The Midnight Bargain Quotes

The storm has brought Ulla to the cold shelter of the northern islands, to the darkened caves and flat black pools where she remains to this day, waiting for the lonely, the ambitious, the clever, the frail, for all those willing to strike a bargain. She never waits for long.

I hadn't bargained for this. I didn't think it would be like this - shabby clothes, worn-out shoes, circles under your eyes, your hair getting straight and lanky, the way people look at you. ... I didn't think it would be like this

If I can only use my magic when you deem it safe, does that magic belong to me, or you?

People are prepared for everything except for the fact that beyond the darkness of their blindness there is a great light. They are prepared to go on breaking their backs plowing the same old field until the cows come home without seeing, until they stub their toes on it, that there is a treasure buried in that field rich enough to buy Texas. They are prepared for a God who strikes hard bargains but not for a God who gives as much for an hour’s work as for a day’s. They are prepared for a mustard-seed kingdom of God no bigger than the eye of a newt but not for the great banyan it becomes with birds in its branches singing Mozart. They are prepared for the potluck supper at First Presbyterian but not for the marriage supper of the Lamb, and when the bridegroom finally arrives at midnight with vine leaves in his hair, they turn up with their lamps to light him on his way all right only they have forgotten the oil to light them with and stand there with their big, bare, virginal feet glimmering faintly in the dark.

He woke one morning tantalized by an idea: if he could catch the orchard trees motionless for one second -- for half of one second -- then none of it would have happened. The kitchen door would bang open and in his father would walk, red-faced and slapping his hands and exclaiming about some newly whelped pup. Childish, Edgar knew, but he didn't care. The trick was to not focus on any single part of any tree, but to look through them all toward a point in the air. But how insidious a bargain he'd made. Even in the quietest moment some small thing quivered and the tableau was destroyed. How many afternoons slipped away like that? How many midnights standing in the spare room, watching the trees shiver in the moonlight? Still he watched, transfixed. Then, blushing because it was futile and silly, he forced himself to walk away. When he blinked, an afterimage of perfect stillness. To think it might happen when he wasn't watching. He turned back before he reached the door. Through the window glass, a dozen trees strummed by the winter wind, skeletons dancing pair-wise, fingers raised to heaven. Stop it, he told himself. Just stop. And watched some more.

Adelina, one of them says. I know it is Compasia, the angel of Empathy. There has been another bargain. I don’t understand, I reply. They are so tall, and I am so small. There is a feeling of light under my body, of wind and stars. There is the disintegration of my form. Then, there is sky. You will.

Would it make a difference if I were bothered? I have some other skills not usually seen in ladies: swimming, as I told you, and how to shoot a gun. I can bargain down a butcher to within an inch of his life. I know how to make soap and how to put a bill collector off. I can do mending but not embroidery, can drive a cart but not ride a horse, know how to grow cabbages and carrots and even make them into a nice soup, but I haven’t the least idea how to trellis roses.

Harriman’s was precisely the kind of bookstore Beatrice sought every time she was in a new town: the ones run by people who couldn’t bear to throw books away no matter what was inside the covers, so long as they could be stacked and shelved and housed.

Me, I hated Suits. Loathed them. Because when you’re a rock star and make a crap ton of money, everyone wants a piece of the pie. A pie you baked. With ingredients you bought. None of the Suits had given a shit about me when I sat, day in and day out, outside King’s Cross tube station with Tania, my acoustic Tatay, and played, and begged, and shoved demos into people’s hands just to watch them slam-dunking them to the nearest bin. None of the Suits were there when I knocked on doors in the pouring rain, and pleaded in the bitter snow, and bargained, and argued, to get myself heard. They also weren’t there when I got booed in Glastonbury three years in a row opening for bigger bands, or when mostly-empty beer cans were thrown my way for a good laugh, or when a drunk girl puked on my only pair of shoes trying to tell me I sounded like a Morrissey knockoff.

YOU WISH TO STRIKE A BARGAIN, and so you come north, until the land ends, and you can go no farther. You stand on the rocky coast and face the water, see the waves break upon two great islands, their coastlines black and jagged. Maybe you pay a local to help you find a boat and a safe place to launch it. You wrap yourself in sealskins to keep the cold and wet away, chew whale fat to keep your mouth moist beneath the hard winter sun. Somehow you cross that long stretch of stone-colored sea and find the strength to scale the angry cliff face, breath tight in your chest, fingers nearly numb in your gloves. Then, tired and trembling, you traverse the island and find the single crescent of gray sand beach. You make your way to a circle of rocks, to a little tide pool, your wish burning like a sun in your mortal heart. You come as so many have before—lonely, troubled, sick with avarice. A thousand desperate wishes have been spoken on these shores, and in the end they are all the same: Make me someone new.

We should do this on computer," she said, chalking it carefully for the eighty-ninth time. "With a drawing pad." "Nonsense. You're lucky I don't make you inscribe it with a stylus on a wax tablet, like the old days," Myrnin snorted. "Children. Spoiled children, always playing with the shinest toy." "Computers are more efficient!" "I can perform calculations on that abacus faster than you can solve them on your computer," Myrnin sneered. Okay, now he was pissing her off. "Prove it!" "What?" "Prove it." She backed off on her tone, but Myrnin wasn't looking angry; he was looking strangely interested. He stared at her for a second in silence, and then he got the biggest, oddest smile she'd ever seen on the face of a vampire. "All right," he said. "A contest. Computer versus abacus." She wasn't at all sure now that was a good idea, even if it had been her idea, essentially. "Um -- what do I win?" More importantly, what do I lose? Making bargains was a way of life in Morganville, and it was a lot like making deals with man-eating fairies. Better be careful what you ask for. "Your freedom," he said solemnly. His eyes were wide and guileless, his too-young face shining with honesty. "I will tell Amelie you were not suited to the work. She'll let you go about your life, such as it is." Good prize. Too good. Claire swallowed hard. "And if I lose?" "Then I eat you," Myrnin said.

When you said our engagement is subject to your family’s approval,” he ventured, “I hope you don’t expect it to be unanimous.” “I would like it to be. But it’s not a requirement.” “Good,” he said. “Because even if I manage to talk Trenear into it, debating with West will be like tilting at windmills.” She looked up at him alertly. “Was Don Quixote one of the books you read?” “To my regret, yes.” “You didn’t like it?” Tom gave her a sardonic glance. “A story about a middle-aged lunatic who vandalizes private property? Hardly. Although I agree with Cervantes’ point that chivalry is no different from insanity.” “That’s not at all what he was saying.” Cassandra regarded him ruefully. “I’m beginning to suspect you’ve missed the point of every novel you’ve read so far.” “Most of them are pointless. Like the one about the French bread thief who violated his parole—” “Les Misérables?” “Yes. It took Victor Hugo fourteen hundred pages to say, ‘Never let your daughter marry a radical French law student.’ Which everyone already knows.” Her brows lifted. “Is that the lesson you took from the novel?” “No, of course not,” he said promptly, reading her expression. “The lesson of Les Misérables is …” Tom paused cagily before taking his best guess. “… ‘It’s usually a mistake to forgive your enemies.’” “Not even close.” Amusement lurked at the corners of her mouth. “I have my work cut out for me, it seems.” “Yes,” Tom said, encouraged by the remark. “Take me on. Influence me for the better. It will be a public service.” “Hush,” Cassandra begged, touching his lips with her fingers, “before I change my mind.” “You can’t,” Tom said, knowing he was taking the words more seriously than she’d intended. But the very idea was like an ice pick to the heart. “That is, don’t. Please. Because I …” He couldn’t break their shared gaze. Her blue eyes, as dark as a cloudless midnight, seemed to stare right inside him, gently and inexorably prying out the truth. “… need you,” he finally muttered. Shame caused his face to sting as if from spark burns. He couldn’t believe what he’d just said, how weak and unmanly it had sounded. But the strange thing was … Cassandra didn’t seem to think less of him for it. In fact, she was looking at him with more certainty now, nodding slightly, as if his mortifying admission had just cemented the bargain. Not for the first time, Tom reflected there was no understanding women. 

The Horned Master governs the generative powers of the kingdom of the beasts, the raw forces of life, death and renewal which sustains the natural world.” Nigel A Jackson. The Call of the Horned Piper: 38 The Art and Craft of the Witches is found at the crossroad, where this world and the other side meets and all possibility become reality. This simple fact is often forgotten as one rushes to the Sabbath or occupies oneself with formalities of ritual. The cross marks the four quarters, the four elements, the path of Sun, Moon and Stars. The cross was fused or confused with the Greek staurus, meaning ‘rod’, ‘rood’ or ‘pole’. Various forms of phallic worship are simply, veneration for the cosmic point of possibility and becoming. It is at the crossroads we will gain all or lose all and it is natural that it is at the crossroads we gain perspective. The crossroad is a place of choice, the spirit-denizens of the crossroads are said to be tricky and unreliable and it is of course where we find the Devil. One of the most famous legends of recent times concerns the blues-man Robert Johnson (1911– 1938). He claimed that, one night, just before midnight he had gone to the crossroads. He took out his guitar and played, whereupon a big black guy appeared, tuned his guitar, played a song backwards and handed it back.2 This incident altered Johnson’s playing and his finest and most everlasting compositions were the fruit of the few years of life left to him. This legend tells us how he needed to bury himself at the crossroads, offering himself to the powers dwelling there. Business done with the Devil is said to give him the upper hand. The ill omens and malefica associated with such deals is present in Johnson’s story. He got fame and women, but he died less than three years later before he reached thirty. His body was found poisoned at a crossroads, the murderer’s identity a mystery. Around the Mississippi no less than three tombs carry the name of Robert Leroy Johnson. The image of the Devil remains one of threat, blessing, beauty and opportunity. Where we find the Devil we find danger, unpredictability and chaos. If he offers a deal we know we are in for a complicated bargain. The Devil says that change is good, that we need movement in order to progress. His world is about cunning and ordeal entwined like the serpents of past and future on the pole of ascent. It is to the crossroads we go to make decisions. It is at the crossroads we set the course for the journey. It is at the crossroads we confront ourselves and realize our

Kate believed, with all her heart, that she and Samuel could build a happy life together. But when he’d made that bargain with Evan last night, he revealed his own doubts. He’d passed her into someone else’s keeping, the same way he’d left her at Margate two decades ago. He doubted his own worth. And he didn’t believe her when she said she’d give up everything for him. She had run out of ways to convince him with words.

:The great bargain is complete. You are my ally, and I am yours.

I love you. And if I have to choose between you, fully within your destiny, or a son to continue the traditions that depend on keeping you diminished, I choose you.

That you are your own person, and love needs to be free, or else it’s just ownership.

with light. A doorway in the back led to a half bath. On a cot against the far wall, his son, Evan, reclined, one arm thrown over his back, the other attached to a support beam by a wrist manacle and chain. His son’s wrist was raw where he’d struggled against the metal cuff. With the aid of the sedative Nathan had slipped him, Evan was sleeping deeply. A sliver of guilt sliced through Nathan. Keeping his son prisoner was the hardest thing he’d ever done, but no one ever said parenting was easy. A father often had to make unpopular decisions for his child. Someday, Evan might forgive him. But as long as the boy remained healthy—and able to sleep—Nathan could live with the consequences. Nothing mattered more than his son. Modern medicine had no cure for the disease that waited in Evan’s genes. Nathan would follow in his uncle’s footsteps and try the old way. As his Druid ancestors had bargained with the gods to repel the Romans from the shores of Britain, he would make a deal for his and Evan’s futures. No sacrifice was too great. Nathan would walk through fire to save his son. He watched, mesmerized, as Evan snored. His son was as yet unaffected by the sickness. Once afflicted, sedatives and sleeping aids only worsened the condition. Nathan should know. In the beginning of his illness, his uncle had been prescribed every known tranquilizer. Nathan thanked the gods he’d had the foresight to accumulate the medication.

of his glass throne. After a moment of silence—during which Chaol wondered if a castle spy had somehow been looking through the keyhole when Celaena touched him—the king spoke. “Princess Nehemia needs to be watched.” Of all the things the king could have said, this was not what Chaol had expected. But he kept his face blank and did not question the words that implied so much. “Her … influence is starting to be felt in these halls. And I am beginning to wonder if perhaps the time has come to remove her back to Eyllwe. I know that we already have some men watching her, but I also received word that there was an anonymous threat on her life.” Questions roared through him, along with a rising sense of dread. Who had threatened her? What had Nehemia said or done to warrant the threat? Chaol stiffened. “I haven’t heard anything about that.” The king smiled. “No one has. Not even the princess herself. It seems she’s made some enemies outside the palace as well.” “I’ll have extra guards watch her rooms and patrol her wing of the castle. I’ll alert her immediately of—” “There is no need to alert her. Or anyone.” The king gave him a pointed look. “She might try to use the fact that someone wants her dead as a bargaining chip—might try to make herself into a martyr of sorts. So tell your men to stay quiet.” He didn’t think Nehemia would do that, but Chaol kept his mouth shut. He’d tell his men to be discreet. And he wouldn’t tell the princess—or Celaena. Just because he was friendly with Nehemia, just because she was Celaena’s friend, it didn’t change anything. While he knew that Celaena would be furious that he didn’t tell her, he was the Captain of the Guard. He had fought and sacrificed nearly as much as Celaena had to get to this position. He’d let her get too close by asking her to dance—he’d let

Marry me, and I’ll restore Ramsay House. I’ll turn it into a palace. We’ll consider it part of your bride-price.” “My what?” “A Romany tradition. The groom pays a sum to the bride’s family before the wedding. Which means I’ll also settle Leo’s accounts in London—” “He still owes you money?” “Not to me. Other creditors.” “Oh, no,” Amelia said, her stomach dropping. “I’ll take care of you and your household,” Cam continued with relentless patience. “Clothes, jewelry, horses, books … school for Beatrix … a season in London for Poppy. The best doctors for Winnifred. She can go to any clinic in the world.” A calculated pause. “Wouldn’t you like to see her well again?” “That’s not fair,” she whispered. “In return, all you have to do is give me what I want.” His hand came up to her wrist, sliding along the line of her arm. A ticklish pleasure ran beneath the layers of silk and wool. Amelia fought to steady her voice. “I would feel as if I’d made a bargain with the devil.” “No, Amelia.” His voice was dark velvet. “Just with me.” “I’m not even certain what it is you want.” Cam’s head lowered over hers. “After last night, I find that hard to believe.” “You could get that from countless other women. F-far more cheaply, I might add, and with much less trouble.” “I want it from you. Only you.

March 3, 1938, he strode across the auditorium, bowed to the principal, and accepted his high school diploma. Harry was among the youngest nisei in Sanyō’s graduating class. Harry had kept his end of the bargain. Now his mother was obligated to keep hers.