Went Down Like Quotes & Sayings

I remember I grew up in Pasadena in a very, kind of, homogeneous, kind of, suburban existence and then I went to college at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. And there were all these, kind of, hipster New York kids who were so-called 'cultured' and had so much, you know, like knew all the references and, like, already had their look down. — Mike White

I'd always assumed Beth and I would be friends forever. But then in middle of the eighth grade, the Goldbergs went through the World's Nastiest Divorce.
Beth went a little nuts.
I don't blame her. When her dad got involved with this twenty-one year old dental hygienist, Beth got involved with the junk food aisle at the grocery store. She carried processed snack cakes the way toddlers carry teddy bears. She gained, like, twenty pounds, but I didn't think it was a big deal. I figured she'd get back to her usual weight once the shock wore off.
Unfortunately, I wasn't the only person who noticed.
May 14 was 'Fun and Fit Day at Surry Middle School, so the gym was full of booths set up by local health clubs and doctors and dentists and sports leagues, all trying to entice us to not end up as couch potatoes. That part was fine. What wasn't fine was when the whole school sat down to watch the eighth-grade cheerleaders' program on physical fitness. — Katie Alender

Oh, it was a disaster, .. It went down like a lead balloon. I don't know why. I had thought the women in the audience deserved a little bit of something else after watching all those beautiful women. But I think they were shocked. Although the guys did dance nicely. — Barbara Lee

Environment affects me a great deal. A lot of the songs were written after the sun went down. And I like storms, I like to stay up during a storm. I get very meditative sometimes, and this one phrase was going through my head: 'Work while the day lasts, because the night of death cometh when no man can work.' I don't recall where I heard it. I like preaching, I hear a lot of preaching, and I probably just heard it somewhere. Maybe it's in Psalms, it beats me. But it wouldn't let me go. I was, like, what does that phrase mean? But it was at the forefront of my mind, for a long period of time... — Bob Dylan

We didn't push it down people's throats ... One turned into three in a short period of time. I built the first one and ... one day someone walked in and said "You know, I really like the design on this. Who built that?" I said "I did." He goes "Well, would you be interested in building me one?" I went "Yeah, I'll do that." — Drew Waters

Surprisingly I've never really stolen anything. One time when I was really young, I was walking down the street, found a GI Joe in the mud, and took it home and I was like, "I got a GI Joe!" And then my great grandmother was like, "You stole that." I said, "What are you talking about?" and she said, "That's not yours." I'm like, "But I found it!" She's like, "But it's not yours, and therefore you stole it." So I just went and put it right back in the mud where I found it. — Baron Vaughn

There was more than one way to think about Mike Burry's purchase of a billion dollars in credit default swaps. The first was as a simple, even innocent, insurance contract. Burry made his semiannual premium payments and, in return, received protection against the default of a billion dollars' worth of bonds. He'd either be paid zero, if the triple-B-rated bonds he'd insured proved good, or a billion dollars, if those triple-B-rated bonds went bad. But of course Mike Burry didn't own any triple-B-rated subprime mortgage bonds, or anything like them. He had no property to "insure" it was as if he had bought fire insurance on some slum with a history of burning down. To him, as to Steve Eisman, a credit default swap wasn't insurance at all but an outright speculative bet against the market - and this was the second way to think about it. — Michael Lewis

When I finally calmed down, I handed her the Ewok. "Can you go back and give it to him" I said. "Oh, honey," she answered. "That's so sweet of you. But Isabel can clean the Lego set. It'll be good as new for Auggie, don't worry." "No, for the other kid," I answered. She looked at me a second, like she didn't know what to say. "Via said he doesn't speak any English," I sai. "It must be really scary for him, being in the hospital." She nodded slowly. "Yeah," she whispered. "It must be." She closed her eyes and hugged me again. And then she took me over to the security desk, where I waited until she went back up the elevator and, after about five minutes, came back down again. "Did he like it?" I asked. "Honeyboy," she said softly, brushing the hair out of my eyes. "You made his day. — R.J. Palacio

Thomas didn't have to think. He reached out and took the cup, poured the liquid in his mouth, swallowed all of it at once. It burned like fire, searing his throat and chest as it went down; he broke into a lurching, wracking cough. — James Dashner

He was sick of the noise and sight of so many people and determined to go quietly away, but it so happened that just at that moment the crowds about the door were particularly impenetrable; he was caught up in the current of people and carried away to quite another part of the room. Round and round he went like a dry leaf caught up in a drain; in one of these turns around the room he discovered a quiet corner near a window. A tall screen of carved ebony inlaid with mother-of-pearl half-hid - ah! what bliss was this! - a bookcase. Mr Norrell slipped behind the screen, took down John Npier's A Plaine Discouverie of the Whole Revelation of St John and began to read. — Susanna Clarke

Hell, they'd say in the country club locker room, you know how Milt's getting his. Everybody knew, bearing testimony to the fact that suburban vice, like a peeling nose, is almost impossible to conceal. It went all over town, this talk, like a swarm of bees, settling down lazily on polite afternoon sun porches to rise once more and settle down again with a busy murmur among cautious ladylike foursomes on the golf course, buzzing pleasurably there amid ladylike whacks of the golf ball and cautious pullings-down of panties which bound too tightly. Everybody knew about their affair and everybody talked about it, and because of some haunting inborn squeamishness it would not have relieved Loftis to know that nobody particularly cared. — William Styron

Paterson was not a member of the club. [..] When Paterson wanted to swim he took a towel and swam in the river naked and his Burmese boy stood on the bank with his bath-robe and waited to rub him down. 'I like to swim in water, not people,' was a remark of Paterson's that for a long time went round the club. — H.E. Bates

Without a conscious thought to do so, he went down on his knees in front of her, grasping both her hands. If she wouldn't look up at him, she could
look down at him. Her tiny, surprised intake of breath caught in the air between them. He lifted her knuckles to his lips, aching so hard to touch
some part of her. Being away from you has been ... hell. I could wax poetic and tell you it's been like being torn away from my own soul, or missing a
shard of my heart, but in the end it's been absolute torment. I'm missing all those things if I'm not with you. — Cherrie Lynn

All four gospel writers were no doubt enthusiastic members of their local churches. They went there every Sunday; sometimes they preached themselves; sometimes they listened to the sermon and nodded when the tradition was repeated accurately. And eventually they were prevailed on to write down their own or their sources' recollections of the facts that had generated the tradition. This is why it is silly for X to say: "Mark wasn't written until the 50s at the earliest. That's a good twenty years after Jesus died. Mark couldn't be expected to remember things clearly after all that time." Mark didn't hibernate between the death of Jesus and the time he wrote his gospel, then take out his pen, scratch his head, and say: "It was a long time ago, and I'm trying to remember this for the first time, but so far as I remember it went something like this."31 — Charles Foster

Suddenly energized, she jumped to her feet and bounced up and down on the couch. Clean clothes went flying off the pile. Maybe she should feel bad because she'd just seen what a huge flaw she'd uncovered in herself. But she didn't.

She felt free and alive. Up to now, she hadn't really been living. Not fully and completely. That had to change. Immediately.

"What are you doing? I'm hearing weird sounds."

"I'm pulling a Tom Cruise. And I;m also waving a bra around. HUnter, this is amazing? YOu've changed everything. We should have talked like this long ago."

"You're freaking me out, sis. Do I need to call someone? — Jennifer Bernard

He's not my lover," Isolfr said.
She raised an eyebrow, a long feathery, shaggy sweep. "You're his beloved. Both of them. I saw enough on the war-trail to know." Then she laughed, and took her hand off his and pushed his chest like a wolf-cub nudging playfully. "We don't get to pick who loves us, you know. And better to get him to write the song than be remembered forever as 'fair Isolfr, the cold.'"
He scrubbed a hand across his face, roughness of beard and scars and the smooth skin of the unmarked cheek. "Is that really what they call me?"
She smiled. "You frighten them, Viradechtisbrother. You went down under the mountain and came out again, twice, and the alfar call you friend. They'll have you among the heroes before you know it. And you can seem quite untouchable - 'ice-eyes, and ice-heart, and ice-hard, his will.'"
"Othinn help me. It is a song already. — Sarah Monette

Yeah,bumpers are for preschoolers or two teenagers who couldn't stop throwing gutter balls if their lives depended on it.Which, fortunately, they don't.Because we'd be screwed."
I grabbed my glittery hot pink ball (which I was seriously considering buying) and imitated the perfect form a Mohawked guy next to us was using. Instead of shooting straight down the lane and knocking over all the pins, my ball inexplicably went flying backward toward Lend.
"Okay,now we're getting dangerous." Lend brought my ball back and, wrapping himself around me,we threw it together. After pinballing off the bumpers on both sides,it knocked down a whole three pins.
I jumped up and down, screaming. "That's like, practically a strike,right?"
"Good enough for me! — Kiersten White

Eve started in on his jeans, obviously knowing he was commando as usual by grasping his penis and pulling it free without hesitation.
She went down on him hard. It was like she was punishing her mouth for wanting him as much as she did. Driving the car while Eve expertly handled his stick made him feel so powerful, he wanted to head butt the windshield. — Debra Anastasia

How was the light today?"
"Big. Hot. Yellow-white. The sky's blue was like a drumbeat. I watched the black tree shadows revolve. When the sun went down it was like someone's hand was pulling it, very gently. It was soft-edged and orange. The land went purple, then dark blue and grey, then black. Then you opened your eyes. — Glen Duncan

The first glance at the pillow showed me a repulsive sentinel perched upon each end of it
cockroaches as large as peach leaves
fellows with long, quivering antennae and fiery, malignant eyes. They were grating their teeth like tobacco worms, and appeared to be dissatisfied about something. I had often heard that these reptiles were in the habit of eating off sleeping sailors' toe nails down to the quick, and I would not get in the bunk any more. I lay down on the floor. But a rat came and bothered me, and shortly afterward a procession of cockroaches arrived and camped in my hair. In a few moments the rooster was crowing with uncommon spirit and a party of fleas were throwing double somersaults about my person in the wildest disorder, and taking a bite every time they stuck. I was beginning to feel really annoyed. I got up and put my clothes on and went on deck.
The above is not overdrawn; it is a truthful sketch of inter-island schooner life. — Mark Twain

Will turned away, wordless. There was no use to argue. The wind was moving. It cut right through him. He went to the tree, a vaulting grey-green sentinel, and began to climb. Soon his hands were sticky with sap, and he was lost among the needles. Fear filled his gut like a meal he could not digest. He whispered a prayer to the nameless gods of the wood, and slipped his dirk free of its sheath. He put it between his teeth to keep both hands free for climbing. The taste of cold iron in his mouth gave him comfort. Down — George R R Martin

Michaels went upstairs to start cooking while Judge walked and catered to his dog. It felt oddly domestic. He smiled without even realizing it. Maybe he did like the idea of settling down, just had to have the right guy put those thoughts there. Judge chewed on his cane. — A.E. Via

My eyes were covered and closed: eddying darkness seemed to swim around me, and reflection came in as black and confused a flow. Self-abandoned, relaxed, and effortless, I seemed to have laid me down in the dried up bed of a great river: I heard a flood loosened in remote mountains, and felt the torrent come: to rise I had no will, to flee I had no strength. I lay faint longing to be dead. One idea only still throbbed life like within me- a remembrance of God: it be got an unuttered prayer: these words went wandering up and down in my rayless mind, as something that should be whispered, but no energy found to express them — Charlotte Bronte

I went outside, tripping over slabs of sunshine the size of towns. The sun was like a crowd of people, it was a party, it was music. The sun was blaring through the walls of houses and beating down the steps. The sun was drumming time into the stone. The sun was rhythming the day. — Jeanette Winterson

I never knew what an extraordinary thing it could be to write a book. In the first place, the characters take the bit between their jaws and canter off with you into places you don't want and never catered for. I had smugly intended my book to be about a family rather like ours, but, lud love you! it's already turned into an account of a barmaid's career in an Edgware Road pub, and I can't squeeze us in anywhere!

Odd things happen, too. I had called my pub, 'The Three Feathers,' and counted on there being heaps of pubs in Edgware Road, not called that, but looking a bit like my description. Before we left home, I went down Edgware Road to investigate, and found my pub, even down to the old-fashioned phonograph on the table in the upstairs sitting-room. And I thought, 'I built that place. — Rachel Ferguson

There was an ache in his heart like the farewell to a dear woman; there was a vague sorrow in him like the despair of autumn. He walked past the restaurants he used to smell with interest, and no appetite was aroused in him. He walked by Madam Zuca's great establishment, and exchanged no obscene jests with the girls in the windows. Back to the wharf he went. He leaned over the rail and looked into the deep, deep water. Do you know, Danny, how the wine of your life is pouring into the fruit jars of the gods? Do you see the procession of your days in the oily water among the piles? He remained motionless, staring down. — John Steinbeck

After a conversation with someone that went on all night, but I didn't take much persuading, and the next day I was a vegetarian. It came down to one question, can you be healthy without killing animals? If the answer is 'yes' then the only reason you're killing is because you like the taste. But you can't take a life just because you like its taste. — Martin Shaw

I looked at him, tipping down the coarse wine like a man who expects to put up with worse. I felt I was looking my last at the lad I still remembered. I was right. When I saw him again, it was five years later, and not in Athens. He was tanned like the thong of a javelin, and as tough as the shaft, a soldier who looked to have been cradled in a shield; but the oddest change, I think, was to see in one always so mindful of convention that careless outlandishness you find in irregular troops of great renown; men who seem to say, "Take it or leave it, you who never went where we have been. We are the only judges of one another. — Mary Renault

A dead tree, falling, made less havoc than a live one. It seemed as though a live tree went down fighting, like an animal. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Mrs Anderson was dead.
Nothing flashy, just old age - she went to bed one night and never woke up. The news said it was a peaceful, dignified way to die, which I suppose is technically true, but the three days it took for someone to realize they hadn't seen her in a while removed most of the dignity from the situation. Her daughter eventually dropped by to check on her and found her corpse three days rotted and stinking like roadkill. And the worst part isn't the rotting, it's the three days - three whole days before anyone cared enough to say, 'Wait, where's that old lady who lives down by the canal?' There's not a lot of dignity in that — Dan Wells

It was raining when Amarelle Parathis went out just after sunset to find a drink, and there was strange magic in the rain. It came down in pale lavenders and coppers and reds, soft lines like liquid dusk that turned luminescent mist on the warm pavement. The air itself felt like champagne bubbles breaking against the skin. Over the dark shapes of distant rooftops, blue-white lightning blazed, and stuttering thunder chased it. — Scott Lynch

There was the sun, letting down great glowing masses of heat; there was life, active and snarling, moving about them like a fly swarm - the dark pants of smoke from the engine, a crisp "all aboard!" and a bell ringing. Confusedly Maury saw eyes in the milk train staring curiously up at him, heard Gloria and Anthony in quick controversy as to whether he should go to the city with her, then another clamor and she was gone and the three men, pale as ghosts, were standing alone upon the platform while a grimy coal-heaver went down the road on top of a motor truck, carolling hoarsely at the summer morning. CHAPTER — F Scott Fitzgerald

Well, what? Sophie-"
"I hit her on the head with a mirror," Sophie said hopelessly. "One of those silver-backed ones, so it was quite heavy. She went down just like a stone, miss. So I ... I tied her to the bed and I came looking for you. — Cassandra Clare

You know, where have you - what have you been doing? You know, and you find yourself sitting next to Jesus, and he's rather an agreeable man. And you have an opportunity to say, so what went down then, you know, that night? And it's supposed to be like him just sort of telling you very conversationally. That was the idea I had. Whether it - whether it comes - came off or not, I don't know. — Nick Lowe

It's a cake," he said, shoving both hands under the thing and raising it with some difficulty. "From my mother." He managed to put it on the table without trapping his fingers. "Can you eat it?" said Nobby. "It's taken months to get here. You'd think it would go stale." "Oh, it's to a special dwarfish recipe," said Carrot. "Dwarfish cakes don't go stale." Sergeant Colon gave it another sharp rap. "I suppose not," he conceded. "It's incredibly sustaining," said Carrot. "Practically magical. The secret has been handed down from dwarf to dwarf for centuries. One tiny piece of this and you won't want anything to eat all day." "Get away?" said Colon. "A dwarf can go hundreds of miles with a cake like this in his pack," Carrot went on. "I bet he can," said Colon gloomily, "I bet all the time he'd be thinking, 'Bloody hell, I hope I can find something else to eat soon, otherwise it's the bloody cake again. — Anonymous

How had he lost the upper hand so quickly? His dick jerked and wept like it had found the happiest place on earth. He was gonna come, but he'd be damned if he did it before Michaels. He dropped his arm from around Michaels' chest and gripped him on his hip, using it to slam that sexy ass back into him while he jerked him fast with the other. He felt Michaels' dick jump in his fist and knew it was time. Good because he was past time. "Fuckin' come," he hissed, snapping his hips forward at the same time he squeezed the head of Michaels' dick. He went down on that length one more time, squeezed hard, twisted his palm and shot his fist back up, wrenching the first spurt of hot come from it. Yesssss. Michaels grunted with the next spurt and worked his ass hard against Judge's aching dick. The sounds he made were delicious and wicked. Sounds he'd never heard a man make. Masculine but erotic as hell. Not ashamed to show Judge how much he'd pleased him. It — A.E. Via

I remember the last season I played. I went home after a ballgame one day, lay down on my bed, and tears came to my eyes. How can you explain that? It's like crying for your mother after she's gone. You cry because you love her. I cried, I guess, because I loved baseball, and I knew I had to leave it. — Willie Mays

He who could write so easily, who could spend a thousand words down along his plunging fingers on the green-rubber keyboard of his machine, had stumbled like a first-grader over this single paragraph. A dozen times he had begun it and written into it a naked desperation; a dozen times he had begun it and written into it the frosted mathematics of logic. Finally he'd written out quickly the sentences that kept cropping up in all the versions. Those must be, to whatever censor there was in him, the most acceptable ones. He sealed it without rereading it and went out to mail it. An hour later he despised himself for having sent it. — Laura Z. Hobson

...there are enormous regions where I have never been, and what one has not known is what one has not been. An anxiety to start running, go into a house, into that store, jump on a train, devour all of Jouhandeau, know German... What is defective is felt more as an intuitive poverty than as a mere lack of experience. It really doesn't afflict me not having read all of Jouhandeau, at most the melancholy feeling of too short a life for so many libraries, etc. The lack of experience is inevitable, if I read Joyce I am automatically sacrificing another book and vice versa, etc. The feeling of lack is sharper in... zones for detention of your eyes, your smell, your taste, and you can't get beyond that limit when you think you've caught anything fully, just like an iceberg the thing has a small piece outside and shows it to you, and the enormous rest of it is beyond our limits and that's why the Titanic went down. — Julio Cortazar

She made a slow turn as she loosened her ponytail and shook her head; her hair streamed down her back like a glossy black waterfall. She finished her spin. Her focus landed on me, and the air caught in my throat. My Wolf stirred.
Clare.
Her body went rigid; her sultry gaze hardened as she stared at me.
Clare Walker. I'd know those moonlit eyes anywhere.
She ran and grabbed hold of the stage right pole. Her feet left the floor as she wrapped her legs around the brass and spun.
What in god's name is she doing working in a fucking strip club? — Elizabeth Morgan

It was called 'We Wear the Mask', by Paul Laurence Dunbar. I transcribed the first stanza and then started jotting down my reaction to it.

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes, -
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

I used to wear masks so subtle I barely noticed them. A compliment to my mother after a dismal meal, a smile at my best friend when she sang out of tune, a forced laugh at my uncle's bad jokes. I wore small masks that came and went, like fleeting expressions.

I am stuck inside the mask I wear now. I want to rip it off. I want to show my scars to the world, to unveil the ugliness that breathes inside me. I want to be unashamed. I want to be unafraid. But every day the mask gets tighter, and I suffocate a little more.

I stopped writing. — Catherine Doyle

Uri was turned, looking at him, shouting something, but at that point, Gabe couldn't hear him. A moment later, Gabe felt like the car was spinning uncontrollably. The nausea overcame him and he seriously thought he might be sick. He looked down at Sophie to make sure she was still all right. His hands were holding her head gently, but they no longer seemed like his hands. There was a glowing, blue light coming from his palms. He began to hyperventilate. Everything went black. — Wendy Owens

I'd hate to see the look on my face when that mask came down and I saw the face behind it. Thinner than I remember. Paler. The eyes sunk deep into their sockets, kind of glazed over, like he's sick or hurt, but I recognize it, I know whose face was hidden behind that mask. I just can't process it.
Here, in this place. A thousand years later and a million miles from the halls of George Barnard High School. Here, in the belly of the beast at the bottom of the world, standing right in front of me.
Benjamin Thomas Parish.
And Cassiopeia Marie Sullivan, having a full-bore out-of-body experience, seeing herself seeing him. The last time she saw him was in their high school gymnasium after the lights went out, and then only the back of his head, and the only times that she's seen him since happened in her mind, the rational part of which always knew Ben Parish was dead like everyone else. — Rick Yancey

I went to an all-girls' Catholic school for, like, six years during the time when kids actually had handwriting class. I've always had a propensity for getting the cursive down pretty well. — Meghan Markle

Sophia took in a deep breath as she prepared to screech up at him angrily like the deep-down angel-bitch she really was. However, as her beautiful violet eyes looked up furiously into the Shepherd's mesmerizing green eyes, she caught her breath and her body went weak at his masterful handling of her rebellious angel body. — Bella Swann

Hannah sat down again and leant back against the tall head of the hall chair. He was right. Yes, he was right. She must have been mad to go on like she had. Good Lord! She hadn't given him the message from Mrs Beggs. Again she was on her feet, but her voice still sounded angry as she called down the hall, 'I forgot to give you a message, from Mrs Beggs. She wanted to know if you were going there tomorrow or Saturday.' There was a moment's silence before his door opened and he came back into the hall and went to the telephone. She remained standing where she was until she heard him say, 'Hello, Beggie. — Catherine Cookson

[She] knew there were women who worked successfully out of the home. They ran businesses, created empires and managed to raise happy, healthy, well-adjusted children who went on to graduate magna cum laude from Harvard or became world-renowned concert pianists. Possibly both.
These women accomplished all this while cooking gourmet meals, furnishing their homes with Italian antiques, giving clever, intelligent interviews with Money magazine and People, and maintaining a brilliant marriage with an active enviable sex life and never tipping the scale at an ounce over their ideal weight ...
She knew those women were out there. If she'd had a gun, she'd have hunted every last one of them down and shot them like rabid dogs for the good of womankind. — Nora Roberts

The days went by for him, all different and all the same. The boy was happy, and yet he didn't know that he was happy, exactly: he couldn't remember having been unhappy. If one day as he played at the edge of the forest some talking bird had flown down and asked him: "Do you like your life" he would not have known what to say, but would have asked the bird: "Can you not like it? — Randall Jarrell

Such gratitude! It hurt me to see you lose your professional standing, McGee. Like you were going soft and sentimental. So, through my own account, I put us into Fletcher and rode it up nicely and took us out, and split the bonus right down the middle. It's short-term. It's a check. Pay your taxes. Live a little. It's a longer retirement this time. We can gather up a throng and go blundering around on this licentious craft and get the remorses for saying foolish things while in our cups. We had a salvage contract, idiot, and the fee is comparatively small but fair."
"And you are comparatively large but fair."
"I think of myself that way. Where did the check go? Into the pocket so fast? Good." he looked at his watch. "I am taking a lady to lunch. Make a nice neat deck there, Captain." And away he went, humming. — John D. MacDonald

I've tackled many challenges in my lifetime. The most satisfying ones were food related. Like the 2-pound burger at Fuddruckers that I had to devour in 15 minutes. Shattered it in 5 minutes and 46 seconds! Or
the Blazing Challenge at Buffalo Wild Wings: eat 12 blazing wings in 5 minutes. Killed it in 57 seconds! Quaker Steak and Lube's all-you-can- eat wings in one sitting? I may still hold the record in Madison, Wisconsin, for scarfing down 78. I'll never forget when 6 linemen and I went to a sushi restaurant during the time of the 2011 Rose Bowl in Pasadena. We didn't exactly take on an eating challenge, but we did get kicked out of the place when the owner ordered, "Go home now.
You've eaten eight hundred dollars' worth of sushi. — Jake Byrne

And then I went back into my room, locked into a sequence as perfect as a pattern, and I sat down on my great rock throne, invisible to the outside world but palpable beneath me, and from how my face felt I thought maybe I was crying, either because I didn't want to do this or because I did, it was hard to tell and anyway I never would, who would believe me in either case and who would be there to believe me in all cases, it was a puzzle, I had yet to learn the way of the jigsaw, and so I positioned the rifle beneath my chin, it feels cold, like an actual thing in the actual present physical world, OK, there it is, I am here now, and then I lay down on my belly and listened to the rising squall beyond the door. — John Darnielle

I started boxing when I was eight. I enjoyed when I could hit someone and they couldn't hit me back. It was like a game for me. The feeling of knocking someone out. My first knockout victory was when I was ten. He went down and his nose started to bleed, so they stopped it. — Emanuel Steward

I grabbed his hand and dragged him down the street to a convenience shop. I abandoned him once inside and went down the stationery aisle. I'd already known I wanted to get him some colored pencils, but now I finally had the occasion to do it. Not long after I'd picked out a big box of them, I heard Rafael call out from another part of the store, "Trojans? Like The Iliad?"
I didn't waste a second finding him and pulling him out of that aisle. — Rose Christo

Soaring at this altitude, I saw Elsace as something so much cleaner. Lakes turned to puddles, cities into toys. The squalor of the slums went invisible and everything smelled fresh like rain. It was one of the reasons I loved the Wastrel. I felt so far away from all that misery down below. — Meg Merriet

Katrina," he said, his mouth going dry.
"I'm feeling like Winnie. I'm ready to cry."
He slid down his bars to the mesh of the floor,
feeling even more gloomy than ever before.

Katrina went over to offer some cheer,
to say something kind into Mortimer's ear.
But what could she say? What could she do
for a friend who felt so inconsolably blue?
So gently, she rested her hand on his head.
Because sometimes our words ...
... are best left unsaid. — Robert Paul Weston

But holding Michael had always been like holding a little person, who knew that his feeding would end, who knew that if you were picked up you would be put down, that the comfort came but also went. — Adam Haslett

The building is rather like a medieval Castle and was established in the Sixth Century and soon afterwards, as the Moslem armies advanced Westwards from the Arabian Peninsula, somebody had the prescience to build a small Mosque in its courtyard to guard against it being burned or demolished. At the time of the Crusades it was the turn of the Monastery to protect the Mosque, and so it has been down the ages, each House of God extending its shelter to the other as opposing armies came and went. — Ahdaf Soueif

On the second night here, the Koreans played and the streets had to be closed down to traffic for half a day before the game. In a remarkable coincidence, everyone came to town wearing the same type of red T-shirt. The Koreans gathered like a huge blob of ketchup and went mad in a quiet, Dufferlike way. You haven't seen crowds until you've seen Korean crowds. They gathered. They cheered in unison. They clapped and exuberated.
Then they tidied up after themselves and went home.
If you ever have to have half-a-million people in your house for a function, make sure they are Koreans. — Tom Humphries

For she is my love, and other women are but big bodies of flame. who in the world would have thot of her like that? when most people looked they only saw a certain collection of bones, a selection of forms filling space. but he saw past the mouth and the eyes. the archetecture of the body, her fleshy masquerade. other boys were happy enuf to enjoy the show, they just wanted to be entertained by the bodys shadow theater but he had to come backstage. he went down into the mines. into the dark, brot up the gold. your new self, a better self. but wat good was it if he was jus gonna leave her behind. his poets lady, his silver lilly. he was a boy who knew things, things that looked one way but proved to be another. — Janet Fitch

I'd like a stocking made for a giant, And a meeting house full of toys, Then I'd go out in a happy hunt For the poor little girls and boys; Up the street and down the street, And across and over the town, I'd search and find them everyone, Before the sun went down. — Eugene Field

By the Angel," Jace said, looking the demon up and down. "I knew Greater Demons were meant to be ugly, but no one ever warned me about the smell."
Abbadon opened its mouth and hissed. Inside its mouth were two rows of jagged glass-sharp teeth.
"I'm not sure about this wind and howling darkness business," Jace went on, "smells more like landfill to me. You sure you're not from Staten Island? — Cassandra Clare

I wove my way between the tables, pulling my hair forward over my shoulders as I went.Alex was still sitting when I reached him.
"Hey.This was on the floor in the upstairs hall ... "
I stood behind his chair. Completely frozen.
I might have stood there for a very long time if he hadn't pushed himself away from the table to get up. The chair thumped me in the stomach first, then in the knees.I think I made a noise. I dropped his book.
"Oh.Oh,crap.I'm really sorry!" Alex jerked the chair out of the way and bent down a little. He had to, to see my face. "You okay?"
I did manage to nod.
"Seriously.I must have really pounded you there.You sure you're all right?"
"Yes,fine," I whispered.
Across the table, Chase Vere laughed. "Dude, she was,like, standing right behind you. — Melissa Jensen

Love's the boy stood on the burning deck
trying to recite "The boy stood on
the burning deck." Love's the son
stood stammering elocution
while the poor ship in flames went down.

Love's the obstinate boy, the ship,
even the swimming sailors, who
would like a schoolroom platform, too,
or an excuse to stay
on deck. And love's the burning boy. — Elizabeth Bishop

I saw it, he wanted to buy something he was near to the store I went to see little far from him what he was doing. He looked right in the store the cups, the plates how they were made... and then he went forward... face down... So far it sounded like he wanted to buy these stuff, but he couldn't afford them! — Deyth Banger

Someone told me at the beginning of that summer that I would come face-to-face with death because of a Romeo and Juliet romance, I would never have believed it. But it wasn't like that summer went at all like I had planned in the first place. The Columbia recruiter sat across from me, her dark bushy eyebrows rising as high as they could go while she stared down at my application. "So, Alex, I see that you don't have any extracurricular activities." I shrugged. I was sitting in one of those uncomfortable orange plastic chairs in the guidance counselor's office, wishing I could just disappear. I was the first student in all of Winnebago High School's history to have a recruiter from an Ivy League school visit. By the way she looked at our tiny school with its ancient, chipped walls and rusted lockers, I could see why nobody had wanted to visit in the past. — Magan Vernon

Buster went bananas, running over to Paci and jumping up on his legs, begging for attention. Paci didn't disappoint him, either. He bent down and baby-talked with Buster, like he was an old hand at it.
I smiled in amusement. Paci was no wimp. He was almost as big as Bodo and ripped to the max. He had zero body fat, so Peter and I were able to admire his every muscle, which I noticed Peter was doing with unabashed curiosity. I caught his attention and raised my eyebrows at him in a conspiratorial message of mutual admiration. He smiled in return, giving me a pitiful wink that made him look like he had something stuck in both eyes. It made me laugh.
Paci looked up at me. "Something strike you as funny?"
"Yeah. You baby-talking to a nude poodle. — Elle Casey

I want to be good all the time, so I feel anxious. But if you weren't like that, you'd be dead, wouldn't you? If you went out happy down the road, la la la. I've never been like that. I don't want to be. — Michael Gambon

When I look at someone's face, there's something in my brain that just clicks - that breaks down their face into the elements that go into a caricature. It might be like the way a chef tastes a dish and can break down into elements what went into it. — Steve Breen

After they had gone another mile, Pinocchio heard the same little low voice saying to him:
'Bear it in mind, simpleton! Boys who refuse to study, and turn their backs upon books, schools, and masters, to pass their time in play and amusements, sooner or later come to a bad end ... I know it by experience ... and I can tell you. A day will come when you will weep as I am weeping now ... but then it will be too late! ... '
On hearing these words whispered very softly, the puppet, more frightened than ever, sprang down from the back of his donkey and went and took hold of his mouth.
Imagine his surprise when he found that the donkey was crying ... and he was crying like a boy! — Carlo Collodi

He went into those little gardens beneath the over-hanging, brightly-lit masses of the Savoy Hotel and the Hotel Cecil. He sat down on a seat and became aware of the talk of the two people next to him. It was the talk of a young couple evidently on the eve of marriage. The man was congratulating himself on having regular employment at last; 'they like me,' he said, 'and I like the job. If I work up - in'r dozen years or so I ought to be gettin' somethin' pretty comfortable. That's the plain sense of it, Hetty. There ain't no reason whatsoever why we shouldn't get along very decently - very decently indeed. — H.G.Wells

I can see it, when your heart slows down. That's how I know when to call. I keep your heart - the icon of your heart - in one corner of my vision. All the time." Her stomach flipped over and tried to exit through her fingertips. Adrenaline jangled down her arms like music. Her mouth went dry and all she could taste was the burn of the drug in her throat. "See, there? It skipped. — Madeline Ashby

I went down like a tray of dishes — Blake Bailey

Shrago stayed on his feet for a long second, and then his knees got the message that the lights were out upstairs, and he went down in a vertical heap, like he had jumped off a wall. — Lee Child

As far as evil goes" - she shrugged one shoulder - "I've spent a dozen years studying the subject and there's one thing I know for sure." Her expression grew distant, breakable somehow. She blinked and seemed to push whatever had distracted her aside. "If you want to know what evil looks like, look in the mirror." She leaned down, flattened her hands on the table once more, and went face-to-face with Wells. "Any one of us is capable of evil, Detective. We all have a line. It's not crossing it that separates us from the Ed Geins and Charles Mansons of the world. — Debra Webb

I know we've only known each other four weeks and three days, but to me it seems like nine weeks and five days. The first day seemed like a week and the second day seemed like five days. And the third day seemed like a week again and the fourth day seemed like eight days. And the fifth day you went to see your mother and that seemed just like a day, and then you came back and later on the sixth day, in the evening, when we saw each other, that started seeming like two days, so in the evening it seemed like two days spilling over into the next day and that started seeming like four days, so at the end of the sixth day on into the seventh day, it seemed like a total of five days. And the sixth day seemed like a week and a half. I have it written down, but I can show it to you tomorrow if you want to see it. — Steve Martin

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

I heard a horrible, stomach-turning crack that vibrated up my arms. Ari and I stared at each other in shock. "You really hurt me," he gasped rawly, terrible surprise in his voice. "I wouldn't hurt you. Not like this." Then his head flopped down, and Ari went totally limp. His — James Patterson

She went as through a forest
the columns were furrowed like ancient trees, and in through the forest flowed the light, many-hued and clear as song, from the pictured windows. High up above her, beasts and men sported among the stone leafage, and angels played
and yet far, dizzily far higher, the vaulting soared, lifting the church towards God. In a hall that lay to one side, worship was being held at an altar. Kristin sank down on her knees by a pillar. The singing cut into her like a too strong light. Now she saw how low she lay in the dust ... Pater noster. Credo in unum Deum. Ave Maria, gratia plena. — Sigrid Undset

There are times when I wouldn't rule violence out. I personally don't like violence at all. But it wasn't until we had the Trafalgar Square riots that the Poll Tax went out in Britain. When people take to the streets and fight the police, it's the one thing the government can't control. You can march round in circles for the rest of your life and they can ignore it, but once you start damaging property and fighting with the police, they can't. Even though they tar you with a brush and say you're a set of bastards, they have to actually tone down what they are doing. — Alice Nutter

He lifted a hand and turned and went on. He had divested himself of the little cloaked godlet and his other amulets in a place where they would not be found in his lifetime and he'd taken for talisman the simple human heart within him. Walking down the little street for the last time he felt everything fall away from him. Until there was nothing left of him to shed. It was all gone. No trail, no track. The spoor petered out down there on Front Street where things he'd been lay like paper shadows, a few here, they thin out. After that nothing. A few rumors. Idle word on the wind. Old news years in traveling that you could not put stock in. — Cormac McCarthy

After a few months, I decided to do one more leg of the Le Noise tour and film the last show with Jonathan Demme in Toronto's Massey Hall/ It turned out to be a great night. Everyone was very happy because we had captured it. During a review of the digital files, we realized that the resolution was not full, it was a stepped down quality, not the best it could be. My own team's excuses were not adequate, because I was not informed of the decision to go to a lesser quality. Lesser quality is so accepted as normal now that even I had used it unknowingly. I went back to Massey Hall and set up a PA system like the one I used at the show, played back the mixes through the PA, and rerecorded the house sound at the highest resolution. I did the best I could with a bad situation. It does sound great now. Thankfully, the PA mix was only one step down from the highest resolution, so when it resonated in the hall and was rerecorded at the highest level, a high resolution hall sound was captured. — Neil Young

We went far down the garden to the farthest end, where the children and the nurse and the puppy and I used to play in the summer in the shade of a great elm, and there the footman dug a hole, and I saw he was going to plant the puppy, and I was glad, because it would grow and come up a fine handsome dog, like Robin Adair, and be a beautiful surprise for the family when they came home; so I tried to help him dig, but my lame leg was no good, being stiff, you know, and you have to have two, or it is no use. When the footman had finished and covered little Robin up, he patted my head, and there were tears in his eyes, and he said: Poor little doggie, you saved HIS child! — Mark Twain

Change was incessant, and change perhaps would never cease. High battlements of thought, habits that had seemed as durable as stone, went down like shadows at the touch of another mind and left a naked sky and fresh stars twinkling in it. — Virginia Woolf

The conquest was not achieved without one frightful convulsion of revolt. "In this year A.D. 61", according to Tacitus, "a severe disaster was sustained in Britain." Suetonius, the new governor, had engaged himself deeply in the West. He transferred the operational base of the Roman army to Chester. Because it was the centre of Druid resistance he prepared to attack "the populous island of Mona [Anglesey], which had become a refuge for fugitives, and he built a fleet of flat-bottomed vessels suitable for those shallow and shifting seas. The infantry crossed in the boats, the cavalry went over by fords: where the water was too deep the men swam alongside of their horses. The enemy lined the shore, a dense host of armed men, interspersed with women clad in black like the Furies, with their hair hanging down and holding torches in their hands. Round this were Druids — Winston S. Churchill

Cinderella was such a dork. She left behind her glass slipper at the ball and then went right back to her step-monster's house. It seems to me she should have worn the glass slipper always, to make herself easier to find. I always hoped that after the prince found Cinderella and they rode away in their magnificent carriage, after a few miles she turned to him and said, Could you drop me off down the road please? Now that I've finally escaped my life of horrific abuse, I'd like to see something of the world, you know? ... I'll catch back up with you later, Prince, once I've found my own way. — Rachel Cohn

Athletes, he believed, were simple, straightforward people, cruel and brutal if you like, but never petty. They knocked you down and hurt you, and then went on their way rejoicing. — E. M. Forster

Tell them I'm like you," Gavriel said as they began to slow down.
Aidan laughed. "I think they can see you're not like us anymore."
"No," he said. "Tell them you know me. That I'm like you, one of you. From the party. Tell them."
"Wait," said Winter. "Wait. Is he saying he wasn't at the party? Did you meet him by the side of the road? Did you pick up a hitchhiker who coincidentally turned out to be a vampire?"
Gavriel fixed his gaze on Winter. "You know me," he said, and a chill went up Tana's spine. "You've known me since outside the rest stop, when I turned and the light hit my face."
"What does he mean?" Midnight asked.
"I don't know," Winter said in an odd voice. "Nothing. — Holly Black

- I won't be able to think. I won't be able to work.
- Nothing will interfere with your work like suicide.
(Silence)
- I dreamt that I went to the doctor's and she gave me eight minutes to live. I'd been sitting in the fucking waiting room for half an hour.
(A long silence)
- Okay, let's do it, let's do the drugs, let's do the chemical lobotomy, let's shut down the higher functions of my brain and perhaps I'll be a bit more fucking capable of living.
Let's do it. — Sarah Kane

Patrick sort of had a very pragmatic, practical, Ed-like approach and went down to see. — Vera Farmiga

I lost Ike,' Aunt Josephine said, 'and I lost Lake Lachrymose. I mean, I didn't really lose it, of course. It's still down in the valley. But I grew up on its shores. I used to swim in it every day. I know which beaches were sandy and which were rocky. I knew all the islands in the middle of its waters and all the caves alongside it's shore. Lake Lachrymose felt like a friend to me. But when it took poor Ike away from me I was too afraid to go near it anymore. I stopped swimming in it. I never went to the beach again. I even put away all my books about it. The only way I can bear to look at it is from the Wide Window in the Library. — Lemony Snicket

Mom once snuck me into a casino. We were going on vacation to Crater Lake and we stopped at a resort on an Indian reservation for the buffet lunch. Mom decided to do a bit of gambling, and I went with her while Dad stayed with Teddy, who was napping in his stroller. Mom sat down at the dollar blackjack tables. The dealer looked at me, then at Mom, who returned his mildly suspicious glance with a look sharp enough to cut diamonds followed by a smile more brilliant that any gem. The dealer sheepishly smiled back and didn't say a word. I watched Mom play, mesmerized. It seemed like we were in there for fifteen minutes but then Dad and Teddy came in search of us, both of them grumpy. It turned out we'd been there for over an hour. The ICU is like that. — Gayle Forman

We were all grinning and everyone had their eyes open for once. Ian must have been moving - his hand was blurred. It was exactly how I imagined us, right down to Kieran's arm around me and the peace sign he was making above Matty's head. The big carving was behind us, and the other trees leaned into the picture, like giant people.

Then a cloud went over the sun and Ian said he had better get going. I wished we had taken five pictures so that we could all have a copy. When I looked at the image again, the colours had already started to fade, as if it was a moment we could never have back. — Inga Simpson

Turned and ran down another. They remembered the corridors that held no cheese and quickly went into new areas. Sniff would smell out the general direction of the cheese, using his great nose, and Scurry would race ahead. They got lost, as you might expect, went off in the wrong direction and often bumped into walls. But after a while, they found their way. Like the mice, the two Littlepeople, Hem and Haw, also used their ability to think and learn from their past experiences. However, they relied on their complex brains to develop more sophisticated methods of finding Cheese. Sometimes they did well, but at other times their powerful human beliefs and emotions took over and clouded the way they looked at things. It made life in the Maze more complicated and challenging. Nonetheless, Sniff, Scurry, Hem and Haw all discovered, in their own way, what they were looking for. They each found their own kind of cheese one day at the end of one of the corridors in Cheese Station — Spencer Johnson

I like you in my bed," Patch said. "I rarely pull down the covers. I rarely sleep. I could get used to this picture."
"Are you offering me a permanent place?"
"Already put a spare key in your pocket."
I patted my pocket. Sure enough, something small and hard was snug inside. "How charitable of you."
"I'm not feeling very charitable now," he said, holding my eyes, his voice deepening with a gravelly edge. "I missed you, Angel. Not one day went by that I didn't feel you missing from my life. You haunted me to the point that I began to believe Hank had gone back on his oath and killed you. I saw your ghost in everything. I couldn't escape you and I didn't want to. You tortured me, but it was better than losing you. — Becca Fitzpatrick

The world soon to be largely populated by men who would eat your children in front of your eyes and the cities themselves held by cores of blackened looters who tunneled among the ruins and crawled from the rubble white of tooth and eye carrying charred and anynymous tins of food in nylon nets like shoppers in the commissaries of hell. The soft black talc blew through the streets like squid ink uncoiling along a sea floor and the cold crept down and the dark came early and the scavengers passing down the steep canyons with their torches trod silky holes in the drifted ash that closed behind them silently as eyes. Out on the roads the pilgrims sank down and fell over and died and the bleak and shrouded earth went trundling past the sun and returned again as trackless and as unremarked as the path of any nameless sisterworld in the ancient dark beyond. — Cormac McCarthy

I never told anyone about waking in the night to him standing over me with a knife. It was small, one of my switchblades, chosen for carving.
His seeping dick twitched as he bent toward me, his slick left hand went down on my sternum, the other holding the knife like a scapel.
"What're you gonna do?" I asked, reaching for him, my fingers closing around his hard, wet length.
"Carve my name on your skin so everyone knows you're mine. — Mary Calmes

We treat racism in this country like it's a style that America went through. Like flared legs and lava lamps. Oh, that crazy thing we did. We were hanging black people. We treat it like a fad instead of a disease that eradicates millions of people. You've got to get it at a lab, and study it, and see its origins, and see what it's immune to and what breaks it down. — Chris Rock

One night I couldn't sleep. It was like 2:00 in the morning. I was thinking, 'What can I do?' I'm watching TV. I'm like, 'Let me do something else.' I'm not going to fall asleep for a few hours. What are my hobbies? There was the masturbation option. I skipped that because just knowing my kids are down the hall I felt psychotic. So, I went with watching more TV. I couldn't come up with anything. I was going, 'God, read a book.' Then I was like this, 'Where do I keep the books?' I've got nothing to do but watch TV. — Adam Sandler

Sophia and Grandmother sat down by the shore to discuss the matter further. It was a pretty day, and the sea was running a long, windless swell. It was on days just like this
dog days
that boats went sailing off all by themselves. Large, alien objects made their way in from sea, certain things sank and others rose, milk soured, and dragonflies danced in desperation. Lizards were not afraid. When the moon came up, red spiders mated on uninhabited skerries, where the rock became an unbroken carpet of tiny, ecstatic spiders. — Tove Jansson

He killed, his sword shearing, shield and horse a ram, pushing in, and further in, opening a space by force alone for the momentum of the men behind him. Beside him a man fell to a spear in the throat. To his left, an equine scream as Rochert's horse went down.
In front of him, methodically, men fell, and fell, and fell.
He split his attention. He swept a sword cut aside with his shield, killed a helmed soldier, and all the while flung out his mind, waiting for the moment when Touar's lines split open. The most difficult part of commanding from the front was this
staying alive in the moment, while tracking in his mind, critically, the whole fight. Yet it was exhilarating, like fighting with two bodies, at two scales. — C.S. Pacat