Crossed Lovers Quotes

We star-crossed lovers of District 12, who suffered so much and enjoyed so little the rewards of our victory, do not seek our fans' favor, grace them with our smiles, or catch their kisses. We are unforgiving. And I love it. Getting to be myself at last.

Some bridges you crossed on your own, no matter who drove you to the edge

Star-crossed lovers desperate to get home together. Two hearts beating as one. Romance.

For fuck's sake, get off the cross. Someone else needs the wood.

I love inscriptions on flyleaves and notes in margins, I like the comradely sense of turning pages someone else turned, and reading passages someone long gone has called my attention to.

No matter how long or how difficult, we will undo whatever that Moroi boy has done to you." I managed a wavering smile, tasting blood in my mouth. "You sure about that, Dad? Because he's done everything to me.

Two households, both alike in dignity, In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. From forth the fatal loins of these two foes A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life; Whole misadventured piteous overthrows Do with their death bury their parents' strife. The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love, And the continuance of their parents' rage, Which, but their children's end, nought could remove, Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage; The which if you with patient ears attend, What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.

I am not a believer in love at first sight. For love, in its truest form, is not the thing of starry-eyed or star-crossed lovers, it is far more organic, requiring nurturing and time to fully bloom, and, as such, seen best not in its callow youth but in its wrinkled maturity. Like all living things, love, too, struggles against hardship, and in the process sheds its fatuous skin to expose one composed of more than just a storm of emotion–one of loyalty and divine friendship. Agape. And though it may be temporarily blinded by adversity, it never gives in or up, holding tight to lofty ideals that transcend this earth and time–while its counterfeit simply concludes it was mistaken and quickly runs off to find the next real thing.

The male who'd just arrived laughed as he embraced Qhuinn. "You have such a way with words, cousin. I would say...trucker meets sailor crossed with a twelve-year-old.

Ride?" Rhage snorted. "Please. That thing is a sewing machine with an air dam taped to it. My GTO could dust the fucker in fourth gear from a dead stop." When there was an odd sound from behind, John looked back. So did the three Brothers. "What." Xhex bristled and crossed her arms over her chest. "I can laugh, you know. And that's . . . pretty damn funny." Rhage beamed. "I knew I liked you.

Why is it that people who wouldn't dream of stealing anything else think it's perfectly all right to steal books?

It’s in our nature to want to watch our human frailties played out on a huge, epic canvas. Ancient societies had anthropomorphic gods: a huge pantheon expanding into centuries of dynastic drama: fathers and sons, star-crossed lovers, warring brothers, martyred heroes. Tales that taught us the danger of hubris and the primacy of humility. It’s the everyday stuff of everyman’s life, but it’s writ large, and we love it.

It's not the right word, Eva," he pressed on stubbornly, his lips at my ear. "That's why I haven't said it. It's not the right word for you and what I feel for you." "Shut up. If you care about me at all, you'll just shut up and go away." "I've been loved before--by Corinne, by other women...But what the hell do they know about me? What the hell are they in love with when they don't know how fucked up I am? If that's love, it's nothing compared to what I feel for you.

Jesus has now many lovers of the heavenly kingdom but few bearers of His cross.

The star-crossed lovers

I tried to hate you, to forgive you, all just to forget you, but I'm only capable of loving you. You're tattooed onto my skin, and the more I try to erase you, the deeper you sink in.

We're star crossed, Shakespeare. Fateful star-crossed lovers. We have a lifetime to get to know each other, unlike our namesakes. I'll makes sure we get our happily ever after.

Maybe we were together in another life...in a parallel universe, maybe our paths are not supposed to cross twice, maybe your arms are not supposed to go around me. I hear about you now & then, I wonder where you are & how you feel. Sometimes I walk by & I look up to your balcony, just to make sure you were real-just to make sure that I can still feel you...it appears to me that Destiny Rules...

He was acting like our kiss had broken him, and his reaction was breaking me.

You two are bound to one another. You always have been … and you can't run away from what you are. No matter where you go, your feelings for her are going to follow you.

Star-crossed lovers meeting their fate.

I can cross the boundless ocean just to save you, I cannot eat or sleep without you, I can take you on a journey to heaven and show you to the angels. All these are fake and absurd promises; Be sincere, walk up to your lover and say, honestly, darling, i can only do the best i can for you.

Like, even in fiction, friends to lovers? Never my thing. I'm more star-crossed tragedy, supernatural soul mates, enemies to lovers. Epic, you know?

Vishous's chest expanded. . . and his diamond stare slowly swung to Butch. There was a heartbeat of intensity. Then V reached out and repositioned the cross so it once again hung over Butch's heart. "You did well, cop. Congratulations, true?

No, no. I get it. You had to do it." Kieran's eyes narrowed. "Believe it or not, I'm a sucker for romance. Two star-crossed lovers who don't fit in each other's world. Kind of like Romeo and Juliet - just with fangs.

The audience must be sick to death of the star-crossed lovers from District 12. I know I am.

Fine,” he said. “You’re right. We’re not normal. We’re the most fucked-up, star-crossed lovers in history. So let’s not play nice.

without any assistance or guidance from you i have loved you assiduously for 8 months 2 wks & a day i have been stood up four times i've left 7 packages on yr doorstep forty poems 2 plants & 3 handmade notecards i left town so i cd send to you have been no help to me on my job you call at 3:00 in the mornin on weekdays so i cd drive 27 1/2 miles cross the bay before i go to work charmin charmin but you are of no assistance i want you to know this waz an experiment to see how selifsh i cd be if i wd really carry on to snare a possible lover if i waz capable of debasin my self for the love of another if i cd stand not being wanted when i wanted to be wanted & i cannot so with no further assistance & no guidance from you i am endin this affair this note is attached to a plant i've been waterin since the day i met you you may water it yr damn self

It finally happened, he thought as he burrowed under his shirt and took hold of his heavy cross. All his life he’d wondered why he’d never fallen in love, and now he knew: He’d been waiting for this moment, this woman, this time. The female is mine, he thought. - Manny

Her heart was telling her to trust him, but it wouldn’t be the first time that that foolish muscle, there in the middle of her chest, had betrayed her.

I want to take you under the moonlight.

I have peanut M&M's up there." "Not my style" "Raisinets." "Feh." "Sam Adams." Thor narrowed his eyes. "Cold?" "Downright icy." Thor crossed his arms over his chest and told him self he was not pouting like a five-year-old. "I want Milk Duds.

I'd lost myself in the abyss of someone else's tyranny...again.

What, did he think I was just going to melt into his arms? Start a tragic and dramatic tale of star-crossed lovers on a war-torn planet?

I'll have mine [The Book-Lovers' Anthology] till the day I die - and die happy in the knowledge that I'm leaving it behind for someone else to love. I shall sprinkle pale pencil marks through it pointing out the best passages to some book-lover yet unborn.

The want for that kiss had shocked him more than the interruption, and he fell back into the chair, cool and nonchalant as Quen came in with his questions and demands. He wasn't sure if he believed he'd really helped, but one thing was very clear. He wanted that again, that feeling of standing with her against all odds and succeeding. He wanted it so bad, he was going to risk destroying everything he and his father had worked for. He should walk away. Right now. But as she was ushered out the door under David's arm, all he wanted to do was follow her. What the hell was he doing, falling in love with a demon?

Deep down, I’d known how this would end all along. I’d sensed it from the moment we’d first met, from the time I’d first glimpsed the Balisarda in his bandolier—two star-crossed lovers brought together by fate or providence. By life and by death. By gods, or perhaps monsters. We would end with a stake and a match.

I do hope we shall meet again. Perhaps we could have a reading club of some sorts. I 've read that one." She leaned in. "Have you reached the part where Mr. Darcy proposes?" Asriel narrowed his gaze on Cross. "She did that on purpose." Pippa shook her head. "Oh, I did not ruin it. Elizabeth refuses." She paused. "I suppose I did ruin that. Apologies.

I don't have the luxury of dealing with his hormones- or mine, for that matter. What, did he think I was just going to melt into his arms? Start a tragic and dramatic tale of star-crossed lovers on a war-torn planet?

I want a dyke for president. I want a person with AIDS for president and I want a fag for vice president and I want someone with no health insurance and I want someone who grew up in a place where the earth is so saturated with toxic waste that they didn’t have a choice about getting leukemia. I want a president that had an abortion at sixteen and I want a candidate who isn’t the lesser of two evils and I want a president who lost their last lover to AIDS, who still sees that in their eyes every time they lay down to rest, who held their lover in their arms and knew they were dying. I want a president with no air-conditioning, a president who has stood in line at the clinic, at the DMV, at the welfare office, and has been unemployed and laid off and sexually harassed and gaybashed and deported. I want someone who has spent the night in the tombs and had a cross burned on their lawn and survived rape. I want someone who has been in love and been hurt, who respects sex, who has made mistakes and learned from them. I want a Black woman for president. I want someone with bad teeth and an attitude, someone who has eaten that nasty hospital food, someone who crossdresses and has done drugs and been in therapy. I want someone who has committed civil disobedience. And I want to know why this isn’t possible. I want to know why we started learning somewhere down the line that a president is always a clown. Always a john and never a hooker. Always a boss and never a worker. Always a liar, always a thief, and never caught.

Le hasard, c'est peut-être le pseudonyme de Dieu quand il ne veut pas signer.

From forth the fatal loins of these two foes A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life, Whose misadventured piteous overthrows Doth with their death bury their parents’ strife. . . . O, I am fortune’s fool! . . . Then I defy you, stars.

You want an ending," she says. "Then take my life when I am done with it. You can have my soul when I don't want it anymore." The shadow tips his head, suddenly intrigued. A smile - just like the smile in her drawings, askance, and full of secrets - crosses his mouth. And then he pulls her to him. A lover's embrace. he is smoke and skin, air and bone, and when his mouth presses against hers, the first thing she tastes is the turning of the seasons, the moment when dusk gives way to night. And then his kiss deepens. His teeth skim her bottom lip, and there is pain in the pleasure, followed by the copper taste of blood on her tongue.

I laugh. “How exactly do you see this…” I wave between the two of us, unable to come up with a descriptor “Beautiful friendship?” he supplies with a devilish grin. “…going?” I finish, ignoring him. “Us being mortal enemies and all.” “I prefer the term ‘star-crossed lovers.’” I snort. “Regardless, it can’t end well.” “The best romances don’t.

Kevin stopped where he was and stood there simply gazing at her. Molly sat cross-legged in the meadow with the sun shining on her bare shoulders and a pair of yellow butterflies fluttering like hair bows around her head. She was all the dreams he'd lost at dawn-dreams of everything he hadn't understood he needed until now. She was his playmate, his confidante, the lover who made his blood rush. She was the mother of his children and the companion of his old age. She was the joy of his heart.

They created a strange tableau: rabid boy, trapped girl, bombed-out building. It suggested a tale that could only end in tragedy. Star-crossed lovers meeting their fate. A revenge story turned in on itself. A war saga that took no prisoners.

This is the gateway to Hell, baby… Welcome to The Underworld.

They say I should stay away from you,” I said. “They said you’re not good for me.” “I’m not,” he said with a wicked smile, “But doesn’t that make it even more fun?

He wanted a fight, yes—but he wanted her willing, not besieged, with his name shattering from her lips like a broken shield as she surrendered.

I need a little language such as lovers use, words of one syllable such as children speak when they come into the room and find their mother sewing and pick up some scrap of bright wool, a feather, or a shred of chintz. I need a howl; a cry. When the storm crosses the marsh and sweeps over me where I lie in the ditch unregarded I need no words. Nothing neat. Nothing that comes down with all its feet on the floor. None of those resonances and lovely echoes that break and chime from nerve to nerve in our breasts making wild music, false phrases. I have done with phrases.

She had assumed they would see each other every day but she hadn’t really thought about the implications of having an affair with a married man. It wasn’t going to be a normal relationship.

If she had looked into his eyes at that very moment she would have seen the inferno that she had thrown him into.

I love everything about you. And I’ve felt that way for such a long time that it could last forever.

I’d do anything for her if she really wanted me to. I would even walk away from the chance of a lifetime if she asked me to... and I could even be happy about it.

But you’re right about one thing: he’s my best friend. I know him very well, and no matter what he said or did tonight, I’ve never seen him act this way with another girl. No one,” he repeated, “except you.

You're a freak. But I really can't accept these-' Were you raised in a barn? Don't be ruuuuuude, my boy. They're a gift.' Blay shook his head. 'Take them, John. You're just going to lose this argument, and it will save us from the theatrics.' Theatrics?' Qhuinn leaped up and assumed a Roman oratory pose. 'Whither thou knowest thy ass from thy elbow, young scribe?' Blay blushed. 'Come on-' Qhuinn threw himself at Blay, grasping onto the guy's shoulders and hanging his full weight off him. 'Hold me. Your insult has left me breathless. I'm agasp.' Blay grunted and scrambled to keep Qhuinn up off the floor. 'That's agape.' Agasp sounds better.' Blay was trying not to smile, trying not to be delighted, but his eyes were sparkling like sapphires and his cheeks were getting red. With a silent laugh, John sat on one of the locker room benches, shook out his pair of white socks, and pulled them on under his new old jeans. 'You sure, Qhuinn? 'Cause I have a feeling they're going to fit and you might change your mind. Qhuinn abruptly lifted himself off Blay and straightened his clothes with a sharp tug. 'And now you offend my honor.' Facing off at John, he flipped into a fencing stance. Touché.' Blay laughed. 'That's en garde, you damn fool.' Qhuinn shot a look over his shoulder. 'ça va, Brutus?' Et tu?' That would be tutu, I believe, and you can keep the cross-dressing to yourself, ya perv.' Qhuinn flashed a brilliant smile, all twelve kinds of proud for being such an ass. 'Now, put the fuckers on, John, and let's be done with this. Before we have to put Blay in an iron lung.' Try sanitarium.' No, thanks, I had a big lunch.

She was afraid of giving in to that overwhelming, absolute, unconditional love, a love that had shown her the route to heaven, but which had also taught her how much one could suffer, to the point where even the sound of your own tears became deafening.

We were friends and have become estranged. But this was right, and we do not want to conceal and obscure it from ourselves as if we had reason to feel ashamed. We are two ships each of which has its goal and course; our paths may cross and we may celebrate a feast together, as we did - and then the good ships rested so quietly in one harbor and one sunshine that it may have looked as if they had reached their goal and as if they had one goal. But then the mighty force of our tasks drove us apart again into different seas and sunny zones, and perhaps we shall never see each other again; perhaps we shall meet again but fail to recognize each other: our exposure to different seas and suns has changed us.

She loved the fact he was older than her and more experienced, he had so much to teach her and she couldn’t wait to learn.

Then I thought of the drive back, late at night, along the starlit river to this rickety antique New England hotel on a shoreline that I hoped would remind us both of the bay of B., and of Van Gogh's starry nights, and of the night I joined him on the rock and kissed him on the neck, and of the last night when we walked together on the coast road, sensing we'd run out of last-minute miracles to put off his leaving. I imagined being in his car asking myself, Who knows, would I want to, would he want to, perhaps a nightcap at the bar would decide, knowing that, all through dinner that evening, he and I would be worrying about the same exact thing, hoping it might happen, praying it might not, perhaps a nightcap would decide - I could just read it on his face as I pictured him looking away while uncorking a bottle of wine or while changing the music, because he too would catch the thought racing through my mind and want me to know he was debating the exact same thing, because, as he'd pour the wine for his wife, for me, for himself, it would finally dawn on us both that he was more me than I had ever been myself, because when he became me and I became him in bed so many years ago, he was and would forever remain, long after every forked road in life had done its work, my brother, my friend, my father, my son, my husband, my lover, myself. In the weeks we'd been thrown together that summer, our lives had scarcely touched, but we had crossed to the other bank, where time stops and heaven reaches down to earth and gives us that ration of what is from birth divinely ours. We looked the other way. We spoke of everything but. But we've always known, and not saying anything now confirmed it all the more. We had found the stars, you and I. And this is given once only.

He could feel V's eyes sharpen, the vampire's fierce intellect churning over the situation. Among the brothers, Vishous had the most raw brainpower, but he paid for the privilage. Man, Wrath sure had his own demons, and they were no walk in the park, but he wouldn't have wanted Vishous's cross to bear. Seeing what had yet to come was a terrible burden. -Wrath's thoughts

Who doesn't have a friend who worships her lover with a passion that seems baffling to everyone that knows them? Before you met him for the first time, she'd talked him up like he was a cross between Indiana Jones, Barack Obama and The Doctor. When you finally meet him, he's a quiet little thing who looks like a baked bean in glasses, and actually says 'harumph' as spelt.

He just wasn't good at being a cross between a teddy bear and just a friend.

And you have to believe me when I tell you that no one could ever be as beautiful as you are at this very moment, because I could never want anyone more than I want you right now.

Who owns Cross Creek? The red-birds, I think, more than I, for they will have their nests even in the face of delinquent mortgages..It seems to me that the earth may be borrowed, but not bought. It may be used, but not owned. It gives itself in response to love and tending, offers its sesonal flowering and fruiting. But we are tenants and not possessors, lovers, and not masters. Cross Creek belongs to the wind and the rain, to the sun and the seasons, to the cosmic secrecy of seed, and beyond all, to time..."

When Hades decided he loved this girl he built for her a duplicate of earth, everything the same, down to the meadow, but with a bed added. Everything the same, including sunlight, because it would be hard on a young girl to go so quickly from bright light to utter darkness Gradually, he thought, he’d introduce the night, first as the shadows of fluttering leaves. Then moon, then stars. Then no moon, no stars. Let Persephone get used to it slowly. In the end, he thought, she’d find it comforting. A replica of earth except there was love here. Doesn’t everyone want love? He waited many years, building a world, watching Persephone in the meadow. Persephone, a smeller, a taster. If you have one appetite, he thought, you have them all. Doesn’t everyone want to feel in the night the beloved body, compass, polestar, to hear the quiet breathing that says I am alive, that means also you are alive, because you hear me, you are here with me. And when one turns, the other turns— That’s what he felt, the lord of darkness, looking at the world he had constructed for Persephone. It never crossed his mind that there’d be no more smelling here, certainly no more eating. Guilt? Terror? The fear of love? These things he couldn’t imagine; no lover ever imagines them. He dreams, he wonders what to call this place. First he thinks: The New Hell. Then: The Garden. In the end, he decides to name it Persephone’s Girlhood. A soft light rising above the level meadow, behind the bed. He takes her in his arms. He wants to say I love you, nothing can hurt you but he thinks this is a lie, so he says in the end you’re dead, nothing can hurt you which seems to him a more promising beginning, more true.

She was sitting cross-legged on her bed in her white kimono, writing in a notebook with an ink pen she dipped in a bottle. 'Never let a man stay the night,' she told me. 'Dawn has a way of casting a pall on any night magic.' The night magic sounded lovely. Someday I would have lovers and write a poem after.

That is what the opposites do, cross the swords invariably and unknowingly.

She’s my best friend, and I’m hers. Nothing needs to change between us.” He was afraid, not because he thought she wasn’t the one. He was terrified, because he knew she was.

They all broke the rules. They all crossed into forbidden territory. They all tampered with the laws that lay down who should be loved and how. And how much. The laws that make grandmothers grandmothers, uncles uncles, mothers mothers, cousins cousins, jam jam, and jelly jelly. It was a time when uncles became fathers, mothers lovers, and cousins died and had funerals. It was a time when the unthinkable became thinkable and the impossible really happened.

Most people think that love doesn’t stand the test of time – that it is eternal only as long as it lasts – but love is an unquenchable flame. It is only the fires of momentary desire that burn too fast and go out far too quickly without leaving behind a single trace.

You will not mock me—and you will let me finish. I have owned and lost a kingdom, and I have battled death. I have been through all that, and I will not chase after you like some lovesick poet spouting verse. If you wish to call me yours, then you will have to act as if you are mine. On the front of surrender, there is no middle ground.

Although she was beautiful, he knew that that wasn’t enough anymore.

Somehow my soul remembers it all, hers doesn't.

In that moment, the moon and the sun shared the sky. For all of eternity, the moon and sun have chased each other around the world. Long into the future, they will continue this chase, merging the days into months into years into centuries, until the day the sun cannot take the separation any longer and she shatters, engulfing the moon and everything else in a burst of light. Most will call it the day of final judgment. The end. To the sun and the moon, it will only be the beginning. For the smallest of instants each day, they pause in this chase. They pause and look back at one another, smiling as if sharing a secret. Two lovers that can never exist as one, except in that single, brief instant. Lying there, Persephone smiled too. And as quickly as a smile parts two lips, the two sky wanderers parted ways. The chase was on again. Night gave way to day. That is true love, she had always thought. No force but love can impel one to step willingly into the shadows so that the other may shine.

Couldn't one go right away, to the far ends of the earth, and be free from it all? One could not. The far ends of the earth are not five minutes from Charing Cross. nowadays. While the wireless is active, there are no far ends of the earth.

But how can I let him just walk away with a smile on my face and a slap on his back when every cell in my body is tied painfully to him, and I can’t breathe when I think of him being away from me?!

..How the numbness in my fingertips travelled to my heart and I never even knew it. I had crushes, I had lovers, I had orgasms. My trilogy of desire, I liked to call it, but I'd no great love after him, not really. Love and sex became separated by a wide river and one the ferryman refused to cross.

Maybe it was the alcohol, maybe it was the truth, maybe I didn't want things to turn abstract, but I felt I should say it, because this was the moment to say it, because it suddenly dawned on me that this was why I had come, to tell him 'You are the only person I'd like to say goodbye to when I die, because only then will this thing I call my life make any sense. And if I should hear that you died, my life as I know it, the me who is speaking with you now, will cease to exist. Sometimes I have this awful picture of waking up in our house in B. and, looking out to the sea, hearing the news from the waves themselves, He died last night. We missed out on so much. It was a coma. Tomorrow I go back to my coma, and you to yours. Pardon, I didn't mean to offend—I am sure yours is no coma.' 'No, a parallel life.

Do not allow yourself to be full of hate, princess. Hate is a heavy thing. It weighs us down, chaining us in a dark place. You focus on your love. If you want to be free of this heavy darkness you feel, focus on your love. Love is a chariot with a skeleton key to the chains which hate can wrap around you. To love is to be free.

Matteo lived inside her like a memory that paradoxically stopped the pain and which she could never get enough of... because there was, and never would be, anything that was like him. Wherever she went, whatever she did, he was the only thing she truly loved, and which she sadly no longer had.

We are nothing more than game pieces on a celestial board whose sheer scale we could not possibly fathom. All of it is inevitable—just like you and I. You can’t fight Fate.” “I can fight you.” He smiled. It was a courtier’s smile. An elegant cover to endless secrets and depravities. “I’m counting on it.

I can't really remember the days. The light of the sun blurred and annihilated all color. But the nights, I remember them. The blue was more distant than the sky, beyond all depths, covering the bounds of the world. The sky, for me, was the stretch of pure brilliance crossing the blue, that cold coalescence beyond all color. Sometimes, it was in Vinh Long, when my mother was sad she'd order the gig and we'd drive out into the country to see the nighta s it was in the dry season. I had that good fortune- those nights, that mother. The light fell from the sky in cataracts of pure transparency, in torrents of silence and immobility. The air was blue, you could hold it in your hand. Blue. The sky was the continual throbbing of the brilliance of the light. The night lit up everything, all the country on either bank of the river as far as the eye could reach. Every night was different, each one had a name as long as it lasted. Their sound was that of the dogs, the country dogs baying at mystery. They answered on another from village to village, until the time and space of the night were utterly consumed.

Birthdays were wretched, delicious things when you lived in Beau Rivage. The clock stuck midnight, and presents gave way to magic. Curses bloomed. Girls bit into sharp apples instead of birthday cake, chocked on the ruby-and-white slivers, and collapsed into enchanted sleep. Unconscious beneath cobweb canopies, frozen in coffins of glass, they waited for their princes to come. Or they tricked ogres, traded their voices for love, danced until their glass slippers cracked. A prince would awaken, roused by the promise of true love, and find he had a witch to destroy. A heart to steal. To tear from the rib cage, where it was cushioned by bloody velvet, and deliver it to the queen who demanded the princess's death. Girls became victims and heroines. Boys became lovers and murderers. And sometimes... they became both.

There were never strawberries like the ones we had that sultry afternoon sitting on the step of the open french window facing each other your knees held in mine the blue plates in our laps the strawberries glistening in the hot sunlight we dipped them in sugar looking at each other not hurrying the feast for one to come the empty plates laid on the stone together with the two forks crossed and I bent towards you sweet in that air in my arms abandoned like a child from your eager mouth the taste of strawberries in my memory lean back again let me love you let the sun beat on our forgetfulness one hour of all the heat intense and summer lightning on the Kilpatrick hills let the storm wash the plates.

The impulse is being called reactionary now, but lovers of Middle-earth want to go there. I would myself, like a shot. For in the end it is Middle-earth and its dwellers that we love, not Tolkien’s considerable gifts in showing it to us. I said once that the world he charts was there long before him, and I still believe it. He is a great enough magician to tap our most common nightmares, daydreams and twilight fancies, but he never invented them either: he found them a place to live, a green alternative to each day’s madness here in a poisoned world. We are raised to honor all the wrong explorers and discoverers—thieves planting flags, murderers carrying crosses. Let us at last praise the colonizers of dreams.

They were forced to remember, however, when the doors to the church opened, and half the aristocracy poured out into the grey April morning, desperate and finally, finally able to gossip about the most important part of the double wedding—one missing bride—only to discover the lady in question was not missing at all. Indeed, she was right outside the church. In the arms of a man to whom she was not affianced. Ignoring the collective gasp of their audience, Cross kissed the tip of her nose and rectified the situation. Jasper Arlesey, Earl Harlow lowered himself to one knee and— in front of all the world—proposed to his brilliant, bespectacled bluestocking.

We were never meant to be together. Stars never aligned for us, they always diverged our paths from each other. Too close, but never enough. Minute hands were never slow enough for us to catch up, but fast enough we’re slipping from its grasp. We were never meant to be together, but that doesn’t mean I love you any less.

Destinies, are like roads. Relationships are much like destinies. Therefore, relationships are like roads. Some roads are circular. They start at one spot and end in the same. Some roads fork and force. Their travelers to choose which way to go. Some roads go great distances. And then there are those that end abruptly. Who is to say that a short road is less meaningful than a long?

I’ve always liked you, from the first moment I saw you at the Pigafetta Stadium.” He kept his distance because he wanted her too much. “And ever since that day, I knew that you were in love with another guy, and that he would sooner or later feel the same way I did.” Cutting ties with her was excruciatingly painful. “I just hoped that he would be stupid enough to let me have you,” he gasped. “But he wasn’t.

Out into the staff quarters. Over to the entrance to the movie theater. Tohr stopped dead. “If this is another Beaches marathon, I’m going to Bette your ass until you can’t sit down.” “Aw, look at you! Trying to be finny.” “Seriously, if you have any compassion in you at all, you’ll let me go to bed—” “I have peanut M&M’s up there.” “Not my style.” “Raisinets.” “Feh.” “Sam Adams.” Tohr narrowed his eyes. “Cold?” “Downright icy.” Tohr crossed his arms over his chest and told himself he was not pouting like a five-year-old. “I want Milk Duds.” “Got ’em. And popcorn.” With a curse, Tohr yanked open the door and ascended into the dimly lit red cave.

Moments later a huge male with a cropped mohawk came out. Rehvenge was dressed in a perfectly tailored black suit and had a black cane in his right hand. As he came slowly over to the Brotherhood's table, his patrons parted before him, partly out of respect for his size, partly out of fear from his reputation. Everyone knew who he was and what he was capable of: Rehv was the kind of drug lord who took a personal interest in his livelihood. You crossed him and you turned up diced like something off the Food Channel.

There was a feeling of inevitability when I met you. The sense that we would be together; that there would be a moment when you would look at me in a certain way, and we could cross the threshold from friendship into something so much more. We spoke once about lovers who kept finding each other, no matter how many times the world came between them. And I think I had to break your heart, and you had to break mine. How else could we know the worth of what we were given? I think you were always meant to know me a little better than anyone else. And our lives were fated to converge like some cosmic dance. I know there is terrible distance between us. But our bodies are made of celestial light, and we are hurtling through space and time, toward the most beautiful collision.

It’ll be hard not to tease your folk sometimes.” Brishen couldn’t imagine how she might go about such a thing.  He had no idea if the Kai and the Gauri even knew the same jokes or found the same things funny.  “What do you mean?” He almost leapt out of his skin when Ildiko stared at him as both of her eyes drifted slowly down and over until they seemed to meet together, separated only by the elegant bridge of her nose. “Lover of thorns and holy gods!” he yelped and clapped one hand across her eyes to shut out the sight.  “Stop that,” he ordered. Ildiko laughed and pushed his hand away.  She laughed even harder when she caught sight of his expression.  “Wait,” she gasped on a giggle.  “I can do better.  Want to see me make one eye cross and have the other stay still?” Brishen reared back.  “No!”  He grimaced.  “Nightmarish.  I’ll thank you to keep that particular talent to yourself, wife.

The story of my life doesn't exist. Does not exist. There's never any center to it. No path, no line. There are great spaces where you pretend there used to be someone, but it's not true, there was no one. The story of one small part of my youth I've already written, more or less- I mean, nought to give a glimpse of it. Of this part, I mean, the part about the crossing of the river. What I'm doing now is both different and the same. Before, I spoke of clear periods, those on which the light fell. Now I'm talking about the hidden stretches of that same youth, of certain facts, feelings, events that I buried.

A few days later, Tuesday quietly crossed our apartment as I read a book and, after a nudge against my arm, put his head on my lap. As always, I immediately checked my mental state, trying to assess what was wrong. I knew a change in my biorhythms had brought Tuesday over, because he was always monitoring me, but I couldn't figure out what it was. Breathing? Okay. Pulse? Normal. Was I glazed or distracted? Was I lost in Iraq? Was a dark period descending? I didn't think so, but I knew something must be wrong, and I was starting to worry...until I looked into Tuesday's eyes. They were staring at me softly from under those big eyebrows, and there was nothing in them but love.

Songs of the Soul On a dark night, Inflamed by love-longing - O exquisite risk! - Undetected I slipped away. My house, at last, grown still. Secure in the darkness, I climbed the secret ladder in disguise - O exquisite risk! - Concealed by the darkness. My house, at last, grown still. That sweet night: a secret. Nobody saw me; I did not see a thing. No other light, no other guide Than the one burning in my heart. This light led the way More clearly than the risen sun To where he was waiting for me - The one I knew so intimately - In a place where no one could find us. O night, that guided me! O night, sweeter than sunrise! O night, that joined lover with Beloved! Lover transformed in Beloved! Upon my blossoming breast, Which I cultivated just for him, He drifted into sleep, And while I caressed him, A cedar breeze touched the air. Wind blew down from the tower, Parting the locks of his hair. With his gentle hand He wounded my neck And all my senses were suspended. I lost myself. Forgot myself. I lay my face against the Beloved's face. Everything fell away and I left myself behind, Abandoning my cares Among the lilies, forgotten.

It is possible to feel you are “madly in love” with someone, when it is really just an attraction to someone who can meet your needs and address the insecurities and doubts you have about yourself. In that kind of relationship, you will demand and control rather than serve and give. The only way to avoid sacrificing your partner’s joy and freedom on the altar of your need is to turn to the ultimate lover of your soul. He voluntarily sacrificed himself on the cross, taking what you deserved for your sins against God and others. On the cross he was forsaken and experienced the lostness of hell, but he did it all for us. Because of the loving sacrifice of the Son, you can know the heaven of the Father’s love through the work of the Spirit. Jesus truly “built a heaven in hell’s despair.” And fortified with the love of God in your soul, you likewise can now give yourself in loving service to your spouse. “We love—because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19).

She pushed and elbowed and knocked and strained to catch him, and finally, she did, reaching out for his hand--adoring the fact that neither of them wore gloves, loving the way their skin came together, the way his brought wonderful heat in a lush, irresistible current. He felt it too. She knew it because he stopped the instant they touched, turning to face her, grey eyes wild as Devonshire rain. She knew it because he whispered her name, aching and beautiful and soft enough for only her to hear. And she it because his free hand rose, captured her jaw and titled her face up to him even as he leaned down and stole her lips and breath and thought in a kiss that she would never in her lifetime forget. The was like food and drink, like sleep, like breath. She needed it with the same elemental desire and she cared not a bit that all of London was watching. Yes, she was masked, but it did not matter. She would have stripped to her chemise for this kiss. To her skin. Their fingers still intertwined, he wrapped their arms behind her back and pulled her to him, claiming her mouth with lips and tongue and teeth, marking her with one long luscious kiss that went on and on until she thought she might die from the pleasure of it. Her free hand was in his hair then, tangling in the soft locks, loving their silky promise. She was lost, claimed and fairly consumed by the intensity of the kiss, and for the first time in her life, Pippa gave herself up to emotion, pouring every bit of her desire and her passion and her fear and her need into this moment This caress. This man. This man, who was everything she had never allowed herself to dream she would find. This man, who made her believe in friendship. In partnership.. In love

You know what I think?” Touching him feels so good, so strangely uncomplicated, like he’s the exception to every rule. “What?” “I think you love your job,” he says softly. “I think you work that hard because you care ten times more than the average person.” “About work,” I say. “About everything.” His arms tighten around me. “Your sister. Your clients. Their books. You don’t do anything you’re not going to do one hundred percent. You don’t start anything you can’t finish. “You’re not the person who buys the stationary bike as part of a New Year’s resolution, then uses it as a coatrack for three years. You’re not the kind of woman who only works hard when it feels good, or only shows up when it’s convenient. If someone insults one of your clients, those fancy kid gloves of yours come off, and you carry your own pen at all times, because if you’re going to have to write anything, it might as well look good. You read the last page of books first—don’t make that face, Stephens.” He cracks a smile in one corner of his mouth. “I’ve seen you—even when you’re shelving, you sometimes check the last page, like you’re constantly looking for all the information, trying to make the absolute best decisions.” “And by you’ve seen me,” I say, “you mean you’ve watched me.” “Of course I fucking do,” he says in a low, rough voice. “I can’t stop. I’m always aware of where you are, even if I don’t look, but it’s impossible not to. I want to see your face get stern when you’re emailing a client’s editor, being a hard-ass, and I want to see your legs when you’re so excited about something you just read that you can’t stop crossing and uncrossing them. And when someone pisses you off, you get these red splotches.” His fingers brush my throat. “Right here.” “You’re a fighter,” he says. “When you care about something, you won’t let anything fucking touch it. I’ve never met anyone who cares as much as you do. Do you know what most people would give to have someone like that in their life?” His eyes are dark, probing, his heartbeat fast. “Do you know how fucking lucky anyone you care about is? You know . . .