Bleakly Quotes & Sayings

Please tell me you did something good."

"No," Romeo said bleakly. "I did something terrible."

Wait, Paris said silently. You can't tell him about that.

Don't we have to? said Romeo.

We don't know anything about him! How do we know he won't sell us out to the City Guard?

He leads a gang, said Romeo. He's probably not on speaking terms with the Guard. And do we have a choice?

"Does it have anything to do with the marks you have on your hands, which look strangely similar to the marks worn by the Juliet and her Guardian, and the way you stare at each other silently like you're talking mind to mind?" Vai asked innocently. — Rosamund Hodge

It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was us, what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things. — Terry Pratchett

Shakespeare's ambiguous lubricity in Venus is less disturbing than the bleakly moral emphasis of Lucrece, where virtue is so low-spirited, its exclamation so lachrymose and its justification the nasty realpolitik of Roman Republicanism. The sun has not dried the dew on the grass in Venus, but the ill-lit world of Livy's Rome darkens Lucrece. The first poem lives out of doors; the second is in a permanent chiaroscuro. — Peter Porter

It seemed bleakly ironic to me that someone who craved, deserved and had worked so hard to earn a tragic, early death appeared to be doomed to live forever. — Mishka Shubaly

I never saw it coming," I said bleakly. "I thought I was so smart. And each time I talked to her, I dismissed her as some dumb, scattered girl. Meanwhile, she was laughing and countering my moves every step of the way. It's humbling. I don't meet many people like that. — Richelle Mead

She loved sinking into her bed on evenings like this, but apparently she shouldn't, because it worried her aunts, who thought she ought to be out dancing. It worried her a little bit, too, because what if they were right, and because sometimes a great loneliness welled up in her and threatened all the dams she built to hold it back. You couldn't cure loneliness by wallowing in it, up above the world, on an island removed from everything. She knew that. But she had such a hard time with all the cures. They seemed rough and brusque and brutal, as if they abused her skin with a pot scrubber ... forcing herself into a mass of people, a stranger among strangers ... But it was much more tempting to curl up with a book under her thick white comforter.
Still, sometimes after she curled up, she regretted her lack of courage and felt bleakly lonely.
It was important to have a really good book. — Laura Florand

It was because he wanted there to be conspirators. It was much better to imagine men in some smoky rooms somewhere, made mad and cynical by privilege and power, plotting over the brandy. You had to cling to this sort of image, because if you didn't then you might have to fact the fact that bad things happened because ordinary people, the kind who brushed the dog and told their children bedtime stories, were capable of then going out and doing horrible things to other ordinary people. It was much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. — Terry Pratchett

For was that all, she thought bleakly, that love ever was? Something that saved one from loneliness? A sort of insurance policy against not counting? — Sarah Waters

I am a Highlander," Jamie said bleakly. He glanced once more at the far bank, where occasional glimpses of tartan showed through the mist, and then back. The shouting echoed from the fog. "And I am the sire of Americans. — Diana Gabaldon

Just as there are broken people, there are broken places on this earth. Some have always been broken. All cities have such neighborhoods at their edges, and this city is all edges ... block after block of bleakly hopeless outskirts.
People don't bury dead cities. They abandon them. They abandon them to the poorest of the poor, to the lost and the doomed. — Robert Dunbar

Striding, finally, into the solitude. You feel as if part of your body has been ripped from you, as if flesh has been torn from flesh. But you feel powerful too, for you're free, after so long; the great burden of uncertainty, and guilt, has gone.

But then the anger comes.

At all the times in the past you've said I love you and felt stripped. All the times they never rang back. All the love affairs that evaporated, bleakly, into one-night stands. All the times they've drowned you out. Drained your energy. Your confidence. Stood you up. Walked out. Wanted a Chinese girl next. — Nikki Gemmell

Bleakly, Harriet gazed out into the antiseptic gloom. A weight lay upon her, and a darkness. She'd learned things she never knew, things she had no idea of knowing, and yet in a strange way it was the hidden message of Captain Scott: that victory and collapse were sometimes the same thing. — Donna Tartt

And finally he had upset the whole household when he arrived an hour and a half late for luncheon and covered with mud from head to foot, and made not the least apology, saying merely: I never allow myself to be influenced in the smallest degree either by atmospheric disturbances or by the arbitrary divisions of what is known as Time. I would willingly reintroduce to society the opium pipe of China or the Malayan kriss, but I am wholly and entirely without instruction in those infinitely more per-nicious (besides being quite bleakly bourgeois) implements, the umbrella and the watch. — Marcel Proust

The realisation of our mortality came slowly, in dribs and drabs, until we bleakly acknowledged that everything was on loan to us for a short time - the world, our possessions, the people we knew and loved. But we could not spend our time dwelling on our mortality; we still had to behave as if the worst would not happen, for otherwise we would not do very much, we would be defeated and give up. — Alexander McCall Smith

...She squeezed Niall's hand and bleakly said, "I don't want you hurt."
"Oh, Serena, that's all I have to know." And with that, he kissed her so passionately, she felt as though she had fae transported to the moon and back... — Terry Spear

Well, girls always love assholes," said Platt, not bothering to dispute this. "Haven't you noticed?" No, I thought bleakly, untrue. Else why didn't Pippa love me? — Donna Tartt

A bullet only costs about two cents, and anybody can afford that. — Sherman Alexie

Forty years ago, at the dawn of molecular biology, the French biologist Jacques Monod wrote his famous book Chance and Necessity, which argues bleakly that the origin of life on earth was a freak accident, and that we are alone in an empty universe. The final lines of his book are close to poetry, an amalgam of science and metaphysics: The ancient covenant is in pieces; man knows at last that he is alone in the universe's unfeeling immensity, out of which he emerged only by chance. His destiny is nowhere spelled out, nor is his duty. The kingdom above or the darkness below: it is for him to choose. Since — Nick Lane

The problem (as I'd learned, repeatedly) was that thirty-six hours in, with your body in full revolt, and the remainder of your un-opiated life stretching out bleakly ahead of you like a prison corridor, you needed some fairly compelling reason to keep moving forward into darkness, rather than falling straight back into the gorgeous feather mattress you'd so foolishly abandoned. — Donna Tartt

Sometimes I think death is even more inevitable than taxes," his grandmother replies bleakly. "Humans don't live in a vacuum; we're part of a larger pattern of life. — Charles Stross

Maybe you'll get lucky." I said bleakly, lurching on my feet. "Maybe I'll get hit by a truck on my way back. — Stephenie Meyer

Atticus
" ... said Jem bleakly. "How could they do it, how could they?"
"I don't know, but they did it. They've done it before & they did it tonight & they'll do it again & when they do it
seems that only children weep. — Harper Lee

The celebrated Parisian doctor Professor Xavier Bichat developed a fully materialist theory of the human body and mind in his lectures Physiological Researches on Life and Death, translated into English in 1816. Bichat defined life bleakly as 'the sum of the functions by which death is resisted — Richard Holmes

Excelsior," Gansey said bleakly.
Blue asked, "What does that even mean?"
Gansey looked over his shoulder at her. He was once more, just a little bit closer to the boy she'd seen in the churchyard.
"Onward and upward. — Maggie Stiefvater

They went Indian file. First came the scouts, clever, graceful, quiet. They had rifles. Next came the antitank gunner, clumsy and dense, warning Germans away with a Colt .45 automatic in one hand and a trench knife in the other.
Last came Billy Pilgrim, empty-handed, bleakly ready for death. Billy was preposterous - six feet and three inches tall, with a chest and shoulders like a box of kitchen matches. He had no helmet, no overcoat, no weapon, and no boots. On his feet were cheap, low-cut civilian shoes which he had bought for his father's funeral. Billy had lost a heel, which made him bob up-and-down, up-and-down. The involuntary dancing, up-and-down, up-and-down, made his hip joints sore. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

The math is dead simple: it seems that the frequency of planets able to support life is roughly one percent. In other words, a billion or more such worlds exist in our galaxy alone. That's a lot of acreage, and it takes industrial-strength credulity to believe it's all bleakly barren. — Seth Shostak

So this is the boom, eh?" I said. "Not exactly Scott Fitzgerald, is it?" "I'll tell you what it's like," he said glumly. "It's like being in Caligula's Rome, and everyone around you's having an orgy, and you're the mug stuck looking after the horse." He pulled heavily on his cigarette. "The whole thing'll come crashing down," he said bleakly, "and all anyone'll have done is eaten a lot of expensive cheese. — Paul Murray

The vulgarity of an environment as bleakly desolate as the neon lights of the factory where the men go each morning, like sinners returning to hell ... — Muriel Barbery

Lord Emsworth was a man with little of the aggressor in his spiritual make-up. He believed in living and letting live. Except for his sister Constance, his secretary Lavender Briggs, the Duke of Dunstable and his younger son Frederick, now fortunately residing in America, few things were able to ruffle him. Placid is the word that springs to the lips. But the Church Lads had pierced his armour, and he found resentment growing within him like some shrub that has been treated with a patent fertilizer. He brooded bleakly on the injuries he had suffered at the hands of these juvenile delinquents. The — P.G. Wodehouse

Do the kits have names?" Bluefur asked. "The she-kits are Mistkit and Nightkit, and the tom is Tigerkit." "Tigerkit?" Leopardfoot had chosen a fierce name. "He's the weakest of the three," Featherwhisker mewed bleakly. "I suppose she hopes he's a fighter from the start." His eyes darkened. "He'll need to be. — Erin Hunter

was because he wanted there to be conspirators. It was much better to imagine men in some smoky room somewhere, made mad and cynical by privilege and power, plotting over the brandy. You had to cling to this sort of image, because if you didn't then you might have to face the fact that bad things happened because ordinary people, the kind who brushed the dog and told their children bedtime stories, were capable of then going out and doing horrible things to other ordinary people. It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was Us, what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things. Around — Terry Pratchett

Atticus - " said Jem bleakly. He turned in the doorway. "What, son?" "How could they do it, how could they?" "I don't know, but they did it. They've done it before and they did it tonight and they'll do it again and when they do it - seems that only children weep. Good night." But — Harper Lee

Don't stay away from me anymore."
I stop myself, just barely, from telling him I won't. I can't promise that. Can't lie.
He opens his eyes. Stares starkly, bleakly. "I need you. — Sophie Jordan