Sitting By A Fire Quotes & Sayings

And she told me I deserved a merit badge for it ... which was such a particularly funny, particularly uncanny thing for her to have said, because when I was about eight years old and I was a Cub Scout, all the boys in our den were sitting around in the kitchen of our den mother one afternoon, and she lit a cigarette bending over the flame from the front burner of the stove, and she set her hair on fire, and I put it out - I don't remember if I just smothered it with my hands or doused it with some Sprite or what - but she stared at me with this sort of demented look of gratitude on her face (she drank) and she said, 'I'm going to recommend that you get a merit badge for this,' and sure enough I did, I actually got a merit badge for extinguishing the fire in our den mother's hair. — Mark Leyner

I could barely move my left arm, and it hurt like fire. I tried to stretch out my wing, only to suck my breath in hard as I found out it had been hit too. I couldn't see it well over my shoulder, but my big clue was the screaming pain. I was scraped all over, had lost my windbreaker, and, if I wasn't mistaken, I was sitting in a patch of poison ivy. — James Patterson

I think the artistic process comes from disorder. When you are happy, it's not always a feeling that you can identify. It's like a dog sitting in front of a fire. Pain isolates you, but it can also clarify things. — Amanda Harlech

In the beginning this is bound to happen. You have been sitting on the lid that covers your repressions, and you have been riding on that lid a long time, trying continuously to hold down everything beneath it. To become a witness means that you have finally jumped off the lid; now you will only stand aside and will not do anything. Now you will no longer repress, now you will just witness. So everything suppressed will arise, all the repressions will catch fire; you will find flames leaping where there were only ashes. — Rajneesh

My grandson was sitting by a fire in the backyard and said it was getting smaller. I said he was getting bigger and in fact was twenty years old now.
He laughed and said, No I'm not I didn't have any birthdays!! — Neil Leckman

He was sitting in front of the kitchen fire, and after Elizabeth's taunt he cocked up a hind leg and carefully, ostentatiously, groomed his private parts, a habit which he often used with great effect to annoy his women folk. — Olaf Stapledon

Please, Lord, tell me what to do! "Mom?" I said later that night. "Yes?" We were sitting on the sofa in the den, the fire blazing before — Nicholas Sparks

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

Too many people learn about war with no inconvenience to themselves. They read about Verdun or Stalingrad without comprehension, sitting in a comfortable armchair, with their feet beside the fire, preparing to go about their business the next day, as usual.
One should really read such accounts under compulsion, in discomfort, considering oneself fortunate not to be describing the events in a letter home, writing from a hole in the mud. One should read about war in the worst circumstances, when everything is going badly, remembering that the torments of peace are trivial, and not worth any white hairs. Nothing is really serious in the tranquility of peace; only an idiot could be really disturbed by a question of salary.
One should read about war standing up, late at night, when one is tired, as I am writing about it now, at dawn, while my asthma attack wears off. And even now, in my sleepless exhaustion, how gentle and easy peace seems! — Guy Sajer

Emotions, particularly strong emotions in people we care about, are contagious. But just as so-called negative emotions are contagious, so are calming and compassionate ones. [...] Mirror neurons in the brain are what cause us to feel the experiences and emotions of people around us. In the classic example, if I am watching you eat a banana, the neurons in my brain that are involved in eating bananas begin to fire. Likewise, if I am sitting across from you and feeling sad or angry, you are likely to have those neurons fire in your brain as well; thus you are *feeling* those emotions yourself, not just detecting them. — Christopher Willard

When it comes to sitting down and composing, there is no hesitation, no concern, no critics breathing fire down my neck. For me, writing a song is the purest part of all. No one can mess with that. — Rufus Wainwright

Duke was already sitting in the passenger seat, waiting for her. She got in and started the car. Duke busted into a Slim Jim of his own.
"You hairy toad fucker. That stuff's nasty. Your toilet must be like a nuclear reactor." Dove turned on her windshield wipers as a light mist seemed to fracture the glass.
"I'm sorry, Whore Basket. I couldn't hear you over the noise of you crapping your pants!" Duke took another huge bite and chewed the waxy meat like gum.
"This stuff is off the charts. I could eat vats of it. — Debra Anastasia

Peggotty and I were sitting one night by the parlour fire, alone. I had been reading to Peggotty about crocodiles. I must have read very perspicuously, or the poor soul must have been deeply interested, for I remember she had a cloudy impression, after I had done, that they were a sort of vegetable. I — Charles Dickens

Wood heat is not new. It dates back to a day millions of years ago, when a group of cavemen were sitting around, watching dinosaurs rot. Suddenly, lightning struck a nearby log and set it on fire. One of the cavemen stared at the fire for a few minutes, then said: Hey! Wood heat! The other cavemen, who did not understand English, immediately beat him to death with stones. But the key discovery had been made, and from that day forward, the cavemen had all the heat they needed, although their insurance rates went way up. — Dave Barry

In other languages,
you are beautiful- mort, muerto- I wish
I spoke moon, I wish the bottom of the ocean
were sitting in that chair playing cards
and noticing how famous you are
on my cell phone- picture of your eyes
guarding your nose and the fire
you set by walking, picture of dawn
getting up early to enthrall your skin- what I hate
about stars is they're not those candles
that make a joke of cake, that you blow on
and they die and come back, and you
you're not those candles either, how often I realize
I'm not breathing, to be like you
or just afraid to move at all, a lung
or finger, is it time already
for inventory, a mountain, I have three
of those, a bag of hair, box of ashes, if you
were a cigarette I'd be cancer, if you
were a leaf, you were a leaf, every leaf, as far
as this tree can say. — Bob Hicok

I thought of kissing Astrid under the fire escape. I thought of Norm's rusty microbus and of his father, Cicero, sitting on the busted-down sofa in his old trailer, rolling dope in Zig-Zag papers and telling me if I wanted to get my license first crack out of the basket, I'd better cut my fucking hair. I thought of playing teen dances at the Auburn RolloDrome, and how we never stopped when the inevitable fights broke out between the kids from Edward Little and Lisbon High, or those from Lewiston High and St. Dom's; we just turned it up louder. I thought of how life had been before I realized I was a frog in a pot. I shouted: "One, two, you-know-what-to-do!" We kicked it in. Key of E. All that shit starts in E. — Stephen King

At my father's club, sitting before the fire, we had spoken of 'moments made eternity', meaning what are called timeless moments, moments precisely without the pressure of time--moments that might be called, indeed, timeful moments. And we had clearly understood that the pressure of time was our nearly inescapable awareness of an approaching terminus-the bell about to ring, the holiday about to end, the going down from Oxford foreseen...Life itself is pressured by death, the final terminus. Socrates refused to delay his own death for a few more hours: perhaps he knew that those few hours under the pressure of time would be worth little....Awareness of duration, of terminus, spoils Now. — Sheldon Vanauken

One of the most inventive forms of creative capitalism involves someone we all know very well. A few years ago, I was sitting in a bar here in Davos with Bono. Late at night, after a few drinks, he was on fire, talking about how we could get a percentage of each purchase from civic-minded companies to help change the world. He kept calling people, waking them up, and handing me the phone to show me the interest. — Bill Gates

Did you set this fire?" Thiago demanded angrily.
"If I had started this fire, there would just be a crater," Brandt answered heatedly, "and none of us would be sitting here breathing in all this lovely smoke because I would have made damn sure to blow us all to Hell!" he shouted. It was the first time Thiago had seen the big man perturbed, and he instantly regretted his hasty accusation. "So no, I didn't start this fire, but fuck you very much, all the same. — Abigail Roux

I recall those beautiful summer mornings with my parents by the sandy beach of Belek. My father used to teach me how to ride waves. I remember him constantly emphasizing the fact that no wave, no matter how big it is should stir enough fear inside me to keep me glued to the shore. He used to repeat those words while glancing at my mother with a smile that could set the whole sea on fire. My mother, sitting on the beach, too afraid of the deep blue sea, contented herself with building sand castles, ones my father would step on trying to drag her hopelessly into water.
Step on your sand castle and dive deep. Dive deep into the unknown. Life is damn too short for building sand castles. — Malak El Halabi

You never know when you might come home and find Mam sitting by the fire chatting with a woman and a child, strangers. Always a woman and child. Mam finds them wandering the streets and if they ask, Could you spare a few pennies, miss? her heart breaks. She never has money so she invites them home for tea and a bit of fried bread and if it's a bad night she'll let them sleep by the fire on a pile of rags in the corner. The bread she gives them always means less for us and if we complain she says there are always people worse off and we can surely spare a little from what we have. — Frank McCourt

And, instead of pelting these babbling idiots with their own freshly toasted marshmallows, everyone else sitting around the fire is often nodding and smiling and looking solemny thoughtful. — Stephen King

I find beauty in unusual things, like hanging your head out the window or sitting on a fire escape. — Scarlett Johansson

So in that sense, I and my fellow horror writers are absorbing and defusing all your fears and anxieties and insecurities and taking them upon ourselves. We're sitting in the darkness beyond the flickering warmth of your fire, cackling into our caldrons and spitting out spider webs of words, all the time sucking the sickness from your minds and spewing it out into the night. — Stephen King

An Eleanor, she told herself triumphantly, who belongs, who is talking easily, who is sitting by the fire with her friends. — Shirley Jackson

Look at the stars! Look, look up at the skies! Oh look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air! The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there! — Gerard Manley Hopkins

You should not use your fireplace, because scientists now believe that, contrary to popular opinion, fireplaces actually remove heat from houses. Really, that's what scientists believe. In fact many scientists actually use their fireplaces to cool their houses in the summer. If you visit a scientist's house on a sultry August day, you'll find a cheerful fire roaring on the hearth and the scientist sitting nearby, remarking on how cool he is and drinking heavily. — Dave Barry

I can certainly throw out some observation about the process of creating which may be of use. Firstly, it's the best & the worst of worlds, because the only fuel you have to make the fire blaze on the page / screen is the stuff of your own being. An artist consumes his or herself in the act of making art. I can feel that consumption even now, sitting here at my desk at the end of a working day. In order to generate the ideas that I have set on the page for the last 10 or 11 hours I have burned the fuel of my own history. This is, obviously a double-edged sword. In order to give, the artist must take from himself. That's the deal. And it's very important to me that the work I do is the best I can make it, because I know what is being burned up to create. As the villain of Sacrament says: living & dying, we feed the fire. — Clive Barker

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

Maggie sipped her drink with the cat draped across her lap and the dog curled at her feet. The only sounds in the room were the crackling of the fire and Dan Sean's shallow snores. There were no CD's to play, no radio, no television. There was nothing. She was just sitting there in silence, getting drunk. It occurred to her that a person's first drunken experience shoud be in the basement of a friend's house, in a forest preserve, behind the bleachers of a football field. Certainly not in the company of a sleeping ninety-nine-year-old man. She giggled a little and wondered what Uncle Kevin would make of it. "Hot port?" he would say. "Very impressive, Mags. I would have thought you'd be more of a wine cooler type of girl. — Jessie Ann Foley

When I'm writing, what I pretend subconsciously is that we're cavemen, we're sitting around the fire, and I'm telling you stories. If I bore you, you're probably going to pick up a big club and hit me over the head. — Harlan Coben

I have had a most shameful and distressing interview with poor dear Tom Eliot, who may be called dead to us all from this day forward. He has become an Anglo-Catholic, believes in God and immortality, and goes to church. I was really shocked. A corpse would seem to me more credible than he is. I mean, there's something obscene in a living person sitting by the fire and believing in God. — Virginia Woolf

Not long after he nodded off, he felt something and opened his eyes. She was beside him on the floor by the stove, wrapped in her sleeping bag, red hair all crazy from sleep. "I got cold, even with the sleeping bag," she said. "I'll feed the fire," Ian replied, sitting up and slipping a couple of logs into the stove. Then he lay back down, giving her room on the pallet beside him and, pulling her close, said, "Come here, little girl. Let me get you warm." "Hmm. That's what I need." "And what I need," he said, giving her a kiss against her temple. "Can — Robyn Carr

It would seem that the full meaning of the word marriage can never be known by those who, at their first outspring into life, are surrounded by all that money can give. It requires the single sitting-room, the single fire, the necessary little efforts of self-devotion, the inward declaration that some struggle shall be made for that other one. — Anthony Trollope

I could understand how such stories of horror can spread, like a wild fire. Such was the nature of rumor. People seemed to love to be frightened especially when, in their heart of hearts, they knew that they were safe. How many truly believed in vampires, I pondered? How many truly believed that they were risking their life by sitting up in the gods to watch a stage performance? — Raymond Buckland

Mansoor had seen Vikas Uncle's movies before and had never cared for them. They were serious, stiff, shot in black-and-white, the characters speaking crisp English. Nothing good happened to anyone. People lived enclosed middle-class lives, taunting each other with petty memories, and women and men argued incessantly. "They're so joyless," he had told his mother, wondering at how tragic Vikas Uncle's sensibility had been even before the blast - it was as if he were sitting at a ceremonial fire, fanning a tragedy toward himself. "But they are very acclaimed," his mother had said reverently. — Karan Mahajan

Then the syncretist Ficino, sitting hunched with Lorenzo standing at his side, put all the ideas together, along with Lorenzo's new song: chariots blazing between the worlds as gods fought rebel gods, the destruction of a city
a planet?
by fire, beasts beyond imagining both to terrify and befriend the heroes.
"It needs a title," Signorina Scala said.
Pulci had his mouth open, but Ficino beat him to the pun.
"It shall be dedicated to Isis and Mars," he said, "and we will call it Stella Martis. — John M. Ford

That's about when it happens. Coming down the escalator from one Nord floor to the next we see Little Teena has commandeered the grand piano. He's busy busting out Bach to all the bewildered shoppers. Little Teena just doesn't look for Nordstromy sitting there, with his red hair slick up in a pompadour, his girth squeezing out between his black leather jacket and the lip of his jeans, gumball machine rings decorating every single one of his fingers. But it's hen he goes from Bach to Great Balls of Fire that we attract the attention of the Nordfuck's militia. — Lidia Yuknavitch

But mostly, when I look back, what I remember is not Mom rushing about; it's Mom sitting quietly in the center of the house, in the living room, under the swirling colors of a Paul Jenkins painting; there would be a fire in the fireplace and a throw over her lap, her hands sticking out to hold a book. And we all wanted to be there with her and Dad, reading quietly too. — Will Schwalbe

After tea, when the door was shut and all was made snug (the nights being cold and misty now), it seemed to me the most delicious retreat that the imagination of man could conceive. To hear the wind getting up out at sea, to know that the fog was creeping over the desolate flat outside, and to look at the fire, and think that there was no house near but this one, and this one a boat, was like enchantment. Little Em'ly had overcome her shyness, and was sitting by my side upon the lowest and least of the lockers, which was just large enough for us two, and just fitted into the chimney corner. — Charles Dickens

A little later Anastasia was sitting before her bedroom fire writing. It has a magic of its own - the bedroom fire. Not such a one as night by night warms hothouse bedrooms of the rich, but that which burns but once or twice a year. How the coals glow between the bars, how the red light shimmers on the black-lead bricks, how the posset steams upon the hob! Milk or tea, cocoa or coffee, poor commonplace liquids, are they not transmuted in the alembic of a bedroom fire, till they become nepenthe for a heartache or a philtre for romance? Ah, the romance of it, when youth forestalls to-morrow's conquest, when middle life forgets that yesterday is past for ever, when even querulous old age thinks it may still have its "honour and its toil"! — John Meade Falkner

Reggie made him feel like he was nine years old and out for dinner with his family at the Ponderosa Steak House and he had run into his French teacher and his mother invited her to dine with him.
Reggie made him feel like he was sitting in a public bathroom stall and someone had come into the bathroom and began singing a song about what a stinky bastard he was while he was in there sweating it out.
Reggie made him feel like someone had taken the red Tonka fire engine he had always wanted and painfully corkscrewed it down the front of his jeans.
Reggie made him feel like the ice cream man had just rolled by and all his dead grandparents were mooning him out the truck window. — Jonathan Goldstein

For a while I thought I was the dragon.
I guess I can tell you that now. And, for a while, I thought I was
the princess,
cotton candy pink, sitting there in my room, in the tower of the castle,
young and beautiful and in love and waiting for you with
confidence
but the princess looks into her mirror and only sees the princess,
while I'm out here, slogging through the mud, breathing fire,
and getting stabbed to death.
Okay, so I'm the dragon. Big deal.
You still get to be the hero.
You get magic gloves! A fish that talks! You get eyes like flashlights! — Richard Siken

I've got different ideas of complete happiness. But one is being by myself out in a forest, completely happy. Another is walking with a dog in some nice place. And three is sitting around preferably a fire, but not necessarily, and drinking red wine with friends and telling stories. — Jane Goodall

If you asked most kids, "Hey, you want to summon fire or lightning or magical makeup?" they'd think it sounded pretty cool. But those powers went along with hard stuff, like sitting in a sewer in the middle of winter, running from monsters, losing your memory, watching your friends almost get cooked, and having dreams that warned you of your own death. — Rick Riordan

Suddenly the bridge was filled with intense warmth, Will had lit the fire. Everyone immediately scurried over to it, with the exception of Scott. Carrie looked back at him, he was sitting with his back leaned against a stone pillar. The light from the flames danced on his sharp features and reflected in his dark eyes. Scott always wore a half-smile that was suspiciously close to a smirk. She was practically immune to his cockiness and wasn't at all bothered by it the way that Will seemed to be. — Julia Barkey

Sometimes life begins like a bad dream and ends up like a kid's fairytale. The kind our
grandmothers used to tell us about sitting next to a fireplace, with their white braids shining under
the fire's light. They knew that even in an era like ours, there is nothing wrong with dreaming.. — Georgia Kakalopoulou

One weekend it rained for 48 hours without stopping. The rain beat like bony fingers against the window panes. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Fungus was growing on the walls. I polished off a bottle of gin sitting huddled over the two-bar electric fire and wrote a poem, one of the few that has lasted through the moves and the years. It is called 'Where Can I Go?'
If this is not the place where tears are understood where do I go to cry?
If this is not the place where my spirits can take wing where do I go to fly?
If this is not the place where my feelings can be heard where do I go to speak?
If this is not the place where you'll accept me as I am where can I go to be me?
If this is not the place where I can try and learn and grow where can I go to laugh and cry? — Alice Jamieson

There ought to be such an atmosphere in every Christian church that a man going there and sitting two hours should take the contagion of heaven, and carry home a fire to kindle the altar whence he came. — Henry Ward Beecher

Picture this broad: 22 going on 18. Half the guys in my class would have given their left testicle to date her. This cupcake is the guidance counselor the principal has assigned me. Miss Boyle is her name. We all call her "Miss Bubbly Water." Imagine the teasing I have to endure from my friends. Not to mention what it's like, sitting across from this Barbie Doll every Thursday afternoon, watching her cross and uncross her legs, while she's lecturing me about - get this: "staying focused." Right! My pants are on fire, and she's handing me a crash course in Psych 101! — Ted Gargiulo

The room was almost dark, with just flickers of light coming from the logs burning in the hearth. I could just see his shape, sitting in the leather, wing-backed chair, silhouetted by the fire.
"Come here."
His voice was quiet, but with the firmness I had come to expect from him. I moved closer and knelt down in front of him, my naked bottom facing the warmth of the fire. I bent my head downwards and looked at the floor as I had been taught, but he surprised me by lifting up my chin with his hand.
"You look so beautiful."
He bent and kissed me softly on the lips, and I shivered in anticipation. Was it to be pleasure or pain this time? Or perhaps a combination of both, given in the way that only he can. — Rachel De Vine

The really odd thing about human sex, though, was the way it went on even when people were fully clothed and sitting on opposite sides of a fire. It was in the things they said and did not say, the way they looked at one another and looked away. — Terry Pratchett

Make no mistake, Marin ... a Dragon Guardian may not always be the one sitting upon the throne, but he or she is the protector of the entire realm. — Aida Jacobs

But what if time worked the other way around?
What if what his adolescent self had felt then was the ghost of his present one, sitting here on a sagging bench, beckoning him into his future? — Garth Risk Hallberg

She lost twenty minutes sitting on the floor with her arms wrapped around her knees, smiling into the pretty glow and imagining herself a contented farmer's wife waiting for her man to come in from the fields. — Nora Roberts

Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly; but when they lit a fire in the craft, it sank, proving once and for all that you can't have your kayak and heat it too. — Tommy Cooper

4.07 WALK OF LIFE
A candle without fire cannot be burning,
Man without a spiritual life cannot be living,
Yet sitting quietly and nothing even if doing,
Spring will come and grass will be growing.
[76] - 4 — Munindra Misra

When I'm in pain I want everyone I love on the island with me, sitting around the fire, getting drunk on coconut milk, banging out a plan. — Melanie Gideon

High in a turret of a great castle rising on a black crag above snowy plains, besieged and grand, crammed full of an empire's treasure, and he sitting by a log fire with a sad and lovely princess ... I used to dream about such things, he thought. I used to long for them, ache for them. They seemed the very stuff of life, its essence. So why does all this taste of ashes? — Iain M. Banks

Some of the best conversations I've had are sitting around a camp fire. — Robyn Davidson

An eleven-year-old girl sitting on this fire escape could imagine that she was living in a tree. — Betty Smith

A move to a different town or school gives us new places to explore, new people to meet; a lost pet means we have to organize a careful search; baby-sitting requires looking out for dangers a young child can't foresee; a car crash or fire demands that we get help immediately. — Jim Murphy

He missed Stephanie, the ease between them, her solid and comforting presence. Sitting across from him, in the light of the fire, she blazed with health and well-being and good humor. "I — Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney

Just as many who were brought up to think of God as a bearded old gentleman sitting on a cloud decided that when they stopped believing in such a being they had therefore stopped believing in God, so many who were taught to think of hell as a literal underground location full of worms and fire ... decided that when they stopped believing in that, so they stopped believing in hell. The first group decided that because they couldn't believe in childish images of God, they must be atheists. The second decided that because they couldn't believe in childish images of hell, they must be universalists. — N. T. Wright

Bright young men of disheveled appearance, often with
sunken glowing eyes, can be seen sitting at computer consoles,
their arms tensed and waiting to fire their fingers, already poised
to strike, at the buttons and keys on which their attention seems
to be riveted as a gambler's on the rolling dice. When not so
transfixed, they often sit at tables strewn with computer printouts
over which they pore like possessed students of a cabbalistic
text. They work until they nearly drop, twenty, thirty hours
at a time. Their food, if they arrange it, is brought to them:
coffee, Cokes, sandwiches. If possible, they sleep on cots near
the printouts. Their rumpled clothes, their unwashed and
unshaven faces, and their uncombed hair all testify that they are
oblivious to their bodies and to the world in which they move.
These are computer bums, compulsive programmers ... — Joseph Weizenbaum

Mostly writing requires massive dedication, a whole lot of time spent alone, way too much sitting, countless hours spent thinking hard, and unending and occasionally painful dedication to forming ideas and laboring over the production of sentences, paragraphs, scenes, dialogue, punctuation, and all the elements that go into writing a novel, a play, a screenplay, or a poem. When we're not writing, we're thinking, plotting, imagining, or editing, which can be far more tedious than cranking out first drafts.
--Fire Up Your Writing Brain — Susan Reynolds

Way up in my tree I'm sitting by my fire
Wond'rin' where in this world might you be
And knowin' all the time you're still roamin' the countryside
Do you still think about me? — Jimi Hendrix

Sitting on my bed with all these things I used to love but not loving them anymore, I just wanted to set them on fire. That's when I knew I was never going to be all right again. — Wendy Walker

Sitting in an armchair under yellow lamplight in front of a black window in an apartment whose only other light was the milky rainbow of the Wurlitzer, Richard was like a giant, welcoming ear. Or a reflecting device, beaming her best self back at her. — Garth Risk Hallberg

Had been sitting with his face turned towards the fire: giving the palms of his hands a warm and a rub alternately. As the young woman spoke, he — Charles Dickens