Sleeping With The Enemy Quotes

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Give me honorable enemies rather than ambitious ones, and I'll sleep more easily by night.
George R.R. Martin (A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, #1))
Always sleep with one eye open. Never take anything for granted. Your best friends might just be your enemies.
Sara Shepard (The Lying Game (The Lying Game, #1))
When we hate our enemies, we are giving them power over us: power over our sleep, our appetites, our blood pressure, our health, and our happiness.
Dale Carnegie (How to Stop Worrying and Start Living: Time-Tested Methods for Conquering Worry (Dale Carnegie Books))
People say, 'I'm going to sleep now,' as if it were nothing. But it's really a bizarre activity. 'For the next several hours, while the sun is gone, I'm going to become unconscious, temporarily losing command over everything I know and understand. When the sun returns, I will resume my life.' If you didn't know what sleep was, and you had only seen it in a science fiction movie, you would think it was weird and tell all your friends about the movie you'd seen. They had these people, you know? And they would walk around all day and be OK? And then, once a day, usually after dark, they would lie down on these special platforms and become unconscious. They would stop functioning almost completely, except deep in their minds they would have adventures and experiences that were completely impossible in real life. As they lay there, completely vulnerable to their enemies, their only movements were to occasionally shift from one position to another; or, if one of the 'mind adventures' got too real, they would sit up and scream and be glad they weren't unconscious anymore. Then they would drink a lot of coffee.' So, next time you see someone sleeping, make believe you're in a science fiction movie. And whisper, 'The creature is regenerating itself.
George Carlin (Brain Droppings)
And I have faith that you'll make a wonderful head of the Council someday, Sophie." Yeah, except for that whole sleeping with the enemy part, I thought. Wait, not that I would actually be sleeping with...I mean, it's a metaphor. There would only be metaphorical sleeping.
Rachel Hawkins (Demonglass (Hex Hall, #2))
The Seven Commandments: Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy. Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend. No animal shall wear clothes. No animal shall sleep in a bed. No animal shall drink alcohol. No animal shall kill any other animal. All animals are equal.
George Orwell (Animal Farm)
It is better to have an enemy who will fight you in an open field then a lover who will kill you in your sleep.
Marie Lu (The Rose Society (The Young Elites, #2))
I used to love the ocean. Everything about her. Her coral reefs, her white caps, her roaring waves, the rocks they lap, her pirate legends and mermaid tails, Treasures lost and treasures held... And ALL Of her fish In the sea. Yes, I used to love the ocean, Everything about her. The way she would sing me to sleep as I lay in my bed then wake me with a force That I soon came to dread. Her fables, her lies, her misleading eyes, I'd drain her dry If I cared enough to. I used to love the ocean, Everything about her. Her coral reefs, her white caps, her roaring waves, the rocks they lap, her pirate legends and mermaid tails, treasures lost and treasures held. And ALL Of her fish In the sea. Well, if you've ever tried navigating your sailboat through her stormy seas, you would realize that her white caps are your enemies. If you've ever tried swimming ashore when your leg gets a cramp and you just had a huge meal of In-n-Out burgers that's weighing you down, and her roaring waves are knocking the wind out of you, filling your lungs with water as you flail your arms, trying to get someone's attention, but your friends just wave back at you? And if you've ever grown up with dreams in your head about life, and how one of these days you would pirate your own ship and have your own crew and that all of the mermaids would love only you? Well, you would realize... Like I eventually realized... That all the good things about her? All the beautiful? It's not real. It's fake. So you keep your ocean, I'll take the Lake.
Colleen Hoover
Simon: You're in a dangerous line of work, Jayne. Odds are you'll be under my knife again, often. So I want you to understand one thing very clearly: No matter what you do or say or plot, no matter how you come down on us, I will never, ever harm you. You're on this table, you're safe... 'cause I'm your medic. And however little we may like or trust each other, we're on the same crew. Got the same troubles, same enemies, and more than enough of both. Now, we could circle each other and growl, sleep with one eye open, but that thought wearies me. I don't care what you've done, I don't know what you're planning on doing, but I'm trusting you. I think you should do the same. 'Cause I don't see this working any other way. River: Also, I can kill you with my brain.
Ben Edlund
Both teachers and learners go to sleep at their post as soon as there is no enemy in the field.
John Stuart Mill (On Liberty)
Water sleeps, and the enemy is sleepless.
Bram Stoker (Dracula)
They should be going to sleep, but good company is the enemy of sleep.
David Levithan (Two Boys Kissing)
You are the biggest enemy of your own sleep.
Pawan Mishra
The war between the sexes is the only one in which both sides regularly sleep with the enemy.
Quentin Crisp (Manners from Heaven: A Divine Guide to Good Behaviour)
You can get what you want. Never sell out. Don't break. Don't weaken. Don't let the kindness of strangers be your salvation, for it is no salvation at all. Unless you sleep alone, you sleep with the enemy. Never come out of the storm. On the other hand, maybe you should. You don't have what it takes to go the hard way. Come out of the cold and sit by the fire. Let them warm you with the smiles and promise of friendship's fortune. Lose your edge. A soft body and chained mind suit you. Chances are you don't have what it takes to walk the frozen trail. Stay home and relax.
Henry Rollins (Solipsist)
Water sleeps, but Enemy never rests.
Glen Cook (She is the Darkness (The Chronicles of the Black Company, #7))
Staying with detractors is like sleeping in a room located just behind the public toilet. You will never feel comfortable until you relocate.
Israelmore Ayivor
Divorce has taught us how to sleep with friends, sleep with enemies, and then act like it's all perfectly normal in the morning.
Elizabeth Wurtzel (Prozac Nation)
Every decision we make in life is a move, our opponent invisible. Whether it be the enemy of illness, or the enemy you sleep with, you don’t get that knowledge until the opponent makes itself known.
Kate Stewart (Exodus (The Ravenhood Duet, #2))
sleepin with strangers will have you waking with enemies!
Eric Jerome Dickey (Sleeping with Strangers (Gideon, #1))
When we hate our enemies, we are giving them power over us: power over our sleep, our appetites, our blood pressure, our health, and our happiness. —DALE CARNEGIE
Amy Morin (13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do: Take Back Your Power, Embrace Change, Face Your Fears, and Train Your Brain for Happiness and Success)
I’ve always thought that Binding was a bit like a war − both sides think they’re right, and neither wants to back down…the only difference is that you’re sleeping with the enemy.” -Evan
Suzanne Wright (The Bite That Binds (Deep In Your Veins, #2))
What good does it do me, after all, if an ever-watchful authority keeps an eye out to ensure that my pleasures will be tranquil and races ahead of me to ward off all danger, sparing me the need even to think about such things, if that authority, even as it removes the smallest thorns from my path, is also absolute master of my liberty and my life; if it monopolizes vitality and existence to such a degree that when it languishes, everything around it must also languish; when it sleeps, everything must also sleep; and when it dies, everything must also perish? There are some nations in Europe whose inhabitants think of themselves in a sense as colonists, indifferent to the fate of the place they live in. The greatest changes occur in their country without their cooperation. They are not even aware of precisely what has taken place. They suspect it; they have heard of the event by chance. More than that, they are unconcerned with the fortunes of their village, the safety of their streets, the fate of their church and its vestry. They think that such things have nothing to do with them, that they belong to a powerful stranger called “the government.” They enjoy these goods as tenants, without a sense of ownership, and never give a thought to how they might be improved. They are so divorced from their own interests that even when their own security and that of their children is finally compromised, they do not seek to avert the danger themselves but cross their arms and wait for the nation as a whole to come to their aid. Yet as utterly as they sacrifice their own free will, they are no fonder of obedience than anyone else. They submit, it is true, to the whims of a clerk, but no sooner is force removed than they are glad to defy the law as a defeated enemy. Thus one finds them ever wavering between servitude and license. When a nation has reached this point, it must either change its laws and mores or perish, for the well of public virtue has run dry: in such a place one no longer finds citizens but only subjects.
Alexis de Tocqueville (Democracy in America)
Sometimes, when you sleep with the enemy, waking up is the hardest part." ~ Muse
Pippa DaCosta (Devil May Care (The Veil, #2))
My dearest Rose, One of the few downsides to being awakened is that we no longer require sleep; therefore we also no longer dream. It's a shame, because if I could dream, I know I'd dream about you. I'd dream about the way you smell and how your dark hair feels like silk between my fingers. I'd dream about the smoothness of your skin and the fierceness of your lips when we kiss. Without dreams, I have to be content with my own imagination - which is almost as good. I can picture all of those things perfectly, as well as how it'll be when I take your life from this world. It's something I regret having to do, but you've made my choice inevitable. Your refusal to join me in eternal life and love leaves no other course of action, and I can't allow someone as dangerous as you to live. Besides, even if I forced your awakening, you now have so many enemies among the Strigoi that one of them would kill you. If you must die, it'll be by my hand. No one else's. Nonetheless, I wish you well today as you take your trails - not that you need any luck. If they actually making you take them, it's a waste of everyone's time. You're the best in that group, and by this evening you'll wear your promise mark. Of course, that means you'll be all that much more of a challenge when we meet again - which I'll definitely enjoy. And we will be meeting again. With graduation, you'll be turned out of the Academy, and once you're outside the wards, I'll find you. There is no place in this world you can hide from me. I'm watching. Love, Dimitri
Richelle Mead (Spirit Bound (Vampire Academy, #5))
But I hate socks.' I do, especially sleeping in them. They always come half-off in the middle of the night, and why? What kind of inferior clothing item falls off of you when you're lying still?
Francesca Serritella (Best Friends, Occasional Enemies: The Lighter Side of Life As a Mother and Daughter)
Everyone talks about snows forty foot deep, and how the ice wind comes howling out of the north, but the real enemy is the cold. It steals up on you quieter than Will, and at first you shiver and your teeth chatter and you stamp your feet and dream of mulled wine and nice hot fires. It burns, it does. Nothing burns like the cold. But only for a while. Then it gets inside you and starts to fill you up, and after a while you don't have the strength to fight it. It's easier just to sit down ot go to sleep. They say you don't feel any pain toward the end. First you go weak and drowsy, and everything starts to fade, and then it's like sinking into a sea of warm milk. Peaceful, like.
George R.R. Martin (A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, #1))
The traditional techniques used in getting sleep aren’t much effective any longer and our sleep techniques need to evolve as rapidly as our life style has, in order to cope with it.
Pawan Mishra
She had not realised that grief was so physical. Before Zach died, she thought grief happened in your head. She didn’t know that your whole body ached with it, that it screwed up your digestive system, your menstrual cycle, your sleep patterns, your skin. You wouldn’t wish it on your worst enemy.
Liane Moriarty (Nine Perfect Strangers)
Do not look so concerned on my behalf, Captain. It is a common enough statement. For example, I myself love that house there with the wooden shutters. I love tea. I love you, and your smile, and the way you sigh in your sleep. See, common. Unconcerning. We are still enemies.
India Holton (The League of Gentlewomen Witches (Dangerous Damsels, #2))
Why was I led astray by a tiger brightness? Why did a false sun lure me so far from home?...my eyes had looked at something forbidden and seen what they should never have seen, and now sight itself had gone out of them…never again would I see the blinding glare of enemy eyes.
Anna Kavan (Sleep Has His House)
She put her hand on her chest. “I have magic yet. If you will set the clock working again, then I must be still. I have read quite as many stories as you, September. More, no doubt. And I know a secret you do not: I am not the villain. I am no dark lord. I am the princess in this tale. I am the maiden, with her kingdom stolen away. And how may a princess remain safe and protected through centuries, no matter who may assail her? She sleeps. For a hundred years, for a thousand. Until her enemies have all perished and the sun rises over her perfect, innocent face once more.
Catherynne M. Valente (The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making (Fairyland, #1))
THOMASINA: ....the enemy who burned the great library of Alexandria without so much as a fine for all that is overdue. Oh, Septimus! -- can you bear it? All the lost plays of the Athenians! Two hundred at least by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides -- thousands of poems -- Aristotle's own library!....How can we sleep for grief? SEPTIMUS: By counting our stock. Seven plays from Aeschylus, seven from Sophocles, nineteen from Euripides, my lady! You should no more grieve for the rest than for a buckle lost from your first shoe, or for your lesson book which will be lost when you are old. We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it. The missing plays of Sophocles will turn up piece by piece, or be written again in another language. Ancient cures for diseases will reveal themselves once more. Mathematical discoveries glimpsed and lost to view will have their time again. You do not suppose, my lady, that if all of Archimedes had been hiding in the great library of Alexandria, we would be at a loss for a corkscrew?
Tom Stoppard (Arcadia)
My brain has become my enemy. We fight over creation and his need for sleep.
Darnell Lamont Walker
In the City Market is the Meet Café. Followers of obsolete, unthinkable trades doodling in Etruscan, addicts of drugs not yet synthesized, pushers of souped-up harmine, junk reduced to pure habit offering precarious vegetable serenity, liquids to induce Latah, Tithonian longevity serums, black marketeers of World War III, excusers of telepathic sensitivity, osteopaths of the spirit, investigators of infractions denounced by bland paranoid chess players, servers of fragmentary warrants taken down in hebephrenic shorthand charging unspeakable mutilations of the spirit, bureaucrats of spectral departments, officials of unconstituted police states, a Lesbian dwarf who has perfected operation Bang-utot, the lung erection that strangles a sleeping enemy, sellers of orgone tanks and relaxing machines, brokers of exquisite dreams and memories tested on the sensitized cells of junk sickness and bartered for raw materials of the will, doctors skilled in the treatment of diseases dormant in the black dust of ruined cities, gathering virulence in the white blood of eyeless worms feeling slowly to the surface and the human host, maladies of the ocean floor and the stratosphere, maladies of the laboratory and atomic war... A place where the unknown past and the emergent future meet in a vibrating soundless hum... Larval entities waiting for a Live One...
William S. Burroughs (Naked Lunch)
For every person who closed the door in my face, thank you. For every person who told me I wasn't good enough, thank you. For every person who laughed and told me that I was wasting my time going to college, because I was going to fail, thank you. For every person who tried to break me, thank you. For every person who took my kindness for weakness, thank you. For every person who told me I was wasting time chasing my dreams because I would fail, thank you. It could of broke me. From the core of my heart, I thank you. I truly mean it, because if it weren't for each of you I wouldn't be who I am today. I wouldn't of spend hours and loss sleep studying. I wouldn't developed tough skin. You pushed me to think about what I "really" want out of life. You pushed me to master my craft. You helped me develop the drive, passion and determination. You pushed me to not wait for someone to believe in my vision, but to find a way to make things happen. I know you didn't "intend" to, but I thank you for teaching me to believe in myself! AND you taught me to TRUST in God and lean on my faith, not man. Thank You!
Yvonne Pierre (The Day My Soul Cried: A Memoir)
Poison doesn't break Oberon's law unless somebody dies. There are circles where putting your enemies to sleep for a thousand years is perfectly normal.
Seanan McGuire (Late Eclipses (October Daye, #4))
There is no thing called dishonor. No thing called honor. There is only winning. Only losing. And if you lose, you don't leave a freshly made bed for your enemy to sleep in.
Lesley Livingston (The Valiant (The Valiant, #1))
Distrust yourself, and sleep before you fight, ‘Tis not too late to-morrow to be brave. —John Armstrong, Art of Preserving Health. Bk. iv, 1. 456.   The fight is over when the enemy is down. —Ovid, Tristia. Bk. iii, eleg. 5, 1. 34.
Keith G. Laufenberg (Semper Fi Do Or Die)
It is better to have an enemy who will fight you in an open field than a lover who will kill you in your sleep. —Kenettra and Beldain: An Ancient Rivalry, various authors
Marie Lu (The Rose Society (The Young Elites, #2))
Even as I hate myself for it, I cling to him, my enemy. This monster who doesn’t hide in the dark. The one in whose bed I’ll sleep. My monster.
Natasha Knight (Unholy Intent (Unholy Union #2))
The Sleep Problem today is not as much about being able to sleep for 7 hours; it is more about being able to sleep when you are ready to.
Pawan Mishra
I would have left you out there and thrown this ring back at you if I saw weakness. I see what your enemies see, a sleeping dragon. I’m the only woman who can make sure everyone knows you’re awake.
J.J. McAvoy (Children of Ambition (Children of Vice, #2))
I took my right hand off the wheel and reverse-punched him square between the eyes. It was a good solid smack. It put him right back to sleep. Manual anesthetic. He stayed out all the way back to the post.
Lee Child (The Enemy (Jack Reacher, #8))
I once met Death, but she told me that she was on her period. Because of that, I couldn't sleep with her. When she came back to me the second time, I simply ignored her, which really pissed her off. Now, Death has become my enemy. I love the fact that Death is my enemy, and yet I trust her more than anyone else.
Lionel Suggs
Sometimes a savage beauty lured me into the sun and I would start to love the danger a little. On these occasions I felt the reluctant love drained painfully from me as blood drains from a deep wound. The tigers lapped my love’s blood and remained enemies. The inhabitants of the day laughed at the gift I wanted to bring them, and I shut myself in my inner room to escape the betrayal of their arrogant mouths.
Anna Kavan (Sleep Has His House)
it’s a terrible feeling when you first fall in love. your mind gets completely taken over, you can’t function properly anymore. the world turns into a dream place, nothing seems real. you forget your keys, no one seems to be talking English and even if they are you don’t care as you can’t hear what they’re saying anyway, and it doesn’t matter since your not really there. things you cared about before don’t seem to matter anymore and things you didn’t think you cared about suddenly do. I must become a brilliant cook, I don’t want to waste time seeing my friends when I could be with him, I feel no sympathy for all those people in India killed by an earthquake last night; what is the matter with me? It’s a kind of hell, but you feel like your in heaven. even your body goes out of control, you can’t eat, you don’t sleep properly, your legs turn to jelly as your not sure where the floor is anymore. you have butterflies permanently, not only in your tummy but all over your body - your hands, your shoulders, your chest, your eyes everything’s just a jangling mess of nerve endings tingling with fire. it makes you feel so alive. and yet its like being suffocated, you don’t seem to be able to see or hear anything real anymore, its like people are speaking to you through treacle, and so you stay in your cosy place with him, the place that only you two understand. occasionally your forced to come up for air by your biggest enemy, Real Life, so you do the minimum then head back down under your love blanket for more, knowing it’s uncomfortable but compulsory. and then, once you think you’ve got him, the panic sets in. what if he goes off me? what if I blow it, say the wrong thing? what if he meets someone better than me? Prettier, thinner, funnier, more like him? who doesn’t bite there nails? perhaps he doesn’t feel the same, maybe this is all in my head and this is just a quick fling for him. why did I tell him that stupid story about not owning up that I knew who spilt the ink on the teachers bag and so everyone was punished for it? does he think I'm a liar? what if I'm not very good at that blow job thing and he’s just being patient with me? he says he loves me; yes, well, we can all say words, can’t we? perhaps he’s just being polite. of course you do your best to keep all this to yourself, you don’t want him to think you're a neurotic nutcase, but now when he’s away doing Real Life it’s agony, your mind won’t leave you alone, it tortures you and examines your every moment spent together, pointing out how stupid you’ve been to allow yourself to get this carried away, how insane you are to imagine someone would feel like that about you. dad did his best to reassure me, but nothing he said made a difference - it was like I wanted to see Simon, but didn’t want him to see me.
Annabel Giles (Birthday Girls)
Enemies are a choice. A result of our egos. They happen when we’ve chosen to see sheep instead of sleeping lions.
Penelope Douglas (Tryst Six Venom)
She made a suck-bad prisoner of war wanting to sleep with the enemy.’ (Abbie)
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Silent Truth (B.A.D. Agency, #4))
Now I understood why I had to prevent the day world from getting real. I saw that my instinct about this was a true one. As my eyes grew more discerning, I recognized my enemy’s face and I was afraid, seeing there was a danger that one day might destroy me. Because of my fear that the daytime world would become real, I had to establish reality in another place.
Anna Kavan (Sleep Has His House)
Tiny, searing stabs. Wherever the droplets of mist touch my skin. "Run!" I scream at the others. "Run!" Finnick snaps awake instantly, rising to counter an enemy. But when he sees the wall of fog, he tosses a still-sleeping Mags onto his back and takes off. Peeta is on his feet but not as alert. I grab his arm and begin to propel him through the jungle after Finnick.
Suzanne Collins (Catching Fire (The Hunger Games, #2))
No books is more fascinating than the Bible. And no books are less fascinating than most of our commentaries on the Bible. Nothing is more formidable and unconquerable than the Church Militant. But nothing is more sleepy and sheepish than the Church Mumbling. Christ's words roused His enemies to murder and His friends to martyrdom. Our words reassure both sides and send them to sleep. He put the world in a daze. We put it in a doze.
Peter Kreeft (Jesus-Shock)
Yeah, that’s a great idea. Sleep with the guy who’s trying to steal my job.” “Why not? You know that old saying…keep your friends close and fuck the shit out of your enemies.” “That’s not exactly the saying.
Vi Keeland (We Shouldn't)
O VENENO ARDENTE DO DESGOSTO. THE WHITE HOT POISON OF ANGER. When others make us angry at them- at their shamelessness, injustice, inconsideration- then they exercise power over us, they proliferate and gnaw at our soul, then anger is like a white-hot poison that corrods all mild, noble and balanced feelings and robs us of sleep. Sleepless, we turn on the light and are angry at the anger that has lodged like a succubus who sucks us dry and debilitates us. We are not only furious at the damage, but also that it develops in us all by itself, for while we sit on the edge of the bed with aching temples, the distant catalyst remains untouched by the corrosive force of the anger that eats at us. On the empty internal stage bathed in the harsh light of mute rage, we perform all by ourselves a drama with shadow figures and shadow words we hurl against enemies in helpless rage we feel as icy blazing fire in our bowels. And the greater our despair that is only a shadow play and not a real discussion with the possibility of hurting the other and producing a balance of suffering, the wilder the poisonous shadows dance and haunt us even in the darkest catacombs of our dreams. (We will turn the tables, we think grimly, and all night long forge words that will produce in the other the effect of a fire bomb so that now he will be the one with the flames of indignation raging inside while we, soothed by schadenfreude, will drink our coffee in cheerful calm.) What could it mean to deal appropriately with anger? We really don't want to be soulless creatures who remain thoroughly indifferent to what they come across, creatures whose appraisals consist only of cool, anemic judgments and nothing can shake them up because nothing really bothers them. Therefore, we can't seriously wish not to know the experience of anger and instead persist in an equanimity that wouldn't be distinguished from tedious insensibility. Anger also teaches us something about who we are. Therefore this is what I'd like to know: What can it mean to train ourselves in anger and imagine that we take advantage of its knowledge without being addicted to its poison? We can be sure that we will hold on to the deathbed as part of the last balance sheet- and this part will taste bitter as cyanide- that we have wasted too much, much too much strength and time on getting angry and getting even with others in a helpless shadow theater, which only we, who suffered impotently, knew anything about. What can we do to improve this balance sheet? Why did our parents, teachers and other instructors never talk to us about it? Why didn't they tell something of this enormous significance? Not give us in this case any compass that could have helped us avoid wasting our soul on useless, self-destructive anger?
Pascal Mercier (Night Train to Lisbon)
In an effort to teach myself self-restraint and self-control, I decided that until I completed my engineering degree, I would wear only white saris, refrain from sweets, sleep on a mat and take baths with cold water. I aimed to become self-sufficient; I would be my best friend and my worst enemy. I didn’t know then that such a quote already existed in the Bhagavad Gita where Krishna says, ‘Atma aiva hi atmano bandhu aatma aiva ripu atmanah’.
Sudha Murty (Three Thousand Stitches: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Lives)
Hey,Dad, remember earlier this week, when I got stabbed?" "I have a hazy recollection, yes." "Is it worth it? Being head of the Council? I mean, if people are always gunning for you, why not hand it over to someone else? You could go on vacation.Have a life.Date." I waited for Dad to embrace his inner Mr. Darcy again and get all huffy, but if anything,he just looked rueful. "One,I made a solemn vow to use my powers to help the Council. Two, things are turbulent now, but that won't always be the case. And I have faith that you'll make a wonderful head of the Council someday,Sophie." Yeah,except for that whole sleeping with enemy part,I thought.Wait, not that I would actually be sleeping with...I mean,it's a metaphor. There would only be metaphorical sleeping. My face must have reflected some of the weirdness happening in my brain, because Dad narrowed his eyes at me before continuing, "As for dating, theres no point." "Why?" "Because I'm still in love with your mother." Whoa.Okay, not exactly the answer I was expecting. Before I could even process that, Dad rushed on, saying, "Please don't let that get your hopes up. There is no way your mother and I could or will ever reunite." I held up my hand. "Dad,relax. I'm not twelve, and this isn't The Parent Trap.
Rachel Hawkins (Demonglass (Hex Hall, #2))
When she decided to get a job, she rejected a tempting offer from a company that had just been set up in her recently created country in favor of a job at the public library, where you didn’t earn much money but where you were secure. She went to work every day, always keeping to the same timetable, always making sure she wasn’t perceived as a threat by her superiors; she was content; she didn’t struggle, and so she didn’t grow: All she wanted was her salary at the end of the month. She rented the room in the convent because the nuns required all tenants to be back at a certain hour, and then they locked the door: Anyone still outside after that had to sleep on the street. She always had a genuine excuse to give boyfriends, so as not to have to spend the night in hotel rooms or strange beds. When she used to dream of getting married, she imagined herself in a little house outside Ljubljana, with a man quite different from her father—a man who earned enough to support his family, one who would be content just to be with her in a house with an open fire and to look out at the snow-covered mountains. She had taught herself to give men a precise amount of pleasure; never more, never less, only what was necessary. She didn’t get angry with anyone, because that would mean having to react, having to do battle with the enemy and then having to face unforeseen consequences, such as vengeance. When she had achieved almost everything she wanted in life, she had reached the conclusion that her existence had no meaning, because every day was the same. And she had decided to die.
Paulo Coelho (Veronika Decides to Die)
Falconi said, "Hey, Gregorovich, you're in fine form. How about a few words to send us on our way?" The ship pretended to clear his throat. "Fine. Here me now. The Lord of Empty Spaces protect us as we venture forth to fight our foes. Guide our hands - and our thoughts - and guide our weapons that we may work our will upon these perversions of peace. Let daring be our shield and righteous fury be our sword, and may our enemies flee at the sight of those that defend the defenseless, and may we stand unbowed and unbroken in the face of evil. Today is the Day of Wrath, and we are the instruments of our species' retribution. Deo duce, ferro comitante. Amen." "Amen," said Hwa-jung and Nielsen. "Now that. was a prayer!" said Sparrow, grinning.
Christopher Paolini (To Sleep in a Sea of Stars (Fractalverse, #1))
You drank acid, and it turned a vitality drink in your stomach. You had an accident, and you find yourself sleeping comfortably on your sofa. Robbers shot you, and the bullets became a basking fire on your skin. Your enemy cursed you, and you became a president next year. You were headstrong and rude, then suddenly, you find yourself very humble and compassionate. Don't think all these things are magic, you're not under the possession of the world nor its people, but God is the power behind your metamorphosis.
Michael Bassey Johnson
We wage battle with our traumas each day, individually and, to a broader extent, collectively. Too often we are dragged from our sleep by inner skirmishes that invade and dominate our emotions, rile the inner snipers, and hold our bodies hostage to our histories. Often we are ambushed by an unseen enemy from within and for the untrained, unconditioned warrior, there is no safety. We hide, isolate, avoid known landmines, and shield ourselves with alcohol, other drugs, spending, raging, sex, gambling, risk taking. At least, for a moment, the terror dissolves and we can attach ourselves to a sense of safety. Even in the full knowledge that it's all temporary.
Louise Sutherland-Hoyt
All of us live with a demon inside. Somedays you control the demon. And other days it controls you. And it's always hungry. It feeds on lust and longing. And while you may slumber, the demon never sleeps. It temps you into crossing every line you've ever drawn, all the while it tests you, haunts you, and once it has turned your loves one's into enemies, the demon had consumed you whole.
Rebekah Mikaelson
Cloves Where is the scent of cloves coming from? her hair? armpit? or her dress thrown on the Tunisian rug? From the third step in the house? Layla makes everything smell of cloves. Layla is the orchard when it’s wet. She is what the orchard breathes when it’s watered at night. Layla knows now that I am drunk with the scent of cloves, she stiches together my clouds and then scatters them together in a sky like a sheet as she clasps me. Layla feels that my fingers are numb, over the dunes she knows my pulse is hers, my water is hers. Layla leaves me sleeping, rocking between clouds and cloves.
سعدي يوسف (Nostalgia, My Enemy)
Some nights the bed is endlessly wide, some nights it contains all the loneliness in the world. Some nights it is soft and promising, when waiting for sleep is the best part of the day. Some nights, like this one, the bed is hard, the mattress an enemy that wants to force your thoughts into the wrong track, that seems to want to mock you for lying there alone, without another body to rest into and against.
Mons Kallentoft (Midvinterblod)
They should be going to sleep, but good company is the enemy of sleep. We remember this feeling so acutely - the desire to linger away the hours with someone else, talking or holding or even just watching a movie. In those moment, the clock seems arbitrary, since you are setting your understanding of time to another, more personal measure.
David Levithan (Two Boys Kissing)
By what judgment am I judged? What is the accusation against me? Am I to be accused of my own betrayal? Am I to blame because you are my enemies? Yours is the responsibility, the knowledge, the power. I trusted you, you played with me as a cat plays with a mouse, and now you accuse me. I had no weapon against you, not realizing that there was need for weapons until too late. This is your place; you are at home here. I came as a stranger, alone, without a gun in my hand, bringing only a present that I wanted to give you. Am I to blame because the gift was unwelcome? Am I accused of the untranslated indictment against myself? Is it my fault that a charge has been laid against me in a different language? Is my offense that I stood too long on your threshold, holding a present that was unsuitable? Am I accused because you, wanting a victim and not a friend, threw away the only thing which I had to give?
Anna Kavan (Sleep Has His House)
Girls, since when have we ever fought over a chick? Since when has that same chick been our sworn enemy? This is some weird shit, and if you two don't figure it out, then we're all screwed. SO tuck your panties back in and toss your bras into the fire. I don't want to have to bury two of my best friends just because they don't see the bullet aimed for their hearts the minute Frank learns that his precious granddaughter isn't just flirting with the enemy...but sleeping with him.
Rachel Van Dyken (Enforce (Eagle Elite, #5))
Then Hermione’s voice came out of the blackness for the third time, sharp and clear from a few yards away. “Harry, they’re here…right here.” And he knew by her tone that it was his mother and father this time: He moved toward her, feeling as if something heavy were pressing on his chest, the same sensation he had had right after Dumbledore had died, a grief that had actually weighed on his heart and lungs. The headstone was only two rows behind Kendra and Ariana’s. It was made of white marble, just like Dumbledore’s tomb, and this made it easy to read, as it seemed to shine in the dark. Harry did not need to kneel or even approach very close to it to make out the words engraved upon it. JAMES POTTER BORN 27 MARCH 1960 DIED 31 OCTOBER 1981 LILY POTTER BORN 30 JANUARY 1960 DIED 31 OCTOBER 1981 The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. Harry read the words slowly, as though he would have only one chance to take in their meaning, and he read the last of them aloud. “‘The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death’…” A horrible thought came to him, and with it a kind of panic. “Isn’t that a Death Eater idea? Why is that there?” “It doesn’t mean defeating death in the way the Death Eaters mean it, Harry,” said Hermione, her voice gentle. “It means…you know…living beyond death. Living after death.” But they were not living, though Harry: They were gone. The empty words could not disguise the fact that his parents’ moldering remains lay beneath snow and stone, indifferent, unknowing. And tears came before he could stop them, boiling hot then instantly freezing on his face, and what was the point in wiping them off or pretending? He let them fall, his lips pressed hard together, looking down at the thick snow hiding from his eyes the place where the last of Lily and James lay, bones now, surely, or dust, not knowing or caring that their living son stood so near, his heart still beating, alive because of their sacrifice and close to wishing, at this moment, that he was sleeping under the snow with them.
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter, #7))
I know a charm that can cure pain and sickness, and lift the grief from the heart of the grieving. I know a charm that will heal with a touch. I know a charm that will turn aside the weapons of an enemy. I know another charm to free myself from all bonds and locks. A fifth charm: I can catch an arrow in flight and take no harm from it. A sixth: spells sent to hurt me will hurt only the sender. A seventh charm I know: I can quench a fire simply by looking at it. An eighth: if any man hates me, I can win his friendship. A ninth: I can sing the wind to sleep and calm a storm for long enough to bring a ship to shore. For a tenth charm, I learned to dispel witches, to spin them around in the skies so that they will never find their way back to their own doors again. An eleventh: if I sing it when a battle rages it can take warriors through the tumult unscathed and unhurt, and bring them safely back to their hearths and their homes. A twelfth charm I know: if I see a hanged man I can bring him down from the gallows to whisper to us all he remembers. A thirteenth: if I sprinkle water on a child’s head, that child will not fall in battle. A fourteenth: I know the names of all the gods. Every damned one of them. A fifteenth: I had a dream of power, of glory, and of wisdom, and I can make people believe in my dreams. A sixteenth charm I know: if I need love I can turn the mind and heart of any woman. A seventeenth, that no woman I want will ever want another. And I know an eighteenth charm, and that charm is the greatest of all, and that charm I can tell to no man, for a secret that no one know but you is the most powerful secret there can ever be.
Neil Gaiman (American Gods)
Why was he doing this? So that life could continue in the metro? Right. So that they could grow mushrooms and pigs at VDNKh in the future, and so that his stepfather and Zhenkina’s family lived there in peace, so that people unknown to him could settle at Alekseevskaya and at Rizhskaya, and so that the uneasy bustle of trade at Byelorusskaya didn’t die away. So that the Brahmins could stroll about Polis in their robes and rustle the pages of books, grasping the ancient knowledge and passing it on to subsequent generations. So that the fascists could build their Reich, capturing racial enemies and torturing them to death, and so that the Worm people could spirit away strangers’ children and eat adults, and so that the woman at Mayakovskaya could bargain with her young son in the future, earning herself and him some bread. So that the rat races at Paveletskaya didn’t end, and the fighters of the revolutionary brigade could continue their assaults on fascists and their funny dialectical arguments. And so that thousands of people throughout the whole metro could breathe, eat, love one another, give life to their children, defecate and sleep, dream, fight, kill, be ravished and betrayed, philosophize and hate, and so that each could believe in his own paradise and his own hell . . . So that life in the metro, senseless and useless, exalted and filled with light, dirty and seething, endlessly diverse, so miraculous and fine could continue.
Dmitry Glukhovsky (Metro 2033)
I had to first overcome the nightmares: my dreams were populated by menaces, shadows, murderous persecutions, disgusting events and objects, ambiguous sexual relations that excited me while also making me feel guilty. Here, I was a character inferior to my level of consciousness in the real world, capable of misdeeds that I would never have allowed myself to perpetrate while awake. I repeated many times, like a litany, “It is I who dream, just as it is I who am awake, and not a perverse and vulnerable child. The dreams happen in me; they are part of me. All that appears is myself. These monsters are aspects of me that have not been resolved. They are not my enemies. The subconscious is my ally. I must confront the terrible images and transform them.” I often had the same nightmare: I was in a desert, and a psychic entity determined to destroy me would come from the horizon as a huge cloud of negativity. I would wake up screaming and soaked in sweat. Now, tired of this undignified flight, I decided to offer myself in sacrifice. At the climax of the dream, in a state of lucid terror, I said, “Enough, I will stop wanting to wake up! Abomination, destroy me!” The entity approached threateningly. I stood still, calm. Then, the immense threat dissolved. I woke up for a few seconds, then peacefully went back to sleep. I realized it was I myself who had fed my terrors. I now knew that what terrifies us loses all its power in the moment that we stop fighting it. I began a long period during which whenever I had dreams, instead of running I would face my enemies and ask them what they wanted to tell me. Gradually, the images transformed before me and began to offer me presents: sometimes a ring, other times a golden sphere or a pair of keys. I now understood that just as every devil is a fallen angel, every angel is also a demon that has risen.
Alejandro Jodorowsky (The Dance of Reality: A Psychomagical Autobiography)
Two days later, he left for Yorkshire, and I prepared for what I'd come to think of as my "field trip" with Archer. Calling it that seemed safer and more business-like than "meeting" or, God forbid, "assignation." Still, I spent most of the day in my room by myself because I was afraid Jenna or Cal would be able to tell something was up with me. I was so nervous that I was shooting off tiny flashes of magic like a sparkler. I didn't even attempt to sleep, and I thought three a.m. would never come. Finally, at 2:30, I threw on a black T-shirt and some cargo pants, hoping that was an appropriate ensemble for meeting one's former crush who had turned out to be one's mortal enemy.
Rachel Hawkins (Demonglass (Hex Hall, #2))
Since I encountered death, met death on every mountain path,conversed with death in my sleep, wrestled with death in the snow, gambled at dice with death, I have come to the conclusion that death is not an enemy but a brother. Death is a beautiful naked man who looks like Apollo, and he is notsatisfied with those who wither away in old age. Death is a perfectionist, he likes the young and beautiful, he wants to stroke our hair and caress the sinew that binds our muscle to the bone. He does all he can to meet us, our faces gladden his heart, and he stands in our path to challenge us because he likes a clean fair fight, and after the fight he likes to befriend us, clap us on the shoulder, and make us laugh at all the pettiness and folly of the living. At the conclusion of a battle he wanders amongst the dead, raising them up, placing laurels upon the brows of those most comely, and he gathers them together as his own children and takes them away to drink wine that tastes of honey and gives them the sense of proportion that they never had in life.
Louis de Bernières (Corelli’s Mandolin)
Hope is my enemy. She is a sucuubus who descends upon sleeping humankind, whispering that there is a future. A broth future, as a matter of fact; as long as we persevere in extending our essences through the lives of our children, and through their children. She is a lost, a snakeoil salesman bartering chimira for generative fluid, which she sucks out of us before casting out withered husks onto the fire. And so we fall, row upon row like seasons of corn, but not until we relinquish our seed into her exploitive hands. For in the end, we all die, and only Hope lives on. And we for, sometimes mourned for a season, but presently forgotton. Ultimately, like it or not, we are the futures dirt. This is the state of affairs we choose to subject our children to
Jim Crawford (Confessions of an Antinatalist)
She broke slices of apple in tiny pieces and played the game she’d love as a little girl: feeding the ants. Bent double in the hot sun, she was a great god dropping manna from heaven with no more reason and logic than any human could ever discover. The ants stopped in their tracks before such food from paradise, showing their astonishment with agitated feelers at first. Then, human as people, they put such amazing gifts to practical use — they picked up the food and headed for home. If they met other ants at the corner or down the block, the word went out in Formic, and the newcomers came looking for manna too.
Nancy Price
Dream Fable I saw myself in a wide green garden, more beautiful than I could begin to understand. In this garden was a young girl. I said to her, "How wonderful this place is!" "Would you like to see a place even more wonderful than this?" she asked. "Oh yes," I answered. Then taking me by the hand, she led me on until we came to a magnificent palace, like nothing that was ever seen by human eyes. The young girl knocked on the door, and someone opened it. Immediately both of us were flooded with light. Only Allah knows the inner meaning of the maidens we saw living there. Each one carried in her hand a serving-tray filled with light. The young girl asked the maidens where they were going, and they answered her, "We are looking for someone who was drowned in the sea, and so became a martyr. She never slept at night, not one wink! We are going to rub funeral spices on her body." "Then rub some on my friend here," the young girl said. "Once upon a time," said the maidens, "part of this spice and the fragrance of it clung to her body -- but then she shied away." Quickly the young girl let go of my hand, turned, and said to me: "Your prayers are your light; Your devotion is your strength; Sleep is the enemy of both. Your life is the only opportunity that life can give you. If you ignore it, if you waste it, You will only turn to dust." Then the young girl disappeared.
Rabia al Basri
Word of my arrival spread as soon as I walked out of the ocean. Our beach is on the North Shore of Long Island, and it’s enchanted so most people can’t even see it. People don’t just appear on the beach unless they’re demigods or gods or really, really lost pizza delivery guys. (It’s happened—but that’s another story.) Anyway, that afternoon the lookout on duty was Connor Stoll from the Hermes cabin. When he spotted me, he got so excited he fell out of his tree. Then he blew the conch horn to signal the camp and ran to greet me. Connor had a crooked smile that matched his crooked sense of humor. He’s a pretty nice guy, but you should always keep one hand on your wallet when he’s around, and do not, under any circumstances, give him access to shaving cream unless you want to find your sleeping bag full of it. He’s got curly brown hair and is a little shorter than his brother, Travis, which is the only way I can tell them apart. They are both so unlike my old enemy Luke it’s hard to believe they’re all sons of Hermes. “Percy!” he yelled. “What happened? Where’s Beckendorf ?
Rick Riordan (The Last Olympian (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #5))
I think we should kill her…What? She’s ruined my entire day. Made me fight with my wife and now you tell me she’s a spy sent to put us all under the jail. What part of ‘kill your enemies before they kill you’ did you sleep through? Your dad was an assassin, same as my mom. Don’t puss on me now, boy. You know what they’d do if they were here. Hell, your own mother would tear her up, spit her out in pieces, and not blink. (Sway) He’s right. None of you have any reason to help me. Why should you care? (She clicked the vid wall and a picture of a teenage girl was there.) That’s my baby sister, Tempest Elanari Gerran. Her birthday was day before yesterday. She turned sixteen in jail with my mother. I may be out of line, but I’ll bet when you guys turned sixteen, you had a celebration for it with presents and friends wishing you well. You won’t just be killing me. You’ll be killing them, too. Tempest is a prime sexual age and a virgin. Any idea what’s the first thing her new owner will do to her when she’s sold? I don’t want her to ever know the horror that was my sixteenth birthday. (Alix)
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Born of Ice (The League: Nemesis Rising, #3; The League: Nemesis Legacy, #2))
O thou well skill'd in curses, stay awhile And teach me how to curse mine enemies! QUEEN MARGARET. Forbear to sleep the nights, and fast the days; Compare dead happiness with living woe; Think that thy babes were sweeter than they were, And he that slew them fouler than he is. Bett'ring thy loss makes the bad-causer worse; Revolving this will teach thee how to curse. QUEEN ELIZABETH. My words are dull; O, quicken them with thine! QUEEN MARGARET. Thy woes will make them sharp and pierce like mine. DUCHESS. Why should calamity be fun of words? QUEEN ELIZABETH. Windy attorneys to their client woes, Airy succeeders of intestate joys, Poor breathing orators of miseries, Let them have scope; though what they will impart Help nothing else, yet do they case the heart. DUCHESS. If so, then be not tongue-tied. Go with me, And in the breath of bitter words let's smother My damned son that thy two sweet sons smother'd. The trumpet sounds; be copious in exclaims.
William Shakespeare (Richard III)
Meg! I love you! I want to marry you!” “That’s weird,” she said without stopping. “Only six weeks ago, you were telling me all about how Lucy broke your heart.” “I was wrong. Lucy broke my brain.” That finally stopped her. “Your brain?” She looked back at him. “That’s right,” he said more quietly. “When Lucy ran out on me, she broke my brain. But when you left . . .” To his dismay, his voice cracked. “When you left, you broke my heart.” He finally had her full attention, not that she looked at all dreamy-eyed or even close to being ready to throw herself into his arms, but at least she was listening. He collapsed the umbrella, took a step forward, then stopped himself. “Lucy and I fit together so perfectly in my head. We had everything in common, and what she did made no sense. I had the whole town lining up feeling sorry for me, and I was damned if I was going to let anybody know how miserable I was. I—I couldn’t get my bearings. And there you were in the middle of it, this beautiful thorn in my side, making me “feel like myself again. Except . . .” He hunched his shoulders, and a trickle of rainwater ran down his collar. “Sometimes logic can be an enemy. If I was so wrong about Lucy, how could I trust the way I felt about you?” She stood there, not saying a word, just listening. “I wish I could say I realized how much I loved you as soon as you left town, but I was too busy being mad at you for bailing on me. I don’t have a lot of practice being mad, so it took me a while to understand that the person I was really mad at was myself. I was so pigheaded and stupid. And afraid. Everything has always come so easy for me, but nothing about you was easy. The things you made me feel. The way you forced me to look at myself.” He could barely breathe. “I love you, Meg. I want to marry you. I want to sleep with you every night, make love with you, have kids. I want to fight together and work together and—just be together. Now are you going to keep standing there, staring at me, or could you put “me out of my misery and say you still love me, at least a little?
Susan Elizabeth Phillips (Call Me Irresistible (Wynette, Texas, #6))
I hate you. I hate you waking and sleeping; I hate you for undoing men’s souls, and for spoiling their lives; I hate you as the sworn enemy of the laughter of men.... Oh, it is God’s deadly enemy which I see, and hate, in you. In every one of your speeches you make a mockery of the Spirit, which you have silenced, and you forget that the private thought, the thought born in sorrow and loneliness, can be more deadly than all your implements of torture. You threaten all who oppose you with death, but you forget: our hatred is a deadly poison. It will creep into your blood, and we will die shouting with joy when our hate pulls you down with us into the depths.
Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen (Diary of a Man in Despair)
Peculiar trait of the western people, thought Grant, that you could sleep with their wives, despoil their daughters, sponge on them, defraud them, do almost anything that would mean at least ostracism in normal society, and they would barely seem to notice it. But refuse to drink with them and you immediately became a mortal enemy. What the hell? He didn’t even want to think about the west or its people and their peculiarities. Let them be. Once he was in Sydney, who knew, he might never come back.
Kenneth Cook (Wake In Fright: Text Classics)
I know a flower that grows in the valley, none knows it but I. It has purple leaves, and a star in its heart, and its juice is as white as milk. Should’st thou touch with this flower the hard lips of the Queen, she would follow thee all over the world. Out of the bed of the King she would rise, and over the whole world she would follow thee. And it has a price, pretty boy, it has a price. What d’ye lack? What d’ye lack? I can pound a toad in a mortar, and make broth of it, and stir the broth with a dead man’s hand. Sprinkle it on thine enemy while he sleeps, and he will turn into a black viper, and his own mother will slay him. With a wheel I can draw the Moon from heaven, and in a crystal I can show thee Death. What d’ye lack? What d’ye lack? Tell me thy desire, and I will give it thee, and thou shalt pay me a price, pretty boy, thou shalt pay me a price.
Oscar Wilde (A House of Pomegranates)
I don't think I'll bother sleep again.' I shoot a look sideways at his irritatingly gorgeous profile. 'And if you even think about suggesting that you sleep with me for safety from now on-' He scoffs. 'Hardly. I don't fuck first years- even when I was one- let alone... you.' 'Who said anything about fucking?' I fire back, cursing myself as the ache in my ribs only intensifies. 'I'd have to be a masochist to sleep with you, and I can assure you, I'm not.' Fantasising about it doesn't count. 'Masochist, huh?' A corner of his mouth quirks up into a smirk. 'You hardly give off snuggly morning-after vibes.' A smile of my own curves my lips. 'Unless you're worried about me killing you while we sleep.
Rebecca Yarros (Fourth Wing (The Empyrean, #1))
No one likes to be afraid. Fear is the enemy of love & faith & it robs us of our sleep & our sunrise & makes us treacherous & venal& fills our glands with toxins & effaces our identity & gives flight to any vestige of self respect. If you have ever been afraid, truly afraid, in a way that makes your hair soggy with sweat & turns your skin gray & fouls your blood & spiritually eviscerates you to the point you cannot pray, lest your prayers be a concession to your conviction that you're about to die, you know what I am talking about. If you do not have the option of either fleeing or attacking your adversary, your level of fear will grow to the point where you feel like your skin is being stripped from your bones.
James Lee Burke (Creole Belle (Dave Robicheaux, #19))
The young of the town, preoccupied with their own germinating angst, which each possessed in varying degree (though few were ever fully aware of its existence), felt no particular connection to the land, its people, its structures, or its history. As such, they had no inclination to defend its invisible borders from declared enemies within or without. They desired only escape from this small village, which each viewed as an existential prison built upon the antiquated expectations of their parents and their parents’ parents. And because of their invisible bondage, the young of this town were possessed by a quiet rage. But this rage laid torpid and inert within them, dulled to sleep by the tired repetition of nothing happening over and over and over again, day after day after day. This is the story of one of those young people, and the terrible things that happened to her, and the terrible things she did as a result.
P.S. Baber (Cassie Draws the Universe)
... As for me, I taught the lad the real character of a rifle; and well has he paid me for it. I have fought at his side in many a bloody scrimmage; and so long as I could hear the crack of his piece in one ear, and that of the Sagamore in the other, I knew no enemy was on my back. Winters and summers, nights and days, have we roved the wilderness in company, eating of the same dish, one sleeping while the other watched; and afore it shall be said that Uncas was taken to the torment, and I at hand - There is but a single ruler of us all, whatever maybe the color of the skin, and him I call to witness - that before the Mohican boy shall perish for the want of a friend, good faith shall depart the 'arth and 'Kill-deer' become as harmless as the tooting we'pon of the singer!
James Fenimore Cooper (The Last of the Mohicans (The Leatherstocking Tales, #2))
It was such ecstacy to dream, and dream - till you got a bite. A scorpion bite. Then the first duty was to get up out of the grass and kill the scorpion; and the next to bathe the bitten place with alcohol or brandy; and the next to resolve to keep out of the grass in the future. Then came an adjournment to the bedchamber and the pastime of writing up the day's journal with one hand and the destruction of mosquitoes with the other - a whole community of them at a slap. Then, observing an enemy approaching - a hairy tarantula on stilts - why not set the spittoon on him? It is done, and the projecting ends of his paws give a luminous idea of the magnitude of his reach. Then to bed and become a promenade for a centipede with forty-two legs on a side and every foot hot enough to burn a whole through a raw-hide. More soaking with alcohol, and a resolution to examine the bed before entering it, in future. Then wait, and suffer, till all the mosquitoes in the neighborhood have crawled in under the bar, then slip out quickly, shut them in and sleep peacefully on the floor till morning. Meantime, it is comforting to curse the tropics in occasional wakeful intervals.
Mark Twain (Mark Twain in Hawaii: Roughing It in the Sandwich Islands: Hawaii in the 1860s)
Today everyone on our side knows that criminality is not the result of the Algerian's congenital nature nor the configuration of his nervous system. The war in Algeria and wars of national liberation bring out the true protagonists. We have demonstrated that in the colonial situation the colonized are confronted with themselves. They tend to use each other as a screen. Each prevents his neighbor from seeing the national enemy. And when exhausted after a sixteen-hour day of hard work the colonized subject collapses on his mat and a child on the other side of the canvas partition cries and prevents him from sleeping, it just so happens it's a little Algerian. When he goes to beg for a little semolina or a little oil from the shopkeeper to whom he already owes several hundred francs and his request is turned down, he is overwhelmed by an intense hatred and desire to kill—and the shopkeeper happens to be an Algerian. When, after weeks of keeping a low profile, he finds himself cornered one day by the kaid demanding "his taxes," he is not even allowed the opportunity to direct his hatred against the European administrator; before him stands the kaid who excites his hatred—and he happens to be an Algerian.
Frantz Fanon (The Wretched of the Earth)
Let other men gather bright gold to themselves and own many acres of well-ploughed soil, let endless worry trouble them, with enemies nearby, and the peals of the war trumpets driving away sleep: let my moderate means lead me to a quiet life, as long as my fireside glows with endless flame. Let me plant the tender vines at the proper time, tall fruit trees, myself a rustic, with skilled hands:nor let hope fail, but deliver the pile-up fruits, and the rich vintage in overflowing vats, since i worship wherever there's a stump left in the fields, or an old stone at the crossroads, wreathed with flowers: and whatever fruit of mine the new season brings I set as an offering before the god of the fields. --Tibullus cca. 55 BC – 19 BC
Tibullus
We know that Antony pined for Cleopatra months later, though she wound up with all the credit for the affair. As one of her sworn enemies asserted, she did not fall in love with Antony but “brought him to fall in love with her.” In the ancient world too women schemed while men strategized; there was a great gulf, elemental and eternal, between the adventurer and the adventuress. There was one too between virility and promiscuity: Caesar left Cleopatra in Alexandria to sleep with the wife of the king of Mauretania. Antony arrived in Tarsus fresh from an affair with the queen of Cappadocia. The consort of two men of voracious sexual appetite and innumerable sexual conquests, Cleopatra would go down in history as the snare, the delusion, the seductress. Citing her sexual prowess was evidently less discomfiting than acknowledging her intellectual gifts. In the same way it is easier to ascribe her power to magic than to love. We have evidence of neither, but the first can at least be explained; with magic one forfeits rather than loses the game. So Cleopatra has Antony under her thumb, poised to obey her every wish, “not only because of his intimacy with her,” as Josephus has it, “but also because of being under the influence of drugs.” To claim as much is to acknowledge her power, also to insult her intelligence.
Stacy Schiff (Cleopatra)
The Romans, by that means, made pagans out of indigenous people. The moral syntax of the Roman word pagan means having the quality of village life and village mindedness. It means living at a distance from the seat of power and the arbiters of orthodox belief and observance, and living at the shadowy edge of a ploughed field. It designated undomesticated, unbroken bush dwellers, those for whom the light of culture of the eastern Mediterranean kind had not yet dawned. It is a powerful distinction to make, with powerful, enforceable criteria. The Romans didn’t invent pagan, but they did make pagans out of the country people they conquered. Though the word at this time meant something like “those on land unbroken,” the change in meaning to the modern European sense of pagan as “enemy of the true religion” tracks the arc from agricultural practice to systematic ethnic cleansing. Through a programme of shame and systematic desecration, they marginalized traditionalists, drove wedges of privilege between families, rewarded collaborators, confounded and demeaned the local languages, compromised indigenous lifeways. They made another kind of war on the indigenous aptitude for living alongside ancestors. Though certainly not the history many of us were taught to emulate or admire, it is there, stones in the sediment of the Europe that founded America. As the Romans went their civil, ruinous way, they made a point of learning from the newly conquered something of the traditional histories, alliances, and enmities of the area. They learned these enmities not to conclude them but to collude with them and deepen them, to further them, prey upon them, employ them, turning the conquered against the not-yet conquered, holding themselves out as the new, powerful ally who would right ancestral wrongs, securing and obliging and forcing the newly conquered to raise the foreign conqueror to the status of a mysteriously benevolent foreign God. Sleeping with the enemy began in earnest. This is a lesson and example relied upon heavily by Hernando Cortes as he made his ruinous way across Mexico early in the sixteenth century, and it made Cortes a dark legend in the old and new worlds.
Stephen Jenkinson (Come of Age: The Case for Elderhood in a Time of Trouble)
All at once he found his mind drawing a parallel between that destiny and his own existence; all at once questions of life arose before his vision, like owls in an ancient ruin flushed from sleep by a stray ray of sunlight. Somehow he felt pained and grieved at his arrested development, at the check which had taken place in his moral growth, at the weight which appeared to be pressing upon his every faculty. Also gnawing at his heart there was a sense of envy that others should be living a life so full and free, while all the time the narrow, pitiful little pathway of his own existence was being blocked by a great boulder. And in his hesitating soul there arose a torturing consciousness that many sides of his nature had never yet been stirred, that others had never even been touched, and that not one of them had attained complete formation. Yet with this there went an aching suspicion that, buried in his being, as in a tomb, there still remained a moribund element of sweetness and light, and that it was an element which, though hidden in his personality, as a nugget lies lurking in the bowels of the earth, might once have become minted into sterling coin. But the treasure was now overlaid with rubbish--was now thickly littered over with dust. 'Twas as though some one had stolen from him, and besmirched, the store of gifts with which life and the world had dowered him; so that always he would be prevented from entering life's field and sailing across it with the aid of intellect and of will. Yes, at the very start a secret enemy had laid a heavy hand upon him and diverted him from the road of human destiny. And now he seemed to be powerless to leave the swamps and wilds in favour of that road. All around him was a forest, and ever the recesses of his soul were growing dimmer and darker, and the path more and more tangled, while the consciousness of his condition kept awaking within him less and less frequently--to arouse only for a fleeting moment his slumbering faculties. Brain and volition alike had become paralysed, and, to all appearances, irrevocably--the events of his life had become whittled down to microscopical proportions. Yet even with them he was powerless to cope--he was powerless to pass from one of them to another. Consequently they bandied him to and fro like the waves of the ocean. Never was he able to oppose to any event elasticity of will; never was he able to conceive, as the result of any event, a reasoned-out impulse. Yet to confess this, even to himself, always cost him a bitter pang: his fruitless regrets for lost opportunities, coupled with burning reproaches of conscience, always pricked him like needles, and led him to strive to put away such reproaches and to discover a scapegoat.
Ivan Goncharov (Oblomov)
By “crime” I do not mean mere illegality, but instead a category of socially proscribed acts that: (1) threaten or harm other people and (2) violate norms related to justice, personal safety, or human rights, (3) in such a manner or to such a degree as to warrant community intervention (and sometimes coercive intervention). That category would surely include a large number of things that are presently illegal (rape, murder, dropping bricks off an overpass), would certainly not include other things that are presently illegal (smoking pot, sleeping in public parks, nude sunbathing), and would likely also include some things that are not presently illegal (mass evictions, the invasion of Iraq). The point here is that the standards I want to appeal to in invoking the idea of crime are not the state’s standards, but the community’s — and, specifically, the community’s standards as they relate to justice, rights, personal safety, and perhaps especially the question of violence. (...) Because the state uses this protective function to justify its own violence, the replacement of the police institution is not only a goal of social change, but also a means of achieving it. The challenge is to create another system that can protect us from crime, and can do so better, more justly, with a respect for human rights, and with a minimum of bullying. What is needed, in short, is a shift in the responsibility for public safety—away from the state and toward the community.
Kristian Williams (Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America)
Tate won’t like it that we kept the truth from him.” “I’m resigned to that,” Cecily said half-truthfully. “He would never have turned to me, anyway, even if he knew he had mixed blood. I’ve been living on dreams too long already.” “If you go away from him, he’ll follow you,” Leta said unexpectedly. “There’s a tie, a bond, between you that can’t be broken.” “There’s Audrey,” Cecily pointed out. “Honey, there have been other Audreys,” she replied. “He never brought them home or talked about them. They were loose relationships, and not very many at all-never any who were innocent.” “Audrey’s lasted a long time.” Leta searched her eyes. “If he’s sleeping with Audrey, Cecily, why can’t he keep his hands off you?” Cecily’s heart turned over twice. “Wh…what?” “Simple question,” came the droll reply. She grinned at the younger woman’s embarrassment. “When you came in the kitchen that last time you were here, before Tate left, your mouth was swollen and you wouldn’t look straight at him. He was badly shaken. It doesn’t take a mind-reader to know what was going on in my living room. It isn’t like Tate to play games with innocent girls.” “He doesn’t think I am, anymore,” she returned curtly. “I let him think that Colby and I are…very close.” “Uh-oh.” She scowled. “Uh-oh, what?” “The only thing that’s kept him away from you this long is that he didn’t want to take advantage of you,” Leta replied. “If he thinks you’re even slightly experienced, he’ll find a reason not to hold back anymore. You’re playing a dangerous game. Your own love will be your downfall if he puts on the heat. I know. How I know!” Cecily refused to think about it. She’d put Tate out of her mind, and she was going to keep him there for the time being. “I’ll worry about that when I have to,” she said finally. “Now you dry up those tears and drink some more coffee. Then we have to plan strategy. We’re going to take down the enemy by any means possible!
Diana Palmer (Paper Rose (Hutton & Co. #2))
Don't you think Rycca would like to hear about Hadding, the warrior Odin rescued from his enemies? Indeed, so would I for as I recall, the last time I asked about him, you told the story in great haste without the scantiest details." There was a gleam in her eyes that Rycca had come to understand meant she was up to something, but she had no idea what might lurk behind so seemingly innocent a suggestion. Dragon grinned and looked at his brother, who leaned back in his chair and laughed. When Rycca appeared puzzled, Cymbra said, "I confess, when I noticed how attentive you are to Dragon's stories I was reminded of myself. At Wolf's and my wedding feast, I persuaded Dragon to tell a great many tales. He was the soul of patience." "He was?" Wolf interjected. "I was the one with the patience. My dear brother knew perfectly well I was sitting there contemplating various possibilities for doing away with him and he enjoyed every moment of it." "Now how could I have known that, brother?" Dragon challenged. "Just because the wine goblet you were holding was twisted into a very odd shape?" "It was that or your neck, brother," Wolf replied pleasantly. He looked at Rycca reassuringly. "Don't worry, if I hadn't already forgiven him, that sword he gave me would force me to." "It is a magnificent blade," Dragon agreed. "They both are. Every smithy in Christendom is trying to work out what the Moors are doing but..." "It's got something to do with the temperature of the steel," Wolf said. "And with the folding. They fold more than we do, possibly hundreds of times." "Hundreds,really? Then the temperature has to be very high or they couldn't pound that thin. I wonder how much carbon they're adding-" Cymbra sighed. To Rycca, she said, "We might as well retire.They can talk about this for hours." Wolf heard her and laughed. He draped an arm over her chair, pulling her closer. Into her ear, he said something that made the redoubtable Cymbra blush. She cleared her throat. "Oh, well, in that case, you might as well retire, too." Standing up quickly, she took her husband's rugged hand in her much smaller and fairer one. "Good night, Rycca, good night, Dragon. Sleep well." This last was said over her shoulder as she tugged Wolf from the hall. Her obvious intent startled Rycca, who even now could not think herself as being so bold, but it made both the Hakonson brothers laugh. "As you may gather," Dragon said in the aftermath of the couple's departure, "my brother and his wife are happily wed.
Josie Litton (Come Back to Me (Viking & Saxon, #3))
Dear Sawyer and Quin, If you ever read this and I'm gone I want you to know something that has been weighing on me. I watch you two play and it can be so sad sometimes. You two have been best friends since Sawyer's birth. Always inseparable. It's been adorable , but comes with its challenges. I'm worried when I watch you boys. Quinton, you are always driven by your ego. You're strong and talented, but much too determined to beat down everyone in your efforts to be the best. You push yourself to win a competition, then shove it in someone's face. I’ve rarely seen you compliment others, but you always give yourself a pat on the back. You don't play anything for the love of it, you play to win and normally do. I've seen you tear down your brother so many times just to feel good about yourself. You don't have to do that, dear. You don't have to spend your life trying to prove that you're amazing. One day you'll fail and be alone because you've climbed to the top of a pyramid with only enough room for yourself. Don't let it get to that point and if you do, learn humility from your brother. He could do without so much of it. Sawyer, just because you're most often the underdog and the peaceful introspective kid, don't think I'm letting you off the hook. Your humility has become your worst enemy. It's so intense that I wonder if it will be your vice one day, instead of your greatest virtue. It's one thing to believe you are below all men, even when you're not, but it's another thing to be crippled by fear and to no longer try. Sometimes , dear, I think you fear being good at something because you've tasted the bitterness of being the one who comes in last and you don't want to make others feel that way. That's sweet of you and I smile inside when I see you pretending to lose when you race your younger cousins , but if you always let people beat you they may never learn to work hard for something they want. It's okay to win, just win for the right reasons and always encourage those who lose. Oh, and Sawyer, I hope one day you read this. One day when it matters. If so, remember that the bottom of a mountain can be just as lonely as the top. I hope the two of you can learn to climb together one day. As I'm writing this you are trying to climb the big pine tree out back. Quin is at the top, rejoicing in his victory and taunting Sawyer. And Sawyer is at the bottom, afraid to get hurt and afraid to be sad about it. I'm going to go talk to you two separately now. I hope my words mean something. Love you boys, Mom
Marilyn Grey (When the City Sleeps (Unspoken #6))
Man tends to regard the order he lives in as natural. The houses he passes on his way to work seem more like rocks rising out of the earth than like products of human hands. He considers the work he does in his office or factory as essential to the har­monious functioning of the world. The clothes he wears are exactly what they should be, and he laughs at the idea that he might equally well be wearing a Roman toga or medieval armor. He respects and envies a minister of state or a bank director, and regards the possession of a considerable amount of money the main guarantee of peace and security. He cannot believe that one day a rider may appear on a street he knows well, where cats sleep and chil­dren play, and start catching passers-by with his lasso. He is accustomed to satisfying those of his physio­logical needs which are considered private as dis­creetly as possible, without realizing that such a pattern of behavior is not common to all human so­cieties. In a word, he behaves a little like Charlie Chaplin in The Gold Rush, bustling about in a shack poised precariously on the edge of a cliff. His first stroll along a street littered with glass from bomb-shattered windows shakes his faith in the "naturalness" of his world. The wind scatters papers from hastily evacuated offices, papers labeled "Con­fidential" or "Top Secret" that evoke visions of safes, keys, conferences, couriers, and secretaries. Now the wind blows them through the street for anyone to read; yet no one does, for each man is more urgently concerned with finding a loaf of bread. Strangely enough, the world goes on even though the offices and secret files have lost all meaning. Farther down the street, he stops before a house split in half by a bomb, the privacy of people's homes-the family smells, the warmth of the beehive life, the furniture preserving the memory of loves and hatreds-cut open to public view. The house itself, no longer a rock, but a scaffolding of plaster, concrete, and brick; and on the third floor, a solitary white bath­ tub, rain-rinsed of all recollection of those who once bathed in it. Its formerly influential and respected owners, now destitute, walk the fields in search of stray potatoes. Thus overnight money loses its value and becomes a meaningless mass of printed paper. His walk takes him past a little boy poking a stick into a heap of smoking ruins and whistling a song about the great leader who will preserve the nation against all enemies. The song remains, but the leader of yesterday is already part of an extinct past.
Czesław Miłosz (The Captive Mind)
You can’t be in here.” Ian stated it as a fact. Sam sank back onto the bed. He was definitely growing stronger, but standing could be troublesome on shaky legs. The pain of his wound had definitely receded. “Why not?” he asked a little belligerently. “She can’t; it’s impossible. I was standing guard at her door.” Ian’s gaze met Azami’s. “To protect you of course.” “Of course, because there are so many enemies creeping around your halls,” Azami said, her voice soft and pleasant, a musical quality lending innocence and sweetness. Ian’s frown deepened as if he was puzzled. She certainly couldn’t have meant that the way it came out, anyone listening would be certain of it. “Just what are you two doing in here anyway?” he asked, suspicion lending his tone a dark melodrama. He even wiggled his eyebrows like a villain. Sam kept a straight face with difficulty. Ian was a large man with red hair and freckles. He didn’t look in the least bit mean or threatening, even when he tried. “Azami was just telling me how when she left her room to inquire after my health, there was a giant man with carroty hair snoring in the hallway beside her door.” “There was no way to get past me,” Ian insisted. Sam grinned at him. “Are you saying you did fall asleep on the job, then?” “Hell no.” Ian scowled at him. “I was wide awake and she didn’t slap past me.” “You say,” Sam pointed out, his tone mocking as he folded his arms across his chest and leaned back casually, pleased he could tease his friend. “Still, she’s here and that proves you were looking the other way or sleeping, just like that time in Indonesia when we parachuted in and you fell asleep on the way down. I believe that time you got tangled in a very large tree right in the center of the enemies’ camp.” Azami’s lashes fluttered, drawing Sam’s attention. He almost reached out to her, wanting to hold her hand, but she’d mentioned a couple of times she didn’t show affection in public. “You fell asleep while parachuting?” she asked, clearly uncertain whether or not they were joking. Ian shook his head. “I did not. A gust of heavy wind came along and pushed me right into that tree. Gator told everyone I was snoring when he shoved me out of the plane. The entire episode is all vicious fabrication. On the other hand, Sam here, actually did fall asleep while he was driving as we were escaping a very angry drug lord in Brazil.” Azami raised her eyebrow as she turned to Sam for an explanation. Her eyes laughed at him and again he had a wild urge to pull her to him and hold her tight. Primitive urges had never been a part of his makeup until she’d come along; now he figured he was becoming a caveman. Her gaze slid to his face as if she knew what he was thinking—which was probably the case. He flashed a grin at her.
Christine Feehan (Samurai Game (GhostWalkers, #10))
Okay, I’m going to tell you what I think. It’s like this,” he said grimly. “Quit or don’t quit. Take the promotion or not take it. But, if you take the graveyard shift, mark my words, we will eventually—I don’t know how, and I don’t know when—live to regret it.” Without saying another word he walked inside. In bed Alexander let her kiss his hands. He was on his back, and Tatiana sidled up to him naked, kneeling by his side. Taking his hands, she kissed them slowly, digit by digit, knuckle by knuckle, pressing them to her trembling breasts, but when she opened her mouth to speak, Alexander took his hands away. “I know what you’re about to do,” he said. “I’ve been there a thousand times. Go ahead. Touch me. Caress me. Whisper to me. Tell me first you don’t see my scars anymore, then make it all right. You always do, you always manage to convince me that whatever crazy plan you have is really the best for you and me,” he said. “Returning to blockaded Leningrad, escaping to Sweden, Finland, running to Berlin, the graveyard shift. I know what’s coming. Go ahead, I’ll be good to you right back. You’re going to try to make me all right with you staying in Leningrad when I tell you that to save your hard-headed skull you must return to Lazarevo? You want to convince me that escaping through enemy territory across Finland’s iced-over marsh while pregnant is the only way for us? Please. You want to tell me that working all Friday night and not sleeping in my bed is the best thing for our family? Try. I know eventually you’ll succeed.” He was staring at her blonde and lowered head. “Even if you don’t,” he continued, “I know eventually, you’ll do what you want anyway. I don’t want you to do it. You know you should be resigning, not working graveyard—nomenclature, by the way, that I find ironic for more reasons that I care to go into. I’m telling you here and now, the path you’re taking us on is going to lead to chaos and discord not order and accord. It’s your choice, though. This defines you—as a nurse, as a woman, as a wife—pretend servitude. But you can’t fool me. You and I both know what you’re made of underneath the velvet glove: cast iron.” When Tatiana said nothing, Alexander brought her to him and laid her on his chest. “You gave me too much leeway with Balkman,” he said, kissing her forehead. “You kept your mouth shut too long, but I’ve learned from your mistake. I’m not keeping mine shut—I’m telling you right from the start: you’re choosing unwisely. You are not seeing the future. But you do what you want.” Kneeling next to him, she cupped him below the groin into one palm, kneading him gently, and caressed him back and forth with the other. “Yes,” he said, putting his arms under his head and closing his eyes. “You know I love that, your healing stroke. I’m in your hands.” She kissed him and whispered to him, and told him she didn’t see his scars anymore, and made it if not all right then at least forgotten for the next few hours of darkness.
Paullina Simons (The Summer Garden (The Bronze Horseman, #3))
... They're really going to mash the world up this time, the damn fools. When I read that description of the victims of Nagasaki I was sick: "And we saw what first looked like lizards crawling up the hill, croaking. It got lighter and we could see that it was humans, their skin burned off, and their bodies broken where they had been thrown against something." Sounds like something out of a horror story. God save us from doing that again. For the United States did that. Our guilt. My country. No, never again. And then one reads in the papers "Second bomb blast in Nevada bigger than the first! " What obsession do men have for destruction and murder? Why do we electrocute men for murdering an individual and then pin a purple heart on them for mass slaughter of someone arbitrarily labeled "enemy?" Weren't the Russians communists when they helped us slap down the Germans? And now. What could we do with the Russian nation if we bombed it to bits? How could we "rule" such a mass of foreign people - - - we, who don't even speak the Russian language? How could we control them under our "democratic" system, we, who even now are losing that precious commodity, freedom of speech? (Mr. Crockett," that dear man, was questioned by the town board. A supposedly "enlightened" community. All he is is a pacifist. That, it seems, is a crime.) Why do we send the pride of our young men overseas to be massacred for three dirty miles of nothing but earth? Korea was never divided into "North" and "South." They are one people; and our democracy is of no use to those who have not been educated to it. Freedom is not of use to those who do not know how to employ it. When I think of that little girl on the farm talking about her brother - "And he said all they can think of over there is killing those God-damn Koreans." What does she know of war? Of lizard-like humans crawling up a hillside? All she knows is movies and school room gossip. Oh, America's young, strong. So is Russia. And how they can think of atom-bombing each other, I don't know. What will be left? War will come some day now, with all the hothead leaders and articles "What If Women are Drafted?" Hell, I'd sooner be a citizen of Africa than see America mashed and bloody and making a fool of herself. This country has a lot, but we're not always right and pure. And what of the veterans of the first and second world wars? The maimed, the crippled. What good their lives? Nothing. They rot in the hospitals, and we forget them. I could love a Russian boy - and live with him. It's the living, the eating, the sleeping that everyone needs. Ideas don't matter so much after all. My three best friends are Catholic. I can't see their beliefs, but I can see the things they love to do on earth. When you come right down to it, I do believe in the freedom of the individual - but to kill off all the ones who could forge a strong nation? How foolish! Of what good - living and freedom without home, without family, without all that makes life?
Sylvia Plath