Gray Days Quotes & Sayings

I can now recreate life in a way that was hidden from me, before.'A dream of form in days of thought: — Oscar Wilde

Harry scanned the table more carefully. Tiny little Professor Flitwick, the Charms teacher, was sitting on a large pile of cushions beside Professor Sprout, the Herbology teacher, whose hat was askew over her flyaway gray hair. She was talking to Professor Sinistra of the Astronomy department. On Professor Sinistra's other side was the sallow-faced, hook-nosed, greasy-haired Potions master, Snape - Harry's least favorite person at Hogwarts. Harry's loathing of Snape was matched only by Snape's hatred of him, a hatred which had, if possible, intensified last year, when Harry had helped Sirius escape right under Snape's overlarge nose - Snape and Sirius had been enemies since their own school days. — J.K. Rowling

Once out of all the gray days of my life I have looked into the heart of reality; I have witnessed the truth; I have seen life as it really is-ravishingly, ecstatically, madly beautiful, and filled to overflowing with a wild joy, and a value unspeakable. — Margaret Prescott Montague

Alexander Smollett, master; David Livesey, ship's doctor; Abraham Gray, carpenter's mate; John Trelawney, owner; John Hunter and Richard Joyce, owner's servants, landsmen
being all that is left faithful of the ship's company
with stores for ten days at short rations, came ashore this day and flew British colours on the log-house in Treasure Island. Thomas Redruth, owner's servant, landsman, shot by the mutineers; James Hawkins, cabin boy
'
And at the same time, I was wondering over poor Jim Hawkins' fate. — Robert Louis Stevenson

All day, after two days and nights of rain, water had been rising in the dykes and now it was creeping rapidly up the five stone arches of the bridge where the she stood watching the wide rainy valley up which the tongue of river finally lost itself in a gray country of winter elms. — H.E. Bates

A day out of season, stopping the monotonous count of summer days. Stopping, too, one's own summer routine, so that, looking out on the gray skies, one says not only, 'What time of year is it?' but, 'What time of life am I in? Where am I? What am I doing? — Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Its tall chimneys throw up black smoke, impregnating everything with soot, and the miners' faces as they traveled the streets were also imbued with that ancient melancholy of smoke, unifying everything with its grayish monotones, a perfect coupling with the gray mountain days. — Che Guevara

From the gardener's point of view, November can be the worst month to be faced: Nature is winding things down, the air is cold, skies are gray, but usually the final mark of punctuation to the year as yet to arrive - the snow; snow that covers all in the garden and marks a mind-set for the end of a year's activity. There is little to do outside except to wait for longer days in the new year and the joys of coming holidays. — H. Peter Loewer

He would have noticed it sooner if he hadn't been overcome by gray days- days where morning seemed bled of color and getting up unimportant. — Maggie Stiefvater

I'm of the opinion that we're always on holy ground and some days it's just more apparent. — Jason Gray

These days, I no longer believe there ever are truly good guys or bad guys in war, at least in the Middle East. They're generally shades of gray. But that doesn't translate well on television. It was too complicated. Too remote. — Richard Engel

We drove under a giant gray wing and headed out over open blacktop straight for a small white airplane standing alone. A corporate thing. A business jet. A Lear, or a Gulfstream, or whatever rich people buy these days. The paint winked in the sun. There was no writing on it, apart from a tail number. No name, no logo. Just white paint. Its engines were turning slowly, and its stairs were down. — Lee Child

Out of damp and gloomy days, out of solitude, out of loveless words directed at us, conclusions grow up in us like fungus: one morning they are there, we know not how, and they gaze upon us, morose and gray. Woe to the thinker who is not the gardener but only the soil of the plants that grow in him. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Is the sky blue?" "Well, that depends." Sometimes it's blue, different shades depending on where you, what the weather is like, or the time of day. On cloudy days the sky is really shades of white and gray, and sometimes it looks red, or pink around sunset, or when there is a nearby fire..." I mean really, the possibilities are endless, to a lawyer. — Melody A. Kramer

A gray day provides the best light. — Leonardo Da Vinci

But I was never, you know, when I see some kids today who are close to their parents, close to their friends ... I think it's simply wonderful. I was not a happy kid. Back in those days, I remember the sick, gray days were better. Because when it was sunny I'd feel worse. — Mike Wallace

In January in Northern Russia, everything vanishes beneath a deep blanket of whiteness. Rivers, fields, trees, roads, and houses disappear, and the landscape becomes a white sea of mounds and hollows. On days when the sky is gray, it is hard to see where earth merges with air. On brilliant days when the sky is a rich blue, the sunlight is blinding, as if millions of diamonds were scattered on the snow, refracting light. In Catherine's time, the log roads of summer were covered with a smooth coating of snow and ice that enabled the sledges to glide smoothly at startling speeds; on some days, her procession covered a hundred miles. — Robert K. Massie

Prison would kill him. Not neatly or cleanly or quickly, It would kill him with ten thousand days of gray, each taking a bite of his sanity until all that remained was huddled terror with the body of a man wrapped around it. — Nevada Barr

When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he'd reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him. Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before. Like the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world. — Cormac McCarthy

It took two days to cross that ashen scabland. The road beyond fell away on every side. It's snowing, the boy said. He looked at the sky. A single gray flake sifting down. He caught it in his hand and watched it expire there like the last host of christendom. — Cormac McCarthy

Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before. — Cormac McCarthy

November is usually such a disagreeable month ... as if the year had suddenly found out that she was growing old and could do nothing but weep and fret over it. This year is growing old gracefully ... just like a stately old lady who knows she can be charming even with gray hair and wrinkles. We've had lovely days and delicious twilights. — L.M. Montgomery

It's one of those dumb days where nothing's really wrong but nothing's really right either and the sky can't even choose to be white or gray. — Andrea Portes

I have walked this south stream when to believe in spring was an act of faith. It was spitting snow and
blowing, and within two days of being May ... But as if to assert the triumph of climate over weather,
one ancient willow managed a few gray pussy willows, soft and barely visible against the snow-blurred
gray background. — Ann Zwinger

I thought about every mundane moment that makes up that gray area of a person's life. It's the hour or two a day that you clean your kitchen or watch TV or do the laundry. All my gray moments with Mia were colored in: chasing her around the Laundromat, spraying water on her from the kitchen sink, or messing around with her on the couch while we spent whole days watching reruns of The Office. I looked forward to the rest of my life, even if the rest of my life only consisted of the humdrum day-in, day-out bullshit, it didn't matter because Mia turned the most unremarkable moments into moments I cherished. — Renee Carlino

Cause me physical pain. I was burning inside. Nothing and nobody could ease the pain. I became a gray figure in the corridors. My shadow merged with the walls. Days fell off the calendar like dead leaves. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

[On writing more Sherlock Holmes stories.] 'I don't care whether you do or not,' said Bram. 'But you will, eventually. He's yours, till death do you part. Did you really think he was dead and gone when you wrote "The Final Problem"? I don't think you did. I think you always knew he'd be back. But whenever you take up your pen and continue, heed my advice. Don't bring him here. Don't bring Sherlock Holmes into the electric light. Leave him in the mysterious and romantic flicker of the gas lamp. He won't stand next to this, do you see? The glare would melt him away. He was more the man of our time than Oscar was. Or than we were. Leave him where he belongs, in the last days of our bygone century. Because in a hundred years, no one will care about me. Or you. Or Oscar. We stopped caring about Oscar years ago, and we were his bloody *friends.* No, what they'll remember are the stories. They'll remember Holmes. And Watson. And Dorian Gray. — Graham Moore

God's word is tailor-made for gray-slush days. It sends a beam of light through the fog. It signals safety when we fear we'll never make it through. — Charles R. Swindoll

Gray fall light came through the nine square glass panes. On days like this, the strips of white wood that separated the glass seemed brighter to the eye than did the window light. — Graham Moore

Love at first sight." It comes out as hardly more than a whisper, but the quietest words carry in this vast, echoing room. "I've always thought real love could only come later. After you both know each other, trust each other. After days, or weeks, or months spent together - learning to understand everything that isn't spoken out loud."

Paul smiles, which only makes his eyes look sadder. "One can grow into the other, my lady." His words are even quieter than mine. "I have known that to be true."

When we look at each other then, he silently admits something beautiful and dangerous. Does he see the same confession in my eyes? — Claudia Gray

Each of us hides our own private Delaware lost in the gray jungle-tangle of our brains. No one else can know its depths and byways. No one else can know the height of its towers, the secrets of its tides and pools. There will always be lost lagoons to find there, and ruins almost hidden by the sand. There will always be monsters of great beauty and good men with ugly frowns. The forests are dark but lights bob among the branches. You are at home there, more at home than anyplace else, and yet you will never go there in your life. Their legends are yours. The pirates sale around the cape, a crew of skeletons in the rigging. Milkmaids run down mountain passes, dragging kites behind them. Wizards crack their backs after long days of chalk and incantation while above the crowded bazaars, over the golden temples, against the setting sun, around the ruddy minarets, the pterodactyls call out a long farewell. — M T Anderson

The knock-kneed brown moose, a tired group of ten, yards ahead of her for the last three days, comfort her too. It's like following a pack of grandfathers, their large, weary eyes, red lids sagging, their gray muzzles, puckered as if the world is almost done with them but not quite yet. — Amy Bloom

The stark gray sky and bare tree limbs feel more suited to her than the uncomplicated promise of sunny spring days. — Christina Baker Kline

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

He lost, for that moment, all the days and dogmas of his past; his concepts, his problems, his pain were wiped out; he knew only - as from a great, clear distance - that man exists for the achievement of his desires, and he wondered why he stood here, he wondered who had the right to demand that he waste a single irreplaceable hour of his life, when his only desire was to seize the slender figure in gray and hold her through the length of whatever time there was left for him to exist. — Ayn Rand

Out west everything has its own space. Every little ramshackle cabin, shack, hut sits perched atop its own little piece of destiny with room to breathe, room to live, room to die. You'll see them, the dead ones, sitting by the side of the road like some faded gray and rotting mystery, thinking about the good ol days before trains and cars and wanting more. — Andrea Portes

Quinnipeague in August was a lush green place where inchworms dangled from trees whose leaves were so full that the eaten parts were barely missed. Mornings meant 'thick o' fog' that caught on rooftops and dripped, blurring weathered gray shingles while barely muting the deep pink of rosa rugosa or the hydrangea's blue. Wood smoke filled the air on rainy days, pine sap on sunny ones, and wafting through it all was the briny smell of the sea. — Barbara Delinsky

A FEW DAYS passed. Miserable days; they should have been gray and overcast. I hated that they weren't. — Anyta Sunday

One of the elders told him that when he was a boy his grandfather came to him one day and said he had two wolves fighting inside him. One was gray, the other black. The gray one wanted his grandfather to be courageous, and patient, and kind. The other, the black one, wanted his grandfather to be fearful and cruel. This upset the boy, and he thought about it for a few days then returned to his grandfather. He asked, 'Grandfather, which of the wolves will win?'
The abbot smiled slightly and examined the Chief Inspector. 'Do you know what his grandfather said?'
Gamache shook his head ...
'The one I feed,' said Dom Philippe. — Louise Penny

The library would've cheered me up, most days. I loved the heavy oaken tables, the high walls stacked with books to the ceiling, the musty smell of old pages and the heavy brass fixtures that had gone dark with age and wear. — Claudia Gray

Beauty in this Iron Age must turn From fluid living rainbow shapes to torn And sootened fragments, ashes in an urn On whose gray surface runes are traced by a Norn Who hopes to wake the Future to arise In Phoenix -fashion, and to shine with rays To blast the sight of modern men whose dyes Of selfishness and lust have stained our days ... — Philip Jose Farmer

The dull gray days of the preceding winter and spring, so uneventless and monotonous, seemed more associated with what she cared for now above all price. She would fain have caught at the skirts of that departing time, and prayed it to return, and give her back what she had too little valued while it was yet in her possession. What a vain show life seemed! How unsubstantial, and flickering, and flitting! It was as if from some aerial belfry, high up above the stir and jar of the earth, there was a bell continually tolling, "All are shadows! All are passing! All is past!" And when the morning dawned, cool and gray, like many a happier morning before ... it seemed as if the terrible night were unreal as a dream; it, too, was a shadow. It, too, was past. — Elizabeth Gaskell

In 1990, my wife and I were married in her village in southwestern Uganda. The festivities went on for three days, and all the while a couple of dozen gray-crowned cranes, with regal bonnets of sun-shot yellow feathers, were pecking and padding around in the adjacent savanna. — Alex Shoumatoff

Long time a child, and still a child, when years Had painted manhood on my cheek, was I; For yet I lived like one not born to die; A thriftless prodigal of smiles and tears - No hope I needed, and I knew no fears. But sleep, though sweet, is only sleep - and waking, I waked to sleep no more; at once o'ertaking The vanguard of my age, with all arrears Of duty on my back. Nor child, nor man, Nor youth, nor sage, I find my head is gray, For I have lost the race I never ran. A rathe December blights my lagging May: And still I am a child, though I be old Time is my debtor for my days untold. — Hartley Coleridge

Winter came in days that were gray and still. They were the kind of days in which people locked in their animals and themselves and nothing seemed to stir but the smoke curling upwards from clay chimneys and an occasional red-winged blackbird which refused to be grounded. And it was cold. Not the windy cold like Uncle Hammer said swept the northern winter, but a frosty, idle cold that seeped across a hot land ever lookung toward the days of green and ripening fields, a cold thay lay uneasy during during its short stay as it crept through the cracks of poorly constucted houses and forced the people inside huddled around ever-burning fires to wish it gone. — Mildred D. Taylor

One thing that has become clear over the last several days is that we no longer have 135 choices to make, .. It's really one choice likely to emerge from question number two, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and that leaves the voters with a clear choice. They can retain Gray Davis as governor, or they can elect Arnold Schwarzenegger and his crew from Pete Wilson to run the governor's office. — Gray Davis

If a man does not die of a wound, then it heals in some fashion, and so it is with loss. From the sharp pain of immediate berevement, both the Prince and I passed into the gray days of numb bewilderment and waiting. So grief has always seemed to me, a time of waiting not for the hurt to pass, but to become accustomed to it. — Robin Hobb

Some days i'm bursting at the seams
With all my half remembered dreams
And then it shoots me down again
I feel the dampness as it creeps
I hear you coughing in your sleep
Beneath a broken window pane
Tomorrow girl i'll buy you chips
A lollipop to stain your lips
And it'll all be right as rain
This ain't no love that's guiding me
— David Gray

Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation. — Alasdair Gray

in November was dismal. It was a time of short gray days and long — Sharon Cramer

Alone and lost, appeared this saint,

With pretty gray eyes, darkness can't taint.

He stole her from cold, from blustering storm,

Kind and gentle, he took her from harm.

Fearful of dark, he created her light,

A jar of gold, chasing demons of night.

Telling stories of love, he brought to her life,

A moment by his side: no pain, no strife.

He gifted her poems, a gesture on whim,

With every word read, she could see only him.

She counted the days until he returned home,

The boy with his light, the girl not alone.

Invisible to all, a shade wandering in dark,

He brought back her faith, with his pure kind heart.

- Elsie — Tillie Cole

Back From Vacation"
"Back from vacation", the barber announces,
or the postman, or the girl at the drugstore, now tan.
They are amazed to find the workaday world
still in place, their absence having slipped no cogs,
their customers having hardly missed them, and
there being so sparse an audience to tell of the wonders,
the pyramids they have seen, the silken warm seas,
the nighttimes of marimbas, the purchases achieved
in foreign languages, the beggars, the flies,
the hotel luxury, the grandeur of marble cities.
But at Customs the humdrum pressed its claims.
Gray days clicked shut around them; the yoke still fit,
warm as if never shucked. The world is still so small,
the evidence says, though their hearts cry, "Not so! — John Updike

In the freakish pink and gray of dawn I took
his death to bed with me and his death was my bed
and in every corner of the room it hid from the light,
and then it was the light of day and the next day
and all the days to follow, and it moved into the future
like the sharp tip of a pen moving across an empty page. — Billy Collins

It was hard to admit that those days were over, but it was hard to admit that any days were over, that the days themselves didn't stretch like pulled taffy and sag to the floor. — Amelia Gray

They rode for days through the rain and they rode through rain and hail and rain again. In that gray storm light they crossed a flooded plain with the footed shapes of the horses reflected in the water among clouds and mountains and the riders slumped forward and rightly skeptic of the shimmering cities on the distant shore of that sea whereon they trod miraculous. They climbed up through rolling grasslands where small birds shied away chittering down the wind and a buzzard labored up from among bones with wings that went whoop whoop whoop like a child's toy swung on a string and in the long red sunset the sheets of water on the plain below them lay like tidepools of primal blood. — Cormac McCarthy

There were days, rainy gray days, when the streets of Brooklyn were worthy of a photograph, every window the lens of a Leica, the view grainy and immoble. We gathered our colored pencils and sheets of paper and drew like wild, feral children into the night, until, exhausted, we fell into bed. We lay in each other's arms, still awkward but happy, exchanging breathless kisses into sleep. — Patti Smith

The warden always seems to know which book to bring. When the sun is gunslinger blue, the warden brings a western. When rain slates against the towers and the world has gone hopeless with gray, it is Bible stories. When the halls ring with the cries of riot and the bars of my own cell rattle with pain, the warden drops a soft book on the floor, solace in its pages: the collected poems of Walt Whitman. And oh, my favorites, like the tastes of childhood. Every few months the warden passes me The White Dawn, and for a few precious days I traverse the open heavens on hard-packed moonlit snow and see the blue splashing arctic lights, and I fill my belly with frozen seal meat and laugh with my Inuit friends. — Rene Denfeld

If I break the glass, then I'll have to fly, There's no one to catch me if I take a dive. I'm scared of change, and the days stay the same, The world is spinning but only in gray — Lindsey Stirling

When you're working on something where there's usually one sex scene in the film, it all gets a little bit of a gray area and people get a bit uncomfortable and awkward. You just get through it. But, it became very clear on this that that can't happen. There can't be any gray areas on this because there are actors and actresses coming in for a day or a couple of days, as well as people who are there regularly. — Michael Sheen

I know exactly how that is. To love somebody who doesn't deserve it. Because they are all you have. Because any attention is better than no attention. For exactly the same reason, it is sometimes satisfying to cut yourself and bleed. On those gray days where eight in the morning looks no different from noon and nothing has happened and nothing is going to happen and you are washing a glass in the sink and it breaks-accidentally-and punctures your skin. And then there is this shocking red, the brightest thing in the day, so vibrant it buzzes, this blood of yours. That is okay sometimes because at least you know you're alive. — Augusten Burroughs

Try to praise the mutilated world.
Remember June's long days,
and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew.
The nettles that methodically overgrow
the abandoned homesteads of exiles.
You must praise the mutilated world.
You watched the stylish yachts and ships;
one of them had a long trip ahead of it,
while salty oblivion awaited others.
You've seen the refugees heading nowhere,
You've heard the executioners sing joyfully.
You should praise the mutilated world.
Remember the moments when we were together
in a white room and the curtain fluttered.
Return in thought to the concert where music flared.
You gathered acorns in the park in autumn
and leaves eddied over the earth's scars.
Praise the mutilated world
and the gray feathers a thrush lost,
and the gentle light that strays and vanishes
and returns. — Adam Zagajewski

The poet dreams of the mountain
Sometimes I grow weary of the days, with all their fits and starts.
I want to climb some old gray mountains, slowly, taking
The rest of my lifetime to do it, resting often, sleeping
Under the pines or, above them, on the unclothed rocks.
I want to see how many stars are still in the sky
That we have smothered for years now, a century at least.
I want to look back at everything, forgiving it all,
And peaceful, knowing the last thing there is to know.
All that urgency! Not what the earth is about!
How silent the trees, their poetry being of themselves only.
I want to take slow steps, and think appropriate thoughts.
In ten thousand years, maybe, a piece of the mountain will fall. — Mary Oliver

She was an intelligent and honest woman who knew what she was... and she was no beauty. Her attractions were moderate at best, and that was only if one completely discounted the current feminine ideal. She was short, and while on some days she could be described as voluptuous, on others she was most definitely plump. Her hair was a reddish-brown, wildly chaotic mass of curls- hateful curls that successfully defied any substance or implement used to straighten them. Oh, she had nice skin with no pockmarks or blemishes, and her eyes had once been described as "fine" by some well-meaning friend of the family. But they were plain gray eyes, with no shade of green or blue to enliven them. — Lisa Kleypas

The days were a gray fog. Faces, familiar and unfamiliar, badgered him for directions, to which his reply was an invariable, laconic, "Suit yourself." Elena would not talk to him at all. He was stirred to fear she was finding comfort in Baz's arms. He watched her covertly, anxious. But she seemed not to be finding comfort anywhere. After — Lois McMaster Bujold

It was late morning when he woke and found the telephone beside his bed in the hotel tolling frantically, and remembered that he had left word to be called at eleven. Sloane was snoring heavily, his clothes in a pile by his bed. They dressed and ate breakfast in silence, and then sauntered out to get some air. Amory's mind was working slowly, trying to assimilate what had happened and separate from the chaotic imagery that stacked his memory the bare shreds of truth. If the morning had been cold and gray he could have grasped the reins of the past in an instant, but it was one of those days that New York gets sometimes in May, when the air of Fifth Avenue is a soft, light wine. How much or how little Sloane remembered Amory did not care to know; he apparently had none of the nervous tension that was gripping Amory and forcing his mind back and forth like a shrieking saw. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Oddly enough I never used to suffer from depression on cold, gray, cloudy days like this. I feel as if nature is in harmony with me, that it reflected my soul. On the other hand, when the sun appeared, the children would come out to play in the streets, and everyone was happy that it was such a lovely day, and then I would feel terrible, as if that display of exuberance in which i could not participate was somehow unfair. — Paulo Coelho

I stared at the stop sign and even though I was only five I thought, I will remember that stop sign for the rest of my life. The dents and the bumps, the colors and the shape, the three-fingered, black scuff and long silver scrape - even the dirty gray sky behind it. Days will go by and I will grow old but from time to time the image of this stop sign will come to my mind and I will think about it and remember what I was thinking at this exact time. I even remember thinking that I was awfully young to have such a profound thought and premonition but there it was. — April Adams

Now comes the picture of mass defeat, the most awesome spectacle of the war. It is in the bent bodies of old women who poke among ruins seeking some miserable object that will link their lives with the old days. It is in the shamed darting eyes of the defeated. It is in the faces of the little boys who regard our triumphant columns with fear and fascination. And above all it is in the thousands of beaten, dusty soldiers who stream along the roads towards the stockades. Their feet clump wearily, mechanically, hopelessly on the still endless road of war. They move as haggard, gray masses, in which the individual had neither life nor meaning. It is impossible to see in these men the quality that made them stand up and fight like demons out of hell a few shorts months ago. — Audie Murphy

Me?" he said in some surprise. "I won't be dancing! It's the bridal dance. The bride and groom dance alone!"
For one circuit of the room," she told him. "After which they are joined by the best man and first bridesmaid, then by the groomsman and the second bridesmaid."
Will reacted as he had been stung. He leaned over to speak across Jenny on his left, to Gilan.
Gil! Did you know we have to dance?" he asked. Gilan nodded enthusiastically.
Oh yes indeed. Jenny and I have been practicing for the past three days, haven't we, Jen?"
Jenny looked up at him adoringly and nodded. Jenny was in love. Gilan was tall, dashing, good-looking, charming and very ammusing. Plus he was cloaked in the mystery and romance tat came with being a Ranger. Jenny had only ever known one ranger and that had been grim-faced, gray-bearded Halt. — John Flanagan

Here was a new generation, shouting the old cries, learning the old creeds, through a revery of long days and nights; destined finally to go out into that dirty gray turmoil to follow love and pride; a new generation dedicated more than the last to the fear of poverty and the worship of success; grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken ... — F Scott Fitzgerald

Back in those days there was still an unbroken stretch of heath that lay on the route of our excursions, all that was left of a heath that once had extended almost up to the town on the one side and almost to the little village on the other. Here the honeybees and white-gray bumblebees hummed over the fragrant blossoms of heather, and the beautiful gold-green beetles ran among the plants; here in the sweet clouds of the erica and the resinous bushes hovered butterflies that could be found nowhere else on this earth. — Theodor Storm

The past week and a half has slipped away so quickly, I can't remember individual days: Everything blurs together, turns the muddled gray of a confused dream. — Lauren Oliver

The wind comes creeping, it calls to me to come go exploring. It sings of the things that are to be found under the leaves. It whispers the dreams of the tall fir trees. It does pipe the gentle song the forest sings on gray days. I hear all the voices calling me. I listen. But I cannot go. — Opal Whiteley

A dream of form in days of thought'--who is it who says that? I forget; but it is what Dorian Gray has been to me. — Oscar Wilde

I think we ought to find something else to do," said Mandy. "But Alecto my love, you're the first person to notice my retro diner kitchen. When my parents saw it, they thought I was creating a weird art project."
"I like it. It's got that let's-drown-ourselves-in-better-days type ambiance," Alecto declared, his gray eyes narrowed. — Rebecca McNutt

It's going to come out all right - do you know?
The sun, the birds, the grass - they know.
They get along - and we'll get along.

Some days will be rainy and you will sit waiting
And the letter you wait for won't come, 5
And I will sit watching the sky tear off gray and gray
And the letter I wait for won't come. — Carl Sandburg

Fear not, my doves!" Thorn jumped as someone flung an arm around her shoulders. The strange woman who had watched Thorn fight Brand a few days before thrust her gray-stubbled skull between her and her mother. "For the wise Father Yarvi has placed your daughter's education in my dextrous hands."
Thorn hadn't thought her spirits could drop any lower, but the gods had found a way. "Education?"
The woman hugged them tighter, her smell a heady mix of sweat, incense, herbs and piss. "It's where I teach and you learn."
"And who ... " Thorn's mother gave the ragged woman a nervous look, "or what ... are you?"
"Lately, a thief." When that sharpened nervousness into alarm she added brightly, "but also an experienced killer! — Joe Abercrombie

On gray days, when it's snowing or raining, I think you should be able to call up a judge and take an oath that you'll just read a good book all day, and he'd allow you to stay home. — Bill Watterson

Twice in my life I have spent two weary and scientifically profitless years seeking evidence to corroborate dearly loved hypotheses that later proved to be groundless; times such as these are hard for scientists-days of leaden gray skies bringing with them a miserable sense of oppression and inadequacy. — Peter Medawar

I want to come home. Not just for a few days or a couple weeks. I want to stay. Can I stay?"
Cam drew off his sunglasses, and his eyes, smoke-gray, met Seth's. "What the hell's the matter with you that you think you have to ask? You trying to piss me off?"
"I never had to try, nobody does with you. Anyway, I'll pull my weight."
"You always pulled your weight. And we missed seeing your ugly face around here."
And that, Seth thought as they walked to the car, was all the welcome he needed from Cameron Quinn. — Nora Roberts

The night was fading. It was too early to be called dawn yet, but Taylor could just make out the outline of Will's weary, unshaven face. His deep blue eyes were the only color in the gray world of rain and shadows.
Will leaned in, and his mouth covered Taylor's, rough but sweet, his tongue seeking Taylor's. Taylor opened willingly to that kiss, forgetting for a second his scratched, scraped hands and the rain running down the back of his neck. They kissed a lot these days, especially for men who had never been much for kissing. Taylor had become expert in all Will's kisses, from the hungry, lustful kisses that always made his own cock rise so fast it hurt, to the tender, almost cherishing kisses that Will generally saved for when he thought Taylor was sleeping. That dawn kiss beneath the pine trees rippled through him like an electric shock, a reminder that, tired, wet, and lost as they might be, so long as they were together, they were all right. — Josh Lanyon

I've learned to stare at things. The walls. My hands. The cracks in the walls. The lines on my fingers. The shades of gray in the concrete. The shape of my fingernails. I pick one thing and stare at it for what must be hours. I keep time in my head by counting the seconds as they pass. I keep days in my head by writing them down. Today is day two. Today is the second day. Today is a day.
Today.
It's so cold. It's so cold. It's so cold.
Please please please
I started screaming today. — Tahereh Mafi

Wilson, my fluffy gray, had two kitty paws out of the box, two kitty paws in it and he was looking around, getting his new bearings and probably wishing he had opposable thumbs so he could hack me up, such was his current shitty life finding himself in four different houses in four different days, only one of them home. — Kristen Ashley

Every day is like a kid's drawing, offered to you with a strange mix of ceremoniousness and offhand disregard, yours for the keeping. Some of the days are rich and complicated, others inscrutable, others little more than a stray gray mark on a ragged page. Some you manage to hang on to, though your reasons for doing so are often hard to fathom. But most of them you just ball up and throw away. — Michael Chabon

Arms and legs thrashing. The hammer of blood.
I'm coming, says Jude.
And holds her breath. Orgasm is brief, nonviolent.
What color? I say
Devastating blue, she says. The pale blue eyes of a murdered boy.
Very nice.
You remembered, she says.
Jude comes in colors. How could I forget. Trembling blond orgasms that seem to piss her off and rare pink orgasms that never end. Chemical red orgasms that fill her with guilt and perfect orgasms black as fresh earth. Orgasms shadowy and gray that may or may not cause her to weep and orgasms the color of bruised skin, orgasms that fade from purple to yellow and remain visible for days. — Will Christopher Baer

And I cannot tell you how much I appreciate that because the days are long, the road is hard, the trials are there and I never know when, I have this little gray cloud that's over my head, when it's gonna start raining on me again. And I do need everyone's prayers. But I also believe that we're here for a purpose, and Mitt is prepared. — Ann Romney

There was gray train smoke over the town most days, it smelled of travel, of transcontinental trains about to flash by, of important things about to happen. The train smell sounded the 'A' for Lamptown and then a treble chord of frying hamburger and onions and boiling coffee was struck by Hermann Bauer's kitchen, with a sostenuto of stale beer from Delaney's back door. These were all busy smells and seemed a 6 to 6 smell, a working town's smell, to be exchanged at the last factory whistle for the festival night odors of popcorn, Spearmint chewing gum, barber-shop pomades, and the faint smell of far-off damp cloverfields. Mornings the cloverfields retreated when the first Columbus local roared through the town. Bauer's coffee pot boiled over again, and the factory's night watchmen filed into Delaney's for their morning beer. — Dawn Powell

I like these cold, gray winter days. Days like these let you savor a bad mood. — Bill Watterson

Not far away lay the big cannons that had held Ulysses Grant at bay for fifty siege days while the citizens of the town ate rat flesh and clung to their long-cherished beliefs. How many had died in that lost cause? Dr. Tarver wondered. Fifty thousand casualties at Gettysburg alone, and for what? To free the slaves who built this house? To preserve the Union? Had Stonewall Jackson died to create a nation of couch potatoes ignorant of their own history and incapable of simple mathematics? If those brave soldiers in blue and gray had seen what lay in the future, they would have laid down their muskets and walked home to their farms. — Greg Iles

God of our life, there are days when the burdens we carry chafe our shoulders and weigh us down; when the road seems dreary and endless, the skies gray and threatening; when our lives have no music in them, and our hearts are lonely, and our souls have lost their courage. Flood the path with light, run our eyes to where the skies are full of promise; tune our hearts to brave music; give us the sense of comradeship with heroes and saints of every age; and so quicken our spirits that we may be able to encourage the souls of all who journey with us on the road of life, to your honor and glory. — Saint Augustine

As the carriage whipped forward, they passed the alley she had spent so many days staring at - it was there, and then gone as they careened around a corner, nearly knocking over a costermonger pushing a donkey cart piled high with new potatoes. Tessa screamed.
Will reached past her and yanked the curtain shut. "It's better if you don't look," he told her pleasantly.
"He's going to kill someone. Or get us killed."
"No, he won't. Thomas is an excellent driver."
Tessa glared at him. "Clearly the word excellent means something else on this side of the Atlantic. — Cassandra Clare

If each memory that drifted up were a star, I was standing at the center of a galaxy. Beneath vast constellations of lost smiles and quiet laughter. Whole, endless days of gray and brown and black that we'd spent with only each other to hold on to. — Alexandra Bracken

The sky was painted over, a perfect uniform gray. On days like this the clouds probably absorbed the sounds from the surface of the earth. And not just sounds. All kinds of things. Perceptions, for example. — Haruki Murakami

chewing gum, particularly peppermint chewing gum, which they were allergic to, but they ran to the pots. Violet picked one up and Sunny picked up the other, while Klaus hurriedly made the beds. "Give them to me," Foreman Flacutono snapped, and grabbed the pots out of the girls' hands. "Now, workers, we've wasted enough time already. To the mills! Logs are waiting for us!" "I hate log days," one of the employees grumbled, but everyone followed Foreman Flacutono out of the dormitory and across the dirt-floored courtyard to the lumbermill, which was a dull gray building with many smokestacks sticking out of the top like a porcupine's quills. The three children looked at one another worriedly. Except for one summer day, back when their parents were still alive, when the Baudelaires had opened a lemonade stand in front of their house, the orphans had never had jobs, and they were nervous. The Baudelaires followed Foreman Flacutono into the — Lemony Snicket

I interned for the Knicks for one year doing community relations, but I absolutely hated it. It was a desk job, and the team was not good at all, and I didn't realize how much that correlated to the office. It was just gray, gloomy days. — Ramon Rodriguez

IF A BRAIN could shrivel up and die from too much contemplation, mine was dangerously close to living out the rest of its days as a pruney, gray raisin. — Nicole Williams

There are some things you can do forever. Given a deep enough shaft, you can fall forever. You can forget forever, and disintegrate forever, and you can laugh for a very long time. But you cannot bleed for long - not you, not citruses, not twites or treepies, not orangequits or plushcaps or jewel-babblers, nor any creature whose vessels flutter with warm, swirling, cell-bearing plasma. Either your leak will mend or you will become void.
Only love can bleed forever; only love has endless blood. Only love's slender drooping tassels can bleed yet grow stronger, bleed yet grow brighter; redder, redder, never spent, never phantasmal-gray. Maybe, if it only gets kicked, then love is love-lies-dented, and in a few days it replumps. But when it suffers a terrible wound, love seems able neither to heal - to grow substitute tissue over its damage - nor to run dry. — Amy Leach

And at that moment, for no reason he could put into words, the hourglass shattered. No more, the cool gray sift of days, the diligent waiting for the future to trickle forth. Lazlo's dream was spilled out into the air, the color and storm of it no longer a future to be reached, but a cyclone here and now. He didn't know what, but as surely as one feels the sting of shards when an hourglass tips of a shelf and smashes, he knew that something was happening.
Right now. — Laini Taylor

Good digestions, the gray monotony of provincial life, and the boredom - ah the soul-destroying boredom - of long days of mild content. — Jean-Paul Sartre

She breathed that air he'd forgotten, of high-school loveliness, come uninvited to bloom in the shadow of railroad overpasses, alongside telephone poles, within earshot of highways with battered aluminum center strips, out of mothers gone to lard and fathers ground down by gray days of work and more work, in an America littered with bottlecaps and pull-tabs and pieces of broken muffler. — John Updike