Marking Quotes

And what is the very essence of poetry if it is not this 'metaphorical language'-this marking of the before unapprehended relations of things? ~ Owen Barfield

Time is a relationship that we have with the rest of the universe; or more accurately, we are one of the clocks, measuring one kind of time. Animals and aliens may measure it differently. We may even be able to change our way of marking time one day, and open up new realms of experience, in which a day today will be a million years. ~ George Zebrowski

He was part of the night, the creatures known to him, the restless, untamed land matching his hungry soul. Beau watched him,observing the utter stillness marking the dangerous predator, the merciless eyes moving constantly,missing nothing.The powerful, well-muscled body was deceptively relaxed but ready for anything. The face,harshy sensual, beautifully cruel, was etched with hardship and knowledge,rish and peril. Gregori stayed in the shadows,but the silver menace of his gaze glowed with a strange iridescent light in the dark of the night.
Beau took the opportunity to study Savannah. She was everything up close that she had been on the stage, even more. Ethereal, mysterious, sexy. They very stuff of men's fantasies. Her face was flawless, lit up with joy, her eyes clear,like beautiful blue star sapphires. Her laughter was musical and infectious. She was small and innocent beside the predator in his boat. She would touch Gregori's arm, point to something on the embankment, her body brushing his lightly,and each time it happened,those pale eyes would warm to molten mercury and caress fer face intimately,hungrily. ~ Christine Feehan

But what is this clock, marking only so many years, that such men seem to consult in the dark of their being? We do not know. All we do know for certain is that no such clock, no such warnings, can come out of the passing time that we are told is all we have. They belong to a larger idea of Time, like all these dreams that came true. ~ J.B. Priestley

Marking a book is literally an experience of your differences or agreements with the author. It is the highest respect you can pay him. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

The pastoral labours of the archbishop of Constantinople provoked and gradually united against him two sorts of enemies; the aspiring clergy, who envied his success, and the obstinate sinners, who were offended by his reproofs. When Chrysostom thundered from the pulpit of St. Sophia against the degeneracy of the Christians, his shafts were spent among the crowd, without wounding or even marking the character of any individual. ~ Edward Gibbon

And though the implication is that I am the sort who is always careful and preparing, I that that's not right, either' in fact I feel I have not really been living anywhere or anytime, not for the future and not in the past and not at all of-the-moment, but rather in a lonely dream of an oblivion, the nothing-of-nothing drift from one pulse beat to the next, which is really the most bloodless marking-out, automatic and involuntary. [pp. 320-321] ~ Chang-rae Lee

Oz suddenly looked very guilty. "About that. Um, that's because I marked you last night."
My smile froze on my cheeks, making my face ache. "What?"
He suddenly found the half-eaten pancakes on his plate fascinating. "While you were sleeping on the couch, I rolled you over and ... "
The blood left my face. "What exactly does marking someone entail?"
"Nothing so bad. I just bit your back."
"You bit me?"
"Yeah. I injected some venom into your bloodstream that would make you feel better around me. I like holding your hand but I didn't think it was very practical."
I lifted my shirt, pulled down my pants, and almost fell over. My lower back looked ... it looked ... "You gave me a festering tramp stamp?" I shrieked.
"You don't think it's cute? ~ Katherine Pine

Everything seems different now. The room I am in looks no more familiar to me than it did this morning when I woke up and stumbled into it, trying to find the kitchen, desperate for a drink of water, desperate to piece together what happened last night. And yet it no longer seems shot through with pain, and sadness. It no longer seems emblematic of a life I cannot consider living. The ticking of the clock at my shoulder is no longer just marking time. It speaks to me. Relax, it says. Relax, and take what comes. ~ S.J. Watson

I like everything about you, Larry. I like the way you look and how you're so clever, and I like it when we laugh together and watch TV together. I like going to art galleries with you and hearing you get all bitchy about some of the artists. I like watching you when you're doing marking, 'cause you get these funny looks on your face. I like watching you sleep and hearing that snuffly noise you make. I like waking up with you at weekends and spending the day together, just doing stuff like walking round town and shopping and cooking and stuff." I kind of ran out of breath after that.
For a moment, I thought he was going to cry."Is there anything you don't like about me? ~ J.L. Merrow

I knew a teacher that kept a calendar on his desk. He didn't use it for lesson planning though. Instead he was marking time until summer. That's what prisoners do on walls. They mark the days until they go free. But if you're marking time as a teacher, you aren't redeeming the time with your students. A parent drops a child off at the beginning of the year and it's your job to redeem the time and educate that child. It's your responsibility to see that child progress throughout the year. The child should be a better student as a result of being in your classroom. You are responsible - for successes and failures - and you have an obligation to students and parents to redeem every precious minute you're given as an educator. ~ Tucker Elliot

The fateful moment for the Chinese economy, crippled by central planning and collectivized production, was when Deng Xiaoping, China's long-term leader after Mao's death, announced that the country would pursue "Socialism with Chinese characteristics," which is to say a market economy under an authoritarian technocracy. This was in 1977, as good a year as any for marking the birth of modern China. Deng and his associates undertook a job akin to that of a political bomb squad, laboriously dismantling most of the economic ideology installed by Mao without blowing up political continuity at the same time. That they succeeded is in many ways the single most important political fact of contemporary China. ~ Clay Shirky

T just seemed as if she were marking time while life rocketed past. ~ Soheir Khashoggi

...in a universe where both information and misinformation are constantly suspect, reviewed and drifing as they must be (constantly) by and between the two, a moment when either information or misinformation turns out to be harmless must bloom, when surrounded by the workings of desire and terror, into the offered sign of all about it, making and marking all about it innocent by contamination. ~ Samuel R. Delany

She was about twenty-four, Rosemary guessed - her face could have been described in terms of conventional prettiness, but the effect was that it had been made first on the heroic scale with strong structure and marking, as if the features and vividness of brow and coloring, everything we associate with temperament and character had been molded with a Rodinesque intention, and then chiseled away in the direction of prettiness to a point where a single slip would have irreparably diminished its force and quality. With the mouth the sculptor had taken desperate chances - it was the cupid's bow of a magazine cover, yet it shared the distinction of the rest. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

You will stumble on secrets. Hidden all over the restaurant: Mexican oregano, looking cauterized, as heady as pot. Large tins of Chef's private anchovies from Catalonia hidden behind the bulk olive oil. Quarts of grassy sencha and tiny bullets of stone-ground matcha. Ziplock bags of masa. In certain lockers, bottles of sriracha. Bottles of well whiskey in the dry goods. Bars of chocolate slipped between books in the manager's office.

And people too, with their secret crafts, their secret fluency in other languages. The sharing of secrets is a ceremony, marking kinship. You have no secrets yet, so you don't know what you don't know. But you can intuit it while holding yourself on the skin of the water, treading above deep pockets, faint voices underneath you. ~ Stephanie Danler

For me, once I've made a cup of tea I belong somehow. It's like I'm marking out my territory, and anyone attempting to come and make a cup of tea on my patch will be dealt with most severely, more likely than not with a counter attack into their territory and the seizure of their milk cartons and shortbread biscuits. ~ Tony Hawks

There was no lifeboat here in these
deep, killing waters, not even a lighthouse, marking the way back to shore with its soft amber promise.
There was only the storm of Barrons and the one I seemed to be, and if there were dark shapes moving in the waters beneath my feet that I should probably take a good hard look at and possibly reconsider trying to swim here, I didn't care. ~ Karen Marie Moning

Tonight was marking the first of many goodbyes yet to come as we all took off in different directions across the map to live out the next chapters of our lives. Would we ever be in the same place like this ever again? Would we remember who we were to each other? Would we grow up and forget to be idiots?
Maturity blows. ~ T. Torrest

These scenes, by the way, are not altogether a literary device - a means of summing up and making a knot of innumerable little threads. Innumerable threads were there; still, if I stopped to disentangle, I could collect a number. But whatever the reason may be, I find that scene making is my natural way of marking the past. ~ Virginia Woolf

This isn't how it should be, God.

Thousands of graves marking thousands of lives--so much focus on death. Did the gravediggers spend their lives just serving the dead? How many Numbers ticked away for the sake of carving headstones no one would read?

As I stare at this scene, I decide I don't want a headstone when I die. I don't even want to be buried. I want to disappear--save that chunk of earth for people to live on. This land I stand on is worthless now. No one can build a house here. No one can plant gardens or start a new village. Is that what the people buried beneath me would have wanted?

Earth wasn't intended to hold only dead bodies.

I stand. God, I need to live. ~ Nadine Brandes

Reaching inside his coat, Christopher pulled out the letter from Pru, the one he carried with him always. It had become a talisman, a symbol of what he had fought for. A reason for living. He looked down at the bit of folded paper, not even needing to open it. The words had been seared into his heart.
"Please come home and find me…"
In the past he had wondered if he were incapable of love. None of his love affairs had ever lasted more than a matter of months, and although they had blazed on a physical level, they had never transcended that. Ultimately no particular woman had ever seemed all that different from the rest.
Until those letters. The sentences had looped around him with a spirit so artless and adorable, he had loved it, loved her, immediately.
His thumb moved over the parchment as if it were sensitive living skin. "Mark my words, Audrey--I'm going to marry the woman who wrote this letter."
"I am marking your words," she assured him. "We'll see if you live up to them. ~ Lisa Kleypas

Feet gauge the pliable tracts of snowy hoodlum
Amidst the pacing sobs of our night sky
I watch you go, I watch them come
Within the life span of an iridescent sigh;
I watch the tracks bereft of a human hand,
I watch them trite in thy laconic land,
I watch them silent from where I stand,
I watch them marking a bloodied rand,
I watch the tracks bereft of a human hand,
I watch them silent from where I stand. ~ Ashfaq Saraf

The eager and often inconsiderate appeals of reformers and revolutionists are indispensable to counterbalance the inertia and fossilism marking so large a part of human institutions. ~ Walt Whitman

The full moon symbol on my calendar no longer seemed to be a period marking the end of something, but just another way of counting time. ~ Charlaine Harris

Why does Jesus regard the Father and himself as the best model for all humans? Because neither the Father nor the Son desires greedily, egotistically. God "makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and he sends his rain on the just and on the unjust." God gives to us without counting, without marking the least difference between us. He lets the weeds grow with the wheat until the time of harvest. If we imitate the detached generosity of God, then the trap of mimetic rivalries will never close over us. This is why Jesus says also, "Ask, and it will be given to you ... " When Jesus declares that he does not abolish the Law but fulfills it, he articulates a logical consequence of his teaching. The goal of the Law is peace among humankind. Jesus never scorns the Law, even when it takes the form of prohibitions. Unlike modern thinkers, he knows quite well that to avoid conflicts, it is necessary to begin with prohibitions. ~ Rene Girard

November 20. Andrius's birthday. I had counted the days carefully. I wished him a happy birthday when I woke and thought about him while hauling logs during the day. At night, I sat by the light of the stove, reading Dombey and Son. Krasivaya. I still hadn't found the word. Maybe I'd find it if I jumped ahead. I flipped through some of the pages. A marking caught my eye. I leafed backward. Something was written in pencil in the margin of 278.
Hello, Lina. You've gotten to page 278. That's pretty good!
I gasped, then pretened I was engrossed in the book. I looked at Andrius's handwritting. I ran my finger over this elongated letters in my name. Were there more? I knew I should read onward. I couldn't wait. I turned though the pages carefully, scanning the margins.
Page 300:
Are you really on page 300 or are you skipping ahead now?
I had to stifle my laughter.
Page 322:
Dombey and Son is boring. Admit it.
Page 364:
I'm thinking of you.
Page 412:
Are you maybe thinking of me?
I closed my eyes.
Yes, I'm thinking of you. Happy birthday, Andrius. ~ Ruta Sepetys

In any case, if the reader would have a correct idea of the mood of these exiles, we must conjure up once more those dreary evenings, sifting down through a haze of dust and golden light upon the treeless streets filled with teeming crowds of men and women. For, characteristically, the sound that rose towards the terraces still bathed in the last glow of daylight, now that the noises of vehicles and motors
the sole voice of cities in ordinary times
had ceased, was but one vast rumour of low voices and incessant footfalls, the drumming of innumerable soles timed to the eerie whistling of the plague in the sultry air above, the sound of a huge concourse of people marking time, a never-ending, stifling drone that, gradually swelling, filled the town from end to end, and evening after evening gave its truest, mournfullest expression to the blind endurance which had ousted love from all our hearts. ~ Albert Camus

I dream the scent
of my mother's lipstick
has come back to haunt me -
like an oil pastel
marking
my dreary, dramatic heart. ~ Analicia Sotelo

I feel with ELP that I wasn't making the most of my life and I wasn't making the most of my creativity. I was marking time. I don't want to do that. Life is to short. ~ Greg Lake

There are little flags, marking the trunk rings.' He plucked one, and picked out the lettering. 'University of Krakow. Scientists did this. What's the point? ~ Terry Pratchett

They do not know that by thinking in new directions (which has been called the definition of genius) they can bring new directions into their lives. Most of them are marking time, as if they have a non-cancelable contract with life. How can we rise above our more egregious mistakes if we just mark time! Let's do it better than it's been done before. Let's find our partner in the freest, richest land on earth and do something wonderful with this holiday we've been mysteriously granted. ~ Earl Nightingale

This book is a treasure; I did not suspect it would be so good when I picked it up, but now I can feel the printed words seeping through my skin and into my veins, rushing to my heart and marking it forever.
I want to savor this wonder, this happening of loving a book and reading it for the first time, because the first time is always the best, and I will never read this book for the first time ever again. ~ Laura Nowlin

In this way they went on, and on, and on-in the language of the story-books-until at last the village lights appeared before them, and the church spire cast a long reflection on the graveyard grass; as if it were a dial (alas, the truest in the world!) marking, whatever light shone out of Heaven, the flight of days and weeks and years, by some new shadow on that solemn ground. ~ Charles Dickens

If our
contemporaries as a whole could see what it is that is guiding them
and where they are really going, the modern world would at once
cease to exist as such, for the 'rectification' that has often been
alluded to in the author's other works could not fail to come about
through that very circumstance; on the other hand, since this 'recti-
fication' presupposes arrival at the point at which the 'descent' is
completely accomplished, where 'the wheel stops turning' - at least
for the instant marking the passage from one cycle to another - it is
necessary to conclude that, until this point is actually attained, it is
impossible that these things should be understood by men in gen-
eral, but only by the small number of those who are destined to pre-
pare, in one way or in another, the germs of the future cycle. It is
scarcely necessary to say that everything that the author has set out
in this book and elsewhere is intended to be addressed exclusively to
these few, without any concern for the inevitable incomprehension
of the others; it is true that these others are, and still must be for a
certain time to come, an immense majority, but then it is precisely
in the 'reign of quantity', and only then, that the opinion of the
majority can claim to be taken into consideration at all. ~ Rene Guenon

Adam asked, "What is he doing, anyway?"
"Peeing."
"Trust Lynch to deface a place like this five minutes after getting here."
"Deface? Marking his territory."
"He must own more of Virginia than your father, then."
"I don't think he's ever used an indoor toilet, now that I think about it. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

I shook my head. "Tomorrow you won't even remember my name, my face - "
He stepped closer, eyes scanning me. "Emerson Wingate. Dark hair with reddish highlights. Bright blue eyes." His gaze dipped, roaming over me. "Hundred ten. Hundred fifteen pounds. Your hands . . ." He plucked one of my hands up, pressing his palm flush to mine. He considered our kissing palms, my hand so much smaller than his own. The tips of my fingers barely passed his middle knuckle.
"Beautiful hands." My chest tightened at his deep voice washing over me. "Slender. Fine-boned but strong. Like they play an instrument. Piano maybe?" His eyes locked with mine. A dark eyebrow arched in question.
"I-I paint," I admitted.
He smiled as if he had just solved some kind of puzzle. "You paint," he echoed and continued, marking characteristics like he was reading off a chart. "Skin smooth. Pale. A tight little body perfect for tying guys up in knots."
My eyes shot to his face and I yanked my hand away from his. I rubbed my palm against my thigh, still feeling his touch there. "Go to hell."
"Temperamental." He gave me his half smile. "See? I'll remember you. ~ Sophie Jordan

We try to evade the question of existence with property, prestige, power, possession, production, fun, and, ultimately, by trying to forget that we- that I- exist. No matter how much he thinks of God or goes to church, or how much he believes in religious ideas , if he, the whole man, is deaf to the question of existence, if he does not have an answer to it, he is marking time, and he lives and dies like one of the million things he produces. He thinks of God, instead of experiencing God. ~ Erich Fromm

When he bared his fangs, she knew he was going to go for her jugular, and she wanted him there. Turning her head to the side, she bared herself to him - The strike was brutal, his fangs going in so deep, she screamed - but not in pain, even though it hurt in a delicious way. This was the marking she had heard about. This was the owning of the female by the male, the staking of the claim. And sure enough, he held her in place at the throat with his teeth as he marked her from the inside out by coming into her sex. But ~ J.R. Ward

The story, I like to say and remember, is always smarter than you - there will be patterns of theme, image, and idea that are much savvier and more complex than what you could come up with on your own. Find them with your marking pens as they emerge in your drafts. Become a student of your work in progress. Look for what your material is telling you about your material. Every aspect of a story has its own story. ~ Lucy Corin

Far from marking the outer edge of the solar system, as those schoolroom maps so cavalierly imply, Pluto is barely one-fifty-thousandth of the way. ~ Bill Bryson

I pray the gods some respite from the weary task of this long year's watch that lying on the Atreidae's roof on bended arm, dog- like, I have kept, marking the conclave of all night's stars, those potentates blazing in the heavens that bring winter and summer to mortal men, the constellations, when they wane, when they rise. ~ Aeschylus

But there are rock and roll fans all over this continent and all over the globe, really, and we're just set at marking the planet with Styx music until the day we die. ~ James Young

Having the Having"

I tie knots in the strings of my spirit
to remember. They are not pictures
of what was. Not accounts of dusk
amid the olive trees and that odor.
The walking back was the arriving.
For that there are three knots
and a space and another two
close together. They do not imitate
the inside of her body, nor her clean
mouth. They cannot describe, but they
can prevent remembering it wrong.
The knots recall. The knots
are blazons marking the trail
back to what we own and imperfectly
forget. Back to a bell ringing
far off, and the sweet summer darkening.
All but a little of it blurs and leaks
away, but that little is most of it,
even damaged. Two more knots
and then just straight string. ~ Jack Gilbert

trange things began to happen in the sea.
Anchor buoys marking the dorymen's fishing trawl sank and then shot back to the surface. ~ Barbara Walsh

When the Bolide Fragmentation Rate shot up through a certain level on Day 701, marking the formal beginning of the White Sky, a number of cultural organizations launched programs that they had been planning since around the time of the Crater Lake announcement. Many of these were broadcast on shortwave radio, and so Ivy had her pick of programs from Notre Dame, Westminster Abbey, St. Patrick's Cathedral, the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, Tiananmen Square, the Potala Palace, the Great Pyramids, the Wailing Wall.

After sampling all of them she locked her radio dial on Notre Dame, where they were holding the Vigil for the End of the World and would continue doing so until the cathedral fell down in ruins upon the performers' heads and extinguished all life in the remains of the building. She couldn't watch it, since video bandwidth was scarce, but she could imagine it well: the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, its ranks swollen by the most prestigious musicians of the Francophone world, all dressed in white tie and tails, ball gowns and tiaras, performing in shifts around the clock, playing a few secular classics but emphasizing the sacred repertoire: masses and requiems. The music was marred by the occasional thud, which she took to be the sonic booms of incoming bolides. In most cases the musicians played right through. Sometimes a singer would skip a beat. An especially big boom produced screams and howls of dismay from the audience, blended with the clank an ~ Neal Stephenson

As Ian looked at her, he felt something in his chest slip and shift. The pressure came with a blood-tingling rush of triumph and satisfaction, pride and a deeply burning sense of possessiveness. His inner caveman warrior had been awakened and wanted to rush around the room, peeing into the corners, marking it - and her - as his own, while shouting Mine! and randomly smashing things for emphasis.
But he knew that was he was feeling was the equivalent of emotional and hormonal indigestion. He hadn't done this in a long time. And he particularly hadn't done it with a woman he liked as much as this one. In fact, he'd never had sex with anyone that he genuinely liked as much as he liked Phoebe. ~ Suzanne Brockmann

Sometimes I still forget to look for the gentler parts of her. For so long all I saw was the strength, standing out like the wiry muscles in her arms or the black ink marking her collarbone with flight. ~ Veronica Roth

I want to make love to you, Rhone. I want to fill your ass with my penis and fuck you until you love it just as much as I do. I want to suck your dick and eat your balls until your cum coats my tongue and throat. I want you to do the same to me. I want to come inside you, in your mouth, in your ass, on your chest, marking you as mine in a way you can feel even when I'm not by your side. That's what I want. It's what I've wanted ever since you told me I could have a different, better life and then took the time to care and to show me how to care about myself. I want everything you can give, and I want to offer you everything that I am. ~ Cameron Dane

a Quarter Quell. They occur every twenty-five years, marking the anniversary of the districts' defeat with over-the-top celebrations and, for extra fun, some miserable twist for the tributes. I've ~ Suzanne Collins

The lady across the hall tried to rob a department store ... with a pricing gun. She said, "Give me all of the money in the vault, or I'm marking down everything in the store." ~ Steven Wright

Everyone had very uncreased necks, which meant no prolonged inclining of the head, which meant no reading. Linda's own neck looked like a finger, but she reassured herself that the creases were like tree rings marking her substance. ~ Tony Tulathimutte

Some musicians like to decorate their walls with discs saying: '1 million records sold in America.' I prefer to put up discs marking sales in lesser-known countries. ~ Jamie Cullum

I rubbed my head against his chest like a cat soliciting attention and marking her territory. I couldn't get close enough. I wished humans had a pouch like kangaroos.. I would happily climb in and let Griff tote me around everywhere. ~ Genna Rulon

Kids are like pissing cats or burrowing moles, marking off land within land, each section with its own rules, beliefs, laws of engagement. ~ Zadie Smith

At one point, Tom came back with another tattoo hidden under the bracelet he'd worn since his and Prophet's first mission together. A tattoo that was almost an exact replica of the bracelet. "So no one can take it off me again," he'd said in response to Prophet's unasked question. Because when Tom had been jailed in New Orleans, he'd been forced to take it off, and he'd then waited until Prophet could put it back on him. The superstitious voodoo bastard. But Prophet had to admit it made him smile when Tom wasn't looking. And once he'd discovered it, he'd taken the time to trace it with his tongue and nip it with his teeth, marking Tom hard, wanting to give tangible proof to his feelings. When Tom found out about the other shit - his eyes, everything else he was hiding - he might run, but Prophet resigned himself to the fact that his heart could get ripped out. Again. And it would be worse this time. Way worse, because Prophet knew more, felt more, loved harder. ~ S.E. Jakes

God pulled back and gripped a handful of Day's hair, pulling so that he was looking up at him. God bent down and gently grazed his soft lips across his. Day's body vibrated from the sensual feeling. God rubbed his face all over Day's as if he were a cat marking him with his scent. God's grip tightened in his hair and he moaned again. Day could feel God's body trembling and Day didn't know at that moment if the shaking was from residual fear or need, so he didn't move as he let his lover do what he needed to do. God ~ A.E. Via

Montaigne simply turns his mind loose and writes whatever he feels like writing. Mostly, he wants to say that reason is not a special, unique gift of human beings, marking us off from the rest of nature. ~ Lewis Thomas

There always comes in September a parched brightness to the air that hits Rabbit two ways, smelling of apples and blackboard dust and marking the return to school and work in earnest, but then again reminding him he's suffered another promotion, taken another step up the stairs that has darkness at the head. ~ John Updike

I did not piss in the bloody shower."

"You're a liar."

"KANE!" I screeched. "I went to the toilet before I got in. If I pissed in the fuckin' shower, I'd say it."

"Uh-huh."

"I'll piss on you if you keep this up."

"Is that a way of marking your territory?"

I covered my face with my hands.

"I hate you," I grumbled.

"Now I definitely know you're lying."

I lowered my hands and glared at him. "I do hate you."

He smiled. "Then I love the way you hate me. ~ L.A. Casey

The kind of poem I produced in those days was hardly anything more than a sign I made of being alive, of passing or having passed, or hoping to pass, through certain intense human emotions. It was a phenomenon of orientation rather than of art, thus comparable to stripes of paint on a roadside rock or to a pillared heap of stones marking a mountain trail. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

My own drawing was a house made of books, but where there should have been a door, there was a book, and where there should have been windows, there were books, and where the chimney should have been open to let the smoke out, a book was covering the hole, so if anyone was in the house, they couldn't get out. They'd suffocate, to be found years later, a desiccated corpse still marking its place in the book it had been reading with a knobby finger bone, head caved in by an avalanche of fallen books. As I said, I liked books. ~ Nova Ren Suma

Don't stop," she whispered. "I want to feel you inside me."
"I couldn't stop now, even if I wanted." He kissed her, marking her with all the passion and yearning she had felt for so long. "I need this. Damn it, I need you."
And then he plunged into her with one deep stroke. ~ J. Lynn

She marking them begins a wailing note And sings extemporally a woeful ditty How love makes young men thrall and old men dote How love is wise in folly, foolish-witty Her heavy anthem still concludes in woe, And still the choir of echoes answer so. ~ William Shakespeare

Life is an error-making and an error-correctin g process, and nature in marking man's papers will grade him for wisdom as measured both by survival and by the quality of life of those who survive. ~ Jonas Salk

Come here, little Cyra, and let me have a look at you," Yma Zetsyvis said. "Not so little anymore, I suppose. How old are you?"
"I've sojourned ten times," I said, using the traditional time reference--marking what I had survived rather than how long I had existed. Then I clarified, "I began early, though--I'll be sixteen seasons in a few days."
"Oh, to be young and think in days!" Yma laughed. "So, still a child, then, tall as you are."
Yma had a gift for elegant insults. Calling me a child was one of her mildest ones, I was sure. ~ Veronica Roth

My new life was marking me. It was happening so quickly. There were intermittent spells of resistance, during which I'd pluck and moisturize and exfoliate, and then there was a period of grieving for my old self, who seemed to be disappearing toward the horizon, and then I relaxed into it. ~ Kristin Kimball

The great men of the earth are but the marking-stones on the road of humanity; they are the priests of its religion. ~ Giuseppe Mazzini

My friends, we did it. We weren't just marking time, we made a difference. We made (America) stronger - we made (America) freer - and we left her in good hands. All in all, not bad. Not bad at all. And so, goodbye. God bless you. And God bless the United States of America. ~ Ronald Reagan

Not very long ago some one invented the assertion that there were only "Four Hundred" people in New York City who were really worth noticing. But a wiser man has arisen - the census taker - and his larger estimate of human interest has been preferred in marking out the field of these little stories of the "Four Million. ~ O. Henry

I know we don't like to vote – marking your ballot nowadays is like choosing between the 3am showing of Beastmaster on Showtime and the 3am showing of Beastmaster 2 on Cinemax. ~ Dennis Miller

We have the power of the Holy Cross, our holy symbol, the divine grace of Christ, only as long as we have the holy marking of the Holy Baptism, meaning we have denied the devil and sided with Christ, and received the Holy Marking, the seal of the Gift of the Holy Spirit. ~ Elder Paisios Of Mount Athos

Byatt's carved her initials over and over. BW. BW. BW. She does that everywhere. On the bunk, on her desk in every class we had, on the trees in the grove by the water. Marking Raxter as hers, and sometimes I think if she asked, I'd let her do the same to me. ~ Rory Power

At least it was gym and there was a little wiggle room.
Or so I thought. Miss Lynn,that hideous creature, was waiting outside the door, marking off girls as they came in. ~ Kiersten White

ON THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF D-Day, I was broadcasting from the American cemetery overlooking Omaha Beach at Colleville-sur-Mer in Normandy, one of the bloodiest battlefields in American history. The cemetery is at once haunting and beautiful, with 9,386 white marble headstones in long, even lines across the manicured fields of dark green, each headstone marking the death of a brave young American. The anniversary was a somber and celebratory ~ Tom Brokaw

I don't believe that Nature's powers
Have tied her hands or pinioned ours,
By marking on the heavenly vault
Our fate without mistake or fault.
That fate depends on conjunctions
Of places, persons, times, and tracks,
And not on the functions
Of more or less of quacks. ~ Jean De La Fontaine

We are like a bunch of dogs squirting on fire hydrants. We poison the groundwater with our toxic piss, marking everything MINE in a ridiculous attempt to survive our deaths. ~ John Green

When the first mechanical clocks were invented, marking off time in crisp, regular intervals, it must have surprised people to discover that time flowed outside their own mental and physiological processes. Body time flows at its own variable rate, oblivious to the most precise hydrogen master clocks in the laboratory. In fact, the human body contains its own exquisite time-pieces, all with their separate rhythms. There are the alpha waves in the brain; another clock is the heart. And all the while tick the mysterious, ruthless clocks that regulate aging. ~ Alan Lightman

Fire!
Your nose ignites,
flameless kerosene
(and, some say, Drano)
laced with ephedrine
you want to cry
powdered demons bite
through cartilage and sinuses,
take dead aim at your
brain, jump inside
want to scream
troops of tapping feet
fall into rhythm,
marking time, right
between your eyes
get the urge to dance
louder, louder, ultra
gray-matter power,
shock waves of energy
mushroom inside your head
you want to let go
detonate,
annihilate barriers,
bring down the walls,
unleashing floodwaters,
freeing long-captive dreams
to ride the current
through
arteries and capillaries,
pulsing, rushing,
raging torrents
pounding against your heart
sweeping you away ~ Ellen Hopkins

But we all die, and all death is violent, the overthrowing of the state of life, so why did that year [1968]seem so terrible? Are King or Kennedy or some peasant folk in a village more important than the starved-out of Biafra, the names on the Detroit homicide list? Maybe I'm playing an intellectual game, marking out one year or two on a calendar as special in horror so I can add that they were also special in significance, and thus compensate for the horror, or even redeem it. Humans are fond of finding ways to be grateful for their suffering, calling falls fortunate and deaths resurrection. It's not a bad idea, I guess: since you're going to have the suffering anyway, you might as well be grateful for it. Sometimes, though, I think if we didn't expect the suffering, we wouldn't have so much of it. ~ Marilyn French

She belonged to a different age, but being so entire, so complete, would always stand up on the horizon, stone-white, eminent, like a lighthouse marking some past stage on this adventurous, long, long voyage, this interminable
this interminable life. ~ Virginia Woolf

Like most markets, Da Jing is most alive just after dawn, when the elementary-school children in their uniforms and bright red kerchiefs set off through narrow streets, marking the start of another frenzied day of commerce. ~ Evan Osnos

Spanish pilgrims travel on Camino de Santiago from monastery to monastery, collecting small medals to attach to their rosary as proof of their steps. I have stacks of Polaroids, each marking my own, that I sometimes spread out like tarots or baseball cards of an imagined celestial team. ~ Patti Smith

But time soon passes. Even the deepest pain eventually loses its edge in the more vivid reality of the present; then, what once was unbearable becomes strangely familiar. And after much familiarity, it assumes the insignificance of just another milestone, ever marking the journey to higher ground. ~ N. Maria Kwami

I felt somewhat like a fire hydrant – with everyone marking their territory around me. ~ Farrah Naseem

When I was younger, I avoided exercise or anything strenuous. I didn't even enjoy walking. As I got older, I spent so much time marking books or sitting at a desk writing that there was no room for exercise - not that I would have bothered anyway. ~ Maeve Binchy

As I ran a few blades of grass between my fingers, enjoying the breeze as it caressed my face, I contemplated the cycle of life. As this year would host the long anticipated arrival of the Mayan Doomsday, marking the end of their long count calendar, I wasn't alone in my ponderings. The whole world was focused on the potential that we would be the last generation; the witnesses of the world's end. ~ J.M. Northup

'Bum's Rush' is a piece about timing, and everything that's in the piece needs to be with the piece. If people are missing, or marking, or unable to use their voices, the impulses that prompt the action are lost, and its logic crumbles. ~ Twyla Tharp

It is unfair of me to say so, but the slogan Booth shouted from the stage of Ford's Theatre, the over-blown, self-important, pseudo-Shakespearean blather, being etched on the sign marking his death feels like the stamp of approval. ~ Sarah Vowell

The Cavern you are asking about, yes, I have seen that, with rows and rows of tubes stored neatly in the earth. I have also seen a cave full of papers, and golden apples on dark trees twisted from growing in a place with great wind and little rain, and my name carved in a tree, and paintings on stone. And in the Carving I have seen burned bodies under the sky and a man singing his daughter to her grave, marking her arms and his with blue. I have felt life in that place, and I have seen death. ~ Ally Condie

My sisters had been living in the House of Wind since they'd arrived in Velaris.
They did not leave the palace built into the upper parts of a flat-topped mountain overlooking the city. They did not ask for anything, or anyone.
So I would go to them.
Lucien was waiting in the sitting room when Rhys and I came downstairs at last, my mate having given the silent order for them to return.
Unsurprisingly, Cassian and Azriel were casually seated in the dining room across the hall, eating lunch and marking every single breath Lucien emitted. Cassian smirked at me, brows flicking up.
I shot him a warning glare that dared him to comment. Azriel, thankfully, just kicked Cassian under the table.
Cassian gawked at Azriel as if to declare I wasn't going to say anything while I approached the open archway into the sitting room, Lucien rising to his feet. ~ Sarah J. Maas

He was carving me. Marking me. I whimpered as blood dripped down my neck. 'Mine,' he said.
A threat and a promise. ~ Jill Criswell

What are you reading?' he asks this afternoon.

'Kafka's Metamorphosis,' George says, without looking up.

'And what's it about?'

'Guy turns into a giant bug and eventually dies.'

'Not exactly life-affirming,' Martin observes.

'Life isn't exactly life-affirming,' George says.

'How have you been able to read so many books?' he asks, and she looks up from Kafka, her thumb marking the page. 'I'm a weird girl in high school. I've had some time to kill. ~ Cath Crowley

The ceremonies that persist - birthdays, weddings, funerals - focus only on ourselves, marking rites of personal transition. […]
We know how to carry out this rite for each other and we do it well. But imagine standing by the river, flooded with those same feelings as the Salmon march into the auditorium of their estuary. Rise in their honor, thank them for all the ways they have enriched our lives, sing to honor their hard work and accomplishments against all odds, tell them they are our hope for the future, encourage them to go off into the world to grow, and pray that they will come home. Then the feasting begins. Can we extend our bonds of celebration and support from our own species to the others who need us?
Many indigenous traditions still recognize the place of ceremony and often focus their celebrations on other species and events in the cycle of the seasons. In a colonist society the ceremonies that endure are not about land; they're about family and culture, values that are transportable from the old country. Ceremonies for the land no doubt existed there, but it seems they did not survive emigration in any substantial way. I think there is wisdom in regenerating them here, as a means to form bonds with this land. ~ Robin Wall Kimmerer

I listen to the tick of an unseen clock marking moments of time long passed ... ~ James Frey

Let the labyrinth of wrinkles be furrowed in my brow with the red-hot iron of my own life, let my hair whiten and my step become vacillating, on condition that I can save the intelligence of my soul - let my unformed childhood soul, as it ages, assume the rational and esthetic forms of an architecture, let me learn just everything that others cannot teach me, what only life would be capable of marking deeply in my skin! ~ Salvador Dali

We are also working on the restoration of salmon runs, and we are doing a new process of mass marking with these fish so we can tell the wild fish from the hatchery fish. ~ Norm Dicks

There are transcendent collective events. There is anger spreading through the streets of Port-au-Prince in Haiti, anger marking in black the unallowable, the intolerable, anger that hurls itself beyond all that can reasonably be expected or demanded. This anger is the most precious gift of the disinherited to tourists and academics who have imprisoned their hearts through so many years of well-paid compromises and betrayals ~ Alphonso Lingis

I suppose it's possible that the Sundance Kid didn't like to make much of his birthdays - they may have struck him as just another reminder that his draw was getting slower by the year - but what if he truly liked a major celebration? What if he looked forward every year to marking the day of his birth with what they used to call in the West 'a real wingding, with pink balloons and a few survivors'? ~ Calvin Trillin

Noon bells sang out with their usual ignorance of mood, marking out moments of grief and worry, elation and confusion. The bells said that at its core, human life was fundamentally a sort of organic clockwork, while the winds and skylarks that swept against the sound of metronomic iron timekeeping argued for variety, subtlety, epiphany. ~ Gregory Maguire