Retelling Quotes

Twenty-five minutes ago, I was blissfully invisible. No laughing. No evil grins. No drama. And now? It couldn't be more dramatic. I've got a stepsister masquerading as Cinderella, the chauvinistic villagers think I'm the ugly stepsister, and the boy coming to my side is more likely to snag a prince than I am. ~ Kelsey Macke

She's bewitched you! What good could she do us?"

"Well, now... We could do some good for her. ~ Mariah Marsden

He raised his wine for a toast. "To the Exquisite Nightmare. ~ A.G. Howard

They watch on, evil, incredibly stupid, enjoying my destruction.
'Poor Grendel's had an accident,' I whisper. 'So may you all. ~ John Gardner

Literature offers us all, writers and readers, the best method of discovering and retelling the changing story of ourselves. The story is both journey and surprise. And as everyone knows, even the past is altered, depending on, not the facts, but the interpretation. ~ Jeanette Winterson

One of the core ideas of the Bible is that meaning can be found in history. The sheer act of telling and retelling stories helps us to understand God's role in the world as well as our own position in a long line of ancestors who have wrestled with similar issues to the ones we wrestle with every day. ~ Bruce Feiler

The contents of someone's bookcase are part of his history, like an ancestral portrait.
(About Books; Recoiling, Rereading, Retelling, New York Times, February 22, 1987) ~ Anatole Broyard

Honestly, I think there's a cycle to the popularity of fantasy and fairytales that usually coincides with times of unrest or hardship in our own world. By retelling these legends or immersing ourselves in fantasy realms, we can safely explore the very real, very day-to-day darkness of our own lives. ~ Sarah J. Maas

My retelling of events to Zoe is what grounds them, shapes them, makes them real. If I can't tell Zoe about kissing Danny Spinelli, it didn't happen. ~ Wendy Wunder

My future was about to happen. ~ Emma Donoghue

Usually, but not always, a story is told mostly for the benefit of the teller. The story (...) demonstrates how the teller has lived a life full of adventure, of meaning; that they're comical, self-deprecating, and brave; that they're ultimately a person worth knowing.
It's as though folks need to remind themselves of their own worth, and they do this by telling and retelling their favourite eleven or twelve stories, the anecdotes that fundamentally define who they are. ~ Penny Reid

My conception of a novel is that it ought to be a personal struggle, a direct and total engagement with the author's story of his or her own life. This conception, again, I take from Kafka, who, although he was never transformed into an insect, and although he never had a piece of food (an apple from his family's table!) lodged in his flesh and rotting there, devoted his whole life as a writer to describing his personal struggle with his family, with women, with moral law, with his Jewish heritage, with his Unconscious, with his sense of guilt, and with the modern world. Kafka's work, which grows out of the nighttime dreamworld in Kafka's brain, is *more* autobiographical than any realistic retelling of his daytime experiences at the office or with his family or with a prostitute could have been. What is fiction, after all, if not a kind of purposeful dreaming? The writer works to create a dream that is vivid and has meaning, so that the reader can then vividly dream it and experience meaning. And work like Kafka's, which seems to proceed directly from dream, is therefore an exceptionally pure form of autobiography. There's an important paradox here that I would like to stress: the greater the autobiographical content of a fiction writer's work, the *smaller* its superficial resemblance to the writer's actual life. The deeper the writer digs for meaning, the more the random particulars of the writer's life become *impediments* to deliberate dreaming. ~ Jonathan Franzen

Jostling in the saddle against an iron shirt of mail wasn't half as romantic as the books made it out to be. ~ Amy Jarecki

Paul's One Way Out is a fresh, intelligently arranged, and satisfyingly complete telling of the lengthy (and unlikely) history of the group that almost singlehandedly brought rock up to a level of jazz-like sophistication and virtuosity, introducing it as a medium worthy of the soloist's art. Oral histories can be tricky things: either penetrating, delivering information and backstories that get to the heart of how timeless music was made. Or too often, they lie flat on the page, a random retelling of repeated facts and reheated yarns. I'm happy to say that Paul's is in that first category. ~ Ashley Kahn

Stories continue in all directions to include even the retelling of the stories themselves, as legend is informed by interpretation, and interpretation is informed by time. ~ Garth Stein

Destinies, are like roads.
Relationships are much like destinies. Therefore, relationships are like roads.
Some roads are circular. They start at one spot and end in the same. Some roads fork and force. Their travelers to choose which way to go. Some roads go great distances. And then there are those that
end abruptly.
Who is to say that a short road is less meaningful than a long? ~ Heather Lyons

It is hard to face the truth, Bel," Lux says. "Only the courageous ever do. ~ Zoey Hunter

Tolkien disapproved of Lewis's Narnia books because they worked by analogy, taking an existing myth and retelling it with different names and circumstances, whereas he felt that you should make your own myth out of whole cloth. But it's not possible to read The Silmarillion without seeing how Sauron's fall mirrors Satan's. It's only a question of how you triangulate your relationship to your source material. ~ M.R. Carey

Therapy could be of tremendous benefit to "getting over" one's past if the therapy is focused on specific ways to stop submitting to the temptation to obsess. Many people with difficult histories carry these histories with them, burnishing the past with each retelling. ~ Augusten Burroughs

Australian Aborigines say that the big stories - the stories worth telling and retelling, the ones in which you may find the meaning of your life - are forever stalking the right teller, sniffing and tracking like predators hunting their prey in the bush. ~ Robert Moss

There is a pale, penetrating loneliness chiselled into every statue. A kind of loneliness made living. It haunts every rock and stone, every sinew of every room. A whispering, blistery loneliness. In a breath's moment, I swear I can hear voices, and at the exact same time, all I can hear is the deafening sound of utter nothingness. ~ Kate Macdonald

I love you," he said. "I love you more than any other creature, because you are cruel, and kind, and alive. Nyx Triskelion, will you be my wife? ~ Rosamund Hodge

It happened so quickly. One minute I was plucking the flower, and the next I was in his chariot immersed in darkness. I struggled to wrench myself free from his grasp and run away. I twisted as far as I could, hoping to see mother chasing after me. But ahead of me, behind me, on either side of me, everywhere I looked, all I could see was darkness. ~ Tamara Agha-Jaffar

Art is the retelling of certain themes in a new light, making them accessible to the public of the moment. ~ George Lucas

In retrospect one's life is subject to invention and distortion. Documentation is often scanty, and what survives rarely predicts a famous life. Indeed, fame begins with the mundane: a messy birth, a crying baby, health and sickness, parents, family, schooling. Later, we consciously and unconsciously edit our lives: saving some papers, throwing much away; telling and retelling certain stories and suppressing much more. By the time a biographer relates a life, much of it has faded into well-tailored memory, an open arena for creative retelling or outright invention. ~ William E. Wallace

Fairy tales are about trouble, about getting into and out of it, and trouble seems to be a necessary stage on the route to becoming. All the magic and glass mountains and pearls the size of houses and princesses beautiful as the day and talking birds and part-time serpents are distractions from the core of most of the stories, the struggle to survive against adversaries, to find your place in the world, and to come into your own.

Fairy tales are almost always the stories of the powerless, of youngest sons, abandoned children, orphans, of humans transformed into birds and beasts or otherwise enchanted away from their own lives and selves. Even princesses are chattels to be disowned by fathers, punished by step-mothers, or claimed by princes, though they often assert themselves in between and are rarely as passive as the cartoon versions. Fairy tales are children's stories not in wh they were made for but in their focus on the early stages of life, when others have power over you and you have power over no one.

In them, power is rarely the right tool for survival anyway. Rather the powerless thrive on alliances, often in the form of reciprocated acts of kindness -- from beehives that were not raided, birds that were not killed but set free or fed, old women who were saluted with respect. Kindness sewn among the meek is harvested in crisis...

In Hans Christian Andersen's retelling of the old Nordic tale that begins with a stepmother, "The Wild Sw ~ Rebecca Solnit

The newly released movie 'Noah' features a retelling of the creation story that clearly depicts Darwinian evolution transforming a single-cell organism into a monkey. The movie also seems to show magic in scenes more reminiscent of the occult than of the Bible story. ~ Aaron Klein

She says affection is all very well being imagined, like a romantic fancy, but marriage should be based on practical purposes in order to last longer. ~ Aya Ling

My body - I do not fall to pieces and be reduced to a big pile of lovable mush over a woman, never! ~ A.R. Von

Oh, I don't know. The human world has its charms. Cotton candy for instance."
"Yeah, and it's got plenty of problems."
"It's got you. ~ L.L. McKinney

Alice: I didn't know that cheshire cats grinned. In fact, I didn't know that cats could grin.
Duchess: They can, and most of 'em do. ~ Rod Espinosa

She ... grabbed her bra, clasping it and shoving her arms through.
"Ye harness your udders?" The man was insufferable.
"For your information, it's a bra - short for brassiere, something that wasn't invented until the twentieth century. ~ Amy Jarecki

All of our lives were a story; their magic came in their retelling. Words could give life everlasting rebirth.

I would accept this challenge. I would use my breath to give life. ~ J. Lynn Else

To believe in anything takes risk," Arpien said. "Perhaps the risk of disappointed hopes is greater than the reward of fulfilled ones. ~ Sarah E. Morin

'I'm happy,' David said. 'All the time. It's amazing. I think of you and I want to smile. Do I make you want to smile?'
'No,' Alec said, and kissed him. David could feel the curve of his mouth against his own. ~ Wheeler Scott

One of the most beautifully disturbing questions we can ask, is whether a given story we tell about our lives is actually true, and whether the opinions we go over every day have any foundation or are things we repeat to ourselves simply so that we will continue to play the game. It can be quite disorienting to find that a story we have relied on is not only not true - it actually never was true. Not now not ever. There is another form of obsolescence that can fray at the cocoon we have spun about ourselves, that is, the story was true at one time, and for an extended period; the story was even true and good to us, but now it is no longer true and no longer of any benefit, in fact our continued retelling of it simply imprisons us. We are used to the prison however, we have indeed fitted cushions and armchairs and made it comfortable and we have locked the door from the inside.

The imprisoning story I identified by the time the entree was served was one I had told myself for a long time. "In order to write I need peace and quiet and an undisturbed place far from others or the possibility of being disturbed. I knew however, that if I wanted to enter the next creative stage, something had to change; I simply did not have enough free space between traveling, speaking and being a good father and husband to write what I wanted to write. The key in the lock turned surprisingly easy, I simply said to myself, "What if I acted as if it wasn't true any more, what if it had be ~ David Whyte

Our greatest enemy can often be found within. ~ Renee Ahdieh

The darkness had come to claim her at last and she gave into it willingly. Her beast would keep her safe. ~ Jennifer Silverwood

I believe in a world where love can still catch you off guard and where the best part is the falling stage. Those shy glances, the racing heart, flushed cheeks, and the butterflies? That's magic.
~Sarah Brocious on More Than Scars ~ Sarah Brocious

My days are filled with you, and for that I am more grateful than you could ever know ~ Kennedy Vega

Once you understand that Goliath is much weaker than you think he is, and David has superior technology, then you say: why do we tell the story the way we do? It becomes, actually, a far more meaningful and important story in its retelling than in the kind of unsophisticated way we've done it for, I think, too long. ~ Malcolm Gladwell

Isabelle thought her heart might burst.One by one, queens, pirates, empresses, and generals from all the corners of the world told their stories, bowed their heads, and left the stage. They were not pretty, these women. Pretty did not begin to describe them.
They were shrewd. Powerful, Wily. Proud. Dangerous.
They were strong.
They were brave.
They were beautiful. ~ Jennifer Donnelly

Everything is dangerous, and one must decide whether to live in fear, or courage ~ Emma Hamm

You thought if you were good. If you gave up the things that made you different. The world you know. That it would be enough. But sacrifice is often so invisible. People do not look for it in others. They know their own. They list them out like titles at a ball. I've done for you. I've done for you. I've done. And it is always your turn now. To hurt, to long. To be a broken thing. A thing that differs. Before, you always thought you were a person. ~ Deirdre Sullivan

He appears close to my age. The left half of his face stands out beneath the hood: one side of plump lips, one squared angle of a chin. Two coppery-colored eyes look back at me – bright and metallic. The sight makes me do a double take. As far as he is from the car, I shouldn't be able to make out the color, yet they glimmer in the shadow of his cape, like pennies catching a flashlight's glare in a deep well. ~ A.G. Howard

Lord help the girl he set those eyes on for good. His boyish vulnerability was a weapon, powerful and disarming. ~ Kerri Maniscalco

It has always been the way of tales and dreams. Time forgets itself. That is also the way of remembering. But when remembering or retelling, it is best to start at the beginning. And for all memories,all tales, and all dreams, there is but one beginning… ~ Steve Karmazenuk

The best stories, however, are living things, and as much as we may cherish the original, the true act of love comes in the retelling. ~ Anne Boyd Rioux

Hello, Miss Adler. Irene Adler. Wow," he said, his voice hushed. "This is so weird. ~ Colleen Gleason

If I'm a monster, mademoiselle, it's because man's cruelty has made me so. ~ Rachel L. Demeter

In preparing for this ceremony," Kai said, setting the bouquet on the mantel behind him, "I did some research and learned that the word Alpha has held many meanings across history. Alpha can refer to the first of something," said Kai, "or the beginning of everything. It can be attributed to a particularly powerful or charismatic person, or it can signify the dominant leader in a pack of animals, most notably, of course, wolves." His serious expression tweaked briefly into a teasing smile. "It has meanings in chemistry, physics, and even astronomy, where it describes the brightest star in a constellation. But it seems clear that Ze'ev and Scarlet have created their own definition for the word, and their relationship has given this word a new meaning for all of us. Being an Alpha means that you'll stand against all adversity to be with your mate. It means accepting each other, both for your strengths and your flaws. It means forging your own path to happiness and to love. ~ Marissa Meyer

Quite the narration in your head, even for a moment, and see for yourself that life is life, and not one minute of it is a retelling or a foretelling. Some things happen; some things don't. That's what makes it all worth seeing, no matter where it goes or how it ends. There is no spinmeister steering it all to a forgone conclusion. ~ Karen Maezen Miller

In all great works of fiction, regardless of the grim reality they present, there is an affirmation of life against the transience of that life, an essential defiance. This affirmation lies in the way the author takes control of reality by retelling it in his own way, thus creating a new world. Every great work of art, I would declare pompously, is a celebration, an act of insubordination against the betrayals, horrors and infidelities of life. The perfection and beauty of form rebels against the ugliness and shabbiness of the subject matter. ~ Azar Nafisi

Have I..." I venture, terrified of the potential answer. "Have I gone mad?"

"No, no, no." She says. "Okay, oui, peut-être, that depends. Maybe you have gone a little mad, and only for a little spell. ~ M.D. Elster

How does one say something new and not retell? ~ Dejan Stojanovic

Sometimes at night, when the nightmare clung to me, I wondered if Peter's assurances that I would never grow up were only assurances that I would die before such a thing happened. I wondered if that were better, to die before I became something withered and grey and not wanted. ~ Christina Henry

Ever since I was small, opera has been a living, breathing part of me.
The problem is that as I've grown, it's become more demanding… an entity that controls me. Once a song speaks to my subconscious, the notes become a toxin I have to release through my diaphragm, my vocal cords, my tongue. ~ A.G. Howard

After I'd told her – the mall, the taxi, Cross stroking my hair – she said, 'Did he kiss you?'
'John and Martin totally would have seen that,' I said, and as I felt myself implying the circumstances had prevented our kissing, I thought maybe this was why you told stories to other people – for how their possibilities enlarged in the retelling. ~ Curtis Sittenfeld

I realize the importance of retelling those stories is so that, one, we don't forget what our ancestors had to do so we can be where we are, and two, to just educate the newer generation. I'm being educated by all these films [ The Root and Selma] and the things I've had the opportunity to be a part of, and kids even younger than me are being educated, too. It's important to make sure those stories never die. ~ Stephan James

Keep your sword close and your friends closer. ~ Kiley Kellermeyer

Good writers don't moralize, nor do they preach, but they do create longing for the true and the beautiful, and that is why you must write with Christ at the center of your reason for writing. That does not mean that every book must be a retelling of Luke's gospel, however, every worthy book written by a Christian will direct readers away from self, and sin, and put them on a quest for God and his gospel. Create longing for these things. ~ Douglas Bond

Daughter, he said in a voice like old wood breaking, can you ever forgive me?
I could only answer his question with one of my own. Putting my hand over his mouth, I whispered, Which of us would not sell all we had to stay alive? ~ Emma Donoghue

Elimae was a magician with a key in her mouth, a foreign language, a matryoshka doll: uncomplicated on the surface, but with a dozen secret selves hidden inside. She thought I didn't notice her, but she's all I did notice. ~ Kirsty Logan

Barely able to breathe, Eva's tongue slipped across her lips.
He moved a bit closer. "Every time ye walk past, I want ye. Your scent sends my insides into a maelstrom of need."
She closed her eyes and drew out the moment, wishing he'd say that again. Oh, how delectable to listen to a medieval Scotsman declare his desire. ~ Amy Jarecki

She never forgot the day she'd met him, or how his friends had told her to be more than pretty. She never forgot Elizabeth, Yennenga, Abhaya Rani. She wore his gold coin on a chain around her neck until the day she died. But the thing she treasured most was the memory of his smile, a smaile that was a wink and a dare. A wild road on a windy night. A kiss int he dark.
A smile that had given her all she'd ever wanted-a chance.
A chance to be herself. ~ Jennifer Donnelly

Guard your throats and hide your eyes. He's not dead, you fools. Legends never die. ~ A.G. Howard

But what is a legend if not a story so great it has survived the retelling of countless generations? ~ Aminatta Forna

Our stories are not new; yet, in the retelling we are reborn as heroes. ~ Harley King

Unbridled passion with an incredibly hot seven hundred-year-old Highlander in the middle of the night? Mm Yeah. Bring it on. ~ Amy Jarecki

I couldn't let you sacrifice yourself for me."

"Its not a sacrifice. My ambition has just changed. ~ Mariah Marsden

It's strange how memory gets twisted and pulled like taffy in its retelling, how a single event can mean something different to everyone present. ~ Lisa Unger

Beyond any human lifetime, and often within it, what is recorded is what is remembered, the records gradually displacing the actuality of lived events. And what is recorded is a fraction of what is thought, felt, acted out, lived - a fraction at best edited by the very act of its selection, at worst warped by rationalization or fictionalized by a deliberate retelling of reality. ~ Maria Popova

Better that one heart be broken a thousand times in the retelling, he has decided, if it means that a thousand other hearts need not be broken at all. ~ Elie Wiesel

Resentment is a storytelling passion,' says the philosopher Charles Griswold in his book Forgiveness. I know well how compelling those stories are, how they grant immortality to an old injury. The teller goes in circles like a camel harnessed to a rotary water pump, diligently extracting misery, reviving feeling with each retelling. Feelings are kept alive that would fade away without narrative, or are invented by narratives that may have little to do with what once transpired and even less to do with the present moment. ~ Rebecca Solnit

A good book is never exhausted. It goes on whispering to you from the wall. Books perfume and give weight to a room. A bookcase is as good as a view, as the sight of a city or a river. There are dawns and sunsets in books - storms, fogs, zephyrs.
I read about a family whose apartment consists of a series of spaces so strictly planned that they are obliged to give away their books as soon as they've read them. I think they have misunderstood the way books work.
Reading a book is only the first step in the relationship. After you've finished it, the book enters on its real career. It stand there as a badge, a blackmailer, a monument, a scar. It's both a flaw in the room, like a crack in the plaster, and a decoration. The contents of someone's bookcase are part of his history, like an ancestral portrait.
- in "About books; recoiling, rereading, retelling", The New York Times, February 22, 1987 ~ Anatole Broyard

I envy Johnny and at the same time I get sore as hell watching him destroy himself, misusing his gifts, and the stupid accumulation of nonsense the pressure of his life requires. I think that if Johnny could straighten out his life, not even sacrificing heroin, if he could pilot that plane better, maybe he'd end up worse, maybe go crazy altogether, or die, but not without having played it to the depth, what he's looking for in those sad a posteriori monlogues, in his retelling of great, fascinating experiences which, however, stop right there, in the middle of the road. And all this I back up with my own cowardice, and maybe basically I want Johnny to wind up all at once like a nova that explodes into a thousand pieces and turns astronomers into idiots for a whole week, and then one can go off to sleep and tomorrow is another day. ~ Julio Cortazar

I like working in children's books because it gives rise to such a variety of jobs. One month it may be a picture book, the next a retelling, the next a play, a short story or the start of the next novel. ~ Geraldine McCaughrean

I need to know why I'm so broken, so I can fix myself. One way or another. Maybe this place can help me do that, and then I can finally look forward to my future. Because I'm starting to realize there's something worse than stepping up and facing your fears – and that's living as if you're already dead. ~ A.G. Howard

She had not meant to name them, but she could not help herself; and having done so she thought, Let their names be symbols that their lives are worth the keeping. Let them struggle a little the harder, to keep their names. ~ Robin McKinley

You cruel, hard-hearted gods!" I flung the goblet in his direction. Hermes barely had time to dart out of its way before it hit the wall and shattered to small pieces. "You're all the same! Hsst! Jealous! Vindictive! That's what you are! You allow yourselves to take pleasure with any mortal you wish. Let a goddess do the same. Let a goddess choose a mortal for her lover, and you set off in a fury of revenge against her as if her actions are an affront to you. And all the while, you male gods allow yourselves all kinds of liberties you deny to us females. ~ Tamara Agha-Jaffar

I would dare much, sir, against a man who seemingly does not understand boundaries. You must ask a woman if you may enter her abode and, when granted approval, you may do so. If they request you leave, then you remove yourself. And as far as lording over all who linger on this isle, I must inquire upon who named you king. They must be sorely lacking in wits! ~ Emma Hamm

Natural isn't the same as right. Normal isn't the same as moral. Everyone deserves a say in what happens to the world. ~ Audrey Greathouse

At the end of the 1400s, the world changed. Two key dates can mark the beginning of modern times. In 1485, the Wars of the Roses came to an end, and, following the invention of printing, William Caxton issued the first imaginative book to be published in England - Sir Thomas Malory's retelling of the Arthurian legends as Le Morte D'Arthur. In 1492, Christopher Columbus's voyage to the Americas opened European eyes to the existence of the New World. New worlds, both geographical and spiritual, are the key to the Renaissance, the 'rebirth' of learning and culture, which reached its peak in Italy in the early sixteenth century and in Britain during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, from 1558 to 1603. ~ Ronald Carter

I did a film called 'Days and Nights,' which is a modern-day retelling of and inspired by Chekhov's 'The Seagull.' ~ Juliet Rylance

The Last Canyon by John Vernon is a beautiful retelling of John Wesley Powell's 1869 exploration of the Grand Canyon and his and his men's inevitable and tragic clash with a tribe of Paiute Indians who lived on the canyon's northern edge. ~ Nancy Pearl

The Ramayana has never been a tale of Ram's life. It is a tale of how Ram lived for others. By retelling his tale, storytellers hope to inspire themselves and others to live as Ram did. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik

I can' because the Sea King will be angry if we do not do as he wishes. He will not stand for female insubordination, today of all days ~ Louise O'Neill

Stories, great flapping ribbons of shaped space-time, have been blowing and uncoiling around the universe since the beginning of time. And they have evolved. The weakest have died and the strongest have survived and they have grown fat on the retelling ... stories, twisting and blowing through the darkness. And ~ Terry Pratchett

Australian Aboriginees say that the big stories - the stories worth telling and retelling, the ones in which you may find the meaning of your life - are forever stalking the right teller, sniffing and tracking like predators hunting prey in the bush. ~ Robert Moss

I may lie every day of my life, Hattori Mariko. But my heart will always be true. ~ Renee Ahdieh

...why did you stick with me?"

"That's easy, Alice," he said. His amber eyes melted into hers. "It's the first rule of chess: always protect your queen. ~ J.M. Sullivan

I think that when every person in this room looks at Ze'ev and Scarlet, they don't see a Lunar and an Earthen. We don't see an agenda, or two people trying to make a statement. I think we see two people who were lucky enough to find each other in this vast universe, and they weren't going to let any boundaries of distance or race or even physiological tampering get in the way of a happy life together. ~ Marissa Meyer

They had stood against all adversity to be together, and now they would forge their own path to love. She would be Kai's wife. She would be the Commonwealth's empress. And she had every intention of being blissfully happy for ever, ever after. ~ Marissa Meyer

Because this story struck me as extraordinary, and it still does. Once upon a time there was a man in a spacesuit in a secret reconnaissance plane reading The Once and Future King, that great historical epic, that comic, tragic, romantic retelling of the Arthurian legend that tussles with questions of war and aggression, and might, and right, and the matter of what a nation is or might be. ~ Helen Macdonald

For the last few centuries, these jeweled fruits have been my constant and sole companions. The greatest treasure in all the world, as comfortless as light to the blind. ~ Jessica Khoury

The embroidery came later, in the retelling, as the story was told again and again by the men, taking on its own character as it passed over camp.
The Prince had ridden out, with only one soldier. Deep in the mountains, he had chased down the rats responsible for these killings. Had ripped them out of their hiding holes and fought them, thirty to one, at least. Had brought them back thrashed, lashed and subdued. That was their Prince for you, a twisty, vicious fiend who you should never, ever cross, unless you wanted your gullet handed to you on a platter. Why, he once rode a horse to death just to beat Torveld of Patras to the mark.
In the men's eyes the feat was reflected as the wild, impossible thing it was
their Prince vanishing for two days, then appearing out of the night with a sackful of prisoners thrown over his shoulder, tossing them at the feet of his troop and saying: You wanted them? Here they are. ~ C.S. Pacat

Take thy bow in hand," said Robin,
"For Much will ride with thee,
And all can be together,
If no man die for me. ~ Nathan Makaryk

'My problem was comparatively simple,' Marcus said. 'One kiss was enough to solve it. But that doesn't mean one kiss is enough to wake everyone up and end every nightmare. [ ... ] That's okay,' Marcus whispered to him. 'One kiss doesn't need to be enough to let you know that the nightmare is really over.'
Liam swallowed rapidly, the world around him becoming embarrassingly misty.
'I'm not going anywhere,' Marcus promised. 'There'll be as many kisses as you need.'
Tilting Liam's head back, Marcus dipped his head and brought their lips together one more time. Liam sighed softly into the kiss and, very slowly, woke up just a little bit more. ~ Kim Dare

I went back to Australia to do a show called 'The Beautiful Lie,' which is a retelling of 'Anna Karenina' in a six-part mini-series - a modern, contemporary version. ~ Sarah Snook

I think controlling the future with an iron grasp only limits the possibilities of tolerance and positive change. ~ Emma Hamm