c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
When you made tons of money, had a beautiful wife and three adorable kids-when you were the envy of your community and coworkers-you had no right to behave badly. Stop whining, chin up, take Prozac, and pretend your pain isn't ravaging your soul.
— C.S. Lakin, Conundrum
Your race devotes itself to justifying its errors, not correcting them
— Karen Marie Moning, Shadowfever
The journey is about coming home....There is always the return. And the wound will take you there. It is a blood-trail." (p. 220,222)
— Jeanette Winterson
...everywhere I am is true.
— Baisao, The Old Tea Seller: Life and Zen Poetry in 18th Century Kyoto
I love family reunions. Maybe next year we could pass out samurai swords.
— Doug Solter
Och, stop being so sensitive, Prentice; it isn't much fun getting old. One of the few pleasures that do come your way is to speak your mind... Certainly annoying your relatives is enjoyable too, but I expected better of you.
— Iain Banks, The Crow Road
Remember, whoever is funny is king.
— Sean "Day 9 " Plott
He used to annoy me with sophistry that we all chose our destiny. Then one day I told him that that’s great when fate offers you a nice set of destinies to choose from, but when you find yourself choosing between risking being raped, tortured and killed, or moving to another country to live like an alien without tongue, money or understanding, you are buggered either way. And that’s not even to mention how easily he could navigate through the mine filed of his mistakes...
— Dunya Look
I was so sure and Ididn’t want to admit I got it that wrong. And when you’re that sureand end up getting it that wrong, you lose faith in yourself, yourability to make the right decisions about your life.
— Kirsten Ashley
A patient man gets all that he waits for.
— William T. LeDent
I have a special pair of poop shoes under my desk. Whenever I need to drop a deuce, I slip them on and scurry to the restroom, and no one ever knows it's me. Like, if I'm wearing Louboutins that day, and my producer sees Earth shoes in the stall....well, you get the idea. It was truly a lightbulb moment when that came to me.
— Oprah Winfrey
The New Age movement, for all the validity of its protest and the value of some of its recommendations, is in truth a very old blind alley. There is a very long history to remind us of what happens when nature is our ultimate point of reference . . . . Nature knows no ethics. There is no right and wrong in nature; the controlling realities are power and fertility.
— Lesslie Newbigin, Truth to Tell: The Gospel as Public Truth
Oh how the candles will be lit and the wood of worm burn in a fiery dust. For on all Hallow's Eve will the spirits come to play, and only the fruit of thy womb will satisfy their endless roaming.
— Solange nicole
You think it's all rather too "New Age" to be taken seriously, eh?''Not at all.''But it's an ancient discipline...''New Age disciplines invariably are,' Beede said, disparagingly, 'but in the modern world they lack context - we just pick them up and then toss them back down again, we consume them. They have no moral claim on us. No moral value. And without that they're rendered meaningless, fatuous, even.
— Nicola Barker, Darkmans
Always marveling at how New Age pseudo-philosophy had taken over the Internet.
— Jeff Lindsay, Dexter in the Dark
Keep an open mind. Only an open mind is big enough to contain the secrets of the universe.
— Vera Stanley Alder
Onyx prides itself on its award winning customer service, however some of the staff prefer to pride themselves on their outstanding blow job skills.
— Pandora Tolson, Erin
There are two common and complementary mistakes, which have been made over and over again concerning spirits by people in the Western world. The first of these is the orthodox Christian habit of assuming that all spirits are malevolent, dishonest and evil; the second is the corresponding habit, common in many New Age circles nowadays, of assuming that all spirits are loving, wise and good. Both of these attitudes are as foolish when applied to spirits as they would be if applied to human beings.
— John Michael Greer, Paths of Wisdom: Cabala in the Golden Dawn Tradition
Begin a new life today without any fear! Let's go over it together.
— Nazim Ambalath
She told me it was unlucky to share a reading with others, but the main point, the one I don't mind mentioning because it seems relevant to the story, is that she said I had a kind of evil spirit following me. 'Obviously,' she added, 'that sucks. But if we get you some amber—
— Olivia Sudjic, Sympathy
In order to love, we must address our fears.
— Carolyn E. Cobelo
My illusion, the idea of a soul mate, was so entrenched in my fantasy that the thought of letting him go, wrecked me.
— M.R. Field, Splinters
Once we got closer to the origins of these Eastern practices, we found that the monks and swamis were just as dogmatic and paternalistic, just as literal and conservative in their approach to spirituality as the Christian priests and ministers we were trying to get away from.
— Gudjon Bergmann, More Likely to Quote Star Wars than the Bible: Generation X and Our Frustrating Search for Rational Spirituality
Tarot helps us look within ourselves to understand our emotions, the reasoning behind our words and conduct, and the source of our conflicts.
— Benebell Wen
While the world piles fear on top of light, our job is to remember that light within. When we do, whatever seems to conceal it ceases to exist
— Debra Landwehr Engle, The Only Little Prayer You Need: The Shortest Route to a Life of Joy, Abundance, and Peace of Mind
A person functioning exclusively in the Cartesian mode may be free from manifest symptoms but cannot be considered mentally healthy. Such individuals typically lead ego-centred, competitive, goal-oriented lives. Overpreoccupied with their past and their future, they tend to have a limited awarenessof the present and thus a limited ability to derive satisfaction from ordinary activities in everyday life. They concentrate on manipulating the external world and measure their living standard by the quantity of material possessions, while they become ever more alienated from their inner world and unable to appreciate the process of life. For people whose existence is dominated by this mode of experience no level of wealth, power, or fame will bring genuine satisfaction
— Fritjof Capra
...we can choose to be truthful even when the choice means personal loss. We can choose to undertake a great action - unselfish, courageous, daringly creative - that looks unreasonable and irrational to the eye of the Ego.
— Ilchi Lee, Change: Realizing Your Greatest Potential
I've had my past lives read, my aura tuned, my chakras aligned, my spirit guides channeled, my palms interpreted, and my kundalini awakened.
— Sera J. Beak, The Red Book: A Deliciously Unorthodox Approach to Igniting Your Divine Spark
It is indispensable for us to undermine all faith, to tear out of the mind of the "goyim" the very principle of god-head and the spirit, and to put in its place arithmetical calculations and material needs
— Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion
Once you discovered that it is ok to love yourself there will be a world opening up to you. You will experience the magic of this world, you will see its beauty in spite of all the troubles and you will be happy.
— Nynke Visser
Happiness is just a state of mind, you don’t need any artificial or superficial matter to experience happiness. I believe that happiness is an instrument to cope and an instrument to change this world full of troubles. When you stop labelling happiness to a goal or an artificial or superficial matter you will be happy.
— Nynke Visser
You need to experience fear in order to be capable of Universal love. If you can’t acknowledge fear, you can’t change it.
— Nynke Visser
Once you become aware of knowledge and you are conscious of knowledge, there is no going back to the previous conscious state of mind.
— Nynke Visser
I wonder are we the people really that high on these political agenda’s these day’s? Or are we merely pawns in the majestic Game of Thrones?
— Nynke Visser
Death will always be a part of life, and life will always be a part of death
— Elio Melo
The time and moment of Ancient and Medieval is gone, a new change is sought from within by the lifeforce a moment that is for NOW and not holding on the Past which though Primordial is eternally in the present living for the Future.
— Maitreya Rudrabhayananda
In one aspect, yes, I believe in ghosts, but we create them. We haunt ourselves.
— Laurie Halse Anderson, Wintergirls
Now I know what a ghost is. Unfinished business, that's what.
— Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses
Be hole, be dust, be dream, be wind/Be night, be dark, be wish, be mind,/Now slip, now slide, now move unseen,/Above, beneath, betwixt, between.
— Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book
Oh, very good,' interrupted Snape, his lip curling. 'Yes, it is easy to see that nearly six years of magical education have not been wasted on you, Potter. 'Ghosts are transparent.
— J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Do you really want to know where we come from?" she said. "In every century, in every country, they'll call us something different. They'll say we're ghosts, angels, demons, elemental spirits, and giving us a name doesn't help anybody. When did a name change what someone is?
— Brenna Yovanoff, The Replacement
Did you know sometimes it frightens me--when you say my name and I can't see you?will you ever learn to materialize before you speak?impetuous boy, if that's what you really are.how many centuries since you've climbed a balconyor do you do this every night with someone else?you tell me that you'll never leaveand I am almost afraid to believe it.why is it me you've chosen to follow?did you like the way I look when I am sleeping?was my hair more fun to tangle?are my dreams more entertaining?do you laugh when I'm complaining that I'm all alone?where were you when I searched the seafor a friend to talk to me?in a year where will you be?is it enough for you to steal into my mindfilling up my page with music written in my handyou know I'll take the credit for I must have made you come to me somehow.but please try to close the curtains when you leave at night,or I'll have to find someone to stay and warm me.will you always attend my midnight tea parties--as long as I set it at your place?if one day your sugar sits untouchedwill you have gone forever?would you miss me in a thousand years--when you will dry another's tears?but you say you'll never leave meand I wonder if you'll have the decencyto pass through my wall to the next roomwhile I dress for dinnerbut when I'm stuck in conversationwith stuffed shirts whose adorationhurts my ears, where are you then?can't you cut in when I dance with other men?it's too late not to interfere with my lifeyou've already made me a most unsuitable wifefor any man who wants to be the first his bride has slept withand you can't just fly into people's bedroomsthen expect them to calmly wave goodbyeyou've changed the course of historyand didn't even trywhere are you now--standing behind me,taking my hand?come and remind mewho you arehave you traveled farare you made of stardust tooare the angels after youtell me what I am to dobut until then I'll save your side of the bedjust come and sing me to sleep
— Emilie Autumn
It's easier to dismiss ghosts in the daylight.
— Patricia Briggs, Dragon Bones
I assure you; while I look like a ghost, I'm no spirit or demon. I'm nothing but a girl struggling to make her way in an intolerant world. I bleed, I love, and someday, I'll die.
— Leanna Renee Hieber, The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker
Ghosts have a way of misleading you
—  they can make your thoughts as heavy as branches after a storm.
Percy glanced over. He saw the fallen giant and seemed to understand what was happening. He yelled something that was lost in the wind, probably: Go!Then he slammed Riptide into the ice at his feet. The entire glacier shuddered. Ghosts fell to their knees. Behind Percy, a wave surged up from the bay-a wall of gray water even taller than the glacier. Water shot from the chasms and crevices in the ice. As the wave hit, the back half of the camp crumbled. The entire edge of the glacier peeled away, cascading into the void-carrying buildings, ghosts, and Percy Jackson over the edge.
— Rick Riordan, The Son of Neptune
At night, here in the library, the ghosts have voices.
— Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night
When good Americans die, they go to Paris,' the ghost said, after taking a drag on a small cigarette.
— Karen Chance, Embrace the Night
The ghosts of things that never happened are worse than the ghosts of things that did.
— L.M. Montgomery, Emily's Quest
In the great cities we see so little of the world, we drift into our minority. In the little towns and villages there are no minorities; people are not numerous enough. You must see the world there, perforce. Every man is himself a class; every hour carries its new challenge. When you pass the inn at the end of the village you leave your favourite whimsy behind you; for you will meet no one who can share it. We listen to eloquent speaking, read books and write them, settle all the affairs of the universe. The dumb village multitudes pass on unchanging; the feel of the spade in the hand is no different for all our talk: good seasons and bad follow each other as of old. The dumb multitudes are no more concerned with us than is the old horse peering through the rusty gate of the village pound. The ancient map-makers wrote across unexplored regions, 'Here are lions.' Across the villages of fishermen and turners of the earth, so different are these from us, we can write but one line that is certain, 'Here are ghosts.' ("Village Ghosts")
— W.B. Yeats, The Celtic Twilight: Faerie and Folklore
Boo: "Go talk to her."Callum: "About what?"Boo: "Anything."Callum: "You want me to walk up to her and say, 'Are you a ghost?'"Boo: "I do that."Callum: "I love it when you get it wrong.
— Maureen Johnson, The Name of the Star
Maybe all the people who say ghosts don't exist are just afraid to admit that they do.
— Michael Ende, The Neverending Story
A house with old furniture has no need of ghosts to be haunted.
— Hope Mirrlees, Lud-in-the-Mist
Um ,sorry. I cant read the last line.""Fish. Have you stolen any fish from the holy lakes?""I lived in Kansas..So ..no
— Rick Riordan
I could isolate, consciously, little. Everything seemed blurred, yellow-clouded, yielding nothing tangible. Her inept acrostics, maudlin evasions, theopathies - every recollection formed ripples of mysterious meaning. Everything seemed yellowly blurred, illusive, lost.
— Vladimir Nabokov, Tyrants Destroyed and Other Stories
Rosehill was shady and beautiful, the most serene place I could imagine. It had been closed to the public for years, and sometimes as I wandered alone - and often lonely - through the lush fern beds and long curtains of silvery moss, I pretended the crumbling angels were wood nymphs and fairies and I their ruler, queen of my own graveyard kingdom.
— Amanda Stevens
It's a big spooky place when you're in it alone. It's like you can hear all the whispers of all the voices of all the actors who ever played here. Kind of creepy. Like a church can be creepy when it's empty. You ever been in a church after hours?
— Benjamin R.  Smith
Lockwood gave a sudden exclamation; when I looked at him, his eyes were shining. 'On second thoughts, we can scrap my last suggestion,' he said. 'Stuff the mingling. Who wants to do that? Boring. George - this library. Where is it?
— Jonathan Stroud, The Whispering Skull
She needs you, Dad," Julia says. "She has unfinished business in this world.""What is the matter with you?" Charlie asks his daughter. "Any sane person would have told me to go to the doctor. I'm seeing a headless apparition every day. Maybe my medications are conflicting. You should see the list of side effects on this stuff.
— Joey Comeau, One Bloody Thing After Another
One IGHS member said that, yup, she could hear it, too. Then again, during a dinner conversation earlier in the trip, this same woman heard “Siegfried and Roy” as “Sigmund Freud.” The resulting image-Sigmund Freud with flowing hair and tigers and too much men’s makeup-haunts me to this day.
— Mary Roach
It's not only what we have inherited from our father and mother that walks in us. It's all sorts of dead ideas, and lifeless old beliefs, and so forth. They have no vitality, but they cling to us all the same, and we can't get rid of them.
— Henrik Ibsen, Ghosts
Every city is a ghost.New buildings rise upon the bones of the old so that each shiny steel bean, each tower of brick carries within it the memories of what has gone before, an architectural haunting. Sometimes you can catch a glimpse of these former incarnations in the awkward angle of a street or filigreed gate, an old oak door peeking out from a new facade, the plaque commemorating the spot that was once a battleground, which became a saloon and is now a park.
— Libba Bray, Lair of Dreams
So what, ghosts can't hurt you. That's what I thought then.
— Stephen King, Bag of Bones
So many horrid Ghosts.
— William Shakespeare, Henry V
It occurred to me that if I were a ghost, this ambiance was what I'd miss most: the ordinary, day-to-day bustle of the living. Ghosts long, I'm sure, for the stupidest, most unremarkable things.
— Banana Yoshimoto, The Lake
GhostsTake shape under moonlight,materialize in dreams.Shadows. Silhouettesof what is no more. Butghosts don'tbother me. The day bringsbigger things to worry aboutthan flimsy remains ofyesterday. No, spooks don'tscare me.Gauzy apparitions mightprank your psyche oragitate your nightmares,but lackingflesh and bloodthey are powerlessto hurt you-cannot hopeto inflict the kind of damagethat real, livepeople do.
— Ellen Hopkins
It is good for a man to invite his ghosts into his warm interior, out of the wild night, into the firelight, out of the howling dark.
— A.S. Byatt, The Biographer's Tale
So let’s raise our glass to the accident season,To the river beneath us where we sink our souls,To the bruises and secrets, to the ghosts in the ceiling,One more drink for the watery road.
— Moïra Fowley-Doyle
Graveyards were the one place Belladonna never saw ghosts.
— Helen Stringer, Spellbinder
He could not shake the feeling - reportedly common among ghosts - that it was not he but those he haunted whose lives were devoid of matter, sense, future.
— Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
Herr Schiller? Are there really any such things as ghosts?' The old man did not even show surprise at the question. He heaved a sigh. 'Yes Pia, there are. But never the ones you expect.
— Helen Grant, The Vanishing of Katharina Linden
Ghosts! […] I almost think we are all of us ghosts. It is not only what we have inherited from our father and mother that ‘walks’ in us. It is all sorts of dead ideas, and lifeless old beliefs, and so forth. They have no vitality, but they cling to us all the same, and we cannot shake them off. Whenever I take up a newspaper, I seem to see ghosts gliding between the lines. There must be ghosts all the country over, as thick as the sands of the sea. And then we are, one and all, so pitifully afraid of the light.
— Henrik Ibsen
Ghosts could walk freely tonight, without fear of the disbelief of men; for this night was haunted, and it would be an insensitive man who did not know it.
— John Steinbeck, Tortilla Flat
Empty space eventually fills up with something. A void, cultivated in the aftermath of misfortune, begins to attract the wrong kind of attention. Marco knew it was time to leave when disagreeable spirits started roaming freely through the house, as if they owned the place.
— Rahma Krambo, Guardian Cats and the Lost Books of Alexandria
It's like the corporate world's full of ghosts … maybe a fairer way of putting this would be to say that adulthood's full of ghosts … these people who've ended up in one life instead of another and they are just so disappointed ... They've done what's expected of them. They want to do something different but it's impossible now, there's a mortgage, kids, whatever, they're trapped … High-functioning sleepwalkers, essentially.
— Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven
Okay. When he comes, you can see him?""Yes. I can hear him, too. And he, uh..."She brushed the bandage on the side of her skull. I looked at her in bewilderment. Was she serious?"He hits you?""Yes.""With his fist?""Yes."John looked up from his coffee indignantly. "Man, what a dick!"I did roll my eyes this time and glared at John once they stopped. I don't know if you've ever seen a ghost, but I'm guessing that if you did, the thing didn't run over and punch you in the face. I'm guessing that's never happened to any of your friends, either.
— David Wong, John Dies at the End
The popular notion that ghosts are likely to be seen in a graveyard is not borne out by psychical research... A haunting ghost usually haunts a place that a person lived in or frequented while alive... Only a gravedigger's ghost would be likely to haunt a graveyard.
— John H. Alexander, Ghosts! Washington Revisited: The Ghostlore of the Nation's Capitol
It was past dark when I reached the city and I’d mostly shoved my ghosts back into their graves. I let the gray mare pick her own pace and browse in the grain fields along the way.
— Deborah Wheeler, Northlight
We are the dead. We are the keepers of the stories. We hold the history of blood and promises. We are speaking. Are you listening? Will you hear?
— Libba Bray
A ghost is something that fills a hole inside you, where you lost something. It's a memory. Sometimes it can be painful, and sometimes it can be scary. Sometimes it's hard to tell where the ghost ends and real life begins.
— Nathan Ballingrud, North American Lake Monsters: Stories
It's Halloween,The night we all play,Trick or treat,We won't go away.Be we ghoul or goblin, ghost,We'll knock on your door,To see who scares you the most.But cringe not in fear,Or cry out in pain,Cause it's only a game,Oh, what a shame.But don't despair,In the cold night air,Because we'll be back,And then you'll be scared!But not just one,Or even two.And so we bid you,A sweet adieu.
— Anthony T.Hincks
Chasing ghosts while pursued by daemons...
— Gail Carriger, Blameless
Of all ghosts, the ghosts of our old loves are the worst.
— Arthur Conan Doyle
Ghosts!—They exist, they exist! Dead things playing at being alive.
— Arthur Schnitzler, Selected Short Fiction
Like the feeling of a carbonated beverage slipping down the throat, the bubbles rushing and popping as they make their descent, the air around a departed spirit fizzles, dissipating from a thick electric presence to an ephemeral blink of light and color, like the aftereffect of too many flash cameras going off at once.
— Eda J. Vor, Lay Her Ghosts to Rest
I am not dead. Death does not exist. I am alive! That is the purpose of this tale, to let everyone know that they do go on and that they don't need to be afraid, as I was afraid. Yet I also have a selfish reason for wanting my story told. I was young when I died. I didn't have a chance to make my mark in the world. I didn't do anything unique, nothing that will change the course of history. But I wasn't a bad girl. I don't want to be forgotten. I want people to remember me.
— Christopher Pike, Remember Me
You hear about ghosts: sad ghosts, angry ghosts.I'll tell you, the worst is when they laugh, and the worst sort are the ones whose faces I've forgotten.
— Richard Smyth, Wild Ink
Surely ghosts will follow wherever there is bad record keeping
— Colin Dickey, Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places
During the luncheon he paid attention to no one except his own phantoms.
— Gabriel García Márquez, The General in His Labyrinth
And you shouldn't believe all the press about Ouija boards. They can't be used in an exorcism. Trivial Pursuit can, but that's another story.
— Seanan McGuire, Magic for Nothing
People who ask you if you’ve ever seen a ghost are always people who believe in ghosts. They’re limbering up to tell their own ghost story. These are always remarkably tedious efforts about feeling as if someone had brushed past them but nobody being there. I always think that if you’re lying anyway you should at least make it interesting.
— Frankie Boyle, My Shit Life So Far
Every ghost has a story. Monsters are nothing without mythology.
— Kris Kidd
They read a little bit, write a little, and especially agree with themselves on important moves, important information, important awards, important writers that they plan to enthrone forever in history through a variety of memberships and numerous prizes awarded under the influence of top bureaucrats who know everything, not only about literature, but also about secret conspiracies, the Masons that lurk in every corner to crucify someone, steal someone’s soul and sell it to an unknown devil, about whom only the chief bureaucrat possesses secret knowledge that he doesn’t share; about history, ghosts, missing continents; about who said what to whom in confidence.
— Dejan Stojanovic, Serbian Satire and Aphorisms
The only ghosts, I believe, who creep into this world, are dead young mothers, returned to see how their children fare. There is no other inducement great enough to bring the departed back. They glide into the acquainted room when day and night, their jailers, are in the grip, and whisper, "How is it with you, my child?" but always, lest a strange face should frighten him, they whisper it so low that he may not hear. They bend over him to see that he sleeps peacefully, and replace his sweet arm beneath the coverlet, and they open the drawers to count how many little vests he has. They love to do these things. What is saddest about ghosts is that they may not know their child. They expect him to be just as he was when they left him, and they are easily bewildered, and search for him from room to room, and hate the unknown boy he has become. Poor, passionate souls, they may even do him an injury. These are the ghosts that go wailing about old houses, and foolish wild stories are invented to explain what is all so pathetic and simple. I know of a man who, after wandering far, returned to his early home to pass the evening of his days in it, and sometimes from his chair by the fire he saw the door open softly and a woman's face appear. She always looked at him very vindictively, and then vanished. Strange things happened in this house. Windows were opened in the night. The curtains of his bed were set fire to. A step on the stair was loosened. The covering of an old well in a corridor where he walked was cunningly removed. And when he fell ill the wrong potion was put in the glass by his bedside, and he died. How could the pretty young mother know that this grizzled interloper was the child of whom she was in search? All our notions about ghosts are wrong. It is nothing so petty as lost wills or deeds of violence that brings them back, and we are not nearly so afraid of them as they are of us.
— J.M. Barrie, The Little White Bird
Most people would probably call me a ghost. I am, after all, dead. But I don't think of myself that way. It wasn't so long ago that I was alive, you see. I was only eighteen. I had my whole life in front of me. Now I suppose you could say I have all of eternity before me. I'm not sure exactly what that means yet. I'm told everything's going to be fine. But I have to wonder what I would have done with my life, who I might have been. That's what saddens me most about dying--that I'll never know.
— Christopher Pike, Remember Me
Love was like swallowing a cili padi whole.
— Zen Cho, Spirits Abroad
Did you ever feel a creeping,That awoke you from your sleeping,That made your pulses flutter and bristled all your hair;While a horrid stealthy crawlingPrevented you from calling,And something seemed to tell you that a ghost was coming there?
— Amelia B. Edwards
The main work of haunting is done by the living
— Judith Richardson, Possessions: The History and Uses of Haunting in the Hudson Valley
Still less could I be afraid of those ghosts who touch my thoughts in passing. Any library is filled with them. I can take a book from dusty shelves, and be haunted by the thoughts of one long dead, still lively as ever in their winding sheet of words.
— Diana Gabaldon, Drums of Autumn
If they (ghosts) wander the halls of night, it is not from a grievance with or envy of the living. Rather, it is because they have no desire to see the living at all. Any more than snakes hope to see gardeners, or foxes the hounds. They wander about at midnight because at that hour they can generally do so without being harried by the sound and fury of earthly emotions. After all those years of striving and struggling, of hoping and praying, of shouldering expectations, stomaching opinions, navigating decorum, and making conversation, what they seek, quite simply, is a little peace and quiet.
— Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow
These days, there are angry ghosts all around us, dead from wars, sickness, starvation--and nobody cares. So you say you're under a curse? Well, so what? So's the whole damned world.
— Hayao Miyazaki, Princess Mononoke Film Comic, Vol. 1
The use of ghosts as a means of social control predated the Klan. Slave owners employed so-called patterollers, usually poor whites, who would patrol the countryside at night; such patrols would regularlyuse spook stories, among other tactics, to help keep enslaved people from escaping. "The fraudulent ghost," [Gladys-Marie] Fry writes, "was the first in a gradually developed system of night-riding creatures, the fear of which was fostered by white for the purpose of slave control." A man in a white sheet on horseback riding ominously through a forest could help substantiate rumers that the forest was haunted and that those who valued their lives best avoid it. By spreading ghost stories, Southern whites hoped to limit the unauthorized movement of black people. If cemeteries, crossroads, and forests came to be known particularly as haunted, it's because they presented the easiest means of escape and had to be patrolled. Now it's common to think of such places as the provenance of spirits. We have stories for such places: a tragic death, forlorn lovers, a devil waiting to make a deal -- stories that reflect a rich tradition of American folklore. But all this might have come much later, and these places might have first earned their haunted reputation through much more deviant methods. In the ghost-haunting legacies of many of these public spaces lies a hidden history of patrolling and limiting access.
— Colin Dickey, Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places
Our brains are hardwired to think in terms of place and to associate psychic value or meaning to the places we inhabit.
— Colin Dickey, Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places
The feet of ghosts never touch the ground.
— Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun
I’ve seen him before you know. In real life.” “What? When?” I catch a twinge of hurt in her voice for not filling her in on it earlier. “When I was at Sephora,” I tell her. “So he’s a metrosexual ghost as well?” Dex asks.
— Karina Halle, Veiled
wwsssswssssweteeheeeeessssssszzzzzzzzsssss everyone Lee wee eerily everyone what everyone eerily everyone everyone what what what everyone eerily we're lee eerily what what eerily everyone we're www everyone what eerily eerily everwhat - Somehow entered into my Kindle as I slept
— Keith Blodgett
I Only Speak in Blood. . .
— Something in my Room One Night
Do not fear the ghosts in this house; theyare the least of your worries.Personally I find the noises they make reassuring,The creaks and footsteps in the night,their little tricks of hiding things,or moving them, I findendearing, not upsettling. It makes the placefeel so much more like a home.Inhabited.
— Neil Gaiman, Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders
I wasn't trying to reach England. Or Paris. I thought that if I made the broadcast powerful enough, my brother would hear me. That I could bring him some peace, protect him as he had always protected me.""You'd play your brother's own voice to him? After he died?""And Debussy.""Did he ever talk back?"The attic ticks. What ghosts sidle along the walls right now, trying to overhear? She can almost taste her great-uncle's fright in the air. "No," he says. "He never did.
— Anthony Doerr
I wasn't trying to reach England. or Paris. I thought that if I made the broadcast powerful enough, my brother would hear me. That I could bring him some peace, protect him as he had always protected me." You'd play your brother's own voice to him? After he died?""And Debussy." Did he ever talk back?" The attic ticks. What ghosts sidle along the walls right now, trying to overhear? She can almost taste her great-uncle's fright in the air. "No," he says. "He never did.
— Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See
That night there was more than one killer in the forest, the next day a lot more ghosts.--The Book of Brin
— Michael J. Sullivan, Age of Myth
If God did not exist, then neither did divine punishment, but this meant nothing to ghosts who did not need God.
— Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer
When life is forgiving enough to bless you with a minute, a second, of happiness, there's nothing to do but savor the moment, however odd or unexpected or foolish the source might be.Because who knows when those moments will grace us again.
— Rebecca Harris - If It Kills Me
I am consoled only to see that I was not mistaken: Chicago is just as I remembered it. I was here twenty five years ago. My father brought me and Scott up to see the Century of Progress and once later to the World Series. Not a single thing do I remember from the first trip but this: the sense of the place, the savor of the genie-soul of the place which every place has or else is not a place. I could have been wrong: it could have been nothing of the sort, not the memory of a place but the memory of being a child. But one step out into the brilliant March day and there it is as big as life, the genie-soul of the place Which, wherever you go, you must meet and master first thing or be met and mastered. Until now, one genie-soul and only one ever proved too strong for me: San Francisco—up and down the hills I pursued him, missed him and was pursued, by a presence, a powdering of fall gold in the air, a trembling brightness that pierced to the heart, and the sadness of coming at last to the sea, the coming to the end of America. Nobody but a Southerner knows the wrenching rinsing sadness of the cities of the North. Knowing all about genie-souls and living in haunted places like Shiloh and the Wilderness and Vicksburg and Atlanta where the ghosts of heroes walk abroad by day and are more real than people, he knows a ghost when he sees one, and no sooner does he step off the train in New York or Chicago or San Francisco than he feels the genie-soul perched on his shoulder.
— Walker Percy, The Moviegoer
I've come for one of your lasses," Sinclair said again. "A maid - she must be a virgin."Donal folded his arms over his chest. "What for? Pagan sacrifice?
— Lecia Cornwall, Beauty and the Highland Beast
There are various levels above and below the human through which the individual soul may pass in the course of its reincarnations—the angelic, the titanic, the animal, the purgatories, and the realm of the frustrated ghosts.
— Alan W. Watts, Psychotherapy East and West
I have seen worse things than ghosts, and if one were to appear to me, I should have so many questions to ask of it that it would have no time to groan and moan and shake its chains.
— Paul Kearney, The Wolf in the Attic
No one is nothing. Everyone has a place and a purpose. Some choose their purpose and others have it thrust upon them but no one is useless. Everyone is someone. The world has use for us all.
— E.J. Divitt, Ghost Of A Chance
What is a ghost? Something dead that seems to be alive. Something dead that doesn't know it's dead.
— Richard Siken
Ghosts are laid to rest when injustices are righted, when their duties are fulfilled. But my mother's duty is to make me happy so long as I live. So there is not rest for her, and no escape for me. I will be happy and happy until it kills me.
— Rosamund Hodge, Gilded Ashes
See, even though Jesse's a ghost, and can walk through walls and disappear and reappear at will, he's still...well, there. To me, anyway. That's what makes me-and Father Dom-different from everybody else. We not only can see and talk to ghosts, but we can feel them too-just as if they were anybody else. Anybody alive, I mean. Because to me and Father Dom, ghosts are just like anyone else, with blood and guts and sweat and bad breath and whatever. The only real difference is that they kind of have this glow around them-an aura, I think it's called.
— Meg Cabot, Ninth Key
I have been both a ghost and haunted in the city I love.
— Rebecca Solnit
If a ghost was a recording of a memory, as some believed, and Wasp pulled back the curtain from the third alcove on the right, she might find the wide-eyed bloody-handed ghost of herself, hugging her knees and shivering, trying to unremember the sound of her little dagger sinking hilt-deep into girlflesh, the day she earned her name.
— Nicole Kornher-Stace, Archivist Wasp
...at least that would explain the weeping and moaning emanating from the woman’s bedroom at night. It woke her regularly and created an illusion which suggested disembodied spirits roamed the corridors. And if there was one thing Melba would not have it was disembodied spirits roaming the corridors...
— Brian Kavanagh, Murder on the Island
Ghosts are some of the loneliest people you will ever meet.
— Thomm Quackenbush, A Collector of Spirits
Feb. 1, 1965Storm late at night, heavy rain, a thunderous racket, the windows shaking. I heard my name called. A woman’s voice in hell pleading with me to join her.
— Leonard Michaels, Time out of Mind: The Diaries of Leonard Michaels, 1961-1995
He takes a draw on a cigarette, blows out a smoky ghost. I reach to catch the phantom in my hands, but it eludes me. I've been trying to catch a ghost for as long as I can remember.
— Brenda Sutton Rose
For dreams, too, are ghosts, desires chased in sleep, gone by morning.
— Libba Bray, Lair of Dreams
Ghosts were created when the first man woke in the night
— J.M. Barrie
I won't tell if you don't." I winked.Granny laughed.In the South, a wink speaks louder than words.
— Tonya Kappes, A Ghostly Demise
There ain't no haints in Detroit.
— Angela Flournoy, The Turner House
My brothers and I love A Christmas Story. It reminds us of ourselves when we were that age."	"Your father didn't want to give you a BB shotgun because you might shoot your eye out?
— Terry Spear, A Silver Wolf Christmas
How do you know about Leotta?"	It wasn't like I could tell him that Cephus Hardy was dead and right there about to give him the smackdown, nor could I tell him that I had seen his old Buick parked in front of Higher Ground when I acted like I had no idea he had a car and offered him a ride.	"Isn't she still married to Cephus Hardy?" My eyes zeroed in on his facial expression.	Cephus jumped around me and grabbed Terk by the neck. "Yeah, you sonofabitch!"	"Stop!" I yelled, but it was too late.
— Tonya Kappes, A Ghostly Demise
The next morning I was up bright and early. Mostly because I'd sold the curtains.
— Angie Fox, Southern Spirits
Quick," I hissed. "Tell me what you know about this place."The ghost frowned. His face appeared sweaty and his hair was a mess, like he'd been running his fingers through it. "How about, 'hey, Frankie. How you doing, Frankie? I see you're missing both your legs, Frankie.
— Angie Fox, Southern Spirits
There were two things Southerners hated to see knocking on their door. Jehovah Witnesses, because the majority of us were Baptist, and the undertaker. It was understandable that when Terk Rhinehammer opened the door, his face turned white as all the blood was drained from it after he looked past me and saw my hearse.	"What's wrong?" He used his hands to pat down his chest. "I'm not dead, am I?
— Tonya Kappes, A Ghostly Demise
I'll be glad when this election is over!" Mary Anna yelled out the window of her car. She pulled the silver convertible classic Mercedes into the driveway of Eternal Slumber. "I was mobbed by O'Dell's sister and my momma this morning before I even had my boobs tucked in.
— Tonya Kappes, A Ghostly Demise
Jephus Hardy?"	Stunned. My jaw dropped when I saw Cephus Hardy walk up to me in the magazine aisle of Artie's Meat and Deli. I was admiring the cover of Cock and Feathers, where my last client at Eternal Slumber Funeral Home, Chicken Teater, graced the cover with his prize Orloff Hen, Lady Cluckington.
— Tonya Kappes, A Ghostly Demise
Laurel returned to CJ's bedroom. "Do you want me to remove your clothes?"	"Hell, yeah," he said, and the growly expression immediately vanished.
— Terry Spear, A Silver Wolf Christmas
It was the artists who finally gave their times and places significance. Paul felt the presence of their ghosts out in the world, just as felt them in his office and in his head. The air was full of them. They were everywhere and always would be.
— Jonathan Galassi, Muse
I’m tired. Dead tired. So tired I can barely stay awake to write this. After helping Mr Bircher search for his head all night, I’m a little annoyed too. Dad doesn’t help. He doesn’t know what it's like for a girl my age, trying to fit in at school as much as possible, and trying to fit in all the dead people. It’s not easy being a soul helper.
— L.P. Donnelli, Dead Diary
Demons... they don't just waltz into your life and take over for no reason," she said, her voice going soft again. "They might knock on the door, but ultimately, you have to be the one to invite them in.
— Kelly Creagh
Everybody in my family believed in ghosts, and my grandma said it wasn't just bad people who turned into them, it was bad deeds too.
— Anna North, The Life and Death of Sophie Stark
Out in the shadows of the city, in the houses and cellars, in the secret rooms and locked attics, a stirring cold be sensed. The ghosts and spirits-of-place whispered and muttered on the edge of hearing, glided and flowed on the edge of sight. They were pleased with the turn of events; it was they who had driven the small garrison of Polypontian troops out to die in the snow. It was they who’d haunted their movements through the cities. And it was they who had joined them on watch in the dark of the night, filling their minds with a slow-growing fear, which had evolved into a terror that had driven them mad… The Queen had returned, and some of the people, and the rest of the folk would one day come back and they could slip back into their minds, becoming the warp and the weft of the legend and stories. Becoming the fireside companions of long winter nights, living their lives for a while in the minds of the breathing, in the blood that still flowed, in the feelings that still thrilled to nerves that still sensed.
— Stuart Hill, The Cry of the Icemark
She would've made an excellent pirate.
— Erica Ridley, Too Sinful To Deny
I was in a strip club trying to help a ghost get laid which was challenging, but not impossible.
— A.J. Locke, Affairs of the Dead
He blamed television, movies, and books for his love of ghosts. It was a fascination that’s been with him since his youth. He always loved watching or reading anything that had to do with ghosts and haunted locations, especially historic sites like New Orleans, Salem, Tombstone, Gettysburg, and Old San Juan.
— Jason Medina, A Ghost In New Orleans
He was a paranormal investigator. Yes, a ghost hunter, although he never liked to use that terminology. As far as he was concerned, it was inappropriate. He didn’t really hunt ghosts, although he did search for them.
— Jason Medina, A Ghost In New Orleans
Ghosts,” Doktor Messerli continued, “aren’t always the spirits of the human dead bound to the earth. A ghost can be the residual feeling that follows an act you have accomplished but feel bad about. Or the act itself. Something you’ve been or done that you cannot escape.
— Jill Alexander Essbaum, Hausfrau
The best time to talk to ghosts is just before the sun comes up. That's when they can hear us true.
— Laurie Halse Anderson, Chains
She came very close, and looking into my eyes, she said, “My Jenny,” and then she bent her head and kissed me—here, on the left-hand corner of my mouth. And nobody knows better than I that I couldn’t have felt anything, because Tamsin was a ghost—but nobody but me knows what I felt. And I’ll always know.
— Peter S. Beagle, Tamsin
Back in the 1800's, Ormsby Island was one of South Carolina's crown jewels. The island was owned by Maxwell Ormsby, a very wealthy man who liked to entertain everyone from heads of state to artists and authors and anyone who knew how to make money in business. An invitation to the island was a declaration that you were someone on the move. Once a year, Ormsby opened the island up to the public and hosted a huge fair. It was the social event of the year in these parts. My family still talks about the days when my great grandmother would take the family out to enjoy the festivities. It must have been some party.
— Hunter Shea, Island of the Forbidden
There was a profound silence, abruptly broken by an enormously loud rumble from George's stomach. Plaster didn't actually fall from the ceiling, but it was close.
— Jonathan Stroud, The Screaming Staircase
Are you asking if I believe in ghosts?""I don't know. Maybe. Yes.""Of course not. Imagine how many there'd be.""Yes," Kirsten said, "that's exactly it.
— Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven
Ghosts are the only ones who never have to feel scared. Because the worst thing in the world has already happened to them.
— Simon R. Green, Ghost of a Chance
The ghosts will eat everything because the bellies of ghosts want the whole world, just to fill one tiny corner.
— Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless
Tom Farrell had always wished Hell on his boss. On New Years Eve... Hell sent someone.-Along For The Ride-
— Thomas Amo, Midnight Never Ends
I noticed that in a corner, across from where they ate with such innocent relish, sitting forlorn and abandoned, was the ghost of their son. He had lost both of his arms, one side of his face was squashed, and both his eyes had burst. He had bluish wings. He was the saddest ghost in the house.
— Ben Okri, The Famished Road
...most ghosts are a rag and a bone and a hank of hair at best--a memory fragment stuck on continual loop, just dust and PKE and water-vapour with no real "there" there. Leftover fragments of psychic energy deluded into believing in their own personality; an echo cobbled together from memory and pain, with no self-awareness as such 'cept what we give them. Survival instinct, with no survival.
— Gemma Files, We Will All Go Down Together
Someday, I’ll gain telepathic powers like every other regular movie ghost and I will go all Freddie Krueger on his bony, little, rat arse!”I rolled my eyes, but kept marching down the street.“Then I’d have to go all Ghostbusters on yours.”, I tried to keep my voice low to keep from drawing attention to myself.“No, you wouldn’t. You love my arse, darling!”, he walked backwards few feet in front of me.His big smile was enough to make me grin and roll my eyes again at him.
— Tia Artemis, The Death's Daughter
Walt also had a humorous sign posted outside the mansion, recruiting ghosts who wanted to enjoy 'active retirement' in the "country club atmosphere' of this 'fashionable address'. Interested ghosts were to write to the 'Ghost Relations Dept. Disneyland,' and were told,'Do not apply in person.
— Leslie Le Mon, The Disneyland Book of Secrets 2014 - Dca: One Local's Unauthorized, Rapturous and Indispensable Guide to the Happiest Place on Earth
His ghost comes back to be remembered. If he can’t be in this life, he procures a way to stay in orbit, and in that way, is never forgotten.
— Donna Lynn Hope
The ego of a god, the wit of a goldfish.
— Shah Wharton, Finding Esta: #1 The Supes Series
She always imagined their voices entangled somewhere in the wires when they spoke, caught up in a grid she didn't fully understand, passing back and forth. Once the calls were disconnected, she imagined the echoes of old conversations would be trapped there, floating back and forth with no exit, like ghosts.
— Lauren Oliver, Rooms
Jim said he believed it was spirits, but I says: no, spirits wouldn't say "dern the dern fog".
— Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn