So Quiet Quotes & Sayings

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

Jeeves," I said, "those spats."
"Yes, sir?"
"You really dislike them?"
"Intensely, sir."
"You don't think time might induce you to change your views?"
"No, sir."
"All right, then. Very well. Say no more. You may burn them."
"Thank you very much, sir. I have already done so. Before breakfast this morning. A quiet grey is far more suitable, sir. Thank you, sir. — P.G. Wodehouse

I gave his a squeeze and relaxed beside him, wondering if this was how it felt.
If this was how it felt to get what you wanted for a lifetime.
Have it stretched out beside you.
The promise of it there all night so you'd wake up to it in the morning.
The promise of it going to work the next day with you knowing it was coming back.
A promise that would stay a promise-beautiful, forever there, beckoning, even as minute by minute it was being fulfilled, leaving you taking your last breath on earth knowing you lived a life filled with beauty.
If it was, it was weirdly serene.
You'd think something that magnificent would be about fireworks.
But if this was it, it wasn't.
It was quiet, tranquil, comfortable.
Beauty. — Kristen Ashley

As an open fire in a dark room throws romance and pathos into the quiet faces at its edge, so she cast her lights and shadows around the rooms that held her, — F Scott Fitzgerald

All men of talent, whether they be men of feeling or not; whether they be zealots, or aspirants, or despots--provided only they be sincere--have their sublime moments, when they subdue and rule. I felt veneration for St. John--veneration so strong that its impetus thrust me at once to the point I had so long shunned. I was tempted to cease struggling with him--to rush down the torrent of his will into the gulf of his existence, and there lose my own. I was almost as hard beset by him now as I had been once before, in a different way, by another. I was a fool both times. To have yielded then would have been an error of principle; to have yielded now would have been an error of judgment. So I think at this hour, when I look back to the crisis through the quiet medium of time: I was unconscious of folly at the instant — Charlotte Bronte

I think it's really important as an artist not to be drawn to the haters, because there are so many people who are nice and quiet. — Lisa Yuskavage

On A Cold Day, Of A Cool Walking

The day is cold, and the clouds are gray.
The grass is white with frost, and may I say?
The sun is coming up, over the hill.
It's so quiet, and so still.
In the midst of all the trees, by the broke I see.
Something moving in the bush; what could it be?
The frost falls from the dead leaves, as he hops about in the breeze.
It's a bunny, all bundled up with fur, so he will not freeze.
Life keeps on going, even when we think not.
Where are you going, and what is your lot?
Looking for God's Love, from up above?
Jesus will fly to you, like a dove.
He is there; just start talking.
On a cold day, of a cool walking. — Jerrel C. Thomas

It would perhaps be as well if things were to remain quiet for a few years yet, so that all this 1848 democracy has time to rot away. — Karl Marx

The really destructive feature of their relationship is its inherent quality of boredom. It is quite natural for Peter often to feel bored with Otto - they have scarecely a single interest in common - but Peter, for sentimental reasons, will never admit that this is so. When Otto, who has no such motives for pretending, says, "It's so dull here!" I invariably see Peter wince and looked pained. Yet Otto is actually far less often bored than Peter himself; he finds Peter's company genuinely amusing, and is quite glad to be with him most of the day. Often, when Otto has been chattering rubbish for an hour without stopping, I can see that Peter really longs for him to be quiet and go away. But to admit this would be, in Peter's eyes, a total defeat, so he only laughs and rubs his hands, tacitly appealing to me to support him in his pretense of finding Otto inexhaustibly delightful and funny. — Christopher Isherwood

Following the pattern offered a kind of comfort, a quiet balance to working in the field during the day. The farmwork was coarse, exhausting, and largely a matter of faith - a farmer threw everything he had into the earth, but ultimately it wasn't up to him whether it rained or not. Sewing was different. Mabel knew if she was patient and meticulous, if she carefully followed the rules, that in the end when it was turned right-side out, it would be just how it was meant to be. A small miracle in itself, and one that life so rarely offered. — Eowyn Ivey

I start thinking about life after death. I've got to quit thinking about it because it's very deep. Very deep. Sometimes you start thinking about it, and you don't feel like you want to be alive, so I don't like to get all quiet. — David Ortiz

Someone asked them to be quiet, so it's just a matter of a time before all hell breaks loose. — Brian Andreas

Bull stares into the hazy distance as though the right words are out there somewhere and all he has to do is claim them as his own. Sometimes it gets so quiet in Gungee you can hear conversations from a hundred years ago breathing on a gust of wind. — Bill Condon

Do you remember when everyone thought Bush (sr) had a mistress too"" he asks in the course of a Clinton era conversation. "But she was rumored to be someone wealthy and Waspy, of course ... The problem here is the goddamn Democrats, who sleep down, you see. They love that white trash ... And white trash loves publicity,so the Democrats are the ones who get into all the trouble. As opposed to the Republicans. They sleep up ... Up, where all is Episcopalian and quiet as death itself, and no one ever has to hear a thing about it — Sue Miller

At the moment you are no longer an observing, reflecting being; you have ceased to be aware of yourself; you exist only in that quiet, steady thrill that is so unlike any excitement that you have ever known. — May Sinclair

It brings a lump into the throat to see how they go over, and run and fall. A man would like to spank them, they are so stupid, and to take them by the arm and lead them away from here where they have no business to be. They wear grey coats and trousers and boots, but for most of them the uniform is far too big, it hangs on their limbs, their shoulders are too narrow, their bodies too slight; no uniform was ever made to these childish measurements. — Erich Maria Remarque

I close my eyes to escape the burn. His eyes are so hot right now, I feel like I could be incinerated. The intense heat pouring off his body makes me think of Dax's cool touch. I'm sure it could kill, too, but it would be a quiet death, lulling you to sleep, promising life is better on the other side. Turner's touch, it simply sears and sizzles, melting me into nothing. Quick, painful, intense. I love it even though I don't want to. — C.M. Stunich

Some writers just write about their own lives. Well, I don't want to do that. I want to have a really boring life. A quiet, boring life so no one wants to write a biography. I'm the only writer in history only to have one wife, for instance. — T.C. Boyle

It's not like it ruined my life, I was going to say, but then I didn't. Because it occurred to me that maybe it had ruined my life, in a kind of quiet way
a little lie, probably not so vital, insidiously separating me from everyone I loved. — Dan Chaon

Fortunately, no matter how many times she is pushed down, she bounds up again. No matter how many times she is forbidden, quelled, cut back, diluted, tortured, touted as unsafe, dangerous, mad, and other derogations, she emanates upward in women, so that even the most quiet, even the most restrained woman keeps a secret place for Wild Woman, Even the more repressed woman has a secret life, with secret thoughts and secret feelings which are lush and wild, that is, natural. Even the most captured woman guards the place of the wildish self, for she knows intuitively that someday there will be a loophole, an aperture, a chance, and she will hightail it to escape. — Clarissa Pinkola Estes

As far as I could tell, my history teacher had three passions in life: quoting Shakespeare, identifying historical inaccuracies in cable TV shows, and berating Ryan Washburn. "Eighteen sixty-three, Mr. Washburn. Is that so hard to remember? Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation in eighteen sixty-three." Ryan was a big guy: a little on the quiet side, a little shy. I had no idea what it was about him that had convinced Mr. Simpson he needed to be taken down a notch - or seven. But more and more, this was how history class went: Simpson called on Ryan, repeatedly, until he made a mistake. And then it began. — Jennifer Lynn Barnes

That's not what it means," you told me.
"And anyway don't you feel naked now?"
You fell quiet, gestured for me to listen.
The sound of the woods, the feel of the air ... The sky, so present.
And you, watching me take it all in.
Naked to the world, the world naked to us. — David Levithan

And I started to hear it again
But this time it wasn't the end
And the room is so quiet,
Oh oh oh
And my heart is a hollow plane
For the devil to dance again
But the room is too quiet
Oh oh oh
I was looking for the breath of a life
A little touch of a heavenly life
But all the choirs in my head sang
No, oh oh — Florence Welch

The air is so crisp it gives me a brief, delusive sense of health and youth.
those I don't have but I have learned not to scorn the substitutes: quiet, plenty of time, and a job to spend it on. — Wallace Stegner

There's one bright spot in the generally gloomy picture know as the Pacific Conflict Zone. According to my calculations, by the year 2500 or so we should have killed off every last member of our species who is stupid enough to take part in so futile a pastime as this war between "ideals," and with luck they won't have left their genes behind because they'll typically have been killed at an age when society thinks they're too young to assume the responsibility of childbearing. After that we may get some peace and quiet for a change. — John Brunner

And then there's silence. Though is silence the right word when, through the quiet, the air is so charged, electricity crackles deafeningly without making a sound? — Riley Edgewood

and you try to quiet your mind so you can hear... — Anne Lamott

You could have heard a rat tinkle it was so quiet. — Annie Knox

After returning home from a long day at work, start your evening off with your spouse (the second you walk through the door) with a positive part of your day or ask about something positive that happened in theirs, as opposed to the all-too-common, "I'm exhausted. Today was quite a day." Your power lead could even be a quiet kiss with someone you love, followed by a sincere, "I'm so glad to see your face." You never know what might happen if you start off with that! I — Michelle Gielan

Anyway, you're the one who doesn't want to be my boyfriend."
"How do you know?" I shrugged.
"You're not like that."
"What if you're wrong? What if I am?" "You are?" There was a moment of quiet. "Well, I am now."
"So am I, — Ava Dellaira

And so it was settled. Sam Gamgee married Rose Cotton in the spring of 1420 (which was also famous for its weddings), and they came and lived at Bag End. And if Sam thought himself lucky, Frodo knew that he was more lucky himself; for there was not a hobbit in the Shire that was looked after with such care. When the labours or repair had all been planned and set going he took to a quiet life, writing a good deal and going through all his notes. He resigned the office of Deputy Mayor at the Free Fair that Midsummer, and dear old Will Whitfoot had another seven years of presiding at Banquets. — J.R.R. Tolkien

I thought crocodiles lived under my bed and if my feet hung over the side, they'd get bitten off. So I slept in a ball. I think I still do actually." Oh God. Shut up. Shut up. "Out of habit, I mean, not crocodiles. I d-don't think that anymore. Obviously."

He was quiet a moment. And then, faintly accusingly, "You know that's adorable, don't you?"

I tripped hard over adorable and couldn't think how to answer. So I said nothing at all, and merely enjoyed my few minutes in a dangerous puddle with a man who maybe thought I was adorable. — Alexis Hall

A quick and dirty whatever-it-was in the stolen minutes in the middle of the day was one thing. The quiet crackle of the fire, smell of warm bread, the home she knew was so important to him - this was something else altogether. — Rebecca Brooks

The poet should try to give his poem the quiet swiftness of flame, so that the reader will feel and not think while he is reading. But the thinking will come afterwards. — Sara Teasdale

My room is so quiet and empty it hurts. — Nina LaCour

There was nothing I hated worse than clumps of whispering girls who got quiet when I passed. I started picking scabs off my body and, when I didn't have any, gnawing the flesh around my fingernails until I was a bleeding wreck. I worried so much about how I looked and whether I was doing things right, I felt half the time I was impersonating a girl instead of really being me. — Sue Monk Kidd

Somehow you always stayed quiet." He laid his hands beside each of mine, so that if he'd been solid, I would've been pinned between his body and the dresser. "Remember? — Jeri Smith-Ready

- Shush sweet baby, I said, so tired, and mixed her gripe water with whiskey and dill weed, but it did no good, so I seen now why lullabies was all about cradles falling from trees, oh dear, when the wind blows, down will come baby, whoops too bad, but at least it's quiet. — Kate Manning

I've just stopped talking to you. It seems so strange. It's perfectly peaceful here
they're playing bowls
I'd just put flowers in your room. And there you sit with the bombs falling around you.
What can one say
except that I love you and I've got to live through this strange quiet evening thinking of you sitting there alone.
Dearest
let me have a line ...
You have given me such happiness ... — Virginia Woolf

My work is not so overtly about movement. My horses' gestures are really quite quiet, because real horses move so much better than I could pretend to make things move. For the pieces I make, the gesture is really more within the body, it's like an internalized gesture, which is more about the content, the state of mind or of being at a given instant. And so it's more like a painting ... the gesture and the movement is all pretty much contained within the body. — Deborah Butterfield

But now, sitting on this airplane on my way back to the life I went on to fashion after she left, I think of her differently. I see her so many ways: sitting back on her heels at the side of the bathtub, singing softly as she washes Sharla and my backs; watching at the window for the six o'clock arrival of our father; wrapping Christmas presents on the wide expanse of her bed; biting her lip as she stood before the open cupboards, making out the grocery list; leaning out the kitchen window that last summer to call Sharla and me in for supper. Most clearly, though, I see her sitting at the kitchen table, in her old, usual spot. There is a cup of coffee before her, but she doesn't drink it. Instead, she stares out the window. I see the sharp angle of her cheekbone, the beautiful whitish down at the side of face, illuminated by the sun. Her hands are quiet, resting in the cloth bowl of her apron. She sits still as a statue - waiting, I can see now; she was always waiting. -What We Keep — Elizabeth Berg

Strider: "Pull Over," he commanded.
"What?" William flicked him a now's-not-the-time-to-joke glance. "We just got a little peace and quiet and you want to ruin it all just to piss? You're such a baby."
"Red Hots, dude." He'd ruin ANYTHING for a mouthful of those. "Now pull the fuck over."
"Oh, Gummy Bears. You should have said so. — Gena Showalter

I was so shy and so quiet, and the only time I had my own voice and I could really connect with people was when I was singing or on stage. — Emeli Sande

People who live in quiet, remote places are apt to give good dinners. They are the oft-recurring excitement of an otherwise unemotional, dull existence. They linger, each of these dinners, in our palimpsest memories, each recorded clearly, so that it does not blot out the others. — M. E. W. Sherwood

I'm so opposite of my profession. No one - particularly my mother and father - ever thought I was going to be a boxer because I always felt that football and baseball were too dangerous. I was just such a quiet kid. — Sugar Ray Leonard

They are the great tribe," Temujin replied, almost to himself. His voice was so quiet that Kachiun had to strain to hear. "I will give them a family again. I will bring them in and I will make them hard and I will send them against those who killed our father. I will write the name of Yesugei in Tartar blood and, when we are strong, I will come back from the north and scatter the Wolves in the snow. — Conn Iggulden

I'm going to fall in love with an artist. And we'll have two kids and live in the country. A quiet life, so we can hear our muses and answer when they call.
Tipping up my chin to meet his gaze, he gives me a tender, starlit smile - one that melts my insides. I like your version better. — A.G. Howard

The wildly drunk man from the cabin next door to ours is in front of me in the crowd. He's so drunk that he's standing in the women-and-children section. He complains loudly that this is boring and that we are a bunch of assholes. When a clearly terrified woman blurts out, "Please, sir, be quiet," he sways for a second and then lets out a long "Shuuuuut uuuuuuuup" that is funny not just because of its Jackie Gleason-style delivery but also because of its inappropriateness in a situation where we're all probably going to die. — Tina Fey

Comforts that were rare among our forefathers are now multiplied in factories and handed out wholesale; and indeed, nobody nowadays, so long as he is content to go without air, space, quiet, decency and good manners, need be without anything whatever that he wants; or at least a reasonably cheap imitation of it. — G.K. Chesterton

The bourgeois treasures nothing more highly than the self ... And so at the cost of intensity he achieves his own preservation andsecurity. His harvest is a quiet mind which he prefers to being possessed by God, as he prefers comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to that deathly inner consuming fire. — Hermann Hesse

Good fiction makes me turn off all the other parts of my brain, so that I become quiet and submissive, entirely at the mercy of the work at hand. — Gary Shteyngart

Egyptian drumming happens to be a favorite of mine. It's a really simple instrument, but it's really difficult to play. You can take it anywhere with you - you can play it in your room, in an airport. It's very quiet, so you explore the quiet side. — Mickey Hart

Here's the thing: You rescue us every day in small, quiet ways, so why not in this way? Let us into your mystery, tell us how you would like to be loved, show us how to see you, really see you. — Chris Abani

Then we were quiet. Quiet isn't easy. Especially with virtual strangers. They say that nature hates a vacuum, and so it's kind of natural to want to fill up a human silence with words - any kind of lame words. But there was such a feeling of space around us that my first self-conscious word died long before I ever felt it on my tongue. — Kristen D. Randle

Murderer!" he said suddenly in a quiet but clear and distinct voice.

Raskolnikov went on walking beside him. His legs felt suddenly weak, a cold shiver ran down his spine, and his heart seemed to stand still for a moment, then suddenly began throbbing as though it were set free. So they walked for about a hundred paces, side by side in silence. The man did not look at him.

"What do you mean... what is... Who is a murderer?" muttered Raskolnikov hardly audibly.

"You are a murderer," the man answered still more articulately and emphatically, with a smile of triumphant hatred, and again he looked straight into Raskolnikov's pale face and stricken eyes. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Everyone had forgotten her. But that's the way Penny was
so quiet and unimportant that you could look right at her and never see her. Esther had no idea why Penny always showed up at Grandma's house on Sunday afternoons when they came to visit. She was just one of those nosy neighbors with no life of her own, who watched other people's lives as if watching a movie. — Lynn Austin

We were all quiet for so long after, touched by the magnitude of it all. This is what we are connected to. What we are all connected to. When the lights go out, so do we. — Sarah Winman

For twelve months, I'd been quiet. Almost every day since Kim died.
Now, at Ms. Homeyer's funeral, I wanted to say so many things.
I wanted to say, you guys are jerks.
I wanted to say, someone died. Did you know someone died? Someone is dead. You can't talk like that.
I wanted to say, don't you get bored? Don't you get tired? Doesn't it get old, making fun of people? Laughing at people? — Ann Dee Ellis

Alright, alright, I admit it: my husband is the quiet, kind, accepting parent, and I'm the one who wants so much to be part of our two daughters' lives than I can't even let them finish a story without interrupting. — Robin Marantz Henig

Keep quiet. Don't panic. Never tell anyone the truth. She'd lived with their rules for twelve years, and for what? So that she might one day be so lucky as to be forgotten entirely. The memory of Minerva Lane - of who she'd been, what she'd done - felt like a hot coal covered in cold ashes. It smoldered on long after the fire had been doused. Sometimes, all that heat rose up in her until she felt the need to shriek like a teapot. Until she wanted to burn the mousy shreds of her tattered personality. It rose up in her now, that fiery rebellion. The part of her that was still Minerva - the part that hadn't been ground to smoothness - whispered temptation in her ear. You don't need to keep quiet. You need a strategy. — Courtney Milan

I was so shy and when my sister was born I found it hard. I was really strange and kind of too quiet. — Beyonce Knowles

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

You spend so much time in your head in life. And what yoga does is, it asks you to allow your head to be quiet, to allow it to be still, just for an hour and a half. Just deal with your body and your breath. And it's a great workout. I love it. — Colin Farrell

Standing this close to her, he could begin to see the difference. She was still looking down, still acting shy and quiet so that anyone more than three paces away would have no idea what she was saying. But there was a little more excitement in her hands. Her lips twitched, on the verge of smiling. — Courtney Milan

Don't be so anxious about it,' she laughed. 'I'm not used to being loved. I wouldn't know what to do; I never got the trick of it.' She looked down at him, shy and fatigued. 'So here we are. I told you years ago that I had the makings of Cinderella.'
He took her hand; she drew it back instinctively and then replaced it in his. 'Beg your pardon. Not even used to being touched. But I'm not afraid of you, if you stay quiet and don't move suddenly. — F Scott Fitzgerald

You are mad to be spending the summer in the country, where the days are too quiet and you have so much time to think. In the city you live on Broadway, where the noise is so thick your scary thoughts can't get a word in edgewise. But here in the county, there is only space. On the stone bridge by the stream. On the mossy rock at the edge of the yard. Behind the abandoned trailer where Art, the old man with the glass eye, used to live. Space, space, space, and you can scare yourself into thinking your thoughts are more like voices. — Lena Dunham

In a jazz atmosphere, the audience members were so quiet and respectful of the musicians that you felt you were almost part of a meeting at a church or a temple, where everyone was completely in tune with the sermon and what the whole event was about. — David Amram

Willow was very relaxed company, easy to talk to when either of them felt like talking or just as happy to stay quiet, lost in her own thoughts as they climbed. Glancing at her profile as they sat on a boulder looking out at the view, it suddenly struck Alex that he'd never felt so comfortable with anyone in his life. It felt as if he'd known Willow always. No. It felt like she was a part of him. — L.A. Weatherly

Then he was quiet, and Nina didn't have anything to say. But he stayed on the phone, she could hear him breathing, and so she kept it to her ear while she pulled out their plates, heated their food, wrapped utensils in napkins. He stayed right there, and didn't say good-bye until she did. He just stayed right there. — Mary Ann Rivers

I have sometimes thought that the reason the trees are so quiet in the summer is that they are in a sort of ecstasy; it is in winter, when the biologists tell us they sleep, that they are most awake, because the sun is gone and they are addicts without their drug, sleeping restlessly and often waking, walking the dark corridors of forests searching for the sun. — Gene Wolfe

Then there are also the quiet deaths. How about the day you realized you weren't going to be an astronaut or the queen of Sheba? Feel the silent distance between yourself and how you felt as a child, between yourself and those feelings of wonder and splendor and trust. Feel the mature fondness for who you once were, and your current need to protect innocence wherever you make might find it. The silence that surrounds the loss of innocence is a most serious death, and yet it is necessary for the onset of maturity.

What about the day we began working not for ourselves, but rather with the hope that our kids have a better life? Or the day we realize that, on the whole, adult life is deeply repetitive? As our lives roll into the ordinary, when our ideals sputter and dissipate, as we wash the dishes after yet another meal, we are integrating death, a little part of us is dying so that another part can live. — Matthew Sanford

One of the things that made me long to be back in prison was that I had so little opportunity for reading, thinking and quiet reflection after my release. I intend, amongst other things, to give myself much more opportunity for such reading and reflection. — Nelson Mandela

I don't know what game you and geek boy are playing, Gautier. But you get in my way as I leave and I'll wipe my boots on your balls. (Brett)
Before he realized what was happening, Simi had taken Brett's hand and squeezed it so hard Nick heard the bones break.)
Nick is a friend of the Simi's. You threaten him and you make the Simi really unhappy and want to eat your head. Trust me, not something you want me to think about. Now go away mean person or the Simi will tell akri she don't know what happened to you and your masticated form. Not that I like to lie, but there are deceptions to every rule. And you're about to become one. Now get in there and be quiet. (Simi) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

What happened was that sometimes I was, from a young age, put in the theater to watch movies because they kept me quiet and they kept me entertained, and they got me out from under the feet of my parents. So from a very early age, I went to the movies and I soon grew to prefer the life of the movies to my own life. The reality that the movies offered was preferable to the reality that I was experiencing. I became a child movie addict. I would go in with great pleasure and I'd never look at what was playing
what was playing was unimportant. The fact was that I was entering a new world, an environment where not only was it much more attractive than my life was ordinarily, but also I could manipulate it to an extent by coming and going, and by looking at scenes or not, which I could not in my own life. I was subjected to my own domestic life. But I discovered a kind of power at the movies. — Donald Richie

Back in the car, we pass turnoffs for the Lakotas Buffalo Reservation and several pioneer homesteads turned into state monuments. There are bronze National Historic Site markers every five miles or so along the road. The quiet, the utter lack of people makes me feel watched. I continue glancing in the rearview as I drive, searching for pursuit. — Tessa Gratton

This is why the social networks are successful actually, because we are living in a society where people are frustrated with living their own life but in a quiet world so thats why with the internet they are creating a new world and that is why society has changed a lot in the space of 10 years. — Emmanuel Petit

That left two possibilities, really.
Possibility one: Magic was so incredibly opaque, convoluted, and impenetrable, that even though wizards and witches had tried their best to understand, they'd made little or no progress and eventually given up; and Harry would do no better.
Or ...
Harry cracked his knuckles in determination, but they only made a quiet sort of clicking sound, rather than echoing ominously off the walls of Diagon Alley.
Possibility two: He'd be taking over the world.
Eventually. Perhaps not right away. — Eliezer Yudkowsky

There was no portion of land in the world with so contradictory a nature as the Highlands. Now it was a land of sunlit moors stained red with heather, knowing only the peace of the quiet sky and the heart-shaking beauty of the blue hills; now it was a harsh and awesome place where silent mists obscured the peaks and a bitter relentless rain came down from bitter skies, where an angry sea washed against the shore, and sullen clouds reflected in sullen gray lochs.
Scotland in the sun and Scotland in the rain ... — Jan Cox Speas

If you're putting that energy into performance," he said, "you're also getting it back out again, right? You're giving so you can receive." He spread his arms wide. "If you were writing songs with it, you'd be holed up in your room in the middle of the night, scribbling them in a notebook and feeling self-important. You'd think you were getting it out, but really you'd be keeping it inside and quiet. You'd take what upset you and turn it into art, and now it would fester, because you think other people ought to share your outrage at what happened to you. — Jennifer Echols

When the earth gave birth to this tree, There came no sound: A green shoot thrust In silence from the ground. Our births don't come so quiet - Most lives run riot - But the bud opens silently, And flower gives way to fruit. So must we search For the stillness within the tree, The silence within the root. — Ruskin Bond

On a certain day in the blue-moon month of September
Beneath a young plum tree, quietly
I held her there, my quiet, pale beloved
In my arms just like a graceful dream.
And over us in the beautiful summer sky
There was a cloud on which my gaze rested
It was very white and so immensely high
And when I looked up, it had disappeared. — Bertolt Brecht

Terry gets annoyed when I describe his mother as cold. She isn't cold, he insists, just a little standoffish, and not so gabby as certain members of my family. While Terry's mom doesn't believe in asking intrusive questions, like "How are you?", she's still a warm and loving mom; just quiet and undemonstrative. — Dan Savage

The power structure understands that Black folks have been hungry for so long, fixing us a plate now that's the same size as theirs would do nothing for our hunger. After all, they're pretty full and fat.
They know we now require a much bigger plate than theirs to quiet the stomach rumblings.
They see us and know what it looks like to be less powerful. They are fighting to never FEEL it. — Darnell Lamont Walker

Frank, I ran into Gladys and Billy at the store yesterday. Do you know what he said to me?"
The girls went very quiet. Frank didn't look up.
"Hello?" he asked, and kept rubbing Henry's knife.
Dotty hit him with her rag. "He said that. And so did she. But the important part was when he said, 'Frank ever get that door open?' Do you know what I said? What I said was
Are you ready for this? I said, 'No,'"
"Ah" Frank said. He lifted Henry's knife up to his mouth and dabbed the blade with his tongue. "That's my honest wife. I appreciate you lookin' out for my dignity. — N.D. Wilson

Astra is a beauty. ( ... ) Astra is so beautiful that I have no wish to describe her beauty. I will say only that her beauty is the expression of her soul. Her beauty lives in her quiet walk, in her shy movements, in her always-lowered eyelids, in her barely perceptible smile, in the soft outline of her girlish shoulders, in the chastity of her poor, almost beggarly clothing, in her thoughtful grey eyes. She is a white water lily in a pond shadowed by the branches of trees, born amid still, contemplative water. ( ... ) The world of modest female beauty finds its expression in Astra. As for what may lie hidden in the depths of these waters, no-one can say unless he breaks the water's smooth surface, walks barefoot through the cutting sedge and treads the silty, sucking mud - now cold, now strangely warm. But I only stand on the shore, admiring the lily from a distance — Vasily Grossman

The Eastern potentate who declared that women were at the bottom of all mischief, should have gone a little further and seen why it is so. It is because women are never lazy. They don't know what it is to be quiet. They are Semiramides, and Cleopatras, and Joan of Arcs, Queen Elizabeths, and Catharine the Seconds, and they riot in battle, and murder, and clamour, and desperation. If they can't agitate the universe and play at ball with hemispheres, they'll make mountains of warfare and vexation out of domestic molehills; and social storms in household teacups. Forbid them to hold forth upon the freedom of nations and the wrongs of mankind, and they'll quarrel with Mrs Jones about the shape of a mantle or the character of a small maid-servant. To call them the weaker sex is to utter a hideous mockery. They are the stronger sex, the nosier, the more persevering, the most self-assertive sex. — Mary Elizabeth Braddon

We were deluged together in the raw, unbalanced Stuff of the universe. Inevitable consequence:
My own little reification.
I was made flesh, and in the process taken from him. I was never supposed to be real. How terrifying to confide your every doubt to an imaginary companion, to bequeath to him every alternative, and then one day turn and see him standing before you. Gonzo must be feeling so hollow inside, with me spun out and separated from him. It must be quiet and empty in there.
And that, of course, is how I survived being shot. Freshly minted, new, I wasn't real enough to die. — Nick Harkaway

What I do know is, in little more than 30 years, we have gone from a nation where the "quiet enjoyment" of one's private property was a sacred right, to a day when the so-called property "owner" faces a hovering hoard of taxmen and regulators threatening to lien, foreclose, and "go to auction" at the first sign of private defiance of their collective will ... a relationship between government and private property rights which my dictionary defines as "fascism." — Vin Suprynowicz

Some mornings, she'd wake and vow, Today, I will get it right. I won't be such an awful mess of a girl. I won't lose my temper or make unkind remarks. I won't go too far with a joke and feel the room go quiet with disapproval. I'll be good and kind and sensible and patient. The sort everyone loves. But by evening, her good intentions would have unraveled. She'd say the wrong thing or talk a little too loudly. She'd take a dare she shouldn't, just to be noticed. Perhaps Mabel was right, and she was selfish. But what was the point of living so quietly you made no noise at all? "Oh, Evie, you're too much," people said, and it wasn't complimentary. Yes, she was too much. She felt like too much inside all the time. So why wasn't she ever enough? — Libba Bray

So, I looked up, and we were in this giant dome like a glass snowball, and Mark said that the amazing white stars were really only holes in the black glass of the dome, and when you went to heaven, the glass broke away, and there was nothing but a whole sheet of star white, which is brighter than anything but doesn't hurt your eyes. It was vast and open and thinly quiet, and I felt so small. — Stephen Chbosky

In fact, the room was so quiet you might have heard a drop of paint splash. — Jasper Fforde

Oh, I think that Lord Tyrion is quite a large man," Maester Aemon said from the far end of the table. He spoke softly, yet the high officers of the Night's Watch all fell quiet, the better to hear what the ancient had to say. "I think he is a giant come among us, here at the end of the world." Tyrion answered gently, "I've been called many things, my lord, but giant is seldom one of them." "Nonetheless," Maester Aemon said as his clouded, milk-white eyes moved to Tyrion's face, "I think it is true." For once, Tyrion Lannister found himself at a loss for words. He could only bow his head politely and say, "You are too kind, Maester Aemon." The blind man smiled. He was a tiny thing, wrinkled and hairless, shrunken beneath the weight of a hundred years so his maester's collar with its links of many metals hung loose about his throat. "I have been called many things, my lord," he said, "but kind is seldom one of them." This time Tyrion himself led the laughter. — George R R Martin

Thirty minutes out, people," I said. "Where the fuck does she live, Jupiter?" asked Sloane. "Close," I said. "She's in a housing development out near the edge of the wildlife preserve. I guess she likes being close to nature." "Or she's cuckoo-bats," said Sloane. "That's a horrible commute. I'd be road-raging weekly." "That's why we don't let you drive," said Andy. "Henry, you going to light it up?" "No," I said. "No lights, no sirens. We do this quiet." "Because we're so subtle," said Sloane. — Seanan McGuire

I was not athletically inclined. I was very quiet, introverted, non-confrontational. My three older brothers were athletes - basketball, football - but I was kind of a momma's boy. Then one day, my brother Roger encouraged me to go to the boxing gym with him. I tried the gloves on, and it just felt so natural. — Sugar Ray Leonard

So if we're going to keep all kids safe, we have to make incest and child sexual abuse acceptable topics of conversation. When other people want us to keep quiet because the subject makes them uncomfortable, or when someone questions our memory of events, we have to hold to the truth. Sexual abuse of children is preventable! But we can't wait for someone else to act. We're the ones who have to stop this madness. And it starts with each of us telling our story. — Lauren Book

She smoothes the front of the dress, looking down at her hands, at her bitten fingernails, at her big feet in the pointy-toes shoes. This is a woman's dress, she thinks, a young woman's dress. It is not a girl's dress. It is solidly on the other side of the line outside of girlhood. It is a dress that says something big in a very quiet way; it is a dress that is talking to Alice right now, a dress that is making her feel possibilities never before considered, the possibility of perfume and pretty and dancing and boys. This dress is who she might be, only more so. — Laura Harrington

So hot and tight. You're going to be a screamer. You're already fighting to keep quiet, and I've barely started. His low, hoarse voice sent shivers down her back. — Julia Devlin

I couldn't think of anything to say so I kept quiet. I still can't think of anything to say so I am going to sleep. — Sue Townsend

Come then, come with us, out into the night. Come now, America the lovesick, America the timid, the blessed, the educated, come stalk the dark backroads and stand outside the bright houses, calm as murderers in the yard, quiet as deer. Come, you slumberers, you lumps, arise from your legion of sleep and fly. Come, all you dreamers, all you zombies, all you monsters. What are you doing anyway, paying the bills, washing the dishes, waiting for the doorbell? Come on, take your keys, leave the bowl of candy on the porch, put on the suffocating mask of someone else and breathe. Be someone you don't love so much, for once. Listen: like the children, we only have one night. — Stewart O'Nan

Don't be upset," he whispered.
"I couldn't stop it from happening," she said in a plaintive voice.
"You weren't supposed to," he said tenderly. "I was playing with you. Teasing you."
"But I wanted it to last longer. It's our wedding night, and it's already over." Pausing, Beatrix added glumly, "At least my part of it is."
Christopher averted his face, but she could see that he was struggling to contain a laugh. When he had mastered himself, he looked down at her with a slight smile and smoothed her hair back from her face. "I can make you ready again."
Beatrix was quiet for a moment as she evaluated her spent nerves and limp body. "I don't think so," she said. "I feel like a wrung-out kitchen mop."
"I promise to make you ready again," he said, his voice threaded with amusement.
"It will take a long time," Beatrix said, still frowning.
Gathering her into his arms, Christopher crushed his mouth over hers. "I can only hope so. — Lisa Kleypas