V.C. Andrews

Love, in short is the most dangerous emotion human can experience

I don't think she's ever coming back.

After it's all over, the early childhood, a chain of birthdays woven with candlelight, piles of presents, voices of relatives singing and praising your promise and future, after the years of schooling, fitting yourself into different size desks, memorizing, reciting, reporting, and performing for jury after jury of teachers, counselors, and administrators, you still feel inadequate, alone, vulnerable, and naked in a world that can be unforgiving and terribly demanding.

I saw myself dancing alone, always alone,

All right, Chris, you've given me a breather. I'm prepared foranything.And thank you for saying all of that, and for loving me, for youhaven't gone unloved, or unadmired, yourself." I kissed him quickly onthe lips, and told him to go on, to hit me with his knockout blow."Really, Chris, I know you must have something perfectly awful to tellme-so out with it. Keep holding me as you tell me, and I can standanything you have to say.

Whatever doesn't destroy you, makes you stronger. Hardships have a way of toughening us, if they don't kill us.

It's funny how when you're little, you miss all the little lies. They float right past you, but you don't wonder about them much. For a long time, you think this is just something adults still do after being kids - pretend. Then one day you wake up and realize most of the world you're in is built on someone's make-believe.

You were right the first time, Cathy. It was a stupid, silly story.Ridiculous! Only insane people would die for the sake of love. I'llbet you a hundred to one a woman wrote that junky romantic trash!"Just a minute ago I'd despised that author for bringing about such amiserable ending, then there I went, rushing to the defense. "T. M.Ellis could very well have been a man! Though I doubt any woman writerin the nineteenth century had much chance of being published, unlessshe used her initials, or a man's name. And why is it all men thinkeverything a woman writes is trivial or trashy-or just plain sillydrivel? Don't men have romantic notions? Don't men dream of findingthe perfect love? And it seems to me, that Raymond was far moremushy-minded than Lily!

You know what I miss the most about my youth? My gullibility. It's nice believing in everything and everyone. It makes you feel secure, but be strong and depend more on yourself and you'll be ready for disappointments. That's the best advice I can offer you.

Love is fragile at best and often a burden or something that blinds us. It's fodder for poets and song writers and they build it into something beyond human capacity. Falling in love means enrolling yourself in the school of disappointment. Being human means failing each other often, and no two people fail each other more than two people who pledge to do things for each other that they'll never do because they are just incapable of it...That's why art is enduring. The look of love or hope, or the look of compassion, bravery, whatever, is captured forever. We spend our lives trying to get someone to be as enduring as a painting or a sculpture and we can't because feelings crumble as quickly as the flesh.

The Bible said, as Chris quoted one memorable day, there was a time foreverything. I figured my time for happiness was just ahead, waitingfor me.

Promises are lies wrapped in pretty ribbons -Cinnamon

Or was Chris thinking, as I was, that if we went tothe police and told our story, our faces would be splashed on the frontpages of every newspaper in the country? Would the glare of publicitymake up for what we'd lose? Our privacy-our need to stay together?Could we lose each other just to get even?

You are an intriguing combination, half child, half seductress, half angel."I laughed sort and bitterly. "That's what all men like to think about women. Little girls they have to take care of--when I know for a fact it is the male who is more boy than man.

In the dark, the little live Christmas tree, two feet tall, sparkled with tiny coloured lights, like the tears I saw glistening in my brother's eyes.

A Colder breeze lifted a dead leaf to the roof and sent it scuttling merrily on its way to catch in my hair. It crackled dry and brittle when Chris plucked it out and held it, just staring down at a dead maple leaf as if his very life depended on reading its secret for knowing how to blow in the wind. No arms, no legs, no wings... bit it could fly when dead.