They looked so familiar that for a moment Claude feared he had doubled back to Mrs. Merritt's city, until a sudden wave of water blinded his wipers and drove him along with everyone else to the curb, where the crackling radio reported an old man had just now been swept from his backyard by a cloudburst, the latest in a series deluging Tulsa. Clinging there to the side of the hill, no hand brake, Claude rode out the storm, stuffing blankets into the cracks under the doors, watching overhead drips as best he could with the babyseat. When the car next in front crept away from the curb, Claude followed as far as a gas station. There he wondered aloud what lay ahead, but the attendant couldn't say, having swum to work just five minutes ago. Now as Claude pulled away the rain suddenly ceased, it seemed from exhaustion, and for the next hundred miles he spun his dial to catch the latest reports: that old man was still missing, he had last been seen floating downhill toward the river, he had been found, he was dead, he was dying, he was still missing... Claude turned off the radio, for he was beyond range of Tulsa, and Joplin had not heard the news yet. He raced in silence toward the night which he knew already had begun not far ahead.
Douglas Woolf
Related I like to open for a band as it brings on sort of a challenge and it makes things more interesting. ... KELLY JONES Pete offered tobacco and paper, but Claude brought out his cigarettes and they both decided to try t... DOUGLAS WOOLF He's for you and wants to help you be the person He created you to be. CRAIG GROESCHEL He was about to go home, about to return to the place where he had had a family. It was in Godric’... J.K. ROWLING Intrusive, thoughtless people!" said K. as he turned back into the room. The supervisor may have agr... FRANZ KAFKA His dark blue shirt was plastered to his chest, covered with werewolf goop and tears. "Now we both n... LAURELL K. HAMILTON The Doktor was an old man. When he was a kid, his Dad bought him a chemistry set. He never played wi... CHRISTINA ENGELA I walked with my eyes on the path, but out of the corners of them I saw a man hiding behind an olive... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM As he stepped forward with the guitar, the standing ovation just drove him back, ... As he stepped f... DICK WATERMAN Whether or not, he felt very much at home in this state. It was to places like this that they had se... DOUGLAS WOOLF To have the time to reminisce is one of the futures gifts. Don't think to much, don't live to fast, ... CALVIN WILSON We are the masters of our own destinies we shape and mould our lives into to the circumstances surro... GARY F EVANS... Lucas crept around the building to the back parking lot. And there it was, just like he had seen fro... PAUL AERTKER It felt like being shot with an arrow, and Will jerked back. His wineglass crashed to the floor and ... CASSANDRA CLARE And not only of even mainly because of the protection it had given him - it was thanks to his own st... MICHAEL ENDE He knew now, and the knowledge was hard, that his task had never been to undo what he had done, but ... URSULA K. LE GUIN Frodo drew the Ring out of his pocket again and looked at it. It now appeared plain and smooth, with... J.R.R. TOLKIEN There was no meaning in life, and man by living served no end. It was immaterial whether he was born... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Peter was not with them for the moment, and they felt rather lonely up there by themselves. He could... J.M. BARRIE (All the grief she had suffered over her lifetime had moulded her face into a mask of eternal sadnes... JEAN SASSON The rules only applied to people who couldn’t afford different rules. CAMERON STRACHER ...He was a greater craftsman even than Isaac, and he knew it, and so, presently, did Isaac. ELIZABETH GOUDGE McGee’s old touring car had once been green. It had also been painted black, but this had worn thi... JONATHAN LATIMER But he was no longer in Tollygunge. He had stepped out of it as he had stepped so many mornings out ... JHUMPA LAHIRI And Harry saw very clearly as he sat there under the hot sun how people who cared about him had stoo... J.K. ROWLING The park was the heart of the city. He had come to the city – and with a knowing in his blood – ... FLANNERY O'CONNOR Harry lay flat on his back, breathing hard as though he had been running. He had awoken from a vivid... J.K. ROWLING As they scuffled in the grass, Adam closed his eyes and leaned his head back. He could nearly scry j... MAGGIE STIEFVATER Now is the only time we have, and the only time that we have any control over. RICHARD CARLSON We're all dreaming,” Arctor said. If the last to know he's an addict is the addict, then maybe the... PHILIP K. DICK Have you ever noticed that Jesus is never recorded as taking a holiday? He retired for the purposes ... EVELYN UNDERHILL And in an essential way, this was what he was most ashamed of: not his poor understanding of sex, no... HANYA YANAGIHARA Once the good man was dead, one wore his hat and another his sword as he had worn them, a third had ... G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG Captain Tervitt had been a real captain, for many years, on the lake boats. Now he had a job as a sp... ALICE MUNRO He was inspired, and yet he wants books! He had been preaching for thirty years, and yet he wan... CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON He had been given a strong faith through his parents. As an adult, in his teen years and early colle... DEENA BURNETT He had just been to the school earlier, but I didn't know for sure when he was there. So I went ahea... BRENT VINSON Blackthorne, beside the gates, was still turmoiled by his boundless joy at her reprieve and he remem... JAMES CLAVELL Now is the only time we have, and the only time we have any control over. RICHARD CARLSON Nicolai, the Dark Seducer as his people called him, had been in bed, but not alone. He was never alo... GENA SHOWALTER Sam Temple kept a lower profile. He stuck to jeans and understated T-shirts, nothing that drew atten... MICHAEL GRANT The scientific method gives us
information by testing and repeating observable things so that we
can... LEWIS N. ROE A little later, when breakfast was over and I had not yet gone up-stairs to my room, I had my first ... ELLEN GLASGOW He was completely detached from every thing except the story he was writing and he was living in it ... ERNEST HEMINGWAY The marquis de Carabas was not a good man, and he knew himself well enough to be perfectly certain t... NEIL GAIMAN If he played in a system where he had to constantly have his back to the basket, he would not have b... DAVE ROGERS In the half-century of his life, a tick on the Doomsday clock, he had borne witness to the most unbe... KATE ATKINSON He ran as he'd never run before, with neither hope nor despair. He ran because the world was divided... KARL MARLANTES God, he suddenly understood, was love in its purest form, and in these last months with his children... NICHOLAS SPARKS I just remember watching Federer the first year he won Wimbledon. He was struggling with his back pr... JOHN MCENROE The want for that kiss had shocked him more than the interruption, and he fell back into the chair, ... KIM HARRISON He knew Alec enough by now to know the conflicting impulses that warred in him. He was conscientious... CASSANDRA CLARE They were talking more distantly than if they were strangers who had just met, for if they had been ... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM The great fact all the while however had been the incalculability; since he had supposed himself, fr... HENRY JAMES In one horrible moment the last piece of the prophecy became clear. So bid him take care,... SUZANNE COLLINS To his surprise he felt a moment of regret, of sadness that his quest for his mother and father woul... J.G. BALLARD We begin to fight. The wind and I. Horns locked. Battling each other with elements. LAURA DOCKRILL I was watching John, I thought he was the strongest. The Gerolsteiner rider... I think he was playin... JASON MCCARTNEY May I never neither turn left nor turn right in my journey of life, but may I go straight to Christ ... ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH The unfortunate thing is that, sometimes, we slip, but, fortunately, consciously or unconsciously, w... ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH He had no memory of ever being hugged like this, as though by a mother. The full weight of everythin... J.K. ROWLING He had learned some of the things that every man must find out for himself, and he had found out abo... THOMAS WOLFE It's been neat to watch T.J. grow from when he was a little boy to a man now. When he came here, he ... GORDON GIBBONS He tried to shape in his mind what he had to say to McDonald. It was a feeling; it was an urge that ... JOHN WILLIAMS His mind drifted back to times past. He missed the companionship of his old pack. He had grown up in... ALAN KINROSS The rocking of the boat by the waves was soothing but unknown. The men on the shore were asleep. Not... JOSEPH O'NEILL C.J. had once believed that he understood who he was, what he was about, what he was capable of. But... ROY L. PICKERING JR. You're full of contradictions, Ms. Wallace." I looked up at him and arched a brow. "I'm a girl... TAMMARA WEBBER He felt as if there were something missing inside him that didn't fit in with their merriment, with ... SARAH J. MAAS And Harry remembered his first nightmarish trip into the forest, the first time he had ever encounte... J.K. ROWLING This was the greatest gift that he had, the talent that fitted him for war; that ability not to igno... ERNEST HEMINGWAY He finds he cannot think of the dying men at all. Into his mind instead strays the picture of More o... HILARY MANTEL There was a man here, lashed himself to a spar as his ship went down, and for seven days and seven n... JEANETTE WINTERSON Hail to you gods, on that day of the great reckoning. Behold me, I have come to you, without sin, wi... THE BOOK OF THE DEAD When a man takes one step toward God, God takes more steps toward that man than there are sands in t... THE WORK OF THE CHARIOT She was a creature of the deep, and there she must return, or perish. Toby understood that, but it h... JULIET MARILLIER [His opponents have recognized his potential from first-hand experience.] He was pretty impressive, ... BOB SCHAEFER He got angry in a good way. He had just had enough and he responded in a manner that you'd expect a ... JOE MADDON Friendship is a double-edged sword one side it can be great and true but the other side it spells be... GARY F EVANS... It came to him that he had turned away from the buffalo not because of a womanish nausea at blood an... JOHN WILLIAMS What?” Ron bellowed furiously. “Four? You lousy, biased scumbag, you gave Krum ten!” But Harry... J.K. ROWLING He had no longer any need for home, for he carried his Gormenghast within him. All that he sought wa... MERVYN PEAKE ...He made no complaint whatsoever about the bad reputation he had attracted throughout the world, a... CHARLES BAUDELAIRE Horace’s pulse was racing and adrenaline was surging into his system. But he showed no sign of it.... JOHN FLANAGAN Long ago there was a little boy who lived in the wood with his father and his sister. One night, the... S.R. CRAWFORD A parabatai. Like he was. And Jace knew, too, what that faded rune meant: a parabatai whose other ha... CASSANDRA CLARE Harry lay flat on his back, breathing hard as though he had been running. He had awoken from a vivid... J.K. ROWLING For the last year his grandma had been slipping in and out of reality. One minute she was as clear a... SUZANNE COLLINS His habit of reading isolated him: it became such a need that after being in company for some time h... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM [T]his jealousy gave him, if anything, an agreeable chill, as, to the sad Parisian who is leaving Ve... MARCEL PROUST He just had no feel. Everything he tried to do, he was missing his target. It was one of those days ... TONY LA RUSSA The first inkling of this notion had come to him the Christmas before, at his daughter's place in Ve... JOHN CROWLEY All that he had of her was his memory, where he held every moment, every single moment that she had ... JULIET MARILLIER Stop running from me and listen. I do want you. I want you even knowing if I marry you, I’ve got a... LISA KLEYPAS The little Otak was hiding in the rafters of the house, as it did when strangers entered. There it s... URSULA K. LE GUIN Nixon had been to China. He had been to Russia doing arms negotiation. And so, he was on his way tow... THOMAS MALLON Another Mexican American in another class, approaches Victor after class, carrying his copy of Fahre... VICTOR VILLANUEVA As he rose to his feet he noticed that he was neither dripping nor panting for breath as anyone woul... C.S. LEWIS At first, man was enslaved by the gods. But he broke their chains. Then he was enslaved by the kings... AYN RAND Cheney was among the best secretaries of defence the country has ever had. He was a very effective W... BARTON GELLMAN
More Douglas Woolf
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VIRGINIA WOOLF Life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning. VIRGINIA WOOLF The first duty of a lecturer--to hand you after an hour's discourse a nugget of pure truth to wrap u... VIRGINIA WOOLF It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality VIRGINIA WOOLF The first duty of a lecturer is to hand you after an hour's discourse a nugget of pure truth to wrap... VIRGINIA WOOLF Why are women... so much more interesting to men than men are to women? VIRGINIA WOOLF The history of men's opposition to women's emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story o... VIRGINIA WOOLF All this pitting of sex against sex, of quality against quality; all this claiming of superiority an... VIRGINIA WOOLF A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction. VIRGINIA WOOLF Anything may happen when womanhood has ceased to be a protected occupation. VIRGINIA WOOLF It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top. VIRGINIA WOOLF Women have sat indoors all these millions of years, so that by this time the very walls are permeate... VIRGINIA WOOLF This soul, or life within us, by no means agrees with the life outside us. If one has the courage to... VIRGINIA WOOLF On the outskirts of every agony sits some observant fellow who points. VIRGINIA WOOLF When the shriveled skin of the ordinary is stuffed out with meaning, it satisfies the senses amazing... VIRGINIA WOOLF Language is wine upon the lips. VIRGINIA WOOLF Yet, it is true, poetry is delicious; the best prose is that which is most full of poetry. VIRGINIA WOOLF A good essay must have this permanent quality about it; it must draw its curtain round us, but it mu... VIRGINIA WOOLF Once conform, once do what other people do because they do it, and a lethargy steals over all the fi... VIRGINIA WOOLF Humor is the first of the gifts to perish in a foreign tongue. VIRGINIA WOOLF Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the power of reflecting the figu... VIRGINIA WOOLF It seems as if an age of genius must be succeeded by an age of endeavour; riot and extravagance by c... VIRGINIA WOOLF One must love everything. VIRGINIA WOOLF How then did it work out, all this? How did one judge people, think of them? How did one add up this... VIRGINIA WOOLF The beauty of the world, which is so soon to perish, has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish,... VIRGINIA WOOLF You cannot find peace by avoiding life. VIRGINIA WOOLF Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so slightly perhaps, but still attached to life at... VIRGINIA WOOLF These are the soul's changes. I don't believe in ageing. I believe in forever altering one... VIRGINIA WOOLF Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparen... VIRGINIA WOOLF Arrange whatever pieces come your way. VIRGINIA WOOLF Mental fight means thinking against the current, not with it. It is our business to puncture gas bag... VIRGINIA WOOLF It is fatal to be a man or woman pure and simple: one must be a woman manly, or a man womanly. VIRGINIA WOOLF Anyone can be a barbarian; it requires a terrible effort to remain a civilized man. LEONARD WOOLF One likes people much better when they're battered down by a prodigious siege of misfortune than... VIRGINIA WOOLF He who robs us of our dreams robs us of our life. VIRGINIA WOOLF When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman se... VIRGINIA WOOLF It flattered her, where she was most susceptible of flattery, to think how, wound about in their hea... VIRGINIA WOOLF Now begins to rise in me the familiar rhythm; words that have lain dormant now lift, now toss their ... VIRGINIA WOOLF To want and not to have, sent all up her body a hardness, a hollowness, a strain. And then to want a... VIRGINIA WOOLF For this moment, this one moment, we are together. I press you to me. Come, pain, feed on me. Bury y... VIRGINIA WOOLF For most of history, Anonymous was a woman. VIRGINIA WOOLF The truth is, I often like women. I like their unconventionality. I like their completeness. I like ... VIRGINIA WOOLF I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman. VIRGINIA WOOLF Indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often ... VIRGINIA WOOLF The telephone, which interrupts the most serious conversations and cuts short the most weighty obser... VIRGINIA WOOLF Anyone who has the temerity to write about Jane Austen is aware of [two] facts: first, that of all g... VIRGINIA WOOLF I feel a thousand capacities spring up in me. I am arch, gay, languid, melancholy by turns. I am roo... VIRGINIA WOOLF It's not catastrophes, murders, deaths, diseases, that age and kill us; it's the way people ... VIRGINIA WOOLF It might be possible that the world itself is without meaning. VIRGINIA WOOLF One might fancy that day, the London day, was just beginning. Like a woman who had slipped off her p... VIRGINIA WOOLF I rise from my worst disasters, I turn, I change. VIRGINIA WOOLF As a woman I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman, my country is the whole worl... VIRGINIA WOOLF How much better is silence; the coffee cup, the table. How much better to sit by myself like the sol... VIRGINIA WOOLF The grinding of the intellect is for most people as painful as a dentist's drill. LEONARD WOOLF Sleep, that deplorable curtailment of the joy of life. VIRGINIA WOOLF What does the brain matter compared with the heart? VIRGINIA WOOLF Often on a wet day I begin counting up; what I've read and what I haven't read. VIRGINIA WOOLF Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others. VIRGINIA WOOLF If one could be friendly with women, what a pleasure -- the relationship so secret and private com... VIRGINIA WOOLF