#line

Occasionally, very occasionally, say at four o’clock in the afternoon on a wet Sunday, she feels panic-stricken and almost breathless with loneliness. Once or twice she has been known to pick up the phone to check that it isn’t broken. Sometimes she thinks how nice it would be to be woken by a call in the night: ‘get in a taxi now’ or ‘I need to see you, we need to talk’. But at the best of times she feels like a character in a Muriel Spark novel – independent, bookish, sharp-minded, secretly romantic. ↗

— David Nicholls

#romantic

If you are alone you belong entirely to yourself. If you are accompanied by even one companion you belong only half to yourself or even less in proportion to the thoughtlessness of his conduct and if you have more than one companion you will fall more deeply into the same plight. ↗

— Leonardo da Vinci

#loneliness #solitude #strength #strength

Karou wished she could be the kind of girl who was complete unto herself, comfortable in solitude, serene. But she wasn't. She was lonely, and she feared the missingness within her as if it might expand and...cancel her. She craved a presence beside her, solid. Fingertips light at the nape of her neck and a voice meeting hers in the dark. Someone who would wait with an umbrella to walk her home in the rain, and smile like sunshine when he saw her coming. Who would dance with her on her balcony, keep his promises and know her secrets, and make a tiny world wherever he was, with just her and his arms and his whisper and her trust. ↗

— Laini Taylor

#self-sufficiency #trust

There were crimson roses on the bench; they looked like splashes of blood. ↗

— Dorothy L. Sayers

#first-sentence #opening-lines #roses #first-sentence

Listen: I am ideally happy. My happiness is a kind of challenge. As I wander along the streets and the squares and the paths by the canal, absently sensing the lips of dampness through my worn soles, I carry proudly my ineffable happiness. The centuries will roll by, and schoolboys will yawn over the history of our upheavals; everything will pass, but my happiness , dear, my happiness will remain,in the moist reflection of a street lamp, in the cautious bend of stone steps that descend into the canal's black waters, in the smiles of a dancing couple, in everything with which God so generously surrounds human loneliness. ↗

— Vladimir Nabokov

#path

There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. ↗

— Charlotte Brontë

#opening-lines #opening-sentences #walks #first-sentence

This is the secret to mastering any discipline: as you conquer one, you'll find it easier to tackle another. ↗

— Jeff Goins

#writing-craft #writing-craft

Each one of us needs to discover the proper balance between the masculine and feminine energies, between the active and the receptive. (104) ↗

— Ravi Ravindra

#balance #feminine #masculine #receptive #yoga

A fuel pump is a fountain drink machine for cars. And people who want to save the environment and get drunk and run to work.
 ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#drunk #environment #fuel #gas #gasoline

A lonely day is God's way of saying that he wants to spend some quality time with you. ↗

— Criss Jami

#divine #divine-intervention #emotions #energizer #god