#owe

He lay, often, looking at her sleeping face in the new light that fell in through the open walls of the strange house, and he stared at her skin and hair with his mouth open, transfixed by the quick stillness of her, struck dumb with the physical fact of her existence as though she was some careless star-thing that slept on quite unaware of its incandescent power; the casualness and ease with which she slept there amazed him; he couldn't believe that such beauty could survive without some superhumanly intense conscious effort. ↗

— Iain M. Banks

#incandescent-power #love #shias-engin #star-thing #beauty

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

— Robert McKee

#capability #decisions #determination #life #willpower

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen and waste its sweetness on the desert air. ↗

— Paul Hoffman

#blush #born #cale #desert #die

You can’t substitute material things for love or for gentleness or for tenderness or for a sense of comradeship. Money is not a substitute for tenderness, and power is not a substitute for tenderness. ↗

— Mitch Albom

#gentleness #love #material-things #money #power

I know that love is about power, too. Who gives, who takes. Who is willing to risk showing their true self. ↗

— Alison Goodman

#power #love

I'm not here to solve your problems. I'm here to support you in your own decisions. I'm not going to walk away, Amy. Not now, not when the going gets tough, not ever. I'm right here at your back." "For how long?" "For as long as you'll have me. I love you, Amy." Staggered, she stared at him. "But you don't do love." "I never said that. I said love hasn't worked out for me. But all it takes is the right one. You're the right one." No one had ever said such a thing to her before, and it made her heart swell hard against her ribcage. "I love you, Matt. So much." He smiled like she'd just given him the best gift he'd ever had. She settled against his good side, and they stared up at the star-laden sky. "I knew I'd find something on this journey," she said. "I wasn't sure what, but I knew it'd be something special. ↗

— Jill Shalvis

#love #matt-bowers #love

Privacy is a protection from the unreasonable use of state and corporate power. But that is, in a sense, a secondary thing. In the first instance, privacy is the statement in words of a simple understanding, which belongs to the instinctive world rather than the formal one, that some things are the province of those who experience them and not naturally open to the scrutiny of others: courtship and love, with their emotional nakedness; the simple moments of family life; the appalling rawness of grief. That the state and other systems are precluded from snooping on these things is important - it is a strong barrier between the formal world and the hearth, extended or not - but at root privacy is a simple understanding: not everything belongs to everyone. ↗

— Nick Harkaway

#government #home #personal #power #privacy

But neither infinite power nor infinite wisdom could bestow godhood upon men. For that there would have to be infinite love as well. ↗

— Walter M. Miller Jr.

#gods #love #power #wisdom #love

We made love like Tuesday at noon, even though it was Thursday at 3:00, and then again at 3:03. (I have the stamina of a water lily). 
 ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#fornication #lily #love #sex #love

I would far rather have two or three lilies of the valley gathered for me by a person I like, than the most expensive bouquet that could be bought! ↗

— Elizabeth Gaskell

#elizabeth-gaskell #flowers #friends #lily-of-the-valley #love