“
Failed relationships can be described as so much wasted make-up.
”
”
Marian Keyes (Watermelon (Walsh Family, #1))
“
We walked back to iDEATH, holding hands. Hands are very nice things, especially after they have travelled back from making love.
”
”
Richard Brautigan (In Watermelon Sugar)
“
What shall we do, all of us? All of us oassionate girls who fear crushing the boys we love with our mouths like caverns of teeth, our mushrooming brains, our watermelon hearts?
”
”
Francesca Lia Block
“
I feel horrible. She doesn't
love me and I wander around
the house like a sewing machine
that's just finished sewing
a turd to a garbage can lid.
”
”
Richard Brautigan (Trout Fishing in America / The Pill vs. the Springhill Mine Disaster / In Watermelon Sugar)
“
My Name
“I guess you are kind of curious as to who I am, but I am one of those who do not have a regular name. My name depends on you. Just call me whatever is in your mind.
If you are thinking about something that happened a long time ago: Somebody asked you a question and you did not know the answer.
That is my name.
Perhaps it was raining very hard.
That is my name.
Or somebody wanted you to do something. You did it. Then they told you what you did was wrong—“Sorry for the mistake,”—and you had to do something else.
That is my name.
Perhaps it was a game you played when you were a child or something that came idly into your mind when you were old and sitting in a chair near the window.
That is my name.
Or you walked someplace. There were flowers all around.
That is my name.
Perhaps you stared into a river. There as something near you who loved you. They were about to touch you. You could feel this before it happened. Then it happened.
That is my name.
”
”
Richard Brautigan (In Watermelon Sugar)
“
What shall we do? All of us passionate girls who fear crushing the boys we love with our mouths like caverns of teeth, our mushrooming brains, and watermelon hearts?
”
”
Francesca Lia Block (Blood Roses)
“
I may as well have told him I'd carried a watermelon
”
”
Lindsey Kelk (I Heart New York (I Heart, #1))
“
I love watermelon!
Chomp! Chomp! Chomp!
”
”
Greg Pizzoli (The Watermelon Seed)
“
As for sex. Well, of course I could’ve had sex. Guys will have sex with a watermelon if they’re desperate enough. Lots of girls try to prove their love by having sex. It only proves they’re having sex.
”
”
Carol Matas (The Freak (The Freak No.1))
“
I love her bare legs from a distance. When she's standing by a pool. When she's facing the water, thinking. Her legs are white as watermelon rind, veined blue from cold. There's that 'H' shape behind her knees. The H trembles softly with the swimming-water cold.
”
”
Jaclyn Moriarty (The Ghosts of Ashbury High (Ashbury/Brookfield, #4))
“
Hands are very nice things, especially after they have travelled back from making love.
”
”
Richard Brautigan (In Watermelon Sugar)
“
Raw Living: Picking blackberries, beneath late afternoon sun; a sunset reminiscent of watermelon sangria, as the scent of honeysuckle accosts me and the ducks waddle into the lake. Thanking Mama Nature for her abundance. Loving this candied-sweet southern life.
”
”
Brandi L. Bates
“
No one knows how strong they are until they have to be.
”
”
Marian Keyes (Watermelon (Walsh Family, #1))
“
A few minutes after discovering we had a goal but no plan, Brent was laughing heartily at a pathetic joke I had made. It reminded me of the first
day on campus when I had thought his laughter sounded like a melody. It did now, even more so. It was music, beautiful, in a manly way, like a
sensual, slow jazz. I loved jazz.
“Jazz, huh?” Brent asked, his voice suddenly husky.
“Uh . . . what?”
“My laugh reminds you of jazz? Is there anything about me you don’t find attractive?” He rubbed his hand over his lips trying to cover his smirk.
“So tell me, how much do you love jazz?”
I’m sure my face was pinker than the inside of a watermelon. “I didn’t say any of that.”
“You didn’t have to say it, Yara, I could hear it.” Brent tapped the side of his head. “I can hear your thoughts.”
“You’re not serious.”
“Oh, but I am,” he said, completely straight-faced.
”
”
Lani Woodland (Intrinsical (The Yara Silva Trilogy, #1))
“
No one can resurrect love once it has breathed its last.
”
”
Marian Keyes (Watermelon (Walsh Family, #1))
“
As they say in New York, Get over it and, if you can't get over it, Get over talking about it.
”
”
Marian Keyes (Watermelon (Walsh Family, #1))
“
He looked on in silence at the proof of what Israelis already know, that their history is contrived from the bones and traditions of Palestinians. The Europeans who came knew neither hummus nor falafel but later proclaimed them authentic Jewish cuisine." They claimed the villas of Qatamon as "old Jewish homes. They had no old photographs or ancient drawings of their ancestry living on the land, loving it, and planting it. They arrived from foreign nations and uncovered coins in Palestines earth from the Canaanites, the Romans, the ottomans, then sold them as their own "ancient Jewish artifacts." They came to Jaffa and found oranges the size of watermelons and said, "Behold! The Jews are known for their oranges." But those oranges were the culmination of centuries of Palestinian farmers perfecting the art of citrus growing.
”
”
Susan Abulhawa (Mornings in Jenin)
“
We surf-fished in the breakers catching spottail bass and flounder for dinner. I discovered that summer that I loved to cook and feed my friends, and I enjoyed the sound of their praise as they purred with pleasure at the meals I fixed over glowing iron and fire. I had the run of my grandparents’ garden and I would put ears of sweet corn in aluminum foil after washing them in seawater and slathering them with butter and salt and pepper. Beneath the stars we would eat the beefsteak tomatoes okra and the field peas flavored with salt pork and jalapeno peppers. I would walk through the disciplined rows that brimmed with purple eggplants and watermelons and cucumbers, gathering vegetables. My grandfather, Silas, told us that summer that low country earth was so fertile you could drop a dime into it and grow a money tree.
”
”
Pat Conroy (Beach Music)
“
I Ask for Silence"
Now they can leave me in peace.
Now they grow used to my absence.
I am going to close my eyes.
I want only five things,
five chosen roots.
One is an endless love.
Two is to see the autumn.
I cannot exist without leaves
flying and falling to the earth.
The third is the solemn winter,
the rain I loved, the caress
of fire in the rough cold.
Fourth, the summer,
plump as a watermelon.
And fifthly, your eyes,
Matilde, my dear love,
I won’t sleep without your eyes,
I won’t exist without your gaze,
I adjust the spring
for you to follow me with your eyes.
That, friends, is all I want.
Next to nothing, close to everything.
Now they can go if they wish.
I have lived so much that some day
they will have to forget me forcibly,
rubbing me off the blackboard.
My heart was inexhaustible.
But because I ask for silence,
don’t think I’m going to die.
The opposite is true;
it happens I am going to live.
To be, and to go on being.
I will not be, however, if inside me,
the crop does not keep sprouting,
the shoots first, breaking through the earth
to reach the light;
but the mothering earth is dark,
and, deep inside me, I am dark.
I am a well in the water of which
the night leaves behind stars
and goes on alone across fields.
It’s a question of having lived so much
that I want to live a bit more.
I never felt my voice so clear,
never have been so rich in kisses.
Now, as always, it is early.
The light is a swarm of bees.
Let me alone with the day.
I ask leave to be born.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (I Explain a Few Things: Selected Poems (English and Spanish Edition))
“
She's wearing a purple jumpsuit and heart-shaped sunglasses, , and her hair is pulled over her shoulder into a fishtail braid that reaches her ribcage. Her purse is shaped like a watermelon, and her necklace is a pink flower with the letter K in its middle. I want to be her.
”
”
Ali Hazelwood (Love on the Brain)
“
you see, my whole life
is tied up
to unhappiness
it's father cooking breakfast
and me getting fat as a hog
or having no food
at all and father proving
his incompetence
again
i wish i knew how it would feel
to be free
it's having a job
they won't let you work
or no work at all
castrating me
(yes it happens to women too)
it's a sex object if you're pretty
and no love
or love and no sex if you're fat
get back fat black woman be a mother
grandmother strong thing but not woman
gameswoman romantic woman love needer
man seeker dick eater sweat getter
fuck needing love seeking woman
it's a hole in your shoe
and buying lil sis a dress
and her saying you shouldn't
when you know
all too well that you shouldn't
but smiles are only something we give
to properly dressed social workers
not each other
only smiles of i know
your game sister
which isn't really
a smile
joy is finding a pregnant roach
and squashing it
not finding someone to hold
let go get off get back don't turn
me on you black dog
how dare you care
about me
you ain't go no good sense
cause i ain't shit you must be lower
than that to care
it's a filthy house
with yesterday's watermelon
and monday's tears
cause true ladies don't
know how to clean
it's intellectual devastation
of everybody
to avoid emotional commitment
"yeah honey i would've married
him but he didn't have no degree"
it's knock-kneed mini skirted
wig wearing died blond mamma's scar
born dead my scorn your whore
rough heeeled broken nailed powdered
face me
whose whole life is tied
up to unhappiness
cause it's the only
for real thing
i
know
”
”
Nikki Giovanni
“
I love looking for the big white moon. Seeing it change. It's better than looking at my watch. The moon has been up there watching me since the dawn I said goodbye to Abuelita, Mali, Lupe, Julia, the dog, the cat, and my parakeet. It was there with Grandpa, when Marcelo left us, when Chele and Mario ran. It reminds me of all of them. Polleros said there wouldn't be a moon, but they're wrong. Like a slice of watermelon bitten to the rind, it showed up over the mountains to our right. I like its gray light before the sun paints the dawn, our clothing changing from black to gray to blue like we're chameleons.
”
”
Javier Zamora (Solito)
“
Get a watermelon, draw a face on it, and talk to it before making love to it.
”
”
Jarod Kintz (Love quotes for the ages. Specifically ages 18-81.)
“
He's a waiter, not a Mafia stooge, so what's he going to do? Blac pepper them to death? Compliment them into a coma? Run them over with the dessert trolley?
”
”
Marian Keyes (Watermelon (Walsh Family, #1))
“
Who’s in charge around here? I’d like to complain about my life. I distinctly ordered a happy life with a loving husband to go with my newborn baby and what was this shoddy travesty that I’d been served up instead?
”
”
Marian Keyes (Watermelon (Walsh Family, #1))
“
It's not like we need to compete, you know. He's a nice guy, but he's not staying."
"Yeah. I know." Unless he fell in love and changed his mind. Even then it would probably be Sierra he went for.
Maybe Jo should encourage her. It wasn't likely she'd ever find a guy who loved her until Sierra was happily married and out-like-a-watermelon pregnant. Even then, she'd probably be one of those that glowed. No doubt Jo would throw up for nine months and look like a bloated shrew.
”
”
Valerie Comer (Raspberries and Vinegar (A Farm Fresh Romance #1))
“
When I close my eyes to see, to hear, to smell, to touch a country I have known, I feel my body shake and fill with joy as if a beloved person had come near me.
A rabbi was once asked the following question: ‘When you say that the Jews should return to Palestine, you mean, surely, the heavenly, the immaterial, the spiritual Palestine, our true homeland?’ The rabbi jabbed his staff into the ground in wrath and shouted, ‘No! I want the Palestine down here, the one you can touch with your hands, with its stones, its thorns and its mud!’
Neither am I nourished by fleshless, abstract memories. If I expected my mind to distill from a turbid host of bodily joys and bitternesses an immaterial, crystal-clear thought, I would die of hunger. When I close my eyes in order to enjoy a country again, my five senses, the five mouth-filled tentacles of my body, pounce upon it and bring it to me. Colors, fruits, women. The smells of orchards, of filthy narrow alleys, of armpits. Endless snows with blue, glittering reflections. Scorching, wavy deserts of sand shimmering under the hot sun. Tears, cries, songs, distant bells of mules, camels or troikas. The acrid, nauseating stench of some Mongolian cities will never leave my nostrils. And I will eternally hold in my hands – eternally, that is, until my hands rot – the melons of Bukhara, the watermelons of the Volga, the cool, dainty hand of a Japanese girl…
For a time, in my early youth, I struggled to nourish my famished soul by feeding it with abstract concepts. I said that my body was a slave and that its duty was to gather raw material and bring it to the orchard of the mind to flower and bear fruit and become ideas. The more fleshless, odorless, soundless the world was that filtered into me, the more I felt I was ascending the highest peak of human endeavor. And I rejoiced. And Buddha came to be my greatest god, whom I loved and revered as an example. Deny your five senses. Empty your guts. Love nothing, hate nothing, desire nothing, hope for nothing. Breathe out and the world will be extinguished.
But one night I had a dream. A hunger, a thirst, the influence of a barbarous race that had not yet become tired of the world had been secretly working within me. My mind pretended to be tired. You felt it had known everything, had become satiated, and was now smiling ironically at the cries of my peasant heart. But my guts – praised be God! – were full of blood and mud and craving. And one night I had a dream. I saw two lips without a face – large, scimitar-shaped woman’s lips. They moved. I heard a voice ask, ‘Who if your God?’ Unhesitatingly I answered, ‘Buddha!’ But the lips moved again and said: ‘No, Epaphus.’
I sprang up out of my sleep. Suddenly a great sense of joy and certainty flooded my heart. What I had been unable to find in the noisy, temptation-filled, confused world of wakefulness I had found now in the primeval, motherly embrace of the night. Since that night I have not strayed. I follow my own path and try to make up for the years of my youth that were lost in the worship of fleshless gods, alien to me and my race. Now I transubstantiate the abstract concepts into flesh and am nourished. I have learned that Epaphus, the god of touch, is my god.
All the countries I have known since then I have known with my sense of touch. I feel my memories tingling, not in my head but in my fingertips and my whole skin. And as I bring back Japan to my mind, my hands tremble as if they were touching the breast of a beloved woman.
”
”
Nikos Kazantzakis (Travels in China & Japan)
“
The list of frequently used nouns included: struggle for peace, woman, love, constitution, deputy, congress, delegation, friend, mother, little girl, salmon, sturgeon, red (black) caviar, champagne, vodka, watermelon, cherry, sour cherry, horseradish, and beefsteak. “Fini!” exclaimed Piri happily: she was done gluing the mirror.
”
”
Elif Batuman (The Idiot)
“
The definition of beauty is badly stuck in a triangular cage.
1. Puffy lips look like a bad version of duck lips.
2. big breasts like watermelon and
3. heavy bum like an elephant.
The gentle expression of praising the beauty is also vanished, Now everything is sexy. It means influencing sex desire only, nothing more, just one feeling nothing more.
”
”
Mohammed Zaki Ansari ("Zaki's Gift Of Love")
“
In South Texas I saw three interesting things. The first was a tiny girl, maybe ten years old, driving in a 1965 Cadillac. She wasn't going very fast, because I passed her, but still she was cruising right along, with her head tilted back and her mouth open and her little hands gripping the wheel.
Then I saw an old man walking up the median strip pulling a wooden cross behind him. It was mounted on something like a golf cart with two spoked wheels. I slowed down to read the hand-lettered sign on his chest.
JACKSONVILLE
FLA OR BUST
I had never been to Jacksonville but I knew it was the home of the Gator Bowl and I had heard it was a boom town, taking in an entire county or some such thing. It seemed an odd destination for a religious pilgrim. Penance maybe for some terrible sin, or some bargain he had worked out with God, or maybe just a crazed hiker. I waved and called out to him, wishing him luck, but he was intent on his marching and had no time for idle greetings. His step was brisk and I was convinced he wouldn't bust.
The third interesting thing was a convoy of stake-bed trucks all piled high with loose watermelons and cantaloupes. I was amazed. I couldn't believe that the bottom ones weren't crushed under all that weight, exploding and spraying hazardous melon juice onto the highway. One of nature's tricks with curved surfaces. Topology! I had never made it that far in mathematics and engineering studies, and I knew now that I never would, just as I knew that I would never be a navy pilot or a Treasury agent. I made a B in Statics but I was failing in Dynamics when I withdrew from the field. The course I liked best was one called Strength of Materials. Everybody else hated it because of all the tables we had to memorize but I loved it, the sheared beam. I had once tried to explain to Dupree how things fell apart from being pulled and compressed and twisted and bent and sheared but he wouldn't listen. Whenever that kind of thing came up, he would always say - boast, the way those people do - that he had no head for figures and couldn't do things with his hands, slyly suggesting the presence of finer qualities.
”
”
Charles Portis (The Dog of the South)
“
That I don’t tell my family about my job because I’m unable to let people know that I’m more than the sum of the ways I can be useful to them. That if I show my true self, with my needs and my wants, I risk being rejected. That I’ve wielded my ability to hide who I am like an emotional antiseptic, and in the process I’ve turned myself into a puppet. Or a watermelon with googly eyes.
”
”
Ali Hazelwood (Love, Theoretically)
“
Later, as the sisters grew, Esther hyperfocused on their differences, but as a little kid she'd been far more hypnotised by their sameness. They both loved chewing lemon peels and watermelon rinds, loved pictures of goats but not actual goats, loved putting sand in their hair so they could scratch it out later, loved watching their parents slow-dance in the living room to Motown records. They loved the sound of the wind, the sound of breaking ice, the sound of coyotes calling on the mountain.
They disliked zippers, ham, the word 'milk', flute music, the gurgling sound of the refrigerator, Cecily's long weekends away, Abe's insistence on regular chess matches, and days with no clouds. They disliked the boxes of books that came to their door daily or were lugged home by their father, disliked their dusty lonesome smell and how they consumed Abe's attention. They disliked when their parents closed the bedroom door and fought in whispers. They hated the phrase 'half sister.' There had been no half about it.
”
”
Emma Törzs (Ink Blood Sister Scribe)
“
Newt thought that it was Charlie who was beating his wife to death, instead of the other way around, . . .. So he reached into his overalls pocket, fished out his pocketknife and flicked out a blade long enough to cut watermelon.
Ava took one look at that knife and flung her body across her husband, to shield him. Then she looked up at Newt, and when she spoke there were spiders and broken glass in her voice.
"Don't you touch him," she hissed.
. . .
Everybody has a moment like it. If they never did, they never did love nobody truly. People who have lived a long, long time say it, so it must be so.
”
”
Rick Bragg (Ava's Man)
“
You did your best to be a good student. You chopped and cooked and measured and served according to her wishes. But sometimes you wondered if the stall could stand to be upgraded with modern comfort food. With pandan ensaymada instead of the increasingly popular but also growingly common ube, the fresh bread from the oven and the cheese still melting, sweetly fragrant from the infusion of those steeped leaves and as simple as a summer morning. Or chopped watermelons in bulalo soup to replace tomatoes, for that extra tang. Or even pork adobo, but with chili and sweet pineapples. You had so many ideas.
”
”
Rin Chupeco (Hungry Hearts: 13 Tales of Food & Love)
“
Gardening Work
There was a man breaking up the ground, getting ready to plant, when
another man came by, "Why are you ruining this land?" "Don't interfere. Nothing can grow here
until the earth is turned over and crumbled. There can be no roses and no orchard without
first this devastation. You must lance an ulcer to heal.
You must tear down parts of
an old building to restore it." So it is with the sensual life that has no spirit. A person must
face the dragon of his or her appetites with another dragon, the life energy of the soul. When
that's not strong, everyone seems to be full of fear and wanting, as one thinks
the room is spinning when one's whirling around. If your love has contracted into anger, the
atmosphere itself feels threatening, but when you're expansive and clear, no matter
what the weather, you're in an open windy field with friends. Many people travel as far as Syria
and Iraq and meet only hypocrites. Others go all the way to India and see only people buying and selling.
Others travel to Turkestan and China to discover those countries are full of cheats
and sneak thieves. You always see the qualities that live in you. A cow may walk
through the amazing city of Baghdad and notice only a watermelon rind and a tuft of hay
that fell off a wagon. Don't repeatedly keep doing what your lowest self wants. That's like
deciding to be a strip of meat nailed to dry on a board in the sun.
”
”
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi (The Soul of Rumi: A New Collection of Ecstatic Poems)
“
The pieces of Cholly's life could become coherent only in the head of a musician. Only those who talk their talk through the gold of curved metal, or in the touch of black-and-white rectangles and taut skins and strings echoing from wooden corridors, could give true form to his life. Only they would know how to connect the heart of a red watermelon to the asafetida bag to the muscadine to the flashlight on his behind to the fists of money to the lemonade in a Mason jar to a man called Blue and come up with what all of that meant in joy, in pain, in anger, in love, and give it its final and pervading ache of freedom. Only a musician would sense, know, without even knowing that he knew that Cholly was free. Dangerously free. Free to feel whatever he felt--fear, guilt, shame, love, grief, pity. Free to be tender or violent, to whistle or weep.
”
”
Toni Morrison (The Bluest Eye)
“
Madrid. It was that time, the story of Don Zana 'The Marionette,' he with the hair of cream-colored string, he with the large and empty laugh like a slice of watermelon, the one of the
Tra-kay, tra-kay, tra-kay,
tra-kay, tra-kay, tra
on the tables, on the coffins. It was when there were geraniums on the balconies, sunflower-seed stands in the Moncloa, herds of yearling sheep in the vacant lots of the Guindalera. They were dragging their heavy wool, eating the grass among the rubbish, bleating to the neighborhood. Sometimes they stole into the patios; they ate up the parsley, a little green sprig of parsley, in the summer, in the watered shade of the patios, in the cool windows of the basements at foot level. Or they stepped on the spread-out sheets, undershirts, or pink chemises clinging to the ground like the gay shadow of a handsome young girl. Then, then was the story of Don Zana 'The Marionette.'
Don Zana was a good-looking, smiling man, thin, with wide angular shoulders. His chest was a trapezoid. He wore a white shirt, a jacket of green flannel, a bow tie, light trousers, and shoes of Corinthian red on his little dancing feet. This was Don Zana 'The Marionette,' the one who used to dance on the tables and the coffins. He awoke one morning, hanging in the dusty storeroom of a theater, next to a lady of the eighteenth century, with many white ringlets and a cornucopia of a face.
Don Zana broke the flower pots with his hand and he laughed at everything. He had a disagreeable voice, like the breaking of dry reeds; he talked more than anyone, and he got drunk at the little tables in the taverns. He would throw the cards into the air when he lost, and he didn't stoop over to pick them up. Many felt his dry, wooden slap; many listened to his odious songs, and all saw him dance on the tables. He liked to argue, to go visiting in houses. He would dance in the elevators and on the landings, spill ink wells, beat on pianos with his rigid little gloved hands.
The fruitseller's daughter fell in love with him and gave him apricots and plums. Don Zana kept the pits to make her believe he loved her. The girl cried when days passed without Don Zana's going by her street. One day he took her out for a walk. The fruitseller's daughter, with her quince-lips, still bloodless, ingenuously kissed that slice-of-watermelon laugh. She returned home crying and, without saying anything to anyone, died of bitterness.
Don Zana used to walk through the outskirts of Madrid and catch small dirty fish in the Manzanares. Then he would light a fire of dry leaves and fry them. He slept in a pension where no one else stayed. Every morning he would put on his bright red shoes and have them cleaned. He would breakfast on a large cup of chocolate and he would not return until night or dawn.
”
”
Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio (Adventures of the Ingenious Alfanhui)
“
What is it that makes a person the very person that she is, herself alone and not another, an integrity of identity that persists over time, undergoing changes and yet still continuing to be—until she does not continue any longer, at least not unproblematically? I stare at the picture of a small child at a summer’s picnic, clutching her big sister’s hand with one tiny hand while in the other she has a precarious hold on a big slice of watermelon that she appears to be struggling to have intersect with the small o of her mouth. That child is me. But why is she me? I have no memory at all of that summer’s day, no privileged knowledge of whether that child succeeded in getting the watermelon into her mouth. It’s true that a smooth series of contiguous physical events can be traced from her body to mine, so that we would want to say that her body is mine; and perhaps bodily identity is all that our personal identity consists in. But bodily persistence over time, too, presents philosophical dilemmas. The series of contiguous physical events has rendered the child’s body so different from the one I glance down on at this moment; the very atoms that composed her body no longer compose mine. And if our bodies are dissimilar, our points of view are even more so. Mine would be as inaccessible to her—just let her try to figure out [Spinoza’s] Ethics—as hers is now to me. Her thought processes, prelinguistic, would largely elude me. Yet she is me, that tiny determined thing in the frilly white pinafore. She has continued to exist, survived her childhood illnesses, the near-drowning in a rip current on Rockaway Beach at the age of twelve, other dramas. There are presumably adventures that she—that is that I—can’t undergo and still continue to be herself. Would I then be someone else or would I just no longer be? Were I to lose all sense of myself—were schizophrenia or demonic possession, a coma or progressive dementia to remove me from myself—would it be I who would be undergoing those trials, or would I have quit the premises? Would there then be someone else, or would there be no one? Is death one of those adventures from which I can’t emerge as myself? The sister whose hand I am clutching in the picture is dead. I wonder every day whether she still exists. A person whom one has loved seems altogether too significant a thing to simply vanish altogether from the world. A person whom one loves is a world, just as one knows oneself to be a world. How can worlds like these simply cease altogether? But if my sister does exist, then what is she, and what makes that thing that she now is identical with the beautiful girl laughing at her little sister on that forgotten day? In this passage from Betraying Spinoza, the philosopher and novelist Rebecca Newberger Goldstein (to whom I am married) explains the philosophical puzzle of personal identity, one of the problems that engaged the Dutch-Jewish thinker who is the subject of her book.5 Like her fellow humanist Dawkins, Goldstein analyzes the vertiginous enigma of existence and death, but their styles could not be more different—a reminder of the diverse ways that the resources of language can be deployed to illuminate a topic.
”
”
Steven Pinker (The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century)
“
At some point I tried willing things along, mentally focusing on a rapid delivery. That didn't work. I got up to walk around-walking is supposed to help you progress-then quickly got back in the chair.
“Argh!!!!!” I groaned. And other stuff.
The way I saw it, my baby should have been out by now, shaking hands with his dad and passing around cigars to the nurses. But he apparently had other plans. Labor continued very slowly.
Very slowly.
We were in that room for eighteen hours. That was a lot of contractions. And a lot of PG versions of curse words, along with the X-rated kind. I may have invented a whole new language.
Somewhere around the twelve-hour mark, Chris asked if I’d mind if he changed the music, since our songs had been playing on repeat for what surely seemed like a millennium.
“Sure,” I said.
He switched to the radio and found a country station. That lasted a song or two.
“I’m so sorry,” I told him. “I need Enya. I’m tuned in to it, and it calms me…ohhhhh!”
“Okay. No problem,” he said calmly, though not quite cheerfully. I’m sure it was torture.
Chris would take short breaks, walking out into the waiting room where both sides of our family were waiting to welcome their first grandchild and nephew. He’d look at his dad and give a little nod.
“She’s okay,” he told everyone. Then he’d wipe a little tear away from his eye and walk back to me.
Chris said later that watching me give birth was probably the most powerless feeling he’d ever had. He knew I was in pain and yet couldn’t do a whit about it. “It’s like watching your wife get stabbed and not being able to do anything to help.”
But when he came into the room with me, his eyes were clear and he seemed confident and even upbeat. It was the thing he did when talking to me from the combat zone, all over again: he wasn’t about to do anything that would make me worry.
I, on the other hand, made no secret of what I was feeling. An alien watermelon was ripping my insides out. And it hurt.
Whoooh!
Suddenly one of the contractions peaked way beyond where the others had been. Bubba had finally decided it was time to say hello to the world.
I grabbed the side rail on the bed and struggled to remain conscious, if not exactly calm.
Part of me was thinking, You should remember this, Taya. This is natural childbirth. This is beautiful. This is what God intended. You should enjoy this precious moment and remember it always.
Another part of me was telling that part to shut the bleep up.
I begged for mercy-for painkillers.
”
”
Taya Kyle (American Wife: Love, War, Faith, and Renewal)
“
Rosalia was standing in a field of fragrant white jasmine flowers. It was the first week in June, and the sun was especially hot today. She could feel it warming her head through the cotton kerchief she wore. A large straw basket, slung around her arm, held the jasmines she was harvesting for the jasmine water that was needed to make Gelo di Melone- watermelon pudding. With the temperatures well in the eighties, the shop couldn't make enough of the watermelon pudding that was popular with the villagers during late spring and throughout the summer.
As she picked the jasmines from their stems, she frequently took the time to smell them although she didn't need to do so since the fragrance surrounded her. But she loved holding the blossoms up to her nose and inhaling deeply.
”
”
Rosanna Chiofalo (Rosalia's Bittersweet Pastry Shop)
“
Body-Loving Weekly Fruit Choices (enjoy these sweet fruits only once or twice a week) Apples Bananas Cherries Fresh apricots Grapefruits Kiwis Melons Nectarines Oranges Passion fruit Peaches Pears Persimmons Plums Pomegranates Tangerines Watermelon
”
”
Kelly LeVeque (Body Love)
“
No sickness in the world could make my mama’s love for us less real. And none of us had to get through any of it on our own.
”
”
Cindy Baldwin (Where the Watermelons Grow)
“
When I woke up an hour later, something had changed. Maybe it was the sleep…maybe it was the tender moment with Marlboro Man…maybe it was my sister’s tough-love pep talk, or a combination of the three. I got out of bed quietly and made my way to the shower, where I washed and scrubbed and polished my body with every single bath product I could find. By the time I turned off the water, the bathroom smelled like lemongrass and lavender, wisteria and watermelon. The aromatherapy worked; while I didn’t exactly feel beautiful again, I felt less like Jabba the Hut.
”
”
Ree Drummond (The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels)
“
I stopped worrying about the precise amounts of tiny caviar pearls that went atop each pillow of cheese, and started looking around me to see what the other chefs were doing. As I knew, Vanilla Joe on my left was handing out his homemade pigs in a blanket, his hand-ground sausages wrapped in what looked like hand-rolled pastry, all served with a variety of dipping sauces he must also have made himself (including vanilla aioli, obviously). The judges were at his station now. From the big, cheesy grin on Vanilla Joe's mustached mouth and the rhapsodizing tones of Charles Weston's and Maz's voices that floated my way, they loved it. I scowled.
On my other side, Kaitlyn looked to be handing out arancini balls atop a bed of crisp greens and pickled vegetables. Probably tasty, but hard to eat in one bite---the judges always took that into account. She was laughing and talking with each guest, assembling her dishes in a way that looked totally effortless; was she even sweating at all?
Guests wandered by with charred meat on a skewer, alternating with ripe chunks of watermelon and tomato. In the distance I could see Kel cooking up spoon bread with what looked like mushrooms. Megan was frying dumplings, which made my mouth water thinking about the inner mixture of pork and cabbage and water chestnuts. When I saw somebody eating takoyaki balls, I assumed that was Bald Joe's work----after all, the tender balls of fried dough and octopus were a traditional Japanese street food. Somebody else had soup shooters.
”
”
Amanda Elliot (Sadie on a Plate)
“
I was so distraught. I couldn’t understand all the different ways I was feeling. I was so confused. I did have a crush on Adam. But I felt so guilty about it because that must make me a very shallow person when I was supposed to be in love with James. But was I in love with James? I was afraid to think about that one. It was too huge to contemplate. And then I felt angry with James. Why couldn’t I flirt with Adam and have a bit of fun? But then I felt guilty again because Adam was a person, a nice person, and he deserved better than to be treated by me as some sort of ego balm.
”
”
Marian Keyes (Watermelon (Walsh Family, #1))
“
Abigail loved her feet—small, feminine, exuding a slender, proportionate beauty her friends openly envied. These shredded, swollen blobs of flesh did not belong to her. They looked more like battered cod, blanched and translucent, with silver dollar–size blisters on her heels and ankles that peeled back, revealing raw skin the color of watermelon pulp. She got up, had to walk on the balls of her feet to bypass the excruciating pain.
”
”
Blake Crouch (Abandon)
“
My grin tipped up on one side. “I’m sorry. Who asked about the television screens in my truck?”
Her lush lips thinned. “And how long did it take you to pick out the watermelon? Thirty minutes?”
“Twenty-nine,” I shot back. “And it’s the best fucking watermelon I’ve ever had. Worth every minute.”
A single brow quirked. “You want a medal?”
I leaned over the counter and she met my stare. I wasn’t sure what was happening, but it seemed like the air cracked with electricity, heating my skin, quickening my pulse. This couldn’t be normal. Maybe I was getting sick. I’d overheated in all of the seventy-eight degrees outside. Yeah, that had to be it.
“I’d love one.”
It was so fast, I almost missed it. Her gaze dipped to my mouth before dropping to the island again. “There isn’t any more room on your shelf for one more medal.”
“I’ll just put up another shelf.”
“I’m sure you would.
”
”
Ashlan Thomas (The Silent Cries of a Magpie (Cove, #1))
“
When did we get Watermelon Oreos? That just sounded so wrong.
”
”
Ashlan Thomas (To Love (The To Fall Trilogy #3))
“
No, babies come from watermelon seeds. A man gives a woman a watermelon seed and she swallows it and it starts to grow in her belly.
”
”
Myiesha (A New Jersey Love Story 3: Bulletproof Love)
“
by the time we finished painting her house, she was sending her boys home with pecan pies and watermelon and fried chicken—you never saw such a love fest.” He paused, slowly lowering his hammer. “But I’ll never forget the day Stump leaned waaaay down to give her a hug, then swept her right off her feet and twirled her around in a circle.” Tracey laughed so hard, Noah was afraid she might fall off the roof. “Knowing Mrs. Peterson, I bet she shrieked with delight!
”
”
Diane Moody (Home to Walnut Ridge (The Teacup Novellas, #3))
“
Because you promised? But you've promised me load of things. Like to cherish me and to love till death do us part.
”
”
Marian Keyes (Watermelon (Walsh Family, #1))
“
He didn't even attempt to smile and I knew then that I had lost him.
”
”
Marian Keyes (Watermelon (Walsh Family, #1))
“
If he says he doesn't love you anymore and does love this other woman, you've got to accept it. Maybe he will come back, maybe he won't, but either way, you've got to live through this.
”
”
Marian Keyes (Watermelon (Walsh Family, #1))
“
If it was that beautiful, why did I leave you
”
”
Marian Keyes (Watermelon (Walsh Family, #1))
“
Don't make the mistake of letting pride get in the way of forgiveness. You still love him. He still loves you. Don't throw it all away just because your feelings are hurt.
”
”
Marian Keyes (Watermelon (Walsh Family, #1))
“
I can’t remember the flavor. I was constantly applying that garbage,” she muses, fingers tracing again as a shiver races down my spine. I don’t even need to think about it. I know. I will never forget. “Watermelon.
”
”
Elsie Silver (Wild Love (Rose Hill, #1))
“
All of us passionate girls who fear crushing the boys we love with our mouths like caverns of teeth, our mushrooming brains, our watermelon hearts?
”
”
Francesca Lia Block (Blood Roses)
“
Abbie kept telling him all the things he could, and could not, do because of The Race. You had to be polite; you had to be punctual; you couldn't wear bright-colored clothes, or loud-colored socks; and even certain food was forbidden. Abbie said that she loved watermelons, but she would just as soon cut off her right arm as go in a store and buy one, because colored people loved watermelons. She wouldn't buy porgies because colored people loved all the coarsefleshed fish and were particularly fond of porgies. She wouldn't fry fish, she wouldn't fry chicken, because everybody knew that colored people liked fried food. She was always on time, in fact, way ahead of time, because colored people were always late, you could never count on them, they had no sense of responsibility. The funny thing about it was that when Abbie talked about The Race she sounded as though she weren't colored, and yet she obviously was.
”
”
Ann Petry (The Narrows)
“
My seven-year-old daughter, Emma, is standing at the doorway to our bedroom, watching me contemplate what to do with her father’s favorite T-shirt. Even though we’ve already had breakfast, she’s still wearing her Frozen pajamas, which are royal blue with little snowflakes all over them. I guiltily shove the T-shirt back into the drawer and turn to smile at Emma. She doesn’t smile back. While her big brother is excited about the idea of staying with Aunt Penny for a week, Emma is decidedly freaked out. For the last week, Emma has crawled into our queen-sized bed every single night to sleep. Fortunately, Noah and I sleep with a gap the size of the Atlantic Ocean between us. “What’s wrong, honey?” I ask. Emma’s lower lip trembles. She runs over to me and wraps her skinny arms around my hips. “Don’t go, Mommy. Please.” “Emma…” I attempt to pry her off me, but she’s stuck like glue. It’s sweet. As much as I dislike my husband, I love my children. I’ve always loved children. It’s part of the reason I became a teacher. Nothing makes me happier than seeing the smiles light up those little faces. I reach down and wipe Emma’s damp light brown curls from her face. Her hair looks like mine, but it’s still baby soft. I lean in and bury my face in it—it smells like her watermelon shampoo. “It’s just a week, sweetheart,” I say. She looks up at me with her little tear-streaked cheeks. “But what if something happens to you?” I don’t know how my seven-year-old daughter got so neurotic. She worries about everything, including things no child has any business worrying about. Like when there was talk of a teacher strike last year, she was worried I wouldn’t have a job and we wouldn’t be able to afford food. What seven-year-old worries about that? “Why are you so worried, Emma?” She chews on her little pink lip. “Well, you’re going to be in the woods.” I don’t blame her for worrying if that’s what she thinks. Neither of her parents is what you would call “the outdoorsy type” by any stretch of the imagination. “Don’t worry,” I say. “We’re staying in a nice hotel. It will be really safe.
”
”
Freida McFadden (One by One)
“
meet me in the backyard with a kiddie pool i just want to splash around like i’m seven call up the neighbors let’s make new friends run through sprinklers throw water balloons (i’ll miss) let’s laugh real loud scream for fun eat watermelon and orange slices remind each other to reapply sunscreen forget what we were supposed to do today forget what we were supposed to do this week call in sick for work no—quit our jobs break our leases move to the forest bathe in the river fall asleep on the grass let’s quit adulthood
”
”
Michaela Angemeer (Please Love Me at My Worst)
“
She pointed to a sundress with bright yellow lemons on it. "That's cute. I love lemons." Ay, Dios mio! Carolina cringed. She sounded like a fool. It was like Baby's "I carried a watermelon" line in Dirty Dancing. Why was she so awkward?
"You'd look stunning in that." Enrique signaled to a woman who worked there.
A saleswoman walked over to them from the back of the shop. She quickly and professionally assessed Carolina's body and then picked one of the bright dresses off the rack. "This should fit you. Shall I put it in a room for you, miss?"
"Sure." Carolina followed her right to the dressing room. The dark hair on her arms stood at full attention and her heart raced. Nerves and anticipation swirled through her--- this whole day seemed like a fantasy, but it was tough for her to just live in the moment.
She undressed and slipped the dress over her head. The soft fabric caressed her body, accentuating her curves. She stared at her figure in the mirror. She looked... sexy. Carolina had never seen herself as sensual, but in this dress, in the soft, warm glow of the dressing room lights, she was a knockout.
The saleswoman had also placed some bright red pumps in the room. Carolina loved high heels and never had a problem walking in them, because she had spent so many years dancing with the Ballet Folklórico. Carolina's eyes practically bugged out of her head when she saw their bottoms, and she stroked the red soles--- they were Louboutins, an identifying detail she knew about from Blanca's endless fashion magazines. Blanca dreamed of owning a pair one day. She would be so jealous. Luckily, they were the same size, so Carolina would let Blanca borrow them.
There was only one problem with Carolina's outfit--- her underwear didn't work with the dress. Her broad, wide bra elastics showed under the thin spaghetti straps, and her panties were too dark.
She leaned out of the curtain. "Ma'am."
The saleslady walked back over to her. "Can I get you something else?"
"Yes. A bra and some panties." Carolina told the lady her sizes, and the lady went around the corner, returning later with an adorable matching yellow lace bra and thong.
A thong.
Her face crinkled. "Do you have anything with, uh, fuller coverage?"
"Of course, dear. But not in the yellow. Do you want to match the bra?"
Carolina did want to match the bra. It was such a cute set. She exhaled, stepping out of her comfort zone and into the lingerie.
She again looked at herself in the mirror. She practically couldn't recognize herself--- a gorgeous young woman on a romantic day trip with a man whom she really liked.
”
”
Alana Albertson (Kiss Me, Mi Amor (Love & Tacos))
“
Her words were like warm honey, thick and sweet with love and pride.
”
”
Cindy Baldwin (Where the Watermelons Grow)
“
We forgot that there were those who loved that old country as it was, who did not lament the divisions, but drew power from them. And so, we saw postcards with watermelons on the white house lawn. We saw simian caricatures of the first family, the invocation of a food stamp president, and his anti-colonialist Islamist agenda. These were the fetishes that gathered the tribe of white supremacy, that rallied them to the age-old banner. And if there was one mistake, one reason why I did not see the coming tragedy, why I did not account for it's possibilities, it was because I had not yet truly considered that banners fearsome power.
”
”
Ta-Nehisi Coates (We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy)
“
In the produce section she stopped to inhale the smell of so many oranges- Valencia, blood, juice, navel- net bags of limes, stacks of pineapples. The hygienic overtones of bleach were also in the air and she sniffed at the scent of chlorine as though it were a delicacy. She picked up a watermelon as big as a child, lifting it with difficulty into her cart. A sheaf of plantains. Peaches thick with fuzz.
She chose bottled waters from Maine and Italy, from Germany and France, then proud-colored squeeze bottles of Joy and Cheer, Dove and Palmolive. She reached for high-protein cereals and protein bars, granola with cranberries, Cap'n Crunch. She explored the store, lapping up the light, listening to the music with its brave half-heard songs of love lost and found.
Naomi passed by the stacks of mammalian flesh cut into portions wrapped in tight plastic. She lingered at the fish counter to contemplate the blackness of the mussels, the glistening dislocated stripes of the mackerel, the rosy pinkness of the salmon fillets arrayed on the ice. Here were animals still with their eyes on, red snapper and Mediterranean black bass. In a tank of greenish water, lobsters swam with halting deliberation; she pursed her lips and gave a furtive salute, her fingers held like claws.
”
”
Grace Dane Mazur (The Garden Party: A Novel)
“
-Snap?
-Shh, Poodle. I'm having a Johnny Castle, Dirty Dancing moment right now.
-Is this a good thing or a bad thing, he asks, bending to lick up my neck
-I carried a watermelon...
-How drunk are you?
-For the love of God, man. I am not drunk!
”
”
Christina Lauren (Dirty Rowdy Thing (Wild Seasons, #2))
“
Cali Vibes Delta 8
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”
”
Cali Vibe
“
If Johnny drove from point A to point B, how long would it take twenty-five unicorns to eat sixty watermelons, and how many waffles would it take to fill a sink?
”
”
Tiffany Nicole Smith (Bex Carter 2: All's Fair in Love and Math (The Bex Carter Series))
“
Fun Fact: That little song you hear played by an ice cream truck—you know, the one that kinda sounds like “Turkey in the Straw”—yeah, that song is actually called “Nigger Love a Watermelon Ha! Ha! Ha!” I kid you not. Google it. That’s what that is.
”
”
Don Lemon (This Is the Fire: What I Say to My Friends About Racism)