If I Lay Here Quotes & Sayings

Pritkin, it's a hotel room, not a death trap!" A glance over his shoulder showed him impatient blue eyes under a fall of messy blond curls. "Anyway, you're here."
"I can't protect you from everything," he forced himself to say, because it was true. It was also frankly terrifying in a way that his own mortality was not. He'd never had children, but he sometimes wondered if this was how parents felt when catching sight of a fearless toddler confidently heading toward a busy street. Not that his charge was a child, as he was all too uncomfortably aware. But the knowledge of just how many potentially lethal pitfalls lay in her path sometimes caused him that same heart-clenching terror.
And the same overwhelming need to throw her over his lap and spank the living daylights out of her, he thought grimly, when she suddenly popped out of existence. "Cassie! — Karen Chance

That thou hast her, it is not all my grief,
And yet it may be said I lov'd her dearly;
That she hath thee is of my wailing chief,
A loss in love that touches me more nearly.

Loving offenders, thus I will excuse ye:
Thou dost love her because thou know'st I love her, And for my sake even so doth she abuse me,
Suff'ring my friend for my sake to approve her.

If I lose thee, my loss is my love's gain,
And losing her, my friend hath found that loss;
Both find each other, and I lose both twain,
And both for my sake lay on me this cross.

But here's the joy, my friend and I are one;
Sweet flattery! then she loves but me alone. — William Shakespeare

While Elstir, at my request, went on painting, I wandered about in the half-light, stopping to examine first one picture, then another.
Most of those that covered the walls were not what I should chiefly have liked to see of his work, paintings in what an English art journal which lay about on the reading-room table in the Grand Hotel called his first and second manners, the mythological manner and the manner in which he shewed signs of Japanese influence, both admirably exemplified, the article said, in the collection of Mme. de Guermantes. Naturally enough, what he had in his studio were almost all seascapes done here, at Balbec. But I was able to discern from these that the charm of each of them lay in a sort of metamorphosis of the things represented in it, analogous to what in poetry we call metaphor, and that, if God the Father had created things by naming them, it was by taking away their names or giving them other names that Elstir created them anew. — Marcel Proust

Men are indeed wretched ... Everything beautiful happens without them. Cholera and catchwords are what they make. The foam with jealousy or die of boredom, which comes down to the same thing, if they're not allowed to interfere. And whenever they do interfere, there's a premium on hypocrisy and raving. One need only be up here o in the wilderness that I rode through the other day, to realize where the true battles lie, to become very particular about the victories one strives for. In short, to cease being content with little. As soon as you're alone, things lay hold of you by themselves and always force you to take the roads that are hardest to climb. And even if you don't get there, what fine views you have, and how reassuring everything is. — Jean Giono

If I were twenty or thirty years younger, I would start afresh in this field with the certainty of accomplishing much. But I should have to learn from the bottom up, forgetting the theatre entirely and concentrating on the special medium of this new art. My mistake, and that of many others, lay in employing "theatrical" techniques despite every effort to avoid them. Here is something quite, quite fresh, a penetrating form of visual poetry, an untried exponent of the human soul. Alas, I am too old for it! — Eleanora Duse

I am now satisfied of what I always though
which is how much more women can do if they set about it then men. I will lay any bet that had you been here, you would not have got half as much on board as I have. — Karen Essex

I know that if I said today, "How many of you would like to have me pray for you to have self control?" I could stay here and pray for people to have self control until midnight tonight. How many of you would stay if I would just lay hands on you and pray for you to have self control? Well, you know what, it would be a waste of time! Because, you are not going to have self control because somebody prays for you to have self control. You aready have self control. It is in you as a fruit of the spirit, but it's a little teeny tiny little seed. And, nobody else can develop your fruit of the spirit. Nobody can develop your peace but you. Nobody can develop your joy but you. Nobody can develop your patience butyou. Nobody can develop your discipline and self control but you. — Joyce Meyer

I crashed," she said.
"It was a helluva crash. If you're going to go down, go down big. You should be proud." And then he smiled.
He held her hand as it lay on her lap while she lifted her brandy to her lips with the other hand, trembling a bit. When it was gone, he said, "Come on. I'm putting you to bed."
"What if I cry all night?"
"I'll be right here," he said. — Robyn Carr

Empty - it was utterly empty here. Like a tomb. "Tam?" I called. I bounded up the front steps and into the house. I rushed inside, swearing as I slid on a piece of broken porcelain - the remnants of a vase. Slowly, I turned in the front hall. It looked as if an army had marched through. Tapestries hung in shreds, the marble banister was fractured, and the chandeliers lay broken on the ground, reduced to mounds of shattered crystal. "Tamlin?" I shouted. Nothing. The windows had all been blown out. "Lucien?" No one answered. "Tam?" My voice echoed through the house, mocking me. Alone in the wreckage of the manor, I sank to my knees. He was gone. — Sarah J. Maas

....One dark night,
my Tudor Ford climbed the hill's skull;
I watched for love-cars. Lights turned down,
they lay together, hull to hull,
where the graveyard shelves on the town. . . .
My mind's not right.

A car radio bleats,
"Love, O careless Love. . . ." I hear
my ill-spirit sob in each blood cell,
as if my hand were at its throat. . . .
I myself am hell;
nobody's here--

only skunks, that search
in the moonlight for a bite to eat.
They march on their soles up Main Street:
white stripes, moonstruck eyes' red fire
under the chalk-dry and spar spire
of the Trinitarian Church.

I stand on top
of our back steps and breathe the rich air--
a mother skunk with her column of kittens swills the garbage pail.
She jabs her wedge-head in a cup
of sour cream, drops her ostrich tail,
and will not scare. — Robert Lowell

It was a glorious morning. The wind had fallen quite, and the sun was shining as if he would say, "Keep up your hearts; I am up here still. I have not forgotten you. By and by you shall see more of me." But Nature lay dead, with a great white sheet cast over face and form. Not dead? - Just as much dead as ever was man, save for the inner death with which he kills himself, and which she cannot die. It is only to the eyes of his neighbours that the just man dies: to himself, and to those on the other side, he does not die, but is born instead: "He that liveth and believeth in me shall never die." But the poor old lord felt the approaching dank and cold of the sepulchre as the end of all things to him - if indeed he would be permitted to lie there, and not have to get up and go to worse quarters still. — George MacDonald

You want me to have feelings?" he said. "I already told you that I love you. What else should I say? That I long to be near you every second of every day? I see colors, only around you ... I smell perfume, only around you. God, it's like ... like I'm alive again. Sometimes I go crazy just wondering if I imagined it all, and I wait to see when it ... you ... will be taken away from me."
"I feel all these things, Abbey," he continued on. "Rage that I can't run my fingers through your hair. Sorrow that I can't lay my face next to yours. Agony that I can't steal the breath from your lips. I can't eat or breathe or sleep for wanting to touch you, and yet I don't eat or breathe or sleep. I'm just here. Stuck in between. — Jessica Verday

The Eastern allusion bit me again. "I'll not stand you an inch in the stead of a seraglio," I said; "so don't consider me an equivalent for one. If you have a fancy for anything in that line, away with you, sir, to the bazaars of Stamboul without delay, and lay out in extensive slave-purchases some of that spare cash you seem at a loss to spend satisfactorily here. — Charlotte Bronte

When he lay beside me with his dog-breath sighs, it was if he was saying, Give me your sadness. I will take it, as much as you need. If it kills us both, so be it. I am here. — Luis Carlos Montalvan

Still, here I was, suspended, and at the moment there seemed to be very little I could do about it, so there was no reason for me to leap out of bed and fret. And if I had been the logical and rational creature that I often like to think I am, I would have seen that even this unhappy situation had a very real upside - I didn't have to get up! - and I would have gone right back to sleep. But for some reason, I found that I could not; at my first memory of what had happened yesterday, sleep had run screaming from the room, and in spite of the fact that I lay there frowning and threatening it for several minutes, it would not come back. So — Jeff Lindsay

I would next like to work in anthropology; for here, if I may say so, I believe I have much to contribute-indeed, I believe I am on the verge of substantiating significant advances both theoretical and practical; yes, my inquisitors, I assure you this is true; for I have established, on my own, as an unaffiliated scholar, no less than a new definition of Man- yes, him- one that is easily more rigorous than any heretofore proposed; forget opposable thumbs, disregard use of tools,lay down language capacity or abstract reasoning-those are clearly insufficient; my definition easily surpasses these provisional flouncings in accuracy, comprehensiveness, and elegance; and it is this: man is the animal who pisses where he shouldn't; — Evan Dara

He remembered that these imaginary conversations always began the same way, with the same phrase, the words he believed lay at the core of what any human being ever wants to hear from another, what affection is in its primary essence, what the bonds of friendship and family mean above all else. So he placed his hand gently on Bemm's shoulder and, softly, slowly, spoke the phrase, over and over again, as if it were a prayer, I am so glad you are here. — Toby Barlow

Relax. The thought of going home tonight and leaving you to your dreams just about did me in. Let's see if you still dream sleeping next to me. If you don't, terrific. If you do, I'm here. But there's no way I can lay my head down ten minutes away from you wondering if you're battling those demons by yourself. — Brynne Asher

I closed my eyes and he kissed my eyelids, barely brushing them with his lips. I felt safe, at home. I felt as if here, against his body, was the only place in which I belonged. The only place I had ever wanted to be. We lay in silence for a while, holding each other, our skin merging, our breathing synchronized. I felt as if silence might allow the moment to last for ever, which would still not be enough. — S.J. Watson

I decide that if I ever get to come back here under different, nonstressful circumstances, I will stay at this hotel and drink fruity drinks and lay in the sand until my skin looks like it had a makeout session with the sun. But today, I'm looking for an inconspicuous way into the water.
We head out of the lobby and get waylaid by hula dancers in grass skirts handing out necklaces of flowers. Apparently Toraf doesn't like necklaces of flowers; as one of the women raises it above his head, he slaps her hand away. I show him, as I accept the gift around my neck, that the woman with the coconut boobs was just trying to be his friend. Just like all the women he's come across so far.
"Humans are too weird," he whispers, unconvinced. I wonder what Toraf would think of Disney World.
Our hotel is right on the water, so we pass through the lobby to the back. The beach is lined with lounge chairs and umbrellas and people scantily clad and people who shouldn't be scantily clad. — Anna Banks

I am not alone in this. I only let him do to me what men have ever done to women: march off to empty glory and hollow acclaim and leave us behind to pick up the pieces. The broken cities, the burned barns, the innocent injured beasts, the ruined bodies of the boys we bore and the men we lay with.
The waste of it. I sit here, and I look at him, and it is as if a hundred women sit beside me: the revolutionary farm wife, the English peasant woman, the Spartan mother-'Come back with your shield or on it,' she cried, because that was what she was expected to cry. And then she leaned across the broken body of her son and the words turned to dust in her throat. — Geraldine Brooks

Here's an important piece of information about me. If I'm looking for just a lay, I'm not going to bring that woman crepes in the morning or fix her window. And I'm sure as hell not going to risk my career to just screw around with a witness. If I'm going to take that risk, it's going to be worth it." His thumb dragged under my lip, causing me to suck in a shallow breath.
"And honey, I have a good feeling, you're worth it. — J. Lynn

The true heart of Carolyn's farm was her kitchen, where sausages and pungent dog treats lay scattered over they counters, along with collars, magazines and books, trial application forums, checks from her students (Carolyn, not big on details, often left them lying around for months), leashes, and dog toys.

Pots of coffee were always brewing, and dog people could be found sitting around her big wooden table at all hours. Devon and I were always welcome there, and he grew to love going around the table from person to person, collecting pats and treats. Troubled dogs were familiar at the table, and appreciated. If we couldn't bring our dogs many places, we could always bring them here. — Jon Katz

Don't worry if I lay my head back and start to snore while we're flying. It's normal. I'm just here in case Jake has a stroke and dies. (Tony) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

I say no wealth is worth my life! Not all they claim
was stored in the depths of Troy, that city built on riches,
in the old days of peace before the sons of Achaea came-
not all the gold held fast in the Archer's rocky vaults,
in Phoebus Apollo's house on Pytho's sheer cliffs!
Cattle and fat sheep can all be had for the raiding,
tripods all for the trading, and tawny-headed stallions.
But a man's life breath cannot come back again-
no raiders in force, no trading brings it back,
once it slips through a man's clenched teeth.
Mother tells me,
the immortal goddess Thetis with her glistening feet,
that two fates bear me on to the day of death.
If I hold out here and I lay siege to Troy,
my journey home is gone, but my glory never dies.
If I voyage back to the fatherland I love,
my pride, my glory dies ...
true, but the life that's left me will be long,
the stroke of death will not come on me quickly. — Homer

If I lay here
If I just lay here
would you lie with me and just forget the world? — Snow Patrol

Occasionally they would hear a harsh croak or a splash as some amphibian was disturbed, but the only creature they saw was a toad as big as Will's foot, which could only flop in a pain-filled sideways heave as if it were horribly injured. It lay across the path, trying to move out of the way and looking at them as if it knew they meant to hurt it.
'It would be merciful to kill it,' said Tialys.
'How do you know?' said Lyra. 'It might still like being alive, in spite of everything.'
'If we killed it, we'd be taking it with us,' said Will. 'It wants to stay here. I've killed enough living things. Even a filthy stagnant pool might be better than being dead.'
'But if it's in pain?' said Tialys.
'If it could tell us, we'd know. But since it can't, I'm not going to kill it. That would be considering our feelings rather than the toad's.'
They moved on. — Philip Pullman

Now I lay me down to sleep In mud that's many fathoms deep. If I'm not here when you awake Just hunt me up with an oyster rake — Shelby Foote

I do lay in some opinions here and there. For example, I don't think it should be socially acceptable for people to say they are "bad with names." No one is bad with names. That is not a real thing. Not knowing people's names isn't a neurological condition; it's a choice. You choose not to make learning people's names a priority. It's like saying, "Hey, a disclaimer about me: I'm rude." For heaven's sake, if you don't know someone's name, just pretend you do. Do that thing everyone else does, where you vaguely say, "Nice to see you!" and make weak eye contact. So, — Mindy Kaling

Nora sobered and turned back to the windows, her breath fogging the glass. "We may as well lay some ground rules if we're going to be stuck here for a few days."
"Okay."
"You can keep the bed, I prefer the sofa. I don't cook. I'm not a maid, so pick up after yourself. You can eat whatever you can find in the kitchen, but I'll warn you, I don't keep much. I prefer my privacy, so you'll have to occupy yourself. Any questions?
"Only one."
She turned to face him.
"What are you hiding from? — Jennifer Lowery

It's not too late," he says. "Zahra, I - "
"Sh." I lay a finger across his lips. "Don't say it. You will marry Caspida, and you will learn to love each other. You will live a happy life, long after my lamp has passed to new hands."
"I won't make my third wish," he says. "That's the answer! If I don't make the wish, you can stay here in the palace for as long as you want. You'll never have to go back to your lamp. We can fight off anyone who tries to take you from me. — Jessica Khoury

I know a girl from whose body sunbeams rose to the clouds as if they'd fallen from the sun.
Her laugh was like a bangle of bells.
"Your hair is wet," I told her one day, "Did you take a bath?"
"It is dew!" she laughed, "I've been lying in the grass. All morning long, I lay here waiting for the dawn. — Roman Payne

So why are you here?"
He lifted his hands and made as if to lay them on her arms, but just before they touched he stopped and let them fall. Then, simply, as though it were all the explanation she could ever need, he said, "Because I love you. — Aprilynne Pike

I saw a moving sight the other morning before breakfast in a little hotel where I slept in the dusty fields. The young man of the house shot a little wolf called coyote in the early morning. The little heroic animal lay on the ground, with his big furry ears, and his clean white teeth, and his little cheerful body, but his little brave life was gone. It made me think how brave all living things are. Here little coyote was, without any clothes or house or books or anything, with nothing to pay his way with, and risking his life so cheerfully - and losing it - just to see if he could pick up a meal near the hotel. He was doing his coyote-business like a hero, and you must do your boy-business, and I my man-business bravely, too, or else we won't be worth as much as a little coyote. — William James

Where is Wilkins, anyway?" Cameron asked.
"In the living room, being accosted by eighteen women who think he's a stripper. I thought it was best to duck in here."
"So much for never leaving a man behind."
"If he starts screaming, I'll lay down a cover fire and go pull him out. — Julie James

if there is any part of our lives that we haven't turned over to Christ, the devil reminds him, 'No, that one isn't totally yours. I still have this patch of ground here.' "Jesus is totally committed to us. And until we learn to be totally surrendered to him, we'll never find the joy of what it means to fully belong to him. That is the key to every believer's life - full ownership by Christ. Everything we are and want to be belong to him. "The Lord wants to have ownership of your life. If there is anything hindering this from happening, I invite you to come forward now and lay it before Christ. — Ravi Zacharias

During his sweet sleep, there was an angelic creature and in her eyes a look of joyous elation that filled Kevin's mind with anticipation of her possible existence in the real world. This freckle-faced vision with her wild mane of untamed blonde curls nightly left an unexplainable ache in his soul. In his dreams, she would appear to him as a mirage of hope. He could feel the love in her heart, for it seeped through her very essence into the air between them. She lay next to him in the grass as they quietly observed the sky above. Her hand seemed to be always just out of his reach. Kevin wanted to hold her hand so badly it was torturous. Her hand was just about touching his but not quite. Then her fingers brushed a path across his fingertips as if to say in the exquisite beauty of the moment, I will always be right here. — Kim Cormack

I sat silently for several minutes, resisting the urge to speak, knowing it was stupid. There was nothing left of my father. Even if there were, it was ridiculous to believe it would be here, hovering around ashes and dust, jostling for position among the souls of the hundreds of thousands of others buried in this place. People lay the flowers and say the prayers, they believe these things, because doing so avoids the discomfort of acknowledging that the person you loved is gone. It's easier to believe that maybe the person can still see and hear and care. — Barry Eisler

finally it became obvious that my talents lay with flies. That's a fate that takes some getting used to. Anyway, the hoverflies are only props. No, not only, but to some extent. Here and there, my story is about something else. Exactly what, I don't know. Some days I tell myself that my mission is to say something about the art and sometimes the bliss of limitation. And the legibility of landscape. Other days are more dismal. As if I were queueing in the rain outside confessional literature's nudist colony, mirrors everywhere, blue with cold. But — Fredrik Sjoberg

Blaire, even if all we do is kiss or just lay there and talk, I'm okay with that. I just wanted you up here. Close to me. — Abbi Glines

I ran a constant low fever waiting for my ride to come and take me away to something finer. I lay in bed at night, watching the red beacon on top of the water tower, a clear signal to me of the beauty and mystery of a life that waited for me far away, and thought of Housman's poem,
"Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom upon the bough.
It stands among the woodland ride,
Wearing white for Eastertide.
Now, of my three-score years and ten,
Twenty will not come again ... "
and would have run away to where people would appreciate me, had I known of such a place, had I thought my parents would understand. But if I had said, "Along the woodland I must go to see the cherry hung with snow," they would have said, "Oh,no, you don't. You're going to stay right here and finish up what I told you to do three hours ago. Besides, those aren't cherry trees, those are crab apples. — Garrison Keillor

Oh my, aren't we going to have fun?" Sarah remarked sarcastically as she quickly pulled the covers over herself. A weak sweat covered her body and her arms trembled, feeling no stronger than wet wax. With a weary sigh, she lay down beside her baby. "Imagine staying here for the winter with such a cheery soul."
Thaddeus returned from his sink with a cup of cold water. He glared at her when he saw her trembling and held the cup to her lips himself. "If you were looking for cheery, lady, you shouldn't have come here."
"I didn't come here," she snapped angrily, almost choking on a mouthful of water. "You brought me."
"Would you rather I left you in a blizzard?"
"I'd rather, since we're stuck here together, you spoke civilly and treated me with a measure of kindness."
"Yeah...well, we all want things we can't have. — Patricia Pellicane

At that point Ms Fox came in and said, "Hello, carry on as if I am not here."
Then she lay down on the floor. — Louise Rennison