#owe

Annabelle’s eyes stung as she stared at him, while need and inexhaustible tenderness gathered like an ache in her body. “I realized something,” she said huskily, “when I was standing outside the foundry, watching it burn and knowing you were inside.” She swallowed hard against the thickness in her throat. “I would rather have died in your arms, Simon, than face a lifetime without you. All those endless years… all those winters, summers… a hundred seasons of wanting you and never having you. Growing old, while you stayed eternally young in my memories.” She bit her lip and shook her head, while her eyes flooded. “I was wrong when I told you that I didn’t know where I belonged. I do. With you, Simon. Nothing matters except being with you. You’re stuck with me forever, and I’ll never listen when you tell me to go.” She managed a tremulous smile. “So you may as well stop complaining and resign yourself to it. ↗

— Lisa Kleypas

#hunt #simon #wallflower #winter

In Japan, a number of time-honored everyday activities (such as making tea, arranging flowers, and writing) have traditionally been deeply examined by their proponents. Students study how to make tea, perform martial arts, or write with a brush in the most skillful way possible to express themselves with maximum efficiency and minimum strain. Through this efficient, adroit, and creative performance, they arrive at art. But if they continue to delve even more deeply into their art, they discover principles that are truly universal, principles relating to life itself. Then, the art of brush writing becomes shodo—the “Way of the brush”—while the art of arranging flowers is elevated to the status of kado—the “Way of flowers.” Through these Ways or Do forms, the Japanese have sought to realize the Way of living itself. They have approached the universal through the particular. ↗

— H.E. Davey

#budo #do #efficiency #flowers #ikebana

We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes. ↗

— Gene Roddenberry

#blames #creates #faulty #god #having

Neither heaven nor hell can keep me apart from you, Melanie. ↗

— Stephenie Meyer

#melanie #heaven

You gain power by pretending to be weak. ↗

— Chuck Palahniuk

#power #weak #weakness

On September 11, the murders of World Trade Center employees and visitors took the lives of numerous nationalities, ethnic groups and religious followers. ↗

— Cliff Stearns

#employees #ethnic #ethnic groups #followers #groups

Our findings with reference to organized crime was that organized crime as an entity didn't participate in the assassination of the president. However, we were unable to preclude the possibility of individual members of organized crime having participated. ↗

— Louis Stokes

#crime #entity #findings #having #however

This tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry and pointed blasphemously at heaven. At night the owls made of it an echoing throat; by day it stood voiceless and cast its long shadow. ↗

— Mervyn Peake

#description #gothic #owl #purple #ruin

If sexuality is one dimension of our ability to live passionately in the world then in cutting off our sexual feelings we diminish our overall power to feel know and value deeply. ↗

— Judith Plaskow

#passion #power #sexuality #sexuality

Names have power. ↗

— Rick Riordan

#names #power #names