After Dark Quotes

Well, look. You're the kid sister, but you always had a good, clear image of what you wanted for yourself. You were able to say no when you had to, and you did things at your own pace. But Eri Asai couldn't do that. From the time she was a little girl, her job was to play her assigned role and satisfy the people around her. She worked hard to be a perfect little Snow White - if I can borrow your name for her. It's true that everybody made a big fuss over her, but I'll bet that was really tough for her sometimes. At one of the most crucial points in her life, she didn't have a chance to establish a firm self. If 'complex' is too strong a word, let's just say she probably envied you."
Excerpt From: Haruki Murakami. "After Dark." iBooks. ~ Haruki Murakami

I have remade myself; or I am no one, driving a delivery van carrying boxes of electronics from nowhere to no place, the road empty before me by day, shared by headless headlights after dark, beams increasing briefly and then gone, beyond, somewhere off in the cross-traffic, catchable in the rearview if I dare. I thrive. I fail to thrive. I fall. I rise. Too many. Too late. Not that, not those, not these: this. ~ John Darnielle

I was ordered not to go out to Abu Ghraib after dark early on, because Abu Ghraib was extremely dangerous. ~ Janis Karpinski

Nothing but rules. Rule the first: no callers at the front door. Rule the second: no callers at the back door. Rule the third: no going out after dark. The six dusters had to be washed each evening and accounted for. ~ Edna O'Brien

Winter started today. The sky turned grey and the snow began to fall and it did not stop falling untill well after dark. ~ Neil Gaiman

With Sky, I can make the scary stuff disappear. We walk through the neighborhood after dark, and our shadows stand on top of each other, stretching across the whole street. We kiss, and I feel that if my shadow could stay inside of his, then he could eclipse everything that I don't want to remember. I can get lost in the things about him that are beautiful. ~ Ava Dellaira

The horror of what I saw chilled me to the bone. Blood glistened on my friend's lips. He knelt down and whispered something I could not hear. Star then stopped attacking, and to lay down to sleep. What the hell had he done to my dog? Just how much of a chance did I have to live through the next few moments of my life? I turned and ran as fast as I could, heart thudding in my chest. I ran down the pier, running for my life. Something came in front of me and grabbed me. It was Drew. He held my arms still in front of him. He stared intently into my eyes. ~ Stella Coulson

She murmured, "You're unfinished."
"Aye, precisely."
"I need to go."
When she moved to get up, he shoved her against his side and slapped her arse to keep her there. "You stay with me."
She snapped, "What do you want from me, Chase?"
He drew his head back in confusion. "I want everything. You're mine, Regin. ~ Kresley Cole

Has anybody ever seen a dramatic critic in the daytime? Of course not. They come out after dark, up to no good. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

Forty years as an astronomer have not quelled my enthusiasm for lying outside after dark, staring up at the stars. It isn't only the beauty of the night sky that thrills me. It's the sense I have that some of those points of light are the home stars of beings not so different from us, daily cares and all, who look across space with wonder, just as we do. ~ Frank Drake

[Veda:] Twenty years of thinking that vampires and witches and all things supernatural were nothing but a bedtime story: a myth, thought up by ignorant people and told to children to keep them from straying after dark. Now, when it was right in front of her, it still felt like a fairy tale. ~ Jessica Lave

What's up?' he said, like the church was always burning down and I always called him on a school night, telling him to come over after dark and bring a shovel. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

Please put your penises away, gentlemen. Dinner is procured. By a woman. ~ Kresley Cole

When I write after dark the shades of evening scatter their purple through my prose. ~ Cyril Connolly

Aidan from the past: He took her hands in his bloodied, callused ones. "Accept me?" His eyes glowed, his lashes spiked from rain.
Declan in the present: He gripped her nape. "I fuckin love you, Regin!" Rain spiked his lashes as he gazed down at her, commanding her, "Love me back! ~ Kresley Cole

Confinement is always waiting to envelope you.) Some pranksters put up a poster announcing another remedy, that all men be excluded from campus after dark. It was an equally logical solution, but men were shocked at being asked to disappear, to lose their freedom to move and participate, all because of the violence of one man. It is easy to name the disappearances of the Dirty War as crimes, ~ Rebecca Solnit

It gives men courage and ambition and the nerve for anything. It has the colour of gold, is clear as a glass and shines after dark as if the sunshine were still in it. ~ O. Henry

Where did you say you found that bird again?"
"In my head." Ronan's laugh was a sharp jackal cry.
"Dangerous place," commented Noah.
Ronan stumbled, all his edges blunted by alcohol, and the raven in his hands let out a feeble sound more percussive than vocal. He replied, "Not for Chainsaw."
Back out in the hard spring night, Gansey tipped his head back. Now that he knew that Ronan was all right, he could see that Henrietta after dark was a beautiful place, a patchwork town embroidered with black tree branches.
A raven, of all the birds for Ronan to turn up with.
Gansey didn't believe in coincidences. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

He'd only been gone two seconds, but the room got brighter when they were together, as if they were two elements that became brilliant in proximity. At Sam's clumsy efforts to carry the vacuum, Grace smiled a new smile that I thought only he ever got, and he shot her a withering look full of the sort of subtext you could only get from a lot of conversations whispered after dark.
It made me think of Isabel, back at her house. We didn't have what Sam and Grace had. We weren't even close to having it. I didn't think what we had could get to this, even if you gave it a thousand years. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

You may have an occasion to be traveling in southern Maine yourself one of these days. Pretty part of the countryside. You may even stop by Tookey's Bar for a drink. Nice place. They kept the name just the same. So have your drink, and then my advice to you is to keep right on moving north. Whatever you do, don't go up that road to Jerusalem's Lot. Especially not after dark. There's a little girl somewhere out there. And I think she's still waiting for her good-night kiss. ~ Stephen King

He was aware for the first time of how quiet the city had gotten. After dark the streets and canals seemed to empty out. As if Venice felt less of an obligation to pretend to be part of this millennium at night, and had reverted to its medieval self again. ~ Lev Grossman

The new day is almost here, but the old one is still dragging its heavy skirts. Just as ocean water and river water struggle against each other at a river mouth, the old time and the new time clash and blend. ~ Haruki Murakami

Declan and Regin:
"Kiss you?" As he waited for the revulsion to seize him, he found himself wondering how she would react. Would she moan into his mouth?
"It will help you remember me. Kiss me. Come on, you know you want to so bad. You want me so bad."
"Never." Bloody get off her, get away from her. But he needed to be above her like this, to master her, overpower her.
"Never? That boner of yours just called you a lair. ~ Kresley Cole

Kneeling before him, Regin murmured, "Don't let that Fegley worm get to you." Still staring ahead, the kid slowed his banging. "There's a good ... male of indeterminate species. ~ Kresley Cole

As a rule, dictatorships guarantee safe streets and terror of the doorbell. In democracy the streets may be unsafe after dark, but the most likely visitor in the early hours will be the milkman. ~ Adam Michnik

Now fairy stories are at risk too, like the forests. Padraic Column has suggested that artificial lighting dealt them a mortal wound: when people could read and be productive after dark, something fundamental changed, and there was no longer need or space for the ancient oral tradition. The stories were often confined to books, which makes the text static, and they were handed over to children. ~ Sara Maitland

Her clothes were almost dry by the time she reached the gatehouse. The portcullis was down and the gates barred, so she turned aside to a postern door. The gold cloaks who had the watch sneered when she told them to let her in. "Off with you," one said. "The kitchen scraps are gone, and we'll have no begging after dark."

"I'm not a beggar," she said. "I live here."

"I said, off with you. Do you need a clout on the ear to help your hearing?"

"I want to see my father."

The guards exchanged a glance. "I want to fuck the queen myself, for all the good it does me," the younger one said.

The older scowled. "Who's this father of yours, boy, the city ratcatcher?"

"The Hand of the King," Arya told him.

Both men laughed, but then the older one swung his fist at her, casually, as a man would swat a dog. Arya saw the blow coming even before it began. She danced back out of the way, untouched. "I'm not a boy," she spat at them. "I'm Arya Stark of Winterfell, and if you lay a hand on me my lord father will have both your heads on spikes. If you don't believe me, fetch Jory Cassel or Vayon Poole from the Tower of the Hand." She put her hands on her hips. "Now are you going to open the gate, or do you need a clout on the ear to help your hearing? ~ George R.R. Martin

Ideas, of course, have a place in fiction, and any writer of fiction needs a mind. But ideas are not the best subject matter for fiction. They do not dramatize well. They are, rather, a by-product, something the reader himself is led to formulate after watching the story unfold. The ideas, the generalizations, ought to be implicit in the selection and arrangement of the people and places and actions. They ought to haunt a piece of fiction as a ghost flits past an attic window after dark. ~ Wallace Stegner

And you expect us to take the word of your ... very pregnant wife, over a DNA test? No offense, but pregnancy tends to lower a female's IQ."
Burnett turned to the warlock, but before he could add his two cents - which didn't look as if it would be pleasant - Holiday added her own.
"That's funny," she said, but without humor.
"I've heard it also makes us vicious if provoked. And for your information, I'd be happy to put my IQ up against yours, pregnant or not."
Hunter, C. C. (2014-05-20). Reborn (Shadow Falls: After Dark) (p. 336). St. Martin's Press. Kindle Edition. ~ C.C. Hunter

In Vancouver, in Sydney and in Orange County, we live among fluorescent stores and streets so brightly lit that you can read a book after dark; in other places across our global body, there are blackouts and curfews every night. ~ Pico Iyer

He can learn things about me through your blood. Can learn about my sister!" She briefly covered her mouth. "He can see everything we've done! I don't want that leech to know what we do in private."
Lothaire strolled up, making a scoffing sound. "As if I don't watch you two live from a distance. ~ Kresley Cole

At night, Henrietta felt like magic. And at night, magic felt like it might be a terrible thing. After dark, it felt like anything could happen. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

they had not yet been destroyed as Africans completely. Slavery was the curse of their existence; but they had not been robbed yet of that which had been characteristically theirs. They tolerated the baptism and modest garments imposed on them by the French Catholic laws; but in the evenings, they made their cheap fabrics into alluring costumes, made jewelry of animal bones and bits of discarded metal which they polished to look like gold; and the slave cabins of Pointe du Lac were a foreign country, an African coast after dark, in which not even the coldest overseer would want to wander. ~ Anne Rice

Valkyrie, if there was ever a cradle to be robbed ... Gods, just look at him." ...
... "Face it, Nat, this is one tiger who will never be jumping through your flaming hoop
~ Kresley Cole

There's no poetry in me, Reginleit. No fine words." He stared down at her, his gaze seeming to consume her. "I come to you as a man unfinished. ~ Kresley Cole

The reason we fear to go out after dark is not that we may be set upon by bands of evangelicals and forced to read the New Testament, but that we may be set upon by gangs of feral young people who have been taught that nothing is superior to their own needs or feelings. ~ Philip Yancey

After dark vapors have oppress'd our plains
For a long dreary season, comes a day
Born of the gentle South, and clears away
From the sick heavens all unseemly stains.
The anxious month, relieved of its pains,
Takes as a long-lost right the feel of May;
The eyelids with the passing coolness play
Like rose leaves with the drip of Summer rains.
The calmest thoughts came round us; as of leaves
Budding - fruit ripening in stillness - Autumn suns
Smiling at eve upon the quiet sheaves -
Sweet Sappho's cheek - a smiling infant's breath -
The gradual sand that through an hour-glass runs -
A woodland rivulet - a Poet's death. ~ John Keats

Regin:
So everybody thinks Lothaire is hotter than the sun he will never see, but I
don't get it. ~ Kresley Cole

There is a story they tell, about a girl dared by her peers to venture to a local graveyard after dark. This was her folly: when they told her that standing on someone's grave at night would cause the inhabitant to reach up and pull her under, she scoffed. Scoffing is the first mistake a woman can make.

I will show you, she said.

Pride is the second mistake.

They gave her a knife to stick into the frosty earth, as a way of proving her presence and her theory.

She went to that graveyard. Some storytellers say that she picked the grave at random. I believe she selected a very old one, her choice tinged by self-doubt and the latent belief that if she were wrong, the intact muscle and flesh of a newly dead corpse would be more dangerous than one centuries gone.

She knelt on the grave and plunged the blade deep. As she stood to run she found she couldn't escape. Something was clutching at her clothes. She cried out and fell down.

When morning came, her friends arrived at the cemetery. They found her dead on the grave, the blade pinning the sturdy wool of her skirt to the ground. Dead of fright or exposure, would it matter when the parents arrived? She was not wrong, but it didn't matter any more. Afterwards, everyone believed that she had wished to die, even though she had died proving that she could live.

As it turns out, being right was the third, and worst, mistake. ~ Carmen Maria Machado

, It'd taken her several seconds to react to the sight of them together. She'd been almost hypnotized by the scene as Lothaire drank. Chase's masculine face had been tense, his gray eyes focused on the ground. Lothaire's face had been starkly beautiful, his pale blond hair brushing Chase's shoulder.
Light and dark. One terrible, one tragic.
And Lothaire had been ... hard. "Oh, gods!" She cried as she ran back along the trail. Hot poker for my eyes! Hot poker! ~ Kresley Cole

He clenched Nix's shoulders. 'Why did you hesitate? I saw you hesitate!' He shook her until her head lolled, while she grinned and said, 'Wheeee! ~ Kresley Cole

No one ever does live happily ever after, but we leave the children to find that out for themselves. ~ Stephen King

I don't want dead paint, so I test many of my works by studying them in a dark room at twilight or even after dark to check the luminosity. If the darker forms still have resonance and luminosity, I know the painting's working. ~ Will Barnet

Things are very different now because a lot of those little clubs don't exist. In Soho for instance, where nearly half my nightlife photographs were taken, it's rapidly changing. There isn't the same after dark frisson of excitement about the place any more. ~ Derek Ridgers

Allowing ourselves to become pure point of view, we hang in midair over the city. What we see now is a gigantic metropolis waking up. Commuter trains of many colors move in all directions, transporting people from place to place. Each of those under transport is a human being with a different face and mind, and at the same time each is a nameless part of the collective identity. Each is simultaneously a self-contained whole and a mere part. Handling this dualism of theirs skillfully and advantageously, they perform their morning rituals with deftness and precision: brushing teeth, shaving, tying neckties, applying lipstick. They check the morning news on TV, exchange words with their families, eat, defecate. ~ Haruki Murakami

On the perfect night there is nothing more transcendent or terrifying than boxing. It's the ultimate representation of the guilty pleasure. ~ Brian D'Ambrosio

A gang of unpredictable ruffians by day who turned to enthralling storytellers after dark. I would sometimes join them, and listen for a great part of the night to some of the finest fairy tales and most romantic legends it has ever been my fortune to hear. ~ Russell S. Bonds

His tone dripping condescension, Lothaire crooned, "Ah children, it's not yet story time." He closed his eyes and turned away, saying over his shoulder, "To anyone who contemplates even nearing me while I sleep: I will garrote you with your own viscera. ~ Kresley Cole

The studio rented a house for my wife in Los Angeles under a phony name to keep reporters away. Whenever I wanted to visit her and my children, I would have to sneak in the back door after dark. ~ Max Von Sydow

The woods played on our imaginations the most after dark, in our dorms as we were trying to fall asleep. You almost thought then you could hear the wind rustling the branches, and talking about it seemed only to make things worse. I remember one night, when we were furious with Marge K.
she'd done something really embarrassing to us during the day
we chose to punish her by hauling her out of bed, holding her face against the window pane and ordering her to look up at the woods. At first she kept her eyes screwed shut, but we twisted her arms and forced open her eyelids until she saw the distant outline against the moonlit sky, and that was enough to ensure for her a sobbing night of terror. ~ Kazuo Ishiguro

Once I'm free, we're going to find out exactly how much pain you can endure while remaining conscious. I won't stop until you tell me where my ring is." He leaned in to say at his ear, "I'll be sure to make you feel your loss. ~ Kresley Cole

My solo travels in Paris have brought many perfect hours of being alone but not a moment of loneliness. People who depend on other people are often in hiding from themselves. Two and a quarter million people live in the City of Light: you will see many of them and you will pass them in the street, but when you see Notre Dame after dark and walk home and perhaps stop to have a drink in the Marais, you can feel that the only thing that is missing from your experience is the common dependence on someone to distract your attention. You are living without it: you are on vacation. ~ Andrew O'Hagan

Nyx sold her womb somewhere between Punjai and Faleen, on the edge of the desert.
Drunk, but no longer bleeding, she pushed into a smoky cantina just after dark and ordered a pinch of morphine and a whiskey chaser. She bet all of her money on a boxer named Jaks, and lost it two rounds later when Jaks hit the floor like an antique harem girl. ~ Kameron Hurley

The discipline to rise early is not as difficult as the discipline of going to bed. This did not used to be so. Before electricity and radio and television and the Internet, going to bed soon after dark was not so difficult. There was not much to do. Today the strongest allurements to stay up and be entertained are against us. Therefore, the battle against weariness, which makes us drowsy as soon as we open our Bible in the morning, has to be fought in the evening, not just in the morning. ~ John Piper

Fuathan don't come out until after dark. Sunlight kills them.'
'Like vampires?'
'Kind of. Very mean, sub-aquatic vampires who don't need to drink your blood, but might do it anyway, just for fun. ~ Somerset McCoy

Nix:
I'm actively involved in steering the lives of thousands of beings. Which directly affects hundreds of
thousands, which indirectly affects millions, with a ripple effect reaching billions. If someone said, 'It
ain't easy being Nïxie,' I wouldn't cal him a liar. ~ Kresley Cole

When she scooped up her clothes, opened his door, then snapped her fingers for a guard down the hall, Wroth watched like a bystander.
"Pssst. Minion. I need these laundered. Very little starch. Don't just stand there gawking or you'll anger my good frenemy General Wroth. We're like this."
He couldn't see her but knew she was twining two fingers together. ~ Kresley Cole

When they passed the centaur king's cell, Volos pointed at Regin and slid his forefinger across his throat.

She replied, "Hey, didn't I see you in a donkey show down in Tijuana? No? You've got a twin then-- ~ Kresley Cole

He had lived his life as a good father but now Oscar Mendoza saw again his life as a boy. A daughter was a battle between fathers and boys in which the fathers fought valiantly and always lost. He knew that one by one each of his daughter would be lost, either honorably in the ceremony of marriage or, realistically, in a car pointed out towards the ocean well after dark. In his day, Oscar himself had made too many girls forget their better instincts and fine training by biting them with tender persistence at the base of their skull, just where the hairline grew in downy wisps. Girls were like kittens in this way, if you got them right at the nape of their neck, they went easily limp. Then he would whisper his suggestions, all the things they might do together, the wonderful dark explorations for which he was to be their guide. His voice traveled like a drug dripped down the spiraling canals of their ears until they had forgotten everything, until they had forgotten their own names, until they turned and offered themselves up to him, their bodies sweet and soft as marzipan. ~ Ann Patchett

Wouldn't be surprising. Most immortal females behave like they're in heat."
Her brows rose. "You are the one who taught me about pleasure." ... "And now in another lifetime, you ridicule me for missing it? Come on, Chase. Take me to where you live. Scared I'll find some footy pajamas? A fleshlight? I want a bath almost as much as you need to watch me take one. I get so much more talkative when I'm clean. Loreans are really fastidious, you know. ~ Kresley Cole

Valkyrie, I will get answers from you one way or another. Either through this painful exercise in futility, as you believe, or through a civilized conversation."
"You call this civilized?" She strained against her cuffs, leaning in to whisper, "Psst, Chase. The sexual tension between us is grueling. ~ Kresley Cole

You stay on me like my godsdamned shadow, vampire."
Mirceo's lips curved. "Eternally, demon. ~ Kresley Cole

Louisville, an hour after dark, is a carpet of gilt thumbtacks below them, with straight, twinkling lines like strings of beads leading out from it. Southeastward now, toward the Tennessee state-line. ("Jane Brown's Body") ~ Cornell Woolrich

That's what we do. Embellish. Decorate. Unvarnished truth has only limited appeal. Some events are a joy to recall, but others are best modified, even forgotten. They live in some lumber-room of the mind, housed somewhere you wouldn't want to go alone and never after dark. If I make a mistake in my work or if I change my mind, I can unpick. Undo what I've done. I can make good my errors and no one is the wiser. If they looked, even through a magnifying glass, all observers would see would be the tiny holes where my needle had travelled. I can erase even that evidence by scratching carefully at the weave of the lining with my needle, until the holes are no longer visible. But life isn't like that. Mistakes once made are rarely reversible. The holes they leave in the fabric of life aren't tiny and they can't be scratched away. You have to live with them as best you can. Work round them. That's why you have to come to terms with memory. You can't obliterate the past or eradicate it from the mind, even when, for our own good, memory enfolds us in a blanket of forgetfulness. There are always traces left, marks where time gripped us and left its telltale fingerprint. ~ Linda Gillard

As the number and the size of cities keep growing across the world, changing conditions bring shifts in language and vocabulary. Despite the social and linguistic complexity, however, there are only two types of cities: those where a woman can walk after dark relatively freely and those where she possibly cannot. - Elif Shafak, Taksim Square, Istanbul: Byzantine, Then and Now, ~ Catie Marron

He said that if you were able to look at the crows really closely, you would see that their eyes were stolen baubles, like buttons or marbles.
To get real eyes, they had to steal them from children. Older people's eyes were too set in their ways of looking and would be no good for a crow. That's why people don't let their children out after dark. The crow who stole the eyes of a real child was king. With a piece of plastic they could just see what was in front of them, but with a child's eyes, they could see the whole world. ~ Heather O'Neill

In the night the song came to me; but you were not there.
It found the words for which I had been seeking all day. Yes, in the stillness a moment after dark they throbbed into music, even as the stars then began to pulse with light; but you were not there. My hope was to sing it to you in the morning; but, try as I might, though the music came, the words hung back, when you were beside me. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

Would you like to stand next to me and introduce yourself to the class?' Smiled Mr Zimmerman, the English teacher.
Nope, I would rather turn into bat! Leave me the heck alone. Ughh, why is it teachers ask ' Would you like to?' No teen ever wants to stand in front of strangers and be forced to talk about them.
- Lenore Lee from Whitby After Dark ~ Stella Coulson

I'm only lonely when I'm driving in my car. I'm only lonely after dark. I'm only lonely when I watch my TV. I'm only lonely occasionally. ~ Melissa Etheridge

Yes, I definitely prefer the daylight population of the playing fields to that which comes there after dark. ~ M.R. James

Yo, Dekko, who do I gotta blow around here to get a shower? ~ Kresley Cole

I'm told the effect is cumulative
it will continue to worsen." Though outwardly calm as he explained this, his face had paled even more. "But if you tell me about the Valkyrie's weaknesses, I'll administer the antidote."
"Weaknesses? So many. Foremost, we're ... ticklish. ~ Kresley Cole

And speaking of females, if I call you by one's name while my fangs are plunged deep in your neck, just run with it. ~ Kresley Cole

..and Umétsu remembered that goblins were wont to assume feminine shapes after dark, in order to deceive and destroy men. ~ Lafcadio Hearn

China's use of 'night soil,' as the Chinese rightly call a manure that is collected after dark, is probably the reason that its soils are still healthy after four millennia of intensive agriculture, while other great civilizations - the Maya, for one - floundered when their soils turned to dust. ~ Rose George

And if you don't think I can hold my own against all those eighteenth-century mortals you were out tagging, then you're a fool, Casanova." ... "Oh, yes, I know all about you."
He went still. "What are you talking about?"
"I was alive back then. And all the Lore heard about the ruthless warlord brothers from Estonia. The general, the scholar, the enigma, and ... the manwhore. ~ Kresley Cole

What can come? my grandson Sam asked, when he was very young, after his mother had warned him not to go into the woods after dark. What can come? This was a brilliant question. Can is scarier than will. What will come limits itself. What can come has no boundaries. ~ Abigail Thomas

Regin!" He leapt up from a bunk.
"Well, well, the gang's all here." Nix must've given him Regin's whereabouts. Again.
"I'm going to get you out of here," he said, his green eyes aglow.
She snorted. "Let me know how that works out for you, Job MacBangup." Seeing Brandr here just brought her situation into stark relief. "It's curious though
you don't usually show up until it's time to bury him. ~ Kresley Cole

We'll play tomorrow. Besides, isn't it time for my cup of dinner?"
"I am not your blood gofer. Suck my dick, Vampirellie-suck it."
(Ellie and Regin, Lothaire, IAD #12) ~ Kresley Cole

I know exactly what you are now. I know what you will be - Lothaire ~ Kresley Cole

Well I am young." Just as he felt a flicker of ease, she murmured in a sexy voice, "But, baby, I've been busy. ~ Kresley Cole

The only exercise that Tess took at this time was after dark; and it was then, when out in the woods, that she seemed least solitary.She knew how to hit to a hair's-breadth that moment of evening when the light and the darkness are so evenly balanced that the constraint if day and the suspense of night neutralize each other, leaving absolute mental liberty.It is then that the plight of being alive becomes attenuated to its least possible dimensions. ~ Thomas Hardy

We'll be fine," Della added.
"You know we can take care of ourselves."
"Being stronger and faster doesn't make you invincible."
Oh, boy, Della had heard that one about a hundred times since she'd been Reborn.

Hunter, C. C. (2014-10-28). Eternal: Shadow Falls: After Dark (Kindle Locations 2590-2592). St. Martin's Press. Kindle Edition. ~ C.C. Hunter

There isn't a liquor store in the world that lets you buy on credit. So, if a man walks into a liquor store after dark, it's either because he's got money … or because he doesn't. ~ Andrew Vachss

We tried to love the world. We cleaned after this world, scrubbed its hospital floors and ironed its shirts, sweated in its kitchens and spooned school lunches, cared for its sick and nursed its babies. But the world didn't want us, so we left and gave our love to Upper Room. Now we're afraid of this world. A boy snatched Hattie's purse one night and now none of us go out after dark. We hardly go anywhere at all, besides Upper Room. We've seen what this world has to offer. We're scared of what it wants. ~ Brit Bennett

...the bad dreams are the way I bleed... ~ Peter S. Beagle

Celebrating something?" she asked.
A wicked smile formed on his lips, showing off his dimples. "Just a good night's sleep."
She smiled, too, though not without some reservation. Just what kind of person had they partnered with? A thief and an arsonist? Camille placed a napkin in her lap and devoured a slice of buttered toast.
Oscar hadn't returned from his walk until well after dark the night before. Camille had already turned down the lamps, pulled the blankets up to her ears, and buried her head in her pillow to avoid having to speak to or see him.
"Oscar." She felt her pulse rise. "What I said to you yesterday was miserable."
He kept his attention on his eggs.
"I didn't mean to be so thoughtless. I was just trying to avoid your question."
Oscar finished chewing. "I'm sorry, too," he whispered. "So what about Randall don't you want to talk about?"
The fork slipped between her damp fingers, and she set it on the rim of the plate.
"It's just…I haven't talked about it with anyone. I don't really know how to put it."
She wanted to be desperately in love with Randall and not just fond of him. She didn't want to need to marry Randall; she just wanted to want to. It had been her father's greatest hope for her-and for the company. There was no way to explain it all to Oscar, though, without going into her father's poor finances.
As she drew her palm into her lap, it left a handprint of sweat on the lacquered cherry table. Oscar ~ Angie Frazier

Never trust a scarecrow wearin' shades after dark. ~ Tom Waits

When you make a mistake, son, you face it.
he's gonna yell at me, dad
well, yeah. you broke his window. he has the right to yell.
(chase and his dad) ~ C.C. Hunter

Finally when he climbed below deck after dark, wondering where his dinner was, perhaps with a storm come up and rough seas and blinding rains, I'd sulk and lure him into the warm and steamy darkness and from the hairs of his warm body I'd breed a myriad smiling, sparkle-eyed one-year-olds, my broods, my flocks. In the churning seas, below the waves, together inside our hammock woven in coarse sailcloth by Unguentine's deft hands, a spherical webbed sack which hung and swivelled between the two walls of our bedroom, we would spin round and round with lapping tongues and the soft suction of lips, whirling, our amorous centrifuge, all night long, zipped inside against the elements. Now, years and years later, those nights, the thought and touch of them is enough to make me throw myself down on the ground and roll in the dust like a hen nibbled by mites, generating clouds, stars and all the rest. ~ Stanley Crawford

The park was a highly secure place for people to do drugs after dark, more secure even than homes and apartments. The police didn't make regular patrols because they were too busy answering 911 calls. Policemen were more likely to enter a user's building during the night, answering a domestic abuse call from down the hallway, than they were to make a pass through the Orange Park playground. ~ Jeff Hobbs

Bay's room was the first one at the top of the staircase. It was painted a dove gray that turned peacock blue after dark, as if the room absorbed the warmth of daylight and radiated with it at night. ~ Sarah Addison Allen

One who roams the channels after dark, searching for buried treasure. ~ Harriet Van Horne

Thus, the Church of Rome gave its official sanction to cruelty toward cats. Anyone coming upon a cat after dark was justified in killing or maiming it, on the grounds that it might be a witch in disguise. ~ John Bradshaw

Warlord, you once told me I'd always know what you're thinking. What are your thoughts now?"
"Partly, I'm thinking that I might shame myself in my trews, just from the feel of you next to me. ~ Kresley Cole

I am a good runner. There are many faster, but not so many for whom it has been as necessary to learn to become nothing but flight. ~ Peter S. Beagle

humans are like Hong Kong knockoffs of angels, in that we have a divine spark in us, but sometimes it goes dim when Cinemax "After Dark" is on. ~ Anonymous

Under Stars

The sleep of this night deepens

because I have walked coatless from the house

carrying the white envelope.

All night it will say one name

in its little tin house by the roadside.


I have raised the metal flag

so its shadow under the roadlamp

leaves an imprint on the rain-heavy bushes.

Now I will walk back

thinking of the few lights still on

in the town a mile away.


In the yellowed light of a kitchen

the millworker has finished his coffee,

his wife has laid out the white slices of bread

on the counter. Now while the bed they have left

is still warm, I will think of you, you

who are so far away

you have caused me to look up at the stars.


Tonight they have not moved

from childhood, those games played after dark.

Again I walk into the wet grass

toward the starry voices. Again, I

am the found one, intimate, returned

by all I touch on the way. ~ Tess Gallagher

Burnett stared down at her and his brows tightened the way they did right before he started arguing. The fact that she knew his pre-arguing expressions said a lot about their relationship.
Hunter, C. C. (2014-10-28). Eternal: Shadow Falls: After Dark (p. 304). St. Martin's Press. Kindle Edition. ~ C.C. Hunter

Once I am sure there's nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence.

Move forward, run my hand around the font.
From where I stand, the roof looks almost new -
Cleaned, or restored? Someone would know: I don't.
Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few
Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce
'Here endeth' much more loudly than I'd meant.
The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door
I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,
Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.

Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,
And always end much at a loss like this,
Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,
When churches will fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show,
Their parchment, plate and pyx in locked cases,
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.
Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?

Or, after dark, will dubious women come
To make their children touch a particular stone;
Pick simples for a cancer; or on some
Advised night see walking a dea ~ Philip Larkin