1
" Harvey wanted to dive into his ugliness; he intentionally reached for those long hours of soul desolation. He waited. He paced, ready to face down whatever was to come.
Paulette’s, though, busted loose uninvited, catching her completely off guard when she was already hurting, feeling crumbled, and vulnerable. When all she really wanted was some quiet gentle feelings for a change. A few flowers. Some sunshine. A way out of all that inner torment for even just a moment.
Had she had brought only nastiness out of her childhood? Hadn’t there been anything sweet she could remember instead?
As she wandered back to her cabin, searching for even a single fond memory, light faded everywhere around her.
Aw, c’mon, she thought. Everyone had some happy childhood memories. She had to have at least a couple.
How about the coloring? Children enjoy coloring; how about that? She’d spent hours and days on her art. It was as close as she could remember to having her Mamma stand over her with anything even remotely resembling approval. Her books and comics could be tales of Jesus, but coloring books had to be Old Testament because “No child’s impure hand could touch a crayon to the sweet beautiful face of our beloved Lord and savior Christ Jesus.”
So the little girl had scrunched down over Daniel in the lion’s den. Samson screaming in rage, pain, and terror as they blinded him with daggers and torches. The redder she made the flowing wounds of a man of God shot full of arrows, the richer the flames around those three men being burned in an iron box, the longer Mamma let her stay out of that closet.
- From “The Gardens of Ailana "
― Edward Fahey , The Gardens of Ailana
3
" She clung to her husband. And it was just at the time when he needed her most, because he suffered the disadvantage of being ten years ahead of her as he stumbled alone through the mists of old age, with the even greater disadvantage of being a man and weaker than she was. In the end they knew each other so well that by the time they had been married for thirty years they were like a single divided being, and they felt uncomfortable at the frequency with which they guessed each other’s thoughts without intending to, or the ridiculous accident of one of them anticipating in public what the other was going to say. Together they had overcome the daily incomprehension, the instantaneous hatred, the reciprocal nastiness and fabulous flashes of glory in the conjugal conspiracy. It was the time when they loved each other best, without hurry or excess, when both were most conscious of and grateful for their incredible victories over adversity. Life would still present them with other mortal trials, of course, but that no longer mattered: they were on the other shore. "
― Gabriel García Márquez , Love in the Time of Cholera
6
" Look, cat, you and I are never going to be friends. She’s going to
call you Max, but I’m going to call you Shit Head. And if you think for
one second—” The cat lies down in a tight little ball of nastiness and
falls asleep. “Oh, please. Make yourself at home by sleeping on my
scrotum.” I peek out into the sitting room area that connects to the
four bedrooms, and then glance back at the kitten. Releasing a sigh of
discontent, I pet Shit Head with one finger. He purrs extra hard, and
I find myself wondering if I could train him to do things. Every hero
needs a sidekick, and I’m nothing if not a Grade-A Hero.
- Dante Walker "
― Victoria Scott , The Warrior (Dante Walker, #3)
8
" His tunic was unbuttoned at the top, and he ran a hand through his blue-black hair before he wordlessly slumped against the wall across from me and slid to the floor." What do you want?" I demanded." A moment of peace and quiet," he snapped, rubbing his temples.I paused. " From what?" He massaged his pale skin, making the corners of his eyes go up and down, out and in. He sighed. " From this mess." I sat up farther on my pallet of the hay. I'd never seen him so candid." That damned bitch is running me ragged," he went on, and dropped his hands from his temples to lean his head against the wall. " You hate me. Imagine how you'd feel if I made you serve in my bedroom. I'm High Lord of the Night Court - not her harlot." So the slurs were true. And I could imagine very easily how much I would hate him - what it would do to me - to be enslaved to someone like that. " Why are you telling me this?" The swagger and nastiness were gone. " Because I'm tired and lonely, and you're the only person I can talk to without putting myself at risk." He let out a low laugh. " How absurd: a High Lord of Prythian and a - " " You can leave if you're just going to insult me." " But I'm so good at it" . He flashed one of his grins. I glared at him, but he sighted. " One wrong move tomorrow, Freyre, and we're all doomed. "
9
" I am a wicked man... But do you know, gentlemen, what was the main point about my wickedness? The whole thing, precisely was, the greatest nastiness precisely lay in my being shamefully conscious every moment, even in moments of the greatest bile, that I was not only not a wicked man but was not even an embittered man, that I was simply frightening sparrows in vain, and pleasing myself with it. "
― Fyodor Dostoevsky , Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead