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Love potions? For Will 'erondale? 'Tain't my way to turn down payment, but any man who looks like you 'as got no need of love potions, and that's a fact." "No," Will said, a little desperation in his voice. "I was looking for the opposite, really -- something that might put an end to being in love." "An 'atred potion?" Mol still sounded amused. "I was hoping for something more akin to indifference? Tolerance?" She made a snorting noise, astonishingly human for a ghost. "I 'ardly like to tell you this, Nephilim, but if you want a girl to 'ate you, there's easy enough ways of making it 'appen. You don't need my help with the poor thing." And with that she vanished, spinning away into the mists among the graves. Will, looking after her, sighed. "Not for her," he said under his breath, though there was no one to hear him, "for me..." And he leaned his head against the cold iron gate. ↗
#clockwork-prince #the-infernal-devices #tid #will-herondale #love
Yeah, you got married, didn’t you? But, you only did it because you thought we were over — and we’re not over. We’ll never be over. If you think that little piece of metal on your finger can shield off your feelings for me, you’re wrong. I wore one for five years and there wasn’t a day that went by where I wasn’t wishing it were you. ↗
One of my favourite things to do when I write is to bring a sense of wonder to a normal everyday setting... Yes, there are magical elements, but there are also very down-to-earth elements and often what shines through isn’t the magic, but the lanterns that the characters light against the dark... If you substitute the words “fairy tale” or “myth” for “fantasy,” the reason I use these elements in my own work is that they create resonances that illuminate solutions to the real world struggle without the need for an authorial voice to point them out. Magic never solves the problems–we have to do that on our own–but in fiction it allows the dialogue to have a much more organic approach than the talking heads one can encounter in fiction that doesn’t utilize the same tools. [from the interview Year’s Best 2012: Charles de Lint on “A Tangle of Green Men”] ↗
#fairy-tales #fantasy #magic #myth #writing
As the bartender struck a match to light her cigarette, she put her hand on his wrist to steady it. Travis saw him jump, draw back. He held his wrist, blew on it, looked at her reproachfully. Travis said: 'Why, you scratched him, Sarah.' 'Did I?' And as she turned and looked at him, he saw her hand twitch a little, and drew still further away from her. 'What - what's got into you?' he faltered. There was some kind of tension spreading all around the horseshoe-shaped bar, emanating from her. All the cordiality, the sociability, was leaving it. Cheery conversations even at the far ends of it faltered and died, and the speakers looked around them as though wondering what was putting them so on edge. A heavy leaden pall of restless silence descended, as when a cloud goes over the sun. One or two people even turned and moved away reluctantly, as though they hadn't intended to but didn't like it at the bar any more. The gaunt-faced woman in red and black was the center of all eyes, but the looks sent her were not the admiring looks of men for a well-dressed woman; they were the blinking petrified looks a blacksnake would get in a poultry yard. Even the barman felt it. He dropped and smashed a glass, a thing he hadn't done since he'd been working on the ship. Even the canary felt it, and stood shivering pitifully on its perch, emitting an occasional cheep as though for help. ("I'm Dangerous Tonight") ↗
Though it's fearful, Though it's deep, though it's dark And though you may lose the path, Though you may encounter wolves, You can't just act, You have to listen. you can't just act, You have to think. Though it's dark, There are always wolves, There are always spells, There are always beans, Or a giant dwells there. So into the woods you go again, You have to every now and then. Into the woods, no telling when, Be ready for the journey. Into the woods, but not too fast or what you wish, you lose at last. Into the woods, but mind the past. Into the woods, but mind the future. Into the woods, but not to stray, Or tempt the wolf, or steal from the giant-- The way is dark, The light is dim, But now there's you, me, her, and him. The chances look small, The choices look grim, But everything you learn there Will help when you return there. The light is getting dimmer.. I think I see a glimmer-- Into the woods--you have to grope, But that's the way you learn to cope. Into the woods to find there's hope Of getting through the journey. Into the woods, each time you go, There's more to learn of what you know. Into the woods, but not too slow-- Into the woods, it's nearing midnight-- Into the woods to mind the wolf, To heed the witch, to honor the giant, To mind, to heed, to find, to think, to teach, to join, to go to the Festival! Into the woods, Into the woods, Into the woods, Then out of the woods-- And happy ever after! ↗
To most people today, the name Snow White evokes visions of dwarfs whistling as they work, and a wide–eyed, fluttery princess singing, "Some day my prince will come." (A friend of mine claims this song is responsible for the problems of a whole generation of American women.) Yet the Snow White theme is one of the darkest and strangest to be found in the fairy tale canon — a chilling tale of murderous rivalry, adolescent sexual ripening, poisoned gifts, blood on snow, witchcraft, and ritual cannibalism. . .in short, not a tale originally intended for children's tender ears. Disney's well–known film version of the story, released in 1937, was ostensibly based on the German tale popularized by the Brothers Grimm. Originally titled "Snow–drop" and published in Kinder–und Hausmarchen in 1812, the Grimms' "Snow White" is a darker, chillier story than the musical Disney cartoon, yet it too had been cleaned up for publication, edited to emphasize the good Protestant values held by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. (...) Variants of Snow White were popular around the world long before the Grimms claimed it for Germany, but their version of the story (along with Walt Disney's) is the one that most people know today. Elements from the story can be traced back to the oldest oral tales of antiquity, but the earliest known written version was published in Italy in 1634. ↗
I was to grow used to hearing, around New York, the annoying way in which people would say: 'Edward Said, such a suave and articulate and witty man,' with the unspoken suffix 'for a Palestinian.' It irritated him, too, naturally enough, but in my private opinion it strengthened him in his determination to be an ambassador or spokesman for those who lived in camps or under occupation (or both). He almost overdid the ambassadorial aspect if you ask me, being always just too faultlessly dressed and spiffily turned out. Fools often contrasted this attention to his tenue with his membership of the Palestine National Council, the then-parliament-in-exile of the people without a land. In fact, his taking part in this rather shambolic assembly was a kind of noblesse oblige: an assurance to his landsmen (and also to himself) that he had not allowed and never would allow himself to forget their plight. The downside of this noblesse was only to strike me much later on. ↗
#bigotry #dress #edward-said #new-york #palestinian-national-council
Louis found me in the rear parlor, the one more distant from the noises of the tourists in the Rue Royale, and with its windows open to the courtyard below. I was in fact looking out the window, looking for the cat again, though I didn't tell myself so, and observing how our bougainvillea had all but covered the high walls that enclosed us and kept us safe from the rest of the world. The wisteria was also fierce in its growth, even reaching out from the brick walls to the railing of the rear balcony and finding its way up to the roof. I could never quite take for granted the lush flowers of New Orleans. Indeed, they filled me with happiness whenever I stopped to really look at them and surrender to their fragrance, as though I still had the right to do so, as though I still were part of nature, as though I were still a mortal man. ↗
#cat #david-talbot #flowers #fragrance #louis
...you make it sound like this is work. I’m having a hard time thinking about sex as a project to manage.” He barely touched the cheeks of her ass, just a little tickle on her flesh, and her muscles clenched. “Only because you don’t take it seriously.” “I take it very seriously,” she shot back. “No, you take the choice of your partner seriously, but not the sex itself. The sex itself you view as something you have to give up to get to what you really want, and that’s companionship and affection. You can’t buy those with sex, Avery. Those will come or not, and it doesn’t mean a damn thing to any man. Not really. He’ll take sex from you even if he doesn’t particularly like you. He’ll take it because you offer it up so easily. Again—not the relationship, but the sex. You’re offering me easy sex. Sex where I don’t have to work, but I want to work because I do like you and I do feel affection for you. Do you understand?” “You think I should ask for more.” “No, I think you should demand more.” “That doesn’t sound very submissive... ↗
#bdsm #demanding-more #erotica-romance #rules-on-sex #submissive
Though he never actually joined it, he was close to some civilian elements of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which was the most Communist (and in the rather orthodox sense) of the Palestinian formations. I remember Edward once surprising me by saying, and apropos of nothing: 'Do you know something I have never done in my political career? I have never publicly criticized the Soviet Union. It’s not that I terribly sympathize with them or anything—it's just that the Soviets have never done anything to harm me, or us.' At the time I thought this a rather naïve statement, even perhaps a slightly contemptible one, but by then I had been in parts of the Middle East where it could come as a blessed relief to meet a consecrated Moscow-line atheist-dogmatist, if only for the comparatively rational humanism that he evinced amid so much religious barking and mania. It was only later to occur to me that Edward's pronounced dislike of George Orwell was something to which I ought to have paid more attention. ↗
