#par

You look beautiful and tragic, just the way a heroine should on the eve of battle. Like Joan of Arc in her silver armor. ↗

— Melissa de la Cruz

#gates-of-paradise #melissa-de-la-cruz #oliver-hazard-perry #tragic #warrior

We had to make ends meet. My parents were divorced, so my father wasn't really in my life. We grew up like most kids, just wanting things. ↗

— Jeffrey Donovan

#ends #father #grew #had #just

Regrets are about decisions that you know you should have done different. ↗

— Laurell K. Hamilton

#life #paranormal-romance #life

Though Alec had never seen the occupants of the first floor loft, they seemed to be engaged in a tempestuous romance. Once there had been a bunch of someone's belongings strewn all over the landing with a note attached to a jacket lapel addressed to "A lying liar who lies." Right now there was a bouquet of flowers taped to the door with a card tucked among the blooms that read I'M SORRY. That was the thing about New York: you always knew more about your neighbors' business than you wanted to. ↗

— Cassandra Clare

#apartment #cassandra-clare #city-of-lost-souls #funny #humor

He was changed as completely as Amory Blaine could ever be changed. Amory plus Beatrice plus two years in Minneapolis - these had been his ingredients when he entered St. Regis'. But the Minneapolis years were not a thick enough overlay to conceal the "Amory plus Beatrice" from the ferreting eyes of a boarding school, so St. Regis' had very painfully drilled Beatrice out of him and begun to lay down new and more conventional planking on the fundamental Amory. But both St. Regis' and Amory were unconscious of the fact that this fundamental Amory had not in himself changed. Those qualities for which he had suffered: his moodiness, his tendency to pose, his laziness, and his love of playing the fool, were now taken as a matter of course, recognized eccentricities in a star quarter-back, a clever actor, and the editor of the "St. Regis' Tattler"; it puzzled him to see impressionable small boys imitating the very vanities that had not long ago been contemptible weaknesses. ↗

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

#this-side-of-paradise #youth #change

Mrs Forrester ... sat in state, pretending not to know what cakes were sent up, though she knew, and we knew, and she knew that we knew, and we knew that she knew that we knew, she had been busy all the morning making tea-bread and sponge-cakes. ↗

— Elizabeth Gaskell

#cakes #humor #modesty #pretense #tea-parties

I went to Maui to stay a week and remained five. I never spent so pleasant a month before, or bade any place goodbye so regretfully. I have not once thought of business, or care or human toil or trouble or sorrow or weariness, and the memory of it will remain with me always. ↗

— Mark Twain

#memory #paradise #business

Parents are so busy with the physical rearing of children that they miss the glory of parenthood, just as the grandeur of the trees is lost when raking leaves. ↗

— Marcelene Cox

#business

Like any other tool for facilitating the completion of a questionable task, rewards offer a "how" answer to what is really a "why" question. ↗

— Alfie Kohn

#parenting #rewards #business

(Da) "Sorry, Son, what was that? I was too busy ignoring you." (Later) "Sorry, Son, I missed that," Ma said. "Ignoring you can be a full-time job. ↗

— Brian Farrey

#humor #parenting #business