Stopped Caring Quotes

I don't think there's a lonelier feeling than being with someone who has stopped caring. ~ Alexis Harrington

And then, just like that, my heart broke. My face crumpled, my composure went and I held him tightly and I stopped caring that he could feel the shudder of my sobbing body because grief swamped me. It overwhelmed me and tore at my heart and my stomach and my head and it pulled me under, and I couldn't bear it. I honestly thought I couldn't bear it. ~ Jojo Moyes

I don't remember when I stopped noticing - stopped noticing every mirror, every window, every scale, every fast-food restaurant, every diet ad, every horrifying model. And I don't remember when I stopped counting, or when I stopped caring what size my pants were, or when I started ordering what I wanted to eat and not what seemed "safe," or when I could sit comfortably reading a book in my kitchen without noticing I was in my kitchen until I got hungry - or when I started just eating when I got hungry, instead of questioning it, obsessing about it, dithering and freaking out, as I'd done for nearly my whole life.

I don't remember exactly when recovery took hold, and went from being something I both fought and wanted, to being simply a way of life. A way of life that is, let me tell you, infinitely more peaceful, infinitely happier, and infinitely more free than life with an eating disorder. And I wouldn't give up this life of freedom for the world.

What I know is this: I chose recovery. It was a conscious decision, and not an easy one. That's the common denominator among people I know who have recovered: they chose recovery, and they worked like hell for it, and they didn't give up. Recovery isn't easy, at first. It takes time. It takes more work, sometimes, than you think you're willing to do. But it is worth every hard day, every tear, every terrified moment. It's worth it, because the trade-off is this: you let go of your eating disorder, and you get ~ Marya Hornbacher

When I got my first television set, I stopped caring so much about having close relationships. ~ Andy Warhol

I stopped caring what people thought. ~ Namie Amuro

Tiger and mountain lion. Fuck you. Fuck you for getting me out. You should have shot me. But you didn't have the guts to do it. Too weak. You just didn't care enough. You waited two years, and then you fucking stopped caring and tore out my fucking heart. Come on. Promises, Dan. Keep them. Cut it out. If you're a man. ~ Aleksandr Voinov

Oh, I steal things all the time. It's just something I do. I stopped caring a long time ago. ~ Creed Bratton

It wasn't that I stopped caring about life, but that I've stopped being able to care. ~ Ruby Elliot

Rhiannon's Law #14: There is a reason the truth hurts. When you cease to feel the sting, it means you've stopped caring. And damn, wouldn't that be a total fucking waste? ~ J.A. Saare

Exactly what am I supposed to care about? That we were just getting to the fun stuff? That my hand
was on your breasts, and your hands were all over my chest, and both of us were having a good time?
Damn right I care about that. I wasn't finished. But don't expect me to care that a little old lady looked in
the window and watched. Why should I care what people are going to say about that? People have
talked about me since the day I was born. I stopped caring a long time ago. ~ Rachel Gibson

She was starting to think there might be such a thing as karma - that repetition - maybe you lived through the same thing over and over until you stopped caring. Maybe eventually it got less intense, until it was just nothing. ~ Janet Fitch

Now, the last one was that the demon king can't stand either in heaven or on the earth. Urga set the demon on his lap, which means I guess I'll have to…sit on your back."
Awkward. Even though Ren was a big tiger and it would be like riding a small pony, I was still conscious that he was a man, and I didn't feel right about turning him into a pack animal. I took off my backpack and set it down wondering what I could do to make this a bit less embarrassing. Mustering the courage to sit on his back, I'd just decided that it wouldn't be too bad if I sat sidesaddle, when my feet flew out from under me.
Ren had changed into a man and swept me up into his arms. I wiggled for a minute, protesting, but he just gave me a look-the don't-even-bother-coming-up-with-an-argument look. I shut my mouth. He leaned over to pick up the backpack, let it dangle from his fingers, and then said, "What's next?"
"I don't know. That's all that Mr. Kadam told me."
He shifted me in his arms, walked over to stand in the doorway again, then peered up at the statue. He murmured, "I don't see any changes."
He held me securely while looking at the statue and, I have to admit, I totally stopped caring about what we were doing. The scratches on my arm that had been throbbing a moment ago didn't bother me at all. I let myself enjoy the feeling of being cuddled up close to his muscular chest. What girl didn't want to be swept up in the arms of a drop-dead gorgeous man? I allowed my gaze t ~ Colleen Houck

And at this point, do you think a give a fuck anymore? I looked out for me and only me for years, and then you came along. You made me feel things. And when I laid here after I came back from seeing you beat up and broken because of me, I stopped caring what happens to me. ~ Emily Snow

You know you have arrived when you have stopped caring about the destination ~ Srividya Srinivasan

Is that how he sees it? He knows how much his death will hurt us, so he must be under the impression that by staying alive he'll eventually hurt us even more. Maybe we should pretend we've stopped caring what he does. Say, "We've given up on you, Abel. You don't matter." Well, that would gratify him, our failling in line with what he has been telling us for months. How do we get around that? How do we persuade him that he's entitled to cause pain and, what's more, that he has a responsibility to bear the pain that he causes?

If only I could say, "You're worthy of your own life," and make him believe me. Too late. Too late. He seems completely enraptured now by the idea of no longer existing. I think he imagines the space he'll vacate, the actually physical space, and there we'll be, his parents and I, waving our hands around trying to find him, but at least we won't come up against any resistance. There won't be anything to collide with, only air. ~ Barbara Gowdy

Sometimes seeing the changes in one another had the opposite effect and actually comforted them. Seeing that they weren't alone in growing older, they stopped caring, or at least caring so much. But often this seemed to be accompanied by a kind of neutering, a gradual disappearance of anything remotely resembling sexuality, until finally the men in question were more like kindly old aunties than men who liked to fuck other men. ~ Michael Thomas Ford

I asked him to leave because he stopped caring for me, stopped supporting me. Not because I'd stopped caring for him. ~ Louise Penny

...weighted down by the world, but I had stopped caring long ago. ~ Ricky Navarro

When he finally looked at her again, he was a different
man. She never thought she would see the day that those brown eyes would look at
her like that. It was something to behold, almost devastating to witness.
The exact moment he stopped caring. ~ Jacqueline Francis - Wanting To Remember, Trying To Forget

He knew it.

He just didn't care, and a man who'd stopped caring was dangerous as fuck. ~ Joanna Wylde

Time slowed, and stilled. It was just the two of us, me murmuring in the empty, sunlit room. Will didn't say much. He didn't answer back, or add a dry comment, or scoff. He nodded occasionally, his head pressed against mine, and murmured, or let out a small sound that could have been satisfaction at another good memory.
"It has been, the best six months of my entire life."
"Funnily enough, Clark, mine too."
And then, just like that, my heart broke. My face crumpled, my composure went and I held him tightly and I stopped caring that he could feel the shudder of my sobbing body because grief swamped me. It overwhelmed me and tore at my heart and my stomach and my head and it pulled me under, and I couldn't bear it. ~ Jojo Moyes

[On writing more Sherlock Holmes stories.] 'I don't care whether you do or not,' said Bram. 'But you will, eventually. He's yours, till death do you part. Did you really think he was dead and gone when you wrote "The Final Problem"? I don't think you did. I think you always knew he'd be back. But whenever you take up your pen and continue, heed my advice. Don't bring him here. Don't bring Sherlock Holmes into the electric light. Leave him in the mysterious and romantic flicker of the gas lamp. He won't stand next to this, do you see? The glare would melt him away. He was more the man of our time than Oscar was. Or than we were. Leave him where he belongs, in the last days of our bygone century. Because in a hundred years, no one will care about me. Or you. Or Oscar. We stopped caring about Oscar years ago, and we were his bloody *friends.* No, what they'll remember are the stories. They'll remember Holmes. And Watson. And Dorian Gray. ~ Graham Moore

I can't tell if she's actually real, or if she's stopped caring if she's real or not. Or is not caring what makes a person real? ~ Jennifer Egan

On Sunday morning I put on jeans, changed into a denim dress, then back into jeans again, feeling stupid. I can get into a mood where I annoy myself to no end. At the moment when I got completely fed up and stopped caring, I had on jeans and a white cotton shirt and silver earrings, so that's what I wore. And yes, I'll admit it, nice underwear. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

Freddie once told me that I was the worst kind of stubborn-because I wasn't stubborn at all. I was patient. Patient, but determined. A stubborn person could be distracted, or tricked. But not me. I just held on and on and on, never giving up until I got my way, long after everyone else stopped caring. ~ April Genevieve Tucholke

Xavi never did see the end of the Iraq War; he died at the peak of the pandemonium there, though he'd stopped caring, having receded from the world in stages: aware of just the hospice, then just his room, then his bed, then his body, then nothing. ~ Tom Rachman

Luc was, well, he was Luc. He wasn't even really human. As I stared up at him, I had to admit to myself that I'd stopped caring about the whole not-being-human thing after the first time I'd seen him shirtless.
I was that shallow.
I fully accepted that.
Whatever. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

Soon enough, Miner stopped caring who was watching - for a brief time, he and Ennek were a universe of two. ~ Kim Fielding

Nobody knows my heart. It's hidden deep side my coat, my skin, my ribs. My heart was important for nine months inside my mother's belly, but once I left the belly, everyone stopped caring whether it beat enough times per hour. No one worries when it stops or begins to beat fast, telling me there must be something wrong. ~ Marieke Lucas Rijneveld

One fine day I stopped caring about what others think, and oh boy, I've loved every moment of life since then. ~ Kiran Bisht

I enjoy my crazy, thank you very much. I noticed a long time ago that those who value normalcy to the point of making someone else feel like shit for being different were assholes. I stopped caring about what people thought of me after that. ~ Alanea Alder

The test of one's decency is how much of a fight one can put up after one has stopped caring, and after one has found out that one can never please the people they wanted to please. ~ Willa Cather

I stopped caring so much about what people might think if I sung about love and humanity. ~ Wayne Coyne

Look at our culture. Look at the computer-enhanced people we compare ourselves to. Look at the expensive cars and trinkets we're all supposed to have. Look at how many people are wrapped up in that! Imagine how much money and worry we'd save ourselves if we stopped caring what kind of car we drove! and why do we care? perfection. But there is no such thing, is there? And if there is, then everyone is perfect in their own way, right? ~ A.S. King

Their heroes were always straying from well-lit paths and into the woods. Or maybe it was a single wood: the dark place where the things they feared most dwelled. And so, he reassured himself, he had the advantage of knowing already how this had to end. He had stopped to admire a flower, had gotten waylaid in the shadows, but in no time at all he would be back on the path again renewed and rededicated. For was that not the point of the woods? ~ Garth Risk Hallberg

Behind my office, to the south-east, was Police Headquarters, and I imagined all the good hard work that was being done there to crack down on Berlin's crime. Villainies like speaking disrespectfully of the Führer, displaying a 'Sold Out' sign in your butcher's shop window, not giving the Hitler Salute, and homosexuality. That was Berlin under the National Socialist Government: a big, haunted house with dark corners, gloomy staircases, sinister cellars, locked rooms and a whole attic full of poltergeists on the loose, throwing books, banging doors, breaking glass, shouting in the night and generally scaring the owners so badly that there were times when they were ready to sell up and get out. But most of the time they just stopped up their ears, covered their blackened eyes and tried to pretend that there was nothing wrong. Cowed with fear, they spoke very little, ignoring the carpet moving underneath their feet, and their laughter was the thin, nervous kind that always accompanies the boss's little joke. ~ Philip Kerr

Do you love him?"
I jumped out of my skin. She was standing right beside me. "Who?"
Her eyes widened.
"Seth?" I peered over my shoulder at his retreating back. "Um, we've been going together for a long time. A year."
"That's not what I asked."
I couldn't look at her. Couldn't risk her seeing through me, reading me.
"Do you hear bells?" she asked.
I had to smile at that. "Bells?"
"You know, bells. Music, fireworks." She wiggled her eyebrows.
I let out a short laugh. It sounded strangled, same way I felt. "Only in my dreams."
"Oh, yeah?" She arched an eyebrow.
Why did I say that? God.
Cece said softly, "Maybe you should listen to your dreams."
My stomach suffered a major eruption.
She pushed off the locker she'd been balancing against with the sole of her shoe and said, "Think about it."
Like I haven't been. "Do you think about it?" I asked at her back.
She stopped and turned around. "I don't have to. I know." (Chapter13) ~ Julie Anne Peters

In the past, a great library was the result of librarians functioning as guardians of culture, tending and caring, selecting and recommending works that maintained and nurtured a cultural heritage. ~ David Gerrold

Apart from the peace and emptiness of the landscape, there is a special smell about winter in Provence which is accentuated by the wind and the clean, dry air. Walking in the hills, I was often able to smell a house before I could see it, because of the scent of woodsmoke coming from an invisible chimney. It is one of the most primitive smells in life, and consequently extinct in most cities, where fire regulations and interior decorators have combined to turn fireplaces into blocked-up holes or self-consciously lit "architectural features." The fireplace in Provence is still used - to cook on, to sit around, to warm the toes, and to please the eye - and fires are laid in the early morning and fed throughout the day with scrub oak from the Luberon or beech from the foothills of Mont Ventoux. Coming home with the dogs as dusk fell, I always stopped to look from the top of the valley at the long zigzag of smoke ribbons drifting up from the farms that are scattered along the Bonnieux road. It was a sight that made me think of warm kitchens and well-seasoned stews, and it never failed to make me ravenous. ~ Peter Mayle

Bye Caspian!' I called out. He stopped, and threw me a big grin over his shoulder. I grinned back like the Cheshire cat. What was it about him that made me feel so ridiculously happy? ~ Jessica Verday

Knowledge is a tree and sharing is the water element that is necessary for the growth of the tree. The more you share the more tree will increases. So keep sharing! ~ Sid

But doesn't every precious era feel like fiction once it's gone? After a while, certain vestigial sayings are all that remain. Decades after the invention of the automobile, for instance, we continue to warn each other not to 'put the cart before the horse'. So, too, we do still have 'day'dreams and 'night'mares, and the early-morning clock hours are still known colloquially (if increasing mysteriously) as 'the crack of dawn'. Similarly, even as they grew apart, my parents never stopped calling each other 'sweetheart'. ~ Karen Thompson Walker

Type II trauma also often occurs within a closed context - such as a family, a religious group, a workplace, a chain of command, or a battle group - usually perpetrated by someone related or known to the victim. As such, it often involves fundamental betrayal of the relationship between the victim and the perpetrator and within the community (Freyd, 1994). It may also involve the betrayal of a particular role and the responsibility associated with the relationship (i.e., parent-child, family member-child, therapist-client, teacher-student, clergy-child/adult congregant, supervisor-employee, military officer-enlisted man or woman). Relational dynamics of this sort have the effect of further complicating the victim's survival adaptations, especially when a superficially caring, loving or seductive relationship is cultivated with the victim (e.g., by an adult mentor such as a priest, coach, or teacher; by an adult who offers a child special favors for compliance; by a superior who acts as a protector or who can offer special favors and career advancement). In a process labelled "selection and grooming", potential abusers seek out as potential victims those who appear insecure, are needy and without resources, and are isolated from others or are obviously neglected by caregivers or those who are in crisis or distress for which they are seeking assistance. This status is then used against the victim to seduce, coerce, and exploit. Such a scenario can lead to trauma bonding between ~ Christine A. Courtois

Things we had, like respect and trust, but also freely expressed desires and accountability to whatever degree it took to make both people happy. It took work, a willingness to fight passionately and fairly--out of bed, not just in it--commitment and honesty. It took waking up and saying each day, "I hold this man sacred and always will. He's my sun, moon, and stars."
It took letting the other person in; a thing I'd stopped doing. It took being unafraid to ask for what you wanted, to put yourself on the line, to risk it all for love. ~ Karen Marie Moning

I have no interest in prisioners or battling today," Manon said.
The Queen of Terrasen gave her a grin. "Good."
Manon turned away, barking at her Thirteen to get to their mounts.
"I suppose," the queen went on, "that makes you smarter than Baba Yellowlegs."
Manon stopped, staring straight ahead and seeing nothing of the grass or sky or tress.
Asterin whirled. "What do you know of Baba Yellowlegs?"
The queen gave a low chuckle, despite the warning growl from the Fae warrior.
Slowly, Manon looked over her shoulder.
The queen tugged apart the lapels of her tunic, revealing a necklace of thin scars as the wind shifted.
The scent - iron and stone and pure hatred - hit Manon like a rock to the face. Every Iroonteeth witch knew the scent that forever lingered on those scars: Witch Killer. ~ Sarah J. Maas

Faced with an ecological crisis whose roots lie in this disengagement, in the separation of human agency and social responsibility from the sphere of our direct involvement with the non-human environment, it surely behoves us to reverse this order of priority. I began with the point that while both humans and animals have histories of their mutual relations, only humans narrate such histories. But to construct a narrative, one must already dwell in the world and, in the dwelling, enter into relationships with its constituents, both human and non-human. I am suggesting that we rewrite the history of human-animal relations, taking this condition of active engagement, of being-in-the-world, as our starting point. We might speak of it as a history of human concern with animals, insofar as this notion conveys a caring, attentive regard, a 'being with'. And I am suggesting that those of us who are 'with' animals in their day-to-day lives, most notably hunters and herdsmen, can offer us some of the best possible indications of how we might proceed. ~ Tim Ingold

The prideful man qualifies himself by what people think of him, always looking for applause. There is another proud man; head bloodied by the world but eyes focused on what is good, never caring about spectators or the cost. He is proud that his wife can laugh, that his children can play, humbled by their love for him. His prayers say, "Please make me worthy of them" - In humility lies the foundation of strength. ~ Lee Goff

Listen, I know there were days you wanted to die

when the sky was so clear
you'd stand obnoxious underneath it
begging for stars to shoot you
just so you could feel at home.

I know about the ways you misplaced all the right words,
stockpiled every important social cue you ever missed
from the first time you learned you were wrong,
waited to make it right
once everyone stopped watching.

I know you let them beat up your beauty in bed
because redemption was still alive in you, howling relentless, gathering strength.
Felt like ecstasy when they pounded it out of you in the hard dark.
Those days of dead weather
got all strung together
and they spoke for you,
wore you down to telling everyone here it was a good life
so you could run back into the wails of your windfight.

I know the parts of your past that haunt you the most
are the days you weren't being yourself,
and I know that's why most of your past haunts you.
There were so many who found you out,
and they were right.
You were good.

So
un-
numb. ~ Buddy Wakefield

I love being middle-aged in general. I'm more at peace with myself now. I still have tormented times, but they are few and far between. You don't feel you have to be the centre of your world when you get older. Becoming a mother had been a turning point which stopped me from being the centre of my world. ~ Alison Moyet

I decided it would be better to be a bird. Birds are very busy at one period each year caring for babies, but this lasts only a few weeks with many of them, and then their babies are grown and gone. Best of all, they leave their houses forever and take to camping for the rest of the year. No wonder they are happy. ~ Margaret Morse Nice

It seemed to me that this was the real reason people wanted to fuck so much. To get here. To get to this tiny, quiet place where there was nothing else to do but be with each other. Just to be two humans who had - for a short while - stopped wanting. This is the beautiful, final destination. The end of things. ~ Caitlin Moran

Unfinished business is our worst business. Perpetual procrastination must yield to perceptive preparation. Today we have a little more time to bless others-time to be kinder, more compassionate, quicker to thank and slower to scold, more generous in sharing, more gracious in caring. ~ Russell M. Nelson

It all came apart once you started caring for something outside yourself. ~ Kameron Hurley

Forty minutes later he saw her and stopped and sat the horse and watched. She was riding along a red dirt ridge to the south sitting with her hands crossed on the pommel, looking toward the last of the sun, the horse slogging slowly through the loose sandy dirt, the red stain of it following them in the still air. That's my heart yonder, he told the horse. It always was. ~ Cormac McCarthy

Because women and girls are not valued equally as human beings, they are treated as less than such. Female genital mutilation is one example of this that has to be stopped. ~ Waris Dirie

Caring is weakness, and weakness is death. ~ Adrienne DeWolfe

At the end of the day, it's not about who the refugees are, or if they are refugees at all. We are not helping "the refugees", we care only about the People behind the label because we are all human beings. We create those borders inside our heads and pretend that we care about where each of us comes from, allowing those borders to limit our way of thinking and living. ~ Ra'ad Ammari

There is a constant suspicion that headache and giddiness are to be ascribed to philosophy, and hence all practising or making trial of virtue in the higher sense is absolutely stopped; for a man is always fancying that he is being made ill, and is in constant anxiety about the state of his body. ~ Plato

One day, everyone stopped over-thinking. We started thinking just as much as we should, and not any more than necessary. There was no more misunderstandings whatsoever. Minor disagreements were forgotten, not turned into proof of larger things. Trivial errors of speech or judgement were just as important as items on the breakfast menu: you chose waffles and I chose eggs and it was a god damn miracle. ~ Amelia Gray

All of us, wherever we happen to stand on the marriage equality issue, can agree that all our children deserve the opportunity to live in a loving, caring, committed, and stable home, protected equally under the law. ~ Martin O'Malley

Because if you walk in a city you're jostled by hundreds of indifferent people with indifferent eyes that look at you as if you weren't there at all. You begin to feel you must be invisible. Hundreds and thousands of eyes, and not one pair really seeing you or caring who you are. I'd rather walk down Beilford High Street and know that everybody was saying, 'There goes the mad painter!' It's better to be mad than invisible." She ~ D.E. Stevenson

Wait! he yelled.
I didn't turn around, I walked faster. Then I heard him slam his fist on the hood of his car. I almost stopped.
Maybe I would have if he'd followed me. But he didn't. He got in his car and he left, just like he said he would. ~ Jenny Han

They started the meeting out by saying, "Everybody please take your seats"
I was halfway back to my cubicle with mine before they stopped me ... ~ Neil Leckman

In solitude I get rid of my scaffolding ...
Solitude molds self-righteous people into gentle, caring, forgiving persons who are so deeply convinced of their own great sinfulness and so fully aware of God's even greater mercy that their life itself becomes ministry. ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

The world has lost a truly great soul today. Stephen Covey was a man whose 'work was love made visible.' He touched millions of people by the strength of his integrity and the depth of his caring. He was a personal friend, an extraordinary father, and a model for what human beings are truly capable of. Please join us in sending love and prayers to his family. ~ Tony Robbins

Everyone kept touching, touching, touching. 'Hello, Jes.' They'd say. 'Good to have you back.' Touch. Touch. Touch."
"I'm sorry. You should have asked them not to touch you."
"Hennea said, 'Stop touching the man, you fools. It hurts him.' and they stopped touching me." He pulled off a boot and looked up with a pleased expression.
"Hennea yelled at them?" Seraph asked surprised.
He shook his head. "No, she just said it very firmly. But she can touch me. I told her so."
"In front of everyone?" asked Rinnie, horrified.
Seraph was hard put not to laugh. ~ Patricia Briggs

He seemed to realize she was staring at him, because the cursing stopped. "You cut me," he said. His voice was pleasant. British. Very ordinary. He looked at his hand with critcal interest. "It might be fatal."
Tessa looked at him with wide eyes. "Are you the Magister?"
He tilted his hand to the side. Blood ran down it, spattering the floor. "Dear me, massive blood loss. Death could be imminent. ~ Cassandra Clare

Mental health days only exist for people who have the luxury of saying 'I don't want to deal with things today' and then can take the whole day off, while the rest of us are stuck fighting the fights we always fight, with no one really caring one way or another, unless ... ~ David Levithan

I knew unless I got stopped I was going to go all the way. I don't know if I can run any faster. I just ran as fast as I could. ~ Ken Griffey, Jr.

When he was still about forty feet away he stopped, walked over to a bulkhead, and tapped on ~ Mike Resnick

If you can just stop loving her then you never really loved her at all. Love doesn't work that way. If you ever truly love someone, then it never goes away. It can become something else. There are all different sorts of love. It can even become hate- a thin line and all that- and, really, hate is just another kind of caring. ~ Blakney Francis

There is a thought that stops thought. That is the only thought that ought to be stopped. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Friedrich's soldiers saw them and started hooting and whistling. "I haven't convinced her yet! Stop carrying on, or she'll run the other way," he said as they stopped at a covered wagon. He plucked a sack from the driver's seat and led Cinderella on toward the front of the house. "What's ~ K.M. Shea

I could've totally cut out your heart before you knew what was happening." "What stopped you?" "I thought Montgomery might've been pissed off at all the blood on the sheets." "Montgomery would never be something as uncouth as pissed off. Annoyed in an icily genteel manner, perhaps. ~ Nalini Singh

So, what did you want to watch?'

'Thought we might play a game instead,' he said, holding up a familiar dark green box. 'Found this on the bottom shelf of your DVD cupboard … if you tilt the glass, the champagne won't froth like that.'

Neve finished pouring champagne into the 50p champagne flutes she'd got from the discount store and waited until Max had drunk a good half of his in two swift swallows. 'The thing is, you might find it hard to believe but I can be very competitive and I have an astonishing vocabulary from years spent having no life and reading a lot – and well, if you play Scrabble with me, I'll totally kick your arse.'

Max was about to eat his first bite of molten mug cake but he paused with the spoon halfway to his mouth. 'You're gonna kick my arse?'

'Until it's black and blue and you won't be able to sit down for a week.' That sounded very arrogant. 'Really, Max, Mum stopped me from playing when I was thirteen after I got a score of four hundred and twenty-seven, and when I was at Oxford, I used to play with two Linguistics post-grads and an English don.'

'Well, my little pancake girlfriend, I played Scrabble against Carol Vorderman for a Guardian feature and I kicked her arse because Scrabble has got nothing to do with vocabulary; it's logic and tactics,' Max informed her loftily, taking a huge bite of the cake.

For a second, Neve hoped that it was as foul-tasting as she suspected just to get ~ Sarra Manning

Do you know why I stopped being Delight, my brother? I do. There are things not in your book. There are paths outside this garden. ~ Neil Gaiman

She'd so believed he could - that decades marked by disdain for emotion could have been nothing more than a faint memory in his checkered past. That she could love him enough to prove to him that the world was worth his caring, his trust. That she could turn him into the man of whom she had dreamed for so long.
That was perhaps the hardest truth of all - that Ralston, the man she'd pined over for a decade, had never been real. He'd never been the strong and silent Odysseus; he'd never been aloof Darcy; never Antony, powerful and passionate. He had only ever been Ralston, arrogant and flawed and altogether flesh and blood. ~ Sarah MacLean

Sometime in her forties, my mother stopped moving forward. Somehow when we weren't looking, she must have curtsied, performed a little shuffle sidestep, and exited stage right. In retrospect, she'd been rehearsing for some time. She went up to bed often without saying good night, or stayed home from family outings with ambiguous symptoms. ~ Jessica Francis Kane

I panicked when my son, Jett, stopped eating baby food. He's only two, but his food vocabulary is fantastic. He likes my baked tilapia and string beans with chopped garlic. But he really likes pizza. Sometimes every inanimate object to him is pizza. ~ Jill Scott

But calm is precisely what is absent from love's classroom. There is simply too much on the line. The "student" isn't merely a passing responsibility; he or she is a lifelong commitment. Failure will ruin existence. No wonder we may be prone to lose control and deliver cack-handed, hasty speeches which bear no faith in the legitimacy or even the nobility of the act of imparting advice. And no wonder, too, if we end up achieving the very opposite of our goals, because increasing levels of humiliation, anger, and threat have seldom hastened anyone's development. Few of us ever grow more reasonable or more insightful about our own characters for having had our self-esteem taken down a notch, our pride wounded, and our ego subjected to a succession of pointed insults. We simply grow defensive and brittle in the face of suggestions which sound like mean-minded and senseless assaults on our nature rather than caring attempts to address troublesome aspects of our personality. Had ~ Alain De Botton

Holden stopped next to the desk and turned around to look at the woman sitting on the couch. Graying hair, but good features and an athletic build. In a flophouse like this, that probably meant a prostitute reaching the end of her shelf life. ~ James S.A. Corey

A wee beverage afore the next dance?"
Her green eyes widened mischievously as her tongue slipped to the corner of her mouth. "Yes, indeed." She took the goblet and drank a healthy tot.
Before she downed it all, he stopped her. "Ye might want to ebb your thirst... for I have plans involving the both of us this night, and it will be all the more fun if ye are awake to enjoy it. ~ Amy Jarecki

As she went down the steps leading to the station square she noticed a priest going before her. He seemed a very upright and sturdy old man, for though his hair was white he walked steadily and strongly. At the foot of the steps he stopped and half turned, and then, to her surprise, she saw that his face was that of a young man, fine-featured and strong, with black eyebrows and very bright grey eyes. Then she passed on and began to cross the square in the direction of her aunt's house. Then without the slightest warning, except one shrill hoot from overhead, a number of things happened. A great shadow whirled across the sunlight at her feet, a sound of rending tore the air, and a ~ Robert Hugh Benson