Quotes about the night
page 7

“The night is full of mystery. Even when the moon is brightest, secrets hide everywhere. Then the sun rises and its rays cast so many shadows that the day creates more illusion than all the veiled truth of the night.”

Amelia Atwater-Rhodes book Demon in My View

Source: Demon in My View

Truth, Secret, Sun

“In the photograph by my bed my mother is perpetually smiling on me. I guess I have forgiven us both, although sometimes in the night my dreams will take me back to the sadness, and I have to wake up and forgive us again.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees

Sadness, Smile, Dreams, Forgiveness

“If this were a made-up story, it would begin at night, with a storm blowing and owls hooting and rattling noises under the bed.”

Darren Shan book Cirque du Freak

Source: A Living Nightmare

“Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars… Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. book Strength to Love

This passage contains some phrases King later used in "Where Do We Go From Here?" (1967) which has a section below. 1950s, Loving Your Enemies (Christmas 1957) Variant: Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that. Source: Mentioned in "Out of Osama's Death, a Fake Quotation Is Born" by Megan McArdle, The Atlantic (May 2011) http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/05/out-of-osamas-death-a-fake-quotation-is-born/238220/, and widely distributed on twitter http://twitter.com/#!/jmadly/status/65314784136011776 as a quote of King, after the death of Osama bin Laden, the first sentence is one written by Jessica Dovey http://i.imgur.com/cqtjw.jpg on her Facebook page, which became improperly combined by others with genuine statements of King, whom she quoted, and which occur in Strength to Love (1963), Ch. 5 : Loving your enemies, and in Where Do We Go from Here : Chaos or Community? (1967), p. 62. For the full story see "Anatomy of a Fake Quotation" by Megan McArdle, The Atlantic (May 3, 2011) http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/05/anatomy-of-a-fake-quotation/238257/ and for the Facebook version of the quote see Did Martin Luther King, Jr. say that “I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy”? at skeptics.stackexchange.com http://skeptics.stackexchange.com. Context: Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction. Context: Let us move now from the practical how to the theoretical why: Why should we love our enemies? The first reason is fairly obvious. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction. So when Jesus says "love your enemies," he is setting forth a profound and ultimately inescapable admonition. Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies-or else? The chain reaction of evil-Hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars-must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation. Context: I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

Peaceful, Love, Hate, Star

“B. O. B. and I have a longtime understanding - when we're done with each other, we know exactly which one of us has been used, and it isn't me. Good night Gideon.”

Sylvia Day book Bared to You

Source: Bared to You

Understanding

“I had a good-talking candle last night in my bedroom. I was very tired but I wanted somebody to be with me, so I lit a candle and listened to its comfortable voice of light until I was asleep.”

Richard Brautigan (1935–1984) American novelist, poet, and short story writer

Light

“No trouble ever got fixed late at night," he said. "Midnight is for regrets.”

Holly Black book Red Glove

Source: Red Glove

“The heights by great men reached and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upward in the night.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

The Ladder of St. Augustine, st. 10.
Source: Good Poems for Hard Times

Back To Work, Men

“So, what, you just decided to sack out here and seduce me when I walked in the door? Home from spending the night at my boyfriend's? After having sex with him that could go in the Guinness Book of Records?”

Charlaine Harris book Dead Reckoning

Source: Dead Reckoning

Books, Sex, Home

“I am the blue-lidded daughter of Sunset; I am the naked brilliance of the voluptuous night-sky.”

Aleister Crowley book The Book of the Law

Source: The Book of the Law (1904)

Daughters

“As the water pounded on my back, I reflected that I must be pretty simple. It didn't take much to make me happy. A long night with a dead guy had done the trick.”

Charlaine Harris book Dead to the World

Source: Dead to the World

Guy, Water, Dead, Happiness

“Due to attachment, anger, and foolishness, I have committed numberless mistakes in speech, deed and thought. I bow my head and repent. I vow from today to begin anew, to live day and night in mindfulness, and not to repeat my previous mistakes.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Anger

“Only do not forget, if I wake up crying
it's only because in my dream I'm a lost child

hunting through the leaves of the night for your hands….”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Source: 100 Love Sonnets

Dreams, Cry, Forgetting

“It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing.”

Ernest Hemingway book The Sun Also Rises

Source: The Sun Also Rises

“But just suddenly I really, really needed to see you again right that minute, that night.”

Daniel Handler book Why We Broke Up

Source: Why We Broke Up

“The streets were dark with something more then night.”

Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) Novelist, screenwriter

“Whipped cream isn't whipped cream at all if it hasnt been whipped with whips, just like poached eggs isn't poached eggs unless it's been stolen in the dead of the night.”

Roald Dahl book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Source: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Dead

“They've done it before and they'll do it again and when they do it -- seems that only the children weep. Good night.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Variant: I don't know, but they did it. They've done it before and they did it tonight and they'll do it again and when they do it--seems that only children weep.
Source: To Kill a Mockingbird

Children

“The night you gave me my birthday party… you were a young Lieutenant and I was a fragrant phantom, wasn't I? And it was a radiant night, a night of soft conspiracy and the trees agreed that it was all going to be for the best.”

Zelda Fitzgerald (1900–1948) Novelist, wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald

Birthday, Tree

“No one will ever forget that night, and what it meant for this country. But I will never forget the man and what he meant to me.”

Alan Moore V for Vendetta

Source: V for Vendetta

Country, Forgetting

“I'd watch your mouth", he said, tilting his head as he looked at my ID."The last lunker who laughed at her picture spent the night in the emergency room with a drink umbrella jammed up his nose".”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Drink

“I have only one friend, and that is echo. Why is it my friend? Because I love my sorrow, and echo does not take it away from me. I have only one confidant, and that is the silence of night. Why is it my confidant? Because it remains silent.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Source: Entweder / Oder

Love, Confidence, Silence

“Poetry is a rich, full-bodied whistle, cracked ice crunching in pails, the night that numbs the leaf, the duel of two nightingales, the sweet pea that has run wild, Creation’s tears in shoulder blades.”

Borís Pasternak (1890–1960) Russian writer

LIFE magazine (13 June 1960)

Tear

“The only reason there's such a thing as a morning in the first place is to keep night and afternoon from bumping into each other.
-Kheldar”

David Eddings book King of the Murgos

Source: King of the Murgos

“The main thing is to write
for the joy of it. Cultivate a work-lust
that imagines its haven like your hands at night
dreaming the sun in the sunspot of a breast.
You are fasted now, light-headed, dangerous.
Take off from here.”

Seamus Heaney book Station Island

Source: Station Island

Dreams, Imagination, Light, Sun

“If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and adore.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson book Nature

Source: 1830s, Nature http://www.emersoncentral.com/nature.htm (1836), Ch. 1, Nature Context: If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore, and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! Context: If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore, and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.

Star, Appearance

“I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.”

Ernest Hemingway book A Moveable Feast

As quoted in Reporting (1964) by Lillian Ross
Source: A Moveable Feast

Spring, Learning, Parting

“The moon was a sharply defined crescent and the sky was perfectly clear. The stars shone with such fierce, contained brilliance that it seemed absurd to call the night dark.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi

Star

“The night is alive with stars, and when I lie down and look up, I get lost up there. I feel like I’m falling, but upward, into the abyss of sky above me.”

Markus Zusak (1975) Australian author

Source: I Am the Messenger

Lie, Feeling, Star

“I read my books at night, like that, under the quilt with the overheated reading lamp. Reading all those good lines while suffocating. It was magic.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Books, Reading

“He looks at me in such a way that I know for sure-he's never looked at another girl quite like this.
And the I'm in his arms, and we're hugging and kissing, and we're both shaking, because we both know-this is the night we become real.”

Jenny Han book P.S. I Still Love You

Source: P.S. I Still Love You

Way, Girl, Kiss

“You know, the condom is the glass slipper of our generation. You slip it on when you meet a stranger. You dance all night, then you throw it away.”

Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club

Source: Fight Club

Dance

“I've never really understood why people sleep. Wasting a third of your life and becoming vulnerable for almost 8 hours every night. Doesn't seem very appealing to me.”

Banksy pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, and painter

Life, People, Sleep

“Shades of a new morning standing still are worse than the shades of night. At least a person can understand the dark of night. It’s not fickle like the day.”

Sarah E. Wright (1929–2009) American writer

Source: This Child's Gonna Live

Understanding, Personality

“There was no answer, except the general answer life gives to all the most complex and insoluble questions. That answer is: one must live for the needs of the day, in other words, become oblivious. To become oblivious in dreams was impossible now, at least till night-time; it was impossible to return to that music sung by carafe-women; and so one had to become oblivious in the dreams of life.”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Pt. 1, ch. 2
Source: Anna Karenina (1875–1877; 1878)

Life, Women, Dreams, Music

“You get what you give, but also what you're willing to take. The night before, I'd offered up my hand. Now, if I held on, there was no telling what it was possible to recieve in return.”

Sarah Dessen Lock and Key

Source: Lock and Key

“This last night we tear into each other, as if to wound, as if to find the key to everything before morning.”

Michael Ondaatje book Coming Through Slaughter

Source: Coming Through Slaughter

Tear

“People think about who they are in the stillest hour of the night. I carry this thought, the child's
mystery and terror of this thought, I feel this immensity in my soul every second of my life.”

Don DeLillo book Cosmopolis

Source: Cosmopolis

Life, People, Feeling, Soul

“Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?”

Jack Kerouac book On the Road

Part Two, Ch. 3
On the Road (1957)

Cars

“These days the nights and mornings have a tendency to bleed into one another.”

David Nicholls book One Day

Source: One Day

“Work every day. No matter what has happened the day or night before, get up and bite on the nail.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

“Summer is only the unfulfilled promise of spring, a charlatan in place of the warm balmy nights I dream of in April. It’s a sad season of life without growth…It has no day.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Life, Sadness, Dreams, Spring

“There's always the dinner rolls," said Will, pointing to a covered basket. "Though I warn you, they're as hard as stones. You could use them to kill black beetles, if any beetles bother you in the middle of the night.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

“This was not my moment to be seeking romance and (as day follows night) to further complicate my already knotty life. This was my moment to look for the kind of healing and peace that can only come from solitude.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

Life, Peace, Solitude

“I kept having dreams all night. I thought they were touching me with their fingers. But dreams don't have fingers, they have fists, so it must have been scorpions.”

Roberto Bolaño book The Savage Detectives

Source: The Savage Detectives

Dreams

“I want to keep my dreams, even bad ones, because without them, I might have nothing all night long.”

Joseph Heller (1923–1999) American author

Dreams

“It has always been a happy thought to me that the creek runs on all night, new every minute, whether I wish it or know it or care, as a closed book on a shelf continues to whisper to itself its own inexhaustible tale.”

Annie Dillard book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Source: Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Books, Happiness

“It looked as if a night of dark intent was coming, and not only a night, an age. Someone had better be prepared for rage…”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

" Once by the Pacific http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/once-by-the-pacific-2/" (1928) General sources Context: You could not tell, and yet it looked as if The shore was lucky in being backed by cliff, The cliff in being backed by continent; It looked as if a night of dark intent Was coming, and not only a night, an age. Someone had better be prepared for rage. There would be more than ocean-water broken Before God's last Put out the Light was spoken.

Age, Rage

“I found a sad little fairy
Beneath the shade of a paper tree.
I know a sad little fairy
Who was blown away by the wind one night.”

Khaled Hosseini book And the Mountains Echoed

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

Sadness, Tree

“we would be together and have our books and at night be warm in bed together with the windows open and the stars bright.”

Ernest Hemingway book A Moveable Feast

Variant: Where we would be together and have our books and at night be warm in bed together with the windows open and the stars bright. That was where we could go.
Source: A Moveable Feast

Books, Star

“Writing is a deeper sleep than death.
Just as one wouldn't pull a corpse from its grave,
I can't be dragged from my desk at night.”

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

Death, Sleep

“A mob's always made up of people, no matter what. Mr. Cunningham was part of a mob last night, but he was still a man. Every mob in every little Southern town is always made up of people you know--doesn't say much for them, does it?”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Source: To Kill a Mockingbird

People, Parting

“If you've ever wondered where your dreams come from when you go to sleep at night, just look around. This is where they are made.”

Brian Selznick book The Invention of Hugo Cabret

Source: The Invention of Hugo Cabret

Dreams, Sleep

“I was a newborn vampire, weeping at the beauty of the night.”

Anne Rice book Interview with the Vampire

Source: Interview with the Vampire

Beauty

“Wild nights are my glory!”

Madeleine L'Engle book A Wrinkle in Time

Source: A Wrinkle in Time

“There is no stillness like the quiet of the first cold nights in the fall.”

Carson McCullers (1917–1967) American writer

Source: The Ballad of the Sad Café and Other Stories

“The Night World isn't a place. It's all around us. The creatures of Night World are beautiful and deadly and irresitable to humans. Your best friend could be one-so could your crush.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

World, Beauty

“I like it where it gets dark at night, and if you want noise, you have to make it yourself.”

H. Beam Piper (1904–1964) American science fiction writer

Source: Fuzzies and Other People

“On the way out Jeremiah turned around and danced a quick jig for me and i couldn't help it, I laughed. Over his shoulder Conrad said, "Good night Belly."

And that was it. I was in love”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: The Summer I Turned Pretty

Love, Way, Help, Dance

“Want to come back to the morgue with me after lunch? (Tate)
I shudder at the thought of the pickup line you must have used the night you met LaShonda. Come with me, baby, and see my collection of stiffs. (Simone)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Dream Chaser

Baby

“The night is the hardest time to be alive and 4am knows all my secrets.”

Poppy Z. Brite (1967) Novelist, short story writer, food writer

Secret, Time

“I don't know how I could sleep at night, not knowing I was surrounded by a thousand other sleeping, dreaming souls. - pg 120, Jem to Tessa & Will”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

Dreams, Soul, Sleep

“Got tight on absinthe last night. Did knife tricks.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

“The night is mine, my own time, to do with it as I will, as long as I am quiet. As long as I don't move. As long as I lie still. The difference betweenand. Lay is always passive.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

Lie, Time

“dissonance, n.

Nights when I need to sleep and you can't. Days when I want to talk to you and you won't. Hours when every noise you make interferes with my silence. Weeks when there is a buzzing in the air, and we both pretend we don't here it.”

David Levithan The Lover's Dictionary

Source: The Lover's Dictionary

Sleep, Silence

“When the dawn was still long hours away, bad thoughts took on flesh and began to walk. In the middle of the night thoughts became zombies.”

Stephen King book Under the Dome

Source: Under the Dome

“I couldn’t remember the last time I had stayed up into the squeaky hours of the night because I couldn’t put a book down, and that was a tragedy.”

Shannon Hale (1974) American fantasy novelist

Books, Time

“Jem is nothing but goodness. That he struck you last night only shows how capable you are of driving even saints to madness.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

Madness

“At night too, she puzzled the mystery of her desperate need of kindness. As other girls prayed for handsomeness in a lover, or for wealth, or for power, or for poetry, she had prayed fervently: let him be kind.”

Anaïs Nin book A Spy in the House of Love

Source: A Spy in the House of Love

Girl, Lovers, Wealth

“Yeah, the whole family knows. It's no big deal. One night at dinner I said, 'Mom, you know the forbidden love that Spock has for Kirk? Well, me too.' It was easier for her to understand that way.”

Holly Black (1971) American children's fiction writer

Source: Tithe

Love, Family, Way, Moms

“We make families of our own, Travis whispered in my arms on the last night we spent together. It starts with you and me and then it spreads. And whatever happens, there’ll always be a part of me that’s part of you. No matter what.”

Steve Kluger book Almost Like Being in Love

Source: Almost Like Being in Love

Family, Parting

“I remember discussions withwhich went through many hours till very late at night and ended almost in despair; and when at the end of the discussion I went alone for a walk in the neighbouring park I repeated to myself again and again the question:?”

Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976) German theoretical physicist

Question, Despair

“Her face was fair and pretty, with eyes like two bits of night sky, each with a star dissolved in the blue.”

George MacDonald book The Princess and the Goblin

Source: The Princess and the Goblin

Star

“I know what to do with my life. I just don't know what to do with this one night.”

Joshua Ferris Then We Came to the End

Source: Then We Came to the End

Life

“And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares, that infest the day,
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

St. 11.
The Day is Done (1845)

Music

““I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend ... if you have one."
— George Bernard Shaw, playwright (to Winston Churchill)
"Cannot possibly attend first night; will attend second, if there is one."
— Churchill's response”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

“Somewhere inside me there’ll always be the person I am to-night”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book Tender Is the Night

Source: Tender Is the Night

Personality

“I read and walked for miles at night along the beach, writing bad blank verse and searching endlessly for someone wonderful who would step out of the darkness and change my life. It never crossed my mind that that person could be me.”

Anna Quindlen (1952) journalist, Novelist

Source: Living Out Loud

Life, Search, Change, Reading

“I didn't want to kiss you goodbye — that was the trouble — I wanted to kiss you good night — and there's a lot of difference.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Kiss

“I do this so you cannot help but hear. A wise man views a moonless night with fear.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Wise Man's Fear

Source: The Wise Man's Fear

Fear, Help

“We fumed and screamed in our mountain nook, mad drunken Americans in the mighty land. We were on the roof of America and all we could do was yell, I guess--across the night…”

Jack Kerouac book On the Road

Source: On the Road

Mountain, Madness

“I’ve named everything that I’ve ever owned. Real or inanimate, I have to give it a first and last name. Everything in my apartment comes alive at night.”

Amy Sedaris (1961) American comedian

“What I saw wasn't a ghost. It was simply--myself. I can never forget how terrified I was that night, and whenever I remember it, this thought always springs to mind: that the most frightening thing in the world is our own self. What do you think?”

Haruki Murakami (1949) Japanese author, novelist

Source: Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman: 24 Stories

World, Spring, Thinking, Forgetting

“My luck is getting worse and worse. Last night, for instance, I was mugged by a Quaker.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

“It's the hour when night breaks away from the day, my dove, let me go.”

Jean Genet The Balcony

Source: The Balcony

“Black is the color of night. White is the true color of death”

Melissa de la Cruz Blue Bloods

Source: Blue Bloods

Death, Color

“The lions sing and the hills take flight.
The moon by day, and the sun by night.
Blind woman, deaf man, jackdaw fool.
Let the Lord of Chaos rule.”

Robert Jordan Lord of Chaos

Chant from a children’s game heard in Great Arvalon, the Fourth Age
(15 October 1994)
Source: Lord of Chaos

Fools, Singing, Sun

“To be a poet in a destitute time means: to attend, singing, to the trace of the fugitive gods. This is why the poet in the time of the world's night utters the holy.”

Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) German philosopher

God, World, Singing, Time

“You know how sometimes you lie in bed at night and think, “What if the law of gravity just wears out and lets go and I drift into space?” Does that ever make you anxious?”

Elaine May (1932) American screenwriter, film director, actress, and comedian

Lie, Law, Thinking

“On bisexuality: It immediately doubles your chances for a date on Saturday night.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

The earliest source located is here http://books.google.com/books?id=kd41AQAAIAAJ&q=bisexuality#search_anchor, in the sidebar "Quotations According to Woody Allen" http://books.google.com/books?id=kd41AQAAIAAJ&q=%22quotations+according%22#search_anchor which appeared alongside the New York Times article "Everything You Wanted to Know About Woody Allen at 40" by Mel Gussow, 1 December 1975, page 33. Full text also available in Lakeland Ledger, 25 December 1975 http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=pUdNAAAAIBAJ&sjid=4foDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6578%2C6650273 on google news. Unsourced variant: "Bisexuality immediately doubles your chances for a date on Saturday night."

Chance