Left With Nothing Quotes & Sayings

In 2012, I was diagnosed with melanoma - skin cancer - and had to get surgery on my left foot. I was out for four weeks - no dancing, no walking, nothing! It was horrible, but it taught me patience and to never take for granted the simple things we have. — Witney Carson

Decades of behavioral blunders and ill-conceived marriages and businesses run amok had left next to nothing by the time Leonard was in high school. He'd wangled himself an engineering scholarship to Cornell and then a job with Dow Chemical during a time he referred to, reverently, as the Dawn of the Absorbency Revolution. — Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney

He [Maxime] was twenty, and already there was nothing left to surprise or disgust him. He had certainly dreamt of the most extreme forms of debauchery. Vice with him was not an abyss, as with certain old men, but a natural, external growth. — Emile Zola

Most modern biologists, having reviewed with satisfaction the downfall of the spontaneous generation hypothesis, yet unwilling to accept the alternative belief in special creation, are left with nothing. — George Wald

She was shaking so badly that she tucked her hands into her pockets and clamped her lips together to lock up the words.
But they danced in her skull anyway, around and around.
You should have gotten Dorian and Sorscha out the day the king butchered those slaves. Did you learn nothing from Nehemia's death? Did you somehow think you could win with your honor intact, without sacrificing something? You shouldn't have left him; how could you let him face the king alone? How could you, how could you, how could you? — Sarah J. Maas

I wanna be with you, if only for a night to be the one who's in your arms to hold you tight. I wanna be with you, there's nothing left to say. — Mandy Moore

We are left with nothing but death, the irreducible fact of our own mortality. Death after a long illness we can accept with resignation. Even accidental death we can ascribe to fate. But for a man to die of no apparent cause, for a man to die simply because he is a man, brings us so close to the invisible boundary between life and death that we no longer know which side we are on. Life becomes death, and it is as if this death has owned this life all along. Death without warning. Which is to say: life stops. And it can stop at any moment. — Paul Auster

Markus definitely wasn't comfortable. He was sorry about having long legs; as regrets go, it certainly was a useless one.* Not to mention another fact that amped up his torture: there's nothing worse than being seated next to a woman you're dying with desire to look at. The show was to his left, where she was, not on stage. Not only that, but what was he seeing? It was so-so. The fact that it was a Swedish play wasn't exactly helping matters! Had she done it on purpose? As if that weren't enough, the playwright had studied in Uppsala. Might as well have dinner at his parents'. — David Foenkinos

We also notice that Paul was focused. He had a clear goal, and he would not veer to the right or to the left from it. We can't help but wonder how many emails Paul would have skipped over, or how current he would have been with the news of the day, or even how vigorously he would be rooting for his favorite sports teams or athletes. Our ability to have information quickly is both a blessing and a curse. Our ability to function in a fast-paced society sometimes encourages us to focus on nothing of lasting value, just running from one temporal thing to the next. Just — James MacDonald

Sounding hoarse, Dare whispered, "Tell me what you want."
The feel of his broad, strong hand against her left her quaking inside - in a good way. The tremble sounded in her tone as she tried to explain. "I want to be whole again. I want to be me, the person I was before I was taken to Tijuana."
Dare said nothing. Molly felt his hesitation, his indecision. God love the man, he didn't want to take advantage of her.
"I know what I want, Dare." She covered his hand with her own, pressed him closer. "I want to replace the bad memories with new ones. Better ones."
His hand curved around her, but he said nothing.
Watching his face, Molly whispered, "I want to do that now, with you. — Lori Foster

She had been with her share of schemers and men who were forever building castles in the sky. All of those dreams made out of clouds; when it rained - and it always did - they were left with nothing but the soggy shirts on their backs. — Ayana Mathis

Was there ever really a chance for us? What is down in the middle of him, his very center? Does he even have a center, or do you just cut away the layers, away, away, away, until you are left with nothing? — R.A. Nelson

There was nothing in the fourth stack. Not even a possible. A hundred and sixty gone by. Neagley slid the final forty into place. Reacher watched Klopp. One card at a time, left thumb and index finger, held easy, not near and not far. Decent vision, with his glasses on. Genuine concentration. Not a bored blank stare or an impatient sneer. A calm focus. He was interrogating the photographs, one by one, point by point. Eyes, cheek bones, mouth. Yes or no. No, — Lee Child

I felt the seed of something strong sprout something real in me and felt a surge. I'd be in the woods, homeless, walking north with my fellow self-exiled desert pilgrims. I'd be a dropout.
I had nothing left to lose. — Aspen Matis

Philip obliged, opening his left hand, palm upwards, and forcing his energy into the creation of an orb of light, formed, tangible, and alive. The small suns Philip could create out of nothing, were miniatures of the original, with molten plasma lying almost invisible at their cores, obscured by the bright rays of light emitted from them, making them seem harmless. — D.M. Enslin

I slipped into the shop, wanting to curl up and disappear, wanting the world to blow away until there was nothing left. But before I got my wish, Mama came in after me, slamming the door on Dempsey, on all the prying eyes, on all the swirl of hope and despair and want, and I knew that the world would never go away, but would pull me down right along with it. — Eden Butler

Time was with most of us, when Christmas Day, encircling all our limited world like a magic ring, left nothing out for us to miss or seek; bound together all our home enjoyments, affections, and hopes; grouped everything and everyone round the Christmas fire, and make the little picture shining in our bright young eyes, complete. — Charles Dickens

Being a vampire for him meant revenge. Revenge against life itself. Every time he took a life it was revenge. It was no wonder, then, that he appreciated nothing. The nuances of vampire existence weren't even available to him because he was focused with a maniacal vengeance upon the mortal life he'd left. Consumed with hatred, he looked back. Consumed with envy, nothing pleased him unless he could take it from others; and once having it, he grew cold and dissatisfied, not loving the thing for itself; and so he went after something else. Vengeance, blind and sterile and contemptible. — Anne Rice

Even granting that the genius subjected to the test of critical inspection emerges free from all error, we should consider that everything he has discovered in a given domain is almost nothing in comparison with what is left to be discovered. — Santiago Ramon Y Cajal

You have quite dampened by spirit and eagerness, and left me exhausted before I could strike a blow. There are two reasons for this: first, your cleverness in treating the subject with such remarkable and consistent moderation as to make it impossible for me to be angry with you; and secondly, the luck or chance or fate by which you say nothing on this important subject that has not been said before. — Martin Luther

On this day, Eustace was heating iron rods to fix a broken piece on his antique mower. He had a number of irons cooking in his forge at the same time and, distracted by trying to teach me the basics of blacksmithing, he allowed several of them to get too hot, to the point of compromising the strength of the metal. When he saw this, he said, "Damn! I have too many irons in the fire."
Which was the first time I had ever heard that expression used in its proper context. But such is the satisfaction of being around Eustace; everything suddenly seems to be in its proper context. He makes true a notion of frontier identity that has long since passed most men of his generation, most of whom are left with nothing but the vocabulary. — Elizabeth Gilbert

A small piece of me still believed in hope. However minute or unattainable hope seemed, I wanted the childlike wonder. "I want you to love me. I need someone who needs me. But most of all, I know you understand me, and I crave that bond so much that when I'm with you, it's all I feel. It consumes me. Fires me. Eats at my fine tuned control until there is nothing left of me, but the feel of you in my bones. — E.R. Pierce

It meant nothing. Some people are like that: everything comes out like a lie. Not that they're brilliant liars, just that they're useless at telling the truth. You get left with no way to tell what's the real fake and what's the fake one. — Tana French

Sometimes I wait for you at the exact edge of the jetty where we left each other. Sometimes I disappear into an unconscious hole and lie there silted up in stories having nothing to do with the vigorous immediacy of our epic. — Helene Cixous

Like that timber wolf on the mountain he had a kind of animal courage. He went his own way with unconcern for consequences that sometimes stunned people, and stuns me now to hear about it. He did not often swerve to right or to left. I've discovered that. But this courage didn't arise from any idealistic idea of self-sacrifice, only from the intensity of his pursuit, and there was nothing noble about it. — Robert M. Pirsig

They don't matter. I thought I had to prove something, and I did, to myself. There's nothing left for me to prove. I can move on with my life. — Tami Hoag

In order not to leave any traces, when you do something, you should do it with your whole body and mind; you should be concentrated on what you do. You should do it completely, like a good bonfire. You should not be a smoky fire. You should burn yourself completely. If you do not burn yourself completely, a trace of yourself will be left in what you do. You will have something remaining which is not completely burned out. Zen activity is activity which is completely burned out, with nothing remaining but ashes. This is the goal of our practice. That is what Dogen meant when he said, "Ashes do not come back to firewood." Ash is ash. Ash should be completely ash. The firewood should be firewood. When this kind of activity takes place, one activity covers everything. — Shunryu Suzuki

Dreams are what keep a man going, William, and already your father was dreaming empire. But looking at him on the day he left that town he was born in, you would have seen little more than a young, handsome boy with nothing but the clothes on his back and the holes in his shoes. You might not have actually seen the holes in his shoes, but they were there, William; the holes were there. "That — Daniel Wallace

I can't even begin to describe how I miss him. He always supported me in everything I did. He was a very wise man and I realised at an early age I could learn a lot from him. He always gave me the right answer. But above all he was a very easy-going guy and all he wanted was to be my best friend. I'm an only child and so he shared everything with me. Of course he was very young to die and I was very young to lose a father. But there was nothing left unsaid between us. — Dhani Harrison

He'd wanted all of me and that's what I'd given him. Did it mean I had nothing left?
"No," he muttered, voice thick with passion. "You have me, and I love you. — Jeaniene Frost

Don't look for wealth and beauty as these will last only a short time , and then you'll be left with nothing. Look for piety and faith and you'll get everything including wealth and beauty with it — Shelina Zahra Janmohamed

Because memories fall apart, too. And you're left with nothing. — John Green

I have waited hundreds of years for this moment, for your power, for this chance. I have earned it with loss and with struggle. I will have it, Alina. Whatever the cost."
"There will be nothing left," I whispered. — Leigh Bardugo

She chose books because they never left her lonely the way that Kirk had left her lonely. BEcause company was often nothing of the kind, whereas a good book always was.
She chose books for the smell of fresh-pressed pages, for the yellow-brown musk of library mould, but always for the breathy kiss of paper rustling. She chose books because some of the held prose that made her weep, or poetry that winded her, and words that mae her heart skip beats.
She chose books because some came readey-made with characters that seemed like perfect versions of hrself, all of them little proofs that somehow, somewhere, it might just be possible for her to be better: to be popular, powerful, sexy and smart.
She chose books because they lied to her with more conviction than people ever had. — Dan Micklethwaite

Everything that falls upon the eye is apparition, a sheet dropped over the world's true workings. The nerves and the brain are tricked, and one is left with dreams that these specters loose their hands from ours and walk away, the curve of the back and the swing of the coat so familiar as to imply that they should be permanent fixtures of the world, when in fact nothing is more perishable. — Marilynne Robinson

Her feelings as dark as the night sky, the moon was the only thing making her come alive
So she got some paper and pen to let the ink spill it all out because talking never seemed to work.
Blood drops fell on her little piece of paper, drowning it along with her. By the time the blood dried up it left her with nothing but red dust. Red. The same color her eyes were captivated by.
They never told her that there is no way to get over crazy, messy things in life. There's only crossing that red sea as if you're walking through the wilderniss. The sun will rise when you've gone through the depts of it all. Writing wont matter anymore. Don't you understand? You're life is not messy little girl, you're just crazy sometimes. — N

He is not a tame lion," said Tirian. "How should we know what he would do? We, who are murderers. Jewel, I will go back. I will give up my sword and put myself in the hands of these Calormenes and ask that they bring me before Aslan. Let him do justice on me."
"You will go to your death, then," said Jewel.
"Do you think I care if Aslan dooms me to death?" said the King. "That would be nothing, nothing at all. Would it not be better to be dead than to have this horrible fear that Aslan has come and is not like the Aslan we have believed in and longed for? It is as if the sun rose one day and were a black sun."
"I know," said Jewel. "Or as if you drank water and it were dry water. You are in the right, Sire. This is the end of all things. Let us go and give ourselves up."
"There is no need for both of us to go."
"If ever we loved one another, let me go with you now," said the Unicorn. "If you are dead and if Aslan is not Aslan, what life is left for me? — C.S. Lewis

Nothing irrevocable had yet been spoken, but there was only the barest margin of safety left them, each of them moving delicately along the outskirts of an open question, and, once spoken, such a question-as "Do you love me?" -could never be answered or forgotten. They walked slowly, meditating, wondering, and the path sloped down from their feet and they followed, walking side by side in the most extreme intimacy of expectation; their feinting and hesitation done with, they could only await passively for resolution. Each knew, almost within a breath, what the other was thinking and wanting to say; each of them almost wept for the other. They perceived at the same moment the change in the path and each knew then the other's knowledge of it; Theodora took Eleanor's arm and, afraid to stop, they moved on slowly, close together, and ahead of them the path widened and blackened and curved. — Shirley Jackson

Delilah, pretend that it doesn't bother you. Move on
with your life, as if nothing ever happened. Nothing moves
a man, more than a woman who acts as if he didn't mean a
thing to her when he left. It bothers them, and they often
try to make sense of it. Meanwhile, you're putting
everything you have into yourself, and well, sometimes you
just don't know why things happen until later. — Jennifer Megan Varnadore

He felt so tired, so weary of holding on with an iron grip to something he knew was slipping away.
"You can't make someone love you," he said.
Her hand stilled for a moment, the dirty tissue between her fingers. "True."
"Even if you love them so much you'd do anything, anything, for them." The truth of his words sank in. Speaking about it wasn't helping. It felt worse, like probing an open wound.
"Even if," his grandmasaid, nodding.
"Sometimes they pick another person to love when you've been right in front of them the whole time."
"It does happen." Her voice was soft.
"And then there's nothing left but to keep going as you were, pretending you never felt anything more than . . ."
"Friendship?" Her eyes met his and there was the faintest glimmer of tears.
"But I don't think I can have even that, anymore. — Mary Jane Hathaway

He caressed my arm and then frowned as he leaned down and examined the marks Jac's nails had made in my skin, along with the blood I still hadn't washed off. "What is this?" His cold voice left me filled with dread. I tried to jerk away. "Nothing." "Maya," he growled. "Who the hell dared to lay a hand on you?" His voice was furious as his eyes flashed with rage. "Tell me. Now. — Rachel Van Dyken

My father had left behind an old piano. My sister was already going to school, my mother was out working, and I stayed at home alone with my adorable grandmother who understood nothing I said. It was so boring that I stayed at the piano all day long, and that saved my life. — Michel Legrand

But after the bottle was empty sometime that night, I was finally left with nothing but myself and my thoughts, devious cabdrivers that took me where I did not want to go. Now — Viet Thanh Nguyen

Passing from one dimension to another, he feels that nothing is left behind, but rather is always with him in the moment. His life is no more a myth than other man's, his needs much the same. The only price he pays for this exquisite singularity may be the intrusion of his fellow dreamers who sometimes call him on the telephone. They mean no harm. They too are innocent. Clarity is all any man seeks, this Somnambulist merely find his on the other Side. — Ralph Gibson

After she knocked, she walked into the room with confidence she didn't feel, her head up, her spine straight, her unease camo'd by a combo of posture and professional focus. "How are you this evening?" she said, as she looked the patient right in the eye.
The instant his amethyst stare met hers, she couldn't have told a soul what had just come out of her mouth or whether he replied. Rehvenge, son of Rempoon, sucked the thought right out of her head, sure as if he'd drained the tank of her brain's generator and left her with nothing to catch a mental spark off of.
And then he smiled.

-Ehlena's thoughts — J.R. Ward

Occasionally, he left the compound. I'd figured he must be out hunting, at least some of the time, but he hadn't returned with a new icon, and I'd heard nothing on Arcana Radio. Plus, Lark's laminated player list - the little twit actually did keep it on the fridge door - had had no updates since the Star.

Well, other than her scratching my title out and scribbling in "The Unclean One." Har. — Kresley Cole

Speak up,' says Myrna who has a fuzzy white caterpillar of a moustache. 'My hearing's not so good.'
'I WAS SHOT IN THE HEAD.'
Liz turns to Thandi. 'I thought you said you didn't remember how you got the hole in your head.'
Thandi apologizes. 'I just remembered.'
'Shot in the head!' Florence-scratchy-voice says. 'Oy, that's rough.'
'Aw, it's nothing special. Happens pretty regularly where I'm from,' Thandi says.
'WHAT?' asks Myrna with the moustache. 'Say it toward my left ear, that's the good one.'
'I SAID, "IT'S NOTHING SPECIAL,"' Thandi yells/ — Gabrielle Zevin

If I could tell you only one thing about my life it would be this: when I was seven years old the mailman ran over my had. As formative events go, nothing else comes close; my careening, zigzag existence, my wounded brain and faith in God, my collisions with joy and affliction, all of it has come, in one way or another, out of that moment on a summer morning when the left rear tire of a United States postal jeep ground my tiny head into the hot gravel of the San Carlos Apache Indian reservation. — Brady Udall

The important thing is to firmly fix our gaze on our own weaknesses, not run away from them, but to battle them head-on and establish a solid self that nothing can sway. Hardships forge and polish our lives, so that eventually they shine with brilliant fortune and benefit. If left in its raw, unpolished form, even the most magnificent gem will not sparkle. The same applies to our lives. — Daisaku Ikeda

In short, if we adhere to the standard of perfection in all our endeavors, we are left with nothing but mathematics and the White Album. — Daniel M. Gilbert

My fingers draw up her back and tangle into her hair. "They'll never separate us."
"Never," she repeats.
Our lips crush together, our bodies pressed tight. An inferno of lips and hands and movements that continues to grow in heat. The blanket falls away as Rachel slides her legs so that she straddles me. On the verge of burning up completely, I groan and cling to her small frame. Her hands drift under my shirt, leaving a singeing trail.
We've become a wildfire. Almost unstoppable. I kiss her neck and the beautiful sounds escaping her mouth encourage me further. My hands skim under her shirt, up her back, linger for seconds near her bra, and I gently nip her ear when I feel lace.
Images pour into my mind of what she'd look like with her shirt off, then her jeans. My fist traps strands of her hair. "I want you, Rachel."
And because I do, I kiss her fully on the mouth - nothing left to the imagination. Every fantasy becomes a reality with that one embrace. — Katie McGarry

It had been impossible to decide how they were going to do it, because the goblin rarely left Harry, Ron, and Hermione alone together for more than five minutes at a time: "He could give my mother lessons," growled Ron, as the goblin's long fingers kept appearing around the edges of doors. With Bill's warning in mind, Harry could not help suspecting that Griphook was on the watch for possible skullduggery. Hermione disapproved so heartily of the planned double-cross that Harry had given up attempting to pick her brains on how best to do it; Ron, on the rare occasion that they had been able to snatch a few Griphook-free moments, had come up with nothing better than "We'll just have to wing it, mate. — J.K. Rowling

More than the choking heat, more than the blinding flames that rise up into the night sky, more than the endlessly leaping colours that change shape with every moment, more than all of these is the transforming power of fire. Fire takes solid wooden beams and reduces them to charcoal. It licks at everything with a scarlet tongue and leaves it black. It spreads like the folds of a golden robe over human bodies and what is left is gray and chalky: ash, blown up and up by every breath of wind only to fall like dust on the ground. When it is burning most fiercely, it seems that it might go on forever and devour everything in its path. It does not cower and withdraw in front of princes. Palace and hovel alike are good fuel and nothing more. It is unstoppable. And when it has moved, what remains is desolation. — Adele Geras

One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing; that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one. — Agatha Christie

For in this sickened world, it is better to believe in something too fiercely than to believe in nothing.' Words, words, wonderful words. But lies too. 'No, it isn't!' shouted Mosca the Housefly, Quillam Mye's daughter. 'Not if what you're believin' isn't blinkin' well True! You shouldn't just go believin' things for no reason, pertickly if you got a sword in your hand! Sacred just means something you're not meant to think about properly, an' you should never stop thinking! Show me something I can kick, and hit with rocks, and set fire to, and leave out in the rain, and think about, and if it's still standing after all that then maybe, just maybe, I'll start to believe in it, but not till then. An' if all we're left with is muck and wickedness and no gods, then we'd better face it and get used to it because it's better than a lie. Which is what you are, Mr Kohlrabi.' Mosca — Frances Hardinge

It's luck. All is luck when skill's played out. It was luck left me with a face that didn't fit in Contact, it's luck that's made you a great game-player, it's luck that's put you here tonight. Neither of us were fully planned, Jernau Gurgeh; your genes determined you and your mother's genofixing made certain you would not be a cripple or mentally subnormal. The rest is chance. I was brought into being with the freedom to be myself; if what that general plan and that particular luck produced is something a majority - a majority, mark you; not all - of one SC admissions board decides is not what they just happen to want, is it my fault? Is it?"

"No," Gurgeh sighed, looking down.

"Oh, it's all so wonderful in the Culture, isn't it, Gurgeh; nobody starves and nobody dies of disease or natural disasters and nobody and nothing's exploited, but there's still luck and heartache and joy, there's still chance and advantage and disadvantage. — Iain M. Banks

Carrying his books from one life into the next was nothing new to Zuckerman. He had left his family for Chicago in 1949 carrying in his suitcase the annotated works of Thomas Wolfe and Roget's Thesaurus. Four years later, age twenty, he left Chicago with five cartons of classics, bought secondhand out of his spending money, to be stored in his parents' attic while he served two years in the Army. In 1960, when he was divorced from Betsy, there were thirty cartons to be packed from the shelves no longer his; in 1965, when he was divorced from Virginia, there were just under sixty to cart away; in 1969, he left Bank Street with eighty-one boxes of books. — Philip Roth

Jonah's breath came fast and shallow. I reached for his hand. He turned his face to me, his eyes wide with panic. Two frozen ponds. A boy screamed and pounded on the surface, trapped under the ice. Panicking. Trying to break through. But his screams faded, his fists flailed, and he slipped away into the dark. The boy was gone. Nothing left but the ice, clear and smooth enough to skate on. — Natalie Standiford

Conservatives and those on the right are usually willing to settle for thinking themselves correct on political issues; those on the left have always needed to feel not so much that they are correct but that they are also good. Disagree with someone on the right and he is likely to think you obtuse, wrong, sentimental, foolish, a dope; disagree with someone one the left and he is more likely to think you selfish, cold-hearted, a sellout, evil-in league with the devil, he might say, if he didn't think religious terminology too coarse for our secular age. To this day one will hear of people who fell for Communism in a big way let off the hook because they were sincere; if one's heart is in the right place, nothing else matters, even if one's naive opinions made it easier for tyrants to murder millions. — Joseph Epstein

You must know that there is nothing higher and stronger and more wholesome and good for life in the future than some good memory, especially a memory of childhood, of home. People talk to you a great deal about your education, but some good, sacred memory, preserved from childhood, is perhaps the best education. If a man carries many such memories with him into life, he is safe to the end of his days, and if one has only one good memory left in one's heart, even that may sometime be the means of saving us. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Even if you have got nothing else left, be proud of your relationship with God. — Sunday Adelaja

I left the clinic in a daze that had nothing to do with my head injury. Clear up in a week or so? How could Dr. Olendzki speak so lightly about this? I was going to look like a mutant for Christmas and most of the ski trip. I had a black eye. A freaking black eye.
And my mother had given it to me. — Richelle Mead

That is the hazard in curiosity, I thought: all the certainties fragment and dissolve. A man curious enough and persistent enough might find even the round and solid ball of earth to be not so. He might be less proud of his faculty of reasoning when it left him with nothing whereon to stand. But then again, was not the truth a more solid foundation than illusion? — Gary Jennings

Find happiness in tribulation, too. Find it in joy alone and you could lose it, sooner or later, and be left with nothing. — Siddharth Katragadda

I'll say it again - mental illness is a physical illness. You wouldn't consider going up to someone suffering from Alzheimers to yell, "Come on, get with it, you remember where you left your keys?" Let us shout it from the rooftops until everyone gets the message; depression has and nothing to do with having a bad day or being sad, it's a killer if not taken seriously. — Ruby Wax

Holding a tear back makes them drain upward, higher and higher, until one day your head just explodes and you're left with a stub of a neck and nothing more. — Alice Hoffman

If you will take me for your wife, Walter, I will love you dearly. If you will let me go with you, Walter, I will go to the world's end without fear. I can give up nothing for you - I have nothing to resign, and no one to forsake; but all my love and life shall be devoted to you, and with my last breath I will breathe your name to God if I have sense and memory left. — Charles Dickens

So with the lamps all put out, the moon sunk, and a thin rain drumming on the roof, a downpouring of immense darkness began. Nothing, it seemed, could survive the flood, the profusion of darkness which creeping in at keyholes and crevices, stole round window blinds, came into bedrooms, swallowed up here a jug and basin, there a bowl of red and yellow dahlias, there the sharp edges and firm bulk of a chest of drawers. Not only was furniture confounded; there was scarcely anything left of body or mind by which one could say, 'This is he,' or, 'This is she. — Virginia Woolf

With each brick, my hopes faded until nothing was left. If there had ever been a chance of Dominic and my father returning, then the wall took that too. My schoolteacher taught us a new song that thanked our leaders for building a wall to keep the fascists out. I muted my glares and only mouthed the words when my teacher was looking - I couldn't bear to sing the lies. — Jennifer A. Nielsen

Even though he had admitted to her that he used to watch me shower through a hole in the bathroom wall back when I was thirteen. She blamed us both for what we had "done" to her. But it sounds like she got over being mad at him pretty quick. She later told me that she had to go back and have sex with him one more time, just to make sure that there was nothing left between the two of them and to get some closure. That almost made me want to vomit. The only interaction between us after that was her showing up at the courthouse when I had to sit in front of a grand jury of twelve strangers and tell them what had happened. She came into the waiting room where I was sitting and started screaming that I was a whore and that I'd fucked her husband. She had to be escorted out of the court by two officers. That's what I got from her. — Ashly Lorenzana

I wanted to pull away, remind him that I was a big girl, a highly trained operative, a spy - that I'd been training for this mission my entire life, and I wasn't going to be left on the sidelines. But in the dim space with Zach pressed tightly against me, only one thought came to mind. I kissed him - longer and deeper than I ever had before. The school was not watching us this time. There was nothing playful in the tone. We were just two people kissing as if for the first time, as if it might be the last.
And then I broke away. "So," I asked, as if I got kissed like that all the time (which, believe me, I don't), "where is it you're taking me again?"
"The tombs. — Ally Carter

No. Depression is the unseen, unheard, silent killer. It is the pain that is too much to cope with, too hard to deal with and never understood. It is something that you can't escape, no matter how hard you try it ALWAYS swallows you again. It constantly follows you around, like black smoke choking you from the inside out. Like a lion clawing at your heart and mind, eating pieces of you until there is nothing left. — Astrid Lee Miles

I know you've been aching to have your hands on my staff," I said to Ascher, as Nicodemus examined the altar for himself. I held out my hand. "But I'd rather be the one fondling my tool. Wizards are weird like that."
"Wow," she said, and flashed me a grin, her face flushed, excited. "You left me nowhere to go with that one. I have nothing to add. — Jim Butcher

When I look over my past, I see that the stages in my life are like the phases of the moon. I've had periods where I was the waxing gibbous: fat with wealth and success. There have been other seasons when my happiness was like the waning crescent and I watched my joy fade away slowly, merging with the atmosphere around me as if it never existed. Then I felt as if I was left with nothing more than an illusion, but happiness returns in time and glows once more in corpulent fullness. It's time that makes the difference. — Amy Neftzger

Nothingman" is about a troubled relationship. I wrote it before I was married.I might bring something I know from the relationship to "Nothingman," but I'm thinking about someone else going through it, someone who fucked up. I didn't fuck up. The idea is about if you love someone and they love you, don't fuck up ... 'cause you are left with less than nothing. — Eddie Vedder

I got out of the music industry many years ago. I had a charlatan for a producer who I wanted nothing to do with. He's dead now, so I guess I can't beat that horse any more. It left a very bad taste in my mouth, so I just went on about my business doing what I do and not involving myself with record companies, except for distribution. — Leon Redbone

It was then Jessica realized he wasn't using his left hand at all, and that he held the arm oddly, as though something were wrong with it. There shouldn't be except for a minor bullet wound. She'd aimed carefully, and she was an excellent markswoman. Not to mention he was a very large target.
He looked her way then, and caught her staring. Admiring your handiwork, are you? I daresay you'd like a better look. Regrettably, there's nothing to see. There's nothing wrong with it, according to the quacks. Except that it doesn't work. Still, I count myself fortunate, Miss Trent, that you didn't aim a ways lower. I'm merely disarmed, not dismanned. But I have no doubt that Herriard here will see to the emasculation. — Loretta Chase

He knew that he was very near achieving the General Temporal Theory that the Ioti wanted so badly for their spaceflight and their prestige. He knew also that he had not achieved it and might never do so. He had never admitted either fact clearly to anyone. Before he left Anarres, he had thought the thing was in his grasp.
...
He wasn't quite sure he was ready to publish. There was something not quite right, something that needed a little refining. As he had been working ten years on the theory, it wouldn't hurt to take a little longer, to get it polished perfectly smooth. The little something not quite right kept looking wronger. A little flaw in the reasoning. A big flaw. A crack right through the foundations...The night before he left Anarres he had burned every paper he had on the General Theory. He had come to Urras with nothing. For half a year he had, in their terms, been bluffing them.

Or had he been bluffing himself? — Ursula K. Le Guin

I imagine you working on me as an algebra problem, reducing me to fractions, crossing out common denominators, until there's nothing left on the page but a line that says x = whatever it is that is wrong with me. — Patricia McCormick

So long as we judge ourselves by human comparisons, there is plenty of room for self-satisfaction, and self-satisfaction kills faith, for faith is born of the sense of need. But when we compare ourselves with Jesus Christ, and through Him, with God, we are humbled to the dust, and then faith is born, for there is nothing left to do but to trust to the mercy of God. — William Barclay

Scarlett was not fond of fate. She liked to believe if she were good, good things would happen. Fate left her feeling powerless, and hopeless, and with an overall feeling of lessness. To her, fate seemed like a larger, omnipotent version of her father, stealing her choices and controlling her life without any regard for her feelings. Fate meant that nothing she did mattered. — Stephanie Garber

Happiness, thou art naught but an illusion. Thy enchantments are cast upon my eyes, my mind, my spellbound heart. Dependent upon nothing but thy victim's perception of thee, souls soar at thy artful hand! I have fallen in love with thy illusions, Happiness. Thou hast made me a part of them, and I am left delirious. — Richelle E. Goodrich

What have I left,from loving you?
Just my voice,with no sudden echo
Just my fingers,which grasp nothing
Just my skin,which seeks your hands
And above all fear,of loving you still
Tomorrow,almost dead.
Charles Aznavour — Guillaume Musso

Deferring judgement to a later date resolves nothing and all you are left with is a box of jumbled slides and a collection of knick-knacks and odds and ends. Here a face. There a sunset. — Will Ferguson

Reality isn't the most pleasant of atmospheres, Lieutenant. But we like to think we're engineered for it. It's a pretty fine piece of engineering, the kind an engineer can respect. Drag in an obsession and reality can't tolerate it. Something has to give; if reality goes, your fine piece of engineering is left with nothing to operate on. Nothing it was designed to operate on. So it operates badly. So kick the obsession out; start functioning the way you were designed to function. — Theodore Sturgeon

Asset-heavy businesses generally earn low rates of return - rates that often barely provide enough capital to fund the inflationary needs of the existing business, with nothing left over for real growth, for distribution to owners, or for acquisition of new businesses — Warren Buffett

Or consider a story in the Jewish Talmud left out of the Book of Genesis. (It is in doubtful accord with the account of the apple, the Tree of Knowledge, the Fall, and the expulsion from Eden.) In The Garden, God tells Eve and Adam that He has intentionally left the Universe unfinished. It is the responsibility of humans, over countless generations, to participate with God in a "glorious" experiment - the "completing of the Creation."
The burden of such a responsibility is heavy, especially on so weak and imperfect a species as ours, one with so unhappy a history. Nothing remotely like "completion" can be attempted without vastly more knowledge than we have today. But, perhaps, if our very existence is at stake, we will find ourselves able to rise to this supreme challenge. — Carl Sagan

When I thought you'd died - "
"Don't say it," she choked out. "You don't have to relive that."
"No," he said. "I do. I have to tell you. It was the first time - even after all these years of expecting my own death - that I truly knew what it meant to die. Because with you gone ... there was nothing left for me to live for. I don't know how my mother did it."
"She had her children," Kate said. "She couldn't leave you."
"I know," he whispered, "but the pain she must have endured ... "
"I think the human heart must be stronger than we could ever imagine."
Anthony stared at her for a long moment, his eyes locking with hers until he felt they must be one person. Then, with a shaking hand, he cupped the back of her head and leaned down to kiss her. His lips worshiped hers, offering her every ounce of love and devotion and reverence and prayer that he felt in his soul.
-Anthony & Kate — Julia Quinn

And some day there will be nothing left of everything that has twisted my life and grieved it and filled me so often with such anguish. Some day, with the last exhaustion, peace will come and the motherly earth will gather me back home. It won't be the end of things, only a way of being born again, a bathing and a slumbering where the old and the withered sink down, where the young and new begin to breathe. Then, with other thoughts, I will walk along streets like these, and listen to streams, and overhear what the sky says in the evening, over and over and over. — Hermann Hesse

I believe that some people are lost souls, with nothing left to save. But some aren't lost, and the problem is you can't tell which is which. All you can do is try to save them all, and hope none of the good ones slip away, and none of the lost ones hurt you."

Jack Prescott, in Painted Black — Debra R. Borys

That's because true travel, the kind with no predetermined end, is one of the most selfish endeavors we can possibly undertake-an act in which we focus solely on our own fulfillment, with little regard to those we leave behind. After all, we're the ones venturing out into the big crazy world, filling up journals, growing like weeds. And we have the gall to think they're just sitting at home, soaking in security and stability.
It is only when we reopen these wrapped and ribboned boxes, upon our triumphant return home, that we discover nothing is the way we had left it before. — Stephanie Elizondo Griest

They'd had fun, for sure. They laughed and enjoyed being together. But if she was painfully honest with herself, something was missing. Something in the way Tim looked at her. She remembered her mom's word. "I saw the way he looked at you ... he adores you." Maybe that was it. Tim looked at her on a surface level. He smiled and seemed happy to see her. But When Cody looked at her, there were no layers left, nothing her didn't reveal, nothing he couldn't see. He didn't really look at her so much as he looked into her. To the deepest, most real places in her heart and soul. — Karen Kingsbury

In the dark room a cloud of yellow dust flew from beneath the tool like a scatter of sparks from under the hooves of a galloping horse. The twin wheels turned and hummed. Binet was smiling, his chin down, his nostrils distended. He seemed lost in the kind of happiness which, as a rule, accompanies only those mediocre occupations that tickle the intelligence with easy difficulties, and satisfy it with a sense of achievement beyond which there is nothing left for dreams to feed on. — Gustave Flaubert

They ask me what kind of perfume I wear or how I choose a signature scent or what to wear to what occasion. The truth is, I just go into the perfumery and pick out the most beautiful smell. I sniff the scent and then see with my mind's eye the vision that it brings to my heart. If I want to wear that vision with me every day until the bottle is all used-up, then that's the perfume I'll purchase. And I do use it up until there's nothing left and only then do I go out to buy another one. Another vision for another year or two. Fragrance, to me, is about wearing a perspective on your skin. The scent itself is the vehicle by which you can be reminded of those pictures that those notes have opened in your soul. — C. JoyBell C.

A cat's paw. It's an old fable. The monkey wanted some chestnuts that were roasting in the hot coals inside the fireplace. So he convinced the cat to get them out for him, promising to share them. The cat reached his paw in and scooped out the chestnuts one by one. And as each chestnut was removed, the monkey gobbled it up. The cat was left with nothing but a burnt paw. He was used by a cleverer creature at great expense to himself." "Now — Heather Blackwood

Their world will eat at you," Mab said. "Strip you away bit by bit. Cut off from the Nevernever, you will not survive. Whether it takes one mortal year or a thousand, you will gradually fade away, until you simply cease to exist." Mab stepped closer, pointing at me with the scepter. "She will die, Ash. She is only human. She will grow old, wither and die, and her soul will flee to a place you cannot follow. And then, you will be left to wander the mortal world alone, until you yourself are only a memory.And after that-" the queen opened her empty fist "-nothing. Forever. — Julie Kagawa

Could I write an autobiographical novel, I wonder? Can one make a book out of the very essence of one's self? Perhaps so, if one was left with one's gift stripped bare of all that made it worth having, and nothing else was left ... — Vera Brittain

One of the lessons I have learned in my own life is that if you don't act on life, life has a habit of acting on you. The days slip into weeks, the weeks slip into months and the months slip into years. Pretty soon it's all over and you are left with nothing more than a heart filled with regret over a life half lived. — Robin S. Sharma

Terrifying: Jax remembered what had happened to the last Clakker to say no. They'd broken his legs, and filled his mouth with glue, and tossed him into the hellish forges of the Clockmakers' Guild. The humans had destroyed the rogue Clakker Adam, who'd been born Perjumbellagostriavantus, and made a public spectacle of it. Practically declared a citywide holiday. They had called him rogue and demon-thrall, melted his body to an alchemical slurry, and incinerated his hard-won soul until there was nothing left of it but a shiver in the spines of the human voyeurs.
Rogue. That's what they'd call Jax too, if they caught him. They'd condemn, damn, torture, and melt him. — Ian Tregillis

I'd had my heart broken, you see. Fell in love with the wrong chap and he crushed me right down to the bedrock. Nothing left but humiliation. — Deanna Raybourn