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1 " There are strange things done in the midnight sun By the men who moil for gold; The Arctic trails have their secret tales That would make your blood run cold;The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, But the queerest they ever did see Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge I cremated Sam McGee. "
― Robert W. Service , The Cremation of Sam McGee
2 " Sometime during high school he’d gotten . . . kind of . . . beautiful, and Harper found it easier to not look directly at him. When she did, it did strange things to her, making her voice high and her cheeks burn. So she only ever really looked at him out of the corner of her eyes, like one would look at a solar eclipse. "
― Summer Hines , Some Things Stay With You: A Windswept Wyoming Romance
3 " I look at the world and I see absurdity all around me. People do strange things constantly, to the point that, for the most part, we manage not to see it. "
― David Lynch
4 " Wow! This woman is doing a lot of strange things to me and I want more. Much more. "
― A.R. Von , Jailhouse Rock
5 " I feel as though I’m in a dream, where strange things are happening but they don’t feel strange. Everything is cloudy—everything is wrapped in a fog—and I’m filled from head to toe with the single, burning desire to get closer to the music, to hear the music better, for the music to go on and on and on. "
― Lauren Oliver , Delirium (Delirium, #1)
6 " The mind does strange things when confronted with sights it doesn’t want to process, sometimes leading to actions that would be deemed inappropriate at any other time "
7 " On the whole she found erring children easier to deal with than their frantic parents, confirming her conclusion that marriage did strange things to the adult mind. "
― Miranda Neville , The Second Seduction of a Lady (The Wild Quartet, #0.5)
8 " This tub is for washing your courage...When you are born your courage is new and clean. You are brave enough for anything: crawling off of staircases, saying your first words without fearing that someone will think you are foolish, putting strange things in your mouth. But as you get older, your courage attracts gunk and crusty things and dirt and fear and knowing how bad things can get and what pain feels like. By the time you're half-grown, your courage barely moves at all, it's so grunged up with living. So every once in awhile, you have to scrub it up and get the works going or else you'll never be brave again. Unfortunately, there are not many facilities in your world that provide the kind of services we do. So most people go around with grimy machinery, when all it would take is a bit of a spit and polish to make them paladins once more, bold knights and true....This tub is for washing your wishes...For the wishes of one's old life wither and shrivel like old leaves if they are not replaced with new wishes when the world changes. And the world always changes. Wishes get slimy, and their colors fade, and soon they are just mud, like all the rest of the mud, and not wishes at all, but regrets. The trouble is, not everyone can tell when they ought to launder their wishes. Even when one finds oneself in Fairyland and not at home at all, it is not always so easy to catch the world in its changing and change with it....Lastly, we must wash your luck. When souls queue up to be born, they all leap up at just the last moment, touching the lintel of the world for luck. Some jump high and can seize a great measure of luck; some jump only a bit and snatch a few loose strands. Everyone manages to catch some. If one did not have at least a little luck, one would never survive childhood. But luck can be spent, like money, and lost, like a memory; and wasted, like a life. If you know how to look, you can examine the kneecaps of a human and tell how much luck they have left. No bath can replenish luck that has been spent on avoiding an early death by automobile accident or winning too many raffles in a row. No bath can restore luck lost through absentmindedness and overconfidence. But luck withered by conservative, tired, riskless living can be pumped up again--after all, it is only a bit thirsty for something to do. "
― Catherynne M. Valente , The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making (Fairyland, #1)
9 " As regards plots I find real life no help at all. Real life seems to have no plots. And as I think a plot desirable and almost necessary, I have this extra grudge against real life. But I think there are signs that strange things happen, though they do not emerge "
― Ivy Compton-Burnett
10 " We’re making strange fictions of strange things inside ourselves. "
― Clive Barker
11 " Sometimes all you need in your life is anything strange because strange things can revive your soul just like a cold water freshening your pale face with every splash! "
― Mehmet Murat ildan
12 " They say things about these woods...that there are strange things living here. "
13 " Memory did not let go; it remained the net dragged in one's wake, with all sorts of strange things snarled in the knotted strands. "
― Steven Erikson , Toll the Hounds (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #8)
14 " These last few months Vida had started believing in all kinds of strange things she'd have laughed at when we lived back in Avalon. She'd tried every spell she could find in the dusty old books she brought home from thrift shops and garage sales; none of them ever worked, and it was awful watching her try. "
15 " In truly deep darkness, all kinds of strange things were possible. "
16 " Souls and memories can do strange things during trance. "
― Bram Stoker , Dracula
17 " Back in the gurdwara, the ceiling doing strange things above my head, Jungli fed me with pieces of orange. Our outspoken attachment deepened. I was moved by his tenderness, his simplicity and his beautiful eyes. Beauty is a great robber of my common sense. "
18 " Now I know that strange things happen to your body when it meets the snow at 100 mph, no matter what the position. In the twinkling of hitting the snow I regained a proper respect for speed. If you are inattentive, as well as somewhat stupid, you may breed a contempt for big speeds, forgetting respect through the grace of being atop your skis each run. No one on his back at 100 mph will ever after have contempt for speed. "
― Dick Dorworth , The Perfect Turn: and other tales of skiing and skiers
19 " In the middle of a novel, a kind of magical thinking takes over. To clarify, the middle of the novel may not happen in the actual geographical centre of the novel. By middle of the novel I mean whatever page you are on when you stop being part of your household and your family and your partner and children and food shopping and dog feeding and reading the post—I mean when there is nothing in the world except your book, and even as your wife tells you she’s sleeping with your brother her face is a gigantic semi-colon, her arms are parentheses and you are wondering whether rummage is a better verb than rifle. The middle of a novel is a state of mind. Strange things happen in it. Time collapses. "
― Zadie Smith
20 " It is said that in Ulthar, which lies beyond the river Skai, no man may kill a cat; and this I can verily believe as I gaze upon him who sitteth purring before the fire. For the cat is cryptic, and close to strange things which men cannot see. He is the soul of antique Aegyptus, and bearer of tales from forgotten cities in Meroë and Ophir. He is the kin of the jungle’s lords, and heir to the secrets of hoary and sinister Africa. The Sphinx is his cousin, and he speaks her language; but he is more ancient than the Sphinx, and remembers that which she hath forgotten. "
― H.P. Lovecraft , The Cats of Ulthar