My Dark Places Quotes & Sayings

As the prospect gradually revealed itself and disclosed the scene over which the wind had wandered in the dark, like my memory over my life, I had a pleasure in discovering the unknown objects that had been around me in my sleep. At first they were faintly discernible in the mist, and above them the later stars still glimmered. That pale interval over, the picture began to enlarge and fill up so fast that at every new peep I could have found enough to look at for an hour. Imperceptibly my candles became the only incongruous part of the morning, the dark places in my room all melted away, and the day shone bright upon a cheerful landscape, prominent in which the old Abbey Church, with its massive tower, threw a softer train of shadow on the view than seemed compatible with its rugged character. — Charles Dickens

You're the light that shines on the dark places of my soul — Noelle Adams

Because you are human beings you are going to meet failure. You are going to meet disappointment, injustice, betrayal, and irreparable loss. You will find you're weak where you thought yourself strong. You'll work for possessions and then find they possess you. You will find yourself - as I know you already have - in dark places, alone, and afraid.

What I hope for you, for all my sisters and daughters, brothers and sons, is that you will be able to live there, in the dark place. To live in the place that our rationalizing culture of success denies, calling it a place of exile, uninhabitable, foreign.

From "A Left-Handed Commencement Address," Mills College 1983 — Ursula K. Le Guin

I think my soul never was in such an agony before. I felt no restraint, for the treasures of divine grace were opened to me. I wrestled for absent friends, for the ingathering of souls, for multitudes of poor souls, and for many that I thought were the children of God, in many distant places. I was in such an agony, for half an hour before sunset, till near dark, that I was all over wet with sweat: but yet is seemed to me that I had wasted away the day, and had done nothing. Oh!, my dear Savior did sweat blood for poor souls! — David Brainerd

Have you really not noticed, then, that here of all places, in this private, personal solitude that surrounds me, I have turned to you? All the memories of my youth speak to me as I walk, just as the sea shells crunch under my feet on the beach. The crash of every wave awakens far-distant reverberations within me ... I hear the rumble of bygone days, and in my mind the whole endless series of old passions surges forward like the billows. I remember my spasms, my sorrows, gusts of desire that whistled like wind in the rigging, and vast vague longings that swirled in the dark like a flock of wild gulls in a stormcloud ... On whom should I lean, if not on you? My weary mind turns for refreshment to the thought of you as a dusty traveler might sink onto a soft and grassy bank ... — Gustave Flaubert

Whenever I wore a bathing suit, I kept a sarong around my hips that went halfway down my thighs. The tops of my thighs are like baby skin. Where the sarong ended, I can see sun damage: I've got dark spots and places where there is no melanin. The spots are not pretty, so I encourage everyone to protect their skin from the sun. — Christie Brinkley

I'm not averse to making a lot of money. But where does that end? I hang out with people with hundreds of millions of dollars. Is that the standard by which I should measure myself? Where does that take you if you're in my business? I think it takes you to pretty dark, corrupt places. — Tim Ferriss

How, I wonder, staring out my hotel window into black nothingness, can Icelanders possibly be happy living under this veil of darkness? I've always associated happy places with palm trees and beaches and blue drinks and, of course, swim-up bars. That's paradise, right? The global travel industry certainly wants us to think so. Bliss, the ads tell us, lies someplace else, and that someplace else is sunny and eighty degrees. Always. Our language, too, reflects the palm-tree bias. Happy people have a sunny disposition and always look on the bright side of life. Unhappy people possess dark souls and black bile. — Eric Weiner

I'm a light sleeper. I've never been one of those people who can put their head down and suddenly everything disappears. Nighttime is the time I get most scared, anxious or worried. In those darker moments before waking or sleeping is when I feel most, I don't know, I can turn on myself, and my imagination can take me dark places. — Florence Welch

I buckle over, sobbing, my head resting against the hard shower tiles. I remember crying like this when Sukey died, the tears harsh, devouring, total. I hadn't known I was capable of being so sad, and the discovery shocked and terrified me. It was like finding an extra door in the house I'd always lived in, and opening it to find that the grief had carved out new rooms, new hallways, an entire black annex of its own. There were dark places in my mind I'd never known existed, and now that I'd seen them I knew they'd always be there, lying in wait, even when the original door had been sealed up. — Hilary T. Smith

Grab onto my arm now. Hold tight. We are going into a number of dark places, but I think I know the way. Just don't let go of my arm. And if I should kiss you in the dark, it's no big deal; it's only because you are my love. — Stephen King

I blame my generation for having neglected to teach our children that in life there are no safe places, that safety is an illusion. "Most of us, no matter what we say, are walking in the dark, whistling in the dark," Baldwin said in an interview in 1961. — Azar Nafisi

Hey, Adam," I said.
I thought you'd want to know that Warren and Darryl made it out of the vampire den alive."
I sucked in my breath. "You didn't actually agree to their meeting on Marsilia's grounds?"
He laughed. "No, it just sounded better than saying they made it out of Denny's alive. It might not be romantic, but it's open all night and set in the middle of a brightly lit parking lot with no dark places for skulking parties to ambush from. — Patricia Briggs

What did you learn?"
"Letting go of my past, because it's all soot, nothing is left
of it, if I wandered there for long I would be running in circles
in the dark, no hope, no life. And if I chose to live in those
places rebuilt from ashes, I can never get rid of the darkness
which would prevail underneath."
"The present is my ray of hope. I could have stayed there,
complaining about the gloominess of the light, and regretting
not having turned a corner to explore a new horizon at the same
time I needed to respect that light because it was my savior from
the dark. I learnt it finally and that's why I reached here today
and found you — Dixy Gandhi

I'm probably going to get in trouble for this but 'American Dad' is one of my favourite shows. It gets very dark in places but the jokes are there. — Donald Glover

Border crossings in the Balkans, where bitter wars have been waged, were not regarded as pleasurable; in many places, they weren't even possible, and one avoided them. But, while riding in the droshky and later, when we dismounted, we saw the most luxuriant orchards and vegetable gardens, dark-violet eggplants, peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, gigantic pumpkins and melons; I couldn't get over my amazement at all the different things that grew here. "That's what it's like here", said Mother, "a blessed land. And it's a civilized land, no one should be ashamed of being born here. — Elias Canetti

You are a member of my court. And as such, you answer to me. You are wise, and brave, and a joy - but we are headed into dark, horrible places where even I fear to tread. — Sarah J. Maas

Isaiah places his hands on the top of my car and leans over so that his head is level with mine. The strong scent of dark spices tickles my nose and I inhale deeply. A brief calm washes through me and somehow I know Isaiah will get me out of this. — Katie McGarry

I put on a skirt and blouse for the meeting, feeling dwarfy, my grown up, big-girl clothes never quite fitting. I'm barely five foot -- four foot, ten inches in truth, but I round up. Sue me. I'm thirty-one, but people tend to talk to me in singsong, like they want to give me fingerpaints. — Gillian Flynn

I always thought it would be really, really cool to play Edgar Allan Poe, because when I was a kid, he was one of the authors who really blew my mind open to all sorts of weird dark and twisted places. — Ezra Miller

There was a reason my first substantial role after rehab was to play a maniac whose personal story ended badly. I knew what it was like to go those dark places. I played a guy who died as a result of his abuse. — Charlie Sheen

Matthais: *Sighs* England. I'd take my Valentine to England on a tour of all the places from Jane Austen's books. Derbyshire, Mr. Darcy's house. Places like that.
Ayden: You're really milking that whole dark, brooding thing. — A&E Kirk

Oh Carrie," he breathes in my ear, "there are so many places I want to touch you."
"Above the shoulder?"
"No. Though I love your neck, and it's worth exploring more. So if I were there, I would start at your nape right where those small dark curls point into the hollow, where I can feel your goose bumps against my tongue when I bite into you. — Mary Ann Rivers

Then I played the song that hides in the center of me. That wordless music that moves through the secret places in my heart. I played it carefully, strumming it slow and low into the dark stillness of the night. I would like to say it is a happy song, that it is sweet and bright, but it is not. — Patrick Rothfuss

Research, for me, it's trying to get a mood, a mood of a place and style of people and it's also trying to boost my confidence and get the adrenalin flowing. I go off on my trips to odd places and dark corners, feeling somewhat apprehensive and nervous. — Gerald Seymour

If you make the bad guy enticing and dangerous, that's where the excitement of playing the role really kicks in. I don't get to do that in my normal day-to-day life. Life is too taxing to go to those dark places. — Tony Vincent

I'm not someone who can be depended one five days a week. Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday? I don't even get out of bed five days in a row-I often don't remember to eat five days in a row. Reporting to a workplace, where I should need to stay for eight hours-eight big hours outside my home- was unfeasible. — Gillian Flynn

I've never been in those places where I've never been and never will be, I have no share in the infinity of light-years and dark-years, but the darkness is mine, and the light, and my time is my own. — Yehuda Amichai

There's a joy in my helplessness, joy in my surrender to him, and to know that he can lose himself in me the way he wants to. I can do this. He takes me to these dark places, places I didn't know existed, and together we fill them with blinding light. Oh yes ... blazing, blinding light. -Anastasia Steele — E.L. James

But it was the second guy who caught my eye. Like the girl, he, too, paused by the door, seeming even more wary than she looked. The sunlight streaming in through the windows highlighted the rich honey in his dark chocolate brown hair, even as it cast his face in shadow. The tan skin of his arms resembled marble - hard, but smooth and supple at the same time.
He must have passed through the mist spewed up by the fountain outside, because his black T-shirt was wet in places and the damp patches clung to his skin. The wetness allowed me to see just how muscled his chest was. Oh, yeah, I totally ogled that part of him, right up until I spotted the silver cuff on his right wrist.
Given the angle, I couldn't tell what crest was stamped into the metal, but I glanced at the others, who also wore cuffs. I sighed. So they belonged to some Family then. Wonderful. This day just kept getting better. — Jennifer Estep

I was meeting a mountain. I meant to kiss her in secret. I meant to wed her under the midnight dark. The prettiest mountain you ever saw, sparkling with snow in all the right places, rich with granite and tourmaline and silver, sturdy and sensible and weathered by experience of eons. When she saw me, my mountain's pine trees bristled and the wind in her heights whistled my name. When I saw her, I felt rivers break through the rock of my heart and carve me into a new shape. — Catherynne M Valente

They're powerful, those songs. At times they've been my only way back, the only door out of the dark, bad places the black dog calls home. — Johnny Cash

Back at the cottage we explored the topography of my body; twigs in my hair, calves striped red and my skirt smudged in meadowtones. The forest underlined me, accentuated me, illustrated me. I felt alive in that midnight village whose dark places left their signatures on my skin, whose bites still hummed around my wrists. I didn't notice till then the thousand nettle stings rising like pearls; burning bracelets that my love kissed and rubbed with dock leaves; a folk remedy painting my pulse points green; honorary stalks. — Jalina Mhyana

I think in the modern world we really need to have movie theaters or places we can go in and rejuvenate ourselves. I think we'll have less problems with our souls and our health. I do that in my life, and I feel healthy and happy. I need those hours in the darkness where I used to spend time as a kid, sitting in a little closet in the darkness, listening to AM radio, having glowing paint that I illuminated, just sitting there, dreaming about anything, not being disturbed for an hour or two, just alone in the dark. I'm still that little boy in my brain. — Peter Stormare

Of all the ruinous and desolate places my uncle had ever beheld, this was the most so. It looked as if it had once been a large house of entertainment; but the roof had fallen in, in many places, and the stairs were steep, rugged, and broken. There was a huge fire-place in the room into which they walked, and the chimney was blackened with smoke; but no warm blaze lighted it up now. The white feathery dust of burnt wood was still strewed over the hearth, but the stove was cold, and all was dark and gloomy. — Charles Dickens

I know personally that when a child is abused the trajectory of that child's life is changed forever. That doesn't mean the path to happiness is impossible, but it does mean there will be detours and side roads that were never intended. Come back from those places, my friends, with lessons and compassion those on the straight road might never have the chance to learn. You are now equipped to help hurting children because you've navigated down those dark courses and made it back. Cudos to you, but also let your shoulders feel the weight of the responsibility to help others who are still lost and struggling to find their way to safety. — Toni Sorenson

I was lost in a magical mystic world as I step into the old university library. This place I would say is the birth place of the 'writer' in me and still one of my most loved places in the world. It was always peaceful there. Each and every moment I spent their searching for books or walking on unknown paths with the un-quenching thirst for knowledge, is cherished in my mind forever. The dark dusty corners all brown and the smell of old books untouched by readers for years, the quiet long walking passages between overloaded bookshelves were places where my magical world existed. — Ama H. Vanniarachchy

A boy was staring at me.
I was quite sure I'd never seen him befroe. Long and leanly muscular, he dwarfed and the molded plastic elementary school chair he was sitting in. Mahogany hair, straight and short. He looked my age, maybe a year older, and he sat with his tailbone against the edge of the chair, his posture aggresively poor, one hand half in a pocket of dark jeans.
I looked away, suddenly conscious of my myriad insufficiencies. I was wearing old jeans, which had once been tight but now sagged in weird places, and a yellow T-shirt advertising a band I didn't even like anymore. Also my hair: I had this pageboy haircut, and I hadn't even bothered to, like, brush it. Furthermore, I had ridiculously fat chipmunked cheeks, a side effect of treatment. I looked like a normally proportioned person with a balloon for a head. This was not even to mention the canckle situation. And yet-I cut a glance to him, and his eyes were still on me. — John Green

I am a fragment of a mirror whose whole design and shape I do not know. Nevertheless, with what I have - I can reflect light into the dark places of this world - into the black places in the hearts of men - and change somethings in some people. Perhaps others may see and do likewise. This is what I am about. This is the meaning of my life. — Robert Fulghum

My journey through life has led me through both light and dark places, and it's because of those experiences that I have learned how to work through my character defects and to help others do the same. — Jessie Pavelka

I do not think there is a person in this world who has been a more ardent admirer of him than I have been. His life and work have been an inspiration to the whole earth, shedding light in the dark places which so sadly needed light. His memory calls forth my most sincere homage, love, and esteem.

{Burbank on the great Robert Ingersoll, whom he admired so much that he requested Ingersoll's eulogy for his brother, Ebon Ingersoll, to be read at his own funeral} — Luther Burbank

At Cornell, my acting teacher said you cannot be religious and be an artist. I sort of got it, because faith is a comfort and art comes from a lot of places, in a lot of people, from the dark chasm. — Catherine Hicks

There's a scream that can't be silenced.It's rising, growing louder and louder. It's the scream of a child abandoned, suddenly long ago. As the scream echoed then in that alley, it echoes now in my mind. It penetrates all the dark places. It slams into the loss, bounces against the regret.. and the pain. — Tom Taylor

Before I got on full-time medication, I believed that my mental disorder was the reason I could create so much and create well, because it made me crazy. I could go to these dark places and then come out of it and just be human again. — Mary Lambert

I think I had a tendency to get stuck inside my head and go to some very dark places in my mind, and get stuck there. I couldn't see a way to get out. — Joan Osborne

I like comedy but I guess I don't think [my art] is that funny, either. It's too dark and a bit weird in places to be genuinely, uniformly hilarious and function as comedy. — David Shrigley

My constellations are not made from the stars, but from the spaces between the stars. The dark places. The open places, where your mind can travel forever and ever. — T.A. Barron

Something in her demanded victimization and terror, so she corrupted my dreams, led me into dark places I had no wish to explore. It was no longer clear to me which of us was the victim. Perhaps we were victims of one another. — Anna Kavan

I felt that something horrible was near from the moment that my foot first touched the water,' said Frodo. 'What was that thing, or were there many of them?'
'I do not know,' answered Gandalf; 'but the arms were all guided by one purpose. Something has crept, or has been driven out of dark waters under the mountains. There are older and fouler things than Orcs in the deep places of the world.' He did not speak aloud his thought that whatever it was that dwelt in the lake, it had seized upon Frodo first among all the Company. — J.R.R. Tolkien

I can suffer alone, or I can hold on to God in my pain. I can be meek and trust Him to make something good out of it. Only Jesus can heal the wounds, only Jesus can fill up those dark places with light, with understanding. Only He can quench our thirst for hope. — Susan May Warren

You should climb around inside my brain, Dan. It's like this dark room surrounded by quicksand." "I know what you mean," her brother said quietly. "I hate being in my brain sometimes. I have to get out." "What do you do?" Amy asked. Dan shrugged "I go to other places. My toes. My shoulders. But mostly here." He tapped his chest and immediately reddened. "I know. It's stupid." "Not really," Amy said. "I wish I could do that, too. — Peter Lerangis

My sleep wasn't peaceful, though. I have the sense of emerging from a world of dark, haunted places where I traveled alone. — Suzanne Collins

This darkness is for sleeping, for escape; it's where I go when the other places ache with light; this is where I curl up and close my eyes and darkness flows like lava, and I dissapear into what, into nothing, into pure dark, into what there is before there is anything else. — Leslie Pietrzyk

Imagine a man between thirty-eight and forty, tall, slim, and pale. His clothes, except for their style, looked as if they'd escaped from the Babylonian captivity. The hat was a contemporary of one of Gessler's. Imagine now a frock coat broader than the needs of his frame
or, literally, that person's bones. The fringe had disappeared some time ago, of the eight original buttons, three were left. The brown drill trousers had two strong knee patches, while the cuffs had been chewed by the heels of boots that bore no pity or polish. About his neck the ends of a tie of two faded colors floated, gripping a week-old collar. I think he was also wearing a dark silk vest, torn in places and unbuttoned.
"I'll bet you don't know me, my good Dr. Cubas," he said.
"I can't recall ... "
"I'm Borba, Quincas Borba. — Machado De Assis

If something is visceral and unsettling for me, my job is to not look away, not to punk out. Sometimes the dark things come from places inside me, experiences I've had, that need to be transformed. — Lilith Saintcrow

Gripping her wrists, he pinned her tight to the vanity. "That sex as a weapon thing can only get you so far, Tess."
Wanna bet? "I'm not damaged, cowboy. I don't have hang-ups about my body, I don't use sex to mask my problems" - much - "and right now, if you don't touch me in some very hot, very wet places, I might die. — Kate Meader

If you should ask me where I've been all this time
I have to say "Things happen."
I have to dwell on stones darkening the earth,
on the river ruined in its own duration:
I know nothing save things the birds have lost,
the sea I left behind, or my sister crying.
Why this abundance of places? Why does day lock
with day? Why the dark night swilling round
in our mouths? And why the dead? — Pablo Neruda

Of course my ex didn't walk me home. Instead I wandered, drunk, from Main Street down to the railroad tracks, lay down there and listened to the quiet world. Smoked a cigarette on my back, feeling a part of the ground, one of night's dark and lost creatures.
For as long as I can remember, this has been one of my favorite feelings. To be alone in public, wandering at night, or lying close to the earth, anonymous, invisible, floating. To be "a man of the crowd," or, conversely, alone with Nature or your God. To make your claim on public space even as you feel yourself disappearing into its largesse, into sublimity. To practice for death by feeling completely empty, but somehow still alive.
It's a sensation that people have tried, in various times and places, to keep women from feeling. — Maggie Nelson

And there she was, turning and smiling at me, at me! and there were way too many people in the theater because it was the seven o'clock show, way more people than I was comfortable with my generalized anxiety and hatred of crowded places and more people trickling in even after the show had started but I didn't care, it could have been a foxhole in the Somme being shelled by the Germans and all that mattered was her next to me in the dark, her arm beside mine. — Donna Tartt

The normal objective of my thought affords no insight into the dark places of human will and feeling. — Albert Einstein

There comes a moment when having everything seems to be the only way to squeeze even a little out of life. There comes a day when this job, this home, this town, this family all seem irritating and deficient beyond the bearable. There comes a period in life when I regret every major decision I've ever made. This is precisely the time when the spirituality of stability offers its greatest gift. Stability enables me to outlast the dark, cold places of life until the thaw comes and I can see new life in this uninhabitable place again. But for that to happen I must learn to wait through the winters of my life. — Joan D. Chittister

I wanted to lie hour after hour on a couch, pouring out the dark, secret places of my heart
do this feeling that over my shoulder sat humanity and wisdom and generosity, a munificent heart
do this until that incredibly lovely day when the great man would say to me, his voice grave and dramatic with discovery: This is you, Exley. Rise and go back into the world a whole man. — Frederick Exley

Let's get the heck out of here then. These dark empty places give me the creeps. I feel like zombies are going to spring out at any time," I said, picking up my dropped items.
"If there are zombies then we have much bigger problems," he joked.
-Cora and Noah — Andrea Heltsley

The beast which Giovanni had awakened in me would never go to sleep again; but one day I would not be with Giovanni any more. And would I then, like all the others, find myself turning and following all kinds of boys down God knows what dark avenues, into what dark places? With this fearful intimation there opened in me hatred for Giovanni which was as powerful as my love and which was nourished by the same roots. — James Baldwin

So yes I know how angry, or naive, or self-destructive, or messed up, or even deluded I sound weaving my way through these life stories at times. But beautiful things. Graceful things. Hopeful things can sometimes appear in dark places. Besides, I'm trying to tell you the truth of a woman like me. — Lidia Yuknavitch