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A Quotes

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All A Quotes

“After all we shared? You throw a dagger at my face?' 'All we shared? It was a handful of minutes and a few kisses,' I said, and the truth of that struck me with startling clarity. That was all we'd shared. Gods, I was so... sheltered. Because in my limited experience, it had become... so much more to me. The wake-up call that it was only a few kisses was utterly brutal. 'It was more than a few kisses.' His voice dropped low. 'If you've forgotten, I'm more than willing to remind you.' Tiny coils of tension formed in my stomach. Part of me wanted to be reminded of what I surely had not forgotten. Thank the gods, the smarter, logical part of me won out. 'There was nothing worth remembering.' 'Now you insult me after throwing a dagger at my face? You've wounded my tender feelings.' 'Tender feelings?' I snorted. 'Don't be overdramatic.' 'Hard not to be when you threw a dagger at my head and then cut my neck,' he shot back, his grip on me surprisingly gentle compared to the hardness of his tone. 'I knew you'd move out of the way.' 'Did you? Is that why you tried to slice open my throat?' His golden eyes burned from beneath heavy, thick lashes. 'I nicked your skin,' I corrected. 'Because you had a hold of me and wouldn't let go. Obviously, you haven't learnt anything from it.' 'I've actually learned a lot, Princess. That's why your hands and your dagger aren't getting anywhere near my neck.' His thumb slid over the inside of my wrist as a reminder, and my fingers spasmed around the handle of my weapon. 'But if you let go of the dagger, there's a whole lot of me I'll let your hands get close to.”

“After all, we were young. We were fourteen and fifteen, scornful of childhood, remote from the world of stern and ludicrous adults. We were bored, we were restless, we longed to be seized by any whim or passion and follow it to the farthest reaches of our natures. We wanted to live – to die – to burst into flame – to be transformed into angels or explosions. Only the mundane offended us, as if we secretly feared it was our destiny . By late afternoon our muscles ached, our eyelids grew heavy with obscure desires. And so we dreamed and did nothing, for what was there to do, played ping-pong and went to the beach, loafed in backyards, slept late into the morning – and always we craved adventures so extreme we could never imagine them. In the long dusks of summer we walked the suburban streets through scents of maple and cut grass, waiting for something to happen.”

“After all, what is a dollar but paper? A bullet can save your life. Bullets make weapons more significant, and that makes you more significant. A man's life - what is that worth? Another man exists only to the degree that he stands in your way. Life doesn't mean much, but it's better to take it from the enemy before he has time to deliver a blow.”

“After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other word? A word contains its opposite in itself. Take ‘good’, for instance. If you have a word like ‘good’, what need is there for a word like ‘bad’? ‘Ungood’ will do just as well—better, because it’s an exact opposite, which the other is not. Or again, if you want a stronger version of ‘good’, what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like ‘excellent’ and ‘splendid’ and all the rest of them? ‘Plusgood’ covers the meaning, or ‘doubleplusgood’ if you want something stronger still" (51).”

“After all, what was the point of showing trepidation? It would merely be another proof that, although Eleanor had traveled across war-torn Europe as the duchess's companion, she hadn't acquired the verve and confidence that characterized Madeline's every move. This wasn't from lack of trials; the two women had faced trials aplenty. It was because- Eleanor sighed as she allowed the butler to take her cloak- Eleanor was born timid. She never remembered a time when her father's shouting hadn't paralyzed her with fright, or when her stepmother's narrow-eyed glare hadn't had the power to turn her into a bowl of quivering blancmange. Which is why Eleanor cultivated a serene facade- she might be a coward, but she saw no reason to announce the fact.”

“After all, when ‘the Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become’ He resolved to ‘wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created – and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground – for I regret that I have made them’ (Genesis 6:7). The Bible thinks it is perfectly all right to destroy all animals as punishment for the crimes of Homo sapiens, as if the existence of giraffes, pelicans and ladybirds has lost all purpose if humans misbehave. The Bible could not imagine a scenario in which God repents having created Homo sapiens, wipes this sinful ape off the face of the earth, and then spends eternity enjoying the antics of ostriches, kangaroos and panda bears.”

“After all, when you look at the faces of a class of graduating seniors, you realize that each student has only one thing that no one else has. When you leave college, there are thousands of people out there with the same degree you have; when you get a job, there will be thousands of people doing what you want to do for a living. But you are the only person alive who has sole custody of your life. Your particular life. Your entire life. Not just your life at a desk, or your life on the bus, or in the car, or at the computer. Not just the life of your mind, but the life of your heart. Not just your bank account, but your soul.”

“After all, who is ever threatened by a Librarian? (Except for that one librarian who hunted a seven-year old Danny across state and provincial borders, endlessly, tirelessly over the span of three years to try murder him for accidentally moving away, with the library’s copy of “The Berenstain Bears and the Bad Dream” book. But that’s a story for another time. Where were we?)”

“After all why should our goal be the reinstatement of an illusory 'exact' relationship between events and words? If you probe in the ashes you will never learn anything about the fire: by the time the ashes can be handled the meaning has passed on. Every adventure is a cup so empty it can be drunk from again and again and again. Every adventure is so perfect it verges on silence.”

“After all, [female genital mutilation is] a key pillar of institutional misogyny in Islam: its entire purpose is to deny women sexual pleasure. True, a lot of us hapless western men find we deny women sexual pleasure without even trying, but we don't demand genital mutilation to guarantee it. On such slender distinctions does civilization rest.”

“After all, acknowledging unfairness then calls decent people forth to correct those injustices. And since most persons are at their core, decent folks, the need to ignore evidence of injustice is powerful: To do otherwise would force whites to either push for change (which they would perceive as against their interests) or live consciously as hypocrites who speak of freedom and opportunity but perpetuate a system of inequality.”