Then There Was One Quotes & Sayings

That's when Sam grabbed my hand. "I love this song!" She led me to the dance floor. And she started dancing. And I started dancing. It was a fast song, so I wasn't very good, but she didn't seem to mind. We were just dancing, and that was enough. The song ended, and then a slow one came on. She looked at me. I looked at her. Then, she took my hands and pulled me in to dance slow. I don't know how to dance slow very well either, but I do know how to sway. Her whisper smelled like cranberry juice and vodka. "I looked for you in the parking lot today." I hoped mine still smelled like toothpaste. "I was looking for you, too." Then, we were quiet for the rest of the song. She held me a little closer. I held her a little closer. And we kept dancing. It was the one time all day that I really wanted the clock to stop. And just be there for a long time. — Stephen Chbosky

Last night I had a nightmare. That me and someone I cared a lot about were playing a game in a pool. We'd take turns submerging ourselves under the water while the other person kept time.
At one point it felt like the other person might be drowning, so I jumped in to pull her up. She smiled and laughed and pushed me away. Then she turned blue and died. I could not resuciate her.
I woke up at 3, sweating, in shock and pain. Frightened. But then I realized it was only a dream. But then I realized it was just like real life ...
Sometimes people we care about play risky games and then don't want our help. There is nothing we can do for them, no matter how much we care ... — Jose N. Harris

When I look back at my mule it was like he was one of these here spy-glasses and I could look at him standing there and see all the broad land and my house sweated outen it like it was the more the sweat, the broader the land; the more the sweat, the tighter the house because it would take a tight house for Cora, to hold Cora like a jar of milk in the spring: you've got to have a tight jar or you'll need a powerful spring, so if you have a big spring, why then you have the incentive to have tight, wellmade jars, because it is your milk, sour or not, because you would rather have milk that will sour than to have milk that wont, because you are a man. — William Faulkner

If there's a disaster, do you go over to your neighbor's house with: a) a covered dish or b) a shotgun? It's game theory. If you believe your neighbor is coming over with a shotgun, you'd be an idiot to pick a); if she believes the same thing about you, you can bet she's not going to choose a) either. The way to get to a) is to do a) even if you think your neighbor will pick b). Sometimes she'll point her gun at you and tell you to get off her land, but if she was only holding the gun because she thought you'd have one, then she'll put on the safety and you can have a potluck. — Cory Doctorow

It's bad enough," said Eeyore, almost breaking down, "being represented myself, what with all that Disney nonsense and then the Internet, and no proper attributions at all, but if everybody else is going to be misrepresented too
"
This was too much for Pooh. "Stay there!" he called to Eeyore, as he turned and hurried back home as quick as he could; for he felt that he must get poor Eeyore a genuine quote of some sort at once, and he could always think of a proper one afterwards. — A.A. Milne

He held me against his body and his upper arm was close to my face, so I turned and bit him. He was so startled he actually released me and I tried to jab him with the knife, but he gripped my wrist.

"Did you bite me?" he asked as he stared at my teeth marks on his bicep.

"Not hard enough. There isn't even blood," I said. Luca's shoulders twitched once, then again. He was fighting laughter. Not the effect I'd intended when I bit him but I had to admit I loved the sound of his deep chuckle.

"I think you've done enough damage for one day," he said. — Cora Reilly

Little bits of Norwegian came to me by a kind of aural osmosis. The most surprising linguistic fact I learned was the impoverishment of that language in swear words. In fact, there is only one- 'farn'- which merely means something like 'devil take it!', but is considered very rude by a well brought-up Viking. It has to pass muster for most of the everyday tragedies that beset an expedition. If a finger is hammered, you jump up and down and cry 'farn'; if you drop an outstanding fossil irretrievably into the sea, you splutter for a while and then mutter 'farn' under your breath. If all your provisions were carried away by a hurricane and death were guaranteed, all the poor Norwegian could do would be to stand on the shingle and cry 'farn' into the wind. Somehow this does not seem adequate for the occasion. — Richard Fortey

Hayati?"

"Yeah, that one. What does it mean?"

He was quiet for so long she had started to think he'd never answer. "There is no English translation for this name," he finally said.

She smiled. "Try. Get as close as you can."

His dark eyes searched her gaze. "It means, my life."

Her forehead wrinkled. "My life?"

Hani pulled her head down and forced her to rest against his chest. He said nothing for a suspended moment and then, "My life," he murmured. "My love. — Jaid Black

[Ted] Cruz railed against his fellow senators for not appreciating the risk that Obamacare would destroy healthcare for America's families ... Cruz then lodged a more general complaint against his Senate colleagues who, he said, seemed more concerned with "cocktail parties in Washington, D.C." than with their constituents. Referring to calls that he said were pouring in from around the country, begging legislators to resist and defund, Cruz noted, "It is apparently an imposition on some members of this body for their constituents to pick up the phone and ask for assistance." As I heard him say that, I picked up the phone and called Cruz's local constituent service office in Houston. "Could someone there give me information about how to enroll in Obamacare?" I asked, when I was put on the phone with one of the senator's case workers. "No. We don't support the bill, and think it's a bad idea," I was told. — Steven Brill

He paused, then looked up at her. "It hurts, did you know that? Growing." She shook her head. "How?" That smile again, the one that made her want to hold him until they were old. "Physically. You ache. Like your bones cannot keep up with themselves. But now that you ask, I suppose it hurts in every other way, as well - there's a keen sense that where you have been is no longer where you are. And certainly nothing like where you are going." He stopped, then whispered, "Nothing like where I was going." "Alec - — Sarah MacLean

I looked at the door, at war with myself. On the one hand, I hated going anything Reth wanted me to. On the other hand, there was a mop with my name on it inside.
"Fine, but if you try anything-"
"Really, Evelyn,how I've missed your charming company."
Keeping a wary eye on the faerie, I followed hi, through the alley. We made our way down the lamp-lined street, his step so light it bordered on dancing. I felt like a graceless clod next to him. Then there was the aspect of his ethereal, near-angelic beauty compared to my..well, for the sake of my self-esteem, it was probably best not to compete. — Kiersten White

They were quiet for a time, alone with their thoughts, but then John sat up straight, struck by a thought. "There's a passage in Exodus - God tells Moses, 'No one can see My face, but I will protect you with My hand until I have passed by you, and then I will remove My hand and you will see My back.' Remember that?"
Emilio nodded, listening.
Well I always thought that was a physical metaphor," John said, "but, you know - I wonder now if it isn't really about time? Maybe that was God's way of telling us that we can never know His intentions, but as time goes on ... we'll understand. We'll see where He was: we'll see His back. — Mary Doria Russell

Cantor illustrated the concept of infinity for his students by telling them that there was once a man who had a hotel with an infinite number of rooms, and the hotel was fully occupied. Then one more guest arrived. So the owner moved the guest in room number 1 into room number 2; the guest in room number 2 into number 3; the guest in 3 into room 4, and so on. In that way room number 1 became vacant for the new guest.
What delights me about this story is that everyone involved, the guests and the owner, accept it as perfectly natural to carry out an infinite number of operations so that one guest can have peace and quiet in a room of his own. That is a great tribute to solitude. — Peter Hoeg

The availability of cheap effective lighting alone, following Thomas Edison's invention of the incandescent bulb in 1879, greatly extended the range of waking human consciousness, effectively adding more hours onto the day - for work, for entertainment, for study, for discovery, for consumption. Subsequently, one development led to another, and to yet another, fueled by a corporate economy in developed nations, and then later by the arms race, and then the space race, as human ambition literally outgrew the planet. It seemed that there was no limit on what humanity could achieve. But there was a flaw at the heart of that expansive optimism - namely, that humanity cannot exist as a thing apart from nature; it has no destiny but annihilation apart from the land that gave it birth. — Clark Strand

You've dated a shoplifter. A drug addict. A girl who claimed that her roommate kept her locked in a dumpster. She was admitted to Mulberry not too long ago, if I recall, right? They diagnosed her with schizophrenia." Reece nodded reluctantly. "For the record, I only dated her for two months. And also for the record, she's doing a lot better." "Hmm," Camden replied. "There's the one who put salt on all her food then complained incessantly of bloating problems. Oh yeah! And the one who wanted you to tie her up and beat the shit out of her every night." "All right already!" Reece snapped. "I get it. I haven't had the best of luck with normal women. — S. Walden

Colin decided then and there that the female mind was a strange and incomprehensible organ - one which no man should even attempt to understand. There wasn't a woman alive who could go from point A to B without stopping at C, D, X, and 12 along the way. — Julia Quinn

With her back turned, she loosened each plait until her hair hung in waves that curled around her waist. Then she spun to face him and puffed a sigh.
"Fine. You caught me. I guess there's no use pretending anymore."
Doran settled in and waited for the punch line.
"I lured you onto this ship," she said, "because I couldn't get enough of your scintillating personality."
There it was.
"Kiss me, Doran," she cried, flopping onto the mattress with one arm slung over her eyes and the other clutched to her breast. "I burn for you, hotter than a thousand hells."
He cocked his head to the side. "I think there's an ointment for that. — Melissa Landers

You think you know what is just and what is not. I understand. We all think we know." I had no doubt, myself, then, that at each moment each one of us, man, woman, child, perhaps even the poor old horse turning the mill-wheel, knew what was just: all creatures come into the world bringing with them the memory of justice. "But we live in a world of laws," I said to my poor prisoner, "a world of the second-best. There is nothing we can do about that. We are fallen creatures. All we can do is to uphold the laws, all of us, without allowing the memory of justice to fade. — J.M. Coetzee

The idea of living there, of not having to go back ever again to asphalt and shopping malls and modular furniture; of living there with Charles and Camilla and Henry and Francis and maybe even Bunny; of no one marrying or going home or getting a job in a town a thousand miles away or doing any of the traitorous things friends do after college; of everything remaining exactly as it was, that instant - the idea was so truly heavenly that I'm not sure I thought, even then, it could ever really happen, but I like to believe I did. — Donna Tartt

It could kill you, Maura said.
Then there was the awkward moment that arrives when two thirds of the people in the room know that the other third is supposed to die in fewer than nine months, and the person who is meant to die is not one of the ones in the know. — Maggie Stiefvater

When I go out by the gateway, taking the road I drove along that first time I picked up Lotte for the ball, how very different it all is! It is all over, all of it! There is not a hint of the world that once was, not one bulse-beat of those past emotions. I feel like a ghost returning to the burnt-out ruins of the castle he built in his prime as a prince, which he adorned with magnificent splendours and then, on his deathbed, but full of hope, left to his beloved son — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Duke is in extremely competitive environment. In my high school, I think I got one B my whole four years. I was used to being the smartest kid in every class I was in, and then I went to Duke and suddenly I was the dumbest kid in every class. Everybody there is up to something. — Mike Posner

The second reason for the failure of industrial agriculture is its wastefulness. In natural or biological systems, waste does not occur. And it is easy to produce examples of nonindustrial human cultures in which waste was or is virtually unknown. All that is sloughed off in the living arc of a natural cycle remains within the cycle; it becomes fertility, the power of life to continue. In nature death and decay are as necessary - are, one may almost say, as lively - as life; and so nothing is wasted. There is really no such thing, then, as natural production; in nature, there is only reproduction. But — Wendell Berry

There is a progression from pictographic, writing the picture; to ideographic, writing the idea; and then logographic, writing the word. Chinese script began this transition between 4,500 and 8,000 years ago: signs that began as pictures came to represent meaningful units of sound. Because the basic unit was the word, thousands of distinct symbols were required. This is efficient in one way, inefficient in another. Chinese unifies an array of distinct spoken languages: people who cannot speak to one another can write to one another. It employs at least fifty thousand symbols, about six thousand commonly used and known to most literate Chinese. In swift diagrammatic strokes they encode multidimensional semantic relationships. One device is simple repetition: tree + tree + tree = forest; more abstractly, sun + moon = brightness and east + east = everywhere. The process of compounding creates surprises: grain + knife = profit; hand + eye = look. — James Gleick

It is a battle that intensely interests humanists (the International Humanist and Ethical Union is one of the most responsible and persistent of the NGOs at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva27) because the concept of rights is so paradigmatically humanistic: when the instruments of the international Human Rights Bill were being forged, there was no claim that their terms and principles were drawn from anything other than human experience, nor that their observance would get anyone into heaven. No, the claim was then, and is now, only that their observance would make this world a vastly better place. — A.C. Grayling

He said when he went to sell a man a flue, he asked first about that man's wife's health and how his children were. He said he had a book that he kept the names of his customers' families and what was wrong with them. A man's wife had cancer, he put her name down in the book and wrote 'cancer' after it and inquired about her every time he went to that man's hardware store until she died; then he scratched out the word 'cancer' and wrote 'dead' there. "And I say thank God when they're dead," the salesman said; "that's one less to remember. — Flannery O'Connor

I reckon you must get bored more easily than other people." He came up onto one elbow and looked at her. "Yes. You'll have your hands full, keeping me excited." "I don't remember anything about that in the marriage vows," she said. "There was obey - I noticed that came first - but I privately added a lengthy footnote to that item." "This surprises me not at all. But there was the part about serving me." "It, too, needed a footnote. Then love and honor and keeping you and sticking with you and nobody else. I remember all those. But I don't recall the minister mentioning anything about keeping you excited." "That was the serve part. It had an asterisk and some fine print." "I did not hear any fine print. — Loretta Chase

I grew up in one of the biggest high schools in the world, and that's the Disney Channel. Everybody was falling in love with each other or not liking each other, and it was exhausting and I was the shy one in the corner. And now I'm so opinionated, and I don't have time for the cattiness. I have good people around me, and I'm glad I'm at the place I'm in. I wish I was there back then. — Selena

In what, then, can those engaged in this kind of warfare place their hope? The Nakano Military School answered this question with a simple sentence: "In secret warfare, there is integrity." And this is right, for integrity is the greatest necessity when a man must deceive not only his enemies but his friends. With integrity - and I include in this sincerity, loyalty, devotion to duty and a sense of morality - one can withstand all hardships and ultimately turn hardship itself into victory. This was the lesson that the instructors at Futamata were constantly trying to instill in us. One of them put it this way: "If you are genuinely pure in spirit, people will respond to you and cooperate with you." This meant to me that so long as I remained pure inside, whatever measures I saw fit to take would eventually redound to the good of my country and my countrymen. — Hiroo Onoda

There was a man that hated his footprints and his shadow, so one day he thought that if he ran fast enough, his footprints and shadow would not be able to follow him and then he never ever had to look at them again. He ran and he ran as fast as he could, but the shadow and the footprints had no problems keeping up to him. And he ran even faster and all of a sudden he fell dead to the ground. But if he been standing still there hadn't been any footprints and if he had been resting under a tree his shadow had been swallowed of the trees shadow. — Benjamin Hoff

Don't look so worried. I've sailed the seven seas, and I've never had an unsuccessful adventure yet!"
"Really? You've sailed all seven seas?" asked Darwin admiringly.
"Every last one!"
"What are the seven seas? I've always wondered."
"Aaarrr. Well, let's see ... " said the Pirate Captain, scratching his craggy forehead. "There's the North Sea. And that other one, the one near Mozambique. And ... what's that one in Hyde Park?"
"The Serpentine?"
"That's the one. How many's that then? Three. Um. There's the sea with all the rocks in it ... I think they call it Sea Number Four. Then that would leave ... uh ... Grumpy and Sneezy ... "
Darwin was starting to look a little less impressed.
"Would you look at that big seagull!" said the Pirate Captain, quickly ducking into a beach hut. — Gideon Defoe

When I first came in the business, I had a couple of close calls on planes going to London for shows. There was one time where the plane had to fly around until a storm ended, and then we started having a question about fuel, so we had to go through the storm. It was the worst thing that ever happened in my life. That really messed me up. — R. Kelly

When she'd finished, Blake took the paper from her hands. He folded it and put it in his pocket, where it nestled side by side with his music. He kissed her ringed hand, and then her bare one. He had no paper, but he spoke clearly and unhesitatingly. There was a slight echo as his words bounced around the cement platform. He borrowed her letter format to respond. — Debra Anastasia

I'm so sorry. I always felt like there was something off about me, and now I know. I'm broken."
It wrecked me all over again to hear her say that.
"You're not broken."
"Then how come I can't be fixed?" she asked, shaking as she held back tears. "If I'm not broken, how come no one can fix me? — Robyn Schneider

The broken branch hissed loudly, and then that
wind was converted into these words: Briefly will
you be answered.
When the fierce soul departs from the body from
which it has uprooted itself, Minos sends it to the
seventh mouth.
It falls into the wood, and no place is assigned to
it, but where chance hurls it, there it sprouts like a
grain of spelt.
It grows into a shoot, then a woody plant; the
Harpies, feeding on its leaves, give it pain and a
window for the pain.
Like the others, we will come for our remains, but
not so that any may put them on again, for it is not
just to have what one has taken from oneself.
Here we will drag them, and through the sad
wood our corpses will hang, each on the thornbrush
of the soul that harmed it. — Dante Alighieri

Using one's beauty was the only way a smart girl could get by, at least that's how it was back then, though even for a smart girl there were really only three professions. You could be a nurse or a teacher or a wife. — Shannon Celebi

And then the shower fell, sudden, profuse. No one had seen the cloud coming. There it was, black, swollen, on top of them. Down it poured like all the people in the world weeping. Tears. Tears. Tears. — Virginia Woolf

I wanted to pull away, remind him that I was a big girl, a highly trained operative, a spy - that I'd been training for this mission my entire life, and I wasn't going to be left on the sidelines. But in the dim space with Zach pressed tightly against me, only one thought came to mind. I kissed him - longer and deeper than I ever had before. The school was not watching us this time. There was nothing playful in the tone. We were just two people kissing as if for the first time, as if it might be the last.
And then I broke away. "So," I asked, as if I got kissed like that all the time (which, believe me, I don't), "where is it you're taking me again?"
"The tombs. — Ally Carter

When I was first at court and he was the young husband of a beautiful wife, he was a golden king. They called him the handsomest prince in Christendom, and that was not flattery. Mary Boleyn was in love with him, Anne was in love with him, I was in love with him. There was not one girl at court, nor one girl in the country, who could resist him. Then he turned against his wife, Queen Katherine, a good woman, and Anne taught him how to be cruel. — Philippa Gregory

Every little prick out there wants me to lift them. I had this one kid from Oklahoma, big fat shitter he was. Legs as fat as a Downers forehead screaming Up, up, Hulk up! at me for ten minutes until I had no other choice. Fat fucker damn near put my back out and then his old man stiffs me with Canadian dollars. Canadian, can you believe that shit?! — David Louden

Any mother could tell you that a child invades her space from the moment of conception. And for years after, space does not exist. It was one of the things I had missed. I'd even yearned for it. And then Eli died, and I had all the space I had thought I wanted. Not just a little space. Outer space. Galaxies. And I'd floated in it in agony, longing for the days when there had been no such thing. — Amy Harmon

Frank turned to look down at me, and he was right there, so close. Hi, he said.
I looked up at him.Now that the moment was here, it didn't feel scary. What would happen would happen, and I couldn't know or control it. But I was ready for it to begin. Hey, I said.
In a well-ordered universe, he said, and I could hear how nervous he was, I'd be able to do this. He leaned his head down and kissed me softly, then pulled back, making sure this was okay.
I smiled at him. Then we must be in one, I said. And as the sun rose behind us and he bent his head down to kiss me again, I leaned forward.
Toward him, and to whatever came next. — Morgan Matson

Logic said that at some point he must've been a baby and then a child, but looking at him one was almost convinced that some deity had touched the ground with its scepter and proclaimed, "There shall be a badass," and Jim had sprung into existence, fully formed, complete with clothes, and ready for — Ilona Andrews

While she strode rapidly through the ward to the door at the other end, she was able to see that every bed or cot held an infant or a small child in whom the human template had been wrenched out of pattern, sometimes horribly, sometimes slightly. A baby like a comma, great lolling head on a stalk of a body... then something like a stick insect, enormous bulging eyes among stiff fragilities that were limbs... a small girl all blurred, her flesh guttering and melting - a doll with chalky swollen limbs, its eyes wide and blank, like blue ponds, and its mouth open, showing a swollen little tongue. A lanky boy was skewed, one half of his body sliding from the other. A child seemed at first glance normal, but then Harriet saw there was no back to its head; it was all face, which seemed to scream at her. — Doris Lessing

She smiled. Her skin looked whiter than he recalled, and dark spidery veins were beginning to show beneath its surface. Her hair was still the color of spun silver and her eyes were still green as a cat's. She was still beautiful. Looking at her, he was in London again. He saw the gaslight and smelled the smoke and dirt and horses, the metallic tang of fog, the flowers in Kew Gardens. He saw a boy with black hair and blue eyes like Alec's, heard violin music like the sound of silver water. He saw a girl with long brown hair and a serious face. In a world where everything went away from him eventually, she was one of the few remaining constants.
And then there was Camille. — Cassandra Clare

My little donkey, if I hadn't shown up, your fate would have been sealed. Love has saved you. Is there anything else that could erase the innate fears of a donkey and send him to rescue you from certain death? No. That is the only one. With a call to arms, I, Ximen Donkey, charged down the ridge and headed straight for the wolf that was tailing my beloved. My hooves kicked up sand and dust as I raced down from my commanding position; no wolf, not even a tiger, could have avoided the spearhead aimed at it. It saw me too late to move out of the way, and I thudded into it, sending it head over heels. Then I turned around and said to my donkey, Do not fear my dear, I am here! — Mo Yan

Whether or not belive in Fate comes down to one thing: who you blame when something goes wrong. Do you think it's your fault - that if you'd tried better, worked harder, it wouldn't have happened? Or do you just chalk it up to circumstance?
I know poeple who'll hear about the people who died, and will say that it was God's will. I know people who'll say it was bad luck. And then there's my personal favorite: They were just in the wrong place at hte wrong time.
Then again, you could say the same thing about me, couldn't you? — Jodi Picoult

In the popular imagination, the Big Bang is a great explosion; at one time there was nothing, then matter erupted into previously empty space. However, the Big Bang is the beginning of spacetime itself, not an event in time. — Taner Edis

What do you think of boybands?"
I avoided eye contact, put my hands in my pockets, and shrugged.
"Not my thing, really." What was he getting at?
He chortled, and continued. "They are all the same. They've all got a lead singer whose head is stuck up his own arse, then a hard one who gets into trouble, an ugly one who wants to be taken seriously, and always, without exception, there's a gay one. — Eddie De Oliveira

This was puzzling, as the standard textbook of psychiatry at the time stated that incest was extremely rare in the United States, occurring about once in every million women.8 Given that there were then only about one hundred million women living in the United States, I wondered how forty seven, almost half of them, had found their way to my office in the basement of the hospital. Furthermore, the textbook said, "There is little agreement about the role of father-daughter incest as a source of serious subsequent psychopathology." My patients with incest histories were hardly free of "subsequent psychopathology" - they were profoundly depressed, confused, and often engaged in bizarrely self-harmful behaviors, such as cutting themselves with razor blades. The textbook went on to practically endorse incest, explaining that "such incestuous activity diminishes the subject's chance of psychosis and allows for a better adjustment to the external world."9 — Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

We talk of strong personalities, and they are strong, until the not-every-day when we see them as we might see one woman alone in a desert, and know that all the strength we thought we knew was only courage, only her lone song echoing among the stones; and then at last when we have understood this and made up our minds to hear the song and admire its courage and its sweetness, we wait for the next note and it does not come. The last word, with its pure tone, echoes and fades and is gone, and we realize - only then - that we do not know what it was, that we have been too intent on the melody to hear even one word. We go then to find the singer, thinking she will be standing where we last saw her. There are only bones and sand and a few faded rags. — Gene Wolfe

Oh, I thought that I was giving him so much!
And he to me - and the giving and the taking
Seemed so right: not in terms of calculation
Of what was good for the persons we had been
But for the new person, us. If I could feel
As I did then, even now it would seem right.
And then I found we were only strangers
And that there had been neither giving nor taking
But that we had merely made use of each other
Each for his purpose. That's horrible. Can we only love
Something created by our own imagination?
Are we all in fact unloving and unlovable?
The one is alone, and if one is alone
Then lover and beloved are equally unreal
And the dreamer is no more real than his dreams. — T. S. Eliot

One day [when I relapsed] I walked into a store and saw a little bottle of Jack Daniel's. And then that voice - I call it the 'lower power' - goes, 'Hey. Just a taste. Just one.' I drank it, and there was that brief moment of 'Oh, I'm okay!' But it escalated so quickly. Within a week I was buying so many bottles I sounded like a wind chime walking down the street. — Robin Williams

He supposed he was one of those unfortunates born with a great capacity for suffering ... He opened his eyes a moment and they were dark with fear, for only one race was run as yet and there might be many others ... Then his newborn courage came back to him and he accepted his suffering as the price he must pay for the gift of creation that was his. And suffering, he had discovered, could be the gateway to renewal, than which no more glorious experience can be man's on earth. — Elizabeth Goudge

As time went on, Sniff and Scurry continued their routine. They arrived early each morning and sniffed and scratched and scurried around Cheese Station C, inspecting the area to see if there had been any changes from the day before. Then they would sit down to nibble on the cheese. One morning they arrived at Cheese Station C and discovered there was no cheese. They weren't surprised. Since Sniff and Scurry had noticed the supply of cheese had been getting smaller every day, they were prepared for the inevitable and knew instinctively what to do. They looked at each other, removed the running shoes they had tied together and hung conveniently around their necks, put them on their feet and laced them up. The mice did not overanalyze things. To the mice, the problem and the answer were both simple. The situation at Cheese Station C had changed. So, Sniff and Scurry decided to change. They both looked out into the Maze. Then Sniff — Spencer Johnson

So, Henrik, is the weather good for fishing?" Papa asked cheerfully, and listened briefly. Then he continued, "I'm sending Inge to you today with the children, and she will be bringing you a carton of cigarettes. "Yes, just one," he said, after a moment. Annemarie couldn't hear Uncle Henrik's words. "But there are a lot of cigarettes available in Copenhagen now, if you know where to look," he went on, "and so there will be others coming to you as well, I'm sure." But it wasn't true. Annemarie was quite certain it wasn't true. Cigarettes were the thing that Papa missed, the way Mama missed coffee. He complained often - he had complained only yesterday - that there were no cigarettes in the stores. — Lois Lowry

I knew that on that island one was driven back into the past. There was so much space, so much silence, so few meetings that one too easily saw out of the present, and then the past seemed ten times closer than it was. — John Fowles

I'm really going off of watching John Waters speak one time and I remember he just kind of talked and it was totally interesting. I wanted to hear about his life and how he got started and when did he think he made it, stupid stuff like that. And what his relationship with the mainstream is because he's so far out there, but then he became part of the mainstream in this weird way. He was really funny, though. Yeah, I have to work on my jokes. — Kathleen Hanna

Then the bull shook himself, turned his head and looked at us. There was an awed whisper from one of the young men: "By gaw, it's working!" I enjoyed myself after that. I can't think of anything in my working life that has given me more pleasure than standing in that pen directing the life-saving jet and watching the bull savouring it. — James Herriot

He was watching me, and he chuckled.
"Do you know how a man tames a wolf?" he asked me.
"No," I said.
"You get some clothing that you've been wearing for a while, and you toss it in with her. In the cage or the cavern where she sleeps. That first one, she rips up, shreds it to nothing. The second one, she just mouths it a bit, gets a taste. Inhales, like you're doing there. The third but of clothing, she starts dragging it around, loving on it, sleeping with it. And then you've got her under your spell. She's got the scent of you, wants to keep it around. She'll follow you everywhere."
"Are you calling me a wolf?" I asked.
"Are you calling me a man?" he said. — Delilah S. Dawson

One night I was meditating in such perfect stillness that two mosquitoes came and sat on each of my cheekbones and stayed there a long time without biting and then went away. — Jack Kerouac

There is another difference between my grandfather and James B. Duke that may finally be more important than any other, and this was a difference of kinds of pleasure. We may assume that, as a boomer, moving from one chance of wealth to another, James B. Duke wanted only what he did not yet have. If it is true that he was in this way typical of his kind, then his great pleasure was only in prospect, which excludes affection as a motive. My grandfather, on the contrary, and despite his life's persistent theme of hardship, took a great and present delight in the modest good that was at hand: in his place and his affection for it, in its pastures, animals, and crops. — Wendell Berry

Our lives are so important to us that we tend to think the story of them begins with our birth. First there was nothing, then I was born ... Yet that is not so. Human lives are not pieces of string that can be separated out from a knot of others and laid out straight. Families are webs. Impossible to touch one part of it without setting the rest vibrating. Impossible to understand one part without having a sense of the whole. - Vida Winter — Diane Setterfield

( ... ) and then I realized there was no one else to call, which was the saddest thing. The only person I really wanted to talk to about Augustus Water's death was Augustus Water. — John Green

I lit a candle in a Catholic church for the first time that afternoon. Me, a Presbyterian. I lit a candle in the warm, dark, waxy-smelling air of Saint Adelbert's. I put it beside the one that Mrs. Baker lit. I don't know what she prayed for, but I prayed that no atomic bomb would ever drop on Camillo Junior High or the Quaker meetinghouse or the old jail or Temple Emmanuel or Hicks Park or Saint Paul's Episcopal School or Saint Adelbert's. I prayed for Lieutenant Baker, missing in action somewhere in the jungles of Vietnam near Khesanh. I prayed for Danny Hupfer, sweating it out in Hebrew school right then. I prayed for my sister, driving in a yellow bug toward California - or maybe she was there already, trying to find herself. And I hoped that it was okay to pray for a bunch of things with one candle. — Gary D. Schmidt

I don't know where I'm going on this path. I don't know what I'm doing with my life. You had to be lost, before you could be found. These are the truths. You had to be confused, before you could find clarity; you had to suffer, before you could find peace. These were the only ways, life could happen. Of course you were confused before you found clarity. If you weren't confused, then you would already be clear. Of course you were lost before you were found. If you were already found, then you wouldn't be lost. Of course there would be suffering before peace. If there was already peace, then there wouldn't be suffering. One necessarily came before the other. — T. Scott McLeod

Honestly, I hate Facebook - it has nothing on Myspace. I loved how weird and crappy and wild and trashy it was. Then there was the whole culture of pimping out your Myspace page. I remember spending 10 hours one day learning how to make our Myspace page look more like a message board from the mid-90s. — Alex Scally

Detainees were not allowed to talk to each other, but we enjoyed looking at each other. The punishment for talking was hanging the detainee by the hands with his feet barely touching the ground. I saw an Afghani detainee who passed out a couple of times while hanging from his hands. The medics "fixed" him and hung him back up. Other detainees were luckier: they were hung for a certain time and then released. Most of the detainees tried to talk while they were hanging, which made the guards double their punishment. There was a very old Afghani fellow who reportedly was arrested to turn over his son. The guy was mentally sick; he couldn't stop talking because he didn't know where he was, nor why. I don't think he understood his environment, but the guards kept dutifully hanging him. It was so pitiful. One day one of the guards threw him on his face, and he was crying like a baby. — Mohamedou Ould Slahi

It is plain that there is one moral law for heaven and another for the earth. The pulpit assures us that wherever we see suffering and sorrow, which we can relieve and do not, we sin, heavily. There was never yet a case of suffering or sorrow which God could not relieve. Does He sin then? — Mark Twain

The Church expected the Second Coming of Christ immediately, and no doubt this was so in the ordinary literal sense. But it was certainly expected also in another sense. The converts in all the cities of Asia and (soon) of Europe where the small groups were founded had known, in their conversion, one way or another, a first coming of their Redeemer. And then? And then! That was the consequent task and trouble - the then. He had come, and they adored and believed, they communicated and practiced, and waited for his further exhibition of himself. The then lasted, and there seemed to be no farther equivalent Now. Time became the individual and catholic problem. The Church had to become as catholic - as universal and as durable - as time. — Charles Williams

She wasn't too big, heroic, what they call Junoesque. It was that there was just too much of what she was for any one human female package to contain, and hold: too much of white, too much of female, too much of maybe just glory, I don't know: so that at first sight of her you felt a kind of shock of gratitude just for being alive and being male at the same instance with her in space and time, and then in the next second and forever after a kind of despair because you knew there would never be enough of any one male to match and hold and deserve her; grief forever after because forever after nothing less would ever do. — William Faulkner

We folded up newspapers and made them into boats. We'd see whose would float the longest before it got bogged down, soggy, and sank. My father gave us a few pennies each day, which we'd toss and try to land on rocks.We'd wade in and get them again and again.Then we'd flip them in one final time to make a wish. Bliss and I could keep ourselves entertained for hours, but of course we became more and more aware that the whole forest was right there -- waiting for us to explore.
We didn't go far at first, not beyond where we could hear Mom call for us from the back door of the barn, but it gave us a whole new playground. We found a fallen log that we walked like a plank. There was a tree with a low straight branch that we could dangle and swing from. We gathered pine cones and tossed and batted them with twigs. — Riel Nason

She gulped her whiskey sour. The bar was hot tonight.
CJ circled back to check on them. "You ladies doing okay?"
"Define okay." Natalie's whiskey seemed to be talking. Because the whiskey was the only thing that could've put that husky, suggestive tone in her voice. Yep, that was all the whiskey.
He propped his elbows on the bar, which put his face level with hers, and fixed his undivided attention on her. There went her lady bits fanning themselves. With a few added whimpers. They remembered what his hands and body and lips felt like too.
"Content." His voice was low and raw, his gaze penetrating and unwavering. "Happy. Completely, one hundred percent satisfied."
Her mouth went dry while the rest of her went up in needy flames that made her want to scratch the all-but-gone rash he'd tended so well on Monday.
"Nope," Natalie squeaked. "Not okay then. — Jamie Farrell

Why did people fall in love?he wondered as he watched Rock and Doris pretend to do just that. Obviously, it made people ridiculous and not just in movies from the sixties. There had to be some basis in real life or no one would ever have made a silly comedy about love. Yeah, there were also movies about love that weren't comedies, but in those movies people acted ridiculous for a while and then someone announced the were going to die, or they had to go off to war, or oops I forgot to mention my wife. People stopped acting ridiculous and starting acting really serious and sad, sad because the ridiculous part was over. How could people want this foolishness in their lives? — Marshall Thornton

I'm not one to insist that a man can't possibly make it without a lot of formal education, since my own formal education pretty much stopped when I graduated from Independence High School in 1901. And then there was a twenty-two-year gap, while I worked on a farm and as a railroad timekeeper and served in the Army and did a lot of other things, before I started to attend night classes at Kansas City Law School - and I left there in 1925 and never got a degree. But I've tried to increase my knowledge all my life by reading and reading and reading, — Harry Truman

Then Nuvoletta reflected for the last time in her little long life and she made up all her myriads of drifting minds in one. She cancelled all her engauzements. She climbed over the bannistars; she gave a childy cloudy cry: Nuee! Nuee! A lightdress fluttered. She was gone. And into the river that had been a stream ... there fell a tear, a singult tear, the loveliest of all tears ... for it was a leaptear. But the river tripped on her by and by, lapping as though her heart was brook: Why, why, why! Weh, O weh! I'se so silly to be flowing but I no canna stay! — James Joyce

In marching, in mobs, in football games, and in war, outlines become vague; real things become unreal and a fog creeps over the mind. Tension and excitement, weariness, movement
all merge in one great gray dream, so that when it is over, it is hard to remember how it was when you killed men or ordered them to be killed. Then other people who were not there tell you what it was like and you say vaguely, yes, I guess that's how it was. — John Steinbeck

I need one, Momma, how come I don't have a baby sister?"

Rachel smiled. "You're so perfect. There was no need to ask for another."

Sophie cocked her head to the side like a puppy. "Ask who?"

"The Stork," Faith supplied.

Sophie looked thoroughly confused then. "I thought sex caused babies."

Rachel patted Faith on the back when she began to cough.

Kaycee shook her head. "Rhonda at school told me that special music causes babies. her sister told her that when her mom and dad play music in their bedroom, babies were being made. Momma, you play music in your room, but we don't have a baby."

"I don't have that particular CD, sweetie."

"My friend told me that it takes a penny and a Virginia to make a baby," Sophie said and sent Faith into another coughing fit. — Robin Alexander

Indeed, there were those who maintained that Russia's defeat at the hands of the Japanese was itself the result of a Jewish conspiracy. According to S. A. Nilus, a secret Jewish council known as the Sanhedrin had hypnotized the Japanese into believing they were one of the tribes of Israel; it was the Jews' aim, Nilus insisted, 'to set a distraught Russia awash with blood and to inundate it, and then Europe, with the yellow hordes of a resurgent China guided by Japan'. The — Niall Ferguson

Now we are going to have a new noise, Eleanor thought, listening to the inside of her head; it is changing. The pounding had stopped, as though it had proved ineffectual, and there was now a swift movement up and down the hall, as of an animal pacing back and forth with unbelievable impatience, watching first one door and then another, alert for a movement inside, and there was again the little babbling murmur which Eleanor remembered; Am I doing it? She wondered quickly, is that me? And heard the tiny laughter beyond the door, mocking her. — Shirley Jackson

At Dachau. We had a wonderful pool for the garrison children. It was even heated. But that was before we were transferred. Dachau was ever so much nicer than Auschwitz. But then, it was in the Reich. See my trophies there. The one in the middle, the big one. That was presented to me by the Reich Youth Leader himself, Baldur von Schirach. Let me show you my scrapbook. — William Styron

There'd been an epidemic, the man had told him. Thirty people had died incandescent with fever, including the mayor. After this, a change in management, but the tuba's acquaintance had declined to elaborate on what he meant by this. He did say that twenty families had left since then, including Charlie and the sixth guitar and their baby. He said no one knew where they'd gone, and he'd told the tuba it was best not to ask. — Emily St. John Mandel

You do know baby. You're just scared and that's okay. But don't throw away your
chance for happiness because you're afraid to take the leap or because you know someone ends up hurt. No matter what you choose, someone
was always going to end up heartbroken. But if there's a chance two hearts can be blissfully happy together in love, then that's worth the broken heart of one. They will mend. They will find love again and be happy. But if you do this, let them both walk away, the only heart that will break and
stay broken is yours baby. — Marie Coulson

Then there was the gray of human habitation. The blue places were turning brown, the yellow places to dust, the green places to smoke and ashes. Each time one of the animals disappeared
they went by species or sometimes by organizations of species, interconnected
it was as though all mountains were gone, or all lakes. A certain form of the world. But in the gray that metastasized over continents and hemispheres few appeared to be deterred by this extinguishing or even to speak of it, no one outside fringe elements and elite groups, professors and hippies, small populations of little general importance. The quiet mass disappearance, the inversion of the Ark, was passing unnoticed. — Lydia Millet

Wearily, she sat up. Jesus was not coming today. She would have to die later, she decided. There was no use lying out here like a fool in the rain. One step, she thought. One step and then the next gets you where you're going. — Robert McCammon

Music began playing and a woman walked into the room and stood beside a small band. She was dressed in a red Irish costume that hung to her ankles and it was laced at the bodice with a black cord. After giving a nod to the band, she sang a few Irish songs. But one song seemed to stand out to Rick and he stopped eating and listened.
Sure a little bit of Heaven fell from out the sky one day and it nestled on the ocean in a spot so far away. When the angels found it, sure it looked so sweet and fair, they said, "Suppose we leave it for it looks so peaceful there."
So they sprinkled it with stardust just to make the shamrocks grow. 'Tis the only place you'll find them no matter where you go. Then they dotted it with silver to make its lakes so grand and when they had it finished, sure they called it Ireland. — Linda Weaver Clarke

I couldn't wait to get out of the car. The first thing I did was smell the air. I closed my eyes and took a breath, the biggest breath of my life, knowing I was taking the biggest breath of my life. I was taking a breath to smell Shepelevo. Breathing in Shepelevo was like hitting the right note on the piano. There was only one right note. When I was young, Shepelevo was the smell of nettles, of salted smoked fish, of fresh water from the Gulf of Finland, and of burning firewood, all wrapped up in one Shepelevo. As it had been, so it was. Across two continents, a dozen countries, twenty cities, three colleges, two marriages, three children, three books, and twenty-five years of another life, I breathed it and smelled the air. Nowhere else in the world had it. "Papa," I said, my voice breaking. "Do you think we could photograph the smell?" He gave me a look and then laughed. — Paullina Simons

Of course (said Oryx), having a money value was no substitute for love. Every child should have love, every person should have it ... but love was undependable, it came and then it went, so it was good to have a money value, because then at least those who wanted to make a profit from you would make sure you were fed enough and not damaged too much. Also there were many who had neither love nor a money value, and having one of these things was better than having nothing. — Margaret Atwood

Dear God," she said. She was shuddering suddenly and the tears came back and she looked past me into the light overhead. "If I can't trust you, then there is no one." "I love you" I said. "I don't care about any of it, I swear. I love you."
Holy Communion," she said. squeezing her eyes so the tears came out.
Yes Holy Communion, my darling," I said. — Anne Rampling

Arthur found himself staring down at the knife embedded in his foot. There was a surreal split second before the blood started to well up and then up it came, dark and thick as syrup.
Arthur looked at Jake and saw that he was staring at the knife. His expression was one of surprise, and this was something that Arthur wondered about later too. Was Jake surprised because he had never considered the possibility that he might be a less than perfect shot? Did he have that much confidence in himself, that little self-doubt?
Or was he merely surprised at how easy it was to give in to an impulse, and carry through the thought which lay in your mind? Simply to do whatever you wanted to do, and damn the consequences. — Mary Lawson

You're going to have to take care of yourself," Karrin said quietly. "Over the next few weeks. Rest. Give yourself a chance to heal. Keep the wound on your leg clean. Get to a doctor and get that arm into a proper cast. I know you can't feel it, but it's important that
"
I stood, leaned over the bed, and kissed her on the mouth.
Her words dissolved into a soft sound that vibrated against my lips. Then her good arm slid around my neck, and there wasn't any sound at all. It was a long kiss. A slow kiss. A good one. I didn't draw away until it came to its end. I didn't open my eyes for a moment after.
" ... oh ... ," she said in a small voice. Her hand slid down my arm to lie upon mine.
"We do crazy things for love," I said quietly, and turned my hand over, fingers curling around hers. — Jim Butcher

I guess the hard part is more in the development stage when we're writing it. The logic is hard. You come up with a great idea and you get all excited that it's going to work and then you go down two hours and then one guy turns to everyone and goes, 'Wait, that makes absolutely no sense because if he was there, then this wouldn't have happened, then this,' and it completely implodes. — Dean Israelite

Kate& Derek
"No, Kate, you don't understand. He vanished. He was there one moment and then he was gone."
I couldn't resist. "Like a ninja. In a puff of smoke. — Ilona Andrews

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

Then I imagine this is how other people feel when they find my pink Post-it. But this one is bright blue and it's written in black Sharpie. It says, You are the silver lining. I love that phrase and the fact that it came from John Milton. "Was I deceived, or did a sable cloud / Turn forth her silver lining on the night?" So somebody out there thinks I'm the bright side of a dark cloud. — Ann Aguirre

Then everything was normal again, except that the liner was speeding for the planet Krim at something more than thirty times the speed of light. Normality extended through all the galaxy so far inhabited by men. There were worlds on which there was peace, and worlds on which there was tumult. There were busy, zestful young worlds, and languid, weary old ones. From the Near Rim to the farthest of occupied systems, planets circled their suns, and men lived on them, and every man took himself seriously and did not quite believe that the universe had existed before he was born or would long survive his loss. Time passed. Comets let out vast streamers like bridal veils and swept toward and around their suns. Some of them - one in ten thousand, or twenty - were possibly seen by human eyes. The liner bearing Hoddan sped through the void. In time it made a landfall on the Planet Krim. — Murray Leinster

Our days flowed around well-charted, often traveled courses, and yet, the underlying sense of falling out of time, out of the trajectory of one's life, not by choice, but by subtraction, was frequent and disquieting. Then I grieved for him, for the lost and previous Paul. He grieved for that man too. Both our griefs were mainly private, internal, unuttered. Return was impossible, and there was only one direction open ; and so we kept our compass pointed forward. [p. 286] — Diane Ackerman

He learned that America differed from Russia in that its government existed under the form of a democracy. The officials who ruled it, and got all the graft, had to be elected first; and so there were two rival sets of grafters, known as political parties, and the one got the office which bought the most votes. Now and then, the election was very close, and that was the time the poor man came in. In the stockyards this was only in national and state elections, for in local elections the Democratic Party always carried everything. — Upton Sinclair

My whole adult life I've worked toward one goal - the success of our business. But I might as well have been chasing the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. What I was looking for, striving for, wasn't really there. Meaning I've been measuring the value of my life all wrong. Then I met you and realized that being a somebody isn't nearly as wonderful as having a somebody. And being somebody to somebody else. — Ally Blake

In my experience, there were two types of guys. One type asked you every five minutes what was on your mind and then got pissy when you didn't feel like sharing. The other type never asked and you got pissy when they didn't seem to care. — Kristen Ashley