Nightfall Quotes

People talk about nightfall, or night falling, or dusk falling, and it's never seemed right to me. Perhaps they once meant befalling. As in night befalls. As in night happens. Perhaps they, whoever they were, thought of a falling sun. That might be it, except that that ought to give us dayfall. Day fell on Rupert the Bear. And we know, if we've ever read a book, that day doesn't fall or rise. It breaks. In books, day breaks, and night falls.
In life, night rises from the ground. The day hangs on for as long as it can, bright and eager, absolutely and positively the last guest to leave the party, while the ground darkens, oozing night around your ankles, swallowing for ever that dropped contact lens, making you miss that low catch in the gully on the last ball of the last over. ~ Hugh Laurie

Oh dear ... then they must already be on the march! We have to hurry and get to the Hamblings ... before nightfall!' - Phillip Celeste from Curse of Ancient Shadows ~ Rod Tyson

Because he's the one pure, beautiful thing untainted by ugliness," he repeated his same words from the shower. "And we love him for it. ~ Penelope Douglas

And it all started with a field trip, a giant dinosaur model, and an especially noticeable pair of teal eyes. ~ Shannon Messenger

Ivanov's breath smelled of vodka and sewers, sour and heavy, like something rotting, reminiscent of empty houses near swamps, nightfall at four in the afternoon, vapors rising from the sickly grass and fogging the dark windows. A horror film, thought Ansky. Where everything has come to a halt, and it comes to a halt because it knows it's lost. ~ Roberto Bolano

I'll be back before nightfall." She crammed her handkerchief back up her sleeve and gathered the reins. "Julia?" She stopped, but didn't look at him. "I'll be waiting for you." She swallowed and nodded, but shouted giddyap without answering. She was pretty certain he had that look in his eye again, and she didn't want to see it. ~ Melissa Jagears

Nothing could be more lonely and nothing more beautiful than the view at nightfall across the prairies to these huge hill masses, when the lengthening shadows had at last merged into one and the faint after-glow of the red sunset filled the west. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Grief was an actual weight, he thought. It felt like a physical burden. You carried it with you all day, unsheddable. Your shoulders, by nightfall, felt dragged down." p 320 ~ Roxana Robinson

Darkness is more than a shade of nightfall. It is a feeling as though there has been an eclipse not only within what should be a vibrant life inside you but in all that is good around you. ~ Andrew Kendall

I always imagined rape as this violent scene of a woman walking alone down a dark alley and getting mugged and beaten by some masked criminal. Rape was an angry man forcing himself inside a damsel in distress. I would not carry the trauma of a cliché rape victim. I would not shriek in the midst of my slumber with night terrors. I would not tremble at the sight of every dark haired man or the mention of Number 1's name. I would not even harbor ill will towards him. My damage was like a cigarette addiction- subtle, seemingly innocent, but everlasting and inevitably detrimental.
Number 1 never opened his screen door to furious crowds waving torches and baseball bats. Nobody punched him out in my honor. The Nightfall crowd never socially ostracized him. Even the ex-boyfriend who'd second handedly fused the entire fiasco continued to mingle with him in drug circles. Everybody continued with business as usual. And when I told my parents I lost my virginity against my will, unconscious on a bathroom floor, Carl did not erupt in fury and demand I give him all I knew about his whereabouts so he could greet him with a rifle. Mom blankly shrugged and mumbled, "Oh, that's too bad," and drifted into the kitchen as if I'd received a stubbed toe rather than a shredded hymen.
Everyone in my life took my rape as lightly as a brief thunderstorm that might have been frightening when it happened, but was easy to forget about. I adopted that mentality as the foundation of my sex life ~ Maggie Georgiana Young

Let him not vow to walk in the dark, who has not seen the nightfall. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

Life is a balance. We tend to forget that as we go blithely from day to day. We eat and drink and sleep and assume that we will always rise up the next day, that meals and rest will always replenish us. Injuries we expect to heal, and pain to lessen as times goes by. Even when we are faced with wounds that heal more slowly, with pain that lessens by day only to return in full force at nightfall, even when sleep does not leave us rested, we still expect that somehow tomorrow all will come back into balance and that we will go on. At some point, the exquisite balance has tipped, and despite all our flailing efforts, we begin the slow fall from the body that maintains itself to the body that struggles, nails clawing, to cling to what it used to be. ~ Robin Hobb

Thomas nodded his head and thought, soon, soon it will be mayhem. Thousands more will join the thousands already gone to meet their maker. Look at them, all eager to die, mine, and theirs. Almighty God, protect us all this day and, if it should please you, provide us with the means to hold until nightfall and then safe passage away from this place. He looked skyward and muttered, "Amen." He ~ Blair Howard

Dad," I admonished lightly. "You can't threaten the King. You'll be pooping in buckets by nightfall."
"I don't care," he retorted. "I'd poop in buckets for the rest of my life if it means your heart was safe. ~ T.J. Klune

Our Christian habit is to bewail the world's deteriorating standards with an air of rather self-righteous dismay. We criticize its violence, dishonesty, immorality, disregard for human life, and materialistic greed.

"The world is going down the drain," we say with a shrug. But whose fault is it? Who is to blame? Let me put it like this. If the house is dark when nightfall comes, there is no sense in blaming the house; that is what happens when the sun goes down. The question to ask is "Where is the light?"

Similarly, if the meat goes bad and becomes inedible, there is no sense in blaming the meat; that is what happens when bacteria are left alone to breed. The question to ask is "Where is the salt?"

Just so, if society deteriorates and its standards decline until it becomes like a dark night or a stinking fish, there is no sense in blaming society; that is what happens when fallen men and women are left to themselves, and human selfishness is unchecked.

The question to ask is "Where is the Church? Why are the salt and light of Jesus Christ not permeating and changing our society?" It is sheer hypocrisy on our part to raise our eyebrows, shrug our shoulders, or wring our hands. The Lord Jesus told us to be the world's salt and light. If therefore darkness and rottenness abound, it is largely our fault and we must accept the blame.--John Stott (Human Rights and Human Wrongs) ~ Richard Stearns

Toward nightfall, Khrenov's temperature had risen. The thermometer was warm, alive - the column of mercury climbed high on the little red ladder. For a long time he muttered unintelligibly, kept biting his lips and gently shaking his head. Then he fell asleep. Natasha undressed by a candle's wan flame, and saw her reflection in the murky glass of the window - her pale, thin neck, the dark braid that had fallen across her clavicle. She stood like that, in motionless languor, and suddenly it seemed to her that the room, together with the couch, the table littered with cigarette stubs, the bed on which, with open mouth, a sharp-nosed, sweaty old man slept restlessly - all this started to move, and was now floating, like the deck of a ship, into the black night. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

The door handle turned. Someone knocked, and a man's voice called, "Uh, hello?"
Valkyrie looked at Skulduggery, looked back at the others, looked at Skulduggery again.
"Hello," Skulduggery said, speaking loudly to be heard over the alarm.
"Hi," said the man. "The door's locked."
"Is it?"
"Yes."
"That's funny" said Skulduggery. "Hold on a moment." He reached out, jiggled the handle a few times, then stepped back. "Yes, it's locked. You wouldn't happen to have the key, would you?"
There was a delay in response from the other side. "I'm sorry," the man called, "Who am I speaking with?"
Skulduggery tilted his head. "Who am I speaking with?"
"This is Oscar Nightfall."
"Are you sure?"
"What?"
"Are you sure you are who you say you are? This is the Great Chamber, after all. It's a very important place for very important people. It is not beyond the realms of possibility that someone, and I'm not saying that this applies to you in particular, but someone could conceivably lie about who they are in order to gain access to this room. I have to be vigilant, especially now. There's a war on, you know."
Oscar Nightfall sounded puzzled. Who are you?"
"Me? I'm nobody. I'm a cleaner. I'm one of the cleaners. I was cleaning the thrones and the door shut behind me. Now I can't get out. Could you try and find a key?"
"What's your name? Give me you name."
"No. It's mine."
"Tell me your name!"
"My name is Os ~ Derek Landy

There were streetlights here, but they were so far apart and surrounded by trees that light dropped away to solid black between them. The skin on the back of his neck crawled as he became aware of the darkness. He didn't usually walk around after nightfall, but tonight he'd had no choice without his car. The wind lifted his hair, leaving him shivering; a voice in his mind chattered nervously.
There was someone in my yard the other night... ~ Danika Stone

Feeling indisposed towards the evening, I drove up the ancient plains. The setting sun is unspeakably beautiful, Only it is approaching nightfall. ~ Li Shangyin

Creatures of the Darkness
BY VICKI JORDAN

It was world of vampires and demons, where innocence
was rare and so were the living. It was a world of darkness,
where light had been outlawed and nightfall had swallowed
us whole.

An epic war had been fought, and the creatures of the dark
had finally prevailed over the promoters of the light. Finally,
for the first time in existence, the people of the shadows could
come out and freely walk among one another in the rays of the
dying sun, which had once been used to shun them away.

A little girl, a child of the light, had survived the battle and
crawled out from under the ashes of the destruction. She looked
around at her altered world in dismay and confronted a vampire
about the changes, of which she did not approve.

"Why did you turn my world into a world of night, and make
wrong into a new form of right? How could you make all the light
disappear, and with it everyone I once loved so dear? Why are the
shadows now the new sun, and why is everything lost what you have
won?"
The vampire looked down at the little girl with amusement
and delight.

"Because, little girl, this is the real world you see, where there's no
light to shine on false identities. We didn't destroy the world just to scare;
we simply uncovered what was already there. What has come out was all the
~ Chris Colfer

Dad would call it my Sisyphus toll. Push a boulder up a hill, pretending it's okay, and come nightfall it - and I - come crashing down. But he forgets the view each time I make it to the top. ~ Marieke Nijkamp

He leaned against the writing desk and stayed there till nightfall, lost in sorrowful thoughts. After all, she had loved him. ~ Gustave Flaubert

Amy hugged her tighter. "Does that mean I can keep you?"
"Only if I can keep you. ~ Shannon Messenger

Having worked on 'Halo: Nightfall' and gotten a taste for what 'Halo' has to offer, it definitely has me interested in picking up the games and getting familiarized more with the 'Halo' universe. ~ Mike Colter

Wait for the morning, when you can regroup with your friends, and the seven of you can start scheming together. ~ Shannon Messenger

She'd been kidnapped right after - and then her abilities had broken, and Alden's sanity collapsed, and Silveny was attacked, and Kenric was murdered, and the Council turned against her, and she was banished along with all of her friends, and the gnomish plague was unleashed, and Keefe ran off, and Lumenaria fell, and so many other devastating and distracting things had happened that Sophie had never stopped to wonder . . . ~ Shannon Messenger

The great masses, who have never been, in the history of mankind, more subject to hypnotic suggestion than they are right now, have become the puppets of the "public opinion" that is engineered by the newspapers in the service, it need hardly be emphasized, of the reigning powers of finance. What is printed in the morning editions of the big city newspapers is the opinion of nine out of ten readers by nightfall. The United States of America, whose more rapid "progress" enables us to predict the future on a daily basis, has pulled far ahead of the pack when it comes to standardizing thought, work, entertainment, etc.

Thus, the United States in 1917 went to war against Germany in sincere indignation because the newspapers had told them that Prussian "militarism" was rioting in devilish atrocities as it attempted to conquer the world. Of course, these transparent lies were published in the daily rags because the ruling lords of Mammon knew that American intervention in Europe would fatten their coffers. Thus, whereas the Americans thought that they were fighting for such high-minded
slogans as "liberty" and "justice," they were actually fighting to stuff the money bags of the big bankers. These "free citizens" are, in fact, mere marionettes; their freedom is imaginary, and a brief glance at American work-methods and leisure-time entertainments is enough to prove conclusively that l'homme machine is not merely imminent: it is already the American reality. ~ Ludwig Klages

Neither father nor son moved, but stayed face to face for hours and hours, neither looking away nor surrendering, until the sun finished its daily pilgrimage, for no day is so long that it is not ended by nightfall. ~ Rabih Alameddine

All he said was, "I believe in you, Sophie Foster," as he raised his pathfinder up to the silvery glow of the moonlight.
And Sandor added, "We all do. ~ Shannon Messenger

I build with you now," he whispered to me, the heat of his mouth on my lips. "We make Thunder Bay together, Em. I love you." I love you. I closed my eyes, my face cracking and my eyes filling with tears. ~ Penelope Douglas

It was not really alarming at first, since the change was subtle, but I did notice that my surroundings took on a different tone at certain times: the shadows of nightfall seemed more somber, my mornings were less buoyant, walks in the woods became less zestful, and there was a moment during my working hours in the late afternoon when a kind of panic and anxiety overtook me, just for a few minutes, accompanied by a visceral queasiness. ~ William Styron

Knock, knock. You have the day to hide. Come nightfall, we hunt. (Desiderius)
Yeah, yeah ... you and your little dog, too. (Kyrian)
You're not scared of his threats? (Amanda)
Chere, the day I fear something like him is the day I lie down at his feet and hand him the knife to cut my heart out. The only fear I have is getting you back to your sister and convincing High Queen Hard Head to leave off this matter until I can locate Desiderius and send his soul into oblivion where it belongs. (Kyrian) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

Ah, but in time the heat of noontide passes, and to it there succeed nightfall and dusk, with a return to the quiet fold where for the weary an the heavy-laden there waits sleep, sweet sleep. ~ Ivan Turgenev

Gates Open at Nightfall & Close at Dawn in swirly lettering, and under that, in tiny plain letters: Trespassers Will Be Exsanguinated Bailey doesn't know what "exsanguinated" means, but he doesn't much like the sound of it. ~ Erin Morgenstern

I sat down, turning the pages of my notebook in search of a blank page, in the dim light of my room. The arrival of nightfall had invited leafy shadows to play hide and seek in the glass reflection of the window. I smiled as one of these mischievous shadows crept across the page in a midnight dance. ~ Gina Marinello-Sweeney

I get up in the morning with an idea for a three-volume novel and by nightfall it's a paragraph in my column. ~ Don Marquis

In the early days, when they thought this epidemic was much like other epidemics, religion held its ground. But once these people realized their instant peril, they gave their thoughts to pleasure. And all the hideous fears that stamp their faces in the daytime are transformed in the fiery, dusty nightfall into a sort of hectic exaltation, an unkempt freedom fevering in their blood. ~ Albert Camus

When the sun went down, and touches of blue filtered into the fading afterglow, an orange lamp would light up in the knob of the bell and slowly begin to revolve. The beacon always pinpointed the onset of nightfall exactly. Against the most gorgeous sunsets or in dim drizzling mist, the beacon was ever true to its appointed moment: that precise instant in the alchemy of light and dark when darkness tipped the scales. ~ Haruki Murakami

Elizabeth snapped awake in a terrified instant as the door to her bed chamber was flung open near dawn, and Ian stalked into the darkened room. "Do you want to go first, or shall I?" he said tightly, coming to stand at the side of her bed.
"What do you mean?" she asked in a trembling voice.
"I mean," he said, "that either you go first and tell me why in hell you suddenly find my company repugnant, or I'll go first and tell you how I feel when I don't know where you are or why you want to be there!"
"I've sent word to you both nights."
"You sent a damned note that arrived long after nightfall both times, informing me that you intended to sleep somewhere else. I want to know why!"
He has men beaten like animals, she reminded herself.
"Stop shouting at me," Elizabeth said shakily, getting out of bed and dragging the covers with her to hide herself from him.
His brows snapped together in an ominous frown. "Elizabeth?" he asked, reaching for her.
"Don't touch me!" she cried.
Bentner's voice came from the doorway. "Is aught amiss, my lady?" he asked, glaring bravely at Ian.
"Get out of here and close that damned door behind you!" Ian snapped furiously.
"Leave it open," Elizabeth said nervously, and the brave butler did exactly as she said.
In six long strides Ian was at the door, shoving it closed with a force that sent it crashing into its frame, and Elizabeth began to vibrate with terror. When he turned around and start ~ Judith McNaught

You cannot say to the sun, 'More sun,' or to the rain, 'Less rain.' To a man, geisha can only be half a wife. We are the wives of nightfall. And yet, to learn kindness after so much unkindness, to understand that a little girl with more courage than she knew, would find her prayers were answered, can that not be called happiness? After all these are not the memoirs of an empress, nor of a queen. These are memoirs of another kind. ~ Arthur Golden

Fitz grinned - and a girl who'd been watching him tripped over her own feet. ~ Shannon Messenger

I want morning and noon and nightfall with you. I want your tears, your smiles, your kisses ... the smell of your hair, the taste of your skin, the touch of your breath on my face. I want to see you in the final hour of my life ... to lie in your arms as I take my last breath. ~ Lisa Kleypas

Occasionally I looked up towards some vast old apartment with its shutters still open and where amphibious men and women, adapting themselves each evening to living in an element different from their daytime one, swam about slowly in the dense liquid which at nightfall rises incessantly from the wells of lamps and fills the rooms to the brink of their walls of stone and glass, and as they moved about in it, their bodies sent forth unctuous golden ripples. ~ Marcel Proust

She would like to be on a train named Nightfall going to some place where she'd be twenty-five years old. ~ Dawn Powell

There is no thing that with a twist of the imagination cannot be something else. Porpoises risen in a green sea, the wind at nightfall bending the rose- red grasses and you- in your apron hurrying to catch- say it seems to you to be your son. How ridiculous! You will pass up into a cloud and look back at me, not count the scribbling foolish that put wings at your heels, at your knees. ~ William Carlos Williams

The Sun can rise anytime in your dreams. And there night may fall anytime as well. ~ Munia Khan

For me the autumn has never been a sad season. The dead leaves and the increasingly shorter days have never suggested the end of anything, but rather an expectation of the future. In paris, there is an electricity in the air in october evenings at nightfall. Even when it is raining. i do not feel low at that hour of the day, nor do i have the sense of time flying by. i have the impression that everything is possible. the year begins in the month of october. ~ Patrick Modiano

Events That Haunt The Mind And Scar It With Nightmares Are Never What They Seem ... ~ P.W. Creighton

Two German kayakers arrive from the north at nightfall. They set up camp on the cape beach, about a third of a mile from the cabin, and come up to recharge their equipment on my solar batteries. We have to look at their photos, their films, exchange e-mail addresses. When you meet someone nowadays, right after the handshake and a quick glance you write down the website and blog information. Conversation has given way to a session in front of the screen. Afterwards, you won't remember faces or tones of voice, but you'll have cards with scribbled numbers. Human society's dream has come true: we rub our antennae together like ants. One day we'll just take a sniff. ~ Sylvain Tesson

...I awoke with a renewed understanding of why it is wise to retire to bed come nightfall. For evil thoughts take strength from the dark, while hope thrives in the light. ~ Elizabeth Blackwell

I remember a nightfall from childhood, far from home and off the known track: I'd been walking with some older boys, but they ran off and left me, and as darkness hurried in, I suddenly realised how far from home I was. ~ John Burnside

I'm disappearing in the nightfall,
becoming one with the rocks I'm sitting on…
Sinking in my own reminiscence of your smile,
your lips and your smell…
Not missing you, not longing for you,
but grieving for the dreams that held the image of
the darkest brown eyes.
Perhaps I was your one as you called me…
It is said a man can be happy
with any woman
but the one he truly loves. ~ Tatjana Ostojic

All these half-tones of the soul's consciousness create a raw landscape within us, a sun eternally setting on what we are. Our sense of ourselves then becomes a deserted field at nightfall, with sad reeds flanking a boatless river, bright in the darkness growing between the distant shores. ~ Fernando Pessoa

Mallowmelt always makes a difficult conversation better. ~ Shannon Messenger

Keefe was going to slay her over this ~ Shannon Messenger

Some minutes passed before anyone hastened to the aid of the elderly man sitting there collapsed in his chair. They bore him to his room. And before nightfall a shocked and respectful world received the news of his decease. ~ Thomas Mann

If as we see nightfall,
we become capable of accepting love,
let's celebrate an alliance with our unbroken delusions.
Who ever knew we would say goodbye to oblivion?
Who ever knew we would accept hope? ~ Mya Robarts

December stillness, teach me through your trees
That loom along the west, one with the land,
The veiled evangel of your mysteries.
While nightfall, sad and spacious, on the down
Deepens, and dusk embues me where I stand,
With grave diminishings of green and brown,
Speak, roofless Nature, your instinctive words;
And let me learn your secret from the sky,
Following a flock of steadfast-journeying birds
In lone remote migration beating by.
December stillness, crossed by twilight roads,
Teach me to travel far and bear my loads. ~ Siegfried Sassoon

Chris loved to look at every type of plant, animal, and bug he hadn't seen before on the trail and point out those he did recognize. He enjoyed walking along small streams, listening to the water as it traveled, and searching for eddies where we could watch the minnows scurry amongst the rocks. On one Shenandoah trip, while we were resting at a waterfall, eating our chocolate-covered granola bars and watching the water pummel the rocks below, he said, "See, Carine ? That's the purity of nature. It may be harsh in its honesty, but it never lies to you".

Chris seemed to be most comfortable outdoors, and the farther away from the typical surroundings and pace of our everyday lives the better. While it was unusual for a solid week to pass without my parents having an argument that sent them into a negative tailspin of destruction and despair, they never got into a fight of any consequence when we were on an extended family hike or camping trip. It seemed like everything became centered and peaceful when there was no choice but to make nature the focus. Our parents' attention went to watching for blaze marks on trees ; staying on the correct trail ; doling out bug spray, granola bars, sandwiches, and candy bars at proper intervals ; and finding the best place to pitch the tent before nightfall. They taught us how to properly lace up our hiking boots and wear the righ socks to keep our feet healthy and reliable. They showed us which leaves were safe to use as toilet pape ~ Carine McCandless

T nightfall, at
the oppressive moment of transition, a storm of carnivorous mosquitoes rose
out of the swamps, and a tender breath of human shit, warm and sad, stirred
the certainty of death in the depths of one's soul. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I guess that makes sense. And by the way - your friends?" Amy glanced over her shoulder to take another peek at them. "Are they in a contest to see who can be the most gorgeous or something?"
Sophie had to laugh. "They might be."
"It's ridiculous," Amy told her. "Especially Fitz's family. I mean, seriously, who looks like that?"
"Only the Vackers," Sophie assured her. ~ Shannon Messenger

How quickly we grow accustomed to wonders. I am reminded of the Isaac Asimov story "Nightfall," about the planet where the stars were visible only once in a thousand years. So awesome was the sight that it drove people mad. We who can see the stars every night glance up casually at the cosmos and then quickly down again, searching for a Dairy Queen. ~ Roger Ebert

To accomplish our destiny it is not enough to merely guard prudently against road accidents. We must also cover before nightfall the distance assigned to each of us. ~ Alexis Carrel

We left in pretty good time, and came after nightfall to Klausenburgh. Here I stopped for the night at the Hotel Royale. I had for dinner, or rather supper, a chicken done up some way with red pepper, which was very good but thirsty. (Mem. get recipe for Mina.) I asked the waiter, and he said it was called "paprika hendl," and that, as it was a national dish, I should be able to get it anywhere along the Carpathians. ~ Bram Stoker

Why couldn't my heart have picked him? Life would have been so much easier."
"Because hearts are ornery, sneaky little bastards, designed to cause misery. They want what they want, and they don't give a damn about what would make life easier or harder for the heart's owner." Della snapped. ~ C.C. Hunter

Being free is as difficult and as perpetual - or rather fighting for one's freedom, struggling towards being free, is like struggling to be a poet or a good Christian or a good jew or a good Moslem or a good Zen Buddhist. You work all day long and achieve some kind of level of success by nightfall, go to sleep and wake up in the next morning with the job still to be done. So you start all over again. ~ Maya Angelou

In addition to the little ecosystem developing around my raft, I am constantly surrounded by a display of natural wonders. The acrobatic dorados perform beneath ballets of fluffy white clouds. The clouds glide across the sky until they join at the horizon to form whirling, flaming sunsets that are slowly doused by nightfall. Then, as if the sun had suddenly crashed, thousands of glistening galaxies are flung out into deep black night. There is no bigger sky country than the sea. But I cannot enjoy the incredible beauty around me. It lies beyond my grasp, taunting me. Knowing it can be stolen from me at any time, by a Dorado or shark attack or by a deflating raft, I cannot relax and appreciate it. It is beauty surrounded by ugly fear. I write in my log that it is a view of heaven from a seat in hell. ~ Steven Callahan

And I suggest we get there before nightfall, 'cause that's when the monsters come out."
"Monsters?" …
"Yeah, monsters. And my boyfriend? He's the scariest one. ~ Elizabeth Hunter

Mama wasn't dead ... exactly. They all said she was, but when Elma was small, she seen Mama creep into her room at night, half-naked, head all bloodied red like when they found her by the well that day, and Elma reckoned dead just meant pretendin' you couldn't move or breathe until nightfall when you got up and walked around like you was free. ~ Shannon Celebi

People hide in the dark. They quench their thirsts in the dark. They build their secrets in the dark. We're more ourselves here than anywhere else. I get to be me..." he swallowed, staring at me, "when nightfall is coming. ~ Penelope Douglas

How shall man measure Progress there where the dark-faced Josie lies? How many heartfuls of sorrow s hall balance a bushel of wheat? How hard a thing is life to the lowly, and yet how human and real! And all this life and love and strife and failure,
is it the twilight of nightfall or the flush of some faint-dawning day? ~ W.E.B. Du Bois

Out of doubt, out of dark to the day's rising
I came singing into the sun, sword unsheathing.
To hope's end I rode and to heart's breaking:
Now for wrath, now for ruin and a red nightfall! ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

And lo, between the sundawn and the sun His day's work and his night's work are undone: And lo, between the nightfall and the light, He is not, and none knoweth of such an one. ~ Algernon Charles Swinburne

The semigloom of the Tower's nightfall made Senlin shiver. He cleared his throat and turned toward Adam, silhouetted by the rapidly fleeing line of sunlight. "Who will bury them?" Senlin rubbed tenderly at the dust-clotted gash in his cheek.
"The vultures," Adam said grimly. "We should go. ~ Josiah Bancroft

His descent was like nightfall. ~ Homer

When nightfall weaves its way through the New York Public Library, it is nothing shy of magic. Long stretched of sunlight on marble morph from white to yellow to pink to orange to red, the dim slowly, completely. Shadows yawn and stretch awake. Eighty-five miles of books on shelves blink away their daytime sleep, for book are often nocturnal creatures, ready to play. To roam. To hunt. ~ Kristin O'Donnell Tubb

Moody was not unaware of the advantage his inscrutable grace afforded him. Like most excessively beautiful persons, he had studied his own reflection minutely and, in a way, knew himself from the outside best; he was always in some chamber of his mind perceiving himself from the exterior. He had passed a great many hours in the alcove of his private dressing room, where the mirror tripled his image into profile, half-profile, and square: Van Dyck's Charles, though a good deal more striking. It was a private practice, and one he would likely have denied--for how roundly self-examination is condemned, by the moral prophets of our age! As if the self had no relation to the self, and one only looked in mirrors to have one's arrogance confirmed; as if the act of self-regarding was not as subtle, fraught, and ever-changing as any bond between twin souls. In his fascination Moody sought less to praise his own beauty than to master it. Certainly whenever he caught his own reflection, in a window box, or in a pane of glass after nightfall, he felt a thrill of satisfaction--but as an engineer might feel, chancing upon a mechanism of his own devising and finding it splendid, flashing, properly oiled and performing exactly as he had predicted it should. ~ Eleanor Catton

Best get moving. At nightfall they'll come for the rest of you. ~ Katherine Arden

The law presides over things of this world, finally. The world where shadow is shadow and light is light, yin is yin and yang is yang, I'm me and he's him. 'I am me and / He is him/ Autumn eve.' But you don't belong to that world, sonny. The world you belong to is above that or below that."

Which is better?" I asked, out of simple curiosity. "Above or below?"

It's not that either one is better," he said. After a brief coughing fit, he spat a glob of phlegm onto a tissue and studied it closely before crumpling the tissue and throwing it into a wastebasket. "It's not a question of better or worse. The point is, not to resist the flow. You go up when you're supposed to go up and down when you're supposed to go down. When you're supposed to go up, find the highest tower and climb to the top. When you're supposed to go down, find the deepest well and go down to the bottom. When there is no flow, stay still. If you resist the flow, everything dries up. If everything dries up, the world is darkness. 'I am he and/ He is me:/ Spring nightfall.' Abandon the self, and there you are. ~ Haruki Murakami

In really bad times, the hungriest would gather at his door at nightfall, vying for the chance to earn a few coins to feed their families by selling their bodies. Had I been older when my father died, I might have been among them. Instead I learned to hunt. ~ Suzanne Collins

Park women, properly so called, are those degraded creatures, utterly lost to all sense of shame, who wander about the paths most frequented after nightfall in the Parks, and consent to any species of humiliation for the sake of acquiring a few shillings. ~ Henry Mayhew

What do you think was the only thing that made me keep breathing?" My tone hardened as I clenched my jaw. "In my brain, I reached for you. I never stopped reaching for you. ~ Penelope Douglas

The Goldsworth castle became particularly solitary after that turning point at dusk which resembles so much the nightfall of the mind. Stealthy ~ Vladimir Nabokov

The Nantucketer, he alone resides and riots on the sea; he alone, in Bible language, goes down to it in ships; to and fro ploughing it as his own special plantation. There is his home; there lies his business, which a Noah's flood would not interrupt, though it overwhelmed all the millions in China. He lives on the sea, as prairie cocks in the prairie; he hides among the waves, he climbs them as chamois hunters climb the Alps. For years he knows not the land; so that when he comes to it at last, it smells like another world, more strangely than the moon would to an Earthman. With the landless gull, that at sunset folds her wings and is rocked to sleep between billows; so at nightfall the Nantucketer, out of sight of land, furls his sails, and lays him to his rest, while under his very pillow rush herds of walruses and whales. ~ Herman Melville

Dating is like nightfall--there's got to be a mourning after. ~ Lois Greiman

And that enquiring man John Synge comes next,
That dying chose the living world for text
And never could have rested in the tomb
But that, long travelling, he had come
Towards nightfall upon certain set apart
In a most desolate stony place ... ~ William Butler Yeats

They're just waiting for nightfall. Then you're s.o.l., sister. There's only one other chick in the entire camp. But she's the chief redneck's daughter, so they consider her off-limits, kind of f a Smurfette situation." He exhaled, grinning up at the slats of the cage roof. "Smoking body on that one - but shy a few teeth. Still, I'd do Hickette with a flag over her face."

"Excuse me?"

Matthew chuckled. "Do her for his country."

"Matthew!" I cried, frowning at him. I'd thought of him as more . . . innocent. ~ Kresley Cole

The rapid nightfall of mid-December had quite beset the little village as they approached it on soft feet over a first thin fall of powdery snow. Little was visible but squares of a dusky orange-red on either side of the street, where the firelight or lamplight of each cottage overflowed through the casements into the dark world without. Most of the low latticed windows were innocent of blinds, and to the lookers-in from outside, the inmates, gathered round the tea-table, absorbed in handiwork, or talking with laughter and gesture, had each that happy grace which is the last thing the skilled actor shall capture--the natural grace which goes with perfect unconsciousness of observation. Moving at will from one theatre to another, the two spectators, so far from home themselves, had something of wistfulness
in their eyes as they watched a cat being stroked, a sleepy child picked up and huddled off to bed, or a tired man stretch and knock out his pipe on the end of a smouldering log. ~ Kenneth Grahame

I watched the shadow of our plane hastening below us across hedges and fences, rows of poplars and canals … Nowhere, however, was a single human being to be seen. No matter whether one is flying over Newfoundland or the sea of lights that stretches from Boston to Philadelphia after nightfall, over the Arabian deserts which gleam like mother-of-pearl, over the Ruhr or the city of Frankfurt, it is as though there were no people, only the things they have made and in which they are hiding. One sees the places where they live and the roads that link them, one sees the smoke rising from their houses and factories, one sees the vehicles in which they sit, but one sees not the people themselves. And yet they are present everywhere upon the face of the earth, extending their dominion by the hour, moving around the honeycombs of towering buildings and tied into networks of a complexity that goes far beyond the power of any one individual to imagine, from the thousands of hoists and winches that once worked the South African diamond mines to the floors of today's stock and commodity exchanges, through which the global tides of information flow without cease. If we view ourselves from a great height, it is frightening to realize how little we know about our species, our purpose and our end, I thought, as we crossed the coastline and flew out over the jelly-green sea. ~ W.G. Sebald

If I'm not back by nightfall, come and take a very careful look, said Anya. But I don't expect to need rescuing. I'm not that kind of princess.

What kind of princess are you?

Not the kind that needs rescuing, said Anya firmly. ~ Garth Nix

Autumn is a cunning muse who steals by degrees my warmth and light. So distracted by her glorious painting of colors, I scarcely realize my losses until the last fiery leaf has fallen to the ground and the final pumpkin shrinks. Autumn departs with a cold kiss, leaving me to suffer the frigid grasp of winter in prolonged nightfall. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

If you didn't find some way of stopping it, people would go on asking questions.
The teachers were useful there. Bands of them wandered through the mountains, along with the tinkers, portable blacksmiths, miracle medicine men, cloth peddlers, fortune-tellers, and all the other travelers who sold things the people didn't need every day but occasionally found useful.
They went from village to village delivering short lessons on many subjects. They kept apart from the other travelers and were quite mysterious in their ragged robes and strange square hats. They used long words, like corrugated iron. They lived rough lives, surviving on what food they could earn from giving lessons to anyone who would listen. When no one would listen, they lived on baked hedgehog. They went to sleep under the stars, which the math teachers would count, the astronomy teachers would measure, and the literature teachers would name. The geography teachers got lost in the woodsand fell into bear traps.
People were usually quite pleased to see them. They taught children enough to shut them up, which was the main thing, after all. But they always had to be driven out of the villages by nightfall in case they stole chickens. ~ Terry Pratchett

THE MEETING"

"Scant rain had fallen and the summer sun
Had scorched with waves of heat the ripening corn,
That August nightfall, as I crossed the down
Work-weary, half in dream. Beside a fence
Skirting a penning's edge, an old man waited
Motionless in the mist, with downcast head
And clothing weather-worn. I asked his name
And why he lingered at so lonely a place.

"I was a shepherd here. Two hundred seasons
I roamed these windswept downlands with my flock.
No fences barred our progress and we'd travel
Wherever the bite grew deep. In summer drought
I'd climb from flower-banked combe to barrow'd hill-top
To find a missing straggler or set snares
By wood or turmon-patch. In gales of March
I'd crouch nightlong tending my suckling lambs.

"I was a ploughman, too. Year upon year
I trudged half-doubled, hands clenched to my shafts,
Guiding my turning furrow. Overhead,
Cloud-patterns built and faded, many a song
Of lark and pewit melodied my toil.
I durst not pause to heed them, rising at dawn
To groom and dress my team: by daylight's end
My boots hung heavy, clodded with chalk and flint.

"And then I was a carter. With my skill
I built the reeded dew-pond, sliced out hay
From the dense-matted rick. At harvest time,
My wain piled high with sheaves, I urged the horses
Back to the master's barn with shouts and curses
John Rawson

Anyone can carry their burden, however hard, until nightfall. Anyone can do their work, however hard, for one day. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Mental discipline, prayer and remoteness from the world and its disturbing visions reduce temptation to a minimum, but they can never entirely abolish it. In medieval traditions, abbeys and convents were always considered to be expugnable centres of revolt against infernal dominion on earth. They became, accordingly, special targets. Satan, issuing orders at nightfall to his foul precurrers, was rumoured to dispatch to capital cities only one junior fiend. This solitary demon, the legend continues, sleeps at his post. There is no work for him; the battle was long ago won. But monasteries, those scattered danger points, become the chief objectives of nocturnal flight; the sky fills with the beat of sable wings as phalanx after phalanx streams to the attack, and the darkness crepitates with the splintering of a myriad lances against the masonry of asceticism. ~ Patrick Leigh Fermor

Aragorn: Gentlemen! We do not stop 'til nightfall.
Pippin: But what about breakfast?
Aragorn: You've already had it.
Pippin: We've had one, yes. But what about second breakfast?
[Aragorn stares at him, then walks off.]
Merry: Don't think he knows about second breakfast, Pip.
Pippin: What about elevensies? Luncheon? Afternoon tea? Dinner? Supper? He knows about them, doesn't he?
Merry: I wouldn't count on it Pip. ~ Peter Jackson

She was in person full-limbed and somewhat heavy; without ruddiness, as without pallor; and soft to the touch as a cloud. To see her hair was to fancy that a whole winter did not contain darkness enough to form its shadow: it closed over her forehead like nightfall extinguishing the western glow. ~ Thomas Hardy

Fading light buttered the ridges until shadows licked them clean and they were lost to nightfall. ~ Daniel Woodrell

Shortly after we returned from the Platte River in Nebraska, I scouted a few of our duck holes on my dad's property. I wanted to see what kind of ducks had gathered on our land while we were gone. On this particular day, it was cool and crisp as it got close to sunset. As I sat in a deer stand waiting for nightfall, I was counting mallard ducks that flew over my head. Meanwhile, there were fox squirrels scurrying in the trees around me looking for acorns, while groups of wood ducks waited in the water for the squirrels to drop acorns. A few minutes later, fifteen wild turkeys walked in front of me. I thought to myself, Man, this is paradise. As I soaked in my surroundings, I heard the sounds of footsteps in shallow water. A majestic eight-point buck walked right in front of me. I raised my rifle and fired. The buck hit the ground. My dad was in the woods with me and heard me shoot. As we loaded up the deer, I shared the details of what I had seen with my dad. We both agreed that there is nothing better than the beauty of the outdoors. It was about as perfect a day as I've ever had in the woods. ~ Jase Robertson

If you leave within the hour, you can make it by nightfall. With this rain, I wouldn't wait longer. The stream is close to covering the bridge already."
Sophia had to smile. "Anxious to get rid of me?"
"Aye.I'm tried of seeing your long face over the breakfast table."
She laughed a little. "Red,I don't understand. Why are you so insistent about this?"
"Because if anyone knows the cost of lost opportunities, it's me. Sometimes you have to grab life by the horns and ride it,even if it tries to throw you. I don't want to see you spending the rest of your life wincing every time you say this man's name. ~ Karen Hawkins