We All Looked Up Quotes

I definitely did look up to John. We all looked up to John. He was older and he was very much the leader; he was the quickest wit and the smartest. ~ Paul McCartney

Anita felt like she finally understood why love was symbolized by the grotesque pumping organ, always threatening to clog, or break, or attack. Because the heart was the body's engine, and love was an act of the body. Your mind could tell you who to hate or respect or envy, but only your body--your nostrils and your mouth and the wide, blank canvas of your skin--could tell you who to love. ~ Tommy Wallach

What the monkey!" My dad slammed through my door and burst into my room wearing nothing but his bathrobe.
We all looked up at him in surprise. "You tell us," I said.
"Oh." My dad actually looked sheepish. "It's one o'clock in the morning and I was going to tell you to shut the monkey up and go to bed. I didn't realize what was
going on in here."
"What's going on in here?" Cameron asked suspiciously.
"Maturity." My dad backed out of the room and closed the door. ~ Jennifer Echols

Charlie Kaufman: There was this time in high school. I was watching you out the library window. You were talking to Sarah Marsh.
Donald Kaufman: Oh, God. I was so in love with her.
Charlie Kaufman: I know. And you were flirting with her. And she was being really sweet to you.
Donald Kaufman: I remember that.
Charlie Kaufman: Then, when you walked away, she started making fun of you with Kim Canetti. And it was like they were laughing at *me*. You didn't know at all. You seemed so happy.
Donald Kaufman: I knew. I heard them.
Charlie Kaufman: How come you looked so happy?
Donald Kaufman: I loved Sarah, Charles. It was mine, that love. I owned it. Even Sarah didn't have the right to take it away. I can love whoever I want.
Charlie Kaufman: But she thought you were pathetic.
Donald Kaufman: That was her business, not mine. You are what you love, not what loves you. That's what I decided a long time ago.
Donald Kaufman: What's up?
Charlie Kaufman: Thank you.
Donald Kaufman: For what? ~ Charlie Kaufman

Once in high school, I completely over plucked my left eyebrow all the way up to where you're not supposed to. I had no idea what I was doing and it looked terrible! My mom was like 'What did you do to yourself?' I was so embarrassed. ~ Ashley Tisdale

There she was, up on that bed pushing and pushing just as they'd practiced. She was dilated and the tension had been building to this moment all day. He had never been so glad to be a writer. It meant that he could be here and he could be at home, helping her as much as he liked after the baby was born. Wendy was sweating and bleary-eyed, focusing so very hard on the movement of her baby down the birth canal that it took her a moment to hear what anyone said to her. The pain was clearly unimaginable and he wished he could have taken some of it from her, but she'd insisted on a natural birth and that's just what she was doing.
"Are you okay, Babe?" She'd grown extra quiet in the last few moments, tension lines growing deeper in her face, her hands clawing at the bed rails as she pushed. She was trying so hard to endure and to get through that he had to ask again. "Are you okay?"
She looked at him from the bed with all the nurses and the doctor flitting about the room watching her vital signs, monitoring the baby's heart rate and her own and of course, guiding the course of the birth itself. She said something he barely heard. "No, no something is…"and then they all knew. ~ Amanda M. Lyons

After the new information had been sent out and everyone knew what was going on, Onmvar and Herilda went back to working but what happened next surprised them the most unlikely person to walk through their doors did, Jevlei Onmvar looked up "What brings you here?" Jevlei simply shrugged "I want to become a trainer." he announced what!? "Who are you and what have you done with the real Jevlei!" Herilda shouted "I am being serious." but Onmvar and Herilda were not taking this whole thing seriously at all. ~ Charon Lloyd-Roberts

Recuerdo
We were very tired, we were very merry
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon;
And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.
We were very tired, we were very merry
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;
And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.
We were very tired, we were very merry,
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
We hailed "Good morrow, mother!" to a shawl-covered head,
And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
And she wept, "God bless you!" for the apples and pears,
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares. ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

Though I obviously have no proof of this, the one aspect of life that seems clear to me is that good people do whatever they believe is the right thing to do. Being virtuous is hard, not easy. The idea of doing good things simply because you're good seems like a zero-sum game; I'm not even sure those actions would still qualify as 'good,' since they'd merely be a function of normal behavior. Regardless of what kind of god you believe in--a loving god, a vengeful god, a capricious god, a snooty beret-wearing French god, or whatever--one has to assume that you can't be penalized for doing the things you believe to be truly righteous and just. Certainly, this creates some pretty glaring problems: Hitler may have thought he was serving God. Stalin may have thought he was serving God (or something vaguely similar). I'm certain Osama bin Laden was positive he was serving God. It's not hard to fathom that all of those maniacs were certain that what they were doing was right. Meanwhile, I constantly do things that I know are wrong; they're not on the same scale as incinerating Jews or blowing up skyscrapers, but my motivations might be worse. I have looked directly into the eyes of a woman I loved and told her lies for no reason, except that those lies would allow me to continue having sex with another woman I cared about less. This act did not kill 20 million Russian peasants, but it might be more 'diabolical' in a literal sense. If I died and found out I was going to hell and Stali ~ Chuck Klosterman

Some years later I met Queen Elizabeth II, in our capital Ottawa at a Canada Day celebration. David Foster and I were doing the show and we both met her afterwards. She told me how much she loved the Canadian Railroad Trilogy. She looked at me and said, "oh, that song", and then said again, "that song", and that was all she said. ~ Gordon Lightfoot

Yeah? ... Oh, hell no, I got Pidge here with me. We're just gettin' ready to go to bed ... Shut the fuck up, Trent, that's not funny ... Seriously? What's he doin' in town" He looked at me and sigued. "All right. We'll be there in half an hour ... You heard me, douchebag. Because I don't go anywhere without her, that's why. Do you want me to pound your face when I get there?" Travis hung up and shook his head. I raised an eyebrow. "That is the weirdest conversation I've ever heard. ~ Jamie McGuire

Other people's houses are right on top of this one," he said. "I think they could take one step and be in our living room."
"You haven't seen the courtyard yet, Gregori. The house opens up to a courtyard in the back, and it's immense and in quite good shape." Savannah began heading up the stairs, ignoring his grousing.
"I hate to think what you would call bad shape," he muttered as he followed her upstairs.
"I wonder why everything is so dusty," Savannah said. "I had the real estate people come in and clean and get things ready for our arrival."
"Do not touch anything," Gregori hissed softly, and very gently caught her shoulders to put her behind him.
"What is it?" Instinctively she lowered her voice and looked around, trying to see if there was some danger she had been unable to sense.
"If people came and made up the bed and prepared the house for your arrival, then they would have removed the dust too."
"Maybe they're incredibly incompetent," she suggested hopefully.
Gregori glanced at her and found the hard edge of his mouth softening. She was making him want to smile all the time, even in the most serious of situations. "I am certain any company would work overtime trying to make you happy, ma petite. I know I do."
She blushed at the memory of how he did so. "So why all the dust?" she asked, deliberately distracting him.
"I think Julian left us a message. You have remained with humans so long, you see only with your eyes." ~ Christine Feehan

CUSTOM AND MORALITY. To be moral, correct, and virtuous is to be obedient to an old established law and custom. Whether we submit with difficulty or willingly is immaterial, enough that we do so. He is called "good" who, as if naturally, after long precedent, easily and willingly, therefore, does what is right, according to whatever this may be (as, for instance, taking revenge, if to take revenge be considered as right, as amongst the ancient Greeks). He is called good because he is good "for something"; but as goodwill, pity, consideration, moderation, and such like, have come, with the change in manners, to be looked upon as "good for something", as useful, the good natured and helpful have, later on, come to be distinguished specially as "good". (In the beginning other and more important kinds of usefulness stood in the foreground.) To be evil is to be "not moral" (immoral), to be immoral is to be in opposition to tradition, however sensible or stupid it may be; injury to the community (the "neighbour" being understood thereby) has, however, been looked upon by the social laws of all different ages as being eminently the actual "immorality" so that now at the word "evil" we immediately think of voluntary injury to one's neighbour. The fundamental antithesis which has taught man the distinction between moral and immoral, between good and evil, is not the "egoistic" and "unegoistic" but the being bound to the tradition, law, and solution thereof. How the tradition has arise ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

The Pakistani film International Gorillay (International guerillas), produced by Sajjad Gul, told the story of a group of local heroes - of the type that would, in the language of a later age, come to be known as jihadis, or terrorists - who vowed to find and kill an author called "Salman Rushdie" . The quest for "Rushdie" formed the main action of the film and "his" death was the film's version of happy ending.

"Rushdie" himself was depicted as a drunk, constantly swigging from a bottle, and a sadist. He lived in what looked very like a palace on what looked very like an island in the Philippines (clearly all novelists had second homes of this kind), being protected by what looked very like the Israeli Army (this presumably being a service offered by Israel to all novelists), and he was plotting the overthrow of Pakistan by the fiendish means of opening chains of discotheques and gambling dens across that pure and virtuous land, a perfidious notion for which, as the British Muslim "leader" Iqbal Sacranie might have said, death was too light a punishment. "Rushdie" was dressed exclusively in a series of hideously coloured safari suits - vermilion safari suits, aubergine safari suits, cerise safari suits - and the camera, whenever it fell upon the figure of this vile personage, invariably started at his feet and then panned [sic] with slow menace up to his face. So the safari suits got a lot of screen time, and when he saw a videotape of the film the fashion insult ~ Salman Rushdie

Selethen was names Hawk. Alyss had been given the title of Tsuru, or Crane. . .Evanlynn was Kitsune, the Nihon-Jan word for Fox . . .Halt strangly enough had been known only as Halto-san. . . But Will had been taken aback in his confrotation with Arisaka to discover that his name - Chocho - meant "butterfly". It seemed a highly unwarlike name to him- not at all glamorous.And he was puzzled to know why they had selected it. His friends,of course, were delighted in helping him guess the reason.
"I assume its because you're such a snazzy dresser," Evanlynn said. "You Rangers are like a riot of color after all."
Will glared at her and was mortified to hear Alyss snigger at the princess's sally. He'd thought Alyss, at least, might stick up for him.
"I think it might be more to do with the way he raced around the the training ground, darting here and there to correct the way a man might be holding his sheidl then dashing off to show someone how to put theri body weight into their javelin cast," said Horace, a little more sympathetically. Then he ruined the effect by adding thoughtlessly, "I must say, your cloak did flutter around like a butterfly's wings."
"It was neither of those things," Halt said finally, and they all turned to look at him. "I asked Shigeru," he explained. "He said that they had all noticed how Will's mind and imagination darts from one idea to another at such high speed," . .
Will looked mollified. "Isuppose it's not too bad it you put ~ John Flanagan

I bet you have girls hanging all over you. Dozens would probably kill to be in my spot and here I am, allergic to your bread."
I looked up. "Why? Because of my near godlike perfection? ~ J. Lynn

The truth is, most of those female stories that are contending for Oscars are directed by men. Let's be honest. I looked at the 44 Oscar contenders in Variety that someone wrote up - there was not one directed by a woman. All the ones that were getting an Oscar pitch with the money and everything behind them were by men. ~ Catherine Hardwicke

When I went to law school, which after all was back in the dark ages, we never looked beyond our borders for precedents. As a state court judge, it never would have occurred to me to do so, and when I got to the Supreme Court, it was very much the same. We just didn't do it. ~ Sandra Day O'Connor

Look at that ship. That clipper cost me a queen's ransom, even with the Kestrel thrown in the bargain. But it was the fastest ship to be had." He took her hands in his. "Forget money. Forget society. Forget expectations. We've no talent for following rules, remember? We have to follow our hearts. You taught me that."
He gathered her to him, drawing her hands to his chest. "God, sweet, don't you know? You've had my heart in your pocket since the day we met. Following my heart means following you. I'll follow you to the ends of the earth if I have to." He shot an amused glance at the captain. "Though I'd expect your good captain would prefer I didn't. In fact, I think he'd gladly marry us today, just to be rid of me."
"Today? But we couldn't."
His eyebrows lifted. "Oh, but we could." He pulled her to the other side of the ship, slightly away from the gaping crowd. Wrapping his arms around her, he leaned close to whisper in her ear, "Happy birthday, love."
Sophia melted in his embrace. It was her birthday, wasn't it? The day she'd been anticipating for months, and here she'd forgotten it completely. Until Gray had appeared on the horizon, she hadn't been looking forward to anything.
But now she did. She looked forward to marriage, and children, and love and grand adventure. Real life and true passion. All of it with this man. "Oh, Gray."
"Please say yes," he whispered. "Sophia." The name was a caress against her ear. "I love you."
He kissed her ~ Tessa Dare

Well, don't you look lovely," his voice dripped behind me, his breath tickling my ear as his words trickled in my brain.
Turning slowly, I saw him in his usual attire, a white t-shirt and jeans, but he looked incredible. His dark hair appeared darker in the dimmed lighting, his eyes shone with eagerness.
"You're here," I said dumbly. Like he didn't know he was here. I was such an idiot sometimes.
"I am," he said, a sexy smirk showing on one side of his mouth. "Wanna dance?" he asked, his leg shaking nervously, his eyes desperately searching mine for an answer.
I nodded, unable to speak. We'd kised, but only a couple of times. He grabbed me, pulling me to a spot close to where we stood. Warm fingers of one hand circled around my waist, while the others held my had. He pulled me close, every inch of our bodies touching. His eyes never left mine as we swayed and spun. I was lost in all that was Cade Kelling. ~ Felicia Tatum

Mikhail would be going into a dangerous situation, and a part of her knew he needed most of the night to complete his tasks, but there was no sign of impatience in him. He appeared relaxed and enjoying his time with her, wholly focused on her alone. She appreciated that in him so much--that ability to give her what she needed.
He lifted his head and looked at her. "You always come first with me, Raven."
"I don't know how I managed to get so lucky." She trailed her fingers through his hair. All that dark silk intrigued her. She had never really seen men who wore their hair long and yet still looked so masculine.
"That you can say that after all that has happened amazes me," Mikhail said. He dipped his head to taste the small indent of her belly button. His chin nuzzled her. "Someday my child will grow right here."
"You'd like that, would you? I might get as big as a house."
Mikhail kissed her tummy again and then kissed the path to her breasts. "You will have milk for our babies. That is such a miracle, Raven."
She heard the ache in his voice. The need. He didn't quite believe they would manage to have children, not when his people had been unable to do so for centuries, but he was willing to dream of it--with her.
"We'll find a way to have children, Mikhail. You managed to convert me without becoming deranged." There was gentle humor in her voice.
Mikhail's head went up, his dark eyes meeting hers.
Raven laughed softly. "Did you th ~ Christine Feehan

In India they tell a fable about this: There was once a great devotee of Vishnu who prayed night and day to see his God. One night his wish was granted and Vishnu appeared to him. Falling on his knees, the devotee cried out, "I will do anything for you, my Lord, just ask."
"How about a drink of water?" Vishnu replied.
Although surprised by the request, the devotee immediately ran to the river as fast as his legs could carry him. When he got there and knelt to dip up some water, he saw a beautiful woman standing on an island in the middle of the river. The devotee fell madly in love on the spot. He grabbed a boat and rowed over to her. She responded to him, and the two were married. They had children in a house on the island; the devotee grew rich and old plying his trade as a merchant. Many years later, a typhoon came along and devastated the island. The merchant was swept away in the storm. He nearly drowned but regained consciousness on the very spot where he had once begged to see God. His whole life, including his house, wife, and children, seemed never to have happened.
Suddenly he looked over his shoulder, only to see Vishnu standing there in all his radiance.
"Well," Vishnu said, "did you find me a glass of water? ~ Deepak Chopra

I don't think if you looked up all the main points of feminism I would tick every one essentially myself. ~ Jamie Dornan

In the Thirties all of us who were young had been united by anger and the obviousness of our plight; in the war we had been united by fear and the obviousness of the danger. But now, prosperous under the bomb, we all seemed to have become atomized. Wherever I looked I saw people trying to live private lives for themselves and their families. Nobody asked the big questions any more. Why think, when the thing to be thought about is so huge it is impossible to think about it? Why ask where you are going, when you know you can't stop even if you wish? Why ask why, when it does no good to know why? ~ Hugh MacLennan

I mean...if I told people what to believe, they'd stop thinking. And then they'd be easier to lie to. And...what if I was wrong?'

'So...if you may not decide what is true, and the men of letters may not, who may?'

'Nobody. Everybody.' Mosca looked up at the windows where the jubilant people of Mandelion swung their bells. 'Clamouring Hour – that's the only way. Everybody able to stand up and shout what they think, all at once. An' not just the men of letters, an' the lords in their full-bottomed wigs, but the streetsellers an' the porters an' the bakers. An' not just the clever men, but the muddle-headed, and the madmen, and the criminals, an' the children in their infant gowns, an' the really, really stupid. All of 'em. Even the wicked, Mr Clent. Even the Birdcatchers. ~ Frances Hardinge

Oh my God," Mrs. McIntire screamed. She'd dropped to her knees, the dark sand and water soaking into her jeans. "Neely!"
Mr. McIntire held his wife while she screeched her daughter's name over and over. "She's going to be fine, sweetie," he kept saying.
I really wanted to believe him.
"Is she on the other side?" I paced the shore. I couldn't see anything except a piece of driftwood lying at the water's edge. "I don't see her."
Mr. McIntire didn't answer, only pointed across the rolling water.
A log had washed up on the shore. It looked like maybe the water had rubbed all the bark off and left a naked, saturated trunk behind.
"Tell me where she is." Aggravated, I stared until my eyes blurred with stress. "All I see is a damn log."
"Son," Sheriff Mills said from behind me. "That ain't a log. ~ K.D. Wood

Phoenix sank to the desk chair and stared at her computer screen. "I don't know. I've lived like this for so long, it's who I am. Everything seems so stupid. Like, look at this girl,writing to Sasha. She's all" - he spoke in a falsetto voice - "'OMG!' and 'LOL!' and 'WTF?' and 'Girl, you should totes go out with Tyler in Telluride!'" He looked up at her."You're seventeen years old, and this is how seventeenyear-olds talk to each other. I'm a thousand years old, and this stuff is like alien-speak to me. If I found another Anabo,she'd be writing OMG and I'd be thinking, You're f'ing
kidding me. ~ Trinity Faegen

The crumpled butcherpaper mountains lay in sharp shadowfold under the long blue dusk and in the middle distance the glazed bed of a dry lake lay shimmering like the mare imbrium and herds of deer were moving north in the last of the twilight, harried over the plain by wolves who were themselves the color of the desert floor. Glanton sat his horse and looked long out upon this scene. Sparse on the mesa the dry weeds lashed in the wind like the earth's long echo of lance and spear in old encounters forever unrecorded. All the sky seemed troubled and night came quickly over the evening land and small gray birds flew crying softly after the fled sun. He chucked up the horse. He passed and so passed all into the problematical destruction of darkness. ~ Cormac McCarthy

Kauffman was in awe when he realized all this. Here it was again: order. Order for free. Order arising naturally from the laws of physics and chemistry. Order emerging spontaneously from molecular chaos and manifesting itself as a system that grows. The idea was indescribably beautiful.

But was it life? Well no, Kauffman had to admit, not if you meant life as we know it today. An autocatalytic set would have had no DNA, no genetic code, no cell membrane. In fact, it would have had no real independent existence except as a haze of molecules floating around in some ancient pond. If an extraterrestrial Darwin had happened by at the time, he (or it) would have been hard put to notice anything unusual. Any given molecule participating in the autocatalytic set would have looked pretty much like any other molecule. The essence was not to be found in any individual piece of the set, but in the overall dynamics of the set: its collective behavior. ~ M. Mitchell Waldrop

As the syringe was filled, Butch stepped up into the surgeon's grille. Even as incapacitated as the cop was from the inhaling, he was straight-up deadly as he spoke. "I don't need to tell you not to f*ck my buddy. Right."
The surgeon looked around his little-glass-bottle-and-needle routine. "I'm not thinking about sex at the moment, thank you very much. But if I was, it sure as shit wouldn't be with him. So instead of worrying about who I'm tapping, how'd you like to do us all a favor and have a shower. You stink."
Butch blinked. Then smiled a little. "You have balls."
"And they're made of brass. Big as church bells, too. ~ J.R. Ward

It is important to live each day with a positive perspective. It is not wise to pretend problems do not exist, but it is wise to look beyond the problem to the possibilities that are in it. When Goliath came against the Israelites, the soldiers all thought, "He's so big, we can never kill him." But David looked at the same giant and thought, "He's so big, I can't miss him. ~ Dale E. Turner

You don't read a poem to find the meaning of life. The opposite. I mean, you'd be foolish to. Now, some American poets present the reader with a slice of life, saying, I went to the store today, and I saw a man, and he looked at me, and I looked at him, and we both knew we were ... thieves. And aren't we all thieves? You know, this is extracting from everyday experience a statement about life, or a moral. ~ Mark Strand

I work with a great deal of discipline, although I usually take on more than I can handle and often have to extend due dates. I have always been appalled by bohemianism because of its laziness, disorder, and moral weakness. I understand that this way of living is a response to the fact of human frailty, but it leans too far in one direction. Being a little more buttoned up doesn't mean that you'll get so brittle that you'll break. Nor does it mean that you don't understand tragedy, loss, and, most of all, human limitation.

I am more than well aware of those things and I feel very strongly, but on the other hand I like to run ten miles and return to a spotless well-ordered room, and I like my shirts heavily starched. When I used to go on a long run on Sunday morning when I lived on the Upper West Side, I would pass thousands and thousands of people in restaurants eating . . . (I won't say this word, because I hate it so much, but it rhymes with hunch, and it's a disgusting meal that is supposed to be both breakfast and lunch). There they were - having slept for five hours while I was doing calisthenics and running - unshaven (the women too), bleary eyed, surrounded by newspapers scattered as if in a hamster cage, smoking noxious French cigarettes, and drinking Bloody Marys while they ate huge quantities of fat. They looked to me like a movie version of South American bandits. I would never want to be like that. I prefer to live like a British soldier. ~ Mark Helprin

We were just about the last ones to leave. Reverend Ballou took Joseph's hand to shake it, and Joseph said, "How much of that story is true?" Reverend Ballou considered this. "I think it all has to be true, or none of it," he said. "The angels?" said Joseph. "Really?" "Why not?" said Reverend Ballou. "Because bad things happen," said Joseph. "If there were angels, then bad things wouldn't happen." "Maybe angels aren't always meant to stop bad things." "So what good are they?" "To be with us when bad things happen." Joseph looked at him. "Then where the hell were they?" he said. I thought Reverend Ballou was going to start bawling. ~ Gary D. Schmidt

Our polarization, and the increasing reality that we simply don't know each other, makes it too easy to settle for dislike and contempt.

I first experienced reaching out and being reached out to as the child of a Foreign Service Officer. In my child's mind, I had been given a personal mission, parallel to my father's, to befriend the people of all the foreign countries my father's job took us to. I was instructed to reach out, I imagined, to people who spoke, dressed, walked, looked, and worshipped differently than we did. Had my father asked me to do this? I don't think so. […] Curiously, I felt that same gratitude for connection when, many decades later, I drove from plant to plant with Sharon, and when I talked to the many others I met in the course of researching this book. I felt I was in a foreign country again, only this time it was my own. ~ Arlie Russell Hochschild

That night, while you were asleep, I unbuttoned your pajama jacket and looked at what he'd done to you. Afterward, I drove back to his house and very nearly killed him. If he hadn't started crying and begging me to stop, I…" He let out the angry breath. "That was when I realized how I felt about you," he added, his eyes meeting hers. "A man wants to protect what he considers his own. It started then, that night."
She was surprised by what he was telling her. "You…looked at me?"
He nodded. His eyes narrowed. "You had the most beautiful little breasts," he said roughly. "And they were covered with bruises. I wanted to kiss the bruises, take you into my bed and hold you, just hold you, all night long so that you'd be safe. I didn't dare give in to the impulse, of course," he added with the first touch of amusement he'd shown since her arrival. "My mother would have horsewhipped me."
She felt waves of surprised pleasure lance through her body. "I never knew."
"I was always known for my poker face," he murmured. "But it was sheer agony to be around you. The older you got, the worse it was. It was inevitable that one day I'd go mad and take you." He sighed. "The most hellish part of the whole thing was knowing that all I had to do was touch you and you'd let me do anything I liked to you."
She traced the mouth of her coffee cup. "I loved you," she said quietly.
"I know."
There was a world of pain in the words. She looked up into his black eyes and ~ Diana Palmer

When they reached the top of the hill they turned and looked down at the valley. Moominhouse was just a blue dot, and the river a narrow ribbon of green: the swing they couldn't see at all. "We've never been such a long way from home before," said Moomintroll, and a little goose-fleshy thrill of excitement came over them at the thought. ~ Tove Jansson

The duke nudged his ball a bit forward from the rest of the pile. "You do realize," he said to no one in particular, "that I have never played Pall Mall before?"
"Just give the ball a good whack in that direction, darling," Daphne said, pointing to the first wicket.
"Isn't that the last wicket?" Anthony asked.
"It's the first."
"It ought to be the last."
Daphne's jaw jutted out. "I set up the course, and it's the first."
"I think this might get bloody," Edwina whispered to Kate.
The duke turned to Anthony and flashed him a false smile. "I believe I'll take Daphne's word for it."
"She did set up the course," Kate cut in.
Anthony, Colin, Simon, and Daphne all looked at her in shock, as if they couldn't quite believe she'd had the nerve to enter the conversation.
"Well, she did," Kate said.
Daphne looped her arm through hers. "I do believe I adore you, Kate Sheffield," she announced.
"God help me," Anthony muttered.
The duke drew back his mallet, let fly, and soon the orange ball was hurtling along the lawn.
"Well done, Simon!" Daphne cried out.
Colin turned and looked at his sister with disdain. "One never cheers one's opponents in Pall Mall," he said archly.
"He's never played before," she said. "He's not likely to win."
"Doesn't matter."
Daphne turned to Kate and Edwina and explained, "Bad sportsmanship is a requirement in Bridgerton Pall Mall, I'm afraid."
"I'd ga ~ Julia Quinn

I had looked into the distance so long that I hadn't seen what was near at hand. If we don't cherish those who stay near, what do we have? Only longing. Longing which we grow to love because it's all we have. ~ Janice Clark

Days and nights passed over this despair of flesh, but one morning he awoke, looked (with calm now) at the blurred things that lay about him, and felt, inexplicably, the way one might feel upon recognizing a melody or a voice, that all this had happened to him before and that he had faced it with fear but also with joy and hopefulness and curiosity. Then he descended into his memory, which seemed to him endless, and managed to draw up from that vertigo the lost remembrance that gleamed like a coin in the rain - perhaps because he had never really looked at it except (perhaps) in a dream. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

The thing is we never needed anyone's consent to get married. What is happening is that the established powers are starting realize how much of jack asses they have looked like for not acknowledging our marriages and our human rights and we are starting to receive the rights we were always entitled too. Therefore, no one is "giving" or "allowing" us anything. We are simply and powerfully starting to reclaim what has always been ours. The moralistic patriarchy has made this a long and bloody battle, but the concept has always been simple and I am glad it is finally sinking in. We are here, we have always been here, we are not going anywhere, and trying to suppress us under false puritanical mores is not smart and will not make us go away. It's not just about the LGBTQ communities but all suppressed minorities. If you listen closely you can here the subtle but real shifting of the winds to a more enlightened and egalitarian society. It won't happen without work, and it won't happen without intelligence. Never stop learning, never stop growing, never be ashamed because you are different, and never stop knowing that there is power in community. ~ Kent Marrero

I'm feeling generous. I shall answer one question for every month you spent in my company as a child." He looked over at her. Her lips thinned. Her fingers tapped an angry rhythm against her saucer. Robert stood up. "As you are no doubt aware," he said, "that leaves you with no questions at all. This interview is done. ~ Courtney Milan

Gordo: "Doubts? Then why are you even doing this?"
I said, "Not about him. About me. What if I'm not good enough for him? What if I can't be what he's going to need?"
He stopped his pacing and his shoulders sagged. "Ox, you can't think like that."
I snorted. "Yeah? It's actually pretty easy to."
"You're father did this to you," he said with a scowl. "I should have kicked his ass when I had the chance."
I looked up in surprise.
"I don't like any of this," Gordo siad, "At All. But I'm going to say it anyway, okay? Anyone should count their lucky stars if they got to call you their own, I am not giving you my approval because it doesn't matter to you anyway. Nothing I can say matters at this point." His voice cracked. :But he had better treat you like you hung the moon or I will tear him from this earth. ~ T.J. Klune

When he finally lifted his head up from the sea to cough, then breathe, he looked out at all the water before him, at the vast expanse of time and space. He could hear Marjorie laughing, and soon, he laughed too. When he finally reached her, she was moving just enough to keep her head above water. The black stone necklace rested just below her collarbone and Marcus watched the glints of gold come off it, shining in the sun. "Here," Marjorie said. "Have it." She lifted the stone from her neck, and placed it around Marcus's. "Welcome home. ~ Yaa Gyasi

I did not put my request in words: she understood it instinctively, and this time she yielded too - or rather, there was nothing so deliberate as requesting or yielding in the matter: there was a sudden impulse that neither could resist. One moment I stood and looked into her face, the next I held her to my heart, and we seemed to grow together in a close embrace from which no physical or mental force could rend us. A whispered 'God bless you!' and 'Go - go!' was all she said; but while she spoke she held me so fast that, without violence, I could not have obeyed her. At length, however, by some heroic effort, we tore ourselves apart, and I rushed from the house. ~ Anne Bronte

Often, half in a bay of the mountains and half on a headland, a small and nearly amphibian Schloss mouldered in the failing light among the geese and the elder-bushes and the apple trees. Dank walls rose between towers that were topped with cones of moulting shingle. Weeds throve in every cranny. Moss mottled the walls. Fissures branched like forked lightning across damp masonry which the rusting iron clamps tried to hold together, and buttresses of brick shored up the perilously leaning walls. The mountains, delaying sunrise and hastening dusk, must have halved again the short winter days. Those buildings looked too forlorn for habitation. But, in tiny, creeper-smothered windows, a faint light would show at dusk. Who lived in those stone-flagged rooms where the sun never came? Immured in those six-foot-thick walls, overgrown outside with the conquering ivy and within by genealogical trees all moulting with mildew? My thoughts flew at once to solitary figures…a windowed descendant of a lady-in-waiting at the court of Charlemagne, alone with the Sacred Heart and her beads, or a family of wax-pale barons, recklessly inbred; bachelors with walrus moustaches, bent double with rheumatism, shuddering from room to room and coughing among their lurchers, while their cleft palates called to each other down corridors that were all but pitch dark. ~ Patrick Leigh Fermor