“Violet: "You're an asshole."
Onyx: "Thank you, it's something that took an eternity to perfect.”
“We all have the capacity to find the will to do what must be done - even when that which we must do terrifies us most. Remember this.”
“We would all believe in God if he served our every whim. Belief is not about an easy life or even truth. Belief is something you have regardless.”
“Violet!' Lincoln said, then sighed. 'You don't love him. This isn't real. You know what's real and it's hard and it hurts and we can't...Damn it, Vi--we're real!”
“You do. You're most beautiful just after you've woken up. It's always my favorite time, when we go for a run I the morning and I get to see you first thing." He kept playing with my hair.”
“It was like hacking through a thicket of raw tension whenever we were near each other.”
“I was learning that people are, on the whole, more at ease believing in vampires or aliens than vengeful angels intent on a biblical Armageddon. Yes, we are naïve by choice.”
“Without darkness, nothing comes to birth, As without light, nothing flowers.”
“It's been hard for me at times...the responsibility and expectation that comes with being a leader. I'm not always the one I wish I could be, that I should be, but nonetheless, it is my place. If I were to ever show a commitment to something other than my leadership, which could jeopardize the function I have, I would be risking too many lives. I couldn't live with that.”
“Getting back to the issue of the child," Tina said, harshing our buzz as visual, "I really think you should reconsider. He—"
The phone rang. She picked it up, glanced at the caller ID.
"We're kind of busy," I said, a little sharply. The phone was a whole thing between Tina and me.
"But—"
"If it's important, they'll call back."
"But it's your mother."
I practically snarled. The phone, the fucking phone! People used it the way they used to use the cat-o'-nine-tails. You had to drop everything and answer the fucking thing. And God help you if you were home and, for whatever reason, didn't answer. "But I called!" Yeah, it was convenient for you so you called. But I'm in the shit because it wasn't convenient for me to drop everything and talk to you, on the spot, for whatever you needed to talk about.”
“Our lives were just beginning, our favorite moment was right now, our favorite songs were unwritten.”
“Yet, after all, they were not bad souls; and though he failed so grotesquely, he did his incompetent best.”
“Reality depends upon your mind alone.[34] If your mind is not at peace what use are riches?”
“I don’t know why religious zealots have this compulsion to try to convert everyone who passes before them – I don’t go around trying to make them into St Louis Cardinals fans, for Christ’s sake – and yet they never fail to try.
Nowadays when accosted I explain to them that anyone wearing white socks with Hush Puppies and a badge saying HI! I’M GUS! probably couldn’t talk me into getting out of a burning car, much less into making a lifelong commitment to a deity, and ask them to send someone more intelligent and with a better dress sense next time, but back then I was too meek to do anything but listen politely and utter non-committal ‘Hmmmm’s’ to their suggestions that Jesus could turn my life around. Somewhere over the Atlantic, as I was sitting taking stock of my 200 cubic centimetres of personal space, as one does on a long plane flight, I spied a coin under the seat in front of me, and with protracted difficulty leaned forward and snagged it. When I sat up, I saw my seatmate was at last looking at me with that ominous glow.
‘Have you found Jesus?’ he said suddenly.
‘Uh, no, it’s a quarter,’ I answered and quickly settled down and pretended for the next six hours to be asleep, ignoring his whispered entreaties to let Christ build a bunkhouse in my heart.”
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