The past can teach us, nurture us, but it cannot sustain us. The essence of life is change, and we must move ever forward or the soul will wither and die.
~ Susanna Kearsley
Ye'll never best your fears until ye face them
But life, if nothing else, had taught her promises weren't always to be counted on, and what appeared at first a shining chance might end in bitter disappointment.
There are times when our victories have a cost that we did not foresee, when winning brings us loss.
I had met death before, in different forms--I knew quite well the pattern of my grieving. First came shock, and then tears, and then a bitter anger, followed by a softer grief that time would wear away.
A grieving person's like a person treading in deep water--if they've nothing to hold on to, they lose hope. They slide right under.
Watching him walk off was very nearly as absorbing as observing his approach. He walked as all men ought to walk, with a decided swagger to his shoulders.
Tis action moves the world....[in] the game of chess, mind that: ye cannot leave your men to stand unmoving on the board and hope to win. A soldier must first step upon the battlefield if does mean to cross it.
Let the devil bar my way, I will come back to ye.
Sometimes, the scales of justice find a level of their own, without our help... And sometimes, in seeking justice, we don't always serve it.
No matter what the bards may say, there’s no romance in dying for a man.
The strongest soldier cannot balance long upon the blade that does divide his honor and his heart, and whatever way he falls, the cut will kill him.
That's how you have to read this book, you see. You wade through a few sentences, then stop and think about them, then wade through a few more.
And does he like blondes, as well?'Rob laughed. I had forgotten just how great a laugh he had. 'No, he prefers, dark haired women. You've nothing to fear from the Sentinel, Nicola.
As a former waitress myself, I know firsthand how a simple smile from someone can improve your day and how a single harsh word can destroy it. Being courteous and thoughtful costs you nothing and can sometimes pay you dividends in unexpected ways.
It's the pursuit of love and happiness that is the driving force of the romantic novel.
When you say that you write romantic fiction, there are a lot of people who have an image in their mind of the 'bodice ripper.' It's the one term that most romantic fiction writers absolutely hate because it has no bearing on what people are writing.
Romantic fiction, in the broader sense, can be any novel that has a love story somewhere in it. It can be a mystery or a historical novel, as long as it has this very strong romantic thread running through it.
A walk through the storage facility of the community museum where I worked might easily have convinced you that people in the past wore only wedding dresses, carried silver candlesticks, and played with porcelain dolls.
People didn't just wear wedding dresses in the past. They also wore plain cotton shifts beneath them. As pretty as the dresses might be, and as lovely as they might look on display, if a museum doesn't hang the shifts beside them or acknowledge that the shifts existed, that exhibit's incomplete.
