2
" You really shouldn’t have come,” Lord Blackthorne said, his hand slipping across my faceto cup my jaw, fingers brushing my cheek. I shrieked, shrinking back and kicking at my captorwith stocking-covered feet. “Such a pretty child, in such an ugly place. Tell me, do you thinkyour dear husband would mind if I stole a kiss from the bride?”Kicking him in the shin, I spun, making him release me. I climbed off whatever I’d landedon, aiming my palms out and wishing that I could see what the heck was happening. Flamesfrom dozens of candles blinked at me as they lit with the power of my mind. Lord Blackthornetouched my shoulder, his other hand curving around the bodice of my gown, toying with thebeading along the neckline. "
3
" I still don’t know where the river begins, or where it ends. I don’t know where it comes from, or where it goes. I don’t know what it looked like yesterday, or what it will look like tomorrow,”Father Dominic put forth.“How the heck am I supposed to see all that from here?” Thomas pleaded.Father Dominic smiled, his body shaking slightly as he silently laughed.“Exactly, Thomas. Exactly. Now, think of your life as this river. If I were to ask you to describe it to me, how much of your life would you be able to share?”This was a question Thomas had never thought about before. Considering his life like this felt strange, uncomfortable.“I guess I’d share just about as much. I’d only talk about the part I can see right now. I guess I’d only tell you about what I know,” Thomas offered. "
6
" Courage, sacrifice, determination, commitment, toughness, heart, talent, guts. That's what little girls are made of; the heck with sugar and spice. "
― Bethany Hamilton , Soul Surfer: A True Story of Faith, Family, and Fighting to Get Back on the Board
10
" America is a leap of the imagination. From its beginning, people had only a persistent idea of what a good country should be. The idea involved freedom, equality, justice, and the pursuit of happiness; nowadays most of us probably could not describe it a lot more clearly than that. The truth is, it always has been a bit of a guess. No one has ever known for sure whether a country based on such an idea is really possible, but again and again, we have leaped toward the idea and hoped. What SuAnne Big Crow demonstrated in the Lead high school gym is that making the leap is the whole point. The idea does not truly live unless it is expressed by an act; the country does not live unless we make the leap from our tribe or focus group or gated community or demographic, and land on the shaky platform of that idea of a good country which all kinds of different people share.
This leap is made in public, and it's made for free. It's not a product or a service that anyone will pay you for. You do it for reasons unexplainable by economics--for ambition, out of conviction, for the heck of it, in playfulness, for love. It's done in public spaces, face-to-face, where anyone is free to go. It's not done on television, on the Internet, or over the telephone; our electronic systems can only tell us if the leap made elsewhere has succeeded or failed. The places you'll see it are high school gyms, city sidewalks, the subway, bus stations, public parks, parking lots, and wherever people gather during natural disasters. In those places and others like them, the leaps that continue to invent and knit the country continue to be made. When the leap fails, it looks like the L.A. riots, or Sherman's March through Georgia. When it succeeds, it looks like the New York City Bicentennial Celebration in July 1976 or the Civil Rights March on Washington in 1963. On that scale, whether it succeeds or fails, it's always something to see. The leap requires physical presence and physical risk. But the payoff--in terms of dreams realized, of understanding, of people getting along--can be so glorious as to make the risk seem minuscule. "
― Ian Frazier , On the Rez
12
" Angel slowly closed her door then sighed as she leaned against it feeling the sudden loss of her new love leaving for a while which they forgot to exchange on, and they have a positive outcome. Soon as Angel got up from the door, her doorbell rang she was hoping it was just Jana coming back again for something else, but when she looked at the peephole she saw it was Scarlett so she sighed and unlocked her door saying," What do you need Scarlett? We broke up a long time ago." Scarlett pushed Angel inside, and they both landed on the couch as Scarlett kissed her long and hard as Angel try to shove her off then once she pushed her off saying," What do you want Scarlett?" Scarlett gave a sweet smile replying," I want you back of course baby, you are my world I realize that." Angel shoved her out of the apartment replying," Get the heck out of here and never come back, you found love in someone else and so have I, so get out, GET OUT! "