Quotes & Sayings About A Long Way Gone

Longstreet stayed up talking, as long as there was company, as long as there was a fire. Because when the fire was gone and the dark had truly come there was no way he could avoid the dead faces of his children. — Michael Shaara

The only sensible way to regard the art life is that it is a privilege you are willing to pay for ... You may cite honors and attentions and even money paid, but I would have you note that these were paid a long time after the creator had gone through his struggles. — Robert Henri

The NFL has gone a long way to Disney-fy its image, but it's not Disney. It's the MMA. It's a violent, brutal human war, with rules. The same guy who says, 'I'm going to rob everybody,' is the same guy who would be successful in the NFL. — Terry Crews

Life is a long road with lots of junctions and every time you chose to go one way, you may just have easily have gone the other. We don't make choices so much as choices are made like a new fashion we slip into without realising. — Chloe Thurlow

And once when we were walking on Bredon Hill, we met a bedraggled and exhausted fox. 'Oh, poor thing,' Jack said. 'What shall we do when the hunt comes up? I can already hear them. Oh, I know
I have an idea.' He cupped his hands and shouted to the first riders, "Hallo, yoicks, gone that way," and pointed in the direction opposite to the one the fox had taken. The whole hunt followed his directions. There followed a long discussion about when lying was morally justifiable, but he boasted delightedly later to my wife that he had saved the life of a poor fox and showed no trace of guilt. — George Sayer

I'd watch old movies with Judy Garland, Shirley Temple and Bette Davis and long to be part of that glamorous world. A lot of that glamour is gone now. In my own small way, I hope I'm bringing some of it back. But it would be great if I could inspire women to dress up. — Imelda May

Meanwhile you just lived on and there was nothing to it. She understood perfectly well why people had cocktail parties, and jazzed, and Charlestoned till they were ready to drop. You had to take it out some way or other, your youth, or it ate you up. But what a ghastly thing, this youth! You felt as old as Methuselah, and yet the thing fizzed somehow, and didn't let you be comfortable. A mean sort of life! And no prospect! She almost wished she had gone off with Mick, and made her life one long cocktail party, and jazz evening. Anyhow that was better than just mooning yourself into the grave. — D.H. Lawrence

You could tell by the way he talked, though, that he had gone to school a long time. That was probably what was wrong with him. — John Kennedy Toole

My first memory was of stories about the past - a past that, according to the storytellers, was superior in every way to the life then being lived. It didn't take me long, however, to understand that the present was all we had, for the past was gone, and nothing could be done about it. — Horton Foote

A flush came into the sky, the wan moon, half-way down the west, sank into insignificance. On the shadowy land things began to take life, plants with great leaves became distinct. They came through a pass in the big, cold sandhills on to the beach. The long waste of foreshore lay moaning under the dawn and the sea; the ocean was a flat dark strip with a white edge. Over the gloomy sea the sky grew red. Quickly the fire spread among the clouds and scattered them. Crimson burned to orange, orange to dull gold, and in a golden glitter the sun came up, dribbling fierily over the waves in little splashes, as if someone had gone along and the light had spilled from her pail as she walked. — D.H. Lawrence

Some women don't care how their quilts look. They piece the squares together any sort of way, but she couldn't stand careless sewing. She wanted her quilts, and Joy's, made right. Quilts stay a long time after people are gone from this world, and witness about them for good or bad. She wanted people to see, when she was gone, that she'd never been a shiftless or don't-care woman. — Julia Peterkin

When I was a child and told my mother I didn't felt this was my planet, she thought I was schizophrenic or autistic. When later I finished a college degree and started working in different countries, she called me monster and started threatening me. Nearly 40 years later, when I was making a living from the books I wrote based on what I know, and making 6 times more money than she ever will, she apologized. I'm just not sure why or what she was apologizing for. I had already forgiven her ignorance when realizing nobody would ever believe the truth but myself. I had to go the whole way alone. Nobody was going to come with me on this very long, painful and challenging journey that humans call life but for me was much more than that, it was my mission, of changing their whole future far beyond the time when I'm gone. She was never my mother but merely the human body that gave me birth. In that sense, I am a monster, because I had no love. I had to find that too, on my own. — Robin Sacredfire

When the business man who fights to secure special privileges, to crowd his competitor off the track by other than fair competitive methods, receives the same summary disdainful ostracism by his fellows that the doctor or lawyer who is 'unprofessional,' the athlete who abuses the rules, receives, we shall have gone a long way toward making commerce a fit pursuit for our young men. — Ida Tarbell

One way or another, I'll watch her from a distance, silently and wihtout her knowledge, if that's what it takes. And no matter how long you live
I'll be around when you're gone. I get to spend my entire life either with Laurel, or watching over her while she's with someone else. Bliss or torture
there's really no middle ground. — Aprilynne Pike

And Belen?"
"Yes, Your Majesty?"
Maybe I do want to talk about him. A little. "Humberto would be proud of you, too. He always believed you'd come back to us." Saying his name aloud doesn't hurt as much as I thought it would. Humberto, I practice silently. Humberto.
A soft catch of breath. Then: "He had a way of believing in people long before they believed in themselves, didn't he?"
The entrance to my tent flaps closes, and he is gone. — Rae Carson

Coffee, she'd discovered, was tied to all sorts of memories, different for each person. Sunday mornings, friendly get-togethers, a favorite grandfather long since gone, the AA meeting that saved their life. Coffee meant something to people. Most found their lives were miserable without it. Coffee was a lot like love that way. And because Rachel believed in love, she believed in coffee, too. — Sarah Addison Allen

She was not certain what she wanted from life, or what to expect from it, for she had seen so little of it, but she was sure that in some way - because she willed it to be so - her wants and her expectations were the same.
For a while after their marriage she was in such demand that it was not unpleasant when he fell asleep. Presently, however, he began sleeping all night, and it was then she awoke more frequently, and looked into the darkness, wondering about the nature of men, doubtful of the future, until at last there came a night when she shook her husband awake and spoke of her own desire. Affably he placed one of his long white arms around her waist; she turned to him then, contentedly, expectantly, and secure. However, nothing else occurred, and in a few minutes he had gone back to sleep.
This was the night Mrs. Bridge concluded that while marriage might be an equitable affair, love itself was not. — Evan S. Connell

Once you've produced the scientific data that's necessary to make a drug into a medicine, you've gone a long way towards mainstreaming the acceptance of these drugs as having beneficial properties. And then the step to legalization is not that far behind that. — Rick Doblin

'A Long Way Gone' says something about human nature that we try, most of the time, to ignore. — Carolyn See

The man who actually knows just what he wants in life has already gone a long way toward attaining it. — Napoleon Hill

Where the shadow of the bridge fell I could see down for a long way, but not as far as the bottom. When you leave a leaf in water a long time after awhile the tissue will be gone and the delicate fibres waving slow as the motion of sleep. They don't touch one another, no matter how knotted up they once were, no matter how close they lay once to the bones. — William Faulkner

If you could figure out how to live with family then you'd gone a long way toward finding your peace. — Ben Fountain

Distances and days existed in themselves then; they all had a story. They were not barriers. If a person wanted to get to the moon, there is a way; it all depended on whether you knew the directions ... on whether you knew the story of how others before you had gone. He had believed in the stories for a long time, until the teachers at Indian school taught him not to believe in that kind of "nonsense". But they had been wrong. — Leslie Marmon Silko

As I walked with my arms crossed to keep warm, I felt myself going numb. How long was I gone, I wondered. A few hours? Minutes? Days? There was no way to know. Maybe I was locked in that darkness all along and just woke from my dream ... A marvelous dream. — Charles Lee

She remembered how one day she'd gone running to him with a shell, told him to listen and hear the waves inside. He'd taken time off from his endless making of money and driven her way up into the hills and found a quarry and dug a fossil out the rocks and made her put that to her ear as well; she'd heard the same singing and he'd told her that was the noise the years made, all the millions of them shut inside buzzing to get free. She kept the stone a long while after that; and when more time had passed and she knew the whispering and piping were only echoes of her blood she did't care because she'd still heard what she heard, the sound of trapped eternities. — Keith Roberts

My parents wanted their daughter back, and I haven't had the courage to tell them she's long gone. Haven't found a way to break it to them that that girl doesn't exist anymore. — Charlie Donlea

We have failed to recapture Gollum. We came on his trail among those of many Orcs, and it plunged deep into the Forest, going south. But ere long it escaped our skill, and we dared not continue the hunt; for we were drawing nigh to Dol Guldur, and that is still a very evil place; we do not go that way.' 'Well, well, he is gone,' said Gandalf. 'We have no time to seek for him again. He must do what he will. But he may play a part yet that neither he nor Sauron have foreseen. 'And now I will answer Galdor's other questions. What of Saruman? What are his counsels to us in this need? This tale I must tell in full, — J.R.R. Tolkien

Change doesn't happen overnight. There's no button that's pushed to magically alter everything. Change happens little by little. Day by day. Hour by hour.
It's the ticking of a secondhand, moving painstakingly, as it makes its way around the clock. You don't realize it until it's already over, the minute gone forever, as you're thrust right into the next one, the time still ticking away, whether you want it to or not.
Before long you have a hard time remembering the world as it once was, the person you were then, too focused on the world around you instead.
A world full of promise. A world full of excitement. — J.M. Darhower

The bus roared through Indiana cornfields that night; the moon illuminated the ghostly gathered husks; it was almost Halloween. I made the acquaintance of a girl and we necked all the way to Indianapolis. She was nearsighted. When we got off to eat I had to lead her by the hand to the lunch counter. She bought my meals; my sandwiches were all gone. In exchange I told her long stories. — Jack Kerouac

Where there has been racial hatred, it must be ended. Where there has been tribal animosity, it will be finished. Let us not dwell upon the bitterness of the past. I would rather look to the future, to the good new Kenya, not to the bad old days. If we can create this sense of national direction and identity, we shall have gone a long way to solving our economic problems. — Jomo Kenyatta

Gifts of grace come to all of us. But we must be ready to see and willing to receive these gifts. It will require a kind of sacrifice, the sacrifice of believing that, however painful our losses, life can still be good - good in a different way then before, but nevertheless good. I will never recover from my loss and I will never got over missing the ones I lost. But I still cherish life ... I will always want the ones I lost back again. I long for them with all my soul. But I still celebrate the life I have found because they are gone. I have lost, but I have also gained. I lost the world I loved, but I gained a deeper awareness of grace. That grace has enabled me to clarify my purpose in life and rediscover the wonder of the present moment. — Gerald L. Sittser

How, I asked, could I have gone my whole life not knowing about my mother? How could I have not known what Keith knew when he saw our house? "It's your mom," Helder said. "Because it's Mom." He sounded firm and knowing and clear. "When a child has an alcoholic father, he sees him drink all day long but he doesn't have a label, a concept. You just know that at night, when the tires make a certain sound in the driveway and the doors slam a certain way, with a certain sound, you just know you need to hide. — Heather Sellers

In searching for a way out of my own troubles, I had found my way into the trouble of others, some long gone, and now I was trying to find my way back out, through their troubles, as if we human beings can ever learn from one another. — Jesse Ball

Keep this constantly in mind: that all sorts of people have died - all professions, all nationalities. Follow the thought all the way down to Philistion, Phoebus, and Origanion. Now extend it to other species. We have to go there too, where all of them have already gone: . . . the eloquent and the wise - Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Socrates . . . . . . the heroes of old, the soldiers and kings who followed them . . . . . . Eudoxus, Hipparchus, Archimedes . . . . . . the smart, the generous, the hardworking, the cunning, the selfish . . . . . . and even Menippus and his cohorts, who laughed at thewhole brief, fragile business. All underground for a long time now. And what harm does it do them? Or the others either - the ones whose names we don't even know? The only thing that isn't worthless: to live this life out truthfully and rightly. And be patient with those who don't. — Marcus Aurelius

A soft noise, almost a sob. Ash rose, hesitated, as if fighting the compulsion to obey. "I will always be your knight, Meghan Chase," he whispered in a strained voice, as if every moment he remained was painful to him. "And I swear, if there is a way for us to be together, I will find it. No matter how long it takes. If I have to chase your soul to the ends of eternity, I won't stop until I find you, I promise."
And then he was gone. — Julie Kagawa

Books can be immensely powerful. The ideas in them can change the way people think. Yet it was the Nazis and Stalin's officers who committed terrible crimes, and not Mein Kampf or the Communist Manifesto - and of course, the Manifesto contained many key ideas that are still relevant and important today, long after Stalin has gone. There is a crucial distinction between the book and its effect - it's crucial because if you talk about a book being harmful rather than its effect you begin to legitimise censorship. Abhorrent ideas need to be challenged by better ones, not banned. — John Farndon

I'd gone from being simply awkward to being completely weird. Like I'd traveled a long way, only to feel like I was stuck in the same place. — C.L.Stone

The SNP became a minority government in 2007, then a majority one in 2011. But Labour viewed what was happening as some kind of aberration. They felt the problem wasn't theirs: they didn't have to change; the Scottish people had just gone down this wrong road, and if they waited long enough, they would find their way back. — Nicola Sturgeon

The Lost Tribe

How long, how long must I regret?
I never found my people yet;
I go about, but cannot find
The blood-relations of the mind

Through my little sphere I range,
And though I wither do not change;
Must not change a jot, lest they
Should not know me on my way.

Sometimes I think when I am dead
They will come about my bed,
For my people well do know
When to come and when to go.

I know not why I am alone,
Nor where my wandering tribe is gone,
But be they few, or be they far,
Would I were where my people are! — Ruth Pitter

Suppose you came across a woman lying on the street with an elephant sitting on her chest. You notice she is short of breath. Shortness of breath can be a symptom of heart problems. In her case, the much more likely cause is the elephant on her chest. For a long time, society put obstacles in the way of women who wanted to enter the sciences. That is the elephant. Until the playing field has veen leveled and lingering stereotypes are gone, you can't even ask the question. — Sally Ride

At the end of the day, life's about realising one's human potential. I don't know if I've realised mine, but I've certainly gone a long way towards realising some goals and some dreams. — Linton Kwesi Johnson

She saw that the world was evil and yet craved for happines in it, which she thought to get by being evil herself. And she had no more happiness than I have had -- who chose the other way. There was something that was the same in each of us: we were alike in that we hated the world, and yet saw that it could not have been otherwise. And we both tried to love in spite of this hate: perhaps she was more successful than I. Therefore do not talk lightly of a new start. Evil as the old things were, they were all that we had. And if you feel that they are gone now, be sorrowful -- for it will be a long time before new things come to replace them, and we cannot say how much better they will be. — Laura Riding Jackson

No doubt, I had some kind of carefully designed pattern for living before my son came. Some strategy for defining myself. Whatever that pattern was, it is long gone. Levered out of the way by a tool so powerful no force on earth can resist it. — Mark Greene

I raise my head and see a red illuminated EXIT sign and as my eyes adjust I see tigers, cavemen with long spears, cavewomen wearing strategically modest skins, wolfish dogs. My heart is racing and for a liquor-addled moment I think Holy shit, I've gone all the way back to the Stone Age until I realize that EXIT signs tend to congregate in the twentieth century. — Audrey Niffenegger

Early on, I settled on the first-person strategy as a way to deal with exposition and world-description issues. As long as the book is, it could have been far longer had I gone with an omniscient third-person narrator, or multiple point-of-view characters, since either of those would have enabled me to impart much more detailed information about the history and geography of the world. — Neal Stephenson

I wandered over across the hall where they were showing a short movie about vasectomies. Much later I told her that I'd actually gotten a vasectomy a long time ago, and somebody else must have gotten her pregnant. I also told her once that I had inoperable cancer and would soon be passed away and gone, eternally. But nothing I could think up, no matter how dramatic or horrible, ever made her repent or love me the way she had at first, before she really knew me. — Denis Johnson

I am a storyteller. The type that went from place to place, gathered people in the square and transported them, inspired them, woke them up, shook their insides around so that they could resettle in a new pattern, a new way of being. It is a tradition that believes that the story speaks to the soul, not the ego ... to the heart, not the head. In todays world , we yearn so to 'understand', to conquer with our mind, but it is not in the mind that a mythic story dwells.
So I do not offer interpretation. What I offer is to tell the story again, and again ... on and on, if need be - until the ego has stepped aside and the soul can hear. I trust that the life of the story continues long after I have gone, if the listener can step aside and be taken up and in, to a world where words speak not to the mind, but to the soul.
I invite you to trust it too. — Donna Jacobs Sife

Yes, at some point, billions of years from now, the Earth will be destroyed by the sun, or bombarded into a rock by asteroids or a comet, but I suspect that we will be long gone by then, if we haven't figured out how to live more harmoniously, and found a way to Star Trek our asses into the Milky Way to find a new home. Hopefully, we'll learn our lesson before we do, or ole Tom Bombadilo will just be laughing at us again, on a different rock, spinning around a different sun, watching us play with our magic techno-ring-trinkets. — Steve Bivans

But as the Pope has a long arm, which might reach me in France, I have gone a little out of the way to tell him the plain truths contained in these pages. — Edmond About

Despite an unfriendly demeanor and shrewd tongue, Sister Hilde's nose was her deadliest weapon. Same as the rest of her, it was long, pointed, and gnarled like an old tree, striking out first in one direction, then shifting midstride to head in quite another, then finally changing its mind again and heading back the way it had gone to begin with. When she was irritated, it twitched back and forth and turned red. When she was mad, it dove down and depressed her nostrils, making them flare out like crab apples. Children claimed she could even point with it, and the last thing a child wanted was to look up and find Sister Hilde's nose pointing at him. Wherever Hilde was, somewhere else was always a better place to be. — A.S. Peterson

He stared and talked at the girl's red hair and amused face for what seemed to be a few minutes; and then, feeling that the groups in such a place should mix, rose to his feet. To his astonishment, he discovered the whole garden empty. Everyone had gone long ago, and he went himself with a rather hurried apology. He left with a sense of champagne in his head, which he could not afterwards explain. In the wild events which were to follow, this girl had no part at all; he never saw her again until all his tale was over. And yet, in some indescribable way, she kept recurring like a motive in music through all his mad adventures afterwards, and the glory of her strange hair ran like a red thread through those dark and ill-drawn tapestries of the night. For what followed was so improbable that it might well have been a dream. — G.K. Chesterton

I have thought briefly about getting caught in rock slides or falling from a rock face. If that happened, I would probably perish on the mountain in much the same way many of the big animals do. I would be long gone before anyone found me. My only wish would be that folks wouldn't spend a lot of time searching. When the time comes for a man to look his Maker in the eye, where better could the meeting be held than in the wilderness? — Richard Proenneke

Beyond the field my eyes studied a long wall of pine trees, a windbreak of sorts that stretched from the road back toward an old farmhouse and an older barn surrounded by low brush. Through the binoculars, I could just make out the top of Carney's Impala parked in the side yard by the house. From a long way off you could see that the white house paint was blistered or gone to bare clapboard. The roof of the barn looked like it had been hit by lightning at some point. There was a charred, gaping hole on one corner. The whole structure sagged left. — James Patterson

While Celia was gone he walked up and down remembering what he had originally felt about Dorothea's engagement, and feeling a revival of his disgust at Mr. Brooke's indifference. If Cadwallader-- if every one else had regarded the affair as he, Sir James, had done, the marriage might have been hindered. It was wicked to let a young girl blindly decide her fate in that way, without any effort to save her. Sir James had long ceased to have any regrets on his own account: his heart was satisfied with his engagement to Celia. But he had a chivalrous nature (was not the disinterested service of woman among the ideal glories of old chivalry?): his disregarded love had not turned to bitterness; its death had made sweet odors-- floating memories that clung with a consecrating effect to Dorothea. He could remain her brotherly friend, interpreting her actions with generous trustfulness. — George Eliot

I had a tattoo once," said Kaidan. "Last year, just before we left England."
"What do you mean, you had one 'once'?"
"Bloody thing was gone by the morning!" His voice was indignant. "Sheets were black with ink. I put myself through all of that for hours, and my body just pushed it back out!"
And once again we were both in a fit of hysterics, sharing the world's best inside joke. We were doubled over, unable to breathe, and I accidentally snorted. Kaidan pointed at me and laughed harder, clutching his stomach.
"What was your tattoo?" I managed to push the words out.
"You had to ask. It was a deadly-looking pair of black wings on my shoulder blades."
Kaidan and I started roaring again, muscles clenching from the exertion.
We had no way of knowing it would be our last reason to laugh for a very long time. — Wendy Higgins

The two of us, in the rain, went down streets of vacant lots. The sidewalks in that part of the world sink and evade your step, in winter the branches of the little ash trees at the edge hold the raindrops a long time, a tenuous fairyland trembling in the breeze. Our way back to the hospital led past a number of newly built hotels, some had names, others hadn't even gone to that much trouble. "Rooms by the week" was all they had to say for themselves. The war had suddenly emptied them of all the workers and wage slaves who had lived there. They wouldn't even come back to die. Dying is work, too, but they'd do it somewhere else. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

When you look at a person, any person, everyone has a story. Everyone has gone through something that has changed their life. Anxiety, depression and panic attacks are not signs of weakness. They are signs of trying to remain strong for way too long. — Deepika Padukone

We can ask and ask but we can't have again what once seemed ours for ever - the way things looked, that church alone in the fields, a bed on a belfry floor, a remembered voice, the touch of a hand, a loved face. They've gone and you can only wait for the pain to pass.
All this happened so long ago. And I never returned, never wrote, never met anyone who might have given me news of Oxgodby. So, in memory, it stays as I left it, a sealed room furnished by the past, airless, still, ink long dry on a put-down pen.
But this was something I knew nothing of as I closed the gate and set off across the meadow. — J.L. Carr

He would give anything if he could feel toward a lover one tenth of what he felt for Darling. Just for one heartbeat. But it wasn't meant to be. He'd accepted that a long time ago. Darling would always be heterosexual. Nothing would ever change that, and his best friend would die before sleeping with him. Why can't I walk away from Darling? Honestly, he'd tried. He'd gone from one man to another, hoping, aching that one of them would find a way into his jaded heart. And every one of them had disappointed him, and left him with scars that were deeper and uglier than the ones marring his body. But as he breathed Ture in, that part of him that he hated most surged forward. Hope was a fickle whore, and he hated the fact that he was her bitch. You've walked this path a million times, Mari. Only Darling was Darling. Everyone else was a poor substitution. Clenching — Sherrilyn Kenyon

In order to bring a nation to support the burdens of maintaining great military establishments, it is necessary to create an emotional state akin to war psychology. There must be the portrayal of an external menace. This involves the development to a high degree of the nation-hero, nation-villain ideology and the arousing of the population to a sense of sacrifice. Once these exist, we have gone a long way on the path to war. — John Foster Dulles

Here, on the borders of death, life follows an amazingly simply course, it is limited to what is most necessary, all else lies buried in gloomy sleep; - in that besides our primitiveness and our survival. Were we more subtly differentiated we must long since have gone mad, have deserted, or have fallen. As in a polar expedition, every expression of life must serve only the preservation of existence, and is absolutely focused on that. All else is banished because it would consume energies unnecessarily. That is the only way to save ourselves. — Erich Maria Remarque

A jellyfish, if you watch it long enough, begins to look like a heart beating. It doesn't matter what kind: the blooded Atolla with its flashing siren lights, the frilly flower hat variety, or the near-transparent moon jelly, Aurelia aurita. It's their pulse, the way they contract swiftly, than release. Like a ghost heart-- a heart you can see right through, right into some other world where everything you ever lost as gone to hide.
Jellyfish don't even have hearts, of course-- no heart, no brain, no bone, no blood. But watch them for a while. You will see them beating. — Ali Benjamin

God has arranged strange ways for some of us to find him. Sometimes He brings us on long physical journeys; sometimes He leaves us at home and makes the journey internal. Yours has been both. You have gone a long way and struggled a great deal, but I can see from your eyes that it was not for nothing. — Abigail J. Hartman

And though, indeed, it only happened once, it's gone on happening, the way unique and momentous things do, for ever and ever, as long as there's a memory for them to happen in ... — Graham Swift

The last time I was in New York was in a cold January, and everyone was ill and tired. Many of the people I used to know there had moved to Dallas or had gone on Antabuse or had bought a farm in New Hampshire. We stayed ten days, and then we took an afternoon flight back to Los Angeles, and on the way home from the airport that night I could see the moon on the Pacific and smell jasmine all around and we both knew that there was no longer any point in keeping the apartment we still kept in New York. There were years when I called Los Angeles "the Coast," but they seem a long time ago. — Joan Didion

Auntie Ann's voice cracked when she spoke, like a piano that hasn't been played in too long. "I try not to dwell on what's dead and gone. It has a way of showing back up if it thinks it's been invited. — Jennifer L. Greene

One travels long distances not solely for large gatherings, but for something more intangible. I have always gone out on a limb for love. A dangerous, romantic, disappointing way to live. — Jennifer Ball

They couldn't talk. They were not good talkers, either of them. And once, long ago now, she had bought a notebook for a course. It lay empty and forgotten on the kitchen table until one afternoon, when she had gone out to the shops and he was worried that she would be killed by a bus or by lightning, he opened the notebook and he wrote lines about how he loved her, the way he loved her, about his fucking heart and crap like that, about his body brimful and his scrambled head. All that. She came back from the shops. He left the notebook where it was, and he didn't mention it. And it wasn't until about a week later that he noticed it again, and he flicked it open, and he saw his lines followed by lines from her. She'd written words that she had never said. He sat down. He read them over and over for a long time. Then he wrote a paragraph for her to find. — Keith Ridgway

It is quite possible that, even if you set the most relevant, realistic goals, you may not achieve them in the way or the time you wanted to. Life may throw something unexpected in your path, which stops you from achieving what you want, when you want. This is not failure. Feeling like you have failed is bound to lead to low mood, and can often come about if things haven't quite gone according to plan. However, the best thing to do is to draw a mental line under the experience, learn from what has happened and try again. As long as you are still trying, you are working towards your long-term aims; and as long as you are doing that, you are never truly failing. — Anna Barnes

When someone you love dies, and you're not expecting it, you don't lose her all at once; you lose her in pieces over a long time - the way the mail stops coming, and her scent fades from the pillows and even from the clothes in her closet and drawers. Gradually, you accumulate the parts of her that are gone. Just when the day comes - when there's a particular missing part that overwhelms you with the feeling that she's gone, forever - there comes another day, and another specifically missing part. — John Irving

Maybe I'd never see him again ... maybe he'd gone for good ... swallowed up, body and soul, in the kind of stories you hear about ... Ah, it's an awful thing ... and being young doesn't help any ... when you notice for the first time ... the way you lose people as you go along ... the buddies you'll never see again ... never again ... when you notice that they've disappeared like dreams ... that it's all over ... finished ... that you too will get lost someday ... a long way off but inevitably ... in the awful torrent of things and people ... of the days and shapes ... that pass ... that never stop ... — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Time changes its nature in prisons and hospitals. In this cosmogony it both races and drags itself. For anyone who hasn't been a long-term patient or prisoner - or both, like Sharmila - there is no way to imagine what evenings are like when you are locked in - the indeterminate hour when the sun has gone down but night hasn't fully set in. It haunts you. In a hospital, especially one where air-conditioning and double-glass windows don't shield you from the real world, there are mixed sounds that rise up from every floor; murmurs, shallow breaths, the sounds of pain and healing. Once the final inspections are done and the trays and bowls carried away, a shroud of silence falls over everything. It can be strangely tranquil, or eerily desolate. — Anubha Bhonsle

Those who guide us, who inspire us, having gone our way before, are now partners with us in building a better world. Any success we have is theirs as well as ours. To copy or imitate them should be only the beginning-the apprentice stage of life. It is fine to think, "what will a Shaker do? What would Scott Nearing have said? What would Gandhi have thought?" These are good exercises for the mind, a way of weighing ideas and contemplated actions, valuable so long as we do not follow anyone blindly.
Only by standing on their shoulders can we build a better world, but we should use the wise as advisers, not masters. — William Coperthwaite

Often we feel the need to say that a book isn't just about a particular time or place but is about the human spirit. People say this of Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, or Night by Elie Wiesel, or A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah. — Will Schwalbe

An enormous bartender came over. He looked like the pullout centerfold for Leather Biker Monthly. Extra big and extra scary. He had long hair, a long scar, and tattoos of snakes slithering up both arms. He shot the two men a glare and - poof - they were gone. Like the glare had evaporated them. Then he turned his eyes toward Esperanza. She met the glare and gave him one back. Neither backed down. "Lady, what the fuck are you?" he asked. "Is that a new way of asking what I'm drinking?" "No." The mutual glaring continued. He leaned two massive snake-arms on the bar. "You're too good-looking to be a cop," he said. "And you're too good-looking to be hanging out in this toilet. — Harlan Coben

I believe America has gone a long way down the wrong road. If we ever needed God's help, it is now. — Billy Graham

And she'd also found Logan again. Now he was her ... what? New-old boyfriend? Lover? Skype buddy? Pen pal with benefits? Whatever his title, his e-mails filled her inbox. Sometimes he sent five a day, short and quipping. Other times he sent longer, more serious ones. She kept her tone light when she replied. That'd always been her MO - a joke, a jab. A way to deflect from what she was really feeling. A way to keep the nonstop ache of missing him from becoming too painful to survive. And honestly, what was there to say that would come close to what she felt? The moments they'd spent together before he'd shipped out on his latest naval tour had been the most peaceful she could remember - even with her anxiety about her dad. It'd been the first time she'd felt complete in a long time. And then, just like that, he was gone again. — Rob Thomas

For John was running, and this was terrible. Because if you ran, time ran. You yelled and screamed and raced and rolled and tumbled and all of a sudden the sun was gone and the whistle was blowing and you were on your long way home to supper. When you weren't looking, the sun got around behind you! The only way to keep things slow was to watch everything and do nothing! You could stretch a day to three days, sure, just by watching! — Ray Bradbury

When my career first began, I didn't have children - so there's a whole lot of difference in the way I choose roles now. Not just films for my children, but how long I'm going to be away, and is Dad going to be home while I'm gone. That sort-of factor plays a part. — Amy Irving

Pirates are the very essence of profit maximising entrepreneurs described in neoclassical economics. Yet, whilst films such as 'The Pirates of the Caribbean' and 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid' have gone a long way to popularise both pirates and outlaw behaviour, the truth of the matter is that piracy is illegal, and it kills. — Peter Middlebrook

That is why the sadness passes: the new presence inside us, the presence that has been added, has entered our heart, has gone into its innermost chamber and is no longer even there, is already in our bloodstream. And we don't know what it was. We could easily be made to believe that nothing happened, and yet we have changed, as a house that a guest has entered changes. We can't say who has come, perhaps we will never know, but many signs indicate that the future enters us in this way in order to be transformed in us, long before it happens. — Rainer Maria Rilke

Think of a potter taking a misshapen bowl from his wheel and pounding it back into the tub of clay. A soul suffers while it is being pounded in this way, and suffers until it ceases to be. You are pounded down, and that which was you gets into something else. God tries again, and tries until the Work is complete. Meanwhile you, my son, are long gone — K.J. Bishop

There's pathos in this familiar routine, in the sounds of homely objects touching surfaces. And in the little sigh she makes when she turns or slightly bends our unwieldy form. It's already clear to me how much of life is forgotten even as it happens. Most of it. The unregarded present spooling away from us, the soft tumble of unremarkable thoughts, the long-neglected miracle of existence. When she's no longer twenty-eight and pregnant and beautiful, or even free, she won't remember the way she set down the spoon and the sound it made on slate, the frock she wore today, the touch of her sandal's thong between her toes, the summer's warmth, the white noise of the city beyond the house walls, a short burst of birdsong by a closed window. All gone, already. — Ian McEwan

The way I pack is I look at how long I'll be gone and I pack day for day. If I'm going on a three-day fishing trip, I plot each day. I put most of that in a little bag. If I'm going from there to work on golf courses for a few days, I plot that trip. — Jack Nicklaus

All the way back she talked haltingly about herself, and Amory's love waned slowly with the moon. At her door they started from habit to kiss good night, but she could not run into his arms, nor were they stretched to meet her as in the week before. For a minute they stood there, hating each other with a bitter sadness. But as Amory had loved himself in Eleanor, so now what he hated was only a mirror. Their poses were strewn about the pale dawn like broken glass. The stars were long gone and there were left only the little sighing gusts of wind and the silences between ... but naked souls are poor things ever, and soon he turned homewards and let new lights come in with the sun. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Ink black hair, dark smoldering eyes with eyelashes so enviably long they cast shadows upon his cheekbones, a dimpled smile and broad shoulders and a height a little over six feet was all that comprised of Logan Jackson. Basically, he looked like he had just stepped out of the cover of GQ magazine and belonged in Milan and not Haven Falls.
He looked the same but completely different all at once. His pretty boyish features had hardened. He was still handsome but in a rougher more masculine way. Gone was the slightly mischievous innocent child. Now there only remained a devilishly handsome young man — Ali Harper

Religions are often state-protected nurseries of pseudoscience, although there's no reason why religions have to play that role. In a way, it's an artefact from times long gone. — Carl Sagan

What is it about having a period that makes women so bitchy?" I paused for a moment, struggling against the urge to leap on him and tear him limb from limb. For one thing, I love him. Even when he's being an asshole, I love him. For another, any attempt to leap and tear right now would hurt me way worse than I could possibly hurt him. It was an effort, but I said as sweetly as possible, "It isn't that we're bitchier, it's that having a period makes us feel all tired and achy, so we have less tolerance for all the bullshit we normally SUFFER IN SILENCE." By the time the sentence ended the sweetness was long gone, my jaw was clenched, and I think my eyes were bugging out. — Linda Howard

Science has gone a long way toward helping man to free himself from the burden of hard labor; yet, science itself is not a liberator. It creates means, not goals. It is up to men to utilize those means to achieve reasonable goals. — Albert Einstein

Isn't it weird," I said, "the way you remember things, when someone's gone?"
What do you mean?"
I ate another piece of waffle. "When my dad first died, all I could think about was that day. It's taken me so long to be able to think back to before that, to everything else."
Wes was nodding before I even finished. "It's even worse when someone's sick for a long time," he said. "You forget they were ever healthy, ever okay. It's like there was never a time when you weren't waiting for something awful to happen."
But there was," I said. "I mean, it's only been in the last few months that I've started remembering all this good stuff, funny stuff about my dad. I can't believe I ever forgot it in the first place."
You didn't forget," Wes said, taking a sip of his water. "You just couldn't remember right then. But now you're ready to, so you can."
I thought about this as I finished off my waffle. — Sarah Dessen

I'm not even sure he would have realized he was permitted to have his own desires and preferences. That it would have been okay for him to have a favorite place, to walk with satisfaction down the long straight boulevards of whatever post he may have gone to next, to admire the uniformity of the grass, green and neatly shorn beneath a blue, limitless sky, to bury himself in a sandy shallow of some clear cold stream and let the water wash over the pitted skin of his scarred body. I don't know what his favorite place would have been like, because I don't believe he would have let himself have one. He would have waited for one to be assigned to him. That's the way he was ... Everything he'd done had been a response to a preexisting expectation. — Kevin Powers

What do you really want to know? Am I sorry for what I did? There's not a day goes by I don't feel regret. Not because I'm in here, but because you think I should be. I look back on the way I was. A young, stupid kid that committed that terrible crime. I want to talk to him. I want to try to talk some sense to him. Tell him the way things are. But I can't. That kid's long gone, and this old man is all that's left. — Stephen King

At the best of times his face was unreadable. Now his face was a book written in a language long forgotten, in an alphabet unimagined. Silas wrapped the shadows around him like a blanket, and stared after the way the boy had gone, and did not move to follow. — Neil Gaiman

Peter's gone away on his training weekend. It's only been one day and I'm already longing for him the way I long for Christmas in July. Peter is my cocoa in a cup, my red mittens, my Christmas morning feeling. He — Jenny Han

We have gone a long way toward civilization and religious tolerance, and we have a good example in this country. Here the many Protestant denominations, the Catholic Church and the Greek Orthodox Church do not seek to destroy one another in physical violence just because they do not interpret every verse of the Bible in exactly the same way. Here we now have the freedom of all religions, and I hope that never again will we have a repetition of religious bigotry, as we have had in certain periods of our own history. There is no room for that kind of foolishness here. — Harry S. Truman

It is not known that Litvinoff's favorite flower was the peony. That his favorite form of punctuation was the question mark. That he had terrible dreams and could only fall asleep, if he could fall asleep at all, with a glass of warm milk. That he often imagined his own death. That he thought the woman who loved him was wrong to. That he was flat-footed. That his favorite food was the potato.That he liked to think of himself as a philosopher. That he questioned all things, even the most simple, to the extent that when someone passing him on the street raised his hat and said, "Good day," Litvinoff often paused so long to weigh the evidence that by the time he'd settled on an answer the person had gone on his way, leaving him standing alone.
These things were lost to oblivion like so much about so many who are born and die without anyone ever taking the time to write it all down. — Nicole Krauss

It was a cool day and very clear. You could see a long way-but not as far as Velma had gone. — Raymond Chandler

Love again: wanking at ten past three
(Surely he's taken her home by now?),
The bedroom hot as a bakery,
The drink gone dead, without showing how
To meet tomorrow, and afterwards,
And the usual pain, like dysentery.
Someone else feeling her breasts and cunt,
Someone else drowned in that lash-wide stare,
And me supposed to be ignorant,
Or find it funny, or not to care,
Even ... but why put it into words?
Isolate rather this element
That spreads through other lives like a tree
And sways them on in a sort of sense
And say why it never worked for me.
Something to do with violence
A long way back, and wrong rewards,
And arrogant eternity. — Philip Larkin

I see that as usual I've gone on too long and that I'm running out of room, but I do hope that you are happy and well, and it's all a little less lonely out there than you may have feared. If there's anything I can do for you back here, or if I can help you in any way, please know that I will. — Donna Tartt

Whatever any of them thinks about who she was, or what happened, or why people do what they do, is just absolutely fine & dandy, as long as they have a good time, do it with a kind heart, & pay homage in a respectful way to the Goddesses that have gone before them. — Kris Radish