c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Jackie, can you tell me if someone’s dead or not?’“Who it be? Maybe I heard something.”“Miranda Lopez.” I pulled out the charm and balanced it on my fingertips, and then I realized the photo was probably a better likeness. I pocketed the milagro ad held up the Polaroid. “I find out for you if you get me a dime.”I sighed and put the photo away. “You can’t smoke crack. You’re dead. And even if you weren’t, I’m not gonna score for you. I’m a cop. ““You so full of shit. You ain’t no cop neither.”“Would I be wearing this fucking suit if I wasn’t a cop?”“I don’t know. I always thought you sold cars or something.”I tucked my chin toward my chest and stomped toward my gate. Jackie couldn’t help me. And how dare she call me a used car salesman? I wasn’t always a dork in a blazer. Once upon a time I was actually cool. Until the Cook County Mental Health Centre, anyway. After that, I guess I kinda stopped caring.
— Jordan Castillo Price, Body and Soul
If you want to mimic spoons in a drawer, I promise I won't think anythin' of it."	She realized that curling the same way they'd fit much better. She sighed. "Okay, but I get to be the big spoon. I don't want to accidentally bump into your..."	"Knife?" he supplied.
— Ashlyn Chase, I Dream of Dragons
You know all is not well when Hell resorts to outsourcing to close deals made with the Devil. Or in this case, a guy named Stan.
— Carl Begai, GRIM - My Way To Hell
From Got Luck --"Tell me why we’re doing this again?” Erin asked.“Remember what we learned from Return of the Jedi?”“No. What?”“We learned you can be the most powerful sorcerer in the galaxy but if someone grabs you and throws you down an energy shaft, you die like everybody else.
— Michael Darling
Those aren’t the rules. She cost us a meal,” Tank said. “You cost the group a meal, you go hungry. That’s the way it’s always been.”I thought Dax was going to let them fight it out but then he spoke up. “I don’t want to feed her right now either but she’s a walking skeleton, and I need her alive. If there was one jerky, she’d get it before any of us.” He reached over and grabbed two dried meat sticks from Lucy and tried to hand me one.“I’m fine. I don’t need it,” I said, looking at Tank.Dax grabbed my hand and shoved the jerky into my palm. “I took you out of that compound for a reason. I will force-feed you that jerky before I let you starve yourself.”“Fine. I’ll eat it. Whatever. You don’t need to get so bent out of shape about it.” I was hungry as hell so it wasn’t actually a concession, but he didn’t know that. I mean hell, I knew I needed the calories and the Cement Giant wasn’t going to blow itself to smithereens.“I took a couple of bites as Dax got up and walked out of the camp.I gnawed on the stuff as I leaned against my rock. “What flavor is this? It’s really good stuff.”Lucy and Tank looked at me kind of oddly. Hey, if I was going to eat it I didn’t see a lot of reason to pretend it sucked. These people were weird.
— Donna Augustine, The Wilds
From her perch more than a kilometer aboveground, she surveys the city that never sleeps, glittering and coruscating in the rain like a metaphor for her glamorous life.
— Bao Shu, Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 108
The shadow acts on instinct, not reason.
— Erin Kellison, Shadow Touched
I suppose he could be the mole,” Shannon said. “What with his being completely insane and all.
— C.T. Phipps, Esoterrorism: From the Secret Files of the Red Room
Raith smiled. "There. You already feel yourself weakening. I've taken thousands like you, lovely child. Taken them and broken them. There was nothing they could do. There is nothing you can do. You were made to feel desire. I was made to use it against you. It is the natural cycle. Life and death. Mating and death. Predator and Prey."Raith leaned closer with each word, and brushed his lips against Murphy's throat as he spoke. "Born mortal. Born weak. And easily taken."..."And that's only a taste, child. When you know what it is to be truly taken later this night, you will understand that your life ended the moment I wanted you.
— Jim Butcher, Blood Rites
Love isn't easy. It isn't perfect like in stories or movies--but it's real. When we feel it, it reminds us we are alive, and when we truly feel it--it hurts like hell--but it reminds us why we live... For the hope of love.
— N.A. Koziol
Santa, himself, was sitting behind his desk when I walked in.	"Hello," he greeted me. He looked exactly as one would expect. Long white beard and a thick head of white hair. His cheeks were rosy and he truly did look jolly when he smiled at me. "You're the new Karma."	"Yes," I smiled back all the while waiting for the scolding.	"Would you care for a cookie?" He motioned to the heaped plate on the corner of his desk.	"No thanks." I didn't want to get thrown out mid-bite. He was Santa. He knew everything. Any second, he'd tell me to get the hell out of his office, throwing coal at me as I ran. He stood up from his chair and walked around to the fireplace that blazed in the corner, lending the space a warm light. 	"Would you like to sit?" He motioned to the two well-stuffed chairs in front of it.	"I don't want to take up too much of your time. I can see you're busy." I made a step backward toward the door.	"I got time for you." Guess I was going to have to see this thing out until the coal started flying. I watched as he sat. He was still smiling. I took the seat across from him. Maybe he didn't know.	"I know why you're nervous." Well, there went that. "Karma, sometimes there are gray areas in life. Things that don't fit neatly into wrong vs right.
— Donna Augustine, Jinxed
His eyes slowly moved up my legs. I drank the iced tea in my glass so as not to have to respond. He needed to stop staring at me like he was ready to eat me. What the hell was wrong with him today? He was too smart to get caught by Cupid. But, he was acting awfully interested. The worst part about that was that the more interested he looked, the more my body seemed to respond. Forget him! What the hell was wrong with me? 	My breathing became more erratic. I tugged my hair loose from its pony tail and pulled it over my shoulders, trying to hide how excited certain parts of my body were becoming. It backfired, because he took it as a different type of sign and closed the gap between us. One hand reached up and threaded through my hair as I tilted my face upward. I felt his other palm land on my hip, but it didn't stay there long. Slowly it slid down and then wrapped around until it cupped my ass and pulled me upward into contact with his hips where I could feel just how much he wanted me.
— Donna Augustine, Jinxed
Do you need me to carry you?" The words were said softly but with a definite edge. He looked so angry, I wasn't sure if he was mad or trying to help.	"No." The last thing I wanted was to be carried out of there. I turned in my seat and tried to get a read on him. An idiot would have known he was pissed, but beyond that, I got nothing. Why was he the only person in my life I had so much trouble reading. He started to lean down and I realized I was out of time. 	"Don't you dare," I said, trying to delay whatever action he was preparing to take. Looks like my stall quota had been all used up. If I'd had any delusions of him cutting me any slack because of what had happened between us, I was quickly realizing how wrong I'd been. He seemed even worse.
— Donna Augustine, Jinxed
He didn't get it. That's exactly why I needed my Maker's Mark. You can't throw my life into turmoil, and then screw me out of my bourbon too.
— Donna Augustine, Jinxed
No, I might not know what's coming, but I know where you're going.
— Donna Augustine, Jinxed
I wonder if he ever smelt bad. Maybe if he got all sweaty. No, that wasn't a good thing to think about either. I'd seen him all sweaty as he'd covered my body with his. There was good sex, and then, there was that night.
— Donna Augustine, Jinxed
Most people don’t get their soul mates in their designated lifetime or if ever they do, they let them go. It doesn’t matter to me who you are, who you love, as long as they love you back. That is what’s important. The world seems to have forgotten that and have conducted themselves all based on the concept of love that is both selfish, misguided and outdated. And if the world saw what we see, things would be a whole lot better.
— C.J. Edmunds, #StrangeLit: Darkest Dreams
She's the queen of the herd."	"May I touch her?"	"If she'll let you. She doesn't take to strangers well."	I took a hesitant step forward and reached out my hand. Terror approached me with confidence, then ducked her muzzle beneath my palm. Once she came closer, for a moment, I feared she was going to trample me. But then she brushed gently against my side.	"She wants you to ride her." Jockey looked at me. "This is an honor."	All thoughts of bailing out quietly went to hell with that statement. Why not? How often did you get a chance to ride a Night Mare?
— Donna Augustine, Jinxed
Without the queen pulling your strings, you’re nothing but thoughts and dreams. Such things are easily destroyed." ~ General Kael, City of Fae #2
— Pippa DaCosta, City of Shadows
I thought we weren't actually dead?", I asked. There was a lot of ambiguity surrounding that subject. We weren't mortal anymore. That was for sure. I could swing by my grave and prove that anytime I wanted. But, we had bodies with needs. And could get hurt or killed. And, though, I've been told we didn't age, my hair continued to grow. I still woke up hungry in the morning, and watch out, if I didn't get a cup of coffee. It was like we were straddling some invisible fence between immortality and human frailty. 	"Seriously, are we dead or not? I asked again when I still received no response. I got several yes's and no's at the same time confirming my own belief. Somehow, we were neither.
— Donna Augustine, Jinxed
The trouble with the dead, as I see it, is they don't stay that way.
— Tom Cook
Maggie had a sinking suspicion that those stories her Aunt Lizzie told her, the ones that sent her to bed with her head full of leprechauns and fairies, may be more than fairytales after all.
— Sara  Humphreys, Luck of the Irish
When I remembered Stefan first coming for me, it wasn't a man in a black mask or a crazy guy shoving Three Musketeers bars at me as he tried to convince me I was his brother. I remembered an ocean, dark as a universe without stars-black with guilt, despair, rage, violence, self loathing. All I could see was his hand reaching out of the water; the rest of him was buried in a liquid Hell he couldn't escape
— Rob Thurman, Basilisk
At one time in my life, a shapeshifted, demonically possessed maniac crashing through a window and trying to rip my face off would have come as an enormous and nasty surprise.But that time was pretty much in the past.
— Jim Butcher, Small Favor
Sometimes, when you sleep with the enemy, waking up is the hardest part." ~ Muse
— Pippa DaCosta, Devil May Care
That, my dear detective, was the other San Francisco. You've probably seen it before, just out of the corner of your eye. You've probably dismissed it all your life. Maybe you always told yourself you'd just had too much to drink." She paused, her gaze heavy on his face. MacMillian squirmed. "But I'm guessing you always knew better."His head was throbbing. He shook it once, twice, but it didn't clear. "I don't get it, Miss...""Alan," she supplied.He nodded. "Ms. Alan. Why are you here?"Her eyes darkened. "Because there are things that go bump in the night, Mr. MacMillian. It's my job to bump back.
— Laura  Oliva, A World Apart
MacMillian steepled his fingers on the head of his cane. Anticipation rose in his chest. Lena and Cyrus Alan might have an advantage over him when it came to hunting ghosts, but this was where he excelled. This part of the game was all about patterns. He saw patterns. Always had.
— Laura  Oliva, A World Apart
I should hex the IRS.
— Laura  Oliva, A World Apart
Are you here about the infestation?"MacMillian stiffened. "I don't... We aren't-"Lena cleared her throat. "I'm afraid bugs aren't really our specialty.""Not bugs." The woman shook her head vigorously. "Ghosts. Whole place is crawling with 'em.
— Laura  Oliva, A World Apart
The Toyota plowed headlong into the boy. But there was no impact. No screams, no blood, no bending metal.The boy simply dematerialized in a swirl of white light.
— Laura  Oliva, A World Apart
Durbin's sunglasses were gone, and his gray eyes sparkled up at her. He winked. "Take care of yourself, Dr. Venkman."Lena bit back a grin. "You too, Dana Barrett.
— Laura  Oliva, A World Apart
Lena scowled at the empty space in her living room. "Oh sure, thanks, I had fun too." She'd stayed awake, spilled a cup of perfectly good tea, and for what? A spirit with the noncorporeal equivalent of erectile dysfunction. Mostly she was fine being permanently on-call in the Veil. On nights like this, however, it sucked.
— Laura  Oliva, A World Apart
Speaking Akil’s name around Stefan felt like throwing gasoline on a bushfire." ~ Muse
— Pippa DaCosta, Darkest Before Dawn
Have a Werebeast free day!" - Lucy Lowell
— Bonita Gutierrez, The Werewolf Whisperer
If you hurt Muse, I will hunt you down, use every rusted weapon I own, cut off your precious parts and feed them to the hellhounds." Ryder
— Pippa DaCosta, Drowning In The Dark
Most of us aren't equipped to handle miracles, man. I'm not sure that I am, not without being seriously stoned.
— Stephen Dedman, The Art of Arrow Cutting
Mall maintenance halls are creepy. Plain and white, with fluorescent lighting, they evoke images of serial killers, hockey masks nd bloody butcher knives. The figure standing at the end does not help matters.
— Suzanna J. Linton, Willows of Fate
In front of me stands a willow tree by a river, its long green tendrils trailing into the chuckling water. A man sits beneath the tree, back propped against the trunk, gently strumming a lute as he looks out over the water. He feels familiar to me, as if I must know him. As if it would be impossible not to know him.I do not approach. I simply listen to the water and the lute, the sound settling deeply into my bones and heart.
— Suzanna J. Linton, Willows of Fate
The motel owner, who walked up when the police car came screaming in with lights flashing, takes me into the office. He sits me down with a mug of coffee. The mug is blue and reads in white lettering, Warning: Murderous Until Caffeinated.
— Suzanna J. Linton, Willows of Fate
I've hated you for the longest time, but I've loved you for longer." ~ Stefan #5 The Veil Series, Ties That Bind,
— Pippa DaCosta, Ties That Bind
I have not lived for millennia to be bested by a half-blood whore and her puppet prince." ~ Valenti
— Pippa DaCosta, Drowning In The Dark
I curled my lip at the sight of sizzling human hair and skin clinging to my demon flesh. Damn, I’d have given anything to be back in Boston, sipping chai tea latte." ~ Muse, Ties That Bind, #5 The Veil Series.
— Pippa DaCosta, Ties That Bind
I’m not in the torturing business, but I am in the monster-killing business.
— Reyna Pryde, Unique: A New Breed
Powerful grateful in the demons mortals in the courier of shadows, Darkened protectors of the rest and dusk of sea, Shadow broken and ashes in my eclipse, Crave force the demons flesh
— Brandice Snowden, Demon's Veil
You with the tentacles, you're nicked!
— Paul Cornell, London Falling
You’re impossible. You’re a murdering son-of-a-bitch. You get off on pain and control and fucking up peoples’ lives. You lie through your teeth. You wouldn’t know the truth if it crawled up your ass and bit you on the balls.” ~ Muse to Akil
— Pippa DaCosta, Darkest Before Dawn
DI Cartwright: The cat is booby trapped? DI Quill: Welcome to my world.
— Paul Cornell, London Falling
The word spread. 	It began with the techno-literates: young summoners who couldn’t quite get their containment circles right and who had fallen back on Facebook to keep themselves occupied while the sacred incense was cooked in their mum’s microwaves; eager diviners who scoured the internet for clues as to the future of tomorrow, and who read the truth of things in the static at the corners of the screen; bored vampires who knew that it was too early to go out and hunt, too late still to be in the coffin. The message was tweeted and texted onwards, sent out through the busy wires of the city, from laptop to PC, PC to Mac, from mobile phones the size of old breeze blocks through to palm-held devices that not only received your mail, but regarded it as their privilege to sort it into colour-coordinated categories for your consideration. The word was whispered between the statues that sat on the imperial buildings of Kingsway, carried in the scuttling of the rats beneath the city streets, flashed from TV screen to TV screen in the flickering windows of the shuttered electronics stores, watched over by beggars and security cameras, and the message said: 	We are Magicals Anonymous. 	We are going to save the city.
— Kate Griffin, Stray Souls
As his gaze rose to her face - he bit back a gasp. "Your hair, it's - ""Red." ..."You look stunning." ..."Did I ever tell you that when I was growing up, my favorite cartoon characters was Jessica Rabbit?" ..."You always had the curves, but now, with the hair..." He blew out an exaggerated Roger Rabbit whistle. "You're a spittin' image.
— Kristin Miller, So I Married a Werewolf
Hopefully by next week the classes will have paid off and I'll be cooking gourmet.""Gourmet? From your cooking?" He pushed aside his computer, grabbed a paper plate, and started scoop0ing rice. "You shouldn't be able say those things in the same sentence.
— Kristin Miller, So I Married a Werewolf
It seemed for a moment as if something was there, loitering between the knurled and towering cherry trees, a flash of a presence as stark as the sight of the snow against their bare branches and cracked, piceous bark. Unblinking, I watched the edge of the lake, waiting for it to reappear, but whatever it had been was gone, vanished under cover of a willow tree, lofty and dense, rearing over the lake, its branches dripping all the way to the ground. The tree’s lament had been transformed into a thing of such beauty I was tempted to go and hide within it.
— Hazel Butler, Chasing Azrael
Joshua had always been able to get away with things—things for which he should never have been forgiven. He was a lot like James in that respect, for while my husband had bought his grace with his brilliance, Joshua did so with his looks. I considered that a moment, before turning away, suddenly finding I could not bear to look at him for fear of what I might forgive next.
— Hazel Butler, Chasing Azrael
The past had already been dealt with, to one end or another, it was certain, fixed, the horror of it was already over.For the living at least. They grieved, yes, but they were not trapped in the terror of the moment.Not so for my poor, elegant wraiths. They were like the old-fashioned zoetropes you find at the seaside: a tiny slice of a world in a box, brief yet somehow also eternal.
— Hazel Butler, Chasing Azrael
I found serenity in the towers, especially the highest, even in the midst of winter. The crows also enjoyed the lofts, and I habitually fed them.Often I held conference with the grotesques lining the summit. The gryphon was perhaps my favourite. I’d regularly sat beside them when feeling pensive, even before James’s death, one leg dangling precariously over the edge
— Hazel Butler, Chasing Azrael
She stood in the snow, effervescent, all pale skin and blonde hair, clad in white and bathed in moonlight. She should have looked angelic, instead she looked like a corpse, freshly raised from the grave, frosted in ice and darkness, swaying precariously in a graveyard.
— Hazel Butler, Chasing Azrael
The woman would be beautiful if she wasn't so deceitful, but snakes ofte3n had the most beautiful design on their scales.
— Kristin Miller, So I Married a Werewolf
The reflection was that of a putrefying corpse. By some trick of the light, her face seemed sallow and slipping, the patches of darkness giving the appearance of skin sloughing off in small pockets. I’d almost forgotten the knife in my panic; the woman was far more dangerous than the weapon. Blood drizzled down the blade, obscuring the macabre reflection of Natalya’s face and suddenly I was transfixed by a thought that should have been immediate:Whose blood is that?
— Hazel Butler, Chasing Azrael
Since she moved in, Carter found himself in the mood for a lot of things he hadn't been before. Crispy salmon wasn't one of them.
— Kristin Miller, So I Married a Werewolf
She stretched beneath him, bare and aching, held captive by an entirely new form of magic, one she'd thought existed only in books and movies.
— Christine Warren, Heart of Stone
Do you remember anything about last night?" he asked.Her stomach churned as memories of the night before swam into mental view. Oh, she recalled a few things. How could she forget? She took a solid gulp of her coffee. "I remember vodka, an ax murderer, and a marriage proposal.""Good. The important things." He nodded.
— Kristin Miller, So I Married a Werewolf
He dropped back into the couch cushions, stroking the condensation dripping off his glass. "You're in a pickle.""You want one?" Her eyebrows perked up, though her eyes weren't tracking well. "I think I have a jar in the fridge.
— Kristin Miller, So I Married a Werewolf
Charles, if you were here right now, I'd totally kiss you."He chuckled softly. "I get that a lot, but I doubt my boyfriend will approve.
— Laurel Cremant, Wynter's Fall
The demonic love the taste of little girls.
— Mercedes M. Yardley, Nameless: The Darkness Comes
Sometimes there is no right thing. Sometimes wrong wins, and that's okay. Life doesn't have cooker-cutters for right and wrong, Ryder. There's that messy gray area in between, and I sure hope I'm not the one staring down the barrel of your gun when you figure that out." Muse ~ Darkest Before Dawn. #3 The Veil Series
— Pippa DaCosta, Darkest Before Dawn
She was a goddess personified, her breasts so soft and round he could've buried his head between them, suffocated, and died a happy man.
— Kristin Miller, So I Married a Werewolf
I'm just a wretched half-blood girl caught in a storm."Akil tasted his wine and smiled. "Muse, you are the storm.
— Pippa DaCosta, Darkest Before Dawn
There is no shame in being afraid.
— K.L. Penington, The Guardians
When demons call you the Mother of Destruction, sh*t gets real." Muse.
— Pippa DaCosta, Darkest Before Dawn
But if you cross me again Akil, so-help-me, I’ll find a way to kill you this time.”His eyes lit up at the prospect, as though he’d accepted a challenge I didn’t even know I’d laid down. “I’d expect nothing less.” Demons; only they can get a cheap thrill from a death threat.
— Pippa DaCosta, Devil May Care
Half demon, half human, wholly f*cked." ~ Muse
— Pippa DaCosta, Darkest Before Dawn
The lust for chaos wrenched reason from my mind. She wanted the power I’d called before. She wanted to burn it all; to slice open the veil and summon the fires of hell to dance for her. She burned for it, and so did I." ~ Muse
— Pippa DaCosta, Devil May Care
If you put your heart, mind and soul into it, there's nothing you can't do!
— Jason A. Cheek, Flight
Cause I'd rather spend one glorious lifetime with you, Claire Doyle, than an eternity with anyone else.
— K.L. Penington, The Apprentice
There ain't no happy endings for half-bloods." Ryder ~ Darkest Before Dawn #3 The Veil Series
— Pippa DaCosta, Darkest Before Dawn
Why did you laugh right before you lost consciousness.”“Death’s an adventure. I lived big. Rigor mortis makes your face stick. So, who knew how to thaw me?”“Death’s an insult.”“At least an affront,” I agree.
— Karen Marie Moning, Iced
When the dead are afraid, you know there's a big problem.
— Maer Wilson, Relics
Get off that damn chair and pull yourself together. You're supposed to be an ageless creature of chaos and all I'm getting right now is sulking city boy.
— Pippa DaCosta, Devil May Care
Urban Fantasy is the orphan left on the doorstep that no-one knows what to do with.
— Tracy Cooper-Posey
I only believed in three things: my right fist, my left fist, and my gut.
— Jaye Wells, Meridian Six
Yes, but I am not human and to expect me to live by your rules or values is unrealistic. For my kind, I am quite altruistic.” Tyler Jones/Dhavenbahtek to Thulu and La Fi.
— Maer Wilson, Relics
Fighting demons is what I do; real, and those in my head.
— Pippa DaCosta, Devil May Care
Reo Malone - "You can't put the genie back in the bottle.
— Maer Wilson, Relics
Maybe that's why I'd been chosen to become the first female Reaper in history. I think the boys had been losing too many souls.
— Tish Thawer, Raven's Breath
I’ve never paid any attention to time. Dancer says I’ve enjoyed a luxury most people never have. He hates clocks and watches and everything that has to do with time. He says people already have too many lost days and that most folks live in the past or the future but never the present, always saying stuff like “I’m unhappy because ‘X’ happened to me yesterday, or I’ll be happy again when ‘Y’ happens to me tomorrow.” He says time is the ultimate villain.
— Karen Marie Moning, Iced
A flicker of someone else’s memory came to Simon and he picked up Excalibur from where he had dropped it. Carefully, he laid Excalibur on Arthur’s chest. A smile crossed the king’s pasty face as he closed his grazed hands around the sword’s hilt. The touch of something so familiar seemed to give Arthur cause to close his eyes and after a final, relieved breath left his lips, he died.
— Sam Whitehouse, The Prophecy of Three: The Keys of Time
In the beginning there was Logos...and God of course. And it was all extremely boring for Logos because he could never beat God at any game...
— Yannis Karatsioris, The Book of the Forsaken
Am I really standing here, conversing with a bloody unicorn?" Tiffy was certain her mind had finally left the building.
— T.J. Loveless, Lucky Number Six
If I hadn’t stopped to thank the ghoul, I might not be covered in rotting, slimy, dead guy. I shook my head ruefully and continued walking. No good deed goes unpunished.
— E.J. Stevens, Ghost Light
What," asked Mr Croup, "do you want?""What," asked the Marquis de Carabas, a little more rhetorically, "does anyone want?""Dead things," suggested Mr Vandemar. "Extra teeth.
— Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere
You got secrets you better keepTake flight before she cuts you deep- Sam's song
— Helen Boswell, Mythology: The Wicked
He invaded my consciousness in the same way the ocean washes up on the beach, with sweeping tides of longing and regret, and with such power and raw force, I often woke with the taste of salt from my tears clinging to my skin." Joanna about Ben
— Vicki Pettersson, The Touch of Twilight
To gain your heart's desire you have to lose some part of your old life, your old self. To do that you have to have courage; without it, you can't make the leap. And if you don't make the leap you have only three choices: You can hate yourself for not taking the chance, you can hate the person from whom you've sacrificed your happiness, or you can hate the one who offered you happiness, and blame them for your lack of courage, convince yourself it wasn't real.
— Laurell K. Hamilton
If there was a light at the end of the tunnel, the flickering bulb above my head wasn’t it. The faces of my tormentors were no angels—they were hell’s minions and I’d stepped into their purgatory.
— Susan Illene, Darkness Haunts
It was another dark and windy night. Like so many others.
— Lisa Williamson, One More All Hallows Eve
So I flirt with disaster once or twice. Who doesn’t?”He snorted. “You don’t just flirt with disaster, you have intercourse with it.
— Dannika Dark, Impulse
Right now. Living. Aiming to misbehave or just trying not to fade away.
— Michael R. Underwood, Geekomancy
Shit happens. But so does magic." ~ Celia Wird, SEALED WITH A CURSE: A Weird Girls Novel
— Cecy Robson
Infighting would be stupid, since, y'know, claws and teeth.
— Michael R. Underwood, Geekomancy
But, self, that thing was on TV, and this one wants to tear your liver out your nose. Run.
— Michael R. Underwood, Geekomancy
The trouble with dead people today is they have no sense of decorum
— Vicky Loebel
Mind gleams in every atom of the Universe.
— Lisa Mason
The Road to Hell is Paved With Bad Intentions
— Vicky Loebel
They burned this neighbourhood down in the early 1900s to prevent the spread of bubonic plague, and it occurs to me that they should consider doing it again, to purge the blight of well-meaning hipsters desperately trying to paint it rainbow
— Lauren Beukes
For whatever we lose (like a you or a me),It's always our self we find in the sea.
— E.E. Cummings, 100 Selected Poems
She loves the serene brutality of the ocean, loves the electric power she felt with each breath of wet, briny air.
— Holly Black, Tithe
The ocean was the best place, of course. That was what she loved most. It was a feeling of freedom like no other, and yet a feeling of communion with all the other places and creatures the water touched.
— Ann Brashares
Ah, well, then you've never stood on a beach as the waves came crashing in, the water stretching out from you until it's beyond sight, moving and blue and alive and so much bigger than even the black beyond seems because the ocean hides what it contains.
— Patrick Ness, The Ask and the Answer
Life in us is like the water in a river.
— Henry David Thoreau
You can't trust water: Even a straight stick turns crooked in it.
— W.C. Fields
A pool just isn't the same as the ocean. It has no energy. No life.
— Linda Gerber, Death by Bikini
The sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.
— Joseph Conrad
Water was something he loved, something he respected. He understood its beauty and its dangers. He talked about swimming as if it were a way of life.
— Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
You are waterI’m waterwe’re all water in different containersthat’s why it’s so easy to meetsomeday we’ll evaporate together.
— Yoko Ono
It's unpleasantly like being drunk." "What's so unpleasant about being drunk?" "You ask a glass of water.
— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Dip him in the river who loves water.
— William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
There is no water in oxygen, no water in hydrogen: it comes bubbling fresh from the imagination of the living God, rushing from under the great white throne of the glacier. The very thought of it makes one gasp with an elemental joy no metaphysician can analyse. The water itself, that dances, and sings, and slakes the wonderful thirst--symbol and picture of that draught for which the woman of Samaria made her prayer to Jesus--this lovely thing itself, whose very wetness is a delight to every inch of the human body in its embrace--this live thing which, if I might, I would have running through my room, yea, babbling along my table--this water is its own self its own truth, and is therein a truth of God.
— George MacDonald
The water you kids were playing in, he said, had probably been to Africa and the North Pole. Genghis Khan or Saint Peter or even Jesus may have drunk it. Cleopatra might have bathed in it. Crazy Horse might have watered his pony with it. Sometimes water was liquid. Sometimes it was rock hard- ice. Sometimes it was soft- snow. Sometimes it was visible but weightless- clouds. And sometimes it was completely invisible- vapor- floating up into the the sky like the soals of dead people. There was nothing like water in the world, Jim said. It made the desert bloom but also turned rich bottomland into swamp. Without it we'd die, but it could also kill us, and that was why we loved it, even craved it, but also feared it. Never take water forgranted, Jim said. Always cherish it. Always beware of it.
— Jeannette Walls, Half Broke Horses
Water seeks its own level. Look at them. The Tigris, the Euphrates, the Mississippi, the Amazon, the Yangtze. The world's great rivers. And every one of them finds its way to the ocean.
— Alison McGhee, All Rivers Flow To The Sea
Where the waters do agree, it is quite wonderful the relief they give.
— Jane Austen, Emma
People left a lot of things behind when they went in the water. Their clothes, their stuff, their makeup, their fixed-up hair, their voices, their hearing, their sight—at least as the normally experienced them.
— Ann Brashares
He was going to take a dive into this lake. He just didn’t know it. Cerise rose, finding footing in the soft mud. The water came up to just below her breasts and her wet shirt stuck to her body. William’s gaze snagged on her chest. Yep, keep looking, Lord Bill. Keeeeeep looking.
— Ilona Andrews, Bayou Moon
Praised be my Lord, for our sister water.St. Francis of Assisi,Canticle of the Sun
— Francis of Assisi
Father says hot water can be as stimulating as an alcoholic drink and though I never come by one...I can well believe it.
— Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle
i know how it makes you feel...peaceful, permanent, unbroken
— Margaret Stohl, Icons
The places where water comes together with other water. Those places stand out in my mind like holy places.
— Raymond Carver, Where Water Comes Together with Other Water: Poems
She found out that having something to do prevented you from feeling seasick, and that even a job like scrubbing a deck could be satisfying, if it was done in a seamanlike way. She was very taken with this notion, and later on she folded the blankets on her bunk in a seamanlike way, and put her possessions in the closet in a seamanlike way, and used 'stow' instead of 'tidy' for the process of doing so. After two days at sea, Lyra decided that this was the life for her.
— Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass
A lake carries you into recesses of feeling otherwise impenetrable.
— William Wordsworth
It is difficult to find anything more healthy to drink than good cold water, such as flows down to us from springs and snows of our mountains. This is the beverage we should drink. It should be our drink at all times.
— Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, Volume 12
The best way to keep your daughter out of hot water is to put some dishes in it.
— Bob Phillips
Micah: “Come, on. Let’s get you out of here.” He began putting his arms under me and lifted me off my bed of rocks.“Oh, no. You can’t just come trotting in here like some hero. I’m saving myself this time. Go away!” “And let me just say you were doing a fine job lying there on your back.
— Terra Harmony, Water
We Pisceans know how to swim without water
— Munia Khan
And I feel like the Queen of Water. I feel like water that transforms from a flowing river to a tranquil lake to a powerful waterfall to a freshwater spring to a meandering creek to a salty sea to raindrops gentle on your face to hard, stinging hail to frost on a mountaintop, and back to a river again.
— María Virginia Farinango, The Queen of Water
Geography is the key, the crucial accident of birth. A piece of protein could be a snail, a sea lion, or a systems analyst, but it had to start somewhere. This is not science; it is merely metaphor. And the landscape in which the protein "starts" shapes its end as surely as bowls shape water.
— Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters
All water is holy water.
— Rajiv Joseph, Animals Out of Paper
This couldn’t be just a lake. No real water was ever blue like that. A light breeze stirred the pin-cherry tree beside the window, ruffled the feathers of a fat sea gull promenading on the pink rocks below. The breeze was full of evergreen spice.
— Dorothy Maywood Bird, Mystery at Laughing Water
The water was pure and cold and came out of the Apennines tasting like snow melted in the hands of a pretty girl.
— Pat Conroy, Beach Music
He stepped forward and took the butterfly hanging around my neck between his two fingers: “This will remind me, both of my mistake and how much I care for you.” He took another step closer so we were only inches apart, and his hand moved to the back of my shoulder where Shawn’s mark stillscarred my skin. “And I hope this will never heal. It will remind me to never take anything for granted; other people’s intentions, your safety, or . . . you.
— Terra Harmony, Water
The lakes are something which you are unprepared for; they lie up so high, exposed to the light, and the forest is diminished to a fine fringe on their edges, with here and there a blue mountain, like amethyst jewels set around some jewel of the first water, - so anterior, so superior, to all the changes that are to take place on their shores, even now civil and refined, and fair as they can ever be.
— Henry David Thoreau
For the people of my country," Renato said, "water is everything: love, life, religion... even God.""It is like that for me too," I said. "In English we call that a metaphor.""Of course," said Renato, "and water is the most abundant metaphor on earth.
— Pam Houston, Waltzing the Cat
You can’t imagine how much I regret what happened. For some reason, becauseof the type of relationship we had, I thought it was an acceptable training exercise; albeit a little extreme. But I’m not going to ask your forgiveness, I don’t want it. I mean to always remember my mistake, so I will never make it again.” (Micah to Kaitlyn)
— Terra Harmony, Water
Thanks to the centrifugal pump, places like Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas had thrown on the garments of fertility for a century, pretending to greenery and growth as they mined glacial water from ten-thousand-year-old aquifers. They'd played dress-up-in-green and pretended it could last forever. They'd pumped up the Ice Age and spread it across the land, and for a while they'd turned their dry lands lush. Cotton, wheat, corn, soybeans -- vast green acreages, all because someone could get a pump going. Those places had dreamed of being different from what they were. They'd had aspirations. And then the water ran out, and they fell back, realizing too late that their prosperity was borrowed, and there would be no more coming.
— Paolo Bacigalupi, The Water Knife
In the deepest places, where physical norms collapse under the crushing water, bodies still fall softly through the dark, days after their vessels have capsized. They decay on their long journey down. Nothing will hit the black sand at the bottom of the world but algae-covered bones.
— China Miéville, The Scar
Water belongs to us all. Nature did not make the sun one person's property, nor air, nor water, cool and clear.
— Michael Simpson, The Metamorphoses of Ovid
Shadows of cloud lurked in the water, like holes the sun forgot about.
— Markus Zusak, Getting the Girl
The night stayed outside. She was surprised. She opened her mouth but no sound came out. Instead, blue things flew in, pieces of glass or tin, or necklaces of blue diamond, perhaps. The air was the blue of a pool when there are shadows, when clouds cross the turquoise surface, when you suspect something contagious is leaking, something camouflaged and disrupted. There is only this infected blue enormity, elongating defiantly. The blue that knows you and where you live and it's never going to forget.
— Kate Braverman
What an incomparable creature is the sea! ("Absolute Evil")
— Julian Hawthorne, American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from Poe to the Pulps
He wouldn't call a glass of water half full or half empty
—  he'd assume it was poisoned and run away.
We designate the spirit of the well as 'she' because in most of her personifications she takes a female form, though not invariably. She appears in many guises - ghost, witch, saint, mermaid, fairy, and sometimes in animal form, often as a sacred fish - and her presence permeates well lore, and indeed water lore generally.
— Colin Bord
Like any stage of the hydrologic process, we have our own peculiarities, our organs making us nothing more than water pools or springs of bizarre shape, filled with pulsing tubes and chambers.
— Craig Childs, The Secret Knowledge of Water
So never give in,” continued the girl, and restated again and again the vague yet convincing plea that the Invisible lodges against the Visible. Her excitement grew as she tried to cut the rope that fastened Leonard to the earth. Woven of bitter experience, it resisted her. Presently the waitress entered and gave her a letter from Margaret. Another note, addressed to Leonard, was inside. They read them, listening to the murmurings of the river.
— E.M. Forster, Howards End
There definitely needs to be water on the sidelines for these players, but I also had some Gatorade just in case they were allergic to the water or vice versa.
— John Madden
When the water is calm, take as much distance as possible with your boat!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
Five million people die unnecessarily each year because of illness related to lack of potable water. Half of them are children under the age of five. To bring it home, think about this: one child dies from lack of clean water every twelve seconds.
— Thomas M. Kostigen, You Are Here: Exposing the Vital Link Between What We Do and What That Does to Our Planet
The world beyond the water was a blue of green and stone and blue. A moment later Yoshi pushed through, the water pouring down in sheets so smooth it looked like glass, and stepped into the calm [p. 296]
— Kim Edwards, The Lake of Dreams
And there, on that road, that very minute, he started to play - the most lonesome music that them priests ever in their lives heard. It brought water out o' their teeth, so it did.
— Eddie Lenihan, Meeting the Other Crowd
I suppose that, after the passion of love, water rights have caused more trouble than anything else to the human species.
— Alice Steinbach, Without Reservations: The Travels of an Independent Woman
In my life, water has had the character of punctuation.
— SueEllen Campbell
Poetry is a wild water that flows as furious river from "spring" in the summer.
— Lepota L. Cosmo
A calm water is like a still soul.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
A dam tears at all the interconnected webs of river valley life.
— Patrick McCully, Silenced Rivers: The Ecology and Politics of Large Dams: Enlarged and Updated Edition
Water is always working, reorganizing the land.
— Tim Palmer, Endangered Rivers and the Conservation Movement
Before heading back up the road, she had turned for a moment toward the sea. In the late afternoon light, the water was gray wrinkled with orange. Tiger water, she called it when it looked like that. Rhino water was smooth and leaden, dull as smoke. But her favorite was polar bear water, when the moon hung low and large, as if too heavy to rise very high, and scattered great radiant patches, like ice floes, across a dark blue ocean.
— Julia Glass, The Whole World Over
Endless seas, mean endless adventures.
— Anthony T. Hincks
However, were we to invite you to drink a beaker of fresh oxidane, you may [sic] think we'd gone mad. Oxidane is used to cool nuclear reactors and it's found everywhere as a simple, cheap solvent. The oceans are full of it; we are full of it and life cannot exist without it. It's just a fancy name for water and it's possible (if impractical) to make the stuff with no more than some hydrogen and a match!
— Kavin Senapathy, The Fear Babe: Shattering Vani Hari's Glass House
Be like water, which is fluid & soft & yielding, as in time, water will overcome rock which is rigid & hard. Therefor, what is soft is strong.
— Anonymous
The ocean is both my mistress and my lover. How else can I explain her salty kiss that is still on my lips.
— Anthony T.Hincks
Water in the boat is the ruin of the boat, but water under the boat is its support.
— Jalaluddin Rumi, The Rumi Collection
Water is one of the least understood aspects of biology.
— Steven Magee
Water begins to boil in the kettle; it starts as a private, secluded sound, pure as rain, and grows to a steady, solipsistic bubbling.
— Amit Chaudhuri, Afternoon Raag
The gutters in the lane overflowed with an odd, languid grace. Water filled the lane; rose from ankle-deep to knee-deep. Insects swam in circles. Urchins splashed about haphazardly, while Saraswati returned from market with a shopping-bag in her hands; insects swam away to avoid this clumsy giant. Her wet footprints printing the floor of the house were as rich with possibility as the first footprint Crusoe found on his island.
— Amit Chaudhuri, A Strange And Sublime Address
Traditional angling is a mindset. So,have you set your mind?
— Fennel Hudson, Traditional Angling - Fennel's Journal - No. 6
It is a hot summer day in Tennessee in the midst of the sixth decade of this century. The girl has climbed the fence to get to the swimming hole she has visited so many summers of her life in the time before this part of the land was enclosed. She stands now at the edge of it. Her body is sticky with heat. The surface of the water moves slightly. Sunlight shimmers and dances in a green reflection that seems as she stares at it to pull her in even before her skin is wet with it. Drops of water on the infant’s head. All the body immersed for baptism. Do these images come to her as she sinks into the coolness? The washing of hands before Sunday’s midday meal. All our sins washed away. Water was once the element for purification. But at the bottom of this pool, There is no telling what is there now. This is what the girl’s father will say to her finally: corroded cans of chemical waste, some radioactive substances. That was why they put the fence there. She is not thinking of that now. The words have not yet been said, and so for her no trouble exists here. The water holds up her body. She is weightless in this fulsome element, the waves her body makes embracing her with their own benediction. Beneath her in the shadowy green, she feels the depth of the pond. In this coolness as the heat mercifully abates, her mind is set free, to dream as the water dreams.
— Susan Griffin, A Chorus of Stones: The Private Life of War
Mine is the river.where the love runs deep,that if you fall in, you'll be mine to keep.
— Anthony T Hincks
Don't spend your time fetching water with a basket for it will never get filled up
— Topsy Gift
A good shell has to have life and resiliency to get in harmony with the swing of the crew.
— Daniel James Brown, The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics
In the Bay, whenever I got depressed, I always drove out to the Ocean Beach. Just to sit. And, I don't know, something about looking at water, how it just goes and goes and goes, something about that I found very soothing. As if somehow I were connected to every ripple that was sending itself out and out until it reached another shore.
— Cisneros Sandra
Piddle on me, oh joy.Please, let it flow.Let it slide between your legsLike its rose water.
— Maffio Venier
You can not hide on an island and expect that water will not find you.
— Chuck Bridges
Living on the water took away the boundaries created by land and custom and introversion. Without fences and driveways, the water provided a constant thread of connection and dependency.
— Lily Graham, The Cornish Escape
Crossing the Fens by boat there comes the realisation that water not earth or sky is the natural element in this landscape.
— Stephanie Green, Wide Woman on a Narrow Boat
Let us grow strong rootsWatering and nurturing Each other daily.
— Sanjo Jendayi
And he who would not languish among men, must learn to drink out of all glasses; and he who would keep clean among men, must know how to wash himself even with dirty water.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
There were the Newport hills, far up the bay, marked now by a rim of lights. There was the water, a blue shimmer under the sun, a black mirror after dark, somehow alive, a living thing that tied it all together, the houses hugging the rim and the people in them, drawn there to be beside the bay. The water had been there in the beginning, the beautiful bay all alone; and now the houses had crowded about it, hemming it in a row of stucco and brick and white clapboard. Someday the bay would be alone again. When The Thing went off. When all of the houses would be blown away. There would be floating rubble, a border of broken trash for a little while.
— Dolores Hitchens, The Watcher
Also, I'll lose half a liter of water per day to breathing until the humidity in the Hab reaches its maximum and water starts condensing on every surface. Then I'll be licking the walls. Yay.
— Andy Weir, The Martian
We wish to be watered
—  we must daily mediate on the word of God.