On The Ledge Quotes

Suzy Zeus is tense as stemware,
not explosive, just on edge -
needs a ten-foot wall around her,
or at least a ten-foot hedge,
Suzy's straining, teeth to toenails,
easing backward on the ledge. ~ Maggie Robbins

I revise my suicide plan to slow death by morphling. I will become a yellow-skinned bag of bones, with enormous eyes. I'm a couple of days into the plan, making good progress, when something unexpected happens. I begin to sing. At the window, in the shower, in my sleep. Hour after hour of ballads, love songs, mountain airs. All the songs my father taught me before he died, for certainly there has been very little music in my life since. What's amazing is how clearly I remember them. The tunes, the lyrics. My voice, at first rough and breaking on the high notes, warms up into something splendid. A voice that would make the mockingjays fall silent and then tumble over themselves to join in. Days pass, weeks. I watch the snows fall on the ledge outside my window. And in all that time, mine is the only voice I hear. What ~ Suzanne Collins

What is the value and worth of knowledge? My teachings have taught me that many will die for lack of knowledge. If knowledge and mindset are key ingredients to life - why do some reject it? Remove know from knowledge and you are standing on the ledge. When are we going to rescue ourselves from the ledge? ~ Bobby F. Kimbrough Jr.

The autumn months are my domain:
Mirrored in pools my castles dream
Of wars long past and out of mind
From towers with ivy garlands twined

Weak and with regret the sun
Drowns itself in the sluggish green
Water that marble fountains weep;
Trees open their nests to the wings of sleep.

The wind like a phantom seems to roar,
Returned to die of love once more
At the false meeting of the ways
Where a temple rounds its dome in the haze.

Sometimes a child is heard to laugh
In the house of the priest, far off;
His lamp on the ledge of the window gleams
Much as the Holy Spirit flames.

Then nothing. Only a plane tree sways
Its crown of leaves in the dark that graze
Slowly and with a sound so alight
They barely ripple the silent night.

I am the lord of this domain.
Through halls of hollow, echoing
Armor, I haul the heavy shame
Of not being able to be king. ~ Stuart Merrill

Elizabeth, when you look into the darkness you have two choices. You either fall into it, so you'll never fear the unknown again. Or you stay on the ledge, always wondering what's there. Torturing yourself over it. Elizabeth, I live in the abyss, and would like you to leap into the unknown with me. Will you join me? ~ LeeAnn Whitaker

I promise not to step on you - I only look like a clodhopper," he was saying when Jo reached them. He winked at Ella, who glanced away and blinked, as if surprised that he'd come so close to guessing what she thought.
Jo slid up to the bar behind her sister, planted a stiff arm on the ledge, and raised an eyebrow at him.
He glanced up and saw her.
She expected him to blanche, or bristle, or pretend he'd just forgotten someplace else he had to be. A lot of men did that, when they realized that the girl they thought was alone had brought friends to look out for her.
But instead he only said, "Oh," softly, his smile so wide and earnest that crows'-feet appeared at the edges of his eyes; he smiled as though she was an old friend, as though he had been waiting for Jo a long time and was delighted to see her at last. ~ Genevieve Valentine

At the top of the cellar steps Broadman knelt down and fumbled in his tinderbox. It turned out to be damp.
'I'll kill that bloody cat,' he muttered, and groped for the spare box that was normally on the ledge by the door. It was missing. Broadman said a bad word. A lighted taper appeared in mid-air, right beside him.
HERE, TAKE THIS.
'Thanks,' said Broadman.
DON'T MENTION IT.
Broadman went to throw the taper down the steps. His hand paused in mid-air. He looked at the taper, his brow furrowing. Then he turned around and held the taper up to illuminate the scene. It didn't shed much light, but it did give the darkness a shape ...
'Oh, no - ' he breathed.
BUT YES, said Death. ~ Terry Pratchett

When there was room on the ledge outside of the pots and boxes for a cat, the cat was there- in sunny weather- stretched at full length, asleep and blissful, with her furry belly to the sun and a paw curved over her nose. ~ Mark Twain

He came back, sat on the ledge again, and handed her a glass. "You haven't slept; you haven't eaten."
"It goes with the territory." The wine tasted like liquid gold. "Nonetheless, you worry me, Lieutenant."
"You worry too easily."
"I love you." It flustered her to hear him say it in that lovely voice that hinted of Irish mists, to know that somehow, incredibly, it was true. Since she had no answer to give him, she frowned into her wine. ~ J.D. Robb

I may not believe in God, but I believe in the Wow! That day you kissed me on the ledge, that was it." A light, like I'd seen in the eyes of those testifying on their faith, it lit him up.
"We're tiny out there. In a million years what we do ain't going to matter worth shit and that's still going to be there. I think the Wow will make it better. ~ James Buchanan

When she moved away from him now it didn't stink of retreat. Instead it felt as though she had seized the high ground as she sat gracefully on the ledge of the window. She crossed her long legs and her short dress hiked up another inch. The night sky - vast and open without any tall buildings blocking its reach - seemed to both swallow her and retreat from the immensity of her presence. ~ Armada West

There was something unfamiliar about him. Something ferocious about his eyes, some sort of bite in his faint smile. Something altogether hectic and unsettled. She stood on the ledge of his smile and looked over the edge. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

Napier surfaced next to her and propped his arms on the ledge. "I meant to ask - can you swim?"
"No," she said through chattering teeth, "Actually I can't."
He cocked his head to the side and looked perplexed. "Your lips are blue."
"I'm cold," she said curtly.
"Want me to warm you up?" he asked, grinning.
"I'd rather be cold," she snapped, hating him more by the second. ~ Emory Sharplin

We have to emphasize to the gay community that opposition to same-sex marriages is not about hate, but about debate. Opposition to what some of us see as a devastating move that will further weaken the family and harm children
such opposition is not hateful. Morality is not bigotry.
In their book The Homosexual Agenda, authors Alan Sears and Craig Osten give this illustration, which I've summarized: Imagine that you are standing at the bottom of a cliff and you are watching as someone on the ledge above you is walking backwards, and in a few steps he will surely fall over the precipice. You shout, warning him to stop, and before you know it, a crowd gathers around you, snapping your picture and accusing you of "hate speech." You are being warned to keep your prejudices to yourself. After all, who are you to tell someone where they can and can't walk? Who are you to say that someone can't walk backwards? You are dumbfounded, but there you are, the object of everyone's wrath. ~ Erwin W. Lutzer

He looks up and the loss in his Noise is so great it feels like I'm standing on the edge of an abyss, that I'm about to fall down into him, into blackness so empty and lonely there'd never be a way out.
"Todd," I say again, a catch in my voice. "On the ledge, under the waterfall, do you remember what you said to me? Do you remember what you said to save me?"
He's shaking his head slowly. "I've done terrible things, Viola. Terrible things-"
"We all fall, you said." I'm gripping his hand now. "We all fall but that's not what matters. What matters is picking yourself up again. ~ Patrick Ness

He wiped the sweat off his forehead and bent to look out the window. It was amazing how heavy a 1.6-pound pistol could get
if you weren't relaxed. He knew better and chided himself, but forgot the pain the moment he saw the target building.


The neon dragon dancing on the roof glinted off the puddles in sparks of yellow and red. Outside the Dragon's Door the line
stretched back around the block. Steele set the pistol on the ledge and checked the Rolex Submariner on his wrist. It was
11:25. He pulled a magnifier from the inside pocket of his Manning and Manning jacket and pressed it to his eye.


"I'm on target," he said.

"Uploading the feed, stand by, ~ Sean Parnell

If I take a chamois and rub real hard on the bone, right on the ledge of your cheek bone, some of the black will disappear. It will flake away into the chamois and underneath there will be gold leaf. I can see it shining through the black. I know it is there…
[...] And if I take a nailfile or even Eva's old paring knife - that will do - and scrape away at the gold, it will fall away, it will fall away and there will be alabaster. The alabaster is what gives your face its planes, its curves. That is why your mouth smiling does not reach your eyes. Alabaster is giving it a gravity that resists a total smile.


[...] Then I can take a chisel and small tap hammer and tap away at the alabaster. It will crack then like ice under the pick, and through the breaks I will see the loam, fertile, free of pebbles and twigs. For it is the loam that is giving you that smell. ~ Toni Morrison

I remember the years I had been too afraid to dream of sitting on the ledge of a humble yellow house, chatting with a family that wasn't my own, chatting in a language that wasn't my own, in a part of the world so far away from the one I grew up in and yet not that different. ~ Shivya Nath

Titter," Radcliffe muttered as he pushed the window open on the first empty room he found on the main floor. "What the devil is a titter? And how the hell am I supposed to try not to look so large?" Shaking his head with disgust, he held the window open with one hand as he sat on the ledge, then swung one leg after the other over the sill and into the room. Standing, he let the window slide closed, then took a moment to brush the wrinkles out of his skirt and yank at the bottom of his bodice to straighten it before hurrying across the room.
Pausing at the door, he pressed an ear to it to listen briefly, then eased it open and peered out. It was early afternoon and yet it seemed the women were all still abed. Slipping into the hallway, he pulled the door gently closed and hurried as quickly as a man could in a dress that kept catching at his boot spurs, toward the stairs. ~ Lynsay Sands

I'm high above the city
I'm standing on the ledge
The view from here is pretty
And I step off the edge

And now I'm fallin', baby
Through the sky
Through the sky
I'm fallin'
Baby, through the sky
It's my callin'
Baby, don't you cry, don't you cry
I'm fallin' down through the sky

Toward the street that I'm from
Oh, Broadway, here I come
Broadway, here I come ~ Joe Iconis

The doors had not two, but four shutters of paneled teak so that in the old days, ladies could keep the bottom half closed, lean their elbows on the ledge and bargain with visiting vendors without betraying themselves below the waist. Technically, they could buy carpets, or bangles, with their breasts covered and their bottoms bare. Technically. ~ Arundhati Roy

Adventures don't happen when you're worried about the future or tied down by the past. They only exist in the now. And they always,always come at the most unexpected time,in the least likely of packages. An adventure is an open window; and an adventurer is the person willing to crawl out on the ledge and leap. ~ Cora Carmack

Piggy took off his shoes and socks, ranged them carefully on the ledge and tested the water with one toe. 'It's hot!' 'What did you expect?' 'I didn't expect nothing. My auntie-' 'Sucks to your auntie! ~ William Golding

Take cover!" but could not move himself. The helicopter nosed in unsteadily, rags of cloud catching in its whirring vanes. Even as he watched it approach, Rocannon watched from inside it, not knowing what he looked for, seeing two small figures on the mountainside, afraid, afraid - a flash of light, a hot shock of pain, pain in his own flesh, intolerable. The mind-contact was broken, blown clean away. He was himself, standing on the ledge pressing his right hand against his chest and gasping, seeing the helicopter creep still closer, its vanes whirring with a dry loud rattle, its laser-mounted nose pointing at him. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Maybe this is not a come-down-from-the-ledge story. But I tell it with the thought that the woman on the ledge will ask herself a question, the question that occurred to that man in Bogota. He wondered how we know that what happens to us isn't good? ~ Amy Hempel

He could feel the end of the battle approaching, and so could the blur of the Sith he faced in the Force, the shadow had become a pulsar of fear.

Easily, almost effortlessly, he turned the shadow's fear into a weapon: he angled the battle to bring them both out onto the window ledge.

Out in the wind. Out with the lightning. Out on a rain-slicked ledge above a half kilometer drop.

Out where the shadow's fear's fear made it hesitate.

Out where the shadow's fear turned some of it's Force-powered speed into a Force-powered grip on the slippery permacrete.

Out where Mace could flick his blade in one precise arc and slash the shadow's lightsaber in half.

One piece flipped back in through the cut open window. The other tumbled from opening fingers, bounced on the ledge, and fell through the rain towards the distant alleys below.

Now the shadow was only Palpatine: old and shrunken, thinning hair bleached white by time and care, face lined with exhaustion.

'For all your power, my lord,you are no Jedi. All you are, my lord,' Mace said evenly, staring past his blade, 'is under arrest. ~ Matthew Woodring Stover

He woke early the next morning. It was still cool, but he opened the window and, leaning on the ledge, looked down at the river. A ship slid by. Then another. Years later, in exile, he would watch the railway tracks from his hotel and it would sink a well in him, and he would taste the same calm water. ~ Rupert Thomson

You need shoving, not pushing. You need to jump back on that camel. Otherwise you're going to stay up on the ledge you've made for yourself. ~ Jennifer Niven

All you need to know about Antarctica is it's three horizontal stripes. On the bottom, there's the stripe for the water, which is anywhere from black to dark gray. And on top of that, there's a stripe for the land, which is usually black or white. Then there's a stripe for the sky, which is some kind of gray or blue. ~ Maria Semple

Vuillard balances too far on the side of fantasy ... the people in his pictures are not properly defined. As he's an admirable draughtsman it must be that he just doesn't want to give them mouths and hands and feet. ~ Paul Signac

In a last violent protest against the hopelessness of imminent death, I sensed my spirit piercing through the enveloping gloom. I felt it transcend that hopeless, meaningless world, and from somewhere I heard a victorious "Yes" in answer to my question of the existence of an ultimate purpose. At that moment a light was lit in a distant farmhouse, which stood on the horizon as if painted there, in the midst of the miserable gray of a dawning morning in Bavaria. "Et lux in tenebris lucet"-and the light shineth in the darkness. ~ Viktor E. Frankl

I want the Saints to be one of those teams where when other teams see us on the schedule, they know they're in for one hell of a game. ~ Reggie Bush

An imaginary circle of empathy is drawn by each person. It circumscribes the person at some distance, and corresponds to those things in the world that deserve empathy. I like the term "empathy" because it has spiritual overtones. A term like "sympathy" or "allegiance" might be more precise, but I want the chosen term to be slightly mystical, to suggest that we might not be able to fully understand what goes on between us and others, that we should leave open the possibility that the relationship can't be represented in a digital database.

If someone falls within your circle of empathy, you wouldn't want to see him or her killed. Something that is clearly outside the circle is fair game. For instance, most people would place all other people within the circle, but most of us are willing to see bacteria killed when we brush our
teeth, and certainly don't worry when we see an inanimate rock tossed aside to keep a trail clear.

The tricky part is that some entities reside close to the edge of the circle. The deepest controversies often involve whether something or someone should lie just inside or just outside the circle. For instance, the idea of slavery depends on the placement of the slave outside the circle, to make some people nonhuman. Widening the circle to include all people and end slavery has been one of the epic strands of the human story - and it isn't quite over yet.

A great many other controversies fit well in the model. The ~ Jaron Lanier

I do look better on TV. In real life, I look scruffy and pale, and I get the worst kind of recognition ... I get the 'Haven't we met somewhere before?' I suggest it might be because I'm on the telly, and they say, 'No, it's definitely not that. Wasn't it at so-and-so's party?' ~ Tom Ward

The end of the world started when a Pegasus landed on the hood of my car. ~ Rick Riordan

If you can get past those awful idiot faces on the bleachers outside the theater without a sense of the collapse of human intelligence, and if you can go out into the night and see half the police force of Los Angeles gathered to protect the golden ones from the mob in the free seats, but not from the awful moaning sound they give out, like destiny whistling through a hollow shell; if you can do these things and still feel the next morning that the picture business is worth the attention of one single, intelligent, artistic mind, then in the picture business you certainly belong because this sort of vulgarity, the very vulgarity from which the Oscars are made, is the inevitable price that Hollywood exacts from each of its serfs. ~ Raymond Chandler

"Eight Days of Luke" was refused by another confused publisher on the grounds that children shouldn't strike matches. When my agent pointed out that David in the book was twelve years old, the publisher said that he was striking matches to summon the devil, then, and this couldn't be allowed. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

There was a time we laughed at the old guys up on the hill. The ones who graduated a couple of years before us, and who would hang around the school and the ballpark still, and would sit on the hoods of their cars and tell us how when they were seniors they did it better, faster, and further. We laughed, because we were still doing it, and all they could do was talk. If our goals were not met, there was next year, but it never occurred to us that one day there would not be a next year, and that the guys sitting on the hoods of their cars at the top of the hill, wishing they could have one more year, willing to settle for one last game, could one day be us. ~ Tucker Elliot

Keep it up, wise guy. I'm always going to be taller than you once you're lying unconscious on the ground. ~ Jim Butcher

It was the seventh or eighth floor, she couldn't remember which. A streetcar crawled past the front of the hotel, and people on the sidewalk moved in every direction, with legs on either side of them, and it crossed her mind to jump. ~ Patricia Highsmith

I also felt a storm in the air. It prickled on the horizon. I felt it on my skin. The skies were clear, I could not wish for clearer. But I could feel the clouds massing against me, somewhere over the horizon. ~ Philippa Gregory

and the girl and I get into her car and drive off into the hills and we go to her room and I take off my clothes and lie on her bed and she goes into the bathroom and I wait a couple of minutes and then she finally comes out, a towel wrapped around her, and sits on the bed and I put my hands on her shoulders, and she says stop it and, after I let her go, she tells me to lean against the headboard and I do and then she takes off the towel and she's naked and she reaches into the drawer by her bed and brings out a tube of Bain De Soleil and she hands it to me and then she reaches into the drawer and brings out a pair of Wayfarer sunglasses and she tells me to put them on and I do. And she takes the tube of suntan lotion form me and squeezes some onto her fingers and then touches herself and motions for me to do the same, and I do. After a while I stop and reach over to her and she stops me and says no, and then places my hand back on myself and her hand begins again and after this goes on for a while I tell her that I'm going to come and she tells me to hold on a minute and that she's almost there and she begins to move her hand faster, spreading her legs wider, leaning back against the pillows, and I take the sunglasses off and she tells me to put them back on and I put them back on and it stings when I come and then I guess she comes too. Bowie's on the stereo and she gets up, flushed, and turns the stereo off and turns on MTV. I lie there, naked, sunglasses still on and she ~ Bret Easton Ellis

More than a billion adults worldwide are now overweight - and at least 300 million of them are clinically obese. Childhood obesity is already epidemic in some areas and on the rise in others. Worldwide, an estimated 17.6 million children under five are said to be overweight. ~ Morgan Spurlock

Adaptedness) of the conscious mind by adding to it contents of the unconscious, our aim is to create a wider personality whose centre of gravity does not necessarily coincide with the ego, but which, on the contrary, as the patient's insights increase, may even thwart his [sheer] ego-tendencies. Like a magnet, the new centre [i.e., self] attracts to itself that which is proper to it.80 ~ C. G. Jung

Every Navy warship assigned to the Sol protection fleet flashed in towards Earth, knitting together in a defensive formation that extended out beyond lunar orbit. Weapons platforms that had spent decades stealthed in high orbit emerged to join the incredible array of firepower lining up on the Swarm. All over the planet, force fields powered up, shielding the remaining cities. Anyone outside an urban area was immediately teleported in to safety. The T-sphere itself was integrated into the defence organization, ready to ward off energy assaults against the planet by rearranging spacetime in a sharp curve. ~ Peter F. Hamilton

Our ascent, of course, does not end the possibility for new accomplishments on El Capitan. The day will probably come when this climb will be done in five days, perhaps less; and a younger generation will make a new route on the west face. ~ Royal Robbins

His strides are the only evidence he exists, and so he wanders,
lost in a city that he has always called home.

Our creased hides and limp tongues attract neither fashionable
eye nor futile envy, and we no longer feel the burden of his
entire weight, though his heart is heavier than it was.
Sometimes we stop, and he looks with longing at the stars
overhead.

We remain on the ground. We have no concept of up, for out
reality lies below. It is how life works. This too shall pass. ~ Krishna Udayasankar

When changes in one genetic trait are the source of selection for changes in a second, the rate of response in the latter depends in parts on the rate of change in the former, which, as a rule, is not fast. In comparison, if a cultural practice modifies selection acting on human genetic variation, then the greater the proportion of individuals in the population that exhibit the cultural trait, the stronger the selection on the gene. As a consequence, the rapid spread of a cultural practice often leads quickly to the maximally strong selection of the advantageous genetic variant, which rapidly increases in frequency. Cultural practices typically spread more quickly than genetic mutations, simply because cultural learning typically operates at faster rates than biological evolution. What does the speed with which a culturla trait spreads depend upon? Answer: the fidelity of cultural transmission. The very factor that is critical to the emergence of complex cumulative culture in humans is also a major determinant of evolutionary responses to that culture. ~ Kevin N. Laland

Even though you're not equipped, keep searching: equipment isn't necessary on the way to the Lord. ~ Rumi

Perhaps you have never watched people go raving mad or drop dead because of blood shortages." Crimson. Starlight. The taste of death. The nightmare tugged at her mind. Ishtaka fought back, focusing her gaze on The Blood Waster. "Perhaps, because of all this, you are not used to our ways. Let me remind you: My clan collects every last drop of blood. Every. Last. Drop." Her lips curled over her fangs. "Understood? ~ Hannah Heath

The more talented somebody is, the less they need the props. Meeting a person who wrote a masterpiece on the back of a deli menu would not surprise me. Meeting a person who wrote a masterpiece with a silver Cartier fountain pen on an antique writing table in an airy SoHo loft would seriously surprise me. ~ Hugh MacLeod

Somehow whether or not the war is winnable is beyond our scope, an irrelevant detail. We don't do it to win anymore; we do it because it's what we know how to do. Get ready to go. Get ready to come back. And the moments in between we mark on the calendar. It's our battle rhythm. ~ Angela Ricketts

The next day, I get a call from this student's mother.

My daughter has said nothing about the GRE. All she ever talks about is color. Is color on the GRE?

No, It's not. But it should be.

What are you really teaching her?

How to make sense of sunsets. ~ Weike Wang

You're like a Christmas present," he [Josh] sais
"How so?" [Star]
"Wrapped up really pretty on the outside with bows and glitz."
"You think I'm really pretty?" I grin. I can't help it. ~ Tammy Falkner

I remember seeing the song in some diners on the selection gadget that plays records at the table while you were eating. We were never told if the songs ever got on any charts. ~ Phil Harris

Sometimes you just need to lie on the floor. ~ Alliyah Wakefield

The warmth of him always, even on the coldest of nights, as though his inner furnace burned extravagantly. ~ Anita Shreve

I don't think there's any border between science and art. All the fiction films I have made were always on the same subject, - a discovery of the "Other," an exploration of difference. ~ Jean Rouch