He Was There All Along Quotes & Sayings

He caught me and held my gaze without welcome or warmth or any hint of what we had shared, and my sense of having violated something, of having looked where I shouldn't have faded, as I understood that this was what he wanted me to see all along, that I was there not as guard but as audience. I was there to see how different from me he was, how free of the foulness my father had shown him; and now that I had seen it, I knew our friendship had run its course. — Garth Greenwell

Reagan to son: how really great is the challenge of proving your masculinity and charm with one woman for the rest of your life. Any man can find a twerp here and there who will go along with cheating, and it doesn't take all that much manhood. It does take quite a man to remain attractive and to be loved by a woman who has heard him snore, seen him unshaven, tended him while he was sick and washed his dirty underwear. Do that and keep her still feeling a warm glow and you will know some very beautiful music. — H.W. Brands

In Paris, I found myself surrounded by Germans; they were all over the place. They played music, and people would go and listen to them! All along rue de Rivoli, as far as you could see from place de la Concorde, there were enormous swastika banners five or six floors high. I just thought, This is impossible.
Imagine that someone comes into your home - someone you don't like - he settles down, gives orders: "Here we are, we're at home now; you must obey." To me that was unbearable. — Pearl Witherington Cornioley

Elli."
"Shea," she gasped as he bit softly.
"Show me your undies." Elli broke out in a fit of giggles as Shea smiled against her neck.
"No way."
"What if a get a goal just for you-then can I see your undies?"
"Do they have to be on me?" she asked, playing along. There was no way in hell he would see her in her undies.
"Yes, they do."
"Hmm ... no."
"Come on, two goals."
"No."
"Three."
"Okay. Three, and y'all gotta win."
"Deal. Now kiss me."
"That I will do," she said with a grin as she leaned up on her tippy toes to kiss him deeply.
It was probably the first time Elanor Fisher hoped Shea didn't score. — Toni Aleo

Look at that symbol,' she said, pointing to the top of a page. Above what Harry assumed was the title of the story (being unable to read runes, he could not be sure), there was a picture of what looked like a triangular eye, its pupil crossed with a vertical line. 'I never took Ancient Runes, Hermione.' 'I know that, but it isn't a rune and it's not in the syllabary, either. All along I thought it was a picture — J.K. Rowling

Then began an experience that turned my life around-working on a book with a black kid as hero. None of the manuscripts I'd been illustrating featured any black kids-except for token blacks in the background. My book would have him there simply because he should have been there all along. Years before I had cut from a magazine a strip of photos of a little black boy. I often put them on my studio walls before I'd begun to illustrate children's books. I just loved looking at him. This was the child who would be the hero of my book. — Ezra Jack Keats

Every broken man comes to understand that'll he'll never find paradise when all that he wants was there all along. — Alter Bridge

What do you know? This is where it all began," he said.
"Began?"
"This is exactly where I was when I wanted to kiss you," he whispered, his lips brushing along my neck causing me to melt under his touch. "So bad."
"Except this time there's no drunk netballer squawking at us," I teased.
"I wouldn't care if the seven horseman of the Apocalypse charged through the garden right now, nothing's gonna stop me from doing this." He leaned down and captured my lips with tenderness, a completely perfect kiss, like it always was. — C.J. Duggan

Romans 8:16 tells us that the Spirit bears witness to our hearts that we are children of God. Part of the mission of the Spirit is to tell you about God's love for you, his delight in you, and the fact that you are his child. These things you may know in your head, but the Holy Spirit makes them a fiery reality in your life. Thomas Goodwin, a seventeenth-century Puritan pastor, wrote that one day he saw a father and son walking along the street. Suddenly the father swept the son up into his arms and hugged him and kissed him and told the boy he loved him - and then after a minute he put the boy back down. Was the little boy more a son in the father's arms than he was down on the street? Objectively and legally, there was no difference, but subjectively and experientially, there was all the difference in the world. In his father's arms, the boy was experiencing his sonship. — Timothy Keller

What he wanted above all to get right was the web of relationships a dozen column inches had never been enough to contain. Family, work, romance, church, municipality, history, happenstance ... He wanted to follow the soul far enough out along these lines of relationship to discover that there was no fixed point where one person ended and another began. — Garth Risk Hallberg

He stood up. "Let's go." The sun spilling through the window hit his chest, making his bare skin look even more golden.
"That's okay," she sputtered. "You don't have to ... tag along."
"Yes, I do. I'm your shadow until after breakfast."
Oh great. Her gaze slipped down to his open shirt again. Was she going to have to look, or try not to look, at his chest all morning? "Then at least button your shirt." The words were out before she realised how that sounded.
The disappointment in his eyes vanished and a sexy twinkle took its place. The twinkle brought out the gold flecks in his irises, which she used to admire so much.
"Why?" he asked. "Does it bother you?"
She glared at him. "Don't go there. — C.C. Hunter

It was a music that had so little wisdom you wanted to clean nearly every note he passed, passed it seemed along the way as if travelling in a car, passed before he even approached it and saw it properly. There was no control except the mood of his power ... and it is for this reason it is good you never heard him play on recordings. If you never heard him play some place where the weather for instance could change the next series of notes - then you should never have heard him at all. He was never recorded. — Michael Ondaatje

From the pocket of her windbreaker he extracted what he falsely believed to be a portable marine radio, which along with two granola bars he'd pilfered from Honey's belongings after she was snatched by the club-handed lunatic. Shreave started pressing buttons on the compact gadget and barking, "Mayday! Mayday!
There was no response from the Coast Guard pilot or any other human, and for a good reason. Except for its LED screen, the instrument in Shreave's possession was electronically dissimilar to a radio in all significant respects. Most crucial was the absence of either an audio receiver or a transmitter.
"SOS! SOS!" he persisted. "Help!"
The device was in fact a mobile GPS unit, as technogically impenetrable to Shreave as the Taser gun he'd found beneath Honey's bed. — Carl Hiaasen

One day, The road came. The road brought with it beer and cigarettes. The road brought Coca-Cola and disposable razors. The road brought all the wonderful things that we westerners know and hold close. But where did the road go? A few of the younger men decided to find out. They rode a buffalo cart along the road until they came to a town and then a train station. They hid in a bunch of rice sacks and took the train to the city, to the lights, to the jobs. There was this thing called money, with it you could buy stuff. You could gamble, drink, and be merry. After a period of two years, one of the young men returned to the village driving a new car. He showed the villagers all the beautiful things that he had bought. He said that there was work for everyone in the cities. He took another young man and two young women with him. They were pretty in a rural way and very hungry for money. Money was good. They liked it. It was a great adventure. — James A. Newman

When I go out by the gateway, taking the road I drove along that first time I picked up Lotte for the ball, how very different it all is! It is all over, all of it! There is not a hint of the world that once was, not one bulse-beat of those past emotions. I feel like a ghost returning to the burnt-out ruins of the castle he built in his prime as a prince, which he adorned with magnificent splendours and then, on his deathbed, but full of hope, left to his beloved son — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

He thought here you are Joe Bonham lying like a side of beef all the rest of your life and for what? Somebody tapped you on the shoulder and said come along son we're going to war. So you went. But why? In any other deal even like buying a car or running an errand you had the right to say what's there in it for me? Otherwise you'd be buying bad cars for too much money or running errands for fools and starving to death. It was a kind of duty you owed yourself that when anybody said come on son do this or do that you should stand up and say look mister why should I do this for who am I doing it and what am I going to get out of it in the end? But when a guy comes along and says here come with me and risk your life and maybe die or be crippled why then you've got no rights. You haven't even the right to say yes or no or I'll think it over. There are plenty of laws to protect guys' money even in war time but there's nothing on the books says a man's life's his own. Of — Dalton Trumbo

It occurred to Soo-Ja that if she gave him permission, he'd kiss her right then and there. But she realized that all along, what she really wasn't to have him in the present - how could she, married woman that she was, married man that he was - but to rewrite the past, have him go back in time and create a version that allowed them to kiss. To be able to kiss him did not seem to take much - a step forward, the angling of her face. But, in fact, it required rearranging the molecules of every interaction they had ever had, from the very first day they met. — Samuel Park

"Was that your plan all along? Show me where to go, then convince me there's nothing I can do to save my sister?"
"Actually, my plan all along was to become a rockstar, travel the world collecting fan girls, and then getting really fat and spending the rest of my life playing video games while the girls kept comin', thinking I look good as I did in my music videos." He shrugs as if to say, 'who knew the world would turn out so different? — Susan Ee

She shook her head. What was the point of anger? There were occasions when Mma Ramotswe, like all of us, could feel angry, but they were few - and they never lasted long. Anger, Obed Ramotswe had explained to her once, is no more than a salt that we rub into our wounds. She had never forgotten that - along with the things he said about cattle, and Botswana, and the behaviour of the rains. — Alexander McCall Smith

Perkins was doing basically the same sort of thing up around Jackson, and I know for a fact Jerry Lee Lewis had been playing that kind of music ever since he was ten years old. You see, from the honky tonks you got such a mixture of all different types of music, and I think what happened is that when Elvis busted through, it enabled all these other groups that had been going along more or less the same avenue - I'm sure there were hundreds of them - to tighten up and focus on what was going to be popular. If they had a steel guitar they dropped it. The weepers and slow country ballads pretty much went out of their repertoire. And what you had left was country-orientated boogie music. — Peter Guralnick

She turned down her street once more, glaring at the garish lights someone had put up along their house. Might as well light the roof with "Santa Park Here". Sheesh. The closer she got to home, though, the lower her heart sank. The overly bright house looked suspiciously like ... No. Oh, no. He wouldn't. He had. Light up animated animals were dotted all over her lawn. The circle of life has apparently found our power outlet. And why the fuck is there a Star of David on my roof? She wasn't exactly the most church-going member of the community, but you'd think Simon would know what religion she was. After all, she knew exactly who was going to officiate at his funeral. She picked up her cell phone and called Emma. "I'm going to kill him. — Dana Marie Bell

Then suddenly Percy was next to her, lacing his fingers in hers. He turned her gently away from the pit and wrapped his arms around her. She buried her face in his chest and broke down in tears. "It's okay," he said. "We're together." He didn't say you're okay, or we're alive. After all they'd been through over the last year, he knew the most important thing was that they were together. She loved him for saying that. Their friends gathered around them. Nico di Angelo was there, but Annabeth's thoughts were so fuzzy, this didn't seem surprising to her. It seemed only right that he would be with them. "Your leg." Piper knelt next to her and examined the Bubble Wrap cast. "Oh, Annabeth, what happened?" She started to explain. Talking was difficult, but as she went along, her words came more easily. Percy didn't let go of her hand, which also made her feel more confident. When she finished, her friends' faces were slack with amazement. "Gods of Olympus," Jason said. "You did all that — Rick Riordan

God is a good horseman. He waits while we circle the fences of our lives - whatever they are, whether it be a bad childhood, or a destructive habit, family problems, an addiction, a personal tragedy, an inability to forgive someone else or to allow ourselves to ask forgiveness, or believe we deserve it. The Good Horseman waits, and each time we turn and look at Him, He stretches out His hand, slow and quiet, until finally, sooner or later, we reach for it, and we come to the center with Him, and find that peace was waiting there all along. — Lisa Wingate

We passed upon the stair, we spoke of was and when
Although I wasnt there, he said I was his friend
Which came as some surprise I spoke into his eyes
I thought you died alone, a long long time ago
Oh no, not me
I never lost control
Youre face to face
With the man who sold the world
I laughed and shook his hand, and made my way back home
I searched for form and land, for years and years I roamed
I gazed a gazely stare at all the millions here
We must have died along, a long long time ago
Who knows? not me
We never lost control
Youre face to face
With the man who sold the world
Who knows? not me
We never lost control
Youre face to face
With the man who sold the world — David Bowie

He stopped at the gate on his way back to the temple, where Gracilis, the Twentieth's hard-case wolf hunter from the Campanian mountains, was supervising the strengthening of the defences.
'Take some men and tear down the huts along the west wall. And while you're at it, clear everything for a javelin throw in front of this gate. I want a killing ground from there to about there.'
Gracilis grinned and saluted. Like all legionaries, the only thing he liked better than fighting and drinking was destroying someone else's property. 'Should we burn them, sir?' he said hopefully. Valerius shook his head. No point in creating smoke to warn the enemy. 'Just break them up and add them to the barriers. — Douglas Jackson

Except in a very few matches, usually with world-class performers, there is a point in every match (and in some cases it's right at the beginning) when the loser decides he's going to lose. And after that, everything he does will be aimed at providing an explanation of why he will have lost. He may throw himself at the ball (so he will be able to say he's done his best against a superior opponent). He may dispute calls (so he will be able to say he's been robbed). He may swear at himself and throw his racket (so he can say it was apparent all along he wasn't in top form). His energies go not into winning but into producing an explanation, an excuse, a justification for losing. — C. Terry Warner

His life had been tied to the past. He'd seen himself a point on a moving wavefront, propagating through sterile history - a known past, a projectable future. But she was the breaking of the wave. Suddenly there was a beach, the unpredictable ... new life. Past and future stopped at the beach: that was how he'd set it out. But he wanted to believe it too, the same way he loved her, past all words - believe that no matter how bad the time, nothing was fixed, everything could be changed and she could always deny the dark sea at his back, love it away. And (selfishly) that from a somber youth, squarely founded on Death - along for Death's ride - he might, with her, find his way to life and to joy. — Thomas Pynchon

Every time Roscoe tried to think back along the line of events that had led to his being in a place where there was no trees to lean against, he strayed off the line and soon got all tangled up in his thinking. It was probably better not to try and think back down the line of life. — Larry McMurtry

Somewhere in the cosmos, he said, along with all the planets inhabited by humanoids, reptiloids, fishoids, walking treeoids and superintelligent shades of the color blue, there was also a planet entirely given over to ballpoint life forms. And it was to this planet that unattended ballpoints would make their way, slipping away quietly through wormholes in space to a world where they knew they could enjoy a uniquely ballpointoid lifestyle, responding to highly ballpoint-oriented stimuli, and generally leading the ballpoint equivalent of the good life.
And as theories go this was all very fine and pleasant until Veet Voojagig suddenly claimed to have found this planet, and to have worked there for a while driving a limousine for a family of cheap green retractables, whereupon he was aken away, locked up, wrote a book and was finally sent into tax exile, which is the usual fate reserved for those who are determined to make fools of themselves in public. — Douglas Adams

One night I dreamed a dream.
I was walking along the beach with my Lord. Across the dark sky flashed scenes from my life. For each scene, I noticed two sets of footprints in the sand, one belonging to me and one to my Lord.
When the last scene of my life shot before me I looked back at the footprints in the sand. There was only one set of footprints. I realized that this was at the lowest and saddest times of my life. This always bothered me and I questioned the Lord about my dilemma.
"Lord, You told me when I decided to follow You, You would walk and talk with me all the way. But I'm aware that during the most troublesome times of my life there is only one set of footprints. I just don't understand why, when I need You most, You leave me."
He whispered, "My precious child, I love you and will never leave you, never, ever, during your trials and testings. When you saw only one set of footprints, It was then that I carried you. — Margaret Fishback Powers

It struck me that Lee was in many ways our true hero. Lee was the one who did the dirtiest jobs, quietly, without fuss, without going into big emotional scenes. He was so efficient, so reliable, so brave. Whenever we fell short, he made up the gap. I'm not just talking about the red hot moments, when enemy soldiers were shooting at us, when we were within a moment of death. I'm talking about the sourer times too, when we were so tired we could hardly remember to breathe, or we were so bored we'd pick at each other just for something to do, or so distressed we'd wish a soldier would come along and blow us into oblivion with an M16. At all those times Lee stood strong. He was like the Wirrawee grain silo. You could see the grain silo from miles away, tall and reliable. It stood for Wirrawee, and it gave you a safe comforting feeling to know it was there. That was how I'd felt about Lee during the war. — John Marsden

That's what this has been all about for you, correct? Make it clear. That you and me
it was nothing more that you'll have with Spinnerbait boy, or the guy after that, or the guy after that. Right?"
"Yeah, I said, shrugging. "You're right."
He just stood there, looking at me, as if I had actually changed before his eyes. But this was the girl I'd been all along. I'd just hidden her well. — Sarah Dessen

He had no secrets left. No defenses. He had nothing, except that same vast, dark, empty, infinite ache that had resided in him for as long as he could remember. An endless flight of stairs, leading down and down into the cold, dark pit of his soul. Now, at long last, he'd reached the absolute rock bottom. And there she was, just standing there. She'd been there all along. — Tessa Dare

I woke at dawn every morning to his touch, the delight of his warmth and the heady smell of his skin. I had never before lain with a man who had loved me completely, for myself, and it was a dizzy experience. I had never lain with a man whose touch I adored without any need to hide my adoration, or exaggerate it, or adjust it at all. I simply loved him as if he were my one and only lover, and he loved me too with the same simplicty of appetite and disire which made me wonder what I thought I had been doing all those years when I had been dealing in the false coin of vanity and lust. I had not known then that all along there had been this other currency of pure gold. — Philippa Gregory

That was the only time, as I stood there, looking at that strange rubbish, feeling the wind coming across those empty fields, that I started to imagine just a little fantasy thing, because this was Norfolk after all, and it was only a couple of weeks since I'd lost him. I was thinking about the rubbish, the flapping plastic in the branches, the shore-line of odd stuff caught along the fencing, and I half-closed my eyes and imagined this was the spot where everything I'd ever lost since my childhood had washed up, and I was now standing here in front of it, and if I waited long enough, a tiny figure would appear on the horizon across the field, and gradually get larger until I'd see it was Tommy, and he'd wave, maybe even call. The fantasy never got beyond that
I didn't let it
and though the tears rolled down my face, I wasn't sobbing or out of control. I just waited a bit, then turned back to the car, to drive off to wherever it was I was supposed to be. — Kazuo Ishiguro

Thomas Goodwin, a seventeenth-century Puritan pastor, wrote that one day he saw a father and son walking along the street. Suddenly the father swept the son up into his arms and hugged him and kissed him and told the boy he loved him - and then after a minute he put the boy back down. Was the little boy more a son in the father's arms than he was down on the street? Objectively and legally, there was no difference, but subjectively and experientially, there was all the difference in the world. In his father's arms, the boy was experiencing his sonship. When — Timothy J. Keller

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions. — Steve Jobs

Alfred North Whitehead summed it up best when he remarked that the greatest invention of the nineteenth century was the idea of invention itself. We had learned how to invent things, and the question of why we invent things receded in importance. The idea that if something could be done it should be done was born in the nineteenth century. And along with it, there developed a profound belief in all the principles through which invention succeeds: objectivity, efficiency, expertise, standardization, measurement, and progress. It also came to be believed that the engine of technological progress worked most efficiently when people are conceived of not as children of God or even as citizens but as consumers - that is to say, as markets. — Neil Postman

I hate this," he muttered, lowering his forehead until it rested on mine. "I hate him. I hate what he does to you. I hate that I can't stop him."
My heart melted as pain registered on his beautiful face. Without thinking, I lifted my hand and slid it along Ethan's cheek. He covered my hand with his own and nuzzled it softly. Finally, he took a deep breath and opened his eyes again. What I saw in them made my breath falter. There was anger and pain, but above all there was ... something else. Something that made my heart beat frantically and my whole body vibrate. There was desire. — Jamie Canosa

Finn?" Al asked in a husky voice. She blinked big gray eyes at him
from where she lay wrapped up in Daniel. Her hair was all tussled,
and there was a general well-fucked appeal to her.
He was nowhere near as immune to it as he would have liked. Which
pissed him off.
And she wore his t-shirt, having gasped words along the lines of
"God", "yes", and "Daniel" before slipping into it.
"What's wrong, Finn?"
His. Shirt — Kylie Scott

You're certainly chipper this morning."
"Damn straight. Chipper's my middle name. I'm going out to spread joy and laughter to all of mankind."
"What a nice change of pace." There was amusement riding along with the Irish in his voice. "Perhaps you'll start now by going down with me to see Summerset off."
She grimaced. "That might spoil my appetite." Testing, she polished off the pancakes. "No, no, it doesn't. I can do that. I can go down and wave bye-bye."
Brow lifted, he gave her hair a quick tug. "Nicely."
"I won't do the happy dance until he's out of sight. Three weeks. — J.D. Robb

And there stood Basta with his foot already on another dead body, smiling. Why not? He had hit his target, and it was the target he had been aiming for all along: Dustfinger's heart, his stupid heart. It broke in two as he held Farid in his arms, it simply broke in two, although he had taken such good care of it all these years. — Cornelia Funke

Speaking more generally about what attracted him to bluegrass banjo, he said it was 'just the sound of the instrument, and then the fire, you know; the speed and all that. I was attracted by the intensity of it, really. And I was drawn to that incredible clarity-- when something is going along real fast and every note is absolutely clear. That, to me, was really amazing-- the Earl Scruggs instrumentals...' But Garcia refused to commit himself to just one style of music. Though bluegrass became his overriding obsession for about two years, he still dabbled in folk, old-timey and blues whenever the opportunity arose and there were players around. — Blair Jackson

And as soon as you accepted that the man's breakdown was a consequence of his war experience rather than his own innate weakness, then inevitably the war became the issue. And the therapy was a test, not only of the genuineness of the individual's symptoms, but also of the validity of the demands the war was making on him. Rivers had survived partly by suppressing his awareness of this. But then along came Sassoon and made the justifiability of the war a matter for constant, open debate, and that suppression was no longer possible. At times it seemed to Rivers that all his other patients were the anvil and that Sassoon was the hammer. Inevitably there were times when he resented this. As a civilian, Rivers's life had consisted of asking questions, and devising methods by which truthful answers could be obtained, but there are limits to how many fundamental questions you want to ask in a working day that starts before eight am and doesn't end till midnight. — Pat Barker

First and foremost, they had the curses of the country: and Sir Murtagh Rackrent, the new heir, in the next place, on account of this affront to the body, refused to pay a shilling of the debts, in which he was countenanced by all the best gentlemen of property, and others of his acquaintance; Sir Murtagh alleging in all companies that he all along meant to pay his father's debts of honour, but the moment the law was taken of him, there was an end of honour to be sure. It was whispered (but none but the enemies of the family believe it) that this was all a sham seizure to get quit of the debts which he had bound himself to pay in honour. — Maria Edgeworth

For they was never a young man yet who don't want to go out and right a wrong, or kill a man, or have to do something to earn his right to what is there for the taking, all along. Only he don't think he can ask, nor take, without earning it. Without no pain. Oftener than not, a young man's a regular fool. — Lee Smith

Sophie, Sophie, Sophie," he groaned, his lips moving frantically along her face until they found her mouth again. "I need you." He pressed his hips hotly against hers. "Do you feel how I need you?"
"I need you, too," she whispered. And she did. There was a fire burning within her that had been simmering quietly for years. The sight of him had ignited it anew, and his touch was like kerosene, sending her into a conflagration.
His fingers wrestled with the large, poorly made buttons on back of her dress. "I'm going to burn this," he grunted, his other hand relentlessly stroking the tender skin at the back of her knee. "I'll dress you in silks, in satins." He moved to her ear, nipping at her lobe, then licking the tender skin where her ear met her cheek. "I'll dress you in nothing at all."
-Benedict & Sophie — Julia Quinn

None of us asked for this life. I, of all people should know that our paths were chosen for us and we were just along for the ride, doing what was necessary and expected. There were far greater forces at work here. He was playing my heartstrings, which sang a sad melody I felt deep in my soul.
For the first time, I could see him for who and what he was now. Even the worst incarnations of evil could change, and from this point forward, I would try to honor that. He was willing to put his life back in the line of fire to help me, and at the very least, he deserved my respect for that. Maybe even a second chance. — L.J. Kentowski

In the beginning when the world was young there were a great many thoughts but no such thing as a truth. Man made the truths himself and each truth was a composite of a great many vague thoughts. All about in the world were the truths and they were all beautiful. [ ... ]
There was the truth of virginity and the truth of passion, the truth of wealth and of poverty, of thrift and of profligacy, of carelessness and abandon. Hundreds and hundreds were the truths and they were all beautiful.
And then the people came along. Each as he appeared snatched up one of the truths and some who were quite strong snatched up a dozen of them.
It was the truths that made the people grotesques. The old man had quite an elaborate theory concerning the matter. It was his notion that the moment one of the people took one of the truths to himself, called it his truth, and tried to live his life by it, he became a grotesque and the truth he embraced became a falsehood. — Sherwood Anderson

There's an interesting story around that ["Heaven Without a Gun"], because the girl I was dating at the time got into a bike accident and couldn't make it into the studio, and the gentleman Dave Hamlin who worked on this record along with Ohad sort of took it, rearranged it. Dave went and sonically changed it and changed the keys so that Andy could sing it better. All these pieces came together that suddenly displayed that the song was meant for Andy [Kim] to sing. And he always said, "I'll never understand it, but I'll sing it with all my heart." — Kevin Drew

The beach was hours away by bicycle, forbidden, completely out of all bounds. Going there risked expulsion, destroyed the studying I was going to do for an important test the next morning, blasted the reasonable amount of order I wanted to maintain in my life, and it also involved the kind of long, labored bicycle ride I hated. "All right," I said. We got our bikes and slipped away from Devon along a back road. Having invited me Finny now felt he had to keep me entertained. He told long, wild stories about his childhood; as I pumped panting up steep hills he glided along beside me, joking steadily. He analyzed my character, and he insisted on knowing what I disliked most about him ("You're too conventional," I said). — John Knowles

[Having perosonal trainer for the movie 'The back-up plan'] I felt like I had just given birth. He was like, "You can't eat anything but this. You've got to do what I say." So along with doing the film, I did this kind of disciplined workout regimen, because every cheese farmer is ripped and buff, and I wanted to be true to character, because I'm Method. But it took a lot of hard work to get there. You can rest assured in the fact that it's all gone now. — Jennifer Lopez

How could I not love him, after that? That is not to say that I approved of all he did, or much enjoyed the company of the man that he became ... but every little girl needs a big brother to protect her. Tywin was big even when he was little." She gave a sigh. "Who will protect us now?"
Jaime kissed her cheek. "He left a son."
"Aye, he did. That is what I fear the most, in truth."
That was a queer remark. "Why should you fear?"
"Jaime," she said, tugging on his ear, "sweetling, I have known you since you were a babe at Joanna's breast. You smile like Gerion and fight like Tyg, and there's some of Kevan in you, else you would not wear that cloak ... but Tyrion is Tywin's son, not you. I said so once to your father's face, and he would not speak to me for half a year. Men are such thundering great fools. Even the sort who come along once in a thousand years. — George R R Martin

Who can ever know what turns the spark into flame? Vidanric's initial interest in me might well have been kindled by the fact that he saw my actions as courageous, but the subsequent discovery of passion, and the companionship of the mind that would sutain it, seemed as full of mystery as it was of felicity. As for me, I really believe that the spark had been there all along, but I had been too ignorant--and too afraid--to recognize it. — Sherwood Smith

This was a lonely project. But perhaps there is, in all research, a time when a man is all alone and must struggle against his own doubts. Even when he holds to his course, doubts go along with him and mingle with the questions at the back of his mind. But as I have said, we have burned our bridges. I could only explore now. Most explorers are thought to be mad by someone, and all explorers are lonely. Perhaps a touch of madness is a help - that and the knowledge that someone, like Dulcinea, believes in you. — Wilder Penfield

I hate all electronic toys: cell phones, e-mail, PalmPilots, handheld Global Positioning System equipment, and the whole raft of gadgets that intrude on solitude.
When I was a kid I used to disappear into the woods all day. Now I can walk in the wilderness without wasting my valuable time. As I hike along I can call anyone in the world, schedule an appointment, take a picture of me standing next to a tree and then send the person a map so he or she can join me there. Solitude has been snuffed out. — David Skibbins

For a split second, Harry thought how absurd it was for Tonks to expect the dummy to hear her talking that quietly through a sheet of glass, when there were buses rumbling along behind her and all the racket of street full of shoppers. Then he reminded himself that dummies could not hear anyway. — J.K. Rowling

There's a bar like it in every town. It's dimly-lit and the drinkers, although they talk, don't address their words to one another and they don't listen, either. They just talk the hurt inside. It's a bar for the derelict and the unlucky and all of those people who have been temporarily flagged off the racetrack of life and into the pits.
It always does a brisk trade.
On this dawn the mourners sat ranged along the counter, each in his cloud of gloom, each certain that he was the most unfortunate individual in the whole world. — Terry Pratchett

There is therefore now no condemnation for two reasons: you are dead now; and God, as the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, has been dead all along. The blame game was over before it started. It really was. All Jesus did was announce that truth and tell you it would make you free. It was admittedly a dangerous thing to do. You are a menace. Be he did it; and therefore, menace or not, here you stand: uncondemned, forever, now. What are you going to do with your freedom? — Robert Farrar Capon

If he hadn't done that interview with Bashir, he wouldn't be there now. That was the first time he ever did an interview like that. He was afraid of something like that all along. And it happened. — Joseph Jackson

I'm not going anywhere." Gently, he stroked her back, cradled her head. Was there anything more astounding or more frightening to a man, he wondered, than a strong woman in tears?
"I've been right here all along. I love you, Eve, almost more than I can stand."
"I need you. I can't help it. I don't want to."
"I know." He eased back, tucking a hand under her chin to lift her face to his.
"We're going to have to deal with it." He kissed one wet cheek, then the other. "I really can't do without you. — J.D. Robb

The man she had loved as a father was a fraud. He kissed the back of her hands and advocated war; he had played with her on the carpet with toy soldiers, and all along he had been planning the extinction of an entire people.

There would be no resettlement in the east. No carefully orchestrated exodus of Jews from Germany, no trains wending through the mountains, carrying Jews to another home in another country. There would be no peaceful expulsion. It was obvious now; Hitler had said it himself tonight. The internal purification of the Jewish spirit is not possible.

She understood. In Hitler's Germany, the Jews would have no place at all. — Anne Blankman

He's a very nice man and all that, easy to get along with, fun, he never makes me cry. But is that love? I mean, is that all there is to it? Even when you learned to ride your two-wheeler, you had to fall off a few times and scrape both knees. Call it a rite of passage. And that was just a little thing. — Stephen King

There - the chandelier, choked with dust and webs. A single rivulet of red had trickled from the ceiling, down the central column, and out along a curving crystal arm. At its lowest point, a new pendant of blood was slowly building.
'It - it can't do that,' I stammered. 'We're inside the iron.'
'Move out of the way!' Lockwood pushed me back just as the drop fell, spattering on the floor in the center of the circle. We were all standing almost atop the iron chains. 'We've made it too big,' he said. 'The power of the iron doesn't extend into the very center. It's weak there, and this Visitor's strong enough to overcome it.'
'Adjust the chains inward-' George began.
'If we make the circle smaller,' Lockwood said, 'we'll be squeezed in a tiny space. It's scarcely midnight; we've seven hours till dawn and this thing's just gotten started. No, we've got to break out — Jonathan Stroud

Being Lulu, it made me realize that all my life I've been living in a small, square room, with no windows and no doors. And I was fine. I was happy, even. I thought. Then someone came along and showed me there was a door in the room. One that I'd never even seen before. Then he opened it for me. Held my hand as I walked through it. And for one perfect day, I was on the other side. I was somewhere else. Someone else. And then he was gone, and I was thrown back into my little room. And now, no matter what I do, I can't seem to find that door. — Gayle Forman

There was a time when a new deputy tried to teach Mr. Fruit about the difference between a red and a green light, but Mr. Fruit had resisted all efforts to reorder what he had been doing perfectly well for many years. He had not only monitored the comings and goings of the town, his presence softened the ingrained evil that flourished along the invisible margins of the town's consciousness. Any community can be judged in its humanity or corruption by how it manages to accommodate the Mr. Fruits of the world. Colleton simply adjusted itself to Mr. Fruit's harmonies and ordinations. He did whatever he felt was needed and he did it with style. "That's the Southern way" my grandmother said. "That's the nice way. — Pat Conroy

The Patriots had picked Brady in the sixth round, and he soon turned out to be one of the two or three best quarterbacks in the League, and absolutely perfect for the Belichick system and for the team's offense. So, as the team continued to make a series of very good calls on other player personnel choices, there was a general tendency to talk about how brilliant Pioli and Belichick were, and to regard Pioli as the best young player personnel man in the League. Just to remind himself not to believe all the hype and that he could readily have screwed up on that draft, Pioli kept on his desk a photo of Brady, along with a photo of the team's fifth-round traft choice, the man he had taken ahead of Brady: Dave Stachelski. He was a Tight End from Boise State who never a played a down for New England. Stachelski was taken with the 141st pick, Brady with the 199th one. 'If I was so smart,' Pioli liked to say, 'I wouldn't have risked an entire round of the draft in picking Brady. — David Halberstam

But everything was so instantly, remarkably different. I was shocked. Literally incapable of comprehending what I'd seen. I felt stabbed, like the air was forced out of my chest, and I looked at him aghast, hurt, shut behind walls. It was unfathomable to me. The game didn't matter. The stakes were so low. There was no part of me that would - could - ever consider doing what he did. But it was so easy for him. The easiest thing. And that, I realized, had been there all along. — Marina Keegan

Once, on ancient Earth, there was a human boy walking along a beach. There had just been a storm, and starfish had been scattered along the sands. The boy knew the fish would die, so he began to fling the fish to the sea. But every time he threw a starfish, another would wash ashore. "An old Earth man happened along and saw what the child was doing. He called out, 'Boy, what are you doing?' " 'Saving the starfish!' replied the boy. " 'But your attempts are useless, child! Every time you save one, another one returns, often the same one! You can't save them all, so why bother trying? Why does it matter, anyway?' called the old man. "The boy thought about this for a while, a starfish in his hand; he answered, "Well, it matters to this one." And then he flung the starfish into the welcoming sea. — Loren Eiseley

Whatcha got there?" Drake asked, nodding to the floor. "Snacks for me." I winked. "Well, now I'm offended." He fake pouted, scooting away from me in his seat, which made it even more funny because there was nowhere for him to go in the tiny car. "Why is that?" Nothing wrong with playing along, besides, he was cute when he was fake-mad. What was I saying? He was cute ALL the time. He turned to me and slid his arms around my waist, pulling me close. Far off, I caught a whiff of his scent. Mmm. Delicious. "It's just that I thought I was your snack on the go." His breath danced on my cheek, dangerously close to my lips. I giggled before I could stop myself. "Do you really want me to suck you dry?" "Mmm, that sounds like an offer I can't refuse." He raised his eyebrows and flashed a naughty grin. "Don't be dirty, I didn't mean that." I slapped his arm for good measure. "Is that all you think of me as - some kind of slutty vampire? — Karly Kirkpatrick

It amazed Chess how he'd really believed, almost all along, that there was nothing he'd miss, leaving this world. Only the whole of it, you ass-stupid fool.

Every bit, the living and the dead, and then some; hot sun on his back, the wind and the rain, full-out galloping into battle, feel of his guns in hand, a good hard fuck. Getting drunk - on absinthe, anger, blood. Stomping twice on some enemy's face for good measure, and laughing while he did it; the sound of Asher Rook's voice preaching, or Yancey's, singing. Ed's heartbeat under his cheek. — Gemma Files

You have been spying all along," Conrad said, unconvinced. "The manhunt for you was a ruse."
"Check with the emperor," Ferrin replied coolly.
... "That will not take long," said a man in the corner, studiously picking at a fingernail with a small knife. He raised his head, wavy gray hair framing his pallid face. He wore a long coat of brown leather.
"Torvic!" Ferrin called, the exuberance hollow. "I hadn't seen you over there. Still in touch directly with Felrook? You know, to come clean, I haven't brought Maldor in on my plan yet, so it might be of little use to bother him at this juncture. — Brandon Mull

There was what people called "present bias" - the tendency, when making a decision, to undervalue the future in relation to the present. There was "hindsight bias" - which he thought of as the tendency for people to look at some outcome and assume it was predictable all along. The — Michael Lewis

He told me once that there was no better faith than a wounded faith and sometimes I wonder if that is what he was doing all along
trying to wound his faith in order to test it
and I was just another stone in the way of his God. — Colum McCann

Russ decided the best defense was a good offense. "I'm Russell Van Alstyne, Millers Kill chrief of police." He held out his hand. She shook firm, like a guy.
"Clare Fergusson," she said. "I'm the new priest at Saint Alban's. That's the Episcopal Church. At the corner of Elm and Church." there was a faint testiness in her voice. Russ relaxed a fraction. A woman priest. If that didn't beat all.
"I know which it is. There are only four churches in town." He saw the fog creeping along the edges of his glasses again and snatched them off, fishing for a tissue in his pocket. "Can you tell me what happened, um ... " What was he supposed to call her? "Mother?"
"I go by Reverend, Chief. Ms. is fine, too."
"Oh. Sorry. I never met a woman priest before."
"We're just like the men priests, except we're willing to pull over and ask directions. — Julia Spencer-Fleming

We do not often get to declare victories, Natch, and most of them do not remain victories for very long. Ultimately when you reach my age you realize that victories are temporary, and in all the years of human history there is one final battle which nobody has ever won.Time has a way of changing the terms of your victories over the years, until you begin to wonder precisely what it was you fought for so viciously, so uncompromisingly. You begin to see that victory and defeat are but alternate reflections from the same prism.You see that the measure of a person really might be the integrity with which he fought his battles and not their ultimate dispensation, just like your elders have been telling you all along. — David Louis Edelman

Livy." His voice deepened to nearly guttural. Desire unfurled in her abdomen. Then reality slammed her in the face.
"Are you glamoring me?" she asked, anger rippling along her skin.
His eyebrows drew down. "Glamoring?"
"Yeah. What vampires do." She put her hands on her hips. "Making me want you."
He chuckled again. "Oh, you want me, and it's all you. There's no such thing as glamoring."
Truth. She opened her senses, and he was definitely telling the truth. "Oh. — Rebecca Zanetti

The skerry was resting in the sea. It was like being in a cradle, or on a deathbed, he thought. All the voices hidden in the cliff were whispering. Even rocks have memories, as do waves and breakers. And down below, in the darkness where fish swam along invisible and silent channels, there were also memories. — Henning Mankell

The people of Lancre wouldn't dream of living in anything other than a monarchy. They'd done so for thousands of years and knew that it worked. But they'd also found that it didn't do to pay too much attention to what the King wanted, because there was bound to be another king along in forty years or so and he'd be certain to want something different and so they'd have gone to all that trouble for nothing. In the meantime, his job as they saw it was to mostly stay in the palace, practise the waving, have enough sense to face the right way on coins and let them get on with the ploughing, sowing, growing and harvesting. It was, as they saw it, a social contract. They did what they always did, and he let them. — Terry Pratchett

Smiling now, Michael Dawn sat on his rooftop, gazing at the stars above him, just like men had done for thousands of years. Out there lay secrets and mysteries that an eternity could never unravel, worlds he could only imagine. Yet looking at them then, it all seemed so surreal. As if the only purpose the stars had in this world was to shine their tiny points of light down on him that evening. To give him something beautiful and breathtaking to admire. Maybe that was their only purpose. Maybe trying to get more out of them, trying to travel among them and shed light on things that were better left unexposed, had been the trouble all along. — John A. Ashley

He might as well have been sitting there all along, all eight years that he was away, because he was there in my head, insinuated in the cracks of my heart. — Leylah Attar

Then I stood alone at the edge of the sea I had longed for so often; but though I was alone, I found it cheering, and breathed the air that is like no other, and smiled to hear the soft song of the little waves. Land - Nessus, the House Absolute, and all the rest - lay to the east; west lay the sea; I walked north because I was reluctant to leave it too soon, and because Triskele had run in that direction, along the margin of the sea. There great Abaia might wallow with his women, yet the sea was older far, and wiser than he; we human beings, like all the life of the land, had come from the sea; and because we could not conquer it, it was ours always. The old, red sun rose on my right and touched the waves with his fading beauty, and I heard the calling of the sea birds, the innumerable birds. — Gene Wolfe

We started shooting, and then Jodie found out she was pregnant. Forest broke it to me - he'd gone to work and heard it on the radio! It seemed like the movie was doomed. But, like these characters, there was a disregard for all the signs along the way. — Dwight Yoakam

Where are you going?" Millie whispered, although why she was whispering was a bit of a mystery since the sound of yelling, along with a lot of cursing, was flowing into the house. "I'm not just going to sit here while everyone else is fighting my battle." She made it all the way to the door, crawling on her stomach, no less, before she was forced to stop when she encountered a pair of shoes. They were nice shoes, a little dusty, and unfortunately, they belonged to none other than Bram. "You weren't trying to sneak out to help, were you?" he asked, squatting down next to her. "I might have been." "There's no need. Silas has been secured." Lucetta frowned. "He came down here on his own?" Holding out a hand, Bram helped her to her feet before he smiled. "Apparently, yes. I imagine those women he hired weren't too keen to travel the country with him. Aiding and abetting men on the run usually results in a stint behind bars, and they must have decided he wasn't worth that." "I — Jen Turano

Or, obversely, he might kill a man himself. It would be a question of throwing up his rifle, pressing the trigger, and a particular envelope of lusts and anxieties and perhaps some goodness would be quite dead. All as easy as stepping on an insect, perhaps easier ... Everything was completely out of whack, none of the joints fitted. The men had been singing in the motor pool, and there had been something nice about it, something childish and brave. And they were here on this road, a point moving along in a line in the vast neutral spaces of the jungle. And somewhere else a battle might be going on. The artillery, the small-arms fire they had been hearing constantly, might be nothing, something scattered along the front, or it might be all concentrated now in the minuscule inferno of combat. None of it matched. The night had broken them into all the isolated units that actually they were. — Norman Mailer

Somewhere there was a book of love, with all the symptoms written down in red ink: Dizziness and Desire. A tendency to stare at the night sky, searching for a message that might be found up above. A lurching in the pit of the stomach, as if something much too sweet had been eaten. The ability to hear the quietest sounds--snails munching the lettuce leaves, moths drinking nectar from the overripe pears on the tree by the fence, a rabbit trembling in ivy-just in case he might be there, which was what mattered all along. Real hunger, just to see him, as if this would ever be enough. — Alice Hoffman

Colton picked up a glass of cider and tok a sip. "We're not a couple, Olivia and I, so if you want to flirt with me, it's all right." He was teasing, but there was also truth mixed into this game. Perhaps more than he knew, and I felt as though everything inside of me was stretched tight.
I didn't want to face him, so I kept my gaze centered out on the dance floor. "I see. Should I bat my eyelashes or were you thinking along the lines of pointless small talk?"
"Actually, I like the way you keep looking at me."
"I don't keep looking at you."
"Yes, you do."
I didn't look at him, just to prove the point. — Janette Rallison

He felt that now over his every word, his every deed, there was a judge, a judgment, which was dearer to him than the judgments of all the people in the world. He spoke now, and along with his words he considered the impression his words would make on Natasha. He did not deliberately say what would be please her, but whatever he said, he judged himself from her point of view. — Leo Tolstoy

Someone once asked Michelangelo how he was able to create the amazing statue of David. He replied, "I didn't create David. He was there all along, in that massive block of marble. I just had to chip away to find him. — Lori Nelson Spielman

The man who came with the barrow told us the mail had set him down the morning before at the Royal George, that he had inquired what inns there were along the coast, and hearing ours well spoken of, I suppose, and described as lonely, had chosen it from the others for his place of residence. And that was all we could learn of our guest. — Robert Louis Stevenson

Good!" the creature echoed. "Doctor Nelson will be along in a minute. Feel like some breakfast?" All four symbols in the query were in Smith's vocabulary but he had trouble believing that he had heard them rightly. He knew that he was food, but he did not "feel like" food. Nor had he had any warning that he might be selected for such an honor. He had not known that the food supply was such that it was necessary to reduce the corporate group. He was filled with mild regret, since there was still so much to grok of these new events, but no reluctance. — Robert A. Heinlein

I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron:
Penelope did this too.
And more than once: you can't keep weaving all day
And undoing it all through the night;
Your arms get tired, and the back of your neck gets tight;
And along towards morning, when you think it will never be light,
And your husband has been gone, and you don't know where, for years.
Suddenly you burst into tears;
There is simply nothing else to do.
And I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron:
This is an ancient gesture, authentic, antique,
In the very best tradition, classic, Greek;
Ulysses did this too.
But only as a gesture, - a gesture which implied
To the assembled throng that he was much too moved to speak.
He learned it from Penelope ...
Penelope, who really cried. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

She smiled thoughtfully. "I think Jackson was like a lost puppy. He needed purpose, someone to believe in him and love him despite his bullshit. But he didn't have that, so he just went around humping everyone's leg and peeing everywhere. Then you came along and he thought he found that owner that would give him that purpose - something that would make him feel needed - but you chose the fancy pet store puppy instead, so he went back to peeing on everything and destroying all the furniture."
"Um, Whit ... is there a point to this?"
"We all need someone to believe in us. It helps us see our full potential. You were that someone to believe in him. I think he'll be a new man because of it."
"So you're saying I rescued a lost puppy, and now he'll become a topnotch show dog because I'm just so amazing?"
"Exactly."
"You have such an eloquent way with words."
"No shit, right?"
"Precisely."
-Emma and Whitney — Rachael Wade

And then one day he realised that of course he was always staring at his hand when he wrote, was always watching the pen as it moved along, gripped by his fingers, his fingers floating there in front of his eyes just above the words, above that single white sheet, just above these words i'm writing now, his fingers between him and all that, like another person, a third person, when all along you thot it was just the two of you talking and he suddenly realized it was the three of them, handling it on from one to the other, his hand translating itself, his words slipping thru his fingers into the written world. You. — B.P. Nichol

Knowledge equals power ...
The string was important. After a while the Librarian stopped. He concentrated all his powers of librarianship.
Power equals energy ...
People were stupid, sometimes. They thought the Library was a dangerous place because of all the magical books, which was true enough, but what made it really one of the most dangerous places there could ever be was the simple fact that it was a library.
Energy equals matter ...
He swung into an avenue of shelving that was apparently a few feet long and walked along it briskly for half an hour.
Matter equals mass.
And mass distorts space. It distorts it into polyfractal L-space.
So, while the Dewey system has its fine points, when you're setting out to look something up in the multidimensional folds of L-space what you really need is a ball of string. — Terry Pratchett

After a while, they start landing some relief in helicopters, and I guess the napalm bomb have frightened away the gooks. They must of figured that if we was willing to do that to ourselves, then what the hell would we of done to them?
They taking the wounded out of there, when along come Sergeant Kranz, hair all singed off, clothes burnt up, looking like he just got shot out of a cannon. — Winston Groom

But for me, the true attraction of America is that it's practically godless. When I was younger and dodging the Romans, I could hardly walk a mile in Europe without stepping on a stone sacred to some god or other. But out here in Arizona, all I have to worry about is the occasional encounter with Coyote, and I actually rather like him. (He's nothing like Thor, for one thing, and that right there means we're going to get along fine. The local college kids would describe Thor as a "major asshat" if they ever had the misfortune to meet him.) — Kevin Hearne

If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the contradiction along with them. His spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that. Thus he has always believed that there was such a thing as fate, but such a thing as free will also. Thus he believed that children were indeed the kingdom of heaven, but nevertheless ought to be obedient to the kingdom of earth. He admired youth because it was young and age because it was not. It is exactly this balance of apparent contradictions that has been the whole buoyancy of the healthy man. — G.K. Chesterton

But I never finished because then Zach's lips found mine. His hands burned as they left my arms and moved through my hair, bracing the back of my neck. My head still hurt, but there was no music playing. "I remember this." I felt my hand run along his chest, his breath warm on the side of my face. I breathed him in - Zach. "I remember this." And then he kissed me again, and the kiss was all that mattered. He pulled back, traced his lips across the tender place on my head. — Ally Carter

He who could write so easily, who could spend a thousand words down along his plunging fingers on the green-rubber keyboard of his machine, had stumbled like a first-grader over this single paragraph. A dozen times he had begun it and written into it a naked desperation; a dozen times he had begun it and written into it the frosted mathematics of logic. Finally he'd written out quickly the sentences that kept cropping up in all the versions. Those must be, to whatever censor there was in him, the most acceptable ones. He sealed it without rereading it and went out to mail it. An hour later he despised himself for having sent it. — Laura Z. Hobson