Emily

“You can figure out what the villain fears by his choice of weapons.”
― Connie Brockway, The Bridal Season

“Something about first love defies duplication. Before it, your heart is blank. Unwritten. After, the walls are left inscribed and graffitied. When it ends, no amount of scrubbing will purge the scrawled oaths and sketched images, but sooner or later, you find that there’s space for someone else, between the words and in the margins.”
― Tammara Webber, Where You Are

“Where will you go? What will you do?" he demanded.

"That need be no concern of yours--"

"The hell it isn't!" he shouted. "Everything about you is my concern."

She opened her mouth to deny this but the look of him stopped her. For a long tense moment he studied her and when he spoke his voice was low and furious and yearning.

"I don't give a bloody damn if I never share your bed, your name, or your house -- you are still my concern. You can leave, take yourself from my ken, disappear for the rest of my life but you cannot untangle yourself from my -- my concern. That I have of you, Miss Bede, for that, at least, I do not need your permission."

His words shocked her. She looked decades hence and she saw a specter of what might have been haunting her every moment, her every act, for the rest of her life.

"Your concern is misplaced."

"It's mine to misplace," he said steadily.”
― Connie Brockway, My Dearest Enemy

“I have named you queen.
There are taller than you, taller.
There are purer than you, purer.
There are lovelier than you, lovelier.
But you are the queen.”
― Pablo Neruda