Hot Air Balloon Quotes

The Hot Air Balloon Charm

Life Can Be Filled with Adventure If You Let Yourself Soar ~ Viola Shipman

It may merely be apocryphal that when the Wizard saw the glass bottle he gasped, and clutched his heart. The story is told in so many ways, depending on who is doing the telling, and what needs to be heard at the time. It is a matter of history, however, that shortly thereafter, the Wizard absconded from the Palace. He left in the way he had first arrived
a hot-air balloon
just a few hours before seditious ministers were to lead a Palace revolt and to hold an execution without trial. ~ Gregory Maguire

Three deaths - by snakebite, by explosion, by razor. What next? Death by hot air balloon? Cannon? Trident? ~ Christopher Fowler

SWEETEST IN THE GALE
by
Michelle Valois

After Emily Dickinson

You won't lose your hair, I heard at the start of treatment, and though I didn't, I lost a litany of other lesser and greater luxuries - saliva, stamina, taste buds, my voice - but my hair, during that chilly sojourn in the land of extremity to which I had sailed on a strange and stormy sea, my hair was not taken from me.

Had it been, I would have perched one of those 18th century wigs on my head, such as those worn by the French aristocracy, measuring three, four, even five feet high and stuffed, as they were known to be, with all sorts of things: ribbons, pearls, jewels, flowers, tunes without words, reproductions of great sailing vessels, my soul inside a little bird cage - ornaments selected to satisfy a theme: the signs of the Zodiac (à la Zodiaque) or the discovery of a new vaccine (à l'inoculation) or, as was the case in June of 1782, the first successful hot air balloon flight by the brothers Michel and Etienne Montgolfier.

Regarde, I exclaim to my ladies in waiting, pointing to the sky on that bright afternoon as the balloon, made of linen and paper, rises some 6,000 feet. Later, a duck, then a sheep, and finally a human is carried away. I watch, inspired, hopeful, whispering, lest my doctors overhear: when the storm turns sore, and that little bird escapes her little bird cage and is abashed without reckoning, I will sail away in my balloon, prepared, ~ Michelle Valois

I was in a round the world hot-air balloon race. Before I left, I wrote a long letter to my children, in case I didn't return. I started the letter by saying, 'Dear Holly and ~ Richard Branson

There are things in life you hope to do some day - like ride in a hot air balloon or go to Paris- and there are things that you know you will never do because, in a nutshell, the desire isn't there. ~ Alice J. Wisler

My dream date is a tall, dark, handsome, blue eyed man with a bubble butt who will whisk me away to Paris in a hot air balloon to wine me, dine me and. ~ Karen McDougal

You know, there are things that can be done easily and simply and there are things that are very difficult. When it comes to the important stuff, I always seem to take the most difficult path, for some reason. You can buy the most amazing ring and get down on one knee or write a message in the sky or go up in a hot air balloon, but all of those options are for people who do everything on time, and that's not me. I made my choice a long time ago... But how can I tell this girl that I want to live a full and happy life and that that's only possible with her when she's not available? Somebody beat me to it, but it's so much more than that. How can I tell her that I'll never hurt her, never cause her pain? That I'll dedicate my life to protecting her from all the bad, from every possible harm and danger? That I want to have lots of babies, but only if she is their mother? That I can't imagine my life without her? How can I tell her all this if she has already given herself to someone else? ~ Victoria Sobolev

You make my frown turn upside down and now my worries are gone. ~ Owl City

People's personalities took up space, he sometimes thought. When they were trapped in a house or a job or a school together, they rubbed up against each other, squeaked like balloons, and made sparks. Ryan's parents both had large, gleaming, hot-air-balloon personalities. Sometimes it was hard to fit them into the same house, and Ryan had learned the art of suddenly making himself take up less space, demand less, so that his parents were not chafing against each other as much. ~ Frances Hardinge

I like that hot air balloon.' I pointed to the ceiling where an antique looking wooden hot air balloon hung.
'Yeah, I like it too. Partly because it's cool looking, but also partly because of the irony. It weighs a ton. In this office, anything can fly. No matter what is weighing it down. Even wooden balloons. Cool, huh? ~ Jennifer Brown

I learned to be a hot-air balloon pilot to take tourists over the Masai Mara Reserve in order to earn some money and finance the work I was doing with my wife, Anne. We were studying the life of a family of lions for more than two years. Taking pictures was a way to capture information we could not put in words. ~ Yann Arthus-Bertrand

She wondered if this were what hell was about. Not a place of punishment but of disparity. Those who had done nothing to earn their fate lived like this, while three miles away, others rode the Ferris wheel and children raised their hands joyfully to a hot-air balloon that rained down candy on their heads. ~ James Lee Burke

To distract himself he started making a mental list of all the ways he could leave Chapel Bluff.
He could go by train. Plane. Motorcycle.
Last night Beverly had invited all three of them - him, Ryan, and Tyler - to stay for dinner. Matt had refused. Ryan had likewise refused because his wife had dinner waiting for him at home. Tyler had leapt at the chance.
Matt had been the one who'd decided to put distance between himself, Kate, and Beverley. Even so, it rankled that Tyler had slipped right into his empty spot at the dinner table. That Kate had found someone so much more charming than him to talk to. That Kate seemed so delighted to turn her back on him.
He could leave by four-wheeler. Mountain bike. Skateboard.
"You're a design genius, young lady." Tyler said to Kate. "That's a perfect place for that sideboard."
"Why thank you," Kate replied.
Matt ground his teeth and imagined leaving by Greyhound bus.
He'd even have settled for a horse.
Hot air balloon.
Donkey cart. ~ Becky Wade

A hot air balloon requires a great deal of fuel to keep it aloft, so that you can't fly it even for one day. A gas balloon, which usually uses helium, has the problem that the helium cools at night when the sun is not on it, and you have to throw ballast overboard to keep it from going to the surface. ~ Steve Fossett

A story is like a giant jigsaw puzzle, a jigsaw puzzle that would cover the whole floor of a room with its tiny pieces. Buts it's not that sort of puzzle that comes with a box. There is no lid with a picture on it so that you can see what the puzzle will look like when it's finished. And you have only some of the pieces. All you can do is keep looking and listening, sniffing about in all sorts of places, until you find the next piece. And then you'll be amazed where that next piece will take you. Suddenly your puzzle can have a whole new person in it, or it can go from being on a train to a hot air balloon, from city to country, from love to sadness to loneliness and back to love. Pieces can come to you at any time. When you're having a cup of tea or sitting on a bus or talking with a friend.it will be like a bell going off in your head. That's what comes next you'll think. And that's why it's serendipity. Serendipity is luck and chance and fate all tumbled into one. ~ Angelica Banks

Can I get you anything?" I couldn't remember if the Amrita family drank human blood or animal blood.
"I'm just hiding out from my little sisters. They giggle." She tilted her head. "Where are all your famous brothers?"
"Around."
She rolled her eyes. "Are they as insufferable as mine?"
I rolled my eyes back. "Worse."
She looked unconvinced. "I only have the one," she pointed out. "My family has daughters the way yours has sons. His rarity has made Haridas's head roughly the size of a hot-air balloon."
I had to grin. "I have seven of those."
"Seven what?" Quinn interrupted, leaning in the doorway. "Seven heroically patient big brothers of which I am the obvious favorite?"
"Something like that," I allowed. "You know, if you replace 'brother' with 'baboon'? ~ Alyxandra Harvey

And then, when I was at my lowest ebb, you came. And you somehow coaxed me into talking to you as though you were a trusted confidant. And then you flirted with me. For a few moments you bore me off with you to the sunshine above the clouds in a hot air balloon, wrapped together in warm furs and bound for a place far, far away. And then you kissed me. ~ Mary Balogh

My grandmother flew only once in her life, and that was the day she and her new husband ascended into the skies of Victorian London in the wicker basket of a hot-air balloon. They were soon to emigrate to Canada, and the aerial ride was meant to be a last view of their beloved England. ~ Alan Bradley

I'll be out of my mind
and you'll be out of ideas pretty soon.
So let's spend the afternoon
in a cold hot air balloon.
Leave your jacket behind.
Lean out and touch the tree tops over town.
I can't wait to kiss the ground wherever we touch back down. ~ Owl City

Many people would have to hang by their teeth from a frayed cord suspended by a paper clip from a leaking hot air balloon over the Grand Canyon in order to feel what I feel standing on the third step of a stepladder trying to put millet in the bird feeder. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Gloria watched the swollen white orb of a hot-air balloon rising over Navy Pier and knew she had to break it off with Oliver, for he was the type who would never enjoy hot-air balloons, Van Morrison songs, or mess, whether from orgasm or otherwise. But who was she to be dreaming about mess today? ~ Andrea Kayne Kaufman

Parents choosing a school for their children - an innocent, important, humdrum, private affair which a lethal blend of bitter division and too much money had transmuted into a monstrous clerical task, into box files of legal documents so numerous and heavy they were hauled to court on trolleys, into hours of educated wrangling, procedural hearings, deferred decisions, the whole circus rising, but so slowly, through the judicial hierarchy like a lopsided, ill-tethered hot-air balloon. If the parents could not agree, the law, reluctantly, must take the decisions. ~ Ian McEwan

I'm building a hot air balloon out of my love for you. I'm starting with the hot air, and then I'm going to surround that with saran wrap, because after all, I'm only using leftovers. ~ Jarod Kintz

J: You will not believe what Mom is doing.
M: Ballroom dancing lessons? Hot-air balloon classes? ~ Kelly Bingham

The evening light was like honey in the trees
When you left me and walked to the end of the street
Where the sunset abruptly ended.
The wedding-cake drawbridge lowered itself
To the fragile forget-me-not flower.
You climbed aboard.
Burnt horizons suddenly paved with golden stones,
Dreams I had, including suicide,
Puff out the hot-air balloon now.
It is bursting, it is about to burst ~ John Ashbery

She'd pulled back her hair to air her neck, just for one second, fanning her flushed cheeks by flapping her other hand. She'd smiled at him and pulled a face at how hot and stuffy the bar was. Miles had thought she was beautiful, the most beautiful girl he'd ever seen, and if you'd told him, in that minute, that he'd be in this beautiful creature's bed tonight, or that in seven years' time he'd be waiting for her at the top of the aisle, he could never have believed you. ~ Erin Lawless

A month passed in silence and then came an email asking if Qayennat would care to further amend, fortify or prune various sections of her proposal; Like all communication for them so far, this was well written and polite but abhorrent in its covert attempt to stamp out anything like love, to turn passion into hot air. She wanted to tell them as much, inviting them to take their stuffy foundation and stuff it up their backside ~ Anjum Hasan

A Halt

Lie still, my soul, the Sun of Grace
Is warm within this garden space
Beneath tall kindly trees.
The quiet light is green and fair;
A fragrance fills the swooning air;
Lie still, and take thine ease.

This silent noon of Jesu's love
Is warm about thee and above-
A tender Lord is He.
Lie still an hour- this place is His
He has a thousand pleasaunces,
And each all fair and fragrant is,
And each is all for thee.

Then, Jesu, for a little space
I rest me in this garden place,
All sweet to scent and sight.
Here, from this high-road scarce withdrawn,
I thrust my hot hands in the lawn
Cool yet with dew of far-off dawn
And saturate with light.

But ah, dear Saviour, human-wise,
I yearn to pierce all mysteries,
To catch Thine Hands and see Thine Eyes
When evening sounds begin.
There, in Thy white Robe, Thou wilt wait
At dusk beside some orchard gate,
And smile to see me come so late,
And, smiling, call me in. ~ Robert Hugh Benson

When the air balloon was first discovered, some one flippantly asked Dr. Franklin what was the use of it. The doctor answered this question by asking another: "What is the use of a new-born infant? It may become a man." ~ Charles Caleb Colton

SONG OF THE STAR


I am nothing but
Oxygen and hydrogen,
A luminous sphere of plasma
Held together by helium and gravity,
And like a balloon I float on earth,
Waiting to be released back into the sky,
Waiting to go back in the reverse direction
From which I came,
Traveling through a warm tunnel of light,
And out into a dark, cold abyss
Where I will explode into a thousand pieces.
I shall leave behind my body,
Just like air abandons the skin of
A shattered balloon,
And the magnetic dust that carries my
Heart and spirit will lift us back
To congregate and shine
With the stars.
Home again,
In the fluorescent
Kingdom of the constellations,
I will once again be called by
My soul's true name.
And my heart,
It will flicker again,
With every memory
From its many
Lifetimes,
And with every wish
Made by a child. ~ Suzy Kassem

There was no reason to feel pressure, but I felt it anyway
the pressure of hot air and passing time, an idle tension that builds up in places where men sweat twenty-four hours a day. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

(At a health and fitness fair)

Though normally superconfident, I am not prepared for the judgmental stares of the ultrafit. They don't know me and have no idea of my prowess in the boardroom. They're unfamiliar with my shoe collection and unaware that I live in the Dot-Com Palace. And they didn't notice me pulling up in the Caddy. All they can see is how much space I occupy.

With each step I take, I feel cellulite blossoming on my arms, my stomach, my calves. Stop it! I think my chin just multiplied and my thighs inflated. No! Deflate! Deflate! And I'm pretty sure I can see my own ass out of the corner of my eye. Gah! Cut it out!! Am I imagining things, or do my footsteps sound like those of the giant who stomped through the city in the beginning of Underdog? And how did I go from aging-but-still-kind-of-hot ex-sorority girl to horrific, stompy cartoon monster in less than an hour?

My sleek and sexy python sandals have morphed into cloven hooves by the time I reach the line for the race packet. While I wait, the air is abuzz with tales of other marathons while many sets of eyes cut in my direction. Eventually an asshat in a JUST DO IT T-shirt asks me, "How's your training going? ~ Jen Lancaster

An alternative - and better - definition of reality can be found by naming some of its components: air, sunlight, wind, water, the motion of waves, the patterns of clouds before a coming storm. These elements, unlike 20th-century office routines, have been here since before life appeared on this planet, and they will continue long after office routines are gone. They are understood by everyone, not just a small segment of a highly advanced society. When considered on purely logical grounds, they are more real than the extremely transitory lifestyles of the modern civilization the depressed ones want to return to.If this is so, then it follows that those who see sailing as an escape from reality have their understanding of sailing and reality backward. Sailing is not an escape, but a return to and a confrontation of a reality from which modern civilization is itself an escape. For centuries, man suffered from the reality of an Earth that was too dark or too hot or too cold for his comfort, and to escape this he invented complex systems of lighting, heating and air conditioning.Sailing rejects these and returns to the old realities of dark and heat and cold. Modern civilization has found radio, television, movies, nightclubs and a huge variety of mechanized entertainment to titillate our senses and help us escape from the apparent boredom of the Earth and the Sun, the wind and the stars. Sailing returns to these ancient realities. ~ Robert M. Pirsig

Mary Hepburn was meanwhile murdering herself up in her room, lying on her bed with the polyethylene sheath of her "Jackie dress" swapped around her head. The sheath was now all steamed up inside, and she hallucinated that she was a great land tortoise lying on its back in the hot and humid hold of a sailing ship of long ago. She pawed the air in perfect futility, just as a land tortoise on its back would have done.

As she had often told her students, sailing ships bound out across the Pacific used to stop off in the Galàpagos Islands to capture defenseless tortoises, who could live on their backs without food or water for months. They were so slow and tame and huge and plentiful. The sailors would capsize them without fear of being bitten or clawed. then they would drag them down to waiting longboats on the shore, using the animals' own useless suits of armor for sleds.

They would store them on their backs in the dark paying no further attention to them until it was time for them to be eaten. the beauty of the tortoises to the sailors was that they were fresh meat which did not have to be refrigerated or eaten right away. ~ Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

You collect a hunderd pennies in one minute by Master's timepiece and you bought yourself free. Then they shakes a jar of coppers onto the belly of a shovel and holds it over the campfire long time. When they think it fun enough, they say, get yourself ready, and now you go, boy. The pennies go in the dirt around the fire and I got to pick them up and keep hold on them." "Oh," said Ada, with a sound like a kind of punch in the air, or out of it. "I gets forty-two hot cents before that minute up," he said, holding out his hands again. "Here's the proof." "Oh," she said. "And no freedom." "Nothing next, but that we left," he said. "One by one, and not on the same path, turns out." "And here you are." "And wherever this be, I don't know. Some mystery or t'other." She lifted her shoulders and dropped them. "Well. With me I suppose. ~ Gregory Maguire

I only tend to think of the week ahead, to keep my eye on the ball and question whether a full stop is in the right place. It's easy to get distracted by the wrong things. If you start thinking of grand gestures, it's going to be a lot of hot air. You have to be logical. The theatre is a very logical place. ~ Lee Hall

I rolled my eyes at Jeremy. Guys and their egos are completely insufferable. "What do you want me to say Jeremy? You're hot, and you're a good kisser. But I'm in love with Bryn. End of story."
A smile spread across his face, the gold flecks in his eyes dancing. "So I'm still in the game."
I threw my hands up in the air in exasperation. "This isn't a game-it's my life! ~ D.T. Dyllin

My ice-cream is melting just as quickly as Danny's and is dripping down my chin, across my wrist, and onto my thigh. I laugh, throwing my head back and covering my eyes so as not to be blinded by happiness, and it is in this moment of weightlessness that I am suddenly aware of the lightest touch on my skin, like the wings of a butterfly. It flutters against my thigh then lingers on my wrist, but before its delicate wings reach my face, I force my eyes open and see only fragments: pink lips, a tanned cheek, the features and lines of a face silhouetted against the bright sunlight. My nostrils draw in his scent for the very first time and it is so strong that he is not just next to me but intimately close. His smell instantly takes me prisoner, overpowering me to such an extent that I have forgotten who and where I am.
I know that, moments before, Alex was using his lips and tongue to clean the melted ice-cream off my thigh and wrist and inadvertently treating me to the most ecstatic experience of my life. My body and mind are adrift in a sea of bliss, the sounds of the park suddenly fade away, and the world and everyone in it cease to exist. All I can see is a blindingly bright light and all I can feel are a man's moist lips touching mine. Alex's hot, passionate mouth is kissing me greedily as if there is finally enough air; as if he had been suffocating, but now he can breathe.
I know that a kiss like this is neither flirting nor dating and can sense with every fibr ~ Victoria Sobolev

I am constantly mystified by what John ends up remembering… I just don't understand why he's able to hang on to information like that, while so many other more important memories evaporate.
Then again, I suppose so much of what stays with us is often insignificant. The memories we take to the ends of our lives have no real rhyme or reason, especially when you think of the endless things that you do over the course of a day, a week, a month, a year, a lifetime. All the cups of coffee, hand-washings, changes of clothes, lunches, goings to the bathroom, headaches, naps, walks to school, trips to the grocery store, conversations about the weather - all the things so unimportant they should be immediately forgotten.
Yet they aren't. I often think of the Chinese red bathrobe I had when I was twenty-seven years old; the sound of our first cat Charlie's feet on the linoleum of our old house; the hot rarefied air around aluminum pot the moment before the kernels of popcorn burst open. I think of these things as often as I think about getting married or giving birth or the end of the Second World War.
What is truly amazing is that before you know it, sixty years go by and you can remember maybe eight or nine important events, along with a thousand meaningless ones. How can that be?
You want to think there's a pattern to it all because it makes you feel better, gives you some sense of a reason why we're here, but there really isn't any. People look for God in thes ~ Michael Zadoorian

I am like a machine being driven to excessive rotations: the bearings are incandescing and, in a minute, melted metal will begin to drip and everything will turn to nothing. Quick: get cold water, logic. I am pouring it over myself by the bucketload but the logic sizzles on the hot bearings and dissipates elusive white steam into the air. ~ Yevgeny Zamyatin

Just as a balloon too full of air eventually bursts, a person too full of sadness eventually breaks. Fractures like a cracked bone. Shatters like glass. Snaps like a rubber band. ~ Anoosha Lalani

There will always be naysayers. The key is to listen to God's calling. If you're doing that, then everyone else's opinion amount to little more than hot air. ~ Karen Kingsbury

What they had felt as fragile as a floating dandelion seed rising through the hot summer air. Matt had no idea where it would go. ~ Jan Irving

Civil disobedience was new to Lancre, but its inhabitants had already mastered some of its more elementary manifestations, viz, the jerking of rakes and sickles in the air with simple up-and-down motions accompanied by grimaces and cries of "Gerrh!," although a few citizens, who hadn't quite grasped the idea, were waving flags and cheering. Advanced students were already eyeing the more combustible buildings inside the walls. Several sellers of hot meat pies and sausages in a bun had appeared from nowhere* and were doing a brisk trade. Pretty soon someone was going to throw something. ~ Terry Pratchett

Those were the good mornings, when the sun was hot and the air was quick and promising, when the Real Business seemed right on the verge of happening and I felt that if I went just a little faster I might overtake that bright and fleeting thing that was always just ahead. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

The idea of aerial military surveillance dates back to the Civil War, when both the Union and the Confederacy used hot-air balloons to spy on the other side, tracking troop movements and helping to direct artillery fire. ~ Michael Hastings

Then she laughed out loud and hugged him tight with both arms. She smelled like pine trees and lichens and hot sand. How odd, thought Roger, that after all, this is what it took - not a flock of scarlet ibises or golden-crowned kinglets, but just the names of chicken, hovering in the air like the sulpher butterflies at the dump. ~ Bailey White

Over our heads, two millimetres, maybe one millimetre from our temples, those long tempting lines of steel that bullets make when they're out to kill you were whistling through the hot summer air.
I'd never felt so useless as I did amid all those bullets in the sunlight. A vast and universal mockery. ~ Louis Ferdinand Celine

There is an uncommonly harsh beauty to the Tibetan landscape. Its nakedness makes it seem incapable of deception, but under its calm deportment it conceals winds so brutal that yaks are known to die while their jaws are in masticating bliss. On hot summer days the sun licks up the rain within minutes. No puddles are formed; no moisture lingers in the air. It is only the droplets on tiny leaves of the baby turnip plant that betray rain. ~ Tsering Wangmo Dhompa

Gravity was something you could beat; all it took was hydrogen, hot air, or even a bit of rope. But being a girl was a miserable, never-ending struggle. ~ Scott Westerfeld

At four o'clock in the morning most people have been asleep for hours, but at four o'clock in the morning the night-club children of a few years ago were just getting hot. The band jazzed at full blast. The air was so thick you could pick it up in handfulls and through it around like snowballs. The dance-floors were crowded with couples who couldn't do anything but wiggle hips and feet. ~ Jimmy Durante

Symbolically, what the rabbis say is that at Passover, what we have to do is try to get rid of our hot air - our pride, our feeling that we are the most important people in the whole entire world and that everything should revolve round us. ~ Jackie Tabick

The Universe is made of hands;
Hands that twist fabric and sizzle in the air.

Hands that grasp curls and flick words away

Small, smooth fingers pouring gold over gaping wounds

Before slicing into soft tissue,

Blood mixing with gold.

Hands that make it beautiful.

The Universe is made of bones;

Bones that cut against yards of skin,

Warm and yielding and moulded around the wings that splay across his back.

Bones that cage the heart and dig into the hollows.

Bones that break,

Tear the warm, yielding skin.

Bones that shred and brush his chin.

The Universe is made of lips;

Lips that breathe and stutter warm sighs,

Caressing the cracks in his broken body, the body that he broke.

Lips that carve paths into stone,

That leave trails upon gooseflesh,

Lips that make incisions,

Too delicate to mend.

The Universe is made of blood;

Blood that runs warm and hot and steady and crimson,

Pumping beneath the stone and the gold.

Blood that burns with every jerk of limbs.

Blood that spills on open palms,

Staining the fabric,

Filling up his throat.

The Universe is made of eyes;

Eyes that breach and eyes that splice and eyes that never leave.

Eyes that ripple oceans.

Eye ~ Velvetoscar

It was a sordid scene. Philip leaned over the rail, staring down, and he ceased to hear the music. They danced furiously. They danced round the room, slowly, talking very little, with all their attention given to the dance. The room was hot, and their faces shone with sweat. It seemed to Philip that they had thrown off the guard which people wear on their expression, the homage to convention, and he saw them now as they really were. In that moment of abandon they were strangely animal: some were foxy and some were wolflike; and others had the long, foolish face of sheep. Their skins were sallow from the unhealthy life the led and the poor food they ate. Their features were blunted by mean interests, and their little eyes were shifty and cunning. There was nothing of nobility in their bearing, and you felt that for all of them life was a long succession of petty concerns and sordid thoughts. The air was heavy with the musty smell of humanity. But they danced furiously as though impelled by some strange power within them, and it seemed to Philip that they were driven forward by a rage for enjoyment. They were seeking desperately to escape from a world of horror. The desire for pleasure which Cronshaw said was the only motive of human action urged them blindly on, and the very vehemence of the desire seemed to rob it of all pleasure. The were hurried on by a great wind, helplessly, they knew not why and they knew not whither. Fate seemed to tower above them, and they danced as t ~ W. Somerset Maugham

I saw him with her last week, at a coffeehouse near my apartment. They were holding hands. She's captivated him."
"The Lakota Captive." Leta made a line in the air with her hand. "I can see it now, the wily, brave Lakota warrior with the brazen white woman pioneer. She carries him off into the sunset over her shoulder…"
Cecily whacked her with a strand of grass she'd pulled.
"You write history your way, I'll write it my way," Leta said wickedly.
"Native Americans are stoic and unemotional," Cecily reminded her. "All the books say so."
"We never read many books in the old days, so we didn't know that," came the dry explanation. She shook her head. "What a sad stereotype so many make of us-a bloodthirsty ignorant people who never smile because they're too busy torturing people over hot fires."
"Wrong tribe," Cecily corrected. She frowned thoughtfully. "That was the northeastern native people."
"Who's the Native American here, you or me?"
Cecily shrugged. "I'm German-American." She brightened. "But I had a grandmother who dated a Cherokee man once. Does that count?"
Leta hugged her warmly. "You're my adopted daughter. You're Lakota, even if you haven't got my blood. ~ Diana Palmer

Dave was a confirmed serotonin junkie. Any day of the year, he chose a good book, a hot cupper, and air-conditioning over jeopardy to life and limb. ~ Dan Sofer

Her flesh was powdery and voluptuously weary, as if tenderized by all the different beds and arms in which she had lain. Her face was as soft as the pulpy flash of an overripe banana, her breasts like two tiny bunches of grapes. She exuded a certain seedy charm, a poetry of premature corruption and decay. She breathed the air as if it burned her palate, baking her small, hot, whorish mouth. It was as if she were sucking a sweet or slurping champagne. ~ Dezso Kosztolanyi

We need to leave as soon as possible."
"Okay," Luce said. "I have to go home, then, pack, get my passport..." Her mind whirled in a hundred directions as she started making a mental to-do list. Her parents would be at the mall for at least another couple of hours, enough time for her to dash in and get her things together...
"Oh, cute." Annabelle laughed, flitting over to them, her feet inches off the ground. Her wings were muscular and dark silver like a thundercloud, protruding through the invisible slits in her hot-pink T-shirt. "Sorry to butt in but...you've never traveled with an angel before, have you?"
Sure she had. The feeling of Daniel's wings soaring her body through the air was as natural as anything. Maybe her flights had been brief, but they'd been unforgettable. They were when Luce felt closest to him: his arms threaded around her waist, his heart beating close to hers, his white wings protecting them, making Luce feel unconditionally and impossibly loved.
She had flown with Daniel dozens of times in dreams, but only three times in her waking hours: once over the hidden lake behind Sword & Cross, another time along the coast at Shoreline, and down from the clouds to the cabin just the previous night.
"I guess we've never flown that far together," she said at last.
"Just getting to first base seems to be a problem for you two," Cam couldn't resist saying.
Daniel ignored him. "Under normal circumstances, I think you'd enjoy t ~ Lauren Kate

Everett and his mom broke up with me,thank you very much."
"You shouldn't have made out with him in his mother's scrapbooking room," Liz said sagely.
"We're seventeen,"I snapped, "and Everett and I had been dating for two months when that happened.What were we supposed to do,eat dinner with his family and keep our hands on the table where everyone could see them?I mean, you and Davis are Mr. and Mrs. Polite Reserve, and even you were macking in the hot tub an hour ago." I picked up a pink fuzzy pillow that had fallen from he bed and threw it at Liz.
"You were?" Chloe gushed. "You what? Hello,I need the details of Liz and Davis."
"Hayden!" Liz squealed, ducking behind Chloe. "I'm not saying you shouldn't have made out with Everett.I'm saying you shouldn't have done it in his mother's scrapbooking room.Location, location,location.You might have disorganized her supplies.Some people are very particular about their chipboard getting mixed up with their cardstock."
I closed my eyes,inhaled through my nose,and felt my lungs fill with air. My blood spread the life-giving oxygen throughout my body.
"Watch out,"Chloe whispered to Liz. "She's doing yoga."
My eyes snapped open.So much for controlling my temper. "Why the hell didn't you tell me Nick's mother left before I went into the sauna with him?" I hollered at Chloe.
"We didn't know he was here!" Liz came to Chloe's defense. "And if we'd warned you about him before he got here," Chloe explain ~ Jennifer Echols

I totally remember what it felt like to be so full ... Full of promise, full of dreams, full of shit. Mostly just full of yourself. So full you're bursting. And then you get out into the world, and people empty you out, little by little, like air from a balloon ... You try like hell to fill yourself up with fresh air, from you and from other people. But back then ... it was so damn effortless to feel full, you know? All you had to do was breathe ~ Jonathan Tropper

I sit alone in a dead world. The wind blows hot and dry, and the dust gathers like particles of memory waiting to be swept away. I pray for forgetfulness, yet my memory remains strong, as does the outstretched arm of the oppressive air. It seems as if the wind has been there since the beginning of the nightmare. Sometimes loud and harsh, a thousand sharp needles scratching at my reddened skin. Sometimes a whisper, a curious sigh in the black of night, of words more frightening than pain. I know now the wind has been speaking to me. Only I couldn't understand because I was too scared. I am scared now as I write these words. Still, there is nothing else to do. ~ Christopher Pike

I heard 'naked' and 'full of hot air.' I try not to let that be my first impression of anyone. ~ Kathy Bryson, Fighting Mad

My father keeps the air-conditioning up high, and though I complain to him and to my mother, he either won't listen or can't believe me. And what he says makes sense: He is hot and I am hurting, but why should I think that my hurting should outweigh his hot? This is the logic I will never find an answer to, the way in my family a hurt will always be your hurt or my hurt, one to be set against the other and weighed, never the family's hurt. Is what happens in a family the problem of the family, or the problem of the one most harmed by it? There is a cost to this kind of adversarial individualism. ~ Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich

The afternoon was very hot, so hot that the breaking of the waves on the shore sounded like the repeated sigh of some exhausted creature, and even on the terrace under an awning the bricks were hot, and the air danced perpetually over the short dry grass. The red flowers in the stone basins were drooping with the heat, and the white blossoms which had been so smooth and thick only a few weeks ago were now dry, and their edges were curled and yellow. Only the stiff and hostile plants of the south, whose fleshy leaves seemed to be grown upon spines, still remained standing upright and defied the sun to beat them down. ~ Virginia Woolf

IT WAS A HOT AND MUGGY DAY AS I looked up in the powder blue sky that covered the Port of San Pedro. The Bell helicopter circled above like a dragonfly in my Grandma Cholé's rose garden. I don't know if it was the unbearable humidity or the whoop- whoop- whoop of the chopper's rotor blades as they sliced through the air, but something was affecting me. ~ Jose N Harris

When things get really hot, smoke fills the air. And things were definitely hot in here. ~ S.D. Mary