Night When The Lights Quotes & Sayings

The best time to cry is at night, when the lights are out and someone is being beaten up and screaming for help. — Walter Dean Myers

But, along with the street lamp, everything breathes deceit. It lies all the time, this Nevsky Prospect, but most of all at the time when night heaves its dense mass upon it and sets off the white and pale yellow walls of the houses, when the whole city turns into a rumbling and brilliance, myriads of carriages tumble from the bridges, postillions shout and bounce on their horses, and the devil himself lights the lamps only so as to show everything not as it really looks. — Nikolai Gogol

They hammered on the outer gate and called, but there was at first no answer; and then to their surprise someone blew a horn, and the lights in the windows went out. A voice shouted in the dark: 'Who's that? Be off! You can't come in. Can't you read the notice: No admittance between sundown and sunrise?' 'Of course we can't read the notice in the dark,' Sam shouted back. 'And if hobbits of the Shire are to be kept out in the wet on a night like this, I'll tear down your notice when I find it. — J.R.R. Tolkien

When we pulled out into the winter night and the real snow, our snow, began to stretch out beside us and twinkle against the windows, and the dim lights of small Wisconsin stations moved by, a sharp wild brace came suddenly into the air. That's my middle-west - not the wheat or the prairies or the lost Swede towns, but the thrilling returning trains of my youth and the street lamps and sleigh bells in the frosty dark and the shadows of holly wreaths thrown by lighted windows on the snow. — F Scott Fitzgerald

What happens to a marriage? A persistent failure of kindness, triggered at first, at least in my case, by the inequities of raising children, the sacrifices that take a woman by surprise and that she expects to be matched by her mate but that biology ensures cannot be. Anything could set me off. Any innocuous habit or slight or oversight. The way your father left the lights of the house blazing, day and night. The way he could become so distracted at work that sometimes when I called, he'd put me on hold and forget me, only remembering again when I'd hung up and called back. The way he wore his pain so privately, whistling around the house after we'd had a spat, pretending nonchalance, protecting you and your sisters from discord, hiding behind his good nature, inadvertently — Jan Ellison

Of all the delectable islands the Neverland is the snuggest and most compact, not large and sprawly, you know, with tedious distances between one adventure and another, but nicely crammed. When you play at it by day with the chairs and table-cloth, it is not in the least alarming, but in the two minutes before you go to sleep it becomes very nearly real. That is why there are night-lights. — J.M. Barrie

So when their campfire was nothing but embers and the horses were dozing behind them, Ansel and Celaena lay on their backs on the side of a dune and stared up at the stars.
Her hands tucked behind her head, Celaena took a long, deep breath, savoring the balmy night breeze, the exhaustion ebbing from her limbs. She rarely got to see stars so bright - not with the lights of Rifthold. The wind moved across the dunes, and the sand sighed. "That's the stag," Celaena breathed. "The Lord of the North." ... the smile faded when she stared at the familiar constellation. "Because the stag remains constant - no matter the season, he's always there. — Sarah J. Maas

The night is nearly spent waiting for him in vain. I fear lest in the morning he suddenly come to my door when I have fallen asleep wearied out. Oh friends, leave the way open to him
forbid him not.
If the sounds of his steps does not wake me, do not try to rouse me, I pray. I wish not to be called from my sleep by the clamorous choir of birds, by the riot of wind at the festival of morning light. Let me sleep undisturbed even if my lord comes of a sudden to my door.
Ah, my sleep, precious sleep, which only waits for his touch to vanish. Ah, my closed eyes that would open their lids only to the light of his smile when he stands before me like a dream emerging from darkness of sleep.
Let him appear before my sight as the first of all lights and all forms. The first thrill of joy to my awakened soul let it come from his glance. And let my return to myself be immediate return to him. — Rabindranath Tagore

Sometimes at night, when I leave and ride by the front of the White House and the lights are on, it is so beautiful, I have some sense of, 'Hey, that's where I work, and Jimmy is President now.' But day in and day out, it's a job. — Hamilton Jordan

They were on the set of Bad Santa but I tried to keep the headphones away from them. My kids have seen Sling Blade, they've seen Armageddon, Bandits and Friday Night Lights. They have not seen Monster's Ball, nor will they ever, even when they're sixty [laughter]. I will leave it in my will that they can never see it. — Billy Bob Thornton

At night I leave the lights on in my little house and walks across the flat fields. When I look back from a distance the house is like a boat on the sea. It's really the only time I feel safe. — Will Graham

They were taken from Anacortes on a train to a transit camp - the horse stables at the Puyallup fairgrounds. They lived in the horse stalls and slept on canvas army cots; at nine p.m. they were confined to their stalls; at ten p.m. they were made to turn out their lights, one bare bulb for each family. The cold in the stalls worked into their bones, and when it rained that night they moved their cots because of the leaks in the roof. The next morning, at six A.M., they slogged through mud to the transit camp mess hall and ate canned figs and white bread from pie tins and drank coffee out of tin cups. — David Guterson

I want to be awful. I want to do awful things and why not? Dull is dull is dull is my life. Like now, it's night, not yet time for bed but too late to be outside, and the two of them reading reading reading with their eyes moving like the lights inside a copy machine. When I was helping put the dishes in the washer tonight, I broke a plate. I said sorry Ma it slipped. But it didn't slip, that's how I am sometimes, and I want to be worse. — Victor Lodato

fucking stupid to park there to begin with." "Usually the bigger worry is regular people and the media thinking they can poke around. But no marked car? Okay. There goes your deterrent. Have it your way. You got any idea why the entrance lights weren't on last night?" Marino said. "I only know that they weren't. It's in my report." "They're on now." Gusts of wind hit them like invisible waves of a stormy surf, and Marino felt as if he was about to be washed off the roof. His hands were stiff, and he pulled his sleeves over them. "Then my guess would be the killer turned them off last night," Morales said. "Kind of a strange thing to do once he's already inside the building." "Maybe he turned them off when he was leaving. So nobody would see him, in case someone was walking by, driving by." "Then you're probably not talking about Oscar doing it. Since he never left. — Patricia Cornwell

A great ring of pure & endless light
Dazzles the darkness in my heart
And breaks apart the dusky clouds of night.
The end of all is hinted in the start.
When we are born we bear the seeds of blight;
Around us life & death are torn apart,
Yet a great ring of pure and endless light
Dazzles the darkness in my heart.
It lights the world to my delight.
Infinity is present in each part.
A loving smile contains all art.
The motes of starlight spark & dart.
A grain of sand holds power & might.
Infinity is present in each part,
And a great ring of pure and endless light
Dazzles the darkness in my heart. — Madeleine L'Engle

When I lie back and close my eyes, this farthest lip of beach right next to the end of the ocean feels like being up close to an enormous breathing being, the bass drum surf thump reverberating through the sand. Living out here with no lights, alone, you would indeed become sensitive to seasons, rhythms, weather, sounds- right up next to the sea, right up under the sky, like lying close to a lover's skin to hear blood and breath and heartbeat. — Paul Bogard

At night, when no one's there, the dancers and the musicians on the walls come to life and there's a glamorous ball. Sometimes their lights are so bright I can see the glow from my bedroom. — Chris Bohjalian

I am a child of the Milky Way. The night is my mother. I am made of the dust of stars. Every atom in my body was forged in a star. When the universe exploded into being, already the bird longed for the wood and the fish for the pool. When the first galaxies fell into luminous clumps, already matter was struggling toward consciousness. The star clouds of Sagittarius are a burning bush. If there is a voice in Sagittarius, I'd be a fool not to listen. If God's voice in the night is a scrawny cry, then I'll prick up my ears. If night's faint lights fail to knock me off my feet, then I'll sit back on a dark hillside and wait and watch. A hint here and a trait there. Listening and watching. Waiting, always waiting, for the tingle in the spine. — Chet Raymo

The yachts' berth was next to the Yas Marina Circuit, where Formula 1 would come into town once a year. At night, when the lights on its orbicular architecture switched on, the circuit would radiate like a constellation of stars — Soroosh Shahrivar

Songwriting is about getting the demon out of me. It's like being possessed. You try to go to sleep, but the song won't let you. So you have to get up and make it into something, and then you're allowed to sleep. It's always in the middle of the night, or you're half-awake or tired, when your critical faculties are switched off. So letting go is what the whole game is. Every time you try to put your finger on it, it slips away. You turn on the lights and the cockroaches run away. You can never grasp them ... — John Lennon

Whenever Beauty looks,
Love is also there;
Whenever beauty shows a rosy cheek
Love lights Her fire from that flame.
When beauty dwells in the dark folds of night
Love comes and finds a heart
entangled in tresses.
Beauty and Love are as body and soul.
Beauty is the mine, Love is the diamond. — Rumi

Barrons Books and Baubles had been ransacked!

Tables were overturned, books torn from shelves and strewn everywhere, baubles broken. Even my little TV behind the counter had been destroyed.

"Barrons?" I called warily. It was night and the lights were on. My illusory Alina had told me more than an hour had passed. Was it the same night, nearly dawn? Or was it the night following our theft attempt? Had Barrons come back from Wales yet? Or was he still there, searching for me? When I'd been so rudely ripped from reality, who or what had come through those basement doors?

I heard footsteps, boots on hardwood, and turned expectantly toward the connecting doors.

Barrons was framed in the doorway. His eyes were black ice. He stared at me a moment, raking me from head to toe. "Nice tan, Ms. Lane. So, where the fuck have you been for the past month? — Karen Marie Moning

You must look for constellations in the orange city lights. View each streetlamp as a star that's simply fallen from the night. So that even tired of footsteps feel like learning how to fly, and you're never truly trapped right where the earth touches the sky. Then when your world is turned upside down, you'll know no matter where you are, that you will always have the chance to fall asleep among the stars. — Erin Hanson

I'm a firm believer that lighting affects mood, and twinkly lights on strings bring something magical to occasions ranging from concerts to weddings, though I'm fond of using them as year-round home decor. There's a reason why they're sometimes called fairy lights. When the night is right, there aren't any strings at all. — Erin Morgenstern

If there could be a little blue light on the rooftop of every home in your town where a mother is awake when you are, the town would be lit with little blue lights, coming on and off, but always lots of them. It might even help to picture it when you're feeling awake and alone in the middle of the night. — Diane Wiessinger

Before we invented civilization our ancestors lived mainly in the open out under the sky. Before we devised artificial lights and atmospheric pollution and modern forms of nocturnal entertainment we watched the stars. There were practical calendar reasons of course but there was more to it than that. Even today the most jaded city dweller can be unexpectedly moved upon encountering a clear night sky studded with thousands of twinkling stars. When it happens to me after all these years it still takes my breath away. — Carl Sagan

There are so few other things we can look at with pride,' said Allen. 'We don't have a large university that has thirty or forty thousand students in it. We don't have the art museum that some communities have and are world-renowned. When somebody talks about West Texas, they talk about football. There is nothing to replace it. It's an integral part of what made the community strong. You take it away and it's almost like you strip the identity of the people. — H. G. Bissinger

When it got to be time to design the week - a period of time, unlike the day, month, and year, with no intrinsic astronomical significance - it was assigned seven days, each named after one of the seven anomalous lights in the night sky. We can readily make out the remnants of this convention. In English, Saturday is Saturn's day. Sunday and Mo[o]nday are clear enough. Tuesday through Friday are named after the gods of the Saxon and kindred Teutonic invaders of Celtic/Roman Britain: Wednesday, for example, is Odin's (or Wodin's) day, which would be more apparent if we pronounced it as it's spelled, "Wedn's Day"; Thursday is Thor's day; Friday is the day of Freya, goddess of love. The last day of the week stayed Roman, the rest of it became German. — Carl Sagan

There's something about that tunnel that leads to downtown. It's glorious at night. Just glorious. You start on one side of the mountain, and it's dark, and the radio is loud. As you enter the tunnel, the wind gets sucked away, and you squint from the lights overhead. When you adjust to the lights, you can see the other side in the distance just as the sound of the radio fades to nothing because the waves just can't reach. Then, you're in the middle of the tunnel, and everything becomes a calm dream. As you see the opening get closer, you just can't get there fast enough. And finally, just when you think you'll never get there, you see the opening right in front of you. And the radio comes back even louder than you remember it. And the wind is waiting. And you fly out of the tunnel onto the bridge. And there it is. The city. A million lights and buildings and everything seems as exciting as the first time you saw it. It really is a grand entrance. — Stephen Chbosky

There are stars whose radiance is visible on Earth though they have long been extinct. There are people whose brilliance continues to light the world even though they are no longer among the living. These lights are particularly bright when the night is dark. They light the way for humankind. — Hannah Senesh

When a hideous man becomes a father
And a son is born to him
In the middle of the night
He trembles and lights a lamp
And runs to look in anguish
On that child's face
To see who he resembles. — Zhuangzi

So the crew fly on with no thought that they are in motion. Like night over the sea, they are very far from the earth, from towns, from trees. The clock ticks on. The dials, the radio lamps, the various hands and needles go though their invisible alchemy ... and when the hour is at hand the pilot may glue his forehead to the window with perfect assurance. Out of oblivion the gold has been smelted: there it gleams in the lights of the airport. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

I don't know when I died. It always seemed to me I died old, about ninety years old, and what years, and that my body bore it out, from head to foot. But this evening, alone in my icy bed, I have the feeling I'll be older than the day, the night, when the sky with all its lights fell upon me, the same I had so often gazed on since my first stumblings on the distant earth. For I'm too frightened this evening to listen to myself rot, waiting for the great red lapses of the heart, the tear sings at the caecal walls, and for the slow killings to finish in my skull, the assaults on unshakable pillars, the fornications with corpses. So I'll tell myself a story, I'll try and tell myself another story, to try and calm myself, and it's there I feel I'll be old, old, even older than the day I fell, calling for help, and it came. Or is it possible that in this story I have come back to life, after my death? No, it's not like me to come back to life, after my death. — Samuel Beckett

Your smile is one that goes on for miles. Your eyes shine like the brightest star in the night sky. When I see the first message you send me in the morning it lights up my day. When our lips touch I feel like I'm the luckiest guy alive. When I hold you in my arms I feel as if time freezes and nothing can tear us apart. You constantly make me smile and there's never a moment that goes by that I don't think of you. You mean the world to me and I don't know what I'd do without you in my life. I truly love you! — Richard M. Ryan

As suburban children we floated at night in swimming pools the temperature of blood; pools the color of Earth as seen from outer space. We would float and be naked - pretending to be embryos, pretending to be fetuses - all of us silent save for the hum of the pool filter. Our minds would be blank and our eyes closed as we floated in warm waters, the distinction between our bodies and our brains reduced to nothing - bathed in chlorine and lit by pure blue lights installed underneath diving boards. Sometimes we would join hands and form a ring like astronauts in space; sometimes when we felt more isolated in our fetal stupor we would bump into each other in the deep end, like twins with whom we didn't even know we shared a womb. — Douglas Coupland

I'm perpetually single. Being alone is not the same as being lonely. I like to do things that glorify being alone. I buy a candle that smells pretty, turn down the lights, and make a playlist of low-key songs. If you don't act like you've been hit by the plague when you're alone on a Friday night, and just see it as a chance to have fun by yourself, it's not a bad day. — Taylor Swift

In summer, waiting for night, we'd pose against the afterglow on corners, watching traffic cruise through the neighborhood. Sometimes, a car would go by without its headlights on and we'd all yell, "Lights!"
"Lights!" we'd keep on yelling until the beams flashed on. It was usually immediate - the driver honking back thanks, or flinching embarrassed behind the steering wheel, or gunning past, and we'd see his red taillights blink on.
But there were times - who knows why? - when drunk or high, stubborn, or simply lost in that glide to somewhere else, the driver just kept driving in the dark, and all down the block we'd hear yelling from doorways and storefronts, front steps, and other corners, voices winking on like fireflies: "Lights! Your lights! Hey, lights! — Stuart Dybek

But nothing was said about chicken farming anymore. Once, long after it was too late for farming, he might catch her crying and pet her a bit. 'What's the matter, little baby? You got a fever? You want to take the night off?' She might murmur something about candling eggs, but he wouldn't be able to understand what she meant. And after a while she cried on without knowing what she meant either, as a girl cries over a bad dream long after the dream is forgotten.
In time the tears dried. She could no longer cry over anything. All the tears had been shed, all the laughs had been had; all the long spent. Leaving nothing to do but to sit stupefied, night after night, under lights made soft beside music with a beat, to rise automatically when someone wearing pants pointed a finger and said 'that one there. — Nelson Algren

The true joy of a moonlit night is something we no longer understand. Only the men of old, when there were no lights, could understand the true joy of a moonlit night. — Yasunari Kawabata

Violet
232 books | 49 friends
see comment history Black for hunting through the night

For death and mourning the color's white

Gold for a bride in her wedding gown

And red to call enchantment down.

White silk when our bodies burn,

Blue banners when the lost return.

Flame for the birth of a Nephilim,

And to wash away our sins.

Gray for knowledge best untold,

Bone for those who don't grow old.

Saffron lights the victory march,

Green will mend our broken hearts.

Silver for the demon towers,

And bronze to summon wicked powers. — Cassandra Clare

Silences seem longer in darkness. I think it's because it's harder to lie when the lights are off. There's a rawness that only belongs to the night and the truth can't help but be set free. — Katie McGarry

But when she turned her back to the lights, she saw that the night was so dark ... She could not see the stars. The world felt as high as the depthless night sky and deeper than she could know. She understood, suddenly and keenly, that she was too small to run away, and she sat on the damp ground and cried. — Shannon Hale

When I have not rage or sorrow, and you depart from me, then I am most afraid. When the belly is full, and the mind has its sayings, then I fear for my soul; I rush to you as a child at night breaks into its parents' room. Do not forget me in my satisfaction. When the heart grins at itself, the world is destroyed. And I am found alone with the husks and the shells. Then the dangerous moment comes: I am too great to ask for help. I have other hopes. I legislate from the fortress of my disappointments, with a set jaw. Overthrow this even terror with a sweet remembrance: when I was with you, when my soul delighted you, when I was what you wanted. My heart sings of your longing for me, and my thoughts climb down to marvel at your mercy. I do not fear as you gather up my days. Your name is the sweetness of time, and you carry me close into the night, speaking consolations, drawing down lights from the sky, saying, See how the night has no terror for one who remembers the Name. — Leonard Cohen

I get lots of ideas when the lights go out at night and it gets very quiet. Sometimes they come when I first lie down to sleep; other times I wake up with an idea racing through my mind. But regardless of when an idea comes, I have made it a habit to get out of bed and write the idea down before it disappears into my dreams. You should do the same. — Zig Ziglar

Black for hunting through the night
For death and mourning the color's white
Gold for a bride in her wedding gown
And red to call the enchantment down
White silk when our bodies burn
Blue banners when the lost return
Flame for the birth of a Nephilim
And to wash away our sins.
Gray for the knowledge best untold
Bone for those who don't grow old
Saffron lights the victory march
Green to mend our broken hearts
Silver for the demon towers
And bronze to summon wicked powers
-Shadowhunter children's rhyme — Cassandra Clare

The most frustrating thing to me is when I tell people I work on 'Friday Night Lights,' they'll say, 'Oh, I hear that's a really good show.' They never watched it. — Jason Katims

Winter came and the city [Chicago] turned monochrome
black trees against gray sky above white earth. Night now fell in midafternoon, especially when the snowstorms rolled in, boundless prairie storms that set the sky close to the ground, the city lights reflected against the clouds — Barack Obama

At Night on the High Seas
At night, when the sea cradles me
And the pale star gleam
Lies down on its broad waves,
Then I free myself wholly
From all activity and all the love
And stand silent and breathe purely,
Alone, alone cradled by the sea
That lies there, cold and silent, with a thousand lights.
Then I have to think of my friends
And my gaze sinks into their eyes,
And I ask each one, silent and alone:
"Are you still mine?
Is my sorrow a sorrow to you, my death a death?
Do you feel from my love, my grief,
Just a breath, just an echo?"
And the sea peacefully gazes back, silent,
And smiles: NO
And no greetings and no answers come from anywhere. — Hermann Hesse

Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour. Which way does your beard point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely.
Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe? — Allen Ginsberg

The summer I was ten years old, there was a group of kids in my neighborhood who played together every night after dinner. I often watched them from my window ... Every night around nine-thirty or ten, those kids would get called in one by one ... I knew the first ones called were full of resentment. But they needn't have been. Nothing ever happened after they left anyway. Things just sort of ended in a slow motion way, like petals falling off a flower. You couldn't have people leave like that and have anything good happen afterward. Whoever was left couldn't pay much attention to anything other than waiting for their turn to get called in. So, it wasn't so bad to go first, to head back toward those deep yellow lights and beds made up with summer linens. It was much better than being last, when you would be left standing there alone, finally going in without anybody calling you. — Elizabeth Berg

At night, when i go to bed i still am at pains to be sure that my legs are under the blankets after the lights go out. I am not a child anymore but .. Because if a cool hand ever reached out from under the bed and grasped my ankle, i might scream. — Stephen King

Poor Williams was left holding the civic bag; he had taken a gutsy stand, his image was all moxie . . . and on Monday night, when the Angels were finally gone, he had earned the leisure that enabled him to go out to the lakefront and gaze off in a proud wistful way, like Gatsby, at the green neon lights of the tavern across the water, where the others were counting their money. — Hunter S. Thompson

I like having plans. I like keeping them. Even if said plan is to spend an uninterrupted hour watching Friday Night Lights. If I pass the day excited about solo time on the couch with a glass of wine, pad thai, and Tim Riggins, it's hard to shift gears and muster up enthusiasm for an invitation when it comes my way. — Rachel Bertsche

I don't want to live in a world where the strong rule and the weak cower. I'd rather make a place where things are a little quieter. Where trolls stay the hell under their bridges and where elves don't come swooping out to snatch children from their cradles. Where vampires respect the limits, and where the faeries mind their p's and q's. My name is Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden. Conjure by it at your own risk. When things get strange, when what goes bump in the night flicks on the lights, when no one else can help you, give me a call. I'm in the book. — Jim Butcher

Lizzie,
It's been a long time since I last saw your smile. Not just any smile-the smile that lights up your entire face, the one that's so contagious everyone around can't help but smile with you. I got to see that smile again when we spent that night in a crappy hotel room baking cookies in an Easy Bake Oven. So it only seemed right for you to keep it. I hope it will keep you smiling because you not smiling is the second thing I hate most in this world.
-Zach — Theresa Paolo

Yet when I looked from that highest of all gable windows, looked while the candles sputtered and the insane viol howled with the night-wind, I saw no city spread below, and no friendly lights gleamed from remembered streets, but only the blackness of space illimitable; unimagined space alive with motion and music, and having no semblance of anything on earth. And as I stood there looking in terror, the wind blew out both the candles in that ancient peaked garret, leaving me in savage and impenetrable darkness with chaos and pandemonium before me, and the demon madness of that night-baying viol behind me. — H.P. Lovecraft

I keep life filled and speeded up so that I can cheat myself into believing that I am happy and contented, but oh! When night comes and I go to bed and turn out the lights, I lie there in the dark, I realize the absolute futility of trying to kid myself. — Margaret Mitchell

It seemed my whole life was composed of these disjointed fractions of time, hanging around in one public place and then another, as if I were waiting for trains that never came. And, like one of those ghosts who are said to linger around depots late at night, asking passersby for the timetable of the Midnight Express that derailed twenty years before, I wandered from light to light until that dreaded hour when all the doors closed and, stepping from the world of warmth and people and conversation overhead, I felt the old familiar cold twist through my bones again and then it was all forgotten, the warmth, the lights; I had never been warm in the life, ever. — Donna Tartt

On our way back to her house, I didn't look at the city lights any longer. I looked into the sky and felt as if the moon was following us.
When I was a child, my grandmother told me that the sky speaks to those who look and listen to it. She said, "In the sky there are always answers and explanations for everything: every pain, every suffering, joy, and confusion." That night I wanted the sky to talk to me. — Ishmael Beah

Right now he's like the ocean at night- you know it's there, but even though the lights are coming on you can't see it and all you know of it is washing sound somewhere sighing in the back room of a house when they think no one is listening. — Polly Johnson

I wrote these letters in the mornings before work, in the library, during my sessions of prolonged loitering in Commons, where I remained every evening until asked to leave by the janitor. It seemed my whole life was composed of these disjointed fractions of time, hanging around in one public place and then another, as if I were waiting for trains that never came. And, like one of those ghosts who are said to linger around depots late at night, asking passersby for the timetable of the Midnight Express that derailed twenty years before, I wandered from light to light until that dreaded hour when all the doors closed and, stepping from the world of warmth and people and conversation overheard, I felt the old familiar cold twist through my bones again and then it was all forgotten, the warmth, the lights; I had never been warm in my life, ever. — Donna Tartt

The whole island was exactly what a kid growing up in some trailer park
say some dump like Tecumseh Lake, Georgia
would dream about. This kid would turn out all the lights in the trailer while her mom was at work. She'd lie down flat on her back, on the matted-down orange shag carpet in the living room. The carpet smelling like somebody stepped in a dog pile. The orange melted black in spots from cigarette burns. The ceiling was water-stained. she'd fold her arms across her chest, and she could picture life in this kind of place. It would be that time
late at night
when your ears reach out for any sound. When you can see more with your eyes closed than open. The fish skeleton. From the first time she held a crayon, that's what she'd draw. — Chuck Palahniuk

When a theater goes dark for the night, a stagehand leaves a lighted lamp on stage. No one knows why any more, but some old timers say it is to keep the ghosts away. Others say it lights the stage for the ghosts to play. Whichever theory one adheres to, most people agree: a great theater is haunted. — Emily Mann

I came to NBC on 'Friday Night Lights' and they have supported that show and found ways - unprecedented ways - to keep it on the air for a long time. And when I came to them with the idea of doing 'Parenthood,' they not only supported me in doing it but also got behind it in such a way that we were able to put together this incredible cast. — Jason Katims

Under the Walnut Tree

When I face what has left my life,
I bow. I walk outside into the cold,
rain nesting in my hair.
All the houses near me
have their lights on. Somewhere,
there is a deep listening.
I stand in the dark for a long time
under the walnut tree, unable
to tell anyone, not even the night,
what I know. I feel the darkness
rush towards me, and I open my arms. — Lynn Martin

YOU WEREN'T born choking on no silver spoon, you know how it goes when you go looking for a job and you need one: You wait in the first indifferent room, ink in the forms, apply in another room with linoleum that's waxy and squeaks and overhead lights that don't miss a thing; then there's the desk and the person behind it who thinks he's an admiral, or it's a she and she thinks she's now in line for the throne to somewhere, and next you're kissing ass and aw-shucksing toward the desk, telling how bad all your life you've been wanting to be night janitor in a chemical plant, or hog wrangler in a slaughterhouse, or pizza delivery boy, how you've laid awake in bed gettin' goose bumps just from imagining how high and wide your life might someday be lived if ever you could average five dollars and forty cents an hour. But — Daniel Woodrell

I can see others in the sunlight; I can see our boats' crews and our athletic young men on the glistening water, or speckled with the moving lights of sunlit leaves; but I myself am always in the shadow looking on. Not unsympathetically, - God forbid! - but looking on alone, much as I looked at Sylvia from the shadows of the ruined house, or looked at the red gleam shining through the farmer's windows, and listened to the fall of dancing feet, when all the ruin was dark that night in the quadrangle. — Charles Dickens

When I come out on the road of a morning, when I have had a night's sleep and perhaps a breakfast, and the sun lights a hill on the distance, a hill I know I shall walk across an hour or two thence, and it is green and silken to my eye, and the clouds have begun their slow, fat rolling journey across the sky, no land in the world can inspire such love in a common man. — Frank Delaney

Tell me have you ever wanted someone so much it hurts?
Your lips keep trying to speak, but you just can't find the words.
Well I had this dream once, I held it in my hand ...
You had me dim the lights, you danced just like a child.
The wine spilled on your dress and all you did was smile.
Yeah, it was perfect.
I hold it in my mind.
When we owned the night. — Lady Antebellum

When you put yourself out there as an expert and the people you are trying to attract are people who want to do the very show you are doing, guys standing around, sitting around arguing with each other over sports, if you make a mistake that lights up like a flare in the middle of the night. You've just got to correct that or else they're going to say, 'Well, why do these dopes have that show? I can go out there and be just as good as them.' — Tony Kornheiser

Once, I asked my mom why stars shine. She said they were
night-lights, so the angels could find their way around in Heaven.
But when I asked my dad, he started talking about gas, and somehow
I put it all together and figured that the food God served caused
multiple trips to the bathroom in the middle of the night. — Jodi Picoult

Love doesn't save, it raises you up and makes you bigger, it lights you up from inside and carves out that light like wood in the forest. It nestles in the hollows of empty days, of thankless tasks, of useless hours, it doesn't drift along on golden rafts or sparkling rivers, it doesn't sing or shine and it never proclaims a thing. But at night, once the room's been swept and the embers covered over and the children are asleep
at night between the sheets, with slow gazes, not moving or speaking
at night, at last, when we're weary of our meager lives and the trivialities of our insignificant existance, each of us becomes the well where the other one can draw water ... — Muriel Barbery

When I had a look at the lights of Broadway by night, I said to my American friends : What a glorious garden of wonders this would be, to any who was lucky enough to be unable to read — G.K. Chesterton

When you use force, people get hurt, and when you kill people, their relatives don't like it. And usually war has some unanticipated consequences so it's something you shouldn't launch into, on the expectation that this is going to rally the nation. This is not like 'Friday Night Lights'. — Wesley Clark

As a child, I felt that Hallowe'en was a time when creatures of the night suddenly came to life - we would turn off all the lights in the house and let flickering candlelight conjure up scary shadows and create the effect of imaginary figures lurking in dark corners. — Pippa Middleton

There is a definite romance that buzzes and ticks and takes you by the elbow when Christmastime arrives in the city. It's something about the lights. The way the wreaths dress up the streetlamps. How everyone seems to commute home at night with much more purpose, and I often found myself wondering what they were barreling back for. If it was a tree that needed to be decorated, or cookies needing to be frosted, or just someone worth holding all winter long. — Hannah Brencher

That night I was alone in my room with the lights off. The radio was on and I was staring at the ceiling. I couldn't sleep much at night anymore because that was when the hollow, empty feeling was the worst. At night there's nothing to hold your mind to the earth, and you spend the entire time falling into an abyss. The only cure is the rising of the sun. — Damien Echols

When the main crowd of worshipers reached the short bridge spanning the pond, the ragged sound of honky-tonk music assailed them. A barrelhouse blues was being shouted over the stamping of feet on a wooden floor. Miss Grace, the good-time woman, had her usual Saturday-night customers. The big white house blazed with lights and noise. The people inside had forsaken their own distress for a little while. Passing near the din, the godly people dropped their heads and conversation ceased. Reality began its tedious crawl back into their reasoning. After all, they were needy and hungry and despised and dispossessed, and sinners the world over were in the driver's seat. How long, merciful Father? How long? A stranger to the music could not have made a distinction between the songs sung a few minutes before and those being danced to in the gay house by the railroad tracks. All asked the same questions. How long, oh God? How long? — Maya Angelou

We walked at night towards a cafe blooming with Japanese lanterns and I followed your white shoes gleaming like radium in the damp darkness. Rising off the water, lights flickered an invitation far enough away to be interpreted as we liked; to shimmer glamourously behind the silhouette of retrospective good times when we still believed in summer hotels and the philosophies of popular songs. — Zelda Fitzgerald

Remember when you told your sister how scared you were of monsters under your bed? Hah. Hah! She scared you good when she hid under there and jumped out when you got up to go pee after the lights were turned off that night! — L.R.W. Lee

Tin Win sat at an open window, his head buried in his hands. She called his name, but he did not react. With a shrill whistle blast, the engine started to move. Su Kyi walked along beside the window. The train picked up speed. The wheezing grew louder and stronger. She started to run. Stumbled. Bowled into a man, jumped over a basket of fruit. Then the platform came to an end. The two rear lights shone like tiger's eyes in the night. Slowly they vanished behind a gentle curve. When Su Kyi turned around the platform was empty. — Jan-Philipp Sendker

I think of the hundreds of lights dancing across the night sky. "I knew you were watching. I know it sounds stupid, but I felt you with me, and then when you sent that letter describing that night ... " I drop off, unable to find the right words to explain the emotion. — Katie McGarry

Night calls to the sandhills and gathers them under her. She pushes away cities because their sharp lights hurt her soft breast. Even candles make a sore place when they stick in the night. — Lola Ridge

When you think of the former high school football star, you think 6-foot-2, white, meathead as the model for that kind of character. Since I'm not 6-foot-2 or white, I just thought about what I could bring to it. I thought about Smash Williams from 'Friday Night Lights,' like the cocky quarterback, and played around with that. — Donald Glover

I changed my headlights the other day. I put in strobe lights instead! Now
when I drive at night, it looks like everyone else is standing still ... — Steven Wright

Sudden Light
I have been here before,
But when or how I cannot tell:
I know the grass beyond the door,
The sweet keen smell,
The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.
You have been mine before,
How long ago I may not know:
But just when at that swallow's soar
Your neck turn'd so,
Some veil did fall, - I knew it all of yore.
Has this been thus before?
And shall not thus time's eddying flight
Still with our lives our love restore
In death's despite,
And day and night yield one delight once more? — Dante Gabriel Rossetti

From this distance, in the dimness, the model looked surreal, made up of parts filled with buildings, bordered by long stretches of empty space. It reminded me of the way cities and towns look when you are flying at night. You can't make out much. But the places where people have come together, and stayed, are collections of tiny lights, breaking up the darkness. — Sarah Dessen

Always, from the first time he went there to see Eros and the lights, that circus have a magnet for him, that circus represent life, that circus is the beginning and the ending of the world. Every time he go there, he have the same feeling like when he see it the first night, drink coca-cola, any time is guinness time, bovril and the fireworks, a million flashing lights, gay laughter, the wide doors of theatres, the huge posters, everready batteries, rich people going into tall hotels, people going to the theatre, people sitting and standing and walking and talking and laughing and buses and cars and Galahad Esquire, in all this, standing there in the big city, in London. Oh Lord. — Samuel Selvon

When I stepped out of my car the night shot up like a tree and branched wide into blossoming masses of stars. Under their far cold lights I felt weak and little. If a fruit fly lived for one day instead of two, it hardly seemed to matter. Except to another fruit fly. — Ross Macdonald

The test of total independence comes each night when the bedroom door closes behind you, the lights go out and all that there is to keep you company in the infinite darkness are your thoughts. — Jon Richardson

And Shanghai is amazing. I'm a fan of science fiction so when you're there in the night with all the lights and all this modernity, it's like a set in a movie. — Berenice Marlohe

Ever since we crawled out of that primordial slime, that's been our unifying cry, 'More light.' Sunlight. Torchlight. Candlelight. Neon, incandescent lights that banish the darkness from our caves to illuminate our roads, the insides of our refrigerators. Big floods for the night games at Soldier's Field. Little tiny flashlights for those books we read under the covers when we're supposed to be asleep. Light is more than watts and footcandles. Light is metaphor. Light is knowledge, light is life, light is light. — Diane Frolov

I let myself feel good for no reason. I let joy happen right there and then, and it's inside me and around me, it's the lights on the road ahead, the clean black of the night, the cold air coming through the window. It's like hearing a song for the first time and being struck by it, haunted by it, wanting to hunt it down and catch it, because the song sums up something you didn't know you wanted to say, giving you chills and goose bumps. But even as you find out what it's called, and you're thinking you'll download it, you've already lost. Because the feeling was right then and there and it's already fading like a dream.
You just have to see those times for what they are: a chance to look down at your life. And when you do, you see it's a skin made up of shiny little moments. — Kirsty Eagar

This is the one thing I hope: that she never stopped. I hope when her body couldn't run any farther she left it behind like everything else that tried to hold her down, she floored the pedal and she went like wildfire, streamed down night freeways with both hands off the wheel and her head back screaming to the sky like a lynx, white lines and green lights whipping away into the dark, her tires inches off the ground and freedom crashing up her spine. — Tana French

Moon, O Moon, how wondrous are you among God's many works! You shine with majesty and brilliance, a thousand times more brightly than the brightest star! You were created on the same day as the sun. You give light just as the sun gives light. But your light, O Moon, is even more important than the light of the sun. The sun is nearly superfluous, for it lights the daytime when we hardly need it. By day, the world is bright and we can already see clearly all that surrounds us. The wonder of your light, O Moon, comes by night when it is dark so that you are a lamp for our feet and a beacon for our eyes. Moon, O Moon, how wondrous you are! — Seymour Rossel

I've always thought that Boathouse Row looked best at night, when hundreds of electric lights outline the shape of each building, truning them into fantastic postcard themes. I knew, however, from many visits to Boathouse Row, that at the same time, armies of rats were holding maneuvers in the basements. — Brad Alan Lewis