#nation

I am not going to let him win, Guillaume. Not this time. I could not keep him from making my mother pay the price for our failed rebellion. Fifteen years she has been his prisoner, fifteen years! And she is his prisoner, for all that she no longer wants for a queen’s comforts. I have had to submit to his demands and subject myself to his whims and endure the indignity of having him brandish the crown before me as he would tease a dog with a bone. But no more. I will not let him rob me of my birthright, and I will not let him keep me from honoring my vow to defend the Holy Land. I do think he is behind that very opportune rebellion in my duchy, and I would not put it past him to be conniving with the Count of Toulouse, either. And if by chance he did not, it is only because he did not think of it. No, a reckoning is long overdue, and we will have it at Bonsmoulins. ↗

— Sharon Kay Penman

#royal-family #family

The thing all writers do best is find ways to avoid writing. ↗

— Alan Dean Foster

#writing #writer

If I were flying, I would travel to a perfect place. A place with frosted cakes and beautiful flowers and excellent trees to climb and absolutely no doldrums. ↗

— Kyo Maclear

#children-s-books #dreams #happiness #imagination #kids-books

Life was never meant to be difficult, we just make it that way so that it fits into societies and our indoctrinated concept of what things should be like. ↗

— Steven Redhead

#difficult #indoctrination #life #societies #things

Most of life's actions are within our reach, but decisions take willpower. ↗

— Robert McKee

#capability #decisions #determination #life #willpower

We do not remember days, Shemei, we remember moments, and the richness of life lies in memories we have forgotten. ↗

— Terri Herman-Poncé

#paranormal #paranormal-series #paranormal-suspense #past-lives #reincarnation

In the oasis complex, the thirsty man images he sees water, palm trees, and shade not because he has evidence for the belief, but because he has a need for it. Desperate needs bring about a hallucination of their solution: thirst hallucinates water, the need for love hallucinates a prince or princess. The oasis complex is never a complete delusion: the man in the desert does see something on the horizon. It is just that the palms have withered, the well is dry, and the place is infected with locusts. ↗

— Alain de Botton

#love #love

But, you know, I feel more fellowship with the defeated than with saints. Heroism and sanctity don't really appeal to me, I imagine. What interests me is being a man. ↗

— Albert Camus

#genuine #humanism #imagination

I felt no shame in these activities, because I understood what almost no one else seemed to grasp: that there was only an infinitesimal difference, a difference so small that it barely existed except as a figment of the human imagination, between working in a tall green glass building on Park Avenue and collecting litter in a park. In fact, there may have been no difference at all. ↗

— Jennifer Egan

#imagination

I drank some too-hot coffee and scowled at him, annoyed although I couldn't remember why. The light from the lounge was leaking in, highlighting his spiky blond hair. I decided that must be it. "You really hate my hair, don't you?" he asked, a smile flickering over his lips so fast I might have imagined it. "Yeah" "Why?" I reached out to touch it, and was surprised as always to find it mostly soft. Just a little stiff in places from whatever product he used on it. It felt weird, imagining Pritkin having anything in his hair but sweat. But he must have; nobody's did that all on its own. "It's like...angry hair," I said, trying to pat it down and failing miserably. He caught my wrist. "Most people would say that suits me." "I'm not most people." "I know. ↗

— Karen Chance

#cassie-palmer #pritkin #imagination