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S Quotes

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All S Quotes

“She managed to smile without smiling, her serious face a-shine with pleasure- real pleasure, which was something he recognized only because he'd never seen it before, not on any of the hundreds of faces which had smirked vainly or proudly or coyly at him as he played out his hero farce. It was Sheridan who looked away, feeling unexpectedly awkward. She was outlandish and yet curiously lovely in her sparrowish, humble way. It made him uncomfortable. He was partial to beautiful women; he liked prettiness as well as the next man. But this was something different. Something that touched him in obscure and half-forgotten places. In his soul, he might have said, if he'd thought he still had one to stir. Which he didn't, as he proved to himself by lowering his eyelids and enjoying the deliberate and easy kindling of more familiar sensations. Her dress, cut in a modish horizontal line across her bosom, revealed quite enough to assure him that nothing artificial amplified the swell of her breasts. The straight neckline made an inviting path, starting low on her shoulders and crossing the opulent expanse of skin at a point that on most females would have been perfectly modest, but which on Miss St Leger clearly showed the shadowy prelude to a luxurious cleavage.”

“She managed to summon her powers twice more by gazing at her mandala, and was tickled with the results: she turned her bright red coral bracelet glittering black, and a dish of pale yellow dye a bluish black. Of course she had no idea if the color was set by the phase of the moon or if it was simply the way she thought about the moon, set in a blue-black sky. But imagine if she could summon any color! She would never have to worry about getting the right paints again.”

“She maneuvered a cart through the produce section, which featured boxes of fruits as gifts, amping up the volume and variety this time of year. She packed several Asian pears in a plastic tear-off bag, then moved on to the most perfect Fuyu persimmons, smooth, orange, and firm. She had always been embarrassed when her mother had given people such odd practical "Korean gifts" - the boxes of apples or even laundry detergent - when in reality, outside of America, these objects might have some rich symbolic relevance that perhaps Margot didn't understand. If she thought of the labor and resources that went into each piece of fruit - the water, the light, the earth, the training and harvesting of each plant - a box of apples could be special, a sacred thing. Perhaps in this land of plenty, of myth and wide-open spaces, trucks and factories, mass production, we lost track of that: the miracle of an object as simple as a pear, nutritious and sweet, created by something as beautiful as a tree.”

“She married him anyway, because she was thirty-five years old and getting married is what she was supposed to do.She married him anyway, because there were so many people she would have disspaointed if she had called it off.There was only one of her, so she dissapointed herself instead.She said "I do" while her insides said "I don't", and then she spent and then she spent the next decade trying not to know what she knew: that she had betrayed herself and that her life would not really begin until she stopped betraying herself.”

“She may resent Playboy because she resents feeling ugly in sex--or, if "beautiful," her body defined and diminished by pornography. It inhibits in her something she needs to live, and gives her the ultimate anaphrodisiac: the self-critical sexual gaze. Alice Walker's essay "Coming Apart" investigates the damage done: Comparing herself to her lover's pornography, her heroine "foolishly" decides that she is not beautiful.”

“She means he's looking for something the New York Times has described as 'revelatory," Sabrina says. "Actually... " Parth walks up with a paper bag already in hand. “I picked this because the Wall Street Journal gave it such a cranky review I needed to read it myself. It's by this married couple who usually publish separately. One of them writes literary doorstop novels and the other writes romance.”

“She meant that they'd never used words like "separation" and "divorce" even in their worst screaming matches. They yelled things like, "You're infuriating!" "You don't think!" "You are the most annoying woman in the history of annoying women!" "I hate you!" "I hate you more!" and they always, always used the word "always," even though Clementine's mother had said you should never use that word in an argument with your spouse, as in, for example, "You always forget to refill the water jug!" (But Sam did always forget. It was accurate.)”

“She melted the butter in the pan. She warmed the egg yolks by immersing them in a bowl of hot water and mixing them with vinegar, then pouring in the shining golden butter little by little. She moved the whisk ceaselessly, making the contents of the bowl whirl round and round. Having observed Chizu's troubles up close, and learned how to avoid them, she succeeded in producing the fine egg-colored foam relatively quickly. Her whole hand, from the wrist down, was dancing on a waltz. The tigers in the book, whose desires had kept them spinning round and round until they transformed into butter, had ended up in the stomachs of Little Babaji's family. Even after their deaths, Kajii's victims continued to be exposed to and consumed by the curious gaze of the general public. Rika had stopped believing that any blame lay with the victims themselves. Being sucked into the vortex of Kajii's ominous power, like she herself had been, was something that could happen to anybody. Thinking this, she went on single-mindedly whisking the butter. Through her adventures with the quatre-quarts on Valentine's Day, she'd learned that waiting on the far side of all of this seemingly endless whisking was not stasis or evaporation, but emulsification. If she couldn't tear her eyes away from Kajii, if she couldn't stop herself from spinning round and round, then maybe all that was left to do was to grip on to Kajii with all her might, so as to ensure she wasn't shaken off. 'Done!' Rika said to herself and lifted up the whisk. The sauce of warm, bright yellow that came dripping off the whisk was smooth as cashmere.”

“She mentally ran through the new dishes for that evening, including the new jambalaya, which would be daringly made with pasta instead of the traditional rice. It was a risk to make such a drastic change to one of New Orleans's most beloved dishes, but if she managed to pull this off, T&J's would be the talk of the town! She wouldn't be surprised if people came in from as far as Biloxi, or even Jackson, Mississippi, to try her new recipe.”

“She merely wiped the floor with paper towels and said nothing, brushing her free hand against my shoulder blade—my shoulder blade!—as she carried the soaked paper to the trash can, never holding me fast, refraining not out of lack of humanity but out of fear of being drawn into a request for further tenderness, a request that could only bring her face-to-face with some central revulsion, a revulsion of her husband or herself or both, a revulsion that had come from nowhere, or from her, or perhaps from something I’d done or failed to do, who knew, she didn’t want to know, it was too great a disappointment, far better to get on with the chores, with the baby, with the work, far better to leave me to my own devices, as they say, to leave me to resign myself to certain motifs, to leave me to disappear guiltily into a hole of my own digging. When the time came to stop her from leaving, I did not know what to think or wish for, her husband who was now an abandoner, a hole-dweller, a leaver who had left her to fend for herself, as she said, who’d failed to provide her with the support and intimacy she needed, she complained, who was lacking some fundamental wherewithal, who no longer wanted her, who beneath his scrupulous marital motions was angry, whose sentiments had decayed into a mere sense of responsibility, a husband who, when she shouted, “I don’t need to be provided for! I’m a lawyer! I make two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year! I need to be loved!” had silently picked up the baby and smelled the baby’s sweet hair, and had taken the baby for a crawl in the hotel corridor, and afterward washed the baby’s filthy hands and soft filthy knees, and thought about what his wife had said, and saw the truth in her words and an opening, and decided to make another attempt at kindness, and at nine o’clock, with the baby finally drowsy in his cot, came with a full heart back to his wife to find her asleep, as usual, and beyond waking. In short, I fought off the impulse to tell Rachel to go fuck herself.”

“She met her father in the living room. “I'm begging you not to kill him.” Her father scowled at her. “This man is our sworn enemy. He has-” “I know who he is and I know what he's done. I also know he is Gianni's father, and in our hearts, he is Will's father. Will loves him.” “And you,” Jack snorted. She glared at her uncle. “This is not about me.” He was silent, but his disbelief was there in his eyes. Bree turned back to her father. “He did what he did on the order of his father. Even though I despise Bernardo, we all know that family is everything. It doesn't make it forgivable, but it does make it understandable. I'm begging you for Will's sake. Don't make him lose another father.” “She could be pregnant with his child,” Beth said softly, coming out of the kitchen. Bree gave a start. They hadn't been trying to conceive but it wasn't outside of the realm of possibility. She grabbed on to the lie. “I am.” Her father's mouth fell open and her uncle swore. She met her sister's gaze in gratitude. “That's right. I found out in Ireland that, yes, I'm pregnant again.” Beth gave her a tiny nod, acknowledging the lie. “Son of a…” Her father clenched his fists. “Don't leave this baby without a father, Daddy. Please.” John looked from her to her sister. “Untie the son of bitch and toss him on the street.”

“She met the magus's stunned look with a smile. "The Thieves of Eddis have always been uncomfortable allies to the throne, Magus. There is the niggling fear that if you fall out with a Thief, he might see it as his right and responsibility to remove you. There are some checks, of course. There is only ever one Thief. They are prohibited from owning any property. Their training inevitably generates the isolation that makes them independent, but also keeps them from forming alliances that might become threats to the throne. It is not the folly you might think.”