Valerie

“It's not what said at times like these. We don't give prizes for rhetoric to the best goodbye. To thank each other for a wonderful time, to separate with a smile, or tears; to part with a final kiss or a final word— no one knows what to do. Even I look away and give couples their privacy.
When I look back, I see a girl on a doorstep, watching a uniformed soldier's back as he hurries away, lest he give in to the unendurable temptation to turn around. I see a friend on the stairs, waiting to catch a brokenhearted girl in her arms after the girl has waited outside, long past reason, in the slim chance that he might.”
― Julie Berry, Lovely War

“The snow fell fast and thick. He looked up for a moment in the air, and thought that those white ashes strewn upon his hopes and misery, were suited to them well. He looked round on the whitening ground, and thought how Marion's foot-prints would be hushed and covered up, as soon as made, and even that remembrance of her blotted out. But he never felt the weather, and he never stirred.”
― Charles Dickens, The Battle of Life

“And the answer was always lost in a tangle of becauses and wells and endless reasons that he clung to like a drowning man at straws.”
― Richard Matheson, Mad House

“I stand.

"The Council wants Locke to arrange some amusement to please Grimsen. If it's nice, perhaps the smith will make you a cup that never runs out of wine."

Carden gives me a look up through his lashes that I find hard to interpret and rises too. He takes my hand.

"Nothing is sweeter," he says, kissing the back of it, "but that which is scarce."

My skin flushes, hot and uncomfortable.”
― Holly Black, The Wicked King