Quotes & Sayings About A Secret Place

This was something she would keep hidden within herself, maybe in place of the knot of pain and anger she had been carrying under her breastbone ... a security blanket, an ace up her sleeve. She might never use it, but she would always feel its presence like a swelling secret stone, and that way when she let go of the rage, she would not feel nearly as empty. — Jodi Picoult

Westcliff thinks that St. Vincent is in love with you."
Evie choked a little and didn't dare look up from her tea. "Wh-why does he think that?"
"He's known St. Vincent from childhood, and can read him fairly well. And Westcliff sees an odd sort of logic in why you would finally be the one to win St. Vincent's heart. He says a girl like you would appeal to ... hmm, how did he put it? ... I can't remember the exact words, but it was something like ... you would appeal to St. Vincent's deepest, most secret fantasy."
Evie felt her cheeks flushing while a skirmish of pain and hope took place in the tired confines of her chest. She tried to respond sardonically. "I should think his fantasy is to consort with as many women as possible."
A grin crossed Lillian's lips. "Dear, that is not St. Vincent's fantasy, it's his reality. And you're probably the first sweet, decent girl he's ever had anything to do with. — Lisa Kleypas

The landscape was snow and green ice on broken mountains. These weren't old mountains, worn down by time and weather and full of gentle ski slopes, but young, sulky, adolescent mountains. They held secret ravines and merciless crevices. One yodel out of place would attract, not the jolly echo of a lonely goatherd, but fifty tons of express-delivery snow. — Terry Pratchett

Aedus reached into the center console and pulled out a pair of sunglasses. There was hardly a cloud in the sky. He drove for ten minutes before the helicopter came in sight, gradually descending towards the airport in his opposite direction. He looked around for a place to make a U-turn, but there was no legal turn available. Aedus sighed. The things a good guy has to do. He made a turn onto a side road and looped back around, tires squealing. In an action movie he'd just make a U-turn wherever, speed down the road, and weave in and out of traffic. Alas, this wasn't an action movie and he wasn't a certain Jason Bour - no time to think about that. The airport was coming up quick and as bustling as ever. — Zechariah Barrett

I think I have the secret of a successful L.A. restaurant, especially now that so many Europeans live there. You have to have a place where they can see out the windows, see the world passing by. Europeans fancy that. — Michael Caine

What is a country for someone who is neither a soldier nor a rabid patriot? A place of subtle affinities, an implicit understanding between the land and the foot that treads it. A familiarity, an agreement, a secret sharing with the colours and smells of it. The impression that the wind is with us and is sometimes carrying us. A renunciation that does not imply acceptance of the idiocy and inhumanity that the country nurtures. — Gil Courtemanche

How were you supposed to explain this kind of thing? It seemed stupid to try. Even the memory was starting to seem vague and starry with unreality, like a dream where the details get fainter the harder you try to grasp them. What mattered more was the feeling, a rich sweet undertow so commanding that in class, on the school bus, lying in bed trying to think of something safe or pleasant, some environment or configuration where my chest wasn't tight with anxiety, all I had to do was sink into the blood-warm current and let myself spin away to the secret place where everything was all right. — Donna Tartt

Old Time, that greatest and longest established spinner of all! ... his factory is a secret place, his work is noiseless, and his hands are mutes. — Charles Dickens

Westcliff sees an odd sort of logic in why you would finally be the one to win St. Vincent's heart. He says a girl like you would appeal to ... hmm, how did he put it? ... I can't remember the exact words, but it was something like ... you would appeal to St. Vincent's deepest, most secret fantasy."
Evie felt her cheeks flushing while a skirmish of pain and hope took place in the tired confines of her chest. She tried to respond sardonically. "I should think his fantasy is to consort with as many women as possible."
A grin crossed Lillian's lips. "Dear, that is not St. Vincent's fantasy, it's his reality. And you're probably the first sweet, decent girl he's ever had anything to do with."
"He spent quite a lot of time with you and Daisy in Hampshire," Evie countered.
That seemed to amuse Lillian further. "I'm not at all sweet, dear. And neither is my sister. Don't say you have been laboring under that misconception all this time? — Lisa Kleypas

That place that no one knows about - horrifying things we keep secret. A lot of that is released through acting. — Charles Durning

Perhaps the art of harvesting the secret riches of our lives is best achieved when we place profound trust in the act of beginning. Risk might be our greatest ally. To live a truly creative life, we always need to cast a critical look at where we presently are, attempting always to discern where we have become stagnant and where new beginning might be ripening. There can be no growth if we do not remain open and vulnerable to what is new and different. I have never seen anyone take a risk for growth that was not rewarded a thousand times over. — John O'Donohue

If we want to unlock the secret behind the origin of our sun and its planets, it would be helpful to find some remnants from the birth itself, an event that took place about four-and-a-half-billion years ago. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

We always felt divine in this place, tasting a desired view of the world, knowing a voracious appetite for the love that dare not speak its name, my soul sewn to your soul. Our fortunate embroidery. — Lisa O'Donnell

The secret must stay and- according to scientists- the love will live. The heart is quite comfortable with secrets. After all, its home is a dark wet place tucked in among all the other organs who aren't talking either. — Toby Barlow

In the castle of Benwick, the French boy was looking at his face in the polished surface of a kettle-hat. It flashed in the sunlight with the stubborn gleam of metal. It was practically the same as the steel helmet which soldiers still wear, and it did not make a good mirror, but it was the best he could get. He turned the hat in various directions, hoping to get an average idea of his face from the different distoritons which the bulges made. He was trying to find out what he was, and he was afraid of what he would find.
The boy thought that there was something wrong with him. All through his life
even when he was a great man with the world at his feet
he was to feel this gap: something at the bototm of his heart of which he was aware, and ashamed, but which he did not understand. There is no need for us to try to understand it. We do not have to dabble in a place which he preferred to keep secret. — T.H. White

Everyone's thought that: maybe even if, maybe we still could, maybe small bits of precious things can be salvaged. No one with cop-on thinks it after the first try. But her voice, quiet and sad, shimmering the air into those pearly colors: for a second I believed it, all over again. — Tana French

I plucked my soul out of its secret place,
And held it to the mirror of my eye,
To see it like a star against the sky,
A twitching body quivering in space,
A spark of passion shining on my face.
And I explored it to determine why
This awful key to my infinity
Conspires to rob me of sweet joy and grace.
And if the sign may not be fully read,
If I can comprehend but not control,
I need not gloom my days with futile dread,
Because I see a part and not the whole.
Contemplating the strange, I'm comforted
By this narcotic thought: I know my soul. — Claude McKay

THE DEATH OF SALADIN
You left ground and sky weeping, mind
and soul full of grief. No one can
take your place in existence or in
absence. Both mourn, the angels, the
prophets, and this sadness I feel has
taken from me the taste of language,
so that I can't say the flavor of my
being apart. The roof of the kingdom
within has collapsed! When I say the
word YOU, I mean a hundred universes.
Pouring grief water, or secret dripping in the heart, eyes in the head or eyes
of the soul, I saw yesterday that all these flow out to find you when you're
not here. That bright fire bird Saladin
went like an arrow, and now the bow
trembles and sobs. If you know how to
weep for human beings, weep for Saladin. — Rumi

The administration of George W. Bush, emboldened by the Sept. 11 attacks and the backing of a Republican Congress, has sought to further extend presidential power over national security. Most of the expansion has taken place in secret, making Congressional or judicial supervision particularly difficult. — Noah Feldman

We place such crazy importance on physical appearance in our image-obsessed culture, on youth and beauty to define our sense of self-worth, that aging, by default, becomes a kind of defect, something secret and corrosive and shameful. — Ruth Ozeki

The secret of a full life is to live and relate to others as if they might not be there tomorrow, as if you might not be there tomorrow. It eliminates the vice of procrastination, the sin of postponement, failed communications, failed communions. This thought has made me more and more attentive to all encounters. meetings, introductions, which might contain the seed of depth that might be carelessly overlooked. This feeling has become a rarity, and rarer every day now that we have reached a hastier and more superficial rhythm, now that we believe we are in touch with a greater amount of people, more people, more countries. This is the illusion which might cheat us of being in touch deeply with the one breathing next to us. The dangerous time when mechanical voices, radios, telephones, take the place of human intimacies, and the concept of being in touch with millions brings a greater and greater poverty in intimacy and human vision. — Anais Nin

Our devotional life with God is more like the planting of a garden. When we arise from sowing into the secret place, we will not usually be able to point to immediate results or benefits. What we sow today will require an entire season of growth before the results are manifest. — Bob Sorge

In what, then, can those engaged in this kind of warfare place their hope? The Nakano Military School answered this question with a simple sentence: "In secret warfare, there is integrity." And this is right, for integrity is the greatest necessity when a man must deceive not only his enemies but his friends. With integrity - and I include in this sincerity, loyalty, devotion to duty and a sense of morality - one can withstand all hardships and ultimately turn hardship itself into victory. This was the lesson that the instructors at Futamata were constantly trying to instill in us. One of them put it this way: "If you are genuinely pure in spirit, people will respond to you and cooperate with you." This meant to me that so long as I remained pure inside, whatever measures I saw fit to take would eventually redound to the good of my country and my countrymen. — Hiroo Onoda

And I could test myself - my own courage - with it, too, because when the doors at either end of the secret staircase were closed, it was impenetrably dark. I hid in the staircase, shivering with terror, telling the narrative: The little girl was in a dark, dark place but she was very brave ... Sometimes the door at the bottom opened, and a wedge of light sliced up the stairs; a maid, her arms filled with folded laundry, would find me and ask in amazement what I was doing there.
And though I answered lightheartedly that I was playing, the truth is that I was not entirely certain what I was doing there, crouched and frightened in the darkness. Only now, sixty years later, do I see that I was arming myself, rehearsing panic, loss, and helplessness; assessing my own cowardice and courage, and and the same time reassuring myself that the door would always open, that the light would always find its way in. — Lois Lowry

She walked through the underpass at the Elephant and Castle, enjoying the sense that nothing really mattered, not the truth about the past, nor whether they believed her, not Winnie's drinking or Vik's ultimatum. It was the perfect place to escape from a painful past. She could waste years at home trying to make sense of a random series of events. There was no meaning, no lessons to be learned, no moral - none of it meant anything. She could spend her entire life trying to weave meaning into it, like compulsive gamblers and their secret schema. Nothing mattered, really, because an anonymous city is the moral equivalent of a darkened room. She understood why Ann had come here and stayed here and died here. It wouldn't be hard. All she had to do was let go of home. She would phone Leslie and Liam sometimes, say she was fine, fine, let the calls get farther apart, make up a life for herself and they'd finally forget. — Denise Mina

He was special friend to Coyote Kachina, who taught him the secret of shape shifting." "Grandfather blessed this earth with his presence for ninety-eight years. He had the courage to survive and left this world a better place than he found it. We shall all miss him." She blew a kiss at Grandfather. "Goodbye, Governor. You are my sun beneath the earth, my heart above the clouds, and my prayer for a better life. I will see you every morning when the sun rises. I shall miss you when the sun sets. I will yearn for you on a cloudy day. Do not forget me." She threw a silver locket with her picture into the grave. — Belinda Vasquez Garcia

There is a secret earth gyrm, a place where the unbelievable, the unthinkable, the terrible, takes place every day. A place hidden by the veils of ignorance and cowardice and fear. On occasions we glimpse it, when its hidden terrors fall through that veil into plain sight, but mostly we just dismiss it as something else, somewhere else, to be dealt with by someone else. Long ago I found the veil and lifted it. And knowing as I do what is behind, what those behind it get away with, with impunity ... I cannot grow old basking on the bank of some safe-haven, no. — Shaun Hick

Barth was the first theologian to begin the criticism of religion ... but he set in its place the positivist doctrine of revelation which says in effect, 'Take it or leave it': Virgin Birth, Trinity or anything else, everything which is an equally significant and necessary part of the whole, which latter has to be swallowed as a whole or not at all. That is not in accordance with the Bible. There are degrees of perception and degrees of significance, i.e. a secret discipline must be re-established whereby the mysteries of the Christian faith are preserved from profanation. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Reading felt like a daytime dream in a secret land. Nobody but I knew how to get there, and nobody but I owned that place — Lawrence Hill

It made me wish there were a place as much me as that place is you. A place I would keep as secret. — Robin Hobb

And Bethod means to make war on this? He must be mad."
"Bethod, for all his waste and pride, understands the Union. They are jealous of one another, all those people. It may be a union in name, but they fight each other tooth and nail. The lowly squabble over trifles. The great wage secret wars for power and wealth, and they call it government. Wars of words, and tricks, and guile, but no less bloody for that. The casualties are many. Behind those walls they shout and argue and endlessly bite one another's backs. Old squabbles are never settled, but thrive, and put down roots, and the roots grow deeper with the passing years. It has always been so. They are not like you, Logen. A man here can smile, and fawn, and call you friend, give you gifts with one hand and stab you with the other. You will find this a strange place. — Joe Abercrombie

o each his Dulcinea, that he alone can name...to each a secret hiding place where he can find the haunting face to light his secret flame. For with his Dulcinea beside him, so to stand, a man can do quite anything, outfly the bird upon the wing, hold moonlight in his hand. Yet if you build your life on dreams, it's prudent to recall--a man with moonlight in his hand has nothing there at all. There is no Dulcinea, she's made of flame and air, and yet how lovely life would seem if ev'ry man could weave a dream to keep him from despair. To each his Dulcinea...though she's naught but flame and air! — Mitch Leigh

You can't find your true voice and peer behind the door and report honestly and clearly to us if your parents are reading over your shoulder. They are probably the ones who told you not to open that door in the first place. You can tell if you they're there because a small voice will say, 'Oh, whoops, don't say that, that's a secret,' or 'That's a bad work,' or 'Don't tell anyone you jack off. They'll all start doing it.' So you have to breathe or pray or do therapy to send them away. Write as if your parents are dead. — Anne Lamott

MARCH 11 THE LEVEL OF TRUST WE HAVE FOR GOD IS A MONUMENTAL ISSUE IN THE LIFE OF EVERY BELIEVER. God, even in this difficult place, You have treasures for me here. You will give me the treasures of darkness, riches stored in secret places, so that I may know that You are the Lord, the God of Israel, who summons me by name (Isa. 45:3). You want me to discover the riches of relationship — Beth Moore

And then I have a secret. Did you know what will happen if you eliminate the empty spaces from the universe, eliminate the empty spaces in all the atoms? The universe will become as big as my fist.
Similarly, we have a lot of empty spaces in our lives. I call them interstices. Say you are coming over to my place. You are in an elevator and while you are coming up, I am waiting for you. This is an interstice, an empty space. I work in empty spaces. While waiting for your elevator to come up from the first to the third floor, I have already written an article! — Umberto Eco

Is it not possible that a place could have huge affection for those who dwell there? Perhaps your place loves having you there. It misses you when you are away and in its secret way rejoices when you return. Could it be possible that a landscape might have a deep friendship with you? That it could sense your presence and feel the care you extend towards it? Perhaps your favourite place feels proud of you. — John O'Donohue

His familiar husky voice sent a wave of wistfulness through me. A thousand memories spun in my head, tangling together- a rocky beach strewn with driftwood trees, a garage made of plastic sheds, warm sodas in a paper bag, a tiny room with one too-small shabby loveseat. The laughter in his deep-set black eyes, the feverish heat of his big hand around mine, the flash of his white teeth against his dark skin, his face stretching into the wide smile that had always been like a key to a secret door where only kindred spirits could enter. It felt sort of like homesickness, this longing for the place and person who had sheltered me through my darkest night. — Stephenie Meyer

What occurred did so because I was open to it, and not because fate and I met at a certain angle. I had plenty of time to think about this later. I thought about it so much that the events of that evening sometimes ran along under my mood like a secret river, in the way that all buried truths rushed along quietly in some hidden place. — Rachel Kushner

The stars of midnight shall be dear
To her; and she shall lean her ear
In many a secret place
Where rivulets dance their wayward round,
And beauty born of murmuring sound
Shall pass into her face. — William Wordsworth

I've never been overwhelmed with a desire to become famous. It's not that I didn't want to have my work appreciated, but for some reason - maybe it's because my father disapproved of almost everything I did - in some secret place in my being was a desire to avoid success. — Saul Leiter

His nature had developed like a flower, had borne blossoms of scarlet flame. Out of its secret hiding-place had crept his Soul, and Desire had come to meet it on the way. — Oscar Wilde

If Disneyland was indeed the Happiest Place on Earth, you'd either keep it a secret or the price of admission would be free and not equivalent to the yearly per capita income of a small sub-Saharan African nation like Detroit. — Paul Beatty

This world looks to us the natural and simple one, and so it is--absolutely fitted to our need and education. But there is that in us which is not at home in this world, which I believe holds secret relations with every star, or perhaps rather, with that in the heart of God whence issued every star, diverse in kind and character as in colour and place and motion and light. To that in us, this world is so far strange and unnatural and unfitting, and we need a yet homelier home. Yea, no home at last will do, but the home of God's heart. — George MacDonald

Unable to penetrate to the secret place of his soul where his motives lay hidden, he believed that a supernatural voice had called him onward, and that a supernatural power had obstructed his retreat. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Music comes from a place we don't know," he said. "It sort of comes through the fingers and toes. So we came up with the idea of, what if you had musical digits, like xylo toes." He shook his head, irritated that he gave up the secret so easily.

And what about "Mylo"?

"It's just a great name," he said. "For anything. — Chris Martin

The grey wall to the right of me had my unfocused eyes attention. The blandness of all four walls and the concrete flooring created a backdrop for my imagination to run wild. Like a blink screen just waiting for a film to start, this bare and depressingly dreary decor did wonderful things for my illusions. I could lay for hours on the floor, staring at seemingly nothing while my mind whirled in a secret place where my reality could not encroach. I'd spend days on end imagining an eleven Kingdom with purple trees and sparkling sapphire oceans. Where I was a guardian of the kingdom, strong and fearless, fighting mythical creatures and villainous traitors. I received adoration from the civilians I was protecting and gratitude from royalty. In this place I was everything I wasn't in the reality. In this place I was wanted. In this place I was alive. — Roxanne Lee

Don't underestimate this gift of finding a place in the writing world: if you really work at describing creatively on paper the truth as you understand it, as you have experienced it, with the people or material who are in you, who are asking that you help them get written, you will come to a secret feeling of honor. — Anne Lamott

Going public was a difficult decision, and I had misgivings. My subjective experience was now an objective fact in the wider world. It didn't belong to just me anymore - though I quickly learned that it hadn't belonged to just me in the first place. More than a million Americans and their families were going through the same thing; some openly, some in secret due to concerns of being misunderstood and marginalized. — Michael J. Fox

I recognized it instantly. It was a made-up story, a fantasy, the tale of four kids who went through a magic wardrobe and found themselves in a strange new world. I'd read it more times than I could remember, and although I sneered at the thought of a magical land with friendly, talking animals, there were times when I wished, in my most secret moments, that I could find a hidden door that would take us allout of this place. — Julie Kagawa

The parents always insisted on telling their child that their secret friends didn't exist - perhaps because they had forgotten that they too had spoken to their angel at one time. Or, who knows, perhaps they thought they lived in a world where there was no longer any place for angels. — Paulo Coelho

And if our goal as moral citizens is to make the world a better place, then there is only once choice: to pump as much oil as we possibly can out of Fort McMurray. Pump and steam and dig and drill and get that oil out of the sand in any and every way we can. Every drop of oil from Alberta is one less drop from some fascist theocracy, or some brutal warlord; one less cent into the treasuries of Russia's secret police and al-Qaeda's murderers. — Ezra Levant

In the life of each of us there is a place remote and islanded, and given to endless regret or secret happiness. — Sarah Orne Jewett

I hope you find a place in your life when you can let go and be happy. But I'm not a dirty secret. I'm not bad and wrong for being comfortable with myself, and I won't let you make me feel that way. — Lauren Dane

It is something of a tragedy for young girls of good family that they cannot carry on a love-affair in a simple, straightforward way, in secret, below their station if need be, as do their sisters of humbler origin, who can place their affections wherever they wish without risk of misdirecting a family fortune or making a 'bad match'. — Gabriel Chevallier

Subject: Wet Panty Fetish I'm not sure if you've realized that I left my thong in your pocket yet, but I want you to know that I did it for your own good, and that your secret is safe with me. Ever since you fucked me in the bathroom at the art gallery, I've noticed that you have a tendency to stare at my panties before taking them off. You run your fingers across them, pull them off with your teeth, and then you stare at them again. I have no problem continuing to appease your panty fetish. I'm sure you place them over your face at night, and if you ever need more feel free to let me know. Aubrey — Whitney Gracia Williams

Embraces are comminglings from the head even to the feet, And not a pompous high priest entering by a secret place. — William Blake

Because each of you has his or her own death, you carry it with you in a secret place from the moment you're born, it belongs to you and you belong to it. — Jose Saramago

I keep thinking

That poetry is something else:

A form of love that exists only in silence,

In a secret place between two people,

Almost always between two strangers — Jose Emilio Pacheco

And the City, in its own way, gets down for you, cooperates, smoothing its sidewalks, correcting its curbstones, offering you melons and green apples on the corner. Racks of yellow head scarves; strings of Egyptian beads. Kansas fried chicken and something with raisins call attention to an open window where the aroma seems to lurk. And if that's not enough, doors to speakeasies stand ajar and in that cool dark place a clarinet coughs and clears its throat waiting for the woman to decide on the key. She makes up her mind and as you pass by informs your back that she is daddy's little angel child. The City is smart at this: smelling and good and looking raunchy; sending secret messages disguised as public signs: this way, open here, danger to let colored only single men on sale woman wanted private room stop dog on premises absolutely no money down fresh chicken free delivery fast. And good at opening locks, dimming stairways. Covering your moans with its own. — Toni Morrison

But it's not time that matters. It felt ... like a secret place just us two knew about. — David Mitchell

I am in the Aleph, the point at which everything is in the same place at the same time. I'm at a window, looking out at the world and its secret places, poetry lost in time and words left hanging in space ... sentences that are perfectly understood, even when left unspoken. Feelings that simultaneously exalt and suffocate. — Paulo Coelho

I think airports are places of huge human drama. The more I see of it, the more I am convinced that Heathrow is a secret city, with its own history, folklore and mythology. But what has surprised me is the love the people who work there feel for the place. Everyone seems to think they are plugged into something majestic. — Tony Parsons

Significantly, it was Disraeli who said, "What is a crime among the multitude is only a vice among the few" - perhaps the most profound insight into the very principle by which the slow and insidious decline of nineteenth-century society into the depth of mob and underworld morality took place. Since he knew this rule, he knew also that Jews would have no better chances anywhere than in circles which pretended to be exclusive and to discriminate against them; for inasmuch as these circles of the few, together with the multitude, thought of Jewishness as a crime, this "crime" could be transformed at any moment into an attractive "vice." Disraeli's display of eroticism, strangeness, mysteriousness, magic, and power drawn from secret sources, was aimed correctly at this disposition in society. — Hannah Arendt

The Land of Civilian was a dry bitter place where you sat in your car staring at drawn curtains and closed doors for hours on end, and where everything was a big, freaking secret. — Lily Gardner

Everyone has a secret place in his mind. Otherwise relationships would be impossible. — Richard Matheson

How's Alison getting on?'

Conway snorted. 'Tucked up in the sick room like she's dying in some season finale. Little fadey voice on her and all. She's having a great old time. — Tana French

There is no better place to keep a secret than in an unfinished novel. — Italo Calvino

His ministrations were tender, his eyes hooded as he seemed to withhold certain emotions from her. She allowed him his secrets, and took what he gave with a greed that shocked her with its intensity. But he never had to know. He never had to glimpse how deeply she felt for him, or discover the secret she had always suspected and finally admitted to herself.
She loved him.
Completely. Every part of him, good and bad, her friend and lover and partner and rival. She wanted to spend the rest of her life with him, giving him everything, even though she knew he didn't want her. She crammed the knowledge to a secret place in- side. Then realized she'd take whatever he gave, even though it would never be enough. — Jennifer Probst

I live in the same house I've lived in for 25 years. I haven't gone off and bought mansions. Even though my subject is living, living in a mansion wouldn't do for my readers. I have to keep my credibility alive with my readers, so we're in the same place. I just make that place nicer and nicer. And that's a secret. People don't know that. People think, oh, she lives in this fabulous place, but it's the same old place. It started out like a farm, it got to be a farmette, then it got to be an estatelet. I built a wall; it helped a lot. But it's the same place, the same grounded nature. — Martha Stewart

If we think of belonging only as membership in a club, organization, or church, we miss the point. Belonging is the risk to move beyond the world we know, to venture out on pilgrimage, to accept exile. And it is the risk of being with companions on that journey, God, a spouse, friends, children, mentors, teachers, people who came from the same place we did, people who came from entirely different places, saints and sinners of all sorts, those known to us and those unknown, our secret longings, questions, and fears. — Diana Butler Bass

Timelessness again, the house like a secret temple as dust built up on things that were never meant to have dust on them - Clee's toothbrush and hairdryer and left-out-of-the-box CDs and deodorant on the bathroom window ledge. Ordinary things carefully kept in place because the last person to touch them would never put a cup down on the edge of the table again, or ever leave a book half-read. — Steven Hall

Moscow, Rome, London, Paris stay in place. Leningrad and New York float, spreading all their sails, cutting space with their prows, and can disappear, if not in reality, then in the imagination of the poet creating a myth, a mythical tradition on the grounds of his secret experience. — Nina Berberova

I did everything wrong," he said. "I misunderstood everything. Moon Child gave me so much, and all I did with it was harm, harm to myself and harm to Fantastica."
Dame Eyola gave him a long look.
No," she said. "I don't believe so. You went the way of wishes, and that is never straight. You went the long way around, but that was your way. And do you know why? Because you are one of those who can't go back until they have found the fountain from which springs the Water of Life. And that's the most secret place in Fantastica. There's no simple way of getting there."
After a short silence she added: "But every way that leads there is the right one. — Michael Ende

I only know how to approach a place by walking. For what does a street photographer do but walk and watch and wait and talk, and then watch and wait some more, trying to remain confident that the unexpected, the unknown, or the secret heat of the known awaits just around the corner. — Alex Webb

I said I know my shot when I see it. Sometimes you don't even have to see it. Sometimes you feel it coming, screaming down the sky towards you like a meteor. — Tana French

Rickie had a young man's reticence. He generally spoke of "a friend," "a person I know," "a place I was at." When the book of life is opening, our readings are secret, and we are unwilling to give chapter and verse. Mr. Pembroke, who was half way through the volume, and had skipped or forgotten the earlier pages, could not understand Rickie's hesitation, nor why with such awkwardness he should pronounce the harmless dissyllable "Ansell. — E. M. Forster

Some people live their entire life and never once feel how I felt every time he looked at me. So yes, this hurts. And yes, I feel as if I might die. But I won't. And somehow, I find a way to let it all go...just let it go. No regrets. No grief. It will always hurt a little, down deep in that secret place, but it's become a pain I can handle. Besides, if it didn't always hurt, just a little, it wouldn't mean as much. — Megan Hart

I think Kwan intended to show me the world is not a place but the vastness of the sou. And the soul is nothing more than love, limitless, endless, all that moves us toward knowing what is true ... If people we love die, then they are lost only to our ordinary senses. If we remember, we can find them anytime with our hundred secret senses. — Amy Tan

A breeze ruffled the neat hedges of Privet Drive, which lay silent and tidy under the inky sky, the very last place you would expect astonishing things to happen. Harry Potter rolled over inside his blankets without waking up. One small hand closed on the letter beside him and he slept on, not knowing he was special, not knowing he was famous, not knowing he would be woken in a few hours' time by Mrs. Dursley's scream as she opened the front door to put out the milk bottles, nor that he would spend the next few weeks being prodded and pinched by his cousin Dudley ... He couldn't know that at this very moment, people meeting in secret all over the country were holding up their glasses and saying in hushed voices: To Harry Potter - the boy who lived! — J.K. Rowling

Mine the long night
The secret place
Where lovers meet
In long embrace
In purple dark
In silvered kiss
Forget the world
And grasp your bliss — A.S. Byatt

Any friendship that is worth its weight is like a dark and secret place where you hide bits of yourself. The door can be opened only by the two people who have the key, and you carry it with you wherever you go. Magnify that by a billion, and you begin to get an idea of what marriage is like. — Damien Echols

I'm more excited than I'll admit when my hand closes around the paperback. It's like I've been handed a secret, a piece of her soul that she just decided to entrust with me. That's the way with writers--every word on a page like a window into their private place, exposing a great deal of vulnerability when they allow others to see inside. Even fiction is made up of the truthful scars of the people telling the story. I should know. I tell the same stories myself every day. — Amy Matayo

She was as lovely as ever, my Jessie Anne. I paused for a moment, taking her beauty in, laying up this vision of her in the deepest and most secret place of my mind, allowing the sight of her to renew my spirit. I stepped slowly down to the platform, never allowing my gaze to drift from her. Jessie Anne was looking toward the front of the car, and it was a moment or two before she turned and spotted me.
The bright and hopeful smile I had so expected and longed for darkened, just for a moment to be sure, but long enough for me to recognize a fleeting glimpse of shock and anguish, possibly of horror. No longer did she see the man she had known, the man she had given her life to. No, she saw me for the man I truly was, the man with blood on his hands. — Karl A. Bacon

Evolution goes beyond what went before, but because it must embrace what went before, then its very nature is to transcend and include and thus it has an inherent directionality, a secret impulse, toward increasing depth, increasing intrinsic value, increasing consciousness. In order for evolution to move at all, it must move in those directions-there's no place else for it to go! — Ken Wilber

For two long years the Franks evaded detection by the Nazis. They were less than a month away from Amsterdam's liberation by the Allies when the end came. On August 4, 1944, a secret informant, whose name has never become known, gave away the family's hiding place to the Gestapo. — Bill O'Reilly

The gospel gives it all. Justification for our guilt. Sanctification for deconstructing our false ideals. Adoption for the red face of our secret shame. And suddenly, in place of the raw emotions that continually joined forces against us, knocking us around like a nickel in a clothes dryer, the sun can now rise in the morning on a truly perfect storm, as God's grace feeds in us a new passion for Him, and passion responds by feeding us even more grace - a revitalizing shower where the only water seeping into our hearts is from the fountain of living waters, replenishing our once-guilty, once-shameful hearts with sheer joy, acceptance, and freedom. Let it rain. — Matt Chandler

When that happens [the demise of golf], old men will furtively beckon to their sons and, like fugitives from the guillotine recalling the elegant orgies at the court of Louis XV, will recite the glories of Portmarnock and Merion, of the Road Hole at St. Andrews, the sixth at Seminole, the eighteenth at Pebble Beach. They will take out this volume from its secret hiding place and they will say: "There is no question, son, that these were unholy places in an evil age. Unfortunately, I had a whale of a time." — Alistair Cooke

The father of sin was theft; every one of the Ten Commandments boiled down to "Thou shalt not steal." Murder was the theft of a life, adultery the theft of a wife, covetousness the secret, slinking theft that took place in the cave of the heart. Blasphemy was the theft of God's name, swiped from the House of the Lord and sent out to walk the streets like a strutting whore. — Stephen King

If every life is a river, then it's little wonder that we do not even notice the changes that occur until we are far out in the darkest sea. One day you look around and nothing is familiar, not even your own face.
My name once meant daughter, grandaughter, friend, sister, beloved. Now those words mean only what their letters spell out; Star in the night sky. Truth in the darkness.
I have crossed over to a place where I never thought I'd be. I am someone I would have never imagined. A secret. A dream. I am this, body and soul. Burn me. Drown me. Tell me lies. I will still be who I am. — Alice Hoffman

Greece has got something like 1,400 islands. There is so much of Greece you can't know even if you're Greek. It's sprinkled out all around the edge of the Aegean, all over the place. It's already a secret place wherever you go, even if it's somewhere huge like Athens or Corinth. The place enchanted me. — Joanna Lumley

The secret to being a good traveler is liking a place before you get there. — Marty Rubin

A mighty wind of resolution sets in strong upon him and freshens the whole atmosphere of his soul, sweeping down before it the light flakes of difficulty, till they vanish like snow upon the sea. He is imprisoned no more in a small compartment of time, but belongs to an eternity which is now and here. The isolation of his separate spirit passes away; and with the countless multitude of souls akin to God, he is but a wave of his unbounded deep. He is at one with Heaven, and hath found the secret place of the Almighty. — James Martineau

It is not I who mix the colors but your own vision,' he answered. 'I only place them next to one another on the wall in their natural state; it is the observer who mixes the colors in his own eye, like porridge. Therein lies the secret. The better the porridge, the better the painting, but you cannot make good porridge from bad buckwheat. Therefore, faith in seeing, listening, and reading is more important than faith in painting, singing, or writing.'
He took blue and red and placed them next to each other, painting the eyes of an angel. And I saw the angel's eyes turn violet.
'I work with something like a dictionary of colors,' Nikon added, 'and from it the observer composes sentences and books, in other words, images. You could do the same with writing. Why shouldn't someone create a dictionary of words that make up one book and let the reader himself assemble the words into a whole? — Milorad Pavic

If love were enough, I'd tell St Peter to close his gates; I'd block out the stars, and cover the moon with a fist. I'd find a place where time stands still, where no world would exist, except one where we could stand together arm in arm. Except, my darling, here's the secret you should know: where you are, so am I. No there exists or here. No place exists where I would not come when you need me, for you will always exist in a place where my love is without end. — Lily Graham

Achati chuckled. You may be surprised. Some might come in the hopes of being snatched away to a secret place ruled by exotic women. — Trudi Canavan

Everyone thinks it goes smoothly in everyone else's house, and theirs is the only place that has problems. I'll let you in on a secret about teaching: there is no place in the world where it rolls along smoothly without problems. Only in articles and books can that happen. — Ruth Beechick

Much on earth is concealed from us, but in place of it we have been granted a secret, mysterious sense of our living bond with the other world, with the higher heavenly world, and the roots of our thoughts and feelings are not here but in other worlds. That is why philosophers say it is impossible on earth to conceive the essence of things. God took seeds from other worlds and sowed them on this earth, and raised up his garden; and everything that could sprout sprouted, but it lives and grows only through its sense of being in touch with other mysterious worlds; if this sense is weakened or destroyed in you, that which has grown up in you dies. Then you become indifferent to life, and even come to hate it. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

In the life of each of us, I said to myself, there is a place remote and islanded, and given to endless regret or secret happiness; we are each the uncompanioned hermit and recluse of an hour or a day; we understand our fellows of the cell to whatever age of history they may belong. — Sarah Orne Jewett

The rise of the Oligarchy will always remain a cause of secret wonder to the historian and the philosopher. Other great historical events have their place in social evolution. They were inevitable. Their coming could have been predicted with the same certitude that astronomers to-day predict the outcome of the movements of stars. Without — Jack London

There is a road in the hearts of all of us, hidden and seldom traveled, which leads to an unkown, secret place. The old people came literally to love the soil, and they sat or reclined on the ground with a feeling of being close to a mothering power. Their teepees were built upon the earth and their altars were made of earth. The soul was soothing, strengthening, cleansing, and healing. That is why the old Indian still sits upon the earth instead of propping himself up and away from its life giving forces. For him, to sit or lie upon the ground is to be able to think more deeply and to feel more keenly. He can see more clearly into the mysteries of life and come closer in kinship to other lives about him. — Luther Standing Bear