Slipped Away Quotes & Sayings

As the Mississippi snaked and their old home slipped further away, perhaps Samuel had finally left the curse behind. — Andrew Galasetti

She seems so cool, so focused, so quiet, yet her eyes remain fixed upon the horizon. You think you know all there is to know about her immediately upon meeting her, but everything you think you know is wrong. Passion flows through her like a river of blood.
She only looked away for a moment, and the mask slipped, and you fell. All your tomorrows start here. — Neil Gaiman

At the end of a criminal's life, it's always the small mistake, the coincidence, the lark. The time we got too comfortable, the time we slipped up, the time someone aimed a little to the left.
I've heard Grandad's war stories a thousand times. How they finally got Mo. How Mandy almost got away. How Charlie fell.
Birth to grave, we know it'll be us one day. Our tragedy is that we forget it might be someone else first. — Holly Black

...the sensation was so startlingly intense that I couldn't help it, I slipped into the shadow.
"What in the name of - " Simon jerked backward, voice shocked. "Gods and suns, Lily, where did you go?"
I froze where I was, embarrassment flowing over me in a fiery tide that burned everything else away. Sweet lords of hell, what had I done? I was fairly certain that vanishing during such a moment was just not done. — M.J. Scott

Then, in the same way that his own dwelling slipped away behind him as he rounded a corner on his bicycle, the dream slipped away from his thoughts. Very briefly, a little guiltily, he tried to grasp it back. But the feelings had disappeared. The Stirrings were gone. — Lois Lowry

Before Gabe could react, he watched helplessly as Rachel slipped backwards and out of sight into the mountainside, a crumbling wall now the only thing he could see.
"Rachel!" Gabe shouted, rushing forward. Before Gabe could reach her Haim, being closer to where she had fallen through, leapt into the gaping hole after her. The group now only heard Haim's cries echoing in the darkness as they drifted further away. — Wendy Owens

That hand slipped under my dress, running along the side of my leg and up to my hip. I burned where he touched me, and everything within me became focused on that hand. It was moving far too slowly, and I grabbed it, ready to urge it on. Adrian chuckled and caught hold of my wrist, pulling my hand away and pinning it down against the covers. "Never thought I'd be the one slowing you down." I opened my eyes and met his. "I'm a quick study. — Richelle Mead

After one last kiss, she stepped away, wrapping his jacket tightly around her. "I'm keeping the coat."
"Okay."
"I'm going to wear it to bed."
"Okay."
"With nothing on underneath it."
Winking, she slipped inside, leaving him on the porch with that mental image ringing through his head. — J.M. Darhower

What the hell are you tryng to do?"
She gave him an innocent stare. "Why, have a conversation. I suppose you're out of practice."
He glared,narrow-eyed, then turned away. "I'm going for a walk," he muttered.
"Lovely." Gennie slipped her arm through his. "I'll go with you."
"I didn't ask you," Grant said flatly, stopping again.
"Oh." Gennie batted her eyes. "You're trying to charm me by being rude again. It's so difficult to resist. — Nora Roberts

I've never stopped and never ever will. But the words got tangled up somewhere between his mouth and his brain, and the moment slipped away. — Justin Cronin

I held onto her and the world slipped away. She calmed my mind and my soul lifted when close to her. Mina Harris was the better part of me, and I would keep her happy for the rest of my life. — Belle Aurora

If You Should Go
Love, leave me like the light,
The gently passing day;
We would not know, but for the night,
When it has slipped away.
Go quietly; a dream,
When done, should leave no trace
That it has lived, except a gleam
Across the dreamer's face. — Countee Cullen

It has happened to all of us. One day, one ordinary day when we imagine we're making our routine rounds in the world with ticket stubs and tobacco shreds in our pockets, our heads full of news items, traffic noise, troublesome monologues, we suddenly realize we are already someplace else, that we are not actually where our feet have taken us.
I had long slipped away, I had melted into a color paler than pale when I stood behind the windowpane made of ice. If you are to come down to earth, or any kind of reality, you must then hold a girl, that girl, hold on to her and win her love. — Orhan Pamuk

Elizabeth's fingers slipped around my arm. She stepped forward, her fangs flashing. My breath caught, but not in fear.
Damn Tiffany and her vampire-bite addiction. I shoved the reaction away just in time for Elizabeth's fangs to break skin.
Warmth rushed up my arm, the blaze filling my body, my mind. On my other side, Tatius's hand on my arm was like a cool oasis. I groped for his fingers, locking mine around his, pressing the long side of my body along his, and the fire in my body calmed enough I could still see, still think.
Cool. — Kalayna Price

For the hundredth time, he examined his face in the bathroom mirror, patiently touched every scratch with the styptic pencil, and repowdered them. He ministered to his face and hands objectively, as if they were not a part of himself. When his eyes met the staring eyes in the mirror, they slipped away as they must have slipped away, Guy thought, that first afternoon on the train, when he had tried to avoid Bruno's eyes. — Patricia Highsmith

He was sick of the noise and sight of so many people and determined to go quietly away, but it so happened that just at that moment the crowds about the door were particularly impenetrable; he was caught up in the current of people and carried away to quite another part of the room. Round and round he went like a dry leaf caught up in a drain; in one of these turns around the room he discovered a quiet corner near a window. A tall screen of carved ebony inlaid with mother-of-pearl half-hid - ah! what bliss was this! - a bookcase. Mr Norrell slipped behind the screen, took down John Npier's A Plaine Discouverie of the Whole Revelation of St John and began to read. — Susanna Clarke

Here again, it occurred to me, was the unique problem that faces my generation, the generation of those who had been, say, seven or eight years old during the mid-1960s, the generation of the grandchildren of those who'd been adults when it all happened; a problem that will face no other generation in history. We are just close enough to those who were there that we feel an obligation to the facts as we know them; but we are also just far enough away, at this point, to worry about our own role in the transmission of those facts, now that the people to whom those facts happened have mostly slipped away. — Daniel Mendelsohn

I slipped into the shop, wanting to curl up and disappear, wanting the world to blow away until there was nothing left. But before I got my wish, Mama came in after me, slamming the door on Dempsey, on all the prying eyes, on all the swirl of hope and despair and want, and I knew that the world would never go away, but would pull me down right along with it. — Eden Butler

But godhead gradually slipped away from him, leaving only a sense of election and the power, through his music, to to change landscapes, seasons, hearts. — Ann Wroe

When my sister was released from the mental hospital, she came to live with me in the tilting and crumbling one-bedroom house I'd bought with the small amount of money I inherited when our parents died. She arrived one afternoon unannounced in a taxi. She must have known instinctively that I'd take her in. I don't know how or why they released her. Probably due to overcrowding, and they had her scratch her name on a form then pushed her out the door. Or maybe she just slipped away when no one was looking (who'd notice in a place like that?)
she never did tell me and I didn't ask her. I was so happy to have her with me again that the last thing I wanted to do was break the spell by letting reality intrude. Ever since they'd dragged her away weeping with laughter and reaching out for me with our parents' blood still coating her hands with shiny red gloves, I'd felt amputated, like they'd pulled her kicking and screaming and insane out of my guts. — Michael Gira

Three heavy blows boxed him low in the back. He saw a splash of red hit the door and had time to think, 'We should have remembered the body armor.' Then he crumpled, still holding onto the knob with one hand as the world rushed away from him. Everything he was and everything he'd ever known diminished to a single burning-bright point of light. Then it went out. His hand slipped off the knob. He died on his knees, leaning against the door. — Stephen King

She was explaining to me that I had won nothing, that in the world there is nothing to win, that her life was full of varied and foolish adventures as much as mine, and that time simply slipped away without any meaning, and it was good just to see each other every so often to hear the mad sound of the brain of one echo in the mad sound of the brain of the other. — Elena Ferrante

Will turned away, wordless. There was no use to argue. The wind was moving. It cut right through him. He went to the tree, a vaulting grey-green sentinel, and began to climb. Soon his hands were sticky with sap, and he was lost among the needles. Fear filled his gut like a meal he could not digest. He whispered a prayer to the nameless gods of the wood, and slipped his dirk free of its sheath. He put it between his teeth to keep both hands free for climbing. The taste of cold iron in his mouth gave him comfort. Down — George R R Martin

You must not think of time as a quantity, a period, a measure. Look at the sky," Gwynneth said. "The moon has now slipped away to another night, into another world. It was not the time it was here that you remember, Faolan, but rather the luminescence of the air, the blue shadows cast by the trees in its light. It was not the length of the time but the quality of the moon's light that you felt and remember." Gwynneth paused. "It is the value, the quality that lives on. — Kathryn Lasky

Life was so short; so many beautiful things slipped away. — Kate DiCamillo

If I didn't have my camera to remind me constantly, I am here to do this, I would eventually have slipped away, I think. I would have forgotten my reason to exist. — Annie Leibovitz

Out in the country it was not uncommon to discover that she had slipped away, alone, out to the lake, maybe, or down to the cellar, where once I found her sitting in the big marooned sleigh, reading, her fur coat thrown over her knees. Things would have been terrible strange and unbalanced without her. She was the Queen who finished out the suit of dark Jacks, dark King, and Joker. — Donna Tartt

It's me, you fool. Who do you think it is? I'm coming in."
He was already naked. She turned away from him as he slipped in by her side but he caught her in his arms and felt her body thaw his belly and thighs. That was all, just to lie there listening to the breathing and the silence and feel the warmth colour his belly and thighs and head. She never wore clothes in bed. They were naked and the warmth run out of her. He wanted to laugh, because it was such a marvelous discovery to make, this warmth. She was hissing like a snake.
"No, it's wrong." She went on hissing.
She brought an elbow back smartly and struck him in the paunch. She seemed all elbows, shoulder blades and heels. It was like trying to make love to a dough-mixing machine. She wanted it, didn't she, otherwise why all this hissing and moaning? — P.H. Newby

Sister," he murmured, not as an inquiry, but a statement of fact. "Brother mine," she groaned ... before her consciousness slipped from her grasp and she drifted away. But she would come back to him. One way or the other, she would not leave her twin ever again. — J.R. Ward

He kissed me tenderly as my heart thumped out of control. My fingers slipped into his thick, black hair and held tightly. He paused, not wanting to pull away. I didn't let him. I was going to say goodbye properly. I held tightly, pressing my lips to his, soft at first then hard with desire. — Leigh Goff

His kissing was slower this time - gentler. The fingertips of his other hand slipped beneath the waist of my undergarment, and I sucked in a breath. He hesitated at the sound, pulling back slightly. But I bit his lip in a silent command that had him growling into my mouth. With one long claw, he shredded through silk and lace, and my undergarment fell away in pieces. The claw retracted, and his kiss deepened as his fingers slid between my legs, coaxing and teasing. I ground against his hand, yielding completely to the writhing wildness that had roared alive inside me, and breathed his name onto his skin. He paused again - his fingers retracting - but I grabbed him, pulling him farther on top of me. I wanted him now - I wanted the barriers of our clothing to vanish, I wanted to taste his sweat, wanted to become full of him. "Don't stop," I gasped out. "I - " he said thickly, resting his brow between my breasts as he shuddered. "If we keep going, I won't be able to stop at all." I — Sarah J. Maas

I regret not telling her how much she meant to me, how much I'd miss her, how devastated I'd be to see her go. If I could have one more second more with her, I would spend it whispering how much I love her into her ear and hugging her, just hugging her, and not letting go until she finally slipped away into nothing. — L.M. Augustine

The energy you drew on so extravagantly when you were a kid, the energy you thought would never exhaust itself - that slipped away somewhere between eighteen and twenty-four, to be replaced by something much duller, something as bogus as a coke high: purpose, maybe, or goals, or whatever rah-rah Junior Chamber of Commerce word you wanted to use. It was no big deal; it didn't go all at once, with a bang. And maybe, Richie thought, that's the scary part. How you didn't stop being a kid all at once, with a big explosive bang, like one of that clown's trick balloons. The kid in you just leaked out, like the air of a tire. — Stephen King

With the curtains clamped tight, he would sleep on the floor with a cushion beneath his head, as the fire slipped away and turned to ash.
In the morning he would return to the basement.
A voiceless human.
The Jewish rat, back to his hole. — Markus Zusak

None of us are meant to be or do anything," he said. "We decide what we're going to be. You told me once that there are no victims here, that we all have the power to choose what we want."
"Don't try to use my own words against me," I warned.
"Why?" he asked, a slight smile on his lips. "They were damned good ones. You're not a victim. You're not a captive to that lily. You can be what you want. You can choose what you want."
"You're right." I slipped away, finding no resistance from him at all. "And I don't choose you. That's what you're missing in all of this"
- Sydney & Adrian, The Golden Lily — Richelle Mead

Newt turned back to me, her eyes black as the sun slipped away. From the slump of broken castle, a rock fell. "We exist in a zoo," she said, chilling me. "You know that, yes? I hope our funding doesn't run out. I'd give anything for a better enclosure, one that at least hides the bars. — Kim Harrison

I know what you're doing," he whispered to Raphael, whose movements only became more fervent, and the thought slipped from the boy's mind so that he became dazed and undone with pleasure, staring up at the ceiling, watching as it blurred and became indistinct, and he felt the rising rush of pleasure, until he cried out in a sharp gasp.
And the pleasure went on and on, as it did, unbearably, until either Raphael took pity on him, or he pushed his Genitor away. Whichever it was, the pleasure that was leaking into pain, stopped, and he was lifted and laid down on the stone, cold and hard under his spine, and Raphael was bent over him, kissing up this time, up to his lips, flicking his tongue at them, and whispering: "Don't question my love for you. Ever again. — Carmen Dominique Taxer

So the days slipped away, as each morning dawned bright and fair, and each evening followed cool and clear. But autumn was waning fast; slowly the golden light faded to pale silver, and the lingering leaves fell from the naked trees. A wind began to blow chill from the Misty Mountains to the east. The Hunter's Moon waxed round in the night sky, and put to flight all the lesser stars. But low in the South one star shone red. Every night, as the Moon waned again, it shone brighter and brighter. Frodo could see it from his window, deep in the heavens, burning like a watchful eye that glared above the trees on the brink of the valley. — J.R.R. Tolkien

That it may be, but we could not have a dozen Apollyons running around." He looked over his shoulder at me. "Two are considered bad enough. Can you imagine if there were a dozen? No. You cannot. And besides, one slipped through every generation as planned. Though, we do make mistakes every once in awhile."

I was really beginning to dislike Apollo. "So I'm a monster and a mistake?"

He winked. "The perfect kind of mistake."

I scooted away from him a little. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

One said, "Nobody paused in front of the house since we've been here." I slipped my ID case away. "Any out-of-state tags?" "Didn't notice any." Different answer from "No." One — Jeffery Deaver

What was the exact percentage of this day that had already slipped away? — Tara Altebrando

Every phrase had to be captured on paper or it wasn't real, it slipped away. I'd see the words hanging in midair
Camille, pass the milk
and anxiety coiled up in me as they began to fade, like jet exhaust. Writing them down, though, I had them. No worries that they'd become extinct. I was a lingual conservationist. I was the class freak, a tight, nervous eighth-grader frenziedly copying down phrases ("Mr. Feeney is totally gay," "Jamie Dobson is ugly," "They never have chocolate milk") with a keenness bordering on the religious. — Gillian Flynn

It started when we were little kids.
Free spirits, but already
tormented by our own hands
given to us by our parents.
We got together and wrote on desks
and slept in laundry rooms near snowy mountains
and slipped through whatever
cracks we could find,
minds altered, we didn't falter
in portraving hysterical and
tragic characters in a smog
filled universe.
we loved the dirty city
and the journeys away from it.
We had not yet been or seen our friends, selves,
chase tails round and round in downward spirals,
leaving trail of irretrievable,
vital life juice behind.
Still, the
brothersbloodcomradespartnerfamilycuzz
was impenetrable
and we lived inside it
laughing with no clothes, and
everything experimental 'till
death was upon us.
In our face, mortality. — Anthony Kiedis

In until ten, not even on Mardi Gras nights. No one except the girl in the black silk dress, the thin little girl with the short, soft dark hair that fell in a curtain across her eyes. Christian always wanted to brush it away from her face, to feel it trickle through his fingers like rain. Tonight, as usual, she slipped in at nine-thirty and looked around for the friends who were never there. The wind blew the French Quarter in behind her, the night air rippling warm down Chartres Street as it slipped away toward the river, smelling of spice and fried oysters and whiskey and the dust of ancient bones stolen and violated. — Poppy Z. Brite

She slipped away unseen, like a shadow's shadow. — Clive Barker

Shuddering Tanis stepped back. Raistlin gave the drawstring on the top of the bag a quick jerk, snapping it shut. Then, glancing at them distrustfully, he slipped the bag within his robes, secreting it in one of his numerous hidden pockets, and begun to turn away. But Tanis stopped him.
"Things can never again be the same between us, can they?" the half-elf asked quietly.
Raistlin looked at him for a moment, and Tanis saw a brief flicker of regret in the young mage's eyes, a longing for trust and friendship and return to the days of youth.
"No," Raistilin whispered. "But such was the price I paid. — Margaret Weis

I slipped the book into my pocket. I assure you to leave off reading was like tearing myself away from the shelter of an old and solid friendship. — Joseph Conrad

One time, your heart almost slipped away on a river
barge. Your hands seemed to claw the sky. I'm sorry.
No one else made anything out of those streaked clouds.
The fact that it happened is proof enough for me. — Richard Jackson

Death is nothing at all. I have only slipped away into the next room. — Joanna Lumley

Exactly." Taking his time, he rose, pulled her to her feet. "You're really stuck on me, aren't you?"
"Stuck?" Her mouth would have fallen open if she hadn't been so busy sneering. "Please. You'll
embarrass yourself."
"Crazy about me." He slipped his arms around her, chuckling when she pushed against his chest
and arched away. "I saw you today, more than once, standing at the window looking at me."
"I don't know what you're talking about. I might have looked out the window."
"Looking at me," he continued, slowly drawing her against him. "The way I was looking at you.
Wanting me." He nuzzled gently at her neck. "The way I was wanting you. And more." His lips
brushed her cheek as she turned her head away. "There's more than the wanting between us. — Nora Roberts

It is about trying to light a candle instead of cursing the darkness, and loving your life even if it has slipped away — Isabel Gillies

You are the one who wanted a happy ending, my dear. So you tell me, how does the story end?"
Tears slipped from my face, and he wiped them away with his thumbs.
"The foolish young man lets the beautiful maiden go."
"Yes." His voice was clotted thick with unshed emotion. "He lets her go. — S. Jae-Jones

Cecy," he said, and closed the distance between them, though it was not much, and then he was kissing her-his hands awkward around her shoulders at first, slipping on the stiff taffeta of her gown before his fingers slipped behind her head, tangling in her soft, warm hair. She stiffened in surprise before softening against him, the seam of her lips parting as he tasted the sweetness of her mouth. When she drew away at last, he felt light-headed. "Cecy?" He said again, his voice hoarse. "Five," she said. Her lips and cheeks were flushed, but her gaze was steady. "Five?" He echoed blankly. "My rating," she said, and smiled at him. "Your skill and technique may, perhaps, require work, but the native talent is certainly there. What you require is practise." "And you are willing to be my tutor?" "I should be very insulted if you chose another," she said, and leaned up to kiss him again. — Cassandra Clare

Seemed to me a phone was an impersonal instrument. If it felt like it, it let your personality go through its wires. If it didn't want to, it just drained your personality away until what slipped through at the other end was some cold fish of a voice, all steel, copper, plastic, no warmth, no reality. It's easy to say the wrong thing on telephones; the telephone changes your meaning on you. First thing you know, you've made an enemy. Then, of course, the telephone's such a convenient thing; it just sits there and demands you call someone who doesn't want to be called. Friends were always calling, calling, calling me. Hell, I hadn't any time of my own. — Ray Bradbury

Remaining relaxed in his seat, he murmured, "Take down your hood."
A slender white hand reached up, and she complied. The hood slipped away from hair so vividly red that it eclipsed the embers in the fireplace.
Sebastian shook his head in bemusement as he recognized the young woman. The ridiculous creature from the house party at Stony Cross Park. A shy, stammering twit, whose red hair and voluptuous figure might make her tolerable company as long as she kept her mouth shut. They had never actually spoken. Miss Evangeline Jenner, he recalled. She had the largest, roundest eyes he had ever seen, rather like the eyes of a wax doll... or a young child. — Lisa Kleypas

She thought to resume crawling, then consciousness slipped away again. — Steven Erikson

One year, on Yom Kippur eve, Salanter did not show up in synagogue for services. The congregation was extremely worried; they could only imagine that their rabbi had suddenly taken sick or been in an accident. In any case, they would not start the service without him. During the wait, a young woman in the congregation became agitated. She had left her infant child at home asleep in its crib; she was certain she would only be away a short while. Now, because of the delay, she slipped out to make sure that the infant was all right. When she reached her house, she found her child being rocked in the arms of Rabbi Salanter. He had heard the baby crying while walking to the synagogue and, realizing that the mother must have gone off to services, had gone into the house to calm him. — Joseph Telushkin

The morgue is a Victorian update of a system established by Alfred the Great. It's the place where certain deaths are resolved - those where the cause is unclear or is the result of some intended or accidental violence. The bodies are almost always victims in some way - of crime, suicides and car crashes, but also victims of loneliness. It's where you go if you die alone in your flat and your body lies undisturbed for days. It's where you go if no one knew you were dying and no GP attended your final hours. It's where you go if no loved one held your hand as you slipped away. In one way or another, then, all the people who pass through this room are the people who die screaming. — Stephen Armstrong

When Jordan was a baby he sat on top of me much as a fly rests on a hill of dung. And I nourished him as a hill of dung nourishes a fly, and when he had eaten his fill he left me.
Jordan ...
I should have named him after a stagnant pond and then I could have kept him, but I named him after a river and in the flood-tide he slipped away. — Jeanette Winterson

In secret pleasure - secret tears
This changeful life has slipped away — Emily Bronte

It was at that point Ginny felt a presence and turning to look into his eyes she knew destiny was waiting, just around the corner, over the hill. His dark limpid pools, full of hope and wonder, gazed longingly at her and slowly, as his stare captured her heart, a hush descended. All that surrounded them slipped away into darkness until she could see only him. What happened next was a blur. — Virginia Alison

I've never really undestood," the unicorn mused as the man picked himself up," what you dream of doing with me, once you've caught me."
The man leaped again, and she slipped away from him like rain. "I don't think you know yourself," she said. — Peter S. Beagle

You just noticed
the disguise that she wears
from day to day?
Well that's too bad.
Because it's too late,
she's gone.
She slipped away. — Amanda Leigh

It was as if his life's work had slipped away unfinished before he had even been born. All he could find, at best, were a few remnants of a lost world. — Richard Preston

She wasn't as destructive as Bee. She had never been as dramatic. Rather, she'd slipped carefully, stealthily away from her ghosts. — Ann Brashares

It's got you thinking - you've never really known anyone who's died of natural causes, have you? Parents and grandparents, plus friends and neighbors and casual lovers, they've all left you too early, and in such ghastly ways. Cancers and violence, accidents and congenital defects, aneurysms of the brain and psyche. You've heard of people who've slipped peacefully away in their sleep, or in their favorite easy chairs, after ripe octogenarian lives, but suspect they must be mythical, in the company of unicorns and mermaids. If you didn't know better, you'd think there was a deliberate methodology behind it all, a gradual pattern of calamity spiraling inward until, at last, you're the only one left to be dealt with. You could be expected to think that, but don't, because you still keep your wits about you, thank god - So to speak. — Brian Hodge

A breakfast-room adjoined the drawing-room, I slipped in there. It contained a bookcase: I soon possessed myself of a volume, taking care that it should be one stored with pictures. I mounted into the window-seat: gathering up my feet, I sat cross-legged, like a Turk; and, having drawn the red moreen curtain nearly close, I was shrined in double retirement. Folds of scarlet drapery shut in my view to the right hand; to the left were the clear panes of glass, protecting, but not separating me from the drear November day. At intervals, while turning over the leaves of my book, I studied the aspect of that winter afternoon. Afar, it offered a pale blank of mist and cloud; near a scene of wet lawn and storm-beat shrub, with ceaseless rain sweeping away wildly before a long and lamentable blast. I — Charlotte Bronte

She flapped her hands, anxious energy coursing through her. "How can you be so calm?"
He got to his feet, unfolding with an easy grace. He held out a hand, his dark eyes focused solemnly on hers. "Come with me."
"For what?"
"That's part of the lesson." Was it her imagination, or did a twinkle of humor stir in those eyes? "Center yourself, and grab onto the here and now."
That made no sense - what was he now, Sir Medieval Zen Master? But she slipped her hand into his strong, calloused one. He hauled her up until she bumped into his chest. With a finger under her chin, he tilted her face until she looked in his eyes.
"Listen to the world around you. Hear the birds? Hear the small animals scurrying? You are in this moment, this moment only, and sometimes that's all you can do, all you can be." His finger pulled away, brushing against her skin, and he tapped her nose, stepping away. — Angela Quarles

Wine is a sign of happiness, love and plenty, how many of our adolescents and young people sense that these are no longer found in their homes? How many women, sad and lonely, wonder when love left, when it slipped away from their lives? How many elderly people feel left out of family celebrations, cast aside and longing each day for a little love? — Pope Francis

Sometimes I thought of the Peace Corps as a reverse refugee organization, displacing all of us lost Midwesterners, and it was probably the only government entity that taught Americans to abandon key national characteristics. Pride, ambition, impatience, the instinct to control, the desire to accumulate, the missionary impulse - all of it slipped away. — Peter Hessler

The past week and a half has slipped away so quickly, I can't remember individual days: Everything blurs together, turns the muddled gray of a confused dream. — Lauren Oliver

I thought calming thoughts and visualized serene places. Eventually, i found myself drifting along the frenetic edges of my mind. The Sandman was nowhere to be found, as i slipped further away from sleep. — Jaeda DeWalt

Do you know my best quality?" she asks.
"Of your many, I could not say, my darling."
"I see the best in people. I fall in love with people when I see a window into their beings, their shining moments. I've fallen in love with so many people but the trouble is I fall out of love so quickly too. I see the worst in them just as easily.
"Do you know I fell in love with you right away? That day at the Trotters' I had noted you because you were new, of course, and then you sat down at the piano, and you played a few notes, but you played them so well, with no self consciousness, and no idea that anyone might be listening. It was in that room off the garden and you were the only one there. I was passing through on the way to the ladies' room and saw you there. I fell in love with you right then, and so I slipped my drink all over myself so I could meet you." — Janice Y.K. Lee

The certainty that she would find what it was she sought just slipped away, until one night she knew there was nothing, no one waiting for her. That no matter how far she walked, how carefully she searched, how much she wanted to find the person she was looking for, she was alone - The Forgotten Garden — Kate Morton

I'm not skilled enough to explain properly how we feel. Not only me, but I'm sure Tony and Tim and Pop feel the same way. Last year was a tough one for all of us. We felt like we had the trophy, that we were touching it, and it slipped away. We all felt guilty. We got to this spot, and we didn't let it go. — Manu Ginobili

Did he hurt you? The emotion I was trying to suppress clawed at my throat, unleashed by the gentleness in Philip's voice. Without warning, a tear slipped down my cheek. I swiped it away. — Julianne Donaldson

[Rick] "Tara."
The sound of his voice snapped her away from the memories. His command brooked no argument as he looked up from between her spread thighs.
"Eyes on me."
His voice told her not to think, dominated every part of her soul, until she couldn't fight him, and she slipped firmly back into the present. — Jennifer Probst

Sarah, though, was still sometimes ruled by stark pain, lost to everything else. Grief slipped away, only to attack from behind. It changed shape endlessly. It lacerated her, numbed her, stalked her, startled her, caught her by the throat. It deceived her eye with glimpses of Charles, her ear with the sound of his voice. She would turn and turn, expecting him, and find him gone. Again. Each time Sarah escaped her sorrow, forgetful amid other things, she lost him anew the instant she remembered he was gone. — Kate Maloy

Without another word he slid toward me, slipped his arms around me, and drew me forward into a kiss. Our lips met and the jolt of electricity I felt in my stomach dwarfed every kiss I'd imagined us having. My willpower broke, swept away by the force of my feelings. For one moment, nothing was real beyond that kiss. — Jennifer Quintenz

All the intervening layers slipped away, and I lost myself in the game within the game. — Ernest Cline

The covers slipped between them. Amelia shivered as the cool air wafted over her naked back and shoulders. "Come back to bed," she whispered. "I need you to warm me."
Cam stripped away his shirt, and laughed quietly as he felt her hands plucking at the buttons of his trousers. "What happened to my prudish gadji?"
"I'm afraid" - she reached into his open falls and stroked his aroused flesh - " that continued association with you has made me shameless."
"Good, I was hoping for that. — Lisa Kleypas

No, Daemon," Jaenelle said gently, looking up at him with her ancient, wistful, haunted eyes. "Everyone knows I'm different. It just doesn't matter to some - and it matters a lot to others." A tear slipped down her cheek. "Why am I different?" Daemon looked away. Oh, child. How could he explain that she was dreams made flesh? That for some of them, she made the blood in their veins sing? That she was a kind of magic the Blood hadn't seen in so very, very long? "What does the Priest say?" Jaenelle sniffed. "He says growing up is hard work." Daemon smiled sympathetically. "It is that. — Anne Bishop

She slipped Glenn into her bed and then her face hung over Glenn's for one quiet moment, like a moon.
"Meera doe branagh, Glennora Morgan."
The strange words drifted down from her mother's lips, whispered as light as falling snow.
"What does it mean, Mommy?"
Fingertips grazed Glenn's cheek. "It means I love you. It means I'll always love you." She kissed Glenn softly on the forehead, then backed away. "No matter what."
She stepped into the bright hallway and closed the door.
When Glenn woke the next morning, her mother was gone — Jeff Hirsch

The almost egregiously English couple, Cedric and Rosamund Chailey, had slipped quietly away when the conversation turned to God. It had not seemed polite to be present when anything so American was being discussed. — Michael Frayn

Something I tried to hold onto, to touch if only for a moment, but it slipped away from me like the air, like an illusion, or a dream that floats away and is lost. I wept in my sleep as though it was something I was losing now; a loss I was experiencing for the first time, and not something I had lost a long time ago. — Nawal El Saadawi

Initially they waited with hope, but as each hour passed, hope slipped away like the wind, the wind that as a small boy Ethan had once tried to capture with his tiny fingers. — K. Martin Beckner

I don't tell her that my grasp on truth, on words, on people, has slipped. I was getting close, so close to normal again, and that's been snatched away. I'm not even back where I started. I'm somewhere else entirely, so far off the map I don't know where to turn next. — Daisy Whitney

He pulled me closer. kneeling in front of me,he kissed me intensely and i felt right. Morning and evening slipped away. it was just us. Silence surrounded us. My heart leapt and i kiss him back, knowing so truly that i loved him. My heart cried and I pulled away, knowing so truly that he had betrayed me. — Jessica Shirvington

Sicarius padded toward the exit, his soft black boots silent on the tile floor. He paused in the doorway and glanced at the backs of the two older men.
The emperor emitted a nervous chuckle. "You trained him too well, Hollow. The man bothers me."
"He is loyal."
"I know. You did a good job. I ought to give you Sespian to work with. The boy is disappointing."
"He does seem soft," Hollowcrest said.
"Did you hear that scream? I would've been fascinated by severed heads at that age."
"You're fascinated with them now, Sire."
"True enough."
They shared a laugh and headed for the door. Sicarius slipped away before they noticed him. — Lindsay Buroker

I was born with the Sight, Ink," she said, voice trembling. "So tell me, why were you the first person I'd ever seen from the Twixt?"
They stared at each other. His answer slipped through his lips.
"Because I saw you," he confessed. "And I couldn't look away. — Dawn Metcalf

Dom decided that when life returned to normal - even after fourteen years, he had to think that it could - he'd follow Cole's example and treat money as easy come, easy go. People were what mattered. You couldn't replace them, and they didn't earn interest. They just slipped away a day at a time, and you had to make the most of every precious moment. When — Karen Traviss

Annabel slipped her trembling fingers into his large, warm hand, and he gently pulled her to her feet. "I forgive you," he said, "and I understand." Without thinking, she leaned against him, pressing her forehead against his shoulder. They stood like that, unmoving, while Annabel concentrated on calming her breathing and forcing away the tears that still threatened. She smelled the familiar lavender, which Mistress Eustacia placed inside his clean laundry, but also a warm, masculine smell that was distinctly Ranulf's. She felt soothed, safe, and she never wanted this moment to end. — Melanie Dickerson

Her whispering lips brushed his ear.
She was praying. Soft begging words to Ganesha and the Buddha, to Kali-Mary Mercy and the Christian God...she was praying to anything at all, begging the Fates to let her walk from the shadow of death. Pleas spilled from her lips, a desperate trickle. She was broken, soon to die, but still the words slipped out in a steady whisper. Tum Karuna ke saagar Tum palankarta hail Mary full of grace Ajahn Chan Bodhisattva, release me from suffering...
He drew away. Her fingers slipped from his cheek like orchid petals falling. — Paolo Bacigalupi

Eight hundred and more years later, more than three and a half thousand miles away, and now more than one thousand years ago, a storm fell upon our ancestors' city like a bomb. Their childhoods slipped into the water and were lost, the piers built of memories on which they once ate candy and pizza, the boardwalks of desire under which they hid from the summer sun and kissed their first lips. The roofs of houses flew through the night sky like disoriented bats, and the attics where they stored their past stood exposed to the elements until it seemed that everything they once were had been devoured by the predatory sky. Their secrets drowned in flooded basements and they could no longer remember them. Their power failed them. Darkness fell. — Salman Rushdie

Only the dead dream fought on as the afternoon slipped away, trying to touch what was no longer tangible, struggling unhappily, undespairingly, towards that lost voice across the room. — F Scott Fitzgerald

My feet are always cold. I'm a vampire," he said in a teasing voice, almost as if he was trying to chase away Holiday's somberness. "And if I remember correctly, you complained about that last night." He slowed down and slipped his arm around Holiday. "Marrying you doesn't scare me a bit. It's the best thing that could ever happen to me. I'd never run out on you. I'll be the first one to the church. — C.C. Hunter

Jonah's breath came fast and shallow. I reached for his hand. He turned his face to me, his eyes wide with panic. Two frozen ponds. A boy screamed and pounded on the surface, trapped under the ice. Panicking. Trying to break through. But his screams faded, his fists flailed, and he slipped away into the dark. The boy was gone. Nothing left but the ice, clear and smooth enough to skate on. — Natalie Standiford

Beau's arms slipped around my waist. I knew I should step away but I couldn't make myself. This was home. Being in his arms like this was where I found peace. — Abbi Glines

You've slipped away like a fistful of sand. You've vanished so quickly like a wind. Do you know how I long to hold you love of my life. — Euginia Herlihy

Zenia has stolen something from him, the one thing he always kept safe before, from all women, even from Roz. Call it his soul. She slipped it out of his breast pocket when he wasn't looking, easy as rolling a drunk, and looked at it, and bit it to see if it was genuine, and sneered at it for being so small after all, and then tossed it away, because she's the kind of woman who wants what she doesn't have and gets what she wants and then despises what she gets. What — Margaret Atwood