When You're Lurking Quotes & Sayings

Even under more ingratiating conditions than rocket travel, this new conquest has already disclosed drawbacks quite as remarkable as its advantages. On a transcontinental flight by a jet plane approaching super-sonic speed, the actual trip is so cramped, so dull, so vacuous, that the only attraction the air lines dare to offer are those vulgar experiences one can have by walking to the nearest cabaret, restaurant, or cinema: liquor, food, motion pictures, luscious stewardesses. Only a lurking sense of fear and the possibility of a grisly death help restore the sense of reality. — Lewis Mumford

Our animal origins are constantly lurking behind, even if they are filtered through complicated social evolution. — Richard Dawkins

Catherine, who was extremely modest, had no desire to shine, and on most social occasions, as they are called, you would have found her lurking in the background. — Henry James

Most attribute the domain of night to evil because they can't see. People fear the shadows of the night because shadows represent the unknown, and the unknown is frightening. They assume evil lurks behind every shadow, in every corner not illuminated. But their fear of the unknown is often what really terrifies them. They find comfort seeing in the daylight for that reason, but the irony is they are often more blinded by their comfort than by the shadow of night. It's a pity. If they could overcome their fear of the unknown they might realize that the unknown is not evil, it is simply an opportunity waiting to be explored. The night is no more a domain of evil than the daylight, both were created good, both have evil lurking in them. When you can overcome your fear, the night becomes a domain of beauty interlaced with danger, and that is exciting! — M.R. Laver

But why think about that when all the golden lands ahead of you and all kinds of unforseen events wait lurking to surprise you and make you glad you're alive to see? — Jack Kerouac

The dilemma for women who love to write may not have so much to do with finding the elusive literary voice, as with being reluctant to use the one that's already lurking inside, just waiting for the chance to speak up. Many of us, especiall,y those from the generations taught to be good, accommodating girls, are afraid of sounding too strong, too loud, too unconventional, or simply too much like the self we're afraid to reveal to the world. Most of us have at least an inkling of what form our writing voice should take, if only we might find the courage to reveal it. — Nava Atlas

Failure is the foundation of success: success is the lurking place of failure. — Laozi

I don't want to even think about what kind of creatures could be lurking out there in the dark in the middle of the sticks. Probably the same ones lurking around during the day, but I've learned that dangerous things like to wait till night to surface, when you can't see the coming. — Carolee Dean

Some things you cannot see or explain, but they are there, lurking.
Some things dwell in the dark: waiting ... watching ... haunting.
Sometimes evil takes on many forms, many faces.
And silence is the last thing you hear, when it's already too late.
THE SILENCE — Barry Brickey

On calm days, you always think you've conquered them.
You think that in the end you've finally done them in.
That you've got rid of them for good, now and forever.
But that seldom happens.
Most of the time, the demons are still there, lurking somewhere in the shadows.
Tirelessly waiting for the moment when our guard drops.
And when love goes away ... — Guillaume Musso

Why were you lurking under our window?"
"Yes - yes, good point, Petunia! What were you doing under our windows, boy?"
"Listening to the news," said Harry in a resigned voice.
His aunt and uncle exchanged looks of outrage.
"Listening to the news! Again?"
"Well, it changes every day, you see," said Harry. — J.K. Rowling

The scariest part to any story is the sliver of truth you hide in the horror. Sometimes its not about the axe wielding murder, but the fact that he's lurking somewhere in your basement. Sure, you keep telling yourself that you'll replace the burnt out light every week. — Rob Manuel

I'm of that generation of Jews still deeply influenced by the Holocaust. Certainly the notion that the state power to kill can be subject to such extraordinary abuse is always lurking beneath the surface for me. Certainly my experience and identity as a Jew is there. — Scott Turow

Repeating a mantra quiets the mind," Lester's mother had said. "And it provides comfort in trying times." Then she had reached her palms skyward and bent forward into an upside-down V. Lester's mother was a yoga teacher and spent a lot of time in strange and unusual positions. These were certainly trying times for Lester, who had moved from Denver to Cape Cod just after Easter and was going to start a new school in two days' time. "A mantra can even unlock great virtues within," Lester's mother had added. Lester liked the idea that there might be great virtues lurking within him waiting to be unleashed, and he wondered what those — Kate Banks

I, for one, bet on science as helping us. I have yet to see how it fundamentally endangers us, even with the H-bomb lurking about. Science has given us more lives than it has taken; we must
remember that. — Philip K. Dick

This, I told myself, this is the way I shall be condemned to pass my days, turning over words, stray lines, fragments of memory, to see what might be lurking underneath them, as if they were so many flat stones, while I steadily faded. — John Banville

Because lurking somewhere beneath the surface of your brain is a vision of loneliness, and it will be a terrible moment when it breaks through, and you realise that your future is not a green pastures, but the knackers yard. We are all separate people, and we are all alone. It is a ridiculous thing to say that no man is an island. We are all islands. You can die, and Gerry won't. Gerry can die, and you won't. Our lives just go on, separate as they have always been. — Fay Weldon

As a child, I felt that Hallowe'en was a time when creatures of the night suddenly came to life - we would turn off all the lights in the house and let flickering candlelight conjure up scary shadows and create the effect of imaginary figures lurking in dark corners. — Pippa Middleton

I feel I'm able to get rid of any demons lurking in my psyche through my writing, which leaves me free to create all of this and to enjoy our family life, stepping away from all the fictional traumas and the dramas. If I write about family in crisis, then I won't have to live through it, I guess. — Jodi Picoult

The assumption lurking beneath a desire for hierarchy is that we can't really trust our partners to act well without a set of rules. That without a formal ranking to remind our partners that we come first, we will lose our status, lose the things we most value about our relationship, lose our sense of security, or even lose the relationship entirely. But as we've said before, if your partner can't be trusted to work with you on your needs when asked, she probably can't be trusted to follow rules. — Franklin Veaux

/When/ the piano falls, not /if/. Oh, Alyssa. What a way to live. With potential pain and heartbreak lurking around every corner.
And the only way to effectively counter it was to prepare for the worst to happen.
Or maybe even to run away from the good things
like love. If you didn't let yourself love someone, you couldn't lose them.
No wonder Alyssa had fought so hard for so long to keep Sam out of her life. — Suzanne Brockmann

There is no time with my bitchface sister, budding teenage romance, shadowy, nefarious businessmen lurking and Rhonda baffling science by being the first case of a walking, talking, cooking, grocery shopping coma patient — Kristen Ashley

Children are instinctually afraid of closets in the dark of night, a portent of evil lurking in the background of shadows. It isn't an irrational fear, for monsters come from closets. It's not something easily forgotten, or a fate yet known. As young adults, some of them venture into their closets, some come out. Sean danced with his. — Zea Miller

Come now, my child, if we were planning to harm you, do you think we'd be lurking here beside the path in the very darkest part of the forest? — Kenneth Patchen

I know a place on this Earth that contains wonders enough to stop the breath. A place where the very rocks whisper and whine, where the rivers boil and the snow-studded peaks thrust into a bowl of blue; where great shaggy beasts press the earth with cloven hooves or threaten with claw and fang; where new life and lurking death coexist in the shallows of varicolored pools. — Janet Fox

I've had a great deal of experience with adolescents over the centuries, and I've discovered that as a group these awkward half children take themselves far too seriously. Moreover, appearance is everything for the adolescent. I suppose it's a form of play-acting. The adolescent knows that the child is lurking under the surface, but he'd sooner die than let it out, and I was no different. I was so intent on being "grown-up" that I simply couldn't relax and enjoy life.
Most people go through this stage and outgrow it. Many, however, do not. The pose becomes more important than reality, and these poor creatures become hollow people, forever striving to fit themselves into an impossible mold. — David Eddings

Risk, as first articulated by the economist Frank H. Knight in 1921,45 is something that you can put a price on. Say that you'll win a poker hand unless your opponent draws to an inside straight: the chances of that happening are exactly 1 chance in 11.46 This is risk. It is not pleasant when you take a "bad beat" in poker, but at least you know the odds of it and can account for it ahead of time. In the long run, you'll make a profit from your opponents making desperate draws with insufficient odds. Uncertainty, on the other hand, is risk that is hard to measure. You might have some vague awareness of the demons lurking out there. You might even be acutely concerned about them. But you have no real idea how many of them there are or when they might strike. Your back-of-the-envelope estimate might be off by a factor of 100 or by a factor of 1,000; there is no good way to know. This is uncertainty. Risk greases the wheels of a free-market economy; uncertainty grinds them to a halt. — Nate Silver

He was a fugitive, lurking soul, James Leer. He didn't belong anywhere, but things went much better for him in places where nobody belonged. — Michael Chabon

Prior to the monotheistic Yahweh, the gods made sense, in that they had familiar, if supra-human appetites - they didn't just want a lamb shank, they wanted the best lamb shank, wanted to seduce all the wood nymphs, and so on. But the early Jews invented a god with none of those desires, who was so utterly unfathomable, unknowable, as to be pants-wettingly terrifying. So even if His actions are mysterious, when He intervenes you at least get the stress-reducing advantages of attribution - it may not be clear what the deity is up to, but you at least know who is responsible for the locust swarm or the winning lottery ticket. There is Purpose lurking, as an antidote to the existential void. — Robert M. Sapolsky

When you are a hero you are always running to save someone, sweating, worried and guilty. When you are a villain you are just lurking in the shadows waiting for the hero to pass by. Then you pop them in the head and go home ... piece of cake. — James Marsters

No!" Shawn whispered harshly. "If you want to break and run then that's your affair. But I've never known you to cower in the corner when there was a perfectly good opportunity to get yourself killed lurking around the next turn. — Abigail Roux

But the day will come when you will have to answer for it! You know I didn't come here alone to-day - - !" Both men looked startled and glanced uneasily into the shadows, as if there might be someone lurking there. "God came with me and He knows! He'll make you remember some day! — Grace Livingston Hill

Still I had a lurking question. Would it not be better if one could really 'see' whether molecules as complicated as the sterols, or strychnine were just as experiment suggested? — Dorothy Hodgkin

I have now been married to my third husband for more than 20 years. But when you've had children with someone you're divorced from, divorce defines everything; it's the lurking fact, a slice of anger in the pie of your brain. — Nora Ephron

The people who don't give you a standing ovation for the hurdles you cross are just afraid that you might win the race. They do not cheer you but they sit, lurking on the sidelines, biting their fingernails hoping you will stumble before the end. They secretly wish you will never win this race. But watch out for them, they will be the firstto stand and cheer you when you stand on that podium of success. — Crystal Evans

Much-Afraid, don't ever allow yourself to begin trying to picture what it will be like. Believe me, when you get to the place which you dread you will find that they are as different as possible from what you have imagined, just as was the case when you were actually ascending the precipice. I must warn you that I see your enemies lurking among the trees ahead, and if you ever let Craven Fear begin painting a picture on the screen of your imagination, you will walk with fear and trembling and agony, where no fear is. — Hannah Hurnard

Between 1995 and 2005, the prison population grew by 30 percent, meaning an additional half million criminals were behind bars, rather than lurking in dark alleys with switchblades. You can well imagine liberals' surprise when the crime rate went down as more criminals were put in prison. The New York Times was reduced to running querulous articles with headlines like Number in Prison Grows Despite Crime Reduction and As Crime Rate Drops, the Prison Rate Rises and the Debate Rages. — Ann Coulter

Demons are real. Since I'm not religious, I think of them as metaphors for the evil desires and impulses all humans have. A religious person can think of them as separate evil beings that can possess you. Either way, I believe they exist, lurking patiently around and in us, whispering their twisted points of view, ever alert for an opportunity. The sudden chink in your armor when you're tired, frightened, or angry. The invitation you issue in that moment of vulnerability. — Nancy Werlin

She pushed the bathroom door open to discover Magnus lurking on the other side, clutching a towel in one hand and his glittery hair in the other. He must have slept on it, she thought, because one side of the glittered spikes looked dented in. "Why does it take girls so long to shower?" he demanded. "Mortal girls, Shadowhunters, female warlocks, you're all the same. I'm not getting any younger waiting out here."
Clary stepped aside to let him pass. "How old are you, anyway?" she asked curiously.
Magnus winked at her. "I was alive when the Dead Sea was just a lake that was feeling a little poorly."
Clary rolled her eyes.
Magnus made a shooing moving. "Now move your petite behind. I need to get in there; my hair is a wreck. — Cassandra Clare

There's a jangle to the music of the dead. I mean that certain something that's so happy and so sad at the same time. The notes almost make a perfect harmony, but don't. Then they do but quickly crash into dissonance. They simmer in that sweet in-between rhythm section rattling along all the while. Chords collapse chaotically into one another and just when you think it's gonna spill into total nonsense, it stands back up and comes through sweet as a lullaby on your mami's lips. Songs that'll make people tap their feet and drink melancholically but not realize the twisting genius lurking within until generations later. — Daniel Jose Older

I took one look at it and demanded that he name three things he isn't good at.
"Roller skating, singing, and talking to girls."
"You left out stalking," I told him as he helped me out of the bed. "I can always tell when you're lurking around corners."
"You only asked for three. — Rick Yancey

But the real fun of writing, for me at least, is the experience of making a set of givens yield. There's an incredibly inflexible set of instruments - our vocabulary, our grammar, the abstract symbols on paper, the limitations of your own powers of expression. You write something down and it's awkward, trivial, artificial, approximate. But with effort you can get it to become a little flexible, a little transparent. You can get it to open up, and expose something lurking there beyond the clumsy thing you first put down. When you add a comma or add or subtract a word, and the thing reacts and changes, it's so exciting that you forget how absolutely terrible writing feels a lot of the time. — Deborah Eisenberg

It is terrible to see how a single unclear idea, a single formula without meaning, lurking in a young man's head, will sometimes act like an obstruction of inert matter in an artery, hindering the nutrition of the brain and condemning its victim to pine away in the fullness of his intellectual vigor and in the midst of intellectual plenty. — Charles Sanders Peirce

My wife is a lovely leathery green, the blue-tongued lizard said;
Her eyes are as red as bulldog ants, lurking in holes in her head;
Her body is made of the speckled grass, a violet grows on her tongue,
And I could watch her for fifty years if nobody blundered along. — Douglas Stewart

Couldn't he have come out and greeted her like a civil human being instead of lurking from his kitchen while she shared a clearly intimate moment with his brisket? — Tracy Ewens

Being an adult child was an awkward, inevitable position. You went about your business in the world: tooling around, giving orders, being taken seriously, but there were still these two people lurking somewhere who in a split second could reduce you to nothing. In their presence, you were a big-headed baby again, crawling instead of walking. — Meg Wolitzer

Had he allowed this deceit to go unpunished, more of his children would eventually have perished than the two we lost. The evil lurking in our hearts will take over if left unchecked. God has given us a reminder of whom we serve. Just as he did in the days of Moses, when God gave the painful instruction to destroy some in order to save more. In a way, it is encouraging, blessed, to realize that we are serving Moses' God. He has not changed. — Janette Oke

Old-fashioned people still say "bless you" when one sneezes, but they have forgotten the reason for the custom. The reason was that people were thought to sneeze out their souls, and before their souls could get back lurking demons were apt to enter the unsouled body; but if any one said "God bless you," the demons were frightened off. — Christopher Hitchens

They had a lurking suspicion even, that he died of secret love; though I must say there was a picture of him in the house with a damask nose, which concealment did not appear to have ever preyed upon. — Charles Dickens

NOT THEY WHO SOAR Not they who soar, but they who plod Their rugged way, unhelped, to God Are heroes; they who higher fare, And, flying, fan the upper air, Miss all the toil that hugs the sod. 'Tis they whose backs have felt the rod, Whose feet have pressed the path unshod, May smile upon defeated care, Not they who soar. High up there are no thorns to prod, Nor boulders lurking 'neath the clod To turn the keenness of the share, For flight is ever free and rare; But heroes they the soil who 've trod, Not they who soar! — Paul Laurence Dunbar

The Tiger's Curse Series has everything my heart could desire in a fantasy: exotic locations, two dashing princes, good vs. evil, the promise of danger and adventure lurking around every corner - and did I mention two dashing princes? Warning: these books may cause you to forget anything else exists until you've turned the last enthralling page. And then you'll want to start all over again! — Bree Despain

People abandoned one another constantly without performing the courtesy of of actually disappearing. They left, but didn't, lurking about, a constant reminder of what could or should have been. — Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney

Fred, in the light from the window above, looked for a moment like a newly hatched chick, with his twitchy little head and blinking dark eyes and face open to the world. Birdie felt something like fear then, something ragged and dark lurking just out of sight. Fred could die just like Eleanor did, just like the Wallace boy who'd gone to bed with a headache and died in the night when a blood vessel exploded in his brain. The slimmest margin separated life from not-life. Pastor Hardy boomed on and on. "We must be overcomers — Rae Meadows

Silly of me not to have realized it. One often finds Greek temples lurking in the woods of English estates. Sneaky things, temples. — Victoria Alexander

I was wary of my sister's cooking, which invariably consisted of a tubular pasta and economy cheese, charred black on the surface, with either tinned tuna or lardy mince lurking beneath the molten crust ... So that evening, in a tiny flat in Tooting, I was pushed into the tiny kitchen where sixteen people sat crammed around a tiny trestle table designed for pasting wallpaper, one of my sister's notorious pasta bakes smouldering in its centre like a meteorite, smelling of toasted cat food. — David Nicholls

No mistake about it. Ice is cold; roses are red; I'm in love. And this love is about to carry me off somewhere. The current's too overpowering; I don't have any choice. It may very well be a special place, some place I've never seen before. Danger may be lurking there, something that may end up wounding me deeply, fatally. I might end up losing everything. But there's no turning back. I can only go with the flow. Even if it means I'll be burned up, gone forever. — Haruki Murakami

When you're used to being in dangerous situations, you develop a sixth sense about your surroundings, about where possible enemies might be lurking, how many steps it will take to reach the next corner on a dead run, the best hiding places if bullets start to fly... — Mark Zero

Mistrust is the fuel for so much mental pain, so many mental disorders. I am not talking here about the suspicions we sometimes have of one another, the distant but lurking sense that perhaps our lover lies to us, our best friend whispers behind our back. I am talking about a belief that betrayal inundates the atoms of the universe, is so woven into the workings of the world that every step is treacherous, and that below the rich mud lies a mine. — Lauren Slater

In newsreels or news-photos, the Arab is always shown in large numbers. No individuality, no personal characteristics or experiences. Most of the pictures represent mass rage and misery, or irrational (hence hopelessly eccentric) gestures. Lurking behind all of these images is the menace of jihad. Consequence: a fear that the Muslims (or Arabs) will take over the world. — Edward W. Said

Like the devout theologian seeing the Devil lurking everywhere, Menninger, the devout Freudian, sees aggression. — Thomas Szasz

Most cops are not looking for understanding. They work in a world filled with a sense - real or imagined - of danger lurking around each corner and every hallway. Most cops are merely looking for respect. — Mike Barnicle

Invisibility
there are things we can't see now, that are there, that are embedded, that it really takes time in order to be able to see. There are many ghosts that are lurking around and lingering through us that takes the technology of another generation or so in order to uncover and show what those stains and strains and perceived flaws really we're building towards — Lynn Hershman Leeson

Reality is like a fruitcake; pretty enough to look at but with all sorts of nasty things lurking just beneath the surface. — A. Lee Martinez

hippocampus damage on a national scale can be measured by the number of guns owned by a country's citizens. According to The Washington Post, the U.S. has the highest per capita gun ownership in the world - nearly 90 guns for every 100 people - and the highest rate of gun-related murders in the developed world.4 The hippocampus senses danger lurking behind every tree. — Alberto Villoldo

everyone who comes to California brings a little of his own state with him. His own old state, regardless of where or when, is always lurking in the back of his memory for comparison with what he finds here. — Max Miller

Where do you get your ideas? people ask. Sometimes they're at the bottoms of cups of tea. Sometimes they're lurking in my shower. Sometimes they're waiting patiently in glass cases in museums. — Erin Morgenstern

She seemed pleasantly surprised that I'd read the homework assignment the night before, despite being somewhat distracted by the thoughts of gremlins lurking around my computer. Apparently satisfied that I could listen and stare out the window at the same time, Miss Singer finally left me alone, and I went back to brooding in peace. — Julie Kagawa

Silas talks about San Francisco, so avidly that I think he's trying to fill the air with words before it can be consumed with awkward silences. I don't know why I feel those silences lurking all around us, but every time Silas and I make eye contact, I can sense them there, waiting to slip in and make me blush. I try to avoid his eyes, stealing glances at his arched brows and bow-shaped lips whenever he's looking away. — Jackson Pearce

Although attracted by the humanities, I had chosen medicine as a career, seduced by the image of the 'man in white' dispensing care and solace to the suffering. But science was lurking around the corner, in the form of an unpaid student assistantship in the laboratory of physiology. — Christian De Duve

Are we safe from human exposure? I don't want the owners to find a busted-up angel and a buzzed vampire lurking in their shed and freak out. — Brandy Nacole

As Rockwell Kent said in his Alaskan journal, 'The wonder of wilderness was its tranquility.' I wish I had said that first. It grasps the salient point: not just tranquility, but wonder at tranquility. Wilderness is a surprise. We were raised on nature films that converted nature into thrilling entertainment; we still expect to find predators lurking everywhere in the wildness, and danger and excitement. But instead we find tranquility. And wonder at it.

Interesting word, "wonder." From Old English wundrain: 'to be affected with astonishment.' Its antonyms name the most pervasive symptoms of modern life: indifference, boredom, ennui. The dictionary strains to explain wonder, mentioning awe, astonishment, marvel, miracle, wizardry, bewilderment (note the 'wild' in 'bewilderment'). Finally it offers this: 'Far superior to anything formerly recognized or foreseen.'

Indeed. — Jack Turner

The mind of youth eagerly catches at promised pleasure: pure and innocent by nature, it thinks not of the dangers lurking beneath those pleasures, till too late to avoid them. — Susanna Rowson

She did it, she told herself, not just for the riches her exploits brought her, not just to satisfy that itch lurking at the heart of her. Some of her visitors were good souls driven half-ma with grief for deceased wives. She helped to ease their loss. The rest of her clients were driven by darker compulsions, and the decor in some of the rooms she passed reflected their tastes. In those cases, she helped the women - far lass qualified then she - who would quench those desires, willingly or unwillingly, should she choose not to make this her task. — Stephen Lloyd Jones

Did she not have it all, the beauty, the brains, the breeding, the brilliant marriage? Yet I felt a tangible sadness lurking within ... — Tatiana De Rosnay

My greatest fear is that the spirit of religion is lurking in so many churches today. Instead of men and women of God preaching about and applying Kingdom principles to everyday living, they have given the spirit of religion the power to cloud the path of others. — Myles Munroe

Cupid is a casuist, a mystic, and a cabalist,
Can your lurking thought surprise, And interpret your device, ... All things wait for and divine him,
How shall I dare to malign him? — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Er smile, which was her pretty feature, was never so pretty as when her sprightly phrase had a scratch lurking in it. — Henry James

Take your condescension, your unwanted advice, your creepy lurking outside of my door and shove it up your ass. — Erin Watt