Cape Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Cape. Here they are! All 100 of them:

When I was a little girl I used to read fairy tales. In fairy tales you meet Prince Charming and he's everything you ever wanted. In fairy tales the bad guy is very easy to spot. The bad guy is always wearing a black cape so you always know who he is. Then you grow up and you realize that Prince Charming is not as easy to find as you thought. You realize the bad guy is not wearing a black cape and he's not easy to spot; he's really funny, and he makes you laugh, and he has perfect hair.
Taylor Swift
Heroes didn't leap tall buildings or stop bullets with an outstretched hand; they didn't wear boots and capes. They bled, and they bruised, and their superpowers were as simple as listening, or loving. Heroes were ordinary people who knew that even if their own lives were impossibly knotted, they could untangle someone else's. And maybe that one act could lead someone to rescue you right back.
Jodi Picoult (Second Glance)
Don’t worry if people think you’re crazy. You are crazy. You have that kind of intoxicating insanity that lets other people dream outside of the lines and become who they’re destined to be.
Jennifer Elisabeth (Born Ready: Unleash Your Inner Dream Girl)
... the devil doesn't come dressed in a red cape and pointy horns. He comes as everything you've ever wished for ...
Tucker Max (Assholes Finish First (Tucker Max, #2))
I would imagine there are days when Superman wakes up, glances at his cape, and wonders when someone will come save him.
Tyler Knott Gregson
I want to be the best version of myself for anyone who is going to someday walk into my life and need someone to love them beyond reason.
Jennifer Elisabeth (Born Ready: Unleash Your Inner Dream Girl)
Our shouting is louder than our actions, Our swords are taller than us, This is our tragedy. In short We wear the cape of civilisation But our souls live in the stone age
نزار قباني
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and all that jazz. Anna use to be the abstinence poster girl, but post-Shaw you could write a comic book about the many adventures of her vagina. It could wear a cape.
Michelle Hodkin (The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer (Mara Dyer, #1))
It wasn’t easy looking dignified wearing a bed sheet and a purple cape.
Rick Riordan (The Son of Neptune (The Heroes of Olympus, #2))
Fight or flight? If I had wings, there’d be no choice. But since I don’t have wings, I have to rely on my cape, and a long running start.
Jarod Kintz (The Days of Yay are Here! Wake Me Up When They're Over.)
If I should have a daughter…“Instead of “Mom”, she’s gonna call me “Point B.” Because that way, she knows that no matter what happens, at least she can always find her way to me. And I’m going to paint the solar system on the back of her hands so that she has to learn the entire universe before she can say “Oh, I know that like the back of my hand.” She’s gonna learn that this life will hit you, hard, in the face, wait for you to get back up so it can kick you in the stomach. But getting the wind knocked out of you is the only way to remind your lungs how much they like the taste of air. There is hurt, here, that cannot be fixed by band-aids or poetry, so the first time she realizes that Wonder-woman isn’t coming, I’ll make sure she knows she doesn’t have to wear the cape all by herself. Because no matter how wide you stretch your fingers, your hands will always be too small to catch all the pain you want to heal. Believe me, I’ve tried. And “Baby,” I’ll tell her “don’t keep your nose up in the air like that, I know that trick, you’re just smelling for smoke so you can follow the trail back to a burning house so you can find the boy who lost everything in the fire to see if you can save him. Or else, find the boy who lit the fire in the first place to see if you can change him.” But I know that she will anyway, so instead I’ll always keep an extra supply of chocolate and rain boats nearby, ‘cause there is no heartbreak that chocolate can’t fix. Okay, there’s a few heartbreaks chocolate can’t fix. But that’s what the rain boots are for, because rain will wash away everything if you let it. I want her to see the world through the underside of a glass bottom boat, to look through a magnifying glass at the galaxies that exist on the pin point of a human mind. Because that’s how my mom taught me. That there’ll be days like this, “There’ll be days like this my momma said” when you open your hands to catch and wind up with only blisters and bruises. When you step out of the phone booth and try to fly and the very people you wanna save are the ones standing on your cape. When your boots will fill with rain and you’ll be up to your knees in disappointment and those are the very days you have all the more reason to say “thank you,” ‘cause there is nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline no matter how many times it’s sent away. You will put the “wind” in win some lose some, you will put the “star” in starting over and over, and no matter how many land mines erupt in a minute be sure your mind lands on the beauty of this funny place called life. And yes, on a scale from one to over-trusting I am pretty damn naive but I want her to know that this world is made out of sugar. It can crumble so easily but don’t be afraid to stick your tongue out and taste it. “Baby,” I’ll tell her “remember your mama is a worrier but your papa is a warrior and you are the girl with small hands and big eyes who never stops asking for more.” Remember that good things come in threes and so do bad things and always apologize when you’ve done something wrong but don’t you ever apologize for the way your eyes refuse to stop shining. Your voice is small but don’t ever stop singing and when they finally hand you heartbreak, slip hatred and war under your doorstep and hand you hand-outs on street corners of cynicism and defeat, you tell them that they really ought to meet your mother.
Sarah Kay
I met a boy whose eyes showed me that the past, present and future were all the same thing.
Jennifer Elisabeth
Stop trying to be less of who you are. Let this time in your life cut you open and drain all of the things that are holding you back.
Jennifer Elisabeth (Born Ready: Unleash Your Inner Dream Girl)
I can do this… I can start over. I can save my own life and I’m never going to be alone as long as I have stars to wish on and people to still love.
Jennifer Elisabeth (Born Ready: Unleash Your Inner Dream Girl)
The dark prince sat astride his black steed, his sable cape flowing behind him. A golden circlet bound his blond locks, his handsome face was cold with the rage of battle, and... "And his arm looked like an eggplant," Clary muttered to herself in exasperation.
Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
Love assumes expectation and hope. All actors of the hazardous pursuit of love eagerly look forward to passing a significant cape without injuries or aching scratches: "the Cape of good Hope". ( " Those journeys of love" )
Erik Pevernagie
Ah, Kurosaki, I see you've finally realized the importance of a cape. ~Uryu Ishida
Tite Kubo
Do I get to wear a fancy hat?" "The fanciest," I said. "And possibly a cape." "Will there be plumes?" "Oh, yes. Several." "Then I'm in.
Leigh Bardugo (Siege and Storm (The Shadow and Bone Trilogy, #2))
You don't get heaven or hell. Do you know the only reward you get for being Batman? You get to be Batman.
Neil Gaiman (Batman: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?)
Gregori strutted toward the door. "I'm too sexy for my cape, too sexy for my fangs. Too sexy." He whirled in a circle, then struck a disco pose with a hand pointing at the ceiling. "Too sexy!" He left with a flourish of his cape.
Kerrelyn Sparks (How to Marry a Millionaire Vampire (Love at Stake, #1))
Courtesy of their tempers, both were now dressed in the Captain Asshole costume—which included, for no extra charge, the cape of disgrace, the booties of shame, and keys to the Fuck Up mobile.
J.R. Ward (Lover Reborn (Black Dagger Brotherhood, #10))
Single moms: You are a doctor, a teacher, a nurse, a maid, a cook, a referee, a heroine, a provider, a defender, a protector, a true Superwoman. Wear your cape proudly.
Mandy Hale (The Single Woman: Life, Love, and a Dash of Sass)
Tell my dad...that I've been hiding his favorite cape in a closet on the twenty-ninth floor. But don't tell him the door is rigged with gulon gas. Let him find that out on his own.
Shannon Messenger (Neverseen (Keeper of the Lost Cities, #4))
What do you think?" I whisper to Peeta. "About the fire?" "I'll rip off your cape if you'll rip off mine," he says through gritted teeth.
Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1))
Heroes don’t always wear capes, badges, or uniforms. Sometimes, they support those who do.
Andrea Randall (In the Stillness)
Take this as your reminder. Not all heroes wear capes. Some wear darkness, some wear wounds.
Nikita Gill (Fierce Fairytales: Poems and Stories to Stir Your Soul)
When love is roaming in our mind, looping in the deepest fringes of our heart, undreamt spaciousness emerges, repealing the constraints of triviality and letting stifling narrowness fade away. While our mindset is besieged by a revolving burst of emotion, our world is ultimately opening up. (Cape of good hope)
Erik Pevernagie
For so many years, I couldn’t understand why every time I thought that someone finally loved me, like… for real, they would eventually turn to vapor. Every person whom I’ve ever loved is trapped inside of my chest. I’ve breathed all of them in so deeply that I’ve nearly choked and died on every soul that I’ve ever given myself to.
Jennifer Elisabeth (Born Ready: Unleash Your Inner Dream Girl)
They'll be days like this" my momma said. When you open your hands to catch, and wind up with only blisters and bruises. When you try to step out of the phone booth and try to fly , and the very people you want to save, are the ones standing on your cape. When your boots will fill with rain, and you'll be up to your knees with disappointment And those are the very days you have all the more reason to say "Thank you".
Sarah Kay
Death, of course, is a refuge. It's where you go when a new name, or a mask and cape, can no longer hide you from yourself. It's where you run to when none of the principalities of your conscience will grant you asylum.
Chris Cleave (Little Bee)
I feel a resurgence of my 6-year-old self… that little warrior, goddess of a girl reminding me of who I was when I was little, before the world got its hands on me.
Jennifer Elisabeth (Born Ready: Unleash Your Inner Dream Girl)
Life keeps throwing me curve balls and I don't even own a bat. At least my dodging skills are improving.
Jayleigh Cape
I have never met a heavy heart that wasn’t a phone booth with a red cape inside Some people will never understand the kind of superpower it takes for some people to just walk outside Some days I know my smile looks like the gutter of a falling house But my hands are always holding tight to the ripchord of believing
Andrea Gibson
I look out into the water and up deep into the stars. I beg the sparkling lanterns of light to cure me of myself — my past and the kaleidoscope of mistakes, failures and wrong turns that have stacked unbearable regret upon my shoulders.
Jennifer Elisabeth (Born Ready: Unleash Your Inner Dream Girl)
If ever I was running, it was towards you.
Jennifer Elisabeth
You go away for a long time and return a different person - you never come all the way back.
Paul Theroux (Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town)
You are a ghost. Filled with stardust, wearing the bones as the shield and the skin as the cape. Fighting every day and opening up for the new wounds in the hustle of hiding the old scars.
Akshay Vasu
I’ve always seen this in you, ever since you were a little girl — this hunger to love other people into their highest selves and it’s what has made me irreversibly and just so forever in love with you.
Jennifer Elisabeth (Born Ready: Unleash Your Inner Dream Girl)
Let this time in your life cut you open and drain all of the things that are holding you back. I’m going to help you forgive the things that you won’t let yourself forget.
Jennifer Elisabeth
So what does Tod look like? Whitewashed skeleton skulking around in a black cape and hood? Carrying a scythe? 'Cause I'm thinking that would cause mass panic in the hospital." ..... "Do you chase after a funeral processions in a long, dirty dress, hair trailing behind you in the wind? I shot him a mock frown. "Have you been following me again?
Rachel Vincent (My Soul to Take (Soul Screamers, #1))
We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate for having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein do we err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with the extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.
Henry Beston (The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod)
I love him in ways that I can’t explain to other people. They don’t understand… it’s not their fault.
Jennifer Elisabeth
It was probably easier in the old days when the bad guys rode into town wearing black capes or whatever bad guys wore and the milk cows were ownded by honest people. Right off the bat, you'd know who you were dealing with. Now everybody dresses alike.
Joan Bauer (Hope Was Here)
Does our purpose on Earth directly link to the people whom we end up meeting? Are our relationships and experiences actually the required dots that connect and then lead us to our ultimate destinies?
Jennifer Elisabeth (Born Ready: Unleash Your Inner Dream Girl)
His severe expression faltered as his hand grazed the cape covering her gown. "Scrivener," he said carefully, "I don't mean to be forward, but is that a—" "A sword hidden underneath my dress? Yes, it is." "I see. And how exactly is it—" "I thought you didn't mean to be forward." She squeezed his arm. "Come on.
Margaret Rogerson (Sorcery of Thorns (Sorcery of Thorns, #1))
As they sped across the bridge, Jesper thought he spotted Matthias and Wylan in their red capes, tossing coins as they steadily made their way off the Stave. If they started running, it might draw stadwatch attention. Jesper struggled not to laugh. That was definitely Matthias and Wylan. Matthias was hurling the money with way too much force and Wylan with way too much enthusiasm. The kid’s throwing arm needed serious work. He looked like he was actively trying to dislocate his shoulder.
Leigh Bardugo (Crooked Kingdom (Six of Crows, #2))
I fantasize the night sky to be like a cosmic blue print of my life as I close my eyes and unbutton my heart…. just in case anyone up there is listening.
Jennifer Elisabeth (Born Ready: Unleash Your Inner Dream Girl)
If Cape wasn't your last name, what was your real one?" I asked, deathly curious now. "Ahhhh," he complained. "Pincas Huckleburr.
Tamora Pierce (Mastiff (Beka Cooper, #3))
Maybe that's why superheroes wore capes. Maybe they weren't capes at all, but safety blankets, like the one Aru kept at the bottom of her bed and pulled up under her chin before she went to sleep. Maybe superheroes just tied their blankies around their necks so they'd have a little bit of comfort wherever they went. Because honestly? Saving the world was scary. No harm admitting that.
Roshani Chokshi (Aru Shah and the End of Time (Pandava, #1))
Her eyes went so wide they nearly bulged. It was probably wrong of me to find that amusing. Or to want to take a photo of Nicholas with his fangs out and wearing a black cape lined with red satin and then hang it over my pillow in a heart-shaped frame.
Alyxandra Harvey (Bleeding Hearts (Drake Chronicles, #4))
Nature is a part of our humanity, and without some awareness and experience of that divine mystery man ceases to be man.
Henry Beston (The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod)
Percy and Reyna occupied matching praeters' chairs on the dais, which made Percy self-conscious. It wasn't easy looking dignified wearing a bedsheet and a purple cape. "The camp is safe," Octavian continued. " I'll be the first to congragulate our heroes for bringing back the legion's eagle and so much Imperial gold! Truly we have been blessed with good fortune. But why do more? Why tempt fate?" "I'm glad you asked." Percy stood, taking the question as an opening. Octavian stammered, " I wasn't--" "--Part of the quest," Percy said. "Yes I know. And your'e wise to let me explain, since I was.
Rick Riordan (The Son of Neptune (The Heroes of Olympus, #2))
I’ve grown up defined by this desperate, undeniable, ‘can’t breathe’ kind of space inside of myself and I’m afraid that the diagnosis is fatal.
Jennifer Elisabeth
Something, somewhere, knows what’s best for me and promises to keep sending me people and experiences to light my way as long as I live in gratitude and keep paying attention to the signs.
Jennifer Elisabeth
I really believe that there is an invisible red thread tied between him and me, and that it has stretched and tangled for years — across oceans and lifetimes. I know that it won’t break because our souls are tied.
Jennifer Elisabeth (Born Ready: Unleash Your Inner Dream Girl)
I am not times fool, nor a god hardened by the millennia; I am not the trickster in the black cape nor the sorrowful wanderer. I have a conscience. I know right from wrong I know what I do and yes, I do it. I am the Vampire Lestat. That's your answer do with it as you will.
Anne Rice (The Tale of the Body Thief (The Vampire Chronicles, #4))
Cruel Prince James strode into the chamber, his cape flashing behind him and his terrible, terrible mustache askew with rage,” Lucie narrated the moment James walked through the door. “Does it need be said twice that it’s terrible?” James said. “He required a hot beverage to soothe his throat, parched from barking out his wicked commands all day. Tea, he thought, yes, tea and revenge.” “I’ll just go put the kettle on,” James sighed.
Cassandra Clare (Chain of Gold (The Last Hours, #1))
Dreadful sorry mistress. Ma always said I was too silly to die
Tamora Pierce
I know that your soul is on life support and that you feel lost and like you’re completely spinning out of control, but you’re finding yourself — here, tonight… even in this darkness.
Jennifer Elisabeth
The end of the story of Batman is he's dead. Because, in the end, the Batman dies. What else am I going to do? Retire and play golf? It doesn't work that way. It can't. I fight until I drop. And one day, I will drop.
Neil Gaiman (Batman: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?)
The measure of civilized behavior is compassion.
Paul Theroux (Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town)
The three great elemental sounds in nature are the sound of rain, the sound of wind in a primeval wood, and the sound of outer ocean on a beach. I have heard them all, and of the three elemental voices, that of ocean is the most awesome, beautiful and varied.
Henry Beston (The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod)
Libraries are a force for good. They wear capes. They fight evil. They don’t get upset when you don’t send them a card on their birthdays. (Though they will charge you if you’re late returning a book.) They serve communities. The town without a library is a town without a soul. The library card is a passport to wonders and miracles, glimpses into other lives, religions, experiences, the hopes and dreams and strivings of ALL human beings, and it is this passport that opens our eyes and hearts to the world beyond our front doors, that is one of our best hopes against tyranny, xenophobia, hopelessness, despair, anarchy, and ignorance. Libraries are the torch of the world, illuminating the path when it feels too dark to see. We mustn’t allow that torch to be extinguished.
Libba Bray
I write letters to you that you’ll never see.
Jennifer Elisabeth
Your personal truth is your gift to the world.
Jennifer Elisabeth
Come on. I know you're not a stupid man.' 'I'm quite stupid. Ask anyone.' 'Finbar, are there superheroes living among us?' Finbar snorted with laughter and Kenny started to feel a little thick. 'Superheroes? In tights and capes, flying around? If there were superheroes, Mr. Journalist, don't you think they'd be in New York or somewhere like that? There's not that many tall buildings for Spiderman to swing from in Dublin, you know? He'd have maybe two good swings and then hang there looking disappointed.' 'These people don't wear tights and capes, Finbar.' 'So they're naked superheroes? That's grand for now, but when the good weather is over they're going to regret it.' 'They look like us. They dress like us. But they're not like us. They're different.' 'You,' Finbar said. 'Are sounding very racist right now.
Derek Landy (Death Bringer (Skulduggery Pleasant, #6))
The world to-day is sick to its thin blood for lack of elemental things, for fire before the hands, for water welling from the earth, for air, for the dear earth itself underfoot. In my world of beach and dunes these elemental presences lived and had their being, and under their arch there moved an incomparable pageant of nature and the year.
Henry Beston (The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod)
I want to marry her, when I grow up to be a man.
Tamora Pierce (Mastiff (Beka Cooper, #3))
I’m going to follow this invisible red thread until I find myself again… until I finally figure out… who I’m meant to be.
Jennifer Elisabeth (Born Ready: Unleash Your Inner Dream Girl)
Poetry is as necessary to comprehension as science. It is as impossible to live without reverence as it is without joy.
Henry Beston (The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod)
I just want your voice aimed at me again. I want to absorb the direction of your eyes…
Jennifer Elisabeth
Everything hurts right now and nothing is helping because as the pain is getting worse — so is the love.
Jennifer Elisabeth
I don’t wear a red cape. I can’t scale buildings like a salamander or leap across canyons twenty miles wide. I don’t have a huge S emblazoned across my chest. My superpowers come from teaching myself how to survive when all I wanted to do was be one of the people that heroes are supposed to save.
Meggie C. Royer
He looked at me, that first day, like he had just found something he’d lost a thousand years ago.
Jennifer Elisabeth
You go away for a long time and return a different person - you never come all the way back
Paul Theroux (Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town)
I know that this process of ‘me changing my life’ doesn’t just end once I set fire to this list of things I hate about myself. Tonight isn’t as much of a new beginning as it is a violent end and I know the real work hasn’t even started yet.
Jennifer Elisabeth
I could watch him do this until morning — never asking questions and never interrupting his work. I worship quietly — his intense focus and attention to detail and then, out of no where, I realize the inconvenient, inappropriate truth: ‘I love this man… and it has swallowed me.
Jennifer Elisabeth
This is how space begins, with words only, signs traced on the blank page. To describe space: to name it, to trace it, like those portolano-makers who saturated the coastlines with the names of harbours, the names of capes, the names of inlets, until in the end the land was only separated from the sea by a continuous ribbon of text. Is the aleph, that place in Borges from which the entire world is visible simultaneously, anything other than an alphabet?
Georges Perec (Species of Spaces and Other Pieces)
Because you live to love and love to live/ And because of what your heardrum will give/ Now we might love to live and live to love.
Janet Goodfriend (For the Love of Art)
I bring my hand to my face and pull away tiny pieces of the jagged scab. My face reflects in the rounded airplane window, and I see it is now a tiny Massachusetts, with Cape Cod curling toward my ear. In only a few more days it will be gone. I feel the fresh, smooth parts and marvel at how soft they are. New skin amazes me. New skin is a miracle. It is proof that we can heal.
A.S. King (Everybody Sees the Ants)
I don't just randomly kill people... I kill people when it's funny.
Neil Gaiman (Batman: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?)
I room with Louisa. Louisa is older and her hair is like a red-and-gold noisy ocean down her back. There's so much of it, she can't even keep it in with braids or buns or scrunchies. Her hair smells like strawberries; she smells better than any girl I've ever known. I could breathe her in forever. My first night here, when she lifted her blouse to change for bed, in the moment before that crazy hair fell over her body like a protective cape, I saw them, all of them, and I sucked my breath in hard. She said, "Don't be scared, little one." I wasn't scared. I'd just never seen a girl with skin like mine.
Kathleen Glasgow (Girl in Pieces)
There are so many things I want to tell her, so many things she doesn't know; like how I remember when she first came home from the hospital, a big pink blob with a perma-smile, and she used to fall asleep while grabbing on to my pinter finger; how I sued to give her piggyback rides up and down the beach on Cape Cod, and she would tub on my ponytail to direct me one way or the other; how soft and furry her head was when she was first born; that the first time you kiss someone you'll be nervous, and it will be weird, and it won't be as good as you want it to be, and that's okay; how you should only fall in love with people who will fall in love back... I feel an ache in my throat, but i manage to smile. Two conflicting desires go through me at the same time, each as sharp as a razor blade: I want to see you grow up and Don't ever change.
Lauren Oliver (Before I Fall)
In the old days, when travelers would get lost, they would follow the stars and I love that idea. I wish that I could rely on something as simple and magnificent as a star for all of my aching questions.
Jennifer Elisabeth (Born Ready: Unleash Your Inner Dream Girl)
My youngest brother killed a lynx yesterday,” Rose said. “Apparently it came into his territory and left some spray marks. He skinned it, smeared himself in its blood, and put its pelt on his shoulders like a cape. And that’s how he came dressed for breakfast.” Cerise drank some beer. “My sister kills small animals and hangs their corpses on a tree, because she thinks she is a monster and she’s convinced we’ll eventually banish her from the house. They’re her rations. Just in case.” Rose blinked. “I see. I think we’re going to get along just fine, don’t you?” “I think so, yes.
Ilona Andrews (Bayou Moon (The Edge, #2))
At first I assumed he was a Mexican, but slowly began to realise that a real Mexican probably wouldn't be wearing a sombrero in a London nightclub. And he'd probably have a real moustache, not a stick-on one. A Mexican with a stick-on moustache would be like a Super-Mexican, because he'd have two moustaches, and that'd be cool, because a Super-Mexican could probably use his poncho as a cape, and then I realised I was saying all this to the man's face.
Danny Wallace (Yes Man)
We fought a military war; our opponents fought a political one. We sought physical attrition; our opponents aimed for our psychological exhaustion. In the process we lost sight of one of the cardinal maxims of guerrilla war: the guerrilla wins if he does not lose. The conventional army loses if it does not win. The North Vietnamese used their armed forces the way a bull-fighter uses his cape — to keep us lunging in areas of marginal political importance.
Henry Kissinger
Please… Whoever you are, whatever you are… I believe in you even though I don’t completely understand you. I feel you around me even though I can’t exactly describe what I’m feeling. Sometimes things happen to me and I know that you’re there and I’m humbled by the lack of coincidence that exists in the world. Whatever you want from me, it’s yours — just please help me. You know how I get when I lose control, and I find myself constantly being pulled back there these days.
Jennifer Elisabeth (Born Ready: Unleash Your Inner Dream Girl)
Without the existance of people to acknowledge or dispute your greatness, your greatness is irrelevant. You are because they are. Without them, no matter how they treat you, you would not exist. Treat all the world as if you owe it your gratitude, because even the cruel and heartless define who you are.
Jayleigh Cape
Whenever I get dumped, I nail the door shut so that no one can come inside, get a towel and clip it around my neck so it's like a Superman cape, take off my shoes so I can slide across the room, and...get a fake mic, like a celery stick or a pen, and I play any record that features the vocalist Ronnie James Dio. And you can just pretend you're Dio, because on every album he does, he has minimum one, usually three, *EVIL WOMAN LOOK OUT!*- songs. And if you wanna point like Dio, it's a three-finger point. (heavy metal voice) 'The exit is that way. Evil LURKS! Evil lurks in twilight! Dances in the DARK! Evil woman! Just WALK AWAY!
Henry Rollins (The Portable Henry Rollins)
An incomplete list: No more diving into pools of chlorinated water lit green from below. No more ball games played out under floodlights. No more porch lights with moths fluttering on summer nights. No more trains running under the surface of cities on the dazzling power of the electric third rail. No more cities. No more films, except rarely, except with a generator drowning out half the dialogue, and only then for the first little while until the fuel for the generators ran out, because automobile gas goes stale after two or three years. Aviation gas lasts longer, but it was difficult to come by. No more screens shining in the half-light as people raise their phones above the crowd to take pictures of concert states. No more concert stages lit by candy-colored halogens, no more electronica, punk, electric guitars. No more pharmaceuticals. No more certainty of surviving a scratch on one's hand, a cut on a finger while chopping vegetables for dinner, a dog bite. No more flight. No more towns glimpsed from the sky through airplane windows, points of glimmering light; no more looking down from thirty thousand feet and imagining the lives lit up by those lights at that moment. No more airplanes, no more requests to put your tray table in its upright and locked position – but no, this wasn't true, there were still airplanes here and there. They stood dormant on runways and in hangars. They collected snow on their wings. In the cold months, they were ideal for food storage. In summer the ones near orchards were filled with trays of fruit that dehydrated in the heat. Teenagers snuck into them to have sex. Rust blossomed and streaked. No more countries, all borders unmanned. No more fire departments, no more police. No more road maintenance or garbage pickup. No more spacecraft rising up from Cape Canaveral, from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, from Vandenburg, Plesetsk, Tanegashima, burning paths through the atmosphere into space. No more Internet. No more social media, no more scrolling through litanies of dreams and nervous hopes and photographs of lunches, cries for help and expressions of contentment and relationship-status updates with heart icons whole or broken, plans to meet up later, pleas, complaints, desires, pictures of babies dressed as bears or peppers for Halloween. No more reading and commenting on the lives of others, and in so doing, feeling slightly less alone in the room. No more avatars.
Emily St. John Mandel (Station Eleven)
Carpe diem' doesn't mean seize the day--it means something gentler and more sensible. 'Carpe diem' means pluck the day. Carpe, pluck. Seize the day would be "cape diem," if my school Latin servies. No R. Very different piece of advice. What Horace had in mind was that you should gently pull on the day's stem, as if it were, say, a wildflower or an olive, holding it with all the practiced care of your thumb and the side of your finger, which knows how to not crush easily crushed things--so that the day's stalk or stem undergoes increasing tension and draws to a thinness, and a tightness, and then snaps softly away at its weakest point, perhaps leaking a little milky sap, and the flower, or the fruit, is released in your hand. Pluck the cranberry or blueberry of the day tenderly free without damaging it, is what Horace meant--pick the day, harvest the day, reap the day, mow the day, forage the day. Don't freaking grab the day in your fist like a burger at a fairground and take a big chomping bite out of it. That's not the kind of man that Horace was.
Nicholson Baker (The Anthologist (The Paul Chowder Chronicles #1))
Hazel studied Reyna’s outfit with concern. “Your sword’s in the truck. Don’t you want to take a shield or something?” “Nah. I’ve got my cloak. It’ll turn aside most weapons.” Reyna brushed the collar of her sweater wrap. Instantly it unfurled into her usual purple cape. Frank’s smile faded. “Does my cloak do that?” “See you, guys!” Reyna climbed behind the wheel. “Wait, does my cloak deflect weapons?” Frank called after us. “Does mine turn into a sweater wrap?” As we pulled away, I could see Frank Zhang in the rearview mirror, intently studying the stitching of his cape.
Rick Riordan (The Tyrant’s Tomb (The Trials of Apollo, #4))
... the doors to his father's council room were thrown open and Celaena prowled in, her dark cape billowing behind her. All twenty men at the table fell silent, including his father, whose eyes went straight to the thing dangling from Celaena's hand. Chaol was already striding across the room from his post by the door. But he, too, stopped when he beheld the object she carried. A head. The man's face was still set in a scream, and there was something vaguely familiar about the grotesque feature and mousy brown hair that she gripped. It was hard to be certain as it swung from her gloved fingers.
Sarah J. Maas (Crown of Midnight (Throne of Glass, #2))
After a moment, his father looked up from the list and surveyed her. "Well done, Champion. Well done indeed." Then Celaena and the King of Adarlan smiled at each other, and it was the most terrifying thing Dorian had ever seen. "Tell my exchequer to give you double last month's payment," the king said. Dorian felt his gorge rise- not just for the severed head and her blood- stiffened clothing, but also for the fact that he could not, for the life of him, find the girl had loved anywhere in her face. And from Chaol's expression, he knew his friend felt the same. Celaena bowed dramatically to the king, flourishing a hand before her. Then, with a smile devoid of any warmth, she stared down Chaol before stalking from the room, her dark cape sweeping behind her. Silence.
Sarah J. Maas (Crown of Midnight (Throne of Glass, #2))
Enough already of Lacan, Derrida, and Foucault poured like ketchup over everything. Lacan: the French fog machine; a grey-flannel worry-bone for toothless academic pups; a twerpy, cape-twirling Dracula dragging his flocking stooges to the crypt. Lacan is a Freud T-shirt shrunk down to the teeny-weeny Saussure torso. The entire school of Saussure, inluding Levi-Strauss, write their muffled prose of people with cotton wool wrapped around their heads; they're like walking Q-tips. Derrida: a Gloomy Gus one-trick pony, stuck on a rhetorical trope already available in the varied armory of New Criticism. Derrida's method: masturbating without pleasure. It's a birdbrain game for birdseed stakes. Neo-Foucaldian New Historicism: a high-wax bowling alley where you score points just by knockng down the pins.
Camille Paglia (Sex, Art, and American Culture: Essays)
After that summer, after being friends with Won-a-nee and her young, I never killed another otter. I had an otter cape for my shoulders, which I used until it wore out, but never again did I make a new one. Nor did I ever kill another cormorant for its beautiful feathers, though they have long, think necks and make ugly sounds when they talk to each other. Nor did I kill seals for their sinews, using instead kelp to bind the things that needed it. Nor did I kill another wild dog, nor did I try to speak another sea elephant. Ulape would have laughed at me, and other would have laughed, too -- my father most of all. Yet this is the way I felt about the animals who had become my friends and those who were not, bu in time could be. If Ulape and my father had come back and laughed, and all the other had come back and laughed, still I would have felt the same way, for animals and birds are like people, too, though they do no talk the same or do the same things. Without them the earth would be an unhappy place.
Scott O'Dell (Island of the Blue Dolphins)
The wish to disappear sends many travelers away. If you are thoroughly sick of being kept waiting at home or at work, travel is perfect: let other people wait for a change. Travel is a sort of revenge for having been put on hold, or having to leave messages on answering machines, not knowing your party's extension, being kept waiting all your working life - the homebound writer's irritants. But also being kept waiting is the human conditon.
Paul Theroux (Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town)
The weather had freshened almost to coldness, for the wind was coming more easterly, from the chilly currents between Tristan and the Cape; the sloth was amazed by the change; it shunned the deck and spent its time below. Jack was in his cabin, pricking the chart with less satisfaction than he could have wished: progress, slow, serious trouble with the mainmast-- unaccountable headwinds by night-- and sipping a glass of grog; Stephen was in the mizentop, teaching Bonden to write and scanning the sea for his first albatross. The sloth sneezed, and looking up, Jack caught its gaze fixed upon him; its inverted face had an expression of anxiety and concern. 'Try a piece of this, old cock,' he said, dipping his cake in the grog and proffering the sop. 'It might put a little heart into you.' The sloth sighed, closed its eyes, but gently absorbed the piece, and sighed again. Some minutes later he felt a touch upon his knee: the sloth had silently climbed down and it was standing there, its beady eyes looking up into his face, bright with expectation. More cake, more grog: growing confidence and esteem. After this, as soon as the drum had beat the retreat, the sloth would meet him, hurrying toward the door on its uneven legs: it was given its own bowl, and it would grip it with its claws, lowering its round face into it and pursing its lips to drink (its tongue was too short to lap). Sometimes it went to sleep in this position, bowed over the emptiness. 'In this bucket,' said Stephen, walking into the cabin, 'in this small half-bucket, now, I have the population of Dublin, London, and Paris combined: these animalculae-- what is the matter with the sloth?' It was curled on Jack's knee, breathing heavily: its bowl and Jack's glass stood empty on the table. Stephen picked it up, peered into its affable bleary face, shook it, and hung it upon its rope. It seized hold with one fore and one hind foot, letting the others dangle limp, and went to sleep. Stephen looked sharply round, saw the decanter, smelt to the sloth, and cried, 'Jack, you have debauched my sloth.
Patrick O'Brian (H.M.S. Surprise (Aubrey & Maturin #3))
Our fantastic civilization has fallen out of touch with many aspects of nature, and with none more completely than with night. Primitive folk, gathered at a cave mouth round a fire, do not fear night; they fear, rather, the energies and creatures to whom night gives power; we of the age of the machines, having delivered ourselves of nocturnal enemies, now have a dislike of night itself. With lights and ever more lights, we drive the holiness and beauty of night back to the forests and the sea; the little villages, the crossroads even, will have none of it. Are modern folk, perhaps, afraid of night? Do they fear that vast serenity, the mystery of infinite space, the austerity of stars? Having made themselves at home in a civilization obsessed with power, which explains its whole world in terms of energy, do they fear at night for their dull acquiescence and the pattern of their beliefs? Be the answer what it will, to-day's civilization is full of people who have not the slightest notion of the character or the poetry of night, who have never even seen night. Yet to live thus, to know only artificial night, is as absurd and evil as to know only artificial day.
Henry Beston (The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod)