“
To him she seemed so beautiful, so seductive, so different from ordinary people, that he could not understand why no one was as disturbed as he by the clicking of her heels on the paving stones, why no one else's heart was wild with the breeze stirred by the sighs of her veils, why everyone did not go mad with the movements of her braid, the flight of her hands, the gold of her laughter. He had not missed a single one of her gestures, not one of the indications of her character, but he did not dare approach her for fear of destroying the spell.
”
”
Gabriel García Márquez (Love in the Time of Cholera)
“
It's true. It's like the hidden secret that no one tells you. we can all be beautiful girls, Colie. it's so easy. it's like Dorothy clicking her heels to go home. You could do it all along.
”
”
Sarah Dessen (Keeping the Moon)
“
I thought about my mother, and the words she said to me almost a lifetime ago. That’s when it clicked: she had asked me not to settle, to fight for the person I loved, and for the first time, I did what she expected of me. I had finally lived up to who she wanted me to be.
”
”
Jamie McGuire (Walking Disaster (Beautiful, #2))
“
The way you seem nervous makes me think you don't know that I'm in love with you."
I looked up at him, eyes wide and hands froze. Click.
"I love you, Petal. I've known it for a while now, but everything changed for me last night.
”
”
Christina Lauren (Beautiful Stranger (Beautiful Bastard, #2))
“
but I want to tell them
that all of this shit
is just debris
leftover when we finally decide to smash all the things we thought
we used to be
and if you can’t see anything beautiful about yourself
get a better mirror
look a little closer
stare a little longer
because there’s something inside you
that made you keep trying
despite everyone who told you to quit
you built a cast around your broken heart
and signed it yourself
you signed it
“they were wrong”
because maybe you didn’t belong to a group or a click
maybe they decided to pick you last for basketball or everything
maybe you used to bring bruises and broken teeth
to show and tell but never told
because how can you hold your ground
if everyone around you wants to bury you beneath it
you have to believe that they were wrong
they have to be wrong
”
”
Shane L. Koyczan
“
And not after, when we’re clinging to each other like the world just fell apart and is slowly clicking back together, piece by piece, breath by breath . . . heartbeat by beautiful heartbeat.
”
”
Jenn Bennett (Alex, Approximately)
“
I love you, too." Click. "But I'm terrified."
He lowered the camera, eyes on me.
"I didn't want to fall in love with you,' I said.
He took a step closer. "If it makes you feel any better, you put up a very impressive fight." He didn't put the camera down when he stepped forward again to kiss me. He just moved his hand to the side and cupped my face with the other, pressing his mouth to mine. "I'm scared, too, Sara. I'm scared I'm your rebound. I'm scared we'll cock it up somehow. I'm scared you'll tire of me. But the thing is," he said, smiling, "I don't want anyone else. You've rather ruined me for other women.
”
”
Christina Lauren (Beautiful Stranger (Beautiful Bastard, #2))
“
For Jenn
At 12 years old I started bleeding with the moon
and beating up boys who dreamed of becoming astronauts.
I fought with my knuckles white as stars,
and left bruises the shape of Salem.
There are things we know by heart,
and things we don't.
At 13 my friend Jen tried to teach me how to blow rings of smoke.
I'd watch the nicotine rising from her lips like halos,
but I could never make dying beautiful.
The sky didn't fill with colors the night I convinced myself
veins are kite strings you can only cut free.
I suppose I love this life,
in spite of my clenched fist.
I open my palm and my lifelines look like branches from an Aspen tree,
and there are songbirds perched on the tips of my fingers,
and I wonder if Beethoven held his breath
the first time his fingers touched the keys
the same way a soldier holds his breath
the first time his finger clicks the trigger.
We all have different reasons for forgetting to breathe.
But my lungs remember
the day my mother took my hand and placed it on her belly
and told me the symphony beneath was my baby sister's heartbeat.
And I knew life would tremble
like the first tear on a prison guard's hardened cheek,
like a prayer on a dying man's lips,
like a vet holding a full bottle of whisky like an empty gun in a war zone…
just take me just take me
Sometimes the scales themselves weigh far too much,
the heaviness of forever balancing blue sky with red blood.
We were all born on days when too many people died in terrible ways,
but you still have to call it a birthday.
You still have to fall for the prettiest girl on the playground at recess
and hope she knows you can hit a baseball
further than any boy in the whole third grade
and I've been running for home
through the windpipe of a man who sings
while his hands playing washboard with a spoon
on a street corner in New Orleans
where every boarded up window is still painted with the words
We're Coming Back
like a promise to the ocean
that we will always keep moving towards the music,
the way Basquait slept in a cardboard box to be closer to the rain.
Beauty, catch me on your tongue.
Thunder, clap us open.
The pupils in our eyes were not born to hide beneath their desks.
Tonight lay us down to rest in the Arizona desert,
then wake us washing the feet of pregnant women
who climbed across the border with their bellies aimed towards the sun.
I know a thousand things louder than a soldier's gun.
I know the heartbeat of his mother.
Don't cover your ears, Love.
Don't cover your ears, Life.
There is a boy writing poems in Central Park
and as he writes he moves
and his bones become the bars of Mandela's jail cell stretching apart,
and there are men playing chess in the December cold
who can't tell if the breath rising from the board
is their opponents or their own,
and there's a woman on the stairwell of the subway
swearing she can hear Niagara Falls from her rooftop in Brooklyn,
and I'm remembering how Niagara Falls is a city overrun
with strip malls and traffic and vendors
and one incredibly brave river that makes it all worth it.
Ya'll, I know this world is far from perfect.
I am not the type to mistake a streetlight for the moon.
I know our wounds are deep as the Atlantic.
But every ocean has a shoreline
and every shoreline has a tide
that is constantly returning
to wake the songbirds in our hands,
to wake the music in our bones,
to place one fearless kiss on the mouth of that brave river
that has to run through the center of our hearts
to find its way home.
”
”
Andrea Gibson
“
I shook my head, sweeping my lips across hers. Not good enough. “I need to hear you say it. I need to know you’re mine.”
“I’ve been yours since the second we
met,” she said, begging. I stared into her eyes for a few seconds, and then felt my mouth turn up into a half smile, hoping her words were true and not just spoken in the moment. I leaned down and kissed her tenderly, and then she slowly pulled me into her. My entire body felt like it was melting inside of her.
“Say it again.” Part of me couldn’t believe it was all really happening.
“I’m yours.” She breathed. “I don’t ever want to be apart from you again.”
“Promise me,” I said, groaning with another thrust.
“I love you. I’ll love you forever.” She looked straight into my eyes when she spoke, and it finally clicked that her words weren’t just an empty promise.
”
”
Jamie McGuire (Walking Disaster (Beautiful, #2))
“
Some people may opt out. Their child turns out to be whatever it is that they find impossible to face—for some, the wrong religion; for some, the wrong sexuality; for some, a drug addict. They close the door. Click. Like in mafia movies: “I have no son. He is dead to me.” I have a son and he will never be dead to me.
”
”
David Sheff (Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction)
“
That was the moment I fell in love with Josh Walker. Everything clicked into place, mending the broken parts of my soul enough to finally breathe freely, to soak in everything about him, and the beauty of what we were together.
”
”
Rebecca Yarros (Full Measures (Flight & Glory, #1))
“
The streets you walk, the food you eat, the job you work, the method of transportation you choose, the beauty products you purchase, the shows you watch, the links you click, the way you sit on a train, the way your speak to waiters, the way you take your coffee -- everything affects everyone. Find a way to believe this, even when sober.
”
”
Tess Gunty (The Rabbit Hutch)
“
He handed me a bandana. "Tie that on."
"Why?" I said, but I did it anyway. "Norman, you are way too into ceremony."
"It's important." I could hear him moving around, adjusting things, before he came to sit beside me. "Okay," he said. "Take a look."
I pulled off the blindfold. Beside me, Norman watched me see myself for the first time.
And it was me. At least, it was a girl who looked like me. She was sitting on the back stoop of the restaurant, legs crossed and dangling down. She had her head slightly tilted, as if she had been asked something and was waiting for the right moment to respond, smiling slightly behind the sunglasses that were perched on her nose, barely reflecting part of a blue sky.
The girl was something else, though. Something I hadn't expected. She was beautiful.
Not in the cookie-cutter way of all the faces encircling Isabel's mirror. And not in the easy, almost effortless style of a girl like Caroline Dawes. This girl who stared back at me, with her lip ring and her half smile - not quite earned - knew she wasn't like the others. She knew the secret. And she'd clicked her heels three times to find her way home.
"Oh, my God," I said to Norman, reaching forward to touch the painting, which still didn't seem real. My own face, bumpy and textured beneath my fingers, stared back at me. "Is this how you see me?"
"Colie." He was right beside me. "That's how you are.
”
”
Sarah Dessen (Keeping the Moon)
“
I heard the click of a shutter followed by Max's deep voice. "The way you seem nervous makes me think you don't know that I'm in love with you.
”
”
Christina Lauren (Beautiful Stranger (Beautiful Bastard, #2))
“
I want to fly like a butterfly around this beautiful world, till the last frame of my life and the last click of my heart.
”
”
Biju Karakkonam Nature and Wild life Photographer
“
There is no enough.’ Tarin flicked her indicator on, the clicking noise filling the car as she merged on to the motorway. ‘You seem to be forgetting that she’s in a clinical facility getting professional help. Which is great, obviously. Let them worry about how to deal with depression. You’re going to visit your friend, remember? Yes, she’s a patient, but she’s not your patient. So for God’s sake, don’t treat her like one.
”
”
Sara Barnard (Beautiful Broken Things (Beautiful Broken Things, #1))
“
We aren't able to click backspace or delete. That's the beauty of real life; good or bad we live in the moment.
”
”
Emily McKee (A Beautiful Idea (Beautiful, #1))
“
I love you. I'll love your forever." She looked straight into my eyes when she spoke, and it finally clicked that her words weren't just an empty promise.
”
”
Jamie McGuire (Walking Disaster (Beautiful, #2))
“
To him she seemed so beautiful, so seductive, so different from ordinary people, that he could not understand why no one was as disturbed as he by the clicking of her heels on the pavement,the flight of her hands,the gold of her laughter.
”
”
Gabriel García Márquez
“
I don’t know what to say.
That’s the problem with words. In my head, words are magic. My thoughts are eloquent and fierce. On the page, words are music. In the clicks of my keyboard, in the scratches of pencil meeting paper. In the beauty of the eraser, of the backspace key. On the page, the words in my head sing and dance with the precision of diction and the intricacies of rhythm.
Out loud? Words are the worst.
”
”
Marisa Kanter (What I Like About You)
“
He came back from France when Tom and Daisy were still on their wedding trip, and made a miserable but irresistible journey to Louisville on the last of his army pay. He stayed there a week, walking the streets where their footsteps had clicked together through the November night and revisiting the out-of-the-way places to which they had driven in her white car. Just as Daisy's house had always seemed to him more mysterious and gay than other houses so his idea of the city itself, even though she was gone from it, was pervaded with a melancholy beauty.
”
”
F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby)
“
And not after, when we’re clinging to each other like the world just fell apart and is slowly clicking back together, piece by piece, breath by breath . . . heartbeat by beautiful heartbeat.
”
”
Jenn Bennett (Alex, Approximately)
“
Now we lie here, a decapitated generation, our child-like names vanishing on tombstones, can't you see? Once there was Rock 'n' Roll, freedom of speech, baroque picnics on miraculous boats, there was resurrection on romantic lakes, there were melting kisses under golden trees, there was ticking laughter, clicking metaphors, there were wine and poetic sex, beauty...
”
”
Laura Gentile (Seraphic Addiction)
“
I left this morning saying ‘I love you’
as if setting out for some unknown country
instead of the corner shop. I wanted
you to be sure, in case
this time - out of, say, 10,000 departures
I never made it back: although
after 50 years together, 2 countries,
3 children, and several former journeys
that would put this one to shame
you’d think there’d be no need to pause
on my own doorstep, suddenly afraid
of the distance between us, of your absolute beauty,
of the growing aloneness when I clicked the latch.
”
”
Peter Bland
“
Your beautiful password is dead. It was simply too complex and too damned exquisite to live in your humdrum world, your humdrum mind. Now you must face the ignominy of clicking the password reset button for the 58th time this year. And as you trudge dolefully toward your inbox, waiting for the help letter to arrive, the cruel laughter of His Computerised Majesty rings in your ears. You have failed, human. You have failed.
”
”
Charlie Brooker
“
Snow White swallows that like a sword. She lets the hammer click back into place. Everything in her that's not nailed down is shaking loose.
”
”
Catherynne M. Valente (Six-Gun Snow White)
“
We get one chance and that one chance can make or break us. Turn our event into enchantment or one of tragedy. Either tears are shed or the sounds of laughter fill a room. We aren't able to click backspace or delete. That's the beauty of real life; good or bad we live in the moment.
”
”
Emily McKee (A Beautiful Idea (Beautiful, #1))
“
He began to see a kind of beauty in the strangeness of the field, too. It was quite different from what he had been taught to expect —as he had already discovered, were many of the things in this world—yet there weas pleasure for him now in its alien colors and textures, its new sights and smells. In sounds, too; for his ears were very acute and he heard many strange and pleasant noises in the grass, the diverse rubbings and clickings of those insects that had survived the cold weather of early November; and even, with his head now against the ground, the very small, subtle murmurings in the earth itself.
”
”
Walter Tevis (The Man Who Fell to Earth)
“
It seemed like I had completed a task, overcome an obstacle. I thought about my mother, and the words she said to me almost a lifetime ago. That’s when it clicked: she had asked me not to settle, to fight for the person I loved, and for the first time, I did what she expected of me. I had finally lived up to who she wanted me to be.
”
”
Jamie McGuire (Walking Disaster (Beautiful, #2))
“
Every time the telephone rings, my stomach constricts. Long after the euphoria from meth is no longer attainable—Tennessee Williams described the equivalent with alcohol in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: “I never again could get the click”—addicts are agitated and confused, and most stop eating and sleeping. Parents of addicts don’t sleep, either.
”
”
David Sheff (Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction)
“
Here's something I still can't get over. Amazes and thrills me every time. I'm sitting here and want a certain book. So I search, click, and then I have the book. Every time, my heart does a little leap of joy. What a beautiful world the market is making.
”
”
Jeffrey Tucker
“
Peace, he knows, can be shattered in a million variations: great visions of the end, a rain of ash, a disease on the wind, a blast in the distance, the sun dying like a kerosene lamp clicked off. And in smaller ways: an overheard remark, his daughter’s sour mood, his own body faltering. There’s no use in anticipating the mode. He will wait for the hushed spaces in life, for Ellis’s snore in the dark, for Grete’s stealth kiss, for the warm light inside the gallery, his images on the wall broken beyond beauty into blisters and fragments, returning in the eye to beauty again. The voices of women at night on the street, laughing; he has always loved the voices of women. Pay attention, he thinks. Not to the grand gesture, but to the passing breath.
He sits. He lets the afternoon sink in. The sweetness of the soil rises to him. A squirrel scolds from high in a tree. The city is still far away, full of good people going home. In this moment that blooms and fades as it passes, he is enough, and all is well in the world.
”
”
Lauren Groff (Arcadia)
“
There are two different kinds of glee club in this world. The first sing barbershop favourites and Gershwin tunes, they swing gently, moving from side to side and sometimes clicking their fingers and winking. Howard could basically deal with that type. He had got through those occasions graced by glee clubs of that type. But these boys were not of that type. Swaying and clicking and winking were just how they got warmed up. Tonight this glee club had chosen as their opener ‘Pride (In the Name of Love)’ by U2, which they had taken the trouble to transform into a samba. They swayed, they clicked, they winked. They did coordinated spins. They switched places with each other. They moved forward, they moved back – always retaining their formation. They smiled the kind of smile you might employ when trying to convince a lunatic to quit holding a gun to your mother’s head.
”
”
Zadie Smith (On Beauty)
“
Everyday I rewrite her name across my ribcage
so that those who wish to break my heart
will know who to answer to later
She has no idea that I’ve taught my tongue to make pennies,
and every time our mouths are to meet
I will slip coins to the back of her throat and make wishes
I wish
that someday
my head on her belly might be like home
like doubt to doubt resuscitation
because time is supposed to mean more than skin
She doesn’t know that I have taught my arms to close around her clocks
so they can withstand the fallout from her Autumn
She is so explosive,
volcanoes watch her and learn
terrorists want to strap her to their chests
because she is a cause worth dying for
Maybe someday
time will teach me to pick up her pieces
put her back together
and remind her to click her heels
but she doesn’t need a wizard to tell her that I was here all along
Lady
let us catch the next tornado home
let us plant cantaloupe trees in our backyard
then maybe together we will realize that we don’t like cantaloupe
and they don’t grow on trees
we can laugh about it
then we can plant things we’ve never heard of
I’ve never heard of a woman
who can make flawed look so beautiful
the way you do
The word smitten is to how I feel about you
what a kiss is to romance
so maybe my lips to yours could be the penance to this confession
because I am the only one preaching your defunct religion
sitting alone at your altar, praising you out of faith
I cannot do this hard-knock life alone
You are all the softness a rock dreams of being
the mistakes the rain makes at picnics
when Mother Nature bears witness in much better places
So yes
I will gladly take on your ocean
just to swim beneath you
so I can kiss the bends of your knees
in appreciation for the work they do
keeping your head above water
”
”
Mike McGee
“
Biju stepped out of the airport into the Calcutta night, warm, mammalian. His feet sank into dust winnowed to softness at his feet, ad he felt an unbearable feeling, sad and tender, old and sweet like the memory of falling asleep, a baby on his mother's lap. Thousands of people were out though it was almost eleven. He saw a pair of elegant bearded goats in a rickshaw, riding to slaughter. A conference of old men with elegant goat faces, smoking bidis. A mosque and minarets lit magic green in the night with a group of women rushing by in burkas, bangles clinking under the black and a big psychedelic mess of colour from a sweet shop. Rotis flew through the air as in a juggling act, polka-dotting the sky high over a restaurant that bore the slogan "Good food makes good mood". Biju stood there in that dusty tepid soft sari night. Sweet drabness of home - he felt everything shifting and clicking into place around him, felt himself slowly shrink back to size, the enormous anxiety of being a foreigner ebbing - that unbearable arrogance and shame of the immigrant. Nobody paid attention to him here, and if they said anything at all, their words were easy, unconcerned. He looked about and for the first time in God knows how long, his vision unblurred and he found that he could see clearly.
”
”
Kiran Desai (The Inheritance of Loss)
“
Time and task were both disorienting, for if you were to remove everything from our lives that depends on electricity to function, homes and offices would become no more than the chambers and passages of limestone caves- simple shelter from wind and rain, far less useful than the first homes at Plymouth Plantation or a wigwam. No way to keep out cold, or heat, for long. No way to preserve food, or to cook it. The things that define us, quiet as rock outcrops - the dumb screens and dials, the senseless clicks of on/off switches- without their purpose, they lose the measure of their beauty and we are left alone in the dark with countless useless things.
”
”
Jane Brox (Brilliant: The Evolution of Artificial Light)
“
The siren soared again, closer at hand, and then, with no anticipatory roar and clamour, a dark and sinuous body curved into view against the shadows far down the high-banked track, and with no sound but the rush of the cleft wind and the clock like tick of the rails, moved towards the bridge - it was an electric train. Above the engine two vivid blurs of blue light formed incessantly a radiant crackling bar between them, which, like a spluttering flame in a lamp beside a corpse, lit for an instant the successive rows of trees and caused Gloria to draw back instinctively to the far side of the road. The light was tepid - the temperature of warm blood... The clicking blended suddenly with itself in a rush of even sound, and then, elongating in sombre elasticity, the thing roared blindly by her and thundered onto the bridge, racing the lurid shaft of fire it cast into the solemn river alongside. Then it contracted swiftly, sucking in its sound until it left only a reverberant echo, which died upon the farther bank.
”
”
F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Beautiful and Damned)
“
What can one do with beauty after the eye of the camera has clicked?
”
”
Isobel English (Every Eye)
“
You know what I love? The spaces between I love you. The tap of your fork against the plate and how my cup of wine clicks against our table. The scratchy voice coming from the radio in the other room. The quiet sound of your hand reaching across the table and whispering over mine. How your voice sounds like your mouth on the back of my neck. The soft murmur of our easy conversation.
Between these quiet Tuesday night routines, following every comma and right after every pause for breath, is I, love, and you. In the middle of every I love you is a sink full of dishes, whisper of socked feet tangled in white sheets, and gentle kisses against curved cheeks. We lyric ourselves into the laundry that needs to be finished, into the ends of every smile that follows me repeating your name. We write ourselves into the grocery bags we need to carry, the cracks running up our rented walls, the sides of the bed we choose to drag up the sails of heavy eyed dreams.
Like the spaces between our fingers, in the spaces between I, love, and you, we wait.
The in-betweens have always been my favorite.
”
”
Marlen Komar (Ugly People Beautiful Hearts)
“
My biggest discovery was that you can literally re-create your life. You can redefine it. You don’t have to live in the past. I found that not only did I have fight in me, I had love. By the time we clicked, I had had enough therapy and enough friendship and enough beautiful moments in my life to know what love is and what I wanted my life to feel and look like. When I got on my knees and I prayed to God for Julius, I wasn’t just praying for a man. I was praying for a life that I was not taught to live, but for something that I had to learn. That’s what Julius represented.
”
”
Viola Davis (Finding Me)
“
Nala pushed her lithe body from the desk and swept across the room, her stilettos clicking against the tiled floor. Her movements were as fluid and elegant as the gazelles that inhabited the grassy savannas in Africa. She stood silently in front of the open window, the chiffon curtains floating in the breeze around her. She presented an ethereal vision, which held Abayomi spellbound. Beautiful on the outside. Lethal on the inside, he thought to himself.
”
”
K.D. McNiven (Sheba's Treasure)
“
I discovered another analogy in the legacy of Prophet Muhammad that immediately clicked with me: that the angels put down their wings in humility for a person who seeks knowledge, and that all living things, even the ants in their anthill and the fish in the sea, pray for a person who teaches people good things.
When I read this, I literally felt the goodness flow out of my heart for all creatures. The beautiful mental image it evoked resonated with my concept of the universe as one unit, and of all living things seeking to live together in peace and harmony, and being grateful when humans tried to fit into the circle of life, instead of working so hard to disrupt its equilibrium
”
”
Sahar El-Nadi (Sandcastles and Snowmen)
“
Painful sunlight spilled into Darcy’s bedroom. He groaned and buried his head beneath his pillow.
“Good morning, Master Darcy,” called Niles’s cheerful voice. “Nice day out; just a few clouds. Might have some rain later today. What would you like for your breakfast?”
“Darkness,” Darcy growled into his pillow. “And more sleep.”
Niles clicked his tongue and walked over to his master’s bed. “You’ve got a town to rule and a castle to mope around. And it’s a bright, beautiful day!
”
”
Emma Clifton (Corroded Thorns)
“
Something clicked . Like watching her through the lens , the aperture flicked and the light hit her face differently. She glowed. So goddamn beautiful , it hurt to look at her. Like and eclipse , I knew the longer I stared , the more fucked I'd be.
”
”
Keri Lake (Backfire (Vigilantes, #2))
“
And I thought, I am in love. For the first time I am in love. And loved. Someone loves me. And I love them. And within me things clicked and whirled like the insides of some gigantic clock, cog against wheel, spring against spiral, tick against tock, and I knew that nothing would ever be the same again. I had shown someone what I really was. I had shown someone my truth, my secret. Out there, beyond the walls of the Castle, there was a boy who had seen inside my chrysalis. And I would never be safe again.
”
”
Philip Ridley
“
Something inside me clicks. It's like I've spent my whole life fiddling with a complicated combination only to discover I was toying with the wrong lock. And now, the vault inside of me that contains all my secrets is swinging open and I feel that rush of blood swell in my chest.
”
”
Jasmine Warga (My Heart and Other Black Holes)
“
I walk into the moonlit room and hear the click of the door behind me. A heartbeat later his presence is at my back. He stands there, hovering, the only contact the heat that simmers off his body onto mine. Then I feel it—a fingertip, or perhaps the back of his finger, moving slowly up and down my spine.
”
”
Iris Ann Hunter (Tragic Beauty (Beauty & The Darkness, #1))
“
The trees in wind, the streetlights on, the click and flash of cigarettes being smoked on the lawn, and just a little kiss before we say goodnight. It spins like a wheel inside you: green-yellow, green-blue, green beautiful green. It's simple: it isn't over, it's just begun. It's green. It's still green.
”
”
Richard Siken (Crush)
“
The flickering flames serve a fair match for the sun as the golden globe dips low behind Dove Mountain.
In response the earth sings out in passionate notes, morphing from a timid silence into an aria of melon, tangerine, and pomegranate. Foraging bats add their faint, rhythmic clicks, and my heart hums in response.
”
”
Julie Cantrell (Perennials)
“
To honour its first creation, no sound was permitted within the home of Muse for a full year, no sound save that of its Art: the slow, crisp, click of polished brass gears, the sensual hiss of pneumatic release, the insidious sibilance and decisive thud of a withdrawing and thrusting piston, and the soft groan of the boy held within the cube as each rod ran him through, over and over and over.
Powered by this action, the music box played.
Ashes, ashes, we all fall down...
And another piston rammed home.
A mechanism of intricate complexity exchanging great pain for a little beauty. This, here, then, was Life.
Muse was fulfilled.
”
”
Cameron Rogers (The Music of Razors: A Novel)
“
Kenji goes suddenly still.
At the creak of the door Kenji’s eyebrows shoot up; a soft click and his eyes widen; a muted rustle of movement and suddenly the barrel of a gun is pressed against the back of his head. Kenji stares at me, his lips making no sound as he mouths the word psychopath over and over again.
The psychopath in question winks at me from where he’s standing, smiling like he couldn’t possibly be holding a gun to the head of our mutual friend. I manage to suppress a laugh.
“Go on,” Warner says, still smiling. “Please tell me exactly how she’s failed you as a leader.”
“Hey—“ Kenji’s arms fly up in mock surrender. “I never said she failed at anything, okay? And you are clearly over-react—“
Warner knocks Kenji on the side of the head with the weapon. “Idiot.”
Kenji spins around. Yanks the gun out of Warner’s hand. “What the hell is wrong with you, man? I thought we were cool.”
“We were,” Warner says icily. “Until you touched my hair.”
“You asked me to give you a haircut—“
“I said nothing of the sort! I asked you to trim the edges!”
“And that’s what I did.”
“This,” Warner says, spinning around so I might inspect the damage, “is not trimming the edges, you incompetent moron—“
I gasp. The back of Warner’s head is a jagged mess of uneven hair; entire chunks have been buzzed off.
Kenji cringes as he looks over his handiwork. Clears his throat. “Well,” he says, shoving his hand in his pockets. “I mean—whatever, man, beauty is subjective—“
Warner aims another gun at him.
“Hey!” Kenji shouts. “I am not here for this abusive relationship, okay?” He points to Warner. “I did not sign up for this shit!”
Warner glares at him and Kenji retreats, backing out of the room before Warner has another chance to react; and then, just as I let out a sign of relief, Kenji pops his head back into the doorway and says
“I think the cut looks cute, actually”
and Warner slams the door in his face.
”
”
Tahereh Mafi (Restore Me (Shatter Me, #4))
“
The streets you walk, the food you eat, the job you work, the method of transportation you choose, the beauty products you purchase, the shows you watch, the links you click, the way you sit on a train, the way you speak to waiters, the way you take your coffee—everything affects everyone. Find a way to believe this, even when sober.
”
”
Tess Gunty (The Rabbit Hutch)
“
She’d never really existed to him. She was of no consequence in his life. He was married to a beautiful woman. Jane was pornography. Jane was the adult movie that didn’t appear on his hotel bill. Jane was Internet porn, where every fetish can be fulfilled. You have a fetish for humiliating fat girls? Enter your credit card number and click right here.
”
”
Liane Moriarty (Big Little Lies)
“
I could hear the *click clack* of my heels on the brick walkway. *click* A boy starts a ballet class and doesn’t worry about what his friends will say. *clack* A college student reads Judith Butler. *click* A transgender person understands that, while they have a difficult life to face, they will not be alone. *clack* A sex worker reclaims her dignity and autonomy from a world that says she’s worthless. *click* A woman finds freedom from her abusive husband. *clack* A friend, struggling with bulimia, realizes that she is beautiful. *click* All people, man and woman, realize that in some small way, they have not been true to themselves, and the bonds of gender stereotypes and heterosexism dissolve into truth.
”
”
Jacob Tobia (Sissy: A Coming-of-Gender Story)
“
Above the engine two vivid blurs of blue light formed incessantly a radiant crackling bar between them, which, like a spluttering flame in a lamp beside a corpse, lit for an instant the successive rows of trees and caused Gloria to draw back instinctively to the far side of the road. The light was tepid, the temperature of warm blood…. The clicking blended suddenly with itself in a rush of even sound, and then, elongating in sombre elasticity, the thing roared blindly by her and thundered onto the bridge, racing the lurid shaft of fire it cast into the solemn river alongside. Then it contracted swiftly, sucking in its sound until it left only a reverberant echo, which died upon the farther bank. Silence crept down again over the wet country;
”
”
F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Beautiful and Damned)
“
I am scared of snapping. That something, some random day, it will simply make ‘click’ in my mind and all of the sudden I will absolutely lose my mind. In other words having gazed into the abyss for too long. Go completely and totally insane! How does one decent into madness? What makes one click so all of the sudden life is upside down and people don’t know themselves anymore?
”
”
Ryan Gelpke (2018: Our Summer of Creeping Boredom and Beautiful Shimmering (Howl Gang Legend Book 3))
“
I found the world of the Little House books to be so much less confusing, not just because it was "simpler," as plenty of people love to insist, but because it reconciled all the little contradictions of my modern girlhood. On the Banks of Plum Creek clicked with me especially, with its perfect combination of pinafores and recklessness. (I will direct your attention to the illustration on page 31 of my Plum Creek paperback, where you will note how fabulous Laura looks as she pokes the badger with a stick; her style is casual yet feminine, perfect for precarious nature adventures!) At an age when I found myself wanting both a Webelos uniform and a head of beautiful Superstar Barbie hair, On the Banks of Plum Creek was a reassuring book. Being a girl sometimes made more sense in Laura World than it did in real life.
”
”
Wendy McClure (The Wilder Life: My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie)
“
I helped Master Crawford, the watchmaker, now that his sight had gone and faded to a thin pinpoint of light. That were my favorite time. I loved the beauty of all them parts working perfectly together, a little world that could be put to rights with the click of gears, like time itself answered to your fingers. “There is a beauty to the way things work. Remove one part, add another, you’ve changed the mechanism
”
”
Kelly Link (Steampunk! An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories)
“
Lord, what will I be? Where will the careless conglomeration of environment, heredity and stimulus lead me? Someday I may say: It was of great significance that I sat and laughed at myself in a convertible with the rain coming down in rattling sheets on the canvas roof. It influenced my life that I did not find content immediately and easily - - and now I am I because of that. It was inestimably important for me to look at the lights of Amherstn town in the rain, with the wet black tree-skeletons against the limpid streetlights and gray November mist, and then look at the boy beside me and feel all the hurting beauty go flat because he wasn't the right one - not at all. And I may say that my philosophy has been deeply affected by the fact that windshield wipers ticked off seconds too loudly and hopelessly, that my clock drips loud sharp clicks too monotonously on my hearing. I can hear it even through the pillow I muffle it with - the tyrannical drip drip drip drip of seconds along the night. And in the day, even when I'm not there, the seconds come out in little measured strips of time. And I wind the clock. And I look at the windshield wipers cutting an arch out of the sprinkled raindrops on the glass. Click-click. Clip-clip. Tick-tick. snip-snip. And it goes on and on. I could smash the measured clicking sound that haunts me - draining away life, and dreams, and idle reveries. Hard, sharp, ticks. I hate them. Measuring thought, infinite space, by cogs and wheels. Can you understand? Someone, somewhere, can you understand me a little, love me a little? For all my despair, for all my ideals, for all that - I love life. But it is hard, and I have so much - so very much to learn.
”
”
Sylvia Plath (The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath)
“
Trees stand at the heart of ecology, and they must come to stand at the heart of human politics. Tagore said, Trees are the earth’s endless effort to speak to the listening heaven. But people—oh, my word—people! People could be the heaven that the Earth is trying to speak to. “If we could see green, we’d see a thing that keeps getting more interesting the closer we get. If we could see what green was doing, we’d never be lonely or bored. If we could understand green, we’d learn how to grow all the food we need in layers three deep, on a third of the ground we need right now, with plants that protected one another from pests and stress. If we knew what green wanted, we wouldn’t have to choose between the Earth’s interests and ours. They’d be the same!” One more click takes her to the next slide, a giant fluted trunk covered in red bark that ripples like muscle. “To see green is to grasp the Earth’s intentions. So consider this one. This tree grows from Colombia to Costa Rica. As a sapling, it looks like a piece of braided hemp. But if it finds a hole in the canopy, the sapling shoots up into a giant stem with flaring buttresses.” She turns to regard the image over her shoulder. It’s the bell of an enormous angel’s trumpet, plunged into the Earth. So many miracles, so much awful beauty. How can she leave so perfect a place? “Did you know that every broadleaf tree on Earth has flowers? Many mature species flower at least once a year. But this tree, Tachigali versicolor, this one flowers only once. Now, suppose you could have sex only once in your entire life. . . .” The room laughs now. She can’t hear, but she can smell their nerves. Her switchback trail through the woods is twisting again. They can’t tell where their guide is going. “How can a creature survive, by putting everything into a one-night stand? Tachigali versicolor’s act is so quick and decisive that it boggles me. You see, within a year of its only flowering, it dies.” She lifts her eyes. The room fills with wary smiles for the weirdness of this thing, nature. But her listeners can’t yet tie her rambling keynote to anything resembling home repair. “It turns out that a tree can give away more than its food and medicines. The rain forest canopy is thick, and wind-borne seeds never land very far from their parent. Tachigali’s once-in-a-lifetime offspring germinate right away, in the shadow of giants who have the sun locked up. They’re doomed, unless an old tree falls. The dying mother opens a hole in the canopy, and its rotting trunk enriches the soil for new seedlings. Call it the ultimate parental sacrifice. The common name for Tachigali versicolor is the suicide tree.
”
”
Richard Powers (The Overstory)
“
How strangely, how inconceivably our fate plays with us! Do we ever get what we desire? Do we ever achieve that for which our powers seem purposely to prepare us? Everything happens in a contrary way. To this one fate gave wonderful horses, and he drives around indifferently without ever noticing their beauty—while another, whose heart burns with the horse passion, goes on foot and contents himself with merely clicking his tongue as a trotter is led past him.
”
”
Nikolai Gogol (The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol (Vintage Classics))
“
Beauty isn’t an arrangement of features, even features as perfect as Finlay Hart’s, it’s a feeling. This is how it feels in the split second you suddenly become aware that you’re falling in love with someone. The click of a jigsaw’s last piece, the rainfall of coins in a jackpot slot machine, the right song striking up and your being swept away by its opening bars. That conviction of making complete sense of the universe, in one moment. Of course. You’re where I should be. You’re here.
”
”
Mhairi McFarlane (Just Last Night)
“
The best thing I have always liked about photographers is that they perceive beauty in everything. Beautify everything with clicks; Sonam was that way, looking for beauty everywhere in every place, in every person, may be it was just a practice of photographers. What if all people really appreciate beauty in the world, themselves and other people, the beauty which makes them fall in love with who they truly are, when love of beauty arouses from hearts even the toughest dreams softens their way.
”
”
Shaikh Ashraf (Friendship, Love & Sacrifice)
“
Bethany stands in the middle of the enormous, apparently endless beach surrounded by square miles of damp sand, the surf still some hundred yards off, the light pearly and uniform, the horizon a blurry, darker grey line shading into the clouds. Turning, she sees the black-green jagged stripe of the pines behind the dunes and, beyond that, more unchanging grey sky. A kind of dizziness afflicts her – she senses her insignificance, a small two-legged homunculus in the midst of all this space, a mere speck, a tiny crawling gnat in this elemental simplicity of sand, water and sky.
She squats on her haunches, worried she might fall over, and to distract herself takes out her camera and frames a shot of the beach, the sea and the packed clouds – it looks like an abstract painting. Click. It looks like an abstract painting by – what was his name? Colour-field paintings they are called, the three layers of colour-fields in this case being broad, horizontal bands of dark taupe, slate grey, nebulous tarnished silver. It is rather beautiful. She stands up, feeling equilibrium return – maybe she was hungry, and felt faint for a second or two or maybe, she wonders, maybe she has experienced an actual existential moment – an epiphany – and has seen clearly the reality of her place in the world and has felt the nothingness, the vast indifference of the universe…
”
”
William Boyd (The Dreams of Bethany Mellmoth)
“
But you must admit,it's taking up an inordinate amount of your time. Why it's taken us six months to have dinner together."
"Is that all?"
He misinterpreted the quiet response, and the gleam in her eyes.And leaned toward her.
She slapped a hand on his chest. "Don't even think about it.Let me tell you something,pal.I do more in one day with my school than you do in a week of pushing papers in that office your grandfather gave you between your manicures and amaretto lattes and soirees. Men like you hold no interest for me whatsoever,which is why it's taken six months for this tedious little date.And the next time I have dinner with you,we'll be slurping Popsicles in hell.So take your French tie and your Italian shoes and stuff them."
Utter shock had him speechless as she shoved open her door.As insult trickled in,his lips thinned. "Obviously spending so much time in the stables has eroded your manners, and your outlook."
"That's right, Chad." She leaned back in the door. "You're too good for me. I'm about to go up and weep into my pillow over it."
"Rumor is you're cold," he said in a quiet, stabbing voice. "But I had to find out for myself."
It stung,but she wasn't about to let it show. "Rumor is you're a moron. Now we've both confirmed the local gossip."
He gunned the engine once,and she would have sworn she saw him vibrate. "And it's a British tie."
She slammed the car door, then watched narrow-eyed as he drove away. "A British tie." A laugh gurgled up,deep from the belly and up into the throat so she had to stand, hugging herself, all but howling at the moon. "That sure told me."
Indulging herself in a long sigh, she tipped her head back,looked up at the sweep of stars. "Moron," she murmured. "And that goes for both of us."
She heard a faint click, spun around and saw Brian lighting up a slim cigar. "Lover's spat?"
"Why yes." The temper Chad had roused stirred again. "He wants to take me to Antigua and I simply have my heart set on Mozambique.Antigua's been done to death."
Brian took a contemplative puff of his cigar.She looked so damn beautiful standing there in the moonlight in that little excuse of a black dress, her hair spilling down her back like fire on silk.Hearing her long, gorgeous roll of laughter had been like discovering a treasure.Now the temper was back in her eyes,and spitting at him.
It was almost as good.
He took another lazy puff, blew out a cloud of smoke. "You're winding me up, Keeley."
"I'd like to wind you up, then twist you into small pieces and ship them all back to Ireland."
"I figured as much." He disposed of the cigar and walked to her. Unlike Chad, he didn't misinterpret the glint in her eyes. "You want to have a pop at someone." He closed his hand over the one she'd balled into a fist, lifted it to tap on his own chin. "Go ahead."
"As delightful as I find that invitation, I don't solve my disputes that way." When she started to walk away, he tightened his grip. "But," she said slowly, "I could make an exception."
"I don't like apologizing, and I wouldn't have to-again-of you'd set me straight right off."
She lifted an eyebrow.Trying to free herself from that big, hard hand would only be undignified.
”
”
Nora Roberts (Irish Rebel (Irish Hearts, #3))
“
As soon as I got an editor title I was met with raised eyebrows from peers and people older than me. I don’t think that men face this challenge; what I’ve observed is that men in my industry who get ahead early are called trailblazers, while women who get ahead early are simply not taken seriously. The messaging is confusing: we’re repeatedly told we should want to look young. Our culture is, in fact, obsessed with it; the global antiaging industry was valued at 250 billion dollars in 2016 and has grown year over year ever since. But if we do look young, and furthermore if we are young, we’re treated like we don’t know anything. For a culture that is so preoccupied with maintaining female youth, we certainly have quite a few parameters around what kind of power that youth is allowed to access.
”
”
Gabrielle Korn (Everybody (Else) Is Perfect: How I Survived Hypocrisy, Beauty, Clicks, and Likes)
“
The nurse brought out some knitting, and clicked her needles sharply. She turned to me, very bright, very cheerful. “How are you liking Manderley, Mrs. de Winter?” “Very much, thank you,” I said. “It’s a beautiful spot, isn’t it?” she said, the needles jabbing one another. “Of course we don’t get over there now, she’s not up to it. I am sorry, I used to love our days at Manderley.” “You must come over yourself sometime,” I said. “Thank you, I should love to. Mr. de Winter is well, I suppose?” “Yes, very well.” “You spent your honeymoon in Italy, didn’t you? We were so pleased with the picture-postcard Mr. de Winter sent.” I wondered whether she used “we” in the royal sense, or if she meant that Maxim’s grandmother and herself were one. “Did he send one? I can’t remember.” “Oh, yes, it was quite an excitement. We love anything like that. We keep a scrapbook you know, and paste anything to do with the family inside it. Anything pleasant, that is.
”
”
Daphne du Maurier (Rebecca)
“
I might be a shameless flirt, but at least I don't have a horrible temper. You should come tend to my wounds from our squabble in the snow. I'm bruised all over thanks to you.
Something clicked against the nightstand, and a pen rolled across the polished mahogany. Hissing, I snatched it up and scribbed:
Go lick your wounds and leave me be.
The paper vanished.
It was gone for a while- far longer than it should have taken to write the few words that appeared on the paper when it returned.
I'd much rather you licked my wounds for me.
My heart pounded, faster and faster, and a strange sort of rush went through my veins as I read the sentence again and again. A challenge.
I clamped my lips shut to keep from smiling as I wrote,
Lick you where exactly?
The paper vanished before I'd even completed the final mark.
His reply was a long time coming. Then,
Wherever you want to lick me, Feyre.
I'd like to start with "Everywhere," but I can choose, if necessary.
I wrote back,
Let's hope my licking is better than yours. I remember how horrible you were at it Under the Mountain.
Lie. He'd licked away my tears when I'd been a moment away from shattering.
He'd done it to keep me distracted- keep me angry. Because anger was better than feeling nothing; because anger and hatred were the long-lasting fuel in the endless dark of my despair. The same way that music had kept me from breaking.
Lucien had come to patch me up a few times, but no one risked quite so much in keeping me not only alive, but as mentally intact as I could be considering the circumstances. Just as he'd been doing these past few weeks- taunting and teasing me to keep the hollowness at bay. Just as he was doing now.
I was under duress, his next note read. If you want, I'd be more than happy to prove you wrong. I've been told I'm very, very good at licking.
I clenched my knees together and wrote back, Good night.
A heartbeat later, his note said, Try not to moan too loudly when you dream about me. I need my beauty rest.
I got up, chucked the letter in the burbling fire, and gave it a vulgar gesture.
I could have sworn laughter rumbled down the hall.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Mist and Fury (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #2))
“
He came back from France when Tom and Daisy were still on their wedding trip, and made a miserable but irresistible journey to Louisville on the last of his army pay. He stayed there a week, walking the streets where their footsteps had clicked together through the November night and revisiting the out-of-the-way places to which they had driven in her white car. Just as Daisy's house had always seemed to him more mysterious and gay than other houses so his idea of the city itself, even though she was gone from it, was pervaded with a melancholy beauty.
He left feeling that if he had searched harder he might have found her—that he was leaving her behind. The day-coach—he was penniless now—was hot. He went out to the open vestibule and sat down on a folding-chair, and the station slid away and the backs of unfamiliar buildings moved by. Then out into the spring fields, where a yellow trolley raced them for a minute with people in it who might once have seen the pale magic of her face along the casual street.
The track curved and now it was going away from the sun which, as it sank lower, seemed to spread itself in benediction over the vanishing city where she had drawn her breath. He stretched out his hand desperately as if to snatch only a wisp of air, to save a fragment of the spot that she had made lovely for him. But it was all going by too fast now for his blurred eyes and he knew that he had lost that part of it, the freshest and the best, forever.
”
”
F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby)
“
A young woman stepped in front of the dais and cleared her throat. She had reddish-brown hair that hung in loose waves down her back. Her figure was slender and regal, and Ian could have easily drowned in her emerald eyes. But what captured his attention the most was the way the lass carried herself—confident, yet seemingly unaware of her true beauty.
She wore a black gown with hanging sleeves, and the embroidered petticoat under her skirts was lined in gray. With the added reticella lace collar and cuffs dyed with yellow starch, she looked as though she should have been at the English court rather than in the Scottish Highlands.
“Pardon me, Ruairi. Ravenna wanted me to tell you that we’re taking little Mary to the beach. We won’t be long. We’ll be in the garden until the mounts are readied, if you need us.”
When the woman’s eyes met Ian’s, something clicked in his mind. His face burned as he remembered. He shifted in the seat and pulled his tunic away from his chest. Why was the room suddenly hot? He felt like he was suffocating in the middle of the Sutherland great hall.
God help him.
This was the same young chit who had pined after him, following him around the castle and nipping at his heels like Angus, Ruairi’s black wolf. But like everything else that had transformed around here, so had she. She was no longer a girl but had become an enchantress—still young, but beautiful nevertheless. His musings were interrupted by a male voice.
“Munro, ye do remember Lady Elizabeth, eh?”
How could he forget the reason why he’d avoided Sutherland lands for the past three years?
”
”
Victoria Roberts (Kill or Be Kilt (Highland Spies, #3))
“
At the top of Anonybitch’s feed, there is a video of a boy and a girl making out in a hot tub. Anonybitch is particularly famous for her hot tub videos. She tags them #rubadub. This one’s a little grainy, like it was zoomed in from far away. I click play. The girl is sitting in the boy’s lap, her body draped over his, legs hooked around his waist, arms around his neck. She’s wearing a red nightgown, and it billows in the water like a full sail. The back of her head obscures the boy. Her hair is long, and the ends dip into the hot tub like calligraphy brushes in ink. The boy runs his hands down her spine like she is a cello and he is playing her.
I’m so entranced I don’t notice at first that Kitty is watching with me. Both of our heads are tilted, trying to suss out what it is we’re looking at. “You shouldn’t be looking at this,” I say.
“Are they doing it?” she asks.
“It’s hard to say because of her nightgown.” But maybe?
Then the girl touches the boy’s cheek, and there is something about the movement, the way she touches him like she is reading braille. Something familiar. The back of my neck goes icy cold, and I am hit with a gust of awareness, of humiliating recognition.
That girl is me. Me and Peter, in the hot tub on the ski trip.
Oh my God.
I scream.
Margot comes racing in, wearing one of those Korean beauty masks on her face with slits for eyes, nose, and mouth. “What? What?”
I try to cover the computer screen with my hand, but she pushes it out of the way, and then she lets out a scream too. Her mask falls off. “Oh my God! Is that you?”
Oh my God oh my God oh my God.
“Don’t let Kitty see!” I shout.
Kitty’s wide-eyed. “Lara Jean, I thought you were a goody-goody.”
“I am!” I scream.
”
”
Jenny Han (P.S. I Still Love You (To All the Boys I've Loved Before, #2))
“
Curtis Bane screamed and though I came around fast and fired in the same motion, he’d already pulled a heater and begun pumping metal at me. We both missed and I was empty, that drum clicking uselessly. I went straight at him. Happily, he too was out of bullets and I closed the gap and slammed the butt of the rifle into his chest. Should’ve knocked him down, but no. The bastard was squat and powerful as a wild animal, thanks to being a coke fiend, no doubt. He ripped the rifle from my grasp and flung it aside. He locked his fists and swung them up into my chin, and it was like getting clobbered with a hammer, and I sprawled into a row of trash cans. Stars zipped through my vision. A leather cosh dropped from his sleeve into his hand and he knew what to do with it all right. He swung it in a short chopping blow at my face and I got my left hand up and the blow snapped my two smallest fingers, and he swung again and I turned my head just enough that it only squashed my ear and you better believe that hurt, but now I’d drawn the sawback bayonet I kept strapped to my hip, a fourteen-inch grooved steel blade with notched and pitted edges—Jesus-fuck who knew how many Yankee boys the Kraut who’d owned it gashed before I did for him—and stabbed it to the guard into Bane’s groin. Took a couple of seconds for Bane to register it was curtains. His face whitened and his mouth slackened, breath steaming in the chill, his evil soul coming untethered. He had lots of gold fillings. He lurched away and I clutched his sleeve awkwardly with my broken hand and rose, twisting the handle of the blade side to side, turning it like a car crank into his guts and bladder, putting my shoulder and hip into it for leverage. He moaned in panic and dropped the cosh and pried at my wrist, but the strength was draining from him and I slammed him against the wall and worked the handle with murderous joy. The cords of his neck went taut and he looked away, as if embarrassed, eyes milky, a doomed petitioner gaping at Hell in all its fiery majesty. I freed the blade with a cork-like pop and blood spurted down his leg in a nice thick stream and he collapsed, folding into himself like a bug does when it dies.
”
”
Laird Barron (The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All)
“
this thing—his thing—still well and alive inside me. # I dreamed of clawed hooks and sexual abandon. Faces covered in leather masks and eyeliner so dark I could only see black. Here the monsters would come alive, but not the kind you have come to expect. I watched myself as if I were outside my own flesh, free from the imprisonment of bone and conscience. Swollen belly stretch-marked and ugly; my hair tethered and my skin vulnerable. Earthquake beats blared from the DJ booth as terrible looking bodies thrashed, moshed and convulsed. Alone, so alone. Peter definitely gone, no more tears left but the ones that were to come from agony. She was above me again, Dark Princess, raging beauty queen, and I was hers to control. The ultimate succession into human suspension. Like I’d already learned: the body is the final canvas. There is no difference between love and pain. They are the same hopeless obsession. The hooks dived, my legs opened and my back arched. Blood misted my face; pussy juice slicked my inner thigh as my water suddenly broke. # The next night I had to get to the club. 4 A.M. is a time that never lets me down; it knows why I have nightmares, and why I want to suspend myself above them. L train lunacies berated me once again, but this time I noticed the people as if under a different light. They were all rather sad, gaunt and bleary. Their faces were to be pitied and their hands kept shaking, their legs jittering for another quick fix. No matter how much the deranged governments of New York City have cleaned up the boroughs, they can’t rid us of our flavor. The Meatpacking District was scarily alive. Darkness laced with sizzling urban neon. Regret stitched up in the night like a black silk blanket. The High Line Park gloomed above me with trespassers and graffiti maestros. I was envious of their creative freedom, their passion, and their drive. They had to do what they were doing, had to create. There was just no other acceptable life than that. I was inside fast, my memories of Peter fleeting and the ache within me about to be cast off. Stage left, stage right, it didn’t matter. I passed the first check point with ease, as if they already knew the click of my heels, the way my protruding stomach curved through my lace cardigan. She found me, or I found her, and we didn’t exchange any words, any warnings. It was time. Face up, legs open, and this time I’d be flying like Superman, but upside down. There were many hands, many faces, but no
”
”
Joe Mynhardt (Tales from The Lake Vol. 1)
“
Glass"
In every bar there’s someone sitting alone and absolutely absorbed
by whatever he’s seeing in the glass in front of him,
a glass that looks ordinary, with something clear or dark
inside it, something partially drunk but never completely gone.
Everything’s there: all the plans that came to nothing,
the stupid love affairs, and the terrifying ones, the ones where actual happiness
opened like a hole beneath his feet and he fell in, then lay helpless
while the dirt rained down a little at a time to bury him.
And his friends are there, cracking open six-packs, raising the bottles,
the click of their meeting like the sound of a pool cue
nicking a ball, the wrong ball, that now edges, black and shining,
toward the waiting pocket. But it stops short, and at the bar the lone drinker
signals for another. Now the relatives are floating up
with their failures, with cancer, with plateloads of guilt
and a little laughter, too, and even beauty—some afternoon from childhood,
a lake, a ball game, a book of stories, a few flurries of snow
that thicken and gradually cover the earth until the whole
world’s gone white and quiet, until there’s hardly a world
at all, no traffic, no money or butchery or sex,
just a blessed peace that seems final but isn’t. And finally
the glass that contains and spills this stuff continually
while the drinker hunches before it, while the bartender gathers
up empties, gives back the drinker’s own face. Who knows what it looks like;
who cares whether or not it was young once, or ever lovely,
who gives a shit about some drunk rising to stagger toward
the bathroom, some man or woman or even lost
angel who recklessly threw it all over—heaven, the ether,
the celestial works—and said, Fuck it, I want to be human?
Who believes in angels, anyway? Who has time for anything
but their own pleasures and sorrows, for the few good people
they’ve managed to gather around them against the uncertainty,
against afternoons of sitting alone in some bar
with a name like the Embers or the Ninth Inning or the Wishing Well?
Forget that loser. Just tell me who’s buying, who’s paying;
Christ but I’m thirsty, and I want to tell you something,
come close I want to whisper it, to pour
the words burning into you, the same words for each one of you,
listen, it’s simple, I’m saying it now, while I’m still sober,
while I’m not about to weep bitterly into my own glass,
while you’re still here—don’t go yet, stay, stay,
give me your shoulder to lean against, steady me, don’t let me drop,
I’m so in love with you I can’t stand up.
Kim Addonizio, Tell Me (BOA Editions Ltd.; First Edition (July 1, 2000)
”
”
Kim Addonizio (Tell Me)
“
What is WordPress?
WordPress is an online, open source website creation tool written in PHP. But in non-geek speak, it’s probably the easiest and most powerful blogging and website content management system (or CMS) in existence today.
Many famous blogs, news outlets, music sites, Fortune 500 companies and celebrities are using WordPress.
WordPress is web software you can use to create a beautiful website, blog, or app. We like to say that WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time. There are thousands of plugins and themes available to transform your site into almost anything you can imagine.
WordPress started in 2003 with a single bit of code to enhance the typography of everyday writing and with fewer users than you can count on your fingers and toes. Since then it has grown to be the largest self-hosted blogging tool in the world, used on millions of sites and seen by tens of millions of people every day.
You can download and install a software script called WordPress from wordpress.org. To do this you need a web host who meets the minimum requirements and a little time. WordPress is completely customizable and can be used for almost anything. There is also a servicecalled WordPress.com.
WordPress users may install and switch between different themes. Themes allow users to change the look and functionality of a WordPress website and they can be installed without altering the content or health of the site. Every WordPress website requires at least one theme to be present and every theme should be designed using WordPress standards with structured PHP, valid HTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).
Themes:
WordPress is definitely the world’s most popular CMS. The script is in its roots more of a blog than a typical CMS. For a while now it’s been modernized and it got thousands of plugins, what made it more CMS-like.
WordPress does not require PHP nor HTML knowledge unlinke Drupal, Joomla or Typo3. A preinstalled plugin and template function allows them to be installed very easily. All you need to do is to choose a plugin or a template and click on it to install.
It’s good choice for beginners.
Plugins:
WordPress’s plugin architecture allows users to extend the features and functionality of a website or blog. WordPress has over 40,501 plugins available.
Each of which offers custom functions and features enabling users to tailor their sites to their specific needs.
WordPress menu management has extended functionalities that can be modified to include categories, pages, etc.
If you like this post then please share and like this post.
To learn more About website design in wordpress
You can visit @ tririd.com
Call us @ 8980010210
”
”
ellen crichton
“
cooking with mud was rolling around in it until only our eyes weren’t caked with brown sludge. I loved him on our hour-long bike rides when we played Would You Rather until we had to pull off to the side of the road because we were laughing so hard. I loved him through high school when he was the obsession of almost every girl at our school, but he always put me first. I loved him when he became my first boyfriend and showed me what it felt like to be cherished. I loved him over our long-distance relationship when receiving his text messages would make my day. And I love him now as he gets ready to commit his life to another woman. I will love him forever, and no amount of time or varying circumstances are going to change that. Jax is my best friend. He will always hold the other half of my heart in the figurative BFF necklace that we share. He will be my friend forever. I hop onto my bed and lie back as I click my phone screen, pulling up my Favorites list. My thumb hovers over his name. I take a deep breath and touch his name. My heart thrums wildly as his phone rings twice on the other end. His voice comes through my earpiece, and I almost cry from happiness. I can move to New York tomorrow with no regrets because the world is right as long as Jax and I are friends again. “Little Love.” His voice sounds anxious, hesitant. “Hey, mister.” Another rogue tear escapes, but this tear is full of happiness.
”
”
Ellie Wade (A Beautiful Kind of Love (Choices, #1))
“
Spoon smiled and held up a palm. I high-fived him. I clicked the link for student files and then typed in the name: Kent, Ashley. When her photograph came up—the one we’d both taken for student IDs the first day of school—I felt a hand reach into my chest and squeeze my heart. “Man,” Spoon said, “no wonder you want to find her.” If you were creating a graphic dictionary and needed a definition of demure, you would use her expression in this picture. She looked pretty, sure, beautiful even, but what you really felt was that she was quiet and shy and somewhat uncomfortable posing. Something about it—something about her, really—called out to me.
”
”
Harlan Coben (Shelter (Mickey Bolitar, #1))
“
BLAKE: You look beautiful tonight. Instead of bolting for my car like any sane person would have, I looked around until I found him. Well, running to my car wouldn’t have helped much; he was parked right next to it and leaning against the driver’s door of his shiny little Lexus. How did he know I was here? If he didn’t know I was here, what is he doing here at two in the morning? Oh my word, he’s been following me! No, that’s ridiculous; come on, Rachel, get a grip. He is not following you. Frick, I really need to stop thinking the world and everyone in it revolves around me. He just happened to be here and saw your car. That’s all. Right? Right. I took a few steps closer to the cars and took a deep breath as I dropped my phone back into my purse, trying to calm myself down. “Hi, Blake.” “I was starting to think you would never leave. I’ve been out here for hours.” Oh God, he has been waiting for me! Those words were creepy enough, but paired with the sexy, innocent smile they seemed even worse. I meant for my voice to sound strong and annoyed but it was barely a whisper. “Why are you following me?” “Following you? I’m not following you. Candice told me you were waiting for me to pick you up from the study group. Jesus, Rachel, you look like you’ve just seen a ghost; are you all right?” “Candice said what? No, I was definitely not waiting for you; I drove myself here. That should be obvious, since you’re parked next to my Jeep.” I didn’t know what was going on, but I wanted to get out of there and away from him. Now. “Yeah, but your car isn’t starting. Which is why I’m here.” He said every word slowly, like I was a child or something. “Don’t you remember, Rachel? You called her almost three hours ago, but she was busy, so you told her to call me. Are you feeling okay? Come on, get in the car. I’ll get you back to your room.” “I am not getting in your car, I’ll drive myself back!” With that I took the last few steps to my car, got in, locked the door, and put the key in the ignition. I turned it but nothing happened. There wasn’t even a click. What had happened to my car? I knew I hadn’t called Candice. And even then, if I’d wanted Blake to pick me up I would have called him myself. Someone tapped on the window and even though I knew who it was, I still jumped. “Come on, Rach, this is dumb. Just get in the car and I’ll take you back. I’ll get your car towed in a couple hours.” There was no point in trying to call someone else. It was two in the morning, everyone was asleep, and I definitely couldn’t walk back at this hour. I grimaced and opened the door. “That’s my girl. Come on, let’s go.” He helped me into his car, then got in beside me. This time he didn’t put his hand on my thigh. The
”
”
Molly McAdams (Forgiving Lies (Forgiving Lies, #1))
“
I want to fly like a butterfly around this beautiful world, ‘til the last frame of my life and the last click of my heart.” -Biju Karakkonam
”
”
Biju Karakkonam Nature and Wild life Photographer
“
245I want to fly like a butterfly around this beautiful world, ‘til the last frame of my life and the last click of my heart.” -Biju Karakkonam
”
”
Biju Karakkonam Nature and Wild life Photographer
“
A woman I have never seen before
Steps from the darkness of her town-house door
At just that crux of time when she is made
So beautiful that she or time must fade.
What use to claim that as she tugs her gloves
A phantom heraldry of all the loves
Blares from the lintel? That the staggered sun
Forgets, in his confusion, how to run?
Still, nothing changes as her perfect feet
Click down the walk that issues in the street,
Leaving the stations of her body there
Like whips that map the countries of the air.
”
”
Richard Wilbur
“
With a curt nod, Vane strode in. And stopped dead.
Patience was in the hall, waiting- the sight literally stole his breath. As his gaze, helplessly, slid over her, over the soft green merino pelisse, severely cut and snugly fitted, its upstanding collar framing her face, over the tan gloves and half boots, over the pale green skirts peeking beneath the pelisse's hem, Vane felt something inside him tighten, click, and lock.
Breathing was suddenly more difficult than if someone had buried a fist in his gut.
Her hair, glinting in the light streaming in through the door, was coiffed differently, to more artfully draw attention to her wide golden eyes, to the creaminess of her forehead and cheeks, and the delicate yet determined line of her jaw. And the soft vulnerability of her lips.
”
”
Stephanie Laurens (A Rake's Vow (Cynster, #2))
“
The term Impressions or People reached upon one's writing, and subject at the social media execute nothing if no one reads and clicks the like button since that waves the baseless and false business, in-other-words, the idiocy within the beautiful and attractive insight.
”
”
Ehsan Sehgal
“
We all know the situation; the brilliant quick bowler with his tail up delivers the ball on a perfect length and line. A hint of swing has it pitching just outside off, before seam movement takes it further away from the right hander who would be well advised, if good enough, to leave well alone. But he only has a fraction of a second to respond and make his decision. Yet somehow this astonishing batsman is neither shouldering arms nor nibbling, he’s standing tall and smashing a wicket-taking delivery through the covers, on the up, to the boundary. 'Wow,' enthuses the commentator, 'I’m here to tell you that was some shot.' And it was. Next over, same bowler, same ball, same response but instead of that beautiful meaty sound of ball meeting sweet-spot there is a heavy click as a thick edge flies waste high to a grateful third slip. 'Gone! And you have to say that was a poor shot – no foot movement.'
"The gap between brilliant and brainless was some four centimetres. Or was it? Surely the first shot was every bit as reckless and feckless? Our foolhardy batsman got away with his poor shot selection first time but within minutes he went from hero to zero. So who is our thrilling and exasperating protagonist? Take your pick: Victor Trumper, Stan McCabe, Denis Compton, Barry Richards, Gordon Greenidge, Virender Sehwag. This is how they played, the risks they took made them what they were: the most thrilling, watchable and often frustrating batsmen of their respective generations. If you want the highs then you must take the lows, and for each run-a-ball century there will be a horridly inappropriate early-innings catastrophe signalling disappointment for all neutrals.
”
”
Andy Baynton-Power (Masterly Batting: 100 Great Test Innings)
“
Raksasom! Rana! Atanka!” he warbles as he runs past the van. Monsters. Horror. Run. Monsters. Pardeep smiles to himself, amused. This is a prank. Probably kids playing tricks on some superstitious old fools. “Hello? Police,” he says, entering the lobby. It’s deserted. “Police!” The smell is awful. It smells like shit, garbage, death—which is to say, nothing unusual for this neighborhood. There’s no response. He starts up the stairs. At the top of the first-floor landing he sees something moving in the dimness down at the end of the hallway. It’s low to the ground, perhaps about waist level. In the windowless corridor, it looks to Pardeep like a woman with a blanket over her, crawling on all fours. He is confused. He reaches for his flashlight, takes a few steps closer. Then there is something moving at him very fast down the dark hallway. He clicks on his flashlight and sees bright eyes flash jewel-green in the darkness. Then he is falling backward. Pardeep doesn’t have time to scream as the leopard opens him from belly to chin. Two more leopards arrive, skulking slyly in the hallway. The leopard is one of the most dangerous animals in the world. The beautiful turquoise-eyed creature is sometimes called a leaping chain saw due to the fact that it uses both its rear claws and its razor-sharp front claws, as well as its teeth, when it strikes.
”
”
James Patterson (Zoo)
“
Africa known for its staggering beauty and a haven for every animal and beast known to mankind, the sounds of mating ooze from its hills and valleys and wondrous sounds fill the air. Roars, growls, chirps, whistles, Squawking, clicking, shrill screams, squeals and warbling echo through the land each animal can be identified by its own sound… Dwanhi carries those familiar sounds in his spirit and was very in tune to the sounds of mating even among his own kind…
”
”
Joan Singleton (She Called... Broken Secrets)
“
Poem (Internal Scene)
To make beauty out of pain, it damns the eyes—
No, dams the eyes. See how they overflow?
No damns them, damns them, and so they cry.
What shape can I swallow to make me whole?
Baby’s bird-shaped block, blue-painted wood
That fits in the bird-hole of the painted wood box?
The skeleton leaf? The skeleton key? Loud
Knock when the shape won’t unlock any locks.
I hear it through the static in the baby’s room
When the monitor clicks on and off, sound
Of sea-ice cracking against the jagged sea-rocks,
Laughing gull in the gale. What is it dives down
Past sight, down there dark with the other blocks?
It can’t be seen, only heard. A kind of curse,
This kind curse. Forgive me. Blessing that hurts.
”
”
Dan Beachy-Quick
“
Wait,” I say, digging into my camera bag. “I want a picture with all of you. Us. Together.”
Dad takes the camera from me and I stand in the middle of everyone. Nestled under Chiara’s and Matilde’s arms, I find it easier to smile than I expect. I’m surrounded by people who care for me, and who I care for, all because I wanted a chocolate pastry for breakfast in Rome.
The shutter clicks and I pry myself from their embrace. At the door I turn and look at each face once more, knowing that this will likely be the last time I’ll see most of them. Matilde, who welcomed me, an American stranger, into her home, even kicking her own children out of their room. Luca, a quiet boy with a good heart. I have confidence he’ll be ten times the man his brother’s been. Bruno, the gorgeous smooth talker. If my dad had a clue about what’s gone on between us this summer, he’d have him beat up all over again.
Chiara. One of my very best friends who I didn’t even know existed a few months ago. All-knowing, beautiful Chiara.
Throat tight, eyes blurred with tears, I wave to them all one last time and turn to Dad, his hand on the doorknob. “I’m ready. Let’s go home.
”
”
Kristin Rae (Wish You Were Italian (If Only . . . #2))
“
The dolphin songs were like Gabriel's poetry: beautiful, ethereal, too sweet for this world. After all this time, Malachy had met very few people who could hear it, truly get the magic. Most folks heard clicks, trills, crooning, keening. Only the emotionally intense, the spiritually advanced, the madly in love, the truly insane, the terminally foolish, the grief-stricken, the guilty, the enlightened, the people with souls of poets and hearts of children, could hear the dolphins sing their songs of love.
”
”
Luanne Rice (Follow the Stars Home)
“
This is what people used to do, when they fell in love with a thing or place, knowing they could only live the moment once. Pictures take the pressure off experience: one click and we would possess those things forever. When someone takes lots of pictures, it means they have a huge appetite for beauty, and an equal fear of losing it.
”
”
Wong Su Ann (Equatorial Sunshine)
“
Part: 1 July
This one more of how where I remember these days.
Photos online, and cam videos all that are my memories- of me to others.
Part: 2 August
Compare… them then and now- naked slut girl or 1940s modesty.
I remember having the old photo album spread out on the bedroom floor.
Oh! Wow! Look at this one… do you like how she was remembered better than me?
(Photo)
Part: 3
It's- September
More of the same- I have become a cam-whore!!! Nothing more…
Part: 4
OCTOBER
…And yah- a, ah- pics that would make you blush, and hard, you boys would love to see me, now, wouldn’t you?
Part: 5
NOVEMBER
Making cummie videos is my life.
Part: 6
DECEMBER
Coming 7 hours out of the day is taking time away from other things.
Part: 7
WAKING UP
…After fraping till- I passed out all hot gross and sweaty, I did not remember falling asleep- with mom and dad- sis and the world seeing me as my door to my trashed bedroom- all jammed open- and’s- and’s- AND’S- did not care at this point. (SAY IT WITH exhausted SLURRING.)
JANUARY yet how- ga-gives- a ________.
Ef…
E- un- mm- ah- in-n…
Whatever…
I am making 50 G’s in a night… so that makes it okay.
(A photo of me lying in bed with all this money!)
Part: 8
TIME PASSES
Craziness… look at my life here… all board…
‘I am home,’ I mumbled, confused- not even more.
‘What did I do?’ I felt my face wrinkle. It was so unfair.
My behavior… here is wow…
After that first week… of doing this…
How do I look… which neither of us ever mentioned what we do?
I hadn't missed a day of school or work.
My grades were perfect.
Yet this show is all going to shit- no?
This is what I did here… showing everything that makes me a girl!
Now I am passing down- to her- yah me- is it wrong? I must live with it.
#- A cam video and all these photos of her online now are worth 1,000 words! #-0-okay then what does this one says then?
My little sis- and she is frapping harder than I do- in this- damn, she is my Minnie me! She started younger than me even- yet that is all girls, her age.
Here is one with her dressed wow seem weird to see her with something on anymore-
(Swipe- and the phone in your hand would make a click sound…)
Oh, this one-
She loves these beautiful white lace kid’s girls’ shorts- so girlie- girly- from Wal-Mart, yet she was banned from wearing them in school without anything under them, yet I look around and all other girls do it.
Yet, on Facebook- and Instagram 1, you get one persona and on Google images a whole other- just like Snapchat you have her as your girlfriend for the night yet have- yet she is your striptease only- and the other Instagram- that grammar should never- ever see- yet this is how to get popular- and stay popular.
Besides then there is the community of internet nudists- on MFC. And the profile- she now has too, a legacy to be remembered by, no? Yet, when you have no education to speak of and working for some d*ck head is just out of the question, over they think you’re not worthy of their time- were you're not making anything, and at this point in Pa she too young to work, yet is old enough to have unprotected sex… Um- and then I wonder- yet she needs the money- for school coming up because your mommy and daddy don’t have it, and all for fun, boys, and a girl's night of fun- and partying- and being crazy. Money is everything… and why girls do what they must do…
”
”
Marcel Ray Duriez (Nevaeh Hard to Let Go)
“
The key with wildlife especially is to take a lot of shots. You never know which moment is going to be the special one that stands out, so I click like mad,” she explained as she did just that. “This is the perfect time of day. We call it the golden hour. It refers to the two windows of time just after the sun rises and before the sun sets, when there’s this soft, beautiful, golden wash over everything…like nature’s filter, if you will.
”
”
Denise Grover Swank (Finding Home (Bluebird Bay, #2))
“
White of snow or white of page is not"
the white of your skin, for skin, except
when truly albino, always has some other color
sleeping within it—a hint of red maple leaf,
a touch of the blue ice at the edge of a melting
stream, a richness implied of its many layers,
the deltas of cells and blood, that deep fecundity
that lies within and makes the skin shed, not
like a snake, but as a tree (one of those golden
cottonwoods flaring just now at the edge
of the river) that sheds its leaves each moment
while an eternity of leaf remains. Oh, nothing
seems to me as white as your skin, all your languid
ease of being—one resting upon the other,
the sliver of your shoulder against the black
fabric—reminds me so of the lost realm of beauty
that I am afraid of nothing, and only dazed
(as I was that day at the aquarium when the beluga
whales came swimming toward me—how white
they were, slipping out of the darkness, radiant
and buoyant as silence and snow, incandescent
as white fire, gliding through the weight of water,
and when they sang in that chamber as small
as the chambers of the human heart, murky
with exhaustion and captivity and the fragments
of what they had consumed, I was almost in love
with them; they seemed the lost children
of the moon, carrying in their milky mammalian skins
a hint of glacial ice and singing to each other
of all the existences they had left behind, their fins
like the wings of birds or angels, clicking and whistling
like canaries of the sea: there was no darkness
in their bodies, like clouds drifting through
unkempt skies, they illuminated the room).
So I did not think of you so much as I felt you
drifting through my being, in some gesture
that held me poised like a hummingbird above
the scarlet blossoms of the trumpet vine, I kissed you
above the heart, and by above I mean there,
not that geometric center, the breastbone
that so many use to divide the body in half and so mistake
for the place where the heart lies, but the exact
location, a little to the left, just on the crescent
where the breast begins to rise; oh, I know
all that drift of white implies, the vanished clothing,
the disappearing room, that landscape of the skin
and night that opens in imagination and in feeling
upon a sea of snow, so that just one kiss above
the heart is a kiss upon the heart, as if one could
kiss the very pulse of being, light upon the head
of that pin that pins us here, that tiny disk where
angels were once believed to dance, and all that
nakedness without could not have been
except for all that burning deep within
”
”
Rebecca Seiferle (Wild Tongue (Lannan Literary Selections))
“
God, you’re crazy beautiful. Why did you want to hide this?”
“I’ve had some bad experiences…” She looked away, her golden lashes sweeping down to hide her eyes. Jax’s mind filled with the words she’d spoken shortly after she’d stepped into his hotel room. “The truth is that men are attracted to me for my… body.”
God, it all clicked. Men wanted her for her beauty, not just her body. Men used her as window dressing, the same way women used Jax—for dressing, a reputation boost, favors.
”
”
Skye Jordan (Reckless (Renegades, #1))
“
I stare at Finlay and he stares back. We’re both fixed on each other, and as seconds pass, I realize neither of us is trying to pretend it’s anything other than a heart-struck gaze of mutual longing. Everything about his face is so ridiculously, staggeringly lovely to me, in this moment, I’m unable to speak.
Beauty isn’t an arrangement of features, even features as perfect as Finlay Hart’s, it’s a feeling. This is how it feels in the split second you suddenly become aware that you’re falling in love with someone. The click of a jigsaw’s last piece, the rainfall of coins in a jackpot slot machine, the right song striking up and your being swept away by its opening bars. That conviction of making complete sense of the universe, in one moment. Of course. You’re where I should be. You’re here.
“How are you?” Fin says to me, eventually, and we both break into broad smiles at the ludicrousness of having declared our feelings without saying a word. I can’t wait to talk to him properly, after we leave here. I can’t wait, full stop.
”
”
Mhairi McFarlane
“
Under the pink wash of dawn, an unexpected foot of snow suffocates the landscape. The sight of so much transcendent white causes me to stare for minutes on end, mesmerized. More than mesmerized. In absolute awe.
I've experienced this one other time: freshman year of high school, a ten-day trip to Italy with my school....
It was the first and only time I've seen Michelangelo's -La Pietà-. It took a moment to realize what it was, but then it clicked. This was Mary holding the body of her son. I had seen a thousand images of Jesus on the trip, but this sculpture grabbed my heart and squeezed so hard I stopped breathing. At that age, I cared little for art and had no connection with Jesus, but in that moment, I was so transfixed by this sculpture -- -how could it be so smooth?- --that I began to weep. Right there. Tears fell, and I thought I was having some kind of religious experience.
But it wasn't that. It was the combination of profound beauty and sadness at such an exquisite level that it left me no option other than to cry. I hadn't experienced anything like that again.
Until now.
This snowfall.
The beauty enveloping the sadness.
With the tears welling in my eyes, I think once again about death. The rainbow in the cornfield. It's all so gorgeous, and it's all so tragic. The extremes of human emotion and how ironic that thoughts of dying fill me with such life.
I'm still staring transfixed at the world outside when my father's voice resonates behind me.
'What a fuckhole of a mess out there.'
And the beauty is gone.
The sadness, however, remains.
[Rose Yates]
”
”
Carter Wilson
“
There are certain male figures we were just told to believe in, to trust. Our rock gods. Our politicians. Our medical professionals. A cornerstone of reaching adult womanhood is realizing that this is a myth—that men, no matter what their profession or how deeply their work speaks to you, can be dangerous.
”
”
Gabrielle Korn (Everybody (Else) Is Perfect: How I Survived Hypocrisy, Beauty, Clicks, and Likes)
“
The audible click of the buckle feels significant, like a declaration. And just the sight of this beautiful man collared for me is the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.
”
”
Sara Cate (Mercy (Salacious Players Club, #4))
“
Relax, Maggie. I’m not gonna bite you.” It’s a strange experience to finally hold her. I might’ve been Bash’s friend first and initially viewed Maggie as a little sister, but I remember the day that changed. From the moment she strolled up on my lawn on a blisteringly hot summer day with a scraped knee when she was thirteen and I was fourteen, I’ve wondered what it would be like to make this girl mine. To hold her when she cried. To be the reason she smiled. To have the words to make her laugh. I ruthlessly locked away those urges. Sebastian was my best friend. In our small town world, you don’t mess with your buddy’s little sister. At the time, I didn’t know exactly what that meant. I just liked the way Maggie always smiled when I caught her looking. Like a toy secreted away in my pocket, I wanted that. Except I learned to look away when she turned my way. Pretended I didn’t light up inside when she was around. Dated other girls when I wondered what it would be like to ask out Bash’s beautiful sister. It’s something I try not to think about—what might have been. When Maggie doesn’t respond, I lean close to whisper in her ear. “Vanessa wasn’t enjoying herself, and she obviously didn’t click with my family. We both agreed it was best to go our separate ways. So she left last night.
”
”
Lex Martin (The Baby Blitz (Varsity Dads #3))
“
A click of a smile donates the sweetness of love and beautifies the world.”
“A smile is not a sign of consent; it’s just the goodness and charity of one’s lips.”
“Smiling is free healing power for oneself and others.”
“A smile hides the pain that one bears.”
“The smile of a common one gives pleasure, but the smile of a special one becomes the treasure of life.”
“Smiling makes you beautiful; if you are beautiful, that makes you brilliant.”
“Don’t look at my smile; realize the pain that I never tell”
“The smile constitutes harmony; conversely, love embraces peace since that both aspires and inspires positive power and notion.”
“Smile is a beautiful beauty of one’s character and heart since that inspires love.”
“There are always reasons to smile; any pleasure and love are the main reasons. Sometimes, sadness, madness, worries, critique, and defeat make you also smile. Although the smile, with love, gives happy feelings, it also hurts people if it is in a way of insulting.”
“Crying or Smiling is a universal language; every human understands and experiences that.”
“Smiling is sometimes a sign of invitation, but do not take it seriously if it is only someone’s habit.”
“Keep smiling; it’s a peaceful defeat of your opponents and a victory for the universe of your inner self.”
“Smile fragrances one’s reflection of the inner, which inspires others’ pleasure feeling.”
“No matter if you remain hurting, hating, and insulting me, I will always give you my love and smile without expecting any kind of best return.”
Disguise of Smile
***
Tears are my life
And life is my tears
I cover and bear
The disguise of a smile
To hide my pain
I know the world is
More painful than my tears
Pain Behind The Smile
***
What would I say,
What is behind the whispering lips?
No one knows how much pain
I carry and bear behind the smile
Life has become tired of tiredness
Something is behind that journey sound.
Smile and Tears
***
In the gatherings,
I smile for my friends
But in solitude,
I drop tears on my destiny
”
”
Ehsan Sehgal