Erik Stimmel

“Haven’t I always said that no amount of beating, ridicule, or degradation could change your beauty, inside or out?”
― Maria Nhambu, America's Daughter

“They could lie drowsing now under the sound of kindly voices in the living room, a sound whose intricately rhythmic rise and fall would slowly turn into the shape of their dreams. And if they came awake later to turn over and reach with their toes for new cool places in the sheets, they knew the sound would still be there—one voice very deep and the other soft and pretty, talking and talking, as substantial and soothing as a blue range of mountains seen from far away.”
― Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road

“By the end of the four-year term, Americans hold a bifurcated view of Mrs. Trump. Many Republicans, especially women, revere her as elegant, graceful, beautiful and wronged by the press. A pastor in Missouri held up Melania as a wifely model to which other women should aspire — or risk losing their men. At the same time some southern preachers referred to then-Senator and presidential candidate Kamala Harris as Jezebel, the Bible’s most nefarious woman and archetype of female cunning. There could be no surer sign that the life stories of prominent women affect the lives of private women than when pastors hold them up as positive or negative role models.”
― Anne Michaud, Why They Stay: Sex Scandals, Deals, and Hidden Agendas of Eight Political Wives

“I hear workplace hookups are really in right now.”
I laughed. “Something tells me they’ve been in for a long time.”
He took the exit for the Arts District. “This chick sounds like she’s got you sprung.”
I took a deep breath. “Lust will do that.”
“Can’t have love without lust, man.”
― J.J. Sorel, A Taste of Peace