Koreena

“Tell me something true about you.”
“Okay …” She mentally rifled through birthplace (Portland, Oregon), college major (sociology), astrological sign (Virgo), favorite movie (The Apple Dumpling Gang—don’t judge), until she hit a fact that wasn’t completely mundane. “One of my favorite things in the world are those charity events where everyone buys a rubber ducky with a number and the first person’s duck to get down the river wins.”
“Why?”
“I like seeing the river teeming with all those outrageously yellow and orange ducks. It’s so friendly. And I love the hope of it. Even though it doesn’t matter if you win, because all that wonderful, candy-colored money is going to something really important like a free clinic downtown or cleft palate operations for children in India, you still have that playful hope that you will win. You run alongside the stream, not knowing which is your duck but imagining the lead one is yours.”
“And this is the essence of your soul—the ducky race?”
“Well, you didn’t ask for the essence of my soul. You asked for something true about me, and so I went for something slightly embarrassing and secret but true nonetheless. Next time you want the essence of my soul, I’ll oblige you with sunsets and baby’s laughter and greeting cards with watercolor flowers.”
He squinted at her thoughtfully. “No, so far as I’m concerned, the yellow duckies are the essence of your soul.”
― Shannon Hale, Midnight in Austenland

“I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone forever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own, than when you broke it eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant.”
― Jane Austen, Persuasion

“Sometimes ..." Miss Charming's voice dropped lower, and she looked Charlotte in the eye. "Sometimes my boobs kill."
Charlotte's eyes wideened, her mouth agape. It wasn't until Miss Charming followed her shocking statement by rubbing her chest in discomfort that Charlotte realized " my boobs kill" meant "my boobs ache" rather than " my boobs fatally maim people." It was a natural mistake to make. After all they really were large enough to suffocate a grown man.”
― Shannon Hale, Midnight in Austenland

“Is this the part where you say if I hurt her, you'll kill me?"
"No" Simon said, "If you hurt Clary she's quite capable of killing you herself. Possibly with a variety of weapons.”
― Cassandra Clare, City of Glass