“He laughed, then became serious once more. "Mary............"
The expression in his eyes set her heart pounding. "Yes?"
Twice he began to frame a sentence, and twice his voice seemed to fail him.
And she thought she understood. What could he possibly say to her now, when he was on the verge of leaving forever? Even something as simple as asking her to write to him carried a distinct sort of promis, the type of promise he was ten years and a half a world removed from being able to make.
She forced a polite smile and held out her hand. "Good luck, James."
Regret-and relief-flooded his eyes. he took her hand, cradling it for a long moment. "And to you."
It was foolish to linger. She slid her fingers from his grasp, turned, and began to walk away in the direction of the Academy. She'd gone about thirty paces when she heard his voice.
"Mary!"
She spun about. "What is it?"
"Stay out of wardrobes!"
She laughed, shook her head, and began to walk again. She was smiling this time.”
― Y.S. Lee, quote from A Spy in the House
“It's terrifying, to be on the verge of finally getting what you want.”
― Y.S. Lee, quote from A Spy in the House
“Calmly, slowly, she reached behind with her left hand and came up against — yes, fabric. Fine linen, to be precise. So far, so good: she was inside a wardrobe, after all. The only problem was that this linen was oddly warm. Body warm. Beneath the tentative pressure of her palm, it seemed to be moving...
With terrifying suddenness, an ungloved hand clamped roughly over her nose and mouth. A long arm pinned her arms against her sides. She was held tightly against a hard, warm surface.
"Hush," whispered a pair of lips pressed to her left ear. "If you scream, we are both lost.”
― Y.S. Lee, quote from A Spy in the House
“For several moments, Mary couldn't hear anything over the violent pounding of her pulse.”
― Y.S. Lee, quote from A Spy in the House
“She hesitated for a moment longer, then tentatively placed her fingers in his. Her hand was hot and dry and so fragile-seeming that James cradled it gingerly. The next moment, she squeezed so hard his eyes widened.
Fragile lady be damned. He squeezed back spitefully. "Vicious minx.”
― Y.S. Lee, quote from A Spy in the House
“It's terrifying to be on the verge of finally getting what you want.”
― Y.S. Lee, quote from A Spy in the House
“¿Por qué la modestia nunca es uno de los atributos del héroe?”
― Y.S. Lee, quote from A Spy in the House
“-¿No sabes qué decir? -parecía divertirse con la confusión que se reflejaba en su rostro.
-Sospecho que eres tú quien trata de dejarme sin nada que decir.”
― Y.S. Lee, quote from A Spy in the House
“-¿Me deseas suerte para mi último día?
-Si utilizas la cabeza, no la necesitarás.”
― Y.S. Lee, quote from A Spy in the House
“-No me lo prometas a mí, Cass. Prométetelo a ti misma.”
― Y.S. Lee, quote from A Spy in the House
“He stopped in a seedy alley in Holborn where he jumped down from the carriage, held a muttered conference with a dirty, one-eyed old woman, and climbed back in, his arms full of grubby cloth.
She wrinkled her nose. "Phew. What the devil is all that?"
"It's a dress."
"Oh, no. I'm not putting that on. It stinks of last week's washing up."
"It smells of the people.”
― Y.S. Lee, quote from A Spy in the House
Y.S. Lee
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“Perhaps the relevant truth- and it's one whose existence was apparent to my wife, and I'm sure to much of the world, long before it became apparent to me-is that we all find ourselves in temporal currents and unless you're paying attention you'll discover, often too late, that an undertow of weeks or of years has pulled you deep into trouble.”
― Joseph O'Neill, quote from Netherland
“The cell phone in my pocket went off. Shit! Damn it! Why do I carry these infernal gadgets? Why does anybody in their right mind need to constantly be on call?”
― James Patterson, quote from Violets Are Blue
“Literature is mostly about having sex and not having children. Life is the other way around”
― David Lodge, quote from The British Museum Is Falling Down
“The great boon of repression is that it makes it possible to live decisively in an overwhelmingly miraculous and incomprehensible world, a world so full of beauty, majesty, and terror that if animals perceived it all they would be paralyzed to act. ... What would the average man (sic) do with a full consciousness of absurdity? He has fashioned his character for the precise purpose of putting it between himself and the facts of life; it is his special tour-de-force that allows him to ignore incongruities, to nourish himself on impossibilities, to thrive on blindness. He accomplishes thereby a peculiarly human victory: the ability to be smug about terror.”
― Ernest Becker, quote from The Denial of Death
“My work is awfully labored just now. Sometimes it has the most wondrous life of its own, it fairly pulls me along—rather like wind surfing! At other times, it drags and mopes, so that I despair of ever writing another word or drawing another picture. I’ve found that if one keeps pushing along during the mopes, out will flash the most exhilarating thought or idea—a way of doing something that I had never seen before—and then, one is off again, and hold on to your hat!”
― Jan Karon, quote from A Light in the Window
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