Quotes & Sayings About Afternoon Light

But never had he felt more enthralled than he was right now, sitting beside Evie on a weathered old dock, with a blazing afternoon sun, almost brutal in its clarity, bathing everything in pure light. Sweat trickled down his back and chest from the steamy heat, and his entire body pulsed with life. Even his fingertips throbbed. It took all of his formidable self-control to prevent himself from pushing her down on the dock and spreading her legs for his entry. — Linda Howard

November, a dark, rainy Tuesday afternoon. This is my ideal time to be in a bookstore. The shortened light of the afternoon and the idleness and hush of the hour gather everything close, the shelves and the books and the few other customers who graze head-bent in the narrow aisles. There's a clerk at the counter who stares out the front window, taking a breather before the evening rush. I've come to find a book. — Lewis Buzbee

When the light of God's truth begins to find its way through the mists of illusion and self-deception with which we have unconsciously surrounded ourselves, and when the image of God within us begins to return to itself, the false self which we inherited from Adam begins to experience the strange panic that Adam felt when, after his sin, he hid in the trees of the garden because he heard the voice of the Lord God in the afternoon.
If we are to recover our own identity, and return to God by the way Adam came in his fall, we must learn to stop saying: "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked. And I hid." [Genesis 2:10] We must cast away the "aprons of leaves" and the "garments of skins" which the Fathers of the Church variously interpret as passions, and attachments to earthly things, and fixation in our own rigid determination to be someone other than our true selves. — Thomas Merton

Clarities of the Nonexistent"

To have loved the way it happens in the empty hours of late afternoon; to lean back and conceive of a journey leaving behind no trace of itself; to look out from the house and see a figure leaning forward as if into the wind although there is no wind; to see the hats of those in town, discarded in moments of passion, scattered over the ground although one cannot see the ground. All this in vague, yellowing light that lowers itself in the hour before dark; none of it of value except for the pleasure it gives, enlarging an instant and finally making it seem as if it were true. And years later to come upon the same scene- the figure leaning into the same wind, the same hats scattered over the same ground that one cannot see. — Mark Strand

Your gravity, your grace have turned a tide
In me, no lunar power can reverse;
But in your narcoleptic eyes I spied
A sightlessness tonight: or something worse,
A disregard that made me feel unmanned.
Meanwhile, insomniac, I catch my breath
To think I saw my future traced in sand
One afternoon "as still, as carved, as death,"
And pray for an oblivion so deep
It ends in transformation. Only dawn
Can save me, flood this haunted house of sleep
With light, and drown the thoughts that nightly warn:
Another lifetime is the least you'll need, to trace
The guarded secrets of her gravity, her grace. — Jonathan Coe

They whirled around in the light dance of a duchess entering a ball - majestic yet understated - a spiraling splash of purity of color that took shape under nature's watch. A newly-sculpted garden burst forth, glistening in an afternoon sun. It welcomed the dusty pink rose, who stood beside its fellows, basked themselves in their own serenity of white, triumphant red, or cheery yellow. It swayed in the breath of a wind, caressing each and becoming more. It was a mixture of quiet and thunderous, light and dark, shyness and boldness. It was a mixture of the quiet strength and overwhelming courage that the human soul might wish to one day possess. — Gina Marinello-Sweeney

For a few moments he indulged his old joy in range and mountain, stretching, rising on his right, away into the purple distance. Something had heightened its beauty. How softly gray the rolling range land - how black the timbered slopes! The town before him sat like a hideous blotch on a fair landscape. It forced his gaze over and beyond toward the west, where the late afternoon sun had begun to mellow and redden, edging the clouds with exquisite light. To the southward lay Arizona, land of painted mesas and storied canyon walls, of thundering streams and wild pine forests, of purple-saged valleys and grassy parks, set like mosaics between the stark desert mountains. — Zane Grey

Hassler flips burgers on a grill in the shadow of the remnants of the Seattle Gas Light Company, a collection of rusted cylinders and ironwork that looms in the distance like the ruins of a steampunk skyline. The expanse of emerald grass runs down to the edge of Lake Union, which sparkles under the late afternoon sun. It's June. It's warm. The entire city seems to be out taking advantage of this rare, perfect day. — Blake Crouch

Her eyes in the half-light suggested night and violets, and for a moment he stirred again to that half-forgotten remoteness of the afternoon. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Behind those doors was, in a stunning anticlimax, another set of doors, which slid open. A lift. They descended for many floors, until it was clear that they were several stories beneath the ground. Neither of them said anything, but Myfanwy took the opportunity to eye her secretary in the mirrored walls. Ingrid was tall, in her late forties, and her auburn hair was immaculately coiffed. She was slim and fit-looking, as if she spent every afternoon playing tennis. She wore a few pieces of discreet gold jewelry, including a wedding ring. Myfanwy breathed in gently through her nose and smelled Ingrid's good perfume. The business suit she wore was of a light purple, and exquisitely cut. — Daniel O'Malley

It was a still afternoon - the golden light was lingering languidly among the upper boughs, only glancing down here and there on the purple pathway and its edge of faintly sprinkled moss; an afternoon in which destiny disguises her cold awful face behind a hazy radiant veil, encloses us in warm downy wings, and poisons us with violet-scented breath. — George Eliot

What drew me down there, I wonder, to the edge of the garden? I remember the summer light--the trees, the bushes,the grass luminously green, basted by the bland, benevolent late-afternoon sun. Was it the light? But there was the laughter, also, coming from where a group of people had gathered by the pond. Someone must have been horsing around making everyone else laugh. The light and laughter, then. — William Boyd

The light a sun. When I was a child, I thought that sleep came with darkness. When I grew older, I took long naps in the glare of the afternoon sunlight. The darkness was my enemy. Daylight was a triumph. — Abigail George

The big white house glowed on the hill above them, tranquil in the afternoon light, the big red spruce behind it a looming but benign presence; not for the first time, he felt that the tree was somehow guarding the house - and in his present fragile mental state, found that notion a comfort. — Diana Gabaldon

The spring came suddenly; the rains stopped, the days grew noticeably longer, and the afternoon light felt powdery, as if it might blow away. — Jane Mendelsohn

How can I say what it was like to breathe again? I felt newborn. I staggered in the light of the world and took deep gulps of fresh sea air. It was late in the day: the wet mouth of the afternoon was full on my face. My soul blossomed in that brief moment as they led me out of doors. I fell, my skirts in the mud, and I turned my face upwards as if in prayer. I could have wept from the relief of light. — Hannah Kent

For history is a pattern Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails On a winter's afternoon, in a secluded chapel History is now and England. — T. S. Eliot

She turned to him, shook her head. Her black hair tossed, and the beams of the late-afternoon sunlight played upon it, sending brief ripples of red and green and blue through it the same way that light, shimmering on the black surface of oil, creates short-lived, wriggling rainbows. — Dean Koontz

Let your thoughts run free, as if your mind is taking a leisurely Sunday afternoon walk through a garden in spring bloom.
I stand in the hallway, mute. Alone. I realize: I must develop the ability to go the distance rather than just envy it.
Don't speak unless you can improve on silence
The truth is never as interesting as what people whisper about them
It's because the dream is so perfect that I can walk away from it
That blackness brought me out of the nightmare and into this morning's light — Rachel Cohn

Along the rough cobbled streets that had served so well in surprise attacks and buccaneer landings, weeds hung from the balconies and opened cracks in the whitewashed walls of even the best-kept mansions, and the only signs of life at two o'clock in the afternoon were languid piano exercises played in the dim light of siesta. Indoors, in the cool bedrooms saturated with incense, women protected themselves from the sun as if it were a shameful infection, and even at early Mass they hid their faces in their mantillas. Their love affairs were slow and difficult and were often disturbed by sinister omens, and life seemed interminable. At nightfall, at the oppressive moment of transition, a storm of carnivorous mosquitoes rose out of the swamps, and a tender breath of human shit, warm and sad, stirred the certainty of death in the depths of one's soul. And — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Hoffland, as it was called, was, next to Moda Polska (simply "Polish Fashion") one of the rare examples of the quasi-private, though officially nationalized fashion companies in Poland. Both have survived communism, and Hoff kept designing well into the 90s. You could be sure, that if Hoff wrote about a new style for wearing a shawl in her column, the same afternoon there would already be dozens of girls on the streets trying to copy this style. Her flagship idea was blackening the "coffin shoes" (i.e. light, paper shoes, used as footwear for the deceased) which when colored black could pass as elegant "ballerinas". — Agata Pyzik

I think of the view from a favorite arroyo in the late afternoon, the east slope still bathed in sunlight, the far slope already full of dark shade and lengthening shadows. A cool breeze, as one can look across the plains, out over miles of homes and trees, and hear the faraway hum of traffic on the high-ways and see the golden light filtering through the mist-laden air. — Carey McWilliams

The light of an early Summer afternoon as it slips toward dusk has so many good things wrapped up in it.. — Brandi L. Bates

He sat by a gray window in the gray light in an abandoned house in the late afternoon and read old newspapers while the boy slept. The curious news. The quaint concerns. — Cormac McCarthy

There is a particular kind of afternoon sun that exists only in autumn. A golden light drapes itself over the world of that hour. It falls through the afternoon sky, fine and faint as a swirl of cigarette smoke caught in the wind, nearly transparent. So sweet, that light, insisting softly, goldly against the windows. — Ayana Mathis

Okay, maybe it wasn't some reason. He was handsome. Like, wow, that's a handsome guy, and then you nudge your friend and get her to take a look as well. That kind of handsome. Though I couldn't see him straight on, he had a nice, strong face, broad nose with a bump on the bridge, and just the right amount of stubble on his cheeks and jaw. His deep-set eyes looked rich brown, his longish, thick hair a shade darker than that and his brows even more so. I couldn't tell how tall he was, he was at least a few inches taller than I was, but his body was fit and lean. His stomach looked washboard flat under his white dress shirt and his forearms that peeked out from the rolled up sleeves were muscular, the same color as wet sand, a beach in the afternoon light. — Karina Halle

She was wearing blue jeans and a dark blue peasant blouse, the ties of the neck open. She looked so beautiful and soft, with her big brown eyes and her light brown hair shining in the afternoon light. He couldn't see the pink streak, and he had an incredible urge to find it. — Sarah Addison Allen

I was reminded of how years before, he had drifted away from one of our afternoon strolls and got surrounded by the tide - Corrigan, isolated on a sandbar, tangled in light, voices from the shores drifting over him, calling his name. — Colum McCann

The afternoon sun was bright above the cloud, lending to the scene a silvery glow that leached the sea of colour and picked out points of white light in the sand. The very raindrops seemed to shimmer in the air; the wind, blowing chill from the ocean, carried with it a pleasant, rusty smell. All this did much to dispel Devlin's torpor, and in very little time at all he was red-cheeked and smiling, his white brimmed hat clamped tight to his head with the palm of his hand. He decided to make the most of his perambulation, and return to Hokitika via the high terrace of Seaview: the site of the future Hokitika Gaol, and Devlin's own future residence. — Eleanor Catton

We may say that on the first Good Friday afternoon was completed that great act by which light conquered darkness and goodness conquered sin. That is the wonder of our Saviour's crucifixion. — Phillips Brooks

The latest incarnation of Oedipus, the continued romance of Beauty and the Beast, stand this afternoon on the corner of 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue, waiting for the traffic light to change. — Joseph Campbell

I think I get used to, even addicted to, the feelings associated with the end of a long training run. I love feeling empty, clean, worn out, starving, and sweat-purged. I love the good ache of muscles that have done me proud. I love the way a cold beer tastes later that afternoon. I love the way my body feels light and sinewy. — Kristin Armstrong

The thunder traveled over the ship, from west to east, with prolonged reverberations, before it moved away with its clouds, leaving the sea, by mid-afternoon, bathed in a strange auroral light, which turned its as smooth and iridescent as a mountain lake. The bow of the Arrow became a plough, breaking up the tranquility of the surface with the frothy arabesques of its wake. Pg 301 Explosion in the Cathedral — Alejo Carpentier

Pearl spent the passing days buried so deep in the musty, dusty sorcery tomes that sometimes when she emerged, she spoke in archaic english. "Hast thou a light?" she'd asked him this afternoon when her study room had grown dark with gathering clouds. — Gail Dayton

Afternoon light slanted in through the parted curtains, laying bars of gold across the floor. — Cassandra Clare

The Maker of the universe with stars a hundred thousand light-years apart was interested, furious, and very personal about it if a small boy played baseball on Sunday afternoon. — Sinclair Lewis

Finally, the day of our meeting crawls into the light and then takes a year to drag itself to the afternoon. — Sally Green

The river this November afternoon
Rests in an equipoise of sun and cloud:
A glooming light, a gleaming darkness shroud
Its passage. All seems tranquil, all in tune. — Cecil Day-Lewis

All I ever did to that apartment was hang fifty yards of yellow theatrical silk across the bedroom windows, because I had some idea that the gold light would make me feel better, but I did not bother to weight the curtains correctly and all that summer the long panels of transparent golden silk would blow out the windows and get tangled and drenched in afternoon thunderstorms. That was the year, my twenty-eighth, when I was discovering that not all of the promises would be kept, that some things are in fact irrevocable and that it had counted after all, every evasion and ever procrastination, every word, all of it. — Joan Didion

I sauntered to the kitchen, where the lone pot of afternoon coffee had been reduced to thick black syrup. Glad that no one was around to watch, I filled a Styrofoam cup halfway with the molten matter, swished it, and sniffed. Nose of burning rubber, with light tar accents. I topped it off with Sparklett's, then nuked it. Kills the germs. — Denise Hamilton

The best way to prepare for a night out with a Shakespearean tragedy is to do a bit of reading up in the afternoon, eat a light supper - perhaps Welsh rarebit - and then arrive early to do some stretching exercises in the foyer before curtain-up. — Arthur Smith

How swiftly the strained honey
of afternoon light
flows into darkness
and the closed bud shrugs off
its special mystery
in order to break into blossom:
as if what exists, exists
so that it can be lost
and become precious — Lisel Mueller

NOW the final copper light of afternoon fades; now the street beyond the low maples and the low signboard is prepared and empty, framed by the study window like a stage. — William Faulkner

Corey was hanging out down by the port one afternoon with Karl and Jacques when a bus-load of american tourists drove by, and in a moment of clarity Corey suddenly perceived Karl in the light of reality rather than through the kaleidoscope of fashion: the tourists were staring open-mouthed through the bus windows, ice creams held in mid-air, gawping at the apparition that was Karl. Jacques was driving the mobylette and Karl sat behind riding side-saddle dressed in hot pants, long strands of pearls and dark glasses; he was wielding a raw frankfurter straight from the packet in one hand and a bottle of coca-cola in the other. I remember thinking "I am with this total freak," says Corey. — Alicia Drake

Instead, he was astonished by what he had: the chance to sit beside this woman in the late afternoon light while she read. — Ann Patchett

The World Series is played in my doubtless too-nostalgic imagination in some kind of autumn afternoon light, and seeing it exclusively in the bitter chill of midnight breaks the spell of even the best of games. — Adam Gopnik

The late afternoon sun illuminated the room with its brilliant light, but Tobias knew he would spend the rest of the day and night proving his love. But it would be the nights and days that followed this one that would continue to mend his soul. He'd won the biggest prize a man could ever win. The heart of a woman who possessed the strength to make him believe in himself and the ability to save him from his past. She was the mistress of his soul. — Monica Burns

But we never stopped believing that somewhere out there, in some stranger's backyard, our mother's rosebush was blossoming madly, wildly, pressing one perfect red flower after another out into the late afternoon light. — Julie Otsuka

I want so badly to help you realize, Elizabeth Anne, how difficult and puzzling and full of wonder it all is: some day I will tell you how I learned to watch the shifting light of autumn days or smelled the earth through snow in March; how one winter morning God vanished from my life and how one summer evening I sat in a Ferris wheel, looking down on a man that hurt me badly; I will tell you how I once travelled to Rome and saw all the soldiers in that city of dead poets; I will tell you how I met your father outside a movie house in Toronto, and how you came to be. Perhaps that is where I will begin. On a winter afternoon when we turn the lights on early, or perhaps a summer day of leaves and sky, I will begin by conjugating the elemental verb. I am. You are. It is. — Richard B. Wright

When I began writing The Night Bookmobile, it was a story about a woman's secret life as a reader. As I worked it also became a story about the claims that books place on their readers, the imbalance between our inner and outer lives, a cautionary tale of the seductions of the written word. It became a vision of the afterlife as a library, of heaven as a funky old camper filled with everything you've ever read. What is this heaven? What is it we desire from the hours, weeks, lifetimes we devote to books? What would you sacrifice to sit in that comfy chair with perfect light for an afternoon in eternity, reading the perfect book, forever? — Audrey Niffenegger

Plume"

Transfixed to the, by the, on the congruities, who is herself a vanishing point coming to closure - dusky flutter - trilling away like a watchdog on drugged sop, channeling her mother and grandmother who've engraved on her locket phrases in script: "glide on a blade" and "rustling precedes the shuck." This is not my teeming fate, my rind, my roiling ellipsis or valedictory spray of myrrh. Always it's morning, afternoon or evening - the loot of hours - a magic sack grasping vacuum but heavy in the hand, and from which, together, we pull a swarm of telepathic bees, melons beached in a green bin, a lithograph of the city from its crumbling ramparts, crackled pitchers and the mouth of a cave. Perhaps this is my open weave, my phantom rialto or plume of light. We bow to each other in the mash of flickering things. We are completely surrounded. — Aaron Shurin

There were other, more subtle artistic effects. The slow shift of the light through each day caused shadows to drift, shorten and lengthen, producing constantly changing silhouettes. The summits of mountains, which might be pink in the mornings, turned violet and amaranth in the afternoon ... Like music, (these phenomena) created a feeling that was not there before — Alan Lightman

I've wandered as far west as I can go. Sitting now on the sand, I watch the sun blur into an aftermath. Reds finally marrying blues. Soon night will enfold us all. But the light is still not gone, not yet, and by it I can dimly see here my own dark hallway, or maybe it was just a foyer and maybe not dark at all, not in fact brightly lit, an afternoon sun blazing through the lead panes, now detected amidst what amounts to a long column of my yesterdays, towards the end, though not the very end of course, where I had stood at the age of seven, gripping my mother's wrists, trying as hard as I could to keep her from going. — Mark Z. Danielewski

First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from a girl named Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey. They were not love letters, but Lieutenant Cross was hoping, so he kept them folded in plastic at the bottom of his rusack. In the late afternoon, after a day's march, he would dig his foxhole, wash his hands under a canteen, unwrap the letters, hold them with the tips of his fingers, and spend the last hour of light pretending. — Tim O'Brien

Alex cornered her right before she was going to make an appointment at the nurse's station to see him. "Bree, I'm going to be referring you to Carlo from now on," Alex informed her. "I think in light of recent events it would be a conflict of interest for me to continue to be your doctor." "Is that right?" Bree asked leaning her elbow on the counter and raising an eyebrow. "Yes, I wouldn't feel comfortable about it considering what you did to Carrie." "Aw, that's nice," Bree smiled sarcastically, staring up at his smug self-righteous face. "Nice to know this place has such moral upstanding doctors." "Yes, so I will be referring you to him from now on," Alex said, clenching his jaw. "Great," Bree said, fighting not to roll her eyes. "Have a good afternoon," he said curtly and turned to walk away. Don't do it. Don't do it, Bree. The evil Bree won though. "You too, Dr. Home Wrecker." Alex's step faltered but he didn't turn around. — E. Jamie

He spent the afternoon watching the indicator light turn from red to orange to green and thought about how useless it was to be angry at anybody about an abstract principle ... How could any idea that drives a man away from the people who love him be considered sound? — Ryan Boudinot

Downstairs, entertaining company, Desdemona heard her son's clarinet and, as if orchestrating a harmony, let out a long sigh. For the last forty-five minutes Gus and Georgia Vasilakis and their daughter Gaia had been sitting in the living room. It was Sunday afternoon. On the coffee table a dish of rose jelly reflected light from the sparkling glasses of wine the adults were drinking. Gaia nursed a glass of lukewarm Vernor's ginger ale. An open tin of butter cookies sat on the table. — Jeffrey Eugenides

I recall an August afternoon in Chicago in 1973 when I took my daughter, then seven, to see what Georgia O'Keeffe had done with where she had been. One of the vast O'Keeffe 'Sky Above Clouds' canvases floated over the back stairs in the Chicago Art Institute that day, dominating what seemed to be several stories of empty light, and my daughter looked at it once, ran to the landing, and kept on looking. "Who drew it," she whispered after a while. I told her. "I need to talk to her," she said finally. — Joan Didion

Aligning your body clock to the new environment requires a phase shift. It takes one day per time zone to shift. Advance or retard your body clock as many days before your trip as the number of time zones you'll be crossing. Before traveling east, get into sunlight early in the day. Before traveling west, avoid sunlight early by keeping the curtains drawn, and instead expose yourself to bright light in the evening, to simulate what would be late afternoon sun in your destination. Once you're on the plane, if you're westbound, keep the overhead reading lamp on, even if it is your home bedtime. When you arrive in the western city, exercise lightly by taking a walk in the sun. That sunlight will delay the production of melatonin in your body. If you're on an eastbound plane, wear eye shades to cover your eyes two hours or so before sunset in your destination city, to acclimate yourself to the new "dark" time. — Daniel J. Levitin

Though nothing much had happened, he felt that he had seen and experienced enough that day - thus securing his tomorrow. For today he required no more, no sight or conversation, and above all nothing new. Just to rest, to close his eyes and ears; just to inhale and exhale would be effort enough. He wished it was bedtime. Enough of being in the light and out of doors; he wanted to be in the dark, in the house, in his room. But he had also had enough of being alone; he felt, as time passed, that he was experiencing every variety of madness and that his head was bursting. He recalled how, years ago, when it had been his habit to taken afternoon walks on lonely bypaths, a strange uneasiness had taken possession of him, leading him to believe that he had dissolved in the air and ceased to exist. — Peter Handke

... everything was fresh, green and particularly beautiful. Afternoon light, filtering between remnants of monsoon clouds, picked out gullies and spot-lit patches of forest and scrub on the convoluted ridges of the rim of the Kathmandu Valley. Or, after a rainstorm, wisps of clouds clung to the trees as if scared to let go. Behind, himals peeked out shyly between the clouds. — Jane Wilson-Howarth

If I'm playing in the morning, I'll get some carbs early: porridge with chopped banana. If I'm playing in the afternoon, I'll start with less carbs and have some eggs and fruit for breakfast, then a light lunch about 90 minutes before I play, so I don't feel sluggish or full. — Rory McIlroy

She ran into the early-October afternoon. The light came at a low slant through the oaks across the street, gold and green, and how she loved that light. There was no light in the world like you saw in New England in early fall. — Joe Hill

Dull late-afternoon light glittered on the hanging copper pots in the kitchen where the old painter sat with his wine, smoking cigarette, a letter angrily crumpled on the table in front of him. — Stephanie Cowell

As we hurry along the sidewalk, we have the absurd sensation that we have entered still another department, composed of ingeniously lifelike streets with artful shadows and reflections
that our destinations lie in a far corner of the same department
that we are condemned to hurry forever through these artificial halls, bright with late afternoon light, in search of the way out. — Steven Millhauser

So after some instruction, Joseph put on the apron and started carefully polishing the clean dishes even though it made no sense to him.
Over the course of the day, he learned how to wash the floors and clean the windows and empty out the iron stove. Soon the kitchen smelled of lemons and spices, fresh bread and soap.
There was a short break for lunch before resuming work. The light shifted during the afternoon and cascaded through the clean windows, burnishing the room with gold.
Joseph was so focused on the work, on the patters of the silverware and the curve of the handles on the ancient pitchers and measuring cups, that he forgot for a little while about his parents, and St. Anthony's, and the fire, and losing Blink. He felt a kind of pride in being allowed to touch all the delicate glassware, plates, and bowls, and he hadn't broken a single thing. — Brian Selznick

The late afternoon light came in through the curtains and made his face a study in contrasts. Chiaroscuro, she thought. The art of shadows and light. — Cassandra Clare

Take your clothes off."
"What?"
"You heard me."
Evelyn forced her mouth shut.
She looked around the room, buying time. The faded brown curtains hung limply over the windows, not quite touching, and the afternoon light filtered through the gaps, its beams turning the dust in the air into diamonds. She could hear the rattle of a wagon on the street below and the regular rhythm of squeaking bedsprings in the adjacent room.
"So? What are you waiting for?"
She stared at the man on the moth eaten chaise longue in front of her. He was serious. — Molly Ann Wishlade

The fact is that these are not my children; they are figures on silvery paper slivered out of time. They represent my children at a fraction of a second on one particular afternoon with infinite variables of light, expression, posture, muscle tension, mood, wind and shade. These are not my children at all; these are children in a photograph. — Sally Mann

This gardener will be out in the very early morning and from late afternoon, attentive to small changes in the quality of light and the atmosphere, as well as to every nuance of the season, which combine to create perfection. — Susan Hill

It's the color scheme of that first afternoon - that white panorama full of potential, that threshold white - that Marina understands as whomise. And that's what she's trying to recreate now, a year and a bit later, with a series of expensive light bulbs. 'White light,' the packaging promised. She fits them one by one throughout the house, and unbeknown to her, choreographs the slow dance of light-over-puddle in the passageway. — Laia Jufresa

The light of the October afternoon lay on an old high-roofed house which enclosed in its long expanse of brick and yellowish stone the breadth of a grassy court filled with the shadow and sound of limes. — Edith Wharton

Without light, how can you keep the sight of the eyes? Without a future, how can you preserve the government? [ ... ] We could have a most dilligent Home Secretary of Lunchtime. We could have an excellent Prime Minister of the Quietest Part of the Late Afternoon. But when twilight comes -do you see?- our world disappears. It cannot see beyond the day because you have taken tomorrow. And because you have tomorrow in front of your eyes, you cannot see what is being done today. — Chris Cleave

Now time, afternoon time, which in the Midi is as elemental as air and light, expanded and rolled billowingly outwards across the rest of the day, and upwards to the vaults of the cobalt sky, freeing everyone in its delicious sprawl from their obligations. — Ian McEwan

When you work alone at home, time can become shapeless. There are no eleven o'clock meetings or afternoon coffee breaks. The light outside may clue me in to what part of the day it is, but if all is going well, the hours bleed together. — Isabel Gillies

At last he said, "Did you come out of the big mountains?"
Gitano shook his head slowly. "No, I walked down the Salinas Valley."
The afternoon thought would not let Joey go. "Did you ever go into the big mountains back there?"
The old dark eyes grew fixed, and their light turned inward on the years that were living in Gitano's head. — John Steinbeck

My God," complained Arthur, "you're talking about a positive mental attitude and you haven't even had your planet demolished today. I woke up this morning and thought I'd have a nice relaxed day, do a bit of reading, brush the dog. ... It's now just after four in the afternoon and I'm already being thrown out of an alien spaceship six light-years from the smoking remains of the Earth!" He spluttered and gurgled as the Vogon tightened his grip. — Douglas Adams

Before she can stop herself, she thinks about desire, how it lives within you and yet is separate, surfacing when it chooses, without permission, in the harsh afternoon light, at the moment when you least expect to find it. — Alice Hoffman

this is real, and it is happening now, just as it happened before: We are under the big tree in my backyard, on that patch of dirt where we used to build fairy houses from moss and sticks and scraps of birch. It is late afternoon. All around us is golden light. We have been together all day, in our cutoff shorts and bare feet. It is the start of fifth grade, the start of being the oldest in the school. Next year, we will be the youngest all over again. But not yet. We are playing that hand-slapping game, the one we like to play at recess. You hold your hands out, palms up, and I place mine lightly on top. You pull yours out and try to slap mine. You hit air three times. On the fourth try, your — Ali Benjamin

The mind carries you with it, away from what you are supposed to do, toward things that cannot be explained rationally, toward difficulty, lack of clarity, late-afternoon light. — Donald Barthelme

Is it snowing where you are? All the world that I see from my tower is draped in white and the flakes are coming down as big as pop-corns. It's late afternoon - the sun is just setting (a cold yellow colour) behind some colder violet hills, and I am up in my window seat using the last light to write to you. — Jean Webster

The spring air just on the cold side of perfect, the late-afternoon light heavenly in its hurtfulness. — John Green

An Elegy, Years After Sarah"

So her ceiling a map of stars. First time we made love
late afternoon late winter, and after she slept
how her room fogged up with dusk
and paper stars she'd stuck up there in childhood
came out in strange constellations
and I missed the earth
till her room was night her breath deepening the stars
cooling down: I said come closer and her eyes
- half-open, flashing back whatever light there was - went out. — Steven Heighton

I picked up a piece of quartz I found in the desert one afternoon and held it up to the light, letting it glitter in my palm.Hey, I couldn't help it. I liked shiny things; it was in my blood. — Julie Kagawa

Ravka is grateful for your service," Sturmhond said as they turned to go. "And so is the crown." He waved once. In the late afternoon light, with the sun behind him, he looked less like a privateer and more like... but that was just silly. — Leigh Bardugo

It was deep afternoon when shadows begin to grow, light becomes gold, and you realize that this particular day has reached its destiny. Like old age, it's not yet over, but there's no denying the time of day. — Vicki Covington

The thorns thinned out and the trees grew taller and straighter, their branches not beginning until a few feet over our heads. The white, peeled bark of the birches looked buttery in the long, slanting afternoon light, and their leaves were a delicate gold. — Maggie Stiefvater

Speaking of 'things,' Mary tells me that Nick is like a keg of dynamite ready to explode at the first spark. She says you're bearing up under the strain marvelously. You've won her wholehearted approval," he added quietly.
"I like her too," Lauren said, her eyes clouding at the mention of Nick.
Jim waited until she had left to go upstairs,then he picked up his telephone and punched four numbers. "Mary, what's the atmosphere like up there this morning?"
"Positively explosive," she chuckled.
"Is Nick going to be in the office this afternoon?"
"Yes,why?"
"Because I've decided to light a match under him and see what happens."
"Jimmy,don't!" she said in a low, sharp voice.
"See you a little before five, beautiful," he laughed, ignoring her wanring. — Judith McNaught

I am excused, I think, for wondering if I am the only one alive this afternoon with no other living soul who wants to cling to me, no other soul who'll let me dampen her. The day has ended and the light has snuffed. I'm left to trudge into the final evening with nobody to loop their soaking hands through mine. — Jim Crace

Photography is all about capturing a mood, a feeling. I feel a special connection with nature, often very powerful. This late afternoon was phenomenal. Standing on the edge of the ocean, I gasped in awe as the holy light illuminated this cathedral window. Witnessing such a moment and capturing it is what I live for. Mother Nature is so powerful, I never underestimate Her. — Peter Lik

The sky grew darker, and the light abandoned the daytime, so that we found ourselves always moving in a timeless murk, the only way to discern the hour the taste of sour burps, toothpaste in the morning, redolent in the afternoon of the jellied beef of school cafetetria meals — Jeffrey Eugenides

There's a certain slant of light, On winter afternoons, That oppresses, like the weight Of cathedral tunes. — Emily Dickinson

I was thankful that nobody was there to meet me at the airport.
We reached Paris just as the light was fading. It had been a soft, gray March day, with the smell of spring in the air. The wet tarmac glistened underfoot; over the airfield the sky looked very high, rinsed by the afternoon's rain to a pale clear blue. Little trails of soft cloud drifted in the wet wind, and a late sunbeam touched them with a fleeting underglow. Away beyond the airport buildings the telegraph wires swooped gleaming above the road where passing vehicles showed lights already. — Mary Stewart

Both formality and dinner forgotten we sat on the floor of the little library, choosing. Sometimes Dr Portman read passages aloud and turned his own memories with their dark side to face the light. And it was late afternoon when, with a headache of happiness, I returned to the ward. And from that day I felt in myself a reserve of warmth from which I could help myself, like coal from the cellar on a winter's day, if the snow came or if the frost fell in the night to blacken the flowers and wither the new fruit. — Janet Frame

Once upon a time there were two cities within a city. One was light and one was dark. One moved restlessly all day while the other never stirred. One was warm and filled with ever-changing lights. One was cold and fixed in place by stones. And when the sun went down each afternoon on Maximus Films, the city of the living, it began to resemble Green Glade cemetery just across the way, which was the city of the dead. — Ray Bradbury

The afternoon light cast long shadows across the ground, — Patrick Wong

The paintings in our galleries are seen one day in bright sunshine and another day in the dim light of a rainy afternoon, yet they remain the same paintings, ever faithful, ever convincing. To a marvelous extent they carry their own light within. For their truth is not that of a perfect replica, it is the truth of art. — Ernst Gombrich

She sat down on one of her grandmother's uncomfortable armchairs, and the cat sprang up into her lap and made itself comfortable. The light that came through the picture window was daylight, real golden late-afternoon daylight, not a white mist light. The sky was a robin's-egg blue, and Coraline could see trees and, beyond the trees, green hills, which faded on the horizon into purples and grays. The sky had never seemed so sky, the world had never seemed so world ... Nothing, she thought, had ever been so interesting. — Neil Gaiman

I laughed because he told me funny stories and it was so easy and light. I realized how long it has been since I've enjoyed that most simple of pleasures: company and conversation on a sunny afternoon. I am impatient for such pleasures, Katy. I am no longer a girl - I am a woman, and I want things, things that I will not have; but it is human, is it not, to long for that from which we are barred? What — Kate Morton

Yet this perhaps is what love does, or the memory of it; it sucks the life from the living, glorying body and leaves it, when love has gone, a shred, a simulacrum - dross, to be swept up from the factory floor, pitiful and dusty, useless ... Do all men and women feel love before they die? This force, this source of light, that lies before the sun; glances off mountains and lakes, blinding and dazzling, on a Sunday afternoon; so brilliant you have to guard your soul, fold your arms to shield your heart from the very memory of it. — Fay Weldon