Seattle Love Quotes

No one else will ever know the strength of my love for you. After all, you’re the only one who knows the sound of my heart from the inside.

I’ve fallen in love with a beautiful, sexy, sweet, jealous control freak. Shit.

Have you ever been anyone's?" "No. And you?" "I've never wanted to." "Neither have I. Until I saw this lovely girl in Seattle, with big gold eyes, and pink, full lips... and I wondered if she could understand me...

Oh, sunshine,' I whisper and smile gently. 'Haven't you figured out that I'm completely in love with you?

I’m in love with you. You are the most interesting person I know, and I’ve never been able to talk to anyone the way I can talk to you. I’ve devoted the past four years to leaving Seattle, but you...You are the best thing about this city. You are going to be the hardest to leave. I love you so much.

And one day, I'd love to see you dressed in nothing but pearls.

I’m completely in love with her. I just don’t know how to tell her because I’m afraid that as soon as I do, she’ll run at full speed in the other direction.

I give you my promise to be by your side forevermore. I promise to love, to honor, and to listen as you tell me your thoughts, your hopes, your fears and your dreams. I promise to love you deeply and truly because it is your heart that moves me, your head that challenges me, your humor that delights me and your hands I wish to hold until the end of my days

You put your arms around me, and I’m home. I’m permanently in love with you. Don’t ever forget that.

You turn me inside out. I want to fuck you seven shades of Sunday, and I want to make long, slow, sweet love to you for days. I’m craving you, goddamn it, and you can’t just say shit like that to me when I know what you taste like, and what you look like and I need desperately to know what the fuck you feel like.

You need to understand, Megan, once I make love to you, you’re mine.

You. Are. Amazing. Meg, I love a woman who looks like a woman. I don’t want to be worried that I’ll snap you in half, and when I lay on your stomach, I don’t want your ribs poking me in the face.

Those East Coast rich kids are a different breed, on a fast track to nowhere. Your friends in Seattle are downright Canadian in their niceness. None of you has a cell phone. The girls wear hoodies and big cotton underpants and walk around with tangled hair and smiling, adorned backpacks. Do you know how absolutely exotic it is that you haven’t been corrupted by fashion and pop culture? A month ago I mentioned Ben Stiller, and do you remember how you responded? ‘Who’s that?’ I loved you all over again.

Romance isn’t about proving to someone you love them with flowers and greeting cards and chocolate. Or even a lock on a fence. It’s a daily reminder. It’s saying, I choose you. Today and every day.

I love you, Josie, and I am devoted to making your life full of happiness and accomplishments, ensuring that you thrive to your fullest potential and that while you reach for the sky, you remain grounded by the love of our family and our home.

Don't worry about what other people think. Do what makes you happy. Do whatever it takes to make the people in your life happy. Court joy as if it were the air that you needed to breath[e].

Just get off the bus somewhere safe and wait for me, all right? I fucking love you. I love you. And I'm sorry you fell in love with an idiot. I'm...Remember Seattle, you said we've been trying this whole time. Since last summer. To be in a relationship. I didn't fully understand at the time, but I do now. There was never going to be a life away from you, because, Jesus, that's no life at all. You, Hannah. Are my life. I love you and I'm coming home, so please, babe. Please. Will you just wait for me? I'm sorry.

I’ve been slowly falling for you for a long time, and I’m afraid I fell the rest of the way in love with you last night, and you’re so much more than my darling. You’re my treasure.

I love you, Mrs. Montgomery.

No one else will ever know the strength of my love for you. After all, you're the only one who knows the sound of my heart from the inside

I love you, Maddie, and I am devoted to making your life full of happiness and accomplishments, nurturing your creativity, encouraging your independence and making sure you always know what a gift you are to this world.” He kisses her forehead and she smiles up at him happily before admiring her pretty new necklace.

You’re everything … Haven’t you figured that out? You’re everything. I’m in love with you. If anything happened to you, it would destroy me.

Samantha, I’m not going to make love to you tonight. But I’m going to kiss the fuck out of you.

I’ll take you hard, and soft, and every way in between.” He grips my face in his hands and looks down at me, his nose touching mine. “I’m going to fuck the shit out of you.” Oh God, yes! “And I’m going to make love to you until you’re shaking and don’t remember who you are.

I turned to face Audrey, and everything I loved was right there in her eyes, the memories tangible: the schooldays and sleepovers, the cheap bottles of wine and sappy chick flicks. She was there for my mother’s drunken relapses, there to hold me until I fell asleep the first time the ex from Seattle hit me. It was all there, and my God, each memory was suddenly sacred and the sun rose and set upon it.

I really, really like him. I mean, I like him more than it makes any sense to... Like my heart has already signed the contract and picked up the keys even though my brain is still going 'wait... what?

New love is grand. Savor all the crazy, muddled might of it.

Seattle is for people who love culture, but refuse to sacrifice their wild nature to attain it.

You'd have to be insane to give up Seattle for someone who loves more than anything but is only willing to show it half of the time.

A love like yours doesn’t come along every day, you know. Love him. Let him love you. Make the most out of every single day, so at the end of it all, you can say you don’t have any regrets.

You're right. Maybe it wouldn't change anything." His gaze shifted from the brightening ocean to me. I didn't need to look into his eyes to feel their intensity. "But maybe it would change everything.

I'll never know how to love you the right way if I don't also know how to be your friend, Mia.

Love doesn’t hurt you, tesoro. People who don’t know how to love hurt you.

I’ll take you any way I can get you, Samantha, and that’s the fucking truth. I love you, every damn day, I love you. I’m never going anywhere. You’re it for me.

Sometimes,” he said very seriously, “fifteen minutes is all it takes for your entire life to change.

You need to understand that love isn’t all romance and flowers and great sex, Violet.” I raised my eyebrows, but she didn’t stop. “Real love takes work and effort and time. Real love is willing to wait while you sort your shit out, and is still there once you get your head on straight.

No one else will ever know the strength of my love for you. After all, you’re the only one who knows the sound of my heart from the inside.

I’m fucking in love with her again already. I’m never letting her go. Never again.

How am I looking at you?” “Like I’m Little Red to your big bad wolf.” “Well,” he said slowly, “I do want to eat you.

Why didi I think I could just have her in my bed, and not fall in love with her ? Why couldn't I keep my fucking hands off her? I stare at the hollow, broken man in the Mirror, knowing the answer already. Because Brynna Vincent is it for me. There will never be another woman who can make me feel safe, make me feel happy. Make me feel loved. And her daughters are two little beacons of light in this dark hell I call a life that I just can't resist.

Seattle,” I repeated, chewing on this new piece of information he had given me. More. I wanted just a little more. “That’s Washington up north, right? I know because of Twilight. Forks is supposed to be a few hours away.

I never stopped, you know.” His voice was quiet. My pulse stuttered. “Never stopped what?” He gripped the glass tightly. “Never stopped loving you.

Peter and I have been working our way down our movie list, which consists of my picks (favorite movies of mine that he’s never seen), his picks, (favorite movies of his that I’ve never seen), and movies neither of us have seen. Aliens was Peter’s pick, and it’s turning out to be quite good. And even though once upon a time Peter claimed he didn’t like rom coms, he was very into Sleepless in Seattle, which I was relieved for, because I just don’t see how I could be with someone who doesn’t like Sleepless in Seattle.

Tell the world what scares you the most” says Brandy. She gives us each an Aubergine Dreams eyebrow pencil and says “Save the world with some advice from the future” Seth writes on the back of a card and hands the card to Brandy for her to read. On game shows, Brandy reads, some people will take the trip to France, but most people will take the washer dryer pair.” Brandy puts a big Plumbago kiss in the little square for the stamp and lets the wind lift and card and sail it off toward the towers of downtown Seattle. Seth hands her another, and Brandy reads: Game shows are designed to make us feel better about the random useless facts that are all we have left from our education” A kiss and the card’s on it’s way toward Lake Washington. From Seth: When did the future switch from being a promise to being a threat?” A kiss and it’s off on the wind toward Ballard. Only when we eat up this planet will God give us another. We’ll be remembered more for what we destroy than what we create.” Interstate 5 snakes by in the distance. From high atop the Space Needle, the southbound lanes are red chase lights, and the northbound lanes are white chase lights. I take a card and write: I love Seth Thomas so much I have to destroy him. I overcompensate by worshipping the queen supreme. Seth will never love me. No one will ever love me ever again. Beandy is waiting to rake the card and read it out loud. Brandy’s waiting to read my worst fears to the world, but I don’t give her the card. I kiss it myself with the lips I don’t have and let the wind take it out of my hand. The card flies up, up, up to the stars and then falls down to land in the suicide net. While I watch my future trapped in the suicide net Brandy reads another card from Seth. We are all self-composting” I write another card from the future and Brandy reads it: When we don’t know who to hate, we hate ourselves” An updraft lifts up my worst fears from the suicide net and lifts them away. Seth writes and Brandy reads. You have to keep recycling yourself”. I write and Brandy reads. Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everybody I’ve ever known.” I write and Brandy reads. The one you love and the one who loves you are never ever the same person.

There are cities that take your breath away by their sheer size; some by the beat of their rhythmic culture, but Seattle gives you your breath back. Fills your lungs. I take it in and feel like I can breathe for the first time in my life. My God, it’s like I’ve been looking for this place all along. My

Nothing, baby. You’re amazing. I don’t have time to untie you because if I don’t get you out of here and home in the next ten minutes, I won’t be responsible for my actions. I need to be inside you, I need to love you, and an hour in a private room isn’t going to do it for me. I need to get you home so I can spend the night showing you what you mean to me.

Are you still making that man sing? It must be love, dude

slaying me all those years ago. For tossing over a decade’s worth of friendship and love in the garbage. Throwing me away like I was worthless.

Everyone thinks of romantic comedies as being these sappy, unrealistic stories where love conquers all and everyone ends up happy at the end. But that's not what her movies were at all. Like, in Sleepless in Seattle, you can't really get any sadder that Tom Hanks missing his dead wife. And in You've Got Mail, Meg Ryan misses her mom and loses her store. None of that gets resolved by the end. It's not like Tom's wife comes back to life, and Meg Ryan still loses the business her mom built.

Ripples shoot across my body, shooting from his thumb straight to my ore as he continues caressing my face, all the time watching me with those breathtaking, heartbreaking, beautiful blue eyes as though engrossed. His voice is velvet on my skin. “Until I saw this lovely girl in Seattle, with big gold eyes, and punk, full lips…and I wondered if she could understand me…

I wasn’t sure if I’d kiss her or scream at her for slaying me all those years ago. For tossing over a decade’s worth of friendship and love in the garbage. Throwing me away like I was worthless.

About the way he made me feel. The way he’d always made me feel. Safe. Loved. Cherished. And with just enough danger in his actions to keep every day exciting. My best friend—once. That is what my heart missed.

You have millions of fans. Everyone around the world loves your songs. How can that not be enough?" "Because music can't tell me when I'm being a self-obsessed jerk. Music can't light up my day with nothing more than a smile. Music can't love me back. And--" He paused to gently caress her cheek. "--music will never be you

he was very into Sleepless in Seattle, which I was relieved for, because I just don’t see how I could be with someone who doesn’t like Sleepless in Seattle.

No one else will ever know the strength of my love for you.  After all, you’re the only one who knows the sound of my heart from the inside.

I'm surprised." My eyes find hers as I cock an eyebrow. "Why?" "You loved science." "I loved you more.

you are my best friend, the love of my life, and I would do it again every single day.

It feels like I’ve loved you my whole life.

And when the last red man shall have perished from the earth and his memory among white men shall have become a myth, these shores shall swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe, and when your children's children shall think themselves alone in the field, the store, the shop, upon the highway or in the silence of the woods they will not be alone. In all the earth there is no place dedicated to solitude. At night, when the streets of your cities and villages shall be silent and you think them deserted, they will throng with the returning hosts that once filled and still love this beautiful land. The white man will never be alone. Let him be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not altogether powerless.

I’m sorry I broke the rules. I really am. But I’ll be damned if I say I’m sorry for loving you because I’m not. I am in love with you, Lilah Jane, and I refuse to apologize for it.

Don’t cling to the past. Look instead to the future. You have a husband who adores you and children waiting to be born. Your life is just beginning. So much love awaits you, more joy than you can possibly imagine now. Your pain shall reap an abundant harvest of life’s treasures. Trust me in this.

It’s just how love gets described in the movies. Like in Sleepless in Seattle . . .” This is the movie they showed us last night. “Tom Hanks’s character is musing about why he fell in love with his dead wife, and he says that it was because she could peel an apple in one long strip, or something like that. And I was reading something similar in a book recently, only that was about peeling an orange . . . anyway . . . I’ve just never felt like the way someone peels fruit would be a reason to spend the rest of your life with them.

Once upon a time, he'd believed that his music, his guitar, and his songs were everything he needed. But tonight, as his tour bus roared down yet another highway to yet another stadium, Ford finally realized that his songs and audiences could never even come close to filling the hole inside of him. Only one thing - only one person - had ever been able to do that. Only Mia.

I wanted him for more than a few months. Somewhere between his penthouse in Seattle and the ranch in Colorado, between the private jets, the dressing rooms, and my mom’s kitchen, I’d fallen in love with him. No wonder I was willing to break all the rules.

But some contemporary believers, such as Lisa Domke, a pastor and mother in Seattle, ground their identity in Christ’s love but a love that goes beyond sentiment or feeling. “I say that I am someone seeking to live in the world with love and humility,” Lisa reports, “following God in the way of Jesus.” Love is the active practice of Christian virtue. As Sky, a Seattle Baptist, relates, “Children know that love is behavior, not romantic words.

The motto of this city should be the immortal words spoken by that French field marshal during the siege of Sebastopol, “J’y suis, j’y reste”—“I am here, and here I shall remain.” People are born here, they grow up here, they go to the University of Washington, they work here, they die here. Nobody has any desire to leave. You ask them, “What is it again that you love so much about Seattle?” and they answer, “We have everything. The mountains and the water.” This is their explanation, mountains and water. As much as I try not to engage people in the grocery checkout, I couldn’t resist one day when I overheard one refer to Seattle as “cosmopolitan.” Encouraged, I asked, “Really?” She said, Sure, Seattle is full of people from all over. “Like where?” Her answer, “Alaska. I have a ton of friends from Alaska.” Whoomp, there it is.

Everything else is Craftsman. Turn-of-the-century Craftsman, beautifully restored Craftsman, reinterpretation of Craftsman, needs-some-love Craftsman, modern take on Craftsman. It’s like a hypnotist put everyone from Seattle in a collective trance. You are getting sleepy, when you wake up you will want to live only in a Craftsman house, the year won’t matter to you, all that will matter is that the walls will be thick, the windows tiny, the rooms dark, the ceilings low, and it will be poorly situated on the lot.

I was born in Nature's wide domain! The trees were all that sheltered my infant limbs, the blue heavens all that covered me. I am one of Nature's children. I have always admired her. She shall be my glory: her features, her robes, and the wreath about her brow, the seasons, her stately oaks, and the evergreen — her hair, ringlets over the earth — all contribute to my enduring love of her. And wherever I see her, emotions of pleasure roll in my breast, and swell and burst like waves on the shores of the ocean, in prayer and praise to Him who has placed me in her hand. It is thought great to be born in palaces, surrounded with wealth — but to be born in Nature's wide domain is greater still! I

Your value doesn't decrease based on someone’s inability to see your worth.

I felt so alone in this world, and so loved at the same time. The best thing about Seattle is the weather!

Because he has not only your friendship, but your love, too. All that’s left is to give him your trust.

Don’t you see what I feel for you? Can’t you feel it when I make love to you? The way I look at you? Jesus, Meg, you’re all I see. You’re all I want.

I’ve been slowly falling for you for a long time, and I’m afraid I fell the rest of the way in love with you last night, and you’re so much more than my darling. You’re my treasure

I promised myself that we’d have this little air-clearing chat today without my tongue ending up in your mouth.

And I've just spent the last 48 hours falling in love with a man that is not only completely out of my league, I don't even play the same sport

Seattle gives you your breath back. Fills your lungs. I take it in and feel like I can breathe for the first time in my life.

the great Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition of 1909—Seattle’s forgotten world’s fair.

I just want you to know that I’m here. I’m patiently waiting, and you absolutely deserve to be loved in the way I’m going to love you. If you’ll give me that chance.

It doesn’t matter how someone in a romantic comedy affords their absurdly nice house, or whether or not their profession makes sense, or if technically they’re sort of stalking someone they heard on a call-in radio show. What matters is that they have hope. Sure, they find love, but it’s not even about love. It’s the hope that you deserve happiness, and that you won’t be sad forever, and that things will get better. It’s hope that life doesn’t always have to be a miserable slog, that you can find someone to love who understands you and accepts you just as you are.

A few of the horrendous facts include: He abducted and killed two women in one day and then took me out to dinner that evening. He raped and murdered women and then slept with me. He took my visiting family out for a fun evening of pizza. He then excused himself, went to a bar in South Seattle, found a young woman, and murdered her. The next day he was his charming self at a family event. One day when he was driving to Utah to go to law school, he called from Nampa, Idaho, to tell me he loved me. I learned later that he abducted a young woman that day and murdered her.

You. Are. Amazing. Meg, I love a woman who looks like a woman. I don’t want to be worried that I’ll snap you in half, and when I lay on your stomach, I don’t want your ribs poking me in the face.

But the most surprising difference was Show Street, the topless corner of Seattle’s second world’s fair, where fairgoers could rent Polaroid cameras to snap photos of showgirls in various stages of undress.

So, how do you feel about Alfredo sauce?” I grin at his flirty tone. “I have a long-standing love affair with Alfredo sauce.” “Really?” He chuckles and tucks a strand of my now messy hair behind my ear. “Lucky Alfredo sauce.

I don’t remember a time in my life that Jules and her family weren’t in it. You have shared everything that has ever mattered with me, even the birth of my baby. When Jules and Nate got together,” Natalie turns to the audience and smiles. Will takes my hand in his and kisses my knuckles. “I was astonished to watch the change in her. Jules is a kick-ass girl. She’s not big on public displays of affection, which she reminds me of almost daily.” “Seriously, you guys are gross,” Jules rolls her eyes, but I can see the tears threatening to spill over. “But Nate brought out that soft side of her. He makes her better. And I think she does the same for him. I just couldn’t have found anyone more suited to you, my friend, if I tried.” Nat raises her glass and we all follow suit. “So, to my new brother-in-law Nate, and my sister of the heart, his Julianne. May your love continue to grow every day.

But curiously, 1909 was also the peak of Seattle’s social evils—described as “dance halls, bagnios, crib houses, opium dens, and noodle joints…openly advertised in the full glare of electric light”—a major concern for the host city.

Utensil While feasting On venison stew After we buried my mother, I recognized my spoon And realized my family Had been using it For at least forty-two years. How does one commemorate The ordinary? I thanked The spoon for being a spoon And finished my stew. How does one get through A difficult time? How does A son properly mourn his mother? It helps to run the errands-- To get shit done. I washed That spoon, dried it, And put it back In the drawer, But I did it consciously, Paying attention To my hands, my wrists, And the feel of steel Against my fingertips. Then my wife drove us back Home to Seattle, where I wrote This poem about ordinary Grief. Thank you, poem, For being a poem. Thank you, Paper and ink, for being paper And ink. Thank you, desk, For being a desk. Thank you, Mother, for being my mother. Thank you for your imperfect love. It almost worked. It mostly worked. Or partly worked. It was almost enough.

The two great "civilizers" after all, were whisky and gunpowder, and from the hour we accepted these we had in reality sold our birthright, and all unconsciously consented to our own ruin. Once we had departed from the broad democracy and pure idealism of our prime, and had undertaken to enter upon the world’s game of competition, our rudder was unshipped, our compass lost, and the whirlwind and tempest of materialism and love of conquest tossed us to and fro like leaves in wind. Ohiyesa

Yes,” I whisper. “Your skin is so soft,” he murmurs, his fingers still on my cheek. “I love your curvy body.” My eyes widen. “Don’t frown.” He kisses me between my eyebrows, as if he’s smoothing the frown from my face. “I’m not so sure about my curvy body.” It’s a whispered admission that I’ve never made before, and frankly, I’ve never felt this vulnerable. His blue gaze meets mine again, and each word is staccato: “You. Are. Beautiful.” I close my eyes, but he tips my chin, forcing me to look at him again. “Thank you.” His

I loved the sense of being so close to the city, yet so far out on this magnificently eventful sea, with its wild creatures and mazy channels. I thought, if I lived in Seattle, I’d keep a boat of my own, and sail it to where the tide ran at sixteen knots at springs, and where there were whirlpools ten feet deep. I’d live on a sane frontier between nature and civilization, with one foot in the water, the other in a metropolis of restaurants and bookstores. I’d read and write in the mornings, and run away to sea in the afternoons.

Fear of Flying (Because every time you fly, you land somewhere new and you have to make new friends.) Leave something you love in every city you've lived in. A record player in Shanghai, a kitten in Seattle, your best dresses hanging in a closet in Paris. That way you'll always have a reason to retrace your steps back to old friends. So it means you won't have to stay away forever. Learn to enjoy being alone, appreciate the silence of dinners where an entire roast duck can be gnawed away, cartilage and all, without conversational interruption. You are free and oh-so-mysterious. Think: Friends, who needs friends?

Hannah, it’s me. Please, please, get off the bus. I’m coming home right now. I’m . . .” His voice lost power. “Just get off the bus somewhere safe and wait for me, all right? I fucking love you. I love you. And I’m sorry you fell in love with an idiot. I’m . . .” Find the words. Find the right words. “Remember in Seattle, you said we’ve been trying this whole time. Since last summer. To be in a relationship. I didn’t fully understand at the time, but I do now. There was never going to be a life away from you, because, Jesus, that’s no life at all. You, Hannah. Are my life. I love you and I’m coming home, so please, babe. Please. Will you just wait for me? I’m sorry.

This is the part they don’t tell you about in the movies. Or in On the Road. This is not rock ’n’ roll. You are not William Burroughs, and it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference if Kurt Cobain was slumped over in an alleyway in Seattle the day Bleach came out. There is no junkie chic. This is not Soho and you are not Sid Vicious. You are not a drugstore cowboy and you are not spotting trains. You are not a part of anything—no underground sect, no counter-culture movement, no music scene, nothing. You have just been released from jail and are walking down Mission Street, alternating between taking a hit off a cigarette and puking, looking for coins on the ground so you can catch a bus as you shit yourself.

Teach your children what we have taught our children: that the earth is our mother. Whatever befalls the earth, befalls the children of the earth. If we spit upon the ground we spit upon ourselves. This we know. The earth does not belong to us; we belong to the earth. One thing we know which the white man may one discover, our god is the same god. You may think now that you own him as you wish to own our land; but you cannot. He is the god of all people. And compassion is equal for all. this earth is precious to god, and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on the creator. So love it as we have loved it. care for it as we have cared for it. and with all your mind, with all your heart, preserve it for our children and love as god loves us all.

Uh-oh,” Brynna says. “Here comes Caleb.” “Caleb, I’d like to introduce—” “Fine,” says Caleb, Brynna’s husband, holding his hand up for me to stop talking. “I know who you are. And I don’t give a flying fuck. If you hurt her, I’ll kill you and make it look like you did it to yourself, do you understand me?” “Well, that’s lovely,” I mutter. “And unnecessary.” “He’s here?” Will chimes in, hurrying over. “Dude, we’ll kill you. But welcome.

Somebody reported my book bag!” he says. “My promposal got fucked.” I take the teddy bear out of his bag and hug it to my chest. I’m so happy I don’t even tell him not to cuss. “I love it.” “You were going to turn the corner, and see the book bag right here by the telescopes. Then you were going to pick up the bear, and squeeze it, and--” “How was I going to know to squeeze it?” I ask. Peter pulls a crumpled piece of paper out of the bag. It says, Squeeze Me. “It fell off when the security guard was manhandling it. See? I thought of everything.” Everything except the ramifications of leaving an unattended bag in a public place in New York City, but still! It’s the thought that counts, and the thought is the sweetest. I squeeze the bear, and again he says, “Will you go to prom with me, Lara Jean?” “Yes, I will, Howard.” Howard is, of course, the name of the bear from Sleepless in Seattle. “Why are you saying yes to him and not to me?” Peter demands. “Because he asked.” I raise my eyebrows at him and wait. Rolling his eyes, Peter mumbles, “Lara Jean, will you go to prom with me? God, you really do ask for a lot.” I hold the bear out to him. “I will, but first kiss Howard.” “Covey. No. Hell, no.” “Please!” I give him a pleading look. “It’s in the movie, Peter.” And grumbling, he does it, in front of everybody, which is how I know he is utterly and completely mine.

Me: Thank you, Joshua, for those “just in case” condoms! Thank you, Reed, for that video link you sent me last month about making women come without fail. And thank you, Baby Jesus, for finally sending me the woman of my dreams AND making her want to have sex with me AND making her want to see me again in Seattle for a whole fucking week! Thanks to all of your contributions, I can now confidently report I’ve found my future wife. The only question is how long I should wait before letting her in on that lil secret?

Our people were divided in opinion about these men. Some thought they taught more bad than good. An Indian respects a brave man, but he despises a coward. He loves a straight tongue, but he hates a forked tongue. The French trappers told us some truths and some lies. The first white men of your people who came to our country were named Lewis and Clark. They also brought many things that our people had never seen. They talked straight, and our people gave them a great feast as a proof that their hearts were friendly. These

Jeff Ament: The minute we started rehearsing and Ed started singing -- which was within an hour of him landing in Seattle -- was the first time I was like, "Wow, this is a band that I'd play at home on my stereo." What he was writing about was the space Stone and I were in. We'd just lost one of our friends to a dark and evil addiction, and he was putting that feeling to words. I saw him as a brother. That's what pulled me back in [to making music]. It's like when you read a book and there's something describing something you've felt all your life.

«All the Amazon guys around Seattle were also aware of the trend. They all knew that, someday, European haute couture would sell online. The problem was that feat couldn’t be done by anybody from Amazon. Because Amazon guys were hacker geeks and cheesy hicks. Amazon had been invented to sell sci-fi books. The least chic thing in the world. The European couture biz would never go anywhere near a dorky sci-fi geek like Jeff Bezos. As for Jeff himself, Jeff would much rather conquer outer space with his private rocket than ever dress the First Lady of France.»

stumbled upon an old article about race and the AYP and how China had declined to sponsor an exhibit because delegates had been harassed at previous world’s fairs, and how ethnographic displays were immensely popular, like the Igorrote exhibit, a mock village of grass huts, which was basically a human zoo. As I kept digging, I was intrigued to learn that 1909 was also the height of Washington State’s suffrage movement. Both the Washington Equal Suffrage Association and the National American Woman Suffrage Association held conventions in Seattle to take advantage of the publicity of the AYP.

Bee, darling, you’re a child of the earth, the United States, Washington State, and Seattle. Those East Coast rich kids are a different breed, on a fast track to nowhere. Your friends in Seattle are downright Canadian in their niceness. None of you has a cell phone. The girls wear hoodies and big cotton underpants and walk around with tangled hair and smiling, adorned backpacks. Do you know how absolutely exotic it is that you haven’t been corrupted by fashion and pop culture? A month ago I mentioned Ben Stiller, and do you remember how you responded? “Who’s that?” I loved you all over again

Everything else is Craftsman. Turn-of-the-century Craftsman, beautifully restored Craftsman, reinterpretation of Craftsman, needs-some-love Craftsman, modern take on Craftsman. It’s like a hypnotist put everyone from Seattle in a collective trance. You are getting sleepy, when you wake up you will want to live only in a Craftsman house, the year won’t matter to you, all that will matter is that the walls will be thick, the windows tiny, the rooms dark, the ceilings low, and it will be poorly situated on the lot. The main thing about this cornucopia of Craftsmans: compared to L.A., they were Ikea-cheap!

What is it again that you love so much about Seattle?” and they answer, “We have everything. The mountains and the water.” This is their explanation, mountains and water. As much as I try not to engage people in the grocery checkout, I couldn’t resist one day when I overheard one refer to Seattle as “cosmopolitan.” Encouraged, I asked, “Really?” She said, Sure, Seattle is full of people from all over. “Like where?” Her answer, “Alaska. I have a ton of friends from Alaska.” Whoomp, there it is. Let’s play a game. I’ll say a word, and you say the first word that pops into your head. Ready? ME: Seattle. YOU: Rain.

As I turn the corner, I hear Peter calling out, “Wait! Wait! Sir!” He’s following a security guard who is approaching a red backpack on the floor. The security guard bends down and picks it up. “Is this yours?” he demands. “Uh, yeah--” “Why did you leave it on the ground?” He unzips the backpack and pulls out a teddy bear. Peter’s eyes dart around. “Can you put that back inside? It’s for a promposal for my girlfriend. It’s supposed to be a surprise.” The security guard is shaking his head. He mutters to himself and starts looking in the backpack again. “Sir, please just squeeze the bear.” “I’m not squeezing the bear,” the security guard tells him. Peter reaches out and squeezes the teddy bear and the bear squeaks out, “Will you go to prom with me, Lara Jean?” I clap my hands to my mouth in delight. Sternly the security guard says, “You’re in New York City, kid. You can’t just leave a backpack on the ground for your proposal.” “It’s actually called a promposal,” Peter corrects, and the security guard gives him a look. “Sorry. Can I just have the bear back?” He spots me then. “Tell him Sleepless in Seattle is your favorite movie, Lara Jean!” I rush over. “Sir, it’s my favorite movie. Please don’t kick him out.” The security guard is trying not to smile. “I wasn’t going to kick him out,” he says to me. To Peter he says, “Just be more aware next time. In New York, we’re vigilant. If we see something, we say something, do you feel me? This is not whatever little country town you guys are from. This is New York City. We do not play around here.” Both Peter and I nod, and the security guard walks away. As soon as he’s gone, Peter and I look at each other and break out into giddy laughter. “Somebody reported my book bag!” he says. “My promposal got fucked.” I take the teddy bear out of his bag and hug it to my chest. I’m so happy I don’t even tell him not to cuss. “I love it.

In Seattle, warm temperatures, associated with moist, Pineapple Express air, have already produced a rainfall of two inches between 7 PM yesterday and 7 AM this morning. I am now going out on a limb and projecting that this flow will stagnate over Puget Sound and the deluge will continue for hours. We are in the midst of a most notable weather show. * See, that’s what I mean about loving Cliff Mass. Because, basically, all he’s saying is it’s going to rain. * From: Ollie-O To: Prospective Parent Brunch Committee REAL-TIME FLASH! The day of the PPB has come. Unfortunately, our biggest get, the sun, is going to be a no-show. Ha-ha. That was my idea of a joke.

We rode in a darling neighborhood of little bungalows cuddled together. I love the gray-green-putty colors against the leafless cherry trees and Japanese maples. I could feel the crocus, daffodil, and tulip bulbs underground, gaining strength, patiently enduring our winter, waiting to burst forth for another glorious Seattle spring. I held my hand out and whooshed it through the thick, healthy air. What other city has given birth to the jumbo jet, the Internet superstore, the personal computer, the cellular phone, online travel, grunge music, the big-box store, good coffee? Where else could somebody like me ride bikes alongside the man with the fourth-most-watched TEDTalk? I started laughing.

I have selected the twenty most relevant and have also included a lengthy one from her to a Paul Jellinek. Please familiarize yourself with them prior to my arrival. I suggest you clear your calendar for the rest of the day and week. I look forward to meeting you at the Visitor Center. With your full cooperation, we are hoping to keep Microsoft out of it. Yours, Marcus Strang P.S.: We all love your TEDTalk. I’d love to see the latest on Samantha 2 if time permits. PART FOUR Invaders MONDAY, DECEMBER 20 Police report filed by night manager at the Westin Hotel STATE OF WASHINGTON CIRCUIT COURT KING COUNTY STATE OF WASHINGTON -vs.- Audrey Faith Griffin I, Phil Bradstock, an officer with the Seattle Police Department, having been first duly sworn in, on oath, state that:

Maybe we should do some more homework.” Homework had been their code word for making out before they’d realized that they hadn’t been fooling anyone. But Jay was true to his word, especially his code word, and his lips settled over hers. Violet suddenly forgot that she was pretending to break free from his grip. Her frail resolve crumbled. She reached out, wrapping her arms around his neck, and pulled him closer to her. Jay growled from deep in his throat. “Okay, homework it is.” He pulled her against him, until they were lying face-to-face, stretched across the length of the couch. It wasn’t long before she was restless, her hands moving impatiently, exploring him. She shuddered when she felt his fingers slip beneath her shirt and brush over her bare skin. He stroked her belly and higher, the skin of his hands rough against her soft flesh. His thumb brushed the base of her rib cage, making her breath catch. And then, like so many times before, he stopped, abruptly drawing back. He shifted only inches, but those inches felt like miles, and Violet felt the familiar surge of frustration. He didn’t say a word; he didn’t have to. Violet understood perfectly. They’d gone too far. Again. But Violet was frustrated, and it was getting harder and harder to ignore her disappointment. She knew they couldn’t play this unsatisfying game forever. “So you’re going to Seattle tomorrow?” He used the question to fill the rift between them, but his voice shook and Violet was glad he wasn’t totally unaffected. She wasn’t as quick to pretend that everything was okay, especially when what she really wanted to do was to rip his shirt off and unbutton his jeans. But they’d talked about this. And, time and time again, they’d decided that they needed to be sure. One hundred percent. Because once they crossed that line… She and Jay had been best friends since the first grade, and up until last fall that’s all they’d ever been. Now that she was in love with him, she couldn’t imagine losing him because they made the wrong decision. Or made it too soon. She decided to let Jay have his small talk. For now. “Yeah, Chelsea wants to go down to the waterfront and maybe do some shopping. It’s easier to be around her when it’s just the two of us. You know, when she’s not always…on.” “You mean when she’s not picking on someone?” “Exactly.

For a team facing a 12-run deficit, the game is all but over. Almost always. Three times in major league history, though, a club has come from down by a dozen to win. The Chicago White Sox were the first in 1911; fourteen years later, the Philadelphia Athletics duplicated the feat. Then seventy-six years would pass before it happened again. Enter the 2001 Cleveland Indians, battling for their sixth playoff spot in seven years. Hosting the red-hot Seattle Mariners, who would win a major league record 116 games that season, the Tribe found themselves trailing 12–0 after just three innings. In the middle of the seventh, Seattle led 14–2—at which point the Indians began their historic comeback. Scoring three in the seventh, four in the eighth, and five in the ninth, Cleveland forced extra innings. In the bottom of the eleventh, utility man Jolbert Cabrera slapped a broken-bat single to score Kenny Lofton for one of the more remarkable wins in the annals of baseball. On August 6, 2001, not even a 12-run deficit could stop the Cleveland Indians. Those of us who follow Jesus Christ can expect even greater victories. “I am convinced,” the apostle Paul wrote, “that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38–39). If you’re deep in the hole today, take heart. As God’s child, you’re always still in the game. We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. HEBREWS

After driving 30-minutes East of Seattle, I expect to see a great bowling alley. But, as we pull into the parking lot, all I see are pot holes, a horse and Amish buggy, and no cars to speak of- broken down or otherwise. Even the building is in shambles, needs painted and looks a bit haunted. The old road sign reading- Flicker Lanes- is half-burnt out. Seeing the building's interior lights on, I'm reassured that the place is open- but then again, maybe they've been left on by mistake. "There's LOTS of NICE bowling alleys in SEATTLE," I said. "Why did we come ALL THIS WAY to go BOWLING?" "I take it that you've never BEEN here before." "I don't think ANYONE HAS. I don't even KNOW what PLANET we're on." "I don't know what PLANET you're on either... but the rest of us are on your ANUS." I half-smile, marveling at his wittiness.

I ran to Sailor’s hutch to see if he’d made it through alive. He was backed into the corner, shivering, and in the most wretched condition: he had become so malnourished that his fur had grown horribly long, his body’s attempt to compensate for his slow metabolism and low temperature. His claws were an inch long, and worse, his front teeth had curled over his lower lip so he could hardly open his mouth. Apparently, rabbits need to be chewing on hard things like carrots; otherwise their teeth will grow. Terrified, I opened the cage door to hug little Sailor, but, in a spastic fury, he started scratching my face and neck. I still have the scars. Without anyone attending to him, he had gone feral. That’s what’s happened to me, in Seattle. Come at me, even in love, and I’ll scratch the hell out of you. ’Tis a piteous fate to have befallen a MacArthur genius, wouldn’t you say? Poof. But I do love you, Bernadette TUESDAY, DECEMBER 14 From Paul Jellinek Bernadette, Are you done?

A lot of touring bands totally skipped Portland and Seattle because it was 14 hours north of San Francisco and 32 hours west of Minneapolis. People in the Northwest had to make up their own entertainment.

JEFF GILBERT (journalist; KZOK DJ; concert organizer) Seattle isn’t a glamorous town at all. It was pretty pathetic. Very depressing. That’s where this music came out of. I’ve made this comment before: Grunge isn’t a music style. It’s complaining set to a drop D tuning.

FansOfTheShoebill shoebillbird@mailingo.net Sherry R. Stinson 206-329-5623 UNT612Z3BL776 SitthenwagnerLaane Seattle, WA 98122 #FansOfTheShoebill Our blog ShoebillBird.Org is focused on giving you excellent online resources about this lovely wild bird, Balaeniceps Rex, or usually called the Shoebill stork. ShoebillBird.Org has handled all the researching just for you: the potential Shoebill enthusiast who wants a superb destination on the net to discover more about this astonishing and unbelievable stork! Find the finest Shoebill stork articles on the web right now on our website ShoebillBird.Org, and please make sure you share us with your family and friends! Thank you for visiting our website! Everybody here at our site ShoebillBird.Org adores the spectacular Shoebill Crane! This web site was created by fans of the lovely stork, Balaeniceps rex, or typically known as the Shoebill. Please ensure that you have a look at our articles and don’t be reluctant to share a link or two… Everyone should discover more about this extraordinary crane-almost definitely one of the last existing relatives of the dinosaurs!

The two friends enjoyed wandering through this place. It was small. Only a city block. Unobtrusive. This was where some of the pioneer workers of Seattle were laid to rest. Laborers who worked in sawmills. Regular folk born when Seattle was a mill town. Regular working class, now buried under ground stones. These folk had to fight to simply survive. Remembered by their children and grandchildren, they worked for a better tomorrow for those they loved. These people had smiled, and danced, and hoped. They had lived. Now buried, most had no fancy education to show for their troubles. They were not part of the elite, yet those who lay here were great. These souls were not the most renowned or powerful, but were, in truth, the best of the world. As Zin and Obia wandered through, they saw various headstones were flat, unobtrusive, and resting in the grass. Right in the ground, without any markers.

He wanted her to keep the piece of tinder safe. She wasn’t sure whether she felt honoured or scared. No one had ever trusted her with something so important. ‘Wait,’ Percy said. ‘You mean you guys shared a blackout? Are you guys both going to pass out from now on?’ ‘Nope,’ Ella said. ‘Nope, nope, nope. No more blackouts. More books for Ella. Books in Seattle.’ Hazel gazed over the water. They were sailing through a large bay, making their way towards a cluster of downtown buildings. Neighbourhoods rolled across a series of hills. From the tallest one rose an odd white tower with a saucer on the top, like a spaceship from the old Flash Gordon movies Sammy used to love. No more blackouts? Hazel thought. After enduring them for so long, the idea seemed too good to be true.

I’m terrified of bees, even though I’ve never been stung. I have this irrational thought that I’d be highly allergic to them. Strawberries make me itch. I think spring is the best season because things start returning to life. If I could live anywhere else, I’d live in Seattle because rain soothes me. I lose my keys regularly, and most of the time, they are right in my back pocket. I hate mean people and love squirrels.

Ron Murgo is a Seattle resident in his early 70s who has lived entirely in the American West. Not only does he enjoy spending time with loved ones he also pursues hobbies.

It was the sweetest, most unhurried kiss I’d ever endured. Never had I been so in tune with someone before, but this was Amelia. She wasn’t just anyone to me; she was everything.

The world seems to be smaller than the eye of a needle,” my mother used to say. But it returns to its normal, infinite size when we aren’t crazy in love with anyone, because love is a minimizing glass that collects and reduces the size of the whole world until it fits into the palm of one hand.

inner conflicts that kept him

While I had no plans to leave Lettie soon, I knew that I couldn't be her nanny forever. All I'd ever wanted, besides maybe a gallery of my own, was a family someday. And while I loved this job and Lettie, I would never make my own children feel like a second choice.

There is no Red Lobster close to us. We live in Seattle, and the nearest one to our home is either thirteen miles north or twenty-seven miles south of us. To encounter one is a rare thing, like finding a truffle in dirt. Red Lobster, it should be noted, offers a truffle lobster mac and cheese on its seasonal Lobsterfest menu. A dinner-sized portion contains 1,460 calories and proudly exceeds the recommended daily intake of sodium and cholesterol. With every bite you are laughing at mortality itself. To eat it is to believe, for a moment, that you will live forever. This is simply part of the excellent value proposition Red Lobster offers. My husband does not realize this. And so, as the restaurant and the strip mall it resides in grow smaller in our rearview mirror, I explain it to him again. “I need endless shrimp for $19.99.” “No you do not. No one needs endless shrimp.” “Orcas do,” I say. This is obviously a winning argument. “You are not an orca,” he replies, and keeps on driving. I accuse him of not loving me. This is a laughable charge, and we both know it.

It’s okay if you ask more of me,” I whispered as my eyes drooped. “I want to give you everything, so ask me for anything.

Chemistry between two people is the strangest science of all.

I preferred someone who would accept that sometimes I didn’t have a lot to say.

I think I’m going to love it here.” “Yeah,” I agreed, nodding. “I think you will.” And maybe I’ll get you to like me too.

There was no way Zeke could have known that he’d gotten me out of a situation that was suffocating me beyond my lungs capacity. Maybe one day I’d tell him what his effort in finding me a permanent place here in Seattle had done for me.

Zeke and I were weird. The chemistry was weird, but it was there.

Maybe not disappear, but you definitely forget about the world around you when he’s in your presence.

Wow… I…” she shook her head and set the chopsticks down. “I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am. I guess I never thought I would meet someone who saw things about me I wasn’t trying to show.” “You weren’t trying to show, but I was determined to see.

Romance isn't about proving to someone you love them with flowers and greeting cards and chocolate. It's a daily reminder. It's saying, I choose you. Today and every day.

That feeling I wanted to keep—the one I got from listening to music—Sawyer was the only woman who sparked the same emotion in me. Seeing her, being in her space, talking about any and everything under the sun made my days better. For the most part, they weren’t even bad, to begin with, but she somehow enhanced them. She somehow brought me more peace, and who wasn’t a fan of that?

know it’s scary letting go of the crutch that can keep you afloat if all else fails, but you can’t let fear make life decisions for you.

And while some people thought that being able to do something on their own without help was the definition of success, I believed differently. Unapologetically using every resource available to you was the quickest and most clever way to see results. It doesn’t make you less successful and never will.

I love her fiery personality, but it frustrates the hell out of me. If I weren’t completely and utterly in love with her, I’d walk away.

Take care of her, Is. You gotta promise me that.” “I got her, Toine. I promise.

You can push all you want. I’m not going anywhere,” Cal said firmly. “I know you, and I love you for you, Maggie.

felt like home to me, and no place had ever felt that way before; no man had ever made me feel that way just from a simple hug. None of it made sense because I barely knew him.

You should know that doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will,” I said, bringing my lips closer. “I’m the last person to be telling you how to feel, but do me a favor and kill the doubt.” “Can I be scared?” I nodded and brushed my lips against hers. “It’s okay to be scared. Being scared means, you’re about to do something

just pray I’m able to give you what you want, what you need.

All while telling myself, you’ve always been worthy of genuine people, Nae., over and over again.

Why does it feel like our minds and bodies are further than we are in this? Like we’re simply being caught up on what’s going to be?” “Chemistry between two people is the strangest science of all.

I’m a lot of things, Nae,” he said, using my nickname and tipping his head at me. “But remember, I’m a man first. A man who is beyond attracted to you—who would take the chance to fuck you if allowed.

I want to spill all of my deepest darkest secrets to you. It’s becoming clearer to me with every day that passes.

So, again, I ask you, when are you going to tell the woman about you having Autism.

Once I bare my soul to you, there’s no giving me back,” she whispered, staring up at me. “I never planned on giving you back in the first place.” I tipped my head to the side. “Bare all, Jo.

My heart was his. My body was his.  He owned me, and no man would be able to have me this way, never in this way.

I’m proposing that you smile a little more. Life ain’t so bad when you smile through the pain.

And even though once upon a time Peter claimed he didn’t like rom coms, he was very into Sleepless in Seattle, which I was relieved for, because I just don’t see how I could be with someone who doesn’t like Sleepless in Seattle.

Amelia’s hallway. He felt like home to me, and no place had ever felt that way before; no man had ever made me feel that way just from a simple hug. None of it made sense because I barely knew him.

You should know that doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will,” I said, bringing my lips closer. “I’m the last person to be telling you how to feel, but do me a favor and kill the doubt.” “Can

I would never let that happen,” he declared, cupping my face with one of his hands. “Your light is too bright for me to watch it dim and not do everything in my power to see you shine again.

Moreover, I preferred someone who would accept that sometimes I didn’t have a lot to say. Someone who had no problem talking for the both of us if needed. And even though I wanted those things, there was something about Jonae Martin that also made me want to talk, to open up.

I love you, Scarlett. A maddening fucking amount if we’re being honest.

The electronics effort faced even greater challenges. To launch that category, David Risher tapped a Dartmouth alum named Chris Payne who had previously worked on Amazon’s DVD store. Like Miller, Payne had to plead with suppliers—in this case, Asian consumer-electronics companies like Sony, Toshiba, and Samsung. He quickly hit a wall. The Japanese electronics giants viewed Internet sellers like Amazon as sketchy discounters. They also had big-box stores like Best Buy and Circuit City whispering in their ears and asking them to take a pass on Amazon. There were middlemen distributors, like Ingram Electronics, but they offered a limited selection. Bezos deployed Doerr to talk to Howard Stringer at Sony America, but he got nowhere. So Payne had to turn to the secondary distributors—jobbers that exist in an unsanctioned, though not illegal, gray market. Randy Miller, a retail finance director who came to Amazon from Eddie Bauer, equates it to buying from the trunk of someone’s car in a dark alley. “It was not a sustainable inventory model, but if you are desperate to have particular products on your site or in your store, you do what you need to do,” he says. Buying through these murky middlemen got Payne and his fledgling electronics team part of the way toward stocking Amazon’s virtual shelves. But Bezos was unimpressed with the selection and grumpily compared it to shopping in a Russian supermarket during the years of Communist rule. It would take Amazon years to generate enough sales to sway the big Asian brands. For now, the electronics store was sparely furnished. Bezos had asked to see $100 million in electronics sales for the 1999 holiday season; Payne and his crew got about two-thirds of the way there. Amazon officially announced the new toy and electronics stores that summer, and in September, the company held a press event at the Sheraton in midtown Manhattan to promote the new categories. Someone had the idea that the tables in the conference room at the Sheraton should have piles of merchandise representing all the new categories, to reinforce the idea of broad selection. Bezos loved it, but when he walked into the room the night before the event, he threw a tantrum: he didn’t think the piles were large enough. “Do you want to hand this business to our competitors?” he barked into his cell phone at his underlings. “This is pathetic!” Harrison Miller, Chris Payne, and their colleagues fanned out that night across Manhattan to various stores, splurging on random products and stuffing them in the trunks of taxicabs. Miller spent a thousand dollars alone at a Toys “R” Us in Herald Square. Payne maxed out his personal credit card and had to call his wife in Seattle to tell her not to use the card for a few days. The piles of products were eventually large enough to satisfy Bezos, but the episode was an early warning. To satisfy customers and their own demanding boss during the upcoming holiday, Amazon executives were going to have to substitute artifice and improvisation for truly comprehensive selection.

stuffed toy from the ground and put it into

If you ask me, it’s perfectly natural that when we feel so much, when our entire world begins to revolve around someone else, that’s when we turn the most into ourselves. We’re sure that no one else can possibly understand what it’s like to love so deeply, aren’t we?

Well, people always say that if you follow your heart, you’ll never regret it, which I agree with. But what I learned when Ian’s father and I were trying to make things work between the two of us way back when, was just how much determination it can sometimes take to stay on your heart’s path. I also learned that love is worth the struggle. Always.

music had come.

but he wasn’t a natural sailor, even if he

The Gift that Keeps on Giving I once had a lovely real estate client named Jane who was an elderly lady living alone. Her sons lived far away in the Pacific Northwest and she rarely saw them. I became her Realtor when she decided she needed to down-size from her larger home and buy a smaller one. Throughout this transition, we would talk, laugh, share, and bond. After we successfully completed her transactions and got her comfortably situated in her new home, I stayed in touch to nurture our friendship. Over a year later, I got a call from her son in Seattle who was calling to inform me that his mother had passed away. And at the reading of her will it was revealed she had requested that when it the time came to sell the property in her estate, they were to call Susan Young. By making her feel special and important, I earned not only her friendship, but her loyalty and continued business.

Howard Schultz, the man who built Starbucks into a colossus, isn’t so different from Travis in some ways.5.22 He grew up in a public housing project in Brooklyn, sharing a two-bedroom apartment with his parents and two siblings. When he was seven years old, Schultz’s father broke his ankle and lost his job driving a diaper truck. That was all it took to throw the family into crisis. His father, after his ankle healed, began cycling through a series of lower-paying jobs. “My dad never found his way,” Schultz told me. “I saw his self-esteem get battered. I felt like there was so much more he could have accomplished.” Schultz’s school was a wild, overcrowded place with asphalt playgrounds and kids playing football, basketball, softball, punch ball, slap ball, and any other game they could devise. If your team lost, it could take an hour to get another turn. So Schultz made sure his team always won, no matter the cost. He would come home with bloody scrapes on his elbows and knees, which his mother would gently rinse with a wet cloth. “You don’t quit,” she told him. His competitiveness earned him a college football scholarship (he broke his jaw and never played a game), a communications degree, and eventually a job as a Xerox salesman in New York City. He’d wake up every morning, go to a new midtown office building, take the elevator to the top floor, and go door-to-door, politely inquiring if anyone was interested in toner or copy machines. Then he’d ride the elevator down one floor and start all over again. By the early 1980s, Schultz was working for a plastics manufacturer when he noticed that a little-known retailer in Seattle was ordering an inordinate number of coffee drip cones. Schultz flew out and fell in love with the company. Two years later, when he heard that Starbucks, then just six stores, was for sale, he asked everyone he knew for money and bought it. That was 1987. Within three years, there were eighty-four stores; within six years, more than a thousand. Today, there are seventeen thousand stores in more than fifty countries.

And what did Mira paying her ex- husband Dennis large sums of money have to do with it? I’d love to go up to Seattle and grill him about it, but any trip there would take a minimum of twelve hours. Someone like Cole could do it, but I knew no one else with the investigative chops, not that I trusted anyway. Not unless I wanted to go against Mira’s wishes and inform SFPD. I made a note to phone Dennis, though. Not as effective, but maybe I could get something.

Because I had no intention of coming back to Seattle. Not for my Harley, not for the family Ronan had so easily proclaimed me to be a part of, and definitely not for the man I’d somehow managed to fall completely in love with without even realizing it.   *

I’m reading this fun Christian romance by an author who lives in Seattle named Lesley Ann McDaniel. It’s called Saving Grace and is about an opera singer from New York who flees from a stalker and winds up in a tiny town in Montana. I’m loving it.

I didn’t want to go, but his arms were underneath me, easing me toward the edge of the gurney and a waiting wheelchair padded with pillows. I was afraid any resistance would result in another game of hospital gown peekaboo. He settled me so gently in the soft wheelchair that my hip and my back hardly hurt. Pushing me past the curtain and into the bustling emergency room, he leaned close, over me, to say, “I fixed it. They’re going to lose the records of your visit, so you’ll never get billed. But you’re my girlfriend.” “What do you mean, I’m your girlfriend?” What delicious blackmail was this? And was it worth the price? Perhaps I could stand it. ‘I had to make them think I have a vested interest in you,” he whispered. “They never would have agreed to lose your records if I told them you were my friend at twelve years old but not so much at eighteen and I had pretty much walked in and stolen the birthright to your family farm. See? Shhh. Hey, Brody.” He slapped hands with another man in scrubs wheeling an empty gurney in the opposite direction. The man eyed me, waggled his eyebrows at Hunter, and kept going. “Couldn’t you have said we’re friends and left it at that?” I needed to keep up the façade that I did not like the idea at all. At the same time, I was a little afraid Hunter would call the charade off. “I have a lot of friends,” he explained, wheeling me into a waiting room marked X-RAY. he rounded the wheelchair and knelt in front of me. Behind him, a door stood ajar. A contraption I assumed to be an X-ray machine was visible through the crack. He glanced over his shoulder at the door, then turned back to me. “Sorry about this,” he murmured as he slid both hands into my hair and kissed me. All I could do at first was feel. His lips were on mine. His hands held me steady, so I couldn’t have shrugged away if I’d tried, but I would not try. Bright tingles spread from my lips across my face and down my neck to my chest. I longed to pull him closer for more. I reminded myself that we were faking this for a reason. I didn’t want to make the kiss deeper than necessary in case it turned him off. Hunter deepened it. His tongue pressed past my teeth and swept inside my mouth. One of his hands released my hair and caressed my shoulder, traveling down. The farther his hand went, the higher I felt. My hip hardly hurt and my back pain was gone. I wondered how low his hand would go. I never found out. A shadow stood in the doorway and cleared its throat. I stopped kissing Hunter back and braced for him to jump away. He did back off, but very slowly. He sat back on his haunches and glared at the X-ray tech as if she had a lot of nerve. His cheeks were bright red. “So, Hunter,” she said mischievously. “This is your girlfriend.” “Hullo.” I gave her a small wave. “And you got hit by a taxi while you were crossing the street to visit Hunter? That is so romantic! Have you seen Sleepless in Seattle?” “Not romantic,” I said flatly. “I hate that movie. They don’t meet until the last scene. They don’t kiss at all.” Too late I realized I sounded like I was begging Hunter for more. “But in that movie,” the tech said, “they talk about An Affair to Remember. Have you seen that? Deborah Kerr is crossing the street to meet Cary Grant and gets hit by a car. Years later he comes back to her and she’s paralyzed from the waist down.” “You call that romantic?” I heard myself yelling. “That is repulsive!” Hunter stood and put a heavy hand on my shoulder as he pushed my wheelchair past the tech and through the doorway to the X-ray machine. “Erin is in a lot of pain,” he murmured to the tech, “and she doesn’t want to think about being paralyzed from the waist down.” After that the tech was a lot nicer, because Hunter had a way with people. Hunter lifted me onto the table and left the room so he wouldn’t be irradiated or see my bony ass.

I think we’ve seen every movie Cary Grant ever made a dozen times.” She widened her eyes. “Me too. Nanna adored Cary Grant.” “‘Everybody wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant.’” “I love that line.” “How about this one. ‘Insanity runs in my family. It practically gallops.’” “Arsenic and Old Lace.” “That’s one point for you.” “My turn. ‘Not that I mind a slight case of abduction now and then, but I have tickets for the theater this evening.’” “Too easy.” AJ smirked. “North by Northwest.” “We’re tied. One point each.” “So it’s a competition now?” “For biggest Cary Grant fan.” “Okay. Try this one. ‘There must be something between us, even if it’s only an ocean.’” “Every woman in the world knows that one.” “Then what is it?” “An Affair to Remember.” Shelby sighed dreamily. “And you can’t watch that one without watching Sleepless in Seattle.” “Another of Gran’s favorites.” “Did you really watch all those movies with her?” “Sure did. About once a month or so on a Sunday afternoon, we’d have a movie marathon.” His eyes softened as he revisited the past, then he grinned. “Sometimes I drifted off to sleep. So did she, but we both pretended we didn’t.” “Sounds like a pleasant way to spend a Sunday.” “It was.

I’m not saying it will be easy to let my little girl go, and to know that I’m no longer the first man she’ll turn to,

You’re no man. You’re a monster.” Tapping on the ice urged her to turn, but she stared out over the swampy lands surrounding her castle, refusing to give him any satisfaction. “As are you. You may have a beautiful face, and a lovely body, but your mind is as dark as the bottomless pits of the abyss.

THE TALKING CURE K. J. Zimring | 3996 words Kim Zimring recently moved from Georgia to Seattle. Her poignant story about an old man's memories of a perilous childhood, however, was written in New Mexico, at Walter Jon Williams's "indisputably fine Rio Hondo workshop." Kim is a graduate of Clarion 2005 and her previous stories have appeared in Asimov's, Analog, and the Writers of the Future anthology. My first memory is of my dead mother. I'm crouched by her face, mouth close enough to kiss, waiting for a breath that never comes. An open jar of mushrooms sits beside her, spoon embedded in its boggy heart. Botulism is the cause of death, I presume, though why I selected that for the image I couldn't say. Some warning about home-canned goods wrapped together in my childish brain with the classic Oedipal love/fear complex: Mother, bringing food and death.

True love would be passion that burned so hot you were almost afraid of the power the other person had over you, the way they could turn you inside out with a look, a touch, a kiss. It would be wanting to fall asleep every night and wake up every morning for the rest of your life in that one person’s arms. Just like you said, it would be holding hands and laughing and building a family together. And, most of all, it would mean being able to talk to each other about absolutely anything, knowing that no matter how hard it was to say the difficult things, you’d both still love each other…and that you’d find a way to work it out together. No matter what.” Mrs.

The only people love needed to make sense to were the two people falling for each other. “Definitely

love is worth the struggle. Always.

Love meant laying every single thing out on the line and trusting that the other person would lay everything out, too. Without fear. And without regret. “How

It was right when you were trying to hold everything tightly under control that the wind and waves decided it was high time to show you not only how vulnerable you really were, but also how precious every single moment was. But

If I ever fall in love with a werewolf," Veronica said, as she stared at a drunken wedding guest being escorted out of Seward Park, "shoot me." "Famous last words.

The right guy will tell you he loves you to your face, and when he kisses you, you'll know it by the curl of your toes.

I want you to experience the smell of a vintage bookstore,” she would say. “Going with you is the only way I’ll do it.

One day the look in her eyes transformed and with bated breath, I’ve waited patiently for her to allow me to love her the way she deserves, the way only I can.

We’ll start with these baskets, but I want you to fill up as many as you want.

People who are depressed are the greatest of actors, Meli. They know how to make everyone believe that they’re okay.

I’ll run down on a nigga like I’m that twenty-year-old kid back in Compton before I ever let that happen.

And you shouldn't be---" I say, looking up and taking in his appearance. So damn hot. My throat catches. Words do not form. He's sexier than the ceviche I'm planning on making---slick and smooth, cool and hot. Confession: I may have a problem binge-watching rom-coms and steamy romances, hoping for my own meet-cute. If they happen in the movies, why not in real life? When I'm not in the kitchen, I watch them all, inhaling the happy endings---from Sleepless in Seattle to Pretty Woman to Sixteen Candles, the latter so politically incorrect and cringe-worthy today but made up for with the drool-worthy hotness that is Jake Ryan. Something about this guy reminds me of Keanu Reeves, with his razor-sharp cheekbones, mildly unkempt black hair that nearly touches his shoulders, two-day scruff, penetrating hazel eyes, and, from what I can tell---dressed in a casual but elegant fitted black suit---a buff body. I may have developed a slight Keanu obsession after I saw him in Always Be My Maybe, the story of him being the temporary love interest of an ambitious chef. Even though he played a douchebag version of himself, he was funny and hot as hell. Normally, I only salivate over recipes, but this feast for the eyes is clearly an exception.

Seattle’s red-light district was a gray area of morality and economics, as elite companionship was somewhat acceptable, while a four-hundred-room crib joint built by Mayor Hiram Gill and his chief of police, Charles “Wappy” Wappenstein, was not.

These are the murky waters where Dame Florence Nettleton came to life, loosely based on the notorious Seattle madam Lou Graham, who, for decades, occupied a special rung on the ladders of business and governance.

The Story of Yamada Waka: From Prostitute to Feminist Pioneer, and also Twice Sold, Twice Ransomed, the autobiography of Mrs. L. P. Ray (a former slave who ministered to the homeless in Seattle), it’s clear that there’s no definitive answer. But instead a rogue’s gallery of societal pressures that contributed in varying proportions to the difficulty of simply being born without a Y chromosome in the early twentieth century—abject poverty, lack of education, an appalling age of consent (as low as ten years old), religious condemnation, tribal shaming toward unmarried women who dared to (gasp) be sexually active, illegality of information pertaining to birth control, vicious wage gaps. Oh, and racism.

...an incisive, smartly informative memoir that celebrates the power of the cohesive family unit—its outcome will offer positivity and hope to those facing similar challenges. —KIRKUS REVIEWS Deep Waters is a survival story of the highest order, navigating the complex terrain of marriage, medical crisis, and a future reimagined. After the trauma of her husband’s stroke, Mathews returns to a basic truth: through love, we discover who we are, and who we hope to become. —CAROLINE VAN HEMERT, award-winning author of The Sun is a Compass Mathews has penned a deeply personal love story with the careful rigor of the scientist she is, free of any giddy prose or rainbows. Instead, Deep Waters comes at the reader with the gloves off and goes a full twelve rounds, documenting in granular detail the fears and conflicts attending a life-altering event that can drive even a strong relationship onto the ropes, and the endurance, commitment, and deep love that can save it. —LYNN SCHOOLER, critically acclaimed author of The Blue Bear and Walking Home With love as rugged and wild as the Alaskan landscape she made home, biologist Beth Ann Mathews tells the story of another wilderness: marriage after a life-altering stroke. Deep Waters is a thoughtful and provoking read, a reminder that life and love are inexplicably fragile and resilient, full of unexpected discovery. —ABBY MASLIN, author of Love You Hard Urgent, informative, emotionally satisfying, and thought-provoking, Deep Waters opens with a harrowing medical mystery and rewards the reader with a loving account of an adventurous partnership made stronger by crisis. —ANDROMEDA ROMANO-LAX, author of Annie and the Wolves We felt like we were there with Beth, sharing her emotions, anguish and struggles through the stroke, hospital stay, and recovery. We felt like part of the family as we read, gasped, cried and hoped for recovery and for peace in her heart.”—TBD BOOK CLUB, Seattle, WA If books were birds, this one would be an arctic tern—powerful and graceful, beset by storms and learning to survive, and more, to thrive. The writing is feather-light yet strong. —KIM HEACOX, author of Jimmy Bluefeather Mathews writes with poignant honesty about the challenges of marriage, family, and community in a moving story that highlights the strengths of human relationships. Deep Waters starts with a bang and just keeps going—lively, vivid, and personal. — ROMAN DIAL, author of The Adventurer’s Son: A Memoir

Everything was simple in her world: her daddy loved her and Bailey adored her. For the first time since she was born, there was a sense of stability in this house, and by God, I was going to keep it that way.

The first woman I'd ever loved had left while I begged her to stay. Now they left because I told them to. Let's be fair. It's not like they didn't know that was part of the package while I was dropping their panties.

The halo effect depends not on the ingredients themselves but on the eater, or more specifically, on the degree of control the eater has over his or her food. Before the 1800s, sugar itself separated rich from poor; now it is your state of mind while enjoying the sugar that separates the haves from the have-nots. For instance, Drewnowski’s absolute favorite dessert is a slice of coconut cream pie—not just any coconut cream pie, but the signature dessert by Seattle’s resident celebrity chef Tom Douglas. (“You have to share it,” he warns. “There’s a lot of sugar and cream in it, but it’s delicious.”) So he and his dinner companion savor the slice of pie, which happens to cost $8 (or the price of about two bags of Chips Ahoy! cookies). Nice sweets with a big price tag are meant to be appreciated like that. You eat a little at a time. Sensory-specific satiety, as we saw earlier, may compel you to eat more than you need, but chances are, if you’re making at least middle-class wages, you’re not wolfing it down to ease hunger. Nor are you eating sweets all the time. Sometimes you might have fruit; sometimes you might have a cappuccino. If you’re making at least middle-class wages, then you have the freedom and the money to decide how much to eat and when to eat it. That’s how even down-market foods can sometimes be elite in the right context. Lollipops at fashion shows and Coca-Cola-infused sauces in trendy restaurants aren’t demonized because the people who consume such items in those contexts have the power to choose something else entirely if they feel like it.

We love this earth as a newborn loves its mother’s heartbeat. If we sell you our land, care for it as we have cared for it. Hold in your mind the memory of the land as it is when you receive it. Preserve the land and the air and the rivers for your children’s children and love it as we have loved it.

And there hasn't been a one time in mine that I've been good enough for Bailey, but we fu*king make it work. That's what love is ! She makes you better, and you take care of her.

Moving to New York had been an easy decision to make. There wasn't much left for me in Seattle other than my family---who I did miss---and the Arlingtons had really wanted me to make my restaurant debut in the food capital of the country. Though I did get messages from a bunch of restaurants in Seattle in case I wanted to stay, saying that they'd love to have me come aboard and that they'd be boycotting Derek and his food. Last I heard, the Green Onion was on the verge of bankruptcy. I'd be lying if I said I hadn't felt a tingle of delight at the news.

Florian Purganan is a teaching pro at Mill Creek Tennis Club. He played his collegiate tennis at Seattle University and played number 1 for the 2001 season. He has been playing tennis since he was 10 years old, having trained at the Baguio Tennis Club in the Philippines where he grew up. He is currently rated NTRP 4.5, and has been to the USTA Nationals. He brings enthusiasm, positive energy, and a love for the game of tennis. He is available for private lessons, and is currently assisting with the junior program, ladies cup teams, and mixed doubles teams. Florian graduated from Seattle University in 2001 with a Bachelors of Arts degree in Psychology. He then earned his J.D. at Seattle University in 2004. He is fluent in Tagalog.

I want this to be a forever thing. You as my friend, my girl, my wife, the mother of my children one day...” He shook his head. “Tell me to stop if I’m asking for too much, too soon, and I will.

To my eleven-year-old self,” I murmured, turning toward my laptop. “We got the girl and life is fucking great.

The blush and gold tiles had been a labor of love, but mostly labor.

And to the pathological people pleasers who see themselves in Maggie, I see you. There's nothing more powerful than learning to love yourself for you, and not for the things you do for others. You've got this.

If she didn't already love him, that would've done it. It wasn't about the bracelets, not really. He'd listened to her, he'd heard her, and he hadn't given up on her.