Mistook Quotes & Sayings

He felt a fluttering inside his chest that he mistook for an air pocket - probably left from when he pushed himself through the cage. He had no way of knowing that the fluttering was a single beat from the fleeting memory of a heart. — Neal Shusterman

The original painters of angels mistook our aura of light for wings, so they depicted us with wings in their paintings, and we appear to you this way so that you will know — Doreen Virtue

He mistook, as the cleverest men often do mistake, in underrating the cruelty of women. — Ouida

He came out of nothingness, took form, was loved, was always bound to return to nothingness. Only I did not think it would be so soon. Or that he would precede us. Two passing temporarinesses developed feelings for one another. Two puffs of smoke became mutually fond. I mistook him for a solidity, and now must pay. I am not stable and Mary not stable and the very buildings and monuments here not stable and the greater city not stable and the wide world not stable. All alter, are altering, in every instant. (Are you comforted?) No. (It — George Saunders

To Amalfitano, Jordi seemed a shy and formal boy. Rosa liked his silence, which she mistook for thoughtfulness when it was really just a symptom of the confusion raging in his head. — Roberto Bolano

That our sanctification did not depend upon changing our works, but in doing that for GOD's sake, which we commonly do for our own. That it was lamentable to see how many people mistook the means for the end, addicting themselves to certain works, which they performed very imperfectly, by reason of their human or selfish regards. — Brother Lawrence

Dad mistook - for some reason unbeknownst to me - he mistook his family for a platoon of Marines. I mean, he - the exact same thing he brought to the disciplining of a squadron, a battalion, a platoon, he brought to the disciplining of his children. He ran the house - he had Saturday morning inspections for us, he had white-glove inspections for us as kids. — Terry Gross

Trouble fell like rain from the heavens, and we just couldn't get enough of it. We went around picking up the stuff and cramming our pockets full of it. Even now I can't figure out why we persisted in doing that. Maybe we mistook it for something else. — Haruki Murakami

Formerly, when religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for medicine; now, when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic. — Thomas Szasz

She put a hit on her boyfriend, so it's not like she hasn't murdered someone."
"And you know that how?" Sam asks.
I'm trying really hard to be honest, but telling the whole thing to Sam seems beyond me. Still, the fragments sound ridiculous on their own. "She said so. In the park."
He rolls his eyes. "Because the two of you were so friendly."
"I guess she mistook me for someone else." I sound so much like Philip that it scares me. I can hear the menace in my tone.
"Who?" Sam asks, not flinching.
I force my voice back to normal. "Uh, the person who killed him. — Holly Black

What do I say to a whale, Galen?" I hiss.
"Tell him to come closer."
"No way."
"Fine. Tell him to back up."
I nod. "Right. Okay." I lace my fingers together to keep from wringing my hands raw. Even more than terror, I feel the insanity of the situation. I'm about to ask a fish the size of my house to make a U-turn. Because Galen, the man-fish behind me, doesn't speak humpback. "Uh, can you please back away from me?" I say. I sound polite, like I'm asking him to buy some Girl Scout cookies.
I feel better in the few moments afterward because Goliath doesn't move. It proves Galen doesn't know what he's talking about. It proves this whale can't understand me, that I'm not some Snow White of the ocean. Except that, Goliath does start to turn away.
I look back at Galen. "That's just a coincidence."
Galen sighs. "You're right. He probably mistook us for a relative or something. Tell him to do something else, Emma. — Anna Banks

Robert Whitmore
died of apoplexy
when a stranger from Georgia
mistook him
for a former Macon waiter. — Frank Marshall Davis

The myths," says Horace in his Ars Poetica, "have been invented by wise men to strengthen the laws and teach moral truths." While Horace endeavored to make clear the very spirit and essence of the ancient myths, Euhemerus pretended, on the contrary, that "myths were the legendary history of kings and heroes, transformed into gods by the admiration of the nations." It is the latter method which was inferentially followed by Christians when they agreed upon the acceptation of euhemerized patriarchs, and mistook them for men who had really lived. — H. P. Blavatsky

Dr. Sacks treats each of his subjects - the amnesic fifty-year-old man who believes himself to be a young sailor in the Navy, the "disembodied" woman whose limbs have become alien to her, and of course the famous man who mistook his wife for a hat - with a deep respect for the unique individual living beneath the disorder. These tales inspire awe and empathy, allowing the reader to enter the uncanny worlds of those with autism, Alzheimer's, Tourette's syndrome, and other unfathomable neurological conditions. "One of the great clinical writers of the 20th century" (The New York Times), Dr. Sacks brings to vivid life some of the most fundamental questions about identity and the human mind. — Oliver Sacks

Des, who brought me things I wanted (tulips, wine) to make me do the things he wanted (love him). Nick just wanted me to be happy, that's all, very pure. Maybe I mistook that for laziness. — Gillian Flynn

He mistook my frustration for anger towards him, which seemed to be typical for us lately. The longer the distance between a correct diagnosis, the greater the silence we shared. — Tracey Berkowitz

[ ... ] under the guise of caring only for intrinsic values Osmond lived exclusively for the world. Far from being its master as he pretended to be, he was its very humble servant, and the degree of its attention was his only measure of success. He lived with his eye on it from morning till night, and the world was so stupid it never suspected the trick. Everything he did was pose - pose so subtly considered that if one were not on the lookout one mistook it for impulse. Ralph had never met a man who lived so much in the land of consideration. — Henry James

What are you? (Danger)
Well, had you listened before you stabbed me, you would have heard the 'I'm Acheron's Squire' part. Apparently that somehow escaped your hearing and you mistook me for a pin cushion. (Alexion) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

I mistook non-conformity for freedom and in so doing found myself anything but free. For it is in conformity to one's true nature that one is most becoming, in both senses of the word: well-fitted and beautiful. — Karen Swallow Prior

People at work eyed me with varying degrees of suspicion or approbation, and a couple of them mistook me for the kind of guy who knew twelve different ways to tie a scarf and whether that scarf clashed with their purse. My helpful tip that most accessories were just needless expenses met with disappointment. — Cary Attwell

It's my own fault, really. For believing in fairy tales. Not that I ever mistook them for actual historical fact, or anything. But I did grow up believing that for every girl, there's a prince out there somewhere. All she has to do is find him. Then it's on with the
happily ever after. So you can only imagine what happened when I found out. That my prince really IS one. A prince. No, I really mean it. He's an actual PRINCE. — Meg Cabot

He was ignorant, but a lot of people mistook ignorance for stupidity, and knowingness for intelligence. — Michael Lewis

Disdaining the heroic outfit, excitable in her methods, garrulous, episodical, shrill, she misled her lover much as she misled her aunt. He mistook her fertility for weakness. He supposed her "as clever as they make 'em," but no more, not realizing that she was penetrating to the depths of his soul, and approving of what she found there. — E. M. Forster

Insofar as he'd formed any opinion of her, it was that she suffered from misplaced gentility and the mistaken belief that etiquette meant good breeding. She mistook mannerisms for manners. — Terry Pratchett

You have but mistook me all the while ... I live by bread like you, taste grief, feel want, need friends. Conditioned thus how can you call me king? — William Shakespeare

She was filled with a strange, wild, unfamiliar happiness, and knew that this was love. Twice in her life she had mistaken something else for it; it was like seeing somebody in the street who you think is a friend, you whistle and wave and run after him, but it is not only not the friend, but not even very like him. A few minutes later the real friend appears in view, and then you can't imagine how you ever mistook that other person for him. — Nancy Mitford

It is said that once upon a time St. Kevin was kneeling with his arms stretched out in the form of a cross in Glendalough ... As Kevin knelt and prayed, a blackbird mistook his outstretched hand for some kind of roost and swooped down upon it, laid a clutch of eggs in it and proceeded to nest in it as if it were the branch of a tree. Then, overcome with pity and constrained by his faith to love all creatures great and small, Kevin stayed immobile for hours and days and nights and weeks, holding out his hand until the eggs hatched and the fledging grew wings, true to life if subversive of common sense, at the intersection of natural process and the glimpsed ideal, at one and the same time a signpost and a reminder. Manifesting that order of poetry where we can at last grow up to that which we stored up as we grew. — Seamus Heaney

I came to see that my quarrel was never with the Christ, but with his foolish and narrow priests who mistook their own narrowness for his. — Marion Zimmer Bradley

At 24, my head was as shiny as a cue ball on a billiard table. I naturally thought this meant curtains. Actually, I found it helped. When I was too young to play real character parts, they mistook me for older because of the bald noggin. I got juicy roles right from the start. — Frank Cady

The love of one's life was never that which you wished for or hoped for or forgot or lost or mistook; it was the partner you spent your long days with ... — Kameron Hurley

...by saying that the former was only concerned with quality, the latter only with quantity, mistook cause for effect. — Immanuel Kant

At first she mistook them for sheets of pink crepe paper that someone had crumpled and carelessly flung down the hillside, perhaps after another astonishing party at the club. A moment later she remembered her great-grandmother's words and saw that they were hosts of wild pink zephyranthes that had come up in the night after the first fall of rain. — Anita Desai

For most of the millions of people who watch TED videos at the office, it's a middlebrow diversion and a source of factoids to use on your friends. Except TED thinks it's changing the world, like if 'This American Life' suddenly mistook itself for Doctors Without Borders. — Alex Pareene

Follow your nature. The practice is really about uncovering your own pose; we have great respect for our teachers, but unless we can uncover our own pose in the moment, it's not practice - it's mimicry. Rest deeply in Savasana every day. Always enter that pratyahara (withdrawn state) every day. And just enjoy yourself. For many years I mistook discipline as ambition. Now I believe it to be more about consistency. Do get on the mat. Practice and life are not that different. — Judith Hanson Lasater

And let me speak to th' yet unknowing world How these things came about. So shall you hear Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts; Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters; Of deaths put on by cunning and forc'd cause; And, in this upshot, purposes mistook Fall'n on th' inventors' heads - all this can I Truly deliver. (5.2.371-78) The — William Shakespeare

I'm sorry we mistook emotional manipulation for love. — M..

We lived in Indian summer and mistook it for spring. — Bruce Catton

Even if there are instances in which it can be mistook by onlookers, never fool yourself into using misunderstood genius as an excuse to be a fool. — Criss Jami

Whatever plane our consciousness may be acting in, both we and the things belonging to that plane are, for the time being, our only realities. As we rise in the scale of development we perceive that during the stages through which we have passed we mistook shadows for realities, and the upward progress of the Ego is a series of progressive awakenings, each advance bringing with it the idea that now, at last, we have reached "reality"; but only when we shall have reached the absolute Consciousness, and blended our own with it, shall we be free from the delusions produced by Maya [illusion]. — Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

We mistook violence for passion, indolence for leisure, and thought recklessness was freedom. — Toni Morrison

However, little by little, I am coming to the view that what I mistook for humility was, in fact, an accurate evaluation of your worth. — Trevanian

I wrapped a movie called 'Zombieland,' in which I was constantly under assault by zombies, then flew to New York, still very much in character. With my daughter at the airport I was startled by a paparazzo, who I quite understandably mistook for a zombie. — Woody Harrelson

I mistook you for a metaphor. — Rachel Hartman

Throw away respect,
Tradition, form, and ceremonious duty;
For you have but mistook me all this while.
I live with bread, like you; feel want,
Taste grief, need friends. Subjected thus,
How can you say to me I am king? — William Shakespeare

I mistook stars reflected in a pond at night for those in the sky. — Andrzej Sapkowski

They tried to tell us that what happened to them would happen to us, too, but we could not hear the message. Mistook it for nostalgia, when they were speaking prophecy. — Brian Francis Slattery

In ancient times people mistook us for gods, but we peculiars are no less mortal than common folk. Time loops merely delay the inevitable, and the price we pay for using them is hefty - an irrevocable divorce from the ongoing present. — Ransom Riggs

I was wrong to insult you, and not only because you are my hosts. I am afraid that I mistook kindness for weakness. My apologies. I stand - only with your aid - profoundly corrected. — Beth Fantaskey

From personal experience, I completely agree that it is often easier to go for monotone sadness. When I was starting out, I wrote a gazillion short stories that ran the gamut of human suffering - drug addiction, child abuse, terminal illness, loved ones dying by all manner of misfortune, etc. In hindsight, it's clear that I mistook the power of the situation for the power of the story. — Anthony Marra

The wretchedest shantytowners we'd seen yet, they were slumped in the ashes, arranged in postures of such listless torpor that for a moment I mistook even the ones who were sitting upright for dead. Their hair and bodies were blacked with ash and grease, and their faces so afflicted with pits and scars that I wondered if they were lepers. As — Ransom Riggs

O guide my judgment and my taste,
Sweet Spirit, author of the book
Of wonders, told in language chaste
And plainness, not to be mistook.

O let me muse, and yet at sight
The page admire, the page believe;
"Let there be light, and there was light,
Let there be Paradise and Eve!"

Who his soul's rapture can refrain?
At Joseph's ever pleasing tale
Of marvels, the prodigious train,
To Sinai's hill from Goshen's vale.

The psalmist and proverbial seer,
And all the prophets sons of song,
Make all things precious, all things dear,
And bear the brilliant word along.

O take the book from off the shelf,
And con it meekly on thy knees;
Best panegyric on itself,
And self-avouch'd to teach and please.

Respect, adore it heart and mind.
How greatly sweet, how sweetly grand,
Who reads the most, is most refind'd,
And polish'd by the Master's hand. — Christopher Smart

Twice in her life she had mistaken something else for it; it was like seeing somebody in the street who you think is a friend, you whistle and wave and run after him, and it is not only not the friend, but not even very like him. A few minutes later the real friend appears in view, and then you can't imagine how you ever mistook that other person for him. Linda was now looking upon the authentic face of love, and she knew it, but it frightened her. That it should come so casually, so much by a series of accidents, was frightening. — Nancy Mitford

Sharon spoke slowly and carefully. It was, she'd found, the best way to create an illusion of shamanly wisdom, as people often mistook cautious speech for being thoughtful instead of panic-struck. — Kate Griffin

Three or four times only in my youth did I glimpse the Joyous Isles, before they were lost to fogs, depressions, cold fronts, ill winds, and contrary tides ... I mistook them for adulthood. Assuming they were a fixed feature in my life's voyage, I neglected to record their latitude, their longitude, their approach. Young ruddy fool. What wouldn't I give now for a never-changing map of the ever-constant ineffable? To possess, as it were, an atlas of clouds. I — David Mitchell

We too, through lack of knowledge and of sufficiently mature reflection, mistook the visible outward appearance of the phenomenon for the phenomenon itself. — Leon Jouhaux

Captain of our fairy band,
Helena is here at hand,
And the youth, mistook by me,
Pleading for a lover's fee.
Shall we their fond pageant see?
Lord, what fools these mortals be! — William Shakespeare

[Hayward] honestly mistook his sensuality for romantic emotion, his vacillation for artistic temperament, and his idleness for philosophical calm ... He was an idealist. — W. Somerset Maugham

The master is bringing Darwin through to examine lower life-forms, Rhoda. Straighten your spine or you'll be mistook for a mollusk. — Gregory Maguire

The man mistook American patience and attempts at diplomacy for weakness. — Joseph Badal

When I was little, I was afraid of monsters. I mistook the silhouettes flitting to and fro in the midst of the bamboo trees for ghost and other horrors. But now, I'm scared of other people, people who you imagine will just jump out form behind the brush to attack you. What age was I when I started to replace the ghosts with people? — Kinoko Nasu

Well so am I." She stared at the coverlet. "What I said ... earlier," she faltered, glancing at him and then away. "I was overwrought and tired, and I guess I kind of got carried away."
"You mistook a chill for true love? — Diana Palmer

History is nothing. It can be recycled or thrown away completely. It isn't this sacred treasure chest I mistook it to be. We were something, but history isn't enough to keep something alive forever. — Adam Silvera

Stupidity mistook itself for intelligence, whereas intelligence knew its own stupidity. — Jonathan Franzen

Satan was accustomed to say that our race lived a life of continuous and uninterrupted self-deception. It duped itself from cradle to grave with shams and delusions which it mistook for realities, and this made its entire life a sham. Of the score of fine qualities which it imagined it had and was vain of, it really possessed hardly one. It regarded itself as gold, and was only brass. — Mark Twain

My father sang well, and he was a handsome man. When he walked down the street, people sometimes mistook him for Cary Grant and asked for his autograph. — Alan Alda

Like all dreamers, I mistook disenchantment for truth. — Jean-Paul Sartre

It is an uncontrolled truth, that no man ever made an ill figure who understood his own talents, nor a good one who mistook them. — Jonathan Swift

I was near-delirious. Gazing up at the pillared skyline, I knew that I was surveying a tremendous work of man. Buying myself a drink in the smaller warrens below, in all their ethnic variety (and willingness to keep odd and late hours, and provide plentiful ice cubes, and free matchbooks in contrast to English parsimony in these matters), I felt the same thing in a different way. The balance between the macro and the micro, the heroic scale and the human scale, has never since ceased to fascinate and charm me. Evelyn Waugh was in error when he said that in New York there was a neurosis in the air which the inhabitants mistook for energy. There was, rather, a tensile excitement in that air which made one think - made me think for many years - that time spent asleep in New York was somehow time wasted. Whether this thought has lengthened or shortened my life I shall never know, but it has certainly colored it. — Christopher Hitchens

They came here on Sunday, 30th June, 1940, after bombing us two days before. They said they hadn't meant to bomb us; they mistook our tomato lorries on the pier for army trucks. How they came to think that strains the mind. They bombed us, killing some thirty men, women, and children - one among them was my cousin's boy. He had sheltered underneath his lorry when he first saw the planes dropping bombs, and it exploded and caught fire. They killed men in their lifeboats at sea. They strafed the Red Cross ambulances carrying our wounded. When no one shot back at them, they saw the British had left us undefended. They just flew in peaceably two days later and occupied us for five years. — Mary Ann Shaffer

The economics profession went astray because economists, as a group, mistook beauty, clad in impressive-looking mathematics, for truth. — Paul Krugman

She'd always been blunt, to the point that people sometimes mistook her for cold. In truth, she was one of the warmest people he had ever met. — Marcus Sakey

I was made for another planet altogether. I mistook the way. — Simone De Beauvoir

Perhaps he was merely being friendly. Perhaps he saw the look on my face and mistook it for something else. Really what I wanted was the cigarette. — Margaret Atwood

My parents mistook me for a sack of potatoes so I sat in the corner of the kitchen for the first 13 years of my life. My birth name is Thom Potatoes. — Thom Yorke

Her only worry sometimes was that she didn't look different enough, that people mistook her for part of a crowd. She'd see a girl in patterned Doc Martens or with a dyed red pixie cut and wish she had the balls. — Mark Haddon

Just like you mistook lust for love, you have mistaken with being alone for loneliness. So I'm fine. Thanks for asking. — Pleasefindthis

I was silently reciting to myself the 23rd Psalm, 'The Lord is my shepherd; I shal not want ... ' [ ... ] The man with the tinted spectacles and the man from the police department were looking at me thoughtfully. They mistook my silence as a sign of weakening. I knew I had to show courage. In fact, I felt much better for having recited the words of the psalm. I had not been so free of fear the whole evening as I was in that moment standing beside the black jeep, a symbol of repression. I lifted my head and said in a loud and firm voice, 'I'm not guilty! I have nothing to confess. — Nien Cheng

Too often, especially in democratic societies, people mistook the mechanisms of power for power itself. — L.E. Modesitt Jr.

Every year the hunters shot cows and horses and family pets and each other. And unbelievably, they sometimes shot themselves, perhaps in a psychotic episode where they mistook themselves for dinner — Louise Penny

The only permissible judgment in polite society is that no judgment is permissible. A century-long reaction against Victorian prudery, repression, and hypocrisy, led by intellectuals who mistook their personal problems for those of society as a whole, has created this confusion. It is as though these intellectuals were constantly on the run from their stern, unbending, and joyless forefathers - and as if they took as an unfailing guide to wise conduct either the opposite of what their forefathers said and did, or what would have caused them most offence, had they been able even to conceive of the possibility of such conduct. — Theodore Dalrymple

Enough human sorrow had been aired on this bench below them over the centuries for them to understand when a mother mistook a daughter for a part of herself, a part that stood for something she did not like. Two people suffer whenever that mistake is made. Blank — James Long

We had not liked each other much at first. He mistook my shyness for arrogance and I failed to see that his arrogance masked his shyness. — Michael Nava

Burns hummed, meeting Ty's eyes and trying not to smile. "You want the CIA to believe that you mistook your partner for your prisoner, handcuffed him, and delivered him to Langley?"
Ty shrugged. "I mean ... he grew a beard. It was an honest mistake."
Burns nodded. "Fair enough. — Abigail Roux

Dr. Kertesz mentioned to me a case known to him of a farmer who had developed prosopagnosia and in consequence could no longer distinguish (the faces of) his cows, and of another such patient, an attendant in a Natural History Museum, who mistook his own reflection for the diorama of an ape — Oliver Sacks

Literature is fighting for its very life because compromise is mistook for ambition, and joining up is preferred to standing out ... — Ben Marcus

My silences he mistook for a lack of wit rather than a lack of any need to speak. — Robin Hobb

Men mistook measurement for understanding. And they always had to put themselves at the center of everything. That was their greatest conceit. The earth is becoming warmer-it must be our fault! The mountain is destroying us-we have not propitiated the gods! It rains too much, it rains too little-a comfort to think that these things are somehow connected to our behavior, that if only we lived a little better, a little more frugally, our virtue would be rewarded. But here was nature, sweeping toward him-unknowable, all-conquering, indifferent-and he saw in her fires the futility of human pretensions. — Robert Harris

Mr. Gabriel Parsons led the way to the house. He was a sugar-baker, who mistook rudeness for honesty, and abrupt bluntness for an open and candid manner; many besides Gabriel mistake bluntness for sincerity. — Charles Dickens

There are many excuses for the person who made the mistake of confounding money and wealth. Like many others they mistook the sign for the thing signified. — Millicent Fawcett

A favor is a friendly, gracious, kind, generous or obliging act that is freely granted. It is offered and not solicited.
A promise is a declaration assuring that one will or will not do something. It is a vow to commit oneself by a promise to do or give. It is a pledge: to make a declaration assuring that something will or will not be done.
When you assume and mistook favor for a promise, then misunderstanding comes in.
Learn to distinguish clearly between a favor and a promise to avoid false expectations, blind hopes and deep disappointments.
Never demand on favours given.
Never impose on mistaken promises.
Never put under pressure the people who have given you favor.
Have a humble and grateful heart for both favors and promises fulfilled. — Angelica Hopes

This is how foreign grace was to her, that when she heard it she mistook it for heresy. There are some people, I am sorry to say, who wouldn't recognize grace if it stood at their door wearing a name tag. — Philip Gulley

The obsessions with eloquence and general knowledge would appear to be ones that emerged with our generation, probably in the wake of Mr Marshall, when lesser men trying to emulate his greatness mistook the superficial for the essence. — Kazuo Ishiguro

Discovering truth is a process that occurs over time, more fully with each idea or book that gets added to the equation. Sure, many of the books I read in my youth filled my head with silly notions and downright lies that I mistook for truth, but only until I read something else that exposed the lie for what it was. — Karen Swallow Prior

When a poor disconsolated drooping creature is terrified from all enjoyment,
prays without ceasing 'till his imagination is heated,
fasts and mortifies and mopes, till his body is in as bad a plight as his mind; is it a wonder, that the mechanical disturbancesof an empty belly, interpreted by an empty head, should be mistook for [the] workings [of God]. — Laurence Sterne

What people mistook for safety was in fact captivity. — Louise Penny

I mistook my free fall for freedom. — Sacha Zimmerman Scoblic

The foremost in religion is the acknowledgement of Him, the perfection of acknowledging Him is to testify Him, the perfection of testifying Him is to believe in His Oneness, the perfection of believing in His Oneness is to regard Him Pure, and the perfection of His purity is to deny Him attributes, because every attribute is a proof that it is different from that to which it is attributed and everything to which something is attributed is different from the attribute. Thus whoever attaches attributes to Allah recognises His like, and who recognises His like regards Him two; and who regards Him two recognises parts for Him; and who recognises parts for Him mistook Him; and who mistook Him pointed at Him; and who pointed at Him admitted limitations for Him; and who admitted limitations for Him numbered Him. — Anonymous

You let him go? What the devil for?"
"Something's wrong with his eyesight." Any man who mistook Miss Turner for a dockside whore had to be losing his vision. — Tessa Dare

He was only five-foot-ten, but people frequently mistook him for being over six feet, at least in part because his gigantic Afro made him appear larger than life. His thin, angular frame, which was shaped like an inverted triangle, furthered this illusion; he had narrow hips, a small waist, but impossibly wide shoulders and arms. His fingers were abnormally long and sinuous, and like the rest of him, they were a rich caramel color. His bandmates jokingly called him "The Bat" because of his preference for covering his windows and sleeping during the day, but the nickname also fit his penchant for wearing capes, which furthered his superhero appearance. — Charles R. Cross

Only now, when it is too late, do I long for Dearth. I was a misbegotten child of bad blood and bile, and I mistook my own orneriness for cleverness. I presumed to know what happiness was - something I could possess, like a marble, or a man. Something I could only find elsewhere. But just when I started to find it at home, I outfoxed myself and lost it forever. — Jane Avrich