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1 " She was an extension of his dreams. A sprinkling of magic dust, of unfeasible wishes, on his stable existence. The one thing-the one bright, marvelous thing-he wanted more than the world, but didn't deserve. However much he was tortured for her sake, however much blood he had spilled to protect her, the bruises to his body and the thrashings to his sanity, it would never be enough to make a wretch like him worthy of such a miracle. "
― V.S. Carnes , Sand for Dreams
2 " 1.I told you that I was a roadway of potholes, not safe to cross. You said nothing, showed up in my driveway wearing roller-skates.2.The first time I asked you on a date, after you hung up, I held the air between our phones against my ear and whispered, “You will fall in love with me. Then, just months later, you will fall out. I will pretend the entire time that I don’t know it’s coming.”3.Once, I got naked and danced around your bedroom, awkward and safe. You did the same. We held each other without hesitation and flailed lovely. This was vulnerability foreplay.4.The last eight times I told you I loved you, they sounded like apologies.5.You recorded me a CD of you repeating, “You are beautiful.” I listened to it until I no longer thought in my own voice.6.Into the half-empty phone line, I whispered, “We will wake up believing the worst in each other. We will spit shrapnel at each other’s hearts. The bruises will lodge somewhere we don’t know how to look for and I will still pretend I don’t know its coming.”7.You photographed my eyebrow shapes and turned them into flashcards: mood on one side, correct response on the other. You studied them until you knew when to stay silent.8.I bought you an entire bakery so that we could eat nothing but breakfast for a week. Breakfast, untainted by the day ahead, was when we still smiled at each other as if we meant it.9.I whispered, “I will latch on like a deadbolt to a door and tell you it is only because I want to protect you. Really, I’m afraid that without you I mean nothing.”10.I gave you a bouquet of plane tickets so I could practice the feeling of watching you leave.11.I picked you up from the airport limping. In your absence, I’d forgotten how to walk. When I collapsed at your feet, you refused to look at me until I learned to stand up without your help.12.Too scared to move, I stared while you set fire to your apartment – its walls decaying beyond repair, roaches invading the corpse of your bedroom. You tossed all the faulty appliances through the smoke out your window, screaming that you couldn’t handle choking on one more thing that wouldn’t just fix himself.13.I whispered, “We will each weed through the last year and try to spot the moment we began breaking. We will repel sprint away from each other. Your voice will take months to drain out from my ears. You will throw away your notebook of tally marks from each time you wondered if I was worth the work. The invisible bruises will finally surface and I will still pretend that I didn’t know it was coming.”14.The entire time, I was only pretending that I knew it was coming. "
3 " I reached out and placed my hand on the book and thought maybe someday I wouldn't need the bruises or the scars anymore. Maybe someday it would be all right for the scars to go away. "
― Han Nolan , Dancing on the Edge
4 " Apologies often cannot undo pain; but they can acknowledge it. And part of the cruelty of bullying is that the bruises it leaves are on the inside—it’s a hidden form of violence, shrouded by shame. "
― Mathew N. Schmalz , Mercy Matters: Opening Yourself to the Life-Changing Gift
5 " I would rather be the person who steps in front of a whole gang to defend someone and gets beaten up for it than the person who watches from a safe hiding. There were times I hid, and I think the shame hurts more than the bruises would have. "
― Jonathan Renshaw , Dawn of Wonder (The Wakening, #1)
6 " I realized that despite the fear and the bruises of life, one has to keep on fighting for one's dream. As Borges said in his writings " there is no other virtue than being brave." And one has to understand that braveness is not the absence of fear but rather the strength to keep on going forward despite the fear. "
7 " Let the blood and the bruises define your legacy. "
― Lady Gaga
8 " I want to move my hands, but they’re fused to his rib cage. I feel his lung span, his heartbeat, his very life force wrapped in these flimsy bars of bone. So fragile yet so solid. Like a brick wall with wet mortar. A juxtaposition of hard and soft.He inhales again. “Jayme,” he says my name with a mix of sigh and inquiry.I open my eyes and peer into his flushed face. Roses have bloomed on his ruddy cheeks and he looks as though he’s raced the wind.“Mm?” I reply. My mind is full of babble, I’m so high.“Jayme,” he’s insistent, almost pleading. “What are you?”Instantaneous is the cold alarm that douses the flames still dancing in my heart. I feel the nervousness that whispers through me like a cool breeze in the leaves.“What do you mean?” I ask, the disquiet wringing the strength from my voice.“It doesn’t hurt anymore,” he explains, inhaling deeply.I feel the line of a frown between my brows. Gingerly, I lift the hem of his shirt. And as sure as I am that the world is round and that the sky is, indeed, blue the bruises and welts on his torso have faded to nothingness, the golden tan of his skin is sun-kissed perfection. Panic has me frozen as I stare.“I don’t understand,” I whisper.He looks down at his exposed abdomen. “I think you healed me.”He says it so simply, but my mind takes his words and scatters them like ashes. I feel like I’m waking from a coma and I have amnesia and everyone speaks Chinese.I can’t speak. If I had the strength to, I wouldn’t have the words. I feel the panic flood into me and fear spiked adrenaline courses through me, I shove him. Hard. Eyes wide with shock, he stumbles back a few steps. A few steps is all I need. Fight or flight instinct taking root, I fight to flee. The space between us gives me enough room to slide out from between him and the car.He shouts my name. It’s too late. I’m running a fast as my lithe legs will carry me. My Converse pound the sidewalk and I hear the roar of his engine. It’s still too late. I grew up here and I’m ten blocks from home. No newbie could track me in my own neighborhood. In my town. Not with my determination to put as much distance as I can between me and the boy who scares the shit out of me. Not when I’ve scared the shit out of myself. I run. I run and I don’t stop. "
― Elden Dare , Born Wicked (The Wicked Sorcer Series #1)
9 " You are in his car and your words taste like honey. The suns yolk is stretching over the road, with hues of pink and red ribbon pressed against the bruises of the sky. He is talking about mechanics or sugar factories, and you are touching the rings on your fingers. The windows are open and the wind is making a home in your bones. Your jeans are ripped, your perfume smells like lilacs, your nails painted the color of sea weed. You forget about noise. You forget about color. It’s your lungs - I think, it’s your lungs that are morphing into purple butter. You are in his car and you are Mozart composing art, Claude Monet painting Water Lilies, you are Aphrodite, you are Shakespeare. You are in his car and you can’t remember what salt feels like against your tongue. You are in his car and you are ocean, fire - lip, tongue, breath, sweat. You are in his car and you are telling him you love him. You are in his car and he is telling you he loves you back. "
10 " I used to pray you know, pray to God that He would somehow stop it. All the nights of listening to my mother scream and things breaking. Of holding my brother and sister and listening to them cry and begging me to stop it.'My voice is slow and steady like a freight train at night.'I was too young, and we were always told that they'd put us in foster homes where people would rape us if we ever said anything. So we explained away the bruises and my mom wore big sunglasses whenever she left the house. And we invented car accidents if the bruising was too bad to cover with make-up. "
― Emily Andrews , The Finer Points of Becoming Machine
11 " You can count the bruises on your heart easily enough, but numbering sins is a far tricker matter. Men are eternally forgetting for their benefit. They leave it to the World to remeber, and to the Outside to call them to harsh accout. One hundred Heavens . . . for one thousand Hells. "
― R. Scott Bakker , The White Luck Warrior (Aspect-Emperor, #2)
12 " She met a boyand called him Stargazerbecause instead of poemshe recited the names of constellations.He said the freckles on his armswere roadmaps to the sky,and the bruises that he carriedwere supernovas in disguise." Stargazer "
13 " It used to be that when I made mistakes like this or came close to losing my life, I would just call Miguel. He'd drop it all to come to me—his movies, media engagements no matter how big they were, and even his criminal activities went on hold for me. It made me think he cared.Miguel canceled an appearance on the Dave Letterman show just because he called me and thought my voice sounded like something was wrong.He directed his gaze to the bruises decorating my face. “You said you weren't hurt.”With those big arms, he picked me up and slammed the door behind us. “When I ask you if you're okay, you tell me the truth. "
― Kenya Wright , Bad for You (Bad for You, #1)
14 " So let’s raise our glass to the accident season,To the river beneath us where we sink our souls,To the bruises and secrets, to the ghosts in the ceiling,One more drink for the watery road. "
― Moïra Fowley-Doyle
15 " Both girls jumped at a hard blow on the door. Eve hastily unlocked the door and stepped back as it flew open, and Shane charged through.“How—?’” He was breathing hard, and he had a crowbar in his hand. He’d have broken through the locks, Claire realized, if he’d had to. She came toward him slowly, trying to figure out what he was feeling, and he dropped the crowbar and wrapped his arms around her, lifting her up off the ground. His face was buried in the crook of her neck, and the warm, fast pump of his breath on her skin made her shiver in raw delight. “Oh Christ, Claire. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’”“Not your fault,’” Eve said. She held out the field hockey stick. “Look! I hit him. Um, twice.’”“Good.’” Shane kissed Claire’s cheek and let her slide back down to the floor, but he kept hold of her arms. His eyes, bright under the bruises and swelling, surveyed her carefully. “He didn’t hurt you? Either of you?’”“I hit him!’” Eve repeated brightly, and brandished the stick again for emphasis "
― Rachel Caine , The Dead Girls' Dance (The Morganville Vampires, #2)
16 " The inner life is bruised by a running against the laws of the Kingdom. The bruises are guilt complexes, a sense of inferiority, of missing the mark, of being out of harmony with God and with oneself, a sense of wrongness. Divine forgiveness wipes out all that sense of inner hurt and condemnation. Brings a sense of at-homeness- at home with God and oneself and with life. The universe opens its arms and takes one in. You are accepted- by God, by yourself, and by life. All self-loathing, self-rejection, all inferiorities drop away. You are a child of God; born from above, you walk the earth, a conqueror, afraid of nothing. Healed at the heart, you can say to life: " Come on, I'm ready for anything. "
17 " I've got this." Apollo stepped forward. His fiery armor was so bright it was hard to look at, and his matching Ray-Bans and perfect smile made him look like a male model for battle gear. " God of medicine, at your service." He passed his hand over Annabeth's face and spoke an incantation. Immediately the bruises faded. Her cuts and scars disappeared. Her arm straightened, and she sighed in her sleep.Apollo grinned. " She'll be fine in a few minutes. Just enough time for me to compose a poem about our victory: 'Apollo and his friends save Olympus.' Good, eh?" Thanks, Apollo," I said. " I'll, um, let you handle the poetry. "
