Margie

“She was beautiful. Not despite her so-called flaws but because of them—those scrapes and life experiences that made her body like no other woman’s. The beauty that wasn’t ephemeral or society-dictated but the real beauty that cut across generations, across all cultures, from the beginning of humankind. The beauty that was painted in Paleolithic caves and carved in ancient Venus statuettes, those wonderful figurines of all shapes and sizes, individualized and gorgeous precisely because of that individuality. What cavemen had known, modern men had forgotten, and sadly, modern women too.”
― Ray Smith, The Magnolia That Bloomed Unseen

“I’m in love, aren’t I? She thought she knew the answer by how much she wanted to be there. Wouldn’t have traded being there for any other location in the world. Wouldn’t have traded it for all the exotic destinations flaunted in Pan Am travel brochures. Not Tahiti, not Monte Carlo, not Hong Kong. No, she wanted to be here, in this ramshackle market not a ten-minute drive from her humdrum house and life. Except it wasn’t a humdrum life anymore, was it? No, I’m at the most exciting place on Earth. The center of the world. The Roman Forum during the reign of Augustus Caesar.”
― Ray Smith, The Magnolia That Bloomed Unseen

“He tried to live a good life and devote that life to helping others, but he never thought the world would reward him for his efforts. Such a thought would be the ultimate in self-deluding self-aggrandizement, for why would the world care one iota about him? Now, however, he wondered if he had been wrong. Now, he thought that maybe, just maybe, if you lived a good life, the universe—this cold, cold world—might just reward you. And he did feel rewarded—rewarded beyond all the gold in the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan.”
― Ray Smith, The Magnolia That Bloomed Unseen

“John knew the best love stories were the ones that were never told. For no medium—no book, no poem, no play or movie—could ever tell a love story in its entirety, its full span and depth, from the exhilarating beginning to the tragic ending of all love stories. He didn’t mind if his life was forgotten—it had never occurred to him to want to be remembered—as long as he had truly lived, and to live life without experiencing one great love story was to not live at all.”
― Ray Smith, The Magnolia That Bloomed Unseen