“There is something romantic about feeding a predator from the palm of your hand, I think- a creature which might bite you if it chooses, but chooses not to. But how does one turn such awful beauty to lead and ink on a page?”
Source: Our Hideous Progeny
“Funny, the thing that hooks you. It’s not always the eyes or the wifely parts; sometimes it’s just the curve of a well-made arm against dark oak.”
Source: The Blacktongue Thief
“People do want to be young and beautiful. When they meet in the street, male or female, if they're getting older they look at each other's face a little ashamed. It's clear they want to say, Excuse me, I didn't mean to draw attention to mortality and gravity all at once. I didn't want to remind you, my dear friend, of our coming eviction, first from liveliness, then from life. To which, most of the time, the friend's eyes will courteously reply, My dear, it's nothing at all. I hardly noticed.”
Source: A Grace Paley Reader: Stories, Essays, and Poetry
“She looked at the rounded buttocks of those made to kneel; she loved their polished chests, the muscularity of their limbs, and above all, perhas, the nobility of suffering in their handsome faces.”
Source: The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty
“This isn't a journey of you becoming the perfect version of yourself; that's what cults are built on.
This is the journey about receiving the gift of yourself - the beautiful, vulnerable you... that you're the kind of person who is relatable, touchable, and in solidarity with others on the journey of life.”
Source: Say Yes: Discover the Surprising Life Beyond the Death of a Dream
“People love beautiful things, but it isn’t enough to simply love them from afar. They want to possess them, own them. Even if—in the case of living things—the cost of ownership is that it can no longer be alive.”
Source: Raise the Blood
“Simplicity is my fashion,
Moderation is my trend.”
Source: Vande Vasudhaivam: 100 Sonnets for Our Planetary Pueblo
“She'd kicked Klein's ass and still had enough moxie to tag him, and enough physical strength to get herself out of a window ten feet up on the wall.
He really should marry her.”
Source: Crazy Wild
“Einstein himself said that "God doesn't play dice with the universe." What is the source of this pattern? Why is the world so beautiful? It could so easily be otherwise: flowers could be ugly to us and still fulfil their own purpose. But they're not.”
Source: Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants
“She saw the confusion and misery of the young Princes, their faces caught between struggle and surrender.”
Source: The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty