Laurell K. Hamilton
American erotic horror and science fiction/fantasy writer.
No, really, Ronnie, it's good to share information when you know someone else is dating the lunarly challenged.
Anita: My life works for me right now, but it wouldn't work for a child.
Ronnie: Why, because you don't have a husband?
Anita: No, because people try to kill me on a semiregular basis.
He wanted to feed the hunger of his skin. The hunger of his body not so much for orgasm but for that need to be held close and tight, that need we all have to press our nakedness against someone else's.
Pretend hard enough and maybe it will go away.
People are supposed to fear the unknown, but ignorance is bliss when the knowledge is so damn frightening.
You ask yourself "What is love? Am I in love?", when what you should be asking is, "What is not love?", ma petite. What is it that this man does for you that is not done out of love?
"Always needing to have the last word is a bad trait Ms. Blake, pisses people off."
I stepped out of the car on the rat king's arm, like a trophy wife--exept for the wrist sheaths and the two folding knives hidden in my clothing. Somehow I think trophy wives wear more makeup and less cutlery. But, Hey, I haven't met a trophy wife, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they know what I know, that the true way to a man's heart is six inces of metal between his ribs. Sometimes four inches will do the job, but to be really sure, I like to have six. Funny how phallic objects are always more useful the bigger they are. Anyone who tells you size doesn't matter has been seeing too many small knives.
I smiled at him but knew it did not reach my eyes. I smiled because he smiled at me, more reflex than emotion. Inside I was nothing. It was a little like being in shock. Shock is nature's insulation, the thing that shuts you down so you can heal, or sometimes so you can die without hurting, or being afraid...
We hate most in others what we dislike in ourselves.
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.
You will never lose your nerve. Your life, probably, but never your nerve."
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.
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.
There's no one so self-righteous as someone policing someone else's morality.
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.
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."
After a good, successful torture, she was as happy as I ever saw her. I guess everyone needed a hobby.
I hate to waste a really good threat.
Love is too precious to be ashamed of.