Ago Afternoon Quotes & Sayings

The afternoon was very hot, so hot that the breaking of the waves on the shore sounded like the repeated sigh of some exhausted creature, and even on the terrace under an awning the bricks were hot, and the air danced perpetually over the short dry grass. The red flowers in the stone basins were drooping with the heat, and the white blossoms which had been so smooth and thick only a few weeks ago were now dry, and their edges were curled and yellow. Only the stiff and hostile plants of the south, whose fleshy leaves seemed to be grown upon spines, still remained standing upright and defied the sun to beat them down. — Virginia Woolf

Now my second story. Three years later, on a clear, bright, calm Sunday afternoon at Bondi Beach, also not far from where we now stood, from out of nowhere there came four freak waves, each up to twenty-five feet high. More than 200 people were carried out to sea in the undertow. Fortunately, fifty lifeguards were in attendance that day, and they managed to save all but six people. I am aware that we are talking about incidents that happened many years ago. I don't care. My point remains: the ocean is a treacherous place. — Bill Bryson

But walking through it all was one thing; walking away, unfortunately, has proved to be quite another, and though once I thought I had left that ravine forever on an April afternoon long ago, now I am not so sure. Now the searchers have departed, and life has grown quiet around me, I have come to realize that while for years I might have imagined myself to be somewhere else, in reality I have been there all the time: up at the top by the muddy wheel-ruts in the new grass, where the sky is dark over the shivering apple blossoms and the first chill of the snow that will fall that night is already in the air. — Donna Tartt

I feel guilty because for a long time I didn't allow myself a television, and I used to drop that fact in conversation to impress people. I thought it made me sound dignified. A couple of years ago, however, I visited a church in the suburbs and there was this blowhard preacher talking about how television rots your brain. He said that when we are watching television our minds are working no harder than when we are sleeping. I thought that sounded heavenly. I bought one that afternoon. — Donald Miller

Hair the color of lemons,'" Rudy read. His fingers touched the words. "You told him about me?"
At first, Liesel could not talk. Perhaps it was the sudden bumpiness of love she felt for him. Or had she always loved him? It's likely. Restricted as she was from speaking, she wanted him to kiss her. She wanted him to drag her hand across and pull her over. It didn't matter where. Her mouth, her neck, her cheek. Her skin was empty for it, waiting.
Years ago, when they'd raced on a muddy field, Rudy was a hastily assembled set of bones, with a jagged, rocky smile. In the trees this afternoon, he was a giver of bread and teddy bears. He was a triple Hitler Youth athletics champion. He was her best friend. And he was a month from his death.
Of course I told him about you," Liesel said. — Markus Zusak

Ever since, two summers ago, Joe Marino had begun to come into her bed, a preposterous fecundity had overtaken the staked plans, out in the side garden where the southwestern sun slanted in through the line of willows each long afternoon. The crooked little tomato branches, pulpy and pale as if made of cheap green paper, broke under the weight of so much fruit; there was something frantic in such fertility, a crying-out like that of children frantic to please. Of plants, tomatoes seemed the most human, eager and fragile and prone to rot. Picking the watery orange-red orbs, Alexandra felt she was cupping a giant lover's testicles in her hand. — John Updike

Many years ago in a period commonly know as Next Friday Afternoon, there lived a King who was very Gloomy on Tuesday mornings because he was so Sad thinking about how Unhappy he had been on Monday and how completely Mournful he would be on Wednesday ... — Walt Kelly

"Having it all" is the phrase of a culture that, as Adam Phillips implies in 'Missing Out', is tyranized by the idea of its own potential. A few generations ago, most people didn't wake up in the morning and fret about whether or not they were living their lives to the fullest. Freedom has always been built into the American experiment, of course, but the freedom to take off and go rock-climbing for the afternoon, or to study engineering, or even to sneak in ten minutes for ourselves in the morning to read the paper- these kinds of freedoms were not, until very recently, built into our private universes of anticipation. It's important to remember that. — Jennifer Senior

I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at least - and it is commonly more than that - sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly engagements. You may safely say, A penny for your thoughts, or a thousand pounds. When sometimes I am reminded that the mechanics and shopkeepers stay in their shops not only all the forenoon, but all the afternoon too, sitting with crossed legs, so many of them - as if the legs were made to sit upon, and not to stand or walk upon - I think that they deserve some credit for not having all committed suicide long ago. — Henry David Thoreau

I was thunderstruck. For an instant I stood like the man who, pipe in mouth,
was killed one cloudless afternoon long ago in Virginia, by a summer lightning;
at his own warm open window he was killed, and remained leaning out there
upon the dreamy afternoon, till some one touched him, when he fell. — Herman Melville

look at the painting again. Despite the obvious differences, this girl is deeply, achingly familiar. In her I see myself at twelve years old, on a rare afternoon away from my chores. In my twenties, seeking refuge from a broken heart. Only a few days ago, visiting my parents' graves in the family cemetery, halfway between the dory in the haymow and the wheelchair in the sea. From the recesses of my brain a word floats up: synecdoche. A part that stands in for the whole. Christina's World. The — Christina Baker Kline

I'm serious," Lucien said as I lifted the glass to my lips, my brows raised. "Remember the last time you ignored my warning?" He poked me in the neck, and I batted his hand away.
"I also remember you telling me how witchberries were harmless, and the next thing I knew, I was half-delirious and falling all over myself," I said, recalling the afternoon from a few weeks ago. I'd had hallucinations for hours afterwards, and Lucien had laughed himself sick-enough so that Tamlin had chucked him into the reflection pool. — Sarah J. Maas

And really, that's the most important thing he does with his days. It's a small, measurable success, in the face of diminishing sales and an empty double bed and a set of skills which were marketable one hundred years ago, but now look quaint and even sad. Every afternoon for the last six months he has been fighting an uneven battle with himself not to overturn the trolley with its many keys, and scatter them across the room. His better nature has won only because the image of himself on his knees, remorsefully gathering them again, repairing scratched case clocks and whispering apologies to the ghost of his grandfather - and for strange and different reasons also his father - is more than he can bear. — Nick Harkaway

You know, I've never known much about fashion, living in the country and all," she said innocently. "What sort of hat would a lady like myself wear to an afternoon tea outside, in the garden, with other ladies? Assuming I'm ever invited, of course."
"Oh, that's easy... a lovely straw number, with a wide brim, en grecque curls if you're dining amongst the ruins, or piles of flowers and feathers, and tipped, just so..."
Belle allowed herself a little smile.
"No one has worn hats like that, even in this remote part of the world, for at lest ten years. Not even Madame Bussard has pulled one out of her own wardrobe recently. And she is very thrifty with her accessories. So whatever happened here must have happened at least a decade ago. — Liz Braswell

I was quite depressed two weeks ago when I spent an afternoon at Brentano's Bookshop in New York and was looking at the kind of books most people read. Once you see that you lose all hope. — Friedrich Hayek

When sometimes I am reminded that the mechanics and shopkeepers stay in their shops not only all the forenoon, but all the afternoon too, sitting with crossed legs, so many of them - as if the legs were made to sit upon, and not to stand or walk upon - I think that they deserve some credit for not having all committed suicide long ago. I, — Henry David Thoreau

When Vanity kissed Vanity, a hundred happy Junes ago, he pondered o'er her breathlessly, and, that all men might ever know, he rhymed her eyes with life and death:
"Thru Time I'll save my love!" he said ... yet Beauty vanished with his breath, and, with her lovers, she was dead ...
-Ever his wit and not her eyes, ever his art and not her hair:
"Who'd learn a trick in rhyme, be wise and pause before his sonnet there" ... So all my words, however true, might sing you to a thousandth June, and no one ever know that you were Beauty for an afternoon. — F Scott Fitzgerald

It was a broiling afternoon of mid-August in Brinoe and everybody who was anybody had long ago quit its burning pavements and chilly palaces for the mountains or the sea. — Louis Bromfield

No, the last thing she cared about was whether people were staring at the boy and girl kissing by the river, as London, it's cities and towers and churches and bridges and streets, circled all about them like the memory of a dream. And if the Thames that ran beside them, sure and silver in the afternoon light, recalled a night long ago when the moon shone as brightly as a shilling on this same boy and girl, or if the stones of Blackfriars knew the tread of their feet and thought to themselves: At last, the wheel comes to a full circle, they kept their silence. — Cassandra Clare

It is convenient for the old men to blame Eve. To insist we are damned because a country girl talked to the snake one afternoon long ago. Children must starve in Somalia for that, and old women be abandoned in our greatest cities. It's why we will finally be thrown into the lakes of molten lead. Because she was confused by happiness that first time anyone said she was beautiful. Nevertheless, she must be the issue, so people won't notice that rocks and galaxies, mathematics and rust are also created in His image. — Jack Gilbert

When Babe Didrickson Zaharias, often called the 'athletic phenomenon of all time,' won the British woman's gold tournament, people said of her what they had said many times before: "Oh, she's an automatic champion, a natural athlete." When Babe started golfing in earnest thirteen years ago she hit as many as 1,000 balls in one afternoon, playing until her hands were so sore they had to be taped. — James Keller

The Muskrat was still lying in his hammock and thinking.
"Good afternoon, Uncle Muskrat!" said Moomintroll. "Do you know that things have begun to happen?"
"Nothing new in any case," said the Muskrat.
"Oh, yes," said Moomintroll. "Completely new. There are people in the forest making secret signs everywhere
threats or warnings or something. When the silk-monkey and I came home a little while ago, somebody had arranged mamma's jam pears in a pattern that looked like a star with a tail. — Tove Jansson

He smiled slowly, as if particularly pleased with her question, and she couldn't help smiling in return. He reached around her, his arms nearly embracing her, and wrote in the notebook on her lap, Very good. Yes, the root ball should be quite big, even so. "Should be?" His breath was warm against her ear. I confess. I've never attempted to transplant a fully grown tree. I shall do so, however, this afternoon. Would you like to watch? If someone had asked her a fortnight ago if she'd like to watch a tree being planted, she would've looked at the questioner quite pityingly. But right now, this moment, she was rather excited at the prospect. Perhaps too many viewings of Caliban's nude chest had addled her brain. In any case she gazed into his thickly lashed brown eyes and smiled brilliantly. "Yes, please." His grin was quick and all-encompassing and, she couldn't help but think, solely for her. — Elizabeth Hoyt

As Ted sat, feeling the evolution of the afternoon, he found himself thinking of Susan. Not the slightly different version of Susan, but Susan herself - his wife - on a day many years ago, before Ted had begun folding up his desire into the tiny shape it had become. On a trip to New York, riding the Staten Island Ferry for fun, because neither one of them had ever done it, Susan turned to him suddenly and said, "Let's make sure it's always like this." And so entwined were their thoughts at that point that Ted knew exactly why she'd said it: not because they'd made love that morning or drunk a bottle of Pouilly-Fuisse at lunch - because she'd felt the passage of time. And then Ted felt it, too, in the leaping brown water, the scudding boats and wind - motion, chaos everywhere - and he'd held Susan's hand and said, "Always. It will always be like this. — Jennifer Egan

Have you got any soul? a woman asks the next afternoon. That depends, I feel like saying; some days yes, some days no. A few days ago I was right out; now I've got loads, too much, more than I can handle. I wish I could spread it a bit more evenly, I want to tell her, get a better balance, but I can't seem to get it sorted. I can see she wouldn't be interested in my internal stock control problems though, so I simply point to where I keep the soul I have, right by the exit, just next to the blues. — Nick Hornby

The point, the essential quality of the act of reading, now and always, is that it tends to no foreseeable end, to no conclusion. Every reading prolongs another, begun in some afternoon thousands of years ago and of which we know nothing; every reading projects its shadow onto the following page, lending it content and context. In this way, the story grows, layer after layer, like the skin of the society whose history this act preserves. — Alberto Manguel

Until that afternoon in October four years ago, I hadn't known dogs could scream. — Stephen King

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

I came home in the afternoon to sleep, and there was this e-mail from Comedy Central saying they were interested in having me be part of this new show called 'Jump Cuts'! So I called them right away, and the producer started laughing and said, 'We sent that e-mail one minute ago - you're so fast!' — Lev Yilmaz

Was it really just an hour ago that he'd licked me into nirvana at the top of the hill? We'd been buying condoms and planning an afternoon of hot sex, and now we were on a witch-hunt. Seeking retribution. Out for blood. — Sofia Grey

People actually seemed to enjoy recalling that on a Saturday afternoon forty years ago Empire Avenue was bustling with people and cars and commerce, whereas now, of course, you could strafe it with automatic weapons and not harm a soul. — Richard Russo

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

From a most kind suggestion put to me by Mr Farraday himself one afternoon almost a fortnight ago, when I had been dusting the portraits in the library. In fact, as I recall, I was up on the step-ladder dusting the portrait of Viscount Wetherby — Anonymous

Friday 8 August Last night, Mom called one of the parents from pony club. A little while ago, he told her about a man who is not only a very experienced horse trainer but also a horse healer. Apparently he worked wonders with their daughter's pony, Rocco who was behaving really badly and wasn't able to be ridden. So Mom decided to get his details so she could ask him about Tara. Now he's coming over on Sunday afternoon to have a look at her. I'm so glad he can come and I hope he can help!!! — Katrina Kahler

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

And he knew that he would never come again, and that lost magic would not come again. Lost now was all of it-the street, the heat, King's Highway, and Tom the Piper's son, all mixed in with the vast and drowsy murmur of the Fair, and with the sense of absence in the afternoon, and the house that waited, and the child that dreamed. And out of the enchanted wood, that thicket of man's memory, Eugene knew that the dark eye and the quiet face of his friend and brother-poor child, life's stranger, and life's exile, lost like all of us, a cipher in blind mazes, long ago-the lost boy was gone forever, and would not return. — Thomas Wolfe