Marta

“Anthony could actually feel the tips of his ears turning red with barely leashed rage. “You, madam, are a menace to society.” She opened her mouth as if to return the insult, but instead she just offered him an almost frighteningly devious smile and turned to the dog and said, “Shake, Newton.”
― Julia Quinn, The Viscount Who Loved Me

“Do you know what a honey mushroom is?" she blurted out, plucking at the hairs on his arm, which was wrapped around her.
He was silent for a moment before letting out a husky laugh "No. Why?"
"It's the largest living thing on earth. Larger than trees, elephants, whales-this one living thing takes up over three square miles in Oregon." She could almost feel him turning that random fact over in his brain. She was glad she wasn't facing him. This would be so much harder if she had to look into his eyes instead of at the wall.
"Like the mushroom cap is over three miles across?" he asked.
Harper shook her head. "No, no. That's the amazing part. When you look at it-the part you see aboveground-it's this tiny little mushroom head. It looks so insignificant. They just pop up here and there" she gestures with her fingertips as though she could draw them in the air. "But it creates this root-like system called hyphae. And the hyphae-it spreads and grows and, kind of... takes over underground. One living thing, every cell genetically identical, spreading below the surface to take up this enormous amount of space."
Dan was quiet for a moment. "Why are you telling me this?" he asked, placing a kiss into her neck. Harper swallowed and fiddled with the edge of the sheet.
"Because thats' what my anxiety feels like-a honey mushroom." She felt Dan tense behind her, but she pushed on." A lot of times, someone on the outside, like you, maybe, sees these clues to it-my fidgeting, my mind seeming a million miles away, panic attacks. But inside" -she tapped her chest- "it's this intricate network of sharp pain and fear that's constantly growing and pulsing through me. It's always there, right beneath my skin, huge and controlling, but no one can see it. I just feel it. And it hurts. So badly. It makes me want to curl up into a ball or sprint out of my skeleton. This huge, inescapable thing inside me that controls me." she paused, picking aggressively at her nails; "It feels cruel to have your own body do that to you".”
― Mazey Eddings, A Brush with Love

“It occurred to Anthony that when she wasn’t arguing with him, Kate Sheffield might bloody well be the finest woman in England.”
― Julia Quinn, The Viscount Who Loved Me

“Her brown eyes, wise and warm and undeniably perceptive, focused on his. For one split moment he had the bizarre thought that she somehow knew everything about him, from the moment of his birth to his certainty of his own death. It seemed, in that second, with her face tipped up toward his and her lips slightly parted, that she, more than anyone else who would ever walk this earth, truly knew him.
It was thrilling.
But more than that, it was terrifying.”
― Julia Quinn, The Viscount Who Loved Me