“My children ain’t the only thing I love. If I was allowed, I reckon I’d love myself, too.”
― Dolen Perkins-Valdez, quote from Wench
“At night, before she went to sleep in her cabin down in the quarters, she remembered Mawu’s story and told herself that she was a god, a powerful god. Each and every day, she reminded herself of this so that she wouldn’t fall backward. She was more than eyes, ears, lips, and thigh. She was a heart. She was a mind”
― Dolen Perkins-Valdez, quote from Wench
“The woman had told the truth. The flowers were the color of sunset. And not the yellowish tinge of a lazy sun either, but the intense orange of a sun refusing to set on anyone else’s terms.”
― Dolen Perkins-Valdez, quote from Wench
“Mawu felt her face where the still-fresh scar had just been opened up again. She examined the blood on her fingers as if it weren’t her own. Sir returned to the table and a servant slipped through the side door and passed him a wet cloth to wipe the blood from his hands.”
― Dolen Perkins-Valdez, quote from Wench
“plans if you were going to go with this woman? come here.”
― Dolen Perkins-Valdez, quote from Wench
“Sweet allowed her pregnancy to get the better of her and simply sat down. Reenie’s lips set into a straight, emotionless line. Mawu no longer talked back, the words she did speak taking on an air of vapidity. Philip was chained at night, no longer trusted. So it was no wonder that Lizzie sought out the white woman then.”
― Dolen Perkins-Valdez, quote from Wench
“What is the denunciation with which we are charged? It is endeavoring, in our faltering human speech, to declare the enormity of the sin of making merchandise of men,—of separating husband and wife,—taking the infant from its mother, and selling the daughter to prostitution,—of a professedly Christian nation denying, by statute, the Bible to every sixth man and woman of its population, and making it illegal for ‘two or three’ to meet together, except a white man be present! What is this harsh criticism of motives with which we are charged?”
― Dolen Perkins-Valdez, quote from Wench
“I like the way he looks at me, like I am a wood nymph that he happened upon one day and just had to take home to keep.”
― Jenny Han, quote from Always and Forever, Lara Jean
“Presently a serpent sought them out privately, and came to them walking upright, which was the way of serpents in those days. The serpent said the forbidden fruit would store their vacant minds with knowledge. So they ate it, which was quite natural, for man is so made that he eagerly wants to know; whereas the priest, like God, whose imitator and representative he is, has made it his business from the beginning to keep him from knowing any useful thing.”
― Mark Twain, quote from Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings
“I think of Krishna and his deep blue eyes. It is said, in the hidden scriptures in India, that to focus on the eyes of the Lord is the highest spiritual practice a human being can proform. It's suppose to be equal to the greatest act of charity, which Jesus describes in the Bible as sacrificing one's life to save the life of another.
The Vedas, the Bible, it's true, they overlap a lot.
Maybe gazing into Krishna's eyes...
Pain...Pain...Pain...
Is equal to Christ's sacrifice.
I'm only suffering this pain to protect John. It doesn't matter that he won't see me. I still love him, I will always love him. And in this exquisitely agonizing moment, I realize he refused to see me because he wanted to force me to see him inside. Ah, that's the key! This practice of visualizing that I'm staring into Krishna's blue eyes, I've done it before.
But this is the first time I see him staring back at me!
The Agony comes, and it does not get transformed into bliss.
If anything it is worse than before. Except for one thing.
The pain does not obliterate my sense of "I."
I'm still Sita, the last vampire.”
― Christopher Pike, quote from Thirst No. 3: The Eternal Dawn
“He sat across from me now, chin on his hands, brooding into the fire. Part of me wanted to walk up to him and hug him from behind, and part of me wanted to hurl a snowball at his perfect face to get some kind of reaction.
I opted for a less suicidal route. “Hey,” I said, poking at the flames with a stick, making them cough sparks. “Earth to Ash. What are you thinking about?”
― Julie Kagawa, quote from Winter's Passage
“Il sacerdote notò il mio gesto e disse: “Hai corso molto a lungo; le tue vesti sono strappate, sei pesto e sanguinante e sporco di fango. Hai sparso sangue altrui e vieni a cercare rifugio? Se è così, entra nel sacro luogo, perché qui fuori Apollo non può proteggerti”. Si chinò per aiutarmi. Le sue erano le mani di un vecchio, ma asciutte e calde, e avevano una forza risanatrice. Io dissi: “Non ho sparso il sangue di nessuno. Sarebbe meglio se avessi sparso il mio, perché i miei occhi hanno visto il mio cuore e la sua luce s’è mutata per sempre in tenebra”. “Nel cuore di ogni uomo c’è un labirinto”, disse il sacerdote, “e per ciascuno viene il giorno in cui deve giungere al centro e affrontare il Minotauro. […]”.”
― Mary Renault, quote from The Last of the Wine
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