122
" No, you don’t get to touch yourself in my car.”“Why not?” It wasn’t a whine, it wasn’t. My voice was too deep to whine. It was more of a… whoan. Or something. I couldn’t think.“Three reasons. One, I don’t want to get into an accident trying to keep my eyes on you. Two, if I got into an accident, or if we were pulled over for indecent exposure, the mood killing would be the least of our problems. Three,” and here it was, the tone I loved, that I could barely wait for even though I knew I wasn’t going to like what he had to say, “for the rest of the night, that’s mine. Don’t touch it. "
125
" Oh, but to reach silence, what a huge effort of voice. My voice is the way I go seek reality; reality prior to my language exists as an unthinkable thought, but I was and am fatefully impelled to have to know what thought thinks. Reality precedes the voice that seeks it, but like the earth precedes the tree, but like the world precedes the man, but like the sea precedes the view of the sea, life precedes love, bodily matter precedes the body, and one day in its turn language shall have preceded possession of silence. - Clarice Lispector, The Passion According to G.H. "
― Clarice Lispector
127
" Hana?" Lena says softly. " Are you okay?" That single stupid question breaks me. All the metal fingers relax me at once, and the tears they've been holding back come surging up at once. Suddenly I am sobbing and telling her everything: about the raid, and the dogs, and the sounds of skulls cracking underneath regulator's nightsticks. Thinking about it again makes me feel like I might puke. At a certain point, Lena puts her arms around me and starts murmuring things into my hair. I don't even know what she's saying, and I don't care. JUst having her here—solid, real, on my side—makes me feel better than I have in weeks. Slowly I manage to stop crying, swallowing back the hiccups and sobs that are still running through me. I try to tell her that I've missed her, and that I've been stupid and wrong, but my voice is muffled and thick "
132
" The press, the media, the internet—they'll make the noise, make the screaming, the screaming all the time, and the truth and my voice will be lost. The blaming and the noise, human things, they'll make it about human things, not the truth. How can anyone live with it? How can anyone live with so much screaming in their lives, all the time? "
― Claire North , The Sudden Appearance of Hope
134
" You once told me you could stand many things.” My voice was raspy from all the emotions battering against those well-honed inner defenses.
“So can I. I can stand whatever Apollyon dishes out, can take the bigotry from others over what I am, the freaky ghost juju from Marie, all the
craziness my mother can throw at me, and even the pain of my uncle dying. But the one thing that I would never, ever recover from would be losing
you. You made me promise before to go on if that happened, but Bones”—here my words broke and tears spilled down my cheeks—“I wouldn’t
want to.”
He’d been near the side of the bed when I started talking, but was in my arms before the first tear fell. Very softly, his lips brushed over those wet
streaks, coming back pink from the drops still shimmering on them.
“No matter what happens, you will never lose me,” he whispered. “I am forever yours, Kitten, in this life or the next. "
― Jeaniene Frost , This Side of the Grave (Night Huntress, #5)
