When he was dry, he believed it was alcohol he needed, but when he had a few drinks in him, he knew it was something else, possibly a woman; and when he had it all -- cash, booze, and a wife -- he couldn't be distracted from the great emptiness that was always falling through him and never hit the ground.

As I circled the room like a lion about to pounce, another animal, bordering on domestic fucking cat stepped behind Tyler and grabbed her by the waist for a dance. I thought she was going to tell him no thanks, like the others, but instead she looked at me challengingly and accepted the man’s advances.

But we never get back our youth… The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty becomes sluggish. Our limbs fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to yield to.

When the twilight of all my evenings reaches me, after a long dark day, my complicated thoughts suffocate inside all of my uncomplicated longings. Evenings refuse to end. And the dawns that constantly swallow up my nights, always shows me an extremely long road I still need to tread, and discover. And get hurt.

Our shadow is on the outside. And we can see in the dark: we can see you, we see you turn away, but one day we finally understand that you turn away not from our faces but from your own fears. From those things inside you that you think mark you as someone unlovable to your family, and society, and even to God.

There are things so horrible that even the dark is afraid of them. Most people don't know this and this is just as well because the world could not really operate if everyone stayed in bed with the blankets over their head, which is what would happen if people knew what horrors lay a shadow's width away.

It’s more eerie to be alone in a city that’s lit up and functioning than one that’s a tomb. If everything were silent, one could almost pretend to be in nature. A forest. A meadow. Crickets and birdsong. But the corpse of civilization is as restless as the creatures that now roam the graveyards.

They're not going to arrest you,' Skulduggery said as they walked through the door. 'They might glare at you and say angry words, but they won't arrest you. Well, they might arrest you. There's a good chance they will. But the important thing is that I've done nothing wrong.''For once.

What was a little dark, anyway? Just no sun, [Petra] reminded herself as her sneakers pounded toward the opening. Just dark, all three fine, she whispered to herself again and again, spinning the words outward into a mobile in her mind. They floated into dark-three, all-just-fine and then into all-fine, dark-just-three.

I remeber asking a wise man, once . . . 'Why do Men fear the dark?' . . . 'Because darkness' he told me, 'is ignorance made visable.' 'And do Men despise ignorance?' I asked. 'No,' he said, 'they prize it above all things--all things!--but only so long as it remains invisible.

I wasn’t going to argue with you. Why ever would you think that? I never argue."Lucian smiled at her. She was so small, it amazed him she was such a strong person. "Of course you do not argue. What was I thinking? Go to sleep, honey, and allow my poor body to rest."I’m already asleep. You’re the one gabbing.

Did you follow me here?""Something like that."I let out a frustrated groan. "Can't anyone just talk to me straight? Why is everyone avoiding my damn questions tonight?"Bishop's brows went up. "Okay, fine. Yes, I followed you here. Better?""Yes. Stalkery, but better.""I'm not stalking you.""Spoken like a true stalke

Opposite Pissec sits ghoulish Gottfried Baumauer, a tall, skinny workaholic with dark-ringed eye sockets and long, yellowing smoker’s fingers. He’s thirty-eight. He doesn’t say much. He drinks a lot of tea – likes it strong as tar. He lines up the strained, dry bags on his desk like dead, tailless voles.

Ged had neither lost nor won but, naming the shadow of his death with his own name, had made himself whole: a man: who, knowing his whole true self, cannot be used or possessed by any power other than himself, and whose life therefore is lived for life's sake and never in the service of ruin, or pain, or hatred, or the dark.

The human imagination may be the most elastic thing in the universe, stretching to encompass the millions of dreams that in centuries of relectless struggle built modern civilization, to entertain the endless doubts that hamper every human enterprise, and to conceive the vast menagerie of boogeymen that trouble every human heart.