Kill Your Emotions Quotes

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Drinking is an emotional thing. It joggles you out of the standardism of everyday life, out of everything being the same. It yanks you out of your body and your mind and throws you against the wall. I have the feeling that drinking is a form of suicide where you're allowed to return to life and begin all over the next day. It's like killing yourself, and then you're reborn. I guess I've lived about ten or fifteen thousand lives now.
Charles Bukowski
You've got to hide your love away. You can't just hide your feelings. You have to destroy them. Kill them before they kill you.
Elizabeth Eulberg (The Lonely Hearts Club (The Lonely Hearts Club, #1))
It was the Hell you’d feared in childhood, come to devour the children. It was treading over the corpses of your friends so that you might be killed yourself. It was the congealed evil of a century.
Alice Winn (In Memoriam)
Some catastrophic moments invite clarity, explode in split moments: You smash your hand through a windowpane and then there is blood and shattered glass stained with red all over the place; you fall out a window and break some bones and scrape some skin. Stitches and casts and bandages and antiseptic solve and salve the wounds. But depression is not a sudden disaster. It is more like a cancer: At first its tumorous mass is not even noticeable to the careful eye, and then one day -- wham! -- there is a huge, deadly seven-pound lump lodged in your brain or your stomach or your shoulder blade, and this thing that your own body has produced is actually trying to kill you. Depression is a lot like that: Slowly, over the years, the data will accumulate in your heart and mind, a computer program for total negativity will build into your system, making life feel more and more unbearable. But you won't even notice it coming on, thinking that it is somehow normal, something about getting older, about turning eight or turning twelve or turning fifteen, and then one day you realize that your entire life is just awful, not worth living, a horror and a black blot on the white terrain of human existence. One morning you wake up afraid you are going to live. In my case, I was not frightened in the least bit at the thought that I might live because I was certain, quite certain, that I was already dead. The actual dying part, the withering away of my physical body, was a mere formality. My spirit, my emotional being, whatever you want to call all that inner turmoil that has nothing to do with physical existence, were long gone, dead and gone, and only a mass of the most fucking god-awful excruciating pain like a pair of boiling hot tongs clamped tight around my spine and pressing on all my nerves was left in its wake. That's the thing I want to make clear about depression: It's got nothing at all to do with life. In the course of life, there is sadness and pain and sorrow, all of which, in their right time and season, are normal -- unpleasant, but normal. Depression is an altogether different zone because it involves a complete absence: absence of affect, absence of feeling, absence of response, absence of interest. The pain you feel in the course of a major clinical depression is an attempt on nature's part (nature, after all, abhors a vacuum) to fill up the empty space. But for all intents and purposes, the deeply depressed are just the walking, waking dead. And the scariest part is that if you ask anyone in the throes of depression how he got there, to pin down the turning point, he'll never know. There is a classic moment in The Sun Also Rises when someone asks Mike Campbell how he went bankrupt, and all he can say in response is, 'Gradually and then suddenly.' When someone asks how I love my mind, that is all I can say too
Elizabeth Wurtzel (Prozac Nation)
Identification with the rag called the national flag is an emotional and sentimental factor and for that factor you are willing to kill another - and that is called, the love of your country, love of the neighbor . . .? One can see that where sentiment and emotion come in, love is not.
J. Krishnamurti
Well, you've finally got a license to kill. It's about time. " I turned and met the amused eyes of Christian Ozera, a onetime annoyance who'd become a good friend. So good, in fact, that in my joyous zeal, I reached out and hugged him--something he clearly didn't expect. I was surprising everyone today. "Whoa, whoa, " he said backing up, flushing. "It figures. You're the only girl who'd get all emotional about the thought of killing. I don't even want to think about what goes on when you and Ivashkov are alone.
Richelle Mead (Spirit Bound (Vampire Academy, #5))
You start dying slowly if you do not travel, if you do not read, If you do not listen to the sounds of life, If you do not appreciate yourself. You start dying slowly When you kill your self-esteem; When you do not let others help you. You start dying slowly If you become a slave of your habits, Walking everyday on the same paths… If you do not change your routine, If you do not wear different colours Or you do not speak to those you don’t know. You start dying slowly If you avoid to feel passion And their turbulent emotions; Those which make your eyes glisten And your heart beat fast. You start dying slowly If you do not change your life when you are not satisfied with your job, or with your love, If you do not risk what is safe for the uncertain, If you do not go after a dream, If you do not allow yourself, At least once in your lifetime, To run away from sensible advice.
Martha Medeiros
…I have never understood the concept of infatuation. It has always been my understanding that being ‘infatuated’ with someone means you think you are in love, but you’re actually not; infatuation is (supposedly) just a foolish, fleeting feeling. But if being ‘in love’ is an abstract notion, and it’s not tangible, and there is no way to physically prove it to anyone else… well, how is being in love any different than having an infatuation? They’re both human constructions. If you think you’re in love with someone and you feel like you’re in love with someone, then you obviously are; thinking and feeling is the sum total of what love is. Why do we feel an obligation to certify emotions with some kind of retrospective, self-imposed authenticity?
Chuck Klosterman (Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story)
Jealousy is such a potent threatening emotion. It doesn’t just eat you alive—it eats you from within. It’s venom that spreads in your bloodstream, polluting you, killing you. It corrodes you until there’s nothing left.
Mia Asher (Arsen: A Broken Love Story)
The person who hurt you--who raped you or killed your family--is also here. If you are still angry at that person, if you haven't been able to forgive, you are chained to him. Everyone could feel the emotional truth of that: When someone offends you and you haven't let go, every time you see him, you grow breathless or your heart skips a beat. If the trauma was really severe, you dream of revenge. Above you, is the Mountain of Peace and Prosperity where we all want to go. But when you try to climb that hill, the person you haven't forgiven weighs you down. It's a personal choice whether or not to let go. No one can tell you how long to mourn a death or rage over a rape. But you can't move forward until you break that chain.
Leymah Gbowee (Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer, and Sex Changed a Nation at War)
An (emotional) vampire goes in for the kill by stirring up your emotions. Pushing your buttons throws you off center, which renders you easier to drain. Of all the emotional types, empaths are often the most devestated.
Judith Orloff
You missed the point completely! You're acting..." The word stuck in my throat. He didn't hesitate to say it. "Jealous?" When I nodded, he continued. "Now you're missing the point. It isn't jealousy. It's fear." "Fear?" Not the emotion I expected. "Yes. Fear. I'm afraid you'll be hurt or killed. I'm afraid I won't be able to protect you. I'm afraid I'll lose you to another man.
Maria V. Snyder (Storm Glass (Glass, #1))
You are a man of extreme passion, a hungry man not quite sure where his appetite lies, a deeply frustrated man striving to project his individuality against a backdrop of rigid conformity. You exist in a half-world suspended between two superstructures, one self-expression and the other self-destruction. You are strong, but there is a flaw in your strength, and unless you learn to control it the flaw will prove stronger than your strength and defeat you. The flaw? Explosive emotional reaction out of all proportion to the occasion. Why? Why this unreasonable anger at the sight of others who are happy or content, this growing contempt for people and the desire to hurt them? All right, you think they're fools, you despise them because their morals, their happiness is the source of your frustration and resentment. But these are dreadful enemies you carry within yourself--in time destructive as bullets. Mercifully, a bullet kills its victim. This other bacteria, permitted to age, does not kill a man but leaves in its wake the hulk of a creature torn and twisted; there is still fire within his being but it is kept alive by casting upon it faggots of scorn and hate. He may successfully accumulate, but he does not accumulate success, for he is his own enemy and is kept from truly enjoying his achievements.
Truman Capote (In Cold Blood)
think you’re emotionally compromised right now.” That was … that was so completely not true. Stupid humans. Sure, I’d had an emotional breakdown with the whole evisceration thing, but I was fine now, despite the drop in performance reliability. Absolutely fine. And I had to kill the rest of the Targets in the extremely painful ways I’d been visualizing.
Martha Wells (Network Effect (The Murderbot Diaries, #5))
The Untruth of Fragility: What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker. The Untruth of Emotional Reasoning: Always trust your feelings. The Untruth of Us Versus Them: Life is a battle between good people and evil people.
Greg Lukianoff (The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure)
The day you love anyone but yourself is the day I’ll take your marital advice, Ian,” Bones bit back in an icy tone. “Then today is that day,” Ian replied sharply, “for I love you, you wretched, pig-headed guttersnipe. I also love that arrogant, overprivileged dandy smirking at us”—a wave indicted Spade, whose aforementioned smirk vanished—“as well as the emotionally fractured, malfunctioning psychic who sired me. And you, Crispin, love a bloodthirsty hellion who’s probably killed more people in her thirty years than I have in over two centuries of living, so again I say, don’t bother trying to convince her that she isn’t who she is.
Jeaniene Frost (Up from the Grave (Night Huntress, #7))
A belligerent samurai, an old Japanese tale goes, once challenged a Zen master to explain the concept of heaven and hell. The monk replied with scorn, "You're nothing but a lout - I can't waste my time with the likes of you!" His very honor attacked, the samurai flew into a rage and, pulling his sword from its scabbard, yelled "I could kill you for your impertinence." "That," the monk calmly replied, "is hell." Startled at seeing the truth in what the master pointed out about the fury that had him in its grip, the samurai calmed down, sheathed his sword, and bowed, thanking the monk for the insight. "And that,"said the monk "is heaven." The sudden awakening of the samurai to his own agitated state illustrates the crucial difference between being caught up in a feeling and becoming aware that you are being swept away by it. Socrates's injunction "Know thyself" speaks to the keystone of emotional intelligence: awareness of one's own feelings as they occur.
Daniel Goleman (Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ)
Like I said, magic comes from life, and especially from emotions. They're a source of the same intangible energy that everyone can feel when an autumn moon rises and fills you with a sudden sense of bone-deep excitement, or when the first warm breeze of spring rushes past your face, full of the scents of life, and drowns you in a sudden flood of unreasoning joy. The passion of mighty music that brings tears to your eyes, and the raw, bubbling, infectious laughter of small children at play, the bellowing power of a stadium full of football fans shouting "Hey!" in time to that damned song—they're all charged with magic. My magic comes from the same places. And maybe from darker places than that. Fear is an emotion, too. So is rage. So is lust. And madness. I'm not a particularly good person. I'm no Charles Manson or anything, but I'm not going to be up for canonization either. Though in the past, I think maybe I was a better person than I am today. In the past I hadn't seen so many people hurt and killed and terrorized by the same kind of power that damn well should have been making the world a nicer place, or at the least staying the hell away from it. I hadn't made so many mistakes back then, so many shortsighted decisions, some of which had cost people their lives. I had been sure of myself. I had been whole.
Jim Butcher (Dead Beat (The Dresden Files, #7))
Closeness can lead to emotions other than love. It's the ones who have been too intimate with you, lived in too close quarters, seen too much of your pain or envy or, perhaps more than anything, your shame, who, at the crucial moment, can be too easy to cut out, to exile, to expel, to kill off.
Daniel Mendelsohn (The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million)
Ham rubbed his chin. “I don’t know, Breeze. It’s an interesting question. By influencing her emotions, did you take away her ability to choose? If, for instance, she were to kill or steal while under your control, would the crime be hers or yours?
Brandon Sanderson (Mistborn: The Final Empire (Mistborn, #1))
You’re not afraid of dying, Henry. You’re just opposed to killing. That isn’t cowardice.
Alice Winn (In Memoriam)
There wasn't any anger involved (I think). I mean, what was I supposed to be angry with? What I was feeling was a fundamental numbness. The numbness your heart automatically activates to lessen the awful pain when you want somebody desperately and they reject you. A kind of emotional morphine.
Haruki Murakami (Killing Commendatore)
You have two emotions—apathy and rage—and nothing in between.” Ellie wanted him to stop, but she could hear the truth in his words. She closed her eyes for his killing blow. “It’s like you’re not even a person. You’re an…organism.” “That’s not true.” Ellie forced her eyes open. “I am a person. I’m just not good at it.
S.G. Redling (Flowertown)
You are my heart,” he said unexpectedly. The amount of care in his voice settled over my chest like a warm cloak. “I do not easily confess emotions in the way you do, but know I feel the same. The words I once spoke to you hold true: I will kill any man and turn the whole world to ash for you, my warrior. I fear neither battle nor death, but I fear the day you are not by my side. Never question where my heart lies, because it is forever yours. In this life and the next.
Jaclyn Osborn (Axios: A Spartan Tale (Axios Series))
Now, your Honor, I have spoken about the war. I believed in it. I don’t know whether I was crazy or not. Sometimes I think perhaps I was. I approved of it; I joined in the general cry of madness and despair. I urged men to fight. I was safe because I was too old to go. I was like the rest. What did they do? Right or wrong, justifiable or unjustifiable -- which I need not discuss today -- it changed the world. For four long years the civilized world was engaged in killing men. Christian against Christian, barbarian uniting with Christians to kill Christians; anything to kill. It was taught in every school, aye in the Sunday schools. The little children played at war. The toddling children on the street. Do you suppose this world has ever been the same since? How long, your Honor, will it take for the world to get back the humane emotions that were slowly growing before the war? How long will it take the calloused hearts of men before the scars of hatred and cruelty shall be removed? We read of killing one hundred thousand men in a day. We read about it and we rejoiced in it -- if it was the other fellows who were killed. We were fed on flesh and drank blood. Even down to the prattling babe. I need not tell you how many upright, honorable young boys have come into this court charged with murder, some saved and some sent to their death, boys who fought in this war and learned to place a cheap value on human life. You know it and I know it. These boys were brought up in it. The tales of death were in their homes, their playgrounds, their schools; they were in the newspapers that they read; it was a part of the common frenzy -- what was a life? It was nothing. It was the least sacred thing in existence and these boys were trained to this cruelty.
Clarence Darrow (Attorney for the Damned: Clarence Darrow in the Courtroom)
You have already captured my heart, body, and soul, Ava. I have no clue when it started, but at some point, my possessiveness and obsessiveness with you turned into this inferno of emotions where I was prepared to lose you if it meant protecting you. That’s when I realized I was in love with everything about you, whether it’s your obsession with pink, candy floss, or cheesy books and films. The lack of you has stripped my world of color and made me realize you’re my sole light in the darkness. It’s why I killed for you and would do it again in a heartbeat. I’d kill everyone if it meant I’d get to keep you. Perhaps that’s not the healthiest form of love, but it’s all I have. The heart you slowly awakened is entirely yours to do with as you please.
Rina Kent (God of War (Legacy of Gods, #6))
What's all this about sin, eh?' 'That,' I said, very sick. 'Using Ludwig van like that. He did no harm to anyone. Beethoven just wrote music.' And then I was really sick and they had to bring a bowl that was in the shape of like a kidney. 'Music,' said Dr. Brodsky, like musing. 'So you're keen on music. I know nothing about it myself. It's a useful emotional heightener, that's all I know. Well, well. What do you think about that, eh, Branom?' 'It can't be helped,' said Dr. Branom. 'Each man kills the thing he loves...
Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
Then the person I least expected to take my side strolled into the kitchen, wearing nothing but a bed sheet wrapped around his hips. "Why do you bother, Crispin? You married a fighter, so stop trying to convince her that the sidelines suit her better." "The day you love anyone but yourself is the day I'll take your marital advice, Ian," Bones bit back in an icy tone. "Then today is that day," Ian replied sharply, "for I love you, you wretched, pig-headed guttersnipe. I also love that arrogant, overprivileged dandy smirking at us"—a wave indicted Spade, whose aforementioned smirk vanished—"as well as the emotionally fractured, malfunctioning psychic who sired me. And you, Crispin, love a bloodthirsty hellion who's probably killed more people in her thirty years than I have in over two centuries of living, so again I say, don't bother trying to convince her that she isn't who she is.
Jeaniene Frost (Up from the Grave (Night Huntress, #7))
We all have regrets, Urian. Nothing that lives is immune from that nasty emotion. (Acheron) So what? You want me to go kiss and make up? (Urian) Hardly. But I want you to set aside your own hurt and anger to see clearly for a minute. This isn’t about you and your father anymore than it’s about me and Nick hating each other over something we can’t change. This is about saving the lives of a million innocent people. People like Phoebe who don’t deserve to be hunted and killed. If I can stand at the side of my enemies for the greater good, so can you. (Acheron)
Sherrilyn Kenyon (One Silent Night (Dark-Hunter, #15))
Because I have nothing else to live for. You told me of your brother’s betrayal. Imagine your own father calling out his hounds to kill your infant daughter and husband. Imagine what it was like to watch them die and then be taken and punished for something you didn’t do. To be stripped of your dignity and emotions because your father was embarrassed by a stupid, insignificant dream he’d had and he blamed everyone who walks in the dreams for it. You feel your pain, Aiden. I feel mine. (Leta)
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Upon the Midnight Clear (Dark-Hunter, #12; Dream-Hunter, #2))
I once had a dream, or a vision, and I imagined that dream to be of importance to other people, so I wrote the manuscript and made the film. But it is not until the moment when my dream meets with your emotions and your minds that my shadows come to life. It is your recognition that brings them to life. It is your indifference that kills them. I hope that you will understand; that you when you leave the cinema will take with you an experience or a sudden thought—or maybe a question. The efforts of my friends and myself have then not been in vain…
Ingmar Bergman
I killed your friends.” – Abigail “And I’m not happy about that. But your head wasn’t screwed on right. It’s easy to let the enemies in and listen to them sometimes, especially when they’re pretending to be your best friends who only want the best for you. At least that’s what they claim. They’re insidious bastards, telling you what you want to hear and using your emotions to manipulate you think doing their bidding.” – Sundown
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Retribution (Dark-Hunter, #19))
Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.
Thibaut Meurisse (Master Your Emotions: A Practical Guide to Overcome Negativity and Better Manage Your Feelings (Mastery Series Book 1))
They program you to have no emotion – like if somebody sitting next to you gets killed you just have to carry on doing your job and shut up,‘ Steve Annabell, a British veteran of the Falkan War … ‘When you leave the service, when you come back from a situation like that, there’s no button they can press to switch your emotions back on. So you walk around like a zombie. They don’t deprogram you. If you become a problem they just sweep you under the carpet.
Chris Hedges
What I was feeling was a fundamental numbness. The numbness your heart automatically activates to lessen the awful pain when you want somebody desperately and they reject you. A kind of emotional morphine.
Haruki Murakami (Killing Commendatore)
I think that certain emotions can compromise you when you’re at war. If you stop to mourn the dead, or even to breathe in what you’ve done, you’ll be dead as well. Your brain goes to a primitive region, one inaccessible to feelings beyond pure anger and pure fear. Your brain is reduced to two impulses: fight or flight. Kill or be killed. No room for more delicate feelings. No room for a soul. All you’re thinking about is how to maneuver your body in space so it will survive.
Willa Strayhorn (The Way We Bared Our Souls)
Worse, their relationship with their work is often emotionally violent. You want to make something? You are told to open up a vein and bleed. Time to edit your work? You are instructed to kill your darlings.
Elizabeth Gilbert (Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear)
One day, it will all make sense, it will all be revealed. Until then, we learn to live and accept our shadows, our Déjà vu's, our dreams, our intuition that takes us to places that our minds never conceived, our bodies only perceived and our souls gladly remembered. Conversations and experiences amuse me, for I am experimenting with my feelings in ways that I can only do down here. Language makes up for a very interesting, yet bizarre way of putting thoughts into spoken form for the sound to move on in other peoples' ears, but every language, every sound, every word carries with it a long history, a deep culture and the souls of the many people who have previously used it throughout the centuries. Our hearts give us direction, hope and the passion to keep moving forward.. But what we do when they're frozen, broken, torn apart by an unhealthy way of living is what gives us new strength to push forward or kills us completely. Deep inside, we feed the entities that empower the fight between our internal demons and angels. We feed them with our thoughts, our emotions, our self-talk and the external talk that we lower our shields to at times. Whether good or bad, this brings about a change internally and at times there isn't much we can do to protect ourselves. At times, we need to let things be and go along with it. Of course, we're all worried, stressed, confused and lacking direction at times and we're in the same way at peace, stable and walking in the right direction once we get things sorted. Give it some time, give it some light, give it some love. You're not very far away.
Virgil Kalyana Mittata Iordache
If a man has tortured and killed your father, your mother, your sweetheart, in short, one of those beings who leave an eternal emptiness and a perpetually bleeding wound when they are torn from your heart, do you think society has given you sufficient reparation because the blade of the guillotine has passed between the murderer's trapezius and his occipital bone, because the who made you undergo long years of mental and emotional suffering has undergone a few seconds of physical pain?
Alexandre Dumas (The Count of Monte Cristo)
Love is kisses and touches and all the little things that make your body flood with emotions such as need, want, protectiveness, jealousy, hurt, and anger. It can take your breath away, or smother you at times, and make you feel like you can't go on. Your heart may race a thousand miles per minute, then slow down, and then race again, just with a simple look. Love is deadly and can kill you from the inside out if you let it. It makes you do stupid, ridiculous things, and say senseless sappy words, or listen to silly love songs, jazz, or dance in the streets, or laugh, or smile. Love is a weapon, or a drug, and can drive a person mad. I know what love is...
Lyra Parish (Weak for Him (Weakness, #1))
I’m not crying,” she said irritably. “I’m thinking. Sometimes I get emotional when I’m thinking—” “When you’re thinking? You mean all the time, then?” He pushed his hands through his hair and swore under his breath. “The devil really is trying to kill me.
Tahereh Mafi (These Infinite Threads (This Woven Kingdom, #2))
what good will it do to tell her her mother´s alive if her mother gets herself killed in the next hour?really?call me provincial, but to me it seems cruel to say, guess what?your mom´s alive. oh wait. she WAS alive. now she is dead again´cause our worthless asses couldn´t save her. sorry,hon. hope you´re ok with me jerking your emotions around and stomping on them. and while i´m at it, you got a newborn puppy i can kick too?
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Born of Shadows (The League, #4))
Is it - I'm not certain - possible to love someone if your first interest is the use you can make of him? Doesn't the gainful motive, and the guilt accruing to it, halt the progression of other emotions? It can be argued that even the most decently coupled people were initially magnetized by the mutual-exploitation principle - sex, shelter, appeased ego; but still that is trivial, human: the difference between that and truly using another person is the difference between edible mushrooms and the kind that kill: Unspoiled Monsters.
Truman Capote (Answered Prayers)
Don’t kill yourself when your scorching sun intensifies; the very hot sun is a very good recipe for a heavy rainfall.
Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
What about you, Mr. Glover. The smartest man in the room is usually the quietest. What do you think about all this?” “I think you killed your wife.
William Landay (All That Is Mine I Carry With Me)
your body doesn’t know the difference between physical pain and emotional pain. That’s why grief, if left unchecked, can eventually kill you.
Mary Calmes (A Matter of Time, Vol. 1 (A Matter of Time #1-2))
Have you lost your mind?” I yelled. “Did you have to humiliate him in front of his comrades? Isn’t it enough that he already hates you with the fire of a thousand suns?” Her expression was grim. Unfeeling. She was in no hurry to answer, but when she did, her tone held no emotion. “Malich laughed the night he told me that he had killed Greta. He reveled in her death. He said it was easy. Her death cost him nothing. It will now. Every day that I breathe, I will make it cost him something. Every time I see that same smug grin on his face, I will make him pay for it.” She dumped her winnings on the bed and looked back at me. “So the short answer to your question, Kaden, is no. It’s not enough. It will never be enough.
Mary E. Pearson (The Heart of Betrayal (The Remnant Chronicles, #2))
What? It’s ridiculous. Control your emotions. Can you imagine if criminals went around saying they fell into hatred or jealousy and that’s why they killed four people or robbed the bank? We act like love is this uncontrollable thing. But when it comes to anger and all of that ugly stuff, we’re expected to control it. We’re supposed to handle those emotions without hurting anyone. But throw out the word ‘love’ and everyone thinks all of the rules should go right out the window and who can help it if someone gets hurt? It’s absurd and it’s degrading, honestly, that we expect people to control themselves except for when it comes to wanting to sleep with someone.
Audrey Bell (Love Show)
Two huge questions keep dangling in front of you, like proverbial carrots in front of the donkey. One: Do you want love? And two: Are you able to give it? Either you're terrified of the emotion or you're a sociopath.
Ellen Hopkins (People Kill People)
Xaden's head snaps in my direction. 'Violence?' I take a step and then another, holding my frame upright with muscle memory I didn't have last year, and begin to cross. Xaden swings his legs up and then fucking jumps to his feet. 'Turn around right now!' he shouts. 'Come with me,' I call over the wind, bracing myself as gust whips my skirt against my legs. 'Should have gone with the pants,' I mutter and keep walking. He's already coming my way, his strides just as long and confident as if he was on solid ground, eating up the distance between us as I move forward slowly until we meet. 'What the fuck are you doing out here?' he asks, locking his hands on my waist. He's in riding leathers, not a dress uniform, and he's never looked better. What am I doing out here? I'm risking everything to reach him. And if he rejects me... No. There's no room for fear on the parapet. 'I could ask you the same thing.' His eyes widen. 'You could have fallen and died!' 'I could say the same thing.' I smile, but it's shaky. The look in his eyes is wild, like he's been driven past the point where he can contain himself in the neat, apathetic façade he usually wears in public. It doesn't scare me. I like him better when he's real with me, anyway. 'And did you stop to think that if you fall and die, then I can die?' He leans in and my pulse jumps. 'Again,' I say softly, resting my hands on his firm chest, right above his heartbeat, 'I could say the same thing.' Even if Xaden's death wouldn't kill Sgaeyl, I'm not sure I could survive it.' Shadows rise, darker than the night that surrounds us. 'You're forgetting that I wield shadows, Violence. I'm just as safe out here as I am in the courtyard. Are you going to wield lightning to break your fall?' Fine. That's a good point. 'I... perhaps did not think that part through as thoroughly as you,' I admit. I wanted to be close to him, so I got close, parapet be damned.' 'You're seriously going to be the death of me.' His fingers flex at my waist. 'Go back.' It's not a rejection, not with the way he's looking at me. We've been sparring emotionally for the past month, hell, even longer than that, and one of us has to expose our jugular. I finally trust him enough to know he won't go for the kill. 'Only if you do. I want to be whereever you are.' And I mean it. Everyone else- everything else in the world can fall away and I won't care as long as I'm with him.
Rebecca Yarros (Fourth Wing (The Empyrean, #1))
Fear is not an emotion, it is a disease. It spreads from the leader to his followers and vice–versa. Nothing has killed more men in war than fear. What should a warrior fear? Death? But death is what everyone achieves ultimately. Is it wounds that you fear? What is more important? A pint of your blood or the nectar of victory? Think. Thinking will clear such doubts.
Anand Neelakantan (Asura: Tale Of The Vanquished)
Of course I need you. I have no experience in anything like this. None of us do. Sometimes humans can’t help but let emotion bleed through into the feed. She was furious and frightened, not at me, at the people who would do this, kill like this, slaughter a whole survey team and leave the SecUnits to take the blame. She was struggling with her anger, though nothing showed on her face except calm concern. Through the feed I felt her steel herself. You’re the only one here who won’t panic. The longer this situation goes on, the others . . . We have to stay together, use our heads. That was absolutely true. And I could help, just by being the SecUnit. I was the one who was supposed to keep everybody safe. I panic all the time, you just can’t see it, I told her. I added the text signifier for “joke.” She didn’t answer, but she looked down, smiling to herself.
Martha Wells (All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries, #1))
When I got to school the next morning I had stepped only one foot in the quad when he spotted me and nearly tackled me to the ground. “Jamie!” he hollered, rushing across the lawn without caring the least bit about the scene he was creating. The next thing I knew, my feet were off the ground and I was squished so tightly in Ryan’s arms that I could barely breathe. “Okay, Ryan?” I coughed in a hushed tone. “This is exactly the kind of thing that can get you killed.” “I don’t care, I’m not letting go. Don’t ever disappear like that again!” he scolded, but his voice was more relieved than angry. “It’s been days! You had your mother worried sick!” “My mother?” I questioned sarcastically. Ryan laughed as he finally set me back on my feet. “Okay, fine, me too.” He still wouldn’t let go of me, though. He was gripping my arms while he looked at me with those eyes, and that smile… You know, being all Ryan-ish. And then, when I got lost in the moment, he totally took advantage of how whipped I was and he kissed me. The jerk. He just pulled my face to his right then and there, in the middle of a crowded quad full of students, where I could have accidentally unleashed an electrical storm at any moment. And okay, maybe I liked it, and maybe I even needed it, but still! You can’t just go kissing Jamie Baker whenever you want, even if you are Ryan Miller! “Ryan!” I yelled as soon as I was able to pull away from him—which admittedly took a minute. “I’m sorry.” Ryan laughed with this big dopey grin on his face and then kissed me some more. I had to push him away from me. “Don’t be sorry, just stop!” I realized I was screaming at him when I felt a hundred different pairs of eyes on me. I tried to ignore the audience that Ryan seemed oblivious to and dropped the audio a few decibels. “I wasn’t kidding when I said this has to stop. Look, I will be your friend. I want to be your friend. But that’s it. We can’t be anything more. It’ll never work.” Ryan watched me for a minute and then whispered, “Don’t do that.” I was shocked to hear the sudden emotion in his voice. “Don’t give up.” It was hopeless. “Fine!” I snapped. “I’ll be your stupid girlfriend!” Big shocker, me giving Ryan his way, I know. But let’s face it—it’s just what I do best. I had to at least act a little tough, though. “But!” I said in the harshest voice I was capable of. “You can’t ever touch me unless I say. No more tackling me, and especially no more surprise kissing.” He actually laughed at my request. “No promises.” Stupid, cocky boyfriend. “You’re crazy. You know that, right?” Ryan got this big cheesy smile on his face and said, “Crazy about you.” “Ugh,” I groaned. “Would you be serious for a minute? Why do you insist on putting your life in danger?” “Because I like you.” His stupid grin was infectious. I wanted to be angry, but how could I with him looking at me like that? “I’m not worth it, you know,” I said stubbornly. “I have issues. I’m unstable.” “You’re cute when you’re unstable,” Ryan said, “and I like your issues.” The stupid boy was straight-up giddy now. But he was so cute that I cracked a smile despite myself. “You really are crazy,” I muttered.
Kelly Oram (Being Jamie Baker (Jamie Baker, #1))
Don’t pack out ______________ To some people, you make life bright When you decide to dim your light Their lives will be full of darkness Do shine your light in kindness To some people, you bring out a joy With their emotions, never ever toy With your smiles, grease them with oil And make them glad when their lives boil To other people, you are the warmth That kills coldness and brings strength Don’t do it; don’t pack out Else, they will have blackout You’re on earth to do two things here Wake up and do them now; this year First, dare to grow and become better Second, help others to also become greater Never in any of the four seasons Should you neglect your gifts for any reasons The world needs you to make it a better place Don’t pack out; run your race
Israelmore Ayivor (Become a Better You)
I want you exactly how you are, emotions and all. I want the woman I fell for. It kills me every time I have to keep my hands off you, every night I lie awake next to you, both blessed and damned with the memory of how hot, how wet, how fucking perfect you feel when I'm losing myself in you. When I do sleep, I dream of the sounds you make right before you come and they way the blue in your eyes outshines the amber right after, all sated and hazy. I wake up starving for you—only you—even on the mornings you're halfway across the kingdom. This isn't me denying you or manipulating you. This is me fighting for you.
Rebecca Yarros (Iron Flame (The Empyrean, #2))
It is not the dead rather the ones who lives through war have seen the dreadful end of the war, you might have been victorious, unwounded but deep within you, you carry the mark of the war, you carry the memories of war, the time you have spend with your comrades, the times when you had to dug in to foxholes to avoid shelling, the times when you hate to see your comrade down on the ground, feeling of despair, atrocities of the war, missing families, home. They live through hell and often the most wounded, they live with the guilt, despair, of being in the war, they may be happy but deep down they are a different person. Not everyone is a hero. You live with the moments, time when you were unsuccessful, when your actions would have helped your comrades, when your actions get your comrades killed, you live with regret, joyous in the victory can never help you forget the time you have spent. You are victorious for the people you have lost, the decisions you have made, the courage you have shown but being victorious in the war has a price to pay, irrevocable. You can't take a memory back from a person, even if you lose your memory your imagination haunts you as deep down your sub conscious mind you know who you are, who you were. Close you eyes and you can very well see your past, you cant change your past, time you have spent, you live through all and hence you are a hero not for the glorious war for the times you have faced. Decoration with medals is not going to give your life back. the more you know, more experiences doesn't make it easy rather make its worse. Arms and ammunition kills you once and free you from the misery but the experiences of war kills you everyday, makes you cherish the times everyday through the life. You may forgot that you cant walk anymore, you may forget you cant use your right hand, you may forgot the scars on your face but you can never forgot war. Life without war is never easy and only the ones how survived through it can understand. Soldiers are taught to fight but the actual combat starts after war which you are not even trained for. You rely on your weapon, leaders, comrades, god, luck in the war but here you rely on your self to beat the horrors,they have seen hell, heaven, they have felt the mixed emotions of hope, despair, courage, victory, defeat, scared.
Pushpa Rana (Just the Way I Feel)
I was scared—with that crystalline, childish fear of being caught and punished. That fear thrashed behind my rib cage like a bird in cupped hands, perhaps the last truly childlike instance of that emotion I’d ever feel. That fear is a kind of magic. As you get older, the texture of your fear changes. You’re no longer afraid of the things you had absolute faith in as a child: that you’d die in convulsions from inhaling the gas from a shattered lightbulb, that chewing apple pips brought on death by cyanide poisoning, or that a circus dwarf had actually bounced off a trampoline into the mouth of a hungry hippo. You stop believing in the things my uncle believed in. Even if your mind wants to go there, it has lost the nimbleness needed to make the leap. That magic gets kicked out of you, churched out, shamed out—or worse, you steal it from yourself. It gets embarrassed out of you by the kids who run the same stretch of streets and grown-ups who say it’s time to put away childish things. By degrees, you kill your own magic. Before long your fears become adult ones: crushing debts and responsibilities, sick parents and sick kids, the possibility of dying unremembered or unloved. Fears of not being the person you were so certain you’d grow up to be.
Craig Davidson (The Saturday Night Ghost Club)
Western culture has some common wisdom associated with these ideas. Don’t be materialistic. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. Sticks and stones. But I am asking you to take this one step further. When you are suffering from some ill or insult that has befallen you, ask yourself: Are you really in jeopardy here? Or is this so-called injury merely threatening the social reality of your self ? The answer will help you recategorize your pounding heartbeat, the knot in the pit of your stomach, and your sweaty brow as purely physical sensations, leaving your worry, anger, and dejection to dissolve like an antacid tablet in water.40
Lisa Feldman Barrett (How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain)
The strident emotional belief that children made you happy, even when all the data pointed to misery. The high-amplitude fear of sharks and dark-skinned snipers who would never kill you; indifference to all the toxins and pesticides that could. The mind was so rotten with misrepresentation that in some cases it literally had to be damaged before it could make a truly rational decision—and should some brain-lesioned mother abandon her baby in a burning house in order to save two strangers from the same fire, the rest of the world would be more likely to call her a monster than laud the rationality of her lifeboat ethics. Hell, rationality itself—the exalted Human ability to reason—hadn’t evolved in the pursuit of truth but simply to win arguments, to gain control: to bend others, by means logical or sophistic, to your will. Truth had never been a priority. If believing a lie kept the genes proliferating, the system would believe that lie with all its heart. Fossil feelings. Better off without them, once you’d outgrown the savanna and decided that Truth mattered after all. But Humanity wasn’t defined by arms and legs and upright posture. Humanity had evolved at the synapse as well as at the opposable thumb—and those misleading gut feelings were the very groundwork on which the whole damn clade had been built. Capuchins felt empathy. Chimps had an innate sense of fair play. You could look into the eyes of any cat or dog and see a connection there, a legacy of common subroutines and shared emotions.
Peter Watts (Firefall (Firefall #1-2))
I can’t give you a life because I take lives. Even if we escape these people at the camp and thrive without any money, I can’t escape the fact that my conscience died long ago. This feeling is within me now; I can always kill again. It’s too late for me to change. You’re a diamond, and I’m a stone; one is meant to decorate, the other to throw.
Navreet Sran (Diamonds and Stones: An Unlikely Story)
Magnus, his silver mask pushed back into his hair, intercepted the New York vampires before they could fully depart. Alec heard Magnus pitch his voice low. Alec felt guilty for listening in, but he couldn’t just turn off his Shadowhunter instincts. “How are you, Raphael?” asked Magnus. “Annoyed,” said Raphael. “As usual.” “I’m familiar with the emotion,” said Magnus. “I experience it whenever we speak. What I meant was, I know that you and Ragnor were often in contact.” There was a beat, in which Magnus studied Raphael with an expression of concern, and Raphael regarded Magnus with obvious scorn. “Oh, you’re asking if I am prostrate with grief over the warlock that the Shadowhunters killed?” Alec opened his mouth to point out the evil Shadowhunter Sebastian Morgenstern had killed the warlock Ragnor Fell in the recent war, as he had killed Alec’s own brother. Then he remembered Raphael sitting alone and texting a number saved as RF, and never getting any texts back. Ragnor Fell. Alec felt a sudden and unexpected pang of sympathy for Raphael, recognizing his loneliness. He was at a party surrounded by hundreds of people, and there he sat texting a dead man over and over, knowing he’d never get a message back. There must have been very few people in Raphael’s life he’d ever counted as friends. “I do not like it,” said Raphael, “when Shadowhunters murder my colleagues, but it’s not as if that hasn’t happened before. It happens all the time. It’s their hobby. Thank you for asking. Of course one wishes to break down on a heart-shaped sofa and weep into one’s lace handkerchief, but I am somehow managing to hold it together. After all, I still have a warlock contact.” Magnus inclined his head with a slight smile. “Tessa Gray,” said Raphael. “Very dignified lady. Very well-read. I think you know her?” Magnus made a face at him. “It’s not being a sass-monkey that I object to. That I like. It’s the joyless attitude. One of the chief pleasures of life is mocking others, so occasionally show some glee about doing it. Have some joie de vivre.” “I’m undead,” said Raphael. “What about joie de unvivre?” Raphael eyed him coldly. Magnus gestured his own question aside, his rings and trails of leftover magic leaving a sweep of sparks in the night air, and sighed. “Tessa,” Magnus said with a long exhale. “She is a harbinger of ill news and I will be annoyed with her for dumping this problem in my lap for weeks. At least.” “What problem? Are you in trouble?” asked Raphael. “Nothing I can’t handle,” said Magnus. “Pity,” said Raphael. “I was planning to point and laugh. Well, time to go. I’d say good luck with your dead-body bad-news thing, but . . . I don’t care.” “Take care of yourself, Raphael,” said Magnus. Raphael waved a dismissive hand over his shoulder. “I always do.
Cassandra Clare (The Red Scrolls of Magic (The Eldest Curses, #1))
Buying a home is always an impulse buy. It's an impossible thing for your brain to absorb fully: to warp your whole emotional and financial life around the shape of this absurd physical thing, this new collection of problems and regrets, ants and undiscovered mold, bad drainage, and cracked foundations that will be your burden until you sell it or it kills you. A thirty-year mortgage is hilarious when you are young and you don't even remember what day it is; it's a grim thing when you are older and see that this debt is a bright, un-ignorable line from the now of your life to its addled decline.
John Hodgman (Vacationland: True Stories from Painful Beaches)
I didn't have a choice." "Are you saying...What are you saying?" Is he...could he be talking about me? He runs a hand through his hair. I've never seen him this emotional before. He's always so controlled, so sure of himself. "I'm saying you're what I want, Emma. I'm saying I'm in love with you." He steps forward and lifts his hand to my cheek, blazing a line of fire with his fingertips as they trace down to my mouth. "How do you think it would make me feel to see you with Grom?" he whispers. "Like someone ripped my heart out and put it through Rachel's meat grinder, that's how. Probably worse. It would probably kill me. Emma, please don't cry." I throw my hands in the air. "Don't cry? Are you serious? Why did you come here, Galen? Did you think it would make me feel better to know that you do love me, but that it still won't work out? That I still have to mate with Grom for the greater good? Don't you tell me not to cry, Galen! I...c...c...can't h...h...help-" The waterworks soak me. Galen looks at me, hands by his side, helpless as a trapped crab. I'm bordering on hyperventilation, and pretty soon I'll start hiccupping. This is too much. His expression is so severe, it looks like he's in physical pain. "Emma," he breathes. "Emma, does this mean you feel the same way? Do you care for me at all?" I laugh, but it sounds sharper than I intended, because of a hiccup. "What does it matter how I feel, Galen? I think we pretty much covered why. No need to rehash things, right?" "It matters, Emma." He grabs my hand and pulls me to him again. "Tell me right now. Do you care for me?" "If you can't tell that I'm stupid in love with you, Galen, then you aren't a very good ambassador for the hum-" His mouth covers mine, cutting me off. This kiss isn't gentle like the first one. It's definitely not sweet. It's rough, demanding, searching. And disorienting. There's not a part of me that isn't melting against Galen, not a part that isn't combusting with his fevered touch. I accidentally moan into his lips. He takes it for his cue to lift me off my feet, to pull me up to his height for more leverage. I take his groan for my cue to kiss him harder. He ignores his cell phone ringing in his pocket. I ignore the rest of the universe. Even when headlights approach, I'm willing to overlook their intrusion and keep kissing. But, prince that he is, Galen is a little more refined than me at this moment. He gently pries his lips from mine and sets me down. His smile is both intoxicated and intoxicating. "We still need to talk." "Right," I say, but I'm shaking my head. He laughs. "I didn't come all the way to Atlantic City to make you cry." "I'm not crying." I lean into him again. He doesn't refuse my lips, but he doesn't do them justice either, planting a measly little kiss on them before stepping back.
Anna Banks (Of Poseidon (The Syrena Legacy, #1))
Jacob being sensitive is an endowment. Think about all you'd miss out on if you didn't feel things so deeply, or see things so clearly." "But feeling good things deeply means you feel bad things deeply, too." "Would you rather walk around oblivious to the meaning of things hidden under the surface and the opportunities to feel wonder and joy? Would you want to miss out on moments that take your breath away?
Jacqueline Simon Gunn (What He Didn't See (Close Enough to Kill))
The more perfect something is, the less it can be loved -- like a face, a body, voice, tone, color, or music itself. In playing a piece, don't strive for perfection: it will kill the piece in that it will prevent it from entering the emotions. That's the kind of advice you can't do anything with except perhaps later, when you don't even know you're doing it. It's part of the freeze of counterpoint.' 'I've never heard that expression,' she said. 'Stasis may be a better word -- the liberation of the space between two contradictions. Let me explain if I can. If two waves of equal but opposite amplitude meet in water, what do you get' 'Flat water.' 'In sound?' 'Silence.' 'Right. From agitation, peace, a perfection that you might have thought unobtainable from the clash of contradictory elements.' 'I think you've explained the magic of counterpoint very well.' 'Not really. It's inexplicable. I've noted it, that's all. Half of humanity's troubles arise from the inability to see that contradictory propositions can be valid simultaneously.
Mark Helprin (Paris in the Present Tense)
Thank you for raising our children and running our house and taking care of all the emotional labour, which enabled me to work without distraction. It’s time for something new now but here is 50 per cent of everything we built together.’ No. They lawyer up and try to shaft you, hiding their money offshore, pleading poverty, arguing that you never contributed in any way, protesting that the kids don’t need that much.
Bella Mackie (How to Kill Your Family)
HAZEL WASN’T PROUD OF CRYING. After the tunnel collapsed, she wept and screamed like a two-year-old throwing a tantrum. She couldn’t move the debris that separated her and Leo from the others. If the earth shifted any more, the entire complex might collapse on their heads. Still, she pounded her fists against the stones and yelled curses that would’ve earned her a mouth-washing with lye soap back at St. Agnes Academy. Leo stared at her, wide-eyed and speechless. She wasn’t being fair to him. The last time the two of them had been together, she’d zapped him into her past and shown him Sammy, his great-grandfather—Hazel’s first boyfriend. She’d burdened him with emotional baggage he didn’t need, and left him so dazed they had almost gotten killed by a giant shrimp monster. Now here they were, alone again, while their friends might be dying at the hands of a monster army, and she was throwing a fit. “Sorry.” She wiped her face. “Hey, you know…” Leo shrugged. “I’ve attacked a few rocks in my day.” She swallowed with difficulty. “Frank is…he’s—” “Listen,” Leo said. “Frank Zhang has moves. He’s probably gonna turn into a kangaroo and do some marsupial jujitsu on their ugly faces.” He helped her to her feet. Despite the panic simmering inside her, she knew Leo was right. Frank and the others weren’t helpless. They would find a way to survive. The best thing she and Leo could do was carry on. She studied Leo. His hair had grown out longer and shaggier, and his face was leaner, so he looked less like an imp and more like one of those willowy elves in the fairy tales. The biggest difference was his eyes. They constantly drifted, as if Leo was trying to spot something over the horizon. “Leo, I’m sorry,” she said. He raised an eyebrow. “Okay. For what?” “For…” She gestured around her helplessly. “Everything. For thinking you were Sammy, for leading you on. I mean, I didn’t mean to, but if I did—” “Hey.” He squeezed her hand, though Hazel sensed nothing romantic in the gesture. “Machines are designed to work.” “Uh, what?” “I figure the universe is basically like a machine. I don’t know who made it, if it was the Fates, or the gods, or capital-G God, or whatever. But it chugs along the way it’s supposed to most of the time. Sure, little pieces break and stuff goes haywire once in a while, but mostly…things happen for a reason. Like you and me meeting.” “Leo Valdez,” Hazel marveled, “you’re a philosopher.” “Nah,” he said. “I’m just a mechanic. But I figure my bisabuelo Sammy knew what was what. He let you go, Hazel. My job is to tell you that it’s okay. You and Frank—you’re good together. We’re all going to get through this. I hope you guys get a chance to be happy. Besides, Zhang couldn’t tie his shoes without your help.” “That’s mean,” Hazel chided, but she felt like something was untangling inside her—a knot of tension she’d been carrying for weeks. Leo really had changed. Hazel was starting to think she’d found a good friend. “What happened to you when you were on your own?” she asked. “Who did you meet?” Leo’s eye twitched. “Long story. I’ll tell you sometime, but I’m still waiting to see how it shakes out.” “The universe is a machine,” Hazel said, “so it’ll be fine.” “Hopefully.” “As long as it’s not one of your machines,” Hazel added. “Because your machines never do what they’re supposed to.” “Yeah, ha-ha.” Leo summoned fire into his hand. “Now, which way, Miss Underground?” Hazel scanned the path in front of them. About thirty feet down, the tunnel split into four smaller arteries, each one identical, but the one on the left radiated cold. “That way,” she decided. “It feels the most dangerous.” “I’m sold,” said Leo. They began their descent.
Rick Riordan (The House of Hades (Heroes of Olympus, #4))
A child used to see her poor father struggling to earn daily bread. She prayed, “O Goddess, please kill the demons living in my stomach that keep demanding food again & again.” This is the perspective that detaches your soul from your character. This is the prayer that directly reaches the gods. Can you stop identifying with your mind and instead see it as a box in which some demons are sitting and constantly craving for thoughts and emotions?
Shunya
This was not going the way I wanted it to. I felt a desperate need to escape before I said something that would screw up my plans. Ren was the dark side, the forbidden fruit, my personal Delilah-the ultimate temptation. The question was…could I resist? I gave his knee a friendly pat and played my trump card…”I’m leaving.” “You’re what?” “I’m going home to Oregon. Mr. Kadam thinks it will be safer for me anyway, with Lokesh out there looking to kill us and all. Besides, you need time to figure out…stuff.” “If you’re leaving, then I’m going with you!” I smiled at him wryly. “That kind of defeats the purpose of me leaving. Don’t you think?” He slicked back his hair, let out a deep breath, then took my hand and looked intently into my eyes. “Kells, when are you going to accept the fact that we belong together?” I felt sick, like I was kicking a faithful puppy who only wanted to be loved. I looked out at the pool. After a moment, he sat back scowling and said menacingly, “I won’t let you leave.” Inside, I desperately wanted to take his hand and beg him to forgive me, to love me, but I steeled myself, dropped my hands in my lap, then implored, “Ren, please. You have to let me go. I need…I’m afraid…look, I just can’t be here, near you, when you change your mind.” “It’s not going to happen.” “it might. There’s a good chance.” He growled angrily. “There’s no chance!” “Well, my heart can’t take that risk, and I don’t want to put you in what can only be an awkward position. I’m sorry, Ren. I really am. I do want to be your friend, but I understand if you don’t want that. Of course, I’ll return when you need me, if you need me, to help you find the other three gifts. I wouldn’t abandon you or Kishan in that way. I just can’t stay here with you feeling obligated to pity-date me because you need me. But I’d never abandon your cause. I’ll always be there for you both, no matter what.” He spat out, “Pity-date! You? Kelsey, you can’t be serious!” “I am. Very, very serious. I’ll ask Mr. Kadam to make arrangements to send me back in the next few days.” He didn’t say another word. He just sat back in his chair. I could tell he was fuming mad, but I felt that, after a week or two, when he started getting back out in the world, he would come to appreciate my gesture. I looked away from him. “I’m very tired now. I’d like to go to bed.” I got up and headed to my room. Before I closed the sliding door, I asked, “Can I make one last request?” He sat there tight-lipped, his arms folded over his chest, with a tense, angry face. I sighed. Even infuriated he was beautiful. He said nothing so I went on, “It would be a lot easier on me if I didn’t see you, I mean as a man. I’ll try to avoid most of the house. It is yours after all, so I’ll stay in my room. If you see Mr. Kadam, please tell him I’d like to speak with him.” He didn’t respond. “Well, good-bye, Ren. Take care of yourself.” I tore my eyes away from him, shut the door, and drew the curtains. Take care of yourself? That was a lame goodbye. Tears welled in my eyes and blurred my vision. I was proud that I’d gotten through it without showing emotion. But, now, I felt like a steamroller had come along and flattened me.
Colleen Houck (Tiger's Curse (The Tiger Saga, #1))
If a man had tortured and killed your father, your mother, your sweetheart, in short, one of those beings who leave an eternal emptiness and a perpetually bleeding wound when they are torn from your heart, do you think society has given you sufficient reparation because the blade of the guillotine has passed between the murderer's trapezius and his occipital bone, because the man who made you undergo long years of mental and emotional suffering has undergone a few seconds of physical pain?
Alexandre Dumas
You don’t know,” Anthony said, his voice low and nearly shaking with rage. “You don’t know what he has done.” “No more than what you have done, I’m sure,” Violet said slyly. “Precisely!” Anthony roared. “Good God, I know exactly what is going on in his brain right now, and it has nothing to do with poetry and roses.” Simon pictured laying Daphne down on a bed of rose petals. “Well, maybe roses,” he murmured. “I’m going to kill him,” Anthony announced. “These are tulips, anyway,” Violet said primly, “from Holland. And Anthony, you really must summon control of your emotions. This is most unseemly.” “He is not fit to lick Daphne’s boots.” Simon’s head filled with more erotic images, this time of himself licking her toes. He decided not to comment. Besides, he had already decided that he wasn’t going to allow his thoughts to wander in such directions. Daphne was Anthony’s sister, for God’s sake. He couldn’t seduce her. “I refuse to listen to another disparaging word about his grace,” Violet stated emphatically, “and that is the end of the subject.” “But—” “I don’t like your tone, Anthony Bridgerton!” Simon thought he heard Daphne choke on a chuckle, and he wondered what that was all about. “If it would please Your Motherhood,” Anthony said in excruciatingly even tones, “I would like a private word with his grace.” “This time I’m really going to get that vase,” Daphne announced, and dashed from the room. Violet crossed her arms, and said to Anthony, “I will not have you mistreat a guest in my home.” “I shan’t lay so much as a hand on him,” Anthony replied. “I give you my word.” Having never had a mother, Simon was finding this exchange fascinating. Bridgerton House was, after all, technically Anthony’s house, not his mother’s, and Simon was impressed that Anthony had refrained from pointing this out. “It’s quite all right, Lady Bridgerton,” he interjected. “I’m sure Anthony and I have much to discuss.” Anthony’s eyes narrowed. “Much.
Julia Quinn (The Duke and I (Bridgertons, #1))
I had no particular problem about getting divorced. For all intents and purposes we already were divorced. And I had no emotional hang up about signing and sealing the official documents. If that's what she wanted, fine. It was a legal formality, nothing more. But when it came to why, and how, things had turned out this way, the sequence of events was beyond me. I understood, of course, that over time, and as circumstances changed, a couple could grow closer, or move apart. Changes in a person's feelings aren't regulated by custom, logic, or the law. They're fluid, unstable, free to spread their wings and fly away. Like migratory birds have no concept of borders between countries. But these were all just generalizations, and I couldn't easily grasp the individual case here-that this woman, Yuzu, refused to love this man, me, and chose instead to be loved by someone else. It felt terribly absurd, a horribly ugly way to be treated. There wasn't any anger involved (I think). I mean, what was I supposed to be angry with? What I was feeling was a fundamental numbness. The numbness your heart automatically activates to lessen the awful pain when you want some-body desperately and they reject you. A kind of emotional morphine.
Haruki Murakami (Killing Commendatore)
One measure for whether or not you’re rested enough—besides falling asleep in board meetings—is to ask yourself this: How much do I care about the things I care about? When we lose concern for people, both the lost and the found, for the bride of Christ, for friendship, for truth and beauty and goodness; when we cease to laugh when our children laugh (and instead yell at them to quiet down) or weep when our spouses weep (and instead wish they didn’t get so emotional); when we hear news of trouble among our neighbors and our first thought is that we hope it isn’t going to involve us—when we stop caring about the things we care about—that’s a signal we’re too busy. We have let ourselves be consumed by the things that feed the ego but starve the soul. Busyness kills the heart.
Mark Buchanan (The Rest of God: Restoring Your Soul by Restoring Sabbath)
On behalf of those you killed, imprisoned, tortured, you are not welcome, Erdogan! No, Erdogan, you’re not welcome in Algeria. We are a country which has already paid its price of blood and tears to those who wanted to impose their caliphate on us, those who put their ideas before our bodies, those who took our children hostage and who attempted to kill our hopes for a better future. The notorious family that claims to act in the name of the God and religion—you’re a member of it—you fund it, you support it, you desire to become its international leader. Islamism is your livelihood Islamism, which is your livelihood, is our misfortune. We will not forget about it, and you are a reminder of it today. You offer your shadow and your wings to those who work to make our country kneel down before your “Sublime Door.” You embody and represent what we loathe. You hate freedom, the free spirit. But you love parades. You use religion for business. You dream of a caliphate and hope to return to our lands. But you do it behind the closed doors, by supporting Islamist parties, by offering gifts through your companies, by infiltrating the life of the community, by controlling the mosques. These are the old methods of your “Muslim Brothers” in this country, who used to show us God’s Heaven with one hand while digging our graves with the other. No, Mr. Erdogan, you are not a man of help; you do not fight for freedom or principles; you do not defend the right of peoples to self-determination. You know only how to subject the Kurds to the fires of death; you know only how to subject your opponents to your dictatorship. You cry with the victims in the Middle East, yet sign contracts with their executioners. You do not dream of a dignified future for us, but of a caliphate for yourself. We are aware of your institutionalized persecution, your list of Turks to track down, your sinister prisons filled with the innocent, your dictatorial justice palaces, your insolence and boastful nature. You do not dream of a humanity that shares common values and principles, but are interested only in the remaking of the Ottoman Empire and its bloodthirsty warlords. Islam, for you, is a footstool; God is a business sign; modernity is an enemy; Palestine is a showcase; and local Islamists are your stunned courtesans. Humanity will not remember you with good deeds Humanity will remember you for your machinations, your secret coups d’état, and your manhunts. History will remember you for your bombings, your vengeful wars, and your inability to engage in constructive dialogue with others. The UN vote for Al-Quds is only an instrument in your service. Let us laugh at this with the Palestinians. We know that the Palestinian issue is your political capital, as it is for many others. You know well how to make a political fortune by exploiting others’ emotions. In Algeria, we suffered, and still suffer, from those who pretend to be God and act as takers and givers of life. They applaud your coming, but not us. You are the idol of Algerian Islamists and Populists, those who are unable to imagine a political structure beyond a caliphate for Muslim-majority societies. We aspire to become a country of freedom and dignity. This is not your ambition, nor your virtue. You are an illusion You have made beautiful Turkey an open prison and a bazaar for your business and loved ones. I hope that this beautiful nation rises above your ambitions. I hope that justice will be restored and flourish there once again, at least for those who have been imprisoned, tortured, bombed, and killed. You are an illusion, Erdogan—you know it and we know it. You play on the history of our humiliation, on our emotions, on our beliefs, and introduce yourself as a savior. However, you are a gravedigger, both for your own country and for your neighbors. Turkey is a political miracle, but it owes you nothing. The best thing you can do
Kamel Daoud
I think it's important to explain that major depression is not even peripherally related to "sadness". Depression is the absence of emotion. I never cried during my darkest periods of depression. Crying would have been A HOLIDAY. It would have been FUCKING CHRISTMAS. A fight or a feeling of anger would have been AN EASTER EGG HUNT AT DISNEYLAND. I am vocal about my depression now because it was so fucking Satanically awful that I view it as one my life's primary missions to help other people understand and overcome it. Depression kills people because in the normal weather patterns of human emotion over a day or a week or a decade, actual unipolar major depressive disorder doesn't appear. It's like The Nothing in The NeverEnding Story. It eats your anger, your sadness, your happiness, your testicle and/or ovaries.
Rob Delaney (Mother. Wife. Sister. Human. Warrior. Falcon. Yardstick. Turban. Cabbage.)
Direct marketers, of course, realize that measurement is the key to success. Figure out what works, and do it more! Mass marketers have always resisted this temptation. When my old company approached the head of one of the largest magazine publishers in the world and pitched a technology that would allow advertisers to track who saw their ads and responded to them, he was aghast. He realized that this sort of data could kill his business. He knew that his clients didn’t want the data because then their jobs would get a lot more complex. Measurement means admitting what’s broken so you can fix it. Mass-media advertising, whether it’s on TV or in print, is all about emotion and craft, not about fixing mistakes. One reason the Internet ad boomlet faded so fast is that it forced advertisers to measure – and to admit what was going wrong.
Seth Godin (Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable)
Curran rested the back of his head on the edge of the hot tub and closed his eyes. I stared at the way his face looked, etched against the darkness of the wall. He really was a handsome bastard. Poised like this, he seemed very human. Nobody to impress. Nobody to command. Just him, in the hot water, tired, hurting, stealing a few precious moments of rest, and so irresistibly erotic. Well, that last one came out of nowhere. It was the beer. Had to be. Despite all his growling and threats, his arrogance, I liked being next to him. He made me feel safe. It was a bizarre emotion. I was never safe. I closed my eyes. That seemed like the only reasonable way out of the situation. If I couldn’t see him, I couldn’t drool over him. “So you didn’t want to see me hurt?” he said. His voice was deceptively smooth and soft, the deep, throaty, sly purr of a giant cat who wanted something. Admitting that I took his well-being into consideration might have been a fatal mistake. “I didn’t want you to have to kill Derek.” “And if he had gone loup?” “I would have taken care of it.” “How exactly were you planning on pushing Jim aside? He was the highest alpha. The duty was his.” “I pulled rank,” I told him. “I declared that since you had accepted the Order’s assistance, I outranked everybody.” He laughed. “And they believed you?” “Yep. I also glared menacingly for added effect. Unfortunately, I can’t make my eyes glow the way yours do.” “Like this?” he breathed in my ear. My eyes snapped open. He stood inches away, anchored on the tub floor, his arms leaning on the tub wall on each side of me. His eyes were molten gold, but it wasn’t the hard, lethal glow of an alpha stare. This gold was warm and enticing, touched with a hint of longing. “Don’t make me break this bottle over your head,” I whispered. “You won’t.” He grinned. “You don’t want to see me hurt.
Ilona Andrews (Magic Strikes (Kate Daniels, #3))
The day you love anyone but yourself is the day I’ll take your marital advice, Ian,” Bones bit back in an icy tone. “Then today is that day,” Ian replied sharply, “for I love you, you wretched, pig-headed guttersnipe. I also love that arrogant, overprivileged dandy smirking at us”—a wave indicted Spade, whose aforementioned smirk vanished—“as well as the emotionally fractured, malfunctioning psychic who sired me. And you, Crispin, love a bloodthirsty hellion who’s probably killed more people in her thirty years than I have in over two centuries of living, so again I say, don’t bother trying to convince her that she isn’t who she is.
Jeaniene Frost (Up From the Grave (Night Huntress, #7))
I have no aspiration here to reclaim mystery and paradox from whatever territory they might inhabit, for there is, indeed, often a killing in a kiss, a mercy in the slap that heats your face . . . There is, nevertheless, a particular poverty in those alloplasts who, addressing tragedy, seek to subdistinguish motives beyond those we have best, because nearest, at hand, and so it is with love and hate--emotions upon whose necks, whether wrung or wreathed, may be found the oldest fingerprints of man. A simple truth intrudes: the basic instincts of every man to every man are known. But who knows when or where or how? For the answers to such questions, summon Augurello, your personal jurisconsult and theological wiseacre, to teach you about primal reality and then to dispel those complexities and cabals you crouch behind in this sad, psychiatric century you call your own. It is the anti-labyrinths of the world that scare. Here is a story for you. Your chair.
Alexander Theroux (Darconville's Cat)
If you are going to start psychoanalyzing me, Legna, just stop it right now,” Noah warned her. “You have had my undivided love and attention practically since the day I was born, Noah. Has it never occurred to you that you are simply unwilling to share me with anyone else? You joke about it, but there are reasons why you are not interested in finding a companion of your own. Why should you? You have a perfectly kept home, a beautiful hostess to manage your social affairs, and she is pretty much emotionally maintenance free. I give you completely unconditional love, respect, and admiration. I keep you company when there are so many around, but none are really close enough to your heart to safely be a King’s confidant. There is only one thing I cannot do for you, and I already know you have your ways of obtaining that.” “Legna,” he protested, his face flushing. “That is not true.” “Which part?” she countered, raising a single brow. “I . . .” He hesitated, looking away from her penetrating gaze, realizing that she saw so much more than he had ever given her credit for. “Well, for one, the rafters of my ‘perfectly kept home’ are full of cobwebs,” he said sheepishly. Legna suddenly, gratefully, found herself laughing. It was a short burst of amusement that instantly defused the painful tension between them. “As if it would kill you to spare a thought to giving them a two-second toasting and getting rid of them yourself?
Jacquelyn Frank (Gideon (Nightwalkers, #2))
Don't you know yet, he said, that an idle and selfish class loves to see mischief being made, even if it is made at its own expense? Its own life being all a matter of pose and gesture, it is unable to realize the power and the danger of a real movement and of words that have no sham meaning. It is all fun and sentiment. It is sufficient, for instance, to point out the attitude of the old French aristocracy towards the philosophers whose words were preparing the Great Revolution. Even in England, where you have some common-sense, a demagogue has only to shout loud enough and long enough to find some backing in the very class he is shouting at. You, too, like to see mischief being made. The demagogue carries the amateurs of emotion with him. Amateurism in this, that, and the other thing is a delightfully easy way of killing time, and feeding one's own vanity--the silly vanity of being abreast with the ideas of the day after to-morrow. Just as good and otherwise harmless people will join you in ecstasies over your collection without having the slightest notion in what its marvellousness really consists. [The informer]
Joseph Conrad (A Set of Six)
Michael grew silent, his gaze softening as he looked from me to Will, and a dim light of hope flickered in my heart. “You would mourn for him.” “Yes, I said. “I would mourn him forever with a broken heart. This human soul has given me so many blessings and curses. I’m the only one of our kind who has ever felt the most perfect happiness and the truest sorrow - because of this soul. My love for my Guardian is one of those blessings. It’s not a curse.” “You can,” I promised. “Please trust me. I need all the help I can get, and that includes yours. If you kill my Guardian, then I will never forgive you. I can’t be at war with you too. Please, please, Michael, my brother. Don’t kill him. … A tear caught on the edge of my lips. “Do you love me as your sister?” His mouth opened to reply, but nothing came out. “It’s okay,” I whispered. “You’re worried about me, because you love me. Don’t be afraid of feeling anything. our Father made us this way. He wouldn’t make a mistake.” “I…,” Michael said, and emotion spilled over his face. His brow furrowed with exhaustion and he seemed overwhelmed by what he felt. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath before opening them again. “You are my sister, Gabriel.” “Then don’t do this.” I begged him. He was quiet again for several agonising moments, returning to his emotionless state. “Keep him. I have faith in you, Sister. Will and I breathed sighs of relief, but it was a few seconds before Michael withdrew his sword. His expression remained unchanging as he lifted Will’s death warrant.
Courtney Allison Moulton (Shadows in the Silence (Angelfire, #3))
She was only twenty-three, not even a quarter of a century old.She had spent the last five years living exclusively in the human world. Now her wild nature was calling to her. Gregori was touching something untamed in her, something to which she had forbidden herself access. Something wild and unhibited and incredibly sensuous. Savannah looked up at his dark, handsome face. It was so male. So carnal. So powerful. Gregori. The Dark One. Just looking at him made her go weak with need. One glance from his slashing silver eyes could bring a rush of liquid heat, fire racing through her.She became soft and pliant. She became his. Gregori's palm cupped her face. "Whatever you are thinking is making you fear me,Savannah," he said softly. "Stop it." "You're making me into something I'm not," she whispered. "You are Carpathian, my lifemate. You are Savannah Dubrinsky. I cannot take any of those things from you. I do not want a puppet, or a different woman. I want you as you are." His voice was soft and compelling. He lifted her in his arms,carried her to his bed and tucked the covers around her. The storm lashed at the windows and whistled against the walls. Gregori wove the safeguards in preparation for their sleep. Savannah as exhausted, her eyes already trying to close. Then he slipped into the bed and gathered her into his arms. "I would never change anything about you,ma patite, not even your nasty little temper." She settled against his body as if she was made for it.He felt the brush of her lips against his chest and the last sigh of air as it escaped from her lungs. Gregori lay awake for a long time, watching as the dawn crept forward, pushing away the night. One wave of his hand closed and locked the heavy shutters over the windows. Still he lay awake, holding Savannah close. Because he had always known he was dangerous, he had feared for mortals and immortals alike at his hand. But somehow,perhaps naively, he had thought that once he was bound to his lifemate, he would become tamer, more domesticated. His fingers bunched in her hair. But Savannah made him wild. She made him far more dangerous than he had ever been. Before Savannah, he had had no emotions. He had killed when it necessary because it was necessary. He had feared nothing because he loved nothing and had nothing to lose. Now he had everything to lose.And so he was more dangerous.For no one, nothing, would ever threaten Savannah and live.
Christine Feehan (Dark Magic (Dark, #4))
He overheard the director talking to one of the cameramen. The cameraman was explaining that he couldn’t get a good long shot on the exterior because someone had set up a fake graveyard right in the plaza. “Kids just playing around, I guess, but it’s morbid; we’ll have to get rid of it, maybe bring in some sod to—” “No,” Albert said. “We’re almost ready for you,” the director assured him. “That’s not a fake graveyard. Those aren’t fake graves. No one was playing around.” “You’re saying those . . . those are actually . . .” “What do you think happened here?” Albert asked in a soft voice. “What do you think this was?” Absurdly, embarrassingly, he had started to cry. “Those are kids buried there. Some of them were torn apart, you know. By coyotes. By . . . by bad people. Shot. Crushed. Like that. Some of those kids in the ground there couldn’t take it, the hunger and the fear . . . some of those kids out there had to be cut down from the ropes they used to hang themselves. Early on, when we still had any animals? I had a crew go out and hunt down cats. Cats and dogs and rats. Kill them. Other kids to skin them . . . cook them up.” There were a dozen crew people in the McDonald’s. None spoke or moved. Albert brushed away tears and sighed. “Yeah. So don’t mess with the graves. Okay? Other than that, we’re good to go.
Michael Grant (Light (Gone, #6))
I was scared- with that crystalline, childish fear of being caught and punished. That fear thrashed behind my rib cage like a bird in cupped hands, perhaps the last truly childlike instance of that emotion I'd ever feel. That fear is a kind of magic. As you get older, the texture of your fear changes. You're no longer afraid of the things you had absolute faith in as a child ... That magic gets kicked out of you, churched out, shamed out- or worse, you steal it from yourself ... By degrees, you kill your own magic. Before long your fears become adult ones: crushing debts and responsibilities, sick parents and sick kids, the possibility of dying unremembered or unloved. Fears of not being the person you were so certain you'd grow up to be. Looking back, I wish I'd relished those final instants of childish fear: that saccharine-sweet taste of terror curdling like sour milk in my mouth.
Craig Davidson (The Saturday Night Ghost Club)
That night, while you were asleep, I unbuttoned your pajama jacket and looked at what he’d done to you. Afterward, I drove back to his house and very nearly killed him. If he hadn’t started crying and begging me to stop, I…” He let out the angry breath. “That was when I realized how I felt about you,” he added, his eyes meeting hers. “A man wants to protect what he considers his own. It started then, that night.” She was surprised by what he was telling her. “You…looked at me?” He nodded. His eyes narrowed. “You had the most beautiful little breasts,” he said roughly. “And they were covered with bruises. I wanted to kiss the bruises, take you into my bed and hold you, just hold you, all night long so that you’d be safe. I didn’t dare give in to the impulse, of course,” he added with the first touch of amusement he’d shown since her arrival. “My mother would have horsewhipped me.” She felt waves of surprised pleasure lance through her body. “I never knew.” “I was always known for my poker face,” he murmured. “But it was sheer agony to be around you. The older you got, the worse it was. It was inevitable that one day I’d go mad and take you.” He sighed. “The most hellish part of the whole thing was knowing that all I had to do was touch you and you’d let me do anything I liked to you.” She traced the mouth of her coffee cup. “I loved you,” she said quietly. “I know.” There was a world of pain in the words. She looked up into his black eyes and saw an answering emotion in them. “You never told me.” “I couldn’t.
Diana Palmer (Paper Rose (Hutton & Co. #2))
Layla!" Don bounded into her sight. The door behind her was still bolted. Where had he come from? The starshot tumbled from her hands and clattered to the floor. She snatched it up and slipped it back inside her dress. Bill was gone.But Don was-Daniel was right where she wanted him to be. "What are you doing here?" Her voice broke with the force of having to act surprised to see him. He didn't seem to hear it.He rushed toward her and wrapped her in his arms. "Saving your life." "How did you get in?" "Don't worry about that.No mortal man, no slab of stone can obstruct a love as true as ours. I will always find you." In his bare, bronzed arms, it was Luce's instinct to feel comforted. But she couldn't right then.Her heart felt ragged and cold.This easy happiness, these feelings of complete trust, every one of the lovely emotions Daniel had shown her how to feel in every life-they were torture to her now. "Fear not," he whispered. "Let me tell you, my love, what happens after this life.You come back,you rise again. Your rebirth is beautiful and real.You come back to me,again and again-" The light from the lamp flickered and made his violet eyes sparkle.His body was so warm against hers. "But I die again and again." "What?" He tilted his head.Even when his physique looked exotic to her, she knew his expressions so well-that bemused adoration when she expressed something he hadn't expected her to understand. "How do you-Never mind. It doesn't matter.What matters is that we will again be together.We will always find each other,always love each other, no matter what.I will never leave you." Luce fell to her knees on the stone steps. She hid her face in her hands. "I don't know how you can stand it.Over and over again,the same sadness-" He lifted her up. "The same ecstasy-" "The same fire that kills everything-" "The same passion that ignites it all again.You don't know.You can't remember how wonderful-" "I've seen it.I do know." How she had his attention. He didn't seem sure whether or not to believe her, but at least he was listening. "What if there's no hope of anything ever changing?" she asked. "There is only hope. One day, you will live through it.That absolute truth is the only thing that keeps me going. I will never give up on you. Even if it takes forever." He wiped away her tears with his thumb. "I'll love you with all my heart,in every life, through every death. I will not be bound by anything but my love for you." "But it's so hard.Isn't it hard for you? Haven't you ever thought,what if..." "One day,our love will conquer this dark cycle.That's worth everything to me.
Lauren Kate (Passion (Fallen, #3))
I want you here. I want you in my home, my bed, my life,” he murmured, the smooth out of his voice, it was low and so rough with sex and emotion, it was abrasive, scoring through me. “Baby –” “I want your clothes in my closet. I wanna hear your voice in my house when you’re talkin’ on the phone. I want you sittin’ beside me when we’re watchin’ TV. I want shit you like in my fridge. I want “your razors in my shower. I want my roof over your head. Your car in my garage. I want to give you what I should have been giving you for sixteen years. As good as you deserve. A showplace. A place where I can make you happy.” God. He was killing me. “Creed, let me –” He didn’t let me finish. He pressed on, driving in, our bodies jolting with his thrusts, his voice harsh in my ear. “Give me that, Sylvie. Give me that and, swear to God, I’ll give you everything.” “I –” His head came up, his cock drove deep and stayed planted and his eyes burned into mine. “All I’ll ask. All I’ll ever ask. You give me that and you got a lifetime of nothin’ but take.
Kristen Ashley (Creed (Unfinished Hero, #2))
Rowan didn’t speak as she turned on her heel and strode to the door. Didn’t speak as she opened it, exited, and shut it behind her with a gentle click. Then he swiveled in his chair and leveled Sean with a dark glare. “What the hell just happened?” “That’s called a strikeout,” Sean said with a grin. “I’ve never seen you crash and burn like that, my friend.” “I know. Embarrassing is what it is. I mean, really.” Rowan tangled his fingers through his hair. “You got a better response than I did.” “Please, I got nothing, same as you.” Rowan offered him a sheepish smile. “I know. But I felt the heat pulsing off you the moment she stepped into the office. Then I saw the fantasies you were weaving about her and decided to throw you a bone. So you want her, huh?” Sean lost his grin but managed to shrug. “Doesn’t matter. Unless you picked up on her weaving fantasies about me?” A sigh. “Sorry. Her mind was a blank slate to me. I didn’t pick up on a single thought, emotion, or desire. It’s like she operates on a completely different frequency than the rest of the world.” She probably did, with all those wires and chips in her head. “Still,” Rowan continued, “we can call Bill and tell him you’re the one who should be—” “Nope.” The word burned his tongue, and he hated himself for saying it, but he didn’t take it back. Success was too important. “I don’t exactly inspire trust in the women I date. The opposite, in fact. Something about me makes people distrust every word and action.” His affiliation with the shadows, with darkness, most likely. They must have sensed it on some level. “You’re better at romancing and I’m better at killing.
Gena Showalter (The Bodyguard (Includes: T-FLAC, #14.5))
All right, but you know Star Trek, and ‘Beam me up, Scotty’? How they can teleport people around?” “Yeah. The transporters.” “Do you know how they work?” “Just … special effects. CGI or whatever they used.” “No, I mean within the universe of the show. They work by breaking down your molecules, zapping you over a beam, and putting you back together on the other end.” “Sure.” “That is what scares me. I can’t watch it. I find it too disturbing.” I shrugged. “I don’t get it.” “Well, think about it. Your body is just made of a few different types of atoms. Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and so on. So this transporter machine, there is no reason in the world to break down all of those atoms and then send those specific atoms thousands of miles away. One oxygen atom is the same as another, so what it does is send the blueprint for your body across the beam. Then it reassembles you at the destination, out of whatever atoms it has nearby. So if there is carbon and hydrogen at the planet you’re beaming down to, it’ll just put you together out of what it has on hand, because you get the exact same result.” “Sure. “So it’s more like sending a fax than mailing a letter. Only the transporter is a fax machine that shreds the original. Your original body, along with your brain, gets vaporized. Which means what comes out the other end isn’t you. It’s an exact copy that the machine made, of a man who is now dead, his atoms floating freely around the interior of the ship. Only within the universe of the show, nobody knows this. “Meanwhile, you are dead. Dead for eternity. All of your memories and emotions and personality end, right there, on that platform, forever. Your wife and children and friends will never see you again. What they will see is this unnatural photocopy of you that emerged from the other end. And in fact, since transporter technology is used routinely, all of the people you see on that ship are copies of copies of copies of long-dead, vaporized crew members. And no one ever figures it out. They all continue to blithely step into this machine that kills one hundred percent of the people who use it, but nobody realizes it because each time, it spits out a perfect replacement for the victim at the other end.
David Wong (This Book Is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don’t Touch It (John Dies at the End, #2))
He's so intense, but I stand my ground. "Your people will... "I am not only talking about my people now," he snaps. "I am talking about me." The words feel like a slap. I stare at him, suddenly breathless "You think I betrayed you." He says nothing. And the worst part is, he's not wrong either. I was acting on emotion. I wasn't thinking about how anyone would perceive my actions. I spent months thinking Grey was dead, and after seeing what Rhen was willing to do in the courtyard, I wasn't going to wait around for him to up the ante. My throat tightens. I turn to look out over the courtyard again, hoping the breeze will drag my tears away. "He was trapped with you for ... ever," I say. "Forever, Rhen. "How could you do that to him?" Rhen is quiet for a moment. "He was your friend, too, my lady. I was not the only one he ran from." I remember a moment, in the courtyard, when Rhen was still a monster. When Lilith was going to kill me, and Grey got on his knees and offered himself to spare me. I remember a moment in Washington, DC, when Grey was near death because Rhen had attacked him, and he came to me for help. Not anyone in Emberfall. To me. He could have told me his secret. I would have helped him. He chose not to. To protect me? Or to protect himself? Both? We once spoke of my duty to bleed so he does not. Oh, Grey.
Brigid Kemmerer (A Heart So Fierce and Broken (Cursebreakers, #2))
In the Middle Ages, marriage was considered a sacrament ordained by God, and God also authorised the father to marry his children according to his wishes and interests. An extramarital affair was accordingly a brazen rebellion against both divine and parental authority. It was a mortal sin, no matter what the lovers felt and thought about it. Today people marry for love, and it is their inner feelings that give value to this bond. Hence, if the very same feelings that once drove you into the arms of one man now drive you into the arms of another, what’s wrong with that? If an extramarital affair provides an outlet for emotional and sexual desires that are not satisfied by your spouse of twenty years, and if your new lover is kind, passionate and sensitive to your needs – why not enjoy it? But wait a minute, you might say. We cannot ignore the feelings of the other concerned parties. The woman and her lover might feel wonderful in each other’s arms, but if their respective spouses find out, everybody will probably feel awful for quite some time. And if it leads to divorce, their children might carry the emotional scars for decades. Even if the affair is never discovered, hiding it involves a lot of tension, and may lead to growing feelings of alienation and resentment. The most interesting discussions in humanist ethics concern situations like extramarital affairs, when human feelings collide. What happens when the same action causes one person to feel good, and another to feel bad? How do we weigh the feelings against each other? Do the good feelings of the two lovers outweigh the bad feelings of their spouses and children? It doesn’t matter what you think about this particular question. It is far more important to understand the kind of arguments both sides deploy. Modern people have differing ideas about extramarital affairs, but no matter what their position is, they tend to justify it in the name of human feelings rather than in the name of holy scriptures and divine commandments. Humanism has taught us that something can be bad only if it causes somebody to feel bad. Murder is wrong not because some god once said, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ Rather, murder is wrong because it causes terrible suffering to the victim, to his family members, and to his friends and acquaintances. Theft is wrong not because some ancient text says, ‘Thou shalt not steal.’ Rather, theft is wrong because when you lose your property, you feel bad about it. And if an action does not cause anyone to feel bad, there can be nothing wrong about it. If the same ancient text says that God commanded us not to make any images of either humans or animals (Exodus 20:4), but I enjoy sculpting such figures, and I don’t harm anyone in the process – then what could possibly be wrong with it? The same logic dominates current debates on homosexuality. If two adult men enjoy having sex with one another, and they don’t harm anyone while doing so, why should it be wrong, and why should we outlaw it? It is a private matter between these two men, and they are free to decide about it according to their inner feelings. In the Middle Ages, if two men confessed to a priest that they were in love with one another, and that they never felt so happy, their good feelings would not have changed the priest’s damning judgement – indeed, their happiness would only have worsened the situation. Today, in contrast, if two men love one another, they are told: ‘If it feels good – do it! Don’t let any priest mess with your mind. Just follow your heart. You know best what’s good for you.
Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow)
Little Blaine: Stop! Stop it, you're killing him! Eddie: (in his mind) What do you think he's trying to do to us, squirt? He considered shooting Blaine one Jake had told while they'd been sitting around the campfire that night and then didn't. He wanted to stick further inside the bounds of logic than that one allowed...and he could do it. He didn't think he would have to get much more surreal than the level of, say, a third-grader with a fair-to-good collection of Garbage Pail Kids cards in order to fuck Blaine up royally...and permanently. Because no matter how many emotions his fancy dipolar circuits had allowed him to mimic, HE was still an IT--a computer. Even allowing Eddie this far into riddledom's Twilight Zone had caused Blaine's sanity to totter. Eddie: Why do people go to bed, Blaine? Blaine: BECAUSE...BECAUSE...GODS DAMN YOU, BECAUSE...BECAUSE THE BED WON'T COME TO THEM, GODS DAMN YOU! Eddie: Give up, Blaine. Stop before I have to blow your mind completely. If you don't quit, it's going to happen. We both know it. Blaine: NO! Eddie: I got a million of these puppies. Been hearing them my whole life. They stick to my mind the way flies stick to flypaper. Hey, with some people it's recipes. So what do you say? Want to give? Blaine: NO! Eddie: Okay, Blaine. You asked for it. Here comes the cruncher. Why did the dead baby cross the road? (later) It crossed the road because it was stapled to the chicken, you dopey fuck!
Stephen King (Wizard and Glass (The Dark Tower, #4))
Good good,' he says. 'I make sure my people take good care of you. They will make Astrophage maybe for you to go home!' 'Yeah...' I say. 'About that... I'm not going home. The beetles will save Earth. But I won't ever see it again.' His joyous bouncing stops. 'Why, question?' 'I don't have enough food. After I take you back to Erid, I will die.' 'You... you can no die.' His voice gets low. 'I no let you die. We send you home. Erid will be grateful. You save everyone. We do everything to save you.' 'There's nothing you can do,' I say. 'There's no food. I have enough to last until we get to Erid and then a few months more. Even if your government gave me the Astrophage to get home, I wouldn't survive the trip.' 'Eat Erid food. We evolve from same life. We use same proteins. Same chemicals. Same sugars. Must work!' 'No, I can't eat your food, remember?' 'You say is bad for you. We find out.' I hold up my hands. 'It's not just bad for me. It will kill me. Your whole ecology uses heavy metals all over the place. Most of them are toxic to me. I'd die immediately.' He trembles. 'No. You can no die. You are friend.' I float closer to the divider wall and talk softly. 'It's okay. I made my decision. This is the only way to save both of our worlds.' He backs away. 'Then you go home. Go home now. I wait here. Erid maybe send another ship someday.' 'That's ridiculous. Do you really want to risk the survival of your entire species on that guess?' He's silent for a few moments and finally answers. 'No.
Andy Weir (Project Hail Mary)
Through the fall, the president’s anger seemed difficult to contain. He threatened North Korea with “fire and fury,” then followed up with a threat to “totally destroy” the country. When neo-Nazis and white supremacists held a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and one of them killed a protester and injured a score of others, he made a brutally offensive statement condemning violence “on many sides … on many sides”—as if there was moral equivalence between those who were fomenting racial hatred and violence and those who were opposing it. He retweeted anti-Muslim propaganda that had been posted by a convicted criminal leader of a British far-right organization. Then as now, the president’s heedless bullying and intolerance of variance—intolerance of any perception not his own—has been nurturing a strain of insanity in public dialogue that has been long in development, a pathology that became only more virulent when it migrated to the internet. A person such as the president can on impulse and with minimal effort inject any sort of falsehood into public conversation through digital media and call his own lie a correction of “fake news.” There are so many news outlets now, and the competition for clicks is so intense, that any sufficiently outrageous statement made online by anyone with even the faintest patina of authority, and sometimes even without it, will be talked about, shared, and reported on, regardless of whether it has a basis in fact. How do you progress as a culture if you set out to destroy any common agreement as to what constitutes a fact? You can’t have conversations. You can’t have debates. You can’t come to conclusions. At the same time, calling out the transgressor has a way of giving more oxygen to the lie. Now it’s a news story, and the lie is being mentioned not just in some website that publishes unattributable gossip but in every reputable newspaper in the country. I have not been looking to start a personal fight with the president. When somebody insults your wife, your instinctive reaction is to want to lash out in response. When you are the acting director, or deputy director, of the FBI, and the person doing the insulting is the chief executive of the United States, your options have guardrails. I read the president’s tweets, but I had an organization to run. A country to help protect. I had to remain independent, neutral, professional, positive, on target. I had to compartmentalize my emotions. Crises taught me how to compartmentalize. Example: the Boston Marathon bombing—watching the video evidence, reviewing videos again and again of people dying, people being mutilated and maimed. I had the primal human response that anyone would have. But I know how to build walls around that response and had to build them then in order to stay focused on finding the bombers. Compared to experiences like that one, getting tweeted about by Donald Trump does not count as a crisis. I do not even know how to think about the fact that the person with time on his hands to tweet about me and my wife is the president of the United States.
Andrew G. McCabe (The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump)
On the other hand, irrational fears are difficult, if not impossible, to quantify. Here’s an example: when 152 people were infected with swine flu in Mexico in 2009, people around the world, prodded by the media’s manufactured hysteria, erupted in fear of an epidemic. We were warned that the threat was everywhere—that everyone was potentially at risk; however, the data showed these fears to be completely unwarranted. Weeks into the “outbreak,” there were around 1,000 reported cases of the virus in 20 countries. The number of fatalities stood at 26—25 in Mexico, and one in the United States (a boy who had just traveled to Texas from Mexico). Yet schools were closed, travel was restricted, emergency rooms were flooded, hundreds of thousands of pigs were killed, hand sanitizer and face masks disappeared from store shelves, and network news stories about swine flu consumed 43% of airtime.9 “There is too much hysteria in the country and so far, there hasn’t been that great a danger,” commented Congressman Ron Paul in response. “It’s overblown, grossly so.”10 He should know. During Paul’s first session in Congress in 1976, a swine flu outbreak led Congress to vote to vaccinate the entire country. (He voted against it.) Twenty-five people died from the vaccination itself, while only one person was killed from the actual virus; hundreds, if not more, contracted Guillain-Barre syndrome, a paralyzing neurological illness, as a result of the vaccine. Nearly 25 percent of the population was vaccinated before the effort was cancelled due to safety concerns.
Connor Boyack (Feardom: How Politicians Exploit Your Emotions and What You Can Do to Stop Them)
Today you are young.your beauty attract every man But the day when you will feel older yourself when you will feel magic of body vanish On that day time will remind you,that man who fall in love with your soul but you will not find him,because you killed him in All The day when you will feel wrinkles on your skin and will understand,no one want to touch it,not soft any more On that day time will remind that man who die for aroma of your skin,for him its always remain best fragrance But you will not find him, because you killed him by your ignorance The day you will feel,you are now not able to feed sex hunger and you will understand men around you but not with you On that day time will remind you that man who never hungry for your body,who just feed love and emotions to your soul and to your heart But you will not find him,because, you killed him by put your betrayed knife in his heart maybe it will not happen,maybe your life will full of love maybe you will never remember past.maybe you will forget All But on the day when you will die,and your loving people will bury you inside your grave,when you will realize, all that who loves you,all that with you spend days & nights all that for whom you cooked you serve,all that whose bed you warm all that who impress by your beauty,all that who claim to love you they all buried you here alone and gone in that your loneliness,time will remind you,that man who just dream to lay with you inside your grave, who dream to bury together in one grave But you will not find him That day will realize you,whom you killed That day will realize you,you killed a man who don't wanted to be just partner of you life but to partner of your death who don't wanted to be just partner of your bed but to partner of your grave Then you will realize you betrayed killed,partner of your grave Partner Of Your Grave,
Mohammed Zaki Ansari ("Zaki's Gift Of Love")
QUOTES & SAYINGS OF RYAN MORAN- THE WORLD'S MOST POWERFUL MAN Favorite Sayings of Ryan Moran: The World's Most Powerful Man “Sometimes the withholding of a small part of the truth is not only wise, but prudent.” “There is one principle that bars all other principles, and that is contempt prior to investigation.” (Ryan was fond of paraphrasing Herbert Spencer) “What do you mean?”, “How do you know?”, “So what?” “I don’t need much, just one meal a day, a pack of cigarettes and a roof over my head.” “Well…, we must have different data bases, mustn’t we?” “This guy is more squirrely than a shithouse rat” The CIA—you know, the ‘Catholic Irish Alcoholics’ “That dumb fuck.” “Oye! A Jew and an Irishman—what a team!” “Okay, everybody, up and to the right ten thousand feet,” ( If things in general were not going well. Refers to his jet flying days) “Is that what you want to do?.....Are you sure?" “Curiosity is self serving,” “If you don’t know where you’re going, you will end up somewhere else.” “So…, what are you thinking?” “I can do anything that I want, as long as I have the desire and I am willing to pay the price.” (His working definition of honesty) “Well, what did you learn tonight?” “Don’t let your emotions get the best of you, and don’t get too far out into your future.” “If you meet someone in the middle of the desert and he asks you where the next water hole is, you had better tell him the truth. If you don’t, then the next time you meet, he will kill you.” “Damn it!” “And remember to watch your mirrors!” (Refers to the fact someone may be following us in the car) “A person either gets humble or gets humiliated.” “That’s right.” “Oye, Sheldon, a Jew and an Irishman—talk about guilt and suffering!” “Pigs grow fat, but hogs get slaughtered.” “A friend is someone who is coming in, when everyone else is going out.
Ira Teller (Control Switch On: A True Story—The Untold Story of the Most Powerful Man in the World—Ryan Moran—Who Shaped the Planet for Peace)
All right, but you know Star Trek, and ‘Beam me up, Scotty’? How they can teleport people around?” “Yeah. The transporters.” “Do you know how they work?” “Just … special effects. CGI or whatever they used.” “No, I mean within the universe of the show. They work by breaking down your molecules, zapping you over a beam, and putting you back together on the other end.” “Sure.” “That is what scares me. I can’t watch it. I find it too disturbing.” I shrugged. “I don’t get it.” “Well, think about it. Your body is just made of a few different types of atoms. Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and so on. So this transporter machine, there is no reason in the world to break down all of those atoms and then send those specific atoms thousands of miles away. One oxygen atom is the same as another, so what it does is send the blueprint for your body across the beam. Then it reassembles you at the destination, out of whatever atoms it has nearby. So if there is carbon and hydrogen at the planet you’re beaming down to, it’ll just put you together out of what it has on hand, because you get the exact same result.” “Sure. “So it’s more like sending a fax than mailing a letter. Only the transporter is a fax machine that shreds the original. Your original body, along with your brain, gets vaporized. Which means what comes out the other end isn’t you. It’s an exact copy that the machine made, of a man who is now dead, his atoms floating freely around the interior of the ship. Only within the universe of the show, nobody knows this. “Meanwhile, you are dead. Dead for eternity. All of your memories and emotions and personality end, right there, on that platform, forever. Your wife and children and friends will never see you again. What they will see is this unnatural photocopy of you that emerged from the other end. And in fact, since transporter technology is used routinely, all of the people you see on that ship are copies of copies of copies of long-dead, vaporized crew members. And no one ever figures it out. They all continue to blithely step into this machine that kills one hundred percent of the people who use it, but nobody realizes it because each time, it spits out a perfect replacement for the victim at the other end.” I
David Wong (This Book Is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don’t Touch It (John Dies at the End, #2))
I think that's quite true. and in fact the people who understand this the best are those who are carrying out the control and domination in the more free societies. like the U.S. and England, where popular struggles have have won a lot of freedoms over the years and the state has limited capacity to coerce. It is very striking that it's precisely in those societies that elite groups—the business world, state managers and so on—recognized early on that they are going to have to develop massive methods of control of attitude and opinion, because you cannot control people by force anymore and therefore you have to modify their consciousness so that they don't perceive that they are living under conditions of alienation, oppression, subordination and so on. In fact, that's what probably a couple trillion dollars are spent on each year in the U.S., very self-consciously, from the framing of television advertisements for two-year olds to what you are taught in graduate school economics programs. It's designed to create a consciousness of subordination and it's also intended specifically and pretty consciously to suppress normal human emotions. Normal human emotions are sympathy and solidarity, not just for people but for stranded dolphins. It's just a normal reaction for people. If you go back to the classical political economists, people like Adam Smith, this was just taken for granted as the core of human nature and society. One of the main concentrations of advertising and education is to drive that out of your mind. And it's very conscious. In fact, it's conscious in social policy right in front of our eyes today. Take the effort to destroy Social Security. Well, what's the point of that? There's a lot of scam about financial problems, which is all total nonsense. And, of course, they want Wall Street to make a killing. Underlying it all is something much deeper. Social Security is based on a human emotion and it's a natural human emotion which has to be driven out of people minds, namely the emotion that you care about other people. You care. It's a social and community responsibility to care whether a disabled widow across town has enough food to eat, or whether a kid across the street can go to school. You have to get that out of people's heads. You have to make them say, "Look, you are a personal, rational wealth maximizer. If that disabled widow didn't prepare for her own future, it's her problem not your problem. It's not your fault she doesn't have enough to eat so why should you care?
Noam Chomsky (Chomsky On Anarchism)