A Pretty Table Quotes & Sayings

Have exactly one hour to find your runaway table, get back your synco-whatsit, and install it in this engine, or the Argo II explodes, destroying Bunker Nine and most of the woods." "Basically," Leo said. Jason frowned. "We should alert the other campers. We might have to evacuate them." "No!" Leo's voice broke. "Look, the explosion won't destroy the whole camp. Just the woods. I'm pretty sure. Like sixty-five percent sure." "Well, that's a relief," Piper muttered. "Besides," Leo said, "we don't have time, and I - I can't tell the others. If they find out how badly I've messed up ... " Jason and Piper looked at each other. The clock display changed to 59:00. "Fine," Jason said. "But we'd better hurry. — Rick Riordan

I love gaming, I'm actually more of a nerd than a metal head and if you see me at shows chances are I'm by our merch table playing league of legends on my laptop or playing super Nintendo or Playstation through an emulator. My Nintendo pretty much raised me. — Mike Powell

She plucked the blossoms from the bag and arranged them, one by one, in the water glass on her dressing table.
"They'll never keep," I said. "They're [hibiscus] a terrible cutting flower. They'll wilt by morning."
"I know," she said." But don't they look so pretty right now, just as they are?"
I nodded. I wished I could see the beauty in the moment the way Kitty did. It was a gift. — Sarah Jio

I know tonight will be no more than some very heavy petting," Cooper said full of sincerity. "I know my hand and I will have to finish the job without you. I know all that so don't freak out when I ask this question. Deal?"
"Ask first."
Cooper grinned. "This weekend, I'd like you to come to my house and hang out. We have the pool and a TV the size of this restaurant. Oh, a pool table too. It'll be fun and I'd like to spend time with you like we did tonight. You're pretty irresistible when you're relaxed."
"But I'm resistible when I'm tense? I've been tense since we met so why do you keep asking me out?"
"Fine, you're irresistible period, but you're especially sexy when you let yourself be you. Teasing me like that was pretty awesome, though I think I really might need medical attention now. — Bijou Hunter

If they don't board and live by themselves, even in their second year they've got no lounge or kitchen table and it's a pretty lonely existence when you get home to an empty house. Homesickness is a key issue for kids who are drafted interstate, whether they are going to Melbourne or coming to Perth or going to Brisbane. All the kids we've drafted this year will all go through periods of homesickness, which can lead to worse things. — Trevor Nisbett

The news networks and the local TV stations all led with the same footage. An obviously moved, very pretty young woman with blond hair and alert blue eyes looking up. Eyes widening. Stumbling a little as she pushed back her chair and went around the table.
Shaky cameras turning too fast, following her as she ran to a boy at the back of the room who pushed through the press of people to reach her.
The embrace.
The kiss that went on for a very long time. — Michael Grant

For instance, supposing that the planet earth were not a sphere but a gigantic coffee table,
how much difference in everyday life would that make? Granted, this is a pretty
farfetched example; you can't rearrange facts of life so freely. Still, picturing the planet
earth, for convenience sake, as a gigantic coffee table does in fact help clear away the
clutter - those practically pointless contingencies such as gravity and the international
dateline and the equator, those nagging details that arise from the spherical view. I mean,
for a guy leading a perfectly ordinary existence, how many times in the course of a
lifetime would the equator be a significant factor? — Haruki Murakami

There are so many sad and ugly things in the world that I feel I must try to counterbalance them with whatever beauty I can produce. Setting a pretty table in a world of pain might seem callous, given that people are starving and living in dreadful disease and poverty. But in trying to create islands of beauty and peace, I feel I am honoring the dreams of the world. — Isobelle Carmody

I was pretty sure the only two rooms I needed in my house were a kitchen with a huge table and a library full of books. "It'll — April White

Hastings hunched at the rickety table in Interview Room C, doing a pretty good job of looking bored. The dribbles of sweat along his temples were the only sign he was feeling the heat.

Eve dropped into the chair across from him, flashed a big, friendly smile. "Hey. Thanks for dropping by."

"Kiss my white, dimpled ass."

"As tempting as that is, I'm afraid I'm not allowed to make such personal contact."

"You kicked my balls, you oughta be able to kiss my ass."

"Rules are rules. — J.D. Robb

Could be. I'm a pretty dangerous dude when I'm cornered."
"Yeah," said the voice from under the table, "you go to pieces so fast people get hit by the shrapnel. — Douglas Adams

Rowena Clark and I had met on the first day of our mixed media class. I'd sat down at her table and said, "Mind if I join you? Figure the best way to learn about art is to sit with a masterpiece." Maybe I was in love, but I was still Adrian Ivashkov.
Rowena had fixed me with a flat look. "Let's get one thing straight. I can see through crap a mile away, and I like girls, not guys, so if you can't handle me telling you what's what, then you'd better take your one-liners and hair gel somewhere else. I don't go to this school to put up with pretty boys like you. I'm here to face dubious employment options with a painting degree and then go get a Guinness after class."
I'd scooted my chair closer to the table. "You and I are going to get along just fine. — Richelle Mead

A girl came in the cafe and sat by herself at a table near the window. She was very pretty with a face fresh as a newly minted coin if they minted coins in smooth flesh with rain-freshened skin, and her hair black as a crow's wing and cut sharply and diagonally across her cheek. — Ernest Hemingway,

I held a brief debate with myself as to whether I should change my ordinary attire for something smarter. At last I concluded it would be a waste of labour. "Doubtless," though I, "she is some stiff old maid ; for though the daughter of Madame Reuter, she may well number upwards of forty winters; besides, if it were otherwise, if she be both young and pretty, I am not handsome, and no dressing can make me so, therefore I'll go as I am." And off I started, cursorily glancing sideways as I passed the toilet-table, surmounted by a looking-glass: a thin irregular face I saw, with sunk, dark eyes under a large, square forehead, complexion destitute of bloom or attraction; something young, but not youthful, no object to win a lady's love, no butt for the shafts of Cupid. — Charlotte Bronte

Are you guys getting to know each other pretty well? I'm sure it's a little bit awkward at first.'
'Yeah,' I said. 'I'd say we're getting to know each other *really* well. Wouldn't you, Nathan?'
He kicked me under the table and mouthed, *Not funny*. — Kody Keplinger

Where's Shauna?" I say. "Still in the hospital?"
"No, she's over there," says Zeke, nodding to the table Lynn walked back to. I see her there, so pale she might as well be translucent, sitting in a wheelchair. "Shana shouldn't be up, but Lynn's pretty messed up, so she's keeping her company."
"But if you're wondering why they're all the way over there ... Shauna found out I'm Divergent," says Uriah sluggishly. "And she doesn't want to catch it."
"Oh."
"She got all weird with me, too," says Zeke, sighing. "'How do you know your brother isn't working against us? Have you been watching him?' What I wouldn't give to punch whoever poisoned her mind."
"You don't have to give anything," says Uriah. "Her mother's sitting right there. Go ahead and hit her. — Veronica Roth

Ciao, bello!' The coal-eyed beauty who had kissed Jason through the Fiat's window appeared through the crowd, her pretty red mouth smiling. Utterly ignoring Storm, she perched herself on the table next to Jason.

'Ciao, bella,' he smiled.

'Vuoi ballare?'

'She wants me to dance,' he explained to Storm, peering round the girl's adolescent bottom.

'I know,' she replied shortly. 'I've got a degree in Italian. — Madeleine Ker

I think we are all of us a pretty milky lot, without tea-table convictions and our radicalism that keeps so consistently within the bounds of decorum ... I'd like to annihilate these stupid colleges of ours ... instillers of stodginess. — John Dos Passos

I spend a lot of time loathing the sentences that I put down on the page. Once I'm past that phase, it doesn't really matter what the routine is (coffee shop, someone else's house, my dining room table), I'm pretty fast. I go back to the start of whatever I'm working on, every half hour or so, and revise my way back to where I left off. I have my headphones on, I'm checking email, I look at Twitter and Tumblr, and drink a lot of coffee. I need a lot of distraction to work. — Kelly Link

She'd done the first, the second and the third, when her father came in.
He stopped in the doorway, held up a hand. "Wait, don't tell me.I know you. The face is very familiar." He narrowed his eyes as she rolled hers. "I'm sure I've seen you before, somewhere.Tibet? Mazetlan? At the dinner table a year or two ago."
"It hasn't been more than a week." She reached up as he bent to kiss her. "But I've mised you,too. I've been swamped here."
"So I've heard." He flipped open the magazine to her article. "Pretty girl. I bet her parents are proud of her."
"I hope so. — Nora Roberts

He gave his father a gentle shove. "Up the stairs."
"Jesper?" said a voice from beneath the nearest table. A pretty blonde girl looked up from where she was crouched on the floor.
"Madeleine?" Jesper said. "Madeleine Michaud?"
"You said we'd have breakfast!"
"I had to go to Fjerda."
"Fjerda?"
Jesper headed up the stairs after Wylan, then poked his head back into the reading room. "If I live, I'll buy you waffles."
"You don't have enough money to buy her waffles," Wylan grumbled.
"Be quiet. We're in a library. — Leigh Bardugo

His eyeless skull took in the line of costumes, the waxy debris of the makeup table. His empty nostrils snuffed up the mixed smells of mothballs, grease, and sweat. There was something here, he thought, that nearly belonged to the gods. Humans had built a world inside the world, which reflected it in pretty much the same way as a drop of water reflects the landscape. And yet... and yet... Inside this little world they had taken pains to put all the things you might think they would want to escape from - hatred, fear, tyranny, and so forth. Death was intrigued. They thought they wanted to be taken out of themselves, and every art humans dreamt up took them further in. — Terry Pratchett

I just gave up trying to be a Christian ... Let's face it, I ain't got the knack for holiness. Besides, I didn't have the slightest little desire to join the likes of Reverend Pelham at the dinner table for fourteen minutes, much less at the banquet table of Heaven eternally. Eternity is a mighty long time to be stuck with people who judge every word you say and think and condemn most of what you do. It struck me as pretty miserable company. And if Reverend Pelham was the kind of company God preferred to keep, well, I just hoped they'd be happy together. — Katherine Paterson

I say grace. I'm a big believer in grace. I happen to believe in a God that made all the food and so I'm pretty grateful for that and I thank him for that. But I'm also thankful for the people that put the food on the table. — Alton Brown

Rough Music ...
No one controls the music, Mr. Pretty - you know that. It just turns up when people have had enough. No one knows where it starts. People look around, and catch on another's eye, and give each other a little nod, and other people see that. Other people catch their eye and so, very slowly, the music starts and somebody picks up a spoon and bangs it on a plate, and then somebody else bangs a jug on the table and boots starts to stamp on the floor, louder and louder. It is the sound of anger, it is the sound of people who have had enough. Do you want to face the music? — Terry Pratchett

If your kitchen table is like mine, you sit there at night before you put the kids to bed and you talk about what you need. You talk about how much you are worried about being able to pay the bills. Ladies and gentlemen, that is not a worry John McCain has to worry about. It's a pretty hard experience. He'll have to figure out which of the seven kitchen tables to sit at. — Joe Biden

'Pretty Little Liars' is very all-consuming of my time, but I guess it's a great problem to have ... there have been other things that have come that were on the table and then were not. — Ian Harding

So it's true what they say about warlocks, then?"
Alec gave him a very unpleasant look. "What's true?"
"Alexander," said Magnus coldly, and Clary met Simon's eyes across the table. Hers were wide, green, and full of an expression that said Uh-oh. "You can't be rude to everyone who talks to me."
Alec made a wide, sweeping gesture. "And why not? Cramping your style, am I? I mean, maybe you were hoping to flirt with werewolf boy here. He's pretty attractive, if you like the messy-haired, broad-shouldered, chiseled-good-looks type."
"Hey, now," said Jordan mildly.
Magnus put his head in his hands.
"Or there are plenty of pretty girls here, since apparently your taste goes both ways, Is there anything you aren't into?"
"Mermaids," said Magnus into his fingers. "They always smell like seaweed."
"It's not funny," Alec said savagely, and kicking back his chair, he got up from the table and stalked off into the crowd. — Cassandra Clare

Why bother trying? What was the point? So I could go to some suck-ass college, get a diploma, march out into a job that I hated, marry a pretty girl who would want to divorce me, but then she wouldn't because we'd have kids, so instead she'd be the angry woman at the other end of the kitchen table, and the kids would grow up watching this, until one day I'd look at my son and he'd look just like that face in the bathroom mirror?
If that was life, then it was twisted. — Laurie Halse Anderson

And in that heightened state of luminous vision, his head nodding over a glass but his mind steady, he told himself that he had nothing to regret; he had done what anyone would have done; Catherine had said it, he was selfish; everybody was selfish; it was not a pretty thing, to be selfish, but he was not alone in it; he had merely been luckier than most; he had been, because he was better than most; he felt fine; he hoped the useless questions would never come back to him again; every man for himself, he muttered, falling asleep on the table. — Ayn Rand

Despite its obscurity, probably no element on the periodic table has as colorful a history as antimony. Money, madness, poison, linguistics, charlatanism, sex - pretty much every theme that runs through the periodic table can be found in Element 51. — Sam Kean

Oh, I get it. You're doing the girlfriend - what's her name? Megan?" "Merit," answered the girl at the table. "And it's a pretty good costume." I opened my mouth to object, to proclaim that I wasn't doing Ethan's girlfriend, I was Ethan's girlfriend, and I was doing Ethan. — Chloe Neill

More than nine million people a year come to the Smokies, many of them to picnic. So bears have learned to associate people with food. Indeed, to them people are overweight creatures in baseball caps who spread lots and lots of food out on picnic tables and then shriek a little and waddle off to get their video cameras when old Mr. Bear comes along and climbs onto the table and starts devouring their potato salad and chocolate cake. Since the bear doesn't mind being filmed and indeed seems indifferent to his audience, pretty generally some fool will come up to it and try to stroke it or feed it a cupcake or something. There is one recorded instance of a woman smearing honey on her toddler's fingers so that the bear would lick it off for the video camera. Failing to understand this, the bear ate the baby's hand. — Bill Bryson

She'd best get the hell outta here pretty damn quick.
Finally he stood and tossed some cash on the littered table then glanced at the pretty lady shifter. He frowned and gave Joe a look. "With the hunt going down tonight, it might be a good idea to give the little blonde a heads up. She needs to hit the road."
When Joe nodded, Mad shrugged, determined to put some distance between himself and the sexy stranger. "Best take off and see what's what, Joe. You take care now."
He felt the woman's eyes on him as he made his way to the door and stopped to return her stare.
A sound similar to white noise buzzed in his ears and fairly rattled his brain then stopped almost as soon as it started. Chills raced over his arms.
What the fuck? — Regina Carlysle

I remember my dad supporting everyone on the local and national level. I was pretty much born into it. I saw the importance of politics firsthand. It gave you a chance to be at the table. — Nicole Avant

I suppose you had to," Wes said when Phin went back to join him at the table.
"Pretty much. She seduced me."
"Yeah, right," Wes said. "She said, 'Please fix the kitchen drain,' and you interpreted that
"
"She said, 'Fuck me.' " Phin put two balls on the table and picked up his cue. "I interpreted that to mean she wanted sex."
"Oh." Wes picked up his cue. "That would have been my call, too." He squinted at the table. "Why would she have said that?"
"On a guess? Because she wanted sex. — Jennifer Crusie

Ben shook his head.
Sitting down he asked, "So, you are Marty, right?"
He got an incredulous look in response along with a cautious, "Yeah."
"You look way different dressed like that and without any make up on and stuff. Like a pretty guy almost, no offense."
Marty widened her eyes incredulously. "Umm...I have a confession here I obviously need to make. We're in public, so don't you dare punch me, or try to jump me later. I got witnesses who'll be able to verify I was here with you and that you threatened me."
Ben's brows furrowed. "What? Why would I do that?"
"Hello, my name is Marty." Marty extended her hand across the table. "I'm a guy. — Leona Windwalker

Vegard and Riston's job today was to guard and protect me. And considering that I was in a tower room in the Guardians' citadel, it looked like a pretty plum assignment. I mean, how much trouble could a girl get into under heavy guard in a tower room? Notice I didn't ask that question out loud. No need to rub Fate's nose in something when I'd been tempting her enough lately.
Phaelan had generously his guard services as well, just in case something happened to me that my Guardian bodyguards couldn't handle. Phaelan's guard-on-duty stance resembled his pirate-on-shore-leave stane of leaning back in a chair with his feet up, but instead of a tavern table, his boots were doing a fine job of holding down the windowsill. I don't know how I'd ever felt safe without him. — Lisa Shearin

I went to say no, but I winced as I pulled my tooth out of my lip.
I was absolutely hopeless. In a two minute period my front curls had
started to go straight due to my constant brushing them behind my ears
and I was pretty sure my lip was bleeding. Frustrated I pushed myself off of
the couch with a huff and walked around the glass coffee table to head for
the kitchen.
"I've made you angry."
"No."
Darren got up and cut me off in the middle of the room. "Yes, I did.
You're angry with me."
"No, not with you."
"Then what's wrong?"
"I'm angry with myself. — Kaitlin Scott

"Well, well!" said my aunt. "I only ask. I don't depreciate her. Poor little couple! And so you think you were formed for one another, and are to go through a party-supper-table kind of life, like two pretty pieces of confectionery, do you, Trot?" — Charles Dickens

My take on all these things is pretty simple. It's all on the table, every bit of it, and you should use anything that improves the quality of your wiring and doesn't get in the way of your story. If you like an alliterative phrases-the knights of nowhere battling the nabobs of nullity-by all means throw it in and see how it looks on paper. If it seems to work, it can stay. If it doesn't (and to me this one sounds pretty bad, like Spiro Agnew crossed with Robert Jordan), well that delete key is on your machine for a good reason. — Stephen King

There's a fine line between imagination and reality. An inventor dreams something up, and pretty soon, it's there on the table before him. A science-fiction writer envisions another world, and then some space probe finds it. If you believe in something strongly enough, I think you can make it happen. — Ridley Pearson

To sit here at the same table with my hero, George W. Bush ... I feel like I'm dreaming. Somebody pinch me. You now what, I'm a pretty sound sleeper, that may not be enough ... Somebody shoot me in the face. — Stephen Colbert

We found a table. Nora said: "She's pretty."
"If you like them like that."
She grinned at me. "You got types?"
"Only you, darling - lanky brunettes with wicked jaws."
"And how about the red-head you wandered off with at Quinns' last night?"
"That's silly," I said. "She just wanted to show me some French etchings. — Dashiell Hammett

You two should do the next partner project together," she said as she flipped through our portfolios. "You both have excellent designs, and you have polar opposite strengths. You'd do well together." Jake and I nodded respectfully, but under the table, he rubbed my leg. "I guess we're pretty good together," he whispered against my ear later in the hall. "Is that what she said? I thought she said you could learn a lot from me."
Reinhardt, Liz (2011-09-06). Double Clutch (A Brenna Blixen Novel) (p. 206). Kindle Edition. — Liz Reinhardt

When I saw "Ulysses" on Georgie's bedside table and Tom Finch's name written on it in a scrawl so like my old man's, I felt that I wanted to read it as a preparation for what's about to happen to us all. I understand where the brawny part of my father and I come from - Bill. I'm not saying bill's not smart, but my old man is a pretty intelligent guy and that kind of intellect came from tome Finch. I want to turn the pages he turned. But honestly I'm actually finding it hard. I think that the whole world has lied and nobody has read the book completely. It's a conspiracy up there with Roswell. — Melina Marchetta

That's it," Mabel said, getting up. She tossed her napkin on the table. "No. That is not right. I don't know what you just said, but whatever it was, I'm pretty certain it was pure hokum. I don't want to dance. I don't want to hear about your plans for a summer house. I am not your sister. And if I were your sister, I'd have to tell people you'd been adopted as an act of charity. Please, don't get up. — Libba Bray

Nothing is more pleasant than to see a pretty woman, her napkin well placed under her arms, one of her hands on the table, while the other carries to her mouth, the choice piece so elegantly carved. — Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

There wasn't an official rule book that he knew of, but he was pretty sure a guy didn't bend his best damn friend over the kitchen table. — Shannon Stacey

Right then, Mel came into the bar, hung her jacket on the peg inside the door and jumped up on a stool in front of her husband, elbows on the bar, leaning toward him for a kiss. "Holy shit," one of the men said. "Look at that one. Talk about a doe I'd like to bag." Jack straightened before meeting his wife's lips. The look on his face wasn't a pretty one. "You know," Mike said, laughing uncomfortably, "about our women. You boys don't want to be giving the women around here any trouble. Trust me on this, okay?" That set up a round of hilarious laughter at the table of hunters and one of them said, unfortunately too loudly, "Maybe the girl wants to get bagged. I think we should at least ask her!" But oops - glancing over his shoulder, Mike saw Jack had heard that. And probably so had Mel. And after what those two had been through earlier in the summer, comments like that were not taken lightly. And — Robyn Carr

Perseus Jackson, I do expect you to
refrain from causing any more trouble. "
"Trouble?" I demanded.
Dionysus snapped his fingers. A newspaper appeared on the table-the front page of today's
New York Post, There was my yearbook picture from Meriwether Prep. It was hard for me to
make out the headline, but I had a pretty good guess what it said. Something like: ... Perseus Jackson, I do expect you to
refrain from causing any more trouble. "
"Trouble?" I demanded.
Dionysus snapped his fingers. A newspaper appeared on the table-the front page of today's
New York Post, There was my yearbook picture from Meriwether Prep. It was hard for me to
make out the headline, but I had a pretty good guess what it said. Something like: Thirteen-
Year-Old Lunatic Torches Gymnasium. — Rick Riordan

At her dressing table putting on earrings. She is a pretty woman in the prime of life, and her ignorance of financial necessity is complete. Her neck is graceful, her breasts gleamed as they rose in the cloth of her dress, and, seeing the decent and healthy delight she took in her own image, I could not tell her that we were broke. She had sweetened much of my life, and to watch her seemed to freshen the wellsprings of some clear energy in me that made the room and the pictures on the wall and the moon that could see outside the window all vivid and cheerful. — John Cheever

I sounded so bad ass, but I was really weak, tired, and pretty much shattered inside. If he gave me a hard time, I was going to jump across the table and try to kill him with my water bottle. — L.D. Davis

I think I was born to write. My mother would put a typewriter on the dining room table and say "there you go".

My first story was published in the Christian Herald and they would pay me five guineas. I wrote my first novel when I was just 14.

I was into mysteries and thrillers at the time but I eventually I drifted into romance because my mother would always ask me to write 'something pretty'.

I've never got bored of it because its something I absolutely love. My books are full of hope and romance rather than sex.

They are a form of escapism - you can escape the parts of the world that you don't like. — Ida Pollock

So I'm reading some poem by Louise . . . something, I forget her last name, but it's about Hades and the underworld, and I don't even notice that Paige has come up to my table until she says, 'Doesn't everyone want love?' And I'm thinking, wow, that's a pretty deep question, but then again Paige is really smart, and this is my chance to finally show her that I'm not just a dumb jock. So I say, 'I heard this theory once that love means your subconscious is attracted to someone else's subconscious.'"

"Very deep," Cade said.

"Exactly. And I'm feeling proud of myself for that one, until she points to the book and says, 'Oh, that wasn't a question. I was just quoting a line from the poem. — Julie James

This book is just not meant for pretty reading. It's not for coffee-table curiosity and other such cameo appearances. Think of it instead as industrial-grade survival gear. Duct tape and superglue. Leather straps lashed around it. Old shoelaces maybe. In tight double knots. Whatever it takes to keep it all together. Because this is war. The fight of your life. A very real enemy has been strategizing and scheming against you, assaulting you, coming after your emotions, your mind, your man, your child, your future. In fact, he's doing it right this second. Right where you're sitting. Right where you are. But I say his reign of terror stops here. Stops now. He might keep coming, but he won't have victory anymore. Because it all starts failing when we start praying. — Priscilla Shirer

Over the table, on which an unpacked line of fabric samples was all spread out
Samsa was a traveling salesman
hung the picture which he had recently cut out of a glossy magazine and lodged in a pretty gilt frame. It showed a lady done up in a fur hat and a fur boa, sitting upright and raising up against the viewer a heavy fur muff in which her whole forearm had disappeared. — Franz Kafka

Without warning, Wesley lifted me up onto the pool table. His hands moved to my shoulders, and a second later, I was flat on my back, staring up at him as he smirked. He shifted so that he was on the table too, leaning over me with his face only inches from mine.
"On the pool table?" I said, narrowing my eyes at him. "Seriously?"
"I can't resist," he said. "You know, you're pretty sexy when you're pissed at me, Duffy."
First, I was struck by the irony of that statement. I mean, he used sexy and Duffy-implying I was fat and ugly-in the same sentence. The contrast was almost laughable. Almost. — Kody Keplinger

He pulled her mirror out of his other pocket. "You left your mirror on my table." He extended it toward her.
"You can keep it," she said quietly. "We have lots of mirrors here."
"I'll keep it, then."
"Good. I'm glad."
He'd never rushed headlong into a battle, but he figured this time, it might be the best approach. "I spent a lot of time studying it. The back is real pretty with all the gold carving. Took me about an hour to gather up the courage to turn it over and look at the other side."
"And what did you see?"
" Aman who loves you more than life itself."
Closing her eyes, she dropped her chin to her chest.
"I wouldn't blame you if you hated me. I haven't held your feelings as precious as I should have."
"I don't hate you," she whispered hoarsely. "I tried to, but I can't."
-Houston and Amelia — Lorraine Heath

Her youngest daughter shrugged. "Ain't got no money, do we?" "I don't understand. Why aren't you pillaging like the rest of your kin?" "It was the Northlands, Da. Ain't nothin' to pillage but the crows in the trees." "And snow," their eldest added. "Lots and lots of snow." Bram motioned to his study. "You know where I keep the gold coin." As if on fire, their offspring made a desperate run for their father's study, climbing over the table and fighting each other through the door. It wasn't pretty. — G.A. Aiken

Let them say what they want," Kuni said. He admired the pamphlets and laughed. "I look pretty good as a girl, though I think they are suggesting I lose a few pounds. I have to send some of these to Jia; she could probably use the laugh as I imagine the baby - may the Twins protect the child - is making her life very stressful." "What is wrong with you?" Mata Zyndu roared and tore the pamphlet in his hands into pieces. He smashed the table in front of him; then, for good measure, smashed the table in front of Kuni as well. He stomped and ground the broken pieces of wood into even smaller pieces against the stone floor. But his rage was not assuaged. Not even a little bit. He paced back and forth in front of Kuni, kicking the wooden splinters every which way. Servants scattered to distant corners of the room, away from the barrage. "What is so bad about being compared to women?" Kuni said. "Half the world is made of women." Mata — Ken Liu

She stood by the tea-table in a light-coloured muslin gown, which had a good deal of pink about it. She looked as if she was not attending to the conversation, but solely busy with the tea-cups, among which her round ivory hands moved with pretty, noiseless, daintiness. — Elizabeth Gaskell