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" Unbidden, a growl escaped him just as his lips brushed that heavenly skin and with one bite he pierced right through it. When her blood hit his tongue, he shook.
It was nectar, hot and wild and sweet, like the fiery kiss of a demon. His fingers twisted up into the glossy knot of hair at her nape, pulling it free, wrapping his fist in that silky skein. Forcing her up as his mouth came down harder, his fangs sliding deeper.
Rissa made a soft sound; whether of pleasure, encouragement or pain, it didn't matter.
Nothing fucking mattered. "
― Heather R. Blair , Phoenix Fallen (Phoenix Inc. #2)
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" You may have misery,” she continued, ignoring my plea, “you may lose hope in the sorrow of an unplanned life but as long as you have faith and trust in adoration, in affection, in love, that sorrow will turn to happiness. And that is a constant, dear.” She breathed deeply and steadily for a moment, seemingly catching her breath.
“No one can know sincere happiness, Sophie, without first having known sorrow. One can never appreciate the enormity and rareness of such a fiery bliss without seeing misery, however unfair that may be.
“And you will know honest happiness. Of that I am certain. Certain because it’s why you are here and also because here is your inevitability. "
― Fisher Amelie , Vain (The Seven Deadly, #1)
129
" I am old now, or at least, I am no longer young, and everything I see reminds me of something else I’ve seen, such that I see nothing for the first time. A bonny girl, her hair fiery red, reminds me only of another hundred such lasses, and their mothers, and what they were as they grew, and what they looked like when they died. It is the curse of age, that all things are reflections of other things. "
― Neil Gaiman , The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains
133
" Ugly and futile: lean neck and thick hair and a stain of ink, a snail’s bed. Yet someone had loved him, borne him in her arms and in her heart. But for her the race of the world would have trampled him underfoot, a squashed boneless snail. She had loved his weak watery blood drained from her own. Was that then real? The only true thing in life? His mother’s prostrate body the fiery Columbanus in holy zeal bestrode. She was no more: the trembling skeleton of a twig burnt in the fire, an odour of rosewood and wetted ashes. She had saved him from being trampled underfoot and had gone, scarcely having been. A poor soul gone to heaven: and on a heath beneath winking stars a fox, red reek of rapine in his fur, with merciless bright eyes scraped in the earth, listened, scraped up the earth, listened, scraped and scraped. "
― James Joyce , Ulysses
135
" I am sorry to have to introduce the subject of Christmas into these articles. It is an indecent subject; a cruel, gluttonous subject; a drunken, disorderly subject; a wasteful, disastrous, subject; a wicked, cadging, lying, filthy, blashphemous, and demoralizing subject. Christmas is forced on a reluctant and disgusted nation by the shopkeepers and the press: on its own merits it would wither and shrivel in the fiery breath of universal hatred; and any one who looked back to it would be turned into a pillar of greasy sausages. "
― George Bernard Shaw ,
136
" The bast, dispersing in shreds in the sunset whispered " Time has begun." The son, Adam, stripped naked, descended into the Old Testament of his native land and arrayed himself in bast; a wreath of roadside field grass he placed upon his brow, a staff, not a switch, he pulled from the ground, flourishing the birch branch like a sacred palm. On the road he stood like a guard. The dust-gray road ran into the sunset. And a crow perched there, perched and croaked, there where the celestial fire consumed the earth.There were blind men along the dust-gray road running into the twilight. Antique, crooken, they trailed along, lonely and sinister silhouettes, holding to one another and to their leader's cane. They were raising dust. One was beard-less, he kept squinting. Another, a little old man with a protruding lip, was whispering and praying. A third, covered with red hair, frowned. Their backs were bent, their heads bowed low, their arms extended to the staff. Strange it was to see this mute procession in the terrible twilight. They made their way immutable, primordial, blind. Oh, if only they could open their eyes, oh if only they were not blind! Russian Land, awake!And Adam, rude image of the returned king, lowered the birch branch to their white pupils. And on them he laid his hands, as, groaning and moaning they seated themselves in the dust and with trembling hands pushed chunks of black bread into their mouths. Their faces were ashen and menacing, lit with the pale light of deadly clouds. Lightning blazed, their blinded faces blazed. Oh, if only they opened their eyes, oh, if only they saw the light!Adam, Adam, you stand illumined by lightnings. Now you lay the gentle branch upon their faces. Adam, Adam, say, see, see! And he restores their sight.But the blind men turning their ashen faces and opening their white eyes did not see. And the wind whispered " Thou art behind the hill." From the clouds a fiery veil began to shimmer and died out. A little birch murmured, beseeching, and fell asleep. The dusk dispersed at the horizon and a bloody stump of the sunset stuck up. And spotted with brilliant coals glowing red, the bast streamed out from the sunset like a striped cloak. On the waxen image of Adam the field grass wreaths sighed fearfully giving a soft whistle and the green dewy clusters sprinkled forth fiery tears on the blind faces of the blind. He knew what he was doing, he was restoring their sight.(" Adam" ) "
137
" That's a rather subversive idea, isn't it? " Do you think so? I don't. If it is subversive, then everything else is too, even breathing. I feel and think as naturally and necessarily as I breathe. If men hate each other, then there is not hope. We will all be the victims of that hate. We will slaughter each other in wars we don't want and for which we're not responsible. They'll put a flag in front of us and fill ours ears with words. And why? To plant the seeds for a new war, to create more hatred, to create new flags and new words. Is that why we're here? To have children and hurl them into the fiery furnace? To build cities and then raze them to the ground? To long for peace and have war instead? " And would love solve everything," asked Able with a sad, slightly ironic smile. " I don't know. It's the only thing we haven't tried so far..." " And will we be in time?" " Possibly. If those who suffer can be convinced that it's true, then yes, we might be in time..." He paused, as if assailed by a sudden thought, " But don't forget, Abel, you must love with a love that is lucid and active! And make sure that the active side never forgets abut the lucid side and that the active side never commits the same kind of villainous deeds as those who want men to hate each other. Active, but lucid. And above all, lucid! "
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" Jess Pepper's review of the Avalon Strings:
'In a land so very civilized and modern as ours, it is unpopular to suggest that the mystical isle of Avalon ever truly existed. But I believe I have found proof of it right here in Manhattan.
To understand my reasoning, you must recall first that enchanting tale of a mist-enshrouded isle where medieval women--descended from the gods--spawned heroic men. Most notable among these was the young King Arthur. In their most secret confessions, these mystic heroes acknowledged Avalon, and particularly the music of its maidens, as the source of their power.
Many a school boy has wept reading of Young King Arthur standing silent on the shore as the magical isle disappears from view, shrouded in mist.
The boy longs as Arthur did to leap the bank and pilot his canoe to the distant, singing atoll. To rejoin nymphs who guard in the depths of their water caves the meaning of life. To feel again the power that burns within.
But knowledge fades and memory dims, and schoolboys grow up. As the legend goes, the way became unknown to mortal man. Only woman could navigate the treacherous blanket of white that dipped and swirled at the surface of the water.
And with its fading went also the music of the fabled isle.
Harps and strings that heralded the dawn and incited robed maidens to dance evaporated into the mists of time, and silence ruled.
But I tell you, Kind Reader, that the music of Avalon lives. The spirit that enchanted knights in chain mail long eons ago is reborn in our fair city, in our own small band of fair maids who tap that legendary spirit to make music as the Avalon Strings.
Theirs is no common gift. Theirs is no ordinary sound. It is driven by a fire from within, borne on fingers bloodied by repetition. Minds tormented by a thirst for perfection.
And most startling of all is the voice that rises above, the stunning virtuoso whose example leads her small company to higher planes.
Could any other collection of musicians achieve the heights of this illustrious few? I think not.
I believe, Friends of the City, that when we witnes their performance, as we may almost nightly at the Warwick Hotel, we witness history's gift to this moment in time. And for a few brief moments in the presence of these maids, we witness the fiery spirit that endured and escaped the obliterating mists of Avalon. "
― Bailey Bristol , The Devil's Dime (The Samaritan Files #1)
