A Stroke Of Midnight Quotes

Goddess" he said. Her voice floated to us. Yes, Child." Will I see you again?"
Just her voice now, young and old at the same time. "In the face of every woman you meet ~ Laurell K. Hamilton

The difference between a good and a great work of art was down to an almost indistinguishable series of largely unidentifiable factors: the élan of a brushstroke; the juxtaposition of colours; the collisions in a composition and an accidental stroke or two. Like a rolling stone gathering moss, a painting gathered history, comment and appreciation, all adding to its value. ~ Hannah Rothschild

Even when you're keeping score, golf is all about focusing on the shot at hand, the total score being a sum of those shots. On magic mushrooms, each shot was an act of self-expression - a karate kick, a pirouette, a paintbrush stroke. The course was an aren, a stage, and a canvas.

That's the way it felt playing in the backcountry, too. Going beyond the simple visual appreciation of a landscape and interacting with it beyond the reach of the physical body. Launching shots across canyons and rivers and down mountainsides and beaches. The motion of the body determining the motion of the ball - its flight an extension of the body like a spider riding the wind on a silken thread or a perfectly cast fly arcing down onto the surface of the water.

This is the part of the game that is hard for nongolfers to see. You have to play to feel it. It isn't visible through the TV screen or from outside the picket fences and privet hedges. The forest gets lost in tress of tartan and argyle, visors and V-necks. Golf seems to be one thing but is very much another, and backcountry golf and mushroom night golf are as true to the nature of the game as any stuffy country club championship or Saturday Nassau or fourball. ~ John Dunn

As it usually happened after an engagement, a heavy sadness was coming down over his spirits. To some degree it was the prodigious contrastbetween two modes of life: in violent hand-to-hand fighting threr was no room for time, reflexion, enmity or even pain unless it was disabling; everything moved with extreme speed, cut and parry with a reflex as fast as a sword-thrust, eyes automatically keeping watch on three or four men within reach, arm lunging at the first hint of a lowered guard, a cry to warn a friend, a roar to put an enemy off his stroke; and all this in an extraordinarily vivid state of mind, a kind of fierce exaltation, an intense living in the most immediate present. ~ Patrick O'Brian

And at the center of the room, a girl. A woman. She sits at the klavier with eyes closed, playing their song. Their story.
Elisabeth.
Her image flickers, wavers, a reflection seen on the edges of a candle flame. The shadows wriggle and writhe with curiosity, and with tremendous effort, the monster holds them back.
Please, he whispers. Please, let me have this one thing.
As he plays, the darkness recedes. From his skin, from his hair, the weight of the rams' horns on his head lightening. Color returns to the world and to his eyes, a mismatched blue and green as the monster remembers what it is to be a man.
Elisabeth.
He sits down on the bench beside her, begging her- beseeching her- to open her eyes and see him. Be with him. But she keeps her eyes closed, hands trembling on the keyboard.
Elisabeth.
She stirs. He sucks in a sharp breath and lifts his hand to stroke her cheek with fingers that are still mangled, broken, strange. His touch passes through her like a knife through smoke, yet she shivers as if she can feel the brush of his fingers in the dark places of her soul, her body, her heart. She is as insubstantial as mist, but he cannot resist the urge, the itch, to kiss. He closes his eyes and leans in close, imagining the silk of her skin against his lips.
They are met.
A gasp. His eyes fly open but hers are still closed. Her hand lifts to her mouth, as though the tingle of their unexpected caress still lingered there.
S. Jae-Jones

OVER THE PAST week, I've taught you how to exploit your best assets. Showed you how to make your man crave you emotionally, just as much as he does physically. I've even taught you how to stroke his fragile ego. That was the first phase of our program, and if you feel that was teetering on the threshold of your sexual tolerance, I suggest you leave now. Now, it's time to kick it up a notch. ~ S.L. Jennings

(...) I'm my very best self when I'm with him, but every day, I want him more than I need him. He taught me that love is patient, love is kind, love is calm and quiet. It's not a music video of big hair, big tears and erotic, electrical storms. It's two people pottering about a small flat making each other coffee. It's waking up every morning and feeling quietly delighted as you smell the sleep on his skin and observe the the way his tufty hair is framed by the pillow. It's sly hands sneaking up jumpers to stroke the silky skin underneath and wanting to share all your big news, bad news and pictures of especially adorable dogs. It's knowing that there's nothing that can't be talked over and solved by a walk to the park or a trip to the pub. ~ Daisy Buchanan

Saku's figure before me looked like a morning glory drawn with one stroke of the brush. My only regret was that the drawing was not by the hand of a master. ~ Soseki Natsume

If through no fault of his own the hero is crushed by a bulldozer in Act II, we are not impressed. Even though life is often like this - the absconding cashier on his way to Nicaragua is killed in a collision at the airport, the prominent statesman dies of a stroke in the midst of the negotiations he has spent years to bring about, the young lovers are drowned in a boating accident the day before their marriage - such events, the warp and woof of everyday life, seem irrelevant, meaningless. They are crude, undigested, unpurged bits of reality - to draw a metaphor from the late J. Edgar Hoover, they are "raw files." But it is the function of great art to purge and give meaning to human suffering, and so we expect that if the hero is indeed crushed by a bulldozer in Act II there will be some reason for it, and not just some reason but a good one, one which makes sense in terms of the hero's personality and action. In fact, we expect to be shown that he is in some way responsible for what happens to him. ~ Bernard Knox

Every emotion, every phrase or sentence, every bit of human action, can be a form of art. Art is not necessarily bound to the stereotypical notions of the human society. Art can come in the form of a little sentence, art can come in the form of a simple brush-stroke, art can come in the form of an everyday snapshot, art can come in the form of a plain strumming on the fret of an old guitar. Art doesn't require definition, and more importantly, art cannot be bound by the descriptions of words, yet words themselves can form the most rejuvenating and liberating form of art. ~ Abhijit Naskar

The evil heart which still remaineth in the Christian, doth always, when it is not attacking or obstructing, still reign and dwell within him. My heart is just as bad when no evil emanates from it, as when it is all over vileness in its external developments. A volcano is ever a volcano; even when it sleeps, trust it not. A lion is a lion, even though he play like a kid; and a serpent, is a serpent, even though you may stroke it while for a season it slumbers; there is still a venom in its sting when its azure scales invite the eye. My heart, even though for an hour, it may not have had an evil thought, is still evil. If it were possible that I could live for days without a single temptation from my own heart to sin, it would be still just as evil as it was before; and it is always either displaying its vileness, or else preparing for another display. It is either loading its cannon to shoot against us, or else it is positively at warfare with us. You may rest assured that the heart is never other than it originally was; the evil nature is still evil; and when there is no blaze, it is heaping up the wood, wherewith it is to blaze another day. It is gathering up from my joys, from my devotions, from my holiness, and from all I do, some materials to attack me at some future period. The evil nature is only evil, and that continually, without the slightest mitigation or element of good. The new nature must always wrestle and fight with it; and when the two natures are not wrestli ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word crisis. One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity. In a crisis, be aware of the danger - but recognize the opportunity. ~ Richard M. Nixon

STEVE CARELL IS NICE BUT IT IS SCARY

It has been said many times, but it is true: Steve Carell is a very nice guy. His niceness manifests itself mostly in the fact that he never complains. You could screw up a handful of takes outside in 104-degree smog-choked Panorama City heat, and Steve Carell's final words before collapsing of heat stroke would be a friendly and hopeful "Hey, you think you have that shot yet?"
I've always found Steve gentlemanly and private, like a Jane Austen character. The one notable thing about Steve's niceness is that he is also very smart, and that kind of niceness has always made me nervous. When smart people are nice, it's always terrifying, because I know they're taking in everything and thinking all kinds of smart and potentially judgmental things. Steve could never be as funny as he is, or as darkly observational an actor, without having an extremely acute sense of human flaws. As a result, I'm always trying to impress him, in the hope that he'll go home and tell his wife, Nancy, "Mindy was so funny and cool on set today. She just gets it."
Getting Steve to talk shit was one of the most difficult seven-year challenges, but I was determined to do it. A circle of actors could be in a fun, excoriating conversation about, say, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, and you'd shoot Steve an encouraging look that said, "Hey, come over here; we've made a space for you! We're trashing Dominique Strauss-Kahn to build cast rapport!" and the best ~ Mindy Kaling

When I'm preparing for a swim, I imagine absolutely everything about it: the color of the water, how cold it is, the taste of salt in my mouth. I visualize each and every stroke. ~ Lewis Gordon Pugh

You don't have to justify a beautiful stroke of good luck. Accept it. Smile and say thank you. ~ Garrison Keillor

A writer's voice is not character alone, it is not style alone; it is far more. A writer's voice line the stroke of an artist's brush- is the thumbprint of her whole person- her idea, wit, humor, passions, rhythms. ~ Patricia Lee Gauch

The origin of modern humanity was a stroke of luck - good for our species for a while, bad for most of the rest of life forever. All ~ Edward O. Wilson

Hannah enjoyed watching as he read; she barely cared what it was she'd given him. Or maybe that wasn't true. She did care. But the way he held a book in his hands, and the frown of concentration on his brow, kindled love in her heart. She wanteed to stroke him as he read. The altering expressions on his face were like cloud shadows passing over a landscape. ~ Robert Hillman

I can't listen to music often. It plays on my nerves; it makes me want to say silly, tender things and stroke the heads of people who, living in a dirty hell, can yet create such beauty. ~ Ilya Ehrenburg

It had become usual to give Napoleon the Credit for every Successful achievement and every stroke of good fortune. You would often hear one hen remark to another, "Under the guidance of our leader, Comrade Napoleon, I have laid five eggs in six days" or two cows, enjoying a drink at the pool, would exclaim,
"thanks to the leadership of Comrade Napoleon, how excellent this water tastes!" ... ~ George Orwell

Here am I: at one stroke incestuous, adulteress, sodomite, and all that in a girl who only lost her maidenhead today! What progress, my friends with what rapidity I advance along the thorny road of vice! ~ Marquis De Sade

As the ACE study has shown, child abuse and neglect is the single most preventable cause of mental illness, the single most common cause of drug and alcohol abuse, and a significant contributor to leading causes of death such as diabetes, heart disease, cancer, stroke, and suicide. ~ Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

Holy crap! I still have to pinch myself that I have not one, but TWO books out there that are Amazon bestsellers and I'm about to publish my third. I just want to shout out to anyone out there that felt like maybe they weren't good enough. YOU ARE! I struggled with this shit for years, but I'm so grateful that I just followed my gut. DON'T let anyone make you feel you are not worth it. This is coming from a high school dropout that only got her GED (Yeah, whatever, nothing to brag about) But is fulfilling her dreams now as a writer. What I'm saying is, take the dive, you may sink for a little, but doggy paddling along of what you want is so much more than learning the proper stroke on things...if that makes any sense? Be YOU and don't give a f*ck!
~Natalie Barnes ~ Natalie Barnes

What a glorious title, Nature, a veritable stroke of genius to have hit upon. It is more than a cosmos, more than a universe. It includes the seen as well as the unseen, the possible as well as the actual, Nature and Nature's God, mind and matter. I am lost in admiration of the effulgent blaze of ideas it calls forth. ~ James Joseph Sylvester

The ship, built on one element, but designed to have its life in another, seemed an image of the soul, formed and fashioned with many a weary hammer-stroke in this life, but finding its true element only when it sails out into the ocean of eternity. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

In a painting, you can't make out whether the artist painted the left eye before the right eye. In Chinese calligraphy, you can see the progression of the artist's stroke. ~ Vikram Seth

One should let one's fingernails grow for a fortnight. Oh! how sweet to snatch brutally from his bed a boy who has as yet nothing upon his upper lip, and, with eyes open wide, to feign to stroke his forehead softly, brushing back his beautiful locks! And all of a sudden, just when he least expects it, to sink your long nails into his tender breast, but not so that he dies, for if he died you would miss the sight of his subsequent sufferings. Then you drink his blood, sucking the wounds, and during this time, which should last an eternity, the child weeps. ~ Comte De Lautreamont

In 1931, Kurt Godel proved in his famous second incompleteness theorem that there could be no finitary proof of the consistency of arithmetic. He had killed Hilbert's program with a single stroke.

So should you be worried that all of mathematics might collapse tomorrow afternoon? For what it's worth, I'm not. I do believe in infinite sets, and I find the proofs of consistency that use infinite sets to be convincing enough to let me sleep at night. ~ Jordan Ellenberg

Behind every coincidence, every stroke of luck, and every miracle, there is inevitably a cold and calculating mind. ~ Ryohgo Narita

... I craved to stroke that delicate skin and run my fingers through her tresses as she moaned with hunger. I would grip a thick section of her hair in my hands, wrap it around my fingers, and take her from behind. And she would scream my name. ~ Kenya Wright

With every stroke of their keyboards they hacked a path through the forest that others would be required to follow. ~ Michael Lewis

Yet a much more fundamentally political dimension of the socially constructed nature of capital - nothing less than the specification of a parallel universe with its own natural laws and rules for the physical existence and subsistence of financial capital and its interaction with the other factors of production - has also often been overlooked in contemporary academic literature. Under the current monetary arrangements financial capital is a peculiar creature indeed. Money can be created ex nihilo at the stroke of a pen - or a keyboard - by a specific type of legal person entrusted with the task, not other legal or natural person. With the socially constructed ability to attract compound interest in a world where physical assets rot and break, it does not share the same physical reality with the mere mortal factors of production: even in cases where productive investments which enable the payment of interest in real terms can be identified, the compounding of interest on financial capital is not temporally limited to the period that the relevant physical assets can continue to produce exponential returns in real terms. Rather than representing accumulated wealth that could be "saved" to finance investment, the bulk of money disappears as soon as other factors of production are not willing to pay a tribute to induce its continuing circulation in the form of interest payments. In addition to the inherently political nature of specifications of money have been detached from vir ~ Tero Auvinen

It's one of those things; you just get a very nice stroke from being included in the next thing. ~ Andreas Katsulas

If you believe the many biographies of great men and women, none of them ever had syphilis. Which would be a remarkable stroke of luck on their part. Since its discovery in Barcelona in 1493 - supposedly brought back from the New World - the sexually transmitted disease just mowed down Europeans. Its effects were so devastating that some regard it as an equal trade for the measles and the smallpox Europeans exported to the Americas. ~ Jennifer Wright

An event is not any more intrinsically intelligible or unintelligible because of the pace at which it moves. For a man who does not believe in a miracle, a slow miracle would be just as incredible as a swift one. The Greek witch may have turned sailors to swine with a stroke of the wand. But to see a naval gentleman of our acquaintance looking a little more like a pig every day, till he ended with four trotters and a curly tail, would not be any more soothing. It might be rather more creepy and uncanny. ~ G.K. Chesterton

This to hear
Would Desdemona seriously incline:
But still the house-affairs would draw her thence:
Which ever as she could with haste dispatch,
She'ld come again, and with a greedy ear
Devour up my discourse: which I observing,
Took once a pliant hour, and found good means
To draw from her a prayer of earnest heart
That I would all my pilgrimage dilate,
Whereof by parcels she had something heard,
But not intentively: I did consent,
And often did beguile her of her tears,
When I did speak of some distressful stroke
That my youth suffer'd. My story being done,
She gave me for my pains a world of sighs:
She swore, in faith, twas strange, 'twas passing strange,
'Twas pitiful, 'twas wondrous pitiful:
She wish'd she had not heard it, yet she wish'd
That heaven had made her such a man: she thank'd me,
And bade me, if I had a friend that loved her,
I should but teach him how to tell my story.
And that would woo her. Upon this hint I spake:
She loved me for the dangers I had pass'd,
And I loved her that she did pity them.
This only is the witchcraft I have used:
Here comes the lady; let her witness it. ~ William Shakespeare

In fact he was incurably insane and hallucinated more or less continuously, but by a remarkable stroke of lateral thinking his fellow wizards had reasoned that, in that case, the whole business could be sorted out if only they could find a formula that caused him to hallucinate that he was completely sane.*
*This is a very common hallucination, shared by most people. ~ Terry Pratchett