The Mother And The Whore Quotes

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There are only three people in life you can never fool--pawnbrokers, whores, and your mother. Since your mother's dead, I've taken her place. Hence, I'm bullshit-proof.
Scott Lynch (The Lies of Locke Lamora (Gentleman Bastard, #1))
Well he didn't treat my mother very well. He did some horrible things." "Like..." I hesitated. "Blood-whore things?" "Like beating-her-up kinds of things" he replied flatly. "Oh God," I said "That's horrible. And she...she just let it happen?" "She did." The corner of his mouth turned into a sly, sad smile. "But I didn't" "Tell me, tell me you beat the crap out of him" His smile grew, "I did.
Richelle Mead (Vampire Academy (Vampire Academy, #1))
They will see the whore, the madwoman, the murderess, the female dripping blood into the grass and laughing with her mouth choked with dirt. They will say “Agnes” and see the spider, the witch caught in the webbing of her own fateful weaving. They might see the lamb circled by ravens, bleating for a lost mother. But they will not see me. I will not be there.
Hannah Kent (Burial Rites)
You know what your problem is, Justina? You're in desperate need of a good shag. "Not that I'm offering you one myself, mind. My days as a whore ended back in the seventeen hundreds." The gin was abruptly sucked back into my lungs as I gasped. He did not just tell my mother about his former profession; sweet Jesus, let me have heard incorrectly! I hadn't, and Bones went right on. "... But I have a friend who owes me a favor and he could be persuaded to... Kitten, are you all right?" I'd stopped breathing as soon as he casually admitted to his prior occupation. Add that to the liquid stuck in my lungs, and no, I wasn't all right.
Jeaniene Frost (One Foot in the Grave (Night Huntress, #2))
My heart to my mother, my cock to the whores, my head to the hangman.
Jean Genet (Our Lady of the Flowers)
..the hope I have for women: that we can start to see ourselves-and encourage men to see us-as more than just the sum of our sexual parts: not as virgins or whores, as mothers or girlfriends, or as existing only in relation to men, but as people with independent desires, hopes and abilities. But I know that this can't happen as long as American culture continues to inundate us with gender-role messages that place everyone-men and women-in an unnatural hierarchical order that's impossible to maintain without strife. For women to move forward, and for men to break free, we need to overcome the masculinity status quo-together.
Jessica Valenti (The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women)
...I realized that the words most often used to define us were words that described our function in relation to others. Even the most benign words- maiden, wife, mother - told the world whether we were virgins or not. What was the male equivalent of maiden? I could not think of it. What was the male equivalent of Mrs., of whore, of common scold?... Which words would define me? Which would be used to judge or contain?
Pip Williams (The Dictionary of Lost Words)
Darwin says your mother’s a whore. Simple as that.
Cacilda Jethá (Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality)
Mistresses, have you ever noticed that when we disagree with a male – I hesitate to say ‘man’ – or find ourselves in a position over males, the first comment they make is always about our reputations or our monthlies?” One of the new women snorted. Others snickered. Kel looked at the man, who was momentarily speechless. “If I disagree with you, should I place blame on the misworkings of your manhood? Or do I refrain from so serious an insult” – she made a face – “far more serious, of course, than your hint that I am a whore. Because my mother taught me courtesy, I only suggest that my monthlies will come long after your hair has escaped your head entirely.
Tamora Pierce (Lady Knight (Protector of the Small, #4))
If you look at most female archetypes—the mother, the virgin, the whore—their power comes from their relation to men. But not the Witch. The Witch derives her power from nature. She calls forth her dreams with spells and incantations. With poetry. And I think that’s why we are frightened of them. What’s scarier to the world of men than a woman limited only by her imagination?
Ryan La Sala (Reverie)
We have become a Nazi monster in the eyes of the whole world—a nation of bullies and bastards who would rather kill than live peacefully. We are not just Whores for power and oil, but killer whores with hate and fear in our hearts. We are human scum, and that is how history will judge us. . . . No redeeming social value. Just whores. Get out of our way, or we’ll kill you. Well, shit on that dumbness. George W. Bush does not speak for me or my son or my mother or my friends or the people I respect in this world. We didn’t vote for these cheap, greedy little killers who speak for America today—and we will not vote for them again in 2002. Or 2004. Or ever. Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads? Who among us can be happy and proud of having all this innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine? These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid little rich kids like George Bush? They are the same ones who wanted to have Muhammad Ali locked up for refusing to kill gooks. They speak for all that is cruel and stupid and vicious in the American character. They are the racists and hate mongers among us—they are the Ku Klux Klan. I piss down the throats of these Nazis. And I am too old to worry about whether they like it or not. Fuck them.
Hunter S. Thompson (Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century)
You poor lonely boy,' she cried, 'it's so dreadful for you to have no parents.' Well, as my mother was a whore, and my father a drunk, I daresay I don't miss much.
W. Somerset Maugham (Christmas Holiday)
Why am I begging you, who parades your suffering over the ruins like a king in order to ensure that you will never be touched deeply, you who're always laughing.
Kathy Acker (My Mother: Demonology)
If a young woman from money marries an old man because of money and nothing else and makes love to him for hours and has this pious look on her face, she's called a German mother and a decent woman. If a young woman without money sleeps with a man with no money because he has smooth skin and she likes him, she's a whore and a bitch.
Irmgard Keun (The Artificial Silk Girl)
Gulls wheel through spokes of sunlight over gracious roofs and dowdy thatch, snatching entrails at the marketplace and escaping over cloistered gardens, spike topped walls and treble-bolted doors. Gulls alight on whitewashed gables, creaking pagodas and dung-ripe stables; circle over towers and cavernous bells and over hidden squares where urns of urine sit by covered wells, watched by mule-drivers, mules and wolf-snouted dogs, ignored by hunch-backed makers of clogs; gather speed up the stoned-in Nakashima River and fly beneath the arches of its bridges, glimpsed form kitchen doors, watched by farmers walking high, stony ridges. Gulls fly through clouds of steam from laundries' vats; over kites unthreading corpses of cats; over scholars glimpsing truth in fragile patterns; over bath-house adulterers, heartbroken slatterns; fishwives dismembering lobsters and crabs; their husbands gutting mackerel on slabs; woodcutters' sons sharpening axes; candle-makers, rolling waxes; flint-eyed officials milking taxes; etiolated lacquerers; mottle-skinned dyers; imprecise soothsayers; unblinking liars; weavers of mats; cutters of rushes; ink-lipped calligraphers dipping brushes; booksellers ruined by unsold books; ladies-in-waiting; tasters; dressers; filching page-boys; runny-nosed cooks; sunless attic nooks where seamstresses prick calloused fingers; limping malingerers; swineherds; swindlers; lip-chewed debtors rich in excuses; heard-it-all creditors tightening nooses; prisoners haunted by happier lives and ageing rakes by other men's wives; skeletal tutors goaded to fits; firemen-turned-looters when occasion permits; tongue-tied witnesses; purchased judges; mothers-in-law nurturing briars and grudges; apothecaries grinding powders with mortars; palanquins carrying not-yet-wed daughters; silent nuns; nine-year-old whores; the once-were-beautiful gnawed by sores; statues of Jizo anointed with posies; syphilitics sneezing through rotted-off noses; potters; barbers; hawkers of oil; tanners; cutlers; carters of night-soil; gate-keepers; bee-keepers; blacksmiths and drapers; torturers; wet-nurses; perjurers; cut-purses; the newborn; the growing; the strong-willed and pliant; the ailing; the dying; the weak and defiant; over the roof of a painter withdrawn first from the world, then his family, and down into a masterpiece that has, in the end, withdrawn from its creator; and around again, where their flight began, over the balcony of the Room of Last Chrysanthemum, where a puddle from last night's rain is evaporating; a puddle in which Magistrate Shiroyama observes the blurred reflections of gulls wheeling through spokes of sunlight. This world, he thinks, contains just one masterpiece, and that is itself.
David Mitchell (The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet)
Does she know we live together?” I ask him. “Is she okay with that? I mean, we aren’t married. She goes to church every Sunday. Oh no, Ryle! What if your mother thinks I’m a blasphemous whore?” Ryle nudges his head toward the apartment door and I spin around to see his mother standing in the doorway, a layer of shock on her face. “Mother,” Ryle says. “Meet Lily. My blasphemous whore.
Colleen Hoover (It Ends with Us (It Ends with Us, #1))
Actually, Justina, I didn't just ring you to chat about what an undead murderer I was...right, degenerate whore as well. Did I ever tell you my mum was one? No? Oh, blimey, I come from a long line of whores, in fact..." I sucked in a breath as Bones divulged yet another tidbit about his past to my mother, who must be frothing at the mouth by now. "...called to give you the good news. I asked your daughter to marry me and she accepted. Congratulations, I will officially be your son-in-law. Now, do you want me to call you Mum straightaway, or wait until after the wedding?" I flew through the air in a dive that finally tackled him, wrenching the phone away. Bones was laughing so hard, he had to breathe to get it all out. "Mom? Are you there? Mom...?" "You might want to give her a moment, Kitten. I believe she fainted.
Jeaniene Frost (At Grave's End (Night Huntress, #3))
If there's such a thing as spiritual adultery, my mother was a whore.
Jeanette Winterson (Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit)
My sister was just another girl doomed by politics and ancestral texts that say a girl’s destiny is to be wholesome, obedient, and quietly attractive, but invisible when need be. Nailed to the cross of her own gender, a girl finds herself between the mother and the prehistoric rib, where there’s little space to be anything other than a daughter who lives alongside sons but is not equal to them. These boys who can howl like tomcats in heat, pawing their way through a feast of flesh, never to be called a slut or a whore like my sister was.
Tiffany McDaniel (Betty)
When an actress takes off her clothes onscreen but a nursing mother is told to leave, what message do we send about the roles of women? In some ways we’re as committed to the old madonna-whore dichotomy as ever. And the Madonna stays home, feeding the baby behind the blinds, a vestige of those days when for a lady to venture out was a flagrant act of public exposure.
Anna Quindlen
Right-wing women have surveyed the world: they find it a dangerous place. They see that work subjects them to more danger from more men; it increases the risk of sexual exploitation. They see that creativity and originality in their kind are ridiculed; they see women thrown out of the circle of male civilization for having ideas, plans, visions, ambitions. They see that traditional marriage means selling to one man, not hundreds: the better deal. They see that the streets are cold, and that the women on them are tired, sick, and bruised. They see that the money they can earn will not make them independent of men and that they will still have to play the sex games of their kind: at home and at work too. They see no way to make their bodies authentically their own and to survive in the world of men. They know too that the Left has nothing better to offer: leftist men also want wives and whores; leftist men value whores too much and wives too little. Right-wing women are not wrong. They fear that the Left, in stressing impersonal sex and promiscuity as values, will make them more vulnerable to male sexual aggression, and that they will be despised for not liking it. They are not wrong. Right-wing women see that within the system in which they live they cannot make their bodies their own, but they can agree to privatized male ownership: keep it one-on-one, as it were. They know that they are valued for their sex— their sex organs and their reproductive capacity—and so they try to up their value: through cooperation, manipulation, conformity; through displays of affection or attempts at friendship; through submission and obedience; and especially through the use of euphemism—“femininity, ” “total woman, ” “good, ” “maternal instinct, ” “motherly love. ” Their desperation is quiet; they hide their bruises of body and heart; they dress carefully and have good manners; they suffer, they love God, they follow the rules. They see that intelligence displayed in a woman is a flaw, that intelligence realized in a woman is a crime. They see the world they live in and they are not wrong. They use sex and babies to stay valuable because they need a home, food, clothing. They use the traditional intelligence of the female—animal, not human: they do what they have to to survive.
Andrea Dworkin (Right-Wing Women)
Maria, lonely prostitute on a street of pain, You, at least, hail me and speak to me While a thousand others ignore my face. You offer me an hour of love, And your fees are not as costly as most. You are the madonna of the lonely, The first-born daughter in a world of pain. You do not turn fat men aside, Or trample on the stuttering, shy ones, You are the meadow where desperate men Can find a moment's comfort. Men have paid more to their wives To know a bit of peace And could not walk away without the guilt That masquerades as love. You do not bind them, lovely Maria, you comfort them And bid them return. Your body is more Christian than the Bishop's Whose gloved hand cannot feel the dropping of my blood. Your passion is as genuine as most, Your caring as real! But you, Maria, sacred whore on the endless pavement of pain, You, whose virginity each man may make his own Without paying ought but your fee, You who know nothing of virgin births and immaculate conceptions, You who touch man's flesh and caress a stranger, Who warm his bed to bring his aching skin alive, You make more sense than stock markets and football games Where sad men beg for virility. You offer yourself for a fee--and who offers himself for less? At times you are cruel and demanding--harsh and insensitive, At times you are shrewd and deceptive--grasping and hollow. The wonder is that at times you are gentle and concerned, Warm and loving. You deserve more respect than nuns who hide their sex for eternal love; Your fees are not so high, nor your prejudice so virtuous. You deserve more laurels than the self-pitying mother of many children, And your fee is not as costly as most. Man comes to you when his bed is filled with brass and emptiness, When liquor has dulled his sense enough To know his need of you. He will come in fantasy and despair, Maria, And leave without apologies. He will come in loneliness--and perhaps Leave in loneliness as well. But you give him more than soldiers who win medals and pensions, More than priests who offer absolution And sweet-smelling ritual, More than friends who anticipate his death Or challenge his life, And your fee is not as costly as most. You admit that your love is for a fee, Few women can be as honest. There are monuments to statesmen who gave nothing to anyone Except their hungry ego, Monuments to mothers who turned their children Into starving, anxious bodies, Monuments to Lady Liberty who makes poor men prisoners. I would erect a monument for you-- who give more than most-- And for a meager fee. Among the lonely, you are perhaps the loneliest of all, You come so close to love But it eludes you While proper women march to church and fantasize In the silence of their rooms, While lonely women take their husbands' arms To hold them on life's surface, While chattering women fill their closets with clothes and Their lips with lies, You offer love for a fee--which is not as costly as most-- And remain a lonely prostitute on a street of pain. You are not immoral, little Maria, only tired and afraid, But you are not as hollow as the police who pursue you, The politicians who jail you, the pharisees who scorn you. You give what you promise--take your paltry fee--and Wander on the endless, aching pavements of pain. You know more of universal love than the nations who thrive on war, More than the churches whose dogmas are private vendettas made sacred, More than the tall buildings and sprawling factories Where men wear chains. You are a lonely prostitute who speaks to me as I pass, And I smile at you because I am a lonely man.
James Kavanaugh (There Are Men Too Gentle to Live Among Wolves)
Two whores who finally found something to mother. A guy could write a book about it, he thought bitterly, call it From Hair To Maternity. It would probly be a very long book. Whores did not produce as fast as rabbits.
James Jones (From Here to Eternity)
There are no whores in Scaithe’s Ebb, or none that consider themselves as such, although there have always been many women who, if pressed, would describe themselves as much-married, with one husband on this ship here every six months, and another husband on that ship, back in port for a month or so every nine months. The mathematics of the thing have always kept most folk satisfied; and if ever it disappoints and a man returns to his wife while one of her other husbands is still in occupancy, why, then there is a fight — and the grog shops to comfort the loser. The sailors do not mind the arrangement, for they know that this way there will, at the least, be one person who, at the last, will notice when they do not come back from the sea, and will mourn their loss; and their wives content themselves with the certain knowledge that their husbands are also unfaithful, for there is no competing with the sea in a man’s affections, since she is both mother and mistress, and she will wash his corpse also, in time to come, wash it to coral and ivory and pearls.
Neil Gaiman (Stardust)
Please, boy. Let’s not start out with either of us insulting the other’s intelligence. There are only three people in life you can never fool—pawnbrokers, whores, and your mother. Since your mother’s dead, I’ve taken her place. Hence, I’m bullshit-proof.
Scott Lynch (The Lies of Locke Lamora (Gentleman Bastard, #1))
Why?’ She nods. ‘She had everything: a family who loved her, friends, activities. Her mother wants to know why she threw it all away?’ Why you want to know why? Step into a tanning booth and fry yourself for two or three days. After your skin bubbles and falls off, roll in coarse salt, then put on long underwear woven from spun glass and razor wire. Over that goes your regular clothes, as long as they are tight. Smoke gunpowder and go to school to jump through hoops, sit up and beg, and roll over on command. Listen to the whispers that curl into your head at night, calling you ugly and fat and stupid and bitch and whore and worst of all ‘A disappointment.’ Puke and starve and cut and drink because you need an anesthetic and it works. For a while. But then the anesthetic turns into poison and by then it’s too late because you are mainlining it now, straight into your soul. It is rotting you and you can’t stop. Look in a mirror and find a ghost. Hear every heartbeat scream that everythingsinglething is wrong with you. ‘Why?’ is the wrong question. Ask ‘Why not?
Laurie Halse Anderson (Wintergirls)
When I was three years old and in my mother's arms, she looked down at me and said, "Son, the way I'm taking care of you now, when you get old, always have a woman to take care of you like this." Dig this! All I'm goin' do is rest and dress, buy gasoline and lean. I'm goin' buy diamond rings and have the best of everything. I'm goin' pimp whores.
Donald Goines (Whoreson: The Story of a Ghetto Pimp)
Privatize everything, privatize the sea and the sky, privatize the sea and the sky, privatize justice and the law, privatize the passing cloud, privatize the dream, especially if it’s during the day and open eyed. And finally, for the embellishment of so many privatizations, privatize the States, surrender once and for all their exploitation to private companies through international share offering. There lies the salvation of the world… and, while you’re at it, privatize your whore mothers.
José Saramago
Long before we discovered that he had fathered two children by two different women, one in Drimoloeague and one in Clonakilty, Father James Monroe stood on the altar of the Church of Our Lady, Star of the Sea, in the parish of Goleen, West Cork, and denounced my mother as a whore.
John Boyne (The Heart's Invisible Furies)
I Want to Shout Leave me alone! What's wrong with you? Don't you remember who I am? Who you are? This is not a father's love! I want to scream, Can't you see what you are doing to me? What you've done to me? What you've made of me? I want to cry out, I am your little girl. I am not your girlfriend. I am not your whore. I am not my fucking mother! But he is on top of me and my shout is silenced. He is inside of me and my scream stays there too. He is finished. And I don't cry out, but I do cry a bucket of silent tears. He slithers away and at last, I quietly sob
Ellen Hopkins (Identical)
Maiden, mother, virgin, whore. They don't write our stories anymore..." Cady began. "Vampires, lairds, pirates, earls - we're taking smut back for the girls," Vee, Gemma and Myrtle recited in unison.
Kerrigan Byrne (Nevermore Bookstore (Townsend Harbor, #1))
What’s wrong with him?” “Nothing. He’s just. . just. .” “Just what?” “A peacemaker.” And she’d dropped her voice to a whisper. “What would I do with a peacemaker?” “The same thing I did with a whore.
G.A. Aiken (Supernatural (Lords of Deliverance, #1.5; Demonica, #6.5; Guardians of Eternity, #7.6; Nightwalkers, #1.5; Dragon Kin, #0.4))
[...] My sisters were either still at school or with friends, my mother was out drinking and my father was out whoring. As a result, I sought—as I still do— affection, loyalty and friendship from animals.
Marlon Brando (Songs My Mother Taught Me)
They never see what you are." Shocked, Jude glanced around to see who'd spoken, then realized she had. "Don't they?" Brenna wanted to know, lifting her brow as she topped off Jude's glass yet again. "They see a reflection of their own perception. Whore or angel, mother or child. Depending on their view, they're compelled to protect or conquer or exploit. Or you're a convenience," she murmured. "Easily discarded.
Nora Roberts (Jewels of the Sun (Gallaghers of Ardmore, #1))
HEY,” he shouted, scowling, with the presumption that he would once again go unheard, but the practical sense that boredom and lethargy would only be needlessly gloomy. “YOUR MOTHER’S A WHORE, AND YOUR FATHER’S A—
Olivie Blake (Masters of Death)
Thunder, Perfect Mind 'I am the first and the last. I am the honored one and the scorned one. I am the whore, and the holy one. I am the wife and the virgin. I am (the mother) and the daughter... I am she whose wedding is great, and I have not taken a husband... I am knowing, and ignorance... I am shameless; I am ashamed. I am strength, and I am fear... I am foolish, and I am wise... I am godless, and I am one whose God is great.
Elaine Pagels (The Gnostic Gospels)
You’re a duke’s brother. A knight. And I’m a whore.” He grabbed her wrist. “Don’t call yourself that. I wouldn’t let anyone else talk about you that way— why should I let you?” “Very well. Call me a fallen woman, then.” “Do you think that matters to me? My mother used to say that there was no such thing as a fallen woman. You just had to look for the man who pushed her down.
Courtney Milan (Unclaimed (Turner, #2))
What is wrong with you?” He glared at me. “I’m somewhat sure I’m suddenly gay,” I shrugged, “My father and mother are hypocritical abandoning homophobic assholes. The former defending my chief suspect in the biggest case of my life—something I’m sure you had a hand in. I’m obsessed with your freckles, your bunny slippers and your lips—which I should be getting points for not kissing while you’re incapacitated, by the way. I’m dating a whore while working on the vice squad—points to me again for not arresting your ass for that—and I’m ridiculously horny. Oh, and my fiancée won’t talk to me.
Dani Alexander (Shattered Glass (Shattered Glass, #1))
He saw merchants trading, princes hunting, mourners wailing for their dead, whores offering themselves, physicians trying to help the sick, priests determining the most suitable day for seeding, lovers loving, mothers nursing their children—and all of this was not worthy of one look from his eye, it all lied, it all stank, it all stank of lies, it all pretended to be meaningful and joyful and beautiful, and it all was just concealed putrefaction. The world tasted bitter. Life was torture
Hermann Hesse (Siddhartha)
Long before we discovered that he had fathered two children by two different women, one in Drimoleague and one in Clonakilty, Father James Monroe stood on the altar of the Church of Our Lady, Star of the Sea, in the parish of Goleen, West Cork, and denounced my mother as a whore.
John Boyne (The Heart's Invisible Furies)
Holy mother of whoring nuns she’s hot. Fuck! I haven’t just crossed the border into boner territory, Mr Happy’s erected a tent from my jeans and is setting up camp there.
Carmen Jenner (Welcome to Sugartown (Sugartown, #1))
Mother Nature," he murdered half aloud and grinned, "we think of her as a benevolent old lady. Maybe instead she's the wantonest kind of whore.
Harold Sinclair (American Years)
I will hold what I am inside, and keep my hands tight around all the things I have seen and heard, and felt. The poems composed as I washed and scythed and cooked until my hands were raw. The sagas I know by heart. I am sinking all I have left and going underwater. If I speak, it will be in bubbles of air. They will not be able to keep my words for themselves. They will see the whore, the madwoman, the murderess, the female dripping blood into the grass and laughing with her mouth choked with dirt. They will say ‘Agnes’ and see the spider, the witch caught in the webbing of her own fateful weaving. They might see the lamb circled by ravens, bleating for a lost mother. But they will not see me. I will not be there.
Hannah Kent (Burial Rites)
The eternal feminine is a massive joke. It seems that male identity depends on keeping up this lie...femme fatale, bunny girl, nurse, Lolita, whore, kindly mother, or ball-breaker. All of it an act. A carefully choreographed and costumed production. And what comfort does it all provide? We don't know exactly what they fear, should these artificial archetypes collapse: whores are just average individuals, mothers are not intrinsically good or brave or loving, and the same goes for fathers. It depends on the person, the situation, the moment.
Virginie Despentes (King Kong théorie)
My mother wasn’t a psychotic criminal. (Kiara) No. I’m sure she was a wonderful lady who loved you dearly. That she held you when you cried, probably even baked you cookies and gave you hugs and kisses before she sent you off to bed at night, and it’s a damn shame a decent woman like her died so tragically. My mother, whore that she was, abandoned me and my sister to our father so that she could return to her cushy life and pretend we didn’t exist while she left us in that house with a man whose name, even though he’d been dead for decades, can still make an assassin wet his pants. And if you think his cruelty was reserved for strangers, think again. My sister and I were target practice for him. So don’t you dare talk to me about pain. My father wrote the book on it and he rammed it down my throat every day of my childhood until they killed him. And the real kicker is, my life under his demented fist was a lot better than Nykyrian’s. At least I was able to hide sometimes from the ones trying to kill me. You want me to call your daddy, baby? Go right ahead. I’ll be more than happy to take you to him. But know that Aksel will have his hands on you in a matter of hours. Then you’ll be able to talk to me about pain and you’ll finally have an idea of what we’ve endured. You won’t live long enough to apologize, but true clarity will be yours before you die. (Syn)
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Born of the Night (The League, #1))
I became another man. I tried to reread the classics that had guided me in adolescence, and I could not bear them. I buried myself in the romantic writings I had repudiated when my mother tried to impose them on me with a heavy hand, and in them I became aware that the invincible power that has moved the world is unrequited, not happy love.
Gabriel García Márquez (Memories of My Melancholy Whores)
What is a whore?" Unsurprisingly, that hadn't been one of the words we had shared over the last span of days. For half a moment I considered lying, but there was no way I could manage it. "He says your mother is a person men pay money to have sex with." Tempi turned back to the mercenary and nodded graciously. "You are very kind. I thank you.
Patrick Rothfuss (The Wise Man's Fear (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #2))
What sort of mother talks about whores on her deathbed? Your mother wouldn’t do that, would she?" "I have no idea,” Grey said, “The situation has fortunately not arisen.
Diana Gabaldon (Lord John and the Private Matter (Lord John Grey, #1))
My mother was a whore
Mariah Cole (Beautiful Failure (Beautiful, #1))
You disrespect my mother and I shoot you in the leg. You call my girl a whore, what do you think I’m gonna do to you now, asshole?
Callie Hart (Twisted (Blood & Roses, #5))
I was born in a wreck and my mothers a whore.
Flannery O'Connor
I am many things: a whore, a mother, a liar. But I am not a killer. Unlike my beloved daughter.
Lucy Foley (The Paris Apartment)
Words won´t make your mother a whore. She was what she was
George R.R. Martin (A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, #1))
Now there is naught but a vast black triangle having the apex downwards, and in the centre of the black triangle is the face of Typhon, the Lord of the Tempest, and he crieth aloud: Despair! Despair! For thou mayest deceive the Virgin, and thou mayest cajole the Mother; but what wilt thou say unto the ancient Whore that is throned in Eternity? For if she will not, there is neither force nor cunning, nor any wit, that may prevail upon her. Thou canst not woo her with love, for she is love. And she hath all, and hath no need of thee. And thou canst not woo her with gold, for all the Kings and captains of the earth, and all the gods of heaven, have showered their gold upon her. Thus hath she all, and hath no need of thee. And thou canst not woo her with knowledge, for knowledge is the thing that she hath spurned. She hath it all, and hath no need of thee. And thou canst not woo her with wit, for her Lord is Wit. She hath it all, and hath no need of thee. Despair! Despair! Nor canst thou cling to her knees and ask for pity; nor canst thou cling to her heart and ask for love; nor canst thou put thine arms about her neck, and ask for understanding; for thou hast all these, and they avail thee not. Despair! Despair! Then I took the Flaming Sword, and I let it loose against Typhon, so that his head was cloven asunder, and the black triangle dissolved in lightnings.
Aleister Crowley (The Vision and the Voice: With Commentary and Other Papers (Equinox IV:2))
That's not the way he told it, Tarwater said. He said that when the schoolteacher was seven years old, he had good sense but later it dried up. His daddy was an ass and not fit to raise him and his mother was a whore. She ran away from here when she was eighteen years old. It took her that long? the stranger said in an incredulous tone. My, she was kind of a ass herself.
Flannery O'Connor (The Violent Bear It Away)
I was sent forth from the power, and I have come to those who reflect upon me, and I have been found among those who seek after me. Look upon me, you who reflect upon me, and you hearers, hear me. You who are waiting for me, take me to yourselves. And do not banish me from your sight. And do not make your voice hate me, nor your hearing. Do not be ignorant of me anywhere or any time. Be on your guard! Do not be ignorant of me. For I am the first and the last. I am the honored one and the scorned one. I am the whore and the holy one. I am the wife and the virgin. I am and the daughter. I am the members of my mother. I am the barren one and many are her sons. I am she whose wedding is great, and I have not taken a husband. I am the midwife and she who does not bear. I am the solace of my labor pains. I am the bride and the bridegroom, and it is my husband who begot me. I am the mother of my father and the sister of my husband and he is my offspring. I am the slave of him who prepared me. I am the ruler of my offspring. But he is the one who begot me before the time on a birthday. And he is my offspring in (due) time, and my power is from him. I am the staff of his power in his youth, and he is the rod of my old age. And whatever he wills happens to me. I am the silence that is incomprehensible and the idea whose remembrance is frequent. I am the voice whose sound is manifold and the word whose appearance is multiple. I am the utterance of my name. -The Thunder, Perfect Mind
George W. MacRae
This was the thing with men, as my mother—Queen Malgven herself—had warned me. It doesn’t matter who you really are. They write their own stories about you. They cast you in one of several roles. The innocent girl who needed teaching. The lunatic who needed calming. The whore who’d break your heart.
C.N. Crawford (Dark King (Court of the Sea Fae, #1))
what is the expression which the age demands? the age demands no expression whatever. we have seen photographs of bereaved asian mothers. we are not interested in the agony of your fumbled organs. there is nothing you can show on your face that can match the horror of this time. do not even try. you will only hold yourself up to the scorn of those who have felt things deeply. we have seen newsreels of humans in the extremities of pain and dislocation. you are playing to people who have experienced a catastrophe. this should make you very quiet. speak the words, convey the data, step aside. everyone knows you are in pain. you cannot tell the audience everything you know about love in every line of love you speak. step aside and they will know what you know because you know it already. you have nothing to teach them. you are not more beautiful than they are. you are not wiser. do not shout at them. do not force a dry entry. that is bad sex. if you show the lines of your genitals, then deliver what you promise. and remember that people do not really want an acrobat in bed. what is our need? to be close to the natural man, to be close to the natural woman. do not pretend that you are a beloved singer with a vast loyal audience which has followed the ups and downs of your life to this very moment. the bombs, flame-throwers, and all the shit have destroyed more than just the trees and villages. they have also destroyed the stage. did you think that your profession would escape the general destruction? there is no more stage. there are no more footlights. you are among the people. then be modest. speak the words, convey the data, step aside. be by yourself. be in your own room. do not put yourself on. do not act out words. never act out words. never try to leave the floor when you talk about flying. never close your eyes and jerk your head to one side when you talk about death. do not fix your burning eyes on me when you speak about love. if you want to impress me when you speak about love put your hand in your pocket or under your dress and play with yourself. if ambition and the hunger for applause have driven you to speak about love you should learn how to do it without disgracing yourself or the material. this is an interior landscape. it is inside. it is private. respect the privacy of the material. these pieces were written in silence. the courage of the play is to speak them. the discipline of the play is not to violate them. let the audience feel your love of privacy even though there is no privacy. be good whores. the poem is not a slogan. it cannot advertise you. it cannot promote your reputation for sensitivity. you are students of discipline. do not act out the words. the words die when you act them out, they wither, and we are left with nothing but your ambition. the poem is nothing but information. it is the constitution of the inner country. if you declaim it and blow it up with noble intentions then you are no better than the politicians whom you despise. you are just someone waving a flag and making the cheapest kind of appeal to a kind of emotional patriotism. think of the words as science, not as art. they are a report. you are speaking before a meeting of the explorers' club of the national geographic society. these people know all the risks of mountain climbing. they honour you by taking this for granted. if you rub their faces in it that is an insult to their hospitality. do not work the audience for gasps ans sighs. if you are worthy of gasps and sighs it will not be from your appreciation of the event but from theirs. it will be in the statistics and not the trembling of the voice or the cutting of the air with your hands. it will be in the data and the quiet organization of your presence. avoid the flourish. do not be afraid to be weak. do not be ashamed to be tired. you look good when you're tired. you look like you could go on forever. now come into my arms. you are the image of my beauty.
Leonard Cohen (Death of a Lady's Man)
You’re pretty full of yourself. You’re marveling at the tragic spectacle of Caleb Trask—Caleb the magnificent, the unique. Caleb whose suffering should have its Homer. Did you ever think of yourself as a snot-nose kid—mean sometimes, incredibly generous sometimes? Dirty in your habits, and curiously pure in your mind. Maybe you have a little more energy than most, just energy, but outside of that you’re very like all the other snot-nose kids. Are you trying to attract dignity and tragedy to yourself because your mother was a whore? And if anything should have happened to your brother, will you be able to sneak for yourself the eminence of being a murderer, snot-nose?
John Steinbeck (East of Eden)
You disgust me." "Like you have room to talk," Cathy said. "You're as much a whore as I am." Dan grabbed the hem of her shirt with both hands as she turned, in one easy move she peeled her tee and sports bra off and gestured at her bare chest. "Oh my god, you see these? They're called breasts. Does this make me a whore? This?" Dan jerked a hand between them, and Cathy shifted uncomfortably in her chair. "This is what I do. I strip. I dance. I work a stage five nights a week. I give lap dances to creeps who can't get enough action on their own. But I don't let them touch me and I still make enough money to keep us afloat. Fuck you! I'm seventeen! I'm too young to be your mother!" "No one asked you to be my mother..." "I asked you to be mine. Thanks for failing so spectacularly at it.
Nora Sakavic
...while epic fantasy is based on the fairy tale of the just war, that’s not one you’ll find in Grimm or Disney, and most will never recognize the shape of it. I think the fantasy genre pitches its tent in the medieval campground for the very reason that we even bother to write stories about things that never happened in the first place: because it says something subtle and true about our own world, something it is difficult to say straight out, with a straight face. Something you need tools to say, you need cheat codes for the human brain--a candy princess or a sugar-coated unicorn to wash down the sour taste of how bad things can really get. See, I think our culture has a slash running through the middle of it, too. Past/Future, Conservative/Liberal, Online/Offline. Virgin/Whore. And yes: Classical/Medieval. I think we’re torn between the Classical Narrative of Self and the Medieval Narrative of Self, between the choice of Achilles and Keep Calm and Carry On. The Classical internal monologue goes like this: do anything, anything, only don’t be forgotten. Yes, this one sacrificed his daughter on a slab at Aulis, that one married his mother and tore out his eyes, and oh that guy ate his kids in a pie. But you remember their names, don’t you? So it’s all good in the end. Give a Greek soul a choice between a short life full of glory and a name echoing down the halls of time and a long, gentle life full of children and a quiet sort of virtue, and he’ll always go down in flames. That’s what the Iliad is all about, and the Odyssey too. When you get to Hades, you gotta have a story to tell, because the rest of eternity is just forgetting and hoping some mortal shows up on a quest and lets you drink blood from a bowl so you can remember who you were for one hour. And every bit of cultural narrative in America says that we are all Odysseus, we are all Agamemnon, all Atreus, all Achilles. That we as a nation made that choice and chose glory and personal valor, and woe betide any inconvenient “other people” who get in our way. We tell the tales around the campfire of men who came from nothing to run dotcom empires, of a million dollars made overnight, of an actress marrying a prince from Monaco, of athletes and stars and artists and cowboys and gangsters and bootleggers and talk show hosts who hitched up their bootstraps and bent the world to their will. Whose names you all know. And we say: that can be each and every one of us and if it isn’t, it’s your fault. You didn’t have the excellence for it. You didn’t work hard enough. The story wasn’t about you, and the only good stories are the kind that have big, unignorable, undeniable heroes.
Catherynne M. Valente
Looking back, I wonder why a gangster movie kidnapped my life. The Godfather had nothing to do with me. I was a feminist, not Italian, and I went to school at Montana State. I had never set foot in New York, thought ravioli came only in a can, and wasn't blind to the fact that all the women in the film were either virgins, mothers, whores, or Diane Keaton.
Sarah Vowell
Bondmaid. It came back to me then, and I realised that the words most often used to define us were words that described our function in relation to others. Even the most benign words—maiden, wife, mother—told the world whether we were virgins or not. What was the male equivalent of maiden? I could not think of it. What was the male equivalent of Mrs., of whore, of common scold?
Pip Williams (The Dictionary of Lost Words)
Siddhartha gave his garments to a poor Brahman in the street. He wore nothing more than the loincloth and the earth-coloured, unsown cloak. He ate only once a day, and never something cooked. He fasted for fifteen days. He fasted for twenty-eight days. The flesh waned from his thighs and cheeks. Feverish dreams flickered from his enlarged eyes, long nails grew slowly on his parched fingers and a dry, shaggy beard grew on his chin. His glance turned to icy when he encountered women; his mouth twitched with contempt, when he walked through a city of nicely dressed people. He saw merchants trading, princes hunting, mourners wailing for their dead, whores offering themselves, physicians trying to help the sick, priests determining the most suitable day for seeding, lovers loving, mothers nursing their children--and all of this was not worthy of one look from his eye, it all lied, it all stank, it all stank of lies, it all pretended to be meaningful and joyful and beautiful, and it all was just concealed putrefaction. The world tasted bitter. Life was torture. A goal stood before Siddhartha, a single goal: to become empty, empty of thirst, empty of wishing, empty of dreams, empty of joy and sorrow. Dead to himself, not to be a self any more, to find tranquility with an emptied heard, to be open to miracles in unselfish thoughts, that was his goal. Once all of my self was overcome and had died, once every desire and every urge was silent in the heart, then the ultimate part of me had to awake, the innermost of my being, which is no longer my self, the great secret.
Hermann Hesse (Siddhartha)
This time of year," she said, "people’s consciences gnaw at them. They give away truckloads of canned goods and quote Dickens and wring their hands over the ‘less fortunate.’" We boarded the Metro and took seats perpendicular to each other. "But God forbid anyone should address why they’re poor in the first place, or try to change the structures that keep them poor. Then the ‘less fortunate’ turn into ‘welfare queens’ and ‘derelicts.’ But if I were a lobbyist whoring on behalf of some transnational corporation, I’d never hear the word ‘derelict.’" "So when it comes to taking care of poor people," I said, "if Mother Teresa is the Hallmark card, then you’re the electric bill.
Jeri Smith-Ready (Requiem for the Devil)
He thought dawdling, protective thoughts, sitting under the lamp, but he knew that pretty soon his name would be called and he would have to go up before the bench with himself as judge and his own crimes as jurors. And his name was called, shrilly in his ears. His mind walked in to face the accusers: Vanity, which charged him with being ill dressed and dirty and vulgar; and Lust, slipping him the money for his whoring; Dishonesty, to make him pretend to talent and thought he did not have; Laziness and Gluttony arm in arm. Tom felt comforted by these because they screened the great Gray One in the back seat, waiting—the gray and dreadful crime. He dredged up lesser things, used small sins almost like virtues to save himself. There were Covetousness of Will’s money, Treason toward his mother’s God, Theft of time and hope, sick Rejection of love. Samuel spoke softly but his voice filled the room. “Be good, be pure, be great, be Tom Hamilton.” Tom ignored his father. He said, “I’m busy greeting my friends,” and he nodded to Discourtesy and Ugliness and Unfilial Conduct and Unkempt Fingernails. Then he started with Vanity again. The Gray One shouldered up in front. It was too late to stall with baby sins. This Gray One was Murder.
John Steinbeck (East of Eden)
Just as women who are so often reduced to sexual objects or babymakers, caregivers, mothers, virgins, and whores, deserve to be considered as whole individuals on their own terms and for their own sakes, I wanted to give their anger space to exist solely for itself, without being packaged and used for someone else’s
Lilly Dancyger (Burn It Down: Women Writing about Anger)
All these women, Huila thought: Mothers of God. These skinny, these dirty and toothless, these pregnant and shoeless. These with an issue of blood, and these with unsuckled breasts and children cold in the grave. These old forgotten ones too weak to work. These fat ones who milked all day. These twisted ones tied to their pallets, these barren ones, these married ones, these abandoned ones, these whores, these hungry ones, these thieves, these drunks, these mestizas, these lovers of other women, these Indians, and these littlest ones who faced unknowable tomorrows. Mothers of God. If it was a sin to think so, she would face God and ask Him why. “The
Luis Alberto Urrea (The Hummingbird's Daughter)
you see, my whole life is tied up to unhappiness it's father cooking breakfast and me getting fat as a hog or having no food at all and father proving his incompetence again i wish i knew how it would feel to be free it's having a job they won't let you work or no work at all castrating me (yes it happens to women too) it's a sex object if you're pretty and no love or love and no sex if you're fat get back fat black woman be a mother grandmother strong thing but not woman gameswoman romantic woman love needer man seeker dick eater sweat getter fuck needing love seeking woman it's a hole in your shoe and buying lil sis a dress and her saying you shouldn't when you know all too well that you shouldn't but smiles are only something we give to properly dressed social workers not each other only smiles of i know your game sister which isn't really a smile joy is finding a pregnant roach and squashing it not finding someone to hold let go get off get back don't turn me on you black dog how dare you care about me you ain't go no good sense cause i ain't shit you must be lower than that to care it's a filthy house with yesterday's watermelon and monday's tears cause true ladies don't know how to clean it's intellectual devastation of everybody to avoid emotional commitment "yeah honey i would've married him but he didn't have no degree" it's knock-kneed mini skirted wig wearing died blond mamma's scar born dead my scorn your whore rough heeeled broken nailed powdered face me whose whole life is tied up to unhappiness cause it's the only for real thing i know
Nikki Giovanni
[Robert] Jensen calls for an end to our current understanding of masculinity. He says, "We men can settle for being men, or we can strive to be human beings." What's funny is that that statement essentially echoes the same hope I have for women: that we can start to see ourselves, and encourage men to see us, as more than just the sum of our sexual parts: not as virgins or whores, as mothers or girlfriends, or as existing only in relation to men, but as people with independent desires, hopes and abilities.
Jessica Valenti (The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women)
I knew my mother hoped I would blame myself, but I didn’t. I knew now where the blame lay. If there’s such a thing as spiritual adultery, my mother was a whore.
Jeanette Winterson (Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit)
Boys, tell your mother to shut her lying whore mouth before I shove the nearest apple down her throat.
Jason Aaron (The Goddamned, Vol. 1: Before the Flood)
Bummer,' said Ira, his new word for "I must remain as neutral as possible" and "Your mother's a whore.
Lorrie Moore (Bark)
right along side his gorgeous, fabulous, Ukrainian-Danish, supermodel, sex slave, homewrecker-slut-whore-mother-fucker-cunt-shit-fuck. Fuck. What
Stylo Fantome (Separation (The Kane Trilogy, #2))
[Dona Queta] says that her motherly advice is always the same: 'Only whores, thieves, and cops go out at night. Which one are you, asshole?' p. 157
Daniel Hernandez (Down and Delirious in Mexico City: The Aztec Metropolis in the Twenty-First Century)
Goddammit,” I hissed as I banged my forearms on the steering wheel and hissed out, “Mother-fucking-son-of-a-bitch-ass-whore. FUCK ME!
Mariana Zapata (From Lukov with Love)
If there is such a thing as spiritual adultery, my mother was a whore.
Jeanette Winterson (Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit)
One thing is certain: a witch is almost always a “she.” And I’ve come to realize that the Witch is arguably the only female archetype that has power on its own terms. She is not defined by anyone else. Wife, sister, mother, virgin, whore—these archetypes draw meaning based on relationships with others. The Witch, however, is a woman who stands entirely on her own. She is more often than not an outsider, and her gift is transformation. She is a change agent, and her work is sparked by speech: an incantation, a naming, a blessing, a curse.
Taisia Kitaiskaia (Literary Witches: A Celebration of Magical Women Writers)
you see a nigga won't give a good girl shit yet he will spend his last dime trying to make a bad girl his bitch. He will go broke trying to trap some whore into a monogamous relationship
Crystal Evans (Ten Things Your Mother Should Have Told You about Dating)
You can’t marry her,” Araminta insisted. Benedict turned to his mother. “Is there any reason I need to consult Lady Penwood about this?” “None that I can think of,” Lady Bridgerton replied. “She is nothing but a whore,” Araminta hissed. “Her mother was a whore, and blood runs— urp!” Benedict had her by the throat before anyone was even aware that he had moved. “Don’t,” he warned, “make me hit you.” The magistrate tapped Benedict on the shoulder. “You really ought to let her go.” “Might I muzzle her?” The magistrate looked torn, but eventually he shook his head.
Julia Quinn (An Offer From a Gentleman (Bridgertons, #3))
Brutality is boring. Over and over, hell night after hell night, the same old dumb, tedious, bestial routine: making men crawl; making men groan, hanging men from the bars; shoving men; slapping men; freezing men in the showers; running men into walls; displaying shackled fathers to their sons and sons to their fathers. And if it turned out that you'd been given the wrong man, when you were done making his life unforgettably small and nasty, you allowed him to be your janitor and pick up the other prisoners' trash. There was always another prisoner, and another. Faceless men under hoods: you stripped them of their clothes, you stripped them of their pride. There wasn't much more you could take away from them, but people are inventive: one night some soldiers took a razor to one of Saddam's former general in Tier 1A and shaved off his eyebrows. He was an old man. "He looked like a grandfather and seemed like a nice guy," Sabrina Harman said, and she had tried to console him, telling him he looked younger and slipping him a few cigarettes. Then she had to make him stand at attention facing a boom box blasting the rapper Eminem, singing about raping his mother, or committing arson, or sneering at suicides, something like that⁠—these were some of the best-selling songs in American history. "Eminem is pretty much torture all in himself, and if one person's getting tortured, everybody is, because that music's horrible," Harman said. The general maintained his bearing against the onslaught of noise. "He looked so sad," Harman said. "I felt so bad for the guy." In fact, she said, "Out of everything I saw, that's the worst." This seems implausible, or at least illogical, until you think about it. The MI block was a place where a dead guy was just a dead guy. And a guy hanging from a window frame or a guy forced to drag his nakedness over a wet concrete floor⁠—well, how could you relate to that, except maybe to take a picture? But a man who kept his chin up while you blasted him with rape anthems, and old man shorn of his eyebrows whose very presence made you think of his grandkids--you could let that get to you, especially if you had to share in his punishment: "Slut, you think I won't choke no whore / til the vocal cords don't work in her throat no more!..." or whatever the song was.
Philip Gourevitch (Standard Operating Procedure)
and chanted. I was sent out from power . . . Be careful. Do not ignore me. I am the first and the last I am she who is honored and she who is mocked I am the whore and the holy woman I am the wife and the virgin I am the mother and the daughter I stopped and looked at their faces, glimpsing both wonder and bewilderment. Diodora was watching me intensely, her hands tucked under her chin.
Sue Monk Kidd (The Book of Longings)
You know about women who work in bars.” “What about them?” Bing asked. “Whores,” Manx said. “Almost all of them. At least until their looks go, and in the case of Lily Carter’s mother they’re going fast.
Joe Hill
No use lamenting over it! I was now living in a blaze of unsatisfied desire, of suspenseful expectancy, that often made me wild and crazy. I often saw the image of my dream beloved before me with more than lifelike clarity, much more clearly than my own hand; I spoke to it, wept before it, cursed it. I called it mother and knelt before it in tears; I called it beloved and sensed its ripe, all-fulfilling kiss; I called it devil and whore, vampire and murderess. It lured me into the tenderest dreams of love and into acts of dissolute shamelessness; nothing was too good and precious for it, nothing too bad and vile.
Hermann Hesse (Demian)
In her relationships with humans, Artemis is primarily concerned with females, especially the physical aspects of their life cycle, including menstruation, childbirth, and death, however contradictory the association of these with a virgin may appear. (She is also cited as the reason for the termination of female life: when swift death came to a woman, she was said to have been short by Artemis.) The Artemis of classical Greece probably evolved from the concept of a primitive mother goddess, and both she and her sister Athena were considered virgins because they had never submitted to a monogamous marriage. Rather, as befits mother goddesses, they had enjoyed many consorts. Their failure to marry, however, was misinterpreted as virginity by succeeding generations of men who connected loss of virginity only with conventional marriage. Either way, as mother goddess or virgin, Artemis retains control over herself; her lack of permanent connection to a male figure in a monogamous relationship is the keystone of her independence.
Sarah B. Pomeroy (Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity)
And eventually in that house where everyone, even the fugitive hiding in the cellar from his faceless enemies, finds his tongue cleaving dryly to the roof of his mouth, where even the sons of the house have to go into the cornfield with the rickshaw boy to joke about whores and compare the length of their members and whisper furtively about dreams of being film directors (Hanif's dream, which horrifies his dream-invading mother, who believes the cinema to be an extension of the brothel business), where life has been transmuted into grotesquery by the irruption into it of history, eventually in the murkiness of the underworld he cannot help himself, he finds his eyes straying upwards, up along delicate sandals and baggy pajamas and past loose kurta and above the dupatta, the cloth of modesty, until eyes meet eyes, and then
Salman Rushdie (Midnight’s Children)
The girls of the sixties had mothers who predicted, insisted, argued that those girls would be hurt; but they would not say how or why. In the main, the mothers appeared to be sexual conservatives: they upheld the marriage system as a social ideal and were silent about the sex in it. Sex was a duty inside marriage; a wife’s attitude toward it was irrelevant unless she made trouble, went crazy, fucked around. Mothers had to teach their daughters to like men as a class—be responsive to men as men, warm to men as men—and at the same time to not have sex. Since males mostly wanted the girls for sex, it was hard for the girls to understand how to like boys and men without also liking the sex boys and men wanted. The girls were told nice things about human sexuality and also told that it would cost them their lives—one way or another. The mothers walked a tough line: give the girls a good attitude, but discourage them. The cruelty of the ambivalence communicated itself, but the kindness in the intention did not: mothers tried to protect their daughters from many men by directing them toward one; mothers tried to protect their daughters by getting them to do what was necessary inside the male system without ever explaining why. They had no vocabulary for the why—why sex inside marriage was good but outside marriage was bad, why more than one man turned a girl from a loving woman into a whore, why leprosy or paralysis were states preferable to pregnancy outside marriage. They had epithets to hurl, but no other discourse. Silence about sex in marriage was also the only way to avoid revelations bound to terrify—revelations about the quality of the mothers’ own lives.
Andrea Dworkin (Right-Wing Women)
This was the neighborhood of the cheap addicts, whisky-heads, stumblebums, the flotsam of Harlem; the end of the line for the whores, the hard squeeze for the poor honest laborers and a breeding ground for crime. Blank-eyed whores stood on the street corners swapping obscenities with twitching junkies. Muggers and thieves slouched in dark doorways waiting for someone to rob; but there wasn't anyone but each other. Children ran down the street, the dirty street littered with rotting vegetables, uncollected garbage, battered garbage cans, broken glass, dog offal — always running, ducking and dodging. God help them if they got caught. Listless mothers stood in the dark entrances of tenements and swapped talk about their men, their jobs, their poverty, their hunger, their debts, their Gods, their religions, their preachers, their children, their aches and pains, their bad luck with the numbers and the evilness of white people. Workingmen staggered down the sidewalks filled with aimless resentment, muttering curses, hating to go to their hotbox hovels but having nowhere else to go.
Chester Himes
My mom wants you to stop pinning stuff on me, said Judy. Says you're making holes in my clothes. Your mother is a lying whore, Mrs. Mudford wanted to say, but instead she said, That's fine, Judy. We'll staple yours on instead.
Bonnie Garmus (Lessons in Chemistry)
was sent out from power . . . Be careful. Do not ignore me. I am the first and the last I am she who is honored and she who is mocked I am the whore and the holy woman I am the wife and the virgin I am the mother and the daughter
Sue Monk Kidd (The Book of Longings)
lip-chewed debtors rich in excuses; heard-it-all creditors tightening nooses; prisoners haunted by happier lives and ageing rakes by other men’s wives; skeletal tutors goaded to fits; firemen-turned-looters when occasion permits; tongue-tied witnesses; purchased judges; mothers-in-law nurturing briars and grudges; apothecaries grinding powders with mortars; palanquins carrying not-yet-wed daughters; silent nuns; nine-year-old whores; the once-were-beautiful gnawed by sores;
David Mitchell (The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet)
And if ever I'm reduced to looking for a meaning to my life, you never can tell, it's in that old mess I'll stick my nose to begin with, the mess of that poor old uniparous whore and myself the last of my foul brood, neither man nor beast.
Samuel Beckett (Molloy)
I lay there and I thought of what that teacher said, and of all the things I’d been: child, rebellious teenager, runaway, whore, lover, bad mother, bad wife. I’m not sure if I can remake myself as a good wife, but a good mother—that I have to try.
Paula Hawkins (The Girl on the Train)
Surely, somewhere in the back of Bulfinch, in a part Lillian had not gotten to, there is an obscure (abstruse, arcane, shadowy, and even hidden) version of Proserpine in he Underworld in which a tired Jewish Ceres schleps through the outskirts of Tartarus, an ugly village of tired whores who must double as laundresses and barbers, a couple of saloons, a nearly empty five-and-dime, and people too poor to pull up stakes. In this version, Ceres looks all over town for her Proserpine, who crossed the River Cyane in a pretty sailboat with Pluto, having had the good sense to come to an understanding with the king early on. Pluto and Proserpine picnic in a charming park, twinkling lights overhead and handsome wide benches like the ones in Central Park. When Ceres comes, tripping a little on her hem as she walks through the soft grass, muttering and trying to yank Proserpine to her feet so they can start the long trip home to Enna and daylight (which has lost much of its luster, now that Proserpine is queen of all she surveys), the girl does not jump up at the sight of her mother, but takes her time handing out the sandwiches and pours cups of sweetened tea for the three of them. She lays a nicely ironed napkin in her lap and another in the lap of her new husband, the king. Proserpine does not eat the pomegranate seeds by mistake, or in a moment of desperate hunger, or fright, or misunderstanding. She takes the pomegranate slice out of her husband’s dark and glittering hand and pulls the seeds into her open, laughing mouth; she eats only six seeds because her mother knocks it out of her hand before she can swallow the whole sparkling red cluster. “We have to get home,” Ceres says. “I am home,” her daughter says.
Amy Bloom (Away)
Narcissa curled her lip. “Oh shut up, you sanctimonious whore. I’m sick of all your—” Hauk stunned her with his blaster. Narcissa cried out before she slumped to the floor. Hauk made no moves to break her fall. Instead, he holstered his weapon and met Desideria’s gaze unabashedly. “My mother always said that if you can’t improve the silence, you shouldn’t be speaking.” Fain let out a low whistle. “You stunned a girl, bro. Then let her hit the floor. Damn, and I thought I was callous.” Ignoring
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Born of Shadows (The League, #4))
One thing is certain: a witch is almost always a “she.” And I’ve come to realize that the Witch is arguably the only female archetype that has power on its own terms. She is not defined by anyone else. Wife, sister, mother, virgin, whore—these archetypes draw meaning based on relationships with others. The Witch, however, is a woman who stands entirely on her own. She is more often than not an outsider, and her gift is transformation. She is a change agent, and her work is sparked by speech: an incantation, a naming, a blessing, a curse.
Taisia Kitaiskaia, Pam Grossman
a liberated man, and what I do has nothing to do with anybody but me and my whore of a mother. She has to pay.” “I thought that your parents lived down south, Hugh?” “You were meant to.  I watched my father die under a tractor, and spat on his dead face.   Later, I fixed my mother and
Michael Kerr (A Deadly Compulsion (DI Laura Scott #1))
Your mother,” he said, in a deep Borders accent, “was a fucking whore.” Strike laughed. “Maybe so,” he said, bleeding and smoking in the darkness as the sirens grew louder, “but she loved me, Donnie. I heard yours didn’t give a shit about you, little policeman’s bastard that you were.
Robert Galbraith (Career of Evil (Cormoran Strike, #3))
His mother’s position was that his father could come back and live with them again as soon as he grew up, but not until. His father had predicted that his mother would kiss his ass before he’d ever walk through that door again. Both of these, Lin had concluded, were highly unlikely events.
Richard Russo (The Whore's Child and Other Stories)
As you say, DeWar, our shame comes from the comparison. We know we might be generous and compassionate and good, and could behave so, yet something else in our nature makes us otherwise." She smiled a small, empty smile. "Yes, I feel something I recognise as love. Something I remember, something I may discuss and mill and theorise over." She shook her head. "But it is not something I know. I am like a blind woman taking about how a tree must look, or a cloud. Love is something I have a dim memory of, the way someone who went blind in their early childhood might recall the sun, or the face of their mother. I know affection from my fellow whore-wives, DeWar, and I sense regard from you and feel some in return. I have a duty to the Protector, just as he feels he has a duty to me. As far as that goes, I am content. But love? That is for the living, and I am dead.
Iain M. Banks (Inversions (Culture, #6))
What is the right course of action if our mother has sold us to the gypsies? No, even worse, thrown us to the dogs? Does she really remain our mother? If a wife has become a whore, are we really still bound to her in fidelity? A Motherland that betrays its soldiers—is that really a Motherland?
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 1]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation)
firemen-turned-looters when occasion permits; tongue-tied witnesses; purchased judges; mothers-in-law nurturing briars and grudges; apothecaries grinding powders with mortars; palanquins carrying not-yet-wed daughters; silent nuns; nine-year-old whores; the once-were-beautiful gnawed by sores;
David Mitchell (The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet)
I am the first and the last I am she who is honored and she who is mocked I am the whore and the holy woman I am the wife and the virgin I am the mother and the daughter I am she . . . Do not be afraid of my power . . . I am the knowledge of my name I am the name of the sound and the sound of the name
Sue Monk Kidd (The Book of Longings)
am the first and the last I am she who is honored and she who is mocked I am the whore and the holy woman I am the wife and the virgin I am the mother and the daughter I am she . . . Do not be afraid of my power . . . I am the knowledge of my name I am the name of the sound and the sound of the name THE THUNDER: PERFECT
Sue Monk Kidd (The Book of Longings)
Bondmaid. It came back to me then, and I realized that the words most often used to define us were words that describe our function in relation to others. Even the most benign words - maiden, wife, mother - told the world whether we were virgins or not. What was the male equivalent of maiden? I could not think of it. What was the male equivalent of Mrs., of whore, of common scold? I looked out the window towards the scriptorium, the place where the definitions of all these words were being bedded down. Which words would define me? Which would be used to judge or contain? I was no maiden, yet I was no man’s wife. And I had no desire to be.
Pip Williams (The Dictionary of Lost Words)
am the first and the last I am she who is honored and she who is mocked I am the whore and the holy woman I am the wife and the virgin I am the mother and the daughter I am she . . . Do not be afraid of my power . . . I am the knowledge of my name I am the name of the sound and the sound of the name THE THUNDER: PERFECT MIND
Sue Monk Kidd (The Book of Longings)
I am the first and the last I am she who is honored and she who is mocked I am the whore and the holy woman I am the wife and the virgin I am the mother and the daughter I am she . . . Do not be afraid of my power . . . I am the knowledge of my name I am the name of the sound and the sound of the name THE THUNDER: PERFECT MIND
Sue Monk Kidd (The Book of Longings)
Women, he would say, are not Muses. Muses are Muses. To confuse one with the other is to mistake the Devouring Void for the Seminal Light. Earthly Women and the Muses are ancient, sworn enemies. The battlefield is the Creative Male. On the one side is the encampment of Discordia, of Diana, of Venus located in his Heart and in his Groin. On the other is the Bastion of Calliope, Clio, Erato, Euterpe, Melpomene, Polyhymnia, Terpsichore, Thalia and Urania, in his Brain and in his Mind. The Muses are tolerant and understanding of border raids, skirmishes, and harassing maneuvers. Throughout the history of the Male Light, there have been few painters, few writers, who have not had a She Who Must Be Accommodated. For some it was their mothers. For many their wives, their mistresses, their girlfriends. For many it was their daughters, a favourite waitress, a stripper, a whore. To the Muses, they are all one. Mother, whore, wife, daughter, stripper, waitress, mistress, girlfriend.
Dave Sim
And my mother probably never told my father, either. He was old school. Old morals. My pregnancy, my accusations of assault, the fact I was drinking—I became a disgrace to him. My father disrespected me. He was disgusted by me. He heard everyone say I was a liar, a drunk little whore who threw myself at ‘JonJon’ Rittenberg and the other boys,
Loreth Anne White (The Maid's Diary)
Nailed to the cross of her own gender, a girl finds herself between the mother and the prehistoric rib, where there’s little space to be anything other than a daughter who lives alongside sons but is not equal to them. These boys who can howl like tomcats in heat, pawing their way through a feast of flesh, never to be called a slut or a whore like my sister was.
Tiffany McDaniel (Betty)
I think I’m going to wear blue to the wedding. I saw this gorgeous dress on sale at Macy’s the other day. I think I have a coupon,” Mom tells Liz. “Oh hell no! I already told you I was going to wear blue, you whore. You can’t wear the same color as me, that’s tacky,” Liz complains. Oh my God, this is not happening right now. “Fuck your mother. I’m wearing blue. I already found my dress,” Mom argues. “I’m the mother of the bride. The mother of the f**king bride! That means it’s up to me!” Liz fires back. “Claire, I think you would look lovely in blue,” Tyler pipes in. Mom turns to face Tyler and folds her arms on top of the table. “When I’m finished neutering you, I’m going to take your tiny little neuticles and light them on fire.
Tara Sivec (Love and Lists (Chocoholics, #1))
Augustine said, “The church is a whore, but she’s our mother.” The early Christians said that if we do not accept the church as our mother, we cannot call God our Father. We are not to leave her, but we are to work for her healing, as we would with a dysfunctional parent. Our work is not “para-church” but “pro-church.” The church needs our discontent, and we need the rest of the body of Christ.
Shane Claiborne (Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals)
I am the first and the last, I am the honored and the mocked, I am the whore and the Holy One, the wife and the virgin, the mother and the daughter. I am a barren woman with many children. I am the silence that is incomprehensible. I am the voice whose sounds are many. I am wisdom and ignorance. I am shy and proud. I am disgraced and I am great. I am compassionate and cruel. I am witness and wise. You who deny me know me.
Nikki Marmery
John has a narrow mind. For him, neither the beauty nor the prosperity of the city of Ephesus is worth a second glance. Ephesus was situated at the end of the Silk Road from China and the caravan route from India which used to pass through the Parthian Empire en route to the West. But the prophet is quite unaware that this particular world exists at all. Even culture means absolutely nothing to him; for example, in 18:22 he rejoices that not only song but also the sound of the flute have disappeared. The world which he knows is limited to the seven churches whose Christianity corresponded with his own; and that in but a single province of the Roman Empire, namely Asia. As to the rest, he is only familiar with the mother church in Jerusalem and the sister church in Rome. John is utterly obsessed by Rome. The fact that this particular metropolis had bestowed both law and peace upon no less than one-half of the world never got through to him at all. He is also quite oblivious of the fact that Rome oppresses nations and exploits slaves. He could not care less about national or social considerations. He abominates the "whore on the seven hills" simply because Rome is persecuting Christians. This is precisely what the Apocalypse is all about: innocent suffering.
Gilles Quispel (The Secret Book of Revelation: The Apocalypse of St John the Divine)
The Cossacks’ irreverent response read, in part, “O sultan, Turkish devil and damned devil’s kith and kin, secretary to Lucifer himself. What the devil kind of knight are thou, that canst not slay a hedgehog with your naked arse? The devil shits, and your army eats. Thou shalt not, thou son of a whore, make subjects of Christian sons; we have no fear of your army, by land and by sea we will battle with thee, fuck thy mother.
Jack Carr (True Believer (Terminal List, #2))
Men are foul, brutish creatures. But they own the world and always will…my brother liked the situation as it was - he had the best of everything without lifting a finger. Mother gave him whatever he wanted. And the selfish pig didn’t mind sacrificing me to keep himself comfortable. He was a man, you see. So I became a whore. And for years I prayed for rescue. But God doesn’t hear the prayers of women. He cares only for those He made in His own image.
Lisa Kleypas
The father of sin was theft; every one of the Ten Commandments boiled down to “Thou shalt not steal.” Murder was the theft of a life, adultery the theft of a wife, covetousness the secret, slinking theft that took place in the cave of the heart. Blasphemy was the theft of God’s name, swiped from the House of the Lord and sent out to walk the streets like a strutting whore. She had never been much of a thief; a minor pilferer from time to time at worst. The mother of sin was pride.
Stephen King (The Stand)
The preachers quickly learned that he could trade biblical quotations with them almost indefinitely. It was equally pointless to cite the standard Presbyterian authorities. James denounced John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion as 'childish', dismissed John Knox as 'a knave' who ha called 'his mother a whore', and informed the minister who claimed a divine warrant to preach that 'the office of prophets was ended'. The preachers could only suffer his sarcasm in silence.
Thomas Cogswell (James I: The Phoenix King)
[...] The dedication of this [Mother Night] is Campbell's too. Of which, Campbell wrote this in a chapter he later discarded: 'Before seeing what sort of book I was going to have here, I wrote the dedication - 'To Mata Hari.' She whored in the interest of espionage, and so did I. Now that I've seen some of the book, I would prefer to dedicate it to someone less exotic, less fantastic, more contemporary - less of a creature of silent film. I would prefer to dedicate it to one familiar person, male or female, widely known to have done evil while saying to himself, 'A very good me, the real me, a me made in heaven, is hidden deep inside.' I can think of many examples, could rattle them off after the fashion of a Gilbert and Sullivan patter song. But there is no single name to which I might aptly dedicate this book - unless it would be my own. Let me honor myself in that fashion then: This book is rededicated to Howard W. Campbell, Jr., a man who served evil too openly and good too secretly, the crime of his times.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Mother Night)
Hello, Josie,” they’d say with a half smile, followed by a sigh and sometimes a shake of the head. They acted like they felt sorry for me, but as soon as they were ten steps away, I’d hear one of the words, along with my mother’s name. The wealthy women pretended it singed their tongue to say whore. They’d whisper it and raise their eyebrows. Then they’d fake an expression of shock, like the word itself had crawled into their pants with a case of the clap. They didn’t need to feel sorry for me. I was nothing like Mother.
Ruta Sepetys (Out of the Easy)
Dressed and dirty and vulgar; and Lust, slipping him the money for his whoring; Dishonesty, to make him pretend to talent and thought he did not have; Laziness and Gluttony arm in arm. Tom felt comforted by these because they screened the great Gray One in the back seat, waiting—the gray and dreadful crime. He dredged up lesser things, used small sins almost like virtues to save himself. There were Covetousness of Will’s money, Treason toward his mother’s God, Theft of time and hope, sick Rejection of love. Samuel spoke softly but his voice filled the room. “Be good, be pure, be great,
John Steinbeck (East of Eden)
Men of this type often had strong mother figures in their childhood. They became good, obedient boys, excellent students at school. Consciously they are attracted to well-educated women, to those who seem good and perfect. But unconsciously they are drawn to women who are imperfect, bad, of dubious character. They secretly crave what is the opposite of themselves. It is the classic split of the mother/whore—they want the mother figure for a wife but feel a much stronger physical attraction to the whore, the Fallen Woman, the type who likes to display her body. They have repressed the playful, sensual, and earthy sides of the character they had as boys. They are too rigid and civilized. The only way they can relate to these qualities is through women who appear to be so different from themselves. Like Swann, they find a way to idealize them with some highbrow reference that has no relation to reality. They project onto such women weakness and vulnerability. They tell themselves they want to help and protect them. But what really attracts them is the danger and naughty pleasures these women seem to promise. Underestimating the strength of such women, they often end up as their pawns. Their anima is passive and masochistic.
Robert Greene (The Laws of Human Nature)
every clanging ambulance bell, in every scar on the faces of the pimps and their whores, in every helpless, newborn baby being brought into this danger, in every knife and pistol fight on the Avenue, and in every disastrous bulletin: a cousin, mother of six, suddenly gone mad, the children parcelled out here and there; an indestructible aunt rewarded for years of hard labor by a slow, agonizing death in a terrible small room; someone’s bright son blown into eternity by his own hand; another turned robber and carried off to jail. It was a summer of dreadful speculations and discoveries, of which these were not the worst.
James Baldwin (The Fire Next Time)
I lost my heart Under the bridge To that little girl – So much to me. And now I moan, And now I holler... She'll never know Just what I found. That blue eyed girl – She said "no more"; That blue eyed girl Became blue eyed whore. Down by the water, I took her hand. Just like my daughter, I'll see her again Oh, help me, Jesus. Come through this storm. I had to lose her To do her harm; I heard her holler, I heard her moan, My lovely daughter... I took her home. Little fish, big fish, swimming in the water, Come back here, man, give me my daughter. Little fish, big fish, swimming in the water. Come back here, man, give me my daughter.
P.J. Harvey
In men, there is the familiar distinction between the Madonna on a pedestal and the lowlife whore, in the sense that they elevate the love object to unknown—and, above all, unattainable—heights. These are the super-conventional husbands who respect their wives. They often respect them so much that they become psychologically impotent. The shadow of the for-bidden mother covers the beloved in this cloak of respect, so that any sexual approach becomes impossible. However, this impotence wholly melts away, together with the respect, when such a man goes to a whore, either in his imagination or in reality. The pendulum swings the other way, because in this case the woman, in the figure of the whore, is humiliated just as much as the wife-mother is extolled. The dimension of lust appears here, inevitably accompanied by feelings of guilt. It is in this context that we come across the typical male fantasy, well known to every prostitute, of 'saving' a woman. A large number of her clients want to 'save' her from her ruin. They want to restore to her the status of being an object of love. In other words, they want her to become a wife-mother, which brings them back to respect, and completes the circle. Interestingly, in either case, whether he saves her or humiliates her, the power lies with the man. This in itself is a rewrite of the original mother-child scenario. His position has shifted from passive to active.
Paul Verheage
Where are the decent women, where are our good daughters, where are our future wives, All i see are whores with tattoos, they smoke do hard drugs and care-less, and if you correct them they insult you, where are our future mothers, where are the women with standards, where are the women with good character and good hearts, where are the women that hide their body from men, Real women are mothers to their kids,wives to their husbands, daughters to their mothers. Real women are strong & independent,Women, stop being a girlfriend that gives boyfriends "wife" privileges! Women: Please set great examples for your daughters & don't let them see you allow nonsense w/your man! Teach them to know their worth. ‪#‎Daniel_Friday_Danzor‬ ‪#‎Women‬
Daniel Friday Danzor
And maybe I was exhausted and broken, but I breathed, 'I killed them.' I hadn't said the words aloud since it had happened. Cassian's lips tightened. 'I know.' Not condemnation, not praise. But grim understanding. My hands slackened as another shuddering sob worked its way through me. 'It should have been me.' And there it was. Standing there under the cloudless sky, the winter sun beating on my head, nothing around me save for rock, no shadows in which to hide, nothing to cling to... There it was. Then darkness swept in, soothing, gentle darkness- no, shade- and a sweat-slicked male body halted before me. Gentle fingers lifted my chin until I looked up... at Rhysand's face. His wings had wrapped around us, cocooned us, the sunlight casting the membrane in gold and red. Beyond us, outside, in another world, maybe, the sound of steel on steel- Cassian and Azriel sparring- began. 'You will feel that way every day for the rest of your life,' Rhysand said. This close, I could smell the sweat on him the sea-and-citrus sent beneath it. His eyes were soft. I tried to look away, but he held my chin firm. 'And I know this because I have felt that way every day since my mother and sister were slaughtered and I had to bury them myself, and even retribution didn't fix it.' He wiped away the tears on one cheek, then another. 'You can either let it wreck you, let it get you killed like it nearly did with the Weaver, or you can learn to live with it.' For a long moment, I just stared at the open, calm face- maybe his true face, the one beneath all the masks he wore to keep his people safe. 'I'm sorry- about your family,' I rasped. 'I'm sorry I didn't find a way to spare you from what happened Under the Mountain,' Rhys said with equal quiet. 'From dying. From wanting to die.' I began to shake my head, but he said, 'I have two kinds of nightmares: the one when I'm again Amarantha's whore or my friends are... And the ones where I hear your neck snap and see the light leave your eyes.' I had no answer to that- to the tenor in his rich, deep voice. So I examined the tattoos on his chest and arms, the glow of his tan skin, so golden now that he was no longer caged inside that mountain. I stopped my perusal when I got to the vee of muscles that flowed beneath the waist of his leather pants.
Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Mist and Fury (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #2))
Even though he had admitted to her that he used to watch me shower through a hole in the bathroom wall back when I was thirteen. She blamed us both for what we had "done" to her. But it sounds like she got over being mad at him pretty quick. She later told me that she had to go back and have sex with him one more time, just to make sure that there was nothing left between the two of them and to get some closure. That almost made me want to vomit. The only interaction between us after that was her showing up at the courthouse when I had to sit in front of a grand jury of twelve strangers and tell them what had happened. She came into the waiting room where I was sitting and started screaming that I was a whore and that I'd fucked her husband. She had to be escorted out of the court by two officers. That's what I got from her.
Ashly Lorenzana (Speed Needles)
Then in the depths of the packed crowd he sees Christophe. He is pushing forward, flailing his arms. Please God he has not a weapon. His whole body braces, ready for a mêlée. ‘My lord, my lord,’ Christophe calls. The guard make a wall, but Christophe’s arm snakes between them as if to touch him. One of the men raises his armoured fist. He hears a crack. He sees the boy’s face twist in shock and pain. Holding out his arm like a broken wing, his voice hoarse, his body convulsing, he speaks his curse: ‘Henry King of England! I, Christophe Cremuel, curse you. The Holy Ghost curses you. Your own mother curses you. I hope a leper spits on you. I hope your whore has the pox. I hope you go to sea in a boat with a hole in it. I hope the waters of your heart rise up and spout down your nose. May you fall under a cart. May rot rise up from your heels to your head, going slowly, so you take seven years to die. May God squash you. May Hell gape.
Hilary Mantel (The Mirror & the Light (Thomas Cromwell, #3))
I have had so many Dwellings, Nat, that I know these Streets as well as a strowling Beggar: I was born in this Nest of Death and Contagion and now, as they say, I have learned to feather it. When first I was with Sir Chris. I found lodgings in Phenix Street off Hogg Lane, close by St Giles and Tottenham Fields, and then in later times I was lodged at the corner of Queen Street and Thames Street, next to the Blew Posts in Cheapside. (It is still there, said Nat stirring up from his Seat, I have passed it!) In the time before the Fire, Nat, most of the buildings in London were made of timber and plaister, and stones were so cheap that a man might have a cart-load of them for six-pence or seven-pence; but now, like the Aegyptians, we are all for Stone. (And Nat broke in, I am for Stone!) The common sort of People gawp at the prodigious Rate of Building and exclaim to each other London is now another City or that House was not there Yesterday or the Situacion of the Streets is quite Changd (I contemn them when they say such things! Nat adds). But this Capital City of the World of Affliction is still the Capitol of Darknesse, or the Dungeon of Man's Desires: still in the Centre are no proper Streets nor Houses but a Wilderness of dirty rotten Sheds, allways tumbling or takeing Fire, with winding crooked passages, lakes of Mire and rills of stinking Mud, as befits the smokey grove of Moloch. (I have heard of that Gentleman, says Nat all a quiver). It is true that in what we call the Out-parts there are numberless ranges of new Buildings: in my old Black-Eagle Street, Nat, tenements have been rais'd and where my Mother and Father stared without understanding at their Destroyer (Death! he cryed) new-built Chambers swarm with life. But what a Chaos and Confusion is there: meer fields of Grass give way to crooked Passages and quiet Lanes to smoking Factors, and these new Houses, commonly built by the London workmen, are often burning and frequently tumbling down (I saw one, says he, I saw one tumbling!). Thus London grows more Monstrous, Straggling and out of all Shape: in this Hive of Noise and Ignorance, Nat, we are tyed to the World as to a sensible Carcasse and as we cross the stinking Body we call out What News? or What's a clock? And thus do I pass my Days a stranger to mankind. I'll not be a Stander-by, but you will not see me pass among them in the World. (You will disquiet your self, Master, says Nat coming towards me). And what a World is it, of Tricking and Bartering, Buying and Selling, Borrowing and Lending, Paying and Receiving; when I walk among the Piss and Sir-reverence of the Streets I hear, Money makes the old Wife trot, Money makes the Mare to go (and Nat adds, What Words won't do, Gold will). What is their God but shineing Dirt and to sing its Devotions come the Westminster-Hall-whores, the Charing-cross whores, the Whitehall whores, the Channel-row whores, the Strand whores, the Fleet Street whores, the Temple-bar whores; and they are followed in the same Catch by the Riband weavers, the Silver-lace makers, the Upholsterers, the Cabinet-makers, Watermen, Carmen, Porters, Plaisterers, Lightemen, Footmen, Shopkeepers, Journey-men... and my Voice grew faint through the Curtain of my Pain.
Peter Ackroyd (Hawksmoor)
So shoot.” “I don’t know how to say this.” “I haven’t got all day, you know.” “I kissed Alex,” I blurt out. “Alex? ¡Benditaǃ Was that before or after the Colin breakup?” I wince. “I didn’t plan it.” Isabel laughs so hard and loud, I have to take the phone away from my ear. “You sure he didn’t plan it?” she asks once she can get words out. “It just happened. We were at his house and then we were interrupted when his mom came home and saw us--” “What? His ma saw you guys? In his house? ¡Benditaǃ” She goes off in Spanish, and I have no clue what the hell she’s saying. “I don’t speak Spanish, Isabel. Help me out here.” “Oh, sorry. Carmen is gonna shit a brick when she finds out.” I clear my throat. “I won’t tell her,” Isabel is quick to say. “But Alex’s mom is one tough woman. When Alex dated Carmen, he kept her far away from his mama. Don’t get me wrong, she loves her sons. But she’s overprotective, just like most Mexican mothers. Did she kick you out?” “No, but she pretty much called me a whore.” More laughing from the other end of the line. “It wasn’t funny.” “I’m sorry.” More laughing. “I would have loved to be a fly on the wall when she walked in on you two.” “Thanks for your compassion,” I say dryly. “I’m hanging up now.
Simone Elkeles (Perfect Chemistry (Perfect Chemistry, #1))
Gulls wheel through spokes of sunlight over gracious roofs and dowdy thatch, snatching entrails at the marketplace and escaping over cloistered gardens, spike-topped walls and treble-bolted doors. Gulls alight on whitewashed gables, creaking pagodas and dung-ripe stables; circle over towers and cavernous bells and over hidden squares where urns of urine sit by covered wells, watched by mule-drivers, mules and wolf-snouted dogs, ignored by hunchbacked makers of clogs; gather speed up the stoned-in Nakashima River and fly beneath the arches of its bridges, glimpsed from kitchen doors, watched by farmers walking high, stony ridges. Gulls fly through clouds of steam from laundries’ vats; over kites unthreading corpses of cats; over scholars glimpsing truth in fragile patterns; over bath-house adulterers; heartbroken slatterns; fishwives dismembering lobsters and crabs; their husbands gutting mackerel on slabs; woodcutters’ sons sharpening axes; candle-makers, rolling waxes; flint-eyed officials milking taxes; etoliated lacquerers; mottled-skinned dyers; imprecise soothsayers; unblinking liars; weavers of mats; cutters of rushes; ink-lipped calligraphers dipping brushes; booksellers ruined by unsold books; ladies-in-waiting; tasters; dressers; filching page-boys; runny-nosed cooks; sunless attic nooks where seamstresses prick calloused fingers; limping malingerers; swineherds; swindlers; lip-chewed debtors rich in excuses; heard-it-all creditors tightening nooses; prisoners haunted by happier lives and ageing rakes by other men’s wives; skeletal tutors goaded to fits; firemen-turned-looters when occasion permits; tongue-tied witnesses; purchased judges; mothers-in-law nurturing briars and grudges; apothecaries grinding powders with mortars; palanquins carrying not-yet-wed daughters; silent nuns; nine-year-old whores; the once-were-beautiful gnawed by sores; statues of Jizo anointed with posies; syphilitics sneezing through rotted-off noses; potters; barbers; hawkers of oil; tanners; cutlers; carters of night-soil; gate-keepers; bee-keepers; blacksmiths and drapers; torturers; wet-nurses; perjurers; cut-purses; the newborn; the growing; the strong-willed and pliant; the ailing; the dying; the weak and defiant; over the roof of a painter withdrawn first from the world, then his family, and down into a masterpiece that has, in the end, withdrawn from its creator; and around again, where their flight began, over the balcony of the Room of the Last Chrysanthemum, where a puddle from last night’s rain is evaporating; a puddle in which Magistrate Shiroyama observes the blurred reflections of gulls wheeling through spokes of sunlight. This world, he thinks, contains just one masterpiece, and that is itself.
David Mitchell (The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet)
The Harlot Church, Mystery Babylon the Great and the Cup of Abominations in Revelation 17: The Bible says an apostate theocracy with a political, economic, military, and religious component will rise. John begins to describe the spiritual foundation of this global system in the Book of Revelation, stating: And there came one of the seven angels, which had the seven vials and talked with me, saying to me, ‘Come, I will show you the judgment of the great whore that sits on many waters: With whom the kings of the earth committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication.’ So, he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit on a scarlet-colored beast which was full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet color and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and the filthiness of her fornication: and on her forehead, was a name written, MYSTERY BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH. I saw the woman, drunken with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus: and when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration. And the angel said to me, ‘Why did you marvel? I will tell you the mystery of the woman and the beast that carries her, which has the seven heads and the ten horns’ (17:1-7, AKJV).
American King James Version (Holy Bible AKJV Paragraphed with Sub-Headings: American King James Version)
And its with my head between my knees that I've loved all the men in my life, that's how I love my psychoanalyst, who doesn't see my body fidgeting on the couch when I'm queasy from repeating my mother who worms and my father who comes, when I want to sit up and show him that I'm not just a voice and that a single thrust of my claws can say as much as ten years of chattering about what's hidden behind the words. that the marks they leave are no better than the rage of a child crying for its mother's breast, and besides, who knows whether he's sleeping with his head between his hands and dreaming of me naked in a bathroom, who knows whether he's not masturbating silently to add a bit of life to my narratives, it's something I'll never know, something I don't have the right to hear, and if I did know what would happen, what would occur if I surprised him with his hand wedged down his pants and took his cock in my mouth, how much time to live would there be left for us if I moved my mouth from bottom to top and right to left, how much time before he came, before the end of the world and lightning striking, well, I don't know that, either, and maybe it would be better if it did happen, after all, maybe I'm dying from nothing happening between us and the fact that we'll have to replay the scene of my parents in the bathroom, finally put actions where there were only my tears, maybe it would be better to face each other and talk about love, confront each other in bathwater and stroke what falls under our hands, it would be better if we could be client and whore for the space of a moment, for the length of a session be the one who pays and the woman who gives herself, the roles would have to change within the time it takes for him to close his books and become a man in my arms, but it will never happen, one last time, it can't happen since those things never occur when you're me, when you're calling out life from death's side
Nelly Arcan (Putain)
BITCH THE POT Tea and gossip go together. At least, that’s the stereotypical view of a tea gathering: a group of women gathered around the teapot exchanging tittle-tattle. As popularity of the beverage imported from China (‘tea’ comes from the Mandarin Chinese cha) increased, it became particularly associated with women, and above all with their tendency to gossip. Francis Grose’s Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue lists various slang terms for tea, including ‘prattle-broth’, ‘cat-lap’ (‘cat’ being a contemporary slang for a gossipy old woman), and ‘scandal broth’. To pour tea, meanwhile, was not just to ‘play mother’, as one enduring English expression has it, but also to ‘bitch the pot’ – to drink tea was to simply ‘bitch’. At this time a bitch was a lewd or sensual woman as well as a potentially malicious one, and in another nineteenth-century dictionary the phraseology is even more unguarded, linking tea with loose morals as much as loquaciousness: ‘How the blowens [whores] lush the slop. How the wenches drink tea!’ The language of tea had become another vehicle for sexism, and a misogynistic world view in which the air women exchanged was as hot as the beverage they sipped. ‘Bitch party’ and ‘tabby party’ (again the image of cattiness) were the terms of choice for such gossipy gatherings. Men, it seems, were made of stronger stuff, and drank it too. Furthermore, any self-respecting man would ensure his wife and daughters stayed away from tea. The pamphleteer and political writer William Cobbett declared in 1822: The gossip of the tea-table is no bad preparatory school for the brothel. The girl that has been brought up, merely to boil the tea kettle, and to assist in the gossip inseparable from the practice, is a mere consumer of food, a pest to her employer, and a curse to her husband, if any man be so unfortunate as to affix his affections upon her. In the twenty-first century, to ‘spill the T’ has become a firm part of drag culture slang for gossiping. T here may stand for either ‘truth’ or the drink, but either way ‘weak tea’ has come to mean a story that doesn’t quite hold up – and it’s often one told by women. Perhaps it’s time for bitches to make a fresh pot.
Susie Dent (Word Perfect: Etymological Entertainment For Every Day of the Year)
The photographer was taking pictures with a small pocket camera but the sergeant sent him back to the car for his big Bertillon camera. Grave Digger and Coffin Ed left the cellar to look around. The apartment was only one room wide but four storeys high. The front was flush with the sidewalk, and the front entrance elevated by two recessed steps. The alleyway at the side slanted down from the sidewalk sufficiently to drop the level of the door six feet below the ground-floor level. The cellar, which could only be entered by the door at the side, was directly below the ground-floor rooms. There were no apartments. Each of the four floors had three bedrooms opening on to the public hall, and to the rear was a kitchen and a bath and a separate toilet to serve each floor. There were three tenants on each floor, their doors secured by hasps and staples to be padlocked when they were absent, bolts and chains and floor locks and angle bars to protect them from intruders when they were present. The doors were pitted and scarred either because of lost keys or attempted burglary, indicating a continuous warfare between the residents and enemies from without, rapists, robbers, homicidal husbands and lovers, or the landlord after his rent. The walls were covered with obscene graffiti, mammoth sexual organs, vulgar limericks, opened legs, telephone numbers, outright boasting, insidious suggestions, and impertinent or pertinent comments about various tenants’ love habits, their mothers and fathers, the legitimacy of their children. “And people live here,” Grave Digger said, his eyes sad. “That’s what it was made for.” “Like maggots in rotten meat.” “It’s rotten enough.” Twelve mailboxes were nailed to the wall in the front hall. Narrow stairs climbed to the top floor. The ground-floor hallway ran through a small back courtyard where four overflowing garbage cans leaned against the wall. “Anybody can come in here day or night,” Grave Digger said. “Good for the whores but hard on the children.” “I wouldn’t want to live here if I had any enemies,” Coffin Ed said. “I’d be scared to go to the john.” “Yeah, but you’d have central heating.” “Personally, I’d rather live in the cellar. It’s private with its own private entrance and I could control the heat.” “But you’d have to put out the garbage cans,” Grave Digger said. “Whoever occupied that whore’s crib ain’t been putting out any garbage cans.” “Well, let’s wake up the brothers on the ground floor.” “If they ain’t already awake.
Chester Himes (Blind Man with a Pistol (Harlem Cycle, #8))
(these are my highlighted parts of the book) Not human, thought Maura, as the hairs stood up on the back of her neck. My god, what have I brought back from the dead? This poor woman's already died once. Let's not have it happen again. Do you solemnly swear that the testimony you are about to give to the court in the case now in hearing shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God? Corpses have woken up in morgues. Old graves have been dug up, and they have found claw marks inside the coffin lids. People are so terrified of the possibility that some casket makers sell coffins equipped with emergency transmitters to call for help. Just in case you're buried alive. The resurrection of Christ wasn't a true resurrection. It was merely a case of premature burial. When they ask you to play a child, it means they want you to be scared. They want you to scream. They enjoy it if you bleed. It's not strength, Mila. It's hate. That's what keeps you alive. Duplex rounds are designed to inflict maximum damage. In marines, we call them "torso meat tags" because they're useful for identifying your corpse. In a blast, there's a good chance you'd lose your extremities. So a lot of soldiers choose to get their tattoos on their chest or back. The world is evil, Mila, and there's no way to change it. The best you can do is to stay alive...and not be evil. You're worse tan a whore. You don't just sell out yourself. You'd sell out anyone else. But these bars look different; these are not to trap people in; they are meant to keep people out. Come on baby. Stop being so goddamn stubborn. Help your mama out! Some babies are born screamers. They refuse to be ignored. God put mothers on this earth for a reason. Now, I'm not saying it takes a village to raise a kid. But it sure does help to have a grandma. Human. A02/B00/C02(7cm)/D42 Scalp hair. Slightly curved, shaft is seven centimeters, pigment is medium red. Reality's a bitch, ain't it? And so am I. Whenever there are big boys playing with a lot of money, you can bet sex comes into it. When I open my eyes again, I see more of Anja peeking out from the sand. The curve of her hip bone, the brown shaft of her thigh. The desert has decided to give her up, and now she is re-emerging from the earth. Nothing that happened to you was your fault. Whatever those men did to you - whatever they made you do - they forced on you. It was done to your body. It has nothing to do with your soul. Your soul, Mila, is still pure.
Tess Gerritsen (Vanish (Rizzoli & Isles, #5))
Though she could feel Dom darting glances at her the whole time, she couldn’t face him, couldn’t even look at him. Not just now, when she was still in turmoil about what they’d done. About what he’d said to her at the end. It will also give you a chance to decide what you want. That was the trouble. She didn’t know what she wanted. Well, she did know--she wanted to marry Dom the courteous gentleman. But not Dom the Almighty. She wanted the Dom who mourned for the six children who’d lost their mother needlessly, not the Dom who was sure Nancy was a whore because she’d married his bastard of a brother. But what if both parts were him? What if she couldn’t have one without the other? Why, he hadn’t even said he loved her! Then again, neither had she, so she could hardly fault him for that. Their past was still too raw, and they were both still afraid. Perhaps he’d been waiting for her to say it. She’d certainly been waiting for him. Because then she might really believe he meant to make a life with her again, and not go running off at the first sign of disaster. Like, perhaps, if Nancy proved to be bearing George’s son. “Since it’s such a beautiful morning,” Dom said, “I was thinking that someone might prefer to ride in the phaeton with me. What do you think, Jane? Shall you join me?” He was asking. Deliberately asking, not ordering. And she could feel his expectant gaze on her, indeed, feel everyone’s expectant gazes on her. But her thoughts were too jangled right now, and an enforced ride with him would only jangle them more. Especially since they’d be trapped together for half the day. She wouldn’t be able to escape. Not that she necessarily wanted to escape. Did she? Oh, Lord, she couldn’t handle this at the moment. “Actually, I was looking forward to chatting with your sister in His Grace’s coach. If you don’t mind.” Only then did she meet his gaze. It showed nothing of his thoughts, which made everything worse. She’d begun to recognize that bland expression; he only wore it when he was protecting himself. And if he felt a need to protect himself, then she’d hurt him. She swallowed hard. She hadn’t wanted to hurt him. Perhaps she should ride with him. Clear the air. Perhaps she was being a coward. “Whichever you prefer,” he said curtly. Then he walked briskly down the steps to his waiting phaeton, leapt in, and set it going. And the decision was made for her. Again. No, she couldn’t blame this one on him. This one was entirely hers. She’d sent him running away. Everyone knew it, too, which was nowhere more apparent than in the carriage once they were all settled in and headed off.
Sabrina Jeffries (If the Viscount Falls (The Duke's Men, #4))
But was young Boasthard's fear vanquished by Calmer's words ? No, for he had in his bosom a spike named Bitterness which could not by words be done away. And was he then neither calm like the one nor godly like the other ? He was neither as much as he would have liked to be either. But could he not have endeavoured to have found again as in his youth the bottle Holiness that then he lived withal ? Indeed not for Grace was not there to find that bottle. Heard he then in that clap the voice of the god Bringforth or, what Calmer said, a hubbub of Phenomenon ? Heard ? Why, he could not but hear unless he had plugged up the tube Understanding (which he had not done). For through that tube he saw that he was like the rest too a passing show. And would he not accept to die like the rest and pass away ? By no means would he and make more shows according as men do with wives which Phenomenon has commanded them to do by the book Law. Then wotted he nought of that other land which is called Believe-on-Me, that is the land of promise which behoves to the king Delightful and shall be for ever where there is no death and no birth neither wiving nor mothering at which all shall come as many as believe on it ? Yes, Pious had told him of that land and Chaste had pointed him to the way but the reason was that in the way he fell in with a certain whore of an eyepleasing exterior whose name, she said, is Bird-in-the-Hand and she beguiled him wrongways from the true path by her flatteries that she said to him as, Ho, you pretty man, turn aside hither and I will show you a brave place, and she lay at him so flatteringly that she had him in her grot which is named Tow-in-the-Bush or, by some learned, Carnal Concupiscence. This was it what all that company that sat there at commons in Manse of Mothers the most lusted for after and if they met with this whore Bird-in-the-Hand (which was within all foul plagues, monsters and a wicked devil) they would strain the last but they would make at her and know her. For regarding Believe-on-Me they said it was nought else but notion and they could conceive no thought of it for, first, Two-in-the-Bush whither she ticed them was the very goodliest grot and in it were four pillows on which were four tickets with these words printed on them, Pickaback and Topsyturvy and Shameface and Cheek by Jowl and, second, for that foul plague Allpox and the monsters they cared not for them for Preservative had give them a stout shield of oxengut and, third, that they might take no hurt neither from Offspring that was that wicked by devil by virtue of this same shield which was named Killchild. So were they all in ther blind fancy, Mr Cavil and Mr Sometimes Godly, Mr Ape Swillale, Mr False Franklin, Mr Dainty Dixon, Young Boasthard and Mr Cautious Calmer. Wherein, O wretched company were ye all deceived for that was the voice of the god that was in a very grievous rage that he would presently lift his arm and spill their souls for their abuse and their spillings done by them contrariwise to his word which forth to bring brenningly biddeth.
James Joyce (Ulysses)
The biblical King David was also a sacred shepherd. His sensual and ecstatic songs of earthly love, so untypical of the Bible, derive from the ancient love rites of the shepherd king and the Goddess—her Canaanite names were Asherah, Astarte, Ashtoreth. The settled people of the Old Testament, like everyone else in the Near East, practiced Goddess worship. The Old Testament is the record of the conquest and massacre of these Neolithic people by the nomadic Hebrews, followers of a Sky God, who then set up their biblical God in the place of the ancient Goddess. The biblical Hebrews were a nomadic pastoral and patriarchal people, tribes of sheepherders and warriors who invaded land belonging to the matriarchal Canaanites. Both Hebrews and Canaanites were Semitic people. The Canaanites lived in agricultural communities and worshiped the orgiastic-ecstatic Moon Mother Astarte. As Old Testament stories relate, the Hebrews sacked, burned, and destroyed village after village belonging to the Canaanites, massacring or enslaving the people—a series of brutal invasions and slaughters described typically by theologians and preachers as “a spiritual victory.” In this way the Hebrews established themselves on the land, along with the worship of their Sky-and-Thunder God Yahweh (Jehovah), calling themselves his “chosen people.” Yahweh’s male prophets and priests, however, despite their political victory over the Canaanites, had to carry on a continuous struggle and fulmination against their own people, who kept “backsliding” into worship of the Great Mother, the Goddess of all their Near Eastern neighbors. For she had originally been the Goddess of the Hebrews themselves. This constant fight against matriarchal religion and custom is the primary theme of the Old Testament. It begins in Genesis, with the takeover of the Goddess’s Garden of Immortality by a male God, and the inversion of all her sacred symbols—tree, serpent, moon-fruit, woman—into icons of evil. Of the two sons of Eve and Adam, Cain was made the “evil brother” because he chose settled agriculture (matriarchal)—the “good brother” Abel was a nomadic pastoralist (patriarchal). The war against the Goddess is carried on by the prophets’ rantings against the “golden calf,” the “brazen serpents,” the “great harlot” and “Whore of Babylon” (the Babylonian Goddess Ishtar), against enchantresses, pythonic diviners, and those who practice witchcraft. It is in the prophets’ war against the Canaanite worship of “stone idols”—the Triple Moon Goddess worshiped as three horned pillars, or menhirs. One of her shrines was on Mount Sinai, which means “Mountain of the Moon.” Moses was commanded by “the Lord” to go forth and destroy these “idols”—who all had breasts. We are told monotheism began with the Jews, that it was the great “spiritual invention” of the religious leader Moses. This is not so. The worship of one God, like everything else in religion, began with the worship of the Goddess. Her universality has been duly noted by everyone who has ever studied the matter. “Monotheism, once thought to have been the invention of Moses or Akhnaton, was worldwide in the prehistoric and early historic world,” i.e., throughout the Paleolithic and Neolithic ages. As E. O. James wrote in The Cult of the Mother Goddess, “It seems that Evans was correct when he affirmed that it was a ‘monotheism in which the female form of divinity was supreme.” The original monotheism of the Goddess is perhaps most clearly shown by the fact that, in Elizabeth Gould Davis’s words, “Almighty Yahweh, the god of Moses and the later Hebrews, was originally a goddess.” His name, Iahu ’anat, derives from that of the Sumerian Goddess Inanna.
Monica Sjöö (The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth)
Witches interest me,” Dr. Poesy said. “If you look at most female archetypes—the mother, the virgin, the whore—their power comes from their relation to men. But not the Witch. The Witch derives her power from nature. She calls forth her dreams with spells and incantations. With poetry. And I think that’s why we are frightened of them. What’s scarier to the world of men than a woman limited only by her imagination
Ryan La Sala (Reverie)
When I was young, I drew self-portraits by the moonlight of my bedroom window, scribbling in crayon a woman on a pedestal with a painted face and a crooked smile, all curves and mystery. Me When I Grow Up, I would title these pieces, a prophecy scrawled in Blue Cyan. When my mother found my drawings, she worried that I had become enamored with whores. Little did she know, it was her, us, our foremothers I was drawing. A troubled youth, they’ll say, daddy issues—these are the citations people will give when explaining why a girl turns into a woman like me. I am guilty of all of these and more. Yet stronger than these streams leading ever toward my fate, there is one reason that never makes the list: a portrait of a goddess, drawn by a child in the dark. A half-orphan, the town slut, unlovable by all. The one the boys liked enough to touch, but not enough to claim. Hands clasped in the dark of closets, but not in the hallway at school. Did you know you can get paid for touching boys in closets?
Lindsay Byron (Too Pretty to be Good)
The stereotypes of Zulu and Xhosa women were as ingrained as those of the men. Zulu women were well-behaved and dutiful. Xhosa women were promiscuous and unfaithful. And here was my mother, his tribal enemy, a Xhosa woman alone with two small children—one of them a mixed child, no less. Not just a whore but a whore who sleeps with white men. “Oh, you’re a Xhosa,” he said. “That explains it. Climbing into strange men’s cars. Disgusting woman.
Trevor Noah (Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (One World Essentials))
Quote from Feed Me: Mr. Nho Davison sat at his desk, looking around his small but adequate corner office. Sometimes he couldn’t believe his dumb luck. Less than a decade ago, he had been on the streets, hustling. The son of a whore, he’d followed in his mother’s footsteps, sucking cock and getting fucked up the ass behind dumpsters in the dirty shadows of San Francisco’s alleys.
Dana J. Wright
Enter the feminists, however, gravid with this thesis, that if the body could be considered negligible, if physiological differences didn't really matter, if men and women were equal where it really counted—inside, you see—why, clearly it was the sudden solution to their persistently gnawing feeling of inferiority! And how swiftly women snatched at the idea! Witchwives, whores, all womanity! For if the body is negligible, equality was assured and the struggle for domination and sovereignty was theirs to win! The logic was as simple as sophistry, for if woman, essentially and chiefly of the body, could now ignore her bodily role in society—and with lofty philosophical reasons!—she would be that much more elevated to the very postions to which she aspire but from which, by every other standard, she'd been judiciously and legitimately prevented from holding, the remarkable first step, this, in allowing them to disassociate themselves from the unilaterally despicable and patently unfair obligation, reactionary and patrivincialistic in intent, of bearing children, suckling them, and dutifully standing by them in trial and trouble. Thus do they act as acted Mother Eve whose unnatural and vaulting ambition for equality took her to the fruit and bade her eat, destroying every one of us in the sudden committing at once of all sin: disobedience, covetousness, pride, unbelief, mistrust of divine veracity, gluttony, vainglory, parricide, jealousy, theft, invasion, sacrilege, deceit, presumption to godly attributes, fraud, arrogance, and sloth of thought. Nothing is less different from a woman than the very woman herself. There is only one woman, though there are a million versions of her. Ask my mother.
Alexander Theroux (Darconville's Cat)
I am your brother, you bleeding cunt.” “By half. God knows I have enough of those to fill a galleon.” “Because your mother was a whore with the sores of syphilis dangling about her stretched lips.
Pam Godwin (Sea of Ruin (Sea of Ruin, #1))
Abra, my mother was a whore.' 'I know. You told me. My father is a thief.' 'I've got her blood, Abra. Don't you understand?' 'I've got his
John Steinbeck (East of Eden)
Because I am the first and the last I am the venerated and the scorned I am the whore and the saint I am the wife and the virgin I am the mother and the daughter I am the arms of my mother I am the sterile one, and my children are many I am the well-wed and the spinster I am the one who gave the light and the one who never gave birth I am the wife and the husband And it was my man who bore me in his belly I am the mother of my father I am the sister of my husband And he is my rejected son Respect me always Because I am the scandalous and the discreet.
3rd or 4th century BC, discovered in Nag Hammadi
These were men who fell in love but not fully, wanted a mother but not really, wanted a whore but not all the time, wanted me in the room but quiet, and I liked trying to be everything at once. Cody said he wanted the word honey tattooed on his throat, and when I asked why, he said, To remember everyone I ever called honey. I said it was a bad idea, but really I just wanted to be the only one called honey, I wanted to be the word he kept in his throat.
Chelsea Hodson (Tonight I'm Someone Else: Essays)
Women were sensitive to the basic issues MGR raised—the availability of food and water, as they are homemakers; and temperance, as excessive male drinking bled their family budgets and often led to violence against them.’ Rural women desired protection against a culture that was associated with alcohol, violence and the perception of women as whores. MGR gave them status and a sense of dignity by calling them ‘thaikulam’—community of mothers.
Shrikanth Veeravalli (MGR: A Biography)
Ho. All the shame a woman carried. How mom branded the word unto her heart. AZADA AZADA AZADA! But what use was a garden tool, I railed, when the Perez women had divorced mother nature? Abuela’s gandules harvest, over. Mom’s circle of sage, dead. My horse farm woods, gone. Ripped and rent from all soil, we who had once been earth-women and were now North Philly—treeless rubble, tire-strewn and derelict. But wait. Hadn’t one plot of land persisted? Migrated with us all this way? One human-size patch of earth? Our bodies. I am tired soil, break me, wound me. I AM A WHORE….
Quiara Alegría Hudes (My Broken Language)
Sir Tristan?’ Simeon ventured. ‘But even if he does, will he defend the King? Coming from Lyonesse, surely he’ll follow the Goddess?’ Dominian showed his teeth in a nasty laugh. ‘The Great Mother, yes. The old whore we are driving from the land.’ ‘As soon as we have taken Her ways for our own?’ Dominian frowned. ‘What d’you mean?’ An earnest student of both history and the modern world, Simeon had been waiting for the moment to bring this up. ‘Did not the first Christians take over the apparatus of the Mother?’ he began importantly. ‘Her threefold incarnation of Maiden, Mother, and Wise Woman, is that not what people in those days called the Holy Trinity?’ Dominian paused. ‘This is not something to share with the common folk,’ he said carefully. ‘We teach them that God the Father was here before all things.’ ‘But our Communion, too,’ Simeon pressed on. ‘At the feasts of the Mother, the Lady is the loaf giver to all who come and pours wine from her loving cup with her own hand. When we offer bread and wine, haven’t we taken thus from the first power of the Lady, to feed and to provide?
Rosalind Miles (Isolde, Queen of the Western Isle (Tristan and Isolde, #1))
She wasn’t going to be his whore, his madonna, his wife, or his mother, or all of the above, and all of the above was what he’d really always wanted, what most men have always wanted because they don’t know any better.
Patricia Cornwell (Scarpetta (Kay Scarpetta, #16))
It was the first time I thought about my age in terms of being old, but it didn’t take me long to forget about it. I became accustomed to waking every day with a different pain that kept changing location and form as the years passed. At times it seemed to be the clawing of death, and the next day it would disappear. This was when I heard that the first symptom of old age is when you begin to resemble your father. I must be condemned to eternal youth, I thought, because my equine profile will never look like my father’s raw Caribbean features or my mother’s imperial Roman ones. The truth is that the first changes are so slow they pass almost unnoticed, and you go on seeing yourself as you always were, from the inside, but others observe you from the outside. In
Gabriel García Márquez (Memories of My Melancholy Whores)
Neither were they the sloppy inadequate whores who, unable to make a living at it alone, turn to drug consumption and traffic or pimps to help complete their scheme of self-destruction, avoiding suicide only to punish the memory of some absent father or to sustain the misery of some silent mother
Toni Morrison (The Bluest Eye)
You’re right, Mother.” The anger that had been building inside me since Manwarring stood up finally boiled over. “I am a prostitute. You made me one the second you sold me off to the highest bidder. That’s my role in this family. To be whored out for the financial benefit of the Astrid name. Don’t you dare look down on me for being what you demanded of me!
Zoe Blake (The More I Hate (Gilded Decadence #1))
The church is a whore, but she's my mother
Tony Campolo rephrasing Cyprian and misattributed to St. Augustine
I had cut myself in two, as the mystics preached, and I ran my business by one code of rules, but my own life by another. I rebelled against the looters’ attempt to set the price and value of my steel—but I let them set the moral values of my life. I rebelled against demands for an unearned wealth—but I thought it was my duty to grant an unearned love to a wife I despised, an unearned respect to a mother who hated me, an unearned support to a brother who plotted for my destruction. I rebelled against undeserved financial injury—but I accepted a life of undeserved pain. I rebelled against the doctrine that my productive ability was guilt—but I accepted, as guilt, my capacity for happiness. I rebelled against the creed that virtue is some disembodied unknowable of the spirit—but I damned you, you, my dearest one, for the desire of your body and mine. But if the body is evil, then so are those who provide the means of its survival, so is material wealth and those who produce it—and if moral values are set in contradiction to our physical existence, then it’s right that rewards should be unearned, that virtue should consist of the undone, that there should be no tie between achievement and profit, that the inferior animals who’re able to produce should serve those superior beings whose superiority in spirit consists of incompetence in the flesh.
Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)
A whore, I whispered. "That lady is a whore." I'm not certain what reaction I was after, but shock would have done quite nicely. Instead my mother said, "Well, the, we should probably offer her a drink.
David Sedaris (Naked)
I should have known that today would be the day this would happen, I thought to myself, as I turned the key in the ignition and heard nothing. Not the choke of the engine trying to turn on. Nothing. Just a click. “Goddammit,” I hissed as I banged my forearms on the steering wheel and hissed out, “Mother-fucking-son-of-a-bitch-ass-whore. FUCK ME!
Mariana Zapata (From Lukov with Love)
He never abandoned his family or started over with someone else. Even your mother appreciated that he didn’t ‘drink, whore, or gamble’ like his father. Your story, though, ends with you, Elsa. No one will suppress or reject the traits they inherit from you.
Angela Mi Young Hur (Folklorn)
She smiled, the same sunny expression that for years I had assumed was simple and guileless. "I know. You think you love him. I saw you kissing in the graveyard. Or are you going to pretend you don't enjoy bedding our enemy?" "It's not..." But I couldn't go on; I remembered his kisses, his fingers running through my hair, his skin against mine, and it felt like my whole body was blushing. Astraia's smile vanished. "You like it." Her voice was low and shaky. "All these years you were miserable. All these years I tried and tried to comfort you but nothing ever worked until at last I thought you were broken. I felt so useless that I couldn't heal you. But really, all you ever needed was to kiss our mother's murderer and become a demon's whore--
Rosamund Hodge (Cruel Beauty)
That sparrow was at the Primeval Stage.” “If it had been at the Ancient Stage, I would’ve left you to die. The Empire doesn’t need useless pieces of shit.” “And what about the other useless piece of shit that sat in the trees during the fight?” “Oh, did you spot me?” “No, I’ve just realized that you're a damned sadist who enjoys tormenting others.” “Stop complaining like a grumpy whore…” “All right,” Hadjar raised his hands in defeat. “I admit it, you aren’t a sadist. You’re a pig. Didn’t your mother teach you not to talk with your mouth full?” Orune belched again and tapped his chest.
Kirill Klevanski (Land of Pain (Dragon Heart, #9))
There are only three people in life you can never fool—pawnbrokers, whores, and your mother. Since your mother’s dead, I’ve taken her place. Hence, I’m bullshit-proof.
Scott Lynch (The Lies of Locke Lamora (Gentleman Bastard, #1))
Your mother—” She makes a soft sound. “She would have been heartbroken to see this.” I know that, and it’s the only solace I have in her death. She never had to see my father’s fall from grace. She never had to see her little girl turned into a whore. “I miss her.
Skye Warren (The Pawn (Endgame, #1))
You only think you do. Because to truly understand my actions, you’ll need to confront all the things about me that you overlooked or ignored because you were too busy nursing wounds from your own shitty childhood. But you weren’t abandoned by your whore mother. You didn’t have a father who beat you. You didn’t grow up getting passed around foster homes like an unwanted mutt.
Riley Sager (The House Across the Lake)
All acts of sex were forms of degradation. Some random recollections: East 11th Street, on the bed with Murray Groman: “Swallow this mother ’til you choke.” East 11th Street, in the bed with Gary Becker: “The trouble with you is, you’re such a shallow person.” East 11th Street, up against the wall with Peter Baumann: “The only thing that turns me on about you is pretending you’re a whore.” Second Avenue, the kitchen, Michael Wainwright: “Quite frankly, I deserve a better-looking, better-educated girlfriend.” What do you do with the Serious Young Woman (short hair, flat shoes, body slightly hunched, head drifting back and forth between the books she’s read)? You slap her, fuck her up the ass and treat her like a boy. The Serious Young Woman looked everywhere for sex but when she got it it became an exercise in disintegration. What was the motivation of these men? Was it hatred she evoked? Was it some kind of challenge, trying to make the Serious Young Woman femme?
Chris Kraus (I Love Dick)
I’ve already lost everything,” my mother said. “Why shouldn’t you? Or are you more worried about your little whore? I suppose I should say whores, since there have been many over the years.
Riley Sager (The Only One Left)
Even more remarkable is the gnostic poem called the Thunder, Perfect Mind. This text contains a revelation spoken by a feminine power: I am the first and the last. I am the honored one and the scorned one. I am the whore, and the holy one. I am the wife and the virgin. I am (the mother) and the daughter.… I am she whose wedding is great, and I have not taken a husband.… I am knowledge, and ignorance.… I am shameless; I am ashamed. I am strength, and I am fear.… I am foolish, and I am wise.… I am godless, and I am one whose God is great.
Elaine Pagels (The Gnostic Gospels (Modern Library 100 Best Nonfiction Books))
The red discharge between a woman’s legs, the pain of no scar, the misery of no wound, that either leads her to extreme shame or a child, which I reckon were the same to my mother. Is that what is supposed to be the essence of womanhood?
Miramoon
Her type belongs in the rubbish, just like her whore mother.
Rina Kent (Cruel King (Royal Elite, #0))
Breeding a whore means hell for the spawn that is created. Whores like her—whores like my mother—aren’t good moms.
Lauren Biel (Driving My Obsession (Ride or Die Romances))
She might be a choosy whore, but she’s still a whore. She’s still too much like my mother.
Lauren Biel (Driving My Obsession (Ride or Die Romances))
Didn't your mother teach you anything? That the best way to find true love is to fuck around with any guy who will say yes and screw men in relationships? Think of your reputation! Who will love you now, whore? Fuck you. It was fun and I felt better afterwards.
Edward Southgate (Great Pleasures)
Around Christmas season 1955, they forgot to lock their bedroom door and Anthony opened it late one night. He came in perhaps because of a nightmare, perhaps because the Christmas music was too loud on their radio, and so while “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” played on, twelve-year-old Anthony saw his naked mother underneath his upraised naked father, he saw gripped legs and small white hands clutching large arms, and he saw unspeakable motion, and he heard his mother making noises as if she were in pain but yet not in pain. He made a noise himself, and Alexander, without even turning around, stopped moving, lay down on top of Tatiana to cover her, and said, “Anthony—” The boy was out, vanished, the door open wide. They tried to imagine the things he may have seen. They tried to feel grateful for the other—completely unexplainable—things that he could have seen and blessedly had not. “Should we build a house now?” Alexander asked. “Why?” Tatiana said. “You can leave the door unlocked in a brand new house just as well as in our mobile home. But now you better go talk to your son, Shura.” “Oh suddenly it’s a mobile home, not a trailer—and what am I supposed to say to him?” “I don’t know, Alexander Barrington, but you’re going to have to think of something, or do you want me to talk to him the way your mother talked to you?” “All right, let’s just take one small step back toward reality,” said Alexander. “My family and I were living in a communal apartment where the man in the next room kept bringing in whores he picked up at the train station. My mother had a responsibility. She was trying to scare me off with nightmarish stories of French disease. I don’t need to scare my boy off; I think what he’s seen tonight will put him off sex for life.
Paullina Simons (The Summer Garden (The Bronze Horseman, #3))
It is obvious the First Mother favors you overmuch, Gen,” Chertanne observed haughtily. “In matters of being over favored, I will certainly defer to your judgment,” Gen returned. “I certainly judge correctly in this! I am the Savior of the World and her future son-in-law and she has not invited me to a private dinner!” “Considering that during the last meal she took with you, you tried to drag her daughter off to your bed like a common street whore, I think it’s understandable that she needs an ample period of time to invent some good feeling for you before inviting you to dinner.
Brian Fuller (Ascension (The Trysmoon Saga, #1))
The moment he stepped outside, Macon materialized out of the darkness, as quickly as if he’d been a part of it. “Just making sure you don’t decide to take to your heels again,” Steven’s half-brother remarked as they walked along the wooden sidewalk. “I’m not going to do that and you know it,” Steven responded, never looking at Macon. “You just want to make me as miserable as you possibly can.” “You don’t know the meaning of the word misery,” Macon answered blithely. “But you will when you’re behind bars and I’m bedding that luscious little wife of yours. She’ll claim not to like it at first, probably, but I’ve dealt with her kind before. They tell you they’re not interested, but when you throw them down on a mattress, they’re breathing hard and spreading their thighs for you in a minute. And how they carry on when they come.” Steven lost the battle to control his rage and gripped Macon by the lapels of his coat, flinging him hard against the outside wall of the newspaper office. He followed that with a solid punch to Macon’s solar plexus. Macon made a sound that was half gasp and half laughter, clutching his middle and struggling to catch his breath. “Your mother was just like her,” he choked out. “She was a hot little whore who liked playing games with rich men.” Steven’s hand knotted into a fist again, but this time he held himself in check, realizing that Macon wanted to be struck. He got some kind of perverse pleasure out of it. Filled with contempt, Steven turned to walk away. “You’ll be swinging at the end of a rope by this time next month,” Macon called after him. “And nine months after that Emma will be sweating in childbirth, bearing the first of my bastards!” Steven’s hand flexed over the butt of his pistol, but he didn’t draw. He just kept walking, pretending he hadn’t heard. But
Linda Lael Miller (Emma And The Outlaw (Orphan Train, #2))
I should be surprised you’re calling me. But I’m not,” she says. “How was practice?” “Not great. Darlene isn’t a great captain, and Ms. Small knows it. You shouldn’t quit.” “I’m not. I’m just taking a break for a little while. But I didn’t call to talk about poms. Listen, I wanted you to know I broke up with Colin today.” “And you’re telling me because…” That’s a good question, one I normally wouldn’t have answered. “I wanted to talk with someone about it, and I know I have friends who I can call, but I kinda wanted to go to someone who wouldn’t gossip about it. My friends have big mouths.” Sierra is the one person I’m closest to, but I lied to her about Alex. And her boyfriend, Doug, is best friends with Colin. “How do you know I won’t blab?” Isabel asks. “I don’t. But you didn’t tell me stuff about Alex when I asked, so I figure you’re good at keeping secrets.” “I am. So shoot.” “I don’t know how to say this.” “I haven’t got all day, you know.” “I kissed Alex,” I blurt out. “Alex? ¡Benditaǃ Was that before or after the Colin breakup?” I wince. “I didn’t plan it.” Isabel laughs so hard and loud, I have to take the phone away from my ear. “You sure he didn’t plan it?” she asks once she can get words out. “It just happened. We were at his house and then we were interrupted when his mom came home and saw us--” “What? His ma saw you guys? In his house? ¡Benditaǃ” She goes off in Spanish, and I have no clue what the hell she’s saying. “I don’t speak Spanish, Isabel. Help me out here.” “Oh, sorry. Carmen is gonna shit a brick when she finds out.” I clear my throat. “I won’t tell her,” Isabel is quick to say. “But Alex’s mom is one tough woman. When Alex dated Carmen, he kept her far away from his mama. Don’t get me wrong, she loves her sons. But she’s overprotective, just like most Mexican mothers. Did she kick you out?” “No, but she pretty much called me a whore.” More laughing from the other end of the line. “It wasn’t funny.” “I’m sorry.” More laughing. “I would have loved to be a fly on the wall when she walked in on you two.” “Thanks for your compassion,” I say dryly. “I’m hanging up now.” “No! I’m sorry for laughing. It’s just that the more we talk, the more I see you as a totally different person than I thought you were. I guess I can understand why Alex likes you.
Simone Elkeles (Perfect Chemistry (Perfect Chemistry, #1))
There are no whores in Scaithe’s Ebb, or none that consider themselves as such, although there have always been many women who, if pressed, would describe themselves as much-married, with one husband on this ship here every six months, and another husband on that ship, back in port for a month or so every nine months. The mathematics of the thing have always kept most folk satisfied; and if ever it disappoints and a man returns to his wife while one of her other husbands is still in occupancy, why, then there is a fight—and the grog shops to comfort the loser. The sailors do not mind the arrangement, for they know that this way there will, at the least, be one person who, at the last, will notice when they do not come back from the sea, and will mourn their loss; and their wives content themselves with the certain knowledge that their husbands are also unfaithful, for there is no competing with the sea in a man’s affections, since she is both mother and mistress, and she will wash his corpse also, in time to come, wash it to coral and ivory and pearls.
Neil Gaiman
I’m not a whore. Even though my mother seems to think I am whenever I tell her I’m out on another job.
Tara Sivec (Shame on Me (Fool Me Once, #2))
He is a sodomite, and my sister is a whore, and perhaps a poisoner, and I am a whore. My uncle has been the falsest of friends, my father a time-server, my mother—God knows—some even say she had the king before the two of us! All of this you knew or you could have deduced. Now tell me, am I good enough for you? For I knew that you were a nobody and I came to find you all the same. If you want to rise to be a somebody in this court you will get blood or shit on your hands. I have had to learn this through a hard apprenticeship since I was a little girl. You can learn it now if you have the stomach.” William
Philippa Gregory (The Other Boleyn Girl (The Plantagenet and Tudor Novels #9))
If you need to clear the air with these gentlemen, better remove yourself from the car!” Julia’s boyfriend, or whatever he was, didn’t seem like much. I had fought more fearsome men in my life. When I heard him mentioning my mother, whom he had started bespattering in something resembling the English language, calling her “a Norwegian whore”, I opened the door and headbutted him without the slightest hesitation. I yelled at the top of my lungs too, so that bitch, Julia, could hear me loud and clear: “I’m an Irish man, you fucking asshole, I’m from Belfast, we would stick some Semtex up your ass" (Doina Rusti - Logodnica/The The Fiancée, Polirom, 2017)
Doina Ruști (Logodnica)
ISIS Like Osiris, Isis was privy to the mysteries of perpetual birth. We know her image: a mother goddess breastfeeding her son Horus, as the Virgin Mary suckled Jesus much later on. But Isis was never what we might call a virgin. She began making love to Osiris when they were growing together inside their mother’s womb. And she practiced the world’s oldest profession for ten years in the city of Tyre. In the thousands of years that followed, Isis traveled the world resuscitating whores, slaves, and others among the damned. In Rome, she founded temples for the poor alongside bordellos. The temples were razed by imperial order, their priests crucified, but like stubborn mules they came back to life again and again. And when Emperor Justinian’s soldiers demolished the sanctuary of Isis on the island of Philae in the Nile, and built the very Catholic church of Saint Stephen on the ruins, Isis’s pilgrims continued paying homage to their errant goddess at the Christian altar.
Eduardo Galeano (Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone)
Kiara watched the two of them. While it was obvious they knew each other, she wanted to know how. Had Nykyrian been a client of Jana’s mother? While the thought didn’t thrill her, it wasn’t really any of her business. “So how did you two meet?” Jana flashed a sheepish grin at her. “I tried to pick Nykyrian’s pocket last year.” She gaped at Nykyrian. “And you let him live?” There was a subtle lifting at the corners of his mouth. “I have an age requirement before I kill someone.” Jana slowed down so that he could walk beside her. “He actually bought me dinner, then took me to me mum and told her to keep me off the streets. Not that she listened. She was a whore.” Nykyrian’s features tightened, and when he spoke, his tone was sharp. “Your mother loved you, Jana. One day you’ll understand how rare a thing that is. Don’t disparage her memory by reducing her down to the occupation she had that kept you fed and clothed. She deserves better than that.” Jana’s anger deflated as he lowered his head. “Sorry.
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Born of Night (The League, #1))
Dared he ask about George? Not a direct inquiry, that wouldn’t do, but a reference to the family, asking whether his mother had happened to encounter Lady Everett lately, and might he ask to be remembered to her son? He sighed and drew another point on his object. No. His widowed mother was ignorant of the situation, but Lady Everett’s husband moved in military circles. His brother’s influence would keep the gossip to a minimum, but Lord Everett might catch a whiff of it, nonetheless, and be quick enough to put two and two together. Let him drop an injudicious word to his wife about George, and the word pass on from Lady Everett to his mother … the Dowager Countess Melton was not a fool. She knew quite well that he was in disgrace; promising young officers in the good graces of their superiors were not sent to the arse-end of Scotland to oversee the renovation of small and unimportant prison-fortresses. But his brother Harold had told her that the trouble was an unfortunate affair of the heart, implying sufficient indelicacy to stop her questioning him about it. She likely thought he had been caught with his colonel’s wife, or keeping a whore in his quarters.
Diana Gabaldon (Voyager (Outlander, #3))
I hate you! And I did pretend with you! I pretended to not like it when I loved it! Because I’m a whooooooooore!” she screamed in his face. “A stupid, fat, Cinderella whore! Fucking and fucking and praying that one of these mother fuuuuuuckers,” she screamed, slamming her fists into his chest. “Would be a real man! And he was! Reginald was and you bastard!” She pummeled his chest again. “You took him from me!” She
Lucian Bane (Reginald Bones 2 (Reginald Bones #2))
I kissed Alex,” I blurt out. “Alex? ¡Benditaǃ Was that before or after the Colin breakup?” I wince. “I didn’t plan it.” Isabel laughs so hard and loud, I have to take the phone away from my ear. “You sure he didn’t plan it?” she asks once she can get words out. “It just happened. We were at his house and then we were interrupted when his mom came home and saw us--” “What? His ma saw you guys? In his house? ¡Benditaǃ” She goes off in Spanish, and I have no clue what the hell she’s saying. “I don’t speak Spanish, Isabel. Help me out here.” “Oh, sorry. Carmen is gonna shit a brick when she finds out.” I clear my throat. “I won’t tell her,” Isabel is quick to say. “But Alex’s mom is one tough woman. When Alex dated Carmen, he kept her far away from his mama. Don’t get me wrong, she loves her sons. But she’s overprotective, just like most Mexican mothers. Did she kick you out?” “No, but she pretty much called me a whore.” More laughing from the other end of the line. “It wasn’t funny.” “I’m sorry.” More laughing. “I would have loved to be a fly on the wall when she walked in on you two.” “Thanks for your compassion,” I say dryly. “I’m hanging up now.” “No! I’m sorry for laughing. It’s just that the more we talk, the more I see you as a totally different person than I thought you were. I guess I can understand why Alex likes you.” “Thanks, I think. Remember when I told you I wouldn’t let anything happen between me and Alex?” “Yeah. Just so I get my timetable straight, that was before you kissed him. Right?” She chuckles, then says, “I’m just kidding, Brittany. If you like him, girl, go for it. But be careful, because even if I think he likes you more than he’ll admit, you should keep your guard up.” “I won’t stop it if something happens between me and Alex, but don’t worry. I always have my guard up.” “Me, too. Well, except for the night you slept at my house. I kinda fooled around with Paco. I can’t tell my friends ’cause they’d give me shit.” “Do you like him?” “I don’t know. I never thought about him that way before, but being with him was kinda nice. How was the kiss with Alex?” “Nice,” I say, thinking about how sensual it was. “Actually, Isabel, it was more than nice. It was fucking incredible.” Isabel starts laughing, and I laugh right along with her this time.
Simone Elkeles (Perfect Chemistry (Perfect Chemistry, #1))
As soon as they are gone and the door closed behind them, we fall into a frenzy about my dress. “Dark green,” my mother says. “It has to be dark green.” It is our only safe color. Dark blue is the royal color of mourning, but I must not, for one moment, look as if I am grieving for my royal lover and the true king of England. Dark red is the color of martyrdom, but also sometimes, contradictorily, worn by whores to make their complexions appear flawlessly white. Neither association is one we want to inspire in the stern mind of the strict Lady Margaret. She must not think that marriage to her son is a torment for me, she must forget that everyone said that I was Richard’s lover. Dark yellow would be all right—but who looks good in yellow? I don’t like purple and anyway it is too imperial a color for a humbled girl whose only hope is to marry the king. Dark green it has to be and since it is the Tudor color, this can do nothing but good.
Philippa Gregory (The White Princess (The Plantagenet and Tudor Novels, #5))
You're mother's a whore." "She is," I’d agreed but my father, he'd mistook my conforming opinion as a question because he'd said: "She is, son, I'm sorry.” I knew by the time I was 3 my mother was getting around. The only difference between a prostitute and my mother was my mother didn't usually charge. Unusually.
Chassis Albuquerque
So I should grant him passage because his mother was an orc-fucking whore? Perhaps I should bow down at his feet as well. All hail he whose mother spreads her legs for–
Robert Bevan (Critical Failures)
I’ll no longer be an unknown killer, a knife plunging out of the pea soup fog and darkness, slashing at whores’ throats, sagging udders and hungry bellies, and filthy flea-crawling cunts; now I have a name. Mothers will caution their kiddies: Jack the Ripper’s going to get you if you don’t watch out; Jack the Ripper’s going to get you if you don’t come inside right now; Jack the Ripper’s going to get you if you don’t eat all your vegetables, mind your manners, and say your prayers. They’ll never forget me; they’ll forget Michael’s jolly jack-tar, but they’ll never forget me! You can take all your sea chanteys, sentimental ballads, and humble hymns, Michael, and shove them up your arse along with Fred Weatherly’s prick. This name, taken with my medicine, will make me invincible. NOTHING can stop me now! I’m Jack, Jack the Ripper, my knife is my scepter, and I reign as the Red King over this Autumn of Terror. Long live King Jack; long may he hack!
Brandy Purdy (The Ripper's Wife)
God gave you the gift of life. The world is beautiful the sun is shining, the corn is tall, the birds are singing, can you not hear them? They are singing for you. Are their songs falling on ears that do not hear? Is your heart not filled with love for your family and they for you? What else do you ask of life my friend?
Lisa V. Proulx (Weedmonkey: Mama, Mother, Whore)
God looks down on you and says, this young man is not happy with what I have given him; perhaps his space should be filled with someone who would appreciate the gifts I have to give.'
Lisa V. Proulx (Weedmonkey: Mama, Mother, Whore)
She removed a knife from the pocket of her skirt and swiftly cut the umbilical cord. She ripped off the remaining portion of her petticoat, wrapping it tightly around her newborn son with instructions that Aunt Mabel was to take him to the cabin and to stay with him until she returned. As she walked up the hill to the cabin, she looked back to see her mother returning to the field to finish her days work. Her father had not once looked up from his work and apparently unaware of the birth of his son.
Lisa V. Proulx (Weedmonkey: Mama, Mother, Whore)
Okay, they were ogre children with little gray teeth, but they were kids! They didn't do anything, not really. Sure, when they played, they boiled their dolls then cut them into bite-sized pieces. But that was make-believe. Everybody says the moral of the story is that short guys can be cunning and brave. But I think the moral is that children pay for the sins of their parent. Ask anybody who hates to go home after school. Ask the girl whose mother is a drunk and a whore. Ask the boy whose dad is doing twenty-five to life.
Ron Koertge (Lies, Knives, and Girls in Red Dresses)
one love for two hearts is not enough.
Lisa V. Proulx (Weedmonkey: Mama, Mother, Whore)
Mom said sometimes when you ask God for something, His answer is “not now.” She said He always hears you, and your prayers do not get ignored, but all things happen in His time, not ours.
Lisa V. Proulx (Weedmonkey: Mama, Mother, Whore)
The grass may be greener on the other side, but you still have to mow your lawn.
Lisa V. Proulx (Weedmonkey: Mama, Mother, Whore)
You can't be transcendent,... which will mean to be perfect in everything. You can try to act as such person, but there is a lot of to learn. - As first you always will know the few from everything - Everything is endless! - (The Wolf of Wall Street), forgot everything what people say to you about the topic "Money"...because money are the thing which make your life interesting. You could buy the best phone, the best hotel or the best room, the best house, the best car, the best TV, the best books... the best wife... There are outside a lot of women which will sleep with you in replace of money... so reality you need money to have them... (More far than this I can't take you, because the train is too fast It will delete everything.... <----- it will just start from here.)... What I gonna say or I will say is "Good Luck and try by yourself the finish the mission".
Deyth Banger
What are you wearing?” he asked me, gripping my cloak. He pulled it roughly from my shoulders, grabbing a section of my hair as well. I cried out as he yanked it. “Charles!” my mother exclaimed, reaching out for me. He pushed her easily aside. When he saw my simple green dress he sneered. “What is this?” “It’s just a dress,” she said quietly. “This is a peasant’s dress. What is she doing in a peasant’s dress, Evelyn?” “She saw one on a girl in the city once and she wanted to try one on. It was her birthday wish. That’s all.” He continued to glare at me, his eyes raking me over. “You look like a commoner. Like a whore. Is that what you want to be, Annabel Lee? A common whore?” Tears began to stream down my face. They flew off my cheeks as I shook my head violently. “No, father. No!” He brought his face down level to mine. I could see nothing but his eyes, I could smell nothing but his breath. Both were clean and hot. “Then you shouldn’t dress as one. Or I know some men who would love to treat you like one,” he growled. My breath froze in my throat. I couldn’t breathe or swallow. I could only nod my understanding. He straightened then threw my cloak across the room toward the fire. “Burn it,” he told my mother harshly. “And when you have her in her nightdress, burn the dress on her back. There’ll be no more of this. No more dinners out, no more playtime, no more dress up. She’s thirteen. It’s time she starts acting like a woman and fulfilling her duties as such.” When he left the room he took all of the air out with him. I collapsed in a heap on the floor, my face buried in my hands as hot tears scalded my cheeks. I was flushed with shame and embarrassment. I heard my mother take a shuddering breath then she was there beside me on the floor. She wrapped me up in her arms, rocking me as though I were a toddler, not a teenager. We never spoke a word of it. Hours later we were lying together in my bed, our hands clenched together tightly. By morning, my simple green joy was nothing but ash on the hearth.   ***
Tracey Ward (Dissever)