#si

Simulation Tobias kisses my neck. I try to think. I have to face the fear. I have to take control of the situation and find a way to make it less frightening. I look Simulation Tobias in the eye and say sternly, “I am not going to sleep with you in a hallucination. Okay?” Then I grab him by his shoulders and turn us around, pushing him against the bedpost. I feel something other than fear—a prickle in my stomach, a bubble of laughter. I press against him and kiss him, my hands wrapping around his arms. He feels strong. He feels…good. And he’s gone. I laugh into my hand until my face gets hot. I must be the only initiate with this fear. ↗

— Veronica Roth

#simulation #tobias #tris #control

Nothing strengthens the judgment and quickens the conscience like individual responsibility. ↗

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

#individual #individual responsibility #judgment #like #nothing

My mouth is a fire escape. The words coming out don’t care that they are naked. There is something burning in there. ↗

— Andrea Gibson

#poetry #escape

Love taught me to die with dignity that I might come forth anew in splendor. Born once of flesh, then again of fire, I was reborn a third time to the sound of my name humming haikus in heaven’s mouth. ↗

— Aberjhani

#dignity #faith #haiku #heaven #human-mortality

You don't understand!" whined Pettigrew. "He would have killed me, Sirius!" "THEN YOU SHOULD HAVE DIED!" roared Black. "DIED, RATHER THAN BETRAY YOUR FRIENDS, AS WE WOULD HAVE DONE FOR YOU!" Black and Lupin stood shoulder to shoulder, wands raised. "You should have realized," said Lupin quietly. "If Voldemort didn't kill you, we would. Goodbye, Peter. ↗

— J.K. Rowling

#friend #remus-lupin #sirius-black #wormtail #prison

I must get my soul back from you; I am killing my flesh without it. ↗

— Sylvia Plath

#obsession #slavery #kill

The ever more sophisticated weapons piling up in the arsenals of the wealthiest and the mightiest can kill the illiterate, the ill, the poor and the hungry, but they cannot kill ignorance, illness, poverty or hunger. ↗

— Fidel Castro

#ignorance #illness #oppression #poverty #war

I'll always choose you." Yes that was the word. "Every single lifetime, I'll choose you. Just as you have always chosen me. Forever. ↗

— Lauren Kate

#illness

But insight doesn't necessarily produce self-control. Sometimes you just see your destructiveness more clearly. ↗

— Keith Ablow

#insight

Your reason and your passion are the rudder and the sails of your seafaring soul. If either your sails or your rudder be broken you can but toss and drift, or else be held at a stand still in mid-seas. For reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and a passion unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction. Therefore let your soul exalt your reason to the height of passion, that it may sing; and let it direct your passion with reason, that your passion may live through its own daily ressurrection, and like the phoenix rise above its own ashes. ↗

— Kahlil Gibran

#passion #reason #soul #destruction