The Midnight Heir Quotes

I beg your pardon again. Do you believe yourself to be a pianoforte?" - Magnus Bane, The Midnight Heir (The Bane Chronicles, 4) by Cassandra Clare and Sarah Rees Brennan ~ Cassandra Clare

In our broad sweep, the city looks like a single gigantic creature - or more like a single collective entity created by many intertwining organism. Countless arteries stretch to the ends of its elusive body, circulating a continuous supply of fresh blood cells, sending out new data and collecting the old, sending out new consumables and collecting the old, sending out new contradictions and collecting the old. To the rhythm of its pulsing, all parts of the body flicker and flare up and squirm. Midnight is approaching, and while the peak of activity has passed, the basal metabolism that maintains life continues undiminished, producing the basso continuo of the city's moan, a monotonous sound that neither rises nor falls but is pregnant with foreboding. ~ Haruki Murakami

How like a queen comes forth the lonely Moon From the slow opening curtains of the clouds Walking in beauty to her midnight throne! ~ George Croly

Hours of the day were named for the hours of prayer: matins around midnight; lauds around three A.M.; prime, the first hour of daylight, at sunrise or about six A.M.; vespers at six in the evening; and compline at bedtime. ~ Barbara W. Tuchman

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

The first thing I see when I get home from the hospital after midnight is the glint of the stainless steel oven in the semidarkness of the kitchen. The air smells sweet and eggy. I walk to the oven and pull open the door. Six white ramekins hold six perfect-looking crème caramels, and I wonder if they're safe to eat. It's been more than three hours since I turned off the oven. I remember a Swedish chef telling me years ago when I worked as a prep cook that unrefrigerated food will keep for four hours, but he also cleaned his fingernails with the tip of his chef's knife, so who knows.
I pick up one of the dishes and sniff it. It smells fine. Without taking off my coat, I dig into a drawer for a spoon and eat the crème caramel in five seconds flat. The texture is silky and it tastes sweet and custardy, if not perfect. I pull the rest of the dishes from the oven to put in the fridge, telling myself one was enough. An extra treat at the end of a hard day. I've put three ramekins into the refrigerator when I can't stand it and dig into the second, eating more slowly this time, slipping out of my coat, savoring the custard on my tongue. Two is definitely enough, I'm thinking as I lick the inside of the cup, two is perfect. I'm picking up the remaining cup to put in the fridge but I turn instead, head for the bedroom with ramekin in hand. At least wait until you've gotten undressed and in bed, I told myself, surely you can wait. I make it as far as the doorway and I'm digging m ~ Jennie Shortridge

She grabbed her briefcase and took a step toward him. "You don't have a last name?"
"Everyone has a last name." His hand hovered in the air, waiting. He was forcing her to cross the marble floor to meet him, and like a Luna moth drawn to a midnight moon, she drifted toward him.
When she reached him, she took his hand and looked up into his face. "Is it Jones? Smith? Or Brown?"
His lips twitched. "None of the above."
"And you won't tell me?"
"It's not necessary information."
She tilted her head, studying his angular features. "You don't look like an Adrian."
His smile broadened. "Imagine that."
"More like a Carlos, or a Juan, or a Diego."
"Those are Hispanic names."
"Aren't you Hispanic?"
"I'm anything you want me to be. ~ Shelby Reed

The days are passing so quickly. This is the only time of year when I want to slow time down. I spend the entire year trying to get here as fast as I can, then once I'm here I want to slam on the brakes. I'm beginning to have those moments when the feel of autumn is so strong it drowns out everything else. Lately it's been making me think about the perfect soundtrack for a Halloween party.

The top of any Halloween music list as to be the theme song from the movie Halloween; right on its heels is "Pet Sematary" by the Ramones. For some reason I've always equated the old Van Morrison song "Moondance" with Halloween, too. I love that song. "Bela Lugosi's Dead" by Bauhaus is an October classic, as well as anything by Type O Negative. And Midnight Syndicate. If you've never heard anything by Midnight Syndicate, look them up right this moment. If you distilled the raw essence of every spooky story you ever heard, you would have Midnight Syndicate. I have a friend who swears by them, believing them to be a vital element of any Halloween party. To finish off the list you must have "The Lyre of Orpheus" by Nick Cave and "I Feel Alright" by Steve Earle. ~ Damien Echols

Most people who ask me what's my favorite song, expect that it's 'Midnight Train' or 'Neither One of Us.' But actually, it's always kinda been 'The Need to Be' because of what it says. I love the way that song was written, I love the melody, I love everything about it. ~ Gladys Knight

First the flame and then the flood:
In the end it's Blackthorn blood.
Seek thou to forget what's past
First thirteen and then the last.
Search not the book of angels gray,
Red or white will lead you far astray.
To regain what you have lost,
Find the black book at any cost. ~ Cassandra Clare

Tis midnight now. The bend and broken moon, Batter'd and black, as from a thousand battles, Hangs silent on the purple walls of Heaven. ~ Joaquin Miller

But you can't plead with autumn. No. The midnight wind stalked through the woods, hooted to frighten you, swept everything away for the approaching winter, whirled the leaves. ("The North") ~ Yevgeny Zamyatin

I lay awake listening to the rain, and at first it was as pleasant to my ear and my mind as it had long been desired; but before I fell asleep it had become a majestic and finally a terrible thing, instead of a sweet sound and symbol. It was accusing and trying me and passing judgment. Long I lay still under the sentence, listening to the rain, and then at last listening to words which seemed to be spoken by a ghostly double beside me. He was muttering: The all-night rain puts out summer like a torch. In the heavy, black rain falling straight from invisible, dark sky to invisible, dark earth the heat of summer is annihilated, the splendour is dead, the summer is gone. The midnight rain buries it away where it has buried all sound but its own. I am alone in the dark still night, and my ear listens to the rain piping in the gutters and roaring softly in the trees of the world. Even so will the rain fall darkly upon the grass over the grave when my ears can hear it no more…

The summer is gone, and never can it return. There will never be any summer any more, and I am weary of everything… I am alone.

The truth is that the rain falls for ever and I am melting into it. Black and monotonously sounding is the midnight and solitude of the rain. In a little while or in an age – for it is all one – I shall know the full truth of the words I used to love, I knew not why, in my days of nature, in the days before the rain: 'Blessed are the dead that the rain rains on. ~ Edward Thomas

Speak you too,
speak as the last,
say out your say.

Speak-
But don't split off No from Yes.
Give your say this meaning too:
Give it the shadow.

Give it shadow enough,
Give it as much
As you know is spread round you from
Midnight to midday and midnight.

Look around:
See how things all come alive-
By death! Alive!
Speaks true who speaks shadow.

But now the place shrinks, where you stand:
Where now, shadow-stripped, where?
Climb. Grope upwards.
Thinner you grow, less knowable, finer!
Finer: a thread
The star wants to descend on:
So as to swim down beliow, down here
Where it sees itself shimmer:in the swell
Of wandering words. ~ Paul Celan

One of the things I've thought about 'Midnight's Children' is that it is a novel which puts a Muslim family at the centre of the Indian experience. ~ Salman Rushdie

I hear rustling in your dark magic; the old seas of midnight. ~ Yvan Goll

It is daffodil time, so the robins all cry, For the sun's a big daffodil up in the sky, And when down the midnight the owl call to-whoo! Why, then the round moon is a daffodil too; Now sheer to the bough-tops the sap starts to climb, So, merry my masters, it's daffodil time. ~ Clinton Scollard

I think that's what you say when you can't have something you want, isn't it? You say you don't want it in the first place. ~ Jodi Lynn Anderson

Welcome to the place on the other side of midnight. ~ Mladen Đorđević

I looked at Judith. "This sounds strange, but I don't suppose you saw three mad women with a cauldron of boiling tea pass by this way?"
"No," she replied. The polite voice of reasonable people scared of exciting the madman.
"Flash of light? Puff of smoke? Erm ... " I tried to find a polite way of describing the symptoms of spontaneous teleportation without using the dreaded "teleportation" word. I failed. I slumped back into the sand. What kind of mystic kept a spatial vortex at the bottom of their cauldrons of tea anyway? ~ Kate Griffin

But the reason I became, why I wanted to be in the business was because there was Midnight Cowboy. ~ Jodie Foster

It was nine French fries because I counted. Was it a lie that Aja said he ate ten French fries? Did a small lie like that matter? Bree didn't look at me or talk to me again all day. The Earth sun was not shining inside me. It was as dark as midnight in there. That evening, I was surprised Bree still came over to talk about the party. She frowned and said, "Well, we still have to figure out the food." Mom and Dad were in the study working on the loud-soft problem. The ~ Darcy Pattison

Good evening, daddy! Ain't you heard The boogie-woogie rumble Of a dream deferred? Trilling the treble And twining the bass Into midnight ruffles Of cat-gut lace. ~ Langston Hughes

I was full time on 'Party of Five' for one year, then more like a creative consultant for two years, where I was in the writing rotation but didn't have to go in every day or cover the set until midnight. ~ Susannah Grant

I felt like I was riding into infinity, and soon I forgot I existed as the sky surrounded us in a blanket of stars, constellations the texture of slushies, swirling blue and violet and gold. I was swallowed b the universe, riding on a white horse in a midnight dream... ~ Aishabella Sheikh

It seemed to me that Q. was talking about the nature of the midnight disease, which started as a simple feeling of disconnection from other people, an inability to "fit in" by no means unique to writers, a sense of envy and of unbridgeable distance like that felt by someone tossing on a restless pillow in a world full of sleepers. Very quickly, though, what happened with the midnight disease was that you began actually to crave this feeling of apartness, to cultivate and even flourish within it. You pushed yourself farther and farther and farther apart until one black day you woke to discover that you yourself had become the chief object of your own hostile gaze. ~ Michael Chabon

The dungeons are windowless. One hour is much like another down there, and for me, all hours are midnight. ~ George R R Martin

There is no night porter wandering about in King's. The authorities pay you the compliment, ugly gate-crasher, of treating you as a grown-up. And since we are not grown-up you and I, we will perform our midnight frolics as the inmates burn the midnight oil. ~ Whipplesnaith

The soldier was like that. He was an expert in getting other people to do what he wanted. The only creature that could make the soldier do something he did not want was Midnight, and Midnight did things she did not want only when Whippersnapper wanted something. That put the kitten right at the top of the pecking order. A kitten! ~ Diana Wynne Jones

If critics and competitors can't match your results, they will often denigrate the way you achieve them. Fast, intuitive types are called lazy. Dedicated burners of the midnight oil are called obsessed. And while it's obviously not a bad idea to hear and consider the opinions of others, you should be suspicious when these criticisms emerge right on the heels of success. ~ Garry Kasparov

I lie awake in bed until way past midnight, fervently hoping Ky is going make an appearance at any moment to explain his behavior. But as the clock chimes two, I have no choice but to face facts.
He isn't coming.
And it feels ominous.
Like the winds are changing, and destiny is altering.
His absence is more than telling.
It has a finality to it that scares me half to death. ~ Siobhan Davis

He rolled in his bed, twisting the sheets, grappling with a problem years too big for him, awake in the night like a single sentinel on picket. And sometime after midnight, he slept, too, and then only the wind was awake, prying at the hotel and hooting in its gables under the bright gimlet gaze of the stars. ~ Stephen King