Nina Brown Quotes

Happiness is having your own library card. —SALLY BROWN, PEANUTS

We’re going to have to read a lot of books,” I say. “My life’s work involves reading books.” “We’ll probably have to take some classes.” “I’m at my best in a classroom.” “And I hear we’ll need to buy a ton of stuff.” “We can afford stuff.” I look up into his chocolate-brown eyes. “I just wish I knew where to start,” I whisper. “Right here, beauty.” And he presses his lips to mine.

The first time she carved something into her skin, she used the sharp tip of an X-Acto knife. She lifted up her shirt to show me after the cuts had scabbed over. She had scrawled F*** YOU on her stomach. I stood quiet for a moment, feeling the breath get knocked out of me. I should have grabbed her arm and taken her straight to the nurse's office, into that small room with two cots covered in paper sheets and the sweet, stale medicinal smell. I should have lifted Ingrid's shirt to show the cuts. Look, I would've said to the nurse at her little desk, eyeglasses perched on her pointed nose. Help her. Instead, I reached my hand out and traced the words. The cuts were shallow, so the scabs only stood out a little bit. They were rough and brown. I knew that a lot of girls at our school cut themselves. They wore their long sleeves pulled down past their wrists and made slits for their thumbs so that the scars on their arms wouldn't show. I wanted to ask Ingrid if it hurt to do that to herself, but I felt stupid, like I must have been missing something, so what I said was, F*** you too, b****. Ingrid giggled, and I tried to ignore the feeling that something good between us was changing.

What is was, was that we complemented each other. We just fit in this way that made strangers ask us if we were sisters, even though her hair was blond and curly and mine was straight and dark. Even though her eyes were blue and mine were brown. Maybe it was the way we acted, or spoke, just moved. The way we would look at something and both have the same thought at the same moment, and turn to each other at the same time and start to say the same thing.

Solitude is independence. -Hermann Hesse Independence is happiness. -Susan B. Anthony Happiness is having your own library card. -Sally Brown, Peanuts

Nina pulled the pins from her hair, shucked off the blonde wig, and tossed it on the table they’d set in the middle of the tomb. She slumped into a chair, rubbing her fingers along her scalp. “So much better,” she said with a happy sigh. But Matthias could not ignore the almost greenish cast to her skin. She was worse tonight. Either she’d run into trouble with Smeet or she’d simply overexerted herself. And yet, watching her, Matthias felt something in him ease. At least now she looked like Nina again, her brown hair in damp tangles, her eyes half-shut. Was it normal to be fascinated by the way someone slouched?

today, i am a black woman in a body of coal i am always burning and no one knows my name i am a nameless fury, i am a blues scratched from the throat of ms. nina—i am always angry i am always a bumble hive of hello i love like this too loudly, my neighbors think i am an unforgiving bitter sometimes, i think my neighbors are right most times i think my neighbors are nosey

Your parent is not open to your thoughts, feelings, and ideas; does not relate to or care about your feelings; does not feel a need to change anything about himself; and can become enraged that you think that he is less than perfect. You cannot win, or even make any inroads into your parent’s self-absorption.

Do you know the only time I felt beautiful?” Hanne asked, her eyes still closed. “When?” “When I tailored myself to look like a soldier. When we cut off all my hair.” Nina exchanged the shimmer for a pot of rose balm. “But you didn’t look like you.” Hanne’s eyes opened. “But I did. For the first time. The only time.” Nina dipped her thumb into the pot of balm and dabbed it onto Hanne’s lower lip, spreading it in a slow sweep across the soft cushion of her mouth. “I can grow my hair, you know,” Hanne said, and moved her hand over one side of her scalp. Sure enough, a reddish-brown curl twined over Hanne’s ear. Nina stared. “That’s powerful tailoring, Hanne.” “I’ve been practicing.” She drew small scissors from a drawer and snipped away the curl. “But I like it the way it is.” “Then leave it.” Nina took the scissors from her hand, brushed her thumb over Hanne’s knuckles. “In trousers. In gowns. With your hair shorn or in braids or down your back. You have never not been beautiful.” “Do you mean that?” “I do.” “I’ve never seen your real face,” Hanne said, eyes scanning Nina’s features. “Do you miss it?” Nina wasn’t sure how to answer. For a long while she’d startled every time she glimpsed herself in the mirror, when she caught sight of the pale blue eyes, the silky fall of straight blond hair. But the longer she played Mila, the easier it became, and sometimes that scared her. Who will I be when I return to Ravka? Who am I now? “I’m beginning to forget what I looked like,” she said. “But trust me, I was gorgeous.” Hanne took her hand. “You still are.

Around 6:30, I fire up one of the playlists that my husband, Phil, has made. Nina Simone starts to sing and my movements become more fluid. I love to dance. Guests might see me on the line and think I’m cooking, but I’m really feeling the music, feeling the timing—dancing and cooking at the same time.

Catching others’ feelings is why some people think that they have too much empathy; they are overly sensitive to others’ feelings and as a result can feel taken over, manipulated, conned, and so on. Sufficient boundary strength permits you to be empathic without experiencing the negative effects. Until

Her cat, Phil, was sitting on the gate waiting for her. Phil was a tabby of the brown and cream variety, with a black tip to his tail and white feet. He jumped down as the gate opened and preceded her up the stairs, the tip of his tail forming a jaunty accent like the marker flag on a toddler’s bicycle.

He took up another long strip of towel in his right hand. He had to lean in to loop it behind her. He was so close now. His mind took in the shell of her ear, the hair tucked behind it, that rapid pulse fluttering in her throat. Alive, alive, alive. It isn’t easy for me either. He looped the bandage around again. The barest touches. Unavoidable. Shoulder, clavicle, once her knee. The water rose around him. He secured the knot. Step back. He did not step back. He stood there, hearing his own breath, hers, the rhythm of them alone in this room. The sickness was there, the need to run, the need for something else too. Kaz thought he knew the language of pain intimately, but this ache was new. It hurt to stand here like this, so close to the circle of her arms. It isn’t easy for me either. After all she’d endured, he was the weak one. But she would never know what it was like for him to see Nina pull her close, watch Jesper loop his arm through hers, what it was to stand in doorways and against walls and know he could never draw nearer. But I’m here now, he thought wildly. He had carried her, fought beside her, spent whole nights next to her, both of them on their bellies, peering through a long glass, watching some warehouse or merch’s mansion. This was nothing like that. He was sick and frightened, his body slick with sweat, but he was here. He watched that pulse, the evidence of her heart, matching his own beat for anxious beat. He saw the damp curve of her neck, the gleam of her brown skin. He wanted to … He wanted. Before he even knew what he intended, he lowered his head. She drew in a sharp breath. His lips hovered just above the warm juncture between her shoulder and the column of her neck. He waited. Tell me to stop. Push me away. She exhaled. “Go on,” she repeated. Finish the story. The barest movement and his lips brushed her skin—warm, smooth, beaded with moisture. Desire coursed through him, a thousand images he’d hoarded, barely let himself imagine—the fall of her dark hair freed from its braid, his hand fitted to the lithe curve of her waist, her lips parted, whispering his name.

I gazed at Nina and Theodore standing now before the window about to say their vows, or as Nina had phrased it, whatever words their hearts gave them at the moment, and I thought it just as well Mother was not here. She would’ve expected Nina to be in ivory lace, perhaps blue linen, carrying roses or lilies, but Nina had dismissed all of that as unoriginal and embarked on a wedding designed to shock the masses. She was wearing a brown dress made from free-labor cotton with a broad white sash and white gloves, and she’d matched up Theodore in a brown coat, a white vest, and beige pantaloons. She clutched a handful of white rhododendrons cut fresh from the backyard, and I noticed she’d tucked a sprig in the button hole of Theodore’s coat. Mother wouldn’t have made it past the brown dress, much less the opening prayer, which had been delivered by a Negro minister.

Well, whatever his name is. I still don’t like him.” His voice is rough and his bright brown eyes pierce straight through me. Tell me why you don’t like him. Tell me it’s because you’re jealous he kissed me and you haven’t. Tell me you want to. Want me. “Gag,” Nina says with a groan. “Would you two just kiss and be done with it already?” Darren and I gape at her. Fire creeps up my neck, and I press my body against the window, as far from Darren as possible. “I thought you were asleep,” Darren says to her. “With the both of you whining like children? Please,” she huffs.

Chapter 3, The Dark Forest....The sound of flowing water echoed in the distance and then the path converged upon a creek full of fast, rippling, white water cascading over brown and red colored rocks. Moss dangled across the pathway and swung back and forth as the trespassers moved under the green vegetation. Bright yellow fingers of sunlight attempted to filter through the dense tundra to touch the moist earth until finally, the appendages of light disappeared completely. “Come children, this way,” called Mrs. Beetle leading her group over a moldy, moss-laden, wood bridge.

When Jasmine woke that morning she'd been dreaming of breakfast. Not cornflakes or melba toast, skim milk and a sorry slice of apple. No, Jasmine was elbow deep in creamy oatmeal slathered with brown sugar and hot cream. Next, a plate of eggs Sardou: poached eggs nestled sweetly in the baby-smooth bottoms of artichokes and napped with a blushing spiced hollandaise sauce. Jasmine stared up at the ceiling, her mouth a swamp of saliva as she mentally mopped the rest of the hollandaise sauce with a crust of crusty French bread before taking a sip of nutty chicory coffee and reaching for a freshly fried beignet so covered with powdered sugar it made her sneeze.

Calgene's FlavrSavr tomato was the first genetically modified whole food. When Calgene brought it to the FDA in 1992, the tomato was subjected to $2 million-worth of testing by the FDA on top of the testing done by Calgene. In a public meeting the FDA scientists brought the results of their extensive and sophisticated chemical analyses to a panel of external advisers; the panel included representatives of public interest groups and industry, as well as scientists whose specialties ranged from nutrition to basic plant science. The concluding slide of the FDA's presentation had a simple message: Calgene's transgenic tomato … is a tomato. Mendel in the Kitchen: A Scientist's View of Genetically Modified Food

Poor creatures who came out of my belly, all alone now on the other side of the world. I placed the doll on my knees as if for company. Why had I taken her. She guarded the love of Nina and Elena, their bond, their reciprocal passion. She was the shining testimony of perfect motherhood. I brought her to my breast. How many damaged, lost things did I have behind me, and yet present, now, in a whirl of images. I understood clearly that I didn’t want to give Nani back, even though I felt remorse, fear in keeping her with me. I kissed her face, her mouth, I hugged her as I had seen Elena do. She emitted a gurgle that seemed to me a hostile remark and, with it, a jet of brown saliva that dirtied my lips and my shirt.

I just figured someone like him would be named Fabio or something.” I want to be angry, I really do, but I can’t resist laughing. “That’s what I thought the first time I met him,” I admit. Darren actually cracks a smile, and hope blooms inside my chest for an instant before it fizzles. I’m itching to tell Darren that he’s the one I want. But I don’t know how, or if I should. Keeping Darren at an emotionally safe distance might be the only way I make it through this summer unscathed. If that’s even possible at this point. “Well, whatever his name is. I still don’t like him.” His voice is rough and his bright brown eyes pierce straight through me. Tell me why you don’t like him. Tell me it’s because you’re jealous he kissed me and you haven’t. Tell me you want to. Want me. “Gag,” Nina says with a groan. “Would you two just kiss and be done with it already?” Darren and I gape at her. Fire creeps up my neck, and I press my body against the window, as far from Darren as possible. “I thought you were asleep,” Darren says to her. “With the both of you whining like children? Please,” she huffs. “I’m going to the little girl’s room.” She stands and her long legs step over Tate’s without waking him. “Fix this or we’re all going to be miserable,” she whispers to Darren loud enough for me to hear.

This time, the pathologist had a morgue assistant, a tall, skinny guy with glasses like airplane windows and a nimbus of brown hair, triple the height of Lyle Lovett's, and with a wave that rivaled the Banzai Pipeline. The hair probably had its own intelligence. It probably had its own Netflix account. It probably received regular invitations to speak at Ivy League commencement ceremonies. It probably contained a netherworld where monsters had houses.

Solitude is independence. -Hermann Hesse Independence is happiness. -Susan B. Anthony Happiness is having your own library card. -Sally Brown, Peanuts” ― Abbi Waxman, The Bookish Life of Nina Hill

Solitude is independence. —HERMANN HESSE Independence is happiness. —SUSAN B. ANTHONY Happiness is having your own library card. —SALLY BROWN, PEANUTS

being unable to initiate and maintain satisfying and enduring relationships; being unable to say no and stick to it; and other negative behaviors and attitudes with others as well as with the self-aborbed parent. Some try to work through their issues or concerns with mental health professionals, but find that it is just about impossible to adequately describe what their formative years were like.

constantly monitoring others for signs of distress; trying to discern others’ unmet needs; and trying to read other people’s minds, attempting to know how to respond or behave even before a request is made. Such adult children are still very anxious and fearful of disagreements and other forms of conflict, will subordinate their own personal needs most of the time, feel guilt and shame when others are disappointed, and do things that they don’t want to do in an effort to please others. In so doing, they can be easily seduced and often become enmeshed in others’ feelings.

One of the most troubling and enduring effects of reverse parenting can be heightened emotional susceptibility. Emotional susceptibility is the tendency to “catch” others’ feelings (usually negative feelings), incorporate these feelings into your self, and then find that you are unable to easily release them. Your psychological boundary strength was not sufficiently developed as you were growing up, so you’re less able to screen out and choose which emotions of others you can accept and which the other person should keep. Do you find that you do any or all of the following?

As she said this, she tossed him one of her blue-and-gray-checked tea towels to use as an apron. She was wearing a blue summer dress and tucked her towel-apron into her red belt. Today he could see that her blond hair was tinged with silver at the temples and that the former confusion and terror had left her eyes. Soon the windowpanes had misted up; the gas flames were hissing under pots and pans; the white wine, shallots and cream sauce was simmering; and in a heavy pan the olive oil was browning potatoes sprinkled with rosemary and salt. They were chatting away as if they'd known each other for years and had simply lost touch for a while. About Carla Bruni, and about how male sea horses carried their young around in a pouch on their stomachs. They talked about fashion and about the trend for salt with added flavorings, and of course they gossiped about their neighbors.

woman of exile and love you. were never afraid of being radical or becoming a full time student of human rights you. sacred. you. not tired. you. destiny driven. you. kathleen cleaver you. evelyn lowery you. juanita abernathy you. elaine brown you. power seekers you. goddess you. sojourner you. you. mariam makeba you. fire starter. you. nina simone you. international you. sister. you. mama africa

In preparation for a feast to welcome the newlyweds, crates of melons, eggplants, tomatoes, basil, apricots, and figs were stacked in the shade. Naneh Goli sat at a table set outside the kitchen, stringing green beans to cook with minced beef in a bright tomato sauce for lubia polo- a favorite dish of Zod's boyhood. Forty game hens already lay in their saffron yogurt marinade, and tomorrow they would roast them over an open fire to serve with mounds of jeweled rice. All morning Yanik shaped lamb koofteh (meatballs) mixed with allspice and thyme, browning them in small batches and infringing on Nina's burners, which she needed to simmer mulberry preserves for parfait.