“She crouched with her hand out. What the hell was she doing…
"Here, kitty, kitty, kitty."
Oh my God, she was retarded and I was going to kill Jim.”
― quote from Curran
“But she was funny sometimes, and never boring. God, it would almost be worth it to see her face when she realized that I had saved her ass again.
Actually it was quite a nice ass, come to think of it. In fact, my memory of the ass and its owner seemed to be remarkably clear.”
― quote from Curran
“You look like shit." Honesty is important in any relationship.”
― quote from Curran
“For a while I thought I had lost her for good, but in our own fucked up way we had
swallowed our pride and reached out to one another. We both knew it would never be easy, but
we were willing to try. I knew that Kate wasn't universally loved by the Pack, but they owed me.
I bled for them, I fixed their petty squabbles. I had given them everything, they would give me
this one thing. Or I would break it all apart.”
― quote from Curran
“She crouched with her hand out. What the hell was she doing… "Here, kitty, kitty, kitty." Oh my God, she was retarded and I was going to kill Jim. She blinked and stared at me. She'd seen my eyes glow. I let go, shifting in the dark into my true form in the dark. If you want a Kitty, little girl, I'll give you one you'll never forget. I stepped into the moonlight. She froze. That's right. No sudden moves. I padded toward her slowly and circled her allowing her take it all in. Do you like the kitty now? I could smell her surprise and fear. Our gazes met. Her eyes went wide and then she fell on her ass. Heh. A bow would have been sufficient.”
― quote from Curran
“Julie looked like she was about to cry and waved her arms. "Whatever. Look, I'm not stupid. I know things! Adult things."
- "Like what?" "Like sex. I know about sex." I just stared at her. I wasn't opening that can of worms.”
― quote from Curran
“A Great Rabbi stands, teaching in the marketplace. It happens that a husband finds proof that morning of his wife's adultery, and a mob carries her to the marketplace to stone her to death.
There is a familiar version of this story, but a friend of mine - a Speaker for the Dead - has told me of two other Rabbis that faced the same situation. Those are the ones I'm going to tell you.
The Rabbi walks forward and stands beside the woman. Out of respect for him the mob forbears and waits with the stones heavy in their hands. 'Is there any man here,' he says to them, 'who has not desired another man's wife, another woman's husband?'
They murmur and say, 'We all know the desire, but Rabbi none of us has acted on it.'
The Rabbi says, 'Then kneel down and give thanks that God has made you strong.' He takes the woman by the hand and leads her out of the market. Just before he lets her go, he whispers to her, 'Tell the Lord Magistrate who saved his mistress, then he'll know I am his loyal servant.'
So the woman lives because the community is too corrupt to protect itself from disorder.
Another Rabbi. Another city. He goes to her and stops the mob as in the other story and says, 'Which of you is without sin? Let him cast the first stone.'
The people are abashed, and they forget their unity of purpose in the memory of their own individual sins. ‘Someday,’ they think, ‘I may be like this woman. And I’ll hope for forgiveness and another chance. I should treat her as I wish to be treated.’
As they opened their hands and let their stones fall to the ground, the Rabbi picks up one of the fallen stones, lifts it high over the woman’s head and throws it straight down with all his might it crushes her skull and dashes her brain among the cobblestones. ‘Nor am I without sins,’ he says to the people, ‘but if we allow only perfect people to enforce the law, the law will soon be dead – and our city with it.’
So the woman died because her community was too rigid to endure her deviance.
The famous version of this story is noteworthy because it is so startlingly rare in our experience. Most communities lurch between decay and rigor mortis and when they veer too far they die. Only one Rabbi dared to expect of us such a perfect balance that we could preserve the law and still forgive the deviation.
So of course, we killed him.
-San Angelo
Letters to an Incipient Heretic”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Speaker for the Dead
“She looked at him; she did not speak. He was there beside her, yet she was far away from him, alone with her outraged love and her ruined life. His feelings had nothing in them to make him silent.”
― Edith Hamilton, quote from Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes
“For so many years I lived in constant terror of myself. Doubt had married my fear and moved into my mind, where it built castles and ruled kingdoms and reigned over me, bowing my will to its whispers until I was little more than an acquiescing peon, too terrified to disobey, too terrified to disagree. I had been shackled, a prisoner in my own mind.
But finally, finally, I have learned to break free.”
― Tahereh Mafi, quote from Ignite Me
“Here's one of the things I learned that morning: if you cross a line and nothing happens, the line loses meaning. It's like that old riddle about a tree falling in a forest, and whether it makes a sound if there's no one around to hear it.
You keep drawing a line farther and farther away, crossing it every time. That's how people end up stepping off the edge of the earth. You'd be surprised at how easy it is to bust out of orbit, to spin out to a place where no one can touch you. To lose yourself--to get lost.
Or maybe you wouldn't be surprised. Maybe some of you already know.
To those people, I can only say: I'm sorry.”
― Lauren Oliver, quote from Before I Fall
“Dreaming led to disappointment, and disappointment to a kind of depressed funk that wasn’t easy to shake. Better to stay in the gray than get eaten by the dark.”
― Alexandra Bracken, quote from The Darkest Minds
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