Quotes from War for the Oaks

“Sometimes, she reflected, she dressed for courage, sometimes for success, and sometimes for the consolation of knowing that whatever else went wrong, at least she liked her clothes.”
― Emma Bull, quote from War for the Oaks

“I’ve no surety that it is. I know only parts of what I feel; I may be misnaming the whole. You dwell in my mind like a household spirit. All that I think is followed with, ‘I shall tell that thought to Eddi.’ Whatever I see or hear is colored by what I imagine you will say of it. What is amusing is twice so, if you have laughed at it. There is a way you have of turning your head, quickly with a little tilt, that seems more wonderful to me than the practiced movements of dancers. All this, taken together, I’ve come to think of as love, but it may not be.

It is not a comfortable feeling. But I find that, even so, I would wish the same feeling on you. The possibility that I suffer it alone–that frightens me more than all the host of the Unseelie Court.”
― Emma Bull, quote from War for the Oaks

“We're all immortal until we die.”
― Emma Bull, quote from War for the Oaks

“It was like him, too, to love her and admit to it before he knew if she loved him. Maybe only mortals expected to barter their hearts.”
― Emma Bull, quote from War for the Oaks

“She has her own glamour, Willy lad. All poets do, all the bards and artists, all the musicians who truly take the music into their own hearts. They all straddle the border of Faerie, and they see into both worlds. Not dependably into either, perhaps, but that uncertainty keeps them honest and at a distance.”
― Emma Bull, quote from War for the Oaks

“How old are you?'

The question startled him. 'Earth and Air. There are times you are no more comfortable a companion than I am. The answer to that serves no conceivable purpose, and I refuse to give it to you.'

When I was a kid I read Black Beauty. There were horse-drawn cabs in that. Are you that old?'

Older, older, older. I shall not tell you, so you may as well leave off, my primrose.'

She snorted. 'I think that means I should give up. You've started sweet-talking.'

I am torn,' the phouka said, grinning, 'between responding, 'Oh, absolutely!' and 'What do you mean, started?'' He grabbed her hand, dropped a kiss on the knuckles, and loped across the street. Eddi felt the touch of his mouth on her hand for an inexplicably long time.”
― Emma Bull, quote from War for the Oaks

“To those who see the magical surface of things, you are invisible.'

Good grief. Will you still be able to see me?'

He met her eyes in a way that made her shiver pleasantly. 'I see you in a great many ways. It would be hard to blind me in all of them.”
― Emma Bull, quote from War for the Oaks

“Could I make you believe something that wasn't true?'

He studied her through his eyelashes. 'You could make me believe anything at all.”
― Emma Bull, quote from War for the Oaks

“Sex without love is like a goddamn business transaction. And sometimes both parties feel as if they got a good deal, but that doesn't make it any less so.”
― Emma Bull, quote from War for the Oaks

“Every motion she made was slow, as if she’d never before put her arms around a man, and didn’t know for certain where everything fit. When at last they were pressed close, she didn’t think she’d know how to let go when the time came. They summarized the course of passion with kisses: a chaste, half-frightened brush of the lips metamorphosed into something fierce and fast-burning, which in its turn became a more patient, more intimate touch, full of inquiry and shared pleasure.”
― Emma Bull, quote from War for the Oaks

“I’ve told you that I’m a tricksy wight, and I am, my sweet. But there are those in the Seelie Court who would make me seem a very perfect knight.”
― Emma Bull, quote from War for the Oaks

“Fairy tales. That was all she could remember about fairies, and as she tried desperately to recall the ones she'd heard or read, she realized she knew of few with fairies in them. And the two before her were nothing like Rumpelstiltskin or Cinderella's fairy godmother. Elegant Oberon and Titiana, silly Puck--Shakespeare was no help, either. These two, with their changing shapes and their offhand cruelties, had their roots in horror movies.”
― Emma Bull, quote from War for the Oaks

“If the obligations of friendship are constraints, then I am so constrained.”
― Emma Bull, quote from War for the Oaks

“You've run a lot of risks, and gone to a lot of work, and all to turn me into a bullet for your gun. But I'm a bullet that thinks for itself, and I want to know what I'm being shot at.”
― Emma Bull, quote from War for the Oaks

“You're good, did you know that?'

Oh, yes.”
― Emma Bull, quote from War for the Oaks

“We cannot resist the lure of that mortal brilliance. It is its own kind of glamour, that dazzles the senses. And once we have found it, we cannot turn away.”
― Emma Bull, quote from War for the Oaks

“I love you like my own sister. Which is why I won't hesitate to tell you that I don't believe it.”
― Emma Bull, quote from War for the Oaks

“She felt … new, just-made. She felt as if everything she had ever done out of weakness or fear had been undone, and all of her past washed clean.”
― Emma Bull, quote from War for the Oaks

“Those the brownies will not help, must learn to help themselves”
― Emma Bull, quote from War for the Oaks

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Popular quotes

“I’ve been in love with you for months. I’m telling you now because I think you love me, too, Anna. You just don’t think you’re supposed to. You’ll tell me when you’re ready. I can wait.”
― Tracey Garvis-Graves, quote from On the Island

“In ninety seconds they were naked and he was nibbling at her ear while his hand rubbed her pubic mat; but a saboteur was at work at his brain. 'I love you,' he thought, and it was not untrue because he loved all women now, knowing partially what sex was really all about, but he couldn't bring himself to say it because it was not totally true, either, since he loved Mavis more, much more. 'I'm awfully fond of you,' he almost said, but the absurdity of it stopped him. Her hand cupped his cock and found it limp; her eyes opened and looked into his enquiringly. He kissed her lips quickly and moved his hand lower, inserting a ringer until he found the clitoris. But even when her breathing got deeper, he did not respond as usual, and her hand began massaging his cock more desperately. He slid down, kissing nipples and bellybutton on the way, and began licking her clitoris. As soon as she came, he cupped her buttocks, lifted her pelvis, got his tongue into her vagina and forced another quick orgasm, immediately lowering her slightly again and beginning a very gentle and slow return in spiral fashion back to the clitoris. But still he was flaccid.

'Stop,' Stella breathed. 'Let me do you, baby.'

George moved upward on the bed and hugged her. 'I love you,' he said, and suddenly it did not sound like a lie.

Stella giggled and kissed his mouth briefly. 'It takes a lot to get those words out of you, doesn't it?' she said bemusedly.

'Honesty is the worst policy,' George said grimly. 'I was a child prodigy, you know? A freak. It was rugged. I had to have some defense, and somehow I picked honesty. I was always with older boys so I never won a fight. The only way I could feel superior, or escape total inferiority, was to be the most honest bastard on the planet earth.'

'So you can't say 'I love you' unless you mean it?' Stella laughed. 'You're probably the only man in America with that problem. If you could only be a woman for a while, baby! You can't imagine what liars most men are.'

'Oh, I've said it at times. When it was at least half true. But it always sounded like play-acting to me, and I felt it sounded that way to the woman, too. This time it just came out, perfectly natural, no effort.'

'That is something,' Stella grinned. 'And I can't let it go unrewarded.' Her black body slid downward and he enjoyed the esthetic effect as his eyes followed her— black on white, like the yinyang or the Sacred Chao—what was the psychoses of the white race that made this beauty seem ugly to most of them? Then her lips closed over his penis and he found that the words had loosened the knot: he was erect in a second. He closed his eyes to savor the sensation, then opened them to look down at her Afro hairdo, her serious dark face, his cock slipping back and forth between her lips. 'I love you,' he repeated, with even more conviction. 'Oh, Christ, Oh, Eris, oh baby baby, I love you!' He closed his eyes again, and let the Robot move his pelvis in response to her. 'Oh, stop,' he said, 'stop,' drawing her upward and turning her over, 'together,' he said, mounting her, 'together,' as her eyes closed when he entered her and then opened again for a moment meeting his in total tenderness, 'I love you, Stella, I love,' and he knew it was so far along that the weight wouldn't bother her, collapsing, using his arms to hug her, not supporting himself, belly to belly and breast to breast, her arms hugging him also and her voice saying, 'I love you, too, oh, I love you,' and moving with it, saying 'angel' and 'darling' and then saying nothing, the explosion and the light again permeating his whole body not just the penis, a passing through the mandala to the other side and a long sleep.”
― Robert Shea, quote from The Illuminatus! Trilogy

“Evangelicalism has taken the Extrovert Ideal to its logical extreme...If you don't love Jesus out loud, then it must not be real love. It's not enough to forge your own spiritual connection to the divine; it must be displayed publicly.”
― Susan Cain, quote from Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“My conscience hath a thousand several tongues,
And every tongue brings in a several tale,
And every tale condemns me for a villain.
Perjury, perjury, in the high'st degree;
Murder, stern murder in the dir'st degree,
Throng to the bar, crying all, 'Guilty!, guilty!”
― William Shakespeare, quote from Richard III

“I receive remarkable letters. They are opened for me, unfolded, and spread out before my eyes in a daily ritual that gives the arrival of the mail the character of a hushed and holy ceremony. I carefully read each letter myself. Some of them are serious in tone, discussing the meaning of life, invoking the supremacy of the soul, the mystery of every existence. And by a curious reversal, the people who focus most closely on these fundamental questions tend to be people I had known only superficially. Their small talk has masked hidden depths. Had I been blind and deaf, or does it take the harsh light of disaster to show a person's true nature?

Other letters simply relate the small events that punctuate the passage of time: roses picked at dusk, the laziness of a rainy Sunday, a child crying himself to sleep. Capturing the moment, these small slices of life, these small gusts of happiness, move me more deeply than all the rest. A couple of lines or eight pages, a Middle Eastern stamp or a suburban postmark... I hoard all these letters like treasure. One day I hope to fasten them end to end in a half-mile streamer, to float in the wind like a banner raised to the glory of friendship.

It will keep the vultures at bay.”
― Jean-Dominique Bauby, quote from The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

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