Falling Out Of Place Quotes & Sayings

Here's one of the things I learned that morning: if you cross a line and nothing happens, the line loses meaning. It's like that old riddle about a tree falling in a forest, and whether it makes a sound if there's no one around to hear it.
You keep drawing a line farther and farther away, crossing it every time. That's how people end up stepping off the edge of the earth. You'd be surprised at how easy it is to bust out of orbit, to spin out to a place where no one can touch you. To lose yourself
to get lost.
Or maybe you wouldn't be surprised. Maybe some of you already know.
To those people, I can only say: I'm sorry. — Lauren Oliver

Falling for someone can be a lot like playing roulette. You don't know what will happen when you place that bet, but you can take a deep breath anyway and put all the chips out there. And when the ball spins around and around, you pray it lands on your number. Probability says you'll likely lose, and in this game of love with Leo, odds were I would lose, too, but I had to try. — Ilsa Madden-Mills

I think you can love a person too much.
You put someone up on a pedestal, and all of a sudden, from that perspective, you notice what's wrong - a hair out of place, a run in a stocking, a broken bone. You spend all your time and energy making it right, and all the while, you are falling apart yourself. You don't even realize what you look like, how far you've deteriorated, because you only have eyes for someone else. — Jodi Picoult

I stop crying for a moment when light from the street steals into my bedroom as Silas gently pushes the curtain aside. He leans against the wall, arms folded across his bare chest and hair falling in front of his eyes. Almost silently, he moves to the tiny space between my bed and the wall and lowers himself to the floor. Raising his knees to his chest, he drops his head and reaches for my hand, running his thumb across my knuckles silently.
I slide off the bed, sheets wrapped around my legs, and ease into his lap, tucking my face against his neck. He cradles me against him like he's afraid to let me go. I know I should shy away, that I should climb back into my bed out of loyalty to my sister. But there's something that locks me in place, something that won't let me stray from the gentle rise and fall of his chest or from his arms, supporting me like I'm something precious as his lips brush across my forehead.
Without speaking, we finally fall asleep. — Jackson Pearce

All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need ... fantasies to make life bearable."
REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little - "
YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.
"So we can believe the big ones?"
YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.
"They're not the same at all!"
YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET - Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME ... SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.
"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point - "
MY POINT EXACTLY. — Terry Pratchett

There's always people looking the other way when the miracles take place, people who want only a good night's sleep when the stars are dancing, comets falling, the angels leaning low out of midnight with their trumpets, their cantatas of longing. — Paul Russell

Any cyclist will tell you that one of the things they value most about cycling is what it does for their heads. It cleans out the clutter. Cycling allows for reflection. It simultaneously offers time to mull over problems and to escape those problems. It's both meditative and contemplative. Whether you're weaving through traffic or climbing a long country road, the effect is the same. Your body's working, and your mind is working. And when those two things start working in concert, other aspects of life can start falling into place too. — BikeSnobNYC

Does that have to go in?" Lada asked.
"What do you mean?" Wistala said, brought back to the dictation.
"The battle. Betrayals. Incompetence, even cowardice. Boats falling, mud everywhere, blood running from balconies, carrion birds poking marrow from bones, dwarves hanging from bridges, burned corpses, but worst of all, no hero whose courage and skill is put to the ultimate test."
"They asked for a history, they shall have my history. If someone else will have the battle take place on a spring-green field with pennants at the lance points and songs sung over the honored dead, let them write it thus. This history is a story of death begetting death, and should end with carrion birds, for they are the only ones who come out the better at the end. — E.E. Knight

Christmas is the marriage of chaos and design. The real sound of life, for once, can burst out because a formal place has been set for it. At the moment when things have gotten sufficiently loose, the secret selves that these familiar persons hold inside them shake the room ... An undercurrent of clowning and jostling is part of the process by which we succeed finally in making our necessary noise: despite the difficulty of getting the words right, of getting the singers on the same page, of keeping the ritual from falling apart into the anarchy of separate impulses. From such clatter
extended and punctuated by whatever instrument is handy, a triangle a tambourine, a Chinese gone
beauty is born. — Geoffrey O'Brien

A man is made of memories. It is all we are. Captured moments, the smell of a place, scenes played out time and again on a small stage. We are memories, strung on storylines
the tales we tell ourselves about ourselves, falling through our lives into tomorrow. — Mark Lawrence

So now the sky was falling.
Maybe the end of the world. Maybe Jesus coming again.
That suited her.
White lights shot across the sky. She lost count. She stood and watched through Sidney's telescope and felt. For the first time in a year she wasn't ice cold all the way to her soul. It was as close as she could be to free in her stronghold of a home.
Logic told her that the world probably wasn't coming to an end. That would be too easy. She hadn't had an easy day in her life.
She pulled the telescope away from her eye and watched white slices of heavenly light. Content with the goosebumps of fear, her spirits rose. Assuming the world wasn't ending, she'd come to a good place out here. Her children were safe. She was safe
bitterly lonely but safe. — Mary Connealy

Everything was falling into place. And out of place, at the same time. — Cynthia Hand

If I was strategic, I would have figured out how to get out of this place. Would have seen everything falling apart and got out while there were still ships to sail. — Paolo Bacigalupi

I just thought you needed one. You use that weird penny, and it keeps falling out" His eyes had immediatly snapped to my face,
"Where is it? You didn't throw it away, did you?" I'd blinked at him, confused. "No, it's in your office." I couldn't hide the hurt from my voice. His eyes had softened, and he'd come around the table to kiss my cheek. "Thank you, Leah. It was a good idea-really. I needed something better to use to remind me of my place." "Your place?" "In the book." He smiled. — Tarryn Fisher

I said
"I love you so much it's killing me"
and you kept saying sorry
so I stopped explaining
for it never made sense to you
what always did to me
to let what you love
kill you
and never regret.
As Romeo is dying Juliet says
"I am willing to die to remain by your side"
and love was never a static place of rest
but the last second of euphoria
while throwing yourself out from a 20 store window
to be able to say
"I flew before I hit the ground",
and it was glorious.
Don't be sorry.
The fall was beautiful, dear.
The crash was beautiful. — Charlotte Eriksson

things keep falling in and out of place.
this is the universe's way of taking care of me. — AVA.

There was nothing unique about my beech tree, nothing difficult in its ascent, no biological revelation at its summit, nor any honey, but it had become a place to think. A roost. I was fond of it, and it
well, it had no notion of me. I had climbed it many times; at first light, dusk, and glaring noon. I had climbed it in winter, brushing snow from the branches of my hand, with the wood cold as stone to the touch, and real crows' nests black in the branches of nearby trees. I had climbed in in early summer, and looked out over the countryside with heat jellying the air and the drowsy buzz of a tractor from somewhere nearby. And I had climbed it in monsoon rain, with water falling in rods thick enough for the eye to see. Climbing the tree was a way to get perspective, however slight; to look down on a city that I usually looked across. The relief of relief. Above all, it was a way of defraying the city's claims on me. — Robert Macfarlane

I kept thinking of an old Robert Mitchum cowboy movie where he goes back to see the farmhouse where he was born and finds the house falling apart and an old man living in it by himself. "Lonely place," Robert Mitchum says. The old man says, "Nothing wrong with a lonely place as long as it's private. That's why I never married. Marriage is lonely, but it ain't private." That was always my most intense fear about getting married: When everything sucked and I was by myself, I thought, Well, at least I don't have another miserable person to worry about. I figured if you gave up your private place and it still turns out to be lonely, you're just screwed. — Rob Sheffield

It was darker in the tower than any place Devnee had ever been. The dark had textures, some velvet, some satin. The dark shifted positions.
The dark continued to breathe. The breath of the tower lifted her clothing like the flaps of a tent, and sounded in her ears like falling snow.
It's the wind coming through the double shutters, Devnee told herself.
But how could the wind come through? There were glass windows between the inside and outside shutters.
Or were there?
The windows weren't just holes in the wall, were they?
What if there was no glass? What if things crawled through those open louvers, crept into the room, blew in with the cold that fingered her hair? What creatures of the night could slither through those slats?
She had not realized how wonderful glass was, how it protected you and kept you inside.
She knew something was out there. — Caroline B. Cooney

Have you ever watched a baby learning to walk? He totters, arms stretched out to balance himself. He wobbles - and falls, perhaps bumps his nose. Then he puts the palms of his little hands flat on the floor, hikes his rear end up, looks around to see if anybody is watching him. If nobody is, usually he doesn't bother to cry, just precariously balances himself - and tries again. Well, the baby can teach us. What you've undertaken ... isn't a state of perfection to be arrived at all of the sudden. It's a WALK, and a walk isn't static but ever-changing. We Friends say that all discouragement is from an evil source and can only end in more evil. Wallowing in self-condemnation or feeling sorry for yourself is worse than falling on your face in the first place ... So thee is human. — Catherine Marshall

Cows in India occupy the same position in society as women did in England before they got the vote. Woman was revered but not encouraged. Her life was one long obstacle race owing to the anxiety of man to put pedestals at her feet. While she was falling over the pedestals she was soothingly told that she must occupy a Place Apart - and indeed, so far Apart did her place prove to be that it was practically out of earshot. The cow in India finds her position equally lofty and tiresome. You practically never see a happy cow in India. — Stella Benson

You are you even before you grow into understanding you are not anyone, worthless, not worth you. Even as your own weight insists you are here, fighting off the weight of nonexistence. And still this life parts your lids, you see you seeing your extending hand as a falling wave - I they he she we you turn only to discover the encounter to be alien to this place. Wait. The patience is in the living. Time opens out to you. The opening, between you and you, occupied, zoned for an encounter, given the histories of you and you - And always, who is this you? The start of you, each day, a presence already - Hey you - — Claudia Rankine

We wonder what lies beyond.
One day, she will grow up and imagine death as an angel that will lend her wings, so she can find out.
Death, unfortunately, is not in the business of lending wings. — Amy Zhang

Suppose you fell over with this fish. Is there anything you could do? Sure. Pray. It'd be like falling out of an airplane without a parachute and hoping you'll land in a haystack. The only thing that'd save you would be God, and since He pushed you overboard in the first place, I wouldn't give a nickel for your chances. — Peter Benchley

Historic American Buildings Survey - HABS for short - was one of FDR's greatest New Deal investments. Jobless folk fanned out across the country, seeking old buildings, photographing them and sketching their floor plans. Many of the structures they recorded in the 1930s were caught in the act of falling down. Some of them were documented in no other place. — Mary Anna Evans

Show me the telegrams they sent you, one every day for six days while they were walking six hundred miles on their pigeon toes."
..
1. Feet are as good as wings if you have to. Chickamauga ...
3. In the night sleeping you forget whether you have wings or feet or neither. Chattahoochee ...
6. Pity me. Far is far. Near is near. and there is no place like home when the yellow roses climb up the ladders and sing in the early summer. Pity me. Wednesday Evening In The Twilight And The Gloaming.
..
Well, Wednesday Evening was the only one I noticed making any mention of the yellow roses in her telegram," Hatrack the Horse explained.
Then the old man and the girl sat on the cracker box saying nothing, only listening to the yellow roses all on fire with early summer climbing up th ecrooked ladders, up and down and crossways, some of them leaning out and curving and nearly falling. — Carl Sandburg

God has not forgotten you . . . he has not abandoned you in your time of desperation. He often works best in your brokenness . . . a humble heart is more moldable in His hands. Stop worrying about the details . . . quit trying to figure it all out - God knows what He's doing. He's in control . . . even when life isn't. Trust that when your world seems to be falling apart . . . it's really just falling into place in the hands of your Almighty loving God. Trust. Wait. Rest. God's help is on the way. Wait in faith . . . and don't let "doubt" get the best of you. — Cherie Hill

Music spilling out of from the eyes in place of tears, music spilling from the throat in place of words, music falling from his fingertips in place of caresses, music exchanged between them instead of love, yearning of five lines, the five lines of their thoughts , their reveries, their emotions, their unknown self, their giant self, their shadow. — Anais Nin

And then I think of the Velvet Underground's doleful song "Jesus," from their third and least renowned or appreciated album. It is my favorite. "Jesus / Help me find my proper place / Help me in my weakness / 'Cause I'm falling out of grace." The only words in the song, repeated repeatedly, composed by Lou Reed, a Jew. You see, in the hour of darkness, it is easier to turn to the Son of God than to God Himself, for some reason. I'm not sure why. — Elizabeth Wurtzel

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

All morning I lay down sentences, erase them, and try new ones. Soon enough, when things go well, the world around me dwindles: the sky out the window, the furious calm of the big umbrella pine ten feet away, the smell of dust falling onto the hot bulb in the lamp. That's the miracle of writing, the place you try to find
when the room, your body, and even time itself cooperate in a vanishing act. — Anthony Doerr

During that night the blessed Antony told us this, too. 'A whole year long I prayed that the place of the righteous and of the sinners be revealed to me, and I saw a huge giant, high as the clouds and black. He had his hand stretched out to heaven, and beneath him there was a lake the size of a sea and I saw souls, flying like birds. 17. " 'Those flying above his hands and his head were being saved; they that were struck by his hands were falling into the lake. A voice came to me saying, "Those souls that you see flying above are the souls of the righteous, the ones that are being brought safely into Paradise; the others are they that are being dragged down to Hades, having followed the desires of the flesh and the remembrance of injuries." ' "* — John Wortley

The way Mom saw it, women should let menfolk do the work because it made them feel more manly. That notion only made sense if you had a strong man willing to step up and get things done, and between Dad's gimp, Buster's elaborate excuses, and Apache's tendency to disappear, it was often up to me to keep the place from falling apart. But even when everyone was pitching in, we never got out from under all the work. I loved that ranch, though sometimes it did seem that instead of us owning the place, the place owned us. — Jeannette Walls