Like A Butterfly Quotes

From the moment of birth, every human being wants to discover happiness and avoid suffering. No differences in our culture or our education or our religion affect this. From the very core of our being, we simply desire joy and contentment. But so often these feelings are fleeting and hard to find, like a butterfly that lands on us and then flutters away. "The ~ Dalai Lama XIV

Like butterflies, we evolve; but as Beings of Light we continuously evolve when we are fully present. ~ Michelle Cruz-Rosado

You look like a butterfly that's just flown in from the garden, Hunt said softly. ~ Lisa Kleypas

Now I'm floating like a butterfly
Stinging like a bee I earned my stripes
I went from zero, to my own hero ~ Katy Perry

Liraz may have captured Ziri's soul like a butterfly in a bottle, but that was only a formality. It was already hers.
And, clearly, judging by the state of her laugh-sobbing in Karou's arms, hers was his, too. ~ Laini Taylor

We're never alone. As soon as we step outside the campfire glow, our Muse lights on our shoulder like a butterfly. The act of courage calls for infallibly that deeper part of ourselves that supports and sustains us. ~ Steven Pressfield

I would say things like 'I am the greatest! I'm pretty! If you talk jive, you'll drop in five! I float like a butterfly, sting like a bee! I'm pretty!' When white people heard me talking like this, some said, 'That black man talks too much. He's bragging.' ~ Muhammad Ali

Read like a butterfly, write like a bee. ~ Philip Pullman

Happiness is like a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Ah, I know you, An. You're too dreamy. Be careful what you do. Choose your life with your head, not your heart. You are like a butterfly. Beautiful. Quick to die. ~ Andrew X. Pham

I embraced that hope for a moment, grabbed onto it with both hands, and held it close like the rare treasure it was. Then I let go of it, let it float away like a butterfly on a bright day, because the darkest part of the night was yet to come, and there was no place for it here. ~ Jennifer Estep

I'll beat him so bad he'll need a shoehorn to put his hat on. ~ Muhammad Ali

Love is like a butterfly - chase it and it will fly away. Be still and be you and it will come and rest upon your skin where it feels safe and welcome. ~ Toni Sorenson

True beauty of dress consists in its simplicity ... What do these devotees of fashion gain? Only the satisfaction of being admired, like a butterfly. ~ Ellen G. White

I would have liked to catch hold of sleep at least once, just as I had been resolved to catch hold of death one day, to catch hold of the wings of the angel of sleep when it came for me, to grab it with two fingers like a butterfly after sneaking up on it from behind. [ ... ] My sleep game was practice for the grand struggle with death. ~ Danilo Kis

To Beatrice- My love flew like a butterfly Until death swooped down like a bat As the poet Emma Montana McElroy said: 'That's the end of that ~ Daniel Handler

I smiled down at Charlie, and I understood that he would be free now even if I would not. In this way the life that was in me would find its way in him now. It was not a sad feeling. I felt my heart take off lightly like a butterfly and I thought, yes, this is it, something has survived in me, something that does not need to run anymore, because it is worth more than all the money in the world and its currency, its true home, is the living. And not just the living in this particular country or in that particular country, but the secret, irresistible heart of the living. I smiled back at Charlie and I knew that the hopes of this whole human world could fit inside one soul. ~ Chris Cleave

You were a crushed and broken thing, like a butterfly crumpled in the hand of a child. ~ Pippa DaCosta

Like a butterfly stuck in a chrysalis, waiting for the perfect moment, I was waiting for the day I could burst forth and fly away and find my home. ~ Emme Rollins

Marya pinned out her childhood like a butterfly. She considered it the way a mathematician considers an equation. ~ Catherynne M Valente

I want to fly like a butterfly around this beautiful world, till the last frame of my life and the last click of my heart. ~ Biju Karakkonam Nature And Wild Life Photographer

Places We Love

Places we love exist only through us,
Space destroyed is only illusion in the constancy of time,
Places we love we can never leave,
Places we love together, together, together,

And is this room really a room, or an embrace,
And what is beneath the window: a street or years?
And the window is only the imprint left by
The first rain we understood, returning endlessly,

And this wall does not define the room, but perhaps the night
Your son began to move in your sleeping blood,
A son like a butterfly of flame in your hall of mirrors,
The night you were frightened by your own light,

And this door leads into any afternoon
Which outlives it, forever peopled
With your casual movements, as you stepped,
Like fire into copper, into my only memory;

When you go, space closes over like water behind you,
Do not look back: there is nothing outside you,
Space is only time visible in a different way,
Places we love we can never leave. ~ Ivan V. Lalić

A pinned butterfly holds no delight. A pinned butterfly is nothing like a butterfly at all. ~ Patrick Rothfuss

Float like a butterfly, sting like a unicorn ;) ~ T.J. Klune

Some say it is best not to go near the center of time. Life is a vessel of sadness, but is noble to live life and without time there is no life. Others disagree. They would rather have an eternity of contentment, even if that eternity were fixed and frozen, like a butterfly mounted in a case. ~ Alan Lightman

Keep those faces in mind, the little girls and boys in the early grades, all trusting the adults to show them the way, all eager and excited about life and what will come next, and then just follow those faces over time. Follow the face of a little girl who doesn't read very well and is told to try harder; who tends to daydream and is told she better pay attention; who talks out in class when she sees something fascinating, like a butterfly on the windowpane, and is told to leave the class and report to the principal; who forgets her homework and is told she will just never learn, will she; who writes a story rich in imagination and insight and is told her handwriting and spelling are atrocious; who asks for help and is told she should try harder herself before getting others to do her work for her; who begins to feel unhappy in school and is told that big girls try harder. This is the brutal process of the breaking of the spirit of a child. I can think of no more precious resource than the spirits of our children. Life necessarily breaks us all down somewhat, but to do it unnecessarily to our children in the name of educating them -- this is a tragedy. To take the joy of learning -- which one can see in any child experimenting with something new -- to take that joy and turn it into fear -- that is something we should never do. ~ Edward M. Hallowell, M.D.

I told him that when we first met ... I felt like a butterfly trapped in a net. But ... I told him that the more time I spent with him, the more I began to realize how much he means to me I told him that since it seems to be my destiny to dodge raindrops ... I was grateful to be dodging them with him. So, I promised him that it would always be his name on my mind when I start my rotation ... and when I go to bed each evening ... and every quiet moment in between. It will be his name ... savored on my lips ... stretched across my heart ... worshipped by my body ... and branded in my mind ... until death do us part ... and forever after that. ~ Amy A. Bartol

Gracefully and gratefully accept the changes in our lives as casually and flexibly like a butterfly does." ~ Angelica Hopes, Odyssey of a Heart, Home of a Soul ~ Angelica Hopes

But most of the time when I wear them, I don't know, I'm kind of hoping - foolishly, probably - that people will read it, get the message, change their lives for the better, even if it's only in the smallest of ways, and make the world a better place." Knox was still grinning as he buttered his toast. "So you're saying your shirts are like a butterfly effect?" "Pretty much, yeah. And when they hand me my Nobel Peace Prize in fifty years for changing the world, one snarky shirt at a time, I'm going to wave it in your face and chant 'Told ya so' about a million times. ~ Nicole Williams

My toughest fight was with my first wife. ~ Muhammad Ali

I'm still like a butterfly going from one job to another job. But it's quite lovely - I hope to keep this freedom, to have fun. ~ Carine Roitfeld

The Force is all around us," she said. " You don't have to be sensitive to it to attract it, to be part of it. We're all part of it. Some people are just...well, think of it like a butterfly landing on you. That doesn't mean you're a flower. It just means you smell sweet. It's a good thing. ~ Delilah S. Dawson

I believe that if there is a huge chunk of white/truth in you, you will be drawn mostly to truth. If there is a lot of black/ego in you, you will naturally migrate to darkness/ego. We can't change our natural compositions or our attraction to certain lighting, but we can slowly change our angle of perception. Anyone can work on balancing their inner lighting simply by adjusting their outer lenses. All you have to do is learn to use your heart before your mind to see things. There is no light greater than truth, and it shines at the heart of all creation. Be like a butterfly and celebrate it every day. It is inside you. Be aware of it so it can cultivate it to grow stronger and bigger. ~ Suzy Kassem

Just like a butterfly, I had sprung from my cocoon for the first time. For my risk, I was rewarded with Jacob Bennett." - Laylla Jonson (Beneath the Blossom Tree) ~ L.B. Malpass

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

I drank that Wine of which the Soul is its vessel.
Its ecstasy has stolen my intellect away.
A Light came and kindled a Flame in the depth of my Soul.
A Light so radiant that the sun orbits around it like a butterfly. ~ Rumi

The object that was pinning me haplessly to the ground, like a butterfly on a collector's tray, was of twentieth-century origin and of very specific function.
Oh, all right, it was a public lavatory. ~ Jonathan Stroud

I literally melted. Seriously, how was I going to not go for this guy?
"May I?" he asked. Somehow I went from puddle on the floor to freaking out school girl. My insides were fluttering like a butterfly garden. ~ Jessica Florence

Being present. The mind is like a butterfly that flits from one flower to the next. Seldom do we find ourselves nestled in the excuisite and eternal ocean of here and now. When you are, you can connect with your true self that is beyond the chattering of your mind. When you take the effort to focus your drifting consciousness to become fully awake to the present moment, you will discover the glorious light that dwells within you. ~ Denise Linn

Flower petals in the breeze look like a butterfly flapping its wings. My love for you takes flight like a white orchid blushing pink. ~ Jarod Kintz

Muhammad Ali has a lot to answer for. When he lit the flame at the Atlanta Olympics there wasn't a dry eye on the planet. Why were we crying? Because a great sportsman had been reduced to this-a shuffling, mumbling, twitching cripple. A man who once danced like a butterfly now shook like blancmange.
We always remember sportsmen. When the body deserts a scientist like Stephan Hawking we figure that he'll be able to live in his mind, but a crippled athlete is like a bird with a broken wing. When you soar the heights the landing is harder. ~ Michael Robotham

She thinks about Christ. How she'd like to lay everything down at his feet. "Here you go," she'd say, dropping everything down like a pile of wood. "You gave me this, and I have no idea what to do with it." Then she'd take out a key, a big, clunky, golden key and she'd reach to unlock her heart with it. Her heart would open up and all kinds of wondrous things would come spilling out - maybe rushing forth like a waterfall, or maybe fluttering out gently like a butterfly. "Here it is," she'd tell him. "Everything that's in my heart, for you and me to see. ~ Kelly Quindlen

Kiss me with love like a butterfly kisses flowers to find and taste the nectar of life. ~ Debasish Mridha

Be the Music that Moves you
Float like a Butterfly Sting like Bee
Follow your DREAMS! ~ John Green

There's some instinctive attraction that draws you, as a writer, to your subject. And the attraction usually has to do with some primal personal thing that, of course, you have no idea about. In the end, the piece always comes down to the one or two sentences you struggle over. The sentences where you try to say explicitly what it is that the two of you, subject and writer, have in common. Those are the sentences that you just bang your head against the wall over until you get them right. It's very hard to make that distillation but that is actually what your job is. Without trying to pin the person like a butterfly to the wall, to sum it up. If I can do that, then I feel satisfied. To give the subject a reality in the form of a sentence that is like a piece of rock crystal or a prism. ~ Judith Thurman

It is easy to lose hope when all is lost. We do not realise that is just the beginning. That is just the catalyst. That is when we have to spread our wings like a butterfly. The rainy days will come but so will 'the botanical drawings' of life. Of kitchen tables, our mother's apron strings, cabbage roses and toys if we want to become the women our mother's were. There are so many careers for women to choose from today. Wherever they find themselves women will always find an abundance. ~ Abigail George

Lasting companies know how to reinvent themselves. Hewlett-Packard had done that repeatedly; it started as an instrument company, then became a calculator company, then a computer company. Apple has been sidelined by Microsoft in the PC business. You've got to reinvent the company to do some other thing, like other consumer products or devices. You've got to be like a butterfly and have a metamorphosis. ~ Walter Isaacson

Love is like a butterfly, when it comes and sits on your palm, you can either care for it and let it fly if it wishes, or you can trap it and see it die. ~ Abhijit Naskar

My entire demeanor is displaying confusion, guilt, shame, pain, pleasure, and a yearning need for him. Lying beneath this huge man, I feel so very helpless and pinned like a butterfly on a plaque. Lucas's ~ Erotic Storm

An author's great day is releasing your book into the world like a butterfly and having a reviewer come upon it and say…oh, that's lovely! ~ Nanette L. Avery

Inside John, she thinks, is another John, who is much nicer. This other John will emerge like a butterfly from a cocoon, a Jack from a box, a pit from a prune, if the first John is only squeezed enough. ~ Margaret Atwood

Hold love like a butterfly, with gentle preservation. Hold life like the reigns of a wild stallion, with fierce assertion. Encompass that, and you find the nectar of the immortal spirit. ~ Kellie Elmore

She was like a butterfly, full of color and vibrancy when she chose to open her wings, yet hardly visible when she closed them. ~ Geraldine Brooks

And then one day when you're playing your little game you'll suddenly find yourself pinned down like a butterfly. ~ Ian Fleming

Like a butterfly in glass, I want to fly away to you but the invisible walls contain me. It's not time.
Hard to accept when I feel your words calling to me.
Your soul beckoning me with its pull.
Come to me, you say in one breath; stay, you say in another.
I taste your lips on mine and pray I make my way to you
As a butterfly chases its freedom.
So will I. ~ Rachel Thompson

Be awesome! Let your mind dance like a butterfly and your heart sing like a flower. ~ Debasish Mridha

Coincidence has nothing to do with faith or destiny , it's just a miss matched eqation of timing and spacing ... just like a butterfly effect ~ Omar Mezzat

I am a happy camper so I guess I'm doing something right. Happiness is like a butterfly; the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Time can play all sorts of tricks on you. In the blink of an eye, babies appear in carriages, coffins disappear into the ground, wars are won and lost, and children transform, like butterflies, into adults. ~ Brian Selznick

To be a fantastic writer, live in your dreams and imaginations where you can dance like a peacock, swim like a shark, and fly like a butterfly. Live where reality has no power to change you. ~ Debasish Mridha

Everything comes easily to Sebastian, don't you know? He drifts because of it - drifts from person to person, thing to thing, gadding about like a butterfly. ~ Courtney Milan

A girl's desire is like a pretty butterfly. And a man's desire is like a butterfly net. His desire captures and kills her. He turns her into an object to be pinned on a corkboard. I don't think I'm interested in the tyranny of the couple. I'm more interested in what a person does when they're forced to be by themselves. ~ Heather O'Neill

[I]f you set out to mention everything you would never be done, and that's what counts, to be done, to have done. Oh, I know, even when you mention only a few of the things there are you do not get done either, I know, I know. But it's a change of muck. And if all muck is the same muck that doesn't matter, it's good to have a change of muck, to move from one heap to another, from time to time, fluttering you might say, like a butterfly, as if you were ephemeral. ~ Samuel Beckett

Love is like a butterfly
As soft and gentle as a sigh
The multicolored moods of love are like its satin wings
Love makes your heart feel strange inside
It flutters like soft wings in flight
Love is like a butterfly, a rare and gentle thing ~ Dolly Parton

Green was the silence, wet was the light,
the month of June trembled like a butterfly. ~ Pablo Neruda

Her adept said: "I'll keep it off you. Nav, show them what the Ninth House does."

Gideon lifted her sword. The construct worked itself free of its last confines of masonry and rotten wood and heaved before them, flexing itself like a butterfly.

"We do bones, motherfucker," she said. ~ Tamsyn Muir

I could smell the curves of the river beyond the dusk and I saw the last light supine and tranquil upon tideflats like pieces of broken mirror, then beyond them lights began in the pale clear air, trembling a little like butterflies hovering a long way off. ~ William Faulkner

For a new year to bring you something new, make a move, like a butterfly tearing its cocoon! Make a move! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Everyone is like a butterfly, they start out ugly and awkward and then morph into beautiful graceful butterflies that everyone loves. ~ Drew Barrymore

With cropping, a new integrity appears and winning abstractions flutter up like butterflies. You can afford to be critical, discriminating, innocent, open-minded, charmed, beguiled or bamboozled. ~ Robert Genn

Men pass in front of our eyes like butterflies, creatures of a brief season. We love them; they are brave, proud, beautiful, clever; and they die almost at once. They die so soon that our hearts are continually racked with pain. ~ Philip Pullman

You must look through an opportunity and not at it. ~ Mayur Ramgir

Try as we will to take the "cure" of ineffectuality; to meditate on the Taoist fathers' doctrine of submission, of withdrawal, of a sovereign absence; to follow, like them, the course of consciousness once it ceases to be at grips with the world and weds the form of things as water does, their favorite element - we shall never succeed. They scorn both our curiosity and our thirst for suffering; in which they differ from the mystics, and especially from the medieval ones, so apt to recommend the virtues of the hair shirt, the scourge, insomnia, inanition, and lament.
"A life of intensity is contrary to the Tao," teaches Lao Tse, a normal man if ever there was one. But the Christian virus torments us: heirs of the flagellants, it is by refining our excruciations that we become conscious of ourselves. Is religion declining? We perpetuate its extravagances, as we perpetuate the macerations and the cell-shrieks of old, our will to suffer equaling that of the monasteries in their heyday. If the Church no longer enjoys a monopoly on hell, it has nonetheless riveted us to a chain of sighs, to the cult of the ordeal, of blasted joys and jubilant despair.
The mind, as well as the body, pays for "a life of intensity." Masters in the art of thinking against oneself, Nietzsche, Baudelaire, and Dostoevsky have taught us to side with our dangers, to broaden the sphere of our diseases, to acquire existence by division from our being. And what for the great Chinaman was a symbol o ~ Emil M. Cioran

Small said, "But what about when we are dead and gone, will you love me then, does love go on?"
... Large (replied) "Look at the stars, how they shine and glow, some of the stars died a long time ago. Still they shine in the evening skies, for you see ... love like starlight never dies ... ~ Debi Gliori

I feel like we're looked at as either completely nonsexual characters or overly sexual characters, and I feel like that affects how we're treated in the public space by men. I believe that women of color experience street harassment in a very hyper way. So I wanted to draw these women in their very normal, regular states and put those images out there in the public for people to see, instead of these other, very sexualized, images of women. ~ Tatyana Fazlalizadeh

Fear is a strong instrument of power, brother, extremely strong, in fact. If you pluck the right strings the population stays docile, concentrates on idiotic rubbish and doesn't complain about the things that are really important, like freedom of expression and thought and other fundamental human rights. ~ Anders De La Motte

We have not shown the world another way of doing life. Christians pretty much live like everybody else, they just sprinkle a little Jesus in along the way. ~ Shane Claiborne

What makes screenplays difficult are the things that require the most discipline and care and are just not seen by most people. I'm talking about movement - screenwriting is related to math and music, and if you zig here, you know you have to zag there. It's like the descriptions for a piece of music - you go fast or slow or with feeling. It's the same. ~ Robert Towne

Gamal Abdal Nasser, the nationalist leader of Egypt, was described by British Prime Minister Anthony Eden as an Egyptian Hitler. Then it carried on like that. Saddam Hussein became Hitler when he was no longer a friend of the West. Then Milosevic became Hitler. ~ Tariq Ali

My apartment is infested with koala bears. It's the cutest infestation ever. Way better than cockroaches. When I turn on the light a bunch of koala bears scatter. But I don't want 'em to, you know, I'm like "Hey, hold on, fellas. Let me hold one of you. And feed you a leaf." ~ Mitch Hedberg

I was full time on 'Party of Five' for one year, then more like a creative consultant for two years, where I was in the writing rotation but didn't have to go in every day or cover the set until midnight. ~ Susannah Grant

Behold, I am weary of my wisdom,
like a bee that has gathered too much honey;
I need hands outstretched to receive it. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Before she could think of what to say, he grasped the axe and turned toward her, his face a mass of angles in the lanternlight. "Step back."
This was a man who expected to be heeded. He did not wait to see if she followed his direction before he lifted the axe high above his head. She pressed herself into the corner of the dark room as he attacked the furniture with a vengeance, her surprise making her unable to resist watching him.
He was built beautifully.
Like a glorious Roman statue, all strong, lean muscles outlined by the crisp linen of his shirtsleeves when he lifted the tool overhead, his hands sliding purposefully along the haft, fingers grasping tightly as he brought the steel blade down into the age-old oak with a mighty thwack, sending a splinter of oak flying across the kitchen, landing atop the long-unused stove.
He splayed one long-fingered hand flat on the table, gripping the axe once more to work the blade out of the wood. He turned his head as he stood back, making sure she was out of the way of any potential projectiles- a movement she could not help but find comforting- before confronting the furniture and taking his next swing with a mighty heave.
The blade sliced into the oak, but the table held.
He shook his head and yanked the axe out once more, this time aiming for one of the remaining table legs.
Thwack!
Penelope's eyes went wide as the lanternlight caught the way his wool trousers wrapped tightly around his ma ~ Sarah MacLean

What do you and Chris even talk about?" he asks. "You have nothing in common."
"What do we talk about?" I counter.
Peter laughs. "Point taken." He pushes away from the wall and puts his head in my lap, and I go completely still.
I try to make my voice sound normal as I say, "You're in a really strange mood today."
He raises an eyebrow at me. "What kind of mood am I in?" Peter sure loves to hear about himself. Normally, I don't mind, but today I'm not in the mood to oblige him. He already has too many people in his life telling him how great he is.
"The obnoxious kind," I say, and he laughs.
"I'm sleepy." He closes his eyes and snuggles against me. "Tell me a bedtime story, Covey."
"Don't flirt," I tell him.
His eyes fly open. "I wasn't!"
"Yes, you were. You flirt with everyone. It's like you can't help yourself."
"Well, I don't ever flirt with you." Peter sits back up and checks his phone, and suddenly I'm wishing I didn't say anything at all. ~ Jenny Han

More recently, during a debate in the House of Lords in 1978 one of the members said: "If there is a more hideous language on the face of the earth than the American form of English, I should like to know what it is." (We should perhaps bear in mind that the House of Lords is a largely powerless, nonelective institution. It is an arresting fact of British political life that a Briton can enjoy a national platform and exalted status because he is the residue of an illicit coupling 300 years before between a monarch and an orange seller.) ~ Bill Bryson

The sound of a cell phone chiming at her desk seems to make her ears perk, and her eyes graze past my shoulders. She's like a dog that's been classically conditioned to react at the sound of a text message notification. ~ Winter Renshaw

They were both standing in front of me now, staring at me. Weston to my right, Donovan to my left, like a real life game of This or That, and of course the choice was This. It was the only choice. Practically. For my sanity. The other one wasn't even an actual option. And yet my body pulled traitorously toward That. ~ Laurelin Paige

That initial anger she had felt turned to sadness, and now it had become something else, almost a dullness of sorts. Even though she was constantly in motion, it seemed as if nothing special ever happened to her anymore. Each day seemed exactly like the last, and she had trouble differentiating among them. ~ Nicholas Sparks

Looking at the players that are truly successful, you see the durability and long careers. Those are the players I respect and look up to. I hope to become a player like that. ~ Daisuke Matsuzaka

Every other piece of industrial design is a pot or a dish or something insignificant. But when you have a chair, it's like a sculpture of a person: it's alive. It's big. You can't miss it. It's a 'look at me!' item. ~ Charles Pollock

What I enjoy is a collaboration. Working with other like-minded people. People who have brilliant minds and big hearts. ~ Julian Ovenden

I actually gained a lot of weight when I started to do 'Grey's Anatomy.' Doing eight theater shows a week, girl, is such a workout. But with TV, you're, like, sitting in your trailer waiting to go to the set. And there's catering and craft service every place you look. ~ Sara Ramirez

Thick smoke like a herd of black horses was rising over the massive building and being blown around by the wind. ~ Ismail Kadare

Once or twice she'd looked back at him and seen such a look of compassion in his brown eyes it had made her heart flop around like a fish on dry land. ~ Melanie Dickerson

I like The Smiths as well. They took a cue from The Buzzcocks. They have jangly guitars instead of distorted guitars. All the Manchester bands have a character about them. The Stone Roses and The Smiths and all that. Even if you don't like them, they have a certain original sound. ~ Steve Diggle

Once you finish a film, it doesn't belong to you anymore - it belongs to the audience to interpret it the way they feel like interpreting. ~ Clint Eastwood

I don't like the definition 'war correspondent'. It is history, not journalism, that has condemned the Middle East to war. I think 'war correspondent' smells a bit, reeks of false romanticism: it has too much of the whiff of Victorian reporters who would view battles from hilltops in the company of ladies, immune to suffering, only occasionally glancing towards the distant pop-pop of cannon fire. ~ Robert Fisk

Next time, just say something. It doesn't have to be the first date. Maybe the third or the fourth. Don't wait a year if you're sure. Certainty is sexy. And owning up to your attraction is sexy, too, and if you do it right and you're not creepy about it, I bet she will respect you for it anyway even if she does not like you back. ~ Mina V. Esguerra

Leni shook her head, feeling a familiar sadness creep in. She could never tell him how it felt to live with a dad who scared you sometimes and a mother who loved him too much and make him prove how much he loved her in dangerous ways. Like flirting.
These were Leni's secrets. Her burdens. She couldn't share them.
All this time, all these years, she'd dreamed of having a real friend, one who would tell her everything. How had she missed the obvious?
Leni couldn't have a real friend because she couldn't be one. ~ Kristin Hannah

. . .perhaps she figured I was already a highly forgiving person, that I did my best to treat shortcomings like hobos I'd found dozing on my porch: take them in and maybe they'll work for you. ~ Marisha Pessl