Dark Friend Quotes & Sayings

Poles had a dark joke in 1944, about a bird which falls out of the sky into a cowpat, to be rescued by a cat; its moral, they said, was that Not everyone who gets you out of the shit is necessarily your friend. — Max Hastings

My father he always say that the oil is already inside the student, already there from all time. The teacher only has a match and makes it light, and then the student isn't a student anymore, just a friend, going the same way down the dark road but seeing now by himself. — Roland Merullo

I remember being a 12 year old art kid and feeling like there was no exciting art movement happening, especially for somebody like me. I was looking around for artistic inspiration and could find nothing - until my older brother's friend brought a Giger book over to the house. Upon seeing the first image I knew I would never be the same. A whole new world opened up to me and I have been exploring it ever since. It's no doubt that I would not be here today, doing what I do, without his influence. H.R. Giger is the king of the Dark Art movement. — Chet Zar

He thought for a moment. About puppets.
About being controlled.
Everyone was controlled by something, the Impressionist knew. By a spouse. A parent. A boss. A friend. By one's own impulses, be they dark or light.
Everyone was a puppet to something.
Most people just couldn't see the strings, is all. And so they didn't believe they were puppets in the first place. — Barry Lyga

There. We can be friends now."
"Someone like you could never be my friend."
"Why ever not?"
"Because I'm a nice person, and you're a sick, twisted bitch. — John Hennessy

My friend, I went to the market and bought the Dark One.
You claim by night, I claim by day.
Actually I was beating a drum all the time I was buying him.
You say I gave too much; I say too little.
Actually, I put him on a scale before I bought him.
What I paid was my social body, my town body, my family body, and all my inherited jewels.
Mirabai says: The Dark One is my husband now.
Be with me when I lie down; you promised me this in an earlier life. — Mirabai

He looks at me again and the flames vanish and the knife is gone and his voice goes light and breezy and all coffee-shop conversational, as if he wasn't just one second ago impaling me with fiery eyes and discussing the dark fate of my best friend and the souls of all my classmates. — Michelle Knudsen

They are between. Not what they used to be, and not what they have become. In those times, they are nothing. And I am invisible, and I am nothing too. That is the true demimonde, Lucien, and the secret is, it is not always desperate and dark. Sometimes it is just nothing. No burden of potential or regret. There are worse things than being nothing, my friend. — Christopher Moore

Fear is like a fire. If you can control it, it can cook for you. It can heat your house.If you can't control it, it will burn everything around you and destroy you. Fear is your friend and your worst enemy. — Sui Ishida

She realized all at once that Doon, thin, dark eyed Doon, with his troublesome temper and his terrible brown jacket, and his good heart
was the person she knew better than anyone now. He was her best friend.
City of Ember
— Jeanne DuPrau

Once I knew, then I forgot. It was as if I had fallen asleep in a field only to discover at waking that a grove of trees had grown up around me.
"Doubt nothing, believe everything," was my friend's idea of metaphysics, although his brother ran away with his wife. He still bought her a rose every day, sat in the empty house for the next twenty years talking to her about the weather.
I was already dozing off in the shade, dreaming that the rustling trees were my many selves explaining themselves all at the same time so that I could not make out a single word. My life was a beautiful mystery on the verge of understanding, always on the verge! Think of it!
My friend's empty house with every one of its windows lit. The dark trees multiplying all around it. — Charles Simic

A good friend will help you plant your tulips. A great friend will help you plant a gun on the unarmed intruder you just shot. — Brian P. Cleary

Invade me now, my ruthless friend,
And make me cower in the dark.
Remind me that I'm all alone
And draw upon my face your mark.
How is it that you capture me,
When all my thoughts deny your force?
Is it the reptile in my brain
That lets your terror run its course?
Baseless Fear undoes us all
Despite our quest for lofty goals.
We would-be Galahads don't die,
Fear just freezes all our souls.
It keeps us mute when feeling love,
Reminding us what we might lose.
And if by chance we meet success,
Fear tells us which safe route to choose. — Arthur C. Clarke

I was almost a wife but lost the man. I was almost recognisable as a friend. And then I wasn't. The nights when I flicked off the bedside lamp and found myself in the heedless, lonely dark. The times I thought, with a horrified twist, that none of this was a gift. Suzanne got the redemption that followed a conviction ... I got the snuffed-out story of the bystander, a fugitive without a crime, half hoping and half terrified that no one was ever coming for me. — Emma Cline

A Lemon Gingertini," the dark-haired girl says. She curls her hands neatly under her chin and watches me mix the ginger syrup. "Oh, could you go light on the ice, too?"
"Sure thing," I say. Damn. I can't place her face.

"And make sure to add a slice of 'I'll kick your ass myself if you ever f*** over my best friend again'?" Her sweet voice changes to venom-laced. — Lori K. Garrett

When I was a child I had a fishless aquarium. My father set it up for me with gravel and plants and pebbles before he'd got the fish and I asked him to leave it as it was for a while. The pump kept up a charming burble, the green-gold light was wondrous when the room was dark. I put in a china mermaid and a tin horseman who maintained a relationship like that of the figures on Keat's Grecian urn except that the horseman grew rusty. Eventually fish were pressed upon me and they seemed an intrusion, I gave them to a friend. All that aquarium wanted was the sound of the pump, the gently waving plants, the mysterious pebbles and the silent horseman forever galloping to the mermaid smiling in the green-gold light. I used to sit and look at them for hours. The mermaid and the horseman were from my father. I have them in a box somewhere here, I'm not yet ready to take them out and look at them again. — Russell Hoban

My friend died doing what he loved ... Heroin. — Deanne Smith

The friend in my adversity I shall always cherish most. I can better trust those who have helped to relieve the gloom of my dark hours than those who are so ready to enjoy with me the sunshine of my prosperity. — Ulysses S. Grant

I was a big Guns N' Roses fan when I was seven. My friend who lived across the street had long dark curly hair and I had long blonde hair, so I'd dress up as Axl and she'd be Slash, and we'd rock out in front of the mirror singing 'Patience.' — Kirsten Dunst

I knew I had a choice. Either let you die and have the world blanketed with evil, or save you and make one dark moment for my best friend while the world continues to grow with light. — K. Weikel

After a moment, his father looked up from the list and surveyed her. "Well done, Champion. Well done indeed."
Then Celaena and the King of Adarlan smiled at each other, and it was the most terrifying thing Dorian had ever seen.
"Tell my exchequer to give you double last month's payment," the king said. Dorian felt his gorge rise- not just for the severed head and her blood- stiffened clothing, but also for the fact that he could not, for the life of him, find the girl had loved anywhere in her face. And from Chaol's expression, he knew his friend felt the same.
Celaena bowed dramatically to the king, flourishing a hand before her. Then, with a smile devoid of any warmth, she stared down Chaol before stalking from the room, her dark cape sweeping behind her.
Silence. — Sarah J. Maas

You want to know why I love you. You brought light into my formerly gray existence." He touched her cheek. "Until you, I never knew a woman could be both friend and lover. You saved me from the dark. I love you for what you are; strong and brave and kind. When I walk into a room and you are there, my heart lifts. When I'm away, just thinking of you makes me smile. Being with you makes me happy. No one else has ever done that. When I am with you, I am whole. Better than whole, for on my own, I'm a worthless fool. — Carolyn Jewel

When 'The Dark Side of the Moon' was a new album in 1973, a friend of mine walked into my room where I was working with a copy in his hand and said, 'You really have to do a play about this album.' — Tom Stoppard

You like rock?
Little boy, I'm not your friend. I'm not your Dark-Hunter and I'm not your friggin' date. You only speak to me when I ask you a question. Otherwise you keep your mouth shut, your eyes off me, and you might live long enough to get me to the French Quarter. (Zarek) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Fame may pass over my head; money may escape me; my one friend may fail me; every hope may fold its tent and steal away; Happiness may remain a sealed book; every remnant of human ties may vanish; I may find myself an outcast; good things held out to me may suddenly be withdrawn; the stars may go out, one by one; the sun may go dark; yet still I may hold upright my head, if I have but my steak - and my onions. — Mary MacLane

Roadblock #5: It's Unpredictable
By and large, human beings don't like surprises. I know that I don't. Okay, maybe I like that rare piece of unexpected good news or a letter from a friend or a thoughtful thank-you. But I'm willing to bet that people in funny hats jumping out of dark closets are responsible for more heart attacks than expressions of unbridled delight. When the doorbell rings late at night, I'm under no illusion that it's the Publisher's Clearing House Prize Patrol!
This, most likely, goes back to our caveman past when a big, exciting surprise was apt to be something like an 800-pound,snarling, saber-toothed tiger about to rip the head from our shoulders. Surprises were usually bad news. (Think about this the next time you're crouching in the dark in somebody's front hall closet with their raincoats and umbrellas.) — Paul Powers

YOU MUSTN'T BE AFRAID OF DEATH
you're a deathless soul
you can't be kept in a dark grave
you're filled with God's glow
be happy with your beloved
you can't find any better
the world will shimmer
because of the diamond you hold
when your heart is immersed
in this blissful love
you can easily endure
any bitter face around
in the absence of malice
there is nothing but
happiness and good times
don't dwell in sorrow my friend
ghazal number 2594 — Rumi

Friend, God wants you to see not just the path ahead, but the profound spiritual realities that are affecting your life. He is ready to help you! So when you sense the dark fears encroaching, run to Him. Because when He is your light, you will have nothing to dread. — Charles F. Stanley

I'm beginning to wonder," said Kent, sitting down now on an overturned wooden tub. "Who do I serve? Why am I here?"
You are here, because, in the expanding ethical ambiguity of our situation, you are steadfast in your righteousness. It is to you, our banished friend, that we all turn - a light amid the dark dealings of family and politics. You are the moral backbone on which the rest of us hang our bloody bits. Without you we are merely wiggly masses of desire writhing in our own devious bile."
Really?" asked the old knight.
Aye," said I.
I'm not sure I want to keep company with you lot, then. — Christopher Moore

True friends are like stars; you can only recognize them when it's dark around you. — Bob Marley

The newly created Darth Vader flexes his Force-muscle as the Emperor's enforcer to maintain order and obedience in a galaxy reeling from civil war and the destruction of the Jedi Order. To the galaxy at large, Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker - the Chosen One - died on Coruscant during the siege of the Jedi Temple. And, to some extent, the was true - Anakin was dead. But from the site of Anakin Skywalker's last stand - on the molten surface of the planet Mustafa, where he sought to destroy his friend and former master, Obi-Wan Kanobi - a fearsome spectre in black has risen. Once the most powerful Knight ever known to the Jedi order he is not a disciple of the dark side, a lord of the dreaded Sith, and the avenging right hand of the galaxy's ruthless new Emperor. Seduced, deranged and destroyed by the machinations of the Dark Lord Sidious, Anakin Skywalker is dead ... and Darth Vader lives ... — James Luceno

Why do you have to make everyone hate you? (Talon)
What? You want to be my friend now, Celt? If I clean up my act, will you be my buddy? (Zarek)
You're such an asshole. (Talon)
Yeah, but at least I know what I am. I have no pretensions. You don't know if you're a Druid, a Dark-Hunter, or a playboy. You lost yourself a long time ago in the dark hole where you buried the parts of you that once made you human. (Zarek)
You are lecturing me on humanity? (Talon)
Ironic as hell, isn't it? (Zarek) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

He holds the elevator door open with one enormous hand and leans out to look at the weather. Then he swings those dark blue eyes to mine, his brow beginning to crease. The familiar bubble forms in my head. I wish he was my friend. I burst it with a pin. "I'll give you a ride," he forces out. "Ugh, no way," I say over my shoulder and run. — Sally Thorne

Now, all quiet, all rusty, wind and rain in possession, lamps extinguished, Mugby Junction dead and indistinct, with its robe drawn over its head, like Caesar. Now, too, as the belated traveller plodded up and down, a shadowy train went by him in the gloom which was no other than the train of a life. From whatsoever intangible deep cutting or dark tunnel it emerged, here it came, unsummoned and unannounced, stealing upon him and passing away into obscurity. Here, mournfully went by, a child who had never had a childhood or known a parent, inseparable from a youth with a bitter sense of his namelessness, coupled to a man the enforced business of whose best years had been distasteful and oppressive, linked to an ungrateful friend, dragging after him a woman once beloved. Attendant, with many a clank and wrench, were lumbering cares, dark meditations, huge dim disappointments, monotonous years, a long jarring line of the discords of a solitary and unhappy existence. — Charles Dickens

My legion has won many victories. And since you are my dearest friend, we will fight that much harder." His intense, dark eyes locked with hers. "I swear to you: Ker-Ys will not fall. — Jennifer McKeithen

Here on the island I find I can sit with a friend without talking, sharing the day's last sliver of pale green light on the horizon, or the whorls in a small white shell, or the dark scar left in a dazzling night sky by a shooting star. Then communication becomes communion and one is nourished as one never is by words. — Anne Morrow Lindbergh

I don't make to-do lists, but if I did, today's would have gone something like this: 1. get drunk, 2. get laid, 3. go surfing (not necessarily in that order.) Noticeably absent from the list: get arrested. And yet here I am, spending my eighteenth birthday with my back against the wall of the Colonel's hunting cabin, two FBI agents prowling the dark with their guns drawn, both trying to get me to confess to the murder of my friend Preston DeWitt. — Paula Stokes

His sympathy made tears spring to Lina's eyes. Doon looked startled for a moment, and then he took a step toward her and wrapped his arms around her. He gave her a squeeze so quick and tight that it made her cough, and then it made her laugh. She realized all at once that Doon
thin, dark-eyed Doon with his troublesome temper and his terrible brown jacket and his good heart
was the person that she knew better than anyone now. He was her best friend. — Jeanne DuPrau

My father sits at the head of a table before the carcass of an enormous American turkey. What he is ashamed of is the one act of decency I have yet encountered in all the tales of our family's past. A young boy with a dead father and a dead friend bends down before a country dog and feeds it his butter sandwich. And I know that sandwich. Because he has made it for me. Two slices of that dark, unbleached Russian bread, the kind that tastes of badly managed soil and a peasant's indifference to death. On top of it, the creamiest, deadliest of American butter, slathered in thick feta-like hunks. And on top of that cloves of garlic, the garlic that is to give me strength, that is to clear my lungs of asthmatic gunk, and make of me a real garlic-eating strong man. At a table in Leningrad, and a table in deepest Queens, New York, the ridiculous garlic crunches beneath our teeth as we sit across from each other, the garlic obliterating whatever else we have eaten, and making us one. — Gary Shteyngart

Even now, talking about those days, tears well up in my eyes, my indefatigable heart pounds rebelliously and still suffers, and my former, stormy passion bursts into my soul with these remembrances! Tedious, profound, burning recollections oppress me. I don't love him any longer: love for my first friend died and grew cold long since, but even now, when I start talking about him, it's as if I begin to love him all over again! The human heart feels deeply - its innermost depths are immeasurable, dark, and strange; and that which is lost in it often comes to the surface unexpectedly and fills the whole being with long-lost, lifeless feeling. — Evgeniya Tur

You're Gideon's friend."
I laughed. Gideon's friend, of course. "Only because his mother pays me to hang out with him."
"Can she pay me?" Elspeth asked.
Iris, moving into the room, rolled her eyes at her sister. — Bethany Frenette

So now you're on the run,' Warrick said wistfully. 'Travelling the Dark Highway, a lone wolf. With your friend, who is another wolf. Two lone wolves. Two wolves, really. Not really alone. Two wolves in a car. Travelling. One of them naked and bloody. The other with her ass hanging out. — Derek Landy

Here's what you need to know: some cliches are true, and war is definitely hell. It's being afraid all the time, and when you're not afraid it's because you're pumped full of adrenaline you could literally burst. It's watching people who you love- really profoundly love- get blown to pieces right next to you. It's seeing a leg lying in the ditch and picking it up to put it in a bag because no man- or part of a man, your friend- can be left behind. It's the dark night of the soul. There's no front line over there. The war is all around them, every day, everywhere they go. Some handle it better than others. We don't know why, but we do know this: the human mind can't safely or healthily process that kind of carnage and uncertainty and horror. It just can't. No one comes back from war the same. — Kristin Hannah

Every friend, every neighbor, and every family member wishes that you retain your golden heart. No one wants to see your love sullied. Yet, they all know a dark circumstance will find you eventually. Know this: You are being hunted
like game. Life will knock you down with some unexpected misfortune. Resolve now, to help your partner get back up. Only a determined family kills its wounded. When everyone else abandons him, come back for your husband.
pg 55 — Michael Ben Zehabe

I made the decision fifteen years ago that you were my life. My everything. You were with me in my dreams my dark lover my friend and confidant. — Christine Feehan

She looks at the Dictaphone in my hand.
"Are you recording this?"
"No, Alex, I was summarizing a deposition."
"How can you work?"
"How can you see a movie? How can you have a friend over?"
She looks away. Half of the room is bright from my lamp. The other side is dark, the sharp silhouette of the mountain framed by the window running across the room. The image always reminds me of a panoramic picture. — Kaui Hart Hemmings

Your iPod is whispering in your ear. It was keeping you company, but now it's like a good friend turned bad [ ... ] It is turning your life into a dark, looping rock opera. — Meg Jay

I couldn't compete with Honesty,

With her dark blonde hair streaked with auburn,
With her captivating blue eyes,
With her legs that stretched into forever.
She had the brains,
The body,
The perfect resume for girlfriend.

And me?
I had the perfect resume for
Best friend.
All the boys said so. — Elana Johnson

I mean, what kind of literature do you think ants would make if they could read? Not F. Scott Fuckin' Fitzgerald, not Joyce or D-D - D-Dostoyevsky, not even friggin' Steinbeck. Wouldn't make any sense to 'em. You ever read Nabokov's Lolita? Best book of the twentieth century, but old-fashioned my friend, old fuckin' fashioned. Same old story over and over again, one more guy mesmerized by his own dick, wandering around the wreckage of his life. Who the fuck cares about that? Give me the Knights of the Round Table! Give me Merlin! Or better, the "wine dark sea"! Much more interesting. — Eric Bogosian

Every midwife knows
that not until a mother's womb
softens from the pain of labor
will a way unfold
and the infant find that opening to be born.
Oh friend!
There is treasure in your heart,
it is heavy with child.
Listen.
All the awakened ones,
like trusted midwives are saying,
'welcome this pain.
It opens the dark passage of Grace. — Rumi

The bonding ceremony is a walk through our peers, a family member or friend usually leads those to be bonded down that path with a white laced leash."

"You want me to wear a collar!" He placed a hand around his neck instinctively.

Lorn lifted a dark eyebrow. "The leash doesn't go around your neck." He glanced between Kallen's legs. — James Cox

They're the strongest creatures I know and they'd make a formidable ally in the coming war. Perhaps ... just perhaps, Thirrin could make a friend of them and bring them into the struggle. If anyone can do it, she can. She could make peace between night and day, between dark and light if she wanted. — Stuart Hill

Then you know that Sam was the true hero of the tale,' Sayna said. 'That he faced far greater and more terrible foes than he ever should have had to face, and did so with courage. That he went alone into a black and terrible land, stormed a dark fortress, and resisted the most terrible temptation of his world for the sake of the friend he loved. That in the end, it was his actions and his actions alone that made it possible for light to overcome darkness. — Jim Butcher

That was just it. You never knew what lay ahead; the future was one thing that could never be broken, because it had not yet had the chance to be anything. One minute you're walking through a dark woods, alone, and then the landscape shifts, and you see it. Something wondrous and unexpected, almost magical, that you never would have found had you not kept going. Like a new friend who feels like an old one, or a memory you'll never forget. Maybe even a carousel. — Sarah Dessen

His story is colored by the murder of a brother, the rape of a sister, the betrayal of a friend, the pounding of nails into flesh and bone, and the darkening of the sky. A world of what-ifs and could-have-beens, peopled by has-beens and might-have-beens. It is a world soaked in fear and drenched by the blood of a million martyrs. A world of men burned at the stake and babes slaughtered at their mother's breasts. A dark history with pain oozing into all its hidden corners. At the center of history is a death. Christ's death, the decisive point of history. Christianity is perhaps the most morbid religion of the world. Perpetually meditating upon death with little crosses hung around their necks, Christian disciples sing their way to martyrdom. Anticipating death and calling it gain, Christians are evangelists of the grotesque. The very hope of the Gospel rests directly upon our ability to imagine a world in which suffering serves as the soil from which resurrection springs. — Ben Palpant

Got a light skinned friend, look like Michael Jackson,
Got a dark skinned friend, look like Michael Jackson. — Kanye West

The heart of a friend gives out sufficient light for us in the dark to rise by. — Helen Keller

Learn how to cope, sweet friend. There will always be dark days ahead. — Kris Carr

It looks as though your shop is doing well," Luka said gazing around, "Could you help me find a gift for a lady friend of mine?"
My heart plunged to my grenn satin slippers, and I had to stare down at Azarte for a minute, petting him hard. Naturally Luka had a "lady friend." She was probably nobly born: the daughter of a count or a duke. I imagined her having thick dark hair and clear skin, and was bitterly jealous. "Of course," I stammered after a time. "What would she like? A gown? A sash?" If she came in for a fitting, I decided to "accidentlly" poke her with every pin. — Jessica Day George

We are entering the Dark Ages, my friend, but this time there will be lots of neon, and screen savers, and street lighting. — Edward St. Aubyn

Though the Christian has no immunity from death and no claim to perpetual life on this planet, death is to him a friend rather than a foe, the beginning rather than the end, another step on the pathway to heaven rather than a leap into a dark unknown. — Billy Graham

If you don't think your anxiety, depression, sadness and stress impact your physical health, think again. All of these emotions trigger chemical reactions in your body, which can lead to inflammation and a weakened immune system. Learn how to cope, sweet friend. There will always be dark days. — Kris Carr

Light always trumps darkness. It always has, and it always will. Therefore ... if you believe that your world is darkening ... if you believe that the culture of your nation is growing dimmer by the year ... don't blame it on the dark! Darkness is only doing what darkness does.
If darkness is winning the battles, my friend, it is because light is not doing it's job. You are light. So wake up. Wake up. — Andy Andrews

Connor asked that I make you like me," Ashton casually says, easing his tight grip on my hips so that I'm not pressed directly against his erection, allowing me to breathe again. His mouth twists as if from something sour. "Since he really likes you." Then he sighs, looking over my head, as he adds, "And I'm his best friend." As if he's reminding himself of that. Right, Connor. I swallow. The mention of Connor and his feelings for me while my hands are still flattened against his best friend's chest, the one that I pawed repeatedly not even two weeks ago, fills me with guilt. "So?" Serious dark eyes lock on my face. "How do I do that, Irish? How do I make you like me? — K.A. Tucker

Dangerous as a lightning strike, as lethal as a pair of crisscrossing short swords, William whispered, "You're about to find out how your liver tastes, my friend."
"I have tasted it already," Zacharel said, his voice its usual monotone. The snowflakes began to fall in earnest, tiny at first, but growing in diameter. An arctic wind blustered around him. "It was a bit salty."
How the hell was a guy supposed to respond to that?
Apparently William didn't know, either, because he gaped at the angel. Then, "Maybe if you added a little pepper?"
O-kay. It was official. William had an answer for everything. — Gena Showalter

No, my friend," he responded finally. "I am not God, no more than you. But I think you and I are equally part of God as we stand here," and he swept his arm wide to take in all the slow, dark shiver of the sea as it breathed under the blue and silver morning. "Surely we two are not merely surrounded by this divine splendor - we both belong to it, we are of it, now and for always. How else should it be? — Peter S. Beagle

The world is going under, I thought, and this notion so little surprised me, it seemed as though I had been waiting a long time for just that to happen. But now, from amid the burning and collapsing city, I saw a boy come toward me. His hands were buried in his pockets and he hopped and skipped from one leg to another, resilient and light-hearted. Then he stopped and emitted an ingenious whistle
our signal from grade school days, and the boy was my friend who had shot himself when he was a student. Immediately I too became, like him, a boy of twelve, and the burning city and the distant thunder and the blustering storm of howling voices from all corners of the world sounded wondrously exquisite to our newly awakened ears. Now everything was good, and the dark nightmare in which I had lived for so many despairing years was gone forever. — Hermann Hesse

Wyatt was, in fact, finding the Christian system suspect. Memory of his fourth birthday party still weighted in his mind. It had been planned cautiously by Aunt May, to the exact number of hats and favors and portions of cake. One guest, no friend to Wyatt (from a family "less fortunate than we are"), showed up with a staunchly party-bent brother. (Not only no friend: a week before he had challenged Wyatt through the fence behind the carriage barn with - Nyaa nyaa, suckinyerma's ti-it-ty ... ) Wyatt was taken to a dark corner, where he later reckoned all Good works were conceived, and told that it was the Christian thing to surrender his portion. So he entered his fifth year hatless among crepe-paper festoons, silent amid snapping crackers, empty of Christian love for the uninvited who asked him why he wasn't having any cake. — William Gaddis

DRACO: My father thought he was protecting me. Most of the time. I think you have to make a choice - at a certain point - of the man you want to be. And I tell you that at a time you need a parent or a friend. And if you've learnt to hate your parent by then and you have no friends . . . then you're all alone. And being alone - that's so hard. I was alone. And it sent me to a truly dark place. For a long time. Tom Riddle was also a lonely child. You may not understand that, Harry, but I do - and I think Ginny does too. — Jack Thorne

The horror of what I saw chilled me to the bone. Blood glistened on my friend's lips. He knelt down and whispered something I could not hear. Star then stopped attacking, and to lay down to sleep. What the hell had he done to my dog? Just how much of a chance did I have to live through the next few moments of my life? I turned and ran as fast as I could, heart thudding in my chest. I ran down the pier, running for my life. Something came in front of me and grabbed me. It was Drew. He held my arms still in front of him. He stared intently into my eyes. — Stella Coulson

Have you ever had a difference with a dear friend? How his letters, written in the period of love and confidence, sicken and rebuke you! What a dreary mourning it is to dwell upon those vehement protests of dead affection! What lying epitaphs they make over the corpse of love! What dark, cruel comments upon Life and Vanities! Most of us have got or written drawers full of them. They are closet-skeletons which we keep and shun — William Makepeace Thackeray

Let me say right now for the record,
I'm still going to be here
asking this world to dance,
even if it keeps stepping on my holy feet.

You, you stay here with me, okay?
You stay here with me.

Raising your bite against the bitter dark,
your bright longing,
your brilliant fists of loss.
Friend, if the only thing we have to gain in staying is each other,
my god that is plenty
my god that is enough
my god that is so so much for the light to give
each of us at each other's backs
whispering over and over and over,
"Live. Live. Live. — Andrea Gibson

We sometimes choose the most locked up, dark versions of the story, but what a good friend does is turn on the lights, open the window, and remind us that there are a whole lot of ways to tell the same story. — Shauna Niequist

It had been in a Paris house, with many people around, and my dear friend Jules Darboux, wishing to do me a refined aesthetic favor, had touched my sleeve and said, "I want you to meet-" and led me to Nina, who sat in the corner of a couch, her body folded Z-wise, with an ashtray at her heel, and she took a long turquoise cigarette holder from her lips and joyfully, slowly exclaimed, "Well, of all people-" and then all evening my heart felt like breaking, as I passed from group to group with a sticky glass in my fist, now and then looking at her from a distance (she did not look ... ), and listening to scraps of conversation, and overheard one man saying to another, "Funny, how they all smell alike, burnt leaf through whatever perfume they use, those angular dark-haired girls," and as it often happens, a trivial remark related to some unknown topic coiled and clung to one's own intimate recollection, a parasite of its sadness. — Vladimir Nabokov

Those who live with insomnia and who consider sleep both an enemy and a gift will understand the following. Some of us cannot comprehend how anyone except the very good or those who have no conscience at all can sleep from dark to dawn without dreaming or waking. We hear William Blake's tiger padding softly through a green jungle, his stripes glowing, his whiskers spotted with gore. Psychoanalysis does no good. Neither does a health regimen that induces physical exhaustion. The only solution that is guaranteed is the one provided by our old friend Morpheus, who requires our souls in the bargain. — James Lee Burke

And he knew that he would never come again, and that lost magic would not come again. Lost now was all of it-the street, the heat, King's Highway, and Tom the Piper's son, all mixed in with the vast and drowsy murmur of the Fair, and with the sense of absence in the afternoon, and the house that waited, and the child that dreamed. And out of the enchanted wood, that thicket of man's memory, Eugene knew that the dark eye and the quiet face of his friend and brother-poor child, life's stranger, and life's exile, lost like all of us, a cipher in blind mazes, long ago-the lost boy was gone forever, and would not return. — Thomas Wolfe

When fear actually turns into a friend. When you open your eyes and all you see is the dark because it's been so long since you've seen the light. — Rachel Van Dyken

The man holding my hand was slim and wiry. Cropped black hair framed a face full of angles. He studied me with more curiosity than sympathy.

He had the rough-edged look of a suspect on Crime Stoppers, complete with dark, piercing eyes.
"My name is Kieran." He eased his hand away from mine, as though embarrassed by his earlier compassion. "A friend brought you here. — Sharon Hinck

Are you lost?"
I turned around. "Excuse me?"
Two guys were sprawled on a bench close to the sidewalk. The one who had spoken wore tattered shorts and a colonial three-cornered hat-nothing else. He had wide shoulders and long, muscular legs. He stretched dramatically, then lay his tanned arm along the back of the bench. "You look lost," he said. "Can I help you find something?"
"Uh, no, thanks. I was just looking."
He grinned. "Me too."
"Oh?" I glanced around, thinking I'd missed something. "At what?"
He and his friend burst out laughing.
Way to go, Lauren, I thought. He had been looking at me! — Elizabeth Chandler

When I woke in the dark I was smiling - it's a happy thing to brace for a visit from old friend Envy who then for some reason never shows up. — Leif Enger

Then meditate on your perceptions. The Buddha observed, "The person who suffers most in this world is the person who has many wrong perceptions, and most of our perceptions are erroneous." You see a snake in the dark and you panic, but when your friend shines a light on it, you see that it is only a rope. You have to know which wrong perceptions cause you to suffer. Please write beautifully the sentence, "Are you sure?" on a piece of paper and tape it to your wall. Love meditation helps you learn to look with clarity and serenity in order to improve the way you perceive. — Thich Nhat Hanh

I know exactly how you feel," Schmendrick said eagerly. The unicorn looked at him out of dark, endless eyes, and he smiled nervously and looked at his hands. "It's a rare man who is taken for what he truly is," he said. "There is much misjudgment in the world. Now I knew you for a unicorn when I first saw you, and I know that I am your friend. Yet you take me for a clown, or a clod, or a betrayer, and so must I be if you see me so. The magic on you is only magic and will vanish as soon as you are free, but the enchantment of error that you put on me I must wear forever in your eyes. We are not always what we seem, and hardly ever what we dream. Still I have read, or heard it sung, that unicorns when time was young, could tell the difference 'twixt the two - the false shining and the true, the lips' laugh and the heart's rue. — Peter S. Beagle

That's always been part of my goal - to show the dark side of women. Men write about bad men all the time, and they're called antiheroes. ... What I read and what I go to the movies for is not to find a best friend, not to find inspirations, not necessarily for a hero's journey. It's to be involved with characters that are maybe incredibly different from me, that may be incredibly bad but that feel authentic. — Gillian Flynn

He didn't call me for a few weeks. This was customary within our friendship, confide and retreat, but I wondered. I wondered if perhaps our last conversation had been an overture. Not the conversation, exactly, but the silences within it. There had been many dark pits of tea-sipping silence; looking back, I could imagine placing my hand on his hand while kneeling in one of these dark pits. And in such a pit could one even be sure what one was doing? One might seek solace in a friend and literally go inside this friend to get the solace; and the friend, being old and familiar, might give especially good solace. — Miranda July

I would always have been the geek who's your friend. I will never be the dark guy with a sensitive side, as much as I yearn to be. — Jon Cryer

Do you know my friend that each one of us is a dark mystery, a maze of conflicting passions and desire and aptitudes? — Agatha Christie

The eyes of his friend were moist and dark, and in them he saw the little rectangled pictures of himself that he had watched a thousand times. — Carson McCullers

As a kid, I imagined lots of different scenarios for my life. I would be an astronaut. Maybe a cartoonist. A famous explorer or rock star. Never once did I see myself standing under the window of a house belonging to some druggie named Carbine, waiting for his yard gnome to steal his stash so I could get a cab back to a cheap motel where my friend, a neurotic, death-obsessed dwarf, was waiting for me so we could get on the road to an undefined place and a mysterious Dr. X, who would cure me of mad cow disease and stop a band of dark energy from destroying the universe. — Libba Bray

Bryce looked like a California underwear model. Not that I'd thought about him in his underwear.
Much.
He was talking with his friend Nathan. Where Bryce had the whole tan, blond, hazel-eyed thing going on, Nathan was fair with dark hair and dark eyes. They looked like opposite sides of the same coin. A really hot, totally unreachable coin that a collector would keep in a special locked case, which normal girls like myself were not allowed to touch. — Chris Cannon

First the mania for confession,
then the mania for clarity,
issued from you, dark, hypocritical
sentiment! Let them now
condemn my every passion, let them
drag me through the mud, call me twisted,
foul pervert, dilettante, perjurer;
you keep me apart, give me life's assurance:
I burn at the stake, play the card of fire
and win: I win this small,
vast possession, my infinite,
miserable pity
which makes even righteous anger my friend.
And I can do this because I've endured you too long! — Pier Paolo Pasolini

But Malone was thinking now and as he watched the men lighting cigarettes for each other in the dark, having sex beneath the trees, he turned to his friend and said in a wondering voice: Isn't it strange that when we fall in love, this great dream we have, this extraordinary disease, the only thing in which either one of us is interested, it's inevitably with some perfectly ordinary drip who for some reason we cannot define is the magic bearer, the magician, the one who brings all this to us. Why? — Andrew Holleran

Bumblebee," he said as the kitchen went dark. "I want you to thank your friend next time you see him."
"My friend?"
"Yeah. The boy who was with you last night. What's his name?"
"Wesley," I muttered.
"Right," Dad said. "Well, I deserved it. He was brave to do what he did. I don't know what's going on between you two, but I'm glad you have a friend who's willing to stand up for you. So please tell him I said thanks. — Kody Keplinger

Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light. — Helen Keller

What is interesting is that elephants can accurately and reliably figure out who is friend and who is foe. Compare this to us humans, who still walk down dark alleys at night, fall for Ponzi schemes, and buy lemons from used-car salesmen. — Jodi Picoult

The dark is your friend, isn't it? When you turn on the light, it makes the dark your enemy ... and it glowers in at you resentfully. — L.M. Montgomery

The marquis de Carabas looked up at him. His eyes were very white in the moonlight. And he whispered, What's it like being dead? It's very cold, my friend. Very dark, and very cold. — Neil Gaiman

I melt and swell at the moment of landing when one wheel thuds on the runway but the plane leans to one side and hangs in the decision to right itself or roll. For this moment, nothing matters. Look up into the stars and you're gone. Not your luggage. Nothing matters. Not your bad breath. The windows are dark outside and the turbine engines roar backward. The cabin hangs at the wrong angle under the roar of the turbines, and you will never have to file another expense account claim. Receipt required for items over twenty-five dollars. You will never have to get another haircut.
A thud, and the second wheel hits the tarmac. The staccato of a hundred seat-belt buckles snapping open, and the single-use friend you almost died sitting next to says:
I hope you make your connection.
Yeah, me too.
And this is how long your moment lasted. And life goes on. — Chuck Palahniuk

When I was a child and heard about angels, I was both frightened and fascinated by the thought of these enormous, invisible presences in our midst. I conceived of them not as white-robed androgynes with yellow locks and thick gold wings, which was how my friend Matty Wilson had described them to me
Matty was the predecessor of all sorts of arcane knowledge
but as big, dark, blundering men, massive in their weightlessness, given to pranks and ponderous play, who might knock you over, or break you in half, without meaning to. When a child from Miss Molyneaux's infant school in Carrickdrum fell under the hoofs of a dray-horse one day and was trampled to death, I, a watchful six year old, knew who was to blame; I pictured his guardian angel standing over the child's crushed form with his big hands helplessly extended, not sure whether to be contrite or to laugh. — John Banville

Somewhere in the city, an orange cat finished chewing on a marjoram plant next to his studio apartment's door and leapt purring onto the shoulder of his owner, home early from work. Somewhere in the city, a young Chinese pianist sat down at a rehearsal hall and let his fingers play the first opening notes of the Emperor Concerto, notes that would envelop the small girl in row D of the Philharmonic that night in a shimmering cloud. A boy in Staten Island touched his finger to the lower back of the girl who had been just a friend until then. A woman in Hell's Kitchen stood in her dark attic garret, her paintbrush in hand, and stepped back from the painting of chartreuse highway and forest-green sky that had taken her two years to complete. A clerk in a Brooklyn bodega tapped her crimson fingernail on a box of gripe water, reassuring the new mother holding a wailing baby, and the mother's grateful smile almost made both of them cry themselves. — Stephanie Clifford

Walking the streets on winter nights kept him warm, despite the cold nocturnal passions of uprising winds. His footsteps led between trade-marked houses, two up and two down, with digital chimneys like pigs' tits on the rooftops sending up heat and smoke into the cold trough of a windy sky. Stars hid like snipers, taking aim now and again when clouds gave them a loophole. Winter was an easy time for him to hide his secrets, for each dark street patted his shoulder and became a friend, and the gaseous eye of each lamp glowed unwinking as he passed. — Alan Sillitoe