β
If writers wrote as carelessly as some people talk, then adhasdh asdglaseuyt[bn[ pasdlgkhasdfasdf.
β
β
Lemony Snicket (Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid)
β
That's what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.
β
β
Arundhati Roy (The God of Small Things)
β
Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters
β
β
Albert Einstein
β
To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.
β
β
Oscar Wilde (The Importance of Being Earnest)
β
Trust is a careless pursuit at best. At worst, it's a good way to get yourself killed.
β
β
Lauren Kate (Fallen (Fallen, #1))
β
It is a common saying that women are delicate creatures, flowers, eggs, anything that may be crushed in a moment's carelessness. If I had ever believed it, I no longer did.
β
β
Madeline Miller (Circe)
β
I couldnβt forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisyβthey smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.
β
β
F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby)
β
Isabella with her whip and boots and knives would chop anyone who tried to pen her up in a tower into pieces, build a bridge out of the remains, and walk carelessly to freedom, her hair looking fabulous the entire time.
β
β
Cassandra Clare
β
Before that she hadnβt realized how fragile happiness was, how if you were careless, you could knock it over and shatter it.
β
β
Celeste Ng (Everything I Never Told You)
β
We are not people who touch each other carelessly; every point of contact between us feels important, a rush of energy and relief.
β
β
Veronica Roth (Allegiant (Divergent, #3))
β
When you hurt people, they begin to love you less. That's what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.
β
β
Arundhati Roy
β
They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.
β
β
F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby)
β
Nothing is more deceitful," said Darcy, "than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast.
β
β
Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)
β
The art of living... is neither careless drifting on the one hand nor fearful clinging to the past on the other. It consists in being sensitive to each moment, in regarding it as utterly new and unique, in having the mind open and wholly receptive.
β
β
Alan W. Watts
β
Words used carelessly, as if they did not matter in any serious way, often allowed otherwise well-guarded truths to seep through.
β
β
Douglas Adams (The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (Dirk Gently, #2))
β
You made a rebel of a careless man's careful daughter. You are the best thing that's ever been mine.
β
β
Taylor Swift
β
Dβyou know what happens when you hurt people?β Ammu said. βWhen you hurt people, they begin to love you less. Thatβs what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.
β
β
Arundhati Roy (The God of Small Things)
β
With how many things are we on the brink of becoming acquainted, if cowardice or carelessness did not restrain our inquiries.
β
β
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (Frankenstein)
β
He says it was tourists being careless, where I see a fiendishly clever murder attempt.β
βMr. McCarthy, youβd better explain.β
βPatrick, please. Youβll be tempted to laugh. It was a banana skin.
β
β
Susan Rowland (Murder on Family Grounds (Mary Wandwalker #3))
β
I thought, this is the most incredible thing I have ever seen, and I had better keep it a safe distance away from me. I thought, if someone like that ever loved me, it would set me on fire.
And then I was a careless fool, and I fell in love with you anyway. When you rang me at truly shocking hours of the night, I loved you. When you kissed me in disgusting public toilets and pouted in hotel bars and made me happy in ways in which it had never even occurred to me that a mangled-up, locked-up person like me could be happy, I loved you.
And then, inexplicably, you had the absolute audacity to love me back. Can you believe it?
Sometimes, even now, I still can't.
β
β
Casey McQuiston (Red, White & Royal Blue)
β
No, my dear, I'm not in love with you, no more than you are with me, and if I were, you would be the last person I'd ever tell. God help the man who ever really loves you. You'd break his heart, my darling, cruel, destructive little cat who is so careless and confident she doesn't even trouble to sheathe her claws.
β
β
Margaret Mitchell (Gone with the Wind)
β
Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth -- more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless of the well-tried wisdom of the ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid ... Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.
β
β
Bertrand Russell (Why Men Fight)
β
There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who, when presented with a glass that is exactly half full, say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty.
The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: What's up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don't think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass! Who's been pinching my beer?
And at the other end of the bar the world is full of the other type of person, who has a broken glass, or a glass that has been carelessly knocked over (usually by one of the people calling for a larger glass) or who had no glass at all, because he was at the back of the crowd and had failed to catch the barman's eye.
β
β
Terry Pratchett (The Truth: Stage Adaptation)
β
She has learned that her body is precious and it mustn't be offered carelessly ever again, as it holds a direct connection to her heart.
β
β
Steve Martin (Shopgirl)
β
She felt that she could so much more depend upon the sincerity of those who sometimes looked or said a careless or a hasty thing, than of those whose presence of mind never varied, whose tongue never slipped.
β
β
Jane Austen (Persuasion)
β
It is better to be small, colorful, sexy, careless, and peaceful...
β
β
Tom Robbins (Jitterbug Perfume)
β
The unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone. She was very old, though she did not know it, and she was no longer the careless color of sea foam but rather the color of snow falling on a moonlit night. But her eyes were still clear and unwearied, and she still moved like a shadow on the sea.
β
β
Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn (The Last Unicorn, #1))
β
There are those hearts, reader, that never mend again once they are broken. Or if they do mend, they heal themselves in a crooked and lopsided way, as if sewn together by a careless craftsman. Such was the fate of Chiaroscuro. His heart was broken. Picking up the spoon and placing it on his head, speaking of revenge, these things helped him to put his heart together again. But it was, alas, put together wrong.
β
β
Kate DiCamillo (The Tale of Despereaux)
β
I'm too careless. I don't put out enough effort. I'm tired.
β
β
Charles Bukowski (South of No North)
β
To spend time is to pass it in a specified manner. To waste time is to expend it thoughtlessly or carelessly. We all have time to either spend or waste and it is our decision what to do with it. But once passed, it is gone forever.
β
β
Bruce Lee
β
How could I have been so ignorant? she thinks. So stupid, so unseeing, so given over to carelessness. But without such ignorance, such carelessness, how could we live? If you knew what was going to happen, if you knew everything that was going to happen nextβif you knew in advance the consequences of your own actionsβyou'd be doomed. You'd be as ruined as God. You'd be a stone. You'd never eat or drink or laugh or get out of bed in the morning. You'd never love anyone, ever again. You'd never dare to.
β
β
Margaret Atwood (The Blind Assassin)
β
I remember when your name was just another name that rolled without thought off my tongue.
Now, I canβt look at your name without an abundance of sentiment attached to each letter.
Your name, which I played with so carelessly, so easily, has somehow become sacred to my lips.
A name I wonβt throw around lightheartedly or repeat without deep thought.
And if ever I speak of you, I use the English language to describe who you were to me. You are nameless, because those letters grouped together in that familiar formβ¦.. carries too much meaning for my capricious heart.
β
β
Coco J. Ginger
β
Careless talk costs lives.
β
β
Elizabeth Wein (Code Name Verity (Code Name Verity, #1))
β
He who writes carelessly confesses thereby at the very outset that he does not attach much importance to his own thoughts.
β
β
Arthur Schopenhauer
β
They were careless people, Tom and Daisyβthey smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.
β
β
F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby)
β
A lot of peopleβyoung and oldβ have not done a very good job of taking care of our country so we can enjoy living in it. Almost everywhere today you see the marks of the stupid and the careless who are ruining what we should all take care of for our own pleasureβand our own good.
β
β
Munro Leaf (Who Cares? I Do.)
β
It is better to be small, colorful, sexy, careless, and peaceful, like the flowers, than large, conservative, repressed, fearful, and aggressive, like the thunder lizards; a lesson, by the way, that the Earth has yet to learn.
β
β
Tom Robbins (Jitterbug Perfume)
β
But the years came and went without bringing the careless boy; and when they met again Wendy was a married woman, and Peter was no more to her than a little dust in the box in which she had kept her toys.
β
β
J.M. Barrie (Peter Pan)
β
I lost a horse today.'
'That sounds careless. What happened?'
'She jumped off a cliff.'
'A cliff! Is that normal?
β
β
Maggie Stiefvater (The Scorpio Races)
β
More about Howl? Sophie thought desperately. I have to blacken his name! Her mind was such a blank that for a second it actually seemed to her that Howl had no faults at all. How stupid! 'Well, he's fickle, careless, selfish, and hysterical,' she said. 'Half the time I think he doesn't care what happens to anyone as long as he's alright--but then I find out how awfully kind he's been to someone. Then I think he's kind just when it suits him--only then I find out he undercharges poor people. I don't know, Your Majesty. He's a mess.
β
β
Diana Wynne Jones (Howlβs Moving Castle (Howlβs Moving Castle, #1))
β
What I wanted was to die among strangers, untroubled, beneath a cloudless sky. And yet my desire differed from the sentiments of that ancient Greek who wanted to die under the brilliant sun. What I wanted was some natural, spontaneous suicide. I wanted a death like that of a fox, not yet well versed in cunning, that walks carelessly along a mountain path and is shot by a hunter because of its own stupidityβ¦
β
β
Yukio Mishima (Confessions of a Mask)
β
Note to self ;
He doesn't care anymore.
β
β
Lyla Tyela Belikov
β
How long are you going to wait before you demand the best for yourself and in no instance bypass the discriminations of reason? You have been given the principles that you ought to endorse, and you have endorsed them. What kind of teacher, then, are you still waiting for in order to refer your self-improvement to him? You are no longer a boy, but a full-grown man. If you are careless and lazy now and keep putting things off and always deferring the day after which you will attend to yourself, you will not notice that you are making no progress, but you will live and die as someone quite ordinary.
From now on, then, resolve to live as a grown-up who is making progress, and make whatever you think best a law that you never set aside. And whenever you encounter anything that is difficult or pleasurable, or highly or lowly regarded, remember that the contest is now: you are at the Olympic Games, you cannot wait any longer, and that your progress is wrecked or preserved by a single day and a single event. That is how Socrates fulfilled himself by attending to nothing except reason in everything he encountered. And you, although you are not yet a Socrates, should live as someone who at least wants to be a Socrates.
β
β
Epictetus
β
Evil turned out not to be a grand thing. Not sneering Emperors with their world-conquering designs. Not cackling demons plotting in the darkness beyond the world. It was small men with their small acts and their small reasons. It was selfishness and carelessness and waste. It was bad luck, incompetence, and stupidity. It was violence divorced from conscience or consequence. It was high ideals, even, and low methods.
β
β
Joe Abercrombie (Red Country)
β
Oh, I'll trust you," the boy told him carelessly. "It hardly matters. We are all betrayed sooner or laterβall betrayed, or traitors."
"I see that a flair for the dramatic runs in the blood," Magnus said under his breath.
β
β
Cassandra Clare (The Midnight Heir (The Bane Chronicles, #4))
β
Anger is useful only to a certain point. After that, it becomes rage, and rage will make you careless.
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β
Lauren Oliver (Pandemonium (Delirium, #2))
β
You have to get away from them. You have to get as far away as you can otherwise they'll kill you with their lives. They don't know what they do. They are careless with themselves and they take too much for granted. They make their shortcomings your problem. The only way to keep your head above it and heal your wounds is to crawl away.
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β
Henry Rollins (Black Coffee Blues)
β
I get up and pace the room, as if I can leave my guilt behind me. But it tracks me as I walk, an ugly shadow made by myself.
β
β
Rosamund Lupton (Sister)
β
There are moments in life, when the heart is so full of emotion
that if by chance it be shaken, or into its depths like a pebble
Drops some careless word, it overflows, and its secret,
Spilled on the ground like water, can never be gathered together.
β
β
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
β
Be careless in your dress if you must, but keep a tidy soul.
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β
Mark Twain
β
How can I describe Peter's face, the pieces of him that stick to my heart? Peter sometimes looked aloof and distant; sometimes his face was open and soft as a bruise. Sometimes he looked completely at Tiger Lily, as if she were the point on which all the universe revolved, as if she were the biggest mystery of life, or as if she were a flame and he couldn't not look even though he was scared. And sometimes it would all disappear into carelessness, confidence, amusement, as if he didn't need anyone or anything on this earth to feel happy and alive.
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β
Jodi Lynn Anderson (Tiger Lily)
β
Woman and children can afford to be careless, men can not.
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β
Mario Puzo (The Godfather (The Godfather, #1))
β
They are not brave, the days when we are twenty-one. They are full of little cowardices, little fears without foundation, and one is so easily bruised, so swiftly wounded, one falls to the first barbed word. To-day, wrapped in the complacent armour of approaching middle age, the infinitesimal pricks of day by day brush one but lightly and are soon forgotten, but thenβhow a careless word would linger, becoming a fiery stigma, and how a look, a glance over a shoulder, branded themselves as things eternal.
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β
Daphne du Maurier (Rebecca)
β
She understood him. He could not forgive her,-but he could not be unfeeling. Though condemning her for the past, and considering it with high and unjest resentment, though perfectly careless of her, and though becoming attached to another, still he could not see her suffer, without the desire of giving her relief. It was a remainder of former sentiment; it was an impuse of pure, though unacknowledged friendship; it was a proof of his own warm and amiable heart, which she could not contemplate without emotions so compounded of pleasure and pain, that she knew not which prevailed.
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β
Jane Austen (Persuasion)
β
Remember this, for it is as true and true gets: Your body is not a lemon. You are not a machine. The Creator is not a careless mechanic. Human female bodies have the same potential to give birth well as aardvarks, lions, rhinoceri, elephants, moose, and water buffalo. Even if it has not been your habit throughout your life so far, I recommend that you learn to think positively about your body.
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β
Ina May Gaskin (Ina May's Guide to Childbirth)
β
Clark," she said softly, "I wouldn't change you for the world.
You're sweet the way you are. The things that'll make you fail
I'll love always-- the living in the past, the lazy days and
nights you have, and all your carelessness and generosity.
β
β
F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Ice Palace)
β
People died of carelessness, of corruption, of abuse, and yet, in every round of voting, gave their enthusiastic approval to the politicians who made their life unbearable.
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β
Elena Ferrante (Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay)
β
Sometimes, when Iβm careless, I think survival is easy: you just keep moving forward with what you have, or whatβs left of what you were given, until something changesβor you realize, at last, that you can change without disappearing, that all you had to do was wait until the storm passes you over and you find thatβyesβyour name is still attached to a living thing.
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β
Ocean Vuong (On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous)
β
Overexposing my innards to careless hearts and hands is a practice I am prepared to stop performing.
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β
Coco J. Ginger
β
I walked into my own book, seeking peace.
It was night, and I made a careless movement inside the dream; I turned too brusquely the corner and I bruised myself against my madness.
β
β
AnaΓ―s Nin (House of Incest)
β
Kissing can ruin lives. Lips touch sometimes teeth clash. New hunger is born with a throb and caution falls away. A cursed girl with lips still moist from her first kiss might feel suddenly wild like a little monsoon. She might forget her curse just long enough to get careless and let it come true. She might kill everyone she loves...
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β
Laini Taylor (Lips Touch: Three Times)
β
Now and then, an inch below the water's surface, the muscles of his stomach tightened involuntarily as he recalled another detail. A drop of water on her upper arm. Wet. An embroidered flower, a simple daisy, sewn between the cups of her bra. Her breasts wide apart and small. On her back, a mole half covered by a strap. When she climbed out of the pond a glimpse of the triangular darkness her knickers were supposed to conceal. Wet. He saw it, he made himself see it again. The way her pelvic bones stretched the material clear of the skin, the deep curve of her waist, her startling whiteness. When she reached for her skirt, a carelessly raised foot revealed a patch of soil on each pad of her sweetly diminished toes. Another mole the size of a farthing on her thigh and something purplish on her calf--a strawberry mark, a scar. Not blemishes. Adornments.
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β
Ian McEwan (Atonement)
β
Nothing happens carelessly. Weβre not brought into the world without reason, even though we may never understand the reason. An infant that lives an hour, that dies before it can lay eyes on those who made it, even that soul did not live without purpose: this is my sudden certainty.
β
β
Clive Barker (Galilee)
β
I am glad it cannot happen twice, the fever of first love. For it is a fever, and a burden, too, whatever the poets may say. They are not brave, the days when we are twenty-one. They are full of little cowardices, little fears without foundation, and one is so easily bruised, so swiftly wounded, one falls to the first barbed word. To-day, wrapped in the complacent armour of approaching middle age, the infinitesimal pricks of day by day brush one but lightly and are soon forgotten, but then--how a careless word would linger, becoming a fiery stigma, and how a look, a glance over a shoulder, branded themselves as things eternal. A denial heralded the thrice crowing of a cock, and an insincerity was like the kiss of Judas. The adult mind can lie with untroubled conscience and a gay composure, but in those days even a small deception scoured the tongue, lashing one against the stake itself.
β
β
Daphne du Maurier (Rebecca)
β
Phaedra shook her head. βIf your people mean no offense, they should not speak their thoughts out loud in front of their children, Tesadora. Because it will be their children who come to slaughter us one day, all because of careless words passed down by their elders who meant no harm.
β
β
Melina Marchetta (Froi of the Exiles (Lumatere Chronicles, #2))
β
When he faced her again, he had never looked to her so much like one of the Fair Folk. His eyes were full of feral amusement, a carelessness that spoke of a world where there was no human Law. He seemed to bring the wildness of Faerie into the room with him: a cold, sweet magic that was nevertheless a bitter at the roots.
The storm calls you as it calls me, does it not?
He held out a hand to her, half-beckoning, half-offering.
"Why lie?" he said.
β
β
Cassandra Clare (Lady Midnight (The Dark Artifices, #1))
β
They were careless people ... they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made . . . .
β
β
F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby)
β
For I do not want any one to read my book carelessly. I have suffered too much grief in setting down these memories. Six years have already passed since my friend went away from me, with his sheep. If I try to describe him here, it is to make sure that I shall not forget him. To forget a friend is sad. Not every one has had a friend. And if I forget him, I may become like the grown-ups who are no longer interested in anything but figures.
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β
Antoine de Saint-ExupΓ©ry
β
Wanting to Die
Since you ask, most days I cannot remember.
I walk in my clothing, unmarked by that voyage.
Then the almost unnameable lust returns.
Even then I have nothing against life.
I know well the grass blades you mention,
the furniture you have placed under the sun.
But suicides have a special language.
Like carpenters they want to know which tools.
They never ask why build.
Twice I have so simply declared myself,
have possessed the enemy, eaten the enemy,
have taken on his craft, his magic.
In this way, heavy and thoughtful,
warmer than oil or water,
I have rested, drooling at the mouth-hole.
I did not think of my body at needle point.
Even the cornea and the leftover urine were gone.
Suicides have already betrayed the body.
Still-born, they don't always die,
but dazzled, they can't forget a drug so sweet
that even children would look on and smile.
To thrust all that life under your tongue!β
that, all by itself, becomes a passion.
Death's a sad Bone; bruised, you'd say,
and yet she waits for me, year after year,
to so delicately undo an old wound,
to empty my breath from its bad prison.
Balanced there, suicides sometimes meet,
raging at the fruit, a pumped-up moon,
leaving the bread they mistook for a kiss,
leaving the page of the book carelessly open,
something unsaid, the phone off the hook
and the love, whatever it was, an infection.
β
β
Anne Sexton
β
You said a bad driver was only safe until she met another bad driver? Well, I met another bad driver, didn't I? I mean it was careless of me to makes such a wrong guess. I thought you were rather an honest, straightforward person I thought it was your secret pride."
"I'm thirty," I said. "I'm five years too old to lie to myself and call it honor."
She didn't answer. Angry, and half in love with her, and tremendously sorry, I turned away.
β
β
F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby)
β
There is probably no better or more reliable measure of whether a woman has spent time in ugly duckling status at some point or all throughout her life than her inability to digest a sincere compliment. Although it could be a matter of modesty, or could be attributed to shyness- although too many serious wounds are carelessly written off as "nothing but shyness"- more often a compliment is stuttered around about because it sets up an automatic and unpleasant dialogue in the woman's mind.
If you say how lovely she is, or how beautiful her art is, or compliment anything else her soul took part in, inspired, or suffused, something in her mind says she is undeserving and you, the complimentor, are an idiot for thinking such a thing to begin with. Rather than understand that the beauty of her soul shines through when she is being herself, the woman changes the subject and effectively snatches nourishment away from the soul-self, which thrives on being acknowledged."
"I must admit, I sometimes find it useful in my practice to delineate the various typologies of personality as cats and hens and ducks and swans and so forth. If warranted, I might ask my client to assume for a moment that she is a swan who does not realzie it. Assume also for a moment that she has been brought up by or is currently surrounded by ducks.
There is nothing wrong with ducks, I assure them, or with swans. But ducks are ducks and swans are swans. Sometimes to make the point I have to move to other animal metaphors. I like to use mice. What if you were raised by the mice people? But what if you're, say, a swan. Swans and mice hate each other's food for the most part. They each think the other smells funny. They are not interested in spending time together, and if they did, one would be constantly harassing the other.
But what if you, being a swan, had to pretend you were a mouse? What if you had to pretend to be gray and furry and tiny? What you had no long snaky tail to carry in the air on tail-carrying day? What if wherever you went you tried to walk like a mouse, but you waddled instead? What if you tried to talk like a mouse, but insteade out came a honk every time? Wouldn't you be the most miserable creature in the world?
The answer is an inequivocal yes. So why, if this is all so and too true, do women keep trying to bend and fold themselves into shapes that are not theirs? I must say, from years of clinical observation of this problem, that most of the time it is not because of deep-seated masochism or a malignant dedication to self-destruction or anything of that nature. More often it is because the woman simply doesn't know any better. She is unmothered.
β
β
Clarissa Pinkola EstΓ©s (Women Who Run With the Wolves)
β
There wasn't a single item of importance [in the newspaper]. A tower of illusion, all of it, made of illusory bricks and full of holes. If life were made up only of important things, it really would be a dangerous house of glass, scarcely to be handled carelessly. But everyday life was exactly like the headlines. And so everybody, knowing the meaninglessness of existence, sets the center of his compass at his own home.
β
β
KΕbΕ Abe (The Woman in the Dunes)
β
Because I love you.'
There. I said it. I can't believe I actually said it. People cast around those words so carelessly. I always cringe whenever I hear kids say it while making out in the hall at school. I love you, babe. I love you, too. Here they're all of sixteen years old and convinced that they've found true love. I always thought I'd have more sense than that, a little more perspective.
But here I am, saying it and meaning it.
β
β
Cynthia Hand (Unearthly (Unearthly, #1))
β
What young people didn't know, she thought, lying down beside this man, his hand on her shoulder, her arm; oh, what young people did not know. They did not know that lumpy, aged, and wrinkled bodies were as needy as their own young, firm ones, that love was not to be tossed away carelessly . . . No, if love was available, one chose it, or didn't chose it. And if her platter had been full with the goodness of Henry and she had found it burdensome, had flicked it off crumbs at a time, it was because she had not know what one should know: that day after day was unconsciously squandered. . . . But here they were, and Olive pictured two slices of Swiss cheese pressed together, such holes they brought to this union--what pieces life took out of you.
β
β
Elizabeth Strout (Olive Kitteridge (Olive Kitteridge, #1))
β
There was a small wooden gazebo built out over the water; Isabelle was sitting in it, staring out across the lake. She looked like a princess in a fairy tale, waiting at the top of her tower for someone to ride up and rescue her.
Not that traditional princess behavior was like Isabelle at all. Isabelle with her whip and boots and knives would chop anyone who tried to pen her up in a tower into pieces, build a bridge out of the remains, and walk carelessly to freedom, her hair looking fabulous the entire time.
β
β
Cassandra Clare
β
I once knew a woman who liked to imagine Love in the guise of a sturdy dog, one that would always chase down the stick after it was thrown and return with his ears flopping around happily. Completely loyal, completely unconditional. And I laughed at her, because even I knew that love is not like that. Love is a delicate thing that needs to be cosseted and protected. Love is not robust and love is not unyeilding. Love can crumble under a few harsh words, or be tossed away with a handful of careless actions. Love isn't a steadfast dog at all; love is more like a pygmy mouse lemur.
β
β
Andrew Davidson (The Gargoyle)
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Back To December is a song that addresses a first for me. In that I've never apologized in a song before. Whether it be good or bad or an apology. The person I wrote this song about deserves this. This is about a person who was incredible to me- just perfect in a relationship- and I was very careless with him. So, this is a song full of words that I would say to him that he deserves to hear.
Iβve never felt the need to apologize in a song before, but in the last two years Iβve experienced a lot, a lot of different kinds of learning lessons And sometimes you learn a lesson too late and at that point you need to apologize because you were careless. ['Back To December'] is about a person who was incredible to me, just perfect to me in a relationship, and I was really careless with him
Iβve written songs about things like burning my ex boyfriends picturesβ¦ Iβve written songs about the times that Iβve been hurt by love. But then one day I woke up and realized that I had hurt somebodyβ¦ And so I wrote this song to tell him Iβm sorry
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Taylor Swift (Taylor Swift - Speak Now Songbook: Piano/Vocal/Guitar)
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I like what I like and not what I'm supposed to like because of mass rating. And I very much dislike the things I don't like.
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Erle Stanley Gardner (The Case Of The Careless Cupid (Perry Mason, #79))
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I'm starting to believe that happily ever after includes people doing things that upset each other. We all get cranky, or impatient, or worried, or careless enough to do or say things that hurt someone else. Like it or not, that's normal. We can't blame it all on Olympia's bad energy. The important part is that we feel sorry about what we've done and make up for it. That's something Olympia never did.
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Jean Ferris (Twice Upon a Marigold (Upon a Marigold, #2))
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I apprehend no danger to our country from a foreign foe. Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence, I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants, and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men, and become the instruments of their own undoing. Make them intelligent, and they will be vigilant; give them the means of detecting the wrong, and they will apply the remedy.
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Daniel Webster
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You know that the beginning is the most important part of any work, especially in the case of a young and tender thing; for that is the time at which the character is being formed and the desired impression is more readily taken....Shall we just carelessly allow children to hear any casual tales which may be devised by casual persons, and to receive into their minds ideas for the most part the very opposite of those which we should wish them to have when they are grown up?
We cannot....Anything received into the mind at that age is likely to become indelible and unalterable; and therefore it is most important that the tales which the young first hear should be models of virtuous thoughts....
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Plato (The Republic)
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This is the spot where I will lie
When life has had enough of me,
These are the grasses that will blow
Above me like a living sea.
These gay old lilies will not shrink
To draw their life from death of mine,
And I will give my body's fire
To make blue flowers on this vine.
"O Soul," I said, "have you no tears?
Was not the body dear to you?"
I heard my soul say carelessly,
"The myrtle flowers will grow more blue.
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Sara Teasdale
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I hate the indifferent. I believe that living means taking sides. Those who really live cannot help being a citizen and a partisan. Indifference and apathy are parasitism, perversion, not life. That is why I hate the indifferent.
The indifference is the deadweight of history. The indifference operates with great power on history. The indifference operates passively, but it operates. It is fate, that which cannot be counted on. It twists programs and ruins the best-conceived plans. It is the raw material that ruins intelligence. That what happens, the evil that weighs upon all, happens because the human mass abdicates to their will; allows laws to be promulgated that only the revolt could nullify, and leaves men that only a mutiny will be able to overthrow to achieve the power. The mass ignores because it is careless and then it seems like it is the product of fate that runs over everything and everyone: the one who consents as well as the one who dissents; the one who knew as well as the one who didnβt know; the active as well as the indifferent. Some whimper piously, others curse obscenely, but nobody, or very few ask themselves: If I had tried to impose my will, would this have happened?
I also hate the indifferent because of that: because their whimpering of eternally innocent ones annoys me. I make each one liable: how they have tackled with the task that life has given and gives them every day, what have they done, and especially, what they have not done. And I feel I have the right to be inexorable and not squander my compassion, of not sharing my tears with them.
I am a partisan, I am alive, I feel the pulse of the activity of the future city that those on my side are building is alive in their conscience. And in it, the social chain does not rest on a few; nothing of what happens in it is a matter of luck, nor the product of fate, but the intelligent work of the citizens. Nobody in it is looking from the window of the sacrifice and the drain of a few. Alive, I am a partisan. That is why I hate the ones that donβt take sides, I hate the indifferent.
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Antonio Gramsci
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Pretty, that's what you think this is? You think that's all she's capable of? You fool, she's done the impossible. She has explained everything there is to know about the world in less than the time it took for your eyes to filly focus, and do you realize that I will spend a lifetime trying to do the same never come close? This is an opus!, this is a triumph!, this is the meaning of life and you would think the answer would be satire, but it isn't, its Truth. She tomd the Truth like you could never dream of telling it, and I pity you, that you could see the inside of your own soul and reduce it like this, so pitylessly. So carelessly.
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Olivie Blake (Alone With You in the Ether)
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She is a mortal danger to all men. She is beautiful without knowing it, and possesses charms that she's not even aware of. She is like a trap set by nature - a sweet perfumed rose in whose petals Cupid lurks in ambush! Anyone who has seen her smile has known perfection. She instills grace in every common thing and divinity in every careless gesture. Venus in her shell was never so lovely, and Diana in the forest never so graceful as you.
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Cyrano de Bergerac
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Take the case of courage. No quality has ever so much addled the brains and tangled the definitions of merely rational sages. Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. 'He that will lose his life, the same shall save it,' is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes. It is a piece of everyday advice for sailors or mountaineers. It might be printed in an Alpine guide or a drill book. This paradox is the whole principle of courage; even of quite earthly or brutal courage. A man cut off by the sea may save his life if we will risk it on the precipice.
He can only get away from death by continually stepping within an inch of it. A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine. No philosopher, I fancy, has ever expressed this romantic riddle with adequate lucidity, and I certainly have not done so. But Christianity has done more: it has marked the limits of it in the awful graves of the suicide and the hero, showing the distance between him who dies for the sake of living and him who dies for the sake of dying.
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G.K. Chesterton (Orthodoxy)
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[Comedies], in the ancient world, were regarded as of a higher rank than tragedy, of a deeper truth, of a more difficult realization, of a sounder structure, and of a revelation more complete. The happy ending of the fairy tale, the myth, and the divine comedy of the soul, is to be read, not as a contradiction, but as a transcendence of the universal tragedy of man.... Tragedy is the shattering of the forms and of our attachments to the forms; comedy, the wild and careless, inexhaustible joy of life invincible.
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Joseph Campbell
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The secret of a full life is to live and relate to others as if they might not be there tomorrow, as if you might not be there tomorrow. It eliminates the vice of procrastination, the sin of postponement, failed communications, failed communions. This thought has made me more and more attentive to all encounters. meetings, introductions, which might contain the seed of depth that might be carelessly overlooked. This feeling has become a rarity, and rarer every day now that we have reached a hastier and more superficial rhythm, now that we believe we are in touch with a greater amount of people, more people, more countries. This is the illusion which might cheat us of being in touch deeply with the one breathing next to us. The dangerous time when mechanical voices, radios, telephones, take the place of human intimacies, and the concept of being in touch with millions brings a greater and greater poverty in intimacy and human vision.
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AnaΓ―s Nin (The Diary of AnaΓ―s Nin, Vol. 4: 1944-1947)
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Your soul is a chosen landscape
Where charming masked and costumed figures go
Playing the lute and dancing and almost
Sad beneath their fantastic disguises.
All sing in a minor key
Of all-conquering love and careless fortune
They do not seem to believe in their happiness
And their song mingles with the moonlight.
The still moonlight, sad and beautiful,
Which gives the birds to dream in the trees
And makes the fountain sprays sob in ecstasy,
The tall, slender fountain sprays among the marble statues.
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Paul Verlaine (FΓͺtes galantes)
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It is only now, these years later, that Rahel with adult hindsight recognized the sweetness of that gesture. A grown man entertaining three raccoons, treating them like real ladies. Instinctively colluding in the conspiracy of their fiction, taking care not to decimate it with adult carelessness. Or affection.
It is after all so easy to shatter a story. To break a chain of thought. To ruin a fragment of a dream being carried around carefully like a piece of porcelain.
To let it be, to travel with it, as Velutha did, is much the harder thing to do.
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Arundhati Roy (The God of Small Things)
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When I say 'I won't hurt you', it's a promise, which can and will be kept but it does not come from me without a breakdown of what it means.
It does not mean we will never disagree, nor does it mean that you will always like everything which I say or do. It does not mean that you will never hurt yourself by behaving in a way which is damaging to a relationship or by behaving in a way which would ultimately result in my withdrawal from your life. What it does mean is that I can promise all that I expect in terms of loyalty, honor and respect. It means I am faithful. It also means that I will not intentionally or carelessly behave in a way which causes upset or doubt. It means, at the lowest level, 'You will break these terms before I do.'
Communication is essential. Trust is paramount.
Be completely honest and don't make promises that you can't keep, that's all.
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Eva Schuette
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At a certain point, an eating disorder ceases to be "about" any one thing. It stops being about your family, or your culture. Very simply, it becomes an addiction not only emotionally but also chemically. And it becomes a crusade. If you are honest with yourself, you stop believing that anyone could "make" you do such a thingβ who, your parents? They want you to starve to death? Not likely. Your environment? It couldn't careless. You are also doing it for yourself. It is a shortcut to something many women without an eating disorder have gotten: respect and power. It is a visual temper tantrum. You are making an ineffective statement about this and that, a grotesque, self-defeating mockery of cultural standards of beauty, societal misogyny. It is a blow to your parents, at whom you are pissed.
And it is so very seductive. It is so reassuring, so all-consuming, so entertaining.
At first.
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Marya Hornbacher (Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia)
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And now my old dog is dead, and another I had after him, and my parents are dead, and that first world, that old house, is sold and lost, and the books I gathered there lost, or sold- but more books bought, and in another place, board by board and stone by stone, like a house, a true life built, and all because I was steadfast about one or two things: loving foxes, and poems, the blank piece of paper, and my own energy- and mostly the shimmering shoulders of the world that shrug carelessly over the fate of any individual that they may, the better, keep the Niles and Amazons flowing.
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Mary Oliver (Blue Pastures)
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If conversion to Christianity makes no improvement in a man's outward actions β if he continues to be just a snobbish or spiteful or envious or ambitious as he was before β then I think we must suspect that his 'conversion' was largely imaginary; and after one's original conversion, every time one thinks one has made an advance, that is the test to apply. Fine feelings, new insights, greater interest in 'religion' mean nothing unless they make our actual behavior better; just as in an illness 'feeling better' is not much good if the thermometer shows that your temperature is still going up. In that sense the outer world is quite right to judge Christianity by its results. Christ told us to judge by results. A tree is known by its fruit; or, as we say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. When we Christians behave badly, or fail to behave well, we are making Christianity unbelievable to the outside world. The war-time posters told us that Careless Talk costs Lives. It is equally true that Careless Lives cost Talk. Our careless lives set the outer world taking; and we give them grounds for talking in a way that throws doubt on the truth of Christianity itself.
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C.S. Lewis
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One day Dostoevsky threw out the enigmatic remark: "Beauty will save the world". What sort of a statement is that? For a long time I considered it mere words. How could that be possible? When in bloodthirsty history did beauty ever save anyone from anything? Ennobled, uplifted, yes - but whom has it saved?
There is, however, a certain peculiarity in the essence of beauty, a peculiarity in the status of art: namely, the convincingness of a true work of art is completely irrefutable and it forces even an opposing heart to surrender. It is possible to compose an outwardly smooth and elegant political speech, a headstrong article, a social program, or a philosophical system on the basis of both a mistake and a lie. What is hidden, what distorted, will not immediately become obvious.
Then a contradictory speech, article, program, a differently constructed philosophy rallies in opposition - and all just as elegant and smooth, and once again it works. Which is why such things are both trusted and mistrusted.
In vain to reiterate what does not reach the heart.
But a work of art bears within itself its own verification: conceptions which are devised or stretched do not stand being portrayed in images, they all come crashing down, appear sickly and pale, convince no one. But those works of art which have scooped up the truth and presented it to us as a living force - they take hold of us, compel us, and nobody ever, not even in ages to come, will appear to refute them.
So perhaps that ancient trinity of Truth, Goodness and Beauty is not simply an empty, faded formula as we thought in the days of our self-confident, materialistic youth? If the tops of these three trees converge, as the scholars maintained, but the too blatant, too direct stems of Truth and Goodness are crushed, cut down, not allowed through - then perhaps the fantastic, unpredictable, unexpected stems of Beauty will push through and soar to that very same place, and in so doing will fulfil the work of all three?
In that case Dostoevsky's remark, "Beauty will save the world", was not a careless phrase but a prophecy? After all he was granted to see much, a man of fantastic illumination.
And in that case art, literature might really be able to help the world today?
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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Nobel Lecture (Bilingual Edition) (English and Russian Edition))
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Be brave. Even if you're not, pretend to be. No one can tell the difference. Don't allow the phone to interrupt important moments. It's there for your convenience, not the callers. Don't be afraid to go out on a limb. That's where the fruit is. Don't burn bridges. You'll be surprised how many times you have to cross the same river. Don't forget, a person's greatest emotional need is to feel appreciated. Don't major in minor things. Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Helen Keller, Leonardo Da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein. Don't spread yourself too thin. Learn to say no politely and quickly. Don't use time or words carelessly. Neither can be retrieved. Don't waste time grieving over past mistakes Learn from them and move on. Every person needs to have their moment in the sun, when they raise their arms in victory, knowing that on this day, at his hour, they were at their very best. Get your priorities straight. No one ever said on his death bed, 'Gee, if I'd only spent more time at the office'. Give people a second chance, but not a third. Judge your success by the degree that you're enjoying peace, health and love. Learn to listen. Opportunity sometimes knocks very softly. Leave everything a little better than you found it. Live your life as an exclamation, not an explanation. Loosen up. Relax. Except for rare life and death matters, nothing is as important as it first seems. Never cut what can be untied. Never overestimate your power to change others. Never underestimate your power to change yourself. Remember that overnight success usually takes about fifteen years. Remember that winners do what losers don't want to do. Seek opportunity, not security. A boat in harbor is safe, but in time its bottom will rot out. Spend less time worrying who's right, more time deciding what's right. Stop blaming others. Take responsibility for every area of your life. Success is getting what you want. Happiness is liking what you get. The importance of winning is not what we get from it, but what we become because of it. When facing a difficult task, act as though it's impossible to fail.
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Jackson H. Brown Jr.
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Sometimes this just happens,β Kylie said, much calmer now that she had a sneak preview of his
comeuppance.
βJust happens?β Burnett bellowed out. βAre you freaking kidding me! If you have sex, you use
protection. Itβs that simple. This shit doesnβt have to happen! This is nothing but carelessness. Itβs
irresponsible. Itβs unforgivable.β
βBurnett!β Holiday rolled her eyes at Kylie and frowned. The fae knew exactly what Kylie was up
to now.
But Kylie wasnβt finished yet. βMaybe we should put a rule in place. Any male who impregnates a
girl should be neutered.β
βEnough,β Holiday snapped.
βActually, thatβs not a bad plan!β he growled.
βBurnett!β Holiday said in a stern voice. βShut up before you embarrass yourself more than you
already have.β When the vampire looked at Holiday, she continued, βKylie didnβt buy the pregnancy
tests for Miranda. She bought them for me.β
Kylie flopped back against the seat again, enjoying the look of disbelief on the vampireβs face a
little too much. βWould you like a name of a good doctor who will schedule your little snip-snip
operation?β she bit out.
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C.C. Hunter (Chosen at Nightfall (Shadow Falls, #5))
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Ranna," she said aloud, touching the first, the smallest bell. Ranna the sleepbringer, the sweet, low sound that brought silence in its wake.
"Mosrael." The second bell, a harsh, rowdy bell. Mosrael was the waker, the bell Sabriel should never use, the bell whose sound was a seesaw, throwing the ringer further into Death, as it brought the listener into Life.
"Kibeth." Kibeth, the walker. A bell of several sounds, a difficult and contrary bell. It could give freedom of movement to one of the Dead, or walk them through the next gate. Many a necromancer had stumbled with Kibeth and walked where they would not.
"Dyrim." A musical bell, of clear and pretty tone. Dyrim was the voice that the Dead so often lost. But Dyrim could also still a tongue that moved too freely.
"Belgaer." Another tricksome bell, that sought to ring of its own accord. Belgaer was the thinking bell, the bell most necromancers scorned to use. It could restore independent thought, memory and all the patterns of a living person. Or, slipping in a careless hand, erase them.
"Saraneth." The deepest, lowest bell. The sound of strength. Saraneth was the binder, the bell that shackled the Dead to the wielder's will. And last, the largest bell, the one Sabriel's cold fingers found colder still, even in the leather case that kept it silent.
"Astarael, the Sorrowful," whispered Sabriel. Astarael was the banisher, the final bell. Properly rung, it cast everyone who heard it far into Death. Everyone, including the ringer.
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Garth Nix (Sabriel (Abhorsen, #1))
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When was the last time you were kissed?" he went on easily. "And I'm not talking about the dry, noncommittal, meaningless kiss you forget about as soon as it's over."
I scrambled out of my stupor long enough to quip, "Like last night's kiss?"
He cocked an eyebrow. "That so? I wonder, then, why you moaned my name after you drifted to sleep."
"I did not!"
"If only I'd had a video recorder. When was the last time you were really kissed?" he repeated.
"You seriously think I'm going to tell you?"
"Your ex?" he guessed.
"And if he was?"
"Was it your ex who taught you to be ashamed and uncomfortable with intimacy? He took from you what he wanted, but never seemed to be around when you wanted something back, isn't that right? What do you want, Britt?" he asked me point-blank.
"Do you really want to pretend like last night never happened?"
"Whatever happened between me and Calvin isn't your business,β I fired back.
"For your information, he was a really great boyfriend. I-I wish I was with him right now!" I exclaimed untruthfully. My careless comment made him flinch, but he recovered quickly.
"Does he love you?"
"What?" I said, flustered.
"If you know him so well, it shouldn't be a hard question. Is he in love with you? Was he ever in love with you?"
I tossed my head back haughtily. "I know what you're doing. You're trying to cut him down because you're-you're jealous of him!"
"You're damn right I'm jealous,β he growled. "When I kiss a girl, I like to know she's thinking about me, not the fool who gave her up.
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Becca Fitzpatrick (Black Ice)
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There is lovemaking that is bad for a person, just as there is eating that is bad. That boysenberry cream pie from the Thrift-E Mart may appear inviting, may, in fact, cause all nine hundred taste buds to carol from the tongue, but in the end, the sugars, the additives, the empty calories clog arteries, disrupt cells, generate fat, and rot teeth. Even potentially nourishing foods can be improperly prepared. There are wrong combinations and improper preparations in sex as well. Yes, one must prepare for a fuck--the way an enlightened priest prepares to celebrate mass, the way a great matador prepares for the ring: with intensification, with purification, with a conscious summoning of sacred power. And even that won't work if the ingredients are poorly matched: oysters are delectable, so are strawberries, but mashed together ... (?!) Every nutritious sexual recipe calls for at least a pinch of love, and the fucks that rate four-star rankings from both gourmets and health-food nuts use cupfuls. Not that sex should be regarded as therapeutic or to be taken for medicinal purposes--only a dullard would hang such a millstone around the nibbled neck of a lay--but to approach sex carelessly, shallowly, with detachment and without warmth is to dine night after night in erotic greasy spoons. In time, one's palate will become insensitive, one will suffer (without knowing it) emotional malnutrition, the skin of the soul will fester with scurvy, the teeth of the heart will decay. Neither duration nor proclamation of commitment is necessarily the measure--there are ephemeral explosions of passion between strangers that make more erotic sense than lengthy marriages, there are one-night stands in Jersey City more glorious than six-months affairs in Paris--but finally there is a commitment, however brief; a purity, however threatened; a vulnerability, however concealed; a generosity of spirit, however marbled with need; and honest caring, however singled by lust, that must be present if couplings are to be salubrious and not slow poison.
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Tom Robbins (Still Life with Woodpecker)