Rising Up Like Quotes & Sayings

Sometimes the newer kids who won't even let him near them come in and set the resistance on the shoulder-pull at a weight greater than their own weight. The guru on the towel dispenser just sits there and smiles and doesn't say anything. They hunker, then, and grimace, and try to pull the bar down, but, like, lo: the overweighted shoulder-pull becomes a chin-up. Up they go, their own bodies, toward the bar they're trying to pull down. Everyone should get at least one good look at the eyes of a man who finds himself rising toward what he wants to pull down to himself. — David Foster Wallace

In ancient times, any man rising up above the common people tried to shape his life according to his principles; it is no longer like than now; it is (because) for the ancients, moral was a principle of inner life, whereas in our days, most of the time one is content to adhere to an official moral, that we recognize in theory, but that one does not care to put into practice. — African Spir

It is easier to talk about issues; it is easier to say you're a feminist because it's actually awesome to be one. The panopoly of people identifying as feminists is really excellent now that we've come to a point where all these really interesting voices are rising up and saying they're feminists - women of color, trans people, gay folks, everybody. It's an exciting time to actually define as that because it means that people are really feeling like their voice is what's the most important thing in the movement, and I love that. — Lizz Winstead

And all the shelves rising up around her like book-lined walls of a fortress, safe in here, always safe in here from the world, guarded by books and all the secrets inside them, all the things hardly anyone else will ever care to learn. — Caitlin R. Kiernan

I just ... I understand you might want to start dating more seriously, and that means dating someone from town. But if you're going to do that ... " This time he took a long drink of coffee, and the mug was still at his lips when he said, "I like Daniel. He takes care of you."
I blinked. "Oh my God. Did you really just say that? He takes care of me?"
Dad flushed. "I didn't mean it like-"
"Takes care of me? Did I go to sleep and wake up in the nineteenth century?" I looked down at my jeans and T-shirt. "Ack! I can't go to school like this. Where's my corset? My bonnet? — Kelley Armstrong

To fill in the silence Tsukuru lowered the needle onto the record again, went back to the sofa, and settled in to listen to the music. This time he tried his best not to think of anything in particular. With his eyes closed and his mind a blank, he focused solely on the music. Finally, as if lured in by the melody, images flashed behind his eyelids, one after the next, appearing, then disappearing. A series of images without concrete form or meaning, rising up from the dark margins of consciousness, soundlessly crossing into the visible realm, only to be sucked back into the margins on the other side and vanish once again. Like the mysterious outline of microorganisms swimming across the circular field of vision of a microscope. — Haruki Murakami

I will not share you." Still holding his gaze, she drove her body down onto his. Tiny threads of lightning danced over his skin in a shocking web of blue-white light. He gave a choked cry. His spine arched. His buttocks clenched tight. The tendons in his neck stood out like cords of steel. His hips surged again, powerfully, rising up to meet her downward slide. She felt the shock of it to her bones.
"I will not share," she cried out fiercely, one final time as both of them shattered. — C.L. Wilson

They all seemed hungry, happy, and healthy enough in their buzzing - oh the days were hot, and the noise of bees filled the air that was dusty with pollen and sun haze, and there were tiny black flies stuck to one another crowded by the creek and a creek stink rising from the deep pool under the willow tree where a wheat sack of new kittens had been drowned, and their tiny terrible struggling had shot like an electric current through the confusion of muddy water and up the arm of the person who had tied the stone around the mouth of the sack and thrust it into the water; and the culprit had not been able to brush away the current; it penetrated her body and made her heart beat with fear and pity. I was the culprit. — Janet Frame

What seems dangerous often is not - black snakes, for example, or clear-air turbulence. While things that just lie there, like this beach, are loaded with jeopardy. A yellow dust rising from the ground, the heat that ripens melons overnight - this is earthquake weather. You can sit here braiding the fringe on your towel and the sand will all of a sudden suck down like an hourglass. The air roars. In the cheap apartments onshore, bathtubs fill themselves and gardens roll up and over like green waves. If nothing happens, the dust will drift and the heat deepen till fear turns to desire. Nerves like that are only bought off by catastrophe. — Amy Hempel

An ear-splitting screech pierced the silence, followed by another, striking his ears like metal against a hollow bell. The woosh woosh of wind being displaced brought Andrew's attention skyward, and a glacial gust of paralyzing terror raced up his spine. The creature opened its mouth, and a blazing shaft of fire bellowed from above. Andrew barely had enough time to back beneath an awning for protection. Egnatious and Sebastian dove to the side while Firen sidestepped her impending doom, raising the katana in challenge.
The screeching returned, except now the howls were coming from every direction.
Firen's chest heaved. "Did you see that?" she asked, her stormy eyes glinting with rapture and daring as she held her katana out, preparing for the next attack.
"Did I see the dragon?" Sebastian asked, hysteria dangerously rising to the surface. He stood and brushed himself off. "Yes, I bloody well did see that enormous, scaly, fire-breathing dragon. — Laura Kreitzer

A scratching of melody comes from the radio, chords rising open as the land that carries us, rhythm mimicking our passage down the road, harmony making this life seem it should be only that. We sing along to what songs have always been about- beginning, going on, breaking up, forgiving, We sing in missed words and broken phrases as glints of tiger moths fly at us like snow, streaking the windshield over. — Susan Froderberg

Michael saw Northampton Castle being built by Normans and their labourers, while being pulled down in accordance with the will of Charles the Second fifteen hundred years thereafter. A few centuries of grass and ruins coexisted with the bubbling growth and fluctuations of the railway station. 1920s porters, speeded up into a silent comedy, pushed luggage-laden trolleys through a Saxon hunting party. Women in ridiculously tiny skirts superimposed themselves unwittingly on Roundhead puritans, briefly becoming composites with fishnet tights and pikestaffs. Horses' heads grew from the roofs of cars and all the while the castle was constructed and demolished, rising, falling, rising, falling, like a great grey lung of history that breathed crusades, saints, revolutions and electric trains. — Alan Moore

Zero Holding

I grow to like the bare
trees and the snow, the bones and fur
of winter. Even the greyness
of the nunneries, they are so grey,
walled all around with grey stones -
and the snow piled up on ledges
of wall and sill, those grey
planes for holding snow: this is how
it will be, months now, all so still,
sunk in itself, only the cold alive,
vibrant, like a wire - and all the
busy chimneys - their ghost-breath,
a rumour of lives warmed within,
rising, rising, and blowing away. — Robyn Sarah

But the future is unknown, and stands before a man like autumnal fogs rising from the swamps; birds fly foolishly up and down in it with flapping wings, never recognizing each other, the dove seeing not the vulture, nor the vulture the dove, and no one knowing how far he may be flying from destruction. — Nikolai Gogol

Dark here comes quickly. He undresses and slips into his silky cold sleeping bag. Up above, the clouds mask the stars and the moon alone glows like a strange pearl. Somewhere, he thinks, cherishing his last thought before sleep, somewhere, out there, the last tiger stands with her back to the rising wind and slowly shakes herself awake. — Julia Leigh

Here
You always belonged here.
You were theirs, certain as a rock.
I'm the one who worries
if I fit in with the furniture
and the landscape.
But I "follow too much
the devices and desires of my own heart."
Already the curves in the road
are familiar to me, and the mountain
in all kinds of light,
treating all people the same.
and when I come over the hill,
I see the house, with its generous
and firm proportions, smoke
rising gaily from the chimney.
I feel my life start up again,
like a cutting when it grows
the first pale and tentative
root hair in a glass of water. — Jane Kenyon

Shergahn and friend lay like poleaxed steers, and the Daranfelian's greasy hair was thick with potatoes, carrots, gravy, and chunks of beef. His companion had less stew in his hair, but an equally large lump was rising fast, and Brandark flipped his improvised club into the air, caught it in proper dipping position, and filled it once more from the pot without even glancing at them. He raised the ladle to his nose, inhaled deeply, and glanced at the cook with an impudent twitch of his ears.
"Smells delicious," he said while the laughter started up all around the fire. "I imagine a bellyful of this should help a hungry man sleep. Why, just look what a single ladle of it did for Shergahn! — David Weber

I was working for a chef a long time ago who told me to not skip steps or be in a hurry. Success in a kitchen is more like a marathon and less like a sprint. Rising up the ranks too quickly isn't necessarily a good thing. This advice was from a guy who was sorry he had done that and didn't want me to do the same. — Wylie Dufresne

They bear down upon Westminster, the ghost-consecrated Abbey, and the history-crammed Hall, through the arches of the bridge with a rush as the tide swelters round them; the city is buried in a dusky gloom save where the lights begin to gleam and trail with lurid reflections past black velvety- looking hulls - a dusky city of golden gleams. St. Paul's looms up like an immense bowl reversed, squat, un-English, and undignified in spite of its great size; they dart within the sombre shadows of the Bridge of Sighs, and pass the Tower of London, with the rising moon making the sky behind it luminous, and the crowd of shipping in front appear like a dense forest of withered pines, and then mooring their boat at the steps beyond, with a shuddering farewell look at the eel-like shadows and the glittering lights of that writhing river, with its burthen seen and invisible, they plunge into the purlieus of Wapping.
("The Phantom Model") — Hume Nisbet

It is a great and beautiful spectacle to see a man somehow emerging from oblivion by his own efforts, dispelling with the light of his reason the shadows in which nature had enveloped him, rising above himself, soaring in his mind right up to the celestial regions, moving, like the sun, with giant strides through the vast extent of the universe, and, what is even greater and more difficult, returning to himself in order to study man there and learn of his nature, his obligations, and his end. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Together, on his back porch, his cigarette smoke rising like incense to the heavens, we spoke to the God of grace we both are so grateful to know up close and personal. It may be the most beautiful prayer I've ever heard. Jesus, for some reason you've given us another day, and you've set us in Narnia. There are people who still think it's frozen, and there are people who are longing to be thawed but don't know it. God, I pray that what you've called us to do would be the subversive work of the kingdom, that we would help participate in the melting of Narnia, and that people would come alive and would drink and dance and sing and just celebrate life in ways that are so marvelous that the world would press its face against the glass and see the redeemed celebrate life. Amen. — Cathleen Falsani

It seemed as if the valley were not always girded by woods, growing on the surrounding hills and facing away from the horizon, but the trees had only taken up their places now, rising out of the ground to offer their condolences. He almost waved away the tangible beauty of the hour like a crowd of persistent friends, almost said to the lingering afterglow, 'thank you, thank you, I'll be all right.' — Boris Pasternak

How everyone is struggling for something. Trying to keep the balance.

Struggling to find their way back. Doing the best they can with what they've been dealt. Staying in place, doing anything to keep from sinking. To keep from rising.

Until something changes. Like a day at school, a friend for lunch, someone standing up for you.

And the choice to feel. Standing before you.

Realizing what part is yours. What you can and can't do. Who you are. Who you are meant to be.

More than the sum of all your broken parts. — Ash Parsons

Oliver liked to keep the windows and shutters wide open in the afternoon, with just the swelling sheer curtains between us and life beyond, because it was a 'crime' to block away so much sunlight and keep such a landscape from view, especially when you didn't have it all life long, he said. Then the rolling fields of the valley leading up to the hills seemed to sit in a rising mist of olive green: sunflowers, grapevines, swatches of lavender, and those squat and humble olive trees stooping like gnarled, aged scarecrows gawking through our window as we lay naked on my bed, the smell of his sweat, which was the smell of my sweat, and next to me my man-woman whose man-woman I was, and all around us Mafalda's chamomile-scented laundry detergent, which was the torrid afternoon world of our house. — Andre Aciman

What I really love about them ... is the fact that they contain someone's personal history ... I find myself wondering about their lives. I can never look at a garment ... without thinking about the woman who owned it. How old was she? Did she work? Was she married? Was she happy? ... I look at these exquisite shoes, and I imagine the woman who owned them rising out of them or kissing someone ... I look at a little hat like this, I lift up the veil, and I try to imagine the face beneath it ... When you buy a piece of vintage clothing you're not just buying the fabric and thread - you're buying a piece of someone's past. — Isabel Wolff

I had a lot of great lakes of ignorance that I was up against, I would write what I knew in almost like islands that were rising up out of the oceans. Then I would take time off and read, sometimes for months, then I would write more of what I knew, and saw what I could see, as much as the story as I could see. And then at a certain point I had to write out what I thought was the plot because it was so hard to keep it all together in my head. And then I started to write in a more linear way. — Rebecca Miller

His eyes were more intense, the gaze more intimate. He put just the last inch or so of the fingers of both hands on the table to either side of his plate and said, Love makes them run. That is not my lineage, my idea. That is a fact just like when water gets cold it ices. Like that. Some people cannot see this is a fact, but this is. They are blind in different ways but this is a fact: Love makes the atoms go where they go and stick where they stick. Everybody when they see a baby, a small boy or girl, they smile? Why? Because inside themself they know this fact. They know love made this baby, this boy, this girl. They feel this natural rising up of love in themself. Okay, yes? Before, I said to you about God's music that is playing all the time, for everyone. God's music is this love. And this love that runs our world, sometimes it means that there is help coming from that love, from that ... source you would — Roland Merullo

Chills ran up Lake's spine like fingers. Visions of himself rising above everyone appeared before him like a mirage. Beautiful men catered to his needs, and he sat surrounded by piles of money. The last image was of a club located across the city - The Devil's Lair. The door was open and a sign flashed, 'Welcome'. — Patricia Josephine

In that darkness they exchanged rumors: A dozen victims had been drawn and quartered. John Brown had eaten their flesh. Slaves were rising up everywhere, holding secret meetings in an old cemetery at the edge of town. Arden had heard that the first sign of the uprising would be the discovery of all the dogs in Winchester piled in a heap at the edge of town, their throats cut. even families like the Beales who owned no slaves would not be spared. revenge would trade color for color; whites would die for no other crime than being white. At that very moment, John Brown's disciples were trying to free him from jail before his execution. — Kathy Hepinstall

There is tragedy all around us, we pick up pieces, we find our feet and before long another turn of events stare us in the eyes; like we're some kind of magician- the fight seems endless, so I look to the world for inspiration. I observe and I watch how others face adversity, some hide from it, some master each lesson and some create a life with it ... Our lessons don't define us, our integrity to keep rising after every fall is. — Nikki Rowe

Sometimes at night I would look out and up at the glow rising up around me through the plastic and it would just make me shudder. It reminded me of larvae. We were like pale grubs in our eggs. When I got the horrors like that, I requested a little yellow pill from the dial-a-doc and flopped down into the fuzz along with everyone else. — Stevie O'Connor

She stared out. She saw a vastness, a rising shape, indistinct in the rain, gray in the misty drizzle. At first she had thought it was a cloud, a great bank of fog drifting up over the mountains, but now she realized with a cold awe that it was real, a vast building climbing the mountainside, rising in a countless series of rooms, stairways, balconies, and galleries, far away and immense, its topmost roofs white with snow. And up there, like a needle sharp with ice, one uttermost pinnacle flew the remote black pennant of the Watch.
The Tower of Song. — Catherine Fisher

I'd be ( ... ) lying there on my back with my clothes on and looking up at the ceiling and watching the cigarette smoke flow up slow and splash against the ceiling like the upside-down slow-motion moving picture of the ghost of a waterfall or like the pale uncertain spirit rising up out of your mouth on the last exhalation, the way the Egyptians figured it, to leave the horizontal tenement of clay in its ill-fitting pants and vest. — Robert Penn Warren

I don't generally like running. I believe in training by rising gently up and down from the bench. — Satchel Paige

Failure cannot be erased. It is built in to a life and helps us grow. Failure cannot be erased, but it can be understood.
Most people carry around a load of feeling that they bury or pretend is not there because it is too painful and alarming to cope with or because it involved unbearable guilt. Anger against a parent, for example.
I knew the tide of woe was rising, that woe that seizes me like anger, and is a form of anger, and I didn't know what to do to stop it, so I got up and picked flowers, cooked my dinner, looked at the news, all the same usual routine that can ward off the devils or suddenly clear the air as when a thunderstorm seems to be coming and then dissipates ... .it always happens when there is a galaxy of problems that get knit together into one huge outcry against the sense of being abandoned or orphanhood ... — May Sarton

He lay on his back in his blankets and looked our where the quartermoon lay cocked over the heel of the mountains. In the false blue dawn the Pleiades seemed to be rising up into the darkness above the world and dragging all the stars away, the great diamond of Orion and Cepella and the signature of Cassiopeia all rising up through the phosphorous dark like a sea-net. He lay a long time listening to the others breathing in their sleep while he contemplated the wildness about him, the wildness within. — Cormac McCarthy

Kiss me, she pleaded, and he did, hot languorous slow kisses that sped up as his heartbeat did, as the movement of their bodies quickened against each other. Each kiss was different, each rising higher and higher like a spark as a fire grew: quick soft kisses that told her he loved her, long slow worshipful kisses that said that he trusted her, playful light kisses that said that he still had hope, adoring kisses that said he had faith in her as he did in no one else. Clary abandoned herself to the kisses, the language of them, the wordless speech that passed between the two of them. — Cassandra Clare

he leaned down and pressed his face to my belly.

"You're having my baby," he announced against my skin.

I felt my eyes well up and tears drip down my face. finally. He'd finally said it.

"Sure am," I replied, my hoarse voice belying the nonchalance of my words.

"I'm going to do my best, okay?" he said nervously. "I promise. I'll be a good dad to him."

"You're already a good dad."

But to this baby," he replied, lifting his face and pressing his hand to my belly. "I'm going to be a good dad to this baby."

"I never doubted that."

"I did," he confessed, his head rising to shamefully meet my eyes.

The truth of his words hit me like a ton of bricks, and I finally understood why he'd ignored the proof of our child for so long.

I nodded once, and he nodded back, as if, without words, we were making a pact then and there to take care of this baby we hadn't planned for or wanted. — Nicole Jacquelyn

Perhaps defining a self begins with simply making the first choice, simply rising up and deciding what you desire, and then methodically, like writing, putting one word after the other until you have created a whole self and a whole life in the process. — Michele Rosenthal

There are rumors that your Lantsov prince has been sighted."

I drifted nearer, trying to keep my voice casual. "Where?"

He glanced up, his lips curling in a slight smile. "Do you like him?"

"Does it matter?"

"It's harder when you like them. You mourn them more."

"Tell me, Alina," said the Darkling. "Has he claimed you yet?"

"Claimed me? Like a peninsula?"

"No blushes. No averted eyes. How you've changed. What about your faithful tracker? Will he sleep curled at the foot of your throne? — Leigh Bardugo

Ode to Love
Lin Huiyin

I think you are the April of this world,
Sure, you are the April of this world.
Your laughter has lit up all the wind,
So gently mingling with the spring.

You are the clouds in early spring,
The dusk wind blows up and down.
And the stars blink now and then,
Fine rain drops down amid the flowers.

So gentle and graceful,
You are crowned with garlands.
So sublime and innocent,
You are a full moon over each evening.

The snow melts, with that light yellow,
You look like the first budding green.
You are the soft joy of white lotus
Rising up in your fancy dreamland.

You're the blooming flowers over the trees,
You're a swallow twittering between the beams;
Full of love, full of warm hope,
You are the spring of this world! — Lin Huiyin

What's this?" Dan said, pointing to a funny squiggly formation.
Uh, an M," said Nellie. "Or if you look at it the other way, a W. Or sideways, kind of S-ish..."
Maybe it's palm trees," Dan said. "Like in the movie It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. You know? No? These guys need to find hidden money, and the only clue they have is it's under a big W? And no one sees what it means-but then, near the end of the movie, there's this grove of four palm trees rising up in the shape of... you-know-what! Classic!"
Amy, Alistair, Natalie, Ian and Nellie all looked at him blankly.
There is no W in the Korean language," Alistair replied. "Or palm trees in Korea. I might be maple trees..."
Mrrp," said Saladin, rubbing his face against Dan's knee.
I'll tell you the rest of the plot later," Dan whispered to the Mau. — Peter Lerangis

The thing people don't understand about an army is its great, unpunctuated wastes of inaction: you have to scavenge for food, you are camped out somewhere with a rising water level because your mad capitaine says so, you are shifted abruptly in the middle of the night into some indefensible position, so you never really sleep, your equipment is defective, the gunners keep causing small unwanted explosions, the crossbowmen are either drunk or praying, the arrows are ordered up but not here yet, and your whole mind is occupied by a seething anxiety that things are going to go badly because il principe, or whatever little worshipfulness is in charge today, is not very good at the basic business of thinking. It didn't take him many winters to get out of fighting and into supply. In Italy, you could always fight in the summer, if you felt like it. If you wanted to go out. — Hilary Mantel

So when his tractor came to a smash-halt, the potato-digger rising up behind and then crashing back down, Bob was flung forward over the engine block and directly into the Dome. His iPod exploded in the wide front pocket of his bib overalls, but he never felt it. He broke his neck and fractured his skull on the nothing he collided with and died in the dirt shortly thereafter, by one tall wheel of his tractor, which was still idling. Nothing, you know, runs like a Deere. — Stephen King

I feel for the first time in my life that I have really come to understand what the gospel actually is. It is about a Father who lost His kids and He simply wants them back ... I look forward to the day when we will see sons and daughers in their full expression and freedom, rising up out of every nation of the world, exhibiting and expressing the person, nature and works of our Father and walking like Jesus in this broken world. — James Jordan

Don Enrique says a full moon pulls up the highest tides of the month, at midday and midnight. And it pulls them down to their lowest ebb when it is rising or setting. So says a man in a frock coat and breeches who, if he tried to row a boat, would fall out instantly and drown. But Leandro said the same thing about the moon and high tide, so it might be true. How can you know if the moon is going toward full, or disappearing? This evening the moon was half, and Leandro said it's dying away. You can tell because it's shaped like the letter C, not curved forward like D. He says when the moon is D like Dios, it is growing to fill God's sky. When dying away it is C, like Cristo on the cross. So, no good tides again for many days. — Barbara Kingsolver

Chamberlain closed his eyes and saw it again. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. No book or music would have that beauty. He did not understand it: a mile of men flowing slowly, steadily, inevitably up the long green ground, dying all the while, coming to kill you, and the shell bursts appearing above them like instant white flowers, and the flags all tipping and fluttering, and dimly you could hear the music and the drums, and then you could hear the officers screaming, and yet even above your own fear came the sensation of unspeakable beauty. He shook his head, opened his eyes. Professor's mind. But he thought of Aristotle: pity and terror. So this is tragedy. Yes. He nodded. In the presence of real tragedy you feel neither pain nor joy nor hatred, only a sense of enormous space and time suspended, the great doors open to black eternity, the rising across the terrible field of that last enormous, unanswerable question. — Michael Shaara

The rain comes through their thin cotton clothes against their muscles. Alice sweeps back her wet hair. A sudden flinging of sheet lighting and Clara sees Alice subliminal in movement almost rising up into the air, shirt removed, so her body can meet the rain, the rest of her ascent lost to darkness till the next brief flutter of light when they hold a birch tree in their clasped hands, lean back and swing within the rain.
They crawl delirious together in the blackness. There is no moon. There is the moon flower in its small power of accuracy, like a compass, pointing to where the moon is, so they can bay towards its absence. — Michael Ondaatje

As long as it's a regular day, not too rough to begin with, the ocean is pretty smooth once you make it out past the first set of waves. That's why people are afriad to swim in the ocean. They try to jump over those waves and get slammed down to the bottom and pulled across the sand like a piece of shell. You've got to go throught them, dive under just when they're rising up for you, set your direction, close your eyes, and just swim like hell. Once you get throught that, you'll find there isn't a better place for swimming because it's the ocean and it goes on forever. You don't have to see anyone if you don't want to. If you look out, away from the beach, it's easy to imagine that there's no one else but you in the whole world, you and maybe a couple of sea gulls. — Ann Patchett

Yes, I am finally a match for Amy. The other morning I woke up next to her, and I studied the back of her skull. I tried to read her thoughts. For once I didn't feel like I was staring into the sun. I'm rising to my wife's level of madness. Because I can feel her changing me again: I was a callow boy, and then a man, good and bad. Now at last I'm the hero. I am the one to root for in the never-ending war story of our marriage. It's a story I can live with. Hell, at this point, I can't imagine my story without Amy. She is my forever antagonist.
We are one long frightening climax. — Gillian Flynn

It's easy to feel like the bunny rabbi frozen in terror. And it's easy to feel like one of the fire balloons, at the whim of the wind, either rising up out of sight or burning down. Blow one direction or another. — Ava Dellaira

And when we finally stood up and turned to face the world, I could feel something climbing through me. I could feel it on its hands and knees inside me, rising up, rising up - and I smiled.
I smiled, thinking, The hunger, because I knew it all too well.
The hunger.
The desire.
Then, slowly, as we walked on, I felt the beauty of it, and I could taste it, like words inside my mouth. — Markus Zusak

Night falls. Or has fallen. Why is it that night falls, instead of rising, like the dawn? Yet if you look east, at sunset, you can see night rising, not falling; darkness lifting into the sky, up from the horizon, like a black sun behind cloud cover. Like smoke from an unseen fire, a line of fire just below the horizon, brushfire or a burning city. Maybe night falls because it's heavy, a thick curtain pulled up over the eyes. Wool blanket. — Margaret Atwood

Emma whirled and looked up. Someone stood at the top of the stairs: a young Shadowhunter with dark hair, a gleaming chakhram still in his right hand. Several others were hooked to his weapons belt. In the red light of the demon towers he seemed to glow- a tall, thin figure in dark gear against the darker black of night, the Accords Hall rising like a pale moon behind him.
"Brother Zachariah?" said Helen in amazement. — Cassandra Clare

When has the world seen a phenomenon like this? a lonely uninstructed youth, coming from amid the moral darkness of Galilee, even more distinct from His age, and from every thing around Him, than a Plato would be rising up in some wild tribe in Oregon, assuming thus a position at the head of the world and maintaining it, for eighteen centuries, by the pure self-evidence of His life and doctrine. — Horace Bushnell

Freed hands both rising for the pommel now, so natural, so smooth, it was like Kiriath machinery, as if he were machinery, a cunningly crafted clockwork Kiriath mannequin, built to complement the steel.
He felt the accustomed kiss of the grip on his palms, felt the grin on his face turn into a snarl.
Cold chime as the scabbard gave up its embrace.
And the Ravensfriend came out. — Richard K. Morgan

Watching someone you love ... die? There are no words for how broken that makes a person. It's like waking up from a bad dream only to find out that it's you reality, it's like watching sunlight fade from the sky, like watching death suck the one you love dry, and being powerless to stop it. You may as well try to stop the waves from rolling in, or the sun from rising.In the end, the waves will roll, the sun will set, and death will come. The only thing you have a choice in? How you deal with it ... when it does. — Rachel Van Dyken

Charley Hapgood is what they call a rising young man - somebody told me as much. And it is true. He'll make the Governor's Chair before he dies, and, who knows? maybe the United States Senate." "What makes you think so?" Mrs. Morse had inquired. "I've heard him make a campaign speech. It was so cleverly stupid and unoriginal, and also so convincing, that the leaders cannot help but regard him as safe and sure, while his platitudes are so much like the platitudes of the average voter that - oh, well, you know you flatter any man by dressing up his own thoughts for him and presenting them to him. — Jack London

When you were sleeping on the sofa I put my ear to your ear and listened to the echo of your dreams. That is the ocean I want to dive in, merge with the bright fish, plankton and pirate ships. I walk up to people on the street that kind of look like you and ask them the questions I would ask you. Can we sit on a rooftop and watch stars dissolve into smoke rising from a chimney? Can I swing like Tarzan in the jungle of your breathing? I don't wish I was in your arms, I just wish I was peddling a bicycle toward your arms. — Jeffrey McDaniel

But Paul's vision of God's love, rising here like the sun on a clear summer's morning, shines through all the detail that has gone before. You need to wake up early, to get out of bed, and to throw back the curtains, to see it; that's what the previous four chapters are about. But now that we have done all that, the view is here for us to enjoy. And to be dazzled by. God's love has done everything we could need, everything we shall need. — N. T. Wright

Like any child, I slid into myself perfectly fitted, as a diver meets her reflection in a pool. Her fingertips enter the fingertips on the water, her wrists slide up her arms. The diver wraps herself in her reflection wholly, sealing it at the toes, and wears it as she climbs rising from the pool, and ever after. — Annie Dillard

Wouldn't it be nice to be done with it? To be done with sex and longing? Mitchell could almost imagine pulling it off, sitting on a bridge at night with the Seine flowing by. He looked up at all the lighted windows along the river's arc. He thought of all the people going to sleep or reading or listening to music, all the lives contained by a great city like this, and, floating up in his mind, rising just above the rooftops, he tried to feel, to vibrate among, all those million tremulous souls. He was sick of craving, of wanting, of hoping, of losing. — Jeffrey Eugenides

Early June, Providence, Rhode Island, the sun up for almost two hours already, lighting up the pale bay and the smokestacks of the Narragansett Electric factory, rising like the sun on the Brown University seal emblazoned on all the pennants and banners draped up over campus, a sun with a sagacious face, representing knowledge. But this sun
the one over Providence
was doing the metaphorical sun one better, because the founders of the university, in their Baptist pessimism, had chosen to depict the light of knowledge enshrouded by clouds, indicating that ignorance had not yet been dispelled from the human realm, whereas the actual sun was just now fighting its way through cloud cover, sending down splintered beams of light and giving hope to the squadrons of parents, who'd been soaked and frozen all weekend, that the unseasonable weather might not ruin the day's activities. — Jeffrey Eugenides

The most exemplary nature is that of the topsoil. It is very Christ-like in its passivity and beneficence, and in the penetrating energy that issues out of its peaceableness. It increases by experience, by the passage of seasons over it, growth rising out of it and returning to it, not by ambition or aggressiveness. It is enriched by all things that die and enter into it. It keeps the past, not as history or as memory, but as richness, new possibility. Its fertility is always building up out of death into promise. Death is the bridge or the tunnel by which its past enters its future. — Wendell Berry

The caterpillars are coming. They're coming. As they passed a blunt rolled with marijuana shake around the bonfire, filled plastic cups with beer from a keg in the back of John Anderson's Bronco, snuck cigarettes at the red doors that led to the make-out woods behind school. As they waited on line at the cafeteria for pizza and Tater Tots, warmed up during choral practice, and changed for gym in the locker room. Until Maddie felt something titanic rushing toward the island, gathering steam like a nor'easter barreling toward shore, and the waiting filled with a tingling urgency she knew they all felt. She felt it. Car engines revved harder, highs soared higher, buzzes and crushes burned brighter. "Look." She lifted her palm as the insect inched across. The two lines of blue and red dots on its back glimmered like spots of blood rising after a pinprick. "They're here. — Julia Fierro

Watching From Withing protagonist Dr. Jesse Baine says, "The only place I can fathom that is truly private is the space between your ears. Think about the sheer number of surveillance systems, automated ID tracking and police brain-print scanners. What is privacy anyhow? And, why would anyone protest the advancement of such tried and true [surveillance] technology? That's a bit like rising-up against the aspirin!" -Daniel LaMonte — Daniel LaMonte

You are too kind, my lady. Indeed, you are the most amiable Englishwoman I have ever met."
She laughed. The viscount was rapidly rising on her list. "Some people don't find me amiable." Like a certain unfeeling Bow Street Runner.
He struck a hand to his chest. "I cannot believe that! You are such an alma brilhante ... a bright soul. How can anyone not see it?"
She grinned at him. "They must all be blind."
"And deaf." He tapped his temple. "And not very right in the head."
"Excellent, my lord," she said. "Your grasped that idiom quite well."
He looked surprised by that, then smiled. "I have to learn if I am to impress the senhora."
She cast him a coy glance. "And why would you want to impress me, sir?"
Picking up her hand, he pressed a kiss to it again and this time didn't release it. "Why would I not?" His wistful expression tugged at her sympathies.
"You'd better eat your eggs before they get cold," she said, gently withdrawing her hand. — Sabrina Jeffries

He rolled her over, rising above her, cupping her cheek. "I wasn't lying, Loree. I've always heard the music in my heart ... but I lost the ability to do that when I went to prison. It was like the music just shriveled up and died. I thought I'd never hear it again. How could I play the violin if I couldn't hear the music? Then lately, I started going crazy because I'd hear snatches of music - when you'd look at me or smile at me. But I couldn't grab onto it, I couldn't hold it. Then last night, you told me that you loved me and I heard the music, so sweet, so soft. It scared me to hear it so clearly after I hadn't for so long.
"Tonight, I hurt you - again. I was going to let you go, Loree. I was gonna take you back to Austin. But I heard my heart break ... and I knew that's all I'd hear for the rest of my life. Don't leave me, Sugar."
Joy filled her and she brushed the locks of hair back off his brow. "I won't."
-Austin and Loree — Lorraine Heath

overhead the birds are calling,
their cries seeming to feel the air.
As i watch, they rise.. flinging their bodies against the sky, intent upon the moment, spinning and turning like embers of smoke upon the air.
I envy them, this life of theirs..
the way they live so free of themselves, they are without past, without future, an exaltation of life beating in so many parts, rising up into the infinity of space. watching them i find i want to weep, and yet i have no tears. — Thomas F. Monteleone

THE TREE OF LIFE

The sun is rising,
And the ether dance at the first sight of his light,
As he ascends like a phoenix from the ashes of morality,
His luminous rays form the magnificent tree of life.
He springs up from the east,
Spreading his long arms like branches,
Over the horizons of milky meadows and open seas,
Extending his wings to embrace all living things.
He walks on water and grazes through fields,
Pouring his butter like honey to feed the Earth.
Towering over all of creation,
He who is the lamp of the universe,
The power source of all life.
And in his truth and light,
Everything becomes aroused
Like a flower,
And everything is given
Sight. — Suzy Kassem

Anger is like a storm rising up from the bottom of your consciousness. When you feel it coming, turn your focus to your breath. — Thich Nhat Hanh

You see, Francisco, a warrior isn't just someone who slays dragons - or Englishmen, like Mel Gibson does in our favorite movie, Braveheart. A warrior can also be a man who takes apart an engine to make soup and then serves it to his brothers, keeping up their spirits with the rising inflections of his voice. — Hector Tobar

The real power of the Buddha was that he had so much love. He saw people trapped in their notions of small separate self, feeling guilty or proud of that self, and he offered revolutionary teachings that resounded like a lion's roar, like a great rising tide, helping people to wake up and break free from the prison of ignorance. — Nhat Hanh

The glee of it. The ecstasy of It. I can't speak about this It because I know no word. It is just there, It is always there, like death in life. In this instant I know that something terrible is rising that must be seized and turned back upon itself before it twists outward into violence. But that knowing always comes too late, a wild unraveling is under way and I am caught up in it like a coyote seen late one afternoon in an Arkansas tornado-a toy dog spinning skyward, struck white by a ray of sun against black clouds, then black, then white, then gone and lost forever. The wind dies. A dead stillness. Mirror water. That ecstasy that shivered every nerve replaced by the precise knowing that what this self perpetrated is as much a part of the universal will as erupting lava that subsides once more into the inner earth. — Peter Matthiessen

A thing among things, its self's soul so much vapor aloft, falling as rain and then rising, the sun up and down like a yoyo. — David Foster Wallace

She strolled between shelves, looking at titles, smiling as she met old friends - books she had read three times or five times or a dozen. Just a title, or an author's name, would be enough to summon up happy images. Strange creatures like phoenixes and psammeads, moving under smokey London daylight of a hundred years before, in company with groups of bemused children; starships and new worlds and the limitless vistas of interstellar night, outer space challenged but never conquered; princesses in silver and golden dresses, princes and heroes carrying swords like sharpened lines of light, monsters rising out of weedy tarns, wild creatures that talked and tricked one another ... — Diane Duane

A dark shadow rose from the depth of the watercourse. Forced to crawl out of the oceans rolling waves, it struggled against the pull of the undertow. Rising, it moved further up the white sandy beach away from the cold water. The creature collapsed onto the cool sand as the crescent moon above shone on his sleek gray skin revealing two immense leather-like wings protruding from his back. Exhaustion clouded his mind.
The darkness of night was soothing, refreshing. Somehow he knew it would bring him strength and sustenance. The creature watched as a great rolling storm cloud sunk into the salty water before him and he tried to remember why he had come. — Alaina Stanford

While the egg yolks cooled, he directed the beaters at the egg whites, setting the mixer on high speed that sent small bubbles giggling to the side of the bowl, where a few became many until they were a white froth rising up and then lying down again in patters and ridges, leaving an intricate design like the ribs of a leaf in the wake of the beaters — Erica Bauermeister

Scientists say that the palm tree line, that is the climate suitable to growth of the palm, is moving north, five hundred metres, I think it was, every year ... The palm tree line ... I call it the coffee line, the strong black coffee line ... It's rising like mercury in a thermometer, this palm tree line, this strong coffee line, this scandal line, rising up throughout Italy and already passed Rome ... — Leonardo Sciascia

I felt memories rising to the surface like a corpse coming up from dark water. — John Morgan Wilson

The radar directed flak intensifies. Like swarms of angry red-and-yellow-eyed snakes slithering up invisible ropes in the sky. The sky around them is a glittering maelstrom of light. The stars pale into insignificance. Down below the city is lit up in sections as shockwaves fan out in kaleidoscopic bursts. Shell smoke rising up from the ground. On his right a burst of flame and a thick guttering of black smoke lit up by the geometry of the searchlights. — Glenn Haybittle

Life would continue, with joys and sorrows, triumphs and tragedies rising and falling like the waves of the sea. It was up to him to respond wisely, enjoy simple pleasures unshaken by the inevitable endless turmoil of the world. — Devdutt Pattanaik

That was enough dialogue for a few pages - he had to get into some fast, red-hot action.
There weren't any more hitches now. The story flowed like a torrent. The margin bell chimed almost staccato, the roller turned with almost piston-like continuity, the pages sprang up almost like blobs of batter from a pancake skillet. The beer kept rising in the glass and, contradictorily, steadily falling lower. The cigarettes gave up their ghosts, long thin gray ghosts, in a good cause; the mortality rate was terrible.
His train of thought, the story's lifeline, beer-lubricated but no whit impeded, flashed and sputtered and coursed ahead like lightning in a topaz mist, and the loose fingers and hiccuping keys followed as fast as they could. ("The Penny-A-Worder") — Cornell Woolrich

Inside Duquet something like a tightly closed pine cone licked by fire opened abruptly and he exploded with incensed and uncontrollable fury, a life's pent-up rage. 'No one helped me,' he shrieked, 'I did everything myself. I endured. I contended with powerful men. I suffered in the wilderness. I accepted the risk I might die. No one helped me!' The boy's gaze shifted, the fever-boiled eyes following Duquet's rising arm closing only when the tomahawk split his brain. — Annie Proulx

The three of us, each paralyzed in his own silence, contemplate the horizon, which the dawn lights up with a thousand fires; and each of us knows for certain that the rising sun of this day, like all those that have gone before it, will be incapable of bringing sufficient light into the hearts of men. — Yasmina Khadra

What are they doing?' Mathys cried.
'They are mating, lad. And what a wondrous thing.'
Flukes grinding back and forth somewhere in the depths their song became a symphony vibrating across the ocean and ships in other latitudes vibrated and maybe continents vibrated and suddenly pressed close so close they looked like giantly godly Siamates and they drove themselves up and up rising out of the water all of them the massiveness the length of them high high into the blue above the blue below and they were blue and blue oceans sluicing down their sides and joined yes joined and everything all earthly things were small and they just stood there in the sky a young boys memory and then they dove back down into other atmospheres a deafening resounding roar that shook the timbers of the ship and shook the hearts of watching men and threw them to their knees. — Kiana Davenport

Kate Boo's reporting is a form of kinship. Abdul and Manju and Kalu of Annawadi will not be forgotten. She leads us through their unknown world, her gift of language rising up like a delicate string of necessary lights. There are books that change the way you feel and see; this is one of them. If we receive the fiery spirit from which it was written, it ought to change much more than that. — Adrian Nicole LeBlanc

Vikus looked at Luxa and opened his arms. She stood, still frozen, staring at him as if he were a complete stranger.
"Luxa, it's your grandpa," said Gregor. It seemed like the best and most important thing to say at the moment. "It's your grandpa."
Luxa blinked. A tiny tear formed at the corner of her eye. A battle took place on her face as she tried to stop the feelings rising up inside her.
The feelings won, and to Gregor's great relief, she ran into Vikus's arms. — Suzanne Collins

You don't know how it is. It's like I've got this angry little person inside me, and I can feel him trying to get out. He's running out of room because he's growing bigger and bigger, and so he starts rising up, into my lungs, chest, throat, and I just push him right back down. I don't want him to come out. I can't let him out because i hate him, because he's not me, but he's in there and he won't leave me alone, and all I can think is that I want to go up to someone, anyone, and just knock them into space because I'm angry at all of them. — Jennifer Niven

It's a very cheery thing to come into London by any of these lines which run high and allow you to look down upon the houses like this."
I thought he was joking, for the view was sordid enough, but he soon explained himself.
"Look at those big, isolated clumps of buildings rising up above the slates, like brick islands in a lead-coloured sea."
"The board-schools."
"Light-houses, my boy! Beacons of the future! Capsules with hundreds of bright little seeds in each, out of which will spring the wiser, better England of the future. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Then I take a dump. Feel better. Take off my clothes and step into the pool. Ice water. But great. I walk along toward the deep end of the pool, the water rising inch by inch, chilling me. Then I plunge below the water. It's restful. The world doesn't know where I am. I come up, swim to the far edge, find the ledge, sit there. It must be about the 9th or 10th race. The horses are still running. I plunge again into the water, being aware of my stupid whiteness, of my age hanging onto me like a leech. Still, it's OK. I should have been dead 40 years ago. I rise to the top, swim to the far edge, get out. — Charles Bukowski

Still the dream persists, suppressed but always there, that somehow by some miraculous effort of the heart what was done could be undone. What form would such atonement take that would turn back time and bring the dead to life? None. None possible, not in the real world. And yet in my imaginings I can clearly see this cleansed new creature steaming up out of myself like a proselyte rising drenched from the baptismal river amid glad cries. — John Banville

God forgive her, but underneath the smiles and the good job and the great family, she was tired. Desperately tired. Tired to the point of breaking. In the last few years the exhaustion had grown, rising up like a specter to knock on her door. No one knew, she hadn't told even Kit, but in the past year she'd begun to question her entire existence. Why was she even here? What was life? Was she even necessary?
Maybe all women had these thoughts. Maybe all women felt tired. But the thoughts confused her. Good women weren't supposed to have doubts. Good women were supposed to be strong and selfless. Instead Meg felt needy and afraid. What if there was no reward for all the hard work? What if life was just one sacrifice after another? — Jane Porter

I looked at her without a word. She held an edge of the beach towel in each hand, pressing the edges against her cheeks. White smoke was rising from the cigarette between her fingers. With no wind to disturb it, the smoke rose straight up, like a miniature smoke signal. She was apparently having trouble deciding whether to cry or to laugh. At least she looked that way to me. She wavered atop the narrow line that divided one possibility from the other, but in the end she fell to neither side. May Kasahara pulled her expression together, put the towel on the ground, and took a drag on her cigarette. The time was nearly five o'clock, but the heat showed no sign of abating. — Haruki Murakami

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.
Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn. — William Wordsworth

Samuel Spade's jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth. His nostrils curved back to make another, smaller, v. His yellow-grey eyes were horizontal. The v motif was picked up again by thickish brows rising outward from twin creases above a hooked nose, and his pale brown hair grew down - from high flat temples - in a point on his forehead. He looked rather pleasantly like a blond satan. — Dashiell Hammett

The way I see it, the blue is the stuff you can't control, life's major heartbreak and struggles, that feeling of devastation so massive and brutal it inflicts permanent damage on the heart and spirit that can never be undone and will always be there, spewing somewhere in a corner of your mind like deep scars you'll have with you you're whole life.
The green you also can't control. But that's the part that reminds you life is worth living. It's not the here-and-there type of good stuff that happens every day either. The green is the stuff that comes in huge doses that slap you in the face when you least expect it and brings a light to all that you are through growth, bravery, and goodness, and love. It's the stuff that picks you up when you're at the bottom and makes you keep on going even when you're sure you can't. That's the green. — Love Maia

There was a low growling sound and the Munstermobile came gliding up out of the parking garage, dripping water from its gleaming surface like some lantern-eyed leviathan rising from the depths. There were still a few dents and dings in it, but the broken glass had all been replaced, and the engine sounded fine.
Okay, I'm not like a car fanatic or anything - but the guitar riff from "Bad to the Bone" started playing in my head. — Jim Butcher

It felt like everything was rising up in me, like I was drowning in this weirdly painful joy, but I couldn't say it back. I just looked at him and let him look at me until he nodded, lips pursed and turned away, placing the side of his head against the window. — John Green

The seasons, like greater tides, ebb and flow across the continents. Spring advances up the United States at the average rate of about fifteen miles a day. It ascends mountainsides at the rate of about a hundred feet a day. It sweeps ahead like a flood of water, racing down the long valleys, creeping up hillsides in a rising tide. Most of us, like the man who lives on the bank of a river and watches the stream flow by, see only one phase of the movement of spring. Each year the season advances toward us out of the south, sweeps around us, goes flooding away to the north. — Edwin Way Teale