How Was Your Night Quotes & Sayings

Nigger, you sure ought to be glad it was us you talked to that way. You're a lucky bastard, 'cause if you'd said that to some other white man, you might've been a dead nigger now." I was learning rapidly how to watch white people, to observe their every move, every fleeting expression, how to interpret what was said and what left unsaid. Late one Saturday night I made some deliveries in a white neighborhood. I was pedaling my bicycle back to the store as fast as I could when a police car, swerving toward me, jammed me into the curbing. "Get down, nigger, and put up your hands!" they ordered. I did. They climbed out of the car, guns drawn, faces set, and advanced slowly. "Keep still!" they ordered. I reached my hands higher. They searched my pockets and packages. They seemed dissatisfied when they could find nothing incriminating. Finally, one of them said: "Boy, tell your boss not to send you out in white neighborhoods at this time of — Richard Wright

I got a number of very thoughtful responses to the email I sent out last night, most of which I don't have time to respond to right now. Thanks everyone for the encouragement, questions, criticism. Daniel's response was particularly inspiring to me and deserves to be shared. The resistance of Israeli Jewish people to the occupation and the enormous risk taken by those refusing to serve in the Israeli military offers an example, especially for those of us living in the United States, of how to behave when you discover that atrocities are being commited in your name. Thank you. — Rachel Corrie

At lunch I turned my phone on to check my messages. Georgia always sent me a few inane texts during the day, and sure enough there were two messages from her: one complaining about her physics teacher and a second, also obviously sent from her phone: I love you, baby. V.
I wrote her back: I thought I told you to buzz off last night, you creep-o French stalker guy.
Her response came back immediately: As if! Your beet-red cheeks this morning suggest otherwise ... liar! You're so into him.
I groaned and was about to turn my phone off when I saw that there was a third text from UNKNOWN. Clicking on it, I read: Can I pick you up from school? Same place, same time?
I texted back: How'd you get my number?
Called myself from your phone while you were in the restaurant's bathroom last night. Warned you we were stalkers! — Amy Plum

And she knew for the first time that someone can wire your skin in a single evening, and that love arrives not by accumulating to a moment, like a drop of water focused on the tip of a branch - it is not the moment of bringing your whole life to another - but rather, it is everything you leave behind. At that moment.
Even that night, the night he touched one inch of her in the dark, how simply Avery seemed to accept the facts - that they were on the edge of lifelong happiness and, therefore, inescapable sorrow. It was as if, long ago, a part of him had broken off inside, and now finally, he recognised the dangerous fragment that had been floating in his system, causing him intermittent pain over the years. As if he could now say of that ache: Ah. It was you. — Anne Michaels

Butch : Two words for you. CYNDI.LAUPER
Vishous : Clearly, the paste you ate has gone to your head. Did Marissa like all that lace you glued on ? Oh ... and I'm talking to your body, not that ridiculous card you made her.
Butch : How does that song go ?
*sings song about true colors*
Vishous : I have no idea what you are talking about.
Butch : Oh.Really. So you deny that shit was playing in the weight room yesterday ?
Vishous : Please. Like I listen to crap like that ?
Butch : So you deny that song was also playing in the Escalade last night ?
Vishous : Don't act the fool.
Butch : So you deny that song was ALSO coming out of your shower early this morning. — J.R. Ward

I gave his a squeeze and relaxed beside him, wondering if this was how it felt.
If this was how it felt to get what you wanted for a lifetime.
Have it stretched out beside you.
The promise of it there all night so you'd wake up to it in the morning.
The promise of it going to work the next day with you knowing it was coming back.
A promise that would stay a promise-beautiful, forever there, beckoning, even as minute by minute it was being fulfilled, leaving you taking your last breath on earth knowing you lived a life filled with beauty.
If it was, it was weirdly serene.
You'd think something that magnificent would be about fireworks.
But if this was it, it wasn't.
It was quiet, tranquil, comfortable.
Beauty. — Kristen Ashley

There was a pause, and then Damien said, "I nominate Erik Night."
Shaunee rolled her eyes.
Erin said, "Okay, how many times do we have to explain this to you
the boy is not on your team. He likes breasts and vaginas, not penises and anu
"
"Stop!" I absolutely did not want to get off on this subject. "I think Erik Night is a good choice, and not because he likes me or, well ... — P.C. Cast

This is the codicil of motherhood: Like it or not, you acquire a sixth sense when it comes to your children - viscerally feeling their joy, their frustration, and the sharp blow to the heart when someone causes them pain. "Fast." Mariah sighs. "And with my eyes wide open." As Millie opens her arms, Mariah moves into them, drawing close the comfort of childhood with a great rush of relief. She tells her mother of Ian, who was not following her when she thought he was, who was not the person he made himself out to be. She describes the way they would sit on the porch after Faith went to sleep, and how they would sometimes talk and sometimes just let the night settle over their shoulders. She does not tell Millie of Ian's brother, of what Faith might or might not have briefly done for him. She does not tell Millie how it felt to have Ian's body pressed against hers, heat from head to toe, how even during hours — Jodi Picoult

You called?" Sounding casual is difficult when it feels like you're heart's river-dancing in your rib cage.
"Yes. I just wondered where you were. You didn't answer your cell. Is everything okay?" She sighs, but I can't tell if it's in relief or parental aggravation.
"Everything's fine. My battery is dead, but Galen bought me a charger to keep over here, so it's charging."
"How sweet of him," she says, knowing good and well she instructed him to do so. "Well, just wanted to check in. Should I wait up for you? I don't appreciate you missing curfew the last few nights. Technically, staying over there until four in the morning is a coed sleepover, which I don't allow, or had you forgotten? Your trip to Florida with Galen's family was a special circumstance."
"I stayed the night at Chloe's all the time with JJ there." JJ is Chloe's eight-year-old brother. Not a great comeback, but it will have to do. — Anna Banks

Your sons have no names."
Adam replied, "Their mother left them motherless."
"And you have left them fatherless. Can't you feel the cold at night of a lone child? What warm is there, what bird song, what possible morning can be good? Don't you remember, Adam, how it was, even a little?"
"I didn't do it," Adam said.
"Have you undone it? Your boys have no names. — John Steinbeck

I would say the three stages of making a film are the initial 'are we gonna do this,' 'how much will I be paid,' is there a lot of nights, who's it going to be with? The second stage of doing a film is how much fun your going to have doing it. The third stage is was the film a hit? — Steve Martin

Recalling those gone times, old memories lit by the fire of the new, I did not this time wonder how long it would last; I was too smart for that now. Take what you get, and don't think. Of course it could never be that easy, but there were moments, like now, that I could successfully pretend that it was, and I had no inclination to try to peer past those moments. I'm not one who wants to know the future: at the best it spoils the present, with longing or dismay, and at the worst, well. Who really wants to find out how tight the sling is, for your own very personal ass, who wants to know how deep the shit will really be. Not you. Not me either. Because it's rarely bliss saved up, is it, when you finally get there. I'll take my now, waking with a lover's scent on me, around me, take my hopes before they're maybe tragedy; a good morning is a good morning, even if it leads to apocalypse at night. — Kathe Koja

As to your sister, she is quite a peach, is she not? You have been hiding her from me."
Lady Maccon would not be goaded. "Really, Channing, she is practically" - she paused to do some calculations - "one-twentieth your age. Or worse. Don't you want some maturity in your life?"
"Good God, no!"
"Well, how about some human decency?"
"Now you're just being insulting." Alexia huffed in amusement.
Channing raised blond eyebrows at her, handsome devil that he was. "Ah, but this is what I enjoy so much about immortality. The decades may pass for me, but the ladies, well, they will keep coming along all young and beautiful, now, won't they?"
"Channing, someone should lock you away."
"Now, Lady Maccon, that transpires tomorrow night, remember? — Gail Carriger

I wonder if any of these boys ever sit in a room for boys' talk night and discuss how to treat women. Who teaches them how to call out to a girl when she's walking by, minding her own business? Who teaches them that girls are parts - butts, breasts, legs - not whole beings?

I was going to eat at Dairy Queen, but I don't want to sit through the discussion of if I'm a five or not. I eat a few fries before I walk out.

'Hey, hold up. My boy wants to talk to you,' Green Hat says. He follows me, yelling into the dark night.

I keep walking. Don't look back.

'Aw, so it's like that? Forget you then. Don't nobody want your fat ass anyway. Don't know why you up in a Dairy Queen. Needs to be on a diet.' He calls me every derogatory name a girl could ever be called.

I keep walking. Don't look back. — Renee Watson

In fact, you should take a nap this afternoon, because there won't be much sleep tonight. I
mean to have you every way I can. I mean to intoxicate you and torment you so that you know precisely
how I feel about you." His finger trailed down her cheek and tipped up her chin.
"Don't mistake what is going to happen tonight." His voice was sinful, dark and hoarse. "You will never
forget the imprint of my skin after tonight, Esme. Waste your life chitchatting with ladies in lace caps.
Raise your child with the help of your precious Sewing Circle. But in the middle of all those lonely nights,
you will never, ever, forget the night that lies ahead of us. — Eloisa James

In the silence of fragrance, Eva saw how ambiguous, complex stories could be told. Shifting and mutating, they blossomed, bloomed and faded; their very impermanence was incredibly moving to her. You could be laughing in public yet wear, right on the surface of your skin, a perfume ripe with longing, dripping with regret, shining with hope, all at the same time. It would fade as the day faded, vanishing into gossamer on your skin. And still it had the power to catch you unaware, piercing right through you, when you hung your dress up that night. — Kathleen Tessaro

In the silence that followed, violent anger hit Blay from out of
nowhere.
Now his hands shook for a different reason.
"So," Saxton said hoarsely. "How was your night?"
"What the hell happened down there?"
Saxton loosened his tie. Unbuttoned his collar. Took yet another
deep breath. "Family tiff, as it were."
"Bullsh*t."
Saxton shifted exhausted eyes over. "Must we do this?"
"What happened - "
"I think you and Qhuinn need to talk. And once you do, I won't have to worry about being jumped like a felon again."
Blay frowned. "He and I have nothing to say to each other - "
"With all due respect, the ligature marks around my neck would
suggest otherwise."
-Lover at Last, pg. 188 of the galleys — J.R. Ward

Last to dry was the hair.
When we were already far from the sea,
when words and salt, which had merged on us,
separated from one another with a sigh,
and your body no longer showed
signs of a terrible ancientness.
And in vain we had forgotten a few things on the beach,
so that we would have an excuse to return.
We didn't return.
And these days I remember the days
that have your name on them, like a name on a ship,
and how we saw through two open doors
one man who was thinking, and how we looked at the clouds
with the ancient gaze we inherited from our fathers,
who waited for rain,
and how at night, when the world cooled off,
your body kept its warmth for a long time,
like the sea — Yehuda Amichai

A boy from Brooklyn used to cruise on summer nights.
As soon as he'd hit sixty he'd hold his hand out the window,
cupping it around the wind. He'd been assured
this is exactly how a woman's breast feels when you put
your hand around it and apply a little pressure. Now he knew,
and he loved it. Night after night, again and again, until
the weather grew cold and he had to roll the window up.
For many years afterwards he was perpetually attempting
to soar. One winter's night, holding his wife's breast
in his hand, he closed his eyes and wanted to weep.
He loved her, but it was the wind he imagined now.
As he grew older, he loved the word etcetera and refused
to abbreviate it. He loved sweet white butter. He often
pretended to be playing the organ. On one of his last mornings,
he noticed the shape of his face molded in the pillow.
He shook it out, but the next morning it reappeared. — Mary Ruefle

Is your queen what you are searching for in a woman, Froi?"
"I never imagined I was looking for something in a woman. But if I did, I'd have to judge her by the way I felt laying beside her before I went to sleep at night and how I felt in the morning waking up to her."
"Oh, too profound, my friend. Much too profound. — Melina Marchetta

Davy,
Didn't you realize that the only thing I wanted from Mark was his version of the night you,
well, removed him from the party? I know Mark is a sleaze. I'm not involved with him in any
way, but when you vanished from in front of me, what was I to think?
I don't know if you're even human. For all I knew you fly around in a flying saucer kidnapping
humans left and right. If this sort of jumping to conclusions bothers you, think how much
alternative explanation you offered.
I know you're hurt, and I guess you were hurt even more when you thought I was getting
involved with Mark again. But, dammit, you are doing your share of lashing out, yourself.
Millie
P.S. I still don't know if you are human, but I know that I care for you enough that you can
hurt me. You did. — Steven Gould

The stranger looked at his watch; he jumped to his feet. "Nine o'clock! Mrs. Braile, I'm ashamed. But you must blame your husband, partly. Good night, ma'am; good - Why, look here, Squire Braile!" he arrested himself in offering his hand. "How about the obscurity of the scene where Joe Smith founded his superstition, which bids fair to live right along with the other false religions? Was Leatherwood, Ohio, a narrower stage than Manchester, New York? And in point of time the two cults were only four years apart. — William Dean Howells

What do you say to taking up our game where we left off? I was winning, you will recall.'
Winning, for all love: how your ageing memory does betray you, my poor friend,' said Stephen, fetching his 'cello. They tuned, and at no great distance Killick said to his mate, 'There they are, at it again. Squeak, squeak; boom, boom. And when they do start a-playing, it's no better. You can't tell t'other from one. Never nothing a man could sing to, even as drunk as Davy's sow.'
I remember them in the Lively: but it is not as chronic as a wardroom full of gents with German flutes, bellyaching night and day, like we had in Thunderer. No. Live and let live, I say.'
Fuck you, William Grimshaw. — Patrick O'Brian

The best yardstick for our progress is not other people, but ourselves. Am I better than I was yesterday? This is the only question worth asking. As long as you go to bed at night a better practitioner than the one who woke up that morning, you have succeeded. Your worth should have nothing to do with how your progress stacks up relative to another. — Chris Matakas

That's why you look so tired, isn't it?" I murmured. "You used up all your magic to find me last night."
Owen shrugged as though it was nothing. But it wasn't nothing to me. Besides Finn and the Deveraux sisters, I couldn't even remember the last time someone had cared enough to come looking for me when I was in trouble. I was so used to being on my own for so long, always being the tough, strong, capable one, that I'd forgotten how nice it felt to have someone else look out for me.
To have someone else care about me.
And just like that, the fragile strings of my feelings for Owen joined together, all the tangled threads wrapping around and weaving their way through my heart. Scary and painful in some ways, but necessary in others too. — Jennifer Estep

You would keep the people in their hopeless squalid misery? you would fill those infamous prisons again with the noblest spirits in the land? you would thrust the rising sun of liberty back into the sea of blood from which it has risen? And all because there was in the middle of the dirt and ugliness and horror a little patch of court splendor in which you could stand with a few orders on your uniform, and yawn day after day and night after night in unspeakable boredom until your grave yawned wider still, and you fell into it because you had nothing better to do. How can you be so stupid, so heartless? — Anonymous

You don't like me talking to other girls?"
"I don't like you grinning at them."Teagan admitted
"Then tame me with your fine Irish eyes, girl."
"Humph."
"You have nothing to worry about. You've had my heart since ... "
"When?"
"I was just trying to sort it, " Fin said. "It could have been the time you explained how its cockles were related to a shellfish." he paused. "No, it was when you flat refused to kiss me
and me thinking I'd never see you agina, risking my kife to lead the goblins away into the night. It was heroic. And sad."
Teagan punched his arm.
"All right." He smiled. "It was the first time I set eyes on you. My heart stopped beating, and that's a fact."
"I know," Teagan said. "The first time I met you, it made me throw up."
Finn knit his brows. "I'll never get over how romantic you are. It's like you've stepped right out of one of those fairy movies Aiden's making Roisin watch. — Kersten Hamilton

The Hum is gone. You remember the Hum. Unless you grew up on top of a mountain or lived in a cave your whole life, the Hum was always around you. That's what life was. It was the sea we swam in. The constant sound of all the things we built to make life easy and a little less boring. The mechanical song. The electronic symphony. The Hum of all our things and all of us. Gone. This is the sound of the Earth before we conquered it. Sometimes in my tent, late at night, I think I can hear the stars scraping against the sky. That's how quiet it is. After a while it's almost more than I can stand. — Rick Yancey

I can't bury another friend."
"You won't."
"If anything ever happened to you, Rowan-"
"Don't" he breathed. "Don't even say it. We dealt with that enough the other night."
He lifted a hand - hesitated, and then brushed back a strand of hair that had fallen across her face. His callused fingers scrapped against her cheekbone, then caressed the shell of her ear.
It was foolish to even start down that road, when every other man she'd let in had left some wound, in one way or another, accidentally or not.
There was nothing tender in his face. Only a predator's glittering gaze. "When we get back," he said, "remind me to prove you wrong about every thought that just went through your head."
She lifted an eyebrow. "Oh?"
He gave her a sly smile that made thinking impossible. Exactly what he wanted - to distract her from the horrors of tomorrow. "I'll even let you decide how I tell you: with words"- his eyes flickered once to her mouth- "or with my teeth and tongue. — Sarah J. Maas

When I was fifteen, a dark shape came into my room at night. It was dark, but it glowed, which is the first of many facts you will have to tackle with your imagination. It wasn't in the shape of a person, but right away I knew it was like a person in every way except for how it looked. As it turns out, our looks are not the main thing that makes us human. — Miranda July

Waitressing takes a certain gusto. You need a good memory and an ability to connect with people fast. You have to learn how to treat the kitchen as well as you treat the customers. You have to figure out which crazy people to listen to and which crazy people to ignore. I loved waiting tables because when you cashed out at the end of the night your job was truly over. — Amy Poehler

It didn't make much sense to me then, what Gnut was going through, but after Pila and me had our little twins, and we put a family together, I got an understanding of how terrible love can be. You wish you hated those people, your wife and children, because you know the things the world will do to them, because you have done some of those things yourself. It's crazy-making, yet you cling to them with everything and close your eyes against the rest of it. But still you wake up late at night and lie there listening for the creak and splash of oars, the clank of steel, the sounds of men rowing toward your home. — Wells Tower

I used to think I knew everything. I was a "smart person" who "got things done," and because of that, the higher I climbed, the more I could look down and scoff at what seemed silly or simple, even religion.
But I realized something as I drove home that night: that I am neither better nor smarter, only luckier. And I should be ashamed of thinking I knew everything, because you can know the whole world and still feel lost in it. So many people are in pain-no matter how smart or accomplished-they cry, they yearn, they hurt.But instead of looking down on things, they look up, which is where I should have been looking, too. Because when the world quiets to the sound of your own breathing, we all want the same things:comfort, love, and a peaceful heart. — Mitch Albom

Then Marco Polo spoke: Your chessboard, sire, is inlaid with two woods: ebony and maple. The square on which your enlightened gaze is fixed was cut from the ring of a trunk that grew in a year of drought: you see how its fibers are arranged? Here a barely hinted knot can be made out: a bud tried to burgeon on a premature spring day, but the night's frost forced it to desist. — Italo Calvino

Are you busy?" I ask.

"I'm working on a paper. Recall? The phone conversation we had fifteen minutes ago?"

I glance up at a clock in the hall, and then back at his smart-ass mouth.

"It was twenty minutes ago."

"I need coffee," he says, and why is he being such an adorable dick, still smiling at me like that? "Want to walk up to Dunkin' Donuts?"

"What about Millie?" I say.

"What about her?"

"Does she want any?"

"Should we call her and ask?"

"Isn't she upstairs?"

"How hard did you hit your head last night? — Mercy Brown

You can stay on the porch. Like how you left me on the floor outside our room."
"I didn't know what else to do. You found the check, and I panicked."
"That isn't an excuse."
"I know. And I'm not saying that this is going to make up for it. I'm going to try, really try, to make you trust me again. I want you to trust me. I just ... I couldn't sleep last night without you. It was the strangest thing, being in the room alone without you. I couldn't hear you breathing, and your laughter was gone and you were gone, and it was like a part of my life was missing. A big part. I tripped going to the bathroom and banged my head. See?" He pointed to a lovely gash on his forehead.
"And then I burned my hand on the toaster oven. And then my car wouldn't start. Again. I've never had such bad luck in my life. — Chelsea M. Cameron

Human beings don't work like this in China. Time goes slower there. Here we have to hurry, feed the hungry children before we're too old to work. I feel like a mother cat hunting for its kittens. She has to find them fast because in a few hours she will forget how to count or that she had any kittens at all. I can't sleep in this country because it doesn't shut down for the night. Factories, canneries, restaurants - always somebody somewhere working through the night. It never gets done all at once here. Time was different in China. One year lasted as long as my total time here; one evening so long, you could visit your women friends, drink tea, and play cards at each house, and it would still be twilight. It even got boring, nothing to do but fan ourselves. Here midnight comes and the floor's not swept, the ironing's not ready, the money's not made. I would be still young if we lived in China. (1983: 98) — Maxine Hong Kingston

I met Elvis in your woods one night," Terry said. One of the EMTs had given him a shot, and I thought it was beginning to work. "I knew I was nuts then. He was telling me how much he liked cats. I told him I was a dog person, myself. — Charlaine Harris

Growing up, I absolutely wanted a name that was easier to pronounce, more common, prettier. But then I grew up and understood the power of a name, the beauty that comes in understanding how your name has affected who you are. My name is indigenous to my country, it is not easy to pronounce, it takes effort to say correctly and I am absolutely in love with the sound of it and its meaning. Also, it's not the kind of name you baby, slip into sweet talk mid sentence, late night phone conversation, whisper into the receiver kind of name, so, of that I am glad. — Warsan Shire

I was always told never to wish on the first star at night. If everyone wishes on one star, how will the star keep up? A star with too many wishes will just fall out of the sky. Rain drops are plentiful, and there are thousands. They wash away the filth and carry it to a better place. So when you make a wish, wish on the water and let it carry your problems away. — Elizabeth York

Last night I saw you in my sleep:
And how your charm of face was changed!
I asked, 'Some love, some faith you keep?'
You answered, 'Faith gone, love estranged.'
Whereat I woke--- a twofold bliss:
Waking was one, but next there came
This other:"Though I felt, for this,
My heart break, I loved on the same. — Robert Browning

At last, liveried in the costume of the age, reality entered the room in the shape of a servant to tell the duchess that her carriage was waiting. She wrung her hands in mock despair. "How annoying!" she cried. "I must go. I have to call for my husband at the club, to take him to some absurd meeting at Willis's Rooms, where he is going to be in the chair. If I am late he is sure to be furious, and I couldn't have a scene in this bonnet. It is far too fragile. A harsh word would ruin it. No, I must go, dear Agatha. Good-bye, Lord Henry, you are quite delightful and dreadfully demoralizing. I am sure I don't know what to say about your views. You must come and dine with us some night. Tuesday? Are you disengaged Tuesday? — Oscar Wilde

Then, yeah, of course I've given this a lot of thought. I've been thinking about your pussy constantly, what it looks like, what it tastes like, how it'll feel." He towered over me, half naked and dripping wet. The dripping-wet part was definitely going around. "Why do you think I was on Ben's couch last night? No one else I wanna fuck. It's gotta be you. — Kylie Scott

Dear John - It will be many years before you understand fully what a great man your father was. His loss is a deep personal tragedy for all of us, but I wanted you particularly to know that I share your grief - You can always be proud of him - Affectionately Lyndon B. Johnson The second was a little longer. Himself the father of two girls, he had been particularly fond of the President's daughter. THE WHITE HOUSE WASHINGTON Friday Night 7:30 November 22, 1963 Dearest Caroline - Your father's death has been a great tragedy for the Nation, as well as for you, and I wanted you to know how much my thoughts are of you at this time. He was a wise and devoted man. You can always be proud of what he did for his country - Affectionately Lyndon B. Johnson — William Manchester

I've bespelled this locket, for you; my own, my mate. The day has come when death forced us to part. You must know that I for you, forever, I shall wait. So until we meet again I hold your love safely within my heart.
Remember, your oath was to temper strength with mercy. No matter how long apart we shall be, I hold you to that oath
eternally ... eternally ... — P.C. Cast

Quite a few soldiers . . . had ended up spending some time wrapped around each other, alone in the night. Most often, it was just for the touch of another person and not in the pursuit of an entangling relationship. In fact, when it happened there was usually an unspoken covenant which existed between soldiers to just forget whatever had happened and move on, as many preferred not to talk about how you secretly needed to curl up in basically the fetal position, tucked away with another psychologically damaged human, deep in the bowels of your tin-can refuge from the deep black, just to get through another week of it all. — Robert Lee Wolfe

You used to own the night and put it to good use, during that sweet spot after your father could no longer tell you when to go to sleep and before you shared an apartment with someone else. Is togetherness killing your productivity? When's the last time you stayed up until 4:00 a.m. testing the boundaries of your consciousness and Googling serial killers? But then you remember how hard it was, that moment between wakefulness and sleep. How the moment of settling down was almost physically painful, your mind pulling away from your body like a balloon being sucked into the atmosphere. He settles that. He tells you that your day was rich enough and now it is time to wind down. He helps you sleep. People need sleep. — Lena Dunham

This," Alaric explained to Sarah in what he thought was a kindly voice, "isn't love you're feeling. Only dopamine. Because Felix isn't like anyone else you know. Being a creature of the night, he's new and exciting and activates a neurotransmitter in your brain that releases feelings of euphoria when you're around him ... especially because you know you can never actually be together, and he seems complicated, and perhaps even sensitive and vulnerable at times. But I can assure you: he's anything but."
"How dare you?" Sarah demanded hotly. "It isn't dopa ... whatever! It's love! Love! — Meg Cabot

Correct me if I'm wrong," he said, "but I was under the impression that you weren't looking for anything more than a short-term arrangement either, Miss Free Spirit."
She flushed. "I wasn't the one who ran for the door that night. I was doing just fine with the summer-fling thing."
"I did not run for the door. I left in a hurry, but I did not run."
"Details."
"Important details. And I'd like to remind you that I showed at your gallery the next morning," he said. "It's not like I didn't call. And how the hell do you think I felt when you told me that the sex had been therapeutic? You made it sound like a good massage or a tonic, damn it."
She bit her lip. "Well, it was in a way."
"Great. Well, do me a favor. The next time you want physical therapy, call a masseuse or a chiropractor. Or buy a vibrator. — Jayne Ann Krentz

We saw no bugs or reptiles to speak of, and so I was thinking of saying in print, in a general way, that there were none at all; but one night after I had gone to bed, the Reverend came into my room carrying something, and asked, "Is this your boot?" I said it was, and he said he had met a spider going off with it. Next morning he stated that just at dawn the same spider raised his window and was coming in to get a shirt, but saw him and fled. I inquired, "Did he get the shirt?" "No." "How did you know it was a shirt he was after?" "I could see it in his eye. — Mark Twain

When I have not rage or sorrow, and you depart from me, then I am most afraid. When the belly is full, and the mind has its sayings, then I fear for my soul; I rush to you as a child at night breaks into its parents' room. Do not forget me in my satisfaction. When the heart grins at itself, the world is destroyed. And I am found alone with the husks and the shells. Then the dangerous moment comes: I am too great to ask for help. I have other hopes. I legislate from the fortress of my disappointments, with a set jaw. Overthrow this even terror with a sweet remembrance: when I was with you, when my soul delighted you, when I was what you wanted. My heart sings of your longing for me, and my thoughts climb down to marvel at your mercy. I do not fear as you gather up my days. Your name is the sweetness of time, and you carry me close into the night, speaking consolations, drawing down lights from the sky, saying, See how the night has no terror for one who remembers the Name. — Leonard Cohen

One night I begged Robin, a scientist by training, to watch Arthur Miller's 'Death of a Salesman' with me on PBS. He lasted about one act, then turned to me in horror: 'This is how you spend your days? Thinking about things like this?' I was ashamed. I could have been learning about string theory or how flowers pollinate themselves.
I think his remark was the beginning of my crisis of faith. Like so many of my generation in graduate school, I had turned to literature as a kind of substitute for formal religion, which no longer fed my soul, or for therapy, which I could not afford ... I became interested in exploring the theory of nonfiction and in writing memoir, a genre that gives us access to that lost Middlemarch of reflection and social commentary. — Mary Rose O'Reilley

Traveling at night toward the stars, I thought yet again how very far away they were, and how you could travel your whole lifetime and never reach even the closest one. But even if you knew you couldn't have something, it didn't stop you wanting it. I wondered if Kate was to be my star, and I'd spend my life gazing upon her but never reaching her. — Kenneth Oppel

At the Ball

I chanced to see you. Music played,
Vain chatter filled the place.
It seemed as though a veil were laid
Across your secret face.

Your eyes alone were sad; your way
Of speaking ravished me,
As though I heard a far pipe play,
And on the shores the sea.

How welcome was your look of thought,
Your figure tall and slight;
And that clear laugh with sadness fraught
Is in my heart to-night.

And when the noise of day is stilled
Once more they come to me,
Those eyes with so much sadness filled,
That voice, with gaiety.

Down to the depths of sleep I go,
Where dreams uncaptured move.
But do I love you? Who can know?
Yet this, I think, is love. — Alexei Tolstoy

How solemn is this fact: nothing can be concealed from God! "For I know the things that come into your mind, every one of them" (Ezek. 11:5). Though he be invisible to us, we are not so to him. Neither the darkness of night, the closest curtains, nor the deepest dungeon can hide any sinner from the eyes of Omniscience. The trees of the garden were not able to conceal our first parents. No human eye beheld Cain murder his brother, but his Maker witnessed his crime. Sarah might laugh derisively in the seclusion of her tent, yet was it heard by Jehovah. Achan stole a wedge of gold and carefully hid it in the earth, but God brought it to light. David was at much pains to cover up his wickedness, but ere long the all-seeing God sent one of his servants to say to him, "Thou art the man!" And to writer and reader is also said, "Be sure your sin will find you out" (Num. 32:23). — Arthur W. Pink

The night had fallen. I had let my tools drop from my hands. Of what moment now was my hammer, my bolt, or thirst, or death? On one star, one planet, my planet, the Earth, there was a little prince to be comforted. I took him in my arms, and rocked him. I said to him:
"The flower that you love is not in danger. I will draw you a muzzle for your sheep. I will draw you a railing to put around your flower. I will
"
I did not know what to say to him. I felt awkward and blundering. I did not know how I could reach him, where I could overtake him and go on hand in hand with him once more.
It is such a secret place, the land of tears. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

After that, Simon swam naked every night. By the third skinnydipping
session, I secretly peeled off my bikini top while I was in
the water. It was safe. Simon was splashing somewhere ahead of
me. He couldn't see. It was an amazing feeling. I felt free. Or at least half of me did.
And right then that seemed to "t with the person I felt I was on
Long Island: half-cautious, half-spontaneous, surprising myself
with my random behavior, my sudden moves away from who I
thought I was.
"So how was it, your half skinny dip?" Simon asked as I was
drying off.
"You were watching me?" I blushed, horrified.
"Just a hunch," he replied. "Feels good though, right?"
I hit him with the towel. — Amanda Howells

If you have ever come up against Nothing you have no idea how it can scare you out of your wits. When I was a child I used to be afraid of Something in the dark. I know now that the most fearful thing about the dark is that we may find Nothing in it. — Howard Spring

Why do old houses creak so much?" he asked idly, playing with her braid and drawing the silky end across her cheek.
"When all the warmth fades at night, it makes the old boards contract and slip against each other."
"A bloody massive house, it is. And you were left to your own devices in this place for too long. I didn't understand before, how alone you were."
"I had the twins for company. I watched over them."
"But there was no one to watch over you."
A sense of uneasiness came over her, as it always did whenever she reflected on her childhood. It had seemed as if her very survival had depended on never complaining or drawing attention to herself. "Oh I- I didn't need that."
"All little girls need to feel safe and wanted. — Lisa Kleypas

After seeing the various fantastic sights, a visitor to Panorama Island would have had to gasp in amazement at this unsurpassable view. He would have had the impression that the entire island was a rose floating on the vast ocean and that the giant scarlet flower of an opium dream was conversing on an equal footing with the sun in the sky, just the two of them. What kind of strange beauty had that incomparable simplicity and grandeur created? Some travelers might have recalled the world of myth that their distant ancestors had seen. . . .

How can the author describe the madness and debauchery, the pleasures of revelry and drunkenness, the numberless games of life and death that were played day and night on that magnificent stage? You readers might find something that resembled it, in part, in your most fantastic, bloodiest, and most beautiful nightmares. — Rampo Edogawa

People always say the greatest love story in the world is Romeo and Juliet. I don't know. At fourteen, at seventeen, I remember, it takes over your whole life." Alice was worked up now, her face flushed and alive, her hands cutting through the night-blooming air. "You think about nobody, nothing else, you don't eat or sleep, you just think about this ... it's overwhelming. I know, I remember. But is it love? Like how you have cheap brandy when you're young and you think it's marvelous, just so elegant, and you don't know, you don't know anything ... because, you've never tasted anything better. You're fourteen."
It was no time for lying. "I think it's love"
You do?"
I think maybe it's the only true love."
She was about to say something, and stopped herself. I'd surprised her, I suppose. "How sad if you're right," she said, closing her eyes for a moment. "Because we never end up with them. How sad and stupid if that's how it works. — Andrew Sean Greer

Left alone in the room with Gavin, Alex let out a sigh. "I fear I won't be able to find a way out of this. How did his even happen? I went out of my way to avoid attracting suitors last night."
Leaning back in his chair, Gavin leveled Alex with a serious look. "You've learned your first lesson, Minx. Men chase that what seems unattainable."
"No. What I learned was that mean are gluttons for punishment. Why 'chase' me when they could catch any number of eligible young females from last evening?"
"Silly girl ... because chasing you makes for more of a challenge
and more of a reward. — Sarah MacLean

When Sarsine saw Kestrel, her eyes narrowed to mere cracks and Kestrel became very conscious that Sarsine was a tall woman. "For someone with a reputation for being so smart," Sarsine said, "you act like you haven't a thought in your head. Did it never occur to you that I'd worry when you disappeared from the city with no word?"
"I didn't exactly mean to leave."
"Oh, so it just happened."
"Yes."
"The gods made you do it."
Kestrel laughed. "Maybe they did." Then, earnestly, she said, "I'm sorry, Sarsine."
Sarsine folded her arms. "Then make it up to me."
"How?"
Sarsine's expression softened. Now there was an inquisitive gleam in her eye. "Start with the night you left. End with this very moment. And tell me everything."
So Kestrel did. — Marie Rutkoski

Uncle Wiggens ain't really my uncle, everyone just calls him that. He's over eighty and fought in the War Between the States. He only has one leg and one hero, General Robert E. Lee. Uncle Wiggens manages to work Lee's name into pretty much any old conversation. You might say, 'My, it's cold today,' and he'd reply, 'You think this is cold? General Lee said it didn't even qualify as chill till your breath froze on your nose and made a little icicle.' He had about five different stories of how he lost his leg, every one of them entertaining.
That night I was listening to the version that involved him running five Yankees into a bear's den. — Kristin Levine

Sarsine grabbed his wrists and tugged the hands from his eyes. He looked at her, but didn't see her. He saw Kestrel's wasted face. He saw himself as a child, the night of the invasion, soldiers in his home, how he had done nothing.
Later, he'd told Sarsine when the messenger had come to see him.
No, I won't, he'd promised Roshar when the prince had listed reasons not to rescue the nameless spy from the tundra's prison.
"I was wrong," Arin said. "I should have - "
"Your should haves are gone. They belong to the god of the lost. What I want to know is what you are going to do now. — Marie Rutkoski

Late-Flowering Lust

My head is bald, my breath is bad,
Unshaven is my chin,
I have not now the joys I had
When I was young in sin.
I run my fingers down your dress
With brandy-certain aim
And you respond to my caress
And maybe feel the same.
But I've a picture of my own
On this reunion night,
Wherein two skeletons are shewn
To hold each other tight;
Dark sockets look on emptiness
Which once was loving-eyed,
The mouth that opens for a kiss
Has got no tongue inside.
I cling to you inflamed with fear
As now you cling to me,
I feel how frail you are my dear
And wonder what will be--
A week? or twenty years remain?
And then--what kind of death?
A losing fight with frightful pain
Or a gasping fight for breath?
Too long we let our bodies cling,
We cannot hide disgust
At all the thoughts that in us spring
From this late-flowering lust. — John Betjeman

For two weeks, I lay awake at night and said Hail Marys over and over to stop my heart from beating too fast. I suddenly realized how much being a husband was about fear: fear of not being able to keep somebody safe, of not being able to protect somebody from all the bad stuff you want to protect them from. Knowing they have more tears in them than you will be able to keep them from crying. I realized that Renee had seen me fail, and that she was the person I was going to be failing in front for the rest of my life. It was just a little failure, but it promised bigger failures to come. Additional ones, anyway. But that's who your wife is, the person you fail in front of. Love it so confusing; there's no peace of mind. — Rob Sheffield

All I knew that night was that I believed in something and couldn't express it, while your team believed in nothing but knew how to say it - in other men's words. — Mary McCarthy

Now listen to me. I will not walk on one-way streets any longer. Your wound is my wound, (though you don't know that mine is yours), and I do what I can, but the well will run dry. You will use us up. There are women whose first stretching across borders was into your lives. When they discover how you make use of their compassion, they will turn away heartsick, stricken, withering in the freshness of their hope. There are women who were leaders, who worked night and day, defeated not by foreign policy, but by the sexual politics of solidarity, bitter now, unable to work anywhere near you. How dare you speak of the New Woman! We are your richest resource besides your endurance, and you use us like rags to wrap around your pain. — Aurora Levins Morales

You prefer thieving to honest work?" "Honest work? How much do you pay your maids annually? Six pounds? Eight? I can make that in a month - in a night, if all goes well. I could make more than that as a beggar. Why do you think so many take to the streets, begging? Because honest work is hardly honest when the only one profiting is the rich man who owns the workplace." She was right. Dane knew it, and he hated to accept — Shana Galen

So I have absolutely no privacy anymore? None? Because the four of you had to check scores with each other?" His frustration was clear.
"You know, for someone concerned with honesty, you ought to be grateful."
He stopped and stared. "I beg your pardon?"
"Everything is out in the open now. We all have a pretty good idea of where we stand, and I, for one, am thankful."
He rolled his eyes. "Thankful?" "If you had told me that Celeste and I were at about the same point with you physically, I would never have tried to come on to you like I did last night. Do you know how humiliated I was?" He scoffed and started pacing again. "Please, America, you've said and done so many foolish things, I'm surprised you can even be embarrassed anymore. — Kiera Cass

Not nearly enough. Not recently, anyway." And she was sad about that.
"I know," he said, and kissed the back of her hand. "We'll fix it. Get some sleep."
"Night," she said, and watched him walk toward the door. "Hey. How'd you get in?"
He wiggled his fingers at her in a spooky oogie-boogie pantomime. "I'm a vampire. I have secret powers ," he said with a full-on fake Transylvanian accent, which he dropped to say, "Actually, your mom let me in."
"Seriously? My mom? Let you in my room? In the middle of the night?"
He shrugged. "Moms like me."
He gave her a full-on Hollywood grin, and slipped out the door. — Rachel Caine

It was queer how it all hurt you--how the odor of the night, the silver sheen of the moon, the moist feeling of the dew, the whispering of the night breeze, how somewhere down in your throat it hurt you. — Bess Streeter Aldrich

Now you're just being selfish," Dominic said to Jaime, shaking his head. "You have that body for the rest of your life. I only want it for one night."
Not in the mood to hear his packmate making moves - no matter how playful - on the female he intended to claim, Dante growled. "Dominic, no. Not to Jaime."
"But - "
"No."
Dominic sighed in resignation. "Okay, fine."
Noticing that Trey seemed to find the whole thing extremely amusing, Dante raised a brow at him. "It's funny now that he's not saying this shit to Taryn?"
Trey smiled. "Of course."
"I've always got some stored up for my gorgeous Alpha female," said Dominic with an impish grin.
Instantly Trey's smile fell from his face. "Dom, don't do it."
Dominic held his hands up, pleading innocence. "I was just going to ask her if she went to Boy Scouts ... because she has my heart all tied in knots."
Taryn groaned and chuckled at the same time. — Suzanne Wright

Free folk don't follow names, or little cloth animals sewn on a tunic," the King-Beyond-the-Wall had told him. "They won't dance for coins, they don't care how your style yourself or what that chain of office means or who your grandsire was. They follow strength. They follow the man. — George R R Martin

When your mom noticed me watching a Buffy rerun on the little TV on the doorman desk one slow night on the job, she admitted that watching Buffy was her shared solace with you after your dad left. She told me how you cry and cry for Buffy. You cry when Angel shows up to be Buffy's prom date even though they'd already recognized the futility of their true love and broken up. You cry when Buffy's mom is taken away by natural instead of supernatural causes. You cry when seasons six and seven really don't reflect the quality of seasons one through five except for the musical episode. — Rachel Cohn

They hadn't expected to find quite such a large gathering, however, and Anthony couldn't resist remarking, "My, my, how, what would draw so many children to this room in the middle of the night, I wonder? Jack and Judy aren't hiding behind you, are they? D'you get the feeling these younguns think it's Christmas already, James?"
James had already deduced what was causing so many red faces, and said, "Good God,take a gander at that, Tony. Even the Yank is blushing, damn me if he ain't."
Warren sighed and glanced down at his wife. "You see what your silliness has caused, love? Those two will never let me live this down."
"Course we will," Anthony replied with a wicked grin. "In ten or twenty years perhaps. — Johanna Lindsey

Junction nineteen! Una, she came off at Junction nineteen! You've added an hour to your journey before you even started. Come on, let's get you a drink. How's your love life, anyway?"
Oh GOD. Why can't married people understand that this is no longer a polite question to ask? We wouldn't rush up to THEM and roar, "How's your marriage going? Still having sex?" Everyone knows that dating in your thirties is not the happy-go-lucky free-for-it-all it was when you were twenty-two and that the honest answer is more likely to be, "Actually, last night my married lover appeared wearing suspenders and a darling little Angora crop-top, told me he was gay/a sex addict/a narcotic addict/a commitment phobic and beat me up with a dildo," than, "Super, thanks. — Helen Fielding

The 101st was trucked to Utah Beach on July 10, seeing from the land what they had seen from the air the night of June 5: hundreds of ships sitting off shore as far as the eye could see. Smaller boats, LSTs, LCMs and other craft carrying men and supplies plied the waters between the ships and the sand. "It took your breath away," he recalled. Winters saw something else he had not seen for more than a month, a sight that literally brought tears to his eyes: the American flag. In 2003, the memory still left him choked up. "I didn't realize how much the American flag meant to me," he said. — Larry Alexander

ROSE: I love you, Jack.
JACK: No ... don't say your goodbyes, Rose. Don't you give up. Don't do it.
ROSE: I'm so cold.
JACK: You're going to get out of this ... you're going to go on and you're going to make babies and watch them grow and you're going to die an old lady, warm in your bed. Not here ... Not this night. Do you understand me?
ROSE: I can't feel my body.
JACK: Rose, listen to me. Winning that ticket was the best thing that ever happened to me. It brought me to you. And I'm thankful, Rose. I'm thankful. You must do me this honor ... promise me you will survive ... that you will never give up ... not matter what happens ... no matter how hopeless ... promise me now, and never let go of that promise.
ROSE: I promise.
JACK: Never let go.
ROSE: I promise. I will never let go, Jack. I'll never let go. — James Cameron

There was another world below - this was the problem. Another world below that had volume but no form. By day the sea was blue surface and whitecaps, a realistic navigational challenge, and the problem could be overlooked. By night, though, the mind went forth and dove down through the yielding - the violently lonely - nothingness on which the heavy steel ship traveled, and in every moving swell you saw a travesty of grids, you saw how truly and forever lost a man would be six fathoms under. Dry land lacked this z-axis. Dry land was like being awake. Even in chartless desert you could drop to your knees and pound land with your fist and land didn't give. Of course the ocean, too, had a skin of wakefulness. But every point on this skin was a point where you could sink and by sinking disappear. — Jonathan Franzen

What's the difference between love and obsession? Didn't both make you stay up all night, wandering the streets, a victim of your own imagination, your own heartbeat? Didn't you fall into both, headfirst into quicksand? Wasn't every man in love a fool and every woman a slave?
Love was like rain: it turned to ice, or it disappeared. Now you saw it, now you couldn't find it no matter how hard you might search. Love evaporated; obsession was realer; it hurt, like a pin in your bottom, a stone in your shoe. It didn't go away in the blink of an eye. A morning phone call filled with regret. A letter that said, 'Dear you, good-bye from me'. Obsession tasted like something familiar. Something you'd known your whole life. It settled and lurked; it stayed with you. — Alice Hoffman

People are complicated. There is so much more to everybody than you realize. You see someone in school everyday, or at work, in the canteen, and you share a cigarette of a coffee with them, and you talk about the weather or last night's air raid. But you don't talk so much about what was the nastiest thing you ever said to your mother, or how you pretended to be David Balfour, the hero of Kidnapped, for the whole of the year when you were 13, or what you imagine yourself doing with the pilot who looks like Leslie Howard if you were alone in his bunk after a dance. — Elizabeth Wein

He wanted to break me, the me I'd made, the me I'd needed to make, my need, mine, my whole life since I could remember. I didn't want to hear him that night. When I was ready to change I'd change. When life opens up before you, when you don't really know death ... it's easy to promise yourself change. Keeping the lines hard, the parts of me separate, was what I knew, how I lived. — Adam Berlin

1:52-53
THE NIGHT VIGIL

Darkness has been given a nightshirt to sleep in (25:47). Remember how human beings were composed from water and dust for blood and flesh with oily resins heated in fire to make a skeleton. Then the soul, the divine light, was breathed into human shapes. The work now is to help our bodies become pure light. It may look like this is not happening. But in a cocoon every bit of worm-dissolving slime becomes silk. As we take in light, each part of us turns to silk.

We made the night a darkness, but we bring shining dawnlight out of that. In the same way the mound of your grave will bloom with resurrection. Sufis and those on the path of the heart use darkness to go within. During the night vigil the universe is theirs (40:16). With all the kings and sultans and their learned counselors asleep, everyone is unemployed, except those wakeful few and the divine presence. — Bahauddin

He muttered something foul and then climbed the stairs, rapping twice on Timmie's door.
"Right, then, mate, terribly sorry for my unspeakable rudeness, and I do beg your pardon,"
he said with admirable humbleness when Timmie cracked it open. Only I could pick up the
slight edge to his voice as he went on. "I can only say that it was caused by my natural
affront to the notion of her as my sister. Since I'll be shagging her tonight, you can
imagine how I'd be distressed at the thought of rogering my sibling."
"You schmuck!" I burst as Timmie's jaw dropped. "The only thing you'll be shagging
tonight is yourself!"
"You wanted sincerity," he countered. "Well, luv, I was sincere. — Jeaniene Frost

How are you?"
Rosa shrugged her shoulders. "My sister turned into a giant snake last night. And your cousin Tano - "
"Second cousin."
"He was there too. He was a tiger. I recognized him from his eyes. Then I fainted." She looked at him. "How does that sound? — Kai Meyer

From time to time I feel as though my books and figurines were with me still. But how could they be? Are they somehow floating around me or over my head? Have the figurines and books that I lost over the years dissolved into the air of Mexico City? Have they become the ash that blows through the city from north to south and from east to west? Perhaps. The dark night of the soul advances through the streets of Mexico City sweeping all before it. And now it is rare to hear singing, where once everything was a song. The dust cloud reduces everything to dust. First the poets, then love, then, when it seems to be sated and about to disperse, the cloud returns to hang high over your city or your mind, with a mysterious air that means it has no intention of moving. — Roberto Bolano

I was a tongue, a gazette. The bearer of "the truth of the whispers."
I knew of hollowed books, trunks with false bottoms, and the meanders of secret corridors. I knew how to open hidden drawers in your escritoire, how to unseal your letter and make you think no one had touched it. If I had been in your room, I left the hair around your lock the way you had tied it. If you trusted the silence of the night, I had overheard your secrets. — Eva Stachniak

It's just how love gets described in the movies. Like in Sleepless in Seattle ... " This is the movie they showed us last night. "Tom Hanks's character is musing about why he fell in love with his dead wife, and he says that it was because she could peel an apple in one long strip, or something like that. And I was reading something similar in a book recently, only that was about peeling an orange ... anyway ... I've just never felt like the way someone peels fruit would be a reason to spend the rest of your life with them. — Catherine McKenzie

It's so weird how that can be, how you could have a night that's the worst in your life, but to everybody else it's just an ordinary night. Like on my calendar at home, I would mark this as being one of the most horrific days of my life. This and the day Daisy died. But for the rest of the world, this was just an ordinary day. Or may be it was even a good day. May be somebody won the lottery today. — R.J. Palacio

If I were a poet, that's what I'd write about. People who worked in the middle of the night. Men who loaded trains, emergency room nurses with their gentle hands. Night clerks in hotels, cabdrivers on graveyard, waitresses in all-night coffee shops. They knew the world, how precious it was when a person remembered your name, the comfort of a rhetorical question, "How's it going, how's the kids?" They knew how long the night was. They knew the sound life made as it left. It rattled, like a slamming screen door in the wind. Night workers lived without illusions, they wiped dreams off counters, they loaded freight. They headed back to the airport for one last fare. — Janet Fitch

Vegas?" I asked. His brow furrowed, unsure of where I was headed.
"Yeah?"
"Have you thought about going back?" His eyebrows shot up.
"I don't think that's a good idea for me."
"What if we just went for a night?" He looked around the dark room, confused.
"A night?"
"Marry me," I said without hesitation. I was surprised at how quickly and easily the words came. His mouth spread into a broad smile.
"When?" I shrugged.
"We can book a flight tomorrow. It's spring break. I dont't have anything going on tomorrow, do you?"
"I'm callin' your bluff," he said, watching my reaction closely as he was connected. "I need two tickets to vegas, please. Tomorrow. Hmmmm ... ," he looked at me, waiting for me to change my mind. "Two days, round trip. Whatever you have. — Jamie McGuire

Now you see only the mystery of this great sorrow; then you shall see how the threatening enemy was swept away in the wild night of fear and grief.
Now you look only at the loss; then you shall see how it struck at the evil that had begun to rivet its fetters upon you.
Now you shrink from the howling winds and muttering thunders; then you shall see how they beat back the waters of destruction, and opened up your way to the goodly land of promise. — Mark Guy Pearse

Now, almost one hundred years later, it is difficult to fully appreciate how much our picture of the universe has changed in the span of a single human lifetime.
As far as the scientific community in 1917 was concerned, the universe was static and eternal, and consisted of a one single galaxy, our Milky Way, surrounded by vast, infinite, dark, and empty space.
This is, after all, what you would guess by looking up at the night sky with your eyes, or with a small telescope, and at the time there was little reason to suspect otherwise. — Lawrence M. Krauss

To have come on all this new world of writing, with time to read in a city like Paris where there was a way of living well and working, no matter how poor you were, was like having a great treasure given to you. You could take your treasure with you when you traveled too, and in the mountains where we lived in Switzerland and Italy, until we found Schruns in the high valley in the Vorarlberg in Austria, there were always the books, so that you lived in the new world you had found, the snow and the forests and the glaciers and their winter problems and your high shelter in the Hotel Taube in the village in the day time, and at night you could live in the other wonderful world the Russian writers were giving you. — Ernest Hemingway,

As I stood in contemplation of the garden of the wonders of space," Milosz writes, "I had the feeling that I was looking into the ultimate depths, the most secret regions of my own being; and I smiled, because it had never occurred to me that I could be so pure, so great, so fair! My heart burst into singing with the song of grace of the universe. All these constellations are yours, they exist in you; outside your love they have no reality! How terrible the world seems to those who do not know themselves! When you felt so alone and abandoned in the presence of the sea, imagine what solitude the waters must have felt in the night, or the night's own solitude in a universe without end!" And the poet continues this love duet between dreamer and world, making man and the world into two wedded creatures that are paradoxically united in the dialogue of their solitude. — Gaston Bachelard

You must not obey a majority, no matter how large, if it opposes your principles and opinions.' He said this to each new volunteer and repeated it over and over to him, until it was engraved on his mind. 'The largest majority is often only an organized mob whose noise can no more change the false into the true than it can change black into white or night into day. And a minority, conscious of its rights, if those rights are based on moral principles, will sooner or later become a just majority. — Russell Banks

The important things in life always happened by accident. At fifteen she didn't know much, in fact, with each passing year she was a lot less clear about most things. But this much she did know. You could worry yourself sick trying to be a better person, spend a thousand sleepless nights figuring out how to live clean and decent and honest, you could make a plan and bolt it in place, kneel by your bed every night and swear to God you'd stick to it, hell, you could go to church and promise properly. You could cross your heart seven times with your eyes tight shut, cut your thumb and squeeze it and pen solemn vows on a rock with your own blood then throw it in the river at the stroke of midnight. And then, out of the black beyond, like a hawk on a rat, some nameless catastrophe would swoop into your life and turn everything upside down and inside out forever. — Nicholas Evans

We fight monsters and unholy creatures for a living here. Grotesque, evil, violent, dangerous; they're certainly all these things. And yet, we somehow manage to go to sleep each night and wake up each morning. The terror wears off. What was horrific becomes mundane. We lose ourselves to a numbed normalcy after a while, a self-inflicted detachment. You forget how you got here, what it was like before. And then someone comes along, someone new, someone who sees it all with fresh eyes, and it snaps you out of your daily coma, reminding you of what you've forgotten. Of what you've become. — Bill Blais