Being A Ghost Quotes

The fog was where I wanted to be. Halfway down the path you can't see this house. You'd never know it was here. Or any of the other places down the avenue. I couldn't see but a few feet ahead. I didn't meet a soul. Everything looked and sounded unreal. Nothing was what it is. That's what I wanted - to be alone with myself in another world where truth is untrue and life can hide from itself. Out beyond the harbor, where the road runs along the beach, I even lost the feeling of being on land. The fog and the sea seemed part of each other. It was like walking on the bottom of the sea. As if I had drowned long ago. As if I was the ghost belonging to the fog, and the fog was the ghost of the sea. It felt damned peaceful to be nothing more than a ghost within a ghost. ~ Eugene O'Neill

In a big city you become a ghost; you walk on the crowded streets and realise that you are a kind of transparent entity; an indistinct being, a thing which is not something! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

To be on an island inhabited by artificial ghosts was the most unbearable of nightmares,- to be in love with one of those images was worse than being in love with a ghost (perhaps we always want the person we love to have the existenceof a ghost). ~ Adolfo Bioy Casares

When the full moon was out the other night, it created one of the most spectacular scenes that I have seen in the Alps. The high glaciers of the Mont Blanc range were glowing an eerie bright blue-white, and they looked like huge ghost ships in the dark ocean of sky, sailing amongst black mountain valleys.

There were no clouds, and the moon was a huge and perfect disc tracking across the sky, shining on different parts of the glaciers through the night.

Looking up, I saw the black silhouette of the mid-altitude mountains below the ethereal shining high-mountain terrain, which created a weird vision: the ghostly glaciers floating, and appearing separate, contrasting sharply with the dark valleys beneath.

The Aiguille Verte especially, being so steep and isolated, seemed almost like a holographic mast with sails, plowing into the rolling waves, chasing after the Mont Blanc summit with its billowing spinnaker... ~ Steve Baldwin

Often she had seemed to herself to be moving among those vanished figures of old books and pictures, an invisible ghost among the living, better acquainted with them than with her own friends. she very nearly lost consciousness that she was a separate being, with a future of her own. ~ Virginia Woolf

...Hell is the home of the unreal and of the seekers for happiness. It is the only refuge from heaven, which is, as I tell you, the home of the masters of reality, and from earth, which is the home of the slaves of reality. The earth is a nursery in which men and women play at being heroes and heroines, saints and sinners; but they are dragged down from their fool's paradise by their bodies: hunger and cold and thirst, age and decay and disease, death above all, make them slaves of reality: thrice a day meals must be eaten and digested: thrice a century a new generation must be engendered: ages of faith, of romance, and of science are all driven at last to have but one prayer, "Make me a healthy animal." But here you escape this tyranny of the flesh; for here you are not an animal at all: you are a ghost, an appearance, an illusion, a convention, deathless, ageless: in a word, bodiless. There are no social questions here, no political questions, no religious questions, best of all, perhaps, no sanitary questions. Here you call your appearance beauty, your emotions love, your sentiments heroism, your aspirations virtue, just as you did on earth; but here there are no hard facts to contradict you, no ironic contrast of your needs with your pretensions, no human comedy, nothing but a perpetual romance, a universal melodrama. As our German friend put it in his poem, "the poetically nonsensical here is good sense; and the Eternal Feminine draws us ever upward and on... ~ George Bernard Shaw

When a traveler from the future must talk, he does not talk but whimpers. He whispers tortured sounds. He is agonized. For if he makes the slightest alteration in anything, he may destroy the future. At the same time, he is forced to witness events without being part of them, without changing them. He envies the people who live in their own time, who can act at will, oblivious of the future, ignorant of the effects of their actions. But he cannot act. He is an inert gas, a ghost, a sheet without soul. He has lost his personhood. He is an exile of time. ~ Alan Lightman

Sometimes she is struck by how much she goes through life almost unconsciously. She is being swept along. She is a pale ghost. ~ Kate Zambreno

This whole goddam house stinks of ghosts. I don't mind so much being haunted by a dead ghost, but I resent like hell being haunted by a half-dead one. ~ J.D. Salinger

When we walk in, everybody turns to look at us. Pres looks down at our joined hands and then looks to Knox. I open my mouth to say something, but he beats me to it.

Of course he does.

"Yo. Little announcement here. Violent Violet and I are together. She's my old lady and I'm her old man. Yada yada yada, we're getting married. So there's that."

I look at him, and I feel my jaw pop open. "Did you just yada yada your proposal to me?"

Knox shrugs like it's no big deal. "Wasn't going to let you tell me no."

The big scarred-up guy comes over and gives him a high five. "Best way to do it," he says and pats Knox on the back.

"About time you made an honest man out of him," Pres says, walking over and giving me a hug. I feel Knox's hand tighten, and he doesn't let it go while I awkwardly try to hug the guy back.

"We're all a family here now, and it's going to stay that way. We agreed that you're patched in, regardless if you marry this nerd or not."

I lean into Knox and laugh. "Thank you."

"Welcome to the Ghost Riders," Pres says, and suddenly I hear a champagne cork pop and we're all being sprayed with suds.

I try to turn into Knox's chest, but he holds me in front of him so I get covered.

As more champagne is popped and more bottles get poured, Knox spins me in his arms and raises me up so we are at eye level.

"I love you, baby," he says, kissing me on ~ Alexa Riley

So, look, you can't leave," Doug said, sitting straight up and turning towards her. "if you do, Miller's gonna revert and Caleb and Ian are gonna ride roughshod and Sean'll go back to being ghost brother and Finn ... "
Megan's heart slipped. "Finn what?"
"Finn will be destroyed," Doug said, looking her in the eye. "You got that dude all up in a twist, you know that, right?"
"What does that even mean?" Megan asked.
"All's I know is, he found out you left and he locked himself in the shed and barricaded the door. No one's seen him since," Doug said. "When I bolted, Sean and Evan were trying to boost Caleb up onto the roof so he could look through the skylight and make sure the kid wasn't dead or something."
Megan swallowed hard. "Wow. ~ Kate Brian

Atticus, I think we're being stalked by the ghost of Alfred Hitchcock. First it was a Vulture adn now two giant ravens are coming our way. Oberon ~ Kevin Hearne

If he was a ghost in the life he remembered, Jeff thought, he was also a ghost in his present life, just the same way. Except, in all the fourteen years, just a couple of times. With Melody that first summer he had felt alive. On the beach on the island. And when he played the guitar. Most of the time, he thought, he practiced not being anybody. If you weren't anybody then nobody could - what? Hurt you or leave you behind? Make you unhappy? But then they couldn't make you happy either, could they? If you played it safe, then you kept safe. Jeff figured he was pretty good at keeping safe - he didn't even look in mirrors because he didn't want to see Melody's eyes. But one result of that was that Jeff didn't know anything about himself. And he thought, sitting in the little boat, alone on the creek, alone with the creek and the sky and the marshes, that he might want to know more. ~ Cynthia Voigt

Betelgeuse. Sirius. Orion. Antares. The sky is very large, and you are very small. Let the words wash
through him, the voice and its memories pass over him, shivering his skin like the touch of a ghost,
vanishing into darkness.
The Pleiades. Cassiopeia. Taurus. Heaven is wide, and you are very small. Dead, but none the less
powerful for being dead. He spread his hands wide, gripping the fence - those were powerful, too.
Enough to beat a man to death, enough to choke out a life. But even death was not enough to loose the
bands of rage.
With great effort, he let go. Turned his hands palm upward, in gesture of surrender. He reached
beyond the stars, searching. The words formed themselves quietly in his mind, by habit, so quietly he
was not aware of them until he found them echoed in a whisper on his lips. ~ Diana Gabaldon

I know this feeling of being a ghost in your own life - no one sees you, no one feels you, so you stay still as if you could actually disappear at any moment. ~ Emery Lord

I think I am a better ghost than I am a human being. ~ Ingmar Bergman

To sit, staring at those fixed glazed eyes, in silence for a moment, would play, Scrooge felt, the very deuce with him. There was something very awful, too, in the spectre's being provided with an infernal atmosphere of its own. Scrooge could not feel it himself, but this was clearly the case; for though the Ghost sat perfectly motionless, its hair, and skirts, and tassels, were still agitated as by the hot vapour from an oven. ~ Charles Dickens

I woke up to an ache in my chest, the smell of chocolate, and the sound of the ghost making a racket in the kitchen. Now, I'm not the sort to dwell on doom and sorrow. Life is too short for that. But I should at least try to describe the ache briefly: It is not the kind that comes from eating tacos too late at night. It's the kind that comes from being left behind. I think my heart is smart enough to know there's a place I should be filling with new memories, new jokes, and wondrous adventures with the one person I loved most of all. But that person is gone now. And so, my heart has a giant hole. I call it The Big Empty. ~ Natalie Lloyd

Do not suppose, however, that those first principles [faith, repentance, baptism, Holy Ghost] are the only ones to be learned; do not become stereotyped in your feelings, and think that you must always dwell upon them and proceed no further. If there be knowledge concerning the future; if there be knowledge concerning the present; if there be knowledge concerning ages that are past, any species of knowledge that would be beneficial to the mind of man, let us seek for it, and that which we cannot obtain by using the light which God has placed within us, by using our reasoning powers, by reading books, or by human wisdom alone, let us seek to a higher source - to that Being who is filled with knowledge. ~ Orson Pratt

I went on writing reviews for the newspaper, and critical articles crying out for a different approach to culture, as even the most inattentive reader could hardly fail to notice if he scratched the surface a little, critical articles crying out, indeed begging, for a return to the Greek and Latin greats, to the Troubadours, to the dolce stil nuovo and the classics of Spain, France and England, more culture! more culture! read Whitman and Pound and Eliot, read Neruda and Borges and Vallejo, read Victor Hugo, for God's sake, and Tolstoy, and proudly I cried myself hoarse in the desert, but my vociferations and on occasions my howling could only be heard by those who were able to scratch the surface of my writings with the nails of their index fingers, and they were not many, but enough for me, and life went on and on and on, like a necklace of rice grains, on each grain of which a landscape had been painted, tiny grains and microscopic landscapes, and I knew that everyone was putting that necklace on and wearing it, but no one had the patience or the strength or the courage to take it off and look at it closely and decipher each landscape grain by grain, partly because to do so required the vision of a lynx or an eagle, and partly because the landscapes usually turned out to contain unpleasant surprises like coffins, makeshift cemeteries, ghost towns, the void and the horror, the smallness of being and its ridiculous will, people watching television, people going to football m ~ Roberto Bolano

He was too fascinated with this ghost of Magnus. So many questions came to his mind: "Can you eat, can you drink, can you make love, can you taste?" "No," said Magnus, "but I can see very well, and I can feel hot and cold in a pleasurable way, and I have a sense of being here, being alive, occupying this space, being tangible, and having a tempo in time. ... ~ Anne Rice

One other sacrifice of the New Testament believer-priests is the offering up of new converts to God. The apostle Paul saw himself by the grace of God as a minister to the Gentiles "that the offering up of the Gentiles might be acceptable, being sanctified by the Holy Ghost" (Ro 15:16; cf. Is 66:20). Although the apostle Paul was uniquely a minister to the Gentiles, every New Testament believer has the privilege of making this sacrifice of the fruits of evangelism. ~ Robert L. Saucy

Being a Milliner's about standing up for what's right, for those who can't stand up for themselves. ~ Frank Beddor

How happy can you be when you think every action and thought is being monitored by a judgmental ghost? ~ Dan Barker

There, standing before the mausoleum, Michael's anxiety skyrocketed. His heart raced. His head spun. His stomach turned. For a few moments, he really thought he was going to have to run to the bushes and puke. He'd never heard of a ghost being able to actually curse someone, but he didn't want to risk it by vomiting on Bluidy Mackenzie's front lawn. ~ Jacqueline E. Smith

Children of her type contrive the purest philosophies. Ada had worked out her own little system. Hardly a week had elapsed since Van's arrival when he was found worthy of being initiated in her web of wisdom. An individual's life consisted of certain classified things: "real things" which were unfrequent and priceless, simply "things" which formed the routine stuff of life; and "ghost things," also called "fogs," such as fever, toothache, dreadful disappointments, and death. Three or more things occurring at the same time formed a "tower," or, if they came in immediate succession, they made a "bridge." "Real towers" and "real bridges" were the joys of life, and when the towers came in a series, one experienced supreme rapture; it almost never happened, though. In some circumstances, in a certain light, a neutral "thing" might look or even actually become "real" or else, conversely, it might coagulate into a fetid "fog." When the joy and the joyless happened to be intermixed, simultaneously or along the ramp of duration, one was confronted with "ruined towers" and "broken bridges. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

I was a human being once," said the younger ghost. "I was a blood drinker for centuries after that. And I am a ghost now. And my soul has been my soul in all three forms. ~ Anne Rice

One boy's footprints are not long in being lost in the snow, in the steadily falling snow of the shortest day, the longest night; they are lost as soon as they are made. And once again the heath is clothed in drifting white. And there is no ghost, save the one ghost that lives in the heart of a motherless boy, till his footprints disappear. ~ Halldor Laxness

The final option to have your book completed is to hire a ghost writer. The challenge with this option is that it is important to note that your voice IS an integral part of your branding. When you hire someone else, what your readers will ultimately get is their voice. When they see you later at your website or on your social media, your voice will not be the same. This will trigger a feeling of inconsistency when relationships need to be built upon trust and authenticity. Your audience will eventually come to think you are not the "real deal" and will find another to replace you. Finally, your book is a springboard and launching pad to greater things such as speaking, interviews, a product line, etc. Will your ghost writer be available for all of that as well? How will you be able to "ghost write" your way through an interview? Hence the reason I stress speaking in your own voice. You may think you are not perfect, but your authenticity will speak in volumes to your followers and they will be customers for life if they see your true being. ~ Kytka Hilmar-Jezek

And then there is emotional death born out of necessity and measured solely by the absence of grief it causes: the turning off the lights of oneself in order to shut down the feelings of being alive. Eventually I just checked out of the world altogether, leaving behind only my body, like a snail abandoning its shell. Sometimes I would catch myself in the mirror, surprised to see someone staring back at me, a stranger whose face I struggled to connect as my own, whose body was visible and intact despite the feeling that I moved through the world as a ghost. ~ Kerry Kletter

I waved my hand in front of my face, obi-wan style. "I am not here."
Niall's mucas glands kicked into overdrive. "Eoin's dead! And his ghost is standing right there on the grass!"
Donal let out a long suffering sigh. "Eoin is being a writer." Niall calmed down, becuase everyone knows writers are weird and are always doing stupid thingss. ~ Eoin Colfer

When the truth would be unbearable the mind often just blanks it out. But some ghost of an event may stay in your head. Then, like the smudge of a bad word quickly wiped off a school blackboard, this ghost can call undue attention to itself by its very vagueness. You keep studying the dim shape of it, as if the original form will magically emerge. This blank spot in my past, then, spoke most loudly to me by being blank. It was a hole in my life that I both feared and kept coming back to because I couldn't quite fill it in. ~ Mary Karr

AIDANCE (A'IDANCE) n.s.[from aid.]Help; support: a word little used. Oft have I seen a timely parted ghost,Of ashy semblance, meagre, pale, and bloodless,Being all descended to the lab'ring heart,Who, in the conflict that it holds with death,Attracts the same for aidance 'gainst the enemy.Sh.Hen. VI. ~ Samuel Johnson

Throughout my teenage years, I read 'A Christmas Carol' by Charles Dickens every December. It was a story that never failed to excite me, for as well as being a Dickens enthusiast, I have always loved ghost stories. ~ John Boyne

I now had to walk everywhere rather than just deciding to go places. I admit I was disappointed about that part, since being a ghost had made me quite lazy. Stupid living people with their walking and stepping! ~ Dennis Liggio

Reading is merely a surrogate for thinking for yourself; it means letting someone else direct your thoughts. Many books, moreover, serve merely to show how many ways there are of being wrong, and how far astray you yourself would go if you followed their guidance. You should read only when your own thoughts dry up, which will of course happen frequently enough even to the best heads; but to banish your own thoughts so as to take up a book is a sin against the holy ghost; it is like deserting untrammeled nature to look at a herbarium or engravings of landscapes. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

After, Mam,' I say. 'What happens when you pass away?"
I couldn't bear her being a ghost. Couldn't take her sitting in the kitchen, invisible. Couldn't take seeing Pop walk around her without touching her cheek, without bending to kiss her on her neck.
'It's like walking through a door, Jojo.'
'But you won't be no ghost, huh, Mam?' I have to ask even though I know the telling hurts her. Even though I feel like speaking's bringing her leaving closer. Death, a great mouth set to swallow.
'Can't say for sure. But I don't think so. I think that only happens when the dying's bad. Violent. The old folks always told me that when someone dies in a bad way, sometimes it's so awful even God can't bear to watch, and then half your spirit stays behind and wanders, wanting peace the way a thirsty man seeks water.' She frowns: two fishhooks dimpling down. 'That ain't my way.'
'That don't mean I won't be here, Jojo. I'll be on the other side of the door. With everybody else that's gone before. Your uncle Given, my mama and daddy, Pop's mama and daddy.'
'How?'
'Because we don't walk no straight lines. It's all happening at once. All of it. We all here at once. My mama and daddy and they mamas and daddies.' Mam looks to the wall, closes her eyes. 'My son. ~ Jesmyn Ward

My name is Zak Bagans. I've never believed in ghosts until I came face to face with one. So I set out on a quest to capture what I once saw onto video ... With no big camera crews following us around, I am joined only by my fellow investigator Nick Groff and our equipment tech Aaron Goodwin. The three of us will travel to the some of most highly active paranormal locations, where we will spend an entire night, being locked down from dusk until dawn ... Raw ... Extreme ... These are our Ghost Adventures. ~ Zak Bagans

The worst part about being a fat woman isn't that people look at you with judgment in their eyes. It's that most don't look at you at all. You cease to be a person for whom they need to account. They look over your shoulder, or at the ground in front of you, or they glaze their eyes and look directly through you. It's like being a ghost, but with none of the fun of haunting. ~ Michele Gorman

Krisztina played the song. It was a lament made of eight notes, repeated. It was an empty melody. It sounded elemental too; it made Krisztina think of the snow falling beyond the window and across Budapest. She wondered if it was snowing in England. Alice's mother would be here again later, all the way from London. There was so much grief. They were mourning her little girl before she had gone. Without realising she heard these words making themselves part of the song. She played what she could, her head down, her face solemn and determined. She went back to the start, and felt the world falling away, the tears drying on her face. She heard the words coming, falling like the luminous snow. After a few minutes she looked across what seemed like a huge divide to Alice on the bed and faltered. In the house of the body, the lights were being extinguished, one by one. The floors were now bare, the walls unadorned, all sound hollow and lost; all that remained was the ghost of what was, the glimmer of the melody, the tune, the song of a life lived and lost in three minutes. ~ Simon Avery

Lee, I'm not good enough for him."
"Now, what do you mean by that?"
"I'm not being funny. He doesn't think about me. He's made someone up, and it's like he put my skin on her. I'm not like that - not like the made-up one."
"What's she like?"
"Pure!" said Abra. "Just absolutely pure. Nothing but pure - never a bad thing. I'm not like that."
"Nobody is," said Lee.
"He doesn't know me. He doesn't even want to know me. He wants that - white - ghost. ~ John Steinbeck

It's like having a ghost in my garage. I feel like I'm being haunted. With all the dead people I've got in my corner, you'd think one of them would be the one hanging around. ~ Katja Millay

And behold, he shall be born of Mary, at Jerusalem which is the land of our forefathers, she being a virgin, a precious and chosen vessel, who shall be overshadowed and conceive by the power of the Holy Ghost, and bring forth a son, yea, even the Son of God.
And he shall go forth, suffering pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind; and this that the word might be fulfilled which saith he will take upon him the pains and the sicknesses of his people.
And he will take upon him death, that he may loose the bands of death which bind his people; and he will take upon him their infirmities, that his bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh, that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities.' -Alma the Younger (Alme 7:10-12) ~ Joseph Smith Jr.

You are quarter ghost on your mother's side.
Your heart is a flayed peach in a bone box.
Your hair comes away in clumps like cheap fabric wet.
A reflecting pool gathers around your altar
of plywood sub flooring and split wooden slats.
You are rag doll prone. You are contort,
angle and arc. Here you rot. Here
you are a greening abdomen, slipping skin,
flesh fly, carrion beetles.
This is where bullets take shelter,
where scythes find their function, breath loses
its place on the page. This is where the page is torn
out of every book before chapter's close,
this is slippage, this is a shroud of neglect
pulled over the body, this
is your chance to escape.
Little wraith,
bend light around your skin until it colors you clear,
disappear like silica in a kiln, become
glass and glass beads, become
the staggered whir of an exhaust fan:
something only noticed
when gone. Become
an origami swan. Fold yourself smaller
than ever before. Become less. More
in some ways but less
in the way a famine is less. They will
forgive you for not being satisfied
with fitting in their hands.
They will forgive you
for dying to be
a bird diminutive enough
to fit in a mouth and not be crushed. ~ Jamaal May

A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

The story of America is one that is still being written. Many of the ideological battles we like to think we've tucked neatly into a folder called "the past" -issues of race, class, gender, sexual identity, civil rights, justice, and just what makes us "American" -are very much alive today. For what we do not study and reflect upon, we are in danger of dismissing or forgetting. What we forget, we are often doomed to repeat. Our ghost, it seems, are always with us, whispering that attention must be paid. ~ Libba Bray

Does being a paranormal author make me a ghost writer? ~ Adrian Lee

I remember, around age ten, beholding the scene in The Shining in which the hot young woman whom Jack Nicholson is lewdly embracing in the haunted hotel bathroom ages rapidly in his arms, screeching from nubile chick to putrefying corpse within seconds. I understood that the scene was supposed to represent some kind of primal horror. This was The Shining, after all. But the image of that decaying, cackling crone, her arms outstretched in desire toward the man who is backing away, has stayed with me for three decades, as a type of friend. She's part baths-ghost, part mad-Naomi. She didn't get the memo about being beyond wanting or being wanted. Or perhaps she just means to scare the shit out of him, which she does. ~ Maggie Nelson

As Freud noted: "A thing which has not been understood inevitably reappears; like an unlaid ghost, it cannot rest until the mystery has been resolved and the spell broken." . . . in ambivalent attachment, a mother vacillates inexplicably from being loving and tender to angry and threatening.. Faced with this unpredictable inconsistency, a child tries to appease the mother, anxious to control and monitor her shifting moods. ~ Terri Apter

He let go of the rope one hand at a time and latched onto Lisa's hands. Her fingernails dug into his wrists, but her grip was strong after a summer of lifting girls into the air. It was a tug of war battle between his friends and Shawn's ghost. The wind died down as Shawn gathered all of his energy to pull on Mike. Even though he was terrified of what was happening, Mike knew that Shawn wasn't trying to hurt him. After all these years, he was still trying to find a way out. Shawn wanted to go home too, and he saw the hope of being rescued falling away.
"Shawn! Please! Let me go!" Mike called over the dying wind, "I'll get you help! We'll get you out! Just please! Let me go!"

- Saving Hascal's Horrors ~ Laura Smith

Because not loving her is like not existing, not breathing, not being.I don't know how to live without loving her, and if that's how i have to spend the rest of my days on this earth-loving a ghost-that's how it will be ~ Lauren Blakely

In the night as he slept Boyd came to him and squatted by the deep embers of the fire as he'd done times by the hundreds and smiled his soft smile that was not quite cynical and he took off his hate and held it before him and looked down into it. In the dream he knew that Boyd was dead and that the subject of his being so must be approached with a certain caution for that which was circumspect in life must be doubly so in death and he'd no way to know what word or gesture might subtract him back again into that nothingness out of which he'd come. When finally he did ask him what it was like to be dead Boyd only smiled and looked away and would not answer. They spoke of other things and he tried not to wake from the dream but the ghost dimmed and faded and he woke and lay looking up at the stars through the bramblework of the treelimbs and he tried to think of what that place could be where Boyd was but Boyd was dead and wasted in his bones wrapped in the soogan upriver in the trees and he turned his face to the ground and wept. ~ Cormac McCarthy

At your tongue every few minutes." "I will not slow you down. I am a good enough rider." "I will not be stopping at boardinghouses with warm beds and plates of hot grub on the table. It will be traveling fast and eating light. What little sleeping is done will take place on the ground." "I have slept out at night. Papa took me and Little Frank coon hunting last summer on the Petit Jean." "Coon hunting?" "We were out in the woods all night. We sat around a big fire and Yarnell told ghost stories. We had a good time." "Blast coon hunting! This ain't no coon hunt, it don't come in forty miles of being a coon hunt!" "It is the same idea as a coon hunt. You are just trying to make your ~ Charles Portis

hear him breathing behind me, loud and fast. "Are you all right, Four?"

"Are you human, Tris? Being up this high..." He gulps for air. "It doesn't scare you at all?"

I look over my shoulder at the ground. If I fall now, I will die. But I don't think I will fall. A gust of air presses against my left side, throwing my body weight to the right. I gasp and cling to the rungs, my balance shifting. Four's cold hand clamps around one of my hips, one of his fingers finding a strip of bare skin just under the hem of my T-shirt. He squeezes, steading me and pushing me gently to the left, restoring my balance. Now I can't breathe. I pause, staring at my hands, my mouth dry. I feel the ghost of where his hand was, his fingers long and narrow.

"You okay?" he asks quietly.

"Yes," I say, my voice strained. ~ Veronica Roth

You are not like other girls. You are not like other girls ("You are not like other girls," the boys you run with will tell you, and you will try not to let them see you preen under the glancing light of their approval). You learn their books and their language. You laugh at their jokes. You listen to their stories, sit blank-eyed on their couched while they play video games, pass them your English notes. You keep their secrets. You use the words they use about other girls in order to assure yourself that they will never use those words about you. You make yourself into nothingness, a ghost conjured into being only through the desires of boys, the rules of boys, the ideas of boys. You're not like other girls. ~ Sarah McCarry

This must be what it means to be a ghost, being certain that life exists, because your four senses say so, and yet unable to see it. ~ Jose Saramago

Can you give yourself your own evil and your own good and hang your own will over yourself as a law? Can you be your own judge and avenger of your law? Terrible it is to be alone with the judge and avenger of one's own law. Thus is a star thrown out into the void and into the icy breath of solitude. Today you are still suffering from the many being one: today your courage and your hopes are still whole. But the time will come when solitude will make you weary, when your pride will double up and your courage gnash its teeth. And you will cry, "I am alone!" The time will come when that which seems high to you will no longer be in sight, and that which seems low will be all-too-near; even what seems sublime to you will frighten you like a ghost And you will cry, "All is false! ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Outside the station of Santa Maria Novella Isabella has to stand aside while a line of prisoners are marched into the terminus by armed Fascist guards. They pass within touching distance of her, carrying bags and bundles. There are old people and some children too. They all seem swamped by their clothes, disembodied by them somehow. Then she catches the eye of Ezra, a young Jewish man who once worked in the arts material shop where she buys most of her pigments and brushes. He is almost at the back of the line. The veins are high and urgent on his hand. His trousers are held up with a dirty piece of string. His cobalt blue eyes hold hers for the barest beat of a moment but some essence of his being conveys itself to her and her blood quickens in sympathy for him. She has the feeling of looking into the eyes of a ghost. ~ Glenn Haybittle

The Cult of Done Bre Pettis wrote this manifesto on his blog: 1. There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion. 2. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done. 3. There is no editing stage. 4. Pretending you know what you're doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so accept that you know what you're doing even if you don't and do it. 5. Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it. 6. The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done. 7. Once you're done you can throw it away. 8. Laugh at perfection. It's boring and keeps you from being done. 9. People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right. 10. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes. 11. Destruction is a variant of done. 12. If you have an idea and publish it on the Internet, that counts as a ghost of done. 13. Done is the engine of more. ~ Seth Godin

Parental love is a matchless thing; if it weren't for that, most of us wouldn't have a pot to piss in, affectionately speaking. But even at its most irreplacable, it's still pretty cheap. Any ape loves their children; spiders lie still while theirs crawl around inside them, happy to let them eat their guts.
The only reason anybody unrelated is ever nice to anyone else, meanwhile, is as a sort of pre-emptive emotional strike - to prevent themselves from being treated as badly, potentially, as they might have treated other people. Which makes love only the lie two brains on spines tell each other, the lie that says: "You exist, because I love you. You exist, because you can see yourself in my eyes."
So we blunder from hope to hope, hollowed and searching. All of us equally incomplete.
And after all these years, still the sting comes, the liquid pressure in the chest and nose, the migraine-forerunner frown. Phantom pain. The ghost without the murder.
But what the fuck? That's all it is, ever. You want to be loved. You tell other people you love them, in order to trick them into loving you back. And after a while, it's true. You feel the pull, the ache. ~ Gemma Files

I'm not a strong virgin any more, I'm a mighty woman. I'm no longer just the ghost of a human being, I'm solid. But how could I be real if I never cast a shadow? I need my darker side in order to be whole. ~ Cathy Dobson

If God wishes to be born as man and to unite mankind in the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, He suffers the terrible torment of having to bear the world in its reality. It is a crux; indeed, He Himself is His own cross. The world is God's suffering, and every individual human being who wishes even to approach his own wholeness knows very well that this means bearing his own cross. But the eternal promise for him who bears his own cross is the Paraclete. ~ Carl Jung

To rush headlong into the comforting darkness of selfhood as a reborn human being, or even as beast, an unhappy ghost, a denizen of hell. Anything rather than the burning brightness of unmitigated Reality. ~ Aldous Huxley

Ethan didn't know anything about the fat girl, the Cootie Twin, the loner and reject. The only person who had ever picked Jennifer Harris was Cameron Quick, and sometimes when I was with Ethan I felt the smallest twinge of guilt, like being with him was a betrayal. The one thing that could never die or be buried was my loyalty to Cameron for everything he'd done for me and what we'd been through together, even if that loyalty was to a ghost. ~ Sara Zarr

To tell a ghost story means being willing to be haunted. ~ Judith "Jack" Halberstam

In all my years of Ghost Hunting I have never been afraid, after all, a ghost is only a fellow human being in trouble ~ Hans Holzer

Though the mules plod in a steady and unflagging hypnosis, the vehicle does not seem to progress. It seems to hang suspended in the middle distance forever and forever, so infinitesimal is its progress, like a shabby bead upon the mild red string of road. So much so is this that in the watching of it the eye loses it as sight and sense drowsily merge and blend, like the road itself, with all the peaceful and monotonous changes between darkness and day, like already measured thread being rewound onto a spool. So that at last, as though out of some trivial and unimportant region beyond even distance, the sound of it seems to come slow and terrific and without meaning, as though it were a ghost traveling a half mile ahead of its own shape. ~ William Faulkner

The trouble with being a ghostwriter or artist is that you must remain rather anonymously without credit. If one wants the credit, one has to cease being a ghost and become a leader or innovator. ~ Bob Kane

They don't take the Bible as a general thing, sailors don't; though I will say that I never saw the man at sea who didn't give it the credit of being an uncommon good yarn.
("Kentucky's Ghost") ~ Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

As a child, I was a brat, and my parents didn't know how to control me. So they told me ghost stories, which stayed with me. I am still petrified of darkness and being alone. ~ Bipasha Basu

Then I began, as though I had never seen my shoes before, to study their expression, their mimelike movements when I moved my toes, their shape, and the worn-out leather they had; and I discovered that their wrinkles and their white seams gave them an expression, provided them with a face. Something of my own being had gone over into these shoes, they struck me as being a ghost of my "I," a breathing part of myself. . . . ~ Knut Hamsun

Against snow, a tall Beautiful Being. Whistlings of death and circles of muffled music make this adored body rise, swell and tremble like a ghost; scarlet and black wounds open in the magnificent flesh. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

Total immersion in and saturation with the Savior's gospel are essential steps in the process of being born again. ~ David A. Bednar

God Himself, "One God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible," and "One Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God; begotten of His Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God; begotten, not made; being of one substance with the Father," and "the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life, Who proceedeth from the Father and the Son, Who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified." Yet this holy Trinity is One God, for "we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Substance. For there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one: the glory equal and the majesty co-eternal." So in part run the ancient creeds, and so the inspired Word declares. ~ A.W. Tozer

Also in the boom of the big bell there is a quaintness of tone which wakens feelings, so strangely far-away from all the nineteenth-century part of me, that the faint blind stirrings of them make me afraid, - deliciously afraid. never do I hear that billowing peal but I become aware of a striving and a fluttering in the abyssal part of my ghost, - a sensation as of memories struggling to reach the light beyond the obscurations of a million million deaths and births. I hope to remain within hearing of that bell ... and, considering the possibility of being doomed to the state of a jiki-ketsu-geki, I want to have my chance of being reborn in some bamboo flower-cup, or mizutame, whence I might issue softly, singing my thin and pungent song, to bite some people that I know. ~ Lafcadio Hearn

The world of shadows and superstition that was Victorian England, so well depicted in this 1871 tale, was unique. While the foundations of so much of our present knowledge of subjects like medicine, public health, electricity, chemistry and agriculture, were being, if not laid, at least mapped out, people could still believe in the existence of devils and demons. And why not? A good ghost story is pure entertainment. It was not until well into the twentieth century that ghost stories began to have a deeper significance and to become allegorical; in fact, to lose their charm. No mental effort is required to read 'The Weird Woman', no seeking for hidden meanings; there are no complexities of plot, no allegory on the state of the world. And so it should be. At what other point in literary history could a man, standing over the body of his fiancee, say such a line as this:

'Speak, hound! Or, by heaven, this night shall witness two murders instead of one!'

Those were the days.

(introduction to "The Weird Woman") ~ Hugh Lamb

Let me see if I understand correctly now," the Jinni said at one point. "You and your relations believe that a ghost living in the sky can grant you wishes." "That is a gross oversimplification, and you know it." "And yet, according to men, we jinn are nothing but children's tales?" "This is different. This is about religion and faith." "And where exactly is the difference?" "Are you honestly asking, or being deliberately insulting?" "I'm honestly asking. ~ Helene Wecker

You let me think I was being stalked by a ghost, you fuck nuts! ~ Abigail Roux

Many people, after spending a long weekend being stealthily seduced by this grand dame of the South, mistakenly think that they have gotten to know her: they believe (in error) that after a long stroll amongst the rustling palmettoes and gas lamps, a couple of sumptuous meals, and a tour or two, that they have discovered everything there is to know about this seemingly genteel, elegant city. But like any great seductress, Charleston presents a careful veneer of half-truths and outright fabrications, and it lets you, the intended conquest, fill in many of the blanks. Seduction, after all, is not true love, nor is it a gentle act. She whispers stories spun from sugar about pirates and patriots and rebels, about plantations and traditions and manners and yes, even ghosts; but the entire time she is guarded about the real story. Few tourists ever hear the truth, because at the dark heart of Charleston is a winding tale of violence, tragedy and, most of all, sin. ~ James Caskey

A ghost story of which the scene is laid in the twelfth or thirteenth century may succeed in being romantic or poetical: it will never put the reader into the position of saying to himself: If I'm not careful, something of this kind may happen to me! ~ M.R. James

A man is after all himself and no other, and not merely an example of a class of similar selves. If such a man is deprived of the means of being a self in a world made over by science for his use and enjoyment, he is like a ghost at a feast. He becomes invisible. That is why people in the modern age took photographs by the million: to prove despite their deepest suspicions to the contrary that they were not invisible. ~ Walker Percy

Cletus Byron Winston, you are being rude." I might have my own less than glowing thoughts about my father, but he was my father.

He opened his mouth to respond, then snapped it shut and did a double take, his eyes narrowing on me. "First of all, how do you know my middle name?"

"Your momma used to use it when you were naughty, when you boys would help her shelve books in the library. 'Cletus Byron! Stop stuffing Astrophysics Monthly down your pants!'"

Cletus grinned. Then he chuckled. His eyes lost some of their zealous focus as he pushed away from the tree and strolled closer. "Oh yeah. She did, didn't she?"

"I felt sorry for Billy, though." I scooched to one side as he sat down. "His name always confused everyone, like your momma was trying to talk to Shakespeare's ghost. 'William Shakespeare, would you please stop Beauford from pulling down his pants in front of the girls?'"

Cletus laughed harder, leaning backward and holding his stomach. "I remember that. How old was Beau?"

"He was ten. He was trying to show us his new Tarzan underwear. I don't think he meant any harm."

"He sure did love that underwear." Cletus nodded and he scratched his beard. "I'm going to have to find him some Tarzanunderwear in adult size."

"So you can torture him about it?"

He pretended to be shocked by my accusation. "Certainly not. I don't torture my siblings."

"Yeah, right." I gave him my ~ Penny Reid

Ghost Dog: In the words of the ancients, one should make his decision within the space of seven breaths. It is a matter of being determined and having the spirit to break through to the other side. ~ Jim Jarmusch

I was on the first one when I felt his fingers encircle my wrist. "Sophie, come on. I don't want to fight with you."
Turning, I opened my mouth to say I didn't want to fight with him either. But before I could, I saw the telltale flash out of the corner of my eye, and the next thing I knew, my arm was jerking out of his grasp. "If you don't want to fight with her, maybe you shouldn't suggest she team up with people who want to kill her," my voice snarled.
Archer backed up so fast he nearly stumbled, and I wasn't sure I'd ever seen him look so freaked out. But he recovered quickly. "Elodie, if I wanted to talk to you, I'd do a séance or something. Maybe go on an episode of Ghost Hunters. But right now, I want to talk to Sophie. So clear out."
Elodie had no intention of doing that. "You always were a crappy boyfriend," she said. "Once you left, I chalked that up to you, you know, not actually liking me. But unless I'm blind as well as dead, you really like Sophie. In fact, hard as it is for me to fathom, I think you love her."
Shut up, shut up, shut up!
Screw that, she retorted. You two spend all your time making stupid jokes and being all witty. Someone has to get real.
"What's your point?" Archer asked, narrowing his eyes at me. Her. Whatever. God, this was getting confusing.
"Cal loves her, too, you know. And the last time I checked, he wasn't part of a cult of monster killers. I'm just saying that if you're going have loyalties that divid ~ Rachel Hawkins

I mean," her mother paused to choose her words, "maybe you'll get involved in some school related activities, or join a team, or maybe meet a nice boy."
"Ugh," Keely groaned, "I don't have time for that stuff mom. We've talked about this."
"Because of the little ghost ... searching ... thingy you and Tad do?"
"It's called paranormal investigation mom."
"It's called being antisocial. ~ Aaron Crabill

I believe that He was made man, joining the human nature with the divine in one person; being conceived by the singular operation of the Holy Ghost, and born of the blessed Virgin Mary, who, as well after as before she brought Him forth, continued a pure and unspotted virgin. ~ John Wesley

The Self since the time of Descartes has been stranded, split off from everything else in the Cosmos, a mind which professes to understand bodies and galaxies but is by the very act of understanding marooned in the Cosmos, with which is has no connection. It therefore needs to exercise every option in order to reassure itself that it is not a ghost but is rather a self among other selves. One such option is a sexual encounter. Another is war. The pleasure of a sexual encounter derives not only from physical gratification but also from the demonstration to oneself that, despite one's own ghostliness, one is, for the moment at least, a sexual being. Amazing! Indeed, the most amazing of all the creatures in the Cosmos: a ghost with an erection! Yet not really amazing, for only if the abstracted ghost has an erection can it, like Jove spying Europa on the beach, enter the human condition. ~ Walker Percy

Let today be the day you stop being haunted by the ghost of yesterday. Holding a grudge & harboring anger/resentment is poison to the soul. Get even with people ... but not those who have hurt us, forget them, instead get even with those who have helped us. ~ Steve Maraboli

All the drinking reinforced my unease, and since nothing of what I did gave me anything back, I became more and more worn down, it was as though I was being drained, I became emptier and emptier, and soon I would be walking around like a shadow, a ghost, as empty and dark as the sky and the sea around me. ~ Karl Ove Knausgaard

When you ask me what I'm afraid of, I'd say I still go to see ghost movies when I get a chance or some sort of supernatural being, but it doesn't scare me as it scared me when I was a child. ~ Stephen King

I think ghostliness is a good quality. I pretend I'm dead all the time."
"What?" He stopped rummaging through his locker to look at me full in the face a last.
"It helps me go to sleep," I said.
"That shows you don't know anything about death," Jonah said.
"Do you?" I asked.
He hesitated before saying "I'm a g-g-g-ghost, aren't I?"
"I think being dead might be nice. Restful."
"Death is not restful. It's nothing."
"That's what seems restful to me," I said. "The nothing. Not being here. Not being anywhere. ~ Natalie Standiford

Peace and beauty? You think Indians are so worried about peace and beauty? ... If Wovoka came back to life, he'd be so pissed off. If the real Pocahontas came back, you think she'd be happy about being a cartoon? If Crazy Horse, or Geronimo, or Sitting Bull came back, they'd see what you white people have done to Indians, and they'd start a war. They'd see the homeless Indians staggering around downtown. They'd see fetal-alcohol-syndrome babies. They'd see the sorry-ass reservations. They'd learn about Indian suicides and infant mortality rates. They'd listen to some dumb-ass Disney song and feel like hurting somebody. They'd read books by assholes like Wilson, and they would start killing themselves some white people, and then kill some asshole Indians too.

Dr. Mather, if the Ghost Dance worked, there would be no exceptions. All you white people would disappear. All of you. If those dead Indians came back to life ,they wouldn't crawl into a sweathouse with you. They wouldn't smoke the pipe with you. They wouldn't go to the movies and munch popcorn with you. They'd kill you. They'd gut you and eat your heart. ~ Sherman Alexie

I was selling a piece of my art on eBay from The Escapist, which was an adaptation of The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, and the person who bought it was Alan Heinberg, one of the executive producers of the show and was a huge fan of my work and asked if I'd be interested in maybe being the ghost artist for Seth. It clicked and I could relate to Seth's plight on the show. It became really easy to fill in his shoes, and people really grabbed onto it; they really dug that sort of very minor sub-plot in the show. ~ Eric Wight

Scientific fraud, plagiarism, and ghost writing are increasingly being reported in the news media, creating the impression that misconduct has become a widespread and omnipresent evil in scientific research. ~ Heinrich Rohrer

The author apologizes for being unable to afford a ghost writer, which explains the lack of a distinctive prose style. ~ Richard Armour

Wessex Heights

There are some heights in Wessex, shaped as if by a kindly hand
For thinking, dreaming, dying on, and at crises when I stand,
Say, on Ingpen Beacon eastward, or on Wylls-Neck westwardly,
I seem where I was before my birth, and after death may be.

In the lowlands I have no comrade, not even the lone man's friend –
Her who suffereth long and is kind; accepts what he is too weak to mend:
Down there they are dubious and askance; there nobody thinks as I,
But mind-chains do not clank where one's next neighbour is the sky.

In the towns I am tracked by phantoms having weird detective ways –
Shadows of beings who fellowed with myself of earlier days:
They hang about at places, and they say harsh heavy things –
Men with a frigid sneer, and women with tart disparagings.

Down there I seem to be false to myself, my simple self that was,
And is not now, and I see him watching, wondering what crass cause
Can have merged him into such a strange continuator as this,
Who yet has something in common with himself, my chrysalis.

I cannot go to the great grey Plain; there's a figure against the moon,
Nobody sees it but I, and it makes my breast beat out of tune;
I cannot go to the tall-spired town, being barred by the forms now passed
For everybody but me, in whose long vision they stand there fast.

There's a ghost at Yell'ham Bottom chiding l ~ Thomas Hardy

He appeared into the scene like an otherworldly being, providing no indication nor declaration. He did not even issue a warning of what his presence would entail. He may have been the wind, a caress, or a ghost, invading others' most precious convictions and still haunting mine like a ruthless despot. ~ Jeni Dhodary

Daisy was my beloved bulldog, who had some problems of her own - the main one being that she, too, was no longer alive. However, she wasn't a ghost like Robbie. Daisy was a zombie. Long story. ~ Stephen Osborne

In short, Mrs. Pontellier was beginning to realize her position in the universe as a human being, and to recongize her relations as an individual to the world within and about her. This may seem like a ponderous weight of wisdom to descend upon the soul of a young woman of twenty-eight - perhaps more wisdom than the Holy Ghost is usually pleased to vouchsafe to any woman. ~ Kate Chopin

To be honest," I halfwhispered, "I don't feel as safe with him as I do with you." "I know." A ghost of a smile touched my lips. "How do you know?" "Think about what safety is, Ella." "Trust?" "Yes, partly. But also an absence of risk." He unstuck a strand of hair from my damp cheek and tucked it back. "Maybe you need to take a risk. Maybe you need to be with someone who rattles you a little. ~ Lisa Kleypas