c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
The murky world of terrorism is more relevant than ever today: terrorist organizations, whether Bolshevik at the beginning of the twentieth century or Jihadi at the start of the twenty-first, have much in common.
— Simon Sebag Montefiore, Young Stalin
My dad once told me that his biggest challenge after returning from Vietnam had been coming to terms with his own callousness. He’d made a deal with the war and traded his humanity for a ticket home.
— Tucker Elliot, The Rainy Season
If I were a Palestinian at the right age, I would have joined one of the terrorist organizations at a certain stage.
— Ehud Barak
We obviously don’t live in a perfect world. If we did, then my dad would never have volunteered for Vietnam so he could use the GI Bill to pay for college, Uncle Google would have more important things to do than searching for eight hundred million reasons why our schools suck, and I wouldn’t be at an education leadership conference in Jakarta because there’d be no need for it … right?
— Tucker Elliot, The Rainy Season
To stop the terrorist, we need to give born to our own terrorist; Ruthless than the enemy.
— M.F. Moonzajer, LOVE, HATRED AND MADNESS
...he had read von Lambert's book on terrorism, there were two pages devoted to the Arab resistance movement, von Lambert refused to call them terrorists, which didn't preclude, and he had emphasized this, that nonterrorists were also capable of atrocities, Auschwitz, for instance, was not the work of terrorists but of state employees...
— Friedrich Dürrenmatt, The Assignment
He wished he understood where they come from: all the terrorists, religious revolutionists and hate-criminals. Did terrorizing entire communities of people help them sleep sound at night? Did it make them happy? Or are they just in for the attention? Have they nothing to lose? Or are they simply bored and spit balling issues that have always been there? Can all global acts of violence and terror be summed up, as just a whole other level of a mixture of bad parenting, psychological disorders and unattended anger management issues? Can they be treated, medically or spiritually? Are we waiting for the birth of another great visionary like Gautama Buddha, Jesus Christ or Prophet Muhammad, who will 'make the world a better place'? Or are we just too soaked in the idea that religion is a dying concept and spirituality is overrated? Is it too late? Are we too far behind? He wanted to know.
— Thisuri Wanniarachchi, The Terrorist's Daughter
I will follow anyone and tell everyone my message because it is urgent: Please humanity Protect Yazidis.
— Widad Akreyi
I should have paid greater attention to my mentor in graduate school, Samuel Huntington, who once explained that Americans never recognize that, in the developing world, the key is not the kind of government — communist, capitalist, democratic, dictatorial — but the degree of government. That absence of government is what we are watching these days, from Libya to Iraq to Syria.(“Why they still hate us, 13 years later,” Washington Post, 09/05/2014)
— Fareed Zakaria
One of the biggest obstacles on the path of peace, or even peaceful coexistence, between Israelis and Palestinians was placed by the international community and media when it redefined Hamas as an "organization." One result is that outsiders try to reach a solution based on the assumption that Hamas has structure and leaders. It does not. It has no "political wing" or "militant wing." Hamas is a loosely-knit band of terrorists. Its leaders are whoever has weapons, plans, and influence. Hamas is thuggish and cowardly. Those who fly the green flag are not military combatants. Nor do they represent, or care a whit, for the Palestinian people, as evidenced by their strategy of hiding in and fighting from schools, clinics, hospitals, and people's homes. After what passed for an election some Hamas terrorists were further redefined as politicians and diplomats, though they were neither politic nor diplomatic, evidenced by the fact that many "govern" from Israeli prisons. Prior to the Second Intifada, which began in 2000, Hamas had been emasculated and nearly eradicated by Yassir Arafat, who rounded up, disarmed, and imprisoned the terrorist "leaders," leaving its remaining members to return to their homes. Arafat ensured that members of Hamas had no place to hide among the Palestinian people. And that is the only way the terrorist cancer in Gaza will be excised today. In the absence of Arafat, the task falls by default to Israel, which would do better to enable the citizens of Gaza to purge themselves of Hamas and reward them for doing so than try to get rid of the bad apples by blowing up the barrel, if you'll excuse the mixed metaphor.
— Ron Brackin
A snipit from my PR people:“A British author has revealed how he risked his life to infiltrate the Taliban while researching his new book on religious terrorism. Cal Sawar came face-to-face with Al-Qaeda chiefs in Pakistan while posing as a terrorist sympathiser. “The author, from Falkirk, Scotland, daringly managed to infiltrate the terrorist group — responsible for the deaths of countless Muslims and non-Muslims — by offering to help bankroll terrorist attacks on the UK.
— Palamedia Public Relations on me my book
Islam has nothing to do with any act of terrorism. We reject every act of extremism and terrorism unconditionally.
— Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri, Fatwa on Terrorism and Suicide Bombings
They [terrorists] can’t claim that their suicide bombings are martyrdom operations and that they become the heroes of the Muslim Ummah [global brotherhood]. No, they become heroes of hellfire, and they are leading towards hellfire.
— Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri, Fatwa on Terrorism and Suicide Bombings
Chernobyl, an accident or the most successful anti-Marxist attack in recorded history?
— Anders Breivik, 2083: A European Declaration of Independence
The term terrorism is widely misused. It is utilized in its generic sense as a form of shorthand by governments and the media and is applied to a variety of acts and occurrences that approximate terrorism in form but not in substance or, worse yet, that have no real resemblance to terrorism at all. Terrorism, if nothing else, is violence, or threats of violence, but it is not mindless violence, as some observers have charged. Usually, when employed in a political context, it represents a calculated series of actions designed to intimidate and sow fear through-out a target population in an effort to produce a pervasive atmosphere of insecurity, a widespread condition of anxiety. A terrorist campaign that causes a significant threshold of fear among the target population may achieve its aims. In some instances, terrorism is potentially a more effective, especially from a cost-benefit perspective, strategy that conventional or guerrilla warfare, however, the goal of terrorism is not to destroy the opposing side but instead to break its will and force it to capitulate.
— Neil Livingstone
We know who the homicidal maniacs are. They are the ones cheering and dancing right now.
— Ann Coulter
Ricin - Death by diarrhea
— Anders Breivik, 2083: A European Declaration of Independence
By the end of 2004, U.S. operations in Iraq had been rough enough to antagonize the Sunni population without imposing the draconian methods armies habitually employ to control a population.In the spring of 2006, the coalition was losing on the two major fronts that accounted for most of the fighting. In Anbar to the west, al Qaeda controlled the population; in Baghdad to the east, Shiite death squads were driving our the sunnis, while al Qaeda's suicide bombings continued.Yet, the conditions had already been set for a turnaround without precedent in combating an insurgency. In less that three years, two giant institutions steeped in 200 years of traditions-the Army and Marines-adopted new doctrines and turned around a losing war. This was equivalent to GE and Ford starting afresh in new business lines and turning a profit in three years.A lack of soldiers is frequently cited as the basic flaw after the invasion. This is mistaken. There were 140,000 soldiers, plus 100,000 contractors in support roles, in Iraq in 2003. Adding troops would not have accomplished much because the two-headed command...lacked a plan, a counterinsurgency doctrine, and proper training. With the Pentagon's agreement, Bremer had disbanded the Iraqi Army, and the Iraqi police were ineffective. More American troops operating alone under a doctrine of attack and destroy would have exacerbated the rebellion.
— Bing West, The Strongest Tribe: War, Politics, and the Endgame in Iraq
read thousands of books and I will power myself with knowledge. Pens and books are the weapons that defeat terrorism.
— Malala Yousafzai
Death is only a byproduct of terrorism.
— Dan Brown, Angels & Demons
What if I got hit by lightning while walking with an umbrella? Ban umbrellas! Fight the menace of lightning!
— Cory Doctorow, Little Brother
The [Israelis] believed - they were possessed of an absolute certainty and conviction - that 'terrorists' were in Chatila. How could I explain to them that the terrorists had left, that the terrorists had worn Israeli uniforms, that the terrorists had been sent into Chatila by Israeli officers, that the victims of the terrorists were not Israelis but Palestinians and Lebanese?
— Robert Fisk, Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon
A common strand appeared to unite these conflicts, and that was the advancement of a small coterie’s concept of American interests in the guise of the fight against terrorism, which was defined to refer only to the organized and politically motivated killing of civilians by killers not wearing the uniforms of soldiers. I recognized that if this was to be the single most important priority of our species, then the lives of those of us who lived in lands in which such killers also lived had no meaning except as collateral damage. This, I reasoned, was why America felt justified in bringing so many deaths to Afghanistan and Iraq, and why America felt justified in risking so many more deaths by tacitly using India to pressure Pakistan.
— Mohsin Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist
Rule number one. The good guys always win.Rule number two. If the good guys lose, we play again.
— Charles S. Faddis
...'fundamentalism' and 'liberalism' and terrorism.' These labels only tell us partial truths. We must use them humbly, guardedly, Niebuhr would say, aware of the limitations of our own vision and of our own capacity for misunderstanding and self-deception.
— Krista Tippett, Speaking of Faith
Terrorism is just a whole other level of anger management issues.
— Thisuri Wanniarachchi
There is much in our culture to affront the eye of the fervent terrorist postulant, things out there that do us no favors, to be sure. If, for example, it came to light that the dangerously thin, affectless, value-deficient, higher aspiration-free, amateur-porn chanteuse Paris Hilton was actually a covert agent from some secret Taliban madrassa whose mission was to portray the ultimate capitalist-whore puppet of a doomed society with nothing more on its mind than servitude to Mammon and celebrity at any cost, I wouldn't be a bit surprised.
— David Rakoff, Don't Get Too Comfortable: The Indignities of Coach Class, The Torments of Low Thread Count, The Never-Ending Quest for Artisanal Olive Oil, and Other First World Problems
The West has to take a critical look at itself and examine the apparent double standards at work that allow it to attack Iraq for possessing weapons of mass destruction but not North Korea, whose leader shared Saddam Hussein's megalomaniacal qualities; that permit it to rail against Iran about nuclear weapons but be silent about Israel's arsenal; that allow it to only selectively demand enforcement of UN resolutions. The West has to own up to the mistakes it has made: such as with Abu Ghraib and the torture in Afghan prisons; in the errant attacks on civilians; in its disregard for the basic precept of a civilized legal system, which maintains that an accused person is innocent until proven guilty.
— Kathy Gannon, I is for Infidel: From Holy War to Holy Terror in Afghanistan
Terror is not a new weapon. Throughout history it has been used by those who could not prevail, either by persuasion or example. But inevitably they fail, either because men are not afraid to die for a life worth living, or because the terrorists themselves came to realize that free men cannot be frightened by threats, and that aggression would meet its own response. And it is in the light of that history that every nation today should know, be he friend or foe, that the United States has both the will and the weapons to join free men in standing up to their responsibilities.
— John F. Kennedy
God knows nothing gets accomplished in the world these days without terrorism.
— Manil Suri, The City of Devi
War is legitimized state-sponsored terrorism in a grand scale.
— Newton Lee, Counterterrorism and Cybersecurity: Total Information Awareness
...if anybody was going to blow up the Superland™ Wal-Mart, it was going to be me. Not some fucking crusty punk.
— Vanessa Veselka, Zazen
Terrorism': the word that means nothing, yet justifies everything.
— Glenn Greenwald
Terrorist', noun: 1. Someone my government tells me is a terrorist; 2. Someone my President decides to kill.
— Glenn Greenwald
Only Americans can hurt America.
— Dwight D. Eisenhower
Many signs point to the fact that the youth of the Third World will no longer tolerate living in circumstances that give them no hope for the future. From the young boys I met in the demobilization camps in Sierra Leone to the suicide bombers of Palestine and Chechnya, to the young terrorists who fly planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, we can no longer afford to ignore them. We have to take concrete steps to remove the causes of their rage, or we have to be prepared to suffer the consequences.
— Roméo Dallaire, Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda
The hallmark of an authoritarian idiot is yelling TERRORIST-LOVER! at anyone questioning the definition of Terrorist.
— Glenn Greenwald
I know it's a really hard concept to process, but the fact that Govt accuses someone of being a Terrorist doesn't mean they are.
— Glenn Greenwald
what such people miscall their religion, is a vent for their bad humours and arrogance.
— Charles Dickens, David Copperfield
You revolutionists' the other continued, with leisurely self-confidence, 'are the slaves of the social convention, which is afraid of you; slaves of it as much as the very police that stands up in the defence of that convention. Clearly you are, since you want to revolutionize it. It governs your action, too, and thus neither your thought nor your action can ever be conclusive. (...) 'You are not a bit better than the forces arrayed against you -- than the police, for instance. The other day I came suddenly upon Chief Inspector Heat at the corner of Tottenham Court Road. He looked at me very steadily. But I did not look at him. Why should I give him more than a glance ? He was thinking of many things -- of his superiors, of his reputation, of the law courts, of his salary, of newspapers -- of a hundred things. But I was thinking of my perfect detonator only. He meant nothing to me. He was as insignificant as -- I can't call to mind anything insignificant enough to compare him with -- except Karl Yundt perhaps. Like to like. The terrorist and the policeman both come from the same basket. Revolutions, legality -- counter moves in the same game; forms of idleness at bottom identical. He plays his little game -- so do you propagandists.
— Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent
We try to transform each detainee from a young man who wants to die to a young man who wants to live. Prince Mohammed bin Nayef
— Robert Lacey, Inside the Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia
What we have here is a war—the war of matter and spirit. In the classical era, spirit was in harmony with matter. Matter used to condense spirit. What was unseen—the ghost of Hamlet’s father—was seen—in the conscience of the king. The spirit was trapped in the matter of theater. The theater made the unseen, seen. In the Romantic era, spirit overwhelms matter. The glass of champagne can’t contain the bubbles. But never in the history of humanity has spirit been at war with matter. And that is what we have today. The war of banks and religion. It’s what I wrote in Prayers of the Dawn, that in New York City, banks tower over cathedrals. Banks are the temples of America. This is a holy war. Our economy is our religion. When I came back to midtown a week after the attack—I mourned—but not in a personal way—it was a cosmic mourning—something that I could not specify because I didn’t know any of the dead. I felt grief without knowing its origin. Maybe it was the grief of being an immigrant and of not having roots. Not being able to participate in the whole affair as a family member but as a foreigner, as a stranger—estranged in myself and confused—I saw the windows of Bergdorf and Saks—what a theater of the unexpected—my mother would have cried—there were only black curtains, black drapes—showing the mourning of the stores—no mannequins, just veils—black veils. When the mannequins appeared again weeks later—none of them had blond hair. I don’t know if it was because of the mourning rituals or whether the mannequins were afraid to be blond—targets of terrorists. Even they didn’t want to look American. They were out of fashion after the Twin Towers fell. To the point, that even though I had just dyed my hair blond because I was writing Hamlet and Hamlet is blond, I went back to my coiffeur immediately and told him—dye my hair black. It was a matter of life and death, why look like an American. When naturally I look like an Arab and walk like an Egyptian.
— Giannina Braschi
The problem with human attraction is not knowing if it will be returned.
— Becca Fitzpatrick, Hush, Hush
He liked her
—  it was as simple as that.
I was always attracted not by some quantifiable, external beauty, but by something deep down, something absolute. Just as some people have a secret love for rainstorms, earthquakes, or blackouts, I liked that certain undefinable something directed my way by members of the opposite sex. For want of a better word, call it magnetism. Like it or not, it’s a kind of power that snares people and reels them in.
— Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun
Occupied in observing Mr. Bingley’s attentions to her sister, Elizabeth was far from suspecting that she was herself becoming an object of some interest in the eyes of his friend. Mr. Darcy had at first scarcely allowed her to be pretty: he had looked at her without admiration at the ball; and when they next met, he looked at her only to criticise. But no sooner had he made it clear to himself and his friends that she had hardly a good feature in her face, than he began to find it was rendered uncommonly intelligent by the beautiful expression of her dark eyes. To this discovery succeeded some others equally mortifying. Though he had detected with a critical eye more than one failure of perfect symmetry in her form, he was forced to acknowledge her figure to be light and pleasing; and in spite of his asserting that her manners were not those of the fashionable world, he was caught by their easy playfulness. Of this she was perfectly unaware: to her he was only the man who made himself agreeable nowhere, and who had not thought her handsome enough to dance with.
— Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
Oh no I know that look. What are you thinking?That this is the most ridiculous declaration of attraction I've ever heard
— Jennifer L. Armentrout, Obsidian
I accept the hard reality that I maybe might possibly be just the slightest tiniest littlest bit kinda sorta interested in him.
— Sarah Ockler, Twenty Boy Summer
Keenan was staring at her, too intently for comfort. "I don't know why certain people shine for others. I don't know why you and not someone else." He gently pulled her forward and whispered, "But it's you I think of when I wake each morning. It's your face in my dr
— Melissa Marr, Wicked Lovely
He called her a melon, a pineapple, an olive tree, an emerald, and a fox in the snow all in the space of three seconds; he did not know whether he had heard her, tasted her, seen her, or all three together.
— Virginia Woolf
Just the kind of girl I liked—the weirdo in the bunch.
— Anthony Kiedis, Scar Tissue
That's the kind of guy you'd follow to hell and back.
— Richelle Mead, The Indigo Spell
The situation was extraordinary. How someone like Evangeline Jenner could have wrought such a change in St. Vincent, the most worldly of men, was difficult to understand. However, Westcliff had learned that the mysteries of attraction could not always be explained through logic. Sometimes the fractures in two separate souls became the very hinges that held them together.
— Lisa Kleypas, Devil in Winter
Then is courtesy a turncoat. But it is certain I am loved of all ladies, only you excepted: and I would I could find in my heart that I had not a hard heart; for, truly, I love none. Beatrice: A dear happiness to women: they would else have been troubled with a pernicious suitor. I thank God and my cold blood, I am of your humour for that: I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me. -Much Ado About Nothing
— William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing
I glanced again. He was still watching me.Look, let me just say it: He was hot. A nonhot boy stares at you relentlessly and it is, at best, awkward and, at worst, a form of assault. But a hot boy... well.
— John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
You make me want to suck a bruise on you just to kiss it better.--Luc to Jane--
— Rachel Gibson, See Jane Score
She doesn’t like you, McNab.“I knoooow. I find that really attractive in a woman.
— J.D. Robb, Vengeance in Death
I don’t mind hot and spicy. Actually find that appealing in a girl. And chicken wings.
— Julie James, About That Night
I felt betrayed and absolutely livid, but my body wasn’t smart enough to know it. It had liked the feel of his hands, wanted more of it, wanted it now. It was almost like there were two of me, one who heartily approved of the mage and one who would have dearly loved to see him dead.
— Karen Chance, Embrace the Night
You don’t always get to chose who you fall in love with
— Stephani Hecht, Primal Passions
The mysterious magnet is either there, buried somewhere deep behind the sternum, or it is not.
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
Polar north can't get away from a magnet; the magnet finds it, no matter what.
— Jodi Picoult, Handle with Care
Cosette, in her seclusion, like Marius in his, was all ready to take fire. Destiny, with its mysterious and fatal patience, was slowly bringing these two beings near each other, fully charged and all languishing with the stormy electricities of passion,—these two souls which held love as two clouds hold lightning, and which were to meet and mingle in a glace like clouds in a flash.The power of a glance has been so much abused in love stories, that it has come to be disbelieved in. Few people dare now to say that two beings have fallen in love because they have looked at each other. Yet it is in this way that love begins, and in this way only. The rest is only the rest, and comes afterwards. Nothing is more real than these great shocks which two souls give each other in exchanging this spark.At that particular moment when Cosette unconsciously looked with this glance which so affected Marius, Marius had no suspicion that he also had a glance which affected Cosette.
— Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
She frowned. “I did nothing to arouse you.”He clenched his jaw, his stare growing more aggressive. “You breathed.
— Shayla Black, Possess Me at Midnight
I remember that feeling of skin. It'sstrange to remember touch more than thought. But my fingersstill tingle with it.
— Lucy Christopher
There was a tinge of evil to it, a lot of sex, but under that was alittle boy peeking out, an uncertain little boy. That was it. That was the attraction. Nothing is moreappealing than a handsome man who is also uncertain of himself.
— Laurell K. Hamilton, Guilty Pleasures
She’s really not my kind of girl — most of them have tattoos or nose rings — but there’s something about her smile. She smiles like she’s in love with whoever she’s looking at. She smiled at me a few months ago. I’ve been trying to get her to do it again ever since.
— Jaye Murray, Bottled Up
Many perfumes promise to lure men to women. None of them smell of motherhood. None of them proclaim the wearer to be tidy, thrifty, and sensible.
— Janette Rallison, My Fair Godmother
The first morning I really sat and watched him it was a Tuesday. I know that because Tuesday is trash day for our neighborhood. Unlike me, he leaves gathering up his trash for the morning of pickup instead of doing it the night before. My alarm went off at 6 AM and I went in to start the coffee maker, and as I went about selecting a bit of fruit from the bowl on my kitchen table I looked out the window. It was just a casual glance, and the human eye is attracted to movement.
— Benjamin R.  Smith, Sketches: An Erotic Collection
James does what anybody would do when they see somebody they'd like to know: he ignores the shit out of her.
— Imogen Binnie, Nevada
...The sex was amazing. And the man made me trip over my own feet. And he had a smile like Ctrl+Alt+Delete on my brain.
— L.A. Witt, Where There's Smoke
She knew nothing of Ren except his name, his aptitude with vocabulary, the fact that he wasn’t in college, and the way his hair narrowed to a curling point at the nape of his neck. And she hadn’t even realized she knew that last thing until now.
— Molly Ringle, The Ghost Downstairs
It is no accident that narcissists and altruists often have a magnetic attraction to one another. Can you see how perfect the fit is? The altruistic feels the need to selflessly serve others and this is just what the narcissist wants. Narcissists want to be worshipped and gratified in every way possible, and this is just what altruists offer, thinking it demonstrates their moral virtue.
— Ellen Kenner, Selfish Path to Romance: How to Love With Passion & Reason, Inspired by Ayn Rand
I looked at this man and thought: Oh, how we are going to hurt each other.
— Catherynne M. Valente, In the Cities of Coin and Spice
It's really important that you feel good. Because this feeling good is what goes out as a signal into the universe and starts to attract more of itself to you. So the more you can feel good, the more you will attract the things that help you feel good and that will keep bringing you up higher and higher.
— Joe Vitale
It was certainly not this mummified and outrageously painted old woman he was seeing before him, but the entire "female species," as it was his custom to call women. The individual disappeared, the features were obliterated, whether young or senile, beautiful or ugly - those were mere unimportant variations. Behind each woman rises the austere, sacred and mysterious face of Aphrodite.
— Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek
He stripped to his trunks, then dove into the pool. We all watched as he broke the surface and climbed from the water, his muscles slick and wet, his green eyes glowing in the half light of the glass ceiling. I heard Natalie and Sara both sigh, and Harry murmur that it almost made him want to go gay. Coby stretched out on a chaise beside me and asked, “So you still sorry you moved here?
— Lee Nichols, Deception
Once more Jane sat staring at the telephone. This time she was filled with a confidence that was new to her. Stan Crandall. Stanley Crandall. He liked her! He had seen her once, and even though had been rumpled and grass-stained and having a terrible time with Sandra, he liked her well enough to go to the trouble of finding out her name and calling to ask her to go to the movies. Jane smiled at the telephone and gave a sigh of happiness
— Beverly Cleary, Fifteen
What made him most attractive was that he was attracted to her. Another’s interest can be a powerful stimulant. She could feel his eyes on her as an almost physical pressure.
— Tracy Chevalier, The Last Runaway
it is strange, is it not, how an accident of millimeter here, a millimeter there, makes one face so important.
— Judith Krantz, Scruples
My prototype of a woman was the type who would appear in hallucinations at the last moments of your freezing to death at the top of an icy mountain, a mythical beauty who blurred the line between dreams and reality. For four years, that’s what I believed. And I wasted all of my university days–during which I had the most courage and honesty I would ever have towards life–because of it.
— Qiu Miaojin
Changed my thought. Let’s us go. Back my place, aye?” He was smiling, that smile she’d always loved, while his hands distracted her and his body warmed her through her clothes. Summer drew closer every day, and the temperatures reflected that, but it seemed like she was always cold when he wasn’t around. “C’mon.
— Stacia Kane
She had sought me out. I knew it would happen. Even if I had switched to a different section, she would have sought me out all the same. She, who hid in the crowd, who didn’t want anyone to see her behind her veil of averted eyes and aloofness. When I stepped forward, she came out, too. And she pointed and said, revealing a child’s wanton smile: “That’s the one I want.” And like a potted sunflower that had just been sold to a customer, I was taken away. There was no way to refuse. This, from a beautiful girl that I was already deeply, viscerally attracted to. Things were getting good.
— Qiu Miaojin
David clinks his wineglass to mine and smiles at me. You know what? Without the parsley there to distract you, it's quite a smile. It's bright white and streamlined. His face is handsome in a conventional way, all cheekbones and angles. He's not so attractive that you'd stop traffic to look at him. But neither am I. He's just a humbly good-looking guy. Like, if he were the new doctor in a small town in the Midwest, all the local women would schedule an appointment. He's that kind of attractive. His glasses sit comfortably on his nose, as if they have earned the right to be there.
— Taylor Jenkins Reid, After I Do
Her sudden grin depleted some of his brain cells. She was evil like that.
— Kelly Moran, Benediction
That dress was designed to be a kill switch for rational thought.
— Kelly Moran, Benediction
Dougan had almost completely forgotten about the food, for his entire body was suffused with the most intense and exquisite sensation he'd ever known. It was something like hunger, and something like fulfillment. It was wonder and awe and yearning and fear encapsulated in a tender bliss.
— Kerrigan Byrne, The Highwayman
There was a sense of tightness in the room now, filling the space. Attraction was like that. It filled. It poured into you like batter into a pan, sticking to the sides.
— Sarah Addison Allen, Lost Lake
Stop raping me with your eyes!
— Ramana Pemmaraju
Attraction is an evil. It takes you to the wonderland that doesn't exist. The exit becomes tough, then.
— Bhavik Sarkhedi, The Weak Point Dealer
She may resemble a mythical angel, but she moved like an x-rated wet dream
— Kelly Moran, Counterbalance
It’s in our dreams that we pull people towards us.
— Glenn Haybittle, The Memory Tree
Touching him is order and chaos, like being assembled and disassembled at the same time.
— Nicola Yoon, The Sun Is Also a Star
Pamela was beautiful, it was true, and I felt that submerged attraction to her that everyone felt for the beautiful.
— Emma Cline, The Girls
The fact remains that a certain combination of fragrances can captivate the opposite sex like the scent of an animal in heat. One kind of fragrance might attract fifty out of a hundred people. And another scent will attract the other fifty. But there also are scents that only one or two people will find wildly exciting. And I have the ability, from far away, to sniff out those special scents. When I do, I want to go up to the girl who radiates this aura and say, Hey, I picked it up, you know. No one else gets it, but I do.
— Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun
I dragged my mind away from that line of thought
—  there was nothing but quicksand and crocodiles down that path.
There are some people who state that the exterior, sex, or physique of another person is indifferent to them, that they care only for the communion of mind with mind; but these people need not detain us. There are some statements that no one ever thinks of believing, however often they are made.
— G.K. Chesterton, The Defendant
But all attractions are alike,' he said. 'They come from an emptiness inside.' He hammered on this chest with his index finger. 'Something's missing and you have to fill it. Books, paintings, people, they're all the same...''A lot of people do without books and paintings.''True,' he said, 'but that doesn't affect the argument.' Paris turned his head to one side and chewed on his lip. 'Of course, nothing ever does the trick. Nobody's really satisfied for long.
— Siri Hustvedt, The Blindfold
I do not know how you have done this to me. I thought that if I returned the help you had given me that I would be free of the inexplicable influence you have over me. But it does not seem to be working, and you say you cannot break the thread."Mari realized that her mouth had fallen open as she stared at Mage Alain. "Are you serious?""What would I be if not serious?""You're saying that I put a spell on you that controls your thoughts and actions?""Why else am I here?" The Mage asked."Because it was the right thing to do!""The...what? I am still uncertain about what right thing means—" the trace of puzzlement had retired to him."Listen...Mage Alain! I don't...put spells on boys! Or men! Or anybody! I have no idea why you think that you are thinking about me, but I assure you that it has nothing to do with me thinking about you or making you think that you want to think about me!
— Jack Campbell, The Dragons of Dorcastle
Build Yourself and He Will Come!
— Gregg Michaelsen, To Date a Man, You Must Understand a Man: The Keys to Catch a Great Guy
Love is victory of imagination over intelligence
— Shantanand Sharma
He was broad-shouldered, dark-haired and dark-eyed; more than once, women had been noted openly regarding him, and not just immigrant women or those who smoked in public.
— Dennis Lehane, The Given Day
True sincerity works more than a magnet. It attracts, bond and take people farther far better than mere action and words!
— Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
Nobody has ever looked at me the way he’s looking at me at this moment. Like I’m his possession. Like if anyone else were to touch me, he’d break both their legs and an arm for good measure.
— A. Zavarelli, Crow
What was attraction if not a form of telepathy? The wild luck of two people feeling the exact same thing at the exact same time. That word again: purpose.
— Claire Vaye Watkins, Gold Fame Citrus
Attraction isn't wrong. People can’t help who they are drawn to and they certainly can’t control affinity, as uncommon as it is. What is wrong is acting on inclination if it hurts someone else, namely a significant other.
— Donna Lynn Hope
If I seem better than you, you like me more. If you feel you have no chance with me, you like me more.
— A.D. Aliwat, Alpha
Obviously, genies worked out in their off-hours. He looked so good it was distracting.
— Elizabeth Langston, I Wish
We could’ve been a still photo, the kind from a booth at the mall where two dollars went in and a strip of three shots came out. Our image wasn’t the first shot, the one that was always frantic and unfocused. It wasn’t the second shot either--laughing and silly. No, this was the final image--the serious shot--where the couple realized they wanted a good picture to remember the moment by and couldn’t afford to screw the last one up.
— Elizabeth Langston
I knew a sudden shyness. There was a look on his face, a stillness to his body that had never been there before. Though I couldn’t give the emotion a name, I felt it, too. We had something special. Something hard to define. Something past friendship.“I must go now,” I said and rose up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek, marveling at its velvet skin. “Thank you for the book.”He drew me into his embrace and sighed. “Thank you for the stars.
— Elizabeth Langston, Whisper Falls
Cam was staring into her coffee, cradling the mug in both hands. A working woman's hands, sporting a few scrapes and scratches. Strong, capable hands.
— Jo Victor, Romance by the Book
He took his hand and something sparked in the handshake. It coursed up his arm and fluttered in his chest. He gritted his teeth as he tried to keep his face smooth, pleasant, while lightning struck his heart. Reiner looked straight into his eyes, and when Thierry returned his intense gaze, he was bewildered as to where and when he was.The breath he didn’t need to take caught in his dry throat. The lights around him seemed to dim, leaving only the two of them illuminated. His muddled mind tried to understand what was happening, but as he groped for answers he found nothing to hold. Like trying to catch water.
— Daniel de Lorne, Beckoning Blood
If you put sexual attraction on a scale of one to ten, where ten equals "you can't keep your hands off each other,"five equals "you can take it or leave it," and one equals "repulsed," to support a vibrant relationship, it should be at least a seven, preferably an eight, nine, or ten. With work, you might raise the attraction one notch, but because there is so much biochemistry involved in sexual attraction, it's hard to do much more than that. So if a sexual attraction doesn't evolve, remember, it's not anyone's fault and it's just the what is of your pairing, and you might make better friends than lovers.Sexual attraction doesn't have to be instantaneous on first meeting, but it must eventually flower because it provides a basic glue for successful conjugal union. If we're not sexually alive to our beloved, it often leads to a subdued relationship, loneliness, affairs, or lots of fantasies.
— Charlotte Kasl, If the Buddha Dated: A Handbook for Finding Love on a Spiritual Path
Love is not blind. Infatuation is blind. Love is all-seeing and still accepting.
— Anamika Mishra
Hekate smacked the mirror down. "I'd never fancy you," she retorted to Hermes. "And if you ever try to kiss me, I'll--I'll keep a snake hidden in my clothes and make it bite you. On the lips. And on both ears.""See, your threats are still age twelve," Hermes said. "I'll help you work on that.
— Molly Ringle, Underworld's Daughter
Sure, he was attracted to her, but women always had to go beyond that.Women [had] nesting fantasies. It wasn't long before they wereredecorating your apartment and criticizing your choice of mustard.
— Janet Evanovich, The Heist
And I saw you and I thought, she'd be a cosy fit inside my arm.
— Bryn  Hammond, Amgalant One: The Old Ideal
Attraction is so much more than a pretty face. It’s about passion, attitude, kindness, & faith.
— Charles F. Glassman, Brain Drain   The Breakthrough That Will Change Your Life
Sometimes it’s like people are a million times more beautiful to you in your mind. It’s like you see them through a special lens — but maybe if it’s how you see them,that’s how they really are.
— Jenny Han, The Summer I Turned Pretty
Why is it that you still beguile me –As wind, stone, bird – and all the likes? Why is that you smile on me – With sudden summer lightning strikes?
— Anna Akhmatova, White Flock
I could survive for months, years, on a crush.
— Jenny Han, The Summer I Turned Pretty
You could be a really great and fabulous person, but if your method of communication with a woman doesn’t trigger her physical attraction by “pushing the right buttons,” you will only ever be “just a friend” in her eyes.
— Sahara Sanders, The Art of Seduction: Keys to Mastery / A Pocket Book for a Real Man
It's hard to tell the difference between how we want someone to feel about us and how we actually feel about them. If the person is attractive, we always want them to want us, and sometimes we get so busy trying to make that happen, we forget to keep track of whether we actually want them or not. Plus, we always want what we're afraid we can't get.
— Adrienne Stoltz
Attraction is a funny thing. Women can be beautiful and still do nothing for me. They can be stereotypically sexy and I will still pass them over. They can look innocent and it won’t interest me, have a sassy attitude and I’ll be looking elsewhere. I get bored easily and am as fickle as April weather.
— Holly Stone, Taken by a Stranger
He had a prince's looks but a pirate's eyes.
— Veronica Rossi, Under the Never Sky
And perhaps it was precisely because she knew nothing at all about chess that chess for her was not simply a parlor game or a pleasant pastime, but a mysterious art equal to all the recognized arts. She had never been in close contact with such people — there was no one to compare him with except those inspired eccentrics, musicians and poets whose image one knows as clearly and as vaguely as that of a Roman Emperor, an inquisitor or a comedy miser. Her memory contained a modest dimly lit gallery with a sequence of all the people who had in any way caught her fancy.
— Vladimir Nabokov, The Luzhin Defense
You are pretty, aren’t you?”Rosika frowned. “You don’t have to sound so surprised.
— Jess Schira, Rendezous with Destiny
I'd already sensed the attraction between us. it was apparent from the first time we met. But that sort of attraction was so usual that it didn't rate serious attention, let alone concern. When the attraction turned into something that smelled and tasted like substance, though, that was when things got complicated.A married woman will first deny to herself that anything improper is going on. She'll make excuses for her eagerness to see the man in question. She likes his sharp mind, for example, or his fresh views, or the stories he tells about his experiences, which are so different from her own. She'll dismiss as mere amusement her mind's tendency to wonder where he is and what he's doing, and whether he's thinking of her. She might even avoid the fellow for a day or two to test herself. If she doesn't see him and she feels fine about that, she'll know there's no cause for concern. The test is fake, though, too, because she's lying to herself to make sure she passes the test, which will then justify her choice to see him again, often.
— Therese Anne Fowler, Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald
I have no idea why, but I'm grinning back at her. This temperamental, wild creature in front of me who has the nerve to put me in my place.
— A. Zavarelli, Victoria's Downfall
Even from the point of view of coquetry, pure and simple," he had told her, "can't you see how much of your attraction you throw away when you stoop to lying?
— Marcel Proust, Swann's Way
An inappropriate attraction to your friend’s fiancé was grounds for disbarment from the Woman Club. Neither did it make a lick of sense. He was uncouth, uneducated, uncivilized. All of their conversations back then had been unholy bicker fests where they charged from the opposite ends of the spectrum, determined not to meet in the middle but to rip pieces out of each other on the drive by.
— Kate Meader, Even the Score
I can feel him step close, then his hands lay on my shoulders, and they burn in the most delicious way, only reminding me how dangerous Benjamin is to me, to my soul. How fast I would get lost in him, only to end up with a broken heart when I could not be the woman he expected me to be.
— Nicole Kiefer, Waiting in the Wings
The physicality between us was like nothing I’d experienced before. Just the brush of his fingertips over my cheek was enough to make me feel undressed and naked. “I don’t know,” I answered. “What do you suggest? Culture, entertainment, or the underground car park in Tottenham Court Road?
— Pat Spence
People will sometimes find themselves attracted to others, that's just who they are. It's what they do with that attraction that defines them.
— Donna Lynn Hope
It didn't matter; by now she knew she loved him in any skin. In her book there was another tale - one of the original eighteen - of a dragon who had a human wife, and Neve had never understood it before, at least from the wifes point of view. Love was love. But she hoped that he was not a dragon.
— Laini Taylor, My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories
Honey will wipe the floor with you." His eyes went half-mast, and his voice dropped in evident pleasure. "I know.
— Patricia Briggs
Another abstinence book claims, "A woman is far more attracted by a man's personality, while a man is stimulated by sight. A man is usually less discriminating about those to whom he is physically attracted.
— Jessica Valenti, The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women
She was Bloomingdale’s, not Victoria Secret. She was vanilla, not peach. She was Paul Reiser, not Lenny Bruce. This was not my kind of chick.
— Christopher Paul Meyer, Icarus Falling: The True Story of a Nightclub Bouncer Who Wanted to Be a Fucking Movie Star But Settled for Being a Fucking Man
She was almost too beautiful. Maybe that sounded stupid, but there wasn't another way to describe it.
— Chanel Cleeton, French Kissed
Attraction is often mistaken to be love. If you're in a relationship doesn't necessarily mean you're in love. And what do you do when that ephemeral attraction is long gone? What people call break-ups are nothing more but the realization that you didn't love them at the first place...Shouldn't you have been more careful before making those empty promises?
— Sanhita Baruah
It is a most repulsive quality, indeed,’ said he. ‘Oftentimes very convenient, no doubt, but never pleasing. There is safety in reserve, but no attraction. One cannot love a reserved person.’‘Not till the reserve ceases towards oneself; and then the attraction may be the greater.
— Jane Austen, Emma
I wanted to bathe myself in that burn, to let the radiation take my skin and flesh and bones until I was nothing but charged particles dancing in space.
— Bethany Hagen, Landry Park
You're the fantasy I never knew I had.
— Amy Lane, Chase in Shadow
We attract what we are. We attract who we are.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
We're like the couple on the sitcom that has good sparks but never get together for the sake of ratings.
— Aimee Bender, The Color Master: Stories
They jogged along in silence, Jem playing with the thong of the whip, and Mary aware of his hands beside her. She glanced down at them out of the tail of her eye, and she saw they were long and slim; they had the same strength, the same grace, as his brother's. These attracted her; the others repelled her. She realised for the first time that aversion and attraction ran side by side; that the boundary line was thin between them. The thought was an unpleasant one, and she shrank from it. Supposing this had been Joss beside her ten, twenty years ago? She shuttered the comparison at the back of her mind, fearing the picture it conjured. She knew now why she hated her uncle.
— Daphne du Maurier, Jamaica Inn
The two girls used to meet several times a day, and every time they met, Kitty's eyes said: "Who are you? What are you? Are you really the exquisite creature I imagine you to be? But for goodness' sake don't suppose," her eyes added, "that I would force my acquaintance on you, I simply admire you and like you.""I like you too, and you're very, very sweet. And I should like you better still, if I had time," answered the eyes of the unknown girl.
— Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
You have to be smart to get what you want.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
When I see him, his frame filling the doorway, I do not feel passion, excitement. I can't remember if I ever have. He makes me feel comfortable, like a favorite pair of shoes.
— Jodi Picoult, Songs of the Humpback Whale
Metal business cards are a good investment. Especially if you were to meet Magneto. He would have no other choice but to be attracted to you.
— Ryan Lilly, #Networking is people looking for people looking for people
Maybe I’d already guessed that the physics of us didn’t defy any laws of gravity, and with her, there was always an equal and opposite reaction.
— Robyn Schneider, The Beginning of Everything