Dark Quotes - Page 20

• O remember In your narrowing dark hours That more things move Than blood in the heart.

  Louise Bogan

  Moving, Heart, Blood

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• In a dream I walked with God through the deep places of creation; past walls that receded and gates that opened through hall after hall of silence, darkness and refreshment--the dwelling place of souls acquainted with light and warmth--until, around me, was an infinity into which we all flowed together and lived anew, like the rings made by raindrops falling upon wide expanses of calm dark waters.

  Dag Hammarskjold

  Dream, Wall, Fall

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• That's what living in their world is-a big lie. An illusion where everyone looks the other way and pretends that nothing unpleasant exists at all, no goblins of the dark, no ghosts of the soul.

  Libba Bray

  Lying, Soul, Looks

  Libba Bray (2010). “A Great and Terrible Beauty”, p.27, Simon and Schuster

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• It's lucky it's dark. I haven't blushed so much since Madam Pomfrey told me she liked my new earmuffs.

  J. K. Rowling

  Lucky, Havens

  J.K. Rowling (2015). “Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone”, p.16, Pottermore

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• She walks in beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that's best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes.

  Lord Byron

  Love, Eye, Night

  "SheWalks in Beauty" l. 1 (1815)

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• I become one of those people who walks alone in the dark at night while others sleep or watch Mary Tyler Moore reruns or pull all-nighters to finish up some paper that's due first thing tomorrow. I always carry lots of stuff with me wherever I roam, always weighted down with books, with cassettes, with pens and paper, just in case I get the urge to sit down somewhere, and oh, I don't know, read something or write my masterpiece. I want all my important possessions, my worldly goods, with me at all times. I want to hold what little sense of home I have left with me always.

  Elizabeth Wurtzel

  Book, Home, Writing

  Elizabeth Wurtzel (2014). “Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America”, p.192, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I sink down into my body as into a swamp, fenland, where only I know the footing…. I’m a cloud, congealed around a central object, the shape of a pear, which is hard and more real than I am and glows red within its translucent wrapping. Inside it is a space, huge as the sky at night and dark and curved like that, though black-red rather than black.

  Margaret Atwood

  Real, Night, Clouds

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• We sleep to time's hurdy-gurdy; we wake, if ever we wake, to the silence of God. And then, when we wake to the deep shores of time uncreated, then when the dazzling dark breaks over the far slopes of time, then it's time to toss things, like our reason, and our will; then it's time to break our necks for home. There are no events but thoughts and the heart's hard turning, the heart's slow learning where to love and whom. The rest is merely gossip, and tales for other times.

  Annie Dillard

  Home, Heart, Sleep

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• No, women like you don't write. They carve onion sculptures and potato statues. They sit in dark corners and braid their hair in new shapes and twists in order to control the stiffness, the unruliness, the rebelliousness.

  Edwidge Danticat

  Writing, Hair, Order

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• We do not always remember the things that do no credit to us. We justify them, cover them in bright lies or with the thick dust of forgetfulness. All of the things that Shadow had done in his life of which he was not proud, all the things he wished he had done otherwise or left undone, came at him then in a swirling storm of guilt and regret and shame, and he had nowhere to hide from them. He was as naked and as open as a corpse on a table, and dark Anubis the jackal god was his prosector and his prosecutor and his persecutor.

  Neil Gaiman

  Regret, Lying, Dust

  "American Gods". Book by Neil Gaiman, 2001.

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• He domesticated and developed the native wild flowers. He had one hill-side solidly clad with that low-growing purple verbena which mats over the hills of New Mexico. It was like a great violet velvet mantle thrown down in the sun; all the shades that the dyers and weavers of Italy and France strove for through centuries, the violet that is full of rose colour and is yet not lavender; the blue that becomes almost pink and then retreats again into sea-dark purple—the true Episcopal colour and countless variations of it.

  Willa Cather

  Flower, Sea, Purple

  Willa Cather (1999). “Death Comes for the Archbishop”, p.279, U of Nebraska Press

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• Living in a world that is valued only as gain, an ever-expanding world-as-frontier that has no worth of its own, no fullness of its own, you live in danger of losing your own worth to yourself. That's when you begin to listen to the voices from the other side, and to ask questions of failure and the dark.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Voice, World, Gains

  Ursula K. Le Guin (2004). “The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination”, p.31, Shambhala Publications

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• What in me is dark Illumine, what is low raise and support, That to the height of this great argument I may assert eternal Providence, And justify the ways of God to men. 1 Paradise Lost. Book i. Line 22.

  John Milton

  Book, Men, Support

  Paradise Lost bk. 1, l. 22 (1667) See Housman 5; Milton 49

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• But there was not a moment when she did not see Carol in her mind, and all she saw, she seemed to see through Carol. That evening, the dark flat streets of New York, the tomorrow of work, the milk bottle dropped and broken in her sink, became unimportant. She flung herself on her bed and drew a line with a pencil on a piece of paper. And another line, carefully, and another. A world was born around her, like a bright forest with a million shimmering leaves.

  Patricia Highsmith

  New York, Broken, Mind

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• When Jack Burns needed to hold his mother's hand, his fingers could see in the dark.

  John Irving

  Mom, Mother, Hands

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• Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

  William Butler Yeats

  Dream, Night, Light

  "HeWishes for the Cloths of Heaven" l. 7 (1899)

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• If you are very lucky, you're allowed to be in certain places during just the right season of your life: by the sea for the summer when you're seven or eight and full of the absolute need to swim until dark and exhaustion close their hands together, cupping you in between.

  Jonathan Carroll

  Summer, Eight, Hands

  Jonathan Carroll (2004). “Sleeping in Flame”, p.20, Macmillan

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• Someone asked me...how it felt and I was reminded of a story that a fellow townsman of ours used to tell--Abraham Lincoln. They asked him how he felt once after an unsuccessful election. He said he felt like a little boy who had stubbed his toe in the dark. He said that he was too old to cry, but it hurt too much to laugh.

  Adlai E. Stevenson

  Hurt, Boys, Laughing

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• It is so easy to be hopeful in the daytime when you can see the things you wish on. But it was night, it stayed night. Night was striding across nothingness with the whole round world in his hands . . . They sat in company with the others in other shanties, their eyes straining against cruel walls and their souls asking if He meant to measure their puny might against His. They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God.

  Zora Neale Hurston

  Wall, Eye, Night

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• I have been told I've got a darkish personality. A few times." Takahashi swings his trombone case from his right shoulder to his left. Then he says, "It's not as if our lives are divided simply into light and dark. There's shadowy middle ground. Recognizing and understanding the shadows is what a healthy intelligence does. And to acquire a healthy intelligence takes a certain amount of time and effort. I don't think you have a particularly dark character.

  Haruki Murakami

  Character, Thinking, Light

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• She decides to make a list of the things that make her happy. She writes 'plum-blossom' at the top of a piece of paper. Then she stares at the paper, unable to think of anything else. Eventually it begins to get dark.

  Neil Gaiman

  Writing, Thinking, Plums

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• It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one. We all know that our time in this world is limited, and that eventually all of us will end up underneath some sheet, never to wake up. And yet it is always a surprise when it happens to someone we know. It is like walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark, and thinking there is one more stair than there is. Your foot falls down, through the air, and there is a sickly moment of dark surprise as you try and readjust the way you thought of things.

  Daniel Handler

  Death, Fall, Thinking

  "Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid". Book by Daniel Handler, April 24, 2007.

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• He turns his back to the far shore and rows toward it. He can in this way travel away from, yet still see, his house....he feels he is riding a floating skeleton...Some birds in the almost-dark are flying as close to their reflections as possible.

  Michael Ondaatje

  Reflection, Skeletons, House

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• For with my intuition I knew that this man was repeating a pattern over and over again: courting a woman with his intelligence and sympathy, claiming her emotionally; then, when she began to claim in return, running away. And the better a woman was, the sooner he would begin to run. I knew this with my intuition, and yet I sat there in my dark room, looking at the hazed wet brilliance of the purple London night sky, longing with my whole being.

  Doris Lessing

  Running, Night, Men

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• For long the two enemies looked at one another, Hook shuddering slightly, and Peter with the strange smile upon his face. "So, Pan," said Hook at last, "this is all your doing." "Ay, James Hook," came the stern answer, "it is all my doing." "Proud and insolent youth," said Hook, "prepare to meet thy doom." "Dark and sinister man,“For long the two enemies looked at one another, Hook shuddering slightly, and Peter with the strange smile upon his face. "Dark and sinister man," Peter answered, "have at thee.

  James M. Barrie

  Men, Two, Long

  James M. Barrie (2013). “Peter Pan (Peter and Wendy) (Annotated Edition)”, p.135, Jazzybee Verlag

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