Happily Lover Quotes

once upon a time, the princess rose from the ashes her dragon lovers made of her & crowned herself the mother-fucking queen of herself.   - how’s that for a happily ever after?

Even the smallest shift in perspective can bring about the greatest healing.

If you could only tell them that living and spending isn't the same thing! But it's no good. If only they were educated to live instead of earn and spend, they could manage very happily...

So as long as you can forget your body you are happy and the moment you begin to be aware of your body, you are wretched. So if civilization is any good, it has to help us forget our bodies, and then time passes happily without our knowing it. Help us get rid of our bodies altogether.

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

I brought us all Big Macs,” he said happily. “I know you dig ’em, remember?” “What the…” Tohr tightened his grip on his shellan, just in case . . . well, shit, with the way things were going lately, anything could happen. “What are you doing here?” “It’s your lucky day, motherfucker.

Tohr shrugged. “Assuming he’s kept the same ones on, they’re a total of five. Three cousins. That porn star Zypher—” Rhage harrumphed at that. Clearly, even though he was now very happily mated, he felt like the race had one, and only one, sex legend—and it was him.

It was impossible not to fall in love with him.

I wish this was a love story. A love story about lovers whose mouths meet like two puzzle pieces fitting perfectly into place, about the electric feeling of one person's name on the other's tongue because no one has ever spoken them out loud like that before. About people who spend the night together looking at the stars until entire constellations exist within them. Everyone is perfect in that indistinct way most characters are and every perfectly constructed scene in their fictional lives is somehow more real than anything you've known or lived. Love stories, romances, leave a person secure in the knowledge they'll end Happily Ever After and who wouldn't want a story like that? I wish this was a love story because I know how it goes in one like mine, where the only moments of reprieve are the spaces between its lines.

...your heart spoke for you. You gave up everything for me.

Swifts, on a fine morning in May, flying this way, that way, sailing around at a great hight, perfectly happily. Then, one leaps onto the back of another, grasps tightly and forgetting to fly they both sink down and down, in a great dying fall, fathom after fathom, until the female utters a loud, piercing cry of ecstasy.

His fingerprints covered my skin.

I'm happily married to Peter senior; we're best friends as well as lovers, which is probably the best recipe for a successful relationship. We live in a lovely part of England.

In a world full of uncertainties, your unwavering loyalty is my constant.

I don’t need you to fix me, Stella. I need you for everything else. I need your smiles, your laughter. I need you to be my best friend, my lover, my all. I need to take care of you, touch your skin, make you dinner, give you pleasure whenever you’re in need.” I lean in, emotion clogging my throat. “You are the best thing that has ever happened to me, and I’d happily spend the rest of my life trying to be the best thing that has ever happened to you too.

Kitchen solace—the feeling that a delicious meal is simmering on the kitchen stove, misting up the windows, and that at any moment your lover will sit down to dinner with you and, between mouthfuls, gaze happily into your eyes. (Also known as living.)” RECIPES THE CUISINE of Provence is as diverse as its scenery: fish by the coast, vegetables in the countryside, and in the mountains lamb and a variety of staple dishes containing pulses. One region’s cooking is influenced by olive oil, another’s is based on wine, and pasta dishes are common along the Italian border. East kisses West in Marseilles with hints of mint, saffron and cumin, and the Vaucluse is a paradise for truffle and confectionery lovers. Yet

once upon a time, the princess rose from the ashes her dragon lovers made of her & crowned herself the motherfucking queen of herself. - how’s that for a happily ever after?

I'll forget me. You forget you. We can be one together, happily.

Do you know, when I am with you I am not afraid at all. It is a magic altogether curious that happens inside the heart. I wish I could take it with me when I leave. It is sad, my Grey. We are constrained by the rules of this Game we play. There is not one little place under those rules for me to be with you happily. Or apart happily, which is what makes it so unfair. I have discovered a curious fact about myself. An hour ago I was sure you were dead, and it hurt very much. Now you are alive, and it is only that I must leave you, and I find that even more painful. That is not at all logical. Do you know the Symposium, Grey? The Symposium of Plato. [He] says that lovers are like two parts of an egg that fit together perfectly. Each half is made for the other, the single match to it. We are incomplete alone. Together, we are whole. All men are seeking that other half of themselves. Do you remember? I think you are the other half of me. It was a great mix-up in heaven. A scandal. For you there was meant to be a pretty English schoolgirl in the city of Bath and for me some fine Italian pastry cook in Palermo. But the cradles were switched somehow, and it all ended up like this…of an impossibility beyond words. I wish I had never met you. And in all my life I will not forget lying beside you, body to body, and wanting you.

Finally, after so much heartache, she was going to get what she had always wanted, what she deserved. A male who loved all of her unconditionally. And they were going to live happily ever after. Or she was going to beat his ass.

Now let’s take up the minorities in our civilization, shall we? Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don’t step on the toes of the dog-lovers, the cat-lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico. The people in this book, this play, this TV serial are not meant to represent any actual painters, cartographers, mechanics anywhere. The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that! All the minor minor minorities with their navels to be kept clean. Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters. They did. Magazines became a nice blend of vanilla tapioca. Books, so the damned snobbish critics said, were dishwater. No wonder books stopped selling, the critics said. But the public, knowing what it wanted, spinning happily, let the comic books survive. And the three-dimensional sex-magazines, of course. There you have it, Montag. It didn’t come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God. Today, thanks to them, you can stay happy all the time, you are allowed to read comics, the good old confessions, or trade journals.

He specialized in a particular kind of friendship with that eight-limbed, inscrutable, treacherous creature, the happily married coupe, adapting himself closely and lightly to the composite personality. A peevish dead woman...it's absurd...ho much less humiliating for them both it would have been if she had taken a lover.

To lovers out there.... Pregnancy is the main reason why most couples are married today. Yet every day they ask themselves why they are not happily married, forgetting love was not the main reason for their marriage.

Be nice to your body and then go find somebody else’s body to be nice to, and somebody will be nice to your body, too. Someone who has happily given themselves as many orgasms as they want is unlikely to approach their other relationships in a state of sexual desperation. Sexual self-sufficiency is an important slut skill that makes us far less likely to play with the wrong person just because we’re so horny. Be your own best lover.

They tell me you're the best and the worst thing to have happened to me, but I do not see how it can be both. For if my death resulted from your presence, an everlasting sleep would have me dreaming happily of us together. I see no bad in that. Therefore, you must be the best thing to have ever happened to me because you make the worst seem wonderful.

There are stories where you must wear out your iron shoes to right a wrong, where children are baked into pies, where jealousy cuts off hands and cuts out hearts. We forget, because the stories end with those ritual words—happily ever after—all the darkness, all the pain, all the effort that comes before. People say they want a fairy tale life, but what they really want is the part that happens off the page, after the oven has been escaped, after the clock strikes midnight. They want the part that doesn’t come with glass slippers still stained with a stepsister’s blood, or a lover blinded by an angry mother’s thorns. If you live through a fairy tale, you don’t make it through unscathed or unchanged. Hands

Two guards tortured will happily fight each other.

i am realizing that this fairy tale will not have a happily ever after instead it will end prematurely with one of us reading a eulogy • funerals are for lovers

Necessity is the mother of delusion. For true love to exist there must be nothing that is necessary to it. Lovers have to live happily ever after, no matter what happens.

Your wife is smarter than you; know this, and you will live happily ever after.

Suddenly, he got down on one knee and pulled a small velvet box from his pocket. The tears wouldn’t stop flowing down my face. “I want to be more than just your lover; I want to be your happily ever after, your best friend, your husband, and I want you for my wife. Will you marry me, Ellery Lane?” He opened the box and took out the most beautiful ring that I’ve ever seen.

Love, at its best, wipes commonsense Away. Much as drops will condense From hidden liquid in the air, So, too, do lovers soon compare Their temp’ratures til, happily, Their judgement fogs up suddenly.

as with any good fairytale there are moments when everything seems lost and there's no possible solution that brings the lovers together again so please remember, my little love, that while we may have our ups and downs tears of laughter and bouts of heartache the real beauty of 'I do' of this fairytale the one where every chapter begins 'me and you' is that Happily Ever After is not where our story ends but rather it is where our life together begins

I had a dream about you. You were so cute, and I was holding you for a long time. We went for a walk, happily strutting down the street. We saw a couple others but they weren’t having as much fun as we were. We arrived back home and I gave you a kiss on the nose and a bone.

She did not at the bottom believe she ever would have him. She did not believe in herself primarily: doubted whether she could ever be what he would demand of her. Certainly she never saw herself living happily through a lifetime with him. She saw tragedy, sorrow, and sacrifice ahead.

Let's get it over with, so I can stop wondering. How many have there been?" Lauren stared at him."How many what?" "Lovers," he clarified bitterly. She could hardly believe her ears. After treating her as if her standards of morality were childish, after acting as if promiscuity was a virtue, after telling her how man preferred experienced women, he was jealous. Because now he cared. Lauren didn't know whether to hit him, burst out laughing or hug him. Instead she decided to exact just a tiny bit of revenge for all the misery and uncertainty he had put her through. Turning,she walked over to the bar and reached for a bottle of white wine. "Why should the number make any difference?" she asked innocently. "You told me in Harbor Springs that men don't prize virginity anymore, that they don't expect or want a woman to be inexperienced.Right?" "Right," he said grimly, glowering at the ice cubes in his glass. "You also said," she continued, biting back a smile, "that women have the same physical desires men have,and that we have the right to satisfy them with whomever we wish.You were very emphatic about that-" "Lauren," he warned in a low voice, "I asked you a simple question. I don't care what the answer is, I just want an answer so I can stop wondering. Tell me how many there were. Tell me if you liked the, if you didn't give a damn abou them,or if you did it to get even with me.Just tell me.I won't hold it against you." Like hell you wouldn't! Lauren thought happily as she struggled to uncork the bottle of wine. "Of course you won't hold it against me," she said lightly. "You specifically said-" "I know what I said," he snapped tersely. "Now,how many?" She flicked a glance in his direction, implying that she was bewildered by his tone. "Only one." Angry regret flared in his eyes,and his body tensed as if he had just felt a physical blow. "Did you...care about him?" "I thought I loved him at the time," Lauren said brightly, twisting the corkscrew deeper into the cork. "All right.Let's forget him," Nick said curtly. He finally noticed her efforts with the wine bottle and walked over to help her. "Are you going to be able to forget him?" Lauren asked, admiring the ease with which he managed the stubborn cork. "I will...after a while." "What do you mean,after a while? You said there was nothing promiscuous about a woman satisfying her biological-" "I know what I said,dammit!" "Then why do you look so angry? You didn't lie to me,did you?" "I didn't lie," he said, slamming the bottle onto the bar and reaching for a glass from the cabinet. "I believed it at the time." "Why?" she goaded. "Because it was convenient to believe it," he bit out. "I was not in love with you then." Lauren loved him more at that moment than ever. "Would you like me to tell you about him?" "No," he said coldly. Her eyes twinkled, but she backed a cautious step out of his reach. "You would have approved of him. He was tall, dark, and handsome, like you. Very elegant,sophisticated and experienced. He wore down my resistence in two days,and-" "Dammit, stop it!" Nick grated in genuine fury. "His name is John." Nick braced both hands on the liguor cabinet,his back to her. "I do not want to hear this!" "John Nicholas Sinclair," Lauren clarified.

As I thought about endings and – being a lover of fairy tales – I knew immediately that the deeply rooted last line in folk stories, ‘And they lived happily ever after’, is the core of what we think we know about endings. We hear it always in our hindbrain because it’s the last line most of us in the West have grown up with. That line stops the story at the point of greatest happiness. The wedding, the homecoming, the mystery unraveled, the villain disposed of, families reunited, babies born. If we went on in the story Cinderella, she might be whispered about in court: after all, her manners are not impeccable, she always has smudges of ash on her nose, and no one can trace her bloodline back enough generations. Perhaps she has grown fat eating all that rich food in the castle, and the prince’s eye has strayed. If we went on in The Three Little Pigs, the brother who builds with bricks will have kicked the other two lay-abouts out of his house, or hired them to run his successful company and they – angry at their lower status – plot to kill him. But, having little imagination, do it the only way they know how, by trying to boil him in the pot that still holds the memory of the wolf’s demise, so of course the brick building pig finds them out. But modern books pose a different problem. They present harder choices. It’s no longer fairy tale endings we are talking about, but the other stuff, more realistic, stronger, difficult, and maybe not happy-ever-after stuff.

The best lover you could ever have will sit on this very bench 270 years from now. You two will never meet. And will never know you’ll never meet. They are, however, currently sitting with you because if you two did meet, you’d spend your time sitting as you are now. Because returning to that bench every afternoon, happily single, was like spending a day with every soul who wants to sit there too.

I am in love-desire, and unless you take me now, I shall fall in pieces...but I do not think I can be moderate. Forgive me, forgive me...' But her breathing was as changed now as his, and all order retreating before the strength of the living force beating about them. She pressed the latch, and set the last door to lie open. 'Khush geldi: welcome: thou art come happily,' she said gently, and let him come, where he belonged, within her gouvernance.

So the fact tht anyone would ever suggest that Arab women are dominated and demeaned is really quite ludicrous. In this part of the world, She's just Not That Into Him. We're the ones who make a pantomime of the wedding, and play at happily ever after....The men might think they have the upper hand, they may believe they've nabbed themselves a prime piece of arm candy, but we've got his 'potential as a provider' wrapped around our little fingers. Oh yes, we're the smart ones.

HERE'S THE PROBLEM: Many men have an exaggerated fear of commitment. If you are a contemporary woman, there is a very good chance that you are going to be involved with at least one man, possibly more, who chooses to walk away from love. It may be the man who doesn't call after a particularly good first date; it may be the ardent pursuer who woos you only to leave after the first night of sex; it may be the trusted boyfriend and lover who sabotages the relationship just as it heads for marriage, or it may be the man who waits until after marriage to respond to the enormity of his commitment by ignoring your emotional needs and becoming unfaithful or abusive. However, whenever it happens, chances are you are dealing with a man who has an abnormal response to the notion of commitment. To him something about you spells out wife, mother, togetherness —forever— and it terrifies him. That's why he leaves you. You don't understand it. You don't see yourself as threatening. As a matter of fact, you may not even have wanted that much from this particular guy. If it's any consolation, he probably doesn't understand his reactions any better than you do. All he knows is that the relationship is "too close for comfort." Something about it, and therefore you, makes him anxious. If his fear is strong enough, this man will ultimately sabotage, destroy, or run away from any solid, good relationship. He wants love, but he is terrified—genuinely phobic—about commitment and will run away from any woman who represents "happily ever after." In other words, if his fear is too great, the commitment-phobic will not be able to love, no matter how much he wants to. But that's not how it seems at the beginning. At the beginning of the relationship, when you look at him you see a man who seems to need and want love. His blatant pursuit and touching displays of vulnerability convince you that it is "safe" for you to respond in kind. But as soon as you do, as soon as you are willing to give love a chance, as soon as it's time for the relationship to move forward, something changes. Suddenly the man begins running away, either figuratively, by withdrawing and provoking arguments, or literally, by disappearing and never calling again. Either way, you are left with disappointed dreams and destroyed self-esteem. What happened, what went wrong, and why is this scenario so familiar to so many women?

Adele took her place in front of the audience and began to sing. "Miss Eyre, perhaps you can tell me what he's saying?" Mrs. Fairfax said. "The only other person in the house who speaks French is the master, and he hates to translate anymore." Jane glanced at Mr. Rochester, but he stared straight ahead. Jane listened to the song. "The first few lines are about a famous dancer ... in a club ... She wore flowers in her hair and a dress that ... oh." Adele sang in detail about how much the dress covered. Or didn't cover. Jane blushed and glanced at Mr. Rochester, searching for a reaction to the scandalous lyrics. But he just listened. Not scandalized. "So, yes, the dancer wore a dress," Jane continued, with slightly less detail. "And she was in love with a ... dealer. Of cards. And at night, they ... oh my." Adele sang of a very special hug. Jane's cheeks flamed. "Perhaps Mr. Rochester should translate." She turned to Mr. Rochester, who coughed. He waved his hand. "Please continue, Miss Eyre. You're doing such a fine job." Now Adele sang of the woman's roving eye, and another man visiting while her lover was away. "They continued to love each other," Jane said quickly, maybe a bit desperately. In the last verse, the boyfriend found out about her infidelity, and stabbed the dancer and her other lover. "That escalated quickly," said Helen. She also spoke French, but no one had asked her to translate. "And they both lived happily ever after," Jane blurted. She was going to have to teach Adele some new songs.

If you don't know it, I'll let you in on something: there are two worlds out there with regard to how people feel about fat. In one world - the one that controls most of the media and sells most of the products, the one that runs the politics and the public works - fat is a travesty. The very word "fat" is a terrible insult from which you protect your friends and lovers. In another world, increasing numbers of people of all body types live happily and healthily and with minimal regard for beauty tyranny. They work and walk and swim and have sex and dance and sleep and get sick and well and love and die without organizing their lives around their hatred or suspicion or judgement of their bodies. Well, they practice living that way, at least, because the other world is tough to ignore.

Now it was spring and there was a battle between him and Miriam. This year he had a good deal against her. She was vaguely aware of it. The old feeling that she would be a sacrifice to this love, which she had had when she prayed, was mingled in all her emotions. She did not at the bottom believe she ever would have him. She did not believe in herself, primarily: doubted whether she could ever be what he would demand of her. Certainly she never saw herself living happily through a life-time with him. She saw tragedy, sorrow, and sacrifice ahead. And in sacrifice she was proud, in renunciation she was strong; for she did not trust herself to support everyday life. She was prepared for the big things and deep things, like tragedy. It was the sufficiency of the small day-life she could not trust.

May we imagine for them a vector, passing through the invisible, the "imaginary," the unimaginable, carrying them safely into this postwar Paris where the taxis, battered veterans of the mythic Marne, now carry only lovers and cheerful drunks, and music which cannot be marched to goes on uninterrupted all night, in the bars and bals musettes for the dancers who will always be there, and the nights will be dark enough for whatever visions must transpire across them, no longer to be broken into by light displaced from Hell, and the difficulties they find are no more productive of evil than the opening and closing of too many doors, or of too few. A vector through the night into a morning of hosed pavements, birds heard everywhere but unseen, bakery smells, filtered green light, a courtyard still in shade...

OH HAPPY DAY when in you presence, my ruler, I shall die! When near the sugar-treasure melting like sugar I shall die! Out of my dust will grow a thousand of centrifolias When in the shade of yonder cypress in gardens I shall die. And when you pour into my goblet the bitter drink of death, I'll kiss the goblet full of joy, dear, and drunken I shall die. I may turn yellow like the autumn when people speak of death, Thanks to your smiling lip: like springtime and smiling shall I die. I have died many times, but your breath made me alive again, Should I die thus a hundred more times I happily shall die! A child that dies in mother's bosom, that's how I am, my friend, For in the bosom of His Mercy and kindness, I shall die. Say: Where would death be for the lovers? Impossible is that! For in the fountain of the Water of Life - there I shall die!

I am concerned that the ladies are ill-treated." "The ladies who frequent the Fallen Angel are not ill-treated." Her brows knit together. "How do you know?" "Because they are under my protection." She froze. "They are?" He was suddenly warm. "They are. We do all we can to ensure that they are well treated and well paid while under our roof. If they are manhandled, they call for one of the security detail. They file a complaint with me. And if I discover a member is mistreating ladies beneath this roof, his membership is revoked." She paused for a long moment, considering the words, and finally said, "I have a passion for horticulture." He wasn't certain how plants had anything to do with prostitutes, but he knew better than to interrupt. She continued, the words quick and forthright, as though they entirely made sense. "I've made a rather remarkable discovery recently," she said, and his attention lingered on the breathlessness of the words. On the way her mouth curved in a small, private smile. She was proud of herself, and he found- even before she admitted her finding- that he was proud of her. Odd, that. "It is possible to take a piece of one rosebush and affix it to another. And when the process is completed properly... say, a white piece on a red bush... an entirely new rose grows..." She paused, and the rest of the words rushed out, as though she were almost afraid of them. "A pink one." Cross did not know much about horticulture, but he knew enough about scientific study to know that the finding would be groundbreaking. "How did you-" She raised a hand to stop the question. "I'll happily show you. It's very exciting. But that's not the point." He waited for her to arrive at the point in question. She did. "The career... it is not their choice. They're not red or white anymore. They're pink. And you're why." Somehow, it made sense that she compared the ladies of the Angel to this experiment in roses. Somehow, this woman's strange, wonderful brain worked in a way that he completely understood.

As for denying the existence of fairies, good and bad, you have to be blind not to see them. They are everywhere, and naturally I have links of affection or dislike with all of them. The wealthy, spendthrift ones squander fortunes in Venice or Monte Carlo: fabulous, ageless women whose birthdays and incomes and origins nobody knows, putting charms on roulette wheels for the dubious pleasure of seeing the same number come up more often than it ought. There they sit, puffing smoke from long cigarette-holders, raking in the chips, and looking bored. Others spend the hours of darkness hanging their apartments in Paris or New York with Gothic tapestries, hitherto unrecorded, that drive the art-dealers demented-gorgeous tapestries kept hidden away in massive chests beneath deserted abbeys and castles since their own belle epoque in the Middle Ages. Some stick to their original line of country, agitating tables at seances or organizing the excitement in haunted houses; some perform kind deeds, but in a capricious and uncertain manner that frequently goes wrong, And then there are the amorous fairies, who never give up. They were to be seen fluttering through the Val Sans Retour in the forest of Broceliande, where Morgan la Fee concealed the handsome knight Guyomar and many lost lovers besides, or over the Isle of Avallon where the young knight Lanval lived happily with a fairy who had stolen him away. Now wrinkled with age, the amorous ones contrive to lure young men on the make who, immaculately tailored and bedecked with baubles from Cartier, escort them through the vestibules of international hotels. Yet other fairies, more studious and respectable, devote themselves to science, whirring and breathing above tired inventors and inspiring original ideas-though lately the unimaginable numbers,the formulae and the electronics, tend to overwhelm them. The scarcely comprehensible discoveries multiply around them and shake a world that is not theirs any more, that slips through their immaterial fingers. And so it goes on-all sorts and conditions of fairies, whispering together, purring to themselves, unnoticed on the impercipient earth. And I am one of them.

How I Got That Name Marilyn Chin an essay on assimilation I am Marilyn Mei Ling Chin Oh, how I love the resoluteness of that first person singular followed by that stalwart indicative of “be," without the uncertain i-n-g of “becoming.” Of course, the name had been changed somewhere between Angel Island and the sea, when my father the paperson in the late 1950s obsessed with a bombshell blond transliterated “Mei Ling” to “Marilyn.” And nobody dared question his initial impulse—for we all know lust drove men to greatness, not goodness, not decency. And there I was, a wayward pink baby, named after some tragic white woman swollen with gin and Nembutal. My mother couldn’t pronounce the “r.” She dubbed me “Numba one female offshoot” for brevity: henceforth, she will live and die in sublime ignorance, flanked by loving children and the “kitchen deity.” While my father dithers, a tomcat in Hong Kong trash— a gambler, a petty thug, who bought a chain of chopsuey joints in Piss River, Oregon, with bootlegged Gucci cash. Nobody dared question his integrity given his nice, devout daughters and his bright, industrious sons as if filial piety were the standard by which all earthly men are measured. * Oh, how trustworthy our daughters, how thrifty our sons! How we’ve managed to fool the experts in education, statistic and demography— We’re not very creative but not adverse to rote-learning. Indeed, they can use us. But the “Model Minority” is a tease. We know you are watching now, so we refuse to give you any! Oh, bamboo shoots, bamboo shoots! The further west we go, we’ll hit east; the deeper down we dig, we’ll find China. History has turned its stomach on a black polluted beach— where life doesn’t hinge on that red, red wheelbarrow, but whether or not our new lover in the final episode of “Santa Barbara” will lean over a scented candle and call us a “bitch.” Oh God, where have we gone wrong? We have no inner resources! * Then, one redolent spring morning the Great Patriarch Chin peered down from his kiosk in heaven and saw that his descendants were ugly. One had a squarish head and a nose without a bridge Another’s profile—long and knobbed as a gourd. A third, the sad, brutish one may never, never marry. And I, his least favorite— “not quite boiled, not quite cooked," a plump pomfret simmering in my juices— too listless to fight for my people’s destiny. “To kill without resistance is not slaughter” says the proverb. So, I wait for imminent death. The fact that this death is also metaphorical is testament to my lethargy. * So here lies Marilyn Mei Ling Chin, married once, twice to so-and-so, a Lee and a Wong, granddaughter of Jack “the patriarch” and the brooding Suilin Fong, daughter of the virtuous Yuet Kuen Wong and G.G. Chin the infamous, sister of a dozen, cousin of a million, survived by everbody and forgotten by all. She was neither black nor white, neither cherished nor vanquished, just another squatter in her own bamboo grove minding her poetry— when one day heaven was unmerciful, and a chasm opened where she stood. Like the jowls of a mighty white whale, or the jaws of a metaphysical Godzilla, it swallowed her whole. She did not flinch nor writhe, nor fret about the afterlife, but stayed! Solid as wood, happily a little gnawed, tattered, mesmerized by all that was lavished upon her and all that was taken away!

Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess who was admired by all, but no one dared to ask for her hand in marriage. In despair, the king consulted the god Apollo. He told him that Psyche should be dressed in mourning and left alone on top of a mountain. Before daybreak, a serpent would come to meet and marry her. The king obeyed, and all night the princess waited for her husband to appear, deathly afraid and freezing cold. Finally, she slept. When she awoke, she found herself crowned a queen in a beautiful palace. Every night her husband came to her and they made love, but he had imposed one condition: Psyche could have all she desired, but she had to trust him completely and could never see his face.” How awful, I think, but I don’t dare interrupt him. “The young woman lived happily for a long time. She had comfort, affection, joy, and she was in love with the man who visited her every night. However, occasionally she was afraid that she was married to a hideous serpent. Early one morning, while her husband slept, she lit a lantern and saw Eros, a man of incredible beauty, lying by her side. The light woke him, and seeing that the woman he loved was unable to fulfill his one request, Eros vanished. Desperate to get her lover back, Psyche submitted to a series of tasks given to her by Aphrodite, Eros’s mother. Needless to say, her mother-in-law was incredibly jealous of Psyche’s beauty and she did everything she could to thwart the couple’s reconciliation. In one of the tasks, Psyche opened a box that makes her fall into a deep sleep.” I grow anxious to find out how the story will end. “Eros was also in love and regretted not having been more lenient toward his wife. He managed to enter the castle and wake her with the tip of his arrow. ‘You nearly died because of your curiosity,’ he told her. ‘You sought security in knowledge and destroyed our relationship.’ But in love, nothing is destroyed forever. Imbued with this conviction, they go to Zeus, the god of gods, and beg that their union never be undone. Zeus passionately pleaded the cause of the lovers with strong arguments and threats until he gained Aphrodite’s support. From that day on, Psyche (our unconscious, but logical, side) and Eros (love) were together forever.” I pour another glass of wine. I rest my head on his shoulder. “Those who cannot accept this, and who always try to find an explanation for magical and mysterious human relationships, will miss the best part of life.

Tell me, Lady Philippa." He raised a hand, one finger lingering at the indentation of her upper lip, a hairsbreadth from touching her. "In your study of anatomy, did you ever learn the name of the place between the nose and the lip?" Her lips parted, and she resisted the urge to lean toward him, to force him to touch her. She answered on a whisper, "The philtrum." He smiled. "Clever girl. It is Latin. Do you know its meaning?" "No." "It means love potion. The Romans believed it was the most erotic place on the body. They called it Cupid's bow, because of the way it shapes the upper lip." As he spoke, he ran his finger along the curve of her lip, a temptation more than a touch, barely there. His voice grew softer, deeper. "They believed it was the mark of the god of love." She inhaled, low and shallow. "I did not know that." He leaned down, closer, his hand falling away. "I'd be willing to wager that there are any number of things about the human body that you do not know, my little expert. All things that I would happily teach you.

This is the thing about fairy tales: You have to live through them, before you get to happily ever after. That ever after has to be earned, and not everyone makes it that far. There are stories where you must wear out your iron shoes to right a wrong, where children are baked into pies, where jealousy cuts off hands and cuts out hearts. We forget, because stories end with those ritual words--happily ever after--all the darkness, all the pain, all the effort that comes before. People say they want a fairy tale life, but what they really want is the part that happens off the page, after the oven has been escaped, after the clock strikes midnight. They want the part that doesn't come with glass slippers still stained with a stepsister's blood, or a lover blinded by an angry mother's thorns. If you live through a fairy tale, you don't make it through unscathed or unchanged. Hands of silver may be beautiful, but they don't replace the hands of flesh and bone that were severed. The hazel tree may speak with your mother's voice, but her bones are still buried beneath its roots. The dead are not always returned, and roses do not always bloom from graves. Not every princess climbs out of her coffin. Happily ever after is the dropping of the curtain, a signal for applause. It is not a guarantee, and it always has a price.

To lovers out there.. People chose the people they date according to the way they see them rather than the way they feel about them. That is why they constantly get hurt and not happily in love.

Lassiter walked in like he owned the place, that swagger back in full force, his smile as wide and naughty as ever, his blond and black hair marked with fresh snowflakes. As Tohr and Autumn stared at him with their mouths open, he held up two oversize McDonald’s bags. “I brought us all Big Macs,” he said happily. “I know you dig ’em, remember?” “What the…” Tohr tightened his grip on his shellan, just in case…well, shit, with the way things were going lately, anything could happen. “What are you doing here?” “It’s your lucky day, motherfucker.

A name after all is a label as personal as “sweetheart” that a lover may use or as distant as a “hey you” that a stranger in a crowd may call out. But a name is more than a label. It is an inheritance that is uniquely your own. It is the primary way in which you respond to the world and the lens through which the world sees you. It defines you, shapes you, and grounds you. It is the one right you take for granted from the time you start interacting with society.

In the naked reality! In the nakedness of the reality, She reflects in my mind’s imagination, Sometimes she becomes a dream of endless beauty, Where she is everything, even reality’s beautiful personification, In the smile that slowly grows over my face, She neutralizes every feeling of anxiety, And how happily my heart beats pace, In a feeling of love’s sobriety, Then as I hold her hand, In the midst of Summer flowers, She assumes the form of beauty that grows in my land, Land of reality, land of Irma’s dreams, Irma’s kisses, Irma’s beauty, the land of lovers, We tread and walk for sometime, In this naked moment of the reality, Invaded by a feeling of joy sublime, Because I walk with the most authentic form of beauty, At night when the sky is shimmering with distant glowing dots, We sit under a chestnut tree, To experience our love and a feeling that never departs, Wherever we might be, Finally in this naked moment of reality, I grow over her skin like a shadow that grows over something, I kiss her and then her beauty, Until we both become part of everything, The thing itself and the shadow that covers the thing, The feeling of love that covers us inside out, Then when our hearts no longer beat, but they only sing, I hold her hand and experience love with nothing to fear and with no doubt, And this romance continues to grow, Like two shadows fused into one, And as my endless feelings of love over her skin flow, We lie in this state of naked reality without letting anyone know!

Love and aspirations! Let me take you behind the rainbow, And show you the colours of love, Let me make you wet with my feelings of love, As every droplet of my colourful feelings kisses you behind that rainbow. Let me borrow some colourful mist from the butterfly, And sprinkle it on your soul, Let me love you whole including your soul, As you become the envy of every butterfly. Let me take you to the garden of roses, lavenders and other beautiful flowers, And love you like careless lovers, Let us be those carefree and self indulgent lovers, As I secretly endow you with the beauty of all these flowers. Let us stand at the banks of the noisy rivulet, And flow with its hastiness in one direction, Let you be the sea and I will be the river flowing in this direction, As you and I become the part of the happily and always rushing rivulet. Let me take you to a place where it is always morning, And let the dew fall on your soul and quench you, Let you be the pasture of million grass blades as the dew drops kiss you, As you witness the wave of pleasure engulfing you , then only for you let me be this morning. Let me take you to the distant valley where the shepherdess sings a beautiful song, And you try to be her melody, Let me then be the every note of this melody, As you get drawn towards the mesmerising song. Let me make you sit before my mirror long enough, And fill myself just with your visual imaginations, Let there be no memory left in me except your imaginations, As I love you today Irma may it be till eternity, and yet not enough! Let me feel your bright body and deep eyes, under the sun, And I shall love you in presence of this universe, Let me kiss you , to feel you and to remember you just like this universe, As sometimes under the moonlight I feel you are my warmth and my only sun! Let me love you forever, Although loving is brief but forgetting is an infinite loop of time, So, let me love you Irma till the end of time, Because we were born for each other and to be together forever. Let me now take you to the pinnacle of hopes, dreams and beautiful aspirations, And you decide if you wish to push me into the abyss of nothingness, Let me tell you though, I shall find you even in that nothingness, Because as we both stood in front of the mirror, I hope you remember, my reflection was a representation of your beauty and aspirations!

Our feelings and our eyes I asked her, “Irma, what have you done?” She looked at me and replied, “nothing!” I cannot find few of my heart beats a lot seems undone, But there was a feeling that reminded me of something, And I tracked the rhythm of my every heart beat, Which led just to one trace, That whenever I see her and our eyes meet, My heart loses its pace, And there goes my heart beat missing in between this space, The distance between her eyes and mine, Though we stand on the same ground at the same place, Yet my heart beats rush towards her making a bee line, Just to beat closer to her heart, To feel her warmth and swim in the sea of her feelings, And as these love seeking heart beats depart, My heart cries in its painful reelings, Where it finds itself left in the wilderness of nowhere, She is there, her heart is there too, But our eyes still tend to wander somewhere, Where she is willing to say I love you, But her heart beats are yet to feel the miracle of a missing heart beat, That always rushes unto me, Creating love’s fondest retreat, Where wherever I may see, I see her and she only sees me, This is the distance that grows in the eyes, That only these missing heart beats can shorten, Just like when I look at those skies, I am always by her beauty smitten, Her eyes, her smiles, her face and her sweet ways, Are actually the twinkle that the night stars bear, And ah their pain on those Sunny and bright days, When they long to see her, But today, she looked at me and I felt she plugged into my spirit, And a heart beat unknown sank into me with it, Then she started beating in my every heart beat, And how I loved my heart beat, and repeat and repeat, With every heartbeat, “I love you too.” And then the distance in our eyes vanished suddenly, As I held her in my arms and said, “I was born to love you!” And then our two hearts, beat as one and forever happily.

He could. No, Pierce doesn’t care about anyone but himself. He looks at you like you’re an ending. You’re the ‘happily ever after.’ He would take your come-up story and make it loud and make it his. Class-crossed lovers. Traversing boundaries to be together. Third has big plans for his son. Governor, I think, and a governor needs a story.

Only with her - PART II For when it comes to love and life, prestige loses its significance, All that matters is the moment where you can love her with every heartbeat and the mind’s complete faithfulness, I had fallen in love long ago, but my mind took a while to love what I realised as the most loving feeling, While my heart instantly began beating for her and it immediately recognised her as its most endearing feeling, Now I live in this world created by my mind that is unaware it is obeying my heart’s fancies, Her thoughts, her imaginations, creating for me a world where she fills all my emotional vacancies, I do not mind my current existence in this world, where my mind thinks for my heart and my heart beats neither for me nor for my mind, But only for her, and when in both of them, I my own identity try to find, I realise she occupies every part of this world, where my mind and my heart patronise her alone, And I too begin to favour their sentimental inclinations with a feeling that is too prone, To fall in love again and again, with my own heart that loves her unfailingly, And then my mind doesn't mind loving her willingly, For it partly still lives for me, because without me what can it be, Just a mind that thinks endlessly, leading to feelings that it can neither feel nor see, So, it lets me be the master who depends on the feelings of his revolting heart, Finally we all are ring fenced by her feelings, from which now none of us can depart, And my heart beats one beat at a time, the mind thinks one thought at a time, while I live my life in single moments, I have to deal with my heart and my mind’s ever shifting sentimental arrangements, Where the heart always wants her feelings to be the dominant sentiment, But the mind knows then it will dissolve my existence and this becomes its predicament, Because without me it will be reduced to just a whim, that arises whenever the heart feels something, And in the kingdom of my heart she comprises everything, So, the mind fears its own identity crisis, because it is only her thoughts that continuously flow from my heart, But now all three of us realise that from beautiful thoughts none of us can part, Because to each one of us, she offers reasons to: beat, to think and to keep falling in love, And maybe this is what the wise refer to as a true and fulfilling feeling of love. So, I have left the mind alone, I let the heart beat for whatever sensation it pleases to, Because only then I admit to them both that I love her and I want to! And the heart happily beats for her, the mind only thinks about her, As they leave me alone, just to be with her!

Their sake It was meant to be so, Their lives were meant to be so, But then when it all began neither of them thought it would be so, They felt time lived for them and forever it shall be so, And they loved, they rejoiced, and they loved it so, Always together under all situations very sure that it will always be so, The woman loved the man and the man loved her equally so, Whether it was a sun kissed day or a moon lit night, it never felt so, Because during the day they experienced light of love and felt so, On silent nights they lit candles of desires and passions, and they obediently lit so, There was never a dark moment in their lives, at least for now it was so, In their lives existed no vitriolic moment because for now it was not meant to be so, They sought ratification from their hearts, and nothing else, and it was so, This agitated the fate, and chance too; and they ployed to not let it be so, They cast them in the world managed by predefined outcome of moments and now for them it was so, No matter what they did, how hard they tried, it was never like before, and how they longed for it to be so, Like before, like those sweet days, because fate and chance did not want it to be so, Maybe they were scared the two lovers would render their existence purposeless, and how could they afford it to be so, And to feed their pride they invented moments with predefined destinies, and made they fight a pre-determined battle, and for them it has been so, Even the bright days appear dark, the moonlit nights seem hopeless, and now for long it has been so, But they still love each other, they still hope, and with them it shall for eternity be so, This has left fate and chance wondering how to rob time of new moments everyday, so that the world of lovers remains so, Trapped in moments coded by malice and extreme cussedness of fate and chance, because they desperately want it to be so, It seems time has realised the evil intentions of the two conspirators and it doesnt want it to be so, Because then time will lose its purpose of existence and it ought not to be so, As it would lead the universe into an endless struggle where all shall be busy keeping the fate and chance pleased, and it cannot be so, For life to be organically progressive the two lovers should be free to desire anything and anytime, as and whenever they wish so, Fate‘s deliberate interference, and chance’s intentional disappearance, would steal from life it's every charm, and life isn't meant to be so, This is why time has stamped all its moments with emptiness that can never be filled by fate or chance, and now it is so, And now the two lovers romance like before, they love like always, and since it has been so, Fate and chance have been disenfranchised from free will, and now it shall be so, it has to be so, Otherwise not just the lovers, love will lose its existence across the universe, that cannot afford to be so, And now the two lovers love each other like before, only that now they respect time more, and what a great wonder it is to realise it and feel so! The lovers loving like before as it was always meant to be so, And now only for their sake the universe shall always be so, Happily existing because the universe is meant to be so!

Dear child,’ said Vera, her voice catching. ‘One’s first lover is almost always a disappointment. Forget about it, if you can. You’re a sweet girl. Go and marry your captain and live happily ever after, won’t you?

Well… some people think that when two people get together, that’s the end of the story. Happily ever after. When you have that perspective, it’s easy to feel like your lover finding happiness with someone else takes away from your happily ever after. But… in reality, getting together is only the beginning.

Our spirit wants to experience connection by being seen, felt and heard. When you ask and listen deeply with curiosity to whatever wants to be expressed, you are giving one of the most precious gifts you can give to one you love.

I hope you are well in health, spirit and life. I don’t know how to begin reconnecting, as it’s been so long since we parted. Are you happily ‘married’? If so, I am delighted to know you are in safe hands. I’m sure your beloved takes loving care of you. Albert, my lover for the past 8 years, died 17 months ago after a long battle with AIDs-related illnesses. Mourning for his loss threw me to near depression for several months. But I’m blessed that I’m healthy and back in full swing regaining my life. As you are well aware, we Bahriji boys are very resilient to life’s many challenges. :)

That a mother should wish to see her daughters happily married, is natural and proper; that a young lady should be pleased with polite attentions is likewise natural and innocent; but this undue anxiety, this foolish excitement about showing off the attentions of somebody, no matter whom, is attended with consequences seriously injurious. It promotes envy and rivalship; it leads our young girls to spend their time between the public streets, the ball room, and the toilet; and, worst of all, it leads them to contract engagements, without any knowledge of their own hearts, merely for the sake of being married as soon as their companions. When married, they find themselves ignorant of the important duties of domestic life; and its quiet pleasures soon grow tiresome to minds worn out by frivolous excitements. If they remain unmarried, their disappointment and discontent are, of course, in proportion to their exaggerated idea of the eclat attendant upon having a lover. The evil increases in a startling ratio; for these girls, so injudiciously educated, will, nine times out of ten, make injudicious mothers, aunts, and friends;

Young, you are looking so dreamily pensive,” my lover remarked. Jolted back to reality, I replied happily, “Because I love you and Andy very much.

I presume this is part of your erotic art collection?" she mused out loud. "It is most beautifully done; only look at the masterful brushwork and the lush, luminous colors. Curiously enough, it reminds me of Boucher, though I suppose it was done by a less well-known artist." He lifted a brow. "I am impressed, madam, since Boucher is exactly who painted the work. You do indeed know your art. The provenance says he did this painting as a private commission for a wealthy, anonymous patron. I acquired it at an equally private auction a few years ago and have enjoyed viewing it ever since." "Well, if this painting is representative of your collection, I would guess that all the works must have scandalous, clandestine origins due to the lurid nature of the subject matter." "Actually, this is one of the less provocative pieces," he informed her. "The majority of my collection is housed in a separate gallery devoted strictly to erotic art and literature. A couple of the maids won't even go inside to clean." Esme turned her gaze on him. "Is it really that bad?" "Or that good, depending on your point of view." He grinned. "I'll show it to you sometime, if you'd like. After all, you are an art lover. Come to think, perhaps I should frame the naked sketch you did of me and add it to the collection. Or would you prefer to keep it and hang it on your bedroom wall?" "I believe I will leave it exactly where it is, else the entire house know what you look like without clothing. Although knowing you, you'd likely be as proud as Bacchus here and every bit as shameless." His grin widened. "Yes, but only because certain parts of me actually do rival the gods.

He kissed her deeply then, pouring all his heart into their interweaving lips and souls. This kiss held love, not lust; promise, not hope; relief, not fear.

It’s like the ocean met the sky right there on the canvas.” “Or maybe they’ve always been secret lovers,” I say, my voice low and intimate, “and this is their clandestine meeting place.” “You’re such a charmer, even to the paintings.” “Only the best for my fellow adventurer.

Quite nice! To contemplate the extermination of the human species and the long pause that follows before some other species crops up, it calms you more than anything else. And if we go on in this way, with everybody, intellectuals, artists, government, industrialists and workers all frantically killing off the last human feeling, the last bit of their intuition, the last healthy instinct; if it goes on in algebraical progression, as it is going on: then ta−tah! to the human species! Goodbye! darling! the serpent swallows itself and leaves a void, considerably messed up, but not hopeless. Very nice! When savage wild dogs bark in Wragby, and savage wild pit−ponies stamp on Tevershall pit−bank! te deum laudamus!' Connie laughed, but not very happily.

I’ve learned the hard way that insatiable girls don’t get happily ever afters. They eat their way through lovers and friends too heartily—and that they also want to be eaten alive, their blood drunk and their bones cracked open, is irrelevant. Insatiable girls stay alone. Insatiable girls settle for living by proxy, for craving and wanting and shoving those wants down where they won’t scare anyone away.

In that book of yours, Emma, what happens to her?" he asked Naina as she looked over some paperwork they were about to submit to Naman's office. They were in Yash's apartment, a.k.a. their temporary office, working long after everyone else had left. She raised a brow at him, all the accusations she'd thrown at him---not entirely inaccurately---flashing guiltily in her eyes. "The one who tries to be a matchmaker so she can feel good about herself and fill her boredom?" She smiled, but there was an apology in her eyes. A hot apology. "She learns that having more privilege than other people doesn't mean you know what's best for them. She learns to admit her mistakes and listen to others, and it teaches her to listen to her own feelings too." He laughed. "And she finds the love of her life and they live happily ever after." He'd been joking, but her face said that was exactly what happened. "You're kidding me," he said. "And this is a book you liked?" Which, come to think of it, gave him great hope. "You're a romantic, Naina Kohli," he said, and got all up in her face. "You wish," she said, but she did kiss every last of breath out of him.

Students who proceed according to the master-slave paradigm will only work themselves to death. Students who flirt and dally with Japanese in a lover-like relationship shall live happily ever after

Bum bum bum bum. Tonight’s the night that Tess will get on one knee. Bum bum bum bum. And you and she will live oh so happily. Your hair is blond, your eyes are green, your face is like a dream. And only you know what to do to make your lover scream. The question’s short but life is long; you know just what to dooooooo. Just say ‘yes’ and Tess will make an honest man of yooooou.

Often, as right now, Jean Perdu sits in the farmhouse’s summer kitchen, eyes closed, plucking rosemary and lavender flowers, breathing in this most profoundly provincial fragrance, and writing his Great Encyclopedia of Small Emotions: A Guide for Booksellers, Lovers, and other Literary Pharmacists. He is making an entry under “K.” Kitchen solace—the feeling that a delicious meal is simmering on the kitchen stove, misting up the windows, and that at any moment your lover will sit down to dinner with you and, between mouthfuls, gaze happily into your eyes. (Also known as living.)

Old man and his dead daughter An old aging man, Walks on the promenade everyday, He surely in his years of youth, played and ran, But now he is spending his life slowly and day by day, As life greets him every morning, He looks at it without any surprise, And he treats her like his only darling, For his fulfilling life was his greatest prize, He was aging but somehow not old, He believed in life that is lived everyday, And this realisation had made him bold, So here he is now living his life day by day, But lately he has become meek, His daughter died when the war broke, Now it is her, in everything he loves to seek, And in the darkness he deals with his fate and its cruel stroke, And maybe he wants to know why her, And why not him? When the bullet traveled and hit her, He was happily walking under the moonlight dim, And someone told him about the fateful incident, He fell, he moaned, he grieved, His sobbings were loud and incessant, There was nothing left to love, because his world had died, the world in which he believed, Now he curses the war and the bullets, The killers of joys, the murderers of innocence, And he leads a life of torments, And invain seeks in everything his dead daughter’s essence, That now lies scattered in the air, But as bullets pass through it , the air smells of gunpowder, And it erases all her traces beautiful and fair, And the old man dies every day, as a father who was a lover, Of everything life had to offer, But the bullets have invaded everything, Now they even kill a flower, And that is the most heinous thing, I have known the old man for many decades, But I have never seen him so old, Today a bullet killed him too and ended his life’s facades, He died smiling, looking at the sky, so I am told! Rest in peace wherever you may be now, And be merry that bullets cannot reach there, Because in a place abounding in grace and love, It is just flowers and lovers everywhere!

gone. I wish you knew how loyal your casing is. How your body happily trots everywhere with you like an indebted lover. And it’s you who lays your body out under sweethearts and foes. You. You did that. Because sometimes you need to feel another person’s weight in order to feel your own.

Harley thought to herself so much for temporary lovers when your true love won't acknowledge your existence. Harley Rayne

They spent the night tucked beneath a spare scrap of canvas in the boat bottom, listening to the sluicing of waves against the pine-tarred hull and watching the night wheel over them like a dancer's star-studded skirt. Ade nestled into the softness of his arm and thought about happily-ever-afters and sweet-tasting endings. Yule thought about once-upon-a-times and bold beginnings. At dawn they departed. When asked what she wanted to see, Ade replied, "Everything," so Yule obediently charted a course toward everything. They docked first at the City of Sissly, where Ade could admire the pink domes of the local chapels and taste the pepper-bite of fresh gwanna fruit. Then they stayed three nights on the abandoned Island of Tho, where the ruins of a failed City loomed like broken gray teeth against the sun, before skipping along a string of low, sand-scoured islands too small to be named. They walked the streets of the City of Yef and slept in the cool grottoes of the City of Jungil, and walked across the famed bridge connecting the twin Cities of Iyo and Ivo. They sailed north and west, following the summer currents out of the sweating heat of the equator, and saw Cities so distant even Yule had only read their names on his charts.

He smiled happily, as his lover's wit, like his lover's eye, divined meanings unsupported by the evidence.

I’ve got the first two books,” Calla said. “I’ll loan them to you.” The young woman seemed momentarily surprised and then happily agreed. “I guess that’s what people who read stuff do,” she said. “They loan books to each other.

When I’m not railing at the patriarchy and reconsidering whether a traditional marriage is for me, I spend my time reading romance novels. My favorite romance story plot is always about young lovers who lose touch, reconnect, and then live happily ever after.

ease. He walked under a bright summer sky, over sunlit fields and through little groves that danced and whispered in the wind. The houses of men were scattered here and there, the houses which practically took care of themselves; over beyond the horizon was one of the giant, almost automatic food factories; a few self-piloting carplanes went quietly overhead. Humans were in sight, sun-browned men and their women and children going about their various errands with loose bright garments floating in the breeze. A few seemed to be at work, there was a colorist experimenting with a new chromatic harmony, a composer sitting on his verandah striking notes out of an omniplayer, a group of engineers in a transparent-walled laboratory testing some mechanisms. But with the standard work period what it was these days, most were engaged in recreation. A picnic, a dance under trees, a concert, a pair of lovers, a group of children in one of the immemorially ancient games of their age-group, an old man happily en-hammocked with a book and a bottle of beer— the human race was taking it easy.

Did she really want to give Brian and his lover the power to determine the kind of human being that she herself would become?

I’m the spindle lover boys prick their fingers on. I leave them comatose with only the memory of my touch. I’m not the princess. I’m the rotten apple. The poison made to demolish happily ever afters. I’m no good for him, for anyone.

Sometimes, the greatest love stories begin with a simple hello.