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Quote by Arwa Mahdawi

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Arwa Mahdawi

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“Can you really see different things in a painting from day to day?" This seemed to genuinely interest the duke. She wasn't certain which part of it fascinated him most, the fact that a painting could change or that she thought it could. "Well, it isn't like a crystal ball. Whereby you see shifting images and the like. But haven't you ever looked at a painting for a length of time, or on more than one occasion, and experienced it differently each time?" Where to begin explaining art to someone who seemed to know nothing about it? Now, if she were dancing with Harry... "Of course. As a young man touring the Continent, I once looked at 'length' at a painting called 'Venus and Mars' by an Italian painter called Veronese. Do you know it? Venus is nude as the day she was born, and Mars is entirely clothed and down on his knees in front of her, and it looks as though Mars is about to give her a pleasuring. And there are cherubs hanging about. I looked at it for quite some time." A... pleasuring. 'God above.' He had her attention now. She was speechless. Everything was astonishing about what he'd just said. She stared up at him, her mind exploding with vivid images, her cheeks going increasingly hotter. She knew the painting. She knew 'precisely' where Mars was kneeling in front of Venus. The duke had said it purposely. Suddenly she was acutely aware of her five senses, as though they were blinking on, one by one, like fireflies in the dark. Most particularly vivid was touch. She was potently aware of his hands: the one resting with firm assurance against her waist, warm there now through the fine silk of her gown, the other enfolding hers. She was acutely aware of his size, and everything that was masculine to her feminine. Goodness. He could certainly look at her for a long time without blinking.”

ArtworkGenevieve And AlexanderPleasuringVenus And Mars
Book:What I Did for a Duke
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“The gentlemen pronounced him to be a fine figure of a man, the ladies declared he was much admiration for about half the evening, till his manners gave a disgust which turned the tide of his popularity; for he was discovered to be proud; to be above his company, and above being pleased; and not all his large estate in Derbyshire could then save him from having a most forbidding, disagreeable countenance, and being unworthy to be compared with his friend.”

Jane AustenPride Prejudice
Book:Pride and Prejudice
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“Everyone thinks of romantic comedies as being these sappy, unrealistic stories where love conquers all and everyone ends up happy at the end. But that's not what her movies were at all. Like, in Sleepless in Seattle, you can't really get any sadder that Tom Hanks missing his dead wife. And in You've Got Mail, Meg Ryan misses her mom and loses her store. None of that gets resolved by the end. It's not like Tom's wife comes back to life, and Meg Ryan still loses the business her mom built.”

Tom HanksRomantic Comedies
Book:Waiting for Tom Hanks
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“It doesn’t matter how someone in a romantic comedy affords their absurdly nice house, or whether or not their profession makes sense, or if technically they’re sort of stalking someone they heard on a call-in radio show. What matters is that they have hope. Sure, they find love, but it’s not even about love. It’s the hope that you deserve happiness, and that you won’t be sad forever, and that things will get better. It’s hope that life doesn’t always have to be a miserable slog, that you can find someone to love who understands you and accepts you just as you are.”

LoveFilmRomanceHopeRelationshipsRomantic ComediesKerry WinfreySleepless In SeattleWaiting For Tom Hanks
Book:Waiting for Tom Hanks
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