Boy This Place Quotes & Sayings

The vice minister sets down The Principles of Mechanics and pushes it away, then glances at his palms as though it has made them dirty. He says, "The only place your brother is going, little girl, is into the mines. As soon as he turns fifteen. Same as every other boy in this house. — Anthony Doerr

Forgetting myself for a moment, I stopped to study the menu that was elegantly exposed in a show window. I read, realizing that a few days earlier I could have gone in and ordered anything on the menu. But now, though I was the same person with the same appetite, the same appreciation and even the same wallet, no power on earth could get me inside this place for a meal. I recalled hearing some Negro say, "You can live here all your life, but you'll never get inside one of the great restaurants except as a kitchen boy." The Negro often dreams of things separated from him only by a door, knowing that he is forever cut off from experiencing them. — John Howard Griffin

I'm living every ten-year-old boy's fantasy. The other day, Chris and I had this big scene where we had to pull out our guns, and I was thinking, 'Here we are in New York City - a place where every actor wants to be - and we are literally playing cops and robbers. How great is that?' — Mariska Hargitay

We came to find me home, boy, but this is not the place. Me people once lived, here, 'tis true, but the darkness that creeped into Mithral Hall has put an end to me claim on it. I've no wish to return once I'm clear of the stench of the place, know that in yer stubborn head. — R.A. Salvatore

I am not a romantic leading man anymore so I don't need to nurture that public image anymore. I can talk about it now because I'm not afraid anymore ... When I grew up, being gay, being sissy or anything like that, was verboten. I disliked myself intensely and feared this part of myself intensely, and had to hide it and became 'Perfect Richard, All-American Boy' as a place to hide. — Richard Chamberlain

I had always been a boy in this place, and many of the trees and rocks and streams had been old men when I knew them. Some had died. All had changed. I knew that. I had changed the most. — Dan Groat

One solution ... for the house of the future is to have a place called a 'dirty room.' This would be equipped with appliances for all cleaning problems, and into it would be dumped everything dirty. But in most American homes the way to have a dirty room is to have a small boy; that's the way we worked it for a number of happy years. — E.B. White

There's an old joke - um ... two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of 'em says, "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know; and such small portions." Well, that's essentially how I feel about life - full of loneliness, and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness, and it's all over much too quickly. — Woody Allen

Once upon a time, the great big world outside Bridgeton had seemed like Xanadu - miles of golden road lined with smiling people, waiting to usher me through hundreds of open doors. There was nothing out there but bright light and possibilities. There were big dreams of other places, other people, even other boys.
There had even, for two hours in April, been somebody else.
He was a glimpse of the future, where I would live and breath and love far, far away from this place. A future where behind a closed door, on Saturday mornings, a boy I hadn't met yet would wrap an arm around my waist and exhale damp heat into the curve of my neck. Where we would keep our eyes closed, pull the covers closer, burrow down and deeper to escape the nine-o'clock sunshine, and the sound of heavy breath echoing along the rusted steel confines of a pickup truck would be nothing but a memory. — Kat Rosenfield

I'm not a boy!" Dashan retorted hotly. "How dare you speak to me like that!"
"I'll speak to you any way I see fit. You are sorely lacking in discipline and wouldn't know danger if it bit you in the arse!" Ryland looked towards the door where Dashan wanted to go. "Do you have any idea what sort of place that is?"
"A brothel?"
Ryland laughed so hard his head fell back. "A brothel, he says. My, my, aren't you the innocent? It is a brothel, but a certain type of one. The men who frequent it are known to have very particular tastes."
"What sort of tastes?" Dashan was curious now. Did Ryland know it was a brothel for men who wanted men? And how did he know? Did he use this place too?
Ryland shook his head. "That's not something the king would appreciate me telling his son."
"Show me then. I demand that you show me. That's an order. — Annette Gisby

Father, what did I miss here, in this stage? Did I know I was the beloved son? Do I believe it even now? Come to me, in this place, over these years. Speak to me. Do I believe you want good things for me? Is my heart secure in your love? How was my young heart wounded in my life as a boy? And Jesus, you who came to heal the broken heart, come to me here. Heal this stage in my heart. Restore me as the beloved son. Father me. — John Eldredge

On every side of me are the lights and the tools and the wood and the boots and the boy I want to see forever. And if my Sea of Tranquility were real, it would be this place, with him. — Katja Millay

11But the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven and said, "Abraham, Abraham!" And he said, "Here I am." 12He said, p "Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for q now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me." 13And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. 14So Abraham called the name of that place, r "The LORD will provide"; [2] as it is said to this day, "On the mount of the LORD it shall be provided. — Anonymous

The mind is a machine that is constantly asking: What would I prefer? Close your eyes, refuse to move, and watch what your mind does. What it does is become discontent with That Which Is. A desire arises, you satisfy that desire, and another arises in its place. This wanting and rewanting is an endless cycle for which, turns out, there is already a name: samsara. Samsara is at the heart of the vast human carnival: greed, neurosis, mad ambition, adultery, crimes of passion, the hacking to death of a terrified man on a hillside in the name of A More Pure And Thus Perfect Nation
and all of this takes place because we believe we will be made happy once our desires have been satisfied.
I know this. But still I'm full of desire ...
Buddha Boy — George Saunders

But a Herald has to have your trust right away, don't you see? If you come to trust the person more than the office, the way you do with your priest, there would be trouble for every new Herald in a Sector." The boy looked thoughtful at this. "So you move all the time, to make sure it's the job that stays important, not the person doing it. I bet if you stayed in one place too long, you'd get too bound up with the people to judge right, too. — Mercedes Lackey

Dear friends, he began, there is no timetable for happiness; it moves, I think, according to rules of its own. When I was a boy I thought I'd be happy tomorrow, as a young man I thought it would be next week; last month I thought it would be never. Today, I know it is now. Each of us, I suppose has at least one person who thinks that our manifest faults are worth ignoring; I have found mine, and am content. When we are far from home we think of home; I, who am happy today, think of those in Scotland for whom such happiness might seem elusive; may such powers as listen to what is said by people like me, in olive groves like this, grant to those who want a friendship a friend, attend to the needs of those who have little, hold the hand of those who are lonely, allow Scotland, our place, our country, to sing in the language of her choosing that song she has always wanted to sing, which is of brotherhood, which is of love. — Alexander McCall Smith

When the boy sits up, ... , holds his holy votive tablet up with both hands as if to heaven, up at the level of his head like a priest raising the bread, cause this place is full of people who have eyes and choose to see nothing, who all talk into their hands as they peripatate and carry these votives, some the size of a hand, some the size of a face or a whole head, dedicated to saints perhaps or holy folk, and they look or talk to or pray to these tablets or icons all the while by holding them next to their heads or stroking them with fingers and staring only at them, signifying they must be heavy in their despair to be so consistently looking away from their world and so devoted to their icons. — Ali Smith

Listen! Before you can fully understand the notes, dear boy, you must first understand the space you will place them in. Space can be seen as the birthplace of all things. That is why all things are eventually attracted back to it ... Your understanding of this will allow you to pack your Music with an immeasurable amount of power, the power to change the world and the power for the world to change you. But remember, you are responsible. — Victor L. Wooten

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

I think of the black youngster who comes home sobbing to tell his mother that some other little children kicked him and called him "nigger", and his mother puts her arms around the boy to comfort him and explain how monstrous white people so often are. I can see that same scenario played out in Germany in 1930s when the race laws went into effect. But this youngsters had adults who helped them understand hatred and prejudice and condemnation. The gay child walks into his home, the only place where the human race can expect sanctuary, to find that the larger societal prejudices are just as vivid there. He is alone — Charles Rowan Beye

What is she to you anyway?"
"Here's my answer captain. She's the thing that made this all okay-the threadbare coats and the old boots and the guns that jams when you most need them to fire, the loneliness of knowing that you don't matter, that you will never matter, the fact that you're just another body, another uniform to be sent into the fold or the frost, another good boy who knows his place, who does his job, who doesn't ask questions, who will lie down and die and be forgotten. What is she? She's everything, you dumb son of a bitch. — Leigh Bardugo

The boy was silent as we went. Unsurprising, this - he had seldom left London in his life before. I guessed him to be gazing about in dumbstruck admiration.
"What an appalling place," he [Nathaniel] said. - Bartimaeus — Jonathan Stroud

Talking things over has its place in an organization [but] so-called conferences are being grossly overdone. One executive stops at the desk of another to tell him, perhaps, about the wonderful score he made at golf on Saturday afternoon. This chin-chin immediately becomes a conference, and neither the office boy nor the telephone operator must disturb either gentleman. More idle gossip is indulged in at many business conferences these days than an old wives' sewing circle would be guilty of. — B.C. Forbes

Was I still myself? If so, who was I? I wasn't really interested in knowing that. It had no sort of importance for me anymore. Some moorings had broken, some taboos had fallen, and a world of spells and anathemas was springing up from their ruins. What was terrifying about this whole affair was the ease with which I passed from one universe to another without feeling out of place. Such a smooth transition. I had gone to bed a docile, courteous boy, and I'd awakened with an inextinguishable rage lodged in my very flesh. I carried my hatred like a second nature; it was my armor and my shirt of Nessus, my pedestal and my stake; it was all that remained to me in this false, unjust, arid, and cruel life. — Yasmina Khadra

Septon Cellador spoke up. "This boy Satin. It's said you mean to make him your steward and squire, in Tollett's place. My lord, the boy's a whore ... a ... dare I say ... a painted catamite from the brothels of Oldtown." And — George R R Martin

One day, Oliver and Noah had descended into the kitchen at the usual dinner-hour, to banquet upon a small joint of mutton - a pound and a half of the worst end of the neck - when Charlotte being called out of the way, there ensued a brief interval of time, which Noah Claypole, being hungry and vicious, considered he could not possibly devote to a worthier purpose than aggravating and tantalising young Oliver Twist. Intent upon this innocent amusement, Noah put his feet on the table-cloth; and pulled Oliver's hair; and twitched his ears; and expressed his opinion that he was a 'sneak'; and furthermore announced his intention of coming to see him hanged, whenever that desirable event should take place; and entered upon various topics of petty annoyance, like a malicious and ill-conditioned charity-boy as he was. But, — Charles Dickens

I remember, when we started 'Leverage,' we were all in Chicago, and I read the script for the pilot and thought, 'Boy, this is just a real interesting place to begin a character.' I had to figure out how to go about playing someone who had hit rock bottom. — Timothy Hutton

Everything I told him was technically true, more or less, and I got the job done," Jack said stubbornly. "Look, sir, if I were perfect, I wouldn't be working here in the first place. Now, would I?"
And then he hung up. On speakerphone. On a freaking archangel.
I couldn't help it. I let out a rolling belly laugh. "I just got suckered into doing this by ... Stars and stones, you didn't even know that he ... Big bad angel boy, and you get the wool pulled over your eyes by ... " I stopped trying to talk and just laughed.
Uriel eyed the phone, then me, and then tucked the little device away again, clearly nonplussed. "It doesn't matter how well I believe I know your kind, Harry. They always manage to find some way to try my patience. — Jim Butcher

I pull back, gasping for breath. Reeling. His breath is ragged, and I place my hands on his cheeks to steady him. "Is this okay?" I whisper. "Are you okay?"
His reply is anguished. Honest. "I love you. — Stephanie Perkins

Prit?" she asked. "The boy you bullied in school?"

Emery scratched the back of his head. "'Bullied' sounds so juvenile . . ."

"But it's him, isn't it?" Ceony pushed. "Pritwin Bailey? He became a Folder after all?"

Emery nodded. "We graduated from Praff together, actually. But yes, he's the same."

Ceony relaxed somewhat. "So you two are on good terms, then?"

The paper magician barked a laugh. "Oh, heavens no. We haven't spoken to each other since Praff, save for this telegram. He quite loathes me, actually."

Ceony's eyes bugged. "And you're sending me to test with him?"

Emery smiled. "Of course, in a few days. What better way to prove you had no bias than to place your career aspirations in the hands of Pritwin Bailey?"

Ceony stared at him a long moment. "I've been shot to hell, haven't I?"

"Language, love. — Charlie N. Holmberg

Judges and honoured men, bringing a boy of my name, with a forehead that I know and golden hair, to this place - then fair to look upon, with not a trace of this day's disfigurement - — Charles Dickens

Music is a spiritual expression of what's in your heart. Music as a way of getting rich is a pretty new thing, and I often wonder if the mega-bucks glitzy atmosphere is making the quality of music suffer. You have to work really hard to get around that and remember why you're in it in the first place: because you have to be. It's like an addiction. You can't go a day without picking up your guitar. To me, the only commercial goals that are really valid are, 'Boy, I wish I didn't have to go to work. I wish I could do this all the time.' — Trey Anastasio

I stare into the green eyes of the boy who has helped me realize that I don't need separate lives but, rather, should find a boy who fits comfortably into them all. I run the back of my hand down the scruff on his sweet face. "I love you, Aiden." Never in my life will I forget the way he looks in this moment. The surprise in his eyes. The emotions crossing his face. His lips forming a smile. His big hands holding my cheeks firmly in place as he looks into my eyes and says, "I love you too, Boots. — Jillian Dodd

I used to want to understand how the world worked. Little things, like heavy stuff goes at the bottom of the laundry bag, or big things, like the best way to get a boy to chase you is to ignore him, or medium things, like if you cut an onion under running water your eyes won't sting, and if you wash your fingers afterwards with lemon-juice they won't stink.
I used to want to know all the secrets, and every time I learned one, I felt like I'd taken
a step. On a journey. To a place. A destination: to be the kind of person who knew all this stuff, the way everyone around me seemed to know all this stuff. I thought that once I knew enough secrets, I'd be like them. — Cory Doctorow

She [Catherine of Siena] found a place of refuge in a lonely wood, where some hermits lived. It is generally thought that this brotherhood was the community of hermits in Vallombrosa, founded by St. John Gualbert, the man who had spared the life of his deadly enemy because it was Good Friday, and later rushed into the nearest church and fell before the feet of the crucified Christ, as though drunk with this adventure - the adventure of forgiveness. And the Saviour leaned down from the cross and kissed the boy. — Sigrid Undset

When she and Wren divided up their clothes, Wren had taken anything that said "party at a boy's place" or "leaving the house." Cath had taken everything that said "up all night writing" or "it's okay to spill tea on this."" (pg. 189) — Rainbow Rowell

So I think I'd better go, said Wimsey. "I rather wish I hadn't come buttin' into this. some things may be better left alone, don't you think? My sympathies are all in the wrong place and I don't like it. I Know all about not doing evil tha good may come. I'ts doin' good that evil may come that is so embarrassin'."
"My dear boy," said the Rector, "it does not do for us to take too much thought for the morrow. It is better to follow the truth and leave the results in the hand of God. He can forsee where we cannot, because He knows all the facts. — Dorothy L. Sayers

Calvin: Somewhere in Communist Russia I'll bet there's a little boy who has never known anything but censorship and oppression. But maybe he's heard of America, and he dreams of living in this land of freedom and opportunity! Someday, I'd like to meet that little boy ... and tell him the awful TRUTH ABOUT THIS PLACE!! Calvin's Dad: Calvin, be quiet and eat the stupid lima beans. — Bill Watterson

Often we feel the need to say that a book isn't just about a particular time or place but is about the human spirit. People say this of Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, or Night by Elie Wiesel, or A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah. — Will Schwalbe

Anyway, they have this discussion, and the kid is an idealist in a temporary way. He talks about his "restless generation" and things like that. And he says something like, "This is not a time for heroes because nobody will let that happen." The book takes place in the 1920's, which I thought was great because I supposed the same kind of conversation could happen in the Big Boy. It probably already did with our parents and grandparents. It was probably happening with us right now. — Stephen Chbosky

The two of them on top of the freezing slide, wordlessly holding hands. Once again they were a ten-year-old boy and girl. A lonely boy, and a lonely girl. A classroom, just after school let out, at the beginning of winter. They had neither the power nor the knowledge to know what they should offer to each other, what they should be seeking. They had never, ever, been truly loved, or truly loved someone else. They had never held anyone, never been held. They had not idea, either, where this action would take them. What they entered then was a doorless room. They couldn't get out, nor could anyone else come in. The two of them didn't know it at the time, but this was the only truly complete place in the entire world. Totally isolated, yet the one place not tainted with loneliness. — Haruki Murakami

Next week we have a bunch of horror writers coming from all over the world. That'll be one whole week, fully catered, and pre-paid bar. Those horror writers drink like fshes. Just their beer bill's gonna pay for the upkeep of this place for six months. Motel business is a great business to be in, my boy. — Richard Laymon

You are the biggest fool of a boy I've ever known," Mott said. Then his tone softened. "But you will serve Carthya well."
"I wish I felt ready to do this," I said. "The closer we come to the moment, the more I see every defect in my character that caused my parents to send me away in the first place."
"From all I'm told, the prince they sent away was selfish, mischievous, and destructive. The king who returns is courageous, noble, and strong."
"And a fool," I added
Mott chuckled. "You are that too. — Jennifer A. Nielsen

Turn around, and the people you thought you knew might change. Your little boy might now live half a world away. Your beautiful daughter might be sneaking out at night. Your ex-husband might by dying by degrees. This is the reason that dancers learn, early on, how to spot while doing pirouettes: we all want to be able to find the place where we started. — Jodi Picoult

The center had frayed like a rag rug that had been washed and walked on and shaken and hung and dried. The lines and nets of mesh which held the last jewel at the breast of the world were unraveling. Things were not holding together. The earth drew in its breath in the summer of the coming eclipse.
The boy idled along the upper corridor of this stone place which was home, sensing these things, not understanding. — Stephen King

Dont teach my boy poetry, an English mother recently wrote the Provost of Harrow. Dont teach my boy poetry; he is going to stand for Parliament. Well, perhaps she was rightbut if more politicians knew poetry, and more poets knew politics, I am convinced the world would be a little better place to live on this Commencement Day of 1956. — John F. Kennedy

You come to this place, mid-life. You don't know how you got here, but suddenly you're staring fifty in the face. When you turn and look back down the years, you glimpse the ghosts of other lives you might have led; all houses are haunted. The wraiths and phantoms creep under your carpets and between the warp and weft of fabric, they lurk in wardrobes and lie flat under drawer-liners. You think of the children you might have had but didn't. When the midwife says, 'It's a boy,' where does the girl go? When you think you're pregnant, and you're not, what happens to the child that has already formed in your mind? You keep it filed in a drawer of your consciousness, like a short story that never worked after the opening lines. — Hilary Mantel

Did you not look upon the world this morning and imagine it as the boy might see it? And did you not recognize the mist and the dew and the birdsong as elements not of a place or a time but of a spirit? And did you not envy the boy his spirit? For you know there can be no power over him who freely gives what another would take. Such a one has the capacity to love. Freely, naively, to say I do. — Jamie O'Neill

Once I became a cop. I dived into that career. I never wanted to be an LAPD officer because I thought 'LA is super dangerous, not the place I'd want to be a cop'. But as a boy of course I was into guns, cops and robbers, so that's why it was cool to me and thought 'Yeah I could do this job'. — Eric Hernandez

He's rambling. Oh gosh, he looks so cute when he's all caught up and nervous and rambling. I've never ever seen him lose his calm like this and boy, is it adorable. Without thinking I place my hand over his mouth. "Shut up, Cole." When I'm sure he's not going to start talking again, I stand on my tiptoes and press my lips to his cheek. Applying the slightest pressure, I let them linger there for about five seconds before moving away. The dazed and starstruck look on Cole's face is worth braving my fears. "Thank you, I'm sure I'll love it," I whisper before backing off and walking away. — Blair Holden

This thing about looking for someone less different ... It only really worked, he realized, if you were convinced that being you wasn't so bad in the first place. — Nick Hornby

As they left the pier and walked into the park, Chahda looked around appreciatively. "Nice place, this. Capital of New Caledonia. Big island, has 8,548 square mile, also has 53,245 peoples. Eleven thousand in Noumea. That is what says the Worrold Alm-in-ack."

Rick and Scotty laughed. It was like old times to hear Chahda quoting from The World Almanac. A Bombay beggar boy, he had educated himself with only the Almanac for his textbook, and he had laboriously memorized everything in it. — John Blaine

At Loch Mor we walked down a spongy hill to a valley. The sun was dropping then dropped, leaving a sky of frilly reds. The moon appeared too soon. The valley sloped around a teardrop-shaped lake, pink with the bizarre fuchsia bursts of the late-coming sunset. Violet heather bruised the green weedy ground as we jumped down. This was a place conceived in a burst of emotion by a melancholy boy. — Dave Eggers

Though Farmer Troutham had just hurt him, he was a boy who could not himself bear to hurt anything. He had never brought home a nest of young birds without lying awake in misery half the night after, and often reinstating them and the nest in their original place the next morning. He could scarcely bear to see trees cut down or lopped, from a fancy that it hurt them; and late pruning, when the sap was up and the tree bled profusely, had been a positive grief to him in his infancy. This weakness of character, as it may be called, suggested that he was the sort of man who was born to ache a good deal before the fall of the curtain upon his unnecessary life should signify that all was well with him again. He carefully picked his way on tiptoe among the earthworms, without killing a single one. — Thomas Hardy

Boys are not supposed to cry. Because when they do, things get worse. Then suddenly you have two problems. You have whatever it was that made you cry in the first place, and then you also have the problem that you are a boy crying. And someone is bound to let you know this is worse. So now you have two problems. — Nora Raleigh Baskin

The story is that while a child named Servius Tullius lay sleeping, his head burst into flames in the sight of many. The general outcry which so great a miracle called forth brought the king and queen to the place. One of the servants fetched water to quench the fire, but was checked by the queen, who stilled the uproar and commanded that the boy should not be disturbed until he awoke of himself. Soon afterwards sleep left him, and with it disappeared the flames. Then, talking her husband aside, Tanaquil Said: 'Do you see this child whom we are bringing up in so humble a fashion? Be assured he will one day be a lamp to our dubious fortunes, and a protector to the royal house in the day of its distress. Let us therefore rear with all solicitude one who will lend high renowen to the state and to our family.' It is said that from that moment the boy began to be looked upon as a son, and to be trained in the studies by which men are inspired to bear themselves greatly. — Livy

General Lee, this is no place for you. These men behind you are Georgians and Virginians. They have never failed you and will not fail you here. Will you boys? — John Brown Gordon

Eve turned away as a whispered "yes, ma'am" reached her ears. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply. Why was she saving this asshole? Eve opened her eyes and unlocked the heavy steel bolt securing the five-by-two slab of oak. She looked back, ready to give him the signal to haul ass, when all the air punched from her lungs.
Naked.
It was the only word her stunned mind could form. Eve spun in place, and her rear bumped against the door. Guerin stood there, completely nude, with his briefs and coat in his grip.
"W-wh-what are you doing?" Dear God, she was stuttering like a young girl who'd never seen "boy parts" before. — Jessica Lee

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

I had never seen so many cute men in one place in my life. But I could tell they were not for me. Russell was like the gay vampire Hugh Hefner, and this was the Playboy Mansion, with an emphasis on the boy. — Charlaine Harris

As she stooped over him, her tears fell upon his forehead.
The boy stirred, and smiled in his sleep, as though these marks of pity and compassion had awakened some pleasant dream of a love and affection he had never known; as a strain of gentle music, or the rippling of water in a silent place, or the odour of a flower, or even the mention of a familiar word, will sometimes call up sudden dim remembrances of scenes that never were, in this life; which vanish like a breath; and which some brief memory of a happier existence, long gone by, would seem to have awakened, for no voluntary exertion of the mind can ever recall them. — Charles Dickens

Another dynamic aspect of the sexual conversion of basic needs is the pleasure of sexual orgasm itself. When one is shamed through abandonment, the pain is deep and profound. One feels worthless; one feels painfully diminished and exposed. When one experiences sexual stimulation and climax, one has available an all-encompassing and powerful pleasure. This pleasure can take the place of any other need. In a poignant passage, Kaufman sums up the process of converting all needs into sexuality. He writes: A young boy who learns never to need anything emotionally from his parents is ... faced with a dilemma whenever he feels young, needy or otherwise insecure. If masturbating has been his principle source of good feeling ... he may resort to masturbation in order to restore good feelings about self at times when he is experiencing needs quite unrelated to sexuality. — John Bradshaw

There was a clearing in the middle of the woods. It tasted of lightning and magic.
Of claw and fang.
And in the middle of this clearing sat a man who had once been a boy.
A boy who I had loved.
Then a monster had come to town with murder on his mind and tore a hole in our heads and hearts.
The boy chased after the monster with revenge in his bloodred eyes.
The monster was gone now.
And so was the boy. Because a man had taken his place. — T.J. Klune

A man follows the path laid out for him. He does his duty to God and his King. He does what he must do, not what pleases him. God's truth, boy, what kind of world would this be if every man did what pleased him alone? Who would plough the fields and reap the harvest, if every man had the right to say, 'I don't want to do that.' In this world there is a place for every man, but every man must know his place. — Wilbur Smith

THE COUNTY CLERK: "So there I was sitting in front of Jed's store over in Cunt Lick my peter standing up straight as a jack pine under my Levis just a-pulsin' in the sun ... Weell, old Doc Scranton walks by, a good old boy too, there's not a finer man in this valley than Doc Scranton. He's got a prolapsed asshole and when he wants to get screwed he'll pass you his ass on three feet of in-tes-tine ... If he's a mind to it he can drop out a piece of gut reaches from his office clear over to Roy's Beer Place, and it go feelin' around lookin' for a peter, just a-feelin' around like a blind worm ... So old Doc Scranton sees my peter and he stops like a pointin' dog and he says to me, 'Luke, I can take your pulse from here. — William S. Burroughs

Oh, boy! A bone! I love bones. I take it over to gnaw on in front of the cube door. This is the best place to see the entire yard. — Lea Kirk

Place this salt in water and bring it here tomorrow morning".
The boy did.
"Where is that salt?" his father asked?
"I do not see it."
"Sip here. How does it taste?"
"Salty, father."
"And here? And there?"
"I taste salt everywhere."
"It is everywhere, though we see it not. Just so, dear one, the Self is everywhere, within all things, although we see it not. There is nothing that does not come from it. It is the truth; it is the Self supreme. You are that, Shvetaketu.
You Are That. — Eknath Easwaran

Hans?" the Fairy Godmother said. "Can you remember what made you happy when you were a young boy?" It didn't take him long to remember. "Places like this promenade," he said. "Why?" she asked. "It's a place of unlimited possibility," he said. "At any moment, anyone or anything could appear. A parade could march through the field, a flock of birds from a tropical land could fly across the skies, or a king from a distant country could sail through the waters on a massive ship. I suppose any child is happiest wherever his imagination is stimulated." "Interesting," she said. — Chris Colfer

Tell me this," I said. "My world. It's not like the one I read about in the oldest books. When they talk about magic, about ghosts, it's as if they are fairy-tales to frighten children. And yet I have seen the dead walk, seen a boy bring fire with just a thought."
Fexler frowned as if considering how to explain. "Think of reality as a ship whose course is set, whose wheel is locked in place by universal constants. Our greatest achievement, and downfall, was to turn that wheel, just a fraction. The role of the observer was always important - we discovered that. If a tree falls in the wood and no one hears it, then it is both standing and not standing. The cat is both alive and dead."
"Who mentioned a fecking cat? — Mark Lawrence

Every chip of her being slid into place, into the image of a lost world. The boy discovering it. The girl who sees it spark and flare, and understands, now, what she feels. She realizes that she has felt this for a long time. — Marie Rutkoski

When I was thirteen, I had a nervous breakdown, and I was put into this grown-up mental hospital with all these 50-, 60-year-old men and women. This big, Victorian mental house. There were like five boys in there, all my age, looked after by this woman who was 22 or 23. And it was like "Empire of the Sun" meets "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"-type of arrangement where you've got this young boy overcoming and becoming heroic in the face of this awful place. — Duncan Roy