Quotes & Sayings About Red Lights

The cab moves for a moment but then I see the blurry, glowing red lights through the downpour against my face and heavy lens of tears covering my eyes. The cab's brake lights. The car has stopped, as have I-and then I see the back door open.
It's my Jack Henry.
He gets out of the cab and stands in the heavy rain looking back at me. I don't know how-because my body has turned to mush-but I'm off my knees and running toward him.
... I touch his face because I can't believe he's real. You sort of have a beard. Almost. I love it. It's sexy. — Georgia Cates

The ground went out from under her. She sucked in a breath, flailing for balance. Arms came around her waist from behind, jerking her back, keeping her feet in the air.
She fought, feeling his chest at her back, but he was too strong.
"Damn it," he said, his voice strained. "Do you want to go in the water?"
That forced her still. Red and white lights still hung in the distance, warring with the stars. Now that she wasn't running the sound of waves hitting the rocks was unmistakable.
And right in front of her.
"The water?" she said numbly.
He put her feet on the ground, but he didn't let her go. "Yeah. Water. Did you miss the part where I said we're parked on a peninsula? — Brigid Kemmerer

Let reputation be one of the green or red lights that leads you toward or away from a person you are considering dating. — Matt Chandler

The sky above them was an intense velvety black, changing to bands of Indian red on the horizon, where the great stars burned like street-lamps. From time to time a greenish wave of the Northern Lights would roll across the hollow of the high heavens, flick like a flag, and disappear; or a meteor would crackle from darkness to darkness, trailing a shower of sparks behind. Then they could see the ridged and furrowed surface of the floe tipped and laced with strange colours - red, copper, and bluish; but in the ordinary starlight everything turned to one frost-bitten gray. — Rudyard Kipling

As if hypnotized, he felt his gaze rise again to the old highway which swept by with winds that smelled a billion years ago. Great bursts of headlight arrived, then cut away in departures of red taillight, like schools of small bright fish darting in the wake of sharks and blind-traveling whales. The lights sank away and were lost in the black hills. Charlie — Ray Bradbury

The wife Estelle's stone sinks to the right. The dead here seem really dead, and bone lonely, unlike the graves in Italian cemeteries, bedecked with fresh flowers, red votive lights, and photos of the deceased. — Frances Mayes

Goaltending is a suffering position. Your equipment protects you from injury, but not from pain, every time you go out there. And if you allow a goal, the red lights go on for everyone to see. But you get to be a hero too! — Kevin Constantine

Did you know that the average American spends six months of his or her life waiting for red lights to turn green? Six months wasted, waiting for permission to move on. Think of all the other stuff you could do with that time."
I was totally confused. "In the car?"
"In your life," he said. — Megan McCafferty

I bought a big-ass house and haven't decorated it yet," Psycho replied defensively. "Patio furniture looks good in my living room. I don't
have a lamp. The red and green Christmas lights work just fine."
"The lights blink."
"So do I. — Kate Angell

A sea of red lights, and I slow down. My job now is to gather everyone together and tell them we have to let her go. I won't tell anyone over the phone, because I didn't like hearing the news from the doctor that way. I have maybe a week to handle the arrangements, as the doctor said, but the arrangements are overwhelming. How do I learn how to run a family? How do I say goodbye to someone I love so much that I've forgotten just how much I love her? — Kaui Hart Hemmings

Red is one of the strongest colors, it's blood, it has a power with the eye. That's why traffic lights are red I guess, and stop signs as well ... In fact I use red in all of my paintings. — Keith Haring

Then there was the church and the villagers on the sidewalks, the red geraniums on the graves in the cemetery, Perez fainting (he crumpled over like a rag doll), the blood-red earth spilling over Maman's casket, the white flesh of the roots mixed in with it, more people, voices, the village, waiting in front of a cafe, the incessant drone of the motor, and my joy when the bus entered the nest of lights that was Algiers and I knew I was going to go to bed and sleep for twelve hours. — Albert Camus

She's come to realize that life is a bit like doing laundry
you have to separate the darks from the lights. One's not necessarily better than the other
they're just different. They have different needs, require different levels of care. She knows plenty of customers who don't give it much thought and throw all their laundry in together, and maybe that's the chaotic part of life that just happens, that no matter how hard you try, you can't always keep things separate. A red sock gets mixed in with a load of whites, or a delicate black top gets washed in hot water by accident. These things happen. All you can do is learn from it and move on. Tell your husband to enjoy his pink underwear, give your shrunken top to your little sister or niece. But it doesn't mean that you stop sorting your laundry. You keep sorting
lights from darks, darks from lights
and hope for the best. — Darien Gee

A child of about eleven, garbed in a very short, very tight, very ugly dress of yellowish-gray wincey. She wore a faded brown sailor hat and beneath the hat, extending down her back, were two braids of very thick, decidedly red hair. Her face was small, white and thin, also much freckled; her mouth was large and so were her eyes, which looked green in some lights and moods and gray in others. — L.M. Montgomery

City lights shine bright on my complexion,
Self-reflection ... red hairs flashing at the intersection.
Life is a green light, one star, no script,
Supporting actors ... fresh peaches, no pit. — Action Bronson

Billboards, billboards, drink this, eat that, use all manner of things, everyone, the best, the cheapest, the purest and most satisfying of all their available counterparts. Red lights flicker on every horizon, airplanes beware; cars flash by, more lights. Workers repair the gas main. Signs, signs, lights, lights, streets, streets. — Neal Cassady

All over the city lights were coming on in the purple-blue dusk. The street lights looked delicate and frail, as though they might suddenly float away from their lampposts like balloons. Long twirling ribbons of light, red, green, violet, were festooned about the doorways of drugstores and restaurants
and the famous electric signs of Broadway had come to life with glittering fish, dancing figures, and leaping fountains, all flashing like fire. Everything was beautiful. Up in the deepening sky above the city the first stars appeared white and rare as diamonds. — Elizabeth Enright

The signs are increasing. The lights in the sky will appear red, blue, green, rapidly. Someone is coming from very far and wants to meet the people of earth. Meetings have already taken place, but those who have really seen have been silent. — Pope John XXII

June marked the end of spring on California's central coast and the beginning of five months of dormancy that often erupted in fire. Mustard's yellow robes had long since turned red, then brown. Fog and sun mixed to create haze. The land had rusted. The mountains, once blue-hued with young oaks and blooming ceanosis, were tan and gray. I walked across the fallen blossoms of five yucca plants: only the bare poles of their stems remained to mark where their lights had shone the way. — Gretel Ehrlich

Police in Washington D.C. are now using cameras to catch drivers who go through red lights. Many congressmen this week opposed the use of the red light cameras incorrectly assuming they were being used for surveillance at local brothels. — Dennis Miller

I drove to the doctor's office as if I was starring in a movie Phillip was watching
windows down, hair blowing, just one hand on the wheel. When I stopped at red lights, I kept my eyes mysteriously forward. Who is she? people might have been wondering. Who is that middle-aged woman in the blue Honda? — Miranda July

and the city fireworked alive all around us: flashing with neon signs and flaring with red and gold lights, buzzing with motorbikes and pumping with stereos, streaming warm wind through the open windows. The road unrolled in front of us, it sent its deep pulse up into the hearts of our bones, it flowed on long and strong enough to last us forever. — Tana French

Shadow was a couple of a hundred yards away from his motel, and he walked there, breathing the cold air, past red and yellow and blue lights advertising every kind of fast food a man could imagine, as long as it was a hamburger. — Neil Gaiman

Mr. Manzi stood at the bottom of the big, rickety old amphitheater, making blue flames and red flares and clouds of yellow stuff by pouring the contents of one test tube into another, and I shut his voice out of my ears by pretending it was only a mosquito in the distance and sat back enjoying the bright lights and the colored fires and wrote page after page of villanelles and sonnets. — Sylvia Plath

Life Will Put Many Red Lights In Front Of You, But Sometimes We Must Push On The Gas And Trust God — Kendrick Lamar

There's an energy to these autumn nights that touches something primal inside of me. Something from long ago. From my childhood in Western Iowa. I think of high school football games and the stadium lights blazing down on the players. I smell ripening apples, and the sour reek of beer from keg parties in the cornfields. I feel the wind in my face as I ride in the bed of an old pickup truck down a country road at night, dust swirling red in the taillights and the entire span of my life yawning out ahead of me.

It's the beautiful thing about youth.

There's a weightlessness that permeates everything because no damning choices have been made, no paths committed to, and the road forking out ahead is pure, unlimited potential. — Blake Crouch

I gaze out of the window at the lanes of red taillights streaming towards the hills, the city laid out in anonymous grids and quadrants, the view confirming that I was much more alone than I thought, and all those red lights inspired nothing more than a sense that I, too, should be fleeing somewhere. — Chloe Thurlow

I am a guy who likes those who drive through red lights. — Zlatan Ibrahimovic

Little Jang Li-Li, eight years old, misting the orchids in the Room of a Thousand Fountains. A bright day, sunlight pouring through transparisteel panels, Li-Li making puffs of water with her mister and shrieking with laughter as every little cloud she made broke a sunbeam into colors, fugitive bars of red and violet and green. Master, Master, I'm making rainbows! Those colors hadn't come to mean military signals, yet, or starship navigating lights, or lightsaber blades. Just a girl making rainbows. — Sean Stewart

The outdoor Christmas lights, green and red and gold and blue and twinkling, remind me that most people are that way all year round
kind, generous, friendly and with an occasional moment of ecstasy. But Christmas is the only time they dare reveal themselves. — Harland Miller

Let us consider the holes in our own bodies and into what these congenital wounds open. Under the skin of man is a wondrous jungle where veins like lush tropical growths hang along over-ripe organs and weed-like entrails writhe in squirming tangles of red and yellow. In this jungle, flitting from rock-gray lungs to golden intestines, from liver to lights and back to liver again, lives a bird called the soul. — Nathanael West

Men, if you're traveling with your wife or girlfriend and she mentions that it's time to start looking for a restaurant, you need to sit up and take notice. This means her blood sugar level has dropped and, for you, it ought to be a red alert with flashing lights and sirens. Get that woman fed! — John Gray

Love is like a lighthouse, a beacon in the dark. When you lose the path that lights your way, you feel that you have died, but I assure you, you have not. You are reaching out for help or you would not have found this page. So red these quotations, allow yourself to feel your pain and cry out your loss and anguish. As you let it go, you will find the strength and courage to put your relationship in perspective and move on. — Laura Ramirez

He paused, gazing down at her in amusement, "Do you know when I first fell in love with you?"
"No, when?" she asked, intrigued.
"When you got out of your SUV looking hotter than a firecracker and madder than hell, and you said, 'Don't they stop at red lights where you're from, Forest Gump"'"
Zack to Cori after their first "I love you's — Jo Davis

Brake lights, brake lights, brake lights; a domino topple of red stop lights ripples back from some non-event up ahead. Some idiot blew his nose too abruptly and a Mexican wave of mini traffic lights all went red in neat little pairs.

There are no green lights on a motorway to tell you that you can go. You just go when you can. Another short burst of hemmed in freedom until the next tsunami of 'stop' floods the road. — Christian Cook

The perfect target market for a startup is a small group of particular people concentrated together and served by few or no competitors. Any big market is a bad choice, and a big market already served by competing companies is even worse. This is why it's always a red flag when entrepreneurs talk about getting 1% of a $100 billion market. In practice, a large market will either lack a good starting point or it will be open to competition, so it's hard to ever reach that 1%. And even if you do succeed in gaining a small foothold, you'll have to be satisfied with keeping the lights on: cutthroat competition means your profits will be zero. — Peter Thiel

Lethal like venomous snake bites the marijuana makes my eyes bright red like brake lights — Canibus

The masses-I love em-they rush for red lights, risking everything to capture a few seconds, only to get home and waste their lives. — Arthur Nersesian

I actually share her view and understand her frustration when any government attempts to ban secular symbols like Santa Claus or Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer or Christmas lights. — Steve Israel

A half-dead thing in a stark, dead world, clean mad for the muck called gold;
While high overhead, green, yellow and red, the North Lights swept in bars?-
Then you've a hunch was the music meant ... hunger and night and the stars. — Robert W. Service

It's a way of life to be always texting and when you looks at these texts it really is thoughts in formation. I do studies where I just sit for hours and hours at red lights watching people unable to tolerate being alone. Its as though being along has become a problem that needs to be solved and then technology presents itself as a solution to this problem ... Being alone is not a problem that needs to be solved. The capacity for solitude is a very important human skill. — Sherry Turkle

Something. Of course! he thought. He had touched the screen. It was a touch screen! The red lights around the edges must be infrared sensors. Tim had never seen such a screen, but he'd read about them in magazines. — Michael Crichton

She thought, just for a second, that they were going to bare fangs at each other . . . and then Myrnin smiled. "I suppose I should say thank you."
"It would be customary," Oliver agreed.
Myrnin turned to Claire. "Thank you."
Somehow, she guessed that wasn't what Oliver had expected; she certainly hadn't. It was the kind of snub that got most people hurt in Morganville, but then again, she guessed Myrnin wasn't most people, even to Oliver.
Oliver didn't react. If there was a small red glow in the depths of his eyes, it could have been a reflection from the lights. — Rachel Caine

I don't want the big flashing lights and red carpet, like, 'Here comes another Bon Iver album!' I just want it to be my bedroom-y thing. But that'll take a while to figure out. — Justin Vernon

You taught me what it means to fight for what you love.
You showed me great endurance in a manner that was unusual to me.
You fought for my heart until all the fight in you was gone without neglecting your brain.
You displayed to me what unconditional love should look like, if I were to stare at it in a mirror.
You loved me even on the days I found it difficult to even love myself.
You scooped down to help me up at my lowest.
You chained your heart to mine and stayed by my side even when all the signs gave you red lights about continuing our relationship.
You remained loyal, even when I became disloyal, and fulfilled the belief that many men are dogs.
You hung on longer than I expected,
Loved me more than I could ever imagine.
Some may have called you foolish for staying, but you showed me an aspect of love I've only read about in 1 Corinthians 13. — Pierre Alex Jeanty

One scrawny straggler, inching its way toward me like a tiger focused on prey. I must have looked incredibly savory, for it ignored the beaming lights blinding its searing red eyes and headed right toward me. For a half-starved beast, it was incredibly fast, its body looking bony and malnourished. — Alexia Purdy

So like--imagine each person is a unit, and each unit makes so many decisions in a day, and each decision takes each unit in so many directions, it seems kind of silly to think we'd never run into one another, you know? Especially considering units tend to cluster and linger."

"Consider this. You're flying in the sky, not in a plane, but with your arms and hands. Like a miraculous bird. You're thousands of feet above the earth, drifting through the night. The red lights are in constant motion, blinking, shuffling between buildings and trees and houses. Old ones disappear, new ones are born. Over time, you notice the lights bump into one another occasionally. Are you surprised?"

I shook my head. "No."

"I call it the inevitability of corresponding units. — David Arnold

It never occurred to me before, but there could have easily been a world with no buses, no horns honking, no red lights, no shopping carts, no gum stick to the bottom of benches downtown. For that matter I guess there also could have been no sun, no trees, and no ocean. None of those things had to exist, I guess. It makes me feel lucky that they do. — Jodi Lynn Anderson

Learning operatic roles is ongoing, and I find that I can learn on the train or subway, during a manicure, getting my hair done, and even while driving if I only look at the score at red lights. — Renee Fleming

Paris will give bicyclists more rights when it installs 4,300 signs throughout the city, allowing them to barrel though red lights and turn right on red. — Elaine Sciolino

But they soon found out that Robert just wasn't personable, which isn't surprising since Robert isn't a person. While Robert was always clean and presentable, brushed nickel just doesn't have the same warmth as a flush of skin from a person genuinely showing interest. And no matter what Robot's manufacturer says, blinking red lights on the cheeks are not a suitable substitute for a coy blush. — Jarod Kintz

....One dark night,
my Tudor Ford climbed the hill's skull;
I watched for love-cars. Lights turned down,
they lay together, hull to hull,
where the graveyard shelves on the town. . . .
My mind's not right.

A car radio bleats,
"Love, O careless Love. . . ." I hear
my ill-spirit sob in each blood cell,
as if my hand were at its throat. . . .
I myself am hell;
nobody's here--

only skunks, that search
in the moonlight for a bite to eat.
They march on their soles up Main Street:
white stripes, moonstruck eyes' red fire
under the chalk-dry and spar spire
of the Trinitarian Church.

I stand on top
of our back steps and breathe the rich air--
a mother skunk with her column of kittens swills the garbage pail.
She jabs her wedge-head in a cup
of sour cream, drops her ostrich tail,
and will not scare. — Robert Lowell

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

Your mother and I had one conversation a little before she died. She was sitting in the garden one evening when I came home from work, and she said, "I have to confess something. When we played 'chicken' from KDA to Clifton and I said I made you run three red lights, I lied. I made you stop even when they were only just turning amber." And I replied, "Samina, I didn't love you because you were the girl who ran red lights. I loved you because when you covered my eyes with your hands, I knew I could trust you to get me home." She was afraid of running red lights, Aasmaani. She wasn't an unbreakable creature of myth. She was entirely human, entirely breakable, and entirely extraordinary. — Kamila Shamsie

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

The best way to get America back to work, and reduce our deficit, is hire all the photographers in the country, position them on street corners, and have them take pictures of all the license plates of red-light runners, who will then receive a fine and all will be fine. But wait! Nobody will run red lights, because not only are gas prices too high, but with no jobs to be late to, nobody has anywhere to go. — Jarod Kintz

He left the building, fury propelling his steps, and got into his car. Feeling the way he did just then, Ian realized he shouldn't be driving, but he wasn't about to sit outside this apartment. Not when Cecilia might think he sat there pining for her. He revved the engine and threw the transmission into drive. The tires squealed as he sped off, burning rubber. He hadn't gone more than a quarter mile when he saw the red-and-blue lights of a sheriff's car flashing behind him. — Debbie Macomber

The tree burst into color and we all gasped at the red, yellow, green, white and the blue lights boldly growing in the cold night, the only lights for miles around in the inmense darkness of the range. — Jeannette Walls

There they are.
The extreme definiteness with which they stand, now a brilliant white, again yellow, and in some lights red, imposes ideas of durability, of the emergence through the earth of some spiritual energy elsewhere dissipated in elegant trifles. But durability exists independently of our admiration. Although the beauty is sufficiently humane to weaken us, to stir the deep deposit of mud - memories, abandonments, regrets, sentimental devotions - the Parthenon is separate from all that; and if you consider how it has stood out at night, for centuries, you begin to connect the blaze (at midnight the glare is dazzling and the frieze almost invisible) with the idea that perhaps it is beauty alone that is immortal. — Virginia Woolf

And then we cowards
who loved the whispering
evening, the houses,
the paths by the river,
the dirty red lights
of those places, the sweet
soundless sorrow
we reached our hands out
toward the living chain
in silence, but our heart
startled us with blood,
and no more sweetness then,
no more losing ourselves
on the path by the river
no longer slaves, we knew
we were alone and alive.
(Translated By Geoffrey Brock) — Cesare Pavese

Generally speaking, rural drivers are a much better behaved species than city drivers. I'm not sure whether they're intrinsically this way, or there are just fewer opportunities for them to do behave badly. You can't go around running red lights if there aren't any red lights to run. — Linwood Barclay

His thumb smoothed over the tiny red marks the pins had made on her palm, and he brought her hand to his face to kiss the little sore spots.
His voice curled hotly inside her palm. "Your hand smells like lemons."
She opened her eyes and stared at him gravely. "I scrub my hands with lemon juice to remove the ink stains."
The information seemed to amuse him, and lights of humor mixed with the heat in his gaze. — Lisa Kleypas

Nina turned her face to the water, looking out at the narrow houses that lined the Geldcanal. Jesper saw that the residents had filled their windows with candles, as if these small gestures might somehow push back the dark.
"I'm pretending those lights are for him," she said. She plucked a stray red petal from Matthias' chest, sighed, and released his hand, rising slowly. "I know it's time."
Jesper put his arm around her. "He loved you so much, Nina. Loving you made him better."
"Did it make a difference in the end?"
"Of course it did," said Inej. "Matthias and I didn't pray to the same god, but we knew there was something beyond this life. He went easier to the next world knowing he'd done good in this one. — Leigh Bardugo

The average american spends six months of his or her life waiting for red lights to turn green. six months wasted, waiting for permission to move on. — Megan McCafferty

Western Red Cedar bark and cones are distinct. The foliage is not coniferous ... the tree has flat intricate fronds that branch out like lace. It droops down, hanging fingers from each branch. In certain lights, it looks like a tree made of ferns. — Ned Hayes

It was a great place to run red lights, which I count as a fine recreational activity. — Tim Cahill

Apprehensions"

There is this white wall, above which the sky creates itself-
Infinite, green, utterly untouchable.
Angels swim in it, and the stars, in indifference also.
They are my medium.
The sun dissolves on this wall, bleeding its lights.

A grey wall now, clawed and bloody.
Is there no way out of the mind?
Steps at my back spiral into a well.
There are no trees or birds in this world,
There is only sourness.

This red wall winces continually:
A red fist, opening and closing,
Two grey, papery bags-
This is what i am made of, this, and a terror
Of being wheeled off under crosses and rain of pietas.

On a black wall, unidentifiable birds
Swivel their heads and cry.
There is no talk of immorality among these!
Cold blanks approach us:
They move in a hurry. — Sylvia Plath

Of course! he thought. He had touched the screen. It was a touch screen! The red lights around the edges must be infrared sensors. Tim had never seen such a screen, but he'd read about them in magazines. He touched RESET/REVERT. — Michael Crichton

I bet you like sitting at red lights. — Jon Gruden

Do not cruise through red lights. Because if I'm coming the other way, I will run you down, for fun. — Jeremy Clarkson

I ran from them. Nights, yellow lights
scoured sand. What was ever found
but women in skirts folded around the men
they loved that Friday? No one found me.
And how could that have been, here, where
even botanical names were recorded
and small roads mapped in red?
Night, the sky is black paper pecked with pinholes. — Deborah Ager

Many times people living on street become source of inspirations. When in New Delhi often when your vehicle stops at red lights, small kids living on streets asking for money surrounds you & some of them with smiling face which makes me think if these people in this condition (when they are not even sure if they would get enough to eat today) can keep smiling face, can't I keep myself up during difficult time and this perspective often works. Subodh Gupta — Subodh Gupta

She watched the tunnels as they flowed past: bare walls of concrete, a net of pipes and wires, a web of rails that went off into black holes where green and red lights hung as distant drops of color. There was nothing else to dilute it, so that one could admire naked purpose and the ingenuity that had achieved it. — Ayn Rand

A driver who thinks stop signs are suggestions and red lights are decorative accents. — Hailey Edwards

What the hell are you stopping for, asshole?" Freemont hollered at the car in front of them. "People usually stop for red lights. You should try it sometime. — Kerrelyn Sparks

If I was late, I became so anxious that I might miss one single minute of my time with you that I would close my eyes at the red traffic lights, or look around for people who wore wrist watches to see the seconds ticking by as the traffic came to a standstill. Then I would run and run through all the people, and finally up the stairs, until I reached your room. 'I am not late' I would shout and I would hide myself in a corner by your cupboard and refuse to speak to you. 'Exaggerated behaviour' perhaps, but it is only those who have experienced it, who can know what it is. (59) — Sarah Ferguson

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

September tried to show her sternness. It was becoming a habit. She could show her sternness and think about this another time, when it was quiet and no new red Moon turned somersaults in the sky.
But when she reached for her sternness, all September found in her heart was the bar of a trapeze, swinging wild, inviting her to catch it.
... She leaned up and kissed her Marid and hoped it was the right thing. Her heart caught the bar and swung out, swung wild, over the lights and the gasps below, reaching for a pair of sure blue hands in the air and willing them to find hers. — Catherynne M Valente

Colored lights shone right across the northern sky, leaping and flaring, spreading in rainbow hues from horizon to zenith: blood red to rose pink, saffron yellow to delicate primrose, pale green, aquamarine to darkest indigo. Great veils of color swathed the heavens, rising and falling as light seen through cascading curtains of water. Streamers shot out in great shifting beams as if God had put his thumb across the sun. — Celia Rees

Red lights, green lights, stop and go jive. Headlines, deadlines, jamming your mind. — Billy Squier

Orange is what red and yellow can do when they combine efforts. If you paint only with red, you will get what only red can do. If you paint only with yellow, you will get what only yellow can do. But when you paint with red and yellow, you will get new possibilities, fresh solutions, vibrant outcomes. When you think orange, you see how two combined influences make a greater impact than just two influences. As long as churches do only what churches are doing, they will get only the results they are presently getting. and as long as families do only what families are doing, they will produce only the outcomes they are presently producing. The church can be represented with yellow ("bright lights") and families with red ("warm hearts"). — Reggie Joiner

My books show me what it's like to live in a reliable country where you flick on a switch and a bulb is guaranteed to shine and remain on, where you know that cars will stop at red lights and those traffic lights will not cease working a couple of times a day. How does it feel when a plumber shows up at the designated time, when he shows up at all? How does it feel to assume that when someone says she'll do something by a certain date, she in fact does it? — Rabih Alameddine

Three eternities passed before she ran a hand under her red nose and nodded. "Fine. I'll go." Alex's lungs expanded as he let the air back in. "But the first woman who makes a crack about my hair
"
"I'll punch her lights out." Alex pulled her to her feet.
"You're supposed to love me, so it needs to be more severe than that."
"I'll yank out her heart with ice tongs."
"Aw." Lucy patted his chest. "You would do that for me?"
He captured her hand, felt its warmth all the way through his shirt. "No amount of carnage is too much for my girl. — Jenny B. Jones

Some bands blow it before they even play. The most important moment of any show is when a band walks out with the red amp lights glowing, the flashlight that shows each performer the way to his spot on the stage. It's crucial not to blow it. It sets the tempo of the show; it affects everyone's perception of the band. — Johnny Ramone

There was a fierce jam on the road to Gurgaon. Every five minutes the traffic would tremble - we'd move a foot - hope would rise - then the red lights would flash on the cars ahead of me, and we'd be stuck again. Eveyone honked. Every now and then, the various horns, each with its own pitch, blended into one continuous wail that sounded like a calf taken from its mother. Fumes filled the air. Wisps of blue exhaust glowed in front of every headlight; the exhaust grew so fat and thick it could not rise or escape, but spread horizontally, sluggish and glossy, making a kind of fog around us. Matches were continually being struck - the drivers of autorickshaws lit cigarettes, adding tobacco pollution to petrol pollution. — Aravind Adiga

In me was shaping a yearning for a kind of consciousness, a mode of being that the way of life about me had said could not be, must not be, and upon which the penalty of death had been placed. Somewhere in the dead of the southern night my life had switched onto the wrong track and without my knowing it, the locomotive of my heart was rushing down a dangerously steep slope, heading for a collision, heedless of the warning red lights that blinked all about me, the sirens and the ells and the screams that filled the air. — Richard Wright

In the United States, throughout all twenty-four hours of every day of the year - year after year - we have an average of two million automobiles standing in front of red lights with their engines going, the energy for which amounts to that generated by the full of efforts of 200 million horses being completley wasted as they jump up and down going nowhere. — R. Buckminster Fuller

The white flashed back into a red ball in the southeast. They all knew what it was. It was Orlando, or McCoy Base, or both. It was the power supply for Timucuan County.
Thus the lights went out, and in that moment civilization in Fort Repose retreated a hundred years.
So ended The Day. — Pat Frank

There was a strange but universal understanding among women. On some level all women knew, they all understood, the fear of being outnumbered, of being helpless. It throbbed in their chests when they thought about the times they left stores and were followed. The knocks on their car windows as they were sitting alone at red lights, and strangers asking for rides. Having too much to drink and losing their ability to be forceful enough to just say no. Smiling at strange men coming on to them, not wanting to hurt their feelings, not wanting to make a scene. All women remembered these things, even if they had never happened to them personally. It was a part of their collective unconscious. — Sarah Addison Allen

Beyond our grim circle, the underground station looked like the aftermath of a nightclub bombing. Steam from burst pipes shrieked forth in ghostly curtains. Splintered monitors swung broken-necked from the ceiling. A sea of shattered glass spread all the way to the tracks, flashing in the hysterical strobe of red emergency lights like an acre-wide disco ball. — Ransom Riggs

[The modern age] knows nothing about isolation and nothing about silence. In our quietest and loneliest hour the automatic ice-maker in the refrigerator will cluck and drop an ice cube, the automatic dishwasher will sigh through its changes, a plane will drone over, the nearest freeway will vibrate the air. Red and white lights will pass in the sky, lights will shine along highways and glance off windows. There is always a radio that can be turned to some all-night station, or a television set to turn artificial moonlight into the flickering images of the late show. We can put on a turntable whatever consolation we most respond to, Mozart or Copland or the Grateful Dead. — Wallace Stegner

She took particular comfort in certain familiar sights and sounds that marked her day: the buzz of the fluorescent lights, the pale figures sprawled silent and motionless over their reading, the reassuring feel of her book cart as she wheeled it down the aisle, and the books themselves, symbols of order on their backs - young adulthood reduced to "YA," mystery reduced to a tiny red skull. — T.E.D. Klein

Outside the Bar Del Prado, night was coming on like a hopeless, drunken come-on, tequila on its breath, red neon signs and, outside the shops, strings of colored Christmas lights hung from the eaves like the sad, close-lipped smiles of boys who would lure you in with their loneliness, that melancholia you'd try and try to fix. — Michaela Carter

An image began to form in her mind. There were streets, narrow and crowded with people and vehicles. Above them flashed neon lights and blinking billboards of every colour, shape and size. Some ran up the sides of buildings, others blinked on and off in store windows. In the space above the sidewalk, higher than a double-decker bus, hung flashing neon signs in bright pink, yellow, red, blue, orange, green and white. Yes, if white could be whiter than white, it was when it was in neon, Hong Mei thought. She knew Nathan Road in Kowloon was famous for its neon lights. Were these streets of Kowloon that she was seeing it her head? — B.L. Sauder

Seeing an endless red stream of tail lights, an automotive blood supply — Jojo Moyes

There are over 2 million cars standing in front of red lights with their engines going. Then we have over 2 million times approximately 100 horsepower being generated as they are idling there, so that we have something like 200 million horses jumping up and down and going nowhere. Now, we have to count that in our economy when we begin to get down to what is the efficiency of the economy. — R. Buckminster Fuller

In the Third World, honk your horn only under the following circumstances: 1. When anything blocks the road. 2. When anything doesn't. 3. When anything might. 4. At red lights. 5. At green lights. 6. At all other times. — P. J. O'Rourke

While all the universe and my family are still sleeping, I will walk among the red and blue twinkle-lights of the living room, to sit and gaze upon the pretty white angel atop the tree and say silent prayers, remembering what was good in the world and why I was brought here to remember. — Carew Papritz

The people were all busy in their cars, listening to the radio, so there was no one to smile at, so I just sent my love to the traffic lights. No one ever appreciates them, all day long, working so hard to turn red and yellow and green, right in time with us to make sure we don't crash into each other. If there was any tiny chance, even the tiniest chance, that they happened to be alive, I bet I was the first person ever to tell them they were special. You are special, I said out loud in my car, but in case they couldn't hear, I cracked my window open. "You are special," I said, to the night air.
And just like that, a green light. — Aimee Bender

It was murder - strangulation - but one need not say that the claw-mark on Mrs. Suydam's throat could not have come from her husband's or any other human hand, or that upon the white wall there flickered for an instant in hateful red a legend which, later copied from memory, seems to have been nothing less than the fearsome Chaldee letters of the word 'LILITH'. One need not mention these things because they vanished so quickly - as for Suydam, one could at least bar others from the room until one knew what to think oneself. The doctor has distinctly assured Malone that he did not see IT. The open porthole, just before he turned on the lights, was clouded for a second with a certain phosphorescence, and for a moment there seemed to echo in the night outside the suggestion of a faint and hellish tittering; — H.P. Lovecraft