β
We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.
β
β
Friedrich Nietzsche
β
Anyone who is in love is making love the whole time, even when they're not. When two bodies meet, it is just the cup overflowing. They can stay together for hours, even days. They begin the dance one day and finish it the next, or--such is the pleasure they experience--they may never finish it. No eleven minutes for them.
β
β
Paulo Coelho (Eleven Minutes)
β
It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.
It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain!I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it, or fix it.
I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human.
It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; if you can be faithlessand therefore trustworthy.
I want to know if you can see beauty even when it's not pretty, every day,and if you can source your own life from its presence.
I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, βYes!β
It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up, after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children.
It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.
It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away.
I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.
β
β
Oriah Mountain Dreamer
β
You deserve someone who loves you with every single beat of his heart, someone who thinks about you constantly, someone who spends every minute of every day just wondering what youβre doing, where you are, who youβre with, and if youβre OK. You need someone who can help you reach your dreams and protect you from your fears. You need someone who will treat you with respect, love every part of you, especially your flaws. You should be with someone who could make you happy, really happy, dancing on air happy.
β
β
Cecelia Ahern (Love, Rosie)
β
He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.
β
β
Friedrich Nietzsche
β
Every day brings a chance for you to draw in a breath, kick off your shoes, and dance.
β
β
Oprah Winfrey
β
My parents danced together, her head on his chest. Both had their eyes closed. They seemed so perfectly content. If you can find someone like that, someone who you can hold and close your eyes to the world with, then you're lucky. Even if it only lasts for a minute or a day. The image of them gently swaying to the music is how I picture love in my mind even after all these years.
β
β
Patrick Rothfuss (The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #1))
β
It all goes back and back," Tyrion thought, "to our mothers and fathers and theirs before them. We are puppets dancing on the strings of those who came before us, and one day our own children will take up our strings and dance in our steads.
β
β
George R.R. Martin (A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire, #3))
β
Dance. Smile. Giggle. Marvel. TRUST. HOPE. LOVE. WISH. BELIEVE. Most of all, enjoy every moment of the journey, and appreciate where you are at this moment instead of always focusing on how far you have to go.
β
β
Mandy Hale (The Single Woman: Life, Love, and a Dash of Sass)
β
We knew exactly what we wanted in each other. And even so, it ended. One day it stopped, as if the film simply slipped off the reel.
β
β
Haruki Murakami (Dance Dance Dance (The Rat, #4))
β
The dance between darkness and light will always remainβ the stars and the moon will always need the darkness to be seen, the darkness will just not be worth having without the moon and the stars.
β
β
C. JoyBell C.
β
The Devil pulls the strings which make us dance;
We find delight in the most loathsome things;
Some furtherance of Hell each new day brings,
And yet we feel no horror in that rank advance.
β
β
Charles Baudelaire
β
But I think the first real change in womenβs body image came when JLo turned it butt-style. That was the first time that having a large-scale situation in the back was part of mainstream American beauty. Girls wanted butts now. Men were free to admit that they had always enjoyed them. And then, what felt like moments later, boomβBeyoncΓ© brought the leg meat. A back porch and thick muscular legs were now widely admired. And from that day forward, women embraced their diversity and realized that all shapes and sizes are beautiful. Ah ha ha. No. Iβm totally messing with you. All Beyonce and JLo have done is add to the laundry list of attributes women must have to qualify as beautiful. Now every girl is expected to have Caucasian blue eyes, full Spanish lips, a classic button nose, hairless Asian skin with a California tan, a Jamaican dance hall ass, long Swedish legs, small Japanese feet, the abs of a lesbian gym owner, the hips of a nine-year-old boy, the arms of Michelle Obama, and doll tits. The person closest to actually achieving this look is Kim Kardashian, who, as we know, was made by Russian scientists to sabotage our athletes.
β
β
Tina Fey (Bossypants)
β
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rage at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
β
β
Dylan Thomas (Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night)
β
We are all dying, every moment that passes of every day. That is the inescapable truth of this existence. It is a truth that can paralyze us with fear, or one that can energize us with impatience, with the desire to explore and experience, with the hope- nay, the iron-will!- to find a memory in every action. To be alive, under sunshine, or starlight, in weather fair or stormy. To dance with every step, be they through gardens of flowers or through deep snows.
β
β
R.A. Salvatore
β
Perhaps the biggest tragedy of our lives is that freedom is possible, yet we can pass our years trapped in the same old patterns...We may want to love other people without holding back, to feel authentic, to breathe in the beauty around us, to dance and sing. Yet each day we listen to inner voices that keep our life small.
β
β
Tara Brach (Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha)
β
We danced too wild, and we sang too long, and we hugged too hard, and we kissed too sweet, and howled just as loud as we wanted to howl, because by now we were all old enough to know that what looks like crazy on an ordinary day looks a lot like love if you catch it in the moonlight.
β
β
Pearl Cleage
β
I feel in every girl there is a spirit,
a wild pixie,
that if let go,
would run and dance in grassy fields
until the end of the world.
And then that girl grows up,
that pixie hides,
but it's always there,
peeking out behind old eyes
and reading glasses,
laughing, waiting,
to one day dance again.
β
β
Atticus Poetry
β
I wish to Heaven I was married," she said resentfully as she attacked the yams with loathing. "I'm tired of everlastingly being unnatural and never doing anything I want to do. I'm tired of acting like I don't eat more than a bird, and walking when I want to run and saying I feel faint after a waltz, when I could dance for two days and never get tired. I'm tired of saying, 'How wonderful you are!' to fool men who haven't got one-half the sense I've got, and I'm tired of pretending I don't know anything, so men can tell me things and feel important while they're doing it... I can't eat another bite.
β
β
Margaret Mitchell (Gone with the Wind)
β
What is a Wanderess? Bound by no boundaries, contained by no countries, tamed by no time, she is the force of natureβs course.
β
β
Roman Payne (The Wanderess)
β
I love writing, but hate starting. The page is awfully white and it says, 'You may have fooled some of the people some of the time but those days are over, Giftless. I'm not your agent and I'm not your mommy: I'm a white piece of paper. You wanna dance with me?' and I really, really don't. I'll go peaceable-like.
β
β
Aaron Sorkin
β
It wasn't disgust she felt for Karou, not anymore; it was indignation. Incredulity. A man like Akiva crosses worlds to find you, infiltrates the enemy capital just to dance with you, bends heaven and hell to avenge your death, saves your comrade and kin from torture and death, and you send him off looking gut-punched, diminished, carved hollow?
β
β
Laini Taylor (Days of Blood & Starlight (Daughter of Smoke & Bone, #2))
β
Write every day, line by line, page by page, hour by hour. Do this despite fear. For above all else, beyond imagination and skill, what the world asks of you is courage, courage to risk rejection, ridicule and failure. As you follow the quest for stories told with meaning and beauty, study thoughtfully but write boldly. Then, like the hero of the fable, your dance will dazzle the world.
β
β
Robert McKee
β
You will one day experience joy that matches this pain. You will cry euphoric tears at the Beach Boys, you will stare down at a babyβs face as she lies asleep in your lap, you will make great friends, you will eat delicious foods you havenβt tried yet, you will be able to look at a view from a high place and not assess the likelihood of dying from falling. There are books you havenβt read yet that will enrich you, films you will watch while eating extra-large buckets of popcorn, and you will dance and laugh and have sex and go for runs by the river and have late-night conversations and laugh until it hurts. Life is waiting for you. You might be stuck here for a while, but the world isnβt going anywhere. Hang on in there if you can. Life is always worth it.
β
β
Matt Haig (Reasons to Stay Alive)
β
Life is not unlike cinema. Each scene has its own music, and the music is created for the scene, woven to it in ways we do not understand. No matter how much we may love the melody of a bygone day or imagine the song of a future one, we must dance within the music of today, or we will always be out of step, stumbling around in something that doesnβt suit the moment.
β
β
Lisa Wingate (Before We Were Yours)
β
I have a 12:34 representational time dance. I do it at 3:33 every other Tuesday (twice a day). If youβd like to participate in my choreographed dance routine, bring a football helmet and a half empty can of tuna (keeps the stray cats away, because I perform in a gritty, grimy downtown alley).β¨
β
β
Jarod Kintz (At even one penny, this book would be overpriced. In fact, free is too expensive, because you'd still waste time by reading it.)
β
Because children grow up, we think a child's purpose is to grow up. But a child's purpose is to be a child. Nature doesn't disdain what lives only for a day. It pours the whole of itself into the each moment. We don't value the lily less for not being made of flint and built to last. Life's bounty is in its flow, later is too late. Where is the song when it's been sung? The dance when it's been danced? It's only we humans who want to own the future, too. We persuade ourselves that the universe is modestly employed in unfolding our destination. We note the haphazard chaos of history by the day, by the hour, but there is something wrong with the picture. Where is the unity, the meaning, of nature's highest creation? Surely those millions of little streams of accident and wilfulness have their correction in the vast underground river which, without a doubt, is carrying us to the place where we're expected! But there is no such place, that's why it's called utopia. The death of a child has no more meaning than the death of armies, of nations. Was the child happy while he lived? That is a proper question, the only question. If we can't arrange our own happiness, it's a conceit beyond vulgarity to arrange the happiness of those who come after us.
β
β
Tom Stoppard (The Coast of Utopia (Box Set))
β
The field of battle is my temple. I mentally chant a saying my grandfather taught me the day he met me, when I was six. He insists it sharpens the mind the way a whetstone sharpens a blade. The swordpoint is my priest. The dance of death is my prayer. The killing blow is my release.
β
β
Sabaa Tahir (An Ember in the Ashes (An Ember in the Ashes, #1))
β
And I want to play hide-and-seek and give you my clothes and tell you I like your shoes and sit on the steps while you take a bath and massage your neck and kiss your feet and hold your hand and go for a meal and not mind when you eat my food and meet you at Rudy's and talk about the day and type up your letters and carry your boxes and laugh at your paranoia and give you tapes you don't listen to and watch great films and watch terrible films and complain about the radio and take pictures of you when you're sleeping and get up to fetch you coffee and bagels and Danish and go to Florent and drink coffee at midnight and have you steal my cigarettes and never be able to find a match and tell you about the tv programme I saw the night before and take you to the eye hospital and not laugh at your jokes and want you in the morning but let you sleep for a while and kiss your back and stroke your skin and tell you how much I love your hair your eyes your lips your neck your breasts your arse your
and sit on the steps smoking till your neighbour comes home and sit on the steps smoking till you come home and worry when you're late and be amazed when you're early and give you sunflowers and go to your party and dance till I'm black and be sorry when I'm wrong and happy when you forgive me and look at your photos and wish I'd known you forever and hear your voice in my ear and feel your skin on my skin and get scared when you're angry and your eye has gone red and the other eye blue and your hair to the left and your face oriental and tell you you're gorgeous and hug you when you're anxious and hold you when you hurt and want you when I smell you and offend you when I touch you and whimper when I'm next to you and whimper when I'm not and dribble on your breast and smother you in the night and get cold when you take the blanket and hot when you don't and melt when you smile and dissolve when you laugh and not understand why you think I'm rejecting you when I'm not rejecting you and wonder how you could think I'd ever reject you and wonder who you are but accept you anyway and tell you about the tree angel enchanted forest boy who flew across the ocean because he loved you and write poems for you and wonder why you don't believe me and have a feeling so deep I can't find words for it and want to buy you a kitten I'd get jealous of because it would get more attention than me and keep you in bed when you have to go and cry like a baby when you finally do and get rid of the roaches and buy you presents you don't want and take them away again and ask you to marry me and you say no again but keep on asking because though you think I don't mean it I do always have from the first time I asked you and wander the city thinking it's empty without you and want what you want and think I'm losing myself but know I'm safe with you and tell you the worst of me and try to give you the best of me because you don't deserve any less and answer your questions when I'd rather not and tell you the truth when I really don't want to and try to be honest because I know you prefer it and think it's all over but hang on in for just ten more minutes before you throw me out of your life and forget who I am and try to get closer to you because it's beautiful learning to know you and well worth the effort and speak German to you badly and Hebrew to you worse and make love with you at three in the morning and somehow somehow somehow communicate some of the overwhelming undying overpowering unconditional all-encompassing heart-enriching mind-expanding on-going never-ending love I have for you.
β
β
Sarah Kane (Crave)
β
I was going to die, sooner or later, whether or not I had even spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silences will not protect you.... What are the words you do not yet have? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? We have been socialized to respect fear more than our own need for language."
I began to ask each time: "What's the worst that could happen to me if I tell this truth?" Unlike women in other countries, our breaking silence is unlikely to have us jailed, "disappeared" or run off the road at night. Our speaking out will irritate some people, get us called bitchy or hypersensitive and disrupt some dinner parties. And then our speaking out will permit other women to speak, until laws are changed and lives are saved and the world is altered forever.
Next time, ask: What's the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare. Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt you, put you down and suggest it's personal. And the world won't end.
And the speaking will get easier and easier. And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had. And you will lose some friends and lovers, and realize you don't miss them. And new ones will find you and cherish you. And you will still flirt and paint your nails, dress up and party, because, as I think Emma Goldman said, "If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution." And at last you'll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking.
β
β
Audre Lorde
β
Grief orbits the heart. Some days the circle is greater. Those are the good days. You have room to move and dance and breathe. Some days the circle is tighter. Those are the hard ones.
β
β
Steven Rowley (The Guncle)
β
You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.
You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days.
Ay, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.
But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
Love one another, but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.
Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.
β
β
Kahlil Gibran
β
Men live their lives trapped in an eternal present, between the mists of memory and the sea of shadow that is all we know of the days to come.
β
β
George R.R. Martin (A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, #5))
β
And we danced, on the brink of an unknown future, to an echo from a vanished past.
β
β
John Wyndham (The Day of the Triffids)
β
The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures. It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth in numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.
β
β
Rabindranath Tagore
β
She will blaze through you like a gypsy wildfire. Igniting you soul and dancing in its flames. And when she is gone, the smell of her smoke will be the only thing left to soothe you.
β
β
Nicole Lyons
β
Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake
ββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββand dress them in warm clothes again.
ββββββββββHow it was late, and no one could sleep, the horses running
until they forget that they are horses.
ββββββββββββββββββββItβs not like a tree where the roots have to end somewhere,
ββββββββββitβs more like a song on a policemanβs radio,
ββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββhow we rolled up the carpet so we could dance, and the days
were bright red, and every time we kissed there was another apple
ββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββto slice into pieces.
Look at the light through the windowpane. That means itβs noon, that means
ββββββββββwe're inconsolable.
ββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββTell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.
These, our bodies, possessed by light.
ββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββTell me weβll never get used to it.
β
β
Richard Siken (Crush)
β
He ate and drank the precious words,
His spirit grew robust;
He knew no more that he was poor,
Nor that his frame was dust.
He danced along the dingy days,
And this bequest of wings
Was but a book. What liberty
A loosened spirit brings!
β
β
Emily Dickinson
β
anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did
Women and men(both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn't they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain
children guessed(but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew
autumn winter spring summer)
that noone loved him more by more
when by now and tree by leaf
she laughed his joy she cried his grief
bird by snow and stir by still
anyone's any was all to her
someones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance
(sleep wake hope and then)they
said their nevers they slept their dream
stars rain sun moon
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt to forget to remember
with up so floating many bells down)
one day anyone died i guess
(and noone stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk buried them side by side
little by little and was by was
all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep
noone and anyone earth by april
wish by spirit and if by yes.
Women and men (both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain
β
β
E.E. Cummings (Selected Poems)
β
Why aren't you in school? I see you every day wandering around."
"Oh, they don't miss me," she said. "I'm antisocial, they say. I don't mix. It's so strange. I'm very social indeed. It all depends on what you mean by social, doesn't it? Social to me means talking to you about things like this." She rattled some chestnuts that had fallen off the tree in the front yard. "Or talking about how strange the world is. Being with people is nice. But I don't think it's social to get a bunch of people together and then not let them talk, do you? An hour of TV class, an hour of basketball or baseball or running, another hour of transcription history or painting pictures, and more sports, but do you know, we never ask questions, or at least most don't; they just run the answers at you, bing, bing, bing, and us sitting there for four more hours of film-teacher. That's not social to me at all. It's a lot of funnels and lot of water poured down the spout and out the bottom, and them telling us it's wine when it's not. They run us so ragged by the end of the day we can't do anything but go to bed or head for a Fun Park to bully people around, break windowpanes in the Window Smasher place or wreck cars in the Car Wrecker place with the big steel ball. Or go out in the cars and race on the streets, trying to see how close you can get to lampposts, playing 'chicken' and 'knock hubcaps.' I guess I'm everything they say I am, all right. I haven't any friends. That's supposed to prove I'm abnormal. But everyone I know is either shouting or dancing around like wild or beating up one another. Do you notice how people hurt each other nowadays?
β
β
Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451)
β
My friends are gone and my hair is grey.
I ache in places I used to play.
And Iβm crazy for love but Iβm not coming on.
Iβm just paying my rent every day in the tower of song.
β
β
Leonard Cohen (Dance Me to the End of Love)
β
Once upon a time, there was a wise man who used to go to the ocean to do his writing. He had a habit of walking on the beach before he began his work.
One day, as he was walking along the shore, he looked down the beach and saw a human figure moving like a dancer. He smiled to himself at the thought of someone who would dance to the day, and so, he walked faster to catch up.
As he got closer, he noticed that the figure was that of a young man, and that what he was doing was not dancing at all. The young man was reaching down to the shore, picking up small objects, and throwing them into the ocean.
He came closer still and called out "Good morning! May I ask what it is that you are doing?"
The young man paused, looked up, and replied "Throwing starfish into the ocean."
"I must ask, then, why are you throwing starfish into the ocean?" asked the somewhat startled wise man.
To this, the young man replied, "The sun is up and the tide is going out. If I don't throw them in, they'll die."
Upon hearing this, the wise man commented, "But, young man, do you not realize that there are miles and miles of beach and there are starfish all along every mile? You can't possibly make a difference!"
At this, the young man bent down, picked up yet another starfish, and threw it into the ocean. As it met the water, he said,
"It made a difference for that one.
β
β
Loren Eiseley
β
I wake up and tear drops, they fall down like rain. I put on that old song we danced to and then, I head off to my job cause not much has changed. Punch the clock, head for home, check the phone. Just in case. Go to bed, dream of you. That's what I am doing these days.
β
β
Rascal Flatts
β
Gilgamesh, where are you hurrying to? You will never find that life for which you are looking. When the gods created man they allotted to him death, but life they retained in their own keeping. As for you, Gilgamesh, fill your belly with good things; day and night, night and day, dance and be merry, feast and rejoice. Let your clothes be fresh, bathe yourself in water, cherish the little child that holds your hand, and make your wife happy in your embrace; for this too is the lot of man.
β
β
Anonymous (The Epic of Gilgamesh)
β
If the reality of our life has become an unsettling arabesque puzzle and we still want to add more filigree embroidery to it, we might, some day, expect to stray from the point of recognition, lose the final thread, be expelled to the edge of delusion and forced to dance on the brim of chaos. ("Alert. High noon." )
β
β
Erik Pevernagie
β
Laia and Helene: Theyβre so different. I like that Laia says things I donβt expect, that she speaks almost formally, as if sheβs telling a story. I like that she defied my mother to go to the Moon Festival, whereas Helene always obeys the Commandant. Laia is the wild dance of a Tribal campfire, while Helene is the cold blue of an alchemistβs flame.
But why am I even comparing them? Iβve know Laia a few days and Helene all my life. Heleneβs no passing attraction. Sheβs family. More than that. Sheβs part of me.
β
β
Sabaa Tahir (An Ember in the Ashes (An Ember in the Ashes, #1))
β
There was a soft chuckle beside me, and my heart stopped.
"So this is Oberon's famous half-blood," Ash mused as I whirled around. His eyes, cold and inhuman, glimmered with amusement. Up close, he was even more beautiful, with high cheekbones and dark tousled hair falling into his eyes. My traitor hands itched, longing to run my fingers through those bangs. Horrified, I clenched them in my lap, trying to concentrate on what Ash was saying. "And to think," the prince continued, smiling, "I lost you that day in the forest and didn't even know what I was chasing."
I shrank back, eyeing Oberon and Queen Mab. They were deep in conversation and did not notice me. I didn't want to interrupt them simply because a prince of the Unseelie Court was talking to me.
Besides, I was a faery princess now. Even if I didn't quite believe it, Ash certainly did. I took a deep breath, raised my chin, and looked him straight in the eye.
"I warn you," I said, pleased that my voice didn't tremble, "that if you try anything, my father will remove your head and stick it to a plaque on his wall."
He shrugged one lean shoulder. "There are worse things." At my horrified look, he offered a faint, self-derogatory smile. "Don't worry, princess, I won't break the rules of Elysium. I have no intention of facing Mab's wrath should I embarrass her. That's not why I'm here."
"Then what do you want?"
He bowed. "A dance."
"What!" I stared at him in disbelief. "You tried to kill me!"
"Technically, I was trying to kill Puck. You just happened to be there. But yes, if I'd had the shot, I would have taken it."
"Then why the hell would you think I'd dance with you?"
"That was then." He regarded me blandly. "This is now. And it's tradition in Elysium that a son and daughter of opposite territories dance with each other, to demonstrate the goodwill between the courts."
"Well, it's a stupid tradition." I crossed my arms and glared. "And you can forget it. I am not going anywhere with you."
He raised an eyebrow. "Would you insult my monarch, Queen Mab, by refusing? She would take it very personally, and blame Oberon for the offense. And Mab can hold a grudge for a very, very long time."
Oh, damn. I was stuck.
β
β
Julie Kagawa (The Iron King (The Iron Fey, #1))
β
Kizzy wanted to be a woman who would dive off the prow of a sailboat into the sea, who would fall back in a tangle of sheets, laughing, and who could dance a tango, lazily stroke a leopard with her bare foot, freeze an enemy's blood with her eyes, make promises she couldn't possibly keep, and then shift the world to keep them. She wanted to write memoirs and autograph them at a tiny bookshop in Rome, with a line of admirers snaking down a pink-lit alley. She wanted to make love on a balcony, ruin someone, trade in esoteric knowledge, watch strangers as coolly as a cat. She wanted to be inscrutable, have a drink named after her, a love song written for her, and a handsome adventurer's small airplane, champagne-christened Kizzy, which would vanish one day in a windstorm in Arabia so that she would have to mount a rescue operation involving camels, and wear an indigo veil against the stinging sand, just like the nomads.
Kizzy wanted.
β
β
Laini Taylor (Lips Touch: Three Times)
β
The Jewish sages also tell us that God dances when His children defeat Him in argument, when they stand on their feet and use their minds. So questions like Anne's are worth asking. To ask them is a very fine kind of human behavior. If we keep demanding that God yield up His answers, perhaps some day we will understand them. And then we will be something more than clever apes, and we shall dance with God.
β
β
Mary Doria Russell (The Sparrow (The Sparrow, #1))
β
You try every trick in the book to keep her. You write her letters. You drive her to work. You quote Neruda. You compose a mass e-mail disowning all your sucias. You block their e-mails. You change your phone number. You stop drinking. You stop smoking. You claim youβre a sex addict and start attending meetings. You blame your father. You blame your mother. You blame the patriarchy. You blame Santo Domingo. You find a therapist. You cancel your Facebook. You give her the passwords to all your e-mail accounts. You start taking salsa classes like you always swore you would so that the two of you could dance together. You claim that you were sick, you claim that you were weakβIt was the book! It was the pressure!βand every hour like clockwork you say that youβre so so sorry. You try it all, but one day she will simply sit up in bed and say, No more, and, Ya, and you will have to move from the Harlem apartment that you two have shared. You consider not going. You consider a squat protest. In fact, you say wonβt go. But in the end you do.
β
β
Junot DΓaz (This Is How You Lose Her)
β
living eulogy.
she danced.
she sang. she took.
she gave.
she loved.
she created.
she dissented. she enlivened.
she saw. she grew. she sweated.
she changed.
she learned. she laughed.
she shed her skin.
she bled on the pages of her days,
she walked through walls,
she lived with intention.
β
β
Mary Anne Radmacher
β
When I dance, Iβm so fluid you could drink my moves. And if you sip it with your morning coffee, youβll be light on your feet all day.
β
β
Jarod Kintz (This Book is Not for Sale)
β
My skill, if I have one, isnβt dancing. Itβs my ability to believe that tomorrow can be a better day.
β
β
Erin Watt (Paper Princess (The Royals, #1))
β
To be inspired is great, but to inspire is an honor.
β
β
Stacey T. Hunt
β
Today is Your Day to Dance Lightly with Life. It Really Is.
β
β
Jonathan Lockwood Huie
β
Ooh. Top secret angel business, huh? Whatβre you going to do? Dance on a pinhead? Lobby for National Cute Puppy Day?
β
β
Richelle Mead (Succubus Dreams (Georgina Kincaid, #3))
β
Madness is too glamorous a term to convey what happens to most people who are losing their minds. That word is too exciting, too literary, too interesting in its connotations, to convey the boredom, the slowness, the dreariness, the dampness of depressionβ¦depression is pure dullness, tedium straight up. Depression is, especially these days, an overused term to be sure, but never one associated with anything wild, anything about dancing all night with a lampshade on your head and then going home and killing yourselfβ¦The word madness allows its users to celebrate the pain of its sufferers, to forget that underneath all the acting-out and quests for fabulousness and fine poetry, there is a person in huge amounts of dull, ugly agony...Remember that when youβre at the point at which youβre doing something as desperate and violent as sticking your head in an oven, it is only because the life that preceded this act felt even worse. Think about living in depression from moment to moment, and know it is not worth any of the great art that comes as its by-product.
β
β
Elizabeth Wurtzel (Prozac Nation)
β
Well I'm not dancing," Will said through gritted teeth. "I don't know how."
Oh yes you are," Alyss told him. "Let's hope you're a fast learner."
He glanced at her and saw no prospect of escape. "Well,at least I won't be the only one," he said. "Halt will be terrible too."
But nobody in the assembly knew tat for the past ten days, Halt had been taking dance lessons from Lady Sandra.
β
β
John Flanagan (Erak's Ransom (Ranger's Apprentice, #7))
β
To this day, I feel a fierce warmth for women that have the same disregard for the social conventions of sexual protocol as I do. I love it when I meet a woman and her sexuality is dancing across her face, so it's apparent that all we need to do is nod and find a cupboard.
β
β
Russell Brand (My Booky Wook)
β
He trapped my hand against his chest and yanked my sleeve down past my wrist, covering my hand with it. Just as quickly, he did the same thing with the other sleeve. He held my shirt by the cuffs, my hands captured. My mouth opened in protest.
Reeling me closer, he didnβt stop until I was directly in front of him. Suddenly he lifted me onto the counter. My face was level with his. He fixed me with a dark, inviting smile. And thatβs when I realized this moment had been dancing around the edge of my fantasies for several days now.
"Take off your hat," I said, the words tumbling out before I could stop them.
He slid it around, the brim facing backward.
I scooted to the edge of the counter, my legs dangling one on either side of him. Something inside of me was telling me to stopβbut I swept that voice to the far back of my mind.
He spread his hands on the counter, just outside my hips. Tilting his head to one side, he moved closer. His scent, which was all damp dark earth, overwhelmed me.
I inhaled two sharp breaths. No. This wasnβt right. Not this, not with Patch. He was frightening. In a good way, yes. But also in a bad way. A very bad way.
"You should go," I breathed. "You should definitely go."
"Go here?" His mouth was on my shoulder. "Or here?" It moved up my neck.
My brain couldnβt process one logical thought. Patchβs mouth was roaming north, up over my jaw, gently sucking at my skin...
"My legs are falling asleep," I blurted. It wasnβt a total lie. I was experiencing tingling sensations all
through my body, legs included.
"I could solve that." Patchβs hands closed on my hips.
β
β
Becca Fitzpatrick (Hush, Hush (Hush, Hush, #1))
β
My day is done, and I am like a boat drawn on the beach, listening to the dance-music of the tide in the evening.
β
β
Rabindranath Tagore (Stray Birds)
β
I have licked the fire and danced in the ashes of every bridge I ever burned. I fear no hell from you.
β
β
Nicole Lyons (Hush)
β
Sometimes in life confusion tends to arise and only dialogue of dance seems to make sense.
β
β
Shah Asad Rizvi
β
You know, thereβs this thing called pants. You should try it out.β
He cast me a cheeky grin as he turned. βYouβd be devastated. Just think, you get to see this every day from here on out.β
My heart did a trippy dance. βYour naked ass? Gee. Sign me up for that.
β
β
Jennifer L. Armentrout (Origin (Lux, #4))
β
Pieces.
A bit for someone here.
A bit there.
And sometimes they don't add up to anything whole.
But you are so busy dancing.
Delivering.
You don't have time to notice.
Or are afraid to notice.
And then one day you have to look.
And it's true.
All of your pieces fill up other people's holes.
But they don't fill
your own.
β
β
Mary E. Pearson (The Adoration of Jenna Fox (Jenna Fox Chronicles, #1))
β
Longing surged up within me. I wanted it. Oh God, I wanted it. I didn't want to hear Jerome chastise me for my "all lowlifes, all the time" seduction policy. I wanted to come home and tell someone about my day. I wanted to go out dancing on the weekends. I wanted to take vacations together. I wanted someone to hold me when I was upset, when the ups and downs of the world pushed me too far.
I wanted someone to love.
β
β
Richelle Mead (Succubus Blues (Georgina Kincaid, #1))
β
What can I do, Muslims? I do not know myself.
I am neither Christian nor Jew, neither Magian nor Muslim,
I am not from east or west, not from land or sea,
not from the shafts of nature nor from the spheres of the firmament,
not of the earth, not of water, not of air, not of fire.
I am not from the highest heaven, not from this world,
not from existence, not from being.
I am not from India, not from China, not from Bulgar, not from Saqsin,
not from the realm of the two Iraqs, not from the land of Khurasan.
I am not from the world, not from beyond,
not from heaven and not from hell.
I am not from Adam, not from Eve, not from paradise and not from Ridwan.
My place is placeless, my trace is traceless,
no body, no soul, I am from the soul of souls.
I have chased out duality, lived the two worlds as one.
One I seek, one I know, one I see, one I call.
He is the first, he is the last, he is the outer, he is the inner.
Beyond He and He is I know no other.
I am drunk from the cup of love, the two worlds have escaped me.
I have no concern but carouse and rapture.
If one day in my life I spend a moment without you
from that hour and that time I would repent my life.
If one day I am given a moment in solitude with you
I will trample the two worlds underfoot and dance forever.
O Sun of Tabriz, I am so tipsy here in this world,
I have no tale to tell but tipsiness and rapture.
β
β
Rumi
β
The next morning-at least, I assumed it was morning, since we were all waking up- I felt like one of those twelve dancing princesses, who danced all night, wore holes in their shoes, and had to sleep it off the next day. Except, oh yeah: a)I'm not a princess; b)sleeping in a subway tunnel and having another brain attack aren't that much like dancing all night; and c) my combat boots were still in good shape. Other than that, it was exactly the same.
β
β
James Patterson (The Angel Experiment (Maximum Ride #1))
β
So," says Lev, as casually as he can, "you wanna dance?" "Do you believe in the end of the world?" she responds. Lev shrugs. "I don't know. Why?" "Because the day after that is when I'll dance with you.
β
β
Neal Shusterman (UnWholly (Unwind, #2))
β
A woman must prefer her liberty over a man. To be happy, she must.
A man to be happy, however, must yearn for his woman more than his liberty.
This is the rightful order.
β
β
Roman Payne (Hope and Despair)
β
Ever since that day you danced into my life, I've done nothing but breathed your air. I'd suffocate without you." Braxxon Breaker
β
β
Crystal Spears (Seize Me (Breakneck, #1))
β
Never invest in any kind of relationship with anyone who is not willing to work on themselves just a little every day. A person who takes no interest in any form of self-improvement, personal development or spiritual growth will also not be inclined to make much of an effort building a truly meaningful connection with you. A relationship with only one partner willing to do the work ceases to be a relationship. And as anyone who has been there will tell you - it's pointless to try and dance the tango solo.
β
β
Anthon St. Maarten
β
True love is like little roses,
sweet, fragrant in small doses.
β
β
Ana Claudia Antunes (Pierrot & Columbine (The PierrotΒ΄s Love Book 1))
β
I nod, trying to get the image out of my head of Raffe dancing to some rock song. possibly buck naked.
β
β
Susan Ee (End of Days (Penryn & the End of Days, #3))
β
No matter how much we may love the melody of a bygone day or imagine the song of a future one, we must dance within the music of today, or we will always be out of step, stumbling around in something that doesnβt suit the moment.
β
β
Lisa Wingate (Before We Were Yours)
β
From day one it was like society was this violent, complicated dance and everybody had taken lessons but me. Knocked to the floor again, climbing to my feet each time, bloody and humiliated. Always met with disapproving faces, waiting for me to leave so I'd stop fucking up the party.
The wanted to push me outside, where the freaks huddled in the cold. Out there with the misfits, the broken, the glazed-eye types who can only watch as the normals enjoy their shiny new cars and careers and marriages and vacations with the kids.
The freaks spend their lives shambling around, wondering how they got left out, mumbling about conspiracy theories and bigfoot sightings. Their encounters with the world are marked by awkward conversations and stifled laughter, hidden smirks and rolled eyes. And worst of all, pity.
β
β
David Wong (John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End, #1))
β
Caution not spirit, let it roam wild; for in that natural state dance embraces divine frequency.
β
β
Shah Asad Rizvi
β
One day Iβm going to find a way to rid you of that beast resting on your arm. (Artemis)
(He looked at her over his shoulder.)
And one day Iβm going to find a way to rid myself of the beast resting on my back. (Acheron)
β
β
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Dance with the Devil (Dark-Hunter, #3))
β
He might dance down the street on his way to work, gaze into the eyes of a complete stranger and speak of love at first sight, or defend an apparently absurd idea. Warriors of light allow themselves days like these.
He is not afraid to weep over ancient sorrows or feel joy at new discoveries. When he feels that the moment has arrived, he drops everything and goes off on some long-dreamed-of adventure. When he realises that he can do no more, he abandons the fight, but never blames himself for having committed a few unexpected acts of folly.
A warrior does not spend his days trying to play the role that others have chosen for him.
β
β
Paulo Coelho (Warrior of the Light)
β
Donβt say you donβt have enough time or enough money to change the world. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Gandhi, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci and Jesus Christ.
β
β
Shannon L. Alder
β
Caroline's about to say something really harsh, but suddenly Hunter and Dev launch into a fucking Green Day cover, and we're all seven years old again and dancing like we spit out the Ritalin while Mom wasn't looking.
β
β
David Levithan (Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist)
β
He only invited me because of you and Chase.'
'Right,' she said, following me inside. 'He's never shown the slightest interest in you before. I mean, he's never stared at you like you're the only person in the room when we're all together. Or sulked around for days because you turned him down for a dance. Or touched the sleeve of your sweater when he thinks no one's looking-'
'He's never done any of that,' I said. Then, less confidently, 'Has he?
β
β
Claire LaZebnik (Epic Fail)
β
Dancing? You, Poppy?" Marianne shook her head slowly. I never thought..."
Rose looked concerned. She even felt Poppy's head for fever, but Poppy shook her off.
"I don't know about you, Rose, but I'm done letting creatures like Under Stone and the Corley dictate my life. I enjoy dancing, and I will blasted well dance at my wedding!"
"Poppy! Language!"
Poppy didn't answer; she just threw her arms around Christian and kissed him soundly.
β
β
Jessica Day George (Princess of Glass (The Princesses of Westfalin Trilogy, #2))
β
Cause I don't wanna be a witness to this life,
I want to be charged and convicted,
ear lifted to her song like a bouquet of yes
because my heart is a parachute that has never opened in time
and I wanna fuck up that pattern,
leave a hole where the cold comes in and fill it every day with her sun,
'cause anyone who has ever sat in lotus for more than a few seconds
knows it takes a hell of a lot more muscle to stay than to go
β
β
Andrea Gibson (Pole Dancing To Gospel Hymns)
β
Trust that some of the best days of your life havenβt even happened yet. There are going to be parties that leave you dancing until 6am, spontaneous adventures that teach you more than you ever learned in a classroom. There are going to be nights that will stay burned beneath your eyelids, memories that dance underneath your skin. Life is going to exceed your expectations, it is going to astonish you with its timing.
Remember β you have not felt it all.
The world still has so much left for you
β
β
Bianca Sparacino
β
Hey, are you a boy or a β never mind, can I have a push on the swing?β And some day, yβall, when we grow up, itβs all gonna be that simple.
β
β
Andrea Gibson (Pole Dancing To Gospel Hymns)
β
That's most interesting. But I was no more a mind-reader then than today. I
was weeping for an altogether different reason. When I watched you dancing that day, I saw something else. I saw a new world coming rapidly. More
scientific, efficient, yes. More cures for the old sicknesses. Very good. But a
harsh, cruel world. And I saw a little girl, her eyes tightly closed, holding to her breast the old kind world, one that she knew in her heart could not
remain, and she was holding it and pleading, never to let her go. That is what I saw. It wasn't really you, what you were doing, I know that. But I saw you and it broke my heart. And I've never forgotten.
β
β
Kazuo Ishiguro (Never Let Me Go)
β
They wonβt let any part of him fall to the ground,β says Raffe in a quiet voice. βHis brothers will keep him from falling.β
In the distance, the Watchers weave a beautiful dance in the dawn sky beneath Belielβs shower of fire.
β
β
Susan Ee (End of Days (Penryn & the End of Days, #3))
β
People who don't see you every day have a hard time understanding how on some days--good days--you can run three miles, but can barely walk across the parking lot on other days,' [my mom] said quietly.
β
β
Jennifer Starzec (Determination (5k, Ballet, #2))
β
Sensuality does not wear a watch but she always gets to the essential places on time. She is adventurous and not particularly quiet. She was reprimanded in grade school because she couldnβt sit still all day long. She needs to move. She thinks with her body. Even when she goes to the library to read Emily Dickinson or Emily Bronte, she starts reading out loud and swaying with the words, and before she can figure out what is happening, she is asked to leave. As you might expect, she is a disaster at office jobs.
Sensuality has exquisite skin and she appreciates it in others as well. There are other people whose skin is soft and clear and healthy but something about Sensualityβs skin announces that she is alive. When the sun bursts forth in May, Sensuality likes to take off her shirt and feel the sweet warmth of the sunβs rays brush across her shoulder. This is not intended as a provocative gesture but other people are, as usual, upset. Sensuality does not understand why everyone else is so disturbed by her. As a young girl, she was often scolded for going barefoot.
Sensuality likes to make love at the border where time and space change places. When she is considering a potential lover, she takes him to the ocean and watches. Does he dance with the waves? Does he tell her about the time he slept on the beach when he was seventeen and woke up in the middle of the night to look at the moon? Does he laugh and cry and notice how big the sky is?
It is spring now, and Sensuality is very much in love these days. Her new friend is very sweet. Climbing into bed the first time, he confessed he was a little intimidated about making love with her. Sensuality just laughed and said, βBut weβve been making love for days.
β
β
J. Ruth Gendler (The Book of Qualities)
β
I'm so glad you're okay."
"So, how do we celebrate my okayness? It's my day off. Let's go crazy. Glow-in-the-dark bowling?"
"No"
"I'll let you use the kiddie ball."
"Shut up. I do NOT need the kiddie ball."
"The way you bowl, I think you might."
He grabbed her in an exaggerated formal dance pose and whirled her around, backpack and all, which didn't make her any more graceful.
"Ballroom dancing?"
"Are you INSANE?"
"Hey, girls who tango are hot."
"You think I'm not hot because I don't tango?"
He dropped the act. Shane was a smart boy.
"I think you are too hot for ballroom or bowling. So you tell me. What do you want to do? And don't say study.
β
β
Rachel Caine (Ghost Town (The Morganville Vampires, #9))
β
He almost danced to the fridge, found the three least hairy things in it, put them on a plate and watched them intently for two minutes. Since they made no attempt to move within that time he called them breakfast and ate them. Between them they killed a virulent space disease he'd picked up without knowing it in the Flargathon Gas Swamps a few days earlier, which otherwise would have killed off half the population of the Western Hemisphere, blinded the other half, and driven everyone else psychotic and sterile, so the Earth was lucky there.
β
β
Douglas Adams (So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #4))
β
I don't get why prom is like a mini-wedding these days...No one should spend that kind of money for a high school dance.
β
β
Deb Caletti (The Fortunes of Indigo Skye)
β
Itβs not bragging if you can back it up,β I whisper to myself in the shower every morning. That is my favorite Muhammad Ali quote. If you ask me, Ali invented modern-day swagger.
β
β
Shonda Rhimes (Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand In the Sun and Be Your Own Person)
β
It is growing cold. Winter is putting footsteps in the meadow. What whiteness boasts that sun that comes into this wood! One would say milk-colored maidens are dancing on the petals of orchids. How coldly burns our sun! One would say its rays of light are shards of snow, one imagines the sun lives upon a snow crested peak on this day. One would say she is a woman who wears a gown of winter frost that blinds the eyes. Helplessness has weakened me. Wandering has wearied my legs.
β
β
Roman Payne
β
To a man, sex is the ultimate expression of love. It is pure pleasure. But to a woman there exists something greater than pleasureβgestures of adoration. A gentle caress on the cheek, an attentive smile, a soft kiss while swept away in a slow dance, the whispered words 'You're beautiful'βthese are the tokens of love that women cherish.
β
β
Richelle E. Goodrich (Making Wishes: Quotes, Thoughts, & a Little Poetry for Every Day of the Year)
β
Travelling is like a talent, like whistling or dancing. And some people have it.
β
β
Gayle Forman (Just One Day (Just One Day, #1))
β
And we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh
β
β
Friedrich Nietzsche
β
Slow Dance:
Have you ever watched kids, On a merry-go-round? Or listened to the rain, Slapping on the ground? Ever followed a butterfly's erratic flight? Or gazed at the sun into the fading night? You better slow down. Don't dance too fast. Time is short. The music won't last. Do you run through each day, On the fly? When you ask: How are you? Do you hear the reply? When the day is done, do you lie in your bed, With the next hundred chores, Running through your head? You'd better slow down, Don't dance too fast. Time is short, The music won't last. Ever told your child we'll do it tomorrow? And in your haste, Not see his sorrow? Ever lost touch, Let a good friendship die, Cause you never had time, To call and say Hi? You'd better slow down. Don't dance so fast. Time is short. The music won't last. When you run so fast to get somewhere, You miss half the fun of getting there. When you worry and hurry through your day, It is like an unopened gift thrown away. Life is not a race. Do take it slower. Hear the music, Before the song is over.
β
β
Timothy Ferriss (The 4-Hour Workweek)
β
When a Wanderess has been caged,
or perched with her wings clipped,
She lives like a Stoic,
She lives most heroic,
smiling with ruby, moistened lips
once her cup of Death is welcome sipped.
β
β
Roman Payne
β
Make a wish, Kazi, one for tomorrow, for the next day, and the next. One will always come true.
Because if I could believe in tomorrow or the next day, maybe that would give the magic time to come true. Or better, maybe by then I wouldn't need the magic at all.
β
β
Mary E. Pearson (Dance of Thieves (Dance of Thieves, #1))
β
You must find the magic that warms your skin in winter, the magic that perceives what cannot be seen, the magic that curls in your gut with fierce power and will not let you give up, no matter how long or cold the days.
β
β
Mary E. Pearson (Dance of Thieves (Dance of Thieves, #1))
β
No. Iβm not hot, and I donβt want to do the Squeaky Dance.β Simon sighed. This day was full of disappointments.
β
β
Anne Bishop (Marked in Flesh (The Others, #4))
β
I was alone. I had no one. No mother, no father, no brothers, no sisters, no grandmas, no grandpas, no uncles, no aunties, no cousins, and no tribe. Iβd seen the children at the orphanage laugh or cry when they received news about a family member. I would never receive such news and no family would laugh or cry for me. That day I understood with sharp clarity that I didnβt have a mother who wanted me.
β
β
Maria Nhambu (Africa's Child (Dancing Soul Trilogy, #1))
β
And all my days are trances,
And all my nightly dreams
Are where thy dark eye glances,
And where thy footstep gleams--
In what ethereal dances,
By what eternal streams!
β
β
Edgar Allan Poe
β
Sitting on the floor, I'd replay the past in my head. Funny, that's all I did, day after day after day for half a year, and I never tired of it. What I'd been through seemed so vast, with so many facets. Vast, but real, very real, which was why the experience persisted in towering before me, like a monument lit up at night. And the thing was, it was a monument to me.
β
β
Haruki Murakami (Dance Dance Dance (The Rat, #4))
β
No, Michael was all good. Killed, dismembered, buried, rebornβ¦yeah, just another day in the life.
β
β
Rachel Caine (The Dead Girls' Dance (The Morganville Vampires, #2))
β
This was our language: half-truths, obvious lies, accusations neither one of us would ever make. It was a system eery bit as complicated as Morse code or the dancing of bees. Don't ask, don't tell, stay civil.
β
β
Jennifer Lynn Barnes (Every Other Day)
β
Jon wanted nothing more. No, he had to tell himself, those days are gone. The realization twisted in his belly like a knife. They had chosen him to rule. The Wall was his, and their lives were his as well. A lord may love the men that he commands, he could hear his lord father saying, but he cannot be a friend to them. One day he may need to sit in judgement on them, or send them forth to die.
β
β
George R.R. Martin (A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, #5))
β
When no possessions keep us, when no countries contain us, and no time detains us, man becomes a heroic wanderer, and woman, a wanderess.
β
β
Roman Payne (The Wanderess)
β
THE INVITATION
by Oriah Mountain Dreamer
It doesn't interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for, and if you
dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.
It doesn't interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool
for love,
for your dreams,
for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow,
if you have been opened by life's betrayals
or have become shriveled and closed from fear of future pain.
I want to know if you can sit with pain,
mine or your own,
without moving to hide it,
or fade it,
or fix it.
I want to know if you can be with joy,
mine or your own,
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you
to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us to be careful,
to be realistic,
to remember
the limitations of being human.
It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling
me is true.
I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself;
if you can bear the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul;
if you can be faithless and therefore
trustworthy.
I want to know if you can see beauty even when it's not pretty,
every day,
and if you can source your own life from its presence.
I want to know if you can live with failure,
yours or mine,
and still stand on the
edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon, "yes!"
It doesn't interest me who you know, or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.
It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you,
from the inside,
when all else falls away.
I want to know if you can be alone
with your and if you truly like the company you keep
in the empty moments.
β
β
Oriah Mountain Dreamer
β
Solar Eclipse
Each morning
I wake invisible.
I make a needle
from a porcupine quill,
sew feet to legs,
lift spine onto my thighs.
I put on my rib and collarbone.
I pin an ear to my head,
hear the waxwing's yellow cry.
I open my mouth for purple berries,
stick on periwinkle eyes.
I almost know what it is to be seen.
My throat enlarges from anger.
I make a hand to hold my pain.
My heart a hole the size of the sun's eclipse.
I push through the dark circle's
tattered edge of light.
All day I struggle with one hair after another
until the moon moves from the face of the sun
and there is a strange light
as though from a kerosene lamp in a cabin.
I pun on a dress,
a shawl over my shoulders.
My threads knotted and scissors gleaming.
Now I know I am seen.
I have a shadow.
I extend my arms,
dance and chant in the sun's new light.
I put a hat and coat on my shadow,
another larger dress.
I put on more shawls and blouses and underskirts
until even the shadow has substance
β
β
Diane Glancy
β
Now I must give one smirk, and then we may be rational again." Catherine turned away her head, not knowing whether she might venture to laugh. "I see what you think of me," said he gravely -- "I shall make but a poor figure in your journal tomorrow."
My journal!"
Yes, I know exactly what you will say: Friday, went to the Lower Rooms; wore my sprigged muslin robe with blue trimmings -- plain black shoes -- appeared to much advantage; but was strangely harassed by a queer, half-witted man, who would make me dance with him, and distressed me by his nonsense."
Indeed I shall say no such thing."
Shall I tell you what you ought to say?"
If you please."
I danced with a very agreeable young man, introduced by Mr. King; had a great deal of conversation with him -- seems a most extraordinary genius -- hope I may know more of him. That, madam, is what I wish you to say."
But, perhaps, I keep no journal."
Perhaps you are not sitting in this room, and I am not sitting by you. These are points in which a doubt is equally possible. Not keep a journal! How are your absent cousins to understand the tenour of your life in Bath without one? How are the civilities and compliments of every day to be related as they ought to be, unless noted down every evening in a journal? How are your various dresses to be remembered, and the particular state of your complexion, and curl of your hair to be described in all their diversities, without having constant recourse to a journal? My dear madam, I am not so ignorant of young ladies' ways as you wish to believe me; it is this delightful habit of journaling which largely contributes to form the easy style of writing for which ladies are so generally celebrated. Everybody allows that the talent of writing agreeable letters is peculiarly female. Nature may have done something, but I am sure it must be essentially assisted by the practice of keeping a journal.
β
β
Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey)
β
For we have thought the longer thoughts
And gone the shorter way.
And we have danced to devils' tunes, Shivering home to pray;
To serve one master in the night,
Another in the day.
β
β
Ernest Hemingway (88 Poems)
β
I hope there are days when your coffee tastes like magic, your playlist makes you dance, strangers make you smile, and the night sky touches your soul. I hope there are days when you fall in love with being alive.
β
β
Brooke Hampton
β
The ocean makes its music; the wind does its dance. We hold on. At first we hold on to one another, but then it starts to feel like we are holding on to something even bigger than that. Greater.
β
β
David Levithan (Every Day (Every Day, #1))
β
Who will write our story, Jase?
We will, Kazi. You and I will write our own story.
And side by side, every day, that is what we do.
β
β
Mary E. Pearson (Vow of Thieves (Dance of Thieves, #2))
β
It takes a strong man to love my sister. And you are a strong man. So her are some twin-tips for you from yours truly:
Read her Shakespeare when she cries.
Take walks in the rain and jump in the puddles with her.
Don't mind her when she calls you an asshole during 'that time of the month' - she's a total bitch at those times.
Buy her flowers because it's Tuesday.
Make her do things that scare her.
Don't be a pushover - we don't like that.
Don't be a dick either - we hate that.
Smile at her when you're mad.
Dance with her in the middle of the day.
Kiss her just because.
Love her forever.
β
β
Brittainy C. Cherry (Loving Mr. Daniels)
β
No holy place existed without us then,
no woodland, no dance, no sound.
Beyond all hope, I prayed those timeless
days we spent might be made twice as long.
I prayed one word: I want.
Someone, I tell you, will remember us,
even in another time.
β
β
Sappho
β
Me?" he said in some surprise. "I won't be dancing! It's the bridal dance. The bride and groom dance alone!"
For one circuit of the room," she told him. "After which they are joined by the best man and first bridesmaid, then by the groomsman and the second bridesmaid."
Will reacted as he had been stung. He leaned over to speak across Jenny on his left, to Gilan.
Gil! Did you know we have to dance?" he asked. Gilan nodded enthusiastically.
Oh yes indeed. Jenny and I have been practicing for the past three days, haven't we, Jen?"
Jenny looked up at him adoringly and nodded. Jenny was in love. Gilan was tall, dashing, good-looking, charming and very ammusing. Plus he was cloaked in the mystery and romance tat came with being a Ranger. Jenny had only ever known one ranger and that had been grim-faced, gray-bearded Halt.
β
β
John Flanagan (Erak's Ransom (Ranger's Apprentice, #7))
β
Picture this, Olive. Early two thousands. Preppy, ridiculously expensive all-male DC school. Two gay students in grade twelve. Well, two of us that were out, anyway. Richie Muller and I date for the entirety of senior year - and then he dumps me three days before prom for some guy heβd been having a thing with for months.β
βHe was a prick,β Adam muttered.
βI have three choices. Not go to the dance and mope at home. Go alone and mope at school. Or, have my best friend - who was planning on staying home and moping over gamma-aminobutyric acids - come as my date. Guess which?β
Olive gasped. βHow did you convince him?β
βThatβs the thing, I didnβt. When I told him about what Richie did, he offered!
β
β
Ali Hazelwood (The Love Hypothesis)
β
September has come, it is hers
Whose vitality leaps in the autumn,
Whose nature prefers
Trees without leaves and a fire in the fireplace.
So I give her this month and the next
Though the whole of my year should be hers who has rendered already
So many of its days intolerable or perplexed
But so many more so happy.
Who has left a scent on my life, and left my walls
Dancing over and over with her shadow
Whose hair is twined in all my waterfalls
And all of London littered with remembered kisses.
β
β
Louis MacNeice (Autumn Journal)
β
Allow me to give my lord one last piece of counsel," the old man had said, "the same counsel I once gave my brother when we parted for the last time. He was three-and-thirty when the Great Council chose him to mount the Iron Throne. A man grown with sons of his own, yet in some ways still a boy. Egg had an innocence to him, a sweetness we all loved. Kill the boy within you, I told him the day I took ship for the Wall. It takes a man to rule. An Aegon, not an Egg. Kill the boy and let the man be born." The old man felt Jon's face. "You are half the age that Egg was, and your own burden is crueler one, I fear. You will have little joy of your command, but I think you have the strength in you to do the things that must be done. Kill the boy, Jon Snow. Winter is almost upon us. Kill the boy and let the man be born.
β
β
George R.R. Martin (A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, #5))
β
Death stood alone, watching the wheat dance in the wind. Of course, it was only a metaphor. People were more than corn. They whirled through tiny crowded lives, driven literally by clock work, filling their days from edge to edge with the sheer effort of living. And all lives were exactly the same length. Even the very long and very short ones. From the point of view of eternity, anyway.
β
β
Terry Pratchett (Reaper Man (Discworld, #11; Death, #2))
β
She wanted to tell him so mach, on the tarmac, the day he left. The world is run by brutal men and the surest proof is their armies. If they ask you to stand still, you should dance. If they ask you to burn the flag, wave it. If they ask you to murder, re-create.
β
β
Colum McCann (Let the Great World Spin)
β
Rosie,
I'm returning to Boston tomorrow but before I go I wanted to write this letter to you. All the thoughts and feelings that have been bubbling up inside me are finally overflowing from this pen and I'm leaving this letter for you so that you don't feel that I'm putting you under any great pressure. I understand that you will need to take your time trying to decide on what I am about to say.
I no what's going on, Rosie. You're my best friend and I can see the sadness in your eyes. I no that Greg isn't away working for the weekend. You never could lie to me; you were always terrible at it. Your eyes betray you time and time again. Don't pretend that everything is perfect because I see it isn't. I see that Greg is a selfish man who has absolutely no idea just how lucky he is and it makes me sick.
He is the luckiest man in the world to have you, Rosie, but he doesn't deserve you and you deserve far better. You deserve someone who loves you with every single beat of his heart, someone who thinks about you constantly, someone who spends every minute of every day just wondering what you're doing, where you are, who you're with and if you're OK. You need someone who can help you reach your dreams and who can protect you from your fears. You need someone who will treat you with respect, love every part of you, especially your flaws. You should be with someone who can make you happy, really happy, dancing-on-air happy. Someone who should have taken the chance to be with you years ago instead of becoming scared and being too afraid to try.
I am not scared any more, Rosie. I am not afraid to try. I no what the feeling was at your wedding - it was jealousy. My heart broke when I saw the woman I love turning away from me to walk down the aisle with another man, a man she planned to spend the rest of her life with. It was like a prison sentence for me - years stretching ahead without me being able to tell you how I feel or hold you how I wanted to.
Twice we've stood beside each other at the altar, Rosie. Twice. And twice we got it wrong. I needed you to be there for my wedding day but I was too stupid to see that I needed you to be the reason for my wedding day.
I should never have let your lips leave mine all those years ago in Boston. I should never have pulled away. I should never have panicked. I should never have wasted all those years without you. Give me a chance to make them up to you. I love you, Rosie, and I want to be with you and Katie and Josh. Always.
Please think about it. Don't waste your time on Greg. This is our opportunity. Let's stop being afraid and take the chance. I promise I'll make you happy.
All my love,
Alex
β
β
Cecelia Ahern (Love, Rosie)
β
nerves
twitching in the sheets --
to face the sunlight again,
that's clearly
trouble.
I like the city better when the
neon lights are going and
the nudies dance on top of the
bar
to the mauling music.
I'm under this sheet
thinking.
me nerves are hampered by
history --
the most memorable concern of mankind
is the guys it takes to
face the sunlight again.
love begins at the meeting of two
strangers. love for the world is
impossible. I'd rather stay in bed
and sleep.
dizzied by the days and the streets and the years
I pull the sheets to my neck.
I turn my ass to the wall.
I hate the mornings more than
any man.
β
β
Charles Bukowski (Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame)
β
How very like you, Puck.β Ashβs voice came from a great distance, and the room started to spin. βOffer them a taste of faery wine, and act surprised when theyβre consumed by it.β
That struck me as hilarious, and I broke into hysterical giggles. And once I began, I couldnβt stop. I laughed until I was gasping for breath, tears streaming down my face. My feet itched and my skin crawled. I needed to move, to do something. I tried standing up, wanting to spin and dance, but the room tilted violently and I fell, still shrieking with laughter.
Somebody caught me, scooping me off my feet and into their arms. I smelled frost and winter, and heard an exasperated sigh from somewhere above my head.
βWhat are you doing, Ash?β I heard someone ask. A familiar voice, though I couldnβt think of his name, or why he sounded so suspicious.
βIβm taking her back to her room.β The person above me sounded wonderfully calm and deep. I sighed and settled into his arms. βSheβll have to sleep off the effects of the fruit. Weβll likely be here another day because of your idiocy.β
The other voice said something garbled and unintelligible. I was suddenly too sleepy and light-headed to care. Relaxing against the mysterious personβs chest, I fell into a heady sleep.
β
β
Julie Kagawa (The Iron King (The Iron Fey, #1))
β
God spreads the heavens above us like great wings
And gives a little round of deeds and days,
And then come the wrecked angels and set snares,
And bait them with light hopes and heavy dreams,
Until the heart is puffed with pride and goes
Half shuddering and half joyous from God's peace;
And it was some wrecked angel, blind with tears,
Who flattered Edane's heart with merry words.
Come, faeries, take me out of this dull house!
Let me have all the freedom I have lost;
Work when I will and idle when I will!
Faeries, come take me out of this dull world,
For I would ride with you upon the wind,
Run on the top of the dishevelled tide,
And dance upon the mountains like a flame.
I would take the world
And break it into pieces in my hands
To see you smile watching it crumble away.
Once a fly dancing in a beam of the sun,
Or the light wind blowing out of the dawn,
Could fill your heart with dreams none other knew,
But now the indissoluble sacrament
Has mixed your heart that was most proud and cold
With my warm heart for ever; the sun and moon
Must fade and heaven be rolled up like a scroll
But your white spirit still walk by my spirit.
When winter sleep is abroad my hair grows thin,
My feet unsteady. When the leaves awaken
My mother carries me in her golden arms;
I'll soon put on my womanhood and marry
The spirits of wood and water, but who can tell
When I was born for the first time?
The wind blows out of the gates of the day,
The wind blows over the lonely of heart,
And the lonely of heart is withered away;
While the faeries dance in a place apart,
Shaking their milk-white feet in a ring,
Tossing their milk-white arms in the air;
For they hear the wind laugh and murmur and sing
Of a land where even the old are fair,
And even the wise are merry of tongue;
But I heard a reed of Coolaney say--
When the wind has laughed and murmured and sung,
The lonely of heart is withered away.
β
β
W.B. Yeats (The Land of Heart's Desire)
β
I blinked at the haul. "Are you planning to go to war? Sure you don't want to pack an assault riffle as well?"
He looked up from the bag. "You have met yourself, right?"
"So should I get a gun too?"
"I'd fear the day.
β
β
Kalayna Price (Grave Dance (Alex Craft, #2))
β
Balance is key. In everything you do. Dance all night long and practice yoga the next day. Drink wine but donβt forget your green juice. Eat chocolate when your heart wants it and kale salad when your body needs it. Wear high heels on Saturday and walk barefoot on Sunday. Go shopping at the mall and then sit down and meditate in your bedroom. Live high and low. Move and stay still. Embrace all sides of who you are and live your authentic truth! Be brave and bold and spontaneous and loud and let that complement your abilities to find silence and patience and modesty and peace. Aim for balance. Make your own rules and donβt let anybody tell you how to live according to theirs.
β
β
Rachel Brathen
β
And at that moment a wind came out of the northwest, and entered the woods and bared the golden branches, and danced over the downs, and led a company of scarlet and golden leaves, that had dreaded this day but danced now it had come; and away with a riot of dancing and glory of colour, high in the light of the sun that had set from the sight of the fields, went wind and leaves together.
β
β
Lord Dunsany (The King of Elfland's Daughter)
β
I had grown up in a house with a fence around it, and in this fence was a white smooth wooden gate, two holes bored round and low together so the dog could see through. One night, the moon high, late for me home from the school dance, I remember that I stopped, hand on the gate, and spoke so quietly to myself and to the woman that I would love that not even the dog could have heard.
I donβt know where you are, but youβre living right now, somewhere on this earth. And one day you and I are going to touch this gate where Iβm touching it now. Your hand will touch this very wood, here! Then weβll walk through and weβll be full of a future and of a past and weβll be to each other like no one else has ever been. We canβt meet now, I donβt know why. But some day our questions will be answers and weβll be caught in something so bright...and every step I take is one step closer on a bridge we must cross to meet.
β
β
Richard Bach (The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story)
β
Each of the dancers took a partner, the living with the dead, each to each. Bod reached out his hand and found himself touching fingers with, and gazing into the grey eyes of, the lady in the cobweb dress. She smiled at him.
βHello, Bod,β she said.
βHello,β he said, as he danced with her. βI donβt know your name.β
βNames arenβt really important,β she said.
βI love your horse. Heβs so big! I never knew horses could be that big.β
βHe is gentle enough to bear the mightiest of you away on his broad back, and strong enough for the smallest of you as well.β
βCan I ride him?β asked Bod.
βOne day,β she told him, and her cobweb skirts shimmered. βOne day. Everybody does.β
βPromise?β
I promise.
β
β
Neil Gaiman (The Graveyard Book)
β
That's when Sam grabbed my hand. "I love this song!" She led me to the dance floor. And she started dancing. And I started dancing. It was a fast song, so I wasn't very good, but she didn't seem to mind. We were just dancing, and that was enough. The song ended, and then a slow one came on. She looked at me. I looked at her. Then, she took my hands and pulled me in to dance slow. I don't know how to dance slow very well either, but I do know how to sway. Her whisper smelled like cranberry juice and vodka. "I looked for you in the parking lot today." I hoped mine still smelled like toothpaste. "I was looking for you, too." Then, we were quiet for the rest of the song. She held me a little closer. I held her a little closer. And we kept dancing. It was the one time all day that I really wanted the clock to stop. And just be there for a long time.
β
β
Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower)
β
Blue jeans, white shirt
Walked into the room you know you made my eyes burn
It was like, James Dean, for sure
You're so fresh to death and sick as ca-cancer
You were sorta punk rock, I grew up on hip hop
But you fit me better than my favourite sweater, and I know
That love is mean, and love hurts
But I still remember that day we met in december, oh baby!
I will love you 'til the end of time
I would wait a million years
Promise you'll remember that you're mine
Baby can you see through the tears
Love you more
Than those bitches before
Say you'll remember, oh baby, say you'll remember
I will love you 'til the end of time
Big dreams, gangster
Said you had to leave to start your life over
I was like, βNo please, stay here,
We don't need no money we can make it all work,β
But he headed out on sunday, said he'd come home monday
I stayed up waitin', anticipatin', and pacin'
But he was chasing paper
"Caught up in the game" β that was the last I heard
I will love you 'til the end of time
I would wait a million years
Promise you'll remember that you're mine
Baby can you see through the tears
Love you more
Than those bitches before
Say you'll remember, oh baby, say you'll remember
I will love you 'til the end of time
You went out every night
And baby that's alright
I told you that no matter what you did I'd be by your side
Cause Imma ride or die
Whether you fail or fly
Well shit at least you tried.
But when you walked out that door, a piece of me died
I told you I wanted more-but that's not what I had in mind
I just want it like before
We were dancing all night
Then they took you away-stole you out of my life
You just need to remember....
I will love you 'til the end of time
I would wait a million years
Promise you'll remember that you're mine
Baby can you see through the tears
Love you more
Than those bitches before
Say you'll remember, oh baby, say you'll remember
I will love you 'til the end of time
β
β
Lana Del Rey
β
Author's Prayer
If I speak for the dead, I must
leave this animal of my body,
I must write the same poem over and over
for the empty page is a white flag of their surrender.
If I speak of them, I must walk
on the edge of myself, I must live as a blind man
who runs through the rooms without
touching the furniture.
Yes, I live. I can cross the streets asking "What year
is it?"
I can dance in my sleep and laugh
in front of the mirror.
Even sleep is a prayer, Lord,
I will praise your madness, and
in a language not mine, speak
of music that wakes us, music
in which we move. For whatever I say
is a kind of petition and the darkest days
must I praise.
β
β
Ilya Kaminsky (Dancing in Odessa)
β
I am frightened at the prospect of how much I might love you, because I know the price it brings, and just thinking of you has begun the investment process within my heart. It would be easier to never invest at all, to hold all vulnerability close to my chest, not allowing anyone to enter my safe. But what a cruel thing it would be, to deny an opportunity to love a soul as beautiful as yours. Iβm going to hope, and hope, and hope, until one day I do something. Maybe then, weβll be able to find that place that we have both wanted for so long. Maybe then, weβll have each other. Iβm not reaching for stars anymore. Iβm reaching for you, and honestly, thatβs far more beautiful than a night full of dancing flames. I am not good with words, but still my words dance out of chaos, forming something beautiful.
β
β
T.B. LaBerge (Unwritten Letters to You)
β
Fireflies out on a warm summer's night, seeing the urgent, flashing, yellow-white phosphorescence below them, go crazy with desire; moths cast to the winds an enchantment potion that draws the opposite sex, wings beating hurriedly, from kilometers away; peacocks display a devastating corona of blue and green and the peahens are all aflutter; competing pollen grains extrude tiny tubes that race each other down the female flower's orifice to the waiting egg below; luminescent squid present rhapsodic light shows, altering the pattern, brightness and color radiated from their heads, tentacles, and eyeballs; a tapeworm diligently lays a hundred thousand fertilized eggs in a single day; a great whale rumbles through the ocean depths uttering plaintive cries that are understood hundreds of thousands of kilometers away, where another lonely behemoth is attentively listening; bacteria sidle up to one another and merge; cicadas chorus in a collective serenade of love; honeybee couples soar on matrimonial flights from which only one partner returns; male fish spray their spunk over a slimy clutch of eggs laid by God-knows-who; dogs, out cruising, sniff each other's nether parts, seeking erotic stimuli; flowers exude sultry perfumes and decorate their petals with garish ultraviolet advertisements for passing insects, birds, and bats; and men and women sing, dance, dress, adorn, paint, posture, self-mutilate, demand, coerce, dissemble, plead, succumb, and risk their lives.
To say that love makes the world go around is to go too far. The Earth spins because it did so as it was formed and there has been nothing to stop it since. But the nearly maniacal devotion to sex and love by most of the plants, animals, and microbes with which we are familiar is a pervasive and striking aspect of life on Earth. It cries out for explanation. What is all this in aid of? What is the torrent of passion and obsession about? Why will organisms go without sleep, without food, gladly put themselves in mortal danger for sex? ... For more than half the history of life on Earth organisms seem to have done perfectly well without it. What good is sex?... Through 4 billion years of natural selection, instructions have been honed and fine-tuned...sequences of As, Cs, Gs, and Ts, manuals written out in the alphabet of life in competition with other similar manuals published by other firms. The organisms become the means through which the instructions flow and copy themselves, by which new instructions are tried out, on which selection operates.
'The hen,' said Samuel Butler, 'is the egg's way of making another egg.' It is on this level that we must understand what sex is for. ... The sockeye salmon exhaust themselves swimming up the mighty Columbia River to spawn, heroically hurdling cataracts, in a single-minded effort that works to propagate their DNA sequences into future generation. The moment their work is done, they fall to pieces. Scales flake off, fins drop, and soon--often within hours of spawning--they are dead and becoming distinctly aromatic.
They've served their purpose.
Nature is unsentimental.
Death is built in.
β
β
Carl Sagan (Shadows Of Forgotten Ancestors: A Search For Who We Are)
β
[Anna] In February, I woke up from a nap. A bouquet of flowers gathered from the various bushes and shrubs scattered around the island lay on the blanket beside me, a small length of rope wound around their stems.
I found T.J. down at the shore. βSomeoneβs been checking the calendar.β
He grinned. βI didnβt want to miss Valentineβs Day.β
I kissed him. βYouβre sweet to me.β
Pulling me closer, he said, βItβs not hard, Anna.β
I stared into T.J.βs eyes, and he started to sway. My arms went around his neck and we danced, moving in a circle, the sand soft and warm under our feet.
βYou donβt need music, do you?β
βNo,β T.J. said. βBut I do need you.
β
β
Tracey Garvis Graves (On the Island (On the Island, #1))
β
Did you know sometimes it frightens me--
when you say my name and I can't see you?
will you ever learn to materialize before you speak?
impetuous boy, if that's what you really are.
how many centuries since you've climbed a balcony
or do you do this every night with someone else?
you tell me that you'll never leave
and I am almost afraid to believe it.
why is it me you've chosen to follow?
did you like the way I look when I am sleeping?
was my hair more fun to tangle?
are my dreams more entertaining?
do you laugh when I'm complaining that I'm all alone?
where were you when I searched the sea
for a friend to talk to me?
in a year where will you be?
is it enough for you to steal into my mind
filling up my page with music written in my hand
you know I'll take the credit for I must have made you come to me somehow.
but please try to close the curtains when you leave at night,
or I'll have to find someone to stay and warm me.
will you always attend my midnight tea parties--
as long as I set it at your place?
if one day your sugar sits untouched
will you have gone forever?
would you miss me in a thousand years--
when you will dry another's tears?
but you say you'll never leave me
and I wonder if you'll have the decency
to pass through my wall to the next room
while I dress for dinner
but when I'm stuck in conversation
with stuffed shirts whose adoration
hurts my ears,
where are you then?
can't you cut in when I dance with other men?
it's too late not to interfere with my life
you've already made me a most unsuitable wife
for any man who wants to be the first his bride has slept with
and you can't just fly into people's bedrooms
then expect them to calmly wave goodbye
you've changed the course of history
and didn't even try
where are you now--
standing behind me,
taking my hand?
come and remind me
who you are
have you traveled far
are you made of stardust too
are the angels after you
tell me what I am to do
but until then I'll save your side of the bed
just come and sing me to sleep
β
β
Emilie Autumn
β
With tears of joy, I recalled Fat Maryβs role in my childhood. She had been my consoler and counselor since the day I understood I was alone in the world and had no one who loved me or wanted me. I had decided back then that I would love me, fat me, just as I was. Her role was also to safeguard the meaningful and happy moments of my childhood and bring them to me when I needed to remember lifeβs goodness.
β
β
Maria Nhambu (America's Daughter (Dancing Soul Trilogy, #2))
β
Look,β I say. βItβs weird enough having a semisentient sword without being in the middle of an argument between you two. Can you please just let it go?β
βWhat did she show you?β He holds up his hand. βWait. Donβt tell me. I donβt want to know that youβve seen me dancing in my underwear to my favorite music.β
βAngels wear underwear?β Oh, man, I wish I hadnβt said that. Iβm just digging myself in deeper and deeper today.
βNo.β He shakes his head. βFigure of speech.β
βOh.β I nod, trying to get the image out of my head of Raffe dancing to some rock song, possibly buck naked.
β
β
Susan Ee (End of Days (Penryn & the End of Days, #3))
β
So many people think that they are not gifted because they donβt have an obvious talent that people can recognize because it doesnβt fall under the creative arts categoryβwriting, dancing, music, acting, art or singing. Sadly, they let their real talents go undeveloped, while they chase after fame. I am grateful for the people with obscure unremarked talents because they make our lives easier---inventors, organizers, planners, peacemakers, communicators, activists, scientists, and so forth. However, there is one gift that trumps all other talentsβbeing an excellent parent. If you can successfully raise a child in this day in age to have integrity then you have left a legacy that future generations will benefit from.
β
β
Shannon L. Alder
β
Donia asked incredulously. βWhat were you doing?β
βThe day had just begun, and we were dancing,β Aislinn said.
βDancing?β Donia looked at the Summer Queen with the same disdain Keenan had once seen on her face when she looked at the Summer Girls. βOf course you were. Bananach is attacking faeries, stealing from our courts. Irial is injured. Faerie is closed. Yes, dancing is precisely what will help.
β
β
Melissa Marr (Darkest Mercy (Wicked Lovely, #5))
β
If it is a human thing to do to put something you want, because it's useful, edible, or beautiful, into a bag, or a basket, or a bit of rolled bark or leaf, or a net woven of your own hair, or what have you, and then take it home with you, home being another, larger kind of pouch or bag, a container for people, and then later on you take it out and eat it or share it or store it up for winter in a solider container or put it in the medicine bundle or the shrine or the museum, the holy place, the area that contains what is sacred, and then the next day you probably do much the same againβif to do that is human, if that's what it takes, then I am a human being after all. Fully, freely, gladly, for the first time....
[T]he proper, fitting shape of the novel might be that of a sack, a bag. A book holds words. Words hold things. They bear meanings. A novel is a medicine bundle, holding things in a particular, powerful relation to one another and to us."
β"The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction
β
β
Ursula K. Le Guin (Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places)
β
Did I live the spring Iβd sought?
Itβs true in joy, I walked along,
took part in dance,
and sang the song.
and never tried to bind an hour
to my borrowed garden bower;
nor did I once entreat
a day to slumber at my feet.
Yet days arenβt lulled by lyric song,
like morning birds they pass along,
oβer crests of trees, to none belong;
oβer crests of trees of drying dew,
their larking flight, my hands, eschew
Thus Iβll say it once and trueβ¦
From all that I saw,
and everywhere I wandered,
I learned that time cannot be spent,
It only can be squandered.
β
β
Roman Payne (Rooftop Soliloquy)
β
With the aurora borealis flaming coldly overhead, or the stars leaping in the frost dance, and the land numb and frozen under its pall of snow, this song of the huskies might have been the defiance of life, only it was pitched in minor key, with long-drawn wailings and half-sobs, and was more the pleading of life, the articulate travail of existence. It was an old song, old as the breed itself--one of the first songs of the younger world in a day when songs were sad.
β
β
Jack London
β
how we rolled up the carpet so we could dance, and the days were bright red, and every time we kissed there was another
apple
to slice into pieces.
Look at the light through the windowpane. That means it's noon,
that means
we're inconsolable.
Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.
These our bodies, possessed by light.
Tell me we'll never get used to it.
β
β
Richard Siken
β
I'm never really comfortable at parties. Maybe I'm just not the partying type.
...I think it's because I'm never sure what to do with myself.
I mean, there're drinks, but I don't like being drunk.... There's music, but I never really learned to dance to anything that involved an electric guitar. There are people to talk to...but once you put all the stupid things I do aside, I'm really not that interesting. I like reading, staying home, going on walks with my dog.... Who wants to hear about that? Especially when I would have to scream it over music to which no one dances.
So I'm there but not drinking, listening to music but not dancing, and trying to have conversations with near-strangers about anything other than my own stupid life.... Leads to a lot of awkward pauses. And then I start wondering why I showed up in the first place."
-- Cold Days (The Dresden Files Book 14), pg. 33
β
β
Jim Butcher
β
I believe in nature, in science, in jazz, in dancing. And I believe in people. In their resilience, in their goodness. This is my credo; this is my hymn. Maybe it's not enough for heaven, and maybe I'm even wrong. But if I can walk through the fire and, with blistered skin, still have faith in better days? I have to believe that's good enough.
β
β
Emery Lord (The Names They Gave Us)
β
On Generosity
On our own, we conclude:
there is not enough to go around
we are going to run short
of money
of love
of grades
of publications
of sex
of beer
of members
of years
of life
we should seize the day
seize our goods
seize our neighbours goods
because there is not enough to go around
and in the midst of our perceived deficit
you come
you come giving bread in the wilderness
you come giving children at the 11th hour
you come giving homes to exiles
you come giving futures to the shut down
you come giving easter joy to the dead
you come β fleshed in Jesus.
and we watch while
the blind receive their sight
the lame walk
the lepers are cleansed
the deaf hear
the dead are raised
the poor dance and sing
we watch
and we take food we did not grow and
life we did not invent and
future that is gift and gift and gift and
families and neighbours who sustain us
when we did not deserve it.
It dawns on us β late rather than soon-
that you βgive food in due season
you open your hand
and satisfy the desire of every living thing.β
By your giving, break our cycles of imagined scarcity
override our presumed deficits
quiet our anxieties of lack
transform our perceptual field to see
the abundanceβ¦β¦β¦mercy upon mercy
blessing upon blessing.
Sink your generosity deep into our lives
that your muchness may expose our false lack
that endlessly receiving we may endlessly give
so that the world may be made Easter new,
without greedy lack, but only wonder,
without coercive need but only love,
without destructive greed but only praise
without aggression and invasivenessβ¦.
all things Easter newβ¦..
all around us, toward us and
by us
all things Easter new.
Finish your creation, in wonder, love and praise. Amen.
β
β
Walter Brueggemann
β
Itβs taboo to admit that youβre lonely. You can make jokes about it, of course. You can tell people that you spend most of your time with Netflix or that you havenβt left the house today and you might not even go outside tomorrow. Ha ha, funny. But rarely do you ever tell people about the true depths of your loneliness, about how you feel more and more alienated from your friends each passing day and youβre not sure how to fix it. It seems like everyone is just better at living than you are.
A part of you knew this was going to happen. Growing up, you just had this feeling that you wouldnβt transition well to adult life, that youβd fall right through the cracks. And look at you now. La di da, itβs happening.
Your mother, your father, your grandparents: they all look at you like youβre some prized jewel and they tell you over and over again just how lucky you are to be young and have your whole life ahead of you. βGetting old ainβt for sissies,β your father tells you wearily.
You wish theyβd stop saying these things to you because all it does is fill you with guilt and panic. All it does is remind you of how much youβre not taking advantage of your youth.
You want to kiss all kinds of different people, you want to wake up in a strangerβs bed maybe once or twice just to see if it feels good to feel nothing, you want to have a group of friends that feels like a tribe, a bonafide family. You want to go from one place to the next constantly and have your weekends feel like one long epic day. You want to dance to stupid music in your stupid room and have a nice job that doesnβt get in the way of living your life too much. You want to be less scared, less anxious, and more willing. Because if youβre closed off now, you can only imagine what youβll be like later.
Every day you vow to change some aspect of your life and every day you fail. At this point, youβre starting to question your own power as a human being. As of right now, your fears have you beat. Theyβre the ones that are holding your twenties hostage.
Stop thinking that everyone is having more sex than you, that everyone has more friends than you, that everyone out is having more fun than you. Not because itβs not true (it might be!) but because that kind of thinking leaves you frozen. Youβve already spent enough time feeling like youβre stuck, like youβre watching your life fall through you like a fast dissolve and youβre unable to hold on to anything.
I donβt know if you ever get better. I donβt know if a person can just wake up one day and decide to be an active participant in their life. Iβd like to think so. Iβd like to think that people get better each and every day but thatβs not really true. People get worse and itβs their stories that end up getting forgotten because we canβt stand an unhappy ending. The sick have to get better. Our normalcy depends upon it.
You have to value yourself. You have to want great things for your life. This sort of shit doesnβt happen overnight but it can and will happen if you want it.
Do you want it bad enough? Does the fear of being filled with regret in your thirties trump your fear of living today?
We shall see.
β
β
Ryan O'Connell
β
It was growing dark on this long southern evening, and suddenly, at the exact point her finger had indicated, the moon lifted a forehead of stunning gold above the horizon, lifted straight out of filigreed, light-intoxicated clouds that lay on the skyline in attendant veils.
Behind us, the sun was setting in a simultaneous congruent withdrawal and the river turned to flame in a quiet duel of gold....The new gold of moon astonishing and ascendant, he depleted gold of sunset extinguishing itself in the long westward slide, it was the old dance of days in the Carolina marshes, the breathtaking death of days before the eyes of children, until the sun vanished, its final signature a ribbon of bullion strung across the tops of water oaks.
β
β
Pat Conroy (The Prince of Tides)
β
The second thing I wrote down that day was that exclusive male imagery of the Divine not only instilled an imbalance within human consciousness, it legitimized patriarchal power in the culture at large. Here alone is enough reason to recover the Divine Feminine, for there is a real and undeniable connection between the repression of the feminine in our deity and the repression of women.
β
β
Sue Monk Kidd (The Dance of the Dissident Daughter: A Woman's Journey from Christian Tradition to the Sacred Feminine)
β
USURY: Everybody's looking for the job in which you never have to pay anyone their pound of flesh. Self-employed nirvana. A lot of artists like to think of themselves as uncompromising; a lot of management consultants won't tell you what they do until they've sunk five pints. I don't think anybody should give themselves air just because they don't have to hand over a pound of flesh every day at 5pm, and I don't think anyone should beat themselves with broken glass because they do. If you're an artist, well, good for you. Thank your lucky stars every evening and dance in the garden with the fairies. But don't fool yourself that you occupy some kind of higher moral ground. You have to work for that. Writing a few lines, painting a pretty picture - that just won't do it.
β
β
Zadie Smith (On Beauty)
β
She lifted one arm up, covering her forehead in a mock swoon. βYouβre sweeping me off my feet.β
He laughed, shocked by the sound after the shitty day theyβd had. He bent his knees and cradled her in his arms, spinning her around while he drank in the magic of her giggles. Finally, he lowered her onto the bed and lay down beside her. βNow youβve been swept.
β
β
Lisa Kessler (Dance of the Heart (Muse Chronicles, #6))
β
Okay," Christian said with a great show at maintaining his patience. "So you can't dance. But you could at least talk to the woman."
Julius frowned and avoided his gaze. "I am talking."
"You aren't," Christian insisted. "You haven't said more than a handful of words."
Scowling, he admitted, "I'm practicing in my head."
Christian blinked at this. "Practicing?"
"Well, you don't just blurt out the first thing that comes to mind," Julius said with exasperation. "I have to approach this carefully, so I'm practicing."
"In your head?" Christian clarified.
"Yes." Julius nodded. "In my head."
"Right....Good, good," he nodded, and then said "but you know what would be even better?"
Julius raised his eyebrows with interest. "What?"
"Talking to her OUT LOUD!" Christian snapped. "Jesus Christ, Father, you're as old as the earth. You run a huge corporation, dealing with people-even women-day in day out. Surely you can string a couple of words together and manage a little conversation with the woman?
β
β
Lynsay Sands (Vampire, Interrupted (Argeneau, #9))
β
Live or die, but don't poison everything...
Well, death's been here
for a long time --
it has a hell of a lot
to do with hell
and suspicion of the eye
and the religious objects
and how I mourned them
when they were made obscene
by my dwarf-heart's doodle.
The chief ingredient
is mutilation.
And mud, day after day,
mud like a ritual,
and the baby on the platter,
cooked but still human,
cooked also with little maggots,
sewn onto it maybe by somebody's mother,
the damn bitch!
Even so,
I kept right on going on,
a sort of human statement,
lugging myself as if
I were a sawed-off body
in the trunk, the steamer trunk.
This became perjury of the soul.
It became an outright lie
and even though I dressed the body
it was still naked, still killed.
It was caught
in the first place at birth,
like a fish.
But I play it, dressed it up,
dressed it up like somebody's doll.
Is life something you play?
And all the time wanting to get rid of it?
And further, everyone yelling at you
to shut up. And no wonder!
People don't like to be told
that you're sick
and then be forced
to watch
you
come
down with the hammer.
Today life opened inside me like an egg
and there inside
after considerable digging
I found the answer.
What a bargain!
There was the sun,
her yolk moving feverishly,
tumbling her prize --
and you realize she does this daily!
I'd known she was a purifier
but I hadn't thought
she was solid,
hadn't known she was an answer.
God! It's a dream,
lovers sprouting in the yard
like celery stalks
and better,
a husband straight as a redwood,
two daughters, two sea urchings,
picking roses off my hackles.
If I'm on fire they dance around it
and cook marshmallows.
And if I'm ice
they simply skate on me
in little ballet costumes.
Here,
all along,
thinking I was a killer,
anointing myself daily
with my little poisons.
But no.
I'm an empress.
I wear an apron.
My typewriter writes.
It didn't break the way it warned.
Even crazy, I'm as nice
as a chocolate bar.
Even with the witches' gymnastics
they trust my incalculable city,
my corruptible bed.
O dearest three,
I make a soft reply.
The witch comes on
and you paint her pink.
I come with kisses in my hood
and the sun, the smart one,
rolling in my arms.
So I say Live
and turn my shadow three times round
to feed our puppies as they come,
the eight Dalmatians we didn't drown,
despite the warnings: The abort! The destroy!
Despite the pails of water that waited,
to drown them, to pull them down like stones,
they came, each one headfirst, blowing bubbles the color of cataract-blue
and fumbling for the tiny tits.
Just last week, eight Dalmatians,
3/4 of a lb., lined up like cord wood
each
like a
birch tree.
I promise to love more if they come,
because in spite of cruelty
and the stuffed railroad cars for the ovens,
I am not what I expected. Not an Eichmann.
The poison just didn't take.
So I won't hang around in my hospital shift,
repeating The Black Mass and all of it.
I say Live, Live because of the sun,
the dream, the excitable gift.
β
β
Anne Sexton (The Complete Poems)
β
You deserve someone who loves you with every single beat of his heart, someone who thinks about you constantly, someone who spends every minute of every day just wondering what youβre doing, where you are, who youβre with and if youβre OK. You need someone who can help you reach your dreams and who can protect you from your fears. You need someone who will treat you with respect, love every part of you, especially your flaws. You should be with someone who can make you happy, really happy, dancing-on-air happy.
β
β
Cecelia Ahern
β
Look! You got sparklies like akri. He gives all of his to me. He say I look beautiful in sparklies, βspecially them red ones that match my eyes. Here, Astrid. I know you canβt see it, Astrid, but itβs very lovely, like you. You need to wear that and then you have sparklies, too. But still no hornays. We need to fix you up with hornays one day so you can be a demon, too. Itβs fun being a demon β except when people try to exercise youβ¦Wait, thatβs not the right word. I forget, but you know what I mean. (Simi)
β
β
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Dance with the Devil (Dark-Hunter, #3))
β
What can I do, Dear Ones ?
I do not know myself.
I am neither Christian nor Jew,
neither Magian nor Muslim,
I am not from east or west,
not from land or sea,
not from the shafts of nature
nor from the spheres of the firmament,
not of the earth, not of water,
not of air, not of fire.
I am not from the highest heaven,
not from this world,
not from existence, not from being.
I am not from India, not from China,
not from Bulgar, not from Saqsin,
not from the realm of the two Iraqs,
not from the land of Khurasan.
I am not from the world, not from beyond,
not from heaven and not from hell.
I am not from Adam, not from Eve,
not from paradise and not from Ridwan.
My place is placeless, my trace is traceless,
no body, no soul, I am from the soul of souls.
I have chased out duality, lived the two worlds as one.
One I seek, one I know, one I see, one I call.
He is the first, he is the last,
he is the outer, he is the inner.
Beyond He and He is I know no other.
I am drunk from the cup of love,
the two worlds have escaped me.
I have no concern but carouse and rapture.
If one day in my life I spend a moment without you
from that hour and that time I would repent my life.
If one day I am given a moment in solitude with you
I will trample the two worlds underfoot and dance forever.
O Beloved , I am so tipsy here in this world,
I have no tale to tell but tipsiness and rapture.
β
β
Rumi (The Essential Rumi)
β
They say that people who live next to waterfalls don't hear the water. It was terrible at first. We couldn't stand to be in the house for more than a few hours at a time. The first two weeks were filled with nights of intermittent sleep and quarreling for the sake of being heard over the water. We fought so much just to remind ourselves that we were in love, and not in hate. But the next weeks were a little better. It was possible to sleep a few good hours each night and eat in only mild discomfort. [We] still cursed the water, but less frequently, and with less fury. Her attacks on me also quieted. It's your fault, she would say. You wanted to live here. Life continued, as life continues, and time passed, as time passes, and after a little more than two months: Do you hear that? I asked her one of the rare mornings we sat at the table together. Hear it? I put down my coffee and rose from my chair. You hear that thing? What thing? she asked. Exactly! I said, running outside to pump my fist at the waterfall. Exactly! We danced, throwing handfuls of water in the air, hearing nothing at all. We alternated hugs of forgiveness and shouts of human triumph at the water. Who wins the day? Who wins the day, waterfall? We do! We do! And this is what living next to a waterfall is like. Every widow wakes one morning, perhaps after years of pure and unwavering grieving, to realize she slept a good night's sleep and will be able to eat breakfast, and doesn't hear her husband's ghost all the time, but only some of the time. Her grief is replaced with a useful sadness. Every parent who loses a child finds a way to laugh again. The timbre begins to fade. The edge dulls. The hurt lessens. Every love is carved from loss. Mine was. Yours is. Your great-great-great-grandchildren's will be. But we learn to live in that love.
β
β
Jonathan Safran Foer (Everything is Illuminated)
β
When God creates Eve, he calls her an ezer kenegdo. 'It is not good for the man to be alone, I shall make him [an ezer kenegdo]' (Gen. 2:18 Alter). Hebrew scholar Robert Alter, who has spent years translating the book of Genesis, says that this phrase is 'notoriously difficult to translate.' The various attempts we have in English are "helper" or "companion" or the notorious "help meet." Why are these translations so incredibly wimpy, boring, flat...disappointing? What is a help meet, anyway? What little girl dances through the house singing "One day I shall be a help meet?" Companion? A dog can be a companion. Helper? Sounds like Hamburger Helper. Alter is getting close when he translates it "sustainer beside him"
The word ezer is used only twenty other places in the entire Old Testament. And in every other instance the person being described is God himself, when you need him to come through for you desperately.
β
β
Stasi Eldredge (Captivating: Unveiling the Mystery of a Woman's Soul)
β
Time is different for a tree than for a man. Sun and soil and water, these are the things a weirwood understands, not days and years and centuries. For men, time is a river. We are trapped in its flow, hurtling from past to present, always in the same direction. The lives of trees are different. They root and grow and die in one place, and that river does not move them. The oak is the acorn, the acorn is the oak.
β
β
George R.R. Martin (A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, #5))
β
Soul Mate
When we are born, the soul we are given is split apart and half of it is given to someone else. Throughout our lives, we search for the person with the other half of our soul. Very few ever succeed.
I am blessed that we have met. In a sudden moment, warm within your loving glare, my soul said, βAt last! I can rest. I have found my missing half.β When this happens, it is said we have found our soul mate. We are happy and at peace. When we shared ourselves, we were engulfed in eternity, dancing in a timeless universe. I am truly blessed because that day, my heart recognized you as a part of its own.
Thank you for blessing me with you. Thank you for dreaming with me - for seeing the same future as I do. For your beautiful eyes, reminding me of the truest bliss in life. I am forever grateful for you.
I will spend an eternity loving you, caring for you, respecting you, showing you every day that I hold you as high as the stars.
I am sorry that itβs taken me this long to find you β I shall make it up to you, my flower, as long as we live.
I love you!
β
β
Steve Maraboli (Life, the Truth, and Being Free)
β
If you cannot understand my argument, and declare "It's Greek to me", you are quoting Shakespeare; if you claim to be more sinned against than sinning, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you recall your salad days, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you act more in sorrow than in anger; if your wish is farther to the thought; if your lost property has vanished into thin air, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you have ever refused to budge an inch or suffered from green-eyed jealousy, if you have played fast and loose, if you have been tongue-tied, a tower of strength, hoodwinked or in a pickle, if you have knitted your brows, made a virtue of necessity, insisted on fair play, slept not one wink, stood on ceremony, danced attendance (on your lord and master), laughed yourself into stitches, had short shrift, cold comfort or too much of a good thing, if you have seen better days or lived in a fool's paradise -why, be that as it may, the more fool you , for it is a foregone conclusion that you are (as good luck would have it) quoting Shakespeare; if you think it is early days and clear out bag and baggage, if you think it is high time and that that is the long and short of it, if you believe that the game is up and that truth will out even if it involves your own flesh and blood, if you lie low till the crack of doom because you suspect foul play, if you have your teeth set on edge (at one fell swoop) without rhyme or reason, then - to give the devil his due - if the truth were known (for surely you have a tongue in your head) you are quoting Shakespeare; even if you bid me good riddance and send me packing, if you wish I was dead as a door-nail, if you think I am an eyesore, a laughing stock, the devil incarnate, a stony-hearted villain, bloody-minded or a blinking idiot, then - by Jove! O Lord! Tut tut! For goodness' sake! What the dickens! But me no buts! - it is all one to me, for you are quoting Shakespeare.
β
β
Bernard Levin
β
I would like to barbecue those Olympian gods. They are very tasty. One day, Iβm going to eat that redheaded goddess, too. (Simi)
She doesnβt like Artemis. (Astrid)
The Simi hates her, but akri says, βNo, Simi, you canβt kill Artemis. Behave, Simi, donβt shoot fire at her, donβt make her bald, Simi.β No, no, no. Itβs all I hear. I donβt like that word. βNo.β It even sounds evil. The Simi tends to barbecue anyone dumb enough to say it to her. But not akri. Heβs allowed to say no to me; I just donβt like it when he does. (Simi)
β
β
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Dance with the Devil (Dark-Hunter, #3))
β
At times poetry is the vertigo of bodies and the vertigo of speech and the vertigo of death;
the walk with eyes closed along the edge of the cliff, and the verbena in submarine gardens;
the laughter that sets on fire the rules and the holy commandments;
the descent of parachuting words onto the sands of the page;
the despair that boards a paper boat and crosses,
for forty nights and forty days, the night-sorrow sea and the day-sorrow desert;
the idolatry of the self and the desecration of the self and the dissipation of the self;
the beheading of epithets, the burial of mirrors;
the recollection of pronouns freshly cut in the
garden of Epicurus, and the garden of Netzahualcoyotl;
the flute solo on the terrace of memory and the dance of flames in the cave of thought;
the migrations of millions of verbs, wings and claws, seeds and hands;
the nouns, bony and full of roots, planted on the waves of language;
the love unseen and the love unheard and the love unsaid: the love in love.
β
β
Octavio Paz
β
Mac draws up short to keep from slamming into Barrons and her blonde hair swings back over her shoulder, brushing his face as it goes and my hearing is so good I catch the rasp of it chafing the shadow stubble on his jaw, then one of his hands grazes her breast and his eyes narrow when he looks at what he touched in a hungry way I want a man to look at me like one day and, as they continue to recover from the near-collision, their bodies move in a graceful dance of impeccable awareness of precisely where the other is at all times that is unity, symbiosis, partnership I only dream of, wolves that chose to pack up and hunt together, soldiers who will always have each otherβs back no matter what, no sin, no transgression too great, βcause donβt we all transgress sometimes and it fecking slays me, because once I got a little taste of what that was like and it was heaven and theyβre so beautiful standing there, the best of the best, the strongest of the strong that they practically glow to me, on fire with all I ever wanted in my lifeβa place to belong and someone to belong there with.
β
β
Karen Marie Moning (Burned (Fever, #7))
β
I want to live forever in a land where summer lasts a thousand years. I want a castle in the clouds where I can look down over the world. I want to be six-and-twenty again. When I was six-and-twenty I could fight all day and fuck all night. What men want does not matter.
Winter is almost upon us, boy. And winter is death. I would sooner my men die fighting for the Ned's little girl than alone and hungry in the snow, weeping tears that freeze upon their cheeks. No one sings songs of men who die like that. As for me, I am old. This will be my last winter. Let me bathe in Bolton blood before I die. I want to feel it spatter across my face when my axe bites deep into a Bolton skull. I want to lick it off my lips and die with the taste of it on my tongue.
β
β
George R.R. Martin (A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, #5))
β
And this is how we danced: with our mothersβ
white dresses spilling from our feet, late August
turning our hands dark red. And this is how we loved:
a fifth of vodka and an afternoon in the attic, your fingers
sweeping though my hairβmy hair a wildfire.
We covered our ears and your fatherβs tantrum turned
into heartbeats. When our lips touched the day closed
into a coffin. In the museum of the heart
there are two headless people building a burning house.
There was always the shotgun above the fireplace.
Always another hour to killβonly to beg some god
to give it back. If not the attic, the car. If not the car,
the dream. If not the boy, his clothes. If not alive,
put down the phone. Because the year is a distance
weβve traveled in circles. Which is to say: this is how
we danced: alone in sleeping bodies. Which is to say:
This is how we loved: a knife on the tongue turning
into a tongue.
β
β
Ocean Vuong
β
To our indigenous ancestors, and to the many aboriginal peoples who still hold fast to their oral traditions, language is less a human possession than it is a property of the animate earth itself, an expressive, telluric power in which we, along with the coyotes and the crickets, all participate. Each creature enacts this expressive magic in its own manner, the honeybee with its waggle dance no less than a bellicose, harrumphing sea lion.
Nor is this power restricted solely to animals. The whispered hush of the uncut grasses at dawn, the plaintive moan of trunks rubbing against one another in the deep woods, or the laughter of birch leaves as the wind gusts through their branches all bear a thicket of many-layered meanings for those who listen carefully. In the Pacific Northwest I met a man who had schooled himself in the speech of needled evergreens; on a breezy day you could drive him, blindfolded, to any patch of coastal forest and place him, still blind, beneath a particular tree -- after a few moments he would tell you, by listening, just what species of pine or spruce or fir stood above him (whether he stood beneath a Douglas fir or a grand fir, a Sitka spruce or a western red cedar). His ears were attuned, he said, to the different dialects of the trees.
β
β
David Abram (Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology)
β
If I had my life to live over, I'd dare to make more mistakes next time. I'd relax, I would limber up. I would be sillier than I have been this trip. I would take fewer things seriously. I would take more chances. I would climb more mountains and swim more rivers. I would eat more ice cream and less beans. I would perhaps have more actual troubles, but I'd have fewer imaginary ones.
You see, I'm one of those people who lived sensibly and sanely, hour after hour, day after day. Oh, I've had my moments, and if I had to do it over again, I'd have more of them. In fact, I'd try to have nothing else. Just moments, one after another, instead of living so many years ahead of each day. I've been one of those persons who never goes anywhere without a thermometer, a hot water bottle, a raincoat and a parachute. If I had to do it again, I would travel lighter than I have.
If I had my life to live over, I would start barefoot earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the fall. I would go to more dances. I would ride more merry-go-rounds. I would pick more daisies.
β
β
nadine stair
β
The cawing of a big, black crow awoke me early the next morning, but I remained still, pretending to be asleep. I didnβt want to see Ibrahim in the light of day, and I didnβt want to make more small talk. I felt hunger pains through the remnants of champagne and cognac from the night before. I wondered why I hadnβt eaten more, feeling silly about having been so insecure about my culinary etiquette.
Numb and void of emotion, I remained in a state of suspended animation reliving the events of our night of passion. The night before, I pictured silhouettes of angels dancing upon the ceiling in the moonlight, not disconnected bodies lying beneath the covers at a loss for words.
β
β
Samantha Hart (Blind Pony: As True A Story As I Can Tell)
β
She was tired in her bones, but she rallied her energy one last time and told him of they years in Rifthold, of stealing Asterion horses and racing across the desert, of dancing until dawn with the courtesans and thieves and all the beautiful, wicked creatures in the world. And then she told him about losing Sam, and of that first whipping in Endovier, when she'd spat blood in the Chief Overseer's face, and what she had seen and endured in the following year. She spoke of the day she had snapped and sprinted for her own death. Her heart grew heavy when at last she got to the evening when the Captain of the Royal Guard prowled into her life, and a tyrant's son had offered her a shot at freedom. She told him what she could about the competition and how she'd won it, until her words slurred and her eyelids drooped.
β
β
Sarah J. Maas (Heir of Fire (Throne of Glass, #3))
β
With the passage of days in this godly isolation [desert], my heart grew calm. It seemed to fill with answers. I did not ask questions any more; I was certain. Everything - where we came from, where we are going, what our purpose is on earth - struck me as extremely sure and simple in this God-trodden isolation. Little by little my blood took on the godly rhythm. Matins, Divine Liturgy, vespers, psalmodies, the sun rising in the morning and setting in the evening, the constellations suspended like chandeliers each night over the monastery: all came and went, came and went in obedience to eternal laws, and drew the blood of man into the same placid rhythm. I saw the world as a tree, a gigantic poplar, and myself as a green leaf clinging to a branch with my slender stalk. When God's wind blew, I hopped and danced, together with the entire tree.
β
β
Nikos Kazantzakis
β
Kazi of Brightmist...you are the love I didn't know I needed.
You are the hand pulling me through the wilderness,
The sun warming my face.
You make me stronger, smarter, wiser.
You are the compass that makes me a better man.
With you by my side, no challenge will be too great.
I vow to honor you, Kazi, and do all I can to be worthy of your love.
I will never stumble in my devotion to you, and I vow to keep you safe always.
My family is now your family, and your family, mine.
You have not stolen my heart, but I give it freely,
And in the presence of these witnesses, I take you to be my wife."
He squeezed my hand. His brown eyes danced, just as they had the first time he spoke those vows to me. It was my turn now. I took a deep breath. Were any words enough? But I said the ones closest to my heart, the ones I had said in the wilderness and repeated almost daily when I lay in a dark cell, uncertain where he was but needing to believe I would see him again.
"I love you, Jase Ballenger, and I will for all my days. You have brought me fullness where there was only hunger,
You have given me a universe of stars and stories,
Where there was emptiness.
You've unlocked a part of me I was afraid to believe in,
And made the magic of wish stalks come true.
I vow to care for you, to protect you and everything that is yours.
Your home is now my home, your family, my family.
I will stand by you as a partner in all things.
With you by my side, I will never lack for joy.
I know life is full of twists and turns, and sometimes loss, but whatever paths we go down, I want every step to be with you.
I want to grow old with you, Jase.
Every one of my tomorrows is yours,
And in the presence of these witnesses, I take you to be my husband.
β
β
Mary E. Pearson (Vow of Thieves (Dance of Thieves, #2))
β
All children grow up, all but one. His name is Peter and by now, all the civilized world has heard of him. He has captured the public imagination and become a legend, a subject for poets, philosophers and psychologists to write about, and for children to dream of. The childrenβs tales might be lacking in some details, but on the whole they are more accurate than most other accounts, for children will always understand Peter intuitively, as I did when I first met him.
"I shall endeavor to tell you the true story of my friend Peter, because he cannot tell it to you himself. Afterward I hope you will love him and defend him as I have for the remainder of your days. Pass on to others a true account of the wild boy who would not grow up, who danced with kings and won the hearts of princesses. He defied logic and reason, lived and loved with an innocent heart, and found peace in the midst of a turbulent world.
β
β
Christopher Daniel Mechling (Peter: The Untold True Story)
β
Latter-day capitalism. Like it or not, it's the society we live in. Even the standard of right and wrong has been subdi-vided, made sophisticated. Within good, there's fashionable good and unfash-ionable good, and ditto for bad. Within fashionable good, there's formal and then there's casual; there's hip, there's cool, there's trendy, there's snobbish. Mix 'n' match. Like pulling on a Missoni sweater over Trussardi slacks and Pollini shoes, you can now enjoy hybrid styles of morality. It's the way of the worldβphilosophy starting to look more and more like business administration.
Although I didn't think so at the time, things were a lot simpler in 1969. All you had to do to express yourself was throw rocks at riot police. But with today's sophistication, who's in a position to throw rocks? Who's going to brave what tear gas? C'mon, that's the way it is. Everything is rigged, tied into that massive capital web, and beyond this web there's another web. Nobody's going anywhere. You throw a rock and it'll come right back at you.
β
β
Haruki Murakami (Dance Dance Dance (The Rat, #4))
β
Here's the thing, say Shug. The thing I believe. God is inside you and inside everybody else. You come into the world with God. But only them that search for it inside find it. And sometimes it just manifest itself even if you not looking, or don't know what you looking for. Trouble do it for most folks, I think. Sorrow, lord. Feeling like shit.
It? I ast.
Yeah, It. God ain't a he or a she, but a It.
But what do it look like? I ast.
Don't look like nothing, she say. It ain't a picture show. It ain't something you can look at apart from anything else, including yourself. I believe God is everything, say Shug. Everything that is or ever was or ever will be. And when you can feel that, and be happy to feel that, you've found It.
Shug a beautiful something, let me tell you. She frown a little, look out cross the yard, lean back in her chair, look like a big rose. She say, My first step from the old white man was trees. Then air. Then birds. Then other people. But one day when I was sitting quiet and feeling like a motherless child, which I was, it come to me: that feeling of being part of everything, not separate
at all. I knew that if I cut a tree, my arm would bleed. And I laughed and I cried and I run all around the house. I knew just what it was. In fact, when it happen, you can't miss it. It sort of like you know what, she say, grinning and rubbing high up on my thigh.
Shug! I say.
Oh, she say. God love all them feelings. That's some of the best stuff God did. And when you know God loves 'em you enjoys 'em a lot more. You can just relax, go with everything that's going, and praise God by liking what you like.
God don't think it dirty? I ast.
Naw, she say. God made it. Listen, God love everything you love? and a mess of stuff you don't. But more than anything else, God love admiration.
You saying God vain? I ast.
Naw, she say. Not vain, just wanting to share a good thing. I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it.
What it do when it pissed off? I ast.
Oh, it make something else. People think pleasing God is all God care about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.
Yeah? I say.
Yeah, she say. It always making little surprises and springing them on us when us least expect.
You mean it want to be loved, just like the bible say.
Yes, Celie, she say. Everything want to be loved. Us sing and dance, make faces and give flower bouquets, trying to be loved. You ever notice that trees do everything to git attention we do, except walk?
Well, us talk and talk bout God, but I'm still adrift. Trying to chase that old white man out of my head. I been so busy thinking bout him I never truly notice nothing God make. Not a blade of corn (how it do that?) not the color purple (where it come from?). Not the little wildflowers. Nothing. Now that my eyes opening, I feels like a fool. Next to any little scrub of a bush in my yard, Mr. ____s evil sort of shrink. But not altogether. Still, it is like Shug say, You have to git man off your eyeball, before you can see anything a'tall.
Man corrupt everything, say Shug. He on your box of grits, in your head, and all over the radio. He try to make you think he everywhere.
Soon as you think he everywhere, you think he God. But he ain't. Whenever you trying to pray, and man plop himself on the other end of it, tell him to git lost, say Shug. Conjure up flowers, wind,water, a big rock.
But this hard work, let me tell you. He been there so long, he don't want to budge. He threaten lightening, floods and earthquakes. Us fight. I hardly pray at all. Every time I conjure up a rock, I throw it.
Amen
β
β
Alice Walker (The Color Purple)
β
You know this girl.
Her hair is neither long nor short nor light nor dark. She parts it precisely in the middle.
She sits precisely in the middle of the classroom, and when she used to ride the school bus, she sat precisely in the middle of that, too.
She joins clubs, but is never the president of them. Sometimes she is the secretary; usually, just a member. When asked, she has been known to paints sets for the school play.
She always has a date to the dance, but is never anyoneβs first choice. In point of fact, sheβs nobodyβs first choice for anything. Her best friend became her best friend when another girl moved away.
She has a group of girls she eats lunch with every day, but God, how they bore her. Sometimes, when she canβt stand it anymore, she eats in the library instead. Truth be told, she prefers books to people, and the librarian always seems happy to see her.
She knows there are other people who have it worseβshe isnβt poor or ugly or friendless or teased. Of course, sheβs also aware that the reason no one teases is because no one ever notices her.
This isnβt to say she doesnβt have qualities.
She is pretty, maybe, if anyone would bother to look. And she gets good enough grades. And she doesnβt drink and drive. And she says NO to drugs. And she is always where she says she will be. And she calls when sheβs going to be late. And she feels a little, just a little, dead inside.
She thinks, You think you know me, but you donβt.
She thinks, None of you has any idea about all the things in my heart.
She thinks, None of you has any idea how really and truly beautiful I am.
She thinks, See me. See me. See me.
Sometimes she thinks she will scream.
Sometimes she imagines sticking her head in an oven.
But she doesnβt.
She just writes it all down in her journal and waits.
She is waiting for someone to see.
β
β
Gabrielle Zevin (Love Is Hell)
β
On the first day of November last year, sacred to many religious calendars but especially the Celtic, I went for a walk among bare oaks and birch. Nothing much was going on. Scarlet sumac had passed and the bees were dead. The pond had slicked overnight into that shiny and deceptive glaze of delusion, first ice. It made me remember sakes and conjure a vision of myself skimming backward on one foot, the other extended; the arms become wings. Minnesota girls know that this is not a difficult maneuver if one's limber and practices even a little after school before the boys claim the rink for hockey. I think I can still do it - one thinks many foolish things when November's bright sun skips over the entrancing first freeze.
A flock of sparrows reels through the air looking more like a flying net than seventy conscious birds, a black veil thrown on the wind. When one sparrow dodges, the whole net swerves, dips: one mind. Am I part of anything like that?
Maybe not. The last few years of my life have been characterized by stripping away, one by one, loves and communities that sustain the soul. A young colleague, new to my English department, recently asked me who I hang around with at school. "Nobody," I had to say, feeling briefly ashamed. This solitude is one of the surprises of middle age, especially if one's youth has been rich in love and friendship and children. If you do your job right, children leave home; few communities can stand an individual's most pitiful, amateur truth telling. So the soul must stand in her own meager feathers and learn to fly - or simply take hopeful jumps into the wind.
In the Christian calendar, November 1 is the Feast of All Saints, a day honoring not only those who are known and recognized as enlightened souls, but more especially the unknowns, saints who walk beside us unrecognized down the millennia. In Buddhism, we honor the bodhisattvas - saints - who refuse enlightenment and return willingly to the wheel of karma to help other beings. Similarly, in Judaism, anonymous holy men pray the world from its well-merited destruction. We never know who is walking beside us, who is our spiritual teacher. That one - who annoys you so - pretends for a day that he's the one, your personal Obi Wan Kenobi. The first of November is a splendid, subversive holiday.
Imagine a hectic procession of revelers - the half-mad bag lady; a mumbling, scarred janitor whose ravaged face made the children turn away; the austere, unsmiling mother superior who seemed with great focus and clarity to do harm; a haunted music teacher, survivor of Auschwitz. I bring them before my mind's eye, these old firends of my soul, awakening to dance their day. Crazy saints; but who knows what was home in the heart? This is the feast of those who tried to take the path, so clumsily that no one knew or notice, the feast, indeed, of most of us.
It's an ugly woods, I was saying to myself, padding along a trail where other walkers had broken ground before me. And then I found an extraordinary bouquet. Someone had bound an offering of dry seed pods, yew, lyme grass, red berries, and brown fern and laid it on the path: "nothing special," as Buddhists say, meaning "everything." Gathered to formality, each dry stalk proclaimed a slant, an attitude, infinite shades of neutral.
All contemplative acts, silences, poems, honor the world this way. Brought together by the eye of love, a milkweed pod, a twig, allow us to see how things have been all along. A feast of being.
β
β
Mary Rose O'Reilley (The Barn at the End of the World: The Apprenticeship of a Quaker, Buddhist Shepherd)
β
When Hitler marched
across the Rhine
To take the land of France,
La dame de fer decided,
βLetβs make the tyrant dance.β
Let him take the land and city,
The hills and every flower,
One thing he will never have,
The elegant Eiffel Tower.
The French cut the cables,
The elevators stood still,
βIf he wants to reach the top,
Let him walk it, if he will.β
The invaders hung a swastika
The largest ever seen.
But a fresh breeze blew
And away it flew,
Never more to be seen.
They hung up a second mark,
Smaller than the first,
But a patriot climbed
With a thought in mind:
βNever your duty shirk.β
Up the iron lady
He stealthily made his way,
Hanging the bright tricolour,
He heroically saved the day.
Then, for some strange reason,
A mystery to this day,
Hitler never climbed the tower,
On the ground he had to stay.
At last he ordered she be razed
Down to a twisted pile.
A futile attack, for still she stands
Beaming her metallic smile.
β
β
E.A. Bucchianeri (Brushstrokes of a Gadfly, (Gadfly Saga, #1))
β
Life was not to be sitting in hot amorphic leisure in my backyard idly writing or not-writing, as the spirit moved me. It was, instead, running madly, in a crowded schedule, in a squirrel cage of busy people. Working, living, dancing, dreaming, talking, kissing β singing, laughing, learning. The responsibility, the awful responsibility of managing (profitably) 12 hours a day for 10 weeks is rather overwhelming when there is nothing, noone, to insert an exact routine into the large unfenced acres of time β which it is so easy to let drift by in soporific idling and luxurious relaxing. It is like lifting a bell jar off a securely clockwork-like functioning community, and seeing all the little busy people stop, gasp, blow up and float in the inrush, (or rather outrush,) of the rarified scheduled atmosphere β poor little frightened people, flailing impotent arms in the aimless air. That's what it feels like: getting shed of a routine. Even though one had rebelled terribly against it, even then, one feels uncomfortable when jounced out of the repetitive rut. And so with me. What to do? Where to turn? What ties, what roots? as I hang suspended in the strange thin air of back-home?
β
β
Sylvia Plath (The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath)
β
An attachment grew up. What is an attachment? It is the most difficult of all the human interrelationships to explain, because it is the vaguest, the most impalpable. It has all the good points of love, and none of its drawbacks. No jealousy, no quarrels, no greed to possess, no fear of losing possession, no hatred (which is very much a part of love), no surge of passion and no hangover afterward. It never reaches the heights, and it never reaches the depths.
As a rule it comes on subtly. As theirs did. As a rule the two involved are not even aware of it at first. As they were not. As a rule it only becomes noticeable when it is interrupted in some way, or broken off by circumstances. As theirs was. In other words, its presence only becomes known in its absence. It is only missed after it stops. While it is still going on, little thought is given to it, because little thought needs to be.
It is pleasant to meet, it is pleasant to be together. To put your shopping packages down on a little wire-backed chair at a little table at a sidewalk cafe, and sit down and have a vermouth with someone who has been waiting there for you. And will be waiting there again tomorrow afternoon. Same time, same table, same sidewalk cafe. Or to watch Italian youth going through the gyrations of the latest dance craze in some inexpensive indigenous night-place-while you, who come from the country where the dance originated, only get up to do a sedate fox trot. It is even pleasant to part, because this simply means preparing the way for the next meeting.
One long continuous being-together, even in a love affair, might make the thing wilt. In an attachment it would surely kill the thing off altogether. But to meet, to part, then to meet again in a few days, keeps the thing going, encourages it to flower.
And yet it requires a certain amount of vanity, as love does; a desire to please, to look one's best, to elicit compliments. It inspires a certain amount of flirtation, for the two are of opposite sex. A wink of understanding over the rim of a raised glass, a low-voiced confidential aside about something and the smile of intimacy that answers it, a small impromptu gift - a necktie on the one part because of an accidental spill on the one he was wearing, or of a small bunch of flowers on the other part because of the color of the dress she has on.
So it goes.
And suddenly they part, and suddenly there's a void, and suddenly they discover they have had an attachment.
Rome passed into the past, and became New York.
Now, if they had never come together again, or only after a long time and in different circumstances, then the attachment would have faded and died. But if they suddenly do come together again - while the sharp sting of missing one another is still smarting - then the attachment will revive full force, full strength. But never again as merely an attachment. It has to go on from there, it has to build, to pick up speed. And sometimes it is so glad to be brought back again that it makes the mistake of thinking it is love.
("For The Rest Of Her Life")
β
β
Cornell Woolrich (Angels of Darkness)
β
Iβve had a lot of sucks in life
A lot
My parents died almost four years ago, right after I turned seven
With every day that goes by I remember them less and less
Like my momβ¦I remember that she used to sing.
She was always happy,
always dancing.
Other than what Iβve seen of her in pictures, I donβt really remember what she looks like.
Or what she smells like
Or what she sounds like
And my Dad
I remember more things about him, but only because I thought he was the most amazing man in the world.
He was smart. He knew the answer to everything.
And he was strong.
And he played the guitar.
I used to love lying in bed at night, listening to the music coming from the living room.
I miss that the most.
His music.
After they died, I went to live with my grandma and grandpaul.
Donβt get me wrongβ¦I love my grandparents.
But I loved my home even more.
It reminded me of them.
Of my mom and dad.
My brother had just started college the year they died.
He knew how much I wanted to be home.
He knew how much it meant to me,
so he made it happen.
I was only seven at the time, so I let him do it.
I let him give up his entire life just so I could be home.
Just so I wouldnβt be so sad.
If I could do it all over again, I would have never let him take me.
He deserved a shot, too. A shot at being young.
But sometimes when youβre seven, the world isnβt in 3-D.
So,
I owe a lot to my brother.
A lot of βthank youβdβ
A lot of βIβm sorryβsβ
A lot of βI love youβsβ
I owe a lot to you, Will
For making the sucks in my life a little less suckier
And my sweet?
My sweet is right now.
β
β
Colleen Hoover (Point of Retreat (Slammed, #2))
β
THE DAY YOU READ THIS On this day, you read something that moved you and made you realise there were no more fears to fear. No tears to cry. No head to hang in shame. That every time you thought youβd offended someone, it was all just in your head and really, they love you with all their heart and nothing will ever change that. That everyone and everything lives on inside you. That that doesnβt make any of it any less real. That soft touches will change you and stay with you longer than hard ones. That being alone means youβre free. That old lovers miss you and new lovers want you and the one youβre with is the one youβre meant to be with. That the tingles running down your arms are angel feathers and they whisper in your ear, constantly, if you choose to hear them. That everything you want to happen, will happen, if you decide you want it enough. That every time you think a sad thought, you can think a happy one instead. That you control that completely. That the people who make you laugh are more beautiful than beautiful people. That you laugh more than you cry. That crying is good for you. That the people you hate wish you would stop and you do too. That your friends are reflections of the best parts of you. That you are more than the sum total of the things you know and how you react to them. That dancing is sometimes more important than listening to the music. That the most embarrassing, awkward moments of your life are only remembered by you and no one else. That no one judges you when you walk into a room and all they really want to know, is if youβre judging them. That what you make and what you do with your time is more important than youβll ever fathom and should be treated as such. That the difference between a job and art is passion. That neither defines who you are. That talking to strangers is how you make friends. That bad days end but a smile can go around the world. That life contradicts itself, constantly. That thatβs why itβs worth living. That the difference between pain and love is time. That love is only as real as you want it to be. That if you feel good, you look good but it doesnβt always work the other way around. That the sun will rise each day and itβs up to you each day if you match it. That nothing matters up until this point. That what you decide now, in this moment, will change the future. Forever. That rain is beautiful. And so are you.
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β
pleasefindthis (I Wrote This For You)
β
Finders keepers!" Ian shouted, scooping up the overlay and hopping onto a rock outcropping.
"You cheater!" Amy was furious. No way was he going to get away with that. She climbed the rock, matching him step for step until she reached the top. There he turned to her, panting for breath. "Not bad for a Cahill," he said, grinning.
"You --y-y-you--" The words caught in her throat, the way they always did. He was staring at her, his eyes dancing with laughter, making her so knotted up with anger and hatred that she thought she would explode. "C-c-can't--"
But in that moment, something totally weird happened. Maybe it was a flip of his head, a movement in his eyebrow, she couldn't tell. But it was as if someone had suddenly held a painting at a different angle, and what appeared to be a stormy sea transformed into a bright bouquet -- a trick of the eye that proved everything was just a matter of perspective. His eyes were not mocking at all. They were inviting her, asking her to laugh along. Suddenly, her rage billowed up and blew off in wisps, like a cloud. "You're ... a Cahill, too," she replied.
"Touche."
His eyes didn't move a millimeter from hers.
This time she met his gaze. Solidly. This time she didn't feel like apologizing or attacking or running away. She wouldn't have minded if he just stared like that all day.
β
β
Peter Lerangis (The Sword Thief (The 39 Clues, #3))
β
I remember going to the British Museum one day to read up the treatment for some slight ailment of which I had a touch β hay fever, I fancy it was. I got down the book, and read all I came to read; and then, in an unthinking moment, I idly turned the leaves, and began to indolently study diseases, generally. I forget which was the first distemper I plunged into β some fearful, devastating scourge, I know β and, before I had glanced half down the list of βpremonitory symptoms,β it was borne in upon me that I had fairly got it.
I sat for awhile, frozen with horror; and then, in the listlessness of despair, I again turned over the pages. I came to typhoid fever β read the symptoms β discovered that I had typhoid fever, must have had it for months without knowing it β wondered what else I had got; turned up St. Vitusβs Dance β found, as I expected, that I had that too, β began to get interested in my case, and determined to sift it to the bottom, and so started alphabetically β read up ague, and learnt that I was sickening for it, and that the acute stage would commence in about another fortnight. Brightβs disease, I was relieved to find, I had only in a modified form, and, so far as that was concerned, I might live for years. Cholera I had, with severe complications; and diphtheria I seemed to have been born with. I plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the only malady I could conclude I had not got was housemaidβs knee.
...
I had walked into that reading-room a happy, healthy man. I crawled out a decrepit wreck.
I went to my medical man. He is an old chum of mine, and feels my pulse, and looks at my tongue, and talks about the weather, all for nothing, when I fancy Iβm ill; so I thought I would do him a good turn by going to him now. βWhat a doctor wants,β I said, βis practice. He shall have me. He will get more practice out of me than out of seventeen hundred of your ordinary, commonplace patients, with only one or two diseases each.β So I went straight up and saw him, and he said:
βWell, whatβs the matter with you?β
I said:
βI will not take up your time, dear boy, with telling you what is the matter with me. Life is brief, and you might pass away before I had finished. But I will tell you what is NOT the matter with me. I have not got housemaidβs knee. Why I have not got housemaidβs knee, I cannot tell you; but the fact remains that I have not got it. Everything else, however, I HAVE got.β
And I told him how I came to discover it all.
Then he opened me and looked down me, and clutched hold of my wrist, and then he hit me over the chest when I wasnβt expecting it β a cowardly thing to do, I call it β and immediately afterwards butted me with the side of his head. After that, he sat down and wrote out a prescription, and folded it up and gave it me, and I put it in my pocket and went out.
I did not open it. I took it to the nearest chemistβs, and handed it in. The man read it, and then handed it back.
He said he didnβt keep it.
I said:
βYou are a chemist?β
He said:
βI am a chemist. If I was a co-operative stores and family hotel combined, I might be able to oblige you. Being only a chemist hampers me.β
I read the prescription. It ran:
β1 lb. beefsteak, with
1 pt. bitter beer
every 6 hours.
1 ten-mile walk every morning.
1 bed at 11 sharp every night.
And donβt stuff up your head with things you donβt understand.β
I followed the directions, with the happy result β speaking for myself β that my life was preserved, and is still going on.
β
β
Jerome K. Jerome (Three Men in a Boat (Three Men, #1))
β
Are you going to hand me over to him?"
"I haven't decided yet," I teased, and he smiled again, erasing his momentary seriousness. "So, where'd you get the suit?"
"Believe it or not, that lovely friend of yours, Willa," Loki said. "She brought me a whole slew of clothes last night. When I asked her why she was being so generous, she said it was out of fear that I would run around naked."
I smiled. "That does sound like something you would do. Why are you wearing all black, though? Didn't you know you were going to a wedding?"
"On the contrary," he said, doing his best to look unhappy. "I'm in mourning over the wedding."
"Oh, because it's too late?" I asked.
"No, Wendy, it's never too late." His voice was light, but his eyes were solemn.
"May I cut in?" the best man asked.
"No, you may not," Loki said. I'd started to move away from him, but he held fast.
"Loki," I said, and my eyes widened.
"I'm still dancing with her," Loki said, turning to look at him. "You can have her when I'm done."
"Loki," I said again, but he was already twirling me away. "You can't do that."
"I just did." He grinned. "Oh, Wendy, don't look so appalled. I'm already the rebel Prince of thine enemy. I can't do much more to tarnish my image."
"You can certainly tarnish mine," I pointed out.
"Never," Loki said, and it was his turn to look appalled. "I'm merely showing them how it's done."
He began spinning me around the dance floor in grand arcs, my gown swirling around me. He was a brilliant dancer, moving with grace and speed. Everyone had stopped to watch us, but I didn't care. This was the way a Princess was supposed to dance on her wedding day.
The song ended, switching to something by Mozart, and he slowed, almost to a stop, but he kept me in his arms.
"Thank you." I smiled. My skin felt flushed from dancing, and I was a little out of breath. "That was a wonderful dance."
"You're welcome," he said, staring intently at me. "You are so beautiful."
"Stop," I said, looking away as my cheeks reddened.
"How can you blush?" Loki asked, laughing gently. "People must tell you how beautiful you are a thousand times a day."
"It's not the same," I said.
"It's not the same?" Loki echoed. "Why? Because you know they don't mean it like I do?"
We did stop dancing them, and neither of us said anything. Garrett came up to us. He smiled, but his eyes didn't appear happy.
"Can I cut in?" Garrett asked.
"Yes," Loki said, shaking off the intensity he'd had a moment ago, and grinned broadly at Garrett. "She's all yours, good sir. Take care of her."
He patted Garrett on the arm once for good measure and gave me a quick smile before heading back over to the refreshment table.
β
β
Amanda Hocking (Ascend (Trylle, #3))
β
His hand was a claw, sharp enough to open her. She would be like all the othersβRuta Badowski, in her broken dancing shoes. Tommy Duffy, still with the dirt of his last baseball game under his nails. Gabriel Johnson, taken on the best day of his life. Or even Mary White, holding out for a future that never arrived. Sheβd be like all those beautiful, shining boys marching off to war, rifles at their hips and promises on their lips to their best girls that theyβd be home in time for Christmas, the excitement of the game showing in their bright faces. Theyβd come home men, heroes with adventures to tell about, how theyβd walloped the enemy and put the world right side up again, funneled it into neat lines of yes and no. Black and white. Right and wrong. Here and there. Us and them. Instead, they had died tangled in barbed wire in Flanders, hollowed by influenza along the Western Front, blown apart in no-manβs-land, writhing in trenches with those smiles still in place, courtesy of the phosgene, chlorine, or mustard gas. Some had come home shell-shocked and blinking, hands shaking, mumbling to themselves, following orders in some private war still taking place in their minds. Or, like James, theyβd simply vanished, relegated to history books no one bothered to read, medals put in cupboards kept closed. Just a bunch of chess pieces moved about by unseen hands in a universe bored with itself.
β
β
Libba Bray (The Diviners (The Diviners, #1))
β
My friend, I am not what I seem. Seeming is but a garment I wear-a care-woven garment that protects me from thy questionings and thee from my negligence.
The βIβ in me, my friend, dwells in the house of silence, and therein it shall remain for ever more, unperceived, unapproachable.
I would not have thee believe in what I say nor trust in what I do-for my words are naught but thy own thoughts in sound and my deeds thy own hopes in action.
When thou sayest, βThe wind bloweth eastward,β I say, βAye it doth blow eastwardβ; for I would not have thee know that my mind doth not dwell upon the wind but upon the sea.
Thou canst not understand my seafaring thoughts, nor would I have thee understand. I would be at sea alone.
When it is day with thee, my friend, it is night with me; yet even then I speak of the noontide that dances upon the hills and of the purple shadow that steals its way across the valley; for thou canst not hear the songs of my darkness nor see my wings beating against the stars-and I fain would not have thee hear or see. I would be with night alone.
When thou ascendest to thy Heaven I descend to my Hell-even then thou callest to me across the unbridgeable gulf, βMy companion, my comrade,β and I call back to thee, βMy comrade, my companionβ-for I would not have thee see my Hell. The flame would burn thy eyesight and the smoke would crowd thy nostrils. And I love my Hell too well to have thee visit it. I would be in Hell alone.
Thou lovest Truth and Beauty and Righteousness; and I for thy sake say it is well and seemly to love these things. But in my heart I laughed at thy love. Yet I would not have thee see my laughter. I would laugh alone.
My friend, thou art good and cautious and wise; nay, thou art perfect-and I, too, speak with thee wisely and cautiously. And yet I am mad. But I mask my madness. I would be mad alone.
My friend, thou art not my friend, but how shall I make thee understand? My path is not thy path, yet together we walk, hand in hand.
β
β
Kahlil Gibran (The Madman)
β
Not being able to swipe into the subway when people are backing up behind you. Waiting for him at the bar. Leaving your purse open on a stool with a mess of bills visible. Mispronouncing the names while presenting French wines. Your clogs slipping on the waxed floors. The way your arms shoot out and you tense your face when you almost fall. Taking your job seriously. Watching the sex scene from Dirty Dancing on repeat and eating a box of gingersnaps for dinner on your day off. Forgetting your stripes, your work pants, your socks. Mentally mapping the bar for corners where you might catch him alone. Getting drunker faster than everyone else. Not knowing what foie gras is. Not knowing what you think about abortion. Not knowing what a feminist is. Not knowing who the mayor is. Throwing up between your feet on the subway stairs. On a Tuesday. Going back for thirds at family meal. Excruciating diarrhea in the employee bathroom. Hurting yourself when you hit your head on the low pipe. Refusing to leave the bar though it's over, completely over. Bleeding in every form. Beer stains on your shirt, grease stains on your jeans, stains in every form. Saying you know where something is when you have absolutely no idea where it is.
At some point, I leveled out. Everything stopped being embarrassing.
β
β
Stephanie Danler (Sweetbitter)
β
When you love a woman, what do you really love in her? It will be different with different people and it will be different at different times. If love really grows, this is the way: first you fall in love with the woman because her body is beautiful. That is the first available beauty - her face, her eyes, her proportion, her elegance, her dancing, pulsating energy. Her body is beautiful. That is the first approach. You fall in love.
Then after a few days you start going deeper into the woman. You start loving her heart. Now a far more beautiful revelation is coming to you. The body becomes secondary; the heart becomes primary. A new vision has arisen, a new peak. If you go on loving the woman, sooner or later you will find there are peaks beyond peaks, depths beyond depths. Then you start loving the soul of the woman. Then it is not only her heart - now that has become secondary. Now it is the very person, the very presence, the very radiance, the aliveness, that unknown phenomenon of her being - that she is. The body is very far away, the heart has also gone away - now the being is.
And then one day this particular woman's being becomes far away. Now you start loving womanhood in her, the femininity, the feminineness, that receptivity. Now she is not a particular woman at all, she simply reflects womanhood, a particular form of womanhood. Now it is no longer individual, it is becoming more and more universal. And one day that womanhood has also disappeared - you love the humanity in her. Now she is not just a representative of woman, she is also a representative of man as much. The sky is becoming bigger and bigger. Then one day it is not humanity, but existence. That she exists, that's all that you want - that she exists. You are coming very close to God.
Then the last point comes - all formulations and all forms disappear and there is God. You have found God through your woman, through your man. Each love is an echo of God's love.
β
β
Osho
β
Pink Balloons
My name is Olivia King
I am five years old
My mother bought me a balloon. I remember the day she walked through the front door with it. The curly hot pink ribbon
trickling
down her arm,
wrapped
around her
wrist
. She was
smiling
at me as she
untied
the ribbon and wrapped it around my hand.
"Here Livie, I bought this for you."
She called me Livie.
I was so
happy
. I'd
never
had a
balloon
before. I mean, I always saw balloon wrapped around
other
kids wrist in the parking lot of
Wal-Mart
, but I never
dreamed
I would have my very
own.
My
very own
pink balloon.
I was
excited!
So
ecstatic!
So
thrilled!
i couldn't
believe
my mother bought me something! She'd
never
bought me
anything
before! I played with it for
hours
. It was full of
helium
and it
danced
and
swayed
and
floated
as I
drug
it around from
room
to
room
with me, thinking of places to take it. Thinking of places the balloon had
never
been before. I took it in the
bathroom
, the
closet
, the
laundry room
, the
kitchen
, the
living room
. I wanted my new best friend to see
everything
I saw! I took it to my mother's
bedroom!
My mothers
Bedroom?
Where I wasn't supposed to be?
With my pink
balloon...
I
covered
my ears as she
screamed
at me,
wiping
the
evidence
off her
nose!
She
slapped
me across the face as she told me how
bad
I was! How much I
misbehaved!
How I never
listened!
She
shoved
me into the hallways and
slammed
the door, locking my pink balloon inside with her. I wanted him
back!
He was
my
best friend!
Not her!
The pink ribbon was
still
tied around my
wrist
so I
pulled
and
pulled
, trying to get my new best friend
away
from her.
And
it
popped.
My name is Eddie.
I'm seventeen years old.
My birthday is next week. I'll be big One-Eight. My foster dad is buying me these boots I've been wanting. I'm sure my friends will take me out to eat. My boyfriend will buy me a gift, maybe even take me to a movie. I'll even get a nice little card from my foster care worker, wishing me a happy eighteenth birthday, informing me I've aged out of the system.
I'll have a good time. I know I will.
But there's
one
thing I know
for
sure
I better not get any
shitty ass pink balloons!
β
β
Colleen Hoover (Slammed (Slammed, #1))
β
Here are the sounds of Wear. It rattles stone on stone. It sucks its teeth. It sings. It hisses like the rain. It roars. It laughs. It claps its hands. Sometimes I think it prays. In winter, through the ice, I've seen it moving swift and black as Tune, without a sound.
Here are the sights of Wear. It falls in braids. It parts at rocks and tumbles round them white as down or flashes over them in silver quilts. It tosses fallen trees like bits of straw yet spins a single leaf as gentle as a maid. Sometimes it coils for rest in darkling pools and sometimes it leaps its banks and shatters in the air. In autumn, I've seen it breathe a mist so thick and grey you'd never know old Wear was there at all.
Each day, for years and years, I've gone and sat in it. Usually at dusk I clamber down and slowly sink myself to where it laps against my breast. Is it too much to say, in winter, that I die? Something of me dies at least.
First there's the fiery sting of cold that almost stops my breath, the aching torment in my limbs. I think I may go mad, my wits so outraged that they seek to flee my skull like rats a ship that's going down. I puff. I gasp. Then inch by inch a blessed numbness comes. I have no legs, no arms. My very heart grows still. These floating hands are not my hands. The ancient flesh I wear is rags for all I feel of it.
"Praise, Praise!" I croak. Praise God for all that's holy, cold, and dark. Praise him for all we lose, for all the river of the years bears off. Praise him for stillness in the wake of pain. Praise him for emptiness. And as you race to spill into the sea, praise him yourself, old Wear. Praise him for dying and the peace of death.
In the little church I built of wood for Mary, I hollowed out a place for him. Perkin brings him by the pail and pours him in. Now that I can hardly walk, I crawl to meet him there. He takes me in his chilly lap to wash me of my sins. Or I kneel down beside him till within his depths I see a star.
Sometimes this star is still. Sometimes she dances. She is Mary's star. Within that little pool of Wear she winks at me. I wink at her. The secret that we share I cannot tell in full. But this much I will tell. What's lost is nothing to what's found, and all the death that ever was, set next to life, would scarcely fill a cup.
β
β
Frederick Buechner (Godric)
β
1.
I told you that I was a roadway of potholes, not safe to cross. You said nothing, showed up in my driveway wearing roller-skates.
2.
The first time I asked you on a date, after you hung up, I held the air between our phones against my ear and whispered, βYou will fall in love with me. Then, just months later, you will fall out. I will pretend the entire time that I donβt know itβs coming.β
3.
Once, I got naked and danced around your bedroom, awkward and safe. You did the same. We held each other without hesitation and flailed lovely. This was vulnerability foreplay.
4.
The last eight times I told you I loved you, they sounded like apologies.
5.
You recorded me a CD of you repeating, βYou are beautiful.β I listened to it until I no longer thought in my own voice.
6.
Into the half-empty phone line, I whispered, βWe will wake up believing the worst in each other. We will spit shrapnel at each otherβs hearts. The bruises will lodge somewhere we donβt know how to look for and I will still pretend I donβt know its coming.β
7.
You photographed my eyebrow shapes and turned them into flashcards: mood on one side, correct response on the other. You studied them until you knew when to stay silent.
8.
I bought you an entire bakery so that we could eat nothing but breakfast for a week. Breakfast, untainted by the day ahead, was when we still smiled at each other as if we meant it.
9.
I whispered, βI will latch on like a deadbolt to a door and tell you it is only because I want to protect you. Really, Iβm afraid that without you I mean nothing.β
10.
I gave you a bouquet of plane tickets so I could practice the feeling of watching you leave.
11.
I picked you up from the airport limping. In your absence, Iβd forgotten how to walk. When I collapsed at your feet, you refused to look at me until I learned to stand up without your help.
12.
Too scared to move, I stared while you set fire to your apartment β its walls decaying beyond repair, roaches invading the corpse of your bedroom. You tossed all the faulty appliances through the smoke out your window, screaming that you couldnβt handle choking on one more thing that wouldnβt just fix himself.
13.
I whispered, βWe will each weed through the last year and try to spot the moment we began breaking. We will repel sprint away from each other. Your voice will take months to drain out from my ears. You will throw away your notebook of tally marks from each time you wondered if I was worth the work. The invisible bruises will finally surface and I will still pretend that I didnβt know it was coming.β
14.
The entire time, I was only pretending that I knew it was coming.
β
β
Miles Walser
β
Dear Deborah,
Words do not come easily for so many men. We are taught to be strong, to provide, to put away our emotions. A father can work his way through his days and never see that his years are going by. If I could go back in time, I would say some things to that young father as he holds, somewhat uncertainly, his daughter for the very first time. These are the things I would say:
When you hear the first whimper in the night, go to the nursery leaving your wife sleeping. Rock in a chair, walk the floor, sing a lullaby so that she will know a man can be gentle.
When Mother is away for the evening, come home from work, do the babysitting. Learn to cook a hotdog or a pot of spaghetti, so that your daughter will know a man can serve another's needs.
When she performs in school plays or dances in recitals, arrive early, sit in the front seat, devote your full attention. Clap the loudest, so that she will know a man can have eyes only for her.
When she asks for a tree house, don't just build it, but build it with her. Sit high among the branches and talk about clouds, and caterpillars, and leaves. Ask her about her dreams and wait for her answers, so that she will know a man can listen.
When you pass by her door as she dresses for a date, tell her she is beautiful. Take her on a date yourself. Open doors, buy flowers, look her in the eye, so that she will know a man can respect her.
When she moves away from home, send a card, write a note, call on the phone. If something reminds you of her, take a minute to tell her, so that she will know a man can think of her even when she is away.
Tell her you love her, so that she will know a man can say the words.
If you hurt her, apologize, so that she will know a man can admit that he's wrong.
These seem like such small things, such a fraction of time in the course of two lives. But a thread does not require much space. It can be too fine for the eye to see, yet, it is the very thing that binds, that takes pieces and laces them into a whole.
Without it, there are tatters.
It is never too late for a man to learn to stitch, to begin mending.
These are the things I would tell that young father, if I could.
A daughter grown up quickly. There isn't time to waste.
I love you,
Dad
β
β
Lisa Wingate (Dandelion Summer (Blue Sky Hill #4))
β
And What Good Will Your Vanity Be When The Rapture Comesβ
says the man with a cart of empty bottles at the corner of church
and lincoln while I stare into my phone and I say
I know oh I know while trying to find the specific
filter that will make the sunβs near-flawless descent look
the way I might describe it in a poem and the man
says the moment is already right in front of you and I
say I know but everyone I love is not here and I mean
here like on this street corner with me while I turn
the sky a darker shade of red on my phone and I mean
here like everyone I love who I can still touch and not
pass my fingers through like the wind in a dream
but I look up at the man and he is a kaleidoscope
of shadows I mean his shadows have shadows
and they are small and trailing behind him and I know
then that everyone he loves is also not here and the man doesnβt ask
but I still say hey man Iβve got nothing Iβve got nothing even though I have plenty
to go home to and the sun is still hot even in its
endless flirt with submission and the manβs palm has a small
river inside I mean he has taken my hand now and here we are
tethered and unmoving and the man says what color are you making
the sky and I say what I might say in a poem I say all surrender
ends in blood and he says what color are you making the sky and
I say something bright enough to make people wish they were here
and he squints towards the dancing shrapnel of dying
light along a rooftop and he says I love things only as they are
and Iβm sure I did once too but I canβt prove it to anyone these days
and he says the end isnβt always about what dies and I know I know
or I knew once and now I write about beautiful things
like I will never touch a beautiful thing again and the man
looks me in the eyes and he points to the blue-orange vault
over heavenβs gates and he says the face of everyone you miss
is up there and I know I know I canβt see them but I know
and he turns my face to the horizon and he says
we donβt have much time left and I get that he means the time
before the sun is finally through with its daily work or I
think I get that but I still canβt stop trembling and I close
my eyes and I am sobbing on the corner of church and
lincoln and when I open my eyes the sun is plucking everyone
who has chosen to love me from the clouds and carrying them
into the light-drunk horizon and I am seeing this and I know
I am seeing this the girl who kissed me as a boy in the dairy aisle
of meijer while our parents shopped and the older boy on the
basketball team who taught me how to make a good fist and swing
it into the jaw of a bully and the friends who crawled to my porch
in the summer of any year I have been alive they were all there
I saw their faces and it was like I was given the eyes of a newborn
again and once you know what it is to be lonely it is hard to
unsee that which serves as a reminder that you were not always
empty and I am gasping into the now-dark air and I pull my shirt
up to wipe whatever tears are left and I see the man walking in the
other direction and I chase him down and tap his arm and I say did
you see it did you see it like I did and he turns and leans into the
glow of a streetlamp and he is anchored by a single shadow now
and he sneers and he says have we met and he scoffs and pushes
his cart off into the night and I can hear the glass rattling even
as I watch him become small and vanish and I look down at my
phone and the sky on the screen is still blood red.
β
β
Hanif Abdurraqib