Goes Before Me Quotes & Sayings

She smiled, lifted her arm, and tugged on a couple of his pain-in-the-ass curls, her expression tender enough to bring him back to cold reality. He was an ex-cop. She was the president's daughter. He was scrap metal. She was pure gold. Beyond all that, he had a dead zone a mile wide inside him, while she bubbled with life. "Lucy ... "
"Oh lord ... " She rolled her eyes and flopped to her back. "Here we go. The speech." She deepened her voice in exaggerated imitation of him. "Before this goes any further, Lucy, I need to make sure you don't get the wrong idea. I'm a cowboy, wild and free. No little filly can ever tame a man like me." She sneered. "As if I'd want to. — Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Something now leaves me; something goes from me to meet that figure who is coming, and assures me that I know him before I see who it is. How curiously one is changed by the addition, even at a distance, of a friend. How useful an office one's friends perform when they recall us. Yet how painful to be recalled, to be mitigated, to have one's self adulterated, mixed up, become part of another. As he approaches I become not myself but Neville mixed with somebody - with whom? - with Bernard? Yes, it is Bernard, and it is to Bernard that I shall put the question, Who am I? — Virginia Woolf

You got a problem?" he drawled, obviously expecting me to pee my pants before falling to the ground and groveling like an unworthy subject of the Emperor. And that was all it took. A new, screw-you attitude took precedence, trampling my fear under its boots. A highly dangerous approach, I still found it much easier to bear.
"Well it all goes back to my childhood ... ." I began, — Jennifer Rardin

I think I want to sleep," I say. And I do, really, I do. The last thing I want is to be awake and to think about how Ilven escaped from the life she didn't want. And why she never spoke to me, told me, warned me. Perhaps I could have changed her mind. It occurs to me that she never meant to meet me under the trees - that she knew me well enough to predict that I would wait only so long before I left - because then she could take the Leap without any chance of me witnessing her from my tower. My heart goes small, and every limb feels too heavy to lift. — Cat Hellisen

Finch scribbles something and slaps it to the wall. Welcome. He scribbles something else. Freak. He shows it to me before destroying it. He writes Belong, which goes on the wall, and Label, which doesn't. Warmth, Saturday, Wander, You, Best friend go up, while Cold, Sunday, Stand still, Everyone else go into the heap. — Jennifer Niven

[Photography] ties back into this feeling of wanting to watch things fall and the moment before they break. Fireworks are that way for me - this lovely thing that blows up and is gone. It all goes back to this desire to record things before they disappear - the original reason we take pictures, right? — Laurel Nakadate

Zombie!" Sammy calls. "I knew it was you."
Zombie?
"Where are you taking him?" Ben says to me in a deep voice. I don't remember it being that deep. Is my memory bad or is he lowering it on purpose, to sound older?
"Zombie, that's Cassie," Sam chides him. "You know - Cassie."
"Cassie?" Like he's never heard the name before.
"Zombie?" I say, because I really haven't heard that name before.
I pull off the cap, thinking it might help him recognize me, then immediately regret it. I know what my hair must look like.
"We go to the same high school," I say, drawing my fingers hastily through my chopped-off locks. "I sit in front of you in Honors Chemistry."
Ben shakes his head like he's clearing out the cobwebs.
Sammy goes, "I told you she was coming."
"Quiet, Sam," I scold him.
"Sam?" Ben asks.
"My name is Nugget now, Cassie," Sam informs me.
"Well, sure it is." I turn to Ben. "You know my brother. — Rick Yancey

Asking isn't what I had in mind," Sicarius said.
"Yes, I can see that." Amaranthe planted a hand on his chest, fingers splayed. "Why don't you give Yara and me a few minutes alone to discuss this? I'll brief you on whatever we decide to do before we do it. And you can loiter nearby in case anything goes wrong."
His face didn't soften exactly - and he gave that hand a long look before meeting Amaranthe's eyes - but the hostility he'd been oozing did seem to lessen. "Assassins don't loiter," he said.
The comment startled Evrial, and she wondered if she'd heard it correctly. The man hadn't uttered much that could be classified as humor, not with her around anyway. Maybe he was simply feeling indignant.But Amaranthe smiled. "What do you call it?"
"Standing. Purposefully. — Lindsay Buroker

The woman who runs the Pennsylvania Innocence Project told me that there's a man she's been trying to get out of prison for 26 years. Every night before she goes to bed, she thinks, 'What is he doing?' She says you don't sleep. And yet, she has the greatest sense of humor and this light that comes out of her. — Richard LaGravenese

She doesn't seem to notice me. She focuses on Uriah. "I'm just glad I didn't die while under the simulation," she says weakly. "You're not gonna die now," he says. "Don't be stupid," she says. "Uri, listen. I loved her too. I did." "You loved who?" he says, his voice breaking. "Marlene," says Lynn. "Yeah, we all loved Marlene," he says. "No, that's not what I mean." She shakes her head. She closes her eyes. Still, it takes a few minutes before her hand goes limp in mine. I guide it across her stomach, and then take her other hand from Uriah and do the same to it. He wipes his eyes — Veronica Roth

Now here is Gardiner, patting a manuscript as if it were the cheek of a plump baby: 'The king will be pleased to read this. I have called it, Of True Obedience.' 'You had better let me see it before it goes to the printer.' 'The king himself will expound it to you. It shows why oaths to the papacy are of none effect, yet our oath to the king, as head of the church, is good. It emphasises most strongly that a king's authority is divine, and descends to him directly from God.' 'And not from a pope. — Hilary Mantel

Why don't you use some sense and try to be more like me? You might live to be a hundred and seven, too."
"Because it's better to die on one's feet than live on one's knees," Nately retorted with triumphant and lofty conviction. "I guess you've heard that saying before."
"Yes, I certainly have," mused the treacherous old man, smiling again. "But I'm afraid you have it backward. It is better to live on one's feet than die on one's knees. That is the way the saying goes."
"Are you sure?" Nately asked with sober confusion. "It seems to make more sense my way."
"No, it makes more sense my way. Ask your friends. — Joseph Heller

Just a huge credit goes to the GM Goodwrench team and all my teammates that went before me. It's been a good weekend for us so far and hopefully we can put it all together tomorrow night. — Kevin Harvick

I can't imagine being quite as lucky at any other time - I certainly never have been before. That goes right down from my producing partners to people like Eddie Vedder. But the two things that make me feel that this was meant to be now and not before was that the story itself has more resonance today - I find it a more important story today than it was then - and Emile. — Sean Penn

My smell stays with you? I ruined you ... for what?"
"Your smell keeps me going all the time. I'm in a clutch game or at practice and it's full count? Your cloves and vanilla scent calms me down. I spray it on the front of my uniform and rub my right hand across like this." I demonstrate by rubbing my chest and she watches me in fascination like a starstruck teenager watches a rockstar play his bass. "I went to three different stores before I found the exact scent. Expensive. French perfume. Chamade by Guerlain."
She nods looking fascinated or charmed by me at least for a few seconds. "I got it in Paris when I was there a few years ago. I love it."
"I do too. So yes, you ruined me. For anyone else."
She's smiling but then it slowly disappears like a countdown does as it goes from ten to zero. "What are you doing to me, Elvis?" she asks, looking troubled. — Katherine Owen

I'm just as ambitious as ever. Only I've changed the object of my ambitions. I'm going to be a good teacher- and I'm going to study at home here and take a little college course all by myself. Oh, I've dozens of plans Marilla. I've been thinking them out for a week and I shall give life here my best, and I believe it will give its best to me in return. When I left Queens my future seemed to stretch out before me like a straight road. I thought I could see ti along for many a milestone. Now there is a bend in it. I don't know what lies around the bend, but I'm going to believe that the best does. It has a fascination of its own that bind, Marilla. I wonder how the road beyond it goes - what there is of green glory and soft, checkered light and shadows - what new landscapes- what new beauties - what curves and hills and valley's further on. — L.M. Montgomery

I used to wish I had an easier life," he mused. "Some families sail through years with nothing touching them. They have no tragedies. They go on about how lucky they are. Yet sometimes it seems to me they're half alive. When something goes wrong for them, and it does for everyone sooner or later, their trauma is much worse. They've had nothing bad happen to them before. In the meantime, they think little problems, like losing a wallet, are big deals. They think it's ruined their day. They have no idea what a hard day's like. It's going to be incredibly tough for them when they find out."
He'd also developed his own version of making the most of every minute. "Through Sam I found out how quickly things can change. Because of him I've learned to appreciate each moment and try not to hold on to things. Life's more exciting and intense that way. It's like the yogurt that goes off after three days. It tastes so much better than the stuff that lasts three weeks. — Helen Brown

The thing is, work has simply swamped my whole existence. Slowly but surely it's robbed me of my mother, my wife, and everything that meant anything to me. It's like a germ planted in the skull that devours the brain, spreads to the trunk and the limbs, and destroys the entire body in time. No sooner am I out of bed in the morning than work clamps down on me and pins me to my desk before I've even had a breath of fresh air. It follows me to lunch and I find myself chewing over sentences as I'm chewing my food. It goes with me when I go out, eats out of my plate at dinner and shares my pillow in bed at night. It's so extremely merciless that once the process of creation is started, it's impossible for me to stop it, and it goes on growing and working even when I'm asleep. ... Outside that, nothing, nobody exists. — Emile Zola

Before you judge me as some kind of 'anything goes' language heathen, let me just say that I'm not against usage standards. I don't violate them when I want to sound like an educated person, for the same reason I don't wear a bikini to a funeral when I want to look like a respectful person. There are social conventions for the way we do lots of things, and it is to everyone's benefit to be familiar with them. But logic ain't got nothin' to do with it. — Arika Okrent

I think I'm going to skip all of my classes today because I need a "me" day. The problem with "me" days is that I need them four times a week. The problem with me is that I'm very smart and very capable (or so I've been told) but my laziness hinders me. Laziness. They forgot to add procrastination, self-destruction, and the inability to leave my bed to the list. The problem with me is that I've dealt with this before but have no idea what to do next. I should email my past teachers and ask them what I did after I sent them messages excusing my week-long absences from class due to "personal reasons." I should stop scratching my hand in case my mom asks me if I'm okay again. I am okay. I am doing fine. But I have an itch that I cannot place, an itch that changes locations when my fingers find it. The problem with me is that I will focus on it completely until it goes away. The problem with this feeling is that it never goes away. It has always been one large itch that I cannot place. — Lora Mathis

I think you're asking too much. You know what I have? Toward this Pris android?"
"Empathy," he said.
"Something like that. Identification; there goes I. My god; maybe that's what'll happen. In the confusion you'll retire me, not her. And she can go back to Seattle and live my life. I never felt this way before. We are machines, stamped out like bottle caps. It's an illusion that I - I personally - really exist; I'm just representative of a type."
He could not help being amused; Rachael had become so mawkishly morose. "Ants don't feel like that," he said, "and they're physically identical."
"Ants. They don't feel period."
"Identical human twins. They don't - "
"But they identify with each other; I understand they have an empathic, special bond. — Philip K. Dick

Two days later after the visit to CHOP, Jill wrote, "Give me the faith to leave this with you. Please help her to talk." Then the journal goes silent. It would be ten years before Jill would have the faith and the energy to write another entry in her prayer journal. It would be twenty years before Kim would begin to speak, at age twenty-five. God left Jill in confusion in order to grow her faith, her ability to connect with him. To become like a child, Jill had to become weak again. — Paul E. Miller

In a way, that's also a recognition that Dante needs Virgil and that the Inferno needs the Aeneid and that the epic needs a model and that for Dante to write this great poem he needs someone to come before him and he turns to Virgil's text, especially book six where Aeneas goes down into the underworld. And for me, that's a model of the poet's relationship to previous poetry, to another poetry as calling out for guidance. — Edward Hirsch

You may claim no affiliation with them, but perhaps some have crossed your path.And perhaps you'd like to help us find them."
"Oh,sure.You killed my mother. You can imagine I'm dying to help you out."
Thomas manages to ignore me again. He glances at the first photo projected on the wall. "Know this person?"
I shake my head. "Never seen him before."
Thomas clicks the remote. Another photo pops up. "How about this one?"
"Nope."
Another photo. "How about this?"
"Nope."
Yet another stranger pops up on the wall. "Seen this girl before?"
"Never seen her in my life."
More unfamiliar faces. Thomas goes through them without blinking an eye or questioning my responses. What a stupid puppet of the state. I watch him as we continue, wishing I weren't chained so I could beat this man to the ground. — Marie Lu

Her other boyfriend before me was a druggie, too. I don't mean... he was a druggie. I like drugs, but he was a druggie . It's like she just goes out with people who take drugs so she can pick on them. Joan of Narc, patron saint of the addict. - Alex — Carrie Fisher

In those ancient rooms near the center of Belaire all our wisdom originates, born in the gossip's mind as she sits to watch the Filing System or think on the saints. Things come together, and the saint or the System reveals a new thing not thought before to be there, but which once born spirals out like Path along the cords, being changed by them as it goes. As I got older, the stories of the saints which Painted Red told absorbed me more and more; when one day I stayed after everyone else had gone, hoping to hear more, Painted Red said to me: 'Remember, Rush, there's no one who would not rather be happy than be a saint.' I nodded, but I didn't know what she meant. It seemed to me that anyone who was a saint would have to be happy. I wanted to be a saint, though I told no one, and the thought gave me nothing but joy. — John Crowley

My Shadow
I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;
And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.
The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow
Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;
For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball,
And he sometimes goes so little that there's none of him at all.
He hasn't got a notion of how children ought to play,
And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way.
He stays so close behind me, he's a coward you can see;
I'd think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me!
One morning, very early, before the sun was up,
I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;
But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head,
Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed. — Robert Louis Stevenson

goes stiff, and I pause where I'm standing a few feet away from the bed and the naked woman lying in it. A moment passes before I give her a curt nod. Yanking my black tee shirt over my head, I sit down on the edge of the hotel mattress and shove my feet into the motorcycle boots she'd taken off me earlier on my order. "Got a shoot in the morning," I tell her, my voice bored. But even if my band wasn't doing a music video this week, I wouldn't — Emily Snow

But why do spirits walk the earth, and why do they come to me?"
"It is required of every man," the Ghost returned, "that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world
oh, woe is me!
and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness!
... I cannot rest, I cannot stay, I cannot linger anywhere. My spirit never roved beyond the narrow limits of our money-changing hole; and weary journeys lie before me! — Charles Dickens

Want to make out?"
"With who?" she asks, not bothering to look up.
"Me."
She lifts her head from her book just long enough to give me a once-over. "No, thanks," she says, then goes back to her homework.
She's fuckin' with me. She's got to be fuckin' with me, right?
"Because of that pendejo Tuck?"
"No. Because I don't want Madison's leftovers."
Wait. Un. Momento. I've been called a lot of things before, but . . .
"You callin' me leftovers?"
"Yeah. Besides, Tuck is a great kisser. I wouldn't want you to feel bad when there's no way you can compete."
That guy hardly owns a pair of lips. "Wanna bet? — Simone Elkeles

The vertigo is a difficult thing: it just comes and goes whenever it pleases. I wasn't expecting it. I've had it before, and there have been years between stretches, and unfortunately it happened at the U.S. Open, and that knocked me off my feet. — Jason Day

And nothing formed against me shall stand. You hold the whole world in Your hands. I'm holding onto Your promises. You are faithful. You are faithful. You are faithful. I know Who goes before me. I know Who stands behind. The God of angel armies is always by my side. The One who reigns forever, He is a Friend of mine. The God of angel armies Is always by my side. — Chris Tomlin

My spirit gets nourished in faraway places. Sometimes I wonder if it's a biological need, perhaps a biological flaw, that compels me to seek the excitement and challenge that comes of being in a place where nobody knows me.

Other times I think that my compulsion to settle into communities that are different from the ones I know is related to my passion for experiential learning. I learn best and most happily by doing, touching, sharing, tasting. When I'm somewhere I've never been before, learning goes on all day, every day. — Rita Golden Gelman

She smiles at me and then goes over to stand in front of the light. She tells me one thing before she walks into that glowing warmth. "I'm not your mother, Mattie. — Apryl Baker

You listen to me this one time, Dahlia. If something goes wrong, anything at all, you haul butt out of here fast. You have the cell phone and the number. Call Lily. The Ghost Walkers will be here as soon as possible."
She caught him before he could turn away. "You listen to me this one time, Nicholas. If anything goes wrong, don't be a hero. Haul your butt out of there and in one piece. We'll call Lily, and she can send the others. — Christine Feehan

Kiss me."

I cleared my throat softly even though a doctor had come in and so everyone had turned to him. "Your family is here."

"Don't care, can't feel anything unless you're touching me."

That comment again, from before. "When you're better, you'll tell me what that means."

"Tell you now." He took a breath. "Other people touch me, it's like nothing. When you do it, it's like electric current on my skin, and it goes right to my heart and other places."

"Nice."

"You asked." He smiled wickedly; the sarcasm had not been lost on him. — Mary Calmes

I will not die for a long time." Joseph tugged at his gray beard. "My beard goes white, but there's a lot of life in me yet."
"Don't be so sure, Abba," Joshua said.
Joseph dropped the bowl he was working on and stared into his hands. "Run away and play, you two," he said, his voice little more than a whisper.
Joshua stood and walked away. I wanted to throw my arms around the old man, for I had never seen a grown man afraid before and it frightened me too. "Can I help?" I said, pointing to the half-finished bowl that lay in Joseph's lap.
"You go with Joshua. He needs a friend to teach him to be human. Then I can teach him to be a man. — Christopher Moore

Today is hard because I'm thinking about tomorrow. And I'm thinking about what I've lost. But I had days like this even before Minnie died. Days I just checked out. Gran says it's just the blues. Everybody gets the blues. Maybe that's all they are. But they feel more like grays than blues, and more black than gray sometimes. It's always worse after I've been working too hard, singing night after night, pouring myself out all over the stage so people can lap me up. I love it, the singing, the performing, the people, the music, but sometimes I forget to save something . . . the something that is essentially me, and my light goes out. Sometimes it takes a while to get it burning again... But you have a key, Finn, and I give you permission to come on in," I said. "Even if it's dark, and you don't know what you'll find, you come on in, okay?" I felt an ache in my throat that grew as I spoke. "I want you in here with me, even if it isn't pretty, even if I don't invite you. — Amy Harmon

What really excites me in a project is when it goes in a way you haven't been before. — Idris Elba

Don't be amazed if you see my eyes always wandering. In fact, this is my way of reading, and it is only in this way that reading proves fruitful to me. If a book truly interests me, I cannot follow it for more than a few lines before my mind, having seized on a thought that the text suggests to it, or a feeling, or a question, or an image, goes off on a tangent and springs from thought to thought, from image to image, in an itinerary of reasonings and fantasies that I feel the need to pursue to the end, moving away from the book until I have lost sight of it. The stimulus of reading is indispensable to me, and of meaty reading, even if, of every book, I manage to read no more than a few pages. But those few pages already enclose for me whole universes, which I can never exhaust. — Italo Calvino

Composing is a natural fit. As far as the creative process goes, I'd rather do this than anything else, by far. Something different happened to me when I started to write music to images. It was a feeling of excitement and connection and a sense of being in the right place that I never had before. — James Newton Howard

But I would like to make an important point before this
goes any further and that is if anyone feels like arresting me
for corrupting an innocent kid then all I can say is that
Edmond was not corruptible. Some people are just like
that and if you don't believe me it just means you've never
met one of them yourself.
Which is your loss. — Meg Rosoff

Fear has a lot of flavors and textures. There's a sharp, silver fear that runs like lightning through your arms and legs, galvanizes you into action, power, motion. There's heavy, leaden fear that comes in ingots, piling up in your belly during the empty hours between midnight and morning, when everything is dark, every problem grows larger, and every wound and illness grows worse. And there is coppery fear, drawn tight as the strings of a violin, quavering on one single note that cannot possibly be sustained for a single second longer - but goes on and on and on, the tension before the crash of cymbals, the brassy challenge of the horns, the threatening rumble of the kettle drums. That's the kind of fear I felt. Horrible, clutching tension that left the coppery flavor of blood on my tongue. Fear of the creatures in the darkness around me, of my own weakness, the stolen power the Nightmare had torn from me. And fear for those around me, for the folk who didn't have the power I had. — Jim Butcher

I say so many things that I don't mean. It's as if, even if I think something nice about Harold, by the time it's got to my mouth it's become not nice. He goes to tell me something and I'm saying 'I think not' before he's finished the sentence." "I always got cross with Elizabeth for leaving the top off the toothpaste. Now I take it off as soon as I open a new tube. I find I don't want the lid. — Rachel Joyce

There's a wonderful old Italian joke about a poor man who goes to church every day and prays before the statue of a great saint,'Dear saint-please, please, please ... give me the grace to win the lottery.' This lament goes on for months. Finally the exasperated statue come to life, looks down at the begging man and says in weary disgust,'My son-please, please, please ... buy a ticket. — Elizabeth Gilbert

You can't control what goes on around you, you can't. But for me, I think there's staples of these moments, that crazy moment where you think you're indestructible. That moment where you find out that you're not. And then that moment where all of a sudden you go, okay, I'm not indestructible but I'm gonna be okay. You have this life, and we all have these lives we live but it takes a bit of learning before you realize not every drama's going to kill you and not every hard day has to lead to another one. — Andrew McMahon

Aye. He wills that I work his work in this place. Indeed. I am left behind to labor. Right
'And one day he may show his face beneath his damnable clouds to tell me what that work might be; what's worth so many tears; what's so important in his sight that is needs to be done this way ...
'O my sons!'Chauntecleer suddenly wailed at the top of his lungs, a light flaring before it goes out: 'How much I want you with me! — Walter Wangerin Jr.

Listen, I don't care what you say about my race, creed, or religion, Fatty, but don't tell me I'm not sensitive to beauty. That's my Achilles' heel, and don't you forget it. To me, everything is beautiful. Show me a pink sunset, and I'm limp, by God. Anything. Peter Pan. Even before the curtain goes up at Peter Pan I'm a goddamn puddle of tears. — J.D. Salinger

You know the one about the old man whose grandson is getting married? Just before the wedding, he calls the boy in for a chat. "My child," he says, "I want you to know that all marriages go through phases. At first, you and you wife will make love all the time. But then, as the children come along, you will find that you are having sex less and less. And by the time they are grown and gone, you'll be just like your grandmother and me. All you'll ever have is oral sex. I just wanted you to know how things will go." The boy looks at him, incredulous. "You and Grandma have oral sex?" "Every single night," the old man says, "and it's a perfectly natural thing. She goes into her bedroom and calls, 'Fuck you!' And I go into my bedroom and call back to her, 'No, fuck you! — A. Manette Ansay

I wasn't remembering the gift that God had given me. I had totally put all that aside. And my daughter was growing up before my eyes, and I just wanted to grab hold of that. It goes by so fast. I wanted to watch her. I wanted to be that parent - because at that point in time, I was a single parent. Watch her go to school, and when she got home, be there. I wanted that moment. — Oprah Winfrey

Don't you wish to marry?" At Pandora's lack of response, she pressed impatiently, "Well?"
Pandora glanced at Kathleen for guidance. "Should I say the conventional thing or the honest thing?"
Lady Berwick replied before Kathleen was able. "Answer honestly, child."
"In that case," Pandora said, "No, I don't wish to marry, ever. I like men quite well - at least the ones I've been acquainted with - but I shouldn't like to have to obey a husband and serve his needs. It wouldn't make me at all happy to have a dozen children, and stay at home knitting while he goes out romping with his friends. I would rather be independent. — Lisa Kleypas

Even before my parents died, I felt all the responsibility to my family. I don't know why. In any business, any relationship, if something goes wrong, I feel I am to blame. It's something inside me. — Mikhail Prokhorov

Believe me, sir, never a night goes by, be I ever so tired, but I read the Word of God before I go to bed. — Douglas MacArthur

There were times when I got frightened. Things weren't going right, so I just went out and got smashed. That's me. Something goes wrong, I find a bottle. I don't like it about myself but I've done it before and I'll do it again. But I never vanished for days or held up shooting or quit the picture. — George C. Scott

Hubby,
At the pool. If I don't return by nightfall, it's your marital duty to rescue me. If it goes that late, this means I've passed out on a lounge chair in Vegas in summer so my advice is to stock up on aloe vera before you launch the rescue effort.
Lexie
Walker stared at the note thinking that Alexa Berry ... Strike that. Alexa Walker was fucking funny. — Kristen Ashley

I look over at Satan's Cat in the corner, and of course she starts it again. She widens her eyes. I sigh loudly, but not enough to deter her. Another staring contest. This is probably somewhere around our fifteenth in two days. It goes like this. Satan's Cat stares into my eyes. I stare into Satan's Cat's eyes. After a few minutes I get freaked out and jump off the couch, usually screaming the same string of trilingual curse words as before because she has the most terrifying eyes in the world. They're amber with long black flecks in them that look like slivers, and I swear after about thirty seconds they start spinning like pinwheels and she's actually grinning at me the whole time - EVEN THOUGH CATS CAN'T GRIN! - probably because she knows she's stretching her evil out and into my brain. Demonic ocular poisoning. I'd Google it if I weren't so afraid of what I'd see. Whatever. Maybe this time I'll win. — Jessica Martinez

It makes me happy to hear good music before I go on. — Johnette Napolitano

If you are preaching on the first commandment ("Thou shalt have no other gods before me") or Ephesians 5:5 (which calls greed idolatry) or any of the several hundred other places in the Bible that speak of idols, you could quote David Foster Wallace, the late postmodern novelist. In his Kenyon College commencement speech he argues eloquently and forcefully that "everyone worships. The only choice we get is what to worship."32 He goes on to say everyone has to "tap real meaning in life," and whatever you use to do that, whether it is money, beauty, power, intellect, or something else, it will drive your life because it is essentially a form of worship. He enumerates why each form of worship does not merely make you fragile and exhausted but can "eat you alive." If you lay out his argument in support of fundamental biblical teaching, even the most secular audience will get quiet and keep listening to what you say next. — Timothy J. Keller

I think about him all the time," she said. "It's awful. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before."
"You mean Simon?"
"Scrawny little mundane bastard," she said, and took her hands off Jordan's chest. "Except he isn't. Scrawny, anymore. Or a mundane. And I like spending time with him. He makes me laugh. And I like the way he smiles. You know, one side of his mouth goes up before the other one - Well, you live with him. You must have noticed."
"Not really," said Jordan.
"I miss him when he's not around," Isabelle confessed. — Cassandra Clare

You get one chance.
You get to do this thing one time and you don't even know when it goes from swirling forward and around and around in circles to just a plain cold stop and nothing more. Can you believe it? All this time I've spent weighing this and weighing that, worrying about this and worrying about that, living back then and living forward, caring about what so-and-so thinks and about so-and-so, too, but never living here, here, this moment here. Never even acknowledging that this moment even exists, and it hits me, like a live volt through the chest.
This moment here.
This is all you get.
Before you are part of the sky — Andrea Portes

My life is not this steeply sloping hour,
in which you see me hurrying.
Much stands behind me; I stand before it like a tree;
I am only one of my many mouths,
and at that, the one that will be still the soonest.
I am the rest between two notes,
which are somehow always in discord
because Death's note wants to climb over
but in the dark interval, reconciled,
they stay there trembling.
And the song goes on, beautiful. — Rainer Maria Rilke

It struck me that perhaps a lot of the people you see walking about are dead. We say that a man's dead when his heart stops and not before. It seems a bit arbitrary. After all, parts of your body don't stop working -hair goes on growing for years, for instance. Perhaps a man really dies when his brain stops, when he loses the power to take in a new idea. Old Porteous is like that. Wonderfully learned, wonderfully good taste - but he's not capable of change. Just says the same things and thinks the same thoughts over and over again. There are a lot of people like that. Dead minds, stopped inside. Just keep moving backwards and forwards on the same little track, getting fainter all the time, like ghosts. — George Orwell

8He is ever present with me; at all times He goes before me. I will not live in fear or abandon my calling because He stands at my right hand. 9This is a good life - my heart is glad, my soul is full of joy, and my body is at rest. Who could want for more? — Anonymous

If any man would come after me, let him deny himself." The disciple must say to himself the same words Peter said of Christ when he denied him: "I know not this man." Self-denial is never just a series of isolated acts of mortification or asceticism. It is not suicide, for there is an element of self-will even in that. To deny oneself is to be aware only of Christ and no more of self, to see only him who goes before and no more the road which is too hard for us. Once more, all that self denial can say is: "He leads the way, keep close to him. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The Dictionary [Emily] Dickinson used defined tender as 'anxious for another's good' and a pioneer as 'one that goes before another to remove obstruction or to prepare the way for another.' This seems to me a good way to think of Jesus: sojourning before us, clearing the brush, bushwhacking, even
removing the impediments of sin, making a path that will lead us to our true selves, and to God. — Lauren F. Winner

The Fire Bug flared up at that. "You want to know what bugs me?" it said indignantly. "Nobodaddy's friendly about fire. Oh, it's fine in its place, people say, it makes a nice glow in a room, but keep an eye on it in case it gets out of control, and always put it out before you leave. Never mind how much it's needed; a few forests burned by wildfires, the occasional volcanic eruption, and there goes our reputation. Water, on the other hand! - hah! - there's no limit to the praise Water gets. Floods, rains, burst pipes, they make no difference. Water is everyone's favorite. And when they call it the Fountain of Life! - bah! - well, that just bugs me to bits." The Fire Bug dissolved briefly into a little cloud of angry, buzzing sparks, then came together again. "Fountain of Life, indeed," it hissed. "What an idea. Life is not a drip. Life is a flame. What do you imagine the sun is made of? Raindrops? I don't think so. Life is not wet, young man. Life burns. — Salman Rushdie

Stop looking at me like that," I say, frowning and rubbing at my chest. He has this habit of making my heart sore, making my lungs feel like there's not enough air.
He tilts his head attractively, which only makes matters worse. "Like what?"
"Like you're molesting me with your eyes," I blurt out.
His answering laugh is long and deep. I can barely handle the affection in his gaze. "Okay, I'll try to stop. But if it all gets to be too much for you, this apartment happens to have a very nice bathroom. You can go rub one out again to take the edge off. I'll come listen, too, if that will help."
There he goes again, pushing me.
I do a slow blink at him before coming out with a rather masterful comeback. And when I say "masterful," I mean shit. "Why don't you go and rub one out?"
He cocks an eyebrow. "I don't rub out, darlin'. I jack off. — L. H. Cosway

Here goes. See, my boyfriend and I decided to stay together for the summer, you know, even though he had to go visit some family in nowhereville. At least, that's what he told me. Anyway, everything was fine at first, because you know, we talked every night, and then boom, he just stopped calling. So I called and texted him like the good girlfriend I am, and it wasn't stalkerish, I swear, because I stopped after, like, the thirtieth time. A week goes by before he finally hits me back, and he was totally drunk and all, hey, baby, I miss you and what are you wearing, like no time had passed, and I was all, you so do not deserve to know. — Gena Showalter

I told you to make yourself at home," he says. "I don't want you to feel like you have to tiptoe around, afraid of doing something wrong or hearing something you shouldn't, like phone conversations." My blood runs cold at those words. I can feel his eyes on me and not the screen. "I, uh ... " I don't know what to say. "It's okay," he says, those words silencing me. He kisses the top of my head again, subject closed as he goes back to watching the movie. A few minutes pass before Naz lets out a light laugh. "So, tell me something ... did you at least google me? — J.M. Darhower

The movie starts and he motions for me to sit down next to him. I don't, though. I pat my lap so he'll lay his head down, and then I thread my fingers into his hair. He tenses immediately. "What's wrong?" I ask. "No one has ever done that before," he says quietly. He rolls to face the TV so I can't see his face. "I'm going to do it all the time," I promise. And I mean it. I'm going to do it every time I'm with him. He deserves to have someone show him how wonderful he is. I can tell when he goes to sleep. He gets soft in my lap and his face gets heavy against my thigh. But I don't stop rubbing. I keep touching him, because giving him comfort feels better than any kiss I have ever had. — Tammy Falkner

Smee", he said huskily, "that crocodile would have had me before this, but by a lucky chance it swallowed a clock that goes tick tick inside it, and so before it can reach me I can hear the tick and bolt." He laughed, but in a hollow way. "Some day", Smee said, "the clock will run down, and then he'll get you. — J.M. Barrie

What I need is courage, and this often fails me. And it is also a fact that since my disease, when I am in the fields I am overwhelmed by a feeling of loneliness to such a horrible extent that I shy away from going out. But this will change all the same as time goes on. Only when I stand a painting before my easel do I feel somewhat alive. Never mind, this is going to change too, for now my health is so good that I suppose the physical part of me will gain the victory. — Vincent Van Gogh

It's very difficult to find the time or the money for people to organize rehearsals for some movies. It staggers me how little preparation often goes into these scenes which are difficult and complicated. You think, "God, it's crazy. I've never met this person before and here I am having to work at how to do a whole performance on the set." It was great to have a few days of just talking to Michael [Caine]and Daniel [Barber] and thinking about the characters and the relationship between them before we started shooting. — Emily Mortimer

He shows me that, and I feel it, as he holds me tightly, making love to me. I'm sweaty, and exhausted, by the time it's over. My body is spent from orgasms, and my heart feels like it goes to explode. I say nothing, though, afraid to speak, afraid to offer him any words. Because if I do, I might spew a fucking rainbow. I might spout out the kind of nonsense found in Napoleon's romance novella.
Naz lies on top of me for a moment after he finishes before finally pulling out. He stands up, gathering our clothes, tossing mine to me as I lay on the bed.
"I'm sure now," I manage to say, as I watch Naz getting dressed.
He turns to me. "Yeah?"
I nod as I sit up, clutching a hold of my necklace. "I've got everything I want. — J.M. Darhower

Authors can get an attitude of us-against-them when it comes to publishers, but learning how authors and editors can work together taught me to look at my work in a different way and to make that work as solid as possible before it ever goes to the publisher. — Tracie Peterson

And I? I drink, I burn, I gather dreams.
And sometimes I tell a story. Because Promethea asks me for a bowl of words before she goes to sleep. — Helene Cixous

You think God created the world?" he asks me. "Bullshit. Any kind of benevolent and righteous being would never create a fucking world like this. It's impossible. God didn't fucking create the world."
Before he walks away completely, he turns back to me one final time, pointing his finger at me. Some people on the beach look over.
"Henry," he says, "the Devil created the world when God wasn't looking"
He kicks down the little kids' sand castle and goes somewhere with the girls. — Drew Lerman

A fellow told me one about Wembley yesterday," I said, to help on the cheery flow of conversation. "Stop me if you've heard it before. Chap goes up to deaf chap outside the exhibition and says, "Is this Wembley?" "Hey?" says deaf chap. "Is this Wembley?" says chap. "Hey?" says deaf chap. "Is this Wembley?" says chap. "No, Thursday," says deaf chap. Ha, ha, I mean, what?"
The merry laughter froze on my lips. Sir Roderick sort of just waggled an eyebrow in my direction and I saw that it was back to the basket for Bertram. I never met a man who had such a knack of making a fellow feel like a waste-product. — P.G. Wodehouse

True love, to me, is when she's the first thought that goes through your head when you wake up and the last thought that goes through your head before you go to sleep. — Justin Timberlake

I will not be quiet. I cannot believe you're moving to Greece. That's ... that's insane."
Now hang on a second!
"It's not insane," I shot back.
"It is! Who moves to Greece? Do you know a single soul who's moved to Greece?" He didn't give me a chance to reply before he continued, "No? Me neither. No one moves to Greece. Goes there. Yes. Gets laid. Definitely. Drinks ouzo. Lots of it. Gets a sunburn. Of course! But you don't move there! — Kristen Ashley

This will happen again," Nathaniel explained. "Even if we manage not to hurt each other, eventually one of us will get sick or get bored, or someone else will get in the way. Maybe they won't mean to. Maybe my mom will need me when she's older and I'll have to go to her - "
"I'd go with you," Kelly offered.
" - or maybe one of us will die young or maybe you'll fall out of love with me because emotions can't be controlled. Or maybe we'll get to a point where we want to hurt each other. I know that's hard to imagine now, but relationships only get more complicated as time goes by."
"So we better avoid them?" Kelly snapped. "Why do you even leave the house? Why aren't you constantly scared of getting hit by a car or shot by some random lunatic?"
Nathaniel exhaled." I never was before. Not until I fell in love with you. — Jay Bell

I love you Tory. I know I say it a lot, but ... "
"I know baby. I feel the same way about you. Those words never convey what goes through my mind and heart every time I look up and see you sitting in my house. Funny thign is, I always thought my house was full and that there was nothing missing in my life. I had a job I loved. Family who loved me. Good friends to keep me sane. Everything a human could want. And t hen I met an infuriating, impossible man who added the one thing I didn't know wasn't there."
"Dirty socks on the floor?"
She laughed. "No, the other part of my heart. The last face I see before I go to sleep and the first one I see when I get up. I'm so glad it was you."
Those words both thrilled and scared him. Mostly because he knew firsthand that if love went untended it turned into profound hatred.
Tory and Acheron — Sherrilyn Kenyon

It strikes me that the only reason to take apart a pocket watch, or a car engine, aside from the simple delight of disassembly, is to find out how it works. To understand it, so you can put it back together again better than before, or build a new one that goes beyond what the old one could do. We've been taking apart the superhero for ten years or more; it's time to put it back together and wind it up, time to take it out on the road and floor it, see what it'll do. — Kurt Busiek

Even though I can't hear or see it from this distance, I know that Katherine and my younger self are currently having a brief, nearly silent squabble over who goes through the window first. I'd promised Kate that I'd get her grandmother back to safety, and I took that promise seriously. On the other hand, I was used to getting my bottom whacked if I argued with my elders. And since Katherine's expression suggested she might just toss me out the window if I didn't go willingly, I didn't hesitate long before following her orders. — Rysa Walker

Let me put it this way: You cannot live in the world without being in pain, spiritual and physical pain. We have developed mechanisms to deal with these pains, to overcome them somehow. Therapy, religion and spirituality, relationships, material success. All this can work, but also become a problem itself.
The pursuit of happiness has even been put into the American constitution a couple centuries ago. Today we're so rich, we own much more than we need, we have liberties unknown before, even though they are endangered in the current political climate in the US - and we forget how wonderful it nevertheless is, compared to most other political and economic systems. We have a saying that goes: Give a man enough rope and he hangs himself. — David Foster Wallace

My cat, Kevin, has adorable habits - he waits for me while I'm showering because he loves to have his face washed when I'm done. And he also knows I keep treats for him beside the bed; he loves his treat at night before he goes to sleep - you know, like all men! — Emily Procter

You once said you might not mind being by the president's side," he says. My libido goes crazy under that smile. His words husky, seducing me. The proximity of his mouth to my earlobe making my heart go haywire.
"That was before," I whisper worriedly.
He captures my gaze with his powerful one. "Before you fell in love with me, or after? — Katy Evans

I will love you if you don't marry me. I will love you if you marry someone else your co-star, perhaps, or Y., or even O., or anyone Z. through A., even R. Although sadly I believe it will be quite some time before two women can be allowed to marry and I will love you if you have a child, and I will love you if you have two children, or three children, or even more, although I personally think three is plenty, and I will love you if you never marry at all, and never have children, and spend your years wishing you had married me after all, and I must say that on late, cold nights I prefer this scenario out of all the scenarios I have mentioned. That, Beatrice, is how I will love you even as the world goes on its wicked way. — Lemony Snicket

I don't micromanage, but I do care deeply about every product we make. Every one goes through me, and I try most of our products before they go to market, including our John Paul Pet flea and tick shampoo. If I don't like it, it's not coming out. — John Paul DeJoria

I lost someone I loved before, and it changed me. I gave up someone I loved before, and it crushed me. I know that when you leave, Liis, however it goes down ... it will end me. — Jamie McGuire

They haven't spoken about it, they haven't said what will we do when we leave here, do you want to come with me, let's work something out, and she knows that this means they will quickly and easily drift apart, into other people's lives, into other people's arms in rooms like this. She is surprised that this doesn't make her feel sad. She listens to the music, she looks around at the things people dropped when they fell asleep or went out of the room, she kisses the boy's arm again and she feels only a kind of sweet nostalgia. She wonders if you can feel nostalgic for something before it's in the past, she wonders if perhaps her vocabulary is too small or if her chemical intake has corroded it and the music goes doowah doowah doowah. — Jon McGregor

I believe, if there is some sort of higher power, the universe is it. Whenever religious people ask me where the universe came from, I tell them that it has always been here, and was never created. The Big Bang theory is based on the fact that the universe is expanding right now. And if you rewind the tape, the universe appears to be shrinking. If you rewind the tape far enough, eventually the universe must be just one singular point. Or so the theory goes. But what if the universe has not always been expanding? What if it's pulsating, and one pulse takes trillions of years, and right now the universe is inhaling, and before that, trillions of years ago, it was exhaling? — Oliver Gaspirtz

There's a saying that goes like this: The hourglass freezes in moments of sorrow. Races along in moments of bliss." He spun and pulled me to my feet. Cupping my cheeks, he gazed into my eyes. "The very concept of time is a demand. That you own it, savor it, mean it. Before you waste it . . . or it wastes you. — Christine Le

He makes love to me then, like only Naz can, alternating between slow and deep and rough and hard, sending me into a tailspin. It's a breath-catching, skin-slapping, soul-capturing kind of love. The man owns me. He consumes me. Every part of me was made for every part of him. It's the kind of love I can't imagine ever living without. It's raw, and real, and it's ours.
It's ours.
It goes on forever.
Life flashes before my eyes.
We're old and gray and happy. We're happy.
Nothing is going to get in our way now. — J.M. Darhower

Children, only animals live entirely in the Here and Now. Only nature knows neither memory nor history. But man - let me offer you a definition - is the storytelling animal. Wherever he goes he wants to leave behind not a chaotic wake, not an empty space, but the comforting marker-buoys and trail-signs of stories. He has to go on telling stories. He has to keep on making them up. As long as there's a story, it's all right. Even in his last moments, it's said, in the split second of a fatal fall - or when he's about to drown - he sees, passing rapidly before him, the story of his whole life. — Graham Swift

I think maybe that as time goes by there will be more newness but because I was part of what it was before it's not like coming into a house and saying it's all about me. I don't feel like that. It really is all about McQueen and the things that he was trying to say and about moving that forward, making it relevant, making it desirable, making it into what people want to wear. — Sarah Burton

Taking pity on me, Carissa kept her voice low. "You were calling out for Daemon."I dropped my face in my hands and moaned. "Oh, God."
Lesa giggled. "It was kind of cute."
A minute before the tardy bell rang, I felt an all-too-familiar warmth on my neck and glanced up. Daemon swaggered into class. Textbook-less as usual. He had a notebook, but I don't think he ever wrote anything in it. I was beginning to suspect our math teacher was an alien, because how else would Daemon get away with not doing a damn thing in class? He passed by without so much as a look.
I twisted around in my chair. "I need to talk to you."
He slid into his desk chair. "Okay."
"In private," I whispered.
His expression didn't change as he leaned back in his chair. "Meet me in the library at lunch. No one really goes in there. You know, with all those books and stuff. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

Are they the same reasons my mother had Owen? Me? Did we each think to improve on the generation that came before us, or did we just want to be certain that someone somewhere loved and needed us? I sniff. My mother discovered soon enough that a son's love is only for the length of a childhood. A daughter's is forever. It may be snarled up with resentment, but it goes deeper. Daughters will always eventually understand the mothers they thought they hated. — Cat Hellisen

Moving had no season, was all seasons, crossed time like a train with no schedule. We moved so often our mail never caught up with us, moved sometimes before we'd even gotten properly unpacked or I'd learned the names of all the teachers at my new school. Moving gave me a sense of time passing and everything sliding, as if nothing could be held on to anyway. It made me feel ghostly, unreal and unimportant, like a box that goes missing and then turns up but then you realize you never needed anything in it anyway. — Dorothy Allison

I have to find Tobias, but I'll come back after I do and sit with you, okay?"
She finally looks at me, and her knee goes still. "They didn't tell you?"
My stomach clenches with fear. "Tell me what."
"Tobias was arrested," she says quietly. "I saw him siting with the invaders right before I came in here. Some people saw him at the control room before the attack
they say he was disabling the alarm system."
There is a sad look in her eyes, like she pities me. But I already knew what Tobias did.
"Where are they?" I say.
I need to talk to him. And I know what I need to say. — Veronica Roth