Black Hand Of Sauron Quotes

He felt something on his neck. Warmth.
He hesitated, then turned weary eyes toward the sky. Sunlight bathed his face. He gaped; it seemed so long since he'd seen pure sunlight. It shone down through a large break in the clouds, comforting, like the warmth of an oven baking a loaf of Adrinne's thick sourdough bread.
Almen stood, raising a hand to shade his eyes. He took a deep, long breath, and smelled… apple blossoms? He spun with a start.
The apple trees were flowering.
That was plain ridiculous. He rubbed his eyes, but that didn't dispel the image. They were blooming, all of them, white flowers breaking out between the leaves.
[...] What was happening? Apple trees didn't blossom twice. Was he going mad?
Footsteps sounded softly on the path that ran past the orchard. Almen spun to find a tall young man walking down out of the foothills. He had deep red hair and he wore ragged clothing: a brown cloak with loose sleeves and a simple white linen shirt beneath. The trousers were finer, black with a delicate embroidery of gold at the cuff.
"Ho, stranger," Almen said, raising a hand, not knowing what else to say, not even sure if he'd seen what he thought he'd seen. "Did you… did you get lost up in the foothills?"
The man stopped, turning sharply. He seemed surprised to find Almen there. With a start, Almen realized the man's left arm ended in a stump.
The stranger looked about, then breathed in deeply. "No. I'm not lost. Finally. It fe ~ Robert Jordan

The closest I'd ever got to seeing a naked woman before was black and white cleavage, and then Rosie tossed her clothes in a corner just like they were getting in the way and spun around in the dim light of Number 16, palms up, luminous, laughing, almost close enough to touch. The thought still knocks the wind out of me. I was too young even to know what I wanted to do about her, I just knew nothing in the World, not the Mona Lisa walking through the Grand Canyon with the Holy Grail in one hand and a winning lotto ticket in the other, was ever going to be that beautiful. ~ Tana French

Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandaled feet. ~ Robert E. Howard

He wore a white girdle that pulled in his waist just above the hips. He was, of necessity, slender. She believed men should take up as little space as possible. He wore his black hair long over his shoulders, tied once with a white ribbon. The men allowed to live were, of course, beautiful, far more beautiful than any of the women Zezili knew. Anavha was clean-shaven, as she wanted him, lightly powdered in gold, his eyes lined in kohl, eyes a stormy grey, set a bit too wide in a broad face whose jaw she has initially found almost vulgar in its squareness. He stood a hand shorter than she; she easily outweighed him by fifty pounds. She liked him just this way. ~ Kameron Hurley

At the bakery it's just me. It's a small place. Just me and the raspberry horns and the tourtiere pies and my cigarette going in the ashtray near the black sink. Every once in a while a car passes through the dark street outside the storefont windows, but that's pretty much all I see of people while I'm there, until the end of my shift at eight when Monica shows up to open the store for the day. A solid twelve hours by myself, nothing but the radio to keep me company, and I like it just fine, being alone. It's even better in the winter, during a storm, when the snow piles up outside and no cars come by at all. Inside the bakery it's warm and there's plenty to keep my hands busy. Times like that, for all I can tell I'm the only person left on earth. I could go on making pies and watching the snow pile up until the end of time, so long as there was enough coffee on hand. I don't need company like some people seem to. ~ Ron Currie Jr.

the six of us are supposed to drive to the diner in Hastings for lunch. But the moment we enter the cavernous auditorium where the girls told us to meet them, my jaw drops and our plans change.

"Holy shit - is that a red velvet chaise lounge?"

The guys exchange a WTF look. "Um…sure?" Justin says. "Why - "

I'm already sprinting toward the stage. The girls aren't here yet, which means I have to act fast. "For fuck's sake, get over here," I call over my shoulder.

Their footsteps echo behind me, and by the time they climb on the stage, I've already whipped my shirt off and am reaching for my belt buckle. I stop to fish my phone from my back pocket and toss it at Garrett, who catches it without missing a beat.

"What is happening right now?" Justin bursts out.

I drop trou, kick my jeans away, and dive onto the plush chair wearing nothing but my black boxer-briefs. "Quick. Take a picture."

Justin doesn't stop shaking his head. Over and over again, and he's blinking like an owl, as if he can't fathom what he's seeing.

Garrett, on the other hand, knows better than to ask questions. Hell, he and Hannah spent two hours constructing origami hearts with me the other day. His lips twitch uncontrollably as he gets the phone in position.

"Wait." I pause in thought. "What do you think? Double guns, or double thumbs up?"

"What is happening?"

We both ignore Justin's baffled e ~ Elle Kennedy

In July 1964 an alleged incident involving Paco Rabanne rocked the
model community to its foundations. The innovative Spanish-born designer
had used black beauties in his Paris show to model his futuristic
plastic dresses, a move that enraged the American fashion press. According
to Rabanne in Barbara Summers's book Skin Deep, things got
out of hand backstage after the show. 'I watched them coming,' he said,
'the girls from American Vogue and Harper's Bazaar. "Why did you do
that?" they said. "You don't have the right to do that, to take those kind
of girls. Fashion is for us, white people." They spat in my face. I had to
wipe it off.' Rabanne was subsequently blacklisted by the fashion cartels
until black runway models finally became chic in the 1970s. ~ Ben Arogundade

The newcomer stood well over six feet, as tall as any Warden. His hair was dark, the color of obsidian, and it reflected blue in the dim light. Lazy locks slipped over his forehead and curled just below his ears. Brows arched over golden eyes and his cheekbones were broad and high. He was attractive. Very attractive. Mind-bendingly beautiful, actually, but the sardonic twist to his full lips chilled his beauty. The black T-shirt stretched across his chest and flat stomach. A huge tattoo of a snake curled around his forearm, the tail disappearing under his sleeve and the diamond-shaped head rested on the top of his hand. He looked my age. Total crush material - if it wasn't for the fact that he had no soul. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

Without warning, he fingered the small, black tattoo on her lower back. "What does this script mean?"
She did gasp then, as much from the shock of his touch as from her visceral reaction to it. She wanted to arch up to his hand and couldn't understand why. She snapped, "Are you done groping me?"
"Canna say. Tell me what the marking means."
Mari had no idea. She'd had it ever since she could remember. All she knew was that her mother used to write out that mysterious lettering in all of her correspondence. Or, at least her mother had before she'd abandoned Mari in New Orleans to go on her two-hundred-year-long druid sabbatical -
He tapped her there, impatiently awaiting an answer.
"It means 'drunk and lost a bet.' Now keep your hands to yourself unless you want to be an amphibian." When the opening emerged ahead, she crawled heedlessly for it and scrambled out with her lantern swinging wildly. She'd taken only three steps into the new chamber before he'd caught her wrist, spinning her around.
As his gaze raked over her, he reached forward and pulled a lock of her long hair over her shoulder. He seemed unaware that he was languidly rubbing his thumb over the curl. "Why hide this face behind a cloak?" he murmured, cocking his head to the side as he studied her. "No' a damn thing's wrong with you that I can tell. But you look fey. Explains the name."
"How can I resist these suave compliments?" He was right about the name though. Many of the fey ~ Kresley Cole

So we are nearing the end. The right-hand, still untasted part of the novel, which, during our delectable reading, we would lightly feel, mechanically testing whether there was still plenty left (and our fingers were always gladdened by the placid, faithful thickness) has suddenly, for no reason at all, become quite meager: a few minutes of quick reading, already downhill, and–O horrible! The heap of cherries, whose mass had seemed to us such a ruddy and glossy black, had suddenly become discrete drupes: the one over there with the scar is a little rotten, and this one has shriveled and dried up around its stone (and the very last one is inevitably hard and unripe) O horrible! ~ Vladimir Nabokov

He and I went up to London. He had the advice of an eminent oculist; and he eventually recovered the sight of that one eye. He cannot now see very distinctly: he cannot read or write much; but he can find his way without being led by the hand: the sky is no longer a blank to him - the earth no longer a void. When his first-born was put into his arms, he could see that the boy had inherited his own eyes, as they once were - large, brilliant, and black. On that occasion, he again, with a full heart, acknowledged that God had tempered judgment with mercy. ~ Charlotte Bronte

He said only, "Bad people. Some very bad people."
Uncle Chris's mouth flattened into a small, thin line. Then he nodded crisply. He knew all about bad people. John was speaking in a language he understood.
"Is it drugs?" Uncle Chris asked, in a hushed voice.
I looked at John, in his black jeans and T-shirt, with his long dark hair, and studded leather wristbands. I could see why Uncle Chris had asked. To someone of his generation, it would have to be either drugs, or…well, a rock band.
John gave me a barely perceptible shake of his head. No, his eyes begged me. Don't.
"Yes," I said, glancing back at Uncle Chris. "It's drugs."
John's gaze instantly rolled towards the sky.
"Piercey," Uncle Chris said, exhaling gustily and dragging a hand through his hair. "We talked about this. I thought you were the one I didn't have to worry about."
We had talked about something along those lines, I remembered, outside this very house, the night before Jade was killed. But it had been about Uncle Chris giving me driving lessons. I didn't recall drugs being mentioned.
"Well," I said. "Things are a little messed up right now. That's why we're here. I wanted to make sure Alex is okay."
"Alex?" Uncle Chris threw me a look of alarm. "Don't tell me Alex is doing drugs."
I could see now why John had been against lying about the drugs thing. I'd thought it would simplify things. But it was only making them worse.
"He's not," I said quickly. ~ Meg Cabot

But even as he reached out to cup he face he heard an angry buzzing, and a huge black bee dive-bombed him from out of nowhere. With an oath, Thomas jumped back, swatting ineffectually at the persistent insect. As his left foot came down he turned his ankle and nearly fell.
Alexandria's hand covered her mouth in horror. Aidan, stop it right now!
I cannot imagine what you are accusing me of, Aidan returned innocently from the living room. But I have not done anything. He smiled and moved slowly toward her. Yet.
"Marie!" In a panic, Alexandria called out as loudly as she could.
Aidan laughed as the housekeeper hurried in. Little coward, run while you can.
Though they were half a room apart and Marie was squarely between them, Alexandria felt the brush of his fingers on her skin, her face, her throat. They trailed lower, feather-light, to touch the aching swell of her breast before the sensation was gone.
"What is it, Alexandria?" Marie asked, her hands on her hips, glaring at Aidan.
He held up a placating hand, laughing. "I am innocent. I was a perfect gentleman to her visitor."
"He spilled Thomas's coffee, made him sneeze, smeared whipped cream over him, and chased him with a bee," Alexandria accused.
While Marie struggled to keep a straight face, Alexandria delivered a final outrage. "And he was going to wither my flowers."
"Aidan!" Marie reprimanded sharply, but there was laughter in her eyes. ~ Christine Feehan

I think I might have something for you today, he says, reaches beneath the counter, and his hand comes back with a book, clothbound cover the color of antique ivory, title and author stamped in faded gold and art deco letters. Best Ghost Stories by Algernon Blackwood, and she lifts it carefully off the countertop, picks it up the way someone else might lift a diamond necklace or a sick kitten, and opens the book to the frontispiece and title page, black-and-white photo of the author in a dapper suit, sadkind eyes and his bow tie just a little crooked. ~ Caitlin R. Kiernan

She stretched out her hand, saying, "Vernon! My dear, what a delightful surprise!"
"What's surprising about it?" he enquired, lifting his black brows. "Didn't you ask me to come?"
The smile remained pinned to Lady Buxted's lips, but she replied with more than a touch of acidity: "To be sure I did, but so many days ago that I supposed you had gone out of town!"
"Oh, no!" he said, returning her smile with one of great sweetness. ~ Georgette Heyer

The god of unreflecting drunkenness advised me to take no reading matter at all, or if I absolutely insisted on reading matter, then a little stack of Rasputin would do; Apollo, on the other hand, in his shrewd, sensible way, tried to talk me out of this trip to France altogether, but when he saw that Oskar's mind was made up, insisted on proper baggage; very well, I would have to take the highly respectable yawn that Goethe had yawned so long ago, but for spite, and also because I knew that The Elective Affinities would never solve all my sexual problems, I also took Rasputin and his naked women, naked but for their black stockings. If Apollo strove for harmony and Dionysus for drunkenness and chaos, Oskar was a little demigod whose business it was to harmonize chaos and intoxicate reason. In addition to his mortality, he had one advantage over all the full divinities whose characters and careers had been established in the remote past: Oskar could read what he pleased whereas the gods censored themselves. ~ Gunter Grass

Mr. Kadam bowed and said, "Miss Kelsey, I will leave you to your dining companion. Enjoy your dinner." Then he walked out of the restaurant.
"Mr. Kadam, wait. I don't understand."
Dining companion? What is he talking about? Maybe he's confused.
Just then, a deep, all-too-familiar voice behind me said, "Hello, Kells."
I froze, and my heart dropped into my stomach, stirring up about a billion butterflies. A few seconds passed. Or was it a few minutes? I couldn't tell.
I heard a sigh of frustration. "Are you still not talking to me? Turn around, please."
A warm hand slid under my elbow and gently turned me around. I raised my eyes and gasped softly. He was breathtaking! So handsome, I wanted to cry.
"Ren."
He smiled. "Who else?"
He was dressed in an elegant black suit and he'd had his hair cut. Glossy black hair was swept back away from his face in tousled layers that tapered to a slight curl at the nape of his neck. The white shirt he wore was unbuttoned at the collar. It set off his golden-bronze skin and his brilliant white smile, making him positively lethal to any woman who might cross his path. I groaned inwardly.
He's like…like James Bond, Antonio Banderas, and Brad Pitt all rolled into one.
I decided the safest thing to do would be to look at his shoes. Shoes were boring, right? Not attractive at all. Ah. Much better. His shoes were nice, of course-polished and black, just like I would expect. I smiled wryly when I ~ Colleen Houck

Sometimes, instructing children in the old days, he had been asked by some black lozenge-eyed Indian child, What is God like? and he would answer facilely with references to the father and the mother, or perhaps more ambitiously he would include brother and sister and try to give some idea of all loves and relationships combined in an immense and yet personal passion....But at the centre of his own faith there always stood the convincing mystery - that we were made in God's image. God was the parent, but He was also the policeman, the criminal, the priest, the maniac, and the judge. Something resembling God dangled from the gibbet or went into odd attitudes before bullets in a prison yard or contorted itself like a camel in the attitude of sex. He would sit in the confessional and hear the complicated dirty ingenuities which God's image had thought out, and God's image shook now, up and down on the mule's back, with the yellow teeth sticking out over the lower lip, and god's image did its despairing act of rebellion with Maria in the hut among the rats. He said, Do you feel better now? Not so cold, eh? Or so hot? and pressed his hand with a kind of driven tenderness upon the shoulders of God's image.

Such a lot of beauty. Saints talk about the beauty of suffering. Well, we are not saints, you and I. Suffering to us is just ugly. Stench and crowding and pain. That is beautiful in that corner - to them. It needs a lot of learning to see things with a saint's eye: a s ~ Graham Greene

Deception is the natural defence of the weak against the strong, and the South used it for many years against its conquerors; to-day it must be prepared to see its black proletariat turn that same two-edged weapon against itself. And how natural this is! The death of Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner proved long since to the Negro the present hopelessness of physical defence. Political defence is becoming less and less available, and economic defence is still only partially effective. But there is a patent defence at hand, - the defence of deception and flattery, of cajoling and lying. It is the same defence which peasants of the Middle Age used and which left its stamp on their character for centuries. To-day the young Negro of the South who would succeed cannot be frank and outspoken, honest and self-assertive, but rather he is daily tempted to be silent and wary, politic and sly; he must flatter and be pleasant, endure petty insults with a smile, shut his eyes to wrong; in too many cases he sees positive personal advantage in deception and lying. His real thoughts, his real aspirations, must be guarded in whispers; he must not criticise, he must not complain. Patience, humility, and adroitness must, in these growing black youth, replace impulse, manliness, and courage. With this sacrifice there is an economic opening, and perhaps peace and some prosperity. Without this there is riot, migration, or crime. Nor is this situation peculiar to the Southern United States, is it not ra ~ W.E.B. Du Bois

The sleeve covered its appendages well until it reached outward to Grady. Instead of a hand, several dark green and black-splotched tentacles spilled out of the sleeve. They snaked through the air toward Grady's face. They glistened in the early morning light and long strands of a mucous-like substance dripped from them and clung like shiny webs to its robe. ~ Brian Barnett

What a skeletal wreck of man this is.
Translucent flesh and feeble bones,
the kind of temple where the whores and villains try to tempt the holistic domes.
Running rampid with free thought to free form, and the free and clear.
When the matters at hand are shelled out like lint at a
laundry mat to sift and focus on the bigger, better, now.
We all have a little sin that needs venting,
virtues for the rending and laws and systems and stems are ripped
from the branches of office, do you know where your post entails?
Do you serve a purpose, or purposely serve?
When in doubt inside your atavistic allure, the value of a summer spent, and a winter earned.
For the rest of us, there is always Sunday.
The day of the week the reeks of rest, but all we do is catch our breath,
so we can wade naked in the bloody pool, and place our hand on the big, black book.
To watch the knives zigzag between our aching fingers.
A vacation is a countdown, T minus your life and
counting, time to drag your tongue across the sugar cube,
and hope you get a taste.
WHAT THE FUCK IS ALL THIS FOR?
WHAT THE HELL'S GOING ON? SHUT UP!
I can go on and on but lets move on, shall we?

Say, your me, and I'm you, and they all watch the things we do,
and like a smack of spite they threw me down the stairs,
haven't felt like this in years.
The great magnet of malicious magnanimous refuse, let me go, ~ Stone Sour

Now King Alexander is driving down the familiar streets, curiously unguarded, in a curiously antique car. It can be seen from his attempt to make his stiff hand supple, from a careless flash of his careful black eyes, it can be seen that he is taking the cheers of the crowd with a childish seriousness. It is touching, like a girl putting full faith in the compliments that are paid to her at a ball. ~ Rebecca West

Thankfully, Gabriel was five minutes late, and by the time he knocked on the door I'd just finished putting on lipstick and slipping my feet into sandals. I opened the door.
"I hope I didn't keep you wait . . ." His voice drifted off as he quite blatantly checked me out.
"What?" I asked, hand on my hip.
He flashed me a devilish grin. "The little pink dress. You look cute."
What I found frumpy, he found cute. Wonder what his response would have been to the tight number. My eyes gave him a discreet once-over. He wore jeans and a Yankees T-shirt. It wasn't exactly going to win over the locals, but I had to admit, he filled the shirt out ridiculously well. His short black hair was damp, like he'd just taken a shower. I felt my face behind to flush, so I turned away. "Come on in."
He stopped and surveyed the foyer. "I was only here for a minute when we came to get Joni. I didn't get a chance to check the place out." He paused. "It's not what I was expecting."
"What were you expecting? Voodoo dolls hung from the ceiling?"
He smirked. "Maybe just a little one of me."
"That's hidden under my bed. ~ Kim Harrington

And I want to play hide-and-seek and give you my clothes and tell you I like your shoes and sit on the steps while you take a bath and massage your neck and kiss your feet and hold your hand and go for a meal and not mind when you eat my food and meet you at Rudy's and talk about the day and type up your letters and carry your boxes and laugh at your paranoia and give you tapes you don't listen to and watch great films and watch terrible films and complain about the radio and take pictures of you when you're sleeping and get up to fetch you coffee and bagels and Danish and go to Florent and drink coffee at midnight and have you steal my cigarettes and never be able to find a match and tell you about the tv programme I saw the night before and take you to the eye hospital and not laugh at your jokes and want you in the morning but let you sleep for a while and kiss your back and stroke your skin and tell you how much I love your hair your eyes your lips your neck your breasts your arse your

and sit on the steps smoking till your neighbour comes home and sit on the steps smoking till you come home and worry when you're late and be amazed when you're early and give you sunflowers and go to your party and dance till I'm black and be sorry when I'm wrong and happy when you forgive me and look at your photos and wish I'd known you forever and hear your voice in my ear and feel your skin on my skin and get scared when you're angry and your eye has gone red and the other e ~ Sarah Kane

Some catastrophic moments invite clarity, explode in split moments: You smash your hand through a windowpane and then there is blood and shattered glass stained with red all over the place; you fall out a window and break some bones and scrape some skin. Stitches and casts and bandages and antiseptic solve and salve the wounds. But depression is not a sudden disaster. It is more like a cancer: At first its tumorous mass is not even noticeable to the careful eye, and then one day -- wham! -- there is a huge, deadly seven-pound lump lodged in your brain or your stomach or your shoulder blade, and this thing that your own body has produced is actually trying to kill you. Depression is a lot like that: Slowly, over the years, the data will accumulate in your heart and mind, a computer program for total negativity will build into your system, making life feel more and more unbearable. But you won't even notice it coming on, thinking that it is somehow normal, something about getting older, about turning eight or turning twelve or turning fifteen, and then one day you realize that your entire life is just awful, not worth living, a horror and a black blot on the white terrain of human existence. One morning you wake up afraid you are going to live.

In my case, I was not frightened in the least bit at the thought that I might live because I was certain, quite certain, that I was already dead. The actual dying part, the withering away of my physical body, was a mere formal ~ Elizabeth Wurtzel

Most of the time when I have met artists who have meant a lot to me, the experience has been well above expectation. People like Iggy, Lou Reed, Jerry Lee Lewis, Black Sabbath, Nick Cave, Hubert Selby Jr, Billy Gibbons, Al Pacino, John Lee Hooker, James Brown, Johnny Cash etc. have been really great to me. What strikes me is most of the time, the bigger the celeb/legend, the more polite and cool they are. It's the insecure ones who treat you like they're doing you a favor by shaking your hand. ~ Henry Rollins

If you stand right at the edge of the night sky, some place where one o'clock leaves to meet two, the breeze will carry your words up to the stars. And they'll swallow your secrets until its time to hand them over to the truths in the sky- the ones that draw maps in the black.

They carve their answers into the backs of my hands, the grooves of the words running deep in my palms. ~ Marlen Komar

Interestingly, this was the only incident of blatant prejudice that I can

remember. But I am aware that such opinions exist in human beings, and

it's not a question of being Egyptian or being an Arab or being a Muslim.

One could be a Christian against a Jew or a Jew against a Christian, or a

white against a black, or a man against a woman. My philosophy is not

to let such attitudes stop me from what I want to do. I don't take it very

seriously, although as you can see, I remember the incident very well.

The point was I had to get on with my work and had to behave properly,

and in the process perhaps even change the opinion of these people. But

on the other hand, if I did nothing but complain and feel sorry for myself,

then I wouldn't get anywhere. ~ Ahmed H. Zewail

Her gaze slid up the thick muscles of his arm, imagining her hand doing the same, imagining what it would feel like to explore a body of such raw, masculine energy. No doubt about it, he was man built for battle. Yet she could seein his sharp, dark eyes, and in the glimpses of humor and caring he'd let slip, that there was so much more to him than the fight. ~ Melissa Cutler

Aldrik laughed darkly. "What did you think I was?" he snarled. "Did you think I went to war and read books?" Vhalla took another step back. "You ran head-first into my daily hell. Would it not be more convenient if weapons of death and torture could not talk back?" Vhalla forced herself not to tremble as she looked at him. He glared at her; the orange of the fire reflecting in the black mirrors of his eyes.
With all the bravery she possessed, Vhalla crossed the distance between them; he straightened and looked down at her, imposing. Vhalla swallowed hard and tried to muster her last scrap of confidence. There would be time later to ask him about the real reasons behind the war. For now, they needed to go home.
She grabbed his hand, praying it didn't burst into flames at her touch. It didn't.
"Quit being stupid, Aldrik. Let's go." His features barely softened, but it was more than enough to know she had made herself clear. Whatever this man was, he wasn't a monster. ~ Elise Kova