Effortless Quotes

But, if for some reason we're not closer, if something has gotten between us, please, I'm begging you…don't give up on me. Stay. Stay with me. Work it out with me. Just don't leave me…please.

Their fingers seemed to fit together in just the right way- effortlessly clasped,like perfect complements.

Loving you, Kellan, is so easy, it's effortless." His smile matched mine, then I frowned and sighed "Trusting you...that's the hard part

His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred. Later he became conscious of his damaged wings and of their construction and he learned to think and could not fly any more because the love of flight was gone and he could only remember when it had been effortless.

..."you finally get it."... ... "get what?"... "That I'm yours... that you can take me... anywhere, anytime, anyway. That you own every peice of me.

Love is the cure, for your pain will keep giving birth to more pain until your eyes constantly exhale love as effortlessly as your body yields its scent.

Sometimes not talking is effortless, and other times it’s more exhausting than lifting pianos.

but what it all boils down to is three words that don’t mean nearly enough… I love you.

Friends are a strange, volatile, contradictory, yet sticky phenomenon. They are made, crafted, shaped, molded, created by focused effort and intent. And yet, true friendship, once recognized, in its essence is effortless. Best friends are formed by time. Everyone is someone's friend, even when they think they are all alone. If the friendship is not working, your heart will know. It's when you start being less than perfectly honest and perfectly earnest in your dealings. And it's when the things you do together no longer feel right. However, sometimes it takes more effort to make it work after all. Stick around long enough to become someone's best friend.

It's effortless to let go of self-absorbed people. It's challenging to let go of someone you care about and it's exceedingly difficult to let go of an ideal and a belief in someone because what exacerbates the disappointment of finding out they weren't who they presented themselves to be, is the betrayal of it.

And he leans in, so carefully. Breathing and not breathing and hearts beating between us and he’s so close, he’s so close and I can’t feel my legs anymore. I can’t feel my fingers or the cold or the emptiness of this room because all I feel is him, everywhere,filling everything and he whispers “Please.” He says “Please don’t shoot me for this.” And he kisses me. His lips are softer than anything I've ever known, soft like a first snowfall, like biting into cotton candy, like melting and floating and being weightless in water. It’s sweet, it’s so effortlessly sweet. And then it changes. “Oh God—” He kisses me again, this time stronger, desperate, like he has to have me, like he’s dying to memorize the feel of my lips against his own. The taste of him is making me crazy; he’s all heat and desire and peppermint and I want more. I've just begun reeling him in, pulling him into me when he breaks away. He’s breathing like he’s lost his mind andhe’s looking at me like something has brokeninside of him, like he’s woken up to find that his nightmares were just that, that they never existed, that it was all just a bad dream that felt far too real but now he’s awake and he’s safe and everything is going to be okay and I’m falling. I’m falling apart and into his heart and I’m a disaster.

The truth is, laughter always sounds more perfect than weeping. Laughter flows in a violent riff and is effortlessly melodic. Weeping is often fought, choked, half strangled, or surrendered to with humiliation.

Nothing in the world was as beautiful to me as that tattoo, except the man bearing it.

I know that I have to be with you. Everything else is just...details.

I'll still be with you every night, Kiera. Every night, no matter where I am, crawling into bed with you. Our bed will be a lot bigger, miles wide, but it will just be you and me inside it.

I wanted...to own you. I wanted a part of me in you." He cringed. "I wanted to mark you, make you mine.

I’m exactly right for you, Bella. It would have been effortless for us — comfortable, easy as breathing. I was the natural path your life would have taken… If the world was the way it was supposed to be, if there were no monsters and no magic

When we love someone our love becomes demonstrable or real only through our exertion - through the fact that for that someone (or for ourself) we take an extra step or walk an extra mile. Love is not effortless. To the contrary, love is effortful.

Are you about to have sex in my bathroom?" Without missing a beat, Kellan responded with, "Yes," and started closing the door.

It is one thing to pray, but another thing to watch how God answers - and He does so effortlessly.

You are all that, Catalina. You are light. And passion. Your laughter alone can lift my mood and effortlessly turn my day around in a matter of seconds. Even when it's not aimed at me. You... can light up entire rooms, Catalina. You hold that kind of power. And it's because of all the different things that make you who you are. Each and every one of them, even the ones that drive me crazy in ways you can't imagine. You should never forget that.

Women that can work a camera with ease often work men just as effortlessly for both require the same commitment to vanity and manipulation.

Just because something comes easily to you, does not mean it has no value. You find it effortless because you love it, and that is why it is your gift.

Preoccupied with a single leaf... you won't see the tree. Preoccupied with a single tree... you'll miss the entire forest. Don't be preoccupied with a single spot. See everything in it's entirety... effortlessly. That is what it means to truly "see.

But every spiteful word she ever wrote him was effortless love clenched in her fists. Her heart screaming for stability in this fiery game of desire.

At that moment, something shifted sweetly inside him. It was forgiveness, beautiful and effortless and complete. For Louie Zamperini, the war was over.

If you swim effortlessly in the deep oceans, ride the waves to and from the shore, if you can breathe under water and dine on the deep treasures of the seas; mark my words, those who dwell on the rocks carrying nets will try to reel you into their catch. The last thing they want is for you to thrive in your habitat because they stand in their atmosphere where they beg and gasp for some air.

Anger is effortless. Kindness is hard. Try to exert yourself.

And he was the reason I felt it. His gaze, his touch, his smile, his laugh, no one had ever made me feel... worshiped... quite like he did.

Don't leave me," I begged, when I found air to speak. Kellan wrapped his arms around me just as tight. Voice cracking he murmured, "I won't...I'm yours, Kiera, for as long as you want me." Pulling back I cupped his face. "Forever, I want you forever.

Ethics and I had crossed paths recently, and I’m not sure that I fell on the right side of the morality line.

Dying was and easy thing to accomplish, effortless in its agony. It was living that was hard, requiring endless toil and labor, and for all one's efforts, it could be stolen in an instant.

Well,----me,” he said. “A----ing wizard. I hate----ing wizards!” “You shouldn’t----them, then,” muttered one of his henchmen, effortlessly pronouncing a row of dashes.

when something is right, it will feel easier and much more effortless

Not looking up at me, his smile widened. “I’m reading your porn.” Smacking his foot as I walked by, I scoffed, “That’s not porn…it’s romance.

His voice was melted sex. Yes, melted...sex.

Meditation is a journey from effort to effortlessness, from activity to stillness, and from stress, anxiety and frustration to a state of peace and tranquillity.

Tobias," I say anyway. My hands shake, but not from fear this time– from anger. "Where is he? What are you doing to him?" "I see no reason to provide that information," says Jeanine... I make my voice flat and factual, like hers. "I see no reason to provide that information." I hear a faint snort. Peter is covering his mouth. Jeanine glares at him, and his laughter effortlessly transforms into a coughing fit. "Mockery is childish, Beatrice," she says. "It does not become you." "Mockery is childish, Beatrice," I repeat in my best imitation of her voice. "It does not become you."

There is no word for our kind of friendship. Two people who don't see each other a lot, but can make each other effortlessly happy

Sometimes family was the cruelest form of love there was, for no one could hurt you more than the people who created you.

It strikes me that perhaps I’m not an easy woman to love, but Theo does it so effortlessly that I feel like I could be. Like I deserve to be.

I love you more. I love you enough to let you go and live your dream." I tilted my head and shrugged. "Don't you see....? I love you more." He smiled softly and I brushed some hair off his forehead. Running the backs of my fingers down his cheek, I whispered, "And, yes, I will miss you, more than you could possibly imagine, but I know that you have to do this Kellan. And you know it too." Stubbornly he shook his head. "No, I know that I have to be with you. Everything else is just .... details.

This isn't goodbye, okay. There are no goodbyes... not between us.

My body is just a vessel that my soul inhabits, attached to a shell that it'll one day leave. And when that day comes, I won’t care to let that shell go. I carry my body around because I have to, not because it's a choice. But when I possess something meaningful, I’m choosing to hold on to it. Carrying something meaningful in my skin is effortless but holding onto something that I could lose—that takes devotion.

Her body fit mine the way the ocean hugged the shore-naturally, effortlessly, perfectly.

We were trying to make our lives easier, trying, with all our rules, to make life effortless. But a friction began to arise between Nothing and Something, in the morning the Nothing vase cast a Something shadow, like the memory of someone you've lost, what can you say about that, at night the Nothing light spilled from the guest room spilled under the Nothing door and stained the Something hallway, there's nothing to say.

Sharzad was rewarded with one of his uncommonly effortless smiles. The kind that changed a face of shadows into one of light".

I’m sorry that I am back and forth, push and pull instead of effortless simplicity.

But I realize that people are just people, and they carry their own set of fears, dreams, desires, pains, and mistakes. I can’t expect someone else to make me feel complete; I must find it on my own. And I think I was always writing for myself, to sort through my loss and worry and tangled ambitions. Even now, I think about how effortless it is to lose oneself in words, and yet also find who you are.

…..plainly put, I loved the way he effortlessly forced my pen to act savagely, to swerve course without warning.

It's so effortless to let my loneliness defeat me, make me mold myself to whatever would (in some way - but not wholly) relieve it. I must never forget it... I want sensuality and sensitivity, both... Let me never deny that... I want to err on the side of violence and excess, rather than to underfill my moments.

The minute I was bored with a book or a subject I moved to another one, instead of giving up on reading altogether - when you are limited to the school material and you get bored, you have a tendency to give up and do nothing or play hooky out of discouragement. The trick is to be bored with a specific book, rather than with the act of reading. So the number of the pages absorbed could grow faster than otherwise. And you find gold, so to speak, effortlessly, just as in rational but undirected trial-and-error-based research. It is exactly like options, trial and error, not getting stuck, bifurcating when necessary but keeping a sense of broad freedom and opportunism. Trial and error is freedom.

A happy person isn’t someone who’s happy all the time. It’s someone who effortlessly interprets events in such a way that they don’t lose their innate peace.

You are told from the moment you enter school that time is constant. It never changes. It is one of those set things in life that you can always rely on... much like death and taxes. There will always be sixty seconds in a minute. There will always be sixty minutes in an hour. And there will always be twenty-four hours in a day. Time was not fluctuating. It moved on at the same, constant pace at every moment in your life. And that was the biggest load of crap that I'd ever been taught in school.

You wouldn't think sex could actally be a workout, but if done right...

A man is unlikely to be brought within earshot of women as they judge men's appearance, height, muscle tone, sexual technique, penis size, personal grooming, or taste in clothes--all of which we do. The fact is that women are able to view men just as men view women, as objects for sexual and aesthetic evaluation; we too are effortlessly able to choose the male "ideal" from a lineup and if we could have male beauty as well as everything else, most of us would not say no. But so what? Given all that, women make the choice, by and large, to take men as human beings first.

Without the bitter the sweet aint as sweet

True learning only occurs when you love the subject you are studying and then the acquiring of knowledge is effortless because it is also a pleasure.

The essential and defining characteristic of childhood is not the effortless merging of dream and reality, but only alienation. There are no words for childhood's dark turns and exhalations. A wise child recognizes it and submits to the necessary consequences. A child who counts the cost is a child no longer.

I detach myself from preconceived outcomes and trust that all is well. Being myself allows the wholeness of my unique magnificience to draw me in those directions most beneficial to me and to all others. This is really the only thing I have to do. And within that framework, everything that is truly mine comes into my life effortlessly, in the most magical and unexpected ways imaginable, demonstrating every day the power and love of who I truly am.

The next thing I remembered was Reyes smiling down at me as the sun filtered into his apartment, his hair mussed, his lids hooded with the thick remnants of sleep. I stretched as those three little words that every girl longs to hear slipped from his mouth with effortless ease. As though they did every day. As though they didn't mean the world to me. With one corner of his mouth tipping sensually, he asked, "Want some coffee?" And I fell. I fell hard.

He nodded and leaned down to kiss me. I let him, Dad be damned.

Why do I always have to be the one who says 'stop'?" I demanded, my voice little more than a moan. "You don't. In fact, at this point I'm considering a petition to that word stricken from the English language." His grin was almost lazy, the gleam in his eyes an effortless challenge. "If I did, would you sign?

I didn't actally sleep naked. Not unless he was there to put me to bed that way.

You’re not just a girl he’s seeing. You’re THE girl. You’re it for him. I see it in his eyes when he looks at you … He’s completely, madly, deeply in love with you, and he wants a lifetime with you.

Looking down at me, Kellan raised an eyebrow. “Did your dad buy you the squeakiest bed in the world on purpose?

You don't suck another person's sucker uninvited.

Taking his time, as though he has all of it in the world, in the universe, from the days when tales meant more than they do now, but perhaps less than they will someday, he draws a breath that releases the tangled knot of words in his heart, and they fall from his lips effortlessly. "The circus arrives without warning.

Good writing is the hardest form of thinking. It involves the agony of turning profoundly difficult thoughts into lucid form, then forcing them into the tight-fitting uniform of language, making them visible and clear. If the writing is good, then the result seems effortless and inevitable. But when you want to say something life-changing or ineffable in a single sentence, you face both the limitations of the sentence itself and the extent of your own talent.

Self abandoned, relaxed and effortless, I seemed to have laid me down in the dried-up bed of a great river; I heard a flood loosened in remote mountains, I felt the torrent come; to rise I had no will, to flee I had no strength.

The way of the Essentialist means living by design, not by default. Instead of making choices reactively, the Essentialist deliberately distinguishes the vital few from the trivial many, eliminates the nonessentials, and then removes obstacles so the essential things have clear, smooth passage. In other words, Essentialism is a disciplined, systematic approach for determining where our highest point of contribution lies, then making execution of those things almost effortless.

I know that I’ve become one of those spouting, love-sick idiots, but what it all boils down to is three words that don’t mean enough…I love you.

Yeah, I’m having a girl.” She shook her head. “There’s just no way I’d put another Griffin on this earth.

He who is in harmony with the Tao is like a newborn child. Its bones are soft, its muscles are weak, but its grip is powerful. It doesn't know about the union of male and female, yet its penis can stand erect, so intense is its vital power. It can scream its head off all day, yet it never becomes hoarse, so complete is its harmony. The Master's power is like this. He lets all things come and go effortlessly, without desire. He never expects results; thus he is never disappointed. He is never disappointed; thus his spirit never grows old.

We ate the birds. We ate them. We wanted their songs to flow up through our throats and burst out of our mouths, and so we ate them. We wanted their feathers to bud from our flesh. We wanted their wings, we wanted to fly as they did, soar freely among the treetops and the clouds, and so we ate them. We speared them, we clubbed them, we tangled their feet in glue, we netted them, we spitted them, we threw them onto hot coals, and all for love, because we loved them. We wanted to be one with them. We wanted to hatch out of clean, smooth, beautiful eggs, as they did, back when we were young and agile and innocent of cause and effect, we did not want the mess of being born, and so we crammed the birds into our gullets, feathers and all, but it was no use, we couldn’t sing, not effortlessly as they do, we can’t fly, not without smoke and metal, and as for the eggs we don’t stand a chance. We’re mired in gravity, we’re earthbound. We’re ankle-deep in blood, and all because we ate the birds, we ate them a long time ago, when we still had the power to say no.

-You finally get it. -Get what? -That I'm yours. That you can take me anywhere, anytime, anyway. That you own every piece of me..

You have any…nicknames?” Kellan gave me a charmingly crooked smile. “None that I’ve given myself, but from what I’ve heard said in the bedroom, it would probably be something like, ‘The Oh-God-yes-harder-faster-don’t-you-dare-stop-yes-fuck-me-now-you’re-freaking-amazing Machine.” He shrugged. “But that’s kind of a mouthful.

Intellect and love are made of two different materials. Intellect ties people in knots and risks nothing, but love dissolves all tangles and risks everything. Intellect is always cautious and advises, “Beware too much ecstasy,” whereas Love says, “Oh never mind. Take the plunge!” Intellect does not easily break down, whereas love can effortlessly reduce itself to rubble. But treasures are hidden amongst ruins. A broken heart hides treasure. (5)

Let your alignment (with Well-Being) be first and foremost, and let everything else be secondary. And not only will you have an eternally joyous journey, but everything you have ever imagined will flow effortlessly into your experience. There is nothing you cannot be or do or have—but your dominant intent is to be joyful. The doing and the having will come into alignment once you get that one down.

When we are passionately in love with our Prince, we put Him above all else--not just in theory, but also practically, in every moment of our day-to-day lives. We do not live for the applause of heaven. Our longings are not for people's approval but only for more and more of Him. We are marked by an effortless, unshakable strength that is found in the presence of our perfect Lover.

I hid this one in hopes that you would find it long after I'm gone. I hope you find this months from now, when I'm still out there, on the road, away from you. I can't imagine what the time apart has done to us. I'm hoping we're more in love than ever. I'm hoping that when I come back, you'll move in with me. In all honesty, I'm hoping that when I come back, you'll agree to marry me someday. Because that's what I want, what I dream about. You, mine, for the rest of my life. I hope you feel the same because I don't know what I would do without you. I love you so much. But, if for some reason we're not closer, if something has gotten between us, please, I'm begging you, don't give up on me. Stay. Stay with me. Work it out with me. Just don't leave me. Please.

God knows instantly and effortlessly all matter and all matters, all mind and every mind, all spirit and all spirits, all being and every being, all creaturehood and all creatures, every plurality and all pluralities, all law and every law, all relations, all causes, all thoughts, all mysteries, all enigmas, all feeling, all desires, every unuttered secret, all thrones and dominions, all personalities, all things visible and invisible in heaven and in earth, motion, space, time, life, death, good, evil, heaven, and hell.

She was suddenly angry. Angry that this woman was so effortlessly pretty. Angry that tonight she would sleep beside her doting husband. That soon she would hold a wrinkled, wailing baby in her arms and that child would never question whether it was loved, or whether its parents loved each other. Nothing Levana wanted had ever come that easily.

You are a beautiful, intelligent woman with a boyfriend who adores you. You have nothing to fear ever - Kellan Kyle

I never made love until you." - Kellan Kyle

How often in life he has found himself a frustrated observer of apparently impenetrable systems, watching other people participate effortlessly in structures he can find no way to enter or even understand. So often that it’s practically baseline, just normal existence for him. And this is not only due to the irrational nature of other people, and the consequent irrationality of the rules and processes they devise; it’s due to Ivan himself, his fundamental unsuitedness to life. He knows this. He feels himself to have been formed, somehow, with something other than life in mind.

That kind of friendship doesn't just materialize at the end of the rainbow one morning in a soft-focus Hollywood haze. For it to last this long, and at such close quarters, some serious work had gone into it. Ask any ice-skater or ballet dancer or show jumper, anyone who lives by beautiful moving things: nothing takes as much work as effortlessness.

While a common reaction to seeing a thing of beauty is to want to buy it, our real desire may be not so much to own what we find beautiful as to lay permanent claim to the inner qualities it embodies. Owning such an object may help us realise our ambition of absorbing the virtues to which it alludes, but we ought not to presume that those virtues will automatically or effortlessly begin to rub off on us through tenure. Endeavouring to purchase something we think beautiful may in fact be the most unimaginative way of dealing with the longing it excites in us, just as trying to sleep with someone may be the bluntest response to a feeling of love. What we seek, at the deepest level, is inwardly to resemble, rather than physically possess, the objects and places that touch us through their beauty.

I totally remember what it felt like to be so full…Full of promise, full of dreams, full of shit. Mostly just full of yourself. So full you’re bursting. And then you get out into the world, and people empty you out, little by little, like air from a balloon…You try like hell to fill yourself up with fresh air, from you and from other people. But back then…it was so damn effortless to feel full, you know? All you had to do was breathe

There's no such thing as effortless beauty--you should know that. There's no effort which is not beautiful--lifting a heavy stone or loving you. Loving you is like lifting a heavy stone. It would be easier not to do it and I'm not quite sure why I am doing it. It takes all my strength and all my determination, and I said I wouldn't love someone again like this. Is there any sense in loving someone you can only wake up to by chance?

Here is a simple formula for successful fishing. First decide what it is you want to express or possess. This is essential. You must definitely know what you want of life before you can fish for it. After your decision is made, turn from the world of sense, remove your attention from the problem and place it on just being by repeating quietly but with feeling, “I AM.” As your attention is removed from the world round about you and placed upon the I AM so that you are lost in the feeling of simply being, you will find yourself slipping the anchor that tied you to the shallows of your problem; and effortlessly you will find yourself moving out into the deep.

You are told from the moment you enter school that time is constant. It never changes. It is one of those set things in life that you can always rely on...much like death and taxes. There will always be sixty seconds in a minute. There will always be sixty minutes in an hour. And there will always be twenty-four hours in a day. Time was not fluctuating. It moved on at the same, constant pace at every moment in your life. And that was the biggest load of crap that I’d ever been taught in school. Truth was, time did fluctuate. It was easy to lose hours or even days in a blink of an eye. Other times, it was a struggle to get through a mere hour. It ebbed and flowed as relentlessly as the tides, and just as powerfully too. The moments that you wanted to last forever were the ones that were washed away all too soon. The moments that you wanted to speed up, were slowed down to a snail’s pace. That was the truth of the matter.

Surrender is the ultimate sign of strength and the foundation for a spiritual life. Surrendering affirms that we are no longer willing to live in pain. It expresses a deep desire to transcend our struggles and transform our negative emotions. It commands a life beyond our egos, beyond that part of ourselves that is continually reminding us that we are separate, different and alone. Surrendering allows us to return to our true nature and move effortlessly through the cosmic dance called life. It's a powerful statement that proclaims the perfect order of the universe. When you surrender your will, you are saying, "Even though things are not exactly how I'd like them to be, I will face my reality. I will look it directly in the eye and allow it to be here." Surrender and serenity are synonymous; you can't experience one without the other. So if it's serenity you're searching for, it's close by. All you have to do is resign as General Manager of the Universe. Choose to trust that there is a greater plan for you and that if you surrender, it will be unfolded in time. Surrender is a gift that you can give yourself. It's an act of faith. It's saying that even though I can't see where this river is flowing, I trust it will take me in the right direction.

Just then the door flew open, and Ambrose burst through, yelling like a madman and swinging a battle-ax in one hand. His other arm was torn by a mean gash, and his shredded clothes were stained crimson. A rivulet of blood ran down his face from a scalp wound. His crazed eyes fixed on Lucien's decapitated body and then swung toward Vincent's body, lying in a heap next to the fireplace. He looked at me, standing a few feet away, holding an enormous sword effortlessly in one hand and Lucien's head in the other. He nodded silently, and I nodded back.

As I got older, I got craftier and less obvious, but I’ve always put a lot of energy and effort into people liking me. That’s why I’ve never understood the compliment “effortless.” People love to say: “She just walked into the party, charming people with her effortless beauty.” I don’t understand that at all. What’s so wrong with effort, anyway? It means you care. What about the girl who “walked into the party, her determination to please apparent on her eager face”? Sure, she might seem a little crazy, and, yes, maybe everything she says sounds like conversation starters she found on a website, but at least she’s trying. Let’s give her a shot!

We are created for precisely this sort of suffering. In the end, it is all we are, these limpid tide pools of self-consciousness between crashing waves of pain. We are destined and designed to bear our pain with us, hugging it tight to our bellies like the young Spartan thief hiding a wolf cub so it can eat away our insides. What other creature in God's wide domain would carry the memory of you, Fanny, dust these nine hundred years, and allow it to eat away at him even as consumption does the same work with its effortless efficiency? Words assail me. The thought of books makes me ache. Poetry echoes in my mind, and if I had the ability to banish it, I would do so at once.

My day isn’t complete until I’m deep inside you. Your body wrapped around mine is the only way I feel whole. But don’t think it’s just sex and a physical response to you that I’m feeling. It’s not…it’s so much more. You’ve opened me in a way that leaves me bleeding, vulnerable. Being with you, making love to you, it only solidifies what I feel for you. I know that I’ve become one of those spouting, love-sick idiots, but what it all boils down to is three words that don’t mean nearly enough…I love you.

He handed me a bandana. "Tie that on." "Why?" I said, but I did it anyway. "Norman, you are way too into ceremony." "It's important." I could hear him moving around, adjusting things, before he came to sit beside me. "Okay," he said. "Take a look." I pulled off the blindfold. Beside me, Norman watched me see myself for the first time. And it was me. At least, it was a girl who looked like me. She was sitting on the back stoop of the restaurant, legs crossed and dangling down. She had her head slightly tilted, as if she had been asked something and was waiting for the right moment to respond, smiling slightly behind the sunglasses that were perched on her nose, barely reflecting part of a blue sky. The girl was something else, though. Something I hadn't expected. She was beautiful. Not in the cookie-cutter way of all the faces encircling Isabel's mirror. And not in the easy, almost effortless style of a girl like Caroline Dawes. This girl who stared back at me, with her lip ring and her half smile - not quite earned - knew she wasn't like the others. She knew the secret. And she'd clicked her heels three times to find her way home. "Oh, my God," I said to Norman, reaching forward to touch the painting, which still didn't seem real. My own face, bumpy and textured beneath my fingers, stared back at me. "Is this how you see me?" "Colie." He was right beside me. "That's how you are.

But he had never seen Myrna in practice...never that close up. He had been impressed and a little frightened by the contrast between seeing ballet on stange, where everyone seemed to either glide or mince effortlessly on the tips of their pointes. and seeing it from less than five feet away, with harsh daylight pouring in the floor-to-ceiling windows and no music- only the choreographer rythmically clapping his hands and yelling harsh criticisms. No praise, only criticisms. Their faces ran with sweat. Their leotards were wet with sweat. The room, as large and airy as it way, stank of sweat. Sleek muscles trembled and fluttered on the nervous edge of exhaustion. Corded tendons stood out like insulated cables. Throbbing veins popped out on foreheads and necks. Except for the choreographer's clapping and angry, hectoring shouts, the only sounds were the thrup-thud of ballet dancers on pointe moving across the floor and harsh, agonized panting for breath. Jack had suddenly realized that these dancers were not just earning a living, they were killing themselves. Most of all he remembered their expressions- all that exhausted concentration, all that pain... but transcending the pain, or at least creeping around its edges, he had seen joy. Joy was unmistakably what that look was, and it scared Jack because it had seemed inexplicable.

Over the course of your life you are actually hundreds of different people. You are a different person at the coffee shop than you are at the bar, and a different person for the dry cleaner than you are for your boyfriend, and a different person at work than you are on vacation. You are nobody in particular. But once somebody finds you and loves you, you have to keep being the person that they love. You want thier love. You need to keep getting it even if it means pretending...but no one loved her and so she could keep changing.