#the

V settled back against the pillows and measured the hard line of her chin. "Take off your coat." "Excuse me?" "Take it off." "No." "I want it off." "Then I suggest you hold your breath. Won't affect me in the slightest, but at least the suffocation will help pass the time for you. ↗

— J.R. Ward

#fantasy #jane-witcomb #paranormal #paranormal-romance #vampires

My imagination? No, I don't think it's VIVID at all. On the contrary, it's not nearly potent enough. My poor imaginative faculties have always needed...extentions. That's why I'm here with you. You're smiling again, or rather you're SMIRKING. Funny word, smirk. Rather like an extraterrestrial surname. Simon Smirk. How do you think that sounds? ↗

— Thomas Ligotti

#funny

but for my own part, if a book is well written, I always find it too short. ↗

— Jane Austen

#catherine #or-the-bower #books

Whenever I’m asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one. ↗

— Flannery O'Connor

#writer

This is the secret of the stars, I tell myself. In the end, we are alone. No matter how close you seem, no one else can touch you. ~ Amy ↗

— Beth Revis

#universe

How do you know when you're God?" "When I pray to him I find I am talking to myself. ↗

— Peter Barnes

#atheist #god #noremorse #comedy

A hero can go anywhere, challenge anyone, as long as he has the nerve. ↗

— Rick Riordan

#chiron #hero #percy-jackson-and-the-olympians #rick-riordan #ultimate-guide

Whoa," said Nico as he climbed off the bus. "Is that a climbing wall?" "Yeah," I (Percy) said. "Why is there lava pouring down it?" "Little extra challenge..." - Percy ↗

— Rick Riordan

#climbing-wall #lava #nico-di-angelo #percy-jackson #percy-jackson-and-the-olympians

Angelica didn’t care if she was forbidden from doing something because she relished in the challenge of finding the answer. She needed to know everything because a lack of knowledge terrified her. Angelica was forever afraid of things she didn’t know or didn’t understand. Thus, she opened the attic door… ↗

— Rachel M. Greenebaum

#challenge

Sooner or later, you will discover which kind of father you are, and at that moment you will, with perfect horror, recognize the type. You are the kind of father who fakes it, who yells, who measures his children with greatest accuracy only against one another, who evades the uncomfortable and glosses over the painful and pads the historic records of his sorrows and accomplishments alike. You are the kind who teases and deceives and toys with his children and subjects them to displays of rich and manifold sarcasm when--as is always the case--sarcasm is the last thing they need. You are the kind of father who pretends knowledge he doesn't possess, and imposes information with implacable gratuitousness, and teaches lessons at the moment when none can be absorbed, and is right, and has always been right, and always will be right until the end of time, and never more than immediately after he has been wrong. And when your daughter's body begins to betray her, and her sky flickers in the distance with the heat lightning of sex, you clear your throat and stroke your chin whiskers and tell her to go ask her mother. You can't help it--you're a walking cliché. ↗

— Michael Chabon

#historical