Karen Marie Moning

Words can be twisted into any shape. Promises can be made to lull the heart and seduce the soul. In the final analysis, words mean nothing. They are labels we give things in an effort to wrap our puny little brains around their underlying natures, when ninety-nine percent of the time the totality of the reality is an entirely different beast. The wisest man is the silent one. Examine his actions. Judge him by them.

My city. I pondered that phrase, wondered why Barrons felt that way. He never said __ur world._ He always said __our world._ But he called Dublin his city. Merely because he__ been in it so long? Or had Barrons, like me, been beguiled by her tawdry grace, fallen for her charm and colorful dualities?I looked around __y_ bookstore. That was what I called it. Did we call the things of our heart our own, whether they were or not?

I can see you are a fine lady, but this boy is randy as a goat around you and it's plain to see. If he seeks the joys of wedded bliss, he can wed you. Without a weddin' he'll be havin' no bliss.

Sheep are always looking for a new shepherd when the terrain gets rocky.

I would wear pink because I knew my future was anything but rosy. I would accessorize myself to the hilt, and I would wear flirty shoes because my world needed more beauty to counter all the ugliness in it. I would wear pink because I hated gray, I didn__ deserve white, and I was sick of black.

It's funny how, when things seem the darkest, moments of beauty present themselves in the most unexpected places.

And Mega has a crush on Chester.""I do not!""Do too, Mega.""He's like, old!""How old, Christian says.""Like at least thirty or something."Lor laughs. " Fucking ancient, ain't it, kid?""Dude," I agree. I like Lor.

It's just another of Robin's sayings. Like, 'Holy strawberries, Batman, we're in a jam! Or, Holy Kleenex, Batman, it was right under our nose and we blew it!

Was he a good kisser, Ms. Lane?_ Barrons asked, watching me carefully.I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand at the memory. __t was like being owned.__ome women like that.__ot me.__erhaps it depends on the man doing the owning.__ doubt it. I couldn__ breathe with him kissing me.__ne day you may kiss a man you can__ breathe without, and find breath is of little consequence.__ight, and one day my prince might come.__ doubt he__l be a prince, Ms. Lane. Men rarely are.

Sighing dismally, she acknowledged that some things just weren't humanly possible - not even Martha Stewart could fold fitted sheets.

I said breathe. Not do a fish-out of-water imitation.

The more excited I get, the more I vibrate.""Now there's a thought," Lor says."If you mean what I think you mean, you want to shut the fuck up and never think it again," Ryodan says.

There are only two things to worry about in life: either you__e free or you__e not. If you__e free, there__ nothing to worry about. If you__e not, you kick the shit out of everything around you until you are.

You, Ms. Lane, are a menace to others! A walking, talking catastrophe in pink!

I don__ know where dreams come from. Sometimes I wonder if they__e genetic memories, or messages from something divine. Warnings perhaps. Maybe we do come with an instruction booklet but we__e too dense to read it, because we__e dismissed it as the irrational waste product of the __ational_ mind. Sometimes I think all the answers we need are buried in our slumbering subconscious, int he dreaming. The booklet right there, and ever night when we lay our heads down on the pillow it flips open. The wise read it, heed it. The rest of us try as hard as we can upon awakening to forget any disturbing revelations we might have found there.

Friends don__ build cages for each other.

I love books, by the way, way more than movies. Movies tell you what to think. A good book lets you choose a few thoughts for yourself. Movies show you the pink house. A good book tells you there's a pink house and lets you paint some of the finishing touches, maybe choose the roof style,park your own car out front. My imagination has always topped anything a movie could come up with. Case in point, those darned Harry Potter movies. That was so not what that part-Veela-chick, Fleur Delacour, looked like.

Fear and doubt are major stampeders.