c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
He does manage the bookstore, which is currently my favorite place on earth." Her eyes glazed over. "All those books. If I married him, I could probably work there the rest of my life. Nothing would make me happier.""What about love?" Ve asked."Oh," Harper said solemnly. "I love books.
— Heather Blake, It Takes a Witch
Remember! Reality's an illusion, the universe is a hologram, buy gold! Byeeee!
— Bill Cipher Gravity Falls tv show
There is nothing in which mankind have been more unanimous [founding nations upon superstition]; yet nothing can be inferred from it more than this, that the multitude have always been credulous, and the few artful. The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature: and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history... [T]he detail of the formation of the American governments... may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had any interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the inspiration of heaven... it will for ever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses... Thirteen governments thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favour of the rights of mankind.[A Defence of the Constitutions of the United States of America, 1787]
— John  Adams, The Political Writings of John Adams
If Mere Christianity helps make Christianity comprehensible, Orthodoxy makes it weird again.
— Leah Libresco
You can't know people, only their names.
— Marty Rubin
Love is deep, a mystery - who wants to understand its every particular?
— Michael Cunningham, The Hours
Protector and destroyer were two sides of the same coin. Who knew which one would come out in a toss-up?
— Mina Khan, Wildfire
...We were pulling into the next station, when the woman suddenly got to her feet and made a move to squeeze past me. As her knees made contact with mine, she turned towards me. Her eyes locked straight onto mine, her eyelids pinned back, with a look I could only describe as sheer dread. In the next second, deep tram-lines formed between her eyebrows and her expression shifted. It was as if she was silently imploring me, entreating me. To do what? I had no idea. I was immobile, her gaze pressing me into my seat by some centrifugal force and I held her stare, unsure of how to react. Just as swiftly, she dropped her eyes and the moment passed. With one final glance behind her, she was swallowed up in the bodies at the door. She was getting off. Something wasn’t right.
— A.J. Waines, Girl on a Train
She had been lying there, facedown in the water long before the tide had turned at 3.04 that morning. Her eyes were staring into the river, her blonde hair first fanning out, then drawing back under her head with the wash of the water, like a pulsating jellyfish. The belt of her raincoat was caught on the branches of an overhanging tree and she’d been hooked, destined to forever flap against the corner of the broken pier with outstretched arms. She wasn’t going anywhere now; she was simply bobbing up and down with the rhythm of the water - and she hadn’t blinked in a long while.
— A.J. Waines, The Evil Beneath
There are as many kinds of love as there are flowers and bugs put together but men and women and their needs are all the same.
— Walter Mosley, All I Did Was Shoot My Man
There has always been the wind. Since our planet began to turn, there has been the wind. This ball of dirt and fire and water started to spin. The air stirred. And Earth's time began. But the beginnings of the wind are lost in the mists of time. The wind blew before the Appian Way wended through Rome. It blew before the Parthenon crowned Athens. Before pyramids sprang up in Egypt. Before the Mayans. Before the Incas. Before Man.
— Kaye George, Death in the Time of Ice
It's always seemed like a big mystery how nature, seemingly so effortlessly, manages to produce so much that seems to us so complex. Well, I think we found its secret. It's just sampling what's out there in the computational universe.
— Stephen Wolfram
Imogene Duckworthy did not like pigs. She was fairly fond of cattle, having grown up surrounded by them. She hadn't been around pigs much. In fact, this was the first time she'd ever driven toward a pig farm.
— Kaye George, Smoke
That's it, Uncle Huey!" Imogene Duckworthy whipped off her apron and flung it onto the slick, stainless steel counter. "I quit!" If only her voice didn’t sound so young.
— Kaye George, Choke
Immy knocked on his open door. "Mr. Mallett?"The look on his narrow face was pained. "What's with the Mr. Mallett? When you don't call me Mike, it's usually trouble.
— Kaye George, Broke
There was that sound again--snap, then a footfall. She tried to whirl around as a dark form--Dear God--sprang with a splash from the darkness--grabbed her from behind, shoved her under the water.
— Kaye George, Eine Kleine Murder
story telling is not a career, it's a calling. I've been writing true and compelling news my entire professional life. My novels are packs of lies
— Glen Carter, Last Witness
Childhood has its secrets and its mysteries
—  but who can tell or who can explain them!
...in the middle of the field, Harry suddenly stopped and looked back. Mr. Chad was all alone in the creepy woods. He could take care of himself...couldn't he? Of course he could, he was a teacher.
— Connie Kingrey Anderson, Toadies
Growing up in a family of gamblers, daredevils and practical jokers, I've learned a lot about timing and its first cousin, dumb luck, concepts I was introduced to while still in the womb.
— Toby Speed, Death Over Easy
I was recently living more comfortably surrounded by secrets... Like dozens of luxurious satiny pillows, they were embracing me from all directions into safe lulling warmth, thus isolating me from the sharp dead-cold edges of the truth hiding behind their endearingly smooth textures and tender soothing colours.Secrets could be so irresistibly beautiful...
— Simona Panova, Nightmarish Sacrifice
There are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told. Men die nightly in their beds, wringing the hands of ghostly confessors, and looking them piteously in the eyes — die with despair of heart and convulsion of throat, on account of the hideousness of mysteries which will not suffer themselves to be revealed.
— Edgar Allan Poe, The Man of the Crowd
The utter unbroken silence was more appalling than any ominous noise, than the loudest yells of anguish, than the most piercing screaming...Dead silence.Literally dead.
— Simona Panova, Nightmarish Sacrifice
In the sweet territory of silence we touch the mystery. It's the place of reflection and contemplation, and it's the place where we can connect with the deep knowing, to the deep wisdom way.
— Ángeles Arrien
I was beginning to agree with the thesis that some truths were better off dead.And buried.
— Simona Panova, Nightmarish Sacrifice
His character would be blamed, loathed, discussed, and adored – but somewhere there, behind his mask of a hero, Cardew would remain faceless.Anonymous.
— Simona Panova, Nightmarish Sacrifice
I'm relaxed, Belk. I call it Zen and the art of not giving a shit.
— Michael Connelly, The Concrete Blonde
The desperate piercing scream of horror echoed far above the sharpened tops of the trees wrapped in thin obsidian-transparent mist, and I startled jerkily, tripping again, and almost collapsed onto the cold moist ground.
— Simona Panova, Nightmarish Sacrifice
Kit [Carson Kitteridge] watched me for a few moments before saying, "That was some impressive killing you did. Naked too.""I hope I didn't embarrass Office Palmer.""She said that after all she heard about you she thought your johnson would be bigger.""Tell her that the air conditioner was on.
— Walter Mosley, All I Did Was Shoot My Man
...to be lost is to be fully present, and to be fully present is to be capable of being in uncertainty and mystery. And one does not get lost but loses oneself, with the implication that it is a conscious choice, a chosen surrender...
— Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost
And who are all these people? There weren't this many when I fell asleep."Alfie shrugged, indicating that the universe was mysterious and nothing would ever be fully understood.
— Cassandra Clare, The Rise of the Hotel Dumort
The brave men and women, who serve their country and as a result, live constantly with the war inside them, exist in a world of chaos. But the turmoil they experience isn’t who they are; the PTSD invades their minds and bodies.
— Robert Koger, Death's Revenge
That’s the beauty of the universe. There’s always a new mystery.
— James Rollins, The Eye of God
You never understood games. Maybe that's why the world was such a mystery to you.
— Daniel Suarez, Daemon
He [Harry Bosch] defined good company not by the conversation but by the lack of it. When there was no need to talk to feel comfortable, that was the right company
— Michael Connelly, The Black Echo
PDR: Persons of Dubious Reality; refugees from the collective consciousness. Uninvited visitors who have fallen through the grating that divides the real, from the written. They arrive with their actions hardwired due to their repetitious existence and the older and more basic they are, the more rigidly they stick to them. Characters from cautionary tales are particularly mindless; they do what they do because it's what they've always done.And it's our job to stop them.
— Jasper Fforde, The Fourth Bear
I don't correct her to let her know her backdoor wisdom yanks me deep into another country, where water runs uphill.
— Justin Bog, Sandcastle and Other Stories: The Complete Edition
Shut up!" Finn turned, furious. "Look at you both! The only friends I have in this hell and all you can do is fight over me. Do either of you care about me? Not the seer, the fighter, the fool who takes all the risks, but me, Finn?
— Catherine Fisher, Incarceron
The click of the seat belt securing into the buckle is the only sound to break the awkward silence. I feel his warm breath on my neck as he reaches and I take a deep nervous inhale. His scent fills my nose, it is clean and warm, just like in the coffee shop. The smell of his skin is delicious. I try to stop these thoughts, but they are invading my brain in a way that has never happened to me before. Not even with...Rick. I try push him back out of my mind at this moment because I feel a sense of guilt. Rick and I are frozen. That’s the only way I can describe us. He is faithful, he is steady, he is nice, but he is not like this man in front of me: new, mysterious, and unpredictable. Rick and I are in a state of comfort, but like much of my life, I am becoming more and more discontent with comfort.
— Nina G. Jones, Strapped
Your novels show only the tiniest fraction of detective work, the brilliant crime, the tantalizing clues, the dramatic chase, the final battle atop a lofty peak with ocean waves crashing down below, and then… justice served! If they wrote about the real world, four-fifths of the story would consist of the hero sitting in a library for months and following false leads.
— Stefan Petrucha, Ripper
Everyday is a mystery
— Michael Bassey Johnson
Just read The Virtue of Minding Your Own Business. Oh my, what currents run deep! Beautifully seen, beautifully told. Praise praise praise . . . Pardon my French, but you are one darn major American writer!"---Richard Bach, author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Illusions, on Sandcastle and Other Stories
— Richard Bach
You don’t like what you see out your window, you put up a wall.
— Michael Connelly, The Black Ice
Trust no one. You may be working with the last honest cop in Mexicali, but why bet your life on it?
— Michael Connelly, The Black Ice
I wondered if I could just drop the role I carried like a mantle of a dethroned prince.
— Walter Mosley, All I Did Was Shoot My Man
All force strives forward to work far and wideTo live and grow and ever to expand;Yet we are checked and thwarted on each sideBy the world's flux and swept along like sand:In this internal storm and outward tideWe hear a promise, hard to understand:From the compulsion that all creatures binds,Who overcomes himself, his freedom finds.
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The girl was cinnamon colored in the way of Native America after it had been raped by Europe.
— Walter Mosley, All I Did Was Shoot My Man
I don’t give a fuck what you’re trying to do or what you want. I’d send your ass away if you were a white man with a red ribbon tied around your dick.
— Walter Mosley, All I Did Was Shoot My Man
We must leave the discovery of this mystery, like all others, to time, and accident, and Heaven's pleasure.
— Charles Dickens, Barnaby Rudge
All his life Bosch had lived and worked in society’s institutions. But he hope he had escaped institutional thinking, that he made his own decisions.
— Michael Connelly, The Black Ice
General sentiment, had a poll been taken, was that eventually the negative media would die down, Egypt's head of antiquities would return to Cairo, and St. Louis would enjoy her treasure. But treasures sometimes have a higher price than their acquisition cost.
— Michele Bonnell, Tunnels, Cappuccino, and a Heist
Writing the middle of a novel is a lot like driving through Texas. You think it's never going to end, and the scenery looks the same.
— Carolyn Wheat, How to Write Killer Fiction
Expansion of character is connected to expansion of destiny.
— James Tarantin, The Equation
As an instinct told her which way to turn, her wisdom told her that it will be a long path to manifest.
— Sarah Pussell
Mr. Satterthwaite looked cheered. Suddenly an idea struck him. His jaw fell. "My goodness," he cried, "I've only just realized it! That rascal, with his poisoned cocktail! Anyone might have drunk it! It might have been me!""There is an even more terrible possibility that you have not considered," said Poirot. "Eh?""It might have been me," said Hercule Poirot.
— Agatha Christie, Three Act Tragedy
I'm killing time and it's dying hard.
— Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye
I also had a dim idea that if I walked the streets of New York by myself all night something of the city's mystery and magnificence might rub off on me at last. But I gave it up.
— Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
Here God is not approached as an object that we must love, but as a mystery present in the very act of love itself.
— Peter Rollins, The Idolatry of God: Breaking Our Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction
Blunt turned to the man in question with a helpless grin, "You have always proven yourself a mystery to me, good fellow!"Falconer lifted one corner of his mouth, "Then I have succeeded, Blunt.
— Nicole Sager, The Isle of Arcrea
Out from behind the desk where he’d been sitting, hidden by the piles of books, appeared a bespectacled, green-eyed man in a green plaid suit. His thick white hair was shaggy and mussed, his nose was rather large and lumpy like a vegetable, and although it was clear he had recently shaved, he appeared to have done so without benefit of a mirror, for here and there upon his neck and chin were nicks from a razor, and occasional white whiskers that he’d missed altogether. This was Mr. Benedict.
— Trenton Lee Stewart, The Mysterious Benedict Society
That if a thing is defined in contrast that's what life is, the shadow of death. So the mystery of death couldn't be the bad thing, because without it there wouldn't be life. The badness was life, just happening, as essential a part of the good as the good. And what was there to do but to take it as it comes and to hope, to hope constantly and carnally and with no time to lose.
— Brian McGreevy, Hemlock Grove
The plum-colored night sky was shifting to pink to make room for the day, which looked as though it might turn out “glorious and whimsical,” as the Key West Citizen had promised.
— Lucy Burdette, Topped Chef
With great abilities come great responsibilities; great power comes with great assignments.With great age comes great reasoning; great actions come great experience.With great battles come great victories; great trees come with great tap roots.However, if a little faith can move great mountains, what then will a great faith do? Mysterious things... I guess
— Israelmore Ayivor
What am I to God? Nothing, a murky shadow. My passage on this earth is too rapid to leave any traces; it counts for nothing in space or in time. God really doesn't pay any attention to us, so even if he exists, it's as if he didn't. My form of atheism, however, leads inevitably to an acceptance of the inexplicable. Mystery is inseparable from chance, and our whole universe is a mystery. Since I reject the idea of a divine watchmaker (a notion even more mysterious than the mystery it supposedly explains), then I must consent to live in a kind of shadowy confusion. And insofar as no explication, even the simplest, works for everyone, I've chosen my mystery. At least it keeps my moral freedom intact.
— Luis Buñuel, My Last Sigh
It is the dim haze of mystery that adds enchantment to pursuit.
— Antoine Rivarol
My parents think the longer the name, the more powerful the sorcerer, so they named me Cassandra Morgan Ursula Margaret Scot. You can call me Cassie.
— Christine Amsden, Cassie Scot
She loves mysteries that she became one.
— John Green, Paper Towns
When we arrive on our floor we head to our rooms, politely bidding each other goodnight. Just as I am about to enter mine, I remember I have his jacket. I can use this to have just one more moment with him tonight. I knock on his door, his lips slightly open when he sees me on the other side.“You forgot your jacket.” It is still on my shoulders. I turn around to offer it up to him.“Thank you Shy,” As he says this he takes both of his hands, grabbing each shoulder of the jacket and oh so slowly pulls it off of me, grazing my bare arms and back as he pulls it off. I close my eyes taking in his touch. Each caress of his fingertips feels like one thousand little sparks. How can just the faintest touch from this man set me off like this? Please kiss me. Kiss my neck. I won’t say no. I hold my position for a second more than I should, but it feels so tortuously long. There is nothing, not another touch, not a kiss. I turn to face him again and bid him goodnight. His face looks sad, almost guilty. Every word, every touch, every action tonight was an implication. This keeps us safe from one another. It keeps me safe from him.“Goodnight Shy,” he says as if dismissing me from his presence.“Goodnight Taylor.
— Nina G. Jones, Strapped
about Tommy, you went through your whole life craving these little pockets of time and missing them for more time than you had them.
— Lily Gardner, A Bitch Called Hope
There were men in their fifties, men who take a stab at fitness, men who try. They may not look young, but they still look viable. Lammers wasn't one of those. Lammers was one of those crack-in-the-ass guys ten months pregnant with a beer baby.
— Lily Gardner, A Bitch Called Hope
Excerpt from page 3 of "Wicked Washington"Shelly Williams, the main character, speaking about her life:And close and dangerous calls were almost my last name. Yet I felt as comfortable among the street hustlers, junkies, thieves, and criminals of D.C. as I did dining with mywhite-collar, college-pedigreed friends over filet mignon, Maine lobster, and strawberry cheesecake at LaMermaidSeafood Restaurant.
— Sonja D. Jones, Wicked Washington
We look wishfully to emergencies, to eventful, revolutionary times...and think how easy to have taken our part when the drum was rolling and the house was burning over our heads. -Ralph Waldo Emerson
— Mitch Kynock
You don’t look like much, but they say you murdered that other chick.” Treating Murder
— Gabrielle Black, Treating Murder
I have tread all three of his books and they held me spellbound interesting story. Its fiction based on fact...mmm I like!
— Harold Alvin
It's elementary, my dear Winifred.
— Miss Mae, It's Elementary, My Dear Winifred
The rabbi glanced over glumly from behind the jail bars. 'My faith in God is fine,' he said. 'It's people I'm not so sure about.
— Richard Fliegel, A Minyan for the Dead
that was the thing about luck, its laws were those of scarcity.
— Lily Gardner, A Bitch Called Hope
The past is always with us. It echoes through every living moment, giving it depth and meaning beyond itself. Sometimes the past is so powerful, those echoes threaten to overwhelm the present.
— Trish Feehan
I hate when I look in my closet and find clothes instead of Narnia.
— H.B. Bolton
What a mystery woman is, boss! Even if she falls thousand times, she rises a thousand times a virgin. But how´s that? you´ll say. Because she doesn´t remember!
— Nikos Kazantsakis, Zorba, El Griego
Is there wisdom in innocence? I think there is, but there is a cult now of drab men and women, for whom the world, and even life itself, is a kind of commodity. These critics, having eaten, now study their excrement to see what they consumed. On this they base certain conclusions. Their ignorance is uncompromising. Let us rather stand before the unknown, in very humble, quiet observance and wait while it reveals itself.
— Phillip Mann, The Disestablishment of Paradise
The Templars' mental confusion makes them indecipherable. That's why so many people venerate them.
— Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum
Everything changed, and eleven months later, here I was in the middle of the night with a gungho major, playing secret agent, hoping some Frenchie didn't put a bullet in my skull before I gave the Germans and Italians their chance.
— James R. Benn, The First Wave
I don't understand why you're so obsessed with figuring out everything that happens here, like we have to unravel every mystery.
— John Green, Looking for Alaska
Okay, what in Hades just happened? Stones don’t glow blue or any other color and they certainly don’t burn circles on you.”The stone wasn’t talking.Alexandra considered herself well grounded, yet here she stood, talking to a stone that glowed, burned circles, and refused to answer.A thread of sensation pricked at the edges of her mind, then grew stronger. It mirrored an idea then became c
— H.H. Laura, Larkspur
So I got on with the business of lawyering away at the evidence. Minimizing it. Defending Jacob.
— William Landay, Defending Jacob
Scattered among these things are reminders that sound once existed: a metronome, a drumming pad, a guitar pick, a trumpet mouthpiece, a music stand, a tuning fork, a block of rosin...The older instruments bear the marks of those who have already played them, the scuffs and bites and dents that are the mysterious scars of sound. In their midst the house hangs, tenuous and enveloping, a sounding board waiting to be struck.
— Geoffrey O'Brien, Sonata for Jukebox: An Autobiography of My Ears
Always remember, there’s no such thing as luck, nothing happens by chance, and all is by divine intervention. You’re like a magnet, wherever you go, the people you have relationships with and those that are connected with them will be drawn to you. You’re needed, and soon, the little ones will look to you as well. If you let God be your guide, you’ll have the adventure of a lifetime. Jo, take what God gives you and run with it.
— Diana   Anderson, Happy Valley
Hello?” I ask. No one is there. Not a word. Not a whisper. Not a single sound resonating from the other side of the receiver. “Hello? Anyone there?” I ask again. Repeating myself. I am beginning to feel rather anxious now. Scared, would be a better word to use. Shivers have begun to creep up my spinal cord, and I can feel the urgency of goose pimples begin to line up on by frightened pale skin.
— Keira D. Skye
It's true all the time everywhere or it's not true! And that one truth is always Mystery.
— Richard Rohr
The moon had spread over everything a thin layer of silver--over the rank grass, over the mud, upon the wall of matted vegetation standing higher thanthe wall of a temple, over the great river I could see through a somber gap glittering, glittering, as it flowed broadly by without a murmur.All this was great, expectant, mute, while the man jabbered about himself. I wondered whether the stillness on the face of the immensity looking at us two were meant as an appeal or as a menace. What were we who had strayed in here? Could we handle that dumb thing, or would it handle us? I felt how big, how confoundedly big, was that thing thatcouldn't talk, and perhaps was deaf as well. What was in there?
— Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
That night, Jas wore the only dress she owned.It was made of soft,clingy fabric.The skirt was short, showing off her now tan and muscular legs.When she came down the steps barefoot,Chase's eyes widened in surprise. "Um...what happened to your jeans?" he asked. "Never mind." Linking her arm with his,she steered him away from the kitchen door."Is Danvers here?"  "In the kitchen standing very close to Miss Hahn,tasting spaghetti sauce." "Okay.Here's the plan." she lowered her voice."Call him into the living room for something. I'll run up and get the album." Chase nodded his head with utmost seriousness"And I'll drop the salad." "Right." He was bent slightly to hear her and without warning, he suddenly angled his head and kissed her. When he pulled back, he was grinning like a little kid."Sorry.I couldn't help myself. It's all this intrigue." "Right it's the intrigue," Jas repeated, too surprised to say anything else. Her heart was beating like a drum, and when he went into the kitchen, she thumped up the steps, touching her lips. Thinking to herself "Did he really just kiss me?"...........
— Alison Hart, Shadow Horse
If the soul is immortal then it is one with the Godhead.
— N. K. David
They have to know, for we know , that reincarnation is real.
— N. K. David
Except for a roll of Harding's eyes, everyone ignored me, which is the way I liked it when I had to hang around with senior officers. They had a way of thinking up ideas that got you killed and them promoted.
— James R. Benn, The First Wave
Just because the restaurant had Dynamite Shrimp on the menu, was that any reason for the place to blow up? (re April 15 release, Killer Kitchens
— Jean Harrington
If I can't talk smart I'll just sit back and listen.
— Rae Sanders, Final Sale, A Bittersweet Hollow Mystery
No matter how offensive she's been to me, she continues to act as if she has some sort of God-given right to keep coming back for more favors.
— Diane Capri, Due Justice
Reacher was the kind of guy who solved all problems as permanently as possible.
— Diane Capri, Don't Know Jack
Indignation is often the best defense.
— Diane Capri, Due Justice
But truly it was not the money that mattered. It was the distant glitter of everything that was possible in the world, the things she had always wanted for herself and could not name and called happiness because there was no other word.
— Tim O'Brien
The Land of Civilian was a dry bitter place where you sat in your car staring at drawn curtains and closed doors for hours on end, and where everything was a big, freaking secret.
— Lily Gardner, A Bitch Called Hope
He is nothing more than one of my pawns. However, he is not a normal pawn. He is a pawn that can get across the whole board in one move.
— Yana Toboso, Black Butler, Vol. 1
I was born to end up alone.
— Yana Toboso
It is a mistake to confound strangeness with mystery. The most commonplace crime is often the most mysterious because it presents no new or special features from which deductions may be drawn. This murder would have been infinitely more difficult to unravel had the body of the victim been simply found lying in the roadway without any of those outré and sensational accompaniments which have rendered it remarkable. These strange details, far from making the case more difficult, have really had the effect of making it less so.
— Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet
when I see you, I see mystery - a pale moon's beauty behind a veil of cloud
— John Geddes
Who you are is a mystery no one can answer, not even you.
— Jamaica Kincaid, The Autobiography of My Mother
THERE WAS ALWAYS a boy in your life that common sense and the prayers of parents told you to stay away from: fast talker, fast car, and fast hands. He was the boy your father kept a loaded shotgun by the door for and met on the front porch if he ever thought about venturing onto his property…let alone the threshold. He was the tall, dark, mysteriously handsome, and uncharacter-istically quiet one that made you wonder what was going on in his head, and that little voice in your head said it wasn’t always so honorable. He was the boy you broke all of the rules over because bad-boys equaled excitement and the rebel in you liked the ride.
— A.J. Lape, Grade A Stupid
Annabelle, I'm going to kill you!" I cried, frowning at the mess. Then I glanced down the stairway and gasped.It looked like someone had beaten me to it.
— Cleo Coyle
On a trip to Russia I bought one of those Matryoshka “nested dolls” that break apart at the waist to reveal smaller and smaller dolls inside…it occurred to me to me later that each of us, like the nested dolls, contains multiple selves, making us a mysterious combination of good and evil, wisdom and folly, reason and instinct… (pp.80)
— Philip Yancey, What Good Is God?: In Search of a Faith That Matters
Holding her gaze, he sheathed his short sword and pulled the gauntlet off his left hand with his teeth. He held out his bare hand t
— Elizabeth Hoyt, Duke of Midnight
I watched the enormity of the clouds for several minutes. What I wanted to experience in the water, I realized, was how life of the reef was layered and intertwined. I now had many individual pieces at hand: named images, nouns. How were they related? What were the verbs? Which syntaxes were indigenous to the place? I asked a dozen knowledgeable people. No one was inclined to elaborate- or they didn’t know. “Did you see the octopus?” Someone shouted after the dive. Yes, I thought, but who among us knows what it was doing? What else was THERE, just then? WHY?
— Barry López, About This Life
In Paris, women were not considered interesting until they were middle-aged. The Mist of Montmartre
— Peggy Kopman-Owens, The Mist of Montmartre
We betray our modern arrogance and forget the place of mystery in God's dealing with us.
— Os Guinness
...I've discovered why you fascinate - you keep the mystery and as Carlyle noted, Wonder is the basis of worship...
— John Geddes, A Familiar Rain
To surround anything, however monstrous or ridiculous, with an air of mystery, is to invest it with a secret charm, and power of attraction which to the crowd is irresistible.
— Charles Dickens, Barnaby Rudge
He had learned Lesson One: Let French women tell you what they want.
— Peggy Kopman-Owens, PARIS, Apartment for Rent
Colorful characters are the odd shaped pieces that fill the holes in life's puzzle.
— Richard   Stephens, Pirate Tales
It is a Siren's burden," she whispered, "So much strength, so much pain. You will feel the weight of humanity on your shoulders, though you are only partly human yourself. Soon you will not have any traces of that left.
— Kay Harding, The Innocent and the Condemned
The smell of dead fish lingered in the air, and excited flies darted from fish to fish lapping up the decay.
— S.W. Lothian, The Cursed Nile
I never met a gal who represented a mystery to me in quite the fetchin' way you did. It'd be dull and dreary just to find out how a crook got in and out of a locked room to steal a gold-and-jewelled cup. But it's very rummy, and fascinates the old man a bit, to wonder why a crook didn't steal a gold-and-jewelled cup he should have stolen.
— Carter Dickson, The Cavalier's Cup
Put it in terms of the not-too-serious, if you like. Who got into that locked room? And how was it done? And why should the cup have been moved again? We're up against the essential detective problems of who, how, and why. Simply because there was no murder or near-murder, does that make the mystery one bit less baffling?
— Carter Dickson, The Cavalier's Cup
Avid readers are the most authentic creatures on the face of the earth, and their hearts and minds are not for sale at any price. "Mysteries for the Inspired Traveler" Goodreads blog
— Kopman-Owens
Payne sought clarification. “Vertical or horizontal?”“Horizontal, of course.”“Sorry but I can’t help you.” “Will you pipe down for a minute? Naturally she was dead since I work at a cemetery. Her face struck a chord though. So, I rummaged around in the old Rory memory bank, and Emily is what rings a bell. Didn’t we go to school with an Emily? Tenth or eleventh grade, if I recall it correctly.
— Ed Lynskey, Smoking on Mount Rushmore: 16 New & Selected Short Stories
To worship a sacred mystery was just to worship your own ignorance.
— Eliezer Yudkowsky, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
Every mystery ever solved had been a puzzle from the dawn of the human species right up until someone solved it.
— Eliezer Yudkowsky, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
When the sea goes down, there will come from the mainland boats and men. And they will find ten dead bodies and an unsolved problem on Indian Island.
— Agatha Christie, And Then There Were None
I was worried about my own vagina. It needed a context of other vaginas-- a community, a culture of vaginas. There's so much darkness and secrecy surrounding them-- like the Bermunda Triangle.
— Eve Ensler, The Vagina Monologues
I have before suggested that a genuine blackguard is never without a pocket-handkerchief.
— Edgar Allan Poe
In a universe devoid of life, any life at all would be immensely meaningful. We ARE that meaning. “And what we see, “says the poet Mary Oliver, “is the world that cannot cherish us, but which we cherish.” As though life itself is the great, universal, unrequited love of all time. But there is even more to this. Deep mystery. We are the universe aware of itself. We let the miracle get lost in distractions. On a planet so rich with living companions, much of humanity sentences itself to solitary confinement. Late at night, I used to lie in my boat listening to radio calls from ships to families ashore. There was only one conversation, and it boils down to, “I love you and I miss you: come home safe.” Connections make us individuals. Ironic, isn’t it? The more connected, the more unique our life becomes…
— Carl Safina, The View from Lazy Point: A Natural Year in an Unnatural World
Humans are curious creatures. What we cannot see, our logical minds will try to deny.
— Nancy B. Brewer, Garnet
When you forget what you ultimately stand for, you rejoice in blinding ignorance. Missing the bigger picture for the near pleasure is what humans and all living beings stand for. I guess there is no alternate way either. Because it is after all a game that all are destined to play until they end up dead.
— Rakesh Ranjan, Requiem: Will the Dead Come Back for Love?
Cattle... it called us cattle...We're hamburger, you mean.
— Peter Clines, 14
He began as a minor imitator of Fitzgerald, wrote a novel in the late twenties which won a prize, became dissatisfied with his work, stopped writing for a period of years. When he came back it was to BLACK MASK and the other detective magazines with a curious and terrible fiction which had never been seen before in the genre markets; Hart Crane and certainly Hemingway were writing of people on the edge of their emotions and their possibility but the genre mystery markets were filled with characters whose pain was circumstantial, whose resolution was through action; Woolrich's gallery was of those so damaged that their lives could only be seen as vast anticlimax to central and terrible events which had occurred long before the incidents of the story. Hammett and his great disciple, Chandler, had verged toward this more than a little, there is no minimizing the depth of their contribution to the mystery and to literature but Hammett and Chandler were still working within the devices of their category: detectives confronted problems and solved (or more commonly failed to solve) them, evil was generalized but had at least specific manifestations: Woolrich went far out on the edge. His characters killed, were killed, witnessed murder, attempted to solve it but the events were peripheral to the central circumstances. What I am trying to say, perhaps, is that Hammett and Chandler wrote of death but the novels and short stories of Woolrich *were* death. In all of its delicacy and grace, its fragile beauty as well as its finality.Most of his plots made no objective sense. Woolrich was writing at the cutting edge of his time. Twenty years later his vision would attract a Truffaut whose own influences had been the philosophy of Sartre, the French nouvelle vague, the central conception that nothing really mattered. At all. But the suffering. Ah, that mattered; that mattered quite a bit.
— Barry N. Malzberg, The Fantastic Stories of Cornell Woolrich
These were not the belongings of the past prisoner he had imagined. These were a lady’s things—hairpins and stockings and a glove. There were more clues waiting but William no longer felt certain he wanted to know the dark secrets of this cell.
— Gwenn Wright, Katherine's Journal
If man could apply half the ingenuity he’s exhibited in the creation of weapons to more sensible ends, there’s no limit to what he might yet accomplish
— Mark Frost, The List of Seven
In the nineteenth century, The Romantics viewed Nature as benign, a glowing reflection of God's grace. Now we know better. Nature is brutal and, if it is feminine, she's not the kind of woman you can trust. Human beings may be her finest achievement yet, but when you get right down to brass tacks, we're meat. AIDS and organisms like streptococcus don't give a crap that we subdued the earth or produced a Shakespeare...
— Rick Yancey
Mystery, why so attractive to me?You blind me with fear, place hope on my tongue, and with a cold kiss draw me forward. Wary and trembling, I follow.
— Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway
What the fuck are cavemen doing here?
— Peter Clines, 14
the elephant can remember.
— Agatha Christie
I feel like I've been ironing all day in high heels and no brassiere. ~Tizzy Donovan, Laid Out and Candle Lit
— Ann Everett
To kiss then was the most natural thing in the world. To explore, to taste, to find out. Katie did find out. When they parted from each other, the world was that much more of a beautiful thing.
— Frederick Anderson, The Butterfly Man
I'd rather be stung to death by a bunch of piss ants. ~Synola Harper, You're Busting My Nuptials
— Ann Everett, You're Busting My Nuptials
The terror is trapped inside of him and paralyzes him. He closes his eyes again and tries to drown out the scream - but it keeps ringing and ringing and ringing in his ears.
— Suneeta Misra, Rani of Rampur
To speak of mystery in a Christian sense means that the human mind is finite and not fully able to understand, deduce or even contain the deep structures of God's reality.
— Tobin Wilson
I swear, when that woman dies, she'll be deader than everybody else.~Pattiecake from Laid Out and Candle Lit
— Ann Everett, Laid Out and Candle Lit
Terrible accident; body parts was everywhere—-fingers, toes, wings, beaks. Ambulance people tried to scoop him all up, but apparently it ain’t so easy as you might think—telling a chicken from a Chinaman, I mean. Anyways, they got his weight off his driver’s license, picked up a hundred and thirty pounds of pieces and buried ‘em. Now his wife come every year 'bout this time to pay her respects. We don't serve chicken while she's here. Hope you ain't got a taste for it.
— R.J.  Leahy, Fat Chance
I stared hard, trying to find a pattern. Thinking if I kept looking hard enough, maybe the pieces of the world would fit back together into something I could understand.
— Carol Rifka Brunt, Tell the Wolves I'm Home
Wondrous as it is, how simple is this mystery! To love Christ and to know that I love Him--this is all!
— Elizabeth Payson Prentiss, Stepping Heavenward
So much of history is mystery. We don't know what is lost forever, what will surface again. All objects exist in a moment of time. And that fragment of time is preserved or lost or found in mysterious ways. Mystery is a wonderful part of life.
— Amy Tan, The Bonesetter's Daughter
Marriage is called all sorts of things, a haven, and a refuge, and a crowning glory, and a state of bondage, and lots more. But do you know what I think it is?''What?''A sport!''And a damned good sport too,' said Tommy.
— Agatha Christie, The Secret Adversary
I started to crawl off; then I remembered my leftover pizza, and I peeled off the salami, pepperoni, and anchovies and placed them on the CD tray (whicn no one used these days with flash drives around)on Boone's computer. I hit the close button and watched the smelly part of my delicious dinner slide away. Boone would have a great time wondering 'where's that smell coming from?
— Duffy Brown, Iced Chiffon
Monsieur Bienvenu was simply a man who accepted these mysterious questions...and who had in his soul a deep respect for the mystery which enveloped them.
— Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
David could tell, by looking at her face as she read, whether or not the story contained in the book was living inside her, and she in it, and he would recall again all that she had told him about stories and tales and the power that they wield over us, and that we in turn wield over them.
— John Connolly, The Book of Lost Things
The goodness of the world grew like moss in cracks, she thought. It grew, somehow, with hidden roots, nourished by something unseen.
— K.J. Bishop, The Etched City
If you don't like the path your life has taken, choose another.
— Robert G. DeMers, The Iceman
If you believe it, is it real, or is it real because you believe it?
— Virginia McKevitt
Only the virtuous can count on life, the pursuer of evil can only ever count on death.
— Travis Berketa, Dark Heart: Angels in the City
There are people who will always doubt you and you have to live with it. It only gets a lot worse when you have to die with it!
— Rakesh Ranjan, Requiem: Will the Dead Come Back for Love?
Emilia typed in her password and checked her inbox. A review by the Secretariat de Gobernación of drug cartel activities across Mexico. A report of a robbery in Acapulco’s poorest barrio neighborhood that would probably never be investigated. Notice of a reward for a child kidnapped in Ixtapa who was almost certainly dead by now. Her phone rang. It was the desk sergeant saying that a Señor Rooker wished to see her. Emilia avoided Rico’s eye as she said, yes, the sergeant could let el señor pass into the detectives’ area.A minute later Rucker was standing by her desk, sweat beaded on his forehead. The starched collar of his shirt was damp. “There’s a head,” he said breathlessly. “Someone’s head in a bucket on the hood of my car.
— Carmen Amato, Made in Acapulco
Let the mystery carry you breathlessly along.
— Marty Rubin
Redemption is for the weak. The strong keep sinning
— Marvin Amazon, The Kiss after Midnight
One can survive every hurt and move on, except the hatred of a mother formed without reasons, that one could not elucidate.
— Darmie O-Lujon
People give flowers as presents because flowers contain the true meaning of love. Anyone tries to possess a flower will have to watch its beauty fading. But if you simply look at a flower on a field, you will keep it forever, because the flower is part of the evening and the sunset and the smell of damp earth and the clouds on the horizon.
— Paulo Coelho, Brida
I want to keep you, till the end of days.
— J.D. Robb, Delusion in Death
I did not deceive you, mon ami. At most, I permitted you to deceive yourself.
— Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles
Tell them I have the headache--no, the plague! I need something nice and contagious.
— Lauren Willig, The Secret History of the Pink Carnation
The Initial Mystery that attends any journey is: how did the traveler reach his starting point in the first place?
— Louise Bogan, Journey Around My Room: The Autobiography of Louise Bogan
Simon to die. Jace to live. Jonathon to retune. And you Valentine's daughter, to be the catalist of it all.
— Cassandra Clare, City of Fallen Angels
Calmly, slowly, she reached behind with her left hand and came up against — yes, fabric. Fine linen, to be precise. So far, so good: she was inside a wardrobe, after all. The only problem was that this linen was oddly warm. Body warm. Beneath the tentative pressure of her palm, it seemed to be moving...With terrifying suddenness, an ungloved hand clamped roughly over her nose and mouth. A long arm pinned her arms against her sides. She was held tightly against a hard, warm surface."Hush," whispered a pair of lips pressed to her left ear. "If you scream, we are both lost.
— Y.S. Lee, A Spy in the House
Close your eyes and click your heals three times...because there's no place like Dome.
— Stephen King, Under the Dome
It is a truth universally acknowledged that one only comes up with clever, cutting remarks long after the other party is happily slumbering away.
— Lauren Willig
LIPID (Last Idiot Person I Dated) syndrome: a largely undiagnosed but pervasive disease that afflicts single women.
— Lauren Willig, The Secret History of the Pink Carnation
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.
— Beth Fantaskey, Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side
With riddles as black as coals, and answers as invisible as our past, I can only depend upon the crest of the rolling wave I now traversed; a romance worshiped only by the dreamer in us all, a psithurism of trust making its way through the years of our ascension to one day climb above the kaleidoscopic canopy of this mortal coil.
— Dave Matthes, In This House, We Lived, and We Died
My dear Prue, we are the inheritors of a wonderful world, a beautiful world, full of life and mystery, goodness and pain. But likewise are we children of an indifferent universe. We break our own hearts imposing our moral order on what is, by nature, a wide web of chaos. It is a hopeless task.
— Colin Meloy, Wildwood
It would be, like all of Pammy's parties, hot and crowded and filled with impossibly glamorous people with hip bones so sharp they could qualify as concealed weapons.
— Lauren Willig, The Secret History of the Pink Carnation
That could be a very sexy story.
— LynDee Walker, Front Page Fatality
The idea of eternal return is a mysterious one, and Nietzsche has often perplexed other philosophers with it: to think that everything recurs as we once experienced it, and that the recurrence itself recurs ad infinitum! What does this mad myth signify?
— Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
But that’s the thing about dead people: they can’t warn you to keep your nose out of things that are going to put your ass in danger.
— LynDee Walker, Front Page Fatality
I can't explain my feelings for him...they're strange. But he says it is why we are so much alike, why I dream of him. He calls it The Craving.
— Nadège Richards, Deceiving Destiny
I am not much of a mind to touch
— Stacey Jay
Although there are several 'schools of thought' relating to why God allows mental, emotional, and physical afflictions, it essentially remains a mystery"~ R. Alan Woods [2012]
— R. Alan Woods
The fig tree grows its flowers strangely inside out, concealed within the soft interior of the fruit. Erszébet imagines the fig's hidden fairy weight of seeds, grown in sweetness that is also a darkness. Like treasure in a cave.
— Jody Shields, The Fig Eater
Know this much:regret nothing.Each part of your journey is essential to the whole.The moment you are experiencing is as important as your destination.Ninetah,the Daskiny Healer in The Traveler
— Jenna Lindsey, The Traveler
We were the creatures desired throughout the ages... foolish humans didn't even realize it, living in their own little world.
— Kay Harding
Anticipation tingled in my stomach: the kind of tingle that at first you don’t know if it’s a good tingle or a bad tingle – just a tingle.
— Terry Weible Murphy
I ran out the door but it was to late..... i felt a sharp pain in my back as i heard the gun shoot
— Andy Lane, Bedlam: Young Sherlock Holmes
It’s still all “ifs” “buts” and “maybes”.’ ‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘But if what I’m saying is correct …
— Terry Weible Murphy