22
" I know a charm that can cure pain and sickness, and lift the grief from the heart of the grieving.
I know a charm that will heal with a touch.
I know a charm that will turn aside the weapons of an enemy.
I know another charm to free myself from all bonds and locks.
A fifth charm: I can catch an arrow in flight and take no harm from it.
A sixth: spells sent to hurt me will hurt only the sender.
A seventh charm I know: I can quench a fire simply by looking at it.
An eighth: if any man hates me, I can win his friendship.
A ninth: I can sing the wind to sleep and calm a storm for long enough to bring a ship to shore.
For a tenth charm, I learned to dispel witches, to spin them around in the skies so that they will never find their way back to their own doors again.
An eleventh: if I sing it when a battle rages it can take warriors through the tumult unscathed and unhurt, and bring them safely back to their hearths and their homes.
A twelfth charm I know: if I see a hanged man I can bring him down from the gallows to whisper to us all he remembers.
A thirteenth: if I sprinkle water on a child’s head, that child will not fall in battle.
A fourteenth: I know the names of all the gods. Every damned one of them.
A fifteenth: I had a dream of power, of glory, and of wisdom, and I can make people believe in my dreams.
A sixteenth charm I know: if I need love I can turn the mind and heart of any woman.
A seventeenth, that no woman I want will ever want another.
And I know an eighteenth charm, and that charm is the greatest of all, and that charm I can tell to no man, for a secret that no one know but you is the most powerful secret there can ever be. "
― Neil Gaiman , American Gods (American Gods, #1)
24
" The brain appears to possess a special area which we might call poetic memory and which records everything that charms or touches us, that makes our lives beautiful. From the time he met Tereza, no woman had the right to leave the slightest impression on that part of his brain.
Tereza occupied his poetic memory like a despot and exterminated all other trace of other women. That was unfair, because the young woman he made love to on the rug during the storm was not a bit less worthy of poetry than Tereza. She shouted, ‘Close your eyes! Squeeze my hips! Hold me tight!; she could not stand it that when Tomas made love he kept his eyes open, focused and observant, his body ever so slightly arched above her, never pressing against her skin. She did now want him to study her. She wanted to draw him into the magic stream that may be entered only with closed eyes. [..] She wanted to merge with him. [..] 'It’s not sensual pleasure I’m after,’ she would say, 'it’s happiness. And pleasure without happiness is not pleasure.’ In other words, she was pounding on the gate of his poetic memory. But the gate was shut. There was no room for her in his poetic memory. There was room for her only on the rug. "
― Milan Kundera , The Unbearable Lightness of Being
26
" If anybody studying psychology wants a concrete example of what a narcissist looks like, I advise them to consider any man who cheats on his wife. These guys are the textbook me-firsters, the ones who think the rules don't apply to them, the ones who tell themselves as long as she doesn't know, there's no harm done. No woman needs to sleep with these guys. There are so many single self-absorbed narcissists who will fuck you poorly. "
― , I Don't Care About Your Band: Lessons Learned from Indie Rockers, Trust Funders, Pornographers, Felons, Faux-Sensitive Hipsters, and Other Guys I've Dated
28
" Ma'am is yet another horrible-sounding word in the lexicon of words that women are stuck with to describe various aspects of their body/life/mental state/hair. Vagina. Moist. Fallopian tubes. Yeast infection. Clitoris. Frizz. These are all terrible words, and yet they are our assigned descriptors. Who made up these words? Women certainly didn't. If, at the beginning of time, right after making vaginas, God had asked me, 'What would you like your most intimate and enjoyable part of yourself to be called?',' I most certainly wouldn't have said, 'Vagina.' No woman would, because vagina sounds like a First World War term that was invented to describe a trench that has been mostly blown apart but is still in use. Even off the very top of my head I feel like I could have come up with something better, like for instance the word papoose, which actually as I'm typing it feels like an incredibly brilliant word for vagina. "
― , You'll Grow Out of It
37
" She saw it in her mind's eye like a movie playing, the haunting memories from her childhood she couldn't seem to shake blending together into one raw, aching image. Her mother lying in a darkened room for days, her face swollen with tears. The inevitable ashtray overrun with ashes, the acrid scent of pot smoke in the air. The bed or couch or futon may have been different from year to year as Evie moved them around from apartment to commune to funky cottage, but her mother was always the same. Falling hard for some man, immersing herself in romantic fantasies that were crushed when the guy left. And the guy always left. Her mother's inability to get a grasp on reality had too often left Mischa to care for her younger sister, to care for her mother, from too young an age. She remembered shaking Evie awake, trying to get her to eat. To get up and take a shower, take her and Raine to school. No kid should have to do that. No kid should have to witness the way Evie had allowed herself to be ravaged by love. No woman should allow that to happen. "
― Eve Berlin , Temptation's Edge (Edge, #3)