“Art thou like me, child of my darkest heart? And dost thou think my untamed thoughts and speak my vast language?” “Yea, we are twin brothers, O, Night; for thou revealest space and I reveal my soul.”
“Long miles of snow and mountains spun out behind him, and his hooves scattered stardust or snow crystals. He went bounding on and on, right on the spine of the world, thrust out against the night sky”
“Women can go mad with insomnia. The sleep-deprived roam houses that have lost their familiarity. With tea mugs in hand, we wander rooms, looking on shelves for something we will recognize: a book title, a photograph, the teak-carved bird -- a souvenir from what place? A memory almost rises when our eyes rest on a painting s grey sweep of cloud, or the curve of a wooden leg in a corner. Fingertips faintly recall the raised pattern on a chair cushion, but we wonder how these things have come to be here, in this stranger s home. Lost women drift in places where time has collapsed. We look into our thoughts and hearts for what has been forgotten, for what has gone missing. What did we once care about? Whom did we love? We are emptied. We are remote. Like night lilies, we open in the dark, breathe in the shadowy world. Our soliloquies are heard by no one.”
“It s true though: time moves in its own special way in the middle of the night, the bartender says, loudly striking a book match and lighting a cigarette. You can t fight it.”
“We should live, my Lesbia, and love And value all the talk of stricter Old men at a single penny. Suns can set and rise again; For us, once our brief light has set, There s one unending night for sleeping. Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred, Then another thousand, then a second hundred, Then still another thousand, then a hundred; Then, when we ve made many thousands, We ll muddle them so as not to know Or lest some villain overlook us Knowing the total of our kisses. (Translated by Guy Lee)”
“Night is a world lit by itself”
“You know you love him when you can t sleep at night and get up early to talk to him the next morning.”
“It was getting dark by the time I went out, and nobody who knows the country will need to be told how black is the darkness of a November night under high laurel bushes and yew-trees. I walked into the heart of the shrubberies two or three times, not seeing a step before me, till I came out upon the broader carriage-road, where the trees opened a little, and there was a faint grey glimmer of sky visible, under which the great limes and elms stood darkling like ghosts; but it grew black again as I approached the corner where the ruins lay. ( The Open Door )”
“...And we left the light for the night of the street”
“Now the evening s at its noon, its meridian. The outgoing tide has simmered down, and there s a lull-like the calm in the eye of a hurricane - before the reverse tide starts to set in. The last acts of the three-act plays are now on, and the after-theater eating places are beginning to fill up with early comers; Danny s and Lindy s - yes, and Horn & Hardart too. Everybody has got where they wanted to go - and that was out somewhere. Now everybody will want to get back where they came from - and that s home somewhere. Or as the coffee-grinder radio, always on the beam, put it at about this point: New York, New York, it s a helluva town, The Bronx is up, the Battery s down, And the people ride around in a hole in the ground. Now the incoming tide rolls in; the hours abruptly switch back to single digits again, and it s a little like the time you put your watch back on entering a different time zone. Now the buses knock off and the subway expresses turn into locals and the locals space themselves far apart; and as Johnny Carson s face hits millions of screens all at one and the same time, the incoming tide reaches its crest and pounds against the shore. There s a sudden splurge, a slew of taxis arriving at the hotel entrance one by one as regularly as though they were on a conveyor belt, emptying out and then going away again. Then this too dies down, and a deep still sets in. It s an around-the-clock town, but this is the stretch; from now until the garbage-grinding trucks come along and tear the dawn to shreds, it gets as quiet as it s ever going to get. This is the deep of the night, the dregs, the sediment at the bottom of the coffee cup. The blue hours; when guys nerves get tauter and women s fears get greater. Now guys and girls make love, or kill each other or sometimes both. And as the windows on the Late Show title silhouette light up one by one, the real ones all around go dark. And from now on the silence is broken only by the occasional forlorn hoot of a bogged-down drunk or the gutted-cat squeal of a too sharply swerved axle coming around a turn. Or as Billy Daniels sang it in Golden Boy: While the city sleeps, And the streets are clear, There s a life that s happening here. ( New York Blues )”
“You know what the best part of the stars is? What s that? They re the same no matter what sky you re standing under. I mean...yeah, they might move or look like they re in a different place, but they re the same stars. Yeah? So? So even if you re apart from someone you want to be with, you can look up at the stars and know they re looking at the same ones.”
“It s six o clock; my drink is at the three-quarter mark - three-quarters down not three-quarters up - and the night begins. ( New York Blues )”
“The bleak autumn wind was still blowing, and the solemn, surging moan of it in the wood was dreary and awful to hear through the night silence. Issac felt strangely wakeful. He resolved, as he lay down in bed, to keep the candle alight until he began to grow sleepy; for there was something unendurably depressing in the bare idea of lying awake in the darkness, listening to the dismal, ceaseless moan of the wind in the wood. ( The Dream Woman )”
“Three o clock in the morning. The highway is empty, under a malignant moon. The oil drippings make the roadway gleam like a blue-satin ribbon. The night is still but for a humming noise coming up somewhere behind a rise of ground. Two other, fiercer, whiter moons, set close together, suddenly top the rise, shoot a fan of blinding platinum far down ahead of them. Headlights. The humming burgeons into a roar. The touring car is going so fast it sways from side to side. The road is straight. The way is long. The night is short. (Jane Brown s Body )”
“And yet it seems so full of comfort and of strength, the night. In its great presence, our small sorrows creep away, ashamed. The day has been so full of fret and care, and our hearts have been so full of evil and bitter thoughts, and the world has seemed so hard and wrong to us. Then night, like some great loving mother, gently lays her hand upon our fevered head, and turns our little tear-stained face upto hers, and smiles, and though she does not speak, we know what she would say, and lay our hot flushed cheek against her bosom, and the pain is gone. Sometimes, our pain is very deep and real, and we stand before her very silent, because there is no language for our pain, only a moan. Night s heart is full of pity for us: she cannot ease our aching; she takes our hand in hers, and the little world grows very small and very far away beneath us, and borne on her dark wings, we pass for a moment into a mightier presence than her own, and in the wondrous light of that great presence, all human life s like a book before us, and we know that Pain and Sorrow are but the angels of God.”
“This tune goes manly. Come, go we to the King. Our power is ready; Our lack is nothing but our leave. Macbeth Is ripe for shaking, and the powers above Put on their instruments. Receive what cheer you may. The night is long that never finds the day. They exit.”
“In the shores of twilight, Wide and deep as your eyes, I swim. In a way, I feel her Night, a crowned goddess commanding the stars to swim, So peaceful, even death escapes into serenity. Stars so far, they seem as they tell the living world, lights, live into shinning, die into nothingness. Worlds I want to travel, away to shadows of your eyes in the hold of your lips. So far, so far away.... As your kiss, as my lover. Night, With a soft touch, Touches my face, winds to the trees, sunlight on grass, life, breath, so quite, death screams in the abyss, a black pearl with grains of sand. The dance of the night..reminds me of her. Her tender laughter, the gleam in her enormous eyes, her soft whirlpool lips. As a reflection from dark streams, She reveals hot love, Nothing hidden, no shame, just love that hurts. The solace in the night makes me cry... The lights of stars as arrows to me. Night, Hits my eyes, Beauty of the wilderness, Calling me, Homeless in a city, naked on cold steel At home with the sea, with night above, foam of waters breaks below. As my companion, friend I speak to. I say to the night sky. Does she love me? When travels of the heart goes outside of me, outside the seas into clouds of your warmth, To another place in her heart trying to find out... Does your heart want me to visit or stay? Night, Calm is the winds, feeling the air, Night, She is beautiful.. Hitting me with such painful softness, I don t want day to arrive, I want to stay.. In the night, Peaceful, loving...with you... Night...vast space in time, Nothing, empty, to hold, for night, you are me. For I cannot have her. A love vast, beautiful and alone. For in the night, We see each other, In the light, Nothing hidden, Everything revealed, Night..I love you.,,as I love her. For I don t have her but I have you. As my love, invisible and forever waiting like a lost sailor in the night sea....”