Being Woke Quotes & Sayings

35 On that day, when evening had come, He told them, "Let's cross over to the other side of the sea." 36 So they left the crowd and took Him along since He was already in the boat. And other boats were with Him. 37 A fierce windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking over the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. 38 But He was in the stern, sleeping on the cushion. So they woke Him up and said to Him, "Teacher! Don't you care that we're going to die? " 39 He got up, rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, "Silence! Be still! " The wind ceased, and there was a great calm. 40 Then He said to them, "Why are you fearful? Do you still have no faith? " 41 And they were terrified and asked one another, "Who then is this? Even the wind and the sea obey Him! " — Anonymous

I began to think about God. I mean, the notion of a Supreme Being existing somewhere began to creep into my private thoughts. Not because I wanted to strike Him on the face, to punch Him out for what He was about to do to me - to Jenny, that is. No, the kind of religious thoughts I had were just the opposite. Like, when I woke up in the morning and Jenny was there. Still there. I'm sorry, embarrassed even, but I hoped there was a God I could say thank you to. — Erich Segal

Momsen was 15 when she joined Gossip Girl. Does she feel older and wiser at 17? "You get more insight as you get older, on everything. I kind of woke up one morning and I was like, 'Oh, I see what's happening, I get everything.'"

Then she stops abruptly. So what is it she gets exactly? "Well, I kind of woke up and was like, 'Oh, I get it, I'm a product.'" Which might be the saddest words ever to pass a 17-year-old girl's lips. But, with typical Momsen nonchalance, they're delivered with a shrug. — Hermione Hoby

I had left my anger somewhere long ago. Put it down on a park bench and walked away. And yet. It had been so long, I didn't know any other way of being. One day I woke up and said to myself: It's not too late. The first days were strange. I had to practice smiling in front of the mirror. But it came back to me. It was as if a weight had been lifted. I let go, and something let go of me. — Nicole Krauss

But one day I woke up and heard myself saying, I am a fork being used to eat cereal. I am not a spoon. I am a fork. And I can't help people eat cereal any longer. — Rivka Galchen

There are, I believe, some who still deny that England is governed by an oligarchy. It is quite enough for me to know that a man might have gone to sleep some thirty years ago over the day's newspaper and woke up last week over the later newspaper, and fancied he was reading about the same people. In one paper he would have found a Lord Robert Cecil, a Mr. Gladstone, a Mr. Lyttleton, a Churchill, a Chamberlain, a Trevelyan, an Acland. In the other paper he would find a Lord Robert Cecil, a Mr. Gladstone, a Mr. Lyttleton, a Churchill, a Chamberlain, a Trevelyan, an Acland. If this is not being governed by families I cannot imagine what it is. I suppose it is being governed by extraordinary democratic coincidences. — G.K. Chesterton

And eventually I realized that being in love is not living a life in fairy tale.. I woke up, not with a kiss but with a twinge.. Hello real world.. teach me now.. how to be practically real and really practical.. — Himmilicious

On Thursday, I woke to find a perfect September morning, summer with the first gentle hint of autumn, exactly the wrong day to be away from the country. I would have gone for an enormous walk
except that, while in the bath, I saw exactly how to finish the book I was writing, after being stuck for weeks; though as things turned out, I doubt if I should have walked or written, because during breakfast I suddenly knew how to paint the view framed by my open window. I had been threatening to paint for months, sometimes seeing myself as a primitive, sometimes as an abstractionist. Today the primitive mood was in the ascendent. — Dodie Smith

Most of the time, I feel like a total fraud. Like I have no idea how I've made it this far without the world figuring out that I have no idea what I'm doing or that I'm relying on some sign or the fact that I glanced at the clock at 11:11 or the fact that Paul McCartney's "With a Little Luck" was playing on the radio when my alarm woke me up to give me a little extra confidence that "we can make this whole damn thing work out." This "whole damn thing" being my life. — Caprice Crane

I woke to find the sun streaming through the bedroom window. Looking up with one eye opened and the other still closed, I saw that Luca was awake, lying on one side and looking down on me.
"Good morning. Do you want to talk Adriana?"
"No, I just want to fuck. Oh, good morning by the way."
"For a prospective sub you are becoming a little demanding."
"Sorry, am I not supposed to want sex?"
"There's absolutely nothing wrong with you wanting sex, in fact it is a condition of you being here in bed with me. It's just that a good little sub waits to be asked."
"Sorry. Then of course I will withdraw that demand and lie here to await your pleasure."
"Good, a fast learner, that's what I like. — Rachel De Vine

I actually do have a motto," said Heat. "It's 'Never forget who you work for.'" And as she voiced the words, Nikki felt a creeping unease. It wasn't exactly shame, but it was close. For the first time it sounded hollow. Fake. Why? She examined herself, trying to see what was different. The stress, that was new. And when she looked at that, she recognized that the hardest part of her day lately was working to avoid confrontation with Captain Montrose. That's when it came to her. In that moment, sitting nearly naked in Rook's living room, playing some silly nineteenth-century parlor game, she came to an unexpected insight. In that moment Nikki woke up and saw with great clarity who she had become - and who she had stopped being. Without noticing it, Heat had begun seeing herself as working for her captain and had lost sight of her guiding principle, that she worked for the victim. — Richard Castle

Ever notice how the abbreviation for Testament is Test? I noticed this when I woke up and saw the tabs on my bible. You know that's true in lots of ways. The Old Test. tells about people like Moses, Job and more being tested. In the New Test You have people like Paul, and even Jesus. We as Christians are to study for our Tests in our lives. Most of all we need to study for our final Exam. — Amanda Penland

When Sam's having a hard time and being a total baby about the whole thing, I feel so much frustration and rage and self-doubt and worry that it's like a mini-breakdown. I feel like my mind becomes a lake full of ugly fish and big clumps of algae and coral, of feelings and unhappy memories and rehearsals for future difficulties and failures. I paddle around in it like some crazy old dog, and then I remember that there's a float in the middle of the lake and I can swim out to it and lie down in the sun. That float is about being loved, by my friends and by God and even sort of by me. And so I lie there and get warm and dry off, and I guess I get bored or else it is human nature because after a while I jump back into the lake, into all that crap. I guess the solution is just to keep trying to get back to the float. This morning Sam woke at 4:00, so — Anne Lamott

I dreamt of the execution block last night. I dreamt I was alone and crawling through the snow towards the dark stump. My hands and knees were numb from the ice, but I had no choice.
When I came upon the block, its surface was vast and smooth. I could smell the wood. It had none of the saltiness of driftwood, but was like bleeding sap, like blood. Sweeter, heavier.
In my dream I dragged myself up and held my head above it. It began to snow, and I thought to myself: "This is the silence before the drop." And then I wondered at the stump being there, the tree it might have been, when trees do not grow here. There is too much silence, I thought in my dream. Too many stones.
So I addressed the wood out loud. I said: "I will water you as though you still lived." And at this last word I woke. — Hannah Kent

All the people that were rooting on me to fail, at the end of the day, they have to wake up tomorrow and have the same life that they had before they woke up today. They have the same personal problems they had today. I'm going to continue to live the way I want to live and continue to do the things that I want to do with me and my family and be happy with that. They can get a few days or a few months or whatever the case may be on being happy about not only myself, but the Miami Heat not accomplishing their goal. But they have to get back to the real world at some point. — LeBron James

But in the night he woke and held her tight as though she were all of life and it was being taken from him. He held her feeling she was all of life there was and it was true. — Ernest Hemingway,

Because I woke up today and could take a breath with my own lungs. That's more than what many people on this planet could do. Today, I took a breath this morning while some took their last. Every moment in life is a special occasion. Being alive. Being surrounded by those who appreciate you is a blessed occasion and it's worth a celebration. — Melody Anne

Ty plopped down in the seat next to Kelly and peered over at his friends. "What the hell happened to you two this morning?"
Nick began to snicker and Kelly rolled his eyes as he took a sip of coffee. "I fell out of the bed."
"Fell?" Zane asked. "Or you were pushed?"
"Legit fell. Rolled right out of that thing and took the covers with me. I dreamt I was being attacked by a giant squid and woke up thinking I was drowning."
"I woke up cold and very confused," Nick added. — Abigail Roux

If I woke up one morning and realized that all I ever was going to be was a business man, I'd probably die. All my dreams would be shattered. Early in life I had many dreams. I dreamed of being a great basketball star. I dreamed of being a preacher. I dreamed of saving the world from war and racism. And I dreamed of being a great poet. Today, I dream only of writing. — Harley King

Scuffing her bare feet into slippers, she shrugged into a silk robe, then hesitated, looking down at Perrin. He would be able to see her clearly, if he woke, but to her, he was just a shadowed mound. She wished her mother were there, now, to advise her. She loved Perrin with every fiber of her being, and he confused every fiber. Actually understanding men was impossible, of course, but he was so unlike anyone she had grown up with. He never swaggered, and instead of laughing at himself, he was... modest. She had not believed a man could be modest! He insisted that only chance had made him a leader, claimed he did not know how to lead, when men who met him were ready to follow after an hour. He dismissed his own thinking as slow, when those slow, considering thoughts saw so deeply that she had to dance a merry jig to keep any secrets at all. He was a wonderful man, her curly-haired wolf. So strong. And so gentle. — Robert Jordan

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

I woke up to an ache in my chest, the smell of chocolate, and the sound of the ghost making a racket in the kitchen. Now, I'm not the sort to dwell on doom and sorrow. Life is too short for that. But I should at least try to describe the ache briefly: It is not the kind that comes from eating tacos too late at night. It's the kind that comes from being left behind. I think my heart is smart enough to know there's a place I should be filling with new memories, new jokes, and wondrous adventures with the one person I loved most of all. But that person is gone now. And so, my heart has a giant hole. I call it The Big Empty. — Natalie Lloyd

It was about time she woke up to reality and realized that there was more to being a vampire than just feeding from blood. — Elaine White

Ah'll clean 'em, you fry 'em and let's eat,' he said with the assurance of not being refused. They went out into the kitchen and fixed up the hot fish and corn muffins and ate. Then Tea Cake went to the piano without so much as asking and began playing blues and singing, and throwing grins over his shoulder. The sounds lulled Janie to soft slumber and she woke up with Tea Cake combing her hair and scratching the dandruff from her scalp. It made her more comfortable and drowsy. — Zora Neale Hurston

Everyday he got up. Before sleep wore off, he was who he used to be. Then, as his consciousness woke, it was as if poison seeped in. At first he couldn't even get up. He lay there under a heavy weight. But then only movment could save him, and he moved and he moved and he moved, no movement being enough to make up for it. The guilt on him, the hand of God pressing down on him, saying, You were not there when your daughter needed you. — Alice Sebold

I can't lie to you and tell you that standing in front of someone and offering them your soul and having them reject you is not gonna be one of the worst things that ever happens to you. You will wonder for days or weeks or months or years afterward what it is about you that was so wrong or broken or ugly that they couldn't love you the way you loved them. You will look for all the reasons inside yourself that they didn't want you and you will find a million.
Maybe it was the way you looked in the mornings when you first woke up and hadn't showered. Maybe it was the way you were too available, because despite what everyone says, playing hard to get is still attractive.
Some days you will believe that every atom of your being is defective somehow. What you need to remember, as I remembered as I watched Grace Town leave, is that you are extraordinary. — Krystal Sutherland

During her school days, especially her earlier school days, the world had been very explicit with her, telling her what to do, what not to do, giving her lessons to learn and games to play and interests of the most suitable and various kinds. Presently she woke up to the fact that there was a considerable group of interests called being in love and getting married, with certain attractive and amusing subsidiary developments, such as flirtation and "being interested" in people of the opposite sex. She approached this field with her usual liveliness of apprehension. But here she met with a check. These interests her world promptly, through the agency of schoolmistresses, older school-mates, her aunt, and a number of other responsible and authoritative people, assured her she must on no account think about. Miss — H.G.Wells

Dormouse had closed its eyes by this time, and was going off into a doze; but, on being pinched by the Hatter, it woke up again with a little shriek, and went on: '
that begins with an M, such as mouse-traps, and the moon, and memory, and muchness
you know you say things are "much of a muchness"
did you ever see such a thing as a drawing of a muchness?' 'Really, now you ask me,' said Alice, very much confused, 'I don't think
' 'Then you shouldn't talk,' said the Hatter. This piece of rudeness was more than Alice could bear: she got up in great disgust, and walked off; the Dormouse fell asleep instantly, and neither of the others took the least notice of her going, though — Lewis Carroll

At other times, at the edge of a wood, especially at dusk, the trees themselves would assume strange shapes: sometimes they were arms rising heavenwards, , or else the trunk would twist and turn like a body being bent by the wind. At night, when I woke up and the moon and the stars were out, I would see in the sky things that filled me simultaneously with dread and longing. I remember that once, one Christmas Eve, I saw a great naked women, standing erect, with rolling eyes; she must have been a hundred feet high, but along she drifted, growing ever longer and ever thinner, and finally fell apart, each limb remaining separate, with the head floating away first as the rest of her body continued to waver — Gustave Flaubert

In my dreams a small wolf slept inside of me and it wasn't comfortable. It moved it's heels and elbows and paws, struggled to make space between my lungs, stomach, bladder. Occasionally a scrabbling claw punctured something and I woke. What were you dreaming? Arabella wanted to know. I knew what it was dreaming. It was dreaming of being born. The form and scale of its occupancy shifted. Sometimes its legs were in my legs, its head in my head, its paws in my hands. Other times it was barely the size of a kitten, heartburn hot and fidgety under my sternum. I'd wake and for a moment feel my face changed, reach up and touch the muzzle that wasn't there. — Glen Duncan

I woke up today and said today is not like other days. I have no reason to believe this is true. Everything has gone as it ever does for me. But if you consider a day hard enough, you can make it different. The trick is that you can't think about any other day. If I accept a normal day as being thoughtless, this one has been like no other. — Unknown

There are two things a combat deployment offers which all of us strongly desire. The first, being purpose. Every morning we woke up and knew why we were there. It is immediate and unavoidable. Although, it is extreme and unpleasant, there is a comfort in that purpose. The second, is simplicity. We have one goal. There are relatively simple rules on how to accomplish it, and we understand that just about everything will go wrong. Pretty simple. — Adam Fenner

A lot of being a poet consists of willed ignorance. If you woke up from your trance and realized the nature of the life-threatening and dignity-destroying precipice you were walking along, you would switch into actuarial sciences immediately. — Margaret Atwood

Mornings were hard on Earth. You woke up tireder than when you went to sleep. Your back ached. Your neck ached. Your chest felt tight with anxiety that came from being mortal. And then, on top of all that, you had to do so much before the day even started. The main problem was the stuff to do in order to be presentable. — Matt Haig

The Actor, noticing a closed bookshop, dismounted from the horse which he tied to a street lamp. He woke up the bookseller and bought a Spanish grammar and dictionary. He set out again across town marveling at the way that the words of the foreign language were freshly gathered fruits and not old and dry. They touched the senses marvelously, new like young beggars who accost you, not yet words but the every things they designate, happily running naked before being clothed again in abstraction. — Georges Limbour

His desperation and misery swept her up like a storm capturing the sea. She turned her mind to even these feelings, because they were his, like his terrified rage in the lift when they had first met, being wrapped in his arms in the cold well, being dazzled by his wonder at the woods and her home and her. Like being a child, awareness of him the morning chorus that woke her and the lullaby that sent her to sleep, his thoughts always her first and last song.
I love you, Kami told him, and cut. — Sarah Rees Brennan

I loved having a crew. I loved being the person who woke at six in the morning and knew where to put the camera. I loved watching the actresses cry, and to know that if you were clever and didn't do too many rehearsals, that it just came that way. — Jane Birkin

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

I'm convinced that no normal human being ever woke up one morning and said, "Dammit, my life doesn't have enough petty bureaucratic rules, zero-tolerance policies, censorship, and fear in it. How do I fix that?" Instead, they let this stuff pile up, one compromise at a time, building up huge sores suppurating with spore-loaded fluids that eventually burst free and beslime everything around them. It gets normal to them, one dribble at a time. — Bruce Sterling

The day after we returned from Iorn Fist I woke up and I want either one of them anymore. Somewhere in between a girl I thought was long dead and a woman that was too blood thirsty for me to particularly like. But I thought about all that had happened the day before and decided that I liked being alive. So I wanted to than you for not letting me die. — Michael A. Stackpole

I was fully intending to cook you something complicated and delicious," Meg said. "But then I started to watch this nature documentary, and a fluffy baby seal was being chased by a polar bear, so I muted it and shut my eyes, and when I woke up it was two hours later. How does soup and toasties grab you? — Cari Hunter

What we are, in fact, are electronic ape-men. We woke up just now in the electronic dawn and there, looming against the brightening sky, is this huge black rectangle. And we're reaching out and touching it and saying, "Is it WAP enabled? Can we have sex with it? Can you get it in a different colour? Is it being sold cheap because the Monolith2 is being released next month and has a built-in PDA for the same price? — Terry Pratchett

It isn't easy being on the outside," I admitted. "Judd and I were tight. We spent a shitload of time together. Not talking or having feelings, but I had someone to sit next to me and drink beer with. We played pool every night and had sex with different chicks every night and woke up alone every morning. We were the same. Now, he's whipped and Tawny walks around with his balls in her purse. I asked once if we could take his balls out occasionally and let them breathe, but she just laughed. Tawny's sneaky that way. — Bijou Hunter

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

I woke up horribly early the next morning to the sound of some sadistic bastard operating an electric hedge-trimmer just outside the window. I lay for a while hoping this prat would be struck by lightning or washed away in a bizarre flash flood. Neither happened, so I groaned and rolled out of bed.
My skull had shrunk so that my brain was in imminent danger of being squeezed out of my ears, my teeth seemed to be covered in wool and my tongue was far too big for my mouth. — Danielle Hawkins

A veteran who comes home from war is returning from one of the most intense experiences a human being can have. Even if he was not under fire every day, he woke up every morning as part of a team. He started every day with a purpose, and a mission that mattered to those around him. — Eric Greitens

Damn, Josie. Are you trying to kill me?"
She glanced back my way. "Not particularly right now. Why?"
I didn't even try to stop staring. It would have been a wasted effort. "Because that dress is enough to give a man a heart attack if you come any closer, or break a man's heart if you walk away."
"Now lines like that help me understand why you've got a reputation for being such a ladies man."
"That wasn't even my best one."
( ... )
That kind of dress could bring a man to his knee to propose, even if that had been the furthest thing from his mind when he woke up that morning. Hell, it was bringing me close to a proposal, and I was dead set against anything marriage related. — Nicole Williams

Piney woke up wearing a big grin on his face. He couldn't remember when he'd slept so well. He pulled the pillow next to him up over his face. He could smell her hair on it.
"Jesse," he murmured to himself. He liked her. He really liked her. And he loved, loved, loved doing her.
Being inside her. She was so hot. She was so tight. She was ...
Piney stopped himself in midthought and rolled out of bed. His mind was headed where his body could not go. — Pamela Morsi

In the middle of the night she woke up dreaming of huge white heads like turnips, that came trailing after her, at the end of interminable necks, and with vast black eyes. But being a sensible woman, she subdued her terrors and turned over and went to sleep again. — H.G.Wells

I return one last time to the places of death all around us, the places of slaughter to which, in a huge communal effort, we close our hearts. Each day a fresh holocaust, yet, as far as I can see, our moral being is untouched. We do not feel tainted. We can do anything, it seems, and come away clean.
We point to the Germans and Poles and Ukrainians who did and did not know of the atrocities around them. We like to think they were inwardly marked by the after-effects of that special form of ignorance. We like to think that in their nightmares the ones whose suffering they had refused to enter came back to haunt them. We like to think they woke up haggard in the mornings and died of gnawing cancers. But probably it was not so. The evidence points in the opposite direction: that we can do anything and get away with it; that there is no punishment. — J.M. Coetzee

He turns around, all impatient. Now what? I wanna say something to you. I wanna say ... I dunno ... more. I could bust apart with all I'm feelin inside of me right now. What with fightin off the hellwurms an gittin my shoulder tore open, an how I felt when I woke up an seen you an, now, here I am, being so close to findin Lugh an I dunno what's gonna happen an
Jack's lookin at me, frowning. What's the matter with you, Saba? he says. I grab his face an kiss him on the lips. — Moira Young

Some days I woke up and got out of bed and brushed my teeth like any normal human being; some days I woke up and lay in bed and looked at the ceiling and wondered what the hell the point was of getting out of bed and brushing my teeth like any normal human being. — Ned Vizzini

Senegal had always boasted one of Africa's most vibrant merchant cultures. The country's boubou-wearing traders had long colonized street corners in New York and many a European city, where they sold clothing, gadgetry, and assorted tourist fare. But in 2004, Dakar's traders woke up suddenly to the alarming notion that they were in turn being colonized by Chinese who seemed to be taking over the retail sector. Large protests followed in Dakar, with the striking Senegalese traders demanding government action to protect them from the Chinese newcomers. From — Howard W. French

Or maybe that wasn't the time it snowed. Maybe it was the time we slept in the truck and I rolled over on the bunnies and flattened them. It doesn't matter. What's important for me to remember now is that early the next morning the snow was melted off the windshield and the daylight woke me up. A mist covered everything and, with the sunshine, was beginning to grow sharp and strange. The bunnies weren't a problem yet, or they'd already been a problem and were already forgotten, and there was nothing on my mind. I felt the beauty of the morning. I could understand how a drowning man might suddenly feel a deep thirst being quenched. Or how a slave might become a friend to his master. — Denis Johnson

Love Beyond God

What if every time you woke
Your sigh was felt
By every being on Earth?

What if every time you spoke
Your words were heard
By every ear on Earth?

What if when you told a joke
You tickled the senses
Of every smile on Earth?

What if with each tender stroke
You shared your touch
With every hand on Earth?

What if when your heart broke
You tasted the tears
Running down every cheek on Earth?

No bond or brand or "guilted" yoke,
Surely this is love that reaches beyond,
That holds one to another
And every other to one.
No matter the color
Or where we're from.
This is now.
This is we.
This is Love.
This is God.
And this is love beyond God. — Adam Lawrence Dyer

It was only that night, dreaming forbidden dreams of Laurence and the clear attraction he had already displayed towards her, that the dream was disturbed. She woke to pain, her eyes and mouth flashing open in a wordless scream as two strong fangs pierced her neck. A body lay across hers, warm and strong as she felt the life being sucked out of her. The moment he knew she was awake, Laurence had pulled back from feeding and smiled at her with a bloody grin. 'You are mine now, Shiloh. You may never leave this house until the day I die.' He had warned her, planting a tormenting kiss on her lips before resuming his feed. — Elaine White

Ruxs woke up feeling loved and sorer than he'd ever been in his life. He'd been thrown from two story windows, wrestled with five men at once, even been thrown from a speeding car, but nothing compared to the feel of your ass being fucked by a man that was heavily muscled and well endowed. He noticed he was in bed alone, but he smiled because he could smell the scent of cinnamon buns. Ruxs turned on his side, groaning at the aches. But damn if his man didn't make him soar. He'd never felt that good before, never been that aroused or come so hard. He — A.E. Via

Jeffrey woke up, tied to the high-backed chair in his bedroom, nude. He could hear his wife giggling in the hallway, the hardwood floors creaking with her footsteps with what must have been someone else too. He was gagged, a tight cloth wrapped around his mouth, hurting his jaw when he tried to call for help. He looked down at his body, seeing that he was tied with an intricate rope pattern - a pentagram - on his chest, the hemp fibers tight. He could breathe fine, and he recognized his wife's rigging skills instantly. They'd practiced Kinbaku, a rope bondage before, on multiple occasions, but this rigging was different. It seemed to be tighter than normal, and he knew that something new was being introduced tonight. — Todd Misura

I once made myself black out by pulling G too quickly while flying an F-18. Being unconscious in a single-seat airplane is not good. Fortunately, I woke up in time. I learned how to better plug-in my anti-G suit. — Chris Hadfield

I bunched the squirrel-fur hat up under my head and left the pack for Mal to use as a pillow. Then I pulled my coat close around me and huddled beneath the new furs. I was nodding off when I heard Mal return and settle himself beside me, his back pressed comfortably against mine. As I drifted into sleep, I felt like I could still taste the sugar from that sweet roll on my tongue, feel the pleasure of laughter gusting through me. We'd been robbed. We'd almost been killed. We were being hunted by the most powerful man in Ravka. But we were friends again, and sleep came more easily than it had in a long time. At some point during the night, I woke to Mal's snoring. I jabbed him in the back with my elbow. He rolled onto his side, muttered something in his sleep, and threw his arm over me. A minute later he started snoring again, but this time I didn't wake him. — Leigh Bardugo