Midnight's Quotes

“But especially he loved to run in the dim twilight of the summer midnights, listening to the subdued and sleepy murmurs of the forest, reading signs and sounds as a man may read a book, and seeking for the mysterious something that called
called, waking or sleeping, at all times, for him to come.”

— Jack London

“He'd been toting it, and checking it, and packing and unpacking, all the way since fate was on the river - that's how long - the Big River - Fate Marable and his riverboat caliope (Cleo seemed to recall), who hadastonished the landings between New Orleans and St. Louis with the wild, harsh, skirling Gypsy music, and left there, echoing in the young and restless even as it dies off round the bed; to linger with them thereafter, in the pelting roar of November midnights and the clickety-clack of lonesome valley freights, until they up one night and go after it in a battered bus, following the telephone wires that make a zigzag music staff against the evening sky - some variation of that basic beginning could be told for everyone who jazz has touched and altered.”

— John Clellon Holmes

“In life one of Midnight's favourite movies had been It's a Wonderful Life, a touching story where a man called George Bailey is shown how poor the world would have been if he'd never existed, but now the young ghost of Midnight Merlot was sat imagining himself not as the kind hero of his own narrative, but, - but as the anti-George.”

— Tom Conrad

“Each of them had been looking for a way out of their own black midnights, and each of them still had a long way to go until they found some kind of dawn.”

— Ari Berk

“Fierce midnights and famishing morrows,
And the loves that complete and control
All the joys of the flesh, all the sorrows
That wear out the soul.”

— Algernon Charles Swinburne

“She looked up over Pony's shoulder and saw Noel, and Noel saw her - and he strode straight through the basement, over the love seat and up onto the coffee table and over the couch and through Pony and Simini, and wrapped his arms around Mags, swinging her in a circle. (Midnights)”

— Rainbow Rowell

“I will Basquiat the canvas of your body like a Broadway Junction wall ... and Gordon Parks you for those dark midnights when your scent fades.”

— Brandi L. Bates

“Her presence brought memories of such things as Bourbon roses, rubies, and tropical midnights; her moods recalled lotus-eaters and the march in "Athalie"; her motions, the ebb and flow of the sea; her voice, the viola.”

— Thomas Hardy

“That country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and midnights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Whose people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain.”

— Ray Bradbury

“He felt the tremble ... Why? But she was bigger, stronger, more intelligent than
himself, wasn't she? Did she, too, feel that intangible menace, that groping out of
darkness, that crouching malignancy down below? Was there, then, no strength in
growing up? No solace in being an adult? No sanctuary in life? No fleshly citadel strong
enough to withstand the scrabbling assault of midnights? Doubts flushed him.”

— Ray Bradbury

“There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.”

— W.B. Yeats

“You must live in a place where you can walk safely all alone even after midnights!”

— Mehmet Murat Ildan

“Yes, they will trample me underfoot, the numbers marching one two three, four hundred million five hundred six, reducing me to specks of voiceless dust, just as, in all good time, they will trample my son who is not my son, and his son who will not be his, and his who will not be his, until the thousand and first generation, until a thousand and one midnights have bestowed their terrible gifts and a thousand and one children have died, because it is the privilege and the curse of midnight's children to be both masters and victims of their times, to forsake privacy and be sucked into the annihilating whirlpool of the multitudes, and to be unable to live or die in peace.”

— Salman Rushdie

“The magical tapestry that 'Midnight's Children' unfolded became a part of a journey of self-discovery as I spent time close to my roots during the shooting.”

— Satya Bhabha

“'Midnight's Children' falls under the genre of post-colonial writing, and there is a range of writers like V.S. Naipaul and Salman who popularised it. 'Midnight's Children' was incredibly important in this canon.”

— Satya Bhabha

“I visit India at least once a year, though surrounding the making of 'Midnight's Children' I was there a lot more.”

— Satya Bhabha

“Before doing 'Midnight's Children,' I didn't really have a chance to explore my Indian side. The Indian side of my heritage was always present, but it did not particularly define my identity. Being English was more an identity-defining status. I was born and brought up in London. Yes, my father is Parsi.”

— Satya Bhabha

“The other side of midnight's hour strikes a herald thrice rung
Seer, Shadow, Sun-together they come
Sixteen winters hence-the light shall be eclipsed
Leaving darkness to ascend beneath a sky bleeding fire”

— Alyson Noel

“I don't think people cry reading 'Midnight's Children,' but a lot of people seem to cry watching the movie.”

— Salman Rushdie

“When 'Midnight's Children' came out, people in the West tended to respond to the fantasy elements in the novel, to praise it in those terms. In India, people read it like a history book.”

— Salman Rushdie

“One of the things I've thought about 'Midnight's Children' is that it is a novel which puts a Muslim family at the centre of the Indian experience.”

— Salman Rushdie

“My first novel - the novel I wrote before 'Midnight's Children' - feels, to me, now, very - I mean, I get embarrassed when I see people reading it. You know, there are some people who, bizarrely, like it. Which I'm, you know, I'm happy for.”

— Salman Rushdie

“There's always these giant baffling books, like 'The Da Vinci Code.' People say it's not as well written as 'Midnight's Children.' Why aren't people reading 'Midnight's Children?' Nobody knows why these phenomenons happen but they're great.”

— Denise Mina

“There was our old life, in the apartment, in which we had time to finish most of the tasks we started and took long showers and remembered to water our plants. And there was our new life, in the hospital a mile away, in which Shauna needed morphine and two babies needed to eat every three hours around the clock ... I remember thinking, we're going to have to figure out how to combine our old life with our new life ... Over a year later, we still have days of mind-crushing fatigue, midnights when I think I'm pouring milk into a bottle but am actually pouring it all over the counter. Yesterday I spent five minutes trying to remember my parents' zip code. But now there are mornings like this one, when we wake up and realize we've slept through the entire night, and we stroll through the gardens as if we are normal again, as if we are finally learning the syllables of this strange, new language.”

— Anthony Doerr

“A sickened, sensitive shadow writhing in hands that are not hands, and whirled blindly past ghastly midnights of rotting creation, corpses of dead worlds with sores that were cities, charnel winds that brush the pallid stars and make them flicker low. Beyond the worlds vague ghosts of monstrous things; half-seen columns of unsanctified temples that rest on nameless rocks beneath space and reach up to dizzy vacua above the spheres of light and darkness. And through this revolting graveyard of the universe the muffled, maddening beating of drums, and thin, monotonous whine of blasphemous flutes from inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond Time; the detestable pounding and piping whereunto dance slowly, awkwardly, and absurdly the gigantic, tenebrous ultimate gods-the blind, voiceless, mindless gargoyles whose soul is Nyarlathotep.”

— H.P. Lovecraft

“When moonlight french kisses the Manhattan midnight
There's a not a face without a teardrop that's in sight
Midnights in Manhattan keep me dreamin'
I think I'm gonna keep em”

— Mac Lethal

“But it is never over;
nothing ends until we want it to.
Look, in shattered midnights,
On black ice under silver trees,
We are still dancing, dancing.”

— Gwendolyn MacEwen

“When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds and our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, we will know that we are living in the creative turmoil of a genuine civilization struggling to be born.”

— Martin Luther King, Jr.

“I must confess that waltzes do not move me, I guess I hummed the blues too early, and spent too many midnights out wailing to the rain.”

— Assata Shakur

“Ere midnight's frown and morning's smile, ere thou and peace may meet.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley