Laurell K. Hamilton
American erotic horror and science fiction/fantasy writer.
You cannot die of grief, though it feels as if you can. A heart does not actually break, though sometimes your chest aches as if it is breaking. Grief dims with time. It is the way of things. There comes a day when you smile again, and you feel like a traitor. How dare I feel happy. How dare I be glad in a world where my father is no more. And then you cry fresh tears, because you do not miss him as much as you once did, and giving up your grief is another kind of death.
Nothing helps you sleep at night so much as being absolutely certain that you're right, and everyone else is evil.
Maybe God isn't the sex police, Richard. Sometimes I think Christians get all hung up on the sex thing because it's easier to worry about sex than to ask yourself, am I a good person? If as long as you don't have sex with a lot of people, that's easy. […] It makes it easy to be cruel, because as long as you're not fucking around, nothing you do can be that bad. Is that really all you think of God?
[Talking to friend Veronica, Anita Blake worries she may be pregnant.]
Ronnie: I could ask, who's the father, but that's just creepy. If you are, then it's this little tiny, microscopic lump of cells. It's not a baby. It's not a person, not yet.
Anita: We'll have to disagree on that one.
Ronnie: You're pro-choice.
Anita: Yep, I am, but I also believe that abortion is taking a life. I agree women have the right to choose, but I also think that it's still taking a life.
Ronnie: That's like saying you're pro-choice and pro-life. You can't be both.
Anita: I'm pro-choice because I've never been a fourteen-year-old incest victim pregnant by her father, or a woman who's going to die if the pregnancy continues, or a rape victim, or even a teenager who made a mistake. I want women to have choices, but I also believe that it's a life, especially once it's big enough to live outside the womb.
Giving up at something that no longer serves a purpose, or protects you, or helps you, isn't giving up at all, it's growing up.
There comes a point when you just love someone. Not because they're good, or bad, or anything really. You just love them. It doesn't mean you'll be together forever. It doesn't mean you won't hurt each other. It just mean you love them. Sometimes in spite of who they are, and sometimes because of who they are. And you know that they love you, sometimes because of who you are, and sometimes in spite of it.
A flower may be beautiful all on its own, but a person is never truly beautiful unless someone's eyes show him that he is beautiful.
"I won't die, eaten alive," he said. He put a fresh clip in his gun. "I'll do you first if you want, or you can do it yourself."
I know who and what I am. I am The Executioner, and I don't date Vampires. I kill them.
My eyes were running because there were pieces of zombie all over my toys, Jesus.
Love is too precious to be ashamed of.
I hate to waste a really good threat.
After a good, successful torture, she was as happy as I ever saw her. I guess everyone needed a hobby.
Samuel smiled at me. "Freedom and fairness are very important to you, aren't they?"
I nodded, and frowned. "They're important to everybody."
He laughed. "Oh, no, Anita, you would be amazed at the number of people who try to give away their freedom at every opportunity. They much prefer that someone else make their decisions."
No, really, Ronnie, it's good to share information when you know someone else is dating the lunarly challenged.
There's no one so self-righteous as someone policing someone else's morality.
A person likes to think of himself in a certain way, and when something happens that makes that no longer possible, you mourn the old self. The person you thought you were.
That feeling of terrible emptiness when I touched him was like going into a house that you thought would be full of people you loved, only to find it empty, and even the furniture taken. You walk from room to room, hearing your footsteps echo on the naked floors. Your voice bounces back from the empty walls, where the lines of beloved photos still show like the line around a body at a crime scene. He was gone.
You will never lose your nerve. Your life, probably, but never your nerve."
I could almost smell her fear... Why did it bother me so much? Because she and I were the only women here, and we had to be better than the men. Braver, quicker, whatever. It was a rule for playing with the big boys.