From Here On Out Quotes & Sayings

My main goal is to stay alive. To keep fooling myself into hanging around. To keep getting up every day. Right now I live without inspiration. I go day to day and do the work because it's all I know. I know that if I keep moving I stand a chance. I must keep myself going until I find a reason to live. I need one so bad. On the other hand maybe I don't. Maybe it's all bullshit. Nothing I knew from my old life can help me here. Most of the things that I believed turned out to be useless. Appendages from someone else's life.
Everything I have I would give to not know what I know. To not feel emptiness as my constant companion. To not look into this room and be reminded why I'm in it. I'm not getting enough air. The room feels so small all of a sudden. It's pathetic to be this lonely and know it. To keep breathing. To be silent and alone. And to know. — Henry Rollins

[A]s moral philosophers through the ages have pointed out, a philosophy of living based on "Not everyone, just me!" falls apart as soon as one sees oneself from an objective standpoint as a person just like others. It is like insisting that "here," the point in space one happens to be occupying at the moment, is a special place in the universe. — Steven Pinker

I was trying so hard to find the single pivotal moment that set my life on its path. The moment that answered the question, 'How did I get here?'

But it's never just one moment. It's a series of them. And your life can branch out from each one in a thousand different ways. Maybe there's a version of your life for all the choices you make and all the choices you don't. — Nicola Yoon

Ka-Be is the Lager without the physical discomforts. So that, whoever still has some seeds of conscience, feels his conscience re-awaken; and in the long empty days, one speaks of other things than hunger and work and one begins to consider what they have made us become, how much they have taken away from us, what this life is. In this Ka-Be, an enclosure of relative peace, we have learnt that our personality is fragile, that it is much more in danger than our life; and the old wise ones, instead of warning us 'remember that you must die', would have done much better to remind us of this great danger that threatens us. If from inside the Lager, a message could have seeped out to free men, it would have been this: take care not to suffer in your own homes what is inflicted on us here. — Primo Levi

The questions that we have to ask and to answer about that procession during this moment of transition are so important that they may well change the lives of men and women forever. For we have to ask ourselves, here and now, do we wish to join that procession, or don't we? On what terms shall we join that procession? Above all, where is it leading us, the procession of educated men? ... Let us never cease from thinking
what is this "civilisation" in which we find ourselves? What are these ceremonies and why should we take part in them? What are these professions and why should we make money out of them? Where in short is it leading us, the procession of the sons of educated men? — Virginia Woolf

Toe. He was even wearing a ski mask with strange meshlike coverings over the eyes. We didn't get a lot of ninjas in Half-Moon Hollow. And I'm pretty sure Jed would have responded. So I wasn't quite sure how to react here. Was this some sort of test from Jane to determine whether I would survive a parking-lot attack? Couldn't I just roll around in a gym with a practice dummy or something? The figure cocked his head to the side, staring at me like some predatory creature considering his best approach. I dropped my bag and kicked out of my sandals. I could do this. Sure, I had no fighting experience, but I had superstrength and speed on my side. Then again maybe this guy did, too. He could be a ninja chupacabra for all I knew. But — Molly Harper

Our facility is state of the art. There are half a dozen big cozy offices that Chad Jensen could've parked his ass in, but for some reason he chose this modest office tucked away near the laundry room.

I knock on the door, only opening it when I hear Coach's gruff, "Get in here." The last player who waltzed in without knocking got a tongue-lashing that the rest of us could hear all the way from the showers. I like to think Coach uses the office to jack off and that's why he insists on privacy. Logan hypothesizes that he has a secret office family that's only allowed to venture out in the wee hours of the night.

Logan is an idiot. — Elle Kennedy

Shahara-"
"Zzzt," she said, holding her hand up. "Wasting time here. I won't even hear it. You go. I go. It's my sister's life on the line and I out-shoot and am pretty sure I outfight you, too." "I think we came up pretty even on that score." "But I am the better shot." He gave her a grudging glare. "I concede. However, I think I can take you when I'm sober." She took the bottle out of his hand. "Good. I'm going to throw this out." "Uh!" He reached for it. Shahara danced away from him and had the bottle upside down in the sink before he could catch her. He tried to get it out of her hands, but it was too late. "You are an evil, mean woman."

-Syn & Shahara — Sherrilyn Kenyon

She chuckled, leaned on him as they headed out of the park. "All in all, it was a hell of a party."
"Hmm. We'll have others. But there's one thing."
"Hmm?" She flexed her fingers, relieved that they seemed to be back in full working order. The MTs knew their stuff.
"I want you to marry me."
"Uh-huh. Well, we'll - " She stopped, nearly stumbled, then gaped at him with her good eye. "You want what?"
"I want you to marry me." He had a bruise on his jaw, blood on his coat, and a gleam in his eye. She wondered if he'd lost his mind.
"We're standing here, beat to shit, walking away from a crime scene where either or both of us could have bought it, and you're asking me to marry you?"
He tucked his arm around her waist again, nudged her forward. "Perfect timing. — J.D. Robb

It wasn't the lower classes that preached the religion of sexual liberation. That came from the upper classes, with their comfortable cushions against the resulting disorder. What did it matter to them that they were polluting the waters? Their houses were upstream. The biological absurdism of same-sex pseudogamy (mock-marriage) is just the latest effort of the same irresponsible destroyers. Let those who are in favor of the world that the sexual revolution has produced defend it on its "merits," and not decree all discussion out of bounds from the beginning. We are not talking about privacy here, but about the air we all must breathe and the water we all must drink. — Anthony M. Esolen

On Sundays, at the matin-chime, The Alpine peasants, two and three, Climb up here to pray; Burghers and dames, at summer's prime, Ride out to church from Chamberry, Dight with mantles gay, But else it is a lonely time Round the Church of Brou. — Matthew Arnold

The cruise was the conduit for what would become my third book. While I was traveling and writing for ctnow, women across the United States and from the Caribbean emailed not to ask about my geographic journey but my existential one. "How do you find the courage to travel on your own?" they wondered. "How do you keep from getting lonely? Don't you feel self-conscious eating out alone?" After the first 30 emails like these I thought, There's a book here. It would be eight years before I published Postcards and Pearls: Life Lessons from Solo Moments on the Road. But the inspiration for publication came during the cruise. — Gina Greenlee

Here is perhaps the most delicious turn that comes out of thinking about politics from the standpoint of place: anyone of any race, language, religion, or origin is welcome, as long as they live well on the land. The great Central Valley region does not prefer English over Spanish or Japanese or Hmong. If it had any preferences at all, it might best like the languages it has heard for thousands of years, such as Maidu or Miwok, simply because it is used to them. Mythically speaking, it will welcome whomever chooses to observe the etiquette, express the gratitude, grasp the tools, and learn the songs that it takes to live there. — Gary Snyder

During my time at Eton, I led regular nighttime adventures, and word spread. I even thought about charging to take people on trips.
I remember one where we tried to cross the whole town of Eton in the old sewers. I had found an old grill under a bridge that led into these four-foot-high old brick pipes, running under the streets.
It took a little nerve to probe into these in the pitch black with no idea where the hell they were leading you; and they stank.
I took a pack of playing cards and a flashlight, and I would jam cards into the brickwork every ten paces to mark my way. Eventually I found a manhole cover that lifted up, and it brought us out in the little lane right outside the headmaster's private house.
I loved that. "All crap flows from here," I remember us joking at that time. — Bear Grylls

...And indeed it did take me a long time for me to find someone I wanted to marry. But I'm so glad I waited. What I know about Pete and me is that the flame will never go out. I do not look up from tossing the salad and think, Oh, God, how the hell did I ever get here? I do not look a the back of his head and think, I don't know you at all. I wake up with my pal, and go to sleep with my lover. He still thrills me, not only sexually but because of the way he regards the life that unfolds around him. I am interested in what he says about me and the children and our respective jobs, but I am also interested in what he says about the Middle East and the migratory patterns of monarchs and the amount of nutmeg that should be grated into the mashed potatoes and the impact that being a thwarted artist had on the life of Hitler. I believe he is a truly honest and awake and kind individual. If we live more than once, I want to find him again. — Elizabeth Berg

Living your life 40 floors up, looking out every day on ocean and skies, you see the world from a different point of view. It's like living in a very interesting fishbowl, but since no one can see up here, it's like a fishbowl with a limo tint. — Pharrell Williams

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

Brooklyn Heights itself is a window on the port. Here, where the perspective is fixed by the towers of Manhattan and the hills of New Jersey and Staten Island, the channels running between seem fingers of the world ocean. Here one can easily embrace the suggestion, which Whitman felt so easily, that the whole American world opens out from here, north and west. — Alfred Kazin

Yeah, well. If you're staying here in hopes of making out with Alaska, I sure wish you wouldn't. If you unmoor her from the rock that is Jake, God have mercy on us all. That would be some drama, indeed. And as a rule, I like to avoid drama."
"It's not because I want to make out with her."
"Hold on." He grabbed a pencil and scrawled excitedly at the paper as if he'd just made a mathematical breakthrough and then looked back up at me. "I just did some calculations, and I've been able to determine that you're full of shit." And he was right. — John Green

Even judges' children hear something about the world, they go to the Black Sea like everyone in the country. They look out and feel the same urge to go somewhere, feel it tugging at them from head to toe. You don't have to be particularly bad off to think: This can't be a the life I get. The judges' children know as well as Lilli and me that the same sky that looks down on the border guards stretches all the way to Italy or Canada, where things are better than here. One way or the other, the attempt will be made, whether sooner or later, in this way or that. — Herta Muller

Holl?" Seth turned over. "Where you going?"
"Home. Sorry. Go back to sleep." I pulled on my sweatpants.
"But we have all night." He pushed to his elbows.
"I know. I can't." My voice sounded hoarse, hollow. "I don't feel good. I'm sorry." I lurched for the door. I needed to get out, get away. As far away from here as possible. She was in me, in my blood, invading every cell in my body. She was the one I wanted. She was the one I saw, felt, desired. This was wrong. He was wrong. It was all so wrong. (Chapter. 12) — Julie Anne Peters

I'm not into danger, either." "Aw, Chess. You so into it you ain't climb out with a rope. Why else you do your job, live down here, buy from Bump?" "It's just - I mean - I just do, is all." Her cheeks burned. She shouldn't have let him come in here. She should have just sent him home and let him wash his stupid shirt himself. "No shame in it. Some of us needs an edge on things make us feel right, else we ain't like feeling at all, aye? — Stacia Kane

Here, in their midst, George feels a sort of vertigo. Oh God, what will become of them all? What chance have they? Ought I to yell out to them, right now, here, that it's hopeless? But George knows he can't do that. Because, absurdly, inadequately, in spite of himself, almost, he is a representative of the hope. And the hope is not false. No. It's just that George is like a man trying to sell a real diamond for a nickel, on the street. The diamond is protected from all but the tiniest few, because the great hurrying majority can never stop to dare to believe that it could conceivably be real. — Christopher Isherwood

It was a lone tree burning on the desert. A heraldic tree that the passing storm had left afire. The solitary pilgrim drawn up before it had traveled far to be here and he knelt in the hot sand and held his numbed hands out while all about in that circle attended companies of lesser auxiliaries routed forth into the inordinate day, small owls that crouched silently and stood from foot to foot and tarantulas and solpugas and vinegarroons and the vicious mygale spiders and beaded lizards with mouths black as a chowdog's, deadly to man, and the little desert basilisks that jet blood from their eyes and the small sandvipers like seemly gods, silent and the same, in Jeda, in Babylon. A constellation of ignited eyes that edged the ring of light all bound in a precarious truce before this torch whose brightness had set back the stars in their sockets. — Cormac McCarthy

I refuse to believe that Southern pride stems from the pain we've inflicted on others. Southern pride comes from what we've built together. In our music and art and innovation.

In the people who honor us by taking our culture out into the world and celebrating it. It comes from people seeking us out, and flocking here to experience all that we know and love.

We are all neighbors. We are all Southerners. This is OUR culture, and it means what WE choose it to mean.

So, yes. I'll say it again - Southern Pride is good collard greens.

Death to the flag.

Long live the South. — Jason Latour

The good and the evil resulting from our words and deeds go on apportioning themselves, one assumes in a reasonably uniform and balanced way, throughout all the days to follow, including those endless days, when we shall not be here to find out, to congratulate ourselves or ask for pardon, indeed there are those who claim that this is the much-talked-of immortality, Possibly, but this man is dead and must be buried. — Jose Saramago

This is a part of post-college life that nobody ever warns you about. Your social life is no longer dropped into your lap by virtue of shared classes and extracurricular activities. Relationships, whether with friends, family, or romantic partners - from here on out, they're going to take a lot more work. No more built-in friends at the sorority, or hollering down the stairs when I need my mom. It's certainly not going to be as easy to meet guys now that I'm done with school. It's not like I can just chat up the cute guy in econ class anymore. — Lauren Layne

It's almost like the band is cursed ... and it's only going to get worse from here on out. — Karina Halle

He lifted a hand and turned and went on. He had divested himself of the little cloaked godlet and his other amulets in a place where they would not be found in his lifetime and he'd taken for talisman the simple human heart within him. Walking down the little street for the last time he felt everything fall away from him. Until there was nothing left of him to shed. It was all gone. No trail, no track. The spoor petered out down there on Front Street where things he'd been lay like paper shadows, a few here, they thin out. After that nothing. A few rumors. Idle word on the wind. Old news years in traveling that you could not put stock in. — Cormac McCarthy

Sophie dear,' I said. 'Are you in love with him - with this spider-man?'
'Oh, don't call him that - please - we can't any of us help being what we are. His name's Gordon. He's kind to me, David. He's fond of me. You've got to have as little as I have to know how much that means. You've never known loneliness. You can't understand the awful emptiness that's waiting all round us here. I'd have given him babies gladly, if I could ... I - oh, why do they do that to us? Why didn't they kill me? It would have been kinder than this ... '
She sat without a sound. The tears squeezed out from under the closed lids and ran down her face. I took her hand between my own.
I remembered watching. The man with his arm linked in the woman's, the small figure on top of the pack-horse waving back to me as they disappeared into the trees. Myself desolate, a kiss still damp on my
cheek, a lock tied with a yellow ribbon in my hand. I looked at her now, and my heart ached. — John Wyndham

Later that day I went back to the old turf-house door and drew back the ivy. There between the stones was the dried-out bird's nest that was no longer in use because its owner was on her foreign holidays. I eased my letter to Santa out of my pocket and tucked it into the nest. I considered this the ideal resting place because the owner and Santa both belonged to foreign places and came here across the sky. There was the mystery of the unknown about the worlds they both came from; they belonged in the sky and my letter was destined to join them there when the time was right. — Alice Taylor

I will gladly shell out $24.95 or $9.99 or 99 cents on iTunes to read or see or listen to the 24-karat treasure that you have refined from your pain and your vision and your imagination. I need it. We all do. We're struggling here in the trenches. That beauty, that wisdom, those thrills and chills, even that mindless escape on a rainy October afternoon - I want it. Put me down for it. — Steven Pressfield

Salaries haven't kept up with inflation, and there is such anger coming out of Washington about immigrants that I think it has curtailed the ability of local folks here to hire immigrants, .. I really believe it starts from the top, and the policy continues to be one of ignoring people at the bottom, cutting taxes for those on the top and spending a lot of money for a war built on lies. — Jose Serrano

We, the survivors of the crossing, clung to the beast that had stolen us away. Not a soul among us had wanted to baord that ship, but once out on open waters, we held on for dear life. The ship became an extension of our own rotting bodies. Those who were cut from the heaving animal sank quick to their deaths, and we who remained attached wilted more slow as poison festered in our bellies and bowels. We stayed with the beast until new lands met our feet, and we stumbled down the long plants just before the poison became fatal. Perhaps here in this new land, we would keep living. — Lawrence Hill

Myers was not a neighborhood to visit on a lark.
Hi reached over and hit the door locks.
"Next right," Shelton said. Then, "There, on the left. Bates Pawn-and-Trade."
"Are we one hundred percent sure about exiting the vehicle?" Hi's voice was a bit high. "It might not be here when we get back."
"I'll park right in front." Ben also sounded tense.
"We'll be fine," I said. "In and out."
"That's what she said," Hi mumbled, hauling himself from the car. — Kathy Reichs

Do you ever think about the ocean?" Nick asked me.
"What about it?" I said.
"Like what could live down there? Like how there's as much life down there as up here? Maybe more?"
"God Lives Underwater," said someone. "That's the name of a band. They're awesome."
"But seriously," Nick said, "it's like an alternate universe. Right here on our own planet."
"Right here, a hundred feet from us," said Sheila.
"Right here in my hair," said one of the girls who had swum, pulling some sea gunk out of her wet hair.
Everyone laughed quietly at that. Nick drank his beer. The wood crackled as it burned. We all stared at the black ocean. — Blake Nelson

He yelled at the kid: "Stay here, don't go anywhere." He came out, said everything was okay, called over the squad commander from the checkpoint, stood facing the kid and told the squad commander, "That's how you deal with them." Then he gave the kid another two slaps and let him go. It's a crazy story, I remember sitting in the vehicle, looking on, and telling myself: I've been waiting for a situation like this for three years. From the minute I enlisted, I wanted to stop things like this, and here I am doing nothing, choosing to do nothing, is that okay? I remember answering myself: Yes, it's okay. He's hitting an Arab, and I'm doing nothing. I was really aware of doing nothing because I was scared of the company commander, and what could I do? Jump off the jeep and tell him to stop, because it's stupid, what he's doing? — Breaking The Silence

Just friends, she reminded herself. They were only friends, and would only be friends from here on out. It was a friendship that was to be cherished, as she cherished all the friendships she'd made aboard this ship. She wouldn't ruin it by wishing things could be more. She would be grateful for what affection she did have. — Marissa Meyer

Nobody had ever even stepped out onto the surface, she read in school, leading to a broken line of memorable first statements. "That's one small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind," on Luna, "I wish that the peace I see here could bless the Earth again," from Mars, "This one's for you, Mark Twain," on Halley's Comet. And from the only manned landing on Venus, "Oh my holy fucking shit I think we're on the fucking ground! Get us up we're gonna fucking die! — Ari Bach

If the weather isn't bad and it's a clear night, I spend fifteen or twenty minutes before bedtime out on the deck looking skyward, or, using a flashlight, I pick my way along the dirt road to the open pasture at the peak of my hill, from where I can see, from above the treeline, the whole heavenly inventory, stars unfurled in every direction, and, just this week, the planets Jupiter in the east and Mars in the west. It is beyond belief and also a fact, a plain and indisputable fact: that we are born, that this is here. I can think of worse ways to end my day. — Philip Roth

I used to walk out, at night, to the breakwater which divides the end of the harbor form the broad moor of the salt marsh. There was nothing to block the wind that had picked up speed and vigor from its Atlantic crossing. I'd study the stars in their brilliant blazing, the diaphanous swath of the milk Way, the distant glow of Boston backlighting the clouds on the horizon as if they'd been drawn there in smudgy charcoal. I felt, perhaps for the first time, particularly American, embedded in American history, here at the nation's slender tip. Here our westering impulse, having flooded the continent and turned back, finds itself face to face with the originating Atlantic, November's chill, salt expanses, what Hart Crane called the "unfettered leewardings," here at the end of the world. — Mark Doty

He stripped to his trunks, then dove into the pool. We all watched as he broke the surface and climbed from the water, his muscles slick and wet, his green eyes glowing in the half light of the glass ceiling. I heard Natalie and Sara both sigh, and Harry murmur that it almost made him want to go gay. Coby stretched out on a chaise beside me and asked, So you still sorry you moved here? — Lee Nichols

A new moon lay on its back, and stars were out. Here, away from lights and sounds of town or village, the night was deep, the black sky stretching, fathomless, away among the spheres to some unimaginable world where gods walked, and suns and moons showered down like petals falling. Some power there is that draws men's eyes and hearts up and outward, beyond the heavy clay that fastens them to earth. Music can take them, and the moon's light, and, I suppose, love, though I had not known it then, except in worship. — Mary Stewart

Puck rolled his eyes. Holding out his hand, he gave me an encouraging smile. "Come on, Princess. Don't want to get separated in here." I clasped his hand, and he curled his fingers around mine. "Let's go, then. Rusty can bring up the read. That way, if we're jumped from behind, we won't lose anything important."
I felt Ironhorse's indignant snort as we entered the tunnel, and I pressed closer to Puck as the shadows closed in on us like grasping fingers.
- Puck, Meghan Chase, and Ironhorse, page 152. — Julie Kagawa

There was no way to take the story back, folding it neatly into the place I'd kept
it all this time. No matter
what else happened, from here on out, I would always remember Wes, because
with this telling, he'd become part of that story, of my story, too. — Sarah Dessen

Don't you want to take a last look at the place?" he asked Hedwig, who was still sulking with her head under her wing. "We'll never be here again. Don't you want to remember all the good times? I mean, look at this doormat. What memories . . . Dudley puked on it after I saved him from the dementors . . . Turns out he was grateful after all, can you believe it? . . . And last summer, Dumbledore walked through that front door . . . ."
Harry lost the thread of his thoughts for a moment and Hedwig did nothing to help him retrieve it, but continued to sit with her head under her wing. Harry turned his back on the front door.
"And under here, Hedwig" - Harry pulled open a door under the stairs - "is where I used to sleep! You never knew me then - Blimey, it's small, I'd forgotten . . . . — J.K. Rowling

I do not teach truth as such; I do not transform myself into a diaphanous mouthpiece of eternal pedagogy: I settle accounts , however I can, on a certain number of problems; with you and with me or me, and through you, me and me, with a certain number of authorities represented here. I understand that the place I am now occupying will not be left out of the exhibit or withdrawn form the scene. Nor do I intend to withhold even that which I shall call, to save time, an autobiographical demonstration, although I must ask you to shift its sense a little and to listen to it with another ear. I wish to take a certain pleasure in this, so that you may learn this pleasure from me. — Jacques Derrida

The strands (the gods) weave out of our mortal lives are like a pattern visible only from the heavens; we here on earth can only guess at their designs — Steven Saylor

The canyon is a ladder to the plain. The valley is pale in the end of July, when the corn and melons come of age and slowly the fields are made ready for the yield, and a faint, false air of autumn - an illusion still in the land - rises somewhere away in the high north country, a vague suspicion of red and yellow on the farthest summits. And the town lies out like a scattering of bones in the heart of the land, low in the valley, where the earth is a kiln and the soil is carried here and there in the wind and all harvests are a poor survival of the seed. It is a remote place, and divided from the rest of the world by a great forked range of mountains on the north and west; by wasteland on the south and east, a region of dunes and thorns and burning columns of air; and more than these by time and silence. — N. Scott Momaday

At the hill's foot Frodo found Aragorn, standing still and silent as a tree; but in his hand was a small golden bloom of elanor, and a light was in his eyes. He was wrapped in some fair memory: and as Frodo looked at him he knew that he beheld things as they had been in this same place. For the grim years were removed from the face of Aragorn, and he seemed clothed in white, a young lord fall and fair; and he spoke words in the Elvish tongue to one whom Frodo could not see. Arwen vanimelda, namarie! He said, and then he drew a breath, and returning out of his thought he looked at Frodo and smiled.

'Here is the heart of Elvendom on earth,' he said, 'and here my heart dwells ever, unless there be a light beyond the dark roads that we still must tread, you and I. Come with me!' And taking Frodo's hand in his, he left the hill of Cerin Amroth and came there never again as a living man. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Most human lives were and are too short. Most people have lived out their days hungry and barefoot, on the run from this war and that famine, a plague here and a flood there. But people have to sing anyway. Even a baby that hasn't been fed in days will stop crying and look around when they hear someone singing in joy. You sing and it's like giving a thirsty person water. It's a kindness. It makes you shine. — Joe Hill

Rachel's the first one to speak. "So - he told you."
"Told me what?"
"Come on, Hal. What's changed since yesterday?" Rachel sneaks one arm out of her jacket cocoon to give Hallelujah a soft punch in the shoulder. "I may not be at my best right now, but I'm not blind." She pauses. "Or deaf."
Hallelujah feels her face get hot. "Oh. What did you hear?"
"Bits and pieces. I was really out of it last night, after . . . whatever that was. After almost freezing to death." Rachel shudders. "I have to say, it was totally obvious from the get-go that Jonah liked you."
"It was?" Hallelujah is still surprised. She still doesn't quite believe it.
"Um, yeah. Or did you think he's out here for me?" Rachel says slowly, as if to a child, "You followed me. He followed you. — Kathryn Holmes

The world rains on everybody, Laura. We just have to figure out a way to get a bigger umbrella than a lot of other people need, that's all. ~from-Here Comes The Heroes~ — Kasey Michaels

They seem to be getting it together. How much damage will the picture of people spending four or five days on rooftops do That depends on how well it goes from here on out. — James Carville

I want you to think on this very hard. They always do what is best for them. Always. And what is best for them, if I am right, is to have you secure somewhere, in their control, making you do work for them. So why do they have you out here, in the world? What else do they want from you, that they get from you being out here? — Susan Adrian

That's how the world works, doesn't it?"
"That's how it can work. You're such a snob,Brian."
He looked up,flabbergasted. "What?"
"You're such a snob,and the worst kind of snob-the kind who thinks he's broad-minded. Now that I know that,you don't bother me at all."
The stable phone rang,delighting her. Whoever was on the other end not only had perfect timing but they had her gratitude.It gave her great pleasure to see the absolute shock on Brian's face as she walked to the phone.
"Royal Meadows Riding Academy. Would you hold one moment,please." With a friendly smile,she laid a hand over the receiver. "Really,I can finish up here.I'm keeping you from your work."
"I'm not a snob," he finally managed to say.
"Of course you wouldn't see it that way. Can we discuss this another time? I need to take this call."
Irked,he shoved the scoop back in the grain. "I'm not the one wearing bloody diamonds in my ears," he muttered as he stalked out. — Nora Roberts

Alex leaned over and treated me to a Rhett Butler kiss, slow and deep but not too sweet. He once told Scarlett something to the effect of how badly she needed kissing, and by someone who knew what he was doing. Alex knew what he was doing. By the time he finished proving it, I was breathless. I rested my head on his shoulder, basking in his warmth and filling my lungs with his scent. "What was that for?"
"That was to show you how glad I am that we got out of that mess in one piece and that we're here together." He extracted his arm from around my shoulders and sat back. "Now let's talk about your crazy stunt."
Damn it, Rhett did that, too. He'd kiss Scarlett silly, then lecture her. — Suzanne Johnson

Liall realized that this was the first time he had really been alone with Scarlet.
He stood up and held out his hand. The blanket dropped from his shoulders. "Come here."
Scarlet reached out to him tentatively and Liall quickly dragged him into his arms. He fits there perfectly, Liall thought, snug if not a little small. Scarlet did not respond at first, as if he would pull away, and for a moment Liall believed he had made a huge mistake. Then, surprisingly, Scarlet sighed and his arms went around Liall's back. Scarlet turned his head to rest his cheek against Liall's bare chest as hey listened to the rain batten on the roof.
"Thank you for saving my life." Liall murmured. — Kirby Crow

His hand slid from under his desk and slowly moved up my leg until his fingers grazed my inner thigh. He couldn't just pull something sexy and think that I'd forgive him that easily.I grabbed his hand and squeezed it tightly, turning my head ever so slightly toward his. "Stop it.We're not doing this here."
He pulled his hand out of my grip. "Geez, Red. No need to be so touchy.""You were the one being touchy," I whispered. "And now I
need to pay attention to our lecture.""Come on, Red. I thought we were good."One of the girls in front of us turned her head sharply. "Will you two either quit talking or take it
outside? Some of us are trying to listen," she hissed.
"Mind your own damn business," I pushed back.
She huffed and then turned around to face the front again.
"Ouch! Feisty and I like it," John said through a laugh. — Magan Vernon

Do you recall telling Dr. Phillips during your appointment on February second of last year that you needed to be tested for sexually transmitted diseases because - let me make sure I get this correct here . . ."
Taylor read out loud from her file,

"Because, quote, 'your weasel-dick husband slept with a skanky whore stripper and the cheating bastard didn't use a rubber'?"

Ms. Campbell shot up in her chair. "She actually wrote that down?"

The jury tittered with amused laughter and sat up interestedly. Finally - things were starting to look a little more like Law & Order around here.

"I take it that's a yes?" Taylor asked. — Julie James

Anna Petrovna: Kolya, my dearest, stay at home.
Ivanov: My love, my unhappy darling, I beg you, don't stop me going out in the evenings. It's cruel and unjust on my part, but let me commit that injustice. It's an agony for me at home. As soon as the sun disappears, my spirit begins to be weighed down by depression. What depression! Don't ask why. I myself don't know. I swear by God's truth I don't know. Here I'm in anguish, I go to the Lebedevs and there it's still worse; I return from there and here it's depression again, and so all night ... Simply despair! — Anton Chekhov

You know, there's this thing called pants. You should try it out."
He cast me a cheeky grin as he turned. "You'd be devastated. Just think, you get to see this every day from here on out."
My heart did a trippy dance. "Your naked ass? Gee. Sign me up for that. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

The brick is neither here nor there,' interrupted the stranger in an imposing fashion, 'it never merely falls on someone's head from out of nowhere. In your case, I can assure you that a brick poses no threat whatsoever. You will die another kind of death.
'And you know just what that will be?' queried Berlioz with perfectly understandable irony, letting himself be drawn into a truly absurd conversation. 'And can you tell me what that is?'
'Gladly,' replied the stranger. He took Berlioz's measure as if intending to make him a suit and muttered something through his teeth that sounded like 'One, two.. Mercury in the Second House ... the moon has set ... six-misfortune ... evening-seven ... ' Then he announced loudly and joyously, 'Your head will be cut off! — Mikhail Bulgakov

Maybe love, too, is beautiful because it has a wildness that cannot be tamed. I don't know. All I know is that passion can take you up like a house of cards in a tornado, leaving destruction in its wake. Or it can let you alone because you've built a stone wall against it, set out the armed guards to keep it from touching you. The real trick is not to let it in, but to hold on. To understand that the heart is as wide and vast as the universe, but that we come to know it best from here, this place is gravity and stability, where out feet can still touch ground. — Deb Caletti

Those who die young, they are cheated," she said. "Not cheated out of life, because life is a penance, but the young, they're cheated because they don't know it's coming. They don't have time to move closer, to return home. When you know you're going to die, you try to be near the bones of your own people. You don't even think you have bones when you're young, even when you break them, you don't believe you have them. But when you're old, they start reminding you they're there. They start turning to dust on you, even as you're walking here and there, going from place to place. And this is when you crave to be near the bones of your own people. My children never felt this. They had to look death in the face, even before they knew what it was. Just like you did, no? — Edwidge Danticat

The girl's arms jutted out at awkward angles, not quite hands on the hips belligerent but not relaxed either, as if they weren't all the way under the girl's control. "I came to find you."
"I didn't know. If I'd known ... "
"It doesn't matter now." The girl's attention was unwavering. "This is where you are."
"It is at that."
The girl looked sad. Her soil-dark eyes were clouded over by tears she hadn't been able to shed. "I came here to find you."
"I couldn't have known." Maylene reached out and plucked a leaf from the girl's hair.
"Doesn't matter." She lifted a dirty hand, fingernails flashing chipped red polish, but she didn't seem to know what to do with her outstretched fingers. Little girl fears warred with teenage bravado. Bravado won. "I'm here now."
"All right, then." Maylene walked down the path toward one of the gates. She pulled the key from her handbag, twisted it in the lock, and pushed open the gate. — Melissa Marr

There are places in the world where real life is still happening, far away from here, in a pre-Hitler Europe, where hundreds of lights are lit every evening, ladies and gentlemen gather to drink coffee with cream in oak-panelled rooms, or sit comfortably in splendid coffee-houses under gilt chandeliers, stroll arm in arm to the opera or the ballet, observe from close-up the lives of great artists, passionate love affairs, broken hearts, the painter's girlfriend falling in love with his best friend the composer, and going out at midnight bareheaded in the rain to stand alone on the ancient bridge whose reflection trembles in the river. * — Amos Oz

But we shouldn't be concerned about trees purely for material reasons, we should also care about them because of the little puzzles and wonders they present us with. Under the canopy of the trees, daily dramas and moving love stories are played out. Here is the last remaining piece of Nature, right on our doorstep, where adventures are to be experienced and secrets discovered. And who knows, perhaps one day the language of trees will eventually be deciphered, giving us the raw material for further amazing stories. Until then, when you take your next walk in the forest, give free rein to your imagination-in many cases, what you imagine is not so far removed from reality, after all! — Peter Wohlleben

How are you feeling, man?" he asks me.
"Great," I tell him, and it is purely the truth. Doves clatter up out of a bare tree and turn at the same instant, transforming themselves from steel to silver in the snow-blown light. I know at that moment that the drug is working. Everything before me has become suddenly, radiantly itself. How could Carlton have known this was about to happen? "Oh," I whisper. His hand settles on my shoulder.
"Stay loose, Frisco," he says. "There's not a thing in this pretty world to be afraid of. I'm here."
I am not afraid. I am astonished. I had not realized until this moment how real everything is. A twig lies on the marble at my feet, bearing a cluster of hard brown berries. The broken-off end is raw, white, fleshly. Trees are alive.
"I'm here," Carlton says again, and he is. — Michael Cunningham

This is not exactly what I had in mind when I agreed to miss lunch," Alex said grumpily forty minutes later. He shifted uncomfortably and tried to see what I was doing.
I stared him back into submission. "Wait."
The art room is usually empty Thursday afternoons except for me. Ms. Evers leaves early to teach her UArts class and looks up.Of course, I am one of the few entrusted with the Secret Location of the Key.
A few feet away from where I sat perched on a stool,Alex was posed on the anchient chaise we use for figure drawing. It's a relic, probably from the Palladinetti years: chipped mahogany and dusty velvet, what little remaining stuffing pokes out from a century of holes. I was probably luxurious once. Now it's like sitting on a slightly smelly board. But I'd wanted to sketch Alex as I so often saw him, reclining with his head propped on one hand,listening or talking or coaxing me to put down the glass, already,Ella,and come here. — Melissa Jensen

Battles against Rome have been lost and won before, but hope was never abandoned, since we were always here in reserve. We, the choicest flower of Britain's manhood, were hidden away in her most secret places. Out of sight of subject shores, we kept even our eyes free from the defilement of tyranny. We, the most distant dwellers upon earth, the last of the free, have been shielded till today by our very remoteness and by the obscurity in which it has shrouded our name. Now, the farthest bounds of Britain lie open to our enemies; and what men know nothing about they always assume to be a valuable prize ...
A rich enemy excites their cupidity; a poor one, their lust for power. East and West alike have failed to satisfy them. They are the only people on earth to whose covetousness both riches and poverty are equally tempting. To robbery, butchery and rapine, they give the lying name of 'government'; they create a desolation and call it peace ... — Tacitus

The concept of country, homeland, dwelling place becomes simplified as "the environment"
that is, what surrounds us, we have already made a profound division between it an ourselves. We have given up the understanding
dropped it out of our language and so out of our thought
that we and our country create one another, depend on one another, are literally part of one another; that our land passes in and out of our bodies just as our bodies pass in and out of our land; that as we and our land are part of one another, so all who are living as neighbors here, human and plant and animal, are part of one another, and so cannot possibly flourish alone; that, therefore, our culture must be our response to our place, our culture and our place are images of each other and inseparable from each other, and so neither can be better than they other. — Wendell Berry

I do not begin my novel at the beginning, I do not reach chapter three before I reach chapter four, I do not go dutifully from one page to the next, in consecutive order; no, I pick out a bit here and a bit there, till I have filled all the gaps on paper. This is why I like writing my stories and novels on index cards, numbering them later when the whole set is complete. Every card is rewritten many times. — Vladimir Nabokov

I don't want to be here. I missed my dream world where everything was sunshine and smiles, away from whatever memories snarled on the out skirts of comprehension.
I want to forget ... just for a little longer. — Pepper Winters

They growled a response and went on digging. For some time there was no noise but the grating sound of the spades discharging their freight of mould and gravel. It was very monotonous. Finally a spade struck upon the coffin with a dull woody accent, and within another minute or two the men had hoisted it out on the ground. They pried off the lid with their shovels, got out the body and dumped it rudely on the ground. The moon drifted from behind the clouds and exposed the pallid face. The barrow was got ready and the corpse placed on it, covered with a blanket, and bound to its place with the rope. Potter took out a large spring-knife and cut off the dangling end of the rope and then said: "Now the cussed thing's ready, Sawbones, and you'll just out with another five, or here she stays. — Mark Twain

To enter into a partnership with one of the many thousands of kinds of fungi, a tree must be very open-literally-because the fungal threads grow into its soft root hairs. There's no research into whether this is painful or not, but as it is something the tree wants, I imagine it gives rise to positive feelings. However the tree feels, from then on, the two partners work together. The fungus not only penetrates and envelops the tree's roots, but also allows its web to roam through the surrounding forest floor. In so doing, it extends the reach of the tree's own roots as the web grows out toward other trees. Here, it connects with other trees' fungal partners and roots. And so a network is created, and now it's easy for the trees to exchange vital nutrients (see chapter 3, "Social Security") and even information-such as an impending insect attack.

This connection makes fungi something like the forest Internet. — Peter Wohlleben

He'd already accepted that he was going to die, and he wanted to do it there, not at home from a disease he couldn't fight with a gun or his fists. "It doesn't matter," he told me. "I'll die and you'll find someone else. People die out here all the time. Their wives go on and find someone else. — Chris Kyle

If you don't back away from my girl, I'll rip out your fucking throat. Right here on the dance floor. — Jamie McGuire

In the lower-brow selection of tabloids that report on the weight of celebrities, one statement that follows women struggling with their weight around more than any other is "She got her body back." Here you'll find near-constant Britney coverage. But barring any transcendent out-of-body experiences, these women were never separated from their bodies. They've occupied them across various weights. This phrase is not about a woman getting back something she lost as much as it as about our approval that she has returned to something we want her to be. What is meant by this phrase is "We got her body back." We got the body we felt entitled to. — Alana Massey

There's a beauty in birds on the wing,
That stirs the heart and makes earthbound creatures
Long for flight, but the larks above the battlefield
Are silenced by the sounds of war.
I have watched birds out at sea,
Catching the wind,
And longed to follow them,
To some safe place far from here. — Charles Todd

I never should have come back to Jupiter Point. I've ruined everything for Evie."

"That's not true," Suzanne said impatiently. "My cousin's a lot happier since you got here. Regular sex will do that for you."

Josh snorted coffee though his nose, then clapped a hand to his face with a moan of agony. "You should really warn a guy before tossing the word'sex' out there."

"Sorry, big guy. I'll be more careful with your delicate sensibilities from now on," Suzanne teased. — Jennifer Bernard

Scotty, what's wrong?" For a moment, Scott ignored the sleepy, querulous voice of the man occupying the other half of his bed. Then he turned back from the window to look at the guy whose name he couldn't remember for the life of him and said, "Nothing, just a nightmare. Sorry. Go back to sleep." "Maybe I don't want to sleep now," the man pouted. Scott shrugged. "Then get dressed and go home. Makes me no nevermind." "Well, I never," the man huffed. "I guess I might as well. Looks like nothing more's going to be happening here." With a shrug, Scott grabbed his robe then put it on as he strode out of the bedroom. When he was downstairs in the kitchen, he started a pot of coffee, sighing — Edward Kendrick

84 When We made a covenant with you, We said, 'You shall not shed each other's blood, nor turn your people out of their homes.' You consented to this and bore witness. 85 Yet, here you are, slaying one another and driving some of your own people from their homelands, aiding one another against them, committing sin and aggression; but if they came to you as captives, you would ransom them. Surely their very expulsion was unlawful for you. Do you believe in one part of the Book and deny another part of it? Those of you who act thus shall be rewarded with disgrace in this world and with a severe punishment on the Day of Resurrection. God is never unaware of what you do. — Anonymous

Solitary like a pool at evening, far distant, seen from a train window, vanishing so quickly that the pool, pale in the evening, is scarcely robbed of its solitude, though once seen.
***
Here sitting on the world, she thought, for she could not shake herself free from the sense that everything this morning was happening for the first time, perhaps for the last time, as a traveller, even though he is half asleep, knows, looking out of the train window, that he must look now, for he will never see that town, or that mule-cart, or that woman at work in the fields, again. — Virginia Woolf

Adora changed her color scheme from peach to yellow. She promised me she'd take me to the fabric store so I can make new coverings to match. This dollhouse is my fancy." She almost made it sound natural, my fancy. The words floated out of her mouth sweet and round like butterscotch, murmured with just a tilt of her head, but the phrase was definitely my mother's. Her little doll, learning to speak just like Adora.
"Looks like you do a very good job with it," I said, and motioned a weak wave good-bye.
"Thank you," she said. Her eyes focused on my room in the dollhouse. A small finger poked the bed. "I hope you enjoy your stay here," she murmured into the room, as if she were addressing a tiny Camille no one could see. — Gillian Flynn

Returning the Pencil to Its Tray Everything is fine - the first bits of sun are on the yellow flowers behind the low wall, people in cars are on their way to work, and I will never have to write again. Just looking around will suffice from here on in. Who said I had to always play the secretary of the interior? And I am getting good at being blank, staring at all the zeroes in the air. It must have been all the time spent in the kayak this summer that brought this out, the yellow one which went nicely with the pale blue life jacket - the sudden, tippy buoyancy of the launch, then the exertion, striking into the wind against the short waves, but the best was drifting back, the paddle resting athwart the craft, and me mindless in the middle of time. Not even that dark cormorant perched on the No Wake sign, his narrow head raised as if he were looking over something, not even that inquisitive little fellow could bring me to write another word. — Billy Collins

You could put your faith in technology. It got you here, it can get you out. This is the whole point of technology. It creates an appetite for immortality on the one hand. It threatens universal existence on the other. Technology is lust removed from nature. — Don DeLillo

No! Please no," she feels the cool metal
of the handcuffs again. "Please, I'm
Madison, I'm Madison!"
Her arms lock into place above her head.
She jerks her body, pain snapping at her
muscles.
"You can stay like this for the day." He
rises from the bed, bends down, and
blows out the candles on her birthday
cake. "Night, night, Rosie."
"No!"
He opens the door, letting a stream of
sunlight into the room.
"Please don't leave me here, please!"
And then the door closes, and the
sunlight is gone. — Kay Botha

Oh my lord. It can't be. But it most certainly was. What in the heck is he doing here? Why in the hell was the star wide receiver of the Georgia Bulldogs at his mother's funeral? The man that made history by coming out and telling the world he was bisexual two years ago. He was a hero, and he looked the part. He stood tall, at least 6'2", or 6'3". His wavy, dirty blond hair was longer on top than the cropped hair on the sides. Dark shades covered what he knew were magnetic, emerald-green eyes. His broad shoulders made his suit hang beautifully on his large body. Curtis' mouth watered at the thought of all those muscles. He'd gotten glimpses of the man's chest and biceps when the reporters and cameramen of ESPN would go in the locker room to listen to the coach congratulate his team on a win. There he was right there, just twenty feet away from him. — A.E. Via

The bar was meant to look like a place where Hemingway might have hung out in the Bahamas. A stuffed swordfish hung on the wall, and fishing nets dangled from the ceiling. There were lots of photographs of people posing with giant fish they had caught, and there was a portrait of Hemingway. Happy Papa Hemingway. The people who came here were apparently not concerned that the author later suffered from alcoholism and killed himself with a hunting rifle. — Haruki Murakami

November arrives in Northern Maine on a cold wind from Canada that knives unfiltered through the thinnest forest, drapes snow along the river banks and over the slope of hills. It's lonely up here, not just in fall and winter but all the time; the weather is gray and hard and the spaces are long and hard, and that north wind blows through every space unmercifully, rattling the syllables out of your sentences sometimes. — Gerard Donovan

The ultimate test is always your own serenity. If you don't have this when you start and maintain it while you're working you're likely to build our personal problems right into the machine.
The machine responds to your personality. It's just that the personality that it responds to is your real personality, the one that genuinely feels and reasons and acts, rather than any false, blown up personality images your ego may conjure up. These false images are defaulted so rapidly and completely you're bound to be very discouraged very soon if you've derived your gumption from ego rather than Quality.
The real machine you're working on is a cycle called yourself. The machine that appears to be out there and the person that appears to be in here are not 2 separate things. They grow toward Quality or fall away from Quality together. — Robert M. Pirsig

Hey - guys? Your loin passion is grossing out the little ones." "I'm not a little one," James says, visibly offended. "And I don't think it's gross." Kenji spins around. "You're not bothered by all the heavy breathing going on over here?" He makes a haphazard gesture toward us. I jump away from Adam reflexively. "No," James says, crossing his arms. "Are you?" "Disgust was my general reaction, yeah." "I bet you wouldn't think it was gross if it was you. — Anonymous

The risings and settings of the sun, the moon, and the other heavenly bodies may come about from the lighting up and quenching of their fires ... ; for nothing in our sensory experience runs counter to this hypothesis. Or the said effects may be caused by the emergence of these bodies from a point above the earth and again by the earth's position in front of them; for nothing in our sensory experience is against this.45 Here two alternative explanations of "risings and settings" are offered; both are of equal value and equally true, since neither is contradicted by anything in our experience. On the contrary, we have all seen fires die down from lack of fuel, and lights obscured or blacked out by objects coming in front of them. — Epicurus

Here's some advice. Stay alive, says Haymitch, and then bursts out laughing. I exchange a look with Peeta before I remember that I'm having nothing more to do with him. I'm surprised to see the hardness in his eyes. He generally seems so mild.
'That's very funny,' says Peeta. Suddenly, he lashes out at the glass in Haymitch's hand. It shatters on the floor, sending the bloodred liquid running toward the back of the train. 'Only not to us.'
Haymitch considers this a moment, then punches Peeta in the jaw, knocking him from his chair. When he turns back to reach for the spirits, I drive my knife into the table between his hand and the bottle, barely missing his fingers. I brace myself to deflect his hit, but it doesn't come. Instead, he sits back and squints at us.
'Well, what's this?' says Haymitch. 'Did I actually get a pair of fighters this year? — Suzanne Collins

I admire your courage. I know what you've given up to be here. I know the kind of artist it takes to land a role. I know that you won't receive one on your own. And I imagine you, myshka, two years from now, working at Phantom with the same aspirations, the same dreams, in the same place where you are now. It's wasted courage. And wasted love. You shouldn't have to waste those things."
I'm speechless.
And overwhelmed. When someone reaches out and gives you a hand - for no other reason than to see your success - it's powerful. And rare.
He wipes beneath my eye with his thumb. "I'd rather feed your hunger than watch you starve — Krista Ritchie

I am the flying saucer man from another world trapped on yours until they come to rescue me. One day the saucer will land. Jimi Hendrix and John Coltrane will open the hatch and tell me to get in before someone tries to blow up the ship. I'll just ask what took them so long. Within seconds we'll be out of here. — Henry Rollins

Where did you meet?" he pressed on.
I shrugged and considered a little rephrasing. "I was out for a run."
"From who?"
I leaned back to take a long, very long, slow sip of that beer.
Knox leaned forward. "I think we're both bullsh*tting here, you ever play that card game?"
"With my grandma, every Sunday after church. — Dannika Dark

On game days, I could be in the worst mood imagiable-a really bad mood. But sometimes, I'd get a call from the Make-A-Wish Foundation-there would be people, sometimes kids, who anted to meet me before they died. And the foundation would call on a game day and say, "There's kid dying here whose last wish is to see you. Can you just come and see him?" I'd get there and sometimes the kid would be comatose. One day, a kid woke up for a split second and smiled at me. I was told he'd been hanging on. The mom and dad called me later and said, "I don't know what yu did to him, but those few moments were wonderful." And I cried all the way to the game, just cried my eyes out.
It's very scary. It's uplifting, too, but so scary. And then ... I'm bitching because my breakfast is cold? — Charles Barkley

I had a few really bad years in school, just from not fitting in and being bullied. It was kind of brilliant being a military brat, though, because when you're in that kind of situation, you just think, 'I only have to hang on for another year, because then we'll move. It'll be fine if I can just get out of here.' — Carrie Vaughn