Cold Hand Quotes

Prepare your hearts for Death's cold hand! prepare
Your souls for flight, your bodies for the earth;
Prepare your arms for glorious victory;
Prepare your eyes to meet a holy God!
Prepare, prepare! ~ William Blake

That parish which allows the living to grasp the no longer cold hand of the beloved dead ~ Dennis Potter

Beauty is at its most poignant when the cold hand of Death holds poised to wither it imminently. ~ Jacqueline Carey

There was the bulge and the glitter, and there was the cold grip way down in the stomach as though somebody had laid hold of something in there, in the dark which is you, with a cold hand in a cold rubber glove. It was like the second when you come home late at night and see the yellow envelope of the telegram sticking out from under your door and you lean and pick it up, but don't open it yet, not for a second. While you stand there in the hall, with the envelope in your hand, you feel there's an eye on you, a great big eye looking straight at you from miles and dark and through walls and houses and through your coat and vest and hide and sees you huddled up way inside, in the dark which is you, inside yourself, like a clammy, sad little fetus you carry around inside yourself. The eye knows what's in the envelope, and it is watching you to see you when you open it and know, too. But the clammy, sad little fetus which is you way down in the dark which is you too lifts up its sad little face and its eyes are blind, and it shivers cold inside you for it doesn't want to know what is in that envelope. It wants to lie in the dark and not know, and be warm in its not-knowing. ~ Robert Penn Warren

All things come to him who waits, and among them is that unpleasant sensation of a cold hand upon the portion of the body which lies behind the third waistcoat button. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

O! Time is a faerie-maid, dark is her dairy laid:
Larders of mem'ry and amethyst lore.
But one kiss from her lips
On your lips as she slips
One cold hand in your pocket will finish the chore.

For her kiss it is sweet
It is death, it is meat
It is sharp as a bone-frost and light as a wheat
In her bed, poppy-reds
glimmer bright as she shreds
All your best years of life into raggedy threads.

O! She picks every purse with a laugh and a curse
but a beggar she stays till the end of no end.
For her girtle is trim
From the breast to the hem;
She must ever stay hungry to eat what you lend.

Never thanks, never smile,
Such small coinage is vile
In pay for the life-years snipped off of a man.
But a kiss for the road
- Age and Slumber your load -
And a red-lipped farewell where your trouble began.

O! Time is a faerie-maid, dark is her dairy laid:
Larders of mem'ry and amethyst lore
But one kiss from her lips
On your lips as she slips
One cold hand in your pocket will finish the chore. ~ Rachel Heffington

The cold hand of history, which is for ever robbing us of some of our oldest and best cherished stories, points rigidly to the fact that no such person as King Arthur ever presided over a Round Table. Be this as it may, romance still hugs her heroes to her heart as possessions to be not willingly let die. ~ H. A. Guerber

There is nothing like the dead cold hand of the past to take down our tumid egotism and lead us into the solemn flow of the life of our race. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

I led him up the dark stairs, to prevent his knocking his head against anything, and really his damp cold hand felt so like a frog in mine, that I was tempted to drop it and run away. Agnes and hospitality prevailed, however, and I conducted him to my fireside. When I lighted my candles, he fell into meek transports with the room that was revealed to him; and when I heated the coffee in an unassuming block-tin vessel in which Mrs. Crupp delighted to prepare it (chiefly, I believe, because it was not intended for the purpose, being a shaving-pot, and because there was a patent invention of great price mouldering away in the pantry), he professed so much emotion, that I could joyfully have scalded him. ~ Charles Dickens

The rum fiend would like to go and hang up a skeleton in your beautiful house so that, when you opened the front door to go in, you would see it in the hall; and, when you sat at your table you would see it hanging from the wall; and, when you opened your bedroom you would find it stretched upon your pillow; and, waking at night, you would feel its cold hand passing over your face and pinching at your heart. There is no home so beautiful but it may be devastated by the awful curse. ~ Thomas De Witt Talmage

The sound of the wind stretches its limbs.
The jazz music witholds some of its ruckus.
Hands move something in the dark.
I say: just an old romanticism...
No matter, the place will fit everything.

Vision descends upon flaccid pathways
and rides them on cheap metal.
Dried out trees and others take their water
from the drowned sand by force.
I say: a passing depression.
No matter, the place will fit everything.
During the day the sun approaches the mountain,
places its hand upon it,
its cold hand of lovers,
strikes stone with stone.
Mountain scrub dances behind the stone.
The sun does not see it.
Only the moon shines upon it all the way beyond the bend
and the guardian stones watch from afar.
I say: a passing coincidence.
No matter, the place will fit everything. ~ Ashur Etwebi

Edilio lay on the steps of town hall feeling as weak as a kitten. He had barely heard Caine's big speech. He couldn't have cared less. There was nothing he could do, not with delirium spinning his head.
He coughed hard, too hard. It wracked his body each time he did it so that he dreaded the next cough. His stomach was clenched in knots. Every muscle in his body ached.
He was vaguely aware that he was saying something in between coughs.
"Mamá. Mamá. Sálvame."
Save me, mother.
"Santa María, sálvame," he begged, and coughed so hard he smashed his head against the steps.
Death was near, he felt it. Death reached through his swimming, disordered mind and he felt its cold hand clutching his heart.
Santa María, Madre de Dios, ruega por nosotros pecadores, ahora y en la hora de nuestra muerte. ~ Michael Grant

Wan February with weeping cheer,
Whose cold hand guides the youngling year
Down misty roads of mire and rime,
Before thy pale and fitful face
The shrill wind shifts the clouds apace
Through skies the morning scarce may climb.
Thine eyes are thick with heavy tears,
But lit with hopes that light the year's. ~ Algernon Charles Swinburne

Blood fountained in an arterial spray that wet her face, turned the cherry blossoms black, but she was already shoving the blade into his heart and twisting it into so much pulp ... 'Will she be able to make him rise from this?' she asked Raphael, her voice without inflection, without mercy. Slater didn't deserve her emotions, didn't deserve anything but the cold hand of a long-delayed justice. ~ Nalini Singh

An' that cold hand o' wind was Old Georgie's hand, yay, the devil what was standin' there wavin' a crookit spoon. ~ David Mitchell

We men are all in a fever of excitement, except Harker, who is calm. His hands are cold as ice, and an hour ago I found him whetting the edge of the great Ghoorka knife which he now always carries with him. It will be a bad lookout for the Count if the edge of that "Kukri" ever touches his throat, driven by that stern, ice-cold hand! ~ Bram Stoker

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

Cate, I cant say what you want to hear. Not yet. I want you to know that
when I do, I'll mean it. Completely. Irrevocably."
"When?" I ask, voice small but hopeful. "Not if?"
"When." He takes my cold hand in his. "I'm falling in love with you more every day. I don't know if they were the same things I loved about you before, but now
the bit of red in your hair. The way you tilt your chin when you get angry, like you're charging into battle. How fiercely protective you are of the people you care about. How big your capacity for forgiveness is. You are an amazing woman, Cate Cahill. ~ Jessica Spotswood

Each and every one of us has been born into a given historical reality, ruled by particular norms and values, and managed by a unique economic and political system. We take this reality for granted, thinking it is natural, inevitable and immutable. We forget that our world was created by an accidental chain of events, and that history shaped not only our technology, politics and society, but also our thoughts, fears and dreams. The cold hand of the past emerges from the grave of our ancestors, grips us by the neck and directs our gaze towards a single future. We have felt that grip from the moment we were born, so we assume that it is a natural and inescapable part of who we are. Therefore we seldom try to shake ourselves free, and envision alternative futures. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

Don't pursue something with a vengeful heart, or it will destroy you. Hate wraps a cold hand around your heart and hollows you out.
- Justus ~ Dannika Dark

Nearly a Valediction"

You happened to me. I was happened to
like an abandoned building by a bull-
dozer, like the van that missed my skull
happened a two-inch gash across my chin.
You were as deep down as I've ever been.
You were inside me like my pulse. A new-
born flailing toward maternal heartbeat through
the shock of cold and glare: when you were gone,
swaddled in strange air I was that alone
again, inventing life left after you.

I don't want to remember you as that
four o'clock in the morning eight months long
after you happened to me like a wrong
number at midnight that blew up the phone
bill to an astronomical unknown
quantity in a foreign currency.
The U.S. dollar dived since you happened to me.
You've grown into your skin since then; you've grown
into the space you measure with someone
you can love back without a caveat.

While I love somebody I learn to live
with through the downpulled winter days' routine
wakings and sleepings, half-and-half caffeine-
assisted mornings, laundry, stock-pots, dust-
balls in the hallway, lists instead of longing, trust
that what comes next comes after what came first.
She'll never be a story I make up.
You were the one I didn't know where to stop.
If I had blamed you, now I could forgive

you, but what made my cold hand, back in prox-
imity to your hair, your m ~ Marilyn Hacker

Life was rich with possibility, or life was possibly rich...She felt incandescent with the news.
Cold sun. Jack in the pulpits nosing out of the still-frozen mud. Lotto lay watching the world incrementally wake up. They had been married for seventeen years, she lived in the deepest room in his heart, and sometimes that meant that wife occurred to him before Mathilde, helpmeet before herself, abstraction of her before the physical being.
But not now. When she came across the veranda, he saw Mathilde all of the sudden, the dark whip at the center of her, how, so gently, she flicked it and kept him spinning. She put her cold hand on his stomach, which he was sunning to banish the winter's white. 'Vain,' she said.
'An actor in a playwright's hide,' he said. 'I'll never not be vain.'
'Oh well, it's you,' she said. 'You're desperate for the love of strangers, to be seen.'
'You see me,' he said. And he heard the echo with his thoughts a minute before and was pleased.
'I do,' she said. 'Now please, talk.'
She stretched her arms over heads...she looked at him, savoring her own knowing, his unknowing... ~ Lauren Groff

The steel suddenly touched her heart. Ah, jealousy, it was jealousy, the cold hand mashing her slowly, squeezing her, diminishing her soul. ~ Clarice Lispector

I know what it felt ... like when I ... thought you were dead, and-" A small gasp for breath, and her eyes locked on his. "And I wouldn't do that to you." Her bosom fell and her eyes closed.
It was a long moment before he could speak.
"Thank ye, Sassenach," he whispered, and held her small, cold hand between his own and watched her breathe until the moon rose. ~ Diana Gabaldon

If you cannot come, if you fear
What music might wind your feet
In the moss and migrant roots,
What drink will score your throat
Like a sky scratched
By the claw-end of leaves
What wheels will drive you
Home at dawn, where the dew-blades
Bear up the infancies of light -
Then send, in the tremble
Of your own cold hand,
Regrets only, nothing but regrets. ~ Elton Glaser

There was something at the edge of Silas's lips that might have been a smile, and might have been regret, and might just have been a trick of the shadows.
"Good-bye, then, Silas." Bod held out his hand, as he had when he was a small boy, and Silas took it, in a cold hand the color of old ivory, and shook it gravely.
"Good-bye, Nobody Owens. ~ Neil Gaiman

But then night would fall, revealing the sky's hidden treasure - the stars, after all, weren't gone during the day, merely obscured - and his loneliness would recede, supplanted by the sense that the universe, for all its inscrutable vastness, was not a hard, indifferent place in which some things were alive and others not and all that happened was a kind of accident, governed by the cold hand of physical law, but a web of invisible threads in which everything was connected to everything else, including him. ~ Justin Cronin

The cold hand of the past emerges from the grave of our ancestors, grips us by the neck and directs our gaze towards a single future. We ~ Yuval Noah Harari

It took me less than half a lifetime to realize that regret is one of the few guaranteed certainties. Sooner or later everything is touched by it, despite our naive and senseless hope that just this time we will be spared its cold hand on our heart. ~ Jonathan Carroll

O the sad frugality of the middle-income mind. O the humorless neatness of an intellectuality which buys mass-produced candlesticks and carefully puts one at each end of every philosophical mantlepiece! How far it lies from the playfulness of Him who composed such odd and needless variations on the themes of leaf and backbone, eye and nose! A thousand praises that it has only lately managed to lay its cold hand on the wines, the sauces, and the cheeses of the world! A hymn of thanksgiving that it could not reach into the depths of the sea to clamp its grim simplicities over the creatures that swim luminously in the dark! A shout of rejoicing for the fish who wears his eyeballs at the ends of long stalks, and for the jubilant laughter of the God who holds him in life with a daily bravo at the bravura of his being! ~ Robert Farrar Capon

Everything you have said will not matter anymore one day, only those things that you never said will always haunt you and strangle you every time you see your world in someone else's hand. ~ Akshay Vasu

Knighterrantry is a most chuckleheaded trade, and it is tedious hard work, too, but I begin to see that there is money in it, after all, if you have luck. Not that I would ever engage in it, as a business, for I wouldn't. No sound and legitimate business can be established on a basis of speculation. A successful whirl in the knighterrantry line
now what is it when you blow away the nonsense and come down to the cold facts? It's just a corner in pork, that's all. ~ Mark Twain

Second hand bookshops are best visited alone and in the rain. ~ Christopher Fowler

Central planning was just not good at replacing what the great eighteenth-century economist Adam Smith called the "invisible hand" of the market. When the plan was formulated in tons of steel sheet, the sheet was made too heavy. When it was formulated in terms of area of steel sheet, the sheet was made too thin. When the plan for chandeliers was made in tons, they were so heavy, they could hardly hang from ceilings. ~ Daron Acemoglu

But *why* do clean torture and democracy appear to go hand in hand? This is an important puzzle (though by no means the only one suggested by the data). My explanation for this pattern generally is this: Public monitoring leads institutions that favor painful coercion to use and combine clean torture techniques to evade detection, and, to the extent that public monitoring is not only greater in democracies, but that public monitoring of human rights is a core value in modern democracies, it is the case that where we find democracies torturing today we will also be more likely to find stealthy torture. ~ Darius M. Rejali

Dumbledore's plan works well in giving Harry protection from the external danger of Voldemort. The plan also gives him an ordinary life. This ordinary life is a protection from the spiritual danger of pride, while being an aid to humility.

Voldemort does not escape this danger. He has contempt for anything that makes him ordinary, such as his name Tom. He wants to be "different, separate, notorious." Harry, on the other hand, never tries to avoid his name, although the Dursleys think it a "nasty common name." He interiorises the value of being ordinary. ... singularity [is] the vice that is the opposite of accepting one's ordinariness. ~ Luke Bell

When men see Han-shan
They all say he's crazy
And not much to look at -
Dressed in rags and hides.
They don't get what I say
And I don't talk their language.
All I can say to those I meet:
Try and make it to Cold Mountain. ~ Gary Snyder

Before I knew it, Marlboro Man's right arm was wrapped around my waist while his other hand held the reins of the two horses. In another instant, he pulled me toward him in a tight grip and leaned in for a sweet, tender kiss--a kiss he seemed to savor even after our lips parted.
"Good morning," he said sweetly, grinning that magical grin. ~ Ree Drummond

Oh," she said, putting her hand to her throat -- it was a suprisingly long, slender hand, in contrast to the roundness of her face. ~ Nancy Garden

I felt myself begin to slide down into that recognizable abyss, down and down, where I knew it would be cold and dark, but which had become more familiar to me than my face in the mirror. I knew I should instead be grateful for this time with my two best friends, for having laughed, but I let myself slide anyway. And hoped someone would pull me back up. ~ Tracy H. Tucker

The Dalai Lama took the Archbishop's hand, and then they were more eight than eighty, laughing and making jokes together as they strolled toward the terminal, yellow umbrella sheltering above them. Even ~ Dalai Lama XIV

On December 13, the tsarina suggests to the tsar: "Anything but this responsible ministry about which everybody has gone crazy. Everything is getting quiet and better, but people want to feel your hand. How long they have been saying to me, for whole years, the same thing: 'Russia loves to feel the whip.' That is their nature!" This orthodox Hessian, with a Windsor upbringing and a Byzantine crown on her head, not only "incarnates" the Russian soul, but also organically despises it. Their nature demands the whip - writes the Russian tsarina to the Russian tsar about the Russian people, just two months and a half before the monarchy tips over into the abyss. In ~ Leon Trotsky

I guess I don't really know any other way to do it, it just feels like the natural way to do things for me. Like - if I'm writing a song - it has to have some sort of value. Or it only has some kind of value to me, if it's something really personal. It has to mean something to me. I guess it is a little uncomfortable, or it's a little embarrassing sometimes, to know that stuff that honest is out there. But, when I hand off the thing, when it's totally done and mastered and sent, I kinda feel like it doesn't belong to me anymore. ~ Panda Bear

The bird of paradise alights only upon the hand that does not grasp. ~ John Berry

Phillip look into Ray's eyes. He saw compassion and hope. And he saw himself mirrored back, bleeding in a dirty gutter on a street where life was worth less than a dime bag.
Sick, tired, petrified, Phillip dropped his head into his hands.
"What's the point?"
"You're the point, son." Ray ran his hand over Phillip's hair. "You're the point. ~ Nora Roberts

I never believed in Santa Claus. None of us kids did. Mom and Dad refused to let us. They couldn't afford expensive presents and they didn't want us to think we weren't as good as other kids who, on Christmas morning, found all sorts of fancy toys under the tree that were supposedly left by Santa Claus.
Dad had lost his job at the gypsum, and when Christmas came that year, we had no money at all. On Christmas Eve, Dad took each one of us kids out into the desert night one by one.
"Pick out your favorite star", Dad said.
"I like that one!" I said.
Dad grinned, "that's Venus", he said. He explained to me that planets glowed because reflected light was constant and stars twinkled because their light pulsed.
"I like it anyway" I said.
"What the hell," Dad said. "It's Christmas. You can have a planet if you want."
And he gave me Venus.

Venus didn't have any moons or satellites or even a magnetic field, but it did have an atmosphere sort of similar to Earth's, except it was super hot-about 500 degrees or more. "So," Dad said, "when the sun starts to burn out and Earth turns cold, everyone might want to move to Venus to get warm. And they'll have to get permission from your descendants first.
We laughed about all the kids who believed in the Santa myth and got nothing for Christmas but a bunch of cheap plastic toys. "Years from now, when all the junk they got is broken and long forgotten," Dad said, "you'll still have your stars. ~ Jeannette Walls

I want to tell her that I can't pull her down. I want to tell her that she has to let go of my hand in order to swim. I want to tell her that she must live her own life. But I sense she already knows that these options are open to her. And that she, too, has made her choice. ~ Tabitha Suzuma

In our methodical American life, we still recognize some magic in summer. Most persons at least resign themselves to being decently happy in June. They accept June. They compliment its weather. They complain of the earlier months as cold, and so spend them in the city; and they complain of the later months as hot, and so refrigerate themselves on some barren sea-coast. God offers us yearly a necklace of twelve pearls; most men choose the fairest, label it June, and cast the rest away. ~ Thomas Wentworth Higginson

I'm a fuckin' honey badger and by this claw" - she held her hand up - " I fuckin' rule. ~ Shelly Laurenston

We sat like that for a long time, until a discrete knock at the half-open door broke us apart. Lissa stood in the doorway.
"Sorry," she said, her face shining with joy when she saw me. "Should have put a sock on the door. Didn't realize that things were getting hot and heavy."
"No avoiding it," I said lightly, clasping Dimitri's hand. "Things are always hot with him around."
Dimitri looked scandalized. He'd never held back when we were in bed together, but his private nature wouldn't let him even hint about such matters and others. It was mean, but I laughed and kissed his cheek.
"Oh, this is going to be fun," I said. "Now that everything's out in the open."
"Yeah," he said. "I got a pretty 'fun' look from your father the other day. ~ Richelle Mead

Anastasia," he whispers. "What are you doing to me?" "I could say the same to you," I whisper back. Taking a deep breath, he kisses my forehead and leaves. He strolls purposefully down the path toward his car as he runs his hand through his hair. Glancing up as he opens his car door, he smiles his breathtaking smile. My answering smile is weak, completely dazzled by him, and I'm reminded once more of Icarus soaring too close to the sun. I close the front door as he climbs into his sports car. I have an overwhelming urge to cry; a sad and lonely melancholy grips and tightens around my heart. Dashing back to my bedroom, I close the door and lean against it, trying to rationalize my feelings. I can't. Sliding to the floor, I put my head in my hands as my tears begin to flow. ~ E.L. James

I made a seesaw gesture with my hand. ~ Stephen King

We did make use, from time to time, of candles, neckties, scarves, shoelaces, a little water-color paintbrush, her hairbrush, butter, whipped cream, strawberry jam, Johnson's Baby Oil, my Swedish hand vibrator, a fascinating bead necklace she had, miscellaneous common household items, and every molecule of flesh that was exposed to air or could be located with strenuous search. ~ Spider Robinson

He swept a hand back through his dark hair, and in that moment Ceony saw a flicker in his eyes and a thinning of his lips. He was worried.
"Is everything . . . all right?" she asked, hesitating at the threshold of the library, unsure of her bounds.
"Hm?" he asked, his countenance smoothing between ticks of the library clock. "Quite fine. Do take care, Ceony." He walked down the hallway as far as the lavatory, where he turned around and added, "And keep the doors locked. ~ Charlie N. Holmberg

You wouldn't think the touch of someone's hand could blow your mind. It's nothing, right? People don't right songs and poems about holding hands - they write them about kisses and sex and eternal love. I mean, when you're a little kid you hold hands with your parents to cross the street. Who's going to write an ode to that?
We were alone in the dark, even though the enormous theater was filled with probably a thousand people. We were a tiny island in a sea of other people who didn't matter, who had no meaning, who were so stupid, so oblivious, so stuck in their own boring lives that they didn't even notice the huge, momentous, life-shattering event that was taking place right there in row L, between seats 102 and 104.
Derek Edwards was holding my hand. ~ Claire LaZebnik

Once I was in the cold dim room, without furniture or carpet or rugs, only a dollhouse that wasn't as wonderful as the original, I opened the tall and narrow closet door and began my ascent up the steep and narrow stairs.
On my way to the attic.
On my way to where I'd find my Christopher, again... ~ V.C. Andrews

I feel quite safe and isolated in Germany. My wife is very well known there. But I am only looked at when I am holding her hand. ~ Sam Riley

You read, move your lips, figure out the words, and it's like you're in two places at the same time: you're sitting or lying with your legs curled up, your hand groping in the bowl, but you can see different worlds, far-off worlds that maybe never existed but still seem real. You run or sail or race in a sleigh
you're running away from someone, or you yourself have decided to attack
your heart thumps, life flies by, and it's wondrous: you can live as many different lives as there are books to read. ~ Tatyana Tolstaya

But when I look in the basin, among the curdlike blood clots, I see and elfin thorax, attentuated, its pencilline ribs all in parallel rows with tiny knobs of spine rounding upwards. A translucent arm and hand swim beside. ~ Sallie Tisdale

I need a dance partner." A familiar voice intruded on her thoughts. She turned to find Issah grinning at her. "I'm sure you can find better dance partners than I." "Perhaps. But you're who I desire to dance with." He held out his hand, ~ Jackie Castle

Perhaps I ought to remember that she is very young, a mere girl and make allowances. She is all interest, eagerness, vivacity, the world is to her a charm, a wonder, a mystery, a joy; she can't speak for delight when she finds a new flower, she must pet it and caress it and smell it and talk to it, and pour out endearing names upon it. And she is color-mad: brown rocks, yellow sand, gray moss, green foliage, blue sky; the pearl of the dawn, the purple shadows on the mountains, the golden islands floating in crimson seas at sunset, the pallid moon sailing through the shredded cloud-rack, the star-jewels glittering in the wastes of space - none of them is of any practical value, so far as I can see, but because they have color and majesty, that is enough for her, and she loses her mind over them. If she could quiet down and keep still a couple of minutes at a time, it would be a reposeful spectacle. In that cases I think I could enjoy looking at her; indeed I am sure I could, for I am coming to realize that she is a quite remarkably comely creature - lithe, slender, trim, rounded, shapely, nimble, graceful; and once when she was standing marble-white and sun-drenched on a boulder, with her young head tilted back and her hand shading her eyes, watching the flight of a bird in the sky, I recognized that she was beautiful. ~ Mark Twain

Aurora's studio she stole three charcoal sketches of me as a young boy, sketches in which my ruined hand had been wondrously metamorphosed, becoming, variously, a flower, a paintbrush and a sword. Miss Jaya took these sketches to my Dilly's flat and said they were a gift from the 'young Sahib'. Then she told Aurora that she had seen the teacher pinching them, and, excuse me, Begum Sahib, but that woman's attitude to our boy is not a moral one. ~ Salman Rushdie

Is that...the Looney Tunes theme?"
Mer and St. Clair cock their ears.
"Why,yes.I believe it is," St. Clair says.
"I heard 'Love Shack' a few minutes ago," Mer says.
"It's official," I say. "America has finally ruined France."
"So can we go now?" St. Clair holds up a small bag. "I'm done."
"Ooo,what'd you get?" Mer asks. She takes his bag and pulls out a delicate, shimmery scarf. "Is it for Ellie?"
"Shite."
Mer pauses. "You didn't get anything for Ellie?"
"No,it's for Mum.Arrrgh." He rakes a hand through his hair. "Would you mind if we pop over to Sennelier before we go home?" Sennelier is a gorgeous little art supply sore,the kind that makes me wish I had an excuse to buy oil paints and pastels. Mer and I went with Rashmi last weekend. She bought Josh a new sketchbook for Hanukkah.
"Wow.Congratulations,St. Clair," I say. "Winner of today's Sucky Boyfriend award.And I thought Steve was bad-did you see what happened in calc?"
"You mean when Amanda caught him dirty-texting Nicole?" Mer asks. "I thought she was gonna stab him in the neck with her pencil."
"I've been busy," St. Clair says.
I glance at him. "I was just teasing."
"Well,you don't have to be such a bloody git about it."
"I wasn't being a git. I wasnt even being a twat, or a wanker, or any of your other bleeding Briticisms-"
"Piss off." He snatches his bag back from Mer and scowls at me.
"HEY!" Mer says. "It's Christmas. Ho-ho-ho. Deck ~ Stephanie Perkins

What else is chance but the rude stone which receives its life from the sculptor's hand? Providence gives us chance, and man must mould it to his own designs. ~ Friedrich Schiller

What brings enlightenment is experience, in the sad sense of this word
the pressure of hard facts and unintelligible troubles, making a man rub his eyes in his waking dream, and put two and two together. Enlightenment is cold water. ~ George Santayana

I tend not to reread books, because there's always something new to discover, but Dorothy Sayers is a comfort grab for me - there's no mood so bleak or cold so bad that Lord Peter and Bunter can't make it right. ~ Laura Anne Gilman

Who can pray this request and mean it? Only he who looks at the whole of life from this point of view. Such a man will not fall into the trap of superspirituality, so concentrating on God's redemption as to disregard his creation; people like that, however devoted and well-meaning, are unearthly in more senses than one, and injure their own humanity. Instead, he will see everything as stemming ultimately from the Creator's hand, and therefore as fundamentally good and fascinating, whatever man may have made of it (beauty, sex, nature, children, arts, crafts, food, games, no less than theology and church things). Then in thankfulness and joy he will so live as to help others see life's values, and praise God for them, as he does. Supremely in this drab age, hallowing God's name starts here, with an attitude of gratitude for the goodness of the creation. ~ J.I. Packer

A good way to fall in love
is to turn off the headlights
and drive very fast down dark roads.

Another way to fall in love
is to say they are only mints
and swallow them with a strong drink.

Then it is autumn in the body.
Your hands are cold.
Then it is winter and we are still at war.

The gold-haired girl is singing into your ear
about how we live in a beautiful country.
Snow sifts from the clouds

into your drink. It doesn't matter about the war.
A good way to fall in love
is to close up the garage and turn the engine on,

then down you'll fall through lovely mists
as a body might fall early one morning
from a high window into love. Love,

the broken glass. Love, the scissors
and the water basin. A good way to fall
is with a rope to catch you.

A good way is with something to drink
to help you march forward.
The gold-haired girl says, Don't worry

about the armies, says, We live in a time
full of love. You're thinking about this too much.
Slow down. Nothing bad will happen. ~ Kevin Prufer

And that date, too, is far off?'

'Far off; when it comes, think your end in this world is at hand!'

'How and what is the end? Look east, west, south and north.'

'In the north, where you never yet trod, towards the point whence your instincts have warned you, there a spectre will seize you. 'Tis Death! I see a ship - it is haunted - 'tis chased - it sails on. Baffled navies sail after that ship. It enters the regions of ice. It passes a sky red with meteors. Two moons stand on high, over ice-reefs. I see the ship locked between white defiles - they are ice-rocks. I see the dead strew the decks - stark and livid, green mold on their limbs. All are dead, but one man - it is you! But years, though so slowly they come, have then scathed you. There is the coming of age on your brow, and the will is relaxed in the cells of the brain. Still that will, though enfeebled, exceeds all that man knew before you, through the will you live on, gnawed with famine; and nature no longer obeys you in that death-spreading region; the sky is a sky of iron, and the air has iron clamps, and the ice-rocks wedge in the ship. Hark how it cracks and groans. Ice will imbed it as amber imbeds a straw. And a man has gone forth, living yet, from the ship and its dead; and he has clambered up the spikes of an iceberg, and the two moons gaze down on his form. That man is yourself; and terror is on you - terror; and terror has swallowed your will. And I see swarming up the ste ~ Edward Bulwer-Lytton

At times, she felt that she was involved in an elaborate peasant dance, which had not been entirely explained to her. Now the hand is held; now the heel is stamped; now the head turns; and then the kiss. ~ Gore Vidal

But when my gaze falls on my bed, I freeze, no longer worried what Nolan thinks of the pink or DR.Hoo or my unicorn collection. Instead, I hold up my hand and point at the checkerboard. Someone has made the next move. ~ Paige McKenzie

If you wish to begin life at forty, you must settle two large personal questions first of all. You must find work and play that call for no more energy than you can afford to spend on them. Then you must train your mind, eye and hand to the point of working and playing with ease, grace and precision. ~ Walter B. Pitkin

Is it too much?"
"No. It's like you completed the circuit," I say, gripping his other hand. "I feel kind of drunk, though."
"Drunk on power?" he asks.
I giggle. "Shit, Snow. Stop talking. This is embarrassing. ~ Rainbow Rowell

They had long ago found out that one could not be an owner unless one were cold. ~ John Steinbeck

Trade him for a six pack; it doesn't even have to be cold. ~ Buddy Ryan

Wiley's blade of a nose was busted, and one of his arms, Reacher thought, from the way he was holding it. His other hand was pressed hard against his stomach. Bright red blood was pulsing out between his fingers. He was staring blankly at the far horizon, with wide-open tragedy in his eyes. More shock and misery than Reacher had ever seen before. More abject crushing disappointment, more pain, more betrayal, more open-mouthed incredulity at the unlikely ways the world can crush a person. Reacher ~ Lee Child

Now you feel no rain, for each of you will be shelter to the other. Now you will feel no cold, for each of you will be warmth to the other. Now there is no more loneliness, for each of you will be companion to the other - Apache Wedding Blessing ~ Tia Widiana

No!" Lada shook her head, eyes still wild. "I cannot go in there! If a woman enters the harem complex, she belongs to the sultan!"
Mehmed peered out the window they had climbed through, to make sure their path was clear. "I would not hold you to that, Lada, and - "
"It would not matter! Everyone would know, I would be labeled your concubine, and - "
Radu took her hand, which still hung in the air pointing accusingly at Mehmed, and squeezed it in his own. "And you would be unmarriageable? What a tragedy. I know how dearly you treasured the hope of marrying some minor Ottoman noble, dear sister."
She finally met his eyes, hers still feverish and frenzied. "But I would be his."
"I think our Mehmed is smart enough to know he could never claim you. Right?"
Radu's tone was light, and he turned to Mehmed with a playful smile. Perhaps it was the dimness of the room, or the stress of the night, but Mehmed's face was clouded with…disappointment? Hurt? Then a tight, false smile took its place, and he nodded. Radu's own chest felt equally tight with anxiety and fear and a twisting, bitter sense of jealousy. ~ Kiersten White