Quotes & Sayings About First Night Together

Another way in which the negative anima in a man's personality can be revealed is in waspish, poisonous, effeminate remarks by which he devalues everything. Remarks of this sort always contain a cheap twisting of the truth and are in a subtle way destructive. There are legends throughout the world in which "a poison damsel" (as they call her in the Orient) appears. She is a beautiful creature who has weapons hidden in her body or a secret poison with which she kills her lovers during their first night together. In this guise the anima is as cold and reckless as certain uncanny aspects of nature itself, and in Europe is often expressed to this day by the belief in witches. — C. G. Jung

You see the grandmother down there with her son and grandson? They've probably been coming here for years together. Or maybe it's their first trip. Either way, it's three generations sitting down together, laying aside their differences for one night to be a family. This is humanity, Steele. This is what we're fighting for. Family. People. Pride. It's our differences that make up our strength. BAD isn't about patriotism. It's about saving individuals. Not just those in America, but all the ones who are out there going about their lives with little to no care about politics. Men, women, and children who only want to live peacefully while others are looking for ways to use them as pawns in a deadly game they don't even want to play. (Joe) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Soon, he can hear Nathen's breathing, slight little snores. But Alex refuses to let sleep take him. He wants to stay awake, he wants to drink in every last moment of their first night together. — Martin Wilson

Everyone would remember Peter for nineteen minutes of his life, but what about the other nine million? Lacy would be the keeper of those, because it was the only way for that part of Peter to stay alive. For every recollection of him that involved a bullet or a scream, she would have a hundred others: of a little boy splashing in a pond, or riding a bicycle for the first time, or waving from the top of a jungle gym. Of a kiss good night, or a crayoned Mother's Day card, or a voice off-key in the shower. She would string them together - the moments when her child had been just like other people's. She would wear them, precious pearls, every day of her life; because if she lost them, then the boy she had loved and raised and known would really be gone. — Jodi Picoult

When they ask why we stayed together for so long I say, I don't know. I just know that we cried at the exact same time in every movie. I know we blushed everyday for the first two years. I know I always stole the covers and she never woke me up. I know the exact look on her face, the first night she used my toothbrush. The next day, I brushed my teeth like thirtysome times, 'cause I didn't want to let her go. You have to understand when it hurt to love her, it hurt the way the light hurts your eyes in the middle of the night, but I had to see, even through the ruin, if what we were burying were seeds. There were so many plants in our house, you could rake the leaves even through that winter when I was trying to make angels in the snow of her cold shoulder. She was still leaving love notes in my suitcase; I'd always find them. — Andrea Gibson

I have a boyfriend who knows how to settle me. He puts his hand on my chest and tells me boring stories. On one of our first nights together I woke up apologizing for my snoring and he pulled out two earplugs he had worn to bed so he could hear what I was saying. — Amy Poehler

The first thing he noticed was how quiet it was. This was nothing like the kind of quiet he heard when he woke up in the middle of the night after a bad dream. When that happened, there were always strange, unidentifiable sounds seeping into his room from the tiny gaps where the windowpanes weren't sealed together correctly. At those moments he could always tell there was life outside, even if all that life was fast asleep. It was a silence that wasn't silence at all. — John Boyne

Then they had a day together in Melbourne and Jenny stayed in her first hotel, with Luc sparing no expense and treating her to the Windsor for the night. Here, Jenny experienced a luxury that had her wide-eyed, where men in their fine uniform of burgundy jackets, trimmed with gold, fussed around them and suggested an afternoon tea like never before. Luc couldn't help but grin to see his daughter engulfed in a leather chair, near the huge arched picture windows that fronted Spring Street, choosing cucumber sandwiches and beautiful little cakes and pastries from a silver tiered cake stand. — Fiona McIntosh

We aren't some casual fuck, and we never were. Not from the first night. Not from the first time I laid eyes on you. You were built for me. I denied it as long as I could, but we were meant to be together. You are the sea under my sky. We're bound at the horizon. — C.D. Reiss

The first night Stephen and I slept together, he whispered numbers into my ear: long, high numbers
distances between planets, seconds in a life. He spoke as if they were poetry, and they became poetry. Later, when he fell asleep, I leaned over him and watched, trying to picture a mathematician's dreams. I concluded that Stephen must dream in abstract, cool designs like Mondrian paintings. — Peter Cameron

Anne was now at hand to take up her own cause, and the sincerity of her manner being soon sufficient to convince him, where conviction was at least very agreeable, he had no farther scruples as to her being left to dine alone, though he still wanted her to join them in the evening, when the child might be at rest for the night, and kindly urged her to let him come and fetch her; but she was quite unpersuadable and this being the case, she had ere long the pleasure of seeing them set off together in high spirits. They were gone, she hoped, to be happy, however oddly constructed such happiness might seem; as for herself, she was left with as many sensations of comfort, as were, perhaps ever likely to be hers. She knew herself to be of the first utility to the child; and what was it to her, if Frederick Wentworth were only half a mile distant, making himself agreeable to others! — Jane Austen

It was then that the seven-year-old said, "I am ready. What wonderful place will we visit tonight?"
"I can take you wherever your dreams desire," the calico pony replied on their first night together. — Cheryl Price

I felt tired for the first time, and I thought of us lying down on some grassy patch of SeaWorld together, me on my back and she on her side with her arm draped against me, her head on my shoulder, facing me. Not doing anything
just lying there together beneath the sky, the night here so well lit that it drowns out the stars. And maybe I could feel her breathe against my neck, and maybe we could just stay there until morning and then the people would walk past us as they came into the park, and they would see us and think that we were tourists, too, and we could just disappear into them. — John Green

It's our first Elysium together, Ash. They'll be expecting us. Both of us."
He moaned and grabbed another pillow, covering his eyes.
"No playing hooky and insulting the Winter Queen. I'm not doing this by myself." I took the second pillow, tossing it on the floor, and mock-glared at him. "Up."
He regarded me with a wry smile. "You're awfully perky for someone who kept me up all night."
"Hey, you started it remember? — Julie Kagawa

Let's say that your significant other has been paying less and less attention to you. You realize he or she has a busy job, but you still would like more time together. You drop a few hints about the issue, but your loved one doesn't handle it well. You decide not to put on added pressure, so you clam up. Of course, since you're not all that happy with the arrangement, your displeasure now comes out through an occasional sarcastic remark. "Another late night, huh? I've got Facebook friends I see more often." Unfortunately (and here's where the problem becomes self-defeating), the more you snip and snap, the less your loved one wants to be around you. So your significant other spends even less time with you, you become even more upset, and the spiral continues. Your behavior is now actually creating the very thing you didn't want in the first place. You're caught in an unhealthy, self-defeating loop. — Kerry Patterson

As he crossed Grattan Bridge he looked down the river towards the lower quays and pitied the poor stunted houses. They seemed to him a band of tramps, huddled together along the riverbanks, their old coats covered with dust and soot, stupefied by the panorama of sunset and waiting for the first chill of night bid them arise, shake themselves and begone. — James Joyce

There's nothing more romantic after not seeing your husband for four months than to have our first night back together, on a Broadway stage, with 12 million people watching. — Deborra-Lee Furness

It's been a very old thing for people to gather together and laugh at stuff. The first comedian in America really was Abraham Lincoln. He used to go to a pub near where he lived and stand in front of the fire and he packed the place every night and he would just talk and bust everybody in their guts. He was just a hilarious speaker and that's what he did. — Louis C.K.

The food court sat right next to the movie theater. I needed something to drink. But like an idiot, I'd brought no money, not even my purse. Luke insisted that I leave it at home. Blah, blah, blah ... our first night to the movies together ... blah, blah, blah ... he would pay for everything ... blah, blah, blah ... he took me to see the worst movie ever ... — Katie McGarry

How could she even wonder? "You know why I want you? I didn't know I was lost until you found me. I didn't know what alone was until the first night I spent without you in my bed. You're the one thing I've got right. You're what I've been waiting for, Pigeon."
Abby reached up to take my face between her hands, and I wrapped my arms around her, lifting her off the floor. Our lips pressed together gently, and as she worked her lips against mine, I made sure to silently communicate how much I loved her in that kiss, because I could never get it right with just words. — Jamie McGuire

They'd fallen into an easy routine, the three of them. Breakfast together in the morning, then Hughie would leave for work and she and Nell would get started in the house. Lil found she liked having a second shadow, enjoyed showing Nell things, explaining how they worked and why. Nell was a big one for asking why-why did the sun hide at night, why didn't the fire flames leap out of the gate, why didn't the river get bored and run the other way?-and Lil loved supplying answers, watching as understanding dawned on Nell's little face. For the first time in her life, Lil felt useful, needed, whole. — Kate Morton

Ben scooped her up in his arms, holding her high against his chest as he carried her back into the cottage, past the shrouded, familiar shapes of the furniture into the night-dark bedroom. They were alone now for the first time. There was no Emmett, no Harris, no lies or masquerade or motives or revenge. There was just Ben and Rachel, together in the darkness. — Anne Stuart

She is the person I ran to when I got my period; the one who helped me knit back together my first broken heart; the hand I would reach for in the middle of the night when I could no longer remember which side our father parted his hair on, or what it sounded like when our mother laughed. No matter what she is now, before all that, she was my built-in best friend. — Jodi Picoult

I imagined my first night alone in bed with my stranger. I conjured our future years together unhampered by worries about money or officialdom. We would enjoy the day, the night, a smile, a word, a kiss, a glance. All lovely thoughts. All pointless dreams. — Lisa See

You know that first night when we stayed together here in the cabin? As sick as we were, there was no place on earth I would have rather been then here with you. — Tina Reber

Helping me. It's a full-time job, and I am grateful for your concern for my reader friends. Of course, thanks to my daughter and sons, who pull together - bringing me iced green tea and understanding my sometimes crazy schedule. I love that you know you're still first, before any deadline. Thank you to my mom, Anne Kingsbury, and to my sisters, Tricia and Sue. Mom, you are amazing as my assistant - working day and night sorting through the mail from my readers. I appreciate you more than you'll ever know. Traveling together these past years for Extraordinary Women and Women of Joy events has given us times that we will always treasure. Now we will be at Women — Karen Kingsbury

It rained last night heavily, and now the skies are beginning to clear; it is a new fresh day. Let us meet that fresh day as if it were the only day. Let us start on our journey together with all the remembrance of yesterday left behind - and begin to understand ourselves for the first time. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

I invite you to open your mind to new possibilities. Let's fake it till we make it. Let's create visions of an aspirational future. You don't have to quit your job. But think about what might change your trajectory by half a degree. It could be that when you come home every night your first words are "I'm home! How can I help?" Try doing that. You may have a shitty job. You don't like it. You do it for the money, even if the money isn't great. Try to look at your work in a different way. Find something about your life that's great. Follow that thread. Volunteer. Even if you're in the worst possible situation, there's hope. Challenge yourself. Set your own bar. Redefine your success metrics. Create opportunities for yourself. Reassess your situation. We are all marching together. We're headed toward something big, and it's going to be good. — Biz Stone

When I first seed Cholly, I want you to know it was like all the bits of color from that time down home when all us chil'ren went berry picking after a funeral and I put some in the pocket of my Sunday dress, and they mashed up and stained my hips. My whole dress was messed with purple, and it never did wash out. Not the dress nor me. I could feel that purple deep inside me. And that lemonade Mama used to make when Pap came in out the fields. It be cool and yellowish, with seeds floating near the bottom. And that streak of green them june bugs made on the trees the night we left from down home. All of them colors was in me. Just sitting there. So when Cholly come up and tickled my foot, it was like them berries, that lemonade, them streaks of green the june bugs made, all come together. Cholly was thin then, with real light eyes. He used to whistle, and when I heerd him, shivers come on my skin. — Toni Morrison

She turned so they were face-to-face and gave him back the words he'd offered her their first night together: I survived. Isn't that what matters? — Melissa Marr

Plainly it isn't an exact science, despite it being a complex interaction of micro-decisions and corresponding thought; perhaps it doesn't always work and we pass by some potential soulmates like the proverbial ships in the night, never quite connecting. Then again, perhaps the system is tenacious and continues to run like a computer program on infinite loop, so that if at first you don't meet, you are drawn back together for another try. — Simon Pegg

I learned respect for womanhood from my father's tender caring for my mother, my sister, and his sisters. Father was the first to arise from dinner to clear the table. My sister and I would wash and dry the dishes each night at Father's request. If we were not there, Father and Mother would clean the kitchen together. — Robert D. Hales

Do you remember when we stood together on Blackfriars Bridge?" he asked softly, and his eyes were like that night had been, all black and silver.
"Of course I remember."
"It was the moment I first knew I loved you," Jem said. "I will make you a promise. Every year, Tessa, on one day, I will meet you on that bridge. I will come from the Silent City and I will meet you, and we will be together, if only for an hour. But you must tell no one. — Cassandra Clare

It was like one of those moments when people talked about their lives flashing before their eyes. Because as we stared at one another, every part of our relationship replayed in my mind's eye. I remembered how strong and invincible he'd been when we first met, when he'd come to bring Lissa and me back to the folds of Moroi society. I remembered the gentleness of his touch when he'd bandaged my bloodied and battered hands. I remembered him carrying me in his arms after Victor's daughter Natalie had attacked me. Most of all, I remembered the night we'd been together in the cabin, just before the Strigoi had taken him. A year. We'd known each other only a year, but we'd lived a lifetime in it. — Richelle Mead

You know that, don't you? Alexander whispers. I love you. I'm blind for you, wild for you. I'm sick with you. I told you that our first night together when I asked you to marry me, I'm telling you now. Everything that's happened to us, everything, is because I crossed the street for you. I worship you. You know that through and through. The way I hold you, the way I touch you, my hands on you, God, me inside you, all the things I can't say during dalight, Tatiana, Tania, Tatiasha, babe, do you feel me? — Paullina Simons

I'm not confused anymore.I know what I want."
"Me,too.What I've always wanted since I first saw you."
"Why didn't you kiss me again after that first time,that night on the deck?"
"You didn't give me any hints that you wanted another one."
i wiggled up a little closer to him and looped my fingers behind his neck. "What would a hint entail?"
He held my gaze."Exactly what you're doing."
"Then why aren't you kissing me?"
He touched his nose to mine."It's cold out here.What if our lips freeze together?"
"I'll chance it. — Rachel Hawthorne

The summer I was ten years old, there was a group of kids in my neighborhood who played together every night after dinner. I often watched them from my window ... Every night around nine-thirty or ten, those kids would get called in one by one ... I knew the first ones called were full of resentment. But they needn't have been. Nothing ever happened after they left anyway. Things just sort of ended in a slow motion way, like petals falling off a flower. You couldn't have people leave like that and have anything good happen afterward. Whoever was left couldn't pay much attention to anything other than waiting for their turn to get called in. So, it wasn't so bad to go first, to head back toward those deep yellow lights and beds made up with summer linens. It was much better than being last, when you would be left standing there alone, finally going in without anybody calling you. — Elizabeth Berg

Sleep heavily and know that I am here with you now. The past is gone, and cannot harm you anymore. And while the future is fast coming for you, it always flinches first and settles in as the gentle present. This now, this us? We can cope with that. We can do this together. You and I, drowsily, but comfortably. — Cecil Baldwin

Watching first nights, though I've seen quite a few by now, is never any better. It's a nerve-racking experience. It's not a question of whether the play goes well or badly. It's not the audience reaction, it's my reaction. I'm rather hostile toward audiences-I don't much care for large bodies of people collected together. Everyone knows that audiences vary enormously; it's a mistake to care too much about them. The thing one should be concerned with is whether the performance has expressed what one set out to express in writing the play. It sometimes does. — Harold Pinter

We spent the first night of our honeymoon in a country hotel, with Tudor architecture oak beams, and floors which sloped, of the Queen-Elizabeth-Slept-Here variety. There were old tennis-courts - the Tudor kind where Henry VIII was said to have played; and gardens filled with winter heather, jasmine and yellow chrysanthemums. [ ... ] So that first night together was spent in the ancient bedroom with the tiny leaded paned windows, through which shafts of moonlight touched the room with a dreamlike radiance [ ... ] — Jean Plaidy

It was one of the best meals we ever ate.
Perhaps that is because it was the first conscious one, for me at least; but the fact that we remember it with such queer clarity must mean that it had other reasons for being important. I suppose that happens at least once to every human. I hope so.
Now the hills are cut through with superhighways, and I can't say whether we sat that night in Mint Canyon or Bouquet, and the three of us are in some ways even more than twenty-five years older than we were then. And still the warm round peach pie and the cool yellow cream we ate together that August night live in our hearts' palates, succulent, secret, delicious. — Mary Francis Kennedy Fisher

As we walked the streets together, cups of bitter coffee warming our hands, the present told its story all around us. The present has no need for us to do anything except exactly what we're doing. It's the past and future that needs our voices in order to live. So as we walked, as you spoke of yourself and your family, as you spoke of your past, I began to think of the future. I began to put us into a story. What happens after that first night is where I live sometimes, when I can gather enough of us together again, and this is how it goes. — Christopher Barzak

Then at last the opening music came again, with all the different instruments bunched together for each note like a hard, tight fist that socked at her heart. And the first part was over. This music did not take a long time or a short time. It did not have anything to do with time going by at all. She sat with her arms held tight around her legs, biting her salty knee very hard. It might have been five minutes she listened or half the night. The second part was black-colored
a slow march. Not sad, but like the whole world was dead and black and there was no use thinking back how it was before. One of those horn kind of insturments played a sad and silver tune. Then the music rose up angry and with excitement underneath. And finally the black march again. — Carson McCullers

The first show that my dad and my mom did together was for, was a comedy series, a short form that went in the middle of late-night news, and then through all of their career, it was always the "Ed Sullivan Show," it was a variety act, my dad was on the "Jimmy Dean Show" for a few years. — Brian Henson

Nanabozho also had the task to learn how to live from his elder brothers and sisters. When he needed food, he noticed what the animals were eating and copied them. Heron taught him to gather wild rice. One night by the creek, he saw a little ring-tailed animal carefully washing his food with delicate hands. He thought, "Ahh, I am supposed to put only clean food in my body."
Nanabozho was counseled by many plants too, who shared gifts, and learned to treat them always with the greatest respect. After all, plants were here first on the earth and have had a long time to figure things out. Together, all the beings, both plants and animals, taught him what he needed to know. The Creator had told him it would be this way. — Robin Wall Kimmerer

He saw that they were all working together at the first step of the species' break from the home world, and he understood that if the first step were taken successfully, with balance, they could run from star to star all across the night. — Kim Stanley Robinson

From that time on they both looked forward to sleeping together. I might even say that the goal of their lovemaking was not so much pleasure as the sleep that followed it. She especially was affected. Whenever she stayed overnight in her rented room (which quickly became only an alibi for Tomas), she was unable to fall asleep; in his arms she would fall asleep no matter how wrought up she might have been. He would whisper impromptu fairy tales about her, or gibberish, words he repeated monotonously, words soothing or comical, which turned into vague visions lulling her through the first dreams of the night. He had complete control over her sleep: she dozed off at the second he chose. — Milan Kundera

Hannah leaned her face against his chest, and he felt the curve of her smile. "What is it?" he asked.
"Our first night together. And our first morning will be Christmas." Rafe patted her naked hip. "And I've already unwrapped my present."
"You're rather easy to shop for," she said, making him laugh.
"Always. Because Hannah, my love, the only gift I'll ever want" - he paused to kiss her smiling lips - "is you. — Lisa Kleypas

We let fear rule us and guide us, and that's never the way to win. Never. A long time ago a great man once said that "we have nothing to fear but fear itself." That was never truer than during First Night. It was fear that caused people to panic and abandon defenses. It was fear that made them squabble instead of working together. It was fear that inspired them to take actions they would never have taken if they'd given it a minute's more cool thought. — Jonathan Maberry

I'm not a bad guy. I don't lie; I don't sandbag women with flowery
words about a future together and love at first sight. I'm a straight shooter. I'm looking for a good
time - for one night - and I tell them so. That's better than ninety percent of the other guys in here,
believe me. And most of the girls in here are looking for the same thing I am.
Okay, maybe that's not exactly true. But I can't help it if they see me, fuck me, and suddenly want
to bear my children. — Emma Chase

The room's phone rang a few minutes later to tell us that a Town Car was waiting for us downstairs. We went down in the elevator together, and I went out front first to look around, which was standard bodyguard protocol. I left Jackie in the lobby with a doorman who was all too eager to watch her for as long as possible. I walked out and across the cobblestoned driveway, and looked into the Town Car; it was the same driver we'd had the night before, and he nodded at me. I nodded back and turned to look at the rest of the area around the entrance. — Jeff Lindsay

Do you wonder why we wander?" Cal had asked.
It was the night of the first snow; you could hear the branches bending and the icicles
falling outside the window, beyond the wall.
They were warmth together. They were hot breath and blankets and wrapping themselves
close.
And Elijah had thought, I wonder why I never kiss you. I wonder what would happen.
But he didn't say anything out loud. — David Levithan

her legs and lifted. "Well, for starters, I thought we could take that bath you were talking about." "And then?" "We'll see where the night takes us." "As long as it takes us someplace together, I'm fine with an adventure," Ivy offered. "We might want to grab the pie first, though. I've never eaten pie in a bathtub and that somehow sounds magical to me." "I love the way your mind works." "You just want the pie." "I just want you and the pie. I'm a simple man." "And yet you complicate everything in my life and make it so much better." Jack's heart warmed at her words. "Right back at you, honey. Now grab that pie. It's time for a Thanksgiving treat. I have a feeling this is going to be one for the record books." "That makes two of us. — Lily Harper Hart

I love you. I'm blind for you, wild for you. Sick with you. I told you that our first night together when I asked you to marry me, I am telling you now. Everything that's happened to us, everything, is because I crossed the street for you. I worship you. You know that through and through ... — Paullina Simons

Although I was deliberately dismissive of this idea at the beginning of the chapter, the real answer is, "Well, yes, sort of." Nathan DeWall, together with Naomi Eisenberger and other social rejection researchers, conducted a series of studies to test out the idea that over-the-counter painkillers would reduce social pain, not just physical pain. In the first study, they looked at two groups of people. Half of them took 1,000 milligrams a day of acetaminophen (that is, Tylenol), and half of them took equivalently sized placebo pills with no active substances in them. Both groups took their pills every day for three weeks. Each night, the participants answered questions by e-mail regarding the amount of social pain they had felt that day. By the ninth day of the study, the Tylenol group was reporting feeling less social pain than the placebo group. — Matthew D. Lieberman

Let me stay over," he said. "No. I have things to get ready for tomorrow. I teach a couple of classes on Monday and Thursday mornings and keep office hours for students in the afternoons. Then I work my twenty-four-hour shifts in Redding on Tuesday and Friday mornings. Tomorrow starts a real busy week and I - " "Okay," he said. "I'll watch TV while you get your stuff together." "No. You'll seduce me and I have a child in the house." "Gee, how do you suppose all the families with more than one child managed to do that?" "Those first children were used to their mothers and fathers sleeping in the same bed, but Rosie's not. Sometimes she crawls in with me in the night." "I have sweatpants in my duffel. I'll sleep in those," he tried. "No." "Can I have the couch?" "No. Because I know you and you'll seduce me. I think the only thing more important to you than sex is air. Now be on your good behavior. She isn't even asleep yet." "We — Robyn Carr

Behind those homes was Mass General, where my father and I had gone together so many times. A phone call had woken us in the early hours one morning, and we had driven down to Boston just as the first light was intruding with harsh orange streaks in the sky. She looked the same as the night before, lying in the bed with her eyes closed, only all the machines were shut off, making the room in which we had spent so many quiet hours all the more silent. Her skin felt chilled when I touched it, as if she had just returned from a brisk walk in winter. I looked up now at the windows of the hospital, but my father turned toward Chitra. — Anonymous

I bent down and, and as our lips came together, I understood why people made such a big deal about this. First there was the novelty of it: the weird sensation of my lips pressed against hers, and the warm air sighing in and out of our noses, and the mysterious dark hollows behind our teeth. After that came the disappearing. The walls of the room fell away, the ceiling vanished, and we floated up, up to the stars, suspended in a clear crystal bubble... Our kiss contained us, it contained all of our hopes and fears and wants, and even more. It contained the world: Indians praying to painted gods, and skinny Chinese men pedaling their bicycles to work, and the glossy black water of a bayou at night, where, above it in a soft yellow room, a boy kissed a girl for the very first time while the silver-and-gold sparks of a comet rained down on them...... — George Bishop

I wish we were dead together to-day,
Lost sight of, hidden away out of sight,
Clasped and clothed in the cloven clay,
Out of the world's way, out of the light,
Out of the ages of worldly weather, Forgotten of all men altogether,
As the world's first dead, taken wholly away,
Made one with death, filled full of the night. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

The wave of pure outrage blindsided me. I shouldn't be here, I thought. This is utterly fucked up. I should have been sitting in a garden down the road, barefoot with a drink in my hand, swapping the day's work stories with Peter and Jamie. I had never thought about this before, and it almost knocked me over: all the things we should have had. We should have stayed up all night together studying and stressing out before exams, Peter and I should have argued over who got to bring Jamie to our first dance and slagged her about how she looked in her dress. We should have come weaving home together, singing and laughing and inconsiderate, after drunken college nights. We could have shared a flat, taken off Interrailing around Europe, gone arm-in-arm through dodgy fashion phases and low-rent gigs and high-drama love affairs. Two of us might have been married by now, given the other one a godchild. I had been robbed blind. — Tana French

Coming forward with a placating smile, Win handed him a piece of paper. "Of course we would never want to force you into a loveless marriage, dear. But we have put together a list of prospective brides, all of them lovely girls. Won't you take a glance and see if any of them appeals to you?"
Deciding to humor her, Leo looked down at the list. "Marietta Newbury?"
"Yes," Amelia said. "What's wrong with her?"
"I don't like her teeth."
"What about Isabella Charrington?"
"I don't like her mother."
"Lady Blossom Tremaine?"
"I don't like her name."
"Oh, for heaven's sake, Leo, that's not her fault."
"I don't care. I can't have a wife named Blossom. Every night I would feel as if I were calling in one of the cows." Leo lifted his gaze heavenward. "I might as well marry the first woman off the street. Why, I'd be better off with Marks."
Everyone was silent. — Lisa Kleypas

Here goes. See, my boyfriend and I decided to stay together for the summer, you know, even though he had to go visit some family in nowhereville. At least, that's what he told me. Anyway, everything was fine at first, because you know, we talked every night, and then boom, he just stopped calling. So I called and texted him like the good girlfriend I am, and it wasn't stalkerish, I swear, because I stopped after, like, the thirtieth time. A week goes by before he finally hits me back, and he was totally drunk and all, hey, baby, I miss you and what are you wearing, like no time had passed, and I was all, you so do not deserve to know. — Gena Showalter

I was still very much embroiled in the racist politics of the National Front, living a double-life in which I wrote hate-filled propaganda during the day and read the love-filled pages of Chesterton and Lewis at night. I was not aware of any contradiction, at least at first, and sought to bring the two warring viewpoints together by a process of Orwellian doublethink, which is defined in Nineteen Eighty-four as "the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them."1 Throughout the early to mid-eighties I became very adept at doublethink, endeavoring to squeeze the square peg of my Christian reading into the round hole of my racist ideology. As my knowledge of Christianity grew larger and my commitment to racial nationalism diminished in consequence, the strain of squeezing an ever larger peg into an ever-shrinking hole would eventually become impossible. My days of doublethink were numbered. — Joseph Pearce

When I'd lost him the first time, before Culloden, I'd remembered. Every moment of our last night together. Tiny things would come back to me through the years: the taste of salt on his temple and the curve of his skull as I cupped his head; the soft fine hair at the base of his neck, thick and damp in my fingers ... the sudden, magical well of his blood in dawning light when I'd cut his hand and marked him forever as my own. Those things had kept him by me. — Diana Gabaldon

In the passage of their lives together every object in the garden, every item in the house, every word they spoke, attested to their mutual love, the combining of their humuours ... When the time came that Nora was alone most of the night and part of the day, she suffered from the personality of the house, the punishment of those who collect their lives together. Unconsciously at first, she went about disturbing nothing; then she became aware that her soft and careful movements were the outcome of an unreasoning fear - if she disarranged anything Robin might become confused - might lose the scent of home. — Djuna Barnes

I realize that the memories I cherish most are not the first night successes, but of simple, everyday things: walking through our garden in the country after rain; sitting outside a cafe in Provence, drinking the vin de pays; staying at a little hotel in an English market town with Larry, in the early days after our marriage, when he was serving in the Fleet Air Arm, and I was touring Scotland, so that we had to make long treks to spend weekends together. — Vivien Leigh

Just thinking about spending an uninterrupted hour with him makes the color rise in my cheeks, and Emma inquires, "Are you okay? You seem kind of ... distracted."
Distracted. Well, that's one way to put it.
Deciding to throw caution to the wind, I fess up, "Kyle's here. It's our first night together."
"The cop who arrested you?" Emma suddenly looks much more cheerful as she quips, "Kinky, Jessalyn. Did he bring his handcuffs? — Katie Lynn Johnson