What Had Happened Quotes

I was unhappy there and going through a rough transition, so I was desperate for any friend I could find that I could talk to. I thought that's what he was. We had this secret from my mom, who I didn't like much at the time. It was a harmless secret, so I didn't feel bad about it. All we did was go to the movies and hang out doing fun things all day. It wasn't until much later that the warning signs began, but I was still too young and stupid to see them for what they were at the time. Basically, he was patient as he built up the trust between us. He became a close friend and convinced me that he was on my side somehow. He took total advantage of my ignorance and totally betrayed me a few years later, when he slept with me. After my mom found out, she went psychotic and all she gave a fuck about was what had been done to her. She didn't care about anything except for how hurt she was by what had happened. She blamed me and him equally, telling me that sixteen years old was old enough to know better. Even though I never initiated a goddamn thing with him, and never would have. Even though it happened in the apartment she and I had gotten together, that he was not supposed to be staying in. ~ Ashly Lorenzana

My motions were mindless, each one some feeble attempt to keep from thinking about what had happened, ~ Sarah J. Maas

I had started trying - it for the first time, really - it to remember what had happened in that wood. I prodded tentatively around the edges of it, barely acknowledging even to myself what I was doing, like a kid picking at a scab but afraid to look. ~ Tana French

I meant to ask Erik to say something to Victoria, to follow what had happened at the dance, but I couldn't settle on the right words. An apology for fleeing, sure, but then what? 'I only think of you as a friend'? 'I think we should see other people'? 'It's not you, it's the fact that I'm secretly a girl who sacrificed a foot and a half of perfectly good hair to the dark gods of a capella'? ~ Riley Redgate

Goddamn it," Zane murmured, raking a hand through his hair. What had happened was his fault - he had failed to be the dominant that the submissive obviously wanted and most certainly needed. Instead of taking control he had relinquished it and thus had probably ruined any chance with her. ~ Sharon Davis

The first generation of therapists doing this work were told by their clients that the one massive cult was everywhere, knew everything, had access to state-of-the-art technology, and was willing to kill both clients and therapists to stop the information from getting out." []
"The reality is that even before stories of ritual abuse and mind control began coming out to therapists, the groups had agreed on what kind of disinformation to spread, so that clients would be afraid to tell their therapists what had happened to them, and therapists would be afraid to work with these clients." [ ]
"We know that there is not one massive Satanic cult, but many different interrelated groups, including religious, military/political, and organized crime, using mind control on children and adult survivors. We know that there are effective treatments. We know that many of the paralyzing beliefs our clients lived by are the results of lies and tricks perpetrated by their abusers. ~ Alison Miller

This king [Sesostris] divided the land among all Egyptians so as to give each one a quadrangle of equal size and to draw from each his revenues, by imposing a tax to be levied yearly. But everyone from whose part the river tore anything away, had to go to him to notify what had happened; he then sent overseers who had to measure out how much the land had become smaller, in order that the owner might pay on what was left, in proportion to the entire tax imposed. In this way, it appears to me, geometry originated, which passed thence to Hellas. ~ Herodotus

History was what had happened; class was something you read about in a book. ~ Amit Chaudhuri

This political disorder found expression in Machiavelli Prince. In the absence of any guiding principle, politics becomes a naked struggle for power; The Prince gives shrewd advice as to how to play this game successfully. What had happened in the great age of Greece happened again in Renaissance Italy: traditional moral restraints disappeared, because they were seen to be associated with superstition; the liberation from fetters made individuals energetic and creative, producing a rare florescence of genius; but the anarchy and treachery which inevitably resulted from the decay of morals made Italians collectively impotent, and they fell, like the Greeks, under the domination of nations less civilized than themselves but not so destitute of social cohesion. ~ Bertrand Russell

The river of his youth had been diverted and poured out broadly across the land to seep through dirt to the roots of crops instead of running in its bed. The river was no longer a river, and the desert was no longer a desert. Nothing was as it had been.
He knew what had happened to the sagelands. He himself had helped burn them. Then men like his father had seized the river without a trace of evil in their hearts, sure of themselves but ignorant, and children of their time entirely, with no other bearings to rely on. Irrigators and fruit-tree growers, they believed the river to be theirs. His own life spanned that time and this, and so he believed in the old fast river as much as he believed in apple orchards, and yet he saw that the two were at odds, the river defeated that apples might grow as far as Royal Slope. It made no more sense to love the river and at the same time kill it growing apples than it made sense to love small birds on the wing and shoot them over pointing dogs. But he'd come into the world in another time, a time immune to these contradictions and in the end he couldn't shake old ways any more than he could shake his name. ~ David Guterson

Why did we come back this way instead of popping up somewhere less…cramped?" I asked, substituting the word cramped for creepy. I was trying not to feel weirded out that I was in my boyfriend's crypt. It was only a building, after all.
A very unpleasant one.
"This is a portal," he said, as if that explained everything.
"A what?"
"A portal," John whispered. "A direct link from here to the Underworld. That's why you don't feel dizzy this time."
I hadn't even noticed, but he was right. I didn't feel sick, for once, though we'd just jumped between astral planes.
"This is a doorway through which the souls of the departed enter the world of the dead after they pass," John explained softly. "The doorway closes behind the dead once they enter. They can never leave again-"
"Unless they escape," I interrupted. Because this was what had happened to me.
He glanced down at me with a teasing smile. "Unless I choose to let them escape," he said, "because they seem to want their mothers so badly."
"That was two years ago," I reminded him. I shouldn't have mentioned the thing that morning about being inexperienced with men, even if it was technically true. He was never going to let me help him if he always thought of me as someone he had to protect. "And do I have to remind you that you didn't let me escape, I-"
"Shhh." He held up a hand. "Someone's coming. ~ Meg Cabot

My best friend. I had my best friend back. If I had her, I could recover from what had happened in Siberia. I could go on with my life. ~ Richelle Mead

Jesper shrugged again. He adjusted the buttons on his shirt, touched his thumbs to his revolvers. When he felt like this, mad and scattered, it was as if his hands had a life of their own. His whole body itched. He needed to get out of this room.
Wylan laid his hand on Jesper's shoulder. "Stop."
Jesper didn't know if he wanted to jerk away or pull him closer.
"Just stop," Wylan said. "Breathe." Wylan's gaze was steady.
Jesper couldn't look away from that clear-water blue. He forced himself to still, inhaled, exhaled.
"Again," Wylan said, and when Jesper opened his mouth to take another breath, Wylan leaned forward and kissed him. Jesper's mind emptied. He wasn't thinking of what had happened before or what might happen next. There was only the reality of Wylan's mouth, the press of his lips, then the fine bones of his neck, the silky feel of his curls as Jesper cupped his nape and drew him nearer.
This was the kiss he'd been waiting for. It was a gunshot. It was prairie fire. It was the spin of Makker's Wheel. Jesper felt the pounding of his heart - or was it Wylan's? - like a stampede in his chest, and the only thought in his head was a happy, startled, Oh.
Slowly, inevitably, they broke apart. "Wylan," Jesper said, looking into the wide blue sky of his eyes, "I really hope we don't die. ~ Leigh Bardugo

it occurred to him that kids were better at almost dying, and they were also better at incorporating the inexplicable into their lives. They believed implicitly in the invisible world. Miracles both bright and dark were to be taken into consideration, oh yes, most certainly, but they by no means stopped the world. A sudden upheaval of beauty or terror at ten did not preclude an extra cheesedog or two for lunch at noon.

"But when you grew up, all that changed. You no longer lay awake in your bed, sure something was crouching in the closet or scratching at the window ... but when something did happen, something beyond rational explanation, the circuits overloaded. The axons and dendrites got hot. You started to jitter and jive, you started to shake rattle and roll, your imagination started to hop and bop and do the funky chicken all over your nerves. You couldn't just incorporate what had happened into your life experience. It didn't digest. Your mind kept coming back to it, pawing it lightly like a kitten with a ball of string ... until eventually, of course, you either went crazy or got to a place where it was impossible for you to function. ~ Stephen King

She had heard it was easy to blame others for one's own failures. But that wasn't exactly accurate. It was easy to blame herself for what had happened
hard to live with it. ~ Frank Beddor

The Astronomer
AN ASTRONOMER used to go out at night to observe the stars. One evening, as he wandered through the suburbs with his whole attention fixed on the sky, he fell accidentally into a deep well. While he lamented and bewailed his sores and bruises, and cried loudly for help, a neighbor ran to the well, and learning what had happened said: Hark ye, old fellow, why, in striving to pry into what is in heaven, do you not manage to see what is on earth? ~ Aesop

I listened to the men's voices outside, muted by my car walls.
" ... went at it with a flamethrower in the online video. Didn't even pucker the paint."
"Of course not. You could roll a tank over this baby. Not much of a market for one over here. Designed for Middle East Diplomats, arm dealers, and drug lords mostly."
"Think she's something?" the short one asked in a softer voice. I ducked my head, cheeks flaming.
"Huh," the tall one said. "Maybe. Can't imagine what you'd need missile-proof glass and four thousand pounds of body armor for around here. Must be headed somewhere more hazardous."
Body armor. Four thousand pounds of body armor. And missle-proof glass? Nice. What had happened to good old-fashioned bulletproof? ~ Stephenie Meyer

But when he sat down for a moment on the bed, all the comedy of it was snatched away and torn to pieces. He was wrong about the woman's expression: he was trying to transform it into something he could bear. The truth was probably far different. He had started out to see what had happened with her eyes and had ended by substituting his own, thus contriving to put her on his side. ~ Saul Bellow

As he lay there, he sought some explanation for what had happened. Surely, Miggson and Prior were to blame; his father hadn't known. [...] As soon as he drew out the thick envelope, he knew his father was guilty. [...] His father hadn't even bothered with a convincing ruse. He'd known Wylan wouldn't try to read the papers. And that his gullible son would never think to suspect his father of lying. Pathetic. ~ Leigh Bardugo

. . . [A] creationist spy named Luther Sunderland snuck into a closed scientific meeting of the Systematics Discussion Group at the American Museum in 1981 with a hidden tape recorder. . . . My friend, the distinguished paleoichthyologist Colin Patterson of the British Museum in London, was talking about pattern cladism and how he had abandoned many of the assumptions about evolution that he had once held, including the recognition of ancestors in the fossil record. He was now only interested in the simplest hypotheses that were easily tested, such as cladograms. But, of course, taken out of context, it sounds as though Colin doubted that evolution had taken place, yet he said nothing of the sort! Colin was speaking in a kind of "shorthand" that makes sense to the scientists who understand the subtleties of the debate, but mean something entirely different when taken out of context. I was at that meeting and was stunned to read afterward about Sunderland's account of what had happened because I remembered Colin's ideas clearly and could not imagine how they could be misinterpreted. For decades afterward, Colin had to explain over and over again what he had meant, and why he did not doubt the fact that evolution had occurred, only that he no longer accepted a lot of the other assumptions about evolution that Neo-Darwinists had made. Unfortunately, Colin died in 1998 while he was still in his scientific prime, unable to continue fighting these misinterpretations of his ideas th ~ Donald R. Prothero

And, according to that Hume guy, the fact that I had until now woken up every morning in the same body, into the same world, where what had happened had actually happened, was no guarantee that the same thing would happen again tomorrow morning. ~ Jo Nesbo

When I was a sophomore at USC, I was a socialist, pretty much to the left. But not when I left the university. I quickly got wise. I'd read about what had happened to Russia in 1917 when the Communists took over. ~ John Wayne

Happiness would come, Harry thought, but at the moment it was muffled by exhaustion, and the pain of losing Fred and Lupin and Tonks pierced him like a physical wound every few steps. Most of all he felt the most stupendous relief, and a longing to sleep. But first he owed an explanation to Ron and Hermione, who had stuck with him for so long, and who deserved the truth. Painstakingly he recounted what he had seen in the Pensieve and what had happened in the forest, and they had not even begun to express all their shock and amazement what at last they arrived at the place to which they had been walking, though none of them had mentioned their destination. ~ J.K. Rowling

She scarcely knew what to think except that she was in the presence of a woman who was as close to legendary as any being could get.What stories were told of her! That she had been sequestered in her own manor to prevent men from fighting over her, that she possessed strange powers, that the Wolf had kidnapped her for vengeance but married her for love, that her own brother, mistaking what had happened, had returned her to England by stealth and that Norse and Saxon had come perilously close to war over her. ~ Josie Litton

So far, she had nothing but fear and the nauseating sensation that the hour would pass and she would be just as helpless as when she'd first left the Fuller house. The same problems that had plagued her before were on an endless loop that took up every conscious thought. Her mother: persistently unavailable. Huckleberry: worthless. Jacob Mayhew: probably working for the congressman. Fred Nolan: ditto, or maybe he had his own agenda. Congressman Johnny Jackson: Paul's secret uncle. Powerful and connected, and duplicitous enough to stand with the Kilpatrick family during press conferences, as if he had no idea what had happened to their precious child. Adam Quinn: possible friend or foe. ~ Karin Slaughter

His persistent nostalgia depressed him, aged him, and yet he couldn't stop feeling that the most glorious years, the years when everything seemed drawn in florescents, were gone. Everyone had been so much more entertaining then. What had happened? ~ Hanya Yanagihara

Funny, that no one had ever asked what had happened to the dishes, the scraps, the crumbs in the photographs, on the poster. ~ Anna Quindlen

She closed her eyes, silently continuing the pleas that she be given words that might soothe, words that would begin the healing of bereaved parents. She had seen, when she entered the kitchen, the chasm of sorrow that divided man and wife already, each deep in their own wretched suffering, neither knowing what to say to the other. She knew that to begin to talk about what had happened was a key to acknowledging their loss, and that such acceptance would in turn be a means to enduring the days and months ahead. ~ Jacqueline Winspear

Why wasn't she cooperating? He stood to his full height. "I am Ronan Kayrs of the Kayrs ruling family. Obey me, woman."
She snorted.
He gaped. What had happened to the world he'd protected? ~ Rebecca Zanetti

While the war in Iraq was raging, I spent some time in neighbouring Jordan, meeting with Iraqi refugees who fled their country to try to find some place of safety. I interviewed many families about what had happened to them and what they did as a result. ~ Deborah Ellis

She couldn't put into words how desparately she wanted to know what had happened to Sarah. But she'd suddenly realized that Sarah was not the only one who had lost her memory of what happened when she was a little girl. Hundreds of thousands of people had lost their memories of what had happened to them ... ~ Denny Taylor

The scars of what had happened were still there, not glued together to try to minimise the appearance of them, but glowing with thin rivulets of gold - more beautiful for having once been broken. ~ Alexandra Bracken

I could not discuss what had happened to me with anyone, I could not even admit it to myself; and, while I never thought about it, it remained, nevertheless, at the bottom of my mind, as still and as awful as a decomposing corpse. And it changed, it thickened, it soured the atmosphere of my mind. ~ James Baldwin

There was a scream from inside.
Drawing his sword, Haung crept up to the door and slid inside, merging with the shadows. The source of the scream was illuminated by the conjured light-ball in the centre of the room. Haung took in the scene and felt all strength flee from muscles. His arms fell limp by his side and the tip of his sword struck the tiled floor with a bright clink. From the rafters, two small bodies hung, rope tight round their necks, blackened tongues swelling from their mouths and sightless eyes staring into the void. Below the bodies of the two children, a naked woman, bruised body and bloody face sat staring at him. Blood pooled from between her knees and it was clear to Haung what had happened to her, and to her young children. She screamed again and again. Her eyes were desperate and disbelieving. Her claw fingered hands tore at her cheeks again and again. Ragged lines of blood dripped down her face, tears of madness and grief. Haung stared at her, unable to move. ~ G.R. Matthews

Nobody would say the cowshed was heaven and nobody would say the inhuman torture of so many victims be called a revolution of the proletariat ... A museum should be established to remind China of the follies and disasters that had fallen from 1966 to 1976. We cannot forget what had happened and history should not repeat itself. ~ Ba Jin

We set up our gear for the tune-up and Tony [Iommi] launched into the opening riff of 'Black Sabbath' – doh, doh, doooohnnnn – but before I'd got through the first line of lyrics the manager had run on to the stage, red in the face, and was shouting, 'STOP, STOP, STOP! Are you f**king serious? This isn't Top-Forty pop covers! Who are you people?'
'Earth,' said Tony, shrugging. 'You booked us, remember?'
'I didn't book this. I thought you were going to play "Mellow Yellow" and "California Dream-in'".'
'Who – us?' laughed Tony.
'That's what your manager told me!'
'Jim Simpson told you that?'
'Who the hell's Jim Simpson?'
'Ah,' said Tony, finally working out what had happened. He turned to us and said, 'Lads, I think we might not be the only band called Earth.'

He was right: there was another Earth on the C-list gig circuit. But they didn't play satanic music. They played pop and Motown covers. ~ Ozzy Osbourne

Having always observed that most of them who constantly took in the weekly Bills of Mortality made little other use of them than to look at the foot how the burials increased or decreased, and among the Casualties what had happened, rare and extraordinary, in the week current; so as they might take the same as a Text to talk upon in the next company, and withal in the Plague-time, how the Sickness increased or decreased, that the Rich might judg of the necessity of their removal, and Trades-men might conjecture what doings they were likely to have in their respective dealings. ~ John Graunt

believed in The Good Luck of Right Now. Believing - or maybe even pretending - made you feel better about what had happened, regardless of what was true and what wasn't. And what is reality, if it isn't how we feel about things? What else matters at the end of the day when we lie in bed alone with our thoughts? And isn't it true, statistically speaking - regardless of whether we believe in luck or not - that good and bad must happen ~ Matthew Quick

Mother's Day really was in its origin an antiwar day, an antiwar statement. Julia Ward Howe was sickened by what had happened during the Civil War, the loss of life, the carnage, and she created Mother's Day as a call for women all over the world to come together and create ways of protesting war, of making a kind of alternate government that could finally do away with war as an acceptable way of solving conflict. ~ Gloria Steinem

Zane sighed. He knew no one had died. He knew exactly what had happened last night. He just didn‟t have perspective, because when he drank, he focused in on whatever he thought his goal was to the exclusion of everything else. Last night, Ty had been part of "everything else." That was the problem: Ty wasn‟t his keeper - Ty was his conscience. ~ Abigail Roux

I felt they had really moved the characters in a direction that was very interesting. The family had really felt the impact of what had happened to the. ~ JoBeth Williams

Wedding was quiet and small, home they shared was soulless, their food bland. Sarla and her husband felt like guests in that home rather than family. They wondered what had happened to their son. ~ Shilpi Somaya Gowda

She knew now that everyone had heartbreak in their life at some point. What had happened didn't make her special or unusual. It was part of being human. A broken heart was, after all, the source material of myriad books. Some of those books had become her comfort, and had made her realize she was not alone. ~ Veronica Henry

She could not think of what had happened to her that day, or of what might happen that night. Instead, she watched the lamplighters move along the avenues even as their celestial counterparts set the stars alight in the sky. The rain had washed the city clean, and the air was a confection of clematis and violets and peony. Music and light spilled out of so many grand houses that the two seemed at once ubiquitous and united, as if to play a note was to send forth a ray of illumination, and a quartet was enough to set the grandest halls aglitter. ~ Galen Beckett

All the while, my mind reeled with what had happened.
I have a hickey. I let Adrian Ivashkov give me a hickey. ~ Richelle Mead

The difference in Billy wasn't what had happened to him, but what hadn't. He had a life he hadn't led, and he knew it. He just hoped nobody else noticed. ~ Michael Lewis

Because to ignore what had happened in the recent and distant pasts, to turn away and look elsewhere because it was easier to do so, was to be an accomplice to the crimes that were committed. To refuse to delve deeper would be to collude with the offenders. ~ John Connolly

One just had to be content with what had happened so far. ~ Rosamunde Pilcher

A lot of her songs were to do with Blake, which did not escape Mark's attention. She told Mark that writing songs about him was cathartic and that 'Back to Black' summed up what had happened when their relationship had ended: Blake had gone back to his ex and Amy to black, or drinking and hard times. It was some of her most inspired writing because, for better or worse, she'd lived it. Mark and Amy inspired each other musically, each bringing out fresh ideas in the other. One day they decided to take a quick stroll around the neighbourhood because Amy wanted to buy Alex Clare a present. On the way back Amy began telling Mark about being with Blake, then not being with Blake and being with Alex instead. She told him about the time at my house after she'd been in hospital when everyone had been going on at her about her drinking. 'You know they tried to make me go to rehab, and I told them, no, no, no.' 'That's quite gimmicky,' Mark replied. 'It sounds hooky. You should go back to the studio and we should turn that into a song.' Of course, Amy had written that line in one of her books ages ago. She'd told me before she was planning to write a song about what had happened that day, but that was the moment 'Rehab' came to life. Amy had also been working on a tune for the 'hook', but when she played it to Mark later that day it started out as a slow blues shuffle – it was like a twelve-bar blues progression. Mark suggested that she should think about doing a sixties girl-group sou ~ Mitch Winehouse

I think that people ran out of oxygen and don't really know what happened up there, maybe some of them just made things up because they weren't sure what had happened. ~ Anatoli Boukreev

Thinking what had happened over in my mind, trying to figure out the whys and wherefores, see what lessons were to be learned, what signs to be read in it all. ~ Iain Banks

When the Warrior pulled her half onto his lap and she felt the hard bulge of his erection thrusting up from his groin pressing into her hip, Katya grew nervous. She pulled away, gasping, and pressed him back with her hand on his chest. "Wait! Wait." She licked her tingling lips and touched them with her fingertips, wondering what she'd been thinking to awaken this sleeping giant. What had happened to her vow to fight him off with all her strength?
Turan's dark eyes glowed like two banked coals ready to ignite into flame. "Please. More," he begged hoarsely. "Please."
She suddenly realized that, despite the fact he could snap her in two if he wished, she was the one with the power. He didn't intend to hurt or force her. ~ Bonnie Dee

But that can't work, can it?" Said Richard. "If we do that, then this won't have happened. Don't we generate all sorts of paradoxes?"
Reg stirred himself from thought. "No worse than many that exist already," he said. "If the universe came to an end every time there was some uncertainty about what had happened in it, it would never have got beyond the first picosecond. And many of course don't. It's like a human body, you see. A few cuts and bruises here and there don't hurt it. Not even major surgery if its done properly. Paradoxes are just the scar tissue. Time and space heal themselves up around them and people simply remember a version of events which makes as much sense as they require it to make. That isn't to say if you get involved in a paradox a few things won't strike you as being very odd, but if you've got through life without that already happening to you, then I don't know which universe you've been living in, but it isn't this one ~ Douglas Adams

When Lucy believed that there were actually things in the world that were worse than what had happened to her, she could pull herself up on this knowledge like a rope. When she lost sight of it, she sank. ~ Ann Patchett

Much of the study of history is a matter of comparison, of relating what was happening in one area to what was happening elsewhere, and what had happened in the past. To view a period in isolation is to miss whatever message it has to offer. ~ Louis L'Amour

Claire awoke but kept her eyes closed; she was afraid to open them, unsure of where she would find herself or in what condition. So much of what had happened had the quality of a bad dream, yet there was hope in her heart and she wanted to hang onto it. ~ Jennifer Valoppi

I know that what had happened with my father - his insults, his criticism, the way he made me feel that I was defective and deformed - had hurt me. I'd encountered enough of those self-help articles in women's magazines to know that you don't go through that kind of cruelty unscathed. With every man I met, I'd watch myself carefully.
Did I really like that editor, I'd wonder, or am I just searching for Daddy? Do I love this guy, I'd ask myself, or do I just think he'd never leave me, the way my father did? ~ Jennifer Weiner

So he could talk to Jane and find out what had happened between her and Blakeborough after he left. He could finally get an answer to his marriage proposal.
Proposal? Jane would probably call it a marriage command.
He groaned. Perhaps it wouldn't be a bad idea to talk to her while he waited. He could always pack her off in another hackney before it was time for Meredith to return home. Yes, that would be best.
Climbing inside the hackney, he doffed his hat and shrugged out of his box coat. But all of his perfectly logical reasons for being there went right out of his head the moment he saw her looking so luscious and lovely in her sunny gown.
Because he desired only one thing. Jane. In his arms. Now.
She must have seen the feral need flare in his face, for her eyes went wide. That was the only reaction she had time for, however, before he dragged her into his embrace so he could take her mouth in a hard, urgent kiss.
God, he wanted her. He would never stop wanting her. Fisting his hands in her puffy sleeves to hold her still, he plundered her mouth the way he ached to plunder her body.
Suddenly she shoved him back. "What are you doing? That's not why--"
He clasped her head in his hands, dislodging her bonnet, which tumbled to the floor. Then he kissed her again, demanding her to kiss him back, to need him back. It took her a moment, but then she moaned low in her throat and melted against him.
And he exulted. She was soft, so wonde ~ Sabrina Jeffries

She struggled to find words, and then all the anger she had been damming up for the last few minutes broke out. It made no difference that none of what had happened was his fault. Nor did the fact that he'd saved her, or what he had sacrificed to do it. He was a Carnevare. He was one of them. And he was preventing her from going to her sister's aid when Zoe needed her.
"The girl that Cesare killed … ," she snapped, "her name was Lilia. She … she loved my sister. Do you understand that? Zoe has just lost the person who probably meant more to her than anything else. And Lilia sacrificed herself for me. How can you think that - "
"I'd have done the same thing," he interrupted her calmly. "I'd have died for you up on that mountain."
That took her breath away. For a moment it deprived her not only of her self-control, but of the ability to utter another syllable.
After endless seconds, she stammered, "That - that's nonsense."
"It's the truth." He turned his head and looked at her. "I'm in love with you, Rosa."
She hesitated, fighting for composure.
"Oh, hell," she whispered.
He smiled sadly.
Then neither of them said anything, until finally she took his cell phone and called Zoe. ~ Kai Meyer

I was still a novice at the caped crusader super-sleuth thing, but it didn't take a degree from the Sherlock Holmes Detective School to see exactly what had happened here. Alison had come home, put her lunch in the zapper, poured herself a beverage, turned on her computer and ...
vanished off the face of the earth. ~ Suzanne Brockmann

I had to be right in never talking about what you could not change, and I had to make many people agree that I was right. None of them ever accused me of being responsible for what had happened to Phineas, either because they could not believe it or because they could not understand it. I would have talked about that, but they would not, and I would not talk about Phineas in any other way. ~ John Knowles

A ring was the accepted sign of infinity, eternity. If her own life was that carefully described pencil line, she knew it all at once that the two ends were drawing close together. I have come full circle, she told herself, and wondered what had happened to all the years. It was a question, which from time to time, caused her some anxiety and left her fretting with a dreadful sense of waste. But now, it seemed, the question had become irrelevant, and so the answer, whatever it was, was no longer of any importance. ~ Rosamunde Pilcher

I was devastated. I'm still devastated to this day. When talent like that disappears in a flash, you can't believe it. You deny it. Max Roach, who, of course, played with him on all those EmArcy recordings, held a concert in Baltimore for Clifford long after Clifford died. Max was still disbelieving so many years later. The concert was supposed to bring closure. But Max was so outrageously emotional that day. He had quite a few eruptions and was very emotional about what had happened so many years earlier. Like everyone, he remained disbelieving. ~ Helen Merrill

When the people who were responsible found out what had happened to Chad and Bobby, they shrugged it off by saying that's what the deserved for harvesting lobsters ... yeah, a five-year-old really deserved being blown to pieces over seafood. I hate extremists with a passion. They get so wrapped up in their cause that they think nothing of killing anyone who doesn't agree with them. (Syd) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

Adam shakes his head. "The point isn't to forget what happened to us."

"I didn't mean forget, like, I wouldn't actually remember what had happened. I just don't want to be constantly reminded of what I look like now."

"Like Clyde said, eventually you have to accept it."

I shake my head. "That's not what Clyde said."

"Yeah, but you know as well as I do that that's what he was getting at."

"Well, now you've deprived me of the chance to figure it out myself. I'm going to tell Clyde on you."

"Tattletale," Adam says, grinning. "Seriously, though, Maisie - acceptance is the key. Acceptance is everything."

"Don't use your motivational speech stuff on me."

"How do you know I give motivational speeches?"

"I Googled you."

"You Googled me?"

"Right after we met." I don't add that I haven't looked up any other injuries since I Googled his.

"Guess I made quite an impression, huh?"...

"Nah," I answer. "I was just impressed you found a way to parlay your injury into a lucrative career. ~ Alyssa B. Sheinmel

When you are with somebody you love the smallest, smallest things can be so important, so amusing because love transforms the world, everything. And was that what had happened? ~ Alexander McCall Smith

The class, on the other hand, buzzed and hummed with the anticipated pleasure of writing it up, one day. They were vindicated. Miss Fox belonged after all in the normal world of their writings, the world of domestic violence, torture and shock-horror. They would write what they knew, what had happened to Cicely Fox, and it would be most satisfactorily therapeutic. ~ A.S. Byatt

She said that we didn't know anything, either as children or now, that we were therefore not in a position to understand anything, that everything in the neighbourhood, every stone or piece of wood, everything, anything you could name, was already there before us, but we had grown up without realizing it, without ever even thinking about it. Not just us. Her father pretended that there had been nothing before. Her mother did the same, my mother, my father, even Rino. And yet Stefano's grocery store before, had been the carpenter shop of Alfredo Peluso, Pasquale's father. And yet Don Achille's money had been made before. And the Solaras' money as well. She had tested this out on her father and mother. They didn't know anything, they wouldn't talk about anything. Not Fascism, not the king. No injustice, no oppression, no exploitation. They hated Don Achille and were afraid of the Solaras. But they overlooked it and went to spend their money both at Don Achille's son's and at the Solaras', and sent us, too. And they votes for the Fascists, for the monarchists, as the Solaras wanted them to. And they thought that what had happened before was past, and in order to live quietly, they placed a stone on top of it, and so, without knowing it, they continued it, they were immersed in the things of before, and we kept them inside us, too. ~ Elena Ferrante

I was in New York when Clinton was elected the first time, and everyone I knew was in a state of mad euphoria. I wondered what had happened to my hard-headed friends? Almost everyone I knew was drunk on this great white hope. The next time I was in New York, no one had a good word to say about Clinton, but everyone was in love with Hillary. She was the last word. It's all so unreal. Of course, it's no different in England. Here everyone was besotted with Tony Blair. He was a new face. Do people never learn? ~ Doris Lessing

Everyone stared at her, sorry for her but glad it had not happened to them. There were a few murmurs of sympathy, and a few people whispering all the reasons they thought Vilsa may have deserved what had happened. It is important to make people deserve what happens to them. If bad things can happen for no apparent reason, then bad things might happen to innocent us. ~ Martine Leavitt

In Oklahoma, the CEO of the company that makes McDonald's apple pies told me that she had trouble finding enough Americans to handle modern factory jobs-during a recession. The days of rolling out dough and packing pies in a box were over. She needed people who could read, solve problems and communicate what had happened on their shift, and there weren't enough of them coming out of Oklahoma's high schools and community colleges. ~ Amanda Ripley

There are certain shocks which, if sufficiently strong, seem to have power to destroy the balance of life. Such a shock would seem to overthrow all the intricate, vital, slowly developed mechanism of mind, to plunge the victim into a chaotic half-world of confusion and loss. This is what had happened to Anna. ~ Anna Kavan

It seemed an odd thing to say, and yet all of us had a view from somewhere, a view of the world from the perspective of who we were, of what had happened to us, of how we thought about things. ~ Alexander McCall Smith

If a memory wasn't a thing but a memory of a memory of a memory, mirrors set in parallel, then what the brain told you now about what it claimed had happened then would be coloured by what had happened in between. It was like a country remembering its history: the past was never just the past, it was what made the present able to live with itself. ~ Julian Barnes

Rich loved taking care of women. He would swoop in like Tarzan swinging on a vine, rescue them from whatever situation they found themselves in, and be their hero. He would make all the decisions, and he would be strong and dependable. "What a catch!" they would feel.

But they did not see his inability to allow them to disagree or have an opinion. He could not yield to another person. He could not show weakness or vulnerability. He would make up for that inflexibility by being a very attractive "strong man" to women who would want to be swept off their feet more than they wanted a real person.

So, they would be a perfect match - until he would see the other side of a passive, compliant woman. She would be sneaky and not tell him exactly what was going on. Then, lo and behold, one day she would really "mess up" and have a wish contrary to somthing he wanted or valued. Then, from his perspective, she had "changed" and had become "selfish." "She used to be nice, and now look!"

But in reality, this is not what had happened. She had not changed. When they first met, she showed only half of who she was, hiding the other half, which would come out in sneaky, indirect ways. After a while, it came out directly, such as when she disagreed with him. Then he would cry, "Foul."

So they both got what they asked for. In her compliance, she attracted a controller. In his control he attracted an adaptive person who had a secret side and was indirec ~ Henry Cloud

Have you ever wanted something very badly-something that was within your grasp-and yet you were afraid to reach out for it?
That night he had answered no. Tonight he would have said yes. Among other things, he wanted to know where she was; a month ago he'd told himself it was because he wanted the divorce petition served. Tonight he was too exhausted from his long internal battle to bother lying to himself anymore. He wanted to know where she was because he needed to know. His grandfather claimed not to know; his uncle and Alexandra both know, but they'd both refused to tell him, and he hadn't pressed them.
Wearily, Ian leaned his head against the back of his chair and closed his eyes, but he wouldn't sleep, and he knew it, even though it was three o'clock in the morning. He never slept anymore unless he'd either had a day of grueling physical activity or drunk enough brandy to knock himself out. And even when he did, he laid awake, wanting her, and knowing-because she'd told him-that she was somewhere out there, lying awake, wanting him.
A faint smile touched his lips as he remembered her standing in the witness box, looking heartbreakingly young and beautiful, first trying logically to explain to everyone what had happened-and when that failed, playing the part of an incorrigible henwit. Ian chuckled, as he'd been doing whenever he thought of her that day. Only Elizabeth would have dared to take on the entire House of Lords-and when she couldn't sway them wit ~ Judith McNaught

He had his eyes closed and
rocked himself so much that everyone thought he would
soon crash to the ground. And then it happened. He
crashed to the ground. Surprised, he lay on the ground
on his side, not sure what had happened, looking around.
Next he jumped up and listened to Matica's singing again,
starting to rock himself once more. His eyes closed slowly,
his beak opened. And then he crashed to the ground a second
time. This time he kept lying down, spreading his free
wing up into the air and waving it to the tune of the melody.
Strange sounds came out of his beak. It was a grunt
but more than a grunt, as if he was really enjoying himself,
as if he would follow Matica's words and would sing
or hum as well. ~ Gigi Sedlmayer

Out of this city marched armies that seemed to be great, and afterwards were when glory had magnified them.
As the years went by, an occasional soldier returned, and with a foreign trace to his speech, told tales of what had happened to him in places called Ituzaingo or Ayacucho.
These things, now, are as if they had never been.
Martin Fierro ~ Jorge Luis Borges

Nightmares and secrets. Ewan wished he knew what had happened to these girls before he found them. ~ C.J. Milbrandt

I'm trying to justify it somehow, he thought, meaning it not in the moral sense but rather in the mathematical one. Buildings are built by observing certain natural laws; natural laws may be expressed by equations; equations must be justified. Where was the justification in what had happened less than half an hour ago? ~ Stephen King

Growing up a steward's daughter on the grand Greenwich estate afforded her many opportunities. But life changed one fateful night, a reminder of who and what she was. Since then, she labored hard, building calluses anew on her hands and heart, all in an effort to fall into a deep sleep every night and forget what had happened years ago. Many more years of hard work stretched ahead of her.
Why not sip champagne once more?
What harm could come of that? ~ Gina Conkle

What had happened was going to be always on me, in me, as permanent as one of Roberta's tattoos. "Dolores," I said. I repeated my name over and over until it sounded warped and unreal. I was never going to be myself again. ~ Wally Lamb

But I knew that what had happened was an eye-opener not only to the United States but also to Pakistan, who realized that after what has happened on the 11th of September, it was simply impossible to continue to play those games in Afghanistan. ~ Lakhdar Brahimi

But there's a difference between an old-fashioned financial panic and what had happened on Wall Street in 2008. In an old-fashioned panic, perception creates its own reality: Someone shouts "Fire!" in a crowded theater and the audience crushes each other to death in its rush for the exits. On Wall Street in 2008 the reality finally overwhelmed perceptions: A crowded theater burned down with a lot of people still in their seats. Every major firm on Wall Street was either bankrupt or fatally intertwined with a bankrupt system. The problem wasn't that Lehman Brothers had been allowed to fail. The problem was that Lehman Brothers had been allowed to succeed. This ~ Michael Lewis

What had happened would always be part of us, but we'd survived it. We were still here. The curtain would fall ons us eventually, but I would fight to keep it up as long as I could. For now it was just us, together, and there was nothing in our way. ~ Michelle Hodkin

I remember 'The Yearling' was the first film I ever saw, and my mom told me I cried for about four or five days afterwards. I'd be going along during the day and suddenly start crying over what had happened to the little deer. ~ Ben Mendelsohn

I told him exactly what had happened and he listened with seeming impassiveness, but his nostrils twitched and his eyes blazed as I told how the ruthless hands of the Count had held his wife in that terrible and horrid position, with her mouth to the open wound in his breast. It interested me, even at that moment, to see that whilst the face of white set passion worked convulsively over the bowed head, the hands tenderly and lovingly stroked the ruffled hair. ~ Bram Stoker

I caught a glimpse of my face in the mirror as we glided p. I looked as eroded as the groaning lift. What had happened to the fresh-faced belle from Boston, Mass.? The woman who stared back at me was at the dreaded age between forty-five and fifty, that no-man's land of sag, oncoming wrinkle, and stealthy approach of menopause.
"I hate this elevator, too," I said grimly.
Zoe grinned and pinched my cheek.
"Mom, even Gwyneth Paltrow would look like hell in that mirror."
I had to smile. That was such a Zoe-like remark. ~ Tatiana De Rosnay

She wondered if her father had awakened yet, if he had missed her, if Jeweltongue would tell him she was only out in the garden, if Tea-cosy's wretchedness would give them all away immediately. She wondered if she had been right to guess that her father would not mend till she left--and that he would mend when she did. Had the Beast sent his illness? Did he watch them from his palace? What a sorcerer could and could not do could never quite be relied on--not even always by the sorcerer. She could hate him--easily she could hate him--for the misery of it if he had sent it. If he kept his promises like a man, did he suppose that they mere humans as they were, would keep theirs any less? The price was high for one stolen rose, but they would pay it. If he had sent her father's illness to beat them into acquiescence, she would hate him for it.

The bitterness of her thoughts weighted her down till she had to stop walking. She looked again at the beech trees and, not waiting for a gap this time, fought her way through to the nearest and leant against it, turning her head so that her cheek was against the bark. The Beast is a Beast, even if he keeps his promises; how could she guess how a Beast thinkds, especially one who is so great a sorcere? It was foolish to talk of hating him--foolish and wasteful. What had happened had happened, like anything else might happen, like a bit of paper giving you a new home when you had none finding its way into your hand, like a company ~ Robin McKinley

General Mario Vargas Salinas, now retired from Bolivia's Eighth Army Division, was one of the young army officers present at Guevara's burial. It was his duty to accompany an old dump truck carrying the bodies of the six dead rebels, including that of "Che" Guevara, to the airstrip in Vallegrande, Bolivia. Knowing that the facts surrounding the burials were leaking out, he decided that after 28 years the world should know what had happened to "Che" Guevara's body. At the time, Captain Vargas, who had also led the ambush in which Tamara "Tania" Bunke, Guevara's lover, was shot dead, said that Guevara was buried early on the morning of October 11th, 1967, at the end of the town's landing strip. After the gruesome facts became known, the Bolivian government ordered the army to find Guevara's remains for a proper burial.
General Gary Prado Salmón, retired, had been the commander of the unit that had captured Guevara. He confirmed General Vargas' statement and added that the guerrilla fighters had been burned, before dumping their bodies into a mass grave, dug by a bulldozer, at the end of the Vallegrande airstrip. He explained that the body of "Che" Guevara had been buried in a separate gravesite under the runway. The morning after the burials, "Che" Guevara's brother arrived in Vallegrande, hoping to see his brother's remains. Upon asking, he was told by the police that it was too late. Talking to some of the army officers, he was told lies or perhaps just differing account ~ Hank Bracker

Oftentimes she wondered what had happened to super 8. Sure, it made perfect sense that nobody wanted the hassle of spending money on a three-minute cartridge of film and threading it through a projector, but though digital cameras were convenient and cheap, Mandy didn't care. Super 8 had integrity, it wasn't just nostalgia, it was art, it was history, it was a little recording medium that somehow possessed the power to evoke lost memories, to turn back time, and there was something dazzling about waiting excitedly for a reel of film to come back in its yellow and red Kodak envelope, eating buttered popcorn while the projector paraded life's best moments, and capturing something beautiful in only three minutes. ~ Rebecca McNutt

I remembered lying there in my wet panties, going, "What do I do now?" Jason was asleep, but even if he hadn't been, I wouldn't have told him what had happened. I was convinced I'd never have heard the end of it. "Wet the bed like a baby!" he'd cry. Well, knowing Jason, he probably wouldn't have said any such thing. But in my feverish four-year-old brain, I was convinced he wouldn't want to be my friend anymore if he knew I was a bed wetter. Also, of course, it would come up every time I beat him at anything: "Well, okay, maybe you're better at Candy Land, but at least I'm not a bed wetter. ~ Meg Cabot

I became so desperate that I considered throwing Eric [Beck] off the ledge. I thought I could get down and then lie about what had happened. To my addled brain, this was plausible. Then I came to my senses and woke Eric up and told him that either he had to retreat or I'd throw him off. We went down and I never climbed again for a quarter of a century. ~ Dave Cook

When I came back, I found Mom sobbing at the kitchen table ... Then I asked her what had happened.
'Nothing,'she said. 'I was thinking about that man ... I started thinking about ... if he and his wife and their other child are okay, and I don't know. It just got to me.'
'I know,' I said, because I did know. Sometimes it's safer to cry about people you don't know than to think about people you really love. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

On 17th January 1569, Agnes Bowker of Market Harborough, Leicestershire, allegedly gave birth to a cat. According to the midwife, Elizabeth Harrison, Agnes had told her of how "the likeness of a bear, sometimes like a dog, sometimes like a man" had carnal knowledge of her in its various guises. Harrison went on to describe how Agnes gave birth to the cat, "the hinder part coming first". The other six women who were present at the birth were questioned, but none seemed very sure of what had happened. One Margaret Harrison said "that she was at the birth of the monster with her child in her arms, ~ Claire Ridgway

What had happened was so big, and we were so used to considering our lives as trivial. We almost didn't know how to approach it. The largeness of what had happened, of what we had done. ~ Rufi Thorpe

Russia on its path has oftentimes discussed and overdiscussed what had happened earlier, instead of moving forward. The result is always the same: It is very difficult to move forward when you're looking backward. ~ Mikhail Khodorkovsky

Now he had her full attention. Not only because she wanted to know what had happened, but because anyone who'd get up at two in the morning to smack a melon in the dark deserved attention. Perhaps even medical attention. ~ Louise Penny

But it wasn't just the distance. It was what had happened to me since these days, those endless, quiet days when I thought my life would always continue in that way. When my life consisted of small, certain pieces of a larger, but basically simple, puzzle.
When I was certain that I always knew where each piece fit. ~ Linda Holeman

I opened my eyes and felt better, exhausted but relieved of a burden. The pressure to tell and the weight of the emotions had been with me for weeks. Now that I'd told what had happened, the burden lifted a bit. ~ Olga Trujillo