Dark Quotes - Page 24

• Should we continue to look upwards? Is the light we can see in the sky one of those which will presently be extinguished? The ideal is terrifying to behold... brilliant but threatened on all sides by the dark forces that surround it: nevertheless, no more in danger than a star in the jaws of the clouds.

  Victor Hugo

  Stars, Clouds, Light

  Victor Hugo (1980). “Les misérables”, Viking Pr

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• It's so easy to wish for death when nothing's wrong with you! It's so easy to fall in love with death, and I've been all my life, and seen it's most faithful worshippers crumble in the end, screaming just to live, as if all the dark veils and the lillies and the smell of candles, and grandiose promises of the grave meant nothing. I knew that. But I always wished I was dead. It was a way to go on living

  Anne Rice

  Falling In Love, Smell, Faithful

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• In dark times, the definition of good art would seem to be art that locates and applies CPR to those elements of what's human and magical that still live and glow despite the times' darkness. Really good fiction could have as dark a worldview as it wished, but it'd find a way both to depict this world and to illuminate the possibilities for being alive and human in it.

  David Foster Wallace

  Art, Cpr, Fiction

  The Review of Contemporary Fiction, 1993.

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• Laura felt a warmth inside her. It was very small, but it was strong. It was steady, like a tiny light in the dark, and it burned very low but no winds could make it flicker because it would not give up.

  Laura Ingalls Wilder

  Strong, Giving Up, Light

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• So, there I was, tied to an altar made from outdated encyclopedias, about to get sacrificed to the dark powers by a cult of evil Librarians.

  Brandon Sanderson

  Evil, Librarian, Made

  Brandon Sanderson (2016). “Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians”, p.147, Macmillan

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• And while one is brought up with luxury and caresses, and is thrown bewildered and despairing into a dark pit, another is lifted from the pit and raised to a throne where a jeweled crown is placed on his head. The world has no shame in doing this; it is prompt to hand out both pleasure and pain and has no need of us an our doings.

  Abolqasem Ferdowsi

  Pain, Hands, Luxury

  Abolqasem Ferdowsi (2016). “Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings”, p.303, Penguin

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• Come on back and we’ll see if you remember the simplest thing of all – how it is to be children, secure in belief and thus afraid of the dark.

  Stephen King

  Children, Belief, Remember

  Stephen King (2016). “It: A Novel”, p.908, Simon and Schuster

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• Sometimes it's not the optimist you need, but another pessimist to walk beside you and know, absolutely know, that the sound in the dark is a monster, and it really is as bad as you think. Did that sound hopeless? It didn't feel hopeless. It felt reassuring. It felt - real.

  Laurell K. Hamilton

  Real, Thinking, Monsters

  Laurell K. Hamilton (2008). “Blood Noir: An Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Novel”, p.324, Penguin

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• His mouth opens. From inside him comes a slow stream, without breath, without interruption. It flows up through his body and out upon me; it passes through the cabin, through the wreck; washing the cliffs and shores of the island, it runs northward and southward to the ends of the earth. Soft and cold, dark and unending, it beats against my eyelids, against the skin of my face.

  J. M. Coetzee

  Running, Islands, Skins

  J. M. Coetzee (2017). “Foe: A Novel”, p.149, Penguin

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• Look...at...me..." he whispered. The green eyes found the black, but after a second, something in the depths of the dark pair seemed to vanish, leaving them fixed, blank, and empty. The hand holding Harry thudded to the floor, and Snape moved no more.

  J. K. Rowling

  Eye, Hands, Leaving

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• It is the strain of walking around the world-down the street, riding city buses and elevators, moving from place to place to place-and not knowing who might want to destroy you, who might like to fill your heart with poison, who might rob you and stab you, who might stand above you in the dark with a tarantula.

  Joe Meno

  Moving, Heart, Cities

  Joe Meno (2006). “The Boy Detective Fails”, p.114, Akashic Books

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• You have begun to separate the dark from the dark.

  Philip Levine

  Philip Levine (2011). “What Work Is”, p.46, Knopf

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• Blind is his love, and best befits the dark.

  William Shakespeare

  His Love, Juliet, Blind

  "The New Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works".

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• For a while he'd tried molding himself into the tragic Romantic hero, brooding and staring clench-jawed off into space as he composed dark verse in his head. But it turned out that trying to appear tragic in Incontinence, Indiana, was redundant, and his mother kept shouting at him and making him forget his rhymes. "Tommy, if you keep grinding your teeth like that, they'll wear away and you'll have to have dentures like Aunt Ester." Tommy only wished his beard was as heavy as Aunt Ester's---then he could stare out over the moors while he stroked it pensively.

  Christopher Moore

  Mother, Hero, Aunt

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• Down in the city are the nice houses and the so-so houses and the lovers making out in dark yards and the babies crying for their moms, and I wonder if, other than Jesus, has this ever happened before. Maybe it happens all the time. Maybe there's angry dead all over, hiding in rooms, covered with blankets, bossing around their scared, embarrassed relatives. Because how would we know?

  George Saunders

  Mom, Baby, Jesus

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• I realized the shells were talking in a voice I recognized. I should have; it was my own. Had I always known that? I suppose I had. On some level, unless we're mad, I think most of us know the various voices of our own imaginations. And of our memories, of course. They have voices, too. Ask anyone who has ever lost a limb or a child or a long-cherished dream. Ask anyone who blames himself for a bad decision, usually made in a raw instant (an instant that is most commonly red). Our memories have voices, too. Often sad ones that clamor like raised arms in the dark.

  Stephen King

  Dream, Memories, Children

  Stephen King (2008). “Duma Key: A Novel”, p.478, Simon and Schuster

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• When we come face-to-face with one down a dark alley, we're going to be having a shufti to see if it's solid, aren't we, we're not going to be asking, 'Excuse me, are you the imprint of a departed soul?

  J. K. Rowling

  Soul, Departed, Asking

  "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince". Book by J. K. Rowling, July 16, 2005.

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• They all have tired mouths and bright seamless souls. And a longing (as for sin) sometimes haunts their dreams. They are almost all alike; in God's gardens they keep still, like many, many intervals in his might and melody. Only when they spread their wings are they wakers of a wind: as if God with his broad sculptor- hands leafed through the pages in the dark book of the beginning.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Dream, Book, Tired

  Rainer Maria Rilke (2014). “The Book of Images”, p.31, North Point Press

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• The waitress brought me another drink. She wanted to light my hurricane lamp again. I wouldn't let her. "Can you see anything in the dark, with your sunglasses on?" she asked me. "The big show is inside my head," I said.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Light, Sunglasses, Lamps

  Kurt Vonnegut (1973). “Breakfast of champions: or, Goodbye blue Monday!”, Dell

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• I know when dark-haired evening put on her bright silk at sunset, and, folding the sea sidled under the sheet with her starry laugh, that there'd be no rest, there'd be no forgetting. Is like telling mourners round the graveside about resurrection, they want the dead back.

  Derek Walcott

  Sunset, Sea, Laughing

  Derek Walcott (2014). “Selected Poems”, p.128, Macmillan

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• In the dark, with the windows lit and the rows of books glittering, the library is a closed space, a universe of self-serving rules that pretend to replace or translate those of the shapeless universe beyond.

  Alberto Manguel

  Book, Space, Self

  Alberto Manguel (2011). “The Library at Night”, p.17, Vintage Canada

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• They stood brow to brow, brown to white, black to black, he supporting her elbows, she playing her limp light fingers over his collarbone, and how he "ladored,"he said, the dark aroma of her hair blending with crushed lily stalks, Turkish cigarettes and the lassitude that comes from "lass." "No, no, don't," she said, I must wash, quick-quick, Ada must wash; but for yet another immortal moment they stood embraced in the hushed avenue, enjoying as they had never enjoyed before, the "happy-forever" feeling at the end of never-ending fairy tales.

  Vladimir Mayakovsky

  Light, Hair, White

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• Rebellion flamed up in her soul as the dark hours passed by – not because she had no future but because she had no past.

  Lucy Maud Montgomery

  Past, Soul, Rebellion

  Lucy Maud Montgomery (2016). “The Collected Works of Lucy Maud Montgomery: 20 Novels & 170+ Short Stories, Poems, Letters and Memoirs (Including The Complete Anne Shirley Series, Chronicles of Avonlea & Emily Starr Trilogy): Anne of Green Gables, Anne of Avonlea, Anne of Windy Poplars, Rainbow Valley, Rilla of Ingleside, Emily of New Moon, The Story Girl, The Golden Road, Pat of Silver Bush, The Blue Castle & many more”, p.3595, e-artnow

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• If the future's looking dark, We're the ones who have to shine. If there's no one in control, We're the ones who draw the line. Though we live in trying times, We're the ones who have to try. And we know that time has wings, So we're the ones who have to fly.

  Neil Peart

  Wings, Shining, Trying

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• I closed my eyes to watch tiny dancers like jeweled birds cross the dark screen of my eyelids.

  Janet Fitch

  Eye, Dancer, Bird

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