Seemed Quotes

Some mornings I walked out into the courtyard and every living thing there, the seagulls and wagtails, the small trees, and even the stray blades of grass seemed to smile and shine in the sun. It was at such times, when I perceived the beauty of even this small, closed-in corner of the world, that I knew that some day my people and I would be free. ~ Nelson Mandela

He wondered for an idle moment if he'd ever see her again, but it didn't look likely. You have to be realistic, after all, and getting through tomorrow seemed like quite the ambition. ~ Joe Abercrombie

I remembered how is disheartening and dreadful when you're seeing it for the first time. I thought of my parents and the town where I was born, and suddenly everything around me seemed less real. ~ Daniel Kine

Like me wanting to get nailed made me less of a man than him? That was bullshit. He seemed kind of sexist. I bet he was a fucking Republican. ~ Megan Erickson

I was stunned. The steppe seemed to burst into bloom, heaving a sigh and drawing aside the veil of darkness, and I saw two lovers in its vast expanse. They did not seem to notice me, it was as if I was not there. I was walking along and watching as they, oblivious to the world, swayed together in tune with the song. And I did not recognize them. It was the same old Daniyar in his shabby army shirt unbuttoned at the throat, but his eyes seemed to gleam in the gloom. it was my Jamilia clinging to him, yet so quiet and timid, with teardrops sparkling upon her eyelashes. They were newly born, uniquely happy people. Was this not true happiness? Was not Daniyar giving this inspired music utterly to her, was he not singing for her, singing about her? ~ Chingiz Aitmatov

The highest form of morality is not to feel at home in ones own home. Most great works of the imagination were meant to make you feel like a stranger in your own home. The best fiction always forced us to question what we took for granted. It questioned traditions and expectations when they seemed too immutable. I told my students I wanted them in their readings to consider in what ways these works unsettled them, made them a little uneasy, made them look around and consider the world, like Alice in Wonderland, through different eyes. ~ Azar Nafisi

My mother and I looked at each other then, full in the face, more frankly than we'd done since I was small. I realized with a jolt that I was taller than she was by at least half a foot. When on earth had that happened? The realization made me want to sit down on the stairs and cry. It seemed to signify something terrible about the world: something that couldn't - or mustn't- be put into words. And I could see, looking down into her startled, anxious face, that my mother felt exactly the same way. ~ John Wray

Yeah, I wanted to know where they got it from, what it was all about, you know, and it seemed to strike something in me that was you know rearing it's head and I still don't know what that is. ~ Eric Clapton

She felt something similar, but worse in a way, about hundreds and hundreds of books she'd read, novels, biographies, occasional books, about music and art - she could remember nothing about them at all, so that it seemed rather pointless even to say that she had read them; such claims were things people set great store by but she hardly supposed they recalled any more than she did. Sometimes a book persisted as a coloured shadow at the edge of sight, as vague and unrecapturable as something seen in the rain from a passing vehicle; looked at directly it vanished altogether. Sometimes there were atmospheres, even the rudiments of a scene; a man in an office looking over Regent's Park, rain in the street outside - a little blurred etching of a situation she would never, could never, trace back to its source in a novel she had read some time, she thought, in the past thirty years. ~ Alan Hollinghurst

The smell of her hair, the taste of her mouth, the feeling of her skin seemed to have got inside him, or into the air all round him. She had become a physical necessity. ~ George Orwell

I was trying to do something that seemed very natural and easy but which bridged that gulf between the singing voice and the speaking voice. ~ Carlisle Floyd

I think because both of my parents were essentially salespeople, and Italian-Americans, I always seemed to get along with people; I had a knack of finding something to talk about. ~ Bob Colacello

For two summers not a blue wing, not a blue warble. I seemed to miss something kindred and precious from my environment
the visible embodiment of the tender sky and wistful soil. What a loss, I said, to coming generations of dwellers in the country
no bluebird in spring! ~ John Burroughs

For Mersault, nothing mattered in those days. And the first time Marthe went limp in his arms and her features blurred as they came closer - the lips that had been as motionless as painted flowers now quivering and extended - Mersault saw in her not the future but all the force of his desire focused upon her and and satisfied by this appearance, this image. The lips she offered him seemed a message from a world without passion and swollen with desire, where his heart would find satisfaction. And this seemed a miracle to him. His heard pounded with an emotion he almost took for love. And when he felt the ripe and resilient flesh under his teeth, it was as though he bit into a kind of fierce liberty, after caressing her a long time with his own lips. She became his mistress that same day. ~ Albert Camus

Sometimes women's attraction to true crime is dismissed as trashy and voyeuristic (because women are vapid!). Sometimes it is unquestioningly celebrated as feminist (because if women like something, then it must be feminist!). And some argue that women read about serial killers to avoid becoming victims. This is the most flattering theory - and also, it seemed to me, the most incomplete. By presuming that women's dark thoughts were merely pragmatic, those thoughts are drained of their menace. True crime wasn't something we women at CrimeCon were consuming begrudgingly, for our own good. We found pleasure in these bleak accounts of kidnappings and assaults and torture chambers, and you could tell by how often we fell back on the language of appetite, of bingeing, of obsession. A different, more alarming hypothesis was the one I tended to prefer: perhaps we liked creepy stories because something creepy was in us. ~ Rachel Monroe

I wanted to tell her that if only something were wrong with my body it would be fine, I would rather have anything wrong with my body than something wrong with my head, but the idea seemed so involved and wearisome that I didn't say anything. I only burrowed down further in the bed. ~ Sylvia Plath

Alice felt dreadfully puzzled. The Hatter's remark seemed to have no sort of meaning in it, and yet it was certainly English. 'I don't quite understand you,' she said, as politely as she could. ~ Lewis Carroll

How did you know? That she wasn't the one for him?" Now he's staring at his hands, slowing rubbing them together. "They just didn't have that ... natural magic. You know? It never seemed easy."
My voice grows tiny. "Do you think things have to be easy? For it to work?"
Cricket's head shoots up, his eyes bulging as they grasp my meaning. "NO. I mean, yes, but ... sometimes there are ... extenuating circumstances. That prevent it from being easy. For a while. But then people overcome those ... circumstances ... and ... "
"So you believe in second chances?" I bite my lip.
"Second, third, fourth. Whatever it takes. However long it takes. If the person is right," he adds.
If the person is ... Lola?"
This time, he holds my gaze. "Only if the other person is Cricket."
Chapter 27
Pg 273 ~ Stephanie Perkins

As for myself, what has died for me has died, so to speak, into my own heart: when I looked for him, the person who vanished has collected himself strangely and so surprisingly in me, and it was so moving to feel he was now only there that my enthusiasm for serving his new existence, for deepening and glorifying it, took the upper hand almost at the very moment when pain would otherwise have invaded and devastated the whole landscape of my spirit. When I remember how I - often with the utmost difficulty in understanding and accepting each other - loved my father! Often, in childhood, my mind became confused and my heart grew numb at the mere thought that someday he might no longer be; my existence seemed to me so wholly conditioned through him (my existence, which from the start was pointed in such a different direction!) that his departure was to my innermost self synonymous with my own destruction …, but so deeply is death rooted in the essence of love that (if only we are cognizant of death without letting ourselves be misled by the uglinesses and suspicions that have been attached to it) it nowhere contradicts love: where, after all, can it drive out someone whom we have carried unsayably in our heart except into this very heart, where would the "idea" of this loved being exist, and his unceasing influence (: for how could that cease which even while he lived with us was more and more independent of his tangible presence) … where would this always secret influence be more ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

For days afterward, a series of magical thoughts flew through my mind. For instance, it seemed somehow surprising that the hours continued to pass in spite of what I knew. It was almost shocking that time did not, in fact, stop. ~ Karen Thompson Walker

Our little kinsmen after rain
In plenty may be seen,
a pink and pulpy multitude
The tepid ground upon;
A needless life if seemed to me
Until a little bird
As to a hospitality
Advanced and breakfasted. ~ Emily Dickinson

Everyone is asleep. They've been asleep for years. You seemed ... awake.
I'm tired of sleeping. ~ Lauren Oliver

Movement, after all, seemed futile to him. He felt that imagination could easily be substituted for the vulgar realities of things. It was possible, in his opinion, to gratify the most extravagant, absurd desires by a subtle subterfuge, by a slight modification of the object of one's wishes. ~ Joris-Karl Huysmans

On her own, Grace could be effervescent, illuminating the entire room with her intelligence and wit. Around others she seemed to lose her luster. ~ Krystal Sutherland

Fictional stories were written so that they seemed real, kind of like a well-executed lie. Fiction creates an unreal world that's better than the real one. ~ Hiroshi Ishizaki

In August 1867, a thirteen-year-old142 boy who had severely cut his arm while operating a machine at a fair in Glasgow was admitted to Lister's infirmary. The boy's wound was open and smeared with grime - a setup for gangrene. But rather than amputating the arm, Lister tried a salve of carbolic acid, hoping to keep the arm alive and uninfected. The wound teetered on the edge of a terrifying infection, threatening to become an abscess. But Lister persisted, intensifying his application of carbolic acid paste. For a few weeks, the whole effort seemed hopeless. But then, like a fire running to the end of a rope, the wound began to dry up. A month later, when the poultices were removed, the skin had completely healed underneath. ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

As to the strong likeness between General Hamilton and Dr. Stevens, Mr. Yard could give no account; altho' it seemed apparent that he thought them near of kin. In cases of this sort, the possibility of kindred blood gives rise to surmises, or strong suspicions, of which no proof is attainable. ~ Timothy Pickering

People always - I think were surprised about me connecting with folks in small town Iowa. And the reason I did was - first of all, I had the benefit that at the time nobody expected me to win. And so I wasn't viewed through this prism of Fox News and conservative media making me scary. At the time, I didn't think seem scary, other than just having a funny name. I seemed young. ~ Barack Obama

I needn't have worried about our welcome. As soon as Diana spotted me, she cried out happily, "Mrs. Robertson, I'm so glad you're here!" and gave me a huge, spontaneous hug.
I assured her, "We wouldn't have missed this for the world!" I was touched by her genuine warmth and by her evident surprise that we'd traveled so far to share in her triumph.
She turned quickly to exclaim, "Oh Charles, look! it's Patrick's parents from America!" and formally introduced us to the Prince of Wales. Pat bowed and I curtsied and murmured "Your Royal Highness" just to be on the safe side. Prince Charles radiated tremendous charm and graciousness. His eyes twinkled as he smiled at us. His voice was deep, warm, and resonant, as he said, "How very nice of you to have traveled so far." I loved his voice! He seemed genuinely pleased to meet us. I thought he was absolutely terrific. I was so excited for Diana, about to marry this perfect prince. ~ Mary Robertson

People talk about nightfall, or night falling, or dusk falling, and it's never seemed right to me. Perhaps they once meant befalling. As in night befalls. As in night happens. Perhaps they, whoever they were, thought of a falling sun. That might be it, except that that ought to give us dayfall. Day fell on Rupert the Bear. And we know, if we've ever read a book, that day doesn't fall or rise. It breaks. In books, day breaks, and night falls.
In life, night rises from the ground. The day hangs on for as long as it can, bright and eager, absolutely and positively the last guest to leave the party, while the ground darkens, oozing night around your ankles, swallowing for ever that dropped contact lens, making you miss that low catch in the gully on the last ball of the last over. ~ Hugh Laurie

Yes, this was the evening hour when - how long ago it seemed! - I always felt so well content with life. Then, what awaited me was a night of easy, dreamless sleep. This was the same hour, but with a difference; I was returning to a cell, and what awaited me was a night haunted by forebodings of the coming day. And so I learned that familiar paths traced in the dusk of summer evenings may lead as well to prisons as to innocent, untroubled sleep. ~ Albert Camus

It never seemed that honorable to me, and I guess I was always afraid that I might fail. ~ Rooney Mara

It was the same Dimitri from long ago, the fierce one who was willing to risk his life for what was right. I almost wished he'd go back to being annoying, distant Dimitri, the one who told me to stay away. Seeing him now brought back too many memories -not to mention the attraction I thought I'd smashed. Now, with that passion all over him, he seemed sexier than ever. He'd worn that same intensity when we'd fought together. Even when we'd had sex. This was the way Dimitri was supposed to be: powerful and in charge. ~ Richelle Mead

Certain ramshackle aspects of Dellarobia had also gone undercover, it seemed, just like the snow-covered barns. Some defects lurked, but for now her way seemed clear. She'd made plans. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

Her face, which had never seemed especially remarkable, looked almost beautiful, because she looked so happy. ~ Jeanne DuPrau

I recalled my encounter with the sea goddess Ran, who had described her husband as a hipster who liked microbrewing. At the time, the description had been too weird to comprehend. Afterward, it had seemed funny. Now it seemed a little too real, because I was pretty sure the hipster god in question was standing right in front of me. ~ Rick Riordan

Freud expressed the opinion - not quite in earnest, though, it seemed to me - that philosophy was the most decent form of sublimation of repressed sexuality, nothing more. In response I put the question, 'What then is science, particularly psychoanalytic psychology?' Whereupon he, visible a bit surprised, answered evasively: 'At least psychology has a social purpose. ~ Ludwig Binswanger

Don't know how many minutes I stood there. It was precisely the comfort she seemed to need this night. If only she had known to ask, or I to give, we could've done away with the blindfold ... Thank God for the blindfold. She ~ Abraham Verghese

My favorite was Love Is ... Never Having to Say You're Sorry. This was,the good Lord knew, a dream of mine. But every time I refused to apologize for something, Love seemed to just fly out the window. ~ Haven Kimmel

That's always seemed so ridiculous to me, that people want to be around someone because they're pretty. It's like picking your breakfeast cereals based on color instead of taste. ~ John Green

It was actually very difficult., especially during the first five years of the start-up stage, when all the odds seemed to be against us - this is probably true for most entrepreneurs. To succeed, you really have to put your heart and soul into it. (p. 71) ~ Injap Sia

It seemed crazy that something so big, so seemingly permanent, could be knocked down by a little wind and rain. ~ Morgan Matson

She wished she could help David to seem more legitimate. She wished she could do something to keep everything from being so undignified. Life seemed so uselessly extravagant. ~ Zelda Fitzgerald

If it hadn't been for this chance hospital encounter, accidental in all senses, Victor might never have courted a girl. He already felt well on his way to middle age, and his social life was still limited to the chess club. Victor didn't really feel the need for another person in his life, in fact he found the concept of "sharing" a life bizarre. He had mathematics, which filled up his time almost completely, so he wasn't entirely sure what he wanted with a wife. Women seemed to him to be in possession of all kinds of undesirable properties, chiefly madness, but also a multiplicity of physical drawbacks - blood, sex, children - which were unsettling and other. ~ Kate Atkinson

We tried not to look at each other for a minute, smiling each time we did. Except for the tiny scars on her wrists, she seemed perfect to me, and so I loved the scars, because they meant that I could save her from something, and save myself ~ Chris Fuhrman

Jean was visited by one of her rare moments of happiness, one of those moments when the goodness of God was so real to her that it was like taste and scent; the rough strong taste of honey in the comb and the scent of water. Her thoughts of God had a homeliness that at times seemed shocking, in spite of their power, which could rescue her from terror or evil with an ease that astonished her. ~ Elizabeth Goudge

Hot water is my native element. I was in it as a baby, and I have never seemed to get out of it ever since. ~ Edith Sitwell

Europe was not born in the early Middle Ages. No common identity in 1000 linked Spain to Russia, Ireland to the Byzantine empire (in what is now the Balkans, Greece and Turkey), except the very weak sense of community that linked Christian polities together. There was no common European culture, and certainly not any Europe-wide economy. There was no sign whatsoever that Europe would, in a still rather distant future, develop economically and militarily, so as to be able to dominate the world. Anyone in 1000 looking for future industrialization would have put bets on the economy of Egypt, not of the Rhineland and Low Countries, and that of Lancashire would have seemed like a joke. In politico-military terms, the far south-east and south-west of Europe, Byzantium and al-Andalus (Muslim Spain), provided the dominant states of the Continent, whereas in western Europe the Carolingian experiment (see below, Chapters 16 and 17) had ended with the break-up of Francia (modern France, Belgium and western Germany), the hegemonic polity for the previous four hundred years. The most coherent western state in 1000, southern England, was tiny. In fact, weak political systems dominated most of the Continent at the end of our period, and the active and aggressive political systems of later on in the Middle Ages were hardly visible.

National identities, too, were not widely prominent in 1000, even if one rejects the association between nationalism and modernity made in much contemp ~ Chris Wickham

Because it's kind of great, being an idea that everybody likes. But I could never be the idea to myself, not all the way. And Agloe is a place where a paper creation became real. A dot on the map became a real place, more real than the people who created the dot could never have imagined. I thought maybe the paper cutout of a girl could start becoming real here also. And it seemed like a way to tell that paper girl who cared about popularity and clothes and everything else: 'You are going to the paper towns. And you are never coming back. ~ John Green

But that was the nature of relationships: there always seemed to be an imbalance of one sort of another. And it was fine to plan an emotional strategy, but another thing when the ground opened up in front of you, and your defending troops toppled into a ravine which hadn't been marked on the map until a few seconds previously. ~ Julian Barnes

His terror became his companion. When it seemed to diminish, or grow easier to bear, he forced himself to remember the details of what he had said and done so that his fears returned, redoubled. His previous life, which had been without fear, he now dismissed as an illusion since he had come to believe that only in fear could the truth be found. When he woke from sleep without anxiety, he asked himself, What is wrong? What is missing? And then his door opened slowly, and a child put its head around and gazed at him: there are wheels, Ned thought, wheels within wheels. The curtains were now always closed, for the sun horrified him: he was reminded of a film he had seen some time before, and how the brightness of the noonday light had struck the water where a man, in danger of drowning, was struggling for his life. ~ Peter Ackroyd

One of the purest souls ever to live on this fallen planet was Nicholas Herman, known as Brother Lawrence. He wrote very little, but what he wrote has seemed to several generations of Christians to be so rare and so beautiful as to deserve a place near the top among the world's great books of devotion. The writings of Brother Lawrence are the ultimate in simplicity; ideas woven like costly threads to make a pattern of great beauty. ~ A.W. Tozer

Unlike in the movies, the weather seemed indifferent to his personal predicament and refused dramatic contribution. It was a rather pleasant day, in fact. ~ Mandy Ashcraft

Neither of us mentioned him when we woke on the morning after his death...One is not jealous of the dead, and it seemed easy to me that morning to take up our old life together. ~ Graham Greene

The rest of the guardians are all checking out the explosion," I realised. Pieces began coming together-including Lissa's lack of surprise over the commotion. "Oh no. You had Christian blow up ancient Moroi artifacts."
"Of course not," said Eddie. He seemed shocked that I would have suggested such an atrocity. "Other fire users would be able to tell if he did."
"Well, that's something," I said. I should have had more faith in their sanity.
Or maybe not.
"We used C4," explained Mikhail.
"Where on earth did you- ~ Richelle Mead

From the beginning it was never anything but chaos: it was a fluid which rnvcloped me, which I breathed in through the gills. In the substrata, where the moon shone steady and opaque, it was smooth and fecundating; above it was a jangle and a discord. In everything I (plickly saw the opposite, the contradiction, and between the real and the unreal the irony, the paradox. I was my own worst enemy. There was nothing I wished to do which I could just as well not do. Even as a child, when I lacked for nothing, I wanted to die: I wanted to surrender because I saw no sense in struggling. I felt that nothing would be proved, substantiated, added or subtracted by continuing an existence which I had not asked for. Everybody around me was a failure, or if not a failure, ridiculous. Especially the successful ones. The successful ones bored·me to tears. I was sympathetic to a fault, but it was not sympathy that made me so. It was a purely negative quality, a weakness which blossomed at the mere sight of human misery. I never helped anyone expecting that it would do any good; I helped because I was helpless to do otherwise. To want to change the condition of affairs seemed futile to me; nothing would be altered, I was convinced, except by a change of heart, and who could change the hearts of men? ~ Henry Miller

A Tragic Honesty, like the Ian Hamilton biography of Lowell that I read recently, is a sad and occasionally terrifying account of how creativity can be simultaneously fragile and self-destructive; it also made me grateful that I am writing now, when the antidepressants are better, and we all drink less. Stories about contemporary writers being taken away in straitjackets are thin on the ground - or no one tells them to me, anyway - but it seemed to happen to Lowell and Yates all the time; there are ten separate page references under 'breakdowns' in the index of A Tragic Honesty. ~ Nick Hornby

Time seemed to drag with dreamlike slowness, like a knife through cold honey, and the room took on a surreal golden sheen as if I was looking through that same jar of honey. Maybe at that moment, the sun shone just right though the grimy windows, but the woman, the shelves, the jars, everything in the room appeared in tones of gold and sepia, except for the painting behind the counter. From behind the shopkeeper's head, a fluorescent Mary and Jesus glared at me, their cartoon-like faces reproaching me for being there. ~ Sara Stark

Awkwardly pressed up against him, the Princess seemed to take no notice of their proximity. In the dampness, though, her body heat was near palpable to Luke and he had to force himself to keep his attention on what he was doing. ~ Alan Dean Foster

The room held her scent, that elusive fragrance that sometimes reminded him of spring flowers and other times made him think of summer afternoons and ripe peaches. Gracie seemed to be part of all the seasons. The warm glints of autumn shone in her hair, the clear light of winter sun sparkled in those intelligent gray eyes. He had to keep reminding himself that she wasn't a U.S.D.A. prime-cut female because lately he'd had a tendency to forget. It was just . . .

She was so damned cute. ~ Susan Elizabeth Phillips

It just seemed that we always ended up at the Rainbow, to the point where they finally just said, 'Why don't you guys go up into this loft, where we'll kind of protect people from coming around and sitting on the tables.' And we thought that was a great idea. ~ Alice Cooper

There are no words for how much I will miss her, but I try to kiss her so that she'll know. I try to kiss her to tell her the whole story of my love, the way I dreamed of her when she was dead, the way that every other girl seemed like a mirror that showed me her face. The way my skin ached for her. The way that kissing her made me feel like I was drowning and like I was being saved all at the same time. I hope she can taste all that, bittersweet, on my tongue. ~ Holly Black

The music was so mournful and emotional that it seemed like the only suitable thing to play. ~ Deborah Curtis

Unfair," I said as Captain Goode opened a door to reveal a beautiful library. The room seemed to stretch on forever. Bookshelves lined all the walls. Hundreds, thousands of volumes. The air carried that wonderfully comfortable and musty scent of dust, age, and wisdom that only worn books can emit. ~ Tarun Shanker

Majesty. The word seemed to ripple through her. "I haven't been crowned, Lazarus." "No matter, Lady. I see the queenship in you, and I never saw it in your mother, not one day of her life. ~ Erika Johansen

Chuck seemed deep in thought. "Well, they found a dead Griever, right?" "Yeah," Newt replied. "Thanks for that bit of news." Chuck absently tapped his fork against the table for a few seconds. "Well, then who killed the stupid thing?" Excellent question, Thomas thought. He waited for Newt to answer, but nothing came. He obviously didn't have a clue. ~ James Dashner

It seemed natural; natural to the moment's peculiar reality that was sharply clear, but cut off from everything, immediate, but disconnected, like a bright island in a wall of fog, the heightened, unquestioning reality one feels when one is drunk. ~ Ayn Rand

It seemed to Scobie that life was immeasurably long. Couldn't the test of man have been carried out in fewer years? Couldn't we have committed our first major sin at seven, have ruined ourselves for love or hate at ten, have clutched at redemption on a fifteen-year-old deathbed? ~ Graham Greene

I poked my stomach covertly. It still seemed pretty lean to me. Obviously, I wasn't built like a supermodel, but all the swimming and workouts were keeping me trim enough. Kishan took my hand, squeezed it, and brushed a kiss on my fingers before setting it back onto my lap. I smiled at him in gratitude. ~ Colleen Houck

Mma Ramotswe decided to go back into her office. There was a curious thing about male conversation that she had noticed - men often ended up poking fun at one another. Women did this only rarely, but men seemed to love insulting one another. It was very strange. ~ Alexander McCall Smith

Ancient Egypt was okay. Drinks menu was limited. Not the best place to meet people. Reminded me a lot of the Internet in the sense that it was full of pictures of cats and people seemed pretty excited about them. Also lots of fun emoji. Still not sure what "Feather Squiggly Line Bird" means. ~ Alexandra Petri

When I was laying there in his arms nothing else mattered. My parents, my lack of funds, everything just seemed to melt away as I was lost in his lips- Bentley Evans ~ Magan Vernon

I am sure you're very pleased to have a pair of foxes," Kestrel told Irex now, "but you'll have to do better."
"I set down my tile," Irex said coldly. "I cannot take it back."
"I'll let you take it back. Just this once."
"You want me to take it back."
"Ah. So you agree that I know what tile you mean to play."
Benix shifted his weight on Lady Faris's delicate chair. It creaked. "Flip the damn tile, Irex. And you, Kestrel: Quit toying with him."
"I'm merely offering friendly advice."
Benix snorted.
Kestrel watched Irex watch her, his anger mounting as he couldn't decide whether Kestrel's words were a lie, the well-meant truth, or a truth she hoped he would judge a lie. He flipped the tile: a fox.
"Too bad," said Kestrel, and turned over one of hers, adding a third bee to her other two matching tiles. She swept the four gold coins of the ante to her side of the table. "See, Irex? I had only your best interests at heart."
Benix blew out a gusty sigh. He settled back in his protesting chair, shrugged, and seemed the perfect picture of amused resignation. He kept his head bowed while he mixed the Bite and Sting tiles, but Kestrel saw him shoot Irex a wary glance. Benix, too, had seen the rage that turned Irex's face into stone.
Irex shoved back from the table. He stalked over the flagstone terrace to the grass, which bloomed with the highest members of Valorian society.
"That wasn't necessary," Benix told Kestrel.
"It ~ Marie Rutkoski

To be a full-blooded hillbilly was to be a living koan. Half of you wanted to be dignified and half of you couldn't tolerate any restraint. You could see it in the regional art and hear it in the music. Wood carving with chainsaws. Cloggers who danced up a storm with the lower half of their bodies, but held the upper half perfectly still and stared off into the distance stone-faced. Or a group of bluegrass musicians who'd be playing the most raucous tunes imaginable, looking around at each other with bemused expressions that seemed to say where's all that racket comin from?
Phoebe believed that nearly all the adult males everywhere were pretty much the same way. Most of them could manage to keep the top half of themselves under a semblance of control, but the bottom half tended to run wild. As she continued to descend the trail she couldn't help but think that most men were mentally ill below the waist. ~ Carolyn Jourdan

Betsy was so full of joy that she had to be alone. She went upstairs to her bedroom and sat down on Uncle Keith's trunk. Behind Tacy's house the sun had set. A wind had sprung up and the trees, their color dimmed, moved under a brooding sky. All the stories she had told Tacy and Tib seemed to be dancing in those trees, along with all the stories she planned to write some day and all the stories she would read at the library. Good stories. Great stories. The classics. Not Rena's novels. ~ Maud Hart Lovelace

Wolf took Scarlet's hands into his, as tenderly as he would pick up an injured butterfly, and slid the band onto her finger. His voice was rough and wavering as he recited - "I, Ze'ev Kesley, do hereby claim you, Scarlet Benoit, as my wife and my Alpha. Forevermore, you will be my mate, my star, my beginning of everything." He smiled down at her, his eyes swimming with emotion. Scarlet returned the look, and though Wolf's expression teetered between proud and bashful, Scarlet's face contained nothing but joy. "You are the one. You have always been, and you will always be, the only one.
Scarlet took the second ring - a significantly larger version of the same unadorned band - and pressed it onto Wolf's finger. "I, Scarlet Benoit, do hereby claim you, Ze'ev Kesley, as my husband and my Alpha. Forevermore, you will be my mate, my star, my beginning of everything. You are the one. You have always been, and you will always be, the only one."
Wolf folded his hands around hers. From where she sat, Cinder could see that he was shaking.
Kai grinned. "By the power given to me by the people of Earth, under the laws of the Earthen Union and as witnessed by those gathered here today, I do now pronounce you husband and wife." He spread his hands in invitation. "You may kiss your - "
Wolf wrapped his arms around Scarlet's waist, lifting her off the floor, and kissed her before Kai could finish. Or maybe she kissed him. It seemed mutual, as her hands wound through his dis ~ Marissa Meyer

To Jana's mind everybody seemed happy to see BAbichka and resisted returning her, like a misplaced package sent to the wrong address. It was as if the recipient opened it up, knowing it should be returned, but wondering who long they could legitimately keep it before being changed with theft. ~ F.C. Malby

That chair -shall I ever forget it? Where the shadows fell on the canvas upholstery, stripes of a deep but glowing indigo alternated with stripes of an incandescence so intensely bright that it was hard to believe that they could be made of anything but blue fire. For what seemed an immensely long time I gazed without knowing, even without wishing to know, what it was that confronted me. At any other time I would have seen a chair barred with alternate light and shade. Today the percept had swallowed up the concept. I was so completely absorbed in looking, so thunderstruck by what I actually saw, that I could not be aware of anything else. Garden furniture, laths, sunlight, shadow - these were no more than names and notions, mere verbalizations, for utilitarian or scientific purposes, after the event. The event was this succession of azure furnace doors separated by gulfs of unfathomable gentian. It was inexpressibly wonderful, wonderful to the point, almost, of being terrifying. ~ Aldous Huxley

I sort of laughed when I saw myself. Back then, each time I looked in the mirror was a revelation; I hadn't gotten used to my looks, and the image in the mirror seemed to be shifting constantly, revising itself. ~ Suzanne Scanlon

Harry's extremities seemed to have gone numb. He stood quite still, holding the miraculous paper in his nerveless fingers while inside him a kind of quiet eruption sent joy and grief thundering in equal measure through his veins. Lurching to the bed, he sat down.

He read the letter again, but could not take in any more meaning than he had done the first time, and was reduced to staring at the handwriting itself. She had made her "g's" the same way he did: he searched the letter for every one of them, and each felt like a friendly little wave glimpsed from behind a veil. The letter was an incredible treasure, proof that Lily Potter had lived, really lived, that her warm hand had once moved across this parchment, tracing into these letters, words about him, Harry, her son. ~ J.K. Rowling

Suddenly a dog burst from the concealment of the trees, its shaggy wheaten coat gleaming warmly in the sun. He was a medium-sized mix of no particular breed, part hound, possibly, or maybe retriever. He seemed well fed, so it was doubtful that he was a stray. Then again, mayhap he was skilled at poaching birds and rabbits from the bountiful reserves of game in the area. ~ Tracy Anne Warren

God knows the angel's wings must have been over us in view of the terrible mortality in all other camps up an down this line which seemed to be being built in bones. ~ Edward Dunlop

Back in the autumn I had awakened to a growing darkness and cacophony, as if something in the depths were crying out. A whole chorus of voices. Orphaned voices. They seemed to speak for all the unlived parts of me, and they came with a force and dazzle that I couldn't contain. They seemed to explode the boundaries of my existence. I know now that they were the clamor of a new self struggling to be born. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

There was one issue on which there seemed to be almost unanimity: the Internet should not be managed by any government, national or multinational. ~ Jon Postel

Fang and I searched in every way we could think of and found a million institutes of one kind or another, in Manhattan and throughout New York state, but none of them seemed promising. My favorite? The Institute for Realizing Your Pet's Inner Potential. Anyone who can explain that to me, drop a line. ~ James Patterson

Till she seemed to swoon, gradually her mind went, and she passed away, everything in her was melted down and fluid, and she lay still, become contained by him, sleeping in him as lightning sleeps in a pure, soft stone. ~ D.H. Lawrence

I cooked with so many of the greats: Tom Colicchio, Eric Ripert, Wylie Dufresne, Grant Achatz. Rick Bayless taught me not one but two amazing mole sauces, the whole time bemoaning that he never seemed to know what to cook for his teenage daughter. Jose Andres made me a classic Spanish tortilla, shocking me with the sheer volume of viridian olive oil he put into that simple dish of potatoes, onions, and eggs. Graham Elliot Bowles and I made gourmet Jell-O shots together, and ate leftover cheddar risotto with Cheez-Its crumbled on top right out of the pan.
Lucky for me, Maria still includes me in special evenings like this, usually giving me the option of joining the guests at table, or helping in the kitchen. I always choose the kitchen, because passing up the opportunity to see these chefs in action is something only an idiot would do. Susan Spicer flew up from New Orleans shortly after the BP oil spill to do an extraordinary menu of all Gulf seafood for a ten-thousand-dollar-a-plate fund-raising dinner Maria hosted to help the families of Gulf fishermen. Local geniuses Gil Langlois and Top Chef winner Stephanie Izard joined forces with Gale Gand for a seven-course dinner none of us will ever forget, due in no small part to Gil's hoisin oxtail with smoked Gouda mac 'n' cheese, Stephanie's roasted cauliflower with pine nuts and light-as-air chickpea fritters, and Gale's honey panna cotta with rhubarb compote and insane little chocolate cookies. Stephanie and I bonded over ~ Stacey Ballis

This was precisely the feature that got Pribram so excited, for it offered at last a way of understanding how memories could be distributed rather than localized in the brain. If it was possible for every portion of a piece of holographic film to contain all the information necessary to create a whole image, then it seemed equally possible for every part of the brain to contain all of the information necessary to recall a whole memory. ~ Michael Talbot

This is why Max loved Mr. Beckmann: he was an equal. He seemed to have navigated his way through seven or so decades of adulthood without forgetting one moment of his childhood- what he loved and hated, feared and coveted. ~ Dave Eggers

That seemed to handle it. That was it. Send a girl off with one man. Introduce her to another to go off with him. Now go and bring her back. And sign the wire with love. That was it all right. I went in to lunch. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

Dena seemed about to respond, but instead, she belched again, a smaller belch that seemed unequal as a harbinger to the monstrous chunky gush that erupted from inside her. I held her hair back and looked away as she finished retching. Working with children had made me less squeamish
they were constantly presenting their grubby hands to your, having accidents
but at some point, disgusting was still disgusting, Especially with an adult woman. ~ Curtis Sittenfeld

Some powerful magnificence not human in other words, seemed under me. And it was the same mild pink colour, like the water of a watermelon, that did it. At once I recognised the importance of this, as throughout my life I had known these moments when the dumb begin to speak, when I hear the voices of objects and colours; then the physical universe starts to wrinkle and change and heave and rise and smooth, so it seems even the dogs have to lean against a tree, shivering. ~ Saul Bellow

Cynicism leads to despair, while fixating on the efforts that seemed to work in the past makes an idol out of spiritual states. ~ Monks Of New Skete

There have been times when the church seemed afraid, but she is no longer. Analyze, dissect, use your microscope or your spectrum till the last atom of matter is reached; reflect and refine till the last element of thought is made clear; the church now knows with the certainty of science what she once knew only by the certainty of faith, that you will find enthroned behind all thought and matter only one central idea
that idea which the church has never ceased to embody
I AM! ~ Henry Adams

Men who shared the load at home seemed just as pressed for time as their wives, and torn between the demands of career and small children ... But the majority of men did not share the load at home. Some refused outright. Others refused more passively, often offering a loving shoulder to lean on, an understanding ear as their working wife faced the conflict they both saw as hers. ~ Arlie Russell Hochschild

I guess the beautiful disaster turned into a beautiful wedding."
"Miracles do happen," I said remembering the conversation she and I had what seemed like a lifetime ago. ~ Jamie McGuire

Certain empty houses that seemed to stare like the faces of people suffering from terrible mental illness. An empty barn on the outskirts of town, the hayloft door swinging open and closed on rusty hinges, first disclosing darkness, then hiding it, then disclosing it again. ~ Stephen King

The timing of the electrical failure seemed dramatic and perfectly correct, as if the lights had said, You have no need for sight. Listen. ~ Ann Patchett

And yet, despite this portrait of a self assured woman, Cindy seemed to have a near obsession with being where everyone was and doing what everyone was doing. ~ Imbolo Mbue

It was almost funny. Life seemed downright accidental in its brevity, and death a punch line to a lousy joke. ~ Maureen Johnson