Returning Quotes

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

Deleuze's findings are confirmed by those of an experienced woman psychiatrist who for many years has made a study of automatic writing. In conversation this lady has informed me that, sooner or later, most automatists produce scripts in which certain metaphysical ideas are set forth. The theme of these scripts is always the same: namely, the the ground of the individual soul is identical with the divine Ground of all being. Returning to their normal state, the automatists read what they have written and often find it in complete disharmony with what they have always believed. ~ Aldous Huxley

Ty caught his breath, nearly gasping when Zane finally touched their lips together. He shivered and his lips parted tentatively, but his wary eyes never closed. Giving in, Zane pulled him closer and lifted one hand to cup Ty's cheek as he increased the pressure of his lips against Ty's.

Ty groaned softly and finally relaxed against the kiss, returning it tentatively. He knew he'd regret this just as soon as they parted, but he couldn't bring himself to stop it.

Tension cramped Zane's gut as Ty's lips moved, and he deepened the kiss, all the itch and urge heating inside him as his traced Ty's lips with his tongue. Oh, this was going to be an absolute fucking mess, he just knew it. He pulled his fingers out of the waistband and curled that arm around Ty's waist as he leaned into the dangerous kiss. His hand on Ty's cheek trembled.

Ty indulged himself in the deeper kiss for a long, horribly tantalizing moment before he pulled his head back just enough to break the contact and pushed gently at Zane's chest. "That's what I thought," he rasped as his breath gusted against Zane's lips. ~ Abigail Roux

Yes, this was the evening hour when - how long ago it seemed! - I always felt so well content with life. Then, what awaited me was a night of easy, dreamless sleep. This was the same hour, but with a difference; I was returning to a cell, and what awaited me was a night haunted by forebodings of the coming day. And so I learned that familiar paths traced in the dusk of summer evenings may lead as well to prisons as to innocent, untroubled sleep. ~ Albert Camus

Perhaps a human simply falls back into himself upon the disintegration of his physical body, and continues to take form within the self of himself, simply returning from whence he came. ~ C. JoyBell C.

Just so you know," Bubby says before returning to his seat, "if I had been there, I would have carried you to the hospital on my back. ~ Gwendolyn Heasley

And if you'd been healthy and happy, you wouldn't have come home?"
"When everything is lost a man seeks refuge, as if he were returning to his mother's womb."
"And after that?"
"After that he forgets. He's driven to it by his restlessness. He wants to be what he was not, or what he was. He runs away from his fortune and looks for another. ~ Mesa Selimovic

To Jana's mind everybody seemed happy to see BAbichka and resisted returning her, like a misplaced package sent to the wrong address. It was as if the recipient opened it up, knowing it should be returned, but wondering who long they could legitimately keep it before being changed with theft. ~ F.C. Malby

Pizza makes you a hero in the eyes of your kids. "Daddy got pizza!" You are higher status walking in the door with a pizza than if you were returning from a war with a Purple Heart. ~ Jim Gaffigan

I did a study of soldiers returning from Iraq, and their levels of PTSD were much higher if they had had to shoot a woman or child, even if they knew the person was a suicide bomber. ~ Mia Bloom

May one ask at least to what darkness you are returning? ... For what hell are you leaving, mysterious lady ... or for what paradise? ~ Gaston Leroux

A trail of lightning spread across the clouds, and Shadow wondered if that was the thunderbird returning to its high crags, or just an atmospheric discharge, or whether the two ideas were, on some level, the same thing.
And of course they were. That was the point after all. ~ Neil Gaiman

We must apologise to the readers for returning with such insistence to the Robinson Crusoe and Friday story, which properly belongs to the nursery and not to the field of science - but how can we help it? ~ Friedrich Engels

The Healing spells on his chest were certainly earning their keep tonight. Sullivan got to his feet. The lack of noise from the courtyard indicated that his team had gotten all the mechanical men. "Thanks."

Toru just grunted a noncommittal response as he lifted the feed tray to check the condition of his borrowed machine gun. They didn't see the final robot inside until it turned on its eye and illuminated the Iron Guard in blue light.

Sullivan's Spike reversed gravity, and the gigantic machine fell upward to hit the steel beams in the ceiling. Sullivan cut his Power and the robot dropped. It crashed hard into the floor where it lay twitching and kicking. The two of them riddled the mechanical man with bullets until the light died and it lay still in a spreading puddle of oil.

"Normally, this would be the part where you thank me for returning the favor and saving your life."

"Yes. Normally… If we were court ladies instead of warriors," Toru answered. "Shall we continue onward or do you wish to stop and discuss your feelings over tea?"

Sullivan looked forward to the day that the two of them would be able to finish their fight. "Let's go. ~ Larry Correia

It does seem that the sea ice is returning to 'average' after the record lows of 2007 and 2008. There has been a definite recovery trend since then, so far from being a progression towards ice free summers it seems that it was a temporary dip. The recent observations do make the 2007 projections that the region would be ice free by 2013 look very unrealistic. Given what is happening only the foolish would look many years into the future and predict ice free summers now. ~ David Whitehouse

I don't think we got the chance to introduce ourselves the other night at the diner. My name is Blake Saunders." He offered his free hand.
Daemon glanced at Blake's hand before returning his gaze to me. "I know who you are."
Oh, geez. I twisted toward Blake. "This is Daemon Black."
His smile faltered. "Yeah, I know who he is, too."
Laughing under his breath, Daemon straightened. At his full height, he was a good head taller than Blake. "It's always nice to meet another fan."
Yeah, Blake had no idea what to say to that. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

The most exemplary nature is that of the topsoil. It is very Christ-like in its passivity and beneficence, and in the penetrating energy that issues out of its peaceableness. It increases by experience, by the passage of seasons over it, growth rising out of it and returning to it, not by ambition or aggressiveness. It is enriched by all things that die and enter into it. It keeps the past, not as history or as memory, but as richness, new possibility. Its fertility is always building up out of death into promise. Death is the bridge or the tunnel by which its past enters its future. ~ Wendell Berry

Some people imagine that by returning to tradition, you will renew it. This is not true, for by returning to tradition, you renew nothing. But by setting out from it and adding to it, you renew its power, because only by addition can you prepare the future path for the living sap within it. ~ Jabra Ibrahim Jabra

Until we define happiness for ourselves, clearly seeing the difference between excitement and joy, for example, our habits will likely not change. We will keep returning to the fruits of our desires. ~ Judson Brewer

She didn't have to return to Philly until Sunday, yet from the moment she sat down in the car, Madison was already projecting five days into the future and anticipating the sadness that returning to campus would bring. ~ Kate Fagan

Does anyone swim in there?"
"Everyone does." Without thinking, he added, "I can bring you back sometime when we're not so pressed for - " Trace caught himself before finishing that awesome thought. Pressed for time or not, the odds of him ever returning here with Priss were slim to none.
Gaze cynical, Priss looked at him over her shoulder. "Yeah, right. Maybe we'll do that." She turned to face him. "Sometime when we're not at odds, when we're not dealing with a madman who enjoys selling women, when you haven't just drugged me earlier in the day?"
Trace rubbed the back of his neck. "All of the above. ~ Lori Foster

The hero whose attachment to ego is already annihilate passes back and forth across the horizons of the world, in and out of the dragon, as readily as a king through all the rooms of his house. And therein lies his power to save; for his passing and returning demonstrate that through all the contraries of phenomenality the Un-create- Imperishable remains, and there is nothing to fear (93). ~ Joseph Campbell

One night, I lay awake for hours, just terrified. When the dawn finally came up - the comfortable blue sky, the familiar world returning - I could think of no other way to express my relief than through poetry. I made a decision there and then that it was what I wanted to do. Every time I pulled a wishbone, it was what I asked for. ~ Alice Oswald

To my mind, healing means returning
a malfunctioning human body to full
unrestricted function, not to remove
parts of it by operation or amputation ~ Rudolf Breuss

A fundamental error that I have noticed within a lot of independent women, is that by default, they must succeed. If not, their self-reflection in stagnation will overcome them. In striving to succeed immediately, they have failed successfully, and have fallen into the ocean of persistence and fluctuation. But it's not all in vain, for hope is a returning daydream. Unknown to them, their opposite is merely sleeping with time, awaiting the impending song of daybreak's bell. ~ Lionel Suggs

Daddy, why are we going to the Capitol?" she asked her father. "Luci Baines, we have to go to the Capitol," Johnson said to his daughter. "It's the only place to go. As a result of this great legislation becoming the law of the land, there will be many men and women who will not be returning to these hallowed halls because of the decision they have made to support it. And because of this great legislation that I will be signing into law, there will be many men and women who will have an opportunity to come to the halls of Congress who could have never have come otherwise. ~ Ari Berman

At This Moment Of Time

Some who are uncertain compel me. They fear
The Ace of Spades. They fear
Loves offered suddenly, turning from the mantelpiece,
Sweet with decision. And they distrust
The fireworks by the lakeside, first the spuft,
Then the colored lights, rising.
Tentative, hesitant, doubtful, they consume
Greedily Caesar at the prow returning,
Locked in the stone of his act and office.
While the brass band brightly bursts over the water
They stand in the crowd lining the shore
Aware of the water beneath Him. They know it. Their eyes
Are haunted by water

Disturb me, compel me. It is not true
That "no man is happy," but that is not
The sense which guides you. If we are
Unfinished (we are, unless hope is a bad dream),
You are exact. You tug my sleeve
Before I speak, with a shadow's friendship,
And I remember that we who move
Are moved by clouds that darken midnight ~ Delmore Schwartz

Not the soul that's whitest
Wakens love the sweetest:
When the heart is lightest
Oft the charm is fleetest.
While the snow-frail maiden, 5
Waits the time of learning,
To the passion laden
Turn with eager yearning.
While the heart is burning
Heaven with earth is banded: 10
To the stars returning
Go not empty-handed.
Ah, the snow-frail maiden!
Somehow truth has missed her,
Left the heart unladen 15
For its burdened sister. ~ A.E.

Dortmunder and the Major strolled away down the long corridor overlooking customs, with the duty-free shops on one side of the corridor and on the other side the railing where people can stand and look down at their returning relatives and visiting foreign friends being degraded. ~ Donald E. Westlake

It's beautiful here," Rees murmured, watching the light play upon the water before returning his gaze to her.
Mrs. Hollingsworth, his newest client, turned to him and forced a stiff smile. "Yes, money can buy all kinds of beautiful things," she said without a hint of emotion. ~ D.A. Rhine

I believe that the most urgent need of parents today is to instill in our children a moral vision: what does it mean to be a good person, an excellent neighbor, a compassionate heart? What does it mean to say that God exits, that He loves us and He cares for us? What does it mean to love and forgive each other? Parents and caregivers of children must play a primary role in returning our society to a healthy sense of the sacred. We must commit to feeding our children's souls in the same way we commit to feeding their bodies. ~ Marianne Williamson

It was chilly weather. Through the window the rays of the sun touched my feet, and the slight warmth was very welcome. It was almost eight o'clock, and the early pedestrians were returning home with their heads covered. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

we can only re-establish metaphysics today by returning to realism pure and simple. ~ Etienne Gilson

I was home, and talking about Cuba had no place here. Mimi was never returning, my mother was always leaving, and I was a flightless bird left at her harbor, searching for answers that were buried at the bottom of a sea I could not know. ~ Nina Moreno

Someday someone should make a study of the silence that falls inside a car when you're returning home after having flaunted your well-being, partly to edify the company, partly to deceive yourself. It's a silence that tolerates no sound, not even the radio, for who in that mute war of opposition would dare to turn it on? ~ Yasmina Reza

Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know
... nothing ever really attacks us except our own confusion. perhaps there is no solid obstacle except our own need to protect ourselves from being touched. maybe the only enemy is that we don't like the way reality is now and therefore wish it would go away fast. but what we find as practitioners is that nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know. if we run a hundred miles an hour to the other end of the continent in order to get away from the obstacle, we find the very same problem waiting for us when we arrive. it just keeps returning with new names, forms, manifestations until we learn whatever it has to teach us about where we are separating ourselves from reality, how we are pulling back instead of opening up, closing down instead of allowing ourselves to experience fully whatever we encounter, without hesitating or retreating into ourselves. ~ Pema Chodron

I used to sleep on the floor in friends' rooms, returning Coke
bottles for food, money, and getting weekly free meals at a local temple ~ Steve Jobs

Although claiming my true identity as a child of God, I still live as though the God to whom I am returning demands an explanation. I still think about his love as conditional and about home as a place I am not yet fully sure of. While walking home, I keep entertaining doubts about whether I will be truly welcome when I get there. As I look at my spiritual journey, my long and fatiguing trip home, I see how full it is of guilt about the past and worries about the future. I realize my failures and know that I have lost the dignity of my sonship, but I am not yet able to fully believe that where my failings are great, 'grace is always greater.' Still clinging to my sense of worthlessness, I project for myself a place far below that which belongs to the son, (p. 52). ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

When I was a teenager, I used to go about barefoot with no hat and sunglasses, just open to the Sun. I used to bless and give thanks for my water then too. I'm returning to those practices. I feel it too, I'm not only doing it. Back then, it was not so conscious, I just did it. I've sometimes thought that I knew more at age 15 than I do now. ~ Sienna McQuillen

Lucinda and Mr. Wiley were returning at last, and she ran to Lucinda, hastily stepping around the black horse, who laid his ears back evilly in warning. "Lucy!" she burst out while Lucinda waited calmly for Mr. Wiley to help her down. "Lucy! Disaster has struck."
"A moment, if you please, Elizabeth," said the unflappable woman. "Whatever it is, it will surely wait until we're inside and can be comfortable. I declare, I feel as if I were born atop this horse. You cannot imagine the time we had finding suitable servants…"
Elizabeth scarcely heard the rest of what she was saying. In a torment of frantic helplessness she had to wait while Lucinda dismounted, limped into the house, and sat down upon the sofa. "Now then," said Lucinda, flicking a speck of dust off her skirts, "what has happened?"
Oblivious to the vicar, who was standing by the fireplace looking mystified and alarmed on her behalf, Elizabeth handed Lucinda the note. "Read this. It-it sounds as if he's already accepted him."
As she read the brief missive Lucinda's face turned an awful gray with two bright splotches of angry color standing out on her hollow cheeks. "He'd accept an offer from the devil," Lucinda gritted wrathfully, "so long as he had a noble title and money. This shouldn't come as a surprise."
"I was so certain I'd persuaded Belhaven that we couldn't possibly suit!" Elizabeth almost wailed, twisting her blue skirt in her hands in her agitation. "I did everything, Lucy, everythi ~ Judith McNaught

Something had to be done, for if there was ever a man who deserved killing - this was he.
Georgiana surveyed the room in the silence, finally deciding to take control, returning to the tabletop, taking her spot on the roulette field. "I shouldn't have to remind any of you that every one of you has a secret kept in our confidence."
Temple understood immediately what she was saying, pulling himself back up to stand on a table. "If a breath of what happened here tonight--"
Bourne rose, too. "Not that anything has happened here tonight--"
"Nothing besides obvious self defense," Georgiana said.
"And, of course, saving two perfectly innocent people from their own demise," Duncan pointed out, joining her.
Cross spoke from his place on the floor. "But if something had happened, and information left this room, every one of your secrets--"
"To a man," Georgiana said.
Duncan climbed up beside her. "Will be printed in my papers."
There was a beat as the words sank in around the room, silence fell as the membership of the Fallen Angel remembered why they came to this place, where their dues were paid in secrets.
For the tables.
The gaming began almost immediately. ~ Sarah MacLean

Memories are infinitely richer than their origins, I discovered; to travel back can only estrange one even from memory itself. And because memory is often all that a life or a self is built on, returning home can take away exactly that. ~ David Vann

Was it home, the mercury-lit street? Was he returning like the elephant to his graveyard, to lie down and soon become ivory in whose bulk slept, latent, exquisite shapes of chessmen, backscratchers, hollow open-work Chinese spheres nested one inside the other? ~ Thomas Pynchon

There are patterns which emerge in one's life, circling and returning anew, an endless variation of a theme ~ Jacqueline Carey

< Dear Luke,
I'm sorry for coming by unannounced. You haven't been returning my texts, and a stronger man would have gotten the hint - >
Movement caught my eye. I looked at him. He was signing. Slowly. Imperfectly. Little inflections were wrong, and he got some of the ideas out of order, but he was, as best he could, reciting the letter to me.
- gotten the hint, but I'm not strong. I'm not proud. I'm in love with you, and I'm sorry for hurting you. Please let me say my piece, and then I'll leave if you want. But I'd never be able to look in a mirror if the last time we spoke was that night on the phone.
You are nothing but love and warmth and strength, and the world was a better place when you were a nurse in it. I don't know how serious things are, but if you can get back into nursing, that's what I want for you. If there's a way I can help - any way at all, big or small - please tell me. You deserve your dreams, and I was a complete ass for the things I said during our fight.
I'll never do that again. Never. If you let me in your life, I promise to listen. To always listen. To listen carefully and compassionately. I'll give you advice when you want it or help if you need it, but I will always listen.
And if you want me, a reclaimed ass who promises to do better, in your life, it would make me happy. I don't know what we'd look like in the real world, but I can't think of another person I'd rather figure things out with.
We've ~ Peter Styles

Wardrobing is buying an item of clothing, wearing it for a while, and then returning it in such a state that the store has to accept it but can no longer resell it. By engaging in wardrobing, consumers are not directly stealing money from the company; instead, it is a dance of buying and returning, with many unclear transactions involved. But there is at least one clear consequence - the clothing industry estimates that its annual losses from wardrobing are about $16 billion (about the same amount as the estimated annual loss from home burglaries and automobile theft combined). ~ Dan Ariely

breath,
life after seven decades plus three years
is a lot of breathing. seventy three years on this
earth is a lot of taking in and giving out, is a
life of coming from somewhere and for many a bunch
of going nowhere.

how do we celebrate a poet who has created
music with words for over fifty years, who has
showered magic on her people, who has redefined
poetry into a black world exactness
thereby giving the universe an insight into
darkroads?

just say she interprets beauty and wants to
give life, say she is patient with phoniness
and doesn't mind people calling her gwen or sister.
say she sees the genius in our children, is visionary
about possibilities, sees as clearly as ray charles and
stevie wonder, hears like determined elephants looking
for food. say that her touch is fine wood, her memory
is like an african roadmap detailing adventure and
clarity, yet returning to chicago's south evans
to record the journey. say her voice is majestic
and magnetic as she speaks in poetry, rhythms, song
and spirited trumpets, say she is dark skinned,
melanin rich, small-boned, hurricane-willed,
with a mind like a tornado redefining the landscape.

life after seven decades plus three years
is a lot of breathing.
gwendolyn, gwen, sister g has
not disappointed our expectations.
in the middle
Haki R. Madhubuti

What are the chances of two Adelaide men, both involved in marijuana supply, meeting by chance on a plane to Bali just two weeks after Schapelle Corby's arrest? Then, after returning together during her trail, what are the chances of them also randomly bumping into the Corbys and being fast-tracked into their inner-circle to such a degree that they were given special access to Schapelle in jail just days out from her verdict hearing, when she was feeling at her most vulnerable? ~ Eamonn Duff

Are you guys seriously messing around with real weapons?" she exclaimed. "It's like you want Darwin Awards!"

Tom flushed, and set his gun back on its hook. "It's not like we were going to start a dynastic war or something."

"Yeah," Vik said guiltily, returning his own weapon. ~ S.J. Kincaid

I've seen it before. Been here before. Played or managed here, six or seven times in six or seven years. Always a visitor, always away. ~ David Peace

Our common experience in fact is the opposite - that the past, far from disappearing or lying down and being quiet, has an embarrassing and persistent way of returning and haunting us unless it has in fact been dealt with adequately. Unless we look the beast in the eye we find it has an uncanny habit of returning to hold us hostage. ~ Desmond Tutu

If there's anything I have learned since returning to Congress, it's that talk is still cheap, progress is still slow, and our liberties continue to erode every day. ~ Matt Salmon

Returning to town in the stage-coach, which was filled with Mr. Gilman's guests, we stopped for a minute or two at Kentish Town. A woman asked the coachman, "Are you full inside?" Upon which Lamb put his head through the window and said, "I am quite full inside; that last piece of pudding at Mr. Gilman's did the business for me." ~ Charles Lamb

What is important is to keep our mind high in the world of true understanding, and returning to the world of our daily experience to seek therein the truth of beauty. No matter what we may be doing at a given moment, we must not forget that is has a bearing upon our everlasting self which is poetry. ~ Matsuo Basho

A revenant is also a deceased person returning from the dead to haunt the living, either as a disembodied ghost or alternatively as a corpse. Some people believe the ghost or spirit never leaves Earth until there is no-one left to remember the ~ Charmaine Weems

J. R. R. Tolkien, the near-universally-hailed father of modern epic fantasy, crafted his magnum opus The Lord of the Rings to explore the forces of creation as he saw them: God and country, race and class, journeying to war and returning home. I've heard it said that he was trying to create some kind of original British mythology using the structure of other cultures' myths, and maybe that was true. I don't know. What I see, when I read his work, is a man trying desperately to dream.
Dreaming is impossible without myths. If we don't have enough myths of our own, we'll latch onto those of others - even if those myths make us believe terrible or false things about ourselves. Tolkien understood this, I think because it's human nature. Call it the superego, call it common sense, call it pragmatism, call it learned helplessness, but the mind craves boundaries. Depending on the myths we believe in, those boundaries can be magnificently vast, or crushingly tight. ~ N.K. Jemisin

After I was caught returning at dawn from one such late-night escapade, my worried mother thoroughly interrogated me regarding every drug teenagers take, never suspecting that the most intoxicating thing I'd experienced, by far, was the volume of romantic poetry she'd handed me the previous week. Books became my closest confidants, finely ground lenses providing new views of the world. ~ Paul Kalanithi

Are all of us the same, I wonder, navigating our lives by interpreting the silences between words spoken, analysing the returning echoes of our memory in order to chart the terrain, in order to make sense of the world around us? ~ Tan Twan Eng

Wherarewe?" Thorne muttered.
"Oh, you're awake already," said Cinder, returning with salve and gauze. "I was hoping you'd stay knocked out awhile longer. The peace and quiet was a pleasant change. ~ Marissa Meyer

And as for returning to work as a reporter - something she'd given considerable thought to before taking over her father's inquiry agency - the Sydney newspapers had dismissed most of their women reporters home once the men started to return from the war, or else confined them to the social pages, or covering the Easter Show, which was a bit too steep a downgrade for Billie after she'd chased Nazi activity across Europe, built a good portfolio of published articles, and worked alongside the likes of Lee Miller and Clare Hollingworth.

No, she wouldn't last in that kind of work. It was an imperfect world, and her chosen profession was decidedly imperfect, but for now she had a hint of that spark again, that sense of doing something that mattered to someone. ~ Tara Moss

For all the cynicism that the world contains, people are a little more open to those things that maybe are to do with returning you to some kind of simpler, happier state. ~ Kenneth Branagh

Returning from his flocks, pleased with his ride.
Again in the aul appears the bai.
His horse goes on with an easy stride,
He sits and smiles upon it, hat awry. ~ Abai Kunanbayev

I was returning with myself whole and unbroken - limbs, mind, and spirit. I had discarded pride, that useless burden of self-importance ~ Amy Tan

There will be a lot of young men returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan, who have seen terrible things, and who know all about the "loved and lost", and they will be acting out their grief with reckless behaviour. When I see broken hearted young men, abusing alcohol and angry and trying to make sense of the senseless, I know and understand from my own experiences, something of what they have gone through. ~ Peter B. Lockhart

Perhaps memory is not merely the preservation of a moment in the mind, but the process of repeatedly returning to it, carefully breaking it up in parts and assembling them again until we can make sense of what we remember. ~ Laila Lalami

Sometimes when dogs greeted a returning soldier, they'd go over the edge. They would have to take a few moments to run crazily in circles around the human, or around a room or a yard. I'd have to take a break from watching, so my brain had a chance to absorb what I was seeing: that there is such a thing as joy being bigger than the container that holds it. ~ Ellen Cooney

Sol, listen," came the Voice, modulated now so it did not boom from far above but almost whispered in his ear, "the future of humankind depends upon your choice. Can you offer Rachel out of love, if not obedience?" Sol heard the answer in his mind even as he groped for the words. There would be no more offerings. Not this day. Not any day. Humankind had suffered enough for its love of gods, its long search for God. He thought of the many centuries in which his people, the Jews, had negotiated with God, complaining, bickering, decrying the unfairness of things but always - always - returning to obedience at whatever the cost. Generations dying in the ovens of hatred. Future generations scarred by the cold fires of radiation and renewed hatred. Not this time. Not ever again. ~ Dan Simmons

Everyone has to start somewhere,' he says, his eyes dark and smoldering, his fingers seeking the scar on my face.
The one on my forehead. The one that's hidden under my bangs. The one he has no way of knowing about.
'Even Picasso had a teacher.' He smiles, withdrawing his hand and the warmth that came with it, returning to his painting, as I remind myself to breathe. ~ Alyson Noel

When I was a student there in the mid-1990s, they had just created the weekend; depth and individuality were slowly returning after the austere, colorless low of the 1970s. When I returned to live in China from 2005 to 2013, the country was building everything anew. ~ Evan Osnos

The longer I procrastinate on returning phone calls and emails, the more guilty I feel about it. The guilt I feel causes me to avoid the issue further, which only leads to more guilt and more procrastination. It gets to the point where I don't email someone for fear of reminding them that they emailed me and thus giving them a reason to be disappointed in me. ~ Allie Brosh

When markets are rallying, cash in the portfolio is a drag on performance, returning about zero. ~ Barry Ritholtz

Miss Bennet, I shall be completely blunt and honest and beg your pardon if I cross a line in some manner; however, I sense you are requesting a candid response." He paused, awaiting her favour until she nodded. "I feel drawn to you in a way I do not totally understand, yet there it is. I have never felt so inclined towards another. What this connection bodes for the future, I do not know. You are pretty, intelligent, honest, proper, and many other fine qualities I believe I could list without hesitation. I think it entirely probable you and I would be perfect for each other. It is my intention to discover if this is possible. I do not wish to trifle with your emotions, nor do I wish to have my own sensibilities manipulated; therefore, if you cannot imagine even the remotest chance of returning affection, tell me now and I shall abide by your pleasure. On the other hand, if you sense, even vaguely, a returned interest in me, then let us proceed with willing minds and hearts. ~ Sharon Lathan

As a kid, I lived almost entirely inside books, and eventually the books started returning the favor. A lot of my internal world feels like an anthology, or a library. It's eclectic and disorganized, but I can browse in it, and that hugely shapes both what and how I write. ~ Kathryn Schulz

Rest in inaction, and the world will be reformed of itself; Forget your body and spit forth intelligence. Ignore all differences and become one with the Infinite. Release your mind, and free your spirit. Be vacuous, be devoid of soul. Thus will things grow and prosper and return to their Rust and Rest. Returning to their Root. Returning to their Root without their knowing it, the result will be a formless whole which will never be cut up, to know it is to cut it up. (Great Nebulous says to General Clouds) ~ Zhuangzi

The thoughts of a prisoner - they're not free either. They kept returning to the same things. A single idea keeps stirring. Would they feel that piece of bread in the mattress? Would he have any luck in the dispensary that evening? Would they out Buinovsky in the cells? And how did Tsezar get his hands on that warm vest? ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Presumably, the bells of the Church of the Ascension had been reclaimed by the Bolsheviks for the manufacture of artillery, thus returning them to the realm from whence they came. Though for all the Count knew, the cannons that had been salvaged from Napoleon's retreat to make the Ascension's bells had been forged by the French from the bells at La Rochelle; which in turn had been forged from British blunderbusses seized in the Thirty Years War. From bells to cannons and back again, from now until the end of time. ~ Amor Towles

Upon returning home, she immediately donned the long, silky gloves and was immediately transported to a time of her youth, a time no one in town could ever recall, for it never occurred to anyone who knew her that she had ever been young. ~ Brooke Warra

Since I emerged that day from the labyrinth,
Dazed with the tall and echoing passages,
The swift recoils, so many I almost feared
I'd meet myself returning at some smooth corner,
Myself or my ghost, for all there was unreal
After the straw ceased rustling and the bull
Lay dead upon the straw and I remained…

I could not live if this were not illusion.
It is a world, perhaps; but there's another.
For once in a dream or trance I saw the gods
Each sitting on the top of his mountain-isle,
While down below the little ships sailed by…

That was the real world; I have touched it once,
And now shall know it always. But the lie,
The maze, the wild-wood waste of falsehood, roads
That run and run and never reach an end,
Embowered in error – I'd be prisoned there
But that my soul has birdwings to fly free.

Oh these deceits are strong almost as life.
Last night I dreamt I was in the labyrinth,
And woke far on. I did not know the place. ~ Edwin Muir

There is nothing about abuse that makes it easy to talk about. Not how it is often someone you know, trust and love that inflicts the harm. Not how it spins your head a thousand times over, breaks your spine in two; traps you in a bed for days. There is nothing easy about crying in the shower after it is finished. Ruminating on the details. Watching tears dive into swimming pools at your feet. The night sweats. The intrusive thoughts. The feelings of being less than human. The guilt, the shame, the anger and the fear. I tell you, there is absolutely nothing soft about breaking. There are times when you betray yourself by thinking most about the person that cares for you the least. Times when you put your heart back together knowing it will still break again by morning. Times when you wonder if the darkness gets a kick out of staying too long. And you know it will cost a lot of therapy returning yourself to you, so instead you settle. You settle for anything that will alleviate the memories. The sweets. The overeating. The drugs. The alcohol. The fast sex. You know; those small violence's you do to your body in order to make sense of why. ~ Ezinne Orjiako, Nkem.

Halloween season. The season of the witch, so many thought. And, in legend, the night when souls could return to earth ...
And try to linger on.
But the dead weren't really returning, the living created evil. ~ Heather Graham

Just as you have taken returning to sins as a habit, then also take returning to tawba as a habit, because through tawba you expiate your past sins, and it is very possible that you may have the fortune to die while in a state of tawba. ~ Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali

An adept of Kriya Yoga conquers death by taking the soul beyond identification with the physical body, consciously and at will; and then returning to the consciousness of the mortal form again. By this process, he experiences the body as merely the material dwelling place of the soul. He can remain therein as long as he wants; and after that body has fulfilled its usefulness, he can quit it at will without suffering physical pain or mental pain due to attachment, and enter his omnipresent home in God. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda

The Jews were, as he (Augustine) put it, the living letters of the Law, that they were a constant reminder of the love of God to His chosen people, and that they were a constant reminder that Christ would be returning. ~ Thomas F. Madden

weren't nearly as bad as the silence. He sighed, returning his attention to the parade of stores out the window. "And people said I was guilty of highway robbery." I kept an eye out for a parking spot. "I'm going to pretend you didn't just insult my job," I said, locating an empty spot up ahead in the town ~ Angie Fox

You could move to Europe."
"You know, I've actually been considering that lately."
Kai laughed again, the warmth returning to the sound. "If that's not a vote of confidence, I don't know what is. ~ Marissa Meyer

The job has its grandeurs, yes. There is the exultation of arriving safely after a storm, the joy of gliding down out of the darkness of night or tempest toward a sun-drenched Alicante or Santiago; there is the swelling sense of returning to repossess one's place in life, in the miraculous garden of earth, where are trees and women and, down by the harbor, friendly little bars. When he has throttled his engine and is banking into the airport, leaving the somber cloud masses behind, what pilot does not break into song? ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery

The question is ... whether we shall, by whatever means, succeed in reconstituting the natural world as the true terrain of politics, rehabilitating the personal experience of human beings as the initial measure of things, placing morality above politics and responsibility above our desires, in making human community meaningful, in returning content to human speech, in reconstituting, as the focus of all social action, the autonomous, integral, and dignified human I, ... ~ Vaclav Havel

Returning from the wilderness a man becomes a restorer of order, a preserver. He sees the truth, recognizes his true heir, honors his forbears and his heritage, and gives his blessing to his successors. He embodies the passing of human time, living and dying within the human limits of grief and joy. ~ Wendell Berry

I was nothing but a nomad to you.
Destined to leave,
inclined to stay.
I would have gladly rewritten
my entire journey for you,
but you already viewed me as a traveler.
"Wait for me," you murmured,
with no intention of ever returning.
I was your right now
after you became my infinity. ~ Noor Shirazie

When a Roman was returning from a trip, he used to send someone ahead to let his wife know, so as not to surprise her in the act. ~ Michel De Montaigne

Her eyes weren't blinking. There was still something almost dead in them, something very far away. She seemed to be seeing all the way through to the back of him and beyond, out into the cold space of the future in which they would both soon be dead, out into the nothingness that Lalitha and his mother and his father had already passed into, and yet she was looking straight into his eyes, and he could feel her getting warmer by the minute. And so he stopped looking at her eyes and started looking into them, returning their look before it was too late, before this connection between life and what came after life was lost, and let her see all the vileness inside him, all the hatreds of two thousand solitary nights, while the two of them were still with the void in which the sum of everything they'd ever said or done, every pain they'd inflicted, every joy they'd shared, would weigh less than the smallest feather on the wind. ~ Jonathan Franzen

Back in bed, Cecelia drifted off fairly quickly but soon found her mind returning to the green ~ Gayle Curtis

What do you think it's worth, Lassiter, finding and returning the priceless heritage of a nation?" "How about a Boy Scout merit badge and a thank-you note from Yeltsin?" Above us, ~ Paul Levine

This is going to be murder," Fransic whispered to Mr. Trimes. "Pure murder."
"I'm glad to see your confidence returning, Mr. Tucket. Just a few minutes ago you were ready to give up. Now you're talking about killing him."
"I meant it the other way."
"Oh. ~ Gary Paulsen

A recent Pew Hispanic survey found that more than 70 percent of illegal immigrants from Mexico are interested in a guest-worker program and then returning home. ~ John Shadegg

But as she rounded the last turn before the hall landing, she nearly collided with Sir Ian, carrying his mother's shawl.
"Oh!" Lina exclaimed, coming to an abrupt halt a step above his.
"Rather careless of you to leave this behind," he said.
He was too close.
"Aye, it was," she agreed, stepping back up a step to gain more space.
His eyes danced. "Mayhap I should demand a penance before returning it."
"You dare," she said, stiffening and wishing he were not so fiendishly beguiling with that boyish gleam of mischief in his eyes. He was definitely not just a mischievous boy anymore, though. And, for a lady to encourage such behavior . . .
He looked up, as if to heaven, and murmured, "Just one wee ki - "
"Shame on you, Sir Ian Colquhoun," she interjected, thinking she sounded just like her mother. "Galbraith cannot know that you are on this stairway."
"Once again, you are wrong, lass," he said, his eyes still alight. "He is still with Lizzie on the dais - giving her a well-deserved scolding, I trust. I saw that you had left the shawl and offered to find a maidservant to return it to you. But this is much better. I do think you should thank me prettily for taking so much trouble."
"I will thank you. After you have returned it to me."
Cocking his head, he held the shawl higher, so she'd have to reach for it.
When she did, he moved it back out of her reach.
Lina lowered her outstretched hand to her side and eyed him st ~ Amanda Scott

I've learned that by returning my calls between 11:00 a.m. and noon and 4:00 and 5:00 p.m. I can keep them short and to the point because people are either hungry and starting to think about lunch or they are trying to gear down at the end of the day. ~ Geri Larkin

If this were a book written to entertain small children, you would know what would happen next. With the villain's identity and evil plans exposed, the police would arrive on the scene and place him in a jail for the rest of his life, and the plucky youngsters would go out for pizza and live happily ever after. But this book is about the Baudelaire orphans, and you and I know that these three unfortunate children living happily ever after is about as likely as Uncle Monty returning to life. ~ Lemony Snicket

Getting close to nature is a wonderful way to fill our lives with spirituality and a sense of completion. Nature has an amazing power to purify the energy of our thoughts and emotions, returning us to our original, natural state. ~ Ilchi Lee

By that point a career change was beyond consideration; he was a bottle, thrown to the sea, into which the villagers had folded their wishes, and though he was willing to give up on himself, he wasn't willing to let down those who believed he could carry them over the water. ~ Anthony Marra