Quotes & Sayings About Putting Off Love

I love Christmas tree bulbs, and I started putting them in my paintings. You've got to plug this painting in, and it's got a rig in the back, so that each one can be replaced if it burns out. — David Lynch

I started doing theatre, and that's when I really fell in love with the profession; I learned a lot. It felt a bit weird to go from living in New York on Broadway to university, so I kept putting it off. Then, eventually, I had to give up the place. — Bel Powley

Love is putting another person before yourself. Love means doing what's best for the other person, no matter what it means for you. Love is always there. Time can only strengthen love. You can only love someone else if they allow you to and it applies to yourself. To be loved, you must place trust in another person. — Lindsay Paige

Love. He recoiled from the very idea. He knew all about love: love was following his best friend around school like a lost puppy, putting up with all manner of shit just to be near him. Love was sobbing himself to sleep night after endless night because the guy who'd taken his virginity hadn't called him back. Love was a thousand shattered dreams and a flood of memories that made him cringe. Love could fuck off. — Kate Aaron

To me, hearing that those girls gave my brother Eric a blow job sounded very nice.
History shows that all boys consider blow job to be a nice-sounding set of words.
I thought a blow job was putting your face in front of an air conditioner, which is something all nine-year-old boys love to do, even though Eric did not look like he had been cooled off very much. — Andrew Smith

We rode back from Richmond decorously side by side on the top of a bus. It was as though my left side (her side) burned and was so to speak dissolving into steam, or gases. Other people may often have experienced this secret journeying with the intention of sex at the end, but I was new to it, as I was new to what Fulla had done to my skin and bone-marrow, my fingers and toes, not to mention the most obvious part, or parts of me. I could have stroked her, or gripped her, or licked her, all that long way back, but putting it off, waiting, keeping still, looking uninterested, was so much more exciting ... — A.S. Byatt

I will fall in love with any golf course that you have to drive the ball straight. You understand what I'm saying? That's my advantage. My advantage wasn't putting. In fact, I wasn't even a great putter or a good putter. — Lee Trevino

Work is love made visible. And what is it to work with love? the poet Khalil Gibran wrote. In the hospital, working with love sometimes requires putting people in danger. — Theresa Brown

I would like, then, to end by putting in a good word for the non-industrious poor. At least they aren't hurting anyone. Insofar as the time they are taking time off from work is being spent with friends and family, enjoying and caring for those they love, they're probably improving the world more than we acknowledge. — David Graeber

It's about risking everything. Putting your heart on the line, even when you don't know what's going to happen. It's risking having the person you love rip it out and stomp all over it in public. — Susan Mallery

It is quite funny really when you think that probably I would have married him if he'd been at all clever about it. But instead of putting it to me as a sensible business proposition he would drag in all this talk about love the whole time, and I simply can't bear those showerings of sentimentality. Otherwise I should most likely have married him ages ago. — Nancy Mitford

But we often put our loves out of order. If someone tells you something in confidence and then you blab it as good gossip at a dinner party, you are putting your love of popularity above your love of friendship. If you talk more at a meeting than you listen, you may be putting your ardor to outshine above learning — David Brooks

No sooner would such a temptation present itself than I would smother it. The effect was of snuffing out a candle, two candles, a row of twenty, until the lens pulled back to reveal an entire votive stand exhaling a hundred thin lines of smoke as a terraced offering before the shrine. In this religion hidden lights had been declared superior to those that glared. Somewhere I was storing up merit, accumulating the credit I'd need to buy, one day, the salvation I longed for. Until then (and it was a reckoning that could be forestalled indefinitely, that I preferred putting off) I'd live in that happiest of all conditions: the long but seemingly prosperous courtship. It was a series of tests, ever more arduous, even perverse. For instance, I was required to deny my love in order to prove it. — Edmund White

Bass bands, flags, banners, parades, and monster demonstrations are no different in principle from ecclesiastical processions, cannonades, and fireworks to scare off demons. Only, the suggestive parade of State power engenders a collective feeling of security which, unlike religious demonstrations, give the individual no protection against his inner demonism. Hence he will cling all the more to the power of the State, i.e., to the mass, thus delivering himself up to it psychically as well as morally and putting the finishing touch to his social depotentiation. The State, like the Church, demands enthusiasm, self-sacrifice, and love, and if religion requires or presupposes the "fear of God," then the dictator State takes good care to provide the necessary terror. — C. G. Jung

People love their animals so much so that they put little clothes on them and necklaces and booties and things like that. And if you love your animal, then you should feed them something that's not dangerous for them. There's a lot of poisonous stuff that they're putting in a lot of that food, those by-products. — Ellen DeGeneres

Stories don't teach us to be good; it isn't as simple as that. They show us what it feels like to be good, or to be bad. They show us people like ourselves doing right things and wrong things, acting bravely or acting meanly, being cruel or being kind, and they leave it up to our own powers of empathy and imagination to make the connection with our own lives. Sometimes we do, sometimes we don't. It isn't like putting a coin in a machine and getting a chocolate bar; we're not mechanical, we don't respond every time in the same way ...
The moral teaching comes gently, and quietly, and little by little, and weighs nothing at all. We hardly know it's happening. But in this silent and discreet way, with every book we read and love, with every story that makes its way into our heart, we gradually acquire models of behaviour and friends we admire and patterns of decency and kindness to follow.
Philip Pullman from his Award Lecture, Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award Recipient 2005 — Philip Pullman

The same chemicals were used in the cooking as were used on the composition of her own being: only those which caused the most violent reaction, contradiction, and teasing, the refusal to answer questions but the love of putting them, and all the strong spices of human relationship which bore a relation to black pepper, paprika, soybean sauce, ketchup and red peppers. — Anais Nin

I really look forward to putting on a record. I love writing music and think that may be my strong suit even more than singing. I can't wait to take that music on tour and share it with as many people as I can. — James Wolpert

Are you loving having these great iconic stories back as much as I am? 'One Life' is back in action and I love putting my 'Blair on' again. — Kassie DePaiva

I'm really thirsty to go on tour! I love putting on a show. If the crowd ain't acting bougie, I love performing. — Dreezy

Pop music can absorb so many peculiar talents, ranging from the completely nonmusical poseur who just uses music as a kind of springboard for a sense of style, to people who just love putting all that complicated stuff together, brick by brick, on their computers, to people like me who like playing conceptual games and being surprised. — Brian Eno

Get your sticky fingers away from my cookies," Ben ordered, without turning his head, to see Jaxton trying to steal one from the cooking tray.
"You weren't saying that last night," Jaxton retaliated, coming up to Ben's side, to give him a nudge. They were both smiling, while looking down at the counter, where Ben was making his delicious rosemary cookies. "In fact, I seem to remember you grabbing my sticky fingers and putting them in your mouth," he teased, speaking quietly, so that Lyon wouldn't hear them at the other side of the room.
Ben turned to Jaxton and abandoned his baking, to catch his face in flour covered hands and plant a deep kiss on his lips.
Jaxton opened his mouth, in acceptance of his kiss.

~ From the Heart — Elaine White

I took her face in my hands and tilted it up so I could stare into her eyes. "Listen to me. My reacting to someone putting their hands on you is not me being dramatic; it's me loving you."
"Oh, Romeo," she sighed my name and my cock hardened.
I pulled her into my chest and wrapped my arms around her. "Being an asshole is just part of my charm, baby," I said matter-of-fact, unable to keep the smile out of my voice. "This is just me loving you."
"You love real good," she mumbled against my chest, pushing a little closer. — Cambria Hebert

There are hundreds of reasons for Daniel and me
to be impossible. History has not been kind
to two boys who love each other like we do.
But putting that aside. And not even considering
the fact that a hundred and fifty years ago,
his family was in a small town in Russia
and my family was in a similarly small town
in Ireland- I can't imagine they could have
imagined us here, together. Forgetting our gender,
ignoring all the strange roads that led to us
being in the same time and place, there is still
the simple impossibility of love. That all of our
contradicting securities and insecurities,
interests and disinterests, beliefs and doubts,
could somehow translate into this common
uncommon affection should be as impossible
as walking to the moon. But instead, I love him. — David Levithan

I'm very domestic; I love cleaning. I love cooking. I like waiting on people. I just like to make things. I don't break that down to be weakness, or the only things women can do, or putting me back 20 years. — Amy Sedaris

Putting love first means knowing that the universe supports you in creating the good, the holy, and the beautiful. It means knowing that you're on the earth for a purpose, and that the purpose itself will create opportunities for its accomplishment. — Marianne Williamson

People would ask, "Why don't you put her in a nursing home?" I always answered, "I feel it is my responsibility, because she's my wife and Heather's mother. I love her and it's my job to take care of her for as long as I physically and mentally can."
Every day, I would rush home at lunch, prepare her something to eat and drive her around a little, too. She loved to ride in the car and that seemed to keep her smiling. By late October, she had really gone down. We were playing Ole Miss in Oxford, in a game that is probably best remembered for David Palmer replacing an injured Jay Barker and putting on a show that had Heisman voters buzzing.
Sadly, what I remember most was getting off the team plane and calling home. Charlotte didn't answer and I began to panic and started calling some of our neighbors. I finally reached one of the neighbors and she went to the house and found Charlotte just staring ahead. I don't think Charlotte ever answered the phone again. — Mal Moore With Steve Townsend

I'm the last person to tell you that you need a guy to make you happy. But if you're not moving on because you're afraid you'll hurt David, maybe you need to remember that you're hurting Tamani by not moving on, and you might be hurting David by not letting him move on. If
and I'm not saying you should choose him, but if
you really love Tamani, and you keep putting him off because of David, by the time you're finally ready to be with him, you may find that he's moved on. That's all I'm going to say ... — Aprilynne Pike

The two of you, there's something uncanny about the way you two are with each other. I mean everything
the way you look at each other, the way she relaxes when you put your hand on her back, the way you both seem to know what the other is always thinking, it's always struck me as extraordinary. That's another reason I keep putting marriage off. I know I want something like what you two share, and I'm not sure I've found it yet. I'm not sure I ever will. And with love like that, they say anything's possible, right? — Nicholas Sparks

Her lips are like pillows of warm glass. It is strange to find her resistant for even a second, since she has been the kisser and not the kissed. It wasn't like the last time, which felt fumbling and unnatural. That time wasn't off-putting, just like kissing one's sister. This kiss, my kiss, was tingling sweetness, electric apple blossoms. — Thomm Quackenbush

As a quarterback, you have to love it. As much as you like to turn around and hand the ball off - the whole traditional football game - as a quarterback, you gotta love putting it in the air. — Joe Montana

Because I'm Irish, I've always done an accent. Not doing an accent is off-putting because I sound like me. I love doing an accent. Doing the accent from West Virginia was great, and we had to get specific with it. — Eve Hewson

A woman who dreams of a good home with a man who holds for her only a poor love is putting a $50 saddle on a $20 horse. She'd be far better off single than riding with him. — Nancy E. Turner

I know it's none of my business, but I really wouldn't let her put you off. So you don't understand sex and love and women. Just means you were born with a cock. And this girl? Naomi? She seems like she's worth putting a little effort into it. You know?"
"Yeah," Holden said. Then: "Can we never talk about that again?"
"Sure. — James S.A. Corey

New Rule: Stop putting all those pillows on the bed. Attention, interior designers, hotel maids, and real housewives of New Jersey: It's a bed, not an obstacle course. I'm sorry, baby, I'd like to make sweet love to you all night long, but by the time I get all that crap off your bed, I'm exhausted. A bed needs only two pillows: one to put my head on, and one to cuddle with and pretend it's Robert Pattinson. — Bill Maher

Milton on speed. I am going to need about a decade to think about that. That delay in syntax, the putting off of the click of the sentence into itself, is something that has always intrigued me. I love the emotional effect of it, and never want it to be merely a gesture. Sometimes I try it and it doesn't work, so I have to put the poem aside, and try again, more simply and more strange. — Matthew Zapruder

His heart, he said, had been the guide of his intellect." "That is just what I would fain believe. But, O Wynnie! the pity of it if that story should not be true, after all!" "Ah, my love!" I cried, "that very word makes me surer than ever that it cannot but be true. Let us go on putting it to the hardest test; let us try it until it crumbles in our hands, - try it by the touchstone of action founded on its requirements. — George MacDonald

Worrying about what does not yet exist, is that a gesture of love or the worst kind of argument putting pressure on the living, an excess of scrupulous conscience? For fear of soiling our hands, we prefer to cut them off right now. [...] How far can responsibility go without turning into an abstraction? To extend it to all coming generations is to empty it of its meaning, to put a titanic weight on our shoulders. By being accountable for everything, we are accountable for nothing. We can receive no pardon for our errors, since those who would be in a position to grant it have not yet been born! A vicious circle: isn't sacrificing people today for the benefit of those to come also a way of penalizing the latter [...]? — Pascal Bruckner

Falling out of love is like losing weight. It's a lot easier putting it on than taking it off. — Aretha Franklin

You might think, 'I've got time to follow my dreams.' You don't have time. Life is short. The current life expectancy is 24,869 days. While some of us will live more days and some fewer, either way you have only a precious number of days to live this life, and so you do not have time to put off your dreams. It is now or never. If you don't do it now, you will keep putting it off, and you'll never do it. The time is now! — Rhonda Byrne

The very thing that attracts you to someone can end up putting you off. — Anne Tyler

Even though I'd been terrified and in pain, I'd thought he was handsome. Except that wasn't even a strong enough word: he was beautiful in a way that was almost painful. Flawless in a way that seemed surreal, like a figment of imagination. So perfect, it was off-putting, because while it was something that could be worshipped, it wasn't something that could be touched or loved. He'd been snide, nasty, and wicked, and I'd loathed him. Except even then I'd sensed something wasn't right, that there was a mismatch between what I was seeing and hearing and what I felt. It was this mismatch that made him captivating, and even as I was grasping for ways to escape, the need to know more about him had lurked in my heart. — Danielle L. Jensen

That's where she saw Matt. It couldn't be him, she reasoned. He was in New York. Yet, it was him, she was sure. Same height, same broad shoulders, same mid-length, dark blonde hair. He dug an item out of his jean's pocket, crouched and looked around furtively. That's when he saw her. Putting the item back into his pocket, he rose, and walked to her slowly. "Am I dreaming?" she asked, barely breathing. He stopped inches from her. "We must be sharing the same dream." He bent and kissed her. It was a kiss full of longing after a difficult absence, full of love, warmth, and delicacy. She let him go and rested her head against his chest. "I — Anna Adams

It's scary to realize that the only thing holding our friends to us isn't our performance, or our lovability, or their guilt, or their obligation. The only thing that will keep them calling, spending time with us, and putting up with us is love. And that's the one thing we can't control. — Henry Cloud

The romance is essential. I love the love. I don't love just people struggling. I love what people are struggling for. That moves me. I love watching people be loving, and I find it enchanting, magical and transporting. It's one of the reasons that I go to the movies, and that's why I like putting it in movies. — David O. Russell

You have to develop that peace of mind within yourself by which you can become the witness of yourself first. You should be able to witness yourself and see what are the things, which are putting you down. — Nirmala Srivastava

But I love the idea - whether it's in my work or where I live - exploring new frontier, and I like putting myself in strange places and trying to survive and figure things out and gather up an infrastructure. I like knowing that I could figure out a way to live anywhere. — Madonna Ciccone

I wait until her breathing is soft and even against me before I let myself drift off to sleep, like I've been doing every night for the past few weeks. Slowly, everything in my life is turning into putting her first, and I'm not going to fight it. — Carian Cole

Perfect love means putting up with other peoples shortcomings, feeling no surprise at their weaknesses, finding encouragement even in the slightest evidence of good qualities in them. — Therese Of Lisieux

I like doing stand-up and I love putting out TV specials. — Dave Attell

Loving a person isn't a magical, sparkly passion. It's hard work. It's putting the other person before yourself. It's companionship and being able to trust and depend on each other. That loquacious true love everyone spouts about is really finding a partner who will go through the heartbreaks and joys of life with you. — K.M. Shea

This is how I show my students that I love them - by putting books in their hands, by noticing what they are about, and finding books that tell them, I know. I know. I know how it is. I know who you are, and even though we may never speak of it, read this book, and know that I understand you. — Donalyn Miller

She wasn't ready to settle down, she told her friends. That was one way of putting it. Another was would have been that she had not found anyone to settle down with. There had been several men in her life, but they hadn't been convincing. They'd been somewhat like her table - quickly acquired, brightened up a little, but temporary. The time for that kind of thing was running out, however. She was tired of renting. — Margaret Atwood

Tess passed by the Church's sign, and then made the turn right. Her expectations for a degree of improvement were met with passed echoes of indecisive hand claps from mental bodied insecurities that infiltrated her subconscious with a disruptive applause in an attempt to divert her focus from the road of progression by putting it back on her publicized devastations. — Calvin W. Allison

I think I love and reverence all arts equally, only putting my own just above the others; because in it I recognize the union and culmination of my own. To me it seems as if when God conceived the world, that was Poetry; He formed it, and that was Sculpture; He colored it, and that was Painting; He peopled it with living beings, and that was the grand, divine, eternal Drama. — Charlotte Saunders Cushman

Lily slumped, putting her shaking hands on his shoulders. "But you will, won't you?" Pansy's voice broke into a sob.
"Yes, Pan," Galen said quietly.
"I don't like that," Pansy said. Galen stood and put his arms around the fine-boned girl, while Rose continued to comfort Lily. Oliver looked away. It was such a private moment; he hated to intrude on it. Galen was beloved by all of the sisters, but the love between him and Rose was so clear and shining that it hurt to look at them, spending their last hours together caring for the other girls. — Jessica Day George

His gut was stitched up good and tight, but that didn't prevent it from flopping. He wiped his damp palms on the legs of his jeans and stood up shakily, leaning heavily on his cane.
He called himself a masochist for putting himself through this torture day after day.
He braced himself for the disappointment of having to go home alone.
He braced himself for happiness like he'd never known in his entire life.
He watched the door they would come through. — Sandra Brown

I love performing. I love being a provocateur. I love putting myself in situations that are uncomfortable and that I have to get out of. — Sandra Bernhard

Putting labels on others creates a black hole of disregard where judgment thrives and schisms deepen. — David W. Earle

Are you scared of me now?" She wanted the truth.
"More than ever." He had lowered his guard, putting himself at her mercy, because running away had only served to make him understand that he could never run away from who he was. — Llarjme

My Dream Date.
Putting Pink Floyd on loop in at least a 5-CD rotation or on spotify or something, getting real high on hash while naked, making love on and off for hours, lying on the bed eating cheesy crackers and sipping a quality beer like Tetley's, Guinness or Pilsner Urquell.
Repeat as needed. — Sienna McQuillen

A lot of people never find the person God created them to be. They're too busy trying to live up to other people's expectations, or they try to create themselves in the image of a person they admire or envy. Just because we respect someone or think their life might be more exciting than ours doesn't mean God created us to be just like them. Sometimes we have to ignore the people in our lives so we can hear the voice of God ... But making a decision to put someone else first out of love isn't the same thing as putting them first out of fear. Because you're afraid they won't love you if you don't act the way they might want you to. — Nancy Mehl

My parents taught me to do whatever makes you happy - follow your bliss. That's why I don't make a lot of movies. I'm very meat and potatoes when it comes to work, putting in eight hours each day. I only do what I love. — Mike Myers

It's instinct," he said then. "For centuries, it's been our job to protect our home, our women, and our children. We're emotional cowards. We don't talk about our feelings, we're not comfortable putting our soul into words. So we give of ourselves the only way we know how. We protect. We smother those we love in protection, fight for ways to keep them always safe, even from what we deem as a threat from themselves. It's in our genes, Kira. Right or wrong. Emotions are harder for a man to voice, strength is much easier for us to show. It's not an insult, it's the way men show their emotions for those they love. You can't change it."
"I can protect myself. — Lora Leigh

Life in God should be a daring adventure of love - a continuous journey of putting aside our securities to enter more profoundly into the uncharted depths of God. Too often, however, we settle for mediocrity. We follow the rules and practices of prayer but we are unwilling or, for various reasons, unable to give ourselves totally to God. To settle on the plain of mediocrity is really to settle for something less than God that leaves the heart restless and unfulfilled. A story from the desert fathers reminds us that giving oneself wholly to God can make a difference: Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, "Abba, as far as I can I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?" Then the old man stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, "If you will, you can become all flame."15 — Ilia Delio

I'm all for big production - I love putting on shows. — Derek Hough

Once upon a teenage mistake, Ash thought he was in forever love, the kind of love that started wars and built the Taj Mahal. He knew at that moment how wrong he'd been. Without his even realizing it, Ash had fallen for Fee, harder and faster than he'd ever fallen for anyone. This was the love he'd thought he'd had before, but there was no real comparison between the two. It was like putting a
matchstick beside a raging inferno - one of them would be completely consumed. — Piper Vaughn

Consecrated life means going to the very root of the love of Jesus Christ with an undivided heart and putting nothing ahead of this love. — Pope Benedict XVI

The steel door of the incinerator went up and the muted hum of the eternal fire became a red roaring. The heat lunged out at them like a famished beast. Then Rahel's Ammu was fed to it. Her hair, her skin, her smile. Her voice. They way she used Kipling to love her children before putting them to bed: We be of one blood, though and I. Her goodnight kiss. The way she held their faces steady with one hand (squashed-cheeked, fish-mouthed) while she parted and combed their hair with the other. The way she held knickers out for Rahel to climb into. Left leg, right leg. All this was fed to the beast, and it was satisfied.
She was their Ammu and their Baba and she had loved them Double. — Arundhati Roy

Don't know when my life came to visualising intense pain and tragedy to putting it down on paper, to putting across a message of love in times of abject hate. Thank you everybody and the conspiracy of the stars for showing me this day. To many, many more books, inshallah, and to many more launches. — Simran Keshwani

Elizabeth was so sweet this afternoon trying to show P.B. his sitting room. He became absorbed in some jungle prints along the passage and would not come. The corners of her mouth went down after the third attempt & putting both hands on his shoulders she said angelically: 'Bertie do listen to me.' He kissed her and came at once. — William Shawcross

Let's say then you've made the decision to tear the life you know asunder in order to be with this person you love. A difficult decision to be sure. Putting it lightly. Because you cannot imagine a life without her, and the alternative left to you is a lifetime of desolation, as you don't intend to don a hair shirt or join a monastery or fling yourself into the ocean and drown. And so you go ahead and do the unthinkable and tear your life asunder ... only to discover the person you love won't have you after all, and she actually has a reason — Julie Anne Long

But most of all he liked to listen to stories of real life. He smiled gleefully as he listened to such stories, putting in words and asking questions, all aiming at bringing out clearly the moral beauty of the action of which he was told. Attachments, friendships, love, as Pierre understood them, Karataev had none, but he loved and lived on affectionate terms with every creature with whom he was thrown in life, and especially so with man- not with any particular man, but with the men that happened to be before his eyes.
But his life, as he looked at it, had no meaning as a separate life. It only had meaning as part of a whole, of which he was at all times conscious. — Leo Tolstoy

I really don't want to copy something to a great degree, but I love taking tiny ideas and putting them together. — Joe Goddard

Prayer is putting oneself in the hands of God — Mother Teresa

Now the best thing is to put attention to your spirit. If you start putting your attention to spirit, the sweetness of the spirit itself will make the whole thing very sweet and beautiful. — Nirmala Srivastava

You aren't a bit romantic, are you?" he asked, amused.
She sat back and stared at him. She was beginning to think that Neal required a keeper. He seemed to have the craziest ideas. "Romance? Isn't that love stuff?" She asked finally.
"It's more than just love. It's color, and-and fire. You don't want things magnificent and filled with-with grandeur," he said, trying to make her understand. "You know, drama. Importance. Transcendent Passion."
"I just want to be a knight," Kel retorted, putting her used tableware on her tray. "Eat your vegetables. They're good for you. — Tamora Pierce

Without her, part of my soul was missing. My heart had left with her, when she moved with Henry here, putting half the planet between us, making me wait for the rare phone calls. — Nicole Kiefer

I do love the ceremony of putting on a record but I don't have space for a vinyl collection. — Annie E. Clark

Back then he'd hammered out rags as rough as the planks that made up that schoolhouse stage. Over the years he's taken a saw and rasp to those tunes and smoothed them at the edges, sanded them slowly over time with finer and finer grit paper, and applied a polish to them. The songs are comfortable now. People can take their shoes off to dance without fear of a spike in the foot; they can lie back on that smooth and waxed wood to take a nap in the afternoon or make love all night long. Oliver sees himself as a carpenter, a craftsman putting notes and melodies together, fitting them when they will, stepping back to rest and reconsider when they won't. — Richard J. Alley