Last Line Quotes

There is nothing preventing the enemy reaching Paris. We were fighting on our last line and it has been breached. I am helpless, I cannot intervene. ~ Maxime Weygand

Imagine having a disease so overwhelming that your mind causes you to want to murder yourself. Imagine having a malignant disorder that no one understands. Imagine having a dangerous affliction that even you can't control or suppress. Imagine all the people living life in peace. Imagine the estate of John Lennon not suing me for using that last line. Then imagine that same (often fatal) disease being one of the most misunderstood disorders ... one that so few want to talk about and one that so many of us can never completely escape from. ~ Jenny Lawson

I was Juliet and Quinn was Romeo, and the lines weren't dead black-and-white words on a page but somehow alive, as natural and real as the argument we'd had about the spider and the fly. The rows of empty seats were gone, and we were in a candlelit ballrooom, wrapped in our own cocoon of words. But the playful banter of our words couldn't mask what we both knew
that after this, nothing would be the same .
And then we got to the kissing part, which we'd only read through together and had never really rehearsed. But it didn't matter, because I was still Juliet and Quinn was still Romeo, his gray-green eyes fixed on mine. And when he bent to kiss me, it was Romeo's lips on Juliet's.
Even so, Juliet was just as stunned as I would've been. When I said the last line, I was speaking for both of us. You kiss by the book. ~ Jennifer Sturman

Massive, massive mentality. The mental strength, you've just got to have that because you get a lot of stick, as a goalkeeper you're the last line of defence. When a goal goes in everyone looks at you, you've got to be able to deal with that. If you make a mistake, it could be a bad mistake, how are you going to recover? Are you going to react positively or are you just going to cave in? ~ David Seaman

Recently I've been working very hard and quickly; in this way I try to express the desperately fast passage of things in modern life.

Yesterday, in the rain, I painted a large landscape with fields as far as the eye can see, viewed from a height, different kinds of greenery, a dark green field of potatoes, the rich purple earth between the regular rows of plants, to one side a field of peas white with bloom, a field of clover with pink flowers and the little figure of a mower, a field of tall, ripe, fawn-coloured grass, then some wheat, some poplars, on the horizon a last line of blue hills at the foot of which a train is passing, leaving an immense trail of white smoke over the greenery. A white road crosses the canvas, on the road a little carriage and some white houses with bright red roofs alongside a road. Fine drizzle streaks the whole with blue or grey lines. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

Global climate change is real. The legislative branch of our government is our last line of defense against pollution which is why I am so grateful to have the NRDC making our voice heard. ~ Kyra Sedgwick

Um ,sorry. I cant read the last line."
"Fish. Have you stolen any fish from the holy lakes?"
"I lived in Kansas..So ..no ~ Rick Riordan

His single-minded purpose. His unending fury. ~ Stephen King

There's nothing on Earth like really nailing the last line of a big book. You have 200 pages to tickle their fancy, and seven words to break their heart. ~ Alex De Campi

First thing I'd do is make sure the poor newbie demigods don't have to suffer through the orientation film."
All conversation stopped. "What orientation film?" Will Solace asked.
Nico looked puzzled. "You know ..." He glanced side to side, clearly uncomfortable with everybody watching him. Finally he cleared his throat and sang in a warbly voice to the tune of "The Hokey Cokey": "It lets the demigods in! It shuts the monsters out! It keeps the half-bloods safe, but turns mortals all about! It's Misty, and it's magic, and it makes me want to shout: the border is all about!" He punctuated the last line of the song with some half-hearted claps.
We stared at him in stunned silence.
"Nico." Will patted his boyfriend's arm. "You're scaring the other campers."
"More than usual," Julia Feingold muttered under her breath.
"Oh, come on," Nico protested. "You've all heard that annoying song, right? It's from Welcome to Camp Half-Blood."
Nobody responded.
"The orientation film," Nico added.
We shared a group shrug.
Nico groaned. "You mean I just sang in public and ... I'm the only one who's ever seen that stupid film?"
"So far, anyway," said Connor Stoll. ~ Rick Riordan

Since when," he asked,
"Are the first line and last line of any poem
Where the poem begins and ends? ~ Seamus Heaney

My shirt said, I like cooking my family and pets. Use commas. Don't be a psycho. The sweatshirt was black with white lettering. The last line was italicized and the psycho was done in blood-red creepy-looking lettering.
"Of course." I knew perfectly well what it said. When I put the sweatshirt on earlier, Marshell burst out laughing.
"How did I miss this sick sense of humor you have?"
"Who has a sick sense of humor?" Heller came up behind Lawson and rested his chin on Lawson's shoulder, looking at my shirt. "Good one, Remi."
"Can we please discuss Remi's sick sense of humor and his style choices inside? In case nobody noticed, it's snowing. I hate the snow, ~ M.A. Church

The last line of Hawaii's Story by Hawaii's Queen is addressed to the American people and their congressmen. "As they deal with me and my people, kindly, generously, and justly, so may the Great Ruler of all nations deal with the grand and glorious nation of the United States of America." It's clever to imply that if the U.S. swallows up her little country, God will smite it. As I reread the last sentance of a book written by a Hawaiian queen wh was taught to read and write by American missionaries, her final thought seems emblematic of how hierarchical Hawaiians adapted to Christianity. Jehovah, "the Great Ruler of all nations," is the highest high chief in the universe. ~ Sarah Vowell

I know when a story is finished when there is not a single thing more I can think to do to it. And since I know at the start what the last line will be, I know when I've reached that point as logically as I can that it's finished. As for the rewriting-it's not foolproof, of course, but if you're honest about having thought of every possibility and you still come back to what you have, what more can you do? ~ Amy Hempel

There is nothing we should be quite so grateful for as the last line of the poem that goes, 'When your own heart asks. ~ Tsunetomo Yamamoto

It was very bad if the council had resorted to recruiting men. By tradition men were our last line of defence, their physical strength bent towards the single and most important task of protecting our homes and children. This meant the council had decided that our only defence was to defeat the enemy, period. Anything else meant the end of Darre. ~ N.K. Jemisin

Now, where were we? Read me back the last line." " 'Read me back the last line,' " read back the corporal who could take shorthand. ~ Joseph Heller

Where the hell did this come from? Alex flipped through a Pondimin package insert he had found in another box and saw the last line: Revised June 20, 1996. A similar warning for Redux, a nearly identical drug, was dated April 29, 1996. ~ Alicia Mundy

Well, Metcalf, suppose you try keeping that stupid mouth of yours shut,and maybe that's the way you learn how. Now where were we? Read me back the last line."
"'Read me back the last line,'" read back the corporal who could take shorthand.

"Not my last line, stupid!" the colonel shouted. "Somebody else's."

"'Read me back the last line,'" read back the corporal.

"That's my last line again!" shrieked the colonel, turning purple with anger.

"Oh, no, sir," corrected the corporal. "That's my last line. I read it to you just a moment ago. Don't you remember, sir? It was only a moment ago."

"Oh, my God! Read me back his last line, stupid. Say, what the hell's your name, anyway?"

"Popinjay, sir."

"Well, you're next, Popinjay. As soon as this trial ends, your trial begins. Get it?"

"Yes, sir. What will he be charged with?"

"What the hell difference does that make? Did you hear what he asked me? You're going to learn, Popinjay - the minute we finish with Clevinger you're going to learn. Cadet Clevinger, what did - You are Cadet Clevinger, aren't you, and not Popinjay?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good. What did-"

"I'm Popinjay, sir."

"Popinjay. Is your father a millionaire, or a member of the Senate?"

"No, sir."

"Then you're up shit creek, Popinjay, without a paddle.He's not a general or a high-ranking member of the Administration, i ~ Joseph Heller

Your head is pounding with voices of confession and revelation. You followed the rails of white powder across the mirror in pursuit of a point of convergence where everything was cross-referenced according to a master code. For a second, you felt terrific. You were coming to grips. Then the coke ran out; as you hoovered the last line, you saw yourself hideously close-up with a rolled twenty sticking out of your nose. The goal is receding. Whatever it was. You can't get everything straight in one night. ~ Jay McInerney

You said yourself that the people of Luna need a revolutionary." She lifted her chin, holding his gaze. "So I'm going to Luna, and I'm going to start a revolution. ~ Marissa Meyer

If we're lucky, writer and reader alike, we'll finish the last line or two of a short story and then just sit for a minute, quietly. Ideally, we'll ponder what we've just written or read; maybe our hearts or intellects will have been moved off the peg just a little from where they were before. Our body temperature will have gone up, or down, by a degree. Then, breathing evenly and steadily once more, we'll collect ourselves, writers and readers alike, get up, "created of warm blood and nerves" as a Chekhov character puts it, and go on to the next thing: Life. Always life. ~ Raymond Carver

You're the last line of defense. When you're dead, Hitler will march through Leningrad the way he marched through Paris. Do you remember that?'
'That's not fair. The French didn't fight,' Tatiana said, wanting to be anywhere right now but standing in front of men loading artwork from the Hermitage onto armored trucks.
'They didn't fight, Tania, but you will fight. For every street and for every building. And when you lose
'
'The art will be saved.'
'Yes! The art will be saved,' Alexander said emotionally. 'And another artist will paint a glorious picture, immortalizing you, with a club in your raised hand, swinging to hit the German tank as it's about to crush you, all against the backdrop of the statue of Peter the Great atop his bronze horse. And that picture will hang in the Hermitage, and at the start of the next war the curator will once again stand on the street, crying over his vanishing crates. ~ Paullina Simons

A moment comes in war when the last line must be crossed. The line that separates what you hold dear from what total war demands. If he couldn't cross that line, the battle was over, and he was lost.
His heart, the war.
Her face, the battlefield.
With a cry only he could hear, the hunter turned.
And ran. ~ Rick Yancey

I write the last line, and then I write the line before that. I find myself writing backwards for a while, until I have a solid sense of how that ending sounds and feels. You have to know what your voice sounds like at the end of the story, because it tells you how to sound when you begin. ~ John Irving

When I came to the last line of 'Car Crash While Hitchhiking,' I read it as a pitiless statement of indifference: a refusal to warn the family of their impending collision, a refusal to help when miraculously spared, a refusal to act on the empathy hiding behind the story's language. ~ Anthony Marra

Words are the first and last line of defense for any of us... Long live the people ... Long live his wishes
----------------------------
الكلمات هي اول واخر خط دفاع لاي منا .... يحيا الشعب ... تحيا امانيه ~ Hesham Nebr

No way, Nate. I can't stop them. Maybe I can embarrass them from time to time, cost the City some money, but what they're doing here is happening everywhere. We live in a police state and everybody supports the cops." "So you're the last line of defense?" "Yep." "God help us." "Indeed. Thanks for the scoop. I'll be in touch." "Don't mention it. ~ John Grisham

Woody Allen likes to do a lot of master shots. He likes to get the whole thing in one take, and so you could be going along doing a scene, and then the next to last line, all of a sudden, you stumble, and you have to go back to first base. ~ Larry David

Having exhausted every possibility at the moment when he was coming full circle, Antonino realised that photographing photographs was the only course that he had left - or, rather, the true course he had obscurely been seeking all this time. (Last line of the story The Adventure of a Photographer ) ~ Italo Calvino

As I thought about endings and – being a lover of fairy tales – I knew immediately that the deeply rooted last line in folk stories, 'And they lived happily ever after', is the core of what we think we know about endings. We hear it always in our hindbrain because it's the last line most of us in the West have grown up with. That line stops the story at the point of greatest happiness. The wedding, the homecoming, the mystery unraveled, the villain disposed of, families reunited, babies born. If we went on in the story Cinderella, she might be whispered about in court: after all, her manners are not impeccable, she always has smudges of ash on her nose, and no one can trace her bloodline back enough generations. Perhaps she has grown fat eating all that rich food in the castle, and the prince's eye has strayed.

If we went on in The Three Little Pigs, the brother who builds with bricks will have kicked the other two lay-abouts out of his house, or hired them to run his successful company and they – angry at their lower status – plot to kill him. But, having little imagination, do it the only way they know how, by trying to boil him in the pot that still holds the memory of the wolf's demise, so of course the brick building pig finds them out.

But modern books pose a different problem. They present harder choices. It's no longer fairy tale endings we are talking about, but the other stuff, more realistic, stronger, difficult, and maybe not happy-ever-after ~ Jane Yolen

We've resorted to asking for volunteers - any woman with a horse and her own weapons. Men as well, if they're not yet fathers." It was very bad if the council had resorted to recruiting men. By tradition men were our last line of defense, their physical strength bent toward the single and most important task of protecting our homes and children. ~ N.K. Jemisin

I've thought of the last line of some poems for years and tried them out, It wouldn't work because the last line was much too beautiful for the poem. ~ Howard Nemerov

Everyone gets one last line. But first lines, stories of love and loss and hope floating on backs of paper cranes? We choose how many of those we get to tell. ~ Kate Bassett

There are a lot of bad things out there. Things the Hounds of Heaven were
created to destroy." He trailed his finger down the side of my face. "I can't be the hero you want
me to be
at least not in that way. But you can, Grace. You don't have to become one of the dark
ones. You can fight it. You can turn this curse into a blessing. You can become the hero. You
can become truly divine. ~ Bree Despain

Our ultimate weapon is not our guns but our beliefs ... Ours are not Western values. They are the universal values of the human spirit and anywhere, any time, ordinary people are given the chance to choose, the choice is the same. Freedom not tyranny. Democracy not dictatorship. The rule of law not the rule of the secret police. The spread of freedom is the best security for the free. It is our last line of defence and our first line of attack. ~ Tony Blair

I always want the last line to be really good, which may sound silly, but I want it to be a last pleasing line. ~ Elizabeth McCracken

Move on. Walk forward into the light. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

Just as the sailor yearns for port, the writer longs for the last line. ~ Alix Christie

What kept you distant from me?" she asked. By now, she had regained enough confidence to start a discussion.
"Fear," he replied.
"What kind of fear?"
"Fear of facing people's objections. Fear of putting both of our lives at risk. Fear of exploiting your reputation and mine as well. Fear of beginning a new relationship with you when everybody already knows I am a mentor to you. Fear of…losing you and never having you again in my life." He struggled with words while speaking the last line.
"I love you Ahmar and I would not leave you. Ever. ~ Sara Naveed

Our firefighters are our last line of defense, baby. ~ Jack Scalia

First is a poem, a ballad, out of Scotland. You may say there is no king in it, and of course there isn't, which is what makes it so sad. The last line of the third verse, 'O he might hae been a king' is so sad that I don't like to look at it with both eyes at once. ~ William Mayne

To have to introduce a new product at the worst economic time in the last 50 years probably wasn't the greatest thing to have happened. ~ Bill Mechanic

I think I will serve as secretary of state as my last public position. ~ Hillary Clinton

Riley pulled on his jeans and she almost moaned. Focus, Mercy.

"I'll check," he said, zipping up those damn jeans as she slid on her own. "But we might get lucky with an insomniac."

When he turned, she saw the marks on his back were almost healed. Fast, even for a changeling. Which meant Riley was more powerful than she'd guessed, more than he let on.

There was nothing flashy about him. Just
- "What the - " His hands were on her waist and his mouth on hers before she could do more than gasp. Lightning. Bright. Sizzling. Perfect. This time she did moan, wrapping her arms around him and luxuriating in his strength, in the sheer speed with which he'd come at her. With both of them only wearing jeans, her breasts were pressed against the exquisite roughness of the hairs on his chest. She rubbed against him, giving in to the leopard's innate sensuality.

He tore away his lips but they remained less than a millimeter apart. "This is your fault."

"Hell, no." She sucked on his neck, biting him a little too hard for emphasis. "You jumped my bones." Tugging back her head with a hand fisted in her hair, he glared down at her.

"You were all but licking me the way you were looking."

"Looking's not the same as touching." Her mouth watered at the idea of licking him. They'd been in too much of a rush last night. Even the second and third time. As if they'd both been hungry so long, they'd needed to gorg ~ Nalini Singh

The dead man's face was pale and bloodless. The fierce white lights in the morgue showed up every detail mercilessly and every last pore and pock-mark was revealed, the history of a life, now reduced to a mere handful of scars.
'Always nice to see you Mark, but what brings you in so late on Friday afternoon?' Lambert said nothing, staring at Petrie's corpse, before turning to the coroner. John Humby was older and getting close to retirement and the two had been friends for a very long time. Humby resembled a large blood-hound, the more so the older he got and he was smiling over at Lambert, who was still thinking about the murder. ~ Stevie O'Connor

Necessity and life are so intimately related and connected that life itself is threatened where necessity is altogether eliminated. For the elimination of necessity, far from resulting automatically in the establishment of freedom, only blurs the distinguishing line between freedom and necessity. (Modern discussions of freedom, where freedom is never understood as an objective state of human existence but either presents an unsolvable problem of subjectivity, of an entirely undetermined or determined will, or develops out of necessity, all point to the fact that the objective, tangible difference between being free and being forced by necessity is no longer perceived.) ~ Hannah Arendt

In fact, it struck me when we invaded last year that if we did it without European and East Asian support, we were risking losing our alliance in Europe in exchange for Iraq, and that is a very undesirable exchange. ~ William Odom

Love all God's creation, both the whole and every grain of sand. Love every leaf, every ray of light. Love the animals, love the plants, love each separate thing. If thou love each thing thou wilt perceive the mystery of God in all; and when once thou perceive this, thou wilt thenceforward grow every day to a fuller understanding of it: until thou come at last to love the whole world with a love that will then be all-embracing and universal. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Much has happened since last we met, Bartimaeus," he went on. "Do you remember how we parted?"
"No." I did.
"You set light to me, old friend. Struck a match and left me burning in a copse."
The crow shifted uneasily beneath the cleaver."That's a gesture of endearment in some cultures. Some hug, some kiss, some set each other on fire in small patches of woodland ... ~ Jonathan Stroud

George Brett could roll out of bed on Christmas morning and hit a line drive. ~ John Schuerholz

Musicals are plays, but the last collaborator is your audience, so you've got to wait 'til the last collaborator comes in before you can complete the collaboration. ~ Stephen Sondheim

There are transitional forms between the metals and non-metals; between chemical combinations and simple mixtures, between animals and plants, between phanerogams and cryptogams, and between mammals and birds [ ... ]. The improbability may henceforth be taken for granted of finding in Nature a sharp cleavage between all that is masculine on the one side and all that is feminine on the other; or that any living being is so simple in this respect that it can be put wholly on one side, or wholly on the other, of the line. ~ Otto Weininger

Who can know the ending until the last word has been written? Everything might change with the last word. ~ Lauren Kate

My wife and I had an argument last week that was so stupid, that it bears repeating. My wife collects twist ties ... welcome to my world. ~ Bill Engvall

We have become the new american slaves: but there is a revolution coming. It is a revolution of individual liberty. It will free us without violence. It will begin with the self. It will spread to the workplace. It will turn our corporate masters into our servants. It will free us of government's tyranny. The revolution will spread to all corners of the nation, and at last, we shall be free. ~ Gerry Spence

One looks at death, always moves toward it, but until the last denies its existence. ~ John A. Williams

When you make movies, I find that I never have time to go to the movies and enjoy movies like I used to, because I'm so movied out, right, I'm so filmed out that the last thing that I wanna do is with the little spare time that I have is stick in a dark room and watch more stuff on the screen. ~ James Wan

He didn't go down to dinner at all that night, didn't eat, didn't drink, simply thought of his wife, trying to decide what to do with her. He'd wanted her to suffer, and she'd suffered. He'd wanted her to pay for her deceits, and she'd saved his life. He'd wanted to torment her with the knowledge that she would never see him again and had instead created his own private hell. He wanted her to come to him again, giving herself to him as she had that night before her attempted escape, and he wanted to hear words she would never speak. He'd even started lying to himself as he lay sleepless in his bed, reliving each moment of their last night together, telling himself it was real, that she'd meant every word. He was going mad. ~ Elizabeth Elliott

I've always been enchanted by the endings of things. Series finales and sunsets. Last paragraphs and encores. I think for the way they remind me that losing something you love isn't always sad and heartbreaking, but sometimes breathtaking and beautiful. ~ Beau Taplin

Then I looked at its top sheet, and there was the name – A CLOCKWORK ORANGE – and I said: 'That's a fair gloopy title. Who ever heard of a clockwork orange?' Then I read a malenky bit out loud in a sort of very high preaching goloss: ' - The attempt to impose upon man, a creature of growth and capable of sweetness, to ooze juicily at the last round the bearded lips of God, to attempt to impose, I say, laws and conditions appropriate to a mechanical creation, against this I raise my swordpen - ~ Anthony Burgess

In a court of law,' he said at last 'a witness takes his oath to speak the truth: his own truth, that is. He agrees to two parameters. His testimony must be the whole truth, and his testimony must be nothing but the truth. Only the second of these parameters is a true limit. The first, of course, is largely a matter of discretion. When we say the whole truth we mean, more precisely, all the facts and impressions that are pertinent to the matter at hand. All that is impertinent is not only immaterial; it is, in many cases, deliberately misleading. Gentlemen, [...] I contend that there are no whole truths, there are only pertinent truths----and pertinence, you must agree, is always a matter of perspective. I do not believe that any of you has perjured himself in any way tonight. I trust that you have given me the truth, and nothing but the truth. But your perspectives are very many, and you will forgive me if I do not take your tale for something whole. ~ Eleanor Catton

What are you reading now? I have little time to read when I am here, but while at home I had a feast in the reading line, I can assure you ... Am not I a pendant for telling you what I have been reading? (May 16, 1848 to Abiah Root) ~ Emily Dickinson

The last person Jemma expected to welcome into her bedchamber that night was her husband. Though of course she would have to invite him in at some point if they were to embark on their heir-making activities. ~ Eloisa James

Butch was quiet for a time. Then he said, "I think that's why I like Jane."
"huh?"
"When you look at her? You actually see her, and when's the last time that's happened for you?"
V geared himself up, then stared hard into Butch's eyes. "I saw you. even though it was wrong. I saw you."
Shit, he sounded sad. Sad and ... lonely. Which made him want to change the subject. ~ J.R. Ward

Don't wait for the last judgment - it takes place every day. ~ Albert Camus

It was still only nine o'clock when I set off on the last leg of my journey, feeling old and dirty and incapable. You probably know the feeling if you are over eighteen. ~ Kyril Bonfiglioli

Mrs. Panabaker is ten years older than God and probably smarter. She stops into the offices every other Thursday to tell my dad what she didn't like about his sermon the previous Sunday. She makes fudge-covered marshmallows at Christmas time and force feeds them to anyone too slow to escape. I've never seen her out of a suit dress and floral scarf, and on Sundays she always wears a matching hat. Last week was a salmon-colored number, and her hat was draped in fake fruit. I wanted to try to eat one of the grapes just to see what she'd do, but I value my life. ~ A.C. Williams

What I feel with the best of hip-hop music and with the best of what has been produced by hip-hop culture is that it's going to be timeless, and it's going to last. ~ Simon De Pury

Logic is the last scientific ingredient of Philosophy; its extraction leaves behind only a confusion of non-scientific, pseudo problems. ~ Rudolf Carnap

One by one, drops fell from her eyes like they were on an assembly line - gather, fall, slide ... gather, fall, slide ... each one commemorating something she had lost. Hope. Faith. Confidence. Pride. Security. Trust. Independence. Joy. Beauty. Freedom. Innocence. ~ Lisi Harrison

Horror!' "'His last word - to live with,' she murmured. 'Don't you understand I loved him - I loved him - I loved him!' "I pulled myself together and spoke slowly. "'The last word he pronounced ~ Joseph Conrad

In a strange way we were free. We'd reached the end of the line. We had nothing more to lose. Our privacy, our liberty, our dignity: all of this was gone and we were stripped down to the bare bones of our selves ~ Susanna Kaysen

I had spent my last feeling being disappointed that I couldn't rent Jumanji. (...) And thus began a tiny rebelion. ~ Allie Brosh

The dawn was coming then. All the lower valley was covered with mist, and sometimes little pieces of it broke off and floated away in small clouds. The sky was lighter in the east, and the horizon was a thin golden line. The clouds changed from gray to pink, and the mist was touched with gold. There was a silent moment when everything held its breath, and then the sun rose. It was beautiful. ~ S.E. Hinton

To be a warrior is not a simple matter of wishing to be one. It is rather an endless struggle that will go on to the very last moment of our lives. Nobody is born a warrior, in exactly the same way that nobody is born an average man. We make ourselves into one or the other. ~ Carlos Castaneda

Last night as I was driving home, I ran over a guy in a wheelchair. But it's OK - he was already paralyzed. ~ Jarod Kintz

The ten hottest years in the atmospheric record, going back only 160 years, have been in the last eleven years. ~ Al Gore

Let it be you who lean above me
On my last day,
Let it be you who shut my eyelids
Forever and aye.

Say a 'Good-night' as you have said it
All of these years,
With the old look, with the old whisper
All without tears.

You will know then all that in silence
You always knew,
Though I have loved, I loved no other
As I love you. ~ Sara Teasdale

Creating problems is easy. We do it all the time. Finding solutions, ones that last and produce good results, requires guts and care. ~ Henry Rollins

Genetically speaking, individuals and groups are like clouds in the sky or dust- storms in the desert. They are temporary aggregations or federations. They are not stable through evolutionary time. Populations may last a long while, but they are constantly blending with other populations and so losing their identity. ~ Richard Dawkins

Sometimes,' she said, 'I think I must have invented him.'
I know all I want to about your child,' Chauvin said harshly.
Anne Desbaresdes moaned again, louder than before. Again she put her hand on the table. His eyes followed her movement and finally, painfully, he understood and lifted his own leaden hand and placed it on hers. Their hands were so cold they were touching only in intention, an illusion, in order for this to be fulfilled, for the sole reason that it should be fulfilled, none other, it was no longer possible. And yet, with their hands frozen in this funereal pose, Anne Desbaresdes stopped moaning.
One last time,' she begged, 'tell me about it one last time.'
Chauvin hesitated, his eyes somewhere else, still fixed on the back wall. Then he decided to tell her about it as if it were a memory.
He had never dreamed, before meeting her, that he would one day want anything so badly.'
And she acquiesced completely?'
Wonderfully.'
Anne Desbaresdes looked at Chauvin absently. Her voice became thin, almost childlike.
I'd like to understand why his desire to have it happen one day was so wonderful?'
Chauvin still avoided looking at her. Her voice was steady, wooden, the voice of a deaf person.
There's no use trying to understand. It's beyond understanding.'
You mean there are some things like that that can't be gone into?'
I think so.'
Anne Desbaresdes' expression became dull, almost stupid. Her lips ha ~ Marguerite Duras

It is winter now,
and the roses are blooming again,
their petals bright against the snow.
My father died last April;
my sisters no longer write,
except at the turning of the year,
content with their fine houses
and their grandchildren.
Beast and I
putter in the gardens
and walk slowly on the forest paths.
[from the poem, Beauty and the Beast: An Anniversary] ~ Jane Yolen

For five days, I had no sleep. None. I did not sleep. And the last day, the reason I lasted, I drank 20 Red Bulls, about 20 cups of coffee. I could not function. ~ Sam Farha

I absolutely don't buy into the current mania for tidiness and decluttering. For a writer, piles of papers and notes are a fertile field. Keep all those books you read in college, or had certainly meant to read. Keep all those clothes that last fit during the Carter administration. Or give them away. It's for you to choose. You has value. ~ Anne Lamott

Before she became the Girl from Nowhere-the One Who Walked In, the First and Last and Only, who lived a thousand years-she was just a little girl in Iowa, named Amy. Amy Harper Bellafonte. ~ Justin Cronin