The Last Station Quotes & Sayings

The first day I came I remarked to Miss Maria that it looked a little like rain - and Miss Maria laughed. I said the road from the station was very pretty - and Miss Maria laughed. I said there seemed to be a few mosquitoes left yet - and Miss Maria laughed. I said that Prospect Point was as beautiful as ever - and Miss Maria laughed. If I were to say to Miss Maria, 'My father has hanged himself, my mother has taken poison, my brother is in the penitentiary, and I am in the last stages of consumption,' Miss Maria would laugh. She can't help it - she was born so; but is very sad and awful. The — L.M. Montgomery

Random thinking is the enemy of the ultramarathoner. Thinking is best used for the primitive essentials: when I ate last, the distance to the next aid station, the location of the competition, my pace. Other than those considerations, the key is to become immersed in the present moment where nothing else matters. — Scott Jurek

She walked Toby to Victoria Station and left him at the barrier. On her way into the underground she thought he'd followed her, but there was nobody to be seen behind her on the escalator that sailed downwards with a faint inconsolable squeal. She sat on a bench on the empty platform, the breaths of oncoming trains stirring the hairs on the back of her neck. She leafed through Graham's notebook, but couldn't concentrate; she found she had to keep glancing along the platform towards the tunnel. Some fault in the mechanism made the train doors reopen after she boarded, as if someone had leapt on at the last moment. The galloping rush of the wheels made her think of a hunt in the dark. — Ramsey Campbell

For the last several years and culminating in six months in orbit next year, I've been training for my third space flight. This one is almost in a category completely different than the previous two, specifically to live in on the space station for six months, to command a space ship and to fly a new rocket ship. — Chris Hadfield

When I think about my father, the first image that comes to mind is holding his hand as he drove me to the train station six weeks before he died; I had never noticed how beautiful his hands were until I saw them, for the first and last time, entwined in mine. — Sarah Ban Breathnach

In the democracy of the dead all men at last are equal. There is neither rank nor station nor prerogative in the republic of the grave. — John James Ingalls

Opening the door, he nearly did a double take into the mirror behind
him.
Hooch. Hooch, pushing his shades back up onto his head, and re-shouldering the bergan. Hooch, standing in the doorway.
"Been thinking."
Two words, more than usual.
"Been around a bit."
Six, speech worthy of a national holiday.
"Looking for a station now."
Eleven, whole fucking fireworks.
"Central station."
Thirteen, and the heavens came down for Matt.
"You still offering?"
Sixteen, and the world stopped spinning.
Matt stood thinking for a while, not a muscle in his face twitched. Then
stepped aside, gestured the other man to follow him. Closed the door.
"One condition."
Hooch's brows rose for a split second.
Matt broke into a grin at last, which threatened to split his face. "Promise
not to talk too much. — Marquesate

He turned her ninety degrees. "To get back to the ranger station and your car, you want to go southwest," he said.

Right. She knew that, and she stalked off in the correct direction.

"Watch out for bears," Matt called after her.

"Yeah, okay," she muttered, "and I'll also keep an eye out for the Tooth Fairy."

"Three o'clock."

Amy craned her neck and froze. Oh sweet baby Jesus, there really was a bear at three o'clock. Enjoying the last of the sun, he was big, brown and shaggy, and big. He lay flat on his back, his huge paws in the air as he stretched, confident that he sat at the top of the food chain. "Holy shit," she whispered, every Discovery Channel bear mauling she'd ever seen flashing in her mind. She backed up a step, and then another, until she bumped into a brick wall and nearly screamed.

"Just a brown bear," said the brick wall that was Matt. — Jill Shalvis

I'm a lot of things, Spatchcock, but 'beloved-of-law-enforcement' is not one of them. They'll just say that it's my own damn fault again and send me on my way. Besides, the last time I was at a police station I was quite rude to them. I think I threw a lamp at the custody sergeant. Do you have a light? — Robert McKelvey

When I came to this country in 1958, to be a dying patient in a medical hospital was a nightmare. You were put in the last room, furthest away from the nurses' station. You were full of pain, but they wouldn't give you morphine. Nobody told you that you were full of cancer and that it was understandable that you had pain and needed medication. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

I obeyed, so far as to quit the chamber; when, ignorant where the narrow lobbies led, I stood still, and was witness, involuntarily, to a piece of superstition on the part of my landlord which belied, oddly, his apparent sense. He got on to the bed, and wrenched open the lattice, bursting, as he pulled at it, into an uncontrollable passion of tears. 'Come in! come in!' he sobbed. 'Cathy, do come. Oh, do - ONCE more! Oh! my heart's darling! hear me THIS time, Catherine, at last!' The spectre showed a spectre's ordinary caprice: it gave no sign of being; but the snow and wind whirled wildly through, even reaching my station, and blowing out the light. — Emily Bronte

The last jobs I had were fixing cars and covering football games for a local access TV station. As in driving the mobile van to the field, setting up 3 cameras, teaching depressed grownups and interns how to use them and directing the game from the van and then wanting to kill myself. — Louis C.K.

I would ask myself what o'clock it could be; I could hear the whistling of trains, which, now nearer and now farther off, punctuating the distance like the note of a bird in a forest, shewed me in perspective the deserted countryside through which a traveller would be hurrying towards the nearest station: the path that he followed being fixed for ever in his memory by the general excitement due to being in a strange place, to doing unusual things, to the last words of conversation, to farewells exchanged beneath an unfamiliar lamp which echoed still in his ears amid the silence of the night; and to the delightful prospect of being once again at home. — Marcel Proust

Where did she come from, and where can I find one?" "Picked this one up at a gas station in West Virginia, bargain price. Last one on the shelf, sorry. — Alexandra Bracken

She was experiencing the same odd happiness and odd sadness as then. The sadness meant: We are at the last station. The happiness meant: We are together. The sadness was form, the happiness content. Happiness filled the space of sadness. — Milan Kundera

I am a person who feels guilty for crimes I have not committed, or have not committed in years. The police search the train station for a serial rapist and I cover my face with a newspaper, wondering if maybe I did it in my sleep. The last thing I stole was an eight-track tape, but to this day I'm unable to enter a store without feeling like a shoplifter. It's all the anxiety with none of the free stuff. — David Sedaris

That night, they spoke in hushed voices around the fire, almost expecting to see or hear something jump from the shadows. Gonjo had been spotted dancing on the railway station on last two consecutive nights. Such an innocuous act as dancing could surely have been ignored but the gravity of the matter lay in the chilling fact that Gonjo had died a week back. Those hushed voices were only adding more fuel to the fire, not the one which kept them warm, but the wildfire of ghostly hauntings by the Begunkodor railway station. What happened at the station this particular night, however, would clearly disabuse any misgivings towards the ghost of the dancing woman - Excerpt from the story 'Begunkodor Ghost Station — Manish Mahajan

If you wouldn't mind coming with us, sir? I am arresting you now and will shortly make a formal charge at the station.' I was so happy, so blissfully, radiantly, wildly happy that if I could have sung I would have sung. If I could have danced I would have danced. I was free. At last I was free. I was going on a journey now where every decision would be taken for me, every thought would be thought for me and every day planned for me. I was going back to school. — Stephen Fry

This is where I find myself now on the journey that God and I have been on, at the station called hope, the one that comes right after gratitude and somewhere not far from journey's end. It has been "God and I" the whole way. Not so much because he has always been pleasant company. Not because I could always feel his presence when I got up in the morning or when I was afraid to sleep at night. It was because he did not trust me to travel alone. Personally I liked the last miles of the journey better than the first. But, since I could not have the ending without first having the beginning, I thank God for getting me going and bringing me home. And sticking with me all the way. — Lewis B. Smedes

I understood that he was my host, though he only glanced at me and walked by, and I did not have the audacity to signal to him in any way. He hurried into the station and came out again minutes later with no expression of hope. At last he saw me and pointed with his index finger: "You're Gabito, right?" I answered him with all my heart: "Almost, now. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

At last, her mother and sisters exited the station and came to stand next to her. "Mama," Hattie said. "I'll never go back. Never. — Ayana Mathis

The last Martian report station on Earth was established in the Pyrenees. — L. Ron Hubbard

We walked side by side to the station. The sweater kept me comfortable in the night air.
"Okay, I'll keep plugging away," she said.
"Wasn't much help, was I?"
"No, actually, it took a load off me just to be able to talk."
We caught trains going in opposite directions from the same platform.
"You're really not lonely?" she asked one last time. And while I was searching for a good reply, her train came. — Haruki Murakami

Unhappily for his master, as well as himself, his curiosity drew him unconsciously farther off than he intended to go. At last, having seen the Parsee carnival wind away in the distance, he was turning his steps towards the station, when he happened to espy the splendid pagoda on Malabar Hill, and was seized with an irresistible desire to see its interior. He was quite ignorant that it is forbidden to Christians to enter certain Indian temples, and that even the faithful must not go in without first leaving their shoes outside — Jules Verne

The stranger came early in February, one wintry day, through a biting wind and a driving snow, the last snowfall of the year, over the down, walking as it seemed from Bramblehurst railway station, and carrying a little black portmanteau in his thickly gloved hand. He was wrapped up from head to foot, and the brim of his soft felt hat hid every inch of his face but the shiny tip of his nose; the snow had piled itself against his shoulders and chest, and added a white crest to the burden he carried. He staggered into the Coarch and Horses, more dead than alive as it seemed, and flung his portmanteau down. "A fire," he cried, "in the name of human charity! A room and a fire!" He stamped and shook the snow from off himself in the bar, and followed Mrs. Hall into her guest parlour to strike his bargain. And with that much introduction, that and a ready acquiescence to terms and a couple of sovereigns flung upon the table, he took up his quarters in the inn. — H.G.Wells

WAIT, WAIT! JUST one more!"
"Bliss, there are children waiting."
And they probably hated us, but I was just so glad to see her smiling that I didn't care.
"Yeah, well, they all just jumped on the bandwagon. Most of them weren't alive when I read Harry Potter for the first time."
I turned to the Canadian family behind me and said, "I'm so sorry. This is the last one, I promise." Then I took one more picture of Bliss pretending to push the luggage cart through the wall at the Platform 9¾ monument at King's Cross Station.
A little boy stuck his tongue out at Bliss as we left. I pulled her away before she could follow suit.
"That kid better watch it. I'm totally a Slytherin."
I shook my head, smiling.
"Love, I'm going to need you to pull back on the crazy a bit."
"You're right. Realistically, I'm a Ravenclaw. — Cora Carmack

The cold is getting quite severe already; all the quail have gone, and last night there was a full orchestra of wolves outside the post-station. — Clive Phillipps-Wolley

Hammer: Where are u? The chicks at the Gas Station are so hot tonight. It's like winter doesn't exist for them. God bless band-aid dresses.

Me: Bandage.

Hammer: Same thing. Where are u?! Do you think the Christmas break makes these Western girls hotter? I don't remember them being so fine last semester.

Me: How much have u had to drink? It's only 8.

Hammer: Where are u? — Jen Frederick

We see Him among the thousands of Galilee, anointed of God with the Holy Ghost and power, going about doing good: with no pride of birth, though He was a king; with no pride of intellect, though omniscience dwelt within Him; with no pride of power, though all power in heaven and earth was in His hands; or of station, though the fullness of the Godhead dwelt in Him bodily; or of superior goodness or holiness: but in lowliness of mind esteeming every one better than Himself, healing the sick, casting out devils, feeding the hungry, and everywhere breaking to men the bread of life. We see Him everywhere offering to men His life for the salvation of their souls: and when, at last, the forces of evil gathered thick around Him, walking, alike without display and without dismay, the path of suffering appointed for Him, and giving His life at Calvary that through His death the world might live.1 — John F. MacArthur Jr.

I was also one of those people who hadn't caught up with the latest social networking site. Maura belonged to most of them. She passed most evenings befriending men who had tried to date-rape her in high school, but I was still stuck in the last virtual community, a sad place to be, like Europe, say, during the Black Death. Whenever I cruised this site, with its favorites lists and its paeans to somebody's cousin's gas station art gallery, I could not help but think of medieval corpses in the spring-thaw mud, buboes sprouted in every armpit and anus, black bile curling out of frozen mouths. Those of us still cursed with life wandered the blasted dales of this stricken network, wept and moaned and flogged ourselves with frayed AC adaptors, called out for God to strike us dead, or else let us find somebody who liked similar bands. — Sam Lipsyte

He walked ahead and opened the police station door for the mayor. The office was deserted. Tess was going to help fill Ann's daytime shift tomorrow until he could hire someone else, but that was the last thing on his list of things to do right now. — Karen Harper

It's a letter from my godfather." "Godfather?" spluttered Uncle Vernon. "You haven't got a godfather!" "Yes, I have," said Harry brightly. "He was my mum and dad's best friend. He's a convicted murderer, but he's broken out of Wizard prison and he's on the run. He likes to keep in touch with me, though . . . keep up with my news . . . check if I'm happy. . . ." And, grinning broadly at the look of horror on Uncle Vernon's face, Harry set off toward the station exit, Hedwig rattling along in front of him, for what looked like a much better summer than the last. — J.K. Rowling

The sadness meant: we are at the last station. The happiness meant: we are together. The sadness was form, the happiness content — Milan Kundera

Very softly, but very swiftly, Last, the man with the grey face and the staring eyes, bolted for his life, down and away from the White House. Once in the road, free from the fields and brakes, he changed his run into a walk, and he never paused or stopped, till he came with a gulp of relief into the ugly streets of the big industrial town. He made hi way to the station at once, and found that he was an hour too soon for the London express. So, there was plenty of time for breakfast; which consisted of brandy. — Arthur Machen

All the tiny things made this mammoth union up, all the times he had picked her up from Sutherland station, made her chicken salad rolls and brought her a Lipton's iced tea, called her about Sunday and fixed Nina's shed door hinge, held her and not fucked her when she was dying with period pain, thought of what she said last night and made something of it the following afternoon, all these unspectacular deposits of love he had made and they were the currency, earning enough to have her see that he was nothing but the right one. — Brendan Cowell

He had a book to finish. Ten-thousand words. The other ninety thousand had been difficult. This last tenth seemed impossible. His plot had become derailed. He was unable to see his way through the smoke and coke dust of a mythical railway track that should stretch ahead. Yes, the characters were there, good and solid. Indeed, the story's engine was strong and had shunted yet forward and forward, with only one or two sharp halts. But six weeks ago he met the bumpers. R. was now stuck in a deserted station, his progress blocked. ("Out Back") — Garry Douglas Kilworth

Stations are all alike; it doesn't matter if the lights cannot illuminate beyond their blurred halo, all of this is a setting you know by heart, with the odor of train that lingers even after all the trains have left, the special odor of stations after the last train has left. The lights of the station and the sentences you are reading seem to have the job of dissolving more than of indicating the things that surface from a veil of darkness and fog. — Italo Calvino

These three man," Mimi said, "are suspects in a recent theft. Last night, Polly Partial received a shipment of twenty blueberry pies. This morning she counted them and came up short."
"How many are missing?" I asked.
"Last night she had twenty," Harvey said, shutting the station door, "and today she found zero. So at least eighteen are missing."
"At least." I agreed. — Lemony Snicket

Down at the beginning of the new road, at park headquarters, is the new entrance station and visitor center, where admission fees are collected and where the rangers are going quietly nuts answering the same three basic questions five hundred times a day: (1) Where's the john? (2) How long's it take to see this place? (3) Where's the Coke machine? Progress has come at last to the Arches, after a million years of neglect. Industrial Tourism has arrived. What — Edward Abbey

There's that short moment that seems to last a lifetime when Mark sees the wall of water rushing down the steps of the subtrans station, like a stampede of white, frothy horses. He wonders a thousand things. How he got there. What's happened above them in the city. Is his family dead. What does the future hold. What's it like to drown. — James Dashner

Philip Marlowe, 38, a private licence operator of shady reputation, was apprehended by police last night while crawling through the Ballona Storm Drain with a grand piano on his back. Questioned at the University Heights Police Station, Marlowe declared he was taking the piano to the Maharajah of Coot-Berar. Asked why he was wearing spurs, Marlowe declared that a client's confidence was sacred. Marlowe is being held for investigation. Chief Hornside said police were not yet ready to say more. Asked if the piano was in tune, Chief Hornside declared that he had played the Minute Waltz on it in thirty-five seconds and so far as he could tell there were no strings in the piano. He intimated that someting else was. A complete statement to the press will be made within twelve hours, Chief Hornside said abruptly. Speculation is rife that Marlowe was attempting to dispose of a body. — Raymond Chandler

Bonhoeffer thought of death as the last station on the road to freedom. — Eric Metaxas

Think of the sound you make when you let go after holding your breath for a very, very long time. Think of the gladdest sound you know: the sound of dawn on the first day of spring break, the sound of a bottle of Coke opening, the sound of a crowd cheering in your ears because you're coming down to the last part of a race
and you're ahead. Think of the sound of water over stones in a cold stream, and the sound of wind through green trees on a late May afternoon in Central Park. Think of the sound of a bus coming into the station carrying someone you love.
Then put all those together. — Gary D. Schmidt

Swish, the net sounded like the blast of a cannon, signaling the game was tied at 64. Dave then saw the second shot in his mind before even going into his pre-shot routine. The ball tickled the front rim, brushed against the backboard, and then dropped through the net. The home crowd erupted as Dave backpedaled toward the opposing rim. Central High attempted a last-second shot that fell short into Breslin's hands. The fans rushed onto the floor as the number two train came roaring into the station, bringing Dave back from his glorious past back into the oppressive heat of the present. — Phil Wohl

What I want is Ceres Station or Earth or Mars. You know what they have in New York? All-night diners with greasy food and crap coffee. I want to live on a world with all-night diners. And racetracks. And instant-delivery Thai food made from something I haven't already eaten seven times in the last month. — James S.A. Corey

See, you're walking really fast now, you don't need it at all," she called after me. I stopped and turned around. I could feel my cheeks burning. The bus station was full of people. "Nobody would pretend to be a cripple! Nobody would use a stick they didn't need! You should be ashamed of yourself for thinking that I would. If I could walk without it I'd break it in half across your back and run off singing. You have no right to talk to me like that, to talk to anyone like that. Who made you queen of the world when I wasn't looking? Why do you imagine I would go out with a stick I don't need - to try to steal your sympathy? I don't want your sympathy, that's the last thing I want. I just want to mind my own business, which is what you should be doing. — Jo Walton

He'd had a few sordid gay experiences. He'd wrestled with an obese neighbour boy in Clermont-Ferrand when he was fourteen and last year had been approached in the Clermont-Ferrand train station loo by an obscene old man who'd removed his dentures, wagged his tongue, and pointed to his open, pulsing mouth. — Edmund White

what goes on in that woman's head but she says she isn't psychic, that this has never happened to her before. I don't know what to believe, Jane, but I do think she is a seriously weird woman. You heard her screams at the station, didn't you?' Jane nodded. 'Well, Tom and I stayed the night at her place last night and it was exactly the same. She shrieks in her sleep. Whatever she is dreaming about, it's not pretty. She says she has them every night until Picasso kills the girl. Well, — Valerie Keogh

I lie down on many a station platform; I stand before many a soup kitchen; I squat on many a bench;
then at last the landscape becomes disturbing, mysterious, and familiar. It glides past the western windows with its villages, their thatched roofs like caps, pulled over the white-washed, half-timbered houses, its corn-fields, gleaming like mother-of-pearl in the slanting light, its orchards, its barns and old lime trees.
The names of the stations begin to take on meaning and my heart trembles. The train stamps and stamps onward. I stand at the window and hold on to the frame. These names mark the boundaries of my youth. — Erich Maria Remarque

I opened the bag and packed the boots in; and then, just as I was going to close it, a horrible idea occurred to me. Had I packed my tooth-brush? I don't know how it is, but I never do know whether I've packed my tooth-brush.
My tooth-brush is a thing that haunts me when I'm travelling, and makes my life a misery. I dream that I haven't packed it, and wake up in a cold perspiration, and get out of bed and hunt for it. And, in the morning, I pack it before I have used it, and have to unpack again to get it, and it is always the last thing I turn out of the bag; and then I repack and forget it, and have to rush upstairs for it at the last moment and carry it to the railway station, wrapped up in my pocket-handkerchief. — Jerome K. Jerome