In The Clearing Quotes

What are you doing?" I tried to pull away, but his hand slipped from my hair to cup the nape of my neck.
When he whispered, his warm breath brushed over my lips. "Just let me kiss you, Calla. You don't know how long I've wanted to. No one has to know."
My lips parted as I drew a sudden, startled breath and in that instant his mouth was on mine, soft as velvet. I closed my eyes against the rush of a hundred wings that suddenly beat in my chest and soared through my body.
His scent was all around me. Leather, sandalwood, bonfires in autumn. He pulled back, but only for the sake of moving his lips to trail over my neck.
My blood was on fire and I was shaking. Is this really happening?
I couldn't stop thinking about Shay in the clearing. About asking him to kiss me. The electric touch of his lips on mine.
But this is where I belong. I tried to push the memories back.
Ren stroked my knee, his fingers wandering up my thigh, sliding beneath the hem of my dress.
I grabbed his wrist. "Wait."
He didn't free his arm from my grasp but continued kissing my collar bone.
"Let's skip the waiting part," he murmured into my skin. ~ Andrea Cremer

Go now. Our journey is done. And may we meet again, in the clearing, at the end of the path. ~ Stephen King

The feeling of being a digression not the link in the argument,
a new direction, an offshoot, the limb going on elsewhere,
and liking that error, a feeling of being capable because an error,
of being wrong perhaps altogether wrong a piece from another set
stripped of position stripped of true function
and loving that error, loving that filial form, that break from perfection
where the complex mechanism fails, where the stranger appears in the clearing,
out of nowhere and uncalled for, out of nowhere to share the day. ~ Jorie Graham

The nurses told me what you did, Livia. You made my heart beat in the woods." He looked at her lips and continued, "You gave me breath. Were you scared, love? I'm sorry."
"You're apologizing because you stopped breathing?" Livia wrinkled her nose.
He nodded reverently. "I left you in the clearing again."
"You took the bullet that had my name on it and let it lodge in your back," Livia responded. "You never left me in those woods. You gave me strength when I needed it. You don't need to apologize, but it's perfectly acceptable for you to never, ever stop breathing again." She touched his Sorry tattoo. ~ Debra Anastasia

This is where we come," he said.
Albie and I look at each other. "We?"
"Me and, you know."
Albie's eyes got wide. "I really don't think I want to know about this."
I surprised myself. "I do," I said. I guess I was tired of having to withhold the truth from Toby. Other than Ben, he and Albie we're easily my best friends at Natick.
Toby looked a little surprised, like he'd just assumed we wouldn't want to hear the details.
"You do?"
"Yeah."
He looked around to make sure we were alone. We definitely were. No one came back here to my knowledge. Also it was cold. Like twenty degrees. Only three idiots would be in the woods in the winter, it seemed to me.
"Robinson" he said.
"Gorilla Butt," I said, nodding. "I know."
"You know?"
"Yup."
Toby crossed his arms an then deflated into a fake pout. "You're stealing my scene, bitch. Scene stealer."
"Sorry," I said. "So you and Gorilla Butt. Wow."
He flipped me off. "He hates that," Toby said. "But, yeah. It's hairy."
"Oh, look, almost anything else in the universe," Albie said, heading back to campus and leaving us in the clearing.
"He's such a prude," Toby said rolling his eyes. ~ Bill Konigsberg

The heavy eyelids snapped open. Jack froze.
A huge gold-and-amber eye, as big as a dinner plater, stared at him. The dark pupil shrank, focusing.
Jack stood very still.
The colossal head turned, the scaled lip only three feet from Jack. The golden eyes gazed at him, wirling with fiery color.
Jack breathed in tiny, shallow breaths.
Dont blink. Don't blink ...
Two gusts of wind erutped from the wyvern's nostrils Jack jumped straight up, bounced off the ground into another jump, and scrambled up the nearest tree.
In the clearing, Gaston bent over, guffawing like an idiot.
'It's not funny! ~ Ilona Andrews

Is that all?" he blurted out.
Crowley and Halt exchanged slightly puzzled glances. Then Crowley pursed his lips thoughtfully.
"Um…it seems to be…Listed your trainging, mentioned a few achievements, made sure you know which end of an arrow is the sharp part…decided your new name…I think that's…" Then it seemed that understanding dawned on him and his eyes opened wide.
"Of course! You have to have you Silver…whatsis, don 't you?" He took hold of the chain that held his own Silver Oakleaf around his throat and shook it lightly. It was a badge of a Graduate Ranger. Then he began to search through his pockets, frowning.
"Had it here! Had it here! Where the devil is it…wait. I heard something fall on the boards as I came in! Must have dropped it. Just check outside the front door, will you, Will?"
Too stunned to talk, Will rose and went to the door. As he set his hand on the latch, he looked back at the two Rangers, still seated at the table. Crowley made a small shooing motion with the back of his hand, urging him to go outside. Will was still looking back at them when he opened the door and stepped through on the verandah.
"Congratulations!"
The massive cry went up from at least forty throats. He swung around in shock to find all his friends gathered in the clearing outside around the table laid for a feast, their faces beaming with smiles. Baron Arald, Sir Rodney, Lady Pauline and Master Chubb were all there. So were Jenny and George, his forme ~ John Flanagan

When warm weather came, Baby Suggs, holy, followed by every black man, woman, and child who could make it through, took her great heart to the Clearing--a wide-open place cut deep in the woods nobody knew for what at the end of the path known only to deer and whoever cleared the land in the first place. In the heat of every Saturday afternoon, she sat in the clearing while the people waited among the trees.

After situating herself on a huge flat-sided rock, Baby Suggs bowed her head and prayed silently. The company watched her from the trees. They knew she was ready when she put her stick down. Then she shouted, 'Let the children come!' and they ran from the trees toward her.

Let your mothers hear you laugh,' she told them, and the woods rang. The adults looked on and could not help smiling.

Then 'Let the grown men come,' she shouted. They stepped out one by one from among the ringing trees.

Let your wives and your children see you dance,' she told them, and groundlife shuddered under their feet.

Finally she called the women to her. 'Cry,' she told them. 'For the living and the dead. Just cry.' And without covering their eyes the women let loose.

It started that way: laughing children, dancing men, crying women and then it got mixed up. Women stopped crying and danced; men sat down and cried; children danced, women laughed, children cried until, exhausted and riven, all and each lay about the Clearing damp and ~ Toni Morrison

Alone in the clearing, I rediscover your sighs in the notes of turgid and green leaves ~ Luca Ferrarini

I have tonight begun reading a stupid, shitty book by Kerouac called Big Sur, and I would give a ball to wake up tomorrow on some empty ridge with a herd of beatniks grazing in the clearing about 200 yards below the house. And then to squat with the big boomer and feel it on my shoulder with the smell of grease and powder and, later, a little blood. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

The self is configured in ways that both reflect and influence the very foundations of social life and everyday living. Without the guidance set by a particular set of ideas about what it means to be human, political conflict would be impossible. The shape of the self in a particular era indicates which goals individuals are supposed to strive toward, and how individuals are to comport themselves while striving; it indicates what is worthwhile, who is worthwhile, and which institutions determine worthwhileness. In other words, the self emerges out of a moral dialogue that sets the stage for all other political struggles. Once the self is set, the rest of the struggles begin to appear in the clearing: they materialize. ~ Philip Cushman

The Storyteller

The little boy stumbled through the forest. He was sure that wild animals were chasing him, and wanted to eat him.
As he crashed through the undergrowth he suddenly emerged into a clearing. He looked around, fearing that he could hear animals, but all was quiet.
The little boy walked further into the clearing. He saw a small stool with a book on it. He stopped, and looked around wondering who had left the stool, and the book there.
He walked over to the stool, and picked up the book to look at it.
Without thinking, he sat down, and opened the book.
He started to read aloud. The only sound in the clearing was the little boy's voice.
He had forgotten about his earlier fear, and he had also stopped imagining that he could hear animals after him.
Once he had finished reading the story he put the book down, and he said to the clearing, "I'll come back tomorrow to read again."
The little boy left the clearing and reentered the forest. He wasn't afraid anymore. It was if he had a new found confidence, and manner.
The next day he returned, and found a different book on the stool, and as before, he sat down, and started to read.
This went on for a week. After seven days animals started to come through the undergrowth, and entered the clearing. When they saw the boy, and heard his storytelling they would stop, find a place to sit down, and listen to him.
One day he heard a roar behind him, and the little ~ Anthony T. Hincks

She grabbed his arm and traced the tattoo with her finger. "This Sorry is gone now. This is a new Sorry, and it's from me to you." Livia rolled onto her belly so she could see him lying in the sun. "I'm sorry I didn't say hello sooner. I'll never get those days I missed back. But I won't miss any more."
Livia kissed his sunny face. Blake held one fist in the air.
Even after they dressed, Livia and Blake stayed in the clearing. They left reluctantly when they grew too hungry. Livia wanted to stay forever. She knew this victory was one they'd have to fight for again in the real world. ~ Debra Anastasia

O Canada I have not forgotten you,
as I kneel in my canoe, beholding this vision
of a bookcase.
You are the paddle, the snowshoe, the cabin in the pines.
You are the moose in the clearing and the moosehead on
the wall.
You are the rapids, the propeller, the kerosene lamp.
You are the dust that coats the roadside berries.
But not only that,
you are the two boys with pails walking along that road. ~ Billy Collins

Time flies, knells call, life passes, so hear my prayer.
Birth is nothing but death begun, so hear my prayer.
Death is speechless, so hear my speech.
This is Jake, who served his ka and his tet. Say true.
May the forgiving glance of S'mana heal his heart. Say please.
May the arms of Gan raise him from the darkness of this earth. Say please.
Surround him, Gan , with light.
Fill him, Chloe, with strength.
If he is thirsty, give him water in the clearing.
If he is hungry, give him food in the clearing.
May his life on this earth and the pain of his passing become as a dream to his waking soul, and let his eyes fall upon every lovely sight; let him find the friends that were lost to him, and let every one whose name he calls call his in return.
This is Jake, who lived well, loved his own, and died as ka would have it.
Each man owes a death. This is Jake. Give him peace. ~ Stephen King

Proper circus you make,' Berkley said, with a snort of laughter Laurence considered unnecessary, when they landed in the clearing and set the dog down; it promptly went tearing around the parade ground yelling at the dragons. For their part they were only interested and curious until the dog bit a too-inquisitive Dulcia on the tender nip of her muzzle, at which she hissed in anger; the dog yelped and fled back to the dubious shelter of Temeraire's side; he looked down at it in irritation and tried unsuccessfully to nudge it away.
'Pray be careful of the creature; I have no idea how we should get or train another,' Laurence said, and Temeraire at last grumbling allowed it to curl up beside him. ~ Naomi Novik

I bought a small bottle of beer for fifteen cents and sat on a bench in the clearing, feeling like an old man. The scene I had just witnessed brought back a lot of memories - not of things I had done but of things I had failed to do, wasted hours and frustrated moments and opportunities forever lost because time had eaten so much of my life and I would never get it back. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

Great art grabs you, against your will, and then suspends your will. You are ushered into a quiet clearing, free of desire, free of grasping, free of ego, free of the self-contraction. And through that opening or clearing in your own awareness may come flashing higher truths, subtler revelations, profound connections. For a moment you might even touch eternity; who can say otherwise, when time itself is supendend in the clearing that great art creates in your awareness? ~ Ken Wilber

I moved silently across the garden, silvered with moonlight, my feet barely touching the ground. I brushed past fern and tree, following the lights across the stream, toward the cottage in the clearing where I watched a little girl surrounded by light and laughter as the fairies threaded flowers through her hair. I stood out of sight, peering through the tangled blackberry bushes, but the girl saw me, rushing forward, her hand outstretched, a white flower clasped between her fingers. "For Mammy," she said. "For my Mammy. ~ Hazel Gaynor

You wanted us all back together again! Bonnie shouted at Caroline, and pulled the scandalized girl into the dance. Meredith, her dignity forgotten, joined them too.
And for a long time in the clearing there was only rejoicing. ~ L.J.Smith

The waters of the stream played the part of the orchestra, and the sunlight provided the dancers. Every now and then a crescendo of wind highlighted the symphony in the clearing by the creek. ~ Edward Mooney Jr.

Some of the greatest discoveries ... consist mainly in the clearing away of psychological roadblocks which obstruct the approach to reality; which is why,post factum they appear so obvious. ~ Arthur Koestler

In a matter of seconds, all the events of the morning became incredibly clear. For years I'd been stealing things for the group, making sure everyone had what they needed. Today, for the first time, I took something for myself. And it was the dumbest thing I'd ever done. There was no way we could actually keep her here for long, and, if we did, girls didn't fall for boys who stole them. ~ Kiera Cass

The destructive impulse with respect to nature all too often has psychological causes that go beyond the greed for material resource or the need to domesticate an environment. There is too often a deliberate rage and vengefulness at work in the assault on nature and its species, as if one would project onto the natural world the intolerable anxieties of finitude which hold humanity hostage to death. ~ Robert Pogue Harrison

All I've ever really done is page 3 in The Sun, and not every man reads that. ~ Katie Price

There was a moment when any hope within me froze solid and I was finally emptied of all energy to fight the cold. And at the very point of that very surrender, when I became convinced that I must bow to a world that would be forever frigid, God cupped the hands of my soul and poured in the warmth of Christmas. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

She thought of the women at Chicken Little's funeral. The women who shrieked over the bier and at the lip of the open grave. What she had regarded since as unbecoming behavior seemed fitting to her now; they were screaming at the neck of God, his giant nape, the vast back-of-the-head that he had turned on them in death. But it seemed to her now that it was not a fist-shaking grief they were keening but rather a simple obligation to say something, do something, feel something about the dead. They could not let that heart-smashing event pass unrecorded, unidentified. It was poisonous, unnatural to let the dead go with a mere whimpering, a slight murmur, a rose bouquet of good taste. Good taste was out of place in the company of death, death itself was the essence of bad taste. And there must be much rage and saliva in its presence. The body must move and throw itself about, the eyes must roll, the hands should have no peace, and the throat should release all the yearning, despair and outrage that accompany the stupidity of loss. ~ Toni Morrison

Silence in the face of offence or provocation is maturity ~ Ikechukwu Joseph

This is not the sort of thing that shows up in satellite photographs. Whether in CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, or in the East Asian studies department of a university, people usually analyze North Korea from afar. They don't stop to think that in the middle of this black hole, in this bleak, dark country where millions have died of starvation, there is also love. ~ Barbara Demick

Good things usually get in the way of great things. ~ Gregory D. Kincaid

It isn't religion that's the opiate of the masses in the twenty-first century. It's fear. Fear is the new opioid. It makes us dull, paranoid, selfish and jittery, and we're fed it on the front of every newspaper, all day long on radio and TV and online news. Whether you've got ten million dollars or ten cents, these days fear drives everything. ~ Heather Rose - Bruny

He had been taught as a child that Urras was a festering mass of inequity, iniquity, and waste. But all the people he met, and all the people he saw, in the smallest country village, were well dressed, well fed, and contrary to his expectations, industrious. They did not stand about sullenly waiting to be ordered to do things. Just like Anaresti, they were simply busy getting things done. It puzzled him. He had assumed that if you removed a human being's natural incentive to work
his initiative, his spontaneous creative energy
and replaced it with external motivation and coercion, he would become a lazy and careless worker. But no careless workers kept those lovely farmlands, or made the superb cars and comfortable trains. The lure and compulsion of profit was evidently a much more effective replacement of the natural initiative than he had been led to believe. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

It's people with obsessions who do the real harm in the world. ~ Dick Francis

Forgiveness is the key that can unshackle us from a past that will not rest in the grave of things over and done with. As long as our minds are captive to the memory of having been wronged, they are not free to wish for reconciliation with the one who wronged us. ~ Lewis B. Smedes

The subject matter ... is not that collection of solid, static objects extended in space but the life that is lived in the scene that it composes; and so reality is not that external scene but the life that is lived in it. Reality is things as they are. ~ Wallace Stevens

The most important task for a MAN is to leave his footprints in the sands of time and for his name to be written in the chronicles of Kings and Princes ~ Kenny Kendo

I know the evil that exists. I know the terrible things people do to each other. I've lived it. I've survived it. But just because I've seen the palette of dark colors doesn't mean I have to paint the rest of my world that way. I can choose the bright colors instead. I can see them, paint them, draw them, surround myself with them like a loud, glorious song drowning out all the darkness in the world. ~ Rachel Morgan

And I was very interested in the priesthood. ~ Thomas Keneally

I can explain myself: If you want to be safe, walk in the middle of the street. I'm not joking. You've been told to look both ways before crossing the street, and the sidewalk is your friend, right? Wrong. I've spent years walking sidewalks at night. I've looked around me when it was dark, when there were men following me, creeping out of alleyways, attempting to goad me into speaking to them and shouting obscenities at me when I wouldn't, and I suddenly realised that the only place left to go was the middle of street. But why would I risk it? Because the odds are in my favour. In the States, someone is killed in a car accident on average every 12.5 minutes, while someone is raped on average every 2.5 minutes. Even when factoring in that, one, I am generously including ALL car-related accidents and not just those involving accidents, and two, that the vast majorities of rapes still go unreported […] And, thus, this is now the way I live my life: out in the open, in the middle of everything, because the middle of the street is actually the safest place to walk. ~ Emilie Autumn

The wind picked up. The power went out. The windows rattled. I took an Ambien and curled into a ball and tried to hide from the dark and the wind in the bed that had been ours, the first bed I'd ever shared with someone who loved me and picked me and then changed his mind. ~ Lindy West

I want you now. Always. Everywhere and as my everything-my lover, my friend, my sharp-tongued beauty, my drinking companion, my children's mother, my courage in the face of certain defeat. My sactuary." He captured her lips. "My duchess." He kissed her. She returned his kiss with great enthusiasm. "But at this specific moment," he said between kisses, "I just really want you in my bed." With eager compliance, she accepted his kisses on her throat. "I can oblige you in that, your grace." "Or your bed. Whichever we come to first." "You are all that is wise and efficient." "Or the carriage." She grabbed his hand. "Let's be off then, shall we?" Laughter bubbling from her, she dragged him toward the carriage. He snatched her back to him and with his hands around her face said, "Arabella, I love you."

-Luc & Arabella ~ Katharine Ashe

The heart beneath the breastbone pumping. The blood on its appointed rounds. Life in small places, narrow crannies. In the leaves, the toad's pulse. The delicate cellular warfare in a waterdrop. A dextrocardiac, said the smiling doctor. Your heart's in the right place. Weathershrunk and loveless. The skin drawn and split like an overripe fruit. ~ Cormac McCarthy

Be a light in the dark ~ Kalynn Bayron

I know you worry about getting older, about not being the prettiest guy in the room anymore."

And I worried about aging, but not how he thought. I had never presumed I was prettiest, just one of many. My only concern now was that Sam Kage thought I was hot.

"But there will never come a time when that will be the case," he said, pressing soft kisses to the side of my neck. I leaned my head back so he could reach more of my throat. "To me, Jory," he said, "you're more beautiful now than you ever have been, and I can't wait to see what you're gonna look like at forty and fifty and sixty, and God willing a lot more numbers after that."

"Many after that," I assured him as my eyes drifted open so I could look up into his smoky-blue ones.

"The most important thing is that you're mine, you belong to me," he said, his hands pressing me closer before he kissed me. ~ Mary Calmes

Every time I'm not on a project, I'm writing or in the studio or doing gigs DJing. ~ Taryn Manning

Having neurons wire together can be a good thing. A positive experience with a math teacher can lead to neural connections that link math with pleasure, accomplishment, and feeling good about yourself as a student. But the opposite is equally true. Negative experiences with a harsh instructor or a timed test and the anxiety that accompanies it can form connections in the brain that create a serious obstacle to the enjoyment not only of math and numbers, but exams and even school in general. ~ Daniel J. Siegel

The movement that Jesus begins is constituted by people who believe that they have all the time in the world, made possible by God's patience, to challenge the world's impatient violence by cross and resurrection. ~ Stanley Hauerwas

A woman's place is in the home. Why should she go out and take away a workingman's pay instead of staying home and stealing out of his jacket like a good wife. ~ Sam Levenson

Which is more improbable - that the trillions of solar systems in the known universe exploded from something smaller than a pinhead or that there is an invisible, omniscient moral intelligence present everywhere that has the highest tolerance for cruelty? ~ David Hayden

The longest word in the world is "a word from our sponsor." ~ Sam Levenson

I felt like a pianist who'd been forced to play on a few white keys in the middle, finally allowed to run his hands all up and down the keyboard. ~ Ann Brashares

The smartest people in the world are not in charge, they work for the action takers. ~ Garrison Wynn

If you stay in the word of God then you'll get a fresh leading of new things to share. I share my testimony of what God has done, but there's certain things that when I slip into the Word and let God speak to me through His Word and it's a fresh thing for me to share. ~ Jeremy Camp

The illuminating work of the Holy Spirit comes through diligent study and prayer, as He will teach us and give us confidence in the doctrines that are found in Scripture. ~ Anonymous

You always did have a problem with undies. Remember when you wet your pants in the second grade?
- Joyce Barnhardt ~ Janet Evanovich

Moreover, not unlike presidential candidates who hold babies up in the air as soon as the cameras are rolling, male chimps vying for power develop a sudden interest in infants, which they hold and tickle in order ~ Frans De Waal