Before The Storm Quotes

Quiet Romeo was a scary Romeo. It was like the calm before the storm. Or an empty football stadium. ~ Cambria Hebert

Years ago, I told myself that one day I would stop feeling this quiet but abiding rage about the things I have been through at the hands of others. I would wake up and there would be no flashbacks. I wouldn't wake up and think about my histories of violence. I wouldn't smell the yeasty aroma of beer and for a second, for several minutes, for hours, forget where I was. And on and on and on. That day never came, or it hasn't come, and I am no longer waiting for it.

A different day has come, though. I flinch less and less when I am touched. I don't always see gentleness as the calm before the storm because, more often than not, I can trust that no storm is coming. I harbor less hatred toward myself. I try to forgive myself for my trespasses. ~ Roxane Gay

There are storm clouds before the storm, there are the living before the dead. I need a figurehead, a banner bearer who will announce my arrival to the world. ~ Kevin Outlaw

EFFERVESCE AND OBSESSION

Under the influence of this sensational climax I am reminded of the inundated calm before the storm as I find my mind to see through those same eyes that I have before. The curving slippage of her dynamic vehemence hums over me in a refreshing fixation that imbues this inseparable bond of the eternities. Her single touch sends shock waves down my entire vessel sending our bodies into a confluence of luscious allure. Her hips begin weaving in and out gently oscillating against me in a balmy nubile urge of effervesce and obsession. Again I occlude her recumbent orifice with the soft clasp of my wet lips, satiating my guest with an all-stimulating and interplanetary escape. In a largo samba-like motion I simultaneously absorb and alleviate the tension lingering beneath her plum fuselage as an overflowing ovulation of seismic and fulminating convulsage travels through the apex of her feminous core, following the crevice between her legs like the gentle waters that flow through the shaded gorge. As she levitates into a liberating reflex of celestial zest her panting grip begins to measure the odometer of our obsession. ~ Luccini Shurod

So, in a curious lurid calm which could not last and yet, it seemed, could not end, the days went by. ~ Iris Murdoch

The poems which touched her heart most, suffusing her with exalted emotion, so that she felt she could gather everything to her, were those which tell of the sorrow that wakes in the heart whose dreams have not been fulfilled, and of the beauty of that sorrow. The ship which in Autumn lies deserted on the shore, rudderless, mastless, used no more; the bird that cowers low in shelter, likewise in the Autumn, featherless and forlorn, driven before the storm;the harp that hangs trembling on the wall, silently mourning its owner's fall-all this was her poetry. ~ Halldor Laxness

Now that I've said this, I can't help but say more, can't help but speak the words that have been gathering in my head like dark clouds before the storm, building pressure and growing, and rolling over themselves in chaos. ~ Carrie Ryan

and, before the storm came, silently whispered a prayer. ~ Adam Nicholls

Prose unfolds in time; and time contains both obstacles and revelations. Prose develops, the way characters and situations do. It requires a flow. A poem is an instant, lightning across the sky. Prose is before the storm, the storm, after the storm. ~ Molly Peacock

Where's your dog?' I ask quickly. 'Dawn said you had a dog. Let's take the dog out.'
'There ain't no dog,' replies Janis. ~ Carla H. Krueger

Listen, you don't have to get up or anything. Galen just...uh...went for a swim. He'll be back real soon."
I look between them and past the beach. I shake my head.
"What? What's wrong, Emma?" he asks. I like Toraf. He seems genuinely concerned about me, without ever having met me. Rayna looks as if she might want to stomp on my head and finish the job I started with the cafeteria door.
"Storm," I say. The one syllable word polka-dots my vision.
Toraf smiles. "He'll be back before the storm. Can I get you anything? Something to eat? Something to drink?"
"A taxi?" Rayna pitches in.
"Go to the kitchen, Rayna," he says. "Unless you're ready to go find an island?"
I'm not sure how far away the kitchen is, but it seems like she stomps for a good five minutes. Finding an island doesn't really seem like a fitting punishment for being rude, but since I do have a head injury, I give them the benefit of the doubt. Plus, there's always the possibility that I imagined the whole thing.
"Do you mind if I sit?" Toraf says.
I shake my head. He eases onto the edge of the couch and pulls the blanket back over me. I hope he takes my nod for "Thanks."
He crouches down and whispers, "Listen, Emma. Before Galen gets back. There's something I want to ask you. Oh, don't worry, it's a yes or no question. No talking involved."
I hope he takes my nod for "Sure, why not? You're nice."
He glances around, as if he's about to rob me instead of ask ~ Anna Banks

your outer will power may also have succeeded to build an eventful outer life that fills the void to a degree as long as you do not hold still. However, this is but temporary peace before the storm. ~ Eva Pierrakos

I like these calm little moments before the storm, it reminds me of Beethoven ~ Gary Oldman

In retrospect there were failures enough to go around. There were failures before the storm and failures after the storm. ~ Jeff Sessions

..I began speaking.. First, I took issue with the media's characterization of the post-Katrina New Orleans as resembling the third world as its poor citizens clamored for a way out. I suggested that my experience in New Orleans working with the city's poorest people in the years before the storm had reflected the reality of third-world conditions in New Orleans, and that Katrina had not turned New Orleans into a third-world city but had only revealed it to the world as such. I explained that my work, running Reprieve, a charity that brought lawyers and volunteers to the Deep South from abroad to work on death penalty issues, had made it clear to me that much of the world had perceived this third-world reality, even if it was unnoticed by our own citizens.

To try answer Ryan's question, I attempted to use my own experience to explain that for many people in New Orleans, and in poor communities across the country, the government was merely an antagonist, a terrible landlord, a jailer, and a prosecutor. As a lawyer assigned to indigent people under sentence of death and paid with tax dollars, I explained the difficulty of working with clients who stand to be executed and who are provided my services by the state, not because they deserve them, but because the Constitution requires that certain appeals to be filed before these people can be killed. The state is providing my clients with my assistance, maybe the first real assistance they have ever received from the s ~ Billy Sothern

This is not a problem. I'm making everybody very calm, distracted by my bad results and then I'm going to shoot. One good result and I'm coming back. This is a distraction, it's the calm before the storm, ~ Ernests Gulbis

It was the calm before the storm, and holy crap, my bones knew it was going to be the storm of my life. ~ Tijan

O you mad, you superbly drunk!
If you kick open your doors and play the fool in public;
If you empty your bag in a night, and snap your fingers at prudence;
If you walk in curious paths and play with useless things;
Reck not rhyme or reason;
If you break the rudder in two unfurling your sails before the storm:
Then I will follow you, comrade, and be drunken and go to the dogs.

I have wasted my days and nights in the company of steady wise neighbors.
Much knowing has turned my hair grey, and much watching has made my sight dim.
For years I have gathered and heaped all scraps and fragments of things;
Crush them and dance upon them, and scatter them all to the winds!
For I know 'tis the height of wisdom to be drunken and go to the dogs.

Let all crooked scruples vanish, let me hopelessly lose my way.
Let a gust of wild giddiness come and sweep me away from my anchors.
The world is peopled with worthies, and workers useful and clever;
There are men who are easily the first, and men who come decently next:
Let them be happy and prosperous, and let me be foolishly futile.
For I know 'tis the end of all works to be drunken and go to the dogs.

I swear to surrender this moment all claim to the ranks of the sensible.
I let go my pride of learning and judgment of right and of wrong.
I'll shatter the vessel of memory, scattering the last drop of tears; < ~ Rabindranath Tagore

Saeed and Nadia knew what the buildup to conflict felt like, and so the feeling that hung over London was not new to them, and they faced it not with bravery, exactly, and not with panic either, not mostly, but instead with a resignation shot through with moments of tension, with tension ebbing and flowing, and when the tension receded there was calm, the calm that is called the calm before the storm, but is in reality the foundation of a human life, waiting there for us between the steps of our march to our mortality, when we are compelled to pause and not act but be. ~ Mohsin Hamid

Before the storm comes the calm. Hope you can take the heat like LeBron ~ Nicki Minaj

For one awful moment, I felt the pure panic of an imminent emergency. And then I stopped. My mind staggered, jolted and was sundered. The screen of my mind froze. Time ceased to pass. One intense present moment. Nothing moved. Nothing could move. I could feel no motion in my psyche and all the usual easy fluency of thoughts streaming into each other, confluent waterful, was slung into reverse. It was the silent onset of sheer dread. It was like the terrible sucking back of the oceans just before a tsunami crashes to the shore; the frightening in-breath before the storm-surge roars inland. The sky was going to fall through the sea, the clouds would smash on impact like glass, and the great pale sheet of a dead white sky, motionless, frozen and unbroken, would lie noiseless at the bottom of the ocean. ~ Jay Griffiths

I feel happy. I want to enjoy this feeling and revel in my good fortune but there's something niggling at me in the back of my mind. There's a little voice whispering to me, 'Things are too perfect.' It almost feels like the calm before the storm.
Is this how normal life is supposed to be? Because I'm used to drama, drama, drama. I'm used to things refusing to go my way, I'm used to having to struggle, moan and whinge my way into getting something that's not exactly what I want but that will just do. ~ Cecelia Ahern

I've been through my fair share of highs and lows. Yes, I've been written off, and it amazes me, and it amuses me, also, when I'm written off by the press cause then I tell them that's just the lull before the storm. And every time I've been down, I've been down, never out. So it just makes me work a lot harder. ~ Shilpa Shetty

Words are not enough. Not mine, cut off at the throat before they breathe. Never forming, broken and swallowed, tossed into the void before they are heard. It would be easy to follow, fall to my knees, prostrate before the deli counter. Sweep the shelves clear, scatter the tins, pound the cakes to powder. Supermarket isles stretching out in macabre displays. Christmas madness, sad songs and mistletoe, packed car parks, rotten leaves banked up in corners. Forgotten reminders of summer before the storm. Never trust a promise, they take prisoners and wishes never come true. Fairy stories can have grim endings and I don't know how I will face the world without you. ~ Peter B. Forster

There's always a calm before the storm... ~ Heather Graham

There is history the way Tolstoy imagined it, as a great, slow-moving weather system in which even tsars and generals are just leaves before the storm. And there is history the way Hollywood imagines it, as a single story line in which the right move by the tsar or the wrong move by the general changes everything. Most of us, deep down, are probably Hollywood people. We like to invent "what if" scenarios
what if x had never happened, what if y had happened instead?
because we like to believe that individual decisions make a difference: that, if not for x, or if only there had been y, history might have plunged forever down a completely different path. Since we are agents, we have an interest in the efficacy of agency. ~ Louis Menand

We were like silent, clear skies. Beautifully unpredictable. But like any clear sky, we didn't know that we were just the calm before the storm. ~ Me

Happiness is fleeting. Happiness is just the calm before the storm. And the happier you are, the more you have to lose when it hits. ~ Ranae Glass

The calm before the storm ~ Derek Landy

Thou and I are but the blind instruments of some irresistible fatality, that hurries us along, like ships driving before the storm, which are dashed against each other, and so perish ~ Walter Scott

Life was good. Everything was going right. It was almost scaring him because usually when things were going this well it was the calm before the storm hit. ~ Michelle Sutton

Certainty is the calm before the storm. ~ Stewart Stafford

I couldn't have asked for a better kid. She's our own little Buddha baby so far. I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop to tell you the truth. It's like the calm before the storm. ~ Ana Ortiz

The calm before the storm that might carry us all before it. ~ Cameron Dokey

Right before you head out running, it can be hard to remember exactly why you're doing it. You often have to override a nagging sense of futility, lacing up your shoes, telling yourslef that no matter how unlikely it seems right now, after you finish you will be glad you went. It's only afterward that it makes sense, although even then it's hard to rationalize why. You just feel right. After a run, you feel at one with the world, as though some unspecified, innate need has been fulfilled. ~ Adharanand Finn

Passion is the salt of life, and that at the times when we are under its spell this salt is indispensable to us, even if we have got along very well without it before. ~ Francoise Sagan

Although I could read before I went to school, and I won the school reading prize at five years old, my early children's stories came from the radio and watching films at a cinema on Saturday mornings in Australia. It wasn't until I was nine years old on a ship returning from Australia that I was introduced to children's books. ~ Michelle Magorian

I don't…believe you," she lied, her blood running wild through her veins.
His gleaming gaze impaled her. "Then believe this." And suddenly his mouth was on hers.
This was not what she'd set out to get from him.
But oh, the joy of it. The heat of it. His mouth covered hers, seeking, coaxing. Without breaking the kiss, he pushed her back against the wall, and she grabbed for his shoulders, his surprisingly broad and muscular shoulders. As he sent her plummeting into unfamiliar territory, she held on for dear life.
Time rewound to when they were in her uncle's garden, sneaking a moment alone. But this time there was no hesitation, no fear of being caught.
Glorying in that, she slid her hands about his neck to bring him closer. He groaned, and his kiss turned intimate. He used lips and tongue, delving inside her mouth in a tender exploration that stunned her. Enchanted her. Confused her.
Something both sweet and alien pooled in her belly, a kind of yearning she'd never felt with Edwin. With any man but Dom.
As if he sensed it, he pulled back to look at her, his eyes searching hers, full of surprise. "My God, Jane," he said hoarsely, turning her name into a prayer.
Or a curse? She had no time to figure out which before he clasped her head to hold her for another darkly ravishing kiss. Only this one was greedier, needier. His mouth consumed hers with all the boldness of Viking raiders of yore. His tongue drove repeatedly inside in a rhythm th ~ Sabrina Jeffries

Alp Arslan: "What would you do if I was brought before you as a prisoner?"
Romanos: "Perhaps I'd kill you, or exhibit you in the streets of Constantinople."
Alp Arslan: "My punishment is far heavier. I forgive you, and set you free. ~ Alp Arslan, After Battle Of Manzikert

I've seen it all in Nevada, Kansas before that, and the War of Northern Aggression before that. People do all sorts of nasty things. And while I used to believe that there was something profoundly wrong about the human condition - sin passed on from the first man and that only the grace of God in Jesus Christ could make everything right, the standard explanation in churches Mormon to Methodist - it didn't take me long to learn that Christians and non-Christians, women and men, young and old were all capable of doing the worse things a human being might imagine, and then some.

From my upcoming novel, BATHHOUSE ROW, (available this fall). ~ Gregg Edwards Townsley

Life is an endless circle within God. From before birth to beyond the transition called death, I am filled with life. My soul wears this earth garment I call my body, which I cherish and care for. When I finally lay it down, my soul continues to live, always in God's care and keeping. ~ Daily Word

The Beastie Boys are guys I loved before I met them, and when I got to know them, we started a magazine together, and we started making videos together, and a lot of it came out of us just cracking ourselves up, like going to the fake mustache store and buying fake mustaches. ~ Spike Jonze

I kept picturing the car stalling, zombies breaking through the window; Misty screaming as they dragged her out before I could get it re-started. With that happy thought, I signaled Misty to open the door. ~ M.J. Ware

The American university inherits the missions of two very different institutions: the English college and the German research university. The first pattern prevailed before the Civil War. Curricula centered on the classics, and the purpose of education was understood to be the formation of character. With the emergence of a modern industrial society in the last decades of the nineteenth century, that kind of pedagogy was felt to be increasingly obsolete. Johns Hopkins was founded in 1876 as the first American university on the German model: a factory of knowledge that would focus in particular on the natural and social sciences, the disciplines essential to the new economy and the world to which it was giving rise. ~ William Deresiewicz

Am I missing something because of my lack of education? Being an intellectual - I'm not. So I hire him as a corner man, like a boxer; he watches me and tells me what I do wrong before I go in for the next round. Barry thought he was going to write what became Executioner's Song, and I told him he wasn't going to. And Barry's closest friend was Joan Didion. ~ Lawrence Schiller

Alton shifted so he could talk to the man. He'd been to earth before and watched some of the silly shows, the ones where one cop would play the good guy and the other the bad buy. Ena was definitely the bad dragon in this scenario, her eyes glowing bright green, threatening, a little bit of smoke coming out of her nostrils. She was fire breathing mad. ~ Terry Spear

The Defiler will not have you, Felicity. I have claimed you for myself."
The rumble of those words, soft and dark, sent shivers racing through her. Her imagination supplied all sorts of images of ways she could be claimed by him, and none of them had anything to do with evil.
Heat flooded her cheek, then wormed its way lower. It built in the pit of her belly until she couldn't bear it anymore. Her hand shifted from his shoulder to his cheek, and she lifted herself up on her toes.
"Show me," she whispered, just before she pressed her lips to his. ~ Christine Warren

A Moment Like This"---

What if I told you it was all meant to be?
Would you believe me? Would you agree?
It's almost that feeling that we've met before
So tell me that you don't think I'm crazy
when I tell you love has come here and now

A moment like this
Some people wait a lifetime for a moment like this
Some people search forever for that one special kiss
Oh I can't believe it's happeneing to me
Some people wait a lifetime for a moment like this

Everything changes but beauty remains
Something so tender I can't explain

I may be dreaming but until I awake
Can't we make this dream last forever?
And I'll cherish all the love we share

A moment like this
Some people wait a lifetime for a moment like this
Some people search forever for that one special kiss
Oh I can't believe it's happeneing to me
Some people wait a lifetime for a moment like this

Could this be the greatest love of all?
I wanna know that you will catch me when I fall
So let me tell you this...

Some people wait a lifetime for a moment like this..
A moment like this
Some people wait a lifetime for a moment like this
Some people search forever for that one special kiss
Oh I can't believe it's happeneing to me

Some people wait a lifetime for a moment, a moment like this...
Oh I can't believe it's ~ Unknown

What do you guys even do every night?" The words slip from my mouth before I can stop them.
"It," Rashmi says. "They do it. He's ditching us to screw. ~ Stephanie Perkins

So why was tonight not so good?" he asked, desperate to shut himself the fuck up.
"My father. And then…well, I got stood up."
Rehv frowned so hard he actually felt a slight sting between his eyes. "For a date?"
"Yeah."
He hated the idea of her out with another male. And yet envied the motherfucker, whoever he was.
"What an ass. I'm sorry, but what an ass."
Ehlena laughed, and he loved everything about the sound, especially the way his body warmed a little more in response.
Man, to hell with a hot shower. That soft, quiet chuckle was what he needed.
"Are you smiling," he said softly.
"Yeah. I mean, I guess. How did you know?"
"Was just hoping you were."
"Well, you can be kind of charming."
Quickly, as if to cover up the compliment, she said, "The date wasn't a big deal or anything. I didn't know him that well. It was just coffee."
"But you ended the night on the phone with me. Which is so much better."
She laughed again. "Well, I won't ever know what it's like to go out with him."
"You won't?"
"I just…well, I thought about it, and I don't think dating is a good idea for me right now."
His surge of triumph was sacked when she tacked on, "With anyone."
"Hm."
"Hm? What does hm mean?"
"It means I have your phone number."
"Ah, yes, you do - " Her voice caught as he shifted around. "Wait, are you…in bed?"
"Yeah. And before you go any farther, you don't ~ J.R. Ward

I prefer to linger on the periphery before making a commitment. ~ George Meyer

Crown Of Love

They say it fades if you let it, love was made to forget it. i carved
your name across my eyelids, you pray for rain i pray for blindness.
if you still want me, please forgive me, the crown of love is not upon me.
if you still want me, please forgive me, because the spark is not within me.
i snuffed it out before my mom walked in my bedroom.
the only thing that you keep changin' is your name. my love keeps
growin' still the same, just like cancer, and you won't give me a
straight answer!
if you still want me, please forgive me, the crown of love has fallen from me.
if you still want me, please forgive me, because your hands are not upon me.
i shrugged them off before my mom walked in my bedroom.
the pains of love, and they keep growin', in my heart there's flowers
growin' on the grave of our old love, since you gave me a straight
answer.
if you still want me, please forgive me, the crown of love is not upon me.
if you still want me, please forgive me, because the spark is not within me.
it's not within me.
it's not within me.
you gotta be the one. you gotta be the way. your name is the only
word, the only word that i can say! ~ Arcade Fire

A prize-winning science reporter, Simons had become the number-two editor at the Post a year before. An intent, sensitive man with a large nose, thin face and deep-set eyes, he looks like the kind of Harvard teaching assistant who carries a slide ruler strapped to his belt. But he is skillful with fragile egos, and also the perfect counterpoint to Bradlee. Bradlee is more like Woodward: he wants hard information first and is impatient with theories.

-- Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward ~ Carl Bernstein

TZEDAKAH is a Hebrew word commonly translated as "charity."

One Jewish leader described tzedakah as having eight levels of charitable giving. The eighth and highest level of giving is described like this:

"The highest form of charity is to help sustain a person before they become impoverished by offering a substantial gift in a dignified manner, or by extending a suitable loan, or by helping them find employment or establish themselves in business so as to make it unnecessary for them to become dependent on others."

Serve others in a way that helps them become self-reliant (or interdependent) and watch miracles happen for both you and them. ~ Richie Norton

At every step of her rise, she did the work long before she was granted the title. It was like advancing through empty rooms. Nobody opposed her, yet nobody approved of her progress. ~ Ayn Rand

The me that's here now has been brought up without any brothers or sisters. If I did have brothers or sisters I wouldn't be the me I am. So it's unnatural for the me that's here before you to think about what it'd be like to have brothers or sisters ... . ~ Haruki Murakami

Let's start a revolution, a revolution with no gun, but words and action to inspire the next generation. The truth should make us better human beings, it shouldn't create enemies out of ignorance. "IGNORANCE" got Liberia way, way back, because some of us were blind back then and failed to see the clear picture before. Before it was the Americo VS the Native. Today is corrupt educated or not so educated Liberian brothers and sisters against those people who they call illiterate. STAND FOR CHANGE AND SAY NO! ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! ~ Henry Johnson Jr

He that expects to quantify in dollars the gains that will accrue to a company year by year for a program for improvement of quality expounded in [Out of the Crisis] will suffer delusion. He should know before he starts that he will be able to quantify only a trivial part of the gain. ~ W. Edwards Deming

And it really can crunch. There is a constant danger of injuries from overwork. Close to performance time, a walk through the hallways near the pit can sometimes seem like a visit to a living catalog of alternative medicines: heat before playing, ice after playing, stretches against walls and doors, tai chi, the Feldenkrais Method, the Alexander Technique - all the major and minor bodywork systems have been used by colleagues at one time or another to make playing easier and more informed. Another way to make playing ~ Tom Heimberg

Adrian gave the picture a nod of approval before handing me the phone. "Okay, even I can admit that's pretty cute."
I found myself overanalyzing the comment. What had he meant in saying 'even he' could admit it? That I was cute for a human? Or that I had just met some kind of Adrian hot-girl criteria? ~ Richelle Mead

I have always had the deepest respect for Bill Nicholson as a person and as a manager. The Spurs boss is an honest Yorkshireman and you will go a long way before finding a straighter character than that. Bill has never wavered in his determination to give White Hart Lane fans the best. ~ Bill Shankly

Picture yourself, Jack, a confirmed homebody, a sedentary fellow who finds himself walking in a deep wood. You spot something out of the corner of your eye. Before you know anything else, you know that this thing is very large and that it has no place in your ordinary frame of reference. A flaw in the world picture. Either it shouldn't be here or you shouldn't. Now the thing comes into full view. It is a grizzly bear, enormous, shiny brown, swaggering, dripping slime from its bared fangs. Jack, you have never seen a large animal in the wild. The sight of this grizzer is so electrifyingly strange that it gives you a renewed sense of yourself, a fresh awareness of the self - the self in terms of a unique and horrific situation. You see yourself in a new and intense way. You rediscover yourself. You are lit up for your own imminent dismemberment. The beast on hind legs has enabled you to see who you are as if for the first time, outside familiar surroundings, alone, distinct, whole. The name we give this complicated process is fear. [...]

Fear is self-awareness raised to a higher level.
(p. 218) ~ Don DeLillo

I remember one bobcat they had in here - now bobcats are an endangered species in this neck of the woods - they'd caught it somewhere and they must have put that cat through a dozen rounds of burn experiments before they finally determined that it was utterly useless to them. Like an empty beer can. And then you know what they did to it? Claudius was late for a lunch date so rather thanput the destroyed but still breathing animal to sleep, he picked it up by its hind legs and simply smashed its head against a wall repeatedly until it was dead. How can I forget it: I was the one told to clean up the mess. The head dented in. The eyes slowly closing. The once proud claws hanging down, stunned and lifeless, the utter senselessness of it all, and the hate, a hatred that was consummated in me which is as dangerous a hormone, or chemical, or portion of the brain, as any neutron bomb. Except that I didnt know how to explode. I was like a computer without a keyboard, a bird without wings. Roaring inside. I wanted to kill that man. To do unto others what they had done unto me. I was that bobcat, you better believe it. ~ Michael Tobias

I have the impression of moving in the shadow of syllables, in regions before secrets, where language cannot yet answer the call of thought, in swamps where you risk sinking with every breath ~ Edmond Jabes

Before a nation can be rebuilt, its citizens need to understand how it was destroyed in the first place: how its institutions were undermined, how its language was twisted, how its people were manipulated. ~ Anne Applebaum

Since she moved in, Carter found himself in the mood for a lot of things he hadn't been before. Crispy salmon wasn't one of them. ~ Kristin Miller

Jeff watched her come, the whole time. He never noticed her mincing, hesitant steps on treacherous heels. He was simply swept up in the ancient ceremony. And discovering, as untold millions of young men had discovered before him, that there is nothing in the world as beautiful as his bride approaching. ~ Eric Flint

This is the shape I'm in for the tournament. I feel or I felt extremely good before the match, and I did train very, very hard to get ready for the tournament. ~ Andy Murray

Spiritual God Realization (enlightenment) does not occur before or after the passing away of your physical incarnation. So no need to await death for Divine answers. Spiritual God Realization occurs at the very moment that you enter the eternal Now. Fully present as a Being in the Here and Now; the Holy Origin and Divine Destiny that All Beings share; All is One..... Namaste ~ Leland Lewis

As I became older, I was given many masks to wear. I could be a laborer laying railroad tracks across the continent, with long hair in a queue to be pulled by pranksters; a gardener trimming the shrubs while secretly planting a bomb; a saboteur before the day of infamy at Pearl Harbor, signaling the Imperial Fleet; a kamikaze pilot donning his headband somberly, screaming 'Banzai' on my way to my death; a peasant with a broad-brimmed straw hat in a rice paddy on the other side of the world, stooped over to toil in the water; an obedient servant in the parlor, a houseboy too dignified for my own good; a washerman in the basement laundry, removing stains using an ancient secret; a tyrant intent on imposing my despotism on the democratic world, opposed by the free and the brave; a party cadre alongside many others, all of us clad in coordinated Mao jackets; a sniper camouflaged in the trees of the jungle, training my gunsights on G.I. Joe; a child running with a body burning from napalm, captured in an unforgettable photo; an enemy shot in the head or slaughtered by the villageful; one of the grooms in a mass wedding of couples, having met my mate the day before through our cult leader; an orphan in the last airlift out of a collapsed capital, ready to be adopted into the good life; a black belt martial artist breaking cinderblocks with his head, in an advertisement for Ginsu brand knives with the slogan 'but wait--there's more' as the commercial segued to show another free gift ~ Frank H. Wu

Said all the dwarves. "Dark for dark business! There are many hours before dawn." "Of course!" said Bilbo, and sat down in a hurry. He missed the stool and sat in the fender, knocking over the poker and shovel with a crash. "Hush!" said Gandalf. "Let Thorin speak!" And this is how Thorin began. "Gandalf, dwarves and Mr. Baggins! We are met together in the house of our friend and fellow conspirator, this most excellent and audacious hobbit - may the hair on his toes never fall out! all praise to his wine and ale! - " He paused for breath and for a polite remark from the hobbit, but the compliments were quite lost on poor Bilbo Baggins, who was wagging his mouth in protest at being called audacious and worst of all fellow conspirator, though no noise came out, he was so flummoxed. So Thorin went on: "We are met to discuss our plans, our ways, ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

She was becoming herself and daily casting aside that fictitious self which we assume like a garment with which to appear before the world. ~ Kate Chopin