People Walking Away Quotes & Sayings

When I die
Give what's left of me away
To children
And old men that wait to die.

And if you need to cry,
Cry for your brother
Walking the street beside you
And when you need me,
Put your arms
Around anyone
And give to them
What you need to give to me.

I want to leave you something,
Something better
Than words
Or sounds.

Look for me
In the people I've known
Or loved,
And if you cannot give me away,
At least let me live in your eyes
And not on your mind.

You can love me most
By letting
Hands touch hands
By letting
Bodies touch bodies
And by letting go
Of children
That need to be free.

Love doesn't die,
People do.
So, when all that's left of me
Is love,
Give me away — Merrit Malloy

The old gods and their magics did not dwindle away into murky memories of brownies and little fairies more at home in a Disney cartoon; rather, they changed. The coming of Christ and Christians actually freed them. They were no longer bound to people's expectations but could now become anything that they could imagine themselves to be. They are still here, walking among us. We just don't recognize them anymore. — Charles De Lint

Dad fastens his knife jacket before putting his black pea coat on. He's like a walking armoury. He has two guns on either side of his chest secured in his black shoulder holsters, an array of magazines on his belt and of course the knives. I don't need to check to know he has two more guns strapped to both his legs. With his dark coat on, dark jeans and boots, and his weapons hidden away, he looks imposing but harmless. Unsuspecting people would never think of him otherwise.
He cocks his head. "Too much?" he asks. — M. Rees

Darkness. The door into the neighboring room is not quite shut. A strip of light stretches through the crack in the door across the ceiling. People are walking about by lamplight. Something has happened. The strip moves faster and faster and the dark walls move further and further apart, into infinity. This room is London and there are thousands of doors. The lamps dart about and the strips dart across the ceiling. And perhaps it is all delirium ...
Something had happened. The black sky above London burst into fragments: white triangles, squares and lines - the silent geometric delirium of searchlights. The blinded elephant buses rushed somewhere headlong with their lights extinguished. The distinct patter along the asphalt of belated couples, like a feverish pulse, died away. Everywhere doors slammed and lights were put out. And the city lay deserted, hollow, geometric, swept clean by a sudden plague: silent domes, pyramids, circles, arches, towers, battlements. — Yevgeny Zamyatin

As they walked through the bright noon, up the sandy road with the dispersing congregation talking easily again group to group, she continued to weep, unmindful of the talk.
"He sho a preacher, mon!! He didn't look like much at first, but hush!"
"He seed de power en de glory."
"Yes, suh. He seed hit. Face to face he seed hit."
Dilsey made no sound, her face did not quiver as the tears took their sunken and devious courses, walking with her head up, making no effort to dry them away even.
"Whyn't you quit dat, mammy?" Frony said. "Wid all dese people lookin. We be passin white folks soon."
"I've seed de first en de last," Dilsey said. "Never you mind me."
"First en last whut?" Frony said.
"Never you mind," Dilsey said. "I seed de beginnin, en now I sees de endin. — William Faulkner

Our guns were still strapped onto our backs, because a gun meant life. Without it there was no life in the LRA. After crossing the water and walking for a long time, there was a whisper in my heart, telling me that if we kept the guns we would get killed.

I was learning to listen to this gentle voice that spoke to my heart. This time what was said was hard to accept. I didn't know how I would convince my friends to throw away what seemed to be their last hope. The voice would not leave me alone. It continued to whisper in my ears to drop the guns. — Grace Akallo

Pure entertainment is not an egotistical lady singing boring songs onstage for two hours and people in tuxes clapping whether they like it or not. It's the real performers on the street who can hold people's attention and keep them from walking away. — Andy Kaufman

And I want you to know that I have no intention whatever of ever walking away from the job that the people elected me to do for the people of the United States. — Richard M. Nixon

Your objective is to avoid being on a string.
The first step, I think, is to get over the fear of losing a man by confronting him. Just stop being afraid, already. The most successful people in this world recognize that taking chances to get what they want is much more productive than sitting around being too scared to take a shot. The same philosophy can be applied to dating: if putting your requirements on the table means you risk him walking away, it's a risk you have to take. Because that fear can trip you up every time; all too many of you let the guy get away with disrespecting you, putting in minimal effort and holding on to the commitment to you because you're afraid he's going to walk away and you'll be alone again. And we men? We recognize this and play on it, big time. — Steve Harvey

Listening to her, one experienced a deep uneasiness as of having avoided an urgent responsibility, like someone who, walking at night along the banks of a stream, catches a glimpse in the water of a white face or a moving limb and turns quickly away, refusing to help or to search for help. We all see the faces in the water. We smother our memory of them, even our belief in their reality, and become calm people of the world; or we can neither forget or help them. Sometimes by a trick of circumstances or dream or a hostile neighborhood of light we see our own face. — Janet Frame

Walking away from bad situations and negative people sets a healthier tone for the rest of your life. It also gives those who do not know any better the opportunity to self-correct. — Gary Hopkins

Sure, I get angry. I get very, very angry and indignant. I don't like being locked up for something I didn't do, and I don't like my liberty taken away, and I don't like being treated like
an animal, and I don't like people walking around and ogling me like I'm some sort of weirdo, because I'm not. — Ted Bundy

People ask, why hasn't that person busted out? Almost always, at the end of it, consciously or subconsciously, it hasn't happened because that person has chosen for it to not happen. Either walking away, because it wasn't the life they wanted, or through self-sabotaging. — Chris Gethard

Here in Silicon Valley, I have taken part in hundreds of conversations trying to convince people to dive in and become entrepreneurs. All too often, innovators with good, safe, jobs are unwilling to put their family's access to health care at risk by walking away from company-backed medical insurance. — Eric Ries

Sometimes people are so genuinely themselves they aren't conscious of the fact they have wronged you; sometimes you shouldn't care enough to bring it to their attention. — J'son M. Lee

I love the Autumn,
And yet I cannot say
All the thoughts and things
That make me feel this way.

I love walking on the angry shore,
To watch the angry sea;
Where summer people were before,
But now there's only me.

I love wood fires at night
That have a ruddy glow.
I stare at the flames
And think of long ago.

I love the feeling down inside me
That says to run away
To come and be a gypsy
And laugh the gypsy way.

The tangy taste of apples,
The snowy mist at morn,
The wanderlust inside you
When you hear the huntsman's horn.

Nostalgia - that's the Autumn,
Dreaming through September
Just a million lovely things
I always will remember. — Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

Stephanie glared at Skulduggery. "What was wrong with the door? You could have just come down the stairs and walked out the door. Why did you have to jump out of the window?"
"You know why," Skulduggery said, walking away.
Axle looked up, tears streaming from his eyes. "Why did he do that? Why?"
Stephanie glowered. "Because doors are for people with no imagination," she said, and led Axle to the car. — Derek Landy

Why did you have to jump out of the window?"
"You know why," Skulduggery said, walking away.
Axle looked up, tears streaming from his eyes. "Why did he do that? Why?"
Stephanie glowered. "Because doors are for people with no imagination," she said. — Derek Landy

Many nightclubs from this era were very loud and very dark. Plus some of the best ones were incredibly crowded. To begin with, I could seldom get back far enough to get people into frame from head to foot and when I could, people would be constantly walking in front of me all the time. Then I bought a 24-mm lens and only had to be four or five feet away. — Derek Ridgers

Most dancers find their confidence in dancing. Right is mere millimeters away from wrong. Failure is always louder than success. But there is an accumulation of all the things you don't do wrong, and it becomes your confidence. You can even get to the point where confidence lasts longer than the dance. Seconds at first. Then minutes. Then maybe it'll be there when you're walking into a party, or meeting people after a show. You know you have something desirable, and you know you can move. — David Levithan

A long time ago, I took a walk down a street in Harlem in New York City. I came upon a man who asked me for a dollar. He had asked a few other people before me, but they only passed him by without glancing his way. I stopped and handed the man some money. As I began to turn away, he reached out and shook my hand. He looked me in the eyes and said, "I will bless you." Now, I'm not saying that was God Himself. But how do we know that it wasn't someone working for him, walking around in disguise, just to see what we would do? — Muhammad Ali

To me, it seems unspeakably shabby to make a fuss over charity. You're walking along the street one day, the weather is so and so and you see such and such people, all of which builds up a certain mood in you. Suddenly you catch sight of a face, a child's face, a beggar's face
let's say a beggar's face
which makes you tremble. A strange sensation vibrates through your soul, and you stamp your foot and come to a halt. This face has struck an exceptionally sensitive chord in you, and you lure the beggar into an entranceway and press a ten-krone bill into his hand. If you give me away by as much as a world, I'll kill you! you whisper, and you fairly grind your teeth and shed tears of anger saying it. That's how important it is to you to remain undiscovered. And this can happen repeatedly, day after day, so that often you end up in the worst kind of scrape yourself, without a penny in your pocket ... — Knut Hamsun

Christianity is not about good people getting better. If anything, it is good news for bad people coping with their failure to be good. The heart of the Christian faith is Good News, not good advice, good technique, or good behavior. Too many people have walked away from the church, not because they're walking away from Jesus, but because the church has walked away from Jesus. — Tullian Tchividjian

I've seen too many people give up on love too fast. Walking away from relationships doesn't provide the hoped-for relief, bring solutions, or simplify life. Rather, it piles on more problems through the lingering resentment and finger-pointing. — Gary Chapman

Some people say they will not believe in anything they can't see. What a catastrophe to not have any faith at all! You live only less than a half of life, if you will only believe in the things that you can see. Life is lived by those who have much faith and believe in many unseen things. If you believe in nothing that you cannot see, think about how much there is that you choose to turn your face away from! You can't see your soul and you cannot prove that it exists, therefore if you call yourself one who believes in nothing unseen, then you will forever deny your soul its existence, for the existence of the soul dwells in love, trust, anger, passion, faith, belief, strength; the soul is forever nourished by things that are unseen! And so we have too many empty bodies walking around! Bodies with souls inside that are half-dead and dying. — C. JoyBell C.

I walk away from him. It's enormously pleasing to me, this walking away. It's like being able to make people appear and vanish, at will. — Margaret Atwood

You want people walking away from the conversation with some kernel of wisdom or some kind of impact. — Harry Dean Stanton

Years ago, when he was around fourteen, he'd been all hipped on the idea of going to India. He read books about people sitting on rocks, naked, in all kinds of weather, but mostly bad, naturally, and walking barefoot through hot coals and arriving at wisdom. I used to say that it sounded to me as though they were getting away from wisdom as fast as they could. I think he sort of looked down on me for that. — James Baldwin

I believe that that's why you see all these Pew studies that come out that a lot of people are walking away from the faith. A lot of people are changing what they believe because they really feel lied to. I think that it's very important for people to know what they're signing up for. — Kirk Franklin

In the past I had often tried to escape the grown-up world of sorrow through my imagination- dreaming that a handsome young lieutenant would ride to my rescue or that a great empresario would discover my musical talents and whisk me away. I had envisioned knights in shining armor and happily ever after scenes to escape from rules or boredom or pain; including a vision of my mother walking through our front door whole and well again. Now I knew that a lifetime of escape led to a life like Aunt Bertie's. My imagination was a gift, but I had to live in the real world. My eyes had been opened this summer to poverty and crime and abuse and I needed to use my imagination not to escape, but to help people like Irina and Katya, to make my own contribution as the women in the women's pavilion had done. I couldn't do it in the same way Jane Adams and my grandmother and Aunt Mat were, but I would find my own way and my own time. — Lynn Austin

When good people come into your life, it's not by accident. Troubles may arise, and the world seems to divide, and you may feel like walking away. Be Careful whom you close the door on, if they were meant to be in your life, you may be shutting the door to your own blessings and happiness. Live, love, and be happy.
~Gail Parker — Gail Parker

It's long past dark, and I don't see anyone walking tonight. Maybe Sundays are off-limits. Maybe my ninja girl even goes to bed and gives her swaying, beautiful hair a break. I wonder where she sneaks off to. I wonder, does she have a secret boyfriend or a favorite place? The ants say: What the hell are you doing to yourself? You'll never see her again. She lives two thousand miles away!
Then I think of Granddad and wonder why I dream about a man who is twelve thousand miles away. It makes me ask: Why do I care so much about people who are so far away from me? — A.S. King

I will miss it so," she said beside him. "This hell of a place, I will miss it so much. This fat body, walking mud puddle, deceived by everything, this impossible, ruinous accident of a world, these people who would truly rather hurt one another than eat - oh, there is nothing, nothing, nothing I would not do to stay here ten minutes longer. Oh, I will leave claw marks, I will drag mountains and forests away under my fingernails when I am dragged off. Such a stupid way to feel. I will be all dirty from clutching at this stupid planet, and the gods will laugh at me. — Peter S. Beagle

In a way, it's nice to know that there are Greek gods out there, because you have somebody to blame when things go wrong. For instance, when you're walking away from a bus that's just been attacked by monster hags and blown up by lightning, and it's raining on top of everything else, most people might think that's just really bad luck; when you're a half-blood, you understand that some devine force is really trying to mess up your day. — Rick Riordan

I love acting. It's a lot of fun work, interesting work, and you get to work with some very interesting people. But I seemed to be OK walking away from it for a little while and then coming back to it. — David Alpay

And, Evie, when you walk away from people, even strangers, you gotta know that their eyes follow you. And I'll tell you why because I've felt it myself. It's because they don't want to see the light that is Evie, the light that is you, walking away from them. They want to see it coming towards them and staying with them. — Mia Sheridan

For many people, the mortgages they took out before 2008 are so high that they would be better off walking away from their houses. That is called "jingle mail," returning the keys to the bank and saying, "You can have the house. I can buy the house next door that's just like this for 20% less, so I'm going to save money and switch." That's what someone like Donald Trump or a real estate investor would do. But the banks are trying to convince the mortgage debtors, the homeowners, not to act in their own self-interest. — Michael Hudson

Thank you for your opinion, but please note that I did not request it. When and if I desire your advice, I will ask you for it directly. Until then? I'm good to go." Then, if they keep on keeping on: "You have now entered an Asshole-Free Zone. You are puncturing my Shut The Fuck Up bubble and violating my personal airspace. As such, you are diminishing my tolerance for people who don't know when to keep their noses on their faces instead of up other people's asses. If you continue down this path, I will be forced to Taser you in the nipples. Each nipple. In turn. One after the other. Bzzt, and then bzzt. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go continue creating awesome shit while you sit here dreaming about tearing awesome shit down. Please enjoy a pair of rigidly up-thrust middle fingers as I walk away unflinchingly, like an action star slow-mo walking from an exploding building, except instead of a burning building, I'm walking away from a flaming pile of human excrement. Boom. — Chuck Wendig

I like walking heavy on these disease-ridden streets. I like walking the streets knowing that underneath my jacket is the perfect solution to any dilemma I might encounter. I look at people differently. I meet their gaze until they look away. I like taking my gun for walks. I do not believe in hope. I do not believe that people are going to someday get it together and live in peace and harmony. I don't have time for political correctness. I'm not going to try to talk my way out of a bad situation. I'm just going to shoot the fucker in the face and be done with it. — Henry Rollins

I'm a clown, which could be a public health role. I'm really interested in moving our society away from a society needing Xanax and Prozac, and that is really feeling depressed, to one that is celebrating, and so I find just walking around in colorful clothes, people smile. — Patch Adams

God is not the possession of any religion. If anything, religion can be a path away from God. God cannot be bound up inside churches, synagogues, mosques, and temples. Those are just community centers where people gather to hang out with their friends. God is no more to be found in those places than he is in rock clubs or back-alley bars. God is in the wilderness, and God is in the city. Everywhere you go God is there. God walks with you. God is you, and God is the very act of walking. — Brad Warner

He would move from city to city as he had always done, using people, soiling them like sheets and walking away, to find fresh faces and new diversions. — Robert Goolrick

If you are walking backward, away from something you think is a mistake, you may be right in supposing it is a mistake, but for you to be walking backward is never right. You know what happens to people who walk backward ... We are meant to walk forward, not backward, and reaction is always a matter of walking backward. — J.I. Packer

It's like taking a photograph containing all the people you love and suddenly some of those people purposely cut themselves out of the picture. And the gaping hole left behind is in some ways worse than death. If their absence was caused by death, you would grieve their loss. But when their absence is caused by rejection, you not only grieve their loss but you also have to wrestle through the fact that they wanted this. They chose to cut themselves out. Though you are devastated, they are possibly walking away feeling relieved. Or worse, they might even feel happy. And there you sit, staring at a jacked-up photograph that no glue in the world can fix. Normal has been taken. Not by accident. But very much on purpose by someone you never expected could be such a thief. — Lysa TerKeurst

When the world changed, people were different. Towns closed, cities were boarded up, communities abandoned, their governments collapsed. They seemed to have no qualms that were obvious to you or me about walking away from what they called a useless pile of rubbish, and never looking back. — Alexis Wright

You need to be careful of people who tell you that adventure exists at the next turn--because it turns out that they are not really walking into a story, but running away from a history that chases them throughout time. — Christopher Herz

What if she was meant to be, or could have been, someone important in my life? I think that's what scares me: the randomness of everything. That the people who could be important to you might just pass you by. Or you pass them by. How do you know ... I felt that by walking away I was abandoning [them], that I spent my entire life, day after day, abandoning people. — Peter Cameron

Pause and remember - You deserve peace! So, don't feel bad for one moment about walking away from people, jobs, and situations that keep you from having peace of mind. — Jennifer Young

If writing is the ultimate act of self-pleasure, then mine certainly qualifies as masturbatory.
Still, if you gave me a box of pens and a box of tissues, and then locked me in a room with nothing else but skin mags and blank notebooks, I'd be lying if I told you I'd run out of pens before tissues.
The nice thing about writing is that you actually get to share it with other people when you're done, which usually doesn't go over so well with spent bodily fluids, but ideally you don't want readers walking away from your book with the sneaking suspicion that they've just spent hours of their precious lives watching you masturbate.
Unless of course it's that type of publication. — Arthur Graham

I love the idea of people walking away with the idea of hope and possibility. — Sarah Paulson

I am thrilled with my fan base. For some reason some of them are quite young, so they are quite frightened. I remember when I did 'Click' and I'd see Adam Sandler's fan base. He's the guy that people feel that he's their best friend, so he's walking down the street and people sort of high five him and want to tell him a joke or invite him to come home and have a sandwich with them. Mine are not like that. Mine tend to go: 'Argh,' and look horrified. They shake and take a picture from a really long way away. I do feel I've got quite good, respectful ones though. — Colin Farrell

He thumbed quickly through the ledger and said, "When people see a cripple walking down the street, leaning on his cane, what do they feel?" Wylan looked away. People always did when Kaz talked about his limp, as if he didn't know what he was or how the world saw him. "They feel pity. Now, what do they think when they see me coming?"
Wylan's mouth quirked up at the corner. "They think they'd better cross the street."
Kaz tossed the ledger back in the safe. "You're not weak because you can't read. You're weak because you're afraid of people seeing your weakness. You're letting shame decide who you are. — Leigh Bardugo

And he came to understand that the burial of the broken wasn't eccentric - this was what people did every day, stuffing their brokenness down, pushing it down, smoothing the surface over, making the surface look like nothing was broken underneath. Because, if people see that you are broken, they will not want to stand with you. They will migrate away from you the way groups of people walking down the street will move aside when a shambling ranting man approaches. They will look at the ground and look away so that such a person becomes invisible. So if you are such a person or just an everyday person with some broken places, some places really broken, you will pull them back from view so you can mingle with others without being seen as broken. Because if you have the look of a broken thing, if you are pushed aside and turned from, you will never find your footing again in the world. — Lindsay Hill

When the boat had gone a few oar-strokes away from land they were still standing on the beach, gazing after the boy whom an unknown woman had left naked in their arms. They were holding hands, and other people gave way before them, and I could see no one except them. Or were they perhaps so extraordinary that other people melted away and vanished into thin air around them?
When I had clambered up with my bag onto the deck of the mail-boat North Star, I saw them walking back together on their way home: on the way to our turnstile-gate; home to Brekkukot, our house which was to be razed to the ground tomorrow. They were walking hand in hand, like children. — Halldor Laxness

Just so you know ... Even if I don't break it ... alot of people break their own Egg. All those adults walking around with tired faces ... they've thrown away the person they want to be. — Peach-Pit

It reminds me suddenly that in real life, Patrick and I used to fight sometimes, big and messy ... And I hadn't been scared to argue with him, because I'd never feared him walking away.
So why am I so scared to fight with Dan now? Or with anyone in my life, for that matter? I've spend the last decade thinking of myself as even-tempered and reasonable. But what if I've just been a chicken? What if I'm so terrified of losing the people I love that I've been slowly giving away pieces of myself just to avoid confrontation? — Kristin Harmel

To those who will decide if he should be tried for 'high crimes and misdemeanors' -the House of Representatives-
And to those who would sit in judgment at such a trial if the House impeaches -the Senate-
And to the man who would preside at such an impeachment trial -the Chief Justice of the United States, Warren Burger-
And to the nation ...
The President said, 'I want you to know that I have no intention whatever of ever walking away from the job that the American people elected me to do for the people of the United States.'
- Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward — Carl Bernstein

Whether it's people walking off 'The View' when Bill O'Reilly makes a statement about radical Islam or Juan Williams being fired for expressing his opinion, over-reaching political correctness is chipping away at the fundamental American freedoms of speech and expression. — Eric Cantor

Teaching ... particularly in the 1990s, teaching what is far and away the dumbest generation in American history, is the same as walking up Broadway in Manhattan talking to yourself, except instead of eighteen people who hear you in the street talking to yourself, they're all in the room. They know, like, nothing. — Philip Roth

I saw myself, sharply, as a wanderer, an adventurer, rocking through the world, unanchored.
[ ... ]
The wind of my life was blowing me away.
[ ... ]
I take the blue envelope ... and tear it slowly into many pieces, watching them dance in the wind, watching the wind carry them away. Yet as I turn and begin walking toward the waiting people, the wind blows some of them back on me. — James Baldwin

Walking away from our own lordship - or from the tyranny of our desires - has always been a narrow way. The rich young ruler who once encountered Jesus wanted a religion that would promise him his best life now, extended out into all eternity. But Jesus knew that such an existence isn't life at all, just the zombie corpse of the way of the flesh - always hungry but unable to die. Jesus came to do something else; he came to wreck our lives, so that he could join us to his. We cannot build Christian churches on a sub-Christian gospel. People who don't want Christianity don't want almost-Christianity. — Russell D. Moore

In fact, sometimes God will allow you to experience larger problems in life because He wants to unveil a larger portion of Himself to you. People who want to give up on God simply because life's scenarios don't make sense could very well be walking away from a new manifestation of God and His name in their lives. — Tony Evans

Which would prove I'm a monster, Arnie? Sacrificing the people I love for the fight? Or walking away from the fight to save the people i love? — David Wong

Inside the maize mill, the owners no longer had any use for a broom. The hungry people kept the floors cleaner than a wet mop. At the beginning of the month, the mill was packed full of those waiting for fallen scraps. The crowd would part long enough to allow women to pass with their pails of grain. As the machine rumbled and spit a white cloud of flour into the pails, the multitude of old people, women, and children watched intently with eyes dancing like butterflies. Once the pail was pulled away, they themselves on hands and knees and scooped the floor clean. Afterward, old women would rattle their walking sticks up inside the grinder as if ringing a bell, collecting the loose flour that drifted to the floor. — William Kamkwamba

Walking under Dusk, Moonlit leaf shadows were cast on my skin from the trees above, every step I took was taking a step deeper into magic. Silent whispers of mystical mouthes pulling me in deeper. Then the lights from inside the house turned on. A few seconds later, the fence lights went on. Just like that, the leafy ghosts on my skin ran away and the faery voices ran home. It seems like the creations of man kill magic in so many ways - even the light bulb does this! Oh to be a race of people designing magical things, if someone could capture pieces of Moonlight and place it in a jar; or other things like that, then we could stop killing the magic and be filled with it instead. Or maybe we are already always filled with it. It's the bringing out that we have trouble with. Stop being a doorknob, darling! Be magical, instead! — C. JoyBell C.

Young people all over the world are very frustrated. They are very disillusioned. Many of them are turning their backs on religion. They are walking away from the faith of their parents, and most of this is because religion has failed them. — Myles Munroe

She is walking several feet ahead, pretending I don't exist, but that's okay, I'm used to it, and what she doesn't know is that is doesn't faze me. People either see me or they don't. I wonder what it's like to walk down the street, safe and easy in your skin, and just blend right in. No one turning away, no one starring, no one waiting and expecting, wondering what stupid, crazy thing you'll do next
Then I can't hold back anymore, and I take off running, and it feels good to break free from the slow, regular pace of everyone else. I break free from my mind, which is, for some reason, picturing myself as dead as the authors of the books she has collected, asleep for good this time, buried deep in the ground under layers and layers of dirt and cornfields. I can almost feel the earth closing in, the air going stale and damp, the dark pressing down on top of me, and I have to open my mouth to breath. — Jennifer Niven

I decided to walk alongside Beth and the annoying little ass. It seemed right that it wouldn't be her walking toward me or me waiting for her, but us traveling on the journey together. Because sometimes, that's how love is. It isn't a man chasing a woman, it isn't a man storming the castle, and it isn't the girl waiting for love to happen. It's two people making a commitment. It's two people realizing that they hold the keys to their own happiness in their own damn hands. The problem? Most people forget that they have the power to live the fairytale. I'd forgotten I had the power, and in the end, I'd been willing to walk away from my future. — Rachel Van Dyken

There's not too many people that don't think I'm crazy, for walking away from so much money," he said. "I'm at a restaurant with my wife, it's a nice restaurant, we're eating dinner. I look across the room, I say, "You see this guy over here, across the room? He has $100 million." And we're eating the same entree. So, OK, fine, I don't have $50 million or whatever it was, but say I have $10 million in the bank. The difference in lifestyle is miniscule. — Dave Chappelle

That's the paradox: the only time most people feel alive is when they're suffering, when something overwhelms their ordinary, careful armour, and the naked child is flung out onto the world. That's why the things that are worst to undergo are best to remember. But when that child gets buried away under their adaptive and protective shells - he becomes one of the walking dead, a monster. — Ted Hughes

Sunlight played along the River Cam. People in punts happily shouted at each other to fuck off. Thin natural scientists who had spent months locked away in their rooms growing white and fishlike, emerged blinking into the light. Couples walking along the bank got so excited about the general wonderfulness of it all that they had to pop inside for an hour. — Douglas Adams

Silly that a grocery should depress one - nothing in it but trifling domestic doings - women buying beans - riding children in those grocery go-carts - higgling about an eighth of a pound more or less of squash - what did they get out of it? Miss Willerton wondered. Where was there any chance for self-expression, for creation, for art? All around her it was the same - sidewalks full of people scurrying about with their hands full of little packages and their minds full of little packages - that woman there with the child on the leash, pulling him, jerking him, dragging him away from a window with a jack-o'-lantern in it; she would probably be pulling and jerking him the rest of her life. And there was another, dropping a shopping bag all over the street, and another wiping a child's nose, and up the street an old woman was coming with three grandchildren jumping all over her, and behind them was a couple walking too close for refinement. — Flannery O'Connor

The mob dispersed, going ragged at the edges as people legged it down side alleys, threw away their makeshift weapons and emerged at the other end walking the grave, thoughtful walk of honest citizens. — Terry Pratchett

All of it pointed to a force stronger than the anxious formulas of religion: a radically inclusive love that accompanied people in the most ordinary of actions - eating, drinking, walking - and stayed with them, through fear, even past death. That love meant giving yourself away, embracing outsiders as family, emptying yourself to feed and live for others. The stories illuminated the holiness located in mortal human bodies, and the promise that people could see God by cherishing all those different bodies the way God did. They spoke of a communion so much vaster than any church could contain: one I had sensed all my life could be expressed in the sharing of food, particularly with strangers. — Sara Miles