β
Love is needing someone. Love is putting up with someone's bad qualities because they somehow complete you.
β
β
Sarah Dessen (This Lullaby)
β
Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby.
β
β
Langston Hughes
β
I am coming to terms with the fact that loving someone requires a leap of faith, and that a soft landing is never guaranteed.
β
β
Sarah Dessen (This Lullaby)
β
You know, when it works, love is pretty amazing. It's not overrated. There's a reason for all those songs.
β
β
Sarah Dessen (This Lullaby)
β
No relationship is perfect, ever. There are always some ways you have to bend, to compromise, to give something up in order to gain something greater...The love we have for each other is bigger than these small differences. And that's the key. It's like a big pie chart, and the love in a relationship has to be the biggest piece. Love can make up for a lot.
β
β
Sarah Dessen (This Lullaby)
β
Some things don't last forever, but some things do. Like a good song, or a good book, or a good memory you can take out and unfold in your darkest times, pressing down on the corners and peering in close, hoping you still recognize the person you see there.
β
β
Sarah Dessen (This Lullaby)
β
Wherever you will go,
I will let you down,
But this lullaby goes on.
β
β
Sarah Dessen (This Lullaby)
β
Holding people away from you, and denying yourself love, that doesn't make you strong. if anything, it makes you weaker. Because you're doing it out of fear.
β
β
Sarah Dessen (This Lullaby)
β
The fate of your heart is your choice and no one else gets a vote
β
β
Sarah Dessen (This Lullaby)
β
I had no illusions about love anymore. It came, it went, it left casualties or it didn't. People weren't meant to be together forever, regardless of what the songs say.
β
β
Sarah Dessen
β
What did it feel like, I wondered, to love someone that much? So much that you couldn't even control yourself when they came close, as if you might just break free of whatever was holding you and throw yourself at them with enough force to easily overwhelm you both.
β
β
Sarah Dessen (This Lullaby)
β
Everything, in the end, comes down to timing. One second, one minute, one hour could make all the difference.
β
β
Sarah Dessen (This Lullaby)
β
Heβs like a song she canβt get out of her head. Hard as she tries, the melody of their meeting runs through her mind on an endless loop, each time as surprisingly sweet as the last, like a lullaby, like a hymn, and she doesnβt think she could ever get tired of hearing it.
β
β
Jennifer E. Smith (The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight)
β
I just thought to my self, all of a sudden, that we had something in common. A natural chemistry, if you will. And I had a feeling that something big was going to happen. To both of us. That we were, in fact, meant to be together.
β
β
Sarah Dessen (This Lullaby)
β
Someone has to leave first. This is a very old story. There is no other version of this story.
β
β
Richard Siken (War of the Foxes)
β
He always did the leaving. But not this time. She kept walking, and did not look back.
β
β
Sarah Dessen (This Lullaby)
β
She fell, she hurt, she felt. She lived. And for all the tumble of her experiences, she still had hope. Maybe this next time would do the trick. Or maybe not. But unless you stepped into the game, you would never know.
β
β
Sarah Dessen (This Lullaby)
β
This Lullaby is only a few words, a simple run of chords, quiet here in this spare room, but you can hear it, hear it, wherever you may go, even if I let you down, this lullaby plays on...
β
β
Sarah Dessen (This Lullaby)
β
Maybe you don't go to hell for the things you do. Maybe you go to hell for the things you don't do. The things you don't finish.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Lullaby)
β
Love is so unpredictable. That's what makes it so great.
β
β
Sarah Dessen (This Lullaby)
β
Are these things really better than the things I already have? Or am I just trained to be dissatisfied with what I have now?
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Lullaby)
β
I still search for you in crowds,
in empty fields and soaring clouds.
In city lights and passing cars,
on winding roads and wishing stars.
β
β
Lang Leav (Lullabies (Volume 2) (Lang Leav))
β
Big Brother isnβt watching. Heβs singing and dancing. Heβs pulling rabbits out of a hat. Big Brotherβs busy holding your attention every moment youβre awake. Heβs making sure youβre always distracted. Heβs making sure youβre fully absorbed.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Lullaby)
β
Because you can never go from going out to being friends, just like that. It's a lie. It's just something that people say they'll do to take the permanence out of a breakup. And someone always takes it to mean more than it does, and then is hurt even more when, inevitably, said βfriendly' relationship is still a major step down from the previous relationship, and it's like breaking up all over again. But messier.
β
β
Sarah Dessen (This Lullaby)
β
Birds are settling down for the night, singing lullabies to their young.
β
β
Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1))
β
Here's to the kids.
The kids who would rather spend their night with a bottle of coke & Patrick or Sonny playing on their headphones than go to some vomit-stained high school party.
Here's to the kids whose 11:11 wish was wasted on one person who will never be there for them.
Here's to the kids whose idea of a good night is sitting on the hood of a car, watching the stars.
Here's to the kids who never were too good at life, but still were wicked cool.
Here's to the kids who listened to Fall Out boy and Hawthorne Heights before they were on MTV...and blame MTV for ruining their life.
Here's to the kids who care more about the music than the haircuts.
Here's to the kids who have crushes on a stupid lush.
Here's to the kids who hum "A Little Less 16 Candles, A Little More Touch Me" when they're stuck home, dateless, on a Saturday night.
Here's to the kids who have ever had a broken heart from someone who didn't even know they existed.
Here's to the kids who have read The Perks of Being a Wallflower & didn't feel so alone after doing so.
Here's to the kids who spend their days in photobooths with their best friend(s).
Here's to the kids who are straight up smartasses & just don't care.
Here's to the kids who speak their mind.
Here's to the kids who consider screamo their lullaby for going to sleep.
Here's to the kids who second guess themselves on everything they do.
Here's to the kids who will never have 100 percent confidence in anything they do, and to the kids who are okay with that.
Here's to the kids.
This one's not for the kids,
who always get what they want,
But for the ones who never had it at all.
It's not for the ones who never got caught,
But for the ones who always try and fall.
This one's for the kids who didnt make it,
We were the kids who never made it.
The Overcast girls and the Underdog Boys.
Not for the kids who had all their joys.
This one's for the kids who never faked it.
We're the kids who didn't make it.
They say "Breaking hearts is what we do best,"
And, "We'll make your heart be ripped of your chest"
The only heart that I broke was mine,
When I got My Hopes up too too high.
We were the kids who didnt make it.
We are the kids who never made it.
β
β
Pete Wentz
β
Well, it's true that I have been hurt in my life. Quite a bit. But it's also true that I have loved, and been loved. and that carries a weight of its own. A greater weight, in my opinion. It's like that pie chart we talked about earlier. in the end, I'll look back on my life and see that the greatest piece of it was love. The problems, the divorces, the sadness... those will be there too, but just smaller slivers, tiny pieces.
β
β
Sarah Dessen (This Lullaby)
β
Right now, though, I wanted not to think forward or backward, but only to lose myself in the words.
β
β
Sarah Dessen (This Lullaby)
β
Are those the only options? Nothing or forever?
β
β
Sarah Dessen (This Lullaby)
β
Remy: Did you really believe, that first day, that we were meant to be together?
Dexter: You're here, aren't you?
β
β
Sarah Dessen (This Lullaby)
β
In a world where vows are worthless.Where making a pledge means nothing. Where promises are made to be broken, it would be nice to see words come back into power.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Lullaby)
β
I can say I made a lot of mistakes, but I don't regret things. Because at least I didn't spend a life standing outside, wondering what living would be like.
β
β
Sarah Dessen (This Lullaby)
β
I meant what I said to you. I wasn't playing some kind of summer game. Everything I said was true, from the first day. EVERY GODDAMN WORD.
β
β
Sarah Dessen (This Lullaby)
β
No matter how much you love someone, you still want to have you own way.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Lullaby)
β
History is filled with brilliant people who wanted to fix things and just made them worse.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Lullaby)
β
And for one second, it was like I could feel the timing clicking together, finally pieces falling into place.
β
β
Sarah Dessen (This Lullaby)
β
Acceptance
There are things I miss
that I shouldn't,
and those I don't
that I should.
Sometimes we want
what we couldn'tβ
sometimes we love
who we could.
β
β
Lang Leav (Lullabies (Volume 2) (Lang Leav))
β
Heβs speaking in the tone of voice that everyone uses when theyβre about to break you apart. Gentleβkind, evenβlike they can make the news sound better just by speaking in a lullaby voice.
β
β
Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
β
I knew this feeling, the 2 a.m. loneliness that I'd practically invented.
β
β
Sarah Dessen (This Lullaby)
β
When you think about it, Johnny Appleseed was a fucking ecological terrorist.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Lullaby)
β
Your lullaby would waken a drunken goblin!
β
β
J.R.R. Tolkien (The Hobbit (The Lord of the Rings, #0))
β
So many times it seemed like there were chances to stop things before they started. Or even stop them in midstream. But it was even worse when you knew in that very moment that there was still time to save yourself, and yet you couldn't even budge.
β
β
Sarah Dessen (This Lullaby)
β
Where are you?β She asked. βI have been searching all my life.β βStop looking for me,β Love replied, βand I will find you.
β
β
Lang Leav (Lullabies)
β
Experts in ancient Greek culture say that people back then didn't see their thoughts as belonging to them. When ancient Greeks had a thought, it occurred to them as a god or goddess giving an order. Apollo was telling them to be brave. Athena was telling them to fall in love.
Now people hear a commercial for sour cream potato chips and rush out to buy, but now they call this free will.
At least the ancient Greeks were being honest.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Lullaby)
β
I've seen what commitment leads to. Going in is the easy part. It's the ending that sucks!
-Remy
β
β
Sarah Dessen (This Lullaby)
β
Love is an excuse to put up with the shit that you shouldn't. That's how it gets you. It throws off the scales so that things that should weigh heavily don't seem to. It's a crock. A trap.
β
β
Sarah Dessen (This Lullaby)
β
The voice says, maybe you don't go to hell for the things you do. Maybe you go to hell for the things you don't do. The things you don't finish.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Lullaby)
β
You know, when it works, love is amazing. It's not overrated.
β
β
Sarah Dessen (This Lullaby)
β
If what you're asking is how I debated whether or not to love her the answer is I didn't. Not at all. It just happened. I didn't ever question it; by the time I realized what was happening, it was already done.
β
β
Sarah Dessen (This Lullaby)
β
My heart born naked
was swaddled in lullabies.
Later alone it wore
poems for clothes.
Like a shirt
I carried on my back
the poetry I had read.
So I lived for half a century
until wordlessly we met.
From my shirt on the back of the chair
I learn tonight
how many years
of learning by heart
I waited for you.
β
β
John Berger (And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos)
β
I love you, I do -
you have my word.
You have all my words.
β
β
Lang Leav (Lullabies (Volume 2) (Lang Leav))
β
We're all of us haunted and haunting.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Lullaby)
β
And no relationship is perfect, ever. There are always some ways you have to bend, to compromise, to give something up in order to gain something greater.
β
β
Sarah Dessen (This Lullaby)
β
Time
You were the one
I wanted most
to stay.
But time could not
be kept at bay.
The more it goes,
the more it's goneβ
the more it takes away.
β
β
Lang Leav (Lullabies (Volume 2) (Lang Leav))
β
I wanted everything because I didn't want anything enough.
β
β
Lang Leav (Lullabies (Volume 2) (Lang Leav))
β
Anymore, no one's mind is their own.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Lullaby)
β
Do you know why most survivors of the Holocaust are vegan? It's because they know what it's like to be treated like an animal.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Lullaby)
β
I loved you more than loved allowed
β
β
Lang Leav (Lullabies (Volume 2) (Lang Leav))
β
There are worse things than finding your wife and child dead.
You can watch the world do it. You can watch your wife get old and bored. You can watch your kids discover everything in the world you've tried to save them from. Drugs, divorce, conformity, disease. All the nice clean books, music, television. Distraction.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Lullaby)
β
From the way that people have always talked about your heart being broken, it sort of seemed to be a one-time thing. Mine seemed to break all the time.
β
β
Heather O'Neill (Lullabies for Little Criminals)
β
She said writting novels was like childbirth: if you truly remembered how awful it got, you'd never do it again.
β
β
Sarah Dessen (This Lullaby)
β
Whenever you made a choice, especially one you'd been resisting, it always affected everything else, some in big ways, like a tremor beneath your feet, others in so tiny a shift you hardly noticed a change at all. But it was happening.
β
β
Sarah Dessen (This Lullaby)
β
O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart.
β
β
W.H. Auden (As I Walked Out One Evening: Songs, Ballads, Lullabies, Limericks & Other Light Verse)
β
When someone stirs a world of emotion in you and itβs so intense you can barely stand to be with him.
β
β
Lang Leav (Lullabies)
β
I drew him in my world;
I write him in my lines,
I want to be his girl,
he was never meant as mine.
I drew him in my world;
He is always on my mind;
I draw his every line.
It hurts when he's unkind.
I drew him in my world;
I draw him all the time,
but I don't know where to draw the line.
β
β
Lang Leav (Lullabies (Volume 2) (Lang Leav))
β
Strange how it mattered so much, when now it matters so little.
β
β
Lang Leav (Lullabies (Volume 2) (Lang Leav))
β
It doesn't matter, anyway, why you like me. Just that you do.
β
β
Sarah Dessen (This Lullaby)
β
Doesn't reincarnation strike you as just another form of procrastination?
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Lullaby)
β
And I felt a sudden whirl in my head, knowing this leap was inevitable, that I wasn't just standing on the cliff, toes poking over, but already in mid-air.
β
β
Sarah Dessen (This Lullaby)
β
We're the culture that cried wolf.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Lullaby)
β
Some people still think knowledge is power.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Lullaby)
β
But I think, personally, that it would be worse to have been alone all that time. Sure, maybe I would have protected my heart from some things, but would that really have been better? To hold myself apart because I was too scared that something might no be forever?
β
β
Sarah Dessen (This Lullaby)
β
His computer password is "password.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Lullaby)
β
People give you a hard time about being a kid at twelve. They didn't want to give you Halloween candy anymore. They said things like, "If this were the Middle Ages, you'd be married and you'd own a farm with about a million chickens on it." They were trying to kick you out of childhood. Once you were gone, there was no going back, so you had to hold on as long as you could.
β
β
Heather O'Neill (Lullabies for Little Criminals)
β
Hands are no longer hands. They are caresses. Mouths are no longer mouths. They are kisses. My name is no longer a name, it is a call. And love is no longer love β love is you.
β
β
Lang Leav (Lullabies (Volume 2) (Lang Leav))
β
I'll dissolve when the rain pours in,
When the nightmares take me,
I will scream with the howling wind,
'Cause it's a bitter world and I'd rather dream.
β
β
Owl City
β
Having solved all the major mathematical, physical, chemical, biological, sociological, philosophical, etymological, meteorological and psychological problems of the Universe except for his own, three times over, [Marvin] was severely stuck for something to do, and had taken up composing short dolorous ditties of no tone, or indeed tune. The latest one was a lullaby.
Marvin droned,
Now the world has gone to bed,
Darkness won't engulf my head,
I can see in infrared,
How I hate the night.
He paused to gather the artistic and emotional strength to tackle the next verse.
Now I lay me down to sleep,
Try to count electric sheep,
Sweet dream wishes you can keep,
How I hate the night.
β
β
Douglas Adams (Life, the Universe and Everything (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #3))
β
Tell me if you ever cared,
if a single thought
for me was spared.
Tell me when you lie in bed,
do you think of something
I once said.
Tell me if you hurt at all,
when someone says
my name with yours.
It may have been so long ago,
but I would give
the world to know.
β
β
Lang Leav (Lullabies (Volume 2) (Lang Leav))
β
That's what this has been all about for you, correct? Make it clear. That you and me--it was nothing more that you'll have with Spinnerbait boy, or the guy after that, or the guy after that. Right?"
"Yeah, I said, shrugging. "You're right."
He just stood there, looking at me, as if I had actually changed before his eyes. But this was the girl I'd been all along. I'd just hidden her well.
β
β
Sarah Dessen (This Lullaby)
β
We still groped for each other on the backstairs or in parked cars
ββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββas the road around us
grew glossy with ice and our breath softened the view through the glass
ββββββββββββββββββββalready laced with frost,
but more frequently I was finding myself sleepless, and he was running out of
ββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββlullabies.
But damn if there isnβt anything sexier
ββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββthan a slender boy with a handgun,
ββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββa fast car, a bottle of pills.
β
β
Richard Siken (Crush)
β
When the real history of mankind is fully disclosed, will it feature the echoes of gunfire or the shaping sound of lullabies? The great armistices made by military men or the peacemaking of women in homes and in neighborhoods? Will what happened in cradles and kitchens prove to be more controlling than what happened in congresses? When the surf of the centuries has made the great pyramids so much sand, the everlasting family will still be standing, because it is a celestial institution, formed outside telestial time.
β
β
Neal A. Maxwell
β
My mother was strong, in all the ways I was weak. She fell, she hurt, she felt. She lived. And for all the tumble of her experiences, she still had hope. Maybe this next time would do the trick. Or maybe not. But unless you stepped into the game, you will never know.
β
β
Sarah Dessen (This Lullaby)
β
His desperation and misery swept her up like a storm capturing the sea. She turned her mind to even these feelings, because they were his, like his terrified rage in the lift when they had first met, being wrapped in his arms in the cold well, being dazzled by his wonder at the woods and her home and her. Like being a child, awareness of him the morning chorus that woke her and the lullaby that sent her to sleep, his thoughts always her first and last song.
I love you, Kami told him, and cut.
β
β
Sarah Rees Brennan (Unspoken (The Lynburn Legacy, #1))
β
If you want to get a child to love you, then you should just go hide in the closet for three or for hours. They get down on their knees and pray for you to return. That child will turn you into God. Lonely children probably wrote the Bible.
β
β
Heather O'Neill (Lullabies for Little Criminals)
β
Regrets
Timing is irrelevant when two people are meant for each other. It's what I once believed.
But we met during a time when I was such a mess, when I still had so much to figure out. How could I have known how crucial every word, every action was or how losing you would be something I would always regret?
If only you could have met me now, how different it would be. How much I have changed. How I have grown. I learned so much from all the mistakes I made with you. I just wish I had made them with someone else.
β
β
Lang Leav (Lullabies (Volume 2) (Lang Leav))
β
I still search
for you in crowds,
in empty fields
and soaring clouds.
In city lights
and passing cars,
on winding roads
and wishing stars.
I wonder where
you could be now,
for years Iβve not said
your name out loud.
And longer since
I called you mineβ
time has passed
for you and I.
But I have learnt
to live without,
I do not mindβ
I still love you anyhow.
β
β
Lang Leav (Lullabies (Volume 2) (Lang Leav))
β
As I walked out one evening,
Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
Were fields of harvest wheat.
And down by the brimming river
I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
'Love has no ending.
'I'll love you, dear, I'll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street,
'I'll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.
β
β
W.H. Auden (As I Walked Out One Evening: Songs, Ballads, Lullabies, Limericks & Other Light Verse)
β
Here are the things I want for you -
I want you to be happy. I want someone else to know the warmth of your smile, to feel the way I did when I was in your presence.
I want you to know how happy you once made me and though you really did hurt me, in the end, I was better for it. I don't know if what we had was love, but if it wasn't, I hope to never fall in love. Because of you, I know I am too fragile to bear it.
I want you to remember my lips beneath your fingers and how you told me things you never told another soul. I want you to know that I have kept sacred, everything you had entrusted in me and I always will.
Finally, I want you to know how sorry I am for pushing you away when I had only meant to bring you closer. And if I ever felt like home to you, it was because you were safe with me. - I want you to know that most of all.
β
β
Lang Leav (Lullabies (Volume 2) (Lang Leav))
β
Which is why I am not here to tell you tomorrow will be a new day. That the sun will go on shining. Or there are plenty of fish in the sea. What I will tell you is this; itβs okay to be hurting as much as you are. What you are feeling is not only completely valid but necessaryβbecause it makes you so much more human. And though I canβt promise it will get better any time soon, I can tell you that it willβeventually. For now, all you can do is take your time. Take all the time you need.
β
β
Lang Leav (Lullabies (Volume 2) (Lang Leav))
β
Three Questions What was it like to love him? asked Gratitude. It was like being exhumed, I answered. And brought to life in a flash of brilliance. What was it like to be loved in return? asked Joy. It was like being seen after a perpetual darkness, I replied. To be heard after a lifetime of silence. What was it like to lose him? asked Sorrow. There was a long pause before I responded: It was like hearing every good-bye ever said to meβsaid all at once.
β
β
Lang Leav (Lullabies)
β
Every generation wants to be the last. Every generation hates the next trend in music they can't understand. We hate to give up those reins of our culture. To find our own music playing in elevators. The ballad for our revolution, turned into background music for a television commercial. To find our generation's clothes and hair suddenly retro.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Lullaby)
β
Imagine immortality, where even a marriage of fifty years would feel like a one-night stand. Imagine seeing trends and fashions blur past you. Imagine the world more crowded and desperate every century. Imagine changing religions, homes, diets, careers, until none of them have any real value.Imagine traveling the world until you're bored with every square inch. Imagine your emotions, your loves and hates and rivalries and victories, played out again and again until life is nothing more than a melo-dramatic soap opera. Until you regard the birth and death of other people with no more emotion than the wilted cut flowers you throw away.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Lullaby)
β
I know there were no guaratnees. No way of knowing what came next for me, or him, or anything. Some things dont last forever, but some things do. Like a great song, or a good book, or a good memory you can take out and unfold in your darkest times, pressing down the corners and peering close, hoping you still see the person you see there . . . That was the thing, you just never knew. Right now, though, I wanted not to think forward or backward, but only to lose myself in the words.
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Sarah Dessen (This Lullaby)
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No one wants to admit we're addicted to music. That's just not possible. No one's addicted to music and television and radio. We just need more of it, more channels, a larger screen, more volume. We can't bear to be without it, but no, nobody's addicted. We could turn it off anytime we wanted. I fit a window frame into a brick wall. With a little brush, the size for fingernail polish, I glue it. The window is the size of a fingernail. The glue smells like hair spray. The smell tastes like oranges and gasoline.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Lullaby)
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Suddenly I realized that I wanted everything to be as it was when I was younger. When you're young enough, you don't know that you live in a cheap lousy apartment. A cracked chair is nothing other than a chair. A dandelion growing out of a crack in the sidewalk outside your front door is a garden. You could believe that a song your parent was singing in the evening was the most tragic opera in the world. It never occurs to you when you are very young to need something other than what your parents have to offer you.
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Heather O'Neill (Lullabies for Little Criminals)
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Plastic ware," he said slowly, "like knives and forks and spoons?"
I brushed a bit of dirt off the back of my carβwas that a scratch?βand said casually,
"Yeah, I guess.Just the basics, you know."
"Did you need plastic ware?" he asked.
I shrugged.
"Because," he went on, and I fought the urge to squirm, "it's so funny, because I need
plastic ware. Badly."
"Can we go inside, please?" I asked, slamming the trunk shut. "It's hot out here."
He looked at the bag again, then at me. And then, slowly, the smile I knew and
dreaded crept across his
face. "You bought me plastic ware," he said. "Didn't you?'
"No," I growled, picking at my license plate.
"You did!" he hooted, laughing out loud. "You bought me some forks. And knives.
And spoons.
Becauseβ"
"No," I said loudly.
"βyou love me!" He grinned, as if he'd solved the puzzler for all time, as I felt a flush
creep across my
face. Stupid Lissa. I could have killed her.
"It was on sale," I told him again, as if this was some kind of an excuse.
"You love me," he said simply, taking the bag and adding it to the others.
"Only seven bucks," I added, but he was already walking away, so sure of himself. "It
was on clearance,
for God's sake."
"Love me," he called out over his shoulder, in a singsong voice. "You. Love. Me.
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Sarah Dessen (This Lullaby)
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The Saddest Thing
There was someone I knew, a long time ago. I was so in love with him I couldnβt see straight. The saddest thing is, he felt the same way about me.
It was easy in the beginning. All we had to do was laugh at the same things and love took care of the rest. I had never felt so connected to another person.
He would always say it felt as though I was made for him. How glad he was to have met me. We were so sure of what we felt. We should have held tight, onto that certainty.
There is never one particular reason why two people are pulled apart. All these years later, I have stopped looking for answers. I know better now, that love is never a guarantee. Not when you have the rest of the world to contend with.
Sometimes you have to step back and look at these things from a philosophical standpoint. And I know loving him has taught me something about myself, it has broadened my understanding of the world. And if it has done the same for him, then it wasnβt all in vain.
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Lang Leav (Lullabies (Volume 2) (Lang Leav))
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But you, fine sir." John Miller clapped Dexter on the shoulder, a bit unsteadily. "You have problems of your own."
"This is true," Dexter replied, nodding.
"The women," John Miller sighed.
Dexter wiped a hand over his face, and glanced down the road. "The women. Indeed, dear squire, they perplex me as well."
"Ah, the fair Remy," John Miller said grandly, and I felt a flush run up my face. Lissa, in the front seat, put a hand to her mouth.
"The fair Remy," Dexter repeated, "did not see me as a worthwhile risk."
"Indeed."
"I am, of course, a rogue. A rapscallion. A musician. I would bring her nothing but poverty, shame, and bruised shins from my flailing limbs. She is the better for our parting."
John Miller pantomined stabbing himself in the heart. "Cold words, my squire."
"Huffah," Dexter agreed.
"Huffah," John Miller repeated, "Indeed.
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Sarah Dessen (This Lullaby)
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I suppose the fundamental distinction between Shakespeare and myself is one of treatment. We get our effects differently. Take the familiar farcical situation of someone who suddenly discovers that something unpleasant is standing behind them. Here is how Shakespeare handles it in "The Winter's Tale," Act 3, Scene 3:
ANTIGONUS: Farewell! A lullaby too rough. I never saw the heavens so dim by day. A savage clamour! Well may I get aboard! This is the chase: I am gone for ever.
And then comes literature's most famous stage direction, "Exit pursued by a bear." All well and good, but here's the way I would handle it:
BERTIE: Touch of indigestion, Jeeves?
JEEVES: No, Sir.
BERTIE: Then why is your tummy rumbling?
JEEVES: Pardon me, Sir, the noise to which you allude does not emanate from my interior but from that of that animal that has just joined us.
BERTIE: Animal? What animal?
JEEVES: A bear, Sir. If you will turn your head, you will observe that a bear is standing in your immediate rear inspecting you in a somewhat menacing manner.
BERTIE (as narrator): I pivoted the loaf. The honest fellow was perfectly correct. It was a bear. And not a small bear, either. One of the large economy size. Its eye was bleak and it gnashed a tooth or two, and I could see at a g. that it was going to be difficult for me to find a formula. "Advise me, Jeeves," I yipped. "What do I do for the best?"
JEEVES: I fancy it might be judicious if you were to make an exit, Sir.
BERTIE (narrator): No sooner s. than d. I streaked for the horizon, closely followed across country by the dumb chum. And that, boys and girls, is how your grandfather clipped six seconds off Roger Bannister's mile.
Who can say which method is superior?"
(As reproduced in
Plum, Shakespeare and the Cat Chap
)
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P.G. Wodehouse (Over Seventy: An Autobiography with Digressions)
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What the hell," I said, pushing off the wall, ready to take off the head of whatever stupid salesperson had decided to get cozy with me. My elbow was still buzzing, and I could feel a hot flush creeping up my neck: bad signs. I knew my temper.
I turned my head and saw it wasn't a salesman at all. It was a guy with black curly hair, around my age, wearing a bright orange T-shirt. And for some reason he was smiling.
"Hey there," he said cheerfully. "How's it going?"
"What is your problem?" I snapped, rubbing my elbow.
"Problem?"
"You just slammed me into the wall, asshole."
He blinked. "Goodness," he said finally. "Such language."
I just looked at him. Wrong day, buddy, I thought. You caught me on the wrong day.
"The thing is," he said, as if we'd been discussing the weather or world politics, "I saw you out in the showroom. I was over by the tire display?"
I was sure I was glaring at him. But he kept talking.
"I just thought to myself, all of a sudden, that we had something in common. A natural chemistry, if you will. And I had a feeling that something big was going to happen. To both of us. That we were, in fact, meant to be together."
"You got all this," I said, clarifying, "at the tire display?"
"You didn't feel it?" he asked.
"No. I did, however, feel you slamming me into the wall," I said evenly.
"That," he said, lowering his voice and leaning closer to me, "was an accident. An oversight. Just an unfortunate result of the enthusiasm I felt knowing I was about to talk to you.
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Sarah Dessen (This Lullaby)