Will Greenwood Quotes

A happy ending was imperative. I shouldn't have bothered to write otherwise. I was determined that in fiction anyway two men should fall in love and remain in it for the ever and ever that fiction allows, and in this sense, Maurice and Alec still roam the greenwood.

The moment in The Bell Jar when Esther Greenwood realizes after thirty days in the same black turtleneck that she never wants to wash her hair again, that the repeated necessity of the act is too much trouble, that she wants to do it once and be done with it, seems like the book's true epiphany. You know you've completely descended into madness when the matter of shampoo has ascended into philosophical heights.

I liked learning things. How numbers worked together to explain the stars. How molecules made the world. All the ugly and wonderful things people had done in the last two thousand years.

If we be doomed to marry, we marry; if we be doomed to remain single we do.

To dwellers in a wood, almost every species of tree has its voice as well as its feature.

If I ever saw my muse she would be an old woman with a tight bun and spectacles poking me in the middle of the back and growling, "Wake up and write the book!

Most days I was impossible. Like a unicorn.

When I reached her, she was a star, pulling me into her orbit

You can look up keening in the dictionary, but you don’t know what it means until you hear somebody having their heart ripped out.

There's a friendly tie of some sort between music and eating.

Under the greenwood tree, Who loves to lie with me And tune his merry note, Unto the sweet bird's throat; Come hither, come hither, come hither. Here shall he see No enemy But winter and rough weather.

You make people interested in you by keeping secrets, not by passing them out like candy at Halloween.

I love you. I love you all the way.

Maurice and Alec still roam the greenwood.

I'm concealing a lot of things. That's what a lady does.

I wanted a fairy tale ending for Wavy, because if she could find happiness, there would be hope for me, too.

Your family is real, but mine isn't? Real people with real feelings, but my family isn't real to you. You think. I'm a character. A story. Those women you talk about. Not real people to you. Stupid women. I'm real. I'm as real as you are. My family is real like your family.

Feeling dead was better than when my heart hurt. Sometimes I thought it might burn through my ribs while I was asleep, and smolder in the sheets until the whole house caught fire.

Sometimes waiting and being disappointed was good, to remind me he didn't belong to me. Nothing belonged to me.

Had she been at all used to blushing, she would have blushed, but she wasn't, so she didn't.

Tradition is just peer pressure from dead people, William,

I don't know why you're so hard to convince," I said, "But I'm really not that bad of a guy." "Spoken like a true serial killer.

I liked to play at tragedy, but she drank it out of her baby bottle.

Phryne was getting out of the car. Dot closed her eyes. Miss Fisher was about to happen to someone again.

Everybody must be managed. Queens must be managed. Kings must be managed, for men want managing almost as much as women, and that's saying a good deal.

I was lying on the tracks under a train I was in love with.

There are good sailors. Well, some good sailors. In a way they are ideal as husbands. They drop in every six months for a wild celebration, then they drop out again before one gets bored with their company or annoyed with by their habits.

Hope is really just desire disguised, just desperation, aching, dressed up like a prayer.

Ice cream was reliable. Young men were not.

There are only two precious things on earth: the first is love; the second, a long way behind it, is intelligence.

We pretended she'd only gotten lost in the colors of fall. Piper

What I didn't say was that each time I picked up a German dictionary or a German book, the very sight of those dense, black, barbed-wire letters made my mind shut like a clam.

If the story-tellers could ha' got decency and good morals from true stories, who'd have troubled to invent parables?

Because life is too short to wait around on a good idea.

From Alpha Centauri, we were twin stars, side by side.

Nothing belongs to you. It didn’t matter that Grandma gave the cookbook to me. All Mama had to do was hold it in her hands and it was hers.

...Each secret you carry has a weight all its own. They add up, secrets, to a burden you must carry all your days.

A young man in one’s hotel bedroom is capable of being explained, but a corpse is always a hindrance.

There aren't any normal lives, son. That's the lie that hurts us most.

I have a theory that kitchens, once they reach a certain level of complexity, attract new gadgets into their orbit, like planets. Only this can account for the fact that I own two melon ballers.

... with all the sweetness of a chocolate-coated razor-blade.

Forgiveness is freedom. It's something you do for yourself - to keep who you are intact. Now that I think about it - in some ways, it's kind of a selfish act.

I was moving forward into space, but i would never come home again

That’s not the only thing love means. You just got your mind in the gutter.

He'd pull a door off its hinges rather than work out how to turn a key.

If you are not scared then there is no merit in being brave.

That’s the problem with the Christmas story: most of the roles are for boys. The only girl is there because men can’t have babies.

Life has no meaning but what we give it. I wish a few more of ye would give it a little.

Thought failed him, and he returned to realities.

Girl that age ought not to have so many troubles, but she did. Looking at it that way, them two was about made for each other.

The problem with so many people you encounter in life is that they're being the version of themselves they think they should be rather than the person they actually are.

Sometimes when people want to go, it’s easier to just let them.

the secret to happiness is counting your blessings while others are adding up their troubles.

Truth was she took care of him as much as he did her. There was a few times when he was younger that I thought to myself, One of these days, he ain’t gonna show up for work, ’cause he’ll be at home with a gun in his mouth. I had an uncle did that. Jesse Joe was a man with a deep streak of lonely, until Wavy came along.

What if a family isn't a tree at all? What if it's more like a forest? A collection of individuals, pooling their resources by intertwined roots, sheltering each other from wind and weather and drought... what are families other than fictions? Stories told about a particular cluster of people for a particular reason. And like all stories, families are not born, they're invented. Pieced together from love and lies and nothing else.

Take heart, she seems to say. The world has been on the brink of ending before. The dust has always been waiting to swallow us. People have always struggled and suffered. Your poverty is not shameful. It is not a failure of your character. Life, by its very nature, is precarious. And your struggles are never for nothing.

... I'm a half-empty kind of girl.

What are you doing out there?" Lily hissed. "Would you believe me if I said I was just passing by?" She groaned. "You are a terrible liar, Calder White.

I might not have much choice in how long I stay alive. But I do have some say in how much life I can pack into the days I have left. How much happiness I can experience.

...why is it, she wonders...that we expect our children to be the ones to halt deforestation and species extinction and to rescue our planet tomorrow, when we are the ones overseeing its destruction today?

Her heart was beating appreciably faster, and she took more rapid breaths, but she was enjoying herself. Adventuresses are born, not made.

But a real vision, a real change, isn’t safe,” Maya said. “You don’t pay a workshop fee for it, you pay with your life.

I believe in absolutely nothing except yeast and the inevitability of politicians.

She’s wrong. So fucking wrong. There aren’t a million Aveena Harpers out there. My angry girl. My pen pal. My Love. Just one.

How intimately a book is related to the tree and it’s rings, she thinks. The layers of time, preserved, for all to examine.

I could have told him there was no sense in rushing toward being dead. It would find you soon enough, and before it did there were pleasures to make your heart hurt less.

Why, you make anyone think that loving is a thing that can be done and undone, and put on and put off at a mere whim.

Now you know, okay? From here on out, only you. I promise.

Mr. Arsenikos said if you knew the constellations you would never get lost. You could always find your way home.

Half an hour afterwards Dick emerged from the inn, and if Fancy's lips had been real cherries, probably Dick's would have appeared deeply stained.

Crying means you're feeling," Jan muses. That you're living. That you're loving". That you're laughing.

I love you. I’ve loved you since the day I barbecued your babies and pushed you down the jungle gym just so I could kiss you.” He pauses, pain lacing his voice. “I fucking love you, Vee… And I’m paying for it.

There was no point in lying. "Yes. I am following you." Her carefully controlled exterior faltered. "Why?" "Because I like you. I'm sorry if that makes you nervous." All the color drained from her face. "I thought you thought I was crazy." "I like crazy." "You're unbelievable," she grumbled. "So I've been told.

Now of old the name of that forest was Greenwood the Great, and its wide halls and aisles were the haunt of many beasts and of birds of bright song; and there was the realm of King Thranduil under the oak and the beech.

I can’t afford to spend days in self loathing as everyone expects fat women to do. Self loathing eats your life.

After Liam and Butch took Kellen away, I thought about how he left spaces for me when he talked. If I saw him again, I decided I might put words in those spaces.

Tis my belief she’s a very good woman at bottom.” “She’s terrible deep, then.

How people will talk about one’s doings!” Fancy exclaimed. “Well, if you make songs about yourself, my dear, you can’t blame other people for singing ’em.

I love you, Wavy. I love you." I said it until she relaxed. "Now put your ring back on.

I’d been going along thinking I was Shakespeare, but I’d written myself out of the play.

Money can't buy happiness but it can vastly improve the quality of your misery.

We didn't need to talk. We just laid there watching falling stars go streaking white through all that darkness.

Amor fati: this is the very core of my being—And as to my prolonged illness, do I not owe much more to it than I owe to my health? To it I owe a higher kind of health, a sort of health which grows stronger under everything that does not actually kill it!—To it, I owe even my philosophy.… Only great suffering is the ultimate emancipator of spirit, for it teaches one that vast suspiciousness which makes an X out of every U, a genuine and proper X, i.e., the antepenultimate letter. Only great suffering; that great suffering, under which we seem to be over a fire of greenwood, the suffering that takes its time—forces us philosophers to descend into our nethermost depths, and to let go of all trustfulness, all good-nature, all whittling-down, all mildness, all mediocrity,—on which things we had formerly staked our humanity.

the first Goddess, Gaia, who was the earth, wide hipped, big bellied, the womb of the human race, the nurturing breast of all humans, the opulent and voracious beginning of all things female.

«Fino a oggi non credevo nemmeno di possedere un cuore. Ora sei arrivato tu che riesci a farlo impazzire in un modo tutto nuovo, e io non so cosa fare per controllarlo. Perciò Logan Greenwood: esiste un antidoto per l'incantesimo con cui mi hai ammaliata?»

Why is it that people are engineered to live just long enough to pile up a lifetime of mistakes, but not long enough to fix them? If only we were like trees...If only we had centuries. Maybe then there'd be time enough for us to mend all the harm we have done.

I couldn't say, "I lost the best thing that ever happened to me." Wasn't that punishment enough?

Tell him everything; it is best. He will forgive you.

You see, without the weird phase. Without the work, the struggle, there’d be no victory. Without the ugliness, there’d be no beauty.

People’s mistakes don’t define them, Zac. It’s the decisions they make moving forward.

No cook can ignore the opinion of a man who asks for three helpings. One is politeness, two is hunger, but three is a true and cherished compliment.

It takes courage to make art and put it out there for people to love or hate, or even worse—ignore.

If Fancy's lips had been real cherries probably Dick's would have appeared deeply stained.

I know that right here, right now, with him, is exactly where I´m supposed to be.

Altogether, a pleasant place, marred by activities of unpleasant people whose qualities, perhaps, are sad reflections of sadder environments.

And everything with you is always so, I don't know, fucking heavy.

He looked at the daylight shadows of a yellow hue, dancing with the firelight shadows in blue on the whitewashed chimney corner, but there was nothing in shadows.

You see, I happen to think we’re only as good as the worst thing we’ve ever done.

Zac: Remember when I said no girl could ever keep my attention? Love: Yeah? My heart flutters with anticipation. Zac: I think I was wrong.

I find comfort in knowing the greatest love stories all have an expiration date… I just wish ours didn’t have to be today.

She was sensible of the fact that while there were two sets of masculine arms to fall into, and one of them her current pet, Phryne had fallen into Dot’s.

He needed me to speak, because his heart hurt, too. I didn’t want to be mean, but sometimes, it was dangerous to open my mouth and let words out.

She wondered, briefly, if she was beautiful, decided she was and blew a kiss to her reflection

A person seldom knows they're starved for something until they get a taste of it.

The thing about people is you have to let hem drag you to places you don't want to go. Let them tell you things you don't want to hear. Let them break you and put you back together.

Summer had so many tricks. The nights lasted longer than the days, even though the angle of the Earth’s axis meant that was impossible. The night couldn’t be longer, but summer made it seem that way. Summer sneaked time for me, taking a minute from February, three minutes from English class in March, ten whole minutes from a boring Thursday in April. Summer stole time to give me another hour under the stars with Kellen.

I mostly liked high school. I liked learning things. How numbers worked together to explain the stars. How molecules made the world. All the ugly and wonderful things people had done in the last two thousand years.

Close? ah, he is close! He can hold his tongue well. That man’s dumbness is wonderful to listen to.” “There’s so much sense in it. Every moment of it is brimmen over wi’ sound understanding.

Truth came home one day, naked and wounded, having been beaten and cursed by the people who did not wish to hear, while his brother Falsehood went dressed in the brightest garments and feasted with every household. “What shall I do?” cried Truth to the gods. “No man wishes to hear me and all beat me and throw things at me; look, I am covered with dung.” “You are naked” said the goddess Maat, sympathetically. “No naked one can command respect. Therefore take these robes and you will walk without fear and all men will sit at your feet to hear your stories.” And she dressed Truth in Fable’s garments, and he was welcome at every house.

I could have told him there was no sense in rushing toward being dead. It would find you soon enough, and before it did there were pleasures to make your heart hurt less. If I lay very still in bed at night, I remembered how Grandma’s house smelled. The taste of mint ice cream on Kellen’s tongue. Donal jumping on the bed to wake me up.

The brush that is tinder dry from decades of drought, the warming of the earth's climate that sends the storms away north, the hole in the ozone layer. Not punishment, not even justice, but consequence.

How sad was it that grief had a shelf life, he thought. It’s only fresh and raw for so long before it begins to spoil. And soon enough, it would be replaced by a newer, brighter heartache - the old one discarded and eventually forgotten. 

The world is too harsh a place to contemplate directly, without a cushion of fancy and belief.

First, a bath. I'm feeling soiled. Too much contact with cold reality, I think.

That’s what church was to Wavy: a set of games she didn’t quite understand.

I made a deal with the devil without reading it first. Of all his pretty lies, I love you was the worst.

Here's what all the stories forget to mention; life goes on around the cursed.

This is what 'forever' means, my dear. You don't walk into danger on your own. Not anymore.

trying to do the scary thing is almost as good as actually doing the scary thing.

This is the carpenter's painful truth: nothing is true. ...We think we live in boxes until we look closer and find we're in fact living in irregular shapes, in big, misshapen accidents.

That night I first saw you, I was going too fast. There I was rubbernecking at you and dumped the bike. Wrecked me up. I don’t want to wreck us up like that. I don’t want you to get hurt.” She

You can't find happiness outside yourself, Calder." I shook my head. "You sound like a fortune cookie." "It's still true. Everyone's always trying to do it, y'know. They try to get with the right people, hook up with the right guy, join the right club - without ever asking what 'right' is." "And this is somehow supposed to apply to me? I'm not some identity-confused sophomore, Lily. If you haven't been listening, I turn into a thieving, murdering fish.

I’m never fucking deserting you, Harper.” His voice is so low I can hear my own heart pounding. “Deal with it.” Then he crashes his lips against mine. But Xavier Emery doesn’t just kiss you. Xavier Emery owns you.

Still, Temple has no illusions concerning her library's impact. Her books won't lift anyone from their low station. They won't right wrongs or save wandering souls from perdition or fill grumbling stomachs. But they might let a few scraps of sunlight fall into some lean, desolate lives. And that's something. 'The Greatest Library of Estevan, Saskatchewan

Maybe trees do have souls. Which makes wood a kind of flesh. And perhaps instruments of wooden construction sound so pleasing to our ears for this reason: the choral shimmer of a guitar; the heartbeat thump of drums; the mournful wail of violins--we love them because they sound like us.

You’re the human equivalent of stepping into a puddle with socks on.

Now we will all die. What a pity. I haven't done half the wicked things I wanted to do, and the ones I have done I haven't done anything like enough.

The quizzes helped Renee empty her heart, and she filled it so quickly with the wrong things, it was no wonder she needed to empty it.

You need to figure out how to live here or you need to get the hell out.

Logan Greenwood, cavaliere part-time al suo servizio" […] "Juniper Lee, damigella di spose spettrali e cavalieri a tempo perso

I'd rather lie in a hammock with you -- with nothing but happiness surrounding us -- and be ambushed than run away.

I always like cases when the victim's been practically begging to be killed. It means I don't have to be sorry for him.

The real core of this book is about the open secrets that can fester in a community until an outsider raises questions.

The places that once knew [Marie Antoinette] now know her forever.

It being the first time in his life that he had touched female fingers under water, Dick duly registered the sensation as rather a nice one.

Love: Have you ever had people close to you die? Ten seconds go by. Zac: Is this how you talk dirty? If so, we might need to work on that.

Because it’s always you these days. It’s. Always. Fucking. You.

Both had suggestive bulges in their pockets which told of either huge genitalia or trousered pistols.

Phryne was feeling most displeased with a species to which, she reminded herself, she belonged.

I don't just hang around with people. Especially strangers. The woman pulls another face. "Then they will always be strangers if you never hang out with them. Never friends.

Fate has a way of giving you exactly what you need, when you need it.

I could never see it before… But I can now. Parents aren’t superheroes. Superhumans. They’re just humans, doing their best, making mistakes, getting knocked on their ass and crawling until they can get back up again.

May the wind carry her spirit gently May the Fire release her soul, May the Water cleanse her, may the Earth receive her, May the Goddess take her in her arms and guide her to rebirth.

He was conscious of a cold and sickly thrill throughout him; and all he reasoned was this, that the young creature whose graces had intoxicated him into making the most imprudent decision of his life, was less an angel than a women.

Were you aware that emotional tears have a higher protein concentration than tears that comes from irritation? I read online that the higher protein content makes them fall down your cheeks more slowly -- increasing the chance they'll be seen by people and attract help. Your body is literally built for community. Tears attract people. So cry away!

When you've made up your mind to marry, take the first respectable body that comes to hand - she's as good as any other; they be all alike in groundwork: 'tis only in the flourishes there's a difference.

Equally arresting are British pub names. Other people are content to dub their drinking establishment with pedestrian names like Harry’s Bar and the Greenwood Lounge. But a Briton, when he wants to sup ale, must find his way to the Dog and Duck, the Goose and Firkin, the Flying Spoon, or the Spotted Dog. The names of Britain’s 70,000 or so pubs cover a broad range, running from the inspired to the improbable, from the deft to the daft. Almost any name will do so long as it is at least faintly absurd, unconnected with the name of the owner, and entirely lacking in any suggestion of drinking, conversing, and enjoying oneself. At a minimum the name should puzzle foreigners-this is a basic requirement of most British institutions-and ideally it should excite long and inconclusive debate, defy all logical explanation, and evoke images that border on the surreal.

Kira closed her eyes, thought, and said them aloud. "Madder for red. Bedstraw for red too, just the roots. Tops of tansy for yellow, and greenwood for yellow too. And yarrow: yellow and gold. Dark hollyhocks, just the petals, for mauve...." "Broom sedge," she added, still remembering. "Goldy yellows and browns. And Saint Johnswort for browns too, but it'll stain my hands. "And bronze fennel--leaves and flowers; use them fresh--and you can eat it too. Chamomile for tea and for green hues.

He smelled good. Sweat and motorcycle and wintergreen. No stinking weed smoke. No perfume. No sadness. He smelled like love.

No; the charm is worked by common sense, and the spell can only be broke by your acting stupidly.

The young will no longer be advised by the old," she said to the hall porter. "That is because we advised them to die," said the hall porter.

Sometimes things need to get broken

I looked at the things people think they own. I didn’t take things very often, but I liked to move them. Car keys, purses, glasses, one shoe out of a pair. The

So know this: your father loved you with everything he had. He just didn't have much left.

We lived among people whose poverty could be seen in the length of their faces, in their tired speech and in the heaviness of their eyes.

Such poor liquor do make a man's throat feel very melancholy--and is a disgrace to the name of stimmilent.

In here, Phryne, is the nursery. Do you like babies? Phryne laughed. No, not at all. they are not aesthetic like a puppy or a kitten. In fact, they always look drunk to me. look at that one---you'd swear he had been hitting the gin.

The Chinese philosopher Mencius believed that man is innately good. He argued that anyone who saw a child falling into a well would immediately feel shock and alarm, and that this impulse, this universal capacity for commiseration, was proof positive that man is inherently good.

I feel like a child. But I learn a little something every day. It's like a whole new way of living. It's a willingness to give up control. To make a commitment and have faith it'll work out.

Time, Liam has learned, is not an arrow. Neither is it a road. It goes in no particular direction. It simply accumulates—in the body, in the world—like wood does. Layer upon layer. Light, then dark. Each one dependent upon the last. Each year impossible without the one preceding it. Each triumph and each disaster written forever in its structure. His own life, he can admit now, will never be clear, will never be unblemished, will never be reclaimed. Because it is impossible to ungrow what has already grown, to undo what is already done. Still, people trust the things he’s built, and there is something to that. It’s not enough, but it’s what he’ll take with him.

Her rule was "Don't talk to Mama until she talks to you. Wait until you know which Mama she's going to be. If Mama said, "Oh, God, I'm so alone," it was okey for me to hug her. If Mama said, "Worthless motherfucker. I'll show him," you better watch out.

She rolled her eyes. " I was talking about your temperature, jerk. But just to be clear, I never said you weren't good-looking. If you remember, I said you made me nervous." "Right. So, you think I'm good-looking?" She swatted me over the head with her fedora, then went back to the cash register, saying, "You're really annoying. If you're sisters are pains in the ass, I'm thinking they learned it from you.

My mother, stuck in Two Rivers with a head full of unfulfilled dreams, escaped every chance she got via the Two Rivers Free Library - her library card both a passport and necessary currency for her travels.

Every tree is held up by its own history, the very bones of its ancestors...Jake has gained a new awareness of how her own life is being held up by unseen layers, girded by lives that come before her own. And by a series of crimes and miracles, accidents and choices, sacrifices and mistakes, all of which have landed her in this particular body and delivered her to this day.

Your family is real, but mine isn’t? Real people with real feelings, but my family isn’t—” She ran out of air and took a gulp. “—real to you. You think. I’m a character. A story. Those women you talk about. Not real people to you. Stupid women. Stupid photo albums. But you. You’re smart. You make smarter choices. For us.” She

...and to his eyes, casually glancing upward, the silver and black-stemmed birches, with their characteristic tufts, the pale grey boughs of beech, the dark-creviced elm all appeared now as black and flat outlines upon the sky, wherein the white stars twinkled so vehemently that their flickering seemed like the flapping of wings.

If it's true that the United States was born of slavery and revolutionary justice...then surely her own country was born of a cruel, grasping indifference to its indigenous peoples and the natural world. We who rip our the Earth's most irreplaceable resources, sell them cheaply to anyone with a nickel in their pocket, then wake up and do it all over again--that could well serve as the Greenwood motto, and perhaps even for her nation itself.

My own view is that everyone works too hard and too long and they ought to get out more. There isn’t time in their improverished lives to do anything creative, or even to just sit and stare, one of my favourite occupations. And how the wired-in young—never without their music, never out of touch because of mobile phones, constantly sharing everything, even pictures—are going to cope if they ever encounter solitude and silence is another thing.

If you ever lay a finger on her—” Finn squeezes the guy’s throat so hard, he makes a disturbing wheezing sound that makes my skin crawl. “—if you even think of going near her, or looking at her, or breathing in her direction, I’ll kill you with my bare fucking hands, you got that?

Come to the jacaranda tree at seven o'clock and you will hear something to your advantage. Destroy this note.' No signature, no clue to the identity. Just what sort of heroine do you think I am? Phryne asked the air. Only a Gothic novel protagonist would receive that and say, 'Goodness, let me just slip into a low-cut white nightie and put on the highest heeled shoes I can find,' and, pausing only to burn the note, slip out of the hotel by a back exit and go forth to meet her doom in the den of the monster - to be rescued in the nick of time by the strong-jawed hero (he of the Byronic profile and the muscles rippling beneath the torn shirt). 'Oh, my dear,' Phryne spoke aloud as if to the letter-writer. 'You don't know a lot about me, do you?

One summer day I lay upon the grass. I’d sinned, no matter how, and in sin’s wake there came a kind of drowsy peace so deep I hadn’t even will enough to loathe myself. I had no mind to pray. I scarcely had a mind at all, just eyes to see the greenwood overhead, just flesh to feel the sun. A light breeze blew from Wear that tossed the trees, and as I lay there watching them, they formed a face of shadows and of leaves. It was a man’s green, leafy face. He gazed at me from high above. And as the branches nodded in the air, he opened up his mouth to speak. No sound came from his lips, but by their shape I knew it was my name. His was the holiest face I ever saw. My very name turned holy on his tongue. If he had bade me rise and follow him to the end of time, I would have gone. If he had bade me die for him, I would have died. When I deserved it least, God gave me most. I think it was the Savior’s face itself I saw.

Sometimes I felt like the mundane details of our lives were the only things tethering me to the world. I could hold onto them - distractions necessitating action. They gave me a sense of purpose. If not for the leaky faucet, the sandwiches, the bills, I might not know what to do with my hands.

It doesn’t end with someone fucking up. There’s so much more to life than that. It’s not all black and white. Sometimes it’s gray. Confusing, inconclusive gray. And at the end of the day, it all comes down to one question… Do you regret it?

I remember looking at him like he was mental for suggesting to kiss my bloody knee, and he laughed at the realization. Then he grabbed my face, wiped a tear rolling down my cheek… And kissed me instead. Believe me when I say that shut me right up. Xavier Emery was my first kiss. But he’s still an asshole.

And they need not cause you grief. As my Highland grandmother said—and she had the Sight—“Tis not the dead ye have to be concerned about! Beware of the Living!” And she was a wise woman. The dead are beyond your help or mine, poor things. But the living need us. Thirty souls at the least, Phryne, are still on that island to praise God who might now be angels—or devils.

What I'm saying is that tonight I saw those people singing "Happy Birthday" and I got it. Those guests, friends, family, whatever. They were witnesses to that guy's life. The fact that they were there to see him change age - some arbitrary occasion - it marked it. It means that it will be remembered. That he will be remembered. Even when he's gone. Because, he had, you know, witnesses,

It was the week after Easter holidays, and he was journeying along with Smart the mare and the light spring-cart, watching the damp slopes of the hill-sides as they steamed in the warmth of the sun, which at this unsettled season shone on the grass with the freshness of an occasional inspector rather than as an accustomed proprietor.

I squirmed in my hiding spot. Do something, people,” I urged. Say something. The silence dragged on. I imagined my first report to Maris. “We have underestimated our enemy. They are lethal. We are in serious danger of the Hancocks boring us to death. Abort, abort, abort.

I don’t want them because they don’t have a caterpillar tattoo on their shoulder.” Xav clutches my face with both hands. “I don’t want them because they’re not the only ones who get me in a world of fucking idiots.” He gives a breathy laugh, the garage’s fluorescent lights 

Still here?” he drawls when he notices me. “Still a presumptuous asshole?” I snap back. I expect him to double down on the nasty replies, to crush me with spite, so you can imagine my surprise when he clamps his mouth shut, the corners of his lips twitching into a small smile. His pale eyes rake over my face for a second too long, and I squirm under his undivided attention. Why, oh why, does he have to look like that? Low blow, Life, low blow.

The shocking death of a loved one isn't a wailing thing. The real shudder comes from the world moving on as if nothing's happened. Shops flip their Closed signs to Open, patrons gather at the theaters and soda shops, and people dare smile at things that make them happy, while those left in the ruins find joy in nothing.

Conversation is a minefield until you learn the conventions, Jane dear.’ ‘I’ll never learn all the rules,’ muttered Jane. ‘Yes, you will,’ said Phryne. ‘Then you can bend them. The best advice I would give you is, “If under attack, cause a diversion”.’ ‘A diversion?’ ‘Yes, trip over the dog, spill a glass of wine on your attacker, burst into song, challenge your attacker to a duel. And the angrier you get, the lower your voice should be. Never shout unless you are shouting “Fire!

I like the color of the Caribbean." I paused and absorbed the warmth of her smile before adding, "Dogs, not cats. Boxers, not briefs. Redheads over brunettes..." I glanced sideways at her, and she met my gaze. "I have a penchant for girls in velvet jackets... and I think you're the most beautiful girl I've ever seen." She choked in surprise, sputtered, and shook her head. "You see? This is what I mean." "What?" "Nobody talks like that. I barely know you." I was genuinely confused. Didn't girls like to hear this stuff? Besides, it was, conveniently enough, the truth. "Well, I talk like this. And you should be used to people telling you you're beautiful." "Well, I'm not," she said, and she sounded like she was getting irritated with me again. The feeling was mutual. I leaned against the wall and pulled up one knee. "Okay. I take it back. You are completely average. Dull, dull, dull. Unremarkable in every way.

On the morning of our second day, we were strolling down the Champs-Elysées when a bird shit on his head. ‘Did you know a bird’s shit on your head?’ I asked a block or two later. Instinctively Katz put a hand to his head, looked at it in horror – he was always something of a sissy where excrement was concerned; I once saw him running through Greenwood Park in Des Moines like the figure in Edvard Munch’s ‘The Scream’ just because he had inadvertently probed some dog shit with the tip of his finger – and with only a mumbled ‘Wait here’ walked with ramrod stiffness in the direction of our hotel. When he reappeared twenty minutes later he smelled overpoweringly of Brut aftershave and his hair was plastered down like a third-rate Spanish gigolo’s, but he appeared to have regained his composure. ‘I’m ready now,’ he announced. Almost immediately another bird shit on his head. Only this time it really shit. I don’t want to get too graphic, in case you’re snacking or anything, but if you can imagine a pot of yoghurt upended onto his scalp, I think you’ll get the picture. ‘Gosh, Steve, that was one sick bird,’ I observed helpfully. Katz was literally speechless. Without a word he turned and walked stiffly back to the hotel, ignoring the turning heads of passers-by. He was gone for nearly an hour. When at last he returned, he was wearing a windcheater with the hood up. ‘Just don’t say a word,’ he warned me and strode past. He never really warmed to Paris after that.

See the stars, Lily?" She sighed, surrendering. "Of course." "Do you think they can see the sun coming up?" "I don't know. Probably?" "Do you think they're scared?" "They're burning balls of gas, Calder." "Oh, c'mon. Where's the poet in you?" She exhaled, and I sensed her smile. "I see. Well, in that case, yes. They've finally come home. They are triumphant in their midnight kingdom. But the enemy approaches. They have the numbers on their side, but the enemy is bigger, stronger, with a history of winning that goes back to the dawn of time. They're definitvely terrified." I nodded. She understood my analogy. "But they don't run, Calder.

So…” I start. “I… You wanted me to stop by?” Just so we’re clear, he’s still melting my insides with a single look, and I’m still a babbling idiot who can’t form a sentence. Xavier moves closer to me, a single whiff of his cologne enough to make my knees buckle. “No,” he shocks me by saying. My jaw hangs limply. “I wanted you to come and stay,” he corrects, and a herd of murderous butterflies assault my stomach. “Stay tonight?” He moves closer again. “Forever,” he says unapologetically. I avoid his gaze. “Xav, I—” “Don’t fucking go, Vee.” He cuts to the chase, cupping my face in his hands without a single thought as to the possibility of people seeing us. “I know this is shitty, and complicated, and it’d be easier for you to get on that plane, but… I don’t want easy—fuck easy. I want you. I love you, Vee,” he croaks, pressing his forehead flush to mine. “Just… stay.

The old saying goes that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. But in Willow's experience, the opposite is more likely true. An apple is nothing but a seed's escape vehicle, just one of the ingenious ways they hitch rides -- in the bellies of animals, or by taking to the wind -- all to get as far away from their parents as they possibly can. So is it any wonder the daughters of dentists open candy stores, the sons of accountants become gambling addicts, the children of couch potatoes run marathons? She's always believed that most people's lives are lived as one great refutation of the ones that came before them.

For the next few minutes, Edith led the room in hollering “Fired up! Ready to go!” back and forth, again and again. I was confused at first, but figured it would be impolite of me not to join in. And pretty soon, I started to feel kinda fired up! I started to feel like I was ready to go! I noticed everybody at the meeting suddenly was smiling too, and after the chanting was done we settled down and talked for the next hour about the community and the country and what we could do to make it better. Even after I left Greenwood, for the rest of the day, every so often, I’d point to someone on my staff and ask, “You fired up?” Eventually it became a campaign rallying cry. And that, I suppose, was the part of politics that would always give me the most pleasure: the part that couldn’t be diagrammed, that defied planning or analytics. The way in which, when it works, a campaign—and by extension a democracy—proved to be a chorus rather than a solo act.

One can look at a plumber, a labourer, and say without a great sense of irony, 'He is a man, capable of the same heroism as Admiral Nelson or Saint Francis of Assisi.' But no one looks at a woman and says, 'She is a woman, she is capable of the same heroism as Lady Godiva or Anne Askew.' Our heroines are separated from us. So instead of trying to make Man accept us as daughters of heroism, we must raise all women to the level of heroines.

Things accumulated in purses. Unless they were deliberately unloaded and all contents examined for utility occasionally, one could find oneself transporting around in one's daily life three lipstick cases with just a crumb of lipstick left, an old eyebrow pencil sharpener without a blade, pieces of defunct watch, odd earrings, handkerchiefs (three crumpled, one uncrumpled), two grubby powder puffs, bent hairpins, patterns of ribbon to be matched, a cigarette lighter without fuel (and two with fuel), a spark plug, some papers of Bex and a sprinkling of loose white aspirin, eleven train tickets (the return half of which had not been given up), four tram tickets, cinema and theatre stubs, seven pence three farthings in loose change and the mandatory throat lozenge stuck to the lining. At least, those had been the extra contents of Phyrne's bag the last time Dot had turned it out.

During the youthful period of mankind's spiritual evolution human fantasy created gods in man's own image, who, by the operations of their will were supposed to determine, or at any rate to influence, the phenomenal world. Man sought to alter the disposition of these gods in his own favor by means of magic and prayer. The idea of God in the religions taught at present is a sublimation of that old concept of the gods. Its anthropomorphic character is shown, for instance, by the fact that men appeal to the Divine Being in prayers and plead for the fulfillment of their wishes. Nobody, certainly, will deny that the idea of the existence of an omnipotent, just, and omnibeneficent personal God is able to accord man solace, help, and guidance; also, by virtue of its simplicity it is accessible to the most undeveloped mind. But, on the other hand, there are decisive weaknesses attached to this idea in itself, which have been painfully felt since the beginning of history. That is, if this being is omnipotent, then every occurrence, including every human action, every human thought, and every human feeling and aspiration is also His work; how is it possible to think of holding men responsible for their deeds and thoughts before such an almighty Being? In giving out punishment and rewards He would to a certain extent be passing judgment on Himself. How can this be combined with the goodness and righteousness ascribed to Him? (Albert Einstein, Science, Philosophy, and Religion, A 1934 Symposium published by the Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion in Their Relation to the Democratic Way of Life, Inc., New York, 1941; from Einstein's Out of My Later Years, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1970, pp. 26-27.)

You really want to know?” He drags out the suspense. “Yes.” I grow restless. “Spill.” “Well, for starters… most guys our age aren’t looking to date.” He elaborates. “They just want to fuck around. And those who do want to date are only looking for a girl to make them feel good about themselves.” “Meaning?” “Meaning they want her to laugh at their jokes, stroke their egos, give good head and… that’s pretty much it.” He draws a small smile out of me. “So, when guys like that see a girl like you, a girl who doesn’t look easy or desperate, they get intimidated. Label her high-maintenance and run like hell. You’re beauty and brains, Vee. You’re an immature high school boy’s worst nightmare.

When kindled was the fire, with sober face Unto Diana spoke she in that place. “O thou chaste goddess of the wildwood green, By whom all heaven and earth and sea are seen, Queen of the realm of Pluto, dark and low, Goddess of maidens, that my heart dost know For all my years, and knowest what I desire, Oh, save me from thy vengeance and thine ire That on Actaeon fell so cruelly. Chaste goddess, well indeed thou knowest that I Desire to be a virgin all my life, Nor ever wish to be man’s love or wife. I am, thou know’st, yet of thy company, A maid, who loves the hunt and venery, And to go rambling in the greenwood wild, And not to be a wife and be with child. I do not crave the company of man.

That is exactly what nobody seems to grasp about this karma business. It’s not a simple matter of cause and effect, reward and punishment. It’s a question of what’s available. You see, as long as life for the majority of souls on this planet is just a long round of starvation, misery, torture, and early death—and believe me, outside this fortunate watershed that is an apt description of the state of affairs—as long as only a few live in comfort while the masses scrape along in want, then all us returning souls have to take our fair share of shifts among the hungry. You think this life you’ve lived was tough? Let me tell you, it was just R and R between the ones where you never get a solid meal two days running or you die before your first birthday from drinking bad water.

Time does not heal wounds. It's a body's ritual that does. The instinctual cleansing with rain or other waters, the application of salves. Despite the sting. Even neglected, the body begins to take care. To repair itself. Blood clots, tissues regenerate, flesh scars. Soon, the thin white line is the only evidence of the pain. It is the body, not time. Time does nothing except create distance between the body and that which caused it harm. Recollection of fear can be stronger than the original fear itself. Similarly, bliss is sometimes more vivid when recollected. How else do you explain longing? Longing for what has already passed. That's the real pain. But you insisted, you pried with your fingers to see. You retuned to me after I turned away. You made me recollect for you, collect again and again for you, interrupting the healing with your curiosity. Now that I have given you the words, you may long for them. You may miss me. You may try to find the notes to the song again and again and won't be able to find them. Perhaps, the wounds I made will already have begun to scar. Maybe the body will have begun its ritual of forgetting. I told you not to ask for haunted, not to ask me to recollect. Because recollection is like tearing at closed wounds. Like pealing back the careful tissue put there by the body to make it safe. And because remembered pain is always worse than the original pain, because this time it is expected. This time you already know how much it will hurt.

The earth is a living, conscious being. In company with cultures of many different times and places, we name these things as sacred: air, fire, water, and earth. Whether we see them as the breath, energy, blood, and body of the Mother, or as the blessed gifts of a Creator, or as symbols of the interconnected systems that sustain life, we know that nothing can live without them. To call these things sacred is to say that they have a value beyond their usefulness for human ends, that they themselves become the standards by which our acts, our economics, our laws, and our purposes must be judged. No one has the right to appropriate them or profit from them at the expense of others. Any government that fails to protect them forfeits its legitimacy. All people, all living things, are part of the earth life, and so are sacred. No one of us stands higher or lower than any other. Only justice can assure balance: only ecological balance can sustain freedom. Only in freedom can that fifth sacred thing we call spirit flourish in its full diversity. To honor the sacred is to create conditions in which nourishment, sustenance, habitat, knowledge, freedom, and beauty can thrive. To honor the sacred is to make love possible. To this we dedicate our curiosity, our will, our courage, our silences, and our voices. To this we dedicate our lives.

I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I spin to leave. “No fucking way.” It clicks in his mind. “Little Vee?” Here he is. “You’re that girl Finn and I used to…” He doesn’t complete his sentence, but I know all too well what he was going to say. “Annoy? Tease? Torture? Why, yes, that would be me. Did you seriously just figure that out? A bit slow, are we?” I snark. My outburst only seems to amuse him. “Look, in my defense, your mom only ever called you ‘Vee.’ I thought it was short for Vicky or Vivian or something. And it was ten years ago. I can’t even remember what I had for dinner last night.” “Whatever.” I shrug. “Shit, I’ve got to say, Vee.” He gives me a once-over. “Puberty did you a solid.” My cheeks combust. “Wish I could say the same about you,” I lie through my teeth. Xavier smiles at my failed attempt to deny the undeniable. Let’s not pretend like puberty didn’t do every female on earth a solid when Xavier Emery went from “cute” to “sinfully hot” in the span of a summer. “I think you mispronounced thank you.” He flashes a smug grin that makes me want to knee him where it hurts.

I realized a few days ago I didn't know what love was. To me love was helpless, suffocating, painful. It wasn't until [she] came that I realized that love was strong, that it meant standing up for yourself, saying things nobody wanted to hear. I also know it means giving of yourself because it makes somebody else happy. I don't know if I love [her]. For a while I was sure I didn't, but now I'm not sure. I know I need her, that I can't imagine living the rest of my life without her. Is that love? I think it's part of it. I know I want her. She comforts my spirit and body as nothing ever has. That's a part of love, too. I also know I'm never as happy as I am when I'm with her." "You sound like you're obsessed." "Maybe that's also part of love. I don't know, but I'm going to learn. It's embarrassing sometimes. I feel like a child. But I learn a little somethign every day. It's like a whole new way of living. It's a willingness to give up control. To make a commitment and have faith it'll work out." "It sounds like you've gone crazy" [. . .] "Maybe that's part of it, too. Whatever it is, it's something I want more than I ever thought possible. And [she] is the only one who can teach me. I'm not giving her up, no matter what it costs me." "Hell [. . .] You are in love with her.

During any prolonged activity one tends to forget original intentions. But I believe that, when making a start on A Month in the Country, my idea was to write an easy-going story, a rural idyll along the lines of Thomas Hardy's Under the Greenwood Tree. And, to establish the right tone of voice to tell such a story, I wanted its narrator to look back regretfully across forty or fifty years but, recalling a time irrecoverably lost, still feel a tug at the heart. And I wanted it to ring true. So I set its background up in the North Riding, on the Vale of Mowbray, where my folks had lived for many generations and where, in the plow-horse and candle-to-bed age, I grew up in a household like that of the Ellerbeck family. Novel-writing can be a cold-blooded business. One uses whatever happens to be lying around in memory and employs it to suit one's ends. The visit to the dying girl, a first sermon, the Sunday-school treat, a day in a harvest field and much more happened between the Pennine Moors and the Yorkshire Wolds. But the church in the fields is in Northamptonshire, its churchyard in Norfolk, its vicarage London. All's grist that comes to the mill. Then, again, during the months whilst one is writing about the past, a story is colored by what presently is happening to its writer. So, imperceptibly, the tone of voice changes, original intentions slip away. And I found myself looking through another window at a darker landscape inhabited by neither the present nor the past.

He remembered an old tale which his father was fond of telling him—the story of Eos Amherawdur (the Emperor Nightingale). Very long ago, the story began, the greatest and the finest court in all the realms of faery was the court of the Emperor Eos, who was above all the kings of the Tylwydd Têg, as the Emperor of Rome is head over all the kings of the earth. So that even Gwyn ap Nudd, whom they now call lord over all the fair folk of the Isle of Britain, was but the man of Eos, and no splendour such as his was ever seen in all the regions of enchantment and faery. Eos had his court in a vast forest, called Wentwood, in the deepest depths of the green-wood between Caerwent and Caermaen, which is also called the City of the Legions; though some men say that we should rather name it the city of the Waterfloods. Here, then, was the Palace of Eos, built of the finest stones after the Roman manner, and within it were the most glorious chambers that eye has ever seen, and there was no end to the number of them, for they could not be counted. For the stones of the palace being immortal, they were at the pleasure of the Emperor. If he had willed, all the hosts of the world could stand in his greatest hall, and, if he had willed, not so much as an ant could enter into it, since it could not be discerned. But on common days they spread the Emperor's banquet in nine great halls, each nine times larger than any that are in the lands of the men of Normandi. And Sir Caw was the seneschal who marshalled the feast; and if you would count those under his command—go, count the drops of water that are in the Uske River. But if you would learn the splendour of this castle it is an easy matter, for Eos hung the walls of it with Dawn and Sunset. He lit it with the sun and moon. There was a well in it called Ocean. And nine churches of twisted boughs were set apart in which Eos might hear Mass; and when his clerks sang before him all the jewels rose shining out of the earth, and all the stars bent shining down from heaven, so enchanting was the melody. Then was great bliss in all the regions of the fair folk. But Eos was grieved because mortal ears could not hear nor comprehend the enchantment of their song. What, then, did he do? Nothing less than this. He divested himself of all his glories and of his kingdom, and transformed himself into the shape of a little brown bird, and went flying about the woods, desirous of teaching men the sweetness of the faery melody. And all the other birds said: "This is a contemptible stranger." The eagle found him not even worthy to be a prey; the raven and the magpie called him simpleton; the pheasant asked where he had got that ugly livery; the lark wondered why he hid himself in the darkness of the wood; the peacock would not suffer his name to be uttered. In short never was anyone so despised as was Eos by all the chorus of the birds. But wise men heard that song from the faery regions and listened all night beneath the bough, and these were the first who were bards in the Isle of Britain.