#lt

Is it possible?” He could have sworn she was teasing. She shouldn’t have the energy for that. “What?” He lay next to her on his stomach, wrung out. Completely and utterly sated and yet thinking of the things he yet wanted to do to her. “You did.” Her voice was light, teasing even. “What?” “You begged, my lord.” He laughed softly. “To have you make love to me like that, I’ll beg you every night of my life, Lady Banallt. ↗

— Carolyn Jewel

#carolyn-jewel #scandal #sophie #life

A pulse of current invaded Kaitlyn’s brain, and she straightened up in her seat. It wasn’t painful; it was more of an annoyance. Like a slight buzz between her temples. Maybe even a tickle. She found it somewhat interesting that the test never picked up on her body's awareness of Lucas. Obviously, the computers didn’t know everything. ↗

— Julia Crane

#young-adult-fantasy #nature

This was not guilt: guilt is what you feel when you have done something wrong. What I felt was shame: I was what was wrong. ↗

— Atul Gawande

#shame #science

People from context cultures tend to view personal bonds and informal agreements as far more binding than any formal contract. People from content cultures don't believe the deal is finalized until everyone has signed on the dotted line. And therein lies the potential for conflict. ↗

— Carol Kinsey Goman

#promises #words #science

He gazed deeply into my eyes. Placing his hand to my cheek, he caressed my skin with his fingertips. “Ariel, you have a strength that cannot be hindered by anything. A strength that I admire greatly.” - Luca ↗

— Victoria H. Smith

#new-adult #science-fiction-romance #upper-ya #science

If I were king, I would redress an abuse which cuts back, as it were, one half of human kind. I would have women participate in all human rights, especially those of the mind. ↗

— Émilie Du Châtelet

#engineering #math #passonate-minds #rights #science

It is difficult to write a paradiso when all the superficial indications are that you ought to write an apocalypse. ↗

— Ezra Pound

#despair #difficulty #fear #optimism #poetry

I'm on a roller coaster that only goes up," he said. "And it is my privilege and my responsibility to ride all the way up with you," I said. ↗

— John Green

#hazel-grace #the-fault-in-our-stars #grace

That same night, I wrote my first short story. It took me thirty minutes. It was a dark little tale about a man who found a magic cup and learned that if he wept into the cup, his tears turned into pearls. But even though he had always been poor, he was a happy man and rarely shed a tear. So he found ways to make himself sad so that his tears could make him rich. As the pearls piled up, so did his greed grow. The story ended with the man sitting on a mountain of pearls, knife in hand, weeping helplessly into the cup with his beloved wife's slain body in his arms. ↗

— Khaled Hosseini

#cring #fables #greed #poverty #sorrow

What about little microphones? What if everyone swallowed them, and they played the sounds of our hearts through little speakers, which could be in the pouches of our overalls? When you skateboarded down the street at night you could hear everyone's heartbeat, and they could hear yours, sort of like sonar. One weird thing is, I wonder if everyone's hearts would start to beat at the same time, like how women who live together have their menstrual periods at the same time, which I know about, but don't really want to know about. That would be so weird, except that the place in the hospital where babies are born would sound like a crystal chandelier in a houseboat, because the babies wouldn't have had time to match up their heartbeats yet. And at the finish line at the end of the New York City Marathon it would sound like war. ↗

— Jonathan Safran Foer

#women