Neon Quotes

A smirk crossed those sinful lips, and Bailey thought the guy should come with a flashing neon sign that said: WARNING! DANGER AHEAD! Because he looked exactly like the kind of guy your parents warned you about. The kind of danger that would be so damn good that you kept coming back for more. ~ Ella Frank

Perhaps once we might be able to sneak a death past him. Immortal, yes, but not indestructible. I saw that when AM withdrew from my mind, and allowed me the exquisite ugliness of returning to consciousness with the feeling of that burning neon pillar still rammed deep into the soft gray brain matter. He withdrew, murmuring to hell with you. And added, brightly, but then you're there, aren't you. ~ Harlan Ellison

One cannot turn back the clock but one can move it forward.
(Gendo Ikari, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Ep. 22, 23:55) ~ Hideaki Anno

I love the whole futuristic landscape of dark, rainy neon, the mix of Eastern and Western cultures and the beautiful shots of the flying cars. ~ Reggie Watts

We walked out of there, and for the first time I felt the mood of a night without feeling that an author was ramming it down my throat for story purposes. I looked at the clean-swept, star-reaching cubism of the Radio City area and its living snakes of neon, and I suddenly thought of an Evelyn Smith story the general idea of which was "After they found out the atom bomb was magic, the rest of the magicians who enchanted refrigerators and washing machines and the telephone system came out into the open." I felt a breath of wind and wondered what it was that had breathed. I heard the snoring of the city and for an awesome second felt it would roll over, open its eyes, and ... speak. ~ Theodore Sturgeon

This place is packed," Vee complained. "Where am I supposed to park?" She steered down an alley and slowed to a stop behind a bookstore. "This looks good. Lots of parking back here."
"The sign says employee parking only."
"How are they going to know that we aren't employees? The Neon blends right in. All these cars speak low class."
"The sign says violators will be towed."
"They just say that to scare people like you and me away. It's an empty threat. Nothing to worry about."
...
Vee came to a halt. "What is THAT?"
We were standing in the parking lot behind the bookstore, a few feet from the Neon, and we were staring at a large piece of metal attached to the left rear tire.
"I think it's a car boot," I said.
"I can see that. What's it doing on my car?"
"I guess when they say all violators will be towed, they mean it. ~ Becca Fitzpatrick

Elle Fanning was fifteen when we started [The Neon Demon]. She turned seventeen during the shoot. Four weeks before Cannes, she turned eighteen. She had her prom at Cannes. ~ Nicolas Winding Refn

I'm so lucky to play Sugar because she does get the best wardrobe. Sugar is always in something fluffy, feathery, animal print-y, sparkly she doesn't ever stop with the amazing wardrobe. There's a neon number I thought, when I saw the wardrobe in my trailer, that everyone was going to be wearing neon, but no - just Sugar. And it was fantastic it was so fun, I love neon! ~ Vanessa Lengies

Some people are so stupid that they actually think there are thick neon lines separating good and evil. That it's easy to make that kind of distinction and go to sleep at night with a clear conscience. ~ Tahereh Mafi

But London didn't care, she never does when you leave her because she knows for every one that leaves another two arrive. Besides, she was too busy painting on her neon lipstick and dolling herself up in red and gold. ~ Ben Aaronovitch

Poor Williams was left holding the civic bag; he had taken a gutsy stand, his image was all moxie . . . and on Monday night, when the Angels were finally gone, he had earned the leisure that enabled him to go out to the lakefront and gaze off in a proud wistful way, like Gatsby, at the green neon lights of the tavern across the water, where the others were counting their money. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

I didn't know that would be the last time I'd see him, his neck scar lit blue by the diner's neon marquee. To see that little comma again, to put my mouth there, let my shadow widen the scar until, at last, there was no scar to be seen at all, just a vast and equal dark sealed by my lips. A comma superimposed by a period the mouth so naturally makes. Isn't that the saddest thing in the world, Ma? A comma forced to be a period? ~ Ocean Vuong

It rarely snows because Antarctica is a desert. An iceberg means it's tens of millions of years old and has calved from a glacier. (This is why you must love life: one day you're offering up your social security number to the Russia Mafia; two weeks later you're using the word calve as a verb.) I saw hundreds of them, cathedrals of ice, rubbed like salt licks; shipwrecks, polished from wear like marble steps at the Vatican; Lincoln Centers capsized and pockmarked; airplane hangars carved by Louise Nevelson; thirty-story buildings, impossibly arched like out of a world's fair; white, yes, but blue, too, every blue on the color wheel, deep like a navy blazer, incandescent like a neon sign, royal like a Frenchman's shirt, powder like Peter Rabbit's cloth coat, these icy monsters roaming the forbidding black. ~ Maria Semple

There are new gods growing in America, clinging to growing knots of belief: gods of credit card and freeway, of Internet and telephone, of radio and hospital and television, gods of plastic and of beeper and of neon. Proud gods, fat and foolish creatures, puffed up with their own newness and importance. "They are aware of us, they fear us, and they hate us," said Odin. "You are fooling yourselves if you believe otherwise. ~ Neil Gaiman

Before the man could answer V cursed "If I have to hear all that Keanu Reeves, Matrix, I am Neo' kind of shit my head's going to explode."
"Don't you mean Neon?" Butch shot back "Cause he reminds me of the Citgo sign."
Wraths head turned "Shut the fuck up. All of you. ~ J.R. Ward

There are a few things in life so beautiful they hurt: swimming in the ocean while it rains, reading alone in empty libraries, the sea of stars that appear when you're miles away from the neon lights of the city, bars after 2am, walking in the wilderness, all the phases of the moon, the things we do not know about the universe, and you. ~ Beau Taplin

Across the intersection he could see the crumbling blue-green facade of the Palace Amusements building, the grinning ten-foot-high face on its north wall smiling out on empty streets and vacant lots. The arcade entrances were covered with plywood; broken neon tubing hung from the walls. He thought of the hours he had spent there as a kid, playing pinball, firing the real .22s in the shooting gallery, riding the bumper cars. It hurt to look at it now. ~ Wallace Stroby

The first thing that matters: I am a child of the eighties. I grew up in a neon wonderland of talking horses, compassionate bears, hair that didn't move in a stiff wind, and the constant threat of nuclear war. ~ Seanan McGuire

Twas the night before Christmas - well, the late afternoon, in fact, but who could tell at the North Pole in the middle of winter - and Matthias the werewolf was knee-deep in reindeer guts. Really, it was the deer's own fault for having that glowing red nose that had made it ever so easy to pick him out in the gloom. There it had been, like a neon sign saying FAST FOOD and Matt being like Yellow Dog Dingo - always hungry - had taken the opportunity for a quick snack. ~ Kat Richardson

I don't know anyone who has described that terrible yearning for ecstasy and immolation through music as lucidly as Sean Madigan Hoen in Songs Only You Know. Only a thorough initiate of the scene who also had some genius with language could summon the demotic yet electric voice for the job. If there is ruefulness, now, for the way he treated his body, his girlfriends, and his family, he wisely reprises in his book, in neon detail, the fever that once placed him in the same drunken boat with Iggy Pop, Rimbaud and Artaud. ~ Jaimy Gordon

There's a neon green post-it note stuck to the window ledge. It says DON'T EVEN TRY - R, in bold capital letters. Yeah, like I am going to listen to a sticky note from my captor.
...

DON'T EVEN TRY, my ass. It must be Reece's idea of a joke. Ha ha, so funny. It's going to be even funnier when I kick him in the balls the next time I see him. ~ Rebecca Espinoza

American culture is one that is so easily in denial. We have such a strange dichotomy, so hypocritical. The truth can be blaring in neon letters but our culture will find a reason not to hear what the truth is. ~ RuPaul

This is the thing no one prepares you for where disaster are concerned. There is no ominous black cloud, no spooky chill, no neon sign that flashes: Stop! Please! Go back to bed! There's something really really dreadful waiting to happen around the corner! I beg of you, do not continue! ~ Sarah-Kate Lynch

Trent, is this a date?"
He didn't reach for the key still in the ignition. "You never told me how your car got impounded."
"Is this a date?" I asked again, more stridently.
Silent, he sat there, his hands on the wheel as he stared at the front door and the neon bowling pins flashing on and off. "I want it to be. ~ Kim Harrison

The Strip was still lit by a million neon lights, though the crowds on the sidewalk had greatly decreased by this hour. Still, Bosch was awed by the spectacle of light. In every imaginable color and configuration, it was a megawatt funnel of enticement to greed that burned twenty-four hours a day. Bosch felt the same attraction that all the other grinders felt tug at them. Las Vegas was like one of the hookers on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. Even happily married men at least glanced their way, if only for a second, just to get an idea what was out there, maybe give them something to think about. Las Vegas was like that. There was a visceral attraction here. The bold promise of money and sex. But the first was a broken promise, a mirage, and the second was fraught with danger, expense, physical and mental risk. It was where the real gambling took place in this town. ~ Michael Connelly

I've lived inside every ward of Freedom Incorporated and found I don't like being lied to. Put me in prison; do not put me on the street then call that freedom. Do not force me to into believing block-cut neon red, white, and blue letters super-glued to the tall, outside company wall blinking Freedom Incorporated," chapter seven 'The Problem' from writer Cosmo Starlight's sixth edition novel "Freedom Incorporated. ~ Cosmo Starlight

In the distance, a Benz motor sounds. A neon light wraps itself around the driver and the winter that beats in his heart. His heart stays cold. stays melting. ~ Gwen Calvo

Silly me, here I was thinking we needed big neon signs that said Here We Are, Shoot Us Please on top of the roof. ~ Julie Kagawa

The low point for neon came in 1982, when Holiday Inn did away with its signature 'Great Sign,' replacing the neon extravaganza with a forgettable green plastic box. ~ Virginia Postrel

Sports contained the truth, I decided, the unspoken truth (how quickly we damn ourselves when we start to talk, how small and inglorious we always sound), and it seemed hard to believe that I had never understood this before. They rewarded effortlessness and unself-consciousness; they confirmed that yes, there are rankings of skill and value and that everyone knows what they are (seeing those guys who were subbed with two seconds left before the end of a quarter, I'd think how girls' coaches were never that heartless); they showed that the best things in the world to be were young and strong and fast. To play a great game of high school basketball-it was something I myself had never done, but I could tell-made you know what it was to be alive. How much in an adult life can compare to that? Granted, there are margaritas, or there's no homework, but there are also puffy white bagels under neon lights in the conference room, there's waiting for the plumber, making small talk with your boring neighbor. ~ Curtis Sittenfeld

A drone is often preferred for missions that are too "dull, dirty, or dangerous" for manned aircraft."

PROLOGUE

The graffiti was in Spanish, neon colors highlighting the varicose cracks in the wall. It smelled of urine and pot. The front door was metal with four bolt locks and the windows were frosted glass, embedded with chicken wire. They swung out and up like big fake eye-lashes held up with a notched adjustment bar.

This was a factory building on the near west side of Cleveland in an industrial area on the Cuyahoga River known in Ohio as The Flats.

First a sweatshop garment factory, then a warehouse for imported cheeses then a crack den for teenage potheads. It was now headquarters for Magic Slim, the only pimp in Cleveland with his own film studio and training facility.

Her name was Cosita, she was eighteen looking like fourteen. One of nine children from El Chorillo. a dangerous poverty stricken barrio on the outskirts of Panama City. Her brother, Javier, had been snatched from the streets six months ago, he was thirteen and beautiful.

Cosita had a high school education but earned here degree on the streets of Panama.

Interpol, the world's largest international police organization, had recruited Cosita at seventeen. She was smart, street savvy, motivated and very pretty. Just what Interpol was looking for.

Cosita would become a Drone! ~ Nick Hahn

The Beatles are my number one - I think everything they did was amazing! ~ Neon Hitch

Joel Lane documents a life we don't quite live, in a city we can't quite find: half glimpsed and half imagined, we know it's out there somewhere. Waiting, maybe. Mixing fear with desire, reputation with regret. Touching the blood-beat of our secret hunger with the rhythms of a music that never felt alien till now. Wasted lives, with never a wasted word. It's an extraordinary achievement: vivid as neon, real as rain. Devastating. ~ Chaz Brenchley

Some of us find our way with a single light to guide us; others lose themselves even when the star field is as sharp as a neon ceiling. Ethics may not be situational, but feelings are. We learn to adjust, and, over time, the stars we use to guide ourselves come to reside within rather than without. ~ Robert Crais

I was the apprentice of Robert James Bakker. I'm sure you've heard of him. I am a sorcerer. I was there when Bakker died. We ... made it happen. I too have met death, and did not have to peel the bones away from my chest to survive the encounter. I am also, and incidentally, the Midnight Mayor, the blue electric angels, the fire in the wire, the song in the telephones, and we are having a bad week. Be smart; fear us. ~ Kate Griffin

I agreed. By this time the drink was beginning to cut the acid and my hallucinations were down to a tolerable level. The room service waiter had a vaguely reptilian cast to his features, but I was no longer seeing huge pterodactyls lumbering around the corridors in pools of fresh blood. The only problem now was a gigantic neon sign outside the window, blocking our view of the mountains
millions of colored balls running around a very complicated track, strange symbols & filigree, giving off a loud hum ...
"Look outside," I said.
"Why?"
"There's a big ... machine in the sky, ... some kind of electric snake ... coming straight at us."
"Shoot it," said my attorney.
"Not yet," I said. "I want to study its habits. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

Risk is relative. And relative to the imminent planetary 'game over' neon sign that's starting to flicker above our children's heads, just as they are preparing for a full life ahead ... now that's what you call risk! ~ Dave Hampton

This is roughly the worldview for Neon Genesis Evangelion. This is a worldview drenched in a vision of pessimism. A worldview where the story starts only after any traces of optimism have been removed.
[...]
They say, "To live is to change." I started this production with the wish that once the production complete, the world, and the heroes would change. That was my "true" desire. I tried to include everything of myself in Neon Genesis Evangelion-myself, a broken man who could do nothing for four years. A man who ran away for four years, one who was simply not dead. Then one thought. "You can't run away," came to me, and I restarted this production. It is a production where my only thought was to burn my feelings into film. I know my behavior was thoughtless, troublesome, and arrogant. But I tried. I don't know what the result will be. That is because within me, the story is not yet finished. I don't know what will happen to Shinji, Misato or Rei. I don't know where life will take them. Because I don't know where life is taking the staff of the production. I feel that I am being irresponsible. But... But it's only natural that we should synchronize ourselves with the world within the production. I've taken on a risk: "It's just an imitation." And for now I can only write this explanation. But perhaps our "original" lies somewhere within there. ~ Hideaki Anno

The city had changed beyond recognition. Wrecking balls and bulldozers had leveled the old buildings to rubble. The dust of construction hung permanently over the streets. Gated mansions reached up to the northern foothills, while slums fanned out from the city's southern limits.
I feared an aged that had lost its heart, and I was terrified at the thought of so many useless hands. Our traditions were our pacifiers and we put ourselves to sleep with the lullaby of a once-great civilation and culture. Ours was the land of poetry flowers, and nightingales - and poets searching for rhymes in history's junkyards. The lottery was our faith and greed our fortune. Our intellectuals were sniffing cocaine and delivering lectures in the back rooms of dark cafés. We bought plastic roses and decorated our lawns and courtyards with plaster swans. We saw the future in neon lights. We had pizza shops, supermarkets, and bowling alleys. We had trafric jams, skyscrapers, and air thick with noise and pollution. We had illiterate villagers who came to the capital with scraps of paper in their hands, begging for someone to show them the way to this medical clinic or that government officee. the streets of Tehran were full of Mustangs and Chevys bought at three times the price they sold for back in America, and still our oil wasn't our own. Still our country wasn't our own. ~ Jasmin Darznik

The drive to Black Rock City from San Francisco leads through the Nevada flatlands, past the jittering neon sadness of Reno. ~ Daniel Pinchbeck

It's time to treat domestic violence and hate speech as the neon red flags they are and take the necessary steps to reduce the risks instead of hoping that they'll go away. ~ Mikki Kendall

If God didn't prefer for us to drink at night, he wouldn't have made neon! ~ Tom Robbins

This is life, in all its gruesome, lovely, neon-lit glory. ~ Nuala Casey

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whit-
man, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees
with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images,
I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of
your enumerations! ~ Allen Ginsberg

The thick, stagnant air reeked of perfume, cigarettes, and exhaust. Everyone was barefaced, wanting to flaunt their features instead of hiding beneath blank masks. To be able to flirt with their lips, to be able to kiss. But I wasn't fooled by the dark - the air was still poisonous. Even if we couldn't see the brown haze, it smothered our city lit in neon. ~ Cindy Pon

The trapeze was my first love. To me, it's normal. It's all I've ever known. But when I see other people's upbringings, I think, 'Hmm ... mine was rather unconventional. Quite different!' ~ Neon Hitch

Some people like the dreaming better than the coming true part. They hate when things work out, they almost expect them to go wrong, and they never know what to do when their cynicism is proven wrong. ~ K.B. Ezzell

If. If Mingus Rude could be kept in this place, kept somehow in Dylan's pocket, in his stinging, smudgy hands, then summer wouldn't give way to whatever came after. If. If. Fat chance. Summer on Dean Street had lasted one day and that day was over, it was dark out, had been for hours. The Williamsburg Savings Bank tower clock read nine-thirty in red-and-blue neon. Final score, a million to nothing. The million-dollar kid.
Your school wasn't on fire, you were. ~ Jonathan Lethem

I guess personally I really like "Take on Me" by Aha. I think it just defines the 80s and how insane it was and like neon and like calculator watches and that whole thing. ~ Evan Peters

I don't think drugs are a problem; I think they're a symptom. As long as Americans are empty, spiritually, emotionally, morally empty, they will need things like the drugs they choose to use. Mankind has wanted to change the way it felt from the beginning anyway. In this country there are even more reasons to want to feel different, to want to feel better, because this is such a neon sewer. This is such a degrading culture. It forces you to play Beethoven to your child in the uterus so that he will get into a better school and a better job and make more money so he can take care of you. ~ George Carlin

Olli punched in with the cymbal-whack of her typewriter by the alley-side window while a happy neon sign six stories down flashing Hobart and Sons' Fine Smokables got its purple light all tangled up in her eyelashes. ~ Catherynne M Valente

I don't believe in trying to be somebody you're not - just be a bigger, better version of yourself. ~ Neon Hitch

I wonder why she hides her pretty eyes, Behind those Wayfarers, it's such a waste, Is it sadness or the neon lights? ~ Piyush Rohankar

nerves


twitching in the sheets --
to face the sunlight again,
that's clearly
trouble.
I like the city better when the
neon lights are going and
the nudies dance on top of the
bar
to the mauling music.

I'm under this sheet
thinking.
me nerves are hampered by
history --
the most memorable concern of mankind
is the guys it takes to
face the sunlight again.

love begins at the meeting of two
strangers. love for the world is
impossible. I'd rather stay in bed
and sleep.

dizzied by the days and the streets and the years
I pull the sheets to my neck.
I turn my ass to the wall.
I hate the mornings more than
any man. ~ Charles Bukowski

The single craziest thing about being a priest, he'd found, was that celibacy was simultaneously the most private and most public aspect of his life. One of his linguistics professors, a man named Samuel Goldstein, had helped him understand the consequences of that simple fact. Sam was Korean by birth, so if you knew his name, you knew he was adopted. "What got me when I was a kid was that people knew something fundamental about me and my family just by looking at us. I felt like I had a big neon sign over my head flashing ADOPTEE," Sam told him. "It's not that I was ashamed of being adopted. I just wished that I had the option of revealing it myself. ~ Mary Doria Russell

Don't rely on a man who excludes an animal from his shelter of pity and compassion. Men like these are likely to deal with fellow men in this same fashion."
-Shenita Etwaroo ~ Shenita Etwaroo

I would add entertainment media cheerleader Wolf Blitzer, CNN's Pentagon sycophant in Kuwait City, a representative of the neon press, neon being that colorless, inert gas that lights up on command. ~ Stan Goff

His vision crawled with ghost hieroglyphs, translucent lines of symbols arranging themselves against the neutral backdrop of the bunker wall. He looked at the backs of his hands, saw faint neon molecules crawling beneath the skin, ordered by the unknowable code. He raised his right hand and moved it experimentally. It left a faint, fading trail of strobed afterimages. ~ William Gibson

Music is the only place where time does not exist. ~ K.B. Ezzell

The Roman form of serenade is to race a motorcycle motor under the girl's window, but mufflers are not common in any situation; the only things as dearly loved as a good noise are breakneck speed and eye-splitting lights, preferably neon - all expressions of well-being, like a huge belly-laugh. ~ Eleanor Clark

Where'd that world go, that world when you're a kid, and now I can't remember noticing anything, not the smell of the leaves or the sharp curl of dried maple on your ankles, walking? I live in cars now, and my own bedroom, the windows sealed shut, my mouth to my phone, hand slick around its neon jelly case, face closed to the world, heart closed to everything. ~ Megan Abbott

I'm the only one sitting alone, under the glowing neon sign which reads, Complete and Total Loser, Not Quite Sane. Stay Away. Do Not Feed. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

The wind whistles down into the skyscraper-bound canyons, across the broad expanses of the avenues and the narrow confines of the streets, where lives unfolded in secret, day in, day out: Sometimes a man sighs for want of love. Sometimes a child cries for the dropped lollipop, its sweetness barely tasted. Sometimes the girl gasps as the train screams into the station, shaken by how close she'd allowed herself to wander to the edge. Sometimes the drunk raises weary eyes to the rows of building rendered beautiful by a brief play of sunlight. "Lord?" he whispers into the held breath between taxi horns. The light catches on a city spire, fracturing for a second into glorious rays before the clouds move in again. The drunk lowers his eyes. "Lord, Lord…" he sobs, as if answering his own broken prayer. […] Another day closes. The sun sinks low on the horizon. It slips below the Hudson, smearing the West Side of Manhattan in a slick of gold. Night arrives for its watchful shift. The neon city bursts its daytime seams, and the great carnival of dreams begins again. ~ Libba Bray

After the film it was raining, a light steady rain. Ruthless neon on the wet streets like busted candy. ~ Denis Johnson

I feel weird without lipstick. Even after the first time I wore a really neon pink or a really bright red, I felt really strange without it there. My lips are a main feature, so I feel naked without them. ~ Marina And The Diamonds

The cafeteria in the Chicago's Children's Memorial Hospital basement was the saddest place in the world - and forever it shall be - with its grim neon lights and gray tabletops and the diffuse foreboding of those who stepped away from suffering children to have a grilled cheese sandwich. ~ Aleksandar Hemon

[Adapted and condensed Valedictorian speech:]

I'm going to ask that you seriously consider modeling your life, not in the manner of the Dalai Lama or Jesus - though I'm sure they're helpful - but something a bit more hands-on, Carassius auratus auratus, commonly known as the domestic goldfish. People make fun of the goldfish. People don't think twice about swallowing it. Jonas Ornata III, Princeton class of '42, appears in the Guinness Book of World Records for swallowing the greatest number of goldfish in a fifteen-minute interval, a cruel total of thirty-nine. In his defense, though, I don't think Jonas understood the glory of the goldfish, that they have magnificent lessons to teach us. If you live like a goldfish, you can survive the harshest, most thwarting of circumstances. You can live through hardships that make your cohorts - the guppy, the neon tetra - go belly-up at the first sign of trouble. There was an infamous incident described in a journal published by the Goldfish Society of America - a sadistic five-year-old girl threw hers to the carpet, stepped on it, not once but twice - luckily she'd done it on a shag carpet and thus her heel didn't quite come down fully on the fish. After thirty harrowing seconds she tossed it back into its tank. It went on to live another forty-seven years. They can live in ice-covered ponds in the dead of winter. Bowls that haven't seen soap in a year. And they don't die from neglect, not immediately. They hold on for thre ~ Marisha Pessl

In the doorway of Fortnum & Mason a young couple were kissing, oblivious to the world. The neon signs mounted on the buildings cast a glossy veneer over the streetscape, glowing through the smog. Around the statue of Eros there were crowds of youngers. The girls were a mass of bobby pins and ribbons, hardly dressed for the cold weather. The boys wore suits with thin ties. They were bantering on their way from the cinemas and theatres to the bars, dance halls and music clubs further along.
"I fancy you, Kitty Dawson," a lone boy shouted. ~ Sara Sheridan

We pass a church with a massive blue neon cross, and I am spiritually lifted by feelings of great religiosity. No, I'm not, for crying out loud. Don't be ridiculous. But what I do love about this road is how the gaudy becomes grand, how tastelessness is a way of everyday life. You have to admire how these people shamelessly try to get your attention as you drive by, whether they're trying to feed you a hamburger or a savior. (p.37) ~ Michael Zadoorian

He held up his hand, and in it was ...
Oh, God.
The neon-pink vibrator, glowing in the dark now. It was following her, stalking her, all the way down the yellow brick road to hell. ~ Jill Shalvis

the briefest flash of pale, pale ice over a thin-boned shoulder. Neon caught the red lotus splayed on her elbow and lit it on fire. ~ K.C. Alexander

It was like hundreds of roads he'd driven over - no different - a stretch of tar, lusterless, scaley, humping toward the center. On both sides were telephone poles, tilted this way and that, up a little, down...

Billboards - down farther an increasing clutter of them. Some road signs. A tottering barn in a waste field, the Mail Pouch ad half weathered away. Other fields. A large wood - almost leafless now - the bare branches netting darkly against the sky. Then down, where the road curved away, a big white farmhouse, trees on the lawn, neat fences - and above it all, way up, a television aerial, struck by the sun, shooting out bars of glare like neon. ("Thompson") ~ George A. Zorn

Fame requires every kind of excess. I mean true fame, a devouring neon, not the somber renown of waning statesmen or chinless kings. I mean long journeys across gray space. I mean danger, the edge of every void, the circumstance of one man imparting an erotic terror to the dreams of the republic. Understand the man who must inhabit these extreme regions, monstrous and vulval, damp with memories of violation. Even if half-mad he is absorbed into the public's total madness; even if fully rational, a bureaucrat in hell, a secret genius of survival, he is sure to be destroyed by the public's contempt for survivors. Fame, this special kind, feeds itself on outrage, on what the counselors of lesser men would consider bad publicity-hysteria in limousines, knife fights in the audience, bizarre litigation, treachery, pandemonium and drugs. Perhaps the only natural law attaching to true fame is that the famous man is compelled, eventually, to commit suicide.
(Is it clear I was a hero of rock'n'roll?)
Toward the end of the final tour it became apparent that our audience wanted more than music, more even than its own reduplicated noise. It's possible the culture had reached its limit, a point of severe tension. There was less sense of simple visceral abandon at our concerts during these last weeks. Few cases of arson and vandalism. Fewer still of rape. No smoke bombs or threats of worse explosives. Our followers, in their isolation, were not concerned with precedent now. They w ~ Don DeLillo

Walk with me, hand in hand through the neon and styrofoam. Walk the razor blades and the broken hearts. Walk the fortune and the fortune hunted. Walk the chop suey bars and the tract of stars.
I know I am a fool, hoping dirt and glory are both a kind of luminous paint; the humiliations and exaltations that light us up. I see like a bug, everything too large, the pressure of infinity hammering at my head. But how else to live, vertical that I am, pressed down and pressing up simultaneously? I cannot assume you will understand me. It is just as likely that as I invent what I want to say, you will invent what you want to hear. Some story we must have. Stray words on crumpled paper. A weak signal into the outer space of each other.
The probability of separate worlds meeting is very small. The lure of it is immense. We send starships. We fall in love. ~ Jeanette Winterson

A red neon sign flickered dimly, buzzed like a dying insect, as they passed. ~ Ray Bradbury

It was a very comfortable and personal relationship [Cliff Martinez ].'The Neon Demon'is our third movie and the music has never been as important as for this movie. ~ Nicolas Winding Refn

It's tucked away in a quiet corner, shadowed and obscured, no part of the Nightside's usual bright gaudy neon noir. It doesn't advertise and it doesn't care if you habitually pass by on the other side. It's just there for when you need it. Dedicated to the patron saint of lost causes, St. Jude's is an old old place ... St. Jude's isn't a place for comfort for frills and fancies and the trappings of religion. just a place where you can talk to your god and sometimes get an answer. ~ Simon R. Green

I was so horny in school it felt like my body was filled with electricity. I felt like I had neon bones or something. ~ Patti Smith

Some visualize the Pistols era in shades of black and white. It wasn't. Actually, the colors I envision are neon or army dirt green with fluorescent pink
anything that would annoy. ~ John Lydon

Remembering's dangerous. I find the past such a worrying, anxious place. "The Past Tense," I suppose you'd call it. Memory's so treacherous. One moment you're lost in a carnival of delights, with poignant childhood aromas, the flashing neon of puberty, all that sentimental candy-floss... the next, it leads you somewhere you don't want to go. Somewhere dark and cold, filled with the damp ambiguous shapes of things you'd hoped were forgotten. Memories can be vile, repulsive little brutes. Like children I suppose. But can we live without them? Memories are what our reason is based upon. If we can't face them, we deny reason itself! Although, why not? We aren't contractually tied down to rationality! There is no sanity clause! So when you find yourself locked onto an unpleasant train of thought, heading for the places in your past where the screaming is unbearable, remember there's always madness. Madness is the emergency exit… you can just step outside, and close the door on all those dreadful things that happened. You can lock them away… forever. ~ Alan Moore

As we strolled, I noticed the soft light and its effect on the buildings around us. Like an aging screen actress shot in soft light to conceal her age lines, this magical twilight softened the avenues of Paris and produced an elegant scene not unlike a movie. Lining the street ahead of us, the buildings were constructed of solid white stone and more than one hundred years old, but all traces of age or dirt were diffused by the twilight, while their classic French architecture was center stage and highlighted. Fifty Parisians, the bluish cobblestones of the sidewalk, glowing neon, and a colorful outdoor flower stand completed the scene in front of us. Overwhelmed and in awe of the setting, I stopped and stared silently ahead. ~ Michael Bowe

We were prime examples of the age old debate: nature versus nurture. I'd been brought up around muscle cars and crescent wrenches, and he'd been surrounded by neon lights and stilettos. In all likelihood, I should've been straight as an arrow, and Frank would've ended up as a showgirl. Yet, he was the top, if only in bed. We both knew who wore the pants in the relationship, even though they were big on me because they were his. ~ Nicole Castle

Even as I wrote my note to Fern, for instance, expressing sentiments and regrets that were real, a part of me was noticing what a fine and sincere note it was, and anticipating the effect on Fern of this or that heartfelt phrase, while yet another part was observing the whole scene of a man in a dress shirt and no tie sitting at his breakfast nook writing a heartfelt note on his last afternoon alive, the blondwood table's surface trembling with sunlight and the man's hand steady and face both haunted by regret and ennobled by resolve, this part of me sort of hovering above and just to the left of myself, evaluating the scene, and thinking what a fine and genuine-seeming performance in a drama it would make if only we all had not already been subject to countless scenes just like it in dramas ever since we first saw a movie or read a book, which somehow entailed that real scenes like the one of my suicide note were now compelling and genuine only to their participants, and to anyone else would come off as banal and even somewhat cheesy or maudlin, which is somewhat paradoxical when you consider – as I did, setting there at the breakfast nook – that the reason scenes like this will seem stale or manipulative to an audience is that we've already seen so many of them in dramas, and yet the reason we've seen so many of them in dramas is that the scenes really are dramatic and compelling and let people communicate very deep, complicated emotional realities that are almost impossibl ~ David Foster Wallace

My ancestors are all crazy. My great-great-granddad, he was the last man to live in a cave in Nottingham. ~ Neon Hitch

The one thing I've always liked about that boy. As much as I hate his body language screaming he owns you, with him next to you ain't no one gonna mess with my little girl.It may as well be written on his chest in neon lights. ~ Elizabeth Reyes

The wind howled about the bus, and the wipers slooshed heavily back and forth across the windshield, smeering the city into a red and yellow neon wetness. It was early afternoon, but it looked like night through the glass ~ Neil Gaiman

The jellies living nearest the surface had transparent bodies, but their edges twinkled and flashed, as though traced by fiber-optic cables, blinking and undulating like neon signs. They were delicate; if you weren't looking ~ Susan Casey

Let's get this straight. He told you his name? Yes. Now - I like that ... I like that! He's been giving me gyp for years, simply because I could have spilled the beans, and now he's telling any old broad he meets, free of charge! Who else knows? Faquarl? Nouda? Did he deck his name out in neon lights and parade it round the town? I ask you! And I never told anyone! ~ Anonymous

Sully's, on South Prospect, was the quintessential biker-bar, complete with hefty, leather-clad Harley worshippers, and stringy-haired heroin-addicted women who made the rounds among the bikers. Its décor was decidedly Medieval Garage Sale, with a dose of Americana thrown in. An old motorcycle carcass dangled from the vaulted section of the beamed ceiling, and the wood plank floors were littered with butts, scarred by bottle caps and splattered with homogenized bodily fluids. The only light to be had was from neon, dying sconces, and lit cigarettes. Various medieval swords perched on each wall, reminiscent of the times of Beowulf and Fire Dragons on the Barrow. ~ Kelli Jae Baeli

My English teacher has no face. She has uncombed stringy hair that droops on her shoulders. The hair is black from her part to her ears and then neon orange to the frizzy ends. I can't decide if she had pissed off her hairdresser or is morphing into a monarch butterfly. I call her Hairwoman. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include tooth decay in His divine system of creation? Why in the world did He ever create pain?'
'Pain?' Lieutenant Shiesskopf's wife pounced upon the word victoriously. 'Pain is a warning to us of bodily dangers.'
'And who created the dangers?' Yossarian demanded. 'Why couldn't He have used a doorbell to notify us, or one of His celestial choirs? Or a system of blue-and-red neon tubes right in the middle of each person's forehead?'
'People would certainly look silly walking around with red neon tubes right in the middle of their foreheads.'
'They certainly look beautiful now writhing in agony, don't they? ~ Joseph Heller

All that was missing was a neon sign that read EVIL AND CONFLICTED ABOUT IT with a flashing arrow pointing at his head. ~ Ilona Andrews

The day we become silent about the things that matter is the moment our lives begin to end."
-Shenita Etwaroo ~ Shenita Etwaroo

A part of one's soul remains asleep until one has loved an animal."
-Shenita Etwaroo ~ Shenita Etwaroo

neon sign in red letters EXIT TO HELL…A walks under the arch….she seems not to notice where she is going….Just as the angels are preparing to carry the arch away B makes a desperate dash at it and dives through. Everything blacks out… What happens when you start the downward trip?...Of course there isn't a hope of ever getting out again into the light. Once you're on your way down, the machinery takes charge of you, you're caught, trapped, finished for good and all…you might just as well give in and pluck the cruel thorn of hope out of your heart. ~ Anna Kavan

Fireflies and Fame
As a child I would collect fireflies,
stuff them in a Coke bottle
capped with a wad of cotton
from my asthma medicine.
Tired of being just a collector
I turned Ted Bundy,
peeled off their wings,
then lined up their weightless bodies
into an elegant cursive script
spelling my name.
I stomped them all
like an Indian on a warpath
and for fifteen seconds of fame
my name lit up in Vegas neon
just like Liberace's. ~ Beryl Dov

Maybe it's just getting older. You become so palpably aware this is not a dress rehearsal. There's a big sign in blazing neon that says You Haven't Got Long. But I think it takes a beat to learn that. Life has to knock you down in order for you to realise it, because when you're a kid you think you're immortal. ~ Tom Hiddleston

The neon orange orb sat low in the sky, slowly breaking free of the horizon like the waking memory of a dream. The salty air smelled faintly of fish, and was thick with humidity and hung like a cloak over my body. The lavender sky at the horizon faded into cerulean above and behind me. The soft breeze whispered past my face, teasing my hair on its way to tickle the sawgrass that swayed in gratitude as if laughing like a child.


I sat on the top plank of the boardwalk rail, the wood heavy with atmosphere and was damp and cool under my left palm. The surprising warmth of the winter air and the cool of the wood reminded me that yes, I am alive! Yes, I am grateful for this morning! And yes, I am glad to be here!


The paper in my notebook as I wrote this began to feel sticky and moist within a few minutes. The ink from my pen seemed to grip the paper faster and firmer as if to say, I'm here, I'm happy, and I don't want to lose this moment. Like my ink, I too wanted to cling to this morning.


The sky started turning a peachy orange at the bottom and the ocean was sea foam green. The waves were breaking quietly, as if to give my thoughts amplitude so I could record and rejoice in the sea's majesty. 


The sand was gray and silky like a freshly pressed pair of slacks. The smooth beach seemed paved with sunlight. A jogger ran by, his knees probably grateful for the even stride the flat surface provided. 


Chunks of sea foam lay str ~ Jarod Kintz

He just lingers long enough to see his plane put to bed properly, then grabs a cab at the airport-gate. "The Settlement" and forgetting that he's not inland any more, that Shanghai's snappier than Chicago, "Chop-chop."

"Sure, Mike," grins the slant-eyed driver. "Hop in."

A change has come over the city since he went away, he can feel that the minute they hit the outskirts, clear the congested native sections, and cross the bridge into the Settlement. Shanghai is already tuning-up for its oncoming doom, without knowing it. A city dancing on the brink of the grave. There's an electric tension in the air, the place never seemed so gay, so hectic, as tonight; the roads opening off the Bund a welter of blinking, flashing neon lights, in ideographs and Latin letters alike, as far as the eye can see. Traffic hopelessly snarled at every crossing, cops piping on their whistles, packed sidewalks, the blare of saxophones coming from taxi-dance mills, and overhead the feverish oriental stars competing with inter-crossed searchlight beams from some warships or other on the Whang-poo. Just about the right town and the right night to have fifteen thousand bucks in, all at one time. ("Jane Brown's Body") ~ Cornell Woolrich

Do the things I never did. Swear. Wear neon colours. Skydive. Climb fences. Ride horses naked. Say obscene things. Make love. Shout at people when they piss you off. Toot your horn. Scream. Become tainted and be proud of it. It's who you are. You came into this world naked and blank, like a canvass, but I want you to go screaming out of it covered in every colour of the rainbow. ~ Sarah Michelle Lynch