“
I’ll tell you another secret, this one for your own good. You may think the past has something to tell you. You may think that you should listen, should strain to make out its whispers, should bend over backward, stoop down low to hear its voice breathed up from the ground, from the dead places. You may think there’s something in it for you, something to understand or make sense of.
But I know the truth: I know from the nights of Coldness. I know the past will drag you backward and down, have you snatching at whispers of wind and the gibberish of trees rubbing together, trying to decipher some code, trying to piece together what was broken. It’s hopeless. The past is nothing but a weight. It will build inside of you like a stone.
Take it from me: If you hear the past speaking to you, feel it tugging at your back and running its fingers up your spine, the best thing to do—the only thing—is run.
”
”
Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
“
The first thing you notice about New Orleans are the burying grounds - the cemeteries - and they're a cold proposition, one of the best things there are here. Going by, you try to be as quiet as possible, better to let them sleep. Greek, Roman, sepulchres- palatial mausoleums made to order, phantomesque, signs and symbols of hidden decay - ghosts of women and men who have sinned and who've died and are now living in tombs. The past doesn't pass away so quickly here. You could be dead for a long time.
The ghosts race towards the light, you can almost hear the heavy breathing spirits, all determined to get somewhere. New Orleans, unlike a lot of those places you go back to and that don't have the magic anymore, still has got it. Night can swallow you up, yet none of it touches you. Around any corner, there's a promise of something daring and ideal and things are just getting going. There's something obscenely joyful behind every door, either that or somebody crying with their head in their hands. A lazy rhythm looms in the dreamy air and the atmosphere pulsates with bygone duels, past-life romance, comrades requesting comrades to aid them in some way. You can't see it, but you know it's here. Somebody is always sinking. Everyone seems to be from some very old Southern families. Either that or a foreigner. I like the way it is.
There are a lot of places I like, but I like New Orleans better. There's a thousand different angles at any moment. At any time you could run into a ritual honoring some vaguely known queen. Bluebloods, titled persons like crazy drunks, lean weakly against the walls and drag themselves through the gutter. Even they seem to have insights you might want to listen to. No action seems inappropriate here. The city is one very long poem. Gardens full of pansies, pink petunias, opiates. Flower-bedecked shrines, white myrtles, bougainvillea and purple oleander stimulate your senses, make you feel cool and clear inside.
Everything in New Orleans is a good idea. Bijou temple-type cottages and lyric cathedrals side by side. Houses and mansions, structures of wild grace. Italianate, Gothic, Romanesque, Greek Revival standing in a long line in the rain. Roman Catholic art. Sweeping front porches, turrets, cast-iron balconies, colonnades- 30-foot columns, gloriously beautiful- double pitched roofs, all the architecture of the whole wide world and it doesn't move. All that and a town square where public executions took place. In New Orleans you could almost see other dimensions. There's only one day at a time here, then it's tonight and then tomorrow will be today again. Chronic melancholia hanging from the trees. You never get tired of it. After a while you start to feel like a ghost from one of the tombs, like you're in a wax museum below crimson clouds. Spirit empire. Wealthy empire. One of Napoleon's generals, Lallemaud, was said to have come here to check it out, looking for a place for his commander to seek refuge after Waterloo. He scouted around and left, said that here the devil is damned, just like everybody else, only worse. The devil comes here and sighs. New Orleans. Exquisite, old-fashioned. A great place to live vicariously. Nothing makes any difference and you never feel hurt, a great place to really hit on things. Somebody puts something in front of you here and you might as well drink it. Great place to be intimate or do nothing. A place to come and hope you'll get smart - to feed pigeons looking for handouts
”
”
Bob Dylan (Chronicles, Volume One)
“
Well, I think home spat me out, the blackouts and curfews like tongue against loose tooth. God, do you know how difficult it is, to talk about the day your own city dragged you by the hair, past the old prison, past the school gates, past the burning torsos erected on poles like flags? When I meet others like me I recognise the longing, the missing, the memory of ash on their faces. No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark. I’ve been carrying the old anthem in my mouth for so long that there’s no space for another song, another tongue or another language. I know a shame that shrouds, totally engulfs. I tore up and ate my own passport in an airport hotel. I’m bloated with language I can’t afford to forget.
”
”
Warsan Shire (Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth)
“
But you must stop playing among his ghosts -- it's stupid and dangerous and completely pointless. He's trying to lay them to rest here, not stir them up, and you seem eager to drag out all the sad old bones of his history and make them dance again. It's not nice, and it's not fair.
”
”
Patricia A. McKillip (Winter Rose (Winter Rose, #1))
“
I’ll tell you another secret, this one for your own good. You may think the past has something to tell you. You may think that you should listen, should strain to make out its whispers, should bend over backward, stoop down low to hear its voice breathed up from the ground, from the dead places. You may think there’s something in it for you, something to understand or make sense of.
But I know the truth: I know from the nights of Coldness. I know the past will drag you backward and down, have you snatching at whispers of wind and the gibberish of trees rubbing together, trying to decipher some code, trying to piece together what was broken. It’s hopeless. The past is nothing but a weight. It will build inside of you like a stone.
Take it from me: If you hear the past speaking to you, feel it tugging at your back and running its fingers up your spine, the best thing to do—the only thing— is run.
”
”
Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
“
I know the past will drag you backward and down, have you snatching at whispers of wind and the gibberish of trees rubbing together, trying to decipher some code, trying to piece together what was broken. It's hopeless. The past is nothing but a weight. It will build inside of you like a stone.
If you hear the past speaking to you, feel it tugging at your back and running it's fingers up your spine, the best thing to do--the only thing--is run.
”
”
Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
“
Memories can kill, Yvette. The past can reach right up and grab you and drag you to a place you shouldn’t be. Like a burning building.
”
”
Louise Penny (A Fatal Grace (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #2))
“
If you surround yourself with people who support your upward aim, they will not tolerate your cynicism and destructiveness. They will instead encourage you when you do good for yourself and others and punish you carefully when you do not. This will help you bolster your resolve to do what you should do, in the most appropriate and careful manner. People who are not aiming up will do the opposite. They will become jealous when you succeed, or do something pristine. They will withdraw their presence or support, or actively punish you for it. They will override your accomplishment with a past action, real or imaginary, of their own. Maybe they are trying to test you, to see if your resolve is real, to see if you are genuine. But mostly they are dragging you down because your new improvements cast their faults in an even dimmer light.
”
”
Jordan B. Peterson (12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos)
“
Nothing can change the past, including thought. However, dwelling on thoughts about the past does change our experience of the Now. When we drag the past into the present, everything else that belongs to the Now is marginalized and overlooked. All we see is the past or, more accurately, our story about it. All we can ever have of the past is our story about it, and that story is very unsatisfying. Our stories about the past don't feed our soul like the Now does. And worse, any story is usually a sad tale that keeps us caught up in negative feelings, and then those feelings become our current experience of life.
”
”
Gina Lake (What About Now?: Reminders for Being in the Moment)
“
Nothing is more foolish, nothing more wicked than to drag the skeletons of the past, the hideous images, the foolish deeds, the unfortunate experiences of yesterday into today's work to mar and spoil it. There are plenty of people who have been failures up to the present moment who could do wonders in the future if they only could forget the past, if they only had the ability to cut it off, to close the door on it forever and start anew.
”
”
Orison Swett Marden (Be Good To Yourself)
“
Absolutely pathetic.”
I make a Jeopardy! buzzer sound. “Who is Joshua Templeman?”
“Lucinda flirting with couriers. Pathetic.”
Joshua is hammering away on his keyboard. He certainly is an impressive touch typist. I stroll past his desk and am gratified by his frustrated backspacing.
“I’m nice to him.”
“You? Nice?”
I’m surprised by how hurt I feel. “I’m lovely. Ask anyone.”
“Okay. Josh, is she lovely?” he asks himself aloud. “Hmm, let me think.”
He picks up his tin of mints, opens the lid, checks them, closes it, and looks at me. I open my mouth and lift my tongue like a mental patient at the medication window.
“She’s got a few lovely things about her, I suppose.”
I raise a finger and enunciate the words crisply: “Human resources.”
He sits up straighter but the corner of his mouth moves. I wish I could use my thumbs to pull his mouth into a huge deranged grin. As the police drag me out in handcuffs I’ll be screeching, Smile, goddamn you.
We need to get even, because it’s not fair. He’s gotten one of my smiles, and seen me smile at countless other people. I have never seen him smile, nor have I seen his face look anything but blank, bored, surly, suspicious, watchful, resentful. Occasionally he has another look on his face, after we’ve been arguing. His Serial Killer expression.
”
”
Sally Thorne (The Hating Game)
“
I was in the fifth grade the first time I thought about turning thirty. My best friend Darcy and I came across a perpetual calendar in the back of the phone book, where you could look up any date in the future, and by using this little grid, determine what the day of the week would be. So we located our birthdays in the following year, mine in May and hers in September. I got Wednesday, a school night. She got a Friday. A small victory, but typical. Darcy was always the lucky one. Her skin tanned more quickly, her hair feathered more easily, and she didn't need braces. Her moonwalk was superior, as were her cart-wheels and her front handsprings (I couldn't handspring at all). She had a better sticker collection. More Michael Jackson pins. Forenze sweaters in turquoise, red, and peach (my mother allowed me none- said they were too trendy and expensive). And a pair of fifty-dollar Guess jeans with zippers at the ankles (ditto). Darcy had double-pierced ears and a sibling- even if it was just a brother, it was better than being an only child as I was.
But at least I was a few months older and she would never quite catch up. That's when I decided to check out my thirtieth birthday- in a year so far away that it sounded like science fiction. It fell on a Sunday, which meant that my dashing husband and I would secure a responsible baby-sitter for our two (possibly three) children on that Saturday evening, dine at a fancy French restaurant with cloth napkins, and stay out past midnight, so technically we would be celebrating on my actual birthday. I would have just won a big case- somehow proven that an innocent man didn't do it. And my husband would toast me: "To Rachel, my beautiful wife, the mother of my chidren and the finest lawyer in Indy." I shared my fantasy with Darcy as we discovered that her thirtieth birthday fell on a Monday. Bummer for her. I watched her purse her lips as she processed this information.
"You know, Rachel, who cares what day of the week we turn thirty?" she said, shrugging a smooth, olive shoulder. "We'll be old by then. Birthdays don't matter when you get that old."
I thought of my parents, who were in their thirties, and their lackluster approach to their own birthdays. My dad had just given my mom a toaster for her birthday because ours broke the week before. The new one toasted four slices at a time instead of just two. It wasn't much of a gift. But my mom had seemed pleased enough with her new appliance; nowhere did I detect the disappointment that I felt when my Christmas stash didn't quite meet expectations. So Darcy was probably right. Fun stuff like birthdays wouldn't matter as much by the time we reached thirty.
The next time I really thought about being thirty was our senior year in high school, when Darcy and I started watching ths show Thirty Something together. It wasn't our favorite- we preferred cheerful sit-coms like Who's the Boss? and Growing Pains- but we watched it anyway. My big problem with Thirty Something was the whiny characters and their depressing issues that they seemed to bring upon themselves. I remember thinking that they should grow up, suck it up. Stop pondering the meaning of life and start making grocery lists. That was back when I thought my teenage years were dragging and my twenties would surealy last forever.
Then I reached my twenties. And the early twenties did seem to last forever. When I heard acquaintances a few years older lament the end of their youth, I felt smug, not yet in the danger zone myself. I had plenty of time..
”
”
Emily Giffin (Something Borrowed (Darcy & Rachel, #1))
“
Did you talk to all your past employers this way?” he eventually asks.
“I would have if they were as rude as you.”
Both of his brows shoot up and I’m prepared for him to start shouting to his secret service and have me dragged off to the guillotines.
Instead he gives me a tight smile. “I’ll be paying your salary. That doesn’t mean I have to like you.”:
“And I’ll be earning that salary. That doesn’t mean I have to like you either.
”
”
Karina Halle (A Nordic King (Nordic Royals, #3))
“
...a kid, maybe eight years old, ran up and poked her in the ribs with a plastic laser weapon, making electric zinging noises as he repeatedly pulled the trigger. “You’re dead,” he said victoriously. His mother came hurrying up, looking harassed and helpless. “Damian, stop that!” She gave him a smile that was little more than a grimace. “Don’t bother the nice people.” “Shut up,” he said rudely. “Can’t you see they’re Terrons from Vaniot.”
The kid poked her in the ribs again. “Ouch!” He made those zinging noises again, taking great pleasure in her discomfort. She plastered a big smile on her face and leaned down closer to precious Damian, then cooed in her most alienlike voice, “Oh, look, a little earthling.” She straightened and gave Sam a commanding look. “Kill it.” Damian’s mouth fell open. His eyes went as round as quarters as he took in the big pistol on Sam’s belt. From his open mouth began to issue a series of shrill noises that sounded like a fire alarm. Sam cursed under his breath, grabbed Jaine by the arm, and began tugging her at a half-trot toward the front of the store. She managed to snag her purse from the buggy as she went past.
“Hey, my groceries!” she protested. “You can spend another three minutes in here tomorrow and get them,” he said with pent-up violence. “Right now I’m trying to keep you from getting arrested.”
“For what?” she asked indignantly as he dragged her out of the automatic doors. People were turning to look at them, but most were following the sounds of Damian’s shrieks to aisle seven. “How about threatening to kill that brat and causing a riot?”
“I didn’t threaten to loll him! I just ordered you to.
”
”
Linda Howard (Mr. Perfect)
“
Destiny pulls us forward while the disappointments of our past try to drag us back; back into the mud of mediocrity and complacency. Our life soon becomes a tug-of-war of mental and emotional anguish, until the final decision is made. We must resolve within our soul the question; do I go forward, retreat and give up, or simply stand still? My friend, there is only one logical answer to this question, that has plagued the minds of every human on earth – go forward! Embrace the passion that burns within your soul, because the pursuit of happiness is really the pursuit of Destiny.
”
”
James A. Jimason
“
The essence of meditation practice in Dzogchen is encapsulated by these four points:
▪ When one past thought has ceased and a future thought has not yet risen, in that gap, in between, isn’t there a consciousness of the present moment; fresh, virgin, unaltered by even a hair’s breadth of a concept, a luminous, naked awareness?
Well, that is what Rigpa is!
▪ Yet it doesn’t stay in that state forever, because another thought suddenly arises, doesn’t it?
This is the self-radiance of that Rigpa.
▪ However, if you do not recognize this thought for what it really is, the very instant it arises, then it will turn into just another ordinary thought, as before. This is called the “chain of delusion,” and is the root of samsara.
▪ If you are able to recognize the true nature of the thought as soon as it arises, and leave it alone without any follow-up, then whatever thoughts arise all automatically dissolve back into the vast expanse of Rigpa and are liberated.
Clearly this takes a lifetime of practice to understand and realize the full richness and majesty of these four profound yet simple points, and here I can only give you a taste of the vastness of what is meditation in Dzogchen.
…
Dzogchen meditation is subtly powerful in dealing with the arisings of the mind, and has a unique perspective on them. All the risings are seen in their true nature, not as separate from Rigpa, and not as antagonistic to it, but actually as none other–and this is very important–than its “self-radiance,” the manifestation of its very energy.
Say you find yourself in a deep state of stillness; often it does not last very long and a thought or a movement always arises, like a wave in the ocean. Don’t reject the movement or particulary embrace the stillness, but continue the flow of your pure presence. The pervasive, peaceful state of your meditation is the Rigpa itself, and all risings are none other than this Rigpa’s self-radiance. This is the heart and the basis of Dzogchen practice. One way to imagine this is as if you were riding on the sun’s rays back to the sun: ….
Of couse there are rough as well as gentle waves in the ocean; strong emotions come, like anger, desire, jealousy. The real practitioner recognizes them not as a disturbance or obstacle, but as a great opportunity. The fact that you react to arisings such as these with habitual tendencies of attachment and aversion is a sign not only that you are distracted, but also that you do not have the recognition and have lost the ground of Rigpa. To react to emotions in this way empowers them and binds us even tighter in the chains of delusion. The great secret of Dzogchen is to see right through them as soon as they arise, to what they really are: the vivid and electric manifestation of the energy of Rigpa itself. As you gradually learn to do this, even the most turbulent emotions fail to seize hold of you and dissolve, as wild waves rise and rear and sink back into the calm of the ocean.
The practitioner discovers–and this is a revolutionary insight, whose subtlety and power cannot be overestimated–that not only do violent emotions not necessarily sweep you away and drag you back into the whirlpools of your own neuroses, they can actually be used to deepen, embolden, invigorate, and strengthen the Rigpa. The tempestuous energy becomes raw food of the awakened energy of Rigpa. The stronger and more flaming the emotion, the more Rigpa is strengthened.
”
”
Sogyal Rinpoche (The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying)
“
These feminine vessels we inhabited: why did nobody expect them to contain unfeminine feelings? Why could we, too, not be furious and scornful and entirely altered by grief? Why must we accept the cards we had been dealt? I heard the clock chime two in the hall, and attempted to drag myself from the past into the present. But perhaps we never could entirely. Perhaps we were always made up of both, and they fitted perfectly together, like a jagged little heart.
”
”
Stacey Halls (The Foundling)
“
Roan looked down at the pathetic little fur ball with a pink ribbon clipped to the top of its head and growled at it. It came from deep in his throat, and while it was unintentional, it wasn’t precisely a human noise. He could feel it in his throat, vibrating his vocal chords, and the dog’s ears rotated briefly in as much alarm as a dog could express, and then it whimpered and cringed, pissing on the sidewalk in submission.
The woman took a couple steps backward, eyes wide and horrified, and dragged her dog past them as she hurried off, the Pom more than happy to leave.
Paris looked at him, an eyebrow raised and the corner of his mouth quirked up in a half smile. “I love it when you get defensive.”
“I’m the king of the jungle.I’m not taking any shit from a living dust mop.
”
”
Andrea Speed (Prey (Infected, #1))
“
What’s the benefit of dragging up sufferings that are over, of being unhappy now just because you were then? There is good in doing this. We must not flinch when we look at the past. We must strive to learn from our mistakes. So we must learn to bear and endure. The sorrow will one day prove to be for your good.
”
”
Jeff Wheeler (Fireblood (Whispers from Mirrowen, #1))
“
New Rule: Just because a country elects a smart president doesn't make it a smart country. A couple of weeks ago, I was asked on CNN if I thought Sarah Palin could get elected president, and I said I hope not, but I wouldn't put anything past this stupid country. Well, the station was flooded with emails, and the twits hit the fan. And you could tell that these people were really mad, because they wrote entirely in CAPITAL LETTERS!!! Worst of all, Bill O'Reilly refuted my contention that this is a stupid country by calling me a pinhead, which (a) proves my point, and (b) is really funny coming from a doody-face like him.
Now, before I go about demonstration how, sadly, easy it is to prove the dumbness that's dragging us down, let me just say that ignorance has life-and-death consequences. On the eve of the Iraq War, seventy percent of Americans thought Saddam Hussein was personally involved in 9/11. Six years later, thirty-four percent still do. Or look at the health-care debate: At a recent town hall meeting in South Carolina, a man stood up and told his congressman to "keep your government hands off my Medicare," which is kind of like driving cross-country to protest highways.
This country is like a college chick after two Long Island iced teas: We can be talked into anything, like wars, and we can be talked out of anything, like health care. We should forget the town halls, and replace them with study halls.
Listen to some of these stats: A majority of Americans cannot name a single branch of government, or explain what the Bill of Rights is. Twenty-four percent could not name the country America fought in the Revolutionary War. More than two-thirds of Americans don't know what's in Roe v. Wade. Two-thirds don't know what the Food and Drug Administration does. Some of this stuff you should be able to pick up simply by being alive. You know, like the way the Slumdog kid knew about cricket.
Not here. Nearly half of Americans don't know that states have two senators, and more than half can't name their congressman. And among Republican governors, only three got their wife's name right on the first try. People bitch and moan about taxes and spending, but they have no idea what their government spends money on. The average voter thinks foreign aid consumes more twenty-four percent of our budget. It's actually less than one percent.
A third of Republicans believe Obama is not a citizen ad a third of Democrats believe that George Bush had prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks, which is an absurd sentence, because it contains the words "Bush" and "knowledge." Sarah Palin says she would never apologize for America. Even though a Gallup poll say eighteen percent of us think the sun revolves around the earth. No, they're not stupid. They're interplanetary mavericks.
And I haven't even brought up religion. But here's one fun fact I'll leave you with: Did you know only about half of Americans are aware that Judaism is an older religion than Christianity? That's right, half of America looks at books called the Old Testament and the New Testament and cannot figure out which came first.
I rest my case.
”
”
Bill Maher (The New New Rules: A Funny Look At How Everybody But Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass)
“
Most days I'm good. Most days I can pretend I'm like everyone else. But then there are the days when I can't, days when my past catches up to me.
Days like today. I'm too depressed to get out of bed. I'm being dragged under by all those bad memories.
”
”
Laura Thalassa (Rhapsodic (The Bargainer, #1))
“
You may think the past has something to tell you. You may think that you should listen, should strain to make out its whispers, should bend over backward, stoop down low to hear its voice breathed up from the ground, from the dead places. You may think there’s something in it for you, something to understand or make sense of. But I know the truth: I know from the nights of Coldness. I know the past will drag you backward and down, have you snatching at whispers of wind and the gibberish of trees rubbing together, trying to decipher some code, trying to piece together what was broken. It’s hopeless. The past is nothing but a weight. It will build inside of you like a stone.
”
”
Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
“
I'm getting chocolate. I need you. Come over." She hung up, hoping he would get the message. A binge was coming, get help.
Inside the store, she blew past the small plastic shopping baskets not made for heavy lifting, and wheeled the full-sized grocery cart over to the holiday aisle. One of the wheels dragged like a conscience, pulling the cart halfheartedly in the direction of the fresh produce. The other wheels squealed in protest.
”
”
Ann Wertz Garvin (The Dog Year)
“
I paint the way some people write their autobiography. The paintings, finished or not, are the pages of my journal, and as such they are valid. The future will choose the pages it prefers. It's not up to me to make the choice. I have the impression that the time is speading on past me more and more rapidly. I'm like a river that rolls on, dragging with it the trees that grow too close to its banks or dead calves one might have thrown into it or any kind of microbes that develop in it. I carry all that along with me and go on. It's the movement of painting that interests me, the dramatic movement from one effort to the next, even if those efforts are perhaps not pushed to their ultimate end. In some of my paintings I can say with certainty that the effort has been brought to its full weight and its conclusion, because there I have been able to stop the flow of time around me. I have less and less time, and yet I have more and more to say, and what I have to say is,increasingly, something about what goes on in the movement of my thought. I've reached the moment, you see, when the movement of my thought interests me more than the thought itself.
”
”
Françoise Gilot (Life With Picasso)
“
While walking, for example, if we are talking or thinking at the same time, we get caught up in the conversation or thoughts we’re having and get lost in the past or the future, our worries or our projects. People can easily spend their entire lives doing just that. What a tragic waste! Let us instead really live these moments that are given to us. In order to be able to live our life, we have to stop that radio inside, turn off our internal discourse.
How can we enjoy our steps if our attention is given over to all that mental chatter? It’s important to become aware of what we feel, not just what we think. When we touch the ground with our foot, we should be able to feel our foot making contact with the ground. When we do this, we can feel a lot of joy in just being able to walk. When we walk, we can invest all our body and mind into our steps and be fully concentrated in each precious moment of life.
In focusing on that contact with the earth, we stop being dragged around by our thoughts and begin to experience our body and our environment in a wholly different way. Our body is a wonder! Its functioning is the result of millions of processes. We can fully appreciate this only if we stop our constant thinking and
have enough mindfulness and concentration to be in touch with the wonders of our body, the Earth, and the sky.
”
”
Thich Nhat Hanh (Silence: The Power of Quiet in a World Full of Noise)
“
I took a few dragging steps toward the locker-room door. 'You're doing something to me that I wouldn't do to a dog,' I mumbled. 'What you're doing to me is worse than if you were to kill me. You're locking me up in shadows for the rest of my life. You're taking my mind away from me. You're condemning me slowly but surely to madness, to being without a mind. It won't happen right away, but sooner or later, in six months or in a year - Well, I guess that's that.'
I fumbled my way out of the locker room and down the passageway outside, guiding myself with one arm along the wall, and past the sergeant's desk and down the steps, and then I was out in the street.
("All At Once, No Alice")
”
”
Cornell Woolrich (Tales of Obsession: Mystery Stories of Fatal Attractions and Deadly Desires)
“
It's hard getting momentum riding a bike up hill... It's hard getting momentum when you're dragging around all the pain from your past.
”
”
Tony Curl
“
I am still vaguely haunted by our hitchhiker’s remark about how he’d “never rode in a convertible before.” Here’s this poor geek living in a world of convertibles zipping past him on the highways all the time, and he’s never even ridden in one. It made me feel like King Farouk. I was tempted to have my attorney pull into the next airport and arrange some kind of simple, common-law contract whereby we could just give the car to this unfortunate bastard. Just say: “Here, sign this and the car’s yours.” Give him the keys and then use the credit card to zap off on a jet to some place like Miami and rent another huge fireapple-red convertible for a drug-addled, top-speed run across the water all the way out to the last stop in Key West … and then trade the car off for a boat. Keep moving. But this manic notion passed quickly. There was no point in getting this harmless kid locked up—and, besides, I had plans for this car. I was looking forward to flashing around Las Vegas in the bugger. Maybe do a bit of serious drag-racing on the Strip: Pull up to that big stoplight in front of the Flamingo and start screaming at the traffic: “Alright, you chickenshit wimps! You pansies! When this goddamn light flips green, I’m gonna stomp down on this thing and blow every one of you gutless punks off the road!” Right. Challenge the bastards on their own turf. Come screeching up to the crosswalk, bucking and skidding with a bottle of rum in one hand and jamming the horn to drown out the music … glazed eyes insanely dilated behind tiny black, gold-rimmed greaser shades, screaming gibberish … a genuinely dangerous drunk, reeking of ether and terminal psychosis. Revving the engine up to a terrible high-pitched chattering whine, waiting for the light to change … How often does a chance like that come around? To jangle the bastards right down to the core of their spleens. Old elephants limp off to the hills to die; old Americans go out to the highway and drive themselves to death with huge cars.
”
”
Hunter S. Thompson (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas)
“
Here’s something to consider: If you have a friend whose friendship you wouldn’t recommend to your sister, or your father, or your son, why would you have such a friend for yourself? You might say: out of loyalty. Well, loyalty is not identical to stupidity. Loyalty must be negotiated, fairly and honestly. Friendship is a reciprocal arrangement. You are not morally obliged to support someone who is making the world a worse place. Quite the opposite. You should choose people who want things to be better, not worse. It’s a good thing, not a selfish thing, to choose people who are good for you. It’s appropriate and praiseworthy to associate with people whose lives would be improved if they saw your life improve. If you surround yourself with people who support your upward aim, they will not tolerate your cynicism and destructiveness. They will instead encourage you when you do good for yourself and others and punish you carefully when you do not. This will help bolster your resolve to do what you should do, in the most appropriate and careful manner. People who are not aiming up will do the opposite. They will offer a former smoker a cigarette and a former alcoholic a beer. They will become jealous when you succeed, or do something pristine. They will withdraw their presence or support, or actively punish you for it. They will over-ride your accomplishment with a past action, real or imaginary, of their own. Maybe they are trying to test you, to see if your resolve is real, to see if you are genuine. But mostly they are dragging you down because your new improvements cast their faults in an even dimmer light.
”
”
Jordan B. Peterson (12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos)
“
After a moment or two a man in brown crimplene looked in at us, did not at all like the look of us and asked us if we were transit passengers. We said we were. He shook his head with infinite weariness and told us that if we were transit passengers then we were supposed to be in the other of the two rooms. We were obviously very crazy and stupid not to have realized this. He stayed there slumped against the door jamb, raising his eyebrows pointedly at us until we eventually gathered our gear together and dragged it off down the
corridor to the other room. He watched us go past him shaking his head in wonder and sorrow at the stupid futility of the human condition in general and ours in particular, and then closed the door behind us.
The second room was identical to the first. Identical in all respects other than one, which was that it had a hatchway let into one wall. A large vacant-looking girl was leaning through it with her elbows on the counter and her fists jammed up into her cheekbones. She was watching some flies crawling up the wall, not with any great interest because they were not doing anything unexpected, but at least they were doing something. Behind her was a table stacked with biscuits, chocolate bars, cola, and a pot of coffee, and we headed straight towards this like a pack of stoats.
Just before we reached it, however, we were suddenly headed off by a man in blue crimplene, who asked us what we thought we were doing in there. We explained that we were transit passengers on our way to Zaire, and he looked at us as if we had completely taken leave of our senses.
'Transit passengers? he said. 'It is not allowed for transit passengers to be in here.'
He waved us magnificently away from the snack counter, made us pick up all our gear again, and herded us back through the door and away into the first room where, a minute later, the man in the brown crimplene found us again.
He looked at us. Slow incomprehension engulfed him, followed by sadness, anger, deep frustration and a sense that the world had been created specifically to cause him vexation. He leaned back against the wall, frowned, closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.
'You are in the wrong room,' he said simply. `You are transit passengers. Please go to the other room.'
There is a wonderful calm that comes over you in such situations, particularly when there is a refreshment kiosk involved. We nodded, picked up our gear in a Zen-like manner and made our way back down the corridor to the second room. Here the man in blue crimplene accosted us once more but we patiently explained to him that he could fuck off.
”
”
Douglas Adams (Last Chance to See)
“
A few years ago, Ed and I were exploring the dunes on Cumberland Island, one of the barrier islands between the Atlantic Ocean and the mainland of south Georgia. He was looking for the fossilized teeth of long-dead sharks. I was looking for sand spurs so that I did not step on one. This meant that neither of us was looking very far past our own feet, so the huge loggerhead turtle took us both by surprise. She was still alive but just barely, her shell hot to the touch from the noonday sun. We both knew what had happened. She had come ashore during the night to lay her eggs, and when she had finished, she had looked around for the brightest horizon to lead her back to the sea. Mistaking the distant lights on the mainland for the sky reflected on the ocean, she went the wrong way. Judging by her tracks, she had dragged herself through the sand until her flippers were buried and she could go no farther. We found her where she had given up, half cooked by the sun but still able to turn one eye up to look at us when we bent over her. I buried her in cool sand while Ed ran to the ranger station. An hour later she was on her back with tire chains around her front legs, being dragged behind a park service Jeep back toward the ocean. The dunes were so deep that her mouth filled with sand as she went. Her head bent so far underneath her that I feared her neck would break. Finally the Jeep stopped at the edge of the water. Ed and I helped the ranger unchain her and flip her back over. Then all three of us watched as she lay motionless in the surf. Every wave brought her life back to her, washing the sand from her eyes and making her shell shine again. When a particularly large one broke over her, she lifted her head and tried her back legs. The next wave made her light enough to find a foothold, and she pushed off, back into the water that was her home. Watching her swim slowly away after her nightmare ride through the dunes, I noted that it is sometimes hard to tell whether you are being killed or saved by the hands that turn your life upside down.
”
”
Barbara Brown Taylor (Learning to Walk in the Dark: Because Sometimes God Shows Up at Night)
“
It’s been four years since Justin kissed his best friend Lucas when they were both just 12. Then Justin, afraid of what it meant, afraid of how he felt, afraid of what it made him, ran and has been running from and avoiding Lucas for these four years. The thing about running is that no matter how fast you run, the past always catches up with you, and when faced with his past and all the things he’s missed, Justin finds he doesn’t want to run anymore. Now Justin wants to try to make things right with Lucas; he wants his best friend back. But maybe it's too late. Maybe Lucas has moved on. Read the story to find out if Justin is successful. This story isn't only about internalized homophobia and the hurtful things it leads gay kids to do to themselves and others. It is much more about truth, love and hurt and coming to terms with those things, forgiving yourself, and loving yourself enough to hold yourself accountable.
”
”
JUVENALIUS
“
A chill penetrating wail of outrage screamed up from the depts of the Abyss. So loud and horrifying was it that all the citizens of Palanthas woke shruddering from even the deepest sleep and lay in their beds, paralyzed by fear, waiting for the end of the world. The guards on the the city walls could move neither hand nor foot. Shutting their eyes, they cowered in shadows, awaiting death. Babies wimpered in fear, dogs cringed and slunk beneath beds, cat's eyes gleamed.
The shriek sounded again, and a pale hand reached out from the Tower gates. A ghastly face, twisted in fury, floated in the dank air.
Raistlin did not move.
The hand drew near, the face promised him tortures of the Abyss, where he would be dragged for his great folly in daring the curse of the Tower. The skeletal hand touched Raistlin's heart. Then, trembling, it halted.
'Know this,' said Raistlin calmly, looking up at the Tower, pitching his voice so that it could be heard by those within. 'I am the master of the past and the present! My coming was foretold. For me, the gates will open.'
The skeletal hand shrank back and, with a slow sweeping motion of invitation, parted the darkness. The gates swung open upon silent hinges.
Raistlin passed through them without a glance at the hand or the pale visage that was lowered in reverence. As he entered, all the black and shapeless, dark and shadowy things dwelling within the Tower bowed in homage.
Then Raistlin stopped and looked around him.
'I am home,' he said.
”
”
Margaret Weis (Dragons of Spring Dawning (Dragonlance: Chronicles, #3))
“
The day you finally start dealing with your past is the day you stop dragging it into the present. I’m still dealing. I’m still facing the hard stuff. I’m still getting better and growing up. In J, I’ve found a man who’s willing to take that long road with me. *
”
”
Diane Guerrero (In the Country We Love: My Family Divided)
“
BOWLS OF FOOD
Moon and evening star do their
slow tambourine dance to praise
this universe. The purpose of
every gathering is discovered:
to recognize beauty and love
what’s beautiful. “Once it was
like that, now it’s like this,”
the saying goes around town, and
serious consequences too. Men
and women turn their faces to the
wall in grief. They lose appetite.
Then they start eating the fire of
pleasure, as camels chew pungent
grass for the sake of their souls.
Winter blocks the road. Flowers
are taken prisoner underground.
Then green justice tenders a spear.
Go outside to the orchard. These
visitors came a long way, past all
the houses of the zodiac, learning
Something new at each stop. And
they’re here for such a short time,
sitting at these tables set on the
prow of the wind. Bowls of food
are brought out as answers, but
still no one knows the answer.
Food for the soul stays secret.
Body food gets put out in the open
like us. Those who work at a bakery
don’t know the taste of bread like
the hungry beggars do. Because the
beloved wants to know, unseen things
become manifest. Hiding is the
hidden purpose of creation: bury
your seed and wait. After you die,
All the thoughts you had will throng
around like children. The heart
is the secret inside the secret.
Call the secret language, and never
be sure what you conceal. It’s
unsure people who get the blessing.
Climbing cypress, opening rose,
Nightingale song, fruit, these are
inside the chill November wind.
They are its secret. We climb and
fall so often. Plants have an inner
Being, and separate ways of talking
and feeling. An ear of corn bends
in thought. Tulip, so embarrassed.
Pink rose deciding to open a
competing store. A bunch of grapes
sits with its feet stuck out.
Narcissus gossiping about iris.
Willow, what do you learn from running
water? Humility. Red apple, what has
the Friend taught you? To be sour.
Peach tree, why so low? To let you
reach. Look at the poplar, tall but
without fruit or flower. Yes, if
I had those, I’d be self-absorbed
like you. I gave up self to watch
the enlightened ones. Pomegranate
questions quince, Why so pale? For
the pearl you hid inside me. How did
you discover my secret? Your laugh.
The core of the seen and unseen
universes smiles, but remember,
smiles come best from those who weep.
Lightning, then the rain-laughter.
Dark earth receives that clear and
grows a trunk. Melon and cucumber
come dragging along on pilgrimage.
You have to be to be blessed!
Pumpkin begins climbing a rope!
Where did he learn that? Grass,
thorns, a hundred thousand ants and
snakes, everything is looking for
food. Don’t you hear the noise?
Every herb cures some illness.
Camels delight to eat thorns. We
prefer the inside of a walnut, not
the shell. The inside of an egg,
the outside of a date. What about
your inside and outside? The same
way a branch draws water up many
feet, God is pulling your soul
along. Wind carries pollen from
blossom to ground. Wings and
Arabian stallions gallop toward
the warmth of spring. They visit;
they sing and tell what they think
they know: so-and-so will travel
to such-and-such. The hoopoe
carries a letter to Solomon. The
wise stork says lek-lek. Please
translate. It’s time to go to
the high plain, to leave the winter
house. Be your own watchman as
birds are. Let the remembering
beads encircle you. I make promises
to myself and break them. Words are
coins: the vein of ore and the
mine shaft, what they speak of. Now
consider the sun. It’s neither
oriental nor occidental. Only the
soul knows what love is. This
moment in time and space is an
eggshell with an embryo crumpled
inside, soaked in belief-yolk,
under the wing of grace, until it
breaks free of mind to become the
song of an actual bird, and God.
”
”
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi (The Soul of Rumi: A New Collection of Ecstatic Poems)
“
Cheng Xin gazed up at the giant black columns reaching into space. They lifted up the domed sky and seemed to turn the universe into a Palace of Death. Is this the ultimate end for everything? In the sky, Cheng Xin could see the end of the columns. She pointed in that direction. “So the ships entered lightspeed at the end?” “That’s right. These are only about a hundred kilometers high. We’ve seen columns even shorter than these, presumably left by ships that entered lightspeed almost instantaneously.” “Are these the most advanced lightspeed ships?” “Maybe. But this is a rarely seen technique. Death lines are usually the products of Zero-Homers.” “Zero-Homers?” “They’re also called Resetters. Maybe they’re a group of intelligent individuals, or a civilization, or a group of civilizations. We don’t know exactly who they are, but we’ve confirmed their existence. The Zero-Homers want to reset the universe and return it to the Garden of Eden.” “How?” “By moving the hour hand of the clock past twelve. Take spatial dimensions as an example. It’s practically impossible to drag a universe in lower dimensions back into higher dimensions, so maybe it’s better to work forward in the other direction. If the universe can be lowered into zero dimensions and then beyond, the clock might be reset and everything returned to the beginning. The universe might possess ten macroscopic dimensions again.
”
”
Liu Cixin (Death's End (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #3))
“
People who are not aiming up will do the opposite. They will offer a former smoker a cigarette and a former alcoholic a beer. They will become jealous when you succeed, or do something pristine. They will withdraw their presence or support, or actively punish you for it. They will over-ride your accomplishment with a past action, real or imaginary, of their own. Maybe they are trying to test you, to see if your resolve is real, to see if you are genuine. But mostly they are dragging you down because your new improvements cast their faults in an even dimmer light.
”
”
Jordan B. Peterson (12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos)
“
Boys seem to think that girls hold the keys to all happiness, because the female is supposed to have the right of consent and/or dissent. I’ve heard older men reflect on their youth, and an edge of hostile envy drags across their voices as they conjure up the girls who whetted but didn’t satisfy their sexual appetites. It’s interesting that they didn’t realize in those yearning days past, nor even in the present days of understanding, that if the female had the right to decide, she suffered from her inability to instigate. That is, she could only say yes or no if she was asked. She
”
”
Maya Angelou (The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou (Modern Library (Hardcover)))
“
There's one big difference between the poor and the rich,' Kite says, taking a drag from his cigarette. We are in a pub, at lunch-time. John Kite is always, unless stated otherwise, smoking a fag, in a pub, at lunch-time.
'The rich aren't evil, as so many of my brothers would tell you. I've known rich people -- I have played on their yachts -- and they are not unkind, or malign, and they do not hate the poor, as many would tell you. And they are not stupid -- or at least, not any more than the poor are. Much as I find amusing the idea of a ruling class of honking toffs, unable to put their socks on without Nanny helping them, it is not true. They build banks, and broker deals, and formulate policy, all with perfect competency.
'No -- the big difference between the rich and the poor is that the rich are blithe. They believe nothing can ever really be so bad, They are born with the lovely, velvety coating of blitheness -- like lanugo, on a baby -- and it is never rubbed off by a bill that can't be paid; a child that can't be educated; a home that must be left for a hostel, when the rent becomes too much.
'Their lives are the same for generations. There is no social upheaval that will really affect them. If you're comfortably middle-class, what's the worst a government policy could do? Ever? Tax you at 90 per cent and leave your bins, unemptied, on the pavement. But you and everyone you know will continue to drink wine -- but maybe cheaper -- go on holiday -- but somewhere nearer -- and pay off your mortgage -- although maybe later.
'Consider, now, then, the poor. What's the worst a government policy can do to them? It can cancel their operation, with no recourse to private care. It can run down their school -- with no escape route to a prep. It can have you out of your house and into a B&B by the end of the year. When the middle-classes get passionate about politics, they're arguing about their treats -- their tax breaks and their investments. When the poor get passionate about politics, they're fighting for their lives.
'Politics will always mean more to the poor. Always. That's why we strike and march, and despair when our young say they won't vote. That's why the poor are seen as more vital, and animalistic. No classical music for us -- no walking around National Trust properties, or buying reclaimed flooring. We don't have nostalgia. We don't do yesterday. We can't bear it. We don't want to be reminded of our past, because it was awful; dying in mines, and slums, without literacy, or the vote. Without dignity. It was all so desperate, then. That's why the present and the future is for the poor -- that's the place in time for us: surviving now, hoping for better, later. We live now -- for our instant, hot, fast treats, to prep us up: sugar, a cigarette, a new fast song on the radio.
'You must never, never forget, when you talk to someone poor, that it takes ten times the effort to get anywhere from a bad postcode, It's a miracle when someone from a bad postcode gets anywhere, son. A miracle they do anything at all.
”
”
Caitlin Moran (How to Build a Girl (How to Build a Girl, #1))
“
During my stay in London I resided for a considerable time in Clapham Road in the neighbourhood of Clapham Common... One fine summer evening I was returning by the last bus 'outside' as usual, through the deserted streets of the city, which are at other times so full of life. I fell into a reverie (Träumerei), and 10, the atoms were gambolling before my eyes! Whenever, hitherto, these diminutive beings had appeared to me, they had always been in motion: but up to that time I had never been able to discern the nature of their motion. Now, however, I saw how, frequently, two smaller atoms united to form a pair: how the larger one embraced the two smaller ones: how still larger ones kept hold of three or even four of the smaller: whilst the whole kept whirling in a giddy dance. I saw how the larger ones formed a chain, dragging the smaller ones after them but only at the ends of the chain. I saw what our past master, Kopp, my highly honoured teacher and friend has depicted with such charm in his Molekular-Welt: but I saw it long before him. The cry of the conductor 'Clapham Road', awakened me from my dreaming: but I spent part of the night in putting on paper at least sketches of these dream forms. This was the origin of the 'Structural Theory'.
”
”
August Kekulé
“
Things I've Learned in 18 Years of Life 1) True love is not something found, rather [sic] something encountered. You can’t go out and look for it. The person you marry and the person you love could easily be two different people. So have a beautiful life while waiting for God to bring along your once-in-a-lifetime love. Don't allow yourself to settle for anything less than them. Stop worrying about who you're going to marry because God's already on the front porch watching your grandchildren play. 2) God WILL give you more than you can handle, so you can learn to lean on him in times of need. He won't tempt you more than you can handle, though. So don't lose hope. Hope anchors the soul. 3) Remember who you are and where you came from. Remember that you are not from this earth. You are a child of heaven, you're invaluable, you are beautiful. Carry yourself that way. 4) Don't put your faith in humanity, humanity is inherently flawed. We are all imperfect people created and loved by a perfect God. Perfect. So put your faith in Him. 5) I fail daily, and that is why I succeed. 6) Time passes, and nothing and everything changes. Don't live life half asleep. Don't drag your soul through the days. Feel everything you do. Be there physically and mentally. Do things that make you feel this way as well. 7) Live for beauty. We all need beauty, get it where you can find it. Clothing, paintings, sculptures, music, tattoos, nature, literature, makeup. It's all art and it's what makes us human. Same as feeling the things we do. Stay human. 8) If someone makes you think, keep them. If someone makes you feel, keep them. 9) There is nothing the human brain cannot do. You can change anything about yourself that you want to. Fight for it. It's all a mental game. 10) God didn’t break our chains for us to be bound again. Alcohol, drugs, depression, addiction, toxic relationships, monotony and repetition, they bind us. Break those chains. Destroy your past and give yourself new life like God has given you. 11) This is your life. Your struggle, your happiness, your sorrow, and your success. You do not need to justify yourself to anyone. You owe no one an explanation for the choices that you make and the position you are in. In the same vein, respect yourself by not comparing your journey to anyone else's. 12) There is no wrong way to feel. 13) Knowledge is everywhere, keep your eyes open. Look at how diverse and wonderful this world is. Are you going to miss out on beautiful people, places, experiences, and ideas because you are close-minded? I sure hope not. 14) Selfless actions always benefit you more than the recipient. 15) There is really no room for regret in this life. Everything happens for a reason. If you can't find that reason, accept there is one and move on. 16) There is room, however, for guilt. Resolve everything when it first comes up. That's not only having integrity, but also taking care of your emotional well-being. 17) If the question is ‘Am I strong enough for this?’ The answer is always, ‘Yes, but not on your own.’ 18) Mental health and sanity above all. 19) We love because He first loved us. The capacity to love is the ultimate gift, the ultimate passion, euphoria, and satisfaction. We have all of that because He first loved us. If you think about it in those terms, it is easy to love Him. Just by thinking of how much He loves us. 20) From destruction comes creation. Beauty will rise from the ashes. 21) Many things can cause depression. Such as knowing you aren't becoming the person you have the potential to become. Choose happiness and change. The sooner the better, and the easier. 22) Half of happiness is as simple as eating right and exercising. You are one big chemical reaction. So are your emotions. Give your body the right reactants to work with and you'll be satisfied with the products.
”
”
Scott Hildreth (Broken People)
“
You might want to pop your collar."
"Hey if the biker doesn't pop his, I'm not popping mine. Also? We're thirty years past that fashion faux pas."
"Yeah, but it still comes in handy when you're sporting a hickey."
"What?" My hands flew to my neck, and I found the tender spot. "Shit. No, that's not-- I burned it. My hair wasn't cooperating, so I dragged out the curling iron."
"Gabriel has a curling iron?"
"No, I meant--Damn it." I rooted through my bag for concealer. "I'm sorry. If I'd noticed, I'd have hidden it."
"I know." His lips twitched. "It is kinda funny, though, watching you guys scramble with excuses. Gabriel told me you weren't answering my calls because you forgot your phone in the car. Which is about as likely as you leaving your arm behind. He dried his hair so fast the back was sticking up. And then he scarfed down half the food I brought for lunch. I've never seen him eat like that." He smiled. "But I do appreciate he's being circumspect."
"He's not going to wave it in your face."
"No, but we are talking about Gabriel, who never goes out of his way to cushion anyone's feelings but yours. He's being very thoughtful. It's sweet. Just don't tell him I said that."
"I won't." I finished applying the concealer. "Better?"
"Yep." He leaned over for a better look and then stopped. "Is that a bite on your collarbone?"
"Shit! No. Damn it.
Ricky laughed as I frantically applied more makeup.
”
”
Kelley Armstrong (Rituals (Cainsville, #5))
“
Still keeping a tight grip on my neck, Darren dragged me back into the woods, and I knew instantly he was taking me past the perimeter. I fought and kicked against him, but I had already tired myself out from the chase. Once I felt the sharp tick at the back of my head, I could tell Darren had felt it, too, and then he threw me as hard as he could into the woods, and I stumbled and rolled on the ground. I knew I only had about five seconds, and Darren wasn’t going to let me back into the safe zone. I stayed low on the ground, knowing once the volts hit me I was going to crash. Better to already be low than to fall from standing up. And then I felt it. The sharp current cut through my veins like shards of glass, and I screamed in total agony as it felt like my body was being ripped apart. I writhed in pain, thinking that my head was going to split open as my muscles and limbs convulsed under the current. It was, without a doubt, the most painful thing I had ever experienced, and my body quickly shut down, needing only a few seconds to welcome the numb blackness that claimed me.
”
”
Jay Marie (Survival (Stronger, #2))
“
I’ll tell you another secret, this one for your own good. You may think the past has something to tell you. You may think that you should listen, should strain to make out its whispers, should bend over backward, stoop down low to hear its voice breathed up from the ground, from the dead places. You may think there’s something in it for you, something to understand or make sense of. But I know the truth: I know from the nights of Coldness. I know the past will drag you backward and down, have you snatching at whispers of wind and the gibberish of trees rubbing together, trying to decipher some code, trying to piece together what was broken. It’s hopeless. The past is nothing but a weight. It will build inside of you like a stone.
”
”
Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
“
Thus is the defining characteristic of gay millennials: we straddle the pre-Glee and post-Glee worlds. We went to high school when faggot wasn’t even considered an F-word, when being a lesbian meant boys just didn’t want you, when being nonbinary wasn’t even a remote option. We grew up without queer characters in our cartoons or Nickelodeon or Disney or TGIF sitcoms. We were raised in homophobia, came of age as the world changed around us, and are raising children in an age where it’s never been easier to be same-sex parents. We’re both lucky and jealous. As the state of gay evolved culturally and politically, we were old enough to see it and process it and not take it for granted–old enough to know what the world was like without it. Despite the success of Drag Race, the existence of lesbian Christmas rom-coms, and openly transgender Oscar nominees, we haven’t moved on from the trauma of growing up in a culture that hates us. We don’t move on from trauma, really. We can’t really leave it in the past. It becomes a part of us, and we move forward with it.
For LGBTQ+ millennials, our pride is couched in painful memories of a culture repulsed and frightened by queerness. That makes us skittish. It makes us loud. It makes us fear that all this progress, all this tolerance , all of Billy Porter's red carpet looks can vanish as quickly as it all appeared.
”
”
Grace Perry (The 2000s Made Me Gay: Essays on Pop Culture)
“
Okay, okay . . . where do you hear it coming from?”
“Around here somewhere.”
“Always in this spot?”
“No. Not always. You are going to think I am even more insane, but I swear it is following me around.”
“Maybe it is my new powers. The power to drive you mad.” She wriggled her fingers at him theatrically as if she were casting a curse on him.
“You already drive me mad,” he teased, dragging her up against him and nibbling her neck with a playful growling. “Ah hell,” he broke off. “I really am going mad. I cannot believe you cannot hear that. It is like a metronome set to some ridiculously fast speed.”
He turned and walked into the living room, looking around at every shelf.
“The last person to own this place probably had a thing for music and left it running. Listen. Can you hear that?”
“No,” she said thoughtfully, “but I can hear you hearing it if I concentrate on your thoughts. What in the world . . . ?”
Gideon turned, then turned again, concentrating on the rapid sound, following it until it led him right up to his wife.
“It is you!” he said. “No wonder it is following me around. Are you wearing a watch?” He grabbed her wrist and she rolled her eyes.
“A Demon wearing a watch? Now I have heard everything.”
Suddenly Gideon went very, very still, the cold wash of chills that flooded through him so strong that she shivered with the overflow of sensation. He abruptly dropped to his knees and framed her hips with his hands.
“Oh, Legna,” he whispered, “I am such an idiot. It is a baby. It is our baby. I am hearing it’s heartbeat!”
“What?” she asked, her shock so powerful she could barely speak. “I am with child?”
“Yes. Yes, sweet, you most certainly are. A little over a month. Legna, you conceived, probably the first time we made love. My beautiful, fertile, gorgeous wife.”
Gideon kissed her belly through her dress, stood up, and caught her up against him until she squeaked with the force of his hug. Legna went past shock and entered unbelievable joy. She laughed, not caring how tight he held her, feeling his joy on a thousand different levels.
“I never thought I would know this feeling,” he said hoarsely. “Even when we were getting married, I never thought . . . It did not even enter my mind!” Gideon set her down on her feet, putting her at arm’s length as he scanned her thoroughly from head to toe. “I cannot understand why I did not become aware of this sooner. The chemical changes, the hormone levels alone . . .”
“Never mind. We know now,” she said, throwing herself back up against him and hugging him tightly. “Come, we have to tell Noah . . . and Hannah! Oh, and Bella! And Jacob, of course. And Elijah. And we should inform Siena—”
She was still rattling off names as she teleported them to the King’s castle.
”
”
Jacquelyn Frank (Gideon (Nightwalkers, #2))
“
Boys seem to think that girls hold the keys to all happiness, because the female is supposed to have the right of consent and/or dissent. I've heard older men reflect on their youth, and an edge of hostile envy drags across their voices as they conjure up the girls who whetted but didn't satisfy their sexual appetites. It's interesting that they didn't realize in those yearning days past, nor even in the present days of understanding, that if the female had the right to decide, she suffered from her inability to instigate. That is, she could only say yer or no if she was asked.
She spends half her time making herself attractive to men, and the other half trying to divine which of the attracted are serious enough to marry her, and which wish to ram her against the nearest wall and jab into her recklessly, then leave her leaning, legs trembling, cold wet evidence running down her inner thigh. Which one will come to her again, proud to take her to his friends, and which will have friends who only know of her as the easy girl with good (or even bad) poontang?
The crushing insecurity of youth, and the built-in suspicion between the sexes, militate against the survival of the species, and yet, men do legalize their poking, and women do get revenge their whole lives through for the desperate days of insecurity and bear children so that the whole process remains in process.
Alas.
”
”
Maya Angelou (Gather Together in My Name)
“
With a raw ache in his voice he said, “If you would take one step forward, darling, you could cry in my arms. And while you do, I’ll tell you how sorry I am for everything I’ve done-“ Unable to wait, Ian caught her, pulling her tightly against him. “And when I’m finished,” he whispered hoarsely as she wrapped her arms around him and wept brokenly, “you can help me find a way to forgive myself.”
Tortured by her tears, he clasped her tighter and rubbed his jaw against her temple, his voice a ravaged whisper: “I’m sorry,” he told her. He cupped her face between his palms, tipping it up and gazing into her eyes, his thumbs moving over her wet cheeks. “I’m sorry.” Slowly, he bent his head, covering her mouth with his. “I’m so damned sorry.”
She kissed him back, holding him fiercely to her while shattered sobs racked her slender body and tears poured from her eyes. Tormented by her anguish, Ian dragged his mouth from hers, kissing her wet cheeks, running his hands over her shaking back and shoulders, trying to comfort her. “Please darling, don’t cry anymore,” he pleaded hoarsely. “Please don’t.” She held him tighter, weeping, her cheek pressed to his chest, her tears soaking his heavy woolen shirt and tearing at his heart.
“Don’t,” Ian whispered, his voice raw with his own unshed tears. “You’re tearing me apart.” An instant after he said those words, he realized that she’d stop crying to keep from hurting him, and he felt her shudder, trying valiantly to get control. He cupped the back of her head, crumpling the silk of her hair, holding her face pressed to his chest, imagining the nights he’d made her weep like this, despising himself with a virulence that was almost past bearing.
He’d driven her here, to hide from the vengeance of his divorce petition, and still she had been waiting for him. In all the endless weeks since she’d confronted him in his study and warned him she wouldn’t let him put her out of his life, Ian had never imagined that she would be hurting like this. She was twenty years old and she had loved him. In return, he had tried to divorce her, publicly scorned her, privately humiliated her, and then he had driven her here to weep in solitude and wait for him. Self-loathing and shame poured through him like hot acid, almost doubling him over. Humbly, he whispered, “Will you come upstairs with me?”
She nodded, her cheek rubbing his chest, and he swung her into his arms, cradling her tenderly against him, brushing his lips against her forehead. He carried her upstairs, intending to take her to bed and give her so much pleasure that-at least for tonight-she’d be able to forget the misery he’d caused her.
”
”
Judith McNaught (Almost Heaven (Sequels, #3))
“
Daniel's wings were concealed, but he must have sensed her eyeing the place where they unfurled from his shoulders. "When everything is in order, we'll fly wherever we have to go to stop Lucifer. Until then it's better to stay low to the ground."
"Okay," Luce said.
"Race you to the other side?"
Her breath frosted the air. "You know I'd beat you."
"True." He slipped an arm around her waist, warming her. "Maybe we'd better take the boat, then. Protect my famous pride."
She watched him unmoor a small metal rowboat from a boat slip. The soft light on the water made her think back to the day they'd raced across the secret lake at Sword & Cross. His skin had glistened as they had pulled themselves up to the flat rock in the center to catch their breath, then had lain on the sun-warmed stone, letting the day's heat dry their bodies. She'd barely known Daniel then-she hadn't known he was an angel-and already she'd been dangerously in love with him.
"We used to swim together in my lifetime in Tahiti, didn't we?" she asked, surprised to remember another time she'd seen Daniel's hair glisten with water.
Daniel stared at her and she knew how much it meant to him finally to be able to share some of his memories of their past. He looked so moved that Luce thought he might cry.
Instead he kissed her forehead tenderly and said, "You beat me all those times, too, Lulu."
They didn't talk much as Daniel rowed. It was enough for Luce to watch the way his muscles strained and flexed each time he dragged back, hearing the oars dip into and out of the cold water, breathing in the brine of the ocean.
”
”
Lauren Kate (Rapture (Fallen, #4))
“
It takes me a while to drag him out, he's got himself stuck to the axle, and by the time I am done and stand over the body something strange has started to happen. The alley's filled with a half-dozen cats, runty little things with their ribs showing and their tails worn high like they're pointing to the moon. I stand there, breathing froth into the snowflakes and watch them gather round me, soft kitty paws, and now and then a patrol car rolls past in the distance. The cats are circling us, tails cocked at the moon, their muzzles bloodied by the tail lights' glow. They are vicious bastards, let me tell you: frost on their whiskers, eyes like cut glass, a half-dozen pairs, on me and the dead man. And then they start licking. Licking at the snow I mean, the blood in the snow, they lap it up like mother's milk. And all the while from their throats, from their whole bodies, there issues this sound, you hear it with your skin, it's like an engine running under your palm. That's when I realize they are purring, man, purring as they feed on the midget's death.
”
”
Dan Vyleta (Pavel & I)
“
The last time the "best and brightest" got control of the country, they dragged it into a protracted, demoralizing war in Southeast Asia, from which the country has still not fully recovered. Yet Reich seems to believe that a new generation of Whiz Kids can do for the faltering American economy what Robert McNamara's generation failed to do for American diplomacy: to restore, through sheer brainpower, the world leadership briefly enjoyed by the United States after World War II and subsequently lost not, of course, through stupidity so much as through the very arrogance the "arrogance of power," as Senator William Fulbright used to call it to which the "best and brightest" are congenitally addicted.
This arrogance should not be confused with the pride characteristic of aristocratic classes, which rests on the inheritance of an ancient lineage and on the obligation to defend its honor. Neither valor and chivalry nor the code of courtly, romantic love, with which these values are closely associated, has any place in the world view of the best and brightest. A meritocracy has no more use for chivalry and valor than a hereditary aristocracy has for brains. Although hereditary advantages play an important part in the attainment of professional or managerial status, the new class has to maintain the fiction that its power rests on intelligence alone. Hence it has little sense of ancestral gratitude or of an obligation to live up to responsibilities inherited from the past. It thinks of itself as a self-made elite owing its privileges exclusively to its own efforts. Even the concept of a republic of letters, which might be expected to appeal to elites with such a large stake in higher education, is almost entirely absent from their frame of reference.
”
”
Christopher Lasch (The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy)
“
That said, if we could build giant megalasers, there might be an additional bonus for rocketry. One group at Brown recently suggested that a powerful laser could be used to reduce air drag by as much as 95%. Imagine this: As you are being laser-blasted up, a second laser is being fired into the region ahead of you. This makes the air ahead of you less dense, so there’s less to bump into. Now your astronauts might get a little antsy, since they’re flying at well past the speed of sound with ultrapowerful lasers before and behind them, but you could solve this problem by just calling them cowards.
”
”
Kelly Weinersmith (Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That'll Improve and/or Ruin Everything)
“
Or I can stay with Colby when he comes back,” she added deliberately. She even smiled. “He’ll take care of me.”
His black eyes narrowed. “He can barely take care of himself,” he said flatly. “He’s a lost soul. He can’t escape the past or face the future without Maureen. He isn’t ready for a relationship with anyone else, even if he thinks he is”
She didn’t rise to the bait. “I can count on Colby. He’ll help me if I need it.”
He looked frustrated. “But you won’t let me help you.”
“Colby isn’t involved with anyone who’d be jealous of the time he spent looking out for me. That’s the difference.”
He let out an angry breath and his eyes began to glitter. “You have to beat the subject to death, I guess.”
She managed to look indifferent. “You have your own life to live, Tate. I’m not part of it anymore. You’ve made that quite clear.”
His teeth clenched. “Is it really that easy for you to throw the past away?” he asked.
“That’s what you want,” she reminded him. There was a perverse pleasure in watching his eyes narrow. “You said you’d never forget or forgive me,” she added evenly. “I took you at your word. I’ll always have fond memories of you and Leta. But I’m a grown woman. I have a career, a future. I’ve dragged you down financially for years, without knowing it. Now that I do…”
“For God’s sake!” he burst out, rising to pace with his hands clenched in his pockets. “I could have sent you to Harvard if you’d wanted to go there, and never felt the cost!
“You’re missing the point,” she said, feeling nausea rise in her throat and praying it wouldn’t overflow. “I could have worked my way through school, paid for my own apartment and expenses. I wouldn’t have minded. But you made me beholden to you in a way I can never repay.”
He stopped pacing and glared at her. “Have I asked for repayment?”
She smiled in spite of herself. “You look just like Matt when you glower that way.”
The glare got worse.
She held up a hand. “I know. You don’t want to talk about that. Sorry.”
“Everyone else wants to talk about it,” he said irritably. “I’ve done nothing but dodge reporters ever since the story broke. What a hell of a way to do it, on national television!
”
”
Diana Palmer (Paper Rose (Hutton & Co. #2))
“
You’re too goddamned fat,” he said. I took a defiant drag on my cigarette and willed myself not to cry. The remark made me dizzy. For the past four years, Ma and Grandma had played by the rule: never to mention my weight. Now my jeans and sweatshirt were folded in a helpless pile beside me and there was only a thin sheet of paper between my rolls of dimply flesh and this detestable old man. My heart raced with fear and nicotine and Pepsi. My whole body shook, dripped sweat. “Any trouble with your period?” he asked. “No.” “What?” “No trouble,” I managed, louder. He nodded in the direction of his stand-up scale. The backs of my legs made little sucking sounds as they unglued themselves from the plastic upholstery. He brought the sliding metal bar down tight against my scalp and fiddled with the cylinder in front of my face. “Five-five and a half,” he said. “Two hundred . . . fifty-seven.” The tears leaking from my eyes made stains on the paper gown. I nodded or shook my head abruptly at each of his questions, coughed on command for his stethoscope, and took his pamphlets on diet, smoking, heart murmur. He signed the form. At the door, his hand on the knob, he turned back and waited until I met his eye. “Let me tell you something,” he said. “My wife died four Tuesdays ago. Cancer of the colon. We were married forty-one years. Now you stop feeling sorry for yourself and lose some of that pork of yours. Pretty girl like you—you don’t want to do this to yourself.” “Eat shit,” I said. He paused for a moment, as if considering my comment. Then he opened the door to the waiting room and announced to my mother and someone else who’d arrived that at the rate I was going, I could expect to die before I was forty years old. “She’s too fat and she smokes,” I heard him say just before the hall rang out with the sound of my slamming his office door. I was wheezing wildly by the time I reached the final landing. On the turnpike on the way home, Ma said, “I could stand to cut down, too, you know. It wouldn’t hurt me one bit. We could go on a diet together? Do they still sell that Metrecal stuff?” “I’ve been humiliated enough for one fucking decade,” I said. “You say one more thing to me and I’ll jump out of this car and smash my head under someone’s wheels.
”
”
Wally Lamb (She's Come Undone)
“
I think that what you are most passionate about is the strongest magnet to bring you reward on many levels.” When we release what was, then what is or what could be has space to be born. Children are the happiest people on the planet because they are not dragging the baggage of a long heavy past around with them. If they trip and fall or get upset, they get over it quickly. Nor are they pondering or planning what comes next. The now moment provides them with all the entertainment and fulfillment they need. At some point we all got hung up on time and we abandoned the current moment. We have distracted ourselves with what is not here. Yet the now moment is always available for us to reclaim our soul. At any instant we can step back into heaven. Lao Tse would urge us to pitch our tent right here, the only place life truly lives.
”
”
Alan Cohen (The Tao Made Easy: Timeless Wisdom to Navigate a Changing World (Made Easy series))
“
In the same way, there is also a period in the spiritual life, when sin works to drag the sinner back to the life from which it has recently escaped. Like armies ready for battle, all the sinner’s past iniquities hurry after him and overtake him in a place where there is no escape. The poor fugitive wants to escape, but he cannot. What must he do? Remember, that is when Moses cried to the Lord. When nothing else could be found to provide protection to the unhappy slaves, when the Red Sea was in front of them, and the mountains shut them in on either side, and an angry enemy pursued them, there was one road that was not blocked. It was the King’s highway leading up to the throne; it was the way to their God. They began to travel that road immediately, lifting up their hearts in humble prayer to God, trusting that he would deliver them.
”
”
Charles Haddon Spurgeon (Peace and Purpose in Trial and Suffering)
“
Fane and Jacque looked up from the table when they heard Sally's singing all through the cafeteria. She was belting out at the top of her lungs Train's "Meet Virginia". A very pissed off looking Jen was dragging her IV pole as quickly as she could without falling, trying to catch up to her quarry. By the time Sally had reached the table, she had tears “streaming down her face from laughing so hard. She leaned over the table, panting, finishing her serenade. "Her confidence is tragic, but her intuition magic, and the shape of her body, unusual, meet Virginia!" Sally ended dramatically, arms in the air like Vanna White indicating where Jen now stood. Much to Jen's chagrin the entire cafeteria broke into applause.
Jen pasted on her most dazzling smile and waved at everyone adoringly, but to Sally she muttered under her breath, "This is war.
”
”
Quinn Loftis (Blood Rites (The Grey Wolves, #2))
“
Necessities
1
A map of the world. Not the one in the atlas,
but the one in our heads, the one we keep coloring in.
With the blue thread of the river by which we grew up.
The green smear of the woods we first made love in.
The yellow city we thought was our future.
The red highways not traveled, the green ones
with their missed exits, the black side roads
which took us where we had not meant to go.
The high peaks, recorded by relatives,
though we prefer certain unmarked elevations,
the private alps no one knows we have climbed.
The careful boundaries we draw and erase.
And always, around the edges,
the opaque wash of blue, concealing
the drop-off they have stepped into before us,
singly, mapless, not looking back.
2
The illusion of progress. Imagine our lives without it:
tape measures rolled back, yardsticks chopped off.
Wheels turning but going nowhere.
Paintings flat, with no vanishing point.
The plots of all novels circular;
page numbers reversing themselves past the middle.
The mountaintop no longer a goal,
merely the point between ascent and descent.
All streets looping back on themselves;
life as a beckoning road an absurd idea.
Our children refusing to grow out of their childhoods;
the years refusing to drag themselves
toward the new century.
And hope, the puppy that bounds ahead,
no longer a household animal.
3
Answers to questions, an endless supply.
New ones that startle, old ones that reassure us.
All of them wrong perhaps, but for the moment
solutions, like kisses or surgery.
Rising inflections countered by level voices,
words beginning with w hushed
by declarative sentences. The small, bold sphere
of the period chasing after the hook,
the doubter that walks on water
and treads air and refuses to go away.
4
Evidence that we matter. The crash of the plane
which, at the last moment, we did not take.
The involuntary turn of the head,
which caused the bullet to miss us.
The obscene caller who wakes us at midnight
to the smell of gas. The moon's
full blessing when we fell in love,
its black mood when it was all over.
Confirm us, we say to the world,
with your weather, your gifts, your warnings,
your ringing telephones, your long, bleak silences.
5
Even now, the old things first things,
which taught us language. Things of day and of night.
Irrational lightning, fickle clouds, the incorruptible moon.
Fire as revolution, grass as the heir
to all revolutions. Snow
as the alphabet of the dead, subtle, undeciphered.
The river as what we wish it to be.
Trees in their humanness, animals in their otherness.
Summits. Chasms. Clearings.
And stars, which gave us the word distance,
so we could name our deepest sadness.
”
”
Lisel Mueller (Alive Together)
“
I whirled on him. He was spattered with blood, breathing hard, head down, eyes narrowed, and fury was rolling off him in thick, dangerous waves. How dare he be furious with me? I was the wronged party! My battle was interrupted, bloodlust was bottled up inside me, a turbo engine revved to redline.
“The vamp was mine< Barrons.”
“Inspect his teeth, Ms. Lane,” he said tightly. “They were cosmetic enhancements. He was no vampire.”
I punched him lightly in the shoulder. “I don’t care what he was! It was my fight, you bastard!”
He punched me back with the same light, warning force. “You were taking too long to finish it up.”
“Who are you to decide how long is too long?” I gave him another tap in the shoulder.
He returned the blow with equal force. “You were enjoying it!”
“I was not!”
“You were smiling, bouncing on the balls of your feet, egging him on.”
“I was trying to end the fight!” I punched his shoulder, hard this time.
“You were way past trying to end it,” he snapped, punching me back. I nearly fell over. “You were prolonging it. You were glorying in it.”
“You don’t know what the feck you’re talking about!” I shouted.
“I couldn’t tell the difference between the two of you anymore!” he roared.
I smashed my fist into his face. Lies roll off us. It’s the truths we work hardest to silence. “Then you weren’t looking hard enough! I’m the one with boobs!”
“I know you’re the one with boobs! They’re in my fucking face every fucking time I turn around!”
“Maybe you need to get a grip on your libido, Barrons!”
“Fuck you, Ms. Lane!”
“You just try. I’ll kick the shit out of you!”
“You think you could?”
“Bring it on.”
He grabbed a fistful of my T-shirt, and dragged me up against him until our noses touched. “I’ll bring it on, Ms. Lane. But remember you asked for it. So don’t even think about trying to tap out on the mat and quit the fight.”
“You hear anybody crying ‘Uncle’ here, Barrons? I don’t.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.
”
”
Karen Marie Moning (Bloodfever (Fever, #2))
“
When she finally reached it, she bent forward and looked through the peephole.
Jay was grinning back at her from outside.
Her heart leaped for a completely different reason.
She set aside her crutches and quickly unbolted the door to open it.
"What took you so long?"
Her knee was bent and her ankle pulled up off the ground. She balanced against the doorjamb. "What d'you think, dumbass?" she retorted smartly, keeping her voice down so she wouldn't alert her parents. "You scared the crap out of me, by the way. My parents are already in bed, and I was all alone down here."
"Good!" he exclaimed as he reached in and grabbed her around the waist, dragging her up against him and wrapping his arms around her.
She giggled while he held her there, enjoying everything about the feel of him against her. "What are you doing here? I thought I wouldn't see you till tomorrow."
"I wanted to show you something!" He beamed at her, and his enthusiasm reached out to capture her in its grip. She couldn't help smiling back excitedly.
"What is it?" she asked breathlessly.
He didn't release her; he just turned, still holding her gently in his arms, so that she could see out into the driveway. The first thing she noticed was the officer in his car, alert now as he kept a watchful eye on the two of them. Violet realized that it was late, already past eleven, and from the look on his face, she thought he must have been hoping for a quiet, uneventful evening out there.
And then she saw the car. It was beautiful and sleek, painted a glossy black that, even in the dark, reflected the light like a polished mirror. Violet recognized the Acura insignia on the front of the hood, and even though she could tell it wasn't brand-new, it looked like it had been well taken care of.
"Whose is it?" she asked admiringly. It was way better than her crappy little Honda.
Jay grinned again, his face glowing with enthusiasm. "It's mine. I got it tonight. That's why I had to go. My mom had the night off, and I wanted to get it before..." He smiled down at her. "I didn't want to borrow your car to take you to the dance."
"Really?" she breathed. "How...? I didn't even know you were..." She couldn't seem to find the right words; she was envious and excited for him all at the same time.
"I know right?" he answered, as if she'd actually asked coherent questions. "I've been saving for...for forever, really. What do you think?"
Violet smiled at him, thinking that he was entirely too perfect for her. "I think it's beautiful," she said with more meaning than he understood. And then she glanced back at the car. "I had no idea that you were getting a car. I love it, Jay," she insisted, wrapping her arms around his neck as he hoisted her up, cradling her like a small child."
"I'd offer to take you for a test-drive, but I'm afraid that Supercop over there would probably Taser me with his stun gun. So you'll have to wait until tomorrow," he said, and without waiting for an invitation he carried her inside, dead bolting the door behind him.
He settled down on the couch, where she'd been sitting by herself just moments before, without letting her go. There was a movie on the television, but neither of them paid any attention to it as Jay reclined, stretching out and drawing her down into the circle of his arms. They spent the rest of the night like that, cradled together, their bodies fitting each other perfectly, as they kissed and whispered and laughed quietly in the darkness.
At some point Violet was aware that she was drifting into sleep, as her thoughts turned dreamlike, becoming disjointed and fuzzy and hard to hold on to. She didn't fight it; she enjoyed the lazy, drifting feeling, along with the warmth created by the cocoon of Jay's body wrapped protectively around her.
It was the safest she'd felt in days...maybe weeks...
And for the first time since she'd been chased by the man in the woods, her dreams were free from monsters.
”
”
Kimberly Derting (The Body Finder (The Body Finder, #1))
“
She began talking, quietly and succinctly, telling Sam about what had happened to her ten years ago, telling him about these past nine months. When she was done, she stared up at the oak leaves rustling overhead and dragged her fingers through the soft grass. “I miss you,” she said. “Every day, I miss you. And I wonder what you would have made of all this. Made of me. I think—I think you would have been a wonderful king. I think they would have liked you more than me, actually.” Her throat tightened. “I never told you—how I felt. But I loved you, and I think a part of me might always love you. Maybe you were my mate, and I never knew it. Maybe I’ll spend the rest of my life wondering about that. Maybe I’ll see you again in the Afterworld, and then I’ll know for sure. But until then … until then I’ll miss you, and I’ll wish you were here.” She would not apologize, nor say it was her fault. Because his death wasn’t her fault. And tonight … tonight she would settle that debt.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (Queen of Shadows (Throne of Glass, #4))
“
RANSOM
When the freighters inch past in the distance
The men load their small boats. They motor out,
Buzzing like mosquitoes, aimed at the iron
Side of the blind ship as it creeps closer.
They have guns. They know the sea like it
Is their mother, and she is not well. Her fish
Are gone. She heaves barrels leaking disease
Onto the shores. When she goes into a fit,
She throws a curse upon the land, dragging
Houses, people to their deaths. She glows
In a way she should not. She tastes of industry.
No one is fighting for her, and so they fight.
By night, they load their boats and motor out,
And by day, they aim their guns at the ships,
Climbing aboard. It is clear what they want.
The white men scramble. Some fight back.
When one is taken, the whole world sits up
To watch. When the pirates fall, the world
Smiles to itself, thanking goodness. They
Show the black faces and the dead black bodies
On TV. When the pirates win, after the great
White ships return to their own shores,
There is a party that lasts for days.
”
”
Tracy K. Smith (Life on Mars: Poems)
“
Elizabeth was not entirely right. The climb was steep enough, but the trunk, which originally felt quite light, seemed to gain a pound of weight with every step they took. A few yards from the house both ladies paused to rest again, then Elizabeth resolutely grabbed the handle on her end. “You go to the door, Lucy,” she said breathlessly, worried for the older woman’s health if she had to lug the trunk any further. “I’ll just drag this along.”
Miss Throckmorton-Jones took one look at her poor, bedraggled charge, and rage exploded in her breast that they’d been brought so low as this. Like an angry general she gave her gloves an irate yank, turned on her heel, marched up to the front door, and lifted her umbrella. Using its handle like a club, she rapped hard upon the door.
Behind her Elizabeth doggedly dragged the trunk. “You don’t suppose there’s no one home?” She panted, hauling the trunk the last few feet.
“If they’re in there, they must be deaf!” said Lucinda. She brought up her umbrella again and began swinging at the door in a way that sent rhythmic thunder through the house. “Open up, I say!” she shouted, and on the third downswing the door suddenly lurched open to reveal a startled middle-aged man who was struck on the head by the handle of the descending umbrella.
“God’s teeth!” Jake swore, grabbing his head and glowering a little dizzily at the homely woman who was glowering right back at him, her black bonnet crazily askew atop her wiry gray hair.
“It’s God’s ears you need, not his teeth!” the sour-faced woman informed him as she caught Elizabeth’s sleeve and pulled her one step into the house. “We are expected,” she informed Jake. In his understandably dazed state, Jake took another look at the bedraggled, dusty ladies and erroneously assumed they were the women from the village come to clean and cook for Ian and him. His entire countenance changed, and a broad grin swept across his ruddy face. The growing lump on his head forgiven and forgotten, he stepped back. “Welcome, welcome,” he said expansively, and he made a broad, sweeping gesture with his hand that encompassed the entire dusty room. “Where do you want to begin?”
“With a hot bath,” said Lucinda, “followed by some tea and refreshments.”
From the corner of her eye Elizabeth glimpsed a tall man who was stalking in from a room behind the one where they stood, and an uncontrollable tremor of dread shot through her.
“Don’t know as I want a bath just now,” Jake said.
“Not for you, you dolt, for Lady Cameron.”
Elizabeth could have sworn Ian Thornton stiffened with shock. His head jerked toward her as if trying to see past the rim of her bonnet, but Elizabeth was absolutely besieged with cowardice and kept her head averted.
“You want a bath?” Jake repeated dumbly, staring at Lucinda.
“Indeed, but Lady Cameron’s must come first. Don’t just stand there,” she snapped, threatening his midsection with her umbrella. “Send servants down to the road to fetch our trunks at once.” The point of the umbrella swung meaningfully toward the door, then returned to jab Jake’s middle. “But before you do that, inform your master that we have arrived.”
“His master,” said a biting voice from a rear doorway, “is aware of that.
”
”
Judith McNaught (Almost Heaven (Sequels, #3))
“
Oh, good. I was worried you’d taken ill.”
“Why?” Elizabeth asked as she took a sip of the chocolate. It was cold as ice!
“Because I couldn’t wake-“
“What time is it?” Elizabeth cried.
“Nearly eleven.”
“Eleven! But I told you to wake me at eight! How could you let me oversleep this way?” she said, her sleep-drugged mind already groping wildly for a solution. She could dress quickly and catch up with everyone. Or…
“I did try,” Berta exclaimed, hurt by the uncharacteristic sharpness in Elizabeth’s tone, “but you didn’t want to wake up.”
“I never want to awaken, Berta, you know that!”
“But you were worse this morning than normal. You said your head ached.”
“I always say things like that. I don’t know what I’m saying when I’m asleep. I’ll say anything to bargain for a few minutes’ more sleep. You’ve known that for years, and you always shake me awake anyway.”
“But you said,” Berta persisted, tugging unhappily a her apron, “that since it rained so much last night you were sure the trip to the village wouldn’t take place, so you didn’t have to arise at all.”
“Berta, for heaven’s sake!” Elizabeth cried, throwing off the covers and jumping out of bed with more energy than she’d ever shown after such a short period of wakefulness. “I’ve told you I’m dying of diphtheria to make you go away, and that didn’t succeed!”
“Well,” Berta shot back, marching over to the bell pull and ringing for a bath to be brought up, “when you told me that, your face wasn’t pale and your head didn’t feel hot to my touch. And you hadn’t dragged yourself into bed as if you could hardly stand when it was half past one in the morning!”
Contrite, Elizabeth slumped down in the bed. “It’s not your fault that I sleep like a hibernating bear. And besides, if they didn’t go to the village, it makes no difference at all that I overslept.” She was trying to resign herself to the notion of spending the day in the house with a man who could look at her across a roomful of diners and make her heart leap when Berta said, “They did go to the village. Last night’s storm was more noise and threat than rain.”
Closing her eyes for a brief moment, Elizabeth emitted a long sigh. It was already eleven, which meant Ian had already begun his useless vigil at the cottage.
”
”
Judith McNaught (Almost Heaven (Sequels, #3))
“
per hour. Handbrake knew that he could keep up with the best of them. Ambassadors might look old-fashioned and slow, but the latest models had Japanese engines. But he soon learned to keep it under seventy. Time and again, as his competitors raced up behind him and made their impatience known by the use of their horns and flashing high beams, he grudgingly gave way, pulling into the slow lane among the trucks, tractors and bullock carts. Soon, the lush mustard and sugarcane fields of Haryana gave way to the scrub and desert of Rajasthan. Four hours later, they reached the rocky hills surrounding the Pink City, passing in the shadow of the Amber Fort with its soaring ramparts and towering gatehouse. The road led past the Jal Mahal palace, beached on a sandy lake bed, into Jaipur’s ancient quarter. It was almost noon and the bazaars along the city’s crenellated walls were stirring into life. Beneath faded, dusty awnings, cobblers crouched, sewing sequins and gold thread onto leather slippers with curled-up toes. Spice merchants sat surrounded by heaps of lal mirch, haldi and ground jeera, their colours as clean and sharp as new watercolor paints. Sweets sellers lit the gas under blackened woks of oil and prepared sticky jalebis. Lassi vendors chipped away at great blocks of ice delivered by camel cart. In front of a few of the shops, small boys, who by law should have been at school, swept the pavements, sprinkling them with water to keep down the dust. One dragged a doormat into the road where the wheels of passing vehicles ran over it, doing the job of carpet beaters. Handbrake honked his way through the light traffic as they neared the Ajmeri Gate, watching the faces that passed by his window: skinny bicycle rickshaw drivers, straining against the weight of fat aunties; wild-eyed Rajasthani men with long handlebar moustaches and sun-baked faces almost as bright as their turbans; sinewy peasant women wearing gold nose rings and red glass bangles on their arms; a couple of pink-faced goras straining under their backpacks; a naked sadhu, his body half covered in ash like a caveman. Handbrake turned into the old British Civil Lines, where the roads were wide and straight and the houses and gardens were set well apart. Ajay Kasliwal’s residence was number
”
”
Tarquin Hall (The Case of the Missing Servant (Vish Puri, #1))
“
You're trying to kiss Emma?" Rayna says, incredulous. "But you haven't even sifted yet, Galen."
"Sifted?" Emma asks.
Toraf laughs. "Princess, why don't we go for a swim? You know that storm probably dredged up all sorts of things for your collection." Galen nods a silent thank you to Toraf as he ushers his sister into the living room. For once, he's thankful for Rayna's hoard of human relics. He almost had to drag her to shore by her fin to get past all the old shipwrecks along this coast.
"We'll split up, cover more ground," Rayna's saying as they leave.
Galen feels Emma looking at him, but he doesn't acknowledge her. Instead, he watches the beach as Toraf and Rayna disappear in the waves, hand in hand. Galen shakes his head. No one should feel sorry for Toraf. He knows just exactly what he's doing. Something Galen wishes he could say of himself.
Emma puts a hand on his arm-she won't be ignored. "What is that? Sifted?"
Finally he turns, meets her gaze. "It's like dating to humans. Only, it goes a lot faster. And it has more of a purpose than humans sometimes do when they date."
"What purpose?"
"Sifting is our way of choosing a life mate. When a male turns eighteen, he usually starts sifting to find himself a companion. For a female whose company he will enjoy and ho will be suitable for producing offspring."
"Oh," she says, thoughtful. "And...you haven't sifted yet?"
He shakes his head, painfully aware of her hand still on his arm. She must realize it at the same time, because she snatches it away. "Why not?" she says, clearing her throat. "Are you not old enough to sift?"
"I'm old enough," he says softly.
"How old are you, exactly?"
"Twenty." He doesn't mean to lean closer to her-or does he?
"Is that normal? That you haven't sifted yet?"
He shakes his head. "It's pretty much standard for males to be mated by the time they turn nineteen. But my responsibilities as ambassador would take me away from my mate too much. It wouldn't be fair to her."
"Oh, right. Keeping a watch on the humans," she says quickly. "You're right. That wouldn't be fair, would it?"
He expects another debate. For her to point out, as she did last night, that if there were more ambassadors, he wouldn't have to shoulder the responsibility alone-and she would be right. But she doesn't debate. In fact, she drops the subject altogether.
Backing away from him, she seems intent on widening the space he'd closed between them. She fixes her expression into nonchalance. "Well, are you ready to help me turn into a fish?" she says, as if they'd been talking about this the whole time.
He blinks. "That's it?"
"What?"
"No more questions about sifting? No lectures about appointing more ambassadors?"
"It's not my business," she says with an indifferent shrug. "Why should I care whether or not you mate? And it's not like I'll be sifting-or sifted. After you teach me to sprout a fin, we'll be going our separate ways. Besides, you wouldn't care if I dated any humans, right?" With that, she leaves him there staring after her, mouth hanging open. At the door, she calls over her shoulder, "I'll meet you on the beach in fifteen minutes. I just have to call my mom and check in and change into my swimsuit." She flips her hair to the side before disappearing up the stairs.
He turns to Rachel, who's hand-drying a pan to death, eyebrows reaching for her hairline. He shrugs to her in askance, mouth still ajar. She sighs. "Sweet pea, what did you expect?"
"Something other than that.
”
”
Anna Banks (Of Poseidon (The Syrena Legacy, #1))
“
In theory one is aware that the earth revolves, but in practice one does not perceive it, the ground upon which one treads seems not to move, and one can live undisturbed. So it is with Time in one’s life. And to make its flight perceptible novelists are obliged, by wildly accelerating the beat of the pendulum, to transport the reader in a couple of minutes over ten, or twenty, or even thirty years. At the top of one page we have left a lover full of hope; at the foot of the next we meet him again, a bowed old man of eighty, painfully dragging himself on his daily walk about the courtyard of an almshouse, scarcely replying to what is said to him, oblivious of the past. In saying of me, “He is no longer a child,” “His tastes will not change now,” and so forth, my father had suddenly made me apparent to myself in my position in Time, and caused me the same kind of depression as if I had been, not yet the enfeebled old pensioner, but one of those heroes of whom the author, in a tone of indifference which is particularly galling, says to us at the end of a book: “He very seldom comes up now from the country. He has finally decided to end his days there.
”
”
Marcel Proust (In Search Of Lost Time (All 7 Volumes) (ShandonPress))
“
Isn't it surprising what an array of things a woman can drag forth, burrowing into attics, rooms and nooks! Things long out of mind; an old thing; a worn-out thing; but it has lain in that room, nook or bag until just such a riot of soap and scrubbing brush brings it out. And, as I think of it, a human mind could, and should go through just such a ransacking, occasionally; for you don’t know half of what an accumulation of rubbish is kicking about, in its dark, musty corridors. Old fashions in thoughts; bigotry; vanity; all lying stagnant. So why not drag out and sort all that stuff, discarding all which is of no valuation? About half of us will find, in our minds, a room, having on its door a card, saying: “It Was Not So In My Day.” Go at that room, right off. That “My Day” is long past. “Today” is boss, now. If that “My Day” could crawl up on “Today,” what a mix-up in World affairs would occur! Ox cart against aircraft; oil lamps against arc lights! Slow, mail information against radio! But, as all this stuff is laid out, what will you do with it? Nobody wants it. So I say, burn it, and tomorrow morning, how happy you will find that musty old mind!
”
”
Ernest Vincent Wright (Gadsby)
“
Because this land they live in is a land of missing things. A land stripped of its gold, its rivers, its buffalo, its Indians, its tiger, its jackals, its birds and its green and its living. To move through this land and believe Ba's tales is to see each hill as a burial mound with its own crown of bones. Who could believe that and survive? Who could believe that and keep from looking, as Ba and Sam do, always toward the past? Letting it drag behind them. Letting it make them into fools.
And so Lucy fears that unwritten history. Easier to dismiss all Ba's tales as tall ones - because believe, and where does it end? If she believes that tigers live, then does she believe that Indians are hunted and dying? If she believes in fish the size of men, does she believe in men who string up others like linefuls of catch? Easier to avoid that history, unwritten as it is except in the soughing of dry grass, in the marks of lost trails, in the rumors from the mouths of bored men and mean girls, in the cracked patterns of buffalo bone. Easier by far to read the history that Teacher Leigh teaches, those names and dates orderly as bricks, stacked to build a civilization.
”
”
C Pam Zhang (How Much of These Hills Is Gold)
“
The sound woke Adam. He lifted his head from the flank of Feckless and looked around him in bewilderment for a moment; then slowly his eyes, which looked small and wet and lifeless in his primitive face, lost their terror as he realized that he was in the cowshed, that it was half-past six on a winter morning, and that his gnarled fingers were about the task which they had performed at this hour and in this place for the past eighty years or more. He stood up, sighing, and crossed over to Pointless, who was eating Graceless’s tail. Adam, who was linked to all dumb brutes by a chain forged in soil and sweat, took it out of her mouth and put into it, instead, his neckerchief—the last he had. She mumbled it, while he milked her, but stealthily spat it out as soon as he passed on to Aimless, and concealed it under the reeking straw with her hoof. She did not want to hurt the old man’s feelings by declining to eat his gift There was a close bond: a slow, deep, primitive, silent down-dragging link between Adam and all living beasts; they knew each other’s simple needs. They lay close to the earth, and something of earth’s old fierce simplicities had seeped into their beings.
”
”
Stella Gibbons (Cold Comfort Farm)
“
You choose this moment to act like the Abnegation?” His voice fills the room and makes fear prickle in my chest. His anger seems too sudden. Too strange. “All that time you spent insisting that you were too selfish for them, and now, when your life is on the line, you’ve got to be a hero? What’s wrong with you?”
“What’s wrong with you? People died. They walked right off the edge of a building! And I can stop it from happening again!”
“You’re too important to just…die.” He shakes his head. He won’t even look at me--his eyes keep shifting across my face, to the wall behind me or the ceiling above me, to everything but me. I am too stunned to be angry.
“I’m not important. Everyone will do just fine without me,” I say.
“Who cares about everyone? What about me?”
He lowers his head into his hand, covering his eyes. His fingers are trembling.
Then he crosses the room in two long strides and touches his lips to mine. Their gentle pressure erases the past few months, and I am the girl who sat on the rocks next to the chasm, with river spray on her ankles, and kissed him for the first time. I am the girl who grabbed his hand in the hallway just because I wanted to.
I pull back, my hand on his chest to keep him away. The problem is, I am also the girl who shot Will and lied about it, and chose between Hector and Marlene, and now a thousand other things besides. And I can’t erase those things.
“You would be fine.” I don’t look at him. I stare at his T-shirt between my fingers and the black ink curling around his neck, but I don’t look at his face. “Not at first. But you would move on, and do what you have to.”
He wraps an arm around my waist and pulls me against him. “That’s a lie,” he says, before he kisses me again.
This is wrong. It’s wrong to forget who I have become, and to let him kiss me when I know what I’m about to do.
But I want to. Oh, I want to.
I stand on my tiptoes and wrap my arms around him. I press one hand between his shoulder blades and curl the other one around the back of his neck. I can feel his breaths against my palm, his body expanding and contracting, and I know he’s strong, steady, unstoppable. All things I need to be, but I am not, I am not.
He walks backward, pulling me with him so I stumble. I stumble right out of my shoes. He sits on the edge of the bed and I stand in front of him, and we’re finally eye to eye.
He touches my face, covering my cheeks with his hands, sliding his fingertips down my neck, fitting his fingers to the slight curve of my hips.
I can’t stop.
I fit my mouth to his, and he tastes like water and smells like fresh air. I drag my hand from his neck to the small of his back, and put it under his shirt. He kisses me harder.
I knew he was strong; I didn’t know how strong until I felt it myself, the muscles in his back tightening beneath my fingers.
Stop, I tell myself.
Suddenly it’s as if we’re in a hurry, his fingertips brushing my side under my shirt, my hands clutching at him, struggling closer but there is no closer. I have never longed for someone this way, or this much.
He pulls back just enough to look into my eyes, his eyelids lowered.
“Promise me,” he whispers, “that you won’t go. For me. Do this one thing for me.”
Could I do that? Could I stay here, fix things with him, let someone else die in my place? Looking up at him, I believe for a moment that I could. And then I see Will. The crease between his eyebrows. The empty, simulation-bound eyes. The slumped body.
Do this one thing for me. Tobias’s dark eyes plead with me.
But if I don’t go to Erudite, who will? Tobias? It’s the kind of thing he would do.
I feel a stab of pain in my chest as I lie to him. “Okay.”
“Promise,” he says, frowning.
The pain becomes an ache, spreads everywhere--all mixed together, guilt and terror and longing. “I promise.
”
”
Veronica Roth (Insurgent (Divergent, #2))
“
Look, I’m sorry, Jemma. It took me forever to get there, what with all the flooding and everything. And then I was trying to clean stuff up and…well, I guess the time just got away from me.”
I try to pull away, but he tightens his grip. “I didn’t mean to scare you,” he says.
“Well, you did scare me.” I manage to pull one hand loose, and I use it to whack him in the chest. “Idiot!”
“I’m fine, okay? I’m here.”
“I wish you weren’t!” I yell, fired up now. “I wish you were lying in a ditch somewhere!” I stumble backward, my heel catching on the porch’s floorboards.
“You don’t mean that,” Ryder says, sounding hurt.
He’s right; I don’t. But I don’t care if I hurt his feelings. I’m too angry to care. Angry and relieved and pissed off and…and, God, I’m so glad he’s okay. I thump his chest one more time in frustration, and then somehow my lips are on his--hungry and demanding and punishing all at once.
I hear him gasp in surprise. His mouth is hot, feverish even, as he kisses me back. The ground seems to tilt beneath my feet. I stagger back toward the door, dragging him with me without breaking the kiss. Ryder’s tongue slips between my lips, skimming over my teeth before plunging inside. And…
Oh. My. God. No one’s ever kissed me like this. No one. His hands and his tongue and his scent and his body are pressed against mine…It’s making me light-headed, dizzy. Electricity seems to skitter across my skin, raising gooseflesh in its wake. I cling to him, grabbing fistfuls of his T-shirt as he kisses me harder, deeper. I was meant to do this, I realize. I was made to kiss Ryder Marsden. Everything about it is right, like the last piece of a puzzle falling into place.
Somehow, we manage to open the front door and stumble blindly inside, past the mudroom, where we shed our boots and jackets. We pause right there in the front hall, our hands seemingly everywhere at once. I tug at his T-shirt, wanting it off, wanting to feel his skin against my fingertips. His hands skim up my sides beneath my tank top, to the edges of my bra. Shivers rack my entire body, making my knees go weak. Thank God for the wall behind me, because that’s pretty much all that’s holding me up right now.
With a groan, he abandons my mouth to trail his lips down my neck, to my shoulders, across my collarbone to the hollow between my breasts. I tangle my fingers in the hair at the nape of his neck, clutching him to me--thinking that I should make him stop, terrified that he will.
This is insane. I’m insane.
But you know what? That’s just fine with me. Because right now, “sane” seems way overrated.
”
”
Kristi Cook (Magnolia (Magnolia Branch, #1))
“
Whoa, whoa, calm down, everyone!” I said. “Lemme try to talk to them and see what’s up?” “What’s up? Don’t you see what’s up?” said Devlin. “They’re about to fire on us!” “But they haven’t yet. Just chill and let me salvage this.” I stepped out in front of Devlin’s shield. “I said do not take one step further!” yelled the announcer. “Hey, hey, remember me?” I said. “It’s Steve.” “You! What’s the meaning of this?!” “Of what?” “This army! Why did you bring an army to our doorstep?!” yelled the announcer. “Uh, I’m here on business. Is the Skeleton King in? Can I speak to him?” I asked. “I speak for our king! Now tell me what’s the meaning of this army?! Is it war you want?!” “What?! No, no, not at all! I’m telling you, we’re here on business!” “What kind of business?! The hostile takeover business?!” “No, no, you got it all wrong!” “We were kind to your people. We took you in and this is how you repay us? With a hostile takeover?!” “No! I’m serious! We’re not here to overthrow you!” “Why else would you bring such a huge army?!” “They’re here for another fight!” “Yeah, right! You mean the fight that’s going to start right after we let you past our walls?!” “What?! No!” Then the announcer turned around and said, “Bring out the golem!” “The golem? Is he talking about Bob?” I said to Devlin. “Probably,” replied the paladin. Then Alex came up to me. “Steve, you need to deescalate this situation quickly before it gets out of hand.” I nodded. “You’re right, yeah.” Some skeleton guards brought out Bob to the front of the wall. He was all chained up. “Bob!” I yelled at the sight of my friend in bindings. “Steve! What’s going on?!” said Bob. “They think we’re here to fight them,” I said. “Now tell us the truth or we’ll beat this golem!” said the announcer. Bob chuckled. “Beat me? It’s not like you guys could hurt me.” “Bob, be quiet!” I yelled. “You’re not helping. Just let me deal with them.” “Quit your stalling and start explaining!” yelled the announcer. “Dude! We’re not here to fight. We’re not here to take over your home. I’m telling you the truth! This is a huge misunderstanding,” I explained. “Bring out the girl!” yelled the announcer. “The girl? Is he talking about Emily?” I said softly. “She’ll make him speak the truth!” Some skeleton guards dragged out Emily. She was kicking and screaming all over the place. Her arms were also tied behind her back like Bob’s. “Unhand me, you stupid skeletons!” yelled Emily. “Emily!” I yelled. “Steve!” “Let her go!” “Tell me the truth, or else she’s going to get it!” yelled the announcer as he drew out a stone sword and pointed it at Emily’s throat.
”
”
Steve the Noob (Diary of Steve the Noob 43 (An Unofficial Minecraft Book) (Diary of Steve the Noob Collection))
“
Honest to God, I hadn’t meant to start a bar fight.
“So. You’re the famous Jordan Amador.” The demon sitting in front of me looked like someone filled a pig bladder with rotten cottage cheese. He overflowed the bar stool with his gelatinous stomach, just barely contained by a white dress shirt and an oversized leather jacket. Acid-washed jeans clung to his stumpy legs and his boots were at least twice the size of mine. His beady black eyes started at my ankles and dragged upward, past my dark jeans, across my black turtleneck sweater, and over the grey duster around me that was two sizes too big.
He finally met my gaze and snorted before continuing. “I was expecting something different. Certainly not a black girl. What’s with the name, girlie?”
I shrugged. “My mother was a religious woman.”
“Clearly,” the demon said, tucking a fat cigar in one corner of his mouth. He stood up and walked over to the pool table beside him where he and five of his lackeys had gathered. Each of them was over six feet tall and were all muscle where he was all fat.
“I could start to examine the literary significance of your name, or I could ask what the hell you’re doing in my bar,” he said after knocking one of the balls into the left corner pocket.
“Just here to ask a question, that’s all. I don’t want trouble.”
Again, he snorted, but this time smoke shot from his nostrils, which made him look like an albino dragon. “My ass you don’t. This place is for fallen angels only, sweetheart. And we know your reputation.”
I held up my hands in supplication. “Honest Abe. Just one question and I’m out of your hair forever.”
My gaze lifted to the bald spot at the top of his head surrounded by peroxide blonde locks. “What’s left of it, anyway.”
He glared at me. I smiled, batting my eyelashes. He tapped his fingers against the pool cue and then shrugged one shoulder.
“Fine. What’s your question?”
“Know anybody by the name of Matthias Gruber?”
He didn’t even blink. “No.”
“Ah. I see. Sorry to have wasted your time.”
I turned around, walking back through the bar. I kept a quick, confident stride as I went, ignoring the whispers of the fallen angels in my wake. A couple called out to me, asking if I’d let them have a taste, but I didn’t spare them a glance. Instead, I headed to the ladies’ room. Thankfully, it was empty, so I whipped out my phone and dialed the first number in my Recent Call list.
“Hey. He’s here. Yeah, I’m sure it’s him. They’re lousy liars when they’re drunk. Uh-huh. Okay, see you in five.”
I hung up and let out a slow breath. Only a couple things left to do.
I gathered my shoulder-length black hair into a high ponytail. I looped the loose curls around into a messy bun and made sure they wouldn’t tumble free if I shook my head too hard. I took the leather gloves in the pocket of my duster out and pulled them on. Then, I walked out of the bathroom and back to the front entrance.
The coat-check girl gave me a second unfriendly look as I returned with my ticket stub to retrieve my things—three vials of holy water, a black rosary with the beads made of onyx and the cross made of wood, a Smith & Wesson .9mm Glock complete with a full magazine of blessed bullets and a silencer, and a worn out page of the Bible.
I held out my hands for the items and she dropped them on the counter with an unapologetic, “Oops.”
“Thanks,” I said with a roll of my eyes. I put the Glock back in the hip holster at my side and tucked the rest of the items in the pockets of my duster.
The brunette demon crossed her arms under her hilariously oversized fake breasts and sent me a vicious sneer. “The door is that way, Seer. Don’t let it hit you on the way out.”
I smiled back. “God bless you.”
She let out an ugly hiss between her pearly white teeth. I blew her a kiss and walked out the door. The parking lot was packed outside now that it was half-past midnight. Demons thrived in darkness, so I wasn’t surprised. In fact, I’d been counting on it.
”
”
Kyoko M. (The Holy Dark (The Black Parade, #3))
“
her room now?” They were led down the hall by Beth. Before she turned away she took a last drag on her smoke and said, “However this comes out, there is no way my baby would have had anything to do with something like this, drawing of this asshole or not. No way. Do you hear me? Both of you?” “Loud and clear,” said Decker. But he thought if Debbie were involved she had already paid the ultimate price anyway. The state couldn’t exactly kill her again. Beth casually flicked the cigarette down the hall, where it sparked and then died out on the faded runner. Then she walked off. They opened the door and went into Debbie’s room. Decker stood in the middle of the tiny space and looked around. Lancaster said, “We’ll have the tech guys go through her online stuff. Photos on her phone, her laptop over there, the cloud, whatever. Instagram. Twitter. Facebook. Tumblr. Wherever else the kids do their electronic preening. Keeps changing. But our guys will know where to look.” Decker didn’t answer her. He just kept looking around, taking the room in, fitting things in little niches in his memory and then pulling them back out if something didn’t seem right as weighed against something else. “I just see a typical teenage girl’s room. But what do you see?” asked Lancaster finally. He didn’t look at her but said, “Same things you’re seeing. Give me a minute.” Decker walked around the small space, looked under piles of papers, in the young woman’s closet, knelt down to see under her bed, scrutinized the wall art that hung everywhere, including a whole section of People magazine covers. She also had chalkboard squares affixed to one wall. On them was a musical score and short snatches of poetry and personal messages to herself: Deb, Wake up each day with something to prove. “Pretty busy room,” noted Lancaster, who had perched on the edge of the girl’s desk. “We’ll have forensics come and bag it all.” She looked at Decker, obviously waiting for him to react to this, but instead he walked out of the room. “Decker!” “I’ll be back,” he called over his shoulder. She watched him go and then muttered, “Of all the partners I could have had, I got Rain Man, only giant size.” She pulled a stick of gum out of her bag, unwrapped it, and popped it into her mouth. Over the next several minutes she strolled the room and then came to the mirror on the back of the closet door. She appraised her appearance and ended it with the resigned sigh of a person who knows their best days physically are well in the past. She automatically reached for her smokes but then decided against it. Debbie’s room could be part of a criminal investigation. Her ash and smoke could only taint that investigation.
”
”
David Baldacci (Memory Man (Amos Decker, #1))
“
I studied the stars. 'They're not- they're not stars at all.'
'No,' Rhys came up behind me at the rail. 'Our ancestors thought they were, but... They're just spirits, on a yearly migration to somewhere. Why they pick this day to appear here, no one knows.'
I felt his eyes upon me, and tore my gaze from the shooting stars. Light and shadow passed over his face. The cheers and music of the city far, far below were barely audible over the crowd gathered at the House.
'There must be hundreds of them,' I managed to say, dragging my stare back to the stars whizzing past.
'Thousands,' he said. 'They'll keep coming until dawn. Or, I hope they will. There were less and less of them the last time I witnessed Starfall.'
Before Amarantha had locked him away.
'What's happening to them?' I looked in time to see him shrug. Something twanged in my chest.
'I wish I knew. But they keep coming back despite it.'
'Why?'
'Why does anything cling to something? Maybe they love wherever they're going so much that it's worth it. Maybe they'll keep coming back, until there's only one star left. Maybe that one star will make the trip forever, out of the hope that someday- if it keeps coming back often enough- another star will find it again.'
I frowned at the wine in my hand. 'That's... a very sad thought.'
'Indeed.' Rhys rested his forearms on the balcony edge, close enough for my fingers to touch if I dared.
A calm, full silence enveloped us. Too many words- I still had too many words in me.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Mist and Fury (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #2))
“
NOVA SLUNG THE BAG over her shoulder and reached for one of the weighted ropes she’d set up in the alley the night before. She wrapped her arm around the rope and untied the sailor’s knot from the weights holding it to the ground. The weights attached to the opposite end dropped, dragging it through the pulley on the rooftop above. Nova jerked upward, holding tight as the rope whistled past the building’s concrete wall. The second set of weights crashed into the ground below. She stopped with a shudder, her hand only a few inches shy of the pulley, her body swinging six stories in the air. Nova threw her bag onto the rooftop, then grabbed the ledge and hauled herself over. She dropped down into a crouch and riffled through the bag, pulling out the uniform she had designed with Queen Bee’s help. She slung the weaponry belt across her hips, where it hung comfortably, outfitted with specially crafted pockets and hooks for all of her favorite inventions. Next, the snug black hooded jacket: waterproof and flame-retardant, yet lightweight enough to keep from inhibiting her movements. She zipped it up to her neck and tugged the sleeves past her knuckles before pulling up the hood, where a couple of small weights stitched into the hem held it in place over her brow. The mask came last. A hard metallic shell perfectly molded to the bridge of her nose that disappeared into the high collar of the jacket, disguising the lower half of her face. Transformation complete, she stooped and pulled the rifle and a single poisoned dart from the bag.
”
”
Marissa Meyer (Renegades (Renegades, #1))
“
What’s going on, chick?” she asks, taking a drink. She knows that when Johnnie comes out, something bad has happened.
I suck on my teeth and shake my head.
She cringes at the burn of whiskey, waiting for me to say more.
I glance down at my bracelet. “My past caught up with me.”
She slides the bottle back my way. “Need me to hurt someone?” she asks, dead serious.
She and I are as close as friends come, and we have been since senior year of high school. And at the core of our friendship is a pact of sorts: nothing’s going to drag her towards the future she doesn’t want, and nothing’s going drag me back into the past I’ve worked to forget.
Nothing.
I huff out a laugh. “Eli’s already beaten you to it.”
“Eli?” she says, raising an eyebrow. “Girl, I’m hurt. Hoes before bros, remember?”
“I didn’t ask him to get involved. I broke up with him, and then he got involve—”
“What!” She grabs the table. “You broke up with him? When were you going to tell me?”
“Today. I was going to tell you today.”
She’s shaking her head. “Bitch, you should’ve called me.”
“I was busy ending a relationship.”
She falls back into her seat. “Shit girl, Eli’s going to stop giving us a discount.”
“That’s what your most upset by?” I say, taking another swig of whiskey.
“No,” she says. “I’m happy you grew a vagina and broke up with him. He deserves better.”
“I’m going to throw this bottle of whiskey at you.”
She holds her hands up to placate me. “I’m kidding. But seriously, are you okay?”
I barely stop myself from looking at my computer screen again.
I exhale. “Honestly? I have no fucking clue.
”
”
Laura Thalassa (Rhapsodic (The Bargainer, #1))
“
The street sprinkler went past and, as its rasping rotary broom spread water over the tarmac, half the pavement looked as if it had been painted with a dark stain. A big yellow dog had mounted a tiny white bitch who stood quite still.
In the fashion of colonials the old gentleman wore a light jacket, almost white, and a straw hat.
Everything held its position in space as if prepared for an apotheosis. In the sky the towers of Notre-Dame gathered about themselves a nimbus of heat, and the sparrows – minor actors almost invisible from the street – made themselves at home high up among the gargoyles. A string of barges drawn by a tug with a white and red pennant had crossed the breadth of Paris and the tug lowered its funnel, either in salute or to pass under the Pont Saint-Louis.
Sunlight poured down rich and luxuriant, fluid and gilded as oil, picking out highlights on the Seine, on the pavement dampened by the sprinkler, on a dormer window, and on a tile roof on the Île Saint-Louis. A mute, overbrimming life flowed from each inanimate thing, shadows were violet as in impressionist canvases, taxis redder on the white bridge, buses greener.
A faint breeze set the leaves of a chestnut tree trembling, and all down the length of the quai there rose a palpitation which drew voluptuously nearer and nearer to become a refreshing breath fluttering the engravings pinned to the booksellers’ stalls.
People had come from far away, from the four corners of the earth, to live that one moment. Sightseeing cars were lined up on the parvis of Notre-Dame, and an agitated little man was talking through a megaphone.
Nearer to the old gentleman, to the bookseller dressed in black, an American student contemplated the universe through the view-finder of his Leica.
Paris was immense and calm, almost silent, with her sheaves of light, her expanses of shadow in just the right places, her sounds which penetrated the silence at just the right moment.
The old gentleman with the light-coloured jacket had opened a portfolio filled with coloured prints and, the better to look at them, propped up the portfolio on the stone parapet.
The American student wore a red checked shirt and was coatless.
The bookseller on her folding chair moved her lips without looking at her customer, to whom she was speaking in a tireless stream. That was all doubtless part of the symphony. She was knitting. Red wool slipped through her fingers.
The white bitch’s spine sagged beneath the weight of the big male, whose tongue was hanging out.
And then when everything was in its place, when the perfection of that particular morning reached an almost frightening point, the old gentleman died without saying a word, without a cry, without a contortion while he was looking at his coloured prints, listening to the voice of the bookseller as it ran on and on, to the cheeping of the sparrows, the occasional horns of taxis.
He must have died standing up, one elbow on the stone ledge, a total lack of astonishment in his blue eyes. He swayed and fell to the pavement, dragging along with him the portfolio with all its prints scattered about him.
The male dog wasn’t at all frightened, never stopped. The woman let her ball of wool fall from her lap and stood up suddenly, crying out:
‘Monsieur Bouvet!
”
”
Georges Simenon
“
... man is generous with the word "fool" and is ready to serve it up to his neighbor twenty times a day. It is enough to have one stupid side out of ten to be accounted a fool, aside from the nine good ones ... in the world chronicle of mankind there are many whole centuries which, it would seem, should be crossed out and abolished as unnecessary. There have been many errors in the world which, it would seem, even a child would not make now. What crooked, blind, narrow, impassable, far-straying paths mankind has chosen, striving to attain eternal truth, while a whole straight road lay open before it, like the road leading to a magnificent dwelling meant for a king's mansions! Broader and more splendid than all other roads it is, lit by the sun and illumined all night by lamps, yet people have flowed past it in the blind darkness. So many times already, though guided by a sense come down from heaven, they have managed to waver and go astray, have managed in broad daylight to get again into an impassable wilderness, have managed again to blow a blinding fog into each other's eyes, and, dragging themselves after marsh-lights, have managed finally to reach the abyss, only to ask one another in horror: where is the way out, where is the path? The current generation now sees everything clearly, it marvels at the errors, it laughs at the folly of its ancestors, not seeing that this chronicle is all overscored by divine fire, that every letter of it cries out, that from everywhere the piercing finger is pointed at it, at this current generation; but the current generation laughs and presumptuously, proudly begins a series of new errors, at which their descendants will also laugh afterwards.
”
”
Nikolai Gogol (Dead Souls)
“
I work as fast as I can. Binah will come soon looking for me. It’s Mother, however, who descends the back steps into the yard. Binah and the other house slaves are clumped behind her, moving with cautious, synchronized steps as if they’re a single creature, a centipede crossing an unprotected space. I sense the shadow that hovers over them in the air, some devouring dread, and I crawl back into the green-black gloom of the tree. The slaves stare at Mother’s back, which is straight and without give. She turns and admonishes them. “You are lagging. Quickly now, let us be done with this.” As she speaks, an older slave, Rosetta, is dragged from the cow house, dragged by a man, a yard slave. She fights, clawing at his face. Mother watches, impassive. He ties Rosetta’s hands to the corner column of the kitchen house porch. She looks over her shoulder and begs. Missus, please. Missus. Missus. Please. She begs even as the man lashes her with his whip. Her dress is cotton, a pale yellow color. I stare transfixed as the back of it sprouts blood, blooms of red that open like petals. I cannot reconcile the savagery of the blows with the mellifluous way she keens or the beauty of the roses coiling along the trellis of her spine. Someone counts the lashes—is it Mother? Six, seven. The scourging continues, but Rosetta stops wailing and sinks against the porch rail. Nine, ten. My eyes look away. They follow a black ant traveling the far reaches beneath the tree—the mountainous roots and forested mosses, the endless perils—and in my head I say the words I fashioned earlier. Boy Run. Girl Jump. Sarah Go. Thirteen. Fourteen . . . I bolt from the shadows, past the man who now coils his whip, job well done, past Rosetta hanging by her hands in a heap. As I bound up the back steps into the house, Mother calls to me, and Binah reaches to scoop me up, but I escape them, thrashing along the main passage, out the front door, where I break blindly for the wharves. I don’t remember the rest with clarity, only that I find myself wandering across the gangplank of a sailing vessel, sobbing, stumbling over a turban of rope. A kind man with a beard and a dark cap asks what I want. I plead with him, Sarah Go. Binah chases me, though I’m unaware of her until she pulls me into her arms and coos, “Poor Miss Sarah, poor Miss Sarah.” Like a decree, a proclamation, a prophecy. When I arrive home, I am a muss of snot, tears, yard dirt, and harbor filth. Mother holds me against her, rears back and gives me an incensed shake, then clasps me again. “You must promise never to run away again. Promise me.” I want to. I try to. The words are on my tongue—the rounded lumps of them, shining like the marbles beneath the tree. “Sarah!” she demands. Nothing comes. Not a sound. I remained mute for a week. My words seemed sucked into the cleft between my collar bones. I rescued them by degrees, by praying, bullying and wooing. I came to speak again, but with an odd and mercurial form of stammer. I’d never been a fluid speaker, even my first spoken words had possessed a certain belligerent quality, but now there were ugly, halting gaps between my sentences, endless seconds when the words cowered against my lips and people averted their eyes. Eventually, these horrid pauses began to come and go according to their own mysterious whims. They might plague me for weeks and then remain away months, only to return again as abruptly as they left.
”
”
Sue Monk Kidd (The Invention of Wings)
“
I won’t know where we’re going until we get there.” Skylar was completely unfazed by my snapping. “And once we get there, I probably won’t know why until you guys tell me what’s going on.”
“You’re the psychic,” Bethany muttered. “Shouldn’t you be able to figure it out for yourself?”
If anything, Skylar seemed enthused by the pointed question. “Reading your minds on command would require being significantly psychic, and I’m not. I never know when I’m going to pick up something, and it comes in pieces and feelings, not in words. So who wants to clue the sophomore in?”
Not me.
I didn’t want to drag Skylar into this. There was just something about her that screamed protect me! Whoever the men looking for the “anemic cheerleader” were, I was fairly certain I didn’t want them anywhere near the Little Optimist That Could.
Unfortunately, Bethany had no such predilection. “Sometime in the past week, I got bitten by a chupacabra. Somehow—no idea how—Kali lured it out of my body and into hers. She’s already far enough gone that medical science can’t do a thing to save her, and she’s got some kind of plan—probably a risky, unreliable one riddled with holes—to get the bloodsucker out.” Bethany blew out a long breath and then glanced back over her shoulder at Skylar. “There. You know what I know about the current situation. So, any time now, feel free to do your whole ‘psychic’ thing and tell me where the bedazzler we’re going, or I might be forced to physically hurt you.”
Skylar made a pfft sound with her lips. “Five brothers,” she said, pointing to herself. Then she pointed to Bethany. “Only child. I could totally take you. Turn left.”
Bethany slammed on the brakes. “Seriously?”
“Please?” Skylar smiled winningly, and after a long moment, Bethany turned left onto an access road that dead-ended into a large parking lot.
”
”
Jennifer Lynn Barnes (Every Other Day)
“
There is, in fact, no need to drag politics into literary theory: as with South African sport, it has been there from the beginning. I mean by the political no more than the way we organize our social life together, and the power-relations which this involves; and what I have tried to show throughout this book is that the history of modern literary theory is part of the political and ideological history of our epoch. From Percy Bysshe Shelley to Norman N. Holland, literary theory has been indissociably bound up with political beliefs and ideological values. Indeed literary theory is less an object of intellectual enquiry in its own right than a particular perspective in which to view the history of our times. Nor should this be in the least cause for surprise. For any body of theory concerned with human meaning, value, language, feeling and experience will inevitably engage with broader, deeper beliefs about the nature of human individuals and societies, problems of power and sexuality, interpretations of past history, versions of the present and hopes for the future. It is not a matter of regretting that this is so — of blaming literary theory for being caught up with such questions, as opposed to some 'pure' literary theory which might be absolved from them. Such 'pure' literary theory is an academic myth: some of the theories we have examined in this book are nowhere more clearly ideological than in their attempts to ignore history and politics altogether. Literary theories are not to be upbraided for being political, but for being on the whole covertly or unconsciously so — for the blindness with which they offer as a supposedly 'technical', 'self-evident', 'scientific' or 'universal' truth doctrines which with a little reflection can be seen to relate to and reinforce the particular interests of particular groups of people at particular times.
”
”
Terry Eagleton (Literary Theory: An Introduction)
“
He put his tray down across from Suzao, whose eyes ran up his arm like a skimming hand, counting the kill marks there.
“Remember me?” Akos said.
Suzao was smaller than him, now, but so broad through the shoulders it didn’t seem that way when he was sitting. His nose was spotted with freckles. He didn’t look much like Jorek, who took after his mother. Good thing, too.
“The pathetic child I dragged across the Divide?” Suzao said, biting down on the tines of his fork. “And then beat to a pulp before we even made it to the transport vessels? Yeah. I remember. Now get your tray off my table.”
Akos sat, folding his hands in front of him. A rush of adrenaline had given him pinhole vision, and Suzao was in the very center.
“How are you feeling? A little sleepy?” he said as he slammed the vial down in front of him.
The glass cracked, but the vial stayed in one piece, still wet from the sleeping potion he had poured in Suzao’s cup. Silence spread through the cafeteria, starting at their table.
Suzao stared at the vial. His face got blotchier with every second. His eyes were glassy with rage.
Akos leaned closer, smiling. “Your living quarters aren’t as secure as you’d probably like. What is this, the third time you’ve been drugged in the past month? Not very vigilant, are you?”
Suzao lunged. Grabbed him by the throat, lifted, and slammed him hard into the table, right on top of his tray of food. Soup burned Akos through his shirt. Suzao drew his knife and held the point over Akos’s head like he was going to shove it in Akos’s eye.
Akos saw spots.
“I should kill you,” Suzao snarled, flecks of spit dotting his lips.
“Go ahead,” he said, straining. “But maybe you should wait until you’re not about to fall over.”
Sure enough, Suzao looked a little unfocused. He let go of Akos’s throat.
“Fine,” he said. “Then I challenge you to the arena. Blades. To the death.”
The man didn’t disappoint.
”
”
Veronica Roth (Carve the Mark (Carve the Mark, #1))
“
The crowd as silent,holding their breaths.Hot wind rustled in the trees as the ax gleamed in the sun.Luce could feel that the end was coming,but why? Why had her soul dragged her here? What insight abouther past,or the curse, could she possibly gain from having her head cut off?
Then Daniel dropped the ax to the ground.
"What are you doing?" Luce asked.
Daniel didn't answer.He rolled back his shoulders, turned his face toward the sky, and flung out her arms. Zotz stepped forward to interfere,but when he touched Daniel's shoulder,he screamed and recoiled as if he'd been burned.
And then-
Daniel's white wings unfurled from his shoulders.As they extended fully from his sides,huge and shockingly bright against the parched brown landscape, they sent twenty Mayans hurtling backward.
Shouts rang out around the cenote:
"What is he?"
"The boy is winged!"
"He is a god! Sent to us by Chaat!"
Luce thrashed against the ropes binding her wrists and her ankles.She needed to run to Daniel.She tried to move toward him,until-
Until she couldn't move anymore.
Daniel's wings were so bright they were almost unbearable. Only, now it wasn't just Daniel's wings that were glowing. It was...all of him. His entire body shone.As if he'd swallowed the sun.
Music filled the air.No,not music, but a single harmonious chord.Deafening and unending,glorious and frightening.
Luce had heard it before...somewhere. In the cemetery at Sword&Cross, the last night she'd been there,the night Daniel had fought Cam,and Luce hadn't been allowed to watch.The night Miss Sophia had dragged her away and Penn had died and nothing had ever been the same.It had begun with that very same chord,and it was coming out of Daniel.He was lit up so brightly,his body actually hummed.
She swayed where she stood,unable to take her eyes away.An intense wave of heat stroked her skin.
Behind Luce,someone cried out.The cry was followed by another,and then another,and then a whole chorus of voices crying out.
Something was burning.It was acrid and choking and turned her stomach instantly. Then,in the corner of her vision,there was an explosion of flame, right where Zotz had been standing a moment before. The boom knocked her backward,and she turned away from the burning brightness of Daniel,coughing on the black ash and bitter smoke.
Hanhau was gone,the ground where she'd stood scorched black.The gap-toothed man was hiding his face,trying hard not to look at Daniel's radiance.But it was irresistible.Luce watched as the man peeked between his fingers and burst into a pillar of flame.
All around the cenote,the Mayans stared at Daniel.And one by one,his brilliance set them ablaze.Soon a bright ring of fire lit up the jungle,lit up everyone but Luce.
"Ix Cuat!" Daniel reached for her.
His glow made Luce scream out in pain,but even as she felt as if she were on the verge of asphyxiation, the words tumbled from her mouth. "You're glorious."
"Don't look at me," he pleaded. "When a mortal sees an angel's true essence, then-you can see what happened to the others.I can't let you leave me again so soon.Always so soon-"
"I'm still here," Luce insisted.
"You're still-" He was crying. "Can you see me? The true me?"
"I can see you."
And for just a fraction of a second,she could.Her vision cleared.His glow was still radiant but not so blinding.She could see his soul. It was white-hot and immaculate,and it looked-there was no other way to say it-like Daniel. And it felt like coming home.A rush of unparalleled joy spread through Luce.Somewhere in the back of her mind,a bell of recognition chimed. She'd seen him like this before.
Hadn't she?
As her mind strained to draw upon the past she couldn't quite touch,the light of him began to overwhelm her.
"No!" she cried,feeling the fire sear her heart and her body shake free of something.
”
”
Lauren Kate (Passion (Fallen, #3))
“
Duration is the continuous progress of the past which gnaws into the future and which swells as it advances. And as the past grows without ceasing, so also there is no limit to its preservation. Memory, as we have tried to prove, is not a faculty of putting away recollections in a drawer, or of inscribing them in a register. There is no register, no drawer; there is not even, properly speaking, a faculty, for a faculty works intermittently, when it will or when it can, whilst the piling up of the past upon the past goes on without relaxation. In reality, the past is preserved by itself, automatically. In its entirety, probably, it follows us at every instant; all that we have felt, thought and willed from our earliest infancy is there, leaning over the present which is about to join it, pressing against the portals of consciousness that would fain leave it outside. The cerebral mechanism is arranged just so as to drive back into the unconscious almost the whole of this past, and to admit beyond the threshold only that which can cast light on the present situation or further the action now being prepared—in short, only that which can give useful work. At the most, a few superfluous recollections may succeed in smuggling themselves through the half-open door. These memories, messengers from the unconscious, remind us of what we are dragging behind us unawares. But, even though we may have no distinct idea of it, we feel vaguely that our past remains present to us. What are we, in fact, what is ourcharacter, if not the condensation of the history that we have lived from our birth—nay, even before our birth, since we bring with us prenatal dispositions? Doubtless we think with only a small part of our past, but it is with our entire past, including the original bent of our soul, that we desire, will and act. Our past, then, as a whole, is made manifest to us in its impulse; it is felt in the form of tendency, although a small part of it only is known in the form of idea.
”
”
Henri Bergson (Creative Evolution)
“
We have a deal.”
“The hell you do!” Maria cried out, dashing into the room. She barely noticed that the others stayed behind in the hall.
Nathan looked disconcerted by her appearance, and Oliver looked alarmed. “Leave this to me, Maria,” he said tersely.
“The only way that scoundrel is getting your mother’s pearls,” she shot back,” is if I strangle him with them.” She marched up and snatched the box from Nathan. “Besides, you already have them to me.”
“And you left them behind,” Oliver reminded her. “Gran said you refused to keep them.”
“Well, I want them now.”
“At the risk of being dragged through the courts?” he said, coming to her side. “Of having your name maligned by this vermin?” He lowered his voice. “Do you really want him examining every action you’ve taken in the past two weeks, having it all laid out before a judge?”
She could tell he was thinking of her appearance at the brothel and the unpleasantness there, not to mention her public betrothal to him. “Let him do his worst.” She had an ace in the hole.
She was about to call for Miss Kinsley when Oliver said, “Hyatt won’t let go of this matter without some financial consideration. With 125,000 pounds at stake-“
Nathan’s bark of laughter cut him off. “Is that what she’s told you her half of the company is worth, Lord Stoneville?” Nathan sneered. “Now I understand why a marquess is sniffing around her.”
Oliver’s eyes turned a dangerous shade of black. He seized the man by the throat and slammed him against the wall. “I don’t give a damn what her half of the company is worth, you little worm. She could come to our marriage with nothing but the gown on her back and I wouldn’t care. She’s worth more to me than any amount of money. If you had an ounce of sense, she’d be worth more to you, too.”
As Nathan clawed at Oliver’s hands, struggling for air, Maria hurried to lay her hand on Oliver’s arm. “You promised not to throttle him,” she reminded him, though she was rather enjoying it.
After a second’s hesitation, he released Nathan with a look of disgust.
”
”
Sabrina Jeffries (The Truth About Lord Stoneville (Hellions of Halstead Hall, #1))
“
I was driving home one afternoon during this period when I rolled past a woman putting household objects and furniture out in her front yard. I figured it was a garage sale or she was termite bombing. As I moved past her house an object I saw stopped me. Dragged me into the present. A chair. The chair? The orange Danish modern chair that I broke and that subsequently broke up my marriage appeared to be sitting on her front lawn. “Impossible,” I thought. That was destroyed, thrown out, gone. I stopped my car abruptly in the street, opened my car door, and ran up into her yard. She was pulling more stuff out of her house. I said, “Hi. Hey, are you selling this stuff?” “Just take whatever you want. I’m leaving,” she said, going angrily about her business. “Where did you get this chair? I used to have one exactly like it. I’ve never seen another one.” “I found it,” she said. “Take it.” I inspected the chair. It had been carefully rebuilt, put back together. It was the chair. “Did you find this on the street up on the hill around the corner?” “Yeah,” she said. “Why?” “This chair destroyed my marriage.” She looked at me with a dark, stressed gaze for a second like she was looking through me at something burning in the distance and said, “Mine, too.” I didn’t ask any questions. Synchronicity was upon us. The causality was there, it was explainable, but the meaning of the object before us was at once unique and shared. It was some kind of black magic that sent my thoughts back to the garage wizard who kept Jung’s curtains locked up. What had he unleashed on this world, my world, her world, with this chair? “We have to take it out of circulation.” “Yes,” she said, catatonically, like how I felt. Then this stranger and I proceeded to destroy the chair with our hands and our feet until it was unfixable. We took a breath and looked down at the scattered chair shards. “Thanks,” she said. A horn honked. I turned to see my car, door open, sitting in the middle of the street, running. Someone needed to get by. “Good luck with everything,” I said, then walked back to my car and drove away, strangely relieved. I glanced in my rearview mirror and saw her making a pile of culprit pieces.
”
”
Marc Maron (Attempting Normal)
“
A goods train was approaching. The platform shook, and it seemed to her as if she were again in the train.
Suddenly remembering the man who had been run over the day she first met Vronsky, she realized what she had to do. Quickly and lightly descending the steps that led from the water-tank to the rails, she stopped close to the passing train. She looked at the bottom of the trucks, at the bolts and chains, and large iron wheels of the slowly-moving front truck, and tried to estimate the middle point between the front and back wheels, and the moment when that point would be opposite her.
She wanted to fall half-way between the wheels of the front truck, which was drawing level with her, but the little red handbag which she began to take off her arm delayed her, and then she was too late. The middle had passed her. She was obliged to wait for the next truck. A feeling seized her like that she had experienced when preparing to enter the water in bathing, and she crossed herself. The familiar gesture of making the sign of the cross called up a whole series of girlish and childish memories, and suddenly the darkness, that obscured everything for her, broke, and life showed itself to her for an instant with all its bright past joys. But she did not take her eyes off the wheels of the approaching second truck, and at the very moment when the midway point between the wheels drew level, she threw away her red bag, and drawing her head down between her shoulders threw herself forward on her hands under the truck, and with a light movement as if preparing to rise again, immediately dropped on her knees. And at the same moment she was horror-struck at what she was doing. ‘Where am I? What am I doing? Why?’ She wished to rise, to throw herself back, but something huge and relentless struck her on her head and dragged her down. ‘God forgive me everything!’ she said, feeling the impossibility of struggling… A little peasant muttering something was working at the rails. The candle, by the light of which she had been reading that book filled with anxieties, deceptions, grief and evil, flared up with a brighter light, lit up for her all that had before been dark, crackled, began to flicker, and went out for ever.
”
”
Leo Tolstoy (Anna Karenina)
“
Matthew knew it was wrong the instant their lips met. Because nothing would ever equal the perfection of Daisy in his arms. He was ruined for life. God help him, he didn’t care.
Her mouth was soft and hot, like sunshine, like the white blaze of a heartwood fire. She gasped as he touched her lower lip with the tip of his tongue. Slowly her hands came to his shoulders, and then he felt her fingers at the back of his head, sliding into his hair to keep him from pulling away. There wasn’t a chance in hell of that happening. Nothing could have made him stop.
A tremor shook his fingers as he bracketed the exquisite line of her jaw in the open framework of his hand, gently angling her face upward. The flavor of her mouth, sweet and elusive, fueled a hunger that threatened to rage out of control… he searched the damp silk beyond her lips, deeper, harder, until she began to breathe in long sighs, her body molding against his.
He let her feel how much stronger he was, how much heavier, one muscular arm clamped along her back, his feet spread to hold her between the powerful length of his thighs. Her upper half was bound in a laced and padded corset. He was almost overcome by a savage desire to tear away the stays and quilting and find the tender flesh beneath.
Instead he sank his fingers into her pinned-up hair and tugged it backward until the weight of her head was cradled in his hand, and her pale throat was exposed. He searched for the pulse he had seen earlier, his lips dragging softly along the secret pathway of nerves beneath her skin. When he reached a senstive spot, he felt the vibration of her suppressed moan against his mouth.
This was what it would be like to make love to her, he thought dazedly… the sweet shivering of her flesh as he entered her, the delicate chaos of her breath, the helpless sounds that rustled in her throat. Her skin, warm and female, scented like tea and talcum and a trace of salt. He found her mouth again, opened it, delving into wet silk, heat, and an intimate flavor that drove him mad.
She should have struggled, but there was only yielding and more softness, driving him past all limits. He began to ravish her mouth with deep, twisting kisses, bringing her body rhythmically against his. He felt her legs part beneath her gown, his thigh fitting neatly between them. She squirmed with innocent desire, her face blooming with the color of late summer poppies. Had she understood exactly what he wanted from her, she would have done more than blush. She would have fainted on the spot.
Lifting his mouth from hers, Matthew pressed his jaw against the side of her head. “I think,” he said raggedly, “this puts to rest any question of whether I find you desirable or not.
”
”
Lisa Kleypas (Scandal in Spring (Wallflowers, #4))
“
Come on, show me what you got” Shelby said throwing a set of gear to wing before pulling on a pair of gloves herself “I'll try not to hurt you too badly”
“how reassuring” Wing said pulling on his gloves he had been giving Shelby hand-to-hand combat training for some time back at H.I.V.E And what she lacked in technique she made up for in speed and cunning. “Bring it” Shelby said with a grin raising both gloves in a defensive stance and beckoning him towards her
“It will be brought” Wing replied. He feinted to her left and she went to block as he simultaneously swung a low blow into her other side, carefully pulling his punch so that he just tapped her.
“Two perhaps three broken ribs” Wing said matter of factly “maintain your guard”
Shelby nodded and took a quick jab at his jaw which wing blocked effortlessly “Try not to look where you are striking you betray your intentions” They went on like that for a couple more minutes just as in their previous sparring sessions Wing noticed that once they began Shelby became totally focused. There were none of this smart comments or sarcasm that she'd normally used - she was suddenly deadly serious.
“Broken job possible unconsciousness” Wing said calmly as he struck her passed her guard stopping his fist millimetres from her chin.
“Oh my God” Shelby gasped suddenly, staring in shock at something over wings shoulder. He spun around, his guard raised. Shelby dropped low swinging her leg out, sweeping Wing's feet out from under him and sending him crashing to the floor.
“Wounded pride, possible humiliation” Shelby said with a grin offering her hand to Wing and pulling him up off the floor. “and so ends today's lesson” she said pulling off her head guard.
“an unconventional tactic” Wing said with a nod, taking off his own helmet. “but a successful one none the less”
“ I kinda like unconventional tactics” Shelby said stepping towards him. “never underestimate the power of surprise” She grabbed the back of his neck and kissed him for a few long seconds.
“what was that about maintaining your guard?” she said with a smile as she pulled away from him.
“sometimes one should let ones guard down” Wing said staring at her for a moment before drawing her towards him and kissed her back. “Er...guys?” a familiar voice said causing Wing and Shelby to spring apart.
“Dr Nero wants you to report to the briefing room” Wing winced slightly as he saw Nigel and Franz standing in the doorway. Nigel was looking pointedly at the floor and Franz was staring at him and Shelby, his mouth hanging open in surprise.
“come on big guy - no rest for the wicked” Shelby said to Wing with a grin, taking his hand and dragging him out of the room past Nigel and the stunned looking Franz.
”
”
Mark Walden (Zero Hour (H.I.V.E., #6))
“
Lesson one: Pack light unless you want to hump the eight around the mountains all day and night.
By the time we reached Snowdonia National Park on Friday night it was dark, and with one young teacher as our escort, we all headed up into the mist. And in true Welsh fashion, it soon started to rain.
When we reached where we were going to camp, by the edge of a small lake halfway up, it was past midnight and raining hard. We were all tired (from dragging the ridiculously overweight packs), and we put up the tents as quickly as we could. They were the old-style A-frame pegged tents, not known for their robustness in a Welsh winter gale, and sure enough by 3:00 A.M. the inevitable happened.
Pop.
One of the A-frame pegs supporting the apex of my tent broke, and half the tent sagged down onto us.
Hmm, I thought.
But both Watty and I were just too tired to get out and repair the first break, and instead we blindly hoped it would somehow just sort itself out.
Lesson two: Tents don’t repair themselves, however tired you are, however much you wish they just would.
Inevitably, the next peg broke, and before we knew it we were lying in a wet puddle of canvas, drenched to the skin, shivering, and truly miserable.
The final key lesson learned that night was that when it comes to camping, a stitch in time saves nine; and time spent preparing a good camp is never wasted.
The next day, we reached the top of Snowdon, wet, cold but exhilarated. My best memory was of lighting a pipe that I had borrowed off my grandfather, and smoking it with Watty, in a gale, behind the summit cairn, with the teacher joining in as well.
It is part of what I learned from a young age to love about the mountains: They are great levelers.
For me to be able to smoke a pipe with a teacher was priceless in my book, and was a firm indicator that mountains, and the bonds you create with people in the wild, are great things to seek in life.
(Even better was the fact that the tobacco was homemade by Watty, and soaked in apple juice for aroma. This same apple juice was later brewed into cider by us, and it subsequently sent Chipper, one of the guys in our house, blind for twenty-four hours. Oops.)
If people ask me today what I love about climbing mountains, the real answer isn’t adrenaline or personal achievement. Mountains are all about experiencing a shared bond that is hard to find in normal life. I love the fact that mountains make everyone’s clothes and hair go messy; I love the fact that they demand that you give of yourself, that they make you fight and struggle. They also induce people to loosen up, to belly laugh at silly things, and to be able to sit and be content staring at a sunset or a log fire.
That sort of camaraderie creates wonderful bonds between people, and where there are bonds I have found that there is almost always strength.
”
”
Bear Grylls (Mud, Sweat and Tears)
“
Wrath…”
“What,” he murmured against her, working her with his nose. “You don’t like?”
“Shut up and get back to doing—”
His tongue slipping under the panties cut her off…and made him have to slow himself down.
She was so slick and wet and soft and willing, it was all he could do to keep himself from hauling her on the rug and going at her deep and hard. And then they’d both miss out on the fun of anticipation.
Moving the cotton aside with his hand, he kissed her pink flesh, then delved in. She was oh, so ready for him, and he knew it because of the honey that he swallowed as he dragged upward in a long, slow lick.
But it wasn’t enough, and holding the panties to the side was distracting. With his fang, he punctured them, then split them apart right up the middle, leaving the two halves to hang off her hips. His palms went up to her ass and squeezed hard as he quit fooling around and got busy working out his female with his mouth. He knew exactly what she liked best, the sucking and the licking and the going in with his tongue.
Closing his eyes, he took it all in, the scent and the taste and the feel of her shuddering against him as she peaked and came apart.
Behind the fly of his leathers, his cock was screaming for attention, the rasp of the buttons not nearly sufficient to satisfy what it was demanding, but tough shit.
His erection was going to have to chill for a while, because this was too sweet to stop anytime soon.
When Beth’s knees wobbled, he took her down to the floor and stretched one of her legs up, keeping to his pace while shoving her fleece to her neck and putting his hand under her bra.
As she orgasmed again, she grabbed onto one of the desk legs, pulling hard and bracing her free foot into the rug.
His pursuit pushed them both farther and farther beneath where he discharged his kingly duties until he had to crouch down to fit his shoulders.
Eventually her head was out the other side and she was gripping the pansy-ass chair he sat in and dragging it with her.
As she cried out his name once more, he prowled up her body and glared at the stupid, nancy chair. “I need something heavier to sit in.”
Last coherent thing he said.
His body found the entrance to hers with an ease that spoke of all the practice they’d had and…Oh, yeah, still as good as the first time.
Wrapping his arms around her, he rode her hard, and she was right there with him as the storm rolling through his body gathered in his balls until they stung.
Together, he and his shellan moved as one, giving, receiving, going faster and faster until he came and kept going and came again and kept going until something hit his face.
In full animal mode, he growled and swiped at it with his fangs.
It was the drapes.
He’d managed to fuck them out from under the desk, past the chair, and over to the wall.
Beth burst out laughing and so did he, and then they were cradling each other.
”
”
J.R. Ward (Lover Avenged (Black Dagger Brotherhood, #7))
“
Waking up begins with saying am and now. That which has awoken then lies for a while staring up at the ceiling and down into itself until it has recognized I, and therefore deduced I am, I am now. Here comes next, and is at least negatively reassuring; because here, this morning, is where it has expected to find itself: what’s called at home.
But now isn't simply now. Now is also a cold reminder: one whole day later than yesterday, one year later than last year. Every now is labeled with its date, rendering all past nows obsolete, until--later or sooner-- perhaps--no, not perhaps--quite certainly: it will come.
Fear tweaks the vagus nerve. A sickish shrinking from what waits, somewhere out there, dead ahead.
But meanwhile the cortex, that grim disciplinarian, has taken its place at the central controls and has been testing them, one after another: the legs stretch, the lower back is arched, the fingers clench and relax. And now, over the entire intercommunication system, is issued the first general order of the day: UP.
Obediently the body levers itself out of bed--wincing from twinges in the arthritic thumbs and the left knee, mildly nauseated by the pylorus in a state of spasm--and shambles naked into the bathroom, where its bladder is emptied and it is weighed: still a bit over 150 pounds, in spite of all that toiling at the gym! Then to the mirror.
What it sees there isn’t much a face as the expression of a predicament. Here’s what it has done to itself, here’s the mess it has somehow managed to get itself into the during its fifty-eight years; expressed in terms of a dull, harassed stare, a coarsened nose, a mouth dragged down by the corners into a grimace as if at the sourness of its own toxins, cheeks sagging from their anchors of muscle, a throat hanging limp in tiny wrinkled folds. The harassed look is that of a desperately tired swimmer or runner; yet there is no question of stopping. The creature we are watching will struggle on and on until it drops. Not because it is heroic. It can imagine no alternative.
Staring and staring into the mirror, it sees many faces within its face—the face of the child, the boy, the young man, the not-so-young man—all present still, preserved like fossils on superimposed layers, and, like fossils, dead. Their message to this live dying creature is: Look at us—we have died—what is there to be afraid of?
It answers them: But that happened so gradually, so easily. I’m afraid of being rushed.
It stares and stares. Its lips part. It struggles to breathe through its mouth. Until the cortex orders it impatiently to wash, to shave, to brush its hair. Its nakedness has to be covered. It must be dressed up in the clothes because it is going outside, into the world of the other people; and these others must be able to identify it. Its behavior must be acceptable to them.
Obediently, it washes, shaves, brushes its hair, for it accepts its responsibilities to the others. It is even glad that it has its place among them. It knows what is expected of it.
It knows its name. It is called George.
”
”
Christopher Isherwood (A Single Man)
“
I stopped struggling, going limp in his arms. He reached around us and shoved the door closed, spinning around and facing us toward the kitchen.
“I was trying to make you breakfast.”
It took a moment for his words and their meaning to sink in. I stared dumbfounded across the room and past the island. There was smoke billowing up from the stove and the window above the sink was wide open.
Bowls and spoons littered the island and there was a carton of eggs sitting out.
He was trying to cook.
He was really bad at it.
I started to laugh.
The kind of laugh that shook my shoulders and bubbled up hysterically. My heart rate was still out of control, and I took in a few breaths between laughs to try and calm it down.
He said something, but I couldn’t hear him because the fire alarm was still going off. I had no doubt half the neighborhood was now awake from the sound. He didn’t bother to put me down, instead hauling me along with him, where he finally set me down, dragged a chair over near the alarm, and climbed up to remove the battery.
The noise cut off and the kitchen fell silent.
“Well, shit,” he said, staring at the battery in his hand.
A giggle escaped me. “Does this always happen when you cook?”
He shrugged. “The only time I ever cook is when it’s my turn at the station.” His forehead creased and a thoughtful look came over his face. “The guys are never around when it’s my night to cook. Now I know why.” He snagged a towel off the counter and began waving away the rest of the lingering smoke.
I clicked on the vent fan above the stove. There was a pan with half a melted spatula, something that may or may not have once been eggs, and a muffin tin with half-burned, half-raw muffins (how was that even possible?).
“Well, this looks…” My words faltered, trying to come up with something positive to say.
“Completely inedible?” he finished.
I grinned. “You did all this for me?”
“I figured after a week of hospital food, you might like something good. Apparently you aren’t going to find that here.”
I had the urge to hug him. I kept my feet planted where they were. “Thank you. No one’s ever ruined a pan for me before.”
He grinned. “I have cereal. Even I can’t mess that up.”
I watched as he pulled down a bowl and poured me some, adding milk. He looked so cute when he handed me the bowl that I lifted the spoon and took a bite. “Best cereal I ever had.”
“Damn straight.”
I carried it over to the counter and sat down. “After we eat, would you mind taking me to my car? I hope it’s still drivable.”
“What about the keys?”
“I have a security deposit box at the bank. I keep my spare there in case I ever need them.”
“Pretty smart.”
“I have a few good ideas now and then.”
“Contrary to the way it looks, I do too.”
“Thank you for trying to make me breakfast. And for the cereal.”
He walked over to the stove and picked up the ruined pan. “You died with honor,” he said, giving it a mock salute. And then he threw the entire thing into the trashcan.
I laughed. “You could have washed it, you know.”
He made a face. “No. Then I might be tempted to use it again.
”
”
Cambria Hebert (Torch (Take It Off, #1))
“
Martha would come over every week and check on Mia and work with her on relaxation and breathing exercises to prepare for the natural labor. Jenny was on board with the natural thing too, so of course she and Mia dragged Tyler and me to the Bradley Birthing Method classes.
It was hysterical; we had to get in all kinds of weird poses with the girls while they mimicked being in labor. We would massage their backs while they were perched on all fours, moaning. One of the hardest things I’ve ever done is contain my laughter during those classes. Mia was the freakin’ teacher’s pet because she was taking it so seriously.
Right around the third class, they showed us a video of a live birth. I had nightmares for a week after that. Tyler and I agreed that we had to find a way to get out of going to the classes.
We hadn’t mutually agreed on a plan, so during the fifth class, Tyler took it upon himself and used his own bodily gifts to get us into a heap of trouble. Tyler is lactose intolerant, and he has to take these little white tablets every time he eats cheese. The morning of the class, he stopped by the studio with a half-eaten pizza. I didn’t even think twice about it until that night in class during our visualization exercises when this god-awful, horrendous odor overtook our senses.
At first everyone kept quiet and just looked around for the source. There wasn’t a sound to accompany the lethal attack, so everyone went into investigation mode, staring each other down. Mia began to gag. I heard Jenny cry a little behind us. Finally when I turned toward Tyler, I noticed he had the most triumphant glimmer in his eyes. I completely lost my shit. I was rolling around, laughing hysterically.
Mia grabbed the hood of my sweatshirt and pulled me to my feet. “Outside, now!” She was scowling as she dragged me along. When we passed Tyler, she pointed to him angrily. “You too, joker.”
Mia and Jenny pressed us up against the brick wall outside and then gave us the death stare, both of them with their arms crossed over their blooming bellies. They whispered something to each other and then turned and walked off, arm in arm.
We followed. “Come on, you guys, it was funny.”
Jenny stopped dead in her tracks and turned. She jabbed her index finger into my chest and said, “Yes, it is funny. When you’re five! Not when you’re in a room full of pregnant women. Do you know how sensitive our noses are?”
I shrugged. “It wasn’t me.”
“Oh, I know he’s a child,” she said but wouldn’t even look at Tyler. “And you are too, Will, for encouraging it.”
Mia was glaring at me with a disappointed look, and then she shook her head and turned to continue down the street. Jenny caught up and walked away with her.
“God, they’re so sensitive,” I whispered to Tyler.
“Yeah, I kinda feel bad.”
Without turning around, Mia yelled to us, “You guys don’t have to come anymore. Jenny and I can be each other’s partners.”
I turned to Tyler and mouthed, “It worked!” I had a huge smile on my face.
Tyler and I high-fived.
“Why don’t you guys go celebrate? I know that’s what you wanted,” Jenny yelled back as they made a sharp turn down the sidewalk and down the stairs to the subway.
“Nothing gets past them,” Tyler said
”
”
Renee Carlino (Sweet Little Thing (Sweet Thing, #1.5))
“
My little undomesticated pornstar pushed me so hard between her legs, my oxygen levels plummeted. She clenched around my fingers through her panties as an orgasm rolled through her in waves.
The gush of warmth soaked the cotton. I kissed her through the fabric, again and again, knowing tomorrow everything would return to its proper position—my boundaries, my limits, my hang-ups, my demons.
“Can I return the favor?” Dallas sat half up. “But not through your briefs. Men’s briefs always smell like old cheese that’s been sitting in a crockpot for days. I know because whenever my housekeeper went on vacation, we all took turns doing the laundry. And, well, I really shouldn’t say, but Dadd—”
Not wanting the moment to be ruined with a conversation about her father’s underwear, I pulled forward, shutting her smart mouth with a kiss that tasted like her sweet pussy.
At first, she pinched her lips and made a face, unsure what she thought about her own taste.
But when I dragged the tip of my hard cock along her slit through our clothes, she went wild and kissed me back, shoving her tongue so deep down my throat I thought she would fish out my dinner.
“Yes.” She wiggled against me. “Please, sir, may I have some more?”
She’d quoted Oliver Twist while getting fucked.
Truly, the woman was one of a kind.
Knowing it was idiotic, and dangerous, and deranged, I pushed my tip through her slit. She was tight—tighter, still, through the tattered, stretched cotton of her ruined panties—but wet and sleek, ready for what was coming.
The sensation, how warm and taut she felt, completely undid me. I thrust harder and deeper, entering her through our underwear, fucking her slowly with only flimsy fabric between us.
I tore my mouth from hers, eyes glued to my cock each time it sank into her. I could barely fit inside, she was so tight.
This was, by far, the best fuck I’d ever had.
She panted. “Is this what people call dry-humping?”
No.
Nothing about this was dry. I was basically fucking her through our underwear.
Only, explaining to her that this was full-blown sex with a side order of my issues was not in my plans for tonight. Or ever.
“Sure.”
Each push brought me closer to a climax.
From slow, controlled, teasing thrusts designed to drive her mad with desire, I quickly derailed to jerky, manic, need-to-be-inside-this-woman plunges. Of a man so hungry for human connection, for affection, for carnal needs to be met and satisfied.
My head grew dizzy. I’d taken into consideration the possibility that Dallas couldn’t come through penetration. It merely placed her in the same majority as most females on Planet Earth.
But she shook, clawed, and reached for me, looking ready to climax. Her tits bounced and jiggled each time I slammed into her.
Her mouth opened in awe, probably because this orgasm felt different from the first two. Deeper and more violent.
She clutched the lapels of my shirt, shoving her face in mine. “Lose the underwear.” She met my thrust, groaning when my crown peeked past the slot in my boxer briefs. “I want you to come inside me. I want to feel you.”
I was about two seconds from fulfilling her demand. Luckily, my logic grabbed the steering wheel, which my cock had seized sometime this evening, and derailed the situation from full-blown calamity.
I managed to wait until she came, just barely, before pulling out, flipping her onto her stomach, and jerking off.
I aimed for her bare ass but somehow came on her hair. No matter. She had plenty of time to wash it. Her agenda wasn’t exactly full.
Dallas fell back onto the pillows, a lopsided grin on her face. (Chapter 31)
”
”
Parker S. Huntington (My Dark Romeo (Dark Prince Road, #1))
“
They'd followed him up and had seen him open the door of a room not far from the head of the stairs. He hadn't so much as glanced their way but had gone in and shut the door. She'd walked on with Martha, past that door, down the corridor and around a corner to their chamber.
Drawing in a tight-faintly excited-breath, she set out, quietly creeping back to the corner, her evening slippers allowing her to tiptoe along with barely a sound.
Nearing the corner, she paused and glanced back along the corridor. Still empty. Reassured, she started to turn, intending to peek around the corner-
A hard body swung around the corner and plowed into her.
She stumbled back. Hard hands grabbed her, holding her upright.
Her heart leapt to her throat. She looked up,saw only darkness.
She opened her mouth-
A palm slapped over her lips. A steely arm locked around her-locked her against a large, adamantine male body; she couldn't even squirm.
Her senses scrambled. Strength, male heat, muscled hardness engulfed her.
Then a virulent curse singed her ears.
And she realized who'd captured her.
Panic and sheer fright had tensed her every muscle; relief washed both away and she felt limp. The temptation to sag in his arms, to sink gratefully against him, was so nearly overwhelming that it shocked her into tensing again.
He lowered his head so he could look into her face. Through clenched teeth, he hissed, "What the hell are you doing?"
His tone very effectively dragged her wits to the fore. He hadn't removed his hand from her lips. She nipped it.
With a muted oath, he pulled the hand away.
She moistened her lips and angrily whispered back, "Coming to see you, of course. What are you doing here?"
"Coming to fetch you-of course."
"You ridiculous man." Her hands had come to rest on his chest. She snatched them back, waved them. "I'm hardly likely to come to grief over the space of a few yards!"
Even to her ears they sounded like squabbling children.
He didn't reply.
Through the dark, he looked at her.
She couldn't see his eyes, but his gaze was so intent, so intense that she could feel...
her heart started thudding, beating heavier, deeper.
Her senses expanded, alert in a wholly unfamiliar way.
he looked at her...looked at her.
Primitive instinct riffled the delicate hairs at her nape.
Abruptly he raised his head, straightened, stepped back. "Come on."
Grabbing her elbow, he bundled her unceremoniously around the corner and on up the corridor before him. Her temper-always close to the surface when he was near-started to simmer. If they hadn't needed to be quiet, she would have told him what she thought of such cavalier treatment.
Breckenridge halted her outside the door to his bedchamber; he would have preferred any other meeting place, but there was no safer place, and regardless of all and everything else, he needed to keep her safe. Reaching around her, he raised the latch and set the door swinging. "In here."
He'd left the lamp burning low. As he followed her in, then reached back and shut the door, he took in what she was wearing. He bit back another curse.
She glanced around, but there was nowhere to sit but on the bed. Quickly he strode past her, stripped off the coverlet, then autocratically pointed at the sheet. "Sit there."
With a narrow-eyed glare, she did, with the haughty grace of a reigning monarch.
Immediately she'd sat, he flicked out the coverlet and swathed her in it.
She cast him a faintly puzzled glance but obligingly held the enveloping drape close about her.
He said nothing; if she wanted to think he was concerned about her catching a chill, so be it. At least the coverlet was long enough to screen her distracting angles and calves.
Which really was ridiculous. Considering how many naked women he'd seen in his life, why the sight of her stockinged ankles and calves should so affect him was beyond his ability to explain.
”
”
Stephanie Laurens (Viscount Breckenridge to the Rescue (Cynster, #16; The Cynster Sisters Trilogy, #1))
“
They killed everyone in the camps. The whole world was dying there. Not only Jews. Even a black woman. Not gypsy. Not African. American like you, Mrs. Clara.
They said she was a dancer and could play any instrument. Said she could line up shoes from many countries and hop from one pair to the next, performing the dances of the world. They said the Queen of Denmark honored her with a gold trumpet. But she was there, in hell with the rest of us.
A woman like you. Many years ago. A lifetime ago. Young then as you would have been. And beautiful. As I believe you must have been, Mrs. Clara. Yes. Before America entered the war. Already camps had begun devouring people. All kinds of people. Yet she was rare. Only woman like her I saw until I came here, to this country, this city. And she saved my life.
Poor thing.
I was just a boy. Thirteen years old. The guards were beating me. I did not know why. Why? They didn't need a why. They just beat. And sometimes the beating ended in death because there was no reason to stop, just as there was no reason to begin. A boy. But I'd seen it many times. In the camp long enough to forget why I was alive, why anyone would want to live for long. They were hurting me, beating the life out of me but I was not surprised, expected no explanation. I remember curling up as I had seen a dog once cowering from the blows of a rolled newspaper. In the old country lifetimes ago. A boy in my village staring at a dog curled and rolling on its back in the dust outside a baker's shop and our baker in his white apron and tall white hat striking this mutt again and again. I didn't know what mischief this dog had done. I didn't understand why the fat man with flour on his apron was whipping it unmercifully. I simply saw it and hated the man, felt sorry for the animal, but already the child in me understood it could be no other way so I rolled and curled myself against the blows as I'd remembered the spotted dog in the dusty village street because that's the way it had to be.
Then a woman's voice in a language I did not comprehend reached me. A woman angry, screeching. I heard her before I saw her. She must have been screaming at them to stop. She must have decided it was better to risk dying than watch the guards pound a boy to death. First I heard her voice, then she rushed in, fell on me, wrapped herself around me. The guards shouted at her. One tried to snatch her away. She wouldn't let go of me and they began to beat her too. I heard the thud of clubs on her back, felt her shudder each time a blow was struck.
She fought to her feet, dragging me with her. Shielding me as we stumbled and slammed into a wall.
My head was buried in her smock. In the smell of her, the smell of dust, of blood. I was surprised how tiny she was, barely my size, but strong, very strong. Her fingers dug into my shoulders, squeezing, gripping hard enough to hurt me if I hadn't been past the point of feeling pain. Her hands were strong, her legs alive and warm, churning, churning as she pressed me against herself, into her. Somehow she'd pulled me up and back to the barracks wall, propping herself, supporting me, sheltering me. Then she screamed at them in this language I use now but did not know one word of then, cursing them, I'm sure, in her mother tongue, a stream of spit and sputtering sounds as if she could build a wall of words they could not cross.
The kapos hesitated, astounded by what she'd dared. Was this black one a madwoman, a witch? Then they tore me from her grasp, pushed me down and I crumpled there in the stinking mud of the compound. One more kick, a numbing, blinding smash that took my breath away. Blood flooded my eyes. I lost consciousness. Last I saw of her she was still fighting, slim, beautiful legs kicking at them as they dragged and punched her across the yard.
You say she was colored?
Yes. Yes. A dark angel who fell from the sky and saved me.
”
”
John Edgar Wideman (Fever)
“
I can tell you about my mother, and how her death nearly destroyed me. I can tell you in detail about what I did afterward, and what that cost me. I can tell you about the decade it took me to work through it. I can tell you how many days and nights I suffered during the forty-nine years Amarantha held Rhys captive, the guilt tearing me apart that I wasn't there to help him, that I couldn't save him. I can tell you how I still look at him and know I'm not worthy of him, that I failed him when he needed me- that fact drags me from sleep sometimes. I can tell you I've killed so many people I've lost count, but I remember most of their faces. I can tell you how I hear Eris and Devlon and the others talk and, deep down, I still believe that I am a worthless bastard brute. That it doesn't matter how many Siphons I have or how many battles I've won, because I failed the two people dearest to me when it mattered the most.'
She couldn't find the words to tell him that he was wrong. That he was good, and brave, and-
'But I'm not going to tell you all of that,' he said, pressing a kiss to the top of her head.
The wind seemed to pause, the sunlight on the lake brightening.
He said, 'I am going to tell you that you will get through it. That you will face all of this, and you will get through it. That these tears are good, Nesta. These tears mean you care. I am going to tell you that it is not too late, not for any of it. And I can't tell you when, or how, but it will get better. What you feel, this guilt and pain and self-loathing- you will get through it. But only if you are willing to fight. Only if you are willing to face it, and embrace it, and walk through it, to emerge on the other side of it. And maybe you will still feel that tinge of pain, but there is another side. A better side.
She pulled back from his chest then. Found his gaze lined with silver. 'I don't know how to get there. I don't think I'm capable of it.'
His eyes glimmered with pain for her. 'You are. I've seen it- I've seen what you can do when you are willing to fight for the people you love. Why not apply that same bravery and loyalty to yourself? Don't say you don't deserve it.' He gripped her chin. 'Everyone deserves happiness. The road there isn't easy. It is long, and hard, and often travelled utterly blind. But you keep going.' He nodded to the mountains and lake. 'Because you know the destination will be worthwhile.'
She stared up at him, this male who had walked with her for five days in near-silence, waiting, she knew, for this moment.
She blurted, 'All the things I've done before-'
'Leave them in the past. Apologise to who you feel the need to, but leave those things behind.'
'Forgiveness is not that easy.'
'Forgiveness is something we also grant ourselves. And I can talk to you until these mountains crumble around us, but if you don't wish to be forgiven, if you don't want to stop feeling this way... it won't happen.' He cupped her cheek, calluses scraping against her overheated skin. 'You don't need to become some impossible ideal. You don't need to become sweet and simpering. You can give everyone that I Will Slay My Enemies look- which is my favourite look, by the way. You can keep that sharpness I like so much, that boldness and fearlessness. I don't want you to ever lose those things, to cage yourself.'
'But I still don't know how to fix myself.'
'There's nothing broken to be fixed.' he said fiercely. 'You are helping yourself. Healing the parts of you that hurt to much- and perhaps hurt others, too.'
Nesta knew he wouldn't have ever said it, but she saw it in his gaze- that she had hurt him. Many times. She'd known she had, but to see it again in his face... She lifted her hand to his cheek and laid it there, too drained to are about the gentleness of the touch.
Cassian nuzzled into her hand, closing his eyes. 'I'll be with you every step of the way,' he whispered into her palm.
”
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Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Silver Flames (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #4))