“
I am not a glutton - I am an explorer of food
”
”
Erma Bombeck
“
Love comforeth like sunshine after rain,
But Lust's effect is tempest after sun.
Love's gentle spring doth always fresh remain;
Lust's winter comes ere summer half be done.
Love surfeits not, Lust like a glutton dies;
Love is all truth, Lust full of forged lies.
”
”
William Shakespeare (The Complete Sonnets and Poems)
“
Do you believe,' said Candide, 'that men have always massacred each other as they do to-day, that they have always been liars, cheats, traitors, ingrates, brigands, idiots, thieves, scoundrels, gluttons, drunkards, misers, envious, ambitious, bloody-minded, calumniators, debauchees, fanatics, hypocrites, and fools?'
Do you believe,' said Martin, 'that hawks have always eaten pigeons when they have found them?
”
”
Voltaire (Candide)
“
Gussie, a glutton for punishment, stared at himself in the mirror.
”
”
P.G. Wodehouse (Right Ho, Jeeves (Jeeves, #6))
“
...the new world, the communo-bourgeois, sermonizing, Tartuffian, automobilistic, alcoholic, gluttonous and cancerous world has only two anxieties: ass and bank account...
”
”
Louis-Ferdinand Céline
“
He who distinguishes the true savor of his food can never be a glutton; he who does not cannot be otherwise.
”
”
Henry David Thoreau
“
If a person who indulges in gluttony is a glutton, and a person who commits a felony is a felon, then God is an iron.
”
”
Spider Robinson
“
My name is Galaxy, you fucking glutton.
”
”
Leigh Bardugo (Ninth House (Alex Stern, #1))
“
You can’t change the masses. They will always be the same: dumb, gluttonous and forgetful.
”
”
Joseph Goebbels
“
I envy because of the heart
I glutton because of the heart
I covet because of the heart
I am prideful because of the heart
I sloth because of the heart
I rage because of the heart
Because of the heart,
I lust for everything about you."
- Ulquiorra (resurrection)
”
”
Tite Kubo
“
Beware of books. They are more than innocent assemblages of paper and ink and string and glue. If they are any good, they have the spirit of the author within. Authors are rogues and ruffians and easy lays. They are gluttons for sweets and savories. They devour life and always want more. They have sap, spirit, sex. Books are panderers. The Jews are not wrong to worship books. A real book has pheromones and sprouts grass through its cover.
”
”
Erica Jong (Seducing the Demon: Writing for My Life)
“
Now that I think about it, you’d have to be a glutton for punishment to keep coming near me given my acerbic personality where you’re concerned. (Tory)
”
”
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Acheron (Dark-Hunter, #14))
“
All worries are less with wine.
”
”
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
“
I am a gluttonous, gorging failure. A waste. My body isn’t used to high-sugar carbs laced with witchcraft. It can barely cope with soup and crackers.
”
”
Laurie Halse Anderson (Wintergirls)
“
An idler and a sluggard are as different as a gourmand and a glutton.
”
”
David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas)
“
And why not?” “You know why! This is a bad idea.” “Perhaps I like a challenge.” “Perhaps you’re a glutton for punishment!” “Perhaps I am in love.
”
”
Karen Chance (Fury's Kiss (Dorina Basarab, #3))
“
Sooner or later even the most ambitious glutton must crawl away and seek the solace of the vomitorium.
”
”
Clive Barker (Coldheart Canyon)
“
Oh, pity the poor glutton
Whose troubles all begin
In struggling on and on to turn
What's out into what's in.
”
”
Walter de la Mare
“
She felt so lost and lonely. One last chile in walnut sauce left on the platter after a fancy dinner couldn't feel any worse than she did. How many times had she eaten one of those treats, standing by herself in the kitchen, rather than let it be thrown away. When nobody eats the last chile on the plate, it's usually because none of them wants to look like a glutton, so even though they'd really like to devour it, they don't have the nerve to take it. It was as if they were rejecting that stuffed pepper, which contains every imaginable flavor; sweet as candied citron, juicy as pomegranate, with the bit of pepper and the subtlety of walnuts, that marvelous chile in the walnut sauce. Within it lies the secret of love, but it will never be penetrated, and all because it wouldn't feel proper.
”
”
Laura Esquivel (Like Water for Chocolate)
“
We’re not people,” he said. “We’re the stories that people tell each other about us. Belters are crazy terrorists. Earthers are lazy gluttons. Martians are cogs in a great big machine.” “Men are fighters,” Naomi said, and then, her voice growing bleak. “Women are nurturing and sweet and they stay home with the kids. It’s always been like that. We always react to the stories about people, not who they really are.” “And look where it got us,” Holden said.
”
”
James S.A. Corey (Babylon's Ashes (The Expanse, #6))
“
Hunger gives flavour to the food.
”
”
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
“
Marriage. That’s what he called it, though men like Paul do not marry women. They own them. They control them. They are voracious gluttons who devour every part of a woman, then clean their teeth with the bones.
”
”
Karin Slaughter (Pretty Girls)
“
Your perception of meat being nice is blurred by the likely fact that you are excluded from participating in, or even witnessing the untimely mortal demise of the animals you gluttonously devour.
”
”
Mango Wodzak (The Eden Fruitarian Guidebook)
“
You should learn to relish the hunger more than the feast, lest you become a glutton.
”
”
Neal Shusterman (UnDivided (Unwind, #4))
“
Grace before Glutton. For what we are, gifs a gross if we are, about to believe.
”
”
James Joyce (Finnegans Wake)
“
As for her cat, Galahad made an appearance, regally ignored everyone under four feet until he clued in that this variety of humans was more likely to drop food on the floor, or sneak him handouts. He ended in a gluttonous coma, tubby belly up under a table.
”
”
J.D. Robb (Origin in Death (In Death, #21))
“
The glutton cannot turn his mind to God,” he said dismissively. “But neither can the starving man.
”
”
Katherine Arden (The Girl in the Tower (The Winternight Trilogy, #2))
“
I look back on those days and it feels gluttonous, all that time and love and life ahead, no bees in my body and my mother on the other end of the line.
”
”
Lily King (Writers & Lovers)
“
I am sorry to have to introduce the subject of Christmas. It is an indecent subject; a cruel, gluttonous subject; a drunken, disorderly subject; a wasteful, disastrous subject; a wicked, cadging, lying, filthy, blasphemous and demoralizing subject. Christmas is forced on a reluctant and disgusted nation by the shopkeepers and the press: on its own merits it would wither and shrivel in the fiery breath of universal hatred; and anyone who looked back to it would be turned into a pillar of greasy sausages.
”
”
George Bernard Shaw
“
Arthur is no fit king. Uther's bastard, Merlin's pawn, he is lowborn and a fool. He is wanton and petty and cruel. A glutton and a drunkard, he lacks all civilized graces. In short, he is a sullen, ignorant brute.
All these things and more men say of Arthur. Let them. When all the words are spoken and the arguements fall exhausted into silence, this single fact remains: we would follow Arthur to the very gates of Hell and beyond if he asked it. And that is the solitary truth.
Show me another who can claim such loyalty.
”
”
Stephen R. Lawhead (Arthur (The Pendragon Cycle, #3))
“
Some people when they see cheese, chocolate or cake they don't think of calories.
”
”
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
“
A tyrannous and gluttonous demand for affection can be a horrible thing. But in ordinary life no one calls a child selfish because it turns for comfort to its mother; nor an adult who turns to his fellow "for company." Those, whether children or adults, who do so least are not usually the most selfless.
”
”
C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves)
“
One could say that someone who does nothing but wait is like a glutton whose digestive system processes great masses of food without extracting any useful nourishment. One could go further and say that just as undigested food does not strengthen a man, time spent in waiting does not age him.
”
”
Thomas Mann (The Magic Mountain)
“
From the seed of the thief
The Dragon will rise,
the gluttonous one,
feeding on the blood of babes,
Drinking the tears of mothers.
—Song of Venda
”
”
Mary E. Pearson (The Kiss of Deception (The Remnant Chronicles, #1))
“
She was the one person he’d hoped to avoid as much as possible when he’d taken his place as Sheriff of Maxville. It wasn’t that he disliked her, that was the problem. Despite his better judgment and a glutton for punishment, he still cared too damn much for the woman.
”
”
Lia Davis
“
A non-materialist. And yet you are unpleasantly fat. A gluttonous ascetic? Such a contradiction.
”
”
Orson Scott Card (Ender’s Game (Ender's Saga, #1))
“
At the outset of my protracted fast, deprivation sent me constantly to my imaginary larder. I was gluttonous.
”
”
Jean-Dominique Bauby (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly)
“
And, er, these stories about you..."
"Oh, all true. Most of them. A bit of exaggeration, but mostly true."
"The one about the Citadel in Muntab and the Pash and the fish bone?"
"Oh, yes."
"But how did you get in where half a dozen armed and trained men couldn't even - ?"
"I am a little man and I carry a broom," said Lu-Tze simply. "Everyone has some mess that needs clearing up. What harm is a man with a broom?"
"What? And that was it?"
"Well, the rest was a matter of cookery, really. The Pash was not a good man, but he was a glutton for his fish pie."
"No martial arts?" said Lobsang.
"Oh, always a last resort. History needs shepherds, not butchers."
"Do you know okidoki?"
"Just a lot of bunny-hops."
"Shittake?"
"If I wanted to thrust my hand into hot sand I would go to the seaside."
"Upsidazi?"
"A waste of good bricks."
"No kando?"
"You made that one up.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Thief of Time (Discworld, #26; Death, #5))
“
People thought he was a glutton for punishment, that he liked getting dumped. But it wasn't like that. He could just never see anything coming, and as he lay on the solid, uneven ground with Hassan pressing too hard on his forehead, Colin Singleton's distance from his glasses made him realize the problem: myopia. He was nearsighted. The future lay before him, inevitable but invisible.
”
”
John Green (An Abundance of Katherines)
“
Many obese people spend a significant amount of their energy on suppressing the urge to tell some of the people who are staring at them that they do not eat as much and as frequently as they seem to.
”
”
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
“
... male company, sheer complicit male company: the complicity of males which is like, indeed is, a kind of complicity in crime, in chauvinism, in getting away with things, in just gluttonously enjoying the present even if hell is all around.
”
”
Iris Murdoch (The Sea, the Sea)
“
No matter what I attempt, even if it’s the most simple of tasks, it always ends in failure. Unfortunately, I find that my life is one big regret after another. Yet, after all these years, I still don’t know when to give up. Is it my fault to keep trying when the results are always the same? Is it impossible for me to make things right? Even if I’d try to give up, I don’t think I could. It’s not in my nature to sumbit in the face of disappointment. In the end, I guess I’m just a glutton for punishment. I really am an idiot…
”
”
Katsura Hoshino
“
I have been in the bodies of starvers and purgers, gluttons and addicts. They all think their actions make their lives more desirable. But the body
always defeats them in the end.
”
”
David Levithan
“
Then I should have chosen a career for myself, I should have been a sluggard and a glutton, not a simple one, but for instance, one with sympathies for everything sublime and beautiful.
”
”
Fyodor Dostoevsky (Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead)
“
Why was it that her temper and her thinking never happened at the same time? Her temper behaved like a glutton sitting in an expensive restaurant ordering a hundred dishes, only to disappear when the bill came due. It left her lucid mind to do dishes.
”
”
Ann Brashares (The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Sisterhood, #1))
“
To aid and abet in the destruction of a single species or in the extermination of a single tribe is to commit a crime against God, a mortal sin against Mother Nature. Better by far to sacrifice in some degree the interests of mechanical civilization, curtail our gluttonous appetite for things, ever more things, learn to moderate our needs, and most important, and not difficult, learn to control, limit and gradually reduce our human numbers. We humans swarm over the planet like a plague of locusts, multiplying and devouring. There is no justice, sense or decency in this mindless global breeding spree, this obscene anthropoid fecundity, this industrialized mass production of babies and bodies, ever more bodies and babies. The man-centered view of the world in anti-Christian, anti-Buddhist, antinature, antilife, and--antihuman.
”
”
Edward Abbey (Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside)
“
And much addicted to speaking the truth. In her younger years she was a good deal of a romp, and, though it is an awkward confession to make about one's heroine, I must add that she was something of a glutton.
”
”
Henry James (Washington Square)
“
This is our world now... the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals. We explore... and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge... and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals. Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for.
”
”
The Mentor
“
His high spiced wares were made to sell, and they sold; and his thousands of readers could as rationally charge their delight in filth upon him, as a glutton can shift upon his cook the responsibility of his beastly excess.
”
”
Charles Dickens (Martin Chuzzlewit)
“
Relationships matter. They matter as much as exercise and nutrition. And not all relationships help us reach our goals. God doesn’t give us crying, pooping children because he wants to advance our careers. He gives them to us for the same reason he confused language at the Tower of Babel, to create chaos and deter us from investing too much energy in the gluttonous idols of self-absorption.
”
”
Donald Miller (Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy)
“
What belonged to Jack McKenna belonged only to Jack McKenna, and the pussy he was feverishly sucking on was definitely his. He went in for the kill then, sucking her clit firmly and vigorously, growling low in his throat as she bucked up beneath him. On a loud groan she burst, her legs violently trembling as her nipples stabbed up and she drenched his mouth with her sweet climax. He lapped it all up, gluttonously sucking at her hole to get every drop of liquid her cunt had made for him...
"MINE," Jack murmured, causing her to seek out his gaze. "This pussy is ALL mine, baby.
”
”
Jaid Black (The Possession (Possession / Addiction, #1))
“
And yet, I have this sense that this place is holier than back home. Gluttonous, fat, oversexed, overconsuming, materialist home, where we’re too lazy to see our own faults. At least here, Rodriguez has the decency to worry about hell.
”
”
Phil Klay (Redeployment)
“
When men and women are rewarded for greed, greed becomes a corrupting motivator. When we equate the gluttonous consumption of the earth's resources with a status approaching sainthood, when we teach our children to emulate people who live unbalanced lives, and when we define huge sections of the population as subservient to an elite minority, we ask for trouble. And we get it.
”
”
John Perkins (Confessions of an Economic Hit Man)
“
I want to feast like a glutton, spread lust on my breakfast toast, shoot violence and sip greed. And I want you to teach me, sinner man, because you’re the only man for the job,” I told him.
”
”
Giana Darling (Welcome to the Dark Side (The Fallen Men, #2))
“
I would believe again if I could. In goodness. In magnificence. In simple benevolence. Yet even in these far and icy valleys, mankind is no different, just more poorly armed. Strip away psychrometer and sextant, carbines and glass plates, skin shifts and quills and painted faces, and we are the same. Quivering maws. Gluttonous. Covetous. Fearful. We say we worship. A word. A man-god. A fiery mountain. But we worship only ourselves. And we are jealous gods.
”
”
Eowyn Ivey (To The Bright Edge of the World)
“
and so. we are here. brown babies. worshipping. feeding. the glutton that is white literature. even after it dies. — the hot wash (years later. the conclusion: shakespeare is relative. white literature is relative. that we are force fed the meat of an animal that our bodies will not recognize. as inherent nutrition. is not relative. is inert.)
”
”
Nayyirah Waheed (nejma)
“
Do you believe," said Candide, "that men have always massacred each other as they do to-day, that they have always been liars, cheats, traitors, ingrates, brigands, idiots, thieves, scoundrels, gluttons, drunkards, misers, envious, ambitious, bloody-minded, calumniators, debauchees, fanatics, hypocrites, and fools?" "Do you believe," said Martin, "that hawks have always eaten pigeons when they have found them?" "Yes, without doubt," said Candide. "Well, then," said Martin, "if hawks have always had the same character why should you imagine that men may have changed theirs?
”
”
Voltaire (Candide)
“
Hester glowered at her. “The biggest mistake a villain can make is to get caught up in revenge. Hansel and Gretel were two hungry kids trying to survive in the Woods. Mother thought she’d captured another pair of greedy, gluttonous brats, only to grossly underestimate them. Hansel and Gretel killed her because they had to. It wasn’t personal.” She glanced back at the old siblings. “Doesn’t mean I can stand the sight of ’em, of course. But it also doesn’t mean their story has anything to do with mine anymore.
”
”
Soman Chainani (The Last Ever After (The School for Good and Evil, #3))
“
Checking the address, he knocked on the door.
The door opened a crack. “We’re closed.”
He recognized those violet eyes. His throat went dry. “Oh. You again.”
Her eyes narrowed as she chuckled. “You must have women throwing themselves at you with lines like that. What are you doing here?”
“I came to see if Flynn Enterprises has made an offer to buy your property.” His gaze wandered against his better judgement. On his ship, she’d been wearing jeans and a t-shirt. Now her curves were covered by a quality replica of a pirate’s frock coat, complete with deck boots, a bandana covering her hair, and a single hoop earring. “Didn’t take you for a pirate earlier today.”
“You seriously came over here to talk to a stranger about private financial information, and then you have the balls to comment on her work attire?” She raised a brow.
“We’re hardly strangers.” He struggled to hold back a smile and offered his hand. “I don’t think I introduced myself earlier. I’m Colton. Colton Hayes.”
She looked at his hand and finally opened the door. “Skye Olson. And apparently I’m a glutton for punishment.
”
”
Lisa Kessler (Magnolia Mystic (Sentinels of Savannah, #1))
“
You want to know the story? I'd be happy to tell you. I think I have just enough caloric energy stored up to make it through the telling of the tale. It's short. I am monstrously fat. I am a glutton. My wife was disgusted and repulsed. She gave me six months to lose one hundred pounds. I joined Weight Watchers . . . see it there, right across the street, that gaunt storefront? This afternoon was the big six-month weigh-in. So to speak. I had gained almost seventy pounds in the six months. An errant Snickers bar fell out of the cuff of my pants and rolled against my wife's foot as I stepped on the scale. The scale over there across the street is truly an ingenious device. One preprograms the desired new weight into it, and if one has achieved or gone below that new low weight, the scale bursts into recorded whistles and cheers and some lively marching-band tune. Apparently, tiny flags protrude from the top and wave mechanically back and forth. A failure--see for instance mine--results in a flatulent dirge of disappointed and contemptuous tuba. To the strains of the latter my wife left, the establishment, me, on the arm of a svelte yogurt distributor whom I am even now planning to crush, financially speaking, first thing tomorrow morning. Ms. Beadsman, you will find an eclair on the floor to the left of your chair. Could you perhaps manipulate it onto this plate with minimal chocolate loss and pass it to me.
”
”
David Foster Wallace (The Broom of the System)
“
There are seven deadly sins, not just one, and Christianity's understanding of marriage and chastity is intimately bound to its views on gluttony, avarice and pride. (Recall that in the Inferno, Dante consigns gluttons, misers, and spendthrifts to lower circles of hell than adulterers and fornicators.)
”
”
Ross Douthat (Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics)
“
Disgusting, how excessive and gluttonous this priest is, he thought jealously in the dark as he stole the last slice of Mrs. Howard’s pumpkin bread from the rectory larder. Eating sweets and sitting in front of warm fireplaces while others are starving! His bitter countenance was made uglier by his unshaven face and unkempt hair, which hung long and greasy on either side of his face.
”
”
Cece Whittaker (Glorious Christmas (The Serve, #7))
“
Identity. That's my elephant. The thought came with certainty, without the question mark on the end this time. Not fame, exactly, though recognition was some kind of important cement for it. But what you were was what you did. And I did more, oh yes. If a hunger for identity were translated into, say, a hunger for food, he'd be a more fantastic glutton than Mark ever dreamed of being. Is it irrational, to want to be so much, to want so hard it hurts? And how much, then, was enough?
”
”
Lois McMaster Bujold (Memory (Vorkosigan Saga, #10))
“
The envious must climb with their eyes sewn shut so they cannot covet; the prideful must carry huge stones on their backs to bend them low in a humble manner; the gluttonous must climb without food or water, thereby suffering excruciating hunger; and the lustful must ascend through hot flames to purge themselves of passion’s heat.
”
”
Dan Brown (Inferno (Robert Langdon, #4))
“
kids who were able to overcome their desire for short-term reward in favor of a better outcome later weren’t smarter than the other kids, nor were they less gluttonous. They just had a better grasp of how to trick themselves into doing what was best for them.
”
”
David McRaney (You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself)
“
Who sees his true-love in her naked bed,
Teaching the sheets a whiter hue than white,
But when his glutton eye so full hath fed,
His other agents aim at like delight?
Who is so faint that dare not be so bold
To touch the fire, the weather being cold?
”
”
William Shakespeare (Venus and Adonis)
“
our tragedy begins humid.
in a humid classroom.
with a humid text book. breaking into us.
stealing us from ourselves.
one poem. at a time.
it begins with shakespeare.
the hot wash.
the cool acid. of
dead white men and women. people.
each one a storm.
crashing. into our young houses.
making us islands. easy isolations.
until we are so beleaguered and
swollen
with a definition of poetry that is white skin and
not us.
that we tuck our scalding. our soreness.
behind ourselves and
learn
poetry.
as trauma. as violence. as erasure.
another place we do not exist.
another form of exile
where we should praise. honor. our own starvation.
the little bits of langston. phyllis wheatley.
and
angelou during black history month. are the crumbs. are the minor boats.
that give us slight rest.
to be waterdrugged into rejecting the nuances of
my own bursting
extraordinary
self.
and to have
this
be
called
education.
to take my name out of my name.
out of where my native poetry lives. in me.
and
replace it with keats. browning. dickson. wolf. joyce. wilde. wolfe. plath. bronte. hemingway. hughes. byron. frost. cummings. kipling. poe. austen. whitman. blake. longfellow. wordsworth. duffy. twain. emerson. yeats. tennyson. auden. thoreau. chaucer. thomas. raliegh. marlowe. burns. shelley. carroll. elliot…
(what is the necessity of a black child being this high off of whiteness.)
and so. we are here. brown babies. worshipping. feeding. the glutton that is white literature. even after it dies.
(years later. the conclusion:
shakespeare is relative.
white literature is relative.
that we are force fed the meat of
an animal
that our bodies will not recognize. as inherent nutrition.
is not relative.
is inert.)
”
”
Nayyirah Waheed (Nejma)
“
Oh, really,” said Deborah brightly, “you don’t look like the sort of man who reads anything.
”
”
M.C. Beaton (Death of a Glutton (Hamish Macbeth, #8))
“
The old thing where it always was, back again. As when a man, having found at last what he sought, a woman, for example, or a friend, loses it, or realises what it is. And yet it is useless not to seek, not to want, for when you cease to seek you start to find, and when you cease to want, then life begins to ram her fish and chips down your gullet until you puke, and then the puke down your gullet until you puke the puke, and then the puked puke until you begin to like it. The glutton castaway, the drunkard in the desert, the lecher in prison, they are the happy ones. To hunger, thirst, lust, every day afresh and every day in vain, after the old prog, the old booze, the old whores, that's the nearest we'll ever get to felicity, the new porch and the very latest garden. I pass on the tip for what it is worth.
”
”
Samuel Beckett (Watt)
“
The first seventeen years of my life, I fasted. I kept my body clean and my spirit pure. Now, I wanted to feast like a glutton, spread lust on my breakfast toast, shoot violence and sip greed. And I want you to teach me, sinner man, because you're the only man for the job.
”
”
Giana Darling (Welcome to the Dark Side (The Fallen Men, #2))
“
I am lost on a sea of hunger, blue and black and heaving and full five fathoms deep below and rarely, rarely do I feel anything besides hungry, rarely, rarely does a jolt of feeling or emotion pierce the hide of my hunger, and never, never have I been able to live the life God presumably gave me to live, to dance and think and remember and kiss, no, all my life I have stood at the threshold of my life waiting to be let in
”
”
A.K. Blakemore (The Glutton)
“
It was strange too that he found an arid pleasure in following up to the end the rigid lines of the doctrines of the church and penetrating into obscure silences only to hear and feel the more deeply his own condemnation. The sentence of saint James which says that he who offends against one commandment becomes guilty of all, had seemed to him first a swollen phrase until he had begun to grope in the darkness of his own state. From the evil seed of lust all other deadly sins had sprung forth: pride in himself and contempt of others, covetousness In using money for the purchase of unlawful pleasures, envy of those whose vices he could not reach to and calumnious murmuring against the pious, gluttonous enjoyment of food, the dull glowering anger amid which he brooded upon his longing, the swamp of spiritual and bodily sloth in which his whole being had sunk.
”
”
James Joyce (A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man)
“
Well," he said, quite seriously, "it's this way: you work because you're afraid not to. You work becuase you have to drive yourself to such a fury to begin. That part's just plain hell! It's so hard to get started that once you do you're afraid of slipping back. You'd rather do anything than go through all that agony again--so you keep going--you keep going faster all the time--you keep going till you couldn't stop even if you wanted to. You forget to eat, to shave, to put on a clean shirt when you have one. You almost forget to sleep, and when you do try to you can't--because the avalanche has started, and it keeps going night and day. And people say: 'Why don't you stop sometime? Why don't you forget about it now and then? Why don't you take a few days off?' And you don't do it because you can't--you can't stop yourself--and even if you could you'd be afraid to because there'd be all that hell to go through getting started up again. Then people say you're a glutton for work, but it isn't so. It's laziness--just plain, damned, simple laziness, that's all...Napoleon--and--and Balzac--and Thomas Edison--these fellows who never sleep more than an hour or two at a time, and can keep going night and day--why that's not because they love to work! It's because they're really lazy--and afraid not to work because they know they're lazy! Why, hell yes!..I'll bet you anything you like if you could really find out what's going on in old Edison's mind, you'd find that he wished he could stay in bed every day until two o'clock in the afternoon! And then get up and scratch himself! And then lie around in the sun for awhile! And hang around with the boys down at the village store, talking about politics, and who's going to win the World Series next fall!
”
”
Thomas Wolfe (You Can't Go Home Again)
“
I'm Perfect at Feelings,
so I have no problem telling you
why you cried over the third lost
metal or the mousetrap. I knew
that orgasms weren't your fault
and that feeling of keeping solid
in yourself but wanting an ecstatic
black hole was just bad beauty.
Certain loves were perfect
in the daytime and had every
right to express carnally behind
the copy machine and there are
no hard feelings for the boozy
sodomy and sorry XX daisy chain,
whenever it felt right for you.
And when the moment of soft
levitation with erasing hands
made you feel dirty, like
the main person to think up love
in the first place, I knew that.
It's okay, you're an innocent
with the brilliance of an animal
stuffing yourself sick on a kill.
Don't, don't feel like the runt alien
on my ship: I get you. I know
the dimensions of your wishing
and losing and don't think you
a glutton with petty beefs. But
even I, who know your triggers,
your emblematic sacs of sad fury,
I understand why the farthest fat trees
sliver down with your disappointment
and why the big sense of the world,
wrong before you, shrugs but
somewhere grasps your spinning,
stunning, alone. But you have me.
”
”
Brenda Shaughnessy (Human Dark with Sugar)
“
Don’t ever let anyone tell you that food doesn’t work. Anyone who tells you that food doesn’t work is either stupid or a liar or has never had food before. You can tell them I said so. It works. Putting food on top of it works. If food did not work, if it didn’t work its slutty, gluttonous, more-is-more magic, everyone in America would be Angelina Jolie thin. No one would drive-thru. No one would sprinkles or pinkberry or any of it.
”
”
Shonda Rhimes (Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand In the Sun and Be Your Own Person)
“
Ah, this delicious night air,' she said, luxuriously sniffing in the coolness. 'Night air and gardening are the great tonics. There is nothing so stimulating as bare contact with rich mother earth. You are never so fresh as when you have been grubbing in the soil - black hands, black nails, and boots covered with mud.' She gave her great jovial laugh.
'I'm a glutton for air and earth,' she said. 'Positively I look forward to death, for then I shall be buried and have the kind earth all round me. No leaden caskets for me - I have given explicit directions. But what shall I do about air? Well, I suppose one can't have everything.'
("Mrs. Amworth")
”
”
E.F. Benson (Monster Mix)
“
The redheaded man flashed her a dazzling smile. He really was gorgeous. "They're only teasing you." He stood and extended his hand to her. "I'm Darling Cruel and yes, my parents really were nasty enough to name me that."
Kiara shook his gloved hand as she realized this was the man Syn had wanted to kill when they rescued her. Something in Dalring's manner reminded her of an aristocrat. He seemed easy enough to get along with, unlike the two Andarions.
He indicated the Andarion eating her food as he retook his seat. "The glutton is Dancer Hauk."
"Dancer?" Kiara was amused by the revelation.
Hauk stiffened. "It means 'killer' in Andarion."
Darling laughed, a deep throaty sound as he draped his arms over the back of the couch in a decidedly masculine pose. "You wish. Nykyrian told me it meant 'of beautiful cheeks.'"
Hauk gave Nykyrian a glare that bordered on murder.
Nykyrian shrugged, apparently unconcerned by the unspoken threat. "Don't waste that look on me, chiran. I didn't name you and I can't help it if your adoring mother was as sick as Darling's."
-Darling, Kiara, Hauk, & Nykyrian
”
”
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Born of Night (The League: Nemesis Rising, #1))
“
Tipsy, they tumbled early into bed - to get as much sleep as they could. So they would feel less hunger. The summer catch had been poor; there wasn't much food. They ate with care and looked sideways at the old: the old were gluttons, everybody knew it, and what was the good of feeding them? It wouldn't harm them to starve a little.
The hungry dogs howled. The women rinsed the children's bellies with hot water three times a day, so they wouldn't cry so much for food. The old starved silently. ("The North")
”
”
Yevgeny Zamyatin (The Dragon: Fifteen Stories (English and Russian Edition))
“
We're both so into it, neither of us hears the footsteps until a snarl breaks us apart. We turn to find Morpheus standing there with enough rage in his black eyes to send the Devil packing for heaven.
Jeb tugs his fingers from the rings in my belt but keeps a hand at my lower back. I touch my lips; they're throbbing and gluttonous, hungry for more.
"Wel, now, isn't that cozy?" Morpheus's voice isn't liquid this time. It grates like rusted nails along my eardrums. He peels off his gloves and slaps them against his palm, wings droopy and trailing the floor like a cape. "perhaps you might give Alyssa her lipstick back. We haven't time to find more before dinner."
”
”
A.G. Howard (Splintered (Splintered, #1))
“
From the evil seed of lust all other deadly sins had sprung forth: pride in himself and contempt of others, covetousness in using money for the purchase of unlawful pleasures, envy of those whose vices he could not reach to and calumnious murmuring against the pious, gluttonous enjoyment of food, the dull glowering anger amid which he brooded upon his longing, the swamp of spiritual and bodily sloth in which his whole being had sunk.
”
”
James Joyce (A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man)
“
Left alone in the room with Gavin, Alex let out a sigh. "I fear I won't be able to find a way out of this. How did his even happen? I went out of my way to avoid attracting suitors last night."
Leaning back in his chair, Gavin leveled Alex with a serious look. "You've learned your first lesson, Minx. Men chase that what seems unattainable."
"No. What I learned was that mean are gluttons for punishment. Why 'chase' me when they could catch any number of eligible young females from last evening?"
"Silly girl... because chasing you makes for more of a challenge--and more of a reward.
”
”
Sarah MacLean (The Season)
“
Prattling gabblers,
lickorous gluttons,
freckled bittors,
mangy rascals,
shite-a-bed scoundrels,
drunken roysters,
sly knaves,
drowsy loiterers,
slapsauce fellows,
slabberdegullion druggels,
lubberly louts,
cozening foxes,
ruffian rogues,
paltry customers,
sycophant-varlets,
drawlatch hoydens,
flouting milksops,
jeering companions,
staring clowns,
forlorn snakes,
ninny lobcocks,
scurvy sneaksbies,
fondling fops,
base loons,
saucy coxcombs,
idle lusks,
scoffing braggarts,
noddy meacocks,
blockish grutnols,
doddipol-joltheads,
jobbernol goosecaps,
foolish loggerheads,
flutch calf-lollies,
grouthead gnat-snappers,
lob-dotterels,
gaping changelings,
codshead loobies,
woodcock slangams,
ninny-hammer flycatchers,
noddypeak simpletons,
turdy gut,
shitten shepherds,
and other suchlike defamatory epithets; saying further, that it was not for them to eat of these dainty cakes, but might very well content themselves with the coarse unranged bread, or to eat of the great brown household loaf.
”
”
Thomas Urquhart
“
Within five minutes of leaving the reunion, I'd undone the double wrapping and eaten all six rugelach, each a snail of sugar-dusted pastry dough, the cinnamon-lined chambers microscopically studded with midget raisins and chopped walnuts. By rapidly devouring mouthful after mouthful of these crumbs whose floury richness - blended of butter and sour cream and vanilla and cream cheese and egg yolk and sugar - I'd loved since childhood, perhaps I'd find vanishing from Nathan what, according to Proust, vanished from Marcel the instant he recognized "the savour of the little madeleine": the apprehensiveness of death. "A mere taste," Proust writes, and "the word 'death' ... [has] ... no meaning for him." So, greedily I ate, gluttonously, refusing to curtail for a moment this wolfish intake of saturated fat, but, in the end, having nothing like Marcel's luck.
”
”
Philip Roth (American Pastoral)
“
I am sorry to have to introduce the subject of Christmas into these articles. It is an indecent subject; a cruel, gluttonous subject; a drunken, disorderly subject; a wasteful, disastrous, subject; a wicked, cadging, lying, filthy, blashphemous, and demoralizing subject. Christmas is forced on a reluctant and disgusted nation by the shopkeepers and the press: on its own merits it would wither and shrivel in the fiery breath of universal hatred; and any one who looked back to it would be turned into a pillar of greasy sausages.
”
”
George Bernard Shaw (Dramatic Opinions and Essays, volume 2)
“
If we are to go by what the movies and novels tell us, falling in love just happens. If it is a Hindi movie, you hear a melodious track in the background, the lyrics usually waxing eloquent about the heroine’s beauty, comparing various parts of her anatomy to the moon, stars, the sun—even Fevicol. This is accompanied by the hero gazing at her with the expression of a glutton discovering a six-course banquet consisting of various gastronomical delights. In real life though, falling in love often happens over a period of time. You see someone gorgeous and get attracted strongly. If you strike up a conversation, find each other likable—or intriguing, as the case may be—then you exchange phone numbers or email ids. After a couple of dates, discovering many things and maybe a kiss or something more, depending on how much in resonance your moral compasses are, the magic happens, and wham, you are in love.
”
”
Preeti Shenoy (Why We Love the Way We Do)
“
The Berlin conference has been subject to a relentless campaign of debunking by modern intellectuals. One claim they make is that the assembled delegates “carved up” Africa like a bunch of gluttons. This is wrong. For one, the carving was already happening when Bismarck acted. The conference was a response to, not a cause of, expanded colonial claims. Critics seem to think that absent the conference Africa would have been left untouched. Quite the opposite. The scramble for Africa created tensions, suspicions, and fears on all sides. Bismarck wanted to set some ground rules.
”
”
Bruce Gilley (In Defense of German Colonialism: And How Its Critics Empowered Nazis, Communists, and the Enemies of the West)
“
For the worst of it was not the lies that after all he was unable to utter, ready as he always was to lie for pleasure but incapable of doing so out of necessity, the worst of it was the delights he had lost, the season’s light and the time off that had been taken away from him, and now the year consisted of nothing but a series of hasty awakenings and hurried dismal days. He had to lose what was royal in his life of poverty, the irreplaceable riches that he so greatly and gluttonously enjoyed, to earn a little bit of money that would not buy one-millionth of those treasures.
”
”
Albert Camus (The First Man)
“
The flesh,' as Saint Paul used the term, refers, ironically, not to our bodies but to fallen human nature. The 'carnal' spirit is the one that devours things for itself and refuses to make them an oblation to God. The carnal spirit is cruel, egocentric, avaricious, gluttonous, and lecherous, and as such us fevered, restless, and divided. The spiritual man, on the other hand, is alone the man who both knows what flesh is for and can enter into its amplitude. The lecher, for example, supposes that he knows more about love than the virgin or the continent man. He knows nothing. Only the virgin and the faithful spouse knows what love is about. The glutton supposes that he knows the pleasures of food, but the true knowledge of food is unavailable to his dribbling and surfeited jowls. The difference between the carnal man and the spiritual man is not physical. They may look alike and weigh the same. The different lies, rather, between one's being divided, snatching and grabbing at things, even nonphysical things like fame and power, or being whole and receiving all things as Adam was meant to receive them, in order to offer them as an oblation to their Giver.
”
”
Thomas Howard (Evangelical Is Not Enough: Worship of God in Liturgy and Sacrament)
“
In so many ways, Jesus turned people’s expectations upside down. Who could have imagined the Creator of the universe invading the earth not in glory, but born to an unwed teenage mother who then placed Him in a feeding trough? Who could have imagined that when Israel’s Messiah appeared, He would be found among the prostitutes, tax collectors, and sinners of His day, gaining a reputation as a glutton and a drunkard (Matt. 11:19)? Who could have imagined that God would defeat death by dying? Or conquer evil by allowing its triumph on the cross? Or free humanity by bearing upon Himself the cost of human sin and evil?
”
”
Mike Erre (Astonished: Recapturing the Wonder, Awe, and Mystery of Life with God)
“
We learn about the categories of temptation that Satan will use against us. Satan tempted Christ to turn stones into bread, appealing to appetite. Then Satan tempted Christ to worship him, the Devil, in exchange for all of the wealth and power in the world, appealing to the desire for wealth and power. Then, appealing to pride, Satan tempted Christ to fling Himself off a precipice so that the angels would come and rescue Him, thus demonstrating His magnificence and glory to the masses. It seems that Satan seeks to make us gluttons, materialists, or egoists. He will settle for just one, but often he has no problem convincing us to be all three.” -p. 85
”
”
Matt Walsh (Church of Cowards: A Wake-Up Call to Complacent Christians)
“
The pungent fragrance of gingerbread rose in a warm draught to her nostrils, and Aline laughed in delight. "You remembered!" As a girl, the first thing she had always done at the fair was to gorge on iced gingerbread- and although McKenna had never shared her fondness for the treat, he had always gone with her.
"Of course," McKenna said, extracting a coin from his pocket and purchasing a thick slice for her. "To this day, I've never seen anyone devour an entire loaf the way you used to."
"I did not," Aline protested with a frown, sinking her teeth into the heavy, sticky bread.
"I was in awe," McKenna continued. He drew her away from the stall. "To watch you eat something the size of your head in less than a quarter hour-"
"I would never be that gluttonous," she informed him, deliberately taking another huge bite.
He grinned. "I must be thinking of someone else, then.
”
”
Lisa Kleypas (Again the Magic (Wallflowers, #0))
“
Equally important was the fact that the interpretation provided the model for how Tianming had hidden his message in the three stories. He employed two basic methods: dual-layer metaphors and two-dimensional metaphors. The dual-layer metaphors in the stories did not directly point to the real meaning, but to something far simpler. The tenor of this first metaphor became the vehicle for a second metaphor, which pointed to the real intelligence. In the current example, the princess’s boat, the He’ershingenmosiken soap, and the Glutton’s Sea formed a metaphor for a paper boat driven by soap. The paper boat, in turn, pointed to curvature propulsion. Previous attempts at decipherment had failed largely due to people’s habitual belief that the stories only involved a single layer of metaphors to hide the real message. The two-dimensional metaphors were a technique used to resolve the ambiguities introduced by literary devices employed in conveying strategic intelligence. After a dual-layer metaphor, a single-layer supporting metaphor was added to confirm the meaning of the dual-layer metaphor. In the current example, the curved snow-wave paper and the ironing required to flatten it served as a metaphor for curved space, confirming the interpretation of the soap-driven boat. If one viewed the stories as a two-dimensional plane, the dual-layer metaphor only provided one coordinate; the supporting single-layer metaphor provided a second coordinate that fixed the interpretation on the plane. Thus, this single-layer metaphor was also called the bearing coordinate. Viewed by itself, the bearing coordinate seemed meaningless, but once combined with the dual-layer metaphor, it resolved the inherent ambiguities in literary language. “A subtle and sophisticated system,” a PIA specialist said admiringly. All the committee members congratulated Cheng Xin and AA. AA, who had always been looked down on, saw her status greatly elevated among the committee members. Cheng
”
”
Liu Cixin (Death's End (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #3))
“
What possible rationale demanded this many debased representations of the recently freed Black people produced in the final third of the nineteenth century? How many ways can one call a woman or a man a "n*****" or a "c***"? How many watermelons does a person have to devour, how many chickens does an individual have to steal, to make the point that Black people are manifestly, by nature, both gluttons and thieves? Why in the world was it necessary to produce tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of these separate and distinct racist images to demean the status of the newly freed slaves in a set of fixed types and motifs, which reached their perverse apex with the characterizations of Black people during Reconstruction in The Birth of a Nation, in the figures of deracinated Black elected officials and, of course, the black male as rapist? The explanation comes in three words: justifying Jim Crow, or, in three different words, disenfranchising Black voters
”
”
Henry Louis Gates Jr. (Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow)
“
The low-maintenance woman, the ideal woman, has no appetite. This is not to say that she refuses food, sex, romance, emotional effort; to refuse is petulant, which is ironically more demanding. The woman without appetite politely finishes what’s on her plate, and declines seconds. She is satisfied and satisfiable.
A man’s appetite can be hearty, but a woman with an appetite is always voracious: her hunger always overreaches, because it is not supposed to exist. If she wants food, she is a glutton. If she wants sex, she is a slut. If she wants emotional care-taking, she is a high-maintenance bitch or, worse, an “attention whore”: an amalgam of sex-hunger and care-hunger, greedy not only to be fucked and paid but, most unforgivably of all, to be noticed.
”
”
Jess Zimmerman
“
Watching her, I remembered a girl I'd known in school, a grind, Mildred Grossman. Mildred: with her moist hair and greasy spectacles, her strained fingers that dissected frogs and carried coffee to picket lines, her flat eyes that only turned toward the stars to estimate their chemical tonnage. Earth and air could not be more opposite than Mildred and Holly, yet in my head they acquired a Siamese twinship, and the thread of thought that had sewn them together ran like this: the average personality reshapes frequently, every few years even our bodies undergo a complete overhaul--desirable or not, it is a natural thing that we should change. All right, here were two people who never would. That is what Mildred Grossman had in common with Holly Golightly. They would never change because they'd been given their character too soon; which, like sudden riches, leads to a lack of proportion: the one had splurged herself into a top-heavy realist, the other a lopsided romantic. I imagined them in a restaurant of the future, Mildred still studying the menu for its nutritional values, Holly still gluttonous for everything on it. It would never be different. They would walk through life and out of it with the same determined step that took small notice of those cliffs at the left.
”
”
Truman Capote (Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Three Stories)
“
In Debt, the anthropologist David Graeber tells the story of Tei Reinga, a Maori villager and “notorious glutton” who used to wander up and down the New Zealand coast, badgering the local fishermen by asking for the best portions of their catch. Since it’s impolite in Maori culture (as in many cultures) to refuse a direct request for food, the fishermen would oblige—but with ever-increasing reluctance. And so as Reinga continued to ask for food, their resentment grew until “one day, people decided enough was enough and killed him.”
This story is extreme, to say the least, but it illustrates how norm-following and norm-enforcement can be a very high-stakes game. Reinga flouted an important norm (against freeloading) and eventually paid dearly for it. But just as tellingly, the fishermen who put him to death felt so duty-bound by a different norm (the norm of food-sharing) that they followed it even to the point of building up murderous resentment. “Couldn’t you just have said no to Reinga’s requests?!” we want to shout at the villagers.
”
”
Kevin Simler (The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life)
“
We were looking for opportunities to share the message with people who wouldn’t be caught in a church— unless they were wheeled in via a casket! Matthew 11: 19 says this of Jesus: “The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and “sinners.”’ ” Jesus didn’t get that kind of reputation from hanging out only in temples and church buildings. Going to a bar or pool hall doesn’t mean you’re a drunk, just like sitting in a henhouse doesn’t make you a chicken. It’s the same in the opposite setting. Sitting in a church building doesn’t make you a follower of Christ. In fact, Acts 17: 24 says: “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands.” God lives in heaven and in the hearts of men and women on earth. Misunderstanding this principle is one of the reasons so many people act one way in a church building and the total opposite everywhere else.
”
”
Jase Robertson (Good Call: Reflections on Faith, Family and Fowl by Robertson, Jase (2014) Hardcover)
“
To Begin With, the Sweet Grass
1.
Will the hungry ox stand in the field and not eat
of the sweet grass?
Will the owl bite off its own wings?
Will the lark forget to lift its body in the air or
forget to sing?
Will the rivers run upstream?
Behold, I say—behold
the reliability and the finery and the teachings
of this gritty earth gift.
2.
Eat bread and understand comfort.
Drink water, and understand delight.
Visit the garden where the scarlet trumpets
are opening their bodies for the hummingbirds
who are drinking the sweetness, who are
thrillingly gluttonous.
For one thing leads to another.
Soon you will notice how stones shine underfoot.
Eventually tides will be the only calendar you believe in.
And someone's face, whom you love, will be as a star
both intimate and ultimate,
and you will be both heart-shaken and respectful.
And you will hear the air itself, like a beloved, whisper:
oh, let me, for a while longer, enter the two
beautiful bodies of your lungs.
3.
The witchery of living
is my whole conversation
with you, my darlings.
All I can tell you is what I know.
Look, and look again.
This world is not just a little thrill for the eyes.
It's more than bones.
It's more than the delicate wrist with its personal pulse.
It's more than the beating of the single heart.
It's praising.
It's giving until the giving feels like receiving.
You have a life—just imagine that!
You have this day, and maybe another, and maybe
still another.
4.
Someday I am going to ask my friend Paulus,
the dancer, the potter,
to make me a begging bowl
which I believe
my soul needs.
And if I come to you,
to the door of your comfortable house
with unwashed clothes and unclean fingernails,
will you put something into it?
I would like to take this chance.
I would like to give you this chance.
5.
We do one thing or another; we stay the same, or we
change.
Congratulations, if
you have changed.
6.
Let me ask you this.
Do you also think that beauty exists for some
fabulous reason?
And, if you have not been enchanted by this adventure—
your life—
what would do for you?
7.
What I loved in the beginning, I think, was mostly myself.
Never mind that I had to, since somebody had to.
That was many years ago.
Since then I have gone out from my confinements,
though with difficulty.
I mean the ones that thought to rule my heart.
I cast them out, I put them on the mush pile.
They will be nourishment somehow (everything is nourishment
somehow or another).
And I have become the child of the clouds, and of hope.
I have become the friend of the enemy, whoever that is.
I have become older and, cherishing what I have learned,
I have become younger.
And what do I risk to tell you this, which is all I know?
Love yourself. Then forget it. Then, love the world.
”
”
Mary Oliver
“
Because it wasn’t enough to be accompanied by the beast who scared the crap out of every god in Heaven, Xuanzang was assigned a few more traveling companions. The gluttonous pig-man Zhu Baijie. Sha Wujing, the repentant sand demon. And the Dragon Prince of the West Sea, who took the form of a horse for Xuanzang to ride. The five adventurers, thusly gathered, set off on their—
“Holy ballsacks!” I yelped. I dropped the book like I’d been bitten.
“How far did you get?” Quentin said.
He was leaning against the end of the nearest shelf, as casually as if he’d been there the whole time, waiting for this moment.
I ignored that he’d snuck up on me again, just this once. There was a bigger issue at play.
In the book was an illustration of the group done up in bold lines and bright colors. There was Sun Wukong at the front, dressed in a beggar’s cassock, holding his Ruyi Jingu Bang in one hand and the reins of the Dragon Horse in the other. A scary-looking pig-faced man and a wide-eyed demon monk followed, carrying the luggage. And perched on top of the horse was . . . me.
The artist had tried to give Xuanzang delicate, beatific features and ended up with a rather girly face. By whatever coincidence, the drawing of Sun Wukong’s old master could have been a rough caricature of sixteen-year-old Eugenia Lo from Santa Firenza, California.
“That’s who you think I am?” I said to Quentin.
“That’s who I know you are,” he answered. “My dearest friend. My boon companion. You’ve reincarnated into such a different form, but I’d recognize you anywhere. Your spiritual energies are unmistakable.”
“Are you sure? If you’re from a long time ago, maybe your memory’s a little fuzzy.”
“The realms beyond Earth exist on a different time scale,” Quentin said. “Only one day among the gods passes for every human year. To me, you haven’t been gone long. Months, not centuries.”
“This is just . . . I don’t know.” I took a moment to assemble my words. “You can’t walk up to me and expect me to believe right away that I’m the reincarnation of some legendary monk from a folk tale.”
“Wait, what?” Quentin squinted at me in confusion.
“I said you can’t expect me to go, ‘okay, I’m Xuanzang,’ just because you tell me so.”
Quentin’s mouth opened slowly like the dawning of the sun. His face went from confusion to understanding to horror and then finally to laughter.
“mmmmphhhhghAHAHAHAHA!” he roared. He nearly toppled over, trying to hold his sides in. “HAHAHAHA!”
“What the hell is so funny?”
“You,” Quentin said through his giggles. “You’re not Xuanzang. Xuanzang was meek and mild. A friend to all living things. You think that sounds like you?”
It did not. But then again I wasn’t the one trying to make a case here.
“Xuanzang was delicate like a chrysanthemum.” Quentin was getting a kick out of this. “You are so tough you snapped the battleaxe of the Mighty Miracle God like a twig. Xuanzang cried over squashing a mosquito. You, on the other hand, have killed more demons than the Catholic Church.”
I was starting to get annoyed. “Okay, then who the hell am I supposed to be?” If he thought I was the pig, then this whole deal was off.
“You’re my weapon,” he said. “You’re the Ruyi Jingu Bang.”
I punched Quentin as hard as I could in the face.
”
”
F.C. Yee (The Epic Crush of Genie Lo (The Epic Crush of Genie Lo, #1))
“
Marilee lay perfectly still,waiting for her world to settle.She had to fight the unreasonable urge to weep.
Wyatt's face was pressed to the hollow of her throat,his breathing rough, his damp body plastered to hers.
He nuzzled her neck. "Am I too heavy?"
"Umm." It was all she could manage.
"You all right?"
"Umm."
"Did anybody ever tell you that you talk too much?"
"Umm."
He brushed his mouth over hers. "If you hum a bit more,I might be able to name that tune."
That broke the spell of tears that had been threatening and caused her to laugh.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back. "Have I told you how much I like your silly sense of humor?"
"No,you haven't." He rolled to his side and gathered her into his arms,nuzzling her cheek,while his big hands moved over her hip,her back,her waist, as though measuring every inch of her. "What else do you like about me?"
"You fishing for compliments?"
"Of course I am."
"Glutton. Your sense of humor isn't enough?"
"Not nearly enough.How about my looks?"
"They're okay,for a footloose rebel."
"Stop.All these mushy remarks will inflate my ego." He gave a mock frown. "How about the way I kiss?"
"You're not bad."
"Not bad?" His hands stopped their movement. He drew a little away. "That's all you can say?"
"If you recall,tonight was the first time we've kissed.I haven't had nearly enough practice to be a really good judge of your talent."
"Then we'd better take care of that right now." He framed her face. With his eyes steady on hers, he lowered his mouth to claim her lips.
Marilee's eyelids fluttered and she felt an explosion of color behind them. As though the moon and stars had collided while she rocketed through space. It was the most amazing sensation, and, as his lips continued moving over hers,she found herself wishing it could go on forever.
When at last they came up for air, she took in a long,deep breath before opening her eyes. "Oh,yes,rebel.I have to say,I do like the way you kiss."
"That's good,because I intend to do a whole lot more of it." He lay back in the grass,one hand beneath his head. "Now it's my turn.Want to know all the things I like about you?"
"I'm afraid to hear it." Marilee lay on her side,her hand splayed across his chest.
"Besides your freckles,which I've already mentioned,the thing about you I like best is your take-charge attitude."
She chuckled. "A lot of guys feel intimidated by that."
"They're idiots.Don't they know there's something sexy about a woman who knows what to do and how to do it? I've watched you as a medic and as a pilot, and I haven't decided which one turns me on more."
"Really?" She sat up. "Want me to fetch my first-aid kit from the plane? I could always splint your arm or leg and really turn you on."
He dragged her down into his arms and growled against her mouth, "You don't need to do a single thing to turn me on. All I need to do is look at you and I want you."
"You mean now? Again? So soon?"
"Oh,yeah."
"Liar.I don't believe it's possible."
"You ought to know by now that I never say anything I can't back up with action."
"Prove it,rebel."
"My pleasure."
There was a wicked smile on his lips as he rolled over her and began to kiss her breathless,all the while taking her on a slow,delicious ride to paradise.
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R.C. Ryan (Montana Destiny)