Houston Shost

“At the beauty of what she had stumbled onto, at the fear that something terrible would happen because she was not vigilant enough. She cried at the fear of something so good that she would not be brave enough to bear it.”
― Rebecca Wells, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

“And therefor, sir,' seyde the Bysshop, 'leve thys opynyon, other ellis I shall curse you with booke, belle and candyll.'

'Do thou thy warste,' seyde Mordred, 'and I defyghe the!”
― Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte D'Arthur

“Real isn't how you are made. It's a thing that happens to you," said the Skin Horse. " When you are real you don't mind being hurt.
It doesn't happen all at once. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen to people who break easily, or who have sharp corners. Generally, by the time you are real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out, and you get loose and very shabby. But these don't matter at all, because once you are Real, you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand.
Once you are Real, you can't unreal. It last forever”
― Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit

“We feel that to reveal embarrassing or private things, we have given someone something, that, like a primitive person fearing that a photographer will steal his soul, we identify our secrets, our past and their blotches, with our identity, that revealing our habits or losses or deeds somehow makes one less of oneself. ”
― Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius