Sitting In The Dark Quotes

We're sitting in the dark willing to sell our souls for another peppermint with enough uranium to give a terrorist a wet dream. - Diana ~ Michael Grant

If I knew everything, life would be lonely, as everyone else would want to explore the world, and I'd be content with a cat on my lap sitting in the dark. ~ Jarod Kintz

When I looked a little closer, I noticed a guy sitting in the dark, tapping his leg in slow, deliberate movements. His head was cast down, but his eyes...his eyes looked directly at me. My breath caught. I tried to focus on what was being said, but the penetrating gaze from the guy in shadows made my heart pound wildly. When my eyes found their way back to him, I noticed the scowl on his face and immediately looked away. My goodness, this was going to be a long meeting. ~ Maayan Nahmani

I never go to the cinema. I can't stand sitting in the dark with strangers
all of us obliged to share the same emotional experiences
it's too intimate. I like to be emotional in private. ~ Peter Greenaway

I've always been more interested in the audience than I have in the plays. I like that idea of all those people sitting in the dark together. It's kind of fun. ~ Liev Schreiber

If you are sitting in the dark (due to depression) go turn the light on. If you can't find the light switch, seek the help of someone who can. ~ Stephanie Anne Allen

I like sitting in the dark and watching people far more talented than I'll ever be sing my songs and say my words. It's thrilling. ~ Kathie Lee Gifford

Cecil Palmer spoke of the horrors of everyday life. Nearly every broadcast told a story of impending doom or death, or worse: a long life lived in fruitless fear of doom or death. It wasn't that Jackie wanted to know all of the bad news of the world. It was that she loved sitting in the dark of her bedroom, swaddled in blankets and invisible radio waves. ~ Joseph Fink

It is our people who are sitting in the dark because of these cowardly and treacherous attacks, not our occupiers. ~ Iyad Allawi

All I really want to do is entertain people out there sitting in the dark and for them to believe it. ~ Kelly Lynch

Public opinion, - a tyrant, sitting in the dark, wrapt up in mystification and vague terrors of obscurity; deriving power no one knows from whom ... - but irresistible in its power to quell thought, to repress action, to silence conviction ... ~ Harriet Martineau

We don't rehash the question of my sexuality, but I feel its presence like a third person in the room, sitting in the dark corner, eavesdropping on our conversation. ~ Christina Lauren

Wherever the truth lies, in order to eliminate flicker, the rotating shutter within the projector has to allow each image to be flashed upon the screen twice. Thus, whenever we watch a movie, we spend half the time gazing at an optical illusion and the other half sitting in the dark in front of a blank screen. ~ David Parkinson

The greatest thrill is that moment when a thousand people are sitting in the dark, looking at the same scene, and they are all apprehending something that has not been spoken. That's the thrill of it, the miracle - that's what holds us to movies forever. It's what we wish we could do in real life. ~ Mike Nichols

That was really the question. Would I be okay without a child?

Each night I sat with [my infant nephew] Connor and forced myself to go down the path of imaginary motherhood, suspicious of myself that this would be something that I would be willing to reject. Every night I expected to have a change of heart and come up with a different, more recognizable answer. But it never happened.

Instead, sitting in the dark and quiet, something quite unexpected occurred. My life, precisely as it was--the product of good and bad decisions--began to come into focus for me. Sitting there, I could see it for the first time as something I'd chosen. Something I'd built intentionally, and not simply a makeshift thing I'd constructed as a for-the-time-being existence until something came along that would make me a whole person in the eyes of the world. Once I began to see it as such, it dawned on me that I had no wish to escape from it. On the contrary: I wanted it. I was choosing my life. I was willing to risk it. ~ Glynnis MacNicol

On Saturday Ben and I drove to Johns Island to see Skyfall."
"You did?" Hi asked sharply. "Thanks for the invite, jerks."
Shelton raised his palms. "You were at temple. We're supposed to just wait around? Plus, you've seen that move like five times."
"You still could've asked," Hi grumbled.
"I don't - "
"Guys!" I clapped my hands once. "The story, please."
"An hour in, I go for a popcorn refill." Shelton shuddered. "When I get back, Ben's sitting in the dark, flaring away, and he's not even wearing his sunglasses! I almost wet myself. He said he wanted to watch the movie in HD. Man, I don't remember a single minute from the rest of the film."
"In a theater!?" My temper exploded. "That stupid mother - "
"Hiram!"
Our heads whipped. Ruth Stolowitski was standing on her front stoop.
"Get back in here this instant! You're not dressed."
Ruth wore a fuzzy pink bathrobe, her free hand vising the garment closed. Her eyes darted, as if worried that cagey perverts were surveilling our remote island, waiting for just this opportunity to get an eyeful. ~ Kathy Reichs

Looking up occasionally to see rare cars crossing the high bridge and wondering what they'd see on this drear foggy night if they knew a madman was down there a thousand feet below in all that windy fury sitting in the dark writing in the dark - Some sort of sea beatnik, tho anybody wants to call me a beatnik for THIS better try it if they dare - The huge black rocks seem to move - The bleak awful roaring isolateness, no ordinary man could do it I'm telling you - I am a Breton! I cry and the blackness speaks back "Les poissons de la mer parlent Breton" (the fishes of the sea speak Breton) - Nevertheless I go there every night even tho I dont feel like it, it's my duty (and probably drove me mad), and write these sea sounds, and all the whole insane poem "Sea". ~ Jack Kerouac

Come and have a look at this.
I didn't want to have a look at anything. I went anyway. It's always better to understand than it is to be left sitting in the dark; it's always better to have answers, even when those answers lead to fresh questions. ~ Mira Grant

What, after all, is "entertainment"? Entertainment is the ritual of sitting in the dark, staring at a screen, investing tremendous concentration and energy into what one hopes will be a satisfying, meaningful emotional experience. Any film that hooks, holds, and pays off the story ritual is entertainment. ~ Anonymous

Where I'm at is a big Episcopal church in downtown Newark, New Jersey, sitting in the dark while I try to rescue the doomed bits and pieces of life, in the hope that a mere story can become Noah's Ark and deliver all the living things of the past to a bright and glorious immortality? ~ Chuck Palahniuk

Equality is a myth to protect the weak. some of us are strong in the Force, others are not. Only a fool believes otherwise. ~ Drew Karpyshyn

Because brothers don't let each other wander in the dark alone ~ Jolene Perry

I drove back into town, full of the look of her, full of the impact of her. It was an impact that made the day, the trees, the city, all look more vivid. Her face was special and clear in my mind - the wide mouth, the one crooked tooth, the gray slant of her eyes. Her figure was good, shoulders just a bit too wide, hips just a shade too narrow to be classic. Her legs were long, with clean lines. Her flat back and the inswept lines of her waist were lovely. Her breasts were high and wide spaced, with a flavor of impertinence, almost arrogance. It was the coloring of her though that pleased me most. Dark red of the hair, gray of the eyes, golden skin tones. ~ John D. MacDonald

She sulked about this. She tore up a stack of vintage car magazines in the sitting room and sat in the ruins of them and when Ronan came home and demanded what the hell is wrong with you like seriously, she told him that she was bored of being secret.
He said, "Aren't we all!" Then he made her clean up all the damp, gummed paper, and then he made her wipe down the floor because some of the printing had transferred to the wood because of her spit, and then he made her take out the trash plus the kitchen trash without even letting her dig through it first. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

Just like the flowers, Who have forgotten autumn and winter, Oh my friend from past seven seasons, Have you forgotten me, Like the many names in your life? Or are you busy loving yourself, Trapped in your own enchantment are you? ~ Piyush Rohankar

For a long time before I met you, I felt my life was this kind of test. I was in deep, cold water, swimming for shore, and my arms were getting tired,my skin numb. On the shore was everything I thought I wanted: a better job, a house, a family."

He swallowed, his throat cording with tension. "But I could barely keep my head above water. Eventually I stopped seeing the shore. Only cold dark blue, in all directions. I know it's cliché, but when I met you, my eyes opened. I looked around, and realized I could stand up whenever I wanted. There was firm ground under my feet. ~ Leah Raeder

The feeling that he was near the conclusion of his life was an instinctive conviction, such as we have when we waken in the dark and know at once that it is near morning; or when we are walking across the country and suddenly know that we are near the sea. Letters came every week ~ Willa Cather

Why lily?"
"It's the most sacred and beautiful of all flowers in Egypt. They bloom in mud and shine in the darkness like a gift from the gods to remind you that no matter how bad something is, it will get better. That no matter how dark the night, the light will come for you. If you partake of them, they have the power to calm and soothe you, and to heal your wounds." When he spoke his next words, they were laced with emotion and sincerity. "You are, and will always be, my sšn. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

In the end, Astrid couldn't do anything about my . . . turning into light, but she made a prediction. She said the sun would help me and I would be cured thanks to its efforts.'
'The sun?'
'Yes. It was the symbol I drew from among the runes. Astrid says it represents . . .'
'What?' he said, looking at me curiously, and I could see that he really wanted to hear the answer.
I became embarrassed.
'It's not important . . .' I muttered.
'Please tell me!' He turned fully towards me and I could feel myself blushing pink.
'The . . . man in my life.'
I was done for. My heart was beating heavily but Elijah, for the first time since I had awoken, smiled. I was incredibly ashamed of myself, so I made to go back to the house, but the Dark Angel grabbed my wrist. ~ A.O. Esther

Because we had survived
sisters and brothers, daughters and sons,
we discovered bones that rose
from the dark earth and sang
as white birds in the trees
Because the story of our life
becomes our life
Because each of us tells the same story
but tells it differently
and none of us tells it the same way twice . (from, Why We Tell Stories) ~ Lisel Mueller

These folk knew all about death. They killed their own livestock. They died from fevers, falls, or broken bones gone sour. Death was like an unpleasant neighbor. You didn't talk about him for fear he might hear you and decide to pay a visit.
Except for stories, of course. Tales of poisoned kings and duels and old wars were fine. They dressed death in foreign clothes and sent him far from your door. A chimney fire or the croup cough were terrifying. But Gibea's trial or the siege of Enfast, those were different. They were like prayers, like charms muttered late at night when you were walking alone in the dark. Stories were like ha'penny amulets you bought from a peddler, just in case. ~ Patrick Rothfuss

No one ever said that you would live to see the repercussions of everything you do, or that you have guarantees, or that you are not obliged to wander in the dark, or that everything will be proved to you and neatly verified like something in science. Nothing is: at least nothing that is worthwhile. I didn't bring you up only to move across sure ground. I didn't teach you to think that everything must be within our control or understanding. Did I? For, if I did, I was wrong. I fyou won't take a chance, then the powers you refuse because you cannot explain them, will, as they say, make a monkey out of you. ~ Mark Helprin

The pain, so unexpected and undeserved, had for some reason cleared away the cobwebs. I realized I didn't hate the cabinet door, I hated my life ... My house, my family, my backyard, my power mower. Nothing would ever change; nothing new could ever be expected. It had to end, and it did. Now in the dark world where I dwell, ugly things, and surprising things, and sometimes little wondrous things, spill out in me constantly, and I can count on nothing. ~ Philip K. Dick

God 10 A final word: Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. 11 Put on all of God's armor so that you will be able to stand firm against all strategies of the devil. 12 For we* are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places. 13 Therefore, put on every piece of God's armor so you will be able to resist the enemy in the time of evil. Then after the battle you will still be standing firm. 14 Stand your ground, putting on the belt of truth and the body armor of God's righteousness. 15 For shoes, put on the peace that comes from the Good News so ~ Anonymous

A girl sitting with us in the boat compared traveling over the water to the imperceptible gliding and progress of growth, that of fruit for example, which perhaps would have little desire to ripen if it knew to what end. ~ Robert Walser

I only like the live audience. I don't even like to do standup where it's being filmed. Because it affects the way the audience responds to what you say, because it makes them uncomfortable. You have to perform in a light room, and I prefer a dark room. But I love to perform, and I don't really see myself doing any television at all. ~ Ron White

And the darkness felt suddenly like home again.

Like a familiar place in the shadows
where we used to meet. ~ Laura Chouette

So I wish to give to you what I have given to few before." Her dark eyes shone. "Names are not important. It's what lies inside of you that matters. I know what you went through in Endovier. I know what my people endure there, day after day. But you did not let the mines harden you; you did not let it shame your soul into cruelty." The princess traced a mark on her hand, her fingers pressing into Celaena's skin. "You bear many names, and so I shall name you as well." Her hand rose to Celaena's forehead and she drew an invisible mark. "I name you Elentiya." She kissed the assassin's brow. "I give you this name to use with honor, to use when other names grow too heavy. I name you Elentiya, 'Spirit That Could Not Be Broken.'" Celaena ~ Sarah J. Maas

A drunken whore walks in a dark street at night, shedding snatches of song like petals. Was it in this that Anthony heard the heart-numbing strains of the great music which persuaded him to surrender for ever to the city he loved? The ~ Lawrence Durrell

And at midnight there came an apparition in hell. A handsome dark-eyed man with a dagger-like beard, in a tailcoat, stepped onto the veranda and cast a regal glance over his domain. They used to say, the mystics used to say, that there was a time when the handsome man wore not a tailcoat but a wide leather belt with pistol butts sticking out from it, and his raven hair was tied with scarlet silk, and under his command a brig sailed the Caribbean under a black death flag with a skull and crossbones.
But no, no! The seductive mystics are lying, there are no Caribbean Seas in the world, no desperate freebooters to sail them, no corvette chases after them, no cannon smoke drifts across the waves. There is nothing, and there was nothing! There is that sickly linden over there, there is the cast-iron fence, and the boulevard beyond it…And the ice is melting in the bowl, and at the next table you see someone's bloodshot, bovine eyes, and you're afraid, afraid…Oh, gods, my gods, poison, bring me poison!... ~ Mikhail Bulgakov

The reason why we get the same partners is not because people are the same, but because we pull the dark shadow of past hurts over our eyes and we live the same all over again. We change the actors, but never the masks we give them in our play. ~ Dragos Bratasanu

It was too dark to see but I froze in the glow of bright grey eyes that almost appeared white in the moonlight. ~ E.J. Harington

[ ... ] Everyone tries to make his life a work of art. We want love to last and we know that it does not last; even if, by some miracle, it were to last a whole lifetime, it would still be incomplete. Perhaps, in this insatiable need for perpetuation, we should better understand human suffering, if we knew that it was eternal. It appears that great minds are, sometimes, less horrified by suffering than by the fact that it does not endure. In default of inexhaustible happiness, eternal suffering would at least give us a destiny. But we do not even have that consolation, and our worst agonies come to an end one day. One morning, after many dark nights of despair, an irrepressible longing to live will announce to us the fact that all is finished and that suffering has no more meaning than happiness. ~ Albert Camus

Worse, the long, sleepless night in a room stored with mementoes of Alton's life confronted Rusty with the tracks of a ghost. Like a mattress sagging under the weight of an unseen body and a fluffed pillow impressed with the indentation of its head, the room seemed to mold itself around Alton's absence. The shirts that hung over creased pants in the small armoire remembered the boy's shoulders. Toy soldiers, headless and one-legged after a childhood of tabletop battles, did not desert the formation Alton had last ordered. A half-finished model airplane on his desk did not complete itself. As Rusty pitched from side to side in the narrow bed, his eyes fell upon object after object, which each in its own voice seemed to utter Alton's name as a kind of question--a question, he well knew, that would never be answered.
THe chorus of Alton's things, silently protesting their perplexed abandonment, disturbed Rusty's sleep like crickets chirping in the dark. It felt to him as if everything is the room was hardening around Alton's absence And what was a ghost, anyway, he began to understand while lying in a dead man's bed, but a felt absence, a keen unpresence? ~ John Biguenet

If somebody swapped the real sword for the fake while it was in Dumbledore's office," she panted, as they propped the painting against the side of the tent, "Phineas Nigellus would have seen it happen, he hangs right beside the case!"
"Unless he was asleep," said Harry, but he still held his breath as Hermione knelt down in front of the empty canvas, her wand directed at its center, cleared her throat, then said:
"Er--Phineas? Phineas Nigellus?"
Nothing happened.
"Phineas Nigellus?" said Hermione again. "Professor Black? Please could we talk to you? Please?"
"'Please' always helps," said a cold, snide voice, and Phineas Nigellus slid into his portrait. At once, Hermione cried:
"Obscuro!"
A black blindfold appeared over Phineas Nigellus's clever, dark eyes, causing him to bump into the frame and shriek with pain.
"What--how dare--what are you--?"
"I'm very sorry, Professor Black," said Hermione, "but it's a necessary precaution!"
"Remove this foul addition at once! Remove it, I say! You are ruining a great work of art! Where am I? What is going on?"
"Never mind where we are," said Harry, and Phineas Nigellus froze, abandoning his attempts to peel off the painted blindfold.
"Can that possibly be the voice of the elusive Mr. Potter?"
"Maybe," said Harry, knowing that this would keep Phineas Nigellus's interest. "We've got a couple of questions to ask you--about the sword of Gryffindor."
"Ah," said Phineas Nig ~ J.K. Rowling

Silence is where my demons lurk, taunting me endlessly day after day until the end of time...yet still I wait, revelling in their company... ~ Virginia Alison

Wrath: look at how their folklore portrays our species. There's Dracula for Christ's sake, an evil bloodsucker who preys on the defenseless. There's piss-poor B movies and porn. And don't get me started on the whole Halloween thing. Plastic fangs. Black capes. The only thing the idiots got right are that we drink blood and that we can't go out in daylight. The rest is bullshit, fabricated to alienate us and stimulate fear in the masses. Or just as offensive, the fiction used to create some kind of mystique for bored humans who think the dark side is a fun place to visit. ~ J.R. Ward

A corner of the night sky, beyond a wall of trees, blooms red. In the lurid, flickering light, he sees that the airplane was not alone, that the sky teems with them, a dozen swooping back and forth, racing in all directions, and in a moment of disorientation, he feels that he's looking not up but down, as though a spotlight has been shined into a wedge of bloodshot water, and the sky has become the sea, and the airplanes are hungry fish, harrying their prey in the dark. ~ Anthony Doerr

Anyone who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of the eyes are of two kinds, and arise from two causes, either from coming out of the light or from going into the light, which is true of the mind's eye, quite as much as of the bodily eye; and he who remembers this when he sees anyone whose vision is perplexed and weak, will not be too ready to laugh; he will first ask whether that soul of man has come out of the brighter life, and is unable to see because unaccustomed to the dark, or having turned from darkness to the day is dazzled by excess of light. And he will count the one happy in his condition and state of being, and he will pity the other; or, if he have a mind to laugh at the soul which comes from below into the light, there will be more reason in this than in the laugh which greets him who returns from above out of the light into the den. ~ Daniel Keyes

I think I am becoming obsessive-compulsive. David Beckham apparently turns all the Diet Coke cans in his fridge to face the same way every morning, and I nerdily sharpen all the pencils in my pot before sitting down to work. ~ Andrew O'Hagan

I grew up watching movies and being amazed at the animatronics you'd see in stuff like 'The Dark Crystal,' and all those kinds of movies. So, I'm always enthralled with how they can make it all work, behind the scenes, with the visual effects. ~ Colin O'Donoghue

I used to think that life was hills and valleys-you go through a dark time, then to the mountaintop, back and forth. I don't believe that anymore. Rather than life being hills and valleys, I believe it is it's kind of like two rails on a railroad track, and at all times in your life, there is something bad that needs to be worked on. And no matter how bad things are in our lives, there is always something good to thank God for. ~ Elizabeth Adeniyi

Never Land
She rocks herself to sleep,
rocks herself awake, rocks
until she is one with a sky
deep as midnight.
The ground is not hers-
never was-and the only
light, the only light there is,
hums a high song
from the backside of stars.
Here in the dark, yes, here
is the cradle. ~ Jenny Hubbard

It just didn't feel right to let my child scream and holler and thrash by her little self in the dark in her crib when I knew full well that a little rocking in her glider, maybe a song and a sweet nuzzle of her cheek would send her off to dreamland. ~ Denene Millner

A poem's essential discovery can happen at a single sitting. The cascade of discoveries in an essay, or even finding a question worth exploring in one, seems to need roughly the time it takes to plant and harvest a crop of bush beans. ~ Jane Hirshfield

I have spent years of my life sitting in my room, creating defenses of cynicism, darkness, and bleakness. Jed's friendship is the skeleton key to my fortress. He disarms me every time. ~ David Levithan

The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed. ~ Stephen King

Hence the strong attraction which magic and science alike have exercised on the human mind; hence the powerful stimulus that both have given to the pursuit of knowledge. They lure the weary enquirer, the footsore seeker, on through the wilderness of disappointment in the present by their endless promises of the future: they take him up to the top of an exceeding high mountain and show him, beyond the dark clouds and rolling mists at his feet, a vision of the celestial city, far off, it may be, but radiant with unearthly splendour, bathed in the light of dreams. ~ James G. Frazer

You will be the first test subject, Tobias. Beatrice, however ... " She smiles. "You are too injured to be of much use to me, so your execution will occur at the conclusion of this meeting."
I try to hide the shudder that goes through me at the word "execution," my shoulder screaming with pain, and look up at Tobias. It's hard to blink tears back when I see the terror in Tobias's wide, dark eyes.
"No," says Tobias. His voice trembles, but his look stern as he shakes his head. "I would rather die."
"I'm afraid you don't have much of a choice in that matter," replies Jeanine lightly.
Tobias takes my face in this hands roughly and kisses me, the pressure of his lips pushing mine apart. I forget my pain and the terror of approaching death and for a moment, I am grateful that the memory of that kiss will be fresh in my mind as I meet my end. ~ Veronica Roth

Wait - no, not drifting. Following us. "We have an audience," I said to Reth, nodding at the clusters of flying insects.
"I suppose we can't make the Dark Queen any angrier with us than she already is," he said, then his perfect mouth moved, silently forming words, and he gracefully waved his hands through the air in a semicircle. The warm breeze suddenly froze, and I saw frost eat across the nearest butterflies' wings. They stopped midair, then dropped to the ground with tiny clinking noises, frozen solid.
A serene smile spread across Reth's face. "I've always disliked insects."
"If the whole being-a-faerie thing doesn't work out for you, you definitely have a future in pest control. ~ Kiersten White

grave monsters of fable in deeps of the ferny forest danced minuets that witches had made of their whims and their laughter, long ago long ago in their youth before cities had come to the world. And the trees of the forest heavily lifted slow roots out of the ground and swayed upon them uncouthly and then danced as on monstrous claws, and the insects danced on the huge waving leaves. And in the dark of long caverns weird things in enchanted seclusion rose out of their age-long sleep and danced in the damp ~ Lord Dunsany

We come from a dark abyss, we end in a dark abyss, and we call the luminous interval life. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis