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Link Quote Stars Tags Author
636f06d The house smelled musty and damp, and a little sweet, as if it were haunted by the ghosts of long-dead cookies. humor setting smell descriptions ghosts scent Neil Gaiman
708d31b "He was trying to tell me something." Derek snorted. "Aren't they all? Must be a rule in the ghost handbook--if in danger of evaporating, make sure you're in the middle of a dire pronouncement." -- young-adult necromancer derek ghosts supernatural urban-fantasy Kelley Armstrong
279dc9e The muses are ghosts, and sometimes they come uninvited. muse ghosts Stephen King
84a6209 "Hazel frowned. "Why that one?" "You don't see the ghost?" Frank asked. "Ghost?" Nico asked. Okay... if Frank was seeing a ghost that the Underworld kids couldn't see, something was definitely wrong." percy-jackson-and-te-olympians siblings underworld house-of-hades nico-di-angelo rick-riordan hazel-levesque ghosts Rick Riordan
d65d444 The main thing about ghosts - most of them have lost their voices. In Asphodel, millions of them wander around aimlessly, trying to remember who they were. You know why they end up like that? Because in life they never took a stand one way or another. They never spoke out, so they were never heard. Your voice is your identity. If you don't use it,' Nico said with a shrug, 'you're halfway to Asphodel already.' ... He hated when his own advice applied to himself. wisdom ghosts Rick Riordan
56bbd33 "Do we not each dream of dreams? Do we not dance on the notes of lost sex shakespeare magic rain poems romance sacrifice death dreams music songs life carrack cityisle cityspire desolate fedora haunts horace-walpole mannequins phillip-k-dick puddles specters spectre amnesia androids haunting greek-mythology waking damnation count emily-dickinson magick tempest apocalypse reflections storms masquerade empty science-fiction gothic jazz ships ghosts water piano Nathan Reese Maher
ab1ab67 We're all ghosts. We all carry, inside us, people who came before us. liam-callanan the-cloud-atlas death ghosts Liam Callanan
76d1e51 The ghosts of things that never happened are worse than the ghosts of things that did. montgomery ghosts L.M. Montgomery
3fedf3a For dreams, too, are ghosts, desires chased in sleep, gone by morning. dreams ghosts Libba Bray
518b224 Every city is a ghost. New buildings rise upon the bones of the old so that each shiny steel bean, each tower of brick carries within it the memories of what has gone before, an architectural haunting. Sometimes you can catch a glimpse of these former incarnations in the awkward angle of a street or filigreed gate, an old oak door peeking out from a new facade, the plaque commemorating the spot that was once a battleground, which became a saloon and is now a park. hauntings the-past ghosts Libba Bray
98bce33 Not everybody believes in ghosts, but I do. Do you know what they are, Trisha? She had shaken her head slowly. Men and women who can't get over their past . . . That's what ghosts are. past ghosts Stephen King
ed12776 It bothered me that he was right. Without Sir Stuart's intervention, I'd have been dead again already. That's right--you heard me: dead again already. I mean, come on. How screwed up is your life (after- or otherwise) when you find yourself needing phrases like that? life ghosts Jim Butcher
e17fd53 "There is a stillness between us, a period of restlessness that ties my stomach sex shakespeare magic rain poems romance sacrifice death dreams music songs life carrack cityisle cityspire desolate fedora haunts horace-walpole mannequins phillip-k-dick puddles specters spectre amnesia androids haunting greek-mythology waking damnation count emily-dickinson magick tempest apocalypse reflections storms masquerade empty science-fiction gothic jazz ships ghosts water piano Nathan Reese Maher
2ad472f "Boo: "Go talk to her." Callum: "About what?" Boo: "Anything." Callum: "You want me to walk up to her and say, 'Are you a ghost?'" Boo: "I do that." Callum: "I love it when you get it wrong." humor callum ghosts Maureen Johnson
56df2ae Many African societies divide humans into three categories: those still alive on the earth, the sasha, and the zamani. The recently departed whose time on earth overlapped with people still here are the sasha, the living-dead. They are not wholly dead, for they still live in the memories of the living, who can call them to mind, create their likeness in art, and bring them to life in anecdote. When the last person to know an ancestor dies, that ancestor leaves the sasha for the zamani, the dead. As generalised ancestors, the zamani are not forgotten but revered. Many ... can be recalled by name. But they are not the living-dead. There is a difference. death-and-dying lies-my-teacher-told-me spirits ghosts James W Loewen
bc7fb58 Yet man dies not whilst the world, at once his mother and his monument, remains. His name is lost, indeed, but the breath he breathed still stirs the pine-tops on the mountains, the sound of the words he spoke yet echoes on through space; the thoughts his brain gave birth to we have inherited to-day; his passions are our cause of life; the joys and sorrows that he knew are our familiar friends--the end from which he fled aghast will surely overtake us also! Truly the universe is full of ghosts, not sheeted churchyard spectres, but the inextinguishable elements of individual life, which having once been, can never die, though they blend and change, and change again for ever. ghosts H. Rider Haggard
571278b I have emotions that are like newspapers that read themselves. I go for days at a time trapped in the want ads. I feel as if I am an ad for the sale of a haunted house: 18 rooms $37,000 I'm yours ghosts and all. poetry past sadness ruins ghosts Richard Brautigan
989e0bc I have no fear of ghosts, and I have never heard it said that so much harm had been done by the dead during 6,000 years as it brought by the living in a single day. mankind harm ghosts Alexandre Dumas
d3b524d I am empty of everything. I am empty of everything but the thin, frail ghosts in my room. ghosts Jean Rhys
2cb476e "History doesn't start with a tall building sex shakespeare magic rain poems romance sacrifice death dreams music songs life carrack cityisle cityspire desolate fedora haunts horace-walpole mannequins phillip-k-dick puddles specters spectre amnesia androids haunting greek-mythology waking damnation count emily-dickinson magick tempest apocalypse reflections storms masquerade empty science-fiction gothic jazz ships ghosts water piano Nathan Reese Maher
89fa8bd We wander in our thousands over the face of the earth, the illustrious and the obscure, earning beyond the seas our fame, our money, or only a crust of bread; but it seems to me that for each of us going home must be like going to render an account. We return to face our superiors, our kindred, our friends--those whom we obey, and those whom we love; but even they who have neither, the most free, lonely, irresponsible and bereft of ties,--even those for whom home holds no dear face, no familiar voice,--even they have to meet the spirit that dwells within the land, under its sky, in its air, in its valleys, and on its rises, in its fields, in its waters and its trees--a mute friend, judge, and inspirer. mankind humanity family home-town prodigal-daughters prodigal-sons stomping-grounds old-friends homecoming reunion return home ghosts Joseph Conrad
765476b The story of my own childhood is a complicated sentence that I am always trying to finish, to finish and put behind me. It resists finishing, and partly this is because words are not enough; my early world was synaesthesic, and I am haunted by the ghosts of my own sense impressions, which re-emerge when I try to write, and shiver between the lines. past life consciousness ghosts Hilary Mantel
d88654b These days, there are angry ghosts all around us, dead from wars, sickness, starvation--and nobody cares. So you say you're under a curse? Well, so what? So's the whole damned world. pessimism ghosts Hayao Miyazaki
4f1cf5a It's like the corporate world's full of ghosts ... maybe a fairer way of putting this would be to say that adulthood's full of ghosts ... these people who've ended up in one life instead of another and they are just so disappointed ... They've done what's expected of them. They want to do something different but it's impossible now, there's a mortgage, kids, whatever, they're trapped ... High-functioning sleepwalkers, essentially. ghosts Emily St. John Mandel
6e9cbf3 "She leaves my side and heads deeper into sex shakespeare magic rain poems romance sacrifice death dreams music songs life carrack cityisle cityspire desolate fedora haunts horace-walpole mannequins phillip-k-dick puddles specters spectre amnesia androids haunting greek-mythology waking damnation count emily-dickinson magick tempest apocalypse reflections storms masquerade empty science-fiction gothic jazz ships ghosts water piano Nathan Reese Maher
d5cd509 "It's possible that the reason I've never experienced a ghostly presence is that my temporal lobes aren't wired for it. It could well be that the main difference between skeptics (Susan Blackmore notwithstanding) and believers is the neural structure they were born with. But the question still remains: Are these people whose EMF-influenced brains alert them to "presences" picking up something real that the rest of us can't pick up, or are they hallucinating? Here again, we must end with the Big Shrug, a statue of which is being erected on the lawn outside my office." -- science hallucinations ghosts Mary Roach
d273efd America had invented itself. It continued to invent itself as it went along. Sometimes its virtues made it the envy of the world. Sometimes it betrayed the very heart of its ideals. Sometimes the people dispensed with what was difficult or inconvenient to acknowledge. So the good people maintained the illusion of democracy and wrote another hymn to America. They sang loud enough to drown out dissent. They sang loud enough to overpower their own doubts. There were no plaques to commemorate mistakes. But the past didn't forget. History was haunted by the ghosts of buried crimes, which required period exorcisms of truth. Actions had consequences. history mistakes ghosts democracy Libba Bray
9acbceb Sometimes people graduate but they don't leave. They hang around for years, for no reason. I would think of ghosts like that, I decided. letting-go college ghosts Maureen Johnson
4c8d46b "That's a stupid name! Whirly-gig is much better, I think. Who in their right mind would point at this thing and say, 'I'm going to fly in my Model-A1'. sex shakespeare magic rain poems romance sacrifice death dreams music songs life carrack cityisle cityspire desolate fedora haunts horace-walpole mannequins phillip-k-dick puddles specters spectre amnesia androids haunting greek-mythology waking damnation count emily-dickinson magick tempest apocalypse reflections storms masquerade empty science-fiction gothic jazz ships ghosts water piano Nathan Reese Maher
2767bcf The terms we use for what is considered supernatural are woefully inadequate. Beyond such terms as ghost, specter, poltergeist, angel, devil, or spirit, might there not be something more our purposeful blindness has prevented us from understanding? We accept the fact that there may be other worlds out in space, but might there not be other worlds here? Other worlds, in other dimensions, coexistent with this? If there are other worlds parallel to ours, are all the doors closed? Or does one, here or there, stand ajar? spirits ghosts paranormal Louis L'Amour
fd1bb46 We wander in our thousands over the face of the earth, the illustrious and the obscure, earning beyond the seas our fame, our money, or only a crust of bread; but it seems to me that for each of us going home must be like going to render an account. mankind humanity family home-town prodigal-daughters prodigal-sons stomping-grounds old-friends homecoming reunion return home ghosts Joseph Conrad
04772e3 "Are you asking if I believe in ghosts?" "I don't know. Maybe. Yes." "Of course not. Imagine how many there'd be." "Yes," Kirsten said, "that's exactly it." ghosts Emily St. John Mandel
28bbdd4 As I pen these words to leave a lasting record, I wonder myself where it all began. fiction truth handwritten lasting pen second-sight where prologue girls ghosts Richard Peck
cecdc1b The mere mention of the Farakka Express, which jerks its way eastward each day from Delhi to Calcutta, is enough to throw even a seasoned traveller into fits of apoplexy. At a desert encampment on Namibia's Skeleton Coast, a hard-bitten adventurer had downed a peg of local fire-water then told me the tale. Farakka was a ghost train, he said, haunted by ghouls, Thuggees, and thieves. Only a passenger with a death wish would go anywhere near it. india travel delhi farakka-express ghosts Tahir Shah
19b9589 That night there was more than one killer in the forest, the next day a lot more ghosts.--The Book of Brin killer ghosts Michael J. Sullivan
04eef8b The only way, I thought to myself, that this could get any weirder would be if it turns out he has that dead body's head on ice where in the basement, some ready for transplantation onto Cindy Crawford's body as soon as it becomes available. high-school ghosts supernatural ya Meg Cabot
89c310d There such things as ghosts. People everywhere have always known that. And we believe in them every bit as much as Homer did. Only now, we call them by different names. Memory. The unconscious. ghosts memory Donna Tartt
e3c4a23 The dead live in our memories. live memories reality life ghosts Pete Hautman
d9c6448 "I wasn't trying to reach England. or Paris. I thought that if I made the broadcast powerful enough, my brother would hear me. That I could bring him some peace, protect him as he had always protected me." You'd play your brother's own voice to him? After he died?" "And Debussy." Did he ever talk back?" The attic ticks. What ghosts sidle along the walls right now, trying to overhear? She can almost taste her great-uncle's fright in the air. "No," he says. "He never did." radio ghosts Anthony Doerr
82d1076 I am not dead. Death does not exist. I am alive! That is the purpose of this tale, to let everyone know that they do go on and that they don't need to be afraid, as I was afraid. Yet I also have a selfish reason for wanting my story told. I was young when I died. I didn't have a chance to make my mark in the world. I didn't do anything unique, nothing that will change the course of history. But I wasn't a bad girl. I don't want to be forgotten. I want people to remember me. death remember-me shari-cooper christopher-pike ghosts Christopher Pike
447b484 But if you wish, you can imagine that the Shadow does wait for your return and that it does remember everything that has gone before and that it doesn't let you accept yourself as perfect until you let it. There is truth in that. That is why a child usually cries as soon as it's born. With its first breath, the Shadow returns. death remember-me christopher-pike self-acceptance shadows ghosts horror Christopher Pike
536e73e Most people would probably call me a ghost. I am, after all, dead. But I don't think of myself that way. It wasn't so long ago that I was alive, you see. I was only eighteen. I had my whole life in front of me. Now I suppose you could say I have all of eternity before me. I'm not sure exactly what that means yet. I'm told everything's going to be fine. But I have to wonder what I would have done with my life, who I might have been. That's what saddens me most about dying--that I'll never know. death remember-me shari-cooper christopher-pike ghosts Christopher Pike
1df0927 See, even though Jesse's a ghost, and can walk through walls and disappear and reappear at will, he's still...well, there. To me, anyway. That's what makes me-and Father Dom-different from everybody else. We not only can see and talk to ghosts, but we can feel them too-just as if they were anybody else. Anybody alive, I mean. Because to me and Father Dom, ghosts are just like anyone else, with blood and guts and sweat and bad breath and whatever. The only real difference is that they kind of have this glow around them-an aura, I think it's called. jesse-de-silva ninth-key father-dominic susannah-simon suze-simon the-mediator ghosts Meg Cabot
547b4e4 I am consoled only to see that I was not mistaken: Chicago is just as I remembered it. I was here twenty five years ago. My father brought me and Scott up to see the Century of Progress and once later to the World Series. Not a single thing do I remember from the first trip but this: the sense of the place, the savor of the genie-soul of the place which every place has or else is not a place. I could have been wrong: it could have been nothing of the sort, not the memory of a place but the memory of being a child. But one step out into the brilliant March day and there it is as big as life, the genie-soul of the place Which, wherever you go, you must meet and master first thing or be met and mastered. Until now, one genie-soul and only one ever proved too strong for me: San Francisco--up and down the hills I pursued him, missed him and was pursued, by a presence, a powdering of fall gold in the air, a trembling brightness that pierced to the heart, and the sadness of coming at last to the sea, the coming to the end of America. Nobody but a Southerner knows the wrenching rinsing sadness of the cities of the North. Knowing all about genie-souls and living in haunted places like Shiloh and the Wilderness and Vicksburg and Atlanta where the ghosts of heroes walk abroad by day and are more real than people, he knows a ghost when he sees one, and no sooner does he step off the train in New York or Chicago or San Francisco than he feels the genie-soul perched on his shoulder. the-south ghosts Walker Percy
6466853 Even from high above, I could feel Amanda's hate. Or perhaps it was another dimension of my Shadow, my own hate for her closing in on me. Despite all I had learned and seen, I wished to God someone would choke her to death so I could get ahold of her and choke her some more. hatred hate death amanda-parrish remember-me shari-cooper christopher-pike threats ghosts Christopher Pike
77ef19e "I wasn't trying to reach England. Or Paris. I thought that if I made the broadcast powerful enough, my brother would hear me. That I could bring him some peace, protect him as he had always protected me." "You'd play your brother's own voice to him? After he died?" "And Debussy." "Did he ever talk back?" brothers radio ghosts Anthony Doerr
cebf249 The recruits of 1914 have the look of ghosts. They are queuing up to be slaughtered: they are already dead. war somme soldiers ghosts Geoff Dyer
4331ad9 I was facing him before the last word was out, but I should have been dead by then. In a way I did die, right there, all that time ago, and this is a ghost who has been telling you stories and drinking your wine. You don't understand. Never mind. lal lal-after-dark lal-alone lalkhamsin-khamsolal never-mind sailor-lal swordcane-lal telling-stories ghosts wine dying stories Peter S. Beagle
8ad4b63 "- "Do You know what ghosts are, Stuey? I'll tell you. They're secrets haunting the memories of the living. So long as we carry their secrets, they refuse to leave. They wait." "Wait for what?" "To be forgotten. My father has been gone for sixty years, but" -- he tapped the side of his head -- "he's still here. He never left." reality forgotten-memories ghosts-of-the-past ghosts secrets Pete Hautman
0d24b51 "We are all ghosts," Morris Klapper said at last. "We are conceived in a moment of death and born out of ghost wombs, and we play in the streets with other little ghosts, chanting ghost-rhymes and scratching to become real. We are told that life is full of goals and that, although it is sadly necessary to fight, you can at least choose your war. But we learn that for ghosts there can only be one battle: to become real. A few of us make it, thus encouraging other ghosts to believe it can be done." war morris-klapper necessary-to-fight to-become-real real goals ghosts Peter S. Beagle
2b65dfa Still less could I be afraid of those ghosts who touch my thoughts in passing. Any library is filled with them. I can take a book from dusty shelves, and be haunted by the thoughts of one long dead, still lively as ever in their winding sheet of words. prologue ghosts Diana Gabaldon