#temporary

Davy's kiss tasted like vodka and disaster, and even while she kissed him back, Tilda thought, I'm never going into a closet with this man again. He slipped his hand under her T-shirt, and she said, "You know," as his hand slid up to her breast, but the only thing left to say was, I'm not that kind of girl, and of course she was. ↗

— Jennifer Crusie

#sex #contemporary

You have a certain charm, believe it or not. That, and you feed me. ↗

— Abria Mattina

#new-adult #contemporary

What can I do?” he asked. “To start taking care of you? ↗

— Toni Blake

#romance #contemporary

it's a rare day when she speaks in anything but platitudes--all those exhausted phrases and hand-me-down ideas that cram the dump sites of contemporary wisdom ↗

— Paul Auster

#contemporary

Anxiety is the handmaiden of contemporary ambition. ↗

— Alain de Botton

#anxiety #contemporary

There can be no stronger proof of the impoverishment of our contemporary culture than the popular - though profoundly mistaken - definition of myth as falsehood. ↗

— Rollo May

#myth #contemporary

You know there’s this gaping space between us, and if I leaned forward I’d grab Dex’s shirt without ever touching him. You know there’s a three-inch-thick glass wall separating us. Now we know, too. ↗

— Rebecca Berto

#fiction #new-adult #romance #contemporary

After I left here on Saturday, I decided never to see you again.” He was sliding the frittata under the broiler, so she could only see his profile, but damn if he didn’t appear to be smirking. “I know that, darling. It wounds my pride you won’t go out with me, but I can console myself with the knowledge that when you do see me, you can’t keep your knickers on for ten minutes running.” She threw her cookie at him, feigning indignation. “You bastard! Are you calling me easy?” “I like you easy. Besides, you’re not to blame. Who’d want to wear wet knickers? ↗

— Ruthie Knox

#contemporary

It is this nothingness (in solitude) that I have to face in my solitude, a nothingness so dreadful that everything in me wants to run to my friends, my work, and my distractions so that I can forget my nothingness and make myself believe that I am worth something. The task is to persevere in my solitude, to stay in my cell until all my seductive visitors get tired of pounding on my door and leave me alone. The wisdom of the desert is that the confrontation with our own frightening nothingness forces us to surrender ourselves totally and unconditionally to the Lord Jesus Christ. ↗

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

#contemporary

Racism is not merely a simplistic hatred. It is, more often, broad sympathy toward some and broader skepticism toward others... ↗

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

#empathy #empathy-diversity #empathy-psychology #prejudice #racism