Yolanda Mandy > Yolanda's Quotes

“Secrets,’ she replied, casting my trousers aside, ‘are difficult things. Not precise. Not always the same for the one who tells as for the one who receives. They make demands. They may cause you to ask yourself, “Am I worthy?”’ At which, as if to illustrate the point, she removed her bra and watched me follow the lines of her magnificent form with my eyes.”
― Michael Tobert, Karna's Wheel

“When we see our world is about to unwind,God sees an image of His perfect design.”
― Carolyn Cutler Hughes, Through God's Eye

“A look of absolute terror locked onto her features.”
― Gabriel F.W. Koch, Death Leaves a Shadow

“No matter how many times you failed or have fallen, no matter how many times you’ve denied God, He will not deny you.”
― Gregory Dickow, Soul Cure: How to Heal Your Pain and Discover Your Purpose

“As I sat dumbfounded, seemingly paralyzed in my corner, resorting to my old, reliable strategy of scribbling when unsure of how to respond to Sanjit, Sanjit appended his counsel with a dose of silence – one reminiscent to that of a few days prior. The students looked upward and downward, fans to notes to pens to toes, outward and inward, peers to souls, and of course, toward the direction of the perceived elephant in the room, Sanjit’s books. Simultaneously, Sanjit confidently and patiently searched among the students before finding my eyes; once connected, the lesson moved forward.”
― Colin Phelan, The Local School

“I can’t go into detail, but it’s why I went to the special meeting at the Pentagon.”
― Karl Braungart, Counter Identity

“Fine architecture is man’s tribute to the land it has been built on. So are the untouched, pristine lands he preserves for posterity.”
― Tom Baldwin, Macom Farm

“If he shows aptitude toward the A’ris element, meaning toward the healing arts, then he should contact the Healer’s Collage. Not that they would know much about magic. Anyone can become a healer these days.”
― S.G. Blaise, The Last Lumenian

“Each day a whole world passes away, largely unappreciated, numbly relegated to obligation, commerce and routine. One day seems as unremarkable as the next. It's only through the inexorable accretion of days, weeks, months and years, that we come to appreciate with heartbreaking clarity how incredibly unique and precious each lost day has been.”
― S.W. Clemens

“Power concedes nothing without demand. It never has and never will. Show me the exact amount of wrong and injustices that are visited upon a person and I will show you the exact amount of words endured by these people.”
― Frederick Douglass

“on the idea of meeting Carlos”
― Jana Petken, The Guardian of Secrets

“Sometimes, when you’re sad you don’t know what to do, it helps to be angry. But then the tears come back again all the same, and you fall asleep with the salty taste of them on your lips.”
― Cornelia Funke, Inkheart

“The easiest thing in the world is to convince yourself that you’re right. As one grows old it is easier still.”
― Robert Ludlum, The Bourne Identity

“All other swindlers upon earth are nothing to the self-swindlers, and with such pretences did I cheat myself.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

“Lovers who kill each other will blame it on the wind.”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

“Often I felt like two people. One went into the world and did the living for the other, who was stuck in an endless moment of knowing. Yesterday was today and hereon in.”
― Michael Wyndham Thomas, The Erkeley Shadows

“Every night I dream a lot. Every day I live a little.”
― Max Nowaz, Get Rich or Get Lucky

“Yes. Have…have you ever been shot?”
“Yep, more than once. But I was never shot by the same guy twice. If you know what I mean.”
― Michael Deeze, The Deathbed Confessions

“She lowers the volume of this Safe and Top-Trending song titled... "Love Ain’t No Thang But a Chicken Wang.” ”
― Adam Scott Huerta, Motive Black

“Looking into her eyes, I see the emptiness of my mind reflected in the vibration of my heart—love without the presence of 'Me.”
― Raz Mihal, Just Love Her

“I don’t like anything pointing at me, dollface, that includes an umbrella, a finger, or a gun, got it?”
― A.G. Russo, The Cases Nobody Wanted

“Snake Street is an area I should avoid. Yet that night I was drawn there as surely as if I had an appointment. 
The Snake House is shabby on the outside to hide the wealth within. Everyone knows of the wealth, but facades, like the park’s wall, must be maintained. A lantern hung from the porch eaves. A sign, written in Utte, read ‘Kinship of the Serpent’. I stared at that sign, at that porch, at the door with its twisted handle, and wondered what the people inside would do if I entered. Would they remember me? Greet me as Kin? Or drive me out and curse me for faking my death?  Worse, would they expect me to redon the life I’ve shed? Staring at that sign, I pissed in the street like the Mearan savage I’ve become.
As I started to leave, I saw a woman sitting in the gutter. Her lamp attracted me. A memsa’s lamp, three tiny flames to signify the Holy Trinity of Faith, Purity, and Knowledge.  The woman wasn’t a memsa. Her young face was bruised and a gash on her throat had bloodied her clothing. Had she not been calmly assessing me, I would have believed the wound to be mortal. I offered her a copper. 
She refused, “I take naught for naught,” and began to remove trinkets from a cloth bag, displaying them for sale.
Her Utte accent had been enough to earn my coin. But to assuage her pride I commented on each of her worthless treasures, fighting the urge to speak Utte. (I spoke Universal with the accent of an upper class Mearan though I wondered if she had seen me wetting the cobblestones like a shameless commoner.) After she had arranged her wares, she looked up at me. “What do you desire, O Noble Born?”
I laughed, certain now that she had seen my act in front of the Snake House and, letting my accent match the coarseness of my dress, I again offered the copper.
 “Nay, Noble One. You must choose.” She lifted a strand of red beads. “These to adorn your lady’s bosom?”
            I shook my head. I wanted her lamp. But to steal the light from this woman ... I couldn’t ask for it. She reached into her bag once more and withdrew a book, leather-bound, the pages gilded on the edges. “Be this worthy of desire, Noble Born?”
 I stood stunned a moment, then touched the crescent stamped into the leather and asked if she’d stolen the book. She denied it. I’ve had the Training; she spoke truth. Yet how could she have come by a book bearing the Royal Seal of the Haesyl Line? I opened it. The pages were blank.
“Take it,” she urged. “Record your deeds for study. Lo, the steps of your life mark the journey of your soul.”
  I told her I couldn’t afford the book, but she smiled as if poverty were a blessing and said, “The price be one copper. Tis a wee price for salvation, Noble One.”
  So I bought this journal. I hide it under my mattress. When I lie awake at night, I feel the journal beneath my back and think of the woman who sold it to me. Damn her. She plagues my soul. I promised to return the next night, but I didn’t. I promised to record my deeds. But I can’t. The price is too high.”
― K. Ritz, Sheever's Journal, Diary of a Poison Master

“The bar staff and croupiers all wore black with the same green triangle logo emblazoned on their shirts, and contact lenses which made their eyes shine an eerie, vibrant green. The bar optics glowed with the same green light, the intensity of which was linked to the music. As the bartender walked away to fetch the drinks, a breakdown in the techno track commenced and the bottles began to palpitate. The bartender's eyes glowed with a hallucinatory felinity that made Mangle feel nervous.”
― R.D. Ronald, The Zombie Room

“The way you see your life shapes your life.”
― Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here for?

“The tragedy is not that we are alone, but that we cannot be. At times I would give anything in the world to no longer be connected by anything to this universe of men.”
― Albert Camus

“For the next half hour it continued. Dr. Joseph would call on someone who looked half bright, then he would call on someone whom he felt was just the opposite. In the upper grades—fourth, fifth, and sixth—he asked grammatical, mathematical, and geographical questions. And besides looking at hands, now he began inspecting teeth. Open wide, say “Ahhh”—and he would have the poor children spreading out their lips as far as they could while he peered into their mouths. At the university I had read about slave masters who had done the same when buying new slaves, and I had read of cattlemen doing it when purchasing horses and cattle. At least Dr. Joseph had graduated to the level where he let the children spread out their own lips, rather than using some kind of crude metal instrument. I appreciated his humanitarianism.”
― Ernest J. Gaines, A Lesson Before Dying

“How could he explain? If he told her that after the vision, all the knights had gone in quest of the Grail, would she understand?”
― Katherine Paterson, Park's Quest

“We ignore the blackness of outer space and pay attention to the stars, especially if they seem to order themselves into constellations. “Common as the air” meant something worthless, but Hackworth knew that every breath of air that Fiona drew, lying in her little bed at night, just a silver flow in the moonlight, was used by her body to make skin and hair and bones. The air became Fiona, and deserving—no, demanding—of love. Ordering matter was the sole endeavor of Life, whether it was a jumble of self-replicating molecules in the primordial ocean, or a steam-powered English mill turning weeds into clothing, or Fiona lying in her bed turning air into Fiona.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer