21
" He smoothed his fingers along her jawline and lifted her chin, kissing her gently, testing.
Lindsey went light-headed with the rush of sensation, the touch of his lips leaving her longing for more. Clutching his shirt in her fingers - napkin and all - she pulled him closer, melting into his kiss. Carden took it from tentative to tender, then parted her lips with the velvety sweep of his tongue. She matched his languid rhythm, hypnotized. He was all chocolate and caramel, creamy cool and sweet.
'Sinfully delicious'.
No doubt he was 31 flavors of trouble, but resisting him seemed impossible. "
― Tracy March , Should've Said No (Thistle Bend, #1)
24
" You were born on a moving train.
And even though it feels like you're standing still,
time is sweeping past you, right where you sit.
But once in a while you look up,
and actually feel the inertia,
and watch as the present turns into a memory
—as if some future you is already looking back on it.
Dès Vu.
One day you’ll remember this moment,
and it’ll mean something very different.
Maybe you’ll cringe and laugh,
or brim with pride, aching to return.
or notice some detail hidden in the scene,
a future landmark making its first appearance
or discreetly taking its final bow.
So you try to sense it ahead of time, looking for clues,
as if you’re walking through the memory while it’s still happening,
feeling for all the world like a time traveler.
The world around you is secretly strange:
some details are charming and dated,
others precious and irretrievable,
but all fade into the quaint texture of the day.
You try to read the faces around you,
each fretting about the day’s concerns,
not yet realizing that this world is already out of their hands.
That it doesn’t have to be this way, it just sort of happened,
and everything will soon be completely different.
Because you really are a time traveler,
leaping into the future in little tentative steps.
Just a kid stuck in a strange land without a map,
With nothing to do but soak in the moment
and take one last look before moving on.
But another part of you is already an old man,
looking back on things.
Waiting at the door for his granddaughter,
who’s trying to make her way home for a visit.
You are two people still separated by an ocean of time,
Part of you bursting to talk about what you saw,
Part of you longing to tell you what it means. "
― The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows
25
" And yet here he was, looking at Jem Carstairs, a boy so fragile-looking that he appeared to be made out of glass, with the hardness of his expression slowly dissolving into tentative uncertainty. " You are not really dying," he said, the oddest tone to his voice, " are you?" Jem nodded. " So they tell me." " I am sorry," Will said." No" , Jem said softly. He drew his jacket aside and took a knife from the belt at his waist. " Don't be ordinary like that. Don't say you're sorry. Say you'll train with me." He held the knife to Will, hilt first. Charlotte held her breath, afraid to move. She felt as if she were watching something very important happen, though she could not have said what.Will reached out and took the knife, his eyes never leaving Jem's face. His fingers brushed the other boy's as he took the weapon from him. It was the first time, Charlotte thought that she had ever seen him touch any other person willingly." I'll train with you," he said. "
30
" In Anton Chekhov’s play the Three Sisters, sister Masha refuses ‘to live and not know why the cranes fly, why children are born, why the stars are in the sky. Either you know and you’re alive or it’s all nonsense, all dust in the wind.’ Why? Why? The striving to know is what frees us from the bonds of self, said Einstein. It’s the striving to know, rather than our knowledge-which is always tentative and partial- that is important. Instead of putting computers in our elementary schools, we should take the children out into nature, away from those virtual worlds in which they spend unconscionable hours, and let them see an eclipsed Moon rising in the east, a pink pearl. Let them stand in a morning dawn and watch a slip of a comet fling its trail around the Sun…Let the children know. Let them know that nothing, nothing will find in the virtual world of e-games, television, or the Internet matters half as much as a glitter of strs on an inky sky, drawing our attention into the incomprehensible mystery of why the universe is here at all, and why we are here to observe it. The winter Milky Way rises in the east, one trillion individually invisible points of light, one trillion revelations of the Ultimate Mystery, conferring on the watcher a dignity, a blessedness, that confounds the dull humdrum of the commonplace and opens a window to infinity. "
― Chet Raymo , An Intimate Look at the Night Sky
31
" I have written various words, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, and bits of dismantled sentences, fragments of expressions and descriptions and all kinds of tentative combinations. Every now and again I pick up one these particles, these molecules of texts, hold it up to the light and examine it carefully, turn it in various directions, lean forward and rub or polish it, hold it up to the light again, rub it again slightly, then lean forward and fit it into the texture of the cloth I am weaving. Then I stare at it from different angles, still not entirely satisfied, and take it out again and replace it with another word, or try to fit it into another niche in the same sentence, then remove, file it down a tiny bit more, and try to fit it in again, perhaps at a slightly different angle. Or deploy it differently. Perhaps farther down the sentence. Or at the beginning of the next one. Or should I cut it off and make it into a one-word sentence on its own?
I stand up. Walk around the room. Return to the desk. Stare at it for a few moments or longer, cross out the whole sentence or tear up the whole page. I give up in despair. I curse myself aloud and curse writing in general and the language as a whole, despite which I sit down and start putting the whole thing together all over again. [p.268] "
― Amos Oz , A Tale of Love and Darkness
36
" The Janus Guard will also be out that night,” he said, one hand reaching out to squeeze her shoulder. “Just as we have been and will be for every night of the Nine.”
“Good.”
“Speaking of which—Kelley…” Sonny seemed suddenly exhausted. He turned his face to the west, and she could see the fatigue etched into the lines and planes of his face. “It’s getting late. You need to leave the park. Please. Don’t argue with me this time. Just go. The sun will set soon, and I have to go to work.”
He squared his shoulders as though he expected her to put up a fight. She did—a little—but only out of actual concern for him. “Shouldn’t you be taking it easy? I mean, you try to hide it with the whole tough-guy-swagger thing and all, but I saw the bandages. You’re really hurt. Aren’t you?”
“It’s not so bad.”
“Wow. You are a terrible liar.”
He frowned fiercely at her.
“You also look like you haven’t slept in a week.” She took a tentative step toward him and put a hand on his chest, looking up into his silver-gray eyes. He put his hand over the top of hers, and she could feel the rhythm of his heart beating under her palm, through his shirt and the bandages.
“I’m fine.”
“Are you sure?”
With his other hand, Sonny reached up and brushed a stray auburn curl out of her eyes.
“I’m sure.”
He smiled down at her, and she felt her insides melt a little. His whole face changed when he smiled. It was like the sun coming out.
“But,” he continued, “I’ll be even better if you are safe at home and I don’t have to worry about you for tonight.”
“I can take care of myself, Sonny Flannery,” she bristled, halfheartedly.
“Please?” He turned up the wattage on his smile.
“I…okay.” She felt her own lips turn up in a shy, answering smile. “I’ll be good. This once.”
“That’s my girl.”
Kelley was silent. Those three words of Sonny’s had managed to render her utterly speechless. "
― Lesley Livingston , Wondrous Strange (Wondrous Strange, #1)
