Dark Forest Quotes

Sleeping Wrestler

You are a murderer
No you are not, but really a wrestler
Either way it's just the same
For from the ring of your entangled body
Clean as leather, lustful as a lily
Will nail me down
On your stout neck like a column, like a pillar of tendons
The thoughtful forehead
(In fact, it's thinking nothing)
When the forehead slowly moves and closes the heavy eyelids
Inside, a dark forest awakens
A forest of red parrots
Seven almonds and grape leaves
At the end of the forest a vine
Covers the house where two boys
Lie in each others arms: I'm one of them, you the other
In the house, melancholy and terrible anxiety
Outside the keyhole, a sunset
Dyed with the blood of the beautiful bullfighter Escamillo
Scorched by the sunset, headlong, headfirst
Falling, falling, a gymnast
If you're going to open your eyes, nows the time, wrestler ~ Mutsuo Takahashi

At night it felt as if we were walking with the moon. It followed us under thick clouds and waited for us at the other end of dark forest paths. It would disappear with sunrise but return again, hovering on our path. Some nights the sky wept stars that quickly floated and disappeared into the darkness before our wishes could meet them. Under these stars I used to hear stories, but now it seemed as if it was the sky that was telling us a story as its stars fell, violently colliding with each other. The moon hid behind clouds to avoid seeing what was happening. ~ Ishmael Beah

Last night I had the dream again. Except it's not a dream I know because when it comes for me, I'm still awake.
There's my desk. The map on the wall. The Stuffed animals I don't play with anymore but don't want to hurt Dad's feelings by sticking in the closet I might be in bed. I might be just standing there, looking foe a missing sock. Then i'm gone.
it doesn't just show me somthing this time, it takes me from here to THERE> standing on the bank of a river of fire. A thousand wasps in my head. Fighting and dying inside my skull, their bodies piling up against the backs of me eyes. Stinging and stinging.
Dad's voice. Somewhere across the river. Calling my name. I've never heard him sound like that before. He's so frightened he can't hide it, even though he tries (he ALWAYS tries).
The dead boy floats by.
Facedown. So I wait for his head to pop up, show the holes where his eye used to be, say somthing with his blue lips. One of the terrible things it might make him do. But he just passes like a chunk of wood. I've never been here before, but I know it's real. The river is the line between this place and the Other Place. And I'm on the wrong side. There's a dark forest behind me but that's not what it is. I try to get to where Dad is. My toes touch the river and it sings with pain. Then there's arms pulling me back. Dragging me into the trees. They feel like a man's arms but it's not a man that sticks its fingers into my mouth. Nails that scratch the ~ Andrew Pyper

Dovewing felt bone-weary from her ears to the tip of her tail. Just because she had better hearing, sharper senses than any cat didn't seem to give her more strength. She needed to rest, eat, talk with Jayfeather and Lionblaze about the challenge that sol had left them with, of hostile Clans that would be crushed by the dark forest if they tried to fight alone. Starclan, light my path, please.
"Come on," she meowed to Hollyleaf. "It's time we went home. Our Clnmates are waitning for us"
P. 315 ~ Erin Hunter

I will honor my ancestors in StarClan," Bramblestar vowed, "but not those who have ever walked in the Dark Forest. Guide my steps wisely, warriors of the past." He lowered his head. "And warriors of now". ~ Erin Hunter

Outside, under the marquee of the hotel, he stood a moment as he did each night beneath the marquee of the Hotel Hyperion, while he decided what direction to take, what to do. And suddenly, realizing it was not the Hotel Hyperion, that the circumstances were quite different, he felt loneliness spring up like a dark forest all around him. The odd thing was, he felt no impulse to hurry after her, to find her somehow. What would he have to offer her except the history of weakness, loneliness, and inadequacy, the decline and fall of himself? He himself was the core of the loneliness around him, and its core was inadequacy. He was inadequate even in love. ~ Patricia Highsmith

The universe is a dark forest. Every civilization is an armed hunter stalking through the trees like a ghost, gently pushing aside branches that block the path and trying to tread without sound. Even breathing is done with care. The hunter has to be careful, because everywhere in the forest are stealthy hunters like him. If he finds other life - another hunter, an angel or a demon, a delicate infant or a tottering old man, a fairy or a demigod - there's only one thing he can do: open fire and eliminate them. In this forest, hell is other people. An eternal threat that any life that exposes its own existence will be swiftly wiped out. This is the picture of cosmic civilization. It's the explanation for the Fermi Paradox. ~ Liu Cixin

Your soul is a dark forest. But the trees are of a particular species, they are genealogical trees. ~ Marcel Proust

In 'Snow White and the Hunstman,' when we see them in the Dark Forest, you're allowed a lot of freedom to be able to cutaway to, for instance, the prince. That B and C story stuff helps the writing process, even though it makes it a more complicated movie. ~ Evan Daugherty

If Sara chooses me, accepts me, he thought, I'm going to propose to her right away. And give her everything I'm capable of giving - every single thing. Before I get lost in a dark forest. Before the bad elves grab me. ~ Haruki Murakami

She should be more frightened herself, she knew. She was only ten, a skinny girl on a stolen horse with a dark forest ahead of her and men behind who would gladly cut off her feet. Yet somehow she felt calmer than ever had in Harrenhal. The rain had washed the guard's blood off her fingers, she wore a sword across her back, wolves were prowling through the dark like lean grey shadows, and Arya Stark was unafraid. Fear cuts deeper than swords, she whispered under her breath, the words that Syrio Forel had taught her, and Jaqen's words too, valar morghulis. ~ George R R Martin

She's got the whole dark forest living inside of her. ~ Tom Waits

Scientists and shamans alike know that all of life is woven into a web of infinite connections, contributing to the larger whole in a system that is complex beyond our imagining. When we sit quietly at the edge of a lake, or hike through a wildflower-strewn meadow, or walk through a cool, dark forest, we quickly become aware of our unity with the natural world. We fall back into natural rhythms--rhythms we are no longer in synch with as a result of living by the clock and spending much of our time in man-made spaces lit by electricity. Nature has a way of recalibrating us and helping us gain a new perspective on our stressors so that they seem less overwhelming. ~ Carl Greer

Writing about the spiritual life is like making prints from negatives...Often it is the dark forest that makes us speak about the open field. Frequently prison makes us think about freedom, hunger helps us to appreciate food, and war gives us words for peace. Not seldom are our vision of the future born out of the sufferings of the present and our hope for others out of our own despair. Only few "happy endings" make us happy but often someone's careful ad honest articulation of the ambiguities, uncertainties, and painful conditions of life gives us new hope. The paradox is indeed that new life is born out of the pains of the old. ~ Robert Durback

A half-empty bottle of vodka sat on the bedside table, and his sketchbook was open on the king-size bed. Several sketches, only three of which looked finished, were scattered across the bedspread. Clearly he hadn't been sleeping either.

Swallowing, I picked up the nearest one. A dark-skinned, pale-haired child with an angel's wings - too old to be a cherub, more like a small boy - stood in the middle of a dark forest, looking around in terror. His hand was outstretched, reaching for a shadow disappearing off the edge of the page, the unknown figure walking away from him, leaving him behind.

I drew a shuddering breath and picked up the next one. In this one, that same angel - now a willowy adolescent, his thin, maturing body draped in the ubiquitous short toga with strapped sandals wound around his ankles - stood with his shoulders hunched in the midst of a crowd of jeering figures. He held an ornate harp cradled protectively against his body, trying to shield it from further harm. Its strings were sprung and its frame cracked and bent.

In the last one, an even more mature version of the angel - now a young man - knelt on one knee in another clearing in the woods. He was bruised and bleeding, his toga torn and stained. He held the bloody, tattered remnants of one of his wings, trying futilely to piece it back together. ~ Amelia C. Gormley

One afternoon a big wolf waited in a dark forest for a little girl to come along, carrying a basket of food to her grandmother. Finally a little girl did come a long and she was carrying a basket of food. "Are you carrying that basket to your grandmother? asked the wolf. The little girl said yes, she was. So the wolf asked her where her grandmother lived and the little girl told him and he disappeared into the wood.
When the little girl opened the door of her grandmother's house she saw that there was somebody in bed with a nightcap and nightgown on. She had approached no nearer than twenty-five feet from the bed when she saw that it was not her grandmother but the wolf, for even in a nightcap a wolf does not look any more like your grandmother than the Metro-Goldwyn lion looks like Calvin Coolidge. So the little girl took an automatic out of her basket and shot the wolf dead.
Moral: It is not so easy to fool little girls nowadays as it used to be. ~ James Thurber

Adam saw those brown
eyes widen, the pouty lips soften, and then they were kissing. Gaston's mouth
was pliable and submissive under his. Adam was enamored by the taste of those
lips as he deepened the kiss and their tongues touched. Then without warning,
Adam was thrown back. His whole body warmed to the point of sweating, and in
his mind's eye he traveled through the dark forest, into the castle ruins and
to that magical mirror. The images swirled faster and faster until the glass
cracked. It splintered halfway through the mirror, and then the entire object
burst into a thousand glittering pieces. Adam was thrust back into his body and
stared up at Gaston's worried expression.
"What the bloody hell was that?"
"True love's kiss…" Adam whispered. Belle hadn't broken the curse on the mirror, so that's why it still worked, but Gaston had
just freed Adam. He felt the lingering anger and abilities of the beast falling
away. His fingers uncurled as if the claws had been ripped out from his
fingers. That urge to hunt and rip things apart dissolved. Adam felt … human.
The curse was truly broken. Adam could find a real happy ending in Gaston's
arms now that the beast was gone. ~ James Cox

From Oleg Cassini's memoirs... I learned that Cassini had also suffered from insomnia. One night, he woke from uneasy dreams with the opening of Dante's Inferno setting off 'a clamorous tumult in [his] subconscious: "Midway the journey of our life, I found myself in a dark forest."' When I read these terrible words, chills ran up my arms. I knew 'midway the journey' was supposed to mean midlife crisis. But it seemed to me one had always been midway the journey of our life, and would be maybe right up until the moment of death. ~ Elif Batuman

What in your life is calling you, When all the noise is silenced, The meetings adjourned ... The lists laid aside, And the Wild Iris blooms By itself In the dark forest ... What still pulls on your soul? ~ Rumi

She thought that to children adult motives and actions must seem as bulking and ominous as dangerous animals seen in the shadows of a dark forest. They were jerked about like puppets, having only the vaguest notions why. ~ Stephen King

Furious, the beast writhed and wriggled its iterated integrals beneath the King's polynomial blows, collapsed into an infinite series of indeterminate terms, then got back up by raising itself to the nth power, but the King so belabored it with differentials and partial derivatives that its Fourier coefficients all canceled out (see Riemann's Lemma), and in the ensuing confusion the constructors completely lost sight of both King and beast. So they took a break, stretched their legs, had a swig from the Leyden jug to bolster their strength, then went back to work and tried it again from the beginning, this time unleashing their entire arsenal of tensor matrices and grand canonical ensembles, attacking the problem with such fervor that the very paper began to smoke. The King rushed forward with all his cruel coordinates and mean values, stumbled into a dark forest of roots and logarithms, had to backtrack, then encountered the beast on a field of irrational numbers (F1) and smote it so grievously that it fell two decimal places and lost an epsilon, but the beast slid around an asymptote and hid in an n-dimensional orthogonal phase space, underwent expansion and came out, fuming factorially, and fell upon the King and hurt him passing sore. But the King, nothing daunted, put on his Markov chain mail and all his impervious parameters, took his increment Δk to infinity and dealt the beast a truly Boolean blow, sent it reeling through an x-axis and several brackets - but the beast ~ Stanisław Lem

I walked in the dark forest at night ... I couldn't see much further in the dark ,I heard the sound of the past, ..Memories Went back clear to me and Fear started hunting me, ..No Way To Escape , No Way To Stand Still ... ~ Hamza Wolf

Maybe all I wanted was for Toby to hear the wolves that lived in the dark forest of my heart. ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

Can a person who has been brought up in the heart of a thick dark forest, where one has to beat a path through multiple layers of trees just to take a letter to the post office, have any conception of what it's like to spend one's entire childhood waiting for a single tree to grow? ~ Audur Ava Olafsdottir

Whatever exists, he said. Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent.
He looked about at the dark forest in which they were bivouacked. He nodded toward the specimens he'd collected. These anonymous creatures, he said, may seem little or nothing in the world. Yet the smallest crumb can devour us. Any smallest thing beneath yon rock out of men's knowing. Only nature can enslave man and only when the existence of each last entity is routed out and made to stand naked before him will he be properly suzerain of the earth. ~ Cormac McCarthy

Being the reader of a dark fairy tale is much like being the hero of one. Our lives are filled with pain, boredom, and fear. We want to venture into the dark wood, to see the oddities and the beauties it holds, and to test ourselves against them. So we pick up a book of fairy tales. The real ones. THe weird ones. The dark ones. We see oddities and beauties galore. We test our courage and our understanding. Finally, we put the book down and return to our lives. And hopefully, just like the hero of the fairy tale, we return stronger, richer, and wiser. In difficult times - of recession and violence and political bitterness - we long for a dark forest to which we can escape; and from which we can return, better than we were before. ~ Adam Gidwitz

A true warrior's heart needs no rules! It can do no evil! ~ Erin Hunter

Love is a twisted path full of obstacles. You are the only one who can see the light at the end of this dark forest. So I highly suggest you let lve take its course. ~ Jonnie Nicosia

The human heart is a dark forest ~ Tobias Wolff

Talent is a firefly; even in a remote dark forest, sooner or later it is caught to an eye. ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

This is what I believe: That I am I. That my soul is a dark forest. That my known self will never be more than a little clearing in the forest. That gods, strange gods, come forth from the forest into the clearing of my known self, and then go back. That I must have the courage to let them come and go. That I will never let mankind put anything over me, but that I will try always to recognize and submit to the gods in me and the gods in other men and women. There is my creed. ~ D.H. Lawrence

Something about the howling of a wolf took a man right out of his here and now and left him in a dark forest of the mind, running naked before the pack. ~ George R R Martin

The heart of another is a dark forest, always, no matter how close it has been to one's own. ~ Willa Cather

A good writer must be like the birds of a dark forest; you can't see them, but you can hear their mysterious and wise voices! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

The road passed through a curtain of pine forest and came out on a flat, rolling snow field. In this field the sprawled or bunched bodies of Germans lay thick, like some dark shapeless vegetable. ~ Martha Gellhorn

And so Galahad decided that it would be a disgrace to set off on a quest with the other knights. Alone he would enter the dark forest where there was no path. This is the myth of The Hero's Journey. ~ Joseph Campbell

The moon glistens
in her dreamy eyes
as she frolics in the dark forest.
She's got wild overgrowing in her bones,
and tangles upon tangles of midnight
weaving through her long silky hair,
this belle of the night. ~ Melody Lee

When alone in a dark forest waiting for an audience with an evil god, the most prudent course of action is to be quiet and wait. 'Prudent' wasn't one of my favourite words.
"Hello? I've come to borrow a cup of sugar. Anybody? Perhaps there is an old woman with a house made of candy who could help me?"
"Marrying for love isn't wise."
The voice came from somewhere to the left. Melodious, but not soft, definitely female and charged with a promise of hidden power. Something told me that hearing her scream would end very badly for me.
I stopped and pivoted toward the voice.
"Marry for safety. Marry for power. But only fools marry for love."
When a strange voice talks to you in the black woods, only idiots answer.
I was that idiot. "Thank you, counsellor. How much do I owe you for this session? ~ Ilona Andrews

But maybe I am. Maybe that's exactly what I am. Maybe all I wanted was for Toby to hear the wolves that lived in the dark forest of my heart. And maybe that's what it meant. Tell the Wolves I'm Home. Maybe Finn understood everything, as usual. You may as well tell them where you live, because they'll find you anyway. They always do. ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

Help. We can be freed from a damaging insistence on forward thrust, from a commitment to running wildly down a convenient path that might actually be taking us deeper into the dark forest. Praying "Help" means that we ask that Something give us the courage to stop in our tracks, right where we are, and turn our fixation away from the Gordian knot of our problems. We stop the toxic peering and instead turn our eyes to something else: to our feet on the sidewalk, to the middle distance, to the hills, whence our help comes - someplace else, anything else. Maybe this is a shift of only eight degrees, but it can be a miracle. It may be one of those miracles where your heart sinks, because you think it means you have lost. But in surrender you have won. And if it were me, after a moment, I would say, Thanks. ~ Anne Lamott

At the midpoint on the journey of life, I found myself in a dark forest, for the clear path was lost ... ~ Dante Alighieri

It's a queer thing is a man's soul. It is the whole of him. Which means it is the unknown him, as well as the known. It seems to me just funny, professors and Benjamins fixing the functions of the soul. Why, the soul of man is a vast forest, and all Benjamin intended was a neat back garden. And we've all got to fit into his kitchen garden scheme of things. Hail Columbia !

The soul of man is a dark forest. The Hercynian Wood that scared the Romans so, and out of which came the white- skinned hordes of the next civilization.

Who knows what will come out of the soul of man? The soul of man is a dark vast forest, with wild life in it. Think of Benjamin fencing it off!

Oh, but Benjamin fenced a little tract that he called the soul of man, and proceeded to get it into cultivation. Providence, forsooth! And they think that bit of barbed wire is going to keep us in pound for ever? More fools they.

...

Man is a moral animal. All right. I am a moral animal. And I'm going to remain such. I'm not going to be turned into a virtuous little automaton as Benjamin would have me. 'This is good, that is bad. Turn the little handle and let the good tap flow,' saith Benjamin, and all America with him. 'But first of all extirpate those savages who are always turning on the bad tap.'

I am a moral animal. But I am not a moral machine. I don't work with a little set of handles or levers. The Temperance- silence-order- resolution-f ~ D.H. Lawrence

You must take your opponent into a deep dark forest where 2+2=5, and the path leading out is only wide enough for one ~ Mikhail Tal

They've moved out of the society that would have protected them, and into the dark forest, into the world of fire, of original experience. Original experience has not been interpreted for you, and so you've got to work out your life for yourself. Either you can take it or you can't. You don't have to go far off the interpreted path to find yourself in very difficult situations. The courage to face the trials and to bring a whole new body of possibilities into the field of interpreted experience for other people to experience - that is the hero's deed. ~ Joseph Campbell

I cling to her and try to believe my financial troubles and dark secret can be erased by taking off my clothes for strangers Kiki loves me more than I love myself. She loves me enough for us both. ~ Marata Eros

He was part of the night, the creatures known to him, the restless, untamed land matching his hungry soul. Beau watched him,observing the utter stillness marking the dangerous predator, the merciless eyes moving constantly,missing nothing.The powerful, well-muscled body was deceptively relaxed but ready for anything. The face,harshy sensual, beautifully cruel, was etched with hardship and knowledge,rish and peril. Gregori stayed in the shadows,but the silver menace of his gaze glowed with a strange iridescent light in the dark of the night.
Beau took the opportunity to study Savannah. She was everything up close that she had been on the stage, even more. Ethereal, mysterious, sexy. They very stuff of men's fantasies. Her face was flawless, lit up with joy, her eyes clear,like beautiful blue star sapphires. Her laughter was musical and infectious. She was small and innocent beside the predator in his boat. She would touch Gregori's arm, point to something on the embankment, her body brushing his lightly,and each time it happened,those pale eyes would warm to molten mercury and caress fer face intimately,hungrily. ~ Christine Feehan

As the resident dude, Shane was responsible for the acquisition of party favors, like glow-in-the-dark necklaces and drinks. Non-alcoholic drinks for Claire, of course, because I am a stern house mother even if I suck as a role model. ~ Rachel Caine

She craved a presence beside her, solid. Fingertips light at the nape of her neck and a voice meeting hers in the dark. Someone who would wait with an umbrella to walk her home in the rain, and smile like sunshine when he saw her coming. Who would dance with her on her balcony, keep his promises and know her secrets, and make a tiny world wherever he was, with just her and his arms and his whisper and her trust. ~ Laini Taylor

I'd like to play a mixture of Lucille Ball meets Murphy Brown meets Glenn Close on 'Damages,' to keep a little bit of the darkness in there. I like dark comedy a lot. ~ Joelle Carter

Nakata let his body relax, switched off his mind, allowing things to flow through him. This was natural for him, something he'd done ever since he was a child, without a second thought. Before long the borders of his consciousness fluttered around, just like the butterflies. Beyond these borders lay a dark abyss. Occasionally his consciousness would fly over the border and hover over that dizzying black crevasse. But Nakata wasn't afraid of the darkness or how deep it was. And why should he be? That bottomless world of darkness, that weighty silence and chaos, was an old friend, a part of him already. Nakata understood this well. In that world there was no writing, no days of the week, no scary Governor, no opera, no BMWs. No scissors, no tall hats. On the other hand, there was also no delicious eel, no tasty bean-jam buns. Everything is there, but there are no parts. Since there are no parts, there's no need to replace one thing with another. No need to remove anything, or add anything. You don't have to think about difficult things, just let yourself soak it all in. For Nakata, nothing could be better. ~ Haruki Murakami

Even a dark purpose can keep a man alive. ~ Dan Millman

Don't be a hero for me."
Only for you, Rosie thought but didn't say it. ~ Lara Morgan

Only by the candle, held in the skeleton hand of Poverty, can man read his own dark heart. ~ Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

The many mysteries boil down to three. There is the kind that can be solved: who planted the bomb? Will the travellers reach their destination? What is Mother's childhood secret? There is the supernatural: dark metaphysical forces, never to be fully exposed, yet hinting of themselves in a way that suggests the author could reveal more if he chose, and might do, in his next book. And there are the insoluble mysteries: what lies beyond life, what beauty is for, why the innocent suffer and the guilty prosper, what goes on in the heads of other people, why life keeps fucking us over just when we're doing all right
these are the mysteries the books dealing with them can't solve, and it is for this reason that the best of these books are the ones we keep rereading. ~ James Meek

The dark covers me and I cannot run now. ~ Amy Winehouse

Saaremaa Crater Field KAALI, SAAREMAA Opinions vary on when it happened, but at some point between 5600 BCE and 600 BCE, a large meteor entered the atmosphere, broke into pieces, and slammed into the forest floor of the island of Saaremaa. The heat of the impact instantly incinerated trees within a 3-mile radius (5 km). A mythology developed ~ Joshua Foer

In my practice as surgeon, I am impressed by the alarming increase of cancer cases brought to my notice; an increase, which in the light of the general hygienic and sanitary improvements of our time, can point to no other cause than the indulgence in certain foodstuffs detrimental to normal life of the body. ~ Charles Horace Mayo

Yes, I'm sorry you won't be coming with us," Chloe said to Alex. "But please don't worry. I'm certain The Lord has another plan for you." She glanced at me. "For both of you."
"Oh, I can assure you,"said a new, deeply masculine voice from behind me. I turned to see John sitting, tall and dark and disapproving, on the back of his horse, Alastor. "He does."
"Chloe wasn't talking about you," I said to John, leaning my elbows against the rough wood of the dock railing. "She meant the other lord."
John raised a dark eyebrow. "Oh, that one," he said. "My mistake. ~ Meg Cabot

The key arsenal of dark democracy is developing hatred and enmity towards the neighboring countries. Politicians do this just to block the prefrontal cortex or the wisdom brain of the mass and to activate the amygdala, the fear centers of the brain of the mass. ~ Amit Ray

... I will take a long shower, as the shower is the only place I will have any privacy. In the stall I will get down on my knees and weep, letting the water run over my body, praying to get better, praying not to hurt myself any more than I'm already hurting, praying that this loss, that this whole time, will move over me, through me, like a dark storm passing over a great plane. A great plain which is, essentially, my soul. A soul which is neither light nor dark, neither wholly alone nor wholly with any other, certainly not with God, just flat, open, deathless, and free. Curled up in a wet ball on the tile floor I will hear myself say, something in me is dying. I no longer know to whom I'm talking. ~ Maggie Nelson

Walter from Microsoft catches my eye. Here's a young guy with perfect teeth and clear skin and the kind of job you bother to write the alumni magazine about getting. You know he was too young to fight in any wars, and if his parents weren't divorced, his father was never home, and here he's looking at me with half my face clean shaved and half a leering bruise hidden in the dark. Blood shining on my lips. And maybe Walter's thinking about a meatless, pain-free potluck he went to last weekend or the ozone or the Earth's desperate need to stop cruel product testing on animals, but probably he's not. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

I know I should be Wonder Woman. They need an international actress - a fresh face. They need a woman who's tall, athletic and dark-haired - and an actress who can play the part. That's me. So, I'm coming to L.A. to work hard and meet the industry. And if 'Wonder Woman' comes together, I want it. ~ Tanit Phoenix

How long the thick dark clouds can prevent the truth from shining? The truth is an arrow that can pass through any shield! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

The holy dark over the manger gives way to the heinous dark over the Messiah and the slamming hammer and the tearing vein and the piercing thorn - the created murdering the Creator. The Cross stands as the epitome of evil. And God takes the greatest evil ever known to humanity and turns it into the greatest Gift you have ever known. "If the worst things work for good to a believer, what shall the best things?" writes Puritan Thomas Watson. "Nothing hurts the godly . . . all things . . . shall co-operate for their good, that their crosses shall be turned into blessings."[11] If God can transfigure the greatest evil into the greatest Gift, then He intends to turn whatever you're experiencing now into a gift. You cannot be undone. Somewhere, Advent can storm and howl. And the world robed for Christmas can spin on. You, there on the edge, whispering it, defiant through the torn places: "All is grace. ~ Ann Voskamp

In one way, it is this sense of order and also love that, I think, really saved Eleanor Roosevelt's life. And in her own writing, she's very warm about her grandmother, even though, if you look at contemporary accounts, they're accounts of horror at the Dickensian scene that Tivoli represents: bleak and drear and dark and unhappy. But Eleanor Roosevelt in her own writings is not very unhappy about Tivoli. ~ Blanche Wiesen Cook

AUTHOR'S GOODREADS PAGE: I like dysfunction. Broken people who can't fix each other, but fit together because they're missing the same pieces. ~ Lime Craven

We've tried to live in balance with nature long enough. This time nature went too far. As soon as you and your fiance are safely out of here, I'm calling in an air strike to napalm this whole forest. ~ Mykle Hansen

Loneliness, dejection, the contempt or pity of people around you
these are unpleasant feelings. But they are precisely the things that produce genuine Dark Ones. ~ Sergei Lukyanenko

After that, the book will fade, the way all books fade in your mind. But I hope you will remember this:
A man walking fast down a dark lonely street. Quick steps and hard breathing, all wonder and need. A bell above a door and the tinkle it makes. A clerk and a ladder and warm golden light, and then: the right book exactly, at exactly the right time. ~ Robin Sloan

I have remade myself; or I am no one, driving a delivery van carrying boxes of electronics from nowhere to no place, the road empty before me by day, shared by headless headlights after dark, beams increasing briefly and then gone, beyond, somewhere off in the cross-traffic, catchable in the rearview if I dare. I thrive. I fail to thrive. I fall. I rise. Too many. Too late. Not that, not those, not these: this. ~ John Darnielle

A teacher in class is
like a man in the woods at night with a powerful flashlight in his hand.
Wherever he turns his light, the creatures on whom it shines are aware of it,
and do not behave as they do in the dark. Thus the mere fact of his watching
their behavior changes it into something very different. Shine where be will,
he can never know very much of the night life of the woods. ~ John Holt

In order to become, to be, to move,
Imagine leaving here, going to a cliff above the sea.
Watch the sea
Dive into the air, down into the sea.
Dive deep toward the bottom.
Feel the entities in the sea, in the cool darkness, the pressure.
Listen and communicate with them.
They know the secret way of escape from here.
Escape into other places far from this planet.
Move up from the sea's depths.
Slant up through the dark clod, up to the warmth.
Move out of the sea's surface, into light.
Travel through the earth's air space, out.
Accelerate toward our star, the sun.
Feel its radiance increase, its energy.
This energy started, maintains us, is us.
Enter the sun's flaming self, be its light,
Be its energy, share the star as you.
Be the sun, shining into space.
Move away on its energy, become greater that this star.
Spread as its light in all directions.
Fill the universe with thee, be the universe.
Be all the stars, the galaxies are your body.
Be empty space spread self to infinity.
Be the creative potential in the empty spaces.
BE the potential, infinite in the absolute zero of nothing. ~ John C. Lilly

How I hated the dark part of me that continually foretold of failure or futility. ~ Jeaniene Frost

To deny that there was this dark side of life would be like pretending that the cold of winter was somehow only a temporary illusion, a way station on the way to the higher "reality" of long, warm, pleasant summers. But summer, it turned out, was no more real than the snow that melted in wintertime. ~ David Guterson

They were painfully clean. But inwardly they stank. Never once did they opened the door that leads to the soul; never once did they dream of taking a blind leap into the dark. ~ Henry Miller

I don't know. Just pick one." "Well, there's a lot of choice. I mean, you got your flavored, your ridged, your pre-lubed, your thin, your super-ultra-thin, your super-ultra-thin-pre-lubed, your ... Huh."
"Huh what?" "Would you look at this?" he asked, examining a small box.
"It says it glows in the dark. ~ Karen Chance

So, what is it, woman?" She raised one delicate eyebrow and he felt as if she'd dug down into his very soul.
"I have word of Annwyl of the Dark Plains."
Brastias stood quickly, grasping the woman by the arms; she stood almost as tall as he. "Tell me, witch. Where is she?"
She stared at him. "Remove your hands, or I'll make sure you don't have any." Brastias took a deep breath and released her. "She is safe and alive. But she is healing. She won't be back for another fortnight."
Brastias heaved a sigh of overwhelming relief as he sat heavily in his chair. "Thank the gods. I thought we'd lost her."
"You almost had. But the girl must have the gods smiling down on her."
"Can I see her?"
The woman watched him carefully. "No. But I will get any messages you may have to her."
"Give me a few moments, I need to write something." He grabbed quill and paper and wrote Annwyl a brief-but-to-the-point letter. He folded it, affixed his seal, and handed it to the witch. "Give her this and my love."
"You are her man then?" she asked cautiously.
Brastias laughed. He did like his head securely attached to his shoulders. Becoming Annwyl's man risked that.
"Annwyl has no man because there is no man worthy of her. That includes me. So she has become the sister I lost many years ago in Lorcan's dungeons."
The woman nodded and walked back to the entrance of Brastias's tent. She stopped before leaving. "She asks," the witch spoke softly with ~ G.A. Aiken

We are Adepta Sororitas. We look to the heart for purity, not upon the face. ~ Peter Fehervari

Secrets are truths that show what we've been through - what we've survived. ~ Dannika Dark

There's a part of me that still hates everything, and my natural view default setting is still very cynical and dark ~ Alexei Sayle

How helpless they all looked in the ugliness of sleep. A third of life spent unconscious and corpselike. And some, the great majority, stumbled through their waking hours scarcely more awake, helpless in the face of destiny. They stumbled down a dark alley toward their deaths. They sent exploring feelers into the light and met fire and writhed back again into the darkness of their blind groping. ~ William Lindsay Gresham

You know how you secretly worry that this is it, that it's all downhill from here? I know you do. You worry that the children will turn into hulking criminals; their scalps will turn odorless. You lie in bed now during a thunderstorm, two sleeping, moonlit faces pressed against you, fragrant scalps intoxicating you, the rain on the roof like hoofbeats, heartbeats - and the calamity of raising young children falls away because this is all you ever wanted. Now you boo-hoo noiselessly into the kids' hair because life is so beautiful and you don't want it to change. Enjoy it. But let me tell you - you won't believe it, but let me tell you anyway - you will watch them sleeping still and always: the illuminated down of their cheeks, their dark puffs of lips and dear, dark wedges of eyelashes, and you will feel exactly the way you feel now. Only better. ~ Catherine Newman

Whatever's inside making me what I am, it's like film. Film only works in the dark. Tear it all open and let in the light and you kill it. ~ James Dean

:Well, isn't this cozy?:
Dai is grinning at me. We are packed in so tightly, I realize our shoulders and arms are touching.
:I think I owe that boat captain a favor,: he adds, a gleam of mischief in his dark eyes. :I wouldn't mind if he decided to drive in circles over our heads for the next few hours.:
:I think your muscles would get a little cramped by then: I nod at his long legs, which he's had to bend to fit into our hiding spot.
:The pain would be worth it,: he says, looking at me. I feel my cheeks heat up as I stare back at him. Is Dai actually flirting with me? ~ Polly Holyoke

He imagined that the great dark abyss of space was alive and that he might attract its attention if he stared too long into it - that it might twist and stir and fix its pitiless gaze upon him. ~ Tom Melly

Without the light, no chance; without the dark, no dance. ~ Margaret Atwood

We're none of us, are we, just one thing? I am a policeman, but also a father, a husband for the time being, a nursemaid to a sister who I pray will survive her illness. You are a journalist, a writer, and I don't know what else besides. To look at a person from a single angle is to deform them. Even if Yolanda is guilty...she is also afraid of the dark. And I cannot forget that I put her there. ~ Nicholas Shakespeare

I picked up the butter-soft suede shirt and slacks and held them toward Martucci, but he bent over, grabbing at his stomach, and made it into the dark little cubicle in time to vomit into the toilet. He ran the small trickle of water in the sink over his hands, dabbed water on his face, then blotted himself on the rough paper towels. Within the next five minutes, he was dressed and deposited in the rear seat of my car between Haley and Finn. Vito, who had scared the living hell out of the hustler before giving him a kick in the ass out the hotel's side door, sat next to me as I drove. Vito was breathing heavily; it was the only sound in the car. ~ Dorothy Uhnak