icy."
Tohr crossed his arms over his chest and told himself he was not pouting like a five-year-old. "I want Milk Duds."
"Got 'em. And popcorn."
With a curse, Tohr yanked open the door and ascended into the dimly lit red cave. ~ J.R. Ward

Write down your barrier thoughts, and then consider ways to reinterpret the situation. In the process, ask yourself questions like ... What else could this situation or experience mean? Can anything good come from it? Does it present any opportunities for me? What lessons can I learn and apply to the future? Did I develop any strengths as a result? ~ Sonja Lyubomirsky

I'd say that what I do is like a crack in the mirror. If you go back over the books from Carrie on up, what you see is an observation of ordinary middle-class American life as it's lived at the time that particular book was written. In every life you get to a point where you have to deal with something that's inexplicable to you, whether it's the doctor saying you have cancer or a prank phone call. So whether you talk about ghosts or vampires or Nazi war criminals living down the block, we're still talking about the same thing, which is an intrusion of the extraordinary into ordinary life and how we deal with it. What that shows about our character and our interactions with others and the society we live in interests me a lot more than monsters and vampires and ghouls and ghosts. ~ Stephen King

I want to be an NBA all-star and help my team win. That's what it's all about, is winning. I'm a competitor ... People said a lot about me being selfish and stuff like that. Getting into the league, I can't wait to shut that down. I'm a guy who wants to play and to win and love my teammates. ~ Shabazz Muhammad

I never told you
How I longed to kiss away your every bruise
until there was no evidence
No ghosts of your own suffering
To put your pieces back together
Seal the cracks
Vanish them like they never were
And never, ever
Leave a scar"

"I never told you
I would take your pain if I could
I would drink it down
And take my comfort
In making you ache a little less
For a little while
Did I?
I'll never know because I never told you that I loved you ~ Emma Scott

He could tell Fleming he was a musician but he could not communicate what the music said to him or said to the people he played it for. The music told itself, it made some obscure connection for which there were no words. The music was its own story, but a man could dip into the vast reservoir of folk and blues lines and phrases and images and construct his own story: though upon performing it and without it losing any relevance to his own life it now belonged to the audience as well. It was something he could not fathom. The old songs with juryrigged verses like bodies cobbled up out of bones from a thousand skeletons. Songs about death and lost love and rambling down the line because sometimes down the line was the only place left. Songs that treated the most desperate of loss with a dark sardonic humour. "I'm going where the climate suits my clothes", the song said, not saying the frustration and despair that created it, saying that in the sheer lonesomeness of the sound, in the old man's driving banjo. There was an eerie timelessness about it that said it could have been written a thousand years ago, or it could have been an unfinished song about events that had not yet played themselves out. ~ William Gay

Part of a moon was falling down the west,
Dragging the whole sky with it to the hills.
Its light poured softly in her lap. She saw
And spread her apron to it. She put out her hand
Among the harp-like morning-glory strings,
Taut with the dew from garden bed to eaves,
As if she played unheard the tenderness
That wrought on him beside her in the night. ~ Robert Frost

KEVIN: But there are many reasons we have to do our broadcasting from here.
LAUREN: It sends a message.
KEVIN: It sure does. It sends several fun messages for everyone to enjoy. Anyway, the boys in Sales, who are all named Shawn, came by and with their help I was able to make this studio feel a little more like home. They put up a bit of a fuss about the changes, but that's just because no one likes change. There are some people who don't understand progress, you know.
LAUREN: I'll miss the Shawns.
KEVIN: I'll miss them too, but look how much nicer this places looks. You can see the Shawns' contributions all over the desk.
LAUREN: And running down the walls. Yes, SO much nicer. ~ Joseph Fink

But year after year that summons, unheard but felt, was disobeyed. His one secret thought became like a chain binding down his spirit and like a serpent gnawing into his heart. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Keeping The City

"Unless the Lord keepeth the city, the watchman guardeth in vain" - John F. Kennedy's unspoken words in Dallas on November 23, 1963.

Once,
in August,
head on your chest,
I heard wings
battering up the place,
something inside trying to fly out
and I was silent
and attentive,
the watchman.
I was your small public,
your small audience
but it was you that was clapping,
it was you untying the snarls and knots,
the webs, all bloody and gluey;
you with your twelve tongues and twelve wings
beating, wresting, beating, beating
your way out of childhood,
that airless net that fastened you down.

Since then I was more silent
though you had gone miles away,
tearing down, rebuilding the fortress.
I was there
but could do nothing
but guard the city
lest it break.

I was silent.
I had a strange idea I could overhear
but that your voice, tongue, wing
belonged solely to you.
The Lord was silent too.
I did not know if he could keep you whole,
where I, miles away, yet head on your chest,
could do nothing. Not a single thing.

The wings of the watchman,
if I spoke, would hurt the bird of your soul
as he nested, bit, sucked, flapped.
I wanted him to fly, burst like a missile from your throat,
burst from the spidery-mother-web,
burst from Woman herself
w ~ Anne Sexton

I remember my first job, when I was working in a retail store down there, growing up in Laurel, Mississippi. I was making, like, $2.15 an hour. And I was taught how to responsibly handle those customer interactions. ~ Marsha Blackburn

I don't specifically sit down to write a Motley Crue song, so for me, that's how it works. The things that sound like they might be Crue, I put aside on my hard drive and keep them in that pile. ~ Tommy Lee

See!" Dad yelled. "Boys don't stay with whores, Bianca. They leave them. And I'm not going to let you turn into a whore. Not my daughter. This is for your own good."
I looked up as he reached a hand down to grab my arm. I squeezed my eyes shut, waiting to feel his fingers clamp around my forearm.
But they never did.
I heard a loud thud, and Dad grunted in pain. My eyes flew open. Wesley moved away from Dad, who was massaging his jaw with a shocked look on his face. "Why you little shithead!"
"Are you all right?" Wesley asked, kneeling in front of me.
"Did you just punch my dad?" I couldn't help but wonder if I was delirious. Had all of this really just happened? Totally bizarre.
"Yes," Wesley admitted.
"How dare you touch me!" Dad screamed, but he was having trouble balancing enough to approach us again. "How dare you fuck my daughter, then hit me, you son of a bitch!"
I'd never heard my father swear like that before.
"Come on," Wesley said, helping me to my feet. "Let's get out of here. You're coming with me." He wrapped an arm around me, pulling me close against his warm body, and ushered me out the open door. ~ Kody Keplinger

There are times when surfing where you'll take on a wave only to realize the bottom's dropped out of it and so suddenly without warning you're free-falling down the entire face. It feels like this. ~ Jandy Nelson

It's a bit like the feeling I get when I'm standing on a cliff or high building, looking down at a suicidal drop. I start thinking about what would happen if I stepped off, the rush of the fall, the shattering collision, the quiet emptiness of death. Part of me wants to experience the thrill of complete surrender ... ~ Darren Shan

Returning to her position beneath the skylight, she yanked her arm down. The end of a length of rope tumbled into the room. "Oh, Mr. Addison. I never give something for nothing."
He found that he wasn't quite ready for her to leave. "Perhaps we could negotiate."
She released the rope, approaching him with a walk that looked half Catwoman and all sexy. "I already suggested that, and you turned me down. But be careful. Somebody wants you dead. And you have no idea how close somebody like me can get, without you ever knowing," she
murmured, lifting her face to his.
Jesus. She practically gave off sparks. He could feel the hairs on his arms lifting. "I would know," he returned in the same low tone, taking a slow step closer, daring her to make the next move. If she did, he was going to touch her. He wanted to touch her, badly. The heat coming off her body was almost palpable. ~ Suzanne Enoch

Sometimes I hear Mark laugh, and some days in the car the right song will come on the satellite radio and I'll feel him there tingling like a phantom limb. Like he's sitting there next to me in the dark. But I know that's not so. And I know that when you die there's not even darkness, and I know Mark and me won't meet on some cloud or in some pit of fire. And I guess that's a good thing. I couldn't take those eyes seeing what's become of me, those eyes looking down at my hands and my chewed-up ragged nails. ~ Jordan Harper

Some people are like slinkies. Not really good for much but bring a smile to your face when pushed down the stairs. ~ Anonymous

He wanted you to rob a bank to prove you were a hero?" Skepticism dripped from Victor's voice. "And then what?"
"What the fuck does it look like, ass hat?" Barry gestured down at his body. "He killed me! The bastard walks right up in the middle of a demonstration he told me to do, and he shoots me. ~ V.E Schwab

Perhaps she moves too slowly now, or the world moves too fast for her. She enters the lift, a giant wheel turns and steel cables lower the mechanized box. The lift drops down a black shaft, which exists at the heart of each HDB block. The country may be described, not as a place covered with blocks of public housing, but a topography where black vertical shafts, some forty storeys tall, rise out of the ground like trees. ~ Justin Ker

He was beautiful.
Whatever else he was, Sage was by far the most magnetic man I had ever seen. I had felt it in my dreams, and it was even more true in real life. I welcomed the chance to study him without his knowledge.
He glanced up, and I quickly closed my eyes, feigning sleep. Had he seen me? The scratching stopped. He was looking at me, I knew it. I held my breath and willed my eyes not to pop open and see if he was staring.
Finally the scratching started up again. I forced myself to slowly count to ten before I opened my eyelids the tiniest bit and peeked through my lashes.
Good-he wasn't looking at me.
I opened my eyes a little wider. What was he doing? Moving only my eyes, I glanced down at the dirt floor in front of him…
…and saw a picture of me, fast asleep.
It was incredible. I could see his tools laid out beside the picture: rocks in several sizes and shapes, a couple of twigs…the most rudimentary materials, and yet what he was etching into the floor wouldn't look out of place on an art gallery wall. It was beautiful…far more beautiful than I thought I actually looked in my sleep. Is that how he saw me?
Sage lifted his head again, and I shut my eyes. I imagined him studying me, taking careful note of my features and filtering them through his own senses. My heartbeat quickened, and it took all my willpower to remain still.
"You can keep pretending to be asleep if you'd like, but I don't see a career for you as an actres ~ Hilary Duff

Women were still strange and inscrutable creatures. Men didn't understand them. And women didn't understand themselves either. It was always a performance of some sort. Everywhere you went, it was like there was a spotlight shining down on your head. You were on a stage when you were on the trolley. You were being judged and judged and judged. Every minute of your performance was supposed to be incredible and outstanding and sexy.
You were often only an ethical question away from being a prostitute. ~ Heather O'Neill

Looking up occasionally to see rare cars crossing the high bridge and wondering what they'd see on this drear foggy night if they knew a madman was down there a thousand feet below in all that windy fury sitting in the dark writing in the dark - Some sort of sea beatnik, tho anybody wants to call me a beatnik for THIS better try it if they dare - The huge black rocks seem to move - The bleak awful roaring isolateness, no ordinary man could do it I'm telling you - I am a Breton! I cry and the blackness speaks back "Les poissons de la mer parlent Breton" (the fishes of the sea speak Breton) - Nevertheless I go there every night even tho I dont feel like it, it's my duty (and probably drove me mad), and write these sea sounds, and all the whole insane poem "Sea". ~ Jack Kerouac

I fucking love Scooby-Doo. That Velma girl - she has it going on. That tight sweater, short skirt, and knee socks? You can't tell me she got dressed in the dark. Some folks, they got it out for Daphne. But you know to look at her - she's one of those girls that talks it up all day, but when it comes down to lights-out she just lies there and acts like she's doing you a favor. Velma? You know she takes off those glasses and she gets to work. ~ Robert Brockway

A bad attitude from a chronic complaining employee is like a cancer; it will only spread and infect others. This can take your business down in a nanosecond. You must cut out the cancer and invite them to seek employment elsewhere. Quickly. ~ Beth Ramsay

I like your hair down." He twisted his fingers through the curls.
My eyes drifted shut as I relaxed next to him. "It's a mess. I need to get a haircut."
Hayden's fingers stilled. "No. You shouldn't cut your hair. It's beautiful."
I would never cut my hair. Ever. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

You can't really learn God's hope like you learn the logic of an argument or the details of a story. It's more like learning to belly laugh. You catch hope from someone who has it down in their gut. ~ Shane Claiborne

When I first decided I wanted to make beats and write songs and stuff like that, it wasn't like I sat down and the first thing I wrote was even halfway legit. It took a while to find my way through it. ~ G-Eazy

He grinned like a proud male and moved closer. "It was good."
"Are you asking or telling?"
"I know it was good."
She'd just experienced the longest orgasm in modern history. Who was she to be critical? "It was amazing."
He cupped her face and kissed her. "We could do it again."
"I don't think that's possible."
Instead of answering, he bent down and drew her nipple into his mouth. Then he reached between her legs and lightly touched her. Instantly jolts shot through her. She found herself wanting to pull him close and beg to be taken.
He drew back. "What do you think?"
She looked into his amused eyes. "That maybe I might have a little more time to make up for."
"I figured."
"Did you bring more condoms?"
"Yes."
"Thank God. ~ Susan Mallery

The hedonistic conception of man is that of a lightning calculator of pleasures and pains, who oscillates like a homogeneous globule of desire of happiness under the impulse of stimuli that shift him about the area but leave him intact ...
He is an isolated, definitive human datum, in stable equilibrium except for the buffets of the impinging forces that displace him in one direction or another. Self-poised in elemental space, he spins symmetrically about his own spiritual axis until the parallelogram of forces bears down on him, whereupon he follows he line of the resultant ~ Thorstein Veblen

Ugh. Crushes are the worst, but in hindsight a crush from afar seems so much easier than this. I should stick to making up stories in my head and watching from a distance like a reasonable creeper. Now I've broken the fourth wall and if he's as friendly as his eyes tell me he is, he may notice me when I drop money in his case the next time, and I will be forced to interact smoothly or run in the opposite direction. I may be middle-of-the-pack when my mouth is closed, but as soon as I start talking to men, Lulu calls me Appalland, for how appallingly unappealing I become. Obviously, she's not wrong. And now I'm sweating under my pink wool coat, my face is melting, and I'm hit with an almost uncontrollable urge to hike my tights up to my armpits because they have slowly crept down beneath my skirt and are starting to feel like form-fitting harem pants. ~ Christina Lauren

Subect: Sigh.
Okay. Since we're on the subject...
Q. What is the Tsar of Russia's favorite fish?
A. Tsardines, of course.
Q. What does the son of a Ukranian newscaster and a U.S. congressman eat for Thanksgiving dinner on an island off the coast of Massachusetts?
A.?
-Ella

Subect: TG
A. Republicans.
Nah.I'm sure we'll have all the traditional stuff: turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes. I'm hoping for apple pie. Our hosts have a cook who takes requests, but the island is kinda limited as far as shopping goes. The seven of us will probably spend the morning on a boat, then have a civilized chow-down. I predict Pictionary. I will win.
You?
-Alex

Subect: Re. TG
Alex,
I will be having my turkey (there ill be one, but it will be somewhat lost among the pumpkin fettuccine, sausage-stuffed artichokes, garlic with green beans, and at least four lasagnas, not to mention the sweet potato cannoli and chocolate ricotta pie) with at least forty members of my close family, most of whom will spend the entire meal screaming at each other. Some will actually be fighting, probably over football.

I am hoping to be seated with the adults. It's not a sure thing.

What's Martha's Vineyard like? I hear it's gorgeous. I hear it's favored by presidential types, past and present.
-Ella

Subject: Can I Have TG with You?
Please??? There's a 6a.m. flight off the island. I can be back in ~ Melissa Jensen

He saw his enemies stealthily darting from rock to tree, and tree to bush, creeping through the brush, and slipping closer and closer every moment. On three sides were his hated foes and on the remaining side - the abyss. Without a moment's hesitation the intrepid Major spurred his horse at the precipice. Never shall I forget that thrilling moment. The three hundred savages were silent as they realized the Major's intention. Those in the fort watched with staring eyes. A few bounds and the noble steed reared high on his hind legs. Outlined by the clear blue sky the magnificent animal stood for one brief instant, his black mane flying in the wind, his head thrown up and his front hoofs pawing the air like Marcus Curtius' mailed steed of old, and then down with a crash, a cloud of dust, and the crackling of pine limbs. ~ Zane Grey

Twelve down, like a hundred thousand left to go. ~ Pittacus Lore

What's a „culture"? Look it up. „A group of micro-organisms grown in a nutrient substance under controlled conditions". A squirm of germs on a glass slide is all, a laboratory experiment calling itself a society. Most of us wrigglers make do with life on the slide; we even agree to feel proud of that „culture". Like slaves voting for slavery or brains for lobotomy, we kneel down before the god of all moronic micro-organisms and pray to be homogenized or killed or engineered; we promise to obey. ~ Salman Rushdie

No matter how people mess with you or let you down, or how you let yourself down, a good book means that when you get in bed that night, you have a good hour. I feel like you pay all day for that hour. That's what books mean to me. I can open this two-dimensional, flat white page with squiggly little black marks on them, and someone has created this world that you're going to enter into ... ~ Anne Lamott

You once said you would like to sit beside me while I write. Listen, in that case I could not write (I can't do much, anyway), but in that case I could not write at all. For writing means revealing oneself to excess; that utmost of selfrevelation and surrender, in which a human being, when involved with others, would feel he was losing himself, and from which, therefore, he will always shrink as long as he is in his right mind - for everyone wants to live as long as he is alive - even that degree of selfrevelation and surrender is not enough for writing. Writing that springs from the surface of existence - when there is no other way and the deeper wells have dried up - is nothing, and collapses the moment a truer emotion makes that surface shake. This is why one can never be alone enough when one writes, why there can never be enough silence around one when one writes, why even night is not night enough. This is why there is never enough time at one's disposal, for the roads are long and it is easy to go astray, there are even times when one becomes afraid and has the desire - even without any constraint or enticement - to run back (a desire always severely punished later on), how much more so if one were suddenly to receive a kiss from the most beloved lips! I have often thought that the best mode of life for me would be to sit in the innermost room of a spacious locked cellar with my writing things and a lamp. Food would be brought and always put down far away from my roo ~ Franz Kafka

I was here. I was fine. It was a beautiful day, and I was around people who gave me more love and happiness in a month than I'd had for seventeen years.

I would never have to see those jerks again.

And today was going to be a good day, damn it.

So I got it together and finally looked back down at my best friend to ask, "Did I tell you I stole a bottle of Visine once because I wanted to put a few drops into my dad's coffee, but I always chickened out?"

Lenny snickered. "No. Psycho. Did I tell you that one time I asked Santa to bring my mom back?"

I made a face. "That's sad, Lenny." I blinked. "I pretty much did the same thing."

"Uh-huh."

I raised my eyebrows at her. "Did I ever tell you that I wanted to have like ten kids when I was younger?"

The laugh that came out of her wasn't as strong as it usually was, but I was glad she let it out anyway. It sounded just like her, loud and direct and so full of happiness it was literally infectious. "Ten? Jesus, why?"

I wrinkled my nose at her. "It sounded like a good number."

The scoff that came out of her right then was a little louder. "You're fucking nuts, Luna. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten-ten?"

"That's what ten means." I grinned at her. "I said that was back when I was younger, not any time recently. I can't afford ten kids."

"Still. How about… none?"

I glanced ~ Mariana Zapata

I didn't have a financial need, and I wasn't very gifted at relationships. I probably was more like what we think of boys as being: hard to pin down and wary of commitment. ~ Candice Bergen

I also played with Jimi Hendrix. Jimi would come down and sit in with Retaliation and we would have a ball. He offered me the gig with him at 20 pounds a week, which at that point, was like 60 bucks. ~ Aynsley Dunbar

He stumbled, almost fell, and decided to sit down, with his back against the tunnel wall, his feet resting against the opposite wall. Roaring out of the morass of pity, terror, happiness, joy, sadness, elation that he had inherited - shooting forth from this void, the single sharp thought: She does not love me. It was almost more than he could take. But he was not the kind of person to fold, to crack, to be broken, and so instead, in those moments after the realization, he bent - and bent, and kept on bending beneath the pressure of this new and terrible knowledge. Soon he would bend into a totally new shape altogether. He welcomed that. He wanted that. Maybe the new thing he would become would no longer hurt, would no longer fear, would no longer look back down into the void and wonder what was left of him.

She did not love him. It made him laugh as he sat there -- great belly laughs that doubled him over in the dust, where he lay for a long moment, recovering. It was funny beyond bearing. He had fought through a dozen terrors all for love of her. And she did not love him. He felt like a character in a holovid - the jester, the clown, the fool. ~ Jeff VanderMeer

For just a moment, I thought about it. I pictured how it would be, dusting off the rusty Romance Lindsey, long hidden in some box in the back closet of my mind, under piles of more important boxes filled with Work Lindsey, and Mommy Lindsey, Divorce Court Lindsey, and now Shared Custody Lindsey, and Depressed Insane Lindsey.
Was Romance Lindsey even there anymore? Probably not. She had sat forgotten for so long that, like the Skin Horse and the Velveteen Rabbit, she had ceased to be real. I never even thought about her anymore. Until now. Which was a bad sign that the boxes were getting jumbled up and Control Freak Lindsey needed to get to work.
...
He grinned wickedly, and my stomach fluttered like a firecracker the instant the chain reaction starts inside the casing. Romance Lindsey and Tomboy Lindsey grabbed Mommy Lindsey, shoved her into a box, and sat down on the lid. Control Freak Lindsey ran away screaming. ~ Lisa Wingate

The best part of the ceremony was after Shy kissed his bride, and when we were done, he didn't let go. So I stood in his arms, my thumb stroking his jaw, my eyes gazing up at him. the world had melted away, so I didn't hear the hoots and hollers of friends and family.
I only heard what he muttered in a voice that was weirdly raw but unbelievable beautiful: "Like I'm the only man on the planet."
In that minute, he was but then again, for me, really, when it came down to it, he always had been. ~ Kristen Ashley

Smokers always waxed poetic about the ritual of it, how a large part of the satisfaction was packing the box and pulling the foil wrapper and plucking an aromatic stick. They claimed they loved the lighting, the ashing, the feeling of being able to hold something between their fingers. That was all well and good, but there was nothing quite like actually smoking it: Leigh loved inhaling. To pull with your lips on that filter and feel the smoke drift across your tongue, down your throat, and directly into your lungs was to be transported momentarily to nirvana. She remembered- every day- how it felt after the first inhale, just as the nicotine was hitting her bloodstream. A few seconds of both tranquility and alertness, together, in exactly the right amounts. Then the slow exhale- forceful enough so that the smoke didn't merely seep from your mouth but not so energetic that it disrupted the moment- would complete the blissful experience. ~ Lauren Weisberger

The wanderlust crept up again inside her like a shooting star, a sudden, violent urge to escape disappearing into darkness again. She pushed down the afterglow and focused. ~ Eleanor Brown

The ball was coming down like a butterfly with sore feet. ~ Jamie Redknapp

You think you're the foreigner here, and I'm the American, and I just look the other way while the President or somebody sends down this and that ... to torture people with. But nobody asked my permission, okay? Sometimes I feel like I'm a foreigner, too. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

Only the middle distance and what may be called the remoter foreground are strictly human. When we look very near or very far, man either vanishes altogether or loses his primacy. The astronomer looks even further afield than the Sung painter and sees even less of human life. At the other end of the scale the physicist, the chemist, the physiologist pursue the close-up – the cellular close-up, the molecular, the atomic and subatomic. Of that which, at twenty feet, even at arm's length, looked and sounded like a human being no trace remains.
Something analogous happens to the myopic artist and the happy lover. In the nuptial embrace personality is melted down; the individual (it is the recurrent theme of Lawrence's poems and novels) ceases to be himself and becomes a part of the vast impersonal universe.
And so it is with the artist who chooses to use his eyes at the near point. In his work humanity loses its importance, even disappears completely. Instead of men and women playing their fantastic tricks before high heaven, we are asked to consider the lilies, to meditate on the unearthly beauty of 'mere things,' when isolated from their utilitarian context and rendered as they are, in and for themselves. Alternatively (or, at an earlier stage of artistic development, exclusively), the nonhuman world of the near-point is rendered in patterns. These patterns are abstracted for the most part from leaves and flowers – the rose, the lotus, the acanthus, palm, papyrus – an ~ Aldous Huxley

Puberty for a girl is like floating down a broadening river into an open sea. ~ G. Stanley Hall

The Aristocrat

The Devil is a gentleman, and asks you down to stay
At his little place at What'sitsname (it isn't far away).
They say the sport is splendid; there is always something new,
And fairy scenes, and fearful feats that none but he can do;
He can shoot the feathered cherubs if they fly on the estate,
Or fish for Father Neptune with the mermaids for a bait;
He scaled amid the staggering stars that precipice, the sky,
And blew his trumpet above heaven, and got by mastery
The starry crown of God Himself, and shoved it on the shelf;
But the Devil is a gentleman, and doesn't brag himself.

O blind your eyes and break your heart and hack your hand away,
And lose your love and shave your head; but do not go to stay
At the little place in What'sitsname where folks are rich and clever;
The golden and the goodly house, where things grow worse for ever;
There are things you need not know of, though you live and die in vain,
There are souls more sick of pleasure than you are sick of pain;
There is a game of April Fool that's played behind its door,
Where the fool remains for ever and the April comes no more,
Where the splendour of the daylight grows drearier than the dark,
And life droops like a vulture that once was such a lark:
And that is the Blue Devil that once was the Blue Bird;
For the Devil is a gentleman, and doesn't keep his word. ~ G.K. Chesterton

The Deliverator's car has enough potential energy packed into its batteries to
fire a pound of bacon into the Asteroid Belt. Unlike a bimbo box or a Burb
beater, the Deliverator's car unloads that power through gaping, gleaming,
polished sphincters. When the Deliverator puts the hammer down, shit happens.
You want to talk contact patches? Your car's tires have tiny contact patches,
talk to the asphalt in four places the size of your tongue. The Deliverator's
car has big sticky tires with contact patches the size of a fat lady's thighs.
The Deliverator is in touch with the road, starts like a bad day, stops on a
peseta.
Why is the Deliverator so equipped? Because people rely on him. He is a role
model. This is America. People do whatever the fuck they feel like doing, you
got a problem with that? Because they have a right to. And because they have
guns and no one can fucking stop them. As a result, this country has one of the
worst economies in the world. When it gets down to it -- talking trade balances
here -- once we've brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once
things have evened out, they're making cars in Bolivia and microwave ovens in
Tadzhikistan and selling them here -- once our edge in natural resources has
been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North
Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel -- once the Invisible Hand ha ~ Neal Stephenson

You write poetry?" Klaus asked.
He had read a lot about poets but had never met one.
"Just a little bit," Isadora said modestly. "I write poems down in this notebook. It's an interest of mine."
"Sappho!" Sunny shrieked, which meant something like, "I'd be very pleased to hear a poem of yours! ~ Lemony Snicket

For every mother who ever cursed God for her child dead in the road, for every father who ever cursed the man who sent him away from the factory with no job, for every child who was ever born to pain and asked why, this is the answer. Our lives are like these things I build. Sometimes they fall down for a reason, sometimes they fall down for no reason at all. ~ Stephen King

The thing about hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, the thing that was so profound to me that summer - and yet also, like most things, so very simple - was how few choices I had and how often I had to do the thing I least wanted to do. How there was no escape or denial. No numbing it down with a martini or covering it up with a roll in the hay. As I clung to the chaparral that day, attempting to patch up my bleeding finger, terrified by every sound that the bull was coming back, I considered my options. There were only two and they were essentially the same. I could go back in the direction I had come from, or I could go forward in the direction I intended to go. ~ Cheryl Strayed

At her feet, a luminous path lit the way through the grassy field. It was made entirely from glow sticks; each of the radiant lights had been painstakingly set into the ground at perfect intervals, tracing a curved trail that shone through the darkness.
Apparently, Jay had been busy.
Near the water's edge, at the end of the iridescent pathway and beneath a stand of trees, Jay had set up more than just a picnic. He had created a retreat, an oasis for the two of them.
Violet shook her head, unable to find the words to speak.
He led her closer, and Violet followed, amazed.
Jay had hung more of the luminous glow sticks from the low-hanging branches, so they dangled overhead. They drifted and swayed in the breeze that blew up from the lake.
Beneath the natural canopy of limbs, he had set up two folding lounge chairs and covered them with pillows and blankets.
"I'd planned to use candles, but the wind would've blown 'em out, so I had to improvise."
"Seriously, Jay? This is amazing." Violet felt awed. She couldn't imagine how long it must have taken him.
"I'm glad you like it."
He led her to one of the chairs and drew her down until she was sitting before he started unpacking the cooler.
She half-expected him to pull out a jar of Beluga caviar, some fancy French cheeses, and Dom Perignon champagne. Maybe even a cluster of grapes to feed to her…one at a time. So when he started laying out their picnic, Violet laughed.
Instea ~ Kimberly Derting

Also, I have a pouch below my belly, whereas I'd always had a thin waist before. Now there's this situation down there, low and grabbable. If it had a zipper, you could store stuff in there, like a fanny pack. ~ Anne Lamott

So it went. Bob was increasingly cynical, leery, uneasy; Jesse was increasingly cavalier, merry, moody, fey, unpredictable. If his gross anatomy suggested a strong smith in his twenties, his actual physical constitution was that of a man who was incrementally dying. He was sick with rheums and aches and lung congestions, he tilted against chairs and counters and walls, in cold weather he limped with a cane. He coughed incessantly when lying down, his clever mind was often in conflict, insomnia stained his eye sockets like soot, he seemed in a state of mourning. He counteracted the smell of neglected teeth with licorice and candies, he browned his graying hair with dye, he camouflaged his depressions and derangements with masquerades of extreme cordiality, courtesy, and good will toward others. ~ Ron Hansen

Bitterness is like a weed. Remember how hard it always was to pull out thistles once they root? Remember how deep those roots grow, and how if you just snapped off the end of it, the plant would grow right back? You have to dig down deep inside. Let God search your heart. Let Him show you what's there and help you root out all that bitterness. Then you can pray for forgiveness. ~ Lynn Austin

She went as through a forest
the columns were furrowed like ancient trees, and in through the forest flowed the light, many-hued and clear as song, from the pictured windows. High up above her, beasts and men sported among the stone leafage, and angels played
and yet far, dizzily far higher, the vaulting soared, lifting the church towards God. In a hall that lay to one side, worship was being held at an altar. Kristin sank down on her knees by a pillar. The singing cut into her like a too strong light. Now she saw how low she lay in the dust ... Pater noster. Credo in unum Deum. Ave Maria, gratia plena. ~ Sigrid Undset

Misty bit her lip - or at least that was what it looked like with the glamour. Kate could only imagine what she was doing with that mouth full of fangs. 'How do I know I can trust him? Or you?'

Kate rose to her feet. 'You don't. You never do, with people. Some things, you have to take on faith.' She turned and headed for the door, then paused and looked back. 'I don't know how much you know about humans. I'm just guessing here, but we probably seem like a bunch of violent, paranoid, back-stabbing monkeys. 'Cause we are. But the thing is … sooner or later, we all find ways to trust each other, even though we might get burned doing it.'

Misty's lip curled into a sneer. 'Because deep down inside, humans are all noble creatures that want to rise above their natures, right?'

'Oh, hell no,' Kate said. 'It's just better than facing the darkness alone.'
Then she turned and walked out, leaving the dumbstruck Misty behind her. ~ Chris Lester

Many different kinds of sprouts lay torn. Green, purple and orange leaves lay scattered across the dark soil, and the thorn fence surrounding the bed had a fist-sized hole in it. Teacher eased himself into a squat, poked at the inside of the hole. Whatever made the hole had left blood on the thorns. The sprouts looked like wispy ghosts, pale and broken. Their delicate leaves and stems were riddled with bites. Life drained out of them like water dripping from a hanging cloth, and a breeze made them dance sadly. It felt like a funeral.
Teacher picked up a gnawed berry and gently squeezed it until purple juice dripped down his thumb. He placed the berry by the plant's roots.
Chandi's small face bunched up. "Are they dead?"
"They're dying, yes." Yuvali took her hand. "But their bodies will help other plants grow. ~ B.T. Lowry

It must be very tiring for the Consort," Lorelei said next to me.
[ ... ]
"Perhaps a mount could be brought ... ?" Lorelei suggested.
Out of a corner I saw both Barabas and George freeze. Yes, I know I've been insulted. Settle down. "Thank you for your concern. I can manage."
"Please, it's no trouble at all. You could hurt yourself. I know that even something minor like a twisted ankle would present a big problem for a human ... "
Do not punch the pack princess; do not punch the pack princess ...
"We wouldn't want you to struggle to keep up."
Okay, she went too far. I gave her a nice big smile.
Curran's face snapped into a neutral expression. "We just got here, baby. It's too early for you to start killing people. ~ Ilona Andrews

It's okay, you know." The cocky smile appears. "You can call me your boyfriend. I'd actually like it."
"No, I don't want to tie you down like that." It's such a lie. I don't know why I always say the opposite of what I want. Of course I want him to be my boyfriend. I don't even want to think about anyone else having him.
"What would you say about being my girlfriend? That way, I'd be the one tying you down. And I'd be your boyfriend by default. ~ Allie Everhart

The machine-like behavior of people chained to electronics constitutes a degradation of their well-being and of their dignity which, for most people in the long run, becomes intolerable. Observations of the sickening effect of programmed environments show that people in them become indolent, impotent, narcissistic and apolitical. The political process breaks down because people cease to be able to govern themselves; they demand to be managed. ~ Ivan Illich