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“with this?” Anna ignored him. “Vietnam is very important to you. The bond between you and John was unbreakable, forged in war in a land you came to love.” “That’s all true,” Mack said, his voice flat. Austin swallowed hard. As usual, Anna was going”
― D.D. Black, The Shadows of Pike Place

“known) were accustomed to looking down on Europeans as barbarian adherents to a superseded religion and a primitive civilization. Now, suddenly, they were trouncing the shah’s armies, carving up their lands, making and unmaking governments, monopolizing their markets, and treating their land as battleground, playground, and campground with no regard for the needs or desires of the Iranians themselves. It was humiliating; it was frustrating, and it was frightening for Iranians to be so vulnerable and so constantly manipulated by these foreign powers. And it reinforced a powerful sense of xenophobia coupled with an inferiority complex among Iranians to complement their superiority complex. Elaine Sciolino has covered Iran since the revolution and is one of the most knowledgeable journalists writing on Iran, yet even she admits in her book Persian Mirrors”
― Kenneth M. Pollack, The Persian Puzzle

“the twins were double-teaming me. But it’s at least partly true. “You’re incorrigible,” she says in a way that tells me she thinks I’m cute. I’m a lot of things, baby. Cute isn’t one of them. “I see something I want, and I go after it. I’m used to getting what I want.” You’ll never hear a truer statement about me than that. But let’s put things on hold for a minute here, okay? So I can give you the full picture. See, my mother, Anne, always wanted a big family—five, maybe six kids. But Alexandra is five years older than I am. Five years may not seem like a lot to you, but to my mother it was a lifetime. The way the story goes, after Alexandra, my mother couldn’t get pregnant again—and”
― Emma Chase, Tangled

“darkness, with only a thin slice of daylight breaking through the room’s thick curtains. To my surprise, Iain wasn’t already up and about. He slept heavily next to me in the bed, no longer buried inside of me. I watched him sleep, taking the time”
― Theodora Taylor, Her Scottish Wolf