“
I’m not totally mad at you. I’m just sad. You’re all locked up in that little world of yours, and when I try knocking on the door, you just sort of look up for a second and go right back inside.
”
”
Haruki Murakami (Norwegian Wood)
“
We start off with high hopes, then we bottle it. We realise that we’re all going to die, without really finding out the big answers. We develop all those long-winded ideas which just interpret the reality of our lives in different ways, without really extending our body of worthwhile knowledge, about the big things, the real things. Basically, we live a short disappointing life; and then we die. We fill up our lives with shite, things like careers and relationships to delude ourselves that it isn’t all totally pointless.
”
”
Irvine Welsh (Trainspotting)
“
... Basically, we live a short, disappointing life; and then we die. We fill up oor lives wi shite, things like careers and relationships tae delude oorsels that it isnae aw totally pointless.
”
”
Irvine Welsh (Trainspotting (Mark Renton, #2))
“
When God gets us alone through suffering, heartbreak, temptation, disappointment, sickness, or by thwarted friendship - when He gets us absolutely alone, and we are totally speechless, unable to ask even one question, then He begins to teach us.
”
”
Oswald Chambers
“
You cannot be afraid to disappoint people. You have to live the life you want to live. Sometimes, that means being the motherfucker who can put a middle finger up to everyone in the room and be totally comfortable with that.
”
”
David Goggins (Never Finished: Unshackle Your Mind and Win the War Within)
“
With total strangers, it had always been my policy to expect the worst. Usually they-and those that you knew best, for that matter-did not disappoint.
”
”
Sarah Dessen (Lock and Key)
“
Perhaps there is more understanding and beauty in life when the glaring sunlight is softened by the patterns of shadows. Perhaps there is more depth in a relationship that has weathered some storms. Experience that never disappoints or saddens or stirs up feeling is a bland experience with little challenge or variation of color. Perhaps it's when we experience confidence and faith and hope that we see materialize before our eyes this builds up within us a feeling of inner strength, courage, and security. We are all personalities that grow and develop as a result of our experiences, relationships, thoughts, and emotions. We are the sum total of all the parts that go into the making of a life.
”
”
Virginia M. Axline (Dibs in Search of Self)
“
I glance down at the over-sized t-shirt and socks I’m wearing. “You’d be sadly disappointed if you actually saw what I wear to bed.”
“You know, clothes are overrated as far as I’m concerned. I’m good with you totally doing away with them when you visit me.” I can hear the smile in his voice.
“Noel...” I say his name like a warning.
”
”
Michelle A. Valentine (Rock the Heart (Black Falcon, #1))
“
When God gets us alone through suffering, heartbreak, temptation, disappointment, sickness, or by thwarted desires, a broken friendship, or a new friendship— when He gets us absolutely alone, and we are totally speechless, unable to ask even one question, then He begins to teach us.
”
”
Oswald Chambers (My Utmost for His Highest)
“
You don't stop loving someone just because they do something that surprises or even disappoints you. Maybe facts and formulas comfort Marcus, but I think that article he read was totally wrong. You don't love chemical reactions or particles or neuron receptors. You love whole people. Including the parts you didn't know were there, and the parts you're waiting for them to become.
”
”
Mindy Raf (The Symptoms of My Insanity)
“
These people were the first to master a new kind of late twentieth-century life. They thrived on the rapid turnover of acquaintances, the lack of involvement with others, and the total self-sufficiency of lives which, needing nothing, were never disappointed.
”
”
J.G. Ballard
“
In his life, after all, he had achieved nothing, had been totally unproductive. He couldn’t make anyone else happy, and, of course, couldn’t make himself happy. Happiness? He wasn’t even sure what that meant. He didn’t have a clear sense, either, of emotions like pain or anger, disappointment or resignation, and how they were supposed to feel. The most he could do was create a place where his heart - devoid now of any depth or weight - could be tethered, to keep it from wandering aimlessly
”
”
Haruki Murakami (Hombres sin mujeres)
“
Then in a great crash they threw themselves to the floor, ears flopped down, the whites of their eyes showing, looking the way only a dog can look who is totally disappointed. Indeed, they were the very pictures of disappointment.
”
”
Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson
“
Then Augustus Waters reached into a pocket and pulled out, of all things, a pack of cigarettes. He flipped it open and put a pack between his lips.
“Are you serious?” I asked. “You think that’s cool? Oh, my God, you just ruined the whole thing.”
“Which whole thing?” he asked, turning to me. The cigarette dangled unlit from the unsmiling corner of his mouth.
“The whole thing where a boy who is not unattractive or unintelligent or seemingly in any way unacceptable stares at me and points out incorrect uses of literality and compares me to actresses and asks me to watch a movie at his house. But of course there is always a hamartia and yours is that, oh, my God, even though you HAD FREAKING CANCER you give money to a company in exchange for the chance to acquire YET MORE CANCER. Oh, my God. Let me just assure you that not being able to breathe? SUCKS. Totally disappointing. Totally.”
“A hamartia?” he asked, the cigarette still in his mouth. It tightened his jaw. He had a hell of a jawline, unfortunately.
“A fatal flaw,” I explained, turning away from him.
”
”
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
“
Holy crap, she's going to kiss me! Hanes is totally about to kiss me! Mayday, mayday! I don't think I want her to kiss me. Her arms wrap around me, and it's totally a hug. I don't know if I'm glad or disappointed.
”
”
Nyrae Dawn (Dizzy)
“
When you are young, you think it's going to be solved by love. But it never is. Being close -- as close as you can get -- to another person only makes clear that impassable distance between you."
[…]
"I don't know. If being in love only made people more lonely, why would everyone want it so much?"
"Because of the illusion. You fall in love, it's intoxicating, and for a little while you feel like you've actually become one with the other person. Merged souls, and so on. You thing you'll never be lonely again. Only it doesn't last and soon you realize you can only get so close, and you end up brutally disappointed, more alone that ever, because the illusion - the hope you'd held on to all those years - has been shattered."
[…]
"But see, the incredible thing about people is that we forget." Ray continued. "Time passes and somehow the hope creeps back and sooner or later someone else comes along and we think this is the one. And the whole thing starts all over again. We go through our lives like that, and either we just accept the lesser relationship - it may not be total understanding, but it's pretty good - or we keep trying for that perfect union, trying and failing, leaving behind us a trail of broken hearts, our own included. In the end, we die as alone as we were born, having struggled to understand others, to make ourselves understood, but having failed in what we once imagined was possible.
”
”
Nicole Krauss (Man Walks into a Room)
“
Was my life going to go on like this forever, totally uneventful? Alternating between unfulfilled expectations and expected disappointments?
”
”
Eva Heller (Beim nächsten Mann wird alles anders)
“
On May 26th, 2003,
Aaron Ralston was hiking,
a boulder fell on his right hand,
he waited four days,
he then amputated
his own arm with a pocketknife.
On New Year’s Eve,
a woman was bungee jumping,
the cord broke,
she fell into a river
and had to swim back to land
in crocodile-infested waters
with a broken collarbone.
Claire Champlin was smashed in the face
by a five-pound watermelon
being propelled by a slingshot.
Mathew Brobst was hit by a javelin.
David Striegl was actually
punched in the mouth by a kangaroo.
The most amazing part of these stories
is when asked about the experience
they all smiled, shrugged and said
“I guess things could’ve been worse.”
So go ahead,
tell me you’re having a bad day.
Tell me about the traffic.
Tell me about your boss.
Tell me about the job you’ve been trying to quit for the past four years.
Tell me the morning is just a townhouse burning to the ground and the snooze button is a fire extinguisher.
Tell me the alarm clock
stole the keys to your smile,
drove it into 7 am
and the crash totaled your happiness.
Tell me.
Tell me how blessed are we to have tragedy
so small it can fit on the tips of our tongues.
When Evan lost his legs he was speechless.
When my cousin was assaulted
she didn’t speak for 48 hours.
When my uncle was murdered,
we had to send out a search party
to find my father’s voice.
Most people have no idea
that tragedy and silence
often have the exact same address.
When your day is a museum of disappointments,
hanging from events that were outside of your control,
when you feel like your guardian angel put in his two weeks notice two months ago
and just decided not to tell you,
when it seems like God
is just a babysitter that’s always on the phone,
when you get punched in the esophagus by a fistful of life.
Remember,
every year
two million people die of dehydration.
So it doesn’t matter if
the glass is half full or half empty.
There’s water in the cup.
Drink it and stop complaining.
Muscle is created by lifting things
that are designed to weigh us down.
When your shoulders are heavy
stand up straight and call it exercise.
Life is a gym membership
with a really complicated cancellation policy.
Remember,
you will survive,
things could be worse,
and we are never given
anything we can’t handle.
When the whole world crumbles,
you have to build a new one
out of all the pieces that are still here.
Remember,
you are still here.
The human heart beats
approximately 4,000 times per hour
and each pulse,
each throb,
each palpitation is a trophy,
engraved with the words
“You are still alive.”
You are still alive.
So act like it.
”
”
Rudy Francisco (Helium (Button Poetry))
“
These people were content with their environment, and felt no particular objection to an impersonal steel and concrete landscape, no qualms about the invasion of their privacy by government agencies and organizations, and if anything welcoming these intrusions, using them for their own purposes. These people were the first to master a new kind of 20th century life. They thrived on the rapid turnover of acquaintances, the lack of involvement with others, and the total self-sufficiency of lives which, needing nothing, were never disappointed. Alternatively, their real needs might emerge later.
”
”
J.G. Ballard (High-Rise)
“
He had some taste for romance reading before he went to the university, where, we must confess, in justice to his college, he was cured of the love of reading in all its shapes; and the cure would have been radical, if disappointment in love, and total solitude, had not conspired to bring on a relapse.
”
”
Thomas Love Peacock (Nightmare Abbey)
“
Ahhh, John Clark—totally dope. I’m simmering with curiosity about their romance. I guess that’s what people without romance do . . . wonder. It all started with him. Now, I die a little more every day. Only a fellow shipwrecked lover could possibly understand.
”
”
Michael Benzehabe (Zonked Out: The Teen Psychologist of San Marcos Who Killed Her Santa Claus and Found the Blue-Black Edge of the Love Universe)
“
But hey, I had the best times during each sprint,” I added.
His laugh was soft and possibly a little disappointed. “That’s my girl. Running every morning?”
“Every morning and I’ve been swimming more.” I stopped talking when I heard a voice in the background.
All I heard was my dad mumbling, “It’s Sal… you wanna talk to her?... Okay… Sal, your mom says hi.”
“Tell her I said hi back.”
“My daughter says hi… no, she’s mine. The other one is yours… Ha! No!... Sal are you mine or your mom’s?” he asked me.
“I’m the milkman’s.”
“I knew it!” He finally laughed with a deep pleased sigh.
I was smiling like a total fool. “I love you too, old man.
”
”
Mariana Zapata (Kulti)
“
All human life on the planet is born of woman. The one unifying, incontrovertible experience shared by all women and men is that months-long period we spent unfolding inside a woman’s body. Because young humans remain dependent upon nurture for a much longer period than other mammals, and because of the division of labor long established in human groups, where women not only bear and suckle but are assigned almost total responsibility for children, most of us first know both love and disappointment, power and tenderness, in the person of a woman.
”
”
Adrienne Rich (Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution)
“
Sleep and I do not have a good relationship. We have never been good friends. I am constantly chasing sleep and then pushing it away. A good night's sleep is my white whale. Like Ahab, I am also a total drama queen about it. I love to talk about how little sleep I get. I brag about it, as if it is a true indication of how hard I work. But I truly suffer at night. Bedtime is fraught with fear and disappointment. When it is just me alone with my restless body and mind, I feel like the whole world is asleep and gone. It's very lonely. I am tired of being tired and talking about how tired I am.
”
”
Amy Poehler (Yes Please)
“
Sometimes I think I am going mad. I live for days in the mystery and tears of things so that the commonest object, the most familiar face- even my own- become ghostly, unreal, enigmatic. I get into an attitude of almost total scepticism, nescience, solipsism, in a world of dumb, sphinx-like things that cannot explain themselves. The discovery of how I am situated- a sentient being on a globe in space overshadows me. I wish I were just nothing.
”
”
W.N.P. Barbellion (The Journal of a Disappointed Man)
“
The whole thing where a boy who is not unattractive or unintelligent or seemingly in any way unacceptable stares at me and points out incorrect uses of literality and compares me to actresses and asks me to watch a movie at his house. But of course there is always a hamartia and yours is that oh, my God, even though you HAD FREAKING CANCER you give money to a company in exchange for the chance to acquire YET MORE CANCER. Oh, my God. Let me just assure you that not being able to breathe? SUCKS. Totally disappointing. Totally.
”
”
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
“
I shook my head. 'I did not contribute to the sex trade, no. I know you're disappointed; I'm sorry.'
Linn huffed through a smile. 'You totally did Thailand wrong. Go back.'
”
”
Cary Attwell (The Other Guy)
“
Of course, should the victim happen to be as inordinately strong as a lion or a tiger, the teaser will quickly find himself involved in the yet more total disappointment of being ripped to shreds.
”
”
Natsume Sōseki (I Am A Cat (Tuttle Classics))
“
More and more, when something terrible happens, we declare, “That’s life!” — as though disappointment and heartache declare the sum total of this existence. We miss the roses and see only the thorns. We take for granted the warmth of the sun and get depressed by the frequency of the rain or the snow. We ignore the sounds of life in a nursery because we are preoccupied with the sounds of sirens responding to an emergency. We forget the marvel of a marriage that has endured the test of time because we feel discouraged by the heartaches of loved ones whose marriages didn’t make it to the end.
”
”
Ravi Zacharias (The Grand Weaver: How God Shapes Us Through the Events of Our Lives)
“
I don’t believe God allows surrendered hearts to continue to long for things He will not ultimately grant in one way or another. Our disappointment with God is often the result of our small thinking.
”
”
Beth Moore (Breaking Free: Discover the Victory of Total Surrender)
“
I don’t go to the theatre at all. I hate the theatre. I really do, I can’t stand it. I think it’s totally disappointing for the most part. It’s just always embarrassing, I find. But every once in a while, something real is taking place.
”
”
Sam Shepard
“
It is a mistake to think of the expatriate as someone who abdicates, who withdraws and humbles himself, resigned to his miseries, his outcast state. On a closer look, he turns out to be ambitious, aggressive in his disappointments, his very acrimony qualified by his belligerence. The more we are dispossessed, the more intense our appetites and illusions become. I even discern some relation between misfortune and megalomania. The man who has lost everything preserves as a last resort the hope of glory, or of literary scandal. He consents to abandon everything, except his name. [ . . . ]
Let us say a man writes a novel which makes him, overnight, a celebrity. In it he recounts his sufferings. His compatriots in exile envy him: they too have suffered, perhaps more. And the man without a country becomes—or aspires to become—a novelist. The consequence: an accumulation of confusions, an inflation of horrors, of frissons that date. One cannot keep renewing Hell, whose very characteristic is monotony, or the face of exile either. Nothing in literature exasperates a reader so much as The Terrible; in life, it too is tainted with the obvious to rouse our interest. But our author persists; for the time being he buries his novel in a drawer and awaits his hour. The illusion of surprise, of a renown which eludes his grasp but on which he reckons, sustains him; he lives on unreality. Such, however, is the power of this illusion that if, for instance, he works in some factory, it is with the notion of being freed from it one day or another by a fame as sudden as it is inconceivable.
*
Equally tragic is the case of the poet. Walled up in his own language, he writes for his friends—for ten, for twenty persons at the most. His longing to be read is no less imperious than that of the impoverished novelist. At least he has the advantage over the latter of being able to get his verses published in the little émigré reviews which appear at the cost of almost indecent sacrifices and renunciations. Let us say such a man becomes—transforms himself—into an editor of such a review; to keep his publication alive he risks hunger, abstains from women, buries himself in a windowless room, imposes privations which confound and appall. Tuberculosis and masturbation, that is his fate.
No matter how scanty the number of émigrés, they form groups, not to protect their interests but to get up subscriptions, to bleed each other white in order to publish their regrets, their cries, their echoless appeals. One cannot conceive of a more heart rending form of the gratuitous.
That they are as good poets as they are bad prose writers is to be accounted for readily enough. Consider the literary production of any "minor" nation which has not been so childish as to make up a past for itself: the abundance of poetry is its most striking characteristic. Prose requires, for its development, a certain rigor, a differentiated social status, and a tradition: it is deliberate, constructed; poetry wells up: it is direct or else totally fabricated; the prerogative of cave men or aesthetes, it flourishes only on the near or far side of civilization, never at the center. Whereas prose demands a premeditated genius and a crystallized language, poetry is perfectly compatible with a barbarous genius and a formless language. To create a literature is to create a prose.
”
”
Emil M. Cioran (The Temptation to Exist)
“
Are you a stripper?" I ask. "Because you're wearing way too much clothing for a stripper." "And you're not wearing enough," she says, her voice icy. "Well, it would be a shame to hide my best feature," I say, giving her my cocky grin. Women totally dig the grin. It gets me into – and out of – so much trouble. But this girl doesn't. She wrinkles her nose and looks at me like she just tasted something bad. "I'm sorry," she says. "About what?" "I'm sorry that's your best feature," she says, nodding pointedly downward at my cock. "How disappointing.
”
”
Sabrina Paige (Tackled)
“
Our most fundamental spiritual experiences consist on experiences of risk, fear and chances that make us jump from a cliff of emotional turmoil and into a chaos of excitement. It’s precisely the potential for disappointment, pain and total annihilation that make them so spiritual.
”
”
Robin Sacredfire
“
You're not very deep."
You say these cutting words thoughtfully, to yourself, almost as though you're surprised. They hit me somewhere below my ribs.
I think of the dictionary app on my phone that I have to use all the time when I'm reading stuff like The Master and Margarita or The Awakening. Or that one time when I missed sophomoric on a vocab quiz. And how I totally don't get why girls love Jane Austen. You're right: I'm not deep.
I find myself watching every word I say to you, wondering what they say about me. I look for disappointment in your eyes... I've been walking on eggshells for a week.
”
”
Heather Demetrios (Bad Romance)
“
Don’t try to trust; simply trust that you cannot trust right now or don’t know how. Don’t force gratitude; just be grateful that you aren’t grateful, love that the demand for gratitude is unnecessary. Love your inability to love fully, accept your non-acceptance, surrender to your absolute failure to surrender today. This is freedom, right where you are—the freedom to feel unfree, to taste life totally at the point of creation, to be exactly what you are, no matter what you are. Whatever arises, however unwanted, however disappointing, however ephemeral, say, “You are none other than life itself! I bow to you!
”
”
Jeff Foster (The Way of Rest: Finding The Courage to Hold Everything in Love)
“
Ah don’t really know, Tam, ah jist dinnae. It kinday makes things seem mair real tae us. Life’s boring and futile. We start aof wi high hopes, then we bottle it. We realise that we’re aw gaunnae die, withoot really findin oot the big answers. We develop aw they long-winded ideas which just interpret the reality ay oor lives in different weys, withoot really extending oor body ay worthwhile knowledge, about the big things, the real things. Basically, we live a short, disappointing life; and then we die. We fill up oor lives wi shite, things like careers and relationships tae delude oorsels that it isnae totally pointless. Smack’s an honest drug, because it strips away these delusions. Wi smack, whin ye feel good, ye feel immortal. Whin ye feel bad, it intensifies the shite that’s already thair. It’s the only really honest drug. It doesnae alter yer consciousness. It just gies ye a hit and a sense ay well-being. Eftir that, ye see the misery ay the world as it is, and ye cannae anaesthetise yirsel against it.
”
”
Irvine Welsh (Trainspotting (Mark Renton, #2))
“
mother of a young daughter and son herself, she says, “I understood from a young age that there was nothing I could do to satisfy my mother. She was totally self-absorbed, a narcissist, and she was never able to see me as anything but a projection of herself. And the anger, meanness, and disappointment which began inside of her simply radiated out toward me.
”
”
Peg Streep (Mean Mothers: Overcoming the Legacy of Hurt)
“
When this world totally fails, the ground for joy remains.
”
”
John Piper
“
Disappointing some people in life is inevitable, so make sure you’re not disappointing the ones who matter most,
”
”
Michael Hyatt (Free to Focus: A Total Productivity System to Achieve More by Doing Less)
“
author Martha Beck says of the ego, “Don’t leave home without it.” But do not let your ego totally run the show, or it will shut down the show. Your ego is a wonderful servant, but it’s a terrible master—because the only thing your ego ever wants is reward, reward, and more reward. And since there’s never enough reward to satisfy, your ego will always be disappointed. Left unmanaged, that kind of disappointment will rot you from the inside out. An unchecked ego is what the Buddhists call “a hungry ghost”—forever famished, eternally howling with need and greed. Some version of that hunger dwells within all of us. We all have that lunatic presence, living deep within our guts, that refuses to ever be satisfied with anything. I have it, you have it, we all have it. My saving grace is this, though: I know that I am not only an ego; I am also a soul. And I know that my soul doesn’t care a whit about reward or failure.
”
”
Elizabeth Gilbert (Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear)
“
Basically, we live a short, disappointing life; and then we die. We fill up oor lives wi shite, things like careers and relationships tae delude oorsels that it isnae aw totally pointless.
”
”
Irvine Welsh (Trainspotting (Mark Renton, #2))
“
Sorry, Conner, I can’t be your girlfriend,” Bree said. All the color drained from Conner’s face, and he did his best not to look disappointed. “That’s-totally-fine-no-worries-I’m-super-okay-with-staying-friends,” he said without pausing between words. “It’s not that I don’t want to,” Bree said. “I just know that as soon as I get home I’m going to be grounded for months. But once I’m free, I’d love to be your girlfriend.
”
”
Chris Colfer (Worlds Collide (The Land of Stories #6))
“
Then Augustus Waters reached into a pocket and pulled out, of all things, a pack of cigarettes. He flipped it open and put a cigarette between his lips. “Are you serious?” I asked. “You think that’s cool? Oh, my God, you just ruined the whole thing.” “Which whole thing?” he asked, turning to me. The cigarette dangled unlit from the unsmiling corner of his mouth. “The whole thing where a boy who is not unattractive or unintelligent or seemingly in any way unacceptable stares at me and points out incorrect uses of literality and compares me to actresses and asks me to watch a movie at his house. But of course there is always a hamartia and yours is that oh, my God, even though you HAD FREAKING CANCER you give money to a company in exchange for the chance to acquire YET MORE CANCER. Oh, my God. Let me just assure you that not being able to breathe? SUCKS. Totally disappointing. Totally.
”
”
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
“
It is, often, in the utter despair of humanness that we become willing to consider deeply spiritual answers. Although the door and the guide will be different for people, once the door is open, we are all in the same territory. Spiritual truth irretrievably alters our way of seeing reality and our ability to heal both ourselves and other people. Most spiritual awakening is due to a total disappointment in the human condition to provide any sense of substantial happiness. It is a blessing in disguise. Our greatest need is for the love and assurance that spiritual understanding brings. If it were not for the common experience of human lovelessness and limitation then we would not be driven to seek a higher love.
”
”
Donna Goddard (The Love of Being Loving)
“
Just so you know,” she says, “I’m the kind of twisted bitch who thought the Beast was a five-alarm fire . . . and the prince he becomes at the end when the spell is broken was a total disappointment.” “Thanks for ruining the ending for me, dude.
”
”
Lauren Rowe (Falling Into Love with You (The Hate-Love Duet #2))
“
Take the word saved as it is used in the evangelical vernacular. It’s true, you are saved by grace, by love, by light … but it’s only half the story. The truth is that there is so much that you’re not saved from. You are not saved from pain or loneliness or the bite of reality sharp against your skin. You’re not saved from rained-out picnics, from disappointment, from the unkindness of strangers. You’re not saved from lost jobs or lost loves or cancer or car accidents. Saved. But they say, It’s not religion, it’s a relationship. They say, God loves the sinner but hates the sin. They say, Let go and let God. And they’re worse than cliché, really. They’re thought-terminating cliché, a term that psychologist, Robert Lifton, coined in his book Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism. In this type of cliché, “the most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed.
”
”
Addie Zierman (When We Were on Fire: A Memoir of Consuming Faith, Tangled Love, and Starting Over)
“
Our joy of living does not depend on powerful experiences or peaks of pleasure, and it also shouldn't diminish when pain and disappointment come in the form of external experiences. The joy of living is a non-causal state of an ever creative and total spirit.
”
”
Shai Tubali - "The Seven Wisdoms of Life – a Journey Into The Chakras"
“
Now, the last one was that the demon king can’t stand either in heaven or on the earth. Urga set the demon on his lap, which means I guess I’ll have to…sit on your back.”
Awkward. Even though Ren was a big tiger and it would be like riding a small pony, I was still conscious that he was a man, and I didn’t feel right about turning him into a pack animal. I took off my backpack and set it down wondering what I could do to make this a bit less embarrassing. Mustering the courage to sit on his back, I’d just decided that it wouldn’t be too bad if I sat sidesaddle, when my feet flew out from under me.
Ren had changed into a man and swept me up into his arms. I wiggled for a minute, protesting, but he just gave me a look-the don’t-even-bother-coming-up-with-an-argument look. I shut my mouth. He leaned over to pick up the backpack, let it dangle from his fingers, and then said, “What’s next?”
“I don’t know. That’s all that Mr. Kadam told me.”
He shifted me in his arms, walked over to stand in the doorway again, then peered up at the statue. He murmured, “I don’t see any changes.”
He held me securely while looking at the statue and, I have to admit, I totally stopped caring about what we were doing. The scratches on my arm that had been throbbing a moment ago didn’t bother me at all. I let myself enjoy the feeling of being cuddled up close to his muscular chest. What girl didn’t want to be swept up in the arms of a drop-dead gorgeous man? I allowed my gaze to drift up to his beautiful face. The thought occurred to me that if I were to carve a stone god, I’d pick Ren as my subject. This Urga half-lion and half-man guy had nothing on Ren.
Eventually, he realized I was watching him, and said, “Hello? Kells? Breaking a curse here, remember?”
I just smiled back stupidly. He quirked an eyebrow at me.
“What were you thinking about just now?”
“Nothing important.”
He grinned. “May I remind you that you are in prime tickling position, and there’s no escape. Tell me.”
Gads. His smile was brilliant, even in the fog. I laughed nervously.
“If you tickle me, I’ll protest and struggle violently, which will cause you to drop me and ruin everything that we are trying to accomplish.”
He grunted, leaned close to my ear, and then whispered, “That sounds like an interesting challenge, rajkumari. Perhaps we shall experiment with it later. And just for the record, Kelsey, I wouldn’t drop you.”
The way he said my name made goose bumps rise all over my arms. When I looked down to quickly rub them, I noticed the flashlight had been turned off. I switched it on, but the statue remained the same. Giving up, I suggested, “Nothing’s happening. Maybe we need to wait till dawn.”
He laughed throatily while nuzzling my ear and declared softly, “I’d say that something is happening, but not the something that will open the doorway.”
He trailed soft, slow kisses from my ear down my neck. I sighed faintly and arched my neck to give him better access. With a last kiss, he groaned and reluctantly raised his head.
Disappointed that he’d stopped, I asked, “What does rajkumari mean?”
He laughed quietly, carefully set me down, and said, “It means princess.
”
”
Colleen Houck (Tiger's Curse (The Tiger Saga, #1))
“
Look, he’s not totally wrong.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned after twelve years at the gallery, it’s that sometimes art isn’t a matter of skill or technique. Sometimes it is about experience. So maybe you’ve got some more living to do. But that’s the case with everyone, whether you’ve grown up in a big city or a small town, whether you’re going to school in Paris or not.”
“I know that. It’s just…”
“It’s hard. It is. But the hurt and rejection and disappointment? It’ll help you grow as an artist. And it’ll all be worth it when you finally get it right.
”
”
Jennifer E. Smith (Field Notes on Love)
“
is a prince even human? If you add him up, does the total make a man? He is made of shards and broken fragments of the past, of prophecies and of the dreams of his ancestral line. The tides of history break inside him, their current threatens to carry him away. His blood is not his own, but ancient blood. His dreams are not his own, but the dreams of all England: the dark forest, deserted heath; the stir in the leaves, the dragon’s footprint; the hand breaking the waters of a lake. His forefathers interrupt his sleep to castigate, to warn, to shake their heads in mute disappointment. At a prince’s coronation, God transfigures him, his human faults falling away, his human capacities increased; but that burst of light has to last him. That instant’s transfusion of grace must sustain him for thirty years, forty years, for the rest of his mortal life.
”
”
Hilary Mantel (The Mirror & the Light (Thomas Cromwell, #3))
“
I know that every difficulty we face in life, even those that come from our own negligence or even transgression, can be turned by the Lord into growth experiences, a virtual ladder upward. I certainly do not recommend transgression as a path to growth. It is painful, difficult, and so totally unnecessary. It is far wiser and so much easier to move forward in righteousness. But through proper repentance, faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and obedience to His commandments, even the disappointment that comes from transgression can be converted into a return to happiness.
”
”
Richard G. Scott
“
I munched a carrot, then broke off a piece of bread and teamed it with another bite of salmon. Every single bit could be a different taste sensation.
It was like men. Each was unique. Most had some great qualities, the majority had a few disappointing ones, and a few were total losers.
”
”
Susan Fox (His, Unexpectedly (Wild Ride To Love, #3))
“
My image of others has gone through a thousand transformations, from idealization to total rejection, to re-creation and rescue of a totally new self. As I changed, my perspective changed. The theme of images. How one must struggle against this creation and invention of others, listen to them attentively, let them state their own case, weigh and balance the impressions. Otherwise this invention takes over, or projection. We are like sculptors, constantly carving out of others the image we long for, need, love or desire. Often against reality, against their benefit, and always, in the end, a disappointment because it does not fit them.
”
”
Anaïs Nin (The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 6: 1955-1966)
“
Let’s be honest: we prefer distraction. The more distracted we are, the less present we are to our souls’ various hurts, needs, disappointments, boredom, and fears. It’s a short-term relief with long-term consequences. What blows my mind is how totally normal this has become; it’s the new socially acceptable addiction. I’ve got a friend who decided to break with his; he now turns his phone off over the weekend. I text him, and he doesn’t reply until Sunday night or Monday morning. I’m embarrassed by my irritation: C’mon, man—you know the protocol. Everybody agrees to be totally available, anywhere, anytime, 24/7. It’s what we do. What does it say that you look like some sort of nut job when you turn your phone off?
”
”
John Eldredge (Get Your Life Back: Everyday Practices for a World Gone Mad)
“
Are you serious?” I asked. “You think that’s cool? Oh, my God, you just ruined the whole thing.”
“Which whole thing?” he asked, turning to me. The cigarette dangled unlit from the unsmiling corner of his mouth.
“The whole thing where a boy who is not unattractive or unintelligent or seemingly in any way unacceptable stares at me and points out incorrect uses of literality and compares me to actresses and asks me to watch a movie at his house. But of course there is always a hamartia and yours is that oh, my God, even though you HAD FREAKING CANCER you give money to a company in exchange for the chance to acquire YET MORE CANCER. Oh, my God. Let me just assure you that not being able to breathe? Sucks. Totally disappointing. Totally.
”
”
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
“
• “Are you serious?” I asked. “You think that’s cool? Oh, my God, you just ruined the whole thing.”
“Which whole thing?” he asked, turning to me. The cigarette dangled unlit from the unsmiling corner of his mouth.
“The whole thing where a boy who is not unattractive or unintelligent or seemingly in any way unacceptable stares at me and points out incorrect uses of literality and compares me to actresses and asks me to watch a movie at his house. But of course there is always a hamartia and yours is that oh, my God, even though you HAD FREAKING CANCER you give money to a company in exchange for the chance to acquire YET MORE CANCER. Oh, my God. Let me just assure you that not being able to breathe? Sucks. Totally disappointing. Totally.
”
”
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
“
He had no time or tolerance for social media. Seamus was one of that rare breed who had never had a Facebook page, had no real concept about what purpose Twitter served and had for a long time thought Instagram was a brand of disposable camera. He was convinced that dating apps were a total waste of time and would always lead to, at best, disappointment, and, at worst, utter humiliation
”
”
S.A. Dunphy (Her Child’s Cry (Boyle & Keneally #3))
“
Nobody tells people who are beginners. I really wish someone had told this to me. Is that [if you are watching this video, you are somebody who wants o make videos right?] all of us who do creative work, we get into it. we get into it because we have good taste. you know what I mean? like you want to make TV, because you love TV. there is stuff you just like, love. ok so you got really good taste. you get into this thing … that i don’t even know how to describe it, but there is a gap. for the first couple of years you are making stuff, what you are making isn’t so good... ok, its not that great. it's really not that great. its trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but not quite that good. but your taste, the thing get you into the game, your taste is still killer. your taste is good enough that you can tell what you are making is a kind of disappointment to you, you know what i mean? you can tell it is still sort of crappy. a lot of people never get past that phase. a lot of people at that point, they quit. the thing i would just like say to you with all my heart is that most everybody I know, who does interesting creative work, they went through a phase of years where they had really good taste, they could tell what they were making wasn’t as good as they wanted it to be. they knew it felt short. [some of us can admit that to ourselves, some of us less able to admit that to ourselves] we knew like, it didn’t have that special thing that we wanted it to have. [...] everybody goes through that. for you to go through it, if you are going through right now, just getting out of that phase, if you are just starting out and entering into that phase, you gotta know it is totally normal and the most important possible thing you can do is do a lot of work. do a huge volume of work. put yourself on a deadline so that every week or every month you know you’re gonna finish one story. you know what i mean? whatever its gonna be. you create the deadline. it is best if have somebody who is waiting work from you, expecting work from you. even if not somebody who pays you, but that you are in a situation where you have to turn out the work. because it is only by actually going through a volume of work that you are actually going to catch up and close that gap and the work you are making will be as good as your ambitions.
”
”
Ira Glass
“
You’re unhappy and you feel like a failure. PERFECT! Use that sad/angry/disappointed energy. Channel it into what you know, deep down in your heart, you love.
Spend the next six months in a state of total obsession. Get up two hours earlier than usual and write before you go to work. Come home and exercise (not optional, sorry), then write for another hour. Read or watch the kind of comedy you love before bed. Don’t waste all your time socializing. Do a little socializing on weekends, but focus. Focus! Save your money. Research part-time work you could do for your company; use your slackness as a way to sell a new position where your boss would get your best from you every hour that you’re there. Pitch it as a win-win. Or pitch working from home half the time to cure your blahs and jack up your productivity. Then overproduce at work, but fit all of your work into a part-time schedule, and fill your prime working hours with writing/comedy. Almost any capable human with a not-that-taxing job can pull this off if they put their mind to it. If you’re a manager, investigate other roles or sell your boss on the fact that you’re managing via e-mail most of the time anyway.
”
”
Heather Havrilesky (How to Be a Person in the World: Ask Polly's Guide Through the Paradoxes of Modern Life)
“
Just let me grab my thinking cap,” she told him, heading for her locker. The long floppy hat was required during midterms, designed to restrict Telepaths and preserve the integrity of the tests—not that anything could block Sophie’s enhanced abilities. But after the exams, the hats became present sacks, and everyone filled them with treats and trinkets and treasures. “I’ll need to inspect your presents before you open them,” Sandor warned as he helped Sophie lift her overstuffed hat. “That’s perfect,” Fitz said. “While he does that, you can open mine.” He pulled a small box from the pocket of his waist-length cape and handed it to Sophie. The opalescent wrapping paper had flecks of teal glitter dusted across it, and he’d tied it with a silky teal bow, making her wonder if he’d guessed her favorite color. She really hoped he couldn’t guess why. . . . “Hopefully I did better this year,” Fitz said. “Biana claimed the riddler was a total fail.” The riddle-writing pen he’d given her last time had been a disappointment, but . . . “I’m sure I’ll love it,” Sophie promised. “Besides. My gift is boring.” Sandor had declared an Atlantis shopping trip to be far too risky, so Sophie had spent the previous day baking her friends’ presents. She handed Fitz a round silver tin and he popped the lid off immediately. “Ripplefluffs?” he asked, smiling his first real smile in days. The silver-wrapped treats were what might happen if a brownie and a cupcake had a fudgey, buttery baby, with a candy surprise sunken into the center. Sophie’s adoptive mother, Edaline, had taught her the recipe
”
”
Shannon Messenger (Lodestar (Keeper of the Lost Cities, #5))
“
People see the cleverness of nature and suppose it's the cleverness of the animal itself but it was obvious to me that each and every segment of the animal isn't aware. How much I'd hate to live totally unaware of myself, I thought. What would be the point of living, of existing, if you weren't ever to know about it? I looked at the Fox Moth and pitied it, poor unconscious creature. But then, I supposed, at least it wouldn't be disappointed. It would never find out.
”
”
Poppy Adams
“
For each piece of malignant clutter, ask yourself: How did this get here? What power does this item have over me? Is this item helping me create the vision I have for the space? Is this item serving any purpose or helping me in some positive way? What feelings linked to this object have kept me from throwing it out? How would I feel if this item disappeared on its own right now? Could this item that’s a source of pain or disappointment to me become a wonderful addition to someone else’s life?
”
”
Peter Walsh (Lose the Clutter, Lose the Weight: The Six-Week Total-Life Slim Down)
“
But why write such rotten scripts? If what you say is so, everybody’s where they want to be, even beggars with sores on their shins and starving children and guys being tortured in jails?” She nodded, watching me. I said, “I can’t accept that.”
She waited a bit and then almost smiled. “Unacceptable?” She asked softly.
And that rang a bell. “Unacceptable … ‘to accept the unacceptable.’ You said that, in the seminar. But I can’t remember why you said it.”
“Yes you can,” she said, and waited. I drew a total blank this time, and I guess she knew it, because she gave me a nudge: “You say you don’t belong here. Is ‘here’—unacceptable?”
“Yes,” I said without hesitation. “Then,” she asked, “why did you write this script?” “You mean—the me out there?” She nodded. I thought about that, and then mumbled, “I put it down to—curiosity? That’s all. I mean, throwing yourself into imperfect places, into pain and disappointment and well, the unacceptable—it just doesn’t make sense.”
“It doesn’t?”
“It sure doesn’t … unless …” I felt my eyes get big. “Unless those, uh, entities want to do what you said—to learn to accept the unacceptable. Even if they have to create it. That doesn’t make sense.”
“It doesn’t? Suppose they can’t go on unless they learn that.”
“Go on? Go on where?” She shrugs. “Everything living has to go on. Seed to shrub, shrub to tree, egg to bird.”
“You mean—evolve. They have to learn to accept the unacceptable in order to evolve into—whatever’s next for them.” Surprisingly, she laughed. She said, “You keep on saying ‘they.
”
”
Theodore Sturgeon (The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon, Volume XIII: Case and the Dreamer)
“
your fellow human beings, you will find it hard to ignore the fact that very few people are happy, fulfilled, and leading purposeful lives. Most of them seem unable to cope with their problems and the circumstances of daily living. The majority, settling for the average, have resigned themselves to “just getting by.” Resignation to mediocrity has become a way of life. As a result, feelings of inadequacy cause people, quite humanly, to blame society, other people, circumstances, and surrounding conditions for their failures and disappointments. The idea that people and things control their lives is so thoroughly ingrained in their thinking that they normally will not respond to logical arguments that prove otherwise. William James, the eminent philosopher and psychologist, once observed that, “The greatest discovery of our age has been that we, by changing the inner aspects of our thinking, can change the outer aspects of our lives.” Wrapped up in this brief statement is the dynamic truth that we are not victims, but co-creators in the building of our lives and the
”
”
Robert Anthony (The Ultimate Secrets of Total Self-Confidence)
“
Life’s boring and futile. We start oaf wi high hopes, then we bottle it. We realise that we’re aw gaunnae die, withoot really findin oot the big answers. We develop aw they long-winded ideas which jist interpret the reality ay oor lives in different weys, withoot really extending oor body ay worthwhile knowledge, about the big things, the real things. Basically, we live a short, disappointing life; and then we die. We fill up oor lives wi shite, things like careers and relationships tae delude oorsels that it isnae aw totally pointless.
”
”
Irvine Welsh
“
First, it is necessary to understand that Black Power is a cry of disappointment. The Black Power slogan did not spring full grown from the head of some philosophical Zeus. It was born from the wounds of despair and disappointment. It is a cry of daily hurt and persistent pain. For centuries the Negro has been caught in the tentacles of white power. Many Negroes have given up faith in the white majority because “white power” with total control has left them empty-handed. So in reality the call for Black Power is a reaction to the failure of white power.
”
”
Martin Luther King Jr. (Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (King Legacy Book 2))
“
A new social type was being created by the apartment building, a cool, unemotional personality impervious to the psychological pressures of high-rise life, with minimal needs for privacy, who thrived like an advanced species of machine in the neutral atmosphere. This was the sort of resident who was content to do nothing but sit in his over-priced apartment, watch television with the sound turned down, and wait for his neighbours to make a mistake. Perhaps the recent incidents represented a last attempt by Wilder and the airline pilots to rebel against this unfolding logic? Sadly, they had little chance of success, precisely because their opponents were people who were content with their lives in the high-rise, who felt no particular objection to an impersonal steel and concrete landscape, no qualms about the invasion of their privacy by government agencies and data-processing organizations, and if anything welcomed these invisible intrusions, using them for their own purposes. These people were the first to master a new kind of late twentieth-century life. They thrived on the rapid turnover of acquaintances, the lack of involvement with others, and the total self-sufficiency of lives which, needing nothing, were never disappointed. Alternatively,
”
”
J.G. Ballard (High-Rise)
“
Lara Jean?”
“Yes?”
I peek around the door and it’s Lucas Krapf, wearing a thin V-neck sweater in brilliant blue and stone-colored khakis. “I’ve had this for a while now…I wans’t going to say anything, but then I thought maybe you’d want it back.” He puts a pink envelope in my hand. It’s my letter. So Lucas got his, too.
I drop it into my locker, make a yikes face at myself in the mirror, and then close the door. “So you’re probably wondering what this is all about,” I begin. And then I immediately falter. “It’s um, well, I wrote it a long time ago, and--”
“You don’t have to explain.”
“Really? You’re not curious?”
“No. It was just really nice to get a letter like that. I was actually pretty honored.”
I let out a relieved sigh and sag against my locker. Why is Lucas Krapf just so exactly right? He knows how to say the perfect thing.
And then Lucas gives me a half grimace, half smile. “But the thing is…” He lowers his voice. “You know I’m gay, right?”
“Oh, right, totally,” I say, trying not to sound disappointed. “No, I totally knew.” So Peter was right after all.
Lucas smiles. “You’re so cute,” he says, and I perk up again. Then he says, “Listen, can you not tell anybody, though? I mean, I’m out, but I’m not out out yet. You know what I mean?”
“Totally,” I say, super confident.
”
”
Jenny Han (To All the Boys I've Loved Before (To All the Boys I've Loved Before, #1))
“
They say everything happens for a reason. I can see the truth within that now. If it was not for all the mishaps, all the drama, all the heartache, all the stress that I have endured within the last six months I would not have the book that I have just published, nor the works for the next two books that I am currently working on. If I would have had my cake to eat it as well I may still be stuck where was six months ago. Or worst I may have a regular job. YIKES!!! But in retrospect everything that has happened to me in the last six month I now take with wisdom and a thankful heart for all of the turbulence within my life, as crazy as that sounds. Sometimes it is when you hit rock bottom that you can begin to reach for the stars and beyond. Today I shed the last of my painful tears and I released myself of the countless disappointments within my heart. I am now totally focused on my path. I have already reached many plateaus to meet my ultimate goal of being an accomplished author. I have tried it many times and now it is my time to shine. I have full knowledge of what to do and how to execute my master plan. Within time my words will ascend to the four corners of the universe and I will be on my way to travel the world and see all the great sites this beautiful planet has to offer.
”
”
Kenneth G. Ortiz
“
When I Find It Difficult to Trust Him Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. PROVERBS 3:5 HAS YOUR HUSBAND ever done something you feel has violated your trust in him? It doesn’t have to be anything as terrible as infidelity. It could be financial irresponsibility, or some kind of lie or deception, or hurtful treatment of you, or a confidence he shared with someone else. Whatever it is, you can find yourself wary—always suspecting he may do the same thing again. Yet there must be trust in your marriage relationship or you can never move forward. Living in such a close relationship without trust is not living at all. It’s remarkably sad to not be able to trust the one we are supposed to trust the most. If this has happened to you, it must be remedied, rectified, and resolved. Only God can truly restore the kind of trust you need to have. If your husband has done something to lose your trust, pray that God will lead him to complete repentance. Pray also that your heart will be willing to forgive him. This can be especially hard if he is a repeat offender, but it is not too hard for God to work forgiveness in your heart if you are willing. Ask God to set you free of all anger, frustration, disappointment, fear, and resentment. The most important thing to do after you have prayed for your husband’s repentance and your forgiveness is to pray you will trust God to work a miracle in your husband’s heart and yours as well. You have to first decide that You will trust God with all your heart and not lean on your own understanding. Then He will enable you to trust your husband again. My Prayer to God LORD, I confess any time when I have lost faith in my husband and don’t have full trust in him. I know that is not the way You want me to live. Help us both to have faith in each other and not live in constant distrust, bracing ourselves for what violation of trust is going to happen next. Where my distrust is unfounded, I pray You would help me to see that and enable me to step out in trust of him again. Where my distrust is legitimate because he has truly violated that trust, I ask for a miracle of restoration. First of all, I pray You would lead my husband to total repentance. Bring him to his knees before You in confession so he can be restored. I pray he will be sincerely apologetic to me as well. Second, help me to forgive him so completely that I can trust him fully without reservation again. And last, but most important of all, help me to trust You with all my heart to rectify this situation. Work powerfully in my husband to make him trustworthy, and do a work in me to make me trusting. Help me to not depend on my own reasoning, but rather to depend on Your ability to transform us both. In Jesus’ name I pray.
”
”
Stormie Omartian (The Power of a Praying Wife Devotional)
“
I award you 1 Frank point. Congratulations, you’re finally on the board.” “Frank point? I can’t believe you have a point system. Actually, scratch that: I totally can. How long have you been sitting on this?” “I just made it up about an hour ago. I didn’t feel like scoring you on a ten-point scale left me enough room to articulate how disappointed I am in you as a person.” “Okay, so I’ve got one point,” I said. I pointed a gun at Roly. “What about the big guy over there? What’s he at?” “Roly currently has nine thousand and fifty-six points.” I threw my hands up in the air. “Really? Roly has over nine thousand points? The bug that licks you against your will? That you met, like, hours ago?” “Sure, but Lars said that he literally ate a guy,” Frank said. “We both know you can’t compete with that. And yes, I deducted points for the licking. But at the same time, I’m also not surprised that I’m delicious, so I can’t exactly hold that against him.” I suppressed a gag. “Please don’t refer to yourself as being delicious ever again. What about Darling?” “Darling has 18,600,068 Frank points.” I sighed. “Yeah, that sounds about right.” “She is currently in second place. Truly rarefied air.” “Wait, second place? Who’s winning?” “Me. I thought that would have been obvious.” “It probably should have been. I’m almost afraid to ask, but how many points do you have?” “Ninety trillion and counting. But I’m Frank, so I’m kind of untouchable when it comes to Frank points.
”
”
Kyle Kirrin (Black Sand Baron (The Ripple System #2))
“
If you had asked Dan during that period whether he still loved his wife, he would have looked at you in total confusion and said, “Of course!” Although his wife was at that very moment wallowing in despair over his treatment of her, he perceived things to be fine between them. This isn’t because he is dense; it’s just that after a lifetime of having people mad at or disappointed with him, Dan weathers periods of anger and criticism by mostly ignoring them. And, because people with ADHD don’t receive and process information in a hierarchical way, Maria’s suffering enters his mind at about the same level as everything else he perceives—the lights on the radio clock, the dog barking, the computer, the worrisome project he has at work. “But wait!” you say. “It doesn’t matter—she’s still alone!” You would be right. Regardless of whether Dan was intentionally ignoring his wife or just distracted, actions speak louder than words. She becomes lonely and unhappy, and her needs must be addressed. But recognizing and then identifying the correct underlying problem is critical to finding the right solution. In marriage, just like in middle school math, if you pick the wrong problem to solve, you generally don’t end up with a satisfactory result. Furthermore, the hurt caused by the incorrect interpretation that he no longer loves her elicits a series of bad feelings and behaviors that compound the problem. This is the critical dynamic of symptom–response–response at work.
”
”
Melissa Orlov (The ADHD Effect on Marriage: Understand and Rebuild Your Relationship in Six Steps)
“
Maybe we should do some more homework.”
Homework had been their code word for making out before they’d realized that they hadn’t been fooling anyone.
But Jay was true to his word, especially his code word, and his lips settled over hers. Violet suddenly forgot that she was pretending to break free from his grip. Her frail resolve crumbled. She reached out, wrapping her arms around his neck, and pulled him closer to her.
Jay growled from deep in his throat. “Okay, homework it is.”
He pulled her against him, until they were lying face-to-face, stretched across the length of the couch. It wasn’t long before she was restless, her hands moving impatiently, exploring him. She shuddered when she felt his fingers slip beneath her shirt and brush over her bare skin. He stroked her belly and higher, the skin of his hands rough against her soft flesh. His thumb brushed the base of her rib cage, making her breath catch.
And then, like so many times before, he stopped, abruptly drawing back. He shifted only inches, but those inches felt like miles, and Violet felt the familiar surge of frustration.
He didn’t say a word; he didn’t have to. Violet understood perfectly. They’d gone too far. Again. But Violet was frustrated, and it was getting harder and harder to ignore her disappointment. She knew they couldn’t play this unsatisfying game forever.
“So you’re going to Seattle tomorrow?” He used the question to fill the rift between them, but his voice shook and Violet was glad he wasn’t totally unaffected.
She wasn’t as quick to pretend that everything was okay, especially when what she really wanted to do was to rip his shirt off and unbutton his jeans.
But they’d talked about this. And, time and time again, they’d decided that they needed to be sure. One hundred percent. Because once they crossed that line…
She and Jay had been best friends since the first grade, and up until last fall that’s all they’d ever been. Now that she was in love with him, she couldn’t imagine losing him because they made the wrong decision.
Or made it too soon.
She decided to let Jay have his small talk. For now.
“Yeah, Chelsea wants to go down to the waterfront and maybe do some shopping. It’s easier to be around her when it’s just the two of us. You know, when she’s not always…on.”
“You mean when she’s not picking on someone?”
“Exactly.
”
”
Kimberly Derting (Desires of the Dead (The Body Finder, #2))
“
I don't know how I let myself get so cynical," Charlie went on. "I've been wondering about that a lot. All I can figure is this: it hurts to be disappointed. It hurts so much, we'd rather never get our hopes up. And it's humiliating, too - right? How foolish are you to hope for the best? How pathetic is it to try to win after you've already lost? How naive must you be if you don't know that humanity is dark and vicious and totally irredeemable? But the argument Emma's been making this whole time - and I'm paraphrasing here - is this: If those are the only stories we tell about ourselves, then those are the only stories we have."
"....Humanity at its worst is an easy story to tell - but it's not the only story. Because the more we can imagine our better selves, the more we can become them...
”
”
Katherine Center (The Rom-Commers)
“
No relationship, however deep and intimate, can ever fully take our loneliness from us. And as long as we go through life expecting this, we are doomed to constant disappointment. We also do constant violence to our friendships and love relationships because we will demand from our friends something that they cannot give us, namely, total fulfillment. For example, a goodly number of persons get married precisely because of loneliness. They see their marriage as a panacea for loneliness. After marriage, they discover that they are still lonely, sometimes as lonely as before. Immediately, there is the temptation to think that there is something seriously amiss in the marriage, to foist blame on the marriage partner or on the self, to become disenchanted and seek out new relationships, hoping of course to someday discover the rainbow of total fulfillment.
”
”
Ronald Rolheiser (The Restless Heart: Finding Our Spiritual Home in Times of Loneliness)
“
To begin with, he was struck by the idea that the comprehension of divine truths is not given to man as an individual but to the totality of men united by love--the church. He was particularly pleased by the thought that it was much easier to believe in an existing, living church embracing all the beliefs of men and having God as its head and, therefore, holy and infallible, and from it to accept belief in God, the creation, the fall and redemption, than to begin with some distant mysterious God, the creation, etc. But on reading afterward the history of the church by a Catholic writer and another by a Greek Orthodox writer and seeing that the two churches, both in their essence infallible, each repudiated the other, he became disappointed also in Khomyakov's doctrine of the church, and that edifice, too, crumbled into dust as the philosophers' edifices had done.
”
”
Leo Tolstoy (Anna Karenina)
“
Life’s boring and futile. We start oaf wi high hopes, then we bottle it. We realise that we’re aw gaunnae die, withoot really findin oot the big answers. We develop aw they long-winded ideas which jist interpret the reality ay oor lives in different weys, withoot really extending oor body ay worthwhile knowledge, about the big things, the real things. Basically, we live a short, disappointing life; and then we die. We fill up oor lives wi shite, things like careers and relationships tae delude oorsels that it isnae aw totally pointless. Smack’s an honest drug, because it strips away these delusions. Wi smack, whin ye feel good, ye feel immortal. Whin ye feel bad, it intensifies the shite that’s already thair. It’s the only really honest drug. It doesnae alter yir consciousness. It just gies ye a hit and a sense ay well-being. Eftir that, ye see the misery ay the world as it is, and ye cannae anaesthetise yirsel against it.
”
”
Irvine Welsh (Trainspotting)
“
You think of the prince as living on an exalted plane, finer and higher than other men. But perhaps Gregory has a point: is a prince even human? If you add him up, does the total make a man? He is made of shards and broken fragments of the past, of prophecies and of the dreams of his ancestral line. The tides of history break inside him, their current threatens to carry him away. His blood is not his own, but ancient blood. His dreams are not his own, but the dreams of all England: the dark forest, deserted heath; the stir in the leaves, the dragon’s footprint; the hand breaking the waters of a lake. His forefathers interrupt his sleep to castigate, to warn, to shake their heads in mute disappointment. At a prince’s coronation, God transfigures him, his human faults falling away, his human capacities increased; but that burst of light has to last him. That instant’s transfusion of grace must sustain him for thirty years, forty years, for the rest of his mortal life.
”
”
Hilary Mantel (The Mirror & the Light (Thomas Cromwell, #3))
“
21. Mr. Koenig reports that Ms. Griffin commenced approximately five minutes of hysterically expressing disappointment at her son’s choice of friends. 22. Mr. Koenig reports that the subdued response on the part of Kyle Griffin and his companions indicated that “they were totally wasted.” 23. Mr. Koenig reports that Ms. Griffin suddenly lunged at a girl with a teddy bear safety-pinned to the back of the her jacket. NARRATIVE CONTINUATION BY OFFICER: Upon arrival, I identified myself as Seattle PD. I attempted to pull Ms. Griffin off the teddy bear, which appeared to be causing her acute distress. I informed Ms. Griffin that if she did not lower her voice and step into the hallway with me, I would have to put her in handcuffs. Ms. Griffin started screaming at me with profanity, “I’m a model citizen. These druggies are the ones breaking the law and corrupting my son.” I grabbed hold of her left arm. Ms. Griffin screamed profanities at me while I placed her in handcuffs.
”
”
Maria Semple (Where'd You Go, Bernadette)
“
The units spearheaded the operations of mass arrests and the systematic abuse and torture of those arrested. It is very disappointing that the world continued to remain silent at that point, because that particular activity was investigated by a few American congressmen, a rarity in the history of the occupation. Paul Findley reported in 1991 that human rights groups had published ‘detailed credible reports of torture, abuse and mistreatment of Palestinian detainees in prisons and detention centres’.29 Although this was totally ignored by Western governments, it did generate for the first time a far wider response from what one might call Western civil societies. A more genuine and widespread movement of solidarity emerged – to this day still unable to impact the policies of the governments and hence the reality on the ground.
Needless to say, this kind of treatment reported by Findley was not unique to 1991. The people arrested during the punitive years were added to the thousands who had already been in jail since June 1967
”
”
Ilan Pappé (The Biggest Prison on Earth: A History of the Occupied Territories)
“
Did you mean to hang up on me, Gunnar? You haven’t spoken for a while,” I said neutrally. “Fuck you and the horse you rode in on,” he growled. “I take it you found the owner?” I asked. I heard him dismiss the agent before speaking to me. “The report declares that a certain Gunnar Randulf and Nathin Temple have owned this 2012 Land Rover Defender Hard Top for the last three months. Funny, because I don’t remember ever using my home as collateral for a…” I heard a few more clicks. “$80,000 SUV.” “I remember you having it, but you sent it off to Vilnar for customization, which added on close to $100,000, if I remember correctly.” “Hmmm… It’s not as expensive as the Aston Martin,” he said disappointedly. “You destroyed the Aston Martin in less than 12 hours. This thing has bulletproof glass, and all sorts of other additions that would make it practically impossible to total. Unless you wanted to play chicken with an armored truck heading out of Fort Knox. That might be a different story. Then again, with as much as was spent on this guy, the armored truck might just die in shame.
”
”
Shayne Silvers (Obsidian Son (The Temple Chronicles, #1))
“
Whatever men expect, they soon come to think they have a right to: the sense of disappointment can, with very little skill on our part, be turned into a sense of injury....To produce the best results from the patients fatigue, therefore, you must feed him with false hopes. Put into his mind plausible reasons for believing that the air-raid will not be repeated. Keep him comforting himself with the thought of how much he will enjoy his bed next night. Exaggurate the weariness by making him think it will soon be over; for men usually feel that strain could have been endured no longer than at the very moment it was ending, or when they think it is ending. In this, as in the problem of cowardice, the thing to avoid is the total commitment. Whatever he says, let his inner resolution be not to bear whatever comes to him, but to bear it "for a reasonable period" - and let the reasonable period be shorter than the trial is likely to last. It need not be much shorter; in attacks on patience, chastity, and fortitude, the fun is to make the man yield when (had he but known it) relief was almost in sight.
”
”
C.S. Lewis (The Screwtape Letters)
“
If you leave without me, I’ll just follow you. You can’t stop me, Cassie. How are you going to stop me?”
I shrug helplessly, fighting back tears. “Shoot you, I guess.”
“Like you shot the Crucifix Soldier?”
The words hit me like a bullet between the shoulder blades. I whirl around and fling open the door. He flinches, but stands his ground.
“How do you know about him?” Of course, there’s only one way he could know. “You read my diary.”
“I didn’t think you were going to live.”
“Sorry to disappoint you.”
“I guess I wanted to know what happened—”
“You’re lucky I left the gun downstairs or I would shoot you right now. Do you know how creepy that makes me feel, knowing you read that? How much did you read?”
He lowers his eyes. A warm red blush spreads across his cheeks.
“You read all of it, didn’t you?” I’m totally embarrassed. I feel violated and ashamed. It’s ten times worse than when I first woke up in Val’s bed and realized he had seen me naked. That was just my body. This was my soul.
I punch him in the stomach. There’s no give at all; it’s like I hit a slab of concrete.
“I can’t believe you,” I shout. “You sat there—just sat there—while I lied about Ben Parish. You knew the truth and you just sat there and let me lie!
”
”
Rick Yancey (The 5th Wave (The 5th Wave, #1))
“
with ‘moccasin,’ ” he said. “Ah, there you are … ” said Leo, with a wary chuckle, before changing the subject. “It’s nice where you live,” he said. “Oh … yes …” said Nick, as if he couldn’t quite remember where it was. “I went by there the other day, on the bike. I nearly rang your bell.” “Mm—you, should have. I’ve had the place virtually to myself.” He felt sick at the thought of the missed chance. “Yeah? I saw this girl going in …” “Oh, that was probably only Catherine.” Leo nodded. “Catherine. She’s your sister, yeah?” “No, I don’t have a sister. She’s actually the sister of my friend Toby.” Nick smiled and stared: “It’s not my house.” “Oh …” said Leo. “Oh.” “God, I don’t come from that sort of background. No, I just live there. It belongs to Toby’s parents. I’ve just got a tiny little room up in the attic.” Nick was rather surprised to hear himself throwing his whole fantasy of belonging there out of the window. Leo looked a bit disappointed. He said, “Right … ” and shook his head slowly. “I mean they’re very good friends, they’re a sort of second family to me, but I probably won’t be there for long. It’s just to help me out, while I’m getting started at university.” “And I thought I’d got myself a nice little rich boy,” Leo said. And perhaps he meant it, Nick couldn’t be sure, they were total strangers
”
”
Alan Hollinghurst (The Line of Beauty)
“
I had been thinking earlier that if I had not enjoyed my first experience of La Berma it was because, as with my earlier encounters with Gilberte in the Champs-Élysées, I had approached it with too strong a desire. Between these two disappointments there was perhaps not only this resemblance, but another, deeper one. The impression made upon us by a person or a work of strong character (or its interpretation) is intrinsic to them. We have brought along with us the ideas of “beauty,” “breadth of style,” “pathos,” which we might just possibly think we recognize in the banality of a passable talent or face, but our critical mind is confronted in fact with the nagging presence of a form for which it possesses no intellectual equivalent, the unknown part of which it needs to extricate. It hears a high-pitched sound, an oddly questioning intonation. It asks: “Is that good? Is it admiration I am feeling? Is this what is meant by richness of color, nobility, power?” And what answers back is a high-pitched voice, an oddly questioning tone, the despotic impression, wholly material, caused by a person we do not know, in which no scope is left for “breadth of interpretation.” And for this reason, really fine works of art, if they are given genuine attention, are the ones that disappoint us most, because in the sum total of our ideas there is none that responds to an individual impression.
”
”
Marcel Proust (The Guermantes Way (In Search of Lost Time, #3))
“
Ultimately, it's as predictable as it is disappointing. All we need to concern ourselves about is other people's passions/ their core values. Get to the matter of this from the outset and nothing else in truth needs to be much considered or thereafter discussed regarding the nuts and bolts that inherently thus follow and will fall into place invariably surrounding their character and larger viewpoints. In a sense, it's a reverse consideration of understanding the macro big picture, in that everything can fall into place about another's wider ethos - albeit here from the root, regarding all other significant matters and hardwired thought patterns, whereby you can immediately assess a person's openness and also limitations from this immediate micro standpoint.
Fascinating also is how our blueprint /survival instinct instructs or continually bothers and reminds us where we may be wasting time and energy on all other vast aspects of life - with the grand exception of where it comes to our deepest passions and core values - as this must be expressed at all costs!! Always and every time, immediately and in any situation. Even if we know it is totally futile to speak and act our deepest truths, we must nonetheless imperatively still do so - or else we surely pay a far greater price, increasingly punishing, outwardly and certainly inwardly compared to any of the distress and risks involved in our doing so.
”
”
MuzWot
“
This reaction to the work was obviously a misunderstanding. It ignores the fact that the future Buddha was also of noble origins, that he was the son of a king and heir to the throne and had been raised with the expectation that one day he would inherit the crown. He had been taught martial arts and the art of government, and having reached the right age, he had married and had a son. All of these things would be more typical of the physical and mental formation of a future samurai than of a seminarian ready to take holy orders. A man like Julius Evola was particularly suitable to dispel such a misconception.
He did so on two fronts in his Doctrine: on the one hand, he did not cease to recall the origins of the Buddha, Prince Siddhartha, who was destined to the throne of Kapilavastu: on the other hand, he attempted to demonstrate that Buddhist asceticism is not a cowardly resignation before life's vicissitudes, but rather a struggle of a spiritual kind, which is not any less heroic than the struggle of a knight on the battlefield. As Buddha himself said (Mahavagga, 2.15): 'It is better to die fighting than to live as one vanquished.' This resolution is in accord with Evola's ideal of overcoming natural resistances in order to achieve the Awakening through meditation; it should he noted, however, that the warrior terminology is contained in the oldest writings of Buddhism, which are those that best reflect the living teaching of the master. Evola works tirelessly in his hook to erase the Western view of a languid and dull doctrine that in fact was originally regarded as aristocratic and reserved for real 'champions.'
After Schopenhauer, the unfounded idea arose in Western culture that Buddhism involved a renunciation of the world and the adoption of a passive attitude: 'Let things go their way; who cares anyway.' Since in this inferior world 'everything is evil,' the wise person is the one who, like Simeon the Stylite, withdraws, if not to the top of a pillar; at least to an isolated place of meditation. Moreover, the most widespread view of Buddhists is that of monks dressed in orange robes, begging for their food; people suppose that the only activity these monks are devoted to is reciting memorized texts, since they shun prayers; thus, their religion appears to an outsider as a form of atheism.
Evola successfully demonstrates that this view is profoundly distorted by a series of prejudices. Passivity? Inaction? On the contrary, Buddha never tired of exhorting his disciples to 'work toward victory'; he himself, at the end of his life, said with pride: katam karaniyam, 'done is what needed to he done!' Pessimism? It is true that Buddha, picking up a formula of Brahmanism, the religion in which he had been raised prior to his departure from Kapilavastu, affirmed that everything on earth is 'suffering.' But he also clarified for us that this is the case because we are always yearning to reap concrete benefits from our actions. For example, warriors risk their lives because they long for the pleasure of victory and for the spoils, and yet in the end they are always disappointed: the pillaging is never enough and what has been gained is quickly squandered. Also, the taste of victory soon fades away. But if one becomes aware of this state of affairs (this is one aspect of the Awakening), the pessimism is dispelled since reality is what it is, neither good nor bad in itself; reality is inscribed in Becoming, which cannot be interrupted. Thus, one must live and act with the awareness that the only thing that matters is each and every moment. Thus, duty (dhamma) is claimed to be the only valid reference point: 'Do your duty,' that is. 'let your every action he totally disinterested.
”
”
Jean Varenne (The Doctrine of Awakening: The Attainment of Self-Mastery According to the Earliest Buddhist Texts)
“
Rebellion's demand is unity; historical revolution's demand is
totality. The former starts from a negative supported by an affirmative, the latter from absolute negation
and is condemned to every aspect of slavery in order to fabricate an affirmative that is dismissed until the
end of time. One is creative, the other nihilist. The first is dedicated to creation so as to exist more and
more completely; the second is forced to produce results in order to negate more and more completely.
The historical revolution is always obliged to act in the hope, which is invariably disappointed, of one day
really existing. Even unanimous consent will not suffice to create its existence. "Obey," said Frederick the
Great to his subjects; but when he died, his words were: "I am tired of ruling slaves." To escape this
absurd destiny, the revolution is and will be condemned to renounce, not only its own principles, but
nihilism as well as purely historical values in order to rediscover the creative source of rebellion.
Revolution, in order to be creative, cannot do without either a moral or metaphysical rule to balance the
insanity of history. Undoubtedly, it has nothing but scorn for the formal and mystifying morality to be
found in bourgeois society. But its folly has been to extend this scorn to every moral demand. At the very
sources of its inspiration and in its most profound transports is to be found a rule that is not formal but
that nevertheless can serve as a guide. Rebellion, in fact, says— and will say more and more explicitly—
that revolution must try to act, not in order to come into existence at some future date in the eyes of a
world reduced to acquiescence, but in terms of the obscure existence that is already made manifest in the
act of insurrection. This rule is neither formal nor subject to history, it is what can be best described by
examining it in its pure state—in artistic creation. Before doing so, let us only note that to the "I rebel,
therefore we exist" and the "We are alone" of metaphysical rebellion, rebellion at grips with history adds
that instead of killing and dying in order to produce the being that we are not, we have to live and let live
in order to create what we are.
”
”
Albert Camus (The Rebel)
“
A man strolled up to their table, dressed in the garb of a waiter. His blond hair was long and shiny, showing that he obviously took great care of it, probably more so than a man had any right to care for their hair. Light blue eyes were hidden beneath several strands of shimmering gold, and his pearly white teeth gleamed as he smiled. Kevin nearly groaned. Great. This was just what they needed. A bishie. “Good evening ma’am, madam… sir.” For reasons beyond Kevin, he felt like this man only added him at the last second as an afterthought. “Would either of you care for a refill?” he asked the two ladies at the table, though his eyes focused on Lilian. Kevin felt his blood boil. “No thanks. I’m good here.” Lilian dismissed the man without even looking at him. Vindication rushed through his veins when Kevin saw the pretty boy’s right eye twitch. He apparently wasn’t used to women ignoring him. “I see.” Kevin had to give the man credit. He kept his annoyance in check well. “And what about you, madam?” he addressed Kotohime. “Is the wine to your satisfaction?” He gave her his best smile. “It’s all right, I suppose.” Kotohime took a sip of the wine that he spoke of, managing to hide her grimace. “Though I do wish that you were in possession of some sake instead.” Another twitch. “I apologize that we could not accommodate you.” He bowed. “I have, of course, already suggested that we begin working towards importing sake, however, these things do take time. It will probably be at least a year before we see anything done.” “A shame,” Kotohime said, “I know that Kiara was most looking forward to trying some.” At the mention of Kiara, the man gripped the water pitcher in his hand hard enough that Kevin thought the handle would shatter. Did this man have a grudge against Kiara? He didn’t think so, but then, who could say for sure. For all Kevin knew, this man could have asked Kiara out on a date, thinking his bishounen good looks would make her swoon over him—and had then been disappointed when she told him that wimpy maggots who sparkled didn’t do it for her. Kevin could totally see that happening. “Yes, well, I am terribly sorry to disappoint a woman of her… esteemed position, but I am not in charge of imports, I’m afraid. I merely wait tables.” “Indeed.” “If you’ll excuse me.” “Hold it.” The man turned around. Kevin almost smiled when the man aimed an evil glare at him. He raised his glass. “I’d like a refill of water, please.” A twitch. “Of course, sir.” The man refilled his glass. Kevin leaned in. “If I ever see you stripping my girlfriend with your eyes again, I will rip your arms off and shove them so far up your ass that you’ll need to have surgery done if you ever want to use the restroom again,” he said, his tone and manner nonchalant. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” the man said, his smile fixed. “I am merely doing my job as your host.” “Yes.” Kevin snorted. “I’m sure you are.
”
”
Brandon Varnell (A Fox's Vacation (American Kitsune, #5))
“
Borsk watched Anya scoot away from the shuttle stop, her legs moving as fast as the blades on his family's restaurant's salad chopper. She was surprisingly speedy for a short girl.
And surprisingly nice for a rich one. He wished he hadn't seen how respectful she was with Old Greeley, or how anxious she was to avoid special treatment, in both the greenhouse and out on the suspension bridge. He wished he hadn't seen the way her whole face lit up when anyone praised her art. He especially wished he hadn't seen her manage to seem disappointed, not relieved, when her dating pool color didn't match up with VJ Brown's.
He wished he could keep thinking of her as a stuck-up rich kid.
Then maybe he wouldn't feel so bad about totally ripping her off.
”
”
R.L.S. Hoff (Leaving Hope (Golden Terrace Colony #1))
“
Before I could give it too much thought, my attention snagged on Darius as he charged across the pitch like a stampeding rhino, tackling a member of the other team so hard that I heard something crack.
My breath caught in my throat as the Starlight player groaned on the ground while Darius snatched the ball from him and launched it across the pitch with the force of a torpedo.
A timer was counting down as the Starlight player failed to get up and Darius raced away from him without a backwards glance. I knew it was part of the game but it was insanely brutal. Although if I was being totally honest, watching all of them brawl like that and seeing the power they exuded even while they were losing, was totally hot too.
Darius’s muscles pumped fiercely as he sprinted away from me and I found myself staring at his legs which were splattered with mud and somehow looked even better because of it.
“Olef you’re Out!” Prestos yelled but the Starlight player still didn’t move. A pair of medics jogged onto the pitch and gave him a quick inspection.
“Broken back!” one of them yelled. “This is a long heal, call in a sub once his time out is up.”
My lips parted, I stared on in shock and I couldn’t quite believe what I’d heard.
“Did he just say that Darius broke that guy’s back?” I asked in disbelief.
“That’s the risk you take when you play,” Orion said darkly as he walked past me to regain his seat.
Darcy raised her eyebrows at me and I returned my gaze to the match just as Geraldine tore up the pitch with a rumble of writhing earth magic, knocking the Starlight Waterguard off of her feet and forcing her to drop the ball. A huge -5 flashed into place on the Starlight scoreboard and I leapt from my seat in excitement to applaud my friend.
“Go Geraldine!” I screamed and she flashed me a smile as she somehow managed to hear me.
Seth almost missed the ball as it was thrown to him next while he was distracted by scratching his head. He managed to wrangle it with a gust of air magic and started sprinting for the Pit as the timer above us ticked down to ten seconds.
The crowd started counting down, “Nine! Eight! Seven-”
Seth leapt into the air, propelling himself forward with his magic but the two air Elementals on the opposing team threw their own magic up to counter him.
“Three! Two-”
Seth gritted his teeth as he threw even more power into his propulsion but he was out of time.
The ball in his arms exploded in a blast of pure air which snapped his head back and sent him tumbling out of the sky. He hit the ground hard as the crowd oooohed in disappointment. For three whole seconds my heart didn’t beat at all as I stared at his prone body in the mud, wondering if he was dead.
Seth coughed, pushing himself into a sitting position just as Darius appeared to offer him a hand up. He shook his head to clear it and my eyebrows rose all the way into my hairline.
“This game is crazy,” Darcy breathed, her eyes wide with the thrill of it.
“I think I love it,” I agreed.
(tory)
”
”
Caroline Peckham (Ruthless Fae (Zodiac Academy, #2))
“
To make matters worse, the Starlight Captain, Quentin, got to them before we could and he offered them a teasing bow and a smile which made me want to knock his teeth out. Which I intended to do as soon as the second half started. The girls both laughed at something he said, smiling like he was the funniest fucking dipshit they’d ever met.
Roxy’s dark eyes moved to mine and I felt a lurch right in the centre of my gut for a half a second as it seemed almost like she was directing that smile at me. She’d made a dress out of an oversized Pitball shirt which skimmed her thighs and made her look like she'd just crawled out of my bed and pulled it on. The idea of that excited me way more than it should have but as she turned to whisper something to her sister, I saw the name printed across the back of her shirt wasn’t Acrux, it was Grus.
Of course it is. Stop thinking with your dick and get your head back in the game!
The Starlight Captain noticed us approaching and made himself scarce but I noted the lingering looks the twins gave him as he jogged away.
“Enjoying the game, sweetheart?” Caleb asked as we drew close enough to speak with them. I didn’t miss the way Roxy’s eyes trailed over him and the fact that there was considerably less hatred in her gaze when she looked his way than what she directed at me. I guessed he hadn’t half drowned her but it still pissed me off.
“We are,” she admitted with a wide smile. “Isn’t Geraldine amazing?”
“Yeah she’s the fucking cat's pyjamas,” I growled, wishing I could actually aim an insult the Cerberus’s way but that girl was single handedly saving our asses from total annihilation at this point so I couldn’t even pretend to do it. Without her we would have been royally screwed.
“Maybe she should be the Captain,” Gwendalina suggested with a taunting smile.
“Maybe she should,” Lance agreed loudly and I scowled at my friend. There was no way he’d offer me any loyalty when it came to Pitball. If I wasn’t the best then he’d say it to my face. I just wished he’d hold his opinion back in front of the Vegas.
“I just need a quick top up,” Caleb said and Roxy didn’t even fucking flinch at that. She sighed like him biting her was a goddamn inconvenience and pulled her long hair over her shoulder to offer him access to her neck.
“You’d better hurry up,” she added. “Only two minutes of half time left.”
I glanced around at the board to confirm what she’d said and by the time I looked back, Caleb had her in his arms and his teeth were in her throat.
She didn’t even have the decency to look horrified, her fingers twisting into his hair as he held her in place. His fucking hand was on her thigh, skimming the hem of that shirt and for a moment I actually wanted to rip his arm off.
I shook my head and turned away from them. This anger with Milton was spilling into everything I did today. I just couldn’t believe that he’d done such a thing to me. He was one of my most loyal followers, I’d never even sensed an inch of defiance in him let alone a betrayal of this magnitude and I couldn’t get it out of my head. If I couldn’t trust someone as devoted as him then who the hell could I trust?
My gaze skimmed over the box above the twins where my parents were sitting but I didn’t let it linger there. If I saw the look of frustration and disappointment I knew would be on my father’s face then I really would lose the plot.
Caleb released Roxy, leaning close to whisper something in her ear which made her fucking laugh while I ground my teeth. He spared a moment to heal the bite on her neck and we turned back to the pitch.
“I hope you do better this half!” Gwen called after us.
“You can’t do any worse, right?” Roxy added and I clenched my fists to stop myself from rounding on them.
(Darius POV)
”
”
Caroline Peckham (Ruthless Fae (Zodiac Academy, #2))
“
he said my immune profile really did not look much better after the river trip than before it. I was disappointed, but not totally surprised.
”
”
Florence Williams (Heartbreak: A Personal and Scientific Journey)
“
I bit my lip, debating how I could make tonight swing in my favor without sounding like a total slutty whore. But really, all I could focus on was getting impaled on his cock, which I was pretty sure wouldn't disappoint.
”
”
Tate James (7th Circle (Hades, #1))
“
Would being wrong create a better or a worse problem than my current problem, for both myself and others? This is the litmus test for determining whether we’ve got some pretty solid values going on, or we’re totally neurotic fuckwads taking our fucks out on everyone, including ourselves. The goal here is to look at which problem is better. Because after all, as Disappointment Panda said, life’s problems are endless.
”
”
Mark Manson (The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life)
“
Tell me about your boss.
Tell me about the job
you've been trying to quit for the past four years.
Tell me the morning is
just a townhouse burning to the ground
and the snooze button is a fire extinguisher.
Tell me the alarm clock
stole the keys to your smile,
drove it into the 7 AM
and the crash totaled your happiness.
Tell me.
Tell me how blessed are we to have tragedy
so small it can fit on the tips of our tongues.
When Evan lost his legs he was speechless.
When my cousin was assaulted
she didn't speak for 48 hours.
When my uncle was murdered
we had to send out a search party
to find my father's voice.
Most people have no idea
that tragedy and silence
often have the same address.
When your day is a museum of disappointments,
hanging from events that were outside of your control,
when you feel like your guardian
angel put in his two weeks notice two months ago
and just decided not to tell you,
when it seems like God
is just a babysistter that's always on the phone,
when you get punched in the esophagus
by a fistful of life.
Remember,
every year
two million people die of dehydration.
So it doesn't matter if
the glass is half full or half empty.
There's water in the cup.
Drink it and stop complaining.
Muscle is created by lifting things
that are designed to weigh us down.
When your shoulders are heavy
stand up straight and call it exercise.
Life is a gym membership
with a really complicated cancellation policy.
Remember,
you will survive,
things could be worse,
and we are never given
anything we can't handle.
When the whole world crumbles
you have to build a new one
out of all the pieces that are still here.
Remember,
you are still here.
The human heart beats
approximately 4,000 times per hour
and each pulse,
each throub,
each palpitation is a trophy,
engraved with the words
"You are still alive.
You are still alive.
So act like it.
”
”
Rudy Francisco
“
You’re familiar with the Feeling. It’s the regretful, upset, disappointed feeling you get after someone says or does something particularly shitty and you’re so taken off guard that your politeness instincts take over so you just ignore it or go with it or kind of shut down. And then later you imagine all the awesome things you could have said or done—all the perfect angles1 that you could have kicked that person in the shin—and then you’re awake at 3:00 A.M. totally mad at yourself for not having said/done/kicked them. The epitome of fucking politeness is learning how to act in the moment, instead of wishing you had later.
”
”
Karen Kilgariff (Stay Sexy & Don't Get Murdered: The Definitive How-To Guide)
“
I can’t be your king.”
As reasons go, it’s a good one. But I know there’s more behind it, and that’s what I want. An actual explanation.
“So, if I were just a simple girl, from a simple family, and not the princess…?”
Rhys’s hand finds my waist, and he nudges me back until our faces are as close as they were before. “I wouldn’t be able to walk away from you.” He lets out a self-deprecating sort of laugh. “What am I saying? I know better, and I still haven’t been able to walk away.”
My heart breaks a little. Why must life be so unfair? Why was Braeton taken from me; why was I sent in his place? I don’t want to be queen—I don’t want to choose our king.
I just want Rhys.
“Just for a few minutes, can’t we pretend there isn’t a title attached to my name?” I whisper, running my fingers through the damp hair at the nape of his neck. “Would that be so wrong?”
“It would be,” Rhys answers, his voice full of conviction.
Yet his hand tightens at my side, drawing me even closer, his physical response at odds with his answer.
His eyes are on mine, the intimacy of it almost too much to bear. “But I don’t have the will to stop you right now. If I am what you want, then I give myself to you. However, please know these fleeting minutes are all we have.”
I lick my lips, and his eyes follow the movement. My breaths are short and fast, and Rhys’s fingers press into my side in the most intoxicating way.
Making a decision I’ll likely regret, I slowly pull back. Disappointment flashes in Rhys’s green eyes when I put space between us, but I stand strong.
“If minutes are all you can give me, I won’t waste them now,” I tell him softly. “I’ll save them, hide them away. Outwardly, I will keep our relationship purely platonic, but sometime—when I need you the most—I’ll make my request.”
“Amalia…” Rhys says, sounding pained.
Unable to help myself, I lean in and press the briefest kiss to the very corner of his lips. For a moment, I wonder if the knight is going to lock his arms around me, hold me here, convince me to use those minutes now.
But he doesn’t.
“You can deduct a second from my total,” I tease softly when I pull back. I then climb out of the hot spring, dripping water along the stone.
”
”
Shari L. Tapscott (Forest of Firelight (The Riven Kingdoms, #1))
“
faith, is a good friend, for it destroys one of the heart’s most potent enemies and prepares the soul for the ministration of the Comforter. A sense of utter emptiness, of disappointment and darkness can (if we are alert and wise to what is going on) be the shadow in the valley of shadows that leads on to those fruitful fields that lie further in. If we misunderstand it and resist this visitation of God, we may miss entirely every benefit a kind heavenly Father has in mind for us. There must come a total of self-disvaluation, a death to all things without us and within us, or there can never be a real filling with the Holy Spirit.
”
”
A.W. Tozer (The Holy Spirit’s Presence: Accessing God's Power by Acknowledging Our Weakness)