“As if the night has been created for the writers and as if the silence of it is the very inspiration itself!”
“I do dream every night but in the morning I regret.”
“Tick Tock, The sun fell down; Ding Dong the moon took a peek, Ring Ding, It s Harmonizing my Insanity”
“If you don t believe in yourself, who will? ~Maybeck”
“I ve never really understood why people sleep. Wasting a third of your life and becoming vulnerable for almost 8 hours every night. Doesn t seem very appealing to me.”
“I ve always felt that distant train whistles heard in the dead of night are the universe s way of letting us know the best days are neither ahead nor behind us...they re happening right now, cradled in the palms of our hands. But that doesn t change the fact that the whiskey, weed, and romance eventually runs out and the night will soon turn to day.”
“In tragedy and despair, when an endless night seems to have fallen, hope can be found in the realization taht the companion of night is not another night, that the companion of night is day, that darkness always gives way to light, and that death rules only half of creation, life the other half.”
“This day I ceased to plead. I was no longer capable of lamentation. On the contrary, I felt very strong. I was the accuser, God the accused.”
“Rather nice night, after all. Stars are out and everything. Exceptionally tasty assortment of them.”
“However impatient she might be in the day, however filled with little sudden angers, at night she was all tenderness.”
“I won t let that night ruin you forever. But it did, it broke me into a million pieces and blew them away in the wind, like crumbled leaves.”
“The thing, whatever it was - and no one was ever sure afterwards whether it was a dream or a fit or what - happened at that peculiar hour before dawn when human vitality is at its lowest ebb. The Blue Hour they sometimes call it, l heure bleue - the ribbon of darkness between the false dawn and the true, always blacker than all the rest of the night has been before it. Criminals break down and confess at that hour; suicides nerve themselves for their attempts; mists swirl in the sky; and - according to the old books of the monks and the hermits - strange, unholy shapes brood over the sleeping rooftops. At any rate, it was at this hour that her screams shattered the stillness of that top-floor apartment overlooking the Pare Monceau. Curdling, razor-edged screams that slashed through the thick bedroom door. ( I m Dangerous Tonight )”
“It was dark now, and broodingly sluggish. Like something supine waiting to spring, with just the tip of its tail twitching. Leaves stood still on the trees. An evil green star glinted in the black sky like a hostile eye, like an evil spying eye. ( For The Rest Of Her Life )”
“A scattering of pinpoint lights shows up in the blackness ahead. A town or village straddling the highway. The indicator on the speedometer begins to lose ground. The man glances in his mirror at the girl, a little anxiously as if this oncoming town were some kind of test to be met. An illuminated road sign flashes by: CAUTION! MAIN STREET AHEAD - SLOW UP The man nods grimly, as if agreeing with that first word. But not in the way it is meant. The lights grow bigger, spread out on either side. Street lights peer out here and there among the trees. The highway suddenly sprouts a plank sidewalk on each side of it. Dark store-windows glide by. With an instinctive gesture, the man dims his lights from blinding platinum to just a pale wash. A lunch-room window drifts by. ( Jane Brown s Body )”
“A raging, glowering full moon had come up, was peering down over the side of the sky well above the patio. That was the last thing she saw as she leaned for a moment, inert with fatigue, against the doorway of the room in which her child lay. Then she dragged herself in to topple headlong upon the bed and, already fast asleep, to circle her child with one protective arm, moving as if of its own instinct. Not the meek, the pallid, gentle moon of home. This was the savage moon that had shone down on Montezuma and Cuauhtemoc, and came back looking for them now. The primitive moon that had once looked down on terraced heathen cities and human sacrifices. The moon of Anahuac. ( The Moon Of Montezuma )”
“On hands and knees the figure comes pacing along beside the wall that flanks the patio, lithe, sinuous, knife in mouth perpendicular to its course. In moonlight and out of it, as each successive archway of the portico circles high above it, comes down to join its support, and is gone again to the rear. The moon is a caress on supple skin. The moon of Anahuac understands, the moon is in league, the moon will not betray. ( The Moon of Montezuma )”
“At the end of the day, when the sun falls a willing prisoner of the night...and humans, males and females alike, become submitted to the mistress of the dark, my mind begins to wander and wonder. Looking upwards at a blank slate of concrete, the psyque expresses freely what my subconscious is afraid to give free rein. And there and then, between the play of reality and dreamland, I find my place. I find myself.”