There She Stands Quotes & Sayings

Bianca Nazario stands at the end of the world. The firmament above is as blue as the summer skies of her childhood, mirrored in the waters of la caldera; but where the skies she remembers were bounded by mountains, here on Sky there is no horizon, only a line of white cloud. — David Moles

No person is free until he or she is free at the center. When we let go there, we are free indeed. When the self is renounced, then one stands utterly disillusioned, apart, asking for nothing. If anything comes to us, it is all sheer gain. Then life becomes one constant surprise. — E. Stanley Jones

The entire room turns and stares. There's no doubt what they see - ripped jeans, a black T-shirt, tattoos and earrings. I don't care what they see. All I care about is what she sees: a person unwelcomed or the guy she loves.
A tear flows down her face, and the hand wrapped at her waist tells me she's paralyzed. In a long gold ball gown that's more skirt than dress, Rachel is truly the angel I believe her to be. A man in a tuxedo stands. "Son, I think you have the wrong room."
"No. I don't." I stride between the tables, keeping my eyes locked with hers. The closer I get, the more she straightens. Her hand falls from her stomach, and the tear clears from her face. Rachel gazes at me as if I'm a dream. I extend my hand, palm out. "I need help."
Her blue eyes lose their glaze, and the hue of violet I love so much returns. "So do I." — Katie McGarry

I am charmed by the idea that there is an activity known as work and another as play, although even in grade school the distinction eluded me. I remember how full of hope I was sitting in first-period home room listening to the teacher divide up our activities into purposeful sections. I got a grip on her process, at last, by picturing it in the following way: A cow stands in clover. When she is milked, that is her work; when she is merely eating, that is her play. But the problem lay, then as now, in the realization that, in any case, she is standing in clover. Not a handsome or elegant analogy, but it approximates for me the habit of reading - standing in a world of clover, the eating of which is occasionally utilitarian, usually nourishing, because that's what one does — Toni Morrison

She rests her hand on the ruffled costume beside her. "Just answer this one question. My brother never got over you. Did you ever get over him?"I swallow. "There are some people in life that you can't get over."
"Good." Calliope stands and gives me a grim smile. "But break Cricket's heart? I'll break your face. — Stephanie Perkins

Once she had thrown a square of birch bark into the fire when her father came in the door. He might then have asked her why her quill pen had shaped a row of straight and crooked question marks and after each one an exclamation point
in rows of ten, perhaps forty running along
?! ?! ?! ?!
arranged in pairs or couples. If he had asked her what is this folderol and what can this nonsense mean she would have said the same she said when shaping them with her pen, one pair, one couple after another. Each question mark stands for my ignorance and asks if I may learn and know the answer. And each exclamation point stands for my surprise at how little I know, my amazement at my vast ignorance, my utter astonishment at how much there is for me to learn. — Carl Sandburg

There's no more damage to be done," she said, in a faint, almost thoughtful voice. "No more damage, no salvation. One more of Faerie's glorious monsters lost."
"If you'd left us alone--" I began.
"You'd have sent some hero after me, given time enough. I killed, I die. At least I killed like a monster kills, instead of with iron, and dying by inches. That's Titania's way, the Queen who stands in the darkness and screams about her light. — Seanan McGuire

She's not my nurse but she comes up to Gran and Gramps just the same. "Don't you doubt for a second that she can hear you," she tells them. "She's aware if everything that's going on." She stands there with her hands on her hip. I can almost picture her snapping gum. Gran and Gramps stare at her, lapping up what she's telling them. "You might think the doctors or nurses or all this equipment is running the show," she says, gesturing to the wall of medical equipment. "Nuh-uh. She's running the show. Maybe she's just biding her time. So you talk to her. You tell her to take all the time she needs, but to come on back. You're waiting for her. — Gayle Forman

There was something in her attitude, in her whole appearance when she leaned her head against the high-backed chair and spread her arms, which suggested the regal woman, the one who rules, who looks on, who stands alone. — Kate Chopin

Well, she's so alive, Julia Child. And Margaret is so - is so designed. She's so intent upon making her point. That's the most important thing, is that she win the argument, and there is nothing that stands in the way of that train, you know. But Julia's just alive in front of you. That's part of why people loved her. They lived it with her. They breathed it with her. And the mistakes were all part of it. — Meryl Streep

Every morning he comes to the top of the stairs and looks down over the club and he stands there, so big and powerful and beautiful and ... " She swallows hard like her mouth just went totally dry. "Sexy. God, so unbelievably sexy." Her eyes get a weird, intense look like she's remembering something, then she makes a soft noise and doesn't say anything for a second. — Karen Marie Moning

I'll make sure he stands up and knows what he's worth," she'd interrupted. "There won't be a day he's not loved. I'll say it with my hands - making a home for him. I'll say it with my arms - hugging him so he knows his mother is present every day. His heart will never be alone. And I'll say it out loud every day. Because it matters. — Debra Anastasia

Womanhood is a wonderful thing. In womankind we find the mothers of the race.There is no man so great, nor none sunk so low, but once he lay a helpless, innocent babe in a woman's arms and was dependent on her love and care for his existence. It is woman who rocks the cradle of the world and holds the first affections of mankind. She possesses a power beyond that of a king on his throne.
... Womanhood stands for all that is pure and clean and noble. She who does not make the world better for having lived in it has failed to be all that a woman should be. — Mabel Hale

When I come back, the club is packed. There's hardly any standing room. Anna snagged a wooden bar stool, one of the few seats here. St. Clair stands close to her, facing her, and he smoothes the platinum stripe in her hair. She pulls him even closer by the top of his jeans, one finger tucked inside. It's an intimate gesture. I'm embarrassed to watch, but I can't look away.
He kisses her slowly and deeply. They don't care that anyone could watch. Or maybe they've forgotten they aren't alone. When they break apart, Anna says something that makes him fall into silly, boyish laughter. For some reason, that's the moment that makes me turn away. Something about their love is painful. — Stephanie Perkins

Beyond The Sea"

Somewhere beyond the sea
Somewhere waiting for me
My lover stands on golden sands
And watches the ships that go sailing

Somewhere beyond the sea
She's there watching for me
If I could fly like birds on high
Then straight to her arms
I'd go sailing

It's far beyond the stars
It's near beyond the moon
I know beyond a doubt
My heart will lead me there soon

We'll meet beyond the shore
We'll kiss just as before
Happy we'll be beyond the sea
And never again I'll go sailing

I know beyond a doubt
My heart will lead me there soon
We'll meet (I know we'll meet) beyond the shore
We'll kiss just as before
Happy we'll be beyond the sea
And never again I'll go sailing

No more sailing
So long sailing
Bye, bye sailing... — Bobby Darin

The Niobe of nations! there she stands. — Lord Byron

She grabbed the bills. "Alright, you rat bastard, you win." She stuffed the money in her back pocket.
"But I'm only taking it because I'm greedy and desperate, and because there's no door on that room so you can't get too frisky.
"Fair enough."
"I mean it, Dean. If you try to cop even one feel ... "
"Me? What about you?" His eyes slid over her like cool icing on hot spice cake. "How about this, double or nothing."
"What are you taking about?"
"You touch me first, I keep the hundred. I touch you first, you get two hundred. Nobody touches anybody, the deals stands as is."
She thought it over, but couldn't see any immediate loopholes other than the threat of her inner-slut emerging, and she could darn well control that little bitch. "Deal. — Susan Elizabeth Phillips

I got a personal e-mail and went to their event because I couldn't believe that they were interested in me and I wanted to find out why," she said. But when she got there, she wasn't sure why she'd come in the first place. "I looked around and felt that I not only didn't belong with the group of people but that I didn't believe in what the organization stands for or does," she said. "There's definitely a compulsion element to it. You feel like so many people are doing it and talking about it all the time like it's interesting, so you start to wonder if maybe it really is. — Marina Keegan

The camera follows a young woman as she makes her way through the stands to an area set aside for repentance and conversion. But Jesus' stories imply that far more may be going on out there: beyond that stadium scene, in a place concealed from all camera lenses, a great party has erupted, a gigantic celebration in the unseen world. — Philip Yancey

A woman is beautiful when she stands out as an individual - it's a woman who has her own style and the confidence to pull it off. Half the women on the streets in New York City achieve this. I get so inspired every time I'm there. — Christina Hendricks

It's like this," Mayuri had once explained, citing the several thousand pounds and five years in therapy she had spent to find herself. "You keep going to a bookstore and asking for a dozen red roses. They obviously don't have red roses and you come home disappointed. That's what's going on with your mother. You keep expecting roses and keep getting disappointed. I know not to ask for roses at a bookstore. That's why I have no issues with my amma." "You make it sound so easy," Priya said. "I didn't say it was easy," Mayuri said. "It took me a long time and a lot of effort. There were a lot of tequila shots, irresponsible one-night stands, and shrinks involved. — Amulya Malladi

Something Evil
I said, "Ikstein stands outside the door for a long time before he knocks. Did you suspect that? Did you suspect that he stands there listening to what we say before he knocks?" She said, "Did you know you're crazy?" I said, "I'm not crazy. The expression on his face, when I open the door, is giddy and squirmy. As if he'd been doing something evil, like listening outside our door before he knocked." She said, "That's Ikstein's expression. Why do you invite him here? Leave the door open. He won't be able to listen to us. You won't make yourself crazy imagining it." I said, "Brilliant, but he isn't due for an hour and I won't sit here with the door open." She said, "I hate to listen to you talk this way. I won't be involved in your lunatic friendships." She opened the door. Ikstein stood there, giddy and squirmy. — Leonard Michaels

So he bought tickets to the Greyhound and they climbed, painfully, inch by inch and with the knowledge that, once they reached the top, there would be one breath-taking moment when the car would tip precariously into space, over an incline six stories steep and then plunge, like a plunging plane. She buried her head against him, fearing to look at the park spread below. He forced himself to look: thousands of little people and hundreds of bright little stands, and over it all the coal-smoke pall of the river factories and railroad yards. He saw in that moment the whole dim-lit city on the last night of summer; the troubled streets that led to the abandoned beaches, the for-rent signs above overnight hotels and furnished basement rooms, moving trolleys and rising bridges: the cagework city, beneath a coalsmoke sky. — Nelson Algren

It is the lowered head that makes her seem less noble than, say, a horse, or a deer surprised in the woods. More exactly, it is her lowered head and neck. As she stands still, the top of her head is level with her back, or even a little lower, and so she seems to be hanging her head in discouragement, embarrassment, or shame. There is at least a suggestion of humility and dullness about her. But all these suggestions are false. — Lydia Davis

I have hundreds of roubles that I don't know what to do with, and she stands there in a tattered coat and looks at me timidly," thought Pierre. "And what does she need money for? As id this money can add one hair's breadth to her happiness, her peace of mind? Can anything in the world make her or me less subject to evil and death? Death, which will end everything and which must come today or tomorrow - in a moment, anyhow, compared with eternity. — Leo Tolstoy

She stands on top of the hill again. A small round piece of gold in her hands: the compass. A disk of brighter gold on the horizon: the sun rising. She opens the compass and looks at the arrow. Tears on her face, wind in her hair. She wears a green dress. Her skirt brushes the grass when she bends down to put the compass on the ground. When she stands up again her hands are empty. Xander waits behind her. He holds out his hand. "He's gone," he tells her. "I'm here." His voice sounds sad. Hopeful. No, I start to say, but Xander tells the truth. I'm not there, not really. I'm only a shadow watching in the sky. They're real. I'm not anymore. — Ally Condie

Cold as winter, strong as stone;
She faced the darkness all alone.
A silver goddess; a reflection.
A mirage; a recollection.
No return; no turning back.
The past is gone, the future, black.
Serpents gather in their nest,
And she stands above the rest.
Shadows hunt; she hunts the shadow.
The moon is risen; she stands below.
She views her world through the eyes of others.
Black and white; there are no colors,
As she looks down upon a shattered youth.
A shattered mirror shows a shattered truth. — Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

One morning as I was leaving, the director said I didn't have to leave the set anymore. What happened? Why did they change their ways of treating me? I came to the realization that it was because I had a mother. My mother spoke highly of me, and to me. But more important, whether they met her or simply heard about her, she was there with me. She had my back, supported me. This is the role of the mother, and in that visit I really saw clearly, and for the first time, why a mother is really important. Not just because she feeds and also loves and cuddles and even mollycoddles a child, but because in an interesting and maybe an eerie and unworldly way, she stands in the gap. She stands between the unknown and the known. In Stockholm, my mother shed her protective love down around me and without knowing why people sensed that I had value. — Maya Angelou

There she stands before me, and old woman with an anxious, care-worn face. Her hands are clasped - weary, toil-worn hands with a soft, wrinkled skin, where the veins stand out bluish; hands become so for my sake. - I never thought of that before. There is a lot I did not think of before; I was too young. But now I understand how it is that to this withered, little woman I am something different from any other soldier in the world: I am her child. To her I have always remained so, even as a soldier. In the war she has seen only a pack of wild beasts threatening the life of her child. It has never occurred to her that this same threatened child has been just such another wild beast to the children of yet other mothers. My — Erich Maria Remarque

My social status leaps after decades of disqualification on grounds of radiation. The doorbell rings and there stands Vanessa Redgrave. 'Marcie,' she begins, and then goes on about social injustice in Namibia, and how we must all build a raft by late afternoon - preferably out of coconut matting. — Morrissey

counsel:--Go to the Lady of Sorrow, and 'take with both hands'* what she will give you. Yonder lies her cottage. She is not in it now, but her door stands open, and there is bread and water on her table. Go in; sit down; eat of the bread; drink of the water; and wait there until she appear. Then ask counsel of her, for she is true, and her wisdom is great. — George MacDonald

She stands on the cliffs, near the old crumbling stone house. There's nothing left in the house but an upturned table, a ladle, and a clay bowl. She stands for more than an hour, goose-bumped and shivering. At these times, she won't confide in me. She runs her hands over her body, as if checking that it's still there, her heart pulsing and beating. The limbs are smooth and strong, thin and sinewy, her hair long and black and messy and gleaming despite her age. You wouldn't know it to look at her, that she's lived long enough to look for what's across the water. Eighty years later, and she is still fifteen. — Jodi Lynn Anderson

The things she sees are uninteresting to her. Irrelevant. Until there's a clatter of wings. We both look up. There's a pigeon, a woodpigeon, sailing down to roost in a lime tree above us. Time slows. The air thickens and the hawk is transformed. It's as if all her weapons systems were suddenly engaged. Red cross-hairs. She stands on her toes and cranes her neck. This. This flightpath. This thing, she thinks. This is fascinating. Some part of the hawk's young brain has just worked something out, and it has everything to do with death. — Helen Macdonald

She follows her nose and stands once more before the doors of a quintessential dilemma. Male or Female. Here is her paradox. A staccato voice seems to challenge her, berate her. Hombre or Mujer. Mann or Frau. Homme or Femme. Gentleman or Lady. Com on, decide. She knows them all. She is them all. Not fluid or all-encompassing, gathering the harvest of the reaping fields, but fractured and split and bleeding. Her inner core weeping out of itself. There is nothing for hermaphrodites. It's too confusing. The words rattle around in her earbones, androgynous and humming. How can she choose? She cannot choose. To choose is to sunder. — Mark O'Flynn

The Fish She stands over a fish, thinking about certain irrevocable mistakes she has made today. Now the fish has been cooked, and she is alone with it. The fish is for her - there is no one else in the house. But she has had a troubling day. How can she eat this fish, cooling on a slab of marble? And yet the fish, too, motionless as it is, and dismantled from its bones, and fleeced of its silver skin, has never been so completely alone as it is now: violated in a final manner and regarded with a weary eye by this woman who has made the latest mistake of her day and done this to it. — Lydia Davis

The Dawn is a wild, fair woman, With sunrise in her hair; Look where she stands, with pleading hands, To lure me there. — Robert Loveman

If a woman stands in a kitchen rubbing her eyes and pouring coffee with no one there to see her, does she exist? I — Marya Hornbacher

In the center of the sofa were two oblong companion pillows, shouldered so closely together that they looked like the Decalogue tablets. They were white, or had been white, and painfully stitched upon them with blue thread were companion mottoes, companion pictures. In the left pillow lies a girl, her long blue hair asprawl about her face, her eyes innocently shut, asleep. The motto: I SLEPT AND DREAMED THAT LIFE WAS BEAUTY. But the story continued, and on the next pillow her innocence is all torn away: there she stands, gripping a round broom; her hair now is pinned up severely and behind her sits a disheartening barrel churn. I WOKE AND FOUND THAT LIFE WAS DUTY. The pillows sat, stuffed and stiff as disapproving bishops; they could, he thought, serve as twin tombstones for whole gray generations. — Fred Chappell

I got that familiar mania - there is information somewhere here, and I can find it, I have to. A good librarian is not so different from a prospector, her whole brain a divining rod. She walks to books and stands and wonders: here? Is the answer here? The same blind faith in finding, even when hopeless. If someone caught me when I was in the throes of tracking something elusive, I would have told them: but it's out there. I can feel it. — Elizabeth McCracken

The first time, where Fox Mulder and Scully met, she stands up for herself. She stands right there and gives it to him and that was extremely attractive. — Gillian Anderson

Carefully, she stands. And she runs her hand across the top of Thomasina's gravestone as she leaves, like how, as girls, they would let go of hands - gradually, moving their fingertips over each other's palms, as gently as raindrops. She has done this for sixty-eight years and there is a dip on the stone from this. She has worn the stone down with her loving goodbyes. — Susan Fletcher

In the Lakota/Sioux tradition, a person who is grieving is considered most wakan, most holy. There's a sense that when someone is struck by the sudden lightning of loss, he or she stands on the threshold of the spirit world. The prayers of those who grieve are considered especially strong, and it is proper to ask them for their help.
You might recall what it's like to be with someone who has grieved deeply. The person has no layer of protection, nothing left to defend. The mystery is looking out through that person's eyes. For the time being, he or she has accepted the reality of loss and has stopped clinging to the past or grasping at the future. In the groundless openness of sorrow, there is a wholeness of presence and a deep natural wisdom. — Tara Brach

There's something straight in the way she stands that says she's seen what the world looks like from the clouds. — Sherri L. Smith

Suddenly he stops. He looks up. For, lo, there she stands. The girl of his dreams. Who she is or whence she came, he knows not, nor does he care for his heart tells him that here, here is the maid predestined to be his bride. — Walt Disney Company

The undulating terrain was cloaked in lush abundance, the vineyards like garlands of deep green and yellow, orchards and farms sprouting here and there, hillocks of dry golden grass crowned by beautiful sun-gilt houses, barns and silos. And overhead was the bluest sky she'd ever seen, as bright and hard polished as marble.
There was something about the landscape that caught at her emotions. It was both lush and intimidating, its beauty so abundant. Far from the bustle of the city, she was a complete stranger here, like Dorothy stepping out of her whirling house into the land of Oz. Farm stands overflowing with local produce marked the long driveways into farms with whimsical names- Almost Paradise, One Bad Apple, Toad Hollow. Boxes and bushels were displayed on long, weathered tables. Between the farms, brushy tangles of berries and towering old oak trees lined the roadway. — Susan Wiggs

In losing a friend, she is reminded of all she has lost and all she stands to lose again. There is nothing to be done to make it any easier. We all grieve alone. — Alice Hoffman

I'll go first. I dare Kope to kiss Anna.
It's like a monk kissing a nun. Brilliant. I lean back and cross my arms, enjoying their shifty-eyed embarrassment. Anna suddenly stands, I'm assuming to get far away from me, but instead she heads straight for me and kicks my chair up. I lose my balance and topple backward like an idiot. But when I look up and see her standing over me with eyes ablaze, I can only grin.
There's my girl. I'm relieved I've made her feel something. — Wendy Higgins

The people who lived in this building had figured out something important about life, and she'd stumbled upon their secret. There were places, she now saw, that contained more happiness than ordinary places did. Unless you knew that such places existed, you might be content to stay where you were. She imagined more places like this, hidden behind walls or stands of trees, places where people kept their secrets to themselves. — Matthew Thomas

cross my mind," Marshall replies with a tone, still cold toward him. Mom tries to salvage the mood. "I think it's wonderful! You make a charming couple. I wish you both the best." My dad gives her a side-glance, which she ignores. Olivia stands there, an angry expression on her usually pretty face. She's glaring at me with such rage and gives Hunt a confused, wounded — Lena Black

In the square below,' said the Happy Prince, 'there stands a little match-girl. She has let her matches fall in the gutter, and they are all spoiled. Her father will beat her if she does not bring home some money, and she is crying. She has no shoes or stockings, and her little head is bare. Pluck out my other eye, and give it to her, and her father will not beat her.'

'I will stay with you one night longer,' said the Swallow, 'but I cannot pluck out your eye. You would be quite blind then.'

'Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow,' said the Prince, 'do as I command you.'

So he plucked out the Prince's other eye, and darted down with it. He swooped past the match-girl, and slipped the jewel into the palm of her hand. 'What a lovely bit of glass,' cried the little girl; and she ran home, laughing.

Then the Swallow came back to the Prince. 'You are blind now,' he said, 'so I will stay with you always. — Oscar Wilde

She walks barefoot into the humid night, moonlight on her freckled shoulders. Near a huge, live oak tree on the edge of her father's cotton fields, Sidda looks up into the sky. In the crook of the crescent moon sits the Holy Lady, with strong muscles and a merciful heart. She kicks her splendid legs like the moon is her swing and the sky, her front porch. She waves down at Sidda like she has just spotted an old buddy.
Sidda stands in the moonlight and lets the Blessed Mother love every hair on her six-year-old head. Tenderness flows down from the moon and up from the earth. For one fleeting, luminous moment, Sidda Walker knows there has never been a time when she has not been loved. — Rebecca Wells

What could be more absurd? Yet it is nature's folly, not ours. When she set about her chief masterpiece, the making of man, she should have thought of one thing only. Instead, turning her head, looking over her shoulder, into each one of us she let creep instincts and desires which are utterly at variance with his main being, so that we are streaked, variegated, all of a mixture; the colours have run. Is the true self this which stands on the pavement in January, or that which bends over the balcony in June? Am I here, or am I there? Or is the true self neither this nor that, neither here nor there, but something so varied and wandering that it is only when we give the rein to its wishes and let it take its way unimpeded that we are indeed ourselves? — Virginia Woolf

This is what making love must be like, she thinks. At twelve years old, she understands little more than that it will begin with loss - the loss of virginity, the loss of innocence - but that at some point there stands to be a gain. — Sheri Holman

By the Hospital Lane goes the 'Faeries Path.' Every evening they travel from the hill to the sea, from the sea to the hill. At the sea end of their path stands a cottage. One night Mrs. Arbunathy, who lived there, left her door open, as she was expecting her son. Her husband was asleep by the fire; a tall man came in and sat beside him. After he had been sitting there for a while, the woman said, 'In the name of God, who are you?' He got up and went out, saying, 'Never leave the door open at this hour, or evil may come to you.' She woke her husband and told him. 'One of the good people has been with us,' said he. ("Village Ghosts") — W.B.Yeats

I'm up for a Shadow hunt." She tries to let us out, but the lock's stuck. "That's weird."
"Is this like an omen?" Daisy asks.
Jazz unzips her boot and takes it off so she can slam it at the lock. "It's not an omen." Slam. "Tonight." Slam. "Is going to be great." Slam. "I've got a feeling." Slam. She puts her book back on and looks at us. "Okay, we'll have to climb out of here."
She stands on the toilet seat and from there to the toilet-roll holder and then heaves herself over the wall.
"Impresive," I say, and then we hear her slam to the ground.
"Less impressive," Daisy says.
"It doesn't mean anything," Jazz calls. "Trust me. I'm a psychic. — Cath Crowley