Mushy Quotes

If there is a word that should be retired from use in the service of women's expression, health, well-being, and equality, it is appropriate - a sloppy, mushy word that purports to convey some important moral essence but in reality is just a policing term used to regulate our language, appearance and demands. It's a control word.

We are done with control. ~ Soraya Chemaly

Tombstones grew like ragged, rotting teeth from the mushy grass-covered ground. ~ Fiona Druce

Don't go all mushy on me," I warn him, half-kidding. "Baby," he says, kissing my chin and pressing his weight on me. "Have you felt how hard I am? There ain't a mushy bone in me. ~ Karina Halle

Worrying about me won't help you get your job done."
"Who says I'm worried?"
He stayed where he was; simply held out his hand.
She crossed to him, took it, gripped hard. "When I met you," she said carefully, "I didn't want you in my life. You were one big complication. Every time I looked at you, or heard your voice, or so much as thought about you, the complication got bigger."
"And now?"
"Now? You are my life." She gave his hand one last squeeze, then released. "Okay, enough mushy stuff. Olympus. ~ J.D. Robb

Dear Camryn,

I never wanted it to be this way. I wanted to tell you these things myself, but I was afraid. I was afraid that if I told you out loud that I loved you, that what we had together would die with me. The truth is that I knew in Kansas that you were the one. I've loved you since that day when I first looked up into your eyes as you glared down at me from over the top of that bus seat. Maybe I didn't know it then, but I knew something had happened to me in that moment and I could never let you go.

I have never lived the way I lived during my short time with you. For the first time in my life, I've felt whole, alive, free. You were the missing piece of my soul, the breath in my lungs, the blood in my veins. I think that if past lives are real then we have been lovers in every single one of them. I've known you for a short time, but I feel like I've known you forever.

I want you to know that even in death I'll always remember you. I'll always love you. I wish that things could've turned out differently. I thought of you many nights on the road. I stared up at the ceiling in the motels and pictured what our life might be like together if I had lived. I even got all mushy and thought of you in a wedding dress and even with a mini me in your belly. You know, I always heard that sex is great when you're pregnant. ;-)

But I'm sorry that I had to leave you, Camryn. I'm so sorry…I wish the story of Orpheus and Eurydice was real ~ J.A. Redmerski

You have games on there?" he asks.
"Yeah," I answer for her. "She's become a checkers fanatic. Shelley, show him how it works."
While Shelley slowly taps the screen with her knuckles, Alex watches, seemingly fascinated.
When the checkers screen comes up, Shelley nudges Alex's hand.
"You go first," he says.
She shakes her head.
"She wants you to go first," I tell him.
"Cool." He taps the screen.
I watch, getting all mushy inside, as this tough guy plays quietly with my big sister.
"Do you mind if I make a snack for her?" I say, desperate to leave the room.
"Nah, go ahead," he says, his concentration on the game.
"You don't have to let her win," I say before leaving. "She can hold her own in checkers."
"Uh, thanks for the vote of confidence, but I am tryin' to win," Alex says. He has a genuine grin on his face, without trying to act cocky or cool. ~ Simone Elkeles

I'm not saying it's simple to find and tell the truth. It takes a great deal of hard work, intellectual honesty, open-mindedness, and a willingness to keep listening to people even when your gut is telling you they're full of it. Then it involves drilling through the layers of one's cultural assumptions and prejudgments, all the way down to the mushy middle of all of us, where I believe there's a basic humanity that tells us what's right and what's wrong. If we as writers apply that code - without the anchors of agenda or ideology - we can lift our prose to something that can be called the truth. It's the very best of what journalism can and should be. ~ Brad Parks

Randall, the gay alcoholic in the house next door, boldly peeps through my windows. 'Boy, you sure rock in that chair a lot,' he said last week, his face pressed against my screen.
This time I was lying on my bed with Katherine's cats. I'm watching them while she's out of town. I can be very mushy, and he watched me kissing them and saying that all the other cats in the neighborhood were jealous of their beauty. ~ David Sedaris

Haydn snorts. "Only gullible, lovesick fools spout that mushy crap." Thank the stars that his tone is teasing, because I can sense Logan's patience waning.
"When you find the right girl, I'm so going to make you eat your words. And I'm going to thoroughly enjoy rubbing your nose in it. ~ Siobhan Davis

Fynn, I love you.' When Anna said that, every word was shattered with the fullness of meaning she packed into it. Her 'I' was a totality. Whatever this 'I' was for Anna it was packed tight with being. Like the light that didn't fray, Anna's 'I' didn't fray either; it was pure and all of one piece. Her use of the word 'love' was not sentimental or mushy, it was impelling and full of courage and encouragement. For Anna, 'love' meant the recognition of perfectibility in another. Anna 'saw' a person in every part. Anna 'saw' a 'you'. Now that is something to experience, to be seen as a 'you', clearly and definitely, with no parts hidden. Wonderful and frightening. I'd always understood that it was Mister God who saw you clearly and in your entirety but then all Anna's efforts were directed to being like Mister God, so perhaps the trick is catching if only you try hard enough. ~ Fynn

You'd better be careful, they are going to revoke your vampire license if you get any more romantic and mushy."
"Don't worry," Burnett said, his eyes pinched as if serious. "I can still be a jackass, and kick ass, when it's called for. ~ C.C. Hunter

I like to rock and roll, but I'm a mushy guy, too. I want to be the guy that all the girls love and all the guys want to hang out with. ~ Kenny Chesney

You know, you handled yourself last night. Don't know many humans who would have taken on Rhage or me. Much less in front of all the brothers." "Ah, now, don't get all mushy on me. We ain't dating. ~ J.R. Ward

The American political system is like fast food - mushy, insipid, made out of disgusting parts of things and everybody wants some. ~ P. J. O'Rourke

Mushy food is a form of sensory deprivation. In the same way that a dark, silent room will eventually drive you to hallucinate, the mind rebels against bland, single-texture foods, edibles that do not engage the oral device. ~ Mary Roach

I'm sensitive. I'm nothing but a big ball of mushy sensitive stuff inside. Tell her, pumpkin."

"Your son is very sensitive," I dutifully recited.

"That didn't sound believable." He gently tugged on a strand of my hair, moving in closer. "My feelings are hurt. You've wounded me. Kiss it better."

"Apologies." I gave him a brief but sweet kiss on the lips.

"That the best you got?" He rubbed his lips against mine, trying to lure me in deeper. "You should be ashamed of yourself. I think you can do much, much better than that. Why, you missed my mouth entirely. ~ Kylie Scott

One of the frustrations about the modern world is that we don't even have a good vocabulary to describe our state. The word sentiment sounds mushy [but] sentiment is not mushy. ~ David Brooks

...the brain is like a muscle, and if you don't exercise it by reading and doing creative stuff, it'll get weak and mushy. ~ Jeff Kinney

My mate is really, really weird.
She is also absolutely covered in brown, mushy clay.
She laughs and holds a large lump up to show it to me. Her mouth moves, and she makes enough noise to scare away a group of birds near the shore.
She is so, so strange. ~ Shay Savage

Don't go on thinking poetry's just for sissies. There's mushy love poems, for sure, but there's also funny ones, lots about nature, war even. Whole point of it-they make ya feel something ~ Delia Owens

My tears were not hot and salty,and I imagined them melting my heart.They didn´t.They just made it mushy around the edges. ~ Lauren Myracle

I'm not good with the mushy words, but I want this. I want you. Forever. ~ Rebecca Zanetti

Say That! is an iron fist upside the mushy head of smooth jazz, and Grant Geissman's defiant declaration of independence. ~ Bill Milkowski

But maybe my expression isn't as bad as I think it is. Maybe Galen's just really good at reading me. Or maybe he's just being overly mushy himself. He is a tad protective, after all. I glance at Toraf, who's sitting on the other full-size bed next to Rayna. And Toraf is already looking at me. When our eyes meet, he shakes his head ever so slightly. As if to say, "Don't do it." As if to say, "You really don't want to do it." As if to say, "I know you really want to do it, but I'm asking you not to. As a friend."
I huff, then adjust myself in Galen's death grip. It's not fair that Galen and Toraf silently ask me to accept this. That my mother is putty in Grom's proficient hands. That her temperature barely raised a degree around my dad, yet Grom, within an hour of reunion, has her titanium exterior dissolving like Alka-Seltzer in hot water. I can't accept it. Won't. Will. Not. ~ Anna Banks

Well, what did I expect? S&M didn't stand for soft and mushy? ~ Jeaniene Frost

Ah, now, don't get all mushy on me. We ain't dating.
Butch ~ J.R. Ward

Zeke stood up. He held the Tater Tot up to the sunlight streaming in through the cafeteria window. Some kids sitting at tables nearby took notice. They listened in as Zeke began to recite:

"Oh, Tater Tot, oh, Tater Tot, so tiny and round,
What an amazing potato taste in you I have found!
Crispy on the outside, soft and mushy inside -
What kind of mysterious potato do you hide?
Russet, white, Yukon gold or Idaho?
Are you mashed or baked or fried - I really don't know!
Mystery spud so tasty and round,
What an amazing lunchtime treat in you I have found."

Everyone at the table applauded, and Zeke bowed. The kids around him clapped and whooped and laughed. ~ Alice Alfonsi

Also, I was living in the middle of my parents' marriage. No one ever says this about families, and maybe people who aren't only children don't even notice it, but half the time I feel like I'm this extra person watching them have a marriage. They fight, they kiss, they discuss the inlaws, they do projects, they take down the Christmas tree and reminisce about things I don't remember, they fight some more-and it's all this personal stuff that I really have no business witnessing, except I have nowhere else to go because I live here. I'm just trying to eat my dinner and instead I'm in the middle of this grown-up relationship that is complicated and disgustingly mushy and sometimes angry. ~ E. Lockhart

Leap Before You Look

The sense of danger must not disappear:
The way is certainly both short and steep,
However gradual it looks from here;
Look if you like, but you will have to leap.

Tough-minded men get mushy in their sleep
And break the by-laws any fool can keep;
It is not the convention but the fear
That has a tendency to disappear.

The worried efforts of the busy heap,
The dirt, the imprecision, and the beer
Produce a few smart wisecracks every year;
Laugh if you can, but you will have to leap.

The clothes that are considered right to wear
Will not be either sensible or cheap,
So long as we consent to live like sheep
And never mention those who disappear.

Much can be said for social savior-faire,
Bu to rejoice when no one else is there
Is even harder than it is to weep;
No one is watching, but you have to leap.

A solitude ten thousand fathoms deep
Sustains the bed on which we lie, my dear:
Although I love you, you will have to leap;
Our dream of safety has to disappear. ~ W.H. Auden

In India, 'cold weather' is merely a conventional phrase and has come into use through the necessity of having some way to distinguish between weather which will melt a brass door-knob and weather which will only make it mushy. ~ Mark Twain

Of course. The team on your carriage was beautiful. They are yours, aren't they?"
He ignored her and walked ahead until his foot connected with soft mushy ground. "Shit," he muttered.
"Exactly."
He glared at her, thinking himself a saint for not going for her throat. ~ Julia Quinn

Even your breakfast burrito plays a role; Lieberman's investigations had revealed that as our diet shifted over the centuries from chewy stuff like raw roots and wild game and gave way to mushy cooked staples like spaghetti and ground beef, our faces began to shrink. Ben Franklin's face was chunkier than yours; Caesar's was bigger than his. ~ Christopher McDougall

But come on - tell me the proposal story, anyway."

She raised an eyebrow. "Really?"

"Really. Just keep in mind that I'm a guy, which means I'm genetically predisposed to think that whatever mushy romantic tale you're about to tell me is highly cheesy."

Rylann laughed. "I'll keep it simple, then." She rested her drink on the table. "Well, you already heard how Kyle picked me up at the courthouse after my trial. He said he wanted to surprise me with a vacation because I'd been working so hard, but that we needed to drive to Champaign first to meet with his former mentor, the head of the U of I Department of Computer Sciences, to discuss some project Kyle was working on for a client." She held up a sparkly hand, nearly blinding Cade and probably half of the other Starbucks patrons. "In hindsight, yes, that sounds a little fishy, but what do I know about all this network security stuff? He had his laptop out, there was some talk about malicious payloads and Trojan horse attacks - it all sounded legitimate enough at the time."

"Remind me, while I'm acting U.S. attorney, not to assign you to any cybercrime cases."

"Anyhow. . . we get to Champaign, which as it so happens, is where Kyle and I first met ten years ago. And the limo turns onto the street where I used to live while in law school, and Kyle asks the driver to pull over because he wants to see the place for old time's sake. So we get out of the limo, and he's making thi ~ Julie James

In the Washington soft money game, big business and big labor are accomplices working together to protect the mushy middle of big government, with plenty of special interest plums: Big unions get big spending and big business gets corporate welfare and special tax breaks - all at the expense of average Americans. ~ John McCain

Why do you call me Dominic?" he asked me, ignoring my question and my trembling.
My mind was getting all mushy, and my stomach was fluttering with butterflies.
"Because it's your name."
He grinned. "Everyone calls me Nico though, only my brothers call my Dominic."
I shrugged. "I'm not like everyone else. ~ L.A. Casey

I had always believed that the very best food contains something elementally repugnant. That its innate grotesquerie is what makes it so perversely alluring. My own favorite foods tended toward a certain sludgy, muddy texture. And from the most expensive and genteel through to the indulgently crass, the appeal of slop abides: caviar, escargots, foie gras or hamburgers, kebabs, macaroni and cheese. Even vegetable soup forms a membrane. Apples begin rotting from the very first bite. No matter which end of the spectrum, there lies fundamentally and yet delectably disgusting, some squirmy, sinewy, oozing, greasy, sticky, glutinous, mushy, fatty, chewy, viscous thing that compels. The line between pleasure and revulsion can seem so very thin, if it even exists at all. ~ Lara Williams

A Complete List of Lily's Nicknames
Silly
Little
Lil
Monkey
Bunny
Bunny Rebbit
Mousse
Tiny Mouse
Goose
Silly Goose
Mongoose
Monster
Monster.com
Peanut
Penuche
Pinochle
Sweet Pea
Walnut
Walnut Brian
Copper Bottom
Crazy
Baby
Puppy
Guppy
Old Lady
Crank
Cranky
Cranky Pants
Squeaky
Squeaky Frome
Tiger
Dingbat
Mush
Mushy Face
Hipster
Slinkster
Slinky
Bean
Dog ~ Steven Rowley

A bright haze seemed to lie over everything, and she had a feeling of unreality, but the scene itself looked almost unbelievably wholesome, like something out of a commercial. Just your average family sitting down to eat turkey, she thought. One slightly flustered aunt, worried that the peas will be mushy and the rolls burnt, one comfortable uncle-to-be, one golden-haired teenage niece and her baby sister. One blue-eyed boy-next-door type, one spritely girlfriend, one gorgeous vampire passing the vegetables. A typical American household. ~ L.J.Smith

That even though you look like a warrior and act like a warrior, underneath all that toughness is really a big mushy marshmallow. ~ Cambria Hebert

I still felt unformed, like a cake half baked with edges crisp, but still mushy in the middle. ~ Sarah Dessen

Is it as bad out there as they say it is?" he asked. "From my six-inch window, it looks like we got hit with one hell of a storm."

"It took me nearly an hour to shovel the sidewalk this morning," Jordan said.

Kyle brushed his neck-length dark blond hair off his face. "See? That's one of the positives of being in prison. No shoveling."

Her brother had long ago set the rules regarding their visits. Jokes about being in prison were expected and encouraged, sympathy was not. Which was good for both of them, considering her family had never done particularly well with the mushy and sentimental stuff.

"You live in a penthouse condo and haven't shoveled snow for years," she pointed out.

"A deliberate choice I made because of the trauma of my youth," Kyle said. "Remember how Dad used to make me shovel the whole block every time it snowed? I was eight when he came up with that plan - barely taller than the shovel."

"And I got to stay inside making hot chocolate with Mom." Jordan waved off the retort she saw coming. "Hey, it was good for you - it built character." She paused for a moment, taking in their steel-barred surroundings. "Maybe Dad should've made you shovel the next block over, too."

"That's cute."

"I thought so. ~ Julie James

I like stories where there's a center that's mushy and complicated. ~ Sarah Koenig

As for me, I went inside, walked up to my bedroom, and fell on the floor. What…just happened? Staring at the ceiling, I tried to take it all in. My mind began to race, trying to figure out what it all meant. Do I need to learn how to whittle? Cook fried chicken? Ride a horse? Use a scythe? My face began to feel flushed. And children? Oh, Lord. That means we might have children! What will we name them? Travis and Dolly? Oh my gosh. I have children in my future. I could see it plainly in front of me. They'll be little redheaded children with green eyes just like mine, and they'll have lots of freckles, too. I'll have ten of them, maybe eleven. I'll have to squat in the garden and give birth while picking my okra. Every stereotype of domestic country life came rushing to the surface. A lot of them involved bearing children.
Then my whole body relaxed in a mushy, contended heap as I remembered all the times I'd walked back into that very room after being with Marlboro Man, my cowboy, my savior. I remembered all the times I'd fallen onto my bed in a fizzy state of euphoria, sighing and smelling my shirt to try to get one last whiff. All the times I'd picked up the phone early in the morning and heard his sexy voice on the other end. All the times I'd longed to see him again, two minutes after he'd dropped me off. This was right, this was oh, so right. If I couldn't go a day without seeing him, I certainly couldn't go a lifetime… ~ Ree Drummond

There was a boy down at the stables." She laughed suddenly with her back comfortably nestled against Grant's chest. "Oh,Lord,he was a bit like Will, all sharp,awkward edges."
"You were crazy about him."
"I'd spend hours mucking out stalls and grooming horses just to get a glimpse of him.I wrote pages and pages about him in my diary and one very mushy poem."
"And kept it under your pillow."
"Apparently you've had a nodding aquaintance with twelve-year-old girls."
He thought of Shelby and grinned, resting his chin on the top of her head. Her hair smelled as though she'd washed it with rain-drenched wildflowers. "How long did it take you to get him to kiss you?"
She laughed. "Ten days.I thought I'd discovered the answer to the mysteries of the universe.I was a woman."
"No female's more sure of that than a twelve-year-old. ~ Nora Roberts

You were right the first time, Cathy. It was a stupid, silly story.
Ridiculous! Only insane people would die for the sake of love. I'll
bet you a hundred to one a woman wrote that junky romantic trash!"
Just a minute ago I'd despised that author for bringing about such a
miserable ending, then there I went, rushing to the defense. "T. M.
Ellis could very well have been a man! Though I doubt any woman writer
in the nineteenth century had much chance of being published, unless
she used her initials, or a man's name. And why is it all men think
everything a woman writes is trivial or trashy-or just plain silly
drivel? Don't men have romantic notions? Don't men dream of finding
the perfect love? And it seems to me, that Raymond was far more
mushy-minded than Lily! ~ V.C. Andrews

Anyone who wants to offer me as mushy, earthy, crunchy a role as they can, I will probably take it. In real life, I cry at a drop of a hat, and I'm a mom, and I'm pretty mushy! We all have so many colors as actors that we want to show. ~ Alysia Reiner

Men tend to be more orthodox in belief. Their concern for the rules keeps a congregation from drifting toward mushy moral relativism. ~ David Murrow

The job of the art is to really convey and support that empathetic response. I always try to find where the character is mushy, and then bring that to the forefront. ~ Ryan Hurst

Only the heart knows the correct answer. Most people think the heart is mushy and sentimental. But it's not. The heart is intuitive; it's holistic, it's contextual, it's relational. It doesn't have a win-lose orientation. It taps into the cosmic computer - the field of pure potentiality, pure knowledge, and infinite organizing power - and takes everything into account. At times it may not even seem rational, but the heart has a computing ability that is far more accurate and far more precise than anything within the limits of rational thought. ~ Deepak Chopra

I have used movies to go to sleep at night. You flip from channel to channel to channel and see just enough to make your brain mushy and go to sleep. ~ Kip Thorne

in mushy, wet oatmeal. "Are ~ Abby Klein

I know a fantastic kiss when I share one with someone."
My insides went mushy at the compliment. I was glad he'd felt the zinging between us, too. No! I wasn't. Damn it. I scowled. "It was pleasant enough."
Cooper threw his head back in laughter. "Right. You keep telling yourself that, Doc ~ Samantha Young

I'm not a mushy person at all. ~ Carrie Underwood

Did you already forget how to promise?" I worm my pinkie around his and squeeze.
He squeezes back and lowers our joined hands to the bed. My heartbeat is strong in my ears. Do I pull away first? Do I wait for him to? What if he doesn't? What if we fall asleep like this?
"I promise I don't write mushy, girly stuff," he says. "I just like to keep track of what's going on, you know? The places I go, the things I find. The people I meet."
I could be imagining it, but the hold on my hand seems to be tighter.
"I know one day I'll want to look back," he continues, "and I don't trust my memory alone to remember everything. What's important to me right now might not be later, but that doesn't mean I want to forget it." He yawns and his eyes get watery, tired.
I fight the temptation to yawn myself. "I think you've just made an excellent case for diaries. Maybe I'll start keeping one."
He yawns again and his grip on my pinkie loosens, but we're still mostly hooked together. "It looked like you already were," he says in a fading whisper. His eyes drift closed.
I stare at his relaxed face, pale in the dim light. Nearly asleep, he looks vulnerable. Like I could tell him anything I wanted and he wouldn't remember it in the morning.
When I first met him, I thought he was attractive but not in an omg-he's-the-most-gorgeous-thing-I've-ever-seen way. But somehow, now that I know him, how his light brown eyes can sear right through me, how the corner of ~ Kristin Rae

When he talked, there was a sort of mushy sound to his pronunciation that was charming because one sensed that it betrayed not so much an impediment in his speech as a quality of his soul, a sort of vestige of early childhood innocence that he had never lost. Each consonant he could not pronounce appeared to be another instance of a hardness of which he was incapable. ~ Marcel Proust

But the one thing that I would never, ever recover from would be losing you. You made me promise before to go on if that happened, but Bones, I wouldn't want to. - Cat from This Side of the Grave ~ Jeaniene Frost

The next man I was involved with lived in Boston. He taught me to cook mushrooms. He taught me that if you heat the butter very hot and put just a very few mushrooms into the frying pan, they come out nice and brown and crispy, whereas if the butter is only moderately hot and you crowd the mushrooms, they get all mushy and wet. Every time I make mushrooms I think of him. There was another man in my life when I was younger who taught me to put sour cream into scrambled eggs, and since I never ever put sour cream into scrambled eggs I never really think of him at all. ~ Nora Ephron

In water so fine, a few minutes of bad memory all but disappear downstream, washed away by ten thousand belly busters, a million cannonballs. Paradise was never heaven-high when I was a boy but waist-deep, an oasis of cutoff blue jeans and raggedy Converse sneakers, sweating bottles of Nehi Grape and Orange Crush, and this stream. I remember the antidote of icy water against my blistered skin, and the taste of mushy tomato and mayonnaise sandwiches, unwrapped from twice-used aluminum foil. I saw my first water moccasin here, and my first real girl, and being a child of the foot washers I have sometimes wondered if this was my Eden, and my serpent. If it was, I didn't hold out any longer than that first poor fool did. ~ Rick Bragg

Her lie was symptomatic of a certain pride she took in mocking the romantic, in being unsentimental, matter-of-fact, stoic; yet at heart she was the opposite: idealistic, dreamy, giving, and deeply attached to everything she liked verbally to dismiss as mushy. ~ Alain De Botton

These white people like really mushy food. ~ Eddie Huang

Some people seem to see compassion as being mushy. ~ Laura Schlessinger

I think it's time to go ahead and start, don't you? We don't want them to have enough time to make a trip back to shore with her."
Galen swims to within an inch of my face. His lazy grin sends a thousand butterflies whipping up a tornado in my stomach. "Start what? The rescue, or the rest of our lives together?"
Just the words make my heart jump, let alone the look he gives me when he says it. We haven't had much time to talk about what all this means for us, but at least I know we can be together. On our own terms, in our own time. Finally. "Both," I breathe.
"This is not the time to be all mushy," Rayna calls from below us. "I swear you two are expert time wasters. So inconsiderate."
Galen winks at me and dives to his sister.
"Wait," I call to him. He stops. "I just wanted to say, I like your big fin. I think it's sexy." Which is the truth. Now t's more than double the size of any other Syrena. I know he's self-conscious about it; he thinks it makes him stand out more. What Galen doesn't realize is that he already stood out. He was already special. This new fin doesn't change anything. Well, except for making me hotter for him than I already was.
"Really?" Galen says.
I nod and blow him a kiss. By his confused expression, he has no idea what I'm doing. My Syrena human ambassador still has a lot to learn about the intimate details of the human world. And I'll be happy to assist him with that. ~ Anna Banks

You're a wrestler, right, Jake?" Dad asked, passing Jake more saag. My parents were in an Indian food phase. The evening's entree consisted of limp spinach. God forbid we'd throw a few burgers on the grill and just have a barbecue when guests came over.
Jake gave the bright green, mushy contents a wary glance but accepted the bowl. "Yeah. I wrestle. I'm captain this year."
"How Greco-Roman of you," Lucius said dryly, lifting a glob of spinach and letting it drip, slowly, from his fork. "Grappling about on mats. ~ Beth Fantaskey

Often, our relationships become an unrealized quest for what is perfect, unfettered, and free of flaws. We expect our partners, spouses, and our friends to avoid missteps and to be magical mind readers. These secret expectations play a sinister part in many of the great tragedies of our lives: failed marriages, dissipated dreams, abandoned careers, outcast family, deserted children, and discarded friendships.

We readily forget what we once knew as children: our flaws are not only natural but integral to our beings. They are interwoven into our soul's DNA and yet we continually reject the crooked, wrinkled, mushy parts of our life rather than embrace them as the very essence of our beings.

I once believed that aiming for perfection would land me in the realm of excellence. This, however, may not be the trajectory of how things happen. In fact, the pursuit of perfection may be the biggest obstacle to becoming whole.

It seems essential to value hard work and determination and yet recognize that the road to excellence is littered with mistakes and subsequent lessons. Imperfection and excellence are intertwined. There is joy in our pain, strength in weakness, courage in compassion, and power in forgiveness. ~ Ann Brasco

If you quote a poem in a sermon today, some people think you are being mushy, but if you quoted one back in the day, people would have felt you were getting to the core of an idea, to the real, whole truth of it. ~ Donald Miller

Fine," Strider said tightly. "You can. But you wont. Because you know that if you take the woman out of this home, I'll go gray from worry. And you like my hair the way it is."
"Stridey-man. Are you hitting on my? Trying to get me to run my fingers through those mangy locks?"
Gideon chuckled. "Sweetie pie."
Striders lips even twitched into a grin. "You know I hate when you get mushy like that."
Boy loved it. No question. ~ Gena Showalter

Whatever response we draw, we've got to know this: evangelism is not easy. It's not supposed to be. It's challenging to tell someone that he or she is lost, in danger of coming judgment, and in need of wholehearted repentance. That's not a light and airy message. It's a world-changing message, one that calls our entire lives into question. It's a loving message, but love in a biblical sense is not mushy or weak. Biblical love is transformative, powerful, renewing, redeeming, cleansing. ~ Owen Strachan

Puck stopped his drumming [on his belly] for a brief moment and grinned at Sabrina.
I hear they have a lot of plastic surgeons in New York City. If I were you I'd make an appointment for that face as soon as you get there," he quipped.
Sabrina scowled and shook a fist at him. "Keep it up, stinkpot, and you're going to need a plastic surgeon yourself."
Puck winked. "No need to get all mushy on me, Grimm. ~ Michael Buckley

A bagel shop isn't the most romantic spot to tell a girl you like her. But that night romance wasn't the priority. Our time there wasn't intended to be mushy. I didn't propose marriage or say I was madly in love with her, and she didn't swoon.
What I did tell her was that through our friendship I'd grown to respect her. ~ Joshua Harris

I do have the most adorable little Chihuahua mix. I adopted him about 3 1/2 years ago from Much Love pet adoption, and he has been the love of my life ever since. His name is Beau, or as my sister and I like to call him ' mushy mush' because he truly is just a pile of loving mush that just melts in your arms. ~ Torrey DeVitto

Strange and mysterious things, though, aren't they - earthquakes? We take it for granted that the earth beneath our feet is solid and stationary. We even talk about people being 'down to earth' or having their feet firmly planted on the ground. But suddenly one day we see that it isn't true. The earth, the boulders, that are supposed to be solid, all of a sudden turn as mushy as liquid - From the short story Thailand ~ Haruki Murakami

For the last four years of her life, Mother was in a nursing home called Chateins in St. Louis ... [S]ix months before she died I sent a Mother's Day card. There was a horrible, mushy poem in it. I remember feeling vaguely guilty. ~ William S. Burroughs