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crouched QUOTES

crouched QUOTES

21 " Picture the person who intimidates you most. Now picture them crouched like a dog, pooping on the sidewalk, looking up at you, all vulnerable. We all poop. Maybe not on the sidewalk, but nobody is better than you and don't let them think they are for a minute. "

― Caprice Crane ,

22 " She led him to the top of the stairs, where light came straight from the sky because the second-story windows of that house had been placed in the pitched ceiling and not the walls. There were two rooms and she took him into one of them, hoping he wouldn’t mind the fact that she was not prepared; that though she could remember desire, she had forgotten how it worked; the clutch and helplessness that resided in the hands; how blindness was altered so that what leapt to the eye were places to lie down, and all else—doorknobs, straps, hooks, the sadness that crouched in corners, and the passing of time—was interference. "

― Toni Morrison , Beloved

23 " The image of him shifted with the violent frenzy of leaves. He was there and he wasn’t, as the leaves whipped and the lightning fell away in a slow strobe effect across the expanse of sky. How he had gotten up there, I had no idea, but he had been there. Crouched in the tree in the middle of the courtyard, he watched me intently through the open window. "

― Gwenn Wright , The Fate of Flannery Flynn

24 " The demon is crouched in the corner, between the Cheetos and the onion dip. It’s a small one, only about four feet tall: a low-level creeper. I flick my gaze over the spot like I don’t see it and open the cooler door to get a Coke. "

― Rachel A. Marks , Darkness Brutal (The Dark Cycle #1)

25 " Ember was watching me, green bright eyes in the shadows of the room. She crouched against the wall with her wings pressed close and her tail curled around herself. Even with her fangs slightly bared and her sides heaving with fear, she was still beautiful, elegant, fiery, everything my dragon wanted. "

― Julie Kagawa , Soldier (Talon, #3)

26 " Bast crouched down and began making weird chittering noises. Uh-oh. She was imitating birds. I'd seen enough cats do this when they were stalking. Suddenly my own obituary flashed in my head: Carter Kane, 14, tragically died in Paris wen he was eaten by his sister's cat, Muffin. "

― Rick Riordan , The Red Pyramid (The Kane Chronicles, #1)

27 " At the unexpected sight of Spence, Colbie startled hard. How was it that he was the one who needed glasses and yet she’d not seen him standing against the window? “No, I don’t kill a lot of people,” she said cautiously because she was wearing only a towelin front of a strange man. “But I’m happy to make an exception.”
He laughed, a rough rumble that was more than a little contagious but she controlled herself because, hello, she was once again dripping wet before the man who seemed to make her knees forget to hold her up.
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said and pushed off the wall to come close.
She froze, but he held up his hands like, I come in peace, and crouched at her feet to scoop up the clothes she hadn’t realized she’d dropped.
Leggings, a long forgiving tee, and the peach silk bra-and-panty set that hadn’t gotten so much as a blink from the TSA guy.
But it got one out of Spence. He also swallowed hard as she snatched them back from him.
“Hold on,” he said and caught her arm, pulling it toward him to look at her bleeding elbow.
“Sit,” he said and gently pushed her down to a weight bench. He vanished into the bathroom and came back out with a first aid kit.
It took him less than two minutes to clean and bandage the scrape. Then, easily balanced at her side on the balls of his feet, he did the same for both her knees, which she hadn’t noticed were also scraped up.
“You must’ve hit the brick coping as you fell in the fountain,” he said and let his thumb slide over the skin just above one bandaged knee.
She shivered, and not from the cold either. “Not going to kiss it better?” she heard herself ask before biting her tongue for running away with her good sense.
She’d raised her younger twin brothers. Scrappy, roughhouse wild animals, the both of them, so there’d been plenty of injuries she’d kissed over the years.
But no one had ever kissed hers. Not surprising, since most of her injuries tended to be on the inside, where they didn’t show. Still, she was horrified she’d said anything at all. “I didn’t mean—”
She broke off, frozen like a deer in the headlights as Spence slowly lowered his head, brushing his lips over the Band-Aid on her elbow, then her knees. When he lifted his head, he pushed his glasses higher on his nose, those whiskey eyes warm and amused behind his lenses. “Better?”
Shockingly better. Since she didn’t quite trust her voice at the moment, she gave a jerky nod and took her clothes back into the bathroom. She shut the door and then leaned against it, letting out a slow, deliberate breath. Holy cow, she was out of her league. He was somehow both cute and hot, and those glasses . "

― Jill Shalvis , Chasing Christmas Eve (Heartbreaker Bay, #4)

28 " Black vomit came gushing out Samantha’s mouth, adding to the puddle already on the floor. Samantha was covered in a sheen of sweat, crouched on all fours on the wooden hallway floor, like an animal. Her thick yellow fingernails made deep scratches in the wood as her body convulsed with each new expulsion of the black vomit. Her hair was long and thick and full; thicker and fuller than he had ever seen it. It reminded him of a lion’s mane. Her skin was a sickly pale grey with disturbing red boils the size of grapefruit and weeping puss-filled black blotches where others had burst. Spider webs of blue veins were visible under the skin all over her body. "

― , Tagged: The Apocalypse

29 " He finds a basket and lays fish inside it. Charcoal is in a wooden bucket. Enrique lifts it, basket in his other hand, and moves through shadow toward daylight.A presence makes him turn his head. He sees no one, yet someone is there.He sets down fish and charcoal. Straightening up, Enrique slips his Bowie knife clear of its sheath. He listens, tries to sense the man’s place. This intruder lies low. Is concealed. Behind those barrels? In that corner, crouched down? Enrique shuts his eyes, holds his breath a moment and exhales, his breath’s movement the only sound, trying to feel on his skin some heat from another "

30 " Suppose after all that death does end all. Next to eternal joy, next to being forever with those we love and those who have loved us, next to that, is to be wrapt in the dreamless drapery of eternal peace. Next to eternal life is eternal sleep.

Upon the shadowy shore of death the sea of trouble casts no wave. Eyes that have been curtained by the everlasting dark, will never know again the burning touch of tears. Lips touched by eternal silence will never speak again the broken words of grief. Hearts of dust do not break. The dead do not weep. Within the tomb no veiled and weeping sorrow sits, and in the rayless gloom is crouched no shuddering fear.

I had rather think of those I have loved, and lost, as having returned to earth, as having become a part of the elemental wealth of the world – I would rather think of them as unconscious dust, I would rather dream of them as gurgling in the streams, floating in the clouds, bursting in the foam of light upon the shores of worlds, I would rather think of them as the lost visions of a forgotten night, than to have even the faintest fear that their naked souls have been clutched by an orthodox god.

I will leave my dead where nature leaves them. Whatever flower of hope springs up in my heart I will cherish, I will give it breath of sighs and rain of tears. But I cannot believe that there is any being in this universe who has created a human soul for eternal pain. I would rather that every god would destroy himself; I would rather that we all should go to eternal chaos, to black and starless night, than that just one soul should suffer eternal agony.

I have made up my mind that if there is a God, he will be merciful to the merciful.
Upon that rock I stand. –

That he will not torture the forgiving. –
Upon that rock I stand. –

That every man should be true to himself, and that there is no world, no star, in which honesty is a crime.
Upon that rock I stand.

The honest man, the good woman, the happy child, have nothing to fear, either in this world or the world to come.
Upon that rock I stand. "

― Robert G. Ingersoll

31 " Upon the shadowy shore of death the sea of trouble casts no wave. Eyes that have been curtained by the everlasting dark, will never know again the burning touch of tears. Lips touched by eternal silence will never speak again the broken words of grief. Hearts of dust do not break. The dead do not weep. Within the tomb no veiled and weeping sorrow sits, and in the rayless gloom is crouched no shuddering fear.

I think of those I have loved and lost as having returned to earth, as having become a part of the elemental wealth of the world – I think of them as unconscious dust, I dream of them as gurgling in the streams, floating in the clouds, bursting in the foam of light upon the shores of worlds... "

― Robert G. Ingersoll

32 " Sometimes in storm weather the shore had fluttered with disabled swallows. They crouched lower for his approach, without strength to escape. In his hands they pulsed with that same pulse. He had taken a bird and warmed it between his hands or inside his jacket, brought the life back until it was able to fly. Sometimes, released from his hands, they circled once around him before flying away; in gratitude, or so the child had believed--and the belief had survived all the man's science. "

― Barry Unsworth , Sacred Hunger (Sacred Hunger #1)

33 " After an eternity she tries to rise. When was it that she had slunk and crouched on the tiles like a haggard waif? Black crows fly down to feast on her eyes. Trembling, her body summons its strength to stand against the swirling mass around her. A long strand of hair falls across her face. She does not bother to brush it back. Instead it stays there like a fly stuck in ointment, strands glued to her tear stained face. Steadying herself on the kitchen bench she edges her way toward the sink to fill a glass of water. Breathe Lisa! Her troubled mind instructs. "

― Felicity Chapman , Connected

34 " It was a lone tree burning on the desert. A heraldic tree that the passing storm had left afire. The solitary pilgrim drawn up before it had traveled far to be here and he knelt in the hot sand and held his numbed hands out while all about in that circle attended companies of lesser auxiliaries routed forth into the inordinate day, small owls that crouched silently and stood from foot to foot and tarantulas and solpugas and vinegarroons and the vicious mygale spiders and beaded lizards with mouths black as a chowdog's, deadly to man, and the little desert basilisks that jet blood from their eyes and the small sandvipers like seemly gods, silent and the same, in Jeda, in Babylon. A constellation of ignited eyes that edged the ring of light all bound in a precarious truce before this torch whose brightness had set back the stars in their sockets. "

― Cormac McCarthy , Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West

35 " Technology is crucial to civilization why? Because it helps us make our fate. We don't need God or miracles or the flight of the bumble bee. But it is also crouched and undecidable. It can go either way. "

― Don DeLillo , Cosmopolis

36 " My recommendation is to keep up the good work. I’m changing your title to senior executive assistant, and giving you a three percent raise effective next payday. Congratulations.”
Wow, three percent. I could move up that early retirement plan to age seventy-five now, instead of eighty. Lucky me.
Thank you,” I said. “That’s very generous.”
You’re quite welcome.” Ms. Saunders nodded and grabbed a gold-plated letter opener to begin attacking her stack of mail.
I turned to leave. Didn’t want to outstay my welcome.
Damn it!” she exclaimed, and I turned back around. She winced and nodded at the letter opener that she’d dropped to her desktop. “Damn thing slipped. I’m probably going to need stitches now. Can you be a dear and fetch the first-aid kit for me?”
She held her left index finger and frowned at the steady flow of blood oozing out. A few small drops of red splashed onto the other letters spread out on the desk.
I felt woozy. And suddenly dizzy.
I blinked.
When I opened my eyes, I was no longer standing by the door about to leave. I was crouched down next to Ms. Saunders’s imported black leather chair, grasping her wrist tightly…… and sucking noisily on her fingertip.
I shrieked and let go of her, staggering backward. I grabbed at her desk to keep from falling, but I dropped on my butt, anyhow, taking most of the contents of the top of her desk with me.
She held her injured finger far away from her and stared at me, wide-eyed, with a mixture of shock and disgust.
I scrambled to my feet and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.
What in the holy hell just happened?
I… I… uh… I’m so sorry,” I managed. “I don’t know what… I wouldn’t normally do something… I just…”
Ms. Saunders pulled her hand close to her chest, perhaps to protect it from further abuse.
Get out,” she said quietly.
Yeah, I’ll get back to work. Again, I’m so, so sorry. Would you like me to bring you a cup of coffee?”
No, not to your desk,” she said evenly, but her volume increased with every word. “Get out of here, you freak. I don’t care what you’ve heard, I’m not into women. You’re fired. Now get out of here before I call security.”
But… my job review—”
Get out!” she yelled. "

― Michelle Rowen , Bitten & Smitten (Immortality Bites, #1)

37 " I—though forced through lack of space to assume the form of a stoic guinea pig crouched between the girl's shoe and the glove compartment—was my usual dignified self. "

― Jonathan Stroud , The Golem's Eye (Bartimaeus, #2)

38 " The people there were gods and midgets and knew themselves mortal and so the midgets walked tall so as not to embarrass the gods and the gods crouched so as to make the small ones feel at home. "

― Ray Bradbury , Dandelion Wine (Green Town, #1)

39 " This other man he could never see in his entirety but he seemed an artisan and a worker in metal. The judge enshadowed him where he crouched at his trade but he was a coldforger who worked with hammer and die, perhaps under some indictment and an exile from men's fires, hammering out like his own conjectural destiny all through the night of his becoming some coinage for a dawn that would not be. It is this false moneyer with his gravers and burins who seeks favor with the judge and he is at contriving from cold slag brute in the crucible a face that will pass, an image that will render this residual specie current in the markets where men barter. Of this is the judge judge and the night does not end. "

― Cormac McCarthy , Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West

40 " A loud clang of what sounded like a tray hitting the marble kitchen floor made Bree jump and Gianni go wide eyed with apparent terror. He covered his ears and shook his head. “Bang! Bang! Bang!” He fell over and covered his head. Bree rushed over to him as he began shrieking fearfully. “Maaammaaaaaa!” “Is okay, Gianni. Just a ting falled down,” Will said patting Gianni’s back but Bree noticed her little boy’s hand was shaking. “It’s okay, sweetie. Mommy’s here. That’s okay,” she crouched down and gathered Gianni into her arms. “Bang! Mama. It bang!” he wailed into her shoulder, trembling in her arms. “It was just a loud noise. Cook just dropped something, probably a whole big plate of yucky beets. Isn’t that funny?” she said, forcing a laugh. Jesus Christ, how much more violence would her children be forced to endure? Again, Bree felt selfish for bringing her innocent babies into the Dardano world. Gianni looked up at her, picking up on her tone he gave a small watery smile. “Ucky ee “Yucky yucky beets,” Bree repeated bouncing him lightly as her heart returned to its normal rhythm in her chest. Gianni giggled and shuddered against her as the last remnants of his fear dissipated. Bree looked over at Will. “You okay, sweetie?” Will blinked and looked over at her, wide eyed and his lower lip quivered, but he set his chin like she knew he’d watched Alessandro do and nodded. “I bwave. I nod scared.” Bree smiled at him and kissed his cheek as she ran her fingers through his hair. “Wow. That is pretty brave. I know I was
scared when I first heard the noise.” “Really?” Will asked hesitantly. “Definitely,” Bree nodded. Gianni echoed the gesture. “Well, dat’s diffen. You’s a girl.” “Oh, is that so?” Bree asked setting Gianni on the blanket next to her. “So you think ’cause mommy’s a girl she’s a fraidy cat. Huh? Huh?” she asked poking him. Will curled in on himself and giggled as he tried to avoid her fingers. "

― E. Jamie , The Betrayal (Blood Vows, #2)