Maggie Lover Quotes

...she made her home in between the pages of books.

A day or two after my love pronouncement, now feral with vulnerability, I sent you the passage from Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes in which Barthes describes how the subject who utters the phrase “I love you” is like “the Argonaut renewing his ship during its voyage without changing its name.” Just as the Argo’s parts may be replaced over time but the boat is still called the Argo, whenever the lover utters the phrase “I love you,” its meaning must be renewed by each use, as “the very task of love and of language is to give to one and the same phrase inflections which will be forever new.

58. “Love is something so ugly that the human race would die out if lovers could see what they were doing” (Leonardo da Vinci).

Was soll ich mit meinem Munde? Mit meiner Nacht? Mit meinem Tag? Ich habe keine Geliebte, kein Haus, keine Stelle auf der ich lebe.’ 'What should I do with my mouth? With my night? With my day? I have no lover, no house, no place where I live.

The mother of an adult child sees her work completed and undone at the same time.' If this holds true, I may have to withstand not only rage, but also my undoing. Can one prepare for one's undoing? How has my mother withstood mine? Why do I continue to undo her, when what I want to express above all else is that I lover her very much?

I stand up, trying to shake myself mentally. Get over him, Maggie, I instruct myself. I need to stop. I really do. I want to. I’m going to. I sound like a drug addict. Perhaps there’s a twelve-step program for me. Priest Lovers Anonymous.

This is what Lilly loves about London, that every building, street, common and square, has had different uses, that everything was once spomething else, that the present, was once the past ammended

Love is something so ugly that the human race would die out if lovers could see what they were doing' (Leonardo da Vinci).

The bloody one?" asked one of the faeries. "Or your lover?" It pointed at its privates, and I rolled my eyes. Definitely like the junior high kids.

I am not yet sure how to sever the love from the lover without occasioning some degree of carnage.

All lovers start as strangers

We think each new romantic prospect, each new lover, is a fresh start, but really we're just tacking into the wind, each new trajectory determined by the last, plotting a jagged yet unbroken line of reactions through our lives. [Hadley Baxter]

Some of the subjects of Puppies and Babies may not identify as queer, but it doesn’t matter: the installation queers them. By which I mean to say that it partakes in a long history of queers constructing their own families—be they composed of peers or mentors or lovers or ex-lovers or children or non-human animals—and that it presents queer family making as an umbrella category under which baby making might be a subset, rather than the other way around. It reminds us that any bodily experience can be made new and strange, that nothing we do in this life need have a lid crammed on it, that no one set of practices or relations has the monopoly on the so-called radical, or the so-called normative.

You're beautiful and sad," I said finally, not looking at him when I did. "Just like your eyes. You're like a song that I heard when I was a little kid but forgot I knew until I heard it again." For a long moment there was only the whirring sound of the tires on the road, and then Sam said softly, "Thank you.

72. It is easier, of course, to find dignity in one's solitude. Loneliness is solitude with a problem. Can blue solve the problem, or can it at least keep me company within it?—No, not exactly. It cannot love me that way; it has no arms. But sometimes I do feel its presence to be a sort of wink—Here you are again, it says, and so am I.

whenever the lover utters the phrase “I love you,” its meaning must be renewed by each use, as “the very task of love and of language is to give to one and the same phrase inflections which will be forever new.

The distance Maggie still feels from the existence of her grief makes her intensely self-conscious, as if she’s acting in a movie about a woman who goes home when her mother dies rather than actually experiencing it.

His yellow eyes were half-lidded as he sang, and in that golden moment, hanging taut in the middle of an ice-covered landscape like a single bubble of summer nectar, I could see how my life could be stretched out in front of me.

There was something that set apart a man who had grown up among women—a strong mother and a clutch of sisters, in Daniel’s case—from a man who hadn’t. Men of this ilk were, in Nicola’s opinion, much more evolved and therefore made much better lovers.

There will always be wars," Maggie told him. "Yes," Reeve replied. "But there will also be brothers, sisters, comrades and lovers as well, and they are who we fight for. Our comrades--our brothers--beside us on the field; our wives and families at home. Wallace wishes for freedom. It is a gife given by God and should not be taken by men; it is the right of every man to be free and it is our duty to protect that right so that our children may know what it is to be free and not live under oppression.

two Christian princesses who were pursued by undesirable pagan lovers—lovers who professed to be unable to live without their beloveds’ beautiful blue eyes. To rid herself of the unwanted attention, Medana supposedly plucked her eyes out and threw them at her suitor’s feet; Triduana was slightly more inventive, and tore hers out with a thorn, then sent them to her suitor on a skewer.

A day or two after my love pronouncement, now feral with vulnerability, I sent you the passage from Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes in which Barthes describes how the subject who utters the phrase “I love you” is like “the Argonaut renewing his ship during its voyage without changing its name.” Just as the Argo’s parts may be replaced over time but the boat is still called the Argo, whenever the lover utters the phrase “I love you,” its meaning must be renewed by each use, as “the very task of love and of language is to give to one and the same phrase inflections which will be forever new.

Declan Lynch was a liar. He'd been a liar his entire life. Lies came to him fluidly, easily, instinctively. What does your father do for a living? He sells high-end sports cars in the summer, life insurance in the winter. He's an anesthesiologist. He does financial consulting for divorcees. He does advertising work for international companies in English-speaking markets. He's in the FBI. Where did he meet your mother? They were on yearbook together in high school. They were set up by friends. She took his picture at the county fair, said she wanted to keep his smile forever. Why can't Ronan come to a sleepover? He sleepwalks. Once he walked out to the road and my father had to convince a trucker who'd stopped before hitting him he was really his son. How did your mother die? Brain bleed. Rare. Genetic. Passes from mother to daughter, which is the only good thing, 'cause she only had sons. How are you doing? Fine. Good. Great. At a certain point, the truth felt worse. Truth was a closed-casket funeral attended by its estranged living relatives, Lies, Safety, Secrets. He lied to everyone. He lied to his lovers, his friends, his brothers. Well. More often he simply didn't tell his brothers the truth.

Maybe the problem was that we hadn’t actually been in a beginning, not starting a chain reaction but still riding out an old one. I was still trying to escape my feelings for Alexei, my guilt about Oliver, hoping Redwood would turn out to be the key that freed me. Maybe he was hoping I was something equally improbable. We think each new romantic prospect, each new lover, is a fresh start, but really we’re just tacking into the wind, each new trajectory determined by the last, plotting a jagged yet unbroken line of reactions through our lives. That was part of the problem: I was always just reacting, always just getting buffeted along, never setting a destination.

Is the missing object a lover’s token you shouldn’t have?” “Gracious!” She sat back, looking dismayed but not insulted. “Investigating must call for a vivid imagination, Mr. Hazlit.” “Hardly. Human nature seems to draw most people into the same predictable peccadilloes over and over. So which misstep have you taken? Do you need to locate the child’s father? Pay off his wife to keep her mouth shut? Those aren’t strictly investigatory matters, but I can see where the need for discretion… What?” “I should slap you.” The words weren’t offered with any particular animosity, more a tired acceptance. “You are a man, though, and allowances must be made.” “I beg your pardon.” “And well you should.” She sipped her tea then tipped her head back to regard him. “Despite the foul implications of your questions, Mr. Hazlit—questions I doubt you would have put to any of my sisters—I still need your help, and I still intend to retain you. I have committed no indiscretion; I have no ill-conceived child on the way; I need not go for a tour of the Continent to eschew my dependence on laudanum.” “So

56. There are, however, many stories of women—particularly saints—blinding themselves in order to maintain their chastity, to prove that they “only have eyes” for God or Christ. Consider, for example, the legend of Saint Lucy, patron saint of the blind, whose name means “clear, radiant, understandable. What seems clear enough: in 304 ad Lucy was tortured and put to death by the Roman emperor Diocletian, and thus martyred for her Christianity. What is unclear: why, exactly, she runs around Gothic and Renaissance paintings holding a golden dish with her blue eyes staring weirdly out from it. Some say her eyes were tortured out of her head in her martyrdom; some say she gouged them out herself after being sentenced by the pagan emperor to be defiled in a brothel. Even more unclear are the twinned legends of Saint Medana (of Ireland) and Saint Triduana (of Scotland), two Christian princesses who were pursued by undesirable pagan lovers—lovers who professed to be unable to live without their beloveds’ beautiful blue eyes. To rid herself of the unwanted attention, Medana supposedly plucked her eyes out and threw them at her suitor’s feet; Triduana was slightly more inventive, and tore here out with a thorn, then sent them to her suitor on a skewer. 57. In religious accounts, these women are announcing, via their amputations, their fidelity to God. But other accounts wonder whether they were in fact punishing themselves, as they knew that they had looked upon men with lust, and felt the need to employ extreme measures to avert any further temptation.

You break her heart, and you’ll have to deal with me and her three brothers, and if you survive that, Her Grace will ensure your social ruin unto the nineteenth generation. I remind you, all of my boys are crack shots and more than competent with a sword.” “It is not my intention to break her heart.” “Oh, it’s never our intention.” His Grace’s brows drew down in thought, and he was once again the affable paterfamilias. “Maggie is different. I hope that’s from being the oldest daughter, but her unfortunate origins are too obvious a factor to be dismissed. She’s in want of… dreams, I think. My other girls have dreams. Sophie dreamed of her own family, Jenny loves to paint, Louisa has her literary scribbling, and Evie must racket about the property as her brothers used to, but Maggie has never been a dreamer. Not about her first pony nor her first waltz nor her first… beau.” Nor her first lover. The words hung unspoken in the air while the fire crackled and hissed and a log fell amid a shower of sparks. It wasn’t what Ben would have expected any papa to say of his daughter, but then, marrying into a family meant details like this would be shared—Esther Windham misplaced her everyday jewels, and Percy thought his daughters should be entitled to dream. In a different way, it felt as if Ben were still lurking in doorways and climbing through windows, but this window was called marriage, and Maggie was trying to lock it shut with Ben on the outside. “I’m not sure Maggie wants to marry me.” It was as close as he’d come to touching on the circumstances of the betrothal. His Grace regarded him for a long moment. “I’m her papa, but I was a young man once, Hazelton. Maggie is only a bit younger than Devlin and a few months older than Bart would have been. When I married, I had no idea either of my two oldest progeny existed. I’d no sooner started filling my nursery when—before my heir was out of dresses—both women came forward, hurling accusations and threats. If my marriage can survive that onslaught, surely you can overcome a little stubbornness in my daughter?” It was, again, an insight into the Windham family Ben gained only because he was engaged to marry Maggie. Such confidences prompted a rare inclination toward direct speech. “I think Maggie’s dream is to be left alone. If she jilts me, she’ll have one more excuse to retire from life, to hide and tell herself she’s content.” “Content.” His Grace spat the word. “Bother content. Content is milk toast and pap when life is supposed to be a banquet. Make Maggie’s dreams come true, young Hazelton, and show her contentment is shoddy goods compared to happiness.” “You make it sound simple.” “We’re speaking of women and that particular subspecies of the genre referred to as wives. It is simple—devote yourself to her happiness, and you will be rewarded tenfold. I do not, however, say the undertaking will ever be easy.

And when I held her cheek against my cheek, I was drawing from the well of love he filled. So I became after all not him exactly but a kind of conduit between them: a conversation they conducted with my mouth. And when I was not unbelievably sad, I was moved to hold inside me both my lovers and to introduce them to each other there, in the hollow just above the heart, among the little folds where the voice starts.

Maggie’s my whole heart but Iris, baby, you’re my soul.

closeness with a queerer notion of motherhood. I was mothered by biological kin as well as by friends and lovers and strangers and myself. This was what I suppose the writer Maggie Nelson means by the “democratization of the maternal function,” a more egalitarian distribution of the labor of caretaking, less a gendered burden and more so a collective undertaking that is reciprocal. We are both caring and cared for.

A day or two after my love pronounced pronouncement, now feral with vulnerability, I send you the passage from Roland Barthes by Ronald Barthes, in which Barthes describes how the subject who utters the phrase “I love you” is like “the Argonaut renewing his ship during its voyage without changing its name.” Just as the Argo’s parts may be replaced over time, but the boat is still called Argo, whenever the lover utters the phrase “I love you,” its meaning must be renewed by its use, as “the very task of love and language is to give to one and the same phrase inflections which will be forever new.

Joan laughs and asks for more, but the mockery stings. Arslan had been her lover. She had been the one to help him defect.

Gareth felt a flare of alarm. His tongue had been too loose. “You won’t leave me yet? The house needs to be presentable for a sale. And who knows—I might find an heiress to marry before the notes come due. Who would not want me, an impoverished cripple?

Life was enough to scare the shit out of the most decorated soldier, and the best were scared to death and fought accordingly.

My scruples are packing a portmanteau and heading to the coast.

I’m not afraid of hard work. But I’m just one woman and your house needs more. Work, that is. Not a woman. Women. No, that’s just what it does need,” she babbled. This was not quite as easy as she thought. “I don’t suppose you could hire a maid or two to help me?

Two things to wash? I’ll earn my keep tonight.” “I’ll make sure you’re properly compensated.” He winked, the devil. She had an idea just how he thought he could compensate her. That would not do at all, and it was time to remind him. “D-despite the fact that we are more or less friends now, Gareth, you will keep your hands to yourself.” He raised an eyebrow. “My hands? Surely you exaggerate.” He seemed more amused than offended, which was even worse." -Anne to an armless man

Jimi, Orla’s mother, was as tall as Orla, but several times wider. She had all of Orla’s grace, too, which was to say that she knocked her hips into every piece of furniture in Blue’s room. Every time she did, she said things like “mother lover!” and “fasten it all.” They sounded worse than real swear words.

MOIST”. “Ew.” Maggie cringes. “What’s wrong with moist?” Selah taunts her. “You know I can’t stand that word.” “What? Moist?” Quinn moans “Mmm, this cake is deliciously moist.” Selah studies the board. “I wonder if I could play panties off of moist.” “Gah.” Maggie flails her arms and runs away. “Stop!”  “What’s wrong with moist panties? I thought wet was a good thing for girls.” Quinn laughs.

Maggie knows about John’s little crush on her. Being

Sammy is just a kid, Maggie realizes, who can’t give her advice. Sammy is doing kid things and Maggie has lost her vampire lover.

...the egg analogy does not work well for the Moon's structure. Here, a better analogy would be a rather boring sugar-coated chocolate-chip muffin. I say boring because the muffin has just a single chocolate chip at its center, definitely a disappointing result for chocolate lovers everywhere.

Love is something so ugly that the human race would die out if lovers could see what they were doing." (Leonardo da Vinci)

Rather than your face as a young woman, I prefer your face as it is now. Ravaged," a man tells the narrator in the opening lines of Duras's The Lover.

56. “There are, however, many stories of women—particularly saints—blinding themselves in order to maintain their chastity, to prove that they “only have eyes” for God or Christ. Consider, for example, the legend of Saint Lucy, patron saint of the blind, whose name means “clear, radiant, understandable.” What seems clear enough: in 304 AD Lucy was tortured and put to death by the Roman emperor Diocletian, and thus martyred for her Christianity. What is unclear: why, exactly, she runs around Gothic and Renaissance paintings holding a golden dish with her blue eyes staring weirdly out from it. Some say her eyes were tortured out of her head in her martyrdom; some say she gouged them out herself after being sentenced by the pagan emperor to be defiled in a brothel. Even more unclear are the twinned legends of Saint Medana (of Ireland) and Saint Triduana (of Scotland), two Christian princesses who were pursued by undesirable pagan lovers—lovers who professed to be unable to live without their beloveds’ beautiful blue eyes. To rid herself of the unwanted attention, Medana supposedly plucked her eyes out and threw them at her suitor’s feet; Triduana was slightly more inventive, and tore hers[…]

I didn’t want a relationship, but Maggie had the power to bend me at her will. If she asked, I would consider saying yes to anything she wanted. I would most likely also fuck it up.