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1 " If God existed (a question concerning which Jubal maintained a meticulous intellectual neutrality) and if He desired to be worshiped (a proposition which Jubal found inherently improbable but conceivably possible in the dim light of his own ignorance), then (stipulating affirmatively both the above) it nevertheless seemed wildly unlikely to Jubal to the point of reductio ad absurdum that a God potent to shape galaxies would be titillated and swayed by the whoop-te-do nonsense the Fosterites offered Him as " worship. "
2 " Staring over him in the dim light of a side lamp, my tired eyes traced along the path of faint, yet emerging, lines etched around his equally-tired eyes. They'd become a permanent reminder of his ever-smiling face, and I wished–even after all of these years together-that I could absorb some of his contentment. "
― Jodi LaPalm , The Choice Not Taken
3 " The Imagination merely enables us to wander into the darkness of the unknown where, by the dim light of the knowledge we carry, we may glimpse something that seems of interest. But when we bring it out and examine it more closely it usually proves to be only trash whose glitter had caught our attention. Imagination is at once the source of all hope and inspiration but also of frustration. To forget this is to court despair. "
― , The Art of Scientific Investigation
4 " What are the dead, anyway, but waves and energy? Light shining from a dead star?That, by the way, is a phrase of Julian's. I remember it from a lecture of his on the Iliad, when Patroklos appears to Achilles in a dream. There is a very moving passage where Achilles overjoyed at the sight of the apparition – tries to throw his arms around the ghost of his old friend, and it vanishes. The dead appear to us in dreams, said Julian, because that's the only way they can make us see them; what we see is only a projection, beamed from a great distance, light shining at us from a dead star…Which reminds me, by the way, of a dream I had a couple of weeks ago.I found myself in a strange deserted city – an old city, like London – underpopulated by war or disease. It was night; the streets were dark, bombed-out, abandoned. For a long time, I wandered aimlessly – past ruined parks, blasted statuary, vacant lots overgrown with weeds and collapsed apartment houses with rusted girders poking out of their sides like ribs. But here and there, interspersed among the desolate shells of the heavy old public buildings, I began to see new buildings, too, which were connected by futuristic walkways lit from beneath. Long, cool perspectives of modern architecture, rising phosphorescent and eerie from the rubble.I went inside one of these new buildings. It was like a laboratory, maybe, or a museum. My footsteps echoed on the tile floors.There was a cluster of men, all smoking pipes, gathered around an exhibit in a glass case that gleamed in the dim light and lit their faces ghoulishly from below.I drew nearer. In the case was a machine revolving slowly on a turntable, a machine with metal parts that slid in and out and collapsed in upon themselves to form new images. An Inca temple… click click click… the Pyramids… the Parthenon.History passing beneath my very eyes, changing every moment.'I thought I'd find you here,' said a voice at my elbow.It was Henry. His gaze was steady and impassive in the dim light. Above his ear, beneath the wire stem of his spectacles, I could just make out the powder burn and the dark hole in his right temple.I was glad to see him, though not exactly surprised. 'You know,' I said to him, 'everybody is saying that you're dead.'He stared down at the machine. The Colosseum… click click click… the Pantheon. 'I'm not dead,' he said. 'I'm only having a bit of trouble with my passport.''What?'He cleared his throat. 'My movements are restricted,' he said.'I no longer have the ability to travel as freely as I would like.'Hagia Sophia. St. Mark's, in Venice. 'What is this place?' I asked him.'That information is classified, I'm afraid.'1 looked around curiously. It seemed that I was the only visitor.'Is it open to the public?' I said.'Not generally, no.'I looked at him. There was so much I wanted to ask him, so much I wanted to say; but somehow I knew there wasn't time and even if there was, that it was all, somehow, beside the point.'Are you happy here?' I said at last.He considered this for a moment. 'Not particularly,' he said.'But you're not very happy where you are, either.'St. Basil's, in Moscow. Chartres. Salisbury and Amiens. He glanced at his watch.'I hope you'll excuse me,' he said, 'but I'm late for an appointment.'He turned from me and walked away. I watched his back receding down the long, gleaming hall. "
― Donna Tartt , The Secret History
5 " Blinding, mineral, shattering silence. You hear nothing but the quiet crunch of stones underfoot. An implacable, definitive silence, like a transparent death. Sky of a perfectly detached blue. You advance with eyes down, reassuring yourself sometimes with a silent mumbling. Cloudless sky, limestone slabs filled with presence: silence nothing can sidestep. Silence fulfilled, vibrant immobility, tensed like a bow. There’s the silence of early morning. For long routes in autumn you have to start very early. Outside everything is violet, the dim light slanting through red and gold leaves. It is an expectant silence. You walk softly among huge dark trees, still swathed in traces of blue night. You are almost afraid of awakening. Everything whispering quietly. There’s the silence of walks through the snow, muffled footsteps under a white sky. All around you nothing moves. Things and even time itself are iced up, frozen solid in silent immobility. Everything is stopped, unified, thickly padded. A watching silence, white, fluffy, suspended as if in parentheses. "
― Frédéric Gros , A Philosophy of Walking
6 " Kate stops grinding the knife and begins to pass it over the length of the stone. Turning her wrist, she pulls the blade, swiping one side after the other, honing it to a fine edge. She wipes it dry with an old cloth and picks up a long piece of dark leather. One end of the strop she ties to the knob on the back of her chair, then holds it taught with her left hand. She counts in her head as she passes the blade over the length of the leather, flipping it at the bottom and the top of each pass. When she gets to twenty, she releases her hold on the strop and looks closely at the knife blade. Even in the dim light of the room, it shines. "
7 " It felt like being shot with an arrow, and Will jerked back. His wineglass crashed to the floor and shattered. He lurched to his feet, leaning both hands on the table. He was vaguely aware of stares, and the landlords anxious voice in his ear, but the pain was too great to think through, almost too great to breathe through. The tightness in his chest, the one he had thought of as one end of a cord tying him to Jem, had pulled so taut that it was strangling his heart. He stumbled away from his table, pushing through a knot of customers near the bar, and passed to the front door of the inn. All he could think of was air, getting air into his lungs to breathe. He pushed the doors open and half-tumbled out into the night. For a moment the pain in his chest eased, and he fell back against the wall of the inn. Rain was sheeting down, soaking his hair and clothes. He gasped, his heart stuttering with a misture of terror and desperation. Was this just the distance from Jem affecting him? He had never felt anything like this, even when Jem was at his worst, even when he'd been injured and Will had ached with sympathetic pain.The cord snapped.For a moment everything went white, the courtyard bleeching through as if with acid. Will jackknifed to his knees, vomiting up his supper into the mud. When the spasms had passed , he staggard to his feet and blindly away from the inn, as if trying to outpace his own pain. He fetched up against the wall of the stables, beside the horse trough. He dropped to his knees to plunge his hands into the icy water-and saw his own reflection. There was his face, as white as death, and his shirt, and a spreading stain of red across the front. With wet hands he siezed at his lapels and jerked the shirt open. In the dim light that spilled from the inn, he could see that his parabati rune, just over his heart, was bleeding. His hands were covered in blood, blood mixed with rain, the same ran that was washing the blood away from his chest, showing the rune as it began to fade from black to silver, changing all that had been sense in Will's life into nonsense.Jem was dead. "
― Cassandra Clare , Clockwork Princess (The Infernal Devices, #3)
8 " Calina studied Nessa’s profile in the dim light of dawn. Her pulse raced as she formed a question in her mind. “Who do you want to be bothered by?”Calina felt like anything could happen in the silence that followed. It wrapped around Nessa and her, stifling the breath from her body and tightening her throat.Nessa shifted and turned so she was facing Calina. It was too dark for Calina to see Nessa’s eyes, but she could feel them wandering over her face.“You.” The word was exhaled from Nessa as if a great relief had washed over her. “I want to be bothered by you. "
― Heather McVea , November's End: A Romantic Fairy Tale
9 " A figure held his daughter in the rocker. In the dim light he couldn’t make out the features, but the sight of anyone he didn’t know sitting in Wendy’s rocker with their daughter was enough to scare the shit out of him. Judging by the shuddering movements of his daughter’s body it had frightened her too, had caused her to mewl. He wanted to charge forward and reclaim his daughter, but he didn’t know what would happen if he acted so quickly. What would he do if it hurt her? What would he do if it killed her? “What-what do you want? I’ll do anything just don’t take my daughter. She’s…all I have left.”The figure stopped rocking and slowly eased its way to its feet. There’s not much light in the room but as it moved closer to the bed and it settled the baby in her crib, he saw just enough of her face in the moonlight.“Wendy?” His voice is as full of horror as it is with awe. He can’t help but be horrified at the sight of her now, the way that death has changed her, making her a terrible figure indeed. Her eyes are strange; some depth, some dark and terrible nothing has swallowed up all of her light, and in this first moment he swears he can feel the awful cold of that operating room coming off of her flesh. She is so small and so hard to look at, as if his mind can’t quite focus on her form. Through the bars of the crib he can see her anger and hear the terrible, alien sound of her hiss. “What do you want?”She doesn’t answer him, staring cold and blank through those stark white bars, and then she was scrambling toward him across the floor, making him press flat against the wall to get away from her skittering shape. "
― Amanda M. Lyons , Wendy Won't Go
10 " I am a shadow. I walk the wet roads under the dim light of the pale lamps, in the darkest hour of the cold dull nights.I walk past the silent graveyard of the dead memories, towards the city of chaos plagued with gloom.I do not exist, but in the eyes of the shattered souls. In the chapter of an old book. In the poem. In the smile of a wrecked and in the tear of a broken spirit.Listen me in the songs told in the times long forgotten.Search for me in the churchs and temples, bars and brothels,pitch black nights and the colorless days.Dive down in your deepest part of your soul. And you will find my home.I have many faces but I have no face of my own. I am a shadow. "
11 " As he himself said, " I will prove it to you, gentlemen, and i will prove it in two ways. First in the blinding clarity of the facts, and second, in the dim light cast by the mind of his criminal soul. "
12 " The closest I’d ever got to seeing a naked woman before was black and white cleavage, and then Rosie tossed her clothes in a corner just like they were getting in the way and spun around in the dim light of Number 16, palms up, luminous, laughing, almost close enough to touch. The thought still knocks the wind out of me. I was too young even to know what I wanted to do about her, I just knew nothing in the World, not the Mona Lisa walking through the Grand Canyon with the Holy Grail in one hand and a winning lotto ticket in the other, was ever going to be that beautiful. "
― Tana French , Faithful Place (Dublin Murder Squad, #3)
13 " The frame of the mirror was a deep mahogany and carved with an intricate design of what appeared in the dim light to be leaves and vines. The mirror’s surface was clouded with dust and age, so much that Quinn could not even see his own reflection. On impulse, he rubbed a small circle with the back of his wrist but beneath the dust the glass was still milky and unclear. ~ " The Mirror "
14 " Her feet shifted underneath her. “I’m not sure what troublesyou.”The wolf prowled, though he sat in a great chair. His uneasinessmade her skin tight and her heart race. Hakan was a handsomeman, very appealing to all of the fairer sex tonight with his blackjerkin stretched across broad shoulders. He had shaved for theGlima festival, and his blonde hair, lighter from summer, loosenedfrom the leather tie.“Many thoughts trouble me tonight, but Astrid’s not one ofthem.” In the dim light of the longhouse, his white teeth gleamedagainst his tanned face.“Does your head ail you?” She clasped her hands together,comfortable with the role of nurturing thrall.“Nay, but ‘twould please me if you sat close to me and playedyour harp.”“Music would be pleasant.” Skittish and studying him underthe veil of her lashes, Helena retrieved her harp.She sat cross-legged on a pelt near his chair. ‘Twas easy tostrum a soothing song and lose herself in the delicate notes herfingers plucked. But when the last note faded, the restless wolfstirred on his throne, unpacified.“Why did you play that game with Astrid? Letting her thinkmore goes on between us?”Ice-blue eyes pinned her, yet, ‘twas his voice, dangerous andsoft, that did things to her.“I…I don’t know.” Her own voice faltered as warmth flushedher skin.Glowing embers molded his face with dim light. Hakanleaned forward, resting both elbows on his knees. His sinewy handplucked the harp from her, placing it on the ground.“Why?” Hakan’s fingertips tilted her chin. "
― , Norse Jewel (Norse, #1)
15 " Mackenzie glanced through the glass doors. It was dark outside, except for the dim light from the front entrance. A night breeze swooshed leaves throughout the parking lot. "
― Yawatta Hosby , Plenty of Fish
16 " Something was in her mouth. Sami's tongue slid along the edges of something plastic. Flat, low ridges, holes-an adjustable strap. A baseball cap? Another taste. Hair spray. Gross. Someone had stuffed her baseball cap in her mouth, and from the feel of it they had taped it in place. Her arms were tied behind her and she lay face down on the floor-of what? Her car. The carpeting scraped her cheek every time they hit a bump. Panic flooded Sami's senses. She came instantly awake. Inhaling deeply through her nose, she willed herself to calm down. Her working motto flashed through her brain, panic never accomplished anything. Of course she had never been kidnapped and tied up before. In the dim light of passing cars, she glimpsed things-paper gum wrappers, an old straw, one whopper wrapper, a CD cover. That's where Sting went. Been looking for that for days. Man did she need to vacuum this car out. A metallic scent hit her nose. She'd recognize that smell until the day she died. Blood. And by the odor, someone had lost a great deal of it. "
― Suzanne Ferrell , Kidnapped (Edgars Family, #1)
17 " One morning indeed, I felt a sudden misgiving that she not only had left the house but had gone for good: I had just heard the sound of a door which seemed to me to be that of her room. On tiptoe I crept towards the room, opened the door, stood upon the threshold. In the dim light the bedclothes bulged in a semi-circle, that must be Albertine who, with her body bent, was sleeping with her feet and face to the wall. Only, overflowing the bed, the hair upon that head, abundant and dark, made me realise that it was she, that she had not opened her door, had not stirred, and I felt that this motionless and living semi-circle, in which a whole human life was contained and which was the only thing to which I attached any value, I felt that it was there, in my despotic possession. "
― Marcel Proust , The Captive: Part 2