“Light a candle for me, I used to whisper to no one.
Someone
Anyone
If you're out there
Please tell me you can feel this fire.”
“She put my hand in the fire once. Jus to see if it would burn, she said. Just to check if it was a regular hand, she said. I was 6 years old then. I remember because it was my birthday.”
“I don't consider myself a moral man. I do not philosophize about life or bother with laws and principles that govern most people. I do not pretend to know the difference between right and wrong. But I do live by a certain kind of code. And somethimes, I think, you have how to shoot first.”
“I fold myself into a corner of this room and bury my head in my knees and rock back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and I wish and I wish and I wish and I dream of impossible things until I've cried myself to sleep.
I wonder what it would be like to have a friend.
And then I wonder who else is locked in this asylum. I wonder where the other screams are coming from.
I wonder if they're coming from me.”
“On the bleakst days you have to keep your eyes onward and upward and on the saddest days you have to leave them open to let them cry. To then let them dry. To give theam a chance to wash out the pain in order to see fresh and clear once again. (p. 193)”
“I've learned to stare at things. The walls. My hands. The cracks in the walls. The lines on my fingers. The shades of gray in the concrete. The shape of my fingernails. I pick one thing and stare at it for what must be hours. I keep time in my head by counting the seconds as they pass. I keep days in my head by writing them down. Today is day two. Today is the second day. Today is a day.
Today.
It's so cold. It's so cold. It's so cold.
Please please please
I started screaming today.”
“Because these words I write down are the only proof I have that I'm still alive”
“No one wants a dandelion.
They crop up all over the place, ugly and unfortunate, an average blossom in a world desperatly seeking beauty. They're weeds, people say. They're uninteresting and offer no fragrance and there are too many of them, too much of them, we don't want them, destroy them.
Dandelions are a nuisance,
We desire the buttercups, the daffodils, the morning glories. We want the azalea, the poinsettia, the calla lily. We pluck them from our gradens and plant them in our homes and we don't seem to remember their toxic nature.
We don't seem to care that
if you get too close?
if you take a small bite?
The beauty is replaced wit pain and laced with a posion that laughs in your blood, destroys your organs, infevts your heart.
But pick a dandelion.
Pick a dandelion and make a salad, eat the leaves, the flower, the stem. Thread it in your hair, plant it in the ground and watch it thrive.
Pick a dandelion and close your eyes
make a wish
blow it into the wind.
Watch it
change
the
world.”
“I’ve never read anything like this before. I’ve never read anything that could speak directly to my bones.”
“This doesn’t happen. People aren’t forgotten like this. Not abandoned like this.”
“He was their father, her husband, and the reason they all died a brutal, untimely death. And some days i wonder why I insist on keeping myself alive.”
“Because i never really know, i still can’t tell the difference, I’m never quite certain whether or not i’m actually alive.”
“Everything you love is illegal, immoral or fattening,’ she”
“The air grew colder and thinner as they rode through the mountain passes. The sun was high and bright, but Martise wrapped her shawl tightly around her and pressed against Silhara’s back. Gnat kept a steady pace, breathing harder in the thin air. Unlike him, the mountain ponies suffered no effects from the rising elevation and clipped ahead at a swift pace. Patches of snow spilled from embankments onto the rutted paths. A brisk wind moaned a soft dirge as it whipped through the towering evergreens cloaking the mountainside.
Silhara called a sudden halt. Martise peered around his arm, expecting to see some obstacle in their path. The way was clear, with only the Kurmans watching them curiously.
“What’s wrong?”
“You’re quaking hard enough to make my teeth rattle.” He moved his leg back and untied one of the packs strapped to the saddle. “Get down.”
She slid off Gnat’s back. Silhara followed and pulled one of their blankets from the packet. “Here. Wrap this around you.” She had only pulled the blanket over her shoulders when he picked her up and tossed her onto Gnat’s back once more, this time in the front of the flat saddle. She clutched the horse’s mane with one hand and held on to her blanket with the other. Silhara vaulted up behind her, scooted her back against him and took up the reins.
“Better,” he said and whistled to the waiting Kurmans he was ready. Martise couldn’t agree more. The blanket’s warmth and Silhara’s body heat soaked through her clothing and into her bones. She leaned into his chest. “This is nice.”
An amused rumble vibrated near her ear. “So glad you approve.” His hand slipped under the blanket, wandered over her belly and cupped her breast. Martise sucked in a breath as his fingers teased her nipple through her shawl and tunic. The heat surrounding her turned scorching. “I agree,” he murmured in her ear. “This is nice.”
He stopped his teasing when she squirmed hard enough in the saddle to nearly unseat them both, but left his hand on her breast, content to just hold her. Martise was ready to toss off the blanket and her shawl. Silhara’s touch had left her with a throbbing ache between her thighs. She smiled a little at the feel of him hard against her back. She wasn’t the only one affected by his teasing.”
“A man lives his life only when he is marching, i thought, when he keeps marching onwards at any price. When he stops marching onwards, he decays. The joy of life is the joy of the experience that comes from feeling one's own strength.”
“… Mr. Og. most humans, in varying degrees, are already dead. In one way or another they’ve lost their dreams, their ambitions, their desire for a better life. They have surrendered their fight for self esteem and they have compromised their great potential. They’ve settled for a life of mediocrity, days of despair and nights of tears. There are no more than living deaths confined to cemeteries of their choice. Yet they need not remain in that state. They can be resurrected from their sorry condition. They can each perform the greatest miracle in the world. They can each come back from the dead…”
“innovators need to be disagreeable. By disagreeable, I don’t mean obnoxious or unpleasant. I mean that on that fifth dimension of the Big Five personality inventory, “agreeableness,” they tend to be on the far end of the continuum. They are people willing to take social risks—to do things that others might disapprove of.”
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