Country Road Quotes

Have you ever heard the wonderful silence just before the dawn? Or the quiet and calm just as a storm ends? Or perhaps you know the silence when you haven't the answer to a question you've been asked, or the hush of a country road at night, or the expectant pause of a room full of people when someone is just about to speak, or, most beautiful of all, the moment after the door closes and you're alone in the whole house? Each one is different, you know, and all very beautiful if you listen carefully. ~ Norton Juster

They were completely alone on the long stretch of country road and there was no one else to share the moment with them. ~ S.A. Tawks

To know a person in his home is not to know him at all: to meet him on a country road with only his baggage is to at last contact the core, the inner cell of his personality. ~ John Tibbetts

It is the passion inside me that means I keep going. I love what I do, and I think I am lucky to do it. When I am riding a quiet country road, I hear the birds singing and think, 'I am in my office now.' ~ Jens Voigt

I change the channel to another movie. An old one, but new to me. And, ironically, a thin, gorgeous blonde - Meg Ryan, maybe - rides her bike on a country road. She smiles like she has no cares in the world. Like no one ever judges her. Like her life is perfect. Wind through her hair and sunshine on her face. The only thing missing are the rainbows and butterflies and cartoon birds singing on her shoulder.

Maybe I should grab my bike and try to catch up with Mom, Mike, and the kids. They can't be going very fast. I would love to feel like that, even if it's just for a second - free and peaceful and normal.
Suddenly, there's a truck. It can't be headed toward Meg Ryan. Could it? Yes. Oh my God. No! Meg Ryan just got hit by that truck.

Figures. See what happens when you exercise? ~ K.A. Barson

I feel the wind in my face as I ride in the bed of an old pickup truck down a country road at night, dust swirling red in the taillights and the entire span of my life yawning out ahead of me. It's the beautiful thing about youth. There's a weightlessness that permeates everything because no damning choices have been made, no paths committed to, and the road forking out ahead is pure, unlimited potential. I ~ Blake Crouch

They leave the insistent monotony of the interstate for more reasonable roads. While the former slices its path through entire states, peppering them with exit signs and mile markers, these lesser cousins of the grand highways keep their manners intact, clinging gently to the hemlines of all but the most obstinate geological points of interest. Charming and sometimes a bit frightening, their paths are as unpredictable and winding as a little boy's route home from school. ~ Kimberly Morgan

Twelve good years thrummed in his steps, and fifteen in mine as we strode down the gypsy ribbon of a country road, laughing in the face of a fast-setting sun and swiftly rising storm. ~ Sarah Clarkson

I pass a construction site, abandoned for the night, and a few blocks later, the playground of the elementary school my son attended, the metal sliding board gleaming under a streetlamp and the swings stirring in the breeze.
There's an energy to these autumn nights that touches something primal inside of me. Something from long ago. From my childhood in western Iowa. I think of high school football games and the stadium lights blazing down on the players. I smell ripening apples, and the sour reek of beer from keg parties in the cornfields. I feel the wind in my face as I ride in the bed of an old pickup truck down a country road at night, dust swirling in the taillights and the entire span of my life yawning out ahead o me.
It's the beautiful thing about youth.
There's a weightlessness that permeates everything because no damning choices have been made, no paths committed to, and the road forking out ahead is pure, unlimited potential.
I love my life, but I haven't felt that lightness of being in ages. Autumn nights like this are as close as I get. ~ Blake Crouch

some twenty more miles on an old two-lane country road. Traffic was light, just a couple of pickups and a Volkswagen, ~ Catherine Coulter

I'm not a big fan of my books going on cross-country road trips. They get arrogant and, next thing, start aspiring to become 'large-print' books. I say, let them stay home and be regular small-print books. ~ George Saunders

Any cyclist will tell you that one of the things they value most about cycling is what it does for their heads. It cleans out the clutter. Cycling allows for reflection. It simultaneously offers time to mull over problems and to escape those problems. It's both meditative and contemplative. Whether you're weaving through traffic or climbing a long country road, the effect is the same. Your body's working, and your mind is working. And when those two things start working in concert, other aspects of life can start falling into place too. ~ BikeSnobNYC

Speculative Encounters New Stories from the Slipstream by C.L. Nichols Speculative Encounters: New Stories from the Slipstream
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I hope you enjoy reading these Speculative Stories from the Slipstream as much as I enjoyed creating them.
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The slipstream combines science fiction, fantasy and horror then

plants the resulting blend into the potting soil of mainstream

fiction. The 17 speculative stories cross the boundaries of genre.

Is a lineman really transported to an alternate reality after a lightning strike or is he hallucinating?

When vampires steal a man's wife, he follows to seek revenge with the assistance of a female vampire who offers him eternity.

Driving on a lonely country road at night, a man in a pickup sees a woman's bloody arm reach out from the shoulder of the two-lane blacktop road.

In the aftermath of a comet's disintegration in Earth's atmosphere, survivors must adapt – and was that an actual comet that exploded?
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eam
SPECULATIVE ENCOUNTERS: New Stories from the Slipstream

Speculative fiction is comprised of three related genres: science fiction, fantasy and horror. The slipstream intermingles these genres then plants imagination's resulting seeds i ~ C.L. Nichols

A picnic. Picture a forest, a country road, a meadow. Cars drive off the country road into the meadow, a group of young people get out carrying bottles, baskets of food, transistor radios, and cameras. They light fires, pitch tents, turn on the music. In the morning they leave. The animals, birds, and insects that watched in horror through the long night creep out from their hiding places. And what do they see? Old spark plugs and old filters strewn around ... Rags, burnt-out bulbs, and a monkey wrench left behind ... And of course, the usual mess - apple cores, candy wrappers, charred remains of the campfire, cans, bottles, somebody's handkerchief, somebody's penknife, torn newspapers, coins, faded flowers picked in another meadow. ~ Arkady Strugatsky

Trying to predict the future is like trying to drive down a country road at night with no lights while looking out the back window. ~ Peter F. Drucker

She dreamed of driving off bridges: into a lake beneath some twisting highway of her youth, into the reservoir on the country road to home, into the San Francisco Bay. ~ Shannon Celebi

We drove ten miles in silence, the country road canopied in electric green. I pressed my head against the glass to watch the new maple leaves curling in the breeze. Every few turns offered a tempting glimpse of Lake Champlain's choppy waters. ~ Miranda Beverly-Whittemore

Texas sharpshooter fallacy: Imagine that you are driving down a country road in Texas. You see a barn that has six targets painted on it, and a bullet hole at the very center of each target. "Yes sir," says the owner of the barn, "I never miss." "That's right," says his spouse, "there ain't a man in the state of Texas who's more accurate with a paint brush." Got it? He fired the six shots, and then painted the targets around them. ~ John V. Guttag

I stared at a tree against dusk
Till it was a girl
Standing beside a country road
Shucking cane with her teeth.
She looked up & smiled
& waved. Lost in what hurts,
In what tasted good, could she
Ever learn there's no love
In sugar? ~ Yusef Komunyakaa

Then birds flew up like a shower of sparks, I followed them with my eyes and saw how they rose in a single breath, until they seemed no longer to be rising but I to be falling ... ~ Franz Kafka

I am a city of sounds.
I will keep you safe.
I know I am supposed to feel ugly.
They all tell me that no woman
should look so well-traveled,
but they do not know.
I am earth. I am sun and skies.
I am the high road, the low road.
I am every poem about skin.
I am a world that cannot be explored in one day.
I am not a place for cowards. ~ Caitlyn Siehl

Right now, there's the illusion of order and civilization, but there's a tremendous amount of economic tension in this country and the educational system is constantly eroding. ~ Kathryn Bigelow

The majority in this country have not seen anything wrong with Zuma. I go with the overwhelming feeling of this country. If the majority say, 'Zuma, do this,' I will do it. ~ Jacob Zuma

If I had even been his friend, well and good: the artful indiscretion of the true friend is intelligible to everybody; but I only saw Pechorin once in my life - on the high-road - and, consequently, I cannot cherish towards him that inexplicable hatred, which, hiding its face under the mask of friendship, awaits but the death or misfortune of the beloved object to burst over its head in a storm of reproaches, admonitions, scoffs and regrets. ~ Mikhail Lermontov

After I had done the first 'Pirates' movie and 'Secret Window,' I went on vacation to escape with my kiddies and my girl, and someone said that there was an island down the road for sale. I said, 'Oh well, let's go see it.' I looked at it, I walked on it, and I was done. It had to be. ~ Johnny Depp

If you have enthusiasm, you have a very dynamic, effective companion to travel with you on the road to Somewhere. ~ Loretta Young

Well, one thing's very clear, that terrorism isn't just a threat which is external to Western countries. It's not simply a foreign menace that comes from overseas to strike our cities. It can and it does, as we now know, come from within our own countries and from inside our own populations. ~ Pauline Neville-Jones

Museums collect what's important in their respective countries. In Berlin's National Gallery, however, this isn't the case. They're interested neither in me nor the other usual suspects. It's simply a German reality. ~ Georg Baselitz

You have come to realize that you must leave it (the old country) and enter the new country, where your Beloved dwells. You know that what helped and guided you in the old country no longer works, but what else do you have to go by? You are being asked to trust that you will find what you need in the new country. That requires the death of what has become so precious to you: influence, success, yes, even affection and praise. ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

That open country is so huge you can feel lost and abandoned in it or you can work to feel a part of it, like ya belong to it and it belongs to you. Like a part of you is rock and stone and stream and all the open sky. Ya get past lonesome then...them creatures is all my family and i'm family to them as well. ~ Richard Wagamese

When I was 22, I met with some janky manager, and she told me, 'You're never going to work at this weight.' I think I was a size 6 at the time. There is just this weird thing about how we perceive women in this country. I would love to be a part of breaking that down. ~ Melissa McCarthy

I find, on my own travels, that the most depressing form of culture shock is experienced when you go into a country that is under the thumb of a dictator. ~ Arthur Frommer

No American should be forced to choose between their spouse and their country. ~ Andrew Sullivan

received his recent letters, Franz said, "That's strange, I've written to you so often." He spoke cryptically, using slang. "I've been on the horn with Papi. He hasn't been able to raise Madi since the Frogs packed it in." "I tried her from Villars," Alex replied. "The maid said they were on the road." She thought of what Polly had suggested about a bolt hole. "Maybe they decided to stay down south for a while." "I would go to find them, but I'm stuck here until the end of next term. ~ Harriet Segal

In the city at best one lives the life of others, the life of the shop, the street, the crowd, while in the country one must live one's own life. ~ Mabel Osgood Wright

It's the sad fact of how race still works in our country. We find that over and over again. ~ Michael Emerson

If you go to a foreign country and disregard their culture, you will be a complete embarrassment to your native home country. You represent your country, so don't ruin it for the rest of them. ~ Scott Worden

They were nearly to Annie's by now, and they made the rest of the trip in silence, Peter frowning out at the road with a look of deep concentration. Emma didn't blame him; after all, she'd insulted his entire system of beliefs. But how were you every supposed to get anywhere if you always stuck to the same route? He spent so much time charting out the world that he barely had a chance to get lost in it. ~ Jennifer E. Smith

There are a lot of people in this country who really like my writing. And a lot of writers respect me. But the so-called establishment? They hate me. ~ Hubert Selby, Jr.

Debt vultures are really the scum at the bottom of the pond. These are guys who buy up the debts of the world's poorest countries on the secondary market. You can go buy debts of a country like Peru, for example, at a real discount. Why? Because people think that the debts won't be repaid. ~ Noreena Hertz

I think it is dangerous to confuse the idea of democracy with elections. Just because you have elections doesn't mean you're a democratic country. They're a very vitally important part of a democracy. But there are other things that ought to function as checks and balances. If elections are the only thing that matter, then people are going to resort to anything to win that election. ~ Arundhati Roy

CHAPTER VIII OLIVER WALKS TO LONDON. HE ENCOUNTERS ON THE ROAD, A STRANGE SORT OF YOUNG GENTLEMAN ~ Charles Dickens

Then they have the audacity to go shopping and pick out their own gifts. I want to know who the first person was who said this was okay. After spending all that money on a bachelorette weekend, a shower, and often a flight across the country, they expect you to go to Williams Sonoma or Pottery Barn and do research? Then they send you a thank-you note applauding you for such a thoughtful gift. They're the one who picked it out! ~ Chelsea Handler

Reputation is the road to power ~ Jeremy Bentham

Now we maintain that we cannot be afford to be concerned about 6 percent of the children in this country, black children, who you allow to come into white schools. We have 94 percent who still live in shacks. We are going to be concerned about those 94 percent. ~ Stokely Carmichael

St John of the Cross told us that if a man wishes to be sure of the road he treads on, he must close his eyes and walk in the dark. I interpret that as a direction for us to trust in the guidance we receive from our invisible self. ~ Wayne Dyer

To get to Earth from the edge of the solar system, depending on the time of year and the position of the planets, you need to pass through at least Poland, Prussia, and Turkey, and you'd probably get stamps in your passport from a few of the other great powers. Then as you get closer to the world, you arrive at a point, in the continually shifting carriage space over the countries, where this complexity has to give way or fail. And so you arrive in the blissful lubrication of neutral orbital territory. ~ Paul Cornell

The naturalistic literature of this country has reached such a state that no family of characters is considered true to life whichdoes not include at least two hypochondriacs, one sadist, and one old man who spills food down the front of his vest. ~ Robert Benchley

She scuttled back from his approach and held up a hand. "No!"
Eversley stilled, his eyes widening at the words. "I beg your pardon?"
He was going to smell her. "Don't come any closer!"
"Why not?"
"It's not appropriate."
"What isn't?"
"You. Being here. So near. While I am abed."
One black brow rose. "I assure you, my lady, I've no intention of debauching you."
She had no doubt of that, considering her current situation, but she couldn't well tell him the truth. "Nevertheless, I must insist on the utmost propriety."
"Who do you think nursemaided you for the last day?"
Bollocks. He was right. He'd been close. He'd had to have noticed her odor. But it didn't mean he had to any longer. She straightened her shoulders, ignoring the twinge in the left. "My reputation, you see."
He blinked. "You were shot on the Great North Road while wearing stolen livery - ~ Sarah MacLean

If it weren't for public transportation," Sam said, "my brother wouldn't be getting married today. He and Maggie fell in love along the ferry route
from Bellingham to Anacortes ... which brings to mind the old saying that life is a journey. Some people have a natural sense of direction. You could
put them in the middle of a foreign country and they could find their way around. My brother is not one of those people." Sam paused as some of the
guests started laughing, and his older brother gave him a mock-warning glance. "So when Mark by some miracle manages to end up where he was
supposed to be, it's a nice surprise for everyone, including Mark." More laughter from the crowd. "Somehow, even with all the roadblocks and
detours and one-way streets, Mark managed to find his way to Maggie." Sam raised his glass. "To Mark and Maggie's journey together. And to
Holly, who is loved more than any girl in the whole wide world. ~ Lisa Kleypas

I came down the long road, even before I got here. Just to be where I am today is already a positive in my life. But to have something like this happen to me as well, I'm speechless. ~ Shawne Merriman

I love living in the country, so much so that I'm even surprised by it. I have met lots of interesting people - the community was really welcoming, and I now probably have a more interesting social life than I did in the city. ~ Dani Shapiro

Never has America lost a war ... But name, if you can, the last peace the United States won. Victory yes, but this country has never made a successful peace because peace requires exchanging ideas, concepts, thoughts, and recognizing the fact that two distinct systems of life can exist together without conflict. Consider how quickly America seems to be facing its allies of one war as new enemies. ~ Vine Deloria Jr.

When I run out of road, you bring me home. ~ Harry Styles

I'll give you a simple formula for straightening out the problems of the United States. First, you tax the churches. You take the tax off of capital gains and the tax off of savings. You decriminalize all and tax them same way as you do alcohol. You decriminalize . You make gambling legal. That will put the budget back on the road to recovery, and you'll have plenty of tax revenue coming in for all of your social programs, and to run the army. ~ Frank Zappa

Early on as news of the sextuple execution in Fort Smith spread, rooted itself in the umber soil of the western Indian Nations, and grew inthe the solid stalk of legend, the men whom Marshal Fagan appointed to swell the judge's standing army abanddonded the practice of introducing themselves as deputy U.S. marshals. Instead, when they entered the quarters of local law enforcement officers and tribal policemen to show their warrants, they said: "We ride for Parker."

Sometimes, in deference to rugged country or to cover ground, they broke up and rode in pairs or singles, but as the majority of the casualties they would suffer occurred on these occasions, they formed ragged escorts around stout little wagons built of elm, with canvas sheets to protect the passengers from rain and sun for trial and execution. With these they entered the settlements well behind their reputations. The deputies used Winchesters to pry a path between rubbernecks pressing in to see what new animals the circus had brought. Inside, accused felons, rounded up like stray dogs, rode in manacles on the sideboards and decks. At any given time-so went the rumor-one fourth of the worst element in the Nations was at large, one fourth was in the Fort Smith jail, and one fourth was on its way there in the 'tumbleweed wagons.'

"That's three-fourths," said tenderheels "What about the rest?'

"That fourth rides for Parker. ~ Loren D. Estleman

What's the use of saying we're better at baseball than this country? We all play together. I'm playing with Venezuelans and Dominicans right now. We all play together, so what's up with saying our country is better than your country? It's stupid. I don't like it. ~ Torii Hunter