A Campfire Quotes & Sayings

You look at the modern humans that a lot of us have slept with and it is hardly a surprise if a Neanderthal maiden or two might have twinkled by the campfire light. — Bill Bryson

In the absence of real power blood seemed the only alternative.
though he could walk away, and had to walk away, he could not walk away with impunity. he could never be a mordantly amused or merely interested observer of the beast. — Thomas Williams

I wake up in the morning and I still have a passion for what I do, and I'll be doing it when I'm 105, I'll be scribbling away. If it was 100 years ago I'd be sitting by the campfire, saying, "Have I got a story to tell you." — Jackie Collins

I wanted to absorb every moment of this night. I knew it was special. I wanted to keep it locked away inside me forever just the way it was. When I closed my eyes to sleep, I thought of how he'd glowed like a jewel in the light of the campfire. The way the flames carved him against the darkness. The very shape of his head. The smudges of chocolate and marshmallows on his fingers and lips. How the hair on his legs looked like filaments of gold. When I was certain my heart hat painted the canvas in my memory...I fell asleep. — Dan Skinner

Heart lesson #3: post-heartbreak survival.
The heart is resilient, I mean literally. When a body is burned, the heart is the last organ to oxidize. While the rest of the body can catch flame like a polyester sheet on campfire, it takes hours to burn the heart to ash. My dear sister, a near-perfect organ! Solid, inflammable. — Ibi Kaslik

Father Wanderly, have you seen a demon or evil spirit actually leave the body? What did it look like? Could you see anything? Did you see a wisp, like smoke over a campfire? Does the demon get sucked into a void, clutching on to the old, possessed body like a life raft? Or does it go quietly, like a child leaving her parents' home for the final time? If you couldn't see anything, if the spirit was invisible, then how could you know if the exorcism really, truly worked? — Paul Tremblay

Stories match the way our species thinks. Equally important, stories are something we share - everyone everywhere tells stories and oddly enough, in the same way. It all probably started around some campfire a million years ago. — John Daly

In a June 25, 2010, Washington Post article, the CIA acknowledged officially
discussing the creation of a video of a fake Saddam Hussein having sex with a
teenage boy in order to discredit him in the eyes of the Iraqi people. Evidently,
the Agency did create a video of a fake Osama Bin Laden drinking liquor
around a campfire with his cronies, bragging about their conquests of young
boys. The article quoted an anonymous former CIA officer "chuckling" at the
memory, and declaring that the actors used in the video were drawn from
"some of us darker-skinned employees." These ridiculous clandestine ideas
brought to mind the childish efforts to assassinate Fidel Castro forty years
earlier. — Donald Jeffries

So when their campfire was nothing but embers and the horses were dozing behind them, Ansel and Celaena lay on their backs on the side of a dune and stared up at the stars.
Her hands tucked behind her head, Celaena took a long, deep breath, savoring the balmy night breeze, the exhaustion ebbing from her limbs. She rarely got to see stars so bright - not with the lights of Rifthold. The wind moved across the dunes, and the sand sighed. "That's the stag," Celaena breathed. "The Lord of the North." ... the smile faded when she stared at the familiar constellation. "Because the stag remains constant - no matter the season, he's always there. — Sarah J. Maas

This song of the waters is audible to every ear, but there is other music in these hills, by no means audible to all ... On a still night, when the campfire is low and the Pleiades have climbed over rimrocks, sit quietly and listen ... and think hard of everything you have seen and tried to understand. Then you may hear it - a vast pulsing harmony - its score inscribed on a thousand hills, its notes the lives and deaths of plants and animals, its rhythms spanning the seconds and the centuries. — Aldo Leopold

I want a campfire box. — Patrick Ness

People are often wary of reading or watching anything in the horror genre because in their minds, it's just senseless gore, death and violence. Well, I can tell you from avid experience, that's not what horror is about. The horror genre teaches us that sometimes really bad things happen to really good people, but that hope always prevails in even the darkest of situations. That's a very important lesson, no matter how frightening you think the teacher is, and to be in the top of her class, all you need to do is to go in with an open mind. — Rebecca McNutt

I write at eighty-five for the same reasons that impelled me to write at forty-five; I was born with a passionate desire to communicate, to organize experience, to tell tales that dramatize the adventures which readers might have had. I have been that ancient man who sat by the campfire at night and regaled the hunters with imaginative recitations about their prowess. The job of an apple tree is to bear apples. The job of a storyteller is to tell stories, and I have concentrated on that obligation. — James A. Michener

-You give her a three, he said ...
-That three was entirely fitting, I said. It was complete garbage. Not the kind of thing I expect the
students to hand in ... In addition to the Second World War, I also deal with a large part of the history that came afterwards,' I interrupted again. Korea, Vietnam, Kuwait, the Middle East and Israel, the Six-Day
War, the Yom Kippur War, the Palestinians. I deal with all of that during my classes. So then you
can't expect to turn in a paper about the state of Israel in which people mostly pick oranges and dance
in sandals around a campfire. Cheerful, happy people everywhere, and all that horseshit about the
desert where flowers blossom again. I mean, people are shot and killed there every day, buses are
blown up. What's this all about?
-She came in here crying, Paul.
-I'd cry too if I turned in garbage like that. — Herman Koch

I think that could go back to the time when people had to live in small groups of relatives - maybe fifty or a hundred people at the most. And evolution or God or whatever arranged things genetically, to keep the little families going, to cheer them up, so that they could all have somebody to tell stories around the campfire at night, and somebody else to paint pictures on the walls of the caves, and somebody else who wasn't afraid of anything and so on. That's what I think. And of course a scheme like that doesn't make sense anymore, because simply moderate giftedness has been made worthless by the printing press and radio and television and satellites and all that. A moderately gifted person who would have been a community treasure a thousand years ago has to give up, has to go into some other line of work, since modern communications put him or her into daily competition with nothing but world's champions. — Kurt Vonnegut

The breath of song in your remembering eyes cascades fragile reflections of time-steeped sunsets tinting delicate snowflakes with the solitude of a sleeping forest where ancient secrets lie waiting, undisturbed by knowing, tranquil in the forgetfulness of yesterday's silvery silence — Sean Terrence Best

A corpse was merely an empty vessel for the spirit it had housed. "The soul," he'd said one night by a campfire in the Valley of the Kings, "is like a falcon. Despite its loyalty to the falconer, it longs to fly free. When my time comes, let my soul soar into the wind and the sky. Wherever its natural home is meant to be, that's where it will go. — Robert Masello

You could expect many things of God at night when the campfire burned before the tents. You could look through and beyond the veils of scarlet and see shadows of the world as God first made it and hear the voices of the beasts He put there. It was a world as old as Time, but as new as Creation's hour had left it.
In a sense it was formless. When the low stars shone over it and the moon clothed it in silver fog, it was the way the firmament must have been when the waters had gone and the night of the Fifth Day had fallen on creatures still bewildered by the wonder of their being. It was an empty world because no man had yet joined sticks to make a house or scratched the earth to make a road or embedded the transient symbols of his artifice in the clean horizon. But it was not a sterile world. It held the genesis of life and lay deep and anticipant under the sky. — Beryl Markham

In the old days, people told their kids stories about the big, bad wolf, and men who were especially cruel and horrible were said to be like animals, maybe werewolves. But the things ordinary men do every day are a million times worse than anything a wolf would do. A wolf would never torture another animal to death, or lock it up. They kill out of instinct, in order to survive, because they have to - not because they just feel like it, not because they're evil. Not like us. Man is the scariest animal on the planet, but from the beginning of time, the wolf has gotten the bad rap. We've tried to pretend that evil is out there, lurking inside animals beyond the campfire, and not where it really is, in here.' He [Cody] tapped his chest. — Lisa Tuttle

I don't consider myself to be a crusader of any sort. I was bystander to a certain number of newspaper crusades. They end badly, in terms of being either fraudulent or by inspiring legislations that makes things worse. So, I regard myself as someone coming to the campfire with the truest possible narrative he can acquire. — David Simon

I learn from him around the campfire that he and the Howlers, Thistle, Screwface, Clown, Weed, and Pebble - the dregs of my old House - stayed no longer than a day after I disappeared. — Pierce Brown

I believe one of the important differences between creating literature and just telling a story around the campfire is that in literature you're recreating the experience of life, not just relaying a 'this happened, then that happened' kind of narrative. The specific details and layers of depth that make the world of the story - and what the character is experiencing in that world - as real as possible are elements I love as a reader and, consequently, elements I strive to use effectively as a writer. — Lara Campbell McGehee

When your down on your luck and you've lost all your dreams theres nothing like a campfire and a can of beans — Tom Waits

Our communities basically want the same things - safe, clean environments; affordable, adequate housing and transportation; educational opportunities; accessible, quality health care; meaningful work at a fair wage; and equitable services for everyone. So, in the spirit of warmth and energy that our campfire metaphor brings, I invite each of you to be the spark that ignites your community to be safer, healthier, and fairer - and fired up for change. — Frances Dunn Butterfoss

I think the experience of going to a theater and seeing a movie with a lot of people is still part of the transformational power of the film, and it's equivalent to the old shaman telling a story by the campfire to a bunch of people. — Wes Craven

Don't we all look back in longing, those of us who had happy childhoods? Because the greatest loss we ever know is not the loss of family or place or money, it is the loss of innocence. There is forever a hollow place in our hearts once we realize that darkness rings the campfire. — Carolyn Hart

I was introduced to country music around a campfire on a farm. — Gavin DeGraw

In an ideal world the scientist should find a method to prevent the most severe forms of autism but allow the milder forms to survive. After all, the really social people did not invent the first stone spear. It was probably invented by an Aspie who chipped away at rocks while the other people socialized around the campfire. Without autism traits we might still be living in caves. — Temple Grandin

The body seems to feel beauty when exposed to it as it feels the campfire or sunshine, entering not by the eyes alone, but equally through all one's flesh like radiant heat, making a passionate ecstatic pleasure glow not explainable. — John Muir

The wine god sighed. 'Oh Hades if I know. But remember, boy, that a kind act can sometimes be as powerful as a sword. As a mortal, I was never a great fighter or athlete or poet. I only made wine. The people in my village laughed at me. They said I would never amount to anything. Look at me now. Sometimes small things can become very large indeed.' He left me alone to think about that. And as I watched Clarisse and Chris singing a stupid campfire song together, holding hands in the darkness, where they thought nobody could see them, I had to smile. — Rick Riordan

I'd learned quite early in life that the mind loves nothing better than to spook itself with outlandish stories, as if the various coils of the brain were no more than a troop of roly-poly Girl Guides huddled over a campfire in the darkness of the skull. — Alan Bradley

A disturbing thought hits me,"but then our only neighbor would be Haymich!"
"Ah, that'll be nice,"says Peeta, tightening his arms around me."You and me and Haymich. Very cozy. Picnics, birthdays. long winters around the campfire retelling old Hunger Games tales."
"I told you he hates me!" I say, but I can't help laughing at the image of Haymich becoming my new pal.
"Only sometimes. When he's sober, I've never heard him say one negative thing about you," says Peeta.
He's never sober!" I protest.
That's right. Who am I thinking of? Oh, I know. It's Cinna who likes you. But that's mainly because you didn't try to run when he set you in fire," says Peeta. "On the other hand, Haymich ... well, if I were you, I'd avoid Haymich completely. He Hates you."
" I thought that you said I was his favorite," I say.
"He hates me more," says Peeta, "I don't think people in general are his sort of thing. — Suzanne Collins

Laia is the wild dance of a Tribal campfire, while Helene is the cold blue of an alchemist's flame. — Sabaa Tahir

The echoes of beauty you've seen transpire, Resound through dying coals of a campfire. — Ernest Hemingway,

Love is not a forest fire that burns intensely,
hotly and out of control for a brief moment until,
its expendable fuel spent,
it sputters,
seeking in vain for something else to consume,
to sustain itself before, finally,
it dies:
cold, black ash the only evidence of its passing.
Love is, instead, a campfire:
it provides ample heat and comfort
to the twosome who sit before it,
and although its flames may at times wane,
a well-tended campfire's embers can be nurtured and fanned
until the flames once again dance brightly and cheerfully,
providing comfort to the couple
who cherish the gentle warmth it ministers. — J. Conrad Guest

Nevertheless, for the most part the intangible dangers of being observed by unintended audiences are considered secondary to the convenience of instantaneous access to this "virtual campfire" from the comfort of the home. While online social networking sites are often disparaged as poor replacements for human interaction that encourage superficial relationships, my ethnographic analysis reveals how some people, American youth in particular, are incorporating this medium into their everyday practices in more or less meaningful ways. Through elucidating both the dangers and possibilities of this medium, I seek to encourage people to create their own "virtual campfires" as a supplement to, rather than a replacement of, their offline lives. Through participation and sharing in meaningful ways- from conversation to creating art- we might begin to see these sites as vehicles for healing the widely-felt loss of community and the pervasive sense of alienation experienced by so many. — Jennifer Anne Ryan

A pastiche of eyes. But faces all gray. Not the color of metal, but the color of old ash in a campfire. Ash faces. Ash clothes. Ash lives. — Pierce Brown

We smoked fat cigars by the campfire and they tasted like wood and ash. The inhale and exhale was exciting. Blowing smoke rings in the calm forest air was followed by a deep swallow of cheap beer, and this too was exciting. There was no judgment in the wild, and so indulgences were plentiful. There were no regulators here and we were free to indulge in the deep intoxications that made our minds free. — Daniel J. Rice

I love stories. When I tell a story, I try to think of people sitting around a crackling campfire. — Phil Keoghan

As the campfire burned to an ashy bowl of red-hot embers, the boys would ramble on, piling up horror upon horror, like cordwood stacked under a blood-red-barked madrona tree. — Gregg Olsen

She backed away, looking at him, his shirt hiked up, his crotch exposed. She could think only of a campfire, one small log, all of it doused in milk. — Dave Eggers

For most, ghost hunting was a few steps escalated from telling scary stories around a campfire. — Thomm Quackenbush

I turned and found Dionysus standing there, still in his black suit.
Walk with me," he said.
Where to?" I asked suspiciously.
Just to the campfire," he said. "I was beginning to feel better, so I
thought I would talk with you a bit. You always manage to annoy me."
Uh, thanks. — Rick Riordan

Whether tales are told by the light of a campfire or by the glow of a screen, the prime decision for the teller has always been what to reveal and what to withhold. Whether in alone or with images, the narrator should be clear about what is to be shown and what is to be hidden. — Dave Gibbons

You fascinate me." Chris leaned away so he could see her face. "How so?" "You quote Augustine, and you make an awesome campfire. You carry a rosary in your pocket, and you're going to work at a brewery. You're a virgin, and you ride a Harley. — Carolyn Astfalk

Frank closed his troubled blue eyes and tipped his head back, but quickly regretted it. The moment he blocked out the light of the campfire, he was back on the smoke cover land. The ground beneath him seemed to be reaching up, eager to soak the life blood of the men around him. In every direction, the cries of the wounded screamed out. The constant sound of the drums echoed across the hills and through the valleys as the thundering cannons answered their call. With a gloved hand, he rubbed his eye lids as if the action might disperse the memories. It didn't. — A.M. Heath

The underlying foundation of all religion is performance - whether it's a tribal dance around a campfire to satisfy the fire god, or a dead religious activity performed week after week by an evangelical Christian with the intent of impressing his God. It's all religious performance, and God isn't impressed by our performance. What impresses Him is faith. — Steve McVey

Even from behind, I knew the seated man was Garth. I'd seen him in chair, saddle, and by a campfire. I'd known him running with his hounds, grooming his horses, leaning back to look at the stars from the branches of a pine tree, hunched with concentration whittling a doll, carrying Alice through a storm, and even sparring with a dragon. A woman will know a man from all sides after that. — Janet Lee Carey

Our band had perfected the art of punk-rock camping, throwing a bunch of crap into the van with, like, an hour's notice and just driving out into the mountains, where we'd drink beer, burn food, jam on our instruments around the campfire, and sack out under the open sky. — Gayle Forman

She rolled the mysterious plunkin across in front of the hearth and stared at it. It still looked disconcertingly like a severed head. "What do we do with this?"
Dag sat cross-legged and smiled
not much of a smile, but a start. "Lots of choices. They all come down to plunkin. You can eat it raw in slices, peel it and cut it up and cook it alone or in a stew, boil it whole, wrap it in leaves and cook it in campfire coals, stick a sword through it and turn it on a spit, or, very popular, feed it to the pigs and eat the pigs. It's very sustaining. Some say you could live forever on plunkin and rainwater. Others say it would just seem like forever. — Lois McMaster Bujold

Laia and Helene: They're so different. I like that Laia says things I don't expect, that she speaks almost formally, as if she's telling a story. I like that she defied my mother to go to the Moon Festival, whereas Helene always obeys the Commandant. Laia is the wild dance of a Tribal campfire, while Helene is the cold blue of an alchemist's flame.

But why am I even comparing them? I've know Laia a few days and Helene all my life. Helene's no passing attraction. She's family. More than that. She's part of me. — Sabaa Tahir

I have mostly been terrified of listening to scary stories around a campfire. We camp a lot as a family, and at night my dad would try and tell us scary stories. This made eating s'mores difficult. The story would start with something like ... 'and the old man who lived in these woods ... ' I would then run back into the camper terrified. — Willow Shields

Without a shadow of a doubt, the first fiction ever recounted was fantasy. Guys sitting around the campfire telling each other stories about the gods who made lightning, and stuff like that. They did not tell one another literary stories. They did not complain about difficulties of male menopause while being a junior lecturer on some midwestern college campus. Fantasy is without a shadow of a doubt the ur-literature, the spring from which all other literature has flown. — Terry Pratchett

The experience of going to a theater and seeing a movie with a lot of people is still part of the transformational power of the film, and it's equivalent to the old shaman telling a story by the campfire to a bunch of people. That is a remarkable thing, if you scream and everyone else in the audience screams, you realize that your fears are not just within yourself, they're in other people as well, and that's strangely releasing. — Wes Craven

I think of myself ... as a troubadour, a village storyteller, the guy in the shadows of the campfire. — Louis L'Amour

I'm a Hollywood kid, and I know that there are only so many stories. Only so many tales around the campfire that we have to tell. Then we have to regurgitate them. Our grandparents' movies were all remakes of silent films - we forget that, but it's true. — Robert Englund

If asked to sketch a picture of the typical archer I would be hard put. They seem to come in all shapes, sizes, colors and backgrounds. Inwardly they seem to have in common a love for the outdoors, a reverence for wildlife, and a close tie with history. There is nothing they seem to enjoy more than telling tall tales around a campfire or talking about archery to others. It would be difficult to find a more interesting group of people. — Fred Bear

I try to give the music more of a campfire feel as opposed to a library atmosphere. I like when you can hear people hanging out in the songs and doing a little shuffling. It creates a feeling of participation. — Alex Ebert

What's exciting to me is the live show medium itself; it's the last untouchable medium. I don't think it will ever go away. It has gone on from the beginning of time with little performances around a campfire, I'd imagine, like cavemen doing some chants, rhythm, and sounds, beating on things. — Juliette Lewis

I've said before, if you're going to earnestly sing a song around a campfire, you'd better be a Muppet! — Colin Trevorrow

and a campfire for illumination. Usually a slow writer - he — John Ferling

Film is just a different version of what we did round the campfire when we were Neanderthals. We tell stories so people can learn things and relativise things. — Chris Pine

You get guys around a campfire, and they start telling their stories. That's the fellowship that they want to be in. — John Eldredge

In setting down these recollections of my early years so far removed from their unfolding, I am fooled, as all are, by time itself. My parents, long gone from my world, live again. Memory, which so confounds our waking life with anticipation and regret, may well be our one true earthly consolation when time slips out of joint." Chapter 6, The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue

"Assembled in a small circle, our faces glowed in the flickering light of the campfire, signs of anxious weariness in our tired eyes, but the meal would prove revitalizing. As the fire burnt down and our bellies filled, a calm complacency settled upon us, like a blanket drawn around our shoulders by absent mothers." Chapter 20, The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue — Keith Donohue

Personally," Mr. D continued, "I couldn't care less, but congratulations. Also, I should tell you that we have a new camper today. Peter Johnson." Chiron murmured something. "Er, Percy Jackson," Mr. D corrected. "That's right. Hurrah, and all that. Now run along to your silly campfire. Go on. — Rick Riordan

The whole campfire idea freaked Piper out. It made her think of that huge purple bonfire in the dreams, and her father tied to a stake.
What she got instead was almost as terrifying: a sing-along. — Rick Riordan

When I was in Boy Scouts, back in the day, we'd tell stories around the campfire. That's why I love movies. It's literally you and your friends, telling stories around a campfire, whatever they may be. — Jon M. Chu

Sam woke to a feeling of utter, profound, incredible relief.
He closed his eyes as soon as he opened them, afraid that being awake would just invite something terrible to appear.
Astrid was back. And she was asleep with her head on his arm. His arm was asleep, completely numb, but as long as that blond head was right there his arm could stay numb.
She smelled like pine trees and campfire smoke.
He opened his eyes, cautious, almost flinching, because the FAYZ didn't make a habit of allowing him pure, undiluted happiness. The FAYZ made a habit of stomping on anything that looked even a little bit like happiness. And this level of happiness was surely tempting retaliation. From this high up the fall could be a long, long one. — Michael Grant

Be sure to do burning pots at least once a month to clean the physical atmosphere of your home. This is done by getting a small cooking pot and placing it on the floor with a plate under it. Place a half an inch of Epsom salt in the pot covered by an inch of rubbing alcohol. Then light a match to it. I call this the New Age campfire. This will clean whatever room you put it in 100% of all etheric, astral and mental negative energies. — Joshua Stone

Some dry leaf blows into a campfire well-stoked and drawing well. What follows? That leaf catches at once, swiftly is consumed, a shadow withering briefly in the fierce light, and thereafter little remains, not cinder and ash so much as smudges of char. — Kai Ashante Wilson

Looked over at the campfire, where three party ponies were teaching Tyson to operate a paintball gun. I hoped they knew what they were getting into. — Rick Riordan

In all the Kalahari Desert, only six true hunters remained. The renegades agreed to let Louis hang around, an offer he took to the extreme; once installed, Louis acted like an unemployed in-law, basically squatting with the Bushmen for the next four years ... He learned to keep his campfire burning and tent zipped even on the most sweltering nights, since packs of hyenas were known to drag people from open shelters and tear out their throats. He leaned that if you stumble upon an angry lioness and her cubs, you stand tall and make her back down, but in the same situation with a rhino, you run like hell. (p. 234) Know why people run marathons? he said ... Because running is rooted in our collective imagination, and our imagination is rooted in running. Language, art, science; space shuttles ... intravascular surgery, they all had their roots in our ability to run. Running was the superpower that made us human- which means it's a superpower all humans possess. (p. 239) — Christopher McDougall

People? People are chaotic quiddities living in one cave each. They pass the hours in amorous grudge and playback and thought experiment. At the campfire they put the usual fraction on exhibit, and listen to their own silent gibber about how they're feeling and how they're going down. We've been there.
Death helps. Death gives us something to do. Because it's a fulltime job looking the other way. — Martin Amis

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't driving around on a bus and having a campfire kind of adding to the environment problem? — Will Smith

How heavy is that day in the mountains when you built a campfire and saw a shooting star? What is the mass of yesterday? How fast is love? — John Varley

My friend Bo had just finished skinny-dipping when one of those bastards came trotting out of the woods and bit his dick clean off." "Just bit it off? Just like that?" "Yeah," I said. "Then that bastard pig put it on a stick and heated it over the campfire while Bo ran home and tried to explain it to his mama. — Nick Wilgus

As the campfire radiated warmth in the opening of the lean-to, Red Macalister crouched before the burning logs. He added more wood to the blaze, then rocked back on his boot heels, studying the flames, and decided the fire would do for the next few hours to ward off the cold winter night. He glanced up at the black sky dotted with diamonds. A clear night. — Debra Holland

I think of myself in the oral tradition-as a troubadour, a village tale-teller,
the man in the shadows of the campfire. That's the way I'd like to be remembered-
as a storyteller. A good storyteller. — Louis L'Amour

All this, and discontent too! Otherwise, why am I sitting here dreaming of England? Why am I gazing at this campfire like a lost should seeking a hope when all that I love is at my wingtips? Because I am curious. Because I am incorrigibly, now, a wanderer. — Beryl Markham

...the only guarantee in this fleeting market day we call life is that no matter how carefully you plod along, you'll grow old and get sick, or a force will sneak up on you in the dark and snuff you like piss on a campfire. Nobody is going to remember your hardest bouldering problem or that you sent your project. After a few years nobody cares who got the gold medal or the gold for that matter. Nobody care who sent what, when, where, why, and how. The memories fade, then just disappear...all that remains is the impact you had on other people — Jeff Jackson

Over by the campfire, Tyson let loose with his paintball gun. A blue projectile splattered against one of the centaurs, hurling him backward into the lake. The centaur came up grinning, covered in swamp muck and blue paint, and gave Tyson two thumbs up. — Rick Riordan

This fifth and final sun will die,
Like every sun before
But for a moment we laughed in its light,
Like wind-blown petals
Sparkling near an exile's campfire
Before the flames take them. — David Bowles

He was a moth to her flame, a marshmallow to her campfire, a redneck to her bottle rocket ... — Nine Naughty Novelists

Raithe enjoyed a good campfire. Something comforting about the dancing light, the smell of smoke, and the way his face and chest were hot but his backside cold. He sensed a profound meaning in this duality as well as in the enigma of flickering flames. The fire spirit spoke in spitting sparks and shifts of choking smoke, but the meaning of each remained a mystery. Everything in nature was that way. All of it spoke to him
to everyone
in a language few could understand. What secrets, what wisdom, and what horrors might he learn if only he knew what it all meant. — Michael J. Sullivan

A white crowned night sparrow sings as the moon sets. Thunder growls far off. Our campfire is a single light. Amongst a hundred peaks and waterfalls. The manifold voices of falling water Take all night. Wrapped in your down bag Starlight on you cheeks and eyelids Your breath comes and goes In a tiny cloud in the frosty night. Ten thousand birds sing in the sunrise. Ten thousand years revolve without change. All this will never be again. — Kenneth Rexroth

Yup, we'll start driving these ill-tempered, longhorn cattle through wild and desolate country. There's coyotes and rattle snakes. There's the blistering sun, blinding dust storms, and wild rivers to cross. Then sometimes, just sometimes, there's a double-crossing, thieving cowboy riding right along beside you. And you don't know it until it's too late. — Connie Kingrey Anderson

I think one of the great problems we have in the Republican Party is that we don't encourage you to be nasty. We encourage you to be neat, obedient, loyal and faithful and all those Boy Scout words, which would be great around a campfire but are lousy in politics. — Newt Gingrich

A picnic. Picture a forest, a country road, a meadow. Cars drive off the country road into the meadow, a group of young people get out carrying bottles, baskets of food, transistor radios, and cameras. They light fires, pitch tents, turn on the music. In the morning they leave. The animals, birds, and insects that watched in horror through the long night creep out from their hiding places. And what do they see? Old spark plugs and old filters strewn around ... Rags, burnt-out bulbs, and a monkey wrench left behind ... And of course, the usual mess - apple cores, candy wrappers, charred remains of the campfire, cans, bottles, somebody's handkerchief, somebody's penknife, torn newspapers, coins, faded flowers picked in another meadow. — Arkady Strugatsky

I do not know who coined the statement "an idle mind is the devil's playground," but it is true. When camping in dangerous places, it is often recommended that you keep a campfire going to keep the predators away. When we set our hearts on fire, demonic predators stay out of our camp, which is my main point in this chapter. The apostle Paul put it best: "Love never fails" (see 1 Corinthians 13:8). We have spent several chapters talking about how to win spiritual battles in our own lives and in the lives of others. But when all else fails, remember this: Love cannot be defeated. — Kris Vallotton

Remember, a good marriage is like a campfire. Both grow cold if left unattended. — H. Jackson Brown Jr.

Light a campfire and everyone's a storyteller — John Geddes

That evening we sat around the campfire. The clouds that had gathered overhead all day broke up and the moonlight shimmered on the Cocus River. The current glittered a silvery reflection. Nor was the Jungle dark. Hundreds of fireflies danced about - it was a magnificent evening — Yossi Ghinsberg

Are you going to tell me what that was about?" Adam asked as we went back upstairs.
"Sometime," I told him. "When we're telling ghost stories around a campfire, and I want to scare you. — Patricia Briggs

Mapping does not purport to create an idealistic vision where all teachers agree, love one another, and gather around a campfire and sing 'Curriculum Kumbaya.' What it can develop is a sense of place, of respect, and of new grounds for discussion, disputes, and direction. — Heidi Hayes Jacobs

Now there was a crack, a kind of canyon, between the Woodrow Call sitting with Teresa on the train and the Woodrow Call who had made the campfire that morning and saddled his horse. The crack was permanent, the canyon deep. He could not get across it, back to himself. His last moments as himself had been spent casually - making a campfire, drinking coffee, saddling a horse. — Larry McMurtry

A good woman is like a campfire; if you don't tend to her and keep her flame bright, she'll go out on you. — Sean D. Brennan

That's just it. It is not one of our men."
Donald's head jerked toward him. "Who then, Rufus?"
"Jacq," he spit out her name like a curse.
"What?" Donald peered through the darkness to the campfire, now glowing dimmer. "You are imagining things, my lord."
"It is she. I'm certain."
"Damnation." Donald echoed Rufus' original curse. His expression however reflected his awe. "Rufus, does your woman even know she is a woman?"
............
"When you tire of her, I'm going to marry her," Donald promised reverently. — Delilah Devlin

The fire, the fire. It rages within, a campfire and then an inferno, and my body is its fuel. I feel it racing through me, eating away at the weight. There is nothing that can kill me now; I am powerful and invincible and eternal. — Veronica Roth

He remembered how nice the kids at Camp Half-Blood had been to him after the war with Kronos. Great job, Nico! Thanks for bringing the armies of the Underworld to save us! Everybody smiled. They all invited him to sit at their table. After about a week, his welcome wore thin. Campers would jump when he walked up behind them. He would emerge from the shadows at the campfire, startle somebody and see the discomfort in their eyes: Are you still here? Why are you here? It didn't help that immediately after the war with Kronos, Annabeth and Percy had started dating ... Nico set down his fartura. Suddenly it didn't taste so good. — Rick Riordan

He nursed one beer each night. Sometimes two. He poured the beer into a glass, and I could smell the hops dancing in the air as I passed. Few scents crackle my nerve endings like beer. As gorgeous as campfire, as unmistakable as gasoline. I sidled up to him. Can I have a sip? Just one. I placed my nose in the glass, and I could feel stardust on my face. I don't know if parents still let their kids taste beer, but it wasn't uncommon at the time. The bitterness was supposed to turn us off the stuff, but that one sip lit a fuse in me that burned for decades. — Sarah Hepola