City Of Lost Souls Quotes

Anyway that other thing we almost did in Paris-that's probably off the table for a while.Unless you want that whole baby-I'm-on-fire-when-we kiss thing to become freakishly literal ~ Cassandra Clare

He is a Shadowhunter," said Jocelyn. "His loyalty will be to Clave and Covenant."
"He's my friend," said Magnus coldly. "His loyalty is to me. ~ Cassandra Clare

I won't be just your friend. I love you, Maia. I'm in love with you. I always have been. I always will be. Just being your friend would kill me - Jordan ~ Cassandra Clare

Though Alec had never seen the occupants of the first floor loft, they seemed to be engaged in a tempestuous romance. Once there had been a bunch of someone's belongings strewn all over the landing with a note attached to a jacket lapel addressed to "A lying liar who lies." Right now there was a bouquet of flowers taped to the door with a card tucked among the blooms that read I'M SORRY. That was the thing about New York: you always knew more about your neighbors' business than you wanted to. ~ Cassandra Clare

He seemed only ... annoyed. Annoyed, and sweaty, and hot.
"Yeah, well," he said, "the next time you decide to sneak out of our magically warded apartment through a door that shouldn't really exist, leave a note. ~ Cassandra Clare

I know you want to think Dad's fine with me being gay, but he's not."
"But if you don't tell me when people say things like that to you, or do things that hurt you, then how can I help you?" Simon could feel Isabelle's agitation vibrating through her body. "How can I-"
"Iz," Alec said tiredly. "It's not like it's one big bad things. It's a lot of little invisible things. When Magnus and I were traveling, and I'd call from the road, Dad never asked how he was. When I get up to talk in Clave meetings, no one listens, and I don't know if it's because I'm young or if it's something else. I saw Mom talking to a friend about her grandchildren and the second I walked into the room they shut up. Irina Cartwright told me it was a pity no one would ever inherit my blue eyes now ... It's not like a stab wound you can protect me from. It's a million little paper cuts every day."
( City of Lost Souls- Cassandra Clare) ~ Cassandra Clare

I knew you were crazy, but I didn't realize that you were out of your goddamned mind!! ~ Cassandra Clare

And I remind you of your mother now? I have got to look into a manlier cologne. ~ Cassandra Clare

She hated that little voice inside her head. Like the Seelie Queen, it planted doubts where there shouldn't be doubts, asked questions that had no answer. ~ Cassandra Clare

Do you remember what I told you that first time at Taki's? About faerie food?"
"I remember you said you ran down Madison Avenue naked with antlers on your head", said Clary, blinking silver drops off her lashes. ~ Cassandra Clare

You never cared that I was your sister before."
"Didn't I?" His black eyes flicked up and down her. "Our father's dead," he said. "There are no other relatives. You and I, we are the last. The last of the Morgensterns. You are the only one left whose blood runs in my veins, too. You are my last chance. ~ Cassandra Clare

Of course he loves me. I'm his sister."
"Blood isn't love," said Magnus, and his voice was bitter. ~ Cassandra Clare

I thought you were dead," she went on. "I saw you fall down, and - I thought you were dead. ~ Cassandra Clare

Wear that scarf," he said, pointing to a blue cashmere scarf hanging on a peg. "It matches your eyes."
Alec looked at it. Suddenly he was filled with hate - for the scarf, for Magnus, and most of all for himself. "Don't tell me," he said. "The scarf's a hundred years old, and it was given to you by Queen Victoria right before she died, for special services to the Crown or something."
Magnus sat up. "What's gotten into you?"
Alec stared at him. "Am I the newest thing in this apartment?"
"I think that honor goes to Chairman Meow. He's only two."
"I said newest, not youngest," Alec snapped. ~ Cassandra Clare

Clary?" he thought.
Her voice came through, tinged with alarm. "What is it? What's happened? Did my mom find out I'm gone?"
"Not yet," he thought back. "Is Azazel the cat from the Smurfs?"
There was a long pause. "That's Azrael, Simon. And no more using the magic rings for Smurfs question. ~ Cassandra Clare

You asked me who I belong to. I belong to you. ~ Cassandra Clare

She turned and looked at him. "Ducks?" she said again.
A smile tugged the edge of his mouth. "I hate ducks. Don't know why. I just always have. ~ Cassandra Clare

Jordan followed, buttoning his jeans and muttering about how there was nothing strange about having a pattern of dancing penguins on your underwear. ~ Cassandra Clare

A date, "often a boring thing you have to memorize in history class," but in this case, "an offer of a n evening of blisteringly white-hot romance with yours truly. ~ Cassandra Clare

You know, when I first met
you, in Idris, I had hopes - I had thought you would be like me. And when you were
nothing like me, I hated you. And then, when I was brought back, and Jace told me what
you did, I realized that I had been wrong. You are like me. ~ Cassandra Clare

Maia pulled on a braid. "I ran into Eric of all people. He told me what happened and that you'd backed out of Millenium Lint's gigs for the past two weeks because of it."
"Actually, they changed their name," Jordan said. "They're Midnight Burrito now. ~ Cassandra Clare

And down she walked along the street,
A handsome lad she hoped to meet
And sore by dawn were her dainty feet
But all the boys were gay. ~ Elka Cloke

Don't tell me you aren't even a little glad to see me, Mother," Sebastian said, and
though his words were pleading, his voice was flat. "Aren't I everything you could want in
a son?" He spread his arms wide. "Strong, handsome, looks just like dear old Dad. ~ Cassandra Clare

I don't blame you if you hate me. I wish you would. As long as I can still dream, I'll dream of you. -City of Lost Souls ~ Cassandra Clare

(Jace) "Is there anything special you want to see? Paris? Budapest? The Leaning Tower of Pisa?"
Only if it falls on Sebastian's head, she thought. ~ Cassandra Clare

Jordan doesn't really care about the blood," Simon said now. "His whole thing is about me being comfortable with what I am. Get in touch with your inner vampire, blah, blah."
Clary slid in next to him onto the bed and hugged a pillow. "Is your inner vampire different from your ... outer vampire?"
"Definitely. He wants me to wear midriff-baring shirts and a fedora. I'm fighting it."
Clary smiled faintly. "So your inner vampire is Magnus? ~ Cassandra Clare

(Sebastian) "See, there you go. You're always looking at me like that."
"Like what?"
"Like I burn down animal shelters for fun and light my cigarettes with orphans. ~ Cassandra Clare

Magnus's eyes went back to Alec. They were gold-green, as unreadable as the eyes of the cat he held on his lap. "Not my favorite topic, Smedley."
"Simon", said Simon. "If I'm going to die for you all, the least you could do is remember my name. ~ Cassandra Clare

I don't want to be Nephilim," said Jace. "I want to be something else. Stronger, faster, better than human. But different. Not subservient to the Laws of an angel who couldn't care less about us. Free." He ran his hand through a curl of her hair. "I'm happy now, Clary. Doesn't that make a difference? ~ Cassandra Clare

Simon I've been trying to call you, but it seems like your phone is turned off. I don't know where you are right now. I don't know if Clary's already told you what happened tonight. But I have to go to Magnus's and I'd really like you to be there.
I'm scared for my brother. I never ask you for anything, Simon, but I'm asking you now.
Please come.
Isabelle.
Simon let the letter fall from his hand. He was out of the apartment and on his way down the steps before it had even hit the floor. ~ Cassandra Clare

Church was doing what he often did when dropped - lying on his back with all four legs in the air, pretending to be dead in order to induce guilt in his owners. ~ Cassandra Clare

This world will be consumed by hellfire," he said. "But I will bring you
and Jace safely through the flames if you only do what I ask. It is a grace I extend to no
one else. Do you not see how foolish you are to reject it? ~ Cassandra Clare

Blood isn't love ~ Cassandra Clare

I think of myself as a freewheeling bisexual, added Magnus. ~ Anonymous

How she still thought of Max every day and it was like someone had emptied her lungs of air, and she would catch at her heart, afraid she was dying. ~ Cassandra Clare

Jordan leaned on the counter. He felt a little like a bartender in a TV show, dispensing sage advice. "What do you owe her?"
"Life," Isabelle said.
Jordan blinked. This was a little beyond his bartending and advice-offering skills. "She saved your life?"
"She saved Jace's life. She could have had anything from the Angel Raziel, and she saved my brother. I've only ever trusted a few people in my life. Really trusted. My mother, Alec, Jace, and Max. I lost one of them already. Clary's the only reason I didn't lose another. ~ Cassandra Clare

Take off your shirt."
Jace raised his eyebrows.
"I'm not going to attack you," she said impatiently. "I can take the sight of your naked chest without swooning."
"Are you sure?" he asked, obediently sliding the shirt off his shoulders. "Because viewing my naked chest has caused many women to seriously injure themselves stampeding to get to me. ~ Cassandra Clare

Isabelle waved a hand. "No need to worry, big brother. Nothing happened. Of course," she added as Alex's shoulders relaxed, "I was totally passed-out drunk, so he could really have done whatever he wanted and I wouldn't have woken up."
"Oh, please," said Simon. "All I did was tell you the entire plot of Star Wars."
"I don't think I remember that," said Isabelle, taking a cookie from the plate on the table.
"Oh, yeah? Who was Luke Skywalker's best childhood friend?"
"Biggs Darklighter," Isabelle said immediately, and then hit the table with the flat of her hand."That is so cheating! ~ Cassandra Clare

Jace set what he was holding down on the windowsill and reached out to her. She came to lean against him, and his hand slid up under her t-shirt and rested caressingly, possessively, on the small of her back. He bent to kiss her, gently at first, but the gentleness went quickly and soon she was pressed up against the glass of the window, his hands at the hem of her shirt - his shirt
"Jace." She moved a little bit away. "I'm pretty sure people down there in the street can see us."
"We could ... " He gestured toward the bed. "Move ... over there."
She grinned. "You said that like it took you a while to come up with the idea."
When he spoke, his voice was muffled against her neck. "What can I say, you make my thought processes slow down. Now I know what it's like to be a normal person."
"How ... is it?" The things he was doing with his hands under the t-shirt were distracting.
"Terrible. I'm already way behind on my quota of witty comments for the day. ~ Cassandra Clare

Isabelle snorted. 'All the boys are gay. In this truck, anyway. Well, not you, Simon.'
'You noticed' said Simon.

'I think of myself as a freewheeling bisexual,' added Magnus.

'Please never say those words in front of my parents,' said Alec. 'Especially my father.'

'I thought your parents were okay with you, you know, coming out,' Simon said, leaning around Isabelle to look at Alec, who was - as he often was - scowling, and pushing his floppy dark hair out of his eyes. Aside from the occasional exchange, Simon had never talked to Alec much. He wasn't an easy person to get to know. But, Simon admitted to himself, his own recent estrangement from his mother made him more curious about Alec's answer than he would have been otherwise.

'My mother seems to have accepted it,' Alec said. 'But my father - no, not really. Once he asked me what I thought had turned me gay.'

Simon felt Isabelle tense next to him. 'Turned you gay?' She sounded incredulous. 'Alec, you didn't tell me that.'

'I hope you told him you were bitten by a gay spider,' said Simon.

Magnus snorted; Isabelle looked confused. 'I've read Magnus's stash of comics,' said Alec, 'so I actually know what you're talking about' A small smile played around his mouth. 'So would that give me the proportional gayness of a spider?'

'Only if it was a really gay spider,' said Magnus, and he yelled as Alec punched him in the arm. 'Ow, oka ~ Cassandra Clare

Sometimes work was just what you clocked into while you were falling in love. Sometimes sex was just something you did while you weren't at work. Drugs were something you did sometimes when you couldn't deal with one of those things, or with yourself. The City was so expensive and so grueling sometimes that it was easy to be unsure why you were there. Many were there to make money, money that could largely only be made there, in the long spiny arms of industries that could never grow anywhere else or anywhere smaller. Some people just liked it, its loudness and crowdedness and surprises. Some started there for a reason and then couldn't imagine being anywhere else, but maybe lost track of that reason along the way. Some people had a plan. Some were just chancing it. Either way the months flew by, and over the years you came up with something or you came up with not much. ~ Choire Sicha

"All that history, the love & laughter, is designed for youth. It is what keeps the story of who we are alive from one generation to the next. It ensures our indelible mark in the souls of generations we will never have the pleasure of holding in a warm embrace. Life is short people. Before you know it, another decade will pass, people you love will be lost to this world, and all that will be left of them is what we carry in our hearts." Elsie Love 2011 ~ Elsie Love

Of all the events leading up to the departure for the shore, though, was one that had been months in the making. The two souls in question had been united at first through their mutual love for a lost woman. They soon discovered that she was but the medium through which the universe once again exercised its peculiar ability to match those destined to be so linked." The Exile (2017) ~ Don Jacobson

In my opinion it is essential to get lost in a new city, that way you are forced to walk about and discover places at a proper, natural pace. But you must have the taxi fare home, and it helps if you can remember the name of your hotel. ~ Sue Townsend

The Marquis sighed. "I thought it was just a legend," he said. "Like the alligators in the sewers of New York City."
Old Bailey nodded, sagely: "What, the big white buggers? They're down there. I had a friend lost a head to one of them." A moment of silence. Old Naeiley handed the statue back to the Marquis. Then he raised his hand, and snapped it, like a crocodile hand, at the Carabas. "It was OK," gurned Old Bailey with a grin that was most terrible to behold. "He had another. ~ Neil Gaiman

And a ride in a hearse tells us we're all close to that final cruise ... when the body dies and we move on. It's just the body, man. It's just the body. The soul's already gone. So don't be afraid of a dead body absent a soul. It's empty, man. No resident. What you need to worry about is a living body that's lost its soul. Now that is scary, man. - Funk N. Wagnalls, owner of the Grim Reapers auto lot, a character in Professor Brown Shoes Teaches the Blues. ~ David Mutti Clark

My main concern while in New York wasn't becoming a hot shot. I was more concerned with staying alive, and that took all the pleasure out of the experience. I didn't know where to find a grocery store so I subsisted on hot dogs, peanuts and whatever else I could buy from a street vendor. I didn't know how to hail a cab (apparently there's an art to it). I stood on the edge of the sidewalk and waved my arms around but no one stopped, so I limited my entire universe to however far I could walk and I never walked too far because I was afraid I'd get lost and never find my way back home again. Perhaps that's why there are so many homeless people in New York; maybe they're not really lost, maybe some of them have homes but they just don't know how to get there. ~ Marlin Bressi

Wilson's weakness was to be over-literal, or to assume that his opponents were. One treatise, The Uttermost Pit, demonstrated with considerable geological learning that there could not be space within the mineral bowels of the Earth for any chambers big enough to contain all the damned souls of the ages. A third, Going to Gehenna, purported to show that the biblical references to the infernal domain were in point of fact to real places of sinister repute, and not to anywhere metaphysical. Wilson lost no opportunity to argue, with any evidence he found to hand, that there could not be any hell or Hades, and so none should fear them. ~ Mark Valentine

The hospital room was as cold as dead skin, the hallway crowded with lost souls and reeking of illness. ~ Raquel Cepeda

You could look out the window today, see the sky raining fire, and say that it has all been for nothing, everything we've ever done, because now we've lost. But folk were born and lived and knew friendship and music in this city, ugly as it is, and all across this land that we fought for. Some grew old, and others were less lucky. Many bore children and raised them, and had the pleasure of making them, too, and we gave them that for as long as we could. Who has ever done more, my friend? ~ Laini Taylor

A proverb in the Old Testament states: 'He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city'.
It is when we become angry that we get into trouble. The road rage that affects our highways is a hateful expression of anger. I dare say that most of the inmates of our prisons are there because they did something when they were angry. In their wrath they swore, they lost control of themselves, and terrible things followed, even murder. There were moments of offense followed by years of regret ...
So many of us make a great fuss of matters of small consequence. We are so easily offended. Happy is the man who can brush aside the offending remarks of another and go on his way. ~ Gordon B. Hinckley

We must beware of the Past, mustn't we? I mean that any fixing of the mind on old evils beyond what is absolutely necessary for repenting our own sins and forgiving those of others is certainly useless and usually bad for us. Notice in Dante that the lost souls are entirely concerned with their past! Not so the saved. ~ C.S. Lewis

Hiding had been effortless in New York City. Getting lost in a sea of people was as easy as stepping onto a crowded Subway car. Sweet Laurel Cove would be very different. Generations of families filled its church pews, ran its farms, and schooled its children. Anonymity was as rare as lightning bugs in wintertime - as her grandmother would say. ~ Teresa Tysinger

It's hurtful somehow to admit this thing and anyway that doesn't mean i'm losing my faith in this beautiful world. But these days now is the time where people have become so much more-excuse me-shallow. When all of the fancy things and outer beauty are demanded, and those who are lost enough to chase and manage to get those things, they will happen to get very nice response from social and able to expand their images and get famous and be seen as someone who has value. Meanwhile those who could see deeper and their souls are insecure of this mad world, they will have smaller space in width but they will dig deeper and deeper into their self, making space in height, finding the true meaning of their souls, the true essential unshakable truth that's beyond the fragile material worldly things. ~ Reza Rusandi

The divine is at the edge of our awareness and vision, but it is also within us as the first seeker found when all seemed lost completely. In order to find the dream of life again, we must first find the way that the dream exists within our own souls. We may be daunted by the surfacing of all the dilemmas and trouble of this troubled world, but the deep self and soul within us already knows how we are intended to swim in the blessed turmoil of the waters of life. For humans exist to bring meaning to the surface of life and awareness to the dream of existence. ~ Michael Meade

I've been lucky enough to cross paths with these angels who seem to brush the dust off my wings so effortlessly. These wonderful people I don't and will never know. I want to be one of them. I want to be many of them. Radiating, resonating, finding lost souls and then exhaling magic. ~ Hillary Wen

Only a fool says in his heart
There is no Creator, no King of kings,
Only mules would dare to bray
These lethal mutterings.
Over darkened minds as these
The Darkness bears full sway,
Fruitless, yet, bearing fruit,
In their fell, destructive way.
Sterile, though proliferate,
A filthy progeny sees the day,
When Evil, Thought and Action mate:
Breeding sin, rebels and decay.
The blackest deeds and foul ideals,
Multiply throughout the earth,
Through deadened, lifeless, braying souls,
The Darkness labours and gives birth.
Taking the Lord's abundant gifts
And rotting them to the core,
They dress their dish and serve it out
Foul seeds to infect thousands more.
'The Tree of Life is dead!' they cry,
'And that of Knowledge not enough,
Let us glut on the ashen apples
Of Sodom and Gomorrah.'


Have pity on Thy children, Lord,
Left sorrowing on this earth,
While fools and all their kindred
Cast shadows with their murk,
And to the dwindling wise,
They toss their heads and wryly smirk.
The world daily grinds to dust
Virtue's fair unicorns,
Rather, it would now beget
Vice's mutant manticores.
Wisdom crushed, our joy is gone,
Buried under anxious fears
For lost rights and freedoms,
We shed many bitter tears.
Death is life, Life is no more,
Humanity buried in a tomb,
In a fatal prenatal w ~ E.A. Bucchianeri

Through me you go into a city of weeping; through me you go into eternal pain; through me you go amongst the lost people ~ Dante Alighieri

Abortion is one of the most shocking, yet entirely logical, extensions of this obsession with comfort, convenience and luxury. Less dramatic, but just as deadly to millions of lost souls in our world, is our unwillingness to make even small sacrifices to reach them with the Gospel. ~ K.P. Yohannan

The tiny motion was lost on his wife, who warmed herself in front of the fire with two wounded, lost souls beside her. She gave for no gain of her own, no goal she needed to reach. Love was not a price but something she owned inside and shared freely ... The woman who was his wife was a fierce, proud creature who both shattered and humbled him, and he realized in the glimmer of firelight, that he loved her. ~ Jennifer Probst

SHORE-LARK
During the week, the shore-lark works in the City and flies home every night with its mate in Wimbledon, where it is a model husband and father. At weekends, however, it migrates briefly on Brighton, on any of one hundred pretexts, where is meets female shore-larks under the pier and seeks to recapture its lost youth. ~ Alan Coren

All my life I have felt a great kinship with the madman and the criminal. Practically all my life I have dwelt in big cities; I am unhappy, uneasy, unless I am in a big city. My feeling for Nature is limited to water, mountain and desert. These three form a trine which is more imperative, for me, than any spiritual alimentation. But in the city I am aware of another element which is beyond all these in power of fascination: the labyrinth. To be lost in a strange city is the greatest joy I know; to become oriented is to lose everything. To me the city is crime personified, insanity personified. I feel at home. ~ Henry Miller

A woman or man of value doesn't love you because of what he or she wants you to be or do for them. He or she loves you because your combined souls understand one another, complements each other, and make sense above any other person in this world. You each share a part of their soul's mirror and see each other's light reflected in it clearly. You can easily speak from the heart and feel safe doing so. Both of you have been traveling a parallel road your entire life. Without each other's presence, you feel like an old friend or family member was lost. It bothers you, not because you have given it too much meaning, but because God did. This is the type of person you don't have to fight for because you can't get rid of them and your heart doesn't want them to leave anyways. ~ Shannon L. Alder

The quest for a lost city erodes your body, damaging you beyond all reason. But it is your mind that bears the heaviest toll. Listen to the doubters, the worriers and the weak, and the vaguest hope of success evaporates. ~ Tahir Shah

If you look at the data, the inner city that was the riot zone lost 55,000 jobs in the ten years from 1992 to 2002, instead of gaining a surplus of 50,000. ~ Tom Hayden

The theological meaning of events in history is always filled with ambiguity, whether their significance is supported by centuries of tradition or is fresh in the minds of contemporaries. John, however, saw no such ambiguity. To him the meaning of the destruction of the temple was patent, demonstrable, indubitable. Yet his interpretation ignored one signifiant fact - the continuing existence of Jewish communities that, by their very way of life, demonstrated that their loss of the temple and the city of Jerusalem had not severed the covenant with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And within his own congregation there were Christians who lived as though the Law of Moses were still in force. Though these Judaizers were a minority, they were living testimony that the Jewish way of life had not lost its legitimacy. For reasons discussed in this book, John could take seriously neither the way of life of the Jews nor the claims of the Judaizers among the Christians. He saw no way to acknowledge the ongoing reality of Israel without calling into question the truth of the Christian faith. That John's view won out is significant for the later history of Christianity for it has shaped all Christian thought about Judaism since his time; but that is no reason why it should be our own view. ~ Robert L. Wilken

So, Randolph Carter, in the name of the Other Gods I spare you and charge you to serve my will. I charge you to seek that sunset city which is yours, and to send thence the drowsy truant gods for whom the dream-world waits. Not hard to find is that roseal fever of the gods, that fanfare of supernal trumpets and clash of immortal cymbals, that mystery whose place and meaning have haunted you through the halls of waking and the gulfs of dreaming, and tormented you with hints of vanished memory and the pain of lost things awesome and momentous. Not hard to find is that symbol and relic of your days of wonder, for truly, it is but the stable and eternal gem wherein all that wonder sparkles crystallised to light your evening path. Behold! It is not over unknown seas but back over well-known years that your quest must go; back to the bright strange things of infancy and the quick sun-drenched glimpses of magic that old scenes brought to wide young eyes. ~ H.P. Lovecraft

When Sadik lost his own lease, we moved in together. And after a few months of closer scrutiny, he began to realize that the city had indeed had an effect on me, although not the one he'd expected. I stopped getting high. I ran three miles a day and fasted on Sundays. For the first time in years, I applied myself to my studies and started keeping a journal of daily reflections and very bad poetry. ~ Barack Obama

I'm sorry, but I don't want to be an emperor. That's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible; Jew, Gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone, and the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical; our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost. The airplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men; cries out for universal brotherhood; for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women, and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me, I say, do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the ~ Charlie Chaplin

There are lost souls here too. They just wander and stumble about, sad and incomplete. They look real tired all the time. But most of us find our way okay. Then, when we know our way well enough, we can help others out. Others who don't know their way so well. Some lost ones maybe. But the truth is, we never stop discovering new things. There's always more. ~ Eric Arvin

Inside a dream.
Within a lost city.
In the shadow of an angel.
At the brink of calamity. ~ Laini Taylor

Those who are esteemed umpires of taste, are often persons who have acquired some knowledge of admired pictures or sculptures, and have an inclination for whatever is elegant; but if you inquire whether they are beautiful souls, and whether their own acts are like fair pictures, you learn that they are selfish and sensual. Their cultivation is local, as if you should rub a log of dry wood in one spot to produce fire, all the rest remaining cold. Their knowledge of the fine arts is some study of rules and particulars, or some limited judgment of color or form which is exercised for amusement or for show. It is a proof of the shallowness of the doctrine of beauty, as it lies in the minds of our amateurs, that men seem to have lost the perception of the instant dependence of form upon soul. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Physicians and mental health workers today don't speak of retrieving souls, but they are faced with a similar task - restoring wholeness to an organism that has been fragmented by trauma. Shamanistic concepts and procedures treat trauma by uniting lost soul and body in the presence of community. This approach is alien to the technological mind. However, these procedures do seem to succeed where conventional Western approaches fail. ~ Peter A. Levine

A good movie can take you out of your dull funk and the hopelessness that so often goes with slipping into a theatre; a good movie can make you feel alive again, in contact, not just lost in another city. Good movies make you care, make you believe in possibilities again. If somewhere in the Hollywood-entertainment world someone has managed to break through with something that speaks to you, then it isn't all corruption. The movie doesn't have to be great; it can be stupid and empty and you can still have the joy of a good performance, or the joy in just a good line. An actor's scowl, a small subversive gesture, a dirty remark that someone tosses off with a mock-innocent face, and the world makes a little bit of sense. Sitting there alone or painfully alone because those with you do not react as you do, you know there must be others perhaps in this very theatre or in this city, surely in other theatres in other cities, now, in the past or future, who react as you do. And because movies are the most total and encompassing art form we have, these reactions can seem the most personal and, maybe the most important, imaginable. The romance of movies is not just in those stories and those people on the screen but in the adolescent dream of meeting others who feel as you do about what you've seen. You do meet them, of course, and you know each other at once because you talk less about good movies than about what you love in bad movies. ~ Pauline Kael

Cities, in many ways, are the best repositories for a love affair. You are in a forest or a cornfield, you are walking by the seashore, footprint after footprint of trodden sand, and somehow the kiss or the spoken covenant gets lost in the vastness and indifference of nature. In a city there are places to remind us of what has been. ~ Edna O'Brien

Slowly, his eyes came up and he looked through the kitchen window and out through the Cahuenga Pass. The lights of Hollywood glimmered in the cut, a mirror reflection of the stars of all galaxies everywhere. He thought about all that was bad out there. A city with more things wrong than right. A place where the earth could open up beneath you and suck you into the blackness. A city of lost light. His city. It was all of that and, still, always still, a place to begin again. His city. The city of the second chance.
Bosch nodded and bent down. He closed his eyes, put his hands under the water and brought them up to his face. The water was cold and bracing, as he thought any baptism, the start of any second chance, should be. ~ Michael Connelly

Necromancy?" The mantis shook his head. "I have laid a ghost or two, and I questioned one once." He swirled the wine in his cup and peered into it, seeing more in the flickers of firelight reflected there than I would have, I think. At last he said, "Our ghosts are becoming worse, have you noticed? It used to be they were no more than lost souls who had wandered away from the Lands of the Dead, or perhaps never reached them, spirits no worse dead than they had been alive, and frequently better. Such were the ghosts of which my masters told me when I was younger; such, indeed, were those I myself encountered as a young man. Now something evil is moving among them. ~ Gene Wolfe

We have become so trusting of technology that we have lost faith in ourselves and our born instincts. There are still parts of life that we do not need to "better" with technology. It's important to understand that you are smarter than your smartphone. To paraphrase, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your Google. Mistakes are a part of life and often the path to profound new insights - so why try to remove them completely? Getting lost while driving or visiting a new city used to be an adventure and a good story. Now we just follow the GPS. ~ Jocelyn K. Glei

It seemed to her the window was a great eye looking out over the city and the harbour and a strip of the gulf under ice. The new silence and emptiness was not entirely a loss; it was something of a relief. Aunt Gerda felt like a balloon, untied, soaring off its own way. But, she thought, it's a balloon that's bouncing against the ceiling and can't get free.
She understood that this was no way to live; human beings are not built to float. She needed an earthly anchor of meaning and care so she didn't get lost in the confusion. ~ Tove Jansson

He felt a little lost, after that experience. Lost as the girls on their knees. It was a never-ending story of young girls losing themselves, such that they were no longer humans with any souls or characters, but pretty girls with fat asses and nice tits. ~ Jess C. Scott

A faint rattling pulled me from sleep, which was a relief because I'd been caught in yet another nightmare. After what Rick, my now-former foster father, had done to me, one would think he'd be the one haunting my dreams. And he had something to do with it - he'd revived me the night I tried to kill myself. In the moments before he had, I was certain I'd been standing at the gates of hell, about to be sucked in. Unfortunately, when Rick revived me, I'd brought a piece of hell back with me. That was what I dreamed about. Every night. A dark, walled city. Wandering, lost, trapped. A voice whispering to me, You're perfect. Come back.
Stay. ~ Sarah Fine

What can the love in my soul be compared to another wonderful soul which is so far and yet so close of my self? What can this symbiosis between two souls can be? What can love be when you feel you cannot sleep at night, that every drop of dew becomes a crystal in your heart, when every breeze of wind has magical meanings? What can love be when you feel that you want nothing more in this world that to be with the soul you love? But what can love be in other transcendental realities? What about our souls? Are our souls a waterfall, a true Niagara or a smile, a flirt of an angel? Are our souls a mere mood of a fairy or a lightening in a summer rain? Our souls could be all of this and much more. But what really happens in that transcendental reality when we feel we are truly in love, that we love so much that it hurts? That the air in the room is unbreathable, that the sentimental, spiritual or physical distances kill us? What happens when dawn find us sadder than ever, looking for an excuse or an argument for the person we love so much, our Great Love? What are all thses? What are the looks lost in the desert horizons of unfulfilment or those in the eyes that deeply loose each other in the others inside the souls? ~ Sorin Cerin

It's so easy for me to get caught up in the feeling of a city like Venice, where everything is just beautiful color and gorgeous buildings that are so peaceful. You can roam around and get lost in the labyrinth. ~ Nanette Lepore

The brown earth, the torn, blasted earth, with a greasy shine under the sun's rays; the earth is the background of this restless, gloomy world of automatons, our gasping is the scratching of a quill, our lips are dry, our heads are debauched with stupor - thus we stagger forward, and into our pierced and shattered souls bores the torturing image of the brown earth with the greasy sun and the convulsed and dead soldiers, who lie there - it can't be helped - who cry and clutch at our legs as we spring away over them. We have lost all feeling for one another. We can hardly control ourselves when our glance lights on the form of some other man. We are insensible, dead men, who through some trick, some dreadful magic, are still able to run and to kill. ~ Erich Maria Remarque

His strides are the only evidence he exists, and so he wanders,
lost in a city that he has always called home.

Our creased hides and limp tongues attract neither fashionable
eye nor futile envy, and we no longer feel the burden of his
entire weight, though his heart is heavier than it was.
Sometimes we stop, and he looks with longing at the stars
overhead.

We remain on the ground. We have no concept of up, for out
reality lies below. It is how life works. This too shall pass. ~ Krishna Udayasankar