β
I don't go looking for trouble. Trouble usually finds me.
β
β
Katie McGarry (Take Me On (Pushing the Limits, #4))
β
And, in the end
The love you take
is equal to the love you make.
β
β
Paul McCartney (The Beatles Illustrated Lyrics)
β
To douchebags!" he said, gesturing to Brad. "And to girls that break your heart," he bowed his head to me. His eyes lost focus. "And to the absolute fucking horror of losing your best friend because you were stupid enough to fall in love with her.
β
β
Jamie McGuire (Beautiful Disaster (Beautiful, #1))
β
You might be poor, your shoes might be broken, but your mind is a palace.
β
β
Frank McCourt (Angelaβs Ashes (Frank McCourt, #1))
β
You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.
β
β
Cormac McCarthy (No Country for Old Men)
β
The capacity for friendship is God's way of apologizing for our families.
β
β
Jay McInerney (The Last of the Savages)
β
I knew the second I met you
that there was something about you I needed. Turns out it
wasnβt something about you at all. It was just you.
β
β
Jamie McGuire (Beautiful Disaster (Beautiful, #1))
β
Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself.
β
β
Lois McMaster Bujold (A Civil Campaign (Vorkosigan Saga, #12))
β
Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real.
β
β
Cormac McCarthy (All the Pretty Horses (The Border Trilogy, #1))
β
You forget what you want to remember, and you remember what you want to forget.
β
β
Cormac McCarthy (The Road)
β
A bit of trash now and then is good for the severest reader. It provides the necessary roughage in the literary diet.
β
β
Phyllis McGinley
β
We are surrounded by story.
β
β
Alice McDermott
β
I found myself thinking about President William McKinley, the third American president to be assassinated. He lived for several days after he was shot, and towards the end, his wife started crying and screaming, "I want to go too! I want to go too!" And with his last measure of strength, McKinley turned to her and spoke his last words: "We are all going.
β
β
John Green (Looking for Alaska)
β
Thinking about history makes me wonder how Iβll fit into it one day, I guess. And you too. I kinda wish people still wrote like that. History, huh? Bet we could make some.
β
β
Casey McQuiston (Red, White & Royal Blue)
β
Books fall open, you fall in.
β
β
David T.W. McCord
β
A peasant that reads is a prince in waiting.
β
β
Walter Mosley (The Long Fall (Leonid McGill, #1))
β
Imagination is the golden-eyed monster that never sleeps. It must be fed; it cannot be ignored.
β
β
Patricia A. McKillip
β
A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended.
β
β
Ian McEwan (Atonement)
β
Perhaps it is our imperfections that make us so perfect for one another!
β
β
Douglas McGrath
β
Too many of us are hung up on what we don't have, can't have, or won't ever have. We spend too much energy being down, when we could use that same energy β if not less of it β doing, or at least trying to do, some of the things we really want to do.
β
β
Terry McMillan (Disappearing Acts)
β
It's over. Go home.
You're my home.
β
β
Jamie McGuire (Beautiful Disaster (Beautiful, #1))
β
When it's gone, you'll know what a gift love was. You'll suffer like this. So go back and fight to keep it.
β
β
Ian McEwan (Enduring Love)
β
I'm the Super-sized McShizzle, man!" Leo said. "I'm Leo Valdez, bad boy supreme. And the ladies love a bad boy.
β
β
Rick Riordan (The Mark of Athena (The Heroes of Olympus, #3))
β
I belong to my beloved, and my beloved is mine.
β
β
Jamie McGuire (Beautiful Disaster (Beautiful, #1))
β
The world spins. We stumble on. It is enough.
β
β
Colum McCann (Let the Great World Spin)
β
If you can't be seven feet tall, be seven feet smart.
β
β
Lois McMaster Bujold (Labyrinth (Vorkosigan Saga, #5.2))
β
You can go through life and make new friends every year - every month practically - but there was never any substitute for those friendships of childhood that survive into adult years. Those are the ones in which we are bound to one another with hoops of steel.
β
β
Alexander McCall Smith (The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, #1))
β
That's the choice. I love him, with all that, because of all that. On purpose. I love him on purpose.
β
β
Casey McQuiston (Red, White & Royal Blue)
β
Next to music, beer was best.
β
β
Carson McCullers (The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter)
β
There will be a few times in your life when all your instincts will tell you to do something, something that defies logic, upsets your plans, and may seem crazy to others. When that happens, you do it. Listen to your instincts and ignore everything else. Ignore logic, ignore the odds, ignore the complications, and just go for it.
β
β
Judith McNaught (Remember When (Foster Saga, #1))
β
Well, usually when a person shakes their head,β said McGonagall coldly, βthey mean βno.β So unless Miss Edgecombe is using a form of sign language as yet unknown to humans...
β
β
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter, #5))
β
You know why I want you? I didnβt know I was lost until you found me. I didnβt know what alone was until the first night I spent without you in my bed. Youβre the one thing Iβve got right. Youβre what Iβve been waiting for, Pigeon.
β
β
Jamie McGuire (Beautiful Disaster (Beautiful, #1))
β
Let me guess, it's the love of your life?" I said quoting Travis' statement about his motorcycle.
"No, it's a car. The love of my life will be a women with my last name.
β
β
Jamie McGuire (Beautiful Disaster (Beautiful, #1))
β
Sometimes you just jump and hope it's not a cliff.
β
β
Casey McQuiston (Red, White & Royal Blue)
β
The worst type of crying wasn't the kind everyone could see--the wailing on street corners, the tearing at clothes. No, the worst kind happened when your soul wept and no matter what you did, there was no way to comfort it. A section withered and became a scar on the part of your soul that survived. For people like me and Echo, our souls contained more scar tissue than life.
β
β
Katie McGarry (Pushing the Limits (Pushing the Limits, #1))
β
I know we're fucked up, alright? I'm impulsive, and hot tempered, and you get under my skin like no one else. You act like you hate me one minute, and then need me the next. I never get anything right, and I don't deserve you...but I fucking love you, Abby. I love you more than I loved anyone or anything ever. When you're around, I don't need booze, or money, or the fighting, or the one-night stands...
β
β
Jamie McGuire (Beautiful Disaster (Beautiful, #1))
β
I need to hear you say it. I need to know youβre mine.β
βIβve been yours since the second we met.
β
β
Jamie McGuire (Beautiful Disaster (Beautiful, #1))
β
We are homesick most for the places we have never known.
β
β
Carson McCullers
β
I know, up on top you are seeing great sights, but down here at the bottom we, too, should have rights.
β
β
Dr. Seuss (Yertle the Turtle and Gertrude McFuzz ( Collins Colour Cubs Mini Format ))
β
The odd thing about people who had many books was how they always wanted more.
β
β
Patricia A. McKillip (The Bell at Sealey Head)
β
Straight people, he thinks, probably don't spend this much time convincing themselves that they're straight.
β
β
Casey McQuiston (Red, White & Royal Blue)
β
You can judge a man's true character by the way he treats his fellow animals.
β
β
Paul McCartney
β
Nobody wants to be here and nobody wants to leave.
β
β
Cormac McCarthy (The Road)
β
It wasn't only wickedness and scheming that made people unhappy, it was confusion and misunderstanding; above all, it was the failure to grasp the simple truth that other people are as real as you.
β
β
Ian McEwan (Atonement)
β
Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent.
β
β
Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West)
β
I used to think anyone doing anything weird was weird. Now I know that it is the people that call others weird that are weird.
β
β
Paul McCartney
β
You canβt tell me
what to do anymore, Travis! I donβt belong to you!β
In the second it took him to turn and face me, his
expression had contorted into anger. He stomped toward
me, planting his hands on the bed and leaning into my face.
βWELL I BELONG TO YOU!β The veins in his neck
bulged as he shouted, and I met his glare, refusing to even
flinch. He looked at my lips, panting. βI belong to you.
β
β
Jamie McGuire (Beautiful Disaster (Beautiful, #1))
β
I cannot go to school today"
Said little Peggy Ann McKay.
"I have the measles and the mumps,
A gash, a rash and purple bumps.
My mouth is wet, my throat is dry.
I'm going blind in my right eye.
My tonsils are as big as rocks,
I've counted sixteen chicken pox.
And there's one more - that's seventeen,
And don't you think my face looks green?
My leg is cut, my eyes are blue,
It might be the instamatic flu.
I cough and sneeze and gasp and choke,
I'm sure that my left leg is broke.
My hip hurts when I move my chin,
My belly button's caving in.
My back is wrenched, my ankle's sprained,
My 'pendix pains each time it rains.
My toes are cold, my toes are numb,
I have a sliver in my thumb.
My neck is stiff, my voice is weak,
I hardly whisper when I speak.
My tongue is filling up my mouth,
I think my hair is falling out.
My elbow's bent, my spine ain't straight,
My temperature is one-o-eight.
My brain is shrunk, I cannot hear,
There's a hole inside my ear.
I have a hangnail, and my heart is ...
What? What's that? What's that you say?
You say today is .............. Saturday?
G'bye, I'm going out to play!
β
β
Shel Silverstein
β
He scanned my face with careful hope in his eyes.
βYou love me?β
βItβs the tattoos,β I shrugged.
A wide smile stretched across his face, making his
dimple sink into his cheek.
β
β
Jamie McGuire (Beautiful Disaster (Beautiful, #1))
β
It wasnβt just me, and it wasnβt just him, it was what we were together that was the exception.
β
β
Jamie McGuire (Beautiful Disaster (Beautiful, #1))
β
Harry witnessed Professor McGonagall walking right past Peeves who was determinedly loosening a crystal chandelier and could have sworn he heard her tell the poltergeist out of the corner of her mouth, 'It unscrews the other way.
β
β
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter, #5))
β
Never forget, Caelius, that a great man makes his luck. Luck is there for everyone to seize. Most of us miss our chances; we're blind to our luck. He never misses a chance because he's never blind to the opportunity of the moment.
β
β
Colleen McCullough (Caesar (Masters of Rome, #5))
β
One of these days you're going to fall in love, son. Don't settle for just anyone. Choose the girl that doesn't come easy; the one you have to fight for, and then never stop fighting. Never
β
β
Jamie McGuire (Walking Disaster (Beautiful, #2))
β
It was always the view of my parents...that hot weather encouraged loose morals among young people.
β
β
Ian McEwan
β
I'm not your anything," I snapped, glaring up at him.
His eyebrows pulled in and he stopped dancing. "You're my everything.
β
β
Jamie McGuire (Beautiful Disaster (Beautiful, #1))
β
Keep a little fire burning; however small, however hidden.
β
β
Cormac McCarthy (The Road)
β
You are", he says, "the absolute worst idea I've ever had.
β
β
Casey McQuiston (Red, White & Royal Blue)
β
There is no God and we are his prophets.
β
β
Cormac McCarthy (The Road)
β
He was afraid of nothing. Until he'd met me.
β
β
Jamie McGuire (Beautiful Disaster (Beautiful, #1))
β
Even when I'm dead, I'll swim through the Earth,
like a mermaid of the soil, just to be next to your bones.
β
β
Jeffrey McDaniel
β
I love you enough to never make you choose.
β
β
Katie McGarry (Pushing the Limits (Pushing the Limits, #1))
β
It's dangerous to need someone that much. You're trying to save him and he's hoping you can. You two are a disaster." I smiled at the ceiling. "It doesn't matter what or why it is. When it's good, Kara... it's beautiful.
β
β
Jamie McGuire (Beautiful Disaster (Beautiful, #1))
β
If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian.
β
β
Paul McCartney
β
War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner.
β
β
Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West)
β
Folks want to glow, to leave their worries and dead skin behind.
β
β
Terry McMillan (Getting to Happy (Waiting to Exhale, #2))
β
History, huh?
β
β
Casey McQuiston (Red, White & Royal Blue)
β
Close your eyes and I'll kiss you, Tomorrow I'll miss you.
β
β
Paul McCartney
β
The cost of oblivious daydreaming was always this moment of return, the realignment with what had been before and now seemed a little worse.
β
β
Ian McEwan (Atonement)
β
You think when you wake up in the mornin yesterday don't count. But yesterday is all that does count. What else is there? Your life is made out of the days itβs made out of. Nothin else.
β
β
Cormac McCarthy (No Country for Old Men)
β
Make way! Move it, people! Lets make room for this poor woman's hideously disfigured, ginormous brain! She's a fucking genius!
β
β
Jamie McGuire (Beautiful Disaster (Beautiful, #1))
β
But the truth is, also, simply this: love is indomitable.
β
β
Casey McQuiston (Red, White & Royal Blue)
β
What's the bravest thing you ever did?
He spat in the road a bloody phlegm. Getting up this morning, he said.
β
β
Cormac McCarthy (The Road)
β
Look. I have a strategy. Why expect anything? If you donβt expect anything, you donβt get disappointed.
β
β
Patricia McCormick (Cut)
β
You can only be in a bad mood for so long before you have to face up to the fact that it isn't a bad mood at all; it's just your sucky personality.
β
β
Megan McCafferty (Sloppy Firsts (Jessica Darling, #1))
β
Between the wish and the thing the world lies waiting.
β
β
Cormac McCarthy (All the Pretty Horses (The Border Trilogy, #1))
β
Chaos is what we've lost touch with. This is why it is given a bad name. It is feared by the dominant archetype of our world, which is Ego, which clenches because its existence is defined in terms of control.
β
β
Terence McKenna
β
It doesn't get better," I said. "The pain. The wounds scab over and you don't always feel like a knife is slashing through you. But when you least expect it, the pain flashes to remind you you'll never be the same.
β
β
Katie McGarry (Pushing the Limits (Pushing the Limits, #1))
β
Just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever, he said. You might want to think about that.
You forget some things, dont you?
Yes. You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget.
β
β
Cormac McCarthy (The Road)
β
You are most powerful when you are most silent. People never expect silence. They expect words, motion, defense, offense, back and forth. They expect to leap into the fray. They are ready, fists up, words hanging leaping from their mouths. Silence? No.
β
β
Alison McGhee (All Rivers Flow to the Sea)
β
There's a girl, Dad."
He smiled a bit. "A girl."
"She kinda hates me, and I kinda..."
"Love her?"
"I don't know. I don't think so. I mean...how do you know?"
His smile grew wider. "When you're talking about her with your old dad because you don't know what else to do.
β
β
Jamie McGuire (Walking Disaster (Beautiful, #2))
β
You just want me to hold you until you fall asleep?"
I didn't answer.
He shifted to look straight into my eyes. "I should say no to prove a point," he said, his eyebrows pulling together. "But I would hate myself later if I said no and you never asked me again.
β
β
Jamie McGuire (Beautiful Disaster (Beautiful, #1))
β
The tears I feel today
I'll wait to shed tomorrow.
Though I'll not sleep this night
Nor find surcease from sorrow.
My eyes must keep their sight:
I dare not be tear-blinded.
I must be free to talk
Not choked with grief, clear-minded.
My mouth cannot betray
The anguish that I know.
Yes, I'll keep my tears til later:
But my grief will never go.
β
β
Anne McCaffrey (Dragonsinger (Harper Hall, #2))
β
Abs? What are you, a workout video?" he sneered.
"Pigeon?" I said with the same amount of disdain. "An annoying bird that craps all over the sidewalk?"
"You like Pigeon," he said defensively. "It's a dove, an attractive girl, a winning card in poker, take your pick. You're my Pigeon.
β
β
Jamie McGuire (Beautiful Disaster (Beautiful, #1))
β
Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it's a feather bed.
β
β
Terence McKenna
β
Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up, it knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn't matter whether you're the lion or a gazelle-when the sun comes up, you'd better be running.
β
β
Christopher McDougall (Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen)
β
Time will make it worse! You're...the other half of his soul. He's never going to get over you. And no matter how much you hope that you will... you'll never get over him. You're going to wake up one day and realize what you've done, and you're going to regret the time you wasted apart from him for the rest of your life.
β
β
Jamie McGuire (Providence (Providence, #1))
β
He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like ground-foxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.
β
β
Cormac McCarthy (The Road)
β
Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.
β
β
Cormac McCarthy (The Road)
β
Was everyone else really as alive as she was?... If the answer was yes, then the world, the social world, was unbearably complicated, with two billion voices, and everyoneβs thoughts striving in equal importance and everyoneβs claim on life as intense, and everyone thinking they were unique, when no one was. One could drown in irrelevance.
β
β
Ian McEwan (Atonement)
β
I fucking love you!β He grabbed each side of my face,
slamming his lips against mine. βI love you so much,
Pigeon,β he said, kissing me over and over.
βJust remember that in fifty years when Iβm still kicking
your ass in poker,β I giggled.
He smiled, triumphant. βIf it means sixty or seventy
years with you, Babyβ¦you have my full permission to
do your worst.β
I raised one eyebrow, βYouβre gonna regret that.β
βYou wanna bet?β
I smiled with as much deviance as I could muster.
β
β
Jamie McGuire (Beautiful Disaster (Beautiful, #1))
β
Should I tell you that when we're apart, your body comes back to me in dreams? That when I sleep, I see you, the dip of your waist, the freckle above your hip, and when I wake up in the morning, it feels like I've just been with you, the phantom touch of your hand on the back of my neck fresh and not imagined? That I can feel your skin against mine, and it makes every bone in my body ache? That, for a few moments, I can hold my breath and be back there with you, in a dream, in a thousand rooms, nowhere at all?
β
β
Casey McQuiston (Red, White & Royal Blue)
β
We have to create culture, don't watch TV, don't read magazines, don't even listen to NPR. Create your own roadshow. The nexus of space and time where you are now is the most immediate sector of your universe, and if you're worrying about Michael Jackson or Bill Clinton or somebody else, then you are disempowered, you're giving it all away to icons, icons which are maintained by an electronic media so that you want to dress like X or have lips like Y. This is shit-brained, this kind of thinking. That is all cultural diversion, and what is real is you and your friends and your associations, your highs, your orgasms, your hopes, your plans, your fears. And we are told 'no', we're unimportant, we're peripheral. 'Get a degree, get a job, get a this, get a that.' And then you're a player, you don't want to even play in that game. You want to reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half-baked moron consuming all this trash that's being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world.
β
β
Terence McKenna
β
I thought, this is the most incredible thing I have ever seen, and I had better keep it a safe distance away from me. I thought, if someone like that ever loved me, it would set me on fire.
And then I was a careless fool, and I fell in love with you anyway. When you rang me at truly shocking hours of the night, I loved you. When you kissed me in disgusting public toilets and pouted in hotel bars and made me happy in ways in which it had never even occurred to me that a mangled-up, locked-up person like me could be happy, I loved you.
And then, inexplicably, you had the absolute audacity to love me back. Can you believe it?
Sometimes, even now, I still can't.
β
β
Casey McQuiston (Red, White & Royal Blue)
β
No matter how old you are now. You are never too young or too old for success or going after what you want. Hereβs a short list of people who accomplished great things at different ages
1) Helen Keller, at the age of 19 months, became deaf and blind. But that didnβt stop her. She was the first deaf and blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree.
2) Mozart was already competent on keyboard and violin; he composed from the age of 5.
3) Shirley Temple was 6 when she became a movie star on βBright Eyes.β
4) Anne Frank was 12 when she wrote the diary of Anne Frank.
5) Magnus Carlsen became a chess Grandmaster at the age of 13.
6) Nadia ComΔneci was a gymnast from Romania that scored seven perfect 10.0 and won three gold medals at the Olympics at age 14.
7) Tenzin Gyatso was formally recognized as the 14th Dalai Lama in November 1950, at the age of 15.
8) Pele, a soccer superstar, was 17 years old when he won the world cup in 1958 with Brazil.
9) Elvis was a superstar by age 19.
10) John Lennon was 20 years and Paul Mcartney was 18 when the Beatles had their first concert in 1961.
11) Jesse Owens was 22 when he won 4 gold medals in Berlin 1936.
12) Beethoven was a piano virtuoso by age 23
13) Issac Newton wrote Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica at age 24
14) Roger Bannister was 25 when he broke the 4 minute mile record
15) Albert Einstein was 26 when he wrote the theory of relativity
16) Lance E. Armstrong was 27 when he won the tour de France
17) Michelangelo created two of the greatest sculptures βDavidβ and βPietaβ by age 28
18) Alexander the Great, by age 29, had created one of the largest empires of the ancient world
19) J.K. Rowling was 30 years old when she finished the first manuscript of Harry Potter
20) Amelia Earhart was 31 years old when she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean
21) Oprah was 32 when she started her talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind
22) Edmund Hillary was 33 when he became the first man to reach Mount Everest
23) Martin Luther King Jr. was 34 when he wrote the speech βI Have a Dream."
24) Marie Curie was 35 years old when she got nominated for a Nobel Prize in Physics
25) The Wright brothers, Orville (32) and Wilbur (36) invented and built the world's first successful airplane and making the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight
26) Vincent Van Gogh was 37 when he died virtually unknown, yet his paintings today are worth millions.
27) Neil Armstrong was 38 when he became the first man to set foot on the moon.
28) Mark Twain was 40 when he wrote "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", and 49 years old when he wrote "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn"
29) Christopher Columbus was 41 when he discovered the Americas
30) Rosa Parks was 42 when she refused to obey the bus driverβs order to give up her seat to make room for a white passenger
31) John F. Kennedy was 43 years old when he became President of the United States
32) Henry Ford Was 45 when the Ford T came out.
33) Suzanne Collins was 46 when she wrote "The Hunger Games"
34) Charles Darwin was 50 years old when his book On the Origin of Species came out.
35) Leonardo Da Vinci was 51 years old when he painted the Mona Lisa.
36) Abraham Lincoln was 52 when he became president.
37) Ray Kroc Was 53 when he bought the McDonalds Franchise and took it to unprecedented levels.
38) Dr. Seuss was 54 when he wrote "The Cat in the Hat".
40) Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger III was 57 years old when he successfully ditched US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River in 2009. All of the 155 passengers aboard the aircraft survived
41) Colonel Harland Sanders was 61 when he started the KFC Franchise
42) J.R.R Tolkien was 62 when the Lord of the Ring books came out
43) Ronald Reagan was 69 when he became President of the US
44) Jack Lalane at age 70 handcuffed, shackled, towed 70 rowboats
45) Nelson Mandela was 76 when he became President
β
β
Pablo
β
There is a legend about a bird which sings just once in its life, more sweetly than any other creature on the face of the earth. From the moment it leaves the nest it searches for a thorn tree, and does not rest until it has found one. Then, singing among the savage branches, it impales itself upon the longest, sharpest spine. And, dying, it rises above its own agony to outcarol the lark and the nightingale. One superlative song, existence the price. But the whole world stills to listen, and God in His heaven smiles. For the best is only bought at the cost of great pain⦠Or so says the legend.
β
β
Colleen McCullough (The Thorn Birds)
β
I clinked my bottle against his. βTo being the only girl a
guy with no standards doesnβt want to sleep with.β I said,
taking a swig.
βAre you serious?β he asked, pulling the bottle from my
mouth. When I didnβt recant, he leaned toward me. βFirst of
allβ¦I have standards. Iβve never been with an ugly woman.
Ever. Second of all, I wanted to sleep with you. I thought
about throwing you over my couch fifty different ways, but I
havenβt because I donβt see you that way anymore. Itβs not
that Iβm not attracted to you, I just think youβre better than
that.β
I couldnβt hold back the smug smile that crept across my
face. βYou think Iβm too good for you.β
He sneered at my second insult. βI canβt think of a single
guy I know thatβs good enough for you.
β
β
Jamie McGuire (Beautiful Disaster (Beautiful, #1))
β
I don't get scared very often," he said finally. "I was scared the first morning I woke up and you weren't here. I was scared when you left me after Vegas. I was scared when I thought I was going to have to tell my dad that Trent had died in that building. But when I saw you across the flames in the basement...I was terrified. I made it to the door, was a few feet from the exit, and I couldn't leave.
"What do you mean? Are you crazy?" I said, my head jerking up to look into his eyes.
"I've never been so clear about anything in my life. I turned around, made my way to that room you were in, and there you were. Nothing else mattered. I didn't even know if we would make it out or not, I just wanted to be where you were, whatever that meant. The only thing I'm afraid of is a life without you, Pigeon."
I leaned up, kissing his lips tenderly. When our mouths parted, I smiled. "Then you have nothing to be afraid of. We're forever.
β
β
Jamie McGuire (Beautiful Disaster (Beautiful, #1))
β
You just asked me to marry you," he said, still waiting for me to admit some kind of trickery.
"I know."
"That was the real deal, you know. I just booked two tickets to Vegas for noon tomorrow. So that means we're getting married tomorrow night."
"Thank you."
His eyes narrowed. "You're going to be Mrs. Maddox when you start classes on Monday."
"Oh," I said, looking around. Travis raised an eyebrow.
"Second thoughts?"
"I'm going to have some serious paperwork to change next week."
He nodded slowly, cautiously hopeful. "You're going to marry me tomorrow?"
I smiled. "Uh huh"
"You're serious?"
"Yep."
"I fucking love you!" He grabbed each side of my face, slamming his lips against mine. "I love you so much, Pigeon," he said, kissing me over and over.
β
β
Jamie McGuire (Beautiful Disaster (Beautiful, #1))
β
The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning.
The universe is no narrow thing and the order within it is not constrained by any latitude in its conception to repeat what exists in one part in any other part. Even in this world more things exist without our knowledge than with it and the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way. For existence has its own order and that no man's mind can compass, that mind itself being but a fact among others.
β
β
Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West)
β
You know, I do believe in magic. I was born and raised in a magic time, in a magic town, among magicians. Oh, most everybody else didnβt realize we lived in that web of magic, connected by silver filaments of chance and circumstance. But I knew it all along. When I was twelve years old, the world was my magic lantern, and by its green spirit glow I saw the past, the present and into the future. You probably did too; you just donβt recall it. See, this is my opinion: we all start out knowing magic. We are born with whirlwinds, forest fires, and comets inside us. We are born able to sing to birds and read the clouds and see our destiny in grains of sand. But then we get the magic educated right out of our souls. We get it churched out, spanked out, washed out, and combed out. We get put on the straight and narrow and told to be responsible. Told to act our age. Told to grow up, for Godβs sake. And you know why we were told that? Because the people doing the telling were afraid of our wildness and youth, and because the magic we knew made them ashamed and sad of what theyβd allowed to wither in themselves.
After you go so far away from it, though, you canβt really get it back. You can have seconds of it. Just seconds of knowing and remembering. When people get weepy at movies, itβs because in that dark theater the golden pool of magic is touched, just briefly. Then they come out into the hard sun of logic and reason again and it dries up, and theyβre left feeling a little heartsad and not knowing why. When a song stirs a memory, when motes of dust turning in a shaft of light takes your attention from the world, when you listen to a train passing on a track at night in the distance and wonder where it might be going, you step beyond who you are and where you are. For the briefest of instants, you have stepped into the magic realm.
Thatβs what I believe.
The truth of life is that every year we get farther away from the essence that is born within us. We get shouldered with burdens, some of them good, some of them not so good. Things happen to us. Loved ones die. People get in wrecks and get crippled. People lose their way, for one reason or another. Itβs not hard to do, in this world of crazy mazes. Life itself does its best to take that memory of magic away from us. You donβt know itβs happening until one day you feel youβve lost something but youβre not sure what it is. Itβs like smiling at a pretty girl and she calls you βsir.β It just happens.
These memories of who I was and where I lived are important to me. They make up a large part of who Iβm going to be when my journey winds down. I need the memory of magic if I am ever going to conjure magic again. I need to know and remember, and I want to tell you.
β
β
Robert McCammon (Boy's Life)