Night Bus Quotes & Sayings

I was on a bus once, it was in the middle of the night, and I had a box of crackers and a can of Easy Cheese. It was dark, and it was a surprise how much cheese I had applied on each cracker. That's why they should have a glow-in-the-dark version of Easy Cheese. It's not like the product has any integrity to begin with. If you buy a room-temperature cheese that you squeeze out of a can, you probably won't get mad because it glows in the dark too. — Mitch Hedberg

"Who Remembers the Armenians?"

I remember them
and I ride the nightmare bus with them
each night
and my coffee, this morning
I'm drinking it with them

You, murderer -
Who remembers you? — Najwan Darwish

Leaning close enough for me to count his whiskers, he mines my vag for oil and says softly, "You do what you gotta do, and so will I. We're heading to the bus. When we get there, I need you humping my face. Breathing is optional. Orgasms are mandatory. You don't leave until you squirt at least twice. Understand?"

I try in vain to catch my breath. "We may be in for a long night."

The corner of his mouth twitches into a smile, and he slows his strokes. "I hope so. — Kendall Grey

I pretty much live on my tour bus.I do well around 300 shows a year. A lot of times I will do two shows a night. — Larry The Cable Guy

Go and get a job. Go and find a flat. Find somebody else. Put them in the flat. Make them stay. Get a toaster. Go to work. Get on the bus. Look at your boss. Say, "fuck". Sit down. Pick up the thing. Go blank. Scream internally. Go home. Listen to the radio. Look at the other person. Think, "WHY? Why did this happen?". Go to bed. Lie awake! At night! Get up. Feel groggy. Put the things on - your clothes - whatever they're called. Go out the door, into work - same thing! Same people, again, it's real, it is happening, to you. Go home again! Sit, Radio, Dinner - mmm, GARDENING, GARDENING, GARDENING, death! — Dylan Moran

Most poor people are not on welfare ... I know they work. I'm a witness. They catch the early bus. They work every day. They raise other people's children. They work every day. They clean the streets. They work every day. They drive vans with cabs. They work every day. They change beds you slept in these hotels last night and can't get a union contract. They work every day ... — Jesse Jackson

The killing happened amid an outburst of deadly violence across the District that claimed six lives in six days. The victims include a community news reporter who police said was waiting for a bus when she was shot by someone aiming at another person; and a motorist killed when a passenger opened fire from another vehicle on the Anacostia Freeway. The killings bring the District's homicide count to 50, up from 45 at this time last year. At Friday night's vigil, Gliss's pastor, Bishop Melvin G. Brown of Greater New Hope Baptist Church, acknowledged national attention on police use of deadly force. But he urged mourners to address dangers closer to home. "Can we be real tonight?" Brown said. "Most of the violence, most of the killing comes from us killing other folk. Young black folk killing other young black folk. — Anonymous

Unburdening, she'd told Laurie about a vision she'd had when she was four or five years old. Unable to sleep on Christmas Eve, she'd tiptoed downstairs and seen a fat bearded man standing in front of her family's tree, checking items off a list. He wasn't wearing a red suit - it was more like a blue bus driver's uniform - but she still recognized him as Santa Claus. She watched him for a while, then snuck back upstairs, her body filled with an ecstatic sense of wonder and confirmation. As a teenager, she convinced herself that the whole thing had been a dream, but it had seemed real at the time, so real that she reported it to her family the next morning as a simple fact. They still jokingly referred to it that way, as though it were a documented historical event - the Night Meg Saw Santa. — Tom Perrotta

This was the night bus, not a Journey song. Two strangers were not on a midnight train going anywhere. I was going home, and he was probably going to knock over a liquor store. — Jenn Bennett

One of my fun road trips was [when] a group of guys and I rented a tour bus and we started in Orlando and drove all the way around the country going to baseball games. That was an awesome trip because each night we would go to a new baseball stadium, watch a baseball game, get in the bus, wake up [in] the next city, go to another baseball game. We did this for a little while and it was great. We called that trip the Rats on the Bus and it was a fun trip. — Alfonso Ribeiro

He [Sir Alex Ferguson] used to play tapes of Bill Shankly talking. I remember that and a singer he liked. I don't know who it was but it was crap. He played it on the team bus too, and all the boys hated it. Until one night it got chucked away. If he's still wondering who threw that tape off the bus, it was me. So maybe he was right and I'm not to be trusted ... — Gordon Strachan

But about the drip drip of long-haul, no-end-in-sight solitude, they know nothing. They don't know what it is to construct an entire weekend around a visit to the laundrette. Or to sit in a darkened flat on Halloween night, because you can't bear to expose your bleak evening to a crowd of jeering trick-or-treaters. Or to have the librarian smile pityingly and say, 'Goodness, you're a quick reader!' when you bring back seven books, read from cover to cover, a week after taking them out. They don't know what it is to be so chronically untouched that the accidental brush of a bus conductor's hand on your shoulder sends a jolt of longing straight to your groin. — Zoe Heller

If you bring somebody into the band you are going to be with them a lot whether it's in the studio, on the tour bus, or at dinner every night; you want somebody you enjoy being around. You don't want an annoying guy . — John Petrucci

The road was wet with rain, black and shiny like oilskin. The reflection of the street lamps wallowed like yellow jelly-fish. A bus was approaching - a bus to Piccadilly, a bus to the never-never land - a bus to death or glory.
I found neither. I found something which haunts me still.
The great bus swayed as it sped. The black street gleamed. Through the window a hundred faces fluttered by as though the leaves of a dark book were being flicked over. And I sat there, with a sixpenny ticket in my hand. What was I doing! Where was I going?
("Same Time, Same Place") — Mervyn Peake

Thursday, the-night-of-the-date, comes and goes, leaving a school bus tire track across Desi's heart, fear abrading her mind until she can think of nothing except what the future will be like if something develops between her dad and Libby. — Sara Stark

Earth to Beatrix: This was the night bus, not a Journey song. Two strangers were not on a midnight train going anywhere. I was going home, and he was probably going to knock over a liquor store. When — Jenn Bennett

Fourth Floor, Dawn, Up All Night Writing Letters
Pigeons shake their wings on the copper church roof
out my window across the street, a bird perched on the cross
surveys the city's blue-grey clouds. Larry Rivers
'll come at 10 AM and take my picture. I'm taking
your picture, pigeons. I'm writing you down, Dawn.
I'm immortalizing your exhaust, Avenue A bus.
O Thought, now you'll have to think the same thing forever! — Allen Ginsberg

You know how they say Black Flag got in a van, and they brought punk rock to the world? The Strokes got on a bus, and they brought "downtown cool" to the world. Along with the Internet, they were changing everything, not just music. They were changing attitudes. The Strokes were making New York travel with them. I saw kids in Connecticut and Maine and Philadelphia and DC looking like they had just been drinking on Avenue A all night. Sixteen-year-old kids in white belts and Converse Chuck Taylors with the greasy hair - hair that had been clean a week ago. Those kids had probably never even smelled the inside of a thrift store before Is This It came out. They found a band that they wanted to be like. They found their band. APRIL — Lizzy Goodman

Most people don't see half of what's in front of them. Your visual cortex does a shit load of imaging processing before the signal even gets to your brain, whose priorities are still checking the ancestral Savannah for dangerous predators, edible berries and climable trees. That's why a sudden cat in the night can make you jump and some people when distracted, can walk right out in front of a bus. Your brain just isn't interested in those large moving chunks of metal or the static heaps of brightly colored stuff that piles up in drifts around us. Never mind all that, says your brain, it's those silent fur-covered merchants of death you've got to watch out for. — Ben Aaronovitch

On weekdays, as soon as she picked Bela from the bus stop and brought her home, she went straight into the kitchen, washing up the morning dishes she'd ignored, then getting dinner started. She measured out the nightly cup of rice, letting it soak in a pan on the counter. She peeled onions and potatoes and picked through lentils and prepared another night's dinner, then fed Bela. She was never able to understand why this relatively unchallenging set of chores felt so relentless. When she was finished, she did not understand why they had depleted her — Jhumpa Lahiri

Hotel bars are pretty good. No one bothers me there. Restaurants are safe. People are quite respectful when you're eating. But what I never do now is go to a busy bar on the weekend, or after 8 o'clock at night. That's the danger zone. Also being trapped. Never go on the Metro, or a bus. — Ricky Gervais

I can't stop some idiot from crashing into a building or blowing up a bus, I can only be your dad and give you a few pure truths. Number one, duct tape will save your life. Number two, Tupac is alive, but I need you to keep that on the DL because of Suge. And number three, don't be afraid of anything - except the television news because they're lying to you every night. — Christopher Titus

And the bell jangled, the driver started. The bus whirled off, to the last stop, the lonely room, the lonely night. — Brian Moore

What I really love is touring on a bus with my band playing shows every night and feeling the audience, feeling the presence of people actually listening to my music. Feeding my soul is what touring feels like for me and I absolutely refuse to have a bad time doing something I really, really love. — Christina Perri

I'll never forget that first night with the team. Going to the ballpark on the bus was the hardest 30 minutes of my life. I had to walk down that aisle between all the players. I really didn't know too much about the Detroit Tigers at that time. — Al Kaline

A couple of minutes later, and the tram started to climb up from Alfama, the streets widened, heavy traffic and Lisboetas about their normal hum-drum business. We skipped off at a busy triangle where three roads converged. A handful of shoppers and workers waited in the small yellow bus shelters, or smoked against the trees that would fringe the diamond with shade when summer came again. Taxi drivers drank coffee from paper cups and ribbed an old guy shaving in his cab. Just another normal day rolling around; no problem, and life trips along no matter who dies in the night. — Gerard Cappa

Why did I obsess over people like this? Was it normal to fixate on strangers in this particular vivid, fevered way? I didn't think so. It was impossible to imagine some random passer-by on the street forming quite such an interest in me. And yet it was the main reason I'd gone in those houses with Tom: I was fascinated by strangers, wanted to know what food they ate and what dishes they ate it from, what movies they watched and what music they listened to, wanted to look under their beds and in their secret drawers and night tables and inside the pockets of their coats. Often I saw interesting-looking people on the street and thought about them restlessly for days, imagining their lives, making up stories about them on the subway or the crosstown bus. — Donna Tartt

I received an award for 25 million in [album] sales the night before the bus accident [in 1990]. — Gloria Estefan

Every night, it's a bakery on the bus. It's a curse, because I talk about how much I love cake, people bring me cake. And now I just found out I'm diabetic, so I'm like, are you kidding me?! — Gabriel Iglesias

I can write a song in the back of the bus, where I am right now, or in my living room, and I can perform it that night and have an instant reciprocal exchange - an emotional, impactful exchange - and it's a less technical medium. It's a pure expression from my soul to other souls. — Juliette Lewis

They would not get closer to the truth that night. They watched a period of hockey in silence. Winkler insisted on doing the dishes. Herman insisted on driving him to the bus stop. — Anthony Doerr

For every album, I look at where I'm at in my career and think of a title that kind of represents that. And for me, 'Night Train' was kind of a metaphor for where things have gone, from being on one bus with 12 other guys, pulling a trailer my first few years on the road, to now. We're out here with six or seven buses and eight or nine semis. — Jason Aldean

The wind howled about the bus, and the wipers slooshed heavily back and forth across the windshield, smeering the city into a red and yellow neon wetness. It was early afternoon, but it looked like night through the glass — Neil Gaiman

Last night they had said and done all those things, and now they were like strangers in a bus queue. The mistake she had made was to fall asleep and break the spell. — David Nicholls

Tupper, I think in The Victor. Alf was a working class, whippet-thin runner known as the Tough of the Track who won all his races despite having been up all night making briquettes to save a friend's business, missing his bus to the stadium, being knocked over mid-race by a poncy upper-class twit and losing one of his raggedy running shoes. — Douglas Skelton

I love being a gypsy and getting on the bus with the band making sounds for the people who love and enjoy a night of Americana and good times. — Shelby Lynne

On the night bus, I felt as though parts of other people were going into parts of me I didn't even know existed. I felt like I was being more intimate with members of the night-bus community than I'd ever been with anyone in my whole life. — Helen Fielding

I thought I was going to die a few times. On the Freedom Ride in the year 1961, when I was beaten at the Greyhound bus station in Montgomery, I thought I was going to die. On March 7th, 1965, when I was hit in the head with a night stick by a State Trooper at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, I thought I was going to die. I thought I saw death, but nothing can make me question the philosophy of nonviolence. — John Lewis

The young man walks by himself, fast but not fast enough, far but not far enough (faces slide out of sight, talk trails into tattered scraps, footsteps tap fainter in alleys); he must catch the last subway, the streetcar, the bus, run up the gangplanks of all the steamboats, register at all the hotels, work in the cities, answer the wantads, learn the trades, take up the jobs, live in all the boardinghouses, sleep in all the beds. One bed is not enough, one job is not enough, one life is not enough. At night, head swimming with wants, he walks by himself alone. — John Dos Passos

I was very young, and I kind of decided I wanted to do comedy. My parents were musicians, so we traveled on a tour bus. You're in a different town every night; as a kid, you're trying to make friends fast. You try to be funny. — Trevor Moore

When the bus or the plane rolled or flew through the night, they sang songs of their own composition about Mr Nixon and the Republicans in chorus with the Kennedy staff and felt that they, too, were marching like soldiers of the Lord to the New Frontier. — Theodore White

It hit us all of a sudden, one night after one of these mouth-marathons, that anyone who has a complaint ought to have to qualify and be certified first. I mean, here's somebody who thinks it's just awful about the dirty water and the foul air. What is he doing about the solid waste he creates in his own house? What kind of poison-factory is he driving, and does he keep it running in such a way as to minimize the junk it puts into the air? Does he support government people he knows are corrupt, or by apathy just let them go on corrupting? The more we heard this kind of crap from these hobby gripers, the more we felt that a man should qualify to complain, just as he has to qualify to drive a bus or cut an appendix or run a ferryboat. Or vote. And if we were going to be honest about it, we had to look at ourselves. Point a finger at anybody and you'll find you have three fingers pointing at you. — Theodore Sturgeon

Emma, your granddad's on the line," says Artemis, putting her hand over the receiver. "Something about the night bus and he'll never trust you again? — Sophie Kinsella

An empty bus hurtles through the starry night
Perhaps the driver is singing
and happy because he sings. — Gunter Grass

Since neither of us needs sleep we take night buses, sharing earphones and listening to knitting podcasts. If anyone else on the bus notices anything about us they assume it's because they're drunk. I've — Helen Oyeyemi

What do I want?" His fingers brushed over loose strands of hair near my temple. "I want to call you every five minutes. I want to text you good night every night. I want to make you laugh. And I want you to look at me like you did that first night on the bus. — Jenn Bennett

Wouldn't it be terrible if you'd spent all your life doing everything you were supposed to do, didn't drink, didn't smoke, didn't eat things, took lots of exercise, all the things you didn't want to do, and suddenly one day you were run over by a big red bus, and as the wheels were crunching into you you'd say 'Oh my god, I could have got so drunk last night!' That's the way you should live your life, as if tomorrow you'll be run over by a big red bus. — Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother

Goodbye Syn.

That man at the end of the bar; that was the kind of man that lured you to his bed at night and fucked you senseless, but then beat the shit out of you the next morning, because in the harsh light of day, he wasn't gay. Furi knew that type of man all too well. As he walked the half-block to the bus stop, his blood cooled at the horrific memories of the last year as he lit a Marlboro and waited for the next bus. He didn't need to dredge up old horror stories, he had to get his mind right ... he had an early shoot in the morning. — A.E. Via

I was happy to find out that when on tour, Dolly Parton doesn't use hotels but stays on her bus every night, to the point of having her buses shipped from Austria to Australia so she can tour the way she sees fit. I used one of her buses once - an honor. — Henry Rollins

And then we would leave, and by that time it would already be dark, and as we headed to the bus or the subway or went walking home, we would eat our sandwiches, enjoying the Mexico City night, which I've always thought is gorgeous, the nights here are mostly cool and bright but not cold, nights made for walking or fucking, nights made for talking. — Roberto Bolano

I was just finishing up my drink then I was off to get the night bus.' Carol grinned. 'Your sophistication never ceases to amaze me. What's wrong with a taxi?' 'You get a better class of nutter on the night bus. I blend in perfectly — Val McDermid

We had eight inches of snow last night. In any other part of the country, that would mean a snow day. Not in Syracuse. We never get snow days. It snows an inch in South Carolina, everything shuts down and they get on the six o'clock news. In our district, they plow early and often and put chains on the bus tires. — Laurie Halse Anderson

Lying in his parents' house, in the middle of the night, she told him the whole story, about meeting Dimitri on a bus, finding his resume in the bin. She confessed that Dimitri had gone with her to Palm Beach. One by one he stored the pieces of information in his mind, unwelcome, unforgivable. And for the first time in his life, another man's name upset Gogol more than his own. — Jhumpa Lahiri

Seymour once said to me - in a crosstown bus, of all places - that all legitimate religious study must lead to unlearning the differences, the illusory differences, between boys and girls, animals and stones, day and night, heat and cold. — J.D. Salinger

Do I as a Christian understand myself? Do I know my own real identity? My own real destiny? I am a child of God, God is my Father; heaven is my home; every day is one day nearer. My Saviour is my brother; every Christian is my brother too. Say it over and over again to yourself first thing in the morning, last thing at night, as you wait for the bus, any time when your mind is free, and ask God that you may be enabled to live as one who knows it is all utterly and completely true. For this is the Christians secret of the Christian life, of a God-honouring life. — J.I. Packer

How could they have forgotten the importance of today's date? My brain screamed at me as, with shaking fingers, I climbed the stairs to the bus, before making my way to the back, out of sight. My birthday, like the norm, happens on the same date every year. Therefore, the confused part of my brain argued, how could they have all simply forgotten this fact and acted so "normal" when I entered the kitchen this morning?
They may have been abducted by aliens in the night? This was a voice from the incomprehensible area of my mind. Consequently, their behaviour would make complete sense then!
Furthermore, answered another voice from the same ridiculous compartment, they could've simply gone to bed last night fine and then awoken the next morning with amnesia? Sometimes, these things happen unexpectedly. Adele Rose, Awakening. — Adele Rose

In order to get the worst possible first impression of Los Angeles one should arrive there by bus, preferably in summer and on a Saturday night. — Christopher Isherwood

We're all about trying to play better every night, not just singing hit songs ... we ad lib, and every night there's jamming .. it's almost like the Grateful Dead meets Buck Owens some nights, because we'll go off on little adventures and sometimes we do crash the bus! ... — Brad Paisley

Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note

Lately, I've become accustomed to the way
The ground opens up and envelopes me
Each time I go out to walk the dog.
Or the broad edged silly music the wind
Makes when I run for a bus...

Things have come to that.

And now, each night I count the stars.
And each night I get the same number.
And when they will not come to be counted,
I count the holes they leave.

Nobody sings anymore.

And then last night I tiptoed up
To my daughter's room and heard her
Talking to someone, and when I opened
The door, there was no one there...
Only she on her knees, peeking into

Her own clasped hands — LeRoi Jones

Do you remember the summer we signed you up for camp? And the night before you left, you said you've changed your mind and wanted to stay home? I told you to to get a seat on the left side of the bus, so when you pulled away, you'd be able to look back and see me there waiting for you." I press her hand against my cheek, hard enough to leave a mark. "You get that same seat in Heaven. One where you can watch me, watching you. — Jodi Picoult

In theory, I would like to lead a transparent life. I wold like my life to be as clear as a new pane of glass, without anything shameful and no dark shadows. I would like that. But if I am completely honest, I have to acknowledge secrets too painful to even tell myself. There are things I consider in the deep dark of night, secret terrors. Why are they secrets? I could easily tell either of my parents how I feel, but what would they say? Don't worry, darling, we will do our best never to die? We will never ever leave you, never contract cancer or walk in front of a bus or collapse of old age? We will not leave you alone, not ever, to navigate the world and all of its complexities without us? — Meg Rosoff

He'd been toting it, and checking it, and packing and unpacking, all the way since fate was on the river - that's how long - the Big River - Fate Marable and his riverboat caliope (Cleo seemed to recall), who hadastonished the landings between New Orleans and St. Louis with the wild, harsh, skirling Gypsy music, and left there, echoing in the young and restless even as it dies off round the bed; to linger with them thereafter, in the pelting roar of November midnights and the clickety-clack of lonesome valley freights, until they up one night and go after it in a battered bus, following the telephone wires that make a zigzag music staff against the evening sky - some variation of that basic beginning could be told for everyone who jazz has touched and altered. — John Clellon Holmes

I couldn't miss the irony, not as a forty-two-year-old native of the segregated South, still fighting to earn respect in the color-conscious world of American business. How often had my parents and grandparents, other family members and friends, and I myself been directed to the back door of a bus, a restaurant, or a theater because we were considered second class, even after paying a first-class price for service! But that night we were treated to courtesies that even President Nixon could not enjoy: entering through the lobby, approaching the front desk, quietly registering, and being assisted to our room by the highly trained wait staff. A familiar portion of a Bible verse came to mind. The last shall be first and the first last (Matt. 20:16). — John Barfield

I sleep equally well in a soft bed or on the grass beside the road. If I am given food and shelter, fine. If not, I'm just as happy. Many times I am given shelter by total strangers. When hospitality is not available there are always bus depots, railroad stations and all night truck stops ... When no shelter is available to me, I sleep in the fields or by the side of the road with God to guard me. — Peace Pilgrim

It's more about when you come back from being out somewhere; in a minicab or a night bus, or with someone, or walking home across London late at night, dreamlike, and you've still got the music kind of echoing in you, in your bloodstream, but with real life trying to get in the way. I want it to be like a little sanctuary. It's like that 24-hour stand selling tea on a rainy night, glowing in the dark. It's pretty simple. — Burial

There are times when you don't belong and you think you're going to kill yourself. Once I went to a hotel. Later that night I made a plan. The plan was I would leave my family when my second child was born. And that's what I did. I got up one morning, made breakfast, went to the bus stop, got on a bus. I'd left a note. I got a job in a library in Canada. It would be wonderful to say you regretted it. It would be easy. But what does it mean? What does it mean to regret when you have no choice? It's what you can bear. There it is. No-one's going to forgive me. It was death. I chose life. -Laura Brown- — Michael Cunningham

She recalled how Pauline had fallen off a bus one night, late, went skidding into Creedmoor. In a novel, it would have portended the fall they were all about to take — Alice McDermott

One of the fears of having too much work is not having time to observe. And once you get recognised, there is nowhere for you to look any more. You can't sit on a night bus and watch it all happen. — Benedict Cumberbatch

Still having nightmares? I've got something for that. Panic attack on the school bus? This should do the trick. Can't sleep? Let's up the dosage. All those pills were making me fat and stupid, and I was still miserable, getting only three or four hours of sleep a night. — Ransom Riggs

The bus roared through Indiana cornfields that night; the moon illuminated the ghostly gathered husks; it was almost Halloween. I made the acquaintance of a girl and we necked all the way to Indianapolis. She was nearsighted. When we got off to eat I had to lead her by the hand to the lunch counter. She bought my meals; my sandwiches were all gone. In exchange I told her long stories. — Jack Kerouac

Don't waste your time trying to look all bad at me. See, I know you, man," Howard said. "School Bus Sam. Mr. Fireman. You go all heroic, but then you disappear. Don't you? It kind of comes and goes with you. Everyone last night is all, 'Where's Sam? Where's Sam?' And I had to say, 'Well, kids, Sam is off with Astrid the Genius because Sam can't be hanging out with regular people like us. Sam has to go off with his hot blond girlfriend.'"
"She's not my girlfriend," Sam said, and instantly regretted it.
Howard laughed, delighted to have provoked him. "See, Sam, you always got to be in your own little world, too good for everyone, while me and Captain Orc and our boys here, we're always going to be around. You step away, and we step up. — Michael Grant

Her body is thin beneath the gray robe. She has high cheekbones and long eyelashes, and when she lets her hair down at night, it hangs in waves over her shoulders. But she must hide that beauty in Abnegation. We walk together to the kitchen. On these mornings when my brother makes breakfast, and my father's hand skims my hair as he reads the newspaper, and my mother hums as she clears the table - it is on these mornings that I feel guiltiest for wanting to leave them. The bus stinks of exhaust. Every time it hits a patch of uneven pavement, it jostles me from side to side, even though — Veronica Roth