Quotes About Darkness

Yes, she still smelled a bit of night funk, but that was fine. Sometimes detectives smell like night funk.

The road was dark, edged with trees. Looking up, he could see a few leaves against the stars; the leaves were twisted and dry, ready to fall. There were distant lights in the windows of houses scattered through the countryside; but the lights made the road seem lonelier. He never felt loneliness except when he was happy.

She sat at the window of the train, her head thrown back, one leg stretched across to the empty seat before her. The window frame trembled with the speed of the motion, the pane hung over empty darkness, and dots of light slashed across the glass as luminous streaks, once in a while.

achieving life is not the equivalent of avoiding death. Joy is not 'the absence of pain,' intelligence is not 'the absence of stupidity,' light is not 'the absence of darkness,' an entity is not 'the absence of a nonentity.

Whoever fights monsters," Nietzsche had said, "should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.

I blame my generation for having neglected to teach our children that in life there are no safe places, that safety is an illusion. "Most of us, no matter what we say, are walking in the dark, whistling in the dark," Baldwin said in an interview in 1961.

I turned on the flashlight; it cut a small circle of light from the darkness around me.

Within the U.S. military, members of Special Ops were considered a breed apart, an elite warrior class that carried out the most difficult missions under the most dangerous circumstances—the guys in the movies rappelling from helicopters into enemy territory or making amphibious landings under cover of darkness.

I have learned things in the dark that I could never have learned in the light, things that have saved my life over and over again, so that there is really only one logical conclusion. I need darkness as much as I need light.

She wanted to go back, to clean it all up, to rewrite her story without all the dark parts, to unknow the things she knew, to unsee the things she'd seen, to live without her memories, her shame, her regret. And maybe that was a kind of atonement, after all. But none of those things were possible.

This is how moths speak to each other. They tell their love across the fields by scent. There is no mouth, the wrong words are impossible, either a mate is there or he is not, and if so the pair will find each other in the dark.

Insomnia's different," I said. It was hard to explain this to people. "You know the light that comes on when you open the refrigerator door? Just imagine it stays on all the time, even after you close the door. That's what it's like in my head. The light stays on.

Insomnia is different,' I said. It was hard to explain this to people. 'You know the light that comes on when you open the refrigerator door? Just imagine it stays on all the time, even after you close the door. That's what it's like in my head. The light stays on.

Autumn darkness had already blinded the dining room windows, an effect that dispirited him, no matter how many autumns he lived or how predictably the light receded.

Even a spotted pig looks black at night.

They jealous 'cause you got the night in you. Some people got night in 'em, some got morning, others, like me and your mama, got dusk. But it's only them that's got night can become invisible. People what got night in 'em can step into the dark and poof—disappear! Go any old where they want. Do anything. Ride them stars up there, like as not.

You've looked into the abyss, and can feel it looking back still;

when you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you.

Hell is empty And all the devils are here. —William Shakespeare, The Tempest

Saturn Devouring His Son

To be inspired is to feel God funnelling into one's work. We always want light from the darkness. We know something is there before we see it. The objective for a writer is to try to get some part of the face of a God on a piece of paper. It is a fearful undertaking going into something profound without knowing what you are looking for. Beauty is incomprehensible. Isn't that what God is? Witnessing the loss of beauty and the enduring effort to restore beauty, isn't this God?

Is it still possible to face the gathering darkness and say to the physical Earth, and to all its creatures, including ourselves, fiercely and without embarrassment, I love you, and to embrace fearlessly the burning world?

we have a way of talking about beauty as though beauty were only skin deep. But real beauty is so deep you have to move into darkness in order to understand what beauty is.-Barry Lopez, Interview with Bill Moyers, Journal, April 30, 2010

From pride there can only come brands for the burning. The resin of the wicked branch makes it flame more brightly and it may seem for a time to light up the dark; but it is soon consumed away, leaving the world darker than before.