Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield Quotes

Evening Concert, Sainte-Chapelle
The celebrated windows flamed with light
directly pouring north across the Seine;
we rustled into place. Then violins
vaunting Vivaldi's strident strength, then Brahms,
seemed to suck with their passionate sweetness,
bit by bit, the vigor from the red,
the blazing blue, so that the listening eye
saw suddenly the thick black lines, in shapes
of shield and cross and strut and brace, that held
the holy glowing fantasy together.
The music surged; the glow became a milk,
a whisper to the eye, a glimmer ebbed
until our beating hearts, our violins
were cased in thin but solid sheets of lead. ~ John Updike

Cade stood midfield, waiting for Zach to take his place at the line of scrimmage.

"When's the last time you threw a football?" Zach asked worriedly.

Aside from the few times Cade had tossed one around casually with friends, a long time. "About twelve years."

Zach threw him a panicked look.

"I won't push it," Cade said. It wasn't as if his shoulder was entirely unusable; in fact, on a daily basis it didn't bother him at all. His rotator cuff simply couldn't withstand the repetitive stress of competitive football. "I just want to see what I can do." He pointed emphatically. "And if the answer is 'not much,' you better not tell a soul. I've got a reputation to uphold here."

Zach smiled, loosening up. "All right. I don't want to stand in the way of you reliving your glory days or whatever."

"Good. But in case this all goes south, my car keys are in the outside pocket of my duffle bag. When you drive me to the emergency room, if I'm too busy mumbling incoherently from the pain, just tell them I've got Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance."

Zach's eyes went wide.

"I'm kidding, Zach. Now get moving. ~ Julie James

Fourth Floor, Dawn, Up All Night Writing Letters
Pigeons shake their wings on the copper church roof
out my window across the street, a bird perched on the cross
surveys the city's blue-grey clouds. Larry Rivers
'll come at 10 AM and take my picture. I'm taking
your picture, pigeons. I'm writing you down, Dawn.
I'm immortalizing your exhaust, Avenue A bus.
O Thought, now you'll have to think the same thing forever! ~ Allen Ginsberg

The next night I went back to the sea dressed in 1950s silk travel scarves – Paris with the Eiffel tower and ladies in hats and pink poodles, Venice with bronze horses and gondoliers, New York in celestial blue and silver. I brought candles and lit the candles, all the candles, in a circle around the lifeguard stand and put a tape in my boom box. I came down the ramp with the sea lapping at my feet and the air like a scarf of warm silk and the stars like my tiara. And my angel was sitting there solemnly in the sand, sitting cross-legged like a buddha, with sand freckling his brown limbs and he watched me the way no boy had ever watched me before, with so much tenderness and also a tremendous sorrow, which was what my dances were about just as much, the sorrow of not being loved the way my womb, rocking emptily inside of me, insisted I be loved, the sorrow of never finding the thing I had been searching for. ~ Francesca Lia Block

But what's left on earth that I haven't tried?" Prince Lír demanded. "I have swum four rivers, each in full flood and none less than a mile wide. I have climbed seven mountains never before climbed, slept three nights in the Marsh of the Hanged Men, and walked alive out of that forest where the flowers burn your eyes and the nightingales sing poison. I have ended my betrothal to the princess I had agreed to marry - and if you don't think that was a heroic deed, you don't know her mother. I have vanquished exactly fifteen black knights waiting by fifteen fords in their black pavilions, challenging all who come to cross. And I've long since lost count of the witches in the thorny woods, the giants, the demons disguised as damsels; the glass hills, fatal riddles, and terrible tasks; the magic apples, rings, lamps, potions, swords, cloaks, boots, neckties, and nightcaps. Not to mention the winged horses, the basilisks and sea serpents, and all the rest of the livestock." He raised his head, and the dark blue eyes were confused and sad.

"And all for nothing," he said. "I cannot touch her, whatever I do. For her sake, I have become a hero - I, sleepy Lír, my father's sport and shame - but I might as well have remained the dull fool I was. My great deeds mean nothing to her. ~ Peter S. Beagle

Oh. Wow.'
'What?'
He held my hand up between us. 'Look.'
I squinted at my hands. 'I don't see anything.' Sighing, he flipped my hand over, and my jaw hit the ground. A faint blue line marked the center of my palm with a smaller line through it. It would've looked like a cross, except the horizontal line was slanted.
'Oh. My. Gods.' I jerked my hand away, scrambling back. 'I have a rune on my hand. It's an Apollyon rune, isn't it.'
Seth rested his hands on his knees. 'I think so. I have one like that.'
'But why is it still there? Why is it there at all?' I flipped my palm over several times, shook it, but the faint blue tattoo was still there. 'You can see it, right? Like right now, you can see it?'
'Yes. It hasn't faded.' Seth leaned forward, catching my hand. 'Stop shaking it like it's a damn Etch-A-Sketch. That doesn't make them disappear. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

Sometimes, she said, she could recognize a place just by the quality of the light. In Lisbon, the light at the end of spring leans madly over the houses, white and humid, and just a little bit salty. In Rio de Janeiro, in the season that the locals instinctively call 'autumn', and that the Europeans insist disdainfully is just a figment of their imagination, the light becomes gentler, like a shimmer of silk, sometimes accompanied by a humid grayness, which hangs over the streets, and then sinks down gently into the squares and gardens. In the drenched land of the Pantanal in Mato Grosso, really early in the morning, the blue parrots cross the sky and they shake a clear, slow light from their wings, a light that little by little settles on the waters, grows and spreads and seems to sing. In the forests of Taman Negara in Malaysia, the light is like a liquid, which sticks to your skin, and has a taste and a smell. It's noisy in Goa, and harsh. In Berlin the sun is always laughing, at least during those moments when it manages to break through the clouds, like in those ecological stickers against nuclear power. Even in the most unlikely skies, Ângela Lúcia is able to discern shines that mustn't be forgotten; until she visited Scandinavia she'd believed that in that part of the world during the winter months light was nothing but the figment of people's imagination. But no, the clouds would occasionally light up with great flashes of hope. She said this, and stood up, adopting a ~ Jose Eduardo Agualusa

Can't handle your alcohol, Mira?" Blue called over.
"I didn't expect it to go everywhere! Now I smell like beer."
"It could be worse," Blue said. "You could smell like Rafe's sex life, like Caspian does." Poor Caspian was huddled in the blanket, staring longingly out to sea, oblivious to their conversation.
"That was low," Freddie said, hiding a grin. ~ Sarah Cross

Rostov kept thinking about that brilliant feat of his, which, to his surprise, had gained him the St. George Cross and even given him the reputation of a brave man - and there was something in it that he was unable to understand. "So they're even more afraid than we are!" he thought. "So that's all there is to so-called heroism? And did I really do it for the fatherland? And what harm had he done, with his dimple and his light blue eyes? But how frightened he was! He thought I'd kill him. Why should I kill him? My hand faltered. And they gave me the St. George Cross. I understand nothing, nothing! ~ Leo Tolstoy

It seared her senses; it made her feel alive, even as it sucked that life away - and she kept coming back to it, again and again. Waves of sensation pulled her under - drowning her. But Blue made drowning feel like the loveliest thing. Like she was losing her breath, but she didn't need it, didn't want it, only wanted him. ~ Sarah Cross

In the loudest voice I could muster, I shouted, "As of this moment, you are no longer the armies of China, Macedonia, Myanmar, Tibet or India. You are now warriors of Durga! We have already fought and overcome many fierce creatures. Now we give you the symbol of their power."
I borrowed the Scarf and touched it to my Pearl Necklace. The silken material sped down each and every soldier to cloak them in the most brilliant red, blue, green, gold and white. Even the flag bearers were not left out and now held banners depicting Durga riding her tiger into battle.
"Red for the heart of a Phoenix that sees through falsehood!" I cheered and raided the trident. "Blue for the Monsters of the Deep that rip apart those who dare to cross their domain! Gold for Metal Birds that cut their enemies with razor beaks! Green for the Horde of Hanuman that comes alive to protect that which is most precious! And white for the Dragons of the Five Oceans, whose cunning and power has no equal! ~ Colleen Houck

In front of a big aluminum building with a plywood cross on the roof, I kneel in a puddle and splash water on my face. I wash my mouth out with dirty gutter runoff and spit until I can't taste anything. That holy wooden "t" looms overhead, and I wonder if the Lord might ever find cause to approve of me, wherever and whatever he is.
Have you met him yet, Perry? Is he alive and well? Tell me he's not just the mouth of the sky. Tell me there's more looking down on us than that empty blue skull. ~ Isaac Marion

Mira, I'm about to be naked," Blue said as he whipped off his belt and tossed it on the floor. "So watch out. Well, in my underwear."
"I've seen you in your bathing suit," Mira said. "It's the same thing."
"It is not the same thing," Blue said. "When it's accompanied by seventies porn music, it's an X-rated strip show." Blue yanked off his shirt. "Freddie, you're kind of slow on the uptake. Eine kleine porn music, please."
Freddie scrunched his forehead in distaste. "I don't want to plug my guitar in just so I can play some bow-chicka-wow-wow accompaniment to your strip show.
Mira laughed. "Bow-chicka-what was that, Freddie? ~ Sarah Cross

All I know is that I am walking on a bridge. Amidst the mist the point where it started appears faded and the bridge ends in bright light that makes it too hard to even look. I need to cross this and I am walking. But, my Lord, I am tired!

I love this blue; I wish if I could see the depth of the river beneath, come back to the surface, float and then to be carried away by the tranquil waves to the banks where a thousand lilies will bloom, look at the sun and say 'we love you'.

O Lord, remember, they are my eyes that longed for a life the boon of your sight! ~ Preeth Nambiar

Larry had brought me blue jeans, a red polo shirt, jogging socks, my white Nikes, an extra cross from my suitcase, the silver knives, the Firestar complete with inner pants holster, and the Browning and its shoulder holster. He'd forgotten a bra, but hey, except for that it was perfect. ~ Laurell K. Hamilton

Then Leo realized something was blocking the middle of his view. Something large and fuzzy, and so close, Leo had to cross his eyes to see it properly. It was a large, ugly face. "Holy mother!" he yelped. The face backed away and came into focus. Staring down at him was a beard man in grimy blue coveralls. His face was lumpy and covered with welts, as if he'd been stung by a million bees, or dragged across gravel. Possibly both. "Humph." the man said. "Holy father, boy. I should think ou know the difference by now. ~ Rick Riordan

Mira sat down on the rim of the fountain. The marble ledge was damp, and mist sprinkled her skin. Coins shimmered under the water like fish scales.
She counted them, each one a wish, and wondered how love could be anything but good. ~ Sarah Cross

There, sitting cross-legged on the floor, he stared absently at his legs. They began to look strange. They no longer seemed to grow from his trunk at all, but rather, completely unconnected, they sprawled rudely before him. When he got this far, he realized something he had never noticed before - that his legs were unbearably hideous. With hair growing unevenly and blue streaks running rampant, they were terribly strange creatures. ~ Soseki Natsume

Cross," she whispered. "Please-"
And in that plea, he lost himself. "Yes, love," he said, inhaling her heady, glorious scent. "I'll give you everything you want. Everything you need."
He stroked into her softness again, and he wondered at the way she wept for him, not knowing what he would give her... what he could do to her... and wanting it nonetheless. "Do you feel it? The truth of it? How much you want me?"
"I want..." she started, then stopped.
He turned his head, nipping at the soft skin of her inner thigh, reveling in the softness there- that untouched, uncharted, silken spread. "Say it." He would give it to her. Anything in his power. Anything beyond it.
She looked down at him, blue eyes fairly glowing with desire. "I want you to want me."
He closed his eyes at that; trust Pippa to be forthright even here, even now, even as she bared herself to his eyes and mouth and hands. Trust her to strip this moment of all remaining shrouds, leaving it raw and bare and honest.
God help him, he told her the truth. He wasn't certain he could do anything but. "I do, love. I want you more than you could ever know. More than I could have ever dreamed. I want you enough for two men. For ten."
She laughed at that, the sound coming on a wicked movement of strong hips and soft stomach. "I don't require ten. Just you."
Even as he knew he would never be worthy enough for her, the words went straight to the hard, straining length of him, and he k ~ Sarah MacLean

He became deeply sun-browned, and although the bronze hue of his skin clearly proclaimed him to be of the working classes, it enhanced the vivid blue-green of his eyes and made his teeth look even whiter than usual. Not surprisingly, McKenna began to attract the notice of female guests at the estate, one of whom even attempted to hire him away from Stony Cross Park. ~ Lisa Kleypas

Dressed in a black pair of men's boxer shorts rolled over at the waist so they didn't sag down her legs and a white men's undershirt she must have found in one of the dresser drawers, with her choppy blue hair sticking up in every direction and her wild, glittering eyes, she looked like an insane, cross-dressing pixie. ~ J.T. Geissinger

She never felt nervous around Blue. She could hold her own with him, laugh at him, and, if necessary, slap him. There was something reassuring about that. ~ Sarah Cross

We need a test!" I jump up out of the chair and pat my body down. "Where's my wallet?"

"In your pocket," she replies dryly.

"I'll be back!" I race out of the house and drive the short distance between Dom's estate and the nearest village. After I find a drug store and buy one of each kind of pregnancy test they have, I race back to my hopefully pregnant wife.

"That was fast," she murmurs with a grin. She was still sitting in the lounge chair, sipping her coffee.

"Should you be drinking coffee?" I ask.

"Let's not get crazy," she responds. I need coffee.

"I got one of each kind," I announce and opened the bag, sending small white and blue boxes scattering.

"Uh, Caleb, we only need one."

"What if we can't figure them out?" I ask and pick one up to examine it. "All of the instructions are in Italian."

She laughs hysterically and then stands, wiping her eyes.

"It's not funny."

"Yes, it is. Pregnancy tests are pretty universal, Caleb. You pee on it and a line either appears or it doesn't." She rubs my arm sweetly and kisses my shoulder before plucking the box out of my fingers. "I'll be back."

"I'm coming with you." I begin to follow her but she turns quickly with her hands out to stop me.

"Oh no, you aren't. You are not going to watch me pee on this stick."

I scowled down at her and cross my arms over my chest. "I've helped you b ~ Kristen Proby

You have to have approached a place from all four cardinal points if you want to take it in, and what's more, you also have to have left it from all these points. Otherwise it will quite unexpectedly cross your path three or four times before you are prepared to discover it. One stage further, and you seek it out, you orient your-self by it. The same thing with houses. It is only after having crept along a series of them in search of a very specific one that you come to learn what they contain. From the arches of gates, on the frames of house doors, in letters of varying size, black, blue, yellow, red, in the shape of arrows or in the image of boots or freshly-ironed laundry or a word stoop or a stairway's solid landing, the life leaps out at you, combative, determined, mute. You have to have traveled the streets by streetcar to realize how this running battle con-tinues up along the various stories and finally reaches its decisive pitch on the roofs. ~ Walter Benjamin

There were noises coming from the spare bedroom. It sounded like ripping cardboard. There was low muttering. Maddy walked forwards quietly, hearing every footstep against the carpet. She stopped in the doorway and looked into the room. There was a pale, gaunt man sitting cross-legged on the floor, rifling through the boxes. His clothes and skin were wet and dripping. There was sand everywhere. His skin looked waxy, almost blue in places, and she knew immediately that he was a ghost by the strange restlessness he'd brought with him into the room, a restlessness and a clamouring, as if he had just disturbed a colony of nesting seabirds. ~ Lucy Wood

That's enough Susy, nuff, nuff.'
'No, no I just want to say this,' she gasped, on the brink of incoherence. 'His eyes, his face, it's not ugly, and I know if I go back that he'll come and get some more of me ... Even when he has drained all I know and when he ... God, God, he came at me, at my throat and even then, I couldn't stop him, didn't want to even when I felt his mouth ... '
She reached to her throat, where her hands fluttered. Her eyes, clear and cornflower blue when they had been so serene a few minutes ago, were stark and tormented. Suddenly she buckled toward him from her propped position, sobbing. He caught her and she wept into his chest.
'And the worst thing ... the worst thing ... is that I want to see him again ... Harry, he wanted me to take that cross off, and I did, and I've felt him wanting me now, even now, with blessed Jesus over my bed. ~ Leslie H. Whitten Jr.

A girl and a boy, sitting lazily cross-legged under a pale green willow, picking at the grass. She is lying with her head in his lap, long red hair fanned against his knee. Her skin is not my unnatural red but like honeyed cream. She grins up at him, his eyes the color of an evergreen forest, of dragonfly wings, his corn-gold, too-long hair falling over his forehead. And she laughs. When she does her back, her throat arches slightly, and he blushes. He smells of wheat fields and fallen autumn apples soft against the earth, and it is a smell she knows like her own. Under the filmy reed-curtain of the old willow tree, they hold hands and talk quietly, shoes discarded like peach pits. The sun is low in the sky, warm and orange-gold on their young faces, their strong white smiles and freshly washed hair. The light spills onto their shoulders like water from a well. There are sharp-smelling rosemary branches braided into her hair, with their little blue blossoms, and the oil is on their brown fingers. The boy whispers something in the girl's ear, and she closes her eyes, lashes smoking cheekbones like bundles of sage. ~ Catherynne M. Valente

You cannot unsee what has been seen once the veil is lifted, Reverend Olumide says in church. We cannot return to the garden of Eden. When I meet with him he says I need to confront my fears, that the devil torments us with that which scares us most. So, I cross the line between the blue hallways tiles and the white locker-room floor and navigate my way to locker umber thirty-two. ~ Uzodinma Iweala

You don't like Blue, do you?"
"No," Mira said, caught off guard by the change of subject.
"I was worried he was doing his knight-in-tarnished-armor thing and it was winning you over. ~ Sarah Cross

(From Danielle Raver's short story THE ENCHANTRESS)
Thick chains attached to the wall hold a metal collar and belt, restraining most of the tiger's movements. Open, bloody slashes cover his face and back, but he shows no loss of strength as he pulls on the chains and tries to rip the flesh of the surrounding humans with his deadly claws. Out of his reach, I kneel down before him, and his lightning-blue eyes cross my space for a moment.

"Get her out of there!" I hear from behind me.

"Numnerai," I speak urgently to the tiger. "They will kill you!"

He growls and gnashes his teeth, but I sense he is responding to me.

"Great white tiger, your duty is to protect the prince. But how can you do that if they sink the end of a spear into your heart?" He looks at me for a longer moment. The fighters respond to this by growing still. In their desperation, they are overlooking my foolishness for a chance to save their fellows' lives. I crouch on my feet and begin to nudge closer to him. The tiger growls a warning, but does not slash out at me. "Think of the prince, protector of the palace. Right now he prays for you to live. ~ D.M. Raver

The Vega Gull is peacock blue with silver wings, more splendid than any bird I've known, and somehow mine to fly. She's called The Messenger, and has been designed and built with great care and skill to do what should be impossible - cross an ocean in one brave launch, thirty-six hundred miles of black chop and nothingness - and to take me with her. It ~ Paula McLain

Senseless people name evil good, call good evil. As you are doing. You accuse Us of passing false judgement: you do Us injustice. We shall prove this to you. You ask who We are: We are God's handle, Master Death, a truly effective reaper. Our scythe works its way. It cuts down white, black, red, brown, green, blue, grey, yellow, and all kinds of lustrous flowers in its path, irrespective of their splendour, their strength, their virtue. And the violet's beautiful colour, rich perfume, and palatable sap, avail it nought. See: that is justice. Our justification was acknowledged by the Romans and the poets, for they knew Us better than you do.
You ask what We are: We are nothing, and yet something. Nothing, because We have neither life, nor being, nor form, and We are no spirit, not visible, not tangible; something, because We are the end of life, the end of existence, the beginning of nullity, a cross between the two. We are a happening that fells all people. Huge giants must fall before Us; all living beings must be transformed by Us.
You ask where We are: We are not ascertainable. But Our form was found in a temple in Rome*, painted on a wall, as a hoodwinked man sitting on an ox; this man wielded a hatchet in his right hand and a shovel in his left hand, with which he was beating the ox. A great crowd of all kinds of people was hitting him, fighting him, and making casts at him, each one with the tools of his trade: even the nun with her psalter was there. They str ~ Johannes Von Saaz

With the first jolt he was in daylight; they had left the gateways of King's Cross, and were under blue sky. Tunnels followed, and after each the sky grew bluer, and from the embankment at Finsbury Park he had his first sight of the sun. It rolled along behind the eastern smokes - a wheel, whose fellow was the descending moon - and as yet it seemed the servant of the blue sky, not its lord. He dozed again. Over Tewin Water it was day. To the left fell the shadow of the embankment and its arches; to the right Leonard saw up into the Tewin Woods and towards the church, with its wild legend of immortality. Six forest trees - that is a fact - grow out of one of the graves in Tewin churchyard. The grave's occupant - that is the legend - is an atheist, who declared that if God existed, six forest trees would grow out of her grave. These things in Hertfordshire; and farther afield lay the house of a hermit - Mrs. Wilcox had known him - who barred himself up, and wrote prophecies, and gave all he had to the poor. While, powdered in between, were the villas of business men, who saw life more steadily, though with the steadiness of the half-closed eye. Over all the sun was streaming, to all the birds were singing, to all the primroses were yellow, and the speedwell blue, and the country, however they interpreted her, was uttering her cry of "now. " She did not free Leonard yet, and the knife plunged deeper into his heart as the train drew up at Hilton. But remorse had b ~ E.M. Forster

The night stayed outside. She was surprised. She opened her mouth but no sound came out. Instead, blue things flew in, pieces of glass or tin, or necklaces of blue diamond, perhaps. The air was the blue of a pool when there are shadows, when clouds cross the turquoise surface, when you suspect something contagious is leaking, something camouflaged and disrupted. There is only this infected blue enormity, elongating defiantly. The blue that knows you and where you live and it's never going to forget. ~ Kate Braverman

When we fully know in our hearts who we are as living beings, not only emotionally, psychologically, politically, or socially, we can share a deep felt, visceral acknowledgment of each other. We can submit our interrelationship to the blue flames, unafraid of being burned away... To be 'good' people we tend to bypass the messiness of our lives in order to enter the gate of tranquility. Can the gate of tranquility really be as we imagine it? No matter which way we approach peace, it seems we must cross the burning threshold of human conditioning to enter it. So, before we leap to the universal, the true essence, or spirit, why not start where we are as human beings? We must carve a path through the flames of our human condition. We must see it for what it is, and bow to it--not a pitiful bow, but a bow of acknowledgment. By acknowledging our human condition, we acknowledge that we might not know how to end hatred and that we are not superheroes; we are human beings. [32&48] ~ Zenju Earthlyn Manuel

Blue smiled. He had one of those devastatingly charming smiles that made you hate him even more when you noticed it. It was like he was fighting dirty. ~ Sarah Cross

For one day as I leant over a gate that led into a field, the rhythm stopped: the rhymes and the hummings, the nonsense and the poetry. A space was cleared in my mind. I saw through the thick leaves of habit. Leaning over the gate I regretted so much litter, so much unaccomplishment and separation, for one cannot cross London to see a friend, life being so full of engagements; nor take a ship to India and see a naked man spearing a fish in blue water. I said life had been imperfect, an unfinished phrase. It had been impossible for me, taking snuff as I do from any bagman met in a train, to keep coherency - that sense of the generations, of women carrying red pitchers to the Nile, of the nightingale who sings among conquests and migrations. It had been too vast an undertaking, I said, and how can I go on lifting my foot perpetually to climb the stair? I addressed myself as one would speak to a companion with whom one is voyaging to the North Pole. ~ Virginia Woolf

In silence, they filed past me, and I was left alone with the person who, the day before, I'd wanted to kill even more than Galdran Merindar.
"Take a swig." Shevraeth held out a flagon. "You're going to need it, I'm afraid."
I crossed the room, sank cross-legged onto the nearest mat. With one numb hand I took the flagon, squeezed a share of its contents into my mouth; and gasped as the fire of distilled bristic burned its way inside me. I took a second sip and with stinging eyes handed the flagon back.
"Blue lips," he said, with that faint smile. "You're going to have a whopping cold."
I looked up at the color burning along his cheekbones, and the faint lines of strain in his forehead, and made a discovery. "So are you," I said. "Hah!" I added, obscurely pleased.
His mouth quirked. "Do you have any questions?"
"Yes." My voice came out hoarse, and I cleared my throat. "Bran said Galdran is coming after us. Why? I thought it had been made abundantly clear that--thanks to you--we were defeated, and that was after he'd already decided we were of no account."
"Here. Eat something." He pulled the tray over and pointed to the bread-and-cheese on it, and at the half of some kind of fruit tart.
I picked up the bread and bit into it as he said, "But his cousin did not encompass your defeat, despite the fact that you were outnumbered and outmaneuvered. This is the more galling for Galdran, you must understand, when you consider the enormous loss o ~ Sherwood Smith

Curiosity killed the brat. ~ Sarah Cross

Freddie dropped down beside them, distressed. "Let go of her, Blue; that looks really bad."
"Feel free to stop him," Mira said, "instead of frowning at me like a sad puppy."
"Hey!" Freddie said, looking like a sadder puppy.
"I'm not going to molest you," Blue said.
"You're molesting my wrist," Mira said. "I don't want you touching me."
"I didn't want you to knee me in the lungs, so I guess we're even. ~ Sarah Cross

(Episode 9. Hijikata finds Gintoki on a rooftop and challenges him to a duel to avenge Kondo's defeat earlier. Gintoki doesn't want to fight him, so breaks Hijikata's sword easily, and leaves. It's then revealed that Okita and Kondo had been watching them clash, from another rooftop.)

Okita Sougou:
"He's an interesting man.
I'd like to cross swords with him, myself."

Kondo:
"Don't bother. He'll kick your ass, Sougou."
"He's the kind of guy fighting another battle far away,
even as a sword swings at his throat."
"Fair or unfair, it doesn't matter to him."

(Not knowing that Kondo & Okita were watching his duel from a high vantage point, Hijikata lights a cigarette and sits back.)

Hijikata (watching the blue sky above him):
"Sorry, Kondo-san. I lost to him, as well ... ~ Kondo Isao - Gintama

A large and comfortable double-bedded room had been placed at our disposal, and I was quickly between the sheets, for I was weary after my night of adventure. Sherlock Holmes was a man, however, who when he had an unsolved problem upon his mind would go for days, and even for a week, without rest, turning it over, rearranging his facts, looking at it from every point of view, until he had either fathomed it, or convinced himself that his data were insufficient. It was soon evident to me that he was now preparing for an all-night sitting. He took off his coat and waistcoat, put on a large blue dressing-gown, and then wandered about the room collecting pillows from his bed, and cusions from the sofa and armchairs. With these he constructed a sort of Eastern divan, upon which he perched himself cross-legged, with an ounce of shag tobacco and a box of matches laid out in front of him. In the dim light of the lamp I saw him sitting there, an old brier pipe between his lips, his eyes fixed vacantly upon the corner of the ceiling, the blue smoke curling up from him, silent, motionless, with the light shining upon his strong-set aquiline features. So he sat as I dropped off to sleep, and so he sat when a sudden ejaculation caused me to wake up, and I found the summer sun shining into the apartment. The pipe was still between his lips, the smoke still curled upwards, and the room was full of a dense tobacco haze, but nothing remained of the heap of shag which I had seen upon the previ ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

The Cosmos extends, for all practical purposes, forever. After a brief sedentary hiatus, we are resuming our ancient nomadic way of life. Our remote descendants, safely arrayed on many worlds throughout the Solar System and beyond, will be unified by their common heritage, by their regard for their home planet, and by the knowledge that, whatever other life may be, the only humans in all the Universe come from Earth. They will gaze up and strain to find the blue dot in their skies. They will love it no less for its obscurity and fragility. They will marvel at how vulnerable the repository of all our potential once was, how perilous our infancy, how humble our beginnings, how many rivers we had to cross before we found our way. ~ Carl Sagan