A child’s voice, as clear and bright as the Angel’s clarion, rose with the notes of the Adamantine aria, “For what is the Void but the beginning of Light? What is Light but the end of Fear? And what am I, but light given form? What am I, but the beginning of eternity?
Here’s to going into the fire.” – Kashkari.
She wasn’t sure that she wanted to understand the full spectrum of human emotions – everything that remained seemed dire to one degree or another. But this warm, silly mutual delight, this she wouldn’t mind experiencing until she comprehended its place in the world.
What stupid children they had been, to cause each other such pain and then to hold on to their wounds so fiercely. She.
You might be surprised at the strength of the fragile. And for some people it is ordinary life that is most challenging, not so much the extraordinary.
Her aunt would be appalled at her forwardness. But Penelope had long ago decided that while the meek might inherit the earth, the non-meek enjoys far more interesting conversations – to say the least.
Wait, here comes Cooper. In which case, carry on with your melodramatic moaning, but put some majesty into it. You know he lives to hear you judge everything as unworthy.
She had grown so accustomed to this exterior that she didn’t always remember what truly lay underneath. Nor did she particularly want to. Why fester in disillusion, bewilderment, and anger when she could float above and pretend to be this sunny, charming girl instead?
You, sir, are a scoundrel. As if he’d heard her thought, he glanced her way. Their gazes held, a pair of miscreants recognizing each other in a roomful of upstanding people.
A woman who has nothing left to lose can prove dangerous.
Are elderly women easier to fool than seven-year-olds? Which one wants more desperately to believe that a loved one will return against all odds?
Then let me tell you this: I live for you, and you alone.
When I was small, it was difficult for me to be around you,” Callista continued. “All your emotions were so intense – your anger like daggers, your unhappiness a poisoned well. Even your love had such sharp corners and dark alleys.
Brotherhood might be unique to men, but loyalty, devotion to friends, and a sense of fairness are not. They are the precise reasons I became a conscript in Dabao’s place. I could never have been at peace with myself knowing that it was within my power to do something for Auntie Xia and Dabao and not have done it.
Some turn the soil and plant seedlings. We garden with words and nurture affinity.
I often question your actions, but rarely your reasoning. And this isn’t one of those rare instances.
There was no such thing as a marriage with one happy spouse. Both must be or neither.
He sighed. The sound conveyed no impatience, only a deep wistfulness. “You are telling me that before you can be sure of your affections, you must be sure of yourself.
She’d never thought of herself quite that way. She was more an idiosyncratic ignorer of established boundaries than a glutton for the new and the uncharted. But perhaps they were one and the same, each one implying the other.
Something that will make my kisses taste like chocolate.