“Ani laughed. ‘A goose girl should feel honored to be mistaken for a lady with land to put a horse on, sir.’
‘You didn’t say ‘sir’ when you stole my horse. Geric. My name’s Geric.‘”
“Geric,” she called.
He turned back around.
“What kind of flowers were they?”
“I don’t rightly know,” he said. He made faltering gestures with his hands, forming their size and shape from the air. “They were yellow, and smallish, and had lots of petals.”
“Thank you,” she said. “They were beautiful.”
“I, Geric-Sinath of Gerhard, declare that you’re beautiful and you’re perfect and I’ll slay any man who tries to take you from my side. Goose girl, may I kiss you?”
“A man fishes for two reasons: he’s either sport fishing or fishing to eat, which means he’s either going to try to catch the biggest fish he can, take a picture of it, admire it with his buddies and toss it back to sea, or he’s going to take that fish on home, scale it, fillet it, toss it in some cornmeal, fry it up, and put it on his plate. This, I think, is a great analogy for how men seek out women.”
“I don’t know if anyone’s ever told you this”, he begins. He doesn’t blush, and his eyes don’t dart away. Instead I find myself staring into a pair of oceans - one perfect, the other blemished by that tiny ripple. “You’re very attractive.”
“I’ve been complimented on my appearance before. But never in his tone of voice. Of all the things he’s said, I don’t know why this catches me off guard. But it startles me so much that without thinking I blurt out, “I could say the same about you.” I pause. ‘In case you didn’t know.’ ”
“We men are very simple people: if we like what we see, we’re coming over there. If we don’t want anything from you, we’re not coming over there. Period.”
“I don’t know if anyone’s ever told you this”, he begins. He doesn’t blush, and his eyes don’t dart away. Instead I find myself staring into a pair of oceans - one perfect, the other blemished by that tiny ripple. “You’re very attractive.”
“Such women as you a hundred men always covet—your eyes will bewitch scores on scores into an unavailing fancy for you—you can only marry one of that many.”
“Just to summarize: I lurched into Rachel’s room like a zombie, freaking her out, then went for a fist pound. It is impossible to be less smooth than Greg S. Gaines.”
“I could tell you an interesting fact to get you nodding, Like how carpets were first made in the hopes that all of the world’s grass would one day be replaced by carpets, or, as they called them, ‘comfy grass.‘”
“‘Nice polka dots,’ I say. He smiles. ‘Nice Labradors.’ I mean, he’s cute, so I’ll let it slide, but the dogs on my pants are clearly golden retrievers.”
“I’m not who that guy says I am. I’m not who that girl says I am. I’m not who social media likes and comments say I am. I’m not who the grades, to-do lists, messes, and mess ups say I am. I’m not who the scale says I am or the sum total of what my flaws say I am. I’m going to stop flirting with the unstable things of this world so I can fall completely in love with You. I am loved. I am held. I am Yours. I am forever Yours.”
″‘But don’t they all do these things--the young girls in America?’ Winterbourne inquired.
Mrs. Costello stared a moment. ‘I should like to see my granddaughters do them!’ she declared grimly. This seemed to throw some light upon the matter, for Winterbourne remembered to have heard that his pretty cousins in New York were ‘tremendous flirts.‘”
‘I’d simply love to come with you for a week in July,’ she went on. (Anyhow, she was publicly proving her unfaithfulness to Henry. Fanny ought to be pleased, even though it was Bernard.) ‘That is,’ Lenina gave him her most deliciously significant smile, ‘if you still want to have me.’
“He’s aw’fly handsome, Anne. And he teases the girls something terrible. He just torments our lives out.”
Diana’s voice indicated that she rather liked having her life tormented out than not.
“Between ourselves, Jo, some of the girls I know really do go on at such a rate I’m ashamed of them. They don’t mean any harm, I’m sure, but if they knew how we fellows talked about them afterward, they’d mend their ways, I fancy.”