Ink Black Heart Quotes

Oh my God..." Xhex's heart stopped as she looked at him in the mirror. Across his upper back, in a glorious spread of black ink...in a declaration that didn't whisper but shouted...in a billboard-size front with flourishes... Her name in the Old Language.

Bright beads of red are rising through the ink, Hearts-blood bubbles smearing out into the black stream

Some thought magic came from the mind, others the soul, or the heart, or the will. But Kell knew it came from the blood. Blood was magic made manifest. There it thrived. And there it poisoned. Kell had seen what happened when power warred with the body, watched it darken in the veins of corrupted men, turning their blood from crimson to black. If red was the color of magic in balance—of harmony between power and humanity—then black was the color of magic without balance, without order, without restraint. As an Antari, Kell was made of both, balance and chaos; the blood in his veins, like the Isle of Red London, ran a shimmering, healthy crimson, while his right eye was the color of spilled ink, a glistening black.

February. Get ink, shed tears. Write of it, sob your heart out, sing, While torrential slush that roars Burns in the blackness of the spring. Go hire a buggy. For six grivnas, Race through the noice of bells and wheels To where the ink and all you grieving Are muffled when the rainshower falls. To where, like pears burnt black as charcoal, A myriad rooks, plucked from the trees, Fall down into the puddles, hurl Dry sadness deep into the eyes. Below, the wet black earth shows through, With sudden cries the wind is pitted, The more haphazard, the more true The poetry that sobs its heart out.

It's time, Old Captain, lift anchor, sink! The land rots; we shall sail into the night; if now the sky and sea are black as ink our hearts, as you must know, are filled with light. Only when we drink poison are we well — we want, this fire so burns our brain tissue, to drown in the abyss — heaven or hell, who cares? Through the unknown, we'll find the new. ("Le Voyage")

He experienced one of those moments of simultaneous confusion and clarity that belong to the drunk and the desperate.

claimed to be the man who wrote a certain book – what was its name again?" "Inkheart." Fenoglio rubbed his aching back. "Its title is Inkheart because it's about a man whose wicked heart is as black as ink, filled with darkness and evil. I still like the title.

there’s nothing like Latin for slapping the fuck out of people who think they’re better than you. I’ve used it several times to good effect.

Strike looked down at his own plate: where there should have been chips, there was only salad.

He was afraid that the secrets she'd kept would always be here, inside him, an ugly malignant thing lodged near enough to his heart to upset its rhythm, and though it could be removed, cut out, there would always be scars; bits and pieces of it would remain in his blood, making it wrong somehow, so that if he accidentally sliced his skin open, his blood would--for one heartbeat--flow as black as India ink before it remembered that it should be red.

There are only three kinds of ink that rulers use to write their stories. Sweat, blood, or tears. So choose your ink carefully, because one day Anubis will weigh your heart upon on a scale. If your heart is black and heavy with sin, it will go to the crocodiles in the hour of judgment. But if you’re faithful, Isis offers immortality.

RAINBOW VOICES I ask people of the world and children of light to start reflecting the stories of their souls to vibrate wisdom around the earth. Pick up a paintbrush or microphone. Press the inks of your pens to paper or tap words onto your screens, and start sharing what you know and have learned with the masses. Turn your personal painting into a piece of the earth's puzzle so that our unified assemblage of thoughts, experiences and lessons reveal common truths that cannot be denied. Imagine the changes that could happen if everyone suddenly stopped acting like someone else, became true to themselves, and celebrated the beauty of their uniqueness. Only after people have willingly removed their masks and costumes, and have begun pouring light from their hearts to reveal their vulnerability, dreams and pains, will we be able to see that beneath the surface we are all the same. After all, how can the world collectively fight for truth, if soldiers in its army are void of truth? We must first all be true by putting truth in our words and actions. And to do so, everyone must learn to think and react with their conscience. Imagine what Truth could do to neutralize the clutches of evil once this black and white world suddenly became embraced by a strong rainbow of loud powerful voices. We could put color back into every home, every school, every industry, every nation, and every garden on earth where flowers have been crushed by corruption.

Not for the first time, he had cause to marvel at the fact that the woman who’d come to him as a temporary secretary had proven to be the agency’s biggest asset.

Stab the body and it heals, but injure the heart and the wound lasts a lifetime – Mineko Iwasaki

My husband claims I have an unhealthy obsession with secondhand bookshops. That I spend too much time daydreaming altogether. But either you intrinsically understand the attraction of searching for hidden treasure amongst rows of dusty shelves or you don't; it's a passion, bordering on a spiritual illness, which cannot be explained to the unaffected. True, they're not for the faint of heart. Wild and chaotic, capricious and frustrating, there are certain physical laws that govern secondhand bookstores and like gravity, they're pretty much nonnegotiable. Paperback editions of D. H. Lawrence must constitute no less than 55 percent of all stock in any shop. Natural law also dictates that the remaining 45 percent consist of at least two shelves worth of literary criticism on Paradise Lost and there should always be an entire room in the basement devoted to military history which, by sheer coincidence, will be haunted by a man in his seventies. (Personal studies prove it's the same man. No matter how quickly you move from one bookshop to the next, he's always there. He's forgotten something about the war that no book can contain, but like a figure in Greek mythology, is doomed to spend his days wandering from basement room to basement room, searching through memoirs of the best/worst days of his life.) Modern booksellers can't really compare with these eccentric charms. They keep regular hours, have central heating, and are staffed by freshly scrubbed young people in black T-shirts. They're devoid of both basement rooms and fallen Greek heroes in smelly tweeds. You'll find no dogs or cats curled up next to ancient space heathers like familiars nor the intoxicating smell of mold and mildew that could emanate equally from the unevenly stacked volumes or from the owner himself. People visit Waterstone's and leave. But secondhand bookshops have pilgrims. The words out of print are a call to arms for those who seek a Holy Grail made of paper and ink.

What I will tell you, son of sons, is this: shortly, if not already, you will begin noticing the blackness inside us all. You will develop black secrets and commit black actions. You will be shocked at the insensitivities and transgressions you are capable of, yet you will be unable to stop them. And by the time you are thirty, your friends will all have black secrets, too, but it will be years before you learn exactly *what* their black secrets are. Life at that point will become like throwing a Frisbee in a graveyard; much of the pleasure of your dealings with your friends will stem from the contrast between your sparkling youth and the ink you now know lies at your feet. Later, as you get to be my age, you will see your friends begin to die, to lose their memories, to see their skins turn wrinkled and sick. You will see the effects of dark secrets making themslves know - via their minds and bodies and via the stories your friends - yes, Harmony, Gaia, Mei-lin, Davidson, and the rest - will begin telling you at three-thirty in the morning as you put iodine on their bruises, arrange for tetanus shots, dial 911, and listen to them cry. The only payback for all of this - for the conversion of their once-young hearts into tar - will be that you will love your friends more, even though they have made you see the universe as an emptier and scarier place - and they will love you more, too.

When you give someone your whole heart and he doesn’t want it, you cannot take it back. It’s gone forever – Sylvia Plath

February Boris Pasternak It's February. Get ink. Weep. Write the heart out about it, sing Another song of February While raucous slush burns black with spring. Six grivnas* for a buggy ride Past booming bells, on screaming gears, Out to a place where drizzles fall Louder than any ink or tears Where like a flock of charcoal pears, A thousand blackbirds, ripped awry From trees to puddles, knock dry grief Into the deep end of the eye. A thaw patch blackens underfoot. The wind is gutted with a scream. True verses are the most haphazard, Rhyming the heart out on a theme. *Grivna: a unit of currency.

The idea of suggesting that Strike stop lying to the women in his life occurred only to be dismissed, on the basis that the resolutions to stop smoking, lose weight and exercise were enough personal improvement to be getting on with.

But as I’m not going around killing people I don’t like, I don’t think there’s much wrong with admitting some people contribute more to the world than others.’ ‘So you don’t subscribe to “any man’s death diminishes me”?’ said Robin. ‘I wouldn’t feel remotely diminished by the deaths of some of the bastards I’ve met.

If she could walk away, she would; her pride demanded at least that much from her. But Quincy knew that her heart beat with the rhythm of the presses in the back room, that her blood ran black with ink, and that her mind filled with reams of numbers and projections and plans. The Q was Quincy's only vital organ, so she would play the game.

He is strangely attractive, isn’t he? Bit beaten-up-looking, but I’ve never minded that.

He was starting to feel like a truffle pig trying to do its job in a room full of incense, dead fish and strong cheese.

in a prosperous country, in peacetime – notwithstanding those heavy blows of fate to which nobody was immune, and those strokes of unearned luck of which Inigo, the inheritor of wealth, had clearly benefited – character was the most powerful determinant of life’s course.

Many red devils ran from my heart And out upon the page, They were so tiny The pen could mash them. And many struggled in the ink. It was strange To write in this red muck Of things from my heart.

many red devils ran from my heart and out upon the page, they were so tiny the pen could mash them. And many struggled in the ink. It was strange to write in this red much of things from my heart.

I’m so in love with you, Eligius Dupré.” I kiss his nose. “It actually took a vampire to claim my icy heart.” “Your heart has never been icy,” he answers, and kisses me. He fingers the wings at my cheek. “It was just waiting on me.

I whispered, "Do you have a rubber?" He laughed, hushed, a laughing whisper, as though his parents were in the next room, and reached one arm past my head to a nightstand there. "A rubber chicken." He shook the dancing chicken in the air. "Will that do?" I laughed back, ran a finger along the bumps of the fake chicken skin. "Ribbed and beaked for her pleasure, even. Want me to leave you two alone?" He threw the chicken on the floor and bit my neck and I giggled and he said, "Never," and he was everywhere then. The couch was a sinking place and I disappeared into the orgy of costumes, the smell of nervous strangers, makeup and smoke, my naked body buried in the perfume of human need. I took the rubber chicken home. Plucky was my mascot, the souvenir of our date. Later, much later, there was the conception of our child. And now the miscarriage, unexpected, though I should've expected it because, why not? -- family slid through my fingers the same as the old silicone banana-peel trick. After the D&C, after the suctioning away of our tiny fetus, I drew the black heart on Plucky's rubber breast in the place where a chicken might have a heart, over the ridges of implied feathers. Indelible ink. Now she'd been nabbed by a kid too young to know what love means, what a chicken might mean. Too young to know that a rubber chicken can carry all of love in one indelible ink heart.

Robin turned her iPad so that Strike could see it. He moved his chair in: Robin felt his knee bump hers.

Black veins were filling the garden, spreading like escaped ink. Darkness, darkness everywhere. It was night, without any moons or stars.

Men are generally predisposed to think they're being flirted with.

I have forged me in sevenfold heats A shield from foes and lovers, And no one knows the heart that beats Beneath the shield that covers.

That's the problem with communal buildings. They're only as secure as the least security-conscious person living there.

I couldn’t talk about it, about them—not yet. So I breathed “Later” and hooked my feet around his legs, drawing him closer. I placed my hands on his chest, feeling the heart beating beneath. This—I needed this right now. It wouldn’t wash away what I’d done, but … I needed him near, needed to smell and taste him, remind myself that he was real—this was real. “Later,” he echoed, and leaned down to kiss me. It was soft, tentative—nothing like the wild, hard kisses we’d shared in the hall of throne room. He brushed his lips against mine again. I didn’t want apologies, didn’t want sympathy or coddling. I gripped the front of his tunic, tugging him closer as I opened my mouth to him. He let out a low growl, and the sound of it sent a wildfire blazing through me, pooling and burning in my core. I let it burn through that hole in my chest, my soul. Let it raze through the wave of black that was starting to press around me, let it consume the phantom blood I could still feel on my hands. I gave myself to that fire, to him, as his hands roved across me, unbuttoning as he went. I pulled back, breaking the kiss to look into his face. His eyes were bright—hungry—but his hands had stopped their exploring and rested firmly on my hips. With a predator’s stillness, he waited and watched as I traced the contours of his face, as I kissed every place I touched. His ragged breathing was the only sound—and his hands soon began roaming across my back and sides, caressing and teasing and baring me to him. When my traveling fingers reached his mouth, he bit down on one, sucking it into his mouth. It didn’t hurt, but the bite was hard enough for me to meet his eyes again. To realize that he was done waiting—and so was I. He eased me onto the bed, murmuring my name against my neck, the shell of my ear, the tips of my fingers. I urged him—faster, harder. His mouth explored the curve of my breast, the inside of my thigh. A kiss for each day we’d spent apart, a kiss for every wound and terror, a kiss for the ink etched into my flesh, and for all the days we would be together after this. Days, perhaps, that I no longer deserved. But I gave myself again to that fire, threw myself into it, into him, and let myself burn.

He ran his hand over his chest and stopped above his heart where a black tattoo of an ornate skeleton key was inked on his skin.She had its other half-a lock in the shape of a heart with a keyhole in the center-tattooed on her lower stomach beside her right hip bone. Laying on top of her, he'd slide down to kiss her breasts and their two tattoos would come together. Lock and key.

Even if Heather had barely known her, as seemed to be the case, her frank enjoyment of her fancy lunch and her persistent eyeing-up of Strike seemed both inappropriate and distasteful to Robin.

O Death, old captain, it is time! let us lift anchor. This land tires us, O Death. Let us be under way! If the sky and the sea are black as ink, Our hearts, those you know, have rays of light! Pour us your poison so that it comfort us! We wish, this fire burns our brain, so much, To plunge to the bottom of the gulf, Hell or Heaven, what does it matter?— To the bottom of the Unknown, to find Something New!

Feeling guilty about not achieving stuff is the result of internalised capitalism, apparently.’ ‘Seriously?’ ‘Oh yeah. You never been to a communist country? Everyone lies on sofas all day while trained poodles bring them cake.

He stood looking down at me with a white towel wrapped around his waist. I always imagined what he might look like after seven years, but even my wildest dreams couldn’t have conjured up what I was actually met with. His messy black hair had now been replaced by longish sexy waves that curled around his ears. He was wearing glasses. He looked even sexier in glasses. Even from here, I could see the piercing gray of his eyes through them. His inked body was bigger, even more built than before. He lifted a cigarette to his mouth and even amidst the shock of seeing him, disappointment set in that he was smoking again. Elec blew out the smoke as his eyes stayed fixed on mine. He wasn’t smiling. He just looked at me intently. His powerful stare alone had put all of my senses on high alert, throwing my body out of whack. My head was pounding, my eyes were teary, my ears were beating, my mouth was watering, my nipples were hard, my hands were trembling, my knees were shaking and my heart…I couldn’t describe what was going on inside my chest. Before I could process any of this, a woman with blonde hair came up from behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist.

in a prosperous country, in peacetime – notwithstanding those heavy blows of fate to which nobody was immune, and those strokes of unearned luck of which Inigo, the inheritor of wealth, had clearly benefited – character was the most powerful determinant of life’s course. ‘Did

She’s not big on achievements either: she says so on her tumblr page. Feeling guilty about not achieving stuff is the result of internalised capitalism, apparently.’ ‘Seriously?’ ‘Oh yeah. You never been to a communist country? Everyone lies on sofas all day while trained poodles bring them cake.

He knew Kandinsky by heart: every trickle of red, slash of black ink, and hemorrhage of gold. Each dissonant note in its allegro, the harmony in its adagio, and its deep blue intermezzo, formed a symphony he had memorized in his body. He couldn’t say if Fragment 2 symbolized the Deluge, the Last Judgment, or the Resurrection. But it had become his religion, offering both redemption and pain..

But a niqab was different. It was not a "choice" in the manner of the consumer economy. A visual obliteration of the self, a plain black niqab was a refusal to engage in everyday modes of self-expression. The woman who wore it chose to wear it because it connected her to something bigger than the self. It could be God. It could be a Muslim identity. But it wasn't a simple case of a teenage fashion choice, that was certain.

I ask people of the world and children of light to start reflecting the stories of their souls to vibrate wisdom around the earth. Pick up a paintbrush or microphone. Press the inks of your pens to paper or tap words onto your screens, and start sharing what you know and have learned with the masses. Turn your personal painting into a piece of the earth's puzzle so that our unified assemblage of thoughts, experiences and lessons reveal common truths that cannot be denied. Imagine the changes that could happen if everyone suddenly stopped acting like someone else, became true to themselves, and celebrated the beauty of their uniqueness? Only after people have willingly removed their masks and costumes, and have begun pouring light from their hearts to reveal their vulnerability, dreams and pains, will we be able to see that beneath the surface we are all the same. After all, how can the world collectively fight for Truth, if soldiers in its army are void of truth? We must first all be true by putting truth in our words and actions. And to do so, everyone must learn to think and react with their conscience. Imagine what Truth could do to neutralize the clutches of evil once this black and white world suddenly became embraced by a strong rainbow of loud powerful voices. We could put color back into every home, every school, every industry, every nation, and every garden on earth where flowers have been crushed by corruption.

The Woman Poet // Die Dichterin You hold me now completely in your hands. My heart beats like a frightened little bird's Against your palm. Take heed! You do not think A person lives within the page you thumb. To you this book is paper, cloth, and ink, Some binding thread and glue, and thus is dumb, And cannot touch you (though the gaze be great That seeks you from the printed marks inside), And is an object with an object's fate. And yet it has been veiled like a bride, Adorned with gems, made ready to be loved, Who asks you bashfully to change your mind, To wake yourself, and feel, and to be moved. But still she trembles, whispering to the wind: "This shall not be." And smiles as if she knew. Yet she must hope. A woman always tries, Her very life is but a single "You . . ." With her black flowers and her painted eyes, With silver chains and silks of spangled blue. She knew more beauty when a child and free, But now forgets the better words she knew. A man is so much cleverer than we, Conversing with himself of truth and lie, Of death and spring and iron-work and time. But I say "you" and always "you and I." This book is but a girl's dress in rhyme, Which can be rich and red, or poor and pale, Which may be wrinkled, but with gentle hands, And only may be torn by loving nails. So then, to tell my story, here I stand. The dress's tint, though bleached in bitter lye, Has not all washed away. It still is real. I call then with a thin, ethereal cry. You hear me speak. But do you hear me feel?

With those words, the busy night seemed to slow again around Cormoran Strike, and the constant growl of traffic seemed suddenly muted. This time he wasn’t staring down into Robin’s face, full of alcohol and desire: the seismic change had happened inside him because he felt something break and he knew, at last, that there was no putting it back together. It wasn’t that he saw the truth of Charlotte in that instant, because he’d come to believe that there was no single, static truth about any human being, but he understood, once and for all, that something he’d taken to be true wasn’t.

But this here, the valley of sweet Virginia, this is the blissful shore. There is no more to reach for. But, humming, he knows. He knows what he believes. He believes in the strength of muscle, the pleasures of the body, the goodness of the heart. He believes in goodness, and this is a new thing, a gift to him from the river and the land and the blue light now almost black, the ink of the sky pocked with stars. This is what the valley and its waters whisper into his ear, in this evening into night. He believes at this moment, and he will always believe it, that people are good, and that he is good among them.

I close my eyes and all I can think of is red. So I get a tube of watercolour, cadmium red dark, and I get a big mop of a brush, and I fill a jar with water, and I begin to cover the paper with red. It glistens. The paper is limp with moisture, and it darkens as it dries. I watch it drying. It smells of gum arabic. In the centre of the paper, very small, in black ink, I draw a heart, not a silly Valentine but an anatomically-correct heart, tiny, doll-like, and then veins, delicate road-map of veins, that reach all the way to the edges of the paper, that hold the small heart enmeshed like a fly in a spiderweb. See, there's his heartbeat.

VII" Oh you can make fun of the splendors of moonlight, But what would the human heart be if it wanted Only the dark, wanted nothing on earth But the sea’s ink or the rock’s black shade? On a summer night to launch yourself into the silver Emptiness of air and look over the pale fields At rest under the sullen stare of the moon, And to linger in the depths of your vision and wonder How in this whiteness what you love is past Grief, and how in the long valley of your looking Hope grows, and there, under the distant, Barely perceptible fire of all the stars, To feel yourself wake into change, as if your change Were immense and figured into the heavens’ longing. And yet all you want is to rise out of the shade Of yourself into the cooling blaze of a summer night When the moon shines and the earth itself Is covered and silent in the stoniness of its sleep.

She found another intriguing object, and she held it up to inspect it. A button. Her brow creased as she stared at the front of the button, which was engraved with a pattern of a windmill. The back of it contained a tiny lock of black hair behind a thin plate of glass, held in place with a copper rim. Swift blanched and reached for it, but Daisy snatched it back, her fingers closing around the button. Daisy's pulse began to race. "I've seen this before," she said. "It was a part of a set. My mother had a waistcoat made for Father with five buttons. One was engraved with a windmill, another with a tree, another with a bridge... she took a lock of hair from each of her children and put it inside a button. I remember the way she took a little snip from my hair at the back where it wouldn't show." Still not looking at her, Swift reached for the discarded contents of his pocket and methodically replaced them. As the silence drew out, Daisy waited in vain for an explanation. Finally she reached out and took hold of his sleeve. His arm stilled, and he stared at her fingers on his coat fabric. "How did you get it?" she whispered. Swift waited so long that she thought he might answer. Finally he spoke with a quiet surliness that wrenched her heart. "Your father wore the waistcoat to the company offices. It was much admired. But later that day he was in a temper and in the process of throwing an ink bottle he spilled some on himself. The waistcoat was ruined. Rather than face your mother with the news he gave the garment to me, buttons and all, and told me to dispose of it." "But you kept one button." Her lungs expanded until her chest felt tight on the inside and her heartbeat was frantic. "The windmill. Which was mine. Have you... have you carried a lock of my hair all these years?

I know if you are going to be for me or against me at first glance. I can read you just like an open book. I know that all book covers are misleading. It is a must to read between the lines of the individual characters, and that is when it is acknowledged with me what to think. I can figure out what anyone’s interpretations are, and if I want to be a part of their story or not. Just because one is well cultured, and observes the world that is before them does not make them strange. Each one of us has our unique way of expression- like me. Besides, sometimes, an expression can conflict, yet not meaning to; just move on, do not fear rejection. ‘Do not let the fear of the black ink spilling all over your drawing stop you from creating a masterpiece.’ The laughter is seen in my conscience, yet it plays out silently in my mind. My entire secret admirer base is left to admire, they have to close the door from the heart, and they are shut down if they desire, Because of the control of the tower, she holds the master keys. The tower and her clans can turn their backs at any time or face me, yet, there are cowards and fearless at the same time.

Female sensibility is layers, words, membranes, cotton, cloth, rope, repetition, bodies, wet, opening, closing repetition, lists, lifestories, grids, destroying grids, houses, intimacy, doorways, breasts, vaginas, flow, strong, building, putting together many disparaging elements, repetition, red, ink, black, earth feel colors, the sun, the moon, roots skins, walls, yellow, flowers, streams, puzzles, questions, stuffing, sewing, fluffing, satin, hearts, tearing, tearing, tearing, tying, decorating, baking, feeding, holding, listening, seeing thru the layers, oil, varnish, shellac, jell, paste, glue, seeds, thread, more, not less, repetition, women critics, women, writers, women artists, either nourishing us or eating us up alive, tokenism, curators, universities, tokenism, fear of other women to acknowledge female sensibility, hostile boy artists, accepting men artists, separating the men from the boys, dividing women, piece of pie-ism, money, art, sex, beasts, layers, symphonies, multi-roled, multi-part, stories, narrative, paint/flesh, serious, overwhelming, soft, hard, women working, working women, hanging, dangling, breaking, being fruity, angry, naïve, born again and trying to describe hot white flesh ties.

He said bleed on the page my son. So my heart spilled with ink and that is when I realized my soul is as black as these words.

Elizabeth comes up behind Talis. If Talis is unGoth, then Elizabeth is Ballerina Goth. She likes hearts and skulls and black pen-ink tattoos, pink tulle, and Hello Kitty. When the woman who invented Hello Kitty was asked why Hello Kitty was so popular, she said, “Because she has no mouth.” Elizabeth’s mouth is small. Her lips are chapped.

Do try it on,” Cassandra urged. Despite Kathleen’s refusal, the girls insisted on draping it over her shoulders, just to see how it looked. “How beautiful,” Helen said, beaming. It was the most luxurious fabric she had ever felt, the fleece soft and cushiony. Kathleen ran her hand across the rich hues, and sighed. “I suppose I can’t ruin it with aniline dye,” she muttered. “But I’m going to tell him that I did.” “You’re going to lie?” Cassandra asked, her eyes wide. “That’s not setting a very good example for us.” “He must be discouraged from sending unsuitable gifts,” Kathleen said. “It’s not his fault if he doesn’t know any better,” Pandora pointed out. “He knows the rules,” Kathleen said darkly. “And he enjoys breaking them.” My Lord, It was very kind of you to send the lovely gift which is very useful now that the weather has turned. I am pleased to relate that the cashmere absorbed an application of black dye quite evenly so that it is now appropriate for mourning. Thank you for your thoughtfulness. Lady Trenear “You dyed it?” Devon asked aloud, setting the note on his desk with mixture of amusement and irritation. Reaching for a silver penholder, he inserted a fresh nib and pulled a sheet of writing paper from a nearby stack. That morning he had already written a half-dozen missives to lawyers, his banker, and contractors, and had hired an outside agent to analyze the estate’s finances. He grimaced at the sight of his ink-stained fingers. The lemon-and-salt paste his valet had given him wouldn’t entirely remove the smudges. He was tired of writing, and even more so of numbers, and Kathleen’s letter was a welcome distraction. The challenge could not go unanswered.

My Lord, It was very kind of you to send the lovely gift which is very useful now that the weather has turned. I am pleased to relate that the cashmere absorbed an application of black dye quite evenly so that it is now appropriate for mourning. Thank you for your thoughtfulness. Lady Trenear “You dyed it?” Devon asked aloud, setting the note on his desk with mixture of amusement and irritation. Reaching for a silver penholder, he inserted a fresh nib and pulled a sheet of writing paper from a nearby stack. That morning he had already written a half-dozen missives to lawyers, his banker, and contractors, and had hired an outside agent to analyze the estate’s finances. He grimaced at the sight of his ink-stained fingers. The lemon-and-salt paste his valet had given him wouldn’t entirely remove the smudges. He was tired of writing, and even more so of numbers, and Kathleen’s letter was a welcome distraction. The challenge could not go unanswered. Staring down at the letter with a faint smile, Deon pondered the best way to annoy her. Dipping the pen nib into the inkwell, he wrote, Madam, I am delighted to learn that you find the shawl useful in these cooler days of autumn. On that subject, I am writing to inform you of my recent decision to donate all the black curtains that currently shroud the windows at Eversby Priory to a London charitable organization. Although you will regrettably no longer have use of the cloth, it will be made into winter coats for the poor, which I am sure you will agree is a far nobler purpose. I am confident in your ability to find other ways of making the atmosphere at Eversby Priory appropriately grim and cheerless. If I do not receive the curtains promptly, I will take it to mean that you are eager for my assistance, in which case I will be delighted to oblige you by coming to Hampshire at once. Trenear Kathleen’s reply was delivered a week later, along with massive crates containing the black curtains.

The poetry of a fool The poetry of a fool think I am a fool, look again, and comprehend, I understand I am not deficient, I chose to be different, because of people eye burden, I feel like a ghost, never be loved, what is the odd, of being love,none repulsion, my heart use, black ink to keep writing the poetry of a fool.

There are plenty of boys clustered around the wall, laughing, shoving each other playfully, yelling, competing for the attention of the girls. But somehow I know that the one who’s staring at me is the boy leaning against the post holding up the canopy, his shoulders square to it, his head ducked over the cigarette he’s holding, a tiny red point flaring in the shadow as he pulls on the filter. I shake my head and say firmly to myself, Smoking’s disgusting. I’m still looking, though. He’s tall and slim, I can tell that much. And his hair, dropping over his forehead, is jet-black, as if he were a hero in a manga book, drawn with pen and ink, two or three thick glossy strands separating into perfect dark curves. I snap my head back from the lurker in the shadows to the actual boy still holding my hand, only to see that Leonardo is looking over my shoulder in the same direction. “Luca!” he exclaims, dropping my hand to wave at someone. “Finalmente!” I am determined not to turn. Just in case it’s the same boy. I don’t want to look too interested, or too eager. Besides, he might be really ugly. Or spotty. Or have some silly chinstrap shaved onto his face-- “Eccolo!” Leonardo’s saying happily, and it would be silly of me, by now, not to turn to face the person who’s strolled over and is leaning against the side of the table. I look up at him, and my heart stops for a moment. “Luca!” Andrea says, echoing Leonardo. “Finalmente!” “This is Luca, our friend,” Leonardo says happily as I think: Luca. Finally. “Ciao,” Luca says, nodding at us, his long legs stretched out, crossed at the ankles. He’s wearing a dark blue shirt tucked into black jeans, and silver rings on a couple of his long fingers, the cigarette held loosely between them. His inky hair tumbles over his forehead, and I see, with a shock like a knife to the chest, that his eyes, heavily fringed with thick black lashes, are the midnight blue of sapphires or deep seawater. I can’t speak.

His own habits of self-discipline, and his preference for cleanliness and order over squalor and chaos, had been forged largely in reaction to his mother’s lifestyle. Strike had spent too many hours of his youth enduring the tedium of the perennially stoned to find either pleasure or excitement in the haze of drink, drugs and rock music that had been Leda’s natural habitat.

Strike had no idea what the need for spoons referred to and assumed it was a piece of whimsy, possibly from some book or film he didn’t know.

Light shall reveal all I writ upon the… “Wall,” Jameson whispered, like he’d lifted the word directly from my thoughts. He was breathing hard—hard enough to make me think that his heart was pounding even faster than mine. “Which wall?” I asked, stepping up beside him. Slowly, Jameson turned, three hundred and sixty degrees. He didn’t answer my question, so I threw out another one. “Invisible ink?” “Now you’re thinking like a Hawthorne.” Jameson closed his eyes. I could practically feel him vibrating with energy. My entire body was doing the same. “Light shall reveal all.” Jameson’s eyelids flew open, and he turned again, until we were facing each other. “Heiress, we’re going to need a black light.

Papa had no inner life. He was hollow, hollow… profit, acquisition and ticking little social-democratic boxes… his death grew naturally out of his life. Anomic suicide: Durkheim describes it well. Everyone’s death is a fulfilment, really.

We lack, yet cannot fix upon the lack: Not this, nor that; yet somewhat, certainly. We see the things we do not yearn to see Around us: and what see we glancing back? Christina Rossetti Later Life: A Double Sonnet of Sonnets

Sweet is the swamp with its secrets, Until we meet a snake… Emily Dickinson XIX: A Snake

One of the children hanging about Pointed at the whole dreadful heap and smiled… There is something terrible about a child. Charlotte Mew In Nunhead Cemetery

The older Strike got, the more he’d come to believe that in a prosperous country, in peacetime – notwithstanding those heavy blows of fate to which nobody was immune, and those strokes of unearned luck of which Inigo, the inheritor of wealth, had clearly benefited – character was the most powerful determinant of life’s course.

We never know how high we are Till we are called to rise… Emily Dickinson Aspiration

The heart continues increasing in weight, and also in length, breadth and thickness, up to an advanced period of life: this increase is more marked in men than in women. Henry Gray FRS Gray’s Anatomy

They are black heart’s blood on white pure lips; Oscillation of lines formed of your images; Emotion pinned in place by the words you use: Shattered into paper, glass on wood – and blood. Blood ink in the pen of a heart that cannot speak, Bound to another by these words I begged from you. Now held like shallow treasure in my hands. Hide this knot of indecision, in my eyes, my lips.

Reaching the brow of a stunted hill, Amelia paused in bewilderment at the sight of a towering contraption made of metal. It appeared to be a chute propped up on legs, tilted at a steep angle. Her attention was caught by a minor commotion farther afield … two men emerging from behind a small wooden shelter … they were shouting and waving their arms at her. Amelia instantly realized she had stumbled into danger, even before she saw the smoldering trail of sparks move, snakelike, along the ground toward the metal chute. A fuse? Although she didn’t know much about explosive devices, she was aware that once a fuse had been lit, nothing could be done to stop it. Dropping to the sun-warmed grass, Amelia covered her head with her arms, having every expectation of being blown to bits. A few heartbeats passed, and she let out a startled cry as she felt a large, heavy body fall on hers … no, not fall, pounce. He covered her completely, his knees digging into the ground on either side of her as he made a shelter of his body. At the same moment, a deafening explosion pierced the air, and there was a violent whoosh over their heads, and a shock went through the ground beneath them. Too stunned to move, Amelia tried to gather her wits. Her ears were filled with a high-pitched buzz. Her companion remained motionless over her, breathing heavily in her hair. The air was sharp with smoke, but even so, Amelia was aware of a pleasant masculine scent, skin-salt and soap and an intimate spice she couldn’t quite identify. The noise in her ears faded. Raising up on her elbows, feeling the solid wall of his chest against her back, she saw shirtsleeves rolled up over forearms cabled with muscle … and there was something else … Her eyes widened at the sight of a small, stylized design inked on his arm. A tattoo of a black winged horse with eyes the color of brimstone. It was an Irish design, of a nightmare horse called a pooka: a malevolent mythical creature that spoke in a human voice and carried people away at midnight. Her heart stopped as she saw the heavy rounded band of a thumb ring. Wriggling beneath him, Amelia tried to turn over. The strong hand curved around her shoulder, helping her. His voice was low and familiar. “Are you hurt? I’m sorry. You were in the way of—” He stopped as Amelia rolled to her back. The front of her hair had come loose, pulled free of a strategically anchored pin. The lock fanned over her face, obscuring her vision. Before she could reach up to push it away, he did it for her, and the brush of his fingertips sent ripples of liquid fire along intimate pathways of her body. “You,” he said softly. Cam Rohan.

I had the dream again. I was leaning in the back corner of the elevator in my building looking down at the bundle of keys in my hand. Below my hand were the blurred outlines of my black leather lace-up boots and my frayed black jeans. There was ink all over my legs from the screen-printers in my shop. There was ink on the skin beneath the rips at my knee and my thigh where the rough edge of my work table had worn through... The detail was vivid, but there was an ethereal sparkle to everything around the edges. The periphery washed out of focus as if I was looking through a narrow lens... Then the elevator stopped and the door opened. A woman climbed on board. Her face was concealed behind large sunglasses. The realism of the dream became unsteady and I lost grip. The images became fleeting close-ups, stills, and sensations. She was looking at me and my heart began to race... A part of me worried that I was drunk and about to make an embarrassing pass at some poor woman from my building. But when I reached for her, she reached for me too... She pulled my hand down and then the elevator began to plummet. I realized I didn’t have much time. I was surrounded by her scent and warmth... I was so overwhelmed with the sensuality of everything that I lost myself in her... Then I watched her eyes fade into the blackness of my apartment as I woke up.

Superstar” by Broods “Letters From The Sky” by Civil Twilight “’Till I Collapse” by Eminem “Jet Black Heart” by 5 Seconds of Summer “Phenomenal” by Eminem “i hate u, i love u” by gnash, Olivia O’Brien “Never Forget You” by Zara Larsson, MNEK “Clarity” by Andy Lange, Andrew Garcia “Evergreen” by Broods “Hate Me” by Blue October

All the endless unconnected desires clumsily bumped with my fear, exhausted to want anything on this long night, I was weary in the valley of the blue foggy sky. I had been endlessly grinding the ink down on the pages of my destiny trying to rewrite my fate. I took the pages out on every rainy night, allowing them to drench in the downpour of blessings, the black of the ink bled out like long tears of swan but wasn't able to erase the traces of my life. With each defeat, I licked my wounds and sank further into the downward spiral of life. Everything was blinded by the storm, my path engulfed in the rageful wind, and I was lost on a nameless journey.

The tattoos that adorn his body--how clearly Bridie sees them now--are, in fact, moving. She is put in mind of Monsieur Desvigne's Mimoscope. A device of cunning construction (a wonder among wonders at the Great Exhibition), pictures looped between spools, illuminated by a spark. Bridie, transfixed, saw animals, insects, and machinery--static images--flickering to life, to bounce and flutter, slither and winch. Bridie watches this man with the same fascination as, in one continuous motion, an inked anchor drops the length of his biceps. High on his abdomen an empty-eyed skull, a grinning memento mori, chatters its jaw. A mermaid sits on his shoulder holding a looking glass, combing her blue-black hair. On finding herself observed the mermaid takes fright and swims off under the man's armpit with a deft beat of her tail. On his left pectoral an ornate heart breaks and re-forms over and over again. He is a circus to the eye.

the pair that was having the most conspicuously good time was not, in fact, a couple.

What inn is this Where for the night Peculiar traveller comes?

That’s part of the fun, taking a sip of a poison that, one day, could very well kill you. Then again, we all die eventually. I’d rather go down engulfed in black flame, my head filled with the dizzying venom of true love, and my body sated and stroked by five glorious men with inked bodies and dark hearts that beat only for me.

nudity as you are.’ ‘It’s not a

Fine,” I said. “You have a deal.” Pain ripped through my hand, worse than the fresh burns. I hissed a curse and leapt away from the wall. When I looked down, a black-and-blue mark adorned my left palm. The overlapping symbols resembled the ones marked into Ilyzath’s walls, arranged in a diamond shape, and it seemed to shimmer slightly, as if shards of silver were buried within the ink. “What is—?” I looked up, and a doorway now stood before me. You may leave, Ilyzath said. No one will stop you.

By slow degrees it broke on her slow sense… That she too in that Eden of delight Was out of place, and, like the silly kid, Still did most mischief where she meant most love. A thought enough to make a woman mad. Elizabeth Barrett Browning Aurora Leigh

The thing he'd been trying for years not to look at, and not to name, had stepped out of the dark corner where he'd attempted to keep it, and Strike knew there was no longer any way of denying its existence.

When Heather pulled her chair in, one of the bright overhead lights illuminated her breasts so that they looked like twin moons; the waiter who’d arrived to hand out menus stared for a few seconds as though dazed.

Those who live by the mob must be prepared to die by the mob.

We subscribe to the Viking ideals of strength, solidarity and brotherhood. We live by the laws and maxims laid down in the Hávamál. We believe that feminism and the legalisation of homosexuality have disastrously undermined both the traditional family and wider society. We believe that multiculturalism has failed.

Katya had given Mr Blay to understand that he could turn up at any hour of the day or night and he took full and regular advantage of the offer.

So Ledwell doesn’t like our game because ‘the game’s really more of a metaphor’. We literally based it on your own rules, u pretentious cow.

Edie was a friend of mine and Mariam’s,’ said Preston Pierce in a low growl. ‘Her murder isn’t exciting fucking goss to us. Why don’t you stop pretending you wanna learn drawing and go sniff around in the cemetery? Might still be a bit of Edie’s blood on the grass. You could frame it. Sell it on eBay.

We had a row about it, actually. She claimed Drek had nothing to do with Jewish people, that he was a kind of chaotic demon and she’d been inspired by a plague doctor’s mask, but I mean, we all need to examine our unconscious biases, right?

young Icelandic woman had tweeted at a member of the Brotherhood, pleading with him not to appropriate a symbol that had nothing whatsoever to do with white supremacy. His response had been to call her a n*****-loving cunt.

Strike had come to know well: a preoccupation with immigrants overbreeding, white men being marginalised, the policing of thought and speech, and the narcissism, greed and vapidity of women.

Anomie has to be someone there, with the quote on the window and the stolen drawing and everything. But you never wanted to believe me, that that place was bad news, because of her.

When Ed found out I was seein’ Kea again, everyfing turned to shit between us. We couldn’ talk wivvout tellin’ each other ’ow much of a fuckin’ bastard we fort the ovver one was…

If you need a reason to keep going right now, you should hold onto the fact that you’re going to be the star witness at this fucker’s trial, and if you need a reason to live beyond that, you ought to remember that you were the one Edie called when she believed she was facing death, because she still trusted you with the thing that mattered to her more than anything else.

E’s always wanted to live the way ’e does – do art, live in a commune, polyamorous…’e an’ Mariam ’ave got an open relationship. Nils sleeps with Freyja, anuvver woman at Norf Grove, sometimes. ’Er partner seems OK with it…

The drugged, drunk, long-haired and beautiful Josh Blay would have been precisely the kind of young man Leda found most attractive; another reason for Strike’s usual antipathy for the type.

But I can guarantee you this: he’ll get more revenue than us over my dead body. If you knew what I know, you’d agree it’s bloody disgusting that Blay’s trying to use Edie as a bargaining tool.

If Jonny Rokeby turned up here, yes, the press would be fighting tooth and nail to get a shot of him. For fuck’s sake. You’re not that famous. Get the fuck over yourself.

Fuck, you’d be fantastic. What a fucking ad that would be: I could put you in a tiara. No, but it’s funny you should say that, because… Look, it was already in the pipeline, but I’m worried how you’re going to take it… It’s Charlotte Campbell.

I’m fine, for God’s sake,’ said Robin, now slightly exasperated. ‘If I keeled over every time someone got stabbed in London I’d spend half my life unconscious.

If he were honest with himself, he’d rather still be at the office, speculating about the stabbings with Robin over a Chinese takeaway than heading towards Madeline’s. Best, then, not