#nic

That's you," Wrath said. You shall be called the Black Dagger warrior Dhestroyer, descended of Wrath son of Wrath." "But you'll always be Butch to us," Rhage cut in. "As well as hard-ass. Smart-ass. Royal pain in the ass. You know, whatever the situation calls for. I think as long as there's an ASS in there, it'll be accurate." "How about bASStard?" Z suggested. "Nice. I feel that. ↗

— J.R. Ward

#fantasy #nicknames #paranormal #paranormal-romance #sobriquet

I don't hate it here," she said automatically. Surprising herself, she realized that as much as she'd been trying to convince herself otherwise, she was telling the truth. "It's just that I don't belong here." He gave her a meloncholy smile. "If it's any consolation, when I was growing up, I didn't feel like I belonged here, either. I dreamed about going to New York. But it's strange, because when I finally escaped this place, I ended up missing it more than I thought I would. There's something about the ocean that just calls to me. ↗

— Nicholas Sparks

#home #life #new-york #nicholas-sparks #the-last-song

Want a sugar cube?" he asks in his old seductive voice. ↗

— Suzanne Collins

#games

You nearly died today,' he says. 'I almost shot you. Why didn't you shoot me, Tris?' 'I couldn't do that,' I say. 'It would have been like shooting myself.' He looks pained and leans closer to me, so his lips brush mine when he speaks. ↗

— Veronica Roth

#four #tobias #tris #veronica-roth #today

Nobody can tell what I suffer! But it is always so. Those who do not complain are never pitied. ↗

— Jane Austen

#histrionics #hysterics #irony #mrs-bennett #suffering

It's an awful truth that suffering can deepen us, give a greater lustre to our colours, a richer resonance to our words. ↗

— Anne Rice

#suffering

It is more important for you to be safe than right, for the time being. Understand? (...) But please, when you see an opportunity...ruin them ↗

— Veronica Roth

#four #tobias #veronica-roth #opportunity

Cynic, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are not as they ought to be. ↗

— Ambrose Bierce

#definition #honesty #vision

Uncouth, clannish, lumbering about the confines of Space and Time with a puzzled expression on his face and a handful of things scavenged on the way from gutters, interglacial littorals, sacked settlements and broken relationships, the Earth-human has no use for thinking except in the service of acquisition. He stands at every gate with one hand held out and the other behind his back, inventing reasons why he should be let in. From the first bunch of bananas, his every sluggish fit or dull fleabite of mental activity has prompted more, more; and his time has been spent for thousands of years in the construction and sophistication of systems of ideas that will enable him to excuse, rationalize, and moralize the grasping hand. His dreams, those priceless comic visions he has of himself as a being with concerns beyond the material, are no more than furtive cannibals stumbling round in an uncomfortable murk of emotion, trying to eat each other. Politics, religion, ideology — desperate, edgy attempts to shift the onus of responsibility for his own actions: abdications. His hands have the largest neural representation in the somesthetic cortex, his head the smallest; but he's always trying to hide the one behind the other. ↗

— M. John Harrison

#greed #human-nature #thought #dreams

I would rather die than betray his trust." "That's not saying much, seeing as you're already dead," Ron observed. "Once again, you show all the sensitivity of a blunt axe," said Nearly Headless Nick in affronted tones. ↗

— J.K. Rowling

#observation