Lurk Quotes

Don't let the case from 1995 fool you. Early Bil Gates Beige is just a color. Many wonders lurk therein."

"Many wonders?"

"A fast-as-hell processor. Shit-tons of memory. A hard drive that could crack nuts. And best of all, for our purposes, some very expensive audio editing software that I did not pay for."

"Ah. And the rest of this stuff--over here on the bookcase?"

"External drives. A CD burner. Extra parts. And that thing on the end that looks like a little hot plate is a mug-warmer my grandmother gave me for Christmas. So that's not part of FrankenHal. ~ Cherie Priest

Memories lurk like dustballs in the backs of drawers. The stereo is a special model that plays only music fraught with poignant associations. ~ Jay McInerney

And cried for mamma, at every turn'-I added, 'and trembled if a country lad heaved his fist against you, and sat at home all day for a shower of rain.-Oh, Heathcliff, you are showing a poor spirit! Come to the glass, and I'll let you see what you should wish. Do you mark those two lines between your eyes, and those thick brows, that instead of rising arched, sink in the middle, and that couple of black fiends, so deeply buried, who never open their windows boldly, but lurk glinting under them, like devil's spies? Wish and learn to smooth away the surly wrinkles, to raise your lids frankly, and change the fiends to confident, innocent angels, suspecting and doubting nothing, and always seeing friends where they are not sure of foes-Don't get the expression of a vicious cur that appears to know the kicks it gets are its desert, and yet, hates all the world, as well as the kicker, for what it suffers.'
'In other words, I must wish for Edgar Linton's great blue eyes, and even forehead,' he replied. 'I do - and that won't help me to them.'
'A good heart will help you to a bonny face, my lad,' I continued, 'if you were a regular black; and a bad one will turn the bonniest into something worse than ugly. And now that we've done washing, and combing, and sulking - tell me whether you don't think yourself rather handsome? I'll tell you, I do. You're fit for a prince in disguise. Who knows, but your father was Emperor of China, and your mother an Indian queen, each of them ~ Emily Bronte

If you have ever been accused of being rude when you were merely stating the truth, or called a gossip because you like to dwell on other people's actions, Westacott is for you. His linked studies of everyday vices offer elegant analysis of the goods that lurk in behavior that is usually condemned. This wise book is practical philosophy in the best sense. ~ Mark Kingwell

Since the beginning of storytelling, he explained, Death has called on the unwitting. In one tale or another, it arrives quietly in town and takes a room at an inn, or lurks in an alleyway, or lingers in the marketplace, surreptitiously. Then just when the hero has a moment of respite from his daily affairs, Death pays him a visit. This is all well and good, allowed the Count. But what is rarely related is the fact that Life is every bit as devious as Death. It too can wear a hooded coat. It too can slip into town, lurk in an alley, or wait in the back of a tavern. Hadn't it paid such a visit to Mishka? Hadn't it found him hiding behind his books, lured him out of the library, and taken his hand on a secluded spot overlooking the Neva? ~ Amor Towles

In my life I had come to realize that when things were going very well indeed it was just the time to anticipate trouble. And, conversely, I learned from pleasant experience that at the most despairing crisis, when all looked sour beyond words, some delightful break was apt to lurk just around the corner. ~ Amelia Earhart

The lies that lurk in the shadows of truth. ~ Moira Young

A relationship is like being in a forest, where snakes lurk awaiting the chance to entice. ~ Anthony Liccione

Modern US consumers now get to taste less than 1 percent of the vegetable varieties that were grown here a century ago. Those old-timers now lurk only in backyard gardens and on farms that specialize in direct sales
if they survive at all. Many heirlooms have been lost entirely. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

Some certain significance lurk in all things, else all things are little worth, and the round world itself but an empty cipher except to sell by the cartload, as they do hills about Boston, to fill up some morass in the Milky Way. ~ Herman Melville

All you have in life is your reputation: you may be very rich, but if you lose your good name, then you'll never be happy. The thought will always lurk at the back of your mind that people don't trust you. ~ Richard Branson

Governments are composed of human beings, and all of the frailties that humans possess are absorbed into these governments and become active within these governments. Hatred, anger, jealousy, fear, greed, distrust and the whole host of afflictions that humans must bear, lurk just beneath the surface of civility displayed by 'government.' ~ John McAfee

Vampires, werewolves, fallen angels and fairies lurk in the shadows, their intentions far from honorable. ~ Jeaniene Frost

I seat myself at the typewriter and hope, and lurk. ~ Mignon G. Eberhart

Fortune is a prize to be won. Adventure is the road to it. Chance is what may lurk in the shadows at the roadside. ~ O. Henry

The quest for homeland security is heading ... toward the quasi-militarization of everyday life ... If danger might lurk anywhere, maybe everything must be protected and policed. ~ William Greider

Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.
[Olmstead v. U.S., 277 U.S. 438 (1928) (dissenting)] ~ Louis D. Brandeis

... it's just something women used to say when they sent their men off to war. Come back with your shield, or on it."
"On your shield?" said Nobby. ""You mean like ... sledging, sort of thing?"
"Like dead," said Angua. "It meant come back a winner or not at all."
"Well, I always came back with my shield," said Nobby. "No problem there."
"Nobby," sighed Colon, "you used to come back with your shield, everyone else's shield, a sack of teeth and fifteen pairs of still-warm boots. On a cart."
"We-el, no point in going to war unless you're on the winning side," said Nobby, sticking the white feather in his helmet.
"Nobby, you was always on the winning side, the reason bein', you used to lurk aroun' the edges to see who was winning and then pull the right uniform off'f some poor dead sod. I used to hear where the generals kept an eye on what you were wearin' so they'd know how the battle was going. ~ Terry Pratchett

I'm going to tell you something that a wise man once told me: it's not the darkness that's terrifying, it's what you might find in it. I was always afraid of the dark as a child, afraid monsters would sneak into my room at night, but now I know there's nothing to fear. Not because monsters don't exist. They do. I've seen them. I've encountered them. One attacked me as I slept. I even became one myself afterward. No, the reason there's nothing to fear in the dark is because real monsters lurk in the light, too. They hide in plain sight. The trick is to find them before they can get you. I'm not a good man. I'm not. I know...I've learned my lesson. I find peace in the darkness sometimes now. I find peace with her. I'll never forget, but she makes me feel like it's okay to remember. It's okay to remember the pain and fear. It's okay to admit the darkness terrified me. Because I found some light in it. I found her. ~ J.M. Darhower

If Adam were honest with himself, which he rarely was, he'd come to terms with the fact that beyond his work and the view, he was floundering a bit. His plan had been to take the insurance money, leave his old life behind, and start completely over somewhere new. A place where memories didn't lurk around every corner.
He hadn't figured on the memories coming along with him. ~ Kirsten Fullmer

They read a little bit, write a little, and especially agree with themselves on important moves, important information, important awards, important writers that they plan to enthrone forever in history through a variety of memberships and numerous prizes awarded under the influence of top bureaucrats who know everything, not only about literature, but also about secret conspiracies, the Masons that lurk in every corner to crucify someone, steal someone's soul and sell it to an unknown devil, about whom only the chief bureaucrat possesses secret knowledge that he doesn't share; about history, ghosts, missing continents; about who said what to whom in confidence. ~ Dejan Stojanovic

Life itself turned our planet blue and green, as tiny photosynthetic bacteria cleansed the oceans of air and sea, and filled them with oxygen. Powered by this new and potent source of energy, life erupted. Flowers bloom and beckon, intricate corals hide darting gold fish, vast monsters lurk in black depths, trees reach for the sky, animals buzz and lumber and see. And in the midst of it all, we are moved by the untold mysteries of this creation, we cosmic assemblies of molecules that feel and think and marvel and wonder at how we came to be here. ~ Nick Lane

Someone described a writer's world as tormented, and I had to laugh. A tormented writer? I personally wouldn't have put those two words together.
Emotions have the power to torment a soul, yes, I agree to that. But writers, through the formation of our characters, delve so often into the depths of a vast range of emotions that we earn the advantage. For we've examined every little thrumming, fracture, spark, pang, and darkening of the heart to a point that we understand and appreciate the necessity and strength of emotions as well as the cause and effects manipulating them.
We understand.
We can imagine.
We sympathize.
Our knowledge is power over the torment of emotional ignorance.
I would suggest that those truly tormented are the readers of our works because those poor souls shall never know with such clarity and sentiment all the tiny little details that make our characters breath, move, and live before our very eyes.
Perhaps, if torment does lurk among writers, it comes simply through knowing more about an imagined friend than can ever be adequately expressed in words. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

But you see how man is also machine, and it suffices to turn one wheel on the surface and other wheels then turn inside: the brother and the enmity are merely the reflection of the fear that each man has of himself, of the recesses of his own soul, where unconfessed desires lurk, or, as they are saying in Paris, unconscious concepts. For it has been demonstrated that imperceptible thoughts exist, affecting the soul without the soul's being aware of them, clandestine thoughts whose existence is demonstrated by the fact that, however little each of us examines himself, he will not fail to remark that in his heart he bears love or hatred, joy or sorrow, while remaining unable to remember distinctly the thoughts that generated it. ~ Umberto Eco

The dark dangerous forest is still there, my friends. Beyond the space of the astronauts and the astronomers, beyond the dark, tangled regions of Freudian and Jungian psychiatry, beyond the dubious psi-realms of Dr. Rhine, beyond the areas policed by the commissars and priests and motivations-research men, far, far beyond the mad, beat, half-hysterical laughter ... the utterly unknown still is and the eerie and ghostly lurk, as much wrapped in mystery as ever. ~ Fritz Leiber

If you really want to be afraid for mankind, you don't even need to know who Paul Ryan is. All you have to do is lurk for five minutes by the pharmacy. ~ Laurie Notaro

The things that lurk inside your thoughts, though hidden sometimes they seem.
Will be revealed in the night's sweet sleep, manifested in the mind as dreams. ~ Reed Abbitt Moore

Modern liberalism, for most liberals is not a consciously understood set of rational beliefs, but a bundle of unexamined prejudices and conjoined sentiments. The basic ideas and beliefs seem more satisfactory when they are not made fully explicit, when they merely lurk rather obscurely in the background, coloring the rhetoric and adding a certain emotive glow. ~ James Burnham

Dear Influencers: Trolls will lurk under the bridges you build to gobble you up. They are hangry for attention. Build bridges anyways. ~ Richie Norton

The greatest dangers to liberty," said Mr. Brandeis, "lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding. ~ E.B. White

Don't you think Rycca would like to hear about Hadding, the warrior Odin rescued from his enemies? Indeed, so would I for as I recall, the last time I asked about him, you told the story in great haste without the scantiest details." There was a gleam in her eyes that Rycca had come to understand meant she was up to something, but she had no idea what might lurk behind so seemingly innocent a suggestion.
Dragon grinned and looked at his brother, who leaned back in his chair and laughed. When Rycca appeared puzzled, Cymbra said, "I confess, when I noticed how attentive you are to Dragon's stories I was reminded of myself. At Wolf's and my wedding feast, I persuaded Dragon to tell a great many tales. He was the soul of patience."
"He was?" Wolf interjected. "I was the one with the patience. My dear brother knew perfectly well I was sitting there contemplating various possibilities for doing away with him and he enjoyed every moment of it."
"Now how could I have known that, brother?" Dragon challenged. "Just because the wine goblet you were holding was twisted into a very odd shape?"
"It was that or your neck, brother," Wolf replied pleasantly. He looked at Rycca reassuringly. "Don't worry, if I hadn't already forgiven him, that sword he gave me would force me to."
"It is a magnificent blade," Dragon agreed. "They both are. Every smithy in Christendom is trying to work out what the Moors are doing but..."
"It's got something to do with the temperatu ~ Josie Litton

The animal is making quite a mess," the butler droned.
"Are you referring to the monkey, or to my nephew?" Fennington drawled, strolling into the room.
"Hm. How long did you lurk outside the room waiting forthat opportunity?" Bennett asked ~ Suzanne Enoch

I'm just so tired. I'm so, so tired all the time.' A tear slips down her face, all the way down till it drops off her chin, and she doesn't brush its trail away.
And I remember being in that jungle, lost in the darkest, wildest part of it, where fearsome beasts and carnivorous plants lurk between every tree. All I could do was lie down on the wet leaves. Bugs crawled up my legs, and I couldn't care enough to brush them off. ~ Emery Lord

All things come to those who lurk. Skulking is also an option. ~ Alex Gabriel

Motherhood is the great mesh in which all human relations are entangled, in which lurk our most elemental assumptions about love and power. ~ Adrienne Rich

Haven't you guessed by now? I'm a monster. I don't hide under your bed or in your closet. I don't lurk in dark corners or only come out at night. ~ Yolanda Olson

Partridge was pretending not to lurk near the stairs. 'The body's under the desk,' I said as I passed, just to give her something to worry about. ~ Jodi Taylor

We need others to bring us back into the comity of human life. This appears to have been the final lesson for me - to appreciate someone's embrace not as forgiveness or as an amicable judgment but as an acknowledgment that from time to time private life becomes brutally hard for every one of us, and that without one another, without some sort of community, the nightmare is prone to lurk, waiting for an opening. ~ John Jeremiah Sullivan

Ghost stories ... tell us about things that lie hidden within all of us, and which lurk outside all around us. ~ Susan Hill

Doth Nature draw me, 'tis because, Unto my seeming, there doth lurk A lawlessness about her laws, More mood than purpose in her work. ~ Alfred Austin

For hearts where wakened love doth lurk,
How fine, how blest a thing is work!
For work does good when reasons fail. ~ Jean Ingelow

Literally: This word should be deleted. All too often, actions described as "literally" did not happen at all. As in, "He literally jumped out of his skin." No, he did not. Though if he literally had, I'd suggest raising the element and proposing the piece for page one. Inserting "literally" willy-nilly reinforces the notion that breathless nitwits lurk within this newsroom. Eliminate on sight - the usage, not the nitwits. The nitwits are to be captured ~ Tom Rachman

White people on Facebook, I discovered by reading people's messages and walls, tended to lurk and judge. ~ Katherine Losse

They lurk in the cold and dark.Hungry and,wicked,they wait for their one chance to devour the weak on Sorry Night.Then the vours feast on a banquet of fear.Your fear.They steal your soul but your body remains.No one knows the difference. ~ Simon Holt

It turns out that an eerie type of chaos can lurk just behind a facade of order - and yet, deep inside the chaos lurks an even eerier type of order. ~ Douglas R. Hofstadter

Busy in a bus or lacking luck you poke to pluck a pick-up truck.
Utterly shocked you choke in the lock and check if you chuck a buck or if you are stuck in the muck.
So you should lurk in a day like this in such a murky lucky way.
In a day when you don't know if you laugh or cry...
Errands wait for those who are late in the busiest day.
Such day that defies all your senses and makes you want to fly...
To fly away! ~ Ana Claudia Antunes

But for me it was enough if, in my own bed, my sleep was so heavy as completely to relax my consciousness; for then I lost all sense of the place in which I had gone to sleep, and when I awoke at midnight, not knowing where I was, I could not be sure at first who I was; I had only the most rudimentary sense of existence, such as may lurk and flicker in the depths of an animal's consciousness; I was more destitute of human qualities than the cave-dweller; but then the memory, not yet of the place in which I was, but of various other places where I had lived, and might now very possibly be, would come like a rope let down from heaven to draw me up out of the abyss of not-being, from which I could never have escaped by myself: in a flash I would traverse and surmount centuries of civilisation, and out of a half-visualised succession of oil-lamps, followed by shirts with turned-down collars, would put together by degrees the component parts of my ego. ~ Anonymous

Do not be afraid of people who lurk in the shadows. Stand up for what you believe in. The people in the shadows are no match for people who are not afraid of light. ~ Alexander McCall Smith

But where hope rises, fear must lurk behind. ~ Anne Bronte

Sock Monsters lurk about, behind walls, in doors, behind washers and dryers! ~ Dalene Davies

What mysteries remain to be revealed in the nervous system, that web of structures both material and ethereal, that network of threads that runs throughout the body, composed of a thousand Ariadne's clues, all leading to the brain, that shadowy central den where the human bones lie scattered and the monsters lurk ~ Margaret Atwood

DNA sequencing opens vast ethical issues. We shall be able to know who has defective genes. What will it mean when we can be sure we're not all born equal? Worked out, the implications will scare a lot of people. Insurance companies will not want to cover those with a genetic predisposition to illness, for example. Here lurk myriad lawsuits. ~ Gregory Benford

It is perhaps not the Church and all that it stands for that some fear so, but instead the demons of humanity that lurk within, tainting its Holy walls with their evil and their lust and their malice.

And what if that window into our own souls wasn't just to show us our reflections, the good and bad of who we are, but instead the reflection of the whole world around us, and how we see that, in all its entirety of good and evil. ~ Ross Turner

But however secure and well-regulated civilized life may become, bacteria, Protozoa, viruses, infected fleas, lice, ticks, mosquitoes, and bedbugs will always lurk in the shadows ready to pounce when neglect, poverty, famine, or war lets down the defenses. ~ Hans Zinsser

Fear and debt drive this system. We are hammered with messages that terrify us into believing that we must pay any price, assume any debt, to stop the enemies who, we are told, lurk at our doorsteps. The ~ John Perkins

Beginnings are sudden, but also insidious. They creep up on you sideways, they keep to the shadows, they lurk unrecognized. Then, later, they spring. ~ Margaret Atwood

He broke up with me."
"Because you weren't in love with him. That's an iffy proposition, and I think he's handling with grace. A lot of teenage boys would sulk, or lurk around under your window with a boom box."
"No one has a boom box anymore. That was the eighties. ~ Cassandra Clare

Never get involved with people who are likely to envy you at the end of the day. People like that will actually lurk in the bushes, play your mind, and pounce on you when you are at our most vulnerable state. Envy is the root of all evil, in all men and women, everywhere. They're not going to leave your side, but for reasons that you wouldn't like! ~ C. JoyBell C.

For then I lost all sense of the place in which I had gone to sleep, and when I awoke at midnight, not knowing where I was, I could not be sure at first who I was; I had only the most rudimentary sense of existence, such as may lurk and flicker in the depths of an animal's consciousness; I was more destitute of human qualities than the cave-dweller; but then the memory, not yet of the place in which I was, but of various other places where I had lived, and might now very possibly be, would come like a rope let down from heaven to draw me up out of the abyss of not-being, from which I could never have escaped by myself.
Marcel Proust
In Search of Lost Time, 1913 ~ Marcel Proust

Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud, Hatch out. ~ Tiberius

And Barron is probably right - we should give this up. Not for the reason he's saying but for the one that's implied. The one about it not being okay to lurk around outside buildings, spying on girls you like. ~ Holly Black

I think he's handling it with grace. A lot of teenage boys would sulk, or lurk around under your window with a boom box. ~ Cassandra Clare

I felt the first inkling of a thing that presently grew quite clear in my mind, that oppressed me for many days, a sense of dethronement, a persuasion that I was no longer a master, but an animal among the animals, under the Martian heel.With us it would be as with them, to lurk and watch, to run and hide; the fear and empire of man had passed away. ~ H.G.Wells

Just as the office worker dreams of murdering his hated boss and so is saved from really murdering him, so it is with the author; with his great dreams he helps his readers to survive, to avoid their worst intentions. And society, without realizing it respects and even exalts him, albeit with a kind of jealousy, fear and even repulsion, since few people want to discover the horrors that lurk in the depths of their souls. This is the highest mission of great literature, and there is no other. ~ Ernesto Sabato

But maybe people like me aren't supposed to be saved. Maybe I'm just destined to bear the weight of the demons that lurk among the good. ~ E.K. Blair

Worry is the secret weapon perpetrated upon us by the dark forces of the world that lurk in the shape of fear, uncertainty, confusion, and loss.
We, on the other hand, have our own secret weapon against these incorporeal fiends.
It is laughter. ~ Vera Nazarian

In the conditions of the proletariat, those of old society at large are already virtually swamped. The proletarian is without property; his relation to his wife and children has no longer anything in common with the bourgeois family-relations; modern industrial labour, modern subjection to capital, the same in England as in France, in America as in Germany, has stripped him of every trace of national character. Law, morality, religion, are to him so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests. ~ Friedrich Engels

Like That"

Love me like a wrong turn on a bad road late at night, with no
moon and no town anywhere
and a large hungry animal moving heavily through the brush in
the ditch.
Love me with a blindfold over your eyes and the sound of rusty
water
blurting from the faucet in the kitchen, leaking down through
the floorboards to hot cement. Do it without asking,
without wondering or thinking anything, while the machinery's
shut down and the watchman's slumped asleep before his small TV
showing the empty garage, the deserted hallways, while the thieves
slice through
the fence with steel clippers. Love me when you can't find
a decent restaurant open anywhere, when you're alone in a glaring
diner
with two nuns arguing in the back booth, when your eggs are
greasy
and your hash browns underdone. Snick the buttons off the front
of my dress
and toss them one by one into the pond where carp lurk just
beneath the surface,
their cold fins waving. Love me on the hood of a truck no one's
driven
in years, sunk to its fenders in weeds and dead sunflowers;
and in the lilies, your mouth on my white throat, while turtles
drag
their bellies through slick mud, through the footprints of coots and
ducks.
Do it when no one's looking, when the riots begin and the planes
open up,
when the bus leaps the curb and the driver hits the brakes and the
Kim Addonizio

I do love Oregon." My gaze wanders over the quiet, natural beauty surrounding us, which isn't limited to just this garden. "Being near the river, and the ocean, and the rocky mountains, and all this nature ... the weather."
He chuckles. "I've never met anyone who actually loves rain. It's kind of weird. But cool, too," he adds quickly, as if afraid to offend me. "I just don't get it."
I shrug. "It's not so much that I love rain. I just have a healthy respect for what if does. People hate it, but the world needs rain. It washes away dirt, dilutes the toxins in the air, feeds drought. It keeps everything around us alive."
"Well, I have a healthy respect for what the sun does," he counters with a smile."
"I'd rather have the sun after a good, hard rainfall."
He just shakes his head at me but he's smiling. "The good with the bad?"
"Isn't that life?"
He frowns. "Why do I sense a metaphor behind that?"
"Maybe there is a metaphor behind that." One I can't very well explain to him without describing the kinds of things I see every day in my life. The underbelly of society - where twisted morals reign and predators lurk, preying on the lost, the broken, the weak, the innocent. Where a thirteen-year-old sells her body rather than live under the same roof as her abusive parents, where punks gang-rape a drunk girl and then post pictures of it all over the internet so the world can relive it with her. Where a junkie mom's drug addiction is readily f ~ K.A. Tucker

The history of science teaches only too plainly the lesson that no single method is absolutely to be relied upon, that sources of error lurk where they are least expected, and that they may escape the notice of the most experienced and conscientious worker. ~ John William Strutt

There are no snares more dangerous than those which lurk under the guise of duty or the name of relationship. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

you are so much more than the rippling fallacies
your reflection whispers to you.
those demons that lurk beneath the surface
do not know you
even though they pretend to.
and someday,
though it feels impossible,
you will see yourself as i do.
when time has finally finished healing your scars,
your siren call will scream 'I AM GOOD ENOUGH!'
and even your bewitching smile will shine through.
but until that day, the day you are okay, just keep singing yourself to sleep.
And eventually, your monsters will stop haunting you.
- trust me. ~ Amanda Lovelace

Success and glory are in the advance, disaster and shame lurk in the rear. ~ John Pope

My roommates continue to lurk in the doorway.

I find a pair of clean boxers and tug them on. "I swear to God, if you tell me you've been watching me sleep for the last hour like a bunch of creepers, I'm calling the cops. ~ Elle Kennedy

You wonder how they do it and you look to see the knack You watch the foot in action, or the shoulder or the back, But when you spot the answer where the higher glamours lurk You'll find in moving higher up the laurel covered spire That most of it is practice and the rest of it is work. ~ Grantland Rice

We need the tonic of the wilderness, to wade sometimes in the marsh where the bitten and the meadow hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground. ~ Henry David Thoreau

We real cool. We
Left school. We
Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We
Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We
Jazz June. We
Die soon. ~ Gwendolyn Brooks

Preserve my sanity, for to this I am reduced. Safety and the assurance of safety are things of the past. Whilst I live on here there is but one thing to hope for, that I may not go mad, if, indeed, I be not mad already. If I be sane, then surely it is maddening to think that of all the foul things that lurk in this hateful place. ~ Bram Stoker

Lift Not The Painted Veil
Lift not the painted veil which those who live
Call Life: though unreal shapes be pictured there,
And it but mimic all we would believe
With colours idly spread,
behind, lurk Fear
And Hope, twin Destinies; who ever weave
Their shadows, o'er the chasm, sightless and drear.
I knew one who had lifted it
he sought,
For his lost heart was tender, things to love,
But found them not, alas! nor was there aught
The world contains, the which he could approve.
Through the unheeding many he did move,
A splendour among shadows, a bright blot
Upon this gloomy scene, a Spirit that strove
For truth, and like the Preacher found it not. ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

Ghosts can haunt damned near anything. I have heard them in the breathy voice of a song and seen them between the covers of a book. They have hidden in trees so that their faces peer out of the bark, and hovered beneath the silver surface of water. They disguise themselves as cracks in concrete or come calling in a delirium of fever. On summer days they keep pace like the shadow of our shadow. They lurk in the breath of young girls who give us our first kiss. I've seen men who were haunted to the point of madness by things that never were and things that should have been. I've seen ghosts in the lines on a woman's face and heard them in the jangling of keys. The ghosts in fire freeze and the ghosts in ice burn. Some died long ago; some were never born. Some ride the blood in my veins until it reaches my brain. Sometimes I even mistake myself for one. Sometimes I am one. ~ Damien Echols

Good and evil exist in all of us.
a moment's temptation takes us on a wrong path.
On that path may lurk foul fiends,
inhuman, yet feeding, needing
all our weaknesses: vanity, indolence and envy,
Easy fruits for evil appetites,
our flesh, a tasty afterthought,
our bones flung asunder. ~ Emmanuelle De Maupassant

When you look in the mirror, your difficult sibling always looks back, though the image is distorted. In the shadows lurk parts of yourself and your past that you don't want to notice. Behind the reflection, silently influencing the interaction, stand your parents, your grandparents, and all their siblings. ~ Jeanne Safer Jeanne Safer Ph.D.

What lies lurk in kisses. ~ Heinrich Heine

No writing is wasted. Did you know that sourdough from San Francisco is leavened partly by a bacteria called lactobacillus sanfrancisensis? It is native to the soil there, and does not do well elsewhere. But any kitchen can become an ecosystem. If you bake a lot, your kitchen will become a happy home to wild yeasts, and all your bread will taste better. Even a failed loaf is not wasted. Likewise, cheese makers wash the dairy floor with whey. Tomato gardeners compost with rotten tomatoes. No writing is wasted: the words you can't put in your book can wash the floor, live in the soil, lurk around in the air. They will make the next words better. ~ Erin Bow

We can't see the true characters of those who lurk in the shade until they are exposed to the light… ~ Nanette L. Avery

This is th' abyss. Behold wherein I lurk
The lazar-house my mind, wherein do work
The horrid charnel-priests, whose loathly song
Sickens my soul, and quells the spirit strong. ~ Aleister Crowley

Johansen, thank God, did not know quite all, even though he saw the city and the Thing, but I shall never sleep calmly again when I think of the horrors that lurk ceaselessly behind life in time and in space, and of those unhallowed blasphemies from elder stars which dream beneath the sea, known and favoured by a nightmare cult ready and eager to loose them upon the world whenever another earthquake shall heave their monstrous stone city again to the sun and air. ~ H.P. Lovecraft

Dangers lurk in all systems. Systems incorporate the unexamined beliefs of their creators. Adopt a system, accept its beliefs, and you help strengthen the resistance to change ~ Frank Herbert

Lurk A Novel by Adam Vine ~ Adam Vine

Like the character I played in 'Jekyll', we all have different masks we put on for different occasions. As much as we all want to lead decent lives, we're also attracted by the idea that something dark may lurk within us. ~ James Nesbitt

The problem I want to talk to you about tonight is the problem of belief. What does it mean to believe? We use this word all the time, and I think behind it lurk some really extraordinary taboos and confusions. What I want to argue tonight is that how we talk about belief- how we fail to criticize or criticize the beliefs of others, has more importance to us personally, more consequence to us personally and to civilization than perhaps anything else that is in our power to influence. ~ Sam Harris

Despite the clear scientific consensus, a veritable brigade of self-proclaimed, underinformed armchair experts lurk on comment threads the world over, eager to pour scorn on climate science. Barrages of ad hominem attacks all too often await both the scientists working in climate research and journalists who communicate the research findings. ~ David Robert Grimes

In days and he was too late to pick up the trail at her home station. The best he could do was to lurk around the ~ Robert Galbraith

Science fiction used to be a dangerous literature. Now, it is a very commercial genre, and whatever dangers might still lurk within seem to have been safely sanitized for the marketplace. The real crime is that the lobotomy has been self performed. I ~ Harlan Ellison

In Nita's experience, the best intelligence officers in any big family were found among the younger siblings. They began their careers while small, nonthreatening, and unobtrusive. By adolescence, they developed formidable powers of observation and recollection, to say nothing of an ability to lurk at keyholes and befriend the servants. ~ Grace Burrowes

Readers are less and less seen as mere non-writers, the subhuman other or flawed derivative of the author; the lack of a pen is no longer a shameful mark of secondary status but a positively enabling space, just as within every writer can be seen to lurk, as a repressed but contaminating antithesis, a reader. ~ Terry Eagleton

Bugs lurk in corners and congregate at boundaries. ~ Boris Beizer

Why, oh why, do you hide in shadows?
As a venomous viper you lurk in dark corners.
Waiting, waiting, waiting to spew your hate. cantankerous you are though you haven't a clue.
Spread, spread, spreading over beauty like a poisonous cloak.
At your touch the day is dark. At your touch the dark is death.
Dying, dying, dying, all light is gone, made ash of simmering sulfur no more to see the day, the dawn.
Do we partake of your deceit or do we despise?
Your lies, your lies, I will outlive your lies, and once again color this world in truth.
Pure, so sweet, the taste of revenge.
Be cursed evil shroud for the dark never wins. ~ Anonymous Diva

Poor Aubrey: I hope he will get all right. He brought a strangely new personality to English art, and was a master in his way of fantastic grace, and the charm of the unreal. His muse had moods of terrible laughter. Behind his grotesques there seemed to lurk some curious philosophy ... ~ Oscar Wilde

History's smell.
Like old roses on a breeze.
It would lurk forever in ordinary things. In coat hangers. Tomatoes. In the tar on roads. In certain colours. In the plates at a restaurant. In the absence of words. And the emptiness in eyes. ~ Arundhati Roy