#apt

Juliette" I inhale too quickly. A stifled cough is balloning in my throat. His glassy green eyes glint in my direction. "Are you not hungry?" "No, thank you." He licks his bottom lip into a smile. "Don't confuse stupidity for bravery, love. I know you haven't eaten anything in days." Something in my patioence snaps. "I'd rather die than eat your food and listen to you call me love," I tell him. Adam drops his fork. Warner spares him a swift glance and when he looks at my way again his eyes have hardened. He holds my gaze fo a few infinitely long seconds before he pulls a gun out of his jacket pocket. He fires. ↗

— Tahereh Mafi

#food

I once wrote you a letter and you never replied, which makes me wonder if you ever received it. This time it's a more personal delivery - and I need a reply, even if it's not the one I want. I'm listening to you - I can hear every word, however softly you speak - and I'm half-agony, half-hope. You're saying that men are realists - that, when the woman they love is no longer available, they move on. Well, believe me, I tried - and I thought I had. But seeing you again, after so many years, just proved how little I knew... You told me to trust myself. So here I am back in Bath, putting everything on the line for a second chance with you. Is that what you want, too? Whatever your answer, remember this: I may not deserve you - when I think of how I've behaved, I know I've shown little self-control and even less forgiveness - but I've never stopped loving you. You're talking about heartless men... But I have a heart, and it's the same one you almost broke ten years ago, and it belongs to you, and only you, even more than it did then. And yes, I'm a realist: if you no longer love me, I will accept it. But don't say that only a woman can keep on loving someone who's no longer part of her life! Because I will keep on loving you until there are no stars in the sky. Tell me tonight how you feel. If there's any chance of you loving me back, then I'll wait for you as I should have waited before. If not, say the word and I'll leave you in peace. But I'll never forget you, or what we had, or what might have been. Rick ↗

— Juliet Archer

#love-letter #modern-adaptation #persuasion #forgiveness

Sudden success in golf is like the sudden acquisition of wealth. It is apt to unsettle and deteriorate the character. ↗

— P. G. Wodehouse

#apt #character #deteriorate #golf #like

There is no more reason to think that they expected the world to remain static than there is to think that any of us holds a crystal ball. The only way to create a foundational document that could stand the test of time was to build in enough flexibility that later generations would be able to adapt it to their own needs and uses. ↗

— Diane Wood

#adapt #any #ball #build #could

St Paul, in his second letter to Corinth, spells this out further in the important eighth and ninth chapters, where he urges some of the Christian communities to be generous to others so that they may also have the chance to be generous in return. ↗

— Rowan D. Williams

#chance #chapters #christian #communities #eighth

Television won't be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night. ↗

— Darryl F. Zanuck

#after #any #box #captures #every

I'm against the capturing of Eastern Orthodox temples. ↗

— Vladimir Zhirinovsky

#capturing #eastern #i #orthodox #temples

On vacation, I totally unplug. I don't bring a laptop with me. ↗

— Will Wright

#i #laptop #me #totally #unplug

Wagons rattling and banging, horses neighing and snorting, conscripts marching, each with bow and arrows at his hip, fathers and mothers, wives and children, running to see them off-- so much dust kicked up you can't see Xian-yang Bridge! And the families pulling at their clothes, stamping feet in anger, blocking the way and weeping-- ah, the sound of their wailing rises straight up to assault heaven. And a passerby asks, "What's going on?" The soldier says simply, "This happens all the time. From age fifteen some are sent to guard the north, and even at forty some work the army farms in the west. When they leave home, the village headman has to wrap their turbans for them; when they come back, white-haired, they're still guarding the frontier. The frontier posts run with blood enough to fill an ocean, and the war-loving Emperor's dreams of conquest have still not ended. ↗

— Du Fu

#the-more-things-change #w #age

Death is a beautiful naked man who looks like Apollo, and he is not satisfied with those who wither away in old age. Death is a perfectionist, he likes the young and beautiful, he wants to stroke our hair and caress the sinew that binds our muscle to the bone. He does all he can to meet us, our faces gladden his heart, and he stands in our path to challenge us because he likes a clean fair fight, and after the fight he likes to befriend us, clap us on the shoulder, and make us laugh at all the pettiness and folly of the living. At the conclusion of a battle he wanders amongst the dead, raising them up, placing laurels upon the brows of those most comely, and he gathers them together as his own children and takes them away to drink wine that tastes of honey and gives them the sense of proportion that they never had in life ↗

— Louis de Berniѐres

#age