Dark Circle Quotes & Sayings

A red-gold glow burst suddenly across the enchanted sky above them as an edge of dazzling sun appeared over the sill of the nearest window. The light hit both of their faces at the same time, so that Voldemort's was suddenly a flaming blur. Harry heard the high voice shriek as he too yelled his best hope to the heavens, pointing Draco's wand:
"Avada Kedavra!"
"Expelliarmus!"
The bang was like a cannon blast, and the golden flames that erupted between them, at the dead center of the circle they had been treading, marked the point where the spells collided. Harry saw Voldemort's green jet meet his own spell, saw the Elder Wand fly high, dark against the sunrise, spinning across the enchanted ceiling, spinning through the air toward the master it would not kill, who had come to take full possession of it at last. — J.K. Rowling

One day, our love will conquer this dark circle. That's worth everything to me — Lauren Kate

The center of my sins
stuck behind a blocked door,
circled by hollow deeds
spread on my lifetime's floor — Munia Khan

One by one they are being picked off around him: in his small circle of colleagues the ratio slowly grows top-heavy, more ghosts, more each winter, and fewer living ... and with each one, he thinks he feels patterns on his cortex going dark, settling to sleep forever, parts of whoever he's been losing all definition, reverting to dumb chemistry ... — Thomas Pynchon

I suppose everybody has a mental picture of the days of the week, some seeing them as a circle, some as an endless line, and others again, for all I know, as triangles and cubes. Mine is a wavy line proceeding to infinity, dipping to Wednesday which is the colour of old silver dark with polishing and rising again to a pale gold Sunday. This day has a feeling in my picture of warmth and light breezes and sunshine and afternoons that stretch to infinity and mornings full of far-off bells. — Angela Thirkell

At 10 minutes to seven on a dark, cool evening in Mexico City in 1968, John Stephen Akwari of Tanzania painfully hobbled into the Olympic Stadium-the last man to finish the marathon. The winner had already been crowned, and the victory ceremony was long finished. So the stadium was almost empty and Akwari - alone, his leg bloody and bandaged - struggled to circle the track to the finish line. When asked why he had continued the grueling struggle, the young man from Tanzania answered softly: My country did not send me 9,000 miles to start the race. They sent me 9,000 miles to finish the race. — Walter Inglis Anderson

My own spirituality serves the human evolution.
I learned to walk in the dark.
I bring a new light.
Religious Leader Petra Cecilia Maria Hermans
The Religion Of The Blue Circle
November 11, 2016 — Petra Hermans

Avada Kedavra!" "Expelliarmus!" The bang was like a cannon blast, and the golden flames that erupted between them, at the dead center of the circle they had been treading, marked the point where the spells collided. Harry saw Voldemort's green jet meet his own spell, saw the Elder Wand fly high, dark against the sunrise, spinning across the enchanted ceiling like the head of Nagini, spinning through the air toward the master it would not kill, who had come to take full possession of it at last. And Harry, with the unerring skill of the Seeker, caught the wand in his free hand as Voldemort fell backward, arms splayed, the slit pupils of the scarlet eyes rolling upward. Tom Riddle hit the floor with a mundane finality, his body feeble and shrunken, the white hands empty, the snakelike face vacant and unknowing. Voldemort was dead, killed by his own rebounding curse, and Harry stood with two wands in his hand, staring down at his enemy's shell. — J.K. Rowling

Death takes us by surprise,
And stays our hurrying feet;
The great design unfinished lies,
Our lives are incomplete
But in the dark unknown,
Perfect their circles seem,
Even as a bridge's arch of stone
Is rounded in the stream.
Alike are life and death,
When life in death survives,
And the uninterrupted breath
Inspires a thousand lives.
Were a star quenched on high,
For ages would its light,
Still traveling downward from the sky,
Shine on our mortal sight.
So when a great man dies,
For years beyond our ken,
The light he leaves behind him lies
Upon the paths of men. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I turn my face and force the corners of my mouth up. There may even be a bit if eyelash fluttering going on. He just rolls his dark blue eyes at me, obviously not impressed - or maybe I just look like I have something stuck in my eye. Sometimes it would be nice to make use of some feminine wiles. I sigh and drop my shoulders. "Out."

"You're going to have to do better than that. You know I'm not supposed to let you out without an escort."

"Please. I can't breathe in here." I step forward, stare up into his face, and lower my voice. "Do you know Emily wanted me to come to sewing circle this morning? Can you even imagine?"

Flint's mouth rounds up into a smile and he coughs to cover his chuckle. "No, Jax. I can't possibly imagine you doing anything remotely feminine. — Theresa Kay

the universe is big and old and, as a result, rare events happen all the time. Go out some night into the woods or desert where you can see stars and hold up your hand to the sky, making a tiny circle between your thumb and forefinger about the size of a dime. Hold it up to a dark patch of the sky where there are no visible stars. In that dark patch, with a large enough telescope of the type we now have in service today, you could discern perhaps 100,000 galaxies, each containing billions of stars. Since supernovae explode once per hundred years per, with 100,000 galaxies in view, you should expect to see, on average, about three stars explode on a given night. — Lawrence M. Krauss

I'm the last one in the dark, until- suddenly- it happens. St. Clair removes something from his pocket. And then he gets down on one knee.
Anna's entire body lights with shock and joy and love. She nods a vigorous yes. St. Clair places the ring on her finger. He stands, she throws her arms around him, and they kiss. He spins her in a circle. They kiss again. Deep, hungry, long. And then he turns to us and waves- with the biggest smile I've ever seen- clearly aware that we've been standing here the whole time. — Stephanie Perkins

In fact, you should take a nap this afternoon, because there won't be much sleep tonight. I
mean to have you every way I can. I mean to intoxicate you and torment you so that you know precisely
how I feel about you." His finger trailed down her cheek and tipped up her chin.
"Don't mistake what is going to happen tonight." His voice was sinful, dark and hoarse. "You will never
forget the imprint of my skin after tonight, Esme. Waste your life chitchatting with ladies in lace caps.
Raise your child with the help of your precious Sewing Circle. But in the middle of all those lonely nights,
you will never, ever, forget the night that lies ahead of us. — Eloisa James

Out here, the deadly shit seeking your blood and meat is not confined to snakes and bears and weather. Other forces resent your presence too. Ghosts of long-gone wolves and buffalo and Indians and pioneers, dead in the service of implacable history. If you stop and camp early, while it's still early, while it's still daylight
claim your space, plant your flag, build your fire
you push them back into the past. But alone in the dark, the minute you sit your ass down they circle close around. Lie on the ground, and the cold seeps up as they try to equalize your temperature with theirs. Get quiet, and you hear the voices. A few words in English, but mostly in other languages. The ones that came before the Indians. Words the long-gone animals thought to one another. Words flowing against you. Wishing you ill. Yet, somehow, all gentle as an outbreath. — Charles Frazier

I fell over twice. It was loud. The garden was black outside our circle of light. The endless night stretched all around us, so we told each other that we had to be close together, together in the dark. — Laure Eve

Doubt is a disease that infects the mind creating a mistrust of peoples motives and ones own perceptions. Doubt has the ability to call into questions everything you ever believed about someone and reinforce the darkest suspicions of our inner circle. — Emily Thorne

Claim your space. Draw a circle of light around it. Push back against the dark. Don't just survive. Celebrate. — Charles Frazier

I see the eight of us within our "Secret Annex" as if we were a little piece of blue heaven, surrounded by black, black rain clouds. The round, clearly defined spot where we stand is still safe, but the clouds gather more closely about us and the circle which separates us from the approaching dangers closes more and more tightly. Now we are so surrounded by danger and darkness that we bump against each other, as we search desperately for a means of escape. We all look down below, where people are fighting each other, we look above, where it is quiet and beautiful, and meanwhile we are cut off by the great dark mass. — Francine Prose

Why is it that it is often easier for us to confess our sins to God than to a brother? God is holy and sinless, He is a just judge of evil and the enemy of all disobedience. But a brother is sinful as we are. He knows from his own experience the dark night of secret sin. Why should we not find it easier to go to a brother than to the holy God? But if we do, we must ask ourselves whether we have not often been deceiving ourselves with our confession of sin to God, whether we have not rather been confessing our sins to ourselves and also granting ourselves absolution ... Who can give us the certainty that, in the confession and the forgiveness of our sins, we are not dealing with ourselves but with the living God? God gives us this certainty through our brother. Our brother breaks the circle of self-deception. A man who confesses his sins in the presence of a brother knows that he is no longer alone with himself; he experiences the presence of God in the reality of the other person. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Explaining God to Children
Draw a rapid river clockwise, flowing in a circle.
Draw a mountain in the middle, with heaven at the tip.
Tell a child,
'God is the top of the mountain.
Man is the river.
Only God's sees we're in a big hurry going nowhere.'
The clever child will ask,
'What does man see?'
Tell the child,
'Well, man sees there's a light side to God ~ and maybe a dark side too,
depending on where he's at.
Man sometimes doesn't see God at all because there are clouds.'
(Quickly draw some clouds.)
The clever child will ask,
'How do i know it's God on top of the mountain in heaven and it's not the Devil in hell?'
'Hmm...How old did you say you were?'

Back to the drawing board. — Beryl Dov

Each state of the human mind has some parable in the physical creation by which it is shadowed forth; nor is it only artists and poets, but even the most abstract thinkers that have drawn from this source. Lively activity we name fire; time is a stream that rolls on, sweeping all before it; eternity is a circle; a mystery is hid in midnight gloom, and truth dwells in the sun. Nay, I begin to believe that even the future destiny of the human race is prefigured in the dark oracular utterances of bodily creation. — Friedrich Schiller

Raven briefly pondered the phrase, "staring down the barrel of a gun". It wasn't really that accurate, he decided. After all, it was too dark to see any features down a barrel, only a black circle at the end of it. — A. Ashley Straker

I shut down again. I went blank. One minute I was spinning, and the next minute my mind was dragging itself around in a circle, like an old arthritic dog trying to lie down. And then I just turned off and went to sleep, but not sleep in the way you do every night. Think a long, dark sleep where you don't dream at all. — Jennifer Niven

You haven't finished the key, but not because you are afraid to finish. You're afraid of finding you can't finish. You're afraid to go down to where the stones stand, but not because you're afraid of what may come once you enter the circle. You're afraid of what may not come. You're not afraid of the great world, Eddie, but of the small one inside yourself. — Stephen King

We would have known nothing of the nature and reach of her sorrow if she had come back. But she left us and broke the family and the sorrow was released and we saw its wings and saw it fly a thousand ways into the hills, and sometimes I think sorrow is a predatory thing because birds scream at dawn with a marvelous terror, and there is, as I have said before, a deathly bitterness in the smell of ponds and ditches. When we were children and frightened of the dark, my grandmother used to say if we kept our eyes closed we would not see it. That was when I noticed the correspondence between the space within the circle of my skull and the space around me. I saw just the same figure against the lid of my eye or the wall of my room, or in the trees beyond my window. Even the illusion of perimeters fails when families are separated. — Marilynne Robinson

Hermione had taken his hand again and was gripping it tightly. He could not look at her, but returned the pressure, now taking deep, sharp gulps of the night air, trying to steady himself, trying to regain control. He should have brought something to give them, and he had not thought of it, and every plant in the graveyard was leafless and frozen. But Hermione raised her wand, moved it in a circle through the air, and a wreath of Christmas roses blossomed before them. Harry caught it and laid it on his parent's grave.
As soon as he stood up he wanted to leave: He did not think he could stand another moment there. He put his arm around Hermione's shoulders, and she put hers around his waist, and they turned in silence and walked away through the snow, past Dumbledore's mother and sister, back toward the dark church and the out-of-sight kissing gate. — J.K. Rowling

In a rabbit-fear I may hurl myself under the wheels of the car because the lights terrify me, and under the dark blind death of wheels I will be safe. I am very tired, very banal, very confused. I do not know who I am tonight. I wanted to walk until I dropped and not complete the inevitable circle of coming home. — Sylvia Plath

WHAT DOES YOUR WORLD LOOK LIKE?

If your world seems dark and those around you speak doubt or defeat, change your circle. Reposition your life until those around you speak hope, confidence, and paths to success. — Lorna Jackie Wilson

The girl jumped into his arms, and he swung her in an ecstatic, lop-sided circle. The joy of it hit Georgie like a shock wave. The boy's duffel bag fell to the ground. His face disappeared in the girl's long, wavy dark hair. — Rainbow Rowell

circle back, you're nearly through.
The next one, then just one more clue.
Summer's coming, dark and drear,
Soon those tourists will appear.

In the word hoard you will find
Books with numbers on the spines.
A 2 a 9 a 2 again-
Not too easy for Athena's friend. — Megan Frazer Blakemore

Essentially, this extra structure covering our life has no reality. It has come to be there because of the misuse of our minds. It's not a question of getting rid of it, since it has no reality; but it is a question of seeing its nature. And as we see its nature, instead of it being so thick and dark, the covering becomes more transparent: we see through it. Enlightenment (bringing in more light) is what happens in practice. Actually we're not getting rid of a structure, we're seeing through it as the dream it is, and as we realize its true nature its whole function in our life weakens; and at the same time we can see more accurately what is going on in our daily life. It's as if we have to go full circle. Our life is always all right. There's nothing — Charlotte Joko Beck

As I squatted on the grass at the edge of the woods, the pee felt hot between my legs. I watched in puddle in the dirt, the smell of it rising into the night. There was no difference between my piss and June's. That's what i thought when I looked at the dark circle on the ground. Piss is Piss. — Sue Monk Kidd

Act! the wise are known by their actions; fame and immortality are ever their attendants. Mark with deeds the vanishing traces of swiftrolling time. Let us make happy the circle around us,
be useful as much as we may. For that fills up with soft rapture, that dissolves the dark clouds of the day! — Johann Gaudenz Von Salis-Seewis

Tom." Mrs. Sprye's tone was severe. "I expect you to look after this boy, not encourage him to go about brawling in the street. In broad daylight!"
Tom was stung. "It's nigh impossible to brawl in the dark, Mrs. Sprye. And look - " He put his hands on Trumpet's shoulders and turned him full circle. "Scarcely a scratch on him. A bit dirty, true, but I believe that Pygmies can be washed. — Anna Castle

I want to love somebody because I want to be loved. In a rabbit-fear I may hurl myself under the wheels of the car because the lights terrify me, and under the dark blind death of the wheels I will be safe. I am very tired, very banal, very confused. I do not know who I am tonight. I wanted to walk until I dropped and not complete the inevitable circle of coming home. I have lived in boxes above, below, and down the hall from girls who think hard, feel similarly, and long companionably, and I have not bothered to cultivate them because I did not want to, could not, sacrifice the time. People know who I am, and the harder I try to know who they are, the more I forget their names - I want to be alone, and yet there are times when the liquid eye and the cognizant grin of a small monkey would send me into a crying fit of brotherly love. I work and think alone. I live with people, and act. I love and cherish both. If I knew now what I wanted I would know when I saw it, who he was. — Sylvia Plath

What was supposed to be so special about a full moon? It was only a big circle of light. And the dark of the moon was only darkness. But halfway between the two, when the moon was between the worlds of light and dark, when even the moon lived on the edge ... maybe then a witch could believe in the moon. — Terry Pratchett

Tonglen practice has four stages: Rest your mind for a second or two in a state of openness or stillness. This is called flashing absolute bodhichitta, or suddenly opening to the basic spaciousness and clarity of the awakened heart. Work with texture. Breathe in a feeling of hot, dark, and heavy - a sense of claustrophobia - and breathe out a feeling of cool, bright, and light - a sense of freshness. Breathe in through all the pores of your body and radiate out completely, through all the pores of your body. Do this until your visualization feels synchronized with your in and out-breaths. Now contemplate any painful situation that's real to you. For example, you can breathe in the hot, dark, constricted feeling of sadness that you feel, and breathe out a light, cool sense of joy or space or whatever might provide relief. Widen the circle of compassion by connecting with all those who feel this kind of pain, and extending the wish to help everyone. — Pema Chodron

So Captain Jack's come a-courtin'." Her hands stilled on the basket. "Who?" "The tall Shawnee who come by your cabin." The tall one. Lael felt a small surge of triumph at learning his name. Captain Jack. Oddly, she felt no embarrassment. Lifting her shoulders in a slight shrug, she continued pulling the vines into a tight circle. "He come by, but I don't know why." "Best take a long look in the mirror, then." Lael's eyes roamed the dark walls. Ma Horn didn't own one. "Beads and a blanket, was it?" She nodded and looked back down. "I still can't figure out why some Shawnee would pay any mind to a white girl like me." Ma Horn chuckled, her face alight in the dimness. "Why, Captain Jack's as white as you are." "What?" she blurted, eyes wide as a child's. Ma Horn's smile turned sober. "He's no Indian, Shawnee or otherwise, so your pa says. He was took as a child from some-wheres in North Carolina. All he can remember of his past life is his white name - Jack. — Laura Frantz

It was the circle of perfect motion. Of the light-bringer and dark-giver, the world-starter and shadow-ender. Of initiation and completion. It was the symbol of the Cahr Awen. Cahr Awen. — Susan Dennard

If any writer in this country has collected as fine and passionate a group of readers as I have, they're fortunate and lucky beyond anyone's imagination. It remains a shock to me that I've had a successful writing career. Not someone like me; Lord, there were too many forces working against me, too many dark currents pushing against me, but it somehow worked. Though I wish I'd written a lot more, been bolder with my talent, more forgiving of my weaknesses, I've managed to draw a magic audience into my circle. They come to my signings to tell me stories, their stories. The ones that have hurt them and made their nights long and their lives harder. — Pat Conroy

When you go out hunting wicked spirits, it's the simple things that matter most. The silvered point of your rapier flashing in the dark; the iron filings scattered on the floor; the sealed canisters of best Greek Fire, ready as a last resort ...
But tea bags, brown and fresh and plenty of them, and made (for preference) by Pitkin Brothers of Bond Street, are perhaps the simplest and best of all.
OK, they may not save your life like a sword-tip or an iron circle can, and they haven't the protective power of a sudden wall of fire. But they do provide something just as vital. They help keep you sane. — Jonathan Stroud

I'd better go," he said, without leaving.
That one eye, the blue one, just kept staring up at him. Bloodshot, with a cut across the brow above it, the thing shouldn't have been able to focus. But it was.
"I have to go," Blay said finally.
Without leaving.
Damn him, he didn't know what the hell he was doing
A tear escaped from that eye. Welling up along the lower lid, it coalesced at the far corner, formed a crystal circle, and grew so fat it couldn't hold on to the lashes. Slipping free, it meandered downward, getting lost in dark hair at the temple. — J.R. Ward

On the blank leaf glued to the inner back cover I drew the double curve within the circle, and blacked the yin half of the symbol, then pushed it back to my companion. 'Do you know that sign?'
He looked at it a long time with a strange look, but he said, 'No.'
'It's found on Earth, and on Hain-Davenant, and on Chiffewar. It is yin and yang. Light is the left hand of darkness ... how did it go? Light, dark. Fear, courage. Cold, warmth. Female, male. It is yourself, Therem. Both and one. A shadow on snow.' — Ursula K. Le Guin

His mouth was a little too wide and snaked from corner to corner. His nose had been broken a few times, and when you looked at him straight on like I was doing as I stared at him across the circle bar, you could really tell. But his eyes were beautiful, cunning and otherworldly. His hair was a controlled mess; wispy dark strands that swooped across his forehead with long sideburns. He had high cheekbones, a strong jawline. When you combined all the parts, they equaled so much more than the sum. He was exotically, dangerously beautiful.
He'd been mine once. He'd broken my heart once.
And he was here to kill me. He only needed to do that once, too. — Karina Halle

If you're going through a dark time ... don't ever give up. You can always make your way back to the other end of that circle and find your happiness again. — Lady Gaga

In Dark Places,
May we Never be truly Alone.....
~Susan Schroder, Circle the Sun books — Susan Schroder

When the Dark comes rising six shall turn it back;
Three from the circle, three from the track;
Wood, bronze, iron; Water, fire, stone;
Five will return and one go alone.
Iron for the birthday; bronze carried long;
Wood from the burning; stone out of song;
Fire in the candle ring; water from the thaw;
Six signs the circle and the grail gone before.
Fire on the mountain shall find the harp of gold
Played to wake the sleepers, oldest of old.
Power from the Green Witch, lost beneath the sea.
All shall find the Light at last, silver on the tree. — Susan Cooper

There is an endless chain of cities, a circle without beginning or end, over which there breaks unrelentingly a shifting wave of laws. There is the city-jungle and the city where people live in the pillars of tall viaducts that crisscross each other in countless overpasses and underpasses, the city of sounds and nothing else, the city in the swamp, the city of smooth white balls rolling on concrete, the city comprising apartments spread across several continents, the city where sculptures fall endlessly from dark clouds and smash on the paving stones, the city where the moon's path passes through the insides of apartments. All cities are mutually the center and periphery, beginning and end, capital and colony of each other. — Michal Ajvaz

Before Luce could reply, a skinny, dark haired girl appeared in from of her, wagging her long fingers in Luce's face.
"Ooooooh," the girl taunted in a ghost-story-telling voice, dancing around Luce in a circle. "The reds are watching youuuu."
"Get out of here, Arriane, before I have you lobotimized," the attendant said, though it was clear from her first brief but genuine smile that she had some coarse affection for that crazy girl.
It was also clear that Arriane did not reciprocate the love. She mimed a jerking-off motion at the attendant, then stared at Luce, daring her to be offended. — Lauren Kate

One morning indeed, I felt a sudden misgiving that she not only had left the house but had gone for good: I had just heard the sound of a door which seemed to me to be that of her room. On tiptoe I crept towards the room, opened the door, stood upon the threshold. In the dim light the bedclothes bulged in a semi-circle, that must be Albertine who, with her body bent, was sleeping with her feet and face to the wall. Only, overflowing the bed, the hair upon that head, abundant and dark, made me realise that it was she, that she had not opened her door, had not stirred, and I felt that this motionless and living semi-circle, in which a whole human life was contained and which was the only thing to which I attached any value, I felt that it was there, in my despotic possession. — Marcel Proust

The candle flame is too hot. It flickers and dances in the over-warm breeze, a breeze that brings no respite from the heat. Soft gossamer wings flutter to and fro in the dark, sprinkling dusty scaled in the circle of light. I'm struggling to resist, but I'm drawn. And then it's to bright, and I am flying too close to the sun, dazzled by the light, fried and melting from the heat, weary in my endeavers to stay airborn. I am so warm. The heat ... It's stiffling, overpowering. It wakes me. — E.L. James

The dark circle became a dot on the moon-flooded snow as Spitz disappeared from view. — Jack London

The grandfather's clock in the corner of the room, I suddenly realized, wasn't getting any younger. It would drop out a tick, and the tick would land inside my head like a rock dropped in a well, and the ripples would circle out and stop, and the tick would sink down the dark. For a piece of time which was not long or short, and might not even be time, there wouldn't be anything. Then the tock would drop down the well, and the ripples would circle out and finish. — Robert Penn Warren

She stepped out from among their shifting confusion of lovely lights and shadows. A circle of grass, smooth as a lawn, met her eyes, with dark trees dancing all around it. And then
Oh Joy! For he was there: the huge Lion, shining white in the moonlight, with his huge black shadow underneath him. — C.S. Lewis

The last word always belongs to the audience ... that blessed connection ... that is a most powerful feeling. One that is worth savouring on dark nights when the wind blows. On the other hand there is no way of ever knowing when one steps out into that circle, if the connection will be made. The promise is there, the hope is there, but no certainty whatsoever. Which is, I suppose, the attraction. That connection, when it happens, is magic. When it doesn't ... Turn out the lights. — Ruth Cracknell

It is, perhaps, the prerogative of every man or woman to imagine, and thus force a shape, a meaning, onto that wild and meandering narrative of their lives, by choosing genre. A princess is rescued by a prince; a vampire stalks a victim in the dark; a student becomes a master. A circle is completed. An so on. — Lavie Tidhar

He hears everything as music,' said his father, Moses Whitaker. 'The fax machine sounds like an A. The copy machine is a B flat. The jackhammers are making the drum beats that he likes.' When the subway rumbles, Matthew taps his cane on the ground to re-create the noise. He hums along with the city - the fast cars and fast talkers. When asked to describe New York, he stands and pivots a full 360 degrees, pointing his fingers in front of him. 'New York is a circle of sounds,' he says. 'There is music everywhere. Everybody has a smile on their face. It's musical, it's dark and so beautiful. — David Byrne

There is nothing left to watch but fire and the night: circle within circle, light within light. Messages arrive in the net where discrete pulses cross. Parametal engines of joy and disaster give them wave and motion. We interpret and defeat their terms by terminus. The night? What of it. It is filled with bestial watchmen, trammeling the extremities and the interstices of the timeless city, portents fallen,
constellated deities plummeting in ash and smoke, roaming the apocryphal cities, the cities of speculation and reconstituted disorder, of insemination and incipience, swept round with the dark. — Samuel R. Delany

Their house was about a mile outside of town. The kids would play outdoors, in the backyard and the large stubble field behind the house. Dusk seemed to last for hours, and when it was finally dark they would sit under the porch light, catching thickly buzzing June bugs and moths, or even an occasional toad who hopped into the circle of light, tempted by the halo of insects that floated around the bare orange lightbulb next to the front door — Dan Chaon

The path to true happiness is one of integrating and fully accepting all aspects of our experience. This integration is represented in the Taoist symbol of yin/yang, a circle which is half dark and half light. In the midst of the dark area is a spot of light, and in the midst of the light area is a spot of darkness. Even in the depths of darkness, the light is implicit. Even in the heart of light, the dark is understood, acknowledged, and absorbed. If things are not going well for us in life and we are suffering, we are not defeated by the pain or closed off to the light. If things are going well and we are happy, we are not defensively trying to deny the possibility of suffering. This unity, this integration, comes from deeply accepting darkness and light, and therefore being able to be in both simultaneously. — Sharon Salzberg

She sat there all afternoon in her hot maiden's bedroom, thinking and dreaming in the dark circle which the splinter spread around her, a darkness which was like the hood of a cobra. — Stephen King

Long I have known and feared this day would come. Like the circle of Earth, the circle of life is changing. Here in the north, there are those who can still feel, see, and smell the changes wrought in and around Earth by Money Chiefs. The air is no longer clean, winter grows warmer, rivers flood without a sign, and the soil, once dark and rich, lies pale and weak. Bears, wolves, and other forest Spirits will soon go the way of the buffalo, for their food dwindles like birds that once ruled the skies. — Frederic M. Perrin

The best thing would be to break your neck, but you'd probably just break your leg and then you couldn't do a thing. You'd yell at the top of your lungs, but nobody;d hear you, and you couldn't expect anybody to find you, and you'd have centipedes and spiders crawling all over you, and the bones of the ones who died before are scattered all around you, and it's dark and soggy, and way overhead there's this tiny, tiny circle of light like a winter moon. You die there in this place, little by little, all by yourself. — Haruki Murakami

It took me a moment. I blinked, and suddenly it swam into focus and I had to frown very hard to keep myself from giggling out loud like the schoolgirl Deb had accused me of being.
Because he had arranged the arms and legs in letters, and the letters spelled out a single small word: BOO.
The three torsos were carefully arranged below the BOO in a quarter-circle, making a cute little Halloween smile.
What a scamp. — Jeff Lindsay

This is not what it is like to be you,
I realized as a few of your magnificent clouds
flew over the rooftop.
It is just me thinking about being you.
And before I headed back down the hill,
I walked in a circle around your house,
making an invisible line
which you would have to cross before dark. — Billy Collins