Todd Petrunger

“Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt.”
― Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit

“Mr. Jamison pulled off his hat and ran his fingers through his hair, damp against his forehead.
...
“folks thinking that lightning struck that fence of yours and started the fire….”
...
Papa had found a way, as Mama had asked, to make Mr. Granger stop the hanging: He had started the fire.
And it came to me that this was one of those known and unknown things, something never to be spoken, not even to each other.”
― Mildred D. Taylor, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry

“The verdict got both the fish and me off the hook.”
― Gabriel F.W. Koch, Death Leaves a Shadow

“Words bend our thinking to infinite paths of self-delusion, and the fact that we spend most of our mental lives in brain mansions built of words means that we lack the objectivity necessary to see the terrible distortion of reality which language brings. Example: the Chinese pictogram for ‘integrity’ is a two-part symbol of a man literally standing next to his word. So far, so good. But what does the Late English word ‘honesty’ mean? Or ‘Motherland’? Or ‘progress’? Or ‘democracy’? Or ‘beauty’? But even in our self-deception, we become gods.”
― Dan Simmons, Hyperion