Edda Bragg > Edda's Quotes

“Individual Desirability / Aggregate Desirability = Your Desirability Ratio

The higher a relationship’s Desirability Ratio, the more stable a relationship will be. If a relationship’s Desirability Ratio drops below one for either partner, the relationship becomes very likely to dissolve.

To put that in other words: When your partner is much more desirable to you than their “league” would suggest, and when this dynamic is mutual (i.e., each partner values the other more than society on average values that other partner), your relationship will be uniquely stable. However, if either partner values the other less than that person would be valued on an open market, the relationship becomes unstable.”
― Malcolm Collins, The Pragmatist's Guide to Relationships

“They look at you odd. They say why don’t you do something? I HAVE done everything possible. It does occupy your mind, but like anything painful, you push it to one side. It’s in the bottom compartment; it comes out every so often. If I knew he was dead, I could grieve.”
― Nicole Morris, Vanished: True Stories from Families of Australian Missing Persons

“I want you to write like Alice Munro.  Stir the world.  Make people see the horror; show them their suffering relatives; show them that they’re not safe.  Let them know that they can’t even begin to imagine what’s happening here.  By making my reality more compelling than reality television is the only way you’ll get their attention.
Psychotic and cynical.
Who can tell the difference anymore between a severed head and a special effect?  Can you?  I doubt it, and I know you’ve been in the middle of it all and seen the damage first-hand.”
― John Payton Foden, Magenta

“This distorted lens may lead someone studying human sexuality to ask: “Where are you on a spectrum from straight to gay?” This question would miss a pattern we found in our data suggesting that people's arousal systems are not bundled by the gender of whatever it is that turns them on: 4.5% of men find the naked male form aversive but penises arousing, while 6.7% of women find the female form arousing, but vaginas aversive. Using simplified community identifications like the gay-straight spectrum to investigate how and why arousal patterns develop is akin to studying historic human migration patterns by distributing a research survey asking respondents to report their position on a spectrum from “white” to “person of color.” Yes, “person of color,” like the concept of “gay,” is a useful moniker to understand the life experiences of a person, but a person’s place on a “white” to “person of color” spectrum tells us little about their ethnicity, just as a person’s place on a scale of gay to straight tells us little about their underlying arousal patterns.

The old way of looking at arousal limits our ability to describe sexuality to a grey scale. We miss that there is no such thing as attraction to just “females,” but rather a vast array of arousal systems that react to stimuli our society typically associates with “females” including things like vaginas, breasts, the female form, a gait associated with a wider hip bone, soft skin, a higher tone of voice, the gender identity of female, a person dressed in “female” clothing, and female gender roles. Arousal from any one of these things correlates with the others, but this correlation is lighter than a gay-straight spectrum would imply. Our data shows it is the norm for a person to derive arousal from only a few of these stimuli sets and not others. Given this reality, human sexuality is not well captured by a single sexual spectrum.

Moreover, contextualizing sexuality as a contrast between these communities and a societal “default” can obscure otherwise-glaring data points. Because we contrast “default” female sexuality against “other” groups, such as the gay community and the BDSM community, it is natural to assume that a “typical” woman is most likely to be very turned on by the sight of male genitalia or the naked male form and that she will be generally disinterested in dominance displays (because being gay and/or into BDSM would be considered atypical, a typical woman must be defined as the opposite of these “other,” atypical groups).

Our data shows this is simply not the case. The average female is more likely to be very turned on by seeing a person act dominant in a sexual context than she is to be aroused by either male genitalia or the naked male form. The average woman is not defined by male-focused sexual attraction, but rather dominance-focused sexual attraction. This is one of those things that would have been blindingly obvious to anyone who ran a simple survey of arousal pathways in the general American population, but has been overlooked because society has come to define “default” sexuality not by what actually turns people on, but rather in contrast to that which groups historically thought of as “other.”
― Simone Collins, The Pragmatist's Guide to Sexuality

“Every night I dream a lot. Every day I live a little.”
― Max Nowaz, Get Rich or Get Lucky

“Losing, and losing again, is the very basis of the life process, till all we are left with is the bare essence of human existence.”
― Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance

“I am me, a unique individual who aspires to be happier than she already is.”
― L.C. Conn

“The thought came to me like a revelation of sorts, that all the world would be better if people were blind. Everyone. Or if we could always have a huge war or something to work against, so that people could just sing and eat fudge in their living rooms with any-one they wanted to.”
― Nancy E. Turner, The Water and the Blood

“Pues las alegrías súbitas, como las penas, al principio desconciertan.”
― Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe

“One thing I have learnt is that you may do a lot of evil things, but if you are ever afforded a chance to be good, then you should take it. You will feel better about yourself.”
― Max Nowaz, The Polymorph

“Snake Street is an area I should avoid. Yet that night I was drawn there as surely as if I had an appointment. 
The Snake House is shabby on the outside to hide the wealth within. Everyone knows of the wealth, but facades, like the park’s wall, must be maintained. A lantern hung from the porch eaves. A sign, written in Utte, read ‘Kinship of the Serpent’. I stared at that sign, at that porch, at the door with its twisted handle, and wondered what the people inside would do if I entered. Would they remember me? Greet me as Kin? Or drive me out and curse me for faking my death?  Worse, would they expect me to redon the life I’ve shed? Staring at that sign, I pissed in the street like the Mearan savage I’ve become.
As I started to leave, I saw a woman sitting in the gutter. Her lamp attracted me. A memsa’s lamp, three tiny flames to signify the Holy Trinity of Faith, Purity, and Knowledge.  The woman wasn’t a memsa. Her young face was bruised and a gash on her throat had bloodied her clothing. Had she not been calmly assessing me, I would have believed the wound to be mortal. I offered her a copper. 
She refused, “I take naught for naught,” and began to remove trinkets from a cloth bag, displaying them for sale.
Her Utte accent had been enough to earn my coin. But to assuage her pride I commented on each of her worthless treasures, fighting the urge to speak Utte. (I spoke Universal with the accent of an upper class Mearan though I wondered if she had seen me wetting the cobblestones like a shameless commoner.) After she had arranged her wares, she looked up at me. “What do you desire, O Noble Born?”
I laughed, certain now that she had seen my act in front of the Snake House and, letting my accent match the coarseness of my dress, I again offered the copper.
 “Nay, Noble One. You must choose.” She lifted a strand of red beads. “These to adorn your lady’s bosom?”
            I shook my head. I wanted her lamp. But to steal the light from this woman ... I couldn’t ask for it. She reached into her bag once more and withdrew a book, leather-bound, the pages gilded on the edges. “Be this worthy of desire, Noble Born?”
 I stood stunned a moment, then touched the crescent stamped into the leather and asked if she’d stolen the book. She denied it. I’ve had the Training; she spoke truth. Yet how could she have come by a book bearing the Royal Seal of the Haesyl Line? I opened it. The pages were blank.
“Take it,” she urged. “Record your deeds for study. Lo, the steps of your life mark the journey of your soul.”
  I told her I couldn’t afford the book, but she smiled as if poverty were a blessing and said, “The price be one copper. Tis a wee price for salvation, Noble One.”
  So I bought this journal. I hide it under my mattress. When I lie awake at night, I feel the journal beneath my back and think of the woman who sold it to me. Damn her. She plagues my soul. I promised to return the next night, but I didn’t. I promised to record my deeds. But I can’t. The price is too high.”
― K. Ritz, Sheever's Journal, Diary of a Poison Master

“Approval is overrated...Approval and disapproval alike satisfy those who deliver it more than those who receive it. I don't care for approval, and I don't mind doing without.”
― Gregory Maguire

“Mr. Severe's place was filled by a Mr. Hopkins. He was a very different man. He was less cruel, less profane, and made less noise, than Mr. Severe. His course was characterized by no extraordinary demonstrations of cruelty. He whipped, but seemed to take no pleasure in it. He was called by the slaves a good overseer.”
― Frederick Douglass, A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

“Dear Father, hear and bless thy beasts and singing birds, and guard with tenderness small things that have no words.”
― Margaret Wise Brown, A Child's Good Night Book

“Yemen produces coffee, Egypt cotton, Iraq dates, Palestine oranges, and Syria trouble.”
― John Gunther, Inside Asia

“I smiled down at Charlie, and I understood that he would be free now even if I would not. In this way the life that was in me would find its way in him now. It was not a sad feeling. I felt my heart take off lightly like a butterfly and I thought, yes, this is it, something has survived in me, something that does not need to run anymore, because it is worth more than all the money in the world and its currency, its true home, is the living. And not just the living in this particular country or in that particular country, but the secret, irresistible heart of the living. I smiled back at Charlie and I knew that the hopes of this whole human world could fit inside one soul.”
― Chris Cleave, Little Bee

“People are becoming more and more like pets in digital cages, where the only meaning of their lives is to consume and isolate themselves from others like themselves.”
― Alexander Morpheigh, The Pythagorean

“Dog or horse was, on the whole, a promotion.”
― Jennifer Mugrage, The Strange Land

“And on that day I turned thirty and I started to cry. I cried because all I was eating was a bowl of chicken and mustard on my birthday... 'Aren’t I supposed to have it all figured out by now!?”
― Jeff Johns, Jet Lag Junkie: Unfiltered Tales of a Compulsive Wanderer

“This faulty light fitting at the front door with the dangerously flickering bulb looks rather festive. Who says I don't do Christmas?”
― R.D. Ronald

“Many Australians experienced a sense of unease, a sense of being watched by unseen eyes.”
― Michael G. Kramer, The Full Circle for Mick

“I’m pretty sure she’s got an angel job now where she plucks a large handful of flowers and carries them up to God where they will bloom even brighter than on earth.”
 
Can we ask God to bring her back home?”
You know what, she’s already home.” Starla patted her chest. “She’ll always be right here in our hearts.”
But I can’t give her a hug.”
 
Yes, you can . . . if you hug yourself or me or Willa or Daddy or Big Pop or GoGo you’re hugging her because she’s a part of us.”
― JoDee Neathery, A Kind of Hush

“Remember to personalize your messages, explaining why you’re reaching out to them specifically.”
― Pilar Calvoz Cordón, Shape Your Path at IE University : What to expect from Spain’s Instituto de Empresa University

“We’re so very sorry about this latest murder. Ignore Simon’s levity.”
― Susan Rowland, Murder on Family Grounds

“All these years I’ve prayed for this and now that it’s happening, my impulse is to run. As if anyone could run from tomorrow.”
― K. Ritz, Sheever's Journal, Diary of a Poison Master

“This country prides itself on freedom of the press and went to war with England because you wanted religious freedom”
― Lin Wilder, Plausible Liars: A Dr. Lindsey McCall Medical Mystery 5

“You have a peace about you. You have a wisdom. You have a way of living life that kicks my butt and pushes me around, and it beats me out of my idiocy and narrow-mindness. You, Addy, you, have shown me what life is all about”
― Heath Sommer

“For a minute, we're just two people wondering why things are the way they are.”
― Kathryn Stockett, The Help

“Maybe kissing was part of the human condition.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

“It is impossible to say why we love something or someone. We can come up with reasons if we have to, but the important part happens in the dark, beyond our control. We just know when it is there. And when it goes away.”
― John Ajvide Lindqvist, Little Star