a gravitationally completely collapsed object (the return to innocence)

"Well, after you've used the phrase 'a gravitationally completely collapsed object' ten times you conclude you've got to get a better name. So that's when I switched to the word 'black hole'."

John Archibald Wheeler, A Brief History of Time (1991)

"No... no, I don't think that. But... 

But what? that rational side of his mind demanded, and Mike thought it was talking just a little too loud, a little too fast. Even if there was still something to find, it would have decayed long ago. So... what?"

It, Stephen King

STEPHEN HAWK-KING

A Brief History of Time (1991)

"The fog changed everything, made the most ordinary things like fire hydrants and stop-signs into objects of mystery--things both strange and a trifle sinister. You could hear cars but not see them, and because of the fog's odd acoustic quality, you could not tell if they were far or near until you actually saw them come rolling out of the fog with ghost-halos of moisture ringing their headlamps."

It, Stephen King

"And yet some rationality remained, even until the end: as the Creature hooked its claws into the soft meat of his neck, as his carotid artery let go in a warm and painless gout that splashed the thing's reptilian plating, Eddie's hands groped at the Creature's back, feeling for a zipper. They fell away only when the Creature tore his head from his shoulders with a low satisfied grunt. 

And as Eddie's picture of what It was began to fade, It began promptly to change into something else."

It, Stephen King

New York Stories (1989) 

" 'cause what do you give a girl that has nothing, you know, that doesn't need anything, right? you give her comfort, right?"

"The Cadillac Hotel," Snap Judgement, 07.27.2017.

"Yet there was something in the concept of haiku that fired his imagination. The idea made him feel happy... Haiku was good poetry, Ben felt, because it was structured poetry. There were no secret rules. Seventeen syllables, one image linked to one emotion, and you were out. Bingo. It was clean, it was utilitarian, it was entirely contained within and dependent upon its own rules. He even liked the word itself, a slide of air broken as if along a dotted line by the 'k'-sound at the very back of your mouth: haiku."

It, Stephen King

Some nights I just play black-jack.

Rain Man (1988) 

"(for some reason this last caused another wave of feeling to sweep him so powerfully he had to grope for the railing again; the feeling was huge, inarticulate, mercifully brief; perhaps a sexual pre-signal, meaningless to his body, where the endocrine glands still slept almost without dreaming, yet as bright as summer heat-lightning) a bright golden anklet-bracelet she wore..."

It, Stephen King

"Team Homer," The Simpsons (1995)

"My mother was not a person but the climate I grew up in."

1982 Janine, Alasdair Gray

An Angel at My Table (1990)

the sun can't be seen
behind our backs while we sleep,
radiating heat

Under the surface
of an extinguishing core,
from remnants are mined

the membrane, stripped off
like vinyl from a billboard
when the bond pays out.

Takes one year no more
to become expert at this
manual labor.

Protein-rich membranes
are dried, powdered, and processed.
Sold as supplements

to heal busted joints,
lasting muscle contracture,
palmar fascia.

"There was very little in the place, mostly it was furnished with light and quiet. It was on the top floor and looked out over rooftops. There was a Chinese teapot in the kitchen, there was a copy of Lilly's The Mind of the Dolphin on the table by the bed. In the sitting room were R. H. Blyth's four volumes on haiku and some natural history. 'I don't buy books much anymore,' he said. There was a radio but no gramophone."

Turtle Diary, Russell Hoban

"I stretched out my hands, thought of holding the grey air cool and wet in my hands."

Turtle Diary, Russell Hoban