Daylight Quotes (page 2)
This commonplace cycle of falling asleep and waking, in darkness, under private cover, with another creature, a pale soft tender mammal, putting faces together in a ritual of affection, briefly settled in the eternal necessities of warmth, comfort, safety, crossing limbs to draw nearer - a simple daily consolation, almost too obvious, easy to forget by daylight.
Ian Mcewan
I used to have a cat, an old fighting tom, who would jump through the open window by my bed in the middle of the night and land on my chest. I'd half-awaken. He'd stick his skull under my nose and purr, stinking of urine and blood. Some nights he kneaded my bare chest with his front paws, powerfully, arching his back, as if sharpening his claws, or pummeling a mother for milk. And some mornings I'd wake in daylight to find my body covered with paw prints in blood; I looked as though I'd been...
Annie Dillard
To save myself, I would try to summon up a vision of Mattie, but I could not see her. I could not imagine her. Some nights in the midst of this loneliness I swung among the scattered stars at the end of the thin thread of faith alone. And then I would wake up and be in awe to see the daylight coming and my old familiar workaday life taking shape again in the dear world. Coherence and clarity returned. I could imagine myself again. I could imagine Mattie Chatham. I could imagine Port William.
Wendell Berry
I think that love is stronger than habits or circumstances. I think it is possible to keep yourself for someone for a long time, and still remember why you were waiting when she comes at last.... I would enter your sleep if I could, and guard you there, and slay the thing that hounds you, as I would if it had the courage to face me in fair daylight. But I cannot come in unless you dream of me.
Peter S. Beagle
He rode out in the dark long before daylight and he rode the sun up and he rode it down again. In the oncoming years a terrible drought struck west Texas. He moved on. There was no work in that country anywhere. Pasture gates stood open and sand drifted in the roads and after a few years it was rare to see stock of any kind and he rode on. Days of the world. Years of the world. Till he was old.
Cormac McCarthy
San Narciso was a name; an incident among our climatic records of dreams and what dreams became among our accumulated daylight, a moment’s squall-line or tornado’s touchdown among the higher, more continental solemnities—storm-systems of group suffering and need, prevailing winds of affluence. There was the true continuity, San Narciso had no boundaries. No one knew yet how to draw them. She had dedicated herself, weeks ago, to making sense of what Inverarity had left behind, never suspecting...
Thomas Pynchon
And he will also find the little god whom girls like best: beside the well he lies, still, with his eyes shut. Verily, in bright daylight he fell asleep, the sluggard! Did he chase after the butterflies too much?... He may cry and weep - but he is laughable even when he weeps. And with tears in his eyes he shall ask you for a dance and I myself will sing a song for his dance: a dancing and mocking song on the spirit of gravity... (p.108 - The Dancing Song)
Friedrich Nietzsche
Haunted. Gulp down your wine, old friends of mine, Roar through the darkness, stamp and sing. And lay ghost hands on everything, But leave the noonday's warm sunshine. To living lads for mirth and wine. I met you suddenly down the street, Strangers assume your phantom faces, You grin at me from daylight places, Dead, long dead, I'm ashamed to greet. Dead men down the morning street.
Robert Graves