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'Life is not fair. Get used to it.'— Charles J. Sykes (commonly misattributed to Bill Gates)
'Life isn't fair. Deal with it.' Fiction Isn't Fair and neither is Real Life. Another one of those Stock Phrases, usually particularly irritating to the character it's being told to. Another way of saying 'deal with it'. Sometimes used to respond to an accusation that the character wasn't fighting fair. Often said by a character guilty of going out of their way to make things unfair, as their way of Evil Gloating and rubbing the victim's nose in their plight.
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Jul 31, 2014 - The idea that “life isn't fair” isn't just some hard-knocks philosophy espoused by tough-as-nails elders who lived through the Depression; it is an. Mchb table in sap.
Examples:
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- In Monster Rancher, Tiger tells Genki speech during their first meeting, while he and his Wild Pack are robbing the other Searchers;Tiger: You're a very brave, and very foolish little human. You rush in head first not bothering to even think of the consequences. You don't understand that sometimes, bravery isn't enough. Life can be hard, little human, hard and unfair—and you must know this. Don't. Be. Reckless. You're young, brave, and you have a good heart—but in this world, that isn't enough. I know that better than anyone.
- In Macross Plus, Isamu snaps at Myung's self-pity by telling her that sometimes life isn't fair and that she needs to deal with it, instead of feeling sorry for herself.
- In the second season of Yu-Gi-Oh! GX (the dub only) Sartorious' henchman X tells Jaden this, telling him that you can't always get everything you want, emphasizing it by saying that when he was Jaden's age, he used to dream of being a pastry chef. (Of course, this sort of comes off as a Broken Aesop considering the type of person X is, and considering that he seems to love his actual job a little too much, that of an Amoral Attorney who is willing to use cruel and underhanded methods to crush the will of his opponent.)
- In Transmetropolitan, when Spider meets with The Beast before the election, The Beast invokes this in spirit when Spider points out how unfair some of The Beast's views are.Spider: That's sick.
The Beast: That's the way it is. Life sucks. Wear a hat. - A suicidal woman tells this to Superman in the Grounded storyline. Much to her surprise, Superman agrees with her, but then adds that it isn't 'unfair' either.
- A line from the song 'Empath's Ballad' in the Empath: The Luckiest Smurf novel, sung by Empath about how unfair his life is.They say that life isn't fair.
All I can say to that is I don't care.
It's so easy when you took from me
The things I can't get back from you in time. - In Kage, Miranda has this opinion (for a justified reason), as she tells Jade in the 12th chapter.Miranda: The only justice that I know is the one that people create and enforce. Everyone has their own definition of right and wrong, but only strength determines which set of rights and wrongs prevails.
Jade: I don't believe in that. There is right, and there is wrong. As much as there is good and evil. It's how the world works.
Miranda: Then you are as naïve as Elyon is. Or the Guardians and the Rebels, for that matter. There is no evil, just as there is no good. Life is cruel and ruthless, not wrong. Or right. It simply is.
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Films — Animated
- The Lion King: Scar has this to say to a mouse he's caught:Scar: Life's not fair, is it? You see, I .. well, I shall never be king. And you .. shall never see the light of another day. Adieu.
- Many times in The Princess Bride.'Who ever said life is fair? Where is that written? Life isn't always fair.''Life is pain, your highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.'
- Cozy Carlisle from Dead Again:Hey, thumbdick, I was a damn good shrink. Nineteen years I worked with a lot of people through a lot of shit. OK, I slept with a patient or two. It's not like I didn't care about them. I loved being a doctor. I used to not charge half my patients. Then the fucking state comes along, they send in some bitch undercover, and I'm fucked. Life isn't fair, is it?
- Snape to Harry in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix:'You and Black, you're two of a kind: sentimental children, forever whining about how bitterly unfair your lives have been. Well, it may have escaped your notice, but life isn't fair. Your blessed father knew that; in fact, he frequently saw to it!'
- A variation in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. Will complains that Jack only won their fight by cheating, and that he'd have lost a fair fight.Jack: That's not much incentive for me to fight fair, then, is it?
- Davy Jones in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest:'Life is cruel! Why should the afterlife be any different?'
- Labyrinth:Sarah:(for about the seventeenth time since the film started) That's not fair!
Jareth: You say that so often. I wonder what your basis for comparison is.- She learns it after that, however. When Hoggle seems to think it's different when it's unfair in her favor, she quickly reminds him.
- Jason feels the need to bring this up to a recently orphaned girl in Mystery Team.Jason: Life isn't fair. If life was fair, I'd have gotten a new bike for Christmas, instead of a stupid car.
- Shows up in the Hindi movie Lagaan, where the Captain Russell puts the natives in an impossible position - play a cricket game against an experienced team and win to avoid taxes for the next few years - or lose and pay three times that amount. His sister calls him out on it.Russell: So is life.
- This comes back to bite him in the ass later.
- Twilight:Bella: Hasn't anyone ever told you? Life isn't fair.
- Anita Blake from Anita Blake Vampire Hunter:
- A Series of Unfortunate Events:Count Olaf: (stuck in a cage, talking to the distraught Baudelaire children) Life isn't fair.
- Many times in The Princess Bride.'Life is pain. Anyone who says differently is selling something.''Life isn't fair. It's just fairer than death, that's all.'
- Discworld
- In Soul Music, Crusty Caretaker Albert explains that Susan is the only eligible replacement for Death, and being a typical teenager at heart Susan eventually resorts to complaining 'It's not fair!' Albert retorts, dripping with sarcasm, that she can go explain that to the universe at large and see how far it gets her. This gets referred back to at the end of the book, when she's trying to save Buddy:You could say to the universe, this is not fair. And the universe would say: Oh, isn't it? Sorry.
You could save people. You could get there in the nick of time. And something could snap its fingers and say, no, it has to be this way. Let me tell you how it has to be. This is how the legend has to go. - This is also seen earlier in Mort when protesting the unfairness of someone's death.There is no fair. There is no justice. There is just me.
- In Soul Music, Crusty Caretaker Albert explains that Susan is the only eligible replacement for Death, and being a typical teenager at heart Susan eventually resorts to complaining 'It's not fair!' Albert retorts, dripping with sarcasm, that she can go explain that to the universe at large and see how far it gets her. This gets referred back to at the end of the book, when she's trying to save Buddy:
- Carlton in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air combines this with a Shout-Out:Life isn't fair, Will. I mean, was it fair when Bambi's mother died?
- In one episode of Babylon 5, Marcus the Ranger expresses a rather enlightened outlook on the subject:You know, I used to think that it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them? So, now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe.
- The Central Theme of Malcolm in the Middle. Hell, it's even stated in the theme song!
- Life in Farscape pretty much sucks, as noted by Crais.Crais: There is much in life that is unfair. We are all proof of that.
- And John expresses the sentiment later when Chiana is upset that she can't see her long-lost (and previously presumed dead) brother.John: I know.. But since when do people like us get what we want?
- And John expresses the sentiment later when Chiana is upset that she can't see her long-lost (and previously presumed dead) brother.
- Blackadder the Third gives us this:
- Blackadder: But you know Baldrick, the world isn't fair. If it was, things like this wouldn't happen, would they?
- On Young Hercules, Hades knows of the special protection that Zeus grants Hercules. He expects Herc to be some kind of privileged son and is surprised to learn that the guy has never even met Zeus.Hercules: The Fates can be cruel. Look what they did to you.
Hades: You're tellin' me. My brother, Zeus, gets to be king of all gods. My other brother, Poseidon, gets to be god of the sea. I get god of the Other Side, hangin' around for eternity with nothin' but dead people. Doesn't seem fair. - On Quantum Leap, the first part of 'The Leap Home' sees Sam as his younger self at a time when his family has yet to endure assorted tragedies (the deaths of his father and brother, his sister marrying an abuser, etc.). Sam tries to do whatever he can to prevent these things, but his warnings just create strain and problems. Sam laments that it's not fair he can Set Right What Once Went Wrong for complete strangers but not the people he loves most. Conversely, Al thinks this situation is actually extremely fair; he says Sam is lucky to get to spend a few days with his family and that he would give anything to see his own father and sister again.
- Young Jeezy in 'Soul Survivor':
- Relient K's 'Be My Escape' uses the phrase to invert the message.And this life sentence that I'm serving
I admit that I'm every bit deserving
But the beauty of grace is that it makes life not fair - Papa Roach in 'She Loves Me Not':I don't know
If I care.
I'm the jerk;
Life's not fair. - The chorus of the Black Box Recorder song 'Child Psychology' goes like this:
- Mitch Benn's plea to be abducted by aliens:People are stupid and life isn't fair,
Doctor Who's finished and Boris is mayor!
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Newspaper Comics
- Lampshaded in Calvin and HobbesCalvin's dad: The world is isn't fair, Calvin.
Calvin: I know, but why isn't it ever unfair in my favor? - Played with in Beetle Bailey. Beetle complains that he's got kitchen detail again, and Sarge tells him that no one ever said that life was fair. Beetle points out that Sarge is the one deciding who gets put on kitchen detail, and Sarge tells him that no one ever said that he (Sarge) was fair, either.
- Vince McMahon sums up this trope in this promo.
- George Carlin had a bit in one his stand up routines where he not only expounded on how unfair life was, but also noted 'Everyone who ever told me that life was fair died horribly before age 35.'
- A famous joke by Johnny Carson: 'If life was fair, Elvis would be alive and all the impersonators would be dead.'
- In Pokémon Live!, Giovanni says this to Ash in the climax.Ash: It's not fair! What kind of creature is that?
Giovanni: Welcome to the world, Ash Ketchum!
- Tali's stance in Mass Effect 2 :Tali: I don't think life is about what you deserve.
- In Zero Time Dilemma, this is Zero II’s Catchphrase:
Web Comics
- Inverted in Something*Positive when Fayedied:Doctor: I'm so sorry. I know this is hard and she was so young. Sometimes it just doesn't seem fair.Fred:: Miss, I had almost forty years with the most amazin' woman in the world. If life is unfair, it was unfair in my favor.
- Invoked and played with in thisArthur, King of Time and Space strip. To Arthur and his crew 'life isn't fair' is a reason to work at making it fairer.
- In the Batman: The Animated Series episode 'What is Reality?', the Riddler's final challenge to Batman before his virtual world shuts down is: 'If the planet were equitable, I'd still have my old job.' This actually has a double meaning; since he previously had told Batman that his criminal career was a personal matter (in the previous episode he appeared in), he's saying if life were fair, his old employer would never have cheated and fired him. But it's also a riddle that tells the hero where he is: The sentence can be rephrased to say, 'If the world was fair, I'd still have my ex-position', meaning he's at the World's Fair Exposition.
- In Steven Universe, when Peridot starts to complain that she won the battle and is irritated that the Pearl gets praised instead, she gets a variant of this from Garnet:
- 'Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boatride', the fourth ever episode of South Park brings this up when Mr Garrison gives Stan an A- for an incredibly half-assed oral report on ancient cultures (he literally made it up on the spot and said that 'ancient cultures has plagued our fragile Earth for many years'). Cartman, who turned in an equally half-assed report but got an F, complains bitterly, and Mr Garrison says that Stan gets preferential treatment because he's the star quarterback of the football team.Cartman: That's not fair!Cartman: Stupid puppet..
- This is especially ironic considering Cartman's Character Development in later seasons where he'll move heaven and Earth if he thinks he's been even slightly wronged.
- Butters bitterly complains about this to himself in the episode 'Professor Chaos', after he's been 'fired' as the boys fourth friend, thinking about how he did all the humiliating, painful things they asked and they still rejected him. As such, he decides to take on the mantle of Tin Tyrant supervillain Professor Chaos (and is joined by the equally mistreated Dougie as General Disarray) as a way to take revenge on the world. Unfortunately for Butters, he really IS just as lame and and wimpy as the boys think, and all his evil plans just amount to pathetically minor acts of vandalism like switching around soup orders in a diner or trying to flood the world with a garden hose.
- Used and abused to hell and back, then back to hell and back again. Trolls, Griefers, and especiallyThe Social Darwinist, using either this or 'satire' to excuse Jerkass behavior.
- Ironic since The Social Darwinist oft perpetrates the 'Just World' fallacy.
- Commonly used by parents and authority figures..usually to excuse Jerkass behavior.
- On the more positive side of things, wanting life to be fair and thus striving towards an admittedly impossible ideal is seen as a virtue of our race.
- Almost anyone dealing with someone that is complaining about whatever is bothering them will tell the person to deal with it, much to the annoyance of the person doing the complaining.
- Often told to those suffering from depression. To those who know someone who is depressed, saying this is abadidea.
Index
“It may be unfair, but what happens in a few days, sometimes even a single day, can change the course of a whole lifetime..”
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“Who says life is fair, where is that written?”
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“It's hard to fight when the fight ain't fair.”
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“Fair means everyone gets what they need. And the only way to get what you need is to make it happen yourself.”
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“It’s probably my job to tell you life isn’t fair, but I figure you already know that. So instead, I’ll tell you that hope is precious, and you’re right not to give up.”
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tags: defiance, fair, giving-up, hope, life, perseverance
“Chiron had said once that nations were the most foolish of mortal inventions. “No man is worth more than another, wherever he is from.”
“But what if he is your friend?” Achilles had asked him, feet kicked up on the wall of the rose-quartz cave. “Or your brother? Should you treat him the same as a stranger?”
“You ask a question that philosophers argue over,” Chiron had said. “He is worth more to you, perhaps. But the stranger is someone else’s friend and brother. So which life is more important?”
We had been silent. We were fourteen, and these things were too hard for us. Now that we are twenty-seven, they still feel too hard.
He is half of my soul, as the poets say. He will be dead soon, and his honor is all that will remain. It is his child, his dearest self. Should I reproach him for it? I have saved Briseis. I cannot save them all.
I know, now, how I would answer Chiron. I would say: there is no answer. Whichever you choose, you are wrong.”
―
“But what if he is your friend?” Achilles had asked him, feet kicked up on the wall of the rose-quartz cave. “Or your brother? Should you treat him the same as a stranger?”
“You ask a question that philosophers argue over,” Chiron had said. “He is worth more to you, perhaps. But the stranger is someone else’s friend and brother. So which life is more important?”
We had been silent. We were fourteen, and these things were too hard for us. Now that we are twenty-seven, they still feel too hard.
He is half of my soul, as the poets say. He will be dead soon, and his honor is all that will remain. It is his child, his dearest self. Should I reproach him for it? I have saved Briseis. I cannot save them all.
I know, now, how I would answer Chiron. I would say: there is no answer. Whichever you choose, you are wrong.”
―
tags: choices, fair, life, love, philosophy, truth, wise-words
“It’s all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps.”
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tags: bootstraps, equality, fair, reasonable, work-ethic
“Life is fair. We all get the same nine-month shake in the box, and then the dice roll. Some people get a run of sevens. Some people, unfortunately, get snake-eyes. Its just how the world is.”
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tags: dice, fair, full-dark-no-stars, life, roll, sevens, stephen-king
“To all those women -- strong enough to be heroes; fair enough to be ladies. This song is for you.”
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“We are all born and someday we’ll all die. Most likely to some degree alone.What if our aloneness isn’t a tragedy? What if our aloneness is what allows us to speak the truth without being afraid? What if our aloneness is what allows us to adventure – to experience the world as a dynamic presence – as a changeable, interactive thing?
If I lived in Bosnia or Rwanda or who knows where else, needless death wouldn’t be a distant symbol to me, it wouldn’t be a metaphor, it would be a reality.
And I have no right to this metaphor. But I use it to console myself. To give a fraction of meaning to something enormous and needless.
This realization. This realization that I will live my life in this world where I have privileges.
I can’t cool boiling waters in Russia. I can’t be Picasso. I can’t be Jesus. I can’t save the planet single-handedly.
I can wash dishes.”
―
If I lived in Bosnia or Rwanda or who knows where else, needless death wouldn’t be a distant symbol to me, it wouldn’t be a metaphor, it would be a reality.
And I have no right to this metaphor. But I use it to console myself. To give a fraction of meaning to something enormous and needless.
This realization. This realization that I will live my life in this world where I have privileges.
I can’t cool boiling waters in Russia. I can’t be Picasso. I can’t be Jesus. I can’t save the planet single-handedly.
I can wash dishes.”
―
tags: fair, hate, justice, love-care, peace, planet, poor, world
“The wicked are wicked, no doubt, and they go astray and they fall, and they come by their deserts; but who can tell the mischief which the very virtuous do?”
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“If I ask God to punish my enemy with vengeful prayers,
then He is fair to allow the enemy to do the same for me.”
―
then He is fair to allow the enemy to do the same for me.”
―
“You cannot be fair to others without first being fair to yourself.
Know that a well-honed sense of justice is a measure of personal experience, and all experience is a measure of self.
Know that the highest expression of justice is mercy.
Thus, as the supreme judge in your own court, you must have compassion for yourself.
Otherwise, cede your gavel.”
―
Know that a well-honed sense of justice is a measure of personal experience, and all experience is a measure of self.
Know that the highest expression of justice is mercy.
Thus, as the supreme judge in your own court, you must have compassion for yourself.
Otherwise, cede your gavel.”
―
tags: acceptance, charity, fair, fairness, judge, judgment, justice, mercy, personal, self, self-esteem
“What did I do to make Mommy leave?”
“You didn’t do anything. This isn’t your fault.”
“Then why?” she’d wailed.
“I don’t know,” her daddy had said, and he looked so sad.
“It isn’t fair!”
“No, it isn’t, baby. Not by a mile. The world’s only as fair as you can make it. Takes a lot of fight. A lot of fight. But if you stay in here, in your own little cave, that’s one less fighter on the side of fair.”
―
“You didn’t do anything. This isn’t your fault.”
“Then why?” she’d wailed.
“I don’t know,” her daddy had said, and he looked so sad.
“It isn’t fair!”
“No, it isn’t, baby. Not by a mile. The world’s only as fair as you can make it. Takes a lot of fight. A lot of fight. But if you stay in here, in your own little cave, that’s one less fighter on the side of fair.”
―
“Justice based purely on laws is about as accurate as a portrait created out of large low-resolution color pixels.
If you stand back far enough it looks good.
Come any closer and the glaring approximations overtake all semblance of the original.
Justice should be viewable under the microscope, not from a telescope.
And for that it needs to be based not on law but on truth.”
―
If you stand back far enough it looks good.
Come any closer and the glaring approximations overtake all semblance of the original.
Justice should be viewable under the microscope, not from a telescope.
And for that it needs to be based not on law but on truth.”
―
tags: fair, fairness, justice, law, spirit, truth
“Don’t fuck yourself waiting for fair. Understand? Listening? You will fuck yourself waiting for fair.”
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“We must all work in harmony with each other to stand up for what is right, to speak up for what is fair, and to always voice any corrections so that the ignorant become informed and justice is never ignored. Every time a person allows an act of ignorance to happen, they delay our progress for true change. Every person, molecule and thing matters. We become responsible for the actions of others the instant we become conscious of what they are doing wrong and fail to remind them of what is right.”
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tags: actions, change, conscious, corrections, fair, harmony, ignorance, ignorant, ignored, injustice, justice, life, progress, purpose, responsibility, right, speak-up, stand-up, truth, united, unity, voice, work-together, wrong
“Our freedoms are vanishing. If you do not get active to take a stand now against all that is wrong while we still can, then maybe one of your children may elect to do so in the future, when it will be far more riskier — and much, much harder.”
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tags: action, administration, censor, censors, censorship, change, cheating, children, civil-liberties, civil-rights, control, corrupt, corrupt-politics, corruption, democracy, democratic, dissent, elect, elections, equality, fair, freedom, freedom-of-speech, future, government, hard, human-rights, injustice, justice, liberty, peace, people, politics, public, rebellion, regulations, revolt, revolution, rigged, rigging, risk, riskier, social-change, social-justice, stand-up, suppress, system, take-a-stand, unfair-elections, united, unity, vote, voting, world, youth
“Murderers don't get forgiven just because we promise to be good from now on. We have to earn our way back. One hundred is the price. One hundred lives for each we took. That seems fair. That's how we get whole again and that's our work, from now until as long as it takes.”
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tags: earn, fair, forgive, forgiven, forgiveness, good, lives, murderers, redemption, restoration, restore, work
“Teach all men to fish, but first teach all men to be fair. Take less, give more. Give more of yourself, take less from the world. Nobody owes you anything, you owe the world everything.”
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tags: equality, fair, fairness, fish, fishing, suzy-kassem, teach, teaching, work, world
“I looked up fairness in the dictionary and it was not there.”
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tags: definition, fair, fairness, language, words
“We will never know peace and stability in the world without balance. And we will never know balance without justice for all. Yet, justice exists only where there is fairness and equality -- when every man and country is treated and viewed equally. No country should be given power over another. In addition, no country should be granted privileges that are denied to others. No one country has the authority to decide which country will be embargoed, denied to protect itself, and will be favored based on the weight of their resources. Eliminate the hypocrisy.”
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tags: authority, balance, corruption, country, embargo, equal, equality, equally, fair, fairness, greed, greediness, humanism, humanity-quotes, hypocrisy, imbalance, justice, leadership, nation, peace, people, power, profit, race, racism, resources, stability, world-peace
“Stand up for what is right against the wrong.”
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tags: corrupt-corruption, fair, fairness, just, justice, right, right-and-wrong, stand-up, stand-up-quotes, standing-alone, truth, unfair, unfairness, unjust, wrong
“What kind of lifehave you lived, little one, that everything seems to be a question of fair and unfair? Life and death just are. Fair has nothing to do with it.”
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“Be fair before being generous, be human before being fair.”
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“There is beautiful you are.'
'No,' said Marged, between a sigh and a sob.
'Yes,' said Owen.
'No,' said Marged, not so certain.
'Behold,' Owen said, from Solomon. 'thou art fair. Thou hast dove's eyes.'
'Dove's eyes are small.' Marged said.
'Yours are so big they are my whole world,' said Owen.”
―
'No,' said Marged, between a sigh and a sob.
'Yes,' said Owen.
'No,' said Marged, not so certain.
'Behold,' Owen said, from Solomon. 'thou art fair. Thou hast dove's eyes.'
'Dove's eyes are small.' Marged said.
'Yours are so big they are my whole world,' said Owen.”
―
“No one would ever like him; he would never be accused of being unfair.”
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“He would not kiss her mouth or allow her to caress him in tenderness. He broke his fierce silence only to whisper what wicked magic he was going to work until it took little more than the husky rasp of his voice in her ear to bring her to the brink of fulfillment. Had there been even a hint of brutality in his attentions, Holly might have brought herself to hate him, but his accomplished hands cherished her flesh as if it were his own private altar. She’d never known such unbridled ecstasy. Or such misery.”
―
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