Can Lit Quotes

When the last leaf falls,
what will die within us? ~ Sheniz Janmohamed

All the things she couldn't say, the things no one wanted to hear. ~ Spencer Gordon

We can allow ourselves to pass through the darkest valley without losing our light. One candle can lit millions of other candles, which are willing to receive the light. ~ Raphael Zernoff

You're just so lucky blood's so hard to get out of the carpet. ~ Lois Greiman

Careful, sidhe-seer. I have chosen to spare you. Do not press your luck."
I locked my jaw, pushed myself up, and lit another match, studying my enemies in the flickering light. Both would devour me. Just in different ways. If forced to choose, I'd take death-by-Shade.
"Why have you chosen to spare me?"
"I want us to be ... what is your word? Friends."
"Psychotic rapists don't have friends."
"I was unaware you were psychotic rapist or I would not have offered. ~ Karen Marie Moning

I think that there's a lot of guys out there that want to read the equivalent of chick lit, but really there's not being much written for them. ~ Tucker Max

The flames of their passion illuminated the dimly lit room, filling it with a blazing fire which was either brilliantly beautiful or dangerously violent. ~ S.R. Crawford

Stop looking for your better half! You need to be whole to attract your better whole, if you expect to have a flourishing relationship. ~ Valerie J. Lewis Coleman

In the dying embers and blackened twigs of a ravaged forest, who could distinguish where the first spark was lit? Only the arsionist knows the exact location where that match was struck. ~ Lang Leav

I'm imagining that paper books will evolve to become something akin to candles we have them in our homes and cherish their light but don't light our homes with them. Readers of Lincoln's era would likely be surprised at how well-lit our homes are and I think it's likely that we will be surprised at how well-read future book readers will be. ~ Steve Leveen

Olivia reminds me of a bird sometimes, how her feathers get all ruffled when she's mad. and when she's fragile like this, she's a little lost bird looking for its nest. ~ R.J. Palacio

Protective of his gleaming domain, beavering away in it alone like an obsessed scientist in a humid and luridly lit laboratory. ~ Michel Faber

Above the street, like a hanged man, swings the spot-lit sign of the neighborhood's best restaurant, closed a long time ago. ~ Roberto Bolano

Sully's, on South Prospect, was the quintessential biker-bar, complete with hefty, leather-clad Harley worshippers, and stringy-haired heroin-addicted women who made the rounds among the bikers. Its décor was decidedly Medieval Garage Sale, with a dose of Americana thrown in. An old motorcycle carcass dangled from the vaulted section of the beamed ceiling, and the wood plank floors were littered with butts, scarred by bottle caps and splattered with homogenized bodily fluids. The only light to be had was from neon, dying sconces, and lit cigarettes. Various medieval swords perched on each wall, reminiscent of the times of Beowulf and Fire Dragons on the Barrow. ~ Kelli Jae Baeli

Unless he actually had a lit gasper going, Calvin Thrust always has this way of being only technically wherever he was. There was always this air of imminent departure about him, like a man whose beeper was about to sound. It's like a lit gasper was psychic ballast for him or something. Everything he said to Gately seemed like it was going to be the last thing he said right before he looked at his watch and slapped his forehead and left. ~ David Foster Wallace

The others followed, and found themselves in a small, stuffy basement, which would have been damp, smelly, close, and dark, were it not, in fact, well-lit, which prevented it from being dark. ~ Steven Brust

When his eyes rested on her, he stopped. He'd been smiling before, in a friendly fashion. But what lit his face when he saw her was more than a smile, more than a grin. It was as if someone had thrown aside the curtains of a sickroom on a glorious morning, to let sunlight spill into every darkened corner. ~ Courtney Milan

Ringo had this habit of lighting up two cigarettes, one for Maureen at the same time that he lit his own. I remember thinking it was a loving thing to do and wishing John did it for me. But that would have been too obviously demonstrative, maybe, for John. ~ Cynthia Lennon

To inspire himself, he lit up a marijuana cigarette, excellent Land-O-Smiles brand. In ~ Philip K. Dick

I began to see new buildings, too, which were connected by futuristic walkways lit from beneath. Long, cool perspectives of modern architecture, rising phosphorescent and eerie from the rubble. ~ Donna Tartt

If I wasn't a man,I'd punch that jealous cat in the nose." His eyes lit up. "I'll get Susie to do it. ~ Nora Roberts

First, the thoughts are chosen,
then the prayers are spoken.
The candles are lit,
then the plea is submitted.
But soon after you move away,
there is wax;
melting, adulterating and braiding-
a new constellation up on your blanks. ~ Jasleen Kaur Gumber

She put a cigarette in her mouth and lit it, tasting the familiar taste of nicotine, smoke, and impending lung cancer. It felt good. She ~ Mike Omer

Claire. - Venus hung low on the Atlantic horizon of a dawn sky. Continuing to shine brightly, her watery reflection lit up a path on the sea across the bay to where Claire stood on the patio. The shining goddess was the last thing she remembered seeing through the bedroom window, before succumbing to sleep. She was high in the night sky then, the brightest of all heavenly bodies, casting an apparent examination of what was euphemistically known as Orion's 'sword'. ~ Francine Scott

We warily sipped 'fresh' buffalo milk in a Krishna temple. We travelled into the Himalayas until, at a height of two kilometres above sea level where we found ourselves surrounded by men as hard and tough as the mountains that bred them. We negotiated a price of 100 rupees for one of these men to carry our two heaviest bags the 15-minute walk to the hotel with nothing more than rope and a forehead strap. I paid him 300 rupees and his face lit up! We watched the morning mist clear to reveal views of the green Doon Valley and the distant white-capped Himalayan peaks. We rode an elephant up to the Amber Fort of Jaipur, and the next day we painted, washed and fed unpeeled bananas to another elephant, marvelling at her gentle nature as we placed the bananas on her huge bubble-gum coloured tongue. ~ Karl Wiggins

A powerful wind swept through the shtetl, making it whistle. Those studying obscure texts in dimly lit rooms looked up. Lovers making amends and promises, amendments and excuses, fell silent. ~ Jonathan Safran Foer

Chick-lit may be staggering on its heels, but women's fiction is alive and kicking. ~ Jojo Moyes

Ashe's entire face lit up when she laughed. That laughter did something to his insides, turning him to mush, so he thought some of the ice that had frozen all emotions so many years earlier had melted and allowed her deeper. ~ Christine Feehan

I bear within me the seed, the rudiments, the possibility of life's capacities and endeavors. Where might I be, if I were not here? Who, what, how could I be, if I were not me, if this outward appearance that is me did not encase me, separating my consciousness from that of others who are not me? An organism - a blind, rash, pitiful eruption of the insistent assertion of the will. Far better, really, if that will were to drift free in a night without time or space, than to languish in a prison cell lit only by the flickering, uncertain flame of the intellect. ~ Thomas Mann

Why should you renounce your right to traverse the star-lit deserts of truth, of the premature comforts of an acre, house, and barn? Truth also has its roof, and bed, and board. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I am a very good cook." When she did cook.
"Good. I like to eat." He lightly bit her palm.
The too-much-air feeling in Lucy's stomach pressed upward into her heart. "What?" she asked past the constriction in her chest.
"What do I like to eat?"
"Yeah."
"Blondes with blue eyes."
Oh God. She pulled her hand from his. "Are you hungry?"
His gaze lowered to her mouth. "I could eat. ~ Rachel Gibson

So many things in this world were cracked and sad, and still a glowing showed through and moments came when everything was lit and love happened. Every tree stood where it belonged, each bird had perfect feathers folded against its tiny body, each holding a heart beating madly. Life was a vibration of light and dark, and love illuminated that life. Then darkness descended and your heart was ripped apart. So that was part of it, a requirement of the miracle. Death stayed, lurking in the shadow of beauty. In the bargain, life both had meaning and had none. So, she kept thinking, what to do? What to do? A pressure in her would not stop asking. There were not many things she could make better, not many things she could change. And yet ... and yet ... sparks of possibility still shot out. Unasked for, they came and randomly flew up. ~ Susan Minot

Most of our platitudes notwithstanding, self-deception remains the most difficult deception. The tricks that work on others count for nothing in that very well-lit back alley where one keeps assignation with oneself: no winning smiles will do here, no prettily drawn lists of good intentions. One shuffles flashily but in vain through one's marked cards- the kindness done for the wrong reason, the apparent triumph which involved no real effort, the seemingly heroic act into which one had been shamed. ~ Joan Didion

Horses ... horses made me happy, complete. Then and there in the middle of some state, in a wild state of being, I vowed I would own a horse again. ~ Carly Kade

There is none so troubled as one who thinks himself perfectly sane. ~ Lois Greiman

Even bigger than Japan is the inside of your head. ~ Soseki Natsume

Yes," he said, shrugging. "Maybe you didn't understand when I said I"d love you forever, but I meant I'd love you forever. There were no qualifiers or addendums to that vow, nothing that would void it out based on your actions." His smile lit up the night. "To make sure you're clear on this, let me repeat myself. I'll love you forever, Bryn Dawson, no matter how determined you might be to screw it up."
"No conditions?" I asked. "Not even (spoiler omitted)
He shook his head. "I think that's why they call it unconditional. ~ Nicole Williams

Celibacy sucks, no pun intended. ~ Lois Greiman

It's not about surviving. It should be about love. When you know love ... that's what makes this life worth it. When you live with it everyday. Wake up with it, hold on to it during the thunder and after a nightmare. When love is your refuge from the death that surrounds us all and when it fills you so tight that you can't express it. ~ Carrie Ryan

In this town, a successful marriage is one that lasts longer than ice. ~ Lois Greiman

Psychologists have devised some ingenious ways to help unpack the human "now." Consider how we run those jerky movie frames together into a smooth and continuous stream. This is known as the "phi phenomenon." The essence of phi shows up in experiments in a darkened room where two small spots are briefly lit in quick succession, at slightly separated locations. What the subjects report seeing is not a succession of spots, but a single spot moving continuously back and forth. Typically, the spots are illuminated for 150 milliseconds separated by an interval of fifty milliseconds. Evidently the brain somehow "fills in" the fifty-millisecond gap. Presumably this "hallucination" or embellishment occurs after the event, because until the second light flashes the subject cannot know the light is "supposed" to move. This hints that the human now is not simultaneous with the visual stimulus, but a bit delayed, allowing time for the brain to reconstruct a plausible fiction of what has happened a few milliseconds before.

In a fascinating refinement of the experiment, the first spot is colored red, the second green. This clearly presents the brain with a problem. How will it join together the two discontinuous experiences - red spot, green spot - smoothly? By blending the colors seamlessly into one another? Or something else? In fact, subjects report seeing the spot change color abruptly in the middle of the imagined trajectory, and are even able to indicate exactly where usin ~ Paul Davies

Around 6 p.m.: the apartment is warm, clean, well-lit, pleasant. I make it that way, energetically, devotedly (enjoying it bitterly): henceforth and forever I am my own mother. ~ Roland Barthes

ECCLESIASTES - NOTE ON 1:2 vanity of vanities! All is vanity. This extremely important thematic word (Hb. hebel, lit., "vapor," taken figuratively as "vanity"; see esv footnote) occurs frequently throughout the book; at this early point, however, the Preacher leaves it unexplained. It is only as the book progresses that its meaning becomes clear (for further discussion of its meaning, see Introduction: Key Themes ~ Anonymous

Hope – or perhaps delusion – was a flame that had stayed lit, even though its scorching light would hurt. It had refused to go out. ~ Dianna Hardy

She glowed, not from the firelight, but as if lit from within. I wondered if she were already a ghost. ~ Julie Berry

Excuses are like butt holes everyone has 'em and they all stink. ~ Lois Greiman

She lit fire to the bridges and forts she built all these years, and she walked into it smiling and tears rolling down her cheeks. ~ Akshay Vasu

A thousand prickling tender touches lit upon her, as if she was caught in a rainstorm and the raindrops were love. ~ Max Gladstone

Life is complex.
Each one of us must make his own path through life. There are no self-help manuals, no formulas, no easy answers. The right road for one is the wrong road for another ... The journey of life is not paved in blacktop; it is not brightly lit, and it has no road signs. It is a rocky path through the wilderness. ~ M. Scott Peck

FALL, SIERRA NEVADA

This morning the hermit thrush was absent at breakfast,
His place was taken by a family of chickadees;
At noon a flock of humming birds passed south,
Whirling in the wind up over the saddle between
Ritter and Banner, following the migration lane
Of the Sierra crest southward to Guatemala.
All day cloud shadows have moved over the face of the mountain,
The shadow of a golden eagle weaving between them
Over the face of the glacier.
At sunset the half-moon rides on the bent back of the Scorpion,
The Great Bear kneels on the mountain.
Ten degrees below the moon
Venus sets in the haze arising from the Great Valley.
Jupiter, in opposition to the sun, rises in the alpenglow
Between the burnt peaks. The ventriloquial belling
Of an owl mingles with the bells of the waterfall.
Now there is distant thunder on the east wind.
The east face of the mountain above me
Is lit with far off lightnings and the sky
Above the pass blazes momentarily like an aurora.
It is storming in the White Mountains,
On the arid fourteen-thousand-foot peaks;
Rain is falling on the narrow gray ranges
And dark sedge meadows and white salt flats of Nevada.
Just before moonset a small dense cumulus cloud,
Gleaming like a grape cluster of metal,
Moves over the Sierra crest and grows down the westward slope.
Frost, the color and quality of ~ Kenneth Rexroth

Czernobog snorted and woke, sitting up slowly. "I dreamed a strange dream," he said. "I dreamed that I am truly Bielebog. That forever the world imagines that there are two of us, the light god and the dark, but that now we are both old, I find it was only me all the time, giving them gifts, taking my gifts away." He broke the filter from a Lucky Strike, put it between his lips and lit it with his lighter. Shadow wound down his window. "Aren't you worried about lung cancer?" he said. "I am cancer," said Czernobog. "I do not frighten myself. ~ Neil Gaiman

If I want to catch the damn worm I get outta bed. ~ Lois Greiman