Distance Between Two Quotes & Sayings

Just as no significant work of art can be created without the element of irrationality that is in fact the artist's talent." p.179
"He wondered if there was a greater distance than the one between two people in the same bed pretending to sleep." p.213 — Henning Mankell

The two elements of the suburban pattern that cause the greatest problems are the extreme separation of uses and the vast distances between things — James Howard Kunstler

It had always been the two of them through everything -every adventure and every expedition- and now there was this awful distance between them, and she tried not to think about all the stories they were missing out on, all the litle moments and bigger milestones that had happened over the past few weeks without the other knowing — Jennifer E. Smith

We grow up hearing so often that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points that we end up thinking it is also the best way to get there. A river knows better-:it has to do with how it dissipates the energy of its flow most efficiently; and how, in its bends, the sediment deposited soon turns into marshes and swampy islands, harboring all manner of interesting life, imparting charm and character to the whole waterway. I would defy you to find a river on this planet that prefers to run straight, unless it has been taught so by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. — Thomas W. Horton

The distance between me and Benny [Goodman], was that I was trying to play a musical thing, and Benny was trying to swing. Benny had great fingers; I'd never deny that. But listen to our two versions of 'Star Dust.' I was playing; he was swinging. — Artie Shaw

Thus, the distance between any two galaxies increases in time, creating the illusion of mechanical motion. But in reality, galaxies just sit there, contemplating the spectacle of the universe creating more and more space in between them. — Joao Magueijo

As regards obstacles, the shortest distance between two points can be a curve. — Bertolt Brecht

A buddha lives in the orgasmic state for twenty-four hours, day in and day out. Between the day Gautama Buddha became enlightened and the day he died there is a distance of forty-two years. For these forty-two years he was utterly in an orgasmic state. Just think! Those few moments you have are nothing compared to a Buddha's. — Osho

Everywhere he looked he saw families reunited, and finally, he saw the two whose company he craved most.
"It's me," he muttered, crouching down between them. "Will you come with me?"
They stood up at once, and together he, Ron, and Hermione left the Great Hall. Great chunks were missing from the marble staircase, part of the balustrade gone, and rubble and bloodstains occurred every few steps as they climbed.
Somewhere in the distance they could hear Peeves zooming through the corridors singing a victory song of his own composition:

We did it, we bashed them, wee Potter's the one,
And Voldy's gone moldy, so now let's have fun!

"Really gives a feeling for the scope and tragedy of the thing, doesn't it?" said Ron, pushing open a door to let Harry and Hermione through. — J.K. Rowling

It's a grace feather. See how its colors shift from green to blue, like the sea? It means remembrance. It shows that no distance, no amount of water between two people, will make them forget. Someone gave it to say that they remembered you. — Kirsty Logan

Every star has its own orbit; and between it and its nearest neighbor there is not only a powerful attraction but an infinite distance. When the attraction becomes stronger than the distance the two do not embrace: they crash together in ruin. — George Bernard Shaw

People have become afraid of love because in love also, death penetrates. If two lovers are sitting side by side in deep love and intimacy, not even talking ... Talking is an escape, an escape from love. When two lovers are talking that simply shows they are avoiding the intimacy. Words in-between give distance - with no words distance disappears, death appears. In silence there is death just lurking around - a beautiful phenomenon. But people are so afraid that they go on talking whether it is needed or not. They go on talking about anything, everything - but they cannot keep silent. — Rajneesh

In philosophy, as in politics, the longest distance between two points is a straight line. — Will Durant

You are weak, Savannah. I can feel it when our minds merge."
"Stay out of my mind. You certainly weren't invited." Her hands went to her hips. "And just for the record, your mind needs to be washed out with soap! Half the things you think we're going to do are never going to happen. I could never look at you again."
He laughed. Aloud.An actual, real laugh. It welled up unexpectedly and emerged low and husky, with genuine amusement. Gregori nearly leapt the distance between them and dragged her into his arms, grateful beyond imagining.
She flung a pillow at his head. "Go ahead and laugh, you arrogant jerk." She wished she had a two-by-four handy. — Christine Feehan

It's amazing how much distance one truth can create between two people. — Colleen Hoover

Time-space as commonly understood, in the sense of the distance measured between two time-points, is the result of time calculation. — Martin Heidegger

I could not disagree more," said Ganesh, my father giving me a hidden wink. "If we build toward them they'll see it as hostile and we'll be pulled into a confrontation. Now, I agree that we've got to expand - these last few days in Bridewell have clearly shown that. Within a few years Bridewell and the towns against the sea will be at maximum capacity, and then what will we do? We have over ten miles between us and Ainsworth, which I think is a good healthy distance. We can't expand off the cliffs from Lathbury or Turlock, so those are dead ends. Bridewell is stuck in the middle with no place to grow. I think our best option is to start building two-and three-story buildings. Grow up instead of out. We could grow to twice our size if we just abolished the single-level rule. — Patrick Carman

All great artists know that part of their task is to light up the distance between two human beings. — Nadeem Aslam

For authors, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line only if you are writing the letter I. — Michael A. Arnzen

The distance between an honest Christian mystic and a fortune-teller is sometimes less than half a whisper. Less than a pot of tea or the space between two book covers. — Cherie Priest

So we must run back and forth between these two suns in our firmament - the presentiment of death and awareness of life - and avoid being transfixed by either of them. If we are lucky in this uncertain middle distance, we may form attachments and projects that enhance the sentiment of life. However, even as we try our luck, death comes to us, and brings our experiment to a end. — Roberto Mangabeira Unger

Silence has many dimensions. It can be a regression and an escape, a loss of self, or it can be presence, awareness, unification, self-discovery. Negative silence blurs and confuses our identity, and we lapse into daydreams or diffuse anxieties. Positive silence pulls us together and makes us realize who we are, who we might be, and the distance between these two. — Thomas Merton

Difficult is a far cry from impossible. The distance between these two lies hope. Hope and fear cannot occupy the same space at the same time. Invite one to stay. — Maya Angelou

It seemed that we loved each other better when there were large swaths of two continents between us. The daily work of love was often hard to perform at home. — Aleksandar Hemon

Whether for good or evil, it is sadly inevitable that all political leadership requires the artifices of theatrical illusion. In the politics of a democracy, the shortest distance between two points is often a crooked line. — Arthur Miller

Time is the longest distance between two places. — Tamara Ireland Stone

As he spoke, he whipped a tape measure and a large round magnifying glass from his pocket. With these two implements he trotted noiselessly about the room, sometimes stopping, occasionally kneeling, and once lying flat upon his face ... As I watched him I was irresistibly reminded of a pure-blooded well-trained foxhound as it dashes backwards and forwards through the covert, whining in its eagerness, until it comes across the lost scent. For twenty minutes or more he continued his researches, measuring with the most exact care the distance between marks which were entirely invisible to me, and occasionally applying his tape to the walls in an equally incomprehensible manner. — Arthur Conan Doyle

The shortest distance between two idiots is a conga line. — Demetri Martin

You could tell them why they should hire you so very much better than I could. But they won't listen to you and they'll listen to me. Because I'm the middleman. The shortest distance between two points is not a straight line
it's a middleman. And the more middlemen, the shorter. Such is the psychology of a pretzel. — Ayn Rand

Kahana was the first to close the distance between them, joining their two universes into one. Stars exploded and meteors crashed into planets as they shared a kiss that felt like more than just magic. It was love. — Aishabella Sheikh

Disharmony prevails when you confuse
Lust with LOVE, while the distance
between the two is endless! — Rumi

It's not where you start or where you finish. It is the distance between the two. — David Icke

Was she Minh Thuy, finally, or was she Jenny? But the time when there had been a meaningful difference between the two would come to seem like a tiny neighborhood where you couldn't decide which house was yours. Which felt important when you were high above, you thought, in the foothills, but not so much at the truer remove of a continent, where the lives you'd lived and the places you'd come from, dwindled to a single point on the horizon, in the incorrigibly distant past. — Garth Risk Hallberg

The anger and shame of these women I hold in one hand, and the basin in the other. The distance between the two, the length I pace and try to measure, is the size of an abortion. — Sallie Tisdale

Think of something useless, and that's probably what I'll be doing. Listen, Virginia, we need to love the useless. We need to raise pigeons without a thought of eating them, plant rose bushes without expecting to pick roses, write without aiming at publication. We need to do things without expecting benefits in return. The shortest distance between two points may be a straight line, but it's in the curving paths that the best things are found ... We must love the useless, because there is beauty in uselessness. — Lygia Fagundes Telles

The smallest breach of royal behaviour is deserving of complaint. After a film premiere, she attended a party where she enjoyed a long conversation with Liza Minnelli. The following morning it was pointed out that it was not done to attend these occasions. It had a happy result however. She enjoyed a rapport with the Hollywood star who talked at length about her difficult life and told her simply that when she felt down she thought of Diana and that helped her endure. It was a touching and very honest conversation between two women who have suffered much in life and has since formed the basis of a long-distance friendship. — Andrew Morton

It's true that when we get caught in the spider's web - between the first chance event and the second - we fantasize endlessly and are, at the same time, willing to make do with the tiniest crumb, with hearing him - as if he were the time itself that exists between those two chance events - smelling him, glimpsing him, sensing his presence, knowing that he is still on our horizon, from which he has not entirely vanished, and that we cannot yet see, in the distance, the dust from his fleeing feet. — Javier Marias

The joy of meeting and the sorrow of separation ... we should welcome these gifts ... with our whole soul, and experience to the full, and with the same gratitude, all the sweetness or bitterness as the case may be. Meeting and separation are two forms of friendship that contain the same good, in the one case through pleasure and in the other through sorrow ... Soon there will be distance between us. Let us love this distance which is wholly woven of friendship, for those who do not love each other are not separated. — Simone Weil

Even if you can't just snap your fingers and make a dream come true, you can travel in the direction of your dream, every single day and you can shorten the distance between the two of you. — Douglas Pagels

Curve: The loveliest distance between two points. — Mae West

In magic - and in life - there is only the present moment, the now. You can't measure time the way you measure the distance between two points. 'Time' doesn't pass. We human beings have enormous difficulty in focusing on the present; we're always thinking about what we did, about how we could have done it better, about the consequences of our actions, and about why we didn't act as we should have. Or else we think about the future, about what we're going to do tomorrow, what precautions we should take, what dangers await us around the next corner, how to avoid what we don't want and how to get what we have always dreamed of. — Paulo Coelho

Sometimes the shortest distance between two points is a winding path walked arm in arm. — Robert Breault

There were no witnesses to what was about to happen. 'Happen' didn't yet exist. Reality was timeless. Space also didn't exist. The distance between two points was immeasurable. The points themselves could be anywhere, hovering and bouncing. Infinity tangled into itself. There was no here and now. Only Being. — Marcelo Gleiser

Between any two beings there is a unique, uncrossable distance, an unenterable sanctuary. Sometimes it takes the shape of aloneness. Sometimes it takes the shape of love. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Wind, weather, power, load - gradually these elements stop churning in my mind. It's less a decision of logic than a feeling, the kind of feeling that comes when you gauge the distance to be jumped between two stones across a brook. Something within you disengages itself from your body and travels ahead with your vision to make the test. You can feel it try the jump as you stand looking. Then uncertainty gives way to the conviction that it can or can't be done. — Charles Lindbergh

A material thing is first of all "the only bridge of communication between two minds." The bridge is a passage, but it is also distance maintained. The materiality of the book keeps two minds at an equal distance, whereas explication is the annihilation of one mind by another. — Jacques Ranciere

Intuitively, she sensed Leonardo's gaze on her, and she caught sight of him near the entrance to the balcony. He was watching her, though he should have been engrossed in the conversation with the two other people with whom he was standing, one of which was the redhead. Even from that distance across the room, she could sense his desire for her, and there was an answering pounding of the blood in her veins as their gazes locked.

Maybe it was the kiss between Russell and Joan and the romantic notion of long-lasting love, but Alexa found her thoughts straying to memories of sharing passionate kisses with Leonardo. She carefully placed her glass of wine on the table before it slipped from her damp fingers and crashed onto the expensive white carpet. She felt nervous and jittery because she knew the reason for Leonardo's smoldering scrutiny. She was fully aware of what was expected of her, and she found herself breathlessly anticipating the end of the evening. — Delaney Diamond

Shortest distance between two points is not a straight line - it's a middleman. — Ayn Rand

The straightest line between a straight distance is two points. — George Carlin

Recreational shopping is the shortest distance between two points: you and broke. — Victoria Moran

The distance between number one and number two is always a constant. If you want to improve the organization, you have to improve yourself and the organization gets pulled up with you. That is a big lesson. I cannot just expect the organization to improve if I don't improve myself and lift the organization, because that distance is a constant. — Indra Nooyi

In life, there is only the present moment, the now. You can't measure time the way you measure distance between two points. "Time" doesn't pass. — Paulo Coelho

When I'm acting, I'm two beings. There's the one monitoring the distance between myself and the camera, making sure I hit my marks, and there is the one driven by this inner fire, this delicious fear. — Jeanne Moreau

The twin guardian angels whose eyes and hands and wings had focused protective attention on the souls that lay there no longer faced each other. They stared blindly into a random middle distance. The scroll they held between them proclaiming eternal resurrection was broken in two. — Clare Morgan

The shortest distance between two jokes makes a perfect speech. — Orlando Aloysius Battista

Lack of communication can drive a spike between two people wider than any physical distance. — Mark W. Boyer

As far as he was concerned, all women wanted all men. And vice versa. What stood in the way between a man and a woman at Cafe Algiers was a few chairs, a table, maybe a door
material distance. All a man needed was the will and above all the patience to wait out a woman's scruples or help her brush them aside. As in a game of penny poker, he explained, all that matters was simply the will to keep raising the pot by a single penny each time; a single penny, not two; a single penny was easy, you wouldn't even feel it; but you had to wait for her to raise you by a penny as well, which is when you'd raise her by another, she by yet another, and so on. Seduction was not pushing people into doing things they did not wish to do. Seduction was just keeping the pennies coming. — Andre Aciman

A shortcut is the longest distance between two points. — Charles Issawi

To our hearts revealed
As dreams flow through
No distance exists at all
Between we two — Ron Bishop

In the various arts, and above all in that of writing, the shortest distance between two points, even if close to each other, has never been and never will be, nor is it now, what is known as a straight line, never, never, to put it strongly and emphatically in response to any doubts, to silence them once and for all. — Jose Saramago

[T]he distance between sympathy and sensuality is as short as that which separates those two words in the dictionary. — Pitigrilli

Immeasurable space.
Closeness.
The shortest distance between two women. — Kris Radish

We don't have anything in common. We just complement each other. You don't have to do everything together; you need some distance between you. But there's no ideal distance and there are only two possibilities: either you reduce the distance or you enlarge it. And because we want to reduce the distance, we're going to get married. Some time or another. — Eva Heller

I may not be great at geometry but I know one theorum. The longest distance between two points is you and your parents. — Jane Wagner

The shortest distance between any two points on a golf course is a straight line that passes directly through the center of a very large tree. — Confucius

It was hard to stay angry when I felt so sad. I would rather have felt angry, but instead, all I could do was sob. Even though people had been coming over all day, the house seemed so lonely that I couldn't stand it.
The room grew somewhat dimmer. I didn't move as it grew dimmer still. Then, with a start, I hurried outside and ran to the alley in back of our house. Through a break between the buildings, I saw that the sun hung low over the horizon. I watched it until it started to hide between two trees in the distance. Then I climbed on a car and watched until only half of the sun was visible, and then a quarter, and then I felt a huge sickening panic inside of me and ran as hard as I could to a ladder I saw down the alley. I rushed up the ladder and climbed on the roof of somebody's garage. I saw the sun again, a quarter of it, and then a slice, and then it disappeared, the last time ever that the sun would set on a day my sister had lived. — Cynthia Kadohata

A straight line is not the shortest distance between two points. — Madeleine L'Engle

The shortest distance between two points is the line from me to you. — Fisher Amelie

It has been observed that the height of a man from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot is equal to the distance between the tips of the middle fingers of the two hands when extended in a straight line. — Pliny The Elder

You can kill people with sound. And if you can kill, then maybe there is also the sound that is opposite of killing. And the distance between these two points is very big. And you are free
you can choose. In art everything is possible, but everything is not necessary. — Arvo Part

Six-Pack didn't despise George W. Bush to the degree that Ketchum did, but she thought the president was a smirking twerp and a dumbed-down daddy's boy, and she agreed with Ketchum's assessment that Bush would be as worthless as wet crap in even the smallest crisis. If a fight broke out between two small dogs, for example, Ketchum claimed that Bush would call the fire department and ask them to bring a hose; then the president would position himself at a safe distance from the dogfight, and wait for the firemen to show up. The part Pam liked best about this assessment was that Ketchum said the president would instantly look self-important, and would appear to be actively involved
that is, once the firefighters and their hose arrived, and provided there was anything remaining of the mess the two dogs might have made of each other in the interim. — John Irving

We are, all four of us, blood relatives, and we speak a kind of esoteric, family language, a sort of semantic geometry in which the shortest distance between any two points is a fullish circle. — J.D. Salinger

The straight line is regarded as the shortest distance between two people, as if they were points. — Theodor Adorno

The worst distance between two people is misunderstanding — Neetesh Dixit

He takes my face with two hands. His eyes drink in every part, and then a slight pause, hesitation perhaps. For a moment, he turns away and then with the same intensity as when he closed the distance between us, he pulls me against him and kisses me. He kisses me firmly with his soft and hungry mouth. He tastes salty and sweet, and I fall deep into a blinding torrent of wonder. — Cindy Martinusen Coloma

A complete sharing between two people is an impossibility and whenever it seems, nevertheless, to exist, it is a narrowing, a mutual agreement which robs either one member or both of his fullest freedom and development. But, once the realization is accepted that, even between the closest human beings, infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole and against a wide sky! — Rainer Maria Rilke

Poetry is the shortest distance between two humans. — Lawrence Ferlinghetti

The word hammockable (describing two trees that are the perfect distance apart between which a hammock can be hung) is not in the dictionary, but it should be. [Of lying in hammocks] — Dan Kieran

When the boy begins to understand that the visible point is preceded by an invisible point, that the shortest distance between two points is conceived as a straight line before it is ever drawn with pencil and paper ... the fountain of all thought has been opened to him ... the philosopher can reveal him nothing new, as a geometrician he has discovered the basis of all thought. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Meaning was not a pitch but an interval. It sprang from the depth of disjunction, the distance between one circuit's center and the edge of another. Representation caught the sign napping, with its semantic pants down. Sense lay in metaphor's embarrassment at having two takes on the same thing. For the first time, I understand Emerson's saying about the use of life being to learn metonymy. Life *was* metonymy, or at least stood for it. — Richard Powers

There was an abyss between myself and my love. I could not interpret the voiding distance. I supposed later that my attempts at interpretation of the abyss between myself and my love, or otherwise put, my love and my love, were themselves partially successful interpretive gestures.
I also realized that the abyss came about on account of the very account that I was loving. I assumed that interpretation would inscribe a course for the two things, my love and my love, to seek out and find each other. — Brandon Brown

English people are famous for never speaking out but only saying what they really feel about you behind your back. Americans believe the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. I like exploring those, er, differences in national snippiness. — Rachel Johnson

Laughter is the closest distance between two people. — Victor Borge

We may be only one of millions of advanced civilizations. Unfortunately, space being spacious, the average distance between any two of these civilizations is reckoned to be at least two hundred light-years, which is a great deal more than merely saying it makes it sound. It means for a start that even if these beings know we are here and are somehow able to see us in their telescopes, they're watching light that left Earth two hundred years ago. So, they're not seeing you and me. They're watching the French Revolution and Thomas Jefferson and people in silk stockings and powdered wigs
people who don't know what an atom is, or a gene, and who make their electricity by rubbing a rod of amber with a piece of fur and think that's quite a trick. Any message we receive from them is likely to begin "Dear Sire," and congratulate us on the handsomness of our horses and our mastery of whale oil. Two hundred light-years is a distance so far beyond us as to be, well, just beyond us. — Bill Bryson

What's happening is the language. Not only in the usual sense of being interesting (which it is), but in the new sense that words are events, as real and important in themselves as wars and lovers ... It is to the word, then, that the mind moves, and the word responds by taking on a physicality, even a sensuality, we have all been trained to ignore. Words have weight, and the distance between two can be a chasm filled with forces of association ... What Clark is doing is genuinely new. — Ron Silliman

It's a big thing now: A lot of people want to be assistants to celebrities. If you're pursuing that, you're an idiot. You're a moron. The shortest distance between two points is not a celebrity, or being next to a celebrity. — Lewis Black

All of a sudden I understand why I like Aliki Barnstones poems so much. They remind me of the one she has studied most - shall we call her her master - Emily Dickinson. Not in the forms, not, as such, in the music, and not in the references; but in that weird intimacy, that eerie closeness, that absolute confession of soul ... In Barnstone, too, the two worlds are intensely present, and the voice moves back and forth between them. She has the rare art of distance and closeness. It gives her her fine music, her wisdom, her form. She is a fine poet. — Gerald Stern

One cold winter's day a number of porcupines huddled together quite closely in order, through their mutual warmth, to prevent themselves from being frozen. But they soon felt the effects of their quills on one another, which made them again move apart. Now, when the need for warmth once again brought them together, the drawback of the quills was repeated so they were tossed between two evils, until they discovered the proper distance from which they could best tolerate one another. Thus the needs for society, which springs from the emptiness and monotony of men's lives, drives them together but their many unpleasant and repulsive qualities once more drive them apart. — Irvin D. Yalom

The clock is Shandy's first symbol: under its influence, he is conceived and his misfortunes begin, which are the same thing according to this sign of time. Death is hidden in clocks, as Belli said, along with the unhappiness of individual life, of this fragment, of this thing that is divided, disintegrated, deprived of wholeness - death, which is time, the time of individuation, of separation, the abstract time that rolls toward its end. Tristram Shandy doesn't want to be born because he doesn't want to die. Any means, any weapon, can be used to save oneself from death and time. If a straight line is the shortest distance between two fatal, inescapable points, then digressions lengthen that line - and if these digressions become so complex, tangled, tortuous, and so rapid as to obscure their own tracks, then perhaps death won't find us again, perhaps time will lose its way, perhaps we'll be able to remain concealed in our ever-changing hiding places. These — Italo Calvino

You can't measure time the way you measure the distance between two points. — Paulo Coelho

From The Self-Mover's Bible; The Longest Distance between Two Points is a Shortcut

Most of us look at a map and instinctively plot a trip based on the shortest distance or as the crow flies. The difference here is that you aren't flying a crow you're driving a truck. Unless you are personally familiar with the alternative route your quickest and safest route is the Interstate. 500 miles of smooth sailing on a six-lane highway takes less time to drive than 400 miles on winding two-lane country roads. The Interstate was made for trucks. — Jerry G. West

Two people may have one sensitivity, one action, one reaction and one feeling; it doesn't matter how much time and distance they have between themselves-that is the state of ultimate love. — Harbhajan Singh Yogi

When you dance, you measure distance as if it's a solid thing; you make precise judgments every time two bodies exist in relation to each other. So I knew right away the definition of the space between us. — David Levithan

Stairs incorporate three pieces of geometry: rise, going, and pitch. The rise is the height between steps, the going is the step itself (technically, the distance between the leading edges, or nosings, of two successive steps measured horizontally), and the pitch is the overall steepness of the stairway. — Bill Bryson

Between what i see in a field and what I see in another field
There passes for a moment the figure of a man.
His steps go with "him" in the same reality,
But I look at him and them, and they're two things:
The "man" goes walking with his ideas, false and foreign,
And his steps go with the ancient system that makes legs walk.
I see him from a distance without any opinion at all.
How perfect that he is in him what he is - his body,
His true reality which doesn't have desires or hopes,
But muscles and the sure and impersonal way of using them. — Alberto Caeiro

Before embarking on a voyage, first speak with the ancient sailors, listen to and understand the winds, then patiently make a boat and sail. Yet, even then, be open to other dreams, changes, circumstances. Throughout our lives, we limit ourselves to fixed goals, only to get on the local ferry and just travel the distance between two known points. Yet, we create an illusion of freedom and choice, accompanied by a sense of independence. Thus, we carefully study weather reports, ride on the port side on odd numbered days, starboard on holidays, have tea at fixed times, never speak with those who wear glasses, always smile at those who wear green and of course allow ourselves just the slight possibility of a dream about jumping ship and going off to our island one day.
C'est la vie? Our predictably totalitarian lives are an insult to the human spirit. — Gunduz Vassaf

Instead of winding and skirting, Roman roads tend to go straight to the top. The chariots were light and the shortest distance between two points seemed to have governed their surveyors. I've read that some of their roadbeds go down twelve feet. — Frances Mayes

Right on cue, the ground came whipping up beneath them. No longer simply held aloft by anti-gravity units, the vehicle's futuristic replacements for wheels could be put to work. Bigger, beefier versions of the same things that made his delivery bike work, the repulsors used the interplay between two tangible energy fields to create a synchronized wave pattern capable of instituting temporary charge differences between the vehicle and road surface for the purposes of facilitating the attraction and repulsion necessary to maintain an approximately constant distance. In other words, he had traction now. — Joseph R. Lallo

Coneybeare didn't put his cigarette out. He merely let it slip from between his long fingers, and it fell down the space between the stairs. Barnes watched, dismayed at the distance, as the red ember disappeared in the darkness, and then, like Coneybeare, he did the same, dropping his cigarette and counting one one thousand, two one thousand, as it fell, a disappearing red dot in the darkness below. — Joseph G. Peterson

The mystery of the evening-star brilliant in silence and distance between the downward-surging plunge of the sun and the vast, hollow seething of inpouring night. The magnificence of the watchful morning-star, that watches between the night and the day, the gleaming clue to the two opposites. — D.H. Lawrence