“It's true: Everyone needs a reason to stay alive -- someone who justifies your existence. Someone who loves you. Not beyond all reason. Just loves you. Even just shows an interest. Even someone who doesn't exist, or isn't yours. No, no! They don't even have to love you! They just have to be there to love! Target for your arrows. Magnetic Pole to drag on your compass needle and stop it spinning and tell you where you're heading and...Someone to soak up all the yearning. That's what I think.”
― Geraldine McCaughrean, quote from The White Darkness
“He is everything, everything, everything I ever admired and wanted and couldn't have. He is everything I needed and couldn't find in real life. Of course he is. That's why I invented him.”
― Geraldine McCaughrean, quote from The White Darkness
“For some crime committed by my ancestors in the dark and forgotten days, I came into the world already tarred and feathered. With shyness. It hurts terribly -- every bit as much as hot tar choking every pore -- and I wish I could be rid of it. But it hurts a lot less than having someone try and peel the shyness off. That's like being flayed alive.”
― Geraldine McCaughrean, quote from The White Darkness
“There are things roaming around inside my head as clever as Theseus in the Labyrinth. It's just that nobody ever gave them the necessary piece of string, so they'll never find their way out.”
― Geraldine McCaughrean, quote from The White Darkness
“If you want to please me very much, you will fall down when I shoot you," -Oates
The White Darkness”
― Geraldine McCaughrean, quote from The White Darkness
“Don't struggle too hard to understand people, Sym. They're hideously complicated. Unhappy people do the oddest, most terrible things, just trying to keep despair at bay. All you have to do is accept them...go around them...take evasive action.”
― Geraldine McCaughrean, quote from The White Darkness
“I like people. I like watching them. It's just I'd prefer to do it from a mile away using very poweful binoculars.”
― Geraldine McCaughrean, quote from The White Darkness
“That's how it's done, you see. It's the same way people get horses out of burning buildings. When the whole world's on fire around you, you use a blindfold. Everyone needs someone like Titus for a blindfold. ”
― Geraldine McCaughrean, quote from The White Darkness
“Every crime like this needs someone like me to look away and say nothing.”
― Geraldine McCaughrean, quote from The White Darkness
“But I refuse to say. Because I love him, and you'd give anything, wouldn't you? You'd give anything for someone you love not to die alone and in scalding agony?”
― Geraldine McCaughrean, quote from The White Darkness
“You aren't stupid, Lillian,' said Uncle Victor, smiling and shaking his head, 'but sometimes the things you do are.”
― Geraldine McCaughrean, quote from The White Darkness
“The richer you are, I've worked out, the smaller your telephone and the bigger your telephoto lens.”
― Geraldine McCaughrean, quote from The White Darkness
“When Titus speaks, I can hear every word. For me, that's like when the optician slides home the right lens and all the e's and g's and o's and c's become perfectly clear again and it isn't a struggle, even to read the bottom-most line...His voice touches places inside me like someone moving through a house, flicking light switches...No peering into corners for what's been said.”
― Geraldine McCaughrean, quote from The White Darkness
“Like everything perfect, he set up a ferocious pain inside me -- a flickering, griping sort of pain, because nothing as marvelous as that is ever within reach, is it? Nothing as beautiful can ever last.”
― Geraldine McCaughrean, quote from The White Darkness
“The world is hollow. It's a lot to take in. Like cracking an egg and finding nothing inside. Or a full grown elephant.”
― Geraldine McCaughrean, quote from The White Darkness
Geraldine McCaughrean
Born place: in The United Kingdom
Born date January 1, 1951
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“أخبرها إنه يرثي لحال خطيبته منذ الآن لأنها ارتبطت برجل قد تذوق طعم الكمال في إمراءة قبلها، وسيظل الطعم على لسانه، يستحيل على امرأة عادية أن تمحوه”
― Rajaa Alsanea, quote from Girls of Riyadh
“The Whites always mean well when they take human fish out of the ocean and try to make them dry and warm and happy and comfortable in a chicken coop; but the kindest-hearted white man can always be depended on to prove himself inadequate when he deals with savages. He cannot turn the situation around and imagine how he would like it to have a well-meaning savage transfer him from his house and his church and his clothes and his books and his choice food to a hideous wilderness of sand and rocks and snow, and ice and sleet and storm and blistering sun, with no shelter, no bed, no covering for his and his family's naked bodies, and nothing to eat but snakes and grubs and offal. This would be a hell to him; and if he had any wisdom he would know that his own civilization is a hell to the savage - but he hasn't any, and has never had any; and for lack of it he shut up those poor natives in the unimaginable perdition of his civilization, committing his crime with the very best intentions, and saw those poor creatures waste away under his tortures; and gazed at it, vaguely troubled and sorrowful, and wondered what could be the matter with them.”
― Mark Twain, quote from Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World
“I believe anyone could light a cigarette from the sparks that fly from your eyes!”
― Enid Blyton, quote from Five on a Treasure Island
“We get to the top of the driveway and get off the snowmobile. Bear bolts out of the darkness to greet us.
“Hey, boy,” says Teague, scratching back Bear’s ears.
“Yes, nice to see you too.” He nestles his nose to Bear’s, giving him an Eskimo kiss, which is funny, because, well, Teague is an Eskimo.
I take off my helmet and shake out my matted-down hair, which feels longer and suddenly sexier than I remembered it to be.
We stand there, Bear panting at our feet.
“So, um, thanks!” I say, half wanting to invite him in but half knowing I should let him go. It’s dark. It’s a school night. I should say good-bye while everything is perfect.
Say good-bye before the spell breaks.
I begin to step back, toward the cabin but--
“Wait a sec,” he says, setting his hand on my shoulder.
When he touches me. God.
“I want to ask you something,” he says.
“Ask away.”
“Well, what I want to ask you is--” Teague kneels down to attend to Bear. “Yes, boy, you just wait one second,” he says, ruffling his ears.
He stands back up.
“Okay, so,” he starts again.
I smile.
A big silly grin.
This boy is so cute, seriously, I--
“What I wanted to ask you is--”
He takes off his gloves and wraps his somehow warm hands around my mittens. Honestly, I think I’m going to die.”
― Megan Shull, quote from Amazing Grace
“Understanding means throwing away your knowledge.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, quote from Being Peace
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