Red Midnight Book Quotes

Howard had a pine display case, fastened by fake leather straps and stained to look like walnut. Inside, on fake velvet, were cheap gold-plated earrings and pendants of semiprecious stones. He opened this case for haggard country wives when their husbands were off chopping trees or reaping the back acres. He showed them the same half-dozen pieces every year the last time he came around, when he thought, This is the season - preserving done, woodpile high, north wind up and getting cold, night showing up earlier every day, dark and ice pressing down from the north, down on the raw wood of their cabins, on the rough-cut rafters that sag and sometimes snap from the weight of the dark and the ice, burying families in their sleep, the dark and the ice and sometimes the red in the sky through trees: the heartbreak of a cold sun. He thought, Buy the pendant, sneak it into your hand from the folds of your dress and let the low light of the fire lap at it late at night as you wait for the roof to give out or your will to snap and the ice to be too thick to chop through with the ax as you stand in your husband's boots on the frozen lake at midnight, the dry hack of the blade on ice so tiny under the wheeling and frozen stars, the soundproof lid of heaven, that your husband would never stir from his sleep in the cabin across the ice, would never hear and come running, half-frozen, in only his union suit, to save you from chopping a hole in the ice and sliding into it as if it were a blu ~ Paul Harding

He kept glancing at my hair, and that meant one of three things; he was trying to figure out if I dye, he had never seen a ginger before in his life, or he was wondering whether the carpet matched the drapes.

Martinez, Katerina (2014-09-25). Midnight Magick: A Romantic Witch Suspense (Amber Lee Mysteries Book 1) (Kindle Locations 202-203). Katerina Martinez. Kindle Edition. ~ Katerina Martinez

People think blood red, but blood don't got no colour. Not when blood wash the floor she lying on as she scream for that son of a bitch to come, the lone baby of 1785. Not when the baby wash in crimson and squealing like it just depart heaven to come to hell, another place of red. Not when the midwife know that the mother shed too much blood, and she who don't reach fourteen birthday yet speak curse 'pon the chile and the papa, and then she drop down dead like old horse. Not when blood spurt from the skin, on spring from the axe, the cat-o'-nine, the whip, the cane and the blackjack and every day in slave life is a day that colour red. It soon come to pass when red no different from white or blue or black or nothing. Two black legs spread wide and mother mouth screaming. A black baby wiggling in blood on the floor with skin darker than midnight but the greenest eyes anybody ever done seen. I goin' call her Lilith. You can call her what they call her. ~ Marlon James

Well, tell me boy," she said, "what have you been reading?"
Craftily he picked his way across the waste land of printery,
naming as his favorites those books which he felt would win her
approval. As he had read everything, good and bad, that the town
library contained, he was able to make an impressive showing.
Sometimes she stopped him to question about a book--he rebuilt the
story richly with a blazing tenacity of detail that satisfied her
wholly. She was excited and eager--she saw at once how abundantly
she could feed this ravenous hunger for knowledge, experience,
wisdom. And he knew suddenly the joy of obedience: the wild
ignorant groping, the blind hunt, the desperate baffled desire was
now to be ruddered, guided, controlled. The way through the
passage to India, that he had never been able to find, would now be
charted for him. Before he went away she had given him a fat
volume of nine hundred pages, shot through with spirited engravings
of love and battle, of the period he loved best.
He was drowned deep at midnight in the destiny of the man who
killed the bear, the burner of windmills and the scourge of
banditry, in all the life of road and tavern in the Middle Ages, in
valiant and beautiful Gerard, the seed of genius, the father of
Erasmus. Eugene thought The Cloister and the Hearth the best story
he had ever read. ~ Thomas Wolfe

The real magic - the magic we'd lived with all our lives, my mother's magic of charms and cantrips, of salt by the door and a red silk sachet to placate the little gods - had turned sour on us that summer, somehow, like a spider that turns from good luck to bad at the stroke of midnight, spinning its web to catch our dreams. And for every little spell of charm, for every card dealt and every rune cast and every sign scratched against a doorway to divert the path of malchance, the wind just blew a little harder, tugging at our clothes, sniffing at us like a hungry dog, moving us here and moving us there. ~ Joanne Harris

Whence is thy learning? Hath thy toil O'er books consumed the midnight oil? ~ John Gay

Through the Mud
(from the book Blue Bridge)

A line of robots,
We approach a wall of mud,
Some of us carrying flowers.
The others laugh
Bit when we enter that wall
It is the flowers
That will make us an ark
To carry us on through the darkness,
Sailing through
With our symbols the only light
Until we fly
Out over the fields
On the other side of midnight
And all our wires
And bits of metal fall off.-
And our souls are bright again,
So new and light
They shoot up –
Up to plant our brilliant flowers
Like stars
In the face of heaven. ~ Jay Woodman

Fresh blood at midnight isn't red. It's a purplish black that easily blends into the shadows. ~ Karen Chance

There will never again be a day exactly like today. There will never again be a moment exactly like this moment. After my next birthday, I will never again be the age I am right now. After midnight tonight, today will be part of history. Someday I'll be dying and I'll wish I'd done all the things I want to do now. Someday I'll be dead and I won't be able to do anything. But today, right now, I'm alive. And yet I'm writing nonsense on the back of my literature book. But I'm alive. And yet I'm just sitting here. But I'm alive. ~ Ryan Miller

Book Buzzed: When you stay up until midnight to finish a book, but then can't fall asleep until 1 a.m. because the story was so amazing. ~ Jennifer Bardsley

McGovern is very sensitive about this sort of thing, and for excellent reason. In three of the last four big primaries (Ohio, Nebraska & California) he has spent an alarmingly big chunk of his campaign time denying that behind his calm and decent facade he is really a sort of Trojan Horse candidate - coming on in public as a bucolic Jeffersonian Democrat while secretly plotting to seize the reins of power and turn them over at midnight on Inauguration Day to a Red-bent hellbroth of radicals, Dopers, Traitors, Sex Fiends, Anarchists, Winos, and "extremists" of every description. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

In order to possess "The Wonder-working Serpent," it is necessary, in the words of the Grimoire, "to buy an egg without haggling," which (by the way) indicates the class of person for and by whom the book was written. This egg is to be buried in a cemetery at midnight, and every morning at sunrise it must be watered with brandy. On the ninth day a spirit appears, and demands your purpose. You reply "I am watering my plant." This occurs on three successive days; at the midnight following the egg is dug up, and found to contain a serpent, with a cock's head. This amiable animal answers to the name of Ambrosiel. Carry it in your bosom, and your suit inevitably prospers. ~ Aleister Crowley

The kiss is the greatest of gifts, uniquely human. A kiss before midnight. A kiss before dying. The Judas kiss. The kiss of the devil. A big wet smacker beneath the mistletoe. More can be said with a kiss than a book full of words. We kiss to say I love you. We kiss the rings of the self-important. The feet of the conquerors. The rich dark earth when we reach the promised land. We kiss babies' cheeks to soak up their innocence. We kiss the foreheads of loved ones as they begin a journey. We kiss beautiful strangers in far away places because on hot July nights with the music of the sea and the stars above your head your lips are incomplete until they are joined in a kiss. ~ Chloe Thurlow

And I want to play hide-and-seek and give you my clothes and tell you I like your shoes and sit on the steps while you take a bath and massage your neck and kiss your feet and hold your hand and go for a meal and not mind when you eat my food and meet you at Rudy's and talk about the day and type up your letters and carry your boxes and laugh at your paranoia and give you tapes you don't listen to and watch great films and watch terrible films and complain about the radio and take pictures of you when you're sleeping and get up to fetch you coffee and bagels and Danish and go to Florent and drink coffee at midnight and have you steal my cigarettes and never be able to find a match and tell you about the tv programme I saw the night before and take you to the eye hospital and not laugh at your jokes and want you in the morning but let you sleep for a while and kiss your back and stroke your skin and tell you how much I love your hair your eyes your lips your neck your breasts your arse your

and sit on the steps smoking till your neighbour comes home and sit on the steps smoking till you come home and worry when you're late and be amazed when you're early and give you sunflowers and go to your party and dance till I'm black and be sorry when I'm wrong and happy when you forgive me and look at your photos and wish I'd known you forever and hear your voice in my ear and feel your skin on my skin and get scared when you're angry and your eye has gone red and the other e ~ Sarah Kane

The sidewalks were haunted by dust
ghosts all night as the furnace wind summoned them up,
swung them about, and gentled them down in a warm spice on
the lawns. Trees, shaken by the footsteps of late-night strol-
lers, sifted avalanches of dust. From midnight on, it seemed a
volcano beyond the town was showering red-hot ashes every-
where, crusting slumberless night watchmen and irritable
dogs. Each house was a yellow attic smoldering with spon-
taneous combustion at three in the morning.

Dawn, then, was a time where things changed element for
element. Air ran like hot spring waters nowhere, with no
sound. The lake was a quantity of steam very still and deep
over valleys of fish and sand held baking under its serene
vapors. Tar was poured licorice in the streets, red bricks were
brass and gold, roof tops were paved with bronze. The high-
tension wires were lightning held forever, blazing, a threat
above the unslept houses.
The cicadas sang louder and yet louder.
The sun did not rise, it overflowed. ~ Ray Bradbury

Where would you like to go, what would you really like to do with your life?
See Istanbul, Port Said, Nairobi, Budapest. Write a book. Smoke too many cigarettes. Fall off a cliff but get caught in a tree halfway down. Get shot at a few times in a dark alley on a Morrocan midnight. Love a beautiful woman. ~ Ray Bradbury

We were like the three Fates, weaving the story together, threads of gold, red, and midnight blue. ~ April Genevieve Tucholke

Katie was forced to do the midnight walk of shame in the pitch dark in all her finery with her high heels in her hands bare footed and man less to the taxi base to get a taxi home. She looked like Cinderella having a nervous breakdown with her face and nose red and swollen and with mascara and tears running down her face, looking like a red pumpkin. She vowed she will never be hurt again and if she loves again it will be under her conditions. ~ Annette J. Dunlea

You just have to be classy at the end of the day. That doesn't mean you can't go with a midnight blue tux. And if you can find a deep red tux that looks classy and classic, I think you can pull it off. ~ Paul Feig

I like to write from midnight to dawn with great stores of candy and Red Bull laid in ... I'm not sure why I have the work habits of a 20-year-old coder, but no matter how many times I set up a more reasonable schedule, I always fall back to this. ~ Jenny Offill

And watch for Midnight Fire, the next book in the Midnight series, coming soon! ~ Lisa Marie Rice

Della & I are drunk at the top of Mont-Royal. We have an open blue plastic thermos of red wine at our feet. It's the first day of spring & it's midnight & we've been peeling off layers of winter all day. We stand facing each other, as if to exchange vows, chests heaving from racing up & down the mountain to the sky. My face is hurting from smiling so much, aching at the edges of my words. She reaches out to hold my face in her hands, dirty palms form a bowl to rest my chin. I'm standing on a tree stump so we're eye to eye. It's hard to stay steady. I worry I may start to drool or laugh, I feel so unhinged from my body. It's been one of those days I don't want to end. Our goal was to shirk all responsibility merely to enjoy the lack of everyday obligations, to create fullness & purpose out of each other. Our knees are the colour of the ground-in grass. Our boots are caked in mud caskets. Under our nails is a mixture of minerals & organic matter, knuckles scraped by tree bark. We are the thaw embodied.

She says, You have changed me, Eve, you are the single most important person in my life. If you were to leave me, I would die.

At that moment, our breath circling from my lungs & into hers, I am changed. Perhaps before this I could describe our relationship as an experiment, a happy accident, but this was irrefutable. I was completely consumed & consuming. It was as though we created some sort of object between us that we coul ~ Zoe Whittall

Fanfare for the Makers

A cloud of witnesses. To whom? To what?
To the small fire that never leaves the sky.
To the great fire that boils the daily pot.

To all the things we are not remembered by,
Which we remember and bless. To all the things
That will not notice when we die,

Yet lend the passing moment words and wings.

So fanfare for the Makers: who compose
A book of words or deeds who runs may write
As many who do run, as a family grows

At times like sunflowers turning towards the light.
As sometimes in the blackout and the raids
One joke composed an island in the night.

As sometimes one man's kindness pervades
A room or house or village, as sometimes
Merely to tighten screws or sharpen blades

Can catch a meaning, as to hear the chimes
At midnight means to share them, as one man
In old age plants an avenue of limes

And before they bloom can smell them, before they span
The road can walk beneath the perfected arch,
The merest greenprint when the lives began

Of those who walk there with him, as in default
Of coffee men grind acorns, as in despite
Of all assaults conscripts counter assault,

As mothers sit up late night after night
Moulding a life, as miners day by day
Descend blind shafts, as a boy may flaunt his kite

In an empty nonchalant sky, as anglers play
The ~ Louis MacNeice

I suppose there has been nothing like the airports since the age of the stage-stops - nothing quite as lonely, as sombre-silent. The red-brick depots were built right into the towns they marked - people didn't get off at those isolated stations unless they lived there. But airports lead you way back in history like oases, like the stops on the great trade routes. The sight of air travellers strolling in ones and twos into midnight airports will draw a small crowd any night up or two. The young people look at the planes, the older ones look at the passengers with a watchful incredulity. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

What am I supposed to do with Cornelis Smeet after midnight?" Nina asked. "Try to talk him into spending the night with you."
"What?" Matthias had sputtered, red flooding his face all the way up to his ears.
"He won't say yes."
Nina sniffed. "Like hell he won't."
"Nina - " Matthias growled.
"Smeet never cheats at cards or on his wife," Kaz said. ~ Leigh Bardugo

Back at the cottage we explored the topography of my body; twigs in my hair, calves striped red and my skirt smudged in meadowtones. The forest underlined me, accentuated me, illustrated me. I felt alive in that midnight village whose dark places left their signatures on my skin, whose bites still hummed around my wrists. I didn't notice till then the thousand nettle stings rising like pearls; burning bracelets that my love kissed and rubbed with dock leaves; a folk remedy painting my pulse points green; honorary stalks. ~ Jalina Mhyana

There is a monstrous garden in the sky
Nightly they sow it fresh. Nightly it springs,
Luridly splendid, towards the moon on high.
Red-poppy flares, and fire-bombs rosy-bright
Shell-bursts like hellborn sunflowers, gold and white
Lilies, long-stemmed, that search the heavens' height...
They tend it well, these gardeners on wings!

How rich these blossoms, hideously fair
Sprawling above the shuddering citadel
As though ablaze with laughter! Lord, how long
Must we behold them flower, ruthless, strong
Soaring like weeds the stricken worlds among
Triumphant, gay, these dreadful blooms of hell?

O give us back the garden that we knew
Silent and cool, where silver daisies lie,
The lovely stars! O garden purple-blue
Where Mary trailed her skirts amidst the dew
Of ageless planets, hand-in-hand with You
And Sleep and Peace walked with Eternity.....

But here I sit, and watch the night roll by.
There is a monstrous garden in the sky!

(written during an air raid, London, midnight, October 1941) ~ Margery Lawrence

I started writing at the kitchen table after midnight. It took ten months to finish that first book; I sent it to a publisher and I got some kind of prize, so it was like a dream - I was surprised to find it happening. ~ Haruki Murakami

Come ye viewless ministers of this dread hour! Come from the fenny lake, the hanging rock, and the midnight cave! The moon is red – the stars are out – the sky is burning – and all nature stands aghast at what we do! ~ William Mudford

One night, Ye was working the night shift. This was the loneliest time. In the deep silence of midnight, the universe revealed itself to its listeners as a vast desolation. What Ye disliked most was seeing the waves that slowly crawled across the display, a visual record of the meaningless noise Red Coast picked up from space. Ye felt this interminable wave was an abstract view of the universe: one end connected to the endless past, the other to the endless future, and in the middle only the ups and downs of random chance - without life, without pattern, the peaks and valleys at different heights like uneven grains of sand, the whole curve like a one-dimensional desert made of all the grains of sand lined up in a row, lonely, desolate, so long that it was intolerable. You could follow it and go forward or backward as long as you liked, but you'd never find the end. ~ Liu Cixin

The magic beauty of simultaneity, to see the loved one rushing toward you at the same moment you are rushing toward him, the magic power of meeting, exactly at midnight to achieve union, the illusion of one common rhythm achieved by overcoming obstacles, deserting friends, breaking other bonds - all this was soon dissolved by his laziness, by his habit of missing every moment, of never keeping his word, of living perversely in a state of chaos, of swimming more naturally in a sea of failed intentions, broken promises, and aborted wishes ~ Anais Nin