Sitting Beside Quotes & Sayings

But never had he felt more enthralled than he was right now, sitting beside Evie on a weathered old dock, with a blazing afternoon sun, almost brutal in its clarity, bathing everything in pure light. Sweat trickled down his back and chest from the steamy heat, and his entire body pulsed with life. Even his fingertips throbbed. It took all of his formidable self-control to prevent himself from pushing her down on the dock and spreading her legs for his entry. — Linda Howard

The letter we all love to receive is one that carries so much of the writer's personality that she seems to be sitting beside us, looking at us directly and talking just as she really would, could she have come on a magic carpet, instead of sending her proxy in ink-made characters on mere paper. — Emily Post

But sitting here beside this girl as unknown to him now as outer space, waiting for whatever she might say to unfreeze him, now he felt like he could see the edge or outline of what a real vision of hell might be. It was of two great and terrible armies within himself, opposed and facing each other, silent. There would be battle but no victor. Or never a battle- the armies would stay like that, motionless, looking across at each other and seeing therein something so different and alien from themselves that they could not understand, they could not hear each other's speech as even words or read anything from what their faces looked like, frozen like that, opposed and uncomprehending, for all human time. Two hearted, a hypocrite to yourself either way. — David Foster Wallace

I really need to remember to block my thoughts."
"Oh, come on," he pulled me closer towards him. "Why are you so scared?"
"Because the second that I let this conversation happen, I'll be letting my walls down. No matter what answer you give me, you'll have some sort of power over me, and I don't want that." I pushed past him, plopping down on the bed, not bothering to remove my boots.
I could feel the mattress sink beside me. Ian ran his fingers through my hair. "Come here," he spoke softly. "Please." I pushed myself into a sitting position, and moved closer to him, leaning my head on Ian's shoulder. "I like this, a lot. It feels nice." Ian lifted my chin so that I was forced to look directly at him, and then he leaned in to kiss me. — Nicole Sobon

Harry scanned the table more carefully. Tiny little Professor Flitwick, the Charms teacher, was sitting on a large pile of cushions beside Professor Sprout, the Herbology teacher, whose hat was askew over her flyaway gray hair. She was talking to Professor Sinistra of the Astronomy department. On Professor Sinistra's other side was the sallow-faced, hook-nosed, greasy-haired Potions master, Snape - Harry's least favorite person at Hogwarts. Harry's loathing of Snape was matched only by Snape's hatred of him, a hatred which had, if possible, intensified last year, when Harry had helped Sirius escape right under Snape's overlarge nose - Snape and Sirius had been enemies since their own school days. — J.K. Rowling

Do you want to know how to write a song? Songwriting is about counterpoint. Counterpoint is the key. Putting two disparate images beside each other and seeing which way the sparks fly. Like letting a small child in the same room as, I don't know, a Mongolian psychopath or something, and just sitting back and seeing what happens. Then you send in a clown, say, on a tricycle and again you wait and you watch. And if that doesn't do it, you shoot the clown. — Nick Cave

I sighed.
Tink was sitting on the couch beside me and he'd commandeered my laptop at some point. The Walking Dead was on the television - well, it was on the Amazon Fire Stick TV thingy that the little bastard had ordered a few days ago unbeknownst to me. On my laptop, he was watching old episodes of Supernatural. I think he was on season three judging by the current length of Sam Winchester's hair.
At least it wasn't Harry Potter andTwilight this time, because I was getting really tired of hearing him quote Edward Cullen and Ron Weasley at the same time. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

Emma shifted her gaze to Steven, sitting just ahead of her at a table, Garrick Wright beside him. As though sensing her perusal, Steven shifted in his chair to look back at her, and to her utter amazement, he winked. She pursed her lips, amazed that he could take so serious a proceeding so lightly. He mimicked her dour expression, then turned to face the front of the courtroom again. The — Linda Lael Miller

The people who related to God best
Abraham, Moses, David, Isaiah, Jeremiah
treated him with startling familiarity. They talked to God as if he were sitting in a chair beside them, as one might talk to a counselor, a boss, a parent, or a lover. They treated him like a person. — Philip Yancey

Sitting beside a young woman who in the dawn seemed so lovely, soothed and spellbound in these magical surroundings - the sea, mountains, clouds, the open sky - Gurov thought how in reality everything is beautiful in this world when one reflects: everything except what we think or do ourselves when we forget our human dignity and the higher aims of our existence. — Anton Chekhov

The landscape started hard, sharp black mountains over my shoulder and thirsty young saguaros hugging patchy dirt. Gradually it let go, began to green on me a little. I crossed a river, watched succulents get fatter and farmland start to wave, hoarding the blue above and the few clouds it had to spare.

I knew the route somehow, knew the curves, the directions, the exact way to go. I knew it the way you know the stars are still up in the sky even though white sun obscures them. Everything that had happened before Lukeville and Sonoita began to liquify in memory, feeling more like fiction than personal history. Funerals and pain, girlfriends and mothers, roommates and priests all tumble away with the desert behind me. The only thing that's real is the road I see ahead. The only person in my life is the man sitting silently beside me. The place I'm going is the only place I've ever wanted to go. — Laurie Perez

He was nothing, even in the eyes of his brother. He could see it in the way the older boy accepted their favor like it was the most natural thing in the world. Never once did he offer anything to the boy sitting beside him, just taking for himself. Somehow, that was the worst part. And it hurt the boy. So he dealt with it the only way he knew how. He retaliated and hurt his brother back. For — Rachel E. Carter

Merit," Catcher said, sitting beside Mallory on the couch, an arm around her shoulders. "It's nice to see you clothed again."
"And now that she is," Gabriel said, standing, "we should get moving."
"Where are we going, exactly?" Catcher asked.
"To a land beyond space and time," Jeff said drawing an arc in the air. "Where the rules of mortals have no meaning."
Gabriel looked up at the ceiling as if he might find patience there. "We're going to the Brecks' backyard. Into the woods, right here in Illinois, where most of us are quite mortal."
"Illi-noise," Jeff said with cheeky enthusiasm. "Because the wolves will howl. — Chloe Neill

I remember sitting and meditating beside a slow flowing river in India, and I got the feeling that this river could teach me all the secrets of the mystery of life. If we learn to surrender to a stone, a flower, to a man, to a woman, or a river, it becomes a door to the Whole. — Swami Dhyan Giten

Again Anne shivered. How terrible ... sitting opposite each other at table ... lying down beside each other at night ... going to church with their babies to be christened ... and hating each other through it all! Yet they must have loved to begin with. Was it possible she and Gilbert could ever ... nonsense! The Pringles were getting on her nerves. Handsome — L.M. Montgomery

A big business man was telling Henry Ford about a coach driver of super-expertness with his whip. The driver was telling how he could flick a fly off his horse's ear with his whip-and, a fly alighting just then, he promptly did so. Next he spied a grasshopper beside the road, and he flicked it off with equal dexterity. A little further along the road the passenger noticed an insect on a bush, and nudged the driver to get him. Not on your life, replied the master of the whip. That there insect is a hornet sitting on his nest with an organization behind him. I leave him alone. — B.C. Forbes

After all, don't care how you want to sit there and deny the knowledge of River Mumma sitting on her rock - don't care how you deny the knowledge of fallen angels who can jump into your body as they please, or the knowledge of ancestors who sit beside your bed and watch when they not harkening on to the sounds of drumming - don't care how you deny any of it, all of it is still true. All of them things still exist, because them do not need the permission of your belief. — Kei Miller

So, while driving in the car with the person sitting right next to us, we think about other things. We aren't interested in him anymore. What arrogance! The person sitting there beside is really a mystery! We only have the impression that we know her, but we don't know anything yet. — Thich Nhat Hanh

These commercials, I directed them all from inside the tracking vehicle, so I was traveling about 85mph most of the time, so there wasn't really anyone sitting beside me other than the driver. But, you know, yeah the agency is there and VW is there, which is- they're paying for it all and also because the agency created the boards, they want to make sure that you're not going off the rails in executing it. And also they can help, because they- it's a very different thing to cinema. — Paul W. S. Anderson

In that moment, there was no place for doubt. I was sitting with the supreme being. I had always sat beside her. She was inside of me. — Christopher Pike

He drew in a breath and struck the opening note. He was usually relaxed when he played. He liked to let himself be swept away from the here and now, but with Zach beside him, brushing his arm when Lucas played the high notes, he was acutely aware of where he was and what he was doing. It was an emotional piece to begin with, now intensified by his feelings for the boy sitting next to him, the physical manifestation of his own dreams of love. His heart felt as if it would burst. When he came to the end of the piece, he was breathing heavily and was on the verge of tears. — Madison Parker

I lost the letter in rather embarrassing circumstances. We were to dine at Parramatta Government House that same evening, and Peter had come in early from harvesting the wheat, sitting down in all his dirt to read the precious missive. I sat beside him, fresh from my bath. And so handsome did my husband look, long legs sprawled in Dungaree trousers and frowning over my father's spiky hand, that I could not resist reaching out to smooth away the frown. He caught my hand to his lips, still reading, and then chancing to look up, and reading my face more swiftly than he would ever read the written word, pulled me onto his lap. — Jennifer Paynter

I push open the door just as Tobias, who is sitting on the floor with one leg stretched out, hurls a butter knife at the opposite wall. It sticks, handle out, from a large hunk of cheese they positioned on top of the dresser. Caleb, standing beside him, stares in disbelief, first at the cheese and then at me.
"Tell me he's some kind of Dauntless prodigy," says Caleb. "Can you do this too?"
"With my right hand, maybe," I say. "But yes, Four is some kind of Dauntless prodigy.
Tobias's eyes catch mine on the word "Four." Caleb doesn't know that Tobias wears his excellence all the time in his own nickname. — Veronica Roth

If you want more joy in your daily life, smile at the people you meet in the street, the woman sitting beside you on the bus or standing next to you in the queue at the airport, the waiter who brings your food, your colleagues or your employer. There's a great chance they'll smile back. — Thorbjorg Hafsteinsdottir

She'd arrived a self-sufficient city woman, and now she was covered in snow, sitting on a bench beside a crazy person, and she had a duck on her lap. Who was nuts now? — Louise Penny

The sun was gone, but he had left his footprints in the sky. It was the time for sitting on porches beside the road. — Zora Neale Hurston

There and then, sitting beside her and within the strength of my adoration, I felt invincible. — Hisham Matar

And the Queen was there, in front of her. She was much taller than Tiffany, but just as slim; her hair was long and black, her face pale, her lips cherry red, her dress black and white and red. And it was all, very slightly, wrong. Tiffany's Second Thoughts said: It's because she's perfect. Completely perfect. Like a doll. No one real is as perfect as that. "That's not you," said Tiffany, with absolute certainty. "That's just your dream of you. That's not you at all." The Queen's smile disappeared for a moment and came back all edgy and brittle. "Such rudeness, and you hardly know me," she said, sitting down on the leafy seat. She patted the space beside her. — Terry Pratchett

The three girls were sitting and lying beside her, holding one another, weeping, their arms and legs and hair tangled like the roots of close trees, sobs shaking them like leaves in a high wind. — Shannon Hale

Sitting beside the pool is fine for two weeks, but after that I think it'd be quite hard to live with - so I need to keep racing. — Mark Webber

Even now I'm well aware that if I allowed myself to listen to him I couldn't resist but would have the same experience again. He makes me admit that, in spite of my great defects, I neglect myself and instead get involved in Athenian politics. So I force myself to block my ears and go away, like someone escaping from the Sirens, to prevent myself sitting there beside him till I grow old. — Plato

I am only a shadow, sitting by the gates of Hades beside that arrogant Ulysses
telling stories of my grievances to my father's indifferent ghost
who, from time to time, gusts an ash wind at me
and whispers
son, for the nonsense you talk pour me even a drop of life
this shit hole of eternity
suffocates terribly — Sigitas Parulskis

How do you make someone love you? For the very young, there can be nothing harder in the world. You may try as hard as you like: place yourself beside them, cook their favourite food, bring them wine or sing the love songs that you know will move them. They will not move them. Nothing will move them. You will waste days interpreting the simple banalities of a phone call; months staring at their soft lips as they talk; you will waste years watching a body sitting in a chair and willing every muscle to take you across the room and do a simple thing, say a simple word, make them love you and you will not do it; you will waste long nights wondering how they cannot feel this - the urge to embrace, the snow melt in the heart when you are near them - how they can sit in that chair, or speak with those lips, or make a call and mean nothing by it, hide nothing in their hearts. Or perhaps what they hide is not what you want to see. Because surely they love someone. It simply isn't you. — Andrew Sean Greer

Alas, Measured Perfectly"

Saturday, August 25, 1888. 5:20 P.M.
is the name of a photograph of two
old women in a front yard, beside
a white house. One of the women is
sitting in a chair with a dog in her
lap. The other woman is looking at
some flowers. Perhaps the women are
happy, but then it is Saturday, August
25, 1888. 5:21 P.M., and all over. — Richard Brautigan

There was a blond misty boy sitting beside me, and he looked at me, and I at him, and we were not strangers: our hands moved towards each other to embrace. I never heard his voice, for we did not speak; it is a shame, I should so like the memory of it. Loneliness, like fever, thrives on night, but there with him light broke, breaking in the trees like birdsong, and when sunrise came, he loosened his fingers from mine, and walked away, that misty boy, my friend. — Truman Capote

Hadley grabs the laminated safety instructions from the seat pocket in front of her and frowns at the cartoon men and women who seem weirdly delighted to be bailing out of a series of cartoon planes. Beside her, Oliver stifles a laugh, and she glances up again.
"What?"
"I've just never seen anyone actually read one of those things before,"
"Well," she says, "then you're very lucky to be sitting next to me."
"Just in general?"
She grins. "Well, particularly in case of an emergency."
"Right," he says. "I feel incredibly safe. When I'm knocked unconscious by my tray table during some sort of emergency landing, I can't wait to see all five-foot-nothing of you carry me out of here. — Jennifer E. Smith

When I wake up the next morning, there's a Hershey's Kiss sitting on the table beside me. — Rick Yancey

When one is sitting in his bedroom and, happening to glance out the window, sees his little brother walking slowly down the driveway, he immediately jumps up, knocks over a stack of magazines piled up beside him, and runs through the doorway and down the hall. He throws open the front door, slams his body, against the screen, and hearing the tap tap tap behind him, jumps over the porch steps and down to the driveway. He stands several yards in front of his brother. He considers running, but doesn't. His arms and legs are shaking. His bottom lip between his teeth, he walks slowly and carefully, making not a sound. He stops, reaches one arm out, and pokes Gabriel Witter on the left shoulder with his index finger. He smiles the slightest of smiles.
Book Title #89: Where Things Come Back — John Corey Whaley

Tell me about yourself."
"Myself?" He looks confused.
"Yes," I say, patting the mattress.
"You know all there is to know," he says, sitting beside me.
"Not true," I say. "Where were you born? What's your favourite season? Anything."
"Here. Florida," he says. "I remember a woman in a red dress with curly brown hair. Maybe she was my mother, I'm not sure. And summer. What about you?" The last part is said with a smile. He smiles so infrequently that I consider each one a trophy. — Lauren DeStefano

Dinner was served on mismatched plates with paper napkins and silverware that looked like it had been stolen from a school cafeteria. The spaghetti was from a box that was still poking out of the garbage pail, the sauce from a jar that was sitting beside the sink. I got the definite impression that he chose to make dinner because he couldn't afford to take me out. — Arlene Schindler

I never thought this day would come for me. I never thought I'd find someone whom I loved with every fiber of my being and I never thought that I would find someone that taught me that I was worth being loved. I'm beyond happy, no, I'm honored to have you sitting beside me Sloane. My partner, my friend, my life, my love, my wife, my everything. Thank you for teaching me about love," he said.

Siva — Micalea Smeltzer

All he felt was that same feeling he'd always had, that he was looking for something, whose name he didn't even know, and yet now, in the dark of the night and with his father had gone to wherever his mother had gone before, with Anna sitting beside him, he suddenly knew its name. Home. — Marcus Sedgwick

No. Absolutely not.'
'Simon,' she said. 'It's a perfectly fine plan.'
'The plan where you follow Jace and Sebastian off to some unknown dimensional pocket and we use these rings to communicate so those of us over here in the regular dimension of Earth can track you down? That plan?'
'Yes.'
'No,' he said. 'No, it isn't.'
Clary sat back. 'You don't just get to say no.'
'This plan involves me! I get to say no! No.'
'Simon - '
Simon patted the seat beside him as if someone were sitting there. 'Let me introduce you to my good friend No. — Cassandra Clare

Read to your children Twenty minutes a day; You have the time, And so do they. Read while the laundry is in the machine; Read while the dinner cooks; Tuck a child in the crook of your arm And reach for the library books. Hide the remote, Let the computer games cool, For one day your children will be off to school; Remedial? Gifted? You have the choice; Let them hear their first tales In the sound of your voice. Read in the morning; Read over noon; Read by the light of Goodnight Moon. Turn the pages together, Sitting close as you'll fit, Till a small voice beside you says, Hey, don't quit. — Richard Peck

I, the driver of this car, that used to be Jim Ross, the teamster, and J.A. Ross and Co., general merchandise at Queen Centre, California, am now J. Arnold Ross, oil operator, and my breakfast is about digested, and I am a little too warm in my big new overcoat because the sun is coming out, and I have a new well flowing four thousand barrels at Los Lobos river, and sixteen on the pump at Antelope, and I'm on my way to sign a lease at Beach City, and we'll make up our schedule in the next couple of hours, and 'Bunny' is sitting beside me, and he is well and strong, and is going to own everything I am making, and follow in my footsteps, except that he will never make the ugly blunders or have painful memories that I have, but will be wise and perfect and do everything I say. — Upton Sinclair

I am a poor student sitting at the feet of giants, yearning for their wisdom and begging for lessons that might one day make me a complete artist, so that if all goes well, I may one day sit beside them. — Rod Taylor

When I started at Freedman's, during orientation, a speaker who was an alumna and board member talked of sitting in economics class next to a shy young man with a thick West African accent. They struck up a friendship, she said, pausing to wink and nod, which I took as an insinuation of a more intimate relationship. The woman ended the story with his name, and I recognized it as the name of the warlord-turned-dictator-for-life of a small African republic. We were supposed to be impressed by the prominence of our alums, and at the same time we were encouraged to wonder what sort of world-shaker sat beside us. One day the dictator will be overthrown and executed or tried in The Hague for crimes against humanity. — Rion Amilcar Scott

My general working style is to write everything first with pencil and paper, sitting beside a big wastebasket. Then I use Emacs to enter the text into my machine. — Donald Knuth

So much beauty in your being, Surely you are an angel sent down to me. Such warm eyes as you regard me, Surely to draw me into your pure heart. Such sweetness in your voice, Surely must be Heaven made. Such a tender embrace, Surely to offer me His strength in your arms. Such soft lips, Surely offering God's love. Such kindness, Surely to remind me be true. Such luck I have at Heaven sitting beside me, Surely to assure me of my Earthly duties as a man. Such amazing beauty, I see in you. Kate." I — Jennyfer Browne

She considered me as if grasping all at once the incredible
and somehow tedious, confusing and unnecessary
fact that the distant, elegant, slender, forty-year-old valetudinarian in velvet coat sitting beside her had known and adored every pore and follicle of her pubescent body. In her washed-out gray eyes, strangely spectacled, our poor romance was for a moment reflected, pondered upon, and dismissed like a dull party, like a rainy picnic to which only the dullest bores had come, like a humdrum exercise, like a bit of dry mud caking her childhood. — Vladimir Nabokov

You make your whole existence dependant on another human being you're asking for a world of trouble. Think of every tragic love story ever written. And I didn't want to play Juliet to anybody's Romeo, not if I could help it. Even if the only candidate available was willing to die for me and sitting right beside me holding my hand and looking deeply into my eyes with the not-so-gah-now eyes the colour of melted chocolate. Plus being practically naked under those covers and possession the body of a Hollister dude ... but I'm not getting into all that. — Rick Yancey

We drove in a kind of wholesome silence, carrying our whole long marriage, all the hope and kindness that it represented, with us. What it felt like was sitting in Sunday school singing "Jesus loves me," sitting in the little chairs, surrounded by sunlight and bright drawings, and having those first inklings of doubt, except that doubt presents itself simply as added knowledge, something new, for the moment, to set beside what is already known. — Jane Smiley

How could he hate the Jews and yet feel sick when they were attacked? Louis hated peasants, too, apparently, and yet he had no problem sitting beside Jeanne - hoisting her in the air and dancing even. Jacob tried to turn this over in his head, around and around, like the cartwheels beneath him. But after a while, he gave up. People were too strange to understand, he decided. They were like life. And also that cheese. Too many things at once. — Adam Gidwitz

I thought of all the summer evenings I'd spent sitting in the chairs under the trees beside the trailer, reading books that helped me escape Creek View, at least for a little while. Magical kingdoms, Russian love triangles, and the March sisters couldn't have been further away from the trailer park. — Heather Demetrios

There I was out in the barn playing midwife to a pregnant mare. I remember sitting there, spinning yarn in the light of a little oil lamp, a city girl who knew nothing about farming, sitting on the deel beside that mother in pain, already beginning the birthing process. All around me there was darkness and perfect silence, except for the mother's pain. It was as if the war didn't exist in those hours. — Diet Eman

One day I was driving down the farm track in the pickup,with two of the little boys, aged about four or five, sitting beside me. One of them turned to me conversationally and said, "Baba, don't worry. When you get old one day you'll be sitting here where we are, and we'll be driving you around! — Angus Buchan

A good friend will bail you out when you land in jail, but a very good friend will be sitting beside you in that jail cell. — Maya Banks

I would say that if someone only has a short time to live and decides to spend that time sitting beside a bed, watching a man sleeping, then that must be love. I'd go further: if, during that time, that person has a heart attack, but sits on in silence, just so as to remain close to the man, I would say that such love had a lot of potential for growth. — Paulo Coelho

Sitting on top of Mr. Weasley's overflowing in-tray was an old toaster that was hiccuping in a disconsolate way and a pair of empty leather gloves that were twiddling their thumbs. A photograph of the Weasley family stood beside the in-tray. Harry noticed that Percy appeared to have walked out of it. — J.K. Rowling

HIGGINS [sitting down beside her] Rubbish! you shall marry an ambassador. You shall marry the Governor-General of India or the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, or somebody who wants a deputy-queen. I'm not going to have my masterpiece thrown away on Freddy.

LIZA. You think I like you to say that. But I haven't forgot what you said a minute ago; and I won't be coaxed round as if I was a baby or a puppy. If I can't have kindness, I'll have independence.

HIGGINS. Independence? That's middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.

LIZA [rising determinedly] I'll let you see whether I'm dependent on you. If you can preach, I can teach. I'll go and be a teacher.

HIGGINS. What'll you teach, in heaven's name?

LIZA. What you taught me. I'll teach phonetics.

HIGGINS. Ha! Ha! Ha! — George Bernard Shaw

So, Zoe told me today that - " "Wait. Are you going to talk like that?"
I glanced down and realized he was referring to the fact that my shirt was sitting on the floor beside me. "My bra's still on. What's the problem?"
"The problem is that I'm distracted. Very distracted. If you want my undivided attention and wisdom, you'd better put the shirt back on."
I smiled and scooted over to him. "Why, Adrian Ivashkov, are you admitting weakness?" I reached out to touch his cheek, and he caught my wrist with a fierceness that was surprisingly provocative.
"Of course. I never claimed strength in the face of your charms, Sage. I'm just an ordinary man. Now put the shirt back on. — Richelle Mead

Not now. He was quiet, and then he said, You are the only person in this world I want to have sitting here beside me. That isn't what I think, it's what I know. I guess it doesn't explain anything. — Marilynne Robinson

He laughed as he bled down his shirt, and I babbled apologies. He let his head fall back against the truck door with a thump. "Leave off, Mercy. It'll close up quick enough on its own." I backed up until I was sitting beside him - half-laughing myself, because although it probably hurt quite a bit, he was right that his injury would heal in a few minutes. It was minor, and — Patricia Briggs

Suit Guy takes the seat beside me and turns to me with a smile on his face. I take in that face for the first time and -

Holy effing shit!

Hotness incarnate is sitting next to me.

Actual pure male hotness. All men should have been made to look like this. Seriously.

He looks like Clark Kent without the glasses, which would mean he looks like Superman - the Henry Cavill version.

Superman in a suit.

Lord, help me. — Samantha Towle

Happiness doesn't lie in conspicuous consumption and the relentless amassing of useless crap. Happiness lies in the person sitting beside you and your ability to talk to them. Happiness is clear-headed human interaction and empathy. Happiness is home. And home is not a house-home is a mythological conceit. It is a state of mind. A place of communion and unconditional love. It is where, when you cross its threshold, you finally feel at peace. — Dennis Lehane

I don't want to go back," Beatrix moaned. "It's so dreadfully dull, and I don't like all that rich food, and I've been sitting beside the vicar who only wants to talk about his own religious writings. It's so redundant to quote oneself, don't you think?"
"It does bear a certain odor of immodesty," Amelia agreed with a grin, smoothing her sister's dark hair. "Poor Bea. You don't have to go back, if you don't wish it. I'm sure one of the servants can recommend a nice place for you to wait until supper is done. The library, perhaps."
"Oh, thank you." Beatrix heaved a sigh of relief. "But who will create another distraction if Leo starts being disagreeable again?"
"I will," Cam assured her gravely. "I can be shocking at a moment's notice."
"I'm not surprised," Amelia said. "In fact, I'm fairly certain you would enjoy it. — Lisa Kleypas

Truman had been sitting in a chair in the bedroom with several new books stacked on a table beside him. Did the President like to read himself to sleep at night, McCormick asked. "No, young man," said Truman, "I like to read myself awake." Thomas — David McCullough

Callie tucked her brother into bed, and once he fell asleep, she left her room in search of her husband. She found him outside her door, leaning against the wall with his sword beside him.
"Sin? What are you doing?"
"'Twould appear I am sitting."
"And why are you sitting there?"
"Because it's rather difficult to sleep while standing."
Callie faltered as his meaning became clear. "You are sleeping outside my door? Why?"
"Because if I slept outside of Simon's door, the innkeeper might think I'm strange."
-Callie & Sin — Kinley MacGregor

Karras showered and then dressed in a T-shirt and trousers. Sitting down to his desk, he discovered a carton of Camel non-filters, and beside it a key that was labeled LANGUAGE LAB and another — William Peter Blatty

As soon as you think of fishing you think of things that don't belong to the modern world. The very idea of sitting all day under a willow tree beside a quiet pool - and being able to find a quiet pool to sit beside- belongs to a time before the war, before radio, before aeroplanes, before Hitler. — George Orwell

Mary stood beside Wilbur, waiting as he sewed Henrietta's abdomen closed. She wanted to run out of the morgue and back to the lab, but instead, she stared at Henrietta's arms and legs - anything to avoid looking into her lifeless eyes. Then Mary's gaze fell on Henrietta's feet, and she gasped: Henrietta's toenails were covered in chipped bright red polish. "When I saw those toenails," Mary told me years later, "I nearly fainted. I thought, Oh jeez, she's a real person. I started imagining her sitting in her bathroom painting those toenails, and it hit me for the first time that those cells we'd been working with all this time and sending all over the world, they came from a live woman. I'd never thought of it that way." — Rebecca Skloot

Another atrocity of summer is soccer. When the Euro Cup is on, it brings out the worst in people. It turns them into ravaging beasts who complain when a team they like, which they have done nothing to deserve, slips from grace and loses the match.
An old man sitting beside me at the cafe was watching the men watch the soccer rather than watch the soccer himself. He found their reactions more entertaining than the game.
"All this stuff and nonsense over men kicking a ball," he groused. "And they don't do any of the work themselves."
I told him, "We should just have wars. Then we would not need sports."
He laughed and quite agreed with me. — Michelle Franklin

Sitting beside me, he gently pulls my sweatpants down again. Up and down like whores — E.L. James

I'll hold the baby," Daniel announced, then narrowed his eyes in case anyone wanted to argue the point. "You can do another next year,lass," he added to Gennie when there was no opposition, "and I'll be holding two." He beamed at Diana before he shifted his look to Shelby. "Or three."
"You should have Dad sitting in his throne-chair," Alan amended quickly, giving Gennie one of his rare grins. "That'd make the clearest statement."
"Exactly." Her eyes danced as she kept her features sober. "And Anna, you'll sit beside him. Perhaps you'd hold your embroidery because it looks so natural."
"The wives should sit at their husband's feet," Caine said smoothly. "That's natural."
There was general agreement among the men and definite scorn among the women. — Nora Roberts

But while admiring my neighbour, I don't think I shall ever try to follow in her steps, my talents not being of the energetic and organising variety, but rather that of that order which makes their owner almost lamentably prone to take up a volume of poetry and wander out to where the kingcups grow, and, sitting on a willow trunk beside a little stream, forget the very existence of everything but green pastures and still waters, and the glad blowing of the wind across the joyous fields. — Elizabeth Von Arnim

Your best friend is the person who not only knows all the important stories and events in your life, but has lived through them with you. Your best friend isn't the person you call when you are in jail; mostly likely, she is sitting in the cell beside you. — Irene S. Levine

On the first day of fifth grade, Liz was sitting on the swing beside Liam's at recess. Falling and flying, her hair fanned out behind her and her eyes were closed, and that was what had caught his attention, her closed eyes. She looked a little bit silly and very much alive, and Liam couldn't stop watching.

Liz, on her part, was aware that the boy beside her was watching, but she loved swinging too much to care what he thought. She loved the wind hitting her face and the brief moment of suspension at the top of the arc and the falling sensation that was magnified by the darkness of her eyelids. She imagined that she was a bird, an angel, a wayward star.

At the height of the arc, she let go. And she flew.

Liam watched with his mouth hanging wide open, expecting her to crumple on the asphalt and die tragically before his eyes.

She didn't, and when she walked away, Liam's heart followed. — Amy Zhang

Our first night in the house, my wife and I were lying in bed. I was thanking God for my blessings. Thanking God for not having to pull aside a dining room curain to have my children near - that they were right down the hall, asleep in their Superman underwear, their little chests rising and falling to the pulse of their dreams.
I thought how some blessings are fickle guests. Just when we think they're here to stay, they pack their bags and move. When we're in the midst of blessing, we think it's our due - that blessing lasts forever. Next thing you know we're sitting helpless beside a hospital bed. All we're left with is a name on a wall, a toy in a desk, and memories that haunt our sleep.
Sometimes we come to gratitute too late. It's only after blessing has passed on that we realize what we had.
- chapter 2 — Philip Gulley

My suggestion was that every night, upon going to bed, he place a chair beside his bed and tell himself that Jesus was sitting in that chair all night, watching over him and lifting the burden of worry from his shoulders. — Norman Vincent Peale

I didn't sleep at all last night, my heart and mind plagued and conflicted and I cant feel my limbs, I cant taste the food I'm not eating and I cant see straight, I cant focus on the things I'm supposed to be hearing. All I can think about are all the casualties and Warner's lips on my neck, his hands on my body, the pain and passion in his eyes and the many possible ways I could die today. I can only think about Warner touching me, kissing me, torturing me with his heart and Adam sitting beside me, not knowing what I've done. — Tahereh Mafi

While I'd been plagued by nightmares of Jonathan's unrest in the hereafter, it was only now that I'd seen Adair again - and seen him so changed - that I could admit, even to myself, that it was him I daydreamed of, who I longed for, who I ached for, physically. That was how I'd betrayed Luke - in my desire for Adair. It wasn't so uncommon, was it? Living with one man while your mind is on another? Being unable to stop thinking of this other man who, for one reason or another, was not the one sitting beside you. Thinking of the way his eyes lit up when he saw you, of his wicked smile and what it was like when he held you, how you responded to the touch of his hands. In solitary moments, you remembered the little intimacies, the feel of his skin against yours, the way he liked to be touched, the velvet nap of his member, the way he tasted. You thought of him even though you could never be with him. His absence nagged like an itch you could never scratch. — Alma Katsu

My definition of art is whatever an artist calls art. Us speaking could be an artwork, us sitting in the near-dark in your kitchen beside the dirty dishes and smoking, me thinking of what to say next. — Matthew Brannon

Thus it was, that when the little hairy man arrived back from the village of Revelry (although why it was so called no man alive could say, for it was a gloomy, somber place, and had been for time out of mind) he found Tristran sitting glumly beside a hawthorn bush, wrapped in a blanket, and bewailing the loss of his hat. "They said cruel things about my true love," said Tristran. "Miss Victoria Forester. How dare they?" "The little folk dare anything," said his friend. "And they talks a lot of nonsense. But they talks an awful lot of sense, as well. You listen to 'em at your peril, and you ignore 'em at your peril, too. — Neil Gaiman

Such are the visions which ceaselessly float up, pace beside, put their faces in front of, the actual thing; often overpowering the solitary traveller and taking away from him the sense of the earth, the wish to return, and giving him for substitute a general peace, as if (so he thinks as he advances down the forest ride) all this fever of living were simplicity itself; and myriads of things merged in one thing; and this figure, made of sky and branches as it is, had risen from the troubled sea (he is elderly, past fifty now) as a shape might be sucked up out of the waves to shower down from her magnificent hands, compassion, comprehension, absolution. So, he thinks, may I never go back to the lamplight; to the sitting-room; never finish my book; never knock out my pipe; never ring for Mrs. Turner to clear away; rather let me walk on to this great figure, who will, with a toss of her head, mount me on her streamers and let me blow to nothingness with the rest. — Virginia Woolf

By the Hospital Lane goes the 'Faeries Path.' Every evening they travel from the hill to the sea, from the sea to the hill. At the sea end of their path stands a cottage. One night Mrs. Arbunathy, who lived there, left her door open, as she was expecting her son. Her husband was asleep by the fire; a tall man came in and sat beside him. After he had been sitting there for a while, the woman said, 'In the name of God, who are you?' He got up and went out, saying, 'Never leave the door open at this hour, or evil may come to you.' She woke her husband and told him. 'One of the good people has been with us,' said he. ("Village Ghosts") — W.B.Yeats

His reaction to the idea was not simple. He felt a great warmth that they should want to give him a party and at the same time he quaked inwardly remembering the last one they had given.
Now everything fell into place-Mack's question and the silences when he was about. He thought of it a lot that night sitting beside his desk. He glanced about considering what things would have to be locked up. He knew the party was going to cost him plenty. — John Steinbeck

Here I am in the garden laughing an old woman with heavy breasts and a nicely mapped face how did this happen well that's who I wanted to be at last a woman in the old style sitting stout thighs apart under a big skirt grandchild sliding on off my lap a pleasant summer perspiration that's my old man across the yard he's talking to the meter reader he's telling him the world's sad story how electricity is oil or uranium and so forth I tell my grandson run over to your grandpa ask him to sit beside me for a minute I am suddenly exhausted by my desire to kiss his sweet explaining lips. — Grace Paley

Sitting down beside her, he found her lower belly with his hand. "I love this."
"Love What?"
"This bump thing you got going on." He smiled. "That's our young. — J.R. Ward

The lamplight was warm and the apartment still and snug. At home in bed, in my private abyss of longing, the scenes I dreamed of always began like this. I could lose myself forever in that singular little face, in the pessimism of her beautiful mouth. When I imagined these phrases cast in her voice, they were almost intolerably sweet; now, sitting right beside her, it was unthinkable that I should voice them myself. — Donna Tartt

But he was not looking at the view beneath him. He was looking beside him, where Violet Baudelaire was sitting, — Lemony Snicket

I think I'd want to be a tree," I told him, finally.
"A tree? Why's that?"
"Because. Everyone loves a tree."
"Ah." He nodded. "I see."
"So, what about you? What would you want to be?"
"Well, considering your answer, I suppose I'd want to be a boy, sitting on park bench somewhere beside a tree named Nicole. — Jennifer DeLucy

Uh, what are you doing?'
'What does it look like I'm doing?' Jake asks, settling into the seat beside me. The bus jerks forward. 'I'm sitting beside you.'
'No, you're not. Your seat is in the middle. Nice try, though.'
He has the audacity to ignore me, sets his book bag on his lap and rummages through it. After a minute, he pulls out a folded sheet of paper and hands it to me.
I unfold it. 'A love letter? How sweet.'
'No.' He turns pink. 'It's just something I found on the Internet-'
'Porn? You shouldn't have. — Courtney Summers

Sophisticated-looking than the girl he used to know. People in hospitals never looked good. And yet, somehow, she did. Dianna was in the middle of saying something to a thin woman with a severe black haircut who was sitting on a chair beside the bed when she looked up and saw him. Breaking off in the middle of her sentence, she sucked in a deep breath, her face flushing beneath his scrutiny. And yet, even as he mentally dissected all the ways she'd changed, all the reasons they were more different than ever, his body was telling him to get over there, to pull her tight against him and kiss her until they were both gasping for air. What — Bella Andre

Some Things, Say the Wise Ones Some things, say the wise ones who know everything, are not living. I say, you live your life your way and leave me alone. I have talked with the faint clouds in the sky when they are afraid of being left behind; I have said, Hurry, hurry! and they have said: thank you, we are hurrying. About cows, and starfish, and roses, there is no argument. They die, after all. But water is a question, so many living things in it, but what is it, itself, living or not? Oh, gleaming generosity, how can they write you out? As I think this I am sitting on the sand beside the harbor. I am holding in my hand small pieces of granite, pyrite, schist. Each one, just now, so thoroughly asleep. — Mary Oliver

When we're married and he looks at me sitting beside him at the table, he should feel as if he's fought a great battle and accomplished something - namely, winning me. He'll treasure me more. I like being treasured. — Linda Howard

This is the Death's-head Moth," he said. "That's nightshade she's sitting on - we're hoping she'll lay." The moth was wonderful and terrible to see, its large brown-black wings tented like a cloak, and on its wide furry back, the signature device that has struck fear in men for as long as men have come upon it suddenly in their happy gardens. The domed skull, a skull that is both skull and face, watching from its dark eyes, the cheekbones, the zygomatic arch traced exquisitely beside the eyes. "Acherontia styx," Pilcher said. "It's named for two rivers in Hell. Your man, he drops the bodies in a river every time - did I read that?" "Yes," Starling said. "Is it rare?" "In this part of the world it is. There aren't any at all in nature. — Thomas Harris

He glanced beside him then patted at his round shoulders. "Want to come up here?" "What, on your shoulders?" He grinned and shrugged. "Yeah, why not? Everyone else is doing it." The idea of a 5'9" girl sitting on a 6'4" guy made me want to laugh. We'd be the brontosaurus of the festival. The acid trippers would see us and freak the hell out. — Karina Halle

Oakheart," Crookedpaw explained. "He's my littermate." Bluepaw stretched up on her hind legs to get a better view of the tom, but could see only the reddish-brown tips of his ears. "He's great," Crookedpaw purred. "He caught a fish on his first day as an apprentice." I caught a squirrel. Bluepaw found herself competing. "He says that when he becomes leader, he'll make me deputy." How modest! "I have a sister," Bluepaw announced. She nodded toward Snowpaw, who was sitting beside Sparrowpelt, a tail-length away. "She's a brilliant hunter, too." "Maybe if they both became leader we could be deputies together," Crookedpaw mewed. Deputy? What was the point of being deputy? "I want to be the leader!" Crookedpaw looked at her in surprise, then broke into a purr. "Of course." Bluepaw — Erin Hunter

makeup that Langdon could see, her complexion appeared unusually smooth, the only blemish a tiny beauty mark just above her lips. Her eyes, though a gentle brown, seemed unusually penetrating, as if they had witnessed a profundity of experience rarely encountered by a person her age. 'Dr. Marconi doesn't speak much English,' she said, sitting down beside him, 'and he asked me to fill out your admittance form.' She gave — Dan Brown

Voldemort's sitting in the Shrieking Shack?" said Hermione, outraged. "He's not--he's not even fighting?"
"He doesn't think he needs to fight," said Harry. "He thinks I'm going to go to him."
"But why?"
"He knows I'm after Horcuxes--he's keeping Nagini close beside him--obviously I'm going to have to go to him to get near the thing--"
"Right," said Ron, squaring his shoulders. "So you can't go, that's what he wants, what he's expecting. You stay here and look after Hermione, and I'll go and get it--"
Harry cut across Ron.
"You two stay here, I'll go under the Cloak and I'll be back as soon as I--"
"No," said Hermione, "it makes much more sense if I take the Cloak and--"
"Don't even think about it," Ron snarled at her.
Before Hermione could get farther than "Ron, I'm just as capable--" the tapestry at the top of the staircase on which they stood was ripped open. — J.K. Rowling