Earlene Sperlich

“He grimaced and went after her. “I’m not a trainer. Just spent a lot of time working out.” 

“Misspent youth, clearly.” She held the door open, standing just outside. 

“My application to princess school was rejected.” Callan exited the building and fell into step alongside her. “Working out was how I coped.”

Sunlight peeked out from behind striped clouds and lit the early-morning sky. Autumn weather chilled the perspiration on his skin. 

“Such a shame.” Meridian glanced up at him out of the corner of her eye. 

“What is?” 

“That you didn’t go to princess school. Could have learned some manners.” Her blue-green eyes sparked in the sunlight. And her mouth . . . Her lips set in some smart-looking, lopsided grin, with a small dimple. 

I should definitely kiss that look off her face.

“Overrated. Inefficient. And I look terrible in a tiara.”
― J. Rose Black, Losing My Breath

“Reason excludes faith," Alessandro responded, watching the blood-red mite as it made a dash for the rim. "It's deliberately limited. It won't function with the materials of religion. You can come close to proving the existence of God by reason, but you can't do it absolutely. That's because you can't do anything absolutely by reason. That's because reason depends on postulates. Postulates defy proof and yet they are essential to reason. God is a postulate. I don't think God is interested in the verification of His existence, and, therefore, neither am I. Anyway, I have professional reasons to believe. Nature and art pivot faithfully around God. Even dogs know that.”
― Mark Helprin

“Somebody always had to pay, and he was glad it was not going to be him. Meanwhile he had managed to ruin the perfect marriage by turning Dick into a crayfish and making Rachael think that he had run off with another woman.”
― Max Nowaz, Get Rich or Get Lucky

“At one point, trying to explain her unhappiness, Sanna was to say to Miss Love, "I read some psychology books in college. Everything that's supposed to warp a child happened to me." Miss Love, who had been raped as an adolescent, replies, "Everything that could warp a child happened to me, too. But understanding that doesn't help. It's interesting but it doesn't help. I figure that what you do with your life now is all that counts. I try not to look back.”
― Olive Anne Burns , Leaving Cold Sassy: The Unfinished Sequel to Cold Sassy Tree