“
He thinks he'll be remembered as the villain in the story. But I forgot to tell him that the villain is usually the person who locks up the maiden and throws away the key. He was the one who let me out.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Mist and Fury (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #2))
“
The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them -- words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.
”
”
Stephen King
“
Your emotions make you human. Even the unpleasant ones have a purpose. Don't lock them away. If you ignore them, they just get louder and angrier.
”
”
Sabaa Tahir (A Torch Against the Night (An Ember in the Ashes, #2))
“
Like nightmares, dreams were insidious things, and didn't like being locked away.
”
”
Laini Taylor (Strange the Dreamer (Strange the Dreamer, #1))
“
There is an ache in my heart for the imagined beauty of a life I haven't had, from which I had been locked out, and it never goes away.
”
”
Robert Goolrick (The End of the World as We Know It: Scenes from a Life)
“
Isn't it funny how the memories you cherish before a breakup can become your worst enemies afterwards? The thoughts you loved to think about, the memories you wanted to hold up to the light and view from every angle--it suddenly seems a lot safer to lock them in a box, far from the light of day and throw away the key. It's not an act of bitterness. It's an act if self-preservation. It's not always a bad idea to stay behind the window and look out at life instead, is it?
”
”
Ally Condie (First Day)
“
If you didn't always have to choose between turning away for good or rushing in deeper. In the moments that it really counts, maybe it's enough - more than enough, even - just to be there.
”
”
Sarah Dessen (Lock and Key)
“
My mind is a warehouse of carefully organized human emotions.
I lock away the things that do not serve me.
”
”
Tahereh Mafi (Destroy Me (Shatter Me, #1.5))
“
I wanted to stay locked away from the pain and destruction. I didn't want to be strong. I didn't want to be the 'smart girl'. I was so very tired. I just wanted it all to be over.
”
”
Ruta Sepetys (Salt to the Sea)
“
You are mine,I am yours; you may be sure of this. You've been locked inside my heart, the key has been thrown away; within it, you must always stay.
”
”
Andrew Davidson (The Gargoyle)
“
Percy, let me go" she croaked. "You can't pull me up."
His face was white with effort. She could see in his eyes that he knew it was hopeless.
"Never," he said. He looked up at Nico, fifteen feet above.
"The other side, Nico! We'll see you there. Understand?"
Nico's eyes widened. "But-"
"Lead them!" Percy shouted. "Promise me!"
"I-I will."
Below them, the voice laughed in the darkness. Sacrifices. Beautiful sacrifices to wake the goddess.
Percy tightened his grip on Annabeth's wrist. His face was gaunt, scraped and bloody, his hair dusted with cobwebs, but when he locked eyes with her, she thought he had never looked more handsome.
"We're staying together," he promised. "You're not getting away from me. Never again."
Only then did she understand what would happen. A one-way trip. A very hard fall.
"As long as we're together," she said.
She heard Nico and Hazel still screaming for help. She saw sunlight far, far above- maybe the last sunlight she would ever see.
Then Percy let go of his ledge, and together, holding hands, he and Annabeth fell into the endless darkness.
”
”
Rick Riordan (The Mark of Athena (The Heroes of Olympus, #3))
“
Don't lock yourself away from those who care about you because you think you'll hurt them or they'll hurt you. What point is there in being human if you don't let yourself feel anything?
”
”
Sabaa Tahir (A Torch Against the Night (An Ember in the Ashes, #2))
“
I thought, this is the most incredible thing I have ever seen, and I had better keep it a safe distance away from me. I thought, if someone like that ever loved me, it would set me on fire.
And then I was a careless fool, and I fell in love with you anyway. When you rang me at truly shocking hours of the night, I loved you. When you kissed me in disgusting public toilets and pouted in hotel bars and made me happy in ways in which it had never even occurred to me that a mangled-up, locked-up person like me could be happy, I loved you.
And then, inexplicably, you had the absolute audacity to love me back. Can you believe it?
Sometimes, even now, I still can't.
”
”
Casey McQuiston (Red, White & Royal Blue)
“
... It's perfect! Locke would appreciate it."
"Bug," Calo said, "Locke is our brother and our love for him knows no bounds. But the four most fatal words in the Therin language are 'Locke would appreciate it.'"
"Rivalled only by 'Locke taught me a new trick,'" added Galo.
"The only person who gets away with Locke Lamora games ..."
"... is Locke ..."
"... because we think the gods are saving him up for a really big death. Something with knives and hot irons ..."
"... and fifty thousand cheering spectators.
”
”
Scott Lynch (The Lies of Locke Lamora (Gentleman Bastard, #1))
“
But I forgot to tell him,” I said quietly, opening the door, “that the villain is usually the person who locks up the maiden and throws away the key.”
“Oh?”
I shrugged. “He was the one who let me out.”.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas
“
You must decide if you are going to rob the world or bless it with the rich, valuable, potent, untapped resources locked away within you.
”
”
Myles Munroe (Understanding Your Potential - Discovering the Hidden You)
“
the princess locked herself away in the highest tower, hoping a knight in shining armor would come to her rescue. - i didn’t realize i could be my own knight.
”
”
Amanda Lovelace (The Princess Saves Herself in this One)
“
I lock eyes with my reflection and don’t look away. The day you look away you start to lose yourself. I’m never going to lose myself. You are what you are. Deal with it or change.
”
”
Karen Marie Moning (Iced (Fever, #6))
“
We're always contradicting ourselves.
We want people to tell us apart....
...yet we don't want them to be able to.
We want people to get to know us...
...but we also want them to keep their distance.
We've always longed for someone to accept us...
But we never believed there'd be anyone who would accept our twisted ways.
That's why we'll stay locked up tight...
...in our own little private world...
...and throw away the key, so that no one can ever hurt us.
”
”
Bisco Hatori (Ouran High School Host Club, Vol. 9 (Ouran High School Host Club, #9))
“
Madness is the emergency exit. You can just step outside, and close the door on all those dreadful things that happened. You can lock them away…forever."
The Joker
”
”
Alan Moore (Batman: The Killing Joke)
“
You love her, don't you?' [Rob] said to Gabriel.
Gabriel finall seemed able to break their locked stare. He looked away, at the carpet. His face was bleak.
Yes' he said
More than anything,' Rob persisted. 'You'd crawl on your belly over broken glass for her. Easy.'
Yes, damn you,' Gabriel said. 'Happy now?
”
”
L.J. Smith (The Passion (Dark Visions, #3))
“
Words aren’t meant to be kept inside, you see. They are free creatures, and if locked away will unsettle the stomach.
”
”
Brandon Sanderson (The Way of Kings (The Stormlight Archive, #1))
“
Ian stood above me, his chest heaving with exertion and fury. For a second he turned away and put the door back in place with one swift wrench. And then he was glowering again.
I took a deep breath and rolled up onto my knees, holding my hands out, palms up, wishing that some magic would appear in them. Something I could give him, something I could say. But my hands were empty.
"You. Are. Not. Leaving. Me." His eyes blazed - burning brighter than I had ever seen them, blue fires.
"Ian," I whispered. "You have to see that... that I can't stay. You must se that."
"No!" he shouted at me.
I cringed back, and, abruptly, Ian crumpled forward, falling to his knees, falling into me. He buried his head in my stomach, and his arms locked around my waist. He was shaking, shaking hard, and loud, desperate sobs were breaking out of his chest.
"No, Ian, no," I begged. This was so much worse than his anger. "Don't, please. Please, don't."
"Wanda," he moaned.
"Ian, please. Don't feel this way. Don't. I'm so sorry. Please."
I was crying too, shaking too, though that might have been him shaking me.
"You can't leave."
"I have to, I have to," I sobbed.
And then we cried wordlessly for a long time.
”
”
Stephenie Meyer (The Host (The Host, #1))
“
All the time I’ve knowed you, Jack, you kept the door to that heart of yers locked up tight an the key hid away. Looks like she found it.
He says nothing. Molly waits. Then:
Keys ain’t her style, he says. She kicked the door down.
”
”
Moira Young (Rebel Heart (Dust Lands, #2))
“
Monsters were supposed to be scary and ugly. They weren’t supposed to hide behind friendly smiles and well-trimmed hair. Goodness, twisted as it might be, was not meant to be locked away in an icy heart and anxious exterior.
”
”
Kerri Maniscalco (Stalking Jack the Ripper (Stalking Jack the Ripper, #1))
“
At the same time, though, I was beginning to wonder if this was just how it was supposed to be for me, like perhaps I wasn't capable of having that many people in my life at any one time. My mom turned up, Nate walked away, one door opening as another clicked shut.
”
”
Sarah Dessen (Lock and Key)
“
I felt overwhelmed. I didn’t expect a first kiss to be so…life altering. In a few brief moments, the rule book of my universe had been rewritten. Suddenly I was a brand new person. I was as fragile as a newborn, but instead of the doctor placing me in my mother’s arms, he’d put me in Ren’s. What would Ren do with me? Would he draw me near, soothe me, and teach me about this new world or would he reject me and tell the doctor there must be some mistake. There was no way to know. What a breakable and delicate thing a heart was, no wonder I’d kept mine locked away.
”
”
Colleen Houck
“
Memories are like wolves. You can’t lock them away and hope they leave you alone.
”
”
Nina George (The Little Paris Bookshop)
“
I love you,” he said fiercely. “ ’Tis not true that I kept a part of my heart locked away from you. You own all of it, lass. You’ve always owned it. I didn’t give it to you. You took it from the very start.
”
”
Maya Banks (Never Love a Highlander (McCabe Trilogy, #3))
“
Such lonely, lost things you find on your way. It would be easier, if you were the only one lost. But lost children always find each other, in the dark, in the cold. It is as though they are magnetized and can only attract their like. How I would like to lead you to brave, stalwart friends who would protect you and play games with dice and teach you delightful songs that have no sad endings. If you would only leave cages locked and turn away from unloved Wyverns, you could stay Heartless.
”
”
Catherynne M. Valente (The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making (Fairyland, #1))
“
Camilla and Palamedes were loved by Nona, said Paul. Pyrrha was loved by Nona. It’s finished, it’s done. You can’t take loved away.
”
”
Tamsyn Muir (Nona the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #3))
“
Perhaps grief is like battle: After experiencing enough of it, your body’s instincts take over. When you see it closing in like a Martial death squad, you harden your insides. You prepare for the agony of a shredded heart. And when it hits, it hurts, but not as badly, because you have locked away your weakness, and all that’s left is anger and strength.
”
”
Sabaa Tahir (A Torch Against the Night (An Ember in the Ashes, #2))
“
I was not weak; I did not cry. But it hurt me, more in a kind of refreshing, thrilling way, than a kind of pain that would cripple me and send me away crying. My fingernails dug into the palms of my hands, and my teeth bit into my lips, my knees were locked, but I could not faint.
”
”
Alysha Speer (Sharden (Body of Blades #1))
“
No offense, Jaron, but I don't want your life. Even locked away behind closed doors I got a taste for how awful it can be."
"Did anyone try to kill you while I was gone?"
"No."
"Then you didn't even get a taste.
”
”
Jennifer A. Nielsen
“
MEMORY'S SO
TREACHEROUS.
ONE MOMENT YOU'RE LOST IN A
CARNIVAL
OF
DELIGHTS,
WITH POIGNANT CHILDHOOD
AROMAS
, THE FLASHING NEON OF
PUBERTY,
ALL THAT SENTIMENTAL
CANDY-FLOSS
...
THE
NEXT
, IT LEADS YOU SOMEWHERE YOU DON'T WANT TO GO...
...SOMEWHERE
DARK
AND
COLD,
FILLED WITH THE DAMP, AMBIGUOUS SHAPES OF THINKS YOU'D HOPED WERE
FORGOTTEN.
MEMORIES
CAN BE
VILE, REPULSIVE
LITTLE
BRUTES.
LIKE
CHILDREN,
I SUPPOSE.
HAHA.
BUT CAN WE LIVE
WITHOUT
THEM?
MEMORIES
ARE WHAT OUR
REASON
IS BASED UPON. IF WE CAN'T
FACE
THEM, WE DENY REASON ITSELF!
ALGHOUGH, WHY
NOT?
WE AREN'T
CONTRACTUALLY TIED DOWN
TO
RATIONALITY!
THERE
IS
NO
SANITY CLAUSE!
SO WHEN YOU FIND YOURSELF LOCKED ONTO AN UNPLEASANT TRAIN OF THOUGHT, HEADING FOR THE PLACES IN YOUR PAST WHERE THE SCREAMING IS
UNBEARABLE,
REMEMBER THERE'S ALWAYS
MADNESS.
MADNESS
IS THE
EMERGENCY EXIT...
YOU CAN JUST STEP
OUTSIDE,
AND CLOSE THE DOOR ON ALL THOSE DREADFUL THINGS THAT HAPPENED. YOU CAN LOCK THEM
AWAY...
FOREVER.
”
”
Alan Moore (Batman: The Killing Joke)
“
where
do all the
memories go,
the ones we
hide away
with
lock &
key yet
continue
to shape
us all the
s a m e?
"- did it really happen if i can't remember it?
”
”
Amanda Lovelace (The Princess Saves Herself in This One (Women Are Some Kind of Magic, #1))
“
I am living in hell from one day to the next. But there is nothing I can do to escape. I don't know where I would go if I did. I feel utterly powerless, and that feeling is my prision. I entered of my own free will, I locked the door, and I threw away the key.
”
”
Haruki Murakami
“
Frida Kahlo to Marty McConnell
leaving is not enough; you must
stay gone. train your heart
like a dog. change the locks
even on the house he’s never
visited. you lucky, lucky girl.
you have an apartment
just your size. a bathtub
full of tea. a heart the size
of Arizona, but not nearly
so arid. don’t wish away
your cracked past, your
crooked toes, your problems
are papier mache puppets
you made or bought because the vendor
at the market was so compelling you just
had to have them. you had to have him.
and you did. and now you pull down
the bridge between your houses,
you make him call before
he visits, you take a lover
for granted, you take
a lover who looks at you
like maybe you are magic. make
the first bottle you consume
in this place a relic. place it
on whatever altar you fashion
with a knife and five cranberries.
don’t lose too much weight.
stupid girls are always trying
to disappear as revenge. and you
are not stupid. you loved a man
with more hands than a parade
of beggars, and here you stand. heart
like a four-poster bed. heart like a canvas.
heart leaking something so strong
they can smell it in the street.
”
”
Marty McConnell
“
But the actual touch of her lingered, inside his heart. That remained. In all the years of his life ahead, the long years without her, with never seeing her or hearing from her or knowing anything about her, if she was alive or happy or dead or what, that touch stayed locked within him, sealed in himself, and never went away. That one touch of her hand.
”
”
Philip K. Dick (A Scanner Darkly)
“
She did not know yet how sometimes people keep parts of themselves hidden and secret, sometimes wicked and unkind parts, but often brave or wild or colorful parts, cunning or powerful or even marvelous, beautiful parts, just locked up away at the bottom of their hearts. They do this because they are afraid of the world and of being stared at, or relied upon to do feats of bravery or boldness. And all of those brave and wild and cunning and marvelous and beautiful parts they hid away and left in the dark to grow strange mushrooms—and yes, sometimes those wicked and unkind parts, too—end up in their shadow.
”
”
Catherynne M. Valente (The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There (Fairyland, #2))
“
I like to watch his hands as he works, making a blank page bloom with strokes of ink, adding touches of color to our previously black and yellowish book. His face takes on a special look when he concentrates. His usual easy expression is replaced by something more intense and removed that suggests an entire world locked away inside him. I've seen flashes of this before: in the arena, or when he speaks to a crowd, or that time he shoved the Peacekeepers' guns away from me in District 11. I don't know quite what to make of it. I also become a little fixated on his eyelashes, which ordinarily you don't notice much because they're so blond. But up close, in the sunlight slanting in from the window, they're a light golden color and so long I don't see how they keep from getting all tangled up when he blinks.
”
”
Suzanne Collins (Catching Fire (The Hunger Games, #2))
“
Five minutes later, we were rolling around on the helipad as he tried to muscle his way out of my armlock, after slamming me onto the helipad.
“I finally realized the source of your mutual attraction,” Saiman said, his voice dry.
I looked up. He was standing a few feet away.
“Do enlighten us.” Curran tried to roll into me to break the lock. Oh no you don’t.
“You both think violence is foreplay.
”
”
Ilona Andrews (Magic Rises (Kate Daniels, #6))
“
...the people who move through the streets are all strangers. At each encounter, they imagine a thousand things about one another; meetings which could take place between them, conversations, surprises, caresses, bites. But no one greets anyone; eyes lock for a second, then dart away, seeking other eyes, never stopping...something runs among them, an exchange of glances like lines that connect one figure with another and draw arrows, stars, triangles, until all combinations are used up in a moment, and other characters come on to the scene...
”
”
Italo Calvino (Invisible Cities)
“
Oh God. Why, oh why, did I have to be the one to deliver this news? Why couldn’t I be locked away in my room or the library doing something enjoyable, like homework?
”
”
Richelle Mead
“
The mind can only remember what it's willing to remember - because if you are guilty, then the truth is not the thing that sets you free. It's the thing that gets you locked away.
”
”
Carolee Dean (Take Me There)
“
Still, there was also was something reassuring about working for Commercial, almost hopeful. Like things that were lost could be found again. As we drove away, I always tried to imagine what it would be like to open your door to find something you had given up on.
”
”
Sarah Dessen (Lock and Key)
“
Nobody’s mind ever remains a blank page, however carefully they are locked away from the world.
”
”
Frances Hardinge (A Face Like Glass)
“
My heart is locked away in a cage surrounded by ribs. That’s to protect it, and to keep the world safe. It’s currently serving a life sentence.
”
”
Jarod Kintz (This Book is Not for Sale)
“
I wondered what the FML post would look like.
"Today, when my father tried to shoot me, I found out he was an assassin monger who's been keeping my mom locked away in a secret facility for freaky killers. FML."
Seriously. F.M.L.
”
”
Jus Accardo (Touch (Denazen, #1))
“
I married my love in the springtime, / but by summer he’d locked me away. / He’d murdered me dead by the autumn, / and by winter I was naught but decay
”
”
Emily Carroll
“
I want you to know...that you can trust me."
John locked eyes with her and was instantly transported to a different plane of existence. Mighta been heaven again. Who the fuck knew or cared. All he knew was that there was only her and him together, the rest of the world drifting away into fog.
Was it possible to fall in love with someone twice, he wondered dimly.
”
”
J.R. Ward (Lover Mine (Black Dagger Brotherhood, #8))
“
We all have secrets we keep locked away from the rest of the world... Friendships we pretend... Relationships we hide... But worst of all... Love we never let show. The most dangerous secrets a person can bury are those we keep from ourselves
”
”
Emily Thorne
“
Sorrow and loss never die. We can put them away in a chest and lock it tight, but whenever it is opened, even a crack, the aroma of lost sweetness will rise to fill our lungs to heaviness.
”
”
Robin Hobb (Fool's Quest (The Fitz and The Fool, #2))
“
I pulled away. He stopped me with a hand on my wrist. “Wait,” he said. “I know what you’re thinking.”
“What?”
“It’s written all over your face.” He pushed a lock of hair out of my eyes. “I’m not going anywhere.
”
”
Jennifer Rush (Altered (Altered, #1))
“
And sure enough, in seeking to become superhuman this foolhardy young man renders himself inhuman. The heart that he has locked away slowly shrivels and grows hair, symbolising his own descent to beasthood.
”
”
J.K. Rowling (The Tales of Beedle the Bard)
“
It runs in the family. And don't expect me to be ashamed. Yankees lock away loony relatives, but down here, we prop 'em up on parade floats and march 'em through the middle of town.
”
”
Susan Elizabeth Phillips (Ain't She Sweet?)
“
When she was a child, the witch locked her away in a tower that had neither doors nor stairs.
”
”
Marissa Meyer (Cress (The Lunar Chronicles, #3))
“
Sleep, my love," He whispered, smoothing her long hair, lifting the damp locks away from the back of her neck. "I'll be here to watch over you."
"You sleep too," she said groggily, her hand creeping to the center of his chest.
"No." McKenna smiled and pressed a soft kiss against her temple. His voice was husky with wonder. "Not when staying awake is better than anything I could find in a dream.
”
”
Lisa Kleypas (Again the Magic (Wallflowers, #0))
“
Jealousy—at least as far as he understood it from his dream—was the most hopeless prison in the world. Jealousy was not a place he was forced into by someone else, but a jail in which the inmate entered voluntarily, locked the door, and threw away the key. And not another soul in the world knew he was locked inside. Of course if he wanted to escape he could do so. The prison, was after all, his own heart. But he couldn't make that decision. His heart was as hard as a stone wall. This was the very essence of jealousy.
”
”
Haruki Murakami (Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage)
“
The thing is, Fallon . . . I told you before to lock the door if you wanted me to stay out. Funny thing is . . .” I leaned in. “You. Never. Did.
”
”
Penelope Douglas (Rival (Fall Away, #2))
“
For centuries the Fates were locked away, but now they wish to come out and play.
If they regain their magic the world will never be the same, but you can help stop them by winning the game
”
”
Stephanie Garber (Legendary (Caraval, #2))
“
Memories I had locked away have begun to break free, like shards of ice fracturing off an arctic shelf. In sleep, these broken floes drift toward the morning light of remembrance.
”
”
Tan Twan Eng (The Garden of Evening Mists)
“
Pick-a-lock, Pick-a-lock, you'll regret the day,
When you took a mouse thief and locked him away,
Silly cat, look at that, it's two for one,
A thief and a warrior, by dawn will be gone.
”
”
Brian Jacques (Mossflower (Redwall, #2))
“
Each life has a different purpose, and some people can find their purpose more easily than others. The key, the most important thing you can ever know, is that whatever your purpose is, that's not your only choice"
"No matter why you're here, no matter why any of us are here, you're never tied down to fate. You're never locked in. You make your own choices, Kira, and you can't let anyone ever take that away from you.
”
”
Dan Wells (Partials (Partials Sequence, #1))
“
Jestine and I lock eyes. She's going to look away first. Even if my eyeballs have to completely dry out.
”
”
Kendare Blake (Girl of Nightmares (Anna, #2))
“
We weren’t born distrusting and fearing ourselves. That was part of our taming. We were taught to believe that who we are in our natural state is bad and dangerous. They convinced us to be afraid of ourselves. So we do not honor our own bodies, curiosity, hunger, judgment, experience, or ambition. Instead, we lock away our true selves. Women who are best at this disappearing act earn the highest praise: She is so selfless. Can you imagine? The epitome of womanhood is to lose one’s self completely. That is the end goal of every patriarchal culture. Because a very effective way to control women is to convince women to control themselves.
”
”
Glennon Doyle (Untamed)
“
Why do things this beautiful make me want to cry?" I asked Michael as I leaned into him. It was an unguarded question, one I'd never have asked of Hugh.
"I don't know," said Michael. "Maybe beauty, true beauty, is so overwhelming, it goes straight to our hearts. Maybe it makes us feel emotions that are locked away inside.
”
”
James Patterson (Sundays at Tiffany's)
“
It's the loneliest feeling in the world-to find yourself standing up when everybody else is sitting down. To have everybody look at you and say, 'What's the matter with him?' I know. I know what it feels like. Walking down an empty street, listening to the sound of your own footsteps. Shutters closed, blinds drawn, doors locked against you. And you aren't sure whether you're walking toward something, or if you're just walking away.
”
”
Robert E. Lee (Inherit the Wind: The Powerful Courtroom Drama in which Two Men Wage the Legal War of the Century)
“
The secrets of survivors are not easily surrendered. They are locked away behind barricaded doors and accessed at great risk to those who possess them.
”
”
Daniel Silva (The Rembrandt Affair (Gabriel Allon, #10))
“
There's no way y'all have been around for thousands of years without there being one person not fitting into the 'men are this, women are that' bullshit." Julian sounded so convinced, so sure. His obsidian eyes locked onto Yadriel's. "Maybe they hid it, or ran away, or I dunno, something else, but there's no way you're the first, Yads.
”
”
Aiden Thomas (Cemetery Boys (Cemetery Boys, #1))
“
Tragedy may hit all of us in one way or another, but fate's not our enemy, Brooke. We are. By locking yourself away from the world, you choose your own mistakes and destroy any chance of ever finding happiness. You cannot control life, but you can chose who you are and what you make of it.
”
”
J.C. Reed (Surrender Your Love (Surrender Your Love, #1))
“
But the fact is that writing is the only way in which I am able to cope with the memories which overwhelm me so frequently and so unexpectedly. If they remained locked away, they would become heavier and heavier as time went on, so that in the end I would succumb under their mounting weight. Memories lie slumbering within us for months and years, quietly proliferating, until they are woken by some trifle and in some strange way blind us to life. How often this has caused me to feel that my memories, and the labours expended in writing them down are all part of the same humiliating and, at bottom, contemptible business! And yet, what would we be without memory? We would not be capable of ordering even the simplest thoughts, the most sensitive heart would lose the ability to show affection, our existence would be a mere neverending chain of meaningless moments, and there would not be the faintest trace of a past. How wretched this life of ours is!--so full of false conceits, so futile, that it is little more than the shadow of the chimeras loosed by memory. My sense of estrangement is becoming more and more dreadful.
”
”
W.G. Sebald (The Rings of Saturn)
“
I know you're frustrated that he's keeping you locked up like this, but don't give him too bad a time when he gets back. He loves you more than you know. It terrifies him to be away from you.
”
”
Stephenie Meyer (Eclipse (The Twilight Saga, #3))
“
maybe, beauty, true beauty, is so overwhelming, it goes straight to our hearts.maybe it makes us feel emotions that are locked away inside
”
”
James Patterson (Sundays at Tiffany's)
“
When we lock things away," he said with conviction, "we're really imprisoning ourselves.
”
”
Gordon Korman (Schooled)
“
But now, I was beginning to wonder if you didn't always have to choose between turning away for good or rushing in deeper. In the moments that it really counts, maybe it's enough- more than enough, even- just to be there.
~Ruby, pg 399
”
”
Sarah Dessen (Lock and Key)
“
Reading about how i live, you might assume i am some kind of psychopath, the sort of beast that must be locked away from society. But the truth is that I'm not tat different from you. Not very different at all.
And that should scare the hell out of you
”
”
Carolee Dean (Take Me There)
“
I have to remind myself that some birds aren't meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright. And when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up DOES rejoice. But still, the place you live in is that much more drab and empty that they're gone. I guess I just miss my friend.
”
”
Stephen King (Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption)
“
He moved closer to her, his face just inches away from her. They stood motionless. Jason looked deep into her eyes. He tore away her barriers and locked eyes. His nose two inches away, he slightly tilted his face and looked at her lips. She slightly turned her face at the opposite angle.
”
”
Mark A. Cooper (Royal Decree (Jason Steed #4))
“
I removed all the doors to our love, so you can’t lock yourself away from me. But I didn’t stop there. I also replaced the doors with metal detectors, so I could fondle you more efficiently, like the highly trained professionals do who run airport security.
”
”
Jarod Kintz (At even one penny, this book would be overpriced. In fact, free is too expensive, because you'd still waste time by reading it.)
“
But unfriendly is usually one of those things you pick up on right away. You know, like B.O. There's no hiding it if it's there.
”
”
Sarah Dessen (Lock and Key)
“
The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them -- words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.
”
”
Stephen King (Different Seasons)
“
Why do you look?” I mutter.
I half expect Magiano to tease me, spitting back one of his sarcastic phrases. But he doesn’t smile. “We are drawn to stories," he says in a soft voice, “and every scar carries one.” He lifts a hand and places his palm gently against the ruined side of my face, covering the scar.
I look down, embarrassed now. Instinctively, I reach up to brush some of my hair over my face—only to remember that I no longer have long locks.
“Hiding it makes you more beautiful,” Magiano says. Then he takes his hand away, exposing my scar again. “But revealing it makes you you.” He nods at me. “So wear it proudly.
”
”
Marie Lu (The Rose Society (The Young Elites, #2))
“
Sherlock: You're keeping a SCRAPBOOK. Only old ladies and pre-pubescent girls keep scrapbooks, John.
John: It's not a scrapbook, Sherlock. I'm collecting papers relevant to the cases. It helps me remember the details. And it was locked away in my desk drawer.
Sherlock: The lock on your desk drawer was insulting me with its pretense at security.
”
”
Guy Adams (Sherlock: The Casebook)
“
I’m only doing this,” he said, “because I really love hiding in haunted Eldren buildings on dark and creepy nights.”
“You’re a liar,” said Jean, slowly. “I’m only doing this because I’ve always wanted to see Bug get eaten by an Eldren ghost.”
“Liar,” said Calo. “I’m only doing this because I fucking love hauling half a ton of bloody coins up out of a vault and packing them away on a cart.”
“Liar!” Galdo chuckled. “I’m only doing this because while you’re all busy elsewhere, I’m going to go pawn all the furniture in the burrow at No-Hope Harza’s.”
“You’re all liars,” said Locke as their eyes turned expectantly to him.
“We’re only doing this because nobody else in Camorr is good enough to pull this off, and nobody else is dumb enough to get stuck doing it in the first place.”
“Bastard!” They shouted in unison, forgetting their surroundings for a bare moment.
”
”
Scott Lynch (The Lies of Locke Lamora (Gentleman Bastard, #1))
“
Percy tightened his grip on Annabeth's wrist. His face was gaunt, scraped and bloody, his hair dusted with cobwebs, but when he locked eyes with her, she thought he had never looked more handsome.
"We're staying together," he promised. "You're not getting away from me. Never again."
Only then did she understand what would happen. A one-way trip. A very hard fall.
"As long as we're together," she said.
She heard Nico and Hazel still screaming for help. She saw the sunlight far,f ar above-maybe the last sunlight she would ever see.
Then Percy let go of his tiny ledge, and together, holding hands, he and Annabeth fell into the endless darkness.
”
”
Rick Riordan (The Mark of Athena (The Heroes of Olympus, #3))
“
You don’t have to be afraid—"
"I am always afraid!"
I don’t know what shocks me more—the power in my voice or the words themselves.
Afraid.
I am always afraid.
It’s a truth I locked away years ago, a fact I fought hard to overcome.
”
”
Tomi Adeyemi (Children of Blood and Bone (Legacy of Orïsha, #1))
“
With every step I took away from her, the movement at my heart and between my legs grew more defined: I felt like a ventriloquist, locking his protesting dolls in to a trunk.
”
”
Sarah Waters (Tipping the Velvet)
“
Koschei smiled. His pale lips sought hers, crushing her into a kiss like dying. She tasted sweetness there, as though he still kissed her with honey and sugar on his tongue. When he pulled away, his eyes shone.
"I don't care, Marya Morevna. Kiss him. Take him to your bed, and the vila, too, for all it matters to me. Do you understand me, wife? There need never be any rules between us. Let us be greedy together; let us hoard. Let us hit each other with birch branches and lock each other in dungeons; let us drink each other's blood in the night and betray each other in the sun. Let us lie and lust and take hundreds of lovers; let us dance until snow melts beneath us. Let us steal and eat until we grow fat and roll in the pleasures of life, clutching each other for purchase. Only leave me my death — let me hold this one thing sacred and unmolested and secret — and I will serve you a meal myself, served on a platter of all the world's bounty. Only do not leave me, swear that you will never leave me, and no empress will stand higher. Forget the girls in the factory. Be selfish and cruel and think nothing of them. I am selfish. I am cruel. My mate cannot be less than I. I will have you in my hoard, Marya Morevna, my black mirror.
”
”
Catherynne M. Valente (Deathless)
“
But he wasn’t going for the sake of corruption or the kingdom. His tower was broken, he’d drunk Spindle-water, and he’d held my hand. So now he was going to run away as quick as he could, and find himself some new stone walls to hide behind. He’d keep himself locked away for ten years this time, until he withered his own roots, and didn’t feel the lack of them anymore.
”
”
Naomi Novik (Uprooted)
“
The only person who gets away with Locke Lamora games—” “—is Locke Lamora—
”
”
Scott Lynch (The Lies of Locke Lamora (Gentleman Bastard, #1))
“
You never forget about things you've done that you know you shouldn't have done. They hang around your mind, linger like a thief casing a joint for a future job. You see them there, dramatically lurking nearby in striped monochrome, leaping behind postboxes as soon as your head whips around to confront them. Or it's a familiar face in a crowd that you glimpse but then lose sight of. An annoying Where's Wally? forever locked away and hidden in every thought in your conscience. The bad thing that you did, always there to let you know.
”
”
Cecelia Ahern (The Time of My Life)
“
There, weeping, a tsarevna lies locked in a cell.
And Master Grey Wolf serves her very well.
There, in her mortar, sweeping beneath the skies,
the demon Baba Yaga flies.
There Tsar Koschei,
he wastes away,
poring over his pale gold.
”
”
Catherynne M. Valente (Deathless)
“
This black box is yours to keep, to stash your troubles away. Just lock it up and call my name and I'll be there always.
”
”
Cassia Leo (Black Box)
“
I look down at our knees, slightly touching. Jeans against jeans. Does she notice the heat transferring from her body to mine? Does she even realize what she's doing to me? I know, I know. I'm not a virgin and the slightest touch of a girl's knee is driving me insane. I don't even know what I'm feeling for Maggie, I just know that I'm feeling. It's something I've tried to avoid and deny until yesterday, when I held her in my arms while her tears spilled onto my shirt.
God, our knees touching isn't enough. I need more.
She's knotting her fingers together on her lap as if she doesn't know what to do with them. I want to touch her, but what if she pulls away like before? I've never been such a wuss with a girl in my life.
I bite my bottom lip as I slide my hand about millionth of a millimeter closer to her hand.
She doesn't seem fazed so I move closer. And closer.
When the tips of my fingers touch her wrist, she freezes. But she doesn't jerk her hand away. God, her skin is so soft, I think as my fingers trail a path from her wrist to her knuckles to her smooth, manicured nails.
I swear touching her like this is driving me nuts. It's more erotic, more intense than any other time with Kendra. I feel awkward and inexperienced as a freshman again. I look up. Everyone else is oblivious to the intensity of emotions running rampant in the back of the public bus.
When I look back down at my hand covering hers, I'm grateful she hasn't come to her senses and pulled away. As if she knows my thoughts, we both turn our hands at the same time so our hands are palm against palm...finger against finger. Her hand is dwarfed against mine. It makes her seem more delicate and petite than I'd realize. I feel a need to protect her and be her champion should she ever need one.
With a slight shift of my hand, I lace my fingers through hers.
I'm holding hands. With Maggie Armstrong.
I'm not even going to think about how wrong it is because it feels so right. She's avoided looking right at me, but now she turns her head and our eyes lock. God, how come I never noticed before how long her lashes were and how her brown eyes have specks of gold that sparkle when the sun shine on them?
The bus stops suddenly and I look out the window. It's our stop. She must have realized this because she pulls her hand away from mine and stands. I follow behind, still reeling.
”
”
Simone Elkeles (Leaving Paradise (Leaving Paradise, #1))
“
There’s this moment when I first wake, a moment where I forget that you left me, that you didn’t want me. And for just a second, everything is perfect and I reach for you, but you’re not there. And then I remember, and I can’t breathe. So I lock away all of the want and need, all of the pain, until I can breathe again. And if that makes me a cold bastard, so be it. It’s what I have to do to survive.
”
”
Stormy Glenn
“
And when her eyes met mine, I felt something click, like a key turning in a lock. Believe me, I'm no romantic, and while I've heard about love at first sight, I've never believed in it, and I still don't. But even so, there was something there, something recognizably real, and I couldn't look away.
”
”
Nicholas Sparks (Dear John)
“
Sunlight played along the River Cam. People in punts happily shouted at each other to fuck off. Thin natural scientists who had spent months locked away in their rooms growing white and fishlike, emerged blinking into the light. Couples walking along the bank got so excited about the general wonderfulness of it all that they had to pop inside for an hour.
”
”
Douglas Adams (Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (Dirk Gently, #1))
“
Give her to me.”
Turning away with his prize, Lock shook his head. “No. Get your own cat.”
“She’s my sister.
”
”
Shelly Laurenston (The Mane Squeeze (Pride, #4))
“
She had locked something away,
something deep inside.
A truth that she had once known,
but chose to forget.
And she couldn't break free.
So I decided to search for it.
I went deep into the recess of her mind
and found that secret place.
And I broke in..
”
”
Christopher J. Nolan (Inception: The Shooting Script)
“
I had never seen the jungle. They fed me behind bars from an iron pan till one night I felt that I was Bagheera - the Panther - and no man's plaything, and I broke the silly lock with one blow of my paw and came away; and because I had learned the ways of men, I became more terrible in the jungle than Shere Khan.
”
”
Rudyard Kipling (The Jungle Books)
“
I was only then, when I knew I was alone, at least for the moment, that I reached under my gown into the pocket of my dress. As I pulled out my key from the yellow house, which I'd kept on my bureau since the day Nate left, I traced the shape one last time before folding my hand tightly around it.
Behind me, Cora was calling again. My family was waiting. Looking down at the pond, all I could think was that it is an incredible thing, how a whole world can rise from what seems like nothing at all. I stepped closer to the edge, keeping my eyes on my reflection as I dropped the key into the water, where it landed with a splash. At first, the fish darted away, but as it began to sink they circled back, gathering around. Together, they followed it down, down until it was gone.<3
”
”
Sarah Dessen (Lock and Key)
“
No matter how much I want to scream at him and make him leave, I find myself wishing he could squeeze me just a little bit tighter. I want him to lock his arms around me and throw away the key, because this is where he belongs and I'm scared he'll just let me go again.
”
”
Colleen Hoover (Hopeless (Hopeless, #1))
“
If you are in the closet and fall in love with someone of the same gender, it doesn't automatically remove the shame and fear that's kept you locked away. The love you are experiencing encourages you to face the reality that this is who you really are and also has the power to set you free. The richness, beauty and depths of love can only be fully experienced in a climate of complete openness, honesty and vulnerability. Love, the most powerful of human emotions, is calling you to freedom and wholeness.
”
”
Anthony Venn-Brown OAM (A Life of Unlearning - a journey to find the truth)
“
Brightlord Adolin insisted. So long as you were in here, he wouldn't leave. We tried to stop him, but the man’s a prince. We can’t storming make him do anything, not even leave. He locked himself away in the cell and we just had to live with it.
”
”
Brandon Sanderson (Words of Radiance (The Stormlight Archive, #2))
“
Remembering's dangerous. I find the past such a worrying, anxious place. "The Past Tense," I suppose you'd call it. Memory's so treacherous. One moment you're lost in a carnival of delights, with poignant childhood aromas, the flashing neon of puberty, all that sentimental candy-floss... the next, it leads you somewhere you don't want to go. Somewhere dark and cold, filled with the damp ambiguous shapes of things you'd hoped were forgotten. Memories can be vile, repulsive little brutes. Like children I suppose. But can we live without them? Memories are what our reason is based upon. If we can't face them, we deny reason itself! Although, why not? We aren't contractually tied down to rationality! There is no sanity clause! So when you find yourself locked onto an unpleasant train of thought, heading for the places in your past where the screaming is unbearable, remember there's always madness. Madness is the emergency exit… you can just step outside, and close the door on all those dreadful things that happened. You can lock them away… forever.
”
”
Alan Moore (Batman: The Killing Joke)
“
Taking Mike home is a great idea," Donny said. "See you tomorrow. Thanks for your help."
Gabe kissed her hand. "I'll be back in an hour, honey."
She snatched her hand away. "No need, sweetheart. We're all fine here. See you tomorrow at school. We'll lock up when we leave."
"Sixty minutes, sugarplum." He leaned in for a kiss.
"Get you pleather-wearing, long-haired paws off me--"
Gabe kissed her soundly, cutting off her protest.
”
”
Gwen Hayes (Falling Under (Falling Under, #1))
“
There is going to come a time when we have to accept who we are without the assistance of religion. That will be the dawn of true faith. We leave the big decisions to invisible consultants and pray we get the answers we are looking for. The late great George Carlin once said he gave up praying to God and started praying to Joe Pesci because his prayers to Joe Pesci were answered with as much accuracy and frequency as those to God. [...] If we as people are still looking for answers, we should turn our eyes away from the heavens and look to each other. I know we do not play well together - hell, some of us do not even like being in the same room with each other - but the divine lies in all of us. We are miracles. We are "god." If we shared a little more, we would not be left feeling less. We hold the keys to our own destinies. It is time we started looking for the locks.
”
”
Corey Taylor (Seven Deadly Sins: Settling the Argument Between Born Bad and Damaged Good)
“
I don't think most people would like my personality. There might be a few--very few, I would imagine--who are impressed by it, but only rarely would anyone like it. Who in the world could possibly have warm feelings, or something like them, for a person who doesn't compromise, who instead, whenever a problem crops up, locks himself away alone in a closet? But is it ever possible for a professional writer to be liked by people? I have no idea. Maybe somewhere in the world it is. It's hard to generalize. For me, at least, I've written novels over many years, I just can't picture someone liking me on a personal level. Being disliked by someone, hated and despised, somehow seems more natural. Not that I'm relieved when that happens. Even I'm not happy when someone dislikes me.
”
”
Haruki Murakami (What I Talk About When I Talk About Running)
“
Love casts out fear; but conversely fear casts out love. And not only love. Fear also casts out intelligence, casts out goodness, casts out all thought of beauty and truth. What remains in the bum or studiedly jocular desperation of one who is aware of the obscene Presence in the corner of the room and knows that the door is locked, that there aren’t any windows. And now the thing bears down on him. He feels a hand on his sleeve, smells a stinking breath, as the executioner’s assistant leans almost amorously toward him. “Your turn next, brother. Kindly step this way.” And in an instant his quiet terror is transmuted into a frenzy as violent as it is futile. There is no longer a man among his fellow men, no longer a rational being speaking articulately to other rational beings; there is only a lacerated animal, screaming and struggling in the trap. For in the end fear casts out even a man’s humanity. And fear, my good friends, fear is the very basis and foundation of modern life. Fear of the much touted technology which, while it raises out standard of living, increases the probability of our violently dying. Fear of the science which takes away the one hand even more than what it so profusely gives with the other. Fear of the demonstrably fatal institutions for while, in our suicidal loyalty, we are ready to kill and die. Fear of the Great Men whom we have raised, and by popular acclaim, to a power which they use, inevitably, to murder and enslave us. Fear of the war we don’t want yet do everything we can to bring about.
”
”
Aldous Huxley (Ape and Essence)
“
Before our white brothers came to civilize us we had no jails. Therefore we had no criminals. You can't have criminals without a jail. We had no locks or keys, and so we had no thieves. If a man was so poor that he had no horse, tipi or blanket, someone gave him these things. We were too uncivilized to set much value on personal belongings. We wanted to have things only in order to give them away. We had no money, and therefore a man's worth couldn't be measured by it. We had no written law, no attorneys or politicians, therefore we couldn't cheat. We really were in a bad way before the white men came, and I don't know how we managed to get along without these basic things which, we are told, are absolutely necessary to make a civilized society.
”
”
John Fire Lame Deer (Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions)
“
I knew as well as I knew anything that the oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the oppressed. A man who takes away another man’s freedom is a prisoner of hatred, he is locked behind the bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness. I am not truly free if I am taking away someone else’s freedom, just as surely as I am not free when my freedom is taken from me. The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity.
”
”
Nelson Mandela (Long Walk to Freedom)
“
I'll lock my heart away deeper ..
if I do that ..
I won't have to feel pain outside or inside .. or the fear
I won't have to feel anything at all !
”
”
Yoshiyuki Sadamoto (Neon Genesis Evangelion: 3-in-1 Edition, Vol. 1)
“
Someday I’ll see him again, and we’ll tell our stories to each other…but for now, I lock him safely away, in a place where I can draw on his strength.
”
”
Marie Lu (Legend (Legend, #1))
“
Keys turn both ways. You can lock something away... But you can also throw a bolt and set something free.
”
”
Joe Hill (Locke & Key, Vol. 6: Alpha & Omega)
“
As a collective exhale hit the airwaves, Qhuinn found himself looking over at Blay. Aw, hell, talk about a suck zone—this was why he avoided the guy like the plague. Just one glance and he was locked on, all kinds of reactions rolling through him, until the room spun a little—
For no good reason, Blay’s eyes flipped up and met his.
It was like getting goosed in the ass with a live wire, his body spasming to the point where he had to hide the reaction by coughing while he glanced away.
About as smooth as a crater. Yup. Fantastic.
”
”
J.R. Ward (Lover Reborn (Black Dagger Brotherhood, #10))
“
Perhaps we don't like what we see: our hips, our loss of hair, our shoe size, our dimples, our knuckles too big, our eating habits, our disposition. We have disclosed these things in secret, likes and dislikes, behind doors with locks, our lonely rooms, our messy desks, our empty hearts, our sudden bursts of energy, our sudden bouts of depression. Don’t worry. Put away your mirrors and your beauty magazines and your books on tape. There is someone right here who knows you more than you do, who is making room on the couch, who is fixing a meal, who is putting on your favorite record, who is listening intently to what you have to say, who is standing there with you, face to face, hand to hand, eye to eye, mouth to mouth. There is no space left uncovered. This is where you belong.
”
”
Sufjan Stevens
“
Language will evolve irregardless of your attempt to literally lock it away in a secluded tower. Obvs.
”
”
Joseph Fink
“
I close the world away. Lock it up. Turn the key so tight. Blackness buries me in its folds.
”
”
Tahereh Mafi (Shatter Me (Shatter Me, #1))
“
There it is; the light across the water. Your story. Mine. His. It has to be seen to be believed. And it has to be heard. In the endless babble of narrative, in spite of the daily noise, the story waits to be heard.
Some people say that the best stories have no words. They weren't brought up to Lighthousekeeping. It is true that words drop away, and that the important things are often left unsaid. The important things are learned in faces, in gestures, not in our locked tongues. The true things are too big or too small, or in any case is always the wrong size to fit in the template called language.
”
”
Jeanette Winterson (Lighthousekeeping)
“
They have elevated him on a pedestal, but...a pedestal is nothing more than an elegant cage. No walls, no locks, but unless one has wings to fly away, one is trapped. A pedestal is the most insidious prison ever devised.
”
”
Neal Shusterman (UnSouled (Unwind, #3))
“
So that means your mom's okay with everything?"
"She will be," Ellie said. "We both will."
Graham nodded. "I'm glad."
"She took it better than expected. If you'd asked me yesterday, I would've guessed I'd be locked in my room tonight."
He waved this away. "I'd have to come to rescue you," he told her. "I might not have a white horse, but I do have a very portly pig."
"How romantic," Ellie said.
”
”
Jennifer E. Smith (This Is What Happy Looks Like (This is What Happy Looks Like, #1))
“
Nightingale"
Did I wound you, mutilate. Take away your voice. Did I cut something from you. Leave you locked in silence?
This is what you do: you sing. Every part of you. Your locks of hair sing, your eyes, your hands, your smile. If I listen closely I can even hear your blood.
Was I the one that took that away?
Go down to the water where we used to swim. Stand under the sky at dawn when the sky is streaked with blood. Open your mouth and shout our secret to the waves. The ocean will be your voice. You won't have to carry anything alone. Little Sister, my Spring, April. Little nightingale. Sant at the edge of the water. Your voice will come back to you. Maybe. If I am silent.
”
”
Francesca Lia Block (Wasteland)
“
I married my love in the springtime,
but by summer he'd locked me away.
He'd murdered me dead by the autumn,
& by winter I was naught but decay.
It's cold where I am and so lonely,
but in loneliness I will remain.
Unloved, unavenged, & forgotten,
until I am whole once again.
”
”
Emily Carroll (Through the Woods)
“
It’s the beating of my heart.
The way I lie awake, playing with shadows slowly climbing up my wall. The gentle moonlight slipping through my window and the sound of a lonely car somewhere far away, where I long to be too, I think. It’s the way I thought my restless wandering was over, that I’d found whatever I thought I had found, or wanted, or needed, and I started to collect my belongings. Build a home. Safe behind the comfort of these four walls and a closed door.
Because as much as I tried or pretended or imagined myself as a part of all the people out there,
I was still the one locking the door every night.
Turning off the phone and blowing out the candles so no one knew I was home.
’cause I was never really well around the expectations of my personality
and I wanted to keep to myself.
and because I haven’t been very impressed lately.
By people,
or places.
Or the way someone said he loved me and then slowly changed his mind.
”
”
Charlotte Eriksson (Another Vagabond Lost To Love: Berlin Stories on Leaving & Arriving)
“
When the last autumn of Dickens's life was over, he continued to work through his final winter and into spring. This is how all of us writers give away the days and years and decades of our lives in exchange for stacks of paper with scratches and squiggles on them. And when Death calls, how many of us would trade all those pages, all that squandered lifetime-worth of painfully achieved scratches and squiggles, for just one more day, one more fully lived and experienced day? And what price would we writers pay for that one extra day spent with those we ignored while we were locked away scratching and squiggling in our arrogant years of solipsistic isolation?
Would we trade all those pages for a single hour? Or all of our books for one real minute?
”
”
Dan Simmons (Drood)
“
A doctor, a logician and a marine biologist had also just arrived, flown in at phenomenal expense from Maximegalon to try to reason with the lead singer who had locked himself in the bathroom with a bottle of pills and was refusing to come out till it could be proved conclusively to him that he wasn't a fish. The bass player was busy machine-gunning his bedroom and the drummer was nowhere on board.
Frantic inquiries led to the discovery that he was standing on a beach on Santraginus V over a hundred light years away where, he claimed, he had been happy for over half an hour now and had found a small stone that would be his friend.
”
”
Douglas Adams (The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #2))
“
Want the change. Be inspired by the flame
where everything shines as it disappears.
The artist, when sketching, loves nothing so much
as the curve of the body as it turns away.
What locks itself in sameness has congealed.
Is it safer to be gray and numb?
What turns hard becomes rigid
and is easily shattered.
Pour yourself like a fountain.
Flow into the knowledge that what you are seeking
finishes often at the start, and, with ending, begins.
Every happiness is the child of a separation
it did not think it could survive. And Daphne, becoming a laurel,
dares you to become the wind.
- Sonnets To Orpheus, Part Two, XII
”
”
Rainer Maria Rilke (Sonnets to Orpheus)
“
You humans are always locking each other away. Cells. Dungeons. Some of your earliest jails were sewers, where men sloshed in their own waste. No other creature has this arrogance—to confine its own. Could you imagine a bird imprisoning another bird? A horse jailing a horse? As a free form of expression, I will never understand it. I can only say that some of my saddest sounds have been heard in such places. A song inside a cage is never a song. It is a plea.
”
”
Mitch Albom (The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto)
“
So that still freaks you out, huh? That might be proof that it needs to happen.
His eyes locked on hers, refusing to let her look away. And when she swallowed, it was so loud, she was sure the whole world heard it.
Or, he said. We could skip the talking.
And do what? She asked, hating her voice for cracking.
Any ideas?
He was so close now, she could feel his breath warming her cheeks. He leaned a tiny bit closer and someone cleared his throat, very loudly.
”
”
Shannon Messenger
“
The shudder went all through him. Bones pressed me so close that his body ground into mine, jerking my head back with a thick handful of hair until our eyes locked. What had started out as a game was now an open challenge, as well as a direct threat. Any further action would bear results, it was clear from the way his gaze smoldered into mine. All of this should have frightened me, but it was as if my mind were incapable of rational thought. He was a vampire, a hit man, and had almost killed me...and nothing mattered more than the feel of him. I licked my lips and didn't pull away, and it was all the invitation he needed.
”
”
Jeaniene Frost
“
Lock reached for the French toast first, but Ric slapped his hand away and placed a carefully prepared plate in front of him. As Lock waited, Ric went to the counter and returned with a small strainer. He tapped the side, covering the French toast with powdered sugar. Somehow the wolf managed not to get any on Lock’s bacon or sausage. “There. Isn’t that nice?”
“I have to say our relationship is getting stranger and stranger as we get older.
”
”
Shelly Laurenston (The Mane Squeeze (Pride, #4))
“
The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them--words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were In your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.
”
”
Stephen King (The Body)
“
She kept her stare locked on his as she let go of his face and slowly, making sure he understood every step of the way,tilted her head back until her throat was arched and bared before him.
"Aelin," he breathed. Not in reprimand or warning, but... a plea. It sounded like a plea. He lowered his head to her exposed neck and hovered a hair's breath away.
She arched her neck farther, a silent invitation.
Rowan let out a soft groan and grazed his teeth against her skin.
One bite, one movement, was all it would take for him to rip out her throat.
His elongated canines slid along her flesh-gently, precisely. She clenched the sheets to keep from running her fingers down on his bare back and drawing him closer.
He braced one hand beside her head, his fingers twining in her hair.
"No one else," she whispered. "I would never allow anyone else at my throat." Showing him was the only way he'd understand that trust, in a manner that only the predatory, Fae side of him would comprehend. "No one else," she said again.
He let out another low groan, answer and confirmation and request, and the rumble echoed inside her. Carefully, he closed his teeth over the spot where her lifeblood thrummed and pounded, his breath hot on her skin.
She shut her eyes, every sense narrowing on that sensation, on the teeth and mouth at her throat, on the powerful body trembling with restraint above hers. His tongue flicked against her skin.
She made a small noise that might have been a moan, or a word, or his name. He shuddered and pulled back, the cool air kissing her neck. Wildness-pure wildness sparked in those eyes.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (Queen of Shadows (Throne of Glass, #4))
“
She was nobody here. It was not just that she had no friends and family; it was rather that she was a ghost in this room, in the streets on the way to work, on the shop floor. Nothing meant anything. The rooms in the house on Friary Street belonged to her, she thought; when she moved in them she was really there. In the town, if she walked to the shop or to the Vocational School, the air, the light, the ground, it was all solid and part of her, even if she met no one familiar. Nothing here was part of her. It was false, empty, she thought. She closed her eyes and tried to think, as she had done so many times in her life, of something she was looking forward to, but there was nothing. Not the slightest thing. Not even Sunday. Nothing maybe except sleep, and she was not even certain she was looking forward to sleep. In any case, she could not sleep yet, since it was not yet nine o’clock. There was nothing she could do. It was as though she had been locked away.
”
”
Colm Tóibín (Brooklyn)
“
Long Time. The famous seventeenth-century Ming painter Chou Yung relates a story that altered his behavior forever. Late one winter afternoon he set out to visit a town that lay across the river from his own town. He was bringing some important books and papers with him and had commissioned a young boy to help him carry them. As the ferry neared the other side of the river, Chou Yung asked the boatman if they would have time to get to the town before its gates closed, since it was a mile away and night was approaching. The boatman glanced at the boy, and at the bundle of loosely tied papers and books—“Yes,” he replied, “if you do not walk too fast.” As they started out, however, the sun was setting. Afraid of being locked out of the town at night, prey to local bandits, Chou and the boy walked faster and faster, finally breaking into a run. Suddenly the string around the papers broke and the documents scattered on the ground. It took them many minutes to put the packet together again, and by the time they had reached the city gates, it was too late. When you force the pace out of fear and impatience, you create a nest of problems that require fixing, and you end up taking much longer than if you had taken your time.
”
”
Robert Greene (The 48 Laws of Power)
“
I pray the tomb is shut forever," recited Harrowhawk, with the curious fervidity she always showed in prayer. " I pray the rock is never rolled away. I pray that which was buried remains buried, insensate, in perpetual rest, with closed eye and stilled brain. I pray it lives, I pray it sleeps ... I pray for the needs of the Emperor All-Giving, the Undying King, His Virtues and his men. I pray for the Second House, the Third, the Fourth, the Fifth; the Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth. I pray for the Ninth House, and I pray for it to be fruitful. I pray for the soldiers and adepts far from home, and all those parts of the Empire that live in unrest and disquiet. Let it be so.
”
”
Tamsyn Muir (Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #1))
“
However, narrating what you remember, telling it to someone, does something else. The more a person recalls a memory, the more they change it. Each time they put it into language, it shifts. The more you describe a memory, the more likely it is that you are making a story that fits your life, resolves the past, creates a fiction you can live with. It’s what writers do. Once you open your mouth, you are moving away from the truth of things. According to neuroscience. The safest memories are locked in the brains of people who can’t remember. Their memories remain the closest replica of actual events. Underwater. Forever.
”
”
Lidia Yuknavitch (The Chronology of Water)
“
I have to remind myself that some birds aren't meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright. And when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up does rejoice. Still, the place you live in is that much more drab and empty that they're gone. I guess I just miss my friend.
”
”
Stephen King (Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption)
“
Behold your future, Cavendish the Younger. You will not apply for membership, but the tribe of the elderly will claim you. Your present will not keep pace with the world's. This slippage will stretch your skin, sag your skeleton, erode your hair and memory, make your skin turn opaque so your twitching organs and blue-cheese veins will be semivisible. You will venture out only in daylight, avoiding weekends and school holidays. Language, too, will leave you behind, betraying your tribal affiliations whenever you speak. On escalators, on trunk roads, in supermarket aisles, the living will overtake you, incessantly. Elegant women will not see you. Store detectives will not see you. Salespeople will not see you, unless they sell stair lifts or fraudulent insurance policies. Only babies, cats, and drug addicts will acknowledge your existence. So do not fritter away your days. Sooner than you fear, you will stand before a mirror in a care home, look at your body, and think, E.T., locked in a ruddy cupboard for a fortnight.
”
”
David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas)
“
Do you ever feel like breaking down?
Do you ever feel out of place?
Like somehow you just don't belong
And no one understands you
Do you ever wanna run away?
Do you lock yourself in your room?
With the radio on turned up so loud
That no one hears you screaming
No you don't know what it's like
When nothing feels all right
You don't know what it's like
To be like me
To be hurt
To feel lost
To be left out in the dark
To be kicked when you're down
To feel like you've been pushed around
To be on the edge of breaking down
And no one's there to save you
No you don't know what it's like
Welcome to my life
”
”
Simple Plan
“
Creatures from another world, only statues when you see them. Lonely Assassins, that's what they used to be called. No one quite knows where they came from, but they're as old as the Universe, or very nearly. And they have survived this long because they have the most perfect defence system ever evolved. They are Quantum Locked. They don't exist when they are being observed. The moment they are seen by any other living creature they freeze into rock. No choice, it's a fact of their biology. In the sight of any living thing, they literally turn into stone. And you can't kill a stone. Of course, a stone can't kill you either, but then you turn your head away. Then you blink. Then, oh yes, it can. That's why they cover their eyes. They're not weeping, they can't risk looking at each other. Their greatest asset is their greatest curse. They can never be seen. Loneliest creatures in the Universe. And I'm sorry. I am very, very sorry. It's up to you now. Don't blink. Don't even blink. Blink and you're dead. They are fast. Faster than you can believe. Don't turn your back, don't look away, and DON'T blink. Good luck.
”
”
Steven Moffat
“
I've been locked in my own world for a really long time," he says. I have an excuse to keep people away, because of my disability. And then I saw your tattoo..." I turn his wrist over and trace my finger across it. He shudders at my touch, closing his eyes tightly. "And I felt like maybe, just maybe, we were locked in our own little worlds and could let each other out.
”
”
Tammy Falkner (Tall, Tatted and Tempting (The Reed Brothers, #1))
“
She's locked up with a spinning wheel
She can't recall what it was like to feel
She says, "This room's gonna be my grave
And there's no one who can save me,"
She sits down to her colored thread
She knows lovers waking up in their beds
She says, "How long can I live this way
Is there someone I can pay to let me go
'Cause I'm half sick of shadows
I want to see the sky
Everyone else can watch as the sun goes down
So why can't I
And it's raining
And the stars are falling from the sky
And the wind
And the wind I know it's cold
I've been waiting
For the day I will surely die
And it's here
And it's here for I've been told
That I'll die before I'm old
And the wind I know it's cold...
She looks up to the mirrored glass
She sees a horse and rider pass
She says, "This man's gonna be my death
'Cause he's all I ever wanted in my life
And I know he doesn't know my name
And that all the girls are all the same to him
But still I've got to get out of this place
'Cause I don't think I can face another night
Where I'm half sick of shadows
And I can't see the sky
Everyone else can watch as the tide comes in
So why can't I
But there's willow trees
And little breezes, waves, and walls, and flowers
And there's moonlight every single night
As I'm locked in these towers
So I'll meet my death
But with my last breath I'll sing to him I love
And he'll see my face in another place,"
And with that the glass above
Her cracked into a million bits
And she cried out, "So the story fits
But then I could have guessed it all along
'Cause now some drama queen is gonna write a song for me,"
She went down to her little boat
And she broke the chains and began to float away
And as the blood froze in her veins she said,
"Well then that explains a thing or two
'Cause I know I'm the cursed one
I know I'm meant to die
Everyone else can watch as their dreams untie
So why can't I
”
”
Emilie Autumn
“
The talk of pale, burning-eyed students, anarchists and utopians all, over tea and cigarettes in a locked room long past midnight, is next morning translated, with the literalness of utter innocence, into the throwing of the bomb, the shouting of the proud slogan, the dragging away of the young dreamer-doer, still smiling, to the dungeon and the firing squad.
”
”
Christopher Isherwood (A Single Man)
“
The window rattles without you, you bastard. The trees are the cause, rattling in the wind, you jerk, the wind scraping those leaves and twigs against my window. They'll keep doing this, you terrible husband, and slowly wear away our entire apartment building. I know all these facts about you and there is no longer any use for them. What will I do with your license plate number, and where you hid the key outside so we'd never get locked out of this shaky building? What good does it do me, your pants size and the blue cheese preference for dressing? Who opens the door in the morning now, and takes the newspaper out of the plastic bag when it rains? I'll never get back all the hours I was nice to your parents. I nudge my cherry tomatoes to the side of the plate, bastard, but no one is waiting there with a fork to eat them. I miss you and I love you, bastard bastard bastard, come and clean the onion skins out of the crisper and trim back the tree so I can sleep at night.
”
”
Daniel Handler (Adverbs)
“
Look,” said Harrowhark.
No murder, sorrow, or fear could ever touch Harrow Nonagesimus. Her tired eyes were alight. A lot of her paint had peeled away or been sweated off down in the facility, and the whole left side of her jaw was just grey-tinted skin. A hint of her humanity peeked through. She had such a peculiarly pointed little face, high browed and tippy everywhere, and a slanted and viscious mouth. She said irascibly, “At the key, moron, not at me.”
The moron looked at the key, but did give her the middle finger.
”
”
Tamsyn Muir (Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #1))
“
People talk about books being an escape, but here on the tube, this one feels more like a lifeline. As she leafs through the pages, the rest of it fades away: the flurry of elbows and purses, the woman in a tunic biting her fingernails, the two teenagers with blaring headphones, even the man playing the violin at the other end of the car, its reedy tune working its way through the crowd. The motion of the train makes her head rattle, but her eyes lock on the words the way a figure skater might choose a focal point as she spins, and just like that, she’s grounded again.
”
”
Jennifer E. Smith (The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight)
“
Nico leaned over the edge o the chasm, thrusting out his hand, but he was much too far away to help. Hazel was yelling for the others, but even if they heard her over the chaos, they'd never make it in time.
Annabeth's leg felt like it was pulling free of her body. Pain washed everything in red. The force of the Underworld tugged at her like dark gravity. She didn't have the strength to fight. She knew she was too far down to be saved.
"Percy, let me go," she croaked. "You can't pull me up."
His face was white with effort. She could see in his eyes that he knew it was hopeless.
"Never," he said. He looked up at Nico, fifteen feet above. "The other side, Nico We'll see you there. Understand?"
Nico's eyes widened. "But-"
"Lead them there!" Percy shouted. "Promise me!"
"I- will."
Below them, the voice laughed in the darkness. Sacrifices. Beautiful sacrifices to wake the goddess.
Percy tightened his grip on Annabeth's wrist. His face was gaunt, scraped and bloody, his hair dusted with cobwebs, but when he locked eyes with her, she thought he had never been more handsome.
"We're staying together," he promised. "You're not getting away from me. Never again."
Only then did she understand what would happen. A oneway trip. A very hard fall.
"As long as we're together," she said.
She heard Nico and Hazel still screaming for help. She saw the sunlight far, far above- maybe the last sunlight she would ever see.
Then Percy let go of his tiny ledge, and together, holding hands, he and Annabeth fell into the endless darkness.
”
”
Rick Riordan (The Mark of Athena (The Heroes of Olympus, #3))
“
Memories can be vile. Repulsive little brutes, like children I suppose. But can we live without them? Memories are what our reason is based upon. If we can't face them, we deny reason itself! Although, why not? We aren't contractually tied down to rationality. There is no sanity clause. So when you find yourself locked down in an unpleasant train of thought, heading for the places in your past where the screaming is unbearable, remember: There's always madness. You can just step outside and close the door, and all those dreadful things that happened, you can lock them away. Madness... is an emergency exit.
”
”
Alan Moore (Batman: The Killing Joke)
“
This whole thing happened because you wouldn't face up to Gideon dying.' he said, which was a stab as precise as any Nonius had managed. 'I don't blame you. But where would you be, right now, if you'd said: She is dead? You're keeping her things like a lover keeping old notes, but with her death, the stuff that made her Gideon was destroyed. That's how Lyctorhood works, isn't it? She died. She can't come back, even if you keep her stuffed away in a drawer you can't look at. You're not waiting for her resurrection; you've made yourself her mausoleum.
”
”
Tamsyn Muir (Harrow the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #2))
“
I want you, Elsie. All the time. I think of you. All. The. Fucking. Time. I’m distracted. I’m shit at work. And my first instinct, the very first time I saw you, was to run away. Because I knew that if we’d start doing this, we would never stop. And that’s exactly how it is. There is no universe in which I’m going to let you go. I want to be with you, on you, every second of every day. I think – I dream of crazy things. I want you to marry me tomorrow so you can go on my health insurance. I want to lock you in my room for a couple of weeks. I want to buy groceries based on what you like. I want to play it cool, like I’m attracted to you and not obsessed out of my mind, but that’s not where I’m at. Not at all. And I need you to keep us in check. I need you to pace us, because wherever it is that we’re going… I’m here. I’m already right here.
”
”
Ali Hazelwood (Love, Theoretically)
“
Roarke glanced over at the monitor briefly, saw Eve on screen facing a woman who'd tried to make herself her twin. The hair, the eyes.
She didn't come close, he thought, then forced himself to look away from the beat of his heart, and work to save her.
Roarke tuned it out, all of it. Just the sound of Eve's voice - not the words, just the sound of her voice - was all he let in as he worked to lift the most important lock of his life.
”
”
J.D. Robb (Obsession in Death (In Death, #40))
“
I heard that when white folks go fishin they do somethin called 'catch and release.'
Catch and release? I nodded solemnly, suddenly nervous and curious at the same time.
'That really bothers me', Denver went on. 'I just can't figure it out. 'Cause when colored folks go fishin, we really proud of what we catch, and we take it and show it off to everybody that'll look. Then we eat what we catch...in other words, we use it to SUSTAIN us. So it really bothers me that white folks would go to all the trouble to catch a fish, when when they done caught it, just throw it back in the water.'
He paused again, and the silence between us stretched a full minute. Then: 'Did you hear what I said?'
I nodded, afraid to speak, afraid to offend.
Denver looked away, searching the blue autumn sky, then locked onto me again with that drill-bit start. 'So, Mr. Ron, it occurred to me: If you is fishin for a friend you just gon' catch and release, then I ain't got no desire to be your friend.'
I returned Denver's gaze with what I hoped was a receptive expression and hung on.
Suddenly his eyes gentled and he spoke more softly than before: 'But if you is lookin for a REAL friend, then I'll be one. Forever.
”
”
Ron Hall (Same Kind of Different as Me: A Modern-Day Slave, an International Art Dealer, and the Unlikely Woman Who Bound Them Together)
“
The Death of Allegory
I am wondering what became of all those tall abstractions
that used to pose, robed and statuesque, in paintings
and parade about on the pages of the Renaissance
displaying their capital letters like license plates.
Truth cantering on a powerful horse,
Chastity, eyes downcast, fluttering with veils.
Each one was marble come to life, a thought in a coat,
Courtesy bowing with one hand always extended,
Villainy sharpening an instrument behind a wall,
Reason with her crown and Constancy alert behind a helm.
They are all retired now, consigned to a Florida for tropes.
Justice is there standing by an open refrigerator.
Valor lies in bed listening to the rain.
Even Death has nothing to do but mend his cloak and hood,
and all their props are locked away in a warehouse,
hourglasses, globes, blindfolds and shackles.
Even if you called them back, there are no places left
for them to go, no Garden of Mirth or Bower of Bliss.
The Valley of Forgiveness is lined with condominiums
and chain saws are howling in the Forest of Despair.
Here on the table near the window is a vase of peonies
and next to it black binoculars and a money clip,
exactly the kind of thing we now prefer,
objects that sit quietly on a line in lower case,
themselves and nothing more, a wheelbarrow,
an empty mailbox, a razor blade resting in a glass ashtray.
As for the others, the great ideas on horseback
and the long-haired virtues in embroidered gowns,
it looks as though they have traveled down
that road you see on the final page of storybooks,
the one that winds up a green hillside and disappears
into an unseen valley where everyone must be fast asleep.
”
”
Billy Collins
“
He looked down at himself and laughed softly. ‘‘My dark side dresses better than I do.’’ He stood up
and reached for clothes folded neatly on a table to the side as he loosened the tie on his robe. He hesitated, smiled, and raised his
eyebrows. ‘‘If you don’t mind, Claire . . . ?’’
‘‘Oh. Sorry.’’ Claire turned her back. She didn’t like turning her back on him, even with the cell door locked. He was better
behaved when he knew she was watching. She focused on the faint, distorted image of his reflection on the TV screen as he shed
the dressing gown and began to pull on his clothing. She couldn’t see much, except that he was very pale all over. Once she was
sure his pants were up, she glanced behind her. He had his back to her, and she couldn’t help but compare him with the only other
man she’d really studied half-naked. Shane was broad, strong, solid. Myrnin looked fragile, but his muscles moved like cables
under that pale skin—far stronger than Shane’s, she knew.
Myrnin turned as he buttoned his shirt. ‘‘It’s been a while since a pretty girl looked at me with such interest,’’ he said. She looked
away, feeling the blush work its heat up through her neck and onto her cheeks. ‘‘It’s all right, Claire. I’m not offended.
”
”
Rachel Caine (Feast of Fools (The Morganville Vampires, #4))
“
Oh,Mercer," he murmured against my temple once we'd come up for air, "we are so screwed."
I pressed my face against his neck, breathing him in. "I know."
"So what do we do?"
Reluctantly, I tried to move away. It was hard to think when he was so close to me. "If we were good people, we'd never see each other again."
His arms locked around my waist, pulling me back. "Okay,well, that's not happening. Plan B?"
I smiled up at him, feeling ridiculously giddy for someone on the verge of ruining her life. "I don't have one.You?"
He shook his head. "Nothing.But...look. I've spent basically my whole life pretending to be someone I'm not, faking some feelings, hiding others." Reaching down, he clasped my hand and lifted it so that our joined hands were trapped between our chests. "This thing with us is the only real thing I've had in a long time.You're the only real thing." He raised our hands and kissed my knuckles. "And I'm done pretending I don't want you."
I had read a lot about swooning in the romance novels Mom had tried to hide from me,but I'd never felt in danger of doing it until now. Which was why a snarky comment was definitely called for.
"Wow,Cross.I think you missed your calling.Screw demon hunting: you should clearly be writing Hallmark cards."
His face broke into that crooked grin that was maybe my favorite sight in the whole world. "Shut up," he muttered before lowering his head and kissing me again.
"Why is it," I said against his lips several moments later, "that we're always kissing in gross, dirty places like cellars and abandoned mills?"
He laughed, pressing kisses to my jaw, then my neck. "Next time it'll be a castle, I promise.This is England, after all. Can't be too hard to find one.
”
”
Rachel Hawkins (Demonglass (Hex Hall, #2))
“
Winter’s head snapped around, away from Scarlet. Scarlet’s pace slowed, dread pulsing through her as she, too, heard the footsteps. Pounding footsteps, like someone was running at full speed toward them. She reached for the knife Jacin had given her. A man barrelled around the corner, heading straight for the princess. Winter tensed half a second before he reached her. Grabbing Winter’s elbow, he yanked back the red hood.
Scarlet gasped. Her knees weakened. The man stared at Winter with a mixture of confusion and disappointment and maybe even anger, all locked up in eyes so vividly green that Scarlet could see them glowing from here. She was the one hallucinating now.
She took a stumbling, uncertain step forward. Wanting to run toward him, but terrified it was a trick. Her hand tightened around the knife handle as Wolf, ignoring how Winter was trying to pull away, grabbed her arm and smelled the filthy red sleeve of Scarlet’s hoodie, streaked with dirt and blood. He growled, ready to tear the princess apart. “Where did you get this?” So desperate, so determined, so him. The knife slipped out of Scarlet’s hand. Wolf’s attention snapped to her. “Wolf?” she whispered.
His eyes brightened, wild and hopeful. Releasing Winter, he strode forward. His tumultuous eyes scooped over her. Devoured her.
When he was in arm’s reach, Scarlet almost collapsed into him, but at the last moment she had the presence of mind to step back. She planted a hand on his chest. Wolf froze, hurt flickering across his face.
“I’m sorry,” said Scarlet, her voice teetering with exhaustion. “It’s just…I smell so awful, I can hardly stand to be around myself right now, so I can’t even imagine what it’s like for you with your sense of sm-“
Batting her hand away, Wolf dug his fingers into Scarlet’s hair and crushed his mouth against hers. Her protests died with a muffled gasp. This time, she did collapse, her legs unable to hold her a second longer. Wolf fell with her, dropping his knees to break Scarlet’s fall and cradling her body against his. He was here. He was here.
”
”
Marissa Meyer (Winter (The Lunar Chronicles, #4))
“
he was keeping track of time. It was nearly two hours since he had last looked at his watch, but he knew what time it was to within about twenty seconds. It was an old skill, born of many long wakeful nights on active service. When you're waiting for something to happen, you close your body down like a beach house in winter and you let your mind lock onto the steady pace of the passing seconds. It's like suspended animation. It saves energy and it lifts the responsibility for your heartbeat away from your unconscious brain and passes it on to some kind of a hidden clock. Makes a huge black space for thinking in. But it keeps you just awake enough to be reach for whatever you need to be ready for. And it means you always know what time it is.
”
”
Lee Child (Die Trying (Jack Reacher, #2))
“
To live a hard life was to make solid and impregnable every way in, until no openings remained and the soul hid in darkness, and no one else could hear its screams, its railing at injustice, its long, agonizing stretches of sadness. Hardness without created hardness within.
Sadness was, she well knew, not something that could be cured. It was not, in fact, a failing, not a flaw, not an illness of spirit. Sadness was never without reason, and to assert that it marked some kind of dysfunction did little more than prove ignorance or, worse, cowardly evasiveness in the one making the assertion. As if happiness was the only legitimate way of being. As if those failing at it needed to be locked away, made soporific with medications; as if the causes of sadness were merely traps and pitfalls in the proper climb to blissful contentment, things to be edged round or bridged, or leapt across on wings of false elation.
Scillara knew better. She had faced her own sadness often enough. Even when she discovered her first means of escaping it, in durhang, she’d known that such an escape was simply a flight from feelings that existed legitimately. She’d just been unable to permit herself any sympathy for such feelings, because to do so was to surrender to their truth.
Sadness belonged. As rightful as joy, love, grief and fear. All conditions of being.
Too often people mistook the sadness in others for self-pity, and in so doing revealed their own hardness of spirit, and more than a little malice.
”
”
Steven Erikson (Toll the Hounds (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #8))
“
Somewhere in the cosmos, he said, along with all the planets inhabited by humanoids, reptiloids, fishoids, walking treeoids and superintelligent shades of the color blue, there was also a planet entirely given over to ballpoint life forms. And it was to this planet that unattended ballpoints would make their way, slipping away quietly through wormholes in space to a world where they knew they could enjoy a uniquely ballpointoid lifestyle, responding to highly ballpoint-oriented stimuli, and generally leading the ballpoint equivalent of the good life.
And as theories go this was all very fine and pleasant until Veet Voojagig suddenly claimed to have found this planet, and to have worked there for a while driving a limousine for a family of cheap green retractables, whereupon he was aken away, locked up, wrote a book and was finally sent into tax exile, which is the usual fate reserved for those who are determined to make fools of themselves in public.
”
”
Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1))
“
But remember in tenth grade, when I wanted to go out with that junior and you said, ‘Eh. I don’t think she’s the right girl for you’?”
“She wasn’t.”
“Because she was setting things on fire!” Ric announced loudly, making Gwen burst out laughing and Lock roll his eyes. “I’m serious, Gwen.” Ric went on. “And when I say setting things on fire, I mean entire buildings. Mostly schools. She’d been setting them on fire or trying to, for weeks. I didn’t find out until the cops came and arrested her during gym class. But does he say to me, ‘She’s setting things on fire! She’s crazy! Stay away from her!’ No. He says, ‘Eh. I don’t think she’s the right girl for you.’ And he’s all calm about it over our chocolate pudding in the cafeteria.”
“I don’t see the point of getting hysterical.
”
”
Shelly Laurenston (The Mane Squeeze (Pride, #4))
“
1.
WE'VE LEFT SHORE SOMEHOW
BECOME THE FRIENDS
OF EARLY THEORY
CLOSE ENOUGH TO SPEAK
DESIRE AND PAIN OF ABSENCE
OF MISTAKES WE'D MAKE
GIVEN THE CHANCE.
EACH SMILE RETURNED
MAKES HARDER AVOIDING
DREAMS THAT SEE US
LYING IN EARLY EVENING
CURTAIN SHADOWS, SKIN
SAFE AGAINST SKIN.
BLOOM OF COMPASSION
RESPECT FOR MOMENTS
EYES LOCK TURNS
FOREVER INTO ONE MORE
VEIL THAT FALLS AWAY.
2.
THIS AFTER SEEING YOU
LAST NIGHT, FIRST TIME
SMELLING YOU WITH
PERMISSION: SHOULDERS TO
WONDER OPENLY AT
AS CAREFULLY KISSED
AS THOSE ARMS
WAITED IMPOSSIBLY ON.
THEY'VE HELD ME NOW
AND YOUR BREATH
DOWN MY BACK
SENT AWAY NIGHT AIR
THAT HAD ME SHAKING
IN THE UNLIT ANGLICAN
DOORWAY.
3.
ARE WE RUINED FOR
FINDING OUR FACES FIT
AND WANT TO KNOW MORE
ABOUT MORNING? IS
FRIENDSHIP CANCELLED
IF WE CAN'T CALL
EACH OTHER ANYMORE
IN AMNESIA, INVITE
OURSELVES TO LAST GLANCES
UNDER SUSPICIOUS CLOCKS
TELLING US WHEN WE'VE
HAD ENOUGH?
4.
YOUR STEADY HANDS
CRADLING MY GRATEFUL
SKULL: WERE YOU TAKING
IN MY FACE TO
SAVE AN IMAGE
YOU'VE RARELY ALLOWED
YOURSELF AFTER LEAVING
THAT COLD ALCOVE?
AM I A PHOTOGRAPH
YOU GAZE AT IN
MOMENTS OF WEAKNESS?
YOU ORDERED ME
OFF MY KNEES
INTO YOUR ARMS.
WASN'T TO BEG
THAT I KNELT; ONLY
TO SEE YOU ONCE
FROM BELOW.
TRIED TO SAY SOMETHING
THAT FILLED MY MOUTH
AND LONGED TO REST
IN YOUR EAR.
DON'T DARE WRITE
IT DOWN FOR FEAR IT'LL
BECOME WORDS, JUST
WORDS.
”
”
Viggo Mortensen (Coincidence of Memory)
“
Grow up with me,Let’s run in fields and through the dark together,Fall off swings and burn special things,And both play outside in bad weather,Let’s eat badly,Let’s watch adults drink wine and laugh at their idiocy,Let’s sit in the back of the car making eye contact with strangers driving past,Making them uncomfortable,Not caring, not swearing, don’t look,Let’s both reclaim our superpowers, The ones we all have and lose with our milk teeth,The ability not to fear social awkwardness,The panic when locked in the cellar, still sure there’s something down there,And while picking through pillows each feather,Let’s both stay away from the edge of the bed,Forcing us closer together,Let’s sit in public, with ice-cream all over both our faces,Sticking our tongues out at passers-by,Let’s cry, let’s swim, let’s everything,Let’s not find it funny, lest someone falls over,Classical music is boring,Poetry baffles us both,There’s nothing that’s said is what’s meant,Plays are long, tiresome, sullen and filled With hours that could be spent rolling down hills and grazing our knees on cement,Let’s hear stories and both lose our innocence,Learn about parents and forgiveness,Death and morality,Kindness and heart,Thus losing both of our innocent hearts,But at least we wont do it apart,Grow up with me.
”
”
Keaton Henson
“
What best remind us of a person is precisely what we had forgotten (because it was of no importance, and we therefore left it in full possession of its strength). That is why the better part of our memories exist outside us, in a blatter of rain, in the smell of an unaired room or of the first crackling brushwood fire in a cold grate: wherever, in short, we happen upon what our mind, having no use for it, had rejected, the last treasure that the past has in store, the richest, that which, when all our flow of tears seems to have dried at the source, can make us weep again. Outside us? Within us, rather, but hidden from our eyes in an oblivion more or less prolonged. It is thanks to this oblivion alone that we can from time to time recover the person that we were, place ourselves in relation to things as he was placed, suffer anew because we are no longer ourselves but he, and because he loved what now leaves us indifferent. In the broad daylight of our habitual memory the images of the past turn gradually pale and fade out of sight, nothing remains of them, we shall never recapture it. Or rather we should never recapture it had not a few words been carefully locked away in oblivion, just as an author deposits in the National Library a copy of a book which might otherwise become unobtainable.
”
”
Marcel Proust (Within a Budding Grove, Part 2)
“
<…>His body shook as his grin spread to a smile. Then he asked, "You honestly think you can tackle me?"
"I didn't say it would be a successful tackle."
And then my husband burst out laughing.
And I watched.
He didn't give this to me often but I always watched. This time it was way better because he was doing it while still inside me.
Then his laughter died to a chuckle, he dropped his forehead to mine and his hand came up and curled around the side of my neck.
And when he did the last, the laughter died, his eyes held mine and he whispered, "Is my mama home?"
I swallowed but I still knew my eyes got bright and my voice was husky when I whispered back, "Yes."
He closed his eyes, shifted the lower half of his face and touched his mouth to mine. Then he lifted his head away, opened his eyes and I felt his thumb stroke my jaw.
His gaze again locked with mine, he told me gently, "Missed you, baby."
I swallowed again and my arms and legs tightened around him. "Me too."<…>
”
”
Kristen Ashley
“
The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them—words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they’re brought out. But it’s more than that, isn’t it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you’ve said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That’s the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.
”
”
Stephen King (Different Seasons)
“
It's easy to mistake being innocent for being simpleminded or naive. We all want to seem sophisticated; we all want to seem street-smart. To be innocent is to be "out of it."
Yet there is a deep truth in innocence. A baby looks in his mother's eyes, and all he sees is love. As innocence fades away, more complicated things take its place. We think we need to outwit others and scheme to get what we want. We begin to spend a lot of energy protecting ourselves. Then life turns into a struggle. People have no choice but to be street-smart. How else can they survive?
When you get right down to it, survival means seeing things the way they really are and responding. It means being open. And that's what innocence is. It's simple and trusting like a child, not judgmental and committed to one narrow point of view. If you are locked into a pattern of thinking and responding, your creativity gets blocked. You miss the freshness and magic of the moment. Learn to be innocent again, and that freshness never fades.
”
”
Michael Jackson (Dancing the Dream: Poems and Reflections)
“
Rather than sleeping myself, I practiced. I practiced taking everything I'd seen in the last few days-every horror, every drop of blood-and locking it away, so deep in my mind that I could pretend that nothing had happened.
And then I practiced letting it out.
This time, I didn't start with a specific memory. I didn't walk myself step by step through a scene. Instead, I built a room inside my head-a tiny room with white walls and no windows and no doors. No way out.
In that room, I put the sound of screams, tearing flesh, and heavy breathing, the smell of rancid blood. Everything I'd been holding back, everything threatening to devour me whole was there-in the ceiling of that room, the corners, the floor.
”
”
Jennifer Lynn Barnes (Taken by Storm (Raised by Wolves, #3))
“
Hamlet's Cat's Soliloquy
"To go outside, and there perchance to stay
Or to remain within: that is the question:
Whether 'tis better for a cat to suffer
The cuffs and buffets of inclement weather
That Nature rains on those who roam abroad,
Or take a nap upon a scrap of carpet,
And so by dozing melt the solid hours
That clog the clock's bright gears with sullen time
And stall the dinner bell. To sit, to stare
Outdoors, and by a stare to seem to state
A wish to venture forth without delay,
Then when the portal's opened up, to stand
As if transfixed by doubt. To prowl; to sleep;
To choose not knowing when we may once more
Our readmittance gain: aye, there's the hairball;
For if a paw were shaped to turn a knob,
Or work a lock or slip a window-catch,
And going out and coming in were made
As simple as the breaking of a bowl,
What cat would bear the houselhold's petty plagues,
The cook's well-practiced kicks, the butler's broom,
The infant's careless pokes, the tickled ears,
The trampled tail, and all the daily shocks
That fur is heir to, when, of his own will,
He might his exodus or entrance make
With a mere mitten? Who would spaniels fear,
Or strays trespassing from a neighbor's yard,
But that the dread of our unheeded cries
And scraches at a barricaded door
No claw can open up, dispels our nerve
And makes us rather bear our humans' faults
Than run away to unguessed miseries?
Thus caution doth make house cats of us all;
And thus the bristling hair of resolution
Is softened up with the pale brush of thought,
And since our choices hinge on weighty things,
We pause upon the threshold of decision.
”
”
Henry N. Beard (Poetry for Cats: The Definitive Anthology of Distinguished Feline Verse)
“
Then what do you want?" she asked softly.
He shook his head without answering. But Sara knew. He wanted to be safe. If he were rich and powerful enough, he would never be hurt, lonely, or abandoned. He would never have to trust anyone. She continued to stroke his hair, playing lightly with the thick raven locks. 'Take a chance on me," she urged. "Do you really have so much to lose?"
He gave a harsh laugh and loosened his arms to release her. "More than you know."
Clinging to him desperately, Sara kept her mouth at his ear. "Listen to me." All she could do was play her last card. Her voice trembled with emotion. "You can't change the truth. You can act as though you're deaf and blind, you can walk away from me forever, but the truth will still be there, and you can't make it go away. I love you." She felt an involuntary tremor run through him. "I love you," she repeated. "Don't lie to either of us by pretending you're leaving for my good. All you'll do is deny us both a chance at happiness. I'll long for you every day and night, but at least my conscience will be clear. I haven't held anything back from you, out of fear or pride or stubbornness." She felt the incredible tautness of his muscles, as if he were carved from marble. "For once have the strength not to walk away," she whispered. "Stay with me. Let me love you, Derek."
He stood there frozen in defeat, with all the warmth and promise of her in his arms ... and he couldn't allow himself to take what she offered. He'd never felt so worthless, so much a fraud. Perhaps for a day, a week, he could be what she wanted. But no longer than that. He had sold his honor, his conscience, his body, anything he could use to escape the lot he'd been given in life. And now, with all his great fortune, he couldn't buy back what he'd sacrificed. Were he capable of tears, he would have shed them. Instead he felt numbing coldness spread through his body, filling up the region where his heart should have been. It wasn't difficult to walk away from her. It was appallingly easy.
Sara made an inarticulate sound as he extricated himself from her embrace. He left her as he had left the others, without looking back.
”
”
Lisa Kleypas (Dreaming of You (The Gamblers of Craven's, #2))
“
I drag the body out into the snowdrifts, as far away from our shack as I can muster. I put her in a thicket of trees, where the green seems to still have a voice in the branches, and try not to think about the beasts that’ll soon be gathering. There’s no way of burying her; the ground is a solid rock of ice beneath us.
I kneel beside her and want desperately to weep. My throat tightens and my head aches. Everything hurts inside. But I have no way of releasing it. I’m locked up and hard as stone.
“I’m sorry, Mamma,” I whisper to the shell in front of me. I take her hand. It could belong to a glass doll. There’s no life there anymore.
So I gather rocks, one by one, and set them over her, trying my best to protect her from the birds, the beasts, keep her safe as much as I can now. I pile the dark stones gently on her stomach, her arms, and over her face, until she becomes one with the mountain.
I stand and study my work, feeling like the rocks are on me instead, then I leave the body for the forest and ice.
”
”
Rachel A. Marks (Winter Rose)
“
James eyed Matthew. “Thomas,” he said, in a low voice. “Maybe a healing rune?”
Thomas nodded and approached Matthew cautiously, as one might approach a stray cat on the street. Some time ago James had discovered that healing runes sobered Matthew up: not entirely, but enough.
“Push up your sleeve, then, there’s a good fellow,” Thomas said, seating himself on the arm of Matthew’s chair. “Let’s wake you up and James can tell us whatever mad thing he has planned.”
“It seems somehow blasphemous to use Marks to rid oneself of the effects of alcohol,” Matthew added, as Thomas put his stele away. The Mark in question gleamed, new-made, on Matthew’s wrist. He looked already more clear-eyed, and less as if he were about to fall asleep or be sick.
“I’ve seen you use your stele to part your hair,” said James dryly, as he began to examine the window locks.
“The Angel gave me this hair,” replied Matthew. “It’s one of the Shadowhunters’ gifts. Like the Mortal Sword.”
“Now that is blasphemy,” said Thomas.
”
”
Cassandra Clare (Chain of Gold (The Last Hours, #1))
“
I should’ve just made something up and gotten the favor over with.” “You probably should have. But you didn’t, so . . . I win!” He shook his hair, flashing his most adorably confident smile, “And I gotta say, I kinda get why you hesitated with this. It’s a big decision. I mean, on the one hand, I could go for the obvious and make you share whatever secret you keep almost telling me.” Sophie’s mouth turned to sandpaper. “So that still freaks you out, huh? That might be proof that it needs to happen.” His eyes locked onto hers, refusing to let her look away. And when she swallowed, it was so loud, she was sure the entire world heard it. “Or,” he said. “We could skip the talking.” “And do what?” she asked, hating her voice for cracking. “Any ideas?” He was so close now, she could feel his breath warming her cheeks. He leaned a tiny bit closer and someone cleared his throat—very loudly.
”
”
Shannon Messenger (Lodestar (Keeper of the Lost Cities, #5))
“
Cam’s grin was wicked as his hand coasted up my waist to cup my breast. He squeezed it, setting off a weird mixture of painful tenderness and a bolt of lust to my sex.
“My eyes!” Cole yelled.
Cam and I jerked apart, and I twisted my head to see my brother standing in the doorway in his pyjamas, his hair falling in wet locks across his forehead. His forearm covered his eyes. “I’m fucking blind,” he growled and turned around, bumping into the wall before remembering to drop his arm. After that he stomped out of the flat, the door slamming in his wake.
Horrified, I looked up into Cam’s face, my eyes wide. “I think I should let him get away with using the ‘f’ word on this occasion.”
Cam snorted, laughter sputtering as he dropped his head to my chest, his whole body shaking with amusement.
I felt an irrepressible giggle escape me despite my mortification for myself and Cole. “It’s not funny. We’ve scarred him. I better check on him.”
Cam shook his head, his eyes bright with mirth. “You’re the last person he wants to see right now … I’m sure he’s barricaded himself in his room and is doing anything he can to burn the image of me dry-humping his sister out of his mind.
”
”
Samantha Young (Down London Road (On Dublin Street, #2))
“
My time in camp with Kaden had become awkward several times, or perhaps I was just more self-conscious now.
I had known he cared about me. It was hardly a secret. It was the reason I was still alive, but I hadn’t quite grasped how much he cared. And in spite of myself, I knew in my own way, I cared about him too. Not Kaden the assassin, but the Kaden I had known back in Terravin, the one who had caught my attention the minute he walked through the tavern door. The one who was calm and had mysterious, but kind, eyes.
I remembered dancing with him at the festival, his arms pulling me closer, and the way he struggled with his thoughts, holding them back. He didn’t hold back the night he was drunk. The fireshine had loosened his lips and he laid it all out quite blatantly. Slurred and sloshy but clear. He loved me. This from a barbarian who was sent to kill me.
I lay back, staring into the cloudless sky, a shade bluer and brighter than yesterday.
Did he even know what love was? For that matter, did I? Even my parents didn’t seem to know. I crossed my arms behind my head as a pillow. Maybe there was no one way to define it. Maybe there were as many shades of love as the blues of the sky.
I wondered if his interest had begun when I tended his shoulder. I remembered his odd look of surprise when I touched him, as if no one had ever shown him a kindness before. If Griz, Finch, and Malich were any indication of his past, maybe no one had. They showed a certain steely devotion to one another, but it in no way resembled kindness. And then there were those scars on his chest and back. Only cruel savage could have delivered those. Yet somewhere along the way, Kaden had learned kindness. Tenderness, even. It surfaced in small actions. He seemed like he was two separate people, the intensely loyal Vendan assassin and someone else far different, someone he had locked away, a prisoner just like me.
”
”
Mary E. Pearson (The Kiss of Deception (The Remnant Chronicles, #1))
“
I have that old sinking feeling. I've been overly available, sickeningly sweet and forever enabling all in the name of being 'liked.' I've compromised myself. I've suffered fools, idiots and dullards. I've gone on far too many dates with men because I felt guilty that they liked me more than I liked them. I've fallen deeply and madly I'm love with men I've never met just because I thought they looked 'deep.' I've built whole futures with men I hardly knew; I've planned weddings and named invisible children based on a side glance. I've made chemistry where there was none. I've forced intimacy while building higher Walls. I've been alone in a two year relationship. I've faked more orgasms than I can count while being comfortable with no affection at all.
I realise I have to make a decision right here and now. Do I go back to the sliver of a person I was before or do I, despite whatever bullshit happened tonight, hold on to this... This authenticity? If I go back to the the way I was before tonight, I'll have to compromise myself, follow rules with men who have none, hold my tongue, be quiet and laugh at shitty jokes. I have to never be challenged, yet be called challenging when I have an opinion or, really, speak at all. I'll never be torched by someone and get goosebumps again. I'll never be outside of myself. I'll never let go. I'll never lose myself. I'll never know what real love is - both for someone else and for me. I'll look back on this life and wish I could do it all over again. I finally see the consequences of that life. The path more travelled only led to someone else's life: an idealised, saturated world of White picket fences and gingham tablecloths. A life where the real me is locked away. Sure i had a plus-one but at what price? No. No matter how awkward and painful this gets, I can't go back.
”
”
Liza Palmer (More Like Her)
“
Smiling victoriously, he crushed me against his chest and kissed me again. This time, the kiss was bolder and playful. I ran my hands from his powerful shoulders, up to his neck, and pressed him close to me.
When he pulled away, his face brightened with an enthusiastic smile. He scooped me up and spun me around the room, laughing. When I was thoroughly dizzy, he sobered and touched his forehead to mine. Shyly, I reached out to touch his face, exploring the angles of his cheeks and lips with my fingertips. He leaned into my touch like the tiger did. I laughed softly and ran my hands up into his hair, brushing it away from his forehead, loving the silky feel of it.
I felt overwhelmed. I didn’t expect a first kiss to be so…life altering. In a few brief moments, the rule book of my universe had been rewritten. Suddenly I was a brand new person. I was as fragile as a newborn, and I worried that the deeper I allowed the relationship to progress, the worse that the deeper I allowed the relationship to progress, the worse it would be if Ren left. What would become of us? There was no way to know, and I realized what a breakable and delicate thing a heart was. No wonder I’d kept mine locked away.
He was oblivious to my negative thoughts, and I tried to push them into the back of my mind and enjoy the moment with him. Setting me down, he briefly kissed me again and pressed soft kisses along my hairline and neck. Then, he gathered me into a warm embrace and just held me close. Stroking my hair while caressing my neck, he whispered soft words in his native language. After several moments, he sighed, kissed my cheek, and nudged me toward the bed.
“Get some sleep, Kelsey. We both need some.”
After one last caress on my cheek with the back of his fingers, he changed into his tiger form and lay down on the mat beside my bed. I climbed into bed, settled under my quilt, and leaned over to stroke his head.
Tucking my other arm under my cheek, I softly said, “Goodnight, Ren.”
He rubbed his head against my hand, leaned into it, and purred quietly. Then he put his head on his paws and closed his eyes.
Mae West, a famous vaudeville actress, once said, “A man’s kiss is his signature.” I grinned to myself. If that was true, then Ren’s signature was the John Hancock of kisses.
”
”
Colleen Houck (Tiger's Curse (The Tiger Saga, #1))
“
He hit her with his best smile. Her eyes widened. She took a deep breath. 'Oh no, not that seductive face. I'm overcome with the need to take off these awful clothes. What is happening? I do not understand. Oooh. Ahhh.' She touched her wrist to her forehead. 'Somebody help me. I'm being drenched with my own fluids.'
Evil woman.
'See now, you shouldn't have done that,' Kaldar said.
She gave him an innocent look.
'You've made yourself into a challenge. Now I'll have to seduce you out of principle.'
'You can try. Not that you'll get anywhere. If you were in love, that would be one thing, but we both know this is pride talking.' Audrey patted his forearm. 'It's all right. I won't tell anybody about your shameful failure. I'll keep it completely confidential.' She pretended to lock her lips and throw away the key.
'I'll remind you of this when you're collapsing on my sheets, all happy and out of breath.' He leaned closer. "I'm picturing it in my head. Mmm, you look lovely.'
'Whatever fantasies help you get through the day.' Audrey said.
'So kind of you.'
'I'm all about being charitable when it doesn't cost me anything.'
Charity? For me?
Before this was all over, either they would be lovers or they'd kill each other. Right now, he had no idea which it would be.
”
”
Ilona Andrews (Fate's Edge (The Edge, #3))
“
Pink Balloons
My name is Olivia King
I am five years old
My mother bought me a balloon. I remember the day she walked through the front door with it. The curly hot pink ribbon
trickling
down her arm,
wrapped
around her
wrist
. She was
smiling
at me as she
untied
the ribbon and wrapped it around my hand.
"Here Livie, I bought this for you."
She called me Livie.
I was so
happy
. I'd
never
had a
balloon
before. I mean, I always saw balloon wrapped around
other
kids wrist in the parking lot of
Wal-Mart
, but I never
dreamed
I would have my very
own.
My
very own
pink balloon.
I was
excited!
So
ecstatic!
So
thrilled!
i couldn't
believe
my mother bought me something! She'd
never
bought me
anything
before! I played with it for
hours
. It was full of
helium
and it
danced
and
swayed
and
floated
as I
drug
it around from
room
to
room
with me, thinking of places to take it. Thinking of places the balloon had
never
been before. I took it in the
bathroom
, the
closet
, the
laundry room
, the
kitchen
, the
living room
. I wanted my new best friend to see
everything
I saw! I took it to my mother's
bedroom!
My mothers
Bedroom?
Where I wasn't supposed to be?
With my pink
balloon...
I
covered
my ears as she
screamed
at me,
wiping
the
evidence
off her
nose!
She
slapped
me across the face as she told me how
bad
I was! How much I
misbehaved!
How I never
listened!
She
shoved
me into the hallways and
slammed
the door, locking my pink balloon inside with her. I wanted him
back!
He was
my
best friend!
Not her!
The pink ribbon was
still
tied around my
wrist
so I
pulled
and
pulled
, trying to get my new best friend
away
from her.
And
it
popped.
My name is Eddie.
I'm seventeen years old.
My birthday is next week. I'll be big One-Eight. My foster dad is buying me these boots I've been wanting. I'm sure my friends will take me out to eat. My boyfriend will buy me a gift, maybe even take me to a movie. I'll even get a nice little card from my foster care worker, wishing me a happy eighteenth birthday, informing me I've aged out of the system.
I'll have a good time. I know I will.
But there's
one
thing I know
for
sure
I better not get any
shitty ass pink balloons!
”
”
Colleen Hoover (Slammed (Slammed, #1))
“
In Chloe, a great city, the people who move through the streets are all strangers. At each encounter, they imagine a thousand things about one another; meetings which could take place between them, conversations, surprises, caresses, bites. But no one greets anyone; eyes lock for a second, then dart away, seeking other eyes, never stopping.
A girl comes along, twirling a parasol on her shoulder, and twirling slightly also her rounded hips. A woman in black comes along, showing her full age, her eyes restless beneath her veil, her lips trembling. At tattooed giant comes along; a young man with white hair; a female dwarf; two girls, twins, dressed in coral. Something runs among them, an exchange of glances link lines that connect one figure with another and draws arrows, stars, triangles, until all combinations are used up in a moment, and other characters come on to the scene: a blind man with a cheetah on a leash, a courtesan with an ostrich-plume fan, an ephebe, a Fat Woman. And thus, when some people happen to find themselves together, taking shelter from the rain under an arcade, or crowding beneath an awning of the bazaar, or stopping to listen to the band in the square, meetings, seductions, copulations, orgies are consummated among them without a word exchanged, without a finger touching anything, almost without an eye raised.
A voluptuous vibration constantly stirs Chloe, the most chaste of cities. If men and women began to live their ephemeral dreams, every phantom would become a person with whom to begin a story of pursuits, pretenses, misunderstandings, clashes, oppressions, and the carousel of fantasies would stop.
”
”
Italo Calvino
“
Swallowing hard, she looked at him.
He raised his eyes from the frothy concoction on his spoon at the precise moment she looked up, and their gazes
locked over the length of the polished wood table. Where would you drip whipped cream on him, Lisa? The answer
came with frightening swiftness and conviction: Everywhere. She wanted to explore his body, the hard ripples, the smooth skin. The candlelight bathed his olive skin with a golden hue, and his dark good looks were set off perfectly by his linen shirt and the splash of black and crimson draped across his chest. He was mesmerizing.
"Are you hungry, lass?" He licked his spoon languidly. She couldn't tear her gaze away. "No. I've eaten quite
enough," she managed.
"You seem to be watching my dessert most intently. Are you certain there isn't something else you wish to sate your appetite?"
Besides you to remove your clothing, lie on the table, and let me finger paint you with whipped cream, you mean?
"Nope," she said casually. "Not a thing." She watched him for a moment; he still had a great deal of dessert left. How was she going to get through this?
”
”
Karen Marie Moning (The Highlander's Touch (Highlander, #3))
“
I don't want your apology, least of all for being afraid," he said. "Without fear, what would we be? Mad dogs with foam on our muzzles and shit drying on our hocks." "What do you want, then?" Eddie cried. "You've taken everything else- everything I have to give! No, not even that, because in the end, I gave it to you! So what else do you want from me?" Roland held the key which was their half of Jake Chamber's salvation locked in his fist and said nothing. His eyes held Eddie's, and the sun shone on the green expanse of plain and the blue-gray reach of the Send River, and somewhere in the distance the crow hailed again across the golden leagues of this fading summer afternoon. After awhile, understanding began to dawn in Eddie Dean's eyes. Roland nodded. "I have forgotten the face. . ." Eddie paused. Dipped his head. Swallowed. Looked up at the Gunslinger once more. The thing which had been dying among them had moved on now- Roland knew it. That thing was gone. Just like that. Here, on this sunny wind-swept ridge at the edge of everything, it had gone forever. "I have forgotten the face of my father, gunslinger. . . and I cry your pardon." Roland opened his hand and returned the small burden of the key to him who ka had decreed must carry it. "Speak not so, gunslinger," he said in the High Speech. "Your father sees you very well. . . loves you very well . . . and so do I." Eddie closed his own hand over the key and turned away with his tears still drying on his face. "Let's go," he said, and they began to move down the long hill toward the plain which streched beyond.
”
”
Stephen King
“
{Yogananda on the death of his dear friend, the eminent 20th century scientist, Luther Burbank}
His heart was fathomlessly deep, long acquainted with humility, patience, sacrifice. His little home amid the roses was austerely simple; he knew the worthlessness of luxury, the joy of few possessions. The modesty with which he wore his scientific fame repeatedly reminded me of the trees that bend low with the burden of ripening fruits; it is the barren tree that lifts its head high in an empty boast.
I was in New York when, in 1926, my dear friend passed away. In tears I thought, 'Oh, I would gladly walk all the way from here to Santa Rosa for one more glimpse of him!' Locking myself away from secretaries and visitors, I spent the next twenty-four hours in seclusion...
His name has now passed into the heritage of common speech. Listing 'burbank' as a transitive verb, Webster's New International Dictionary defines it: 'To cross or graft (a plant). Hence, figuratively, to improve (anything, as a process or institution) by selecting good features and rejecting bad, or by adding good features.'
'Beloved Burbank,' I cried after reading the definition, 'your very name is now a synonym for goodness!
”
”
Yogananda (Autobiography of a Yogi)
“
Songs of the Soul
On a dark night,
Inflamed by love-longing -
O exquisite risk! -
Undetected I slipped away.
My house, at last, grown still.
Secure in the darkness,
I climbed the secret ladder in disguise -
O exquisite risk! -
Concealed by the darkness.
My house, at last, grown still.
That sweet night: a secret.
Nobody saw me;
I did not see a thing.
No other light, no other guide
Than the one burning in my heart.
This light led the way
More clearly than the risen sun
To where he was waiting for me
- The one I knew so intimately -
In a place where no one could find us.
O night, that guided me!
O night, sweeter than sunrise!
O night, that joined lover with Beloved!
Lover transformed in Beloved!
Upon my blossoming breast,
Which I cultivated just for him,
He drifted into sleep,
And while I caressed him,
A cedar breeze touched the air.
Wind blew down from the tower,
Parting the locks of his hair.
With his gentle hand
He wounded my neck
And all my senses were suspended.
I lost myself. Forgot myself.
I lay my face against the Beloved's face.
Everything fell away and I left myself behind,
Abandoning my cares
Among the lilies, forgotten.
”
”
Juan de la Cruz (Dark Night of the Soul (Illustrated))
“
If you're anything like me,
You bite your nails,
And laugh when you're nervous.
You promise people the world,
because that's what they want from you.
You like giving them what they want...
But darling, you need to stop,
If you're anything like me,
You knock on wood every time you make plans.
You cross your fingers, hold your breath,
Wish on lucky numbers and eyelashes
Your superstitions were the lone survivors of the shipwreck.
Rest In Peace, to your naive bravado...
If life gets too good now,
Darling, it scares you.
If you're anything like me,
You never wanted to lock your door,
Your secret garden gate or your diary drawer
Didn't want to face the you you don't know anymore
For fear she was much better before...
But Darling, now you have to.
If you're anything like me,
There's a justice system in your head
For names you'll never speak again,
And you make your ruthless rulings.
Each new enemy turns to steel
They become the bars that confine you,
In your own little golden prison cell...
But Darling, there is where you meet yourself.
If you're anything like me
You've grown to hate your pride
To love your thighs
And no amount of friends at 25
Will fill the empty seats
At the lunch tables of your past
The teams that picked you last...
But Darling, you keep trying.
If you're anything like me,
You couldn't recognize the face of your love
Until they stripped you of your shiny paint
Threw your victory flag away
And you saw the ones who wanted you anyway...
Darling, later on you will thank your stars
for that frightful day.
If you're anything like me,
I'm sorry.
But Darling, it's going to be okay.
”
”
Taylor Swift
“
Tristan?”
He turned his face to me, and it was streaked with tears. I wanted to wipe them away, tell him that everything would be all right, but my body was locked stiff with pain.
“Promise me you’ll get better,” he whispered. “Tell me you’ll grow strong again. That you’ll gallop on horseback through summer meadows. Dance in spring rains and let snowflakes melt on your tongue in winter. That you’ll travel wherever the wind takes you. That you’ll live.” He stroked my hair. “Promise me.”
Confusion crept over me. “You’ll be with me, though. You’ll do those things too?”
He kissed my lips, silencing my questions. “Promise me.”
“No,” I said, struggling against him.. “No, you said you were coming with me. You said. You promised.” He had to be coming with me - he said he was and Tristan couldn’t lie. Wouldn’t lie.
He got to his feet and stepped into the water. I tried to struggle, but he was too strong. “Tristian, no, no, no!” I tried to scream, but I couldn’t. I tried to hold on to him, but my fingers wouldn’t work. The cold of the water bit into my skin and I sobbed, terrified. “You said you would never leave me!”
He stopped, the weight of his sorrow greater than any mountain. “And if I had the choice, I never would. I love you, Cécile. I will love you until the day I take my last breath and that is the truth. “ He kissed me hard. “Forgive me.
”
”
Danielle L. Jensen (Stolen Songbird (The Malediction Trilogy, #1))
“
Yesterday it was sun outside. The sky was blue and people were lying under blooming cherry trees in the park. It was Friday, so records were released, that people have been working on for years. Friends around me find success and level up, do fancy photo shoots and get featured on big, white, movie screens. There were parties and lovers, hand in hand, laughing perfectly loud,
but I walked numbly through the park, round and round,
40 times for 4 hours
just wanting to make it through the day.
There's a weight that inhabits my chest some times. Like a lock in my throat, making it hard to breathe. A little less air got through
and the sky was so blue I couldn’t look at it because it made me sad, swelling tears in my eyes and they dripped quietly on the floor as I got on with my day. I tried to keep my focus, ticked off the to-do list, did my chores. Packed orders, wrote emails, paid bills and rewrote stories,
but the panic kept growing, exploding in my chest. Tears falling on the desk
tick tick tick
me not making a sound
and some days I just don't know what to do. Where to go or who to see and I try to be gentle, soft and kind,
but anxiety eats you up and I just want to be fine.
This is not beautiful. This is not useful. You can not do anything with it and it tries to control you, throw you off your balance and lovely ways
but you can not let it.
I cleaned up. Took myself for a walk. Tried to keep my eyes on the sky. Stayed away from the alcohol, stayed away from the destructive tools we learn to use.
the smoking and the starving, the running, the madness,
thinking it will help but it only feeds the fire
and I don't want to hurt myself anymore.
I made it through and today I woke up, lighter and proud because I'm still here. There are flowers growing outside my window. The coffee is warm, the air is pure. In a few hours I'll be on a train on my way to sing for people who invited me to come, to sing, for them. My own songs, that I created. Me—little me. From nowhere at all.
And I have people around that I like and can laugh with, and it's spring again.
It will always be spring again.
And there will always be a new day.
”
”
Charlotte Eriksson
“
Hi.” I caught a flash of his smile as he bent to kiss me. His lips were warm and his kiss was sweet. Gentle. He only deepened the kiss a little while his hand slid into my hair and his other hand curved into the small of my back.
I smiled as he pulled away. “Hi.”
“That’s better.” He cupped my cheek in his hand, his thumb tracing the curve of my cheekbone. “I’ve missed you since yesterday. Is that weird? Does that make me one of those stalker guys?”
“Only if you follow me home. Cut off a lock of my hair while I sleep. Something like that.”
“I thought I’d save that for next weekend.” He bent to kiss me again but swerved at the last second to brush his lips against my cheek instead. “I have a theory about you, Emily Parker.”
“You do?”
“I do.” Another kiss on my cheek, and then his teeth grazed my earlobe, and I shivered. “I don’t think you’ve ever been wooed. Have you?” The words were a low whisper in my ear, and the shiver intensified.
“Wooed?” The word felt strange in my mouth.
“Wooed,” he repeated, punctuating the word with a kiss on my other cheek. “Courted. Swept off your feet. Had someone show you how you make him feel.”
“I . . . I can’t say that I have.” That was an understatement.
“Then brace yourself.” He straightened up and backed away from me a step or two. “I’m going to woo your ass off.
”
”
Jen DeLuca (Well Met (Well Met, #1))
“
I see things in windows and I say to myself that I want them. I want them because I want to belong. I want to be liked by more people, I want to be held in higher regard than others. I want to feel valued, so I say to myself to watch certain shows. I watch certain shows on the television so I can participate in dialogues and conversations and debates with people who want the same things I want. I want to dress a certain way so certain groups of people are forced to be attracted to me. I want to do my hair a certain way with certain styling products and particular combs and methods so that I can fit in with the In-Crowd. I want to spend hours upon hours at the gym, stuffing my body with what scientists are calling 'superfoods', so that I can be loved and envied by everyone around me. I want to become an icon on someone's mantle. I want to work meaningless jobs so that I can fill my wallet and parentally-advised bank accounts with monetary potential. I want to believe what's on the news so that I can feel normal along with the rest of forever. I want to listen to the Top Ten on Q102, and roll my windows down so others can hear it and see that I am listening to it, and enjoying it. I want to go to church every Sunday, and pray every other day. I want to believe that what I do is for the promise of a peaceful afterlife. I want rewards for my 'good' deeds. I want acknowledgment and praise. And I want people to know that I put out that fire. I want people to know that I support the war effort. I want people to know that I volunteer to save lives. I want to be seen and heard and pointed at with love. I want to read my name in the history books during a future full of clones exactly like me.
The mirror, I've noticed, is almost always positioned above the sink. Though the sink offers more depth than a mirror, and mirror is only able to reflect, the sink is held in lower regard. Lower still is the toilet, and thought it offers even more depth than the sink, we piss and shit in it. I want these kind of architectural details to be paralleled in my every day life. I want to care more about my reflection, and less about my cleanliness. I want to be seen as someone who lives externally, and never internally, unless I am able to lock the door behind me.
I want these things, because if I didn't, I would be dead in the mirrors of those around me. I would be nothing. I would be an example. Sunken, and easily washed away.
”
”
Dave Matthes
“
I think we're the only ones in the building," he says.
"Then no one will mind when I do this!" I jump onto the desk and parade back and forth. St. Clair belts out a song, and I shimmy to the sound of his voice. When he finishes,I bow with a grand flourish.
"Quick!" he says.
"What?" I hop off the desk. Is Nate here? Did he see?
But St. Clair runs to the stairwell. He throws open the door and screams. The ehco makes us both jump, and then together we scream again at the top of our lungs. It's exhilarating. St. Clair chases me to the elevator,and we ride it to the rooftop. He hangs back but laughs as I spit off the side, trying to hit a lingerie advertisement. The wind is fierce,and my aim is off,so I race back down two flights of stairs. Our staircase is wide and steady, so he's only a few feet behind me. We reach his floor.
"Well," he says. Our conversation halts for the first time in hours.
I look past him. "Um.Good night."
"See you tomorrow? Late breakfast at the creperie?"
"That'd be nice."
"Unless-" he cuts himself off.
Unless what? He's hesitant, changed his mind. The moment passes. I give him one more questioning look, but he turns away.
"Okay." It's hard to keep the disappointment out of my voice. "See you in the morning." I take the steps down and glance back.He's staring at me. I lift my hand and wave. He's oddly statuesque. I push through the door to my floor,shaking my head. I don't understand why things always go from perfect to weird with us. It's like we're incapable of normal human interaction. Forget about it,Anna.
The stairwell door bursts open.
My heart stops.
St. Clair looks nervous. "It's been a good day. This was the first good day I've had in ages." He walks slowly toward me. "I don't want it to end. I don't want to be alone right now."
"Uh." I can't breathe.
He stops before me,scanning my face. "Would it be okay if I stayed with you? I don't want to make you uncomfortable-"
"No! I mean..." My head swims. I can hardly think straight. "Yes. Yes, of course,it's okay."
St. Clair is still for a moment. And then he nods.
I pull off my necklace and insert my key into the lock. He waits behind me. My hand shakes as I open the door.
”
”
Stephanie Perkins (Anna and the French Kiss (Anna and the French Kiss, #1))
“
It was during those long and lonely years that my hunger for the freedom of my own people became a hunger for the freedom of all people, White and black. I knew as well as I knew anything that the oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the oppressed. A man who takes away another man’s freedom is a prisoner of hatred, he is locked behind the bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness. I am not truly free if I am taking away someone else’s freedom, just as surely as I am not free when my freedom is taken from me. The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity.
When I walked out of prison, that was my mission, to liberate the oppressed and the oppressor both. Some say that has now been achieved. But I know that that is not the case. The truth is that we are not yet free; we have merely achieved the freedom to be free, the right not to be oppressed. We have not taken the final step of our journey, but the first step on a longer and even more difficult road. For to be free is not merely to castoff one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others. The true test of our devotion to freedom is just beginning.
I have walked that long road to freedom. I have tried not to falter; I have made missteps along the way. But I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb. I have taken a moment here to rest, to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on the distance I have come. But I can rest only for a moment, for with freedom come responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not yet ended.
”
”
Nelson Mandela (Long Walk to Freedom)
“
As for us,Etienne was right.Our schools are only a twenty-minute transit ride away.He'll stay with me on the weekends, and we'll visit each other as often as possible during the week. We'll be together.We both got our Point Zero wishes-each other.He said he wished for me every time.He was wishing for me when I entered the tower.
"Mmm," I say.He's kissing my neck.
"That's it," Rashmi says. "I'm outta here.Enjoy your hormones."
Josh and Mer follow her exit,and we're alone.Just the way I like it.
"Ha!" Ettiene says. "Just the way I like it."
He pulls me onto his lap,and I wrap my legs around his waist.His lips are velvet soft,and we kiss until the streetlamps flicker on outside. Until the opera singer begins her evening routine. "I'm going to miss her," I say.
"I'll sing to you." He tucks my stripe behind my ear. "Or I'll take you to the opera.Or I'll fly you back here to visit. Whatever you want.Anything you want."
I lace my fingers through his. "I want to stay right here,in this moment."
"Isn't that the name of the latest James Ashley bestseller? In This Moment?"
"Careful.Someday you'll meet him, and he won't be nearly as amusing in person."
Etienne grins. "Oh,so he'll only be mildly amusing? I suppose I can handle mildly amusing."
"I'm serious! You have to promise me right now,this instant,that you won't leave me once you meet him.Most people would run."
"I'm not most people."
I smile. "I know.But you still have to promise."
His eyes lock on mine. "Anna,I promise that I will never leave you."
My heart pounds in response.And Etienne knows it,because he takes my hand and holds it against his chest,to show me how hard his heart is pounding, too. "And now for yours," he says.
I'm still dazed. "My what?"
He laughs. "Promise you won't flee once I introduce you to my father.Or, worse, leave me for him."
I pause. "Do you think he'll object to me?"
"Oh,I'm sure he will."
Okay.Not the answer I was looking for.
Etienne sees my alarm. "Anna.You know my father dislikes anything that makes me happy.And you make me happier than anyone ever has." He smiles. "Oh,yes. He'll hate you."
"So....that's a good thing?"
"I don't care what he thinks.Only what you think." He holds me tighter. "Like if you think I need to stop biting my nails."
"You've worn your pinkies to nubs," I say cheerfully.
"Or if I need to start ironing my bedspread."
"I DO NOT IRON MY BEDSPREAD."
"You do.And I love it." I blush,and Etienne kisses my warm cheeks. "You know,my mum loves you."
"She goes?"
"You're the only thing I've talked about all year.She's ecstatic we're together."
I'm smiling inside and out. "I can't wait to meet her.
”
”
Stephanie Perkins (Anna and the French Kiss (Anna and the French Kiss, #1))
“
I feel completely embarrassed and remember the lock on the door and think: He knows, he knows, it shows, shows completely.
“He’s out back,” Mr. Garret tells me mildly, “unpacking shipments.” Then he returns to the papers.
I feel compelled to explain myself. “I just thought I’d come by. Before babysitting. You, know, at your house. Just to say hi. So . . . I’m going to do that now. Jase’s in back, then? I’ll just say hi.”
I’m so suave.
I can hear the ripping sound of the box cutter before I even open the rear door to find Jase with a huge stack of cardboard boxes. His back’s to me and suddenly I’m as shy with him as I was with his father.
This is silly.
Brushing through my embarrassment, I walk up, put my hand on his shoulder.
He straightens up with a wide grin. “Am I glad to see you!”
“Oh, really?”
“Really. I thought you were Dad telling me I was messing up again. I’ve been a disaster all day. Kept knocking things over. Paint cans, our garden display. He finally sent me out here when I knocked over a ladder. I think I’m a little preoccupied.”
“Maybe you should have gotten more sleep,” I offer.
“No way,” he says. Then we just gaze at each other for a long moment.
For some reason, I expect him to look different, the way I expected I would myself in the mirror this morning . . . I thought I would come across richer, fuller, as happy outside as I was inside, but the only thing that showed was my lips puffy from kisses. Jase is the same as ever also.
“That was the best study session I ever had,” I tell him.
“Locked in my memory too,” he says, then glances away as though embarrassed, bending to tear open another box. “Even though thinking about it made me hit my thumb with a hammer putting up a wall display.”
“This thumb?” I reach for one of his callused hands, kiss the thumb.
“It was the left one.” Jase’s face creases into a smile as I pick up his other hand.
“I broke my collarbone once,” he tells me, indicating which side. I kiss that. “Also some ribs during a scrimmage freshman year.”
I do not pull his shirt up to where his finger points now. I am not that bold. But I do lean in to kiss him through the soft material of his shirt.
“Feeling better?”
His eyes twinkle. “In eighth grade, I got into a fight with this kid who was picking on Duff and he gave me a black eye.”
My mouth moves to his right eye, then the left. He cups the back of my neck in his warm hands, settling me into the V of his legs, whispering into my ear, “I think there was a split lip involved too.”
Then we are just kissing and everything else drops away. Mr. Garret could come out at any moment, a truck full of supplies could drive right on up, a fleet of alien spaceships could darken the sky, I’m not sure I’d notice.
”
”
Huntley Fitzpatrick (My Life Next Door)
“
KRIT
"Fuck," Matty whispered.
He'd heard her.
It was me who couldn't breathe now. I had thought it was an accident. But she'd fucking done it on purpose. To protect me. Holy hell.
"I'm gonna go . . . ," Matty trailed off. I listened to his footsteps until he was gone before pulling back and looking down at Blythe.
"You got in front of a six-foot-three one hundred and eighty pounds of muscle because he was going to hit me?"
She nodded. "It was my fault he was going to hit you. I was just going to stop him."
She was going to stop him. This girl. Never in all my life did I imagine there was anyone like her. Never.
"Sweetheart, how did you intend to stop him? I could handle him. I've kicked his ass many, many times." I cupped her chin in my hand. "I had rather had him kick my ass than to have anything happen to you. That was fucking unbearable. You can't do that to me. If you get hurt, I won't be able to handle it."
She signed, and her eyes locked back toward the stage. " I made this worse. I'm sorry. Can you go fix things with the two of you so you can get back onstage?"
The distressed look on her face meant I wasn't going to be able to leave. I wanted nothing more than to take her back home and hold her all night. But she was really upset about this. I had overreacted. She had been sitting over here staring at the floor with the saddest lost expression, and I couldn't think straight. I had to get to her.
"I'll get Green, and we'll go back onstage. But you have to promise me that you won't try and save me again. I take care of you. Not the other way around," I told her.
She reached up and touched my face.
"Then who will take care of you?"
No one had ever cared about that before. That wasn't something I was going to tell her, though. "You safe in my arms is all I need. Okay?"
She frowned and glanced away from me. "I'm not agreeing to that," she said.
God, she was adorable. I pressed a kiss to her head. "Come with me to get the guys," I told her as I stood up and brought her with me.
"You won't do anything to Green then?" she said, sounding hopeful.
"No." Until you're asleep tonight. And then I'm beating his ass.
”
”
Abbi Glines (Bad for You (Sea Breeze, #7))
“
Children write essays in school about the unhappy, tragic, doomed life of Anna Karenina. But was Anna really unhappy? She chose passion and she paid for her passion—that's happiness! She was a free, proud human being. But what if during peacetime a lot of greatcoats and peaked caps burst into the house where you were born and live, and ordered the whole family to leave house and town in twenty-four hours, with only what your feeble hands can carry?... You open your doors, call in the passers-by from the streets and ask them to buy things from you, or to throw you a few pennies to buy bread with... With ribbon in her hair, your daughter sits down at the piano for the last time to play Mozart. But she bursts into tears and runs away. So why should I read Anna Karenina again? Maybe it's enough—what I've experienced. Where can people read about us? Us? Only in a hundred years?
"They deported all members of the nobility from Leningrad. (There were a hundred thousand of them, I suppose. But did we pay much attention? What kind of wretched little ex-nobles were they, the ones who remained? Old people and children, the helpless ones.) We knew this, we looked on and did nothing. You see, we weren't the victims."
"You bought their pianos?"
"We may even have bought their pianos. Yes, of course we bought them."
Oleg could now see that this woman was not yet even fifty. Yet anyone walking past her would have said she was an old woman. A lock of smooth old woman's hair, quite incurable, hung down from under her white head-scarf.
"But when you were deported, what was it for? What was the charge?"
"Why bother to think up a charge? 'Socially harmful' or 'socially dangerous element'—S.D.E.', they called it. Special decrees, just marked by letters of the alphabet. So it was quite easy. No trial necessary."
"And what about your husband? Who was he?"
"Nobody. He played the flute in the Leningrad Philharmonic. He liked to talk when he'd had a few drinks."
“…We knew one family with grown-up children, a son and a daughter, both Komsomol (Communist youth members). Suddenly the whole family was put down for deportation to Siberia. The children rushed to the Komsomol district office. 'Protect us!' they said. 'Certainly we'll protect you,' they were told. 'Just write on this piece of paper: As from today's date I ask not to be considered the son, or the daughter, of such-and-such parents. I renounce them as socially harmful elements and I promise in the future to have nothing whatever to do with them and to maintain no communication with them.
”
”
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Cancer Ward)
“
I don’t know what to . . . to think.” There was a horrifying burn of tears crawling up my throat.
“This is all overwhelming for you, I imagine. The whole world as you know it is on the brink of great change, and you’re here and don’t even know my name.” The man smiled so broadly, I wondered if it hurt. “You can call me Rolland.” Then he extended a hand.
My gaze dropped to it and I made no attempt to take it.
Rolland chuckled as he turned and strolled back to the desk. “So, you’re a hybrid? Mutated and linked to him on such an intense level that if one of you dies, so does the other?”
His question caught me off guard, but I kept quiet.
He sat on the edge of the desk. “You’re actually the first hybrid I’ve seen.”
“She really isn’t anything special.” The redhead sneered. “Frankly, she’s rather filthy, like an unclean animal.”
As stupid as it was, my cheeks heated, because I was filthy, and Daemon had just physically removed me from him. My pride—my everything—was officially wounded.
Rolland chuckled. “She’s had a rough day, Sadi.”
At her name, every muscle in my body locked up, and my gaze swung back to her. That was Sadi? The one Dee said was trying to molest Daemon—my Daemon? Anger punched through the confusion and hurt. Of course it would have to be a freaking walking and talking model and not a hag.
“Rough day or not, I can’t imagine she cleans up well.” Sadi looked at Daemon as she placed a hand on his chest. “I’m kind of disappointed.”
“Are you?” Daemon replied.
Every hair on my body rose as my arms unfolded.
“Yes,” she purred. “I really think you can do better. Lots better.” As she spoke, she trailed red-painted fingers down the center of his chest, over his abdomen, heading straight for the button on his jeans.
And oh, hell to the no. “Get your hands off him.”
Sadi’s head snapped in my direction. “Excuse me?”
“I don’t think I stuttered.” I took a step forward. “But it looks like you need me to repeat it. Get your freaking hands off him.”
One side of her plump red lips curled up. “You want to make me?”
In the back of my head, I was aware that Sadi didn’t move or speak like the other Luxen. Her mannerisms were too human, but then that thought was quickly chased away when Daemon reached down and pulled her hand away.
“Stop it,” he murmured, voice dropped low in that teasing way of his.
I saw red.
The pictures on the wall rattled and the papers on the desk started to lift up. Static charged over my skin. I was about to pull a Beth right here, seconds away from floating to the ceiling and ripping out every strand of red—
“And you stop it,” Daemon said, but the teasing quality was gone from his words. There was a warning in them that took the wind right out of my pissed-off sails.
The pictures settled as I gaped at him. Being slapped in the face would’ve been better.
”
”
Jennifer L. Armentrout (Opposition (Lux, #5))
“
Do you have someone in mind, Galen?" Toraf asks, popping a shrimp into his mouth. "Is it someone I know?"
"Shut up, Toraf," Galen growls. He closes his eyes, massages his temples. This could have gone a lot better in so many ways.
"Oh," Toraf says. "It must be someone I know, then."
"Toraf, I swear by Triton's trident-"
"These are the best shrimp you've ever made, Rachel," Toraf continues. "I can't wait to cook shrimp on our island. I'll get the seasoning for us, Rayna."
"She's not going to any island with you, Toraf!" Emma yells.
"Oh, but she is, Emma. Rayna wants to be my mate. Don't you, princess?" he smiles.
Rayna shakes her head. "It's no use, Emma. I really don't have a choice."
She resigns herself to the seat next to Emma, who peers down at her, incredulous. "You do have a choice. You can come live with me at my house. I'll make sure he can't get near you."
Toraf's expression indicates he didn't consider that possibility before goading Emma. Galen laughs. "It's not so funny anymore is it, tadpole?" he says, nudging him.
Toraf shakes his head. "She's not staying with you, Emma."
"We'll see about that, tadpole," she returns.
"Galen, do something," Toraf says, not taking his eyes off Emma.
Galen grins. "Such as?"
"I don't know, arrest her or something," Toraf says, crossing his arms.
Emma locks eyes with Galen, stealing his breath. "Yeah, Galen. Come arrest me if you're feeling up to it. But I'm telling you right now, the second you lay a hand on me, I'm busting this glass over your head and using it to split your lip like Toraf's." She picks up her heavy drinking glass and splashes the last drops of orange juice onto the table.
Everyone gasps except Galen-who laughs so hard he almost upturns his chair.
Emma's nostrils flare. "You don't think I'll do it? There's only one way to find out, isn't there, Highness?"
The whole airy house echoes Galen's deep-throated howls. Wiping the tears from his eyes, he elbows Toraf, who's looking at him like he drank too much saltwater. "Do you know those foolish humans at her school voted her the sweetest out of all of them?"
Toraf's expression softens as he looks up at Emma, chuckling. Galen's guffaws prove contagious-Toraf is soon pounding the table to catch his breath. Even Rachel snickers from behind her oven mitt.
The bluster leaves Emma's expression. Galen can tell she's in danger of smiling. She places the glass on the table as if it's still full and she doesn't want to spill it. "Well, that was a couple of years ago."
This time Galen's chair does turn back, and he sprawls onto the floor. When Rayna starts giggling, Emma gives in, too. "I guess...I guess I do have sort of a temper," she says, smiling sheepishly.
She walks around the table to stand over Galen. Peering down, she offers her hand. He grins up at her. "Show me your other hand."
She laughs and shows him it's empty. "No weapons."
"Pretty resourceful," he says, accepting her hand. "I'll never look at a drinking glass the same way." He does most of the work of pulling himself up but can't resist the opportunity to touch her.
She shrugs. "Survival instinct, maybe?"
He nods. "Or you're trying to cut my lips off so you won't have to kiss me." He's pleased when she looks away, pink restaining her cheeks.
"Rayna tries that all the time," Toraf chimes in. "Sometimes when her aim is good, it works, but most of the time kissing her is my reward for the pain.
”
”
Anna Banks (Of Poseidon (The Syrena Legacy, #1))
“
You’re not gonna believe what just happened to me,” Jase says the minute I flip my cell open, taking advantage of break at the B&T. I turn away from the picture window just in case Mr. Lennox, disregarding the break sign, will come dashing out to slap me with my first-ever demerit.
“Try me.”
His voice lowers. “You know how I put that lock on the door of my room? Well, Dad noticed it. Apparently. So today, I’m stocking the lawn section and he comes up and asks why it’s there.”
“Uh-oh.” I catch the attention of a kid sneaking into the hot tub (there’s a strict no-one-under-sixteen policy) and shake my head sternly. He slinks away. Must be my impressive uniform.
“So I say I need privacy sometimes and sometimes you and I are hanging out and we don’t want to be interrupted ten million times.”
“Good answer.”
“Right. I think this is going to be the end of it. But then he tells me he needs me in the back room to have a ‘talk.’”
“Uh-oh again.”
Jase starts to laugh. “I follow him back and he sits me down and asks if I’m being responsible. Um. With you.”
Moving back into the shade of the bushes, I turn even further away from the possible gaze of Mr. Lennox. “Oh God.”
“I say yeah, we’ve got it handled, it’s fine. But, seriously? I can’t believe he’s asking me this. I mean, Samantha. Jesus. My parents? Hard not to know the facts of life and all in this house. So I tell him that we’re moving slowly and—”
“You told him that?” God, Jase! How am I ever going to look Mr. Garret in the eye again? Help.
“He’s my dad, Samantha. Yeah. Not that I didn’t want to exit the conversation right away, but still . . .”
“So what happened then?”
“Well, I reminded him they’d covered that really thoroughly in school, not to mention at home, and we weren’t irresponsible people.”
I close my eyes, trying to imagine having this conversation with my mother. Inconceivable. No pun intended.
“So then . . . he goes on about”—Jase’s voice drops even lower—“um . . . being considerate and um . . . mutual pleasure.”
“Oh my god! I would’ve died. What did you say?” I ask, wanting to know even while I’m completely distracted by the thought. Mutual pleasure, huh? What do I know about giving that? What if Shoplifting Lindy had tricks up her sleeve I know nothing about? It’s not like I can ask Mom. “State senator suffers heart attack during conversation with daughter.”
“I said ‘Yes sir’ a lot. And he went on and on and on and all I could think was that any minute Tim was gonna come in and hear my dad saying things like, ‘Your mom and I find that . . . blah blah blah.’”
I can’t stop laughing. “He didn’t. He did not mention your mother.”
“I know!” Jase is laughing too. “I mean . . . you know how close I am to my parents, but . . . Jesus.
”
”
Huntley Fitzpatrick (My Life Next Door)
“
I was acutely aware of him, and the thought that he was walking me back to my room and would most likely try to kiss me again sent shivers down my spine. For self-preservation purposes, I had to get away. Every minute I spent with him just made me want him more. Since merely annoying him wasn’t working, I’d have to up the ante.
Apparently, I needed him not only to fall out-of-like with me, but to hate me as well. I’d frequently been told that I was an all-or-nothing kind of girl. If I were going to push him away, it was going to be so far away that there would be absolutely no change of him ever coming back.
I tried to wrench my elbow out of his grasp, but he just held on more tightly. I grumbled at him, “Stop using your tiger strength on me, Superman.”
“Am I hurting you?”
“No, but I’m not a puppet to be dragged around.”
He trailed his fingers down my arm and took my hand instead. “Then you play nice, and I will too.”
“Fine.”
He grinned. “Fine.”
I hissed back. “Fine!”
We walked to the elevator, and he pushed the button to my floor.
“My room is on the same floor,” Ren edxplained.
I scowled and then grinned lopsidedly and just a little bit evilly, “And umm, how exactly is that going to work for you in the morning, Tiger? You really shouldn’t get Mr. Kadam in trouble for having a rather large…pet.”
Ren returned my sarcasm as he walked me to my door. “Are you worried about me, Kells? Well, don’t. I’ll be fine.”
“I guess there’s no point in asking how you knew which door belong to me, huh, Tiger Nose?”
He looked at me in a way that turned my insides to jelly. I spun around but awareness of him shot through my limbs, and I could feel him standing close behind me watching, waiting.
I put my key in the lock, and he moved closer. My hand started shaking, and I couldn’t twist the key the right way. He took my hand and gently turned me around. He then put both hands on the door on either side of my head and leaned in close, pinning me against it. I trembled like a downy rabbit caught in the clutches of a wolf. The wolf came closer. He bent his head and began nuzzling my cheek. The problem was…I wanted the wolf to devour me.
I began to get lost in the thick sultry fog that overtook me every time Ren put his hands on me.
So much for asking for permission…and so much for sticking to my guns, I thought as I felt all my defenses slip away.
He whispered warmly, “I can always tell where you are, Kelsey. You smell like peaches and cream.”
I shivered and put my hands on his chest to push him away, but I ended up grabbing fistfuls of shirt and held on for dear life. He trailed kisses from my ear down my cheek and then pressed soft kisses along the arch of my neck. I pulled him closer and turned my head so he could really kiss me. He smiled and ignored my invitation, moving instead to the other ear. He bit my earlobe lightly, moved from there to my collarbone, and trailed kisses out to my shoulder. Then he lifted his head and brought his lips about one inch from mine and the only thought in my head was…more.
With a devastating smile, he reluctantly pulled away and lightly ran his fingers through the strands of my hair. “By the way, I forgot to mention that you look beautiful tonight.” He smiled again then turned and strolled off down the hall.
”
”
Colleen Houck (Tiger's Curse (The Tiger Saga, #1))