“Do you love me?" he asked.
I fell silent.
"For the rest of it is glitter and noise," he said. "At the heart of it all is love. You make that choice, and you go forward from there.”
― Sharon Shinn, quote from Summers at Castle Auburn
“Sometimes we become what we see. Sometimes we take what we see and make it the model for what we refuse to become.”
― Sharon Shinn, quote from Summers at Castle Auburn
“So do I wish I was to be king? That is not a question I ask myself. I ask myself, Would I be a good king? Would I be quick witted and generous of spirit and full of that boundless energy? Or would I be clumsy and stupid and dulled by my own prejudices? I try to be a good man, since I am alive at all, and hope that that teaches me what I would need to know if I was ever faced with a higher challenge.”
― Sharon Shinn, quote from Summers at Castle Auburn
“But I am king. And the well-being of my kingdom depends on my sound judgment and clear head. And those things depend on my state of happiness. And I have known for a long time that my state of happiness depends on you.”
― Sharon Shinn, quote from Summers at Castle Auburn
“He looked down at his empty glass. "One of the other ways in which I am different from my father," he said. "I am not interested in marrying where I do not love."
I spoke in a jesting voice. "And of all the women in the eight provinces, you have not been able to find one you could love?"
Now he looked at me again, and his face was completely serious. "That's the problem," he said. "There is one.”
― Sharon Shinn, quote from Summers at Castle Auburn
“she had something I could not have, and so I resented her—but I realized the fault was mine and not hers.”
― Sharon Shinn, quote from Summers at Castle Auburn
“The promises of the future cannot undo the harm of the past.”
― Sharon Shinn, quote from Summers at Castle Auburn
“Would you not marry even for love?'
'Love does not seem to bring anyone much happiness as far as I have observed. So I think the lesson learned is never to love.'
'The lesson is to love wisely,' he replied.”
― Sharon Shinn, quote from Summers at Castle Auburn
“You're just afraid," I flung at him. "Of what would happen to you and your life at court if you were to carry Elisandra away. Of what your father would say. Of what Bryan would do to you."
Now he, too, looked angry. "I am afraid of many things, but those are not the fears that keep me from action," he said.
I turned my back on him. "Then I don't understand you," I said.
I heard the door open. "No," he said, "and you never have.”
― Sharon Shinn, quote from Summers at Castle Auburn
“No such thing as too tall,” she said. She had automatically reached for a brush and now she began uncoiling the tangles of my hair. “It’s good for a woman to be able to look into a man’s eyes. Then she’s not afraid to tell him what she thinks.”
― Sharon Shinn, quote from Summers at Castle Auburn
“My shoes made an odd, clacking sound on the cobblestones of the courtyard, no matter how quietly I placed my feet. It was like being followed by the audible manifestation of my own shadow.”
― Sharon Shinn, quote from Summers at Castle Auburn
“I had been right the first time. His sonorous voice echoed through a hollow place of sorrow, catching its reverberations from those ragged walls. His gaiety masked a deep well of loneliness; he was a bright outward shape wrapped around shadows.”
― Sharon Shinn, quote from Summers at Castle Auburn
“Elisandra read while I tried my hand at embroidering a pillowcase that she lent me. The results were execrable. I had no skill with a needle, and no desire to learn, either.
'I wouldn't shame a dog by laying this upon his bed,' I remarked, showing Elisandra my efforts. She actually smiled.
'I like it,' she said. 'I'll put it on one of my pillows.'
'Bryan won't let you sleep in the same bed with him if you bring this as your dowry,' I said with an attempt at humor.
She bent her head back over her book. 'Then stitch me another.”
― Sharon Shinn, quote from Summers at Castle Auburn
“And how is your head? Better?" he asked.
"Very much. Sometimes it hurts." Right now it was throbbing. "But every day I am much improved."
"Where did you hit it? Are you bruised?"
I put a hand to the back of my head, a little to the left, where I had landed with such jarring force. "Here," I said. "It's still a little tender."
And leaning forward, he touched my hair right where I had just laid my hand. Such was he glamour that attended him that I expected the ache to instantly melt away, healed by his royal caress. But in fact, I felt a sudden leap in my heart that made the pain briefly more intense.”
― Sharon Shinn, quote from Summers at Castle Auburn
“Now his grin lit his face with a sunny halo.”
― Sharon Shinn, quote from Summers at Castle Auburn
“How did I look at you? I asked thickly. Like you had to, like I was a magnet you were pulled to. There was no choice, he said. And when you look at Jack, it's because when he's around, why would you want to look at anything else? You love him the way you could never love me.”
― Amanda Hocking, quote from Flutter
“I looked at other couples and wondered how they could be so calm about it. They held hands as if they weren't even holding hands. When Steve and I held hands, I had to keep looking down to marvel at it. There was my hand, the same hand I've always had - oh, but look! What is it holding? It's holding Steve's hand! Who is Steve? My three-dimensional boyfriend. Each day I wondered what would happen next. What happens when you stop wanting, when you are happy. I supposed I would go on being happy forever. I knew I would not mess things up by growing bored. I had done that once before.”
― Miranda July, quote from No One Belongs Here More Than You
“Jetez sur une étoile un rapide coup d'œil, regardez-la obliquement, en tournant vers elle la partie latérale de la rétine (beaucoup plus sensible à une lumière faible que la partie centrale), et vous verrez l'étoile plus distinctement; vous aurez l'appréciation la plus juste de son éclat, éclat qui s'obscurcit à proportion que vous dirigez votre vue en plein sur elle. Dans le dernier cas, il tombe sur l'œil un plus grand nombre de rayons; mais dans le premier, il y a une réceptibilité plus complète, une susceptibilité beaucoup plus vive. Une profondeur outrée affaiblit la pensée et la rend perplexe; et il est possible de faire disparaître Vénus elle-même du firmament par une attention trop soutenue, trop concentrée, trop directe.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, quote from Tales of Mystery and Imagination
“Those were her best days, although there was always something feckless about her, something so slack and almost fearful in her too frequent smile, so that when you saw Mignon being happy, you always thought: "It can't last." She had the febrile gaiety of a being without a past, without a present, yet she existed thus, without memory or history, only because her past was too bleak to think of and her future too terrible to contemplate; she was the broken blossom of the present tense.”
― Angela Carter, quote from Nights at the Circus
“sometimes our lives have moments of great disappointment. It’s difficult at the time, but we have to move beyond.”
― Nicky Charles, quote from The Mating
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