Along Quotes

Imagine you are walking along, and you trip over something and you turn around and find that it is a huge diamond. You would pick it up and do everything in your power to take care of that diamond because it might take care of you for the rest of your life. ~ Chad Michael Murray

Meridian


First daylight on the bittersweet-hung
sleeping porch at high summer; dew
all over the lawn, sowing diamond-
point-highlighted shadows;
the hired man's shadow revolving
along the walk, a flash of milkpails
passing; no threat in sight, no hint
anywhere in the universe, of that

apathy at the meridian, the noon
of absolute boredom; flies
crooning black lullabies in the kitchen,
milk-soured crocks, cream separator
still unwashed; what is there to life
but chores and more chores, dishwater,
fatigue, unwanted children; nothing
to stir the longueur of afternoon

except possibly thunderheads;
climbing, livid, turreted alabaster
lit up from within by splendor and terror
-- forded lightening's
split-second disaster. ~ Amy Clampitt

The truth is, however, that when two individuals detest each other, while being unable to get along without each other, it is not of all human relations the truest and most moving, but rather the most pitiable. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

I was stunned. The steppe seemed to burst into bloom, heaving a sigh and drawing aside the veil of darkness, and I saw two lovers in its vast expanse. They did not seem to notice me, it was as if I was not there. I was walking along and watching as they, oblivious to the world, swayed together in tune with the song. And I did not recognize them. It was the same old Daniyar in his shabby army shirt unbuttoned at the throat, but his eyes seemed to gleam in the gloom. it was my Jamilia clinging to him, yet so quiet and timid, with teardrops sparkling upon her eyelashes. They were newly born, uniquely happy people. Was this not true happiness? Was not Daniyar giving this inspired music utterly to her, was he not singing for her, singing about her? ~ Chingiz Aitmatov

It's a little-known secret, and it should probably stay that way: attempting suicide usually jump-starts your brain chemistry. There must be something about taking all those pills that either floods the brain sufficiently or depletes it so completely that balance is restored. Whatever the mechanism, the result is that you emerge on the other side of the attempt with an awareness of what it means to be alive. Simple acts seem miraculous: you can stand transfixed for hours just watching the wind ruffle the tiny hairs along the top of your arm. And always, with every sensation, is the knowledge that you must have survived for a reason. You just can't doubt it anymore. You must have a purpose, or you would have died. You have the rest of your life to discover what that purpose is. And you can't wait to start looking. ~ Terri Cheney

You don't even like me, remember?" That's what I try to say. What actually comes out of my mouth is closer to a baby's first attempt at babbling.
"Shh." He runs his fingertips along my cheek, caressing my face. "Hush. I'm right here." He looks at me with deep anguish in his eyes. Like there's so much he wants to tell me but feel it's too late now.
I want to stroke his face and tell him that it will be okay. That everything will be all right.
And I wish so badly that it would be. ~ Susan Ee

How deaf and stupid have I been!" he thought, walking swiftly along.
"When someone reads a text, wants to discover its meaning, he will not
scorn the symbols and letters and call them deceptions, coincidence, and
worthless hull, but he will read them, he will study and love them, letter
by letter. But I, who wanted to read the book of the world and the book
of my own being, I have, for the sake of a meaning I had anticipated be-fore I read, scorned the symbols and letters, I called the visible world a
deception, called my eyes and my tongue coincidental and worthless
forms without substance. No, this is over, I have awakened, I have in-deed awakened and have not been born before this very day. ~ Hermann Hesse

Man always travels along precipices ... His truest obligation is to keep his balance. ~ Pope John Paul II

Would the atheist continue such, let him beware how he admits Love into his breast: for God will surely come along with him. ~ Richard B. Garnett

MiSSS SScott
points to the numbers
along the wall.
I count up to twenty.
The class claps
on its own.
I'm furious,
unable to explain
I already learned
fractions and how to purify water.
So this is what dumb feels like. I hate, hate,
hate it. ~ Thanhha Lai

Somewhere along the line, I conditioned myself to be a quick thinker. I take a step back and try to assess the situation, then make the best decision possible at the moment. ~ Jonathan Sadowski

What of Thought? The Crew had developed a kind of shorthand whereby they could set forth any visions that might come their way. Conversations at the Spoon had become little more than proper nouns, literary allusions, critical or philosophical terms linked in certain ways. Depending on how you arranged the building blocks at your disposal, you were smart or stupid. Depending on how others reacted they were In or Out. The number of blocks, however, was finite.
"Mathematically, boy," he told himself, "if nobody else original comes along, they're bound to run out of arrangements someday. What then?" What indeed. This sort of arranging and rearranging was Decadence, but the exhaustion of all possible permutations and combinations was death.
It scared Eigenvalue, sometimes. He would go in back and look at the set of dentures. Teeth and metals endure. ~ Thomas Pynchon

I think because both of my parents were essentially salespeople, and Italian-Americans, I always seemed to get along with people; I had a knack of finding something to talk about. ~ Bob Colacello

We had some memorable times, on those long, hot summer nights, along the shores of the mighty Rideau; but we were by no means the first to do so. ~ Arlene Stafford-Wilson

Every year, at 8:00 PM on the second Saturday of July, hundreds of people gather along a section of Los Angeles rail track to drop their pants and moon passing passenger trains. ~ James Frey

It is a rather amazing fact that, of the very many dimensions along which the genital activity of one person can be differentiated from that of another (dimensions that include preference for certain acts, certain zones or sensations, certain physical types, a certain frequency, certain symbolic investments, certain relations of age or power, a certain species, a certain number of participants, and so on) precisely one, the gender of the object choice, emerged from the turn of the century, and has remained, as THE dimension denoted by the now ubiquitous category of 'sexual orientation. ~ Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick

I think China will do nothing to obstruct it, and they probably will go along with it. ~ Henry A. Kissinger

Then I thought of how strong I have become, how secure I feel with the person I now am, and how all along the way he has told me that I am brave, I am respected, I am loved and worth loving. ~ Veronica Roth

..:Before dreams are to be realize,
We are to be tested on everything
We have learned along the way.

Why?
Because we can't go to war
Only with the notion and knowledge of things.
We need to have experience and proper training under our belt in order to fulfill the mission.

Why?
Because without it and without proper training,
All knowledge is worthless.
And because one cannot react and act
To what one hasn't face before face to face:.. ~ Rafael Garcia

The Beautiful chariots of kings wear out, This body too undergoes decay. But the Dhamma of the good does not decay: So the good proclaim along with the good. ~ Gautama Buddha

The way people come into your life when you need them, it's wonderful and it happens in so many ways. It's like having an angel. Somebody comes along and helps you get right. ~ Stevie Ray Vaughan

There's a story behind every old ballad or work song or nonsense song that I ever knew. Sometimes it's a fascinating story. A story of people struggling for freedom, struggling to get along in this old world. ~ Pete Seeger

Twilight crept along the ground like a woman trailing long gray veils. ~ Elizabeth Peters

Emotional versatility is the art of making peace with the entire emotional spectrum by honing your capacity to channel various feelings along creative and constructive lines. It is not about controlling or condemning your feelings. It's about conducting your feelings in a self-edifying way. ~ T.K. Coleman

I shall do what needs doing myself, thank you," September said finally. "And I'll ask you kindly to stop telling me what I need and what will be wonderful just as soon as I agree with you! And most importantly to stop turning me into things I didn't ask to be and kissing me when I didn't ask to be kissed! You stole my First Kiss from me, Saturday. I haven't forgiven you just because I haven't had a shout about it yet. I've been busy! But I think I'm the only one who gets a say about when I get kissed or turned into a beast! Not that it wasn't nice to be a Wyvern or a Fairy. I'm not saying it wasn't nice." September could not help adding the apology. But she would absolutely not go meekly along relying on everyone else to fight and speak and wish for her. She would not have things done to her when she could do them on her own! She'd done plenty - and shouldn't Ell know that? Perhaps only her own dear red Ell would understand that she could not just let everyone else do her work for her. Her mother did not just hope some other man would come along and take up the work that needed doing in her factory. She did it herself, and so would September. ~ Catherynne M. Valente

It is not like studying German, where you mull along, in a groping, uncertain way, for thirty years; and at last, just as you think you've got it, they spring the subjunctive on you, and there you are. No- and I see now plainly enough, that the great pity about the German language is, that you can't fall off it and hurt yourself. There is nothing like that feature to make you attend strictly to business. ~ Mark Twain

We need to keep a very keen eye on our own government. It's getting too rich and redistributing wealth is a sure way of robbing us of our private property rights and other rights along with them. ~ Richard Pipes

white people might find that when we decenter our apparent interests, and center Black interests, that all along we were not really centering ourselves but only "whiteness" as a symbol or key to power, wealth, and prestige - mostly for a few white people who despise us only a little less than they do Black people. They are laughing at us. We blame Black "welfare queens" and Mexican "illegal aliens" while the whites who run this country grow richer and richer at our expense. Let's stick up for the most exploited, the most terrorized, and this might wake us up to the terror and exploitation which we also have been experiencing to a lesser degree. ~ Samantha Foster

Feelings do not grow old along with the body. Feelings form part of a world I don't know, but it's a world where there's no time, so space, no frontiers. ~ Paulo Coelho

But, it's not about the ending. It's about the ride. Yes, they're going to end up together. That's the whole point. But I read the book because I want to take part in the ride. I want to tag along, sit in the back seat and watch, see how they get there. ~ Georgia Beers

Further along in the sandy soil they found one clear impression after another. Here the tracking was swift. Zack was out in front when there was a different track. The bear print was changed.
Zack stared at it and felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. The print he saw in the sand wasn't a bear anymore. It was the bearfoot print of a man.
"Oh, shit!" he said. THE OTHER; R Lawson Gamble ~ R. Lawson Gamble

You know, if Nancy Davis hadn't come along when she did, I would have lost my soul. ~ Ronald Reagan

But we progress, Your Graces. Inexorably we progress. Albeit at the blind man's speed, as we tap-tap along in the dark. ~ John Le Carre

She'd kind of been missing him. In a friendly way. Like in a let's-catch-up-over-a-cup-of-coffee way, more than a let's-wander-along-the-beach-at-sunset-and-you-can-smile-at-me-with-those-incredible-blue-eyes way. Because she was with Daniel, she didn't think about other guys. She definitely didn't start blushing intensely in the middle of class while reminding herself that she didn't think about other guys. ~ Lauren Kate

What storyteller is adequate to her story? The story carries us along, bottles on the tide, each with our secret mesage and the fervent hope that it does not turn out to be blank. ~ Erica Jong

You look like a pagan. A pagan warrior queen." He scraped his teeth along her throat. "Naked, glowing, wearing nothing but ropes of diamonds."
"I want you inside me." Breath tearing, she bit at his ear. "Hot, hard inside me."
"My hands are busy at the moment." He filled them with her breasts. "I'll need help getting out of this shirt."
She reached up, tore it open, sending buttons flying.
"Well, that's one way."
"It's how it works when you're a pagan warrior queen. Take me." She gripped his hair, yanked his mouth to hers. "I want you to take me like there's nothing you need more."
"There isn't. It's you. It's always you. ~ J.D. Robb

No way you can get stuck. Your head is much smaller. Look at this big coconut of mine. It's practically Jupiter. Yours is more like, I don't know, Mercury or something."

"That doesn't mean I'm going along with an idea that you're pulling out of Uranus."

We both stopped to snicker. Hard to resist a Uranus joke. ~ Brad Parks

A lifelong insomniac, I sleep like one newly dead every night and dream deeply harmonious dreams of swimming along with the current in a clear green river, playing and at home in the water. On the first night, I dreamed that the real name of the house was not Bramasole but Cento Angeli, One Hundred Angels, and that I would discover them one by one. Is it bad luck to change the name of a house, as it is to rename a boat? As a trepid foreigner, I wouldn't. But for me, the house now has a secret name as well as its own name. ~ Frances Mayes

Education is at present concerned with outward efficiency, and it utterly disregards, or deliberately perverts, the inward nature of man; it develops only one part of him and leaves the rest to drag along as best it can.

Our inner confusion, antagonism and fear ever overcome the outer structure of society, however nobly conceived and cunningly built. When there is not the right kind of education we destroy one another, and physical security for every individual is denied.

To educate the student rightly is to help him to understand the total process of himself; for it is only when there is integration of the mind and heart in everyday action that there can be intelligence and inward transformation.

While offering information and technical training, education should above all encourage an integrated outlook on life; it should help the student to recognize and break down in himself all social distinctions and prejudices, and discourage the acquisitive pursuit of power and domination. It should encourage the right kind of self-observation and the experiencing of life as a whole, which is not to give significance to the part, to the "me" and the "mine", but to help the mind to go above and beyond itself to discover the real.

Freedom comes into being only through self-knowledge in one's daily occupations, that is, in one's relationship with people, with things, with ideas and with nature. If the educator is helping the student to be integ ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

Sometimes, in the throes of a nightmare when unseen powers whirl one over the roofs of strange dead cities toward the grinning chasm of Nis, it is a relief and even a delight to shriek wildly and throw oneself voluntarily along with the hideous vortex of dream-doom into whatever bottomless gulf may yawn. ~ H.P. Lovecraft

You spend your whole life convincing yourself you are a chapter worth following, and then someone comes along and doesn't want to read the ending, and suddenly the whole story falls apart ~ Courtney Peppernell

She smells like fucking freedom. A place I want to get lost in. A future I never cared about until she came along. ~ C.M. Lally

You wait a lifetime to meet someone who understands you, accepts you as you are. At the end, you find that someone, all along, has been you. ~ Richard Bach

The orgy room at Dave's Baths was democracy made flesh; race and social standing were checked at the door along with clothes. ~ Christopher Bram

Curiously enough, it seems that at times the spiritual side prevails, and then the materialistic side - in wave-like motions following each other. ...At one time the full flood of materialistic ideas prevails, and everything in this life - prosperity, the education which procures more pleasures, more food - will become glorious at first and then that will degrade and degenerate. Along with the prosperity will rise to white heat all the inborn jealousies and hatreds of the human race. Competition and merciless cruelty will be the watchword of the day. To quote a very commonplace and not very elegant English proverb, "Everyone for himself, and the devil take the hindmost", becomes the motto of the day. Then people think that the whole scheme of life is a failure. And the world would be destroyed had not spirituality come to the rescue and lent a helping hand to the sinking world. Then the world gets new hope and finds a new basis for a new building, and another wave of spirituality comes, which in time again declines. As a rule, spirituality brings a class of men who lay exclusive claim to the special powers of the world. The immediate effect of this is a reaction towards materialism, which opens the door to scores of exclusive claims, until the time comes when not only all the spiritual powers of the race, but all its material powers and privileges are centered in the hands of a very few; and these few, standing on the necks of the masses of the people, want to rule them. Then ~ Swami Vivekananda

A lot of other people wanted a free production UNIX with lots of bells and whistles and wanted to convert MINIX into that. I was dragged along in the maelstrom for a while, but when Linux came along, I was actually relieved that I could go back to professoring. ~ Andrew S. Tanenbaum

One of the more challenging things in life is not being the guy who does the cheating, but not saying anything about it and going along with it. ~ Dale Murphy

You're not dead," I whispered, focusing on that truth. I pressed against him. "I'm not dead." "Stay that way." He swept his thumb along my knuckles. "You got it. ~ Lori M. Lee

Another Elvis will not come along. He got wasted, but it's alright. ~ David Byrne

Don't forget to pause and nourish yourself a bit along the way. When you're born to help others sometimes you forget to help yourself. ~ Paula Heller Garland

Science is unflinchingly deterministic, and it has begun to force its determinism into morals. On some shining tomorrow a psychoanalyst may be put into the box to prove that perjury is simply a compulsion neurosis, like beating time with the foot at a concert or counting the lampposts along the highway. ~ H.L. Mencken

Every now and then, I'd meet a guy and think that we were getting along great, and suddenly I'd stop hearing from him. Not only did he stop calling, but if I happened to bump into him sometime later he always acted like I had the plague. I didn't understand it. I still don't. And it bothered me. It hurt me. With time, it got harder and harder to keep blaming the guys, and I eventually came to the conclusion that there was something wrong with me. That maybe I was simply meant to live my life alone. ~ Nicholas Sparks

My baby." His eyes close. "She doesn't bare her teeth in vain," he whispers, running his tongue along the wound. "She bites. ~ Meagan Brandy

I've got the bundle hidden in my jammies," chuckled GusGus as they followed along at a distance. "And I know what to say if anyone asks--I'm having a baby!" From ~ S.M.W. Claw

Chris, soap people are like
us-they seldom go outdoors. And when they do, we only hear about it,
never see it. They loll about in living rooms, bedrooms, sit in the
kitchens and sip coffee or stand up and drink martinis-but never, never
go outside before our eyes. And whenever something good happens,
whenever they think they're finally going to be happy, some catastrophe
comes along to dash their hopes. ~ V.C. Andrews

Of course, even without my help, other forces would keep the cosmos chugging along. Many different belief systems powered the revolution of the planets and stars. Wolves would still chase Sol across the sky. Ra would continue his daily journey in his sun barque. Tonatiuh would keep running on his surplus blood from human sacrifices back in the Aztec days. And that other thing - science - would still generate gravity and quantum physics or whatever. ~ Rick Riordan

Already it is twilight down in the Laredito. Bats fly forth from their roostings in courthouse and tower and circle the quarter. The air is full of the smell of burning charcoal. Children and dogs squat by the mud stoops and gamecocks flap and settle in the branches of the fruit trees. They go afoot, these comrades, down along a bare adobe wall. Band music carries dimly from the square. They pass a watercart in the street and they pass a hole in the wall where by the light of a small forgefire an old man beats out shapes of metal. They pass in a doorway a young girl whose beauty becomes the flowers about.

They arrive at last before a wooden door. It is hinged into a larger door or gate and all must step over the foot-high sill where a thousand boots have scuffled away the wood, where fools in their hundreds have tripped or fallen or tottered drunkenly into the street. They pass along a ramada in a courtyard by an old grape arbor where small fowl nod in the dusk among the gnarled and barren vines and they enter a cantina where the lamps are lit and they cross stooping under a low beam to a bar and belly up one two three.

There is an old disordered Mennonite in this place and he turns to study them. A thin man in a leather weskit, a black and straightbrim hat set square on his head, a thin rim of whiskers. The recruits order glasses of whiskey and drink them down and order more. There are monte games at tables by the wall and there are whores at another ~ Cormac McCarthy

There's some homophobia within black community, but there's some strong homophobia throughout the whole of American society as well, particularly throughout the South to a degree, whether white or black. And since many of us migrated from the South, that could be a strong connection along those lines. ~ Otis Moss III

The Nazis, for him, are merely available movie tropes
articulate monsters with a talent for sadism. By making the Americans cruel, too, he escapes the customary division of good and evil along national lines, but he escapes any sense of moral accountability as well. In a Tarantino war, everyone commits atrocities. Like all the director's work after 'Jackie Brown,' the movie is pure sensation. It's disconnected from feeling, and an eerie blankness
it's too shallow to be called nihilism
undermines even the best scenes. ~ David Denby

Any country that enjoys fighting and bitching as a recreation as much as America does will always be, in some way or another, walking along a knife's edge. We're a nation that spends its afternoons watching white trash throw chairs at each other on Jerry Springer, its drive time listening to the partisan rantings of this or that hysterical political demagogue, and its late-night hours composing feverish blog entries full of anonymous screeds and denunciations. All of this shit is harmless enough so long as the power comes on every morning, fresh milk makes it to the shelves, there's a dial tone, and your front yard isn't underwater. But it becomes a problem when the magic grid goes down and suddenly there's no more machinery between you and whomever you happen to get off on hating. ~ Matt Taibbi

The idea of taking a song, envisioning the overall sound in my head and then bringing the arrangement to life in the studio ... well, that gives me satisfaction like nothing else ... My state of being has been elevated, because I've been exercising, writing songs ... No masterpiece ever came overnight. A person's masterpiece is something that you nurture along. ~ Brian Wilson

If I feel anxious every time someone is staring at me, well, I can't control what they stare at, but my reaction is, I'm just not going to go outside the house. I'm going to stay in and chill. And when I do go out, I understand what comes along with that. ~ Tom Brady

I mean, it's stupid to miss someone you didn't even get along with. But I don't know, it was nice, you know, having someone you could always fight with. ~ John Green

A few things go through your mind when you do something stupid. Like, oh hell this was stupid, along with that moment of perfect clarity that this might be the last stupid thing you ever do. ~ Amelia Hutchins

His lips touched the back of her neck and moved along her stubborn shoulder. One hand stroked her breasts, and the other moved unerringly between her thighs; he found the most sensitive part of her and moved against her and in her until her half-formed protests turned into soft, stifled moans. The moon moved lower in the sky, tangling itself in her eyes until he closed them with surprisingly gentle kisses. Her body was the ocean and his was the wild wind
turning ripples into foam-capped breakers that soared and curved translucently before they crashed into oblivion against distant shores. ~ Rosemary Rogers

Now I'm just standing here on the conveyor. Along for the ride. I reach the end, turn around, and go back the other way. The world has been distilled. Being dead is easy. After a few hours of this, I notice a female on the opposite conveyor. She doesn't lurch or groan like most of us. Her head just lolls from side to side. I like that about her. That she doesn't lurch or groan. I catch her eye and stare at her. ~ Isaac Marion

O the blest eyes, the happy hearts,
That see, that know the guiding thread so fine,
Along the mighty labyrinth."
-from "Song of the Universal ~ Walt Whitman

You have been with me all along, even when it hurt like hell you have been with me, because I love you. And when you love someone they are with you forever. ~ Jacqueline Simon Gunn

She reaches down, her fingers trailing along the zipper of my pants, and the movement sears through me. My vision goes white. For a moment I hear nothing but my heart, pounding in my head.
"You are trying to kill me," I say.
"Aaron." I can feel her smile as she whispers the word in my ear. She's unbuttoning my pants. "Please."
And I, I am gone. ~ Tahereh Mafi

A lot of people listen to podcasts because they want to learn something and be entertained along the way. ~ Alex Blumberg

If we have no idea what we believe in, we'll go along with anything. Truth takes courage. Courage to stand up for what we believe in. Not necessarily in a confrontational way, but in a gentle yet firm way. Like an oak tree, able to sway gently in the wind, but strongly rooted to the ground. ~ A.C. Ping

He nodded then cocked his head and gave me a sharp, policeman like look, as though realizing that he had been on the wrong page with me all along. I fell under the heading of Dealing with Assholes. ~ Michael Chabon

The voice came first, then the chill across her skin. A moment later, Noah Czerny joined her, dressed as always in his navy Aglionby sweater. Joined was perhaps the wrong verb. Manifested was better. The phrase trick of the light was even more superior. Trick of the mind was the best. Because it was rare that Blue noticed the moment Noah actually appeared. It wasn't that he gently resolved into being. It was that somehow her brain rewrote the minute before to pretend that Noah had been slouching beside her all along. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

Lev looks at Risa, almost afraid to ask the obvious question. Finally he says, 'Uh ... why do we have a baby?'
'Ask him,' says Risa.
Stone-faced, Conner looks out of the window. 'They're looking for two boys and a girl. Having a baby will throw them off.'
'Great,' snaps Risa. 'Maybe we should all pick up a baby along the way. ~ Neal Shusterman

When the river takes me I don't try to swim or stay afloat. I open my eyes and my mouth and let the water fill me up. I feel my lungs spasm but there's no pain, and I stop being afraid. The current carries me along. I'm flotsam, and I understand that flotsam is all I've ever been. ~ Hillary Jordan

I can't selfishly take journeys anymore because I have to take a little boy along with me. ~ Sandra Bullock

He had given each a code and procedure to follow should any kind of disaster arise, be it a siege of the city or a revolt from within. This revolt fulfilled the second contingency. He would not have to gather everyone himself. He need only contact a couple of them and they would pass along the information through their prescribed channels. All of them would follow various prepared routes to meet in the secret passageways below the palace, created for this very purpose. Down there, they could weather the danger in the city above. They even had food stores which stayed well-preserved in the cool and dry environment. ~ Brian Godawa

I can't change the past and I'm truly sorry that people got hurt along the way but not everything reported in the media is reality and continuing to rehash things publicly only makes it more difficult for everyone to heal. I hope for the sake of our children we can all move forward and heal privately. I wish their mother nothing but the best. ~ Eddie Cibrian

Every human being has a fascinating existence, with a big cast of good and evil characters in each. And almost always, somewhere along the way, magic. ~ Lucinda Riley

Yes, the woman." Cunco took a deep breath. "Women like her don't come along that often, you know. Maybe only every two hundred years. She everything a man could dream of. Beautiful, clever, wise, considerate, passionate--absolutely everything. ~ Nina George

If I thought there was some reason to be concerned about them, I wouldn't be sleeping in this house tonight. (When asked about continued presence of Soviet nuclear submarines along US coastlines) ~ Ronald Reagan

No matter what anyone says, no matter the excuse or explanation, whatever a person does in the end is what he intended to do all along. ~ Cus D'Amato

Betsy was so full of joy that she had to be alone. She went upstairs to her bedroom and sat down on Uncle Keith's trunk. Behind Tacy's house the sun had set. A wind had sprung up and the trees, their color dimmed, moved under a brooding sky. All the stories she had told Tacy and Tib seemed to be dancing in those trees, along with all the stories she planned to write some day and all the stories she would read at the library. Good stories. Great stories. The classics. Not Rena's novels. ~ Maud Hart Lovelace

The way that I write novels in particular is I don't usually outline; I just write. Part of the fun is discovering what's happening in the story as I'm going along. ~ John Scalzi

The further away from something we are, the more we tend to mistrust it, Peter. we dislike the unknown, we reject anything alien to us: people with views that contradict ours, societies that are run along very different lines. ~ Gemma Malley

Somewhere along the way, there develops within the soul a yearning that can no longer be ignored, a craving for the great love affair. We feel it drawing ever closer. It is the greatest of them all. It cannot fail. It is all consuming. It is incomparable. It is the love affair with our own true nature and the source from which it comes. The desire is in all of us but, more often than not, it is ignored for other interests. We wrestle with each interest, trying to make it work, growing with each adventure until the light has grown bright enough for us to reach for it. ~ Donna Goddard

It wasn't depression, exactly; more a weird, restless pressure that made me wander the house late at night, opening the best bottles of wine in our cellar and drinking them alone while I channel-surfed along the forgotten byways of cable TV. ~ Jennifer Egan

There are six billion egos living on this planet. Can you not see why the world is in such a sorry state? Can you not see why we are destroying Heaven on Earth for our own short-term gain? Can you not see why the tiger and the gorilla are facing extinction, along with countless other species? Can you not see why there is so much injustice, abuse, greed, cruelty, and inequality upon this planet? We get along with those who share the same set of illusions. It is called collusion. They are our friends. We declare war on those who dare to believe in another set of illusions. They are our enemies. Religion, and particularly religious fundamentalism, is the most obvious and dangerous example. Nationalism is another. "Me! Me! Me!" "Mine! Mine! Mine!" "I'm right. I'm right. I'm right." "How can I use this or make use of this?" "What's in it for me?" You ~ Mary Bruggeman

How does one get rid of fear? Ramana: What is fear? It is only a thought. If there is anything besides the Self there is reason to fear. Who sees things separate from the Self? First the ego arises and sees objects as external. If the ego does not rise, the Self alone exists and there is nothing external. For anything external to oneself implies the existence of the seer within. Seeking it there will eliminate doubt and fear. Not only fear, all other thoughts centred round the ego will disappear along with it. ~ Ramana Maharshi

Larry sat with his arm stretched out along the top of the front seat. His shirt cuff was pulled back by his position and displayed his slim, strong wrist and the lower part of his brown arm lightly covered with fine hairs. The sun shone goldly upon them. Something in Isabel's immobility attracted my attention, and I glanced at her. She was so still that you might have thought her hypnotized. Her breath was hurried. Her eyes were fixed on the sinewy wrist with its little golden hairs and on that long, delicate, but powerful hand, and I have never seen on a human countenance such a hungry concupiscence as I saw then on hers. It was a mask of lust. I would never have believed that her beautiful features could assume an expression of such unbridled sensuality. It was animal rather than human. The beauty was stripped from her face; the look upon it made her hideous and frightening. It horribly suggested the bitch in heat and I felt rather sick. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

She holds within her the memory of this journey, drawn out for her like a constellation in the darkness, each element of the landscape connecting her along a line that is her past. Carter may want to come here now, but she's the one who belongs, on this road, under this piece of sky. ~ Kirsty Gunn

Slowly I began to understand that the plans God has for us don't just include "good" things, but the whole array of human events … I remember my mom saying that many people look for miracles - things that in their human minds "fix" a difficult situation. Many miracles, however, are not a change to the normal course of human events; they're found in God's ability and desire to sustain and nurture people through even the worst situations. Somewhere along the way, I stopped demanding that God fix the problems in my life and started to be thankful for his presence as I endured them. ~ Lisa Beamer

The Gentle Gardener
I'd like to leave but daffodils to mark my little way,
To leave but tulips red and white behind me as I stray;
I'd like to pass away from earth and feel I'd left behind
But roses and forget-me-nots for all who come to find.
I'd like to sow the barren spots with all the flowers of earth,
To leave a path where those who come should find but gentle mirth;
And when at last I'm called upon to join the heavenly throng
I'd like to feel along my way I'd left no sign of wrong.
And yet the cares are many and the hours of toil are few;
There is not time enough on earth for all I'd like to do;
But, having lived and having toiled, I'd like the world to find
Some little touch of beauty that my soul had left behind. ~ Edgar A. Guest

Elsa learned all about LPs and CDs that afternoon. That was when she worked out why old people seem to have so much free time, because in the olden days until Spotify came along they must have used up almost all their time just changing the track. She ~ Fredrik Backman

An arc of crisis stretches along the shores of the Indian Ocean, with fragile social and political structures in a region of vital importance to us threatened with fragmentation. The resulting political chaos could well be filled by elements hostile to our values and sympathetic to our adversaries. ~ Zbigniew Brzezinski

Questions arise for self-reflection: "Is it really all that money that I want, or is it the glamour that I have attached to it? What is it that I want from that job title or from that designation of "Dr." and "Esq." and "Rev."? Is it the responsibility and activities that go along with it, or is it the glamour and esteem associated with it? Do I really love that person, or am I in love with the glamour I have projected onto him or her?" The more we let go, the more we de-glamorize the world. The more it is de-glamorized, the less it runs us. ~ David R. Hawkins

What attracted me to Zen was my first teacher, Tim McCarthy. He was extremely genuine. It wasn't even really a Zen thing, that sort of came along later. ~ Brad Warner

Now That I Am in Madrid I Can Think "

I think of you
and the continents brilliant and arid
and the slender heart you are sharing my share of with the American air
as the lungs I have felt sonorously subside slowly greet each morning
and your brown lashes flutter revealing two perfect dawns colored by New York

see a vast bridge stetching to the humbled outskirts with only you
Standing on the edge of the purple like an only tree
and in Toledo the olive groves' soft blue look at the hills with silver
like glasses like an old ladies hair
It's well known that God and I don't get along together
It's just a view of the brass works for me, I don't care about the Moors
seen through you the great works of death, you are greater

you are smiling, you are emptying the world so we can be alone together. ~ Frank O'Hara

June 16, 2018

I feel lovely, but it's just the drugs. But sometimes I think that maybe it isn't just the drugs? Maybe these feelings are inside of us all along, and the drugs find them. Maybe that's why some people choose to be junkies because they choose to believe that they're worthy of happiness. And maybe some of us like the pain so much that we numb it in order for us to really understand it. To put these suicidal feelings to sleep and fall in love with the way we fall in love with the stars within us. I think self-destruction is the most addictive thing. There's something very powerful and magical about it. ~ Juansen Dizon

Walking along the sidewalk and staring at the street, I couldn't help but wonder if my date was thinking how provocative the term "manhole cover" is. ~ Jarod Kintz