#ss

You know, I think I knew you for about three weeks before I ever really saw you smile. And then one day, Morgan said something and you laughed, and I remember thinking it was really cool because it meant something. You're not the kind of person who smiles for nothing, Colie. I have to earn every one. ↗

— Sarah Dessen

#sarah-dessen #moon

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful. ↗

— Samuel Johnson

#dreadful #integrity #knowledge #useless #weak

Because you've got guy parts, you're automatically a better mechanic than me? I don't think so," Eve said, and bailed out of the passenger side. ↗

— Rachel Caine

#eve-rosser #gender-stereotypes #morganville-vampires #sexism #shane-collins

It is, I think, the rarest of leisure, hard work mixed with hard pleasure, to refine one's time of deep thought or light regard into the utterly self-absorbed and equally and abundantly outward-seeking shape of the personal essay -- a story comprised of found fact, of analyzed emotion, of fictive memory. ↗

— Barry Lopez

#personal-essay #story #equality

Claire stretched out against the wall and kissed it. "Glad to see you, too," she whispered, and pressed her cheek against the smooth surface. It almost felt like it hugged her back. "Dude, it's a house," Shane said from behind her. "Hug somebody who cares. ↗

— Rachel Caine

#glass #house #morganville-vampires #shane-collins #kiss

If I can't feel, if I can't move, if I can't think, and I can't care, then what conceivable point is there in living? ↗

— Kay Redfield Jamison

#depression #mood-disorders #care

The witchlight made his skin paler, his eyes more intently blue. They were the color of the water in the North Atlantic, where the ice drifted on its blue-black surface like the snow clinging to the dark glass pane of a window. ↗

— Cassandra Clare

#will-herondale #color

The Procrustean bed. . .suggests itself with dispiriting aptness as a metaphor for the Culture Wars, right down to the blandishments with which Procrustes must have lured his guests over the threshold. (I picture him as a handsome fellow with a large vocabulary and an oleaginous tongue, not unlike the chairmen of many English departments.) There's just one crucial difference. Sometimes Procrustes lopped off his victims, and sometimes he stretched them, but the Culture Wars always lop. I have never seen cultural politics enlarge a work of literature, only diminish it. ↗

— Anne Fadiman

#culture-wars #political-correctness #procrustes #censorship

Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves. ↗

— Confucius

#other-people #journey

What people forget is a journey to nowhere starts with a single step, too. ↗

— Chuck Palahniuk

#journey