People are
able to hold
onto hope,
since death
is that which
cannot be seen.

Bleach ~ Kubo Tite

You preached equality, but you drowned in greed and acted like you owned the whole damn world! Don't tell me about the Ishin Shishi, who gave us the lie of a new age!

Sanosuke Sagara, Rurouni Kenshin ~ Nobuhiro Watsuki

Song

Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the devil's foot,
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy's stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.

If thou be'st born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights,
Till age snow white hairs on thee,
Thou, when thou return'st, wilt tell me,
All strange wonders that befell thee,
And swear,
No where
Lives a woman true and fair.

If thou find'st one, let me know,
Such a pilgrimage were sweet;
Yet do not, I would not go,
Though at next door we might meet,
Though she were true, when you met her,
And last, till you write your letter,
Yet she
Will be
False, ere I come, to two, or three.

~ John Donne

"When I stole Hamiathe’s Gift, I loved you then. I didn’t understand it. I thought you must be a fiend from hell,” he admitted, cocking his head to one side, “but I already loved you."

Eugenides, The Queen Of Attolia ~Megan Whalen Turner

Your capacity to land yourself in a mess because you didn’t think first, Eugenides, will never cease to amaze me. What do you mean you didn’t think about being king? Is Attolia going to marry you and move into my library?

Eddis, The Queen Of Attolia ~Megan Whalen Turner

I love you. I hope you don't mind.

Touchstone, Sabriel ~ Garth Nix

Atticus was right. One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them. Just standing on the Radley porch was enough.

Scout Finch, To Kill a Mocking Bird ~ Harper Lee

I will never shame you. I will hate the man you choose because he is not me, and love him if he makes you smile. No woman deserves the sure knowledge of widow's black as her bride price, you least of all.

al'Lan Mandragoran, The Eye of the World, The Wheel of Time ~ Robert Jordan

Cassie: Aaaaaaaahhhhh!

Jake: Look out! Lookoutlookoutlookoutlookout!

Marco: Would you both shut up? I'm trying to drive here!

Jake: Car! Car! Car!

Marco: (yanks wheel left)

Driver: (speeds by, blares horn, and flips Marco off)

Marco: That's rude. And totally uncalled for.

BAM!

Cassie: Aaaaaaaahhhhhh!

Marco: Oh, it's just a trash can. Chill out.

BAM! BAM! BAM!

Marco: Okay, so it's four trash cans.

Jake: Get off the sidewalk, you lunatic!

Marco: (yanks wheel right, bumps the sidewalk, grazes a parked car)

BAM! BAM! BAM!

Jake: Do you hate trash cans? Is that your problem? Do you just HATE TRASH CANS?!!

Marco: I can't drive with you screaming in my ear.

Jake: You can't drive at all!

The Andalites Gift, Megamorphs, Animorphs ~ K.A. Applegate

Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts.

Great Expectations ~ Charles Dickens

"Go to bed, you fool," Calcifer said sleepily. "You're drunk."
"Who, me?" said Howl. "I assure you, my friends, I am cone sold stober."
He got up and stalked upstairs,
feeling for the walls as if he thought it might escape him unless he kept in touch with it.
His bedroom door did escape him.

Howl's Moving Castle ~ Diana Wynne Jones

I don't and I won't trade in affection. You call me a brute because you couldn't buy a claim on me by fetching my slippers and finding my spectacles. You were a fool; I think a woman fetching a mans slippers is a disgusting sight; did I ever fetch your slippers? I think a good deal more of you for throwing them in my face. No use slaving for me and then saying you want to be cared for. Who cares for a slave?

Henry Higgins, Pygmalion ~ George Bernard Shaw

The Next War

The long war had ended.
Its miseries had grown faded.
Deaf men became difficult to talk to,
Heroes became bores.
Those alchemists
Who had converted blood into gold
Had grown elderly.
But they held a meeting,
Saying,
"We think perhaps we ought
To put up tombs
Or erect altars
To those brave lads
Who were so willingly burnt,
Or blinded,
Or maimed.
Who lost all likeness to a living thing,
Or were blown to bleeding patches of flesh
For our sakes.
It would look well.
Or we might even educate the children.''
But the richest of these wizards
Coughed gently;

And he said:
"I have always been to the front
- In private enterprise-,
I yield in public spirit
To no man.
I think yours is a very good idea
-A capital idea-
And not too costly . . .
But it seems to me
That the cause for which we fought
Is again endangered.
What more fitting memorial for the fallen
Than that their children
Should fall for the same cause?''
Rushing eagerly into the street,
The kindly old gentlemen cried
To the young:
"Will you sacrifice
Through your lethargy
What your fathers died to gain?
The world must be made safe for the young!"
And the children
Went . . .

~ Osbert Sitwell

My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath - a source of little visible delight, but necessary.

Wuthering Heights ~ Emily Bronte

Happiness isn't a thing. You can't go out and get it like a cup of tea. It's the way you feel about things.

Fire and Hemlock ~ Diana Wynne Jones

I said I loved you. I gave you my heart... and... you... you tore it all into little pieces... like it was nothing.

Domoyoji Tsukasa, Hana Yori Dango ~ Yoko Kamio

"You must know," said Estella, condescending to me as a beautiful woman might, "that I have no heart- if that has anything to do with my memory."

Great Expectations ~ Charles Dickens

There was love, and there was honor. And when they clashed, it broke your heart

Jim Taylor, The Tin Princess ~Phillip Pullman

“Do you love me?” Eugenides asked without preamble.

“Why do you ask?” she asked and he grimaced in frustration.

“Because I need to know,” he said.

“I am wearing your earrings,” Attolia offered.

“Being willing to marry me is not the same as loving me.”

“Would you believe me if I said I did love you?” Attolia asked. It seemed a genuine question, and Eugenides thought carefully about his answer.

“I don’t think that you’d lie.”

“Does it matter?” Attolia asked.

“If you’re truthful?”

“If I love you” she said.

“Yes. Do you love me?” he asked again.

~~~

“Are you insane?”

“No more then usual, I think.”

“Insane to think of loving me,” said Attolia, and the emotions that colored her usually emotionless voice was bitterness and self mockery.

~~~

(Attolia) “Love I’m not familiar with. I didn’t recognize the feeling till I thought I lost you in Ephrata. And when I thought I was losing you a second time, I realized I would give anything to keep you – my lip service to other gods, but my pride too, and my rage to all gods, everything for you. Then I see you here and see what I have done to you.”

~~~

“Who am I, that you should love me?

“You are My Queen,” said Eugenides. She sat perfectly still, looking at him without moving as his words dropped like water into dry earth.

“Do you believe me?” he asked.

“Yes,” she answered.

“Do you love me?”

“Yes.”

“I love you.”

And she believed him.

The Queen Of Attolia ~Megan Whalen Turner

Words written on parchment in black ink, is a fool’s paradise and I as a writer know this only too well…

Opening words of Wit’ch fire ~James Clemens