Desert Quotes - Page 20

• The rules of the Hunger Games are simple. In punishment for the uprising, each of the twelve districts must provide one girl and one boy, called tributes, to participate. The twenty-four tributes will be imprisoned in a vast outdoor arena that could hold anything from a burning desert to a frozen wasteland. Over a period of several weeks, the competitors must fight to the death. The last tribute standing wins.

  Suzanne Collins

  Girl, Fighting, Winning

  Suzanne Collins (2009). “The Hunger Games”, p.20, Scholastic Inc.

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• Maybe God created the desert so that man could appreciate the date trees

  Paulo Coelho

  Life, Men, Appreciate

  Paulo Coelho (1998). “The Alchemist - 10th Anniversary Edition”, HarperSanFrancisco

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• Instead of answering her as soon as he saw her hair grow electric, her face more vivid, her eyes like lightning, her body restless and jerky like a racehorse’s, he retired behind this wall of objective understanding, this gentle testing and acceptance of her, just as one watches an animal in the zoo and smiles at his antics, but is not drawn into this mood. It was this which left Lilith in a state of isolation - indeed, like a wild animal in an absolute desert.

  Anais Nin

  Zoos, Wall, Eye

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• Sometimes, from beyond the skycrapers, the cry of a tugboat finds you in your insomnia, and you remember that this desert of iron and cement is an island.

  Albert Camus

  New York, Insomnia, Islands

  Albert Camus (1987). “American journals”

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• In recent weeks it has come to my attention that many caravans have met with disaster; they have not gotten through." I grunted wisely. "Probably ran out of water. That's the thing about deserts. Dry." "Indeed. A fascinating analysis. But survivors reaching Hebron report differently: monsters fell upon them in the wastes." "What, fell upon them in a squashed-them kind of way?" "More the leaped-out-and-slew-them kind. (...)

  Jonathan Stroud

  Water, Monsters, Survivor

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• So you find yourself surrounded by death and horror in the world, and you escape it into lust. But lust has no duration; it leaves you again in the desert.

  Hermann Hesse

  Lust, Finding Yourself, World

  Hermann Hesse (2013). “Narcissus and Goldmund: A Novel”, p.270, Macmillan

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• ..when a war ends, what does that look like exactly? do the cells in the body stop detonating themselves? does the orphanage stop screaming for its mother? when the sand in the desert has been melted down to glass and our reflection is not something we can stand to look at does the white flag make for a perfect blindfold? yesterday i was told a story about this little girl in Iraq, six-years-old, who cannot fall asleep because when she does she dreams of nothing but the day she watched her dog eat her neighbor's corpse. if you told her war is over do you think she can sleep?

  Andrea Gibson

  Girl, Mother, Dream

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• If you are the lantern, I am the flame; If you are the lake, then I am the rain; If you are the desert, I am the sea; If you are the blossom, I am the bee; If you are the fruit, then I am the core; If you are the rock, then I am the ore; If you are the ballad, I am the word; If you are the sheath, then I am the sword.

  Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  Rain, Lakes, Rocks

  Cecilia Dart-Thornton (2011). “The Lady of the Sorrows”, p.285, Pan Macmillan

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• Finnick:" Good to see you, Peeta." Peeta:" You be nice to her, Finnick. Or I might try and take her away from you." It could be a joke, if the tone wasn't so cold. Everything it conveys is wrong. The open distrust of Finnick, the implication that Peeta has his eye on Annie, that Annie could desert Finnick, that I do not even exist. Finnick:"Oh Peeta," says Finnick lightly. "Don't make me sorry I restarted your heart.

  Suzanne Collins

  Sorry, Nice, Heart

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• These really are our days, and we can prevail and overcome, even in the midst of trends that are very disturbing. If we are faithful the day will come when those deserving pioneers and ancestors, whom we rightly praise for having overcome the adversities in the wilderness trek, will praise today’s faithful for having made their way successfully through a desert of despair and for having passed through a cultural wilderness, while still keeping the faith.

  Neal A. Maxwell

  Adversity, Lds, Faithful

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• You have to protect yourself from sadness. Sadness is very close to hate. Let me tell you this. This is the thing I learned. If you take in someone else's poison – thinking you can cure them by sharing it – you will instead store it within you. Those men in the desert were smarter than you. They assumed he could be useful. So they saved him, but when he was no longer useful they left him.

  Michael Ondaatje

  Hate, Sadness, Men

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• How shall Integrity face Oppression? What shall Honesty do in the face of Deception, Decency in the face of Insult, Self-Defense before Blows? How shall Desert and Accomplishment meet Despising, Detraction, and Lies? What shall Virtue do to meet Brute Force? There are so many answers and so contradictory; and such differences for those on the one hand who meet questions similar to this once a year or once a decade, and those who face them hourly and daily.

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Honesty, Integrity, Lying

  "The Ordeal of Mansart". Book by W. E. B. Du Bois, 1957.

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• Do you see the Field of Mars, where I walked next to my bride in her white wedding dress, with red sandals in her hands, when we were kids?” “I see it well.” “We spent all our days afraid it was too good to be true, Tatiana,” said Alexander. “We were always afraid all we had was a borrowed five minutes from now.” Her hands went on his face. “That’s all any of us ever has, my love,” she said. “And it all flies by.” “Yes,” he said, looking at her, at the desert, covered coral and yellow with golden eye and globe mallow. “But what a five minutes it’s been.

  Paullina Simons

  Kids, Eye, Hands

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• If you don't know where you're going, stop racing to get there. -- from Just Desert by M. T. Anderson

  Chris Van Allsburg

  Racing, Knows, Ifs

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• Last night we told you that none of the angels remember where we landed when we fell," Daniel said. "Yeah, about that... How's it possible?" Shelby said. "You'd think that kind of thing would leave an impression on the old memorizer." Cam's face reddened. "You try falling for nine days through multiple dimensions and trillions of miles, landing on your face, breaking your wings, rolling around concussed for who knows how long, wandering the desert for decades looking for any clue as to who or what or where you are - then talk to me about the old memorizer.

  Lauren Kate

  Fall, Angel, Night

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• Long ago Mars was an oasis of running water.Today the Martiansurfaceis a sterile,barren desert. Here on Earth, who knows what climactic knobs we unwittingly turn,which might one day render Earth as dry and lifeless as Mars. (From the cover of Old Poison by Joan Francis)

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Running, Oasis, Long Ago

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• God, she was beautiful - my first image of the Orient - a woman such as only the desert poet knew how to praise: her face was the sun, her hair the protecting shadow, her eyes fountains of cool water, her body the most slender of palm-trees and her smile a mirage.

  Amin Maalouf

  Beautiful, Eye, Hair

  Amin Maalouf (1998). “Samarkand”, Interlink Publishing Group Incorporated

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• A man doesn't grow old because he has lived a certain number of years. A man grows old when he deserts his ideal. The years may wrinkle his skin, but deserting his ideal wrinkles his soul.

  Brennan Manning

  Men, Wrinkles, Years

  Brennan Manning (2008). “The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out”, p.120, Multnomah

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• The brown blotches of the benevolent skin cancer the sun brings from its reflection on the tropic sea were on his cheeks. The blotches ran well down the sides of his face and his hands had the deep-creased scars from handling heavy fish on the cords. But none of these scars were fresh. They were as old as erosions in a fishless desert.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Cancer, Reflection, Erosion

  Ernest Hemingway (1995). “The old man and the sea”, p.5, Hueber Verlag

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• People sometimes accuse me of knowing a lot. "Stephen," they say, accusingly, "you know a lot." This is a bit like telling a person who has a few grains of sand clinging to him that he owns much sand. When you consider the vast amount of sand there is in the world such a person is, to all intents and purposes, sandless. We are all sandless. We are all ignorant. There are beaches and deserts and dunes of knowledge whose existance we have never even guessed at, let alone visited.

  Stephen Fry

  Beach, Knowing, People

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• Woods are not like other spaces. To begin with, they are cubic. Their trees surround you, loom over you, press in from all sides. Woods choke off views & leave you muddled & without bearings. They make you feel small & confused & vulnerable, like a small child lost in a crowd of strange legs. Stand in a desert or prairie & you know you are in a big space. Stand in the woods and you only sense it. They are vast, featureless nowhere. And they are alive.

  Bill Bryson

  Children, Confused, Views

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• I went into the desert to forget about you. But the sand was the color of your hair. The desert sku was the color of your eyes. There was nowhere I could go that wouldn't be you.

  Jeffrey Eugenides

  Eye, Hair, Color

  Jeffrey Eugenides (2003). “Middlesex”, p.189, A&C Black

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• But her name was Esmé. She was a girl with long, long, red, red hair. Her mother braided it. The flower shop boy stood behind her and held it in his hand. Her mother cut it off and hung it from a chandelier. She was Queen. Mazishta. Her hair was black and her handmaidens dressed it with pearls and silver pins. Her flesh was golden like the desert. Her flesh was pale like cream. Her eyes were blue. Brown.

  Laini Taylor

  Girl, Mother, Queens

  Laini Taylor (2009). “Lips Touch: Three Times”, p.196, Scholastic Inc.

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• Let his sword break and his shield shatter, Sansa thought coldly as she shoved out through the doors, let his courage fail him and every man desert him.

  George R. R. Martin

  Men, Doors, Shields

  George R. R. Martin (2012). “George R. R. Martin's A Game of Thrones 5-Book Boxed Set (Song of Ice and Fire Series): A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, A Feast for Crows, and and A Dance with Dragons”, p.1307, Bantam

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• If Cameron kidnaps you, kills you, then buries your lifeless body in a shallow grave in the desert where your remains lay decomposing for several decades until they're accidentally discovered by some guy on a journey to awaken his spirit at the Salinas Pueblo Missions, can I have your iMac?" I gaped at her. "You've really thought this out. "I love your iMac." "I love my iMac too, and you're not getting her." "But you'll be decomposing.

  Darynda Jones

  Journey, Guy, Body

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