#utter

It's promising and seductive, that huge Italian family, sitting around the dinner table, surrounded by olive trees. But it's not my family and I am not their family, and no amount of birthing sons, and cooking dinner and raking leaves or planting the gardens or paying for the plane tickets is going to change that. If I don't come back in eleven months, I will not be missed, and no one will write me or call me to acknowledge my absence. Which is not an accusation, just a small truth about clan and bloodline. ↗

— Gabrielle Hamilton

#bones-butter #change

This flesh in which we live is nothing more than a cocoon, and only when we step out of it do we truly begin to live. ↗

— Nancy Stephan

#death #inspirational #life #death

Well, I must endure the presence of a few caterpillars if I wish to become acquainted with the butterflies. ↗

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

#caterpillars #philosophy #philosophy

Seeing David was a full-body experience. I felt heavy and light at the same time. He gives me butterflies, but they aren’t butterflies. They’re bigger and darker and scarier, like crows. They’re dangerous. And did Bill ever give me butterflies? ↗

— Jessica Hawkins

#love #love-triangle #marriage #the-cityscape-series #experience

First smile!! An unseasonal little shower of rain fell here, and a lot of butterflies drowned, so we put them in the sun and they came back to life, and flew up and then Agaat SMILED! ↗

— Marlene Van Niekerk

#nature #life

You can only chase a butterfly for so long. ↗

— Jane Yolen

#butterfly #chase #culloden #historical-fiction #jane-yolen

She lowered her lashes until they almost cuddled her cheeks and slowly raised them again, like a theatre curtain. I was to get to know that trick. That was supposed to make me roll over on my back with all four paws in the air. ↗

— Raymond Chandler

#seduction #seduction

Do you know, it's really hard to be a parent. I blame it on Santa Claus. You spend so long making sure your kid doesn't know he's fake that you can't tell when you're supposed to stop." "Mom, I found you and Calla wrapping my presents when I was, like, six." "It was a metaphor, Blue." "A metaphor's supposed to clarify by providing an example. That didn't clarify." "Do you know what I mean or not?" "What you mean is that you're sorry you didn't tell me about Butternut." Maura glowered at the door as if Calla stood behind it. "I wish you wouldn't call him that." "If you'd been the one to tell me about him, then I wouldn't be using what Calla told me." "Fair enough. ↗

— Maggie Stiefvater

#butternut #lol #maura #raven-boys #santa-claus

Like billiard balls colliding our courses were altered. ↗

— Linda Collison

#philosophical-musings #the-butterfly-effect #historical-fiction

It is up to you to decide that this has lasted long enough, that our boys are dying to serve no British interest but for the interests of a small clique of utterly unscrupulous men. ↗

— John Amery

#clique #decide #dying #enough #interest