#pre

I was sixteen and my mother was about to throw me out of the house forever, for breaking a very big rule, even bigger than the forbidden books. The rule was not just No Sex, but definitely No Sex With Your Own Sex. ↗

— Jeanette Winterson

#books #books-express #sex #sexuality #winterson

Few people ask from books what books can give us. Most commonly we come to books with blurred and divided minds, asking of fiction that it shall be true, of poetry that it shall be false, of biography that it shall be flattering, of history that it shall enforce our own prejudices. If we could banish all such preconceptions when we read, that would be an admirable beginning. ↗

— Virginia Woolf

#expectations #open-mindedness #preconceptions #reading #biography

Walking out in the middle of a funeral would be, of course, bad form. So attempting to walk out on one's own was beyond the pale. ↗

— Steve Hockensmith

#pride-and-prejudice #zombies #zombies

People say you're born innocent, but it's not true. You inherit all kinds of things that you can do nothing about. You inherit your identity, your history, like a birthmark that you can't wash off. ... We are born with our heads turned back, but my mother says we have to face into the future now. You have to earn your own innocence, she says. You have to grow up and become innocent. ↗

— Hugo Hamilton

#future #growing-up #growth #heritage #history

Put that in your self-righteous pipe and smoke it!!!. ↗

— R. Alan Woods

#presumptousness #r-alan-woods #self-righteousness #r-alan-woods

Happiness doesn't always come in pink. Learn to appreciate the rainbow. ↗

— Richelle E. Goodrich

#happiness #joy #rainbow #richelle #richelle-goodrich

All classes in proportion to their lack of travel and familiarity with foreign literature are bellicose, prejudiced against foreigners, fond of fighting as a cruel sport -- in short, dog-like in their notions of foreign policy." [Quoted in Socialism and Foreign Policy and War and the Liberal Conscience] ↗

— George Bernard Shaw

#fighting #foreign-policy #literature #narrow-mindedness #prejudice

Holmes took up the stone and held it against the light. "It's a bonny thing," said he. "Just see how it glints and sparkles. Of course it is a nucleus and focus of crime. Every good stone is. They are the devil's pet baits. In the larger and older jewels every facet may stand for a bloody deed. This stone is not yet twenty years old. It was found in the banks of the Amoy River in soutern China and is remarkable in having every characteristic of the carbuncle, save that it is blue in shade instead of ruby red. In spite of its youth, it has already a sinister history. There have been two murders, a vitriol-throwing, a suicide, and several robberies brought about for the sake of this forty-grain weight of crystallised charcoal. Who would think that so pretty a toy would be a purveyor to the gallows and the prison? ↗

— Arthur Conan Doyle

#gems #greed #jewels #murder #precious-stones

I don’t think I have the right parts to appreciate '50 Shades of Grey'. ↗

— Chris Colfer

#lol #appreciation

Though the task of opening those doors is in no means difficult, Andria finds herself unable to move her shaking legs, as her ankles tremble in her crystal heels, and her fingers, holding gently onto the length of her gorgeous gown, terribly shake in step with the beat of her precious, precious heart. ↗

— Hannah Nikka Bryan

#apprehension #door #fantasy #fear #fiction