Simply Magic

There is nothing worse, is there," she said, "than a past that has never been fully dealt with. One can convince oneself, that it is all safely in the past and forgotten about, but the very fact that we can tell ourselves that it is forgotten proves that it is not.

I know it is something of a cliche to say that love makes all things possible, but I believe it does. It is not a magic wand that can be waved over life to make it all sweet and lovely and trouble free, but it can give the energy to fight the odds and win.

Even friends need private spaces, if only within the depths of their own souls, where no one else is allowed to intrude.

There is no happily-ever-after to run to. We have to work for happiness.

Love, I have discovered, does not judge. It just is.

Sometimes even the imagination lets one down.

Was memory always as much of a burden as it could sometimes be a blessing.

Have you noticed," she asked him, "how we live much of our lives in the past and most of the rest of it in the future? Have you noticed how often the present moment slips by quiet unnoticed?

Why is it," she asked, snuggling closer, "that I so often imagine myself running away and running free?

And he knew at that moment that love world never die, that it would never fade away altogether. The time might come when he would meet and marry someone else. He might even be reasonably happy. But there would always be a deep precious place in his heart that belonged to his first real love.

Sometimes children do not realize by how fragile a thread their security hangs. Perhaps it is as well they do not - most of them grow up before the thread can be broken.

Sometimes love was to be grasped in any form and in any manner it was offered. And sometimes love must be given in the same way.

Ah, this feels just like the old times... I still miss you and the others, you know, and life at school and those times when two or more of us would sit up talking far too late into the night. Which is not to say I would give up my present life to return there, but... Well, even happy choices involve some sacrifice. And most of us, I suppose, would like to both have our cake and eat it if only it were possible

The longing for something beyond yourself, beyond anything you have ever known or dreamed of?

And then something blossomed deep within and opened almost like the multitude petals of a rose, pushing back the tension in rippling waves as they bloomed until she surrendered to relaxation with a soft exclamation of surprise

Ah, but we are women as well as teachers... We have needs that nature has given us fr the very preservation of our species

What happened was pain and pleasure and shock and satisfaction all rolled into one. Pain as he withdrew and thrust over and over again past the soreness of her newly opened womanhood. Pleasure because it was more wonderful, more exhilirating, than any other sensation she had ever experienced. Shock because she had not expected such a deep and vigorous and prolonged invasion of her body. Satisfaction because now, before it was too late, he was her lover. Because she would always be able to remember him as her lover

Did people... really kiss like that? She had had NO idea. She had imagined being kissed, and in her imagination she had been swept away by the sheer romance of the meeting of lips. In her naivete she had not considered the possibility that a kiss, as a prelude to sexual activity, might have powerful effects on parts of her body, in fact, even parts she had been only half aware of possessing. She ached and throbbed in all sorts of unfamiliar places

I perceive,” he said, “that you are of the half-empty-glass school of thought, Miss Osbourne, while I am of the half-full school.” “Then we are quite incompatible,” she said. “Not necessarily so,” he said. “Some differences of opinion will provide us with topics upon which to hold a lively debate. There is nothing more dull than two people who are so totally in agreement with each other upon every subject under the sun that there really is nothing left worth saying.” But

unguarded moment she pictured herself waltzing with Viscount Whitleaf,

And so he drifted back to London... where he lived a life of increasingly busy idleness as he searched out one diversion after another