This Night Quotes & Sayings

Stalin is one of the most extraordinary figures in world history. He began as a small clerk, and he has never stopped being a clerk. Stalin owes nothing to rhetoric. He governs from his office, thanks to a bureaucracy that obeys his every nod and gesture. It's striking that Russian propaganda, in the criticisms it makes of us, always holds itself within certain limits. Stalin, that cunning Caucasian, is apparently quite ready to abandon European Russia, if he thinks that a failure to solve her problems would cause him to lose everything. Let nobody think Stalin might reconquer Europe from the Urals! It is as if I were installed in Slovakia, and could set out from there to reconquer the Reich. This is the catastrophe that will cause the loss of the Soviet Empire. — Adolf Hitler

Everyone carries a room about inside him. This fact can even be proved by means of the sense of hearing. If someone walks fast and one pricks up one's ears and listens, say in the night, when everything round about is quiet, one hears, for instance, the rattling of a mirror not quite firmly fastened to the wall. — Franz Kafka

And the earth itself still turning on its axis and revolving around that sun, the sun revolving around the luminous wheel of this galaxy, the countless unmeasured jewelled wheels of countless unmeasured galaxies, turning, turning, majestically, into infinity, into eternity, through all of which all life ran on - all this, long after she herself was dead, men would still be reading in the night sky, and as the earth turned through those distant seasons, and they watched the constellations still rising, culminating, setting, to rise again - Aries, Taurus, Gemini, the Crab, Leo, Virgo, the Scales and the Scorpion, Capricorn the Sea-goat and Aquarius the Water Bearer, Pisces, and once more, triumphantly, Aries! - would they not, too, still be asking the hopeless eternal question: to what end? What force drives this sublime celestial machinery? — Malcolm Lowry

Damn, is this bitch a crackhead vampire? She stays up all night. In the morning you're looking at her like, did you ever go to sleep? — Sister Souljah

A man of the Night's Watch lives his life for the realm. Not for a king, nor a lord, nor the honor of this house or that house, neither for gold nor glory nor a woman's love, but for the realm, and all the people in it. A man of the Night's Watch takes no wife and fathers no sons. Our wife is duty. Our mistress is honor. And you are the only sons we shall ever know. — George R R Martin

Hence, all you vain delights, As short as are the nights Wherein you spend your folly! There's naught in this life sweet But only melancholy; O sweetest melancholy! — John Fletcher

You told me trees could speak
and the only reason one heard
silence in the forest
was that they had all been born knowing different languages.

That night I went into the forest
to bury dictionaries under roots,
so many books in so many tongues
as to insure speech.

and now this very moment,
the forest seems alive
with whispers and murmurs and rumblings of sound
wind-rushed into my ears.

I do not speak any language
that crosses the silence around me
but how soothing to know
that the yearning and grasping embodied
in trees' convoluted and startling shapes
is finally being fulfilled
in their wind shouts to each other.

Yet we who both speak English
and have since we were born
are moving ever farther apart
even as branch tips touch. — Carol Goodman

He shivered beneath her touch, and his jaw clenched. It pleased her. Her longing rose to the surface, and an unfamiliar emotion overcame her. It swam beneath her skin, lighting little flickers of recognition. It was the same heat - the same feeling - that had made her run the night before. Not this time, though. This time she would own it. Embrace it. Ride it. Enjoy it. — Justine Dell

On this night of the Harvest Moon. They tossed bones into the "Bone Fire" and asked the yellow moon to shine its protection over them. (Today we call it a "Bonfire") — Nancy B. Brewer

The Prophet once said to his Companions, "Do you want to see a man of Paradise?" A man then passed by, and the Prophet said, "That man is of the people of Paradise." One of Companion of the Prophet wanted to find out what it was about this man that earned him such a commendation from the Messenger of God , so he decided to spend some time with this man and observe him closely. He noticed that this man did not perform the night prayer vigil (tahajjud) or do anything extraordinary. He appeared to be an average man of Medina. The Companion finally told the man what the Prophet had said about him and asked if he did anything special. The man replied, "The only thing that I can think of, other than what everybody else does, is that I make sure that I never sleep with any rancor in my heart towards another." That was his secret. — Hamza Yusuf

He thought Mrs. Darling was not sufficiently impressed, and he went on sternly, 'I warn you of this, mother, that unless this tie is round my neck we don't go out to dinner to-night, and if I don't go out to dinner to-night, I never go to the office again, and if I don't go to the office again, you and I starve, and our children will be flung into the streets. — J.M. Barrie

It [money] doesn't have anything have anything to do with the magnificence of a person. It doesn't. What matters is what you make. Whether it's a cake for bingo night or a costume for a saint or a wall of water
whatever you pour into this life is what makes you rich. — Adriana Trigiani

What is this gypsy passion for separation, this
readiness to rush off when we've just met?
My head rests in my hands as I
realize, looking into the night
that no one turning over our letters has
yet understood how completely and
how deeply faithless we are, which is
to say: how true we are to ourselves. — Marina Tsvetaeva

From his soft fur, golden and brown, Goes out so sweet a scent, one night I might have been embalmed in it By giving him one little pet. He is my household's guardian soul; He judges, he presides, inspires All matters in his royal realm; Might he be fairy? or a god? When my eyes, to this cat I love Drawn as by a magnet's force, Turn tamely back upon that appeal, And when I look within myself, I notice with astonishment The fire of his opal eyes, Clear beacons glowing, living jewels, Taking my measure, steadily. — Charles Baudelaire

It was incredible, she told herself, that this ravening monster, dripping blood from claws and teeth, that had arisen roaring in the night, could be the Humanity that had become her God. She had thought revenge and cruelty and slaughter to be the brood of Christian superstition, dead and buried under the new-born angel of light, and now it seemed that the monsters yet stirred and lived. — Robert Hugh Benson

Provide yourself with such work for your hands as can be done, if possible, both during the day and at night, so that you are not a burden to anyone, and indeed can give to others, as St. Paul the Apostle advises (cf. I Thess. 2:9; Eph. 4:28). In this manner you will overcome the demon of listlessness and drive away all the desires suggested by the enemy; for the demon of listlessness takes advantage of idleness. 'Every idle man is full of desires' (Prov. 13:4 LXX). — Evagrius Ponticus

Say, did you read what this writer just dug up in George Washington's diary? I was so ashamed I sat up all night reading it. — Will Rogers

People always want to use this damn place, they need a room to hold this meeting or that, you'd think a library was a big beehive. Myself, I don't see why they can't just check out a couple of books and go home and read. But no, they bunch up and want to cram in here and talk the ears off one another half the night. — Ivan Doig

He'd been prowling this bedchamber every night, driven wild by the knowledge only two oaken doors and some fifty paces of wainscoted corridor lay between him and the woman he'd crossed a continent to hold.

-Luke's thoughts — Tessa Dare

Now the Fates are here on the beach, three shadows blacker than black, walking through the dunes and looking for their own. Just shadows, lamb-white hands beneath black robes spun of tears, glide among the celebrants on this night wherein the spirits of Thebes have found a home, if serendipitously. — Janet Morris

Holl?" Seth turned over. "Where you going?"
"Home. Sorry. Go back to sleep." I pulled on my sweatpants.
"But we have all night." He pushed to his elbows.
"I know. I can't." My voice sounded hoarse, hollow. "I don't feel good. I'm sorry." I lurched for the door. I needed to get out, get away. As far away from here as possible. She was in me, in my blood, invading every cell in my body. She was the one I wanted. She was the one I saw, felt, desired. This was wrong. He was wrong. It was all so wrong. (Chapter. 12) — Julie Anne Peters

I have this idyllic love life, but my mind just won't accept that. I would like to bring a new guy home every night. I try to make humor out of that situation. — Jen Kirkman

...spiritual dryness is not a problem. It only seems a problem because it's such a contrast with the good feelings of the honeymoon stage. ...this night will continue to go on, often getting worse, throughout our life. But if we persevere in our spiritual journey, we will be able to perceive in it positive meaning and learn to understand it. Then we can move beyond it to the freedom that places our feelings in proper perspective. — Monks Of New Skete

To him now, life seemed a shadow, day a white shadow; night, and death, and stillness, and inaction, this seemed like BEING. To be alive, to be urgent and insistent
that was NOT-TO-BE. The highest of all was to melt out into the darkness and sway there, identified with the great Being. — D.H. Lawrence

Hopeless of the future, I wished but this- that my Maker had that night thought good to require my soul of me while I slept; and that this weary frame, absolved by death from further conflict with fate, had now but to decay quietly, and mingle in peace with the soil of this wilderness. — Charlotte Bronte

I mean, I guess I realized subconsciously that this is what I should be doing before I realized it, consciously. Verbally, I don't think I had committed to it, even though I was driving everywhere, every night, just trying to get on stage. — Todd Barry

I had always liked darkness. When I was small I was afraid of it if I was alone, but when I was with other I loved it and the change to the world it brought. Running around in the forest or between houses was different in the darkness, the world was enchanted, and we, we were breathless adventurers with blinking eyes and pounding hearts.
When I was older there was little I liked better than to stay up at night, the silence and the darkness had an allure, they carreid the promise of something immense. And autumn was my favorite season, wandering along the road by the river in the dark and the rain, not much could beat that.
But this darkness was different. This darkness rendered everything lifeless. It was static, it was the same whether you were awake or asleep, and it became harder and harder to motivate yourself to get up in the morning. — Karl Ove Knausgard

This, of course, has no chance of passing. But then Tuesday night'€s State of the Union address could be the first one in history deliberately designed solely to generate a Pavlovian rage response in members of the opposing party. — John Podhoretz

We give you this story. It is for the audience to be moved and gut wrenched, not us. It isn't as if we don't go through those real feeling and it isn't as if I don't cry three or four times a night. I usually do. — Linda Lavin

I suddenly see the world
as no longer viable:
you are out there burning the crops
with some new sublimate
This morning you left the bed
we still share
and went out to spread impotence
upon the world

I hate you.
I hate the mask you wear, your eyes
assuming a depth
they do not possess, drawing me
into the grotto of your skull
the landscape of bone
I hate your words
they make you think of fake
revolutionary bills
crisp imitation parchment
they sell at battlefields.

Last night, in this room, weeping
I asked you: what are you feeling?
do you feel anything?
Now in the torsion of your body
as you defoliate the fields we lived from
I have your answer. — Adrienne Rich

The terrible thing is that the crowd that fills the street believes that the world will always be the same and that it is their duty to keep that huge machine running, day and night, forever. This is what comes of a Protestant morality, that I, as a (thank God) typical Spaniard, found unnerving. — Federico Garcia Lorca

The competitiveness, playing in front of 18-19,000 people every single night, people asking for my autograph, getting recognized, being able to do something like this with Sega and being on the front of a box, and being involved in video games, and listening to movies where they reference my name like in Swingers. All these things they make life so exciting, you don't know what to expect next. — Jeremy Roenick

Came Honker's trip to Slice City along about then: our sax-man got a neck all full of the sharpest kind of steel. So we were out one horn. And you could tell: we played a little bit too rough, and the head-arrangements Collins and His Crew grew up to, they needed Honker's grease in the worst way. But we'd been together for five years or more, and a new man just didn't play somehow. We were this one solid thing, like a unit, and somebody had cut off a piece of us and we couldn't grow the piece back so we just tried to get along anyway, bleeding every night, bleeding from that wound. ("Black Country") — Charles Beaumont

Long before they had ever met, I think this destiny awaited them. They were not like ships passing in the night. It wasn't like they didn't understand each other. They understood each other better than anyone else, and each was focused solely on the other. — Gen Urobuchi

I didn't feel old enough to be anyone's wife, or that I knew enough or had lived enough, or understood the essential things. I didn't know how to say any of this to Jock, either. That I was afraid of the promises we'd made. That late at night as I lay beside him in bed I felt lonely and numb, as if some part of me had died. — Paula McLain

If she could make this journey three times a week while seven-year-old Sierra was at school---then she could get through another long, dark night. She could face the empty place in the bed beside her, face the longing — Karen Kingsbury

This is isn't going to become one of those creepy situations where you show up at all hours of the night to watch me sleep, is it? he asks playfully. — Cynthia Hand

This is a day when all Americans from every walk of life unite in our resolve for justice and peace. America has stood down enemies before, and we will do so this time. None of us will ever forget this day. Yet, we go forward to defend freedom and all that is good and just in our world. Thank you. Good night, and God bless America. — George W. Bush

You can pretend none of this ever happened when you leave, or pretend you had no choice. I don't give a fuck what you have to tell yourself to sleep at night. For the next two weeks you belong to me. — Teresa Mummert

And wasn't it this bright boy you selected for beating and tortures after hours? Of course it was. We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for their are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man's mind. Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man? Me? I won't stomach them for a minute. And so when houses were finally fireproofed completely, all over the world (you were correct in your assumption the other night) there was no longer need of firemen for the old purposes. They were given the new job, as custodians of our peace of mind, the focus of our understandable and rightful dread of being inferior: official censors, judges and executors. That's you, Montag, and that's me. — Ray Bradbury

Our destiny is aligned with our heart's innermost longing, a longing embedded within our soul before birth. This longing is a unique pattern or configuration reminiscent of the constellations in the night sky. When we express (press out) our unique configuration, it shines through us with an otherworldly luminosity, manifesting abundance in our lives and the lives of others. Our sole task is to yoke our inner destiny, thread it through our lives and weave it into the world. All else is just shadows and dust. — Thea Euryphaessa

I would save studying for a test until the night before the test because I didn't know if I was even going to be alive to take it anyway, so why bother? This was the attitude of all my friends. — Brigitte Gabriel

The students we saw were all bright, attractive, and polite, and the teachers all seemed to be smart and dedicated, and I began to appreciate the benefits of a private school education. If only I'd had the opportunity to attend a place like this, who knows what I might have become? Perhaps instead of a mere blood-spatter analyst who slunk away at night to kill without conscience, I could have become a doctor, or a physicist, or even a senator who slunk away at night to kill without conscience. It was terribly sad to think of all my wasted potential. — Jeff Lindsay

You told me I was making you crazy last night," he reminds me, drawing me out of my thoughts, back to a present I'm uncertain of.
"You are, Chris."
"Well, you are making me crazy, too."
"Is this supposed to be making me feel better? — Lisa Renee Jones

Sometimes I feel like there's a hole inside of me, an emptiness that at times seems to burn. I think if you lifted my heart to your ear, you could probably hear the ocean. The moon tonight, there's a circle around it. Sign of trouble not far behind. I have this dream of being whole. Of not going to sleep each night, wanting. But still sometimes, when the wind is warm or the crickets sing... I dream of a love that even time will lie down and be still for. I just want someone to love me. I want to be seen. I don't know. Maybe I had my happiness. I don't want to believe it but, there is no man, Gilly. Only that moon. — Alice Hoffman

Her fingers travel back to the cathedral spire. South to the Gate of Dinan. All evening she has been marching her fingers around the model, waiting for her great-uncle Etienne, who owns this house, who went out the previous night while she slept, and who has not returned. And now it is night again, another revolution of the clock, and the whole block is quiet, and she cannot sleep. — Anthony Doerr

If you look at satellite photographs of the Far East by night, you'll see a large splotch curiously lacking in light. This area of darkness is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. — Barbara Demick

They'd never get here in time. It's easy. A lobotomized monkey could do it." "And where are we going to find a lobotomized monkey at this time of night? — Jasper Fforde

When I went to the Oscars - the only time I've ever been to the Oscars - a few years ago, I wore this Prada dress covered in cooking utensils. I got drunk at the end of the night and started ripping them off and giving them as presents to people, so that was fun. I'm pretty sure that was the point of it, that's how Miuccia meant for it to go I'm sure. — Carey Mulligan

You must not die. You must not die by any hand, but least of all your own. Until the other, who has fouled your sweet life, is true dead you must not die. For if he is still with the quick Undead, your death would make you even as he is. No, you must live! You must struggle and strive to live, though death would seem a boon unspeakable. You must fight Death himself, though he come to you in pain or in joy. By the day, or the night, in safety or in peril! On your living soul I charge you that you do not die. Nay, nor think of death, till this great evil be past. — Bram Stoker

The real gift is time. Now. Each other, this night, and the wide, wide moon-silvered sea. — Amy McNamara

Be strong and of good courage; for you shall cause this people to inherit the land which I swore to their fathers to give them. 7 Only be strong and very courageous, to observe to do according to all the law, which Moses my servant commanded you: turn not from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may have good success wherever you go. 8 This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it: for then you shall make your way prosperous, and then you shall have good success. 9 Have not I commanded you? Be strong and of good courage; Do not be terrified, neither be dismayed: for Yahweh your Elohim is with you wherever you go. — Elder Jacob O Meyer

For this is what we do. Put one foot forward and then the other. Lift our eyes to the snarl and smile of the world once more. Think. Act. feel. Add our little consequence to the tides of good and evil that flood and drain the world. Drag our shadowed crosses into the hope of another night. Push our brave hearts into the promise of a new day. With love; the passionate search for truth other than our own. With longing; the pure, ineffable yearning to be saved. For so long as fate keeps waiting, we live on. — Gregory David Roberts

Tobias wasn't entirely sure what happened next. All of a sudden everyone was in motion, and Tobias hit the carpet behind the couch face down with one arm wrenched behind his back. "Get the light, Phan! Light!" Noah barked, planting a knee in Tobias' back to keep him down. Tobias sighed, fighting the instinct to move; Noah would break his arm. "This really isn't my night," he said. ~ after Tobias sneaks up on Noah & Phan in the dark while they're watching a horror flick — Chris Owen

To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;
To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates
From it's own wreck the thing it contemplates;
Neither to change, not falter, nor repent;
This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be
Good, great and joyous,beautiful and free;
This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory — Percy Bysshe Shelley

I work sometimes from outlines, which are immediately abandoned. Sometimes, when I'm trying to find the characters, I'll sketch things out a bit. Sometimes, outlines help me aim a little bit, but I tend to find it's usually much more interesting, especially with the first draft, to spew it onto the page. I used to get very nervous that, if I write this first rough draft and I die that night, whoever finds it might think that I thought it was good. For me, it's much more important to get some general shape onto the page and later take all the time I need to refine it, fix it, and rewrite it. — Paul Rudnick

It happened again this afternoon. Just the way it did that other night. We were talking
talking about how to protect her, actually
and then, suddenly, I looked at her and it was as if I'd found an entire universe in her eyes. — Cate Tiernan

Last night. I couldn't put that book down. I was awake till four this morning finishing it. I didn't know reading could be like that, I had no idea. — Jill Mansell

The forty days of the soul begin on the morning after death. That first night, before its forty days begin, the soul lies still against sweated-on pillows and watches the living fold the hands and close the eyes, choke the room with smoke and silence to keep the new soul from the doors and the windows and the cracks in the floor so that it does not run out of the house like a river. The living know that, at daybreak, the soul will leave them and make its way to the places of its past ... and sometimes this journey will carry it so far for so long that it will forget to come back. — Tea Obreht

Well, Nero," Genghis said, "I just wanted to give you this rose-a small gift of congratulations for the wonderful concert you gave us last night!"
"Oh, thank you," Nero said, taking the rose out of Genghis's hand and giving it a good smell. "I was wonderful, wasn't I?"
"You were perfection!" Genghis said. "The first time you played your sonata, I was deeply moved. The second time, I had tears in my eyes. The third time, I was sobbing. The fourth time, I had an uncontrollable emotional attack. The fifth time-" The Baudelaires did not hear about the fifth time because Nero's door swung shut behind them. — Lemony Snicket

I didn't want to be here.
Seriously.
I mean, if I made it through the night without catching an STD from standing in this godforsaken shithole, it would be a miracle. — Lee Piper

I took in the thick night air, the sweet smell of honeysuckle, the chirping of frogs, to impress the moment in the folds of my memory, preserve it like a flower between pages of a book. To remember: This is how it feels to be happy. — Laura McHugh

The house seemed so different at night. Everything was in its correct place, of course, but somehow the furniture seemed more angular and the pictures on the wall more one-dimensional. She remembered somebody saying that at night we are all strangers, even to ourselves, and this struck her as being true. — Alexander McCall Smith

He said he loved me," she whispered.
Daniel swallowed, and he had the strangest sensation, almost a premonition of what it must like to be a parent.
Someday, God willing, he'd have a daughter, and that daughter would look like the woman standing in front of him, and if ever she looked at him with that bewildered expression, whispering, "He said he loved me ... "
Nothing short of murder would be an acceptable response. — Julia Quinn

As for their houses, it is no use looking for them, because they are the exact opposite of our houses. You can see our houses by day but you can't see them by dark. Well, you can see their houses by dark, but you can't see them by day, for they are the colour of night, and I never heard of anyone yet who could see night in the daytime. This does not mean that they are black, for night has its colours just as day has, but ever so much brighter. Their blues and reds and greens are like ours with a light behind them. The palace is entirely built of many-coloured glasses, and is quite the loveliest of all royal residences, — J.M. Barrie

On a freezing night like this, someone, please warm him up for me- Nana — Ai Yazawa

At certain epochs, man has felt conscious of something about himself - body and spirit - which was outside the day-to-day struggle for existence and the night-to-night struggle with fear; and he has felt the need to develop these qualities of thought and feeling so that they might approach as nearly as possible to an ideal of perfection - reason, justice, physical beauty, all of them in equilibrium. He has managed to satisfy this need in various ways - through myths, through dance and song, through systems of philosophy and through the order that he has imposed upon the visible world. — Kenneth Clark

In this night too, in this night of his mortal eyes into which he was now descending, love and danger were again waiting ...
a murmur of glory and hexameters, of men defending a temple the gods will not save, and of black vessels searching the sea for a beloved isle;
the murmor of the Odysseys and Iliads it was his destiny to sing and leave echoing concavely in the memory of man.
These things we know, but not those he felt descending into the last shade of all. — Jorge Luis Borges

I'm going to have a nice little nap in this sun. Don't think to wander off-I'll know if you move. A very light sleeper, I am.
Heather stared, speechless, at the woman who slept so soundly every night that she'd never heard Heather slip out of their room, or back in. Heather managed not to shake her head in disbelief, just in case Martha was watching through her lashes. — Stephanie Laurens

Junction nineteen! Una, she came off at Junction nineteen! You've added an hour to your journey before you even started. Come on, let's get you a drink. How's your love life, anyway?"
Oh GOD. Why can't married people understand that this is no longer a polite question to ask? We wouldn't rush up to THEM and roar, "How's your marriage going? Still having sex?" Everyone knows that dating in your thirties is not the happy-go-lucky free-for-it-all it was when you were twenty-two and that the honest answer is more likely to be, "Actually, last night my married lover appeared wearing suspenders and a darling little Angora crop-top, told me he was gay/a sex addict/a narcotic addict/a commitment phobic and beat me up with a dildo," than, "Super, thanks. — Helen Fielding

When I write this in bed, I can almost hear the echo of the wind over the sand, or the groans of wooden panels around me. I can almost smell the dustiness of the camel, taste the bitterness of saltbush. And when I dream, your warm hands cover my shoulders. Your whispers carry stories and sound like the rustle of spinifex. I still wear that ring, you know ... at night, when no one is watching. — Lucy Christopher

That night I slept badly, thrashing about in my bed, not quite asleep and not quite awake. At times I had the feeling there was someone else in my bedroom who was talking to me, but of course I could not deal with this perception in any realistic way, since I was half-asleep and half-awake, and thus, for all practical purposes, I was out of my mind. — Thomas Ligotti

It's this time of year when Kit mist rise in the dark, as if we're a farmer or a fisherman, someone whose livelihood depends on beating the dawn, convincing himself that what looks like night is actually morning. — Julia Glass

I was never young. This idea of fun: cars, girls, saturday night, bottle of wine ... to me, these things are morbid. I was always attracted to people with the same problems as me. It doesn't help when most of them are dead. — Morrissey

And we had met at last in this same cave of greenery, while the summer night hung round us heavy with love, and the odours that crept through the silence from the sleeping woods were the only signs of an outer world that invaded our solitude. — George MacDonald

Last night I dreamed about her," he said. "She had this shawl wrapped around her shoulders with tassels hanging off it, and her hair was long like old times. She said, 'Red, I want to learn every step of you, and dance till the end of the night.' " He stopped speaking. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose. Denny and Stem stood with a screen balanced between them and looked at each other helplessly.

"Then I woke up," Red said after a minute. He stuffed the handkerchief back in his pocket. "I thought, 'This must mean I miss having her close attention, the way I've always been used to.' Then I woke up again, for real. Have either of you ever done that? Dreamed that you woke up, and then found you'd still been asleep? I woke up for real and I thought, 'Oh, boy. I see I've still got a long way to go with this.' Seems I haven't quite gotten over it, you know? — Anne Tyler

I don't know if I've come of age, but I'm certainly older now. I feel shrunken, as if there's a tiny ancient Oliver Tate inside me operating the levers of a life-size Oliver-shaped shell. A shell on which a decrepit picture show replays the same handful of images. Every night I come to the same place and wait till the sky catches up with my mood. The pattern is set. This is, no doubt, the end. — Joe Dunthorne

I like your ... outfit." His eyes took in the naked flesh that was visible below the edge of the shirttail.
"I like your outfit too. You're looking awfully casual this morning, Professor."
He leaned forward and gave her a heated look. "Miss Mitchell, you're lucky I decided to put on any clothes at all." He chuckled at her fierce blush and disappeared into the kitchen.
Oh, gods of all virgins who are planning to have sex with their sex-god (no blasphemy intended) boyfriends, please don't let me spontaneously combust when he finally takes me to bed. I really need a Gabriel-induced orgasm, especially after last night. Please. Please. Pretty please ... — Sylvain Reynard

Though woman needs the protection of one man against his whole sex, in pioneer life, in threading her way through a lonely forest, on the highway, or in the streets of the metropolis on a dark night, she sometimes needs, too, the protection of all men against this one. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Why are you all buttoned up like that?" Cameron ran his gaze down the blackberry-shaped buttons of her bodice.[ ... ] "You were happy to bare all last night," Cameron said. He let his mallet handler hover an inch from her chest. "Your bodice was down here."
Ainsley cleared her throat. "Low neckline for evening, high for morning."[ ... ]
"This doesn't suit you," Cameron said.
"I can't help the fashion, Lord Cameron."
Cameron poked the top button with his gloved finder. "Undo this."
Ainsley jumped. "What?"
"Unbutton your damned frock."
She nearly choked. "Why?"
"Because I want you to." Cameron's smile spread across his face, slow and sinful, and his voice went low. Dangerous. "Tell me, Mrs. Douglas. How many buttons will you undo for me? — Jennifer Ashley

No matter what night preceded it, she had never known a morning when she did not feel the rise of a quiet excitement that became a tightening energy in her body and a hunger for action in her mind - because this was the beginning of day and it was a day of her life. — Ayn Rand

Now, I came to everyone else's rescue. Screw the knights in shining armor. This beauty of the night came to your rescue with pointed fangs and skintight leather then, as a thank-you, sucked your blood in payment. — Eve Langlais

sweetness on the tongue and a promise of scent on the night air. It was sensual in the best meaning of that word, saturating every sense at once, so that the flesh was known, finally, as a thing of such goodness that man blessed his Creator from morning to night for having made him. Here in this medieval town where once an extraordinary little fellow had burst forth with songs to God, as a passionate lover speaks to his bride, here the restoration of man to his own true home was no longer the dream of saints. It was the wedding feast. It was a word made flesh. — Michael D. O'Brien

When, on a moonlit night, you see a wide village street with its peasant houses, haystacks, sleeping willows, tranquility enters the soul; in this calm, wrapped in the shade of night, free from struggle, anxiety and passion, everything is gentle, wistful, beautiful, and it seems that the stars are watching over it tenderly and with love, and that this is taking place somewhere unearthly, and that all is well. — Anton Chekhov

Is there some meaning to this life?
What purpose lies behind the strife?
Whence do we come, where are we bound?
These cold questions echo and resound
through each day, each lonely night.
We long to find the splendid light
that will cast a revelatory beam
upon the meaning of the human dream.
Courage, love, friendship,
compassion, and empathy
lift us above the simple beasts
and define humanity. — Dean Koontz

When your soul is pricked by compunction and gradually changed, it becomes a fountain flowing with rivers of tears and compunction. If any one of you ever happens to communicate with tears, whether you weep before the Liturgy or in the course of the Divine Liturgy, or at the very time that you receive the Divine Gifts, and does not desire to do this for the rest of his days and nights, it will avail him nothing to have wept merely once. It is not this alone that at once purifies us and makes us worthy; it is daily compunction that does not cease until death. — Symeon The New Theologian

Whales, for example, also navigate with sound, but they're now beginning to be beached because the ocean is getting too noisy. Weird things like that. I mean this is very real. Like, if you look at the satellites in the sky at night you know it's an eerie sense of we're ... — DJ Spooky

This, This is what I wanted that night. I couldn't contain myself and I had to taste you, but tonight is the night I really have you. You're mine, Emma. You always have been. — Tijan

The only reason someone would be calling this early the morning after the Grammys is to tell me I did something wrong."

The phone goes silent.

"Well, I'm going to have to disagree with that," I tell him. "In my estimation, you definitely did everything right last night. — Katie Delahanty

Christmas Eve Saint Francis and Saint Benedight Blesse this house from wicked wight; From the night-mare and the goblin, That is hight good fellow Robin: Keep it from all evil spirits, Fairies, weezels, rats, and ferrets: From curfew time To the next prime. — Thomas Cartwright

The memory of an absent being kindles in the darkness of the heart; the more it has disappeared, the more it beams; the gloomy and despairing soul sees this light on its horizon; the star of the inner night. — Victor Hugo

Three days a week she helped at the Manor Nursing Home, where people proved their keenness by reciting received analyses of current events. All the Manor residents watched television day and night, informed to the eyeballs like everyone else and rushed for time, toward what end no one asked. Their cupidity and self-love were no worse than anyone else's, but their many experiences' having taught them so little irked Lou. One hated tourists, another southerners; another despised immigrants. Even dying, they still held themselves in highest regard. Lou would have to watch herself. For this way of thinking began to look like human nature
as if each person of two or three billion would spend his last vital drop to sustain his self-importance. — Annie Dillard

Why did you do this?" He was shaking. "Just tell me why."
I tried to muster up some of the righteous indignation that I'd felt on Friday night as I said, "You knocked over my gravestone!" But even to my ears the words sounded tinny and pathetic.
Dan's face was pale. "It was just a gravestone, Chelsea. And it was a mistake. I told you that already, and I meant it. I've never lied to you. My God, can't you tell the difference between a gravestone and a person you love? Can't you tel which one matters?"
But if I had to point to the real problem in my life, it's that I've never known the difference between a gravestone and a person I love. I have never known which is which until it's too late.
"All's fair in love and war," I reminded him, aiming for Tawny's tone. But my voice came out sounding just like me.
"Oh, yeah? And which is this?" he asked. "Love or war? — Leila Sales

I find it very difficult to do anything on my own now because people recognize me. This has never happened to me before because I haven't really done television before. But I suppose if you're in people's rooms all the time, I don't know - I was thinking the other night with people like DiCaprio and, you know, those big stars and Cate Blanchett, and you just think how did they exist? It's so difficult. And I think now it's very intrusive because of these cellphones, you know, with cameras. — Maggie Smith

They hadn't expected to find quite such a large gathering, however, and Anthony couldn't resist remarking, "My, my, how, what would draw so many children to this room in the middle of the night, I wonder? Jack and Judy aren't hiding behind you, are they? D'you get the feeling these younguns think it's Christmas already, James?"
James had already deduced what was causing so many red faces, and said, "Good God,take a gander at that, Tony. Even the Yank is blushing, damn me if he ain't."
Warren sighed and glanced down at his wife. "You see what your silliness has caused, love? Those two will never let me live this down."
"Course we will," Anthony replied with a wicked grin. "In ten or twenty years perhaps. — Johanna Lindsey

I had grown up in a house with a fence around it, and in this fence was a white smooth wooden gate, two holes bored round and low together so the dog could see through. One night, the moon high, late for me home from the school dance, I remember that I stopped, hand on the gate, and spoke so quietly to myself and to the woman that I would love that not even the dog could have heard.
I don't know where you are, but you're living right now, somewhere on this earth. And one day you and I are going to touch this gate where I'm touching it now. Your hand will touch this very wood, here! Then we'll walk through and we'll be full of a future and of a past and we'll be to each other like no one else has ever been. We can't meet now, I don't know why. But some day our questions will be answers and we'll be caught in something so bright ... and every step I take is one step closer on a bridge we must cross to meet. — Richard Bach

Annabhau Sathe's Akalechi Gosht (The Dimwit's Tale) performed in front of the temple. This had also been banned. We did not know when the police would arrive and arrest the performers. This satire was like no other we had seen; it had no kings and queens. It spoke of the exploitation we saw around us, offering an aesthetic analysis of our situation. It played all night and we learned some new songs. 'Daulatichya raja, utoon Sarjya, haak de shejaaryaala re, shivari chalaa' ('Oh kings of wealth, Sarjya, wake up, listen to what your neighbours say, let's go back to the fields') and 'Aamhi dhartichya lekra bhaagyavaan' ('We are the fortunate sons of the earth'). — Daya Pawar

The NFL draft is going to be this Thursday. That's a huge night for college players. That's the night they start being paid over the table. — Jay Leno

He rose, placed another small log on the fire, sat back down in his armchair, and opened his book.
"What are you reading?" Reggie asked.
"On a wild night like this? Agatha Christie, of course. I still feel compelled to see if Hercule Poirot's 'little gray cells' will do their job one more time. It seems to often inspire my own brain, however inferior it might be to the diminutive Belgian's. — David Baldacci

Once, after a long night of sex and alcohol consecutively and concurrently, he told me somewhat drunkenly that he measured my rages by how long he perceived it would be between the time he made me angry and the time I would sleep with him again; this had made me so furious with him that I'd managed to withhold sex for nearly a full ten minutes.
(Tristan in White Lines) — Shukyou