Laughter On A Cloud Quotes

Will read a poem by Sir Walter Raleigh at his grandmother's funeral.

"Pondering the joys we had, listen & keep very still. If the lowing from the hill or the tolling of the bell do not
serve to break the spell, listen: you may be allowed to hear my laughter from a cloud. ~ Lynne Branard

So when you left Hex Hall after Holly died, that wasn't because you were the grief-stricken fiance. You were going to The Eye."
"Yeah. I told them that I thought Elodie and her coven had raised a demon, so we decided I should get close to her,see what was really going on."
"And you decided to get really close to her."
He laughed softly. "I can't see you, but I have a feeling you're cute when you're jealous,Mercer."
Crossing my arms over my chest, I said, "It's not jealousy you're hearing, it's digust. You dated a girl you didn't even like just to get information out of her."
His laughter died, and his voice sounded weary when he said, "Trust me, a lot of my brothers have done much worse."
There was so much I wanted to ask him, but it's not like we could sit out here all night passing the sharing stick or whatever.Time to cut to the chase.
"So did The Eye tell you to get all Mata Hari on me too? ~ Rachel Hawkins

GE is falling under the same cloud of the market as a whole. Investors are not focused on the positives that are occurring like corporate profitability. ~ James Fisher

I appreciate the scientific rigor with which you've approached this project, Anna," said Christopher, who had gotten jam on his sleeve. "Though I don't think I could manage to collect that many names and also pursue science. Much too time-consuming."
Anna laughed. "How many names would you want to collect, then?"
Christopher tilted his head, a brief frown of concentration crossing his face, and did not reply.
"I would only want one," said Thomas.
Cordelia thought of the delicate tracery of the compass rose on Thomas's arm, and wondered if he had any special person in mind.
"Too late for me to only have one," declared Matthew airily. "At least I can hope for several names in a carefully but enthusiastically selected list."
"Nobody's ever tried to seduce me at all," Lucie announced in a brooding fashion. "There's no need to look at me like that, James. I wouldn't say yes, but I could immortalize the experience in my novel."
"It would be a very short novel, before we got hold of the blackguard and killed him," said James.
There was a chorus of laughter and argument. The afternoon sun was sinking in the sky, its rays catching the jeweled hilts of the knives in Anna's mantelpiece. They cast shimmering rainbow patterns on the gold-and-green walls. The light illuminated Anna's shabby-bright flat, making something in Cordelia's heart ache. It was such a homey place, in a way that her big cold house in Kensington was not.
"What about you, C ~ Cassandra Clare

Loneliness, I've discovered–I discovered then–is a hard-to-define emotion. It's the product of unfulfillment, a factor of frustration, and as such it is largely an emotion of negatives; it arises most often not from something that has, but from something that has not happened–a letter that has failed to arrive, a telephone that refuses to ring–and its worst feature is that its causes and its control are not governed by anything that you can do or can hope to do, but depend on the actions of some other. Thus it is that it has nothing to do with setting or with circumstance; it can descend on you anywhere, anytime, and as reasonlessly and as abruptly as a cloud can blot out the summer sun. ~ Robert M. Coates

I have known both of you all your lives, have carried your Daddy in my arms and on my shoulders, kissed and spanked him and watched him learn to walk. I don't know if you've known anybody from that far back; if you've loved anybody that long, first as an infant, then as a child, then as a man, you gain a strange perspective on time and human pain and effort. Other people cannot see what I see whenever I look into your father's face, for behind your father's face as it is today are all those other faces which were his. Let him laugh and I see a cellar your father does not remember and a house he does not remember and I hear in his present laughter his laughter as a child. Let him curse and I remember him falling down the cellar steps, and howling, and I remember, with pain, his tears, which my hand or your grandmother's so easily wiped away. But no one's hand can wipe away those tears he sheds invisibly today, which one hears in his laughter and in his speech and in his songs. ~ James Baldwin

One thing she realized soon was that the rain here was eternal. The weather must have changed since the Emperor's time, because now the tower loomed constantly in its cloud of drizzle; all the long afternoons rain trickled in runnels and gutters and spouts, spattering through gargoyles of hideous beasts and goblins that spat far down on the heads of hurrying clerks. Always the roofs ran with water; it dripped and plopped and splashed through culverts and drains, or sheeted down, a relentless liquid gurgle that never stopped, until she started to imagine that this was the song the tower sang, through all the throats and mouths and pipes of its endless body. ~ Catherine Fisher

You're wearing a bow tie," I said necessarily.
He glanced over at me. "Mom said I had to dress up for this."
I heard a low snort of laughter coming through the open window above the sink.
And I knew.
I stalked over to the window and looked outside.
There, sitting spread out on the grass, were the rest of the Bennetts.
Goddamn fucking werewolves.
"Hello, Ox," Elizabeth said without a jint of shame. "Lovely day, isn't it?"
"I will deal with you late," I said.
Ooh," Carter said. "I actually got chills from that."
"We're just here for support," Kelly said. "And to laugh at how embarrassing Joe is."
"I heard that!" Joe shouted from behind me.
I banged my head on the windowsill.
"Maggie," Joe said. Then, "May I call you Maggie?"
"Sure." My mother sound like she was enjoying this. The traitor. "You can call me Maggie."
"Good," Joe glanced down at his card berfore looking back up at my mother. " There comes a time in every werewolf's life when he is of age to make certain decisions about his future."
I wondered if I threw something at him if it'd distract him enough for me to drag him out of the kitchen. I glanced over my shoulder out the window. Cater waved at me. Like an asshole.
"My future," Joe said, "is Ox."
Ah god, that made me ache. "Is that so?" Mom asked. "How do you figure?" "He's really nice," Joe said seriously. "And smells good. And he makes me happy. And I want to do nothing more t ~ T.J. Klune

Tess took a deep breath. 'You are not marrying me for love, Lord Mayne. Nor-as far as I can see-due to any overwhelming feeling of a less...less proper nature.' She could feel color rising into her cheeks.
'Now that's not true,' Mayne said. There was a hint of wicked laughter in his eyes, and his fingers tightened on hers. 'I feel quite improperly toward you.'
Goodness, but he was attractive when he wasn't hedging, when he was being honest. 'Are you not disturbed by the fact that we do not feel warmer emotions for each other?' she asked him.
'I would be disturbed if we /did/ ... I do not wish for a tempestuous marriage, although I am quite certain that there will be sufficient warmth between us.'
'And in your estimation, tempests must accompany love,' she said, raising an eyebrow. ~ Eloisa James

Eventually I found my way out of the alley. The laughter had died down and I knew there was a foreboding wave of darkness waiting for me. I wondered why, when I had feelings of intense joy or happiness, I could always sense that black wave, cresting above and threatening to crash down on me at any time but, when I was actually having one of my sad spells, it felt like it was never going to end - like I would never get the happiness back. ~ Andersen Prunty

You did not look like that on the basketball court in high school." "Like what?" He shook his head. "I swim." "To where?" The male ego kicked in, if a bit belatedly, and Quinn's laughter sounded very pleased. "I swim sometimes when I can't sleep." "Mmm. Molly says you have insomnia." "I do." "I can see that. ~ Victoria Dahl

As much depended on the priest's willingness to listen to his imploring cry, a leprous Israelite would often go up to the spot whence he could call on him desponding or fearful. And the priest, however willing, might be busy so as not to be able to come at once. As, with most wistful eye, the man gazes on the living, cheerful camp, he sees one and another meet the priest and pour some message or entreaty into his ear - so that the priest is detained, and hurried away to this and that part of the camp, while the trembling, weary leper waits at the gate. In this we see that our high priest hath the pre-eminence - never too busy - never unwilling - never unable. "He waits that he may be gracious." (Isa. 30.18). Neither the business nor the bliss of heaven will detain him from a wretched soul. He who in the days of his flesh forgot to eat, and even ceased to feel faintness, when a soul stood before him in his leprosy, has nothing now to keep him from instant compassion. He who on the cross, under the dark shade of the approaching cloud of wrath and of death, heard the heaving of his mother's bosom and the rush of anguish through her heart - has nothing now to hinder him freely to direct his ever ready compassions towards the coming leper. Even as this is true in regard to those already come, so also is it to the coming. ~ Andrew A. Bonar

Sometimes you characters give me a pain in the back of my lap," said Manuel abruptly. "I hang around with you and listen to simple-minded gobbledegook in yard-long language, if it's you talking, Dran, and pink-and-purple sissification from the brat here. Why I do it I'll never know. And it goes that way up to the last gasp. So you're going to leave. Dran has to make a speech, real logical. Vaughn has to blow out a sigh and get misty-eyed." He spat.
"How would you handle it?" Dran asked, amused. Vaughn stared at Manuel whitely.
"Me? You really want to know?"
"This I want to hear," said Vaughn between her teeth.
"I'd wait a while - a long while - until neither of you was talking. Then I'd say, 'I joined the Marines yesterday.' And you'd both look at me a little sad. There's supposed to be something wrong with coming right out and saying something. Let's see. Suppose I do it the way Vaughn would want me to." He tugged at an imaginary braid and thrust out his lower lip in a lampoon of Vaughn's full mouth. He sighed gustily. "I have felt …" He paused to flutter his eyelashes. "I have felt the call to arms," he said in a histrionic whisper. He gazed off into the middle distance. "I have heard the sound of trumpets. The drums stir in my blood." He pounded his temples with his fists. "I can't stand it - I can't! Glory beckons. I will away to foreign strands."
Vaughn turned on her heel, though she made no effort to walk away. Dran roared with laughter.
"A ~ Theodore Sturgeon

The silky swirl of his tongue in the hollow of her navel sent fire licking through her veins. Hazily aware of the area his mouth was traversing, she stirred beneath him.
Not seeming to realize just where he was kissing her, Matthew persisted, sliding lower until Daisy let out a muffled yelp and pushed hard at his encroaching head.
"What is it?" he asked, rising to his elbows.
Crimson with mortification, Daisy could hardly bring herself to explain. "You were too close to my…well, you accidentally…"
As her voice faded, understanding dawned in Matthew's eyes. Quickly he bent his head to hide his expression, and a tremor ran through his shoulders. He replied with great care, still looking away from her. "It wasn't accidental. I meant to do that."
Daisy was astonished. "But you were going to kiss me right on my - " She broke off as his gaze met hers, laughter dancing in his blue eyes.
He wasn't embarrassed at all - he was amused.
"You're not shocked, are you?" he asked. "I thought you were well read."
"Well, no one would ever write about something like that."
He shrugged, his eyes glowing. "You're the literary authority."
"You're making fun of me," she said.
"Just a little," he whispered, and kissed her stomach again. Her legs jerked against his restraining hands. ~ Lisa Kleypas

In the violence of overcoming, in the disorder of my laughter and my sobbing, in the excess of raptures that shatter me, I seize on the similarity between a horror and a voluptuousness that goes beyond me, between an ultimate pain and an unbearable joy! ~ Georges Bataille

Whenever I close my eyes, I see her. Scarlet. I see her smiling. I see her crying. I hear her laughter flowing through me, sending chills down my spine. The sound of her moaning creeps through my bloodstream, the face she makes in the throes of passion the pulse that spurs it on. Whatever this is I'm feeling, I want it to stop. I want it to go away. I want to stop fucking seeing her every time I blink. I want to stop fucking thinking about her every time I pause to take a deep breath. She's like an infection that's settling into my chest. I would rip out my own organs if I thought it might purge her from my system. ~ J.M. Darhower

Out on the lawn, Bunny had just knocked Henry's ball about seventy feet outside the court. There was a ragged burst of laughter; faint, but clear, it floated back across the evening air. That laughter haunts me still. ~ Donna Tartt

When you are in the middle of a storm cloud it's hard to think outside of it, but the only way out of the storm is to ride through it and things will be a lot clearer on the other side ~ Jodi Ann Bickley

Here I would point out, as a symptom equally worthy of notice, the ABSENCE OF FEELING which usually accompanies laughter. It seems as though the comic could not produce its disturbing effect unless it fell, so to say, on the surface of a soul that is thoroughly calm and unruffled. Indifference is its natural environment, for laughter has no greater foe than emotion. I do not mean that we could not laugh at a person who inspires us with pity, for instance, or even with affection, but in such a case we must, for the moment, put our affection out of court and impose silence upon our pity. In a society composed of pure intelligences there would probably be no more tears, though perhaps there would still be laughter; whereas highly emotional souls, in tune and unison with life, in whom every event would be sentimentally prolonged and re-echoed, would neither know nor understand laughter. ~ Henri Bergson

Witches are good at dealing with it, and to suddenly find a blank where these tendrils of the future should be has much the same effect on a witch as emerging from a cloud bank and seeing a team of sherpas looking down on him does on an airline pilot. ~ Terry Pratchett

I close my eyes and hear wind rushing through palm trees again. And then laughter. The scene is foggy at first, and then it comes into sharp focus. I am standing in a kitchen. It's one of those big, well-appointed spaces you see in magazines, but this one is well loved, not just staged. A cake bakes in the oven. Carrot. There are matches and a box of birthday candles at the ready by the stove. Stan Getz's smoky-sweet saxophone filters from a speaker somewhere nearby. I'm stirring a pot of marinara sauce; a bit has splattered onto the marble countertop, but I don't care. I take a sip of wine and sway to the music. A little girl giggles on the sofa. I don't see her face, just her blond ponytail. And then warm, strong arms around my waist as he presses his body against me. I breathe in the scent of rugged spice, fresh cotton, and love. ~ Sarah Jio

It was easier with Mother
always had been
less complicated, less treacherous. I didn't have to be on my guard so much. I didn't have to watch what I said all the time for fear of inflicting a wound. Being alone with her on those weekend getaways was like curling up into a soft cloud, and, for a couple of days, everything that had ever troubled me fell away, inconsequentially, a thousand miles below. ~ Khaled Hosseini

Seating themselves on the greensward, they eat while the corks fly and there is talk, laughter and merriment, and perfect freedom, for the universe is their drawing room and the sun their lamp. Besides, they have appetite, Nature's special gift, which lends to such a meal a vivacity unknown indoors, however beautiful the surroundings. ~ Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

The mad scientist is going to chase you around with a hypodermic needle, Gregori," she teased.
Gregori lifted an eyebrow, his face an unreadable mask,the pale eyes glittering with more than menace. White teeth flashed,a baring of fangs.
"Maybe not," Gary conceded. "Not the best idea after all."
Savannah was up and moving with hersensuous grace to fit herself beneath Gregori's shoulder. She looked impossibly small next to the big Carpathian, delicate, fragile even. It wasn't so much Gregori's height but the rippling muscles, the thickness of his arms and chest, and the power emanating from him. Her face was turned up toward his, her soft mouth curved with laughter, in no way intimidated by him.
Gregori's arm swept around her and crushed her to him, nearly enveloping her completely. "She thinks I am going to take her on this ridiculous vampire hunt."
"She's right,too,isn't she?" Gary grinned at him.
"Unfortunately," Gregori admitted. ~ Christine Feehan

Gregory didn't attempt to hide his amazement. "You used to slip inside minds, but this is something different." He stood up and circled Tristan. "When I tried to break in, I felt just one mind, one soul--and it wasn't Luke McKenna's. He would've been an easy mark for me. Tell me how you did it."

Tristan remained silent.

"The voices taught you," Gregory guessed, his voice husky with desire. "The voices taught you something they haven't taught me! Tell me how"--a smile spread slowly over his face--"and I'll spare Ivy."

"You've always been a liar, Gregory."

"Not now. Now we're on the same side, Tristan. The dead side." His laughter ended in an electric hiss.

Beyond the garage, the driveway grew brighter; the floodlights had been switched on again.

"Chase?" the woman called. "Is everything okay?"

He grimaced, then punched a button on the wall, lowering the garage door. Tristan followed Gregory out the side entrance but remained in the shadows.

"Get out of our lives, Gregory," he said. "Go back to where you belong."

Gregory laughed at him. "Don't you know? I bring hell with me wherever I go." Then he sauntered across the lawn. "Coming, Mother. ~ Elizabeth Chandler

Cam's grin was wicked as his hand coasted up my waist to cup my breast. He squeezed it, setting off a weird mixture of painful tenderness and a bolt of lust to my sex.
"My eyes!" Cole yelled.
Cam and I jerked apart, and I twisted my head to see my brother standing in the doorway in his pyjamas, his hair falling in wet locks across his forehead. His forearm covered his eyes. "I'm fucking blind," he growled and turned around, bumping into the wall before remembering to drop his arm. After that he stomped out of the flat, the door slamming in his wake.
Horrified, I looked up into Cam's face, my eyes wide. "I think I should let him get away with using the 'f' word on this occasion."
Cam snorted, laughter sputtering as he dropped his head to my chest, his whole body shaking with amusement.
I felt an irrepressible giggle escape me despite my mortification for myself and Cole. "It's not funny. We've scarred him. I better check on him."
Cam shook his head, his eyes bright with mirth. "You're the last person he wants to see right now … I'm sure he's barricaded himself in his room and is doing anything he can to burn the image of me dry-humping his sister out of his mind. ~ Samantha Young

They lost their sense of reality, the notion of time, the rhythm of daily habits. They closed the doors and windows again so as not to waste time getting undressed and they walked about the house as Remedios the Beauty had wanted to do and they would roll around naked in the mud of the courtyard, and one afternoon they almost drowned as they made love in the cistern. In a short time they did more damage than the red ants: they destroyed the furniture in the parlor, in their madness they tore to shreds the hammock that had resisted the sad bivouac loves of Colonel Aureliano Buendía and they disemboweled the mattresses and emptied them on the floor as they suffocated in storms of cotton. Although Aureliano was just as ferocious a lover as his rival, it was Amaranta ?rsula who ruled in that paradise of disaster with her mad genius and her lyrical voracity, as if she had concentrated in her love the unconquerable energy that her great-great-grandmother had given to the making of little candy animals. And yet, while she was singing with pleasure and dying with laughter over her own inventions, Aureliano was becoming more and more absorbed and silent, for his passion was self-centered and burning. Nevertheless, they both reached such extremes of virtuosity that when they became exhausted from excitement, they would take advantage of their fatigue. They would give themselves over to the worship of their bodies, discovering that the rest periods of love had unexplored possibilities, ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Behind my office, to the south-east, was Police Headquarters, and I imagined all the good hard work that was being done there to crack down on Berlin's crime. Villainies like speaking disrespectfully of the Führer, displaying a 'Sold Out' sign in your butcher's shop window, not giving the Hitler Salute, and homosexuality. That was Berlin under the National Socialist Government: a big, haunted house with dark corners, gloomy staircases, sinister cellars, locked rooms and a whole attic full of poltergeists on the loose, throwing books, banging doors, breaking glass, shouting in the night and generally scaring the owners so badly that there were times when they were ready to sell up and get out. But most of the time they just stopped up their ears, covered their blackened eyes and tried to pretend that there was nothing wrong. Cowed with fear, they spoke very little, ignoring the carpet moving underneath their feet, and their laughter was the thin, nervous kind that always accompanies the boss's little joke. ~ Philip Kerr

It amazes him that life never offers completely smooth sailing, even for one day, a sinister cloud manages to creep its way over the horizon. And, what makes life even more mysterious, what truly probes the depth and complexity of the psyche, is that on an overcast day that one cloud would pass entirely unnoticed. ~ Jacob M. Appel

That reminds me of a song," said Emilia. The women laughed; the men groaned. But the fire was blazing and the night was long, and folk will want entertainment after the tedium of a day's work. Emilia's song detailed the amorous adventures of a water horse who fell in love - if love was the right word - with a series of young women who passed beside the lake in which the creature dwelled and from which he emerged in the form of a good-looking young man of exactly the right sort to catch a young woman's fancy. She had a clear voice and a pleasing timbre, and every local knew the chorus, whose euphemisms about mounting and galloping embarrassed me. We did not sing these sorts of songs in the Barahal house. Rory caught right on and sang the chorus as if born to it. In the laughter and pounding of tables that followed, I said, to no one in particular, "I thought kelpies drowned and then devoured their victims!" The words, innocently spoken, only caused the gathered folk to laugh even ~ Kate Elliott

My stupidity gave its blessing to succouring nature, on her knees before God.
What I am (my drunken laughter and happiness) is nonetheless at stake, handed over to chance, thrown out into the night, chased away like a dog.
The wind of truth responded like a slap to piety's extended cheek.
The heart is human to the extent that it rebels (this means: to be a man is 'not to bow down before the law').
A poet doesn't justify - he doesn't accept - nature completely. True poetry is outside laws. But poetry ultimately accepts poetry.
When to accept poetry changes it into its opposite (it becomes the mediator of an acceptance!) I hold back the leap in which I would exceed the universe, I justify the given world, I content myself with it ~ Georges Bataille

Come on. I know you're not a stupid man.'
'I'm quite stupid. Ask anyone.'
'Finbar, are there superheroes living among us?'
Finbar snorted with laughter and Kenny started to feel a little thick. 'Superheroes? In tights and capes, flying around? If there were superheroes, Mr. Journalist, don't you think they'd be in New York or somewhere like that? There's not that many tall buildings for Spiderman to swing from in Dublin, you know? He'd have maybe two good swings and then hang there looking disappointed.'
'These people don't wear tights and capes, Finbar.'
'So they're naked superheroes? That's grand for now, but when the good weather is over they're going to regret it.'
'They look like us. They dress like us. But they're not like us. They're different.'
'You,' Finbar said. 'Are sounding very racist right now. ~ Derek Landy

Things that remind me of Mother are these:
the truth 'mid deception, a warm summer breeze,
the calm within chaos, a stitch in a rip,
a comforting blanket, the smile on her lip,
an ocean of love in a heart big as whales,
the morals in everyday stories she tells,
a wink amid laughter, the wisdom in books,
the peace in humility, beauty in looks,
the light and the life in a ray of the sun,
the hard work accomplished disguised as pure fun,
concern in a handclasp, encouragement too,
the hope in a clear morning sky azure blue,
the power in prayers uttered soft and sincere,
the faith in a promise, and joy in a tear.
These things all attest to the wonder and grace
of my precious mother, none else could replace. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

Pushkin loved to throw rocks. As soon as he saw a rock, he would throw it. Sometimes he became so excited that he stood, all red in the face, waving his arms, throwing rocks, simply something awful.
Pushkin had four sons, all idiots. One didn't even know how to sit in a chair and fell off all the time. Pushkin himself also sat on a chair rather badly. It was simply killing: they sat at the table; at one end, Pushkin kept falling off his chair continually, and at the other end, his son. Simply enough to make one split one's sides with laughter. ~ Daniil Kharms

I am the dangerous daughter, thigh-stroking, soft-tongued lover, the pit, the well, and the well of horniness, laughter rolling up out of me like gravy boiling over the edge of a pan. I become the romantic, the mystic, the one without shame, rocking myself on the hip of a rock, a woman as sharp as coral. I make in my mind the muscle that endures, tame rage and hunger to spirit and blood. I become the rock. I become the knife. I am myself the mystery. The me that will be waits for me. If I cannot dream myself new, how will I find my true self? ~ Dorothy Allison