Trip Together Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Trip Together. Here they are! All 100 of them:

Percy, let me go" she croaked. "You can't pull me up." His face was white with effort. She could see in his eyes that he knew it was hopeless. "Never," he said. He looked up at Nico, fifteen feet above. "The other side, Nico! We'll see you there. Understand?" Nico's eyes widened. "But-" "Lead them!" Percy shouted. "Promise me!" "I-I will." Below them, the voice laughed in the darkness. Sacrifices. Beautiful sacrifices to wake the goddess. Percy tightened his grip on Annabeth's wrist. His face was gaunt, scraped and bloody, his hair dusted with cobwebs, but when he locked eyes with her, she thought he had never looked more handsome. "We're staying together," he promised. "You're not getting away from me. Never again." Only then did she understand what would happen. A one-way trip. A very hard fall. "As long as we're together," she said. She heard Nico and Hazel still screaming for help. She saw sunlight far, far above- maybe the last sunlight she would ever see. Then Percy let go of his ledge, and together, holding hands, he and Annabeth fell into the endless darkness.
Rick Riordan (The Mark of Athena (The Heroes of Olympus, #3))
You made me happy and you made me laugh, and if I could do it all over again, I would not hesitate. Look at our life, at the trips we took, the adventures we had. As your father used to say, we shared the longest ride together, this thing called life, and mine has been filled with joy because of you.
Nicholas Sparks (The Longest Ride)
When rain and tears are making a trip together, emotions can be coming under pressure. But the fluid bond between the power of nature and the frailty of the soul may also smash the weight of the burden and create a liberating mental flow opening new insights. (“Rainman”)
Erik Pevernagie
On my fifth trip to France I limited myself to the words and phrases that people actually use. From the dog owners I learned "Lie down," "Shut up," and "Who shit on this carpet?" The couple across the road taught me to ask questions correctly, and the grocer taught me to count. Things began to come together, and I went from speaking like an evil baby to speaking like a hillbilly. "Is thems the thoughts of cows?" I'd ask the butcher, pointing to the calves' brains displayed in the front window. "I want me some lamb chop with handles on 'em.
David Sedaris (Me Talk Pretty One Day)
Because I wanted you." He turned from the window to face me. "More than I ever wanted anything in my life," he added softly. I continued staring at him, dumbstruck. Whatever I had been expecting, it wasn't this. Seeing my openmouthed expression, he continued lightly. "When I asked my da how ye knew which was the right woman, he told me when the time came, I'd have no doubt. And I didn't. When I woke in the dark under that tree on the road to Leoch, with you sitting on my chest, cursing me for bleeding to death, I said to myself, 'Jamie Fraser, for all ye canna see what she looks like, and for all she weighs as much as a good draft horse, this is the woman'" I started toward him, and he backed away, talking rapidly. "I said to myself, 'She's mended ye twice in as many hours, me lad; life amongst the MacKenzies being what it is, it might be as well to wed a woman as can stanch a wound and set broken bones.' And I said to myself, 'Jamie, lad, if her touch feels so bonny on your collarbone, imagine what it might feel like lower down...'" He dodged around a chair. "Of course, I thought it might ha' just been the effects of spending four months in a monastery, without benefit of female companionship, but then that ride through the dark together"--he paused to sigh theatrically, neatly evading my grab at his sleeve--"with that lovely broad arse wedged between my thighs"--he ducked a blow aimed at his left ear and sidestepped, getting a low table between us--"and that rock-solid head thumping me in the chest"--a small metal ornament bounced off his own head and went clanging to the floor--"I said to myself..." He was laughing so hard at this point that he had to gasp for breath between phrases. "Jamie...I said...for all she's a Sassenach bitch...with a tongue like an adder's ...with a bum like that...what does it matter if she's a f-face like a sh-sh-eep?" I tripped him neatly and landed on his stomach with both knees as he hit the floor with a crash that shook the house. "You mean to tell me that you married me out of love?" I demanded. He raised his eyebrows, struggling to draw in breath. "Have I not...just been...saying so?
Diana Gabaldon (Outlander (Outlander, #1))
It doesn't matter how sensitive you are or how damn smart and educated you are, if you're not both at the same time, if your heart and your brain aren't connected, aren't working together harmoniously, well, you're just hopping through life on one leg. You may think you're walking, you may think you're running a damn marathon, but you're only on a hop trip. The connections gotta be maintained.
Tom Robbins (Villa Incognito)
Every day God invites us on the same kind of adventure. It's not a trip where He sends us a rigid itinerary, He simply invites us. God asks what it is He's made us to love, what it is that captures our attention, what feeds that deep indescribable need of our souls to experience the richness of the world He made. And then, leaning over us, He whispers, "Let's go do that together.
Bob Goff
We’re staying together,” he promised. “You’re not getting away from me. Never again.” Only then did she understand what would happen. A one-way trip. A very hard fall. ”As long as we’re together,” she said. She heard Nico and Hazel still screaming for help. She saw sunlight far, far above- maybe the last sunlight she would ever see. Then Percy let go of his ledge, and together, holding hands, he and Annabeth fell into the endless darkness.
Rick Riordan (The Mark of Athena (The Heroes of Olympus, #3))
a) he's late. b) he's acting like an asshole and blowing me off. c)he's gotten into a horrible car crash that's left dead. The most likely answer is A. (We went to prom together, and the limo had to wait in his driveway for half an hour. At the end of the night, we got charged for an extra hour. He- read: his parents- paid for it, but still.)
Lauren Barnholdt (Two-Way Street)
I told him the story of the day I'd been mending pottery with one of the maids in the kitchen at Keramzin, waiting for him to return from one of the hunting trips that had taken him from home more and more frequently. I'd been fifteen, standing at the counter, vainly trying to glue together the jagged pieces of a blue cup. When I saw him crossing the fields, I ran to the doorway and waved. He caught sight of me and broke into a jog. I had crossed the yard to him slowly, watching him draw closer, baffled by the way my heart was skittering around in my chest. Then he'd picked me up and swung me in a circle, and I'd clung to him, breathing in his sweet, familiar smell, shocked by how much I'd missed him. Dimly, I'd been aware that I still had a shard of that blue cup in my hand, that it was digging into my palm, but I didn't want to let go. When he finally set me down and ambled off into the kitchen to find his lunch, I had stood there, my palm dripping in blood, my head still spinning, knowing that everything had changed. Ana Kuya had scolded me for getting blood on the clean kitchen floor. She'd bandaged my hand and told me it would heal. But I knew it would just go on hurting.
Leigh Bardugo (Shadow and Bone (The Shadow and Bone Trilogy, #1))
I am a sailor, you're my first mate We signed on together, we coupled our fate Hauled up our anchor, determined not to fail For the heart's treasure, together we set sail With no maps to guide us, we steered our own course Rode out the storms when the winds were gale force Sat out the doldrums in patience and hope Working together, we learned how to cope. Life is an ocean and love it a boat In troubled waters it keeps us afloat When we started the voyage there was just me and you Now gathered round us we have our own crew Together we're in this relationship We built it with care to last the whole trip Our true destination's not marked on any chart We're navigating the shores of the heart
John McDermott
Percy tightened his grip on Annabeth's wrist. His face was gaunt, scraped and bloody, his hair dusted with cobwebs, but when he locked eyes with her, she thought he had never looked more handsome. "We're staying together," he promised. "You're not getting away from me. Never again." Only then did she understand what would happen. A one-way trip. A very hard fall. "As long as we're together," she said. She heard Nico and Hazel still screaming for help. She saw the sunlight far,f ar above-maybe the last sunlight she would ever see. Then Percy let go of his tiny ledge, and together, holding hands, he and Annabeth fell into the endless darkness.
Rick Riordan (The Mark of Athena (The Heroes of Olympus, #3))
Dearest Fear: Creativity and I are about to go on a road trip together. I understand you’ll be joining us, because you always do. I acknowledge that you believe you have an important job to do in my life, and that you take your job seriously. Apparently your job is to induce complete panic whenever I’m about to do anything interesting—and, may I say, you are superb at your job. So by all means, keep doing your job, if you feel you must. But I will also be doing my job on this road trip, which is to work hard and stay focused. And Creativity will be doing its job, which is to remain stimulating and inspiring. There’s plenty of room in this vehicle for all of us, so make yourself at home, but understand this: Creativity and I are the only
Elizabeth Gilbert (Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear)
Congratulations," I tell her with a slight bow. "I hope you and your power trip will be very happy together. Now, if you'll excuse me, it's time for me to go.
Ally Carter (All Fall Down (Embassy Row, #1))
Felt my heartbeat falter, hesitate, then stumble awkwardly forward, tripping on the next beat, then the next, faster and faster until each one tumbled into the other like the drumroll of dominoes crashing together. Funny how time stands still when death is imminent.
Darynda Jones (First Grave on the Right (Charley Davidson, #1))
The concept of time, as it’s commonly understood by normal people with normal jobs and normal goddamn lives, doesn’t exist on the road. The nights spread out like the dark, godforsaken highways that distinguish them, and the days run together like Thanksgiving dinner smothered in gravy. You never really know where you are or what time it is, and the outside world starts to fade away. It’s cool.
Tiffanie DeBartolo (How to Kill a Rock Star)
His gaze burned into mine, like he could see past my eyes into parts of me no one had ever seen, and I knew I was seeing the same in him. No one else had ever seen him so vulnerable before, like if I pushed him away, he might crumble into pieces that could never be put together again. Yet there was strength, too. He was strong beneath that fragile need, and I knew that I could never fall with him next to me. If I tripped, he would catch me. If I lost my balance, he would find it.
Rachel Vincent (Before I Wake (Soul Screamers, #6))
Once, I asked my mom why stars shine. She said they were night-lights, so the angels could find their way around in Heaven. But when I asked my dad, he started talking about gas, and somehow I put it all together and figured that the food God served caused multiple trips to the bathroom in the middle of the night.
Jodi Picoult (My Sister’s Keeper)
Leo remembered their trip together through the House of Hades. Hazel had led him through that creepy maze of illusions. She’d made the sorceress Pasiphaë disappear through an imaginary hole in the floor. She’d battled the giant Clytius while Leo choked in the giant’s cloud of darkness. She’d cut the chains binding the Doors of Death. Meanwhile Leo had done...well, pretty much nothing.
Rick Riordan (The Blood of Olympus (The Heroes of Olympus, #5))
In the tapestry of childhood, what stands out is not the splashy, blow-out trips to Disneyland but the common threads that run throughout and repeat: the family dinners, nature walks, reading together at bedtime, Saturday morning pancakes.
Kim John Payne
Your job then, should you choose to accept it, is to keep searching for the metaphors, rituals and teachers that will help you move ever closer to divinity. The Yogic scriptures say that God responds to the sacred prayers and efforts of human beings in any way whatsoever that mortals choose to worship—just so long as those prayers are sincere. I think you have every right to cherry-pick when it comes to moving your spirit and finding peace in God. I think you are free to search for any metaphor whatsoever which will take you across the worldly divide whenever you need to be transported or comforted. It's nothing to be embarrassed about. It's the history of mankind's search for holiness. If humanity never evolved in its exploration of the divine, a lot of us would still be worshipping golden Egyptian statues of cats. And this evolution of religious thinking does involve a fair bit of cherry-picking. You take whatever works from wherever you can find it, and you keep moving toward the light. The Hopi Indians thought that the world's religions each contained one spiritual thread, and that these threads are always seeking each other, wanting to join. When all the threads are finally woven together they will form a rope that will pull us out of this dark cycle of history and into the next realm. More contemporarily, the Dalai Lama has repeated the same idea, assuring his Western students repeatedly that they needn't become Tibetan Buddhists in order to be his pupils. He welcomes them to take whatever ideas they like out of Tibetan Buddhism and integrate these ideas into their own religious practices. Even in the most unlikely and conservative of places, you can find sometimes this glimmering idea that God might be bigger than our limited religious doctrines have taught us. In 1954, Pope Pius XI, of all people, sent some Vatican delegates on a trip to Libya with these written instructions: "Do NOT think that you are going among Infidels. Muslims attain salvation, too. The ways of Providence are infinite." But doesn't that make sense? That the infinite would be, indeed ... infinite? That even the most holy amongst us would only be able to see scattered pieces of the eternal picture at any given time? And that maybe if we could collect those pieces and compare them, a story about God would begin to emerge that resembles and includes everyone? And isn't our individual longing for transcendence all just part of this larger human search for divinity? Don't we each have the right to not stop seeking until we get as close to the source of wonder as possible? Even if it means coming to India and kissing trees in the moonlight for a while? That's me in the corner, in other words. That's me in the spotlight. Choosing my religion.
Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)
The first time you sit in comfortable silence; The first time you realize you enjoy his company more than anyone else’s; The first time you look like hell and he couldn't care less; The first time you talk until dawn; The first time you bring him home to meet the family; The first time you're naked together and you don't feel a shred of insecurity; The firt time you realize that you don't want anyone else but him; The first time you see a future with him; The first time you take a trip together; The first big blowup fight; The first time you realize he's your home; The first time you realize taht he loves you as much as you love him.
Katy Regnery (The Vixen and the Vet (A Modern Fairytale))
Maturity is when you accept the fact that two contradictory ideas can exist together.
David Kessler (Visions, Trips, and Crowded Rooms: Who and What You See Before You Die)
There is nothing spiritual about a marriage that uses guilt, blame, shame or religious manipulations to keep a relationship together.
Shannon L. Alder
Something is very wrong with Bunce. She's collapsed in the back seat like a dead rabbit. But I can't really focus on it because of the sun and also the wind and because I'm very busy making a list. Things I hate, a list: 1. The sun. 2. The wind. 3. Penelope Bunce, when she hasn't got a plan. 4. American sandwiches. 5. America. 6. The band, America. Which I didn't know about an hour ago. 7. Kansas, also a band I've recently become acquainted with. 8. Kansas, the state. Which isn't that far from Illinois, so it must be wretched. 9. The State of Illinois, for fucking certain. 10. The sun. In my eyes. 11. The wind in my hair. 12. Convertible automobiles. 13. Myself, most of all. 14. My soft heart. 15. My foolish optimism. 16. The words "road" and "trip" when said together with any enthusiasm. 17. Being a vampire, if we're being honest. 18. Being a vampire in a fucking convertible. 19. A deliriously thirsty vampire in a convertible at midday. In Illinois, which is apparently the brightest place on the planet. 20. The sun. Which hangs miles closer to Minooka, Illinois, than it does over London blessed England. 21. Minooka, Illinois. Which seems dreadful. 22. These sunglasses. Rubbish. 23. The fucking sun! We get it - you're very fucking bright! 24. Penelope Bunce, who came up with this idea. An idea not accompanied by a plan. Because all she cared about was seeing her rubbish boyfriend, who clearly cocked it all up. Which we all should have expected from someone from Illinois, land of the damned - a place that manages to be both hot and humid at the same time. You might well expect hell to be hot, but you don't expect it to also be humid. That's what makes it hell, the surprise twist! The devil is clever!
Rainbow Rowell (Wayward Son (Simon Snow, #2))
There are all kinds of pedants around with more time to read and imitate Lynne Truss and John Humphrys than to write poems, love-letters, novels and stories it seems. They whip out their Sharpies and take away and add apostrophes from public signs, shake their heads at prepositions which end sentences and mutter at split infinitives and misspellings, but do they bubble and froth and slobber and cream with joy at language? Do they ever let the tripping of the tips of their tongues against the tops of their teeth transport them to giddy euphoric bliss? Do they ever yoke impossible words together for the sound-sex of it? Do they use language to seduce, charm, excite, please, affirm and tickle those they talk to? Do they? I doubt it. They’re too farting busy sneering at a greengrocer’s less than perfect use of the apostrophe. Well sod them to Hades. They think they’re guardians of language. They’re no more guardians of language than the Kennel Club is the guardian of dogkind.
Stephen Fry
We’re staying together’ he promised ‘you’re not getting away from me. Never again’ Only then did she understand what would happen. A one way trip. A very hard fall. ‘As long as we’re together’ she said.
Rick Riordan (The Mark of Athena (The Heroes of Olympus, #3))
Since our nights together on that trip, I had longed every night to feel her next to me, to curl up against her, my stomach against her behind and my chest against her back, to rest my hand on her breasts, to reach out for her when I woke up in the night, find her, push my leg over her legs, and press my face against her shoulder.
Bernhard Schlink (The Reader)
I think a father’s job, when it’s done best, is to get down on both knees, lean over his children’s lives, and whisper, ‘Where do you want to go?’ Every day God invites us on the same kind of adventure. It’s not a trip where He sends us a rigid itinerary, He simply invites us. God asks what it is He’s made us to love, what it is that captures our attention, what feeds that deep indescribable need of our souls to experience the richness of the world He made. And then, leaning over us, He whispers, ‘Let’s go do THAT together.
Bob Goff
Nico leaned over the edge o the chasm, thrusting out his hand, but he was much too far away to help. Hazel was yelling for the others, but even if they heard her over the chaos, they'd never make it in time. Annabeth's leg felt like it was pulling free of her body. Pain washed everything in red. The force of the Underworld tugged at her like dark gravity. She didn't have the strength to fight. She knew she was too far down to be saved. "Percy, let me go," she croaked. "You can't pull me up." His face was white with effort. She could see in his eyes that he knew it was hopeless. "Never," he said. He looked up at Nico, fifteen feet above. "The other side, Nico We'll see you there. Understand?" Nico's eyes widened. "But-" "Lead them there!" Percy shouted. "Promise me!" "I- will." Below them, the voice laughed in the darkness. Sacrifices. Beautiful sacrifices to wake the goddess. Percy tightened his grip on Annabeth's wrist. His face was gaunt, scraped and bloody, his hair dusted with cobwebs, but when he locked eyes with her, she thought he had never been more handsome. "We're staying together," he promised. "You're not getting away from me. Never again." Only then did she understand what would happen. A oneway trip. A very hard fall. "As long as we're together," she said. She heard Nico and Hazel still screaming for help. She saw the sunlight far, far above- maybe the last sunlight she would ever see. Then Percy let go of his tiny ledge, and together, holding hands, he and Annabeth fell into the endless darkness.
Rick Riordan (The Mark of Athena (The Heroes of Olympus, #3))
A friend is the wax that keeps the flame lit, an enemy is the wind that blows it out.
Anthony Liccione
East Side, West Side, all around the town, The tots sang "Ring-a-rosie, London Bridge is falling Down; Boys and Girls together, me and Mamie O'Rorke, Tripped the light fantastic on the sidewalks of New York.
James W. Blake
them together to battle: the number of whom is
Todd Burpo (Heaven is for Real: A Little Boy's Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back)
Were these boys in their right minds? Here were two boys with good intellect, one eighteen and one nineteen. They had all the prospects that life could hold out for any of the young; one a graduate of Chicago and another of Ann Arbor; one who had passed his examination for the Harvard Law School and was about to take a trip in Europe,--another who had passed at Ann Arbor, the youngest in his class, with three thousand dollars in the bank. Boys who never knew what it was to want a dollar; boys who could reach any position that was to boys of that kind to reach; boys of distinguished and honorable families, families of wealth and position, with all the world before them. And they gave it all up for nothing, for nothing! They took a little companion of one of them, on a crowded street, and killed him, for nothing, and sacrificed everything that could be of value in human life upon the crazy scheme of a couple of immature lads. Now, your Honor, you have been a boy; I have been a boy. And we have known other boys. The best way to understand somebody else is to put yourself in his place. Is it within the realm of your imagination that a boy who was right, with all the prospects of life before him, who could choose what he wanted, without the slightest reason in the world would lure a young companion to his death, and take his place in the shadow of the gallows? ...No one who has the process of reasoning could doubt that a boy who would do that is not right. How insane they are I care not, whether medically or legally. They did not reason; they could not reason; they committed the most foolish, most unprovoked, most purposeless, most causeless act that any two boys ever committed, and they put themselves where the rope is dangling above their heads.... Why did they kill little Bobby Franks? Not for money, not for spite; not for hate. They killed him as they might kill a spider or a fly, for the experience. They killed him because they were made that way. Because somewhere in the infinite processes that go to the making up of the boy or the man something slipped, and those unfortunate lads sit here hated, despised, outcasts, with the community shouting for their blood. . . . I know, Your Honor, that every atom of life in all this universe is bound up together. I know that a pebble cannot be thrown into the ocean without disturbing every drop of water in the sea. I know that every life is inextricably mixed and woven with every other life. I know that every influence, conscious and unconscious, acts and reacts on every living organism, and that no one can fix the blame. I know that all life is a series of infinite chances, which sometimes result one way and sometimes another. I have not the infinite wisdom that can fathom it, neither has any other human brain
Clarence Darrow (Attorney for the Damned: Clarence Darrow in the Courtroom)
Does your father know you're on this trip with me?” I asked. “No. We spoke for a minute before he left this morning. He knows I'm going on a trip with a particularly stubborn virgin, but that's all I told him. He commended me for my valiant efforts, although he thinks it's too much time to spend with one girl. He expects her to be good and deflowered by the end of our time together.” “Well, he'll be good and disappointed then,” I mumbled, and he smirked.
Wendy Higgins (Sweet Evil (Sweet, #1))
At last, Sturmhond straightened the lapels of his teal frock coat and said, “Well, Brekker, it’s obvious you only deal in half-truths and outright lies, so you’re clearly the man for the job.” “There’s just one thing,” said Kaz, studying the privateer’s broken nose and ruddy hair. “Before we join hands and jump off a cliff together, I want to know exactly who I’m running with.” Sturmhond lifted a brow. “We haven’t been on a road trip or exchanged clothes, but I think our introductions were civilized enough.” “Who are you really, privateer?” “Is this an existential question?” “No proper thief talks the way you do.” “How narrow-minded of you.” “I know the look of a rich man’s son, and I don’t believe a king would send an ordinary privateer to handle business this sensitive.” “Ordinary,” scoffed Sturmhond. “Are you so schooled in politics?” “I know my way around a deal. Who are you? We get the truth or my crew walks.” “Are you so sure that would be possible, Brekker? I know your plans now. I’m accompanied by two of the world’s most legendary Grisha, and I’m not too bad in a fight either.” “And I’m the canal rat who brought Kuwei Yul-Bo out of the Ice Court alive. Let me know how you like your chances.” His crew didn’t have clothes or titles to rival the Ravkans, but Kaz knew where he’d put his money if he had any left. Sturmhond clasped his hands behind his back, and Kaz saw the barest shift in his demeanor. His eyes lost their bemused gleam and took on a surprising weight. No ordinary privateer at all. “Let us say,” said Sturmhond, gaze trained on the Ketterdam street below, “hypothetically, of course, that the Ravkan king has intelligence networks that reach deep within Kerch, Fjerda, and the Shu Han, and that he knows exactly how important Kuwei Yul-Bo could be to the future of his country. Let us say that king would trust no one to negotiate such matters but himself, but that he also knows just how dangerous it is to travel under his own name when his country is in turmoil, when he has no heir and the Lantsov succession is in no way secured.” “So hypothetically,” Kaz said, “you might be addressed as Your Highness.
Leigh Bardugo (Crooked Kingdom (Six of Crows, #2))
Try to praise the mutilated world. Remember June’s long days, and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew. The nettles that methodically overgrow the abandoned homesteads of exiles. You must praise the mutilated world. You watched the stylish yachts and ships; one of them had a long trip ahead of it, while salty oblivion awaited others. You’ve seen the refugees heading nowhere, You’ve heard the executioners sing joyfully. You should praise the mutilated world. Remember the moments when we were together in a white room and the curtain fluttered. Return in thought to the concert where music flared. You gathered acorns in the park in autumn and leaves eddied over the earth's scars. Praise the mutilated world and the gray feathers a thrush lost, and the gentle light that strays and vanishes and returns.
Adam Zagajewski
For the first time since I met her, I understand her need to keep her name secret and respect that. Here, someplace other than at home, we can be who we want, be with who we want, as long as it makes us happy. There’s no past today, only this moment together, right now. —HEW
Michelle Warren (He + She)
I even have a welcoming speech prepared for fear, which I deliver right before embarking upon any new project or big adventure. It goes something like this: “Dearest Fear: Creativity and I are about to go on a road trip together. I understand you’ll be joining us, because you always do. I acknowledge that you believe you have an important job to do in my life, and that you take your job seriously. Apparently your job is to induce complete panic whenever I’m about to do anything interesting—and, may I say, you are superb at your job. So by all means, keep doing your job, if you feel you must. But I will also be doing my job on this road trip, which is to work hard and stay focused. And Creativity will be doing its job, which is to remain stimulating and inspiring. There’s plenty of room in this vehicle for all of us, so make yourself at home, but understand this: Creativity and I are the only ones who will be making any decisions along the way. I recognize and respect that you are part of this family, and so I will never exclude you from our activities, but still—your suggestions will never be followed. You’re allowed to have a seat, and you’re allowed to have a voice, but you are not allowed to have a vote. You’re not allowed to touch the road maps; you’re not allowed to suggest detours; you’re not allowed to fiddle with the temperature. Dude, you’re not even allowed to touch the radio. But above all else, my dear old familiar friend, you are absolutely forbidden to drive.
Elizabeth Gilbert (Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear)
she thought about what happily-ever-afters were about, and decided that true love didn’t mean effortless, and ever-after wasn’t about cruise control. You started with the attraction, and then you opened your heart and your soul—but all that, which was no small thing, just got you to first base. There were many, many other trips to take to deeper levels of greater acceptance and understanding. That was where you found the happy. And the ever-after was the work you were always willing to put in to stay close, to learn, and to grow as people together.
J.R. Ward (Blood Kiss (Black Dagger Legacy, #1))
Kay had done hundreds of pre-arrangements, typically for people who were healthy and just, smartly, planning ahead. Providing these services to families who knew death might be lurking right around the corner was another thing all together. It’s what made her job so special. It was like being asked to come along on a very important journey and then trusted to handle intimate details of the trip.
Delora Dennis (Same Old Truths (The Reluctant Avenger, #2))
Life is like a train ride. The passengers on the train are seemingly going to the same destination as you, but based on their belief in you or their belief that the train will get them to their desired destination they will stay on the ride or they will get off somewhere during the trip. People can and will get off at any stop. Just know that where people get off is more of an reflection on them, than it is on you. There will be a few people in your life that will make the whole trip with you, who believe in you, accept that you are human and that mistakes will be made along the way, and that you will get to your desired destination - together, no matter what. Be very grateful of these people. They are rare and when you find one, don't let go of them - ever. Be blessed for the ones who get on at the worst stops when no one is there. Remember those people, they are special. Always hold them dear to your heart. Be very wary of people sneaking on at certain stops when things are going good and acting like they have been there for the whole ride. For they will be the first to depart. There will be ones who secretly try to get off the ride and there will be those that very publicly will jump off. Don't pay any heed to the defectors. Pay heed to the passengers that are still on the trip. They are the important ones. If someone tries to get back on the train - don't be angry or hold a grudge, let them. Just see where they are around the next hard turn. If they are buckled in - accept them. If they are pulling the hand rail alarm again - then let them off the train freely and waste no space in your head for them again, ever. There will be times that the train will be moving slow, at almost a crawls pace. Appreciate that you can take in the view. There will be times where the train is going so fast that everything is a blur. Enjoy the sense of speed in your life, as it is exhilarating but unsustainable. There will also be the chance that the train derails. If that does happen, it will hurt, a lot, for a long time. But there will be people who will appear out of no where who will get you back on track. Those will be the people that will matter most in your life. Love them forever. For you can never repay these people. The thing is, that even if you could repay them, they wouldn't accept it anyway. Just pay it forward. Eventually your train will get to its final stop and you will need to deboard. At that time you will realize that life is about the journey AND the destination. Know and have faith that at the end of your ride your train will have the right passengers on board and all the passengers that were on board at one time or another were there for a distinct purpose. Enjoy the ride.
JohnA Passaro
But the truth is, I knew things wouldn’t change much. I knew it would be the way it had been after the sleepover. Like we had taken a secret trip together. A voyage that no one else knew about. And when we returned from our journey, we each went back to our own homes. Some friendships are like that. Maybe even the best friendships are like that. The connections are always there. They’re just invisible to the eye.
R.J. Palacio (Shingaling (Wonder, #1.7))
Xuan and I had decided to take a trip together in honor of our one-thousand-day anniversary. We ate Korean barbecue, shared a decadent cake, and then drove three and a half hours to Yosemite. I’d never heard of such an occasion. But in Seoul, where Ji-Hoon was born and raised, there was almost a monthly holiday devoted to romance. We wore similar out- fits, which Xuan said was common for couples in Asian countries. Three years was a big deal, especially when we didn’t know how many more we’d have.
Kayla Cunningham (Fated to Love You (Chasing the Comet Book 1))
They feed back exactly what is given them. Because they do not believe in words - words are for "typeheads," Chester Anderson tells them, and a thought which needs words is just one more of those ego trips - their only proficient vocabulary is in the society's platitudes. As it happens I am still committed to the idea that the ability to think for one's self depends upon one's mastery of the language, and I am not optimistic about children who will settle for saying, to indicate that their mother and father do not live together, that they come from "a broken home." They are sixteen, fifteen, fourteen years old, younger all the time, an army of children waiting to be given the words.
Joan Didion (Slouching Towards Bethlehem)
A road trip is a way for the whole family to spend time together and annoy each other in interesting new places.
Tom Lichtenheld (Everything I Know About Cars: A Collection of Made-Up Facts, Educated Guesses, and Silly Pictures about Cars, Trucks, and Other Zoomy Things)
I have been corrupted as much as anyone else by the vast number of menial services which our society has grown to expect and depend on. We should do for ourselves or let the machines do for us, the glorious technology that is supposed to be the new light of the world. We are like a man who has bought a great amount of equipment for a camping trip, who has the canoe and the tent and the fishing lines and the axe and the guns, the mackinaw and the blankets, but who now, when all the preparations and the provisions are piled expertly together, is suddenly too timid to set out on the journey but remains where he was yesterday and the day before and the day before that, looking suspiciously through the white lace curtains at the clear sky he distrusts. Our great technology is a God-given chance for adventure and for progress which we are afraid to attempt. Our ideas and our ideals remain exactly what they were and where they were three centuries ago. No. I beg your pardon. It is no longer safe for a man to even declare them!
Tennessee Williams
He came back from France when Tom and Daisy were still on their wedding trip, and made a miserable but irresistible journey to Louisville on the last of his army pay. He stayed there a week, walking the streets where their footsteps had clicked together through the November night and revisiting the out-of-the-way places to which they had driven in her white car. Just as Daisy's house had always seemed to him more mysterious and gay than other houses so his idea of the city itself, even though she was gone from it, was pervaded with a melancholy beauty.
F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby)
As he read the long poem, I began thinking that, unlike him, I had always found a way to avoid counting the days. We were leaving in three days—and then whatever I had with Oliver was destined to go up in thin air. We had talked about meeting in the States, and we had talked of writing and speaking by phone—but the whole thing had a mysteriously surreal quality kept intentionally opaque by both of us—not because we wanted to allow events to catch us unprepared so that we might blame circumstances and not ourselves, but because by not planning to keep things alive, we were avoiding the prospect that they might ever die. We had come to Rome in the same spirit of avoidance: Rome was a final bash before school and travel took us away, just a way of putting things off and extending the party long past closing time. Perhaps, without thinking, we had taken more than a brief vacation; we were eloping together with return-trip tickets to separate destinations.
André Aciman (Call Me by Your Name)
Most of all, she'd missed feeling connected to someone else. Being a vital part of them—aching when they were on a trip, knowing that someone was out there missing her and counting the heartbeats until they were back together again. There was nothing else like living and breathing for the smile of someone she loved. -leta
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Upon the Midnight Clear (Dark-Hunter, #12; Dream-Hunter, #2))
We kissed for a bit and I stopped shaking. We played with each other for a long time, and after we had joined, my cock and her fanny became one thing, then it seemed to vanish as we took off on a big psychic trip together. It was our souls and our minds that were doing it all; our genitals, our bodies, they were just launch pads and were soon superfluous as we went around the universe together on our shared trip, moving in and out of each other’s heads and finding nothing in them but good things, nothing in them but love. The intensity increased until it became almost unbearable and we exploded together in an orgasmic crash-landing onto the shipwreck of a bed, from a long way out in some form of space. We held each other tightly, drenched in sweat and shaking with emotion
Irvine Welsh
On September 7th, after the Cubs dropped Game Three, the two teams boarded the Michigan Central together to embark on the twenty-seven hour trip, and Babe Ruth got drunk and started stealing hats.
Dennis Lehane (The Given Day (Coughlin, #1))
Emily: Oh, Mama, look at me one minute as though you really saw me. Mama, fourteen years have gone by. I'm dead. You're a grandmother, Mama! Wally's dead, too. His appendix burst on a camping trip to North Conway. We felt just terrible about it - don't you remember? But, just for a moment now we're all together. Mama, just for a moment we're happy. Let's really look at one another!...I can't. I can't go on.It goes so fast. We don't have time to look at one another. I didn't realize. So all that was going on and we never noticed. Take me back -- up the hill -- to my grave. But first: Wait! One more look. Good-bye , Good-bye world. Good-bye, Grover's Corners....Mama and Papa. Good-bye to clocks ticking....and Mama's sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new ironed dresses and hot baths....and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth,you are too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it--every,every minute? Stage Manager: No. (pause) The saints and poets, maybe they do some. Emily: I'm ready to go back.
Thornton Wilder (Our Town)
There was a Catholic priest and the Seventh Day Adventist minister sitting together on one flight. The priest ordered a Scotch and water. The minister said, "I'd rather commit adultery than drink." The priest looked up at me and said, "I didn't know I had a choice today." That was a fun trip.
Trudy Baker (Coffee, Tea or Me?)
At this point, a faerie woman came twirling through. She had leaves in her updo and was swathed in ribbons and ivy and not much else. She tripped on a trailing line of ivy and Alec caught her. “Good reflexes!” she said brightly. “Also great arms. Would you be interested in a night of tumultuous forbidden passion, with an option to extend to seven years?” “Um, I am gay,” Alec said. He was not used to saying that casually, to any random person. It was strange to say it, and feel both relief and a shadow of his old fear, twined together. Of course, the declaration might not mean much to faeries. The faerie woman accepted it with a shrug, then looked over at Raphael and lit up. Something about the leather jacket or the scowl seemed to appeal to her strongly. “How about you, Vampire Without a Cause?” “I’m not gay,” said Raphael. “I’m not straight. I’m not interested.” “Your sexuality is ‘not interested’?” Alec asked curiously. Raphael said, “That’s right.” The faerie thought for a moment, then ventured, “I can also assume the appearance of a tree!” “I didn’t say, ‘not interested unless you’re a tree.’ ” “Wait,” said the faerie suddenly. “I recognize you. You’re Raphael Santiago! I’ve heard of you.” Raphael made a gesture of dismissal. “Have you heard I like it when people go away?” “You were one of the heroes in the Downworlder victory over Valentine.” “He was one of the heroes of the Downworlder and Shadowhunter alliance, which led to the victory,” Alec said. Raphael stopped looking annoyed and began to look nastily amused. “Oh, did the Shadowhunters help a little?” he asked. “You were there!” said Alec. “Can I have your autograph, Raphael?” asked the faerie lady. She produced a large, shiny green leaf and a quill. Raphael wrote LEAVE ME ALONE on the leaf. “I’ll cherish it,” said the faerie. She ran away, clutching the leaf to her bosom. “Don’t,” Raphael yelled after her.
Cassandra Clare (The Red Scrolls of Magic (The Eldest Curses, #1))
They've committed a *murder*! And it's not like taking a trolley ride together where they can get off at different stops. They're stuck with each other and they got to ride all the way to the end of the line and it's a one-way trip and the last stop is the cemetery.
James M. Cain (Double Indemnity)
Meaning hides in repetition: We do this every day or every week because it matters. We are connected by this thing we do together. We matter to one another. In the tapestry of childhood, what stands out is not the splashy, blow-out trip to Disneyland but the common threads that run throughout and repeat: the family dinners, nature walks, reading together at bedtime (with a hot water bottle at our feet on winter evenings), Saturday morning pancakes.
Lisa M. Ross (Simplicity Parenting: Using the Extraordinary Power of Less to Raise Calmer, Happier, and More Secure Kids)
I am not mad here, but clear and calm. I am not transformed, but allowed to be wholly myself.I am isolated, but have never felt more connected to people. I am not imprisoned, but free. I am not cut off from my family and my roots, but am brought back to them. I am not living alone with dogs, but permitting my dogs to lead me somewhere I need to go, and it has been a great trip. We have more distance to travel together, I'm sure, before we are through.
Jon Katz (The Dogs of Bedlam Farm: An Adventure with Sixteen Sheep, Three Dogs, Two Donkeys, and Me)
Percy tightened his grip on Annabeth’s wrist. His face was gaunt, scraped and bloody, his hair dusted with cobwebs, but when he locked eyes with her, she thought he had never looked more handsome. “We’re staying together,” he promised. “You’re not getting away from me. Never again.” Only then did she understand what would happen. A one-way trip. A very hard fall. “As long as we’re together,” she said. She heard Nico and Hazel still screaming for help. She saw the sunlight far, far above—maybe the last sunlight she would ever see. Then Percy let go of his tiny ledge, and together, holding hands, he and Annabeth fell into the endless darkness.
Rick Riordan (The Mark of Athena (The Heroes of Olympus, #3))
At first, you fall in love. You wake in the morning woozy and your twilight is lit with astral violet light. You spelunk down into each other until you come to possess some inner vision of each other that becomes one thing. Us. Together. And time passes. Like the forming of Earth itself, volcanoes rise and spew lava. Oceans appear. Rock plates shift. Sea turtles swim half the ocean to lay eggs on the mother island; songbirds migrate over continents for berries from a tree. You evolve--cosmically and geologically. You lose each other and find each other again. Every day. Until love gathers the turtles and the birds of your world and encompasses them, too.
Michael Paterniti (Driving Mr. Albert: A Trip Across America with Einstein's Brain)
As he kissed her back, she thought about what happily-ever-afters were about, and decided that true love didn’t mean effortless, and ever-after wasn’t about cruise control. You started with the attraction, and then you opened your heart and your soul—but all that, which was no small thing, just got you to first base. There were many, many other trips to take to deeper levels of greater acceptance and understanding. That was where you found the happy. And the ever-after was the work you were always willing to put in to stay close, to learn, and to grow as people together.
J.R. Ward (Blood Kiss (Black Dagger Legacy, #1))
One of the first significant, substantial purchases I made after starting testosterone, was a Compact Colt .45 1991 A1 automatic pistol. It's just about the best penis substitute I've ever waved at a sex partner. I love my gun. Can I get an a-a-ay-men? You better fucking believe I lo-o-ove my gun. I love to take it apart and put it back together and admire...oh,you sexy little death-machine...I suppose I oughta feel guilty or something, loving and fetishizing to the point of anthropomorphizing it it. But I don't. I won't either-don't matter to me whether or not I'm supposed to keep this a dirty little secret. I got a dick and I can kill you with it. Yeah, baby, trip my trigger, why dontcha. Heh.
Allen James (GenderQueer: Voices From Beyond the Sexual Binary)
Whenever God thinks of you, he has your best interests in mind; he has plans to take you further, deeper, and higher than you ever dreamed. This process begins when you seek God and spend time with him. Look for every opportunity to know God. Consider your daily schedule. What does it include? A workout at the gym? A trip to the post office? A lunch hour? A commute? Look for ways to include God in your activities. Invite God to accompany you by talking together. Look for moments- even if it's only ten or twenty seconds- to steal away with him. God will reward your efforts as you reshape your inner life to be focused around him. As you seek God, you will find yourself abiding in him." -Hungry for God
Margaret Feinberg (Hungry for God: Hearing God's Voice in the Ordinary and the Everyday)
I’ve watched it time and time again—a woman always slots into a man’s life better than he slots into hers. She will be the one who spends the most time at his flat, she will be the one who makes friends with all his friends and their girlfriends. She will be the one who sends his mother a bunch of flowers on her birthday. Women don’t like this rigmarole any more than men do, but they’re better at it—they just get on with it. This means that when a woman my age falls in love with a man, the list of priorities goes from this: Family Friends To this: Family Boyfriend Boyfriend’s family Boyfriend’s friends Girlfriends of the boyfriend’s friends Friends Which means, on average, you go from seeing your friend every weekend to once every six weekends. She becomes a baton and you’re the one at the very end of the track. You get your go for, say, your birthday or a brunch, then you have to pass her back round to the boyfriend to start the long, boring rotation again. These gaps in each other’s lives slowly but surely form a gap in the middle of your friendship. The love is still there, but the familiarity is not. Before you know it, you’re not living life together anymore. You’re living life separately with respective boyfriends then meeting up for dinner every six weekends to tell each other what living is like. I now understand why our mums cleaned the house before their best friend came round and asked them “What’s the news, then?” in a jolly, stilted way. I get how that happens. So don’t tell me when you move in with your boyfriend that nothing will change. There will be no road trip. The cycle works when it comes to holidays as well—I’ll get my buddy back for every sixth summer, unless she has a baby in which case I’ll get my road trip in eighteen years’ time. It never stops happening. Everything will change.
Dolly Alderton (Everything I Know About Love: A Memoir)
James Potter moved slowly along the narrow aisles of the train, peering as nonchalantly as he could into each compartment. To those inside, he probably looked as if he was searching for someone, some friend or group of confidantes with whom to pass the time during the trip, and this was intentional. The last thing that James wanted anyone to notice was that, despite the bravado he had so recently displayed with his younger brother Albus on the platform, he was nervous. His stomach knotted and churned as if he’d had half a bite of one of Uncles Ron and George’s Puking Pastilles. He opened the folding door at the end of the passenger car and stepped carefully through the passage into the next one. The first compartment was full of girls. They were talking animatedly to one another, already apparently the best of friends despite the fact that, most likely, they had only just met. One of them glanced up and saw him staring. He quickly looked away, pretending to peer out the window behind them, toward the station which still sat bustling with activity. Feeling his cheeks go a little red, he continued down the corridor. If only Rose was a year older she’d be here with him. She was a girl, but she was his cousin and they’d grown up together. It would’ve been nice to have at least one familiar face along with him.
G. Norman Lippert (James Potter and the Hall of Elders' Crossing (James Potter, #1))
I want to apologize to you, Nikki. Not just, ‘hey, sorry,’ but really. Apologize.” He paused, either to let her absorb it or to find his way, then he went on, “This is all still new to both of us. You and I came to each other with full lives, past baggage, careers, the works. Both of us. And this trip of mine, this was the first time since we got together that you’re seeing what my real work is like. I have the advantage of having gone on ride-along, so you—I get your life, inside and out. Me, I’m an investigative journalist. If I’m doing it right, I’m spending big stretches of time in places nobody else has the balls to go and under conditions most reporters wouldn’t put up with. That explains why I fell off the radar on my story. I told you I might before I left. But it’s no excuse for not calling you when I got in the clear. The only explanation I can give may sound flimsy, but it’s the truth. When I come off assignment, I have a routine. I sleep like the dead and write like the devil, in seclusion. It’s the way I’ve always done it. For years. But now—I realize something’s different now. I’m not the only one involved. “Now, if I could take back the past twenty-four hours, I would, but I can’t. What I can do, though, is say when I look at you now and see the hurt in you—the hurt I caused by being insensitive—I see pain I never want to bring to you again.” He let that sit there, then said, “Nikki, I apologize. I was wrong. And I am sorry.
Richard Castle
What do you think he saw?" Damn--I regret the awed way I phrased that and the hushed voice I used. As if I think acid is a "religious" experience, a visionary thing. "Himself," Josh says. "You always see your true self on acid. You just usually see more than you want to see. So it all seems disorted." See what I mean? He's not your normal stoner. The guy should become a poet, a psychologist, a scientist. We pull up near Greg's house and stare at it like it's a damn fortress. "You don't think he needs to go to the hospital?" I ask. "Nope," Josh says. "For a while, I thought maybe, yeah. But he's good now, he's off it, he's not hallucinating anymore." "You're sure?" "Yeah." "'Cuz you can die on LSD-" "That's such anti-drug propaganda bullshit, Dan," Josh interrupts. "Nobody's ever died from an LSD overdose. Ever. As long as you keep people from doing stupid things while they're tripping, it's all good man, man. Why do you think I babysat him?" He reaches into the backseat and punches my shoulder. "LSD isn't your dad's smack. So stop worrying." I scrunch down in the seat. How'd he know about that? "Right. What's the plan?" "I'd ask him if ther was a key hidden under a rock," Josh says, "but he's not gonna be much help. Watch." He pokes Greg in the leg, prods him on the shoulder, grabs his cheeks and smushes them together, the way parents do to a baby, and says, " Ootchi googi Greggy, did ums have a good trippy? Did ums find out itty-bitty singies about oos-self zat oos didn't likeums?" Yup... Greg was in his own little world...
J.L. Powers (The Confessional)
I think it’s time to go ahead and start, don’t you? We don’t want them to have enough time to make a trip back to shore with her.” Galen swims to within an inch of my face. His lazy grin sends a thousand butterflies whipping up a tornado in my stomach. “Start what? The rescue, or the rest of our lives together?” Just the words make my heart jump, let alone the look he gives me when he says it. We haven’t had much time to talk about what all this means for us, but at least I know we can be together. On our own terms, in our own time. Finally. “Both,” I breathe. “This is not the time to be all mushy,” Rayna calls from below us. “I swear you two are expert time wasters. So inconsiderate.” Galen winks at me and dives to his sister. “Wait,” I call to him. He stops. “I just wanted to say, I like your big fin. I think it’s sexy.” Which is the truth. Now t’s more than double the size of any other Syrena. I know he’s self-conscious about it; he thinks it makes him stand out more. What Galen doesn’t realize is that he already stood out. He was already special. This new fin doesn’t change anything. Well, except for making me hotter for him than I already was. “Really?” Galen says. I nod and blow him a kiss. By his confused expression, he has no idea what I’m doing. My Syrena human ambassador still has a lot to learn about the intimate details of the human world. And I’ll be happy to assist him with that.
Anna Banks (Of Triton (The Syrena Legacy, #2))
You see the grandmother down there with her son and grandson? They’ve probably been coming here for years together. Or maybe it’s their first trip. Either way, it’s three generations sitting down together, laying aside their differences for one night to be a family. This is humanity, Steele. This is what we’re fighting for. Family. People. Pride. It’s our differences that make up our strength. BAD isn’t about patriotism. It’s about saving individuals. Not just those in America, but all the ones who are out there going about their lives with little to no care about politics. Men, women, and children who only want to live peacefully while others are looking for ways to use them as pawns in a deadly game they don’t even want to play. (Joe)
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Bad Attitude (B.A.D. Agency #1))
But I thought I understood what she would not ask. I understood she desired to know if I had found what I was seeking, if this trip would finally satisfy my erratic pursuit of an unanswerable truth, if it would calm my sense of rootlessness, solve the chaos of my origins for me. She wanted to know if anything would be laid to rest, or if we’d continue to drift through the world together, going from place to place until I made her like me, so lacking a foothold anywhere that nowhere felt like home.
Esi Edugyan (Washington Black)
Every day God invites us on the same kind of adventure. It’s not a trip where He sends us a rigid itinerary, He simply invites us. God asks what it is He’s made us to love, what it is that captures our attention, what feeds that deep indescribable need of our souls to experience the richness of the world He made. And then, leaning over us, He whispers, “Let’s go do that together.
Bob Goff (Love Does: Discover a Secretly Incredible Life in an Ordinary World)
You’re with a girl. She’s brown-haired and side-swept. I imagine that she’s the kind of girl who can easily shop for jean shorts, and speaks kindly more often than not. She seems like the kind of girl who hates New York City because it wreaks havoc on her shoes (really she just thinks it’s a big and scary place), but once had the time of her life in Spain on a backpacking trip when she was 23. Her gaze is focused on the embracing couple as near strangers capable of judgement. She stands bolted next to you like you’re her anchor in the social storm. You two seem finely matched… but what do I know? (Nothing at all.) I accidentally saw a picture of you and it reminded me that I was dating a man rightfully shaking his fist at God, while trying to hold my hand with the other. I was reminded of how fiercely we tried to hold our relationship together, and how devastated and relieved we were in its destruction. There’s water under that bridge. I accidentally saw a picture of you. No big deal. I wrote about it.
Joy Wilson
Stop. You can’t love me because you’re lonely, or because I am the only one who doesn’t piss you off. I want to piss you off, I want to get on your fucking nerves. I don’t want the responsibility of always being your rock. I will try, but I’m a mess, too. I lie, I sleep too much and I don’t like children under the age of 6, really. I don’t even know if I want kids because I’m selfish, and mothers can’t be selfish once they decide to carry another life. I’m always looking for the rain to come so I trip over my own feet. I know exactly what the air smells like before a storm. Before you fall in love with me, I want you to know that I cry a lot because it feels good, and I masturbate at least 4 times a week, and you might fall out of love with me before either of us are ready for it. I have no experience with this. I’m trying to be brave and smart but its almost impossible to be both at the same time. You can’t love me like a fire escape. Sometimes I will be the match, or the smoke under the door. I don’t know what I’m doing, all I know is that we all catch fire sometimes, before we even get warm. Before you fall in love with me, I want you to know that there’s a 50% chance that this won’t work, that one of us will wind up hating the other. I will try to keep your head above water, but sometimes I’ll need help, too. I can’t be your savior, and I don’t expect you to be mine. Just watch me unfold and I’ll watch you unfold, too. We’ll get drunk and tell each other everything. I know that’s cheating but maybe it’ll be alright. Maybe we won’t wake up embarrassed. I am going to fall in love with you, too, feet first. Maybe we’ll slow dance off a building together, maybe we’ll have forgotten each other’s names by this time next year. I don’t care, the sky is gray with or without you, so I’m not going to look up anymore, I’m going to look ahead .
Caitlyn S.
The non-jocks, the readers, the gay kids, the ones starting to stew about social injustice: for these kids, "letting your freak flag fly" is both self discovery and self defense. You cry for this bunch at the mandatory pep assemblies. Huddled together, miserably, in the upper reaches of the bleachers, wearing their oversized raincoats and their secondhand Salvation Army clothes, they stare down at the school-sanctioned celebration of the A list students. They know bullying, these kids--especially the ones who frefuse to exist under the radar. They're tripped in the hallway, shoved against lockers, pelted with Skittles in the lunchroom. For the most part, their tormentors are stealth artists. The freaks know where there's refuge: I the library, the theater program, art class, creative writing.
Wally Lamb (The Hour I First Believed)
But…” Hazel gripped his shoulders and stared at him in amazement. “Frank, what happened to you?” “To me?” He stood, suddenly self-conscious. “I don’t…” He looked down and realized what she meant. Triptolemus hadn’t gotten shorter. Frank was taller. His gut had shrunk. His chest seemed bulkier. Frank had had growth spurts before. Once he’d woken up two centimeters taller than when he’d gone to sleep. But this was nuts. It was as if some of the dragon and lion had stayed with him when he’d turned back to human. “Uh…I don’t…Maybe I can fix it.” Hazel laughed with delight. “Why? You look amazing!” “I—I do?” “I mean, you were handsome before! But you look older, and taller, and so distinguished—” Triptolemus heaved a dramatic sigh. “Yes, obviously some sort of blessing from Mars. Congratulations, blah, blah, blah. Now, if we’re done here…?” Frank glared at him. “We’re not done. Heal Nico.” The farm god rolled his eyes. He pointed at the corn plant, and BAM! Nico di Angelo appeared in an explosion of corn silk. Nico looked around in a panic. “I—I had the weirdest nightmare about popcorn.” He frowned at Frank. “Why are you taller?” “Everything’s fine,” Frank promised. “Triptolemus was about to tell us how to survive the House of Hades. Weren’t you, Trip?” The farm god raised his eyes to the ceiling, like, Why me, Demeter? “Fine,” Trip said. “When you arrive at Epirus, you will be offered a chalice to drink from.” “Offered by whom?” Nico asked. “Doesn’t matter,” Trip snapped. “Just know that it is filled with deadly poison.” Hazel shuddered. “So you’re saying that we shouldn’t drink it.” “No!” Trip said. “You must drink it, or you’ll never be able to make it through the temple. The poison connects you to the world of the dead, lets you pass into the lower levels. The secret to surviving is”—his eyes twinkled—“barley.” Frank stared at him. “Barley.” “In the front room, take some of my special barley. Make it into little cakes. Eat these before you step into the House of Hades. The barley will absorb the worst of the poison, so it will affect you, but not kill you.” “That’s it?” Nico demanded. “Hecate sent us halfway across Italy so you could tell us to eat barley?” “Good luck!” Triptolemus sprinted across the room and hopped in his chariot. “And, Frank Zhang, I forgive you! You’ve got spunk. If you ever change your mind, my offer is open. I’d love to see you get a degree in farming!” “Yeah,” Frank muttered. “Thanks.” The god pulled a lever on his chariot. The snake-wheels turned. The wings flapped. At the back of the room, the garage doors rolled open. “Oh, to be mobile again!” Trip cried. “So many ignorant lands in need of my knowledge. I will teach them the glories of tilling, irrigation, fertilizing!” The chariot lifted off and zipped out of the house, Triptolemus shouting to the sky, “Away, my serpents! Away!” “That,” Hazel said, “was very strange.” “The glories of fertilizing.” Nico brushed some corn silk off his shoulder. “Can we get out of here now?” Hazel put her hand on Frank’s shoulder. “Are you okay, really? You bartered for our lives. What did Triptolemus make you do?” Frank tried to hold it together. He scolded himself for feeling so weak. He could face an army of monsters, but as soon as Hazel showed him kindness, he wanted to break down and cry. “Those cow monsters…the katoblepones that poisoned you…I had to destroy them.” “That was brave,” Nico said. “There must have been, what, six or seven left in that herd.” “No.” Frank cleared his throat. “All of them. I killed all of them in the city.” Nico and Hazel stared at him in stunned silence. Frank
Rick Riordan (The House of Hades (Heroes of Olympus, #4))
The drug dealer leaned forward and covered his mouth conspiratorily with the back of his hand. In a voice softer than a gust of wind, he said: ‘Got some new merch, though. High tech, top of the line. Muy experimental. Packs quite the punch they say, and hits you like a brick wall, espiritualmente,’ he pushed three fingers together and planted them a kiss. ‘Real sweet. Un dragón muy poderoso.’ ‘Any... particular side-side-side-effects?’ Mario scratched his chin, thinking back on his aggresive nosebleeds. ‘Not a dicky bird,’ affirmed the dealer. ‘This stuff’s cleaner than la cocina de tu abuela. Mind you, it does call for some weird shit, no doubt about it. And you gotta watch yourself for sharp table corners and the lot, cause you WILL be tripping.
Louise Blackwick (The Underworld Rhapsody)
I have a friend dying of AIDS. Before I was leaving for a trip, we were talking. He said, “I didn’t want this, and I hated this, and I was terrified of this. But it turns out that this illness has been my greatest gift.” He said, “Now every moment is so precious to me. All the people in my life are so precious to me. My whole life means so much to me.” Something had really changed, and he felt ready for his death. Something that was horrifying and scary had turned into a gift. Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.
Pema Chödrön (When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times (Shambhala Classics))
I couldn’t sleep, so I got up and took a walk around the house. Alex’s mother cat just had a batch of baby kittens and I sat on the porch and just kept looking at them. It was a revelation! Without drugs! Without anything but kittens whose fur is like all the softness in the world put together. It was so soft that when I closed my eyes I wasn’t sure I was even touching it, I put the little gray one, named Happiness, up to my ear, and felt the warmth in her tiny body and listened to her incredible purring. Then she tried to nurse my ear and the feeling in me was so big I thought I was going to break wide open. It was better than a drug trip, a thousand times better, a million times, a trillion times. These things are real! The softness was not a hallucination; the sounds of the night, the cars swishing by, the crickets. I was really there. I heard it! I saw it and I felt it and that’s the way I want life to always be! And that’s the way it will be!
Beatrice Sparks (Go Ask Alice (Anonymous Diaries))
The late nights binge-watching The X-Files on the couch they picked out together, the early mornings making toast while they’re still too tired to speak, the kids who will earn their first scars in the backyard and badly practice instruments at inconvenient times, and the way their favorite candle’s scent will gradually infuse the walls so that every time they come back from a trip, exhausted, and dump their bags inside the door, they’ll smell that they’re where they belong. All those moments throughout the days, weeks, months that don’t get marked on calendars with hand-drawn stars or little stickers. Those are the moments that make a life.
Emily Henry (Funny Story)
They didn't exchange a single word. But in the weeks that followed, Trip spent his days wandering the halls, hoping for Lux to appear, the most naked person with clothes on he had ever seen. Even in sensible school shoes, she shuffled as though barefoot, and the baggy apparel Mrs. Lisbon bought for her only increased her appeal, as though after undressing she had put on whatever was handy. In corduroys her thighs rubbed together, buzzing, and there was always at least one untidy marvel to unravel him: an untucked shirttail, a sock with a hole, a ripped seam showing underarm hair. She carted her books from class to class but never opened them. Her pens and pencils were as temporary as Cinderella's broom. When she smiled, her mouth showed too many teeth, but at night Trip Fontaine dreamed of being bitten by each one.
Jeffrey Eugenides
The first time I looked into a microscope at seaweed and pond water micro- organisms, there was something inside me that shifted—like the way people describe falling in love. And if I hadn’t been given the opportunity to cut into a cow’s eyeball at the age of fifteen, maybe I would have never majored in science, or gone on the semester study abroad trip to Colombia with the UC Santa Cruz biology department. So yes, I blamed seaweed and pond water microorganisms, a cow’s eyeball, and my teachers, the real culprits, for starting me down this path. Just like accident investigators put together a timeline, I call this the causation analysis of my love life.
Kayla Cunningham (Fated to Love You (Chasing the Comet Book 1))
The doppelganger nature of the country’s identity is embedded in the dualistic language used to describe it, in which everything is double and never singular: Israel-Palestine, Arab and Jew, Two States, The Conflict. Based on a fantasy of symmetrical power, this suturing together of two peoples implies conjoined twins in a state of unending struggle, an irresolvable sibling rivalry between the two peoples, both descended from Abraham. For Rooney, Israel as doppelganger exists on two levels. First, it is a doppelganger of the forms of chauvinistic European nationalisms that turned Jews into pariahs on the continent since well before the Inquisition. That was Zionism’s win-win pitch to anti-Semitic European powers: you get rid of your “Jewish problem” (i.e., Jews, who will leave your countries and migrate to Palestine), and Jews get a state of their own to mimic/twin the very forms of militant nationalism that had oppressed them for centuries. (This is why Zionism was so fiercely opposed by the members of the Bund, who believed that nationalism itself was their enemy and the wellspring of race hatred.) Israel also became a doppelganger of the colonial project, specifically settler colonialism. Many of Zionism’s basic rationales were thinly veiled Judaizations of core Christian colonial conceptions: Terra Nullius, the claim that continents like Australia were effectively empty because their Indigenous inhabitants were categorized as less than fully human, became “A land without a people for a people without a land”—a phrase adopted by many Zionists and that originated with nineteenth-century Christians. Manifest Destiny became “land bequeathed to the Jews by divine right.” “Taming the wild frontier” became “making the desert bloom.
Naomi Klein (Doppelganger: a Trip into the Mirror World)
She thumped her weapon (others might call it a cane, but he knew better) against the floor. “Fell off your horse?” “No, I—” “Tripped down the stairs? Dropped a bottle on your foot?” Her expression grew sly. “Or does it involve a woman?” He fought the urge to cross his arms. She was looking up at him with a bit of a smirk. She liked poking fun at her companions; she’d once told him that the best part of growing old was that she could say anything she wanted with impunity. He leaned down and said with great gravity, “Actually, I was stabbed by my valet.” It was, perhaps, the only time in his life he’d managed to stun her into silence. Her mouth fell open, her eyes grew wide, and he would have liked to have thought that she even went pale, but her skin had such an odd tone to begin with that it was hard to say. Then, after a moment of shock, she let out a bark of laughter and said, “No, really. What happened?” “Exactly as I said. I was stabbed.” He waited a moment, then added, “If we weren’t in the middle of a ballroom, I’d show you.” “You don’t say?” Now she was really interested. She leaned in, eyes alight with macabre curiosity. “Is it gruesome?” “It was,” he confirmed. She pressed her lips together, and her eyes narrowed as she asked, “And where is your valet now?” “At Chatteris House, likely nicking a glass of my best brandy.” She let out another one of her staccato barks of laughter.
Julia Quinn (Just Like Heaven (Smythe-Smith Quartet, #1))
Many years later, my friend Cecilie Surasky, then one of the leaders of Jewish Voice for Peace, observed of these kinds of educational methods: “It’s re-traumatization, not remembering. There is a difference.” When she said it, I knew it was true. Remembering puts the shattered pieces of our selves back together again (re-member-ing); it is a quest for wholeness. At its best, it allows us to be changed and transmuted by grief and loss. But re-traumatization is about freezing us in a shattered state; it’s a regime of ritualistic reenactments designed to keep the losses as fresh and painful as possible. Our education did not ask us to probe the parts of ourselves that might be capable of inflicting great harm on others, and to figure out how to resist them. It asked us to be as outraged and indignant at what happened to our ancestors as if it had happened to us—and to stay in that state.
Naomi Klein (Doppelganger: a Trip into the Mirror World)
1 The summer our marriage failed we picked sage to sweeten our hot dark car. We sat in the yard with heavy glasses of iced tea, talking about which seeds to sow when the soil was cool. Praising our large, smooth spinach leaves, free this year of Fusarium wilt, downy mildew, blue mold. And then we spoke of flowers, and there was a joke, you said, about old florists who were forced to make other arrangements. Delphiniums flared along the back fence. All summer it hurt to look at you. 2 I heard a woman on the bus say, “He and I were going in different directions.” As if it had something to do with a latitude or a pole. Trying to write down how love empties itself from a house, how a view changes, how the sign for infinity turns into a noose for a couple. Trying to say that weather weighed down all the streets we traveled on, that if gravel sinks, it keeps sinking. How can I blame you who kneeled day after day in wet soil, pulling slugs from the seedlings? You who built a ten-foot arch for the beans, who hated a bird feeder left unfilled. You who gave carrots to a gang of girls on bicycles. 3 On our last trip we drove through rain to a town lit with vacancies. We’d come to watch whales. At the dock we met five other couples—all of us fluorescent, waterproof, ready for the pitch and frequency of the motor that would lure these great mammals near. The boat chugged forward—trailing a long, creamy wake. The captain spoke from a loudspeaker: In winter gray whales love Laguna Guerrero; it’s warm and calm, no killer whales gulp down their calves. Today we’ll see them on their way to Alaska. If we get close enough, observe their eyes—they’re bigger than baseballs, but can only look down. Whales can communicate at a distance of 300 miles—but it’s my guess they’re all saying, Can you hear me? His laughter crackled. When he told us Pink Floyd is slang for a whale’s two-foot penis, I stopped listening. The boat rocked, and for two hours our eyes were lost in the waves—but no whales surfaced, blowing or breaching or expelling water through baleen plates. Again and again you patiently wiped the spray from your glasses. We smiled to each other, good troopers used to disappointment. On the way back you pointed at cormorants riding the waves— you knew them by name: the Brants, the Pelagic, the double-breasted. I only said, I’m sure whales were swimming under us by the dozens. 4 Trying to write that I loved the work of an argument, the exhaustion of forgiving, the next morning, washing our handprints off the wineglasses. How I loved sitting with our friends under the plum trees, in the white wire chairs, at the glass table. How you stood by the grill, delicately broiling the fish. How the dill grew tall by the window. Trying to explain how camellias spoil and bloom at the same time, how their perfume makes lovers ache. Trying to describe the ways sex darkens and dies, how two bodies can lie together, entwined, out of habit. Finding themselves later, tired, by a fire, on an old couch that no longer reassures. The night we eloped we drove to the rainforest and found ourselves in fog so thick our lights were useless. There’s no choice, you said, we must have faith in our blindness. How I believed you. Trying to imagine the road beneath us, we inched forward, honking, gently, again and again.
Dina Ben-Lev
He looks up. Our eyes lock,and he breaks into a slow smile. My heart beats faster and faster. Almost there.He sets down his book and stands.And then this-the moment he calls my name-is the real moment everything changes. He is no longer St. Clair, everyone's pal, everyone's friend. He is Etienne. Etienne,like the night we met. He is Etienne,he is my friend. He is so much more. Etienne.My feet trip in three syllables. E-ti-enne. E-ti-enne, E-ti-enne. His name coats my tongue like melting chocolate. He is so beautiful, so perfect. My throat catches as he opens his arms and wraps me in a hug.My heart pounds furiously,and I'm embarrassed,because I know he feels it. We break apart, and I stagger backward. He catches me before I fall down the stairs. "Whoa," he says. But I don't think he means me falling. I blush and blame it on clumsiness. "Yeesh,that could've been bad." Phew.A steady voice. He looks dazed. "Are you all right?" I realize his hands are still on my shoulders,and my entire body stiffens underneath his touch. "Yeah.Great. Super!" "Hey,Anna. How was your break?" John.I forget he was here.Etienne lets go of me carefully as I acknowledge Josh,but the whole time we're chatting, I wish he'd return to drawing and leave us alone. After a minute, he glances behind me-to where Etienne is standing-and gets a funny expression on hs face. His speech trails off,and he buries his nose in his sketchbook. I look back, but Etienne's own face has been wiped blank. We sit on the steps together. I haven't been this nervous around him since the first week of school. My mind is tangled, my tongue tied,my stomach in knots. "Well," he says, after an excruciating minute. "Did we use up all our conversation over the holiday?" The pressure inside me eases enough to speak. "Guess I'll go back to the dorm." I pretend to stand, and he laughs. "I have something for you." He pulls me back down by my sleeve. "A late Christmas present." "For me? But I didn't get you anything!" He reaches into a coat pocket and brings out his hand in a fist, closed around something very small. "It's not much,so don't get excited." "Ooo,what is it?" "I saw it when I was out with Mum, and it made me think of you-" "Etienne! Come on!" He blinks at hearing his first name. My face turns red, and I'm filled with the overwhelming sensation that he knows exactly what I'm thinking. His expression turns to amazement as he says, "Close your eyes and hold out your hand." Still blushing,I hold one out. His fingers brush against my palm, and my hand jerks back as if he were electrified. Something goes flying and lands with a faith dink behind us. I open my eyes. He's staring at me, equally stunned. "Whoops," I say. He tilts his head at me. "I think...I think it landed back here." I scramble to my feet, but I don't even know what I'm looking for. I never felt what he placed in my hands. I only felt him. "I don't see anything! Just pebbles and pigeon droppings," I add,trying to act normal. Where is it? What is it? "Here." He plucks something tiny and yellow from the steps above him. I fumble back and hold out my hand again, bracing myself for the contact. Etienne pauses and then drops it from a few inches above my hand.As if he's avoiding me,too. It's a glass bead.A banana. He clears his throat. "I know you said Bridgette was the only one who could call you "Banana," but Mum was feeling better last weekend,so I took her to her favorite bead shop. I saw that and thought of you.I hope you don't mind someone else adding to your collection. Especially since you and Bridgette...you know..." I close my hand around the bead. "Thank you." "Mum wondered why I wanted it." "What did you tell her?" "That it was for you,of course." He says this like, duh. I beam.The bead is so lightweight I hardly feel it, except for the teeny cold patch it leaves in my palm.
Stephanie Perkins (Anna and the French Kiss (Anna and the French Kiss, #1))
When my son David was a high school senior in 2003, his graduating class went on a camping trip in the desert. A creative writing educator visited the camp and led the group through an exercise designed to develop their sensitivity and imaginations. Each student was given a pen, a notebook, a candle, and matches. They were told to walk a short distance into the desert, sit down alone, and “discover themselves.” The girls followed instructions. The boys, baffled by the assignment, gathered together, threw the notebooks into a pile, lit them with the matches, and made a little bonfire.
Christina Hoff Sommers (The War Against Boys: How Misguided Policies Are Harming Our Young Men)
Percy tightened his grip on Annabeth's wrist. His face was gaunt, scraped and bloody, his hair dusted with cobwebs, but when he locked eyes with her, she thought he had never looked more handsome. "We're staying together," he promised. "You're not getting away from me. Never again." Only then did she understand what would happen. A one-way trip. A very hard fall. "As long as we're together," she said. She heard Nico and Hazel still screaming for help. She saw the sunlight far, far above--maybe the last sunlight she would ever see. Then Percy let go of his tiny ledge, and together, holding hands, he and Annabeth fell into the endless darkness.
Rick Riordan (The Mark of Athena (The Heroes of Olympus, #3))
Commitment can be expressed in many ways. Traditionally it is solidified through marriage, owning property, having kids or wearing certain types of jewelry, but legal, domestic, or ornamental undertakings are not the only ways to show dedication. In a 2018 talk on solo polyamory at the Boulder Non-Monogamy Talk series, Kim Keane offered the following ways that people practicing nonmonogamy can demonstrate commitment to their partners: - Sharing intimate details (hopes, dreams, fears) and being vulnerable with each other. - Introducing partners to people who are important to you. - Helping your partners with moving, packing, homework, job hunting, shopping, etc. - Having regular time together, both mundane and novel. - Making the person a priority. (I suggest defining what 'being a priority' means to each of you.) - Planning trips together. - Being available to partners when they are sick or in need. - Collaborating on projects together. - Having frequent communication. - Offering physical, logistical or emotional support (e.g. at doctor's appointments or hospital visits or by helping with your partners' family, pets, car, children, taxes, etc.).
Jessica Fern (Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy)
The farmers, who rent out their house so they can stay afloat, and sleep all together in a studio, but spend their days off outside on a picnic blanket, living the lives they want to live. Drew and Melanie, with their two homes and their horses and their love story. And Rene, traveling across the world, painting temporary masterpieces. Even my uncle Pete has something good worked out with Melinda and his day trips and his best friend, my dad, who has a small nice house in San Francisco and a dozen neighborhood vendors who know him by name. All of these different ways of living. Even Sophie, with her baby in that apartment, with her record store job and her record collection. I imagine her twirling with her baby across her red carpet with Diana Ross crooning, the baby laughing, the two of them getting older in that apartment, eating meals on red vinyl chairs. Walt, too, as pathetic as his situation is, seems happy in his basement, providing entertainment to Fort Bragg's inner circle. All of them, in their own ways, manage to make their lives work.
Nina LaCour (The Disenchantments)
You say you know these streets pretty well? The city knows you better than any living person because it has seen you when you are alone. It saw you steeling yourself for the job interview, slowly walking home after the late date, tripping over nonexistent impediments on the sidewalk. It saw you wince when the single frigid drop fell from the air-conditioner 12 stories up and zapped you. It saw the bewilderment on your face as you stepped out of the stolen matinee, incredulous that there was still daylight after such a long movie. It saw you half-running up the street after you got the keys to your first apartment. It saw all that. Remembers too. Consider what all your old apartments would say if they got together to swap stories. They could piece together the starts and finishes of your relationships, complain about your wardrobe and musical tastes, gossip about who you are after midnight. 7J says, ''So that's what happened to Lucy; I knew it would never work out.'' You picked up yoga, you put down yoga, you tried various cures. You tried on selves and got rid of them, and this makes your old rooms wistful: why must things change? 3R says: ''Saxophone, you say? I knew him when he played guitar.'' Cherish your old apartments and pause for a moment when you pass them. Pay tribute, for they are the caretakers of your reinventions.
Colson Whitehead
We always make the best decision we can based upon what we believe in that moment. When I was growing up, my father and I experienced a lot of tension with each other for many years. He had bipolar disorder and it was very difficult for him. As I got older and went through my transformation of consciousness and really forgave him—and forgave myself and forgave the world—my father started showing up in my awareness as an angel. He got happier and happier and our relationship began to improve. People would say, “Your dad has really changed a lot,” and I would say, “My mind has really changed.” My father was just reflecting that back. In fact, he came to me one day and said, “David, I’m sorry. I was not a very good father. I didn’t do the things that a good father should do.” I replied, “Nonsense! I don’t believe that for one instant. You did the best you could and I did the best I could. You didn’t let me down and I didn’t let you down. We’re not going to buy into that guilt trip anymore.” He lit up when I said this. His whole demeanor changed and he instantly reflected love back to me. That simple exchange completely rearranged our view of everything that had taken place during those early years. None of it mattered anymore. We had been mistaken about many things because we couldn’t perceive truly while we were going through our time together.
David Hoffmeister (Quantum Forgiveness: Physics, Meet Jesus)
He waved cheerfully, then opened the door, tripped over the threshold, and as his balance was already impaired, nearly went face down on the floor for the second time that day. He caught himself, hung on to the side of the counter, and waited for the pub kitchen to stop revolving. With the careful steps of the drunk, he walked over to the cupboard to get out a pan for frying, a pot for boiling. Shawn was singing in his break-your-heart voice, about the cold nature of Peggy Gordon. And with one eye closed, his body swaying gently, he dripped lemon juice into a bowl. “Oh, fuck me, Shawn. You are half pissed.” “More than three-quarters if the truth be known.” He lost track of the juice and added a bit more to be safe. “And how are you, Aidan, darling?” “Get way from there before you poison someone.” Insulted, Shawn swiveled around and had to brace a hand on the counter to stay upright. “I’m drunk, not a murderer. I can make a g.d. fish cake in me sleep. This is my kitchen, I’ll thank you to remember, and I give the orders here.” He poked himself in the chest with his thumb on the claim and nearly knocked himself on his ass. Gathering dignity, he lifted his chin. “So go on with you while I go about my work.” “ What have you done to yourself?” “The devil cat caught me hand. Forgetting his work, Shawn lifted a hand to scowl at the red gashes. Oh, but I’ve got plans for him, you can be sure of that.” “At the moment, I’d lay odds on the cat. Do you know anything about putting fish cakes together?” Aidan asked Darcy. “Not a bloody thing,” she said cheerfully. “Then go and call Kathy Duffy, would you, and ask if she can spare us an hour or so, as we have an emergency?” “An emergency?” Shawn looked glassily around. “Where?
Nora Roberts (Tears of the Moon (Gallaghers of Ardmore, #2))
But beyond the extravagance of Rome's wealthiest citizens and flamboyant gourmands, a more restrained cuisine emerged for the masses: breads baked with emmer wheat; polenta made from ground barley; cheese, fresh and aged, made from the milk of cows and sheep; pork sausages and cured meats; vegetables grown in the fertile soil along the Tiber. In these staples, more than the spice-rubbed game and wine-soaked feasts of Apicius and his ilk, we see the earliest signs of Italian cuisine taking shape. The pillars of Italian cuisine, like the pillars of the Pantheon, are indeed old and sturdy. The arrival of pasta to Italy is a subject of deep, rancorous debate, but despite the legend that Marco Polo returned from his trip to Asia with ramen noodles in his satchel, historians believe that pasta has been eaten on the Italian peninsula since at least the Etruscan time. Pizza as we know it didn't hit the streets of Naples until the seventeenth century, when Old World tomato and, eventually, cheese, but the foundations were forged in the fires of Pompeii, where archaeologists have discovered 2,000-year-old ovens of the same size and shape as the modern wood-burning oven. Sheep's- and cow's-milk cheeses sold in the daily markets of ancient Rome were crude precursors of pecorino and Parmesan, cheeses that literally and figuratively hold vast swaths of Italian cuisine together. Olives and wine were fundamental for rich and poor alike.
Matt Goulding (Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy's Food Culture (Roads & Kingdoms Presents))
Depression goes through stages, but if left unchecked and not treated, this elevator ride will eventually go all the way to the bottom floor. And finally you find yourself bereft of choices, unable to figure out a way up or out, and pretty soon one overarching impulse begins winning the battle for your mind: “Kill yourself.” And once you get over the shock of those words in your head, the horror of it, it begins to start sounding appealing, even possessing a strange resolve, logic. In fact, it’s the only thing you have left that is logical. It becomes the only road to relief. As if just the planning of it provides the first solace you’ve felt that you can remember. And you become comfortable with it. You begin to plan it and contemplate the details of how best to do it, as if you were planning travel arrangements for a vacation. You just have to get out. O-U-T. You see the white space behind the letter O? You just want to crawl through that O and be out of this inescapable hurt that is this thing they call clinical depression. “How am I going to do this?” becomes the only tape playing. And if you are really, really, really depressed and you’re really there, you’re gonna find a way. I found a way. I had a way. And I did it. I made sure Opal was out of the house and on a business trip. My planning took a few weeks. I knew exactly how I was going to do it: I didn’t want to make too much of a mess. There was gonna be no blood, no drama. There was just going to be, “Now you see me, now you don’t.” That’s what it was going to be. So I did it. And it was over. Or so I thought. About twenty-four hours later I woke up. I was groggy; zoned out to the point at which I couldn’t put a sentence together for the next couple of days. But I was semifunctional, and as these drugs and shit that I took began to wear off slowly but surely, I realized, “Okay, I fucked up. I didn’t make it.” I thought I did all the right stuff, left no room for error, but something happened. And this perfect, flawless plan was thwarted. As if some force rebuked me and said, “Not yet. You’re not going anywhere.” The only reason I could have made it, after the amount of pills and alcohol and shit I took, was that somebody or something decided it wasn’t my time. It certainly wasn’t me making that call. It was something external. And when you’re infused with the presence of this positive external force, which is so much greater than all of your efforts to the contrary, that’s about as empowering a moment as you can have in your life. These days we have a plethora of drugs one can take to ameliorate the intensity of this lack of hope, lack of direction, lack of choice. So fuck it and don’t be embarrassed or feel like you can handle it yourself, because lemme tell ya something: you can’t. Get fuckin’ help. The negative demon is strong, and you may not be as fortunate as I was. My brother wasn’t. For me, despair eventually gave way to resolve, and resolve gave way to hope, and hope gave way to “Holy shit. I feel better than I’ve ever felt right now.” Having actually gone right up to the white light, looked right at it, and some force in the universe turned me around, I found, with apologies to Mr. Dylan, my direction home. I felt more alive than I’ve ever felt. I’m not exaggerating when I say for the next six months I felt like Superman. Like I’m gonna fucking go through walls. That’s how strong I felt. I had this positive force in me. I was saved. I was protected. I was like the only guy who survived and walked away from a major plane crash. I was here to do something big. What started as the darkest moment in my life became this surge of focus, direction, energy, and empowerment.
Ron Perlman (Easy Street: The Hard Way)
I hadn't told him the news yet, but in that same preternatural way he was always aware of what I was feeling or thinking, he could smell my lies a mile away. He was just giving me time to come to him. To tell him I'd be baking his bun for the next seven and a half months. ''I'm okay." Dex's chuckle filled my ears as he wrapped his arms around my chest from behind, his chin resting on the top of my head. "Just okay?" He was taunting me, I knew it. This man never did anything without a reason. And this reason had him resembling a mama bear. A really aggressive, possessive mama bear. Which said something because Dex was normally that way. I couldn't even sit around Mayhem without him or Sonny within ten feet. I leaned my head back against his chest and laughed. "Yeah, just okay." He made a humming noise deep in his throat. "Ritz," he drawled in that low voice that reached the darkest parts of my organs. "You're killin' me, honey." Oh boy. Did I want to officially break the news on the side of the road with chunks of puke possibly still on my face? Nah. So I went with the truth. "I have it all planned out in my head. I already ordered the cutest little toy motorcycle to tell you, so don't ruin it." A loud laugh burst out of his chest, so strong it rocked my body alongside his. I friggin' loved this guy. Every single time he laughed, I swear it multiplied. At this rate, I loved him more than my own life cubed, and then cubed again. "All right," he murmured between these low chuckles once he'd calmed down a bit. His fingers trailed over the skin of the back of my hand until he stopped at my ring finger and squeezed the slender bone. "I can be patient." That earned him a laugh from me. Patience? Dex? Even after more than three years, that would still never be a term I'd use to describe him. And it probably never would. He'd started to lose his shit during our layover when Trip had called for instructions on how to set the alarm at the new bar. "Dex, Ris, and Baby Locke, you done?" Sonny yelled, peeping out from over the top of the car door. "Are you friggin' kidding me?" I yelled back. Did everyone know? That slow, seductive smile crawled over his features. Brilliant and more affectionate than it was possible for me to handle, it sucked the breath out of me. When he palmed my cheeks and kissed each of my cheeks and nose and forehead, slowly like he was savoring the pecks and the contact, I ate it all up. Like always, and just like I always would. And he answered the way I knew he would every single time I asked him from them on, the way that told me he would never let me down. That he was an immovable object. That he'd always be there for me to battle the demons we could see and the invisible ones we couldn't. "Fuckin' love you, Iris," he breathed against my ear, an arm slinking around my lower back to press us together. "More than anything.
Mariana Zapata (Under Locke)
Catarina hooked her hand around Magnus’s elbow and hauled him away, like a schoolteacher with a misbehaving student. They entered a narrow alcove around the corner, where the music and noise of the party was muffled. She rounded on him. “I recently treated Tessa for wounds she said were inflicted on her by members of a demon-worshipping cult,” Catarina said. “She told me you were, and I quote, ‘handling’ the cult. What’s going on? Explain.” Magnus made a face. “I may have had a hand in founding it.” “How much of a hand?” “Well, both.” Catarina bristled. “I specifically told you not to do that!” “You did?” Magnus said. A bubble of hope grew within him. “You remember what happened?” She gave him a look of distress. “You don’t?” “Someone took all my memories around the subject of this cult,” said Magnus. “I don’t know who, or why.” He sounded more desperate than he would’ve liked, more desperate than he wanted to be. His old friend’s face was full of sympathy. “I don’t know anything about it,” she said. “I met up with you and Ragnor for a brief vacation. You seemed troubled, but you were trying to laugh it off, the way you always do. You and Ragnor said you had a brilliant idea to start a joke cult. I told you not to do it. That’s it.” He, Catarina, and Ragnor had taken many trips together, over the centuries. One memorable trip had gotten Magnus banished from Peru. He had always enjoyed those adventures more than any others. Being with his friends almost felt like having a home. He did not know if there would ever be another trip. Ragnor was dead, and Magnus might have done something terrible. “Why didn’t you stop me?” he asked. “You usually stop me!” “I had to take an orphan child across an ocean to save his life.” “Right,” said Magnus. “That’s a good reason.” Catarina shook her head. “I took my eyes off you for one second.” She had worked in mundane hospitals in New York for decades. She saved orphans. She healed the sick. She’d always been the voice of reason in the trio that was Ragnor, Catarina, and Magnus. “So I planned with Ragnor to start a joke cult, and I guess I did it. Now the joke cult is a real cult, and they have a new leader. It sounds like they’re mixed up with a Greater Demon.” Even to Catarina, he wouldn’t say the name of his father. “Sounds like the joke has gotten a little out of hand,” Catarina said dryly. “Sounds like I’m the punch line.
Cassandra Clare (The Red Scrolls of Magic (The Eldest Curses, #1))
There have been a lot of Smedries over the centuries," he said, "and a lot of Talents. Many of them tend to be similar, in the long run. There are four kinds: Talents that affect space, time, knowledge, and the physical world." "Take my talent, for instance," he continued. "I change things in space. I can get lost, then get found again." "What about grandpa Smedry?" "Time," Kas said. "He arrives late to things. Australia, however, has a Talent that can change the physical world--in this case, her own shape. Her Talent is fairly specific, and not as broad as your grandfather's. For instance, there was a Smedry a couple of centuries back who could look ugly any time he wanted, not just when he woke up in the morning. Other have been able to change anyone's appearance, not just their own. Understand?" I shrugged. "I guess so." "The closer the Talent gets to its purest form, the more powerful it is," Kaz said. "Your grandfather's Talent is very pure--he can manipulate time in a lot of different circumstances. Your father and I have very similar Talents--I can get lost and Attica can lose things--and both are flexible." "What about Sing?" I asked. "Tripping. That's what we call a knowledge Talent--he knows how to do something normal with extraordinary ability. Like Australia, though, his power isn't very flexible." I nodded slowly. "So...what does this have to do with me?" "Well, it's hard to say," Kaz said. "You're getting into some deep philosophy now, kid. There are those who argue that the Breaking Talent is simply a physical-world Talent, but one that is very versatile and very powerful. There are others who argue that the Breaking Talent is much more. It seems to be able to do things that affect all four areas. Legends say that one of your ancestors--one of only two others to have this Talent--broke time and space together, forming a little bubble where nothing aged. Other records speak of breakings equally marvelous. Breakings that change people's memory or their abilities. What is it to 'break' something? What can you change? How far can the Talent go?
Brandon Sanderson (Alcatraz Versus the Scrivener's Bones (Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians, #2))
William Slothrop was a peculiar bird. He took off from Boston, heading west in true Imperial style, in 1634 or -5, sick and tired of the Winthrop machine, convinced he could preach as well as anybody in the hierarchy even if he hadn’t been officially ordained. The ramparts of the Berkshires stopped everybody else at the time, but not William. He just started climbing. He was one of the very first Europeans in. After they settled in Berkshire, he and his son John got a pig operation going—used to drive hogs right back down the great escarpment, back over the long pike to Boston, drive them just like sheep or cows. By the time they got to market those hogs were so skinny it was hardly worth it, but William wasn’t really in it so much for the money as just for the trip itself. He enjoyed the road, the mobility, the chance encounters of the day—Indians, trappers, wenches, hill people—and most of all just being with those pigs. They were good company. Despite the folklore and the injunctions in his own Bible, William came to love their nobility and personal freedom, their gift for finding comfort in the mud on a hot day—pigs out on the road, in company together, were everything Boston wasn’t, and you can imagine what the end of the journey, the weighing, slaughter and dreary pigless return back up into the hills must’ve been like for William. Of course he took it as a parable—knew that the squealing bloody horror at the end of the pike was in exact balance to all their happy sounds, their untroubled pink eyelashes and kind eyes, their smiles, their grace in crosscountry movement. It was a little early for Isaac Newton, but feelings about action and reaction were in the air. William must’ve been waiting for the one pig that wouldn’t die, that would validate all the ones who’d had to, all his Gadarene swine who’d rushed into extinction like lemmings, possessed not by demons but by trust for men, which the men kept betraying . . . possessed by innocence they couldn’t lose . . . by faith in William as another variety of pig, at home with the Earth, sharing the same gift of life. . . .
Thomas Pynchon (Gravity's Rainbow)
Elizabeth snapped awake in a terrified instant as the door to her bed chamber was flung open near dawn, and Ian stalked into the darkened room. “Do you want to go first, or shall I?” he said tightly, coming to stand at the side of her bed. “What do you mean?” she asked in a trembling voice. “I mean,” he said, “that either you go first and tell me why in hell you suddenly find my company repugnant, or I’ll go first and tell you how I feel when I don’t know where you are or why you want to be there!” “I’ve sent word to you both nights.” “You sent a damned note that arrived long after nightfall both times, informing me that you intended to sleep somewhere else. I want to know why!” He has men beaten like animals, she reminded herself. “Stop shouting at me,” Elizabeth said shakily, getting out of bed and dragging the covers with her to hide herself from him. His brows snapped together in an ominous frown. “Elizabeth?” he asked, reaching for her. “Don’t touch me!” she cried. Bentner’s voice came from the doorway. “Is aught amiss, my lady?” he asked, glaring bravely at Ian. “Get out of here and close that damned door behind you!” Ian snapped furiously. “Leave it open,” Elizabeth said nervously, and the brave butler did exactly as she said. In six long strides Ian was at the door, shoving it closed with a force that sent it crashing into its frame, and Elizabeth began to vibrate with terror. When he turned around and started toward her Elizabeth tried to back away, but she tripped on the coverlet and had to stay where she was. Ian saw the fear in her eyes and stopped short only inches in front of her. His hand lifted, and she winced, but it came to rest on her cheek. “Darling, what is it?” he asked. It was his voice that made her want to weep at his feet, that beautiful baritone voice; and his face-that harsh, handsome face she’d adored. She wanted to beg him to tell her what Robert and Wordsworth had said were lies-all lies. “My life depends on this, Elizabeth. So does yours. Don’t fail us,” Robert had pleaded. Yet, in that moment of weakness she actually considered telling Ian everything she knew and letting him kill her if he wanted to; she would have preferred death to the torment of living with the memory of the lie that had been their lives-to the torment of living without him. “Are you ill?” he asked, frowning and minutely studying her face. Snatching at the excuse he’d offered, she nodded hastily. “Yes. I haven’t been feeling well.” “Is that why you went to London? To see a physician?” She nodded a little wildly, and to her bewildered horror he started to smile-that lazy, tender smile that always made her senses leap. “Are you with child, darling? Is that why you’re acting so strangely?” Elizabeth was silent, trying to debate the wisdom of saying yes or no-she should say no, she realized. He’d hunt her to the ends of the earth if he believed she was carrying his babe. “No! He-the doctor said it is just-just-nerves.” “You’ve been working and playing too hard,” Ian said, looking like the picture of a worried, devoted husband. “You need more rest.” Elizabeth couldn’t bear any more of this-not his feigned tenderness or his concern or the memory of Robert’s battered back. “I’m going to sleep now,” she said in a strangled voice. “Alone,” she added, and his face whitened as if she had slapped him. During his entire adult life Ian had relied almost as much on his intuition as on his intellect, and at that moment he didn’t want to believe in the explanation they were both offering. His wife did not want him in her bed; she recoiled from his touch; she had been away for two consecutive nights; and-more alarming than any of that-guilt and fear were written all over her pale face. “Do you know what a man thinks,” he said in a calm voice that belied the pain streaking through him, “when his wife stays away at night and doesn’t want him in her bed when she does return?
Judith McNaught (Almost Heaven (Sequels, #3))