“I do not know what, in the end, makes a person who they are. If we`re all born one way, or if we only arrive there after as series of chioces. The bible claims that the wicked act on their own desires and impulses, because God is good, only good, and He would never compel a soul to wickedness. That I`m supposed to count on justice in the next life, even if I can`t have it in this one.”
― Alexandra Bracken, quote from Sparks Rise
“He has gone to a place I cannot find him. I cannot sing him home.”
― Alexandra Bracken, quote from Sparks Rise
“Sometimes we have to bend," she says, "to survive.”
― Alexandra Bracken, quote from Sparks Rise
“When you have nothing for so long, you forget the terror of having something to lose.”
― Alexandra Bracken, quote from Sparks Rise
“Anything can break if you hit it hard enough. Aren't we all proof of that?”
― Alexandra Bracken, quote from Sparks Rise
“It took me a while to understand that when you don’t like someone, nothing they can say or do will ever seem right. Something as harmless as giving a kid a cookie becomes something aggressive, a challenge to their authority.”
― Alexandra Bracken, quote from Sparks Rise
“Maybe that's the whole point-life showing me how good it could be, letting me have it just long enough to want it more than I've ever wanted anything else, only to rip it away. When you have nothing for so long, you forget the terror of having something to lose.”
― Alexandra Bracken, quote from Sparks Rise
“I glide under a sky so blue, so purple, so golden I fight as hard as anything to keep my eyes open, because I want to remember it forever, however long that lasts. Because I know it'll be the last thing I see.”
― Alexandra Bracken, quote from Sparks Rise
“I know I shouldn't look, but I can't help it, I have to see if it's like before. Even with his mask on, I saw the soul beneath the stone.”
― Alexandra Bracken, quote from Sparks Rise
“How can you miss something, feel so awful about it, when you're not sure you had it in the first place?”
― Alexandra Bracken, quote from Sparks Rise
“I want to feel every ounce of pain and happiness life can serve up, because it'll mean I've survived. It'll mean I'm alive.”
― Alexandra Bracken, quote from Sparks Rise
“There is nothing, not even a flicker of life in his face.”
― Alexandra Bracken, quote from Sparks Rise
“Fire is calling my name. It is whispering words of encouragement, sweet things. It wants out, for me to fan the heat until it’s a vortex that can’t and won’t be stopped.”
― Alexandra Bracken, quote from Sparks Rise
“They will never have this, will they? They might not ever know the feeling of cozying up to a lightning bolt, what it feels like to look at someone's face and see your heart there.”
― Alexandra Bracken, quote from Sparks Rise
“It takes a sharp blade, a huge effort to separate one half of a coin from the other. It would take something a hell of a lot stronger and sharper to separate me from her.”
― Alexandra Bracken, quote from Sparks Rise
“Only, they've done such a good job of making this place hell that I wouldn't be surprised if the real one turned out to be a much nicer place.”
― Alexandra Bracken, quote from Sparks Rise
“My eyes kept skipping back to her, drawn to her face like a lone candle flame in the dark”
― Alexandra Bracken, quote from Sparks Rise
Alexandra Bracken
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“I guess I learned that even though most people are good, they can be talked into doing bad things by one or two jerks...And I guess, people sometimes need someone who can stand up and remind them that they are good people and they know what's right.”
― Christopher Scotton, quote from The Secret Wisdom of the Earth
“Now you might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I personally will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.”
― J.K. Rowling, quote from Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination
“There are moments in life that change us irreparably. Sometimes those moments are grand and dramatic, tragic or beautiful in their intensity. Sometimes those moments are quiet and small like footsteps fading behind a closed door. The subtlety of those moments can sometimes camouflage their impact and sometimes the impact is felt profoundly, but the quietness of the moment is lost on everyone else around you adding loneliness to the equation.”
― Samantha Young, quote from Moonlight on Nightingale Way
“Maria, lonely prostitute on a street of pain,
You, at least, hail me and speak to me
While a thousand others ignore my face.
You offer me an hour of love,
And your fees are not as costly as most.
You are the madonna of the lonely,
The first-born daughter in a world of pain.
You do not turn fat men aside,
Or trample on the stuttering, shy ones,
You are the meadow where desperate men
Can find a moment's comfort.
Men have paid more to their wives
To know a bit of peace
And could not walk away without the guilt
That masquerades as love.
You do not bind them, lovely Maria, you comfort them
And bid them return.
Your body is more Christian than the Bishop's
Whose gloved hand cannot feel the dropping of my blood.
Your passion is as genuine as most,
Your caring as real!
But you, Maria, sacred whore on the endless pavement of pain,
You, whose virginity each man may make his own
Without paying ought but your fee,
You who know nothing of virgin births and immaculate conceptions,
You who touch man's flesh and caress a stranger,
Who warm his bed to bring his aching skin alive,
You make more sense than stock markets and football games
Where sad men beg for virility.
You offer yourself for a fee--and who offers himself for less?
At times you are cruel and demanding--harsh and insensitive,
At times you are shrewd and deceptive--grasping and hollow.
The wonder is that at times you are gentle and concerned,
Warm and loving.
You deserve more respect than nuns who hide their sex for eternal love;
Your fees are not so high, nor your prejudice so virtuous.
You deserve more laurels than the self-pitying mother of many children,
And your fee is not as costly as most.
Man comes to you when his bed is filled with brass and emptiness,
When liquor has dulled his sense enough
To know his need of you.
He will come in fantasy and despair, Maria,
And leave without apologies.
He will come in loneliness--and perhaps
Leave in loneliness as well.
But you give him more than soldiers who win medals and pensions,
More than priests who offer absolution
And sweet-smelling ritual,
More than friends who anticipate his death
Or challenge his life,
And your fee is not as costly as most.
You admit that your love is for a fee,
Few women can be as honest.
There are monuments to statesmen who gave nothing to anyone
Except their hungry ego,
Monuments to mothers who turned their children
Into starving, anxious bodies,
Monuments to Lady Liberty who makes poor men prisoners.
I would erect a monument for you--
who give more than most--
And for a meager fee.
Among the lonely, you are perhaps the loneliest of all,
You come so close to love
But it eludes you
While proper women march to church and fantasize
In the silence of their rooms,
While lonely women take their husbands' arms
To hold them on life's surface,
While chattering women fill their closets with clothes and
Their lips with lies,
You offer love for a fee--which is not as costly as most--
And remain a lonely prostitute on a street of pain.
You are not immoral, little Maria, only tired and afraid,
But you are not as hollow as the police who pursue you,
The politicians who jail you, the pharisees who scorn you.
You give what you promise--take your paltry fee--and
Wander on the endless, aching pavements of pain.
You know more of universal love than the nations who thrive on war,
More than the churches whose dogmas are private vendettas made sacred,
More than the tall buildings and sprawling factories
Where men wear chains.
You are a lonely prostitute who speaks to me as I pass,
And I smile at you because I am a lonely man.”
― James Kavanaugh, quote from There Are Men Too Gentle to Live Among Wolves
“„Este clar că femeile sunt mai deştepte decît bărbaţii. Gîndiţi-vă — cel mai bun prieten al lor sînt diamantele; cel mai bun prieten al bărbaţilor este cîinele.”
― Allan Pease, quote from Why Men Don't Listen and Women Can't Read Maps: How We're Different and What to Do About It
Losing It
The Clown
The Lover
Prince of Thorns
Ordeal
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