Quotes & Sayings About Falling And Standing Up

Then instead of hurrying he was standing still, he was very tired and sweating under the heavy coat, and looking up he saw a white shining fan, spreading over the sky, like light from a door slowly opening, and he knew the moon was coming out of the clouds. Then he looked over the sea and there were islands it seemed, and then a great migration of birds thickened the air and he was in a rushing of wings, the wings beat so dark and fast round him he felt dizzy like falling and the moon disappeared. And then it was clear again, brilliant moonlight, and there, ahead, bright as day, were all the small islands, Cape Promise, and the bay of Mairangi, wide, still, unbelievably peaceful under the full moon. And then he did know where he was going. — Anna Kavan

Yeah," Chris said. "I lose a couple limbs getting drunk and falling into harvesting combine, I'm an idiot. I lose the same limbs because I happened to be standing next to the right door when the ship was damaged, I'm a hero. — James S.A. Corey

How did you fall in, Eeyore?" asked Rabbit, as he dried him with Piglet's handkerchief.
"I didn't," said Eeyore.
"But how
"
"I was BOUNCED," said Eeyore.
"Oo," said Roo excitedly, "did somebody push you?"
"Somebody BOUNCED me. I was just thinking by the side of the river
thinking, if any of you know what that means
when I received a loud BOUNCE."
"Oh, Eeyore!" said everybody.
"Are you sure you didn't slip?" asked Rabbit wisely.
"Of course I slipped. If you're standing on the slippery bank of a river, and somebody BOUNCES you loudly from behind, you slip. What did you think I did? — A.A. Milne

pulling a great substance from a higher height whilst leaning on a slippery ground with the mentality of having the substance whilst standing is a thought of fantasy. You may only result in falling with the substance — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

It's not all gone. She loved someone before and so did I. The Society and the Rising and the world are all still out there, pressing against us. But Lei holds them away. She's made enough space for two people to stand up together, whether or not any Society or Rising says that they can. She's done it before. The amazing thing is that she's not afraid to do it again. When we fall in love the first time, we don't know anything. We risk a lot less than we do if we choose to love again.
There is something extraordinary about the first time falling.
But if feels even better to find myself standing on solid ground, with someone holding on to me, pulling me back, and know that I'm doing the same for her. — Ally Condie

Falling in love is better than standing in hate. — Matshona Dhliwayo

Love is an activity, not a passive affect; it is a "standing in," not a "falling for." In the most general way, the active character of love can be described by stating that love is primarily giving, not receiving. — Erich Fromm

Worried about fitting in, being part of a group, feeling accepted? People gather in groups of similar interests, but these interests are usually based on external preferences and attires.
"We think that if other people like this sport or activity, they'll accept us without an interview or further questions, and we need that because we are afraid of standing naked in front of others, of showing whom we really are underneath the fake smiles and bland expressions of anger and pain: this nakedness is one of the heart and mind.
"It's within these groups that most people find their 'soul-mates' and 'fall in love' with the person they'll never get to know for real.
"Little did you know, you have to keep pretending to be someone else, while your partner is exhausted from having to put on a daily show just to please you. — Nityananda Das

Things can be fixed.
Relationship CANNOT.
Its like standing on a cracked glass plane, you might just adjust yourself for the time being but there will always be a fear of increasing the cracks, fear of falling through, fear of being destroyed. — Hanif Hassan Barbhuiya

Love is not just a passion spark between two people; there is infinite difference between falling in love and standing in love. Rather, love is a way of being, a "giving to," not a 'falling for"; a mode of relating at large, not an act limited to a single person. — Irvin D. Yalom

When I talk to my friends I pretend I am standing on the wings
of a flying plane. I cannot be trusted to tell them how I am.
Or if I am falling to earth weighing less
than a dozen roses. Sometimes I dream they have broken up
with their lovers and are carrying food to my house.
When I open the mailbox I hear their voices
like the long upward-winding curve of a train whistle
passing through the tall grasses and ferns
after the train has passed. I never get ahead of their shadows.
I embrace them in front of moving cars. I keep them away
from my miseries because to say I am miserable is to say I am like them. — Jason Shinder

Look, tiny - i'm trying to be on my best behavior, but you have to understand - i'm always standing on the edge of something bad. and sometimes someone like you can make me look the other way, so that i don't know how close i am to falling over. but i always end up turning my head. always. — David Levithan

Only Merlin and her guards ever woke her in the mornings, and her guards only shouted to her through the doors.
Britt picked her head off her pillow. "Merlin?"
Merlin, once again standing out in the hallway, hissed through the door."You're still in bed."
"Yeah, so?"
"It is indecent for you to allow a man into your bedchambers when you are still in bed!"
Britt rolled her eyes and sat up. "What did you want?"
"Get up. We're going to mass."
"No, we're not. You might be, but I'm not."
"Oh yes you are, you little heathen."
"It's boring. The pastor only talks in Greek or Hebrew or whatever that language is."
"He's the archbishop, and he conducts the service in Latin."
"Mmm, yeah that," Britt said, falling back into her bed with a thump.
"Do not lie back down you unschooled foundling!"
"Too late," Britt said. "If you want me to go to mass you're going to have to drag me out of here. How indecent would that be? — K.M. Shea

Silence emerges from the sound of rain and spreads in a crescendo of gray monotony over the narrow street I contemplate. I'm sleeping while awake, standing by the window, leaning against it as against everything. I search in myself for the sensations I feel before these falling threads of darkly luminous water that stand out from the grimy building facades and especially from the open windows. And I don't know what I feel or what I want to feel. I don't know what to think or where I am. — Fernando Pessoa

Universal military service may be compared to the efforts of a man to prop up his falling house who so surrounds it and fills it with props and buttresses and planks and scaffolding that he manages to keep the house standing only by making it impossible to live in it. — Leo Tolstoy

We run our schools like factories. We line kids up in straight rows, put them in batches (called grades), and work very hard to make sure there are no defective parts. Nobody standing out, falling behind, running ahead, making a ruckus. Playing it safe. Following the rules. Those seem like the best ways to avoid failure. — Seth Godin

terror, and clinging with her hands to the wall to avoid falling. Every one drew back, and the man in the red cloak remained standing alone in the middle of the room. "Oh, grace, grace, pardon!" cried the wretch, falling on her knees. The unknown waited for silence, and then resumed, "I told you well that she would know — Alexandre Dumas

And then, just as I begin to raise my sword to cleave a path to Arthur's side, there comes a sound like a tempest wind - the blast of a mighty sea gale. Men fall back, suddenly afraid. They cover their heads with their arms and peer into the darkness above. What is it? Is the roof falling? The sky?
The strange sound subsides and they glance at one another in fear and awe. Merlin is there. The Emrys is standing calmly beside Arthur. His hands are empty and upraised, his face stern in the unnatural silence he has created ... — Stephen R. Lawhead

When I'm around you, it's like every dream I've ever had is standing right in front of me. — Courtney Giardina

Prayer is being consciously in God's presence, focusing our eyes on him, on who he is, on what he's like. My prayer took the form of singing hymns and songs of praise, sitting, kneeling, standing, hands raised high, or falling on my face before God. We are flesh and blood. We must pray with our bodies. My prayer was also contemplation, meditation, listening to God's voice, sometimes writing letters to God, even e-mails. — Linda McCullough Moore

I hear talk of that slippery slope, and my heart catches for a beat. But there is the musky truth I'm standing in that I can't deny, and it tastes of so much holy. That old way, the narrow line, I see now that was a slippery, saccharine surface where my soul could gain no purchase. For the first time, my feet feel sure beneath me, and that sense is twining its way up from my ankles, racing toward my knees, my thighs, my secret places, my heart. It's in my blood now, and I can't deny it. I can't deny it.

I open my eyes, because I could see even through my clutched-closed lids that the darkness is light, that the blindness has given way to searing vision.

I can't deny it. — Beth Morey

Begin morning run," I said to Max. "Bifrost track." The virtual gym vanished. Now I was standing on a semitransparent running track, a curved looping ribbon suspended in a starry nebula. Giant ringed planets and multicolored moons were suspended in space all around me. The running track stretched out ahead of me, rising, falling, and occasionally spiraling into a helix. — Ernest Cline

Gravity will get you. Life is inclined toward falling. Not standing or flying, indeed, barely sitting. — Patricia Cornwell

He told me that once, in the war, he'd come upon a German soldier in the grass with his insides falling out; he was just lying there in agony. The soldier had looked up at Sergeant Leonard, and even though they didn't speak the same language, they understood each other with just a look. The German lying on the ground; the American standing over him. He put a bullet in the soldier's head. He didn't do it with anger, as an enemy, but as a fellow man, one soldier helping another. — Libba Bray

After that we tried thirty-nine times to stand together on the tube until we finally did. It was fun. I liked the falling part, and holding hangs. Relationships were so easy when all you had to work on was standing up together. — Miriam Toews

I am a palette of emotions; I remember how I have cov-eted to be free from the school rules. I look around to see people casually dressed up and walking with an aim maybe to make a better career or just add fame of DU degree like me. The campus is buzzing with freshman and activity. I just hope, these corridors, hallways, and passages don't see me trip-ping and falling any day. I feel more comfortable standing in between the crowd of people moving. Like nobody is paying any heed. You can be yourself without feeling awkward about anything. — Parul Wadhwa

Free Falling
She's a good girl, loves her mama
Loves Jesus and America too
She's a good girl, crazy 'bout Elvis
Loves horses and her boyfriend too
It's a long day livin' in Reseda
There's a freeway runnin' through the yard
I'm a bad boy, 'cause I don't even miss her
I'm a bad boy for breakin' her heart
And I'm free, I'm free fallin'
All the vampires walkin' through the valley
Move west down Ventura Blvd
All the bad boys are standing in the shadows
All the good girls are home with broken hearts
And I'm free, I'm free fallin'
I wanna glide down over Mulholland
I wanna write her name in the sky
I wanna free fall out into nothin'
Gonna leave this world for a while
And I'm free, I'm free fallin — Tom Petty

The trick is to ride the wave,
Fast, wide-open and
in deep Now-magic.
Free, burning fear for fuel
Generous, knowing there is always more where that came from.
Cresting, spray of liquid jewels hanging, shining in the sun and wind.
Flying down the wave in graceful slices.
Rolling, tumbling under, over
Breathless falling, floating into the deep dark beneath.
Rising, face breaks the surface
Laughing
Kneeling, standing
Riding again.
Sunset waits behind the horizon
But daylight begs us to swim
Out beyond
Where our feet can't touch bottom.
Into the deep wild
Where the next wave can
sweep us higher,
Show us what else is possible
In this marvelous place. — Jacob Nordby

Tom remembered standing there beside her, in font of that field covered in snow, and falling in love. — Andrew Kaufman

The light. The light is so bright that all that remains is you and the darkness. You can feel the audience breathing. It's like holding a gun or standing on a precipice and knowing you must jump. It feels slow and fast. It's like dying and being born and fucking and crying. It's like falling in love and being utterly alone with God; you taste your own mouth and feel your own skin and I knew I was alive and I knew who I was and that that wasn't who I'd been up till then. I'd never been so far away but I knew I was home. "I know everything," I thought. — Anonymous

What do you call falling when the world is standing upside down? — Search

The genius of the Gospel was that it included the problem inside the solution. The falling became the standing. The stumbling became the finding. The dying became the rising. The raft became the shore. The small self cannot see this very easily, because it doubts itself too much, is still too fragile, and is caught up in the tragedy of it all. It has not lived long enough to see the big patterns. No wonder so many of our young commit suicide. This is exactly why we need elders and those who can mirror life truthfully and foundationally for the young. Intimate I-Thou relationships are the greatest mirrors of all, so we dare not avoid them, but for the young they have perhaps not yet taken place at any depth, so young people are always very fragile. — Richard Rohr

Sonny had a quintuple bypass in 2003, when he was fifty-six years old - the last thing he remembered before falling unconscious under the anesthesia was a doctor standing over him saying his mother's cells were one of the most important things that had ever happened to medicine. Sonny woke up more than $125,000 in debt because he didn't have health insurance to cover the surgery. — Rebecca Skloot

Falling in love is the easiest thing in the world. It's standing in love that matters. — Carson McCullers

Just a little rain falling all around The grass lifts its head to the heavenly sound Just a little rain, just a little rain What have they done to the rain? Just a little boy standing in the rain The gentle rain that falls for years And the grass is gone and the boy disappears And the rain keeps falling like helpless tears And what have they done to the rain? Just a little breeze out of the sky The leaves nod their heads as the breeze blows by Just a little breeze with some smoke in its eye And what have they done to the rain? — Malvina Reynolds

Martin Luther described the doctrine of justification by faith as the article of faith that decides whether the church is standing or falling. By this he meant that when this doctrine is understood, believed, and preached, as it was in New-Testament times, the church stands in the grace of God and is alive; but where it is neglected, overlaid, or denied, ... the church falls from grace and its life drains away, leaving it in a state of darkness and death. — J.I. Packer

Standing in front of a fake mountain with fake snow falling and seven girls dressed as Santarettes will stay in my memory. — Bill Nighy

Sculptured figures which appear in motion, will, in their standing position, actually look as if they were falling forward. — Leonardo Da Vinci

We must stop even thinking of standing up straight. To think of it is fatal, for it commits us to the operation of an established habit of standing wrong. We must find an act within our power which is disconnected from any thought about standing. We must start to do another thing which on one side inhibits our falling into the customary bad position and on the other side is the beginning of a series of acts which may lead into the correct posture.[2] The hard-drinker — John Dewey

Life was about loss. One minute standing on the promise of your dreams, then free-falling backward into nothingness. Is this what it meant to grow old? To gradually be stripped of all you cared about. And then what? Were you supposed to spend the rest of your life, dreaming about the past while you waited to die? Or did you start a new life, set the cycle in motion once again. Take the chance of losing that, too. And if you did, what happened to the old life? Did it die away from lack of attention? — Shelley Noble

Lizzie said that if you imagined you were standing on the moon, looking down on the earth, you wouldn't be able to see the itty-bitty people racing around worrying you wouldn't see the barn falling in or the cow stuck in the pond; you wouldn't see the mean Granger kids squirting mustard on your white dress. You would see the most beautiful blue oceans and green lands, and the whole earth would look like a giant blue-and-green marble floating in the sky. Your worries would seem so small, maybe invisible. — Sharon Creech

You fall into thought while staring at the green foliage back here - so much damn green that it envelops you in its cruddy fist - and the thoughts aren't too good, either - thoughts of sitting on the toilet - eating a sandwich - standing in line at a grocery store - watching an episode of Cheaters - doing laundry - staring at your face in a mirror - shaving it - snorting crushed pills - falling in love - death - all death - and the green shrubbery carries you away with it. — Brian Alan Ellis

I used to think that real love involved falling for someone; but now I think it usually involves standing for someone. — Bob Goff

happiness isn't about the events going on in your life; it's about how you handle them. It's about falling down and standing up straighter than you did before. It's about realizing that nothing comes easy. — Jodie Sweetin

She saw Luke, standing atop a pile of bones. Jace with white feathered wings sprouting out of his back, Isabelle sitting naked with her whip curled around her like a net of gold rings, Simon with crosses burned into the palms of his hands. Angels, falling and burning. Falling out of the sky. — Cassandra Clare

You could study the connections for years and never work it out-it was all about things coming together,things falling apart,time warp, my mother standing out in front of the museum when time flickered and the light went funny, uncertainties hovering on the edge of a vast brightness. the stray chance that might, or might not, change everything. — Donna Tartt

I have always pictured accupuncture like falling into a box of sewing needles, and then standing up refreshed and free of pain. — Neil Leckman

The summer I was ten years old, there was a group of kids in my neighborhood who played together every night after dinner. I often watched them from my window ... Every night around nine-thirty or ten, those kids would get called in one by one ... I knew the first ones called were full of resentment. But they needn't have been. Nothing ever happened after they left anyway. Things just sort of ended in a slow motion way, like petals falling off a flower. You couldn't have people leave like that and have anything good happen afterward. Whoever was left couldn't pay much attention to anything other than waiting for their turn to get called in. So, it wasn't so bad to go first, to head back toward those deep yellow lights and beds made up with summer linens. It was much better than being last, when you would be left standing there alone, finally going in without anybody calling you. — Elizabeth Berg

Sometimes I do. Sometimes I look at him ... and I remember how it was when I kissed him and felt that love. It makes me want that back. I want to feel it again. I want to return to it. Other times though ... other times, I'm so scared. I listen to these guys ... and to Jerome ... and then the doubts gnaw at me. I can't get them out of my head. We've been sleeping together, you know. Literally. It hasn't been a problem so far, but sometimes I lie awake watching him, thinking this can't last. The longer it does ... I feel like ... like I'm standing on a high wire, with Seth at one end and me at the other. We're trying to reach each other, but one misstep, one breeze, one side-glance, and I'll fall over the edge. And keep falling and falling."
Carter leaned toward me and brushed the hair away from the side of my face. "Don't look down then," he whispered. — Richelle Mead

One of the heavy marble busts that lined the higher shelves had slid free and was falling toward her; she ducked out of its way, and it hit the floor inches from where she'd been standing, leaving a sizable dent in the floor.
A second later Jace's arms were around her and he was lifting her off her feet. She was too surprized to struggle as he carried her over to the broken window and dumped her unceremoniously out of it. — Cassandra Clare

The want for that kiss had shocked him more than the interruption, and he fell back into the chair, cool and nonchalant as Quen came in with his questions and demands. He wasn't sure if he believed he'd really helped, but one thing was very clear. He wanted that again, that feeling of standing with her against all odds and succeeding. He wanted it so bad, he was going to risk destroying everything he and his father had worked for. He should walk away. Right now. But as she was ushered out the door under David's arm, all he wanted to do was follow her. What the hell was he doing, falling in love with a demon? — Kim Harrison

But sometimes stuff happens and we find ourselves lost, and suddenly we're standing in a place we don't recognize and can't remember walking-or falling-there, and we're unsure how to get back or if we even want to. — Jessica Sorensen

There is no shame in falling," Pernicar said, standing up. "There is only shame if you refuse to rise once again. — Drew Karpyshyn

A man once jumped from the top floor of a burning house in which many members of his family had already perished. He managed to save his life; but as he was falling he hit a person standing down below and broke that person's legs and arms. The jumping man had no choice; yet to the man with the broken limbs he was the cause of his misfortune. If both behaved rationally, they would not become enemies. — Isaac Deutscher

Maybe that's why falling in love becomes so important. The hope of it. Because it's the last standing pillar in the temple of thrill. — Heather McElhatton

At Azzam's funeral, days later, a brokenhearted Zindani tried to hold the movement together. Standing before hundreds of mourners on a hill outside Peshawar, he made an impassioned plea, his voice rising and falling in the microphone, as he praised Azzam's ability to reconcile different factions and called for unity now that Azzam was gone. But Zindani couldn't replace Azzam. No one could. — Gregory D. Johnsen

A mature person does not fall in love, he or she rises in love. Only immature people fall; they stumble and fall down in love. Somehow they were managing and standing. Now they cannot manage and they cannot stand. They were always ready to fall on the ground and to creep. They don't have the backbone, the spine; they don't have the integrity to stand alone. — Rajneesh

Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire's flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It's not desiring the fall; it's terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling 'Don't!' and 'Hang on!', can understand the jump. Not really. — David Foster Wallace

How do you know when it's over?"
"Maybe when you feel more in love with your memories than with the person standing in front of you. — Gunnar Ardelius

Sophie did this?" He said, not for the first time. They were standing at the foot of Jessamine's bed. She lay flung upon it, her chest rising and falling slowly like the famous Sleeping Beauty waxwork or Madame du Barry. Her fair hair was scattered on the pillow, and a large, bloody welt ran across her forehead. Each of her wrists was tied to a post of the bed. "Our Sophie?"
Tessa glanced over at Sophie, who was sitting in a chair by the door. Her head was down, and she was staring at her hands. She studiously avoided looking at Tessa or Will. "Yes,"Tessa said, "and do stop repeating it."
" I think i may be in love with you, Sophie," said Will. "Marriage could be on the cards."
Sophie whimpered. — Cassandra Clare

Layla had always just been there. In my life. I wasn't sure who said, 'hi,' first, or maybe who smiled at who first - all I really remembered was staring at her, and her staring back at me, neither of us looking away. Both of us standing frozen, and life falling into the background with a distant hum. As if the world had stopped spinning. Just for us.
I remembered not caring if it had. She'd seemed so familiar, and even as a little kid, I'd known she was special. Like something bigger than me, older than me, had taken over my emotions in a way I didn't understand. She just felt like ... home.
I could have gazed into her eyes forever. Happy to stand in that powerless state for the rest of my life — Laney McMann

There's no point, I want to shout back. Let me go.
But that's what love is; holding on and holding tight no matter what. Through death, through pain, through everything. There's a part of me that wants to turn back and be worthy of it.
I'm standing on the edge of that bridge, though, and I'm tilting forward. Falling. There is no turning back. — Kelsey Sutton

Havaa, standing on a stepstool and stirring the broth, found an unfamiliar gratitude for the smallness of her life. Everywhere beyond these four walls smelled of smoke and gasoline, but here, no calamity was greater than an egg falling to the floor. — Anthony Marra

A strong hand suddenly grasped my arm above the elbow. My eyes flew open in surprise. It was that hateful, arrogant man from earlier, standing a few steps below me. He looked at me with a strange expression on his face. It almost looked like ... concern. What did he want? I tried to ask him, but the walls were falling in on me again. I closed my eyes tightly. "I think you're about to faint," a low voice said. Whose voice was it? It was too nice to belong to that man. I shook my head and said weakly, "I don't faint." And then darkness rushed up while I swooped down. We met in the middle and it swallowed me whole. — Julianne Donaldson

Honestly, I didn't expect anything. I didn't plan on standing in your penthouse kitchen this morning."
A grin splits his face.
"But you are." Keeping the smile, he sticks his tongue through his teeth.
"Yeah, I am." I beam up at him.
"You stay'n in my kitchen?" he asks, his face moving closer.
"I thought we are seeing how things go?"
I press my hands to his chest, sliding my arms up to his shoulders.
"I'll just take that as a yes. — Sadie Grubor

You don't see heroism, humanity and hope like you do in a horror story. Horror celebrates the kind of friendship that keeps you standing shoulder to shoulder with someone even when the world is falling apart around you. — Alexander Gordon Smith

There are those people who try to elevate their souls like someone who continually jumps from a standing position in the hope that forcing oneself to jump all day - and higher every day - they would no longer fall back down, but rise to heaven. Thus occupied, they no longer look to heaven. We cannot even take one step toward heaven. The vertical direction is forbidden to us. But if we look to heaven long-term, God descends and lifts us up. God lifts us up easily. As Aeschylus says, 'That which is divine is without effort.' There is an ease in salvation more difficult for us than all efforts. In one of Grimm's accounts, there is a competition of strength between a giant and a little tailor. The giant throws a stone so high that it takes a very long time before falling back down. The little tailor throws a bird that never comes back down. That which does not have wings always comes back down in the end. — Simone Weil

And at the thought of the punishments Youdi might inflict upon me I was seized by such a mighty fit of laughter that I shook, with mightly silent laughter and my features composed in their wonted sadness and calm. But my whole body shook, and even my legs, so that I had to lean against a tree, or against a bush, when the fit came on me standing, my umbrella being no longer sufficient to keep me from falling. Strange laughter truly, and no doubt misnamed. — Samuel Beckett

Steve's throat swelled with tension as the intimacy of the moment became more tangible. He moved his eyes from the dark, reflective river, to the dark, reflective pupils in Diane's eyes. They seemed to quiver with tenderness - but then they would grow distant. He found himself continually surprised at the "aliveness" of the person standing just a foot away from him now. She wasn't inanimate: she would flinch if he pinched her, and answer if he asked her. And she was beautiful."
From "The Grand Unified Story"
a short story in Zack Love's Stories and Scripts: an Anthology — Zack Love

And I never felt this way with anyone else. Like I'm falling every time I'm around you, like I can't catch my breath, and I feel alive - not just standing around and letting my life walk past me. There's been nothing like that with anyone else. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

But sometimes one person can hold you up in life, keep you standing, and without that hand to hold, you can find yourself free-falling no matter how strong you used to be, no matter how hard you try to remain steady. — Kristin Hannah

To fall down is to face the weakness of my humanity, test the mettle of my character, and push the limits of my strength. Therefore, falling down will tell me who I am far more clearly than most things I might learn when I'm standing up. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

You're right." He cut me off. "I never understood this country. I never understood why he chose to leave everything else behind and stay for this. Not until I met you."
I felt like he'd pushed me, like I was falling and I needed him to reel those words back in to keep me standing straight.
"You /are/ this country, Amani." He spoke more quietly now. "More alive than anything ought to be in this place. All fire and gunpowder, with one finger always on the trigger. — Alwyn Hamilton

That's the thing about being young
we are textbook pages
of trial and error
falling down and getting up
not by way of standing and
brushing off our jeans
buy by laying where we fell
until we were high enough to forget — Kalyn Roseanne Livernois

What is unknown is the fulfillment of your own unique life, the likes of which has never existed on earth. And you are the only one who can do it. People can give you clues how to fall and when to stand, and when you are falling and when you are standing, this only you can know. And in the way of your own talents is the only way to do it. — Joseph Campbell

The necessity of getting up. He made it that far. Ended up with Banichi's arm around him, Banichi standing on one leg. The dowager-aiji said something rude about young men falling at her feet, and go sit down, SHE was in command of the plane. — C.J. Cherryh

I should like to direct the attention of artists. A constant producer, a man who is a "mother" in the grand sense of the term, one who no longer knows or hears of anything except pregnancies and childbeds of his spirit, who has no time at all to reflect and make comparisons with regard to himself and his work, who is also no longer inclined to exercise his taste, but simply forgets it, letting it take its chance of standing, lying or falling
perhaps such a man at last produces works on which he is then quite unfit to pass a judgment: so that he speaks and thinks foolishly about them and about himself. This seems to me almost the normal condition with fruitful artists. — Friedrich Nietzsche

It's like all my life I've been this tower standing at the edge of the ocean for some obscure purpose, and only now, almost eighteen years in, has someone thought to flip the switch that reveals that I'm not a tower at all. I'm a lighthouse. It's like waking up. I am incandescent. — Laini Taylor

In a world of fog and gray, the youth is a shining being dressed in dark violet, his golden-flecked hair smoothed back from his bronzed temples. He resembles a human, but no man I have ever seen holds himself like a king, like a gleaming statue chiseled from topaz.
I swallow. I am standing before a demon, the most beautiful being I have ever seen, and I can't run. I can only stand in the hushed glade and stare, snowflakes falling in the space between us. — Heather Heffner

Monsoon Love is a love story with a few comic twists. The idea for this story came to me when I went into the local town of Pokhara with a friend to buy his son a birthday present. We had just arrived at the shops when a heavy down pour began, and as we had arrived on his motorbike and didn't have raincoats or umbrellas so we had to wait for the rain to stop. We were standing under a awning watching the street while we waited, and I noticed this very beautiful young woman walk past me dressed in a t-shirt and jeans with the cuffs rolled half up her legs, but the way she held her umbrella made it impossible to see her face, though with the nice body she had her face must have been just as lovely. Then I though, imagine some guy stuck working in an office, and seeing a view like that every day of the same woman, and falling in love with her despite not seeing her face. — Andrew James Pritchard

Some people grow up gradually, the foundations of their childhood steadily sinking into the earth so slowly they barely notice the change. Until one day they're simply standing on their own two feet with little idea how they got there. Then there are people whose childhoods are smashed to bits in one blow. They topple into adulthood, flailing about for something to hold onto, and the terror of falling leaves a permanent scar on their psyche. Do those people ever end up feeling safe? — Kristen Callihan

Something deep in the human soul awakens as things fall apart. Something in the soul knows that everything in this world can become lost. And something in the soul knows how to survive periods of devastation, disorientation and loss. Descent and falling is the way of the soul from its beginning. We each fell from the womb of life when the waters of the inner sea broke and it came time for us to breathe on our own. — Michael Meade

And Pasquale forced himself to look away from her then. It was like prying a magnet off steel, but he did it: he turned forward in the boat, closed his eyes, still seeing her standing there in his memory. He shook with the strain of not looking back until they rounded the breakwater into the open sea and Pasquale exhaled, his head falling to his chest.
"You are a strange young man," Tomasso the Communist said. — Jess Walter

Some make their worlds without knowing it. Their universes are just sesame seeds and three-day weekends and dial tones and skinned knees and physics and driftwood and emerald earrings and books dropped in bathtubs and holes in guitars and plastic and empathy and hardwood and heavy water and high black stockings and the history of the Vikings and brass and obsolescence and burnt hair and collapsed souffles and the impossibility of not falling in love in an art museum with the person standing next to you looking at the same painting and all the other things that just happen and are. — Jonathan Safran Foer