Came A Long Way Quotes & Sayings

After a long while he sat upright with great effort, exhaled a sigh and reached for a clean sheet of lined paper, smoothing it out on the desk. He unscrewed the lid of his fountain pen, laid it perpendicular to his paper, and began to write. Often he compared his writing to white water. He had only to leap in to be dragged away on its rapids, thrown this way and that with his own will rendered impotent. While writing he found the words came from the muscles in his hands, the feel of the shaft of his pen, the locked joint of his elbow. the scratching noise of the nib marking paper and, underneath all that, some coordinating impulse in his guts. Certainly not from his mind. — Ali Shaw

When my generation of women walked away from the kitchen we were escorted down that path by a profiteering industry that knew a tired, vulnerable marketing target when they saw it. "Hey, ladies," it said to us, "go ahead, get liberated. We'll take care of dinner." They threw open the door and we walked into a nutritional crisis and genuinely toxic food supply. If you think toxic is an exaggeration, read the package directions for handling raw chicken from a CAFO. We came a long way, baby, into bad eating habits and collaterally impaired family dynamics. No matter what else we do or believe, food remains at the center of every culture. Ours now runs on empty calories. — Barbara Kingsolver

I stared so long that I got to seeing them as being dark, ugly sins in my body, smelling and dirty, but my touch face showed that I didn't give a damn. I was the toughest person in the whole world. And then inside the outline of my body a devil's face slowly took shape. It came to my chest, a dark, ugly thing with big lips that looked hot around yellow pointed teeth, eyeing me in a friednly way, as though it had been feeding on what was inside me and was trying to show how pleased it was. — Ian Cross

Everything he wanted was comprised moreover in a single boon
the common unattainable art of taking things as they came. He appeared to himself to have given his best years to an active appreciation of the way they didn't come; but perhaps
as they would seemingly here be things quite other
this long ache might at last drop to rest. — Henry James

It's a long way from Graceland across Jordan to the Promised Land, but Jesus finally came to lead him home. — Merle Haggard

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

It is not only the size of these redwoods but their strangeness that frightens them. And why not? For these are the last remaining members of a race that flourished over four continents as far back in geologic time as the upper Jurassic period. Fossils of these ancients have been found dating from the Cretaceous era while in the Eocene and Miocene they were spread over England and Europe and America. And then the glaciers moved down and wiped the Titans out beyond recovery. And only these few are left
a stunning memory of what the world was like once long ago. Can it be that we do not love to be reminded that we are very young and callow in a world that was old when we came into it? And could there be a strong resistance to the certainty that a living world will continue its stately way when we no longer inhabit it? — John Steinbeck

Sometimes work was just what you clocked into while you were falling in love. Sometimes sex was just something you did while you weren't at work. Drugs were something you did sometimes when you couldn't deal with one of those things, or with yourself. The City was so expensive and so grueling sometimes that it was easy to be unsure why you were there. Many were there to make money, money that could largely only be made there, in the long spiny arms of industries that could never grow anywhere else or anywhere smaller. Some people just liked it, its loudness and crowdedness and surprises. Some started there for a reason and then couldn't imagine being anywhere else, but maybe lost track of that reason along the way. Some people had a plan. Some were just chancing it. Either way the months flew by, and over the years you came up with something or you came up with not much. — Choire Sicha

You know," he said, "this design begins to appeal to me after all. Sea slugs aren't the least bit arousing, but logarithms . . . I've always thought that word sounded splendidly naughty." He let it roll off his tongue with ribald inflection. "Logarithm." He gave an exaggerated shiver. "Ooh. Yes and thank you and may I have some more."

"Lots of mathematical terms sound that way. I think it's because they were all coined by men. 'Hypotenuse' is downright lewd."

" 'Quadrilateral' brings rather carnal images to mind."

She was silent for a long time. Then one of her dark eyebrows arched. "Not so many as 'rhombus.' "

Good Lord. That word was wicked. Her pronunciation of it did rather wicked things to him. He had to admire the way she didn't shrink from a challenge, but came back with a new and surprising retort. One day, she'd make some fortunate man a very creative lover. — Tessa Dare

He held the book up to his nose. It smelled like Old Spice talcum powder. Books that smelled that way were usually fun to read. He threw the book onto his bed and went to his suitcase. After rummaging about for awhile, he came up with a long, narrow box of chocolate-covered mints. He loved to eat candy while he read, and lots of his favorite books at home had brown smudges on the corners of the pages. — John Bellairs

My mother called me Silver. I was born part precious metal part pirate.
I have no father. There's nothing unusual about that -even children who do have fathers are often surprised to see them. My own father came out of the sea and went back that way. He was crew on a fishing boat that harboured with us one night when the waves were crashing like dark glass. His splintered hulll shored him for long enough to drop anchor inside my mother.
Shoals of babies vied for life.
I won. — Jeanette Winterson

He threw her a crooked grin as he removed his shirt completely, revealing a torso that seemed too perfectly muscular and finely honed to be real. Unbearable tension knotted inside her, and she struggled with inhibition and modesty as he bent over her. "Shall I stop now?" he asked, cuddling her against his long body. "I don't want to frighten you."
Her cheek pressed against his shoulder, and she relished the exhilarating sensation of pressing her bare skin against his. She had never felt so vulnerable, so willing to be vulnerable. "I'm not afraid," she said, her voice dazed and wondering, and she withdrew her hands from between their bodies, so that her breasts pushed directly against his chest.
An aching sound came from his throat, and he buried his face against her throat, kissing her, working his way downward. — Lisa Kleypas

He was surprised at the way she answered. She had taken a long time to say that. She had nodded her head in a deep way too. Had she wished to affect him with some sort of premonition? He wondered unhappily. Or was it only that she would not help him, after all, by talking with him? For he was not strong enough to receive the impact of unfamiliar things without a little talk to break their fall. He had lived a month in which nothing had happened except in his head and his body - an almost inaudible life of heartbeats and dreams that came back, a life of fever and privacy, a delicate life which had left him weak to the point of - what? Of begging. The pulse in his palm leapt like a trout in a brook.

("Death of a Traveling Salesman") — Eudora Welty

Because of his gift for language and his endless practice at arguing at Hatfield, my father was effective at holding his own, verbally, in this bear garden. He noticed that an offensive personal remark, however irrelevant, was often the best way of fighting back. After one boy with a long, foolish sharp-ended chin had baited him insistently for minutes on end, he came out with 'your remarks, unlike your chin are utterly pointless' - with a deflating result far better than he could possibly have hoped. — Hugh Cecil

A flush came into the sky, the wan moon, half-way down the west, sank into insignificance. On the shadowy land things began to take life, plants with great leaves became distinct. They came through a pass in the big, cold sandhills on to the beach. The long waste of foreshore lay moaning under the dawn and the sea; the ocean was a flat dark strip with a white edge. Over the gloomy sea the sky grew red. Quickly the fire spread among the clouds and scattered them. Crimson burned to orange, orange to dull gold, and in a golden glitter the sun came up, dribbling fierily over the waves in little splashes, as if someone had gone along and the light had spilled from her pail as she walked. — D.H. Lawrence

He was done talking. Aiden came off the wall so fast the water reacted in a frenzy of bubbling. He - we - were in a frenzy. His arms crushed me to him, his mouth demanding, saying those three little words over and over again without speaking them. Aiden lifted me up, one hand burying deep in my hair, the other pressing into my lower back, fitting us together. He turned and my back was against the edge and he was everywhere all at once, stealing my breath, my heart, my soul. There was no coming up for air, no control or limits. There was no tottering on the edge. We both fell headfirst. In his arms, in the way the water bubbled and moved with our bodies, I may've lost track of time, but I gained a little part of me. I gained a part of him that U would hold close for the rest of my days, no matter how long or short that turned out to be. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

The oak was, of course, a great stealer of the surrounding pasture - its only value to provide shade for the livestock - but it was a magnificent tree. It had been there at least as long as Luxtons had owned the land. To have removed it would have been unthinkable (as well as a forbidding practical task). It simply went with the farm. No one taking in that view for the first time could have failed to see that the tree was the immovable, natural companion of the farmhouse, or, to put it another way, that so long as the tree stood, so must the farmhouse. And no mere idle visitor - especially if they came from a city and saw that tree on a summer's day - could have avoided the simpler thought that it was a perfect spot for a picnic. — Graham Swift

Living our lives was like living in a long house. We entered as babies at one end, and we exited when our time came. And in between we moved through this one, great, long room. Everyone we ever met, and every thought and action lived in that room with us. Until we made peace with the less agreeable parts of our past they'd continue to heckle us from way down the long house. And sometimes the really loud, obnoxious ones told us what to do, directing our actions even years later. — Louise Penny

Where I lived - winter and hard earth.
I sat in my cold stone room
choosing tough words, granite, flint,
to break the ice. My broken heart -
I tried that, but it skimmed,
flat, over the frozen lake.
She came from a long, long way,
but I saw her at last, walking,
my daughter, my girl, across the fields,
In bare feet, bringing all spring's flowers
to her mother's house. I swear
the air softened and warmed as she moved,
the blue sky smiling, none too soon,
with the small shy mouth of a new moon. — Carol Ann Duffy

A long time ago, I took a walk down a street in Harlem in New York City. I came upon a man who asked me for a dollar. He had asked a few other people before me, but they only passed him by without glancing his way. I stopped and handed the man some money. As I began to turn away, he reached out and shook my hand. He looked me in the eyes and said, "I will bless you." Now, I'm not saying that was God Himself. But how do we know that it wasn't someone working for him, walking around in disguise, just to see what we would do? — Muhammad Ali

That kiss you gave me was the hottest kiss i've ever had. I pulled away because i was afraid i wouldn't be able to stop myself from ripping off your clothes. And that didn't seem like the right way to end a first date. I didn't want you to think that was all i was interested in."
She stared at him. There was silence again, but this time she didn't worry about how long it went on.
"Why didn't you tell me?" She said finally.
"I tried to, but every time i saw you afterward you disappeared. I got the feeling you were avoiding me."
"i didn't want things to be awkward."
"Yeah, there was nothing awkward about you hiding behind a plant when i came into the dining hall at lunch on wednesday."
"I wasn't hiding. I was, um, breathing. You know, oxygen. From the plant. Very oxygenated, that air is."
"Of course. I should have thought of that."
"It's a healthy thing. Not many people know about it. — Michele Jaffe

When she came back down, Sam and Astrid had arrived.
Sam hugged Dekka, and the two of them stayed that way for a long time, saying nothing. Both had loved Brianna.
To Edilio, Sam said, "I'm so sorry, man. I wish I'd . . . You know what I wish."
Edilio fought back a fresh rush of tears, nodded, waited until he was sure he could speak, and said, "I'm glad you're back, boss. — Michael Grant

The idea for each of the stories in this book came in a moment of belief and was written in a burst of faith, happiness, and optimism. Those positive feelings have their dark analogues, however, and the fear of failure is a long way from the worst of them. The worst - for me, at least - is the gnawing speculation that I may have already said everything that I have to say, and am now only listening to the steady quacking of my own voice because the silence when it stops is just too spooky. — Stephen King

She was not certain what she wanted from life, or what to expect from it, for she had seen so little of it, but she was sure that in some way - because she willed it to be so - her wants and her expectations were the same.
For a while after their marriage she was in such demand that it was not unpleasant when he fell asleep. Presently, however, he began sleeping all night, and it was then she awoke more frequently, and looked into the darkness, wondering about the nature of men, doubtful of the future, until at last there came a night when she shook her husband awake and spoke of her own desire. Affably he placed one of his long white arms around her waist; she turned to him then, contentedly, expectantly, and secure. However, nothing else occurred, and in a few minutes he had gone back to sleep.
This was the night Mrs. Bridge concluded that while marriage might be an equitable affair, love itself was not. — Evan S. Connell

We passed upon the stair, we spoke of was and when
Although I wasnt there, he said I was his friend
Which came as some surprise I spoke into his eyes
I thought you died alone, a long long time ago
Oh no, not me
I never lost control
Youre face to face
With the man who sold the world
I laughed and shook his hand, and made my way back home
I searched for form and land, for years and years I roamed
I gazed a gazely stare at all the millions here
We must have died along, a long long time ago
Who knows? not me
We never lost control
Youre face to face
With the man who sold the world
Who knows? not me
We never lost control
Youre face to face
With the man who sold the world — David Bowie

And then he did rise from his wheelchair. But there was something odd about the way he did it. His blanket fell away from his legs, but the legs didn't move. His waist kept getting longer, rising above his belt. At first, I thought he was wearing very long, white velvet underwear, but as he kept rising out of the chair, taller than any man, I realized that the velvet underwear wasn't underwear; it was the front of an animal, muscle and sinew under coarse white fur. And the wheelchair wasn't a chair. It was some kind of container, an enormous box on wheels, and it must've been magic, because there's no way it could've held all of him. A leg came out, long and knobby-kneed, with a huge polished hoof. Then another front leg, then hindquarters, and then the box was empty, nothing but a metal shell with a couple of fake human legs attached. — Rick Riordan

I consider myself very lucky. God has a funny way of bringing some things around and knocking you in the head with the ultimate destination. Something I should have achieved quite easily took me a long time to get around to. It came in His time, not mine. — Jim Morris

It's important that we came here, just to touch base here in this great country ... When I was about 16 I came with my dad for a couple of weeks and had a great time and I've wanted to come back, it's been way too long. So, I'm very happy to be here and I want to come back longer with the rest of my family. — Ben Stiller

Though he was tired of loneliness - tired down to the depths of his heart - that was really not was troubled him most. What tortured him was the hunger in his soul. A longing. A quiet voice that could not be stilled. Not a threatening voice - or a nagging one. But a persistent calling. Like a parent who calls an errant child back to dinner. Or a father who calls for a son to join him down at the pier for a fishing trip; like a voice echoing off the lake. It was a strangely familiar voice that was calling. A little like the memory of a reunion, long forgotten. Why did he resist it, even fear it? Why would he not respond to a call that came to him in a way that sounded, and felt, so much like family? — Craig Parshall

The vastness and deadly desolation of the field, the long-distance operation of steel machines, and the relay of every movement in the night drew an unyielding Titan's mask over the proceedings. You moved toward death without seeing it; you were hit without knowing where the shot came from. Long since had the precision shooting of the trained marksman, the direct fire of guns, and with it the charm of the duel, given way to the concentrated fire of mechanized weapons. The outcome was a game of numbers: Whoever could cover a certain number of square meters with the greater mass of artillery fire, won. — Ernst Junger

I wanted to be self-sufficient, I wanted to take care of myself, and I wanted to learn. I wanted to travel, I wanted to see the world and have my eyes opened. I wanted to be consistently challenged, and I knew I needed to be creative in some way. When I got my job in a bar and I could pay for my tuition and go on auditions and sometimes get jobs that I loved and pay my rent, I knew that I would be all right. That's when my dreams came true, long before the telephone rang and someone said, 'Come and meet Tom Cruise'. — Renee Zellweger

What I wanted was to get away. But the moon was too far beyond, and there were white bits under me, where the flesh was shredded off and the bone gleamed that famed ivory, and those below cowered and, if they were not quick enough, were spattered in blood. Then came the jolt, as of a fall, and I saw the leg was caught in an ungainly way in the smaller branches of a mutamba tree, the foot hooked, long like that infamous fruit. — Tsitsi Dangarembga

At the beach, fifty years later, the old man understands finally that much of what he disavowed in himself before recognizing its irretrievable value, most of the heartache he caused himself and those who chose to love him, came out of that repudiation of his true self.

Such is the power of denial, the old man now realizes: a comforting ally in our struggles for survival, a fierce foe in our quest for ourselves. Denial finds us when we feel most alone, and only alone can we banish this demon that bars the long way home. — Lionel Fisher

I don't know why, but I suddenly felt a long way away from everybody I had known and loved when I was a girl. I missed people. For a minute I stood there and wished I could get back to that time. Then with my next thought I understood clearly that I couldn't do that. No. But it came to me then that my life did not remotely resemble the life I thought I'd have when I had been young and looking ahead to things. — Raymond Carver

The archangel Michael came down from on high and I asked him,'Lo, how can I getteth the stick from my friend Paul's ass?' and he said, 'This ought to go a long way.' And he gave me a six-pack of Heineken. — Maggie Stiefvater

Jesus came a long way from heaven for you. You certainly matter to Him. He came to give you life and life more abundantly (John 10:10). You are not just a face in a crowd or a number. No, He knows you by name and has a personal love for you; and in spite of the mess which you might be in, He wants to meet your every need and make your life beautiful! — David Corbin

In 1973, 29 percent of all U.S. jobs required postsecondary education. In 1992, 52 percent did. And in 2018, a projected 62 percent of all jobs will require postsecondary education. At the same time, many students and their families came to believe that a college's cost directly reflected the quality of the education it offered and the long-term value of the degrees it granted. Rankings like those in U.S. News & World Report reflected this biased perception and encouraged the public to think that way as well. — Thomas Snyder

Eventually she came. She appeared suddenly, exactly like she'd done that day- she stepped into the sunshine, she jumped, she laughed and threw her head back, so her long ponytail nearly grazed the waistband of her jeans.
After that, I couldn't think about anything else. The mole on the inside of her right elbow, like a dark blot of ink. The way she ripped her nails to shreds when she was nervous. Her eyes, deep as a promise. Her stomach, pale and soft and gorgeous, and the tiny dark cavity of her belly button.
I nearly went crazy. — Lauren Oliver

No doubt, I had some kind of carefully designed pattern for living before my son came. Some strategy for defining myself. Whatever that pattern was, it is long gone. Levered out of the way by a tool so powerful no force on earth can resist it. — Mark Greene

If you were very, very small, smaller than a leprechaun, smaller than a gnome or a fairy, and you lived in a vagina, every time a penis came in there would be a natural disaster. Your dishes would fall out of the cupboards and break and the furniture slide all the way to the other side of the room. It would take a long time to clean up afterwards. — Mary Ruefle

I didn't say, "I'll call you." I didn't hug her because of the wet clothes. Just a quick kiss. Then I turned and left. I made my way quietly down the hallway to the stairwell. I could tell she thought she wasn't going to see me again. I had to admit she might be right. The knowledge was as damp and dispiriting as my sodden clothes. I came to the first floor and looked out at the entranceway of the building. For a second I pictured the way she had hugged me here. It already seemed like a long time ago. I felt an unpleasant mixture of gratitude and longing, streaked with guilt and regret. And in a flash of insight, cutting with cold clarity through the fog of my fatigue, I realized what I hadn't been able to articulate earlier, not even to myself, when she'd asked me what I was afraid of. It had been this, the moment after, when I would come face to face with knowing that it would all end badly, if not this morning, then the next one. Or the one after that. — Barry Eisler

I'd thought about this for a long time. "That bank loses that much money in bad loans every
month. They make that much money in interest every day. They're a big bank. The money I
took was small change to them. No depositor was hurt."
She shook her head. "I still can't approve of it. I don't think it's right."
I felt my face go remote, still. I crossed my arms and felt cold.
She spread her hands. "It doesn't change the fact that I still love you. I've missed you terribly.
I've missed your phone calls, and I've missed your body in bed next to me. I don't know what
to do about this. My loving you goes way beyond my disapproval of your theft."
I uncrossed my arms and reached across the table for her. She leaned forward and we kissed
until the candle burned a hole in my shirt. Then we laughed and I held an ice cube to the
burn and the food came and everything was all right. — Steven Gould

he could feel the outside world closing in on him, demanding his consideration, but as long as he stayed by himself in the woods he was able to remain true to his refusal. He came from a long line of refusers, he had the constitution for it. There seemed to be almost nothing left of Lalitha; she was breaking up on him the way dead songbirds did in the wild
they were impossibly light to begin with, and as soon as their little hearts stopped beating they were barely more than bits of fluff and hollow bone, easily scattered in the wind
but this only made him more determined to hold on to what little of her he still had. — Jonathan Franzen

I'm still happy with the way Einstein's Dreams came out. That book came out of a single inspiration. I really felt like I was not creating the words, that I was hearing the words. That someone else was speaking the words to me and I was just writing them down. It was a very strange experience. That can happen with a short book. I don't think it could happen with a long book. — Alan Lightman

His Uncle Gaston came around the building, looking impossibly angry as he bellowed his impossibly angry words. "How do the Jacobsons keep cheating death? It's not possible and it's not fair. There is no way that you two should be alive." He peeked back inside and back at us, shaking his head. "Of course. You ascended. Of course!" he yelled. "Lilith, take them out." "I haven't charged," she said and backed away. "What?" he growled. "I thought they were going to die like you said they were. It takes a long time to charge, Uncle Gaston, you know that. I can't help it. I wasn't going to charge up on the off chance that your little plan fell through. You know how bad it sucks." "You — Shelly Crane

the tall white windmills that came to her mind. How their skinny long arms all turned, but never together, except for just once in a while two of them would be turning the same way, their arms poised at the same place in the sky. — Elizabeth Strout

She came to me first and asked me to help her. I told the hag to go fuck herself with her own broom, and she left." "You have a beautiful way with words," I confessed to her. Eos smiled. "I'm not done yet. Hera tried the same trick with Helios and Selene, each of them telling her which short pier to take a long run off. — Steve McHugh

I can really say that I'm a pretty good receiver and came a long way. — Hines Ward

You sold a story last week," said Pettit, "about a gun fight in an Arizona mining town in which the hero drew his Colt's .45 and shot seven bandits as fast as they came in the door. Now, if a six-shooter could - "
"Oh, well," said I, "that's different. Arizona is a long way from New York. I could have a man stabbed with a lariat or chased by a pair of chaparreras if I wanted to, and it wouldn't be noticed until the usual error-sharp from around McAdams Junction isolates the erratum and writes in to the papers about it." (from "The Plutonian Fire") — O. Henry

Empires exist for the benefit of the parent state. That, and the fact that the colonists eventually came to appreciate this truth, goes a long way toward explaining the origins of the American Revolution. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the authorities in London, the seat of Great Britain's empire, — John Ferling

A year here and he still dreamed of cyberspace, hope fading nightly. All the speed he took, all the turns he'd taken and the corners he cut in Night City, and he'd still see the matrix in his dreams, bright lattices of logic unfolding across that colourless void ... The Sprawl was a long, strange way home now over the Pacific, and he was no Console Man, no cyberspace cowboy. Just another hustler, trying to make it through. But the dreams came on in the Japanese night like livewire voodoo, and he'd cry for it, cry in his sleep, and wake alone in the dark, curled in his capsule in some coffin hotel, hands clawed into the bedslab, temper foam bunched between his fingers, trying to reach the console that wasn't there. — William Gibson

The beginning is never the clear, precise end of a thread, the beginning is a long, painfully slow process that requires time and patience in order to find out in which direction it is heading, a process that feels its way along the path ahead like a blind man the beginning is just the beginning, what came before is nigh on worthless. — Jose Saramago

Poetry from the bottom up is an act of selection: you kind of feel your way through the crowds of poems. The good ones came forward a long time ago, and the bad ones fell away. — Eileen Myles

Let me end this chapter with an encouraging story. A young man found his way up to the small apartment of Nisargadatta, my old Hindu guru in Bombay, asked him a spiritual question and then left after this one question. One of the regular students then asked, "What will happen to this man? Will he ever become enlightened or will he fall off the path and go back to sleep?" Nisargadatta said, "It's too late for him! He has already begun. Just the fact that he came up here and asked one question about what is his true nature means that that place in him that knows who he really is has started to wake up. Even if it takes a long, long time, there's no turning back. — Jack Kornfield

When we forgive someone, we do not forget the hurtful act, as if forgetting came along with the forgiveness package, the way strings come with a violin. Begin with the basics. If you forget, you will not forgive at all. You can never forgive people for things you have forgotten about. You need to forgive precisely because you have not forgotten what someone did; your memory keeps the pain alive long after the hurt has stopped. Remembering is the storage of pain. It is why you need to be healed in the first place. — Lewis B. Smedes

We have failed to recapture Gollum. We came on his trail among those of many Orcs, and it plunged deep into the Forest, going south. But ere long it escaped our skill, and we dared not continue the hunt; for we were drawing nigh to Dol Guldur, and that is still a very evil place; we do not go that way.' 'Well, well, he is gone,' said Gandalf. 'We have no time to seek for him again. He must do what he will. But he may play a part yet that neither he nor Sauron have foreseen. 'And now I will answer Galdor's other questions. What of Saruman? What are his counsels to us in this need? This tale I must tell in full, — J.R.R. Tolkien

Why did you come?" Gaia asked, passing over his shirt.

"I wanted to see you," he said.

"That's all? No problem with the crims or anything?"

It seemed like so long ago that he'd left the crims to come into the village to find her. He fingered his shirt, which was all but dry. "No. Just you."

"You're awfully untalkative for a guy who came all this way to see me," she said. He glanced up again, seeing the concern in her eyes when she smiled at him. His loneliness began to thaw.

"You were amazing in there, you know," he said.

She shook her head, turning his hat in her hands. "I hope I didn't boss you around too much. I can get a little single-minded."

"Hardly at all. 'Take yer boots off and git yerself in here,'" he drawled. — Caragh M. O'Brien

I had been granted unusual freedom and responsibility at an early age, for which I should have been grateful in the extreme, but I wasn't. Instead, I felt oppressed by the old man's expectations. It was drilled into me that anything less than winning was failure. In the impressionable way of sons, I did not consider this rhetorically; I took him at his word. And that's why later, when long-held family secrets came to light, when I noticed that this deity who asked only for perfection was himself less than perfect, that he was in fact not a deity at all - well, I wasn't able to shrug it off. I was consumed instead by a blinding rage. The revelation that he was merely human, and frightfully so, was beyond my power to forgive. Two — Jon Krakauer

I want to stay," he admitted. "I haven't felt this way in a long time. I feel like ... like I came up from being underwater, and I can finally breathe. I don't want to stop feeling that way. That's how I know I have to leave. — Sarah Cross

As soon as I went to painting school in New York, I took an experimental film course, and everything clicked and came together. I realized my love of music and drama and the visual arts all came together. This happened in 1989. Since then, it's been a long road of educating myself in every possible way. — Patty Jenkins

Out of the rolling ocean the crowd came a drop gently to me,
Whispering I love you, before long I die,
I have travel'd a long way merely to look on you to touch you,
For I could not die till I once look'd on you,
For I fear'd I might afterward lose you.
Now we have met, we have look'd, we are safe,
Return in peace to the ocean my love,
I too am part of that ocean my love, we are not so much separated,
Behold the great rondure, the cohesion of all, how perfect!
But as for me, for you, the irresistible sea is to separate us,
As for an hour carrying us diverse, yet cannot carry us diverse forever;
Be not impatient--a little space--know you I salute the air, the
ocean and the land,
Every day at sundown for your dear sake my love. — Walt Whitman

I do not long for those days. I have no desire to make you "tough" or "street," perhaps because any "toughness" I garnered came reluctantly. I think I was always, somehow, aware of the price. I think I somehow knew that a third of my brain should have been concerned with more beautiful things. I think I felt that something out there, some force, nameless and vast, had robbed me of ... what? Time? Experience? I think you know something of what that third could have done, and I think that is why you may feel the need for escape even more than I did. You have seen all the wonderful life up above the tree-line, yet you understand that there is no real distance between you and Trayvon Martin, and thus Trayvon Martin must terrify you in a way that he could never terrify me. You have seen so much more of all that is lost when they destroy your body. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

In good time she made tea; and afterwards, when I brought down my books, looked into them, and showed me what she knew of them (which was no slight matter, though she said it was), and what was the best way to learn and understand them. I see her, with her modest, orderly, placid manner, and I hear her beautiful calm voice, as I write these words. The influence for all good, which she came to exercise over me at a later time, begins already to descend upon my breast. I love little Em'ly, and I don't love Agnes - no, not at all in that way - but I feel that there are goodness, peace, and truth, wherever Agnes is; and that the soft light of the coloured window in the church, seen long ago, falls on her always, and on me when I am near her, and on everything around. — Charles Dickens

We stayed all day long. We closed our eyes and paryed, which we had not doen together in a long time. The nurse came in and out of the room. Everything felt awful and I wondered why the whole world didn't seem to notice how bad things really were. I thought of how I'd gotten used to awful, how after my dad died the planets kept on spinning and I got up and ate breakfast every morning and kept going to school. Something happens and it's terrible and you think you can't live another day, but then your mother gets used to it and you get used to it and you both keep on living, and you're not sure if that getting-used-to-things is good or the way life should be. — Margaret McMullan

I do not want to know what you will hope for. I want to know what you will work for. I do not want your sympathy for the needs of humanity. I want your muscle. As the wagon driver said when they came to a long, hard hill: 'Them that's going on with us, get out and push. Them that ain't, get out of the way'. — Robert Fulghum

I believe that we are a story-driven species and that we understand how things are put together, in the context of narrative. It's a shame that science hasn't been taught that way, in a long time. It's usually the fact completely devoid of any human experience or any idea of how the scientist came to that conclusion. — Ann Druyan

Although she's miles away, still I remember spending that December, staring at the sounds she made with her breath. And when I asked what it was she was up to "five foot nothing" came from her cracked honky-tonk lips and from a calico bonnet monstrous curls unfurled like apple-blossoms scattering about into the back-country. And wreaths of snowflakes swarmed over the hems of her garments and wandered with us into the ether on John F. Kennedy Avenue, and mingled in the traffic. While she held my head together like Jackie Onassis.
Although she's miles away, still I remember her pinning roses to a lapel and the icicles that hung upon the city when I told her "I may not be a handsome man and I probably don't have what it takes to make you forget for long, but know that I'm grateful we had this little drink and a dance before I'm sent ony way." Down John F. Kennedy Avenue, thumbing to Dallas. She held my head together
Like Jackie Onassis. — Valentine Xavier

Listen, pal. I came here because I knew how worried you must be. But if you're going to talk to me like that, I'll fuck off home. The word racist brightened a little: the Anglo- Saxon was striking back against the Roman invader. — Nick Hornby

If he could have his way, Satan would distract us from our heritage. He would have us become involved in a million and one things in this life-probably none of which is very important in the long run-to keep us from concentrating on the things that are really important, particularly the reality that we are God's children. He would like us to forget about home and family values. He'd like to keep us so busy with comparatively insignificant things that we don't have time to make the effort to understand where we came from, whose children we are, and how glorious our ultimate homecoming can be! — Marvin J. Ashton

She was given a man's name."
The stable master nearly jumped out of his tunic. He hadn't heard Alec Kincaid's approach. He turned around and came face to shoulders with the giant warrior. " 'Twas her mama's way of giving her a place in this family. Baron Jamison weren't the man who fathered Jamie. He claimed her for his own, though. I'll give him that much kindness. Did you get a good look at her, then?" he added in a rush.
Alec nodded.
"You'll be taking her with you, won't you?" The Kincaid stared at the old man a long minute before answering.
"Aye, Beak. I'll be taking her with me." The choice had been made. — Julie Garwood

I came to NBC on 'Friday Night Lights' and they have supported that show and found ways - unprecedented ways - to keep it on the air for a long time. And when I came to them with the idea of doing 'Parenthood,' they not only supported me in doing it but also got behind it in such a way that we were able to put together this incredible cast. — Jason Katims

Sophia and Grandmother sat down by the shore to discuss the matter further. It was a pretty day, and the sea was running a long, windless swell. It was on days just like this
dog days
that boats went sailing off all by themselves. Large, alien objects made their way in from sea, certain things sank and others rose, milk soured, and dragonflies danced in desperation. Lizards were not afraid. When the moon came up, red spiders mated on uninhabited skerries, where the rock became an unbroken carpet of tiny, ecstatic spiders. — Tove Jansson

Lily stopped dead in the doorway to her room and then took a step back. Apollo cocked his head. It'd been a very long day full of trepidation mixed with tediousness and he'd used up all his patience. "If you leave, I'll follow you out and we'll have this discussion in the hallway where everyone can hear." She scowled ferociously at him, but came all the way in the room and shut the door. "What do you want to talk about?" "Us." "There's nothing to discuss." "Yes," he said patiently, "there is. — Elizabeth Hoyt

It was a really strange way that I came into music. Once I gave voice to it, the pit of emotions that I guess I knew was inside of me for a long time, the stream never really stopped. — Matisyahu

An enormous bartender came over. He looked like the pullout centerfold for Leather Biker Monthly. Extra big and extra scary. He had long hair, a long scar, and tattoos of snakes slithering up both arms. He shot the two men a glare and - poof - they were gone. Like the glare had evaporated them. Then he turned his eyes toward Esperanza. She met the glare and gave him one back. Neither backed down. "Lady, what the fuck are you?" he asked. "Is that a new way of asking what I'm drinking?" "No." The mutual glaring continued. He leaned two massive snake-arms on the bar. "You're too good-looking to be a cop," he said. "And you're too good-looking to be hanging out in this toilet. — Harlan Coben

The first time Raffaele ever saw Adelina, it was a stormy-wracked night that changed her life and, indeed, the world. He recalls looking down from the window in his Dalia lodging to see a girl with silver-bright hair, conjuring an illusion of darkness such that he had never seen. He remembers the day she first came to his chambers in Estenzia, when Enzo was still alive and she was still innocent, and the way she looked up at him with her uncertain, damaged gaze. He remembers her test, and what he said to Enzo that night. How long ago that had been. How he had judged her wrongly. — Marie Lu

Self-publishing in comics is core to the whole artform. There is no scarlet letter in comics as there still is, to some degree, in prose. As no publisher for a long time would publish serious work in comics, the only way a lot of it came out was because of self-publishing. Many of the greatest works of the medium are self-published. — Kieron Gillen

I walked away a little disheartened, thinking, 'Oh well. I came a long way to meet the Wizard of Oz, but I guess I won't. Such is life. — Anthony Kiedis

The best piece of advice I ever received about being a writer came from my brother Lee. I was just starting out and he told me that if I wanted to have a long career, I had to be versatile, that I shouldn't just think of myself in one way, because there would come a time when maybe that one thing wasn't working out for me - and I'd still want to earn a living as a writer. — Tod Goldberg

I think we've come a long way since then. The big thing that changed was when ecstasy came along in Britain. — Neil Tennant

His body was tubby but his arms apparently couldn't understand that, for they were long and scrawny. From his brow to an inch below his eyes, his nose turned up; from there on, down. His short upper lip slanted sharply toward his tonsils, which had the effect of making his chinlessness positively jut.
( ... )
The bartender was fascinated by the way the teardrops proceeded down Biddiver's amazing nose. One drop would dash almost halfway, and then hesitate, daunted by the hump. Then it would be joined by another teardrop, and the two, merging, would surmount the obstacle and slip down to hang glittering over the disappearing lip until a sob came along to shake them off. — Theodore Sturgeon

Not part of any London combination and you have to go a long way from London really to ... to throw that feeling off. So, it's right and fitting that the Beatles came from Liverpool. If they hadn't, I wouldn't have got involved. It wouldn't have interested me. And they wouldn't have hired me. — Derek Taylor

A long long time ago I took an oath to tell all secrets that came my way. Don't tell me a secret, I won't keep it. I'm against secrets, I'm against hierarchies, lineages, all assumption of special knowledge on the part of anyone in the presence of anyone else is abhorrent to me. I mean, I am a true anarchist first and foremost. — Terence McKenna

The new country lay open before me: there were no fences in those days, and I could choose my own way over the grass uplands, trusting the pony to get me home again. Sometimes I followed the sunflower-bordered roads. Fuchs told me that the sunflowers were introduced into that country by the Mormons; that at the time of the persecution when they left Missouri and struck out into the wilderness to find a place where they could worship God in their own way, the members of the first exploring party, crossing the plains to Utah, scattered sunflower seeds as they went. The next summer, when the long trains of wagons came through with all the women and children, they had a sunflower trail to follow. I believe that botanists do not confirm Jake's story but, insist that the sunflower was native to those plains. Nevertheless, that legend has stuck in my mind, and sunflower-bordered roads always seem to me the roads to freedom. — Willa Cather

Prophet finally breathed when the forceps came off - how long he'd been holding it, he had no idea, but fuck, everything was reduced to the feeling of the piercing, the burning throb in his nipple, and that made it hard to focus on anything else. A long moment later, the ring was locked firmly in place, and Tommy was sinking to his knees in front of him, unzipping his pants and taking his hard cock down his throat. Prophet shot immediately - and Tom had to know that would happen. Prophet knew he'd no doubt have come as he was being pierced . . . if he'd had Tom sucking him while Ray did the piercing. But that was interesting as a fantasy only. Because this wasn't about sharing. Or payback. This was Tom showing him that he understood. That, no matter what, no matter how pissed they got, how much they fucked up . . . Prophet was his. Which was Tom's way of assuring that he wasn't going anywhere. — S.E. Jakes

But this did not seem likely to happen. She went on and on, a long way, but wherever the road divided there were sure to be two finger-posts pointing the same way, one marked 'TO TWEEDLEDUM'S HOUSE' and the other 'TO THE HOUSE OF TWEEDLEDEE.' 'I do believe,' said Alice at last, 'that they live in the same house! I wonder I never thought of that before - But I can't stay there long. I'll just call and say "how d'you do?" and ask them the way out of the wood. If I could only get to the Eighth Square before it gets dark!' So she wandered on, talking to herself as she went, till, on turning a sharp corner, she came upon two fat little men, so suddenly that she could not help starting back, but in another moment she recovered herself, feeling sure that they must be. — Lewis Carroll

They left us for dead, didn't they? We told them this would happen. We came all this way to try and save them. You'd think they'd have the decency to let us out when they saw we were right."

"Probably think we're behind it. We're lucky they didn't just kill us."

"Not sure that's lucky. A nice, quick decapitation is kind of appealing right now."

"How long do you think before the Ba Ran find us?" Royce asked.

"You in a hurry?"

"Yeah, actually. If I have to be eaten, I would sort of like to get it over with."

Hadrian heard the sound of breaking glass.

"Ah, well, that didn't take long, did it?" Royce muttered miserably.

Footsteps shuffled in the outer room. There was a pause, and then the steps started again, coming closer. There were sounds of a struggle and a muffled cry. Hadrian braced himself and watched the door as it opened. What stood in the doorway shocked him.

"You boys ready to go? — Michael J. Sullivan

Laura never again came to the drugstore as long as I continued to work there.
The next time I saw her, she was a wreck of a woman, notorious around black Roxbury, in and out of jail.
She had finished high school, but by then she was already going the wrong way.
Defying her grandmother, she had started going out late and drinking liquor.
This led to dope, and that to selling herself to men. Learning to hate the men who bought her, she also became a Lesbian.
One of the shames I have carried for years is that I blame myself for all of this.
To have treated her as I did for a white woman made the blow doubly heavy.
The only excuse I can offer is that like so many of my black brothers today, I was just deaf, dumb, and blind. — Malcolm X

White people were dangerous and snakes were dangerous and now the two were working together, each doing what the other told it to. She was sure she had seen a snake in a weeded ditch with the head of a white man. Right after she came out of the house on the way to Big Joe's, which she had immediately forgotten, she saw it, long and black and diamond-patterned in the ditch with a white man's head. It had blue eyes. The bluest eyes any white man ever had. She was sure she had seen it. She thought she had seen it. Maybe it was only a dream or a memory of another time. Whatever it was, she still saw it every time she closed her eyes, coiled there on the back of her eyelids, blue-eyed and dangerous. — Harry Crews

There was a long period during which nearly every thinking man was in some sense a rebel. Literature was largely the literature of revolt or of disintegration. Gibbon, Voltaire, Rousseau, Shelley, Byron, Dickens, Stendhal, Samuel Butler, Ibsen, Zola, Flaubert, Shaw, Joyce - in one way or another they are all of them destroyers, wreckers, saboteurs. For two hundred years we had sawed and sawed and sawed at the branch we were sitting on. And in the end, much more suddenly than anyone had forseen, our efforts were rewarded, and down we came. But unfortunately there had been a little mistake. The thing at the bottom had not been a bed of roses after all, it was a cesspool full of barbed wire. — George Orwell

I remember the day before my dad died, I was in a hospital room with him, and he had lived a long life. He was 94, and I helped him get up, and there were two windows separated by the partition. I took him to the first window, and he kind of found his way to the second window, and on the way there was a mirror, and he looked into it, and I saw through the corner of my eye, I remember the look on his face. What came over his face was "So I'm here. I've crossed that bridge." — Andy Kim

Lori rushed to join him, threw her arms around his waist, and gave him a big, warm hug. And then kissed him full on the mouth.
When he came up for air and looked into her smiling face, he smiled right back. "Well, hell, if you had let me know that this was the way I'd be treated as the pack leader, I would have done it a long time ago. — Terry Spear

When I was eight years old, I wrote a paragraph-long short story about a goat on my mother's hundred-pound, black-and-white-screen laptop. The story came about largely because I liked the way the word 'goat' looked on the page, but I decided then and there that I wanted to be a writer. That desire never changed. — Tea Obreht

They told me the first mourner to come was the dog. He came uninvited, and stood up on his hind legs and rested his fore paws upon the trestle, and took a last long look at the face that was so dear to him, then went his way as silently as he had come. HE KNOWS. — Mark Twain

Far from being freaks, the Hell's Angels are a logical product of the culture that now claims to be shocked at their existence. The generation represented by the editors of Time has lived so long in a world full of Celluloid outlaws hustling toothpaste and hair oil that it is no longer capable of confronting the real thing. For twenty years they have sat with their children and watched yesterday's outlaws raise hell with yesterday's world ... and now they are bringing up children who think Jesse James is a television character. This is the generation that went to war for Mom, God and Apple Butter, the American Way of Life. When they came back, they crowned Eisenhower and then retired to the giddy comfort of their TV parlors, to cultivate the subtleties of American history as seen by Hollywood. — Hunter S. Thompson

Of course, it would help if the manwould keep his shirt on whenever he came into her unconscious mind. What kind of person didn't have the decency to keep himself clothed while barging into her dreams.
a little modesty went a long way.
Yeah, but clothes on a body so fine was its own form of obscenity.
shh, mind, have some decency yourself. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

When they reached the top of the hill they turned and looked down at the valley. Moominhouse was just a blue dot, and the river a narrow ribbon of green: the swing they couldn't see at all. "We've never been such a long way from home before," said Moomintroll, and a little goose-fleshy thrill of excitement came over them at the thought. — Tove Jansson

By some curious chance one morning long ago in the quiet of the world, when there was less noise and more green, and the hobbits were still numerous and prosperous, and Bilbo Baggins was standing at his door after breakfast smoking an enormous long wooden pipe that reached nearly down to his woolly toes (neatly brushed) - Gandalf came by. Gandalf! If you had heard only a quarter of what I have heard about him, and I have only heard very little of all there is to hear, you would be prepared for any sort of remarkable tale. Tales and adventures sprouted up all over the place wherever he went, in the most extraordinary fashion. He had not been down that way under The Hill for ages and ages, not since his friend the Old Took died, in fact, and the hobbits had almost forgotten what he looked like. He had been away over The Hill and across The Water on businesses of his own since they were all small hobbit-boys and hobbit-girls. — J.R.R. Tolkien

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

It may seem like I came out of the blue. But, my road was long, windy, full of hurdles, and even some dead ends. I lost family. I lost friends. I even lost my way. When I reached what felt like rock bottom, I realized I had a responsibility to everyone who believed in me and to kids, like me, who just needed a chance and something to believe in. — Victor Cruz