#con

I am one in a row of specimens. It's when I try to flutter out of line that he hates me. I'm meant to be dead, pinned, always the same, always beautiful. He knows that part of my beauty is being alive. but it's the dead me he wants. He wants me living-but-dead. ↗

— John Fowles

#control #kidnap #beauty

Certainly we're going to continue to see those commercials that I call 30-second drive-by shootings. And they're going to have a lot of money to do it. But we're going to combat it. ↗

— Tom Barrett

#certainly #combat #commercials #continue #going

My confidence was of the hothouse variety, carefully cultivated under highly regulated conditions. One wrong look, one mean comment, and my facade would wither. ↗

— Justina Chen

#ridicule #beauty

One of the most powerful lessons in life is to recognize that no one can give you power, and many people don’t want you to have it. You have to find the courage to seize it, own it and hold on! ↗

— Shannon L. Alder

#courage #power #rights #self-esteem #strength

He could feel it immediately when his shoulder snapped - the intense pain of his bones cracking. His skin tightened, as if it could no long hold whatever was lurking inside him. The breath was sucked from his lungs like he was being crushed. His vision began to blur, and he had the sensation he was falling, even though he could feel the rock tearing at his flesh as his body seized on the ground. ↗

— Kami Garcia

#kami-garcia #macon #beauty

Can we actually suppose that we are wasting, polluting, and making ugly this beautiful land for the sake of patriotism and the love of God? Perhaps some of us would like to think so, but in fact this destruction is taking place because we have allowed ourselves to believe, and to live, a mated pair of economic lies: that nothing has a value that is not assigned to it by the market; and that the economic life of our communities can safely be handed over to the great corporations. (from 'Compromise, Hell!' published in the November/December 2004 issue of ORION magazine) ↗

— Wendell Berry

#economics #lies #sustainability #beauty

I try to take people one at a time, with all the contradictions and compromises that most of us live with. ↗

— Garry Trudeau

#contradictions #i #live #most #people

That pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most elevating and the most intense, is derived, I maintain, from the contemplation of the beautiful. ↗

— Edgar Allan Poe

#contemplation #derived #elevating #i #intense

Having a purpose is the little secret of the nonpretties. Something to do always beats something to look at. ↗

— Adriana Trigiani

#conceit #pretty #self-confidence #self-image #southern-lit

The last book I picked up had a picture of the Stranger on the front cover. Although his eyes were not nearly as beautiful in my dream state, they still took my breath away. I opened it up curiously and there was one word written in a large, bolded font: FATE. ↗

— Markelle Grabo

#elves #fantasy #fate #beauty