#lain

But Hazael only said, "I brought you a present." Liraz took the flower, looked at it, and then a Hazael, expressionless. And then she ate it. She chewed the flower and swallowed it. "Hmm," said Hazael. "Not the usual response." "Oh, do you give flowers often?" "Yes," he said. He probably did. Hazael had a way of enjoying life in spite of the many restrictions they lived under, being soldiers, and worse, being Misbegotten. "I hope it wasn't poisonous," he said lightly. Liraz just shrugged. "There are worse ways to die. ↗

— Laini Taylor

#death #flower #hazael #humor #laini-taylor

Evil turned out not to be a grand thing. Not sneering Emperors with their world-conquering designs. Not cackling demons plotting in the darkness beyond the world. It was small men with their small acts and their small reasons. It was selfishness and carelessness and waste. It was bad luck, incompetence, and stupidity. It was violence divorced from conscience or consequence. It was high ideals, even, and low methods. ↗

— Joe Abercrombie

#men #villainy #violence #design

I want to explain how exhausted I am. Even in my dreams. How I wake up tired. How I’m being drowned by some kind of black wave. ↗

— Elizabeth Wurtzel

#explain #tiredness #dreams

The first time I hung out with [David Blaine], he took me to this condemned building, and it had a pizza oven and he crawled into the pizza oven and turned the heat on to 400 degrees or something like that, and he stayed in it for I guess a half hour. He came out, and except for one or two second-degree burns, he was unscathed. You meet a lot of musicians and filmmakers and actors, but it's rare to meet someone who can step inside a pizza oven and take the heat. I was intrigued by that. ↗

— Harmony Korine

#musician

What isn't remembered never happened. Memory is merely a record...you just need to rewrite that record. ↗

— Yoshitoshi Abe

#experience

In the plains the grass grows tall, since there is no one to cut it. There is no one to water it either. ↗

— Vera Nazarian

#development #freedom #grass #grow #growing

I wanted the syrupy taste of this small rebellion. And this stupid machine was denying that bit of freedom to me . . . just like everyone else. ↗

— Laura Bickle

#freedom #laine-s-fave #freedom

But, I believe," I continue, "I know what true love is - or what it should be." "What should it be?" Tristan asks, his voice soft now. "It should be a friendship and truly knowing who a person is, knowing his flaws and hopes and strengths and fears, knowing all of it. And admiring and caring for - loving the person because of those things. ↗

— Lisa Ann Sandell

#elaine-of-ascalot #friendship #gradual-love #lady-of-shallot #over-the-years

Constantly stopping to explain oneself may expand into a frustrating burden for the rare individual, so ceasing to do so is like finally dropping the weights and sprinting towards his goals. Those who insincerely misunderstand, who intentionally distort the motives of a pure-intentioned individual, then, no longer have the opportunity to block his path; instead, they are the ones left to stand on the sidelines shouting frustratedly in the wind of his trail. ↗

— Criss Jami

#burdens #explaining #explanations #frustration #goals

There are more than straight good and evil, aye, even more than law or disorders or fence-sittin'. There's prejudice, whimsey, affection, superstition, habit, upbringing, alliance, pride, society, morals, animosity, preference, values, religon, circumstance, humor, perversity, honor, vengeance, jealousy, frustration...hundreds o' factors, from the past and in every present moment, as decides what some one person'll do in an individious situation. ↗

— Eve Forward Villains By Necessity

#fantasy #fiction #villains-by-necessity #jealousy